Chapter Text
The car ride back is silent, laced with a lingering tension and exhaustion.
Hob speaks to Johanna only ones on the way, asking her where they are going to which she responds that his home is the safest, because she had apparently made quite the name for herself in the occult community. The immortal doesn’t argue and instead focuses on the man currently laying in his arms.
Dream has barely moved since they got in the vehicle, a few twitches and winces here and there but other than that he’s been as still as a corpse. Hob has felt the need to check if he’s breathing several times now. He is, thankfully, but his chest barely raises and his breath seems thin and aborted.
It worries him to no end.
When the car lurches to a stop, Hob winces as his wounds get jostled. He looks out the window only to be greeted by the wonderful sight of “The New Inn”, the streetlights nearby painting her in a warm golden light.
Hob can’t help the sigh that escapes his lips as they curve upwards. He’s finally home.
Johanna gets out of the car first and walks around to open the door he is leaning against. Hob thankfully has the mind to move so he doesn’t fall out of it but that action seems to jolt Dream, who groans in pain.
“Ah, shit. I’m sorry, my friend.” He shifts again pulling the Endless against his chest so that he might get him out of the car properly.
He manages to slide out, grimacing when he puts weight on his bleeding leg and then it’s much easier to scoop his friend up in his arms and pull him out of the backseat.
Dream starts shaking in his arms again, body curling against him and hand latching onto his shirt. Hob presses his head against Dream’s, speaking as softly as he can. “Hey, hey, it’s alright. You’re alright. We’re just going someplace nicer, okay?”
The Endless’s grip doesn’t loosen but he doesn’t try to jump out of Hob’s arms so he counts that as a win.
They make their way inside the inn; the streets thankfully empty because of the late hour, and quickly go up the stairs to Hob’s apartment.
He had merged two of the rooms during renovations when first bought the building because well he liked a bit of luxury for himself after so many years spend in misery. It wasn’t a penthouse apartment or anything like that. It was a fairly normal place just a bit more spacious. There was a living room and a kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom and that was about it.
When they enter the apartment Hob doesn’t do his usual routine of showing off all the little trinkets that he’s kept through all his centuries of life, when he has guests over, instead they just head to Hob’s bedroom.
Hob lays Dream down as gently as he can, not caring about the sheets turning bloody and checks him over.
Under the bright light he looks even worse than before; the gray tinge to his skin, the deep dark circles under his eyes, the sunken in cheeks and the raw, angry looking cuts littering his body make Hob wince just by looking at them.
Dream’s chest barely raises as he breathes and unmoving as he is...he looks very much dead, if Hob is completely honest with himself, and that brief thought alone sends a shiver up his spine and makes his eyes sting with unshed tears, because he knows he’s saved his friend but the sight before him says otherwise.
Hob sits down on the edge of the bed and presses a hand against Dream’s neck to check his pulse...just to check...to make sure he’s not...
“He looks dead.” Johanna’s voice cuts through the silence and her words embed themselves into Hob’s chest.
“No, he doesn’t!” Hob snaps back and when he meets Johanna’s wide eyes, the anger that had suddenly reared its head inside him curls up and dies immediately, leaving only bitterness.
“I...I’m sorry, Johanna.”
“It’s fine.”
He looks back at his friend, clutching one of his boney hands. “I need to clean him up and...uhm...bandage his wounds.”
There’s a little shift behind him as Johanna steps up. “What about you?”
The pain Hob feels has become a dull ache in the back of his mind that he can ignore without issue. He’s alright until things start getting fuzzy at the corners, then he’ll have to take care of it. He can’t die after all so he’s not particularly worried. Dream on the other hand...
“I’m fine, don’t worry.” He tries to smile as he turns to the woman but by the look on her face it’s not very convincing. “Do you mind getting the first aid box from the bathroom?”
“Box?” She asks a bit incredulously.
Hob scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah well, I can’t really go to the hospital when something happens. People would freak out when I start healing from a headwound.”
Johanna nods. “Right...in the bathroom, you said?”
“Cupboard under the sink.”
