#hobmurphy

[hikaruchen]

🍪?

[doitforstamets]

[fictionplumis]

Dreamling: Arranged Marriage AU

This idea won't leave me alone until I write it. A Dreamling arranged marriage AU where Night decides her children could stand to be a little closer to mortals lest they end up like their father and completely separated from them, so she decides one of them needs to take on a mortal consort--who would then become immortal, no she does not think this would eventually compromise the integrity of her idea. Ideally, all of them would have a mortal consort, but even she recognizes the problem with that. Destiny doesn't meddle in mortal affairs at all, Death is far too busy, Destruction has been pulling back from his duties and neglecting his realm (he's still there, for now, but they all know he's not really doing anything anymore, they just don't know how to bring it up to him), Desire is far too immature, making a mortal spend eternity with Despair would be cruel, and Delirium would drive her spouse insane.

So it's decided that Dream (this is about Sandman, not the YouTuber, if this post breaks containment PLEASE understand this is about the Sandman NOT the YouTuber) is the only suitable candidate, and the others will just have to experience mortals through their sibling-in-law. Night declares it, says she doesn't care how it's done as long as it's done, the end. 

(I'm sorry all you people that want Night and Time to be good supportive parents, but I read Overture, they fucking suck. Night will not show up to the wedding because she's already written off her children as selfish and ungrateful anyway, this is in part a way to punish them and to punish Dream, and Time finds this ridiculous but knows it will happen, has already happened, is happening, and he doesn't really care.)

Dream hates this. If he had his choice he would pluck the first mortal up, marry them, and promptly forget about them and go back to ruling his realm. That's why his siblings decide that he cannot, under any circumstances, be in charge of this.

Instead they decide on a friendly competition. They will each (all except for Destiny, who already knows the various different outcomes and has decided to observe but not participate) pick a candidate for Dream. The Endless don't really abide by silly things like linear time and whatnot, so it could literally be any mortal they nominate. They will each then devise a trial to test what they each believe to be an important quality necessary to marry Dream of the Endless and become Prince Consort of the Dreaming. All candidates will be put through the tests until there's one remaining. 

(I'm sorry, Calliope will not be in this because I can't think of a realistic way she would be eliminated and she's technically not mortal anyway.)

Death finds her candidate in a dingy tavern on Earth, circa 1389, when she overhears a drunken snippet of conversation. A man boldly claiming she's stupid and he's going to live forever. It's a jest, she knows. He doesn't actually believe he'll live forever, but there is the desire to within him and in thirty seconds he's proven himself a natural storyteller. It's a whim that she approaches him with an amused, "Did I hear that right, you intend to live forever?" 

The table goes silent. Hob's companions are smirking between him and the woman suggestively and Hob waves them off with a laugh. "Aye, that's right." 

"I believe you and I need to talk, then. Somewhere more private." 

There's some immature tutting from his mates, and Hob looks surprised and thrilled all at once, because she's very beautiful though why she's interested in him when her outfit implies she's chaste-- But hell if he's going to pass up the opportunity, so he goes with her, tries to make a move on her the second they're around the corner and she laughs in his face, easily bats him away, and goes, "You're cute, but not my type, Robert Gadling. No, I'm here to offer you a chance at immortality." 

He grows wary at first. Asks if she's the devil, but she just stares at him patiently until he realizes who she is and stumbles back in fear and surprise, only to be laughed at again. Kinder, this time. 

"I'm not here to take you, though..." She eyes the tankard in his hand with raised brows. "It is a shame you didn't lay off the ale sooner." He quickly sets the tankard down and steps away from it. 

The deal is this. He'll be part of a competition, though he won't know it or remember this conversation. Should he win, he'll be immortal. If he loses, he'll be returned to his life right before she approached him, to live out what few hours he has left, never remembering any of this. She leaves out how he'll become immortal, leaves out that he'll end up marrying her sullen little brother and becoming Prince Consort to his realm, but what are the changes he'll win anyway?

Dream is surprised to find that each of his siblings picks someone that does, on some level, appeal to him. He's a romantic at heart, it's hard not to fall a little bit in love with each other of them as he watches how this plays out.

The competition is this: 

Each candidate will live what they perceive to be four lifetimes in a dream. For the most part, they're just going to be jumping from important decision to important decision, with the blanks filled in for them through false memories to make it feel like it's been four lifetimes and not a few days at most. At the end of each lifetime, they'll be asked if they wish to continue living. That is Death's trial, because anyone marrying an Endless must be resilient enough to keep going. 

The first lifetime is Despair's test, in which the candidates discover that they won't age, they won't die, that their life may very well be unending. They lose their families, their friends, and realize that they always will. They don't know if there's any way to opt out or not, so for all they know, one day in the very distance future, they will be the only one left. Despair wants to make sure the idea of Endlessness is not a curse for Dream's spouse to bear, though she herself would thrive off that, personally.

