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Hob Gadling is heavy on top of him, around him, inside him. There’s only the warm breath on his neck, the coarse sheets beneath him, the cock driving in him.
And pleasure.
So. Much. Pleasure.
“God, you’re beautiful,” Hob says, into his skin, like it’s the only way Morpheus will be able to feel what he says. He whines.
If anything, he’s always been a vain creature. Not a god, but the way Hob worships him, he wonders if that’s such a bad thing to be. Hob maps him out with his mouth, whispering prayers to him like it’s his life force, like he will die without them.
He might. Now that he knows what it is to be revered. Like this.
“Hob,” he pants, gasping for breath he doesn’t need, as Hob drives in again, deeper, again. “More!” He wails. “Please!”
Hob’s teeth bury themselves in his shoulder, as his cock in his arse. Morpheus screams out as Hob hits that spot deep inside him, and again.
There’s a full tavern below them that will know exactly what Hob Gadling is doing to him, how he’s making him feel, and right at this moment? Morpheus doesn’t care.
(He could change that, could make these walls soundproof, he could, he could. But he can’t. He’s Endless, but his human body, right now? His body is Hob Gadling’s.)
The bark of an ancient English oak is pushing in his back, and still he’s pushing back like he has no other way to go. There’s the sound of the buzzing of a bandit’s campsite not far from here, and he’s only barely hidden from the five bandits mulling around, setting up, drinking their weight in ale.
He’s panting, and one of his fists buries itself in his mouth to keep himself quiet.
The sixth bandit is currently on his knees in front of him, calloused fingers possessively dipping in his thighs, holding him still, pushing him back, back, deeper in the tree, like he could disappear inside the wood.
Hob Gadling looks up coyly through his lashes, and takes his cock in his mouth in one smooth motion. Dream bites his knuckles. Tastes iron. Salt.
When did he start crying?
There’s Hob Gadling’s tongue slowly dragging on the underside of his cock, and he sobs, it’s too much, too overwhelming– and Hob leans back, Morpheus’ cock slipping outside of his mouth, tongue swirling around his head teasingly, and then letting go, and Morpheus bucks forward, trying to get back to that heady heat, but Hob pushes his hips back with one hand, and it’s not, it’s not, but his other reaches towards Morpheus forgotten hand, grasping at the tree behind him, and oh. That’s alright then. Morpheus looks through his tears as Hob presses a reverend kiss to the back of his hand.
“You all right, there?” Hob says, as much kindly as with a wicked, teasing smirk around his cock-bruised lips.
He breathes through his nose, an unsexy, wet sound with the tears on his face (and he hates that his human body is so easily overwhelmed, it’s not kingly, but then, he’s not really kingly either right now, and Hob doesn’t seem to find it unattractive, seems to find joy in teasing him until he’s crying. And anyway, he’s much too overwhelmed to pay too much attention to it).
“Finish it,” he says, trying to look down at Hob like their positions demand, in life and right now, with Hob on his knees, bringing him to the brink of ecstasy. He’s supercilious. Kingly. Endless.
Hob grins, like he’s never seen a better sight than Morpheus, prissy and stuck up and teary all at once. “As you wish, my lord,” he says, and takes him to the hilt.
Morpheus grasps Hob’s hand that’s still in his, their fingers intertwined, crushing his between his own, and comes with a cry.
(This is how it started. Dream of the Endless, Shaper of Forms, King of the Dreaming, Morpheus, is a younger brother too, next to all his titles. And his elder sister drags him out of his slump, to a bar, like elder sisters are allowed to do.
Apparently he’s a workaholic, he’s too much in his own head, he needs to get out there. Have some fun.
Humans are good at having fun, she says. What fun could someone possibly have here, he asks, not quite scrunching his nose at the pub, the people, the smell. Wait and see, she says, find out for yourself.
It’s definitely not the ale, Dream finds out.