Constantine nods and heads off. Hob gets up and goes to the kitchen after a final look at the Endless.
He gets some warm water in a big bowl and a soft towel and gets to work, cleaning his friend’s wounds up as gently as he can. A warm bath would probably work wonders for him, he knows from personal experience but he doesn’t want to risk it right now.
Johanna comes back with a cardboard box in her hands and they both get to work finishing cleaning the Endless up and bandaging him. Dream is like a doll in their hands, seemingly lifeless, no sounds of pain make their way through his lips. Hob continues to check his pulse as they work. It’s always there but it’s always very weak.
They decide to split the work, Johanna takes the smaller wounds and Hob takes the more serious ones, seeing as he has more experience in the matter. They are thankfully few and far between.
There is a very deep “X” carved into his stomach, seemingly numerous times. It needs stitches so Hob gets to work. Thanks to all the wars he’s been through, he’s quick and precise, not because Dream can feel it at the moment but because Hob can’t stand the sight of the wounds.
There is a hole that goes through the Endless’s whole shoulder and Hob tries to not imagine what might have caused it, he just gets to work.
Finally, his eyes move down the huge chunk of missing flesh on Dream’s thigh. Hob grits his teeth as he places a hand over the wound. He wants Burgess in front of him ones more, so he can twist his neck and rip it off his head with his bare hands. He can’t believe that this is something his friend had experienced in the century that he considers the least barbaric. Hob knows human cruelty; he’s experienced it first-hand but to see it happen to someone like his stranger brings out a hatred he didn’t know he could experience.
He bandages the huge wound silently, holding back tears as he does.
After some time has passed when Johanna asks him if he could pull Dream up so she can work on the cuts on his back, Hob simply pulls his friend’s body against his. Dream’s head rests on his shoulder and after a moment Hob lets his own forehead rest on his friend's shoulder. Johanna stays quiet when she sees Hob’s shoulders begin to shake slightly as he cries. She just continues on with her work.
***
When they’re done, Dream looks a bit like a mummy, Hob can barely tell gauze from skin and his head is the only thing not covered up. They’ve managed to put some bandages under the manacles on his wrists and the collar around his neck so that they don’t hurt him further.
“I need to figure out a way to get rid of those.” Hob muses under his breath, properly exhausted after an hour of first aid and a good cry.
“I think I have some pliers at my place. Might give it a go.” Johanna mutters next to him and Hob turns surprised.
“Johanna, I...” He looks down at his feet, swallowing the lump in his throat. “Listen, I can’t thank you enough for what you did for me and him...and I’ll send you the money you’re owed first thing in the morning I promise but...you don’t have to do this...you don’t have to stay...I’ve asked too much of you already...”
The unimpressed look on Constantine’s face only grows as Hob continues to babble and after he’s somewhat done, she delivers a hearty smack on his arm. Hob jumps a bit, rubbing the stinging skin and looking a little scared.
“Shut up and come with me.” She grabs his arm and pulls him out of the room. ” You need to get patched up before you pass out from blood loss.”
“Uhm...wait a minute.” Hob looks back at Dream, covered up to the chin by a thick blanket.
“He’ll be fine for a few minutes, ease off.”
***
Hob sits down on the couch in the living room a bit awkwardly, the TV has apparently been turned on and an old movie is currently playing, the quiet dialogue brings a certain calm to the whole place. Johanna settles right next to the immortal, her hands full of supplies which she unceremoniously dumps on the little table in front of them.
Hob watches her silently and after a few moments she raises a brow at him. “Well, what are you waiting for? Strip down, love.”
“Uh...right.” Hob feels his cheeks warm a bit as he clears his throat before getting to work, unbuttoning his shirt.
He usually does this himself; he’s never really had someone there to see how bad the wound looks or to actually bandage him properly. Sometimes he just wraps a sheet around the bleeding area so it doesn't dirty the couch and just waits for everything to sort itself out. It’s not the most pleasant or efficient strategy but after so many injuries he’s stopped caring, honestly.
As Constantine starts to clean the wound on his shoulder, to Hob’s complete surprise, she asks. “So, you wanna shed some light on this whole friend situation?”
