#anyway. first nano fic done. though this was very very close to being done beforehand anyway

[cuubism]

part four of Hob running into Dream between their centennial meetings [final chapter] [& explicit chapter]

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Hob spends several weeks afterwards fretting.

True to Dream’s word, no one had tried to stop him leaving Fawney Rig. They must have been sleeping, or perhaps just dead. Hob didn’t much care. Dream had gotten out of there. That was what was important.

It’s the afterward that Hob’s uncertain about.

For all his attempts at displaying his normal pride, and strength, power, Dream had seemed worn, tired, after escaping from his cage. As well he should. But he hadn’t stopped even a moment to rest. What if he gets himself hurt chasing after his tools? What if he gets captured again?

Hob does some digging to see if he can find Dream’s tools himself, but to no avail. It doesn’t help that he’s not certain what the tools are. That ruby, maybe. Dream always had it on him during their meetings. But if it was sold or passed around, it wouldn’t have been under the provenance of Dream’s name, which was too obscure, and simply searching for mystical gemstones on the market is too broad a net.

He’s still poking around at it when, several weeks later, Dream swirls unexpectedly into his flat.

Hob jumps, nearly flinging the antiquities sales ledger he’s reading at Dream’s head in instinctive defense.

“Apologies,” Dream says, standing very still in the center of the living room. “I did not intend to startle you.”

“Dream!” Hob lurches to his feet. “Christ. Thank God you’re okay. I’ve been worried.”

“You worried for me?” He sounds ever so slightly touched. And he’s— he’s wearing Hob’s coat. The sight of it startles Hob so much it takes him a second to appreciate the rest of Dream’s outfit, which—

—he’s really taken the new year in stride, hasn’t he, Christ. Dream has always dressed to the times at their meetings, always the peak of elegance and grace, and now is no different.

But now it’s a panther’s grace, not a king’s. His jeans are skintight, and Hob swallows hard at the thought of the lithe muscle of him that he’d seen but barely taken in during the rush of the rescue. His black t-shirt is simple but so much less than Hob’s used to seeing on him, his fingernails are painted black and shiny like claws, and he’s got studs running up his ears, heavy dark makeup hooding his eyes, hair as much of an electric shock as when he’d stepped from his prison, vibrating at the pitch of glass shattering.

He looks dangerous. He always looks dangerous, but now he’s dangerous in the way that would have knocked Hob into a wall if he’d met him in a nightclub. Kneecapped him more effectively than any weapon.

Hob would want to look dangerous too, if he was escaping from such a prison.

His brown overcoat is fair ruining the look Dream’s sporting, but still he wouldn’t have it any other way. He swallows, throat clicking dryly, and all he can manage to say, gesturing at the coat, is, “You still have that.”

Dream takes it off, holds it out to him. This reveals his bare, wiry arms under his t-shirt.

Hob shakes his head, still strangled. “Keep it.”

So Dream drapes the coat over his arm.

“As promised, I have returned to assure you of my wellbeing,” Dream says. “Unnecessary though it is.”

“It’s not unnecessary.” Hob finally manages to get his legs to work and moves closer. Dream does look better. He’s less gaunt, still pale but no longer with quite the pallor of a corpse. His ruby is once again hanging around his neck. “I’m glad to see you.”

Dream inclines his head. “I promised you a boon in return for your help,” he says, and he looks slightly wary now. Does he really think Hob would try to take advantage of him? His oldest—at least in his own mind—friend?

“You coming back is more than enough,” Hob says. “You don’t owe me anything.”

Dream seems, if anything, more disconcerted. “I would not leave a debt between us unpaid.”

There’s no debt, Hob thinks, but arguing this point is probably not going to get him anywhere. “Stay for tea, then, and consider it paid.”

“That is what you would wish?” says Dream, brow furrowed.

Hob sighs. “My friend, you don’t have to pay me to help you. But if you insist on it, then all I want is the pleasure of your company.”

Dream frowns, but sits at the table. “Very well.”

Hob busies himself making tea, and when he returns from the kitchen Dream is still sitting where he left him, hands steepled on the table, Hob’s coat draped over the back of the chair. He looks distant, lost in thought.

“Something on your mind?” Hob asks, setting a mug before him.