And then there’s a man in the inn, bragging about how he will live forever, how life has too much to offer, there are just too many pleasures to fill only one lifetime. So he will just have to not die, will he?
I heard you say you will not die, to experience all pleasures life has to offer, Dream asks. What are these pleasures that you speak of?
The man bites his lip, seizing Dream up, and then grins, as Dream will later find out he does very often, and tells him to meet him out back. He’ll show him what pleasures life can bring.
Behind Dream, his sister has disappeared, job well done.
In front of him, the man leads him outside. He kisses Dream’s hand, teasingly, but not quite a mockery of a loyalty oath. Call me Hob, my Lord, he says, repeating what Dream already knew all along. You’ll need to remember it for later.
Dream hums. Show me your pleasures, Hob Gadling, or I’ll have to find someone else to show me them.
Hob Gadling turns out to be a very adequate teacher.)
Truth is, it’s not the first time, by far, Morpheus has had a human lover. It’s the first time he’s had such a considerate one, however.
Hob takes him apart with his tongue, his fingers, his eyes, his cock. Hob puts him back together with his hands, his arms, his words, his smile.
Now, currently, Hob is holding him against his bare chest, trying to keep him warm under the cold night’s air. Offering himself as a pillow, so Morpheus would not have to lie on the damp grass. He is aware that Hob thinks he is a lord, a prince maybe, living in a neighboring castle. And it is the right of lords and princes to have paupers and peasants offer up their comfort for that of the nobility.
He is also aware that Hob has little love for the aristocracy, would fight in their wars for money one day, and rob them the next. Hob cares for him, not because he should, is required to, but because. He just does.
It’s cute.
Of course he has no idea who Morpheus really is. It’s the beauty of this whole thing.
(Dream can do whatever he wants, for once. If he wants to debase himself, let himself go, cry for Hob’s cock in him, and ride him on the riverbank. He can. He has.)
Dream should feel embarrassed for these human pleasures, maybe, but who is there to know, and judge? In fifty years, all this will only exist in Dream’s memories, and maybe a dream or two.
Hob will be dead by then.
Warm hands are rubbing warmth in his back, and Morpheus, in his mortal form, shivers and buries his face deeper in Hob’s neck, beard tickling at his own pale flesh. Hob’s cock is still half buried in his hole, from their earlier tryst. It’s weirdly comfortable. Dream is dozing off, and it’s only the memory of both Lucienne and his sister telling him he should take a break, for once, please, that keeps him from returning to his realm immediately after blowing off steam.
Of course it is.
It’s not Hob, who is telling him of the last week’s business, of his mate Greg having this embarrassing hook-up, of the bounty and the thrills. It’s not Hob going quiet, hand combing soothingly through Morpheus’ locks, still damp with sweat and the Thames.
“Tell me something,” Hob Gadling says, quietly.
“Like what?” Morpheus whispers back. He doesn’t know why he’s whispering, and it makes him feel oddly vulnerable. Fifty years, he thinks.
“I don’t know,” Hob answers, and Morpheus feels him shrugging rather than seeing it. “Anything. I want to know more about you. Feel like I barely do.” He stretches his neck, trying to catch Morpheus’s gaze with his disarming brown eyes. Morpheus often thinks it’s probably Hob’s best weapon, but he’s seen him in action. Felt him in action, afterward.
Hob presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “You’re as unknowable to me as are the stars.”
And isn’t that a comparison. Sometimes Morpheus thinks Hob can look right through his human form, fashioned especially for these meetings, and see the Endless at the heart.
Morpheus tells him about the stars instead.
Hob’s hands rub firmly on his reddened skin, warming it, and then. Smacks. Morpheus rocks forward, kept only in place with his legs kept firmly in between Hob’s thighs, and he sobs.
“Come now, duck, you can do better than that,” Hob tuts, bringing his hand down again sharply.
