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cuubism · 2 months ago

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thoughts had while traveling turned into a ficlet

[E]

After university, Hob had always kind of assumed they'd end up in the same place. He doesn’t know why he was so foolish as to think that. But he was always foolish about Dream.

Hob had stuck around in London. He liked traveling, liked seeing new places, but London was home. And it was nice to feel like he had roots somewhere. Like he was maybe sort of building a life.

Dream, meanwhile, had essentially vanished.

He’d picked up some kind of remote editing job that he could do anywhere on top of his writing, and took full advantage of it to bounce all over the globe. Hob didn’t even know all of the places he’d lived, Dream moved so often.

He’d been in Los Angeles for a while and apparently hated it. He’d been in Singapore for about six months at some point. Then he’d been in Istanbul— or was Istanbul before? At one point he’d been in a rural village in Slovenia.

(Hob got emails about these things.)

Then at one point, he’d been in Paris, which at least seemed to suit him a tiny bit better. Still hadn’t last long, though.

Now, Hob’s not sure where he is. He tries not to take it personally. Tries not to take it like he wasn’t enough for Dream to want to stay. Dream just had some things to figure out, he thinks. That’s all.

One day, seemingly at random, he gets a FaceTime call.

“Hob.”

Hob squints at the screen. It’s very bright. He can barely make Dream out. “Where are you?”

“Rhodes,” Dream says.

He pans the phone around to show Hob what must be just about the most gorgeous beach he’s ever seen. It’s a little cove with fishing boats bobbing, water still and sun-drenched.

Dream turns the camera back around. He looks like he’s been crying, eyes red-rimmed, eyeliner smudging. He’s sitting on the sand, phone propped on his knees.

“What’s wrong?” Hob asks, alarmed.

“Is it better,” Dream wonders, “to be full of despair on a beautiful beach, or does it not matter?”

“What d’you mean?”

Dream wipes at his eyes. “I. I thought if I just went. Somewhere. That it would get better. Death even said. Try changing your environment. I did. I did.”

“You did, you went to a lot of places, didn’t you?”

Dream nods, and sniffles. “Why didn’t it fix anything?”

“Oh, darling.” So that’s what it is. He’s just running away from himself.

“What is wrong with me,” Dream continues, “that. I am sat watching the sunset in one of the most beautiful corners of the world. And I feel nothing.”

“It’s not the corner of the world that's the issue,” Hob says, and Dream sighs, sniffling again.

“I want to go home,” he says, despondent.

“Come home, then.”

“Is that still with you? After all I’ve put you through?”

“Yeah, Dream.” To my peril. But Hob will never be able to turn Dream away. “It is.”

Dream nods. “Okay.” Then he stands. “I suppose I may as well go for a swim, while I am still here.”

“Not going to drown yourself, are you?”

Dream huffs. “No.”

He risks the fate of his phone taking Hob with him, though. Holds it above the surface as he treads water, hair increasingly fluffy and clumped together from salt.

“It really is gorgeous,” Hob tells him. The water is so, so blue and the sky so wide. “You’re making me jealous.”

Dream smiles faintly. “You would enjoy it better than I.”

“Maybe. I’m enjoying watching you though.”

“Oh?” Dream raises an eyebrow. Only his throat is visible above the water, but it’s enough. Hob can imagine the rest. His attraction to Dream’s never wavered. “Tell me more.”

“Come home and find out instead, idiot.”

Dream smiles. “Hmm.”

“Oh yeah, hmm.”

Dream’s smile widens. God, he’s so gorgeous. “You’re making me want to leave now.”

“Do it then.”

“Okay.” He starts swimming back to shore, and Hob laughs.

“I missed you, you maniac.”

“I missed you,” Dream echoes.

“S’gonna be okay, yeah?” Hob tells him. “So Rhodes didn’t fix anything. It’s alright.”

“It’s alright,” Dream echoes, eyes looking misty again.

“Just come home.” Hob can’t promise to fix anything. But he can promise Dream a home.

“Yes,” Dream agrees, sea water flowing around his throat, sunset in his hair. “Yes.”

