#Throwing Down the Gauntlet | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sseanettles · 1 month ago

Text

nothing grows in corpses (in the earth of me)

dream x hob gadling | mature | Finally cross-posting my take on the fandom classic of the show progresses as the comics do, even to The Wake. Until Death resurrects Morpheus and forces the choice of "redemption" upon him instead of suicide. It goes...horribly. No good. Very bad. Instead of learning the lesson, Morpheus (in his infinite wisdom) opts instead for a highly effective existence strike until one day Hob Gadling stumbles upon his ghastly handiwork and immediately decides that this just won't do. Man Who Refuses To Die vs. Man Who Refuses To Live: fight.

Dead Dove, Do Not Eat for the following: graphic depictions of starvation, illness, suicidal ideation, self-harm, blood and gore, loss of autonomy, etc. etc. This is some classic old world whump, folks! But I promise it's also supremely healing in the end.

CH. 13: Elsa's song | 6 k | AO3 link | prev part | next part

(or: the one where recovery is not a linear beast.)

The next few weeks settled into a tenuous pattern. Constantine’s nurse kept up her end of the bargain, though not from any kind of free will as Hob quickly learned when he lingered around the corner after one of their weekly supply hand-offs, listening to the women as they bickered.

“You gettin’ cold feet on me now, Sandy?” Constantine pushed, backing the woman against the side of her battered car. “I think you’re forgettin’ how this works.”

“I’m not a fucking hospital, much less a pharmacy!” she pushed back, though her voice was far less fiery than the words it spoke. “I’m gonna lose my license, I—”

“Are you seriously complaining about malpractice? You?” Constantine demanded, almost outright laughing in her face. But when Sandy did not back down, feebly standing her ground, shaking head to toe all the while, Constantine nodded to herself. “Alright.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder down the road. “I’ll just set that demon loose in your new ward, then.”

Sandy paled to a sheet.

“Wait!” she cried and chased after the departing exorcist. “Wait, stop—”

“You summoned the damned thing, not me. It’s not my fault,” she said without breaking pace and rounded on the woman as she grabbed hold of her coat and tried to pull her to a stop. She seized her by the arm and slammed her back-first into the wall, looming in her face. “Fucking go on,” she goaded. “See if I care about a bunch of old fucks staring at the walls like vegetables until they finally kick it. It’s better than the kids you fed it last time.” A heavy silence mounted between them, a kettle on the verge of blowing. “Try me.”

And Hob watched from around the corner as Sandy’s defiance wilted and rotted away to dust.

“Are we good?” Sandy nodded, not meeting her eyes. “Same time next week, then. I’ll text you what they need.”

Hob watched Constantine go. She never once looked back, and she walked with the stride of one unburdened by any guilt for the things she said or did.

Once, he would have envied her. But now…now, he did his best to just fear her.

Bandages, IV fluids and lines, antibiotics, lighter pain medications than what Hob had tried before, physical and occupational therapy routines, and resistance bands…anything and everything they could think of Constantine via Sandy procured. Various YouTube channels run by various disciplines of healthcare providers filled in the rest, and Gwen and Hob quickly discovered that between the two of them, Morpheus participated a touch more readily in the more involved things like physical therapy with Gwen. At first, Hob’s pride had smarted, but on reflection, it made a certain kind of sense. Gwen did not know Morpheus, had never known him.

It was easier to struggle and fail with her. Easier to fall on his face, easier for his joints to buckle and his lungs to heave with the lightest of exertions as his stomach turned on him and his coughs lasted so long that he began to pass out from the lack of air. It was easier to be helped to the bathroom in the early days of recovery by one who had no frame of reference for who he had once been and who did not rub salt into his wounds with her presence alone.

And Gwen had returned home after that first week. She had just needed some time to process, according to her, had needed to map out a few ground rules in her head before moving forward. For one: no half-naked women, property damage, blood, or dead bodies in the house without warning. None of the above ever was preferred, but she had resigned herself to adjusting her expectations at least for the short-term future.

If she was going to come home to a shit show, she had the right to know about it ahead of time.

For another: no talking animals while she was in the flat. Her brain was this close to breaking already. If Matthew was around when she was, he had to confine himself to raven noises only, thank you very much.

While Morpheus had been visibly wounded to hear the bit about Matthew, he had begrudgingly accepted her terms. Not that he had really had much of a choice, but the semblance of one mattered all the same.

