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cuubism · 1 year ago

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Like the Foxglove to the Hummingbird

Dreamling, E rated, Fertility Rituals, Sex Magic, Canon-verse, Soulmates-of-sorts Theirs was a long love affair, Hob and the concept of dreaming.

Children were born dreamers. Naturals at seeing what could be instead of what was, at touching the innate fantasy and magic of the world, finding it and building it in their play and in their stories. They lost the knack for it as they aged, as the harsh realities and responsibilities of the world intruded—but in their youths, they were looking towards the sky.

Not Hob Gadling.

Hob never had the knack for it. He saw too much, too young: neighbor boys cut down by swords, and just-born babes starving in the winter cold, and good people who tried to help the sick struck down by the same plague. Family, friends, whole villages. Muck was what it was, muck it would stay, and no use harping on dreams when one had to survive.

But survive Hob did, when so many others did not. Hob hit adulthood, and the world still lay before him in all its wasted glory. Hob did not know hope, had no acquaintance with some high fantasy life somewhere far away from here. But Hob did know good ale, good friends, the warmth of a fireplace on a cold night; the rush of stepping off a battlefield with all his limbs intact, and the sweet moans of a lass as he plumbed her secret places for the first time. Hob knew the turning of the sun, and the gentle nicker of a horse that had given him its trust— and heaven might have been a crap shot, Hell not even worth thinking of, but there were dreams down there in the muck, if one was willing to trust in life.

Hob believed not in progress or a better world, or a grand arc of history that bent toward justice. He only believed that there would be a tomorrow, and that something there would be worth sticking around for.

Hob Gadling was not born a dreamer, but he chose to become one. And later, Hob would think that someone out there must have had a sense of humor—for they saw fit to send this scrappy, self-made dreamer, of all people, an actual dream.

—

The creature that stopped before Hob could have stepped out of a dream. Only later would Hob know how right he had been in that thought. For now, all he knew was that the most ethereal thing was standing over him, querying him, challenging him. And Hob was inclined to meet that challenge, to push onwards, he always was.

Besides, his dream creature was so pretty. And he looked at Hob with such fixation. Like Hob had plucked some string within him he hadn’t known was there, and he was trying to pick out the notes of that song.

Hob was challenged to return, to meet him again. And he would. Hob wanted to meet him again. To touch this being that had come down off its cloud. He felt like he was meant to.

In truth, he wanted to have him now. To lure this strange creature who was challenging him not to die out behind the tavern and— no, that certainly wasn’t good enough for this dream of a thing, he would have to find a proper room, he would want to do this properly.

Hob would make him feel so good if only he wanted. It struck him like a blow, that wanting. A peek at something he wasn’t yet meant to touch.

But he could be patient. Hob wasn’t often patient, but he could be, for this. He would meet this stranger again, and find out why. Get a proper look at what he had only glimpsed.

He told his dream creature as much. Grinned at the self-satisfied smile that was returned to him. His strange creature might not believe him, that he would come back, that he wouldn’t give up. But Hob had made his choice long before they had met, and wasn’t inclined to change it.

—

That night Hob’s dreams were a swirl of hands and skin and wet kisses. Of his stranger’s dark hair and sharp eyes, teeth set to his inner thighs, the tang of his spend in Hob’s mouth. The contortion of his stranger’s body under his, and his long fingers, and his soft moans. Pain and pleasure. Taking and being taken. The hook of joined bodies.

Hob disrobed a thin frame and unveiled a marvel, wrapped his arms around a narrow waist and kissed soft hair, murmured words he wouldn’t remember, had his stranger in the room above the tavern, in his seat at the table, in a great bed he couldn’t identify, held him, ravished him, again and again, wet lips, aching thighs, his stranger’s cries dragged from deep within him.

Hob woke feeling ruined. If that was what dreaming was like, well. Maybe he would keep to it.

—

Choice being made, dreaming came naturally to Hob after that—in his own fashion. He was no writer, no artist, though he did come to enjoy stories. He was no particular believer in divinity or magic. And Hob did not dwell on fantasies or powers beyond what was attainable to him in this life—a way out of soldiering for a living, a proper trade, then simple riches and social stability, and finally a family to call his own again. No use dwelling on the unreal, when there was such to be had here, if only one persisted long enough.

(Only occasionally did Hob mull on the unreal. The unreal of his stranger. Only when his life brushed up against his stranger’s did Hob’s dreams spiral out briefly into the cosmos, for something about his stranger inferred the fantastical, the unnatural, the darkest darks and lightest lights reachable or unreachable to the human mind. He thought that his stranger had seen things on this earth that would be unimaginable to a man like him who had spent all his life in one certain corner of the world. They were discovering new corners every day, and his stranger had been to all of them, Hob thought. Had touched every fantastical creature spoken of in stories, dragons and unicorns and great beasts under the sea. If the moon was travel-able, he had been there, too.

But this was a flight of fancy, a little story; Hob had no ambitions, no hopes, of touching any such things himself—strange enough already, for his life to touch his stranger’s.)

And when their paths parted again, diverging along the counterpointed sound waves of their lives to intersect again only a century hence, said fancies faded again to the background and Hob’s dreams returned to their mundane heights.

