Chapter Text
Hob is lamenting his life choice of science as he stumbles into the lecture hall at eight in the morning, shoving the last of his toast into his mouth in an attempt to mitigate the damage to his stomach lining from his nuclear waste espresso. He can’t believe he’s going to have to do this five days a week for an entire term. It’s unjust. It’s sadistic. How is anyone’s brain functioning at this hour. Charmed coffee should be subsidized.
The Hall of Sciences permeates an unholy combination of ammonia, sulfur, formaldehyde and Zoflora Linen Fresh, which Hob knows he will eventually adjust to, but right now it’s putting his teeth on edge. This is not helped by the crush of noise around him as students file into the lecture theater, all of them too loud and too close and if one more person steps on the back of his shoe Hob is going to actually snarl.
But then—
It all stops.
Everything goes quiet.
Because the most gorgeous boy to ever exist is sitting at the very top of the lecture theater.
He’s a fey, gothic creature—and Hob grew up with a few goth kids on the estate, okay, he’s used to smudgy eyeliner and artistically placed safety pins—but if those muppets had been dressed for school picture day, then this boy has been professionally styled for the runway. A high-collared black jumper, a subtle rim of eyeliner, an artfully styled mess of black hair, and just a hint of impassive disdain on his delicate features.
He’s got an older-looking guy to his right, and an empty seat on the left.
An empty seat with Hob’s name on it.
Hob swallows the last of his toast, and looks down at his third-hand West Ham shirt, grass-stained trousers, and cherry red AeterNikes.
Lacking a crew of wardrobe specialists and hairdressers, he does his best to brush the crumbs off the front of his shirt, runs a hand through his shower-damp hair, and then heads up the stairs.
“Morning,” Hob says, dropping into the seat next to his future boyfriend and holding out a hand. “I’m Hob, nice to meet you.”
His future boyfriend blinks back at him, and then his eyes go from Hob’s face to the lanyard around his neck, and back again.
He does not shake Hob’s hand.
Hob’s heart sinks.
Because—of course. Of course, even here in the hallowed halls of academia, even in a roomful of people who had all sat through the same Diversity in University presentation in Picker’s Hall last week—even here, there are bigots.
Of course there are. Hob was a moron to think it would be otherwise.
But just as he starts to withdraw, the boy’s eyes go wide, and he seizes Hob’s hand with two of his own.
He does not shake. He clutches.
“Hi,” he says, with eyes that make Hob think they did Frodo a massive sexual disservice by not putting Elijah Wood in eyeliner.
“Hi,” Hob replies, only a little breathless.
“I’m Dream,” says his future boyfriend.
Dream.
This close, Hob can just barely pick out the notes of the boy’s scent from the general classroom muck of unwashed masses, coffee and whiteboard pens. Metal, he thinks. Metal and… winter?
Hob wants to bury his face in that neck and breathe it in deep.
Hob wants to bury his face in that neck and lick it.
“Nice to meet you,” Hob says instead, and then immediately wants to die because he’d just said that.
He’s a mess. Hot people should be outlawed before ten in the morning.
“The pleasure is mine,” Dream replies, smiling just a little.
Christ, but that’s a posh accent.
Hob loves it.
The guy to the right of Dream leans over. “Hey, uh—”
“This is Matthew,” Dream interrupts, raising a casual hand that coincidentally blocks Matthew’s entire face.
Hob gives an obligatory wave. “Hey. You both studying chemistry?”
“Engineering,” Dream replies.
Hob grins. “Physics. I don't mind the chemistry though—easiest A-level by far, if you ask me. When’s your tutorial, then?”
“Fridays?”
Is it Hob’s imagination or does Dream look… hopeful?
“Ah, bad luck,” Hob says, making a face. “I’m on Tuesdays instead. What other lectures have you got?”
“Structure and Mechanics, Electronic and Informational Engineering, Energy, Mathematics, and an Engineering Practical Lab,” Dream rattles off, with immediacy.
“Did you memorize your course prospectus?”
Pink rapidly stains Dream’s cheeks.
This, too, is unfairly gorgeous on him.
“Hey, no worries,” Hob adds, grinning. “I’ve been breakfasting next to mine since February—my mum sent away for the whole bloody packet once I’d got in, and Christ, if you think you’ve got it memorized, you’ve got nothing on my mum. Reads it like the morning paper. I’m the first to go to uni, you know?”
Dream looks like he doesn’t quite know how to respond to that. Poor upper crust bastard’s probably never met anyone without six generations of university degrees.
Deciding to spare him the effort of configuring the correct words into the least possible patronizing order, Hob instead nods his head at the half-eaten breakfast at Dream’s elbow. “Got to say, I’m a bit jealous that your hall does bagels. All we’ve got in Dishy’s if you’re in a pinch is toast and grapefruits. And I hate grapefruit.”
Dream looks, if anything, even more awkward.
“I am… not staying in a hall.”
Hob frowns. “Isn’t it mandatory?”
Dream opens his mouth to reply, but then his gaze turns upward, and his expression closes down.
“Pardon me,” comes another posh voice, and Hob turns around to find that it belongs to a dark-skinned woman in a very expensive suit. Like Matthew, she looks questionably old for a student, and bears no ID lanyard.
Hob watches as her eyes move from his face, to his lanyard, and then back up to his face. Her expression is impassive, but Hob knows what she was looking at.
“I’m afraid the seat you have taken is reserved, sir,” she says.
“Sorry.” Hob settles back in his chair pointedly. “Must’ve missed the name placard.”
The woman’s eyes move to Dream, and then back to Hob. “I must insist.”
“Lots of other seats,” Hob says, extending his hand to indicate the bevy of available options.
“Lucienne,” Dream snaps.
“Sir,” she replies, raising her eyebrows.
Hob turns just in time to see something like regret slide away from Dream’s face, but it’s gone just as soon as it appears.
“My… apologies.” Dream’s voice is stiff as a board. He’s staring at a point just to the left of Hob’s face. “She is correct, Hob. Please find a seat elsewhere.”
Hob’s mouth drops open.
“Are you serious?” he demands, when Dream says nothing more.
“I would recommend relocating with haste, sir,” Lucienne informs him. “Lecture begins in approximately three minutes.”
Something hot and horrible burning in his chest and quickly spreading upward, Hob grabs his bag and stands. “Right. Well, this was lovely. Next time I’ll be sure to check the fucking seating chart.”
Hob all but storms down the stairs of the lecture theater, not particularly caring where he relocates to except that it’s far away from the row of minted bigots in the back. Christ, he never learns, he never fucking learns.
“Gadling!”
Hob’s head snaps up, and he sees a tiny brunette waving him over from the second row. She’s vaguely familiar but no name or introductory event springs to mind, which Hob is finding to be a common outcome of his highly alcoholic fresher’s week.
“Er,” Hob says, subtly attempting to get a glimpse of her lanyard after he drops into the next seat over. He can’t see her name, but he can see the bright orange bar at the top of the ID card, which at least tells him where he’d probably met her.
After the last five minutes, it’s a relief to be sitting next to a fellow werewolf.
The girl laughs. “Jo. You must not remember me teaching you the Savage dance.”
“I… really don’t. But I’m pretty sure I’d require a minimum of, like, five shots to even want to learn,” Hob replies, with faint horror.
“Afraid I can only account for the three jellies you did off my tits, mate,” Jo says.
Hob’s mouth drops open.
Jo cracks a grin. “Joking. You were right battered, though. Anyway, more important—I can’t believe your werewolf arse just tried to sit next to Dream Aeternus, are you mad?”
“Aeternus,” Hob repeats. “Like—”
Jo raises her eyebrows. “Yeah, like that Aeternus. Did you not know? Oh my god, you didn’t.”
“Obviously I didn’t know,” Hob hisses. “Bloody hell, I never would have—I’m not stupid.”
Christ. No wonder Dream had been reluctant to shake his hand.
Hob hasn’t met many sorcerers in his life, but none of them had ever been willing to touch him. One had refused to even stay in the same room. He, like every other child in the world, had grown up on a steady diet of Disney movies and CITV programs featuring villainous werewolf after villainous werewolf, all of whom wanted nothing more in life than to get their nasty teeth into some noble and righteous cartoon sorcerers.
No one knows why a werewolf’s bite will permanently rob a sorcerer of their powers, instead of turning them.
What Hob does know, is what it’s like to be uninvited to a year three birthday party because some werewolf over in Manchester decided to lose the fucking plot on Bonfire Night.
“I can’t believe you,” Jo hisses. “Do you live under a rock? Does your pack still live in a cave? It’s been all over the internet, how did you not know he was starting uni with us?”
“What does the internet care where some nepo baby goes to university?” Hob asks, as he racks his brain for its cumulative knowledge of the Aeternus children.
He knows Desire (obviously), and there was one that had come out with some revolutionary potion for Crohn’s disease last year. There’s another one in government, he thinks, and… and others. His mind supplies a hazy but large brood of children standing in front of Kronos and Nyxa, back when they’d been on the cover of Time.
“Well, he’s the mysterious one, isn’t he?” Jo replies, with erudition. “He’s never at any of the press events, never at any Gatherings—I don’t think they even let him go to school.”
“What—why?”
Jo stares at him.
“Yeah, I know, I live under a rock in a cave and I’m sorry I don’t read The Sun like the rest of the country, all right—will you tell me?”
At this, Jo rolls her eyes, but then she at last leans in and says in an even quieter voice, “They say it’s because he’s powerful. Like. Too powerful, you know? Killed his nannies with his temper tantrums and sent half of Africa into famine because he wanted it to snow at Christmas.”
“Bullshit,” Hob says immediately. “No one does that anymore. Sorcerers can’t just magic up a famine, that’s like. That’s Golden Ages sort of stuff.”
“Well, they can sure as shit kill their nannies,” Jo retorts. “And let’s face it, if anyone’s going to give birth to the most powerful magic user in centuries, it’s probably going to be the family of famously powerful sorcerers, isn’t it?”
Hob thinks about Dream. The warmth of his hands on Hob’s. The cerulean blue of his eyes. The scent of metal and winter.
“All I know is,” Jo continues, eyes flicking towards the back row of the room, “there’s a reason he’s not been allowed out in public his whole life. And those two bodyguards hanging out with him up there? I don’t think they’re here to protect him from us. I think they’re here to protect us from him.”
Ye Gads Family Group Chat
Mum: [a photo of two battered jigsaw puzzle boxes on a shelf]
Mum: The rabbits or the lighthouse, luvs?
Jill: Lol there both ugly
Hob: Weren’t you just at Oxfam last week?
Mum: Margie wanted to go ! Her cousin just had a baby so were looking at all the little clothes so cute !!!
Sarah: Hob you know she’s just empty nesting
Sarah: Even though she has three other lovely children still at home wither
Sarah: Also I vote for rabbits 💯
Hob: Please don't let her buy any more mugs. We've already got enough to serve tea to half the estate
Mum: I'll stop buying them when you lot stop breaking them xx
Jill: I vote lighthouse!! 🤩❤️🥳
Mum: [photo of a battered Motorola phone behind a glass case] £15 Hob ???
Hob: Yeah but Pixel 5 is what I really need
Hob: 2nd vote for rabbits also
Rachel is one of the few people that Hob had met while sober during fresher’s week (unsurprisingly, the scholarship luncheons had not featured alcoholic beverages). The two of them don’t have much in common other than both being diversity grabs for a prestigious university, but it turns out that an inch of poverty becomes a mile when you’re surrounded by people who started each school year with three new pairs of shoes from Clarks and a tailored uniform.
Luckily for them, trauma bonding is a well-documented phenomenon, and the universe has seen fit to deliver it in spades.
Hob is stirring his soggy cornflakes round and round, eyes burning, head pounding. The rest of his hallmates are in similar condition, if not worse. The girl next to him has her head in her arms and earmuffs over her ears. Rachel is across from him, on her third cup of coffee.
The dining hall has surely never been so full at six in the morning on a Saturday. But what else are they supposed to do?
“You’d think—” Rachel starts, and then is interrupted by the crescendoing, unearthly shriek that rattles the windows and makes Hob want to find a way to stuff actual cotton into his ears.
She heaves a sigh, and covers her ears.
Hob does the same, and closes his eyes for good measure.
Cavendish Hall is one of the oldest buildings on campus, and in Hob’s two weeks of residence, it has been uniformly excellent. His room is spacious, with huge old windows and an actual (though boarded up) fireplace. The dining hall is like something out of Harry Potter. The building is old enough that it has a Temperatus instead of normal HVAC, and Hob is told that in the winter the spells even extend to warming the floorboards.
He was also warned about Old Beans.
The warnings did not do him justice.
“You’d think,” Rachel repeats, when the godawful screaming dies away, and Hob dares to finally lift his hands from his ears, “they’d have found a way to do a proper exorcism by now.”
“You’d think it would take them less than seven hours to get a sorcerer in to shut ‘im up,” Hob grumbles.
“Probably quibbling over weekend rates,” Rachel says darkly. “The greedy bastards. My gran used to have her garden charmed every spring, but the last few years it’s just been too expensive. Bloody highway robbery.”
Hob yawns, nodding. “My college was part of that government refurb just before I started. You know—Immacu-nolium, auggie wifi, new Tough Turf for the pitch, Macbook Aers left and right. Went to shit after a year when the government contract for spell renewal was up, and then we were stuck mopping the floors just like everyone else. Total waste of—oh for fuck’s—”
The rest is drowned out but horrible, ear-splitting shrieking that makes Hob’s teeth ache and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He wants to bite. He wants to howl.
He grits his teeth, and counts his way through it.
Eventually, it dies off.
A floor or two above, some student at their wit’s end screams wordlessly in reply.
Hob sympathizes.
“I think it’s getting louder,” Rachel complains, as her hands come away from her head. She casts him a look of sympathy. “Can’t imagine it with your ears.”
“Not great,” Hob agrees, burying his face in his hands. He just wants to sleep. If it weren’t pouring rain right now, he’d even be willing to kip on the quad.
“What d’you reckon they’d have to pay that Aeternus kid to come over and fix it?” Rachel asks.
“A million pounds,” Hob mumbles into his hands.
“Not out of the question. The girl in my geology tutorial, her mum owns Waitrose.”
Good grief.
“Although,” Rachel adds, “I heard the Aeternus kid’s not allowed on campus outside of lectures, or something. So I reckon that’s out.”
Hob brings his head up a little to squint at her. “What?”
Rachel shrugs a shoulder. “Apparently. My roommate’s in engineering, and she says he’s always in the back row by himself during class. Never raises his hand. Gets rushed out the door by his babysitters like the room’s on fire as soon as the lecture’s over. ‘Cause he’s a bit of a psychopath, isn’t he?”
Hob’s cursory Google search of Dream Aeternus, following their brief interaction last week, concurs with this assessment.
“Sources close to the family have implied debilitating mental health issues,” had been People’s slightly more delicate take on the issue, though there hadn’t been a wealth of information on Dream in general. Most of Hob’s search had returned only blurry paparazzi photos of Dream with his more famous siblings, and articles with headlines like The 7 Aeternus Children: Everything to Know and 18 Facts You Didn’t Know About the Aeternus Clan (And No, They’re Not All About Desire!) .
Some part of Hob wants bizarrely to argue for Dream being a normal bloke, but Dream was also weird and rude to him, which doesn’t supply much in the way of defenses. Hob compromises and instead goes with, “I think billionaire babies are all probably a bit nutters, eh?”
“Too right. You think he really killed his nanny, when he was little?”
Hob shrugs. “I heard the rumor.”
“I can see it. My niece is three, and that girl throws eight wobblies a day—kicking, howling, banging her head on the rug, the whole thing. Get a toddler with more power than Merlin himself, take away his lolly, and he’d bring the house down ‘round your ears.”
“Well, they brought up six other magical kids, and none of them ever screamed down Knightsbridge,” Hob points out.
“Maybe the rest of them aren’t schizos to boot,” Rachel replies.
“You know they literally named the youngest one Delirium,” Hob says, having acquired this bit of knowledge from Buzzfeed’s eighteen facts he had not known about the Aeternus clan.
“Yeah, and there’s another one called Despair. How can you name your baby Despair?”
“There was a lady on the estate a few years ago,” Hob says. “Tried to name her kid Cyanide. But registrar’s wouldn’t let her because they said it was child abuse.”
Rachel snorts. “But of course, get yourself a billion pounds and a knighthood, and you can name your kids whatever you bloody well like. Despair. Do you think they have nicknames, or do they just go around yelling, ‘Oi, Destruction, supper’s ready?’”
“Posh people don’t yell. They have intercoms.”
Rachel laughs, sitting up straight and replying, in her plummiest of RP plum, “Excuse me, Mistress Death, but I do believe your Amazon parcel has arrived in the post.”
It’s a terrible impersonation, so it must be the sleep deprivation that makes Hob laugh as hard as he does.
He’s laughing so hard he almost misses it when the pipes begin to groan and the cutlery begins to rattle. He’s a hare too slow with his hands, and earns himself a split second of full-volume angry ghost shrieking as a result.
Chemistry lab begins the second week of term, presumably to give their professors one less week of apoplexy as they attempt to keep forty-odd first years from burning down the Hall of Sciences. Hob enters, chatting with Jo about the were scrimmage league on campus and fully planning to partner up together—but their conversation is brought to a premature halt by the seating chart they find taped to the board.
“Oh, fantastic,” Jo groans, trudging up to it. “What idiot did they stick me with now?”
Hob looks over her head, scanning for his own name, until he sees:
Station 12: Robert Gadling & Dream Aeternus
Oh.
“Corin Thiandomm. Well, he doesn’t sound like a git at all,” Jo mutters. “Who’ve you—oh, what.”
“I’m sure they’ll switch us out,” Hob sighs.
“Well, that’d be brilliant. Then we can partner up instead!” Jo holds up a hand for a high five, which Hob does his best to return with enthusiasm. “See you soon, mate.”
Dream is waiting over at station twelve, with his… bodyguards. Babysitters. Whatever. He is unreasonably attractive even in the sodium-yellow lighting, today with a black turtleneck and that same delicate touch of kohl around the eyes.
Hob starts to inhale, heart leaping at the memory of that singular wintry mix, but he stops abruptly when he is instead assaulted with laboratory sulfur and acetone.
Disgusting.
Hob has to fight the urge to wrinkle his nose as he approaches Dream, taking in small, shallow breaths.
“Hey,” he says.
Dream inclines his head.
“Uh.” Hob shifts his weight to his other foot. “So, it says up there that we’re supposed to be partners.”
“Truly, a relief to have confirmation of your literacy,” Dream replies.
Hob blows out a breath. “Look. I just—you’re a sorcerer, all right, and I’m a—well. I know you know.”
“I am aware.”
“So, I don’t mind if you want to switch, or—or if your, uh. Your friends—” Hob gestures at Matthew and Lucienne. “—want you to switch to someone else. You know, to keep you safe, or whatever. I get it. No hard feelings, mate.”
Dream raises his eyebrows. “Do you plan to bite me, Hob Gadling?”
“No, but—”
“Then I hardly think I am in danger.”
“But last time, you…”
“If you wish to switch partners,” Dream snaps, suddenly acidic, “then you may speak with the professor and present your case. I am sure she will not deny you your request. However, if we are to separate, then allow me to make it very clear that it will not be due to any misgivings on my part regarding your character or your species.”
Hob’s mouth hangs open a little bit.
“All right,” he says, pulling himself back together. He attempts a smile. “Uh. Partners it is, then.”
Dream inclines his head once more, and then snatches up his lab book and a pen and returns to his writings.
After suffering through multiple safety demonstrations, signing a pledge to not be wankers in the lab, and taking inventory of their personal supply drawers for the term—they begin their very first experiment. They’re analyzing water samples.
Thrilling.
Dream assembles their distillation apparatus in silence, while Hob fills a beaker with tap water and then carefully labels it before setting it down amongst the other water samples they’re testing. He’s done far before Dream is.
“D’you want some help?” he asks, folding his arms on the epoxy resin countertop.
“It is almost complete,” Dream replies.
Hob glances at the diagram. Seems more like a ‘halfway’ than an ‘almost’, but Dream also doesn’t seem to be struggling, so he lets it go.
He picks up the striker and squeezes it to the rhythm of Cruel Summer. Spins back and forth on his stool a bit.
“So how’d your first week go?” Hob asks, as Dream battles with a particularly stubborn clamp.
Dream glances up. “It went well,” he says.
“Yeah? What’s gonna be your best class, do you think?”
Dream strains fruitlessly at the clamp’s screw handle, and after the third attempt or so Hob expects to see the glow of magic appear on his hands to help the loosening, but instead the already pale fingers just start to blanche white with effort.
Hob watches Dream struggle a while longer like this, with increasing frustration and continued silence, until it’s perfectly obvious that Dream is going to continue magiclessly until either his hands or the clamp are left in ruin. As Hob isn’t holding out much hope that the clamp will go first, he puts out a palm.
“I can get that,” he says.
Dream looks up with mutiny on his face.
Hob readjusts his odds on the clamp ever so slightly.
Still, they are on a deadline here.
“It was probably another were that screwed it shut last time,” Hob offers. “Come on. You don’t stand a chance.”
“That is statistically unlikely,” Dream grumps.
“Well, then, maybe it was screwed shut while it was hot, and now the metal’s expanded a bit around a defect in the threads,” Hob reasons.
Dream considers this unhappily, and then after a long moment, shoves the clamp at Hob.
Hob grins, and has the clamp open with a single twist of his hand. Dream receives it back with ill grace.
“So,” Hob says, undeterred, “go on. What’s going to be your best class this term?
“Most likely, mathematics,” Dream replies, now attaching the tubing for the input and output samples.
Hob wants to ask if this is Dream’s first time ever attending real lectures, instead of having private tutors or being in one of those internet schools.
Instead he says, “Is maths your favorite, then?”
“If it were,” Dream says, fitting the second rubber hose, “I would be in a mathematics course.”
“Right,” Hob says.
He makes the striker rasp out the rhythm of the operatic section of Bohemian Rhapsody.
Dream hands him the bunsen burner.
Hob obediently lights it, as Dream fills their distillation flask with the tap water, and adds their boiling chips. He then clamps it to the apparatus, and they both sit back to wait for it to boil.
Hob spins back and forth on his stool, ankles hooked on opposing legs.
“My Energy lecture,” Dream says suddenly. He looks up from where he’s been running his thumb up and down the edge of his lab notebook, to instead spare a quick glance at Hob. “It is. Taught by Professor Ramireddy.”
Hob sits up straight. “No.”
Dream’s mouth twitches.
“What’s it like?” Hob demands.
“Astonishingly, his ex-wife has not yet featured in his lecture notes on the conversion of heat energy to mechanical energy.”
“Shame.”
“Though perhaps,” Dream continues with a sly touch, “it will be more relevant to Thursday’s topic of electromagnetics.”
“I’d’ve thought shagging your grad student was pretty directly related to the conversion of thermal energy to mechanical, actually,” Hob replies.
“Perhaps he wishes to utilize it instead as an example of magnetic attraction,” Dream says solemnly.
Hob laughs out loud.
Dream does not—but he does give another one of his tiny little Mona Lisa smiles.
“Did you read her book?” Hob asks, and then his eyes catch on the distillation flask. “Ah, shit.”
Dream’s eyes widen, and he grabs an empty beaker to hold under the dripping hose.
“It was supposed to be, uh… twenty?” Hob says, pulling his lab notebook closer.
“Twenty-five,” Dream replies, eyes fixed on the drip.
Hob waits as Dream silently counts out the drops. After twenty-five, Dream switches it out for a second beaker.
“So, did you read it?” Hob asks, as they wait for the beaker to fill.
“No,” Dream says.
“Yeah, me either,” Hob agrees readily. “Read the summary on wikipedia, that’s good enough for me. Tell you what, though, that’s some top notch revenge right there. Your husband leaves you for his grad student, and you turn your story into a top forty novel? Fucking brill.”
“Top forty novel,” Dream repeats.
Hob waves a hand. “Popular.”
“Books. Are bestsellers.”
“I heard Netflix is turning it into a mini-series,” Hob adds, ignoring Dream’s expression of disbelief. “Probably watch that, when it comes out. Maybe they’ll actually film it here. We could be extras!”
“We,” Dream says.
“There’s this kid I tutored back home, his brother—he was an extra on Doctor Who. Twice. Met Matt Smith. Well, sort of. What actually happened was that he’d spent all day getting lectured on how the extras weren’t supposed to do anything with the main actors on set unless directed to? Like—no talking, no looking, no touching, if Karen Gillian catches on fire, don’t go for the fire extinguisher unless the AD hands it to you, and even then, maybe wait for someone to say ‘action’, you know? Well. Then they’re at lunch. And Matt Smith is bumping elbows with everyone over the spag bol, and he says, ‘Nice costume, mate’, and Rhys—that’s his brother—just stares at him like a total idiot because he’s got no idea what to do, doesn’t want to get in trouble, doesn’t want to be rude, he’s just paralyzed—and then Matt Smith wanders off for the salad bar. And that’s it. Opportunity of lifetime, completely wasted.”
“...unfortunate,” Dream says, at length. He glances at their project. “I believe we have enough water to begin. The first step should be chloride testing. Do you have the setup?”
“Uhhhh—yeah, got it,” Hob says, as he turns the page. “We need one mL of the distilled stuff in a test tube, and one of tap water in another test tube. I’ll do the distilled water, you do the tap?”
Dream nods.
Hob carefully swaps out their collection beaker for a different one, and grabs a graduated cylinder for measuring.
“My sister met Matt Smith a few years ago,” Dream says. “She said he was quite kind, as actors go.”
“One of your sisters was on television?” Hob asks, frowning.
This had not been one of Buzzfeed’s eighteen facts.
“No. It was at the BAFTAs,” Dream replies. He’s bent low, carefully measuring out his own milliliter of water. “He was in the row just ahead of our box. I believe we also need deionized water, and the sodium chloride solution.”
“Just—at the BAFTAs. Right. Of course you lot attend the BAFTAs, what was I thinking.”
Dream stares at him.
Hob hands over the deionized water, and starts pouring out the sodium chloride.
“Well, who’d you hang out with at the BAFTAs, then?” Hob asks. “Daniel Craig? Florence Pugh?”
Dream’s mouth presses into a thin line. “I’ve never been.”
Oh right.
Black sheep of the family, not allowed out in public, it’s not like Hob read half a dozen articles about it last week or anything. Christ .
“Er—"
“I am assured that they are imminently more enjoyable from the sofa with a takeaway,” Dream adds. “For instance, unlike my sibling, I’ve never been trapped in a hallway with Danny Dyer for ten minutes while waiting for the next ad break to be allowed to re-enter the theater.”
Hob raises his eyebrows. “Okay, fair point. Bullet dodged.”
“Indeed.” Dream plucks the little brown bottle off the high shelf before them, and looks over at Hob. “Do you require any sort of protective gear?”
Hob blinks at him.
Dream extends the bottle forward, as if the problem is somehow that Hob can't read the AgNO3 written on the bottle and not what's just come out of Dream's mouth.
"No, I'll. Uh." Hob swallows. "I'll be all right."
Dream does not open the bottle. “Should you step back, perhaps?”
“Really, I'll be fine, mate. Just get on with it,” Hob says.
The silver is dilute enough that even at close range, Hob mostly just has to suppress the urge to sneeze. It's easy enough, because he's too busy thinking about how most people keep a silver knife or two around the house ‘just in case’, and how some sorcerers don't ever leave home without one, and this lunatic wants to know if Hob needs safety goggles.
Ye Gads Family Group Chat
Hob: Any broken bones yet?
Mum: No
Mum: Still 40 min left tho so your sister still has time to do some damage
Hob: I'll light a candle for the Newman girls
Hob: Go clippers!!!! 🪇🪇
Hob is double checking that he's got his Classical Mechanics homework in his bag before he sets off for his next lecture, when someone says, "Uh, 'scuse me."
Hob looks up to see Matthew the Bodyguard/Babysitter standing next to his seat.
He is unaccompanied.
Hob looks around, and after a moment, locates Dream in his usual spot at the top of the lecture hall, Lucienne at his side.
"Sorry to bother you,” Matthew says, a touch sheepish, “but uh, Mr. Aeternus wants to talk to you up there.”
Hob squints. "Are you a Yank?"
"Actually, I took a bullet to the head in Afghanistan. Brain trauma. Been stuck with the accent ever since."
Hob’s mouth drops open. “I. Christ, I’m so sorry, I—”
Matthew grins. "Nah. Joking. I am American, sorry. But I get that question about a hundred times a day, so I like to mix it up a little."
Hob gapes.
"Come on, hop to," Matthew says cheerfully, chivvying Hob out of his seat and toward the staircase. "The brain trauma story's the best one so far, I think. Sometimes I go for offended Canadian. Method actor's also a good one—you know, going for a part in Death of a Salesman or whatever?"
"What are you actually doing over here?" Hob asks.
"Oh, y’know.” Matthew shrugs a shoulder. “The ex-wife moved over here for work. Took our daughter with her. So, here I am, suffering your stupid sinks and lack of window screens. Everything you people appropriated from around the world, but you couldn't pick up bug screens too? What, was the shopping cart full?”
Hob opens his mouth to offer some lukewarm defense of the UK and its entomological fixtures, but Matthew cuts him off with a, “Oh for fuck’s—” as he lifts one shoe, pulling up a stretch of pink chewing gum from the carpet with it.
“Pretty sure you lot invented that one,” Hob offers.
“We did not,” Matthew complains, as his hand glows briefly violet and his fingers outstretch, and in seconds the gum has dissolved into thin air.
“You definitely did. You know, baseball?”
“That’s chewing tobacco. Gum came from Mexico. Gum trees, I think.”
And Hob means to ask if gum trees aren’t Australian, but then they're at the top of the stairs, and Dream is there with his big blue eyes and his messy black hair that Hob desperately wants to touch because he thinks it would be soft and lovely and perfect beneath his hands. He thinks he’d like to bury his face into it.
He doesn’t have a clue what he and Matthew were just arguing about. Maybe sinks. Who cares.
"Hi," Hob says.
Dream—as seems to be his way—inclines his head in greeting.
"Matthew said you, er. Wanted something?"
"Yes," Dream replies. His eyes flicker toward Lucienne for a moment. "You are gifted in chemistry."
"I am?" Hob says.
He could fucking kick himself.
"I mean, I'm all right," he corrects hastily, trying and failing not to flush. "Physics is really more my thing, you know, but I get by in chem, yeah."
"I find myself." Dream presses his lips together. "...struggling."
You what, Hob just barely stops himself from blurting out.