Hob had given her so many massages in those weeks, and he had a couple different spa packages in his back pocket for future heavy days. He wished there wouldn’t be anymore, that healing from this point on would only get easier. But he knew better.

Recovery was not a linear thing.

o\\__oOoOoOo__//o

The first major relapse came about three weeks in. Morpheus had never truly recovered any kind of appetite; he still picked at his food more than he ate it. He was only slightly better at keeping up with his fluids and still relied quite heavily on the IV to keep him adequately hydrated. While the antibiotics had gone a long way to resolving the pneumonia, he still grew short of breath at even the slightest exertion, and when he did choose to speak, his sentences were punctuated every four or so words by a heavy, recovering breath.

But the one thing he did keep up with, as best as he could with the way he was neglecting himself in every other category, was his mobility.

Range of motion, weight bearing exercises, resistance bands, slowly increasing the very brief distances he struggled through in Gadling’s flat—he chipped away at it all, kept at it until his strength resembled more that of a schoolchild and less that of toothpicks and wet paper.

Gwen was delighted; in her eyes, this was a step in the right direction, a sign that their strange guest had turned at least one corner and had committed to his recovery. It was a sign that he would maybe yet not be a permanent fixture in their home, whether she would admit it or not.

It puzzled Hob.

He knew his stranger to be many things: stubborn, principled, utterly bone-headed at times in his drive to prove that he and he alone was right.

The one thing he knew him to not be was receptive to the notion that he had perhaps been mistaken and over-reacted and that he should actually listen to the counsel of others.

That was downright laughable.

A man who had let himself waste away into a breathing corpse purely to make a point did not just wake up one day and decide to live. That did not happen. Anywhere. Hob couldn’t think of even a single fairytale or folk story that went that way. And yet here he was, standing at the kitchen island as he finished grading his last paper and watching nervously as his Stranger finally tired at the window, set aside his book, removed the blankets from his legs, and rose unsteadily to his feet. He crossed the room back to his bed in similar, slow fashion, bracing himself along every surface he could reach as he did and using the infusing IV pole as a crutch all the way. But he made it back, even lowering himself to sit on the edge of the bed instead of getting partway down and collapsing the rest of the distance. His cheeks were flushed with the effort, his breaths heavy, and he looked to Hob as he pushed back his bangs that were just starting to reach his eyebrows once more. His nails were still fragile, but not as split and no longer infected, and the little scabs dotting his body had faded away to scars in most places and disappeared altogether in others.

“Satisfied?” Morpheus muttered in that backhanded manner of his, and Hob rolled his eyes as he fetched his friend his nightly cup of water. It was never touched when the morning came, but he liked to think he was laying the groundwork for a future habit.

Harmless delusions like that were important to have.

“A grand marathon,” he threw back and set the glass on the coffee table beside him. “You need anything else?”

“No,” Morpheus shook his head. “I am…well, Gadling.”

“I think well is overselling it a bit. You’re still breathing like a bad advertisement in a smoking kills campaign. Come on.”

Morpheus rolled his eyes but followed Gadling’s herding hands nonetheless to lay back in bed, drawing the blankets over himself with his own strength as had been increasingly common of late. A small smile pulled at Hob’s mouth as he watched him move, as he noted the already far decreased number of dressings taped about him and the shallower hollows within his cheeks and ribs.

Slow, but steady.

“Good to go?” he asked, reaching for the light switch as he headed for his own room, and Morpheus nodded his assent. “Goodnight, my friend. Sleep well.”

“Good…night.”

The room fell dark, and Hob hesitated for a moment amid the black, listening to his friend’s unsteady breaths as they gradually slowed before forcing himself to go to his own room.

For all intents and purposes, it had seemed a perfectly normal evening. Or at least, as close to their normal as their bizarre new lives could get.

So, when Hob awoke in a panic four hours later, at the blackest hour of the night, to the sound of some calamitous crash from beyond their bedroom and a harshly stifled scream of pain, it was the understatement of the century to say he had not been expecting it.

“What the fuck?!” Gwen yelped, scrambling for the lamp switch beside them, but Hob was already out of bed, sprinting for the living room.

“Stranger?!”

The bed was empty. The IV pump still stood beside it, still running happily away without a problem, but a small puddle of saline spread across the floor, seeping into the rug. Hob could see the pulled catheter at the center of it, tinged with blood, and he quickly scanned the rest of the flat, going to the kitchen and the knives first.