Hob feels the tweezers sink into the wound and start digging for the bullet. He grits his teeth taking a breath as the pain ignites ones more. “Um...sure...where...I don’t know what you wanna know.”
He feels the tweezers grab onto the bullet and start to pull. “You said the Sandman made you immortal.”
Hob chuckles through the pain as the bullet slowly starts to make its way out of his skin. “Yeah okay, so...1389 I was drinking with a few buddies of mine, I think we were celebrating something...I can’t really remember anymore and I was joking around that I wasn’t gonna die cause death is a stupid thing that people let happen to them.”
Johanna snorts behind him as the bullet is yanked out of his wound.
Hob hisses trying to keep his voice casual. “Little did I know that an old god was listening to my bullshit at the time and decided to..,uhm...test my metal as it were.”
“Yeah, those godly chaps do have a wicked sense of humor.” Johanna comments with a smile in her voice as she begins to clean and bandage his wound.
“I remember he came up to me, looking all smug, though I couldn't tell at the time and asked me if I would tell him what it was like to not die in a hundred years.” Johanna chuckles behind him.
Hob sighs with a bit of a smile. “I told him sure, cause he was a fine-looking lad and I was a bit drunk and then he left.”
Johanna turns him around, his shoulder now completely patched up, and gives him an appalled look. “What? Just like that? He didn’t tell you anything else?”
Hob laughs. “Nope! He just left. I figured out something was wrong a few years later, when I got mugged in an alley and survived a rusty blade to the stomach.”
“Holy shit.” Johanna gasps before tapping his leg. “Take off your pants and gimme your leg.”
Without stopping his story Hob does as she asks. “Yeah, it was rough week. But I survived it and then I just kept surviving things that killed my friends and then I started to realize that I wasn’t really ageing as well.”
Johanna shakes her head. “Bloody hell. Bit of an asshole, wasn’t he? Not giving you any warning.”
Hob smirks. “Sometimes.”
The immortal puts his hurt leg on Constantine’s lap and thankfully it’s healed enough not to be bleeding and continues his story. “After about 50 years I realized that my stranger wasn’t an ordinary one and that I might actually meet him in another 50.”
“And you did?”
“And I did in exactly 100 years to the date and even in the same bloody tavern we first met.”
Nostalgia has now settled in Hob’s mind like a warm blanket. “I now realize how much I appreciated how calm he was about the whole thing, because I was honestly absolutely losing my mind at the time, thinking I’ve made some kind of deal with a devil.”
“Well, that’s always a possibility.” Johanna mutters with a smirk.
Hob shakes his head. “But he dismissed the whole thing immediately, he almost looked offended that I might consider him a demon, actually and then he offered me immortality in exchange for stories.”
“Stories?”
“Yeah, he wanted us to meet every 100 years so that I might tell him what it was like to live for so long.”
“That’s it?” Constantine sounds very skeptical as she wraps his leg up in gauze. “No strings attached?”
Hob shakes his head. “Nope. He was just...curious I guess...cause I think he found it hard to believe that anyone would want to live for that long.”
“Well, he was right about that.”
“He kept expecting me to give up after another 100 years but I kept proving the bastard wrong. I also kind of think he quite enjoyed our meetings, though he’d never admit it. I found that he’s quite the stubborn individual.” The smile dims on Hob’s face as the memories he’s not very fond of rear their heads.
The bandage around his leg is neatly tied and he takes it off Johanna’s knees before putting on his clothes again.
Johanna of course notices the slight change in the man’s mood and keeps quiet for a few minutes, giving him time to collect his thoughts.
“I’m still finding it hard to believe that the guy over there is the bloody Sandman.” Constantine leans back against the couch.
“My gran used to tell me about him, you know but I never quite believed her.” The woman chuckles as an old memory flits about her mind as well.
Hob has now turned to her and is watching her expectantly, begging for a little more time for himself.
Johanna thrusts one of her arms out, her tone slightly dramatic. “Pale as freshly fallen snow, hair made of living shadows and cloaked in a robe of darkness, his eyes full of galaxies!”