Because, first of all, Dream had had absolutely no issues during their lab together last week—in fact, he'd seemed to be doing better than Hob. Second of all, they’re only just starting to move beyond what has thus far been a review of sixth form chemistry. Thirdly—they’re at St. Ignatius.
Then again, maybe if your family’s annual tax revenue can single-handedly fund the NHS, you don’t need perfect marks to get into the best university in the country.
“Sorry to hear that, mate,” Hob says, choosing his words carefully. “Some of these classes we have to take for our courses are total bollocks. My friend Rachel’s in geology, and the maths is already doing her head in.”
Dream ignores this and says point-blank, “I had thought that you could tutor me.”
Hob blinks. “Me?”
“You mentioned prior experience in tutoring, and you implied that you yourself scored quite well on the subject last year,” Dream explains. He is stiff-backed, wrapped in a black peacoat that seems too heavy for the current weather, and his hands are buried in his pockets. His eyes are fixed just to the left of Hob’s face.
“Well,” Hob says, and then stops. “Er. I mean—”
“You would, of course, be compensated for your time,” Dream adds.
“Oh! No, you don’t have to—I’m not even a qualified teacher, mate, you can’t just. You.” Hob stares at him in bewilderment. "Don't you want to hire a real tutor?"
"Did we not just discuss that you are eminently qualified for the position?" Dream asks impatiently.
Hob opens his mouth, but no words come out.
A very distant part of his brain is screaming that he is yet again needlessly protesting the opportunity for more time with a highly attractive specimen of humanity.
"Thursday evenings, six o'clock, five hundred pounds an hour," Dream declares, folding his arms over his chest.
Hob chokes. "What?"
Dream scowls. "Is that not appropriate?" He casts his eyes to Lucienne. "Seven hundred? A thousand? Whatever the standard rate is, obviously."
"Oh my god," says Hob.
"Pretty sure a hundred bucks would be more than enough, kiddo," Matthew offers.
Dream's scowl deepens.
"Mr. Aeternus," Matthew corrects, rolling his eyes.
“I, er. Have football on Thursday nights,” Hob cuts in hesitantly, which is not at all helped by the way that Dream’s gaze fixes on him with the very first syllable. “Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays?”
“Wednesday, then,” Dream decides.
“And, uh, six o’clock is supper time in my hall? So, maybe we could do seven?”
Dream exhales. “Seven is acceptable.”
“And you’re not paying me anything until you decide whether or not I’m rubbish at it,” Hob adds, and sets his jaw stubbornly against the growing irritation on Dream’s face.
“You will be perfectly serviceable,” Dream replies shortly, “once you stop wasting all of our time with this repetitious self deprecation.”
Hob stares.
Something like discomfort crosses Dream’s face, and he shifts his weight a little before mulishly sticking out his hand.
“Er,” says Hob, and bemusedly start to lift his own hand in response.
“Phone,” Dream demands.
Ah.
“Right,” Hob says, pulling it out of his pocket. “Yeah, we should have each others’ numbers, shouldn’t we?”
He makes a new contact—holy hell, he’s about to get Dream Aeternus’ phone number—and then looks up expectantly.
Dream’s hand is still held out.
“You can just—”
“Recite my personal contact information aloud, surrounded by the same cretins who have been filming me for their insipid TikToks in the hopes of securing viral fame? I think not.”
“...Fair point,” Hob allows, and passes his phone over.
Dream blinks down at the cracked, battered old Pixel, and then back up at Hob. “Did you… drop it?”
“No, I just got a bit peckish,” Hob says.
Dream stares.
Hob rolls his eyes. “Obviously, it got dropped. It types just fine, though—will you put in your bloody number already? I’ve got another lecture to get to.”
“I—yes,” Dream says, and starts tapping at the phone.
Hob knows, intellectually, that there is an all but zero percent chance that Dream will somehow go from the phone contacts app to the TikTok app, and then into the Messages tab, and then open the video Jo had sent Hob just this morning.
It starts with a sweet-faced redhead asking the camera “So what’s it like to go to uni with one of the Aeternus kids?”, followed by a series of clips of Dream billowing his way around campus, and interspersed with slow zoom-ins of Dream sitting in the most remote corners of the lecture halls. All set to the Halloween theme.
Hob had been torn between guilt and amusement as he’d watched it over his cornflakes this morning.
Now, as Hob watches Dream type in his phone number and thinks about what Dream would do—what his face would look like if he somehow opened Hob’s TikTok and saw that video of himself in Hob’s messages—
It is guilt. It is absolutely, definitely guilt.
“I shall contact you with further details,” Dream announces, Hob’s phone abruptly thrust forward.
Hob accepts it, hyper aware of the heat of Dream’s fingers just a hair’s breadth away from his own. “Er, thanks. Sounds good.”
Dream nods, and then turns on his heel and stalks off toward the door, Matthew quickly maneuvering himself slightly ahead of Dream’s stride to take the lead and Lucienne tailing behind. Hob stands there and watches them file out the door one by one, until he’s left standing alone in the lecture hall.
A few moments later, the clock strikes nine.
“Shit,” Hob says, and takes off for differential equations.
Chapter Text
They meet in one of the reservable study rooms in the library. Hob isn’t normally excellent with punctuality, but it turns out that when the appointment involves private time with a cute boy, he sets three alarms on his phone, checks his watch every five minutes through supper, and then arrives twenty minutes early to the library (and proceeds to pace outside the entrance for the next fifteen until it becomes a socially acceptable time to arrive for a date tutoring session).
Matthew is standing guard outside the door. He lets Hob inside with a nod and a wink, whereupon Hob finds Dream seated primly at the table with his books in a neat stack and his laptop open, Hydra Flask off to one side.
Hob’s heart skips a beat when blue eyes look up and lock with his. His breath catches. His fingers tingle.
The whole room smells of Dream.
“Hi,” he says.
There is winter snow, and frozen wood, and clean metal—concentrated and singular and heavenly—and Hob has to swallow the tidal wave of excess saliva that immediately follows his first intake of breath. He wants—
Dream’s pulse point flickers.
—to lick.
The corner of Dream’s mouth moves upward. “Hello, Hob.”
Hob’s nickname is the product of a chav-adjacent upbringing on an estate filled with too many children named Robert. He grew up with yes like the stovetop practically tattooed on his forehead. He’s heard it from a million different people, in all manner of different tones.
He is absolutely certain that no one has ever said it quite like Dream does.
“All right?” Matthew asks, leaning in, which is when Hob realizes that he’s been stopped in the doorway this entire time.
“Yeah,” Hob mumbles, face flaming, and he hurries inside, depositing his bag on the nearest chair, and then depositing himself on the chair beside it. Coincidentally, it’s the one closest to Dream. “Uh. Thanks for getting the room, I—”
He pauses.
Lucienne stares back at him from her seat in the corner, just beside the oversized whiteboard covered in circuit diagrams and Adventure Time doodles.
“It was no trouble,” Dream is saying, studiously logging into their school portal. “We have a standing reservation for the rest of the term, should you find me an agreeable pupil.”
Movement catches from the corner of Hob’s eye, and he focuses just in time to see Lucienne’s hand flash briefly scarlet, making the door close with a soft click.
Matthew outside.
Hob, Dream and Lucienne on the inside.
Hob supposes, if the rumors are true, he should feel safer for having a bodyguard in the room. He is now all but trapped in a small space with a boy who’s apparently powerful enough to turn Hob into a scorch mark on the floor and unstable enough to do it over a bad pun about thermal reactions.
But it does not feel safer.
It just feels… weird.
“Hob?” Dream asks.
“Sorry,” Hob says, pulling his focus once more to Dream. “Sorry, yeah. I mean, no! No, I’m sure you’ll be brilliant. If anything, you’ll have to cancel because you’ll realize you don’t need me after all!”
But Dream’s smile is gone.
His eyes flit ever so briefly to Lucienne.
“She is... required,” Dream says, at length.
Fuck.
“If it makes you uncomfortable—”
“Oh, no, of course! Yeah, of course, I totally understand. No problem,” Hob says, desperately reaching for cool and unfazed and aware that he’s missing by a new mile with every word. “Yeah, it—of course, it’s not a problem at all, of course you—I mean, I… Yeah, I get it, yeah.”
Dream stares at him.
“You… get it,” he says.
Buggering fuck.
“Yeah! Um.” Hob scrambles for literally any explanation that isn’t because everyone says you’re crazy. “Yeah. You know. Overprotective parents?”
Dream’s eyebrows raise.
Hob tries not to cringe.
“Yes,” Dream says, at last. He isn’t smiling, but there’s a note of amusement back in his voice. “Quite… overprotective.”
Hob doesn’t know what to say to that, and his mouth has gotten him in enough trouble in the last two minutes, so he keeps it firmly shut and says nothing at all.
It pays off.
“Shall we begin, then?” Dream asks, turning to the laptop, which has at some point loaded up this week’s chemistry work.
“Yes,” Hob agrees, with unseemly relief, and dives into his backpack before anything else moronic can come flying out of his mouth. He comes up with a pencil, a napkin-wrapped lemon drizzle, and a notebook that is spewing papers in the manner of a particularly rebellious shredder. “Sorry,” he says, hastily attempting to sort out the syllabi and worksheets and sundry belonging to electromag and maths.
Dream is eyeing the cake with something like bafflement.
“You want some?” Hob asks. With the hand that isn’t holding a crumpled bouquet of homework assignments, he nudges it toward Dream. “Go on, take half. It’s miles better than the Eton mess they put out on Mondays.”
“It is… yours,” Dream objects tentatively.
“Bugger that,” Hob says, waving a hand. “Didn’t your mum ever tell you that halving a treat is double the fun?”
Dream blinks at him. “No.”
Oh.
Well, yes, Dream had probably grown up getting his very own 99 Flake from the ice cream van. The privileges of wealth are truly endless.
“Well,” Hob presses onward, undeterred, “take it from a tried and true expert in the matter, then. Splitting a piece of cake in half makes it twice as delicious.”
Dream eyes him.
“It’s true!” Hob insists.
“The scientific veracity of this seems… suspect,” Dream decides.
Hob grins. “Oh, he’s a skeptic! I see. Well as a scientist, I’d think that unsubstantiated claims would make you want to launch a proper investigation, wouldn’t they?”
Dream’s eyes narrow. “So you agree that your claims are unsubstantiated.”
“Pending publication,” Hob replies without missing a beat.
“In which journal?” Dream demands. “Patisserie Proofs?”
“Cake Codification.”
“I don’t believe I subscribe.”
“You ought to. It’s very highly regarded.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah, it is. Amongst, uh. Amongst—cakers.”
“...Bakers?”
“Bollocks—no, no, no! They prefer to be called cakers! Actually.”
“Do they really.”
“See, mate, maybe if you’d subscribe, you’d learn a thing or two. Like the scientific benefits of sharing sweets between friends.”
Dream’s eyebrows raise. “You propose an experiment?”
“I propose,” Hob says, and shoves the slice of lemon cake forward, “that you stop being stubborn for five minutes and eat the damn cake already.”
Dream stares at him.
Hob stares right back, and he waits.
Because where Dream had probably grown up with nannies and chefs and those walk-in pantries you see on Instagram that look like miniature grocery stores—Hob has been in charge of dinner since age eleven, and cooking it is only half as hard as convincing his little sisters to actually consume it. Dream and this bloody cake slice have nothing on Nora and string beans.
And sure enough—Dream drops his gaze.
“Very well,” he sighs.
Hob beams. “Brilliant! Here, let me—rules are if I break, you pick your half, so—let me just—see, there we are! Er. Promise I washed my hands. Which one d’you want, then?”
Dream eyes them both, before eventually pointing to the fractionally smaller half-slice of cake.
Hob wants to roll his eyes, but. These are the sacred rules of food-sharing.
“Next time, you’ll break, and I’ll pick,” Hob informs him, and scoops up his own half.
It wasn’t a large slice of cake to begin with, and so he downs it in one.
His hallmates complain about the quality of the dining hall cuisine (and its lack thereof), but Hob lines up for seconds every night. Even when the food isn’t great, it’s not bad, and the lemon drizzle is one of the absolute highlights. This is, in fact, his third slice of the night.
“Mmph,” Hob says happily, after he’s swallowed down every last trace of lemony goodness.
Dream is staring at him, cake untouched. He looks oddly flushed.
“Go on, then,” Hob says, gesturing. “We’ve got four pages of stoichiometry to get through, you’ll need fuel for that sort of thing.”
Slowly, Dream nods his head, and with two fingers he breaks off a corner of his slice.
Hob retrieves another notebook from his bag—the blue one he’d intended to use for eletromag, with the optimistic belief that the hallowed halls of St. Iggy’s would somehow instill in him heretofore unknown organizational skills. (Thus far—no dice.) The notebook is unusually heavy, though, as he pulls it out. He only has a half second to wonder why before a slew of papers, pens, and an iPod come falling out of it.
The iPod is a sturdy brick of a thing, and it lands on the table with a technologically outdated thunk.
“So that’s where you went,” Hob mutters.
Dream leans forward.
“Sorry,” Hob says, sweeping it up. “I can—”
“You made that,” Dream announces.
Hob pauses.
“Er,” he says. “Modded?”
Dream hums, reaching out with an elegant finger to touch the scuff marks along the case’s seam, from Hob’s first clumsy attempts at opening it up without a proper tool.
“Got it off a mate after the battery died,” Hob elaborates. He watches as Dream’s fingers come within a hair’s breadth of his own, and then drift away. It takes his tongue several seconds to form words again. “There, uh. There was another bricked one at the charity shop I’d been trying to fix up anyway, so I put ‘em together, added some storage, bought a new battery—hard drive ribbon cable, while I was at it—”
“Rockbox?” Dream asks.
He withdrawals his hand.
Hob does not watch it go, and instead clicks the wheel of the iPod, making the screen light up with the OG Apple interface. “Nah. If I’d gone for the Bluetooth mod then maybe, but I haven’t got any wireless headphones to go with that anyway. Besides, I like the classic look.”
“Sensible,” Dream murmurs. “If sentimental. The charge port?”
“Not yet,” Hob admits, and rotates the iPod so that the old thirty-pin is visible. “Meant to do it over the summer, but I had to fix up my mum’s phone after she put it through the wash, and that took weeks. Maybe over winter hols, since I went and left all my stuff at home anyway.”
“And yet,” Dream says, tilting his head, “you are not in an engineering course?”
“What? God, no. I’m not a real engineer. Just messing about to save some money, that’s all,” Hob says, shaking his head.
“A project of this caliber is considerably more than ‘messing about’,” Dream replies with a frown.
Hob waves a hand. “I followed some tutorials off Reddit and watched a Youtube video. Zero brain power required. Are you going to eat your bloody cake or not?”
Dream starts, blinking down at his cake as if he’d forgotten about its existence.
Hob doesn’t know how he could have done, after that first bite. It’s ridiculously good.
As Dream breaks off another morsel, Hob stuffs his iPod and the rest of the non-chemistry rubble back into his bag, and then brings their stoichiometry worksheet front and center. He pulls Dream’s textbook closer, which has not a pen mark or highlighter or coffee stain in sight. The pages are luxuriously crisp beneath his fingers.
No used textbooks for the Aeternus children, obviously.
“So,” Hob says, planting the worksheet square between them. “Balancing equations.”
“Yes,” Dream agrees, gazing down. The napkin is now empty of cake, and his fingers are sightlessly and methodically pressing it into a precise envelope fold.
Any second, Hob is expecting his hands to glow and the napkin to vanish—the careless sort of magic you’d see from even the sorcerers that end up busking on the tube for dosh—but Dream just keeps pressing it into progressively smaller rectangles.
“So what’s troubling you?” Hob asks, when he quite abruptly realizes how long he’s spent staring at Dream’s hands.
“Troubling me?” Dream repeats.
“Yeah. You know. What are the parts you’re struggling to understand?”
Dream stares.
“Is it moles and mass? Density? Empirical equations in general?”
Dream continues to stare.
“...All of it?” Hob tries.
“Yes,” Dream says.
Which is—
Again, this is A-level material. This is review. How do you get into a university like St. Ignatius, to study engineering, and not understand the first thing about stoichiometry? Surely nepotism can only bring you so far.
And Dream just seems so…
Hob takes in a breath.
“Okay,” he says, and pulls the textbook closer. “Uh. Let’s start with basic equations, then. D’you know the chemical formula for water?”
Thursday dawns bright and early. Hob walks into lecture and spots the empty seat next to Jo in the front row, and then looks up to where Dream is seated in the very back with Matthew and Lucienne on either side, and a cocoon of empty seats around them.
Their eyes meet, and instantly, Hob is transported back to the study room from last night, three pages and an hour into chemical equations and giggling hysterically over the theoretical pronunciation of Zn2+(aq) + Ag(s).
“Znagags,” Hob mouths, grinning.
Dream, perfectly deadpain, forms a soundless, “Znah-goghs.”
Hob laughs, delighted, and his heart positively sings when he sees Dream’s mouth quirk upward in response. Beaming, he grips the straps of his backpack and steps toward the stairs.
But Dream’s smile vanishes.
He shakes his head.
And after a moment’s hesitation, Hob goes to sit with Jo instead.
Dream Aeternus
Dream: My apologies, Hob
Dream: There are rules I must follow
Dream: I enjoy your company very much
Hob: No worries, mate. Overprotective parents etc etc I get it
Hob: I also like hanging out with you 😁
Dream: [typing]
Hob: Though maybe bad for my health, I stayed up waaaaaay too late last night watching Nile Red 🙃🙃🙃
Hob: The cotton ball to fairy floss thing was brill
Hob: I bet we could do it
Hob: Lol I mean obviously you could just do it with magic but I mean the regular science way 🧪
Hob: Is that why you like engineering? Having to figure out things the hard way? I guess being able to fix everything with magic would get boring after a while
Dream: Magic cannot fix everything
Hob: True!
Hob: But seriously do you think anyone would notice if we made some fairy floss in lab next week?
Dream: Most likely
Dream: It used several pieces of specialized equipment that we do not have access to in the general lab. The toilet paper moonshine, however, seems much more discrete
Hob: YES
Hob: 🍻🍻
Hob: I’ll bring the bog roll if you bring the shot glasses
Dream: [stock image of a 50 mL glass beaker]
Hob: 🎊
Hob: I feel like you’d be a really cute drunk
Dream: My siblings have reliably assured me otherwise
Hob: Unsubstantiated claims
Hob: Needs experimentation!!
Dream: Excepting laboratory moonshine, that is unfortunately unlikely
Hob: Hey Dream
Dream: Yes?
Hob: Znagags
There is, right in the middle of Professor Thomas’ lecture about theoretical vs actual yield, a very unseemly snort from the back of the lecture theater.
“It’s a sort of poltergeist, I guess,” Hob says, as he digs through their chemistry drawer for their stir bar. Flasks and beakers clink gently. “Every few weeks he wakes up, has a bit of a shout, and then the school puts him back to sleep again. They say he’s been there for decades. Maybe centuries.”
“And no one has been able to lay him to a final rest in all that time?” Dream asks incredulously.
Hob shrugs. “Apparently not.”
“That is absurd.”
“That’s student housing, mate. Every hall’s got something. Packard’s got shit wifi, Stewie’s has got a dragon in the cellar—even East has got trippy fire alarms, and it’s only a year old.”
“Stewart Hall does not have a dragon in the cellar,” Dream objects.
Hob glances up. “Oh yeah? You been down there?”
“I do not need to visit that dripping cesspool to confirm that dragons are extinct, and have been so for over a millenia.”
“Sounds like you’ve been down there.”
Dream folds his arms over his chest. “I have no need to personally visit. My siblings have resided in enough dormitories that I am aware of the inevitable consequences of unsupervised adolescent subsistence.”
“Yeah, it’s a shame we can’t all live in private luxury penthouses with a dedicated cleaning staff like you do,” Hob replies.
Dream’s mouth pinches.
Hob raises his eyebrows.
“It is not a dedicated cleaning staff,” Dream mutters.
“Right. Send them away for a month, and see how well you do then, eh?”
Dream scowls. “I have—”
“Oh, and no enchanting the mops, either,” Hob adds.
“I have a dust mite sensitivity,” Dream says crossly, “that—”
“A what.”
“—precludes chores such as hoovering, sweeping, and—”
“Are you telling me,” Hob demands, resting his hands on the drawer and giving Dream the full force of his disbelief. “Are you telling me that you people are so wealthy that you’ve evolved into being allergic to housework?”
Dream’s scowl deepens. “No.”
“Oh my god, you have. Did you break out in hives when you first got too close to a broom? Did your eyes get all puffy the first time you picked up a bottle of Domestos? No, what am I saying, obviously no one ever made you go near a broom. You probably got that fancy allergy testing as a baby, didn’t you?”
“This is a very protracted search for a stir bar,” Dream says.
Hob blows out a breath. “Yeah, that’s because I can’t sodding find it. But we put it away last week, and they’re locked in between, so it must be…” He sits back on his haunches, staring at the drawer. Then he brightens with inspiration. “Hey, can you do a little—?”
Dream raises an eyebrow.
Hob waggles a hand over the drawer in a sorcerous fashion. “You know.”
“No,” Dream says shortly.
“Well, then you get down here and look, because I’m not seeing it, and my scholarship definitely does not cover fees for missing lab equipment.”
Dream exhales, and then lowers himself to the floor beside Hob to begin sorting through beakers.
Thirty seconds later, he balefully produces a stir bar from beneath an overturned mortar.
“That—” Hob splutters. “I checked there!”
“Evidently not.”
“You used magic,” Hob accuses.
Dream pushes himself up off the ground, and re-perches upon on his stool. “If the employment of eyesight can be considered magic, then yes, I suppose I did.”
“I was employing—you know my eyesight’s ten times better than yours, I’m a werewolf.”
“Perhaps you should seek out a werewolf optometrist,” Dream suggests.
Hob seizes the beaker full of copper sulfate, and places it upon the stir plate. “You’re so full of it.”
Dream hums, and drops the stir bar in the beaker.
Johanna Constantine
Johanna: tiktok.com/@freyaflyingh1gh/video/12340957918237049
Johanna: Ur boy’s got wheels
Johanna: Or I guess the babysitter does since he’s in the back
Johanna: Maybe I should go babysit billionaire brats if it pays enough for a fucking Aston Martin
Hob: Company car?
Johanna: Lol maybe
Johanna: Ask him if we can have a go sometime tho
Hob: With what driving permits exactly???
Johanna: Oh my god you’re such a fucking squaaaaaare
Johanna: I’ve driven loads
Johanna: YOU can sit in the back with Voldemort jr and I’ll drive the car
Hob: I am not sitting in any car that has you at the wheel
Hob: And don’t call him that
Johanna: Hate crimes I’m a great driver
Hob: [GIF of George Costanza crashing through traffic]
Johanna: [GIF of middle finger]
Dream squints down at the worksheet, as one hand breaks off a morsel from his half of the carrot cake. “Insoluble.”
“Why?” Hob asks.
“Hydroxides,” Dream states.
“True,” Hob agrees, spinning a pen between his fingers. “But remember what the exceptions to that are?”
Like we just covered two questions ago?
“Ah,” says Dream immediately. “Alkaline earth metals.”
“I—”
Dream is already scribbling down soluble.
And the thing is.
The thing is, two questions ago, they’d reviewed the exceptions to hydroxide solubility as ‘things with 2+ ions like calcium and barium’. Hob hadn’t used the term ‘alkaline earth metals’. He’d deliberately avoided it because he’s found over years of tutoring that that kind of higher order thinking is only more confusing when first learning the basics.
The thing is that Dream is smart enough that he should have remembered the exception in the first place, because they’d just reviewed it not three minutes ago.
The thing is that this keeps happening again and again, where Dream’s knowledge gaps and incomprehension do not seem to follow any rhyme or reason. It leaves Hob in a very frustrating sort of instructive arrhythmia, constantly lost in how to pace a lesson or how deeply to probe for true understanding, and he doesn’t understand why.
“Hob?”
And sometimes woolgathering on the mystery of it all instead of actually teaching.
“Sorry,” Hob says, refocusing. “Um. What do you think about nickel hydroxide?”
“Insoluble,” Dream says immediately. “Hydroxide group, not an alkaline earth metal.”
“Perfect,” Hob agrees.
Dream’s pencil moves to the next equation on the list—sodium sulfate—and pauses. After a moment, Dream decides, “Soluble.”
Hob’s pen slips its axis and goes flying, bounces off his chest and ricochets to the ground, skidding to a halt just beyond Dream’s chair.
“Shit,” Hob sighs.
“Allow me,” Dream says, and where most people would have awkwardly eeled off the chair with undignified grunting noises, and surely any sorcerer would have just summoned the damned thing—Dream employs a level of grace rarely seen outside the Royal Ballet and retrieves the pen with a single, sinuous arc of his body.
Hob’s mouth goes dry.
The situation only gets worse when Dream’s fingers brush against his as the pen is returned, and Hob can only pray that Dream does not notice the way all his hair stands on end in response.
“Thank you,” he says, gripping the pen hard.
“Of course,” Dream replies. “I am certain you would do the same for me, should the urge ever take me to fling my own writing instruments about the room.”
“It slipped,” Hob protests.
“I have read that werewolves are given to extraordinary reflexes and dexterity, nearly unmatched by any other species on this planet,” Dream says.
This boy.
“How fortunate I am to witness such gifts with my very own two eyes,” Dream adds.
“Yeah, all right, put it in your gratitude journal, you tit,” Hob says, rolling his eyes. “I’ll have you know that I’m a wonder on a football pitch.”
“Are you?”
“Starting right winger on the scrim league this year, I am.”
“Mm. Might you also be the only right winger?”
“Oh, fuck off. Tell me why sodium sulfate’s soluble.”
Dream settles back in his seat, and graces Hob with one of his tiny, perfect smirks.
Hob’s heart skips a beat.
“Sodium,” Dream says, “is an alkali metal.”
“Bang on,” Hob says, and Dream writes the answer down.
They continue on down the worksheet through to precipitation reactions, where Dream breezes right through the concepts of spectator ions and net ionic equations but then somehow forgets from four questions ago that alkali metals are soluble in water.
If Hob didn’t know any better, he’d think…
But no.
No.
He’s being a dick. Everyone learns at different paces and in different patterns. Hob clearly just hasn’t found a good flow with Dream’s learning style yet, and he needs to be patient with both himself and his tutee until they figure it out.
“Next week,” Dream says, as they’re packing up their things.
“Mm?” Hob asks, mouth full of his half of the carrot cake he’d been neglecting all night.
Earlier, Dream had cut the slice in half with such care and concentration that he’d had his lower lip caught between his teeth and Hob had had to look away before his brain could fully solidify the electrifying thought of bite me instead.
Yeah, he’s a werewolf with a biting kink.
Go figure.
“I believe,” Dream continues, and then does not say anything more until Hob looks up from crumpling his now-empty napkin. His eyes meet Dream’s, and Dream looks away, fiddling with the cable of his laptop charger. “That is to say—next week, I expect we will not be meeting as usual?”
Hob frowns. “What—oh. Because of the full moon?”
“I have read that it is common to spend time with one’s pack, during this time of the month,” Dream says.
“Yeah,” Hob says slowly.
Dream nods. “So you will be otherwise occupied, next Wednesday.”
“No, because my pack’s not here, remember?” Hob reminds him patiently. “They’re back in London. I’ve got no special plans for the moon except maybe a night run with some of my footie mates, and sleeping in my fur for a bit.”
Dream stares at him, brow knitting.
“I mean, unless—” Dread pools in Hob’s gut. “Unless you—don’t feel comfortable. With me. On that day.”
Dream’s frown deepens. “No.”
“It’s all right, if that’s what it is,” Hob adds hurriedly. “I mean, it isn’t true, what they say about—it’s literally just another day for us—but I. I understand. Really. We can give it a miss, for a week, and—”
“Hob—”
“—it really is fine, I promise. Especially with the whole, y’know, bodyguard situation that you’ve—you know I got matched with like three different roommates here before they finally found one that was actually all right with me in close quarters and—”
“Stop speaking,” Dream snaps.
Hob stops.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Lucienne shift in her seat.
“I have told you already,” Dream says tightly, “that I take no issue with your species.”
“Well, have you considered,” Hob replies, “that maybe I’ve heard that before?”
Dream blinks.
Hob raises his eyebrows.
“Well I mean it,” Dream declares crossly, and folds his arms over his chest.
Hob waits for more. Perhaps a grand speech on equality, or a diatribe cum resume of an extensive history in befriending other marginalized populations. From Dream specifically, perhaps, a recitation of recent headliner pieces of lycanthropic rights research, and a proclamation of rationality and evidence-based perspectives.
But Dream merely glowers.
As if Hob is the ridiculous one in the room right now, to not take him at his word and his word alone.
It’s so absurdly imperious that—instead of anger, or frustration, or defeat, or a dozen other emotions that most people would probably respond with—Hob bypasses them all and instead bursts out laughing.
“I am not—that was not a joke,” Dream says, sour and scowling like a proper little thundercloud, now.
“No, no, I know it wasn't,” Hob agrees, snorting a little as he calms himself down. “Sorry.”
He sees Dream huff and throw a glance at Lucienne that is, unless he is very much mistaken, a pout.
God, what a ridiculous creature.
Hob wants to kiss him.
“So then we’re on for next Wednesday?” he says instead, as fondness suffuses his chest like steam from a fresh mug of tea.
Dream frowns. “You are truly not in need of the time?”
“Nah,” Hob says.
“University regulations require all enrolled werewolves be offered forty-eight hours leave for each full moon for domestic students, and seventy-two hours for international students,” Dream states.
Hob rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I know. They sent out an email last week.”
“So—”
“So maybe I don’t want to skive off classes for two days every month, eh?” Hob says. “You get excused, yeah, but you’ve still got to learn the material, and any practicals that you miss actually have to be made up on another day—and I’ve got a lab just about every day of the week, this term. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.”
Dream frowns. “You are a highly intelligent person, Hob. I would not think—”
“Dream, we’re at St. Ignatius. We’re all highly intelligent people here.”
“You ought to sit in on my Friday tutorials,” Dream says darkly. “Great Britain should weep, if these are truly the best and brightest minds on offer for our future.”
“That’s quite the take, for someone literally sitting in a private tutoring session,” Hob replies lightly.
Dream freezes.
Hob grins, and nudges Dream with an elbow. “That’s all right. I reckon the air must get a little thin up there on that high horse of yours. We can excuse a slip-up or two, now and then.”
“Well, at least I have the wherewithal to recognize my—struggles,” Dream snits. “And take appropriate corrective action. The same cannot be said for a number of our peers.”