—

The first time Hob actually longed for his stranger, his dream, longed rather than just wanted him, was in the mid-1600s. Broken, filthy, lying in a gutter somewhere starving, he would think of his mysterious stranger swooping in to rescue him. Materializing from the very shadows Hob languished in, sweeping his imperial coat from his shoulders and draping it over Hob’s rags. Coming to him as some awesome beast, a great black unicorn, perhaps, for their touch was said to heal—and resting the tip of his horn on Hob’s head like a strange knighting, banishing the many bruises from his skin. Appearing, even, as the night itself, and softening the sharp edges of the darkness. Whisking him away, maybe, to some faraway land. Just for a little while.

Hob’s hallucinations brought him to many strange places. Made him long for a touch he had never felt.

Looking back on this later, from a time when he knew who his dream truly was, Hob would wonder if it wasn't the ability to dream itself that he had truly been missing. He never gave up on life, but dreams felt distant from him then, even the modest ones he had been accustomed to. And Hob’s chosen love affair with dreaming had been long by now, and he missed the press of it along his side like a lover’s warm body, a bed gone cold.

It was only when he saw his dream again that he touched it once again—the presence of dreams. It was so easy, then, when his dream asked if he wished to live.

—

A century later, Hob’s longing somehow brought him here—a borrowed bed in a particular inn, his borrowed stranger bobbing between his legs. His fine fingers wrapped around Hob’s thighs, his fine lips around his cock, swallowing him down like ambrosia. Hob couldn’t quite replay the steps that had gotten him here in this state, but he knew he was on borrowed time, that he would soon have to give his stranger back to whatever unfathomable business he came from—so he decided not to overthink it and just let the dream of it all wrap around him. A memory to carry until next time, a brilliant fantasy brought to earth.

He spilled in his stranger’s mouth, half-delirious with the heat of it and the shift of his throat as he swallowed, and scrabbled blindly for his stranger’s arms, drawing him up into a mashing kiss before he’d even had a chance to wipe his mouth.

His dear stranger whined into his mouth, composure broken, and Hob only hoped he knew that this was a sacred space, that nothing would leave these walls, that Hob knew how dearly he held his armor and wouldn’t take it away from him—that he felt blessed to touch such a thing at all—

“Hob,” breathed his stranger, voice all cracked stone, and Hob wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, held him close, slipped his other hand between them to take him in hand.

“Shh,” he hushed, stroking him in quick twisting motions, not meaning to leave him in suspense any longer. “I have you, s’alright.”

“I would have been fine without your intervention,” panted his stranger, face pressed to Hob’s throat now as he squirmed so beautifully in Hob’s grasp. “I would have—”

“Oh, don’t I know it, dearling,” Hob consoled. “I’m sure you could have wiped the whole inn off the map if you wanted, hm?”

“Yes. I—” He let out a strangled sort of whimper, muffled into Hob’s neck, as Hob twisted his hand just so. And when Hob finally made him come, he stumbled over the edge of it with a surprised sound, like Hob had caught him off guard, and pressed his face even further into Hob’s neck, fingers grasping restlessly at Hob’s sides.

Hob soothed him through it. “Shh, sweet thing.”

His stranger grumbled against his skin. “You need not placate me so.”

“Want to, though. So pretty, you are, it makes a man say terrible things.” Dangerous things.

“Hmm.” His stranger subsided, and they lay there for a time, loosely entwined. Finally, he said, “I cannot stay long.”

Hob couldn’t hide the disappointed note in his reply. “I figured as much.”

“My responsibilities are great,” said his stranger.

Hob wondered what those responsibilities might be. He still didn’t know who his stranger was. He hadn’t even gotten a name.

“I know,” he said, voice tight.

Not long after that, his stranger was gone again, though for the first time, he seemed genuinely reluctant to leave.

Hob held the memory of that night close in the coming years. He didn’t know exactly what it meant yet, him and his stranger, his dream, but he knew it was something more than a casual tangle of bodies. He knew their paths had collided for a reason, even if that reason was only that it gave them both comfort, something to cling to.

He came back to that night again and again, mulled on the memory of his stranger in the years before they met again. Perhaps, when that day came, Hob would find a way to express even a small fraction of what he thought they could be to each other.

That day did come, and Hob said so. Gave his stranger a small window into his feelings since their union—since they had met, really. Called him friend, called him dear one, expressed how he wanted to care for him.

These sentiments were not taken well by the strange creature Hob had bedded. He recoiled from the name friend, from Hob’s insinuation that there might be anything real there, something more than fleeting. He fled from it, nearly in tears, leaving Hob bereft and wondering what he was supposed to do when his heart was increasingly captured by a being that did not want him back, did not want even to hear of it.

Hob was hardly going to ask for his hand in marriage. He wouldn’t even ask him to stay. All he wanted was the slightest acknowledgement that there was anything there between them.

But how dare he, to ask him to say that it meant something.

