Chapter Text
It's early morning in August, just a few days after the end of Summer term, and Hob is lying awake on the couch, staring at the ceiling.
His back hurts. This isn't unusual, but it still makes him wince as he turns onto his side, trying to find some comfort and failing. He's spent the last month and a half on the sofa, tossing and turning every night, certain that it's affected his work but unable to bring himself to sleep in his bed.
Because it isn't his bed anymore. It's their bed, and the other half of the 'their' isn't here, and Hob just. Can't. He can't stand it. He hasn't been able to change the sheets. There's still an extra cup in the bathroom, an extra toothbrush, there's still Dream's favourite mug in the sink, sticky with honey residue from the last cup of tea he'd had. Hob hasn't been able to bring himself to wash it, because that would mean washing away a trace of Dream, and the thought of that is...unbearable.
So he goes to work, and he comes home, and he orders takeaway because the thought of cooking for just one person hurts his heart, and the dishes pile up in the sink and the laundry overflows the hamper and he lies on the sofa. Staring at the ceiling.
If he changes the bedsheets, they won't smell right anymore. If he washes the mug, it means Dream won't come back to snark at him about it. If he cooks a meal for himself, he's going to end up with too much and he's going to stare at the leftovers and start crying, because he's only just gotten into the habit of cooking precisely the right amount. Enough for him, and Dream, and a day or two extra.
He's grieving. Logically, he knows this. He remembers what it was like when he lost Eleanor, and this isn't quite as devastating, as all-consuming, but it's close. The only solace is that he knows Dream isn't dead. That when Hob sleeps at night he manages to touch some aspect of his friend, no matter how faint. Even if Dream never wants to see him again, he'll still have that.
Christ, he's pathetic.
Hob scrubs his hands over his face. He hasn't shaved in two days and his cheeks itch. He's honestly surprised he's managing to remember to take a shower each night, but he doesn't stink too terribly badly, so he must be doing something. His brain feels like a sieve – what did he eat yesterday? What did he do? He remembers having some scotch and turning on the telly last night and listening to a BBC programme about a spider dancing to attract a mate, and how if he wasn't good enough the female would kill and eat him, and Hob had thought you go, you funky little man, at least one of us might get lucky, and then he must have fallen asleep.
He turns onto his other side, trying to burrow his face into the cushions, and ends up knocking his glass of neglected scotch onto the floor. It rolls, spreading a wide fan of amber liquid as it goes, and Hob swears under his breath. Thinks about just...leaving it there, and trying to go back to sleep.
Dream would snipe at him to clean up. There were a lot of things Dream had relaxed about, but having a clean living space hadn't been one of them, and Hob, gradually, had come around to it. The flat had never seemed that important to him, not when it was the pub downstairs that he'd dedicated so much time and energy to. Flats are just a place for him to rest his head. Nothing like the Gadlen Estate, or the little cottage he'd grown up in.
Somehow, though, over the last year...the flat's filled up, not with history that he's been holding on to 'just in case,' not with broken things he's just been waiting for the right time to fix, but with actual, current stories. New books on the shelves, a calendar with Dream's work schedule in, clothes in the closet that aren't his. He'd never reached this point with Gwen. Fuck, Gwen hadn't even wanted to move in. Too worried he'd foist all the cleaning and cooking onto her, I know how you live, Rob, I've seen your bedroom and I'm not going to be your mother.
He hadn't wanted her to be his mother, he'd wanted her to be his, his love, his only, someone to bring in and show his things and be excited about food trucks and plays and mudlarking with, someone who might have even an inkling of him, who he is, who he's been.
But it's only ever been Dream. He's said as much, hasn't he? His anchor, his waypoint. The star around which he orbits. The only being in the world that knows him.
Hob sighs, and heaves himself off the sofa, and goes to get a rag.
He's in the middle of sopping up the spilled alcohol when the doorbell rings.
Dream, he thinks immediately, with an awful, selfish little hit of excitement that spools from his heart and then just as quickly dies, filling all the space it had carved out with cold lead. Not Dream. Dream hasn't seen fit to contact him since he'd disappeared in June, and Hob hasn't tried to reach out to him, not least because he has no idea how. But even if he knew, what would he say? 'Sorry you heard me moaning your name with two fingers buried in my arse'? 'Sorry, I'm in love with you and have been since at least the 1600s and probably earlier than that'? 'Sorry, I know you just think of us as friends – do you even think of us as friends? Does the moon think of the moths that fly to it as friends? – but I'm an awful cad and I'm going to use this year as a sort of parasocial replacement for the relationship with you that I want but know I can't have'?
No. No, that'd be insane. He can't say any of that, and he won't anyways, because it isn't Dream. It's probably Melanie with leftovers for him, he thinks, or maybe Vihaan, who'd come by a few weeks ago to give Hob a book he'd been looking for and to not so subtly ask if his flatmate was doing all right? That'd been a mess. He'd had to tell the archive that Dream had a family emergency, called out of the country. He'd had to tell Vihaan that he didn't have a forwarding address and his phone was disconnected, but when Hob saw him next he'd pass the worry on, sure.
The doorbell rings again. Hob shouts, "Yes! Yes, I'm coming, all right!" and climbs to his feet. He leaves the rag and the empty glass on the floor because let whoever it is see how he lives. It doesn't matter and he doesn't care. It's his bloody flat and his bloody hardwood floor that he laid with his own fucking hands and he can do with it what he wants, because it's all piss, isn't it? There's not a single thing in this flat – no memory, no story, no broken thing that he'll eventually fix, no scrap of history that reminds him of hearth or family or love – that holds a candle to what he had, what he could've kept having if he'd only been strong enough to let go of that last foolish, clinging hope.