All there. Same with the hatchet and the fire pokers. The window was shut.

But the front door…

“Robbie!” Gwen was calling from the other room, stumbling from the bed herself, “what happened?!”

The front door was open.

“Fuck,” he hissed and ran for the landing.

Curled at the bottom of the stairs, wheezing and moaning in pain, laid Morpheus.

“Fuck,” Hob repeated, with greater feeling this time round, and ran down the stairs as quickly as he could manage in the dark, leaning into the banister all the way. “Stranger!”

Morpheus gritted his teeth against his burning tears and ground the heel of his one working hand into his eyes as he listened to Gadling hurrying to his side. It came away bloody, and he hid his battered face in the floor.

Useless. Weakling. You could not even manage to run away properly.

“Alright…you’re alright…”

I am not alright, you blundering fool! he wanted to snap as Gadling’s hands began their gentle assessment of his shivering body, starting with his head and spine. I am the furthest thing from alright. This is torture grander than the designs of hell, this is—

This was a refractured wrist, dislocated shoulder, a new laceration to his forehead and cheek where he had struck the edges of the steps, a bloody nose, several new bruises across his arms and legs and spine, at least one cracked rib, and a sizeable goose egg to the back of his head. Hob coaxed him onto his back, and his heart twisted at the way his friend threw his one good arm over his face, hiding from Hob’s eyes in the crook of his elbow as he fought to smother his shamed sobs.

“I’m going to have to reset the arm, my friend.”

Morpheus’ hand snapped from his head to Hob’s chest, scrabbling at his shirt, pleading.

“No—”

Hob caught his striking hand and forced him to still.

“It’s me or I call Constantine’s nurse.” He paused, holding Morpheus’ wide, fearful eyes. He seemed so much younger in the moonlight that spilled through the foyer window…so much paler. For a moment, the man beneath him seemed but a boy, and he thought of ebony black eyes and snow-white hair. “Which of us do you want?”

His answer came in closing eyes and a head turning away.

“I’ll be quick,” he promised.

From the landing upstairs, Gwen watched Robbie gently help Morpheus into a seat against the wall. He maneuvered his arm into position, and then there came a quick pull and a jerk followed by two nauseating pops as first the wrist and then the shoulder realigned. Morpheus cried out again through gritted teeth, and a new track of tears spilled down his cheeks.

“All done,” Hob soothed and ran his hand up and down Morpheus’ bruised side, trying to calm his hyperventilating breaths. “We’re all done.”

He tugged off his pullover and bound the garment around his friend’s chest, knotting and twisting the sleeves until he had fashioned a sturdy sling that kept the limb immobile and pressed close. And then, there was silence, punctuated only by Morpheus’ soft, shaking breaths and the quiet notes of pain that accompanied the end of each exhale. But by now, Hob knew better than to mistake this for the quiet of calm, of centering meditation. For the quiet of sanity.

And when Morpheus made a sudden lurching bolt for the door, barely getting his legs under him, Hob was ready. He lunged after him and caught him around the middle before he could swan dive back into the tile.

“My friend, I am not here to keep you prisoner,” he protested and fought to wrangle the man back to the ground with him. “But you are not well!”

“I am well enough to walk—” Morpheus spat back, the words strung together in a rushing wheeze as he struggled to free himself. Hob dragged him back to the floor and pinned him in a seat against the wall with a single hand to his chest.

“You couldn’t even manage the stairs, you just fell your way down them!” he hissed in disbelief, shouting though his words were whispered still. “Where were you going? Where did you think—”

Morpheus shoved at him to no avail, and his eyes welled anew with frustrated, hateful tears as he shouted back his answer.

“Back to the alley!”

Hob went quiet. His hand slowly slipped from his friend’s chest as his own eyes began to glitter.

“I…I cannot be here,” Morpheus continued and tore at his clothes, his skin, at his lame arm with a mounting self-horror and hatred, and the tears slipped from his eyes in a steady, unnoticed stream. “This-this form, it is fragile, weak—this-this grotesque burden! It is despicable, I am desp—I cannot—”

Hob grabbed him mid-ramble and pulled him into a crushing embrace that stopped his thoughts mid-tailspin like a wall. And for a few heartbeats, they just sat there in silence, two grown men on a tiled floor bathed in moonlight at three in the godless morning.