“Oh, don’t put me up on the horse with you, mate.”
“I shall put you where I like,” Dream says, with offense.
Hob laughs. “Trust me, horses and werewolves do not mix—and anyway, I’m as dumb as they come when I’m in a history class. Or English lit, I suppose. But history—oof. Does my head in, all the names and dates and battles and what have you, and like, who cares what some dead kings did hundreds of years ago when you could be learning about stellar evolution and the origins of the universe?”
“Without those dead kings,” Dream says archly, “you wouldn’t have half the tools we have today to study your wretched astrophysics.”
“And without fertilizer we wouldn’t have potatoes, but you don’t see me reciting the bleeding nitrous cycle every time I open a packet of crisps, do you?”
And Dream—
Giggles.
It is a terrible giggle, ghastly and goose-like. It is the most unattractive thing to ever leave Dream’s mouth. Honk after honk comes snerking out, punctuated with snorts that only serve to make the whole thing worse.
Hob is enchanted. Hob wants to record it on his phone and listen to it forever.
Hob is so, so gone on this boy.
Dream Aeternus
Hob: [photo of a teenaged boy passed out on top of a bed, shirtless, in a lake of vomit, and with an open bottle of McHamish’s Tartan Reserve in one hand]
Dream: Is this an example of the practice popularly known as ‘sending nudes’?
Hob: That’s my fucking roommate
Hob: On MY bed
Hob: You are so lucky you somehow got out of student housing
Dream: Indeed, this serves as a poignant example of the benefits
Dream: Is he dead?
Hob: Yeah just thought I’d take a picture of the corpse and spread it online a bit before I called 999
Dream: Why would you call 999 for a corpse?
Hob: IDK who else would you call? Directory enquiries???
Dream: Perhaps they could direct you to a funeral home
Hob: I’m using HIS towel to clean up the vomit
Dream: I beg your pardon
Dream: Why are you cleaning up his mess at all?
Hob: So I don’t get covered in sick when I move him back to his own fucking bed
Hob: Never wanted magic more in my whole life
Hob: Wave your hand and BOOM mess gone
Hob: Levitate him back to his own bed
Hob: Maybe curse him with spots for a bit too
Dream: Surely you have earned the right to use his bed for the night
Dream: Or is it somehow even worse off than yours?
Hob: No his bed is fine but
Hob: It’s a wolf thing
Hob: Not so much the place, but the scent of things. My sheets still smell like pack
Hob: Well I guess now they smell like sick and whiskey
Hob: But I’ve got another set that are still good though
Hob: Just sucks
Hob: He’s all right as a mate but he doesn’t get it sometimes. Like last week he thought it’d be cute to hide one of the washcloths I brought as my scent base
Hob: Which isn’t fucking funny in the first place, but now it’s got his scent on it for the rest of term
Hob: You know what a scent base is?
Dream: Yes
Dream: He should not have done that
Dream: [typing]
Hob: 🙄🙄🙄
Hob: Lucky it was only one of the three I brought
Dream: I fail to see how this is classified as a prank and not abuse, and furthermore how he could ever be considered ‘all right as a mate’ after such an appalling violation of your rights
Dream: The theft of your personal belongings is unconscionable
Hob: He just doesn’t think things through, that’s all
Dream: He’s a cunt
Hob: 😱
Hob: Who taught you that word
Dream: I did grow up with a television
Dream: And siblings
Dream Aeternus
Hob: [photo of a football pitch at night, a empty goal and a sack of footballs]
Hob: Who needs therapy when you can just do penalty shots for an hour instead?
Dream: Yes
Dream: Envision each football as your wretched roommate’s decapitated head
Hob: …okay maybe YOU need therapy
“Three minutes?” Hob asks, tapping at his phone.
“Three minutes,” Dream confirms.
Hob sets his phone on the opposite side of the sink (lessons have been learned) before he returns to the colorimeter that Dream is currently fussing over.
“Want me to read you the directions?” Hob asks.
Dream pauses.
“Yes,” he says, after a beat. “That would be. Most helpful.”
“Great,” Hob says, and grabs the lab workbook off the bench. “So you start by turning the machine on. That’s with the on switch, by the by.”
Dream slowly turns to give him a look more poisonous than the neighboring sulfuric acid.
Hob beams. “The red one, all the way to the left.”
“I cannot possibly overemphasize your need to seek out a lycanthropic optometrist,” Dream says, “if you are unable to see that the machine is already, in fact, switched on.”
“Right-o,” Hob agrees sunnily. “Have you got it plugged into channel one as well?”
He walks them through (or more like, reads the steps aloud as Dream is already halfway through performing them) choosing the correct program for their lab and then calibrating the colorimeter with a blank cuvette. As they sit and wait for their standardized samples to finish diffusing, they gamely pick up the thread of their latest debate—whether Lord of the Rings is superior in book or film format.
“Honestly, I don’t mind the poetry,” Hob offers, as a concession. “It’s in nice italicized stanzas that make it easy to skip over.”
“Skip. Over,” Dream repeats.
“Yeah,” Hob says, suppressing a grin, “you know, unlike the monster paragraphs that you have to actually skim, because one minute it’s useless descriptions of trees and the next there’s been half a battle in the space of a sentence.”
“Professor Tolkien provided this world with some of the most beautiful prose ever written and you skim it over?”
“If I wanted to read a thousand words about trees, I’d read a book on botany.”
“You wouldn’t,” Dream counters, eyes narrowed.
Hob grins. “Yeah, all right, I wouldn’t. But really, prose aside—all the characters are written to be so, so flat. Zero development. They’re all exactly who they say they are and they say exactly what they’re going to, and they always do exactly what they said.”
“Yes, how terrible to have characters who are honest,” Dream says.
“It’s not terrible, it’s just… boring.”
“I find it rather refreshing, actually. It is—”
But, unfortunately, as is the way of lab conversations, they’re interrupted by the timer.
“Rats,” says Hob solemnly.
“Heathen,” Dream pronounces, and leans over the sink to tap at Hob’s phone.
The cheery little tune continues.
Dream frowns, and taps again. Taps a third time.
“Oh, hit the side button instead,” Hob says, leaning over as well. “The screen’s gone on the fritz this week, and anything in the corner with the crack in it has been downright impossible.”
“That sounds,” Dream says, as he presses the side button that at last silences the phone, “incredibly vexing.”
Hob shrugs. “What can you do? Hey—you want first go on the standard solutions?”
The full moon is just like any other day.
Hob wakes up in the morning, and buries his face into the depths of his pillow where the dormitory scents have yet to take hold and it still smells mostly of home and mum, and when his chest begins to tighten and his eyes begin to sting—he reminds himself of this.
It’s just another day of the month.
When he’s fighting through a sea of students to get to lecture and they are all brushing up against him and his skin prickles and buzzes at the touch of strangers—he reminds himself: it’s just another day of the month.
When Jo sees him and runs full-tilt into his chest, body slams him near to the ground and then spins him into a headlock (Hob is pretty sure this is her idea of a hug)—she is warm and solid and familiar and it should feel nice but instead it just puts into sharp relief all the ways in which she is not quite right, not pack—and Hob reminds himself that it’s fine. It’s just another day of the month.
When he eats dinner with his hallmates and the conversation inevitably turns to Hob the Werewolf and someone asks how he uses the bathroom as a wolf and someone else asks if he’s stocked up on milkbones, and one musically inclined soul starts up a howl that somehow catches on across the dining hall—Hob takes in a deep breath, and reminds himself: it’s just another day of the month.
When he sits at a table with Dream, who complains that he’s going to spend half of Friday being driven to Cheshire for some dreaded family function, and half of Sunday being driven back—and Hob thinks about the tab he’s had open on his phone all week with train tickets home, refreshed a dozen and a half times in the hopes that the price would somehow have dropped into a range he could afford—
(Because Hob had lied to Dream, about why he hadn’t gone home for the full moon.)
(He’d lied to Dream, and he’d lied, perhaps just a little bit, to himself as well.)
—and Hob reminds himself again: it’s just another day of the month.
And when Hob finally gets back to his empty dorm room, because his roommate had announced this morning that, “It’s just my parents, mate, I’ve told them a hundred times that you’re safe or whatever, but they’re mad paranoid. And what am I going to do, pass up a free night in a hotel?”—when Hob shucks his bag and turns his phone on silent to stop the deluge of texts from the rest of the scrimmage team about their stupid drunken full moon run together—when Hob sheds his clothes and lets his fur come in and he at last curls up on his bed and it doesn’t smell quite right and he can hear their neighbors recording a TikTok dance and he is alone alone alone—
He is forced to admit that maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe full moons are not exactly like every other day of the month.
Mum
Mum: [photo of three juvenile wolves piled onto a twin bed]
Mum: Missing their big brother xx
Mum: Jill made me promise not to send this so it's our little secret okay?
Mum: Miss you luv but I'm so proud of you !!! I know your going to do so many AMAZING THINGS !! xx
Paywise
Meena Gadling has sent you £5
Some full moon chips on me enjoy xx
“We fucking missed you last night,” Jo says, elbowing him in the side with an unreasonably pointy elbow.
“Ow,” Hob complains.
“Baby.”
“Bully.”
“Antisocial sad sack. What did you do, sit in your room alone all night?”
“I had tutoring,” says Hob, with dignity.
“Bugger that, you were done by nine, I know you were,” Jo says.
Correctly.
Hob shoves the door to the mathematics wing open.
“Look,” Jo says, filing in behind him and lightly shoulder-checking him as she catches up to his side. “You cannot spend the next four years alone on your moons. You’ll end up on fucking antidepressants from the touch deprivation alone.”
“I’m not going to end up on antidepressants,” Hob says.
“No, because you’re going to listen to me, and you’re going to spend the next moon with your teammates,” Jo replies.
Hob makes a face.
“What? D’you not like us?” Jo prods.
Hob dodges another pointy elbow. “You know I do! It’s not you guys, I just—”
Jo raises her eyebrows.
Hob sighs. “I just…”
“Gadling,” Jo says, at last losing what little patience she might have had in the first place, “I promise you that the entire team knows what you just, because we are all away from our packs and too poor to travel home for a moon and we’re all fucking miserable about it, all right? And unfortunately for you the solution to being alone is not to be more alone.”
The image of his sisters piled onto his bed rises in Hob’s mind, and for one brief moment he’s there—home—the scent of pack and the warmth of their bodies and the bone-deep knowledge that he is safe and he is loved—and then a trainer squeaks on the linoleum floor loud enough to drive a knife through his brain.
Jo scowls over Hob’s shoulder at the shoe-squeaker.
“Maybe next time?” Hob tries.
It doesn’t sound convincing even to his own ears.
Jo, accordingly, punches him.
“Ow.”
“Commit,” Jo demands.
Hob rubs his shoulder, and glares.
“Gadling.”
“Fine,” Hob says.
“I will hunt you down, next moon,” Jo warns.
“I said fine!”
“Unless Interview with a Vampire gets to you first, I suppose. He looked fit for homicide during lecture, yesterday.”
“For the last time,” Hob sighs, “his name is Dream.”
“...Nightmare,” Jo replies.
“He’s not,” Hob insists. “I told you, he’s—he’s really normal, actually. I like him.”
“You like everyone.”
“I don’t!”
“Half your hall probably attended the actual, official Tory parliament celebration last year after the Lycan Occupation bill went through, and you’re still playing Smash with them every Saturday night,” Jo says, with disgust.
“They’re not—”
“And your roommate’s a fucking prick.”
Hob laughs. “You know, I think you and Dream would actually get along so well.”
“Hard pass,” Jo replies.
“He’s—I mean, he’s sort of awkward, and prickly, and the RP is sometimes a little bit like being trapped in an episode of The Crown—but underneath all of that, he’s… he’s sweet. And funny.”
“And he unleashed a leviathan on the Outer Hebrides, and murdered a handful of Norland nannies,” Jo says. “Yes, I can see we’d have loads to bond over.”
“Don’t—come on, don’t say shit like that. What are we, thirteen, spreading fake rumors about the school slag again?”
“I didn’t make it up!” Jo protests. “It’s what the internet’s been reporting for years, and before that, you know it was actual newspapers! Look it up, go on.”
“Which newspapers? The bloody Sun?”
“He’s unstable, Gadling.”
“I’ve never even seen him do magic,” Hob protests. “Not even to summon a pen off the floor, or, or clean the crumbs off his shirt. Nothing.”
“Well obviously he’s got a fetter on, hasn’t he?” Jo replies.
“Wha—a fetter?”
“How else d’you think he’d be allowed out in public? It must’ve taken them this long to come up with something that’d finally contain him—you can’t just slap the state prison standard on him and be done with it, can you, he’d blow right through that—”
“He does not have a fetter,” Hob says flatly.
Jo sighs. “I can’t believe you’re this stupid over a crush.”
Hob trips.
“What.”
“You heard me.”
“I do not—”
“You absolutely do, you wanker. I don’t know whether it’s a Sexy Bad Boy thing, or an Oh I Can Fix Him thing, but you are mad for that boy.”
“Neither,” Hob says, face aflame. “It’s definitely neither.”
“Well fucking keep it that way,” Jo says, “because I don’t really fancy ending up on one of those talk shows where they show a photograph of us at footie while I carry on about what a promising young lad you were before you went and got yourself murdered by the school murder trap.”
Hob stops walking.
Jo spins around to face him, planting her feet firmly on the ground, and crossing her arms over her chest.
“Are you being a shit, or are you genuinely concerned?” Hob asks.
Jo, who does not do serious well and especially does not like to verbalize anything so vulnerable as concern, scowls. “What do you think?” she demands.
“Jo.”
She huffs. “‘Just being a shit’, he says—”
“Jo.”
She scowls deeper, and Hob stares right back, waiting.
Just like with Dream and the lemon drizzle, she doesn’t hold a candle to the face-offs he’s had with his younger sisters. Hob has been in the trenches with glare-offs more or less since Jill developed a passingly accurate pincher grip.
And sure enough, Jo folds first.
“Look,” she says, with clear and immense displeasure at being forced to stop wisecracking for three seconds. “Do I enjoy getting to take potshots at Armani’s answer to Siouxsie Sioux? Yeah, obviously. But take two seconds and look at the facts, Gadling, and there’s no getting around the fact that the whole situation is really bloody weird.”
“It’s not—”
“He’s from a family famous enough that you can buy half of them as Halloween costumes on Amazon—the youngest one spent the summer as a pop-up tattooist in New York City for Christ’s sake—but they randomly homeschool Dream? Kept him completely out of the public eye for eighteen years? And then—then they send him to university, but he can’t do anything but attend classes and he’s got bloody bodyguards?”
Hob swallows. “Maybe they’re overprotective.”
“What, and just fuck those other six kids they’ve got lying around?”
Uncomfortable, Hob shrugs.
“Do you know,” Jo says, stepping closer, and lowering her voice. “The two of you, your little tutoring dates, they’re on the fifth floor of the library, east wing, that row of six study rooms by Greek mythology?”
“Ye-es,” Hob says, frowning. “How did you—”
“I’ll tell you how I know,” Jo says. “I wanted to book a study room for maths for Rachel and I, and in the process I just happened to notice that your little Dreamboat has got all six rooms booked up every Wednesday night for the next year.”
“That’s…” Hob starts, weakly.
“Six rooms!”
“I’m sure it’s a, a safety thing,” Hob tries.
Matthew and Lucienne are tireless in their vigilance. And he thinks he read once that it’s not uncommon for the absurdly wealthy to rent out whole floors in a hotel just to avoid the security concerns.
“Or he’s making sure that there won’t be any witnesses if he accidentally murders you,” Jo replies.
“Listen,” Hob starts—but then his eyes catch on the clock just over Jo’s shoulder. “Oh, shit. We’ve got one minute til class.”
Jo swears, and bolts for the staircase. She hurdles up them three at a time, and Hob is right behind her.
“Look, I agree it’s weird!” Hob calls, as they clear the second floor and continue on up to the third.
“Good!” Jo calls back.
“But I’m still going to hang out with him!”
“Less good!”
“And if he murders me, you can write I Told You So on my tombstone!”
Jo skids to a halt in front of the door to the third floor, twisting the knob and yanking it open. “I’ll take it,” she says, as they stumble into the hallway and directly across to the classroom door that awaits them.
“And if I’m right,” Hob says, hushing his voice just as they pull open the door, “you have to make an apology speech at our wedding.”
“I knew it was a crush,” Jo hisses.
“Deal?”
“Deal.”
A fetter, Hob reads, is most commonly seen as a thick, metal anklet, the state standard for sorcerers in prisons and release programs. They are not available for public purchase. And they’re so bulky, anyway, that there’s absolutely no way it would fit underneath the skinny jeans or Doc Martens that Dream favors.
Hob closes the tab in relief.
Sets his phone down.
And then he picks it back up again and googles “neck fetter” as well.
Containing the Uncontainable: The Novel Fetter Designed for Hitler’s Right Hand Man
And there’s a sepia-toned photograph of Göring at the Nuremeurg trials, a smooth leather collar around his neck. It’s thin, and densely embroidered, and no wider than an inch.
The sort that could so very easily hide beneath a high-collared shirt, or a turtleneck.
“Shit,” Hob says.
Chapter Text
Dream Aeternus
Hob: Hope you’re having fun with your family this weekend! 😁
Dream: My siblings are, as always, a font of innovate ways in which to get us all killed, if that is what you mean
Dream: [photo taken from the back of a boat, of a husky red-headed boy lowering an electric surfboard into a sun-dappled ocean, while a thinner blonde figure beside him holds another electric surfboard in wait]
Hob: What?? Those look so fun!
Hob: You won’t die you’ll be fine
Hob: Just wear a lifejacket
Dream: [photo of a table on the boat, covered in empty liquor bottles and red solo cups]
Hob: 👀👀 DEFINITELY wear a lifejacket
Dream: Somehow the risk of drowning or dying horribly in a wreck is still more palatable than the alternative of being alone in the house with my mother
Dream: Only twenty-three hours until I can leave
Hob: Yeah, a sunny yacht with five thousand pound surfboards and unlimited alcohol, I’d be counting down the hours too
Hob: Weeping into my electromag textbook for you and your suffering rn 🥲🥲🥲
Dream: This isn’t the yacht. It’s only a bowrider
Hob: ‘We aren’t on our yacht we’re on our OTHER luxury boat’ isn’t the winning argument you think it is luv ❤️
Dream: [typing]
Dream: [typing]
Dream: BYE DREAMS FRIEND HE HAS TO DO SHOTS NOW XXXXXX
Dream is pretty unresponsive to text messages after that, and returns to class on Monday looking—even Hob has to admit—significantly more homicidal than usual. He is practically monosyllabic in their chemistry lab, blitzing through the assembly and calibration of their spectroscope and only slowing down when Hob reminds him that this is, in fact, a lab meant to be done in pairs.
Hob also, yet again, decides to ignore the fact that this is suspiciously competent for someone who is supposed to be struggling in chemistry enough to require regular private tutoring—and instead he starts up a gentle patter of chitchat and jokes as they work. It remains almost entirely one-sided for the whole of their lab.
It is only at the very end, when they’ve returned all their equipment to their drawer and jotted down all the necessary notes for their lab reports, and Dream still won't quite look him in the eye and is packing up his bag with such haste that he misses the zip twice over—that Hob decides enough is enough.
“Hey,” he says, placing a hand on Dream’s backpack—inches from Dream’s hand, but not over Dream’s hand because he’s not sure how either the bodyguards or Dream himself feel about unrequested physical contact.
Dream goes still. His eyeliner is impeccable, as is the makeup he’s used to try to hide the bags under his eyes.
“Is everything okay?” Hob asks gently.
“Fine,” Dream replies.
“Are you sure?”
“Quite.”
“Because,” Hob ventures, “you haven’t really been acting like yourself, since you came back to school.”
Dream lets out a single, bitter huff. “How little you know me, if you are unaware that I am, in fact, acting entirely like myself.”
Hob frowns. “You aren’t—”
“Surely,” Dream spits, “you have watched the TikToks, or read the articles, or listened to the podcasts. I am—” His hands spasm on the fabric of his backpack. “I am unstable.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Hob sees Lucienne take a step closer, and Hob has to squash the sudden and vicious urge to crowd in closer, to place his body between hers and Dream’s and snarl.
Lucienne, he reminds himself, is here to protect Dream.
Lucienne is not the enemy.
(Even if she is maybe one of the people responsible for the fetter that is maybe wrapped around Dream’s neck beneath the soft, chunky sweater he’s got on right now. Maybe one of the people who held him down. Who had caged him.)
“I don’t care what TikTok says about you,” Hob tells Dream, careful to keep his tone mild. “Just like I don’t care about whatever The Sun has to say about werewolves this week. It’s bullshit. It’s always bullshit. What’s important is what you have to say, because you’re my friend and I care about you.”
Dream scowls down at his backpack. “Travel ban,” he mutters.
“Sorry?”
“They wrote about reinstituting the airplane travel ban for werewolves this week,” Dream clarifies, scowl deepening, “citing research that has already been debunked by any reputable scientific body and an absurd number of anonymous reports whose stories are not corroborated—”
“See?” Hob interrupts, rolling his eyes. “There you go. Bullshit.”
Dream’s lips press together, and he gives a little dragon-esque exhale through his nose. “My mother—” he starts, but then abruptly cuts himself off.
Hob frowns. “Yeah?”
An odd change of subject.
But then one of Dream’s hands fists the black fabric of his backpack, and his mouth twists into a moue of frustration. “It is,” he says, and his thumb begins to make little repetitive smoothing motions. “It is—it is complicated, I. I. I—”
And—
—fuck it—
Hob puts his hand atop Dream’s, pressing down just hard enough that Dream goes still beneath its weight. Hard enough that Hob can feel smooth knuckles against the creases of his palm. Hard enough that Dream finally looks up at him.
Hob’s heart trips into double time. Saliva floods his mouth.
Dream’s eyes are so, so blue.
“Well,” Hob says, and then his brain supplies no more words for several seconds. His heart pounds. “Well. I-I’m here for you. If you ever want to talk about it. Whatever it is.”
Dream blinks rapidly. “I—” he starts.
His lips are parted, and pink.
Hob absolutely, positively cannot kiss him.
Not here. Not like this.
“It’s my job as your friend, yeah?” Hob says instead, and watches with a pounding heart as Dream—
Dream brightens.
It is the subtlest of things. Something in the line in his shoulders, and the slant of his eyes, and the curl of his mouth—something that takes him from startled to hopeful and leaves Hob feeling ten feet tall because he did that.
He made Dream happy.
Hob beams. “And hey—correct me if I’m wrong—I believe it was you who said before that I was… What was it? Ludicrously smart?”
“Highly intelligent,” Dream corrects, slowly.
“Yeah, that,” Hob agrees, grinning like a fool. “So try me sometime, yeah?”
“...Yeah,” Dream echoes.
His knuckles shift beneath the skin of Hob’s palm, and for a wild moment Hob thinks that Dream is going to rotate his hand fully around, make them palm to palm and pulse to pulse. He thinks Dream is going to properly hold his hand.
But instead Dream pulls away.
He twists his wrist as he does so, though. Possibly it is a natural motion. Possibly it is not deliberate, the way his fingers that trail over the meat of Hob’s palm as he withdraws his hand. Possibly, probably, Dream’s fingertips do not—linger.
Hob’s heart is in double time.
The ghost of Dream’s touch is like electricity on his hand, snapping and sparking and sending all his hairs to stand on end.
Dream’s backpack slides away beneath his hand, too, as Dream pulls it away to sling it over his shoulder.
“I shall endeavor to improve my mood tomorrow,” Dream announces.
“I like you no matter what mood you’re in,” Hob blurts out in reply.
Jesus Christ.
But Dream… blushes.
Oh.
“Still,” Dream says, pink-cheeked and wide-eyed.
“Yeah,” Hob replies.
“I shall—”
“Yeah.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Yes.”
“Yeah.”
Matthew clears his throat.
“Tomorrow,” Dream says again, straightening, and then he turns on his heel and starts for the door.
Mum
Mum: Hi luv Jills phone has done it again can you call and help ??
Mum: Its ok if your busy but she has school tomorrow so some time today please ?
“I have something for you,” Dream announces.
Hob looks up from the cardboard carryout container he’d been about to crack open. “Is it dessert? ‘Cause I told you, the rice pudding’s a lot better tasting than it looks.”
“No,” Dream says, wrinkling his nose faintly. “I still shall not be partaking in that.”
“Well, I brought you your own spoon, just in case you change your mind,” Hob says cheerfully, and delves a hand into the side pocket of his backpack. “Whatcha got, then?”
“A phone,” Dream replies, and accordingly produces a white box from inside his backpack, which he slides across the table toward Hob.
Not just any white box.
“That’s—” Hob stares, open-mouthed. “Is. Is that even out yet?”
“Next month, I believe,” Dream says pleasantly, pulling next his Hydra Flask and laptop from his bag, and setting them on the table. “My father always sends us his latest models, and your phone seems to be losing functionality by the week. If the color isn’t to your liking, please let me know. An exchange would be no trouble at all.”
Hob’s jaw hangs.
It’s not just a brand new iPhone—still in perfect factory shrinkwrap—but the black rim around the base of the box advertises its status as an elite Apple Aer product. Obviously, Hob thinks, Dream would get early access to the product his father has been in partnership with for the last decade or so.
“Dream,” Hob manages, at long last.
Dream tilts his head.
“Dream, you can’t just hand me a two thousand pound phone.”
“I did, though,” Dream says, looking pleased.
“No,” Hob argues, and he ruthlessly squashes down part of him that has, very secretly, very desperately, always wanted to know what it felt like to own something so weightily expensive, and instead he says, “I’m sorry, that’s—that’s mental. This is mental. I can’t accept this.”
“You can.”
“I—bloody hell, Dream. I really, really can’t.”
“Hob,” Dream says, eyebrows raised. “You have seen your phone recently, haven’t you?”
And one corner of his mouth is raised ever so slightly. Like this is funny. Like Hob is going to smile right back at him, and this will be their next great joke.
But Hob does not smile back.
He can’t.
Not when Dream’s words—his utter nonchalance at an unprompted four figure gift—leave Hob so suddenly and painfully aware of the cracked, smudgy phone sitting in the back pocket of his secondhand jeans that are just a little too large in the hips, and the bobbly bits on his ancient Poundland jumper and the hole in his right shoe and the fact that he’s got plastic sporks in the fraying mesh pocket of his backpack because he’s been bringing cafeteria food to share with a billionaire.
It prickles and burns in his chest, spreading like wildfire down into his belly and up into his throat, and on its way up it turns into something sharp and hot and—
“There’s nothing wrong with my current phone, thank you,” Hob snaps.
“There are, at last count, at least seven things wrong with your current phone,” Dream says, with disbelief.
Hob laughs, but it isn’t with humor. “Oh, you’ve been keeping count, have you? Real nice.”
Dream blinks at him. “You have complained about them on multiple occasions.”
“Yeah, like you complain about your car door sticking or the fridge smelling funny—it doesn’t mean you go out and buy a new one,” Hob says incredulously. “Or, or not for normal people, I guess. You know, those of us who don’t have parents spoonfeeding us hundred pound notes from birth.”
Dream draws back with a flinch so subtle Hob would have missed it if he weren’t so practiced in the microexpressions of Dream’s face after all these weeks.
“You are… upset,” Dream says, eyes scanning Hob’s face.
“Yeah, a bit,” Hob bites out.
“I,” Dream starts, and then frowns. “But. You needed a new phone.”
And he sounds so—
So lost.
Hob blows out a breath, and tries to loosen his shoulders. Tries to fight past the thrumming of his heart and the heat of embarrassment still flushing his chest.
“Look, I know—I’m sure you meant well,” Hob says, and despite his best efforts it comes out short and harsh. “But. You can’t drop two grand on a phone for me, Dream, you just. That’s not fair.”
“But it was free,” Dream explains, as if Hob had somehow missed that part. “I spent no money at all, I have—I have been sent eight mobile phones in the last year alone, I have—”
Hob shakes his head. “That’s not the point.”
“Then,” Dream demands, expression darkening, “pray tell, what is? Because I have clearly been operating under the delusion that acts of generosity are usual between friends, but I will gladly defer to the expertise of someone not so abnormal as myself.”
Hob ignores the jab. “The point is,” he says tightly, “that friendships have to go two ways, Dream. And you can’t give me an iPhone when all I can afford to get you in return is fucking rice pudding stolen from the dining hall. If you want to offload all your extra phones, go—I don’t know, go donate them to charity or something, all right?”
“But you are—” Dream starts to say.
Hob takes in a careful breath.
Dream stares at him with huge, horrified eyes.
“But I am a charity case,” Hob finishes.
“No,” Dream says. “No, that’s not what I—”
“You did, though.”
“I didn’t, I—”
“It’s okay,” Hob says, but the bitterness that seeps in completely belies the reassurance. “I get it. Thank god for people like you, looking out for people like me, eh?”
“No, I—Hob, I—” Dream’s mouth works, visibly more and more upset as each silent second ticks by. “You must understand, I—”
“Understand what?”
“That—that everyone is poor compared to me, everyone in the world, it is—there are—” Dream cuts himself off, staring wretchedly.
Hob raises his eyebrows.
Dream takes in a shaking breath, and grips at a backpack strap. “I. Quite—quite literally, Hob. There are twelve people on this planet in possession of more wealth than my parents, and I—do you know the exponential math that is required to calculate an eleven digit fortune? Perhaps you did not hear, when I said that I have received eight iPhones in the last year? I am not so disconnected from the world as to be unaware that that is a patently absurd quantity of mobile phones for one person to possess. So. So why should my. You said we were friends. So. So why should my friend not share what I hold in excess? Why should—you deserve to have a nice phone, Hob, and I. I wanted to.” Dream bites his lip, staring down at the hands that are wringing the very life out of his backpack strap. “I-I had only thought. That. It would make you happy.”
There is perfect silence.
“Okay,” Hob says, at long last.
But you are a charity case is still crawling beneath his skin, still lodged somewhere sharp and painful beneath his breastbone. Hob thinks he’ll be carrying it with him for a while.
But he inhales, forcing his chest to push through the pain, and then says, “All right. It was—it was a nice thought. I can see that.”
“You deserve it,” Dream insists, scowling mulishly at his backpack.
“How about this,” Hob says carefully. He studies Dream’s expression, and despite himself, he feels something like fondness rising up.
He’s just so—
“How about,” Hob says, “I don’t want you to give me expensive presents, because I can’t afford to get you something equally expensive back—”
Dream opens his mouth in protest.
