your other life

by geeky_page

Summary:

Death of the Endless takes her rules very seriously. Not as seriously as her late brother did, but still. A rule as important as "what died must stay dead" cannot be broken.

This time - she wants to make an exception.
She pays Hob Gadling a visit to see if he's up for the task of helping her with it.

 

or:
Death brings Dream back and drops him into grieving Hob's lap. Dream needs to learn to accept his new very human, very mortal life. Hob is there to help

Notes:

contains heavy spoilers for season 2 of The Sandman.
I hope you enjoy ♡

Chapter 1: prologue

Slowly, with her breath steady and her head raised high, Death walks the street. The weather is pleasant, but she is too deep in her thoughts to pay attention to the setting sun and the colors it's painting the sky into. Death of the Endless has walked this path before, but the house she means to visit today has never hosted her. She’s met the man who lives there, but it was only a dream. 

It’s late evening and Death is confident Hob Gadling is home. His nights have been quite uneventful, as of late. Death has been thinking about paying his brother’s friend a visit for a while, but chose to observe him from afar, at first. Hob lived his life. He slept. He went to work. He saw friends. He returned home. He seemed fine from the outside, caused no concern from the people in his life. Nobody knew about his nightmares, about his tears, about the excessive drinking, about the heartbreak he’s been quietly enduring for months now. 

Death waited for his call, but it didn’t come. She was glad of it. 

Now, she stands on Hob’s doorstep, hating to come in uninvited, but feeling the need and walking in regardless.

Death asks for no invitation, no consent. 

She finds Hob sitting on the grass in his small backyard. He’s watching the sunset, a book abandoned by his side. Death clears her throat to warn him of her intrusion. 

“You,” Hob gasps. There’s fear in his eyes, but excitement, too. Death smiles at him. 

“Hello, Hob,”

He lets out a sad sigh, but fixes his face quickly and begins rising to his feet. 

“Please, don’t stand up,” she says and sits down next to him. Hob is surprised, but tries not to show it. 

“How have you been?” she asks. 

 

Death has only met Hob twice, though she doesn’t believe their first ever meeting back in 1389 even counts. She, together with her brother, heard Hob’s senseless speeches and decided to play along to them.

It took them over 600 years to meet again. At her brother’s funeral. 

 

“I’m alright,” Hob says and Death can tell he’s used to saying that, “What about…what about you?”

His voice shakes and he still can’t hide his nerves, but he does seem glad to see her. In a sense. 

“I’m good, too, thank you” she says, “Busy,”

Hob nods, decidedly not asking what that means. 

“Are you…are you here for me?” he asks, trying to sound relaxed and casual. Death is not cruel and will not torture this man, but she does stall for a second or two before answering. 

“I’m not on the clock right now, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says and Hob breathes out in relief, “Just wanted to see how you’re doing,”

This seems to surprise Hob.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Death smiles, “Dream would have wanted me to check in,”

The surprised smile fades at the mention of the name. Death, too, can’t keep her smile anymore. She shouldn’t use past tense with that name. Dream of the Endless is alive, safe and healthy in the Dreaming. But the loss of who he once was gets heavy enough for her to forget it, sometimes. 

“Every…every once in a while I manage to almost convince myself that that funeral was just an insane dream of mine and that he’s not really…gone,” Hob wouldn’t look at Death and his voice betrays him and breaks at the last word, “Thank you for disarming me of that delusion,”

There is no sarcasm in Hob’s voice, but Death still feels horrible for him. 

“I’m sorry, Hob,” she says, “You lost a friend,”

“You lost your brother,” he says, “In a way, I guess. I know there is a Dream, but I can’t…I can’t think of him as my Dream,”

Death nods. They mustn’t think like this – there is no Hob’s Dream, or old Dream, or new Dream, there is just him – Dream of the Endless, her younger brother, ruler of the Dreaming. She knows it. But she understands Hob. 

“Do you see him a lot? Dream, as he is now?” Hob asks, stumbling on his awkward words

“Not a lot,” Death sighs, leaning back. The sunset is almost done, soon to be replaced by starry skies. Death cannot look at the stars and not think of her brother. 

“The dinner went well. After that – there’s a lot to do in his realm. A lot he needs to learn, evaluate,”

Hob nods, though he doesn’t understand everything. Death knows that, too. 

“He could use your help,” she says and Hob looks at her with a frown

“My help? With what?”

“Understanding himself,” she says

Hob’s frown deepens.

“Is that why you’re here? To ask me to see him?” he asks

“Not at all,” Death promises, “I honestly did just want to see how you’re doing,”

“You wanted to see if I’ve changed my mind,” Hob doesn’t ask, he states, and he is wrong, but Death gives him space to continue, “To see if this grief is enough to make me want to give up on life,”

There is a tone of accusation in Hob’s voice, but Death chooses not to take it personally. She’s had to develop that skill a long time ago. 

“I have no wish to take you, Hob,” she says, honest, “But it is your choice,”

Hob looks away, into the everdarkening sky.

“I’ve thought about it,” he confesses, “More than I ever have. I think about how…the year 2089 will come sooner or later and he won’t be there. And that’s almost enough to make me want to go,”

“Almost?” Death asks

“Almost,” he confirms, “It’s strange, isn’t it? I barely knew him. But I…I can’t live without him, it seems. I’ll learn to. But now – I can’t,”

Death sighs, her hand reaching out to cover Hob’s. His eyes are red and he tries to hide them, but when she squeezes his fingers, Hob looks at her and allows her to see his tears. 

“You knew him,” she says, “And you meant…so much to him. I know,”

Hob shakes his head, his tears welling up and rolling down his face, breaking Death’s heart.

“I didn’t. There was so much I never…we never got to do. I wasn’t…I wasn’t good enough of a friend to him,”

This shocks Death.

”Hob!” She exclaims, she can’t help it, “How can you say that?”

”He came to me. Some time before…he warned me of what would happen and I didn’t believe him,” Hob looks at Death, no longer trying to hide his heartbreak. It is too grand. So is his guilt.

”Maybe…maybe that was him crying for help. Maybe I could have done something, helped him somehow. Or made it easier, at least,”

Death could see that these words have been choking Hob for a while now. But no relief came after saying them out loud. 

“Hob,” she calls out, slow and warm, “There was nothing you could have done,”

Hob’s face twists in pain only more

”I know I’m just a man-,”

”Not because of that,” she interrupts him, “And you’re not just anything. Only Dream could have helped himself. He chose this,”

This isn’t the purpose of her visit, but part of Death wishes she could soothe Hob Gadling. Comfort him somehow, give some relief. Clearly, she’s failing miserably at that. 

“Maybe I could have convinced him, then,” Hob says, voice barely above a whisper, “To stay,”

Death still holds his hand and squeezes his fingers harder now. She cannot say that no amount convincing would have worked and that she did try to convince him, too. 

“If he were here now, what would you say to him?” she asks, instead. Hob looks up into the sky, considering. 

“The regular clichés, probably. That he wasn’t alone,” Hob begins, “That whatever he was dealing with, it would pass. Things would get better. That I love him,” he adds, shyly. Death doesn’t dare say anything to that. She lets go of Hob’s hand and puts hers on his shoulder. She understands him. For weeks after she took Dream, she wondered when was the last time she’d told her younger brother that she loved him. And even more, she wondered if he believed her. 

“I guess it’s a bit too late for that,” Hob says, a humorless chuckle in his voice, “600 years of knowing each other and…not having enough time,”

“Well. You know Dream,” Death says, to which Hob smiles sincerely. 

“I miss him,” Hob says, “I don’t know how I’d gone a century between our meetings. It’s been just months and I…I feel it every day, all the time,”

Once again, Death says nothing to that. Just keeps her hand on his shoulder, letting him speak, letting him share his grief with her. 

But she cannot stay like this forever. Death is very busy, after all, and her task here is done. 

“Carry no regrets, Hob Gadling,” she says, rising to her feet, “You are a wonderful friend,”

Hob looks up at her in confusion. 

“Are you leaving?”

She nods.

“Will I see you again? Socially?”

She smiles and gives him another nod. With that, she makes her way out of Hob’s backyard, his small house, his little endless life. 

Her mind is made up. She smiles as she leaves. 

Chapter 2: Chapter One

Hob is not allowed to think about Dream. He has firmly placed the ban himself, when weeks began passing after the strangest funeral he’s ever been to, but the feeling of dread did not. 

He forces himself to shove it down. During work days, at least, he makes himself focus on other things – his classes, his students, his life that cannot be put on hold even if it is what he wants sometimes. 

But in the evenings, when he’s alone and the skies assume the exact shade of his friend’s eyes – still not as bright, though, never as bright – Hob cannot help it. He closes his eyes and it’s 1489 or 1589 or 1689, or any other of the brief precious moments they’d shared together. Dream is here. He’s sitting opposite to Hob, listening to his senseless speeches, guiding him and changing his life with one disapproving furrow of his brow, gifting him the rare sight of his smile, storming out in anger, returning to him with an apology and staying. Just staying. 

And then, Hob opens his eyes and none of it is true again. 

Hob lets the time pass. His days repeat one another, his weeks go by and suddenly a month has passed. Then two. Then three. He tells himself that the first few years will be the hardest, and wants to believe things will get better, but his faith is weak. Relief must come, and it usually does – Hob Gadling is no stranger to losses, after all – but this feels so different. Every loss Hob has ever gone through was there to prepare him for this. He does not feel prepared, nonetheless. 

 

Over his long and eventful life, Hob has established somewhat of a routine, a set of steps meant to help him grieve and let go of losses. Admittedly, most therapists and normal people in general would find such practice unnatural – trying to methodize something as chaotic and subjective as grief, but Hob would never share it with them anyway. This practice is true and tried, so he intends to stick to it, thank you very much.

 

His step one was, naturally, to get wasted. 

That’s what he did the morning he woke up from that awful dream. He’d called the university and announced himself unexpectedly and almost gravely sick, shot a quick email to the classes he was supposed to teach that day, and only then was he allowed to even acknowledge the dream as anything but that, as anything real. 

For some reason, Hob couldn’t cry. The panic and shock pounded against the walls of his skull, but found no way out, not through tears, not through sobs. Hob sat on the floor of his living room, the image of his friend – the way he used to be, the way Hob remembered him – frozen in front of his eyes. Their last meeting replayed in his mind. Dream had said it would be the last time. Hob hadn’t believed him. 

 

He’d drunk all the alcohol he’d kept in the house and as the poison spread through his system, so did the realization of what he had lost.  The panic wouldn’t fade and the alcohol brought neither relief, nor the oblivion Hob had craved. 

He woke up the next day, still on the floor of the same room, with the worst headache of his life, having seen no dreams. And that solidified his grief only further. 

 

The next step is supposed to be more helpful, rather than indulgent, but Hob skipped it anyway. For so many years, centuries even, losing people meant risking to forget them, too. The death of someone close meant their complete erasure from Hob’s life, from his mind. When he was young – or rather, younger – there were no photo cameras, no portable devices that could forever keep the smile of his friends in colorful pictures or record the sound of their voice. So what Hob did was go to the nearest store, buy paper and write. He would write down every memory he had about them, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. He’d commit to paper every quirk of his loved one, every particularity of their character. Did they have a habit of rolling their hair on their finger, when lost in thought? Did they hate jazz music, no matter how hard Hob tried to get them to love it? Were there beauty marks on their face? Was there a specific way they enjoyed to be touched? What embarrassing secrets did they whisper under the cover of the night?

Hob had lifetimes tucked safely into yellowing pieces of paper, neat stacks of notebooks, electronic files on his phone and computer.

 

And then Dream died and Hob did not want to write.

 

He didn’t fear forgetting a single detail of their once-a-century meetings because he knew it wasn’t possible. Even now, over 600 years later, he remembered every word Dream had said to him when they first met in 1389. Granted, it wasn’t a lot of words, and maybe that was part of the reason why Hob had no wish to document their friendship. It would be an awfully short piece of writing. Hob had no idea what Dream liked. Didn’t know what he did outside of his occupation, and up until just a few months ago, he hadn’t known what his occupation was either. Hob was grieving a ghost. 

 

The following step in Hob Gadling’s program entailed way less action, but was nevertheless much harder. He was supposed to allow himself to feel the loss. Not push it down, not distract himself endlessly, but instead – let that pain hurt him for as long as it needed to. Hob had found that it was the only way to ever hope that pain would eventually pass him in a peaceful manner. 

This step, as previously established, was discarded, too, and with it all following ones. There was no focusing on good memories, or doing something useful in the honor of the deceased, or telling a friend about them. Hence, the final step was never to be reached, either. Hob would never let go of Dream. Never.

 

More than three months have passed since Dream’s death and all Hob did to get over him was occasionally (too often) repeating step one and getting drunk, and completely ignoring his everpresent pain. Oh, and he talked to Dream’s sister a few weeks back. That was a strange experience. 

 

---

 

If it wasn’t for his job, Hob definitely wouldn’t be able to tell the date or what day of the week it was. In fact, he began confusing the weekdays so often that after having brought the lecture notes of the Wednesday class on a Friday again, he printed out his schedule and hung it on various surfaces of his house – next to the mirror in the bathroom, on his fridge, on the inside of the front door. He’d even set it as the lockscreen of his phone, which meant having to take down the picture of his late dog, which was just another reason for him to be sad. There seemed to be many reasons for that, as of late. 

He was meant to cross out the day that just passed every evening, and then, replace the paper on the weekends. The idea, while not hopeless, didn’t always bring good results – Hob would often forget or lose the pen he’s meant to cross the days out with; remembering to re-print the schedules every weekend was a herculean task, at times, but more than anything the whole ordeal just upset him. He’d never needed to do this before. 

 

Today is Friday, which Hob knows, because he once again had to politely reject numerous friends and coworkers, who offered to go grab a beer, but certainly wouldn’t end the night after just one. His pockets were full of excuses for occasions like this. He’d only recently began his life as Professor Robert Gilbert and still had a sick mom to take care of and an adventurous sister who insisted on stealing him away every weekend. 

 

Today is Friday and Hob chooses to walk home – a whole 40 minute walk – since the weather is so nice and fresh air and exercise are supposed to be good for “battling the blues”, as some of his especially attentive friends have noted. He regrets his choice not to call a taxi almost immediately. He can afford it now, the unreasonably expensive cabs, the unpaid time off he’ll have to take if faced with another morning when he just cannot pull himself out of bed. He could afford to quit his job and live off his savings for a while, for a lifetime, maybe. He’d told himself he wouldn’t do it, knowing that his job, as tiresome as it can be, was the only thing keeping him somewhat afloat. That conviction fades with each passing day and that scares Hob more than the prospect of having to walk for 40 minutes with nothing but his thoughts as his company.

 

He reaches his home – in 47 minutes, not 40 – and he is faced with something even worse. A complete absence of anything to do – a daily occurrence that shocks and upsets him constantly. He knows he won’t fall asleep before midnight, so that means at least 5 hours of nothing, which will be followed by 2 more days, 48 more hours of the same thing, and then Monday is promised to come – a work day, an empty evening, then 4 more of those, and so on, so forth, forever. 

Hob drops his bag and falls face first onto the couch. 

Hours pass mercifully quickly in the half-asleep state Hob is in. At a certain point he grows too disgusted with himself and forces himself into the shower. He leaves his hair to air-dry under the judging gaze of his expensive, yet untouched hair care products and returns to the living room, to the couch. 

Another hour passes before Hob finally pays attention to his stomach that has been growling with hunger since before he left university. 

His fridge is, expectedly, half empty. There are ingredients, but Hob cannot be bothered to cook. He notices his saving grace then, three quarters of a sandwich he’d bought yesterday and didn’t finish. He has dinner for today, after all. 

 

With the not-so-appetizing sandwich in hand, Hob returns to the couch. Somewhere in the process he turned on the TV and now there’s a show playing, one he’s been half-watching for a couple weeks now. He wouldn’t be able to name a single character to save his immortal life, but it’s enough to fill the room with some noise, so Hob leaves it on and the episodes pass one after another. He waits for midnight, then he will turn the TV off, head to the bedroom and prepare himself to do it all over again the next day. And the next. Forever.

 

Some time after 11 pm Hob’s plans are interrupted by a faint knock on the door. So faint, that Hob decides it was part of the TV show and doesn’t grace the door even with one look. Then, it happens again, a louder knock, followed by another quiet one. Hob is tempted to ignore them all. It’s late, there’s no one he’s expecting, and no one whose unexpected visit would make him happy. But then the knock persists once again and Hob gets up, sighing and mumbling that he has a doorbell and whatever it is, it can certainly wait until the morning. 

 

“Yes?” Hob asks the door, not hiding his annoyance. His brief question is met with silence, the only sound in his house being the shootout that’s happening on the show. One Hob would very much like to witness. 

“Yes?” he tries again, louder, pressing his ear against the door. 

He cannot be certain, but he could swear he heard breathing on the other side. And then the faint knock repeats again. Hob wishes he’d installed a camera on his porch, like he meant to years ago. 

“Mate, say something or I’m going to bed,” he tries, one last time. 

He hears a voice then. 

“Help me,” the voice says. Quiet and weak enough for Hob to decide he misheard it. Familiar enough for Hob to grab the doorknob and slam the door open. 

The figure who stands before him is clearly using all their remaining strength to stay upright, and with nothing to lean on, they begin falling.

Dream of the Endless, old Dream, Hob’s Dream, falls into Hob’s arms before he can even understand what is happening. 

He catches him anyway. 

Notes:

Thank you for reading!

Not much happens in this chapter, but not much will happen in the whole fic - when I tagged it a slow burn, I meant it.
I will try to update in the begining of the next week. Hopefully.
Please let me know what you think! Your kudos and comments are very appreciated :)

P.S. this has nothing to do with the fic, but is anyone else emotionally destroyed after Twenty One Pilots' new album? Is there an overlap between The Sandman fandom and the clique? I hope there is.

Chapter 3: Chapter Two

Hob kicks the door closed and takes a breath for the first time since his friend seemingly returned from the dead and materialized himself outside of Hob’s house and then in his arms. 

Dream is unconscious, but breathing, unmistakably alive and concerningly light in Hob’s arms. He heads towards the couch to put him down, and then changes his mind and carries Dream into his bedroom instead, trying to focus on doing everything he can for his comfort, and pushing away the insistent thoughts that he is supposed to be dead. 

Hob gently places Dream on the bed and stands there, breathing and staring, thinking that he must be dreaming and knowing that he’s not. 

Dream looks the same as he remembers him. 

His skin is still pale, even paler than usual, his hair a wild mess with a few strands falling over his shut eyes. Hob’s hand reaches out on its own to brush them away, but he stops it, suddenly afraid to touch Dream. He’s even more afraid to look away from him, as if his attention is the only thing tying his friend to the mortal world. 

He forces his eyes away from Dream’s face, onto his body. Underneath a simple grey t-shirt, his chest rises with breaths surely he never needed to take. The rhythm is steady, slow, and Hob finds himself hypnotized. Unaware of it, he lowers himself and sits down on the bed, by Dream’s side. Carefully he places his palm on Dream’s chest and watches it rise and fall down in that same rhythm. He feels Dream’s heartbeat, how calm and slow it is, compared to Hob’s own heart that has been knocking its way out of his throat for minutes now. Dream is alive. 

Dream is alive. 

Hob tears his hand away, jumps on his feet and runs out of the room. Only then, a closed door away from his peacefully sleeping friend, he feels like he can breathe. Until he can’t, again. Until it’s not breaths that make their way out of Hob’s chest, but harsh, loud and ugly sobs. He drops on the floor, his back to the closed bedroom door and cries the tears of loss, and grief that never came to him all those months ago. And more than anything, he cries tears of relief and gratitude, keeping his hand over his mouth, fearing to wake Dream. 

 

Dream sleeps through the entire night and some more, but Hob barely manages 5 minutes at a time without checking on him. In the duration of those 5 minutes he manages to convince himself that Dream has either: died in his sleep, run away, just disappeared, or had never been there in the first place. He chimes into the room, approaches his sleeping friend as quietly as he can, checks his breath, checks his heartbeat and leaves again, just to repeat the procedure again in 5 minutes. 

This is the longest night of Hob’s entire existence. 

 

He cannot think how or why Dream is back. He can’t think how he found his house or where he was before. Cannot fathom what weakened him to the point of passing out in Hob’s arm the second he opened the door for him, or what would have happened if he hadn’t. What if Hob went to sleep earlier that day and didn’t hear Dream’s quiet knocks? What if he accepted his friends’ invitation and spent the night at the pub? Would Dream be lost, lost to him still? Would Hob ever find him?

 

He cannot think of those things, but that’s what he does, sitting at the kitchen table with daylight filling the room. He checked on Dream minutes ago, but the desire to do it again will become unbearable very soon. 

Hob pours himself a glass of water and forces it down his throat, before leaving the table. He is frozen halfway through the living room, when he hears the sound of the bedroom door opening. 

 

Dream emerges from the hallway, pacing slowly towards where Hob is standing. His hair is even more of a mess, he’s barefoot, but still wearing yesterday’s clothes that Hob didn’t have enough courage to change unconscious Dream out of. He’s looking around, confused and disoriented, but when his eyes land on Hob, he gasps.

Hob does, too. 

 

The eye contact is electrifying, and Hob cannot break it, not by looking away, not by saying something. So the two of them stand in the center of Hob’s not-so-large living room, and Hob has no idea what to do. He doesn’t know what his face is doing, but he’s aware that his fingers are squeezed into fists, nails digging into the soft skin of his palms, and that he’s breathing too loudly. 

Dream’s face is unreadable. 

 

“Hob,” he says, finally, and Hob thinks he might cry. He didn’t think he’d ever hear his voice again. 

“Dream,” he forces out, but it’s so weak, so pathetic, it surprises Dream. Brows furrow on his already displeased face. 

The silence drags and Hob feels like he’ll die if he doesn’t hear Dream’s voice right now. 

“How…how are you feeling?” he asks, “Are you okay?”

Dream frowns at the question and looks down on his body. His hands press against his chest, he takes a breath. Hob waits. 

“I feel…strange,” he responds and this scares Hob

“Strange how? Are you in pain?”

“Yes,”  Dream responds, but his voice is distant, confused. Concern shoots through Hob and he’s finally moving. He approaches Dream in two big steps, places his hands on his forearms, not even realizing he’s doing it. 

To his horror, Dream flinches from the touch and stares at him, wide eyed. 

“What’s wrong?” Hob asks, “What’s hurting you?”

He is looking at Hob as if he’s speaking a foreign language. Dream of the Endless is a master of all human languages, but perhaps not right now. 

“What am I doing here?” he asks. 

“You…you showed up at my door last night. Passed out immediately,” he explains, “I was actually hoping you’d clear some things up for me,”

Hob doesn’t say anything as cheap and insulting as you’re supposed to be dead or I mourned you or I think I’m going crazy and hallucinating you. Instead, he waits for the words to reach Dream, clarity painting his beautiful face, quickly turning into anger. 

“I apologize for disturbing you, Hob,” Dream says through his teeth, “And I thank you for your hospitality. I must leave you now,”

With that, Dream is headed towards the front door. He walks with the same conviction as he always did, but there’s something different to it, too. As if every step is hurting him. 

Hob stops him before he reaches the door, grabbing his shoulders and ignoring the way Dream’s eyes widen once again after the contact. 

“Like hell you are,” Hob says and he wants to laugh and cry and scream and embrace Dream, but he does none of that. He doesn’t unhand him either, despite his friend’s efforts to be freed. 

“As of yesterday evening, I thought you were dead! Then you show up here and try to escape again?”

“I regret inconveniencing you, but-,”

“Jesus, Dream!” Hob’s voice rises on its own. And then the tears come, too. His next words come out in a broken whisper against his will.

 “I thought you were dead,” 

Dream’s silence is a torture. Letting him watch as Hob tries to hold back tears and fails is a small death. 

“I was,” Dream says, then, “I should be,”

Hob’s arms fall. Helpless, he can’t stop Dream from leaving even if he tries. 

“What happened?” he asks. 

“I don’t know,” Dream says and Hob finally sees that he is scared. That there are tears shining in his eyes, too. 

“I was…no more. And then I was at your door,”

“Did you…did you do something to come back?”

“Nothing can be done to escape the Sunless Lands,” he says, “Unless…,”

“Unless what?” Hob braces himself for Dream’s answer.

“Unless someone else interfered,” 

Dream stares at Hob, and he’s almost assured he will accuse him of interfering. But what could he have done? No riches of his could have bought Dream back. No knowledge or experience could have helped. In all truth, Hob was faced with his own helplessness. He wished he could deserve those accusations. 

“My sister,” Dream mutters. 

And suddenly everything makes sense. 

 

---

 

It takes real magic to get Dream to sit down and take a moment. There’s a maniacal glimmer in his eyes and from time to time they still jump to the door. Hob prepares himself for having to fight Dream to get him to stay.

They’re seated on his couch and through his eyes, Hob can see the tornado in Dream’s mind. He wishes he could read it, too, because his friend is not helping him understand it at all. 

“Can I…get you something?” Hob asks, already feeling pretty useless, but Dream’s bewildered gaze makes him feel blatantly dumb. 

“Like water or some food?” he still forces out

“I do not require…,” Dream begins his usual phrase, but stops halfway. He places his hand on his stomach and his brows furrow. Then his breath picks up, now quick and harsh and Hob doesn’t know what to do. 

“Dream?” he asks

“She brought me back,” he says, hatred and anger seeping through every syllable of every word, “She brought me back human,”

The realization sets Dream off. In seconds, he’s up from the couch and rushing to the door again. Hob follows. 

“Dream, will you stop, please?” he calls out, but his friend doesn’t listen. Hob’s salvation is the lock on the door that Dream seems to struggle with. 

“Open this door,” he commands

“Where are you going? What is even happening?”

The tears that have already dried on his face threaten to come back, this time out of sheer confusion and frustration. Maybe this is a dream, Hob thinks. He’s had similar nightmares before, twisted versions of Dream’s funeral. He’s dreamed of losing him even when he was alive. He’s dreamed of getting him back, too. Can this be a dream? If so, could he stay in it, this time?

“I must find my sister,” Dream says

“Death?”

“Yes,”

“Why? Why right now?”

“She’s done this. I require answers,” 

Hob cannot believe the anger with which Dream says those words. He looks and sounds as if given the chance, he’d make Death pay for what he believes she’s done. If Hob had that chance, he’d probably fall to her feet, thanking her. 

“You…she brought you back. You are alive. Are you not…happy?” 