“Chance,” says Dream, taking it, lifting the cup delicately and sipping slowly. “And coincidence. It was chance that allowed me to step into a sleeping guard’s dream—a mere lapse in concentration. Chance that we met outside the hospital, so that later I may think to call upon you and believe it possible you would answer. Chance that one man—” his gaze flicks to Hob— “would be thinking of me with enough fixation that the weakest form of my power could still connect.”

“Of course I would answer,” Hob says. It’s Dream. His eternal stranger. That Hob wouldn’t drop all to help him—unthinkable.

“It was not a requirement of our arrangement.”

“You didn’t have to help with those—what were they? vampire hunters?—that time either. Still never told me how you knew about that, by the way—” Dream’s lips quirk up, but he doesn’t explain—“but you did. How long would you have been stuck there, if I didn’t intervene?”

“A very long time, I expect,” says Dream, lips thinning to a line. He says it with apparent equanimity, but under the stoicism is a flash of hurt. A raw wound, that cage, still. Which isn’t surprising, and neither is that Dream would do what he could to avoid it being seen.

“So tell me, if I were in that cage, would you have left me there?” Hob says. “After all, you owe nothing to me.”

He half expects Dream to say yes, to be honest. It’s possible Hob will regret opening this line of questioning.

Dream’s countenance darkens, and for a moment Hob swears the actual room darkens too. Something flashes in Dream’s eyes, and he looks very inhuman, for that fleeting second. “That would be gravely offensive to me. To attack one who bears my mark is tantamount to attacking me.”

That’s... not the reason Hob would have gone for. But boy is it something.

“Um,” says Hob, grip tightening on his untouched tea. “Your mark?”

Dream’s gaze turns to him. “I would not tolerate abuse to one who is under my protection.”

“Oh,” says Hob, choked. He really doesn’t know what else to say.

Dream sips his tea, and is silent. The thrumming energy that Hob hadn’t realized had been buzzing in the air around them finally fades.

He must know by now that the feeling is mutual, even if Hob has little protection to offer, even if Dream is the only one he would care to offer it to if he did. The only being on this earth he would wade through Hell’s high waters to help.

“What did you do to them?” he asks. “At the manor.”

He still doesn’t really know what Dream is, what his powers do.

“Made them sleep, and dream,” says Dream. Dark satisfaction curls on his lips. “They won’t wake.”

Dream, Hob thinks. Literal, then. A shiver runs up the back of his neck.

“Does that frighten you?” Dream asks. He seems darkly enamored with the prospect.

“Little bit,” Hob admits. Something about Dream whispers of nighttime dangers, especially when darkness swirls around him like that. “Still sitting here, though, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” Dream muses. “You are.”

The fact Hob’s had to accept about himself is that no matter how primordially frightening Dream flexing his powers is—and it is—it’s also alluring. It’s more alluring than frightening. It’s magical in the way the night sky is a brilliant and consuming abyss.

He downs half of his tea as if it were something stronger, then, pushing his luck, says, “I think you should stay awhile. If, of course, you have no more critical tasks to occupy yourself.”

“I don’t,” says Dream. His gaze touches on Hob’s hands, chest, jaw. Interested. Proprietary. He really would have come for me if our positions were reversed, Hob thinks incredulously. At least after we met in 1915. He doesn’t know if it would have been out of friendship, or just possession, annoyance and offense that something he’d come to consider his had been taken from him. Maybe it doesn’t much matter.

Hob stands up, and Dream’s eyes follow him. Hob circles his chair to the kitchen, possibly a bit closer to Dream’s back than he really needs to be. He feels like nothing so much as a lure, like he’s taunting some dangerous thing into playing with him. Dream’s attention prickles on the back of his neck. “Wine?”

Dream inclines his head.

Hob fetches two glasses and a dust-covered bottle from the wine rack under the cabinets. A good vintage, this one. Only the best for his stranger. Especially if he’s willing to let Hob draw him in to something deeper.

Heart pounding in his chest, Hob walks to the living room, gesturing with the wine bottle for Dream to follow. Which he does, like a shadow peeling up from the table to slip across the floor.