Ironically, it's Despair's candidate, the queen of the first human civilization, that falls to this test. Nada lives the first lifetime without ever knowing true, passionate love. She's pushed into marrying someone who is a good ruler for her people, and when they pass, she marries someone else who is also a good ruler for her people, and she sees that there are those besides herself who have the judgement necessary to rule. She's proud of the city she's created, she's proud of her people, and the idea of eventually watching them die and come to an end as all things do, it kills her inside. It doesn't matter that it might be millennia from now. When a gentle voice asks one day if she wishes to continue living, she contemplates it, contemplates her current husband, closes her eyes, and says, "No. I think it's time for a new queen to rule my people." 

Hob, on the other hand, has spent his lifetime fighting, mostly, a bit of highway robbery when he couldn't find a war. Lots of brothels. He's eaten stuff he shouldn't have, gotten himself mortally injured more than a few times, bounced back from it, and now he's into this printing thing. No guilds to restrict it yet, it pays well, and he's been teaching himself how to read. He's sitting in an inn, drinking ale next to the hearth, no smoke in his eyes, and thinking about swindling the table next to him in a round of cards to pay for some more ale. When the same voices asks him if wishes to keep living, his eyes get bright and he answers, "Oh yes." The thought of what his immortality might mean never really crossed his mind. He lost people, sure, but he would have lost them anyway, and there's always more people to meet. This is amazing. 

The second lifetime is Desire's test. Desire, who actually cares on some level, in their own way, and knows that if their big brother marries an idiot, they'll have to put up with them, so they have to make sure Dream marries someone halfway decent. Someone who might keep him busy. Someone who desires things strongly, but is not so ruled by them that they'll give up their duty to chase distractions, nor will they give up if Dream doesn't desire them the way they wish--which is very likely. In Desire's test, each candidate is given people to love, fully and completely, with all their heart, and are forced to watch that thing die violently and terribly only to be asked right afterwards if they still wish to live. 

Delirium's candidate is Killala of the Glow, who finds out that the beautiful green star of her solar system, which is the cause of her power, is a conscious, living thing. And he loves her. He is everything she ever wanted. With him, her powers grow. She learns to use them better, to get stronger with them, to understand them and herself. It shouldn't have happened so soon, they should have had millennia together, but something happens and he has just enough time to warn her, to explain that he's dying and that she needs to be strong and use her powers to shield her world from him or his death will raze it all to the ground. She doesn't understand how this could happen, she can't concentrate through her grief, her planet is destroyed and as she's floating amongst the burning cold heat of her lover collapsing in on himself, she's asked if she still wishes to live and she says no. 

Hob meets Eleanor, who is charming and funny and matches him wit for wit. She doesn't ask about his past or how he acquired his money. He's never been in love before. He thought he would continue finding his companionship in brothels and had felt perfectly content with that, but now there's her, and he wants so very badly to marry her, to be her escape away from her traditionalist of a father who stifles her wit into silence. So he does. And he has a son, a beautiful baby boy that he promises the world to. Then there's the promise of another child, and he's thrilled. 

He's there in the room, holding Eleanor's hand, terrified when she goes into labor months earlier than planned. She's in so much pain. The baby isn't crying. The midwife is trying desperately to stop the bleeding. The blood is still warm on Hob's skin and clothing as he holds Eleanor's lifeless body and sobs. His son needs a mother. Needs a father but he knows, in that moment, that he will be a useless one to the boy like this. Robyn has his temper, he'll die too young and Hob will have failed him. 

When he's asked if he wishes to keep living, he thinks of how the blood is still warm on his skin, and how ashen Eleanor looks in his arms, and he brushes her hair back from her face and says, brokenly, "Someone has to remember her. She wouldn't... She wouldn't want me to give up, now would she?" 

Delirium knows better than any endless how pain and suffering can break a mind. Dream is the Lord of Nightmares as much as he is the Lord of Dreams. Or maybe she was just feeling particularly sadistic because she doesn't understand why she can't get married, she would love to get married, she could turn her spouse into bubbles and they would look so pretty floating around her realm, or maybe even glitter, or frogs! But no, she's not getting married, Dream is, and Dream is mean sometimes, so maybe she just decides to be mean to whoever he gets to married. It's hard to tell if even she knows her own motivation. 

But the candidates suffer for her trial, pushed to their breaking points and then past them. 

Destruction's candidate has never really known suffering before these trials. Or living, really. See, Destruction hadn't actually gone out to try to find someone for Dream, he had been busy trying to learn how to carve a piece of marble into a shape without reducing it to rubble. Once everyone else had found their candidate, he went to Desire and was like, "Hey, so..." 