Hob wipes his hands on the fronts of his jeans and goes to answer the door.
The sun's already a bright glare in the sky, even this early – Hob hadn't bothered to look at the stove clock, so he isn't even sure how early – and he has to raise a hand to shield his eyes against it as he opens the door. "What?" He snaps, and then immediately hates himself for sounding like an arsehole because if it's Melanie she just means well, and if it's Vihaan he's just worried about a friend-slash-potential-lover, and if it's anyone else they still don't deserve the ire that should rightly only be falling on his own shoulders.
And he must look a fright. Not shaved, still dressed in yesterday's wrinkled clothes, smelling of scotch, even if he hasn't imbibed this morning. Yet. The day is still young. He balls up his fist and rubs it against his eyes, trying to banish his exhaustion and his aching back and his annoyance the only way that's ever been truly effective: by pushing it down to deal with later. Hob takes a deep breath, and plasters on a more welcoming expression – or at least, something more neutral – and squints through the sunlight as his eyes adjust.
"Am I...unwelcome?" a hesitant voice asks, and Hob feels his heart leap like a startled goldfish up into his throat. Stupid and golden and yearning, yearning, yearning. He blinks again and again, willing the sun to go the fuck away, and then a cloud passes overhead and the glare's no longer silhouetting the figure on his doorstep, and it's Dream.
Just standing there, like nothing's changed.
No – not quite. When he'd shown up a year ago, the man Hob had let into his flat had been flat-footed but not uncertain. Not hesitant, the way Dream is now, with his shoulders hunched up a bit towards his ears and his eyes darting everywhere, taking in everything except Hob. There's a tic at his cheek that flutters even as Hob watches, fascinated, but there's also no denying that Dream, right now, isn't human. He's too pale, too beautiful, too other. He's wearing his coat again, with the lining deep and indigo and bringing to mind the wild splendour of the aurora borealis, of seeing the Milky Way and understanding it, for the first time, what it meant. All those billions of stars, each pinprick of light a potential world, a new discovery, history in the making.
He's also wearing one of the shirts that Hob got him. It can't be the shirt, because Hob knows where that one is, in the laundry hamper with all the rest of the things he keeps thinking about washing and then isn't able to bring himself to do it. It's one of the short-sleeved Henleys he'd gotten him, such a dark blue that it almost looks black until the light shines on it just right. Hob remembers holding it up to Dream's torso in Harrods to judge the fit, Dream reaching out and pinching the sleeve between his fingers and then nodding in satisfaction. They'd bought three others like it, but the dark blue one had been Dream's favourite, and Hob knows it's the same shirt – or a facsimile of the same shirt – because there's a little stain of bleach on the collar, from the first time that Dream had tried to do his own laundry.
Hob swallows. Swallows again. Dream is staring at him, looking more and more crestfallen the more seconds that pass, and Hob realises that he's waiting for an answer, still. "No!" he blurts out, and shuffles aside, waving Dream in. "No, no, of course not. You're always welcome. My friend. God. I...can I...are we still...?"
Dream steps inside, and the sun catches on something on his smallest finger, glinting like buried treasure. Hob's heart, already lodged in his throat, does an awkward little flip. Dream's still wearing that ring. That stupid little ring he'd fished up from the Thames, with the inscription on the inside that he'd felt but never dared to read, because Hob remembers posey rings. He'd been certain it was going to say something like trew love or my hearte is thine or leave me not, and so long as he hadn't looked at it, if Dream asked about it later he'd have plausible deniability. Could go on pretending that whatever the ring said wasn't actually the words written in his own heart.
Hob lets the door fall shut behind them, safe and cool in the blessed dimness of his flat, which he is realising, now, smells...not the greatest. The trash needs to be taken out, and the dishes need to be washed, and there's still, Christ, the scotch-soaked rag on the floor. Hob hurries past Dream to clean it up. Picks up the glass and wipes it off, then leaves it on the coffee table. Is left standing there awkwardly, holding a scrap of ancient shirt that smells like a brewery and no earthly idea of what to do with it other than wring it between his hands like a worrystone.
"So," he says, and Dream's eyes finally, finally light upon him. Blue as the purest streams and lakes, his pupils two little black holes, and Hob swears he can see the bright white spin of stars within them, if he looks close enough. He takes a step nearer without even thinking. "Are we still? Friends?"
"There is nothing you could do that would tarnish our friendship," Dream says fiercely. Hob can think of a few things, but none of them are things he would do, so he supposes that means the same thing. He risks another step closer, and now they're actually within normal conversation range. Just two or so feet between them. "I have come to...apologise."
"You don't need to. I'm the one who arsed things up, I shouldn't have..."
Dream holds up his hand. It's so imperious and sure compared to the awkward hunch of his shoulders that Hob feels his jaw click shut without his say-so.
"Peace," Dream murmurs. "I am not...this is..." His brows furrow. There's a dear little wrinkle between his eyes that Hob wants very desperately to kiss. He would also like very much to drop to his knees and beg forgiveness, offer anything, whatever Dream wants, his mouth, his hands, Hob's bed and the meals he makes and a hundred other new experiences, a thousand of them, forever and ever.
Dream is staring at him, eyes wide. He lets out a soft little whuff of laughter.
"I had forgotten...how intense daydreams become, when close to their source," he says, and Hob slams a mental hand down on his imaginings. He's fucked up again, hasn't he? Because he can't control himself, because he's greedy and he doesn't know when to stop and Christ, the things he'd done to Dream, slept in the same bed with him, took him out on dates, talked him through masturbation. Pretended like it was all things that good mates would do for each other, when really he'd been so desperate for something close to being loved that he'd just...taken what he could get.