Hob uncorks the bottle and sets it on the coffee table to breathe, then sits on the couch. He expects Dream to take one of the armchairs, but instead Dream sits beside him, though with a small distance between them. Hob’s body thrums with his proximity. He remembers the moment they’d touched, when he’d helped Dream out of the shattered remnants of his cage. Just a brief moment of support, but truthfully, Hob had longed to hug him. He’d like to think it was an impulse to comfort Dream, but it may have been more selfish. An assurance, for himself, that Dream was okay. Enjoyment in the pleasure of his touch.

When he judges the wine’s breathed enough—or really, when the tension of just sitting next to Dream gets the better of him—Hob pours two glasses. Holds one out to him. “1875 vintage. Hard to believe that’s considered old.” 

Dream takes it in delicate fingers, raises the glass to his nose and inhales the scent with a hum of pleasure. The sound runs right down Hob’s spine.

“The youngest thing in the room,” Dream agrees, and Hob chuckles. Dream takes a sip of the wine, and his pleasure deepens. “It is very good.”

“I’m glad.” Hob takes a sip of his own. It is good. Nice trick he’s hung onto it for all these years.

“Does wine actually get you drunk, or are you impervious to it?” he asks.

“It can affect me if I allow it to,” says Dream.

“And are you now?” It feels like pressing on something beyond just curiosity. But he presses.

“Would you want me to?” The energy around Dream hums. Hob feels like he’s being challenged. He’s uncertain which answer to that challenge is what Dream wants.

But he answers. Pulse jumping in his throat like his heart itself has moved up under his jaw, he wraps his fingers over Dream’s hand. His hand is just as bony, skin just as smooth as it looks, and very still. He doesn’t move away.

Hob lifts his hand, kissing the soft skin of Dream’s inner wrist, over the stark tendons. “I think I would,” he says.

The tension buzzing in the air around them snaps.

Dream goes from sitting stoically beside him to being in his lap in half a second, his boots melting away into sand as he goes. Hob catches him by the hips with a barely-restrained yelp, and Dream smiles at it, pleased and predatory. He straddles Hob’s thighs, pushes his shoulders into the back of the couch with wiry strength, the lightness of his eyes—human blue, now, not dark and starry—standing out even more starkly against the dark eye makeup. Christ, but he’s stunning. Hob’s never had him so close, and it takes him a moment to come back to a semblance of sanity.

“Never have I had such a gallant rescuer,” Dream purrs, sliding his hands up and over Hob’s shoulders.

“Oh, enjoyed that, did you?” Hob asks, breathless. “Got a good show?”

“Mmm. I did,” says Dream. And he kisses Hob. Hungrily, devouring his mouth, all the weight in his gaze and his words from earlier set alight.

Hob must be dreaming. Does merely interacting with Dream count as dreaming? Regardless, he’s not about to miss out on the opportunity, even if he is dreaming. He readily opens his mouth for Dream, and Dream sweeps his tongue in, bites at his lip, he is powerful and demanding and all-encompassing and it’s glorious.

Hob slips his hands just under the waistband of Dream’s tight jeans, over his hips, and Dream smiles against his mouth. “You are daring,” he rumbles, and doesn’t seem displeased about it.

“You jumped into my lap,” Hob reminds him, and Dream chuckles lowly.

“You kissed me,” he counters.

“Oh, like this?” Hob takes Dream’s hand again and kisses the inside of his wrist, then nips at the skin. Dream’s eyes darken.

“Supplication,” he observes, the word sweet and satisfied. “Befitting such a fair rescuer.”

“Is that what’s due to your station?” Hob asks, sucking a bruise into his soft skin. “Always knew you were some regal thing. Damn haughty enough for it.”

This could have been offensive, but Dream only smirks. “I am king of my realm,” he says, though doesn’t elaborate on what realm that is, exactly. Something with dreams, presumably. Hob would have to be daft to not have pieced at least that much together.

“My lord of dreams,” he says, and Dream’s eyes flash. Right on, then. “I hope you don’t mind if I take some liberties.”

“If they suit me,” says Dream. Of course.

“Of course, Your Majesty,” Hob says. And without dallying any longer, he returns to the tight waistband of Dream’s jeans, undoing the button and zipper and finding the soft skin underneath, his hipbones, the vee of his pelvis, the swell of his arousal in his underwear. He’s reluctant to really undress Dream at this point, unless Dream does it himself, but he pushes down the hem of his underwear to take Dream in hand, strokes him once, loose and revenant. He can’t believe he’s touching his stranger this way.