Hob’s heart shatters further with every second Dream doesn’t answer him. He pulls on the doorknob. 

“Open the door, Hob,” the command is weaker this time. Hob doesn’t know whether to consider it progress. 

He wipes his face and takes a breath. This is Dream. This is how he’s always been – stubborn, single-minded, insufferable. 

“Alright, Dream,” Hob says, “How about this – we look for her together, okay? I’ll help you, I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. Just…slow down for a second, please. I didn’t sleep a wink last night,”

As if to reaffirm his words, the headache that’s been creeping up on Hob for hours, hits him with its full force. Dream still stands by the door, seemingly considering Hob’s words and Gadling is preparing himself for another rant of how dare you assume I would require the assistance of someone such as you et cetera et cetera. 

“Fine,” Dream says instead, surprising Hob. He lets go of the doorknob and looks at his host expectedly, as if he’s supposed to explain what slowing down means exactly. Hob wishes he had the answer. 

He chooses to start easy. 

He sits Dream down at the kitchen island and puts a kettle on. This gives him seconds, when he has something to do with his hands and has his back turned on Dream. He breathes and stares at the kettle. What now?

“Are you really human?” he asks, when the water is boiled and two cups of tea are placed on the table. Dream chooses to just look at his for now. 

“Yes,” he says. Anger returns to his voice. 

“Is it really…that bad?” Hob asks and Dream looks up at him. From under his eyebrows, his gaze is murderous. Hob forces himself to hold it. 

“I did not ask for this,” he says

“You were dead. Now you’re not. That is a positive development,” Hob says, “Right?”

Dream makes a sound that’s neither affirmative, nor rejecting. 

Hob tries to drink his tea – his favorite tea, all the way from India – that now smells and tastes like dirty hot water to him. 

“Well. For what it’s worth. I’m really glad you’re here,” he says, willing his voice not to break, to sound casual and normal, but of course it doesn’t. 

He forces his nose down the tea mug again and counts to five before looking up at Dream, just to see him watching him attentively. 

“Were you there? At the funeral?” he asks

A shiver runs down Hob’s back at how casually Dream mentions the word. 

“Yeah,” he says, “I went to your funeral. Well, maybe went isn’t the right word, I just fell asleep and…well, it was awful,”

He doesn’t want to talk about it. Just like he didn’t want to talk about it when Death showed up in his backyard, but felt like he couldn’t deny her anything she asked. He feels the same way now, under Dream’s softened, but still demanding eyes. 

He swallows the tasteless tea down and steadies his breath. 

“I met some of your family. Lucienne and Death. Listened to your siblings’ speeches. Even met the new bloke,”

“You did?” 

Hob nods. 

“How did he…seem to you?”

Dream seems weirdly shy asking the question, something Hob has never known him to be. 

“Not you,” he says, “I don’t understand it. They say he is Dream, they call him that, he’s greeted into the family as their brother, all of your realm’s residents now serve him, but he is not you and I don’t understand-,”

“Hush,” Dream cuts his rant. Hob didn’t even notice when he grew mad, when the thought of that Dream, new Dream that mustn’t be thought of as new, began causing this much resentment. 

He knew he wasn’t alone in this judgement, though. 

 

One of the strangest things that has ever happened to Hob in his very long and very strange life was finding a new friend in the face of Dream’s talking raven some time after the funeral. He didn’t really pay attention to Matthew during his short and life-altering visit to the Dreaming – a figure as such seemed to fit perfectly into Dream’s insane world, and Hob was rather…occupied. 

The raven himself, though, did pay attention to Hob, apparently. 

 

He showed up for the first time a week after – knocked on Hob’s window as he was having his late dinner and scared the hell out of him. 

“The immortal, ain’t you?” was his version of greetings. Hob, with pasta leftovers stuck in his throat, just nodded. And that was the start of their beautiful friendship. 

Matthew didn’t have a schedule, didn’t say when he’d show up the next time, he just popped by every so often – sometimes once a week, sometimes every other day, and they’d talk. 

They mostly talked about Morpheus, of course. 

 

More than anything, Hob was glad to spend time with someone who missed him as much as he did. He collected the little precious drops of knowledge Matthew had on his master, his habits, his phrases – anything, no matter how small. 

Matthew hated talking about his current master, though. Even went as far as to call Hob a traitor for having invited him to meet up in a hundred years time. This bitterness – though Hob didn’t necessarily share it – was refreshing compared to the readiness the Endless have expressed to forget Morpheus and accept the new guy. Matthew was a human soul, for sure. 

 

His human heart did begin melting towards this Dream, of course. He looked progressively more guilty while badmouthing his boss, but didn’t stop doing it. Hob loved talking to him. Loved feeling that in some way, he was still a part of Dream’s life, even with Dream being gone. 

 

But he is not gone anymore. 

He’s here and he’s mad at Hob for what he said about his own replacement. 

 

“Do you not hate him?” Hob asks. He knows it’s wrong, but he asks anyway. 

“Hate?” Dream wonders, “He is composed of the only parts of me that do not deserve to be hated. If you expect me to hate him because he’s taken over my function, he had no choice in the matter,”

“I get that. I think,” Hob says, “But it doesn’t have to be rational. Most people would resent him, if they were in your situation. Matthew does,”

Dream is only slightly surprised to hear about the bond Hob has built with his former raven. A small half-smile blooms on his face, when Hob tells him about his visits, so Hob doesn’t stop, wanting, craving for that smile to remain, to grow wider. He retells all of Matthew’s speeches to him, and maybe that could be considered snitching, but he doubts the raven would care. He’d be too happy to have his old boss back. 

“Perhaps I should have introduced you two to each other when I had the chance,” Dream says.

“I wish you had,” Hob admits, “And your sister, too. I won’t lie, I was pretty scared to meet Death, but she’s not scary at all. She was just…sad, when I met her,”

“At the funeral?”

“And after,”

Dream sits up straight at the words. 

“You have talked to Death? After the funeral?” he asks, his tone closer to demanding again. 

“Yes, she came to see me a few weeks ago,” Dream’s eyes widen, he urges Hob to continue, “It was a brief visit, she just wanted to see how I was doing,”

“What did she say to you? What did you talk about?”

“Nothing!” Hob raises his hands in a helpless gesture, “She said she just wanted to check in,”

“You must tell me exactly what she said, word by word. There is not a chance that it is a coincidence that she talked to you before doing this to me,” 

Hob is stalling, opening his mouth and closing it again and again, searching for words. The conversation he’d shared with Death was nothing out of ordinary, just two people grieving over someone they once loved, and would keep loving no matter what, but Dream’s gaze makes him feel guilty, as if he’d done something wrong. 

Hob has to remind himself that he’s done nothing at all. 

“She asked me how I was,” he repeats, “How I was…holding up, or whatever. I thought she wanted to take me, or at least see if I was ready to go. I told her I wasn’t. We talked about the new Dream, we talked about you-,”

“What did she say? About me?”

Hob has been trying to act normal, but his body is failing him. He can’t hold Dream’s gaze, while thinking about the way he cried in front of his sister at a single thought of him. His face feels hot, he knows he’s blushing and he knows Dream sees it. 

“Nothing. Just…regular things,”

He is an awful liar. 

“Hob,”

Dream knows it. 

“She asked me what I’d say to you if you were still here,” Hob forces the words out and leaves his chair, putting his empty mug and Dream’s full one into the sink. He turns the facet on, relieved to hear the water run, any other sound except for Dream’s demanding voice and his pathetic and broken one. He also hears Dream’s chair squeak in protest as he gets up from it. 

“What did you tell her?” Dream asks, impatient. He’s now standing by Hob’s side, and just days ago – it was all Hob wanted. Now, he wants to run away. 

“Nothing,” Hob says again, trying to focus on the mugs, but Dream reaches out and turns the water off. 

“If you think this is some game-,”
“Dream, I was mourning you!” says Hob. The words come out on their own, louder and harsher than either of them expected, “I was grieving and so was she, and I was so fucking grateful that she came to me because I felt insane every waking moment of my life after that day. You were supposed to be immortal, an Endless, for god's sake and then I’m at your castle, they tell me you’re dead and I just wake up. No one explains shit to me! What…what do you think I said to her? I said you broke my fucking heart,”

There are seconds when the two of them just look at each other. Hob’s out of breath and Dream is wide eyed and small. He’s never raised his voice at him before. Never really told him what he felt, not like this. And he regrets it now. It’s immediate – the shame, the remorse – and it seeps deeper with every moment Dream stays silent. 

Hob walks past him, grabbing a towel and drying his hands. He breathes deeper and tries not to panic. He’s almost sure that when he turns back around, Dream will be gone again. 

“Hob,” he calls out. Still there. 

Gadling waits for his heart to calm down before turning to him. 

“Forget it, I’m sorry,” he says, carefully not looking at Dream. 

“Hob,” Dream repeats, but the words don’t come easily to him, it seems. Hob needs to end this torture. 

“Let’s just do it, let’s find your sister, let’s see what she says,” he makes his voice sound sure and steady and finally looks up at his friend. Dream’s eyes are cloudy, full of doubt, but then he nods. 

It’s over. 

---

 

Turns out, there’s not much two human beings can do to summon Death of the Endless. Even if one of them is an immortal man that she seems to favor, and the other is (was?) her little brother. 

They still have to try.

 

Dream is pacing around Hob’s living room, frown on his face, deep in thought. He's still restless, though he agreed to stay home for the brainstorming session at least, and once they formed something close to a plan, they’d leave the house. 

Hob is sitting on the couch, watching his friend. 

“If you had to talk to her in the past, how did you go about that?” he asks

“I had a gallery. All I needed to do was hold her sigil and call for her,” Dream responds. 

Hob sighs.

“Well, what if we fall asleep and try to find our way into the Dreaming and do just that? The new boss probably already knows you’re alive,”

Dream stops in his tracks. 

“We do not know that,” he says, “And it is not easy for the dreamers to stumble upon the castle. It is not meant to be possible,”

“Surely they’ll make an exception for you,”

“No,”

“Maybe Matthew will stop by and we’ll ask for his help,” Hob says, smiling. He can hardly imagine how happy the raven would be, if reunited with Dream. 

“No,” Dream’s harsh tone quickly wipes the smile away from his face, “No one from the Dreaming shall be involved in this. We will find another way,”

“Why? Don’t you want to see them?”

“I said we will find another way,” Dream says and his voice leaves no room for further discussion. 

“Fine,” Hob sighs, remembering his own promise to do whatever Dream says, “Let’s just…I don’t know, call for her, then. Maybe the sigil isn’t necessary,”

Dream hums.

“There were times when my sister came to my side without an official call. Perhaps she just sensed my…need,”

He is far away then, looking somewhere in the distance. Hob wonders what memory is playing in his mind, but doesn’t dare to ask Dream to share it. 

He stands in the middle of the room and breathes out. He shuts his eyes and opens them again, a newly found determination glistening in them. 

“Death of the Endless, my sister. It is I, Morpheus. I do not stand in my gallery and I do not hold your sigil, but I ask for your presence, still. Would you come?”

Hob listens to Dream’s voice, mesmerized and almost frightened. He does not dare to say anything, doesn’t even breathe. Seconds pass and the silence weighs heavy in the air. 

“My sister, I require your company. It is urgent,”

Nothing. 

Dream waits for another minute, tries again and sighs in disappointment. 

“Should I try?” Hob asks, “I mean, you two did say that if I ever want to…you know, call it quits, I should just call for her,”
Dream looks at him. 

“Be my guest,”

Hob nods and gets up from the couch. Dream takes his spot, staring up at him, the way Hob was, just now. He feels strange under Dream’s gaze, though – weirdly exposed and out of place in his own living room. He pushes the feeling down. He’s here to help Dream. 

“Death of the Endless,” he begins, and he almost wants to laugh, so ridiculous it feels.

“Death of the Endless,” he tries again, “I stand…in my living room, and I ask if you would be so kind as to pay us a visit, please? We really need to talk to you. Please?”

Hob looks at the door and around the room, remembering that the Endless can just show up wherever they please and human doors and locks cannot stop them. 

The room is empty, save the two of them. 

“Well, we tried,” Hob drops himself on the couch next to Dream, “Other ideas?”

“Yes,” he says, “There is someone who may help us,”

Notes:

Thank you for reading!

This chapter is a bit longer and things finally begin happening! Yay!
I spent a long time thinking if I should stylize Dream's speech and decided that even though it doesn't make much sense anymore, I still want to do it. Things not making much sense but appealing to me nevertheless are a common practice in my writing btw

 

I'm really excited about what's to come and hope that you are, too. Place your bets on who you believe that mysterious "someone" is and please let me know what you think of the story so far!

Chapter 4: Chapter Three

Dream has a very vague idea where his friend lives, so he and Hob are forced to spend at least an hour virtually walking through London's streets on Google maps, trying to find the house where one Johanna Constantine is supposed to reside. None of this would be necessary, of course, if Dream could still travel via swirls of sands or locate people through their dreams. He reminds Hob of that every 3 minutes. 

During that hour Hob finds that:

Dream has no understanding of modern human technology

Dream has very questionable orientation skills, if stripped of his powers

Dream has the patience of a child. 

He sighs and rolls his eyes at Hob’s ridiculous questions, such as what part of the city does she live in? Is it an apartment complex or a house? Do you know her phone number?

 

At a certain point, the two of them decide to finish the virtual search, and - being about 60% sure that they have the right address - Hob leads Dream to his car. 

Johanna – probably – lives a whole hour drive away and Hob is simultaneously thrilled and terrified at the thought of spending such a long time stuck in a car with Dream. What should he talk about? Is there a type of music Dream enjoys? Or should he just not bother him?

 

Dream gets into the car silently, with no complains, but Hob can tell he’s uncomfortable. His hands are squeezed into fists, his shoulders are rigid and tense. Hob can see Dream’s efforts of keeping his breath steady. He rolls the windows down and waits before starting the car. 

“You’re okay?” he asks. 

Dream breathes deeper. 

“There is no other way for us to reach her. I shall endure,”

He doesn’t clarify any further, not even when Hob continues looking at him with a question in his eyes. He’s forced to drop it and start the car, but persistent beeping cuts his ears. 

“It’s your seatbelt,” Hob says, nodding at his own, buckled one.

Dream reaches for the belt, positively having no idea what to do with it. He looks at Hob, confused and annoyed and Gadling has to bite back a smile. 

He frees himself and reaches close to his friend, buckling him down in a quick gesture, but then he makes a mistake of looking up at him. Dream is staring down at Hob, all annoyance gone from his face. His gaze is open, careful, somewhat surprised, and Hob holds it for way too long, with his hand still on Dream’s seatbelt. 

Have they ever been this close? Hob surely has never noticed how long Dream’s eye lashes are. And he doesn’t know if it’s a new occurrence, a consequence of becoming human, or not, but Dream’s skin has a smell – something sweet, but rich and deep. 

Hob yanks himself back into his seat before he takes a breath. 

“All good,” he says and starts the car. 

Usually, Hob quite enjoys driving. It helps him clear his head and get some alone time after being surrounded by young students all day – those people might be legal adults, but to Hob they are very much children and often that’s exactly how they behave. 

So driving can be therapeutic, and Hob believes he’s pretty good at that – being behind the wheel basically since its invention and all that. He doesn’t get road rage, doesn’t speed in inappropriate places, he can even parallel park. 

All of that has been true for years and years and years. Right until he’s had Dream of the Endless in his passenger seat. 

Dream doesn’t talk, but he mercilessly fidgets with the car radio. He switches stations every 20 seconds, doesn’t let a single song or program run its course fully, doesn’t leave a single button untouched. About halfway through their drive, Dream turns the radio off – Hob doesn’t know if he did it accidentally or on purpose, but he leaves it as is and turns his face to the window. 

Hob must look at the road, so he doesn’t watch the way wind runs through Dream’s hair and the way his irises move underneath his closed eyelids. He’s also just a man and his gaze jumps at his friend’s face every so often. So what? He’s a good driver, he could safely take them wherever they needed to go while blindfolded. 

(he wouldn’t do that, of course)

 

In 54 minutes Hob parks the car in front of the building that hopefully has Johanna’s apartment in it. Dream has remembered that she lived on the top floor, so that narrows their choice a bit. Hob looks at Dream before opening the car door. 

“How do you know her again?” he asks

“Her family has served me for many generations. She has, too,”

Hob doesn’t ask what exactly “serve him” means. He’s heard of Johanna before, of course, even before officially meeting her at the funeral. She didn’t speak to him then and he’d never had the misfortune of requiring her services. He did remember her ancestor, though. If this Johanna is anything like her, this meeting won’t be boring, to say the least.

“Alright, then. Let’s go,”

 

In minutes, they are standing in front of Johanna’s apartment door. Well, they have no way of knowing beforehand if it’s actually hers, but Dream seems convinced. They knock and only silence responds to them. 

“Maybe she’s not home,” Hob offers. Dream rolls his eyes. 

“Constantine,” he practically shouts into the door. Hob can hear a noise on the other side, but no one responds. 

“Or maybe she’s just not expecting company,”

“She never is,”

Dream pounds on the door louder and shouts her name again, clearly frustrated at not being able to just manifest himself inside the apartment. Hob doesn’t know how to help. 

“Maybe we should say it’s you?” he asks

“She knows it’s me,” he says, “Johanna Constantine. Open this door,”

The door flies open and a small female figure stands before them, holding a dagger in her hand, pointing it at Dream. She looks at him for a beat too long, but doesn’t express surprise in any other way. The dagger is a breath away from his face. 

“Ghost, shapeshifter, or an unfunny prank, you two?” she asks.

Hob watches as Dream’s lips stretch into a smirk. 

“It is good to see you, Johanna,” he says and her bravado shatters for less than a second, before she picks herself up. 

“And you’re dead. So I can’t say the same,” she says

“Would a dead man stand before you as I do?”

“Weirder things have happened,” she allows and her gaze shifts to Hob, “And you are?”

Hob isn’t sure how to answer her question. 

“A friend,” he says. She doesn’t look satisfied and keeps staring at Hob with her eyes squinted ever so slightly. Hob can pinpoint the exact moment when the bulb lights up in her head. 

“I remember you,” she says, “At the funeral. At his funeral,” her gaze travels back to Dream

“May we come in? I am in need of your services,” he says

The dagger finally comes down. Johanna crosses her hands at her chest and smirks wider. 

“A dead man and an immortal show up at my doorstep because they are in need of my services,” she says, “Come on in,”

 

Johanna’s apartment is a mess. Her possessions cover each surface in layers of varied thickness. Clothes, books, unwashed mugs are everywhere, making her already modestly sized flat seem even smaller. The only thing that slightly helps the mess is the darkness that reins over the space. Every light is dimmed, shadows hiding in every corner of the room, dancing on the faces of the three people present. 

“So?” Johanna says, “You two are waiting for me to make you tea before telling me how on Earth you’re alive again or what?”

Dream seems endeared by her rudeness and that surprises Hob. 

“It is precisely why I’m here,” Dream says, “I have died, but I was brought back. I must know how and why,”

“Brought back? Who could have done this?” she asks

“I don’t believe anyone but my sister could have,”

“Death?” Dream nods, “Can she even do that? Bring the dead back?”

There’s a fire lighting up in her eyes, as she asks her questions. Hob recognizes it – the fire of grief, of someone who’d lost too much. 

Dream nods again. 

“She can. But it doesn’t mean she should. She’s only done it a handful of times and almost always regretted it. She swore to never do it again,”
Johanna sighs and drops herself on a chair. Neither Dream nor Hob were offered a seat. 

“Nice of you to show up here and all, but what do I have to do with this? You’re alive. Go live,”

“I am human,” Dream says with disgust in his voice. Johanna isn’t impressed. 

“Most of us are,” she says and then looks at Hob, “Are you even human still?”

“Very much I am,” he responds and Johanna opens her mouth to ask something else, but doesn’t get a chance to

“I must speak to my sister. I need you to find her,” Dream says firmly. She turns back to him. 

“You want me to find Death?” Dream responds affirmatively and Constantine laughs. 

“Death? Summon Death? Who do you think I am?”

She leaves her chair and walks over to the small fridge. There’s no real kitchen in her apartment, just an equally messy continuation of the living room that has some kitchen appliances. Hob makes a point not to look inside the fridge  when she opens it. When he looks at her the next moment, she’s holding a bottle of beer. 

“Not even Burgess could do it, if you remember,” she says, opening the bottle.

Dream’s eye twitches at the mention of the name

“You speak of Burgess as if he ever did possess true magic. Do you see yourself below him?” he asks. 

Johanna squeezes her jaws. 

“No one can summon Death. No one alive and certainly no one human,”

There’s a second when her eyes light up and she swallows down a mouthful of beer. She looks away, but Dream has caught her, too. 

“Speak your mind,” he orders and she, inexplicably, does. 

“No human can summon her,” she repeats, “But…I guess I have connections,” 

She sighs. 

Now Dream’s eyes light up. In hope.

“I could maybe talk to the Corinthian. Maybe,” she says. The light is blown from Dream’s eyes. 

“You’re in touch with the Corinthian? Still?”

Johanna seems embarrassed at the question and Hob wishes either of them would clarify why, but doesn’t ask for it. He remembers the Corinthian as Dream’s failed nightmare - one that brought much turmoil into his post-imprisonment life. He remembers the way Dream talked about him, many months ago, during their first meeting in the 21st century. It had been their longest meeting yet – they spoke for many hours. Hob told him of his life in the past 130 years. Dream told him everything. The Corinthian was one of the painful tales. A failure of his. 

He seems to be striking a nerve even now. 

“Not really, no,” Johanna turns around to put the beer away, or escape the conversation, “We were…seeing each other for a minute, but it’s over now,” she says quickly

“You were shagging a nightmare?” Hob asks, his mouth quicker than his brain. 

He can’t tell who looks more offended at the question – Dream or Johanna. 

“Wasn’t my first nightmare, I’ll tell you that,” she says, “It is over. He just…shows up in my dreams sometimes,”

She shrugs and Dream does look disgusted, but he wipes it off his face. 

“I guess I could talk to him next time I see him,” she says, “Which I have zero control over, by the way. It certainly would be easier for someone from the Dreaming to reach your sister,”

“Not an option,” he says, which Hob knew he’d do, “Corinthian mustn’t know about me. Find another way,”

Johanna scoffs. 

“You come to me with an impossible task, I give you a perfectly suited solution and you reject it?” she asks, “What if there is no other way?”

“There is,”

“Please do tell,”

There’s a frustration in her voice that doesn’t really fit into her otherwise not caring attitude. 

Dream looks lost in thought for a moment and then fixes his gaze on Johanna again. 

“There is…something that used to be mine,” he begins, unsure, “A stone. It was a boon from my sibling but I have thrown it into the Waking world,”

“What kind of a stone?” Johanna asks

“It is meant to give its owner whatever their heart desires,” 

There’s a strange gloom on Dream’s face as he says the words. 

“Lapis desiderii,” Johanna says, almost breathless. 

“It’s a myth,” Hob cuts in. The two look at him, “It doesn’t exist,”

The search for the lapis desiderii was fashionable a few centuries ago. The silly legend took Britain and most of Europe by a storm – many of Hob’s friends fell victim to it too. A stone that promises to fulfil any wish, any dream with no price for the owner. It was too good to be true. No one has ever found it. 

“It is real, Hob,” Dream says, “And you, Constantine, must search for it and bring it to me,” 

Johanna raises her eyebrows. She scoffs and stalls before finding her words. 

“There are rumors, but-,”

“Follow them then,”

“Someone probably has it. And they wouldn't part with it,”

“Everything has a price,” Hob says. 

“Not this,” Johanna says, “And even if it doesn’t, you two can’t afford it,”

“I have money,” Hob says and smiles. 

“Not that kind of money,”

“I have money,” Hob insists and Johanna tilts her head, watching him. 

“Who are you?” she asks. Dream saves him once again. 

“Locate the stone,” he orders, “Obtaining it will come second,” 

He moves towards the door, marking the end of the conversation, but Johanna doesn’t necessarily agree with that. 

“What’s in it for me, then?” she calls out. 

Dream stops in front of the door but doesn’t turn around. 

“You could hardly afford me when you were…you. What can you give me now?” she asks.

Hob sees how Dream’s face twitches in pain. 

He doesn’t respond. 

“I have a feeling you won’t do it out of the goodness of your heart?” Hob asks and Johanna laughs again. He doesn’t think that offering her money would help, either. 

Dream turns to her. 

“What is it you want?” he asks. 

Johanna comes close to him. Too close. Looks up and scans his face with her foxy eyes. Hob can’t help the way he clears his throat. 

“I keep the stone,” she says, “And after that, you never bother me again,”

Dream looks down at her. 

“Fine,”

“And if I don’t find the stone,-"

"Which you will,"

"-The second part of the deal stands. Never bother me again,”

“It will be my pleasure,” 

Dream turns around and walks out of the door. He doesn’t check to see if Hob is following him, but he is. He catches up with Dream on the stairs, right after silently handing Johanna his card.

“Have a nice life,” they hear her voice, followed by a loud slam of the door. 

 

---

 

Dream gets into the car and no longer requires Hob’s assistance with his seatbelt. They drive off in silence. The day is slowly heading towards its end – the clock shows 5 in the evening and Hob has felt each and every one of those hours. He’s exhausted and starving, and by looking at Dream’s bleak stare and pale face, he assumes the feelings are mutual. 

He parks in front of the first okay looking restaurant they encounter. 

“This isn’t your home,” Dream states and Hob is relieved that at least that was his expectation. 

“Humans need to eat,” he says and gets out of the car. Dream follows. 

 

They’re seated in a booth by the window, opposite to each other. Hob buries his nose in the menu, but he can’t tear his eyes away from Dream. From the way he’s looking around the cafe, reading the menu items off of big screens and mouthing the words. He’s still wearing the same clothes he slept in, and a spike of guilt comes at Hob with that realization. Should he have offered some of his clothes to him? Would he have accepted them? Will he accept them now?

 

All day Hob’s sanity has depended strictly on his efforts to not let his mind wander. During the night, all he could think about was Dream’s physical safety. Then, it was getting him to stay and not run off on his own god knows where. Afterwards, helping him find Death. Keeping his mind focused then was harder. Still is. 

Even now he tries not to think about why Dream is so fixated on finding his sister. He chooses to believe he just wants answers and nothing more. 

He also does his best not to think about the future of any kind. Future that lies outside this cheap cafe, that awaits them in his house, that hides in tomorrow’s morning. 

What now? Hob doesn’t think. Doesn’t. 