Hob holds up a hand. “And,” he continues. “And. I don’t ever want you to look back and doubt that I’m friends with you, because I like you —just you, grumpy and stubborn and dramatic you—and not because I like getting free iPhones when we hang out. Yeah?”
“...Oh,” says Dream.
“Uh-huh,” agrees Hob.
Dream visibly digests this idea.
“So,” he says after a pause, brightening a little, “less expensive presents would be acceptable?”
“I am genuinely terrified to hear what you would define as ‘cheap’,” Hob replies.
“Not ‘cheap’,” Dream insists, frowning. “Our friendship is not ‘cheap’.”
“No, but as we’ve established, I’m absolutely skint, so ‘cheap’ is just about the only thing on the menu for me, darling,” Hob says.
Dream’s eyes narrow. “...Three hundred pounds.”
Hob puts his head in his hands. “Try ten.”
“What am I meant to gift you with ten pounds, Hob? A KitKat?”
“You know you don’t have to gift me anything at all?”
“Don’t be absurd. A hundred pounds, then,” Dream decides.
“No, not a hundred. Bloody hell. Fifteen.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“That’s four KitKats and Coke. What more does a man need?”
Dream looks genuinely pained. “Fifty pounds.”
“Twenty.”
“...Forty.”
“Twenty-five.”
“Thirty-five.”
“Twenty-five.”
“Thirty-five.”
“Twenty-five.”
Dream’s eyes narrow.
“I’m not going higher,” Hob says. “Twenty-five or nothing, Dream.”
Dream huffs, crossing his arms over his chest.
Hob raises his eyebrows.
“Fine,” Dream mutters, scowling. “Twenty-five.”
Like Nora and the string beans.
Dream Aeternus
Hob: ALL RIGHT
Hob: Six weeks of relentless propaganda
Hob: 🤡 Hob you clearly should just be an engineer 🤡
Hob: 🤡 It is the superior career 🤡
Hob: 🤡 Anyone who likes Mark Rober is obviously meant to be creating, not aimlessly theorizing 🤡
Hob: SEEMS YOU FORGOT TO MENTION
Hob: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqr-PdVVhY4&ab_channel=MarkRober
Hob: 12:46 ‘when I worked at NASA’
Hob: See astrophysics people are cool too ✌️
Hob: Okay I might have looked it up and it turns out he was an engineer at NASA not an astrophysicist
Hob: But STILL
Hob: Really would have expected more victorious crowing by now?
Hob: Everything okay?
Hob: Dream???
Hob: Don’t tell me you’re in bed already it’s only 8
Hob: Lol text me when you wake up I guess
Hob knew this was a mistake even before he opened the menu, but seeing avocado toast for eighteen pounds fifty does hammer the point home quite nicely.
“Finally, some decent fucking food,” Rupert groans, his own menu slapping into Hob’s as he cracks it open. “I’ve been starved and poisoned by turns all fucking week—swear to god by Christmas I’ll be wearing a belt to keep my trousers up.”
“Gimmie that,” Ev demands, reaching over the table.
"Piss off, I grabbed it first,” Bear complains, jerking the newspaper out of reach.
“That shepherd’s pie last night was rank,” Preston yells, from several seats down.
“Yeah, last time I had a bottom that soggy, it’s was your mum’s,” calls Liam, Hob’s esteemed roommate and entrypoint into this particular group.
“Well, we can’t all have Pussy Galore as our mums, now can we?” Preston retorts, flipping a bird.
“She was Anita Cockburn, thank you very much,” Liam shoots back, flashing perfectly inherited film star teeth. “Though if you ask my dad, apparently it’s more like Anita Cockblock, these days.”
There’s another round of laughter.
Hob glances at his phone to see that Dream still hasn’t texted, though the footie group chat seems to be blowing up. He opens it but finds that it’s just Bron and Amari squaring up logistics for their match against St. Olaf’s next week. Half the team still hasn’t coughed up for train tickets yet.
He abandons the group chat in favor of the menu, perusing it once more and finding the situation wholly unchanged: the cheapest plate on the menu without resorting to sides is the Greek yogurt bowl, and Hob doesn’t even like Greek yogurt. He likes the idea of paying fourteen quid for it even less when he could get the same sodding thing at Tesco’s for three.
But sitting rock bottom on the list of things Hob wants is to be eating a sad little croissant with a glass of water while the rest of the table is buried under double entree orders, sides to share, and elaborate foam-arted lattes.
Turns out it’s one thing to hang out with Liam and his friends in Dishy’s, playing Smash Brothers and fighting over prawn crisps—and it’s another thing entirely to join them off campus for a Sunday hangover brunch.
Hob doesn’t know why he’d thought they would go anywhere he could actually afford.
“Oi! Hobsie!”
Hob looks up.
“You study with the little Aeternus kid, don’t you?” Liam asks. He’s got Bear’s newspaper in his hand, and most of the table seems to be awaiting Hob’s response. “Wednesday nights?”
“Er,” Hob says. “Yeah.”
“How come they didn’t interview you?”
The newspaper is plunked between Hob’s complimentary water glass and the cloth-bundled silverware that Hob is about to choke down horribly overpriced Greek yogurt with.
THE UNI WITH A TICKING TIMEBOMB
It’s Sunday, and so it is a color photograph of Dream striding down Bennet’s, hunched unhappily into his black peacoat, long black scarf and an out-of-focus Lucienne trailing in the wind behind him. He’s got his Hydra Flask in one hand and if you squint, you can see three overpriced tea bags hanging from the screwtop lid.
He’s on his way to their chemistry lecture. It’s quarter-to-eight in the morning and it’s cold and he’s about to sit through a full day of lectures and some fuck with a camera in the bushes is photographing him.
If the title of the article hadn’t already sparked rage, the resigned misery on Dream’s face in the picture would have certainly done the job.
What good are bodyguards if they can’t protect him from this?
Hob’s eyes scan the columns of text, fingers curling slowing into fists.
quietly enrolled this autumn at one of the most prestigious universities in the country
long kept from the public eye
multiple rumored inpatient psychiatric hospitalizations
lab partner who asked to remain anonymous for their safety but reports that the nineteen-year-old is “Really unsettling”. They told this reporter: “He’s always sort of muttering to himself, you know, and making these little hand gestures like he’s about to cast some sort of spell or something. Luckily they let me switch after the first two weeks and
describe a wraith-like presence about the campus, escorted by a security team like a predator in transit across a field of prey
that sort of instability paired with Aeternus-caliber sorcery
cold eyes and a dour countenance
asked to comment, Nyxa Aeternus responded: “Our first priority is always the safety and well-being of our family. The world has had the privilege of watching our six other children grow into their powers and embark on incredible journeys to success, but Dream was never quite suited for that sort of publicity. We have been extremely fortunate, in raising him, to have had so many specialized resources at our disposal, and we stand proud of the progress he has made in recent years. The decision to enroll in university was not taken lightly. However, thanks in no small part to the wonderful staff at St. Ignatius University, I firmly believe that the arrangements we have in place will allow Dream to finally enjoy a portion of the student experience without compromising his safety, or the safety of anyone else around him.”
“—wait, in private?” Preston is asking.
“Well, obviously the bodyguards are there,” Liam says, in an undertone. “But a fat lot of good that’ll do him, right? If Aeternus goes and does his nut? Like—pfft. Whole library’d just be gone, Hobsie, guards, books, the whole lot.”
“Nuh-uh,” Bear mutters. “Nuh-uh, that’s not okay.”
“You lot’ve seen that TikTok from Charlotte Browning, the one where they tried to throw maltesers at him from their dorm window, to see what he’d do—”
“Yeah—”
“—and the lady bodyguard just—”
“—with the flames—”
“—imagine if they’d got a hit in, though, that lady probably saved their fucking lives—”
It is only the soft sound of paper tearing that makes Hob realize that he’s claws out in the middle of a fancy brunch place, and he’s shredded right through the margins of the newspaper. He’s trembling, faintly, and he can feel his teeth threatening to elongate against his tongue. He is—
Angry.
“Are those—” someone whispers.
“This is bullshit,” Hob announces, and he tries to keep his voice calm as he drops the newspaper to the table, but it comes out taut as a bowstring. He curls his hands and desperately wills them back into human shape, but it’s hard, it’s so hard when—
wraith-like
cold eyes
unsettling
“This is—it’s not even true,” Hob says. “He’s—”
He looks up, and finds every face at the table staring back at him in disbelief.
“Mate, his own mum said he’s a danger to society,” Liam ventures, at long last.
And she—
Well, not in so many words.
But she had, hadn’t she?
And it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make any sense at all, because by now Hob has seen Dream upset and he’s seen him excited and he’s heard the wonderful, dreadful sound of his laughter and at no point in all the hours that they’ve spent together has Hob ever for a single second felt unsafe. If anything, Hob has had to wrestle with the urge to wrap Dream up in soft blankets and feed him hot chocolate and biscuits and protect him from the world.
And then he remembers, quite suddenly, Dream’s strange little rant on Monday. About the press. And being unstable. And how he’d said—
“My mother—”
At the time it had seemed like a random interjection.
Now.
Now, Hob wonders if it had not been so random.
After all, a full-page article in the Sunday Telegraph is something probably prepared well in advance. Especially when you’re going about collecting formal statements from people like Nyxa Aeternus.
“Swetha said someone’s started a petition to get him expelled,” Ev says quietly, far enough down the table that human ears wouldn’t have picked up on it but Hob is a werewolf and so he hears it perfectly.
He hears it, and hates it.
Hob stands up. “I have to go.”
“What—”
“Hobsie—”
“Sorry, no,” Hob says, hands shaking as he grabs the back of his chair and shoves it back in toward the table. “I, I have to—”
The resulting scrape of metal against the tile floor drives into his brain like nails, and sends all his hair on end. Every last nerve feels like it’s coming undone, the foreign smells and the squeal of The milk steamer and Liam’s hand on his sleeve and Dream’s face on the newspaper and—
“See you later,” Hob manages, around the fangs that are rapidly lengthening in his mouth—
And he bolts for the door.
It’s a cold, wet October morning.
On four paws, though, the pelting rain and the slick of mud barely even register.
Dream Aeternus
Hob: Hey just so you know, I’m here if you ever want to talk
Hob: My phone might not be 100% but it does still take phone calls
Hob: Assuming that your bodyguards don’t follow you around the house when you’re at home
Hob: And assuming YOUR phone isn’t broken I guess
Hob: Since you’ve been leaving me on read all weekend
Dream: You saw the article
Hob: He lives! 😍
Hob: Yeah I saw it
Hob: [screenshot of The Sun’s website, with the headline TikTok Star’s Incredibly Valid Take: ‘Why Lycans Have No Place In Professional Sports’]
Hob: It’s a good day for bullshit in the news apparently
Hob: I know it’s not exactly the same, for you and me
Hob: But I meant it the other day when I said that you’re my friend I care about YOU and not some bullshit clickbait a jumped-up blogger threw together on their notes app to try to snag a promotion
Hob: ✨️ Cecily Knox ✨️
Hob: 🌮 cuntiest of cunts 🌮
______________
Call from
Dream Aeternus
“Hey,” Hob says, elbows on his maths textbook, grinning like an idiot at the wall.
“Hello.”
Bless modern technology. Dream’s voice is just as low and throaty in his ear as it is in person, but instead of being in a bustling chemistry lab or locked in a study room with Lucienne in the corner, Hob is alone in his dorm room and—
“Matthew and Lucienne don’t actually follow you around at home, do they?” Hob asks.
“They do not,” Dream confirms. “The security in the flat is. Extensive. Enough so to grant me my privacy.”
“Thank god. My roommate’s out… actually, I don’t really know what he’s out doing, because brunch was hours ago at this point—but, er. He’s out. So. I’m also alone.”
There is silence.
The implications come belatedly crushing down on Hob.
“Anyway!” Hob adds, flushing slightly and very glad that they’re audio only. “Thanks for interrupting my maths homework—we’re on implicit differentiation and I am bloody tired of chains. How, uh. How’s your weekend?”
“Moderately worse than last weekend,” Dream replies. “Which is impressive, given that I was previously trapped in a house with my mother and am now two hundred kilometers away from her.”
“Did she—” Hob stops.
But.
He has to ask.
“Did you know? About the article, I mean? Is that—”
“Yes,” Dream says.
Hob takes a moment to absorb that.
“I cannot. Even with privacy, there is much I cannot disclose,” Dream says, eventually. “But. Suffice to say. I am not unused to it.”
“Shit,” says Hob, for lack of anything better.
“I am relieved that—” Dream stops. A pause. “If you have… concerns,” he starts again, with absolutely no more confidence. “Or. Hesitations—”
“Dream,” Hob interrupts. He has, at some point, gotten up from his desk and walked the four feet across the room to his bed, where he now plops down and grabs the closest pillow. “I will say this as many times as I need to, which is apparently at least once more: I. Don’t. Care. What a newspaper or TikTok or your own bloody mother has to say about you. At all. I’m sure it’s a complicated situation, and I am here to listen to any part of it you ever feel comfortable talking about, but, but what I know is that you’re my friend. And magic and money and all the comparisons to Voldemort in the world aren’t going to change that.”
There’s a long, quiet pause.
Hob squeezes the pillow hard enough that he gets a good whiff of pack from it.
“All right,” Dream says, at long last.
“Unless you support Millwall,” Hob adds. “Then you’re dead to me.”
“Who?”
“...Jesus Christ,” says Hob.
“My younger brother is the one to talk to about rugby, I’m afraid,” Dream says apologetically.
“Rugby?” Hob demands, sitting up straight crushing the pillow as collateral in the process. “Millwall aren’t rugby, they’re football, how do you not—are you having me on right now?”
There is a tiny, muffled sound like a bullfrog being smothered to death.
“Oh, fuck off,” Hob groans.
“Come now, Hob, I was homeschooled in London, not Siberia,” Dream says, unbecomingly gleeful.
“Who d’you support then? No, no, let me guess—Chelsea.”
“My father, at last count, owns thirty-eight point two percent of Chelsea FC,” Dream replies primly.
“Christ, I should have known,” Hob sighs.
“Accordingly,” Dream continues, “I support Arsenal and Tottenham.”
Hob bursts out laughing. “Oh my god, that’s—but you can’t support Arsenal and Tottenham, Dream, that’s not on at all. Pick one!”
“Truly, I should dread being sat between you and my brother during a match,” Dream says. “As if any of these teams feature anyone from these locales, and aren’t just a rich man’s trading card game to maximize merchandising profits and perpetuate the illusion that athletics remain an accessible career path for the working class.”
“...Uh,” says Hob.
Dream sighs. “My apologies. Yes, Hob, it is unforgivable that I hold no particular loyalty to a group of men who spend their weekends kicking a ball into a net.”
“Questionable, lately, if Arsenal actually knows how to do that,” Hob puts in.
“If you are expecting… smack talk from me, I am afraid I shall disappoint you profoundly,” Dream replies.
Hob laughs again. He’s curled up in the corner of his bed, at this point, pillow snug beneath his arm once more, the hall’s Temperatus keeping the room cozily warm despite the rain pouring down in sheets against the window.
“Tell you what, though, if you want to see some real talent—next Saturday, my scrim league’s playing against St. Olaf, and it’s—well, just a field with some goals and a bit of paint, they won’t let us use the real stadium—but it’s… Y'know, maybe you could come?”
“I…” Dream says, and then exhales.
“It’s okay if you can’t, or—or don’t want to, I—”
“No,” Dream interrupts. “I... For you, Hob Gadling, I would stand in a muddy field on a Saturday morning and watch you kick a ball up and down a pitch for ninety blisteringly cold, wet minutes.”
“In your designer boots and a charm-insulated Italian peacoat, no doubt.”
“I have standards.”
“God forbid you’re not the hottest one in attendance at a scrimmage footie game.”
“Regrettably, I have another family engagement to attend to next weekend,” Dream says. He pauses. “I am also fairly certain that football matches do not fall under my… permissible jurisdiction, however unofficial they might be.”
“You can’t slip Matthew a little bribe?” Hob asks, cajoling and only mostly joking.
“Unfortunately not. Nor Lucienne, though I can’t help but note that you did not suggest her as an option,” Dream says.
“Yeah,” Hob agrees. “Cause I’ve met Matthew and Lucienne.”
“They are both heroically loyal and steadfast companions,” Dream replies, “which makes them very good at their job. And also very unreceptive to bribery.”
“Is that the voice of experience?”
“...Perhaps.”
“Cash? Or did you try giving them one of your shiny new iPhones?”
Dream exhales. Hob can hear the eye roll.
He grins as Dream launches into a detailing of his some of his more previously more bribe-able guards, and curls up tighter with his pack-pillow and doesn’t think at all about how nice it would feel to have Dream here in bed with him, bony limbs and wintry scent and deep voice rumbling perfectly accented English into Hob’s ear instead of the cracked glass of his phone screen and some bedding.
This is almost the same.
This is good enough.
Ye Gads Family Group Chat
Mum: [photo of a completed jigsaw puzzle, featuring two rabbits snuggled up in a field of clover]
Mum: Another one down ! One piece missing but the other 499 were all there !!
Sarah: We also played Go Fish until our eyeballs fell out
Sarah: Another thrilling weekend at the Gadling house 🙄
Jill: I WON 😇😇😇
Mum: Nora wants to say hi is this a good time luv ?
Dream Aeternus <3
Hob: Oh my god I'm a ZOMBIE
Hob: Can you magic zap me in lecture if I fall asleep
Hob: I cannot believe you kept me up until FIVE AM
Dream: You were the one who insisted we start The Martian at three
Hob: I said just the first ten minutes!
Hob: Also who kept pausing the film to gush about the accurate science?
Dream: On further reading, the author of the book it is based on is also a former NASA employee
Dream: I sense a trend in your interests
Hob: Yeah. SPACE
Dream: Space engineering
Hob: [Tim Curry Space.gif]
“She broke her nose,” Dream repeats.
“Well, not on purpose,” Hob says reasonably, as he pours three milliliters of cobalt chloride into the third and final vial. “It’s footie, you know. Things happen.”
“Not to eight year old girls,” Dream protests.
“There’s a reason they’re on a lycan league. And a broken nose heals up in a day or two for us—not like you lot, takin’ half a year.”
Dream rolls his eyes.
Hob shrugs. “Anyway, Mum was with you. Felt horrible.”
“Your mum felt horrible,” Dream clarifies, “that another child broke Nora’s nose?”
“Well—what she said was, she was worried that the other mum would feel horrible about Paisley breaking Nora’s nose, even though Mum told her it was fine and Nora’d be right as rain come Monday—and it was fine, like I said. Bones break all the time.”
Dream shudders down into his oversized cardigan.
“Hey, you want to do the hydrochloric acid? Or the ammonium chloride?” Hob asks.
“Ammonium chloride,” Dream decides, and accordingly accepts his vial of cobalt chloride. He pulls the bunsen burner closer and begins the process of lighting it.
Hob grabs the hydrochloric acid and a pipelle.
“So,” Hob says, bending low to get eye-level with his vial, “the point of the story is that Mum was so worried about it, she went home and baked Paisley’s mum a bloody cake.”
“A cake?”
“And not just any cake. A victoria sponge. Strawberries and all. We don’t even get those for our birthdays, we just get whatever Mr. Kipling’s mix is on sale that week.” Hob glances over at Dream. “Though I expect you don’t even know what—careful!”
Hob’s hand darts out before the word even fully leaves his mouth, snagging a fold of Dream’s cardigan and pulling, just before the hanging sleeve of it would have hit the open flame.
Dream’s arm goes Hob-ward, and his free hand slams onto the table-top to counterbalance, and Hob quickly shifts to accept Dream’s colliding weight.
Dream grunts.
Hob hoists him back onto his stool. “Sorry, sorry,” he apologizes, with a brisk rub of the back. “Didn’t fancy you catching on fire, that’s—”
But he stops.
Because Dream’s left sleeve is still pulled up from where he’d grabbed it—the first time Hob has ever seen either of Dream’s forearms bared—and he knows that for a fact because he surely would have remembered the thick, mottled band of scar tissue around his slim wrist.
Dream yanks the sleeve down.
“Dream—”
“It’s nothing,” Dream snaps, and snatches up his assigned vial once more.
Hob stares.
His heart is pounding. His hands are shaking.
Someone… had hurt Dream.
And Dream is measuring out ammonium chloride into his cobalt chloride, and stirring it gently with a glass rod, and hovering it over the bunsen burner flame, and watching fixedly as the solution turns from pale pink to a startling turquoise.
He turns to Hob.
“Dream—”
“Shouldn’t you be writing this down?” Dream bites out.
“But,” Hob tries.
He can’t stop staring at Dream’s long sleeves. At the neckline of his sweater, above the adam’s apple as all his sweaters seem to be. At the skinny black jeans and the hi-top converse and every inch of skin that Dream has always kept so carefully concealed and—
His own notebook jabs him in the belly.
“All right, all right,” Hob mutters, fumbling it from Dream’s grasp before it can jab a second time.
Dream turns away from him, scribbling away in his own notebook.
Hob’s eyes can’t help but trace over the black lines of his form, one last time, before he uncaps his pen and follows suit.
Dream Aeternus <3
Hob: Okay sorry I can’t just not say ANYTHING
Hob: Is someone hurting you??
Hob: Are you safe at home???
Hob: Dream I don’t care who it is or how powerful they are or how much money they have, it’s NOT okay
Dream: No one is hurting me at home
Dream: It’s old
Hob: It didn’t look old
Hob: I just hate the thought of anyone hurting you
Hob: IDK you don’t have to reply I guess. If you say you’re fine I can leave it alone. But if there’s ever anything LITERALLY ANYTHING that I can do to help please let me know
Dream: I do not require help
Dream: But I appreciate the sentiment
Hob: You know you can come stay with me over the holidays if you like
Hob: I mean it’s not a palace but it’s pretty nice as council houses go. They’re not as bad as they make them out to be on the telly
Hob: And my mum always loves another mouth to feed 🙄
Hob: Maybe she’ll go in for another victoria sponge if she knows we’ve got posh people coming round!
Hob: Hope you like jigsaw puzzles though
Hob: And you might have to kip on the couch. Or squeeze in with me! Promise I don’t snore
Hob: 😴😇😴<--- angelic sleeper
Dream: I have no doubt your family would provide a vastly superior holiday than what my father has planned for us this Christmas
Hob: Mykonos? Bora Bora? Monaco?
Hob: IDK where else rich people go on holiday
Hob: Disney???
Hob: Would pay genuine cash money for a photo of you in some mouse ears
Dream: We own an island near Hawaii
Hob: A. WHOLE. ISLAND???
Dream: It’s a small island
Dream: He could have bought one fractionally closer to home but there weren’t any on the market large enough for a landing strip, and Father gets seasick if he even looks at a fish pond too long, ergo, he would not abide any sort of mandatory water transport
Dream: So
Dream: To Hawaii we traverse
Hob: Yeah I’m sure it’s just dreadful, traveling across the globe in first class 🥲
Dream: Hob we own an ISLAND
Dream: Obviously we also own private aeroplanes
Hob: 💀💀💀
Hob: I’ve never even been on an aeroplane
Hob: Wait your dad gets seasick but he owns a yacht??
Dream: He also owns cars he’s never driven and restaurants he’s never eaten in
Dream: Such is the way of wealth
Hob: Mental
Hob: Absolutely mental
Hob: And I make fun of my mum for buying extra mugs at the charity shop
Dream: Possibly the one financial vice my father does NOT hold
“I have something for you,” Dream announces.
Hob looks up from the lemon drizzle he’s been unwrapping, just in time to see Dream bearing one of his stupid little Mona Lisa smiles, and placing a phone on the work table between them.
Not just any phone.
A battered Pixel 5, with some scuff marks on the edges and a missing volume button and an absolutely obliterated charge port.
“Twenty-two pounds and sixty-five cents,” Dream announces, looking terribly proud of himself.
“But—”
“And these don’t count, I already owned them,” Dream continues, pulling from a FeatherWeight bag a soft black case, which he unlatches to reveal a variety of familiar tools including but not limited to picks, a spudger, and a precision drill with assorted bits. To his credit, they have clearly seen some use. “And neither—does this,” Dream grunts, and heaves his next item from the bag and onto the table, where it lands with a very heavy clunk.
“Is that a laser separator?” Hob demands, boggling.
“Infinitely superior to a heat gun.”
Hob looks from Dream, to the laser, and then back again. “What, you just—had it lying around?”
“Yes,” says Dream.
And while the laser is in its original box, said packaging is dented and worn and torn on one leaf where perhaps someone had gotten a little impatient during the initial unboxing process. All evidence is in Dream’s favor, here.
Still.
Hob is pretty sure those machines go for upward of a thousand pounds.
“But actually,” he tries. “You brought all this—you did all this, just so we could replace my phone screen?”
“Well, you emphatically declined the simpler solution,” Dream replies.
“I—you—” Hob thinks of the chain of text messages from his mother, checking the local charity shops once a week for a defunct Pixel 5, and his own paltry home setup that features plastic drill bits off Temu and his mum’s old hairdryer. “Dream, you didn’t have to do this.”
“I rather did,” Dream says. “Broken phone screens give me dyspepsia.”
Hob suppresses a smile. “God forbid.”
“Thank you.”
“Well, we’ll try to be quick about it, at least. I know enthalpy isn’t the easiest topic, especially the way they’re presenting it now without the context of the other laws of thermodynamics, so—”
Dream waves a hand. “Unnecessary.”
“Unnecessary,” Hob repeats.
“I understand it perfectly.” When he eventually catches sight of Hob’s expression, he tilts his head and adds, “You can check my answers, if you’d like.”
“No,” Hob says, mind racing miles ahead as he wonders for the five hundredth time if Dream just—
If he’s—
“No, it’s fine,” Hob says, because at this point his only other option is to accuse Dream of faking it and. And that would crazy. Because what reason would Dream have to fake it, other than—
Than—
A grunt from Dream pulls Hob abruptly back to reality, where he finds Dream now attempting to lift the laser out of its box, but struggling with both the weight, and with the separation of the laser from something inside its cardboard confines.
“Here, let me—”
“I can do it,” Dream snits, too late, for Hob has already slid his hands in atop Dream’s and threaded his fingers through the gaps in Dream’s and lifted.
“Got it,” Hob says, sunnily and unnecessarily.
Dream looks extremely put out.
“C’mon,” Hob says, as he sets the laser carefully on the table. “It’s only fair that I should be the one to get it out, since you did all the work of getting it in the box back home.”
Dream mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like the Buckingham RP version of actually I made Matthew do it.
An unbearable fondness wells up inside of Hob, sudden and bright and blossoming right through his chest with such force he almost can’t breathe for it—because of course he’d made Matthew do it. Of course he had.
“Thank you,” Hob says, and though he wants to wrap Dream up in his arms and squeeze him to death, he settles for steady eye contact and a warm smile, instead. “For doing this.”
Dream flushes.
Hob’s smile widens.
“I,” Dream says, and swallows. “I-I also. I do not like KitKats.”
Hob blinks.
Dream seizes his backpack, dragging it across the table and then plunging a hand inside until he withdrawals a lunchbox. The moment he unzips it, the whole room floods with currant and cinnamon.
“A Chelsea bun,” Dream announces, depositing it on the table, piping hot from what therefore must be some sort of enchantment on the lunchbox. The bun is wrapped in brown paper, the sort you get at a proper bakery, and it looks fat and sugary and incredible. “Which was two pounds thirty-five,” Dream says.
“Oh,” says Hob.
Dream seats himself at the table, and gestures imperiously for Hob to do the same.
Hob sits. “Dream…”
“Totaling twenty-five pounds, with the phone,” Dream adds, as if Hob had not put that together.
“Thank you,” Hob says, and if this time it comes out a little helpless, it’s probably because he is in fact utterly and completely helpless in the face of Dream being sweet.
Dream pinkly passess him a knife. “You will cut,” he says. “And I will choose my half.”
Truly, Hob doesn’t mean to look.
It’s when Dream leaves for the bathroom, while the double-sided tape is setting on the edges of the phone where the glue had been first meticulously scraped off, and Hob is left alone in the room with Lucienne.
“I know Matthew is newer, but you—you’ve been with Dream for a long time, haven’t you?” Hob asks, spinning a pen between his fingers.
“I have been with the family for not quite ten years,” Lucienne answers.
Hob grins. “So Dream must’ve been—what, eight? Nine? When you joined?”
Lucienne’s eyes have gone soft. “I… suppose so, yes. He was.”
Hob wonders if she knows about the scar on Dream’s wrist. He wonders if she helped put a fetter around Dream’s neck. He wonders if she considers it part of her job, to act as someone who cares for Dream as a person and not just as a client in need of handling.
“What was he like, when he was younger?” Hob asks.
Lucienne pauses, and a small smile quirks the corners of her mouth. “I am uncertain he should like me to tell you.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Lucienne!”
“My apologies, Mr. Gadling.”
“Oh, come on, I can’t still be Mr. Gadling after two months of—oh shit.”
Hob’s pen slips his thumb mid-spin and goes flying straight into Dream’s Hydra Flask. A normal human’s pen slip would have pinged off harmlessly, but Hob has got werewolf strength and so it is with werewolf velocity that the pen hits.
The Hydra Flask tips over.
“Shit,” Hob repeats, sweeping all the electronics away from the resulting flood of tea with one hand, using the other to dive for the mug. He barely gets a sleeve down in time to protect Dream’s laptop, and swears when he looks over and sees that as a result, he’s too far away to grab Dream’s notebook from—
“Shit,” Hob says again, sweeping the tide of tea away from the laptop and toward the floor, then lunging for Dream’s notebook.
It’s sodden.
He looks up at Lucienne, as tea sloshes against his thighs and down onto his trainers and the floor all around him and Dream’s ruined notebook drips from his hand, and asks with no real hope, “Can you… do anything to—”
She’s already raising a hand. In the blink of an eye red flashes from her fingertips, and Hob’s sleeve and the table and Dream’s notebook are all perfectly dry.
“Wow,” Hob says, blinking. “Thanks.”
“Of course,” Lucienne says, inclining her head.
“Magic’s brilliant.”
“It has its uses,” Lucienne agrees.
Hob, still slightly disbelieving, pulls Dream’s notebook closer and traces a hand over the restored cover, and then does a flip through the pages just to see them all pristine and white once more.
He’s not really reading, especially because the first half of the notebook is filled with the expected lecture notes and lab data and all the same things that are in Hob’s notebook as well, and then there’s a run of blank white after that, beautifully restored pages that he marvels at as they speed by beneath his thumb—until suddenly, in the last third of the notebook, there is writing once more.
Pages and pages of it.
Pages and pages of—
Christ.