Hob half-expects Dream actually won’t. That the flash of melancholic clarity will give way to his usual method of running, that Hob will get an email that he’s now in Samarkand or somewhere and isn’t actually coming “home.” Maybe London isn’t really home for him. He hasn’t been there in years anyway. Maybe.

But one day Dream wanders into the pub they used to get Friday drinks in, the pub Hob’s taken up bartending in, partly for the extra cash, partly to feel closer to Dream.

Hob drops a glass when he sees him, Dream flinching at the crash where he stands in the doorway. Hob ducks behind the bar to clean it up, heart pounding. God, he’s actually here. After three years.

When he stands again, Dream is standing right before the bar, looking uncertain. He’s terribly underdressed for the weather, hair damn from the rain, black t-shirt sticking to his shoulders.

“Um,” Hob says, wringing a bar towel in his hands. “Get you your usual?”

Not that Dream’s usual is necessarily the same, after all this time—

Dream leans across the bar and hugs him.

“My usual,” he says, voice so close to Hob’s ear now that he shivers. Dream’s damp hair tickles his cheek. Hob ought to get a towel and dry him off.

He hugs Dream back, leaning awkwardly over the bar. “Missed you.”

Dream hums, finally releasing him. He takes a seat on a bar stool, a faint smile on his face now. On instinct Hob takes off his sweatshirt—New Inn branded—and gives it to him.

Dream takes it, gaze lingering on Hob’s face as he pulls it on. He immediately looks less frigid, though.

“Is it still the driest red on the menu that you want?” he asks, and Dream laughs.

“Yes.”

Hob pours him one, sliding it across the bar. Their fingers brush. It feels, almost, like no time has passed at all. Nothing changed.

“So,” Hob says, grateful there are no other customers awaiting his attention. “Rhodes?”

“The last of many,” Dream says wearily.

“Looked beautiful?”

“Yes,” Dream agrees, and sips his wine.

“So.” It’s hard to ask what he really wants to ask. Are you actually back? Are you actually here for me? “Are you. You have somewhere to stay?”

“I am not wandering the streets,” Dream says with a half smile. “I have a hotel room. For now.”

“Still itinerant,” Hob says, before he can think better of it, and Dream’s smile turns sad.

“Yes.”

“Learn anything?”

“I learned that moving about doesn’t fix anything when the problem is inside of you,” Dream says. Hob winces at the phrasing of it. There’s no problem with you, he wants to say. But he understands what Dream’s getting at. “I do not know what does fix it,” Dream continues.

Hob doesn’t either. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be in Dream’s head. “Try staying here, then,” Hob says. “What’ve you got to lose?”

Dream studies him. “Indeed.”

It really does feel like nothing and everything has changed between them. But maybe not everything. And maybe it’s okay.

He rests his hand against Dream’s on the bar. “Finish your wine,” he says. “And come home with me.”

Dream takes a final sip of his wine, eyes locked on Hob’s over the rim of his glass, and licks the red droplets from his lower lip as he takes Hob’s hand.

Hob has him bent over on the bed, bobbing his head on Hob’s cock, before they’ve had the chance to pass more than a few additional words. Dream seems not to need words, anyway. His expression is finally slack and peaceful, neck craning, eyelids fluttering, as he takes Hob’s cock down, down, down, Hob’s grip tight in his hair. He hasn’t lost any of his skill in these intervening years, apparently. Or his enjoyment of it.

“Yeah, that’s it, darling,” Hob praises, thrusting up into his mouth. “Good. You’re so perfect at this.”

Dream whines, the vibration traveling through Hob’s body, reaching awkwardly around himself to press needy fingers to his own hole.

“I’ll do right by you, darling, don’t worry, come here.” Hob pulls Dream off and hefts him up, sitting back so he can settle Dream in his lap. “Don’t worry, love.”

Dream looks down at him with wide, dark eyes, breathing hard, mouth open and wet. He swallows, says, voice thready, “I need you in me.”

Hob’s heart thumps, hard. It hurts. “I know.”

Dream pushes his cheek into Hob’s temple, lips smearing saliva over his skin, clutching so tight at Hob’s shoulders it hurts. “Hob.”