 

“Need some help?” he asks Dream instead, watching him read the menu again and again with concentration even his best students don’t give to their assigned reading. 

Dream looks up.

“I don’t want any of this,” he says

Okay. 

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” Hob asks

“Yes,” Dream responds, “Your house,”

“I haven’t gone grocery shopping in a minute and it’s a long drive. You need to eat,” Hob says. Dream isn’t pleased. 

“I know this is…kind of new to you, so it’s normal you’re reluctant to try things-,”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child,” he says with hostility Hob didn’t expect

“I…that wasn’t my intention at all,” he says, “You haven’t eaten in 15 hours. At least,”

Dream doesn’t look one bit concerned about that and doesn’t grace Hob with a response. 

“Alright, I’ll order for you, then,” Hob says and calls the waiter with a quick gesture and a smile. 

 

Under Dream’s cold gaze, the process of ordering their lunch-dinner aka the first meal of that day is akin to taking an exam for a class you haven’t been to once. Hob points at meals and appetizers of various kinds, ordering way too much food for two people, and hoping that at least one thing will be to Dream’s liking. 

The cafe they end up in is one of those that have a bit of everything. So when Hob’s order arrives, it includes: burgers, fries, mozzarella sticks, fish and chips, a green salad, tuna spring rolls, a New York style cheesecake, quite dry looking steak, and some nachos. 

Dream stares at the feast in front of him, and while his face expresses mainly confusion, Hob can hear his stomach growl. 

“Dig in,” he says. 

 

Hob himself tries a bit of everything – he never was picky about food – but ends up favoring the burgers and nachos. Dream is much more careful. 

For a while, he just watches Hob eat, making him feel like he’s on the wrong side of a zoo park. Then, he reaches out for a single fry, puts it in his mouth carefully, as if it might bite him in return and chews slowly. 

Hob manages not to laugh, but he can’t bite back his smile. 

“Good?” he asks

“Not particularly,” 

Hob cannot help himself this time.

 

Dream eats very slowly, but he does eat. He finishes most of the salad and the mozzarella sticks. He tries the burger and remains indifferent to it. Tries the steak and confirms Hob’s guess that it’s dry and tasteless. Steals a few of the nachos that Hob pronounced his. Doesn’t even give Hob a chance to try the cheesecake. 

Hob gladly gives it up. 

 

“Do you think Johanna will actually find the stone?” Hob asks, when the meal is finished and he feels the weight of their silence again. 

Dream sighs, keeping his eyes on the table. Hob considers asking the waiter to pack up the leftovers, but then decides he’ll cook Dream something better tomorrow. 

“If anyone can, it is her,” Dream responds. 

“You think highly of her,” Hob notes and Dream doesn’t deny it. 

Clearly there’s history there. All Dream said about Constantine was that her family has served him well, but Hob finds himself curious for more. What connects her to him? What tasks did he have her do that he couldn’t assign to Hob, instead? How come she’s deserving of knowing him, helping him, and he is not?

Mad at himself for such pathetic and ugly thoughts, Hob shoves them down. 

“It will still take her time,” Dream says and Hob has to remind himself to listen, “Days,weeks. We must try our own way, in the meantime,” 

“I…yeah, we can,” Hob allows, “Just…not sure what that would be,”

Dream looks out the window. The sun is still high in the sky, despite how late it is. The street they’re on is quite alive and Dream watches attentively as a man attempts to cross the street on the yellow light. His indifferent eyes widen as a car speeds towards the man and mere seconds save him from death. 

He turns to Hob, eyes glimmering. 

“I may have an idea,” he says. 

What follows next is pure madness. 

 

“Are you insane?” Hob asks, blunt and loud, once Dream finally shuts up, “It’s a genuine question, did she bring you back mad?”

“I understand the risks-,”

“The risks?” Hob makes an effort not to jump out of his seat. His attempts not to attract attention are fruitless, though - everyone is staring at them. 

“You’re proposing pure insanity. Staging a near death situation to meet your sister?” Dream nods, not at all understanding Hob’s reaction. 

“It will certainly attract her attention,”

“It won’t,” Hob says, “I’ve been in accidents that were supposed to be lethal before, she didn’t care,”

“It won’t be you,” Dream says calmly, “It will be me,”

Hob doesn’t know what to say. His hand moves on its own, pushing an empty plate off the table and the sound of it shattering brings him back to reality. 

The waiter – who didn’t sign up for any of this – is by his side before Hob can react. He apologizes profusely, and gets out of the table. He pays, leaving a generous tip and heads out of the cafe. Dream is following him, but they stop by the car. 

“It might work,” Dream insists.

“Or you’ll die. Again,” Hob forces himself to say, “Or get injured,”

“It is within my right to try-,”

“No, it is not,” Hob says and there’s a speech bubbling up in his throat, something about how your life doesn’t just belong to you, and your death won’t happen to you at all, just like Dream’s death didn’t happen to him. It happened to the room of people who spoke and cried at his funeral. It happened to Hob. 

“I veto it,” he says instead, finally shocking Dream into silence. Hob uses the moment to unlock the car and get in. 

Dream does the same. 

“I haven’t granted you veto rights,” he says, as Hob starts the car. 

He scoffs

“I think you did when you showed up at my door in the middle of the night and immediately started bossing me around,”

Dream doesn’t respond, but at least his awful idea is seemingly forgotten. It takes Hob a minute to get rid of its aftertaste, though, to relax his shoulder, slow down his breath, stop squeezing the wheel until his knuckles are bright white. Dream would do this. There’s no escaping it. But this time, Hob is there to stop him. This time. 

 

---

 

By the time they reach home, Hob is too tired to feel anything else but his exhaustion. When the door finally closes behind them, he sighs with relief. That doesn’t last. With his friend there, silent and moody, he’s never felt this…restless within these walls. He leaves Dream in the living room to go use the bathroom and comes back to see him standing in the same place, in the same position. His face is unreadable, he won’t talk to him, won’t even look at him. Hob doesn’t know what to say to him either. He wants to ask if he’s okay, how he feels, but he’s been unsuccessfully attempting that all day. 

“Do you…wanna sit down?” he asks, nodding at the couch. Dream obeys silently. 

This is progress, Hob supposes. 

He offers Dream things to eat, or drink and he turns everything down with a polite No, thank you. Quarter of an hour passes like this – in awkward silence, the two of them sharing the space of Hob’s living room, his couch, but feeling like there’s a universe between them. Hob ends the torture, getting up and saying that he’ll prepare the guest bedroom for Dream. 

 

Hob is an excellent host and has many friends, so his guest bedroom always is prepared, with clean sheets and stocked up bathroom, but he goes over everything once again, swapping perfectly fresh pillow cases with other perfectly fresh ones, opening the window to let some air in, leaving the lights on. He goes to his own bedroom and retrieves a change of clothes for Dream, if he wants them. Then he calls for him. 

“So,” he clears his throat as Dream walks around the room, “Mi casa e su casa, obviously,”

He tries to chuckle, but Dream doesn’t respond. Hob sighs and forces himself to speak. 

“I’m going off of an assumption that as an Endless you didn’t really have the need to take care of your physical body, though I also am sure you’ve seen what humans usually do. Certainly someone has dreamed of taking a shower before,” Hob wants to die of how awkward this feels.

“I can show you how the shower works, no problem, but you should find everything you need stocked up. And here’s some clothes for you to sleep in. They’re clean and as close to your goth aesthetic as I could find,” he lets everything out in one breath. Dream is seated on the edge of the bed, watching him.

“My bedroom is right there,” he points, “So if you need me for any reason at all…I’m here,”

Dream is still silent and the look on his face goes from attentive to analyzing and just weird, so Hob chooses to consider the conversation finished. 

“You must be tired, maybe you should go to sleep before-,”

“Hob,” Dream says, finally.

“Yeah?”

He evades his gaze, turning it down on his hands. 

“I do not wish to take your hospitality for granted. More importantly, I don’t wish to be a burden to you. Just because it was your door I showed up at yesterday, doesn’t mean you are now responsible for me and if my presence inconveniences you in any way, you must tell me and-,”

“Dream,” Hob says. He looks up. 

Hob expected anything, but that. Every word from Dream’s mouth is a small arrow to Hob’s heart. He doesn’t know what to say, but he knows he must stop this nonsense. 

Hob cannot explain how all distance disappeared between them. He couldn’t tell you where he got the courage to sit next to Dream and place his hand on his shoulder, causing a breathy gasp to escape his lips. 

“If you try to leave, I simply won’t let you go. I’m stronger than I look, actually,”

Dream looks at him, the joke lost on him. So Hob speaks plainly.

“I want you here,” he says, “I’m happy you’re here. I’m…I’m very happy you’re here,”

Dream swallows. And then there’s another new sign of humanity – a faint blush creeping up on his cheeks and down his neck. He nods quickly. Relaxes. 

Crisis is averted, but Hob can’t look away. Fears that none of this is real and that he’s just dreaming come back. He pushes them down. He gives Dream’s shoulder a gentle squeeze, gets up and leaves the room, before he says or does too much. 

Today was eventful enough.

Notes:

Thank you for reading!

Writing all Johanna scenes has been very fun. I love her to death. I'm planing to write little cameo-like appearances from some other Sandman characters. Let me know if you have any guesses/requests :)

I finally got around to outlining the fic, and it seems like we're stuck here for a while. I hope you enjoy it. Please let me know your thoughts!

Chapter 5: Chapter Four

To his own surprise, Hob sleeps through the entire night, with no nightmares or unpleasant dreams visiting him. Having forgotten to set an alarm last evening, he wakes earlier than he usually does on the weekends, but way later than he used to. It’s a bit after 10, when Hob opens his eyes for the first time on that Sunday. There’s time to take one singular breath before his anxiety begins choking him. Memories of the last day and the previous night flood his mind. He jumps out of the bed and almost runs into the living room, to find Dream seated on the couch. 

His hair is wet and he’s wearing the pajamas Hob gave him last night, which – as he predicted – are too big for him. The black shirt is too loose in the neckline, exposing part of Dream’s collarbone and shoulder. The grey pants are too long. Dream is even wearing slippers. 

Hob spends way too much time staring, before he remembers to talk. 

“Good morning,” he says, making an effort to sound normal and casual, “How’d you sleep?”

“Well, thank you,” Dream responds, his voice emotionless. Hob can’t help noting that it sounds like an automatic response. 

Dream joins him in the kitchen, as Hob brews the coffee. He doesn’t ask his guest how he takes it, figures it will be easier to do what he did yesterday – present him with a bunch of options and see what he likes more. He opens the cabinet above his head and considers. There’s Italian espresso that sounds like something Dream would enjoy, but there’s always a chance he, like Hob, will find it too bitter. A couple years back Hob gave in and bought a fancy coffee machine that is big and functional enough to substitute a whole coffee shop. He could make him one of those ridiculous frappuccino drinks with some sugary syrups and cream on top. He did like the cheesecake yesterday. 

“I had an idea,” Dream says, pulling Hob out of his thoughts. He turns around. 

“Instead of summoning my sister, we could go somewhere we know she will be,”

Hob sighs. 

“Do you not want to have breakfast first?” he asks

“This is important,” Dream insists and by his tone, yeah it is, “You swore to help,”

Swore? When?

“And I will,” Hob says, “But I’m afraid I won’t be much of a help without coffee and breakfast first. And most likely, neither will you,”

Dream rolls his eyes and obediently sits at the table, ready to be served. Hob smiles at him, affection blooming in his chest. 

 

Dream has the patience to eat one toast, a slice of an apple and one forkfull of the eggs Hob made, before he goes back to talking about his idea. As for the coffee, he favors americano. Hob memorizes that. 

“Somewhere we know Death will be,” he repeats Dream’s words, “Like a hospital? A hospice?”

Dream’s eyes light up.

“Exactly,” he says. 

Hob pulls out his phone and does a quick google search: how many people die in a single hospital per day?

0.3 to 3 or more deaths per day, Google responds. 

“Okay, yeah, this might work,” Hob says and Dream rises to his feet, impatient. 

“We mustn’t waste any time,” he says

“Dream, we can’t just go into a hospital and ask who’s about to die,” Hob says, but the idea doesn’t seem that obvious to Dream. He looks at him with why not? written on his face. 

“They’re not gonna let us in without a good excuse,” 

Dream seems devastated by such senseless development. He sits back down – more like drops himself on the chair, sighs, and crosses his arms at his chest. Somehow, even such a childish gesture looks good on him. Hob groans, leaves his half-finished breakfast and gets up.

“Let me make some calls,”

 

In his life, Hob has hit the rock bottom many times and each time he managed to find a deeper one. There were periods – years, decades – when he was broke, nameless, disgraced. But not this one. Certainly not this one. 

By most standards, Hob is a rich man. He doesn’t like showing it off, almost no one in his life knows just how much Hob has to his (fake) name, but now, he’s rich enough to know that the real capital is not money. 

It is connections.  

Surely, he could get them into a hospital. 

 

“Alright, I can’t believe that worked,” he says, returning to the kitchen

“What worked?”

“I have a friend who owns a private hospice for the elderly outside of London. I called in for a favor, she’s expecting us in the afternoon,” Hob beams

“Without a good excuse?”

“Well,” Hob sighs, “I had to say you’re writing a book about the elderly life in the UK and I’m helping you with research. She’s obsessed with writers, so it was the only way,”
Dream hums. Nods. 

“When do we leave?”

 

Hob tries to get Dream to eat something else, considering the two hour drive ahead of him, but he refuses. The spoiled child aspect of his personality is on full display now – he ignores Hob’s attempts to call to his reason. The only thing that stops him from storming out of the apartment is the simple fact that he has nothing to wear. 

“Everything of mine is too big for you,” Hob says, standing in front of his open closet with Dream sitting on his bed behind him. 

“Should we stop by a store on the way?” he asks, knowing what Dream will say

“It will be a waste of time,” 

“Well what’s the alternative?” Hob turns around, “You’re supposed to be this fancy writer. Gotta dress the part,”

The importance of his appearance seems to finally reach Dream. He sighs. 

“We have to be quick,” he says

“Of course,” 

Hob pulls out a white t-shirt and a pair of jeans from his gym fanatic era that should stay on Dream’s narrow hips at least with the help of a belt. 

“Brush your hair, maybe,” he says and leaves the room. 

 

---

 

For some reason, Hob isn’t at all surprised to find out that Dream hates shopping. He is yet to find a human activity Dream doesn’t hate, but it’s only been a day and a half and Hob is a naturally optimistic person. 

They parked in front of the most generic male apparel store Hob could find and for the last 20 minutes Dream has been pacing around the store, with a deep frown on his face, pulling pieces of clothing out and putting them back in. 

“You were the one who said we need to hurry,” Hob, who’s following his every step, reminds him. Dream gives him the same look he gave him the day before, at the cafe. 

“I don’t like anything here,” he says, which Hob is already used to by now. 

“And you won’t, unless you start trying things on,”

Dream slips a sweater off its hanger – a deep maroon shade with a v-neck and looks at it for 10 seconds straight. 

“You choose,” he says then, “You have a much better grasp on human fashion of this century,”

Hob doesn’t know if he should take it as a compliment. 

“I’m not so sure about that,” he says, “Besides, we do have to buy you more clothes. Something you like, something you’ll be comfortable in,”

“It’s not important,” Dream says, putting the sweater back on its hanger and onto the rack, “All of this comes second to our task,”

Hob sighs. 

“It is important,” he insists, “We don’t know how long our task is gonna take,” Hob had to do the air quotes, “And…what happens after?”

It’s been just a little over 35 hours since Dream showed up outside of Hob’s house. More than 35 hours they spent in each other’s immediate proximity, and aside from Dream’s demands to see his sister, they haven’t really talked. Hob still forces any thoughts about the future out of his head, but what does Dream think? How does he picture the inevitable and terrifying after that would follow his encounter with his sister?

Hob didn’t intend his question as anything but rhetorical, but Dream looks at him with something very real in his eyes. Real and vulnerable. Hob holds his breath and waits, but Dream refuses him once again. He turns away and goes back to analyzing the clothes

“Try this,” Hob says, mainly just to say something and end this torture. He hands Dream a brown long sleeve shirt and a pair of dark grey slacks.

“It’s generic, but fits the character,” he says. Dream doesn’t argue, at least not with his words. His face is…as usual. 

Hob sends him to change, promising to find some shoes. His combat boots would work, he thinks, they’d bring some edginess into the outfit, but he should have options. 

By the time Hob finds a decent pair of lace-up shoes that are hopefully Dream’s size, he’s already waiting for him outside the changing room. 

No one would really call this outfit trendy or even stylish. It painfully lacked character, nothing to catch the eye. The eye of anyone, but Hob. 

Hob cannot hide his smile. 

“So? What do you think?” he asks, stepping closer

Dream looks down on himself, as if only now getting the idea to check the new clothes. He looks up and sighs. 

“I have no opinion regarding these clothes,” 

Hob drops himself on the little sofa, his head in his hands. 

“You said it fits the character,” Dream says, seeing Hob’s reaction. 

“It does, but I want you to like it,” he says, and Dream furrows his brows in confusion. 

“People use clothes as a means of self-expression. Or because it makes them feel good about themselves, their body,” he tries to explain. Dream doesn’t look like he cares about any of that.

“We don’t have time for this,” he says, “These clothes will suffice,”

“Fine, but we will have to come back,” Dream opens his mouth to argue and Hob physically shoves him back into the changing room, “Give me the clothes, I’ll go pay,”

 

On his way to the cashier Hob picks a couple plain t-shirts, one pair of jeans, some socks and underwear, all of which he hopes are at least close to his friend’s size. Waiting in line, paying, bringing the clothes back to Dream, waiting for him to change, it all takes way longer than what  either of them would prefer. By the time they make it to the car, it’s 2 pm, the time they agreed they’d already be at the hospice. 

Hob can sense Dream’s anxiety. It pours out of him in his rigid movements – in the way he fidgets with the seatbelt, unlocking it by accident a couple times; in the way he tugs on the collar and sleeves of his new sweater, the way he taps his foot endlessly, throughout the entire drive. It’s a test on Hob’s patience – was it anyone else in his passenger’s seat now, he’d most likely end up shouting at them and then feeling bad about it. With Dream, he says nothing. He breathes deeply every time he unlocks the seatbelt and the ear-curling sound of the alarm fills the car. 

“We need to work on your character,” Hob says, about halfway through. Dream is currently exploring the glove compartment. He acknowledges Hob’s words with a neutral hum

“I’ll have to introduce you to people, can’t exactly call you Dream,” Hob continues

Dream closes the glove compartment, finally stills. 

“What do we need?” he asks

“Well, a name, for sure. A brief backstory would be nice. You’re a writer, so maybe something you’ve worked on before,” Hob lists, “We need to decide how we met,”

He steals a quick look at Dream, but it doesn’t help decipher his emotions. It never does. 

“Is it really necessary?”

“Uh, yeah,” Hob says, “You’ll have to talk to people. Not just the patients there, my friend, too. And she’s very talkative and curious,”
Dream sighs. 

“I’ll go along with whatever you come up with,” he says, clearly trying to close this topic.

“Dream!” 

Hob wishes he wasn’t driving while having this conversation. 

“You can’t be so passive about this!”

This being your life, your new life, this blessing of a life, that I somehow ended up responsible for, even if you say I don’t have to be, Hob wants to add, but doesn’t.

“It is infinitely insignificant,”

“No, it’s not,” Hob insists, “It’s all important, okay, all of it. You need a name, and you need clothes, and you need to choose it all yourself for yourself. Please!”

Hob feels like he may have a fever. 

He rolls the window down, trying to get more air, trying to cool down.

“Humans do not name themselves,” Dream states. And looks at Hob, expectation in his eyes. 

“You want me to name you?” he asks. Dream nods. 

Hob gives in. For a minute he flips through a list of names in his mind, trying to attach any of them to the image of his friend. Nothing works. 

“I can’t,” he says, “I know it’s just for today, but I can’t. You’re Dream to me. Choose something yourself,”

Dream is silent for a few moments. 

“Dream is not a real name,” he then says, “I’m afraid the closest thing I have to an actual name is Morpheus. Dream is…what used to be my function. It is his now,”

There is sadness in his voice. Sadness and a strange kind of acceptance. 

Hob clears his throat.

“That’s the name you gave me,” he says, “Remember? In the New Inn, some months ago,”

“I do remember,”

“Do you wish for me to call you Morpheus?” Hob asks, “It is a bit formal, but…if that’s what feels right,”

“Nothing feels right,” Dream says under his breath and Hob has a feeling he doesn’t just mean the names. 

Maybe it’d be better, easier to drop it. Use any random name, Tom, or Bill, or whatever, and leave Dream alone. 

But…

“What feels more like you? Dream or Morpheus?” Hob asks, “Outside of the context of your function and the new guy and everything. When you think of yourself, what name comes to mind?”

“Dream,” he says right away, “But I have no rights for that name now,”

“Bullshit,” Hob says, “It’s your name! Who cares about rights and who else might have it?”

Dream doesn’t argue, but he doesn’t seem convinced either. 

“I’m calling you Dream,” Hob adds, definitive,  “And we can use Morpheus today. It’s a bit…unusual, but might fit the character of a pretentious writer,”

Dream doesn’t object. One less problem. 

The backstory is a bit easier to figure out. Robert Gilbert and Morpheus No-Last-Name met back in uni, when the former was doing his PhD in history, and the latter was studying English and creative writing. Morpheus lives abroad, so they don’t see each other much, but now he’s thinking of moving back home and delving into the world of non-fiction literature. 

Dream isn’t very interested in the process and agrees with everything Hob suggests, which is simultaneously easy, frustrating, and sad. 

 

It’s a relief when they make it to the hospice. 

 

Hob has known Larissa May for many years now, but he’s never taken her up on one of her endless invitations to come visit her hospice. She used to joke that one day, a day very far away, a room would be waiting for him.

She has no idea how long she'd have to wait. 

It’s an old mansion – big and moody – much more inviting than Hob expected. He leaves the car in the small parking lot and the two make their way to the front yard. There’s a small fountain with chairs and little tables around it – some empty, some occupied by the patients, or, as Larissa insists on calling them, the guests. 

She’s, of course, there to greet them, too. 

 

“Robert!” she cries before gathering Hob into an embrace, “It’s been so long!”

“It has,” Hob smiles, “You look as showstopping as ever, my dear,”

Larissa laughs. She is a tall, blonde woman with a brilliant smile and the most contagious laughter Hob has ever heard. 

He hasn’t heard it in a while.

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she says and drops her smile, all serious out of nowhere, “I should be mad at you, you know? I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks, and you call me back only when you need a favor,”

Hob freezes, his own smile gone, too. 

In all truth, most of his friends could say the same thing to him. He hasn’t been the best at keeping up with them since the…in a minute. 

Hob considers his words, which is hard when both Larissa and Dream look at him like he just committed a crime.

“It’s a good thing you can’t stay mad at me then, right?” he tries, and, inexplicably, the awkward joke works. Larissa rolls her eyes and grants him another small smile. 

“I suppose,” she says, “I shall not forgive you for your lack of manners, however. Introduce me to your friend this instant!” she demands. 

Hob turns to Dream. 

“This is my old pal, Morpheus,” he says, clasping his arm around his shoulder, desperately trying to sound convincing. For all his love of theater and cinema, Hob is and has always been an awful actor. 

“Morpheus, this is Larissa,”

The two shake hands. Dream – Morpheus – smiles politely, and Larissa’s eyes light up with interest. 

“Morpheus, what a name!” she says, still holding his hand, “It is a pleasure,”
“The pleasure is all mine,” Dream says and does the unbelievable thing of kissing Larissa’s hand. She melts. The tricks that Hob didn’t even know Dream had work perfectly on her – his slow bow, the ghost touch of his lips against the rough skin of a woman whose hands were never not working, his heavy gaze. She blushes like a school girl. Hob needn’t have worried at all. Dream’s got this. 

 

Larissa invites them into the hospice for a quick tour, but her attention is completely monopolized by Dream. Hob paces behind them, trying not to laugh, as the two converse. 

Larissa, predictably, has a ton of questions. Hob listens as Dream talks about their university life, the constant and never fading desire to write, the struggles of trying to get published. Larissa nods at every word, furrowing her brows in empathy. She vaguely gestures towards various hallways, explaining which rooms are where, though neither she, nor Dream actually care about the tour. She only remembers about Hob’s existence when Dream begins telling her of his kindness and hospitality. 

“Robert has supported my idea as a true friend, but it is my great regret we had to bother you in the process,” he says. 

“Oh, you stop it,” Larissa gasps, “I have enormous respect for writers. If I can help you with your book in any way, any whatsoever, it would be my joy,”

Hob cannot believe how well this is working. Too well, perhaps. With all this lying and pretending, he almost forgot that they are here to watch someone die.

“I believe it would be most useful if we could interview some of the oldest guests here. If you don’t mind, of course. Their experience could play a major role in my writing,”

Larissa nods. 

“I wouldn’t normally allow this,” she says, “The oldest guests of ours are nearing a hundred years old, they are much…fragile,” she looks at Hob, finally. 

“We understand, of course,” he says, “We won’t be long,”

She still seems hesitant, but the warm look Dream gives her melts her heart. She sighs. 

“Alright. Sir Ben Williams is rather…talkative, despite his age,” she says and begins walking deeper into the hallway. Dream and Hob follow her. 

“His health took a negative turn some weeks ago, unfortunately. He’s better now, otherwise I wouldn’t allow you to visit him, but remember he needs rest. Even when he insists he doesn’t,”

Hob nods. He looks at Dream, hoping to gain some of his determination, but fails. This feels wrong. 

Larissa disappears inside the room to talk to the patient, and the two of them wait. 

“Such a sweet talker, you are,” Hob can’t help it. 

“You said I must play a character,”

“Well, you’re quite a natural,”

Dream smirks, but the door opens and Larissa emerges before he can say anything. 

 

They are invited in. Larissa didn’t lie that this was a luxury hospice. Hob wonders and fears how much these people (or their children) are paying for it. There are multiple rooms, all beautifully decorated with soft furniture and warm lights. The wall-length windows look out into the forest that’s behind the hospice. It’s a nice place to grow old in, if one must, Hob thinks. 

The elderly man sitting on a chair by the window seems content enough to agree. 

“Sir,” Hob begins, “My name is Robert, this is my friend Morpheus,”

The man looks at them. 

“Yes, Larissa said you two have questions for me,” his voice is strong and steady. So is his gaze. Only the grey hair and wrinkled skin give out how old he might really be. 