There's a little huff of displaced air, and then Dream is no longer two feet away but there, right there, in front of him. They're nearly chest to chest. Hob's heart is throbbing, a convict rattling the bars of its cage, desperate to escape. If he opens his mouth it's just going to come flying right out, he thinks. Go zooming over to Dream where it belongs. So he says nothing. Lets Dream set the terms of the engagement, all his previous thoughts of telling Dream the truth when their year was up tossed out the window.
"I owe you an apology," Dream says again. "For taking advantage of your generosity. And your kindness. And your care, this past year."
Hob opens his mouth to protest, again, and finds that he can't, because Dream's placed a finger over his lips. Cool and smooth and perfect. He's got black nails today, Hob sees, like the shiny nacre of a pearl.
"I did not do so with ill intent," Dream continues. "And I did not do so knowingly, at first. But when it became apparent to me, over the course of our cohabitation...that my feelings for you had changed. I ought to have told you. I see, now, that it would have saved us much hardship."
"Feelings," Hob croaks, lips still pinched together by Dream's finger. There's a flicker of a smile there, a flash of one gleaming white tooth.
"I was afraid," Dream says softly. "Of losing your friendship. But also, of making a fool of myself. I feared that your feelings for me were only friendship. That, were I to reveal the depths of my new ardour. I would irrevocably change the relationship I had come to rely upon. Not only because you housed me. Fed me. Clothed me. But because you were a great comfort to me, during all manner of trials and tribulations. And I dared to think you felt this comfort also. And that if I spoke of my feelings...it would stain what I have come to see. As the best and most true friendship I have ever had."
Dream licks his lips. Hob follows the movement, he can't help it, he's only a man, and slowly the finger over his own mouth lowers. He doesn't say anything, though. Waiting, breathless, for Dream to lay down the boundaries. To draw the line in the sand that Hob can't cross, all the while his brain runs amok in his skull gibbering feelings! new ardour! feelings!
"Being human...provided me with much insight. I see, now, how difficult it is to deny yourself that which you desire. To live with the knowledge that what you want is so very close...and yet to reach out and take would change things...I am not a creature given to change, Hob. None of the Endless are. Not in the way of humans. I was afraid. I judged it, foolishly, easier to live with that fear, rather than to risk what I already had. I thought I would be able to...suppress my feelings, once I was no longer human. Not let them change things."
"Dream..." His voice comes out in a rough whisper, and Dream's hands come up, both of them this time, his cool palms fitting to Hob's cheeks. His thumbnails scratch through the two days' worth of Hob's depression beard, down to brush against his lips.
"I failed," Dream says. "And, I was informed...that I was, perhaps, too close to the situation to see it rightly. That in my fear, and my desperation to make certain that nothing changed...I denied, also, the chance for the change I so desperately wanted." The smooth coolness of the ring brushes against Hob's skin, and he thinks if he holds back any longer he's going to pop like an overfilled balloon. He reaches up, lays his hand over Dream's, and then for a few long seconds all they do is stand there, swaying a bit together.
Then Hob says, "I'm absolutely mad for you." Dream's eyes widen, and so Hob keeps going, bulling past the notion that he's going to ruin this, he won't be able to keep this, too high on the idea of maybe to be able to stop himself. "I have been for years. Centuries. When I first saw you in the White Horse I thought you were the most beautiful creature in the world and then when you showed up after a century I thought, I need to impress him because he's all that matters, and he's all that ever will. Everything else is going to change or die except him and me and as long as there's him and me I could keep going. And then you were kind to me, after Eleanor and Robyn died...and I've been over the moon for you ever since."
He peels Dream's hands away from his cheeks, holds them clasped between his own in front of him, instead. As much a supplication as his day-old clothes and his grotty flat and his hands still stinking of scotch will allow. "And I don't want this to ruin our friendship. If all I can ever have of you is a shared pint every now and then, or a visit once a month, or...or once a century, I'll take it. I'll be glad for it. But if you're saying what I think you're saying, if I can have everything..."
"You can have everything," Dream says.
"...then if I'm wrong you have to tell...me." Hob trails off, lips parted around the shape of words fully-formed in his throat and dead on his tongue. There goes his heart, he thinks. But then, it hasn't been his for a very long time, has it? Not since a beautiful lord looked at him with tears in his eyes across a scratched-up table in the White Horse, him filthy and starving and agonised and the lord still as blindingly beautiful as the sun.
"Everything," Hob repeats, hardly daring to believe it. Dream regards him steadily.
"Yes," he says. "Everything. You and no other. As the ring you gave me says."
A wild, feral sort of laugh bubbles up in him, and Hob can't help it – he brings Dream's hand up to his mouth, presses his lips over the little gold band on his smallest finger. Kisses it, again and again. "I didn't even read it," he admits. There's a hot stinging in his eyes that he blinks frantically against because what if Dream thinks he's upset, he can't muck this up now, now that there's a chance... "I knew it said something but I've seen so many posey rings...I figured it was going to be the sort of...of heartsick bollocks that I would've said to you anyways. As long as I didn't know what it said I could...pretend that we both knew? Pretend that I didn't know, if you asked? Christ, I'm an idiot. I've been an absolute wanker this past year. Pretending that almost-having you was enough, treating you like we were together, taking you on dates and telling myself it was just...just good friends, you know..."
"I did not discourage you," Dream says. "Even when I began to suspect my own feelings, I did not stop you. I, too...was enamoured of the illusion."
"But it doesn't have to be an illusion."
Dream blinks. His lashes are like bird's wings, sweeping down on bright white sand. They smudge against his cheeks, his eyes darkened to a blue that's nearly indigo when he opens them again, and Hob has trouble imagining that look is for him, that heavy-lidded yearning look, when he's ruffled and scruffy and so far from his best that it's laughable, and yet here they are. Dream staring at him with his lips slightly parted, red as rubies, and Hob leaning towards him, incapable of resisting.