His legs try to kick and jolt, but Hob is immovable. Morpheus’s arse is red going on purple, and only his wet cheeks can compete for colour in his otherwise pale skin. He gasps, and whines, and squeals with each strike, going down, down, down.
It’s so embarrassing. Morpheus can’t remember being harder than he is now.
“Prissy little lordling, thinking he can just walk into my life and demand to be fucked whenever and wherever he likes,” Hob says, pausing only to rub comfortingly over the blush of his arse. He drags a thumb teasingly over Morpheus’s slick hole, already prepped and ready to be fucked before Hob bent him over his knees. Morpheus gasps, and keens when Hob slowly dips in one finger.
Then he pulls out, gives Morpheus two final, quick and brutal spanks right where his buttocks go over in his thighs, making him sob loudly, and then in an almost practiced movement he moves Morpheus to straddle him. One hand is cradling his throbbing arse, pulling him closer to his still-clothed body, and the other buries itself in his sweat-soaked hair, guiding his head towards the crook of his own neck, and keeps him there while Morpheus cries, both hands fisted in Hob’s shirt.
When the tears finally stop coming, and Morpheus starts taking hiccupping breaths in Hob’s rough beard, that’s when Hob’s hand on his arse moves and starts playing with and pulling on his rim. His hands grab Hob’s upper arms to hold himself upright when Hob plunges one, and immediately two fingers deep in his hole. He whines, mouths at the skin where Hob’s ear meets his neck.
“There, there, duck,” His human tuts soothingly, though his smugness is evident in his voice. “You know I’ll always give you what you’re coming for.”
It’s so embarrassing, he thinks, pressing himself closer while trying to get Hob’s fingers deeper inside him, trying to bury himself in Hob and Hob in him.
Fifty years.
There’s an urgency in the eyes of the men crowding right outside of the White Horse, but it urgently leaves Hob’s as they meet his, shrouded in the shadows of the alley.
Hob Gadling, as a rule, wastes no time, and does not do so now either. He’s across the tavern in no time, hard steps bringing him closer, closer at once to Morpheus, crowding him against the wall, but not touching him.
“Robert Gadling,” Dream breathes out unnecessarily, “you are going away.”
He’s hidden from all of the room by Hob’s broad shoulders. It feels unexpectedly safe, protected, nice, though perhaps only unexpected in the way it should not at all be. He’s a being made up of shadows, after all. Perhaps the nicest thing about this position is that Hob’s warm brown eyes and intimate grin are wholly, unequivocally his.
“My lord is going to war, and he’s paying well for good, strong men to join him,” Hob says, warm breath stroking over his cheeks.
Morpheus tilts his head. “I’m not going to war.”
Hob chuckles, leaning even closer to him. “Poor word choice, my Lord.”
The corner of Hob’s Lord’s lips twitch in response. “You are not touching me, Hob Gadling.”
One of those strong, rough hands comes up, the one that’s not attached to the arm currently holding Hob up against the wall, propped up above his head, but hovers only over his cheek. Close enough to feel the warmth seeping through his skin, far enough to make him want to crane his head to finally feel those callouses.
“My hand is unworthy of you, my Lord,” he murmurs, which is some absolute bullshit, because Morpheus has felt those hands everywhere they could reach, and then some. “Let me use my lips to smooth where my hands would rough.”
And oh-
“You do your hands wrong, my Hob,” Morpheus murmurs back, “they’re made of your devotion. Tell me,” and he interlaces his fingers with Hob’s as he presses them both against his cheek, “Is not this the holiest show of devotion?”
“Do not even the holiest of men have lips?”
“To pray, they do.”
“Then let me pray to you, my love,” Hob says, eyes twinkling, bringing both their hands from Morpheus’ cheek to his lips, pressing them softly, ardently, against Morpheus’ knuckles.
Morpheus is a wife, waving out her husband to war with a kiss for good luck, when, some minutes later, the horn sounds and their lips have to miss each other with a slick sound. He shakes his head, shaking the story away, and doesn’t stay to look as Hob parts from him.