“If you don’t mind,”

“Why would I?” he smiles, “Who am I to deny two youngsters some of my infinite wisdom?”

Hob smiles and looks at Dream. A small smile has graced his lips, too. 

Hob pulls two chairs and the “interview” begins. He and Dream are armed with notebooks and a recorder, all to look professional, but in reality, they are just killing time.

Sir Ben Williams and his infinite wisdom are certainly some good company for that. 

 

Hob has prepared a list of rather generic questions to ask during these interviews – things about his collocutor’s youth, career, his experience here, in Larissa’s hospice. Sir Williams is answering the questions with mild interest, but keeps throwing glances at Dream, who impatiently fidgets on his chair. 

“Aren’t you the writer?” he asks him, interrupting Hob’s brilliant question about the most popular hobbies among the elderly. 

“I am,” Dream responds. 

“And he’s your assistant?” he nods at Hob. Quite insulting. 

“He’s my friend. And he is far better at this than I am,”

The older man hums. 

“How old are you two?” he asks.

Dream and Hob share a glance. 

“We’re older than we look,” Hob says, making the man laugh

“And how old might that be? 35? 40?”

“You’re close enough,”

The secrecy doesn’t seem to anger Ben. He smirks and shakes his head.

“I suppose I’m being impolite,” he says, “It’s just…curious. Why you chose such a topic for your book,”

He looks at Dream and Hob begins to worry. They never really discussed this part of their backstory. 

“Like you said, sir,” Dream says, “We seek your infinite wisdom,”

Out of anyone else’s mouth the phrase would sound bitter, sarcastic, but Dream pours every bit of his sincerity into it. He says it like he means it. He does mean it. 

“Well,” Sir Williams clears his throat, “I shall not disappoint,”

 

Hob puts away the notebooks, forgets his list of questions. He leans back on the chair and listens as the man in front of him retells his life. It’s almost comical – he is in his 90s, but not more than a child, compared to Hob’s age. He’s nothing, a blink in the eyes of the universe, compared to Dream’s.

Hob still finds himself listening with interest to the tales of his life.

He’s led an honest, difficult life, worked hard, dreamed even harder. Perfectly normal, perfectly average. And now he’s here. Nothing in his tone suggests that he’s particularly happy or upset about this development. Sir Williams talks about his life as something that’s already behind him. 

Hob hates how similar he finds his tone of voice to Dream’s.

“I wanted to live my life so that I had no regrets. I always tried to tell the truth, do what’s right. I didn’t always manage, but my intentions were always in order,” he says, at the end of his tale, nodding at his own words, “If you two are here for some life-altering advice, you have the wrong room,”

Hob smiles together with Ben 

“Do you then?” he asks, “Have any regrets?”

“Oh, yes. Of course. Many, so many,” he shakes his head, “Nothing I can do about them now. They’ll go to the other side with me,”

Hob nods. He knows comforting the man is useless. He, too, is familar with the the taste of true regret.

“Are you afraid?” Dream asks. 

“To die? No,” Ben sighs, “I’ve lived here in this hospice for the last two years, waiting for her. Lady Death,”

Dream’s eyes light up. 

“You’re in good health. There may still be years ahead of you,” Hob tries, but the man dismisses him. 

“I can sense her,” he says and smiles, “She is…a frequent visitor to this place. I know she’ll come for me soon, too,”

Hob looks at Dream, whose face is too excited for a person who just heard someone say they may die soon. He gives his foot a quick kick. 

“Fearing death is pointless,” continues Sir Williams, “In the end, she’s there for all of us,”

Dream opens his mouth and Hob fears what will come out, but by the grace of god, there’s a knock on the door. Larissa peeks her head in, signaling for the two men to come see her. 

She’s sorry to interrupt, of course, but Ben needs rest and it is way past lunch time, but maybe the two of them will accompany her for afternoon tea? Hob immediately accepts the offer. Dream isn’t happy. 

“I must stay,” he whispers to Hob, falling two steps behind Larissa on their way to her office, “She might come to him today, I must be there,”

“We have no way of knowing that. Humans can’t actually sense their death coming,  you know? The man is just old and a bit crazy,” Hob whispers back. 

“I’d rather not take any chances,”

The furious whispering is not the most effective way of communicating and obviously Larissa can hear parts of it. She looks back and Hob smiles, elbowing Dream. 

“We can’t say no to her,” he insists, ignoring Dream’s pleading eyes – and those are hard to ignore. 

Dream doesn’t abandon his attempts to go back right until the moment the doors of Larissa’s office close after him. 

All the charm that was seeping out of him less than an hour before is now gone. He’s cold and disinterested, looking at the clock or the door, not even hiding it. Larissa’s questions either remain ignored, or honored by simple one sentence answers. Or picked up by Hob. 

Hob knows this about Dream, of course, he’s expected this. Once Dream’s attention is caught by something, nothing else in the world exists. 

“Do you believe you’ve gathered enough material by now?” Larissa asks when the tea is finished, which is her not-so-subtle way to know when they intend to leave. 

“No,” Dream answers, sharp and harsh, “We were in the middle of a conversation with Sir Williams, I hoped to return to it,”

Larissa purses her lips. Hob knows what she’s about to say. 

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” there it is, “The guests here have schedules. Sir Ben’s evening is full, I’m sorry,”

Dream leans forward in his chair. 

“I’m sure it is possible to make an exception once,” he says, “His contributions is beyond priceless, it is necessary,”

“Some other day, perhaps,” Larissa’s tone remains soft, but Hob knows she won’t give in, “You may interview some other guests, in the meantime,” she looks at the clock, “Although there is a long drive ahead of you and I know you don’t like driving during the night, Robert,”

She looks at Hob, perhaps out of real care, perhaps to get him to control his eager friend. If she only knew…

“We would hate to overstay your welcome, Larissa,” he says, “Two hours and we’re out of your hair,”

She agrees, insisting that overstaying her welcome is impossible, that they are always welcome here, but she must think of the guests first. Hob nods with understanding and sympathy. Dream stares ahead of himself, dark and broody. 

 

They go outside, back to the fountain. According to the strict schedule Larissa mentioned before, the guests usually enjoy some time outside before dinner, if the weather allows. Some engage in slow strolls, some read, write letters to their friends and relatives “on the outside”, paint, sew, chat among each other. Nurses walk among them, bringing them medicine and tea.

Dream eyes every single one of the people in front of him and turns to Hob. 

“He’s not here,” he says

“Larissa said he needs rest. He’s probably in his room,”

Dream takes it as an instruction to go directly there, and won’t listen to Hob’s explanations that they can’t disobey Larissa. It gets to the point where Hob needs to grab Dream by the elbow and drag him away from the building. He looks up and, of course, sees his friend watching them from her window. There’s a kind looking woman sitting by the fountain alone, and Hob quickly chooses her as their next victim for the fake interview. 

They introduce themselves to her – well, Hob does, because Dream doesn’t care about any of this anymore. He’s not rude, but he definitely doesn’t go out of his way to get his company to like him, like he did with Larissa and Sir Ben. 

So the interview begins. 

This time Hob sticks to the questions he’s prepared, asking her about the hospice, what she enjoys, what she dislikes, what she would change. The woman – Miss Carter – gives some pretty insightful answers and Hob thinks that all this research could actually benefit people, if he comes up with a way to use it. 

He finds himself immersed in the conversation, nodding and taking notes. And then  - an alarm goes off. 

In seconds, all nurses run inside and the patients begin murmuring among each other. Hob turns to Miss Carter. Her eyes are sad, worry painting her face. 

“What is this?” he asks

“An emergency alarm,” she explains, “Something…something bad is happening,”

When Hob turns to look at Dream, he’s already gone. Hob sees as he runs into the building. 

 

The peaceful and calm hospice is now filled with chaos and fear, you can smell it, sense it in the air. Hob rushes inside, following the crowd, but doing his best not to disturb anyone and get in anyone’s way. He sees Dream’s back next to one of the rooms. He, together with many nurses and some of the younger patients are looking through the open doors of Sir Ben Williams’s room. Hob approaches the room carefully, looking in. 

There are doctors inside and the man himself is hidden behind their backs. Larissa is in the corner of the room, staring ahead of herself with blank, defeated eyes. Her expression tells Hob everything he needs to know. 

He walks closer to Dream. Places a hand on his shoulder, making him turn to him. There are tears in his blue, heartbroken eyes. 

Hob holds his gaze and waits. Dream shakes his head once.

He takes Dream’s hand and leads him away. His friend shows no resistance, doesn’t say anything. Not until they’re away from the chaos, not until they are in the car. 

It’s not in Hob’s habit to leave without saying goodbye, but he believes it’s the best thing he can do for Larissa now. He’ll call her tomorrow. He’ll start calling her more often. 

Dream is still silent when the car door closes behind him. 

“You didn’t see her?” Hob asks, though the answer is obvious. 

“No,” Dream’s voice is dry, lifeless.

“Were you…too late?”

“No. I was there when he…,” he doesn’t finish his phrase, “She is avoiding me. She knows I’m looking for her, and she’s hiding,”

Hob looks at Dream, at the singular tear that has fallen from his eye and rolled down his cheek, at his shaking hands. He reaches out, puts his own hand on top of Dream’s. He looks up.

“Maybe…maybe this is a sign. To stop looking,” he offers. He expects Dream to get angry, to push him away, to shout. But he doesn’t.

“What…what do I do then?” he looks up at him and asks, voice barely above a whisper, a desperate plea, a horrific secret that has been behind all these pointless attempts all along. 

Hob holds his gaze. 

He doesn’t have an answer.

Notes:

Thank you for reading!

Kinda hate this chapter and I sure am glad to be done with it.
I didn't do nearly enough research for it, which I ask you to forgive me for. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

I like the idea of both Dream and Hob being unimaginably old and still horrible at communicating and very much not in touch with their feelings. This slow burn is as frustrating to write, as I imagine it is to read.

Let me know what you think!

Chapter 6: Chapter Five

Dream is a shadow in Hob’s home. A wordless, silent ghost, who passes from one room to another, aimless and unreachable. His distance and coldness are not new, but they have gotten worse since their visit to Larissa’s hospice. 

Hob blames himself. 

He cannot help it. That night, after coming home, he lay in bed wide awake, staring at the ceiling, replaying the conversation they had in the car.

 

What do I do? Dream asked him. Hob has never seen him like this – this vulnerable and lost, sitting in Hob’s car and asking for guidance that Hob couldn’t give him. All he could do was squeeze his hand and say something like we’ll figure it out, which wasn’t convincing to either of them.

Dream stared at him for another moment, waiting for something else, something better, and when nothing came, he looked away. Released himself from Hob’s touch. And didn’t say another word until they made it home. 

 

Of course Dream is disappointed. Hob understands it. His plan was air tight, fool-proof, and yet it failed. Clearly Death didn’t want to be found. She brought him back and abandoned him, and though Hob doesn’t know Death of the Endless that well – for better or for worse – he still feels like it’s out of character for her. She loved her little brother. Loves him still. Loves him enough to bring him back from oblivion, but not enough to talk to him?

Hob feels out of his depth. He gladly agreed to help Dream in locating her – he’d agree to anything he asked, in that state, but what help can he truly be?

This thought, this painful realization is reinforced further when the Monday morning comes and Hob is reminded that he does in fact have a life outside of this mess, that he has to go to work. 

 

He awakes at 6:30 am, like he always does on weekdays, but doesn’t snooze his alarm 10 times before finally getting up. Afraid to wake Dream up, he turns the sound off on his phone and tip toes out of his bedroom. No music in the shower, no hair drier, even. He considers having his breakfast in a cafe on the campus, to avoid making noise while cooking, but his worries are misplaced. Dream is already up, sitting on the couch in the living room. 

“Dream!” Hob’s own voice cuts through his ears, bright and too loud in the otherwise silent room. 

“You’re up early,” 

Dream clearly doesn’t believe that Hob stating a fact grants a response from him, so he just hums in agreement. 

“Did you sleep okay?” Hob tries again

“Yes,” Dream answers.

Nothing in his tone indicates that he’s lying, but Hob knows he is. He spends another moment staring at his friend, looking for signs of insomnia or sickness. He’s very pale, but he always is. There are dark circles under his eyes, but they’ve always been there. He looks mildly irritated and not at all well-rested, but that look would be so alien on him, if Hob ever saw him like that, he probably wouldn’t even recognize him. 

Hob sighs and walks into the kitchen. 

He wonders if Dream would even tell him if anything was wrong, physically. He's been a human for a little over 48 hours, everything is supposed to be new and strange to him, but Dream doesn’t ask any questions. Doesn’t say he’s hungry, unless Hob shoves food into his mouth. He’s never once mentioned being tired, or having a headache, or anything of that sort, except for their very first conversation, when he said that everything hurts. 

“Dream, are you feeling alright?” Hob asks, busying himself with making coffee. 

His guest has already made his way into the kitchen too, sitting down and watching Hob. 

“Why are you asking?”

“Just…because?” he says,

Dream stares at him for a moment. 

“I’m okay,” he assures Hob, “Your concerns are misplaced,”

Alright…

Hob places the coffee in front of Dream and opens the fridge. 

“Anything in particular you want me to make for breakfast?” he tries. Dream doesn’t respond, so he turns around. It was a shrug. His response was a careless, indifferent shrug. 

Hob turns back to the fridge, mainly to hide the frustration that was painting his face red. 

He never thought he could be angry at Dream. And he’s still not, but his apathy is driving him insane and reduces him to tears. 

Hob’s never been a particularly patient man, but he’s always had to be patient. For Dream. He had to be patient enough to sustain 100 year breaks in between their meetings. Patient enough to pour his heart to him every time, and not even get a first name in return. Patient enough to have him say that he’s leaving and never coming back, and wait for him still. 

Hob has spent the majority of his life waiting for Dream. 

And now he’s here. 

 

Hob can be patient once more.

 

He turns around to him and smiles. 

“I think today grants a good old indulgent, extremely sweet breakfast,” he says, cringing at his own words, at the fake joy in his voice, but standing his ground. Dream’s facial expression doesn’t change. But he is drinking the coffee. 

 

It’s been ages since Hob has had the energy or the wish to cook a proper breakfast in the morning. Usually it’s just coffee and a quick toast, if he has to leave for work. Today, he’s already made his peace with being a little late for the first lecture. The pancakes and waffles he makes are worth it, though. 

He places two large plates in front of Dream – one with the pancakes, one with waffles. He did use the same batter for both, but somehow they taste different anyway. He cut some fresh fruit – strawberries, peaches, and bananas, cracked open a Nutella jar and some jam one of his students had gifted him. 

“Today we shall find out if you’re a sweet breakfast or savory breakfast type of person,” he says, sitting down at the table. 

 

...

Hob is delighted. 

This is the most he’s ever seen Dream eat and he stares and watches him shamelessly, his friend’s satisfaction feeling even better to him than satiating his own hunger. Dream undeniably has a sweet tooth. He diligently covers the entirety of the waffle in Nutella, his gaze fixed and attentive, before cutting it into little squares and eating them. By the time he’s done, the lower part of his face is covered in chocolate and it’s an effort for Hob to just hand him a napkin, instead of reaching out and wiping it away himself. 

“You’re a fine cook,” Dream says and that might be the nicest thing Hob’s ever heard out of his mouth. 

“This is nothing,” he says, “I’ll cook you something more interesting for dinner,”

Hob finishes the strawberry and proclaims breakfast finished. 

“Important question,” he says, getting up to gather the plates, “Which did you like more, pancakes or waffles?”

Dream furrows his brows, considering the question, as a true academic. 

“Waffles,” he says. 

No further elaboration follows. 

 

Hob has to leave in under 20 minutes if he wants to make it to his first lecture, so he decides to make washing the dishes a future him problem. He leaves the plates in the sink and turns around. Dream is watching him. 

“So,” he starts, “I do have to go to work today,”

If he didn’ know any better, Hob would assume the news upset Dream. His brows furrow for a second and he takes a bit longer than usual to respond. 

“Of course,” he says. 

“I’ll come home for lunch and bring you something,” he promises. 

Dream nods slightly, but his eyes are restless. 

“You can…go outside, if you want, obviously, but…maybe don’t go too far?” The idea is actually quite mortifying to Hob. He forces the words out, but inside he panics. He doesn’t know how he’ll spend the whole day at work, without Dream in his immediate vicinity. He’ll worry himself sick. 

“I’ll get you a phone,” he says, “Just…to be safe,”

He walks past Dream. He needs to get dressed, gather his things, preferably brush his hair, but Dream, still sitting at the table, following Hob with his eyes, is like a magnet, keeping him there. He hesitates some more before sighing and turning to Dream once again. 

“Unless you want to come with me?” he says and goes as far as to bite his lips in a nervous expression. Not one part of him thinks Dream would agree to this. 

“To your university?” he asks

“Yeah?” Hob tries, “I don’t promise it’ll be very fun, but…,”

But what? You’ll be with me, next to me, around me, where I can see you, I can talk to you, touch you, if I muster up the courage? I won’t have to worry, won’t have to convince myself that the last two days were more than just a hallucination, won’t have to fight images of you dead and gone and missing and out of my life again?

The pause is very long. 

“Yeah, I don’t really have anything convincing to say,” Hob admits, “The weather isn’t bad, though,”

“Okay,” Dream says, miraculously. 

For a second Hob thinks he’s misheard him. 

“Okay? You’re coming?”

Dream nods and gets up from the table. 

Hob is trying and failing not to smile too hard. 

“Okay,” he says, “We do have to hurry,”

 

Dream dresses in the new clothes they’d bought for him – dark blue jeans and a white T-shirt. The weather really is quite nice, but it might get chilly in the evening, so Hob grabs a flannel button-up for him. He hands it to Dream in the car. 

“What is this?”

“For you,” Hob says, buckling his seatbelt, “If you get cold,”

Dream studies his face for a moment too long. The alarm reminds him of his own seatbelt, and Hob starts the car.

“I have three lectures today,” he tells Dream, “And some office hours and a meeting. Should be free around five,”

“What should I do in the meantime?”

“You can sit in on the lectures, if you like. It won’t be anything new to you, I’m sure, but…I try very hard not to bore my students, so…,”

Hob looks over to see if he’s managed to make Dream smile, and no, he hasn’t, but his gaze is significantly softer. 

“The campus is huge and pretty safe, so you can walk around if you want,” he says, “Do stay on the campus, though. Please,”

Getting Dream a phone is not just a good idea, but an urgent task now. 

 

On their way to the lecture hall, Dream is characteristically quiet, while Hob’s mind is occupied, racing, and agitated, which hasn’t happened before lectures in a while. They’ve already decided on Dream’s backstory – they took the easy option of using the lie they’d made up for Larissa. Morpheus is an old friend, visiting town, and Hob is showing him his workplace, et cetera, et cetera. 

Easy stuff, but Hob is still nervous. Nervous to teach in front of Dream, nervous that his coworkers will inevitably embarrass him, nervous that Dream will find all of this insufferably boring and just leave. 

 

They stop in front of the lecture hall. By  some magic, they are not late, but most of the students are already inside, some rushing in now, mumbling a good morning prof to Hob and throwing a confused glance at Dream. Hob pulls him aside. 

“Take a seat somewhere in the back,” he says, “Or the very front, but those seats are usually occupied. Come to me if you need anything or if you’re dying of boredom,”

“I cannot imagine how…,” Dream takes lecture notes out of Hob’s hands and reads, “Medieval Government and Society can be boring,”

Hob scoffs.

“When did you learn sarcasm?”

“What sarcasm?”

Hob rolls his eyes, but he can’t stop smiling. He opens the doors for Dream. The class is full.

 

Dream takes a seat in the very back of the lecture hall and doesn’t take his eyes off of Hob once. At first – it’s intimidating. Dream’s heavy gaze makes Hob stumble on his words, mix up papers, confuse dates. At first. There comes a point when instead of mortifying him, Dream’s attention begins fueling Hob. After all, he wants Dream to see him at his best. A few times he feels like he has achieved that – after a particularly clever anecdote or an insightful response to a student’s question – Dream would grant him a small, approving smile. 

Hob is confident that if Dream keeps looking at him like that, he’d invent the perpetual motion machine. 

 

Once the lecture is over, as usual, a group of particularly curious students gather around Hob’s desk to ask even more questions. Any other day, Hob would welcome and encourage it. Today he’s half listening to them, half peeking in the space between their bodies to catch a glimpse of his friend.

His friend, who too is talking to someone, all the way in the last row. 

 

By the time he is freed, the second lecture is about to begin. All Hob has time for is to take a quick swing out of his water bottle and watch as Dream exits the lecture hall, in the company of that same someone. 

Hob doesn’t worry. 

He leads the lecture calmly and contently, not looking at the clock or the door, not wondering who that person was, where they could take Dream, what they were talking about, and why Dream would even leave with them, without warning him first.

 

By the end of the lecture – the longest lecture of his life – Hob can no longer lie to himself. He is worried. No, he is terrified. He cannot control his brain as it supplies endless scenarios of Dream getting kidnapped, run over by a car, getting lost, getting hurt. He should have told him to stay in the lecture hall. He should have followed him out. 

 

Professor Gilbert, for the first time in his career, doesn’t take any post-lecture questions and asks to email them to him, as he rushes out of the room. Thankfully, he has an hour-long break before the next lecture. He usually takes his lunch during this time, and he wanted to take Dream to his favorite sandwich shop on campus, but now food is the last thing on his mind. He’s prepared to spend the whole hour frantically running around the campus, searching for his friend. 

Which he doesn’t believe will be easy. 

He doesn’t have a picture to show to anyone. Attempting to describe him to people probably won’t be very successful, either. Have you seen my friend? He’s a skinny, pale looking guy, who looks like he hasn’t slept in at least 4 decades and stares at everyone with contempt and resentment?

It’s a college campus. 80% of people here fit that description. 

 

Hob rushes through his floor, peeking into every room, knowing how much the lecturer would hate it and doing it anyway. Dream is nowhere to be found. Hob walks into every bathroom, calls out a shy Morpheus? and runs away when no response follows. He doesn’t forget to pass through storage rooms and knocks on every office, apologizing that he’s got the wrong room every time. 

This building has 4 floors. 

The procedure repeats 4 times. 

On the ground floor, most of Hob’s hope is gone. If Dream’s not here, then he’s outside, then he’s anywhere. 

He bites his lower lip and almost draws blood. He cannot think like this. Cannot let his anxiety take over. Full of (fake) determination, Hob turns around to examine the ground floor and almost walks into Doctor Brown, the geography professor. 

“Oh!” the man stumbles, somehow managing not to spill his papers on the floor, “Rob! You alright?”

“Sorry, mate,” Hob sighs, “Wasn’t looking where I’m going,”

“Clearly,” the man says, but there’s no venom in his voice. His eyes are soft beneath his glasses. 

“I haven’t seen you in a while, how are you?” he asks.

Precisely the conversation Hob has been avoiding. 

Professor Brown, or Mike, as Hob is used to calling him, is the closest thing he has to a friend in this university. They started here around the same time and for their both sakes, decided to stick together. A Friday night pint became a tradition, a lunch together every Wednesday - a rule set in stone, a debriefing session after every university staff meeting was basically the only thing that kept them sane. 

But all of this was so long ago. 

It’s been months since Hob joined Mike in a pub on a Friday. Same with the Wednesday lunches – Hob either went home, or ate at his desk alone. The debriefing sessions still happened, because staff meetings still happened, but Hob didn’t have that much to say anymore. 

This wouldn’t be Hob’s first friendship to quietly fade into his grief. But Mike had other plans. 

 

Almost two months have passed since the last time they spoke properly, since Mike noticed the change, when after the last lecture of the day, he waited up for Hob by his car, refusing to leave until they talked. He was dramatic enough to stand in front of the car and yell that he won’t move even if Hob runs him over. Hob had no such thing in mind, though telling Mike the truth wasn’t an option either. 

I lost someone, he said. Mike nodded, as if his theory got confirmed. He had many questions, but they diminished with every vague answer Hob gave. In the end, he gave up. Promised that he’s there if Hob needs him, begged not to isolate himself too much, made Hob swear to show up next Friday. 

That was 3 weeks ago. They haven’t talked since.

“All good,” Hob says, “How are you?”

Mike raises his eyebrows, places his hands on his sides. Hob knows a lecture is coming. 

He only has half of his break left and whatever Mike wants to say to him, he doesn’t care, he’s heard it all before. He’s looking behind him, way past trying to hide it. They’re standing in front of a library, kids keep walking in and out, and the doors remain open only for seconds, but Hob tries to scan the whole room in that time. 

“Listen, Rob, I’m your friend,” Mike says. 

The library doors close. Hob looks at him and nods. 

“Of course,”

“I worry about you,” he says.

The doors open. It’s crowded, too crowded to make someone out.

“Yeah, I know,”

“I’m truly sorry about your loss, but you can’t go on like this,”

The doors close. Hob looks around the hallway.

“No, of course,”

The doors open. A group of girls passes through, forming a wall through which Hob cannot see. 

“This isn’t like you! The guys and I are thinking maybe you need professional help,”

“Definitely,”

The girls are gone and Hob can see a glimpse of jet black hair. The clothes match. Hob gasps.

“Dream!” he cries out, pushing past Mike, somewhere in the back of his head registering that he will have to apologize for this, profusely. 

“Rob! What the hell!” 

Mike is following him, but Hob is barely noticing it. He pushes the library doors open, and yes, Dream is here. Leaning against a shelf, with a book in hand, Hob’s flannel shirt on his shoulder, here he is. Safe, complete, alive. 

Hob breathes out, thankful not to be crying. 

He walks up to him. 

“There you are,”

Dream looks up, unaware of the turmoil he’s just caused. Hob is still trying to catch his breath. 

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I just…,” Hob lets out a breathy chuckle, “I just ran through the whole building looking for you,”

Dream stares at him in complete shock. He opens his mouth to say something, but then Mike catches up to them. 

“Hi there,” he says, his eyes jumping from beaming Hob to confused Dream. 

“Mike,” Hob starts, “Sorry, I just…this is my friend Morpheus. Morph, this is Professor Michael Brown,”

Hob is in no state to come up with excuses for his behavior and hopes Mike will just let it go. The two shake hands wordlessly. It’s all quite awkward. 

“It’s a pleasure,” Mike says, his face saying something else all together, “You’ve never mentioned a Morpheus,” 

Hob sighs. He’s aware of how this might look to Mike. Maybe he even has a right to be defensive. The only thing that could deflate the situation is the truth. Which is, obviously, not an option.