—

Many stopped dreaming in the 20th century, but not Hob. Later he would learn it was because of Dream’s absence, this collective loss in the ability to dream. But Hob kept dreaming, because his dreams were never tied to sleep anyway—always to the real world, the one he properly lived in. Nor were his dreams tied to his stranger, not truly, for all that he usually left their meetings feeling a bizarre mix of devastating loss and unique excitement for the years ahead.

When his stranger walked out at their last meeting, all he felt was the devastating loss. It lodged in his chest and kept him company through the years, like a bullet that had stuck in him and couldn’t be carved out. But he didn’t stop dreaming, of his stranger’s return that he so fervently hoped for, of new inventions across the century whose stories he could share, of the end of each war, of change, always so invigorating to watch happen around him. Hob was still dreaming, pain didn’t stop it, hadn’t since that terrifying period three hundred years ago, and even if his stranger never returned—he wouldn’t give it up.

He might nurse the wound forever like a longing widower, but he wouldn’t give up.

And Hob would be glad he didn’t, for, cliche as it felt, not giving up on his dreams got him his dream back.

—

“I missed you,” Hob said, not for the first time, on the night his dream returned. He’d managed to lure his just-returned friend, his Dream, he now knew, upstairs with him, despite their parting, and now had Dream lying across the couch with his head in Hob’s lap. So much more than he’d thought he would be allowed, this tenderness. But Dream had explained, somewhat reluctantly, that he was tired, that his realm was tired, desolate, damaged—and perhaps that was all this was. Seeking sanctuary, rest, nourishment.

“I am missing you more the longer I lie here,” Dream said, his low voice a purr against Hob’s thighs. “It seems that. My time away was… illustrative of more than one misstep.”

“Oh?” That unexpected admission lodged itself in Hob’s heart, piercing right between his ribs. To think that such a thing as Dream might want him back…

“Stay, then,” he said, and ran a hand through Dream’s feathersoft hair. “And get tangled up. If you want to.”

“And miss this more when I must go?”

“And come back,” Hob said. “Yeah.”

Dream let out a long sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the world in it. “Very well. I will come back, then.”

And Hob drew a blanket over him, and kept petting his hair, offering what comfort he could as his heart leapt and sang.

—

Hob no longer quite knew what dreaming was, because every day merged the real and imaginary. His stranger, his Dream, once only in the stories in the back of his head, walked beside him now. Drank tea in his kitchen and shared his bed. And in his dreams, too, they walked, through strange vistas and sentimental places. It was the culmination of a long, twining pathway, the both of theirs, where Hob stepped through the Dreaming like a second home he had always known he was meant to walk. Met Dream, daily, at that turnstile between sleeping and waking, where things blurred and slid and he felt, sometimes, he might be able to pull dreamstuff right through into the waking world.

And one day, hovering on those cloudy crossroads, Dream said, “There are some particularly strong dreamers in this world.”

“Oh, yeah?” Hob drifted back to wakefulness from where he was falling asleep against Dream’s side, fingers lazily combing his hair.

Dream was lying beside him on his back, stilled in thought. Hob wished he would relax. Though Dream’s manners of relaxing could be strange. “You are one of them.”

Hob pushed himself up on sleep-heavy arms. Dream’s expression was considered, but he was staring off into his own thoughts, or into an echo of the Dreaming perhaps, rather than at Hob. “Huh?” Hob said eloquently. “But I’m not like. An artist or anything. You have no idea how unfantastical I am.”

“Art is only one manner of dreaming,” Dream said. He looped his arm around Hob’s shoulders and started rubbing there, though he still seemed lost in thought. “Though admittedly I have focused much on creating inspiration in that realm in the past. An oversight on my part, perhaps.”

“What are other types of dreaming?” Hob asked, rather than asking what Dream meant about him being a strong dreamer.

“Much of dreaming is passive, and all sentient beings have the right to a place in the Dreaming when they sleep,” said Dream. “But there are also those who bring dreams to the waking world. Enact my power here, as it were. Art, literature, theater, storytelling, these are forms of strong dreaming, of course. But striving to enact positive change in the world against great opposition and the pull of Despair is also a form of dreaming. Invention is a form of dreaming. Love is a form of dreaming.” He smirked. “Perhaps I will reclaim it from Desire.”

Dreams and Desire fighting over the concept of Love, Hob thought, head spinning. That was a tussle that had been happening for a long time with no end in sight, he thought.

Still, he didn’t know what this had to do with him, unless Dream meant the way that Hob loved Dream, but he didn’t think that was all of it.

“I have recently been reminded that living is also a form of dreaming,” Dream explained, sensing Hob’s question. “Persistence. Stubbornness. You love life, Hob. No matter how it tries to prove it is undeserving.”

“That counts as dreaming in your book?” Hob said, dumbstruck.

Dream ran a hand through his hair with a tiny smile. “Very much so. And the Dreaming loves you. It feeds off your presence.”

“Feeds,” Hob repeated. “That’s. Um. A lot. Wait, does that mean you ‘feed off my presence’?”

“You nourish me in many ways,” Dream said. “As friend, lover. As dreamer, as well, yes.”

“Like a battery,” Hob said, unable to resist the opportunity to tease him.

Dream wrinkled his nose. “No.”

