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Hob’s flat, as he enters, is dark - or rather, there is darkness filling the flat, dense and impenetrable. Flicking the light switch has no effect, and there is no light from street lamps filtering in through the half-drawn curtains. Nothing but the pitch-black dark, and the suffocating weight of it.
And then two shards of light appear in the darkness, like a pair of bright-glittering stars; and Greetings, my love whisper the shadows.
“Hullo, you!” Hob drops his bag by the door, and reaches out into the dark space, letting the night kiss his fingertips. “Might’ve let me know you were coming, I would’ve gone home early.”
I wished to surprise you.
“And what a lovely surprise you are.” Hob beams into his dark, only seemingly empty flat, pulling off his coat. “Still, I’m sorry to make you wait quite this long. The literature department was organising a poetry recital and discussion, Poetic Longing something-or-other… you might’ve enjoyed it.”
The department head shall dream of it tonight. I will see it then.
“Convenient. I think there’s a recording on the web, too, just in case your dream-magic won’t suffice.” There’s an amused rustling after those teasing words, a vague fantasy of joy at the edge of Hob’s subconscious. It’s a little strange, to be in the presence of His Soulmate when he’s not altering Hob’s perception to appear human, but Hob’s grown used to it. Rather likes it, actually, that he’s permitted to see behind the veil now and then. “Got any specific plans for tonight, dearest? Besides surprising me.”
I do. A shifting in the dark, and quite suddenly it begins receding, gathering in the centre of Hob’s living room around the twin stars, forming a face, limbs, a midnight-black cloak, until His Beloved Stranger stands before him, as elegant and regal as the first time Hob set eyes on him in a crowded tavern.
(Except, Hob now knows that this Stranger is called Dream, can see the softened love in his peculiar dark-glowing eyes, and is both more and less in awe of him. He knows Dream now, not all of him certainly, but enough to cherish him in ways he couldn’t cherish The Stranger, that nameless phantom only with him every hundredth year, for all that his name was inscribed on Hob’s very soul.)
“I wish to bestow a gift on you,” Dream tells him, reaching out with one graceful hand - and Hob comes easily, lets himself be drawn in and melt in His Love’s embrace. “For it is your birthday.”
Hob blinks.
“No, it isn’t.” He frowns against Dream’s clavicle. “That’s in March.”
“Not the one on your current official documentation, beloved.” Dream dips his head down to press a kiss to the edge of Hob’s jaw. “The day you were brought into this world, in 1356.”
“Christ, really?” Hob laughs, pulls back a little. “I never knew. Birth dates didn’t matter that much to us smallfolk, back then - ma and da didn’t even know quite how many years old I was, never mind the exact day. Figures, that you’d know, though.”
“I have my ways.” Despite the deep, sonorous purr-like quality of His Dream’s voice, the slender chest under Hob’s hands doesn’t reverberate with it, perfectly still except for a mimicry of breathing. “Are you pleased, Hob Gadling?”
“When you’re with me? Always.” Hob kisses him. It feels like kissing a summernight’s storm, warm and electrifying. On his arm, his soulmark burns hot and wanting, and there’s lust coiling in his gut - but not urgently, only a steady, patient burn of faint desire for the man-shaped entity he loves.
(He can feel Dream’s hand curl around his arm during the kiss, touching the mark. He rather seems to like it, fixating on it with a strange almost-possessiveness quite at odds with the initial horror at the reveal - Hob much prefers this state of affairs, in truth.)
“Did you know, I used to give my birthday as the 7th of June, in some of my lives?” He confesses, quietly, against His Soulmate’s lips. “Felt right to me, to count the day I met you as the one my life truly began.”
A moment of silence, cold breath that tastes of night air on Hob’s lips.
“...would you not like your gift, my dear-heart?” Dream finally asks, and there’s something just slightly unsteady in his voice, as if there is a storm of emotion he’s attempting to hold at bay. Hob’s a little enamoured with the implications of it.
“Was I not already receiving it?” Hob winks, but steps back, out of the embrace. There’ll be time for more of that later in the night, he’s sure. “But alright then, let’s have it. Though I will say, after ‘immortality’ and ‘your love’, that present is up against some stiff competition.”
“It is my hope that it will please you equally as much.” Dream reaches into the depths of his constellation-spattered coat, and draws something from it. “Here.”
At first glance, the present doesn’t seem at all impressive. A piece of paper, hardly much bigger than Dream’s slender hand, some writing on it in dark ink.