Hob is staring at chemical equations and maths he’s never even seen before. Dense calculus crowds the margins and there are little drawings surrounded by cramping handwriting and arrows and scribbles. Calculations upon calculations. A wing is drawn, over and over and over, at angles and in segments and spread open to component parts, and on the next page—
A bird.
A beautiful, mechanical bird, sketched with almost more artistry than engineering, but surrounded nevertheless with notes and formulas and arrows more, and beneath it, a doodled banner carefully inscribed with the name JESSAMY.
Lucienne clears her throat.
Hob slams the notebook shut, head snapping up.
“I,” he says, staring at her.
She stares back.
Hob’s mouth works for several seconds. The bird—the diagrams—the chemistry. It adds and it multiplies and it fractates but no matter how hard he tries he cannot solve for x.
“Why am I tutoring him?” Hob manages, at last.
Lucienne blinks at him.
Hob sits down on the chair. “Why am I—why would he…”
It was no wonder he’d so breezily waved off thermodynamics help today. Or whizzed right through labs unless Hob prompted him to split the work. Or had such strange, illogical gaps in his learning comprehension.
He’d been bloody well faking.
“He’s paid me two hundred pounds a week,” Hob says.
Lucienne’s eyebrow raise.
Hob raises a hand to his forehead. “Of course. Of course he’d pay two hundred pounds a week for tutoring he didn’t need, he thinks money is fictional. Oh my god. Oh my god. Why?”
The door swings open.
Dream strides through, the door behind him flashing violet as Matthew’s magic sends it closed once more, but stops on seeing Hob.
Hob, too, has frozen.
The table is not tea-flooded but it is still in disarray from Hob’s valiant attempt to rescue the valuables, and Dream’s forehead creases as he takes this in as well.
“Welcome back, sir,” Lucienne intones.
There is an even longer pause.
“I spilled some of your tea,” Hob blurts out.
Dream’s frown deepens to puzzlement, and his head tilts slowly to the side.
“And, er. Lucienne cleaned it up. No harm done. All good!”
“...Are you all right?” Dream asks.
“Yes, fine,” Hob says instantly. “I’m fine. Sorry about your tea.”
“I shall survive, I think,” Dream says, still squinting a little but easing out of it. He begins to make his way across the rest of the room. “Has the tape finished setting?”
Hob glances at the clock, but cannot for love or money remember at what minute he’d started his mental timer. “Er.”
“Let me see,” Dream says, as he returns to his seat, and he reaches across Hob for the phone in question.
Hob watches him pull it closer with one hand, and take a pair of pickups with the other, and begin to expertly probe the edges of the phone.
He knows what he’s doing.
Apparently… he’s known all along.
Hob lays awake in bed that night, buzzing, giddy, terrified.
Dream is not allowed on campus outside of lectures. Dream is supervised by two bodyguards and has some sort of contractual agreement with the school to allow for his limited presence. Dream comes from one of the wealthiest families on the planet and he has a terrifying scar on his wrist and he may or may not be a magical powder keg that could explode at any moment.
Dream had brought him a Chelsea bun.
Dream has incorrect opinions about books and makes him watch films at three in the morning and double checks, every time, to make sure that Hob is not uncomfortable whenever they use silver in the lab.
Dream is sweet, and a little spoilt, and quite a lot pretentious, and he has more money than common sense and social skills combined—
But would he really pretend to need help in chemistry, just to—
Just to—
It’s insane. It’s the sort of thing you see in bad television programs. The romantic tropes that you see played out on cinema screens, with beautiful actors who don’t live on grubby council estates and miss doing jigsaw puzzles with their mums and have a mandatory orange bar at the top of their student ID that means oh he’s a werewolf is the first thing anyone thinks when they meet them.
So surely. Surely Dream had not pretended to need help in chemistry. Just to spend time with Hob?
Dream Aeternus <3
Hob: So what are you up to for autumnal recess?
Hob: Home like everyone else?
Dream: Will you not also be traveling home?
Hob: Nah I’m sticking around
Hob: Most of the team is. Some mates and I were going to do some hillwalking, and Jo wants to marathon Brassic at some point but otherwise I’ve got no plans
Hob: Other than all the studying we’re, you know, supposed to be using the week to do
Dream: I will be here for the week, but without classes to attend, will unfortunately be restricted to the flat
Hob: What about tutoring???
Hob: Education is very important 😇
Dream: Perhaps we could use the time to finally watch Interstellar
Hob: Or Arrival
Hob: 👀👀👀
Dream: Or Interstellar
Hob: THREE HOURS LONG
Hob: 😭
Dream: We’ll be on google meet, not a cinema. You can perform your strange chair-sitting when you get bored
Hob: You know what movie doesn’t have any boring parts at all?
Hob: Znagags
Dream: Zngogs?
Hob: Zngags
Dream: Zngogs
Hob: Arrival it is then 😀
Hob buzzes all weekend. He can’t stop grinning. He’s on fire during their match on Saturday and three separate people ask him if he’s tried a new energy drink on the train ride home, and one asks him where he’d bought his cocaine.
It’s not like he can tell them he likes me back he likes me back he’s liked me all along.
It’s not like he can tell Dream that he knows, either.
It’s not even like he can do anything about it, even if he could say something, given the iron fist Dream seems to live under at all times. Their weekly tutoring sessions together are probably the most he’s ever going to get, barring absolute miracles.
But the knowledge still lives inside his chest at all times like a small sun, snug and warm and lovely.
Dream likes him.
Johanna Constantine
Johanna: https://www.instagram.com/stories/desire_a_<3/
Hob: I told you to stop sending me these
Hob: I’m not watching another Desire makeup tutorial because it shows the back of Dream’s head in the background for three seconds
Johanna: No mate you should watch this
Johanna: [typing]
Johanna: I think it’s about you
[Desire, walking backward through an expansive living room and holding their phone at selfie-angle, gesturing.]
Desire: And don’t worry about what’s outside the windows, dearest readers, we WILL be circling back to the exterior once we’re done in here, but for now we’re going to step into the hallway—there’s a library in here, I think, I haven’t really been—oh.
[The camera pans to the interior of the library, showing Dream at a central table with a large red-headed man, and a teenaged girl with a dyed pixie cut.]
Delirium: —a BOYFRIEND!
Desire, off camera: Oooooo a pause, dearest readers.
Dream: Don't be ridiculous, Delirium. Obviously I have no such thing.
[Delirium bouncing in her seat.]
Delirium: I think he does, does, does! I saw his phone, phone, phone!
Desire, off camera: Dream, is she talking about your little werewolf friend?
Kronos: A werewolf?
Dream: I told you, I—
Delirium: A boy who’s a friend but not a boy at all but a WOLF.
Dream: I tutor him—
Desire: Oh, tutoring is it?
Dream: In chemistry.
Desire: Oh, CHEMISTRY.
Dream: I am MERELY doing my part to continue this family’s well-established tradition of philanthropy.
[Kronos lifts his head]
Kronos: Is that right?
Dream: Quite. You have your charity projects, Father, and now I have mine.
Hob, in the middle of the Cavendish common room, stares at his phone as the screen version of Desire withdraws from the library with a flounce and the story continues into another segment, but—they speak words he does not hear, and show him images that his mind does not process. There are eight more story segments remaining.
He taps the left side of the screen until Desire appears, walking backwards through an expansive living room, and he watches it again.
And again.
And again.
He watches until his laptop screen has gone dark, and his smuggled ham and cheese panini has gone cold, and Dream's words have cemented themselves into his chest like cinderblocks.
A werewolf?
You have your charity projects, Father, and now I have mine.
Chapter Text
Liam Upshall
Liam: hhttps://www.instagram.com/stories/desire_a_<3/
Liam: Mate is he talking about you?
Liam: Bit of a prick eh?
Sarah Gadling
Sarah: https://www.instagram.com/stories/desire_a_<3/
Sarah: Isn’t this the guy you’ve been hanging out with?
Dream Aeternus <3
Dream: Matthew has been riding in the back of the car with me on the return drive, and keeps trying to convince me to sample some revolting American confection labeled "Corn Nuts"
Dream: Mervyn has tried them and agreed that they are delicious
Dream: Unclear if Matthew paid him for that endorsement
Dream: Pray for me that I stand strong
Dream: Trapped before a viaduct because some imbecile decided to summon an afanc and the police have put up a barrier. It has been twenty minutes and counting
Dream: Have suggested Matthew go and help to speed things up
Dream: He said it is not in his contract unless the beast directly attacks me
Dream: I then obviously suggested that I get out of the car and display myself in a suitably edible fashion so that it might attack me so that Matthew could etc etc etc
Dream: That was also a no
Dream: Regretfully must crush your dreams of stardom
Dream: https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2024/jilted-filming-commences
Dream: Looks as though they’ve chosen St Andrews for the Ramireddy miniseries
Dream: Update: forty-five minutes later apparently the good policemen of Leek have contained the wretched thing, and we are now waiting our turn to proceed
Dream: https://europa.nasa.gov/mission/about/
Dream: Have you been following this?
Dream: Of course it’s launching out of bloody Florida so it’ll probably end up going at 3 am our time
Dream: But for you I would stay up to watch, if you were interested
Dream: Hob?
Dream: Do not tell me you’ve broken your phone already
Dream: Home at last
Dream: Are you all right?
Dream: Hob?
Hob: Sorry
Hob: The charity project has been put on pause for now
Dream: What charity project?
Hob: https://www.instagram.com/stories/desire_a_<3/
Dream: [typing]
Dream: [typing]
_________________
Call from
Dream Aeternus <3
_________________
Call from
Dream Aeternus <3
_________________
Call from
Dream Aeternus <3
Hob: No
Dream: Hob I apologize
Dream: I should not have said that
Dream: I swear I did not mean it
Dream: My father was there
Dream: It is complicated
Hob: Yeah I know
Hob: Everyone wants to be friends with a werewolf until it gets ‘complicated’
Hob: Then the excuses start
Dream: [typing]
Dream: I’m sorry
Dream: You are correct, there are no excuses
_________________
Call from
Dream Aeternus <3
Dream: Please tell me what I can do to make it up you
Hob: I need a few days
Hob: I’ll text you when I’ve cooled off
Dream: [typing]
Dream: [typing]
Dream: Okay
Chemistry lab on Tuesday starts off with Dream already at their lab station, big-eyed and hopeful as Hob approaches.
“Hello,” Dream says.
“Hi,” Hob says.
Dream opens his mouth. “If I can just expl—”
“Nope.”
Dream shuts his mouth.
“We’re going to do our lab together,” Hob says. “And unless you have something related to the lab, I don’t want to hear it.”
“...Okay,” Dream whispers.
It makes Hob twinge in sympathy, just a little, and even though some part of him knows that he is entitled to this anger and he is not being unreasonable—
God help him, he softens.
“It… hurt,” he says, and even as the words leave his mouth, two days later and in the middle of chem lab, it wells up inside his throat, hot and sharp. “What you said. So. I need some time. Okay?”
Dream’s eyes lower to the floor. “Yes.”
Hob nods, and swallows down the lump in his own throat.
It is a very, very quiet day in the lab.
In the end, when their drawer has been packed away and they’re both loading up their backpacks, Dream at last dares to ask:
“Tomorrow…?”
Hob shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
“But—”
“If you’re about to try on some bullshit about how you don’t understand thermodynamics and need my help, you can sell it to someone who’s buying,” Hob says shortly. “I know you’ve been lying about needing tutoring since day one. You’ll be perfectly fine without me for a week.”
Dream looks stricken. “Hob, please—”
“Promise,” Hob says, and then turns on his heel.
“Hob!”
Hob keeps walking.
“Hob.”
But Hob is already out the door.
The football pitch is cold and quiet. The stadium lights were left on by St. Iggys’ actual footie team, when they’d turned in for the night and waved Hob onto the pitch, and it’s lightly misting but not actually raining. It is just how Hob likes it when he’s in this sort of mood
His AeterNikes are cherry red against the grass, and he takes immense satisfaction in seeing them abused against the next ball he sends into the net.
They had been a graduation present from his mum, with adaptive cushioning charms and integrated FeatherWeight and some patented spell tech that kept the leather both thin enough for excellent ball-touch while also durable beyond any other non-magical shoe on the market. The ultimate team-up of Nike and Kronos Aeternus. A teenaged footballer’s dream. Something so utterly beyond the means of a single mother of four that Hob had felt a little sick when he’d torn off the wrapping paper and known immediately that these had not come without sacrifice. His mother had done without to afford these.
He had never in a million years imagined that the man who’d designed these shoes would one day sit at a table with his son and discuss him.
Discussion is probably too strong a word, really.
A werewolf?
You have your charity projects, Father, and now I have mine.
The video had swung back around to Desire, after that, and continued apace to a neighboring room designed exclusively for sound baths. Just another stop on the tour.
Hob has his old cleats back in his dorm room, somewhere. They’re a little tight in the toes and half the studs have worn smooth, but he’d played in them before and he could play in them again. They are, he supposes, the sort of shoes a charity project ought to be wearing.
“Fuck,” Hob exhales, and then he takes in a deep breath and pushes off the ground into a sprint.
The ball slams into the net.
He grabs another football and jogs back to the penalty spot, dropping it to the ground. His AeterNikes shine back up at him, exactly as they had the day he’d taken them out of their box, despite the mud and the mist and almost five months of regular athletic abuse. They’re the best shoes Hob has ever put on his feet.
He doesn’t want to wear his old cleats.
He digs his toes extra hard into the mud on his way back to the penalty arc, just because, and it feels so good that he does a few little digs into the dirt once he gets there, watching the points of his shoes disappear into the mud over and over and enjoying the vibration it sends up his each leg in turn—left—right—left—right—left—right—
And so he almost doesn't hear the footsteps.
Hob might have actually missed them, if they hadn’t been accompanied by a heartbeat that he is slowly coming to know almost as well as his own. A heartbeat he’s been well on his way to picking out of crowds or tracking across a room, like he’s only ever really been able to do with his mum and his sisters.
There’s a lonely black pillar on the green sprawl of pitch, when he at last looks up.
Of course.
Hob sighs, and turns to drive this ball into the net as well.
He goes for the third and final football in his arsenal, walking it to the penalty spot and dropping it in place, and then returning to the penalty arc and lining himself up. Taking in a deep breath. And launching this ball into the net as well.
Dream is, by now, close enough that Hob could turn around and talk to him.
Instead he jogs off to the goal to retrieve his footballs.
He’s feeling a little petty.
One by one, Hob kicks each ball with precision from the goal back to the penalty arc, where Dream is now standing. Waiting. His mist-glittering hair and tailored peacoat make a stark contrast to Hob’s sweat-soaked jersey and muddy knees.
The last ball comes to a stop at Dream’s feet.
He looks down, and nudges it with the toe of his shoe.
“What’re you doing here?” Hob asks.
“You said once,” Dream replies, withdrawing his foot and looking up to tentatively meet Hob’s eyes, “that this is where you come. When you are upset.”
“So yesterday, when I said ‘I need some time’, what you heard instead was ‘Dream please come and crash my therapeutic penalty kicking session’?”
Dream has the grace to look abashed.
Hob runs a hand through his hair, and despite it all he has to suppress a snort of laughter. “Of course you did.”
“It is only…”
Hob waits.
Dream digs a toe into the mud, and he hunches into his coat. “I miss you.”
“Dream,” Hob sighs.
Dream scowls at the ground.
“You can’t ju—hang on.” Hob pauses. He double-checks. “Hang on, are you here alone?”
And, yes: neither Matthew nor Lucienne are anywhere in sight. There is only the shimmer of falling mist and rows upon rows of empty stadium seats.
“They would not have let me come,” Dream replies, lifting his chin. “I had no choice.”
“Did you sneak out of the house?”
Dream scowls. “As I said—”
“Oh my god,” Hob says. This time the laughter comes in full. “Oh my god, Dream.”
“I had no choice,” Dream insists. “You would not tutor me tonight and I cannot speak to you during lectures and we do not share a tutorial, and then come Friday it will be autumnal recess and then it will be another week before I see you, and I—” He stops, and huffs. “I thought perhaps if I apologized in person, you would—”
Hob exhales.
“I am sorry,” Dream pleads.
“I know,” Hob says, and it comes out with more resignation than anger. “I know you are.”
“I should not have said it. And you should not have had to hear it.”
“No,” Hob agrees.
Dream presses his lips together.
“Look,” Hob says, shifting his weight. “I’m not—mad at you. I just. It hurt. To hear you put me down like that. And I’ve spent my whole life hearing shit like that, you know? Every day. And I’ve gotten real good at swallowing it down and making a joke and moving on, and I—but to hear it from you, I—”
He blows out an uneven breath.
“If there was any way I could take it back,” Dream says, eyes shining. “Hob, if there was any way at all.”
Hob waves a hand. “No, I know, but. Look. I know it’s, it’s also more complicated than that. All right? I know who your dad is and I… I know that there’s something really fucking wrong with your home life even if you can’t tell me what it is, and I don’t know what would have happened to you had you—if—bloody hell, Dream, I don’t ever want you to put yourself in danger over me. Call me all the slurs you want, if it means he keeps his hands off you.”
“My father does not beat me,” Dream says stiffly.
“No, but he’d pay someone else to do it, wouldn’t he?”
Dream looks away.
Hob doesn’t think that’s quite the shape of it. There’s too many other things—Dream’s mother and the bodyguards and the way Dream had drawn himself a little mechanical bird like children draw themselves imaginary best friends—but it’s close enough to score a hit.
“I just—” Hob exhales hard, and his shoulders slump. “I just wish that we were both normal. You know?”
Dream shakes his head, stepping forward.
Hob rakes a hand through his hair, and cold rainwater trickles down his neck. “I feel like it’d be so easy. If you were just some cute boy I’d met in class, and I wasn’t something out of a horror movie, and we got to hang out in the student union and argue over which chippy to go to and join stupid clubs together and stay up too late in the Wisdom Tree and—and—”
Dream takes his hand, clasping it carefully between his own. Hob can feel them trembling, but holding strong. “I like,” he whispers, “that you are a werewolf.”
“You’ve never even seen me.”
“But I want to,” Dream says, squeezing Hob’s hand tight enough that Hob lays his other atop what has become an absolute mess of palms and fingers. Dream’s eyes are full of tears. “Hob, I want. I want to see you. I want to know you, everything about you, I am—I am greedy for it. Your loyalty and your compassion and your smile and everything that you are, every last piece. I want it all. It is only—”
Hob grips Dream’s hands, and Dream grips right back. His heart is pounding in his chest.
“Only—”
Dream squeezes his eyes shut, and makes a noise of pure frustration.
“Tell me,” Hob breathes. “Tell me, if you want to. I can keep a secret.”
Dream shakes his head, tears spilling down his cheeks. “I can’t. I—I—Hob—”
And Hob hugs him.
Pulls him in tight and wraps both arms around those skinny shoulders and feels Dream sag against him like a sack of bones and Hob bears him up readily. Gladly. Dream’s heartbeat is in his ears and the scent of winter and iron is in his nose and the warmth of Dream’s body is against his, and every nerve in him is singing yes yes yes.
Dream does not seem to care that Hob is sweaty and muddy and disgusting, so Hob decides not to care as well.
He holds Dream even tighter.
The heat and scent and rush of Dream here now mine overwhelm him and ground him in waves, everything he's wanted for weeks and weeks on end, all right here in his arms. It's wonderful. It's perfect. And Hob is so busy riding it out, that it takes him a few minutes to focus his gaze beyond a vague middle distance and instead to the field entrance, where another figure is standing.
He thinks, at first, that it must be Matthew or Lucienne, come to collect their errant charge.
But it is not.
It is a man, tall and thin. Perhaps in his late sixties or early seventies. He wears a dark trenchcoat and matching fedora, and he is standing perfectly still and… watching.
Hob freezes.
“Dream,” he says.
Something in his tone conveys what his words do not, and Dream goes still against him.
“There’s a man,” Hob says quietly, and Dream tries to turn in his arms but Hob holds him fast. “On the pitch, where you came in from. Old. White. He’s staring at us.”
Dream’s head lifts, and when Hob glances over he sees that Dream has gone very, very pale.
They’re so intertwined that Hob feels it when Dream’s hand darts into his coat pocket—
—his phone—
—and then something flares a bright and sickly green, and Dream cries out and the phone goes flying.
“Too late for that, I’m afraid,” the man calls.
He’s begun to walk toward them.
Hob glances around the stadium. He doesn’t know who this man is or what he wants, but all that is secondary to the fact that there is only one exit from the pitch and it’s directly behind the man, but there’s also only about five feet of concrete separating the green from the stands and—
He grabs Dream and runs.
He makes it three steps before he’s yanked back like a marionette, all his limbs moving in the wrong direction and his body defying gravity and his eyes see green green green, and it’s all he can do to keep Dream in his arms as they crash into the ground.
“Ah, ah, ah,” chides the man, striding sedately forward. “You know better than that.”
Hob looks frantically over at Dream, thinking that this will be it—now, surely now—
But there is no magic. No dark sorcery. Not even a hint of reaching for power. Dream is just staring back at him, wide-eyed and white-faced.
“My phone,” Hob says, trying to redirect his brain to the next most useful plan. “It’s, it's over by the goal—Dream, who is he?”
“You need to go,” Dream says, shoving at him. “You need to go, Hob, you—”
Hob fights back desperately, pulling where Dream is pushing, grasping where he is shoved away again and again because— “I’m not leaving you. What does he want? Who is he?”
“—Hob please—”
“No.”
“—Hob—”
Hob grunts as Dream gets an elbow in, but dives for the opening it creates and seizes Dream about the waist and tosses him over his shoulder as he pushes himself up, and he immediately takes off in a sprint for the stands—
But his body hits an invisible rubber band, and his vision goes green.
They’re dumped on the grass again.
“Fuck,” Hob spits, and it’s lisped a little around the fangs that have lengthened in his mouth. There are claws on his hands. He’s seconds away from fur. “Fuck, can’t you—come on, can’t you do something, aren’t you supposed to be powerful? Dream—anything—I don’t care if your magic’s white or black or, or fucking demonic, okay just—”
“No,” Dream says.
“—please—”
“Hob, no.”
Hob grips at him frantically. “—is it a fetter? Tell me it’s a fetter, tell me how to unlock it, okay, I will, we’ll figure the rest out later, I don’t care—”
“A fetter?”
Hob whirls, and snarls.
“Is that the lie we’re telling people these days, my little maggot?” the man asks, and his voice is amused but his eyes are bone chillingly cold.
Dream’s breathing is growing more ragged by the second.
“My, my. Your parents must be getting desperate indeed.”
Hob feels more and more of his fur coming in, as his crouch becomes more and more animal, sinking lower on back feet that are flatter and a snout that is longer and the drum of his own heartbeat striking in time with Dream’s and reverberating down into the earth.
He growls.
The man’s eyes flicker to him, and he smiles. “I’ve never cared for dogs.”
And then he pulls out a gun.
Hob freezes, caught between disbelief that this is happening and that there is a man who has come to kill him and that just five minutes ago he’d had Dream in his arms and his biggest problem had been a clip on fucking Instagram and—
—caught between disbelief, and Dream’s sharp intake of breath in the quiet of the night—
—and there's no choice at all. Hob coils, muscles bunching, teeth bared, some instinct pining his gaze to the sagging lines of the man’s throat and he—
“No,” Dream gasps, throwing his arms around Hob’s neck and pulling. “No no no Hob, no don’t, you can’t.”
“He knows me well,” the man says, pleased. His thumb strokes the barrel of the gun, where intricate wooden inlay curves seamlessly into steel. “Genuine silver bullets. Nine of them.”
Hob goes still.
“Now,” the man continues, “it isn’t my plan to kill the dog, Dream. In fact, I intend to keep him alive, because I thought I’d give him a little job to do when all this is over. But if you force my hand…”
“I won’t,” Dream whispers.
“What was that?”
“I won’t.”
The man smiles coldly. “Good boy.”
Hob can feel Dream’s quiet little shudder.
The man takes in a slow, luxuriating breath, and gently flexes his hand on the gun while his eyes go half-lidded with pleasure. “Oh. Six years, I’ve been waiting for this.”
The pitch is utterly silent. Mist falls, and the stadium lights hum.
“You see, Robert Gadling Jr.—”
Dream’s hands grip Hob’s fur hard enough to hurt.
“—son of Meena Gadling, resident of 2145 North Colville Street—”
Hob has to fight the growl in his throat.
“—my name is Roderick Burgess. And I have been wronged.” The man pauses, tilting his head. “Understandably, it may not seem that way from your perspective. But I promise you it’s quite true. I am only here to collect what I was promised. No more, and no less.”
“They paid you,” Dream says shakily, still behind Hob.
Burgess scoffs. “Money. I’ve told you a hundred times, maggot, that was only half the contract. Now get up.”
Dream swallows.
His hands tremble as they leave Hob’s fur, and as they recede Hob can feel the prickle of night air against his skin, the shrinking of fur and the shifting of bone and—
Dream is walking toward Burgess.
Hob scrambles back to his feet, a roar in his ears and a clawing need in his chest to have Dream back that grows stronger and stronger with every step Dream takes away from him. He clenches his hands into fists, heedless of the way the points of his claws dig into his palms. His fangs itch desperately against his gums, and his heart is in his throat and he wants Dream back, he wants Dream safe, he wants Dream back and wants to howl.
Do something, he thinks frantically, watching Dream’s every move with clenched fists. Do something, anything, anything, please.
He thinks, maybe Dream has to get closer to his target. Maybe he’s laying a trap. That any second now, there will be a flash of blue or gold or white, and Dream will do something fantastical and wonderful and impossible and save them.
But Burgess accepts Dream with a hand on the back of his neck, knobbly fingers clamping down like a vice—
And Dream is trapped.
Hob gnashes his teeth so hard they ache.
Burgess' fingers dig into the soft, vulnerable flesh just below the angle of Dream's jaw, and Dream flinches in his hold.
It's the fetter, it's that fucking fetter, it must be. Hob is going to find whoever put that thing around Dream's neck—and—
How dare they leave him like this? How dare they?
“You see, Robert Gadling Jr.,” Burgess says, fingers glowing faintly green against Dream’s skin where he has him in a hold.
Hob unleashes a growl, subsonic and rumbling. Threatening.
“When Nyxa came to me six years ago, she was..." Burgess considers. "Desperate. She offered me millions. Anything, she said, anything at all, if only I could fix her poor son, who somehow—from the two greatest sorcerers of our age, and an eight generation pedigree, and a direct ancestral line to Merlin himself—somehow—”
Dream closes his eyes.
“Her poor son,” Burgess says, with relish, “who was born. Without a single. Solitary. Drop of magic.”
Hob's growl dies in his throat.
What.
What.
“Frankly,” Burgess adds, “I think they ought to have just had him drowned, if they were so ashamed of the little maggot, but. We all have our priorities in life, don’t we?”
“What,” Hob says, disbelieving. “But the. There are articles…”
Burgess raises an eyebrow. “Do you know how little money a journalist goes for these days, boy? With the fall of printed newspapers, they’re practically begging on the streets.”
Hob would think Burgess was lying, but the miserable look on Dream’s face is more damning than anything else in evidence right now.
It’s true.
Somehow. Dream isn’t some dark wizard, or a ticking magical time bomb, or a supernova held in check with nuclear-strength fetters beneath his clothes. He isn’t a danger to society. There was never any schizophrenia, or famines, or murdered Norland nannies.
Dream has no magic at all.
“Their hope, you see,” Burgess continues, “was that in time someone could fix him. Someone like me.”
“...Fix him,” Hob repeats weakly.
Burgess turns to Dream, and gives him a little shake. “Shall we show him, little maggot? What five years of hard work looks like?”
“No, please—”
“Five years,” Burgess snaps, and with his free hand he cuts a sharp green line down Dream’s front.
The black peacoat and the black sweater beneath it part like butter, to reveal a pale, narrow chest that is covered in scars. Runes. Rings. They are in layers and discrete sets, as though acquired over time and through different rituals. There is a band around Dream’s neck that looks a perfect match for the one Hob had seen on his wrist a week ago.
Dream twitches in Burgess’ grasp like a fish on a line.
Hob wants to throw up.
“All of that!” Burgess shouts, and with the wave of his hand Dream’s clothes come back together.
Hob blinks, but the horrifying pattern of scar tissue is still seared into the backs of his retinas. He’s going to have nightmares about it.
God. Dream.
“All of that, and after five years of research and magic wasted on this stubborn little cunt, they hand me half my payment and send me on my way with the NDA of a common criminal,” Burgess spits. “The gall. The audacity.”
Of course, Hob thinks wildly. Of course this comes back to money. This insane man is going to hold Dream hostage because his insane parents underpaid him for the five years of ritual torture he had subjected Dream to in an insane endeavor to give him magic powers that he did not have and was clearly not meant to have.
“Now,” Burgess says, fixing his gimlet eyes on Hob once more, “I hope you’ve been paying attention. Because once Dream and I depart, you are going to have the very important job of making sure Kronos and Nyxa understand the stakes at play.”
This can’t be happening.
“You’re going to tell them that I have their son,” Burgess tells him.
Dream is wide-eyed and frantically trying to shake his head.
“And unless they want the world to find out exactly what sort of disgrace has been living under their roof for all these years,” Burgess continues, “they are going to finally hold to their word, and return my son to me.”
“They never promised—”
“Did I ask—” Burgess’ hand flares green, and Dream whimpers. “—for your opinion, maggot?”
“Did they—did they kidnap your son?” Hob asks, feeling like the floor has been completely yanked out from underneath him. “Is that—”
This is too much. This is way, way too much.
Kronos Aeternus barely knows that he exists, how the hell is he supposed to—
“No,” Burgess says, gaze darkening rapidly. “No, my son is dead. And they promised to bring him back.”
“They didn’t—” Dream protests, at the same time Hob says, “But you can’t—”
“DO NOT PRESUME TO TELL ME WHAT IS POSSIBLE,” Burgess roars, and the ground shakes and the stadium lights flicker green. “You filthy, ignorant pissants have no idea—no idea what Kronos is capable of—you’ll see—you’ll see, you mongrel, you’ll see—”
Lightning flashes green, and the wind is whipping fine rain through the air, and the gun in Burgess’ hand is swinging around wildly with each gesture.
And Hob—
Hob cannot let him take Dream away. Dream who has no magic. Dream who is wholly, and totally, defenseless. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t, and werewolves heal fast, werewolves have excellent reflexes and superb aim and maybe it won't kill him to be shot with a silver bullet, not like it would kill him to watch this psychopath walk away with Dream anyway, not like—
Hob coils.