(This is how it goes. Death of the Endless, Teleute, when she has to be, is also an older sister. And her younger brother, who has been in a self-destructive spiral for centuries, seems to finally be clawing his way out.
Who knew Dream only needed to let himself be taken care of, for once?
(She did. She’s been telling him.)
It’s evident he’s in a much, much better place than he used to be, last time, years and years and years ago, when she last visited his home realm. The flowers are blooming, the sea is shining, and the sun is blinding. Some of the realm’s inhabitants are muttering about last week’s heatwave, and she smiles.
See? She’s been telling him. And elder sisters are always right.
Dream doesn’t tell her anything, because when does he ever. But he looks relaxed, and whatever Hob Gadling’s been doing, she wants to know his secret.
Or maybe not, she thinks, remembering the heatwave, and the implications.
She’s death, but she’s also life, and as such she has implicit knowledge of everyone who is and isn’t alive, if she wants to. Hob, she’s been blocking out actively ever since her little brother got involved with him.
But her brother looks happy, and, dare she say it? He looks in love. Even if, very probably, he does not realise it quite yet.
And probably won’t, at least for the next hundred years.
By which time the not-so-secret object of his affections will long be dead.
He kisses her on the cheek and thanks her for visiting, when she stands up to leave, and Death’s made up her mind.
She blocks Hob Gadling permanently from her consciousness. She will not be called whenever he dies, and so he will not.
More importantly, she will never accidentally be flashed with whatever her dear brother likes to do in his free time.)
Hob Gadling steals a horse, and takes Morpheus for a ride. He should feel indignant, maybe, at the way he’s clinging to dignity and Hob’s back, but all he feels is exhilaration. It’s not the speed, the adrenaline, the cool autumn wind tangling his hair, though it is not not that.
(It’s an experience he could experience in the Dreaming whenever he wished for it, but it’s different when he has little to no control over his environment.)
It’s the euphoria of trusting, and being trusted, and knowing Hob would not let him come to harm.
Hob has brought bread and cheese with him, and stalls them out as a feast for Morpheus, and it’s all very charming. It shouldn’t be, because Morpheus could get any of these things and more with just a thought, but it is. Hob has gone to trouble for him.
It’s cute.
Morpheus can humor him for an evening.
So he lets himself be wrapped in Hob Gadling’s arms when it starts to get colder, and leans against his chest to watch the sunset.
Hob talks to him about how he likes sunsets, likes the night. Days are for doing, experiencing, finding new pleasures to receive and gift, and Morpheus knows this about him, but nights are for being. For thinking, for dreaming, for spending time with the people you love.
Morpheus lets himself be lulled to sleep, which he hasn’t done in ever, maybe. He trusts Hob will watch over him.
He has Morpheus on his back, his hands tied to the bedposts with his horse’s reigns, in a private room above the inn only in the way they’re surrounded by four walls, but the sound of the pub is in no way blocked off.
The pub, in return, can overhear just fine what is going on between them.
Hob either does not notice, or, more likely, does not care.
“You’re insatiable, aren’t you?”
He runs a finger along Morpheus’ neck, and he keens at the feeling, arching his back to try to feel more, feel harder. He’s already nude, pale legs spread wide on the sheets for Hob, and Hob has only the tip of his cock inside of Dream, but no more, and Dream is begging for it.
“Little lordling, keeps coming back to be fucked like a common whore by the first common peasant he could find.” There’s a teasing edge to Hob’s voice, and Morpheus has to bite his lip hard to not moan loudly at those words. “Ah, ah,” Hob tuts, and he wipes the pad of one finger, still sticky with precum, on his bottom lip, before pushing his mouth open and pressing it down on his tongue, “Open up for me, duck. Be loud for me.”
Spit dribbles out of the corner of his mouth. Morpheus looks at his lover with red-rimmed eyes, and Hob looks back at him with something like benevolence shining in his, like he’s doing him a favour. Like maybe he is.