“Let go,” Morpheus whispered.

“No.”

Morpheus tried to push at him, to wrench him away. A mouse would have had better luck moving a mountain.

“Let go of me, I command you—”

“Why?” Hob demanded as Morpheus continued to thrash against him, no care given now to his hyperventilating breaths or his new wounds as the blood spattered Hob’s shirt and smeared across his neck and jaw.

“No one touches me—” his Stranger snarled, desperate now, and Hob tightened his arms in a jostling wrench with one hand at the crown of his old friend’s head and the other wrapped about his back.

“I do!”

The ferocity in those two, snapped syllables knocked Morpheus back enough on his heels that Gadling forged ahead, his voice trembling but earnest and true.

“I carried you in my arms when you were more rot and death than life. I warmed your face against my throat. I bathed you. I tended your wounds. I fed you. I cleaned you.” He swallowed, took a few breaths, and pushed on. “I saw you at your absolute worst, and I loved you all the while.”

From the word loved on, even Morpheus went still.

“And yeah,” Hob wetly laughed and tucked his fingers into his friend’s hair, “you were grotesque. And you are a burden, let’s not pretend you aren’t. Especially because I know you put yourself in that alley.” Morpheus flinched. His hand curled into a trembling claw of a thing, shaking, as he tried not to touch anything, let alone Hob. “You dug that hole I found you in for yourself like there was oil or gold at the bottom and you only had a day to strike it. You are a self-destructive, cruel fuckin’ mess.”

Morpheus wanted to disappear. He wanted the earth to swallow him, wanted to be as good as dead beneath a blanket of snow and a frozen quilt, forgotten by the world.

“But we’re all burdens. That’s fucking life!” Hob snapped and shook him again, his voice nearing the breaking point. “And I am hugging you like if I let go the world’s gonna end because you are my friend, and I love you all the same.”

Morpheus’ eyes went wide, and he scarcely breathed. His hand slowly began to drift down.

“I loved you as a demon,” Hob continued when he was sure his words wouldn’t fray apart into croaking tears. “As a fae lord…as some inscrutable cosmic…thing. I loved you as a shroud.” The edge of Morpheus’ palm settled on Gadling’s hip, and the man sucked in a sharp, quaking breath as he pushed on. “I loved you as a pain in the arse who lives on my sofa. And I love you right now as the stuck-up, arrogant idiot who just threw himself headfirst down the stairs because how dare somebody see him as less than beautiful and perfect and untouchably all-powerful.”

And in the silence that followed Gadling’s mighty declaration, the kind of words that would have wreaked havoc on the Dreaming for an age and now echoed only in the foyer of a Richmond flat, Morpheus’ broken head sagged heavily upon his shoulder. His hand tipped to settle fully against Hob’s hip before slipping into a hesitant return embrace.

Surrender; at long last, surrender.

Hob’s shirt grew damp with blood and silent tears, and he blinked swiftly at the ceiling, fighting to keep himself together.

“I did not ask for this,” Morpheus gritted into him.

Hob closed his eyes as if struck, and before he could think better of it, he pressed a fleeting, comforting kiss to the man’s temple before pressing his head a bit more firmly to his Stranger’s. He ran his fingers a little deeper into his hair and closed his eyes with a heavy, heavy sigh as he felt Morpheus sag into him a little more at the tenderness.

“I know,” he murmured and ran his other hand along the knobs of his aching spine. “But you’re here now. We both are. And we both have to make do with what we’ve been handed.”

After a while, Gadling began to pull away, and when it seemed Morpheus was going to let him go, he sat back on his heels and held his friend at arm’s length.

“Hey.” He ever so gently chucked his bruised chin, guiding him to meet his eyes. “You don’t ever have to pretend with me. If you really, truly want to go out that door, I won’t stop you.” God, but his eyes looked so tired…so worn through. “I mean, I will think you’re an idiot, and I will wait until you’re senseless on the ground again in whatever alley you pick next and then just bring you right back home to do this all over again,” he said as if it should be obvious, “but I won’t stop you. I’ll do this as many times as you need. I’ve got nothing but time.” He ran his hand up and down Morpheus’ good arm and tried to catch his eye again as, eventually, it slipped from his. “Can we go back upstairs, love?”

Morpheus shivered. There it was again.