Dream shivers, sighs, tips his head back. Enjoying his touch. That itself is such a reward; Dream wanted to know what favor he would request? Seeing him like this is its own boon, its own privilege.

Dream grinds into Hob’s hand, fingers wrapped around the back of Hob’s neck, twisted in his hair. Hob pays no mind to his own erection, it’s secondary, he’d rather watch Dream. The way his eyes flutter shut, his mouth lax and open. Hob strokes him with an uneven pace, relishes in Dream grinding against him, writhing in his lap. He slips his free hand down Dream’s back, under his waistband, grabs a handful of his ass and pulls Dream closer. Dream lets out a low moan, grip tightening on the back of Hob’s neck.

“Do you like that, darling?” Hob murmurs, even though it’s fairly clear that he does. “Is that good for you?”

“Acceptable,” says Dream, even as he leans in, touching his lips to Hob’s, breathing against him. Hob chuckles. Dream’s lips are soft against his and it’s intoxicating.

“If we’re only at ‘acceptable’,” he breathes, “you’ll just have to come back to give me a chance to improve.”

Dream’s lips twitch up in a small smile. “Perhaps.”

“Welcome anytime,” Hob says, twisting his hand and rubbing his thumb over his slit, pulling a shiver and a moan from Dream. “I want to figure out what makes you feel good. Wanna get my mouth on you, have for ages.”

“Ages?” says Dream, and now his hand finds Hob’s chest under his shirt. Those slim, cold fingers trail down his skin, leaving a prickling trail behind, and Hob shudders, temporarily losing his pace. Dream smiles with what Hob can only interpret as mischief. He would be murderous in bed. He would be such a brat, Hob just knows it, and what Hob wouldn’t give for the chance to fuck it out of him. Haughty little thing.

Of course, this would probably result in Dream bringing his full power and kingly dominance to bear to make Hob cry, but he’s not exactly opposed to that. It might, in fact, have featured in some prominent fantasies over the years.

“Ages,” Hob confirms. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Flattery,” drawls Dream, seeming quite pleased about it. He tips his head back as Hob keeps stroking him, and Hob kisses his throat, biting a mark into the skin, which feels very daring indeed. Dream just tips his head to the side, letting him. It’s heady, the allowance, the sense that Dream is luxuriating in his touch, the fluid lines of his body grinding in Hob’s lap. Pre-come beads at the tip of his cock, he must be close. It’s strange, the normalcy of his body in this moment.

Though Hob wonders if he can actually control his body, if he can prevent himself from coming so he can luxuriate in something that he likes for longer. The thought only makes him harder, and he presses Dream to him by the small of his back, finally giving in to temptation and grinding against him. Dream makes a satisfied humming sound, almost a purr.

“Will you come for me, darling?” Hob murmurs against his throat. “Wanna see you. Gorgeous thing.”

Instead of answering, Dream plucks open the button on Hob’s trousers, slipping his hand inside to take Hob in hand. Hob startles—fuck his fingers are cold—but then mentally stutters at the feeling of his stranger, Dream, touching him, pleasuring him. How long has he held improbable dreams of that?

He loses himself to it for a while, their hands on each other, the way they move together. Dream’s touch is unpredictable, giving and taking, and it has Hob on a wire, drawn after him. Always drawn after him. Dream, meanwhile, is a vision of hooded eyes and dark makeup, superiority on his face again as he watches Hob fall apart at his touch, but Hob sees the shivers of want that go through him, that send ripples through that superior look. He slows his pace, dragging his touch with agonizing patience up and down Dream’s cock. Watches the shudder run through him. And then Dream comes with a gasp, as if surprised by it. He tips his back, eyes closed, mouth open and long throat bared. He’s radiant and loose in that moment in a way Hob hadn’t thought was possible—and the sight of Dream’s pleasure is enough to send Hob over the edge, too, spilling over both of their hands.

For a moment they just breathe—or, Hob breathes, Dream seems to settle his existence back in order in a more metaphysical way—and Hob brings a dab of Dream’s spend to his lips, tastes it, more out of curiosity than anything. He doesn’t taste like much at all, it turns out. Sort of like the way a sex dream might be incredibly vivid but have no real smell or taste to it—ha.