Hob leans in for a closer look - and his eyes widen in recognition.
“Oh, i-it’s a-” he stammers, a little confused, unsure how to interpret… this. “Is it?”
“It is.” His Dream confirms, inclining his head. “And it was… not easy to procure.”
Dream walked the Garden of Forking Ways in silence.
He might have made use of his Gallery instead, called out, beckoned - but if he was going to make a weighty request of his brother, then it was only right that Dream should do him the courtesy of entering Destiny’s own realm to speak it.
So he had entered the Garden, and was aimlessly walking the narrow hedge-corridors, knowing that he would only find his brother when (if) he wanted to be found. There was no rushing Destiny.
He turned another corner - and there sat Destiny, amidst a marble-stone courtyard from which at least a dozen paths led outward again, bent deep over his book. He raised his head at Dream’s approach only very slightly, to indicate his welcome, without even a shred of surprise about him.
(Dream had not called ahead to announce his presence beforehand; but then again, he hadn’t needed to. Destiny had likely known Dream would stand before him on this day since long before Dream himself had decided on it.)
“Brother Destiny.” Dream greeted him, a little stiffly, a little awkwardly.
He held respect for Destiny, to be sure, loved him as he loved all his siblings at the very core of his being, but they had always been… at odds. Not how he was at odds with Desire, certainly, it was all relatively civil, but there was an awareness that Dream was everything Destiny abhorred, uncertainty, surprise, imagination and things that couldwouldshould not be. It made conversation difficult, at times, a layer of tension to their relations - Death was a concept of certainty and permanence, too, but for some reason her presence made Dream feel pleasantly grounded, while Destiny’s left him feeling trapped, more often than not.
Destiny turned a page of his book, which he held in his lap - and his quiet response of “. . . Dream” seemed to melt together with the whisper of moving paper.
“I have something to ask of you, my elder brother.” Dream began, without much preamble. Once more, it could be assumed that Destiny knew his aims already, and there was no point in drawing the petitioning out unnecessarily. And yet, Dream felt it necessary to make his appeal formally, despite the niggling awareness that, to Destiny, the outcome of this matter was already set in stone. “I do not ask lightly, nor frivolously, and in exchange, I shall gladly offer whatever boon or service you might wish to ask of me. It is a matter most close to my heart, for it concerns…”
Dream paused. The words still held a strange weight to them that made them difficult to speak aloud.
“..it concerns my soulmate, Hob Gadling.”
(The one you have bestowed on me, without asking, without telling me, writing me onto his skin and his soul and leaving me in the dark for five centuries. I am outraged by the audacity of it - as well as eternally grateful, too.)
Destiny raised his head.
“You do not normally seek nor appreciate the assistance of us siblings in your love affairs.” He stated, not asked. “Yet you seek it now.”
“Hob is… precious, to me. Most precious. I wish to gift him something that is not in my power to grant - so I come to you, to plead for it.”
“I have little to give.”
“You have this. You know you have this.” Impatience burned in Dream’s chest, and he fought to swallow it. “Please, brother.”
Destiny did not answer. He turned a page.
“It is not too great a request, is it?” Dream pressed. “And I have offered due compensation.”
“You ask to be given an impossibility. A thing that cannot be and never would have been.” Destiny turned another page. “I do not deal in hypotheticals, Dream. That is your domain.”
Dream closed his eyes. Breathed deeply.
There was his answer, then. He had hoped for another… but hopes and dreams had no sway on the granite-hewn certainty of Destiny.
“...I understand.” He lowered his head into a stiff bow. “I came to ask you out of the love I hold for Hob - and had hoped that love might in turn move you to grant my request. Forgive me for the imposition.”
He gathered his cloak about him, turning towards one of the branching-off paths - it mattered little which one.
“Dream.” Destiny turned another page, and then said, calmly: “I did not refuse you.”
Dream froze.
Turned.
Destiny’s gaze was on his book - but he was holding out a piece of paper.
Dream walked back to him, reached out, took it.
And with a deep sigh of choked relief, he pressed the paper to his chest, half curling his body around it.
“Thank you.” Dream whispered.
“There is no need to thank me for something I was always going to do, my brother.” Destiny pointed out, reasonably… and perhaps a little fondly, too. “Nor to repay me.”