“Like a good meal?”

“You are well aware that I meant it metaphorically—”

Hob kissed him halfway through that line, and Dream’s words melted into a comfortable hum. Hob settled over him, giving up on sleep in favor of the pleasure of touching Dream, again. His own dream on earth.

He was going to have to mentally unpack this whole you are a strong dreamer thing later, and properly mull over the fact that his mere stubbornness to keep living was apparently enough to nourish all of dreaming. And his lover most of all.

For now, he just grinned cheekily and said, eyebrows raised innocently, “I could feed you again?”

Dream grumbled. “Must you make everything innuendo?”

“You handed it to me,” Hob pointed out.

“So I did,” Dream admitted, aggrieved. And Hob smiled and went back in to nourish him, figuratively or literally or all ways between.

—

“There is, in fact, a ritual,” Dream said.

They were sitting on a couch in the Dreaming library, Hob’s legs draped over Dream’s lap. Dream had a book open in one hand, and his other loosely holding Hob’s ankle, half tender half possessive—but he was now just looking at Hob expectantly.

“A ritual for what?” Hob asked, feeling very much like he was about to be dropped off the edge of a cliff. He often got premonitions like that when talking to Dream in the Dreaming, for Dream’s feelings and intentions were everywhere in the space and the Dreaming seemed determined for Hob to understand them.

And Dream actually blushed and looked away.

“Wait,” Hob said, realizing, nudging Dream’s thigh with his toes until Dream looked back at him. “Are you somehow talking about sex?”

Dream plucked at the hem of Hob’s trousers. “The Dreaming loves you,” he said, instead of answering, and almost in a way that suggested this was no longer a source of joy to him, rather an incursion.

“Okay,” Hob said, and scooted closer until he could rest a hand on Dream’s arm, concerned, now, by whatever this was. “Aren’t you also the Dreaming?”

Dream nodded. And finally he said, “Answer me this, dreamer. Is it me that you love, or is it dreaming?”

Hob’s heart lurched at the flat, guarded tone of Dream’s voice. There was very much a wrong answer to this, he knew, but he wasn’t even sure he understood the question. He knew what was in his heart, but he didn’t know what would assuage Dream’s uncertainties.

“I fell in love with you a very long time ago,” Hob told him gently. “My mysterious, mystical stranger.”

“That is not as long as you have been dreaming.”

“Can’t I love both?” Hob asked. “Can’t I love all of you?”

Dream stayed silent.

“What answer were you hoping to hear, Dream?”

“I do not know,” Dream admitted, with a pained breath. “No one has loved… all that I am. I am dreams, and the Dreaming, and people have loved the Dreaming. But.”

“You are also Morpheus,” Hob supplied, and Dream nodded.

“I suppose I… have been loved, as such.”

He didn’t sound wholly convinced of it. Hob took his hand, kissed it, held it close to his face. “Has truly no one loved both?”

Dream shook his head, his gaze on his own hand pressed to Hob’s cheek. He twisted it to cradle Hob’s jaw, thumb to the corner of his mouth. “Not the way you have.”

With aching slowness, Hob pulled his strange, unfathomable, hurt creature into a hug. Dream tucked his face into Hob’s shoulder. “Let yourself have it, then, yeah?” he urged. “Will you trust me?”

“Yes,” Dream vowed. “Only beware of the power you hold, Hob Gadling.”

For Dream to even admit such a thing was a power placed in Hob’s hands, he thought.

He squeezed Dream’s shoulders again and then pulled away far enough to look at him. “What’s this ‘ritual,’ then? Is this a good thing, or a you sacrificing yourself upon the altar of my apparent greater love for the Dreaming kind of thing?”

“There are no sacrifices and no altars,” Dream said, with an eye roll that Hob thought meant he was feeling slightly more at ease about the whole thing now, which Hob was glad for. “I am not a god.”

“So what is it for, then?”

“I shepherd all dreaming minds,” Dream said, starting his explanation several steps away from what Hob had asked as per usual. “Particularly strong dreamers can oblige me to take certain actions. Namely, vortexes, whom I must kill for the sake of the rest of the Dreaming. But most powerful dreamers present not a threat, but an opportunity. It is a symbiotic relationship, you understand. I created the landscape you see here, the dreams and nightmares who inhabit it, but the Dreaming would not exist at all if there were no dreamers. There is a ritual one can perform, to remember their importance to one another—dreamer and Dreaming.”

“And… this involves sex, somehow?” It was the impression Hob had gotten from Dream’s reaction before, and he wasn’t entirely certain how he felt about that.

“It can,” said Dream, carefully. “It is mostly about love. And devotion. And union.”

This was starting to sound to Hob rather like marriage. Or at least, a wedding.

“And… you want to do that? With me?” Hob couldn’t help but feel shaken by the thought. That Dream felt them so important to each other, their love so true, that he would use it to symbolize the power of his entire realm.

“I would explore it,” said Dream. “If you are amenable.”

“I mean, obviously I would—“ Another thought occurred to Hob halfway through that sentiment. “Wait. You don’t have to do this, do you?”