“Shhh.” Hob holds him close as he works him open, Dream crying out and clutching at him with each touch. God, Hob remembers what he was like. He really hasn’t changed at all.

When he finally sinks Dream down onto his cock, Dream lets out a long moan, then goes slack again as he shivers. Hob tries to breathe evenly and stay still, letting him adjust, no matter how good it feels to be buried in him again.

“It has been too long,” Dream says, when his breathing’s evened out.

“Didn’t have tons of adventures on all of your travels?”

Dream shakes his head. “Not the same.”

It’s not the same. No one Hob’s hooked up with in the intervening years has been the same, either. No one else makes this feeling rear up in him, like he would do anything for the man in his arms, like he would dash himself to pieces just to have him. It might not be a good feeling but Hob wants it nonetheless.

He doesn’t say all that. He says, “It’s not, no one takes me like you do, I’ve missed how gorgeous you are bouncing on my cock, missed how perfect it feels to fill you.”

“Yes,” Dream says. “It’s so good. I missed that. Please, Hob.”

Hob hefts him in his lap, bouncing Dream on his cock. Dream cries out, holding to him tight. “Yes—!”

Fuck, he feels good. He’s so pliant and wanting, need burning in his fingertips and his wet panting breaths by Hob’s ears. Hob would give him anything in the world.

“Came back just for this, didn’t you?” he says. “Didn’t you?”

“Yes, yes— I missed— oh, Hob!” This as Hob nails his prostate, Dream wailing and clutching at him. Yes. Hob remembers exactly how it feels to make him feel like that. God, it’s everything to make him feel like that.

“More,” Dream begs. “More, harder.”

Hob will give him more. More and more until he’s full up on it, until it’s enough for him to feel satisfied, enough for him to cease his wanderings and stay.

He fucks Dream harder until Dream’s reduced to incoherent wailing, throwing himself into Hob’s touch like to feel nothing and everything is a relief. And Hob feels everything, too: the tight heat of Dream’s body, the dig of his fingertips, his wet panting breaths—and more than anything, the overwhelming want. He wants Dream. He has always wanted Dream.

Dream comes first, pushed over the edge with Hob’s hands on his waist and his cock rubbing over Hob’s belly. He cries out, and then wraps his arms around Hob’s shoulders, holding tight as Hob chases his own completion in his body.

Hob closes his eyes as he comes, just floating in the feeling of having Dream around him. He’s missed that so much. He’s missed Dream so much, in these years he’s been left behind.

He doesn’t realize how emotional he’s gotten about it until he feels Dream’s fingertips tracing over his cheeks, wiping away tears.

“Sorry,” Hob says, voice choked, holding Dream close even as he gently slips from his body.

Dream strokes his hair. “Perhaps I ought to go,” he says quietly, but makes no move to get up. “I fear I am being unfair to you.”

“I’m the one that told you to come back. Wanted you to.” Even if it just breaks his heart all over again, when Dream decides he still isn’t happy, and can’t stay.

“Even so.”

Still he doesn’t move to get up. Hob runs his hands up and down his back, just feeling him.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Dream continues some time later, still stroking Hob’s hair. Hob’s long since buried his face in Dream’s shoulder. “How you. Can feel content.”

Hob barks a laugh. “You think I’m content?”

“Are you not?”

“I don’t know, Dream.” Content to be here, in London, maybe, to not need to uproot himself, chasing some nebulous sense of better, but content? While knowing Dream was out there somewhere?

“My mistake,” Dream says. He rests his cheek on top of Hob’s head. “Perhaps there is no contentment, then.”

That makes Hob laugh for real. He finally lifts his head, looking Dream in the eye. “You’re the most dramatic bitch I’ve ever met. ‘There’s no such thing as contentment'? Dream.”

Dream smiles, then leans in to kiss him. Hob sighs into the brush of his lips. There is such thing as contentment, he thinks.

“What if I don’t leave this time,” Dream says, when their lips part.

“You mean it?”