“—you go to him and you tell him—tell him I have his son—”
The gun swings left.
His claws prickle.
“—and then we’ll see if he doesn’t bring my son right back—”
The gun swings right.
His teeth are bared.
“—right there and then, we’ll see, we’ll see—”
Hob springs.
And the world goes crimson.
Thunder cracks in his ears, and the wind rushes, and when Hob lands it’s on hands and knees, skidding across muddy field and pivoting sharply into a low crouch, looking for Dream Dream Dream Dream—
Matthew appears out of nowhere, shoving Dream at him so hard that Hob barely rises up in time to catch him.
“Run,” Matthew barks, and then slams both hands up behind himself to cast an enormous, pulsating violet shield.
Dream is trying to disentangle himself, but Hob immediately vetos that plan, scooping Dream up in one go and sprinting for the exit that is now wide open. A glance behind them reveals a chaotic lightshow of red, purple, and green, and what looks to be quite a bit of lightning. Hob runs faster.
Bloody hell.
They're—
They’re going to be okay.
He has Dream in his arms and no one is going to be kidnapped and no one is going to get shot and the adults are here and it’s going to be okay.
Hob clears the tunnel in what feels like seconds, hanging a sharp right and pounding down the concrete hallway that leads up to the concourse, past the shuttered snack bar and the team shop and the ticket sales counter and at last—the exit.
There’s an Aston Martin illegally parked on the kerb, and a man standing there holding the back door open.
Hob starts to slow, uncertain, but Dream slaps his chest and hisses, “That’s Mervyn that’s Mervyn,” and so he picks up the pace again.
“‘Allo, you,” Mervyn says around a cigar. “In you get, let’s go, let’s go.”
Hob all but slings Dream inside.
“I’m not a parcel,” Dream can be heard to complain, from the backseat of the car.
“Get in,” Hob says, shoving him across the seat.
When he glances back, he finds that the stadium is now flashing red and purple and very little green.
The door slams shut behind them and seconds later Mervyn is behind the wheel. His cigar goes into what Hob thinks at first is a cigarette lighter, but the moment it slots into place the entire car goes gold and abruptly the air smells of iron and petrichor, and Hob’s hearing tells him that they’ve gone underwater but his vision tells him that they’re still illegally parked outside the football stadium.
Then Mervyn takes off, and Hob is thrown back against the seat.
He scrambles upright again, and finds himself somehow tangled with Dream, arms and legs and one of Dream’s stupid boots wedged beneath his knee but Hob doesn’t care. Dream’s eyes are huge and dark and inches away from his own.
“Are you all right?” Hob asks, breathless.
“Yes, are you all right?”
Hob lets out a semi-hysterical laugh. “Only physically.”
Dream’s mouth opens and he takes in a breath, but no words follow. His hands flutter over Hob’s shirt and over his shoulders and up to his face, brushing hair gently back from his face.
Dream who has no magic.
Dream who has ordinary blood pulsing through ordinary veins propulsed by the contractions of his extraordinary, ordinary, human heart.
“I’m so sorry,” Dream says, face crumpling. “Hob I’m so—”
Hob takes him by the biceps and squeezes. “Don’t be—fucking hell, Dream, that. Was not your fault. You. You did nothing wrong, you’ve never done anything wrong at all, you don’t—oh my god, you don’t deserve any of this. Fuck Burgess and fuck magic and fuck your parents. You—”
“Hob—”
“You are perfect.”
Dream makes a choking noise, and then—
Then.
Then his mouth crashes into Hob’s.
Their teeth knock and their noses smush, and it is immediately clear that while Dream has never done this before, what he lacks in experience he is making up for in enthusiasm and Hob—
Hob has been waiting for this.
Dream is a bony, squirming thing against him, sharp and demanding and why would he be anything else? Hob loves it. Hob lets him drive them back flat onto the expensive leather seats, lets Dream lick into his mouth and fist his shirt, lets him have it all, anything he wants, I’m yours I’m yours I’m yours.
Dream tastes even better than he smells, and Hob can feel his heartbeat against his own, a pulsing, throbbing beat that is so strong for something that feels so fragile beneath his hands, skinny thighs and jutting shoulderblades and—
The car swerves, and Hob just barely throws out a leg in time to keep them from rolling off the seat.
“Sorry,” Mervyn calls back, sounding quite the opposite.
Dream pants, staring down at him from within the cage of Hob’s arms, one hand still with a deathgrip on the front of Hob’s shirt.
Hob laughs, just a little bit, and pulls Dream down to press a quick kiss to his mouth, and then he buries his face in Dream’s neck like he’s been dying to do since day one and takes in deep lungfuls of scent.
Winter, and metal, and sweat… and just a little bit Hob.
Dream startles, when Hob’s tongue laves over his pulsepoint.
Now he smells a lot like Hob.
“Wolf thing,” Hob murmurs, and then rubs the angle of his jaw against Dream’s for good measure.
“I have… read about it,” Dream says.
Hob pulls back. “You have?”
“I wanted to be—” Dream bites his lip. “—prepared.”
“Oh, prepared?” Hob repeats, utterly delighted. “Well-researched in mating habits of werewolves, are you?”
Dream exhales, and lets his forehead drop onto Hob’s chest. “No corner of reddit was left unturned.”
“Dear god.”
And Dream—giggles.
Hob laughs right along with him, running a hand up and down Dream’s narrow back just because he can, and stares up at the ceiling of the Aston Martin and feels the pounding of his own heart in his ears. Feels rainwater and mud gathering beneath him on the seat cushion. Feels Dream's weight atop him, bony and warm and present where just fifteen minutes ago Hob had had to watch him walk away and into the arms of a madman and—
And—
And fifteen minutes ago, when a man had threatened to shoot him. He’d had a gun with silver bullets and he’d had a finger on the trigger, and he’d had Dream by the neck and his hands had glowed green and he'd hurt Dream and—and there had been so many scars—and Hob had thought—
Hob had thought—
Hob had never been so scared in all his life.
“Hob? Hob, it’s okay,” Dream says urgently. “Please don’t cry, please—it’s okay, we’re okay.”
Hob’s chest shudders and his limbs are shaking and he sucks in a great breath of air. “I—I’m trying—I’m trying not—I’m sorry, I—”
Dream hauls him upright and wraps him up tight in his wiry arms, shushing him and patting at him so awkwardly that Hob almost laughs through his tears until it occurs to him that maybe the reason Dream doesn’t know how to do this is because he’s never had anyone soothe him while he cries—and then Hob isn’t laughing at all.
Dream’s parents… had deliberately isolated him from the world.
They had spread rumors that he was unstable and evil and made sure the media caught hold of just enough hearsay to make publishable stories, again and again and again.
They had hired a man to ritually torture Dream for five years, just because Dream had been born different from the rest of his siblings.
Born ordinary.
Hob lets out a wet, shaky breath, and clings tighter. Feels the rise and fall of Dream’s chest against his own. He tries not to think about the scars that are stretched over the skin beneath Dream’s woolen coat, but they were burned into his mind’s eye even with that split second glance, and the implications of what Dream had gone through to acquire those scars are almost too horrific to even contemplate.
Not if Hob doesn’t want to end up claws-out while surrounded by all this extremely expensive leather and chrome.
“One more extra left turn’s about all I can manage, sir,” Mervyn’s voice says from up front.
Dream goes stiff. “Very well.”
“What—”
“Hob,” Dream says, interrupting him. He detaches himself, gripping Hob’s shoulders first and then his elbows, and for a single moment he just stares at Hob as if he’s something… precious. As if Hob is anything other than a grimy, sweaty weirdo in secondhand clothes who is sometimes a little too desperate to be liked and sometimes talks too much and absolutely does not know the name of a single, solitary Austrian ski resort.
As if Hob is something wonderful.
“Here,” Dream says, spoiling the moment and producing an honest-to-god handkerchief.
“Er.”
“Listen to me,” Dream tells him, wiping briskly at Hob’s face. “You understand, now, what my father is truly capable of. I. I will be fine. But you must sign everything, do you understand?”
Hob frowns. “Sign—”
“Do not refuse the money,” Dream orders.
“What money?”
Dream has Hob’s face in his hands, grip firm. “I know that it—you will find it upsetting. I do not care. Accept the money and sign the papers, Hob, because if you do not, he will—” He swallows. “Promise me.”
The car has come to a stop.
“What am I—”
“Promise me.”
“All right, all right,” Hob says hastily. “I promise.”
He’s unsure if he means it but the look of relief on Dream’s face is worth the lie, if it is one.
The car door behind Dream opens.
“Where—”
“This is where I live,” Dream says. “They’ll bring you somewhere safe, I don’t know where, and they may take my phone but I—”
“What—”
“—I will find a way to contact you—”
“Mr. Aeternus.”
The voice belongs to a man in a suit that is a little too bulky not to be concealing some weapons in its crevices. He’s at the open car door, and his face is neutral in a fashion that implies he is professionally prepared to use whatever means necessary to get Dream out of this car.
“Just a moment,” Dream snaps over his shoulder, and whips back around to Hob. “I’m so sorry, Hob.”
They’re going to take him away, Hob realizes.
He can see, beyond the first suit, an assembled team lying in wait, and none of them are policemen. He’s willing to bet the helicopters he can now hear overhead also do not belong to the police, or any other government agency for that matter. This is the aftermath of an attempted kidnapping of a billionaire’s son.
“I can go with you,” Hob says, hands flexing on Dream’s thighs. “I want—”
“They won’t let you,” Dream says.
Every instinct in Hob is screaming at him to keep Dream close where he can smell him and hear him and touch him and protect him.
“I would—”
“I know,” Dream says, and kisses him again.
“Mr. Aeternus, I must insist—”
“Yes, all right—don’t touch me, I’m coming.”
And Dream is shifting away, scooting across the seat and toward the car door and out of Hob’s grasp, and as soon as he gets a foot out of the car he’s more or less swept away in a flurry of pinstripe and earwigs.
He’s gone.
Hob looks up at the front, to find that Mervyn is still at the wheel.
His mind begins to race. Where are they going to take him? What are they going to do with him? He don't have his phone and he’s in a spelled car and these people are handling an entire kidnapping without the police so Hob doesn’t think he’s going to have the right to remain silent or phone a solicitor—not that he has a solicitor, obviously—Jesus Christ—
A woman in a suit slides into the seat next to him.
Hob wants to press himself against the opposite car door, as far away as he can possibly be from this person, but instead he takes in a slow, shaking breath and stands his ground.
“Robert Gadling,” she says, with the same neutral professionalism that the first suit had demonstrated.
She will get what she wants. By any means necessary.
Hob swallows, and tries for a smile.
She does not smile back.
He is eventually allowed out of the car, some fifteen minutes later, and taken up to what is at a guess Lucienne’s flat, given the endless tidy bookcases and the tea caddy carrying the exact same fuck-off expensive organic artisanal tea bags that Dream has hanging out of his Hydra Flask in lecture every morning.
They ask if he is hurt. He is given a shower and a change of clothes that are somehow exactly his size and also made of what is probably the most expensive fabric to have ever touched Hob’s skin. He is made a drink from the tea caddy with the posh tea, into which he dumps some very posh sugar.
He explains what happened.
They nod in sympathy, and apologize for the fright, and use words like traumatizing and unfortunate and remarkable courage and a credit to your species. More tea is poured. Biscuits appear.
And then Hob is handed a non-disclosure agreement that is paperclipped to a cheque for five million pounds.
Chapter 5
Notes:
Credit to celestarium, who had the brainwave to make Hob's siblings into Nora Roberts aliases.
Chapter Text
Dream Aeternus <3
Hob: Are you okay?
Hob: Text me if you can. Please.
“Okay, what gives?” Jo demands, as they exit maths.
“Nothing,” Hob says. He’s got a slight headache from the lack of sleep and his teeth are a little gross because he’d forgotten to brush them and also he’s spent the entire morning feeling like he’s had something very essential carved out of his chest and shipped a few hundred kilometers away to parts unknown, but other than that—he’s fine.
He’s perfectly, completely fine.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Aeternus wasn’t in class this morning,” Jo notes.
He was not. The back row had been conspicuously absent during their chemistry lecture.
No Dream, no Matthew, and no Lucienne.
“Is he sick? Is that it?”
“I don’t know,” Hob replies, hitching his bag a little higher on his shoulder. “He hasn’t texted.”
Jo frowns. “Are you two still having your little domestic? I thought you said you were over it.”
It’s some real personal growth, that Jo’s first suggestion is illness rather than that Dream had probably fucked off to conquer Latvia or perform lewd acts with sacrificial virgins. Hob should feel more appreciative than he currently does. Unfortunately, right now it’s all he can do to keep up the pretense of a normal conversation like this is any other day. Like last night he hadn't had a gun pointed at his face.
Hob had told Jo, the lifetime ago that was yesterday, that he was probably ready to forgive Dream for the stupid video. She’d called him a pushover, and he’d made some lame joke about forgiveness as a virtue.
“Hob?”
“I am,” Hob says, belatedly. “I—I am. It’s fine. It’s not that.”
“You are on another planet today, Gadling, I swear.”
“Sorry.”
“Look,” she says, stopping in the middle of the hallway. The traffic jam this immediately creates does not faze her. “PISS OFF, WALK AROUND. Look, is this something you want to talk about?”
Burgess’ hand on the back of Dream’s neck. The hair-raising crack and flare of green lightning. The heat of Dream’s mouth and the weight of his body.
Accept the money and sign the papers. Promise me.
“No,” says Hob.
Jo’s eyes narrow. “Because I will, like. Sit and listen. I’ve got a bottle of Bombay Sapphire that needs cracking and no exciting plans tonight after practice.”
“Let’s save it for Brassic next week,” Hob says, after a pause. “Y’know. On recess.”
She looks not at all reassured.
Hob summons a smile that feels like he'd cut it from a magazine and pasted it on with glue.
On one hand, thank god he only has to make it through one more day of classes. On the other hand...
Hob had already been dreading having to watch the majority of the school pack up to go home and see their families while he and everyone else with no money for the train wave them off and pretend like they're all excited to be staying at school for recess. Alone. Bored. Left with an abandoned student union and empty dining halls and the desperate lie that it is exciting, actually, to have an entire common room to yourself. But now—
Now—
Hob thinks of swinging gun barrels and scarred-up chests.
Ordinary boys born into extraordinary families.
Five million pounds.
Jo punches him. “I’ll hold you to it.”
“...Yeah,” Hob agrees.
"Yeah, what?" Jo demands.
Hob opens his mouth, and casts his mind back. "Er. Brassic?"
"Fucking hell," Jo snaps, in a tone that implies that was not the right answer, and that Hob had apparently been zoned out during the portion that contained whatever the correct answer had been. Before he can apologize, though, Jo is looping and arm through his, and dragging him off. “Come on, you git. You need food.”
Ye Gads Family Group Chat
Sarah: [photo of a dinner table covered in takeaway containers of fish and chips, and at the center, a black and white dessert]
Hob: A VIENNETTA???
Sarah: Guess who got a surprise pay raise at work? 🎉
Jill: PARTYYYYYY 🎊🎊🎊🎊🎊🎊
Mum: It’s very exciting
Mum: Wish you were here with us luv xx
Jill: Mum says we can get a switch!!!!!
Mum: For xmas !
Mum: Only if your good !!!
Sarah: She’s already talking about some wardrobe she saw at the charity shop last week 🙃
Jill: [slightly blurry selfie of a pre-teen girl pressed cheek to cheek with a middle-aged woman, both mugging for the camera]
Sarah: Hob???
Hob: Congratulations, Mum! That’s brilliant
Hob: You totally deserve it
Paywise
Meena Gadling has sent you £15
For your chippy at school love you xxx
_________________
Calling
Dream Aeternus <3
_________________
Calling
Dream Aeternus <3
Hob wakes up on Friday morning, headachey and gummy-eyed and still not quite fully disentangled from the nightmare that had finished off his long and sleepless night. Even as he stares at the ceiling of his dorm and listens to the sound of Liam dumping clothes into a suitcase, it is Burgess' cold eyes that he sees. It is the metallic cocking of a gun that he hears. When he closes his eyes and tucks his face into his pillow, he gets pack and whiskey and pot noodle and a dozen other scents that are fast wearing into his bedding despite his best efforts—but there is no trace of winter, or iron.
Dream has never been in his room.
Dream isn't even on campus anymore.
Liam swings the closet door closed, and pulls open a drawer. He's humming that song by The Weeknd under his breath, and his phone keeps pinging with text messages. It provides a prescient reminder of perhaps the one and only benefit of being left behind for autumnal recess:
The room to himself.
He can curl up in his fur and have a proper mope.
(At least until Jo beats the door down.)
“Morning, mate,” Liam says cheerfully—for he has no reason not to be cheerful. As of this afternoon, he and several of their hallmates are heading out for the Lake District to an AirBnB they’ve rented for the week. Hob had been invited. Hob had unfortunately not had five hundred pounds lying around for what would have been his portion of the rental.
He supposes that now, after that NDA, he sort of does.
“Morning,” Hob replies, with considerably less cheer.
“Letter came for you,” Liam says.
Hob pauses, half out of bed. “Sorry, what?”
“Letter,” Liam repeats, and waves a hand at their shared wardrobe. “Someone slipped it under the door overnight. Stepped on it a bit this morning. Sorry.”
“S’fine,” Hob says reflexively, padding across the room and squinting at the white envelope in question.
Sure enough, it does bear his name in large but unfamiliar handwriting.
Hob stifles a yawn, and carefully tears the top open. Inside, he finds a piece of paper that reads only "Compliments".
Alongside the note, there is a single round-trip train ticket.
The trouble with having a werewolf family is that you really can’t sneak up on them.
Hob makes it about fifty meters from the house before Nora comes dashing out onto the pavement in her pajamas—spots him, and immediately hops up and down, pointing and screeching, “IT IS HIM I TOLD YOU I TOLD YOU.”
Hob has just enough time to pull his earbuds out and shove his iPod away, before she hurtles into him at full speed.
“Oof, you got heavy,” Hob complains as she scrambles up his body like a climbing frame—though she hasn’t, really.
“You’re HERE,” she shouts, directly into his face, wrapping her legs around his waist as Hob gets a hand under her bum. “You’re here, you’re here, you’re here.”
“I’m here,” Hob agrees, starting quickly down the pavement once more because he can see Jill and Sarah spilling out the door, too, and now that he has Nora’s weight in his arms and her rabbiting heartbeat in his ears and her scent—
God, the scent base at school just isn’t the same.
He is assaulted as soon as he hits the front garden.
“Hob, what are you—”
“—did you quit—”
“HOB! HOB! HOB! HO—”
“—doing here?”
“Did Mum know about this?”
“—arsehole—”
The grass is wet and cold as Hob is at last dragged down, Jill strangling him from behind and Nora with a knee in his stomach and Sarah wedging herself in between with elbows that would put Jo to shame and Hob can’t answer any of their questions. His heart is in his throat. It’s all he can do to sit here under the familiar weights of their bodies and take in deep breaths of their scents and know that he is home.
He’s managing, until there’s a pointed clearing of the throat, and his sisters at last fall quiet, and Hob can crane his head just enough to see his mum standing at the edge of the garden in a dressing gown, arms crossed over her chest, half her hair in heatless rollers.
There are tears in her eyes.
“Surprise,” Hob says, and means it to come out teasing but instead it’s thick and a little broken.
“Hob,” she chokes out.
And, well. Hob’s always been a sympathetic crier.
And there’s nothing like your mum’s arms around you, when you’re having a good little cry.
It’s after the girls have gone to bed and Hob has changed into his own pajamas and it’s just the two of them sitting on the sofa and she’s running her fingers through his hair and Mum asks, “What happened, love?”
And it all comes spilling out, NDA be damned.
Johanna Constantine
Johanna: Cannot believe you abanoned me
Johanna: Gadling
Johanna: Fucking rude
Johanna: [blurry photo of a beer pong setup and several people bedecked in glowsticks and holding red solo cups]
Johanna: Sad ur not her so I COLD TRAS Y
The next day his mum has a shift at the hospital, which she very nearly calls out for until Hob convinces her that he has eight more days at home, and he will not feel any less loved if she spends three of those at work. It also helps that the girls immediately try to claim that if Mum can call off work for Hob then they should get to call off school come Monday, which is obviously a no-go.
So it’s him and his sisters at home today.
“And then Lola said that she wanted to kill herself but not like for real, you know, like a joke, obviously, but Mrs. Song took it like literally—”
“HOB!” Nora yells from elsewhere in the house. “I can’t find my uniform!”
Hob rolls his eyes and opens his mouth, but Sarah beats him to it.
“He’s been home for one day, Nora! How would he know where it is?”
“Hoooooooooooob.”
“Waitwaitwaitwaitwait,” Jill protests, limpeting onto Hob’s arm as he moves to stand up from the kitchen table. “Let me finish my story first, she can wait!”
“I’ll go look for it,” Sarah sighs.
Hob casts her a grateful look.
“So Mrs. Song took it literally,” Jill says, launching right back in, “and then Lola had to get like suspended and meet with the guidance counselors and they told her parents—”
Hob has been getting such low-downs on the drama of year five all morning, when Sarah hasn’t been quizzing him about life at university and Nora hasn’t been dragging him to the park to push her on the swings and spin her on the roundabout. They’ve all been in contact throughout the term via phone, but—it isn’t the same.
Hob feels decidedly uneasy about the circumstances surrounding this trip home, but he can’t argue with the results.
“—and then Mrs. Song said no that’s not good enough and—”
“Hob,” Sarah says, poking her head into the kitchen.
Hob looks up.
Her face is… odd.
“Door for you,” Sarah says.
“The door?” Hob repeats, because he hadn’t heard the bell ring or anyone knocking—though on the other hand, Jill has been going a mile a minute.
Jill sighs in disgust, and slumps over the table. “I’m never going to finish my story.”
Hob ruffles her head, and grins at the resulting squawk. “I’ll listen to the whole thing, Doe, I promise. Be right back.”
Sarah leads him out of the kitchen and toward the front door.
“Who is it?” Hob asks.
She glances over her shoulder, and does not reply.
It’s weird enough that possibilities beyond Mrs. Smith across the street or one of his old schoolmates start to rise up in Hob’s mind, all of them bad. Lucienne. An Aeternus solicitor. Kronos himself.
(...Dream?)
Sarah opens the front door, which reveals, anticlimactically:
No one.
But there’s a little whirring noise, and Hob looks down just in time to see a mechanical bird the size of a mango rising up from the front step, a beautiful creation of intricate black plates and cream wiring and two dark, glittering eyes.
“...Jessamy?”
“Hob Gadling,” Jessamy replies.
Hob chokes.
“That’s all it says,” Sarah says, from behind him. “Over and over.”
“Hob Gadling,” Jessamy repeats, with a mechanized little chirp.
Hob holds out his hands, and it—she flies right into them, motors quieting as her wings fold in and she eases down into his palms. Her head swivels, and her perfect mouth opens to say his name once more and belatedly, all at once, it hits Hob.
…Engineering.
Dream, born ordinary into a family of people who created enchanted prosthetic limbs and charmed linoleum and spelled sculptures and automobiles that ran off of self-replenishing potions—
A little boy growing up surrounded by fantastical inventors, crafting new magics and breaking the bounds of sorcery, in desperate awe of his family’s abilities to make something where once was nothing at all. A tiny Dream buzzing with creativity and wanting to fit in and entirely too smart for his own good—
And so he had become an inventor, too. Just like his parents. Just like his siblings.
He’d just learned to do it without magic.
“Hob Gadling,” Jessamy says again, swiveling her head in the other direction.
“Yeah,” Hob agrees, raising her up to get a better look at the intricate mechanism of her mouth and the thousand exquisite plates of her wings. “That’s me, love.”
She goes still, as her eyes level with his.
Then something clicks, and something else whirs, and her mouth opens once more but this time what emerges is not his name but instead a tiny, perfect golden key.
“Okay, what is this thing?” Sarah asks.
“Yeah,” Jill echoes, and Hob can feel her elbowing from behind for a better view.
Hob doesn’t reply. He is utterly and completely enchanted.
Dream had made this.
When he takes the key from what must be some sort of magnetic base, Jessamy shuffles in his palms, and Hob flattens them out so she can at last raise her right wing to reveal… a keyhole.
When the key turns inside it, a dozen tiny black plates shift with a clockwork sort of tick tick tick tick one after the other, like petals folding down, until they are all pointed inward to reveal the little round door camouflaged beneath.
Hob pulls.
And inside of Jesammy, there is a letter.
Hob,
I hope you are well and enjoying the autumnal recess. I confess I do not know how this letter will be received, given the events of Wednesday and the danger my own imprudence placed the both of us in. It is true, that Burgess has been a known concern for many months. While we were fortunate to have Lucienne and Matthew recognize my absence and arrive for a timely rescue, it does not negate that another and more terrible outcome was always possible and indeed, more likely, and that there was no reason for it beyond my own selfish, thoughtless nature. I am truly sorry for not taking more care in your safety.
Regarding the manner in which we parted—I am given to understand that in times of emotional distress, sometimes actions are taken and words are spoken in haste, instead of truth. Please know that above all else, I value our friendship. I would not hold you to anything said or done in the car that night, should you wish to make revocations. Furthermore, I would understand if at present you require time or further inquiry before revisiting even the idea of our friendship.
It is my hope that you will at the very least reply to this letter, even if in contempt. My phone has been taken and I cannot say how long I will be under such strict custody. The bird is of my own design. Her name is Jessamy. Even if you do not reply, I ask that you please treat her kindly while she is in your keeping. She will return to me, when you return the key to her mouth.
Yours,
Dream
Jesus Christ Dream what happened was not your fault at all and I am not upset with you. I’m upset with your shithead parents for employing a psychopath for five years.
And I would very much like to kiss you again. A lot.
Most important: Are you okay??? Are you safe??? Two pages front and back and I got more about how your bird is doing than you. (She’s gorgeous by the way. I can’t believe you made her. Incredible. I’m embarrassed I even showed you my stupid iPod.)
Please tell me what I can do to help.
- Hob xxx
Hob’s bed at St. Ignatius isn’t uncomfortable, and he has his scent base that he washes his sheets with, and Dishy’s Temperatus has been keeping him toasty warm as the weather starts to turn—but it is absolutely not the same as home. His sheets and his pillows here are drenched in the scent of pack, as is the mattress beneath it, and through the walls he can hear the sounds of the rest of his family, their snores and their heartbeats and their deep, even breathing. The creaks and groans of the house. The humming of the refrigerator.
It’s almost exactly as Hob had left it back in September.
The only difference is the handkerchief now tucked safely inside his pillowcase, so that when he presses his face to it and inhales deeply, the world smells also of frozen wood, and fresh snow.
It smells of heaven.
Hob,
Currently pressed for time and must employ brevity in this note. I am unharmed, but confined. My parents are working to withdraw me from university as we speak. The agreement previous was that I would be allowed to attend for four years before being retired into a more permanent obscurity. They are citing safety concerns but I believe they worry that they’ve lost too much control over my media narrative. Burgess has provided the excuse they have been searching for.
I should very much like to kiss you again. We have a plan.
Yours,
Dream
‘WE HAVE A PLAN’?????
SOME CONTEXT PLEASE? Who’s ‘we’? What’s the ‘plan’????
Oh my god
Well if you’re planning to run away to come stay with me (not opposed) at least let me know so we can buy the strawberries for the victoria sponge
“You have the bladder of a midge, Gadling,” Jo complains.
Hob tilts his head at her image on the phone. “Do midges have bladders?”
“Of course they do. Everything’s got a bladder.”
“Birds have cloacas.”
“Oh, same thing.”
“It definitely isn’t.”
“I’ll look it up while you take your princess bladder to the bathroom, how’s that?”
Hob unfolds himself from his comfortable pretzel on the bed, where his laptop is opened to a paused episode of Brassic. He leaves his phone also, as Jo is currently live on Google Meet and would probably not appreciate a trip to the loo.
It’s Monday, and his sisters are all at school and his mum is at work and Hob had made it all of two hours in trying to revise before he’d lost his mind wondering about Dream and Dream's batshit family and also checking the window every five minutes for Jessamy. Jo had been all too happy to abandon her own studies and watch television with him instead, when he'd texted in desperation.
Part of him, deep down, is hoping wildly that there will be a knock at the door and it will be Dream. A Dream that is finally free of his parents. A Dream that Hob can take inside and feed and wrap in pack blankets and cuddle up to and then it will be a Dream that is here and finally, finally—safe.
It’s an absurd thought.
Whatever Dream’s plan is, it’s not going to be to run away to a grotty little estate in London.
And so it would be absurd for Hob to beg off from the trip his mum has planned to their cousins’ house tonight for dinner, just in case Dream shows up. Hob is not going to do that. Hob is going to go and spend time with his family, because he is home for the first time in two months and that’s what you do as a responsible young man.
“OH. MY. GOD,” Jo screeches tinnily, when Hob sits back down on his bed. “Oh my god, oh my god, get on TikTok right now, you gnat-bladdered wanker. If you knew about this and didn’t tell me I am going to kill you.”
“What the—what happened?” Hob asks, grabbing his phone and tapping to make Jo’s screen shrink and then navigating over to the TikTok app.
“I sent it to you, just—it can’t be real, Jesus bloody fuck, there's no way, there’s no way.”
Hob doesn’t know what exactly he’s expecting… but he is still unsurprised to see Dream’s face on the thumbnail.
Of course.
Of course.
The username is the-dreaming, which has Hob wondering for a moment what fan account Jo’s sent him to—but then the clip loads, and it is clearly no fan account.
It's Dream.
The video shows him—Dream Aeternus, nepo baby, drama queen, builder of birds, the boy Hob had made out with in the back of an Aston Martin not five days ago—lying in a bed, from a selfie angle but with the camera held close enough that only his face is visible. The scene is well-lit, and his hair is perfectly styled despite the pillow, and his eyeliner is sharp as a blade. Impossibly blue eyes stare directly into the camera. As Capone’s Oh No plays its opening lines, he slowly raises one eyebrow, and quirks one corner of his mouth up into a playful little smile.
Then the camera slowly, oh-so-slowly, pans down to Dream’s pale, bared neck.
Where—
Where there’s a bite, that absolutely had not been there when Burgess had put Dream on display last week.
There’s a werewolf bite.
It’s half across his neck and half into the meat of his shoulder, jagged and already scarred over where the smallest teeth dug in but red and scabbed over the largest portions. Fresh, but at least a day or two old, especially if he’s got werewolf healing now to—
But he can’t be a werewolf. Sorcerers who get bit don’t turn. They just lose all their mag—
But no.