“I’m afraid I haven’t heard Robert speak of you, either, Professor,” Dream says, placing the final nail in the coffin of this being a civil conversation.

Mike grants him his fakest of smiles. 

“My mistake,” Hob intervenes. 

Silence falls over them and Hob desperately wants to get himself out of this situation. He pulls out his phone. 

“Oh, the break’s almost done,” he exclaims, “Have you eaten?” he asks Mike.

“Yes,” Mike says and leans towards Hob, so that his words fall to his ears only, “Can we talk?”

Hob throws a glance at Dream, his own gaze a tangible thing on Hob’s skin.

“I’m sorry, mate,” he says, “We have to go, I’ll talk to you later,”

Mike wants to object, but is not given a chance to do so. Hob shoulders Dream, who puts his books back on the shelf and looks Mike in the eye. 

“It’s been a pleasure,”

They leave. 

Hob’s shoulders relax only when they reach the sandwich shop and sit down. He makes an order, pointing at something in the menu, not really thinking about what he’s asking for or realizing how Dream is looking at him. Or how rude he just was to his friend of many years. 

That worry, that fear he felt while looking for Dream still lingers in his chest and Hob can only hope it doesn’t show on his face. He doesn’t know what to do with this feeling. Dream isn’t his property. He cannot be losing mind every time he wanders off. He cannot tie a leash to him and keep him around always and forever. There is no forever, not with them. Their future is too foggy, an unpromised thing that constantly rings in the back of Hob’s head, pressing against his skull in unanswered questions, unmade plans. Hob cannot think about it, he cannot think about anything else. 

The simple fact remains - once Dream’s fixation with finding his sister passes (if it ever does), he might want to leave. 

Hob looks at Dream and reminds himself:

This is not forever. 

 

“I enjoyed your lecture,” Dream says suddenly. He’s sipping on a diet coke that he clearly doesn’t like, but Hob felt like it’s one of those things he had to try.

“Thanks,” Hob smiles. 

Why’d you leave then? He doesn’t ask. 

“I saw you…made a friend,” he says instead. 

Dream furrows his brow in confusion.

“You talked to someone and then left with them,” 

Hob tries very hard to make his voice sound normal, as if it was just a casual observation, not the result of him stalking Dream like prey the whole lecture. It doesn’t work, of course, but thankfully the sandwiches come, easing the tension a bit. 

Dream picks his sandwich apart. He opens the bread and analyzes each ingredient carefully, as if working in a lab. After a few moments, he’s seemingly satisfied with what he sees. He closes the sandwich and takes a bite. 

Hob wonders if he’s going to say anything and if not, should he repeat himself? Will it be strange?

“It was a student of yours. They assumed I was new and introduced themselves,” he says eventually.

The sandwich does seem to his liking. Hob wishes he remembered what he’d ordered.

“How nice,”

Dream hums.

“What’d you talk about?”

Dream looks up from his food.

“Just curious,”

He leans back on his chair.

“Nothing particularly interesting. The usual…pleasantries,”

Hob feels like he’s being teased. 

“They did give me this,” 

Dream reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a crumpled piece of paper. Hob looks at it, then at Dream, wordlessly asking a permission that Dream grants. Hob straightens out the paper on the table and, oh horror. 

It’s a phone number. 

With a little heart drawn next to it. 

Hob looks up and Dream is smirking. He quickly erases that smirk and returns his attention to the sandwich. Hob is still holding the piece of paper in his hands and is reminded that he has to say something. 

“Wow,” he clears his throat, “What a productive lecture,”

Dream nods. 

“I guess it’s another reason to get you a phone,”

He nods again.

Hob is losing his appetite.

“You can use mine for now, if you want,”

Dream seems to consider it, but then shakes his head. 

“What a scandal it will be, if someone finds out a professor has contacted one of his students in such a way,” 

Such a way? 

“Besides. I do believe they are too young for me,”

Dream smirks again, but this time it reaches his eyes, bringing an amused sort of crinkle to them. Hob rolls his own eyes and puts the paper on the table, close to Dream’s plate. He doesn’t take it. 

 

Since Hob spent most of his break running around the campus looking for Dream, they do have to rush back to make it to the next and last lecture of the day. Hob doesn’t ask Dream not to leave, but the understanding seems to pass between them. Dream takes his previous place in the back of the room and stays there.

 

Hob’s work day doesn’t end with that lecture, unfortunately. There are hours left, a staff meeting and his perpetually overbooked office hours, and obviously – Dream cannot participate in any of that. They agree to meet at the library at 5 pm. Hob knows he shouldn’t do it, but he still asks Dream not to go too far away. Again. 

Forcing his heart to be calm, he watches his friend’s back as he walks away. 

Get used to that view, something cruel in his mind says. 

 

---

 

At 5 pm sharp Hob kicks the last student out of his office, gathers his things and heads downstairs. The university building is almost empty at that hour, and considering how far away the exam season is, the library shouldn’t be too crowded either. 

Hob finds Dream, sitting at a desk with piles of books shielding him away from the world. 

He smiles and comes up to him. 

“Do you wanna enroll in a course maybe?” Hob jokes, but Dream looks up at him, wide-eyed. 

Hob scans the books on the table with his eyes. 

Death by Shelly Kagan

The View from Nowhere

How We Die

Book of the Dead

Gates of Death

The Pagan Book of Living and Dying

How cheerful.

“How are these?”

Dream sighs.

“I cannot tell you,” he says, frustrated, “I came here right after I left your lecture, and I haven’t finished a single one of them,”

Hob looks at the watch on his wrist. 

“You didn’t finish a…,” he picks up the book closest to Dream and flips to the last page, “...a 700 page book in 2 hours and 20 minutes? Is that why you’re upset?”

“How long would it take you to finish it?”

“Uhm,” Hob considers, “A week or so, if I have other things to do. Maybe less, if I’m not busy,”

Dream is shocked. 

“I didn’t…realize how limited human brain is,”

Hob chuckles and pulls out a chair for himself. 

“Did you just call me stupid?”

Dream stares at him, from underneath his lashes. 

“You can take these home, if you want,” Hob says, “Do you think they will be helpful?”

Dream sighs again.

“No,” he says, “I cannot imagine real advice on how to summon Death to be found in a book one can access in a university library, so easily,”

Hob nods. 

“Probably not,” he says, “But there’s still hope with Johanna and the stone,”

Dream nods, something too desperate to be called hope swimming in his eyes.

He takes the books with him. 

 

They drive home, and on the way Hob does stop at an electronics store. He spends a while looking at the newest iPhone models, while Dream waits by his side, uninterested in what the latest human technological progress has to offer. When Hob hands him an iPhone, Dream doesn’t really know what to do with it. Hob tries to explain, of course, but there is so much to explain and Dream’s only question is why? Why do you need all this? Why is this what you consider the peak of convenience? 

The shopping consultants try to help, but soon they give up too, standing in pairs aside from them, whispering God knows what. Someone is theorizing Dream is an alien. He has the look. 

In the end, Hob opts for a simple flip phone with big buttons and a very limited amount of functions. It can call, it can text, it has a camera, it even has a calculator that can do things that the limited human brain can’t or doesn’t want to do. Hob pays for the purchase, hands the phone to Dream and braces himself for the fun evening of teaching Dream how to use it. 

...

“Alright, Dream,”

They’re seated on the couch in Hob’s living room, about 20 minutes into the most difficult and demanding lecture of Hob’s educational career and the only thing Dream has learned to do is open the phone and find the telephone icon. 

“Do you want to have a password on your phone?” Hob asks. Dream stares at him.

“Why?”

“So that no one else can use it, except for you. So no one can read your texts or see your pictures,”

Dream considers it. 

“Do you have a password on your phone?”

“Yeah, I do. Most people do,”

“Why? Who are you keeping things from?”

“Uh, no one. This isn’t about keeping secrets, it’s about privacy,” Hob explains. 

“But you live alone,”

“Yeah, but what if I lose it or someone steals it? I have confidential information on it,”

“Such as?”

“My bank information. Private messages, pictures. Very…strange notes,”

Dream tilts his head. 

“Can I see your phone?” he asks.

Uh…

“Sure,”

Hob hands him his few-models-too-old iPhone. It is locked, Hob’s schedule still on the lockscreen. Dream stares at the pin pad, but doesn’t ask for the code. 

“2988,” Hob says. 

Dream looks up at him and then carefully inserts the code. 

He looks weird with the blue light illuminating his face from below, but Dream is completely focused. He slowly swipes along the home screen, seemingly reading the name of every single app. Hob watches his face and feels like an invisible hand is squeezing his heart, every drop of affection he has spilling out. 

Hob still watches, as Dream’s finger hovers over the Photos icon. He doesn’t mind it, doesn’t try to stop Dream, but Dream stops himself. He turns the phone face-down and hands it back. 

“Thank you,” he says. 

And then it’s back to his ancient flip phone. 

By bed-time, Dream confidently knows how to unlock his phone, send a text, accept, reject, and start a phone call. He did impose a password, but he’s shared it with Hob, too.

Hob is proud, happy, and exhausted. 

He falls asleep the moment his head touches the pillow. 

---

 

The next mornings follow the same routine 

Hob wakes up and Dream is already awake, sitting in the kitchen. They eat breakfast – Hob tries to make something new every time, switching between savoury and sweet. In his mind, there already is a list of foods Dream enjoys and doesn’t:

 

Dream-approved:

Cheesecakes

Waffles

Apples

Nutella

Crispy friend eggs with runny yolk

Strawberry

Fries

Americano

Green tea

Not-Dream-approved:

Yogurt

Jams

Black tea (okay if with honey/sugar)

Hashbrowns

Plain toasts

Anything mashed

Anything steamed

Raisins

Spinach

Broccoli

 

Hob should probably start writing it down somewhere. 

 

Dream goes to work with him every day. Now that he has a phone, Hob feels a bit calmer if Dream decides not to sit in on a lecture and go wander the campus instead. Most times, he ends up in the library, spending hours and hours there, getting used to the speed of his own brain.

Still, Hob cannot help himself and every hour he sends Dream a text. 

 

H: everything okay?

D: yds

 

D: yes

 

He tries. 

By the end of the day, their dialogues look quite ridiculous – akin to a conversation between an ever-worried mother and a very indifferent child. 

 

H: everything okay?

D: yes

 

an  hour passes

 

H: are you alright? Where are you?

D: library

 

another hour passes

 

H: I’m coming to get you, let’s get lunch. You hungry yet?

D: ok

 

two more hours

 

H: I’m so tired. What are you doing?

D: outside.

 

It’s amusing. Or rather, Hob chooses to see it as amusing. He rereads the texts in the free moments in between lectures and imagines Dream’s focused face as he taps on the buttons, writing out his – yes, very short – answers. 

 

Every day they meet at 5 pm in the library and go home. 

Less than a week passes in such a way, but Hob is already used to it. It already feels like he’s been living like this – they’ve been living like this – forever. 

It’s a beautiful feeling. 

 

---

 

There is one other thing that interrupts his otherwise pretty content days. Hob doesn’t know for sure if the reason why his usual sleep schedule changed so drastically in the last few months could be attributed to what happened to Dream and all the changes Dreaming had gone through, but he does suspect it. 

In all 600 years of his life, he’s never really had sleep problems. He slept like a baby on satin sheets, in the arms of various lovers, under pouring rain on the street with nothing but an old, worn-out coat to cover himself with. No nightmare of Dream's creation has ever taken a particular liking to him. They happened to him, of course, and while the occasions were quite memorable, they weren’t numerous. 

On average, Hob went to sleep at a reasonable hour, slept through the entire night, and woke up quite easily (well-rested or not depended fully on what Hob chose to do while awake. A teaching job doesn’t necessarily entail a stress-free life)

Not anymore. 

 

It’s been months since Hob slept more than 4 hours uninterrupted – aside from the first couple nights after Dream came back, but Hob blamed it on his shock and unbelievable exhaustion. As soon as a faint resemblance of a routine returned into Hob’s life, so did his issues with sleep. 

And now, some time after 3 am – Hob doesn’t know the exact time because he’s making a point of not touching his phone, and not turning his head to the bedside table with a clock, and not opening his eyes at all – he is wide awake. No nightmare has awakened him, no noise from inside or outside of the house, just Hob’s own brain, his own thoughts, his own worries. 

 

He fights it for a little while longer – stubborn and tired in advance. If he doesn’t manage to fall asleep right now, he’ll only have about 3 hours left to sleep and will be destroyed in the morning. He has to grant papers tomorrow. Read them. Understand and comprehend the words. 

 

Hob groans and gets out of the bed. 

Sometimes moving around works. He’ll go to the empty living room, to the silent kitchen, walk back and merciful sleep will be waiting in bed. That’s what he’s hoping for. 

 

The kitchen is silent, but it certainly is not empty. Moonlit, Dream sits on his usual chair. Hob walks in, startled by his friend’s unexpected presence and reaches out to turn the light on. The harsh lamplight floods the room and Dream squints before looking up at Hob, as surprised to see him as Hob is.

“Dream?” Hob asks, “What are you doing?”

“Did I awake you?”

“Uh, no,” he says, “I wanted to get some water,”

Dream nods, as if allowing Hob to get to his task, and doesn’t answer his question. 

“Can’t sleep?” he tries again.

Dream doesn’t answer. He’s looking at his hands, folded neatly on the table.  Hob puts a kettle on, instead. 

“Did you…have a nightmare?” Hob dares, although the question certainly won’t be welcome and almost definitely won’t be answered. Dream looks up at him again. 

“Did you?”

“Not tonight, no,” he says, “But…it does happen, sometimes. It’s normal,”

“I know it’s normal,”

Right. 

Hob doesn’t know how to talk to Dream about this. Or anything, to be honest. Every conversation is like a mine field and Hob always seems to be stepping on the wrong spots. He is now almost certain Dream did have a nightmare, but all potential words of comfort coming to his mind seem pathetic and useless. What does Hob have to say that Dream doesn’t already know? That he didn’t invent?

He sighs, makes two cups of tea and sits down opposite Dream. 

“I used to have this…recuring nightmare that is…quite stupid, honestly,” he starts, “In that dream I’d wake up and it was 1389 again. All my life, everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve done, none of it was real. It was all just a long, elaborate, insane dream. I’d never…never had children, never fought in any of the wars, become a professor, a publisher, a sailor, anything. I’d never met you. Never gotten…your crazy gift,” Dream opens his mouth to correct him, but Hob is ahead of him, “Your sister’s crazy gift. None of it was real. I was just a nobody, talking crap at some shitty inn and no one ever made my delusions real,”

Hob can’t hold back a chuckle, but the nightmare is still real to him, the feeling of loss still prominent and heavy in his heart. 

“It sounds silly, but it’s terrifying every time,” 

Dream is silent for a moment, considering Hob’s speech. 

“That nightmare wasn’t my doing, if that’s what you’re asking,” he says in the end, “Not deliberately,”
Hob smiles. He wants to know more, but is afraid to ask. 

“Dreamers create their own nightmares. I only supply the tools,” Dream says, “Supplied,”

Hob nods. He expected something like this. 

“I get it. I guess it makes sense. Those dreams would leave me shaken for days, but certainly made me appreciate my crazy life more,” Hob says, “I guess that’s the point of many nightmares,”

“There is no point,” Dream says, “Just like there is no meaning. Once again, you create it yourself,”

Hob rolls his eyes and smiles. 

“Will you tell me yours?” he asks, carefully. He doesn’t expect Dream to answer, to the contrary, he almost expects him to storm out of the room or just ignore him, but he still decides to ask. 

Dream watches the tea in his mug, his gentle fingers wrapped firmly around it. 

“I barely remember it,” he says. Hob’s body leans forward, as if hypnotized. 

“It is…darkness, complete and utter and unnatural. I know I’m not…anywhere. It is not Dreaming, it is not Waking, it is nothing, where nothing is meant to be, but I am there, alone and…as if…it is like I’m drowning, but there is no water, as if I’m burning, but it’s so cold. I do not have a body – there is no one for me to manifest myself for, no one to perceive a dream and I…I know that time doesn’t exist there either, so it is all just one frozen moment and-,” Dream’s voice breaks and Hob can hear him shutting his mouth – a quick sound of teeth harshly hitting each other once. He shuts his eyes, too, and says nothing else. Hob is selfishly glad of it. 

“Dream,” his voice comes out hoarse. He clears his throat and tries again, “Has it…has it happened every night?” he asks and in his head he begs Dream to say no. 

Dream nods. 

Hob isn’t at all surprised. 

Dream has been alive and human for over a week now and Hob has already managed to fail him. Too drunk on his own joy, too consumed by his own grief finally unceasing him, Hob didn’t notice the obvious. 

Has Dream been spending all his nights like this? Sitting alone in his dark kitchen, listening to an occasional car passing, staring out the window, waiting for the sun to rise? Is that why Hob always found him already awake, no matter what time he got up? Why didn’t he ask? How could he be so blind?

“You…you should have told me,” he says, hating himself more for making it all about him, for allowing Dream to trust him, to rely on him, while being so unworthy of it. 

“Why?” Dream asks and seems to be sincere.

“I could have…tried to help,”

“How? There is nothing you can do to stop this. You cannot stop your own nightmares,”

“Yes, I cannot stop them, but…there are things we can do to make it better. Anything is better than just keeping it all inside and shouldering all of it by yourself,” Hob insists, “Do you not feel better already? Having told me about it?”

Dream doesn’t answer. Which Hob takes as an unwilling yes. 

“Let’s make a deal,” he says, “You have a nightmare, you wake me up. No matter what time, just wake me up,”

Dream doesn’t like it. Hob can tell. 

“It is useless,”

“Do it as a favor, then. To me,” he says. 

Hob reaches out his hand and Dream looks at it, but doesn’t move. Hob is stubborn – he will let it hang between them all night (or until it falls off) if that’s what it takes. Dream seems to understand it. He sighs, reaches out and shakes his hand. 

It’s a deal. 

 

---

 

The next night, Dream wakes him up at 2 am with a knock on his door. After that day, Hob remembers to leave the door open. Dream has nightmares every single night.

 

Most nights, they pace to the kitchen together, Hob makes tea and they sit at the table until Dream’s breath slows and his hands stop trembling. Every night Hob asks what he saw. Dream doesn’t always answer, but his nightmares are often similar – same abstract ideas of complete darkness, and solitude, and horror. He’s almost never in a talkative mood in those moments, so Hob takes it upon himself to distract him, sway his mind away from the place it just escaped, and fill it with useless details of his work life, funny things his students say, silly stories from his past that seemed too minor and insignificant to share with Dream before, but work perfectly now. It takes about an hour or two and Hob sees Dream’s eyes shutting down on their own. They go back to their bedrooms. Sometimes the nightmare strikes twice in the same night. They repeat the procedure until the sun rises. 

 

The routine does get interrupted eventually. One night, just like any other, Dream comes to Hob, wakes him up with a gentle tap on his arm and an apology. Hob wipes sleep off his eyes and sits up on the bed. Usually, the next step is Dream getting up and pacing to the kitchen with Hob yawning and following him. But not tonight.

Tonight, Dream sits on the bed and doesn’t move. The half-drawn blinds cast lines of light on his face, as he stares out the window. 

“I saw my parents,” Dream says after a couple minutes of silence. 

Hob sits up straighter, trying to read Dream’s face. He’s never talked about his parents before, Hob doesn’t even know their names or what exactly they are.

“What happened?” he asks

Dream looks at him, but he seems so far away, he probably didn’t even hear the question. 

“Hob, were you close to your parents?” Dream asks, catching him off-guard

“I…maybe not by the modern day standards, but yeah, I think,” he says, “Were you?”

A bitter smile appears on Dream’s face.

“I suppose I…was close enough to them to turn out exactly like my father,”
Hob breathes in.

“I don’t think that’s true,” he says, that mine-field feeling filling him again, “I mean, I don’t know your father, but I kinda figured you don’t mean it as a compliment,” 

“Not exactly,” the humorless, joyless smile returns for a brief moment, “In my dream they…they came to find me here, in the Waking,”

“To take you back?”

“To be with me,” Dream looks up, his eyes full of wonder, “To be a family,”

“Doesn’t sound like a nightmare,” Hob says

“Yes. It feels…worse,”

Oh, Dream, Hob doesn’t say. 

He looks so tired. So unhappy. Hob doesn’t know what to say, what to do.

“I’m sorry, Dream,” he says. 

Dream looks at him and holds eye contact. Even in the low light of the moon, his eyes are exceptionally clear. 

“Come here. Lay down,” Hob whispers, moving away to give him room on the bed. 

Dream lays his head on Hob’s pillow, his body turned to him. Hob has to remind himself to breathe. 

“Something has to be wrong with me,” he says, voice quiet and weak, “I cannot master things that come naturally to all humanity. I cannot even sleep,”

“Don’t you say that,” Hob frowns, his face a breath away, “None of this is your fault. You need to be gentle with yourself, give yourself time,”

“I…I can’t,” Dream whispers, closing his eyes, “I just can’t,”

Hob doesn’t pull Dream into an embrace, doesn’t kiss his tears away from his eyes, but does the closest thing he can muster up the courage to do. He puts his hand on Dream’s shoulder. The touch, like always, makes Dream gasp, but he doesn’t pull away. 

“You can,” Hob says, “I know it, you know it. And if you forget, I’ll be here to remind you,”

Dream doesn’t say anything. After a moment, he nods. 

“Sleep, Dream. I shall fight off your nightmares,” 

Dream is amused by the words, but doesn’t comment on them. He closes his eyes, his breath evening out. Hob watches him for a long while, notices the moment when his sleep becomes deeper, when his irises stop fluttering underneath his eyelids, when the rhythm of his breath gets slower, when his lips part, a peaceful expression taking over his face. 

He allows himself another act of bravery – he brushes Dream’s hair away from his face, stunned by the newfound knowledge of how soft his skin is.

Hob could watch him all night, but his own sleep takes over. 

When he wakes up, Dream is, miraculously, still there, still asleep. Hob sneaks out of the bed, into the shower, and when he emerges from it, the bed is empty. 

He finds him in the kitchen and they do not talk about last night. Not then, not ever. 

 

All following nights resume the old routine – quiet, mostly one-sided conversations in the kitchen over cooling tea, before they each go to their own bedroom and get a couple more pathetic hours of sleep. 

 

Yes, Hob is perpetually exhausted now. Yes, his students have been noticing it. Yes, it’s fucking hard. But to him, it’s a small price to pay. He doesn’t know if his scheme actually helps Dream – it certainly doesn’t stop the nightmares – but he keeps showing up in the middle of the night, keeps tapping on his arm, calling out his name in a low, shaken voice and looking at him like a child when Hob finally wakes up. If it is any comfort at all for Dream, it is worth it. 

But momentary comfort is not enough, Dream needs a solution. 

Any advice online is useless. Endless articles recommend establishing a comfortable night routine – easier said than done when dealing with an ex anthropomorphic personification that keeps trying to run off to find his sister – or eliminating stress from your life (no comment). Starting to see a therapist is not an option either. When Hob suggests it, Dream all but laughs in his face. One tangible direction Hob saw and followed was getting a night light. Didn’t do anything. 

They’ve tried making the room cooler, hotter, changing the bedding, adding more pillows, removing pillows, changing rooms. Nothing works. The nightmare finds Dream even if he dozes off in the passenger’s seat of Hob’s car. 

Hob’s personal theory that he refuses to share with Dream, is that he had pissed off or generally mistreated some particular nightmare of his own creation that is now taking revenge on the helpless, human former ruler of his. If that is the case, however, the only plausible solution is something that Dream doesn’t even want to hear about. Talking to…Dream. The new Dream. 

 

“We have at least two very possible ways of contacting him and you refuse to do it!”

They shouldn't be having this conversation in a car. They certainly shouldn’t be having this conversation while Hob is tired, frustrated and frankly, in a bad mood. He just had a good old tell-off at work for being late for the 4th time that week. It wasn’t Dream’s fault. But it was something Dream could fix. 

“If you think that I will ask Corinthian to ask his master to give me better dreams-,”

“I’ll ask him! Johanna will ask him! If not Corinthian, then Matthew! It’s only a matter of time before he comes around. If you’re so proud that you’d rather keep suffering,-”

“They cannot know I am alive,” Dream says, just like he does every time Hob brings up his friends from the Dreaming. 

Hob squeezes the wheel and breathes deeply. Definitely not the right place to talk about this. 

“Why?” he asks, just like he always does, “They will find out eventually. And it will hurt them deeply that you didn’t tell them,”

“I do not wish to talk about this any longer,” he says and turns away. As far as the limited space of the car allows. 

Hob does his best not to scream. 

It’s the same scene every time. Hob asks the same questions, Dream doesn’t answer. He either ends the conversation there and then, or mentions his sister, and how once he talks to her, everything will be back in order. What order he means and what exactly everything is, are other questions of Hob that are destined to remain unanswered. 

 

One somewhat positive development that has taken place lately is that Dream’s attempts to find Death have dwindled. After days of research, a few con artists who promised to summon her, but succeeded only in making Hob’s money disappear, Dream seemed to have run out of ideas. He still lingered at high-traffic crossroads and spent a day or two sitting outside of a city hospital, while Hob was at work, but now all his bets seemed to be on Johanna and her stone. His stone. 

 

Johanna texted Hob updates every so often and even asked about Dream. Her way with words didn’t necessarily indicate much warmth or care (still looking like a kicked puppy? How’s the black cat doing? Has he driven you mad yet? I refuse to babysit him next, just so you know), but if Hob ignored the questions, she’d ask again. 

She also asked for money. Lots of it. She said the task they assigned her was long and hard and expensive – the traveling to follow new leads, most of which turned out to be dead ends alone cost a lot – and kept reminding Hob of his own foolish words that he had money. Hob gave her however much she asked. Dream didn’t know about this. He didn’t think he’d care. 

 

All said and done, it took Johanna 3 weeks to find the stone. 

Exceptional. 

Hob knew people who have dedicated their entire lives to finding it. Who died trying. And now, this tiny girl is standing in Hob’s kitchen with a smug smirk on her face and a box in her hands that is supposed to have the answers to all Dream’s questions inside. 

She holds the box firmly. 

Dream looks at her like a predator at prey. 

“How on Earth-,” Hob starts, even though Johanna has already said not to ask. She did what was required of her. The rest is unnecessary details. 

“You didn’t doubt me, did you?” she asks, her smirk growing wider. 