She wags her index finger at Hob. “So, you better be careful Johanna for his voice can bring you dreams and his visage nightmares, for he is the king of both!”
Hob’s smile is amused as he buttons up his shirt. “Blimey! I bet he’d love that description. He always did have a royal sort of air to him whenever we met.”
Constantine smiles at him as well but after she doesn’t say anymore Hob takes a deep breath, stilling himself.
“It was fine for a few centuries. We kept meeting and talking and it was great.” Hob sighs. ”And in 1889 we had a fight. I pushed a little too hard and he got spooked and left.”
“You asked him out?” Johanna asks intrigued.
“What?! NO!” Hob is very glad that this room is not very well lit at the moment cause he’s sure that if Constantine could see how red his face is at the moment, she‘d laugh.
“I...I...I just said that...I thought that he was lonely and that...that he was meeting me for so long cause he’d wanted a friend.”
Johanna is watching him with slight disbelief in her eyes and amusement around her lips.
“Are you telling me that you asked The Sandman if you could be friends after 500 years of knowing each other and he got mad and left.”
“He got spooked, okay! He’s...I don’t think he’s very emotionally...educated.” Hob protest but the flush of his cheeks is a very hard thing to ignore and his words don’t sound very convincing.
Johanna barks out a laugh, shaking her head. “You two bloody idiots! I can’t believe it.”
“Yeah, I know.” Hob looks down at himself sheepishly. “And thank you for this, Johanna.” He gestures to his bandages.
“No problem.” Constantine gets to her feet and lightly pats him on the injured shoulder, making him wince. “Now if you would excuse me, I’m gonna go take a shower and I advise you to do the same after I’m done.”
“Yeah, good idea.” Hob nods. “I’m gonna...go check on him.”
Johanna stops her trek to the bathroom and gives him a look. “Don’t beat yourself up about it okay?”
This time Hob just gives a silent nod, only sparing her a brief look before heading to the bedroom, where his dearest friend lays torn apart.
***
Dream feels heavy, as if his limbs are full of lead, the air itself almost seems to be pushing down on him, making it hard to breathe. He has never experienced such a need to take a breath before. The pain is another beast in of itself, like a parasite, eating away at his everything, making him wish he had no body to feel with, making him wish he was a simple breeze on a warm spring day, carrying flower petals and nothing more.
The Endless forces himself to sink into that sweet image and hope it consumes him.
To be a breeze...playing with flowers...
He mouths the words although he does not allow a sound to escape them.
“Finally willing to talk, are we?” A grating metal of a voice interrupts his fantasies and Dream’s eyes snap open, the hatred in them already burning. “Ready to negotiate?”
The face of Roderick Burgess watches him through the stained glass of his prison, the flicks of blood on it almost surround the man as he steps up to the Endless. Dream’s slightly fuzzy vison almost makes the spots look like they’re moving, like bloody flies.
Roderick grins sharply, his now younger features giving him a darker look. “Well, I’m afraid it’s far too late for that.” He places one hand on the glass and the other lifts up to Dream’s eyelevel to show of the expensive looking cup. “I have taken all I need from you, creature.” He lifts the cup to his lips and downs all of its contents before pulling it away to show off his now red lips.
“Delicious.” The bloody smile he sends Morpheus send a shiver down his spine.
He should not be afraid of this mortal man, a part of him screams in defiance and yet the rest of him cowers from the pain, wishing it all to end.
Dream closes his eyes and takes a breath, trying to calm down not wanting to show weakness and then...
There is pain.
Dream screams, his eyes snapping open. He looks down only to find that dreadful blade being dragged across his stomach. Roderick Burgess is there again, grinning at him as he holds the weapon and cutting across his skin again, to make a perfect “X”
Morpheus’s cries are drowned out by gasps and applause and when the Endless lifts his head, before him is a crowd of people watching with intent.
Faces full of smiles and despair mix together into a cacophony of voices and images that Dream can’t comprehend.
“Oh my god!” help me “30 000 000!” " Yes!”