Desire sighed, and rolled their eyes, and was like, "Fine, I'll help you. I'll construct a woman to be your candidate. If I don't win, maybe you will." 

Thus Alianora was created. She's strong, smart, and while she can handle loss, she was created to be a lover. To be loved. To be a partner. Under Delirium's trial, she is alone, she suffers alone, no one pays her any mind or they hurt her worse, and she withers. She grows morose, she grows desperate, she grows hysterical in her isolation. She loses her mind. She never does answer the question of whether or not she wishes to keep living. It's questionable if she can answer the question, if she even fully understands it. Unfortunately, there is no coming back from such a thing, even if they fix her mind and these trials became like just a dream to her. There's no place for her to go now that she's lost this trial, no home for her to go back to. She's the only true causality of this game and Dream, aching for her and bitter over Desire's causal indifference, makes a Dreamscape for Alianora to live in where she'll never be alone. It's the least he can do.

Hob goes a touch insane himself, but the cracks in his mind are strategic. Like crumple zones in a car, it's to survive what comes next. He's drowned as a witch. Over and over, rocks tied to his ankles, tossed into the water, and every time he surfaces they catch him and do it all over again. Again and again. Dirty pond water filling his lungs, his chest fit to burst, throat and nose raw from inhaling liquid, skin clammy and near rotten. He lets himself break so that when the moment for real escape presents itself, he's not so gone that he misses the opportunity or that he stupidly cocks it all up. 

He does escape, but he's lost everything in a world where value is determined by wealth. He sleeps on the street, mutters to himself, has arguments with made up people in an attempt to kept his mind sharp and to distract himself from the decades where he starves and starves but never dies, his stomach endlessly digesting itself and he throws up what little bit of scraps he can get his hands on, which just makes it worse. 

When he's asked if he still wishes to live, he tosses his head back and laughs, startling a couple people walking past him on the street, who walk a bit quicker, and he asks, "Are you crazy?" Dream is leaned in where they watch these dreams projected above the family meeting table, and if one paid attention they might see that his eyes were rimmed red, thinking that Delirium's trial would claim another. At least he could be fixed, and would soon after go to the Sunless Lands to live in peace. He deserved that. They all did. 

"Death is a mug's game! I have so much left to live for!" 

And now there are two left to face down Destruction's trial. 

Destruction may not have put effort into finding a suitable candidate, but he did devise a good trial. While his brother did need someone strong and resilient, they had to be what Dream lacked as well. They needed to be flexible. They needed to learn and grow from their mistakes. They needed to have compassion. All of these things to teach Dream the same, to encourage these things during the moments that Dream lacks them. His trial isn't about pushing the candidates into choosing Death, there's a very clear answer to his and if the candidate does not find it, they fail, whether they want to continue living or not. 

Desire's candidate has yet to break. She has no intention of dying. She's more than willing to let go of what she desires if it means furthering her ambitions. Suffering doesn't break her, it only pisses her off. Dream isn't sure what to think of this woman. He doesn't really like her on a personal level, she would be nothing but trouble actually, but there is a certain appeal to her. He would never have to worry about hurting her unintentionally, at least. But she's greedy and she doesn't care who she hurts to get her way. And when Destruction's test rewrites her memories to have it where her immortality is granted to her through the blood of other witches, of her sisters, killed by her and sacrificed to the Hecate, the Three-in-One, the One Who is Three, and that more will die by her hands to keep living, she feels a twinge of grief and guilt. 

So Thessaly simply decides to not think about it. She misses them, but it's just proof that she was stronger than them. Smarter than them. That she deserved to be here instead of dying out with them. And if she's able to continue making these sacrifices, if no one is able to stop her, then clearly it's just more proof she deserves this. 

She fails, and no amount of Desire calling bullshit on Destruction's verdict changes his mind. 

Hob, meanwhile, has rebuilt his life. His fortune. He's living well again, he's at no risk of starving, no need to fight in anymore wars because he has pockets of money all across the world he can run off to at the first sign of trouble. He has connections and a successful business. 

He's talking with someone about said business only to have them eye him judgmentally. He's told, "It is a poor thing to enslave another." 

He's a bit rankled at being called out on it. He shrugs, says that's just how it's done, because it is. It is. And at first it looks like he's going to fail too and this whole venture will have to be start all over, new candidates found, but as they watch him, the words aren't easily pushed from his mind. He dwells on them. He starts going through charters and logs. He gets restless sitting at home, surrounded by his newly regained wealth. He starts contacting his ships, digging into their practices that's never really taken the time to learn the specifics of before. A captain offers to let Hob sail a round with him so he could show off how safe the investment is, fearing that perhaps Hob is only questioning because he's afraid of potential repercussions.