"No," Dream says. His eyes flick up, from Hob's mouth to Hob's eyes, and then down again. "It does not."
They're both still dancing around it, Hob realises. Neither of them has said the word 'love,' not once, couching everything in metaphor, letting it rest on the skeleton of their shared history. If they were anyone else that might be enough, but this isn't a story and they aren't anyone else, and one of them is going to have to say something. To drag it out of the story and make it real.
In everything else Dream's always set the terms, and Hob, reverent, yearning, has followed them. Now he kisses Dream's knuckles again, the back of his hand, the pale turn of his wrist, and says, "I'm in love with you."
Dream's breath hitches. His tongue flicks out along his lips, pink, pretty, tempting. Hob kisses his hand again. "I've been in love with you for hundreds of years. I am desperately, stupidly in love with you. I want to take you on dates and watch movies with you and buy you absolutely useless, extravagant things, and I want to go home with you when I sleep and I want you to still be here in our bed when I wake up..."
He realises, in the middle of his speech, that he's being pushed, walked backwards towards the sofa. Dream deftly steers them around the coffee table, avoids the still-sticky spot on the floor where the scotch had fallen, and in the midst of 'when I wake up' Hob finds himself being sat abruptly down with a grunt. It leaves Dream standing over him, a towering, pale monolith that Hob reaches up towards, hands fluttering over Dream's collarbones, just barely visible under the Henley, over his shoulders, finally settling on Dream's ribs. His thumbs stroke over each thin notch. Not so thin, though, as before. There's a nascent layer of padding just beneath the skin. Flesh, where before there was just bone and consumptive energy.
"Say that again," Dream demands, and Hob swallows.
"Which part? That I love you? That I want you in our bed?"
Dream's eyes hood, and without any further fanfare he clambers into Hob's lap, dropping himself down over Hob's groin with exactly the right pressure to make him aware that he has a cock, and it's been becoming increasingly interested in the proceedings for the past thirty seconds.
"Our bed," Dream purrs. He settles his hands on Hob's shoulders; the coat melts away from him, not sliding down to the floor but just disappearing, leaving him in his Henley and jeans that are honestly too tight for the occasion. "Ours."
"Yeah," Hob says shakily. Still half-convinced this is a hallucination, he rucks his hands up along the rungs of Dream's ribcage, dragging the Henley with them until the hem clears his belly. It's not concave anymore, Hob sees. There's a dear little pooch there that he very much wants to put his mouth on, a dimple at Dream's hip that's a perfect place for his fingers to rest. "Our bed. Our flat? If you'd like?"
"Yes," Dream says, and then Hob is being kissed, and he doesn't have much more room in his brain for anything other than that.
Dream can think of only a handful of moments in his very long, very eventful life where things have seemed to go well for him. Where all the pieces fell into place without a hitch, and where it was not only good, but seemed intentional. Meant to be.
Here, now, he thinks must be chief among them: Hob beneath him on the sofa, their sofa, his words still ringing like the Angelus bell in Dream's ears: I'm in love with you, I've been in love with you. His tendency towards melancholy demands that he examine this, that he berate himself for his ignorance and his obstinance – that if he had only realised sooner, if he had been clever enough to see it, they would have had this centuries ago. He has wasted so much time, the past year of which is only the latest of his many follies.
He pushes these thoughts aside. (Later, he will think that he has never been able to do this before – that the black moods which sometimes took him had always required another to pull him free. Later, however.)
For now, Hob is warm and willing and pleasantly wriggling underneath him, his thighs held together to accommodate Dream kneeling over him, his mouth open and wet beneath Dream's. Hob lets him take, holding himself very still as Dream sweeps his tongue over his teeth, over the inside of his gums, staking a claim in everything he can touch until there is no taste in Hob's mouth but his own. Hob's beard is a pleasant, ticklish scratch very different from what he is used to in a lover, and when he inches his hands into Hob's hair he finds it silken and smooth. He smells like alcohol – doubtless due to the glass of scotch that is still on the table – but Dream finds he does not mind. Nor does he mind the rag precariously hanging over the table's edge, nor the sight of the moderately-overflowing bin still waiting to be taken out, nor the fact that Hob is clearly wearing clothes from yesterday. None of it matters, because all of it, Hob has said, is theirs, and he is a jealous, possessive creature. Covetous of the things he claims.
They trade kisses for long minutes, swapping the taste of their mouths back and forth when Hob finally dares to nudge Dream's tongue aside, to venture forward with his own. This is a different pleasure: letting Hob take the lead, feeling his fingers dip into the soft flesh of his hips, the puff of his warm breath against Dream's cheek as with his other hand he takes hold of the hair at Dream's nape and uses it to turn him, this way and that, until Hob has found an angle that suits them both. It is gentle, so gentle that Dream finds he does not mind being controlled thus. He could break away at any time and he knows without having to ask that Hob would feel nothing but contrite. Would blame himself even as he is left hard and straining.
When finally they break apart it is with a soft sigh from Dream and a heavy gasp from Hob; his friend is flushed, red blotches across his cheeks and down his neck, half-hidden beneath the dark shadow of his beard. Dream follows their path with his thumbs, sweeping them over Hob's jaw, down over the tripping cacophony of his pulse. When he follows the path of his fingers with his mouth Hob's breath hitches and grows heavier, panting against Dream's ear. He has begun to shift his hips, subtle rocking motions that nudge the evidence of his arousal upwards to rut against Dream's clothed buttocks.
"We should talk about things," Hob grits out. When Dream sets his teeth to his jugular, thrumming rabbit-fast beneath his lips, Hob's words trail off into a low whine. "Oh. We should...Christ, do that again!"