Love.

He gave a weary nod, not quite meeting Gadling’s eye, and allowed the man to help him back to his feet. Hob pulled his friend’s good arm over his shoulders while his own slipped around that boney waist to help him on each wobbling step up the stairs.

When Hob looked up, Gwen was gone from the landing.

“Y’know,” he huffed as they made their slow ascent. “I was going to give you a hug back in 1889. When I said you were lonely.”

Morpheus swallowed and took a few breaths before answering.

“I suspected.”

There was a pause.

“Bit easier to run out of a pub than a flat, isn’t it?” The look Morpheus shot him from his bruise-swelling eyes could only be translated as oh fuck you, and Hob laughed, rubbing his thumb along his hip in comfort as they continued upward. “Come on, mate.”

When they reached home once more, Gwen was nowhere to be seen. The bed had been tidied and prepared once more for sleep, and the first aid kit had been laid out on the coffee table: a suture set, stack of gauze pads, roll of tape and tube of antibiotic ointment already set aside.

The door to their bedroom was closed once more, and once he’d gotten Morpheus squared away once more, settling him back in bed with his menagerie of wounds dressed anew and setting aside the now useless IV pole and pump, he retreated into the waiting, frosty dark. He changed his clothes in silence, and when he climbed into bed, he could tell plainly from the tension in Gwen’s weight upon her side of the mattress that she was wide awake.

“I’m really sorry, love,” he said after a time. “I know you have your big lecture tomorrow, and—”

Gwen rolled over.

“It’s fine.”

Hob turned after her.

“It’s not.” She said nothing, and her silence spoke volumes. Hob released a quiet sigh. “We’ll talk tomorrow. I love you.”

For a while, so long that Hob was sure she wasn’t going to say anything at all to him, Gwen was quiet.

“I know,” she finally whispered and pulled a second pillow over her silk-wrapped head. “Don’t forget to wake up early to clean up any blood he left on the stairs and in the foyer.”

Message received.

“…Yeah. Won’t forget.” Hob’s chest ached, and he turned away, adjusting his pillow at an angle so he could wrap his arms partially about it while still burying his head into its depths.

When sleep took him, he awoke in an idyllic field beneath a towering oak tree on a fine summer day. Morpheus laid beneath him, bloodied and broken, just as he laid in his living room now though without the care of stitches or slings, and he held Hob’s horrified eyes with a listless emptiness. The flowers wilted. The grasses died. And the ground turned to hard-packed permafrost that spread from his Stranger’s body like a mold, consuming him and all around them. Hob could only watch as the ice spread into his own flesh and bone where they touched and froze him into place like some sort of grotesque statue as he tried too late to pull away.

And once Morpheus’ chill robbed from him the last of his freedom, his Stranger’s hand slowly raised to his ice-carved features. His fingers brushed his cheeks like tiny daggers, caressing the line of his nose, his brows, following the path of his cheekbones to his jaw and finally his lips. Hob yearned to shudder but could not so much as blink or even breathe as his Stranger’s nails lengthened and their touch trailed down his neck, over his collarbones, to wait upon his chest.

Please, he wanted to beg— (please, yes? please, no?) Mercy.

And Hob howled in silence as Morpheus’s hand dug in, titanium fingers crushing his ribs, tearing through cartilage and flesh. He wanted at the least to close his eyes, to not see his own crimson spilling down Morpheus’ arm or the expression on his face as he dug. But he could not, and the icy grip pushed and groped ever further into him until it found what it sought.

It curled around his frantically beating heart…

His Stranger smiled that sly, mean smile of old.

…and then ripped.

Gadling could do nothing but stare with frozen eyes as his lifeblood poured in a crystallizing spatter atop his friend, and everywhere the scalding blood touched, Morpheus’ skin began to thaw. His dark head fell back in ecstasy, the color returning, the life glowing once more in his eyes as he clutched Hob’s still-beating heart in his hand.

Gadling felt himself grow colder. And colder. And colder….

And Morpheus moved, leaning up to him with a bloodstained mouth that pressed hungrily to his own, to his neck, and Dream’s voice of old purred against his ear like a starved cat presented with an endless feast.

“Thank you…” Those resonant tones amplified, and a voice Hob felt he should know yet could not recall having ever heard grinned in redoubled volume atop Morpheus’, “my love.”