No.
No, no, no, wait. Dream isn’t a sorcerer.
Hob can't breathe. He isn't certain his heart is beating.
He might actually be sick.
The video—which has by now looped, and Dream is looking smugly at the camera once more, about to reveal the damage that waits down below—is clearly deliberate. It’s downright coy, from Dream’s little smirk to the stupid Oh nos of the song that it’s set to.
Dream had gotten himself bit. Dream is a werewolf.
We have a plan.
And now Dream is a werewolf.
“So I’m guessing from your face,” Jo says drily, “that you didn’t know about this.”
Hob wants to murder whoever had sunk their teeth into that pale, delicate shoulder. Hob will then murder Dream, after he explains what the flaming fuck problem he was thinking this would solve.
“No,” Hob says, watching the camera pan once more over the livid bite marks on Dream’s pale skin. A text bubble appears at the top, which he’d missed the first time around.
It says: Whoops
“Jesus Christ.”
“I know,” Jo says. “Do you think it’s real?”
“I. It looks real,” Hob says blankly.
“It's only been up for fifteen minutes but Desire's reposted it to their account, so it's already gone viral.”
Hob, on his third or possibly fourth rewatch, glances at the numbers on the right side of the screen that are updating steadily. There are already four hundred shares and six thousand likes. When he taps on the icon of Dream’s face, it takes him to a userpage with the subheader Byronic Drip, and absolutely no other videos posted besides today’s.
“This is insane. Who would have—wait, is that why he wasn’t in—holy fucking shit, do you think—” Jo stares at him over the screen, wide-eyed. "—d'you think he got bit on campus?"
“No, he—” Hob remembers too late that Jo has no idea that Dream was whisked off campus on Wednesday night. “No, that. That was Thursday, when he was absent. And, and it’s Monday. It looks too fresh for that.”
“Not for a human,” Jo argues.
Right.
Right, right, right. Bloody hell.
“Well—well, who would have bitten him on campus?” Hob tries.
“I don’t know—probably someone who saw an extremely dangerous dark wizard swanning about with a bunch of defenseless humans and thought, well, I can do something about that?”
Hob swallows.
“I mean, I know you think he’s actually all right, but—but if you think about it. Have you read the comments on it? This is how they used to deal with rogue sorcerers, during the Dark Ages, y’know, before they had fetters and stuff? Go too off the rails with magic, and they’d hire a were to go and bite you and—bam. Permanently neutralized. Problem solved. I had to write a paper about it once.”
Hob opens the video again—mutes it, before the stupid song drives him to murder—and then opens the comments with some dread.
Laney
lmfao so now hes a muggle???
PestilenceMoon
Hate to say it but probably for the best. Didn’t they link him to the 08 thames flood?
Mikayla
EAT THE RICH
MaxxieMouse585
First thing weres have ever done right for this country … 🇬🇧
Tanner Tarst
OK so now that he can’t flay me alive I can come out and say it: hottest Aeternus sibling five stars I want to break him and shake him like a glowstick
Mothman98
@yukoning1974 💀💀 werent you dream for halloween last year?
Poolie_mum
He seems weirdly chill about it tho???
Bungus3344
If I see one more video with this song istg
Hannah
Can we get a George Cross for the were that bit him please? For services rendered?
Pafoon
Thanks god 🙏🙏
John John
Your all idiots thats FAKE FAKE FAKE he just wants you to think hes neutered to drop all the security then papa aternus cn hire him like hes alway 1/2
Nuuto
@Tanner Tarst ur so right look at that pink little mouth
23bazillion
OK haha it’s funny until some were comes for someone who DOESN’T deserve it this is why we need to bring back TAGGING how does this not scare u guys?
ItsJustMeLeigh
Damn son ✨️
Tempest
Yeah all right weres you can have this one
Kathy M
All the way over in america and still letting out a big sigh of relief!
Okay.
Okay, so Hob supposes that he can sort of see how if you were looking to keep yourself in university—and if you were Dream’s particular brand of fucking insane—this might have seemed like a good idea.
It’s about two episodes of Brassic later (Hob thinks—he has not been paying a whit of attention and is very much wishing that he could reach through the phone and grab a swig of Jo’s Bombay Sapphire) when Hob receives a text message from an unknown number.
07323 688699
07323 688699: Hey sexy
07323 688699: Dream lost his little bird so he asked me to text you buuuuuuut I might have forgot until just now
07323 688699: Oopsie
07323 688699: Anyway there was a whole thing but you’ve probably seen our video and figured out most of it. He says you’re not a complete idiot.
07323 688699: But just in case
07323 688699: www.gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/nyxa-aeternus-youngest-child-now-apprenticing-at-famed-brooklyn-enchanted-tattoo-parlor
Hob opens the article, to a photo of grinning Delirium in a crop top and cutoffs, standing in front of a sunny storefront with an open binder of sketches suspended vertically from one hand. The title alone was enough. His eyes skim the text without reading a word.
He… is going to kill Dream.
“Hob? Hello?”
“Sorry,” Hob says faintly.
“Are you even paying attention?” Jo demands.
“Not really,” Hob tells Jo, honestly. “I…”
His phone vibrates with another text message.
07323 688699: xxx
“I know,” Jo sighs, with an eye roll that is practically audible. “Dream, Dream, Dream. I said you should go for a run and clear your head, but you insisted...”
“I’m really sorry.”
Hob does feel bad. Genuinely. She’s been excited about this for over a week, and he’s pretty sure under most other circumstances he’d be enjoying the hell out of this show right alongside her.
If he could only explain the rollercoaster that Dream fucking Aeternus is putting him on today.
“I think I need that run after all,” Hob says, scrubbing a hand over his face.
Jo sighs.
“You can keep watching with me,” Hob offers.
“Fuck off and go for your run. We’ll finish it another time.”
She’s a softie at heart, really.
“Hob!”
“Hob!”
“Hoooooob!”
His sisters are home.
Nora bounds into his room first, backpack and shoes still on, and catapults onto the bed with a holler of “Hoooooooob!”
Hob is freshly showered from his run that had only fractionally helped to settle his mind, and has since been alternating between reading the news articles popping up about Dream, and drowning himself in the streams of his Instagram algorithm. He has not, thankfully, received any further bombshell texts from Desire.
“Hob, can we go to the park?” Nora demands, having crash-landed on top of him and octopussed her skinny limbs as far as they will go around him. “I wanna practice and then go on the swings.”
“We have dinner with cousin Mags and Dipesh tonight, remember?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’s the full moon,” Hob reminds her.
Nora makes a rude noise.
“Don’t be a butt.”
“M’not a butt.”
Hob grins. “I think you are.”
“You’re a butt,” Nora retorts, and makes another rude noise. “Butthead.”
“Butt-mouth,” says Hob, a paragon of maturity and role model to young children everywhere.
“Butt-brains.”
“Butt-hands.”
“Butt-v—” The word stumbles off of Nora’s tongue. “—vaginas.”
Hob's jaw drops.
“Butt-vaginas,” Nora says again, with increasing glee. “Butt-vaginas, butt-vaginas, butt-vag—”
“Where did you learn that word?” Hob demands.
“Your butt-vagina,” Nora says.
Hob buries his face in his hands. “Please don’t say that around mum.”
Jill wanders into his room, pulling the hair tie off the end of her plait and glaring at him. “Hob, you never answered my texts.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to text during school?”
“Obviously it was between classes,” Jill says, rolling her eyes. She’s now at his bedside and is giving him full force tweenage attitude as she shakes her plait out. “So?”
Hob had, in all honesty, forgotten to reply in the mess of other texts from Jo, the football team, his hallmates, and a few other dozen other classmates who had apparently acquired his number in light of Dream's new and exciting plot twist. Nothing assembles a network faster than good quality gossip.
He makes a show of theatrically groaning as he reaches over Nora for his abandoned mobile, and taps around until he has their text thread loaded up. A link to Dream’s first, only, and fantastically viral TikTok precedes several emoji-punctuated questions from his younger sister.
He looks back at her appraisingly. “Well. Yes, I do think begonias should do the trick this time.”
Jill huffs. “That’s not what I—”
“I’ve also heard promising things about daisies but it’s a little late—”
“—shut up—”
“—late in the season—”
“You’re so stupid,” Jill complains, punching him in the thigh. “Tell me about your friend!”
“My friend the faerie? And the flowers she ate to gain her magic powers—”
“That’s not even funny anymore, Hob, no one thinks you’re funny.”
Hob is, contrary to her words, cracking up.
“It was six years ago, you wanker, get new jokes—stop—stop laughing, it's not funny—”
“Eat more flowers,” Hob suggests, between gales of laughter. Nora, still on top of him, has started giggling as well. “Begonias and daisies and petunias and—”
“Saraaaaaaah!”
“I told you he wouldn't tell you!” Sarah yells, from elsewhere. “He knows you're just going to go and spread it all over school.”
“...What ever,” Jill mutters, and slouches off.
Hob flicks her on the side just before she gets out of range, and grins at the shriek it earns him.
“I know what you know, Doe,” he calls after her.
“Liar!”
N.A. Press Release 6/11/24 17:58:03
The Aeternus family regrets to confirm the rumors that their third-eldest child was bitten by a werewolf some days ago and was in consequence robbed of his magic. Young Mr. Aeternus is otherwise expected to make a full recovery. The werewolf in question did not survive the attack. They respectfully request a period of privacy and grace for their family during this difficult time.
Hob carefully squeezes the turkey baster, and watches the water/bicarb soda slurry go down the defrost drain. In the cold of the refrigerator, it steams a little as it goes in. Failing this his next step is to find something to go down the drain to try to unclog it—the internet had recommended a drain snake, but of course he hasn’t got one of those, though he does have a few defunct USB cables he could probably rig up—but before he’s even finished the full syringe, the sound of running water echoes from the bottom of the fridge.
“Ah hah.”
“Oh, thank you, love,” Mum says from the table.
“No problem,” Hob says, and bangs his elbow on the crisper.
“You always had a head for these sorts of things, you know,” Mum tells him, as Hob gingerly withdraws himself from the shelves and starts shoving groceries back inside. “Even when you were young. We couldn’t leave you alone with anything that had screws in it, or you’d have it in pieces and parts the second we looked away.”
Hob rolls his eyes at the bottle of brown sauce as it goes into the fridge, anticipating what will come next.
“You know, when you were six—or maybe it was seven? Jill had just been born, I think. Anyway, you had Sarah in here with you and the two of you took apart the blender, the kettle and the bloody toaster and I was—oh, I was so angry. Screaming, shouting, ready to toss the both of you out to the garden rain be damned, and you kept saying, ‘But Mum it’s squeaking’, and I said, ‘Robby, it’s a toaster, it’s bloody well supposed to squeak’ and—wouldn’t you know it. You turned the bits of it upside down, and a mouse fell out.”
Hob has no actual memory of this incident, but he’s heard the story enough times to be able to picture it anyway. Mum told it approximately once a week, to anyone who’d listen, once he’d been accepted for a physics course at St. Ignatius.
“Never been so speechless in all my life,” Mum says fondly.
“Dream keeps telling me I ought to switch into engineering,” Hob tells her, with another eye roll.
“Well, I think you’d be a brilliant engineer!”
Hob turns to give her a dark look.
Mum waves a hand, and lifts her mug of tea. “Or an astro… physician, that’s fine too.”
“Astrophysicist.”
“How is your friend, anyway? Have you heard from him at all?”
Hob stands at long last, and stretches out the non-existent kinks in his back. He considers it good practice for old age.
“Not really,” Hob says, rejoining her at the table and grabbing the last of the bacon sarnies. “I think his parents have him under, er, pretty tight security. No phone or anything.”
Mum studies him.
Hob takes a large bite of his sandwich.
“He’ll be all right, you know, love,” she says, reaching across the table and laying a hand on his arm. “You told me how clever he is, and how brave he’s been. He’ll pull through this.”
“He’d better,” Hob mutters, swallowing. “He’s half done it to himself, now. Faking a werewolf bite. Did I also mention he’s an idiot?”
Mum smiles. “The best ones always are.”
“I’ll remember that next time I piss you off, yeah?”
“I think we’ll be all right for this week, at least,” Mum replies. “As long as the appliances don't start squeaking, anyway.”
Hob snorts.
“Speaking of which,” Mum says, perking up and reaching for her phone, “Margie texted me yesterday that she saw an AerFryer at the British Heart Foundation. What do you say we go down to see if it’s still there?”
“Mum, no—”
“Look!”
Hob plaintively looks at the photograph of the used AerFryer sitting on a shelf amongst old curtains and dusty dishware. “I have revising to do, you know.”
“Rubbish. You have an hour to do some shopping with your mum.” She pushes her chair back from the table and stands. “Come on, up you get.”
“It’s never just an hour,” Hob grumbles.
She takes him by the shoulders as she passes his chair, bends down and presses a kiss to the top of his head and squeezes him tight. “I’m so proud of you, love. You know that, right? My clever, sweet, handsome boy.”
Hob feels himself turning red.
She brushes her cheek against his once, twice, and then straightens and gives his shoulders a brisk shake. “Let me show you off, eh?”
Hob groans, and puts his head in his hands.
For perhaps the first time ever, Hob is not the last one to know.
It’s the morning after the full moon and his sisters have begrudgingly gone to school and his mother has some recertification course downtown and Hob is on the sofa in his pajamas, munching on toast and scrolling through a reddit thread about the delays in the Europa launch, the telly on mute in the background. It’s an ideal sort of morning, if he ignores the low grade anxiety he’s been desperately trying not to acknowledge for the last few days. And the nightmares still keeping him up at night. And the fact that his toast is burnt in one corner.
He might actually need to take the toaster apart to check to see if there’s anything off with the plates. Maybe later today. It’ll make his mum laugh, if she catches him at it.
Between the toast and the drama of reddit and the sleep deprevation trying to lure him into a sofa nap, it is only pure chance that Hob looks up at the right time to see the television screen, now featuring Kronos Aeternus in all his suited glory.
He freezes, toast half-chewed.
AETERNUS FAMILY GIVES EXCLUSIVE FIRST THOUGHTS ON INJURIOUS ATTACK, is the scrolling headline at the bottom.
Hob lunges for the remote.
“—came to know only afterward that he was an extremely troubled, unwell man. While I am grateful for the security personnel that saved my son’s life, at the same time I do also mourn the sort of sociologic and perhaps even economic troubles that might have driven a werewolf—or, or any person, for that matter—to commit such a heinous crime. Our deepest sympathies extend to Mr. Burgess’ family, for their loss.”
Hob almost chokes on his toast.
“Of course, of course,” the reporter agrees, with professional sympathy. “I think it’s very admirable that you’ve managed to maintain such wisdom in the face of what must be tremendous grief.”
Kronos nods, the very picture of a man bravely soldiering through. “Thank you. It is—it has been a challenging time for our family, these last few days. But even in our darkest moments we do our best to stay cognizant of the privileges we are so blessed to hold in this world.”
“Oh, fuck all the way off,” Hob says, disbelieving.
“Truly inspiring, Mr. Aeternus.”
Kronos gives a modest duck of the head.
His eyes, Hob thinks, are just as cold as Burgess’ are.
Or rather, were.
Matthew and Lucienne must have killed him. Or perhaps someone on the security team that had followed behind. How they’re apparently going to retroactively cast Burgess as a werewolf and frame him for biting a sorcerer—autopsy, background checks, god knows what else—Hob doesn’t know.
But he does possess exactly five million pieces of evidence on hand that prove Kronos has the means to pull it off.
Jesus Christ.
“And it’s my understanding that we have your son here with us today, as well?” the reporter on the screen says.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Kronos agrees, as the camera zooms out, and a perfectly coifed and suited Dream appears beside him.
Hob stares. His eyes search for bruises, for bags under his eyes, for a stain on his collar, but he finds absolutely nothing. Dream is perfection incarnate on camera.
His phone vibrates.
Johanna Constantine
Johanna: Are you watching the news???
Johanna: TURN IT ON RIGHT THE DUCK NOW
“It’s good to have you here, Mr. Aeternus—especially so soon after such a traumatic event!”
Kronos claps him on the back.
Dream does not flinch. But he does not smile.
“Ah, well, he was recovered enough to make a TikTok about it, wasn’t he?” Kronos says, and he and the reporter share a polite laugh.
“Yes, that was quite the—unorthodox choice,” the reporter agrees, rallying. “But certainly an effective way to spread the news!”
Kronos smiles with his teeth, and his blue eyes are like ice. His hand has settled itself just around the back of Dream’s neck. “He’s always been a creative one.”
“I’m sure he comes by that quite naturally, sir,” the reporter says slyly.
“Quite so,” Kronos agrees.
“Oh, just get on your knees and suck his cock already,” Hob mutters.
“My deepest sympathies to you both—to the entire magical community, really—for this tremendous loss. I can’t even imagine what you must be going through.”
Dream’s eyes flicker toward his father.
Kronos turns his head, ever so slightly, and for a fraction of a second their gazes meet.
“Thank you,” Dream says, at last. “It has been a… difficult few days, yes. I feel. Very grateful to have had the support of my family.”
“Yes, of course,” the reporter agrees immediately. “And no doubt very grateful for your security team!”
“Oh, yes,” Dream agrees at once, straightening almost imperceptibly. “Yes, I—incredibly so. My security team—in particular Mr. Cable and Ms. Leclerc—are without question the reason I stand here today. Their jobs are. Repeatedly thankless. They have often done their very best work if I have no idea that any work has been done at all, and I commend their vigilance, their dedication, and their bravery. They routinely perform above and beyond their duties, and deserve nothing but the highest order of compensation for their tireless devotion to my safety.”
“Goodness. It sounds like perhaps a pay raise is in order!” the reporter laughs.
Dream’s mouth moves into something like a smile, but it’s plastic and fixed and Hob can see from a mile away that it’s about as fake as the laugh his father next to him produces.
“Hah!” Kronos says, and gives Dream what passes as a friendly little jostle. “Perhaps it is, eh?”
“I certainly think so,” Dream says, fixed smile not budging.
Kronos turns glittering teeth back to the reporter. “Only nineteen and he’s already prepared to run the estate.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s been learning from the best,” simpers the reporter, predictably.
It had not occurred to Hob that perhaps Lucienne and Matthew, despite their rescue and presumable victory over Burgess, had not been rewarded for their actions. That perhaps they had instead been punished for letting Dream slip their grasp in the first place.
He has some mixed feelings about their role in Dream’s upbringing, but at the same time—he also really hopes that there’s nothing more to this power play than Dream vying for their salaries.
“Do you think—of course, I understand if it’s too early—but do you think you could comment on what the next few days or weeks will look like for you? How has this changed your plans for the future?”
Dream hesitates.
Kronos does not.
“We’ve already discussed a sabbatical,” he says briskly. “This is a life-changing ordeal, and I want to make sure that my son has the privacy and the resources he needs to recover and repair—and I’ve made it very clear that he should take as much time as needed. In fact, we've already put in for a leave of absence from his university.
“Oh, quite understandable,” the reporter agrees at once.
“You cunt,” Hob breathes.
“But of course—we’ve been very discrete about it over the years, but suffice it to say that Dream… has already overcome many troubles in his short life—”
“From you,” Hob says, incredulous.
He can hear his phone vibrating but he ignores it.
“—and I have every confidence that he will one day come out the other side of this, just as he has with every other obstacle life has thrown at him, even stronger than he was before.”
“Well, it sounds like he’s certainly going to be well-supported. Our best wishes to you, young Mr. Aeternus.”
“Thank you,” Dream says.
“That’s—”
“I also,” Dream interrupts, and the reporter immediately swings the microphone back to him, “wished to comment on one aspect of the situation. That my father briefly touched on.”
“Of course, please,” says the reporter.
Kronos’ eyes flicker to Dream.
Dream stares at the camera. “Which is,” he continues steadily, “that while I was attacked by a single werewolf named Roderick Burgess, we as a family wish to make it clear that while we do not absolve him of personal responsibility, we also acknowledge and indeed need to emphasize the pervasive and systemic species-ism in this country that undoubtedly contributed any underlying mental health conditions he may have had.”
Hob has gone very, very still. The rage has abruptly left his body but his heart is still pounding in overtime.
Dream what are you doing?
“Werewolves in this country are disproportionately impacted by socioeconomic hardship as a result of discrimination from the government, the medical community, and even the magical community from which we so proudly descend,” Dream says, and it turns out that he is a shockingly good public speaker when properly motivated. Every word from his mouth is precisely articulated for maximum impact. “This country continues to uphold outdated policies that have been repeatedly proven either ineffective or outright harmful, creating barriers that prevent people like Roderick Burgess from accessing the very resources that might have helped them. Housing. Food. Community spaces. Mental health care. These, more than any security team or weapons or spells, are what could have kept me safe from Roderick Burgess.”
There is a brief pause and a look of mild shell-shock on the reporter’s face that makes it clear that this answer was not on anyone’s pre-approved list.
“Yes,” Kronos agrees, recovering quickly. “Yes, very well spoken, Dream. Our family has always stood for lycan equality, both politically and financially, and the actions of one rogue individual certainly do not change that. In fact, I believe I’m scheduled to attend a charity gala just next week that will be in part donating proceeds to Pups Come First.”
“And of course,” Dream adds, “your longstanding annual donation to the U.K.’s most comprehensive lycan activism group, the Shifter’s Rights and Development Network.”
“Over twenty-five years and running,” Kronos agrees, with ready self-satisfaction. “They got me a little plaque, last year, for my commitment to the cause.”
“They might just have to get you another one this year, Father,” Dream replies.
Kronos tilts his head ever so slightly, but Dream is already turning to face the camera with the first true smile he’s had since the camera started rolling—small, and proud.
“You see,” Dream tells the reporter, who is doing a very good job of covering her confusion, “in the wake of my attack, and all the conversations it has subsequently sparked amongst our family about poor Mr. Burgess—my father has agreed to double down on our commitment to equality, and increase his scheduled donation to the SRDN from a quarter of a million pounds a year, to an incredible five million pounds a year.”
There is a slightly stunned silence.
“Oh, fuck,” says Hob.
“Oh my goodness,” says the reporter. “Oh—oh, goodness! Wow! Mr. Aeternus, is that true?”
“...Yes,” Kronos answers, with a barely perceptible hesitation. The plastic smile follows it. “Yes, it is true.”
“Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” Hob says, hands pressed to his mouth.
“Thank you for sharing, Dream,” Kronos says, eyebrows slightly raised. “We don’t generally make a habit of announcing our finances on television like this, but—I suppose you just couldn’t help yourself.”
His words are light and playful but his eyes are arctic.
His hand is still on the back of Dream’s neck.
“The world deserves to know about the good you do, Father,” Dream replies.
Kronos’ smile has vanished. “Do you think so?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well—”
"Ah, you’re too modest, Mr. Aeternus!” the reporter gushes, breaking into what was rapidly becoming a father and son face-off on live television. “I’m afraid I must side with your son—it really is a remarkable gift, and you deserve recognition for it!”
For a moment, neither Dream nor Kronos even look at her.
"Thank you,” Kronos says at last, breaking the stare-off with another dead-eyed smile. “But as I said. It’s nothing.”
“On the contrary, Father. Charity projects,” Dream puts in, “can change lives.”
Hob lets out a highly unattractive noise.
Who cares.
No one else is home. Dream is referencing him on national television. Dream’s brilliant plan for freedom seems to be to provoke his own father into murdering him.
“Yes—yes, very much so,” the reporter enthuses at once. “Truly, Mr. Aeternus, you are to be applauded for your generosity. I—unfortunately, I do hate to wrap this up—what a note to end on, though! My goodness! Thank you so much to the both of you for your time, and, and your contributions to the country. The world! It’s been an honor!”
And the transition music starts up, just as the camera pans out to show Kronos shaking hands with the reporter, and Dream waiting next to him presumably to do the same—
And then it cuts to the newsroom, where they immediately launch into a segment about the Cardiff Christmas Market, and Hob is left sitting in his pajamas with a half-eaten piece of toast abandoned on the coffee table and his jaw hanging on the ground.
Johanna Constantine
Johanna: DUCK
Johanna: FUCK
Johanna: WHAT THE FUCK
Johanna: HOB?
Johanna: HOB????
If Hob had actually been studying instead of just staring blankly at his differential equations textbook, he might have missed it—but he’s been staring at the same figure for about twenty minutes, and so his senses are in a hazy sort of zen that makes it easy to pick up on changes to the environment. Like a heartbeat.
A familiar heartbeat.
Hob’s first thought is if he’s finally lost his marbles—a reasonable suspicion, given what Dream has put him through for the last few days and most recently just this very morning—and it makes him hesitate long enough that by the time the heartbeat is accompanied by footsteps even his mother has turned her head toward the entrance with a frown.
He’s not hallucinating.
That’s real.
Hob is up off the sofa and bounding for the front door in an instant.
“Hob—”
“I’ve got it!” Hob calls back, rounding the corner and skidding to a halt. He wrenches the door open.
And it’s Dream.
Standing there on Hob’s front step with his older sister just behind him, in a coat that doesn't fit him quite right, and an unfamiliar backpack slung over one shoulder, and a wicked bruise blacking his left eye. He looks momentarily startled to have had the door opened before he could even knock.
Hob reaches for Dream without a second thought.
“You're hurt.”
“I,” Dream says, smiling beatifically, “have been disowned.”
Hob pauses. “Wha—what’d’you mean, disowned?”
“Don’t tell me you missed his little stunt on the news this morning,” Death puts in wryly.
“No, I-I saw, I just—” Hob's thumb strokes over the deep purple and green swelling beneath Dream’s left eye. “You. You…”
“I told you I had a plan,” Dream says.
“You’re insane,” Hob retorts—and yanks him into an absolutely brutal hug. Presses his face down into the curve of Dream’s neck, and inhales wintry iron, and his heart skips three beats in a row. “You’re insane and I’m going to murder you,” he mumbles, feeling the rise and fall of Dream’s ribs against his own and pressing closer with each breath. “Jesus Christ, Dream.”
“It worked.”
Hob grips him tighter. “You tattooed yourself with a fake werewolf bite.”
“Yes,” Dream agrees. “Father was most incensed.”
Hob lets out a strangled noise.
“Unfortunately not enough to disown me. He was set to merely cast me back into exile, until I robbed him of five million pounds on public broadcast this morning,” Dream says contentedly.
“You couldn’t have just called Childline?” Hob mutters into Dream’s neck.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Hob,” Dream replies, giving him a squeeze. “My father owns Childline.”
“No one owns Childline, you numpty. It’s a non-profit.”
Dream pulls back to give him a look.
“...No,” Hob says.
“Yeah, he does, a bit,” Death says cheerfully. “Anyway. Dream said we should bring these?”
Hob opens his mouth to ask bring what when Death Aeternus produces from a heretofore unnoticed shopping tote—
A carton of strawberries.
Hob looks over at Dream, and then back at the strawberries, and then back to Dream again.
“We have the rest of the ingredients as well,” Dream adds, when Hob has still not spoken. He glances at his sister. “And extra, besides. We were uncertain which flour was best and. Might have purchased one of each.”
“Of course you did,” Hob says helplessly.
Dream has been disowned. Dream had plotted his own disownment so that he could run away from his nightmarish parents and then he’d apparently come more or less straight to Hob. With sodding strawberries.
“Do you know how many varieties of flour there are in a Waitrose?” Dream asks.
“No, but I'm guessing I'm about to learn,” Hob replies, and before he can think too much about it leans in and gives Dream a quick kiss. “You’re insane, if I forgot to mention that. Now come inside and meet my mum. She's going to love you.”
Hob slips his hand into Dream’s and tugs forward, but Dream abruptly hesitates.
“What?” Hob asks, frowning.
“Your mother is home,” Dream states.
“Yeah? S'her day off, today.”
“Does she…” Dream swallows, and his eyes flicker over Hob’s shoulder. “I am sure she has read… things. About. I would understand—”
“Nope,” Hob interrupts.
“She may not want—”
“My mother,” Hob says firmly, “does not give a rat’s arse what some bog roll newspapers have to say about Dream Aeternus. She is, however, very excited to meet the boy I've been gushing about for the last two months, who loves nerdy YouTube channels and roots for Arsenal out of spite and thinks that dog-earing the pages of a book ought to be legally classified as a war crime. She's excited to meet you.”
Dream, pink, glances at his sister once more.
“Go on,” Death says, giving Dream a nudge. “We've a whole cake to make, haven't we?”
And so Dream swallows, and nods. Squeezes Hob's hand tightly. And he sets his jaw and squares his shoulders, and at last—
He steps forward, to be known.
Chapter 6
Notes:
Sorry I'm a little behind on comment replies--I'm super busy this week and I figured if you guys had to choose between "get quick comment replies" and "have final chapter posted", you'd pick the chapter.
But I promise I will get to them soon!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Second term, their chemistry lecture is still a daily occurance, but instead of beginning the day, now Dream must first sit through an hour of mathematics, and then an hour of E&E, and then he at last arrives at chemistry. His focus in lectures has suffered because of this, at times, though he is uncertain how much can be blamed on the schedule change and how much must be attributed to the fact that Hob is now his boyfriend.
It is an oft-distracting thought.
Hob is… his. And, even more pleasingly, he is Hob’s.
In the months following his quiet disownment, Dream has had to adjust to a truly staggering number of changes. Most have been good (he can go places, like pubs and zoos and concerts), some have been not-so-good (he has discovered that pubs and zoos and concerts can be extremely overwhelming and occasionally incite panic attacks), but probably his most favorite change of them all is this:
He walks into chemistry class, all on his own, and he does not have to sit in the back row.
In fact, he does not have to sit anywhere in particular at all. He could, if he so desired, choose a new seat every day of the week and conduct an observational study on the applied acoustics of a single-source speaker.
(That each day he chooses the exact same seat is irrelevant. The satisfaction is not in the end result, but in the action of choice itself. Freedom.)
And today, like every day, Hob positively beams the moment Dream steps through the door to their lecture theater.
Sometimes Dream has trouble believing that his sheer presence could be the cause of such joy, but. It has been a reproducible phenomenon for many months now. He does not need to perform a statistical analysis to know that the p-value from the collected data would, at this point, be of significance. The interpretation of the data is obvious even at a glance: Hob likes him.
Here he is now, in a musty lecture theater on a frigid Tuesday morning on his worst day of the month, and yet he is radiant and gentle like a Mediterranean sunrise. All for Dream
Smiling.
Dream must take in a steadying breath as he immediately goes all shivery and belly-warm.
Hob’s favor is not a recent conclusion, but every time Dream compiles the evidence together anew, he gets—like this. He had thought that with repeated exposure a desensitization would occur. Thus far, however, this has not been the case. He does not mind. It is far from unpleasant.