He is once more possessed of all the knowledge befitting his function, including all the ways in which humans experience pleasure, and how best to provoke favourable responses, yet Dream finds himself feeling, perhaps, mischievous. Hob's daydreams are loud and obvious – he thinks, even now, of the first time he saw Dream in any state of undress, sitting on this very couch, his pants down around his thighs and his prick in hand. How the shame that Hob had felt – the perception of taking advantage of a friend – had been a shadow over a genuine desire to make sure that Dream felt good. How he had resisted the urge to visit that moment in his fantasies for many months before he had finally given in.
"Do what?" he asks, injecting a tone of impish curiosity into his voice. He rolls his hips experimentally, riding Hob's thighs as he would a horse, letting his own arousal drag along the dense muscle there. Hob makes a sound like he has been kicked in the chest. "This? Or..." He bends his head down, sets his teeth once more to Hob's throat and nips, tiny, barely-felt. He leaves behind a line of faintly-reddened welts along Hob's jugular, and even these fade within the span of a few seconds, though when he draws back to observe his work he finds that the effect upon Hob is far more marked: his pupils are massively dilated, overtaking all but a thin sliver of brown, and his chest heaves with each breath. His hands have fallen to Dream's hips, and have begun to exert a deeper pressure. He will have bruises on the morrow, if he wishes.
He finds that he dearly does wish it.
"You enjoyed the idea of teaching me," he says, and Hob groans, and lets his head thump back against the sofa.
"Bloody buggering fuck," he mutters, directed towards the ceiling. "Daydreams. Right."
"I did not say I found this displeasing."
Hob huffs a laugh. "No, but...bit silly, isn't it? Considering you're basically robbing the cradle with me. There's nothing I could really teach you, is there? Not now that –"
Dream does not allow him to finish. He has the sense that if they continue down that path of inquiry it will put a halt to all other activities, and he is not ready to stop, not when he can taste Hob's desire in the air, can feel the thin skin of his daydreams and his fantasies brushing against him like a lover's caress. Dream leans down and takes Hob's mouth again, licks into him until he has gone soft and pliant and yielding, and then, with a push of his will, dissolves his jeans and shirt. He feels a twinge of dismay over the loss of the Henley, but comforts himself with the knowledge that the real shirt is here, still, and only waits for him to put it on once more.
"Fuck," Hob says, once Dream has allowed him space to breathe. His eyes are huge, skimming over Dream's shoulders, his chest, down between them where his cock lies flushed and leaking along the seam of Hob's clenched thighs. Dream rolls his hips again, smearing a bead of precome against Hob's jeans. "Oh. Oh, fuck."
"I would learn from you," Dream says, drawing Hob's gaze back up. "I would learn how your touch brings me pleasure. How to bring you pleasure. I would learn how to bring you to completion with my hands..." He reaches down between them, fiddling with the button of Hob's jeans. Hob's hands join him shortly, and together they undo Hob's fly, and draw the zip downwards. "...With my mouth..." Hob's breath hitches as Dream reaches within, cupping his palm to the heavy-hot bulge of his cock. When Dream raises himself up onto his knees, Hob does not need further encouragement: he shoves his jeans and pants down, hissing with discomfort, and then moaning low and pleased in relief as his cock springs free, nearly slapping against his belly with how hard he is. "...With my body."
He takes Hob's prick in hand, marvelling at the velvet feel of it, the slide of his foreskin, how soft it is, layered over such firmness. Hob makes a low keening noise when Dream rubs his thumb over the crown, gathering the wetness there and smearing it liberally down the heft of his shaft.
"I would learn how to please you in the way I have learned your history," he whispers. One slow, light stroke has Hob's hips arching off the sofa, his hands wiggling between them to touch whatever part of Dream he can reach: his hips, his thighs, finally finding the length of him. Hob curls his fingers around Dream's cock, the difference between them in colour and texture startlingly pleasing, and with an expert little twist of his wrist he wrings a gasp from Dream's throat.
"By going mudlarking," Hob says throatily, and Dream leans down and bites his neck again, this time with intent to bruise. Punishment seems to have little effect on Hob: all he gets in response is a full-bodied moan, Hob's cock pulsing in his fist.
"With time," Dream says, once he has released his mouthful of flesh, laved over it with his tongue, admired the bright red weal he has left behind. "And with the fullness of my attention. I am not a gentle lover, Hob. I am ruinous in my affections, and now that I know you are within my grasp...I am selfish enough to turn them upon you even so."
"It's good I'm already ruined for anybody else, then," Hob says. "Have been for years."
He does something new with his hand, which Dream does not see but which he feels, deep-seated pleasure coursing through him, wrenching a startled mewl from him that he is not fast enough to stifle. Hob grins at him, the rakish smirk that Dream has come to associate with illicit activities and overindulgences, and he does it again, whatever it was he had done, and Dream feels his toes curl, trying desperately to find purchase in empty air. When he looks down between them it is to the sight of his cock appearing and disappearing over the ring of Hob's fingers as he strokes, the head flushed a deep, rosy pink, still pale compared to Hob's tanned hands. Directly beside it is Hob's own erection, his fingers just long enough to comfortably enwrap its girth. The sight of them held together in that way makes something tremulous and yearning turn over in his chest.
Hob looks down then, as well. His breath leaves him all at once, a longing sigh, and he strokes Dream again, beads of pre welling up over his fingers and turning the curl of them slick and shining. Dream matches his movements, meeting his speed, the lightness of his touch, until they are both swaying inwards, their heads pressed together, unable to take their eyes from the spectacle of their own pleasure.