The hands tore back into him, prying him apart to make a home, and Hob’s silence screamed and screamed.

Gwen dreamed of gardening. She tended the bountiful yard of a nice house back in North Carolina that she owned, where she was close to all her friends and family and never had to look at another talking animal or hear the title “of the Endless” ever again for the rest of her very long natural life.

In the living room, Morpheus watched the hearth’s embers dwindle to coal and did what he did most nights.

He lost himself in thought and bell jar silence and did not stray anywhere near the land of dreams. He released the effort it took to listen in this mortal plane, allowed the tightness in his neck to relax, and traded his tension headache for the dull constancy of a concussion and the throb of his pulse in his newly sutured forehead. His left eye was nearly bruised shut, and he adjusted the lay of the ice pack to the back of his head as he considered next steps.

His plan for a quick escape in the night had, obviously, failed, and at his current rate of recovery, it was a decreasingly viable plan overall. And in the light of Gadling’s rather melodramatic proclamation, it felt especially cruel to drag his weary body to the kitchen or the window and attempt to end things himself. His sister of course, would not come. But his demise would butt against her domain, would announce his commitment to his decision far more poignantly than any fragmented sentence he could gasp out, and that was his only intent.

But then, Gadling would have to clean up the results of his handiwork, or worse Guinevere. They would have to patch him together once more like that asinine children’s rhyme, knowing he would just do it again and again and again, and the cycle would continue. It was hardly kind or considerate, but then again, Morpheus had never pretended to be either.

…Perhaps he could hide a paring knife in the bathroom tonight. Then, at his next bath, he could take advantage of the privacy and the containment the tub provided and slit his wrists beneath the warm water. It would be easier for Gadling to clean. He would, ostensibly, just need to open the drain, douse the porcelain in bleach, and then—

“My, my,” someone crooned from the window bench. “I should call my dearest twin here for the mood in that mind.”

It was a subtle thing, the way Morpheus’ already flat expression turned to stone and his eyes to steel. But turn, they did, and when his battered skull pivoted upon his neck to glower at the entity that lounged in the moonlight—clad only in a long, flowing black robe of silk and lace and feather that spilled about their bared legs and down to the floor like ink—they only grinned back at him with a smile as sharp as knives.

“Hello, Morpheus,” Desire purred.

“What do you want?” he asked, and what had once been a disdainful demand in a life now passed was little more than a frightened whisper.

Desire laughed, cold and ringing and as playful as the bedroom, and laced their fingers together as they allowed their spine to bend, and they stretched their joined arms above their head toward the ground as they rolled languidly onto their back. The window seemed to grow with them, the bench transforming to a fainting couch and then a bed that they sprawled within. Their bare feet played at the glass, their toes painted red to match their lips, and left fogged footprints behind.

A throne for the reigning victor.

“What do you want is the better question,” they leered, upside-down, and rolled onto their stomach to rest their chin upon the cradle of their fingers. Their golden eyes gleamed like fire as they shifted from Morpheus’ carefully still frame to Hob’s bedroom door. Their grin widened from Cheshire cat to hungry wolf. “Or even better, what does he want.” They drew upright like a cobra, like a lion at the head of their pride, and pointed to Morpheus with a sharp-tipped finger in playful scold. “You hid him from me, brother, but no longer. Such delicious things are happening in that brain of his tonight and all of it mine.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t?” Desire laughed at the piteous objection, and they swung their legs over the edge of the bed with a dancer’s brutal swiftness, sweeping to their feet. “That’s all you have to say to me?”

Desire was smaller than him. It was not by much, a couple inches perhaps, but for the entirety of their existences, they had always been forced to look slightly up at him. Here, now, they were the one who towered, and Morpheus could do little else but watch them come, their every move sultry and fluid and dangerous.

“No posturing?” they needled as they soon reached his bedside. “No threats of ending me or raining down ruin? Just one…” They mounted the bed and drew closer still, “pitiful…little…don’t?”

Morpheus struggled as far back as he could in his newly injured state, balking before Desire’s advances until he was pressed to the sofa’s back; his head turned away, and his eyes cast to the floor as he tried to calm. Desire loomed above him, straddling his legs, and leaned down as they peered at their fallen brother’s sad state. “Well,” they purred after a time, sneering. “I suppose that’s all you can manage right now, isn’t it? Tch…”

Morpheus jumped as Desire’s nails caressed their way up his throat to hook him by the underside of his jaw and drag his head to face them.

