#Hob quietly - or not so quietly - losing it over Dream is my jam

[teejaystumbles]

I thought I’d make some of my shorter fics into a series, like, I want to combine These stones and the little snow fic I wrote last and make a series of their monthly visits, with snow being the last one (so far). Their views will alternate between the fics. I’ll put them all up properly on ao3 when I’m done. I’ve started writing the second meeting after These stones, here’s a tiny bit, enjoy :3

Hob buries his face in his hands and groans loudly. It’s not the first time he does this this evening, he knows, and the waiters are getting a bit annoyed. He knows he’s disturbing the other patrons of the pub with his dramatics but he can’t help himself. Every time he thinks back on the last time he saw Dream – Dream, of the bloody Endless, a being of fucking eldritch proportions, a concept he can barely grasp – he feels himself spinning out of control and nearly vibrates out of his seat in anticipation. Because he is waiting. Again. But this time, he’s fairly sure he’ll not be stood up.

Hob takes a long drink from his pint of ale and fights the blush rising on his cheeks at the thought of their last meeting. Hob had kneeled. Had got down on his knees and clung to his friend like a beggar to a saint. God’s wounds. He’s still fairly embarrassed about it, although Dream had assured him it was alright. Had even patted his head indulgently. When Hob had finally got a grip and let go of him, Dream had swiftly made his excuses and departed, but not without the words that have been on repeat in Hob’s head since that night: “I would… like to talk more. I will. Visit again. In a month. Goodbye, Hob. Sleep well.” Hob groans again and the woman at the nearest table shoots him a scandalized look. He gives her a little apologetic wave and then goes back to his drinking.

The month is over and Hob is here, waiting. He has assumed Dream meant the same date a month later. He hopes he didn’t mean in a month like in exactly four weeks because then Hob would have missed his friend by a few days and… no, he’s not contemplating that. His fingers drum out a nervous rhythm against his glass and he jiggles his knee, all nerves and no composure. Damnit, Gadling, where’s your patience? You’re the most patient man in the world! Stop fidgeting! he admonishes himself. But I kneeled before him! I practically confessed! What if he decides he can’t ignore that? That it’s too much? What if he doesn’t- 

Luckily, before he can spiral further into his ale, the door of the New Inn opens and a black-clad figure walks in. Hob straightens immediately and grins. Dream smiles back and settles opposite of him, like last time. 

“My friend, welcome!”

“Hello, Hob.” 

Dream’s voice is warm with fondness and Hob can’t stop grinning. He waves over the waitress and Dream smoothly orders a black cherry flavored beer, apparently because he enjoyed it the last time, when Hob had ordered it for him. The look the waitress shoots Hob, who is grinning so wide his cheeks start aching, is best described as exasperated. Hob doesn’t give a fig.

[mollymagician]

New chapter of Translation of the Dream is up.

(Finally 😬)

They walked along the river. The wind was cutting. Hob mourned the fact that he’d launched out the door with a mystical fucking banana peel in his pocket but left his hat and gloves behind. Dream walked silently beside him, looking like he didn’t feel the cold at all and somehow simultaneously like the most resigned of human popsicles, hands jammed into his coat pockets and collar turned up against the wind. Hob wished again for his gloves, at least, for a completely different reason.

They walked in silence another half block farther before Dream blurted out, “I wished to. Apologize.”

Hob looked at him, feeling the confusion plain on his face. “What in the world for?”

“For what happened that day. At the pub.”

“What, for making me think I was having a complete mental break?” Hob asked. Dream made a small distressed noise, drowned out as Hob plowed on. “Forgiven. Or for embarrassing a dickhead who was harassing my staff? No apology necessary for that, mate.”

“Hob.”

“Earned you free drinks for life as far as I’m concerned.”

Dream’s expression was pained. Hob knew he could inspire that look on just about anyone when he really got going with the razzing, but this had an extra edge it it. Dream huffed impatiently and it curled away in the chill like dragon’s breath. “It was wrong of me. To…lose my composure. I promised I’d never again…” He looked away out over the glinting dark water and hunched down further into the shelter of his woefully inadequate coat.

Hob lifted an eyebrow. “If that was you losing your composure, I’d hate to see what happens when you get properly pissed off.”

“Yes,” Dream said quietly. “You would.”

Okay, then. Hob’s mouth clicked shut and he looked straight ahead down the pavement. He was wildly out of his depth, here, and he knew it. But. He’d spent so much of his life already throwing himself into things without knowing if he would ever touch bottom, so why start now?

“Make it up to me,” he said.

Dream’s eyes flew to his face, wide and blank.