“Look at you, pet,” he murmurs, wiping Morpheus’ own drool all over his mouth and chin. “You can’t stop yourself, can you? You’re probably in your little castle all day, trying to commit to your responsibilities but not being able to stop thinking about my cock inside you.”
Morpheus whines, and grinds down, trying to get Hob deeper in him. He’s been waiting so long. He’s been so good.
“I bet everyone thinks you’re so put together, duck, so competent, so responsible. I bet they’d be so surprised that you’re actually wishing it was me you were sitting on instead of your hard, uncomfortable chair.”
“Hob,” he keens, his hole clenching around Hob’s cockhead but feeling so, so empty, “please!”
“Maybe they’re not, though. Maybe they all know you’re secretly a whore,” Hob grunts and finally, finally, slides fully into Morpheus. “I bet I could just fill you up with little bastards and they’d just all be expecting you to come home, full and round, one day.”
The moan that escapes Morpheus’ lips is so loud the pub below them could’ve probably heard it even if the walls were insulated.
It’s almost hard to see Hob through his lust-drunk haze, but he knows him well enough by now to know Hob is staring at him with a delighted smirk. “You like that,” he says, rewarding him with a hard thrust that has Morpheus keening once more.
“So do – ah, so do you.”
“Sure,” Hob says, grasping at his thighs to get a better grip, to fuck him better, harder, “wouldn’t have said it otherwise, would I?”
The thing about being in his most human, most vulnerable form, is that Morpheus is vulnerable in all the best and worst ways. He can feel hunger, feel pain, feel pleasure so deep as never before. He can feel himself going down, down, down with every thrust of Hob, deep inside his body. He can feel himself become an empty form, hollowed out by Hob’s cock only to later be filled with his bliss, his love, his satisfaction. He can feel the other, Endless aspects of himself start to fill the space Hob has made for himself.
Right now, the Prince of Stories is making him into a hungry noblewoman, sneaking out every night to be taken by her common lover, ignorant and uncaring about court gossip, and the illegitimate children growing in her belly. Only wanting more and more. The story is filling him, turning him into someone new, making him Hob’s inside and out.
“You want me to come inside you, baby?” Hob murmurs, and Morpheus moans when he feels Hob’s hands slide up, until they grab at his waist, his belly, and one thumb caresses the skin where his womb should be, were he a woman. “Fill you up with my babies?”
It’s enough to make him come with a cry, and when Hob comes inside him immediately after, he imagines he can feel them take.
“I got you something,” Hob tells him, next time they meet. “I’m sure it’s not as pretty as your other thingies, though, not like your ruby, it’s not.”
He trails off, bashful, and Morpheus, who is walking next to him with his arms clasped behind his back in the market town Hob took him to, turns to look at him. “It’s jewelry,” he says, realizing belatedly he should’ve probably put a question mark at the end of that sentence.
“I- yeah,” Hob says, and he’s flushed to under his collar, looks almost embarrassed. It’s weirdly endearing, especially because Hob so rarely looks flustered like this. Morpheus is so often the one caught in compromising positions between the two of them.
“I found it, well, took it, during the last battle,” Hob says, and Morpheus remembers well the last time he was hired to fight for a lord. Hob ate him out for more than an hour when he came back, until Morpheus was a right blabbering mess. (He’s accepted that he’s downright pathetic whenever Hob gets his hands on him. It’s just a phase. Fifty years, and there will be no one in existence who knows that Morpheus likes to be held down sometimes, and held together afterward. He’s experiencing simple human pleasure, like he’s been told to, no more, no less.)
Hob is reaching inside his trousers, and Morpheus watches with curiosity. The object is small enough to fit inside Hob’s closed fist, and it gleams through his fingers like Hob polished it for hours. “A wedding ring,” Morpheus names the simple golden band laying in Hob’s open palm. Question mark.