Dream nods, forehead leaning against Hob’s. “I am. Tired. And this. Is the first moment I have not felt fatigued in longer than I can remember.”

“I’ll have to tire you out better, then.”

“Hob.”

“I’m kidding you, love.” Really, all of Hob is leaping in cautious joy. Could Dream truly mean it? “I want you to stay. Let’s get cleaned up, yeah?”

Dream nods, and lets Hob help him up. They make their joint way to the bathroom, where Hob pulls Dream into the shower with him, and they hold each other close under the warm spray, and Dream washes Hob’s hair with careful focus, mindful of tugging it. Afterwards Hob gives Dream some pajamas to borrow, for all of Dream’s things are still in his hotel room. Dream cuddles up to him in bed, hesitant at first, until Hob opens his arms and assures him of his welcome.

The feeling of Dream laying his head down on Hob’s chest is heavenly. It’s dangerous. But it’s so good.

"I'm sorry," Dream murmurs, into the dark.

“For what? Leaving? You don’t have to be. It’s your life.”

“I don’t know quite what for,” says Dream. “I feel I am wavering about and dragging you along with me.”

“Maybe I want to be dragged along.”

Dream lifts his head to give him a look. “Precisely,” he says, and Hob feels skewered. Seen in his pathetic wanting. Like if he had more self-respect, he’d hold his inconsistent friend at a distance, not invite Dream right back in to break his heart again.

Dream’s decision to leave the first time wasn’t even about Hob. They weren’t really together, more on again, off again, falling into each other and then away. “Friends with benefits.” Only Hob had always cared more about the ‘friends’ than the ‘benefits.’ Maybe if he had made it clearer, Dream would have stayed.

Maybe he needs to stop making it his fault, when it wasn’t about him.

Only. The fact that it wasn’t about him also means that it was.

“Why didn’t you stay?” he asks, grip tightening around Dream’s shoulders.

“I wasn’t happy,” Dream says. The words feel like a shove to the chest. “I didn’t. I did not know how to fix it. I tried to leave. Then I tried to leave again. Only. You can’t leave yourself.”

“What makes it different this time?”

If London— if Hob— didn’t make him happy before—

“Maybe nothing,” Dream admits, quietly, still lying on Hob’s chest. “Maybe it was a futile chase from the start. And I should give up trying.”

“Dream—"

Dream plows on, as if he needs to get it all out. “I called you because. I was staring out at the ocean. I felt nothing. But I thought, ‘Hob would like it.’ And when I showed you, that did make me happy. For a moment. And when I told you how I felt… that made me happy, too.”

Hob wants to say something, but his throat is too tight. God, Dream always finds new ways to break his heart.

“I think that maybe contentment is not… for me,” Dream adds, fingertips stroking lightly up and down Hob’s side. “But the closest I've felt, in fleeting moments, is when I am with you.”

“Dream…” this time it comes out as barely a breath. “My love.”

“Still?”

“Yeah. Always.” Maybe Hob doesn’t have very good self-preservation. But it’s Dream. It’s always been Dream.

“For me as well,” Dream says, and Hob lets out a long, heavy breath.

“Now you’ve got to show me Rhodes in person,” he teases, to break some of the heaviness in the air.

Dream’s smile curves against his skin. “You will like it.”

“I’m sure.”

“I think I will like it more with you there,” Dream adds.

“Yeah?” Hob says.

“Mmhm.”

“I think you just want to ogle me on a beach.”

“If I’m to be in a beautiful place, I ought to have a beautiful man as well,” Dream says. The feeling of his rare smile still pressed to Hob's chest is devastating.

“Completes the picture?” Hob asks, chest tight.

“Yes.” Dream wraps his arms around him and cuddles in close. “I believe it does.”

#i was thinking about the phrase 'wherever you go there you are'#dreamling #my writing #nsft #in university dream was like 'do you want to have an emotionally devastating situationship with me?' and hob was like 'yesss 😍'#and now they're here XD #Dream shouldve just gone to Therapy instead of Los Angeles the first time round honestly 😂#god they're both awful at communicating in this verse 😂 once hob stops deflecting his serious feelings with jokes itll all be over

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