“For my part, I am all too keenly aware of that hypothetical scenario in which you might have refused,” Dream responded, a smile tugging on what, in a human, would be his lips, “so you will receive my gratitude regardless of whether or not there is need for it.”
Destiny wordlessly inclined his head, and turned another page.
Dream could tell he had been dismissed, now that the matter he had come here with had been resolved; so he said his farewells, and departed.
He made his way straight to Hob’s apartment.
Hob stares down at the piece of paper offered to him with some trepidation - though most of it is, admittedly, confusion.
There is a soulmark drawn onto it, in perfect detail, a little larger than most but nowhere near the size of Hob’s own, though a hint more intricate and delicate - and a thing of impossibility. Artists have been trying to recreate marks faithfully for centuries, millennia, and have generally found that it cannot be done. They always look just slightly off, just slightly incorrect, even on photographs - and yet, this one…
But whose is it, anyway? Not his own, that’s for sure.
“Can you Read it?” murmurs Dream, an eagerness vibrating in his voice.
“Not fluently. Bits and pieces.” Hob admits, frowning. “You might have to Read it out for me, love. I can just roughly tell that… here’s some reference to a first meeting, there’s the attributes of the mate’s love, and the Words along here are…”
He squints.
“Are…”
“Allow me.” His Dream offers indulgently… and begins to Read.
“You will not know him at the first,
Nor the second, nor the third,
And will not recognise his thirst
For you.
You will not love him at the fourth,
Nor the fifth, nor the sixth,
And will not see his worth
For now.
You will not want him, nor his mark,
The seventh you’ll both spend alone in the dark
But he’ll wait.
He’ll wait, and wait, and wait
For you.
And you’ll know, and you’ll love, and you’ll want him,
By meeting number eight.
He’ll love you well for all your days, he’ll love you true in every night; you, the King, and he, the Knight; and ne’er will there be an end in sight.
And in the Book of Destiny, these words I Read to be his first:”
(Hob swallows. He knows what will come next, trembles with anticipation nonetheless, and mouths the words alongside Dream.)
“Look, I’ve SEEN death!”
Hob can’t help a little laugh.
“Oh, Christ above, that is what you first heard of me!” He groans lightly. “Well. Better than five minutes before that, I think we were talking about how my old commander looked like a donkey’s arse. That would’ve been mortifying.”
“Rest assured, my dearest love,” Dream hums, a little cryptically, “considering whose company I was keeping at the time, you did indeed manage to embarrass yourself thoroughly with those Words, as well.”
Hob laughs again, helpless, hardly knowing what else to do or say. It is a real, genuine soulmark - and it is the one he has always, abstractly, imagined he would one day kiss on His Soulmate’s arm, before 1889, before finding out that The Stranger’s arm has always been blank, and always will be.
It’s an old dream come true. Hob doesn’t know how to feel about it - or rather, he feels far too much, in all kinds of different directions, and can’t manage to untangle himself properly.
But still. Conflicting feelings are no reason to forget one’s manners. Hob has been given an impossible gift, by the entity he loves more than anything else on this world or beyond it, and the last thing he wants is to seem ungrateful now.
“I- I thank you, Dream.” He finally manages, taking the paper from Dream’s hand, stroking his thumb over the old ink. “This is… a gift beyond anything I could have expected, certainly. Beyond anything I could’ve imagined.”
“On par with immortality and my love?” asks His Beloved, playful, though Hob can see the pleased relief that his gift has been well-received, a vague air of anxiety dissipating.
“Ah, well. Still a high bar there, dearest.”
“Then it is fortunate that there is more to the gift.” Dream continues - and reaches once more into the depths of his cloak, to produce a jar of dark-red fluid, and…
And a brush.
“I would have you paint it onto my skin, as well.”
For a moment, Hob stares.
There is one singular emotion pushing to the surface of his tumultuous heart now; and it is not a very pleasant one, altogether.
It is a dream come true, certainly. A dream made true, for him and him alone… but there are things too precious to Hob to gamble on dreams and fantasies, and that makes him wary of this gift.
(His Love knows his dreams, knows them too well, perhaps, and might wish to give them to Hob, regardless of whether that is… at all wise. Hob has had many dreams he would shudder to see made real.)
“...you do know. Don’t you.” Hob finally ventures, uncertainly. “That I truly, genuinely, do not care whether you have a matching mark or not? That I don’t need you to have one to love you, and consider us bonded?”
Dream blinks, slowly, cat-like.