“Yes,” Hob says, and he’s possibly even more flustered than before. He’s looking Morpheus in the eyes, but he betrays himself by rubbing the back of his neck frantically. “It’s– I’m not asking you– Obviously“, he laughs at his own awkwardness, “Obviously I’m not asking you to marry me.”
Of course not, Morpheus nods in understanding, because that would be ridiculous.
“We’re like star-crossed lovers, you and I.”
And oh, Morpheus does not like where this is going.
“But,” and this is when Hob pulls him to the side, into an alleyway where they are unlikely to be seen and recognized. It’s in places like this that they’ve been having most of their fun, because that’s what it is. Fun.
“Love,” Hob says, and see, Morpheus never even gave Hob his name. But Hob takes both his hands in his, and closes the ring between his fingers. The gold in his eyes shines hope. “You’re more beautiful than the moon and stars together, have I told you that already?”
And the vain creature that is Morpheus preens.
“You’ve changed,” he says, because it’s true, because he has. Hob’s soaked up his stories, and become a beautiful one himself.
“I’m still the same as I’ve ever been,” Hob smiles gently, taking Morpheus’ face into both his hands. The heat is searing into his skin, but he’s letting it burn. “I think it’s you that’s changed. I think I know why you still keep coming back to me, after all this time.”
And Hob is looking so sincere, and the Prince of Stories is sucked into this one, and part of Morpheus melts, but any other part, every other part, revolts.
“I think you love me.”
And maybe it’s the absolute tenderness, maybe it’s the words, but until then Morpheus had felt petrified, unable to move. Now, he recoils.
He ignores the look of hurt on Hob’s face, letting himself be overcome with anger.
(It’s a familiar feeling, but never before with Hob.)
“You dare,” he demands.
“No, look, I’m not saying-“
Hob looks taken aback, but he ignores the impulse to take his words back and curl up in Hob’s arms instead. “You. Dare. Suggest that one such as I might possibly love you.”
“I-“ Hob seems to search his face for something, an inkling of this being a joke, maybe. Morpheus does not joke. When he doesn’t find it, Hob goes on. “Yes. Yes I do.”
There’s a huge, confusing mess of feelings inside him, and it’s manifesting itself in his human body in tears, and he does not like it. It’s an outrage, and it’s too much, and Morpheus does the only thing he can do, and raises his chin defiantly and declares “Then I shall take my leave of you, and prove you wrong.” And he adds, because he can’t help himself, “Goodbye, Robert Gadling.”
He does not turn around until he’s safely out of view, and safely out of the Waking World, and only then realises he still has Hob’s wedding ring clenched tightly in his shaking hands.
(This is what happens. The Dreaming is hanging on the edge of a storm, thunder and lightning splitting the skies, the smell of rain in the air.
Hob Gadling is banned from the Dreaming.
Dream of the Endless does not want to deal with him right now, so he casts him out. It’s a good plan.
He’s got a lot of work to make up for, having spent the better part of the last few years in the Waking, instead of doing his duty. He has no time to wonder what Hob is up to, to wonder if he made the right choice. He did. Of course he did.
Almost half a century passes, and there’s no change in the weather. Dream’s been busy. He’s been dealing just fine.
But fat drops are falling from the sky the closer and closer they get to the fifty-year mark, and Jessamy, his most loyal Raven asks him, and he spills.
And he gave himself fifty years, right, so he’s still got time.
Except no one in the White Horse has heard of Robert Gadling before, he must be eighty by now, if he still lives. Are you sure he didn’t die? A mercenary, you say? There were a lot of battles some forty years back. Must have gotten an arrow to the head, or a sword through the gut.
Sorry mate.
The Dreaming changes for the first time in half a century. The rain is finally falling, and has fifty years of repression to make up for.)
(This is what actually happens. Hob Gadling is killed, not by an arrow to the head, or a sword through the guy, but by a horse kicking him in the head during a skirmish.
It doesn’t last, though, so he just stands back up.