"I want to treat you so fucking well," Hob whispers. He is close enough to kiss, but Dream does not dare tear his eyes away. Pleasure races white-hot along every nerve, fashioned for the sole purpose to come here, to be this way, with Hob, vulnerable and open and needful. "I swear I will, I want to be so good to you, Dream, my dearheart..."
"You have been good to me," Dream says. "You are the primary goodness in my existence." He rocks his hips forward, finding a more pleasing rhythm. Hob rises to meet him, their breaths panting between their bodies, Hob's shirt pushed up along his belly to reveal the thicket of hair that covers his torso. Dream thinks of what it would be like to rub himself along Hob's belly, to strip him of all vestments, to perch atop him and take his pleasure from the thick hair on Hob's chest. What he would look like with a ring of Dream's seed decorating his collarbones like a necklace. It is such a sharp and pervasive image that it pulls another whine from him, another fat bead of pre from the tip of his cock. Hob makes a soft, cut-off noise, nearly a sob.
"Come on, love," he says. The entire flat has gone hushed, only the sound of skin on skin, sweat-slick and close, the movement of their fists, Hob's harsh breathing and Dream's more level panting as pleasure waxes and wanes, drawing him into a hypnotic lull as he spirals closer and closer to some unseen pinnacle. "With me, yeah?"
Close. Hob is close. He can see it now, in the way his breathing has sped and how dark his prick is as the head of it thrusts over the ring of Dream's fingers. It leaks near-continuously, and Dream's mouth waters with the desire to taste; Hob's thighs have gone tense, trembling beneath him, and the knowledge of precisely how near Hob is to coming is enough to nudge his own sedate pleasure over the edge into urgency. It is suddenly important that he have this with Hob, a communion of sorts, the sense of connection that he has been seeking for the past year, rummaging second-hand through Hob's history by visiting places and collecting objects, when all along there has been the man himself, here, for the taking.
"Yes," he breathes, and then, "Kiss me. Please," and Hob is only too eager to provide. He surges forward, takes Dream's mouth in the way that Dream had previously commanded his; each lick and gentle nip drives a thudding pulse of need directly to his prick, and it is not long before they have both sped their hands and Dream is whining continuously into Hob's mouth.
In some dimly lit corner of his mind, it occurs to him that he ought to say the words. Hob has said them. He feels them. Yet it had not seemed the right time, before – too much else needed to be said, about his cowardice, about his hesitancy. Now, however, he can think of nothing but the words, the metronome by which he measures the speed of his fist and the beat of his extraneous heart. If not now, when? Hob has waited whole lifetimes in order to speak his piece, and it seems churlish at the least to keep him in suspense for longer.
"Robert Gadling," he says; Hob makes a quiet, broken noise into his mouth at the sound of his own name, and Dream wonders how often he has heard it, and not some variation of it, over the course of his long life. With his other hand he touches the curve of Hob's cheek, the curl of his ear, back into the silken waves of his hair which he winds between his fingers and holds, holds, as he says, "I have fallen ardently. Desperately. In love with you."
He is farther gone than he had realised, his words slurring and made even more muffled by Hob attempting to crawl into his mouth, and if they were in the Dreaming he would allow it, encourage it, himself in Hob and Hob within himself, perfectly joined as they should be. But this imperfect union has its benefits, also, as Hob draws back just enough that Dream can see his eyes, wide and wondering, his expression one of unabashed awe.
Perhaps it is the sight of that unfettered adoration, perhaps it is the way that Hob lunges closer to kiss him again, sweet and strong, perhaps because it is narratively satisfying to him...or perhaps because it just is. Whatever the reason, Dream feels his peak come upon him all at once, a crashing wave where before it had been a tidal pull of pleasure. He thinks that he makes a sound, something high and thin and reedy as heat and lightning zing through every nerve, but there is no one here to judge him save Hob, and all he hears from his lover is a soft grunt, and, in an awe-filled voice, "Fuck, yes, come for me, love, you're so bloody gorgeous, look at you, fuck."
Dream peppers kisses over Hob's mouth, his cheek, unable to commit to one place as pleasure ripples through him, his hips stuttering into Hob's fist and pulses of seed spurting over his clever fingers. Hob squeezes gently, milking every last ounce of spend from him, and Dream makes another noise that he is certain of this time, a low, animal moan as Hob strokes him through his orgasm, until he is whining and twitching and oversensive. He wishes, simultaneously, for this to be the Dreaming, that he could remain hard and aching for Hob, balance himself on the edge of orgasm and keep this heady moment going for hours, and also for this to remain the Waking, where there is a certain satisfaction to the way that the pleasure becomes almost pain, and then flows back again, his body unable to decide if it wants Hob to continue or to cease.
Then Hob has taken his cheek in his hand, turning Dream's head to kiss him properly, sucking at his bottom lip. When they part Dream's breath has begun to slow, and he realises that at some point during his orgasm his fist had stopped moving, and he is now only holding Hob's erection, still hard, weeping at the tip. When he looks down between them he marvels at how dark it has become, the fascinating mechanics of the human body, the things he had begun to take for granted while he was in possession of them and which now seem all the more precious for their lack.
Hob follows his gaze, his lips quirking in a self-deprecating little smile that is interrupted by the panting breaths he still takes, the way he has begun a slow, rolling thrust into Dream's loose fist. "It's, ah...It's been a long year," he says, and lets go of Dream's softening erection. "I might be...a bit desensitised, a bit, on account of the fact I was wanking at least once a day. Usually more."
"I did that to you," Dream murmurs. The thought is...titillating. He pictures Hob lying beside him in the small hours of the morning, as Dream had so often done himself, staring at the ceiling, desperately hard and unable to touch himself for fear of waking his bed partner. He wonders how many times Hob dared to masturbate in their bed, surrounded by the smell of them. How often he took to the shower in order to hide his arousal.