“You wanted to apologize? Make it up to me by telling me what it was I saw.”

They’d stopped walking, he realized. Dream turned to face him, gaze locked to his. It was the longest stretch of unbroken eye contact that they’d shared and Hob felt it like a charge up his spine. Whatever it was Dream was looking for, he must have found, because after a moment he tipped his head to the side and said, “This way.” Once again Hob was following.

They crossed into a narrow lane between the nearest two buildings, thankfully out of the wind. The way opened into a small common yard between three blocks of flats, shabby but clean. An elderly fountain stood in the center, looking like it had been dry for a long time. Someone had perched a pair of candles in tall glass holders on the edge, burned down far enough to stay lit in the wind that occasionally still made its way into the sheltered space.

Dream folded his gangly frame to sit on the edge of the fountain and Hob did the same, gazing around them curiously. They were alone. The windows around them were mostly dark, a few reflecting flickering late-night screen glow. He wanted to ask. Which one is yours? You know the way to my door, can I know the way to yours? The curiosity burned like a coal, but he knew better.

Dream puffed out a breath, curling steam, and said, “I can make things. Real. When I draw them with my hands.”

Hob blinked.

Dream reached into his battered satchel and drew out his sketchbook. Flipping it open, he took up the pencil that was jammed in like a bookmark and began to softly sketch. “I discovered that I was had the…ability…when I was young enough to be foolish but old enough to know it was strange. Keeping the knowledge to myself was, perhaps, the least foolish thing I have ever done.”

It was the most that Hob had heard him say at one go, as though the words had been piling up as they walked together in silence, and now he had a queue waiting to work it’s way out. It was easier to mark, now that there was more of it, how oddly formal his speech was. He spoke like he moved, as though every word needed to be set down carefully, or something would break. Hob watched his fingers guiding the pencil in careful strokes over the paper. The streetlights were too far, it was too dark in the faint flickering light of the candles to see what he was drawing. “How…did you figure it out?” he asked, slowly.

“I drew a raven,” Dream said. “And it flew off the page in front of me

“Oh,” Hob said. Of course, I hate it when that happens was right behind it but he beat the words back with a mental stick.

“I saw her…I supposed it to be a her…outside my window. Nearly every day. She must have been nesting nearby. I thought she was interesting. I’d never seen one marked before like she was—“ he gestured with his opposite hand at his own chest, the first nearly casual movement Hob had seen him make—“with white banding her chest. I drew her, one day, as carefully as I could. I wished I could…” He stopped, and the pencil stopped. Hob watched him stare down past the paper, into the dark at his feet.

“I wished I could be with her, somehow. I wished I could be free like she was.”

The way he said it made something curl nervously in Hob’s gut.

The soft scratching of the pencil picked back up again. “I’ve learned how it…works…over the years. It’s easier when the image is. True to life. But.” Hob could see him turning the words over in his mind. Keeping the knowledge to myself whispered back through his mind, and he almost jumped in, almost told him to stop, that he didn’t need to know. But it would have been an enormous lie. He did need to know. He’d never burned to know anything the way he did this. Not knowing would drive him completely mad.

Dream said, “There has to be. A desire. To create or have the thing. I can intend to make a thing I do not want, but it won’t work without the desire to have it. Or. To gift it. To someone.” Now Hob could see what he’d drawn. It was a poppy, he realized, perfectly rendered in spare, clean lines. Dream dropped the pencil and let it roll into the gutter of the book. Long fingers touched the page, were still for a moment, and then there was that strange little gesture. Even this close it was hard to follow.

Dream lifted his hand and held the flower out, offering it to Hob with a look as though he expected to be bit.

Hob took it gingerly in one hand. Scarlet, heavy with pollen. Real. The page was blank.

“Christ,” Hob whispered. “That is…incredible.”

Dream’s expression softened and his gaze dropped his knees. “I suppose you could say so.”

“You suppose?” Hob sputtered. “I just…you…” He blew out a long, long breath, until he was empty, then drew it back in through his nose. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Dream replied, softly.

“Yeah.” Hob toyed with the poppy. “So, what, does this run in your family? Your da knew how to talk to animals or…?”

For a long moment the only sound was the distant din of traffic from down the street. “Perhaps. I don’t know,” Dream said, slowly. “I do not know my biological parents.”

Of course, Hob thought. Christ. He wasn’t sure his gob could handle being any more smacked this evening, but he had the sinking feeling that they weren’t done. Bracing himself, he said, “Sounds like there’s a story there.”

Dream opened his mouth, struggling with his words again. Hob just barely caught his lips trembling and almost regretted prodding, but what was done was done.