He's shown how people are collected. Chained together. The conditions they're kept in on ship, the treatment the sailors give them. The captain explains that if they're pursued, it's easy enough to dump the cargo into the ocean, the chains ensure they all sink, no one is the wiser. 

They don't leave port until everyone is loaded off the ship, and Hob demands they go straight back to England. He contacts every ship in his business and puts a stop to it. Cuts every shipping tie he has and when captains tell him he'll never make another quid, he tells him them he doesn't care, it's not worth it. The guilt still eats at him. It's not enough to make him forget the imagined faces of all the lives he's destroyed, drowning the same way he had, again and again, or resigned to a fate worse than death in most cases. He drinks himself into a stupor most nights. 

He's drunk when he's asked if he still wishes to live. It's not the kind, understanding woman's voice that usually asks. It's a man's, soft and deep, curious, and Hob swirls his glass of brandy, contemplating whether he deserves to or not when he was responsible for the death of so many innocents. They weren't killed in a fight, they didn't have anything worth taking from them, it was just cruelty against helpless people. He swings back the rest of his drink and mutters, bitterly, "History has a way of erasing these things, doesn't it? It forgets what it doesn't want to remember. Someone needs to remember. Someone needs to remind people of this. It won't ever be enough to make up for what I've allowed, but this is something I must live with. To die now and let the world forget would make me a coward shirking responsibility for myself." 

Just like that, he's sober again and standing in a room that's a mix of the time periods he lived through in his dream. It's warm, inviting. There's a four poster bed, a large hearth with piles of comfortable pillows in front of it. An oak wardrobe simply carved but beautiful. Rugs over stone floors. There's a large balcony that lets in plenty of natural light, and it overlooks fantastical mountains in the distance, and a harbor filled with ships of every kind, and sea serpents lazily winding their way through them. Hob had never given much thought to what his perfect room would look like, but he knows he's standing in it. 

The dream he lived through feels like a dream, it's hazy and indistinct, disconnected from the emotions that he once felt were so real and consumed by. But he's not the same man he was when it started. He's retained the lessons learned about living, about compassion, he's more mature, he still remembers how to read. It's all still there, but the loss and grief and guilt are distant now, more like a story he read than a life he lived. 

And Death is there with him, dressed in black jeans and a tank top, smiling proudly at him. He suddenly remembers the competition and has a brief moment of panic, blurts out, "Oh god, I lost and drunk myself to death and this is heaven--" 

"No, you won, Hob!"

"What?"

"You won!" And then she has to explain that while yes, he technically will be immortal, it's only because he now has to marry her little brother. They move out to the balcony and she explains that they're in the Dreaming and what that means while Hob looks around in awe. "He's not bad, my brother," she assures. "He's a bit distant, mostly. A stickler for his rules. He's prideful and can have quite temper if you insult that. It's wise to remember that he rules dreams and nightmares here. But at worst, he'll probably go back to his work and forget you exist, and you'll have the whole of his realm to explore. Unfortunately, you can't back out now." 

"Oh, I wouldn't if I could," Hob assures quickly, waving the concern off. "Marrying a nightmare sure beats rotting to maggots in the ground. I'll take it. What's expected of me?" 

She tells him that he probably won't have any actual duties, and Prince Consort will more than likely just be a title. Theoretically, Hob could hold sway over the Dreaming nearly as much as Dream did, but that required getting close to Dream. "Consummating your marriage," she tactfully puts it. "Each time you got closer to my brother, each time he lets you closer and as his trust and care grows, you would find the Dreaming responding easier and easier to you. The Dreaming is an extension of him, after all. And it's better that way, because you're immortal but still human, and suddenly having awareness of this would be way too much to pile on your mind all at once. But I doubt you'll have to worry about it. My brother seems curious about you but he's stubborn and easily distracted."

The wedding happens that night. 

Hob hasn't met his betrothed yet. 

Death dresses him in a stunning white suit with gold accents. His cravat is the finest woven white silk, embroidered in gold. He has a halo of gold light. There's a bloody cape. It drapes like heavy velvet but it's light and sheer and glitters like stars. He's a nervous wreck and she laughs gently and assures him that he'll know what to do when the time comes. 

Everything that dreams attends the wedding. It shouldn't have been possible to fit so many people in a room, but they're there. It should have taken years for Hob to walk down the aisle to the staircase to the raised dais and the throne, but it was a short walk and the whole time Hob can do nothing but stare at the man standing in front of the throne who has his chin raised, his dark eyes a host of starlight. He does seem vaguely curious. And haughty. And prideful. And beautiful. He's dressed in a similar suit of black, his sheer cape swirling with galaxies and nebula, and there's a sword of obsidian glass in his hands, the point resting gently against the stone floor. 

Hob knows intuitively to kneel the second he ascends the last stair, but he can't quite manage to duck his head like he knows is proper because he can't look away from this creature. Thankfully it produces something startlingly close to amusement in his betrothed. 