“Oh, dear Hob.” He finally smiles, a gently-unsettling expression on that dear face. Hob loves to see it. “I know, yes. You have never, never given me reason to doubt that, or to consider this soulmateship lacking in any way. That is not the purpose of this gift.”
“So what is the purpose, then?”
“Enjoyment.” Hob’s Beloved waves an elegant hand. “Tenderness. Love. Playing pretend for shared pleasure, seeing a fantasy play out. Do you think you would not enjoy it?”
“Oh, I would.” Hob answers, truthfully. He has grown to adore the sight of the blank skin of Dream’s lower arm, but now that the idea is in his head… he is curious to see what his mark would look like on there, too. Both sights might please him, just in different ways. “As long as we’re clear on what this is and isn’t, and where we stand… we can do it then, yes.”
He picks up the jar of paint- ink? something of the sorts, though it’s not like any of the inks he worked with as a printer, ages ago. He inspects it carefully, with a clinical eye.
“Will this be permanent, then?” He holds up the paint. “Because if so, I might like to practise-”
“No. Not permanent.” Dream corrects him promptly. “Nothing you could put on or under this imaginary skin I wear could ever last. To mark an Endless that way, with such an intricate design, is a thing of impossibility - that is why I have no soulmark to start with. The paint will likely fade within a few days, even if I exert some force upon my form to maintain it as long as possible. But, Hob…”
A gentle touch to Hob’s hand, to his wrist, his arm.
“What need do I have for permanency, if you can give me repetition instead? You may paint it on me now, and then again when it has already faded, over and over again whenever we might wish for it.” He rubs a thin thumb over the centre of Hob’s soulmark. “My sister once called love, true love, a decision made over and over again - and I would have ‘my mark’ be the same. A continuous choice, made together, should you be amenable.”
“Ah, you old bastard. That’s terribly romantic.” Hob sniffs, touched, and has to hide a tear. “Yes, yes, alright then. I’ll draw it on you however often you want, I’m immortal after all, plenty of time for it.”
Dream is evidently delighted by that promise; he smiles the way cats smile, quiet and smug and impossibly pleased, while watching Hob pull over a small table and settle the paint on it, wetting the brush in his mouth. Kneeling in front of Dream - and, well, this is not unfamiliar, this position, though the evening usually proceeds in other directions afterwards - Hob critically peers at the soulmark design again, the perfect, intricate swirls that, amazingly, describe him.
“It won’t turn out right, redrawing it.” He murmurs, distractedly fiddling with the brush. “It never does. You know that too, don’t you, love?”
“It will be right.” His Dearest dismisses Hob’s concerns easily. “For it shall be drawn in your hand, and all the more perfect for it.”
“Oh, so only moderate incredibly high pressure and expectations then.”
“Hob.”
Hob smirks at the exasperation in His Soulmate’s tone, and leans up to brush a kiss onto the tip of his nose in apology for the teasing.
And then he readies himself, and begins his work.
Material form is, in usual circumstances, an afterthought to Dream. He allows the perceptions of others to flow over him and clothe him in a thousand different guises, and interacts with the Dreaming in strange, immaterial ways. Dreamstuff moves because he wills it to, not because he has a physical form to touch it.
So it used to discomfit him, to be in the Waking, and interact with it bodily - and only moreso after a century of containment in cold, hard glass, feeling the terrible pressure of material existence dig into the skin he was forced to wear. Escaping from the glass cage had been an impossible relief… and a new burden of its own, the Waking now too vast and lively, and his self, material and immaterial, untethered and strained.
But it’s different, with Hob.
He grounds Dream, nearly as gently and comfortably as his dear sister Death does, with his steadfast presence. To touch Hob’s skin, to touch the mark that does not properly connect to Dream, and yet binds him all the same - it makes him feel like he belongs. Not trapped, and not out of place, but right, here at Hob’s side. He’d had reservations, at the start, but now he revels in it, constructing himself a material form and drawing as much of himself into it as he can, all for Hob to kiss and hold and caress. It is a challenge but… a pleasant one, all in all.
Watching Hob reverently push up the sleeve of Dream’s robe, Dream expects this to be comparatively easy. To keep his arm material, to force it to hold the pigment on its skin, will take some effort, but hardly too much of it - and it will be worth it for the pleasure of bearing Hob’s name and mark on his skin, however briefly, until the paint fades.