“Not for a second,” Dream says, sarcastic or not - irrelevant, “Hand it over,”

Johanna does the opposite and hides the box behind her back. 

“Let’s go over our deal once more first,” she says. Dream is impatient, breathing deeply, dangerous fire playing in his eyes. Johanna already told Hob that his presence wasn’t necessary, but now it seems to be the question of her own safety. 

“You use the stone once. Then it’s mine,” she says. 

“The stone can only be used once,” 

“By a singular person, yes. But it can be sold. Rented out,” she says, “The previous owner knew that well,”

“Why would he give it to you then? This is priceless,” Hob insists, losing his mind trying to think of the way Johanna has achieved this. She smiles at him.

“This,” she shakes the box, “Doesn’t work,”

She turns her gaze back to Dream. 

“Which is another thing I want to discuss before I give you the stone. Regardless of how you use it, regardless of what happens after, I did my part. I will get my payment,”

“I never implied otherwise,”

“Well, I know you, immortal deities, you love to change your mind,” she says, “I don’t think humanity has changed you that much,”

“You shall get your reward,” Dream says and Hob can sense the effort he’s putting in to stay calm, “After I use the stone, you shall have it. And you shall have your peace. As we agreed,”

Johanna watches his face for a couple long moments. She’s looking for loopholes, looking for little ways out Dream might have created for himself that she cannot yet see. 

It doesn’t occur to her that yes, he is that desperate. 

“Fine,”

She places the box on the kitchen table. Dream rushes towards it, begins uncovering its contents. 

“Like I was saying, it doesn’t work,” she says, “I had a long conversation with the previous owner, who shall remain anonymous for his own sake and safety,” she looks pointedly at Hob, “He was using the stone like any self-respecting charlatan would, renting it out for absurd amounts of money, promising that it would do its job and give the people their one true wish. It never did, and his clients were quite powerful people. He spent his youth running away from the pissed off mafia bosses and crime lords that were hoping for an easy way out,”

“And he just gave it to you?” Hob asks. Johanna hesitates, but the urge to brag overweighs her secrecy.

“I freed him from it,” she says, “The stone became this poisonous thing. He was too rich to care about how to sell or rent it anymore. But couldn’t bring himself to throw it away either. And here I am, ready to take it off his hands, bring it to good use,”

Johanna smiles. Hob wonders how much of her tale is true.

He looks at Dream, who stands with the stone in his hands, mesmerized. 

Hob has never seen anything like it. 

The closest comparison he can think of is a sunstone. Bright, but translucent, with tiny specks of something darker, something deeper all over. The lapis desiderii is much larger than Hob imagined, almost as big as Dream’s head, probably heavy too. But the most remarkable thing is the light it emits, the rays of yellow and orange now dancing on Dream’s face, mixing with the blue of his eyes. Hob moves closer, he cannot help it. He looks at the stone in his hands, and finds that he doesn’t want to look away. It is the Sun. It is candle light, and fire, and the eye color of someone he’s met once. There is warmth in Hob’s chest. He wants to reach out, wants to touch it. He wants…

“The thing can hypnotize you, by the way,” Johanna’s voice cuts through the yellow-ish smog in Hob’s head, “Not sure what’s the purpose of that, but I didn’t like it. Hence the box,”

“It is not hypnosis,” Dream says, “The stone has no will of its own, the gift was made to me in good faith,”

“Then what’s with the…?” Hob doesn’t know how to describe the feeling. But Dream gets it.

“It helps you focus,” he says, looks at Johanna, “The reason why the stone doesn’t work for a lot of people is because a lot of people do not know what they want. Lapis desiderii more than simple wish magic,”

“How does it work then?” Johanna asks, “Since I’ll be using it next,”

Dream looks back at the stone. 

“You must focus your mind on your wish. Your deepest, truest wish. One thing you want the most in life, one desire that defines you, your whole being. You hold the stone and think of it. If what is on your mind does not match what is in your heart, the stone gives you nothing. It requires complete honesty from its owner. A small price to pay for everything you’ve ever wanted,”

There is silence. Hob cannot take his eyes away from Dream, from how his gaze softens as he looks down at the stone in his hands. He does not dare speak.

And then Johanna laughs. 

“Jesus, it’s a fucking scam,” she says, not ceasing her laughter. Dream has never looked more offended. 

“It is not,”

“Yeah, it is,” she insists, “I bet my entire life this crap has never worked for one human ever,”

“Possible. Humans rarely-,”

“Know what they want, yeah, you’ve said that,” Johanna rolls her eyes, “One true wish? One? What if I have two? What if there are two things I really really want in life and I choose one of them, I ask the stone, but the stone picks the other thing?”

Dream isn’t listening to her. He’s dismissed Johanna, and Hob too, to be honest. The only thing he cares about is the object in his hands. 

“I spent weeks searching for this thing and it’s a fluke,” she says

“Just three weeks,” Hob notes. Johanna gives him a look. 

“Dream, this won’t work,” she says. There is no more sarcasm or bitterness in her voice. She steps closer to him and repeats herself. He looks at her, but her words have no effect on him. 

“It will work,” he says.

“It hasn’t worked on anyone. The guy was loaning it out for decades and it’s never worked on anyone,”

“It will work on me. I know what I want,”

Johanna stands there, a plea in her eyes. 

But Dream will not be convinced. Hob knows it, too. Unless he tries it for himself, he won’t care what anyone else says. 

“Fine,” Johanna steps away, hugging her arms around her body, “Be my guest. I’m waiting for my stone back,”

Dream looks at her once more, then at Hob. The stone’s glow has gotten brighter somehow, and the warm color of the shining sun doesn’t seem so welcoming to Hob anymore. He wishes Johanna never found it. 

“I shall…,” Dream starts, “I will be back,”

He walks away and in moments Hob hears the bedroom door close. Johanna drops herself on a chair, her head in her hands. 

“I shouldn’t have given it to him,” she says. 

Hob cannot find it in himself to argue. 

 

Minutes pass, crawling slower and slower. Johanna doesn’t talk, doesn’t even move. Hob watches the hallway, alert for any sounds, wondering what will come next, wondering what will be worse, if Dream gets his wish, or if he doesn’t. 

Maybe Death is already there, in his guest bedroom, and Dream is getting his answers. Maybe the silence won’t be broken, maybe the blissful sound of the door opening again will not come and hours will pass before Hob gathers up the courage to go there himself, to open the bedroom door and find it empty, the wretched stone shining from under the bed. 

 

It doesn’t happen. 

The sound does come, quiet and long. Dream emerges into the kitchen. He doesn’t look at them and Hob cannot read his face. It is not happiness, that he can tell. 

Dream places the stone on the table, its light now insulting. 

“I thank you, Johanna,” he says, voice hoarse and low, “You may have your reward,”

He turns around and walks away. The bedroom door closes once more. 

In his wake, Johanna asks Hob if he wants her to stay. Asks it once, twice, and if she did it once more, he’d say yes, because maybe, by some magic, she’d find the words. She definitely has an easier time being honest with Dream, speaking plainly with him, even saying things she knows he doesn’t want to hear. 

But Johanna only asks him twice and Hob says no both times. He got this. He’ll talk to him, talk him down, talk him off the edge. All Dream’s hopes just came crushing down. Hob can handle this. 

 

Johanna takes the stone and leaves. Not once does the thought to try it on himself crosses Hob’s mind. 

He braces himself and walks to Dream’s bedroom. The door is closed, but not locked. He knocks once, twice, and waits. No answer follows, he knocks again. 

“Dream, it’s me,” Hob tries, “Can I come in?”

Silence.

“I just…can we talk?”

Silence. Complete, dead silence. 

Hob cannot take it. He opens the door and sees Dream seated on the bed, his back to the door, his head hung. Slowly, Hob walks up to him. 

“I’m really sorry the stone didn’t work,” he says, “I know you’re disappointed,”

Dream doesn’t respond, so Hob forces all the bravery he has out of himself and sits on the bed next to him. Moves closer, looks into his face. Hob expected to see tears, hear sobs, screaming, but his expectations couldn’t be more false. Dream’s expression is empty. Completely blank. His unblinking eyes are glued to the floor. Hob cannot be sure if he can even hear him. 

“Dream,” he asks, pleads, “Dream, will you look at me please?”

He obeys. The same blank face is now turned to Hob and it makes his stomach turn. His eyes look dead. Dream doesn’t look alive, doesn’t look human. 

Hob’s breath catches in his throat, but he needs to be stronger than his fears and worries now. For Dream. 

“I know…I know how hard this is, I know how much you wanted this to work,” he tries, even though every word that comes out of his mouth is a meaningless cliche, but he does mean it, “I cannot even imagine how much it fucking hurts, I’m so sorry,”

Hob puts his hand on Dream’s shoulder. Finally, his eyes move, Dream looks at the point of contact and then back at Hob’s face. 

“I’m so sorry, Dream. But…we will find another way,”

He knows it’s a lie as he says it. Not an empty hope, a lie. There is no other way, there is no point in trying, there is nothing they can do. Unless Death decides to have mercy on them, unless Dream changes his mind and talks to someone in the Dreaming, nothing else can be done. 

“I’m with you, okay? Even if…,” Hob takes a breath, “We can have a life, alright? Even if we never find your sister, we can…you can just be. Live. I know it seems scary and hopeless now, but I promise you, Dream, it won’t always feel like this. We can…we can do anything, I will help you through it all, you are not alone,”

Hob doesn’t notice how tears begin gathering in his eyes. How they fall. He lets them. 

“You will never be alone. There are things worth living for, I promise you,”

Dream fixes his gaze, as if exiting a trance. Hob sighs out in relief, a smile breaks over his face. Dream tilts his head. 

“Things worth living for,” he repeats and Hob nods excitedly, “Like what? You?”

 

It is the coldness of Dream’s tone that gets to Hob. How definitively he says it, how much he means it. He looks at Hob, as if really expecting an answer and Hob finds himself at a loss of words. His smile is gone. His tears take a new meaning. 

His chest feels tight and his hand falls from Dream’s shoulder, who doesn’t seem to notice the loss of the contact. Hob feels so silly now. So stupid. It isn’t that his earnestness was misplaced or unwelcome, it is the ridiculous thought that it could be enough. 

That he could be enough for Dream. 

 

There is noise in his ears, his own blood rushing from his heart, so Hob cannot be sure if he really does hear Dream ask him to leave. Tell him to leave. 

He does it anyway. 

The door shuts behind him. 

The house is silent. 

Notes:

Thank you for reading!

I apologize for taking so long with this chapter, it was a bitch to write, BUT it is probably my favorite chapter yet. It's long as hell and almost nothing happens, but I love a slice-of-life type of stories. Hope you enjoyed it too!

I'm struggling to maintain anything resembling a set posting schedule for this fic, but my plan is to finish it by the end of October. Wish me luck and pleaseee let me know what you think of the story so far! Your kudos and comments are everythingggg

Chapter 7: Chapter Six

Dream of the Endless did wonder, from time to time, what it would be like to be human. It wasn’t much more than mere curiosity, a thought in the back of his head he would sometimes return to. Nothing he’d ever act upon, certainly. He wasn’t like his sister, Death, who went as far as to take a day off once a century to try and be human. Dream found her little experiment endearing. If it helped her be better at her (impossible, in his humble opinion) job, he saw no harm in it. But it didn’t seem to him like a few hours of playing pretend made her actually understand what it is like. To be human. 

 

His once-a-century tradition brought him closer to it, he believed. At least it was meant to. Hob Gadling sat before him and explained in full detail his own very human experience. He’s told him of the good, the bad, the unspeakable. Dream listened, mesmerized, and left every one of their meetings as stumped as before. How could he want this? He asked himself. Dream did consider the idea that maybe Hob was just insane. 

Or maybe this understanding wasn’t Dream’s to attain. 

 

Dream respected humans. Had love for them. Served them with pride and honor. He always put their interests before his own, nothing mattered to him more than the dreamers, but human life, human experience just didn’t seem…worth it, to him. 

He spent eons watching them hurt, suffer, spend their waking days in pain and confusion and then spend the precious few hours of sleep dreaming of the same pain. A few decades of this pathetic excuse of an existence and then it’s done. You’re done. Sunless lands and the great unknown of the afterlife are waiting for you. Life sucks and then you die, some humans say. Who is Dream to disagree?

 

Not worth it was his best description of a human life. 

 

Until a human changed his mind. 

Until a human showed him what a few decades really are, how they feel, how that pain feels. Until he was forced out of his superior position, until his kingdom fell apart and he realized how fragile and breakable he really was. Until he, a necessary being, a crucial element of the balance of the Universe, an Endless, was held captive for a hundred years, and humanity went along just fine. The only consequence of his absence was the so-called sleepy sickness, but Dream knew humanity would find a way to fight through that, too. They always do. 

 

Dream no longer thought of the human condition as a few decades of inconvenience and pain. He didn’t share his sister’s romantic views of it, either, but he began…noticing more. Rose Walker’s bravery, the desperate love she had for her brother. The sacrifice of her grandmother. Lyta Hall’s warmth. Hob Gadling’s optimism and lust for life that Dream didn’t necessarily see as insanity anymore. 

Dream admired humanity, maybe for the first time. 

But he still had no idea what it really meant to be human. What it felt like. 

Until that changed, too. 

 

---

 

Immediate regret creeps into Dream’s bones the moment Hob leaves. This is a new thing too, something he’s still trying to get used to – his emotions feeling so real, so raw, almost physical sensations in his body. That regret feels like an ache in his stomach, like something sharp and alien inside of him, and it moves deeper and deeper, meaning to stay. 

His mind replays Hob’s shocked paling face, images of him retreating, moving away and leaving. Before, Dream felt empty. When the stone didn’t work, when the very last hope of his crashed, he just felt empty. Now that emptiness fills with a bitter realization that he’s hurt someone who…someone he doesn’t deserve. 

 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, the part of him still capable of thinking and being reasonable tells him that he should go to Hob, apologize to him. Explain that he didn’t mean what he said, that the disappointment was – is – too much to bear, that Hob’s presence in this pathetic existence of his that he cannot even call a life has in fact been the only thing that made it tolerable. But Dream doesn’t do it. He hears his door close, and then the house is silent, his shaky breath the only sound insulting his ears. He stays like this, the same way that Hob found him – sitting on the edge of the bed, staring on the floor with unblinking eyes. 

It’s over, he hears his own thoughts. 

He doesn’t know what exactly is over. He didn’t realize anything had begun. 

 

...

Back when Dream was still himself, he didn’t feel time passing the way humans do. There were no strict lines between days, weeks, months – Dream didn’t sleep, but at all times there were souls asleep and dreaming. The night never ended.

Now, that sensation, that uninterrupted flow of time is back. It passes him by, like a river, while he sits ashore. Days pass and Dream doesn’t leave his room. Every once in a while, Hob knocks, and when Dream doesn’t respond, he comes in. Says something that Dream doesn’t listen to. Raises his voice, but his efforts are fruitless. He leaves food on the other side of the bed, and the next time takes it away barely touched. 

When the first Monday comes around (Hob informs him of it), he asks Dream to come to work with him. He starts off by telling him of how nice the weather is and that his lectures today will actually be interesting. Then, he switches strategies and just begs. 

“Please, Dream,” Hob says, somewhere behind his back, somewhere Dream can’t see him, “Please just come with me. I’m scared to leave you alone like this,”

Dream cannot take the strain in his voice. He shuts his eyes and waits for it to be over, but Hob is nothing if not persistent. He stays and asks, begs, repeats that he’s worried and scared and Dream can hear that he’s close to tears. 

“Leave,” he says. It is not a command, it’s a plea, but he tries to make his voice sound strict and sure, “I’m okay. Leave, please,”

After a while, Hob does. 

Seconds pass and Dream’s door closes again. Then, in a few minutes, the entrance door of the house closes. Hob unlocks his car, starts it. Dream listens as it drives away. 

Then, he cries. 

 

Tears fall down his face, staining his pillow. In the past, he could make a whole world drown in rain with his sadness. Now it’s just wet spots on linen and an uncomfortable sensation in his nose. 

He cries until that sensation turns into pain, until a rageful headache takes over him, but even then he doesn’t stop. Cannot stop. Dream has never cried like this, and maybe that is the reason. He doesn’t just cry over the useless stone, or Hob, he mourns his entire existence, every mistake of his, every wrong step. The more he allows the tears to fall, the more memories worth crying over arise in his head. The faces of people he’s left behind feel like sharp needles pointed at his heart – he cannot blink away the last look Lucienne has given him. He cannot shut his ears closely enough to stop Matthew’s words from ringing in his mind. He looks down on his hands and sees his son’s blood again. 

This makes him get up. 

He jumps out of the bed, gasping. More than anything he wishes the house wasn’t this silent, this empty. He’d hate for Hob to see him like this, he’d send him away if he tried to come into the room now, but his quiet steps outside the door and the low sound of TV playing in the living room were more comforting than Dream could know. Now it’s all gone. 

He walks out of the room, willing his head to stop spinning. He paces to the kitchen – a familiar walk he did every night, when nightmares and old memories pushed him out of his bed, and he didn’t know what to do to fight them. Hob did know. 

There is a note on the kitchen table. With shaky hands Dream picks it up and reads it. 

 

Please eat something. I’ll be home as quickly as I can. If anything happens, or if you just feel like it, please call me. 

Hob.

 

Dream didn’t think it would be possible, but his tears return even stronger. A couple fall on the piece of paper and Dream puts it down. He does consider it, calling Hob. But what would he say? He’s had days to talk to him, apologize to him, but he couldn’t even look him in the eye. It’s not worth it now – calling him while he's busy, making him worry. Dream knows Hob would drop everything and come to him. So he doesn’t call. 

 

He feels so weak, his own body not listening to him, unable to even stand upright. He paces back into the hallway, but doesn’t go to his room. Instead, he pushes the door into Hob’s bedroom and stands there, for seconds, for minutes. He looks at the perfectly arranged bed and remembers the one night he’s spent there. He remembers Hob’s concerned eyes on him, the meaningless and yet comforting whispers of his voice, the soft touch of his hands on his shoulder, on his face. Dream only feels human, real and alive when Hob touches him – electricity running from his fingertips right into Dream's bloodstream. He’s never felt this way before, not with other people, lovers, family, not even with Hob himself. They never touched much, before, but there was a moment when Hob allowed himself such bravery. Just as Dream was about to say his goodbyes that day,  the day of their first meeting in the 21st century, the first meeting after Dream’s imprisonment, after their fight, Hob hugged him. It lasted for less than 3 seconds, Hob pulling away quickly, blushed and wide-eyed, but it had stunned Dream anyway. 

And yet, it was nothing, compared to how his touch felt now. 

Dream drops himself on Hob’s bed, closes his eyes and inhales. It is Hob’s perfume, and all those self-care products he’d explained and offered to Dream, and something deeper, something that’s been unchanged for all 600 years of his life, the smell of his skin, his very essence. Dream breathes deep enough to stop crying. His eyelids feel so heavy, but he doesn’t notice how he falls asleep. He dreams of the soft autumn days, he dreams of Hob’s university campus, of his voice, his smile, his hands. He doesn’t hear it when Hob returns home, doesn’t even wake up when Hob calls out his name in panic, seeing his bedroom empty. He doesn’t wake up when Hob finally finds him, puts a blanket over his shoulders and closes the door. He sleeps through the rest of the evening and the whole night. 

 

---

 

Every day Hob and Dream play the same game. Every day each of them feel like they are the ones who lose. 

Hob tries to get Dream to talk. Dream tries to get Hob not to worry. Both fail. 

 

Dream starts going to the campus with Hob again. He finds the ordeal exhausting and largely pointless, but he cannot deny that he hates staying in the house alone even more. And the pure happiness on Hob’s face the first time he showed up in the kitchen at 8 am, dressed and showered is worth it. 

It’s not the same as it was, of course. Dream cannot bring himself to care about the lectures, doesn’t listen to them, doesn’t react to jokes Hob makes, doesn’t wish to discuss them afterwards. He goes to the library, but nothing interests him – every book is excessively long and boring and he cannot focus even if he tries. He walks the campus, but the golden part of autumn is long gone, now it’s all gray skies and endless rains. He doesn’t hate it, but he doesn’t like the extra layer of clothing he’s forced into wearing.

 

Lunch is Dream’s least favorite part of the day. 

He meets Hob, asks how the lecture went, and then Hob begins asking him questions. Dream feels like an object of a study, the way Hob looks at him, careful and restrained. His tone is always perfectly neutral, his questions are obviously prepared in advance, ranging from extremely safe (Did you find something interesting to read at the library?) to progressively more…risky, but never crossing that imaginary line of what Hob actually wants to ask. He is very easy to read. 

Ages ago Dream found all this tip-toeing adorable. Now it just feels unnatural. 

He knows he is to blame for this, he knows the reason why Hob is scared to have a proper conversation with him is because Dream doesn’t respond well to those. Or just doesn’t respond at all. He remembers his own words, his mean, venomous words, and the shock on Hob’s face. He still hasn’t apologized for them, and it’s a constant tug on his heart, constant ache of guilt, but he dreads bringing it up. He tries to avoid thinking about it all together. 

They’re fine now. Weeks pass and they don’t talk about anything real, anything of substance, but they are fine. They don’t talk about the future, even though it’s all Dream really thinks about. What now? He wants to scream into Hob’s face. What do I do now?

He doesn’t. Because they are fine.

Hob explains that the midterms season has approached, and now he is the one constantly busy and distracted. On more than one occasion Dream has had lunch alone. Sometimes people smile at him, rarely they approach him, ask him for his name, his major, his age. Dream lies three times. Some recognize him as the History professor’s friend and he unleashes the fake, much simpler story of their friendship. They ask him how the book is getting along and what his plans after are. He allows himself to admit he’s having quite a writer’s block and tries to take it one day at a time. They always say they get it. 

 

---

 

It’s one of the warmest days of November and Dream spends it outside, sitting on a bench with a library book next to him, that he hasn’t even started. The campus is half empty, most of the students crammed in lecture halls and study rooms. Someone still sits down next to him, though Dream isn’t necessarily in a talkative mood. 

He turns to them. 

Death of the Endless smiles at him. 

“Hello, Dream,” she says. 

Dream stares at her and wonders if he’s asleep, if this is just a dream or a hallucination. He doesn’t breathe, doesn’t blink, and his sister’s face goes from joyful to concerned. 

“Are you alright?” she asks, quite casually. 

Shock releases Dream. Anger takes over. 

“You…,” he forces out, “I have looked for you for-,”

“I know,” Death says. She leans back on the bench, making herself comfortable, “It was…impressive,”

“Impressive?”

“The lengths you went to,” she says, “Very like you, refusing to take the easy way out, inconveniencing yourself and others. Humanity hasn’t changed you at all!”

She grins at Dream, playfully slaps his shoulder. 

He stares at her, stunned. 

“You knew. This entire time you knew I searched for you and you hid from me,”

“I did not hide!”

“You knew!” Dream raises his voice, making a few heads turn at them. Death smiles at them, only making Dream angrier.

“Why? Why would you do this to me?” 

“Do what, Dream? I didn’t do anything!”

“Exactly! I needed you-,”

“You don’t see it now, but you didn’t need me. You didn’t need to talk to me, what you needed was some time and space,”

“Time and space? I needed answers! Need them still,”

Death sighs and closes her eyes. When she opens them back and turns to Dream, there is that signature smile of hers – perfectly calm, and warm, and motherly. Dream yearned to see it for weeks, months. Now it makes his skin crawl. 

“Dream,” she takes his hand, “What answers?”

He stares at her, not sure if he misheard her. His theory that all of this is just a dream comes back stronger in his thoughts. 

“Why am I here? Why am I alive?” he asks her. 

She smiles even softer. 

“I bet you every person here has asked themselves the same question,” she says, looking around at the young students making their way through the campus, through life. 

“I’m not joking,”

“Neither am I. The point of life is not exactly my specialty. I am Death,”

Dream breathes deeply, trying to gain control of his emotions. 

“I was dead. It was right and lawful for me to be dead. Then you did this, you broke every rule of your own creation and beyond to bring me back, and you turned me human. Why? For what?”

Death stares at him and her smile falls. She almost looks…guilty. 

“Lawful doesn’t necessarily mean right, you know?” she says and looks away. Dream waits. 

“I only wanted…to give you another chance. I wanted you to live,”

Dream stares at her. This is not enough. 

“You’re not like Destruction. You wouldn’t leave. You’re not like me. You wouldn’t bend your rules, or break them. You’re not like Delirium, either, you wouldn’t admit to change or adapt, you were so…so set in your ways and so unhappy,” Death looks up at Dream, and he sees tears in her eyes, “There was no other way for you,”

“Presicely,” he whispers, “And I should be dead,”

“You are,” she says, “The First Dream of the Endless is dead, his place taken already. And you, my brother, get a clean slate. A new chance, a new life, to do what you want with it. Isn’t it a good thing?”

Dream pushes her hands away. 

“You seek to justify your own disobedience, I want no part of it,”

“My disobedience?” she asks, almost laughing, “Dream, I don’t give a shit! No one does. Who will punish me for giving you a human lifetime? No one even knows about it,”

“It is wrong,”

“It is my decision,”

“And it should have been mine,” Dream says, his voice breaking. Death is speechless, finally. 

For moments, she just breathes. And then nods. 

“There you’re right,” she admits, “I did it without your consent. I’m sorry about that, but I’m not sorry for what I have done,”

Dream doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t understand his own thoughts, the storm that is happening in his mind and his heart. 

“I knew you wouldn’t take it well at first,” Death says then, “Most people would be very happy to have another shot at life, you know? But you’re not most people,”

“No,” Dream agrees

“It won't always feel like this, you know? Besdies, you do have more than most people have, even now,” Dream looks at her, confused, “You have all your memories, all your infinite knowledge, just waiting to be used. You have your health and your youth. You have comfort and love of someone else,”

Dream sighs. 

“Involving Hob was wrong. Perhaps the worst of your offenses,”

“He all but begged me to do it, Dream,” she says, “I don’t think you understand how much you mean to him. And how deep his grief was,”

Dream closes his eyes. Their last argument arises before them anyway. 

“You’re being an absolute ass to him, by the way. Just so you know,” she says

“I know,” Dream responds. 

 For a couple minutes they just sit there. Dream looks down at the watch Hob gave him a while ago – his work day ends soon. Dream doesn’t know how to feel about it. 

“Why haven’t you talked to anyone from the Dreaming?” Death asks.

“I wanted to talk to you,”

“Well, here I am,” she says, “Did you expect me to say something else? Have different answers?”