"Robert Gadling," he murmurs, his voice soft but carrying, the same one that had last asked him if he wished to live. He holds out his hand, a ruby ring already on his finger. "Swear your fealty to me." And then lower, softer, just between the two of them, "Do not be nervous, the words will come." 

And they do. A bit breathless, but they come after Hob reaches for the hand and presses his lips to the ring, his eyes still on the entity soon to be his husband in what has to be the weird marriage ritual of all time. "I swear my undying fealty to you, Morpheus, Lord of the Dreaming, Ruler of the Nightmare Realms, Prince of Stories and Shaper of Form. I swear to reside at your side, to give my loyalty to you and this Realm first and foremost, and to never raise a hand or support any threat to the denizens here. I am yours, Dream of the Endless." The words tighten through his chest like a binding and good lord, there's the smallest little smile on the Lord's face and he doesn't have a halo but the way the light from the stained glass windows behind him shines, it looks like he does and it's beautiful. 

Dream takes back his hand. He raises his sword and taps both of Hob's shoulders. At the second one, Hob feels the weight of a ring on his own finger. "Arise, Prince Consort of the Dreaming." 

Most people leave after that, they wake up and go about their lives, knowing something changed but not sure what. Some stay, and there's some mingling, and a reception dinner, and Hob barely gets a second to say two words to his husband. He's introduced to family, to Titania and motherfucking Lucifer. A librarian gives him her congratulations, a scarecrow with a pumpkin heads does so with a bit more reluctance and wariness, a raven with a white breast chats with him. She explains that she retired not too long ago, and nods towards a larger raven currently trying to figure out how to get his head into a champagne glass, explaining that he's her replacement. Despite how stupid he looks, she assures Hob that he's a good raven. 

There's a murder at one point. A man is stabbed through the eye with a serving fork. Some blond man in sunglasses looks intrigued by the turn of events, but he's the only one that bothers to react. The murderer tells him not to fucking try it, and then drags the body off. His husband merely tells him that it's normal and fine and that's pretty much the most he says aside from introducing Hob to people and staring at him from the corner of his black eyes. It's a whirlwind night and Hob ends it champagne drunk and passed out alone in his bed in his private quarters, not realizing until morning that he doesn't even know how to find his way around, let alone where the fuck his husband's room is. 

But when he stares at the ruby on his ring in the morning, he knows that he won't stop trying to woo his husband until they are properly, happily married, because one glimpse and Hob Gadling or whatever his surname was now, was most definitely head over heels in love. And thus begins the long and arduous process of courting his husband, the most stubborn man in existence, who is terrified of falling of in love and potentially being too much and would just rather keep his distance thank you very much. He makes it hard for Hob, until Hob remembers Death explaining that the Dreaming was an extension of him. If getting closer to Dream makes him closer to the Dreaming, maybe getting closer to the Dreaming will make him closer to Dream? It's worth a shot.

At the very least, Dream definitely takes note of the way everyone in his realm seems to be so smitten with his Prince Consort all of the sudden.

And that's it, that's all I have. I'm yeeting this out there to get it out of my head and now that you have it, you're free to do whatever you want with it. Change it up, write it, draw it, whatever, I don't care, you can have it now, just tell me if you do something with it because I wanna see okay thanks byee.

[avelera]

(With thanks to @fishfingersandscarves for the art, originally posted here!)

Joke's On You (I'm Into That) by Avelera Chapters: 1/? Fandom: The Sandman (TV 2022) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling Additional Tags: Betaed, Explicit Sexual Content, Explicit Language, Bets & Wagers, Under-negotiated Kink, Dark Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Fuckboi Hob Gadling, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Humor, Sexual Humor, Sex, The Dreaming Realm (The Sandman), Tudor Era, Hate Sex, Enemies to Lovers Summary: At the 1589 meeting, Hob is unwilling to let his stranger’s attention wander so easily. Not after Hob held off on his own marriage just for the chance to ask for his stranger’s hand instead. Dream does not take this proposal well. Disgusted by how Hob has squandered his immortality with the vulgar pursuit of wealth, he sets out to prove that Hob could never hope to endure the horrors of courting the King of Nightmares. OR That time Hob pissed Dream off so badly it started a sex competition between them in the Dreaming. With both of them too proud, pissed off, and horny to back down, things get weird very quickly.

--- It's finally posted! At least, the first chapter. Welcome to my silly, messed up, and very very smutty "What if Hob and Dream got together in 1589 (by pissing each other off so badly they started a sex competition)?" fic! It's very weird! Very kinky! And it's got about 45,000 words written at the time of posting! I do hope you all enjoy but PLEASE be mindful of all tags as they're added, the author notes, and your own experience!