Hurt like a bitch, though.
He is skewered with a sword on the battlefield about a year later, and watches his wound stitch itself back together.
Here’s what actually happens. Hob Gadling dies, again and again, and always gets back up.)
It takes almost 200 years after they last met before Morpheus finds the last gift Hob Gadling gave him.
He finds a playwright with big dreams, in the same inn he and Hob first met, (and this playwright is nothing like Hob, his mind supplies unhelpfully. Who can be?), and Morpheus commissions from him two plays. It’s only after he invites the Fae court for a first viewing of Shakespeare’s own A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and watches Titania fall in love with an ass for the world to see, after they leave, that Morpheus pukes his guts out in the grass, on the side of the road.
He frowns, and reaches inside, and realises.
He returns to the Dreaming, and resolves to never enter the Waking World again.
It takes him another three hundred years and a little bit to break his own promise.
Then the Corinthian, once his masterpiece, escapes, runs, and one little trip shouldn’t be enough for his little anomaly to grow. He sets in pursuit.
His trip is involuntarily extended.
(Here’s what happens next. There’s a war going on on the European mainland, and even away from the actual fighting, London is permeated with the phantom smell of death and despair. In a pub at the Thames, the War is represented by a veteran lieutenant with a shattered knee, drinking alone.
Robert Golden gestures to the bartender for another pint – why not, right? He’ll get a veteran discount, and it’s not like the alcohol is going to kill him.
Getting his leg blown clean off certainly didn’t, and any other death before didn’t really stick either.
A dark-skinned woman takes the stool next to him, and he gives her a polite nod, before returning his attention to the pint placed in front of him. She’s beautiful, but he’s not really in the mood for company tonight. Hasn’t been for a while, actually. Immortality is always lonely, he found out centuries ago, but there’s nothing like a war like this one, seeing too young people die too many times, to really rub it in.
It’s one of those days, where he just can’t stop reminiscing about his long life, and all the loves he’s lost in his time. He’s thinking about Jim, about Eleanor, and, way before, about his first great love he never even knew the name of.
Sometimes he thinks that, along with his body, his love has been frozen in time when he became immortal.
It doesn’t matter. He’s dead now.
It’s lonely, isn’t it, the woman next to him says, and Hob blinks the fog of memory out of his eyes. Huh?
It’s lonely, she says, but in the prospect of loneliness people tend to love the hardest, like in despair hope shines brightest. Like in the face of Death, people live with all they’ve got.
She says that last one with mirth in her dark, ageless eyes, and Hob feels like he’s missing something.
And on that topic, the woman goes on, and sticks out her hand in greeting, I’ve waited so long to finally officially meet you, Robert.
She does look familiar, the woman, but it’s in her mannerisms, not in her face. And for some reason, some unknown, painful reason, it makes his heart clench.
He eyes her hand suspiciously, which is probably rude, but it only makes the woman laugh.
It’s a nice, clear, lively sound, and he hasn’t heard people laugh in a long time.
Don’t worry, Robert, she says, I won’t take you with me. He won’t let me.
He’s getting the impression the woman is definitely confusing him with someone else. The impression strengthens when the mention of he, whomever, makes her sober up.
He’s in trouble, she says, and she says it with the weight of the world. He’s in trouble, and it sounds like it means everyone is in trouble.
He’s asked me for help, she continues, and there’s a dread in Hob’s stomach that makes him want to scream then why don’t you, but he’s stupefied by this weird encounter and so he doesn’t, and she goes on.
It’s too dangerous for me to, you know. She says it with a tilt to the corner of her mouth, pointedly towards him, like he should know.
But you could, rescue him, she finishes. Slides him a piece of paper, then stands up. Goes to leave.
Oh, she stops and looks over her shoulder. Her smile is the most genuine it’s been all evening. And congratulations.
The paper she’s left reads Wych Cross, Fawny Rig.
On her stool, left behind, is a small, soft-looking, black raven plushy.)