Dream lets go of Hob, prompting a whine from his lover, and slowly lifts his palm to his mouth. When he sticks out his tongue, Hob moans. When he laves it over his fingers, thoroughly wetting every inch of skin he can reach, Hob's hips rock upwards, his cock so hard that it slaps against his belly, jutting and impudent and enticing. Dream thinks that he would very much like to take it into his mouth, into his body, all the ways that humans make love to each other, and then afterwards secret Hob away to the Dreaming to show him all the ways that Dream can love him.
Later. Now, he wraps his spit-slick fingers around Hob's prick and strokes him firmly. "Tell me how," he says, and Hob gazes at him, bleary-eyed with pleasure. "Instruct me. As you did before."
Hob swears under his breath, near-incoherent words that slur into a long, trembling whine as Dream ceases his stroking. Hob swallows convulsively, and then says, voice strained, "I like...I like it a bit harder. More p-pressure. Yes," he hisses, as Dream does as he is bid, taking a firmer hold. "Like that. I'm s...sensitive just under the head, if you rub your thumb there I oh God, yes."
It makes sense that Hob has specific tastes after so many years of experience, Dream muses. Now that he is no longer blinded by his own lust, he enjoys the sight of Hob, damp and flushed, the dark hair on his belly and groin made darker with sweat, his thighs trembling with the effort to hold himself still. The muscles of his abdomen flex rhythmically as Dream presses his thumb just under the crown of Hob's prick, pulling from him a groan that sounds almost pained. His breathing comes not only harder now, but faster as well, and Dream gives him a short, strong tug.
"Yeah," Hob bites out. "Bit quicker, now. I'm so close. I'm so, so...Dream please, please, harder, just...!"
Dream quickens his strokes, squeezes Hob tightly in rhythmic counterpoint to each thrust of his hips, and rubs thumb firmly against Hob's slit. It is enough – with a rough shout, Hob arches his spine clear off the sofa and comes over Dream's fist in heavy, lancing spurts. He holds himself so perfectly still, every muscle in stark relief, the tendons sharp against his neck, so much seed leaking over Dream's fingers that he cannot help but picture how well Hob would fill his mouth, how ambrosial he would taste, not just a sip but a swallow.
Then, panting heavily, Hob sags back down onto the sofa, gazing at Dream with lust-fogged eyes, every muscle that was previously taut now loose. Hob exhales sharply through his nose, shivering when Dream gives him one more gentle stroke to ease the last of his spend from him. His hands come down, pry Dream's fingers loose, hold Dream's hands in his own.
"Sensitive," he says, and Dream nods. "Give us a minute and I'll get a flannel to clean up."
Dream tilts his head, blinking slowly. Then, with another slight nudge of power, he wills the evidence of their lovemaking away. Hob is left staring down at his suddenly-clean hand with his brows furrowed.
"Huh," he says, and then his mouth splits in a broad, boyish grin. "Oh, that's going to make things so much easier." Then he lets his head fall back to the sofa with a soft thud, and he glances aside, and a short bark of laughter escapes him. "You know...I always pictured taking you to bed. Making a proper do of things. But you know what? It makes sense that we ended up fucking on the couch like horny teens. I mean, you already christened it."
There is a crude poetry to it, and Dream nods. "It waited only for its other half to join it," he says, and Hob laughs again.
"Oh, you make it sound lovely. Come on. I've still got a bit of feeling in my legs, and I want to hold you in our bed. And we can talk about...where to go from here."
"Our bed," Dream repeats with relish, and when Hob nudges him he goes, willingly. Stands, and lets Hob take his hand and draw him towards the bedroom, with its familiar pile of laundry, its eclectic gathering of knick-knacks and miscellany, its broken things waiting only for the right moment to be made whole again, its stories and history but, more importantly, their stories. Their history, now shared.
Hob wishes to discuss their relationship, and they will. For now, however, he watches his lover struggle to pull up his pants and jeans, his fingers uncoordinated with post-orgasmic laxity, watches Hob eventually give up and leave his jeans undone, his soft, vulnerable prick just barely tucked into his pants, watches Hob nearly trip over the alcohol-soaked rag that has fallen off of the coffee table at some point during their lovemaking, and he smiles.
Everything, he thinks, is as it should be, and lets Hob lead him to their bed.
________
Epilogue
They've gotten it down to a fine science, at this point.
At first it had been once every few months, with Dream hesitant to abandon the Dreaming for too long after two prolonged absences within only a year of each other. And then, when Lucienne had proven more than capable of handling her new responsibilities on a per-diem basis – not that it had been in doubt, considering she'd spent almost an entire year managing the Dreaming and nothing had caught fire or exploded, but Dream had, again, been hesitant, not wanting to 'prevail upon her good nature' – it had become once every few weeks. And then once a week. And now, one week a month.
Humanity suits Dream, Hob thinks, jogging down the walk to the New Inn, messenger bag bouncing against his side. It's just cool enough outside that he's not too worried about sweating through his shirt, a bite in the air that suggests winter will fast be on its way, but for now the leaves are turning, bright fire falling in looping swirls to gather in the gutters, and the sky is an endless, cloudless blue. It's the sort of day that makes him want to sit out for dinner. Pack a picnic basket and head to one of the parks, enjoy the sun while it's out. Maybe bring a blanket so he and Dream can huddle underneath it and watch the kids play after they get out of school.
He's contemplating bringing this up – it's Friday, so they have one more day before Dream returns to his duties – as he opens the door to the Inn, and he's so caught in the fantasy of it that he doesn't actually spot Dream right away.