“It is not a necessary part of my function, the way dealing with dream vortexes is,” Dream stressed. “It is merely. An opportunity. To strengthen the bond between dreamer and Dreaming.”

“Between dreamers and you?” Hob added, voice tipped up in a question.

Dream shook his head. “I am but a conduit.”

“You are dreaming,” Hob said. “That sounds pretty damn central to it, to me. Besides, Dream—“ he took Dream’s hand and squeezed “—I’m not really interested in using you as a bridge for some ceremony. But if you want to do it with me, and the Dreaming, then we can talk.”

Dream smiled, a tiny, surprised thing. “This is why it has not happened before. Because no one would see it the way you do.”

“Never?”

Dream shook his head. “No one has… loved me quite the way you do.”

And if that didn’t hurt and make Hob feel more special to Dream in equal measure.

He wrapped his arms around Dream and pulled him close, kissing his temple. “Well, if you want to do it, then fill me in on what it entails and let’s see, hm?”

Dream hummed, a pleased, purring sound, and let Hob hold him close.

—

This was how Hob found himself, one night, in one of the great forests of the Dreaming, just before dawn. Dream had brought them to a small clearing covered in grass, where old growth trees leaned in above them and framed a cloudless sky, scattered with stars.

It was a uniquely quiet part of the Dreaming. Not a properly sentient dreamspace like Fiddler’s Green, but something older and wilder, a place that still grew only out of Dream himself. No other beings around, only Dream sitting across from him, a loose robe around his shoulders and pooling in his lap.

“Are you certain?” he asked, voice deep and old as the shifting of the trees around them. Hob was reminded of the moment he had first seen him, and the bolt of realization that this was an ancient thing, a wild and magical thing.

“Why, could something go wrong?”

Dream shook his head. “If we are not committed, it may not achieve its intended effect. But there will be no adverse results, no.”

Something could go very wrong indeed, then. If Hob wasn’t committed—in whatever way that manifested—he was certain it would break Dream’s heart.

Still, if there was anything he had been forever tied to, it was his Dream, and his dreaming. So he took both of Dream’s hands in his own. “Okay. Then I’m ready if you are, dear heart.”

“Dear heart,” Dream echoed, a hint of a smile on his lips. A tentative, hopeful glow in his eyes. He was so beautiful.

“Dear,” Hob repeated, and kissed his cheek. “Dear,” he said again, and leaned down to kiss the grass between them.

When he looked back up, Dream’s cheeks were colored with the slightest blush. “Truly, you are singular, Hob Gadling.”

Hob kissed him again, on the lips this time. Dream leaned into it with a hum, and Hob tangled a hand in his hair, holding him there, holding him close. “Nah,” he said, when they parted for a breath, lips still brushing Dream’s. “I just love you.”

“Yes,” Dream breathed, an exhalation of great weight. He pulled Hob close by the front of his shirt, hands fisted tightly in the fabric, and fell back onto the grass, Hob following to land on top of him. He cradled the back of Dream’s head in his hand to protect him from hitting the ground, though he suspected the soil of the Dreaming would be soft and kind to its creator, even this old forest, with its tangle of hard roots under every patch of ground.

Indeed, a flurry of flower petals swirled up from where they’d landed, carried on the wind of Dream’s power. Hob knew not where they came from, but they circled around Dream’s head and then disappeared into the woods as Dream’s hair fanned out over the grass, robe slipping open in a deep vee over his chest.

Hob raised an eyebrow. “You doing that?”

“Not… consciously. I—“ Dream ran his thumb over Hob’s cheek, a steadying motion. “I must… let my power merge more with the Dreaming’s, for this. Give it agency over me in a way that I normally would not.”

“Just be safe, yeah?”

“The Dreaming is me. It is safe,” said Dream.

“Only you usually keep yourself more separate,” Hob guessed, and Dream nodded.

“I do not usually relinquish such direct power to the broader Dreaming, like so,” he confirmed.

Dream didn’t usually relinquish any power ever, Hob thought. “Well, just relax,” he told him, and Dream huffed.

“I was under the impression that I was leading this.”

“Well, maybe I wanna. You’re supposed to give up control, aren’t you?”

Before Dream could answer, Hob kissed him again, pressing him down into the grass with both hands in his hair. Dream tipped his head back, baring his throat with a little whimper, and Hob took the hint, kissing under his jaw and sucking a mark into the skin.

“Very well,” Dream breathed. “Take the lead, then, dreamer.”

So Hob did, pulling his loose shirt over his head and tossing it off into the grass. Despite the relative chill of the night air, and the darkness, he wasn’t cold. He supposed that was the Dreaming, already building magic up between them.

Dream pet at his bare arms and shoulders, clearly pleased, as Hob guided his legs apart, slotting himself between them. Dream folded his legs around Hob’s waist, hands in his hair now, running through the strands with actual sparks following his fingertips.

“I think I like this wild magic,” Hob told him as he kissed Dream’s throat again, then his sternum between the lapels of his robe. “I think I like seeing all your feelings like that.”

Dream grumbled, “You would,” but didn’t stop touching. His fingertips tingled against Hob’s skin. Hob thought about having those hands all over him, and groaned.