[questing-wulfstan]

One thing that is so precious and important to me about Hob's character, is his utter regard for Dream's boundaries.

You may call him an idiot for not seeking any more intel on the entity that has apparently made him immortal without his express consent, and that is fair, but to me that is a deliberate choice on Hob's part.

At first, Hob's not even aware he's been made immortal and may have a price to pay for it, and once he does, he expects to be told of his debt when he meets the stranger in the tavern of the White Horse, one hundred years from 1389. Yet on their first agreed-on meeting, Dream does not corroborate Hob's dread for his integrity — of soul and of freedom. He remains entirely cryptic, but encourages Hob to take full advantage of his prolonged life, if only he'll report on it to Dream once a century.

From there, Hob doesn't feel the need for intel on his stranger so as to devise safeguards against him leveraging Hob's immortality against him. There's also in him immense recognition to the stranger for having turned him immortal, and demanded so little a price in return. Whatever his reasons might be, his own anonymity flagrantly matters to Hob's stranger, and it wouldn't be fair to his benefactor to dismantle it behind his back.

Obviously that does not deter Hob's natural curiosity for all things — as well as his desire to get closer to the stranger — from enquiring, but that only shows his contentement with what Dream is willing to give away about himself throughout the centuries.

Now you're going to tell me that running after Dream claiming that they are friends disregarding that Dream's just denied it in 1889 isn't very boundary-regarding of Hob, but I think he has a very different perspective on the event than Dream, and us readers/viewers following Dream's POV, do.

The problem is that Dream knows himself to be (and I quote) "one such as I", and yet how much he has in common with Hob. Hob doesn't.

What Hob means when he calls Dream his friend, is that Dream has given him exactly what he was willing to give him, and shown himself exactly how he wanted to be perceived by Hob, and that Hob's fallen in platonic love with that, with what he assumes is Dream's most authentic self, rid of what taints him in the eyes of the people who know "more" about him. He means "you might have done terrible things that have irremediably skewed your relationship with people that used to love you, but I love the person you've shown yourself to be with a blank slate. I've shown you all my own flaws throughout our acquaintance, you've helped me grow and become better and I don't believe you to be flawless, but in whichever way you may be flawed that you hide from me, it cannot eclipse how much I love you. And I want you to be aware of this. "

Obviously, Dream and us are well aware that "one such as I" refers to him being an Endless, but to Hob it can mean a number of things, and namely, I believe, "I who have done something so unspeakable it cannot be repaired nor forgiven by anything or anyone."

That is why he allows himself to run after Dream and assure Dream that he'll be here in a 100 years' time and if Dream's here then too it'll be because they're friends. He thinks Dream is so lonely because he was deprived of love, and doesn't allow himself to accept now love because something he has hidden from Hob makes him unworthy of it in his own eyes, and Hob is claiming that no, his stranger deserves Hob's friendship and that Hob will patiently wait for him to come to term with it, even if it takes him a century.

Hob just does not and cannot guess that what weights so heavily on his stranger's shoulders and consciousness is his mantle of Dream of the Endless.

In conclusion, Hob Gadling king of respecting boundaries 2K23

[ihatecoconut]

Canpes

Also on AO3!

kind of based on @softest-punk hobsbandverse

The only information Hob gets from Destiny is that whoever is accompanying him to the event will be waiting in the passenger seat of his car. There’s a certain petulant tone to Destiny’s voice that suggests it is not going to be him.

Delirium is waiting when he climbs in the driver’s side, dressed appropriately in a pretty pink dress and with the colours in her hair faded to a more respectable level – i.e., they won’t burn out anyone’s retinas. She beams when she sees him.

“Hi Hob!”

He laughs, “Hey Del, you were destined to accompany me?”

She leans in, close, like she’s imparting a secret. “There was a fight.” She tells him. “’twas funny, everyone was stood in their galleries and yelling at the other sigils.”

That does sound funny, actually, Hob can imagine them all getting increasingly irate at each other over something as simple as who gets to come with him to an admittedly boring faculty party.

She giggles suddenly and leans in even closer, pressing their noses together. “Even Death and Destiny.”

“And you?”

She scrunches her nose up. “I would have if I had had an opp… opp…”

“Opportunity?”

“Yes! Opportunity. Destiny kept speaking when I wanted to.”

Hob laughs again. “Didn’t he already know it was going to be you?”

“He wanted to change it.” She settles back in her seat and lets him start the car. “He only said it was me when he lost.”

It warms something in him to know that they were all so determined to be with him, even to the point of trying to change the Book.

“Good to know.”

 They pull into the carpark and Hob is not surprised to see that there is already a reasonable number of cars present. The event did technically start almost half an hour ago.

“Alright.” He turns the engine off and turns to face Delirium. “You ready to schmooze?”