(Here’s what happens. Hob Gadling, immortal, has no trouble finding Wych Cross, Fawny Rig. Robert Gadlen, war veteran, has no trouble getting in. As it turns out, he was in the same regiment as the son of the place. Recently deceased, he finds out.
So it’s easy to get into one of the parties, and he finds them a little in bad taste. There are people dying, young people, their own son. But he gets in, and he listens to the lord of the house, listens to a madman’s tales of capturing Death himself.
And did you, Robert Gadlen asks, politely curious, capture Death, I mean.
No, Burgess answers, and he looks like a man who doesn’t like to be reminded of his failures. But maybe I captured something even better.
It’s easy to pretend to be drunk, after that, and that he’s suffering from his fractured knee. It’s easy to wait until everyone’s gone asleep, and Hob Gadling sneaks past the guards to the basement, where Burgess has said to have captured his ‘something even worse’.
In a glass bowl, like a memory, is a face he hasn’t seen in five hundred years.)
He’s been told he’s too stubborn for his own good, mostly by Desire, but his other siblings do so just as often. Jessamy. Lucienne.
Hob said so, once.
But Dream finds out that when it concerns the good of someone else, he turns out to be. Way less so.
It’s probably true enough, that his pride would keep him in this cage, unwilling to ask for help or any sort of relief, unwilling to strike a deal with the monsters that are keeping him stranded, for maybe hundreds of years. What is a century to an endless being, after all?
But the thing is. The thing is.
He’s not alone in here.
He’s managed to hide his growing belly for a long enough time that the humans managed to build a cage around him. It’s made of glass. Sand. His own essence, so he can do nothing but sit here. Surrounded by the thing that he used to give form, now keeping him trapped in this one.
It’s a torture, he supposes.
He supposes he’s lucky his cage was formed before his captors could find a better way to torture him. It would be so easy.
Now, the glass is as much a prison bar as it is a protective barrier.
He supposes he’s lucky.
He imagines that, when they started noticing, their smugness dimmed, and they cursed their own foolhardy hastiness. The thought didn’t bring Dream the grim pleasure it might have used to, in any other situation. Maybe if they’d cursed themselves enough, and they’d tried to break the glass.
They didn’t.
Which was. Smart. Once upon a time. He would’ve had enough power these first few months to rage and thunder and burn the whole place down. They don’t know he’s not, anymore. It may be the cage, but more likely it’s the child in his belly, feeding on his energy, and he’s without a way to replenish.
He misses Hob Gadling more than ever.
Dream hasn’t moved in four months. It was the first time he felt his little anomaly kick.
(It insists on a human pregnancy. Takes after his dad.)
(He’s been in fetus position since, half in an attempt to hide his belly, and to feel closer to his little one.)
His siblings aren’t coming, are they?
Then there’s a motion in his periphery, and it’s not followed by screaming demands and rough gestures, and Dream opens his eyes, barely. Just enough to see a vision of his long-deceased lover, staring back at him.
“Hob,” he says, but no sound comes out. The air has long been used up.
He doesn’t realise he’s moved one of his hands to the swell of his belly until Hob’s eyes follow the movement, and there’s a storm passing over his face. Huh, he’s shaved. Dream can’t believe he never knew Hob had a cleft in his chin. It looks handsome, though, especially with the stubble. His lips are moving, and Dream is transfixed.
His body is not human, but bound it’s not quite endless either, and all of his energy is focused on keeping his little anomaly alive. Is this what it feels like for humans to see his sister?
Maybe she has come for him, after all.
Hob leaves, and Dream sobs.
Then there’s commotion. A clang, and Dream scrabbles back, because it’s the first real sound he’s heard in months, and there’s a crack in the glass. There’s an iron weapon in Hob’s hands, and he’s taking a step back, a warning in his eyes, and swings.
Instinctively, Dream curls up protectively around his belly.
The glass shatters.