“It looks human!” “Is it a devil?!”
help me “Give them more!”
“SOLD!” “It looks dead!” “Double that!”
“How pathetic!” help me “It is a deceiver!”
help me
“How much for the flesh?”
Dream’s head snaps up. The crowd is still there, seated in this strange lush room full of golds and reds, candles shining all around them.
There is a man dressed in a dark green suit standing right in front of his cage. His hair is combed back and beard neatly trimmed, his eyes are a pale gray and his teeth a shiny white. He looks ordinary on the outside but the Endless’s eyes are a different kind, he can see the beast lurking inside. He can see the hunger in the man’s eyes, the hunger for everything he has to give.
It reminds him of...
He blinks and the pain hits again.
He looks down to see the familiar hand of Burgess cutting into the meat of his thigh. Dream trashes, the metal cuffs slashing into his flesh.
Tears spill as his screams fill the chamber full of creatures who could not be human. It is not possible for them to be human and doing this.
Only a nightmare can, a nightmare like...
His eyes zero in on a figure among the horde of people, a figure that blends and yet stands out to Dream like a light...
The man in white takes his dark sunglasses off to reveal familiar teeth behind them, teeth that Morpheus himself had crafted. The charming smile on his face is one that Dream had worked hard on, the feeling the man exuded had to be calming, to make you curious, to make you step closer, like the light of an anglerfish.
The Corinthian is looking at him with the same kind of hunger the man in the green was, both of them feeding into each other. But as Dream kept his eyes on his nightmare, he sees...
...he sucks in a breath...
He sees it clear as day and can hardly believe it...
The chunk of flesh tears from his body and Dream roars in pain, the glass rattling.
“Dream!”
“Hold it in place!”
The Endless yanks on his chains as his will cracks, the candles around them flicker.
Screams fill the room as Morpheus attempts to stand on his feet.
“Dream!”
“Stop it, you pathetic little..! Obey me!”
Pain...more pain, more warmth spills across his body as he trashes. The chains are like claws around his body.
He doesn’t want this anymore. He’s tired. He’s so tired. He wants to leave. He can’t stand this. He can’t stand them, these creatures that dare to call themselves human. He has gone through so many dreams, so many fantasies of humanity and they are not this, they are not supposed to be this.
They should be...
They are supposed to be like...
“DREAM!” A voice breaks through his panic, a voice so familiar and so warm. A voice he didn’t think he’d ever hear again...
***
Dream’s eyes snap open and as the blurry image before him clears a face greets him; warm brown eyes, tanned skin and expression so open and full of emotions it almost seems to glow. The Endless has longed to see that face for one hundred years.
Hob...
The Dream’s body moves before his mind can catch up, launching itself into the man’s arms and grasping onto him like a lifeline.
He’s warm and scorching hot at the same time and Dream wants to let go, because he hasn’t touched anyone in decades and because his wounds scream at him to pull away but he can’t. He won’t. He wouldn’t dare, because Hob is solid and there, in his arms, and he’s speaking to him things he can’t quite understand. The Endless tries to focus on his words finally, after taking a moment.
“...breathe, okay?”
Dream takes a breath and it hurts so much he begins to shake or maybe he’s been shaking for a while now, he honestly can’t tell.
“That’s it. You’re okay. You’re safe. It was just a nightmare. Just breathe. I’m here.”
Tears fill Dream’s eyes as Hob’s smooth voice keeps speaking reassurances and he buries his face in the crook of the man’s neck, the smell of coffee and oranges hits his nose.
Strong arms slowly wrap around his waist and back, pulling him flush against Hob and the Endless’s grip loosens just a fraction because he doesn’t have to keep himself upright anymore. Hob has him.
“I’ve got you, my friend.” Hob whispers, his voice shaking just at the end but it says so much that Dream feels overwhelmed.
He’s out.
He’s free.
He’s safe.
Tears spill down Dream’s cheeks, dampening the man’s shirt as quiet sobs wrack through his body. Hob tightens his grip on him, resting his cheeks against the messy hair and starting to rock gently back and forth, whispering soothing things into his stranger’s ear.