Her face screws up. “Schmooze.”

“Yeah. Don’t repeat that in front of anyone, yeah?”

She nods, incredibly serious, and Hob just has enough time to think that he might want to rephrase that to explain that while it was a joke, he also doesn’t want her referring to it as schmoozing in front of anyone, when her face breaks out in a brilliant and mischievous smile.

He grins back, holds up a fist. “Let’s do this?”

Del hits it with her own. “Do this.”

The Dean sweeps over as soon as the two of them enter, taking in Delirium – undeniably a child – with not a small amount of trepidation.

“Rob!” She says, somehow managing to incorporate both an exclamation mark and an ellipsis into her voice. “Who is this?”

He wraps an arm around Delirium’s shoulders. “Uh, this is Del, my partners’ sibling.”

“They’re busy.” Del offers, polite and reasonable. Hob wonders who gave her instructions on how to act.

The Dean’s face clears slightly, not completely, because Hob loves to keep people guessing on how many partners he actually has, and this does not at all clear anything up for her. ‘They’ could be one, or two, or in this case actually seven, but she doesn’t know that. “Oh, well it was so nice of you to join us instead.”

Del nods, seriously. “We could not let him face you alone.”

Hob manages to restrain the shocked laugh down to a snort. That is almost certainly something he said to Dream, about not wanting to face the faculty alone when everyone else would be with their partners. “She means because no one else will be.”

“Oh!” The Dean laughs as well. “I’ll introduce you to my husband at some point,” she waves a hand vaguely across the room, “unfortunately he has been drawn into a different conversation.”

“Ah, well, there’s no rush, right? We’ve got all evening.”

Del nods again, serious. “And if that falls through there is always the rest of your lives.”

The Dean cups a hand over her mouth, apparently already getting used to Del’s particular chain of thought. “Very true. It was nice to meet you.”

“You also.”

She wanders off again, probably to greet someone else, leaving the two of them hovering by the doorway and looking out across the room. Hob wonders if Delirium is going to whisper the weird hallucinations and beliefs of the people present, the same way Dream tells him their night time fantasies and Desire lets him know their waking ones.

Instead, she tugs on his arm excitedly. “Look, Hob, canapes!”

He lets her pull him over to the ‘buffet’ an admittedly poor selection of tiny foods, and watches her try one of each, accepting every time she pushes one, she particularly likes on him. It’s a new way to experience these sorts of events and he thinks that maybe that’s the point, maybe that’s why the Book decided she would be the one to accompany him.

Del bops him on the nose, pulling him out of his musings. “Thinking?”

“Yup. ‘bout you.”

She beams at him and holds up a tiny eclair. He opens his mouth and lets her stick it in, chewing obediently when she pulls her fingers back and stares expectantly.

“’s good.”

“Death says ones from France are better.”

“We’ll have to go to France sometime then.” Hob replies without really thinking about it.

The hopeful way she looks up at him in response almost breaks his heart. “Really?”

“Of course.”

He thinks she might be about to say something else, but his office neighbour appears beside them before she can.

“Rob! And who might this be?”

Del wipes her hand on her dress before offering it to Ally and Hob winces internally. Money he might have, but the dress she (or someone else) has conjured up looks incredibly expensive.

“I am Del.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Del, I’m Ally.” Ally shoots him an amused look out the corner of her eye.

“Yes,” Del says very seriously, “of medieval literature.”

The amused look becomes impressed, “Yup, you heard about me?”

Hob is very certain that he doesn’t talk about work when he hangs out with Del, which means that she must have gained this information from one of her siblings, and she’d confirmed earlier that they had literally argued over who got to accompany him, but this means that they talk about him when he’s not there. It settles something in his chest that worries sometimes they are all just humouring him.

“Lots.” Del agrees. “Hob is very fond of you.”

She softens visibly, “Well, I’m quite fond of him also.”

At the other end of the table, a waiter lays down a tray of new things and, rather than responding, Del lights up excitedly and scurries off to try one, leaving Hob to face Ally.

“Thought you were bringing one of the undefined number of partners. That’s a child.”

“I know.” Hob replies, because he does. And, sure, Del might technically be eons older than him, but she has the mind of a child – Destiny had described her as ‘not quite broken, almost shattered’ once. “She’s their sibling.”

“Which one’s?”

“Uh, all of them?”

Ally visibly processes this information. “I’m sorry.” She says in a voice that is anything but. “The undefined number of mysterious partners are… all siblings?”

“I think they have a shared calendar.”

She looks like she wants to say more in response to that, but Del reappears with two of the new canapes and holds one out to each of them. Whatever bone Ally has to pick with this weird arrangement of his apparently has nothing to do with Del because her face softens immediately, and she takes the offered food. Hob does as well.