So Dream holds his arm still, and watches, with a sensation akin to hunger, as Hob dips the brush once, twice; takes Dream’s hand in his, to keep his lower arm steady; checks Destiny’s sketch one last time…
And then touches the wet brush to skin.
Dream’s first, only somewhat irrationally paranoid thought, is that his sibling is once more playing one of their pranks on him.
The moment the fine bristles settle on the vulnerable skin on the inside of his wrist, paper-thin and with a false pulse beating under it, sensation shoots through Dream like a bolt of lightning.
He feels every brush hair, every molecule, and the sharp, wet cold of the paint as it settles onto his skin, left behind as Hob draws a single curl from the knob of his wrist to the sinew leading to the muscle. It’s intense, too intense, a teasingly light touch that still seems to burn him to the core - it has to, it must be Desire messing with the paint…
But no. Desire has taken his threat to heart, and would never be so careless, so obvious, after a direct reprimand, Dream reminds himself with some difficulty, distracted by the second brushstroke sending sparks and shivers up his arm. They would not dare, and he cannot feel their presence to any unusual degree. What he feels now is not Desire… but it is desire, he realises. His own.
(At nothing but the touch of a paint-laden brush. How positively mortifying.)
Hob hums, tongue poking through his teeth with concentration, and adds a little flourish. Dream does not shiver, does not fidget, but it’s a near thing.
It might be due to the attention he pays to the area in order to get the paint to stick. It might be a physical manifestation of the pleasure he feels upon being marked by Hob. Perhaps it could even be somehow related to the fact that it is a soulmark being drawn on him, for soulmarks have peculiar powers that not even Dream may fully comprehend.
He’s not certain what causes this strange reaction - and, frankly, he’s well on his way to not caring at all.
Hob’s hand is strong around his, his touch gentle, and the mere presence of his dearest love already intoxicating by itself; arousal is seeping through Dream’s being, a needy eagerness filling his heavy limbs with warmth. Dream does not, in all technicality, need to breathe, but he does it now, his facsimile of a human body only barely calmed by cool air being drawn into it.
He can taste Hob’s concentration on the air, the steady tug of daydreams - Hob is a man of great imagination, his mind prone to drifting off - stubbornly not indulged. His attention is fully on his work, and Dream adores him for it, recognises the state from his own creative endeavours, this total absorption. He will not disturb Hob with his body’s sudden needs. They can be indulged later, after the mark is drawn.
Dream presses his bare thighs together under the robe, bites his lip with a fierceness that would draw blood if he were human, and lets the arousal simmer.
Another dip of the brush into the paint, a graceful line along the side of his ulna; and this time, Dream does shudder, a spasm running down the length of his spine. He is tempted to flee from the sensations into immateriality, slip back into darkness and dreamstuff… but that would defeat the entire purpose of this endeavour. He must endure it, endure the insistent pressure of lust in his lower abdomen, endure the sight of Hob kneeling before him as if in supplication, ignore the… ignore…
Hob curls the brush around his Words, and Dream cannot contain himself at the sight and feel of it combined. A hoarse groan builds deep in his chest, and even with his lips pressed together to keep it from escaping, manages to make itself audible as a deep, purr-like rumbling.
Hob stills instantly, focus broken - or, no, only shifted, all that attention on Dream’s face now.
“...Dream?” He is cautious. Concerned. Scanning Dream’s features for any sign of discomfort. Oh, the dear man. “Darling? Anything the matter?”
“N-nothing is the matter, my love.” Dream’s voice cracks and trembles, and belies his words. “I am well. Proceed.”
Hob does not believe him. Of course.
He frowns, removing the brush from where it was still resting on Dream’s forearm, and Dream gasps again, half from relief, half from the desperate need for more contact, more sensation.
“I’ll not have you lie to me.” Hob’s voice is steel and iron. “Be honest, now. Something about what I am doing is causing you pain, so I would have you-”
“Not… not pain.” Dream interrupts, attempting to pull his lust-frayed self together, and failing. “A discomfort, at most. A sweet one.”
A doubtful, unconvinced look. Dream feels his pale cheeks warm, perhaps even redden, and looks away. He does not feel embarrassed in front of Hob, theirs is no bond that allows for shame, and Dream is many thousands of years too old for shyness anyway… and yet, he flushes to admit the source of his gasps, his fidgeting.
“You see, Hob, this, it…” Dream breathes, deeply, calms his unsteady breathing. “It excites me.”
“Exc-?” Hob blinks. And then, “...oh. Oh!”