He sighs. His heart feels both heavy and empty – like it did when the stone didn’t work, when every plan of his didn’t find success. But it’s worse. It feels worse. Final. 

“I do not know. I wanted to understand you. Why you did it,”

“Do you?”

“I think so,” Dream says, “You’re not as different from me, as I thought. You are selfish. Petty. Unreasonable,”

Death doesn’t look insulted. She doesn’t even look like she disagrees. 

“Did you expect me to fall at your feet in gratitude? For bringing me back and giving me a few decades more of this pathetic pointless existence?”

“You will be clinging to this pathetic pointless existence once it’s over. Like all of them. You will beg for more and you will not wish to see me again after this, when you finally understand. You are not lost, Dream, you are free,”

Dream stares at her. 

“What do I do with it then? With this freedom?” he asks

“Whatever you want,” she responds, “You got what everyone else gets. A lifetime. Not more, not less. You get to do whatever you want with it,”

...

Hob exits the building exactly on time. Dream leaves his bench and gets up to greet him. Hob asks how his day was. Okay, Dream responds and follows him to the car. 

Hob doesn’t talk much on their way to the house and Dream has already learned what that means – he’s taken work home and will most likely lock himself in his office until late in the evening, grading papers, creating new assignments. 

At first, Dream doesn’t mind the silence. He almost appreciates it. Maybe if Hob wasn’t so distracted, he’d notice that Dream’s skin is even paler than usual, he’d notice the tremble in his hands, the look in his eyes. If Hob tries his questions now, Dream will break, so he’s thankful that he doesn't. 

He got what he wanted, in the end. Shouldn’t he feel happy? Somewhat accomplished, somewhat less confused? His own words arise in his mind, a phrase he’d told Titania ages and ages ago. The price of getting what you want is getting what you once wanted. It doesn't comfort him one bit.

 

Dream and Hob have a quick dinner together – take out pasta that has absolutely nothing on what Hob usually cooks on the weekends. He’s distracted, staring at his plate with unseeing eyes, probably not even tasting the food. Dream watches him, forces himself to eat, knowing how much it worries Hob when he doesn’t. But unsaid words bounce against his throat, and he has to swallow them down, too. 

In a few minutes, Hob rises from his chair, excuses himself, explains that he has a lot of work to catch up on and walks away, patting Dream’s shoulder on the way out. 

Dream is alone in the kitchen. 

He lays his head in his hands and sighs. 

 

He cleans after himself. Walks into the living room. Looks at the clock. It’s just after 8 pm, sleep won’t come to him for at least 4 more hours. He turns the TV on, puts the volume at barely audible and looks at the screen. They’d seen a couple of good movies together with Hob – some comedies that he didn’t understand, but Hob laughed at them, and laughed even harder trying to explain the jokes. Dream enjoyed the drama films more. For weeks they’d been meaning to go to a movie theater, and never did. 

Dream finds that watching TV alone doesn’t interest him at all. He cannot focus, cannot decipher what the characters are talking about, what causes them all this distress. It’s too easy to zone out, to let his mind wander. Dream closes his eyes and everything comes back to him, the conversation with his sister, the disappointment it brought. Did you expect me to say something else? she asked. Well, did he? What did he expect? What was all of this for, all this drama, all this effort? He demanded so much from himself, from Johanna, from Hob and for what? Was it worth it?

Dream rises from the couch, as if that alone can stop his mind from racing, and before he can reconsider, he paces towards Hob’s office and knocks on the door. 

“Yeah?” Hob calls out. 

Dream pushes the door open, but doesn’t walk in, doesn’t say anything. 

“Dream? Everything okay?” Hob asks.

His desk is covered in papers and open books, the light from his laptop illuminating his face, making it obvious how it goes from focused to worried in seconds. He gets up from the chair after another second of Dream's silence. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks

“Can I…Can we talk?”

Hob nods, leads Dream by the hand to the small couch in his office. He doesn’t take his eyes off of his face, his own now expressing nothing but fear. 

“Are you okay?” he asks. 

Dream doesn’t know. 

He sighs and chooses to look down at his own hands, but feeling Hob’s gaze on his skin anyway. 

“I saw Death today,” he says and hears Hob gasp. He looks up, too curious to see his reaction, but cannot read it, not this time. 

“How…how?” Hob asks

“She came to me. On the campus,”

Hob’s eyes burn with hungry fire, he moves closer, impatient. 

“What did she say to you?” he asks

“Nothing I didn’t already know,” Dream says. Obviously it’s not enough for Hob,

“What does that mean?”

Dream looks at Hob, at his concerned face. He has to make a choice. He wants to tell him. He wants to be honest. Maybe for the first time in his existence, he wants to share his burden, but his tongue is heavy in his mouth and his throat already threatens to close. 

It’s all painted on his face, it has to be, with the way Hob looks at him. He nods slightly, encouraging. 

And Dream speaks. 

“I wanted…I wanted so badly for there to be a reason. I wanted to talk to her and understand her, I thought it would change everything, but there is…there is nothing. There is no real reason why she did it, why I’m alive now. She just wanted me to live. To give me another chance, but…she was wrong. I shouldn’t be alive after what happened,  after everything I’ve done.  I do not know myself, I am so lost, but she says I must look at it as freedom, but I can’t, I can’t-,”

Dream doesn’t notice when his voice begins breaking, when tears begin forming, he feels so disconnected from this body of his, all he is is an aching heart floating in darkness, until Hob grabs his shoulders and presses his body to his own. Dream chokes on his sobs, but Hob holds him through it, lets him stain his shirt with tears, and this kindness almost makes it worse. He hates it. Hates himself. Hob never asked for any of this, even if Death says otherwise, even if he had grieved him, he only did it because he never knew who Dream really was. He didn’t know him to be this much of a nuisance, a burden, a worthless thing that keeps taking and taking, and will take more even when there’s nothing left. 

Dream pushes Hob away. 

“Dream,” Hob stills his voice, raises his hands, “Please just breathe,”

If he still had the ability, Dream would already be gone in a swirl of sand. He’d lock himself in his quarters in the Dreaming for days, weeks, centuries, until he can collect himself again, until he can be himself, not this mess of emotions and fears he feels he is now. But he doesn’t have centuries. And he has nowhere to go. 

“I should…I should leave,”

“No,” Hob grabs his hands, almost unaware of it, “You’re okay. You just need to breathe. Everything will be okay,”

He doesn’t understand why his breath won’t still, why his tears won’t cease. He used to rule a world. Now he can’t control his own body.

“Breathe with me, okay?” Hob asks, taking deep breaths and waiting for Dream to mimic him. He does. It goes on for minutes. After a while, it starts working. 

“Okay,” Hob reaches out to touch Dream’s face. He wipes his tears. Dream squeezes his eyes shut.

“You will be okay, Dream,” he says, like a promise, like a mantra, “You will be just fine,”

“No,”

“Yes,” he says. Hob keeps his hands around Dream’s face, stroking his hair, “Yes, you will,”

The tears return, bringing shame with them. Dream feels so exposed under Hob’s eyes, his gentle touch.

“Hob,”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry,” he tries, feeling like if he doesn’t say it now, he never will.

“I’m sorry about what I said that day. And before-,”

“Dream, it’s okay, don’t worry about it,”

“No, it’s not,” Dream pushes Hob’s hands away. He tries very hard to focus, not to let his emotions take him over again, and finish his thought, 

“I want to ask for your forgiveness. I was so…focused on finding her, I thought it would fix everything, fix me and I was blind to how poorly I was treating you. I never wanted to hurt you, you don’t deserve any of this. I’m sorry,”

Hob sighs. Dream watches as he fights his own tears. 

“Nothing hurts me more than seeing you in pain, Dream,” he says, “There is nothing to forgive you for,”

Dream wants to interrupt him, to insist, but Hob doesn’t let him. He moves closer, looks him in the eyes.

“I told you. I want this. I want you. Here, with me, whatever that means, whatever that looks like. I want…,” a stubborn tear rolls down his face. Hob sniffs, looks up, “I won’t lie and say I know how you feel or that it will all magically just go away, but I know that it will get better, if you let it. I promise it,”

Hob has said it all before, of course, but for the first time Dream considers the words. He doesn’t believe them, and doesn’t wish to lie to Hob and say he does. But he at least listens, allows his words to settle in his mind, take up some space there. Maybe eventually they will spread roots. Maybe, eventually, they will be proven true. Maybe. 

He nods. 

There is much more he wants to say. More of the same, to be honest. How he fears the day Hob will feel stuck with him. Maybe he already does, despite his words. How he misses his family, but cannot bear the thought of them seeing him like this. How every morning he thinks about how many years he has left, how his life seems simultaneously like something infinite and horrifyingly empty, and mercilessly short. 

“Thank you,” he says instead and lays his head on Hob’s shoulder again. 

His arms wrap around his frame, his warmth seeping into Dream’s bones, the most comforting feeling he’s ever felt. He wishes to stay forever like this, to spend the rest of his life like this, to die like this. He feels Hob plant a kiss on the top of his head, murmur something soft and honest into his ear, and Dream wants to be closer, still, not just take this warmth, but give it, too. 

He almost does it, almost moves his face closer to Hob’s, almost takes his face into his hands, but then there is a sound. A knock on the window. 

At the same time Dream and Hob turn their heads to see the source of intrusion. 

Dream’s heart skips a beat. 

A jet black raven stands outside of Hob’s window.

Notes:

Thank you for reading!

I'm gonna say that randomly switching POVs in the middle of a fic is a creative choice and you will accept it, alright?
Anyway, writing from Dream's POV was a nice change and I do apologize for the excessive amount of angst and drama in this chapter, but the story demanded it. It will get better from here - all my fics need to have a happy ending.

The conversation with Death is the "climax" of this fic, even though it feels pretty anti-climactic, but that's on purpose, too. I wanted to show how Dream fixated on the idea of meeting her and having her explain herself, even though she obviously doesn't have anything new to say to him. Pretty scary feeling, if you think about it.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this part! Please do let me know.

Chapter 8: Chapter Seven

Hob almost doesn’t hear the knocking. 

Well, he does, but it sounds so far away, so deep in the back of his head, a whole world away, his mind just blocks it out. It focuses on much more important things. Like his fruitless attempts to think of something to say to Dream. Like the way he holds onto him, wrinkling his shirt in his fists, the way Dream’s face fits into the crook of his neck, the way his sobs slow and turn into deep breaths, the way his face is suddenly closer, right in front of him, and Hob has never seen anything more beautiful in all 600 years of his life. His eyes are the most extraordinary shade of blue, clear and deep at the same time, tears shining in his lashes, like tiny diamonds. His lips are swollen from the biting, bright red, like rose petals, forgotten in the snow. Hob realizes too late that he’s staring. He also realizes that it’s not unwelcome. Dream is looking at him, too, just as intensely. He’s seen this look before, but never on him. 

The moment is brief, Hob knows it will end soon even when he still can’t hear the knocks, something tugs on his heart. Before he can do anything, say anything, that look disappears from Dream’s face. He’s looking somewhere behind Hob’s face, his hands move away and Hob misses them desperately. As Dream’s eyes widen in fear and shock, Hob finally hears the knocking. 

He turns around. 

 

Matthew is expressive, for a raven. He is frozen outside the window, his beak ajar, and Hob knows exactly where he’s looking. 

This was bound to happen. 

 

Dream turns back to him, eyes even wider, speechless.

“I told you. He visits sometimes,” Hob says. He moves to stand up and Dream grabs his hands, stopping him. 

“We cannot let him in,”

“We have to,” he says, “He’s seen you, Dream,”

“No, I…,” Dream looks around, clearly calculating an exit strategy, “You must convince him it wasn’t me,”

“Dream,” Hob breathes out, “We’re just making it look more suspicious,” as Hob says it, Matthew resumes his knocking. Much fiercer, this time. The sound cuts through Hob’s ears and soon he begins worrying for his windows. 

Dream shakes his head. 

“I’m not ready,” he whispers. 

Hob takes a deep breath. Dream still clings on to his hands, so Hob strokes his knuckles with his thumbs. 

“Dream. It’s Matthew,” he says, “We have to let him in,”

Dream is not convinced. And there is nothing Hob can say to change that, he knows it. So he gives his fingers one last squeeze and gets up. Hob walks to the window, but turns around to look at Dream before opening it. He’s sitting unmoved, his spine perfectly straight, turned away from the window, not looking at him. Hob considers grabbing Matthew and talking to him alone before letting him get to Dream, but seeing the energy and force with which he’s going at his window, Hob doesn’t believe it possible. 

He opens it. 

 

Matthew storms in, flying circles under the ceiling, croaking loudly enough that surely Hob’s neighbors will have some questions. Having let some energy out, he lands on Hob’s desk, his poor students’ papers flying off. He doesn’t know how he’ll explain the marks of a raven’s feet on them tomorrow. 

Matthew stares at Dream’s back and breathes. 

“Matthew,” Hob calls out. 

“Gadling,” he doesn’t look at him. 

Dream is yet to say a word.

“Boss? Is that you?” Matthew’s voice breaks and Dream’s shoulders shudder. He takes a shaky breath, wipes his face as quickly and discreetly as he can and slowly turns around. 

Matthew takes a step back, stamping yet another paper. 

“Boss,” 

The anger that Hob expected, the anger that seemed to fill Matthew in the beginning, is completely gone. He says the title with so much tenderness and all of it is reflected back at him in Dream’s eyes.

“Hello, Matthew,”

Dream’s face softens, his eyes are warm and pleading. Matthew stares at him and says nothing for the longest time, and when he does, he seems to forget human speech. He croaks and flies up, but doesn’t go too high. He moves from the table to the armrest of the couch Dream sits on. He moves closer. Dream raises his hand slowly and gently places it on Matthew’s head. 

“Boss,” Matthew cries.

Hob watches a raven cry. Even after 600 years, life surprises him. 

Dream breathes out, relief obvious on his face. He looks down at Matthew, but then his gaze goes up to Hob – teary, soft, and happy. 

Hob holds it. 

 

A long time passes before either of the two can talk. A long time passes before Matthew can even believe what he’s seeing, and Hob understands him. Understands the shock, the too-good-to-be-true of it all, understands how he refuses to tarnish the moment by questioning it, but the need to know overweighs it. 

Matthew asks all the expected questions. How? Why? How long? What was the cost? Is he to stay?

My sister

No reason

Months

Nothing, supposedly

No. Not forever

With every word out of Dream’s mouth, Matthew’s faith in him seems to solidify. Just like it happened to Hob. Dream slowly stops being a miracle, a gift from God, and becomes a…person. 

A person, who made the decision to keep Matthew in the dark for months. 

“I can’t believe you!” he screams. It seems it is much easier for Matthew to find it in himself to be mad at Dream, than it ever was for Hob. 

Matthew jumps around the room, a couple feathers falling down in his wake. His voice went from gentle and soft to loud, accusatory. Dream sits under his scolding gaze like a misbehaving child. 

“Months! Months! You let us all believe you were dead!”
“I was dead,” Dream defends himself, “It did happen,”

“I know that it happened, I was at your fucking funeral,” Matthew turns away from Dream, tries to catch his breath. Hob takes it as his cue to try and save his friend. 

“Matthew,” he kneels in front of the raven, “Don’t be mad at him,”

Matthew’s head shoots up at him

“You too?” he demands, “Did it cross your dumb mind once I’d want to know?”

“Of course it did,”

“Or are we only friends when you need some feathers to cry into?”

Hob sighs, looks at Dream, and shrugs. He can’t be much help here. 

“Not a single soul knows. Not even Lucienne,” Matthew states, turning back at Dream, “After everything, she deserves to know,”

Dream averts his eyes. 

“She does,” he admits. Matthew and Hob both wait for a continuation that doesn’t follow. 

“Are you going to explain yourself at all?” Matthew demands, “Boss?”

“You mustn’t call me that anymore, Matthew,” Dream says, “I had my…reasons for not contacting you, or anyone in the Dreaming. I do not know if…your lord knows of what has happened to me, if he does, he was honorable to keep it a secret,”

“No way he knows,” Matthew chimes in, “The kid can’t keep a secret to save a life,”

Momentarily, a shadow passes Dream’s face. What was it? Hob wonders. Curiosity? Surprise? Jealousy? His face is back to normal and perfectly neutral before Hob can investigate. 

“Regardless, I would have come to you,” Dream says, “Of course, I would have,”

Matthew seems to melt, for a moment, before gathering himself again. 

“When?” he asks

“Eventually,”

If birds could roll their eyes, surely Matthew would. He still lets his feelings be known. 

“I needed time,” Dream says, “There was much I…didn’t understand. Still is,” 

Hob can sense it – Dream holding back, biting his tongue, keeping parts of the truth to himself. Matthew can sense it, too, surely. He knew Dream well. Knows. 

“Forgive me, Matthew. Please,” 

The raven takes a step back and for moments just stares. Then, he seems to have made a decision, and flies to Dream again. He lands back on the armrest. 

“I’m still angry at you,” he declares, “But…I’m too fucking happy you’re back,”

Dream smiles and returns his hand on Matthew’s head. He, too, looks like he is making a decision. 

“I would…I would ask you to invite Lucienne and whoever else wishes to come to visit me here, in the Waking,” he says. 

Matthew looks up at him. 

“You want me to tell them you’re alive?”

“Will it be a problem for you?”

“Wouldn’t it be better if you did it? I’ll just ask the new boss to get you to the castle,” 

Dream considers it, but Hob can tell he doesn’t like the idea. He guesses what comes out of his mouth before it does. 

“I’d rather host them here,” he says, “I do not…it would not be appropriate for me to visit the Dreaming now,”

Neither Hob, nor Matthew knows how to argue it, and they do not find it useful. Dream doesn’t want to go home yet. He won’t be convinced otherwise. 

“Alright,” Matthew says, “So. Family reunion, tomorrow dinner time? Eight pm?”

He looks up at Hob, the actual owner of the house, who nods, though his heart is jumping. 

“Luce will lose her mind,” Matthew says through a chuckle. 

Dream forces a half-smile, but he certainly looks paler. 

 

When Matthew leaves, flying away through the open window, Dream sighs so heavily, he almost deflates. 

...

Hob is exhausted, but he cannot fall asleep. Maybe there is restlessness in the Dreaming. Maybe Matthew gave in and told everyone what he had earned today, and now the realm is temporarily closed, the new king fearing the old one returning to claim his throne. 

Or maybe, the reason for Hob’s insomnia is much simpler. He can’t silence his mind. Can’t stop thinking about Dream. 

He wonders what would happen if Matthew never arrived, or arrived just moments later. Was he misreading the situation? Would he really cross the line with Dream, that vague, ambiguous, invisible line that separates them from the unknown? What would it be like? What would it start?

Just thinking about it makes Hob’s heart race, the idea of sleep now seeming ridiculous, impossible. When he tries and closes his eyes, he just sees Dream’s face again, streaked with tears and a breath away from his own. 

It wouldn’t be right, Hob decides in the end. Yes, Dream was there. Yes, he was opening his heart to him, holding on to him, looking at him in ways more gentle and vulnerable than he ever did, but Hob still cannot take his actions to mean anything…anything he’d want them to mean. In the end, he is glad it ended when it did. He has to be.

He turns to his side, shuts his eyes, and wills his brain to still. 

It almost works. 

Then, there is a knock on his door. 

 

Since the day Johanna brought the stone and Dream stopped talking to Hob, he also stopped coming to him during the night. Hob didn’t know if that meant that his nightmares ceased – he didn’t believe so, but when he asked, Dream insisted that they didn’t bother him anymore. 

He kept his door open for him, waited in the silent night for the sound of opening doors, turning lights, but none of them came. Dream didn’t leave his room. Hob stayed in his. He started closing the door, thinking a knock would never come again. 

But it did. 

 

“Dream?” Hob asks, “Come in,”

The door opens slowly. Dream doesn’t meet his eyes as he paces towards the bed. Hob moves a way to leave him some room and Dream sits down. The feeling of deja vu fills Hob’s heart. 

“I apologize-,”

“Don’t,” Hob cuts him off, “We had a deal, right?”

Dream looks at him and nods. 

Hob can barely see his face in the dark, only lit by weak streetlights outside the house and lights of an occasional car passing, but he sees the tiredness, the restlessness. 

“What did you see?” he asks, like he always does. 

“Nothing,” Dream answers, “I cannot sleep,”

Hob smiles. 

“Same here,” he admits and moves even farther to the other side of the bed, half-sitting there and leaving another for Dream, who takes the silent invitation. 

“You have to rise in 4 hours,” Dream reminds Hob the cruel truth. 

“I know,” he groans, “I’m guessing you wanna sleep in and stay at home tomorrow?”

He hopes Dream will smile at the words, but he doesn’t. His face is still, contemplative. 

“Yes, I will stay,” he says

Hob nods. He moves on the bed, making himself more comfortable, until he lays down. Dream is still mostly upright, staring somewhere ahead of himself. 

“Are you nervous about tomorrow?” Hob asks, feeling bold. Dream’s response is a deep breath. So, most likely, a yes. 

“It’s okay to be nervous. Hell, I’m nervous,” he says, chuckling. It’s not funny to Dream. 

“I’m not…ready for the questions they will ask me,” he says slowly. Hob figured this would be the problem. 

“Why you haven’t said anything to them?”

Dream nods. 

“They’ll understand. Eventually,” 

Dream looks at him. 

“Would you?” he asks

Hob considers it. He puts himself in Matthew’s shoes. What would he feel, if for months he was kept in the dark, forced to continue drowning in his grief, his longing, when Dream was alive, healthy, with no obvious real reason to stay away?

He’d be heartbroken. 

And it shows on his face. Dream reads it, reads his silence and looks away, closes his eyes in shame and something else that Hob doesn’t fully understand. 

“Eventually I would,” Hob says, moving closer to Dream, rising on his elbow, “I would be mad. But I would forgive you. I think I wouldn’t care, after a while,”

Dream looks at him and shakes his head. He doesn’t say anything else. Hob doesn’t ask. 

“Sleep, Dream,” he says, feeling like he’s about to drift off himself. He doesn’t ask Dream to stay and sleep here, but he does.

When Hob’s alarm rings at 6:30 am, Dream is still by his side. Arms wrapped around himself, he sleeps. Hob pulls his covers higher, covering his shoulders, and leaves the room as quietly as he can. 

 

---

 

Dream texts him when he wakes up. The notification arrives mid-lecture with a quiet pang on his phone, his screen lighting up. Hob looks down on his phone, not interrupting his speech, but as he reads the name of the sender, his tongue stops on its own. 

Hob would never pause the lecture to check his phone. In fact, he has a strict phone-in-the-bag policy for himself, that stopped being respected the moment Dream got a phone of his own. Still, the device is always on mute, always screen down, always less important than the students in front of him. 

Hob holds back for a second, two, three…and then he can’t. He excuses himself, unlocks the phone and enters his chat with Dream. 

 

Good morning 

 

Hob stares at two words, attempting to guess the intonation with which they were intended, the underlying meaning there surely must be. Is it I’m just bored good morning? Or something awful has just happened but I do not know how to start a conversation good morning? Should he call him? Should he just go home?

Hob stares at the phone for way too long, until someone in the classroom politely clears their throat. Hob looks up. Dozens of faces stare at him. 

“Sorry, guys, one second,” he says and quickly types.

 

“Good morning, Dream! Everything okay?”

 

He presses send and locks the phone. Puts it screen down on the table. Then turns it around. Apologizes again and continues the lecture, but his eyes jump down too often. Whenever he has to leave his desk – go write something on the whiteboard or approach the students, he all but runs back. His phone is indifferent to it, notification centre empty, his message delivered, read, but not responded. 

 

Yes. 

 

Comes a response, 10 minutes after, perplexing Hob even more. He finishes the lecture like this, in 2 second proximity to his phone, tapping on the screen and checking it every 2 minutes, but nothing else comes. Once the students begin leaving the classroom, Hob calls Dream. 

He waits on the line for almost a full minute before Dream picks up. 

 

“Yes?”

Alone in his lecture hall, Hob smiles. 

“Hey, Dream. How are you?”

“Okay. How are you?” Dream’s tone is surprised, as if he didn’t just freak Hob out with those texts. 

“Good, I’m on my break, wanted to hear your voice,”

Hob says it and only then realizes it might be too much. He bites his lip and waits, while Dream is silent on the other side. 

“That’s…nice,” he says. Hob smiles wider. 

“What are you doing? Did you have breakfast?” he asks

“I did. I started the dishwasher,”

“You are so talented,”

“Do you mock me?” Dream asks, but Hob can hear it in his voice, he’s smiling too. 

“No, never,” he assures him, “I flooded the kitchen 3 times before I figured the dishwasher out. This reminds me, what should I cook tonight? I’ll stop by a grocery store on the way home,”

“I…I’m not sure,” Dream says, all signs of a smile gone from his voice. 

“Does Lucienne even eat?” 

“She doesn’t need to, but she can,” Dream explains.

“Alright. A good roast then, yeah? And wine. Lots of it,”

Dream makes a sound that seems affirmative enough, so that decides it. 

In the back of his head, Hob is already planning the dinner – with the limited time he’ll have, he needs to establish a course of action. Tonight is very important. 

“When are you coming home?” Dream asks, pulling Hob out of his thoughts. The previous worry settles back into his heart. 

“5pm the latest. I cancelled my office hours for today, so maybe a bit earlier,” he promises, “Why? Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” Dream responds, too quickly not to cause suspicion on Hob’s part. 

“Are you sure?” he asks and hears the same answers, “Do you want to come here? I’ll send a cab for you, or I’ll come get you on my lunch break,”

There’s a pause. 

“Thank you, Hob,” Dream says then, his voice soft, “I’m okay. I’ll see you soon,”

With that, he hangs up. 

Hob counts minutes before the end of his day. 

…

The clock hasn’t yet reached 5 and Hob is already home. He’s unloading his car – the trunk full of groceries. He has to make 3 trips from the car to the house to carry everything in, declining Dream’s offer of help. Once the groceries are settled on the kitchen island, he mentally goes through the menu he made up on his drive. 

He hopes a good Sunday roast will be enough of a crowd-pleaser, even on a Friday. He also plans to make some side salads with his signature dressings, some appetizers, and open some ice-cream, in case anyone will be in the mood for a dessert.

And wine, of course. Fancy, expensive, red, and white, and rose. Just in case. 