“Yeah, I like it a lot,” he confirmed, and tugged on the tie of Dream’s robe. It fell open around his body, and oh, he was so gorgeous in the dark, almost glowing from within with power, deep shadows in every corner of him. “You’re beautiful,” he added, and the air shimmered around them. Hob grinned in delight at the reaction. “Ha!”

Dream squirmed uneasily under him. “You have much influence here.”

Hob laid a gentle hand on his cheek. “Oh, yeah? Is this thing making you uncomfortable?”

“I trust you,” Dream said, which wasn’t quite an answer. Hob waited, and he added, “I want this.”

“Okay,” Hob said, offering a reassuring smile. “Let’s have it, then, yeah?”

The reassurance didn’t land as solidly as he had hoped. “Can I?” Dream whispered, and Hob didn’t think it was something he would have vocalized if it wasn’t just them, alone here in the grass. It was so important to Hob to catch that feeling, to not leave him holding it in empty air. “Would you, truly, love me? The King of Dreams, of Nightmares? The landscape of the unconscious? Hope and fear, persistence and uncertainty, creation, story, ambition, art and terror all?”

“I already do,” Hob murmured, kissing his lips, his cheek, his forehead, lingering there in benediction. “I already have. I’m no artist or visionary with one foot born in the Dreaming. I chose to love you, you know.”

“Oh,” Dream breathed, hands framing his face. “You did, yes.”

“Would choose it again until the end of time, my Dream,” Hob vowed. “Love for you carried me through every hardship. And now. Maybe my love can carry you in return.”

“It does.” Dream’s eyes were shut now, and Hob watched the bob of his throat as he swallowed, the air wavering around him as his composure slipped. The tightening of his expression as he fought it.

“Don’t,” Hob said, as Dream’s hands fell from his face to grip his shoulders, fingertips sharp. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Hold onto yourself so tightly like that. Isn’t the point to let go? Let me catch you.”

“I—” A tremor ran through Dream’s body, echoing out into the ground around them. “I. Yes.” Incrementally, he relaxed, opening his eyes again, and they were rimmed red. Hob ran his thumbs across Dream’s cheeks as tears slipped out one by one, water breaking its surface tension and spilling over.

“Do you want to stop?” Hob asked.

Dream shook his head. “It simply feels… more than I expected.”

“Okay.” Hob kissed the corner of his eye, catching a tear on his lip. “Stop me whenever you need, okay? But otherwise, let me take care of you. Will you let me take care of you?”

“You are good to me,” Dream breathed, eyes falling shut again, “my dreamer.”

The word shimmered something through Hob’s being, a title, a calling, a naming. The Dreaming reaching out to its other half. A magnified version of what he had felt in the Dreaming recently—a comfort, a closeness, a sense of belonging.

Breathing hard now, he kissed down Dream’s collarbone, then his sternum, peppered kisses over each of his ribs, wrapped his hands around Dream’s thighs. He pressed his nose into Dream’s stomach, felt the tension in all of his muscles and their gradual loosening as Hob kept kissing him.

“Relax, Dream. You have got to let go.” Dream’s fingers wound into his hair again, gripping tight. “Easy, my love.”

“I—” Dream blew out another shuddering breath, warm wind whipped around them, caressing Hob’s shoulders like a phantom touch— and he felt the moment Dream finally turned the Dreaming over to his hands. The diffusion of power into the clearing around them, the way the stars shined brighter, the loosening of Dream’s grip in his hair. Dream’s chest heaved like he was truly breathing, like he truly needed to, and Hob surged back up to catch his mouth in a kiss.

He felt so connected to the Dreaming now. He could feel the raw dream power in him, what he could usually only just barely touch by touching Dream. And he knew then that if he wanted to bring the Dreaming’s power to bear against Dream, he could—and that Dream was trusting him not to.

I am but a conduit, Dream had said. Hob shivered. The swirl of emotions was almost overwhelming—honor that Dream would trust him with this, that he even wanted to; and pride that Dream had been able to take that step; and horror at the thought of it ever being abused.

It’s safe, Dream had also assured him, and Hob was about say something to the effect of this not being safe at all, actually—before realizing that Dream meant it was safe with Hob. That the thought of Hob being the danger in this scenario had never crossed his mind.

Dream’s love for him was a terrifying thing sometimes. And a great gift.

“C’mere.” Getting choked up, he gathered Dream close to his chest, pressing his face into his neck. “I love you, you know?”

A tremor ran through Dream’s body, and he hummed, wrapping his arms around Hob’s shoulders. “Hob, I—” his voice rumbled unevenly through Hob’s chest. The powerful thrum of it that usually echoed through the Dreaming whenever he spoke was brought down to normal volume, a human sound Hob could hold within him. “I need—”

“Shh, shh, I’ll give you everything, don’t worry. I’m gonna make you feel so good.” Hob dragged his fingers through the soft grass at their sides, and Dream shivered. “All of you.”

Dream plucked at the waistband of his trousers. His voice was a whisper in the night. “You are still clothed.”