When he looks back up, Dream is watching him. Gaze still heavy, though sated, for now. He’s just as stunning when Hob’s gaze is clear. What Hob wouldn’t give to get him in an actual bed, to really dishevel him. Smear that makeup. Mess up that outrageous hair.

But he wonders if Dream will simply leave again, instead. He’s fulfilled whatever obligation he felt in assuring Hob he was still alive, and now he’s taken his pleasure, too. It would be just like Dream to disappear now with only a vague promise of a meeting a century in the future. Before having Dream in his lap, kissing him, touching him, seeing the shudder of climax run through him, Hob might have been able to bear that. But not now.

But Dream doesn’t get up. His hands are braced on Hob’s hips, playing idly with his t-shirt. He seems to be deliberating on something. Deciding whether to go, perhaps.

“Stay a while, if you want,” Hob says, even though it might have been better to remain quiet and let Dream come to him. His nerves always come back around Dream, and when he’s nervous he runs his mouth. “If you need a rest after… well. You must still be tired.”

Dream stiffens. Shit. Goddamnit, Hob.

“You assume me to be infirm?” Dream says, tightly.

“No, I—”

“I assure you, I am more powerful than I have been in eons, and will gladly demonstrate—”

“Dream, no.” Hob strokes his hands up and down his sides, and Dream stills, though he still looks one misstep away from biting. His eyes are guarded now, and that’s not what Hob wanted at all.

“I know you’re powerful,” he says. “That’s not what I meant. I meant that, even with all that power—” he touches Dream’s chest— “I was worried about you. You went through all that and you didn’t even flinch. You said before you would have helped me if I was the one who got stuck in that place, hm? Well, continuing that scenario, would you blame me if I was a bit fucked up afterwards?”

“I don’t suffer human injuries, Hob,” says Dream, stiffly. He doesn’t climb off Hob’s lap, though, and Hob knows he’s right. Even if Dream won’t admit it. “I have taken my vengeance. That is all that is required.”

“Sure,” says Hob, hand still over his heart.

“Your concern is unwarranted,” Dream continues, though Hob hadn’t contradicted him. “I am not hurt.”

So he’s the type that needs someone to push. And also the type that’s run away when Hob pushed in the past. Great. Fortunately, Hob has an eternity to wait if Dream runs again.

He strokes his thumb over Dream’s wet lower lip, over the corner of his mouth to his cheek. “I think you are hurt,” he says quietly.

Dream opens his mouth to speak, but Hob covers his lips again with his fingertip. It’s too bold by half, and he almost expects to get turned into sand, but instead Dream stills.

“And you’re right to be,” Hob continues, just as quiet. “And it wasn’t enough, that vengeance, was it? It’ll never feel like enough. And it burns. And under that—” he presses harder against Dream’s chest, where his other hand still rests— “it hurts. I see it. I get it. And it’s okay.”

Hob’s mother had always wondered aloud where in God’s green kingdom Hob had gotten his foolishness. And where indeed. For Dream really might smite him for that. But Hob doesn’t take it back. Stronger than the fear that Dream might leave is the need to give him the moment of comfort and rest and empathy he so clearly has not allowed himself to have. Hob doesn’t know if he has anyone else in his life to offer such a thing. He hopes so. But even if he does, it’s obvious to Hob in his iron posture, his careful control, that he hasn’t let himself lean on it. The sex felt good, filled some need, but Dream still kept all his stern, haughty power through it. Never quite believed Hob wouldn’t abuse his trust if he let himself fully relax.

Dream’s dark gaze bores into his, burning with the same low fire as the hurt, the anger Hob knows is still deep in his chest. But it’s not anger at Hob, not this time. With everyone in the manor already punished, his anger has no direction. And Hob knows that sometimes with no other target, that type of anger will turn back on oneself. He may still leave. He might run from it.

Instead, Dream leans into his hand, and Hob’s heart trills with surprise, then relief. He takes Dream’s face between both hands, framing those harsh cheekbones with his thumbs. Dream doesn’t say anything in response to Hob’s words, but then Hob’s always been the more verbose between the two of them. Always running his mouth, and sometimes it gets him walked out on, and sometimes it gets him this. Dream leaning into his touch, and closing his eyes, and letting out the most gentle of sighs as Hob strokes his thumbs over his skin. That’s answer enough.