“Look at you,” they chided with a pouting frown that spread all too easily into another cruel smile. “The things you do to yourself.”

He swallowed and swore their nails drew blood. “Desire,” he hoarsely whispered, only just keeping himself from outright pleading, and they rolled their eyes with a groan.

They released their hold in a put-upon flick of their wrist and picked at his hair next as his head tipped with a pained wince.

“I’ll leave him be…” they sighed, and they waited until they saw the flash of relief in Morpheus’ swollen eyes before allowing another mischievous smirk to curl their painted lips. Their hand returned to his jaw in a clamping flash that dug their nails into his hollow cheeks and had him startling with a grunt of pain. “For now. But you’ll have to do something for me first.”

Morpheus thought of Desire’s talons sunk into Gadling’s mind and body, thought of the man’s gluttony at the mercy of their destructive cruelty, and set his jaw against Desire’s grip.

“Name it,” he growled, for a moment the Morpheus of old.

Desire’s smile turned victorious. They leaned close, holding him in place by the jaw as their lips neared his ear. Their breath was hot on his skin, their scent overwhelming, and Morpheus braced himself for their price as they whispered….

“Fucking…eat.”

His mind grated, ground, and utterly broke.

“What,” he said. The blindsided word hardly registered as a question, and Desire looked directly into his eyes, still holding him in that throttling grip.

“I am tired of your rotted bones haunting my halls like some kind of putrid ghost,” they snapped, and Morpheus could only stare in utter bewilderment. “Start eating. Start drinking. Start sleeping. Start fantasizing. I don’t care what order you do it in, but you better start doing it tonight, because if you don’t—”

Morpheus’ voice strengthened even as his ability to comprehend what was happening with this conversation unspooled like a runaway ball of yarn.

“What,” he repeated, and Desire swatted him upside the head.

“Hunger is just a facet of desire, you shit. All of this,” they gestured to his mess of a body, “is you being arrogant enough to think you can self-immolate your way back into our big sister’s good graces. But guess what, my lord? Death’s not listening. My twin has had her fill. You’ve been knocking about in the wrong kingdom, and I have had it. I—”

They caught themselves with a deep, composing breath, and when they resumed, it was at their usual cadence.

“Start eating. Start sleeping,” they ordered, and their tone, too, began to soften until it returned to their natural, predatory purr. “Or else…” Their eyes slid from their brother’s to something off to their right, and they turned his head with them to look to Gadling’s bedroom door. “…I make all your appetites uncontrollable.”

…They wouldn’t.

“You’d just absolutely shatter loyal little Guinevere’s heart. Hell, maybe the rest of her, too,” Desire continued and bit by bit released their grip on Morpheus’ jaw as they watched him somehow pale further beneath the fresh bruises and wounds. “As you well know, you always get what you want when it comes to lust…or you destroy what stands in your way to get it.” Desire was no longer touching him, but still his head stayed turned, his eyes transfixed on the heavy door and the people who slumbered innocently on beyond it. “And Gadling…” They laughed and slipped from the bed to peruse the kitchen, lingering at the fruit bowl. “Oh, that one would bow for you so fast it embarrasses even me,” they leered and made their selection, “and we both know that you never leave much behind once you’ve satisfied the hunt.”

He thought of Gwen helping him down the hall to the bathroom and guiding him through therapy exercises. He thought of Gadling tending his wounds and studiously tracking each one’s healing. He thought of their endless patience and kindness, and Gadling’s kiss seared his temple in the cooling night, his arms firm about him as he relentlessly pursued his own destruction.

Desire wouldn’t, he begged.

But Desire would. He knew they would, and they would laugh the whole while, delighting in their destruction and cruelty as this flat tore itself apart. He turned from Gadling’s room and looked up at his sibling beside him as they returned, hiding something behind them all the way. And as they read in his eyes the resignation and hatred, they knew they had won.

They presented a banana from behind their back with the single most juvenile smirk on their face. After a moment, Morpheus snatched it from them, and their expression sobered to something that was almost grim approval as, glaring all the way, he ate the entire thing.

“About time.”

#and desire throws down the gauntlet as they do best #also another installment in the gwen run baby girl run saga #nothing grows in corpses #dreamling #dreamling fic #dreamling fanfic #the sandman netflix

8 notes · View notes