Hob is smiling at him, even now.
“Hey, you,” he says, watching Dream’s approach with bright brown eyes.
“Good morning, Hob,” Dream replies.
He takes the seat next to Hob in the front row, removing his backpack and turning to find Hob staring at him with an expression not unlike that of a hyperactive child who has been tasked with sitting perfectly still.
It is the full moon, today.
Hob takes in a breath. “Can I—”
“Yes,” Dream says, and hasn't even started to open his arms when Hob envelopes him.
Hob’s hugs are always wonderful, life-affirming things. He hugs with confidence, and affection, and somehow he does it with his whole body all at once, and the first time Dream had been on the receiving end of it, his skin had bubbled like champagne afterward for hours and hours. Dream feels that he is never quite able to reciprocate in terms of quality.
Still, ineptitude is no excuse for neglect, and so he snakes his unequal arms around Hob in turn and tries to encompass him just as well.
Hob squeezes him tight, and even tighter still.
Dream, who knows by now that physical contact is only half the battle when it comes to full moons, tilts his head to the side just in time for Hob to nuzzle down into the folds of turtleneck and take in a deep, slow breath. On the exhale, he shudders, and Dream can feel Hob’s body going lax against his own at the relief of familiarity. There is a moment of stillness, then, where Hob clings to him like a liferaft in an ocean of foreign scents, and then he buries his nose deeper still.
Dream digs a thumb into a knob of Hob’s spine, and feels Hob shudder against him in response. He rubs, back and forth, and back and forth, until Hob is limp and quiet against him and breathing deeply.
Dream remembers discussing Hob’s first full moon at university, when Hob had blown him off and insisted that it was just as any other day and nothing special was required. Dream had gone home and reread several papers, Larson’s guide, and the bookmarked reddit threads that had all informed him otherwise, and had not understood. Full moons, the sources all agreed, were times when a werewolf’s senses were most heightened and their longing for pack was strongest.
Hob should be home with his pack, right now.
He could be, if he would use just a fraction of the millions of pounds Dream’s father had paid him last term, but Hob staunchly refuses to touch a single cent.
“All right,” Jo complains, from the next seat over.
Dream scowls at her over Hob’s shoulder, and tightens his grip jealously.
But Hob exhales, and begins to pull away. It draws out a noise of protest from Dream, on reflex rather than because he is the creature at risk of touch deprivation today, and Hob huffs and rubs his cheek to Dream's once, twice, and then kisses him gently.
Dream’s whole body bubbles and fizzes.
“You’re just jealous,” Hob tells Jo, turning away from Dream, “that you haven’t got any classes with Rachel.”
“I’m preparing you for next year, when you and Dreamboat don’t share any lectures, either, “Jo replies.
“Don’t remind me,” Hob groans.
“Baby.”
“Bully.”
“Unnecessary,” Dream pronounces. “Hob will be changing courses to engineering.”
“Maybe,” Hob says, nudging him with a shoulder, “you ought to be switching to physics, love.”
“Yeah,” Jo agrees, leaning forward to grin at him around Hob. “Abandon the Legos and duct tape and come study a real science for a change.”
Dream sniffs. “Physics is merely reductive engineering for those too dull-minded to create.”
“Who do you think created all those equations you use to build your little toys, eh mate?” Jo shoots back.
“Those equations are not nearly as crucial as you seem to think, when more than half of them can only be applied to theoretical situations in which inconvenient realities such as friction and drag and—”
“Oh, hey, look, Professor Pullman’s here!” Hob says.
It is not his words that make Dream go quiet, but instead the way Hob’s hand simultaneously comes down heavy and warm atop his knee, and squeezes possessively.
By the time Dream has regathered enough wits to properly lodge a complaint, Professor Pullman has taken the floor and launched into the titration of acids and bases. Hob's eyes flicker over to him, and his mouth quirks up into a little smile.
Dream, aware that he has just been operated like machinery, scowls.
Hob's hand rubs a little circle on the knob of his knee, pats twice, and then vanishes in order for Hob to sit up properly and start taking notes. A second later, one foot sneaks out in search of an ankle to hook around, but Dream is annoyed and so he kicks it away.
Hob grins down at his notes.
He will try again. He knows as well as Dream does that he need only wait a few minutes, and he'll get what he wants.
In the meantime, Dream pulls out his phone underneath the table.
Johanna Constantine
Dream: A real branch of science would have by now figured out a way to unify gravity and quantum mechanics outside of the naive renormalization approach
Johanna: Only an engineer would be dumb enough to think that's an issue in the first place. Loop quantum gravity is just a subset of string theory, people just like to make drama where there is none
Dream: Ah, string theory. The rug under which every irregularity in your discipline is eventually swept
Dream: How dull
Johanna: Change courses and solve it yourself, dickhead ✨️✨️✨️
The halloumi fires at the student union are five pounds even.
Dream would not have even looked at the cost, six months ago, but now that Death has taken on the financial burden of his education, he has been put on a… budget. This certainly counts amongst the lesser outcomes of his newfound freedom, ranking perhaps below flying commercial but still well above the unrepeatable horror that had been his first house party.
Most people find trigonometry or calculus to be the most tiresome application of mathematics.
They are incorrect.
Accounting is, unquestionably and unequivocally, the worst.
Admittedly, Dream is fortunate to have Death paying for his housing as well as his educational fees. His current flat is only a two bedroom and it doesn’t have a private elevator or a chauffeur, but it does have a lovely view of the park, and Death had at least agreed to housekeeping services (“Good Lord it’s a budget, not poverty, Dream.”). He understands why continuing to reside in the four bedroom penthouse owned by his father was no longer an option.
But with a six hundred pound weekly allowance, Dream has nevertheless had to sacrifice and reprioritize certain aspects of his life. He now subjects himself to the local barber, instead of flying in his longtime private hairdresser Gertrude. He has bought a water filter for the tap, to replace the imported crates of Svalbardic iceberg water. He buys, on occasion, off the rack.
And for lunch sometimes he buys the five pound halloumi fries at the student union, instead of the ones at Blackstone’s down the street which are thrice as expensive but better.
“Oh, tzatziki!” Hob says brightly, as Dream sets his tray down at the table.
“The theft was inevitable either way,” Dream replies, though in truth, he also does not care for the greek yogurt that serves as the default dipping sauce.
“Trade you some curry chips,” Hob offers, lifting a forkful of gloopy brown mush.
Dream wrinkles his nose.
Hob shrugs. “Your loss.”
As Dream unzips his backpack and begins to riffle through it, he feels a foot hook around his leg and draw it forward. Hob’s calves are warm around his ankle. He'd spent the entire walk here pressed shoulder-to-hip against Dream with a possessive arm around his waist, and before he'd left to find a table he'd gifted Dream with no less than four kisses.
Dream… likes full moons.
He finds the box he was searching for, and sets it on the table to unlatch it. Inside, nestled in foam padding, is his latest project.
“Goldie!” Hob exclaims, leaning forward.
Dream gently removes the mechanized little gargoyle from her packaging, and sets her on the table. He checks her balance carefully before he flips the discrete little power switch hidden between the scales of her belly.
Goldie comes awake, eyes glowing amber, motors spinning to a steady whir. She starts perfectly still, but then there’s a click, and she slowly begins to rotate her head from left to right as her sensors calibrate to the environment. With one hand, Dream taps into the app that will spit out the real-time data of her microprocesses, and with his other he dips a fry into the tzatziki sauce.
“What are we working on today?” Hob asks.
“Auditory,” Dream replies, tapping at the data filters to ensure they prioritize just that. “I installed a new microphone last night that should filter background noise and non-command cues better than the previous—larger than I’d like, so I might have to rework the flight mechanics a bit in exchange—but I needed to test it in a loud environment first.”
Dream looks up, and pointedly glances around at the hustle and bustle of the student union.
“Ah, yeah. Good choice,” Hob agrees.
On the table Goldie’s wings give a twitch, and then, orientation complete, she comes to life with a step forward and a gurgling coo.
“Oh, hello,” Hob coos right back, bending just a little lower, as if Goldie were a real infant gargoyle with correspondingly limited eyesight, instead of a mechanized computer with almost three hundred and sixty degrees of visual input. “Hello there. D’you remember me, lovie?”
Goldie ambles over to him happily enough, with the bird-like noises that Dream had only recently settled on for her sound palette.
“Can you raise your right arm for me?” Hob asks, and beams when she does just so. “Brilliant. How about the left, then? Oh, good girl.”
Dream studies the feedback. “Send her to me?”
“Goldie, here—can you take this to Dream for me?” Hob asks.
Dream's eyes flicker between Goldie reaching out to accept the spoon Hob is handing her and the output displayed on his phone. She appears to be using the audio to guide her actions, and not merely relying on the visual cues.
It takes her only a few seconds to scan her surroundings and locate Dream, verify his identity, and then plot a course across the table. She begins her trek with the fork held in her blunted little claws.
Halfway across, Dream flicks his plastic fork so that it lands directly in her path.
“Oi!” Hob protests. “She’s already doing hard labor for you, d’you have to make it more difficult?”
“Testing,” Dream replies, and is extremely pleased to see her navigate around the fork without issue.
Her mobility programming is truly some of his best work yet.
Hob rolls his eyes, and stuffs his mouth with chips.
Goldie delivers the spoon without issue, whereupon Dream puts her through his own paces with various auditory commands, some of which are deliberately designed to have conflicting visual cues. She initially responds well, even raising her left arm when Dream points to the right, but about halfway through she suddenly swivels her head to the neighboring table. After a period in which Dream tries and fails to regain her attention, she lifts her wings and her flight motors whir to life, and Dream must snatch her up before she can take off.
He tries again, with about the same results: responsive, but easily distractible. An overhead announcement about the charity pub crawl this weekend nearly undoes her.
It is discouraging, because Dream has already had to make modifications to accommodate this microphone’s processor. Anything larger and not only will he need to modify the flight mechanism further, but also, this is the largest size Sony sells that will work with the current circuitry. He either needs to adjust some element in the programming, or rewire the whole machine with a new board.
Vexing.
Dream powers her down, when she starts making use of the Overwhelming Sensory Input pathway and folding her wings over her face and ducking her head down into them repeatedly. Dream empathizes. Sometimes he also wishes he could be turned off when the world is being too loud and bright and confusing.
“Oh, poor thing. Have a good sleep, lovie,” Hob says, waving, as Dream flips the switch.
She used to simply shut down mid-motion, eyes going abruptly dark, motors spinning down into silence, but Hob had complained that it was sad, and so three nights of labor and a burnt finger later, Goldie now curls up into a cozy little sleeping position when her power switch is disengaged. She tucks her head under her wing and everything.
Dream finds it to be a whimsical little touch to an already indulgent piece of future lab equipment. Far more important is the way his heart squeezes in his chest every time Hob watches her ‘go to sleep’ and positively melts.
Today, his eyes briefly flicker up to meet Dream’s over Goldie’s pseudo-somnolent form, and they are sparkling and bright and adoring.
Dream’s heart squeezes for the second time in two minutes. Possibly concerning for his future cardiac health.
Oh well.
“So, tomorrow,” Hob says, as Goldie is packed back into her foam.
Dream hums.
“Wednesday,” Hob adds. When this receives no response, he continues, “Art Soc meets at seven, don’t they?”
“Perhaps,” Dream agrees.
“Saw it on a flyer in Dishy.”
Dream exhales, and snaps Goldie’s case closed with perhaps more force than necessary.
“I really think you’d like it,” Hob presses. “You’d get to meet people who can talk about art properly for once. Get more feedback on your sketches than variations on a theme of ‘wow love it’s incredible how’d you do that’. And! And you’d get access to the art lab once a week, you know they’ve got some cool stuff up there, and I heard they’ve even got live models in every month for… for anatomy practice, or whatever.”
“I’m not going,” Dream replies shortly.
“You could make a friend!”
“I have friends.”
“Are you counting Jo, to make that a plural?”
“I have enough friends.”
“But you could finally—”
“I do not want to go, Hob,” Dream snaps. “Please drop it.”
Hob is quiet, as Dream shoves Goldie’s casing back into his bag.
“I just think,” Hob says softly, after Dream has finished this task and settled his backpack once more under the table, “that you should have friends outside of me and mine.”
“For when you break up with me?” Dream asks tartly.
Hob gives him a look. “Don’t do that.”
Dream prickles and burns, and he has to look down at his basket of food because he knows Hob is right. That was uncalled for.
Still.
“I will socialize independently in my own time,” he mutters to his fries.
His ankle, still tucked between Hob’s calves, receives a squeeze. “I’m only trying to help, love.”
What Dream has not told Hob, is that he did, actually, attend an Art Soc meeting last month. It had been exactly as he’d feared: there had been stares, and whispers, and not a single person had spoken to him for the entire two hour pottery session. Dream had lied to Hob, afterward, and said that he’d stayed home to study instead.
Hob is not unaware of the student body’s opinion of Dream even after his supposedly dangerous magic had been so publically neutralized. Hob’s solution thus far has been to aggressively inure people to Dream’s presence—loud introductions, pointed inclusions in conversation, and an emphatic policy of if I’m invited then so is my boyfriend—and thus far it has worked, to some extent, within his own friend groups.
But without Hob there to act as a social lubricant, coupled with Dream’s own reticent nature, Dream has had little to no success with the rest of the population of St. Ignatius.
He tells himself that he does not mind.
Introverts do not need many friends, anyway.
“Dream? Sweetheart?”
Dream's head snaps up.
Hob reaches across the little table, and runs a thumb over Dream's knuckles. “I can't tell, is that good-startled or bad-startled?”
Sweetheart.
Dream turns the pet name over in his mind, feeling his cheeks start to flush and his insides start to squirm.
Hob's smile goes soft. “Good, eh?”
“You may. Use it in the future,” Dream says.
Hob's hand wraps all the way around his to lace their fingers together. “M’sorry about pressuring you, about Art Soc. I'm just, just trying to—shit. No. Sorry. You're right. There's no rush, there'll still be meetings next month, or hell, even next year. There's a hundred other societies you could try instead.”
“There… are, yes,” Dream agrees.
“I heard the Quizzing Soc put out a bounty for your capture, after you smoked them five weeks running at Murphy's. Bet they'd pay you to join, at this rate.”
“We smoked them,” Dream corrects. “As a team."
Hob rolls his eyes.
“You were invaluable for sport,” Dream insists. “And you knew about… Nandos. And Galileo. And—and—” He waves a hand. “—Supermarket Savings.”
“Supermarket Sweep.”
“Case in point,” Dream replies.
“Rachel goes rock climbing, you could give that a go,” Hob says.
Dream has not interacted very much with Rachel. She always comes attached to Jo, and so his time near her is usually preoccupied in... battle.
“She says it’s a very, uh. Intellectual sport. Is I think how she described it.”
“Climbing,” Dream says skeptically.
Hob shrugs. “She only picked it up a few months ago, so she’s a little nervous to join the actual club, but I think she goes to the gym a few days a week and is looking for a friend to go with. I’ve always had footie when she asks, though.”
Dream considers this.
Climbing, he imagines, would be a largely solo activity that would not require chatter or cooperative play—and nor does Rachel seem the type to try to force such banalities. He has no known fear of heights. He would not have to wear unfashionable safety gear.
He thinks, actually, he might look rather svelte with some rope snugged around his hips.
“Perhaps,” he allows, at length.
Hob grins. “I’ll take it.”
It takes perishingly little to please him.
This explains much about his inexplicable satisfaction with Dream as a romantic partner.
Hob’s smile widens. “Do you know,” he says, delighted, “that you have a particular look, for when you’re questioning my sanity?”
Dream smooths out his expression at once.
Hob, in return, affects an exaggeratedly haughty, dubious expression, with one eyebrow at his hairline and the opposite eye nearly squinted closed with skepticism, upper lip curled with absurd disdain and it’s so—
He’s so—
His eye is twitching with the effort of it, and it’s so stupid, it’s so utterly and patently ridiculous that Dream—
Laughs.
The sound echoes horribly in the din of the student union, and Dream immediately claps his hands over his mouth. Too late. Several heads have already whipped around to stare at the source of the ungodly honking. He can hear—giggling—and all at once his heart starts to pound and his face starts to flush. His brain screams at him like a siren, freak freak freak freak. Dream wants to disappear on the spot. He stares down at his stupid halloumi fries that are cold and soggy and weren't even very good to begin with, and hears it over and over and over:
Freak. Freak. Freak. Freak. Freak.
There's a scraping of plastic, and Hob abruptly lands elbows first across the table, inches from Dream's face. "Hey," he says, brown eyes dark and warm.
"Surely," Dream says, eyeing where Hob's knees are braced on the chair, "you could have just moved your chair next to mine."
"I love your laugh," says Hob, with a dumb little smile. "You know that, right?"
"Your appalling lack of taste has been a well-documented phenomenon, yes."
"It's the sound of you being happy. Sometimes it means I made you happy. And anyone who has a problem with you being happy can go die in a fire, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah?"
"...This does not address your questionable fondness for rice pudding," Dream notes.
Hob gives him a soft look, and goes in for a long, tender kiss that ends with their foreheads pressed together and Hob's nose against his cheek and the smell of curry and tzaziki between their mouths. The table creaks beneath Hob's weight, and Dream's mouth curls upwards, in spite of himself.
"If you break the table..." he murmurs.
Hob draws back, just enough that Dream can see the sparkle of humor in his eye. "Would it make you laugh?"
"You're an idiot," Dream says.
"Your idiot."
"Rice pudding notwithstanding."
Hob laughs, and kisses him once more, quick and easy, and then rubs his jaw against Dream’s before he at last pulls away. He had been half-lying across the table to get to Dream in the first place, and so when he leaves he goes far, and Dream feels unreasonably cold for someone sitting in a heated building in a woolen jumper and snow boots.
Hob laughs, and re-catches Dream’s ankle between his. “You’re cute when you pout.”
Dream scowls.
This, unfortunately, only serves to make Hob laugh harder.
Siblings
Destruction: Someone make Desire call Milanos about the yacht please 🙏
Delirium: [baby shark.gif]
Delirium: [fat cat boat.gif]
Delirium: [savage dance at sea.gif]
Death: I thought you were going to call last week???
Despair: It’s borrowing a yacht not booking Versailles, calm down
Desire: jfc I’m GETTING to it
Desire: How about one of you become a premier influencer and build a brand from the ground up while attending school full time, and then YOU can spend your precious free minutes swapping favors around for a stupid boat
Dream: Yes, Death, please quit messing about with the medicine nonsense and get a real job like Desire
Desire: Bold words from the unemployed
Delirium: [cat sunglasses.gif]
Dream: Saw you got bumped out of the top ten last week by that child with the talking dog
Dream: They say the brighter a star flares, the faster it dies
Desire: Jealousy isn’t a good look for you Dream 🥰
Desire: But then again most things aren’t ❤️
Desire: Are you still wearing that atrocious wide-lapel jacket or did you finally realize that you haven’t got the figure for it? 🥰❤️🥰
Death: CHILDREN
Delirium: [fat watermelon baby.gift]
Desire: He started it
Death: And I’m ending it
Death: Desire seriously please reach out soon. I need to clear my schedule for that week if we’re actually going to do this sibling vacation.
Delirium: Pls desire i miss dreeeeeeaaaaaaam
Delirium: We havent seen him in EIGHT YEARS
Delirium: [a dream is a wish.gif]
Despair: It’s been three months Del, keep your hair on
Delirium: 😭
Destruction: Dream we really do miss you
Destruction: Like glad you’re done with the bullshit, but home just isn’t the same without you
Despair: Yeah mum has no one to sigh disappointedly at over dinner anymore
Despair: Doesn’t know what to do with herself
Despair: Sort of like when Destiny moved out and she suddenly had to remember the other six children she gave birth to
Despair: But, you know. The opposite direction of that
Death: Desire?
Desire: I said I would omg
Desire: Cos how else am I going to meet Dream’s new squeeze???
Desire: He seems so normal
Desire: And YET
Desire: I want to peel him apart like one of those japanese gummies
Delirium: YES HOB CAN COME YES🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🔥👽🛢🎶
Dream: I am uncertain I wish to expose him to the likes of you all
Destruction: Oi!
Delirium: HEY
Delirium: We’ll be NICE
Dream: Hob isn’t like us
Desire: Calm down Sister Maria, so he’s poor, he’ll enjoy the infinity pool that much more
Dream: I do not refer to his socioeconomic status
Dream: And I would thank YOU not to refer to it again unless you are prepared to deal with the consequences
Delirium: [peppa pig mud squish.gif]
Desire: rawr
Desire: Does ur bf think it's hot when ur overprotective
Delirium: [hockey goal.gif]
Despair: He seems too normal not to be deeply kinky 💣
Delirium: [drowning coffee.gif]
Delirium: DrEaM WOULD hE like a TaToOoOoOoO
Dream: Yes, I don't know why I would ever hesitate to expose Hob to this family
Dream: Hob is DIFFERENT
Desire: oh pour one our for saint hobert
Dream: His family have supper together every night
Dream: They have a scheduled games night
Despair: 🙄 Okay
Dream: Their mother reads the youngest one bedtime stories. In bed with her. With voices.
Desire: No one actually does that irl
Desire: You do know that right
Dream: On weekends they cuddle on the sofa and do jigsaw puzzles together
Delirium: lol sure dream 🦚☺️🧿❤️
Despair: And then they eat rainbows and sing land of hope and glory and then ride unicorns to the park?
Death: No it’s true
Death: He’s going to be horrified the first time Delirium sets someone on fire
Delirium: [fire boom boom.gif]
Desire: Are you serious???
Desire: Bedtime stories????
Despair: Weirdos
Death: Frighteningly well-adjusted and sensible
Destruction: Damn
Desire: I NEED to meet this man
Dream huddles outside the locker room, stamping his boots on the snow and periodically lifting his nose from his scarf when it gets too damp from the moisture of his own breathing, and then ducking it back down again when the cold becomes too bitter to tolerate. His nose has started to run, and he knows that means it has gone unattractively ruddy as well. It is dark, and fat snowflakes fall quietly around him.
There are few things in this world he would stand out in the cold for.
“Hey you,” Hob says, bounding out of the locker room with little more than a light jumper and some trainers. He’s got his duffle slung over one shoulder, and his hair—still wet from the post-practice shower—is visibly beginning to crystalize with ice. “Fancy seeing you here!”
Dream inclines his head, just as Hob plows into him with a laugh and wraps him up in a hug so enthusiastic it lifts Dream clear off the ground.
“Hob.”
Hob hums happily, setting him down and then, of course, ducking his nose down into Dream’s scarf for a little sniff.
Dream puffs a cloud of white into the night air, and rolls his eyes.
He’s smiling, though.
“The whole world smells like you, but you’re still better,” Hob mumbles into his shoulder, and inhales again.
“You’re ridiculous,” Dream says.
Hob licks him.
Dream swats him—and then when Hob does not respond, he does it again. “I’m not a hookah lounge. And anyway, I need your nose clear for a minute. I have another swatch for you.”
Hob grumbles.
The world is cold again, when Hob pulls away. Dream wants him back immediately.
How he suffers, in the name of science.
From his coat pocket he withdraws two sealed bags, and after some fumbling due to the thick woolen gloves he’s wearing, he eventually gets the first open, and holds it up for inspection. Hob sniffs it obligingly, and then follows suit with the second bag.
He looks at Dream and bites his lip, and then after a beat, he musters up a smile. “I think it’s almost there, love!”
Dream’s shoulders slump.
“No—no, really,” Hob insists. “You’re so close! I can tell it’s really starting to retain pack-scent.”
“There is no benefit in lying, Hob,” Dream grumbles, and shoves the swatches back into his coat pocket. “The purpose of the project is to create a detergent that better preserves your pack scent, not to indulge my own ego.”
Hob wraps an arm around him, and starts them walking back to campus. “I know. But… you don’t have to. I feel bad, at this point. It’s been, what, two months you’ve been working on it?”
“I enjoy a challenge,” Dream replies.
What he does not say, is that the only other solution available on the market is the luxury sheet set his father released that are specifically spelled to this purpose, but sold at what Dream now understands to be an entirely inaccessible price point to most werewolves. Detergent that relies solely on engineering could be cheaper, and used on any linen the user desired.
If only he could find a way to isolate the retention of pack scent without also retaining the rest of the everyday scents that accumulate on linens over time.
Dream mulls this over as Hob bounces along at his side through the snow, chattering away about some Mario Kart tournament at Bron’s house this weekend.
“—apparently been put in charge of the jelly shots, which, d’you know I’ve never made jelly shots before? Can’t be too hard, though, and I bet you anything that Liam’s made them before. I think I saw a TikTok once about how to do this rainbow effect that was absolutely aces, I’ll have to look for it—”
His cheeks are red in the cold, and there’s snow dusting his half-frozen hair. His hand is warm inside the deep pocket of Dream’s coat.
Eventually, Hob will come to the part where he will invite Dream to attend the party with him. Experience informs that it will start as a low-key video game gathering, and within two hours it will have descended into pounding music and alcoholic party games and lewd acts being performed in dark corners. Hob will ask him to come, but always in the process, he will include a convenient opt-out excuse.
Or it’s fine, if you have to study.
Or you don’t have to, if you’re not quite recovered from the pub quiz yet.
Or it’s all right, if you’ve already got plans with Death.
But Dream will attend, because Hob loves his teammates almost as much as he enjoys being positively ruinous with a game controller.
And then Hob will take him home early when the music starts up, and tell Dream that it’s fine, and he had a headache anyway, and that the peace and quiet of Dream’s flat will make for a much nicer evening than a silly old party.
This is the ebb and flow they have found, over these last few months, steady and peaceful as the rocking of a ship at sea. Hob takes them hillwalking, and Dream brings a notebook and must stop every twenty minutes to sketch. Dream puts on Interstellar, and Hob pretzels himself up and down the sofa as they watch. Hob refuses on principle to upgrade to bluetooth headphones, and so Dream gifts him a set of used Focal Bathys that he himself had personally repaired.
Dream is rude and ill-tempered and laden with more baggage than all the terminals at Heathrow put together—and Hob, inexplicably, idiotically, ardently… loves him anyway.
Hob’s roommate still leaves for a hotel on the full moons, which Dream finds irritating on a conceptual level, but also highly convenient, on a practical level. He does not particularly care for Liam. His absence is, in Dream’s book, always a bonus.
Back in the room, Dream sheds his snowy layers by the door in a careful pile, while Hob zips around muttering things like “I should charge this, eh?” and “Shit, I need to reply to Amari,” and “How’d you get over here?”
Dream has a half-drawer, where he keeps a toiletry kit and some changes of clothes for occasions such as these. The sight of his own socks piled next to Hob’s never fails to make his chest do a pleasant little squeeze.
It makes him think about their future.
It is still a startling thought, that he will not be spending it rotated through various secluded villas and estates and trotted out for paparazzi only when they start to forget about his fictional villainy. It is more startling, still, to imagine that he could have a future that is not just his own—but a future that is shared with Hob.
Dream thinks it will be quiet. There will be no cameras or interviews. They will live in a nameless little town, in a modest (but plushly appointed) house, and Hob will publish astrophysics papers that only a hundred people in the world will ever understand, and Dream will craft queer little inventions that hold no mass market appeal, and when they go to their local down the street, the people inside will know him only as Hob’s slightly acerbic husband who likes to sketch birds and dominates unfailingly at the weekly pub quiz.
Perhaps on long winter nights, they will do jigsaw puzzles together, and cuddle on the sofa.
Hob goes wolf-shaped, just before they get into bed.
He’s gorgeous, of course. Deep amber eyes, and a tawny, almost tortoiseshell pattern with black and warm browns rippling together to form a thick fur coat. He stands nearly a meter tall and two meters long, and he has claws and teeth both large enough to sever arteries. He once crouched on a rainy football pitch in front of Dream, snapping and snarling and growling. Vicious. Deadly.
The first thing Hob does tonight, after landing on all fours, is headbutt Dream in the stomach.
Dream laughs, and slides his hands into the soft fur on the top of Hob’s head. “Rude,” he admonishes.
Hob whuffles, and presses his left ear into Dream’s hand for scritches.
Then, obviously, the right ear must receive the same.
Hob does a few rounds around the room after this, sniffing at things and occasionally pausing to cock his head and listen to some far-off, unheard noise. Dream, used to this, sends a quick text message before he flips off the lights, and changes into his pajamas.
(Hob has still not seen his bare chest, since that night on the field. But sometimes in the dark, when they are under the covers and they have stopped giggling and shifting about and all the alarms for morning have been set—sometimes Hob will run his fingers over Dream’s sleep shirt and feel the nightmarish mess of ridges and bumps beneath. He will kiss them, like they are beloved.)
But this is not for tonight. Tonight, Dream crawls into Hob’s bed, and then listens to Hob pad around on four legs for a bit more. A brief silence is the only warning he receives before eighty kilos of werewolf join him in bed.
“Oof—Hob,” Dream mutters, wriggling as Hob steps here and there, and for a moment they are an uncoordinated tangle of blankets and limbs.
Then with a huff, a warm, furry weight lands next to him.
Dream wraps an arm around Hob’s body and burrows into the curve of his back. Hob shifts against him, and briefly twists his head around to snuffle at Dream’s neck and give one last territorial lick before he at last settles down into a more comfortable position.
There’s a tail thumping steadily against his knee.
Dream presses a kiss to Hob's ruff, and rests his forehead between two soft traingular ears. The angle is such that it is his wrist that ends up resting atop Hob's chest. The band of scar tissue there is thick, and the nerves are dull, but despite this, Dream can still feel the steady thrum of Hob's canid heartbeat against his skin and it loosens something in his chest he had not known to be tight.
He closes his eyes, and breathes deeply.
They have done this only a handful of times before, but in his mind Dream sees them doing just this—safe, and warm, and together—when they are thirty. When they are forty. When they are old and frail and the world has utterly passed them by.
It is a future he could live with.
It is a future he can choose.
Mrs. Meena Gadling
Mrs. Gadling: I know your not a werewolf luv but happy full moon anyway !!
Mrs. Gadling: <3
Siblings
Desire: Well I got us the yacht for the week
Desire: If anyone cares
Desire: You’re WELCOME
Rachel Smith
Rachel: Hey! Yeah you’re totally welcome to join me for some climbing but fair warning I’m not very good lol
Rachel: I usually go M/W/F around five, right after class
Rachel: It’d be cool to get to know you better 😀
Notes:
Stay tuned for a possible coda piece bc I'm not actually done having feelings over Dream and his scars. <3
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