Then he hears a soft cooing sound, followed by a low murmur that he recognises, even as gentle as it is, as Dream, and he spots his lover's bird's nest of dark hair poking up over one of the corner booths. Hob makes a beeline for it, and nearly trips over his own feet when he finally gets close enough to see the source of the cooing.
A baby.
Dream is holding a baby.
Well, not a baby – a toddler, really. He can't be more than three, still a bit chubby-cheeked, with a riot of white-blond curls that fall in near-Victorian ringlets around his ears. He's dressed in blue denim overalls over a faded red child's turtle neck, the cuffs of the long sleeves stained with multicoloured chalk; there is actually quite a lot of him that is covered in chalk, Hob notes. Probably because Dream is very carefully directing him in how to draw – Hob leans over and squints to get a better look – a unicorn on a toddler-sized handheld blackboard. There's a lot of pink and yellow involved, and the only thing about the drawing that's actually horse-shaped is the head, which Hob assumes is Dream's work, judging by the near-realism of it. The rest of the unicorn is somewhat...blobular, in appearance. There might be four legs, but one of those might actually be a tail? Hob isn't certain.
"Excellent," Dream murmurs. The toddler is perched in his lap, and Dream bounces his knee slightly, causing the little boy to let loose a raucous crow of laughter and the chalk to skid across the board with a screech. "You are doing very well. I will inform Rose of your remarkable development when she returns from her date."
"Deve'pment," the boy says, and Dream nods, as seriously as if he were listening to the words of a sage. "What's deve'pment mean?"
"It means how you grow," Hob says, deciding this is as good a moment to interrupt as any. He slides into the opposite seat of the booth, setting his messenger bag beside him and putting his elbows on the table. He's fascinated. Dream's warm and alive and breathing, fantastically and beautifully human, and there's a smear of bright purple chalk on his cheek. Hob's never wanted to kiss him more. "Hullo, chap. My name's Hob. What's yours?"
"Daniel," the boy says, with surprising and immediate clarity. Dream looks down at him with obvious fondness, and then back up at Hob. There's a sort of bewildered pleasure lurking in his expression, like he's happy but can't quite figure out why.
"He is...complicated," Dream says at last. Hob's eyebrows climb up somewhere into his hairline. He sucks at his teeth for a moment.
"Is he...yours?" he finally asks, not sure if he really wants the answer. On the one hand, Dream holding a toddler is just about the most darling thing he's ever seen, and it makes something in him that he'd thought long dead and buried rear up again, peeking its leaves over fallow soil. He hasn't thought about being a father in...a very long time. He'd always assumed that he'd had the one chance at it, he'd mucked it up, and that was that.
Seeing Dream dandling a babe on his knee, though, is...
Maybe he could be a da again. If it was Dream. If it was theirs.
"No," Dream says. "As I said. He is complicated. And his full story is not yet known to me." Dream huffs softly. "I have been informed by my brother...that the course of destiny has changed. Because of my 'meddling.' He will not, of course, tell me how."
"Of course not," Hob says easily. He's never met Destiny, but the bloke sounds like a prick. Eldest brother complex, he thinks. Thinks everything's his responsibility.
"Daniel was conceived in the Dreaming," Dream continues. Daniel looks up at the sound of his name, but quickly loses interest in favour of smearing yellow chalk all over the board. The unicorn has rapidly lost all sense of cohesion. "In some ways, this makes him mine. But. He has a mother. He has a human life."
"Okay?"
Dream exhales noisily. "Before my year of humanity...I intended to make him my successor."
Hob blinks. Looks at the child. Looks at Dream. Tilts his head.
"Oh...kay?" he tries again, and Dream focuses on him, his mouth turned down in a petulant frown.
"Things have changed," he says. "And I find that I am loath to take him from a life that I now know can be rich, and varied."
"So don't," Hob says. Dream blinks at him. "Seriously. Just don't. Why do you even need a successor?"
"Why, indeed," Dream says. Falls into melancholy silence and does not continue. Hob recognises a dark mood setting in when he sees one, and even though he doesn't see them as often now that Dream isn't human 24/7, they still rear their heads periodically. He's been thinking about getting Dream a prescription for antidepressants. If nothing else, it won't hurt.
He reaches across the table and lays his hand on Dream's forearm.
"You even said that your brother says destiny has changed," he says. Around them, the New Inn has begun to kick into higher gear, tourists and regulars alike settling in for early drinks, avoiding the chill outside. "So let it change. You can't know what's going to happen, so just let it happen. I'll be here with you."
Dream smiles tremulously at him. Turns his hand over, the gold of the ring on his smallest finger glinting under the late afternoon light that pours through the high windows.
"You and no other," Dream whispers. Hob grins at him. Daniel, imperious, sticks his hand up between them and demands more chalk.
"Green," he says firmly, in his tiny, dear little voice. Hob's heart turns almost immediately into a puddle of goo. "An' blue. Please."
"There's some crayons and colouring books around here somewhere," Hob says, giving Dream's hand a squeeze before letting go. "Let me go check. Watch my bag for me?"
"Of course."
Hob slides out of the booth in search of arts and crafts materials, leaving Dream behind to contemplate his words. Knowing his lover, he has no doubt that Dream's going to overanalyse everything, take it too seriously, come to the darkest conclusion. It's how he is, especially when he's human, when his great, endless brain is left boiling in a soup of hormones and adrenaline and serotonin – or, he suspects, too little of it, in Dream's case. But that's why Hob is here.
You fix broken things, Dream has told him, loading the words with weight, the implication of them clear. Even when others would believe them far beyond mending.
Hob digs through the hostess' station in search of crayons, listening to the sound of Dream talking quietly to Daniel, and smiles to himself. He doesn't know where the story goes from here.
But he's very keen to find out.