Hob laughed. “In a rush, now?” But he obediently tugged off his trousers, throwing those to the side as well, and then they were skin to skin, only Dream’s thin robe between their bodies and the ground. Dream was bared to Hob in all his beauty, familiar now but so special when he could feel the energy of dreams in him, the power and vitality of them.

“God, you’re so fucking gorgeous,” he said. Dream made a quiet, rough sound in his throat.

“You are incomparable with the Dreaming’s raiment upon you,” he said, hands running up and over Hob’s shoulders, up his neck to frame his face. Hob leaned in to kiss him and finally pressed their bodies together properly, grinding against him. Dream gasped, already so on edge, hiking his legs up to allow better access. Hob took one narrow thigh in his hand and bent him back further, hooking Dream’s leg over his shoulder. He had Dream physically at his mercy now, too, twisted and pressed into the ground, and he felt this was what was supposed to happen. That Dream was supposed to trust, and Hob was supposed to be deserving of it.

He would be deserving of it.

“Going to make you feel so good,” he promised. “Trust.”

“I trust,” said Dream. He was moving needily against Hob now, and pink dawn was peeking over the horizon, the darkness of early morning slipping away, and Hob reached between them to press his fingertips to Dream’s entrance, finding him already loose and slick. Dream magic. Wanting made manifest.

Hob swallowed hard, throat tight, heat building in his groin, aching in his thighs. He slipped two fingers into Dream, relishing in Dream’s groan, the line of his throat as he tipped his head back. Hob worked him open carefully. Normally, it wasn’t possible to hurt Dream during sex in the Dreaming unless he allowed it, but Hob wasn’t sure that was true in this particular moment. All the power was in his hands, and he wanted it to be right, and good, and easy.

Dream’s hands grasped the back of his neck, buried in his hair. His groan was long and dragged with the agony of wanting, and Hob kissed at his jaw to appease him, nipped along the shell of his ear. “Hob, I am ready.”

“Alright, love. You know me. Got to be sure.” He lined himself up and pushed in, one long, smooth motion, breath trembling as Dream’s heat enveloped him. Dream whined, grip tightening in his hair. And Hob braced himself over him, starting to fuck him in long, slow rolls, each point where they touched a bright spark of dream power. So much of it, in his chest, in Dream’s body, in Hob’s hands where they brushed Dream’s sides. As far as Hob had learned, there was no inherent incantation of this ritual—it came only from them, and their transfer of power, and their trust and devotion. And he could feel it, that connection, and the conduit Dream had made of himself, though Hob would never see him that way. For him it was Dream first. Always had been.

There were words, though. Dream had said he would know them, that he would find them within the Dreaming. And find them he did. He kept his pace slow and dragging as he spoke, fitting the soft, solemn lines.

“I take thee as my lover, all world’s dreaming.” His voice felt rough, torn, and it sounded like marriage rites.

“And I take you, dreamer,” Dream replied, hushed. His breath hitched with each of Hob’s thrusts. His eyes were midnight blue in the shadows, and Hob couldn’t look away.

“To hold you from within and without," Hob continued. “To make you stronger.”

“To never forget you and your power,” said Dream, and the Dreaming flared around them in reminder.

“To help you grow,” said Hob.

“To help you rest,” said Dream.

“To help you rest,” Hob added, kissing his forehead, and Dream huffed.

“Not the words.”

“Still.”

Dream sighed again, and Hob kissed his lips, quick and light. “To inspire you.”

“To inspire you,” Dream echoed. Met Hob’s eyes again, a hopeful, vulnerable little look. “Kiss me again?”

Hob could never say no to that. He kissed him deep, plumbing his mouth with his tongue. Dream groaned, surrendering to it. Hob increased his pace, just a bit, and Dream’s groan stuttered out into a drawn out moan. Hob kissed him deeper, kissed it out of him, pressing Dream’s hiked up leg to his chest until he whined from the angle. Until he was hitting Dream right where he wanted and each thrust drew him a punched out gasp.

“The words?” Hob prompted, grinning against his cheek, and Dream just groaned.

“Hob—”

But he gathered himself, breathed out, wonderfully affected— “I will be a haven for you.”

“I’ll be your custodian,” promised Hob.

“You will plant in me.”

“You’ll help me bloom.”

“You will…” Dream swallowed, throat bobbing, trembling under him, “love me.”

Hob kissed his forehead, and Dream closed his eyes. “I will love you.” Those were the end of the set words, but Hob continued, pressing kisses over Dream’s face: “I’ll adore you, I’ll worship you, I’ll love you fore—”

Dream pulled Hob’s lips back to his. Kissed him deep as he pulled Hob’s body into his, encouraged Hob to thrust harder, clenching around him, and Hob did, bringing them closer and closer until the heat peaked and his orgasm washed over him.

Dream followed him over the edge with a cry, a rush of dreaming power going with him. Hob felt it his hands, over his skin, in Dream’s fingertips where he clutched at his hair. He could feel the entire Dreaming now, the infinite expanse of it. The long history of hope, of curiosity that had curled around him on dark nights; invention and newness, the reshaping of hands and thoughts; change and memory, the shadow that had cloaked and warmed him all his life. Companion, haven, challenge. A shape too big for comprehension. And all of it localized within his lover. Within his heart.