A salacious smile spreads on his face, eyes twinkling, the way they had twinkled with the firelight on that first night in the White Horse, when he had grinned up at Dream just like this. Dream had not loved him then, had not cared overmuch… but to remember it now makes his heart beat faster.
“Well then, dove.” Hob smirks. “As long as you keep the canvas-” he taps Dream’s arm with the back end of the brush “-still, and don’t jostle the painter…” he indicates himself “I suppose there’s nothing stopping you from taking the edge off of the excitement, hm?”
Dream narrows his eyes at him.
“You suggest…”
“I do suggest, yeah. If you’d like to, that is.” Hob shrugs. “Your decision. I’ll be busy with this for a while yet.”
And with those words, he dips his brush into the paint, and with a very deliberate pressure, applies it to Dream’s skin again.
Dream’s entire body bends like a bowstring pulled tightly back, any composure he might have regained gone again in a flash. His left hand flexes and spasms, but Hob’s grip on him is firm, and does not allow his arm to move even an inch.
(He knows Hob will release him, will cease drawing, will put his hands and mouth to better use, if Dream only asks it of him.
Dream does not ask.)
“Such cruelty, Hob Gadling.” Dream breathes out, voice thick with adoration. “You would torment your soulmate thusly?”
“I would. I will.” Another brush stroke, slow and firm, then two quick dots - a bit sloppy and wonky, but Dream does not care in the least. “I do.”
“Hob,” Dream sighs again, and reaches out with his right hand to only barely ghost it over Hob’s soft hair, the curve of his smile.
And then, he pulls back, and slowly draws his robe away from his lap.
Dream enjoys a certain variety in his forms, all in all. Even to the same person, he might appear differently from one moment to the next, the angle of his jaw a bit sharper or softer, eyes higher or lower, height fluctuating (but preferably always a little taller than whoever is observing him), some differences small and barely noticeable, others obvious.
In the regard of his genitals, too, Dream has often experimented, particularly when his partners indicate similar enthusiasm and diverse tastes - and Hob Gadling, lovely Hob Gadling, ever so hungry for more life, more experiences, more and more, certainly seems to enjoy every new option Dream presents him with.
This time, Dream is not so creative. It is not his intent to impress, only to satisfy his own need, provide an outlet for it - so he materialises a simple penis, barely more than a rod of flesh, to enfold in his hand and stimulate. The sort of shapeless pleasure-thing of wet dreams, where details fall away to thoughtless need, and genitals are only vague areas whose touch provides pleasure.
(He considers a vulva, but thinks better of it. At this angle, and one-handedly, he does not think he can satisfy himself adequately with such equipment.)
He grasps it, and handles himself more roughly than he would another, fiercely desperate to alleviate the pressure building in him, to cool the liquid fire every touch of Hob’s brush pours into his material self- no, no, he better call it ‘his body’, because it is, for now. He does not always feel comfortable with having a body, calling it his own, but it is and remains different with Hob, and Dream is currently closer to having a body as humans do than he ever is.
And it does help. To experience the sensation of touch elsewhere than on his left arm splits his torturously sharp awareness, and takes the edge off his desperation…
But at the same time, it adds to the bright bursts of pleasure exploding over his skin, in his chest, and is unbearable in its own way.
Soon, Dream is keening, gasping, moaning, sounds wrenched from his throat. When it is him providing pleasure, he is a quiet lover, all intent and focus - but when he is the one receiving, he is prone to these little vocalisations.
And he does not stifle them, does not even consider it; for Hob likes them, and Dream likes to please his beloved.
(Hob’s breathing is going faster, heavier, too. Arousal is thick in the air, sparks flying between them, even though their only point of direct contact is Hob’s hand holding Dream’s steady.
Dream tries to think if he has ever before felt such needy pleasure from so little, and finds he cannot recall in his current state.)
And, oh, he feels… it is so much, so much, he might… his whole body is wracked with twitches and spasms, and it feels good in a way Dream rarely feels, this base material pleasure. Soon, he… just from a paintbrush and beautiful, perfect, loving Hob drawing on him, Dream will…
“Hush, now. Calm.” Hob’s hand rests on Dream’s knee all of a sudden, the skin-warmed brush hard against the bare skin of it. “You’re moving too much. I’ll need you to hold still for me, love.”