He draws Dream close and kisses him.

It’s different this time. The hunger has shifted. Less urgent, but still chasing a certain need. Hob notices the way Dream slips his hands close, skin-to-skin. Seeks out touch and warmth, rather than pleasure. Apparently he’s decided he will let himself have some degree of it from Hob, and Hob gives it freely, enthusiastically, he would have even if Dream had never been captured, would have fallen into bed with his stranger given the first hint of an opportunity, but it’s different now, when he feels he can offer Dream something he needs. Something he has not had for so long.

He pulls his t-shirt off over his head to give him access to more skin, if that’s what he wants. Dream hums in appreciation, pressing his hands to the warmth of Hob’s body. Rubs his cheek on Hob’s. His skin is utterly smooth against Hob’s stubble. Hob wraps a hand around the back of his head, drags his fingers through his hair. Dream lets out a shivering sigh and shifts closer, pressing their bellies together.

Come closer, Hob thinks, but doesn’t say out loud, not this time. Come closer, it’s alright. It’s alright, darling. Let me give you what you need.

He doesn’t say it, for the last thing he wants is to chase Dream away. He leans back against the couch, curling Dream’s body further into his, arm low around his waist. Dream tucks his face into Hob’s throat. Hob’s breath shakes. Grateful for the trust of this strange, wonderful creature.

“Staying for a while then, love?” he asks, rubbing his hand up and down Dream’s back.

“Mmm,” says Dream. “Perhaps.”

Perhaps might as well be yes, for he doesn’t move, just sinks further into Hob. And for as long as Hob might have dreamt for, wished for the opportunity to have his old stranger in his bed, out of lust when they first met, and care and passion later, this is so much more special. What he’s always truly hoped for, deep down, more illicit and impossible than sex. And for Dream, too, it seems a much greater expression of trust than just sleeping together, as it were. He could perhaps have tempted Dream into bed in a prior era, but he could not have gotten this, not before Dream’s imprisonment.

So of course, he lets Dream stay, relishes in Dream staying, getting what he needs to feel better even if he won’t voice it, never voices it. And when some time has passed, he knows not how much, of Hob stroking his hair and Dream settled against him, and Dream finally sits back up, and Hob knows he’s going to say that he has to return to his duties, he’s stayed too long already— he takes Dream’s dear face between his hands.

“Come back,” he murmurs, “if you want to. You know I’m always here.”

“A man of constancy,” Dream says, with a little smile.

“You said you thought I could change. I hope that’s true. But that’s one thing I wouldn’t. That I’m always here. At least, whenever you come back.”

“And for our chance meetings as well,” says Dream.

“I don’t know if it’s totally chance,” says Hob. “I think I’ve just been waiting for you.”

Dream is Hob’s own source of constancy. A guiding point, ever since they first met. Perhaps it started with the chance meeting of Hob’s loud mouth and Dream’s penchant for challenge, but it doesn’t feel like chance anymore. Chance does not involve so much choice to come back.

With great care, Dream kisses him, a light press of lips that Hob holds dearer than anything, and then sits back again.

“Very well,” he says, and at last slips off of Hob’s lap, all his clothes miraculously perfect again as he stands, though his hair carries the lingering traces of Hob’s fingers still. “I shall return. If you are waiting.”

“Always,” Hob vows, and watches with awe and reverence as Dream lifts Hob’s hand to his lips and kisses his palm, watching him with his dark gaze all the while. Then he turns away, already swirling into a cloud of sand, and Hob’s heart aches with a mixture of sadness and hope, the feeling of endings that also herald new beginnings. And Dream swipes up Hob’s coat from the back of the chair where he’d left it, and then he’s gone.

Hob presses his palm to his lips, touching where Dream just touched, feeling nothing so much like he’s been engaged in a long, careful courtship and his suit was finally accepted. They don’t really do courtships of that kind in this decade. But his Dream is not a creature of this or any decade, and Hob’s always had a lingering fondness for the ‘old ways’ in that regard. The ways of romance they’ve preserved only in novels, nowadays.

He looks at the scattering of sand on his floor, and the empty back of the chair where his coat had been, the places Dream’s already claimed in his life. And just smiles.