Dream asked, slowly, “Do you recall the name Roderick Burgess?”

[kittttycakes]

Hey! Sorry for the super late reply to your reply to my last ask. Life has been v. busy.

“the set up of Grace telling Morpheus no, he can’t do that to the office creep only for Hob to be nodding and giving him the go ahead behind her is funny.” <— YES! I love Hob enabling Morpheus’ protective/vengeful side so much.

Also, speaking of, I wanting to share some of the brain rot that came to me the other day…

What if Grace and Hob were walking somewhere late at night and a group of thugs stop them and try to rob them?

Hob gets to pull out some of his combat/dirty fighting skills from his days as a mercenary. Grace is watching this appreciatively, but then a thug they didn’t see gets a hold of Grace (classic knife to neck or hand around throat maybe?) and Hob can’t reach her.

Who then shows up and goes full eldritch horror on the thug still holding Grace and the semi-conscious ones that Hob beat up? (I’ll let you guess…)

And then our favourite Dream lord whisks them both off to the Dreaming for a week where he lingers and kisses and rages over every scrape or bruise Hob and Grace received and much healing smut ensues.

I know, I’m a terrible person. Hope you’re well though!

Ahhh hello!!! Hopefully life has been good-busy and not the alternative, but if it has been, I hope things slow down nicely for you soon!

Hob is absolutely an enabler when it comes to Morpheus (and also to Grace, let’s be honest), and especially when it comes to all of the petty revenges that he’d like Grace not to think him capable of. He wants her to think the best of him, and if that means just quietly encouraging Morpheus from the sidelines in a plausibly deniable way, well…he and Morpheus both know the truth. The most he can get away with is some strongly disapproving looks and some cutting remarks but Morpheus has far more tools at his disposal. Dr. Ward can look forward to many, many nights keeping company with the “all of your teeth fall out of your mouth one by one” nightmare for weeks to come.

Oh yes, this brain rot is my JAM.

Hob would have been willing to let it go if it was just his wallet. He could cancel the cards, get a new ID. The cash is a lost cause but it’s nothing he can’t afford to lose. He’s calm, he’s collected, he’s not escalating the situation, not when it’s so much easier to try to wrap things up this way. It’s not his first time being mugged, and maybe if he was alone, it would be different, but he has Grace to think about.

It’s really not until he asks for her jewelry that it becomes a problem. The earrings are replaceable, as is her watch. But her ring—

It’s two on one, which are odds Hob is fully willing to take, until it’s not. Hob has it entirely under control, and he thought Grace was just keeping back, out of the way, probably a bit torn between running (which means leaving Hob which she doesn’t want to do) and staying (getting to watch, but in an unknown environment). But she trusts Hob and she doesn’t want to be alone at night without him, not when she’s had a few drinks with dinner, not in a part of the city she’s unfamiliar with, and she doesn’t even hear the other man coming up behind her before it’s too late.

Grace has lived a fairly privileged life. This is her first encounter like this, and she just absolutely freezes. She’s terrified. Hob wants to get to her but he’s a few feet away and he doesn’t trust the man with his arm around her, not when he’s holding a knife. She can’t die but that doesn’t mean she can’t feel pain, and she’s afraid of what it would feel like to be stabbed. The street isn’t well lit, but when the lights go even dimmer, she starts to panic—until she sees a pair of very familiar eyes in the darkness. There’s rather more of them than she’s used to, but that’s no matter.

Morpheus may not be able to physically harm a human in the waking world, but there are so very many things worse than physical pain, as all three of the men in the alley are very soon to discover. It’s the work of a moment, and then he can safely take Hob and Grace away to a place of greater safety.

The worst part, for Morpheus, is that they were human. There was nothing Hob or Grace did to target themselves, it was an entirely freak accident that they were there at all, but it means that there isn’t a anything Morpheus can do to prevent it from ever happening again. He’s less concerned with Hob getting hurt than he is with someone touching what’s his. He knows Hob can hold his own, and, in other circumstances, Grace could, too (that girl’s a biter).

This doesn’t stop him from hovering over both of them horribly (they enjoy it) or Grace from fussing over Hob’s hands (the intimacy of hitting someone with his fists, the cracked and bleeding knuckles…nobody look at me). They have so much sex about it. An alarming amount, frankly. Grace is more than a little into the idea of what Hob is capable of, and eldritch horror Morpheus? Mark her down as scared and horny, because she’s going to climb that brain melting monstrosity like a tree.

I’m doing well!! Trying to chug along and make my way through the next chapter which will (fingers very crossed) be done before the end of the month! I have so much brain rot about the three of them, it’s unreal.