“Yes, Hob,” Dream gasps, and tightens his muscles, stills his trembling, moves his hand on himself only minutely, little rubs and squeezes. His approaching peak recedes, and Dream is both glad for it, and simmering in frustration.
“Not for much longer.” Hob reassures him, already turning back to his work. The brush-strokes are only more inflammatory when Dream cannot allow himself to squirm under them. “Nearly done, darling.”
But ‘nearly done’ is not ‘done’ yet, and soon, Dream is at his limit all over again.
It is too much, and not enough. Dream is incoherent with pleasure, with need for more of Hob, of the man he has spent centuries at a time not thinking of even once, and now feels like he cannot go as long as a heartbeat without. His own desperate touch cannot possibly suffice, not when Hob is so near, and yet not close enough - and on top of that, Hob’s mind is drifting off into daydreams now, of putting his head into Dream’s lap and suckling at him, of licking up Dream’s arm and shoulder and neck, of pushing Dream over the couch and… and…
Dream groans, and trembles with the fantasies that are real to him, yet not real enough to his temporarily more material body. More teasing, more torment. It is delicious, to be sure, it pleases Dream to be at the mercy of one he knows will never betray his trust - but how much more of this he can take, he’s not sure.
Patient. Patient. Dream breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth, hand quickening on his heated flesh. Hob waited 133 years for him, he can wait another three minutes, even as he is practically writhing where he sits. He must not jostle Hob, must not jostle his own arm, even as the paint seeps into his skin slowly, evidence of love and passion drawn onto Dream’s physical form.
(Hob, too, is hard, Dream can see him strain against his trousers - Dream is tempted to press one foot against his fly, answer torturous pleasure with the same, but it would not do to distract the man now.)
Another few strokes of the brush, little dabs and swirls that feel like flame licking up his arm; and for all the Dream is of the Endless, every second feels unbearably eternal to him now, time passing in nothing more than a slow trickle.
And then, finally, finally, Hob says “there we are, all finished now” and sets the brush aside, leaning down to brush a kiss over the very edge of Dream’s palm, where the edges of the newly-drawn mark only barely reach.
Dream pries his eyes fully open, glances down - and the mere sight of Hob’s mark on his skin strikes him to the core and makes him burn with passion, a thousand times more than the drawing process ever could.
He can Read it, he has looked upon Destiny’s design for hours before he brought it to Hob, every line burned into his heart, as Hob’s name and face already are… but to see it now on his own skin, in the handwriting that is all Hob’s rather than his brother’s, Dream feels like he could weep with happiness. He does not need a mark to know their bond is true, and yet to bear Hob’s name and mark and love fills him with breathless joy.
He loves this man. For many years, he was a fool and did not see it, but he sees it now, and will not turn his eyes away from it again.
(He does not think he could. Certainly not with the reminder written on his arm, renewed as often as they can manage it.
There’ll be no forgetting that.)
Finally free to move again, Dream hauls Hob up and into a kiss, ignoring the chuckle and the “impatient!” laughed against his lips.
(He recalls, still, the very first time they kissed. Hob had been daydreaming about it ever since Dream first called him soulmate, had been intending to do it once they were through the door of his flat - but Dream hadn’t been able to wait, had stopped him halfway through their walk back to Hob’s place, and kissed him right there in the street.
And it had been wonderful. Continues to be wonderful, each and every time.
Dream is a complicated creature, by definition containing multitudes - but love makes him oh so simple, and, in truth, that has always been a source of great relief to him.
To exist as Morpheus, as Dream, is a heavy burden… but to love and be loved is sweet, and has always lightened the load for him, at least until the relations turned sour.
He hopes it will be a good long while until matters with Hob reach that point, inevitable as it surely is.)
“Touch me, Hob Gadling,” Dream whispers against his soulmate’s lips, drawing him closer with both hands - more than both, perhaps, now that he is no longer forcing himself to maintain a stable physical form, desperation bleeding into his voice. “Now, now, hear me, your soulmate commands you, touch me-”
“My dream.” Hob’s form is not taller than Dream’s, but broad, and sturdy, and unchanging, reassuringly solid where it is pressed against him. “My dearest love. Anything you want, I’ll give you.”
“You.” Dream takes his left arm, pressing onto the beautiful mark there, draws the hand to where he wishes Hob would touch. “I want you, above all.”
“And,” a kiss to the bony knob under Dream’s ear, “you have me, love. I’m yours.”
Dream sighs, the words alone stroking something deep in his heart…
And then Hob touches him at last, and the world dissolves into bliss.