 

Hob is tired, but he wastes no time. He ties an apron around his waist, rolls up his sleeves and begins. Their guests are supposed to be here in less than 3 hours. Multiple times Dream asks him if he can help, but every task Hob assigns him he ends up doing himself. Obviously Dream has no experience in the kitchen. He doesn’t know the difference between slicing and chopping and actually, maybe he shouldn’t be trusted with a knife anyway. Hob asks him to wash the vegetables for the salad instead, and Dream accomplishes that well enough. Then he stands, waiting for the next task. Usually, Hob prefers to be alone in the kitchen – a few times he even suggests that Dream should get some rest before the guests come, watch TV or go for a walk. Nonsense, Dream says. He wants to help. 

After a while Hob gets it. 

He sees it in the way Dream either doesn’t really try or tries way too hard to do what Hob asks him to do. He sees it in the way Dream’s eyes jump around the kitchen, how he looks at the clock way too often. He’s jittery, he’s restless. He’s nervous. 

 

Some 20 minutes are left when the meat is in the oven, the table is laid, and there is nothing left to do but wait. Dream has changed from his home clothes into a pair of black jeans and a black button up. The monochromatic look on him brings up memories in Hob – with his back straight, his hair groomed and gelled up, Dream looks so much like his old self. This Dream has never been inside of Hob’s house, this Dream is a mysterious nameless stranger Hob had spent decades trying to convince himself he didn’t just make up in his head. Hob stares at him, while he stares at the front door, and inside of him there are butterflies and a housefire and a storm, all at once. 

Then the doorbell rings and Dream, as if automatically, turns to him, eyes wide and scared, and all falls back into place. The old Dream wouldn’t look at him like that, wouldn’t show that much emotion, that much truth. So long has passed since then. So much has happened.

 Hob squeezes his shoulder before going to answer the door. 

“Ready?” he asks. 

Dream looks at him and at the door. 

“No,” he says. And nods. 

 

Hob has met every one of his guests before. There, on his front porch are: Lucienne, Lady Nuala, Matthew the Raven, and The Corinthian. Lucienne stands before her friends, and as Hob opens the door, she draws in a deep breath. Dream stands behind him, not yet visible to their guests. They both wonder what Matthew told them.

“Sir Gadling,” Lucienne begins with a polite smile, but there’s worry in her face. 

“Please, call me Hob,” he asks, “Thank you so much for coming tonight,”

He smiles at all of them, aware that he’s being quite rude, keeping them by the doors and not inviting them in.

“I…I’m not sure what Matthew has told you,” he tries. 

“Nothing much,” Matthew answers, stepping forward, “I want to see the looks on their faces,”

Three faces do in fact turn to Matthew, concern deepens on Lucienne’s. 

“Alright,” Hob starts, “What you will see right now might…shock you. Quite a lot, probably, but…,” Hob realizes suddenly that he has nothing to say, no introduction, no explanation. He sighs and steps back into the house. 

“Welcome,” he says and gestures his guests inside. 

 

Matthew was right. The look on their faces is priceless, but the look on Dream’s is…it’s heartbreaking. Hob stands aside and watches the scene unfold in front of him. First there are gasps, hands flying to chests and mouths, fingers trembling, eyes widening. Silence is stubborn, refusing to be broken, words are even worse, they do not come to Dream, to his guests. 

Hob follows Dream’s gaze, how he holds eye contact with all of them individually, one by one – Lucienne, then Nuala, then Corinthian. In the end, it is Lucienne who speaks first. 

“My Lord?” she asks in the tone most broken, half a whisper, half a sob, and Dream closes his eyes, as if from a blow. 

“Not anymore,” he says, his voice not much stronger, “It is me, Lucienne,” 

Lucienne breaks at the sound of her own name coming out of his mouth. Tears fall down her face, and then she’s moving, shattering the small distance between them, and all but leaps into her former master’s arms. Dream is taken aback, for moments he doesn’t move, as if not realizing what is happening, but then it finally reaches him. He closes his arms around his librarian as she cries. 

“How? How can it be so?” Lady Nuala whispers. She tears her red, shocked eyes away from Dream and looks at Hob, asking him for answers. 

“He’s returned,” Hob says simply, “His sister has decided so,”

“Lady Death?” Lucienne asks, pulling away from Dream’s embrace, but staying close, holding him by the arms, clinging to him. 

“Indeed,” Dream responds. Tears are shining on his eyes too.

His gaze lifts off of Lucienne’s face. He looks at Nuala, frees one of his hands and reaches out for her, but she won’t respond, won’t welcome his touch. She cries and cries, and Dream goes to her himself. 

“Lady Nuala,” 

She won’t even meet his eye. She hides her face in her hands, sobs coming out of her violently, without a pause. Dream looks at Hob, confused and scared, but he cannot help him here. 

Dream places his hands on Nuala’s delicate shoulders, calls her name out again, but she just shakes her head and cries. So he does what Hob would have done, what Hob has done for him, when the emotions have gotten the best of Dream – he pulls her closer, holds her, lets her cry, until her breath slows, until she can speak again. 

“My Lord,” she says, again and again, “My Lord, forgive me,”

Her words, the way she speaks them, it tears at Hob’s heart. Dream hasn’t told him much of Lady Nuala, all he really knows is that she was of Fae, but lived in Dream’s castle, and continues to do so now. But he can tell she loves him. He could tell it back at the funeral – one look in her eyes was enough to understand it. She had the same hollow, empty look that Hob saw every day in the mirror. 

“Forgive me, my Lord,” she asks again

“Lady Nuala,” Dream calls out, pulling away to look her in the eyes, “Whatever I must forgive you for?”

She seems hypnotized, finally locking eyes with Dream. 

“I thought I’d never see you again,” she whispers, but doesn’t answer his question

“As did I,”

Moments later, Lucienne takes Nuala by the hand and pulls her aside. There is one more person in the room who is yet to speak a word to Dream. Or not, exactly, a person. 

“Corinthian,” Dream calls out. 

Hob cannot read the emotion on his face. His eyes are covered by sunglasses, as they always are, his cheeks are dry, his breath is deep and regular. He stands tall, back perfectly straight, unmoving like a statue.

“I knew it,” says the nightmare, “I knew…I believed you would come back,”

The slightest of smiles touches Dream’s face. He steps closer, reaches out his hand. Corinthian takes it. 

“It is good to see you,” Dream says, “All of you,”

 

Tears dry slowly. Both Nuala and Matthew still ask if everyone is certain it’s not a dream. Corinthian is the one who assures them it is not – nightmares cannot dream. 

They take their seats. 

Dream sits at the head of the table with Hob on his right side and Lucienne on his left. Then, after her, is Lady Nuala. Corinthian sits next to Hob, and Matthew prefers to jump around the table. 

It is the strangest dinner Hob has ever hosted. 

Hob and Dream, the only humans at the table, are also the only ones who need to eat, but everyone else takes polite bites and fills their plates with salads and appetizers, praising Hob’s cooking skills. Hob himself eats just to give himself something to do – the people at his table seem to be communicating mostly via glances and telepathy, judging by the silence that fills the room. A long while passes before Corinthian gathers up the courage to begin asking questions. 

“So you have been living here, my Lord?” he says

“You mustn’t call me that, Corinthian,” Dream responds

“How are we to call you?” Nuala asks

Dream considers it. 

“Hob calls me Dream,” he says, turning to look at him, “But you…you must call your lord by that name, it belongs to him now,”

“We don’t really call him that,” Matthew chimes in, “The girls call him Sir, or My Lord, or Your Graceful Highness,”

“We do not call him Your Graceful Highness,” Nuala says and Matthew laughs

“Yeah, but you know…the bootlicking tendencies didn’t exactly go away with the change of management,”

Hob can’t hold back a chuckle, though Lucienne and Nuala look positively scandalized. Dream is amused. He smiles and leans back on his chair. 

“To answer your question, Corinthian, I have been living here, yes,” he says

“How…how long, sir?” Lucienne asks.

Dream takes a breath, knowing what will follow once he answers this question. 

“It has now been months,” he admits, “One night I found myself on Hob’s doorstep, weak and…human. I had no memories following my death, I didn’t know or understand the reason why I was brought back. I spent many weeks searching for my sisters, in hope of receiving answers from her, and then I learned…there were no answers. No special reason. I am here. Alive,”

No one quite knows what to say. Dream has finished his tale and averted his eyes, while all their guests stare at him in shock and disbelief. 

“You are…human?” Corinthian asks, “Mortal?”

“Yes,”

The nightmare takes a deep breath. 

The same thought passes through the immortal heads of everybody else present. A human lifetime. Just one human lifetime. 

“My Lord, why…,” Lady Nuala asks and shakes her head, “Dream. Why didn’t you let us know? Surely there are ways,”

“There are ways indeed, my lady,” Dream responds, “I didn’t keep you in the dark because I had no means to contact you,”

They all wait for him to continue. Candles burning on the table dance and flicker, and Dream chooses to look at them, instead of his friends. 

“I have no real reason. No excuse. I…I have missed you greatly, but…I could not. I ask for your forgiveness,” he says. 

Hob frowns. He can see it on Dream’s face, he’s holding back, again. Matthew is forced to listen to the same lie twice.

“Please,” he asks.

Just like Hob predicted, no one has it in their heart to stay mad at Dream. One by one, they nod and murmur a quiet of course. Lucienne places her hand on top of Dream’s, as if to seal her forgiveness, or, at the very least, delay this conversation for a later time. Dream blinks his tears away and squeezes her fingers. 

 

Hob has to admit – the dinner is going quite solemnly. Four pairs of eyes are glued to Dream’s face, and Hob gets it. He understands feeling that if you look away, Dream will disappear, like your gaze is the only thing anchoring him to this life. 

Corinthian asks more questions – he wants to know exactly what Death told Dream, if he remembers the afterlife, if he enjoys sleep. Hob wonders when Dream’s patience will cease, what question will make him lose his temper. He can tell it is coming. 

“So now what? What are your plans?” the nightmare asks. 

He voices his question so casually, sipping on the wine, not even looking at Dream. 

Hob does look at him, thinking that the moment has arrived. 

He watches as Dream swallows down and takes a sip of the wine too, most likely to buy himself some time. But time passes quickly and with every second he spends silent, heads turn at him, at first just curious, soon worried. Dream opens his mouth to say something, doesn’t find his words and closes it again. He looks at Hob. 

“We try to take it one day at a time,” Hob says. He tries to match his tone to Corinthian’s – casual, chill, normal, but the atmosphere at the table is anything but that. 

“It’s a process,”

Hob doesn’t know if he succeeded with his answer. He repeats it in his head and finds a thousand things he doesn’t like in those two short sentences. 

Does it make Dream sound pitiful? Is it too obvious of a deflection? Is it too vague? Too cliche? Was he wrong to use we? What exactly does it imply? Did Hob mean to imply that? Did Dream catch it? Is he mad at him?

“Yes,” Dream says. So, not mad. Probably. 

“It certainly is a process. I…I am lucky. Not to be alone in it,”

Dream’s gaze shifts from his old family to Hob. It is a soft, warm, tangible thing, and Hob’s hands itch with how much he wants to touch him. Hold his hand. 

He does not. He just smiles back and feels more eyes on him, watching him with the same warmth. 

A couple hours into the night Hob leaves the table. The wine has run out, so he goes to the kitchen to bring some more and to…breathe. He’s happy they are doing this. So happy Dream gets to spend time with his family again, that the guilt of lying to them isn’t hanging over his head anymore, but he also feels the exhaustion taking over him, the emotional exhaustion, mostly. 

He spends too much time in the kitchen, it is not unexpected when someone comes to check on him. Hob turns around to the sound of footsteps, and is surprised to see Lady Nuala smiling gently at him. 

“May I help you, Sir Gadling?” she asks, her hands folded behind her back. 

“Please. It’s Hob,” he reminds her, “And no, thank you. I was fetching some more wine,”

She nods. The kitchen is connected to the living room, where the table is laid, and the two can see it easily from here. They lean against the kitchen island and watch as Lucienne retells some story to Dream, and he listens, smiling. 

“I have never seen him like this,” Nuala says. 

“Like what?” Hob asks. 

Happy? He is not. He’s smiling now, but they haven’t seen the state he was in just yesterday. 

Hob thinks it, but doesn’t say. It is theirs, only theirs. 

“This…alive,” she says, “He seems so different. In the short time we’ve spent together Lord Morpheus was always very…reserved. Far away. I could never tell what he was thinking or feeling,”

Hob nods. He understands her. 

Nuala turns to him, suddenly, her bright eyes shining. 

“I wanted to thank you, sir….Hob,” she says. Hob frowns, confused, “For taking care of him. For being there for him,”

Her voice breaks, and she looks down, tears finding her again. 

“Of course,” Hob says. 

“I still…I cannot truly believe it. I’m scared I shall wake up and he will be gone again,” she wipes her eyes, but her hands tremble. Hob takes them into his. 

“I spent weeks with that feeling,” he says, “But it is a false one. He’s here. He’s going to be okay,”

She nods. And then again and again, as if trying to convince herself. 

“I had so many regrets,” she says, “I ought not to talk to you about this, I do not know why I do,”

“Do not worry,” Hob says, “Whatever makes you feel better,”

“I…,” she looks up at him, her eyes so big, so clear, so full of pain, and this ache hurts Hob, too. It’s an ache that he understands, that he knows first hand, but he cannot fix anyway, not in her, not in him. 

“It was my fault,” she whispers, “What happened to Dream, I…unknowingly and unwillingly I played part in it and-,”

She takes a shaky breath and looks at Dream, but cannot stand to keep her eyes on him long. Hob bows a little, to look into her face. 

“Lady Nuala! What are you talking about? It wasn’t your fault,” he insists

And she shakes her head. 

“If you speak so, it means he has not told you of what happened. Not all of it,”

And indeed. Most of Hob’s conversations about Dream’s death ended poorly. They ended with Dream shutting down, storming out. All he knew was that Dream had paid for a crime. And that it had something to do with his child. 

Hob doesn’t know what to say. Nuala is right, he knows next to nothing, but he doesn’t believe she is to blame in any way, not after how Dream held her, how happy he was to see her. Hob tries to say something, comfort her, but she seems to take hold of herself. She wipes her face, takes a breath and puts on a smile. 

“We must return to the table,” she says. 

Hob watches her as closely as he does Dream for the rest of the night. She, in turn, doesn’t take her eyes away from Dream. She smiles when he does, laughs when it is appropriate, answers all questions directed at her, asks her own, but Hob can see through the cracks now. Dream is oblivious to it. He takes the sad notes in her smile as nothing but the remains of the grief everyone at this table is sharing. But it is more. And it is wrong. 

 

Hob waits for the right moment, and it comes when Dream excuses himself to go to the bathroom. He returns, some minutes later, but before he can go back to the table, Hob catches his eyes and nods towards the kitchen. Dream is confused, a little tipsy, but when Hob nods again, he slowly paces away from the living room. Hob joins him.

“Is everything alright?” Dream asks. 

“Yes,” Hob says, “Well, no. Are you alright?”

“What is wrong?” he seems to sober up in seconds. 

“I…I just talked to Nuala,” Hob starts

It does feel a little wrong, reporting their conversation to Dream like this, but he knows what that quiet feeling of guilt can do to a person and feels an obligation to intervene and stop it, if he can. Or at least try.

So Hob tells him everything. He tells him that Nuala is convinced that she is to blame for his death, and at first Dream looks utterly confused, as if Hob is speaking in a different language, but then something clicks. He sighs. Looks at the table, at Nuala, who has her back turned towards him. And back at Hob. 

“She has no blame on her. It is ridiculous to think otherwise,” he says. 

“She seems sure,” Hob answers, “Dream, what happened?”

Dream seems relaxed enough to talk, and for a moment Hob thinks that he might. He looks at him, his expression calculating. Normally, Hob would say something like you don’t have to tell me, but this time he doesn’t back off. He waits. 

“I shall tell you,” Dream decides, “I shall. But…not now,”

Hob accepts it. He nods, and Dream thanks him, and wastes no more time. He returns to the table, and leads her by the hand outside, to Hob’s backyard. Lucienne, Corinthian and Matthew watch them go, but are polite enough not to ask Hob anything. 

 

The conversation doesn’t really come together, with Dream gone from the table. Hob asks Lucienne and the Corinthian how the business is going at the Dreaming, and they respond, but without much detail. It is a tricky question in a way, he supposes, one they are expected to answer honestly, but they cannot imply the Dreaming is better off now, without Morpheus. It is not. They can’t, however, express that his absence hurts the Dreaming in any way, either. 

“All is well,” Lucienne says, “It is different. But…all is well,”

Hob smiles and nods. 

The glass door that leads to the backyard slides open, Dream and Nuala come back in. Her eyes are red, but that worried, restless look on her face is gone. Hob raises her eyebrows at Dream. He nods. 

 

…

When the clock strikes midnight and the only two humans at the table can no longer hide their exhaustion, Lucienne rises from the table. 

“It has been an absolute pleasure, my lord,” she says and Dream tilts his head. She sighs, smiling

“Dream. It has been…wonderful,” she says, “We must go, but…,”

“You must return,” Dream finishes her thought for her. He looks at Hob, “This could be our…tradition. Yes?”

His eyes ask for permission, for support, and Hob gives it to him tenfold. He lands his hand on Dream’s shoulder and smiles. 

“Whenever you can. Our doors are always open for you,” he says. 

“You are an excellent host. And chef,” Nuala tells Hob. 

 

They move from the table, into the hall. It’s time for goodbyes, but it is not sad, it is not bitter. It is hardly a goodbye. Hob can already hear Matthew promising to fly by every other day and Nuala expresses an interest in seeing the city, which is supported by Lucienne. Corinthian doesn’t take his eyes away from his former master, and gasps quietly when Dream clasps his hand on his shoulder.

Hob stands aside, soaking in the chatter and the love. One by one, every one of the guests hug Dream (with the exception of Matthew, who just receives a pat on the head), and then do the same to him. Nuala mouths a thank you. Hob pretends he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. 

Once the door is closed and the house falls into silence, Dream breathes out. His shoulders sink and he spends long moments looking out the window. He watches as his friends talk amongst themselves, and fade away in the distance. Then he turns to Hob. 

He smiles, but it’s a tired, subtle thing. The wine has gotten its hold on him – his cheeks are flushed, the top button of his shirt undone. For the longest time, he just looks. 

“Well,” Hob says, feeling the obligation to break the silence, “I’d say it was a success, wasn’t it?”

“Thanks to you,”

“Nah,” Hob chuckles. 

He walks to the table, then to the kitchen, evaluating the size of damage his house took. He’s tempted to just leave the mess as is, make it wait until the morning, but he can’t. He starts carrying dishes from the table to the kitchen. Dream follows his example. 

“Leave it, go to bed,” he tells him, “You’re tired,”

“So are you,” 

“I’ll be quick,”

“I want to help you,” Dream insists. Hob doesn’t fight him. 

Wordlessly, they clean up the table. There is a mountain of dirty dishes in the sink, floors that need to be swept, leftover to put away. Once again, Hob attempts to send Dream away. Once again, he refuses to go. 

Dream rolls up his sleeves, and takes over the dishes. Hob tries not to stare, or at least not to be so obvious about it, but he’s too tired for that. Too tired to control the way he smiles at Dream, the way he looks at him. He pulls out the empty containers from the cupboard and arranges the leftover food into them. He’d finish a task this simple much quicker, if he wasn’t turning to look at Dream every 5 seconds, but…he allows it to himself. 

Dream is not used to any of this, of course. Hob has already seen him to be pretty useless around the kitchen, but now it’s completely different. All those nerves and jumpiness from before are gone. Now he and Dream are completely in sync. They are done with the mess in less than half an hour. 

It’s around 1 am, when Hob makes it out of the shower. His bed is calling to him, serenading him, but he goes to check on Dream first. The light in his bedroom is still on, so Hob knocks, and pushes the door open once he hears a quiet yes?

“I think we deserve to sleep in tomorrow. Like, until midday, at least,” Hob says, standing at the doors. 

Dream agrees. He too has changed out of his clothes, his hair still damp from the shower. 

“You certainly deserve it, chef,”

Hob laughs. 

“I can teach you to cook, if you want,” Hob says, “Not that I don’t enjoy cooking for you,”

“I’m afraid you will eat your own words, soon. No pun intended,”

Hob laughs more, his heart swelling. He stalls at the doors, not quite in the room, not exactly outside. His eyes fixed on Dream’s, his cold lonely bed doesn’t seem that appealing to him anymore. 

“Hey, Dream,” he starts, before he can think better of it, “Do you wanna stay in my room tonight?”

He bites his tongue. He wills himself to stand by his words, to wait for Dream’s reply, to not explain himself, to not make it even more awkward. Dream stares at him, eyes wider. Silence is deafening. Time drags. 

“Yes,” Dream says, about three eternities after. He gets up.

Hob can’t believe this. 

He turns around and heads back to his room, hearing the click of the light turning off behind him. Dream follows him. Hob walks in, his heart pounding. Suddenly the simple process of pulling back the blankets, drawing the blinds feels weird and awkward, under Dream’s attentive gaze. He forces himself through it all. Dream has slept here before. They have done this before. Why does it feel different now?

It doesn’t get easier when they are finally in bed. They are sharing a blanket, as they have done all previous times, but now Hob is overly aware of it. He’s overly aware of how close their bodies are, how he can sense the warmth coming from Dream, how he can smell his own shower gel on him. It smells different on Dream, somehow. Richer. 

He barely remembers to breathe. His breath seems so loud and unnatural to him now, he wonders if Dream is noticing it. He wonders if the same thoughts are running through Dream’s head. He turns his head towards him to see if Dream’s already asleep, and he is not. Awake, he’s watching the ceiling. 

“I would like to thank you for tonight,” he says suddenly, not moving his gaze. Hob turns on his side. 

“You don’t need to thank me,” he says, “They are wonderful. I wish I’d gotten to meet them before,”

Hob knows it’s a risky sentiment. All mentions of before are risky, but he’s less scared of those risks now. More sure that Dream will stay, even if he says the wrong thing. 

“It was my mistake,” Dream says, “Not introducing you sooner,”

Hob hums. 

“I’m glad they took it well. Even Matthew doesn’t seem mad anymore,” he says. 

Dream turns to him, finally. They lay on their sides, so close, close enough that Hob can see Dream’s face perfectly, even in the darkness.

“Me too,” he says

“See, you didn’t have to worry. You could have told them before,”

Dream evades his gaze again, his face thoughtful. If Hob doesn’t physically stop himself, his hand will reach out, to smooth the furrow of his brow. 

Dream looks back at Hob, new determination in his eyes. 

“There is…vast difference between humans and us. In custom, as well,”

Hob nods, listening. 

“For most human cultures funerals are held to remember the life lost, to celebrate it. For us, it is different,” Dream explains, “For us, funerals’ main purpose is…forgetting. We see no honor in remembering, in prolonged grieving. No one remembers the first Despair, no one speaks of her,” 

Dream quiets for a moment, like he often does, when he decides whether to say something, or to keep his peace. Hob is glad that more and more Dream chooses the former, but what he says next makes him anything but glad to hear it. 

“I didn’t wish to find out if they have forgotten me,” he says, “I didn’t want to be forgotten,”

Hob doesn’t know what to say. He can hardly believe his ears. He rises, probing himself up on his elbow, trying to see Dream even clearer in the darkness of the night. 

“Dream-,” he starts, but Dream waves his hand at him

“I know what you will say,” he tells him, dissmisive, “You are right. It is ridiculous. I am ridiculous. But you wanted to know the truth. Here it is,” 

Dream doesn’t sound vulnerable or pitiful. He voices his thoughts – such private, but senseless thoughts – in a very matter-of-fact way. Hob, however, cannot be so stonecold about this. 

“I hope you saw, then,” he says, “That forgetting was never an option for any of us,”

Dream’s face softens, and Hob thinks he will leave it at that at first, but then he realizes he can’t. 

“I was at that funeral. It was not about forgetting, not in the slightest,” he says, “Maybe that’s your custom, whatever, but it was never going to be the case for us, with you. People made speeches, they cried, it was all so…I thought I was having a nightmare. I hoped I was,”

Hob is shocked to realize how well he remembers the funeral. Talking about it brings back every detail. The gorgeous castle that he would have loved to visit, but not under such circumstances. The pale, heartbroken faces of the people who just laughed and ate at his table. The body, covered in silk, that Hob could never – still can’t – associate with the man laying in his bed now. 

Hob looks away. He lays down on his back and breathes.They shouldn’t end the night like this. They shouldn’t talk about this at all. All is well. All is well. 

“Hob,” Dream reaches out, moves closer. Hob hopes it’s dark enough, so he can’t see the water in his eyes, but knows he can.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Hob shakes his head. 

“You’re here now,” he says. He turns back, needing to see Dream, even if it makes his heartbreak visible to him. He makes himself smile. 

“You’re here now. That’s all that matters to me,” 

He touches the side of his face. Dream leans into the touch. He places his head on Hob’s shoulder and when Hob’s arms wrap around his frame, he knows they both will sleep through the night, and no nightmare will bother them.

Notes:

Thank you for reading!

This chapter took forever and I apologize for it.
The reunion scene between Dream and his Dreaming family was one of those scenes that the whole fanfic was built around. When I was writing that scene, I kept thinking of the goodbye scene in the show. Dream's face in that scene is forever glued to the insides of my eyelids, I will never stop thinking about it. I also keep thinking about how Dream and Lucienne almost never touch. He doesn't hug her goodbye, and I refuse to believe neither of them wanted it at the moment. It just wasn't something they did, but within the context of this fic, I couldn't leave it like that. I also like to think human!Dream would adapt a lot of Hob's habits, his way of handling different situations, so when Nuala cries in front of him, he comforts her in the way Hob unknowingly taught him to.
Anywayyyyy

We are pretty close to the end. Maybe just a couple chapters away. I post new chapters as I write them, hence the non-existent posting schedule, hence me not knowing when or how the story will end. I do want to torture these two a bit more.

I hope you liked this chapter! Please do let me know if you did. And if you're willing, reread the last bit, after the guests leave, while playing New Year's Day by Taylor Swift, that's how I intended it.

Notes:

Thank you for reading!

Time passes, but my sandman obsession doesn't.
In all honesty, this is the first time I'm posting the first chapter of a fic without having it all finished, so the posting schedule might be a bit of a mess (especially considering that I am a Grown Person with a Job and a Life).

This will probably be long and I sincerely hope I won't abandon it. Your kudos and comments will certainly play a role in that, but more than anything I would love to read what you think.

The fic title is stolen from the Lord Huron song of the same name that absolutely everyone needs to listen to right now.