Hob kissed him hard as the power shimmered through them. Waves of pleasure through Dream, through the Dreaming. He held Dream close to him, body and soul, every moment a deeper connection.

When he pulled back from the kiss, Dream’s eyes had slipped to their natural starry darkness. Hob rested his hand on his cheek. Swam in the pleasure he could see in that look. Pressed his forehead against Dream’s.

“Did it work?” he murmured, voice thick.

“I should probably tell you.” Dream was still twined around him. “It is not binary, where the ritual works or does not. It is a degree of power. Of. Connection.” His voice was more solemn than Hob would usually have expected in the aftermath of sex. “You felt it, did you not?”

Hob could still feel it, Dream running through him, and the vastness of him at the edges of his vision. “Yeah. I did.”

Finally, Dream slipped away, just far enough to separate them. Curled up against Hob’s chest, resting his head over Hob’s heart. “I did not imagine,” he started at a whisper, “how it would feel. To give over the Dreaming.”

Hob wrapped his arms around him. “How did it feel?”

Dream’s voice was still a whisper. “Terrifying. But. Freeing. And you held it so beautifully.”

“I’m proud of you,” Hob murmured. “For even being willing to try that.”

“I have wanted to for a long time," said Dream, "but did not always know it was what I wanted. I would have rejected the idea until recently. But always. There was an itch in me. Something with teeth, biting.”

“What changed?”

Dream’s lips curled up in a tiny smile. “You. I knew there was something to you that I needed, even when I first saw you. Only I did not know what. Not until. My escape. When I saw you again.”

“Couldn’t have imagined anything like this, but I wanted you the second you challenged me,” Hob told him. "I felt like I was supposed to. Like. I'd been watching the horizon for you. Still can’t believe my own patience about it.”

Dream chuckled. “Not so patient. My return was not the first time we had each other.”

“I don’t get any credit for four hundred years?”

“I was speaking of your dream.”

It took Hob a moment to think back. He dreamt of Dream quite a lot, nowadays, and had in the past, too. Then it clicked. He had had really quite a vivid dream the night they had met, hadn’t he? Vivid enough that he could still remember it, when he had forgotten whole eras of his long past. He pushed himself up to look Dream in the eye. “That was actually you? Dream.”

“As I said.” Dream’s voice held a tinge of guilt now, though he didn’t look away from Hob. “I was… compelled by you.”

“You’re a little nightmare, you know that?” Possibly he should have been upset over it, but wasn’t. Dream had that effect on him. And he had known, already, that Dream had hooked something sharp into him, long before they had acknowledged it. “I did wish it was you at the time, although I was imagining you in my bed, not the real you in my dreams.” He swept his thumb over Dream’s lip, and Dream’s tongue dipped out to wet it. “Hottest dream I ever had. Left me wanting for days, you did.”

“Good.” Dream tipped his head back as Hob kissed his throat. If they weren’t careful, this was going to tip right back over into sex, but as much as Hob wanted to make Dream come again, make him cry from overstimulation, he wanted this more right now: touching and lying quietly in the aftermath of their lovemaking. And baring long-held truths, apparently. “I imagined you wanting me, and satiated myself on that for a long time.”

“Could have had me any time you wanted,” Hob murmured. “Only had to say.”

“I see that now. I worried what it meant that I wanted to. And. I understand now that I was sensing something… true and dangerous that really was there, only I needn’t have been worried about it.”

“Dangerous?” Hob asked, but he knew what charge Dream spoke of. He still felt the echo of the Dreaming held in his hands. Union was safety and comfort but also a collision of power.

“Most dangerous,” Dream agreed. He ran his thumb along the hollow of Hob’s eye. “Most kind. Most lovely.”

“Keep me, then,” Hob said, though it was almost a plea, his face still held in Dream’s palm. The perennial fear that Dream would flit away again was always within him, even now, in the wake of all that power, that sharing. Dreaming was so immense. And Hob loved it, loved him, but it was a terrifying thing, to love something so much greater than you, even if doing so felt right.

“Can you not feel it?” said Dream. He took Hob’s hand and a spark jumped between their fingers. “The Dreaming would not let you go now. And nor would I. Even when you return to the waking world, there is always a place for you here. Beside me.”

“Dream…” Hob kissed his hand, then leaned back in to kiss his cheek. Lingered there, with their faces pressed together, his heart soothed of a raw wound he had almost forgotten had once been carved. Wedding vows, Hob had thought of the words they had spoken. He thought now that he had been married to dreaming for a very long time, and being able to give that devotion to Dream himself was only a solidification. It did not, truly, need words. It needed only their hands tangled together, and Dream tucked in his chest, where he had always, truly, resided.

Hob was not made for dreaming. But he chose it. And he intended to keep it.

#nothing like fucking a concept amiright!#this fic got weird sorry #but ive had enough of obsessing over it. here it is #dreamling #dream of the endless #hob gadling #dreamling fic #my writing #ritual sex fic #with LORE! :D #every person on earth definitely dreamed about this that night lol

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