#edit: forgot to @ messmonte who's art started this whole thing lol

[ginoeh]

Dream’s Coat (TM), pretty please??

@chaosheadspace asked for the same! Here you go, lovelies...

This is probably not what you think it is. Or, idk, maybe it's exactly what you think it is? Because both of you know that I'm actually a little dark angst writer at heart lol. 

Okay, so this started a long time ago (read: in March last year) in a wild and hilarious brainstorming session that I saved the transcript of. So far, this is more of an intriguing concept to make Hob suffer and Dream repent - eventually at least. I haven't touched it in a while; I'd have to really dig into Dream's fucking ugly side - the 10000 years in hell side - to get this going.

It all started with a 'what-if' variation of @messmonte 's Saddest Wank (1889 instead of 1989!) because in that drawing, Dream didn't just leave his gloves, he also left his Cloak. Here, this has pretty severe consequences. In SoM, the story gets told of how Dream takes Nada into the Cloak where they have sex unbothered by anyone's gaze. So there we have a ‘magical cloak’ with space-time special features… 

~~~

Now here is Hob, in 1889, drunk and sad and wearing Dream's gloves to get himself off in a seedy room above the White Horse. He took the garments his Stranger left behind in a mixture of spite and pathetic hope that he might come back for them. He doesn't, of course. 

(Snippets and more details under the cut)

(Hob doesn't know that Jessamy *has* actually come back to get them and gets to witness what is going on. This, as well, has consequences)

After, he rolls over onto the cloak he has been gripping, disgusted with himself but still unable to let go of the pathetic need to be close to the Stranger. But instead of falling asleep, he falls into the star-studded folds of the cloak. 

And falls and falls and falls. 

He  barely manages to keep a grip on the strangely wispy fabric. It's what saves him, at first. Because Hob has just managed to accidentally yeet himself into outer space. The cloak is the only thing that's keeping him whole and sustained as a living being, as it were. 

(Jessamy is unfortunate bystander to this. She takes off to the Dreaming immediately and informs Dream of his ‘acquaintance's’ mishap. She's worried - she actually likes Hob and knows that Dream does so, as well. Dream though, is still furious. 

“Let him enjoy this new experience then”, he says and Jessamy recognizes the stubborn curl to her Lord's mouth. “May he experience the meaning of true loneliness for a while.”

Jessamy rather thinks that Lord Morpheus is really tipping his hand there about *who* had it right at their meeting but she'd never dare to point that out. 

She has a really really bad feeling about what this might mean for Hob Gadling, though. Since her Lord is so intent on forgetting that the immortal is, above all else, human and as such not made to sustain himself outside of his own world.

And besides, he is a Dreamer. Lord Morpheus will surely reconsider soon and bring him back.

But as time passes, he does not. 

Hob Gadling is not one of Dream's priorities, after all. In the face of the Universe nearly unravelling, the Corinthian's disobediance and its fallout, Hob Gadling gets forgotten for the better part of a century.)

On the other end of the universe, Hob's life is an unending and undying nightmare. He is neither starving, freezing nor suffocating - not that he knows that he should do the last two - but there is nothing around him but the vastness of space. No sound, no smell, no touch but that of the cloak around his shoulders. He is truly alone for the first time in his existence. 

Until, suddenly, he isn't.

“Oh my what do we have here,” a voice resounds inside his head. His perception slides sideways, something breaks somewhere in his mind and then there is the form of a voluptuous, incandescently beautiful woman that takes over everything around him. 

“A human - here! Covered in my Dream's regard!”

She stretches a hand towards him and Hob thinks that space has decided to cease existing. Maybe he's going mad.

“If I keep you, do you think my son will visit?”

***

Dream does, of course, remember Hob eventually. The horror that rises in Dream, still caught in Burgess’ basement, over what he has allowed a Dreamer to suffer for his own mistake, is as dark and deep and cold as the black hole he has once been cast into. 

After he escapes and has gathered his tools, he searches out his sister.

“Hob Gadling? No, he hasn't asked for me.” 

She falls silent for a moment before leveling a longsuffering and suspicious look at him.

“Is there a particular reason you're asking me this?”

Dream closes his eyes and shreds the rest of the mauled baguette between his fingers.

“He may have. Fallen though an actualized piece of my power. Into space. And I may have been. Too angry to care. At the time.”

There is the rustle of clothes and he feels Death kneeling before him. Her voice, when she speaks, is very soft and very serious.

“Dream? When, exactly, has this happened.”

He opens his eyes. 

“Hob Gadling has suffered my wrath since 1889, sister. I hurt a Dreamer, unprovoked.”

“Oh, Dream.” 

He cannot bear the horrified pity on his sister's face. 

“How shall I -” His words fail him.

“Go and get him back, Dream. Now. Hob Gadling hasn't called for me - yet. If that will help you, though, I don't know.”

~~~

Or: A pathetic wank and Dream's canonically bad decision making skills meets the 'meeting the parents trope' but make it eldritch horror. Then add a magical healing journey afterwards an voilá - you get this.

Yeah I can still make this Dreamling despite their horrifically bad start. Watch me lol.