“Well,” Hob smiles, running his fingertips over the smeared reddish blur on Dream’s left forearm, “that didn’t quite work out as intended.”
“Indeed not.” His Love agrees, draped along Hob’s side like a very large and very content cat, idly pawing the parts of Hob’s neck, shoulders, and back where he suspects he has matching paint smears. “But no matter.”
“You might’ve waited until the paint is dry, at least.” Hob mock-scolds, and then noses at Dream’s hair in immediate apology. “There goes all my careful handiwork! My artistry!”
“A masterpiece lost to time.” Dream agrees solemnly, voice a pleased smoky rumble. “A tragedy to be mourned, indeed, Hob Gadling… though, no matter, for as long as we have my dear brother’s original sketch. One can only hope that the second attempt will be more long-lasting.”
A slow smile, dark eyes twinkling with the light of distant stars.
“Or perhaps the third. We have time yet, to achieve perfection.” He shifts, bends into Hob’s hand petting up and down his ribcage, where no real heart beats - aside, perhaps, from the one Hob has gifted him. “And, I will not deny that I find the mark appealing enough, smudged as it is from our mutual passions. Does it please you, too, my most beloved?”
“It pleases me.” Hob affirms, and twists his neck to brush a kiss over the ruined soulmark, delighting in the way it makes a shudder run through Dream. “Quite the gift you bestowed on me, dear.”
His One is surprisingly prone to smugness and preening, Hob has learned, and he’s clearly indulging now, a vague daydream of satisfaction not his own floating through Hob’s mind. Well then.
“There’s only…” Hob settles in more comfortably on the bed they share ever more often now, lets Dream tuck himself against his chest. “Only one little thing that struck me as odd.”
“Yes?” Dream does not tense, not in the least alarmed; at most a hint playful and indulgent. Hob likes him this way, he does.
“Well. My mum told me I was a winter baby, loved to tell the story of how badly it was snowing the night I was born.” Hob would’ve thought he’d long forgotten that story, lost it to the tooth of time gnawing at his brain - but here it is, as clear as the day she’s last told it to him, over 600 years ago. “So it can’t possibly be my birthday today, in late August.”
He can see the edge of His Soulmate’s smile, soft and enigmatic, the smile he’d grown to adore from the very first time it was directed at him in the summer of 1389.
“And it wasn’t really a gift for me, either, was it?” He continues, the pieces slowly fitting together in his head. “You wanted me to mark you far more than I ever wanted it - though, admittedly, I did enjoy the thought myself some, yeah.”
Dream hums, noncommittal.
“You did want to play pretend… but not for my sake.”
A long silence - but a comfortable one. There’s no accusation in Hob’s tone, he’s making very sure of that, only observations.
And then, “I peddle in dreams and stories, dear Hob.” His Dream murmurs, softly, against his collarbone. “Not truth.”
Hob laughs.
“That you do.” He agrees fondly, feeling a wave of love well up inside him. Other men might mind their beloved keeping secrets from them, outright lying - but Hob knows the truth at Dream’s heart, it’s written on his own arm after all, and he’s never cared so much about the rest.
(Hob has always been trusting to a fault when it came to His Stranger, surviving for centuries on scraps of information and imagined affection. He knows Dream is something far beyond his comprehension, and that he may never know all of him - but just like Dream does not require permanence if he can have repetition, Hob will make do without the truth, if he receives love and trust instead.)
Dream’s skin feels soft and wispy under his touch, the shadows flowing liquid over the angles of his bones, a fuzziness to the edges Hob doesn’t look at directly - and Hob feels like melting himself, slipping away into sleep with His One And Only to receive him in his arms. Hob loves these quiet moments between sleeping and waking, both of them sated and always, always in love.
“Before I forget… there was a poem at the event tonight that was rather lovely.” Hob reaches over to draw the blanket over them both. He should perhaps hang up his clothes properly, wash the excess paint off of himself - but there’ll be time enough for that tomorrow morning. “It reminded me of you.”
An indulgent, loving look. “Regale me, then, Hob.”
“Passing stranger!” Hob softly begins to recite, sparks of inspiration giving half-remembered words shape in his mind, as Dream watches on silently, and sleep slowly folds over Hob like a second blanket. “You do not know how longingly I look upon you…”
He suspects that he, too, will dream of poetry tonight.
Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.
-Walt Whitman, “To a Stranger”