“There are people over there who want to talk to you,” Del adds, helpfully, “I heard them talking.”

Hob follows her gaze to some more members of the faculty. “Alright, might wanna grab some more snacks, I don’t know how long this is gonna take.”

She nods and bounces off down the table, grabbing a paper plate because they might be in a fancy establishment, but G-d forbid anyone has to do any washing up.

Ally presses a hand to his arm, concern gently written in her eyes. “Rob, I’m not gonna tell you what to do with your life, but… are you sure about this?”

He looks down to where Delirium is weighing up how many of something to put on the plate and can almost imagine Dream peering over her shoulder, nose scrunched up in distaste, Death at his side laughing, the twins whispering about the people present, Destiny watching over them and Destruction watching Hob himself. He blinks and the images vanish.

“Yeah, yeah I’m sure about this.”

[joeys-piano]

Style/Vibe: the sunset, the sunrise, that period in between where the world is wide-awake and beautifully still asleep, and the safest place to be is at the bedsheets with a dream

The King of Nightmares. The Lord of Dreams. The Master of Any Form. Mr. Sandman. Onerios. Dream of the Endless. Your Majesty. Morpheus. Prince of Stories. Dreaming. Son of Night, Son of Time. Hope. And names you couldn’t pronounce. Yet the truest of all the titles, and your favorite against the rest when he looks to you like you’re trouble when he’s the actual troublemaker, is Dream, you blushing duck. And see him rile at your impudence. You dare make him falter and believe the universe has a name, whose name is nothing short when it should sound like Robert Gadling.

-- You Find A Way (dreamling fic)

[lenreli]

I wanna feel myself denied

Dreamling, Explicit, 4.5k!

After the events in a pocket realm with Hob and another version of him, Dream copes. (Not that well.)

Excerpt: 

Dream bites his lip, unable to take his mind away from the pocket realm he was in.

“Hey, uh, boss?”

About the way Hob, his own Hob, not the other one, slightly out of phase as another Dream and his Hob interacted―

“Boss?”

There was the jealousy he felt, at seeing another Dream kiss Hob so brashly, so sure, the sadness as Hob seemed to submit, going along with it. Even thinking about it now, he feels all twisted and hot.

“Boss! Half of the Dreaming is all twisted like roller coaster tracks! What the fuck!!”

And even out-of-phase, Hob seemed to find them, eyes dark as they stared up at him while the other Dream pulled him to the floor, white hands roving over him, as Hob moans and whines, on the other Dream’s lap―

>>>AO3<<<

[familiar-anonymous]

Dream x Hob texting AU: (part - 9)

Day - 7

If you want to read the previous chapters, you can find it here on ao3.

Part - 8 | Part - 7 | Part -6 | Part -5 | Part -4 | Part -3 | Part -2 | Part -1

[q-ueen-potato]

I assume that I am really into the Sandman, there's no way out anymore.

I am currently studying the theories of the collective unconscious to adapt on my fanfics and I can tell it's fucking amazing

[highwinds2c]

Some wip friends for German comic con this weekend in Dortmund

[linktenbooks]

So we all know that song that goes "hey emo boy, hey emo boy" well I'm totally convinced that one night hob drunkenly sang it to dream.

[doitforstamets]

punk!dreamling in colour

[fictionplumis]

On the plus side, my terrible experience has brought me to a Sandman human!AU.

Hob Gadling is a history professor who has the terrible habit of getting himself into shit situations, the newest one being hit by a car while walking to work and ending up in the hospital with some pretty serious injuries. After surgeries and stuff, since he has no family and doesn't want to bother friends looking after him, he gets an extra long stay in observation, and the only spare observation room happens to be near the pediatric ones. His doctor is Dr. Teleute and she's the best, they hit it off really well, even if her first experience was him drugged to high hell and badmouthing all doctors in general.

Dream is her little brother and an author, mostly children's books, but he has more adult (re: mature, not sexual) novels under his penname Morpheus. Every so often he'll go to the hospital and go around room to room, reading to the kids. Hob overhears him and as Dream goes to pass his room, jokingly calls out, "What, you're not going to read to me?" and gives Dream the biggest puppy dog eyes.

He's joking, of course.

Dream freezes in the doorway for a long second, awkwardly because he's fucking great with kids but this is a whole ass adult and he has no idea how to answer this. Not that he looks uncertain, he's way too stoic for that. So he just...

Walks into the room and asks, "Which book would you like? I have one about a raven named Jessamy, one about a wyvern, pegasus, and griffon guarding a king's castle, and one about the world's best librarian."

Hob wasn't expecting to get that far. He chooses the wyvern one because it sounds awesome. And it is! He genuinely enjoys it, and Dream enjoys telling it to an adult and still having the story thoroughly appreciated.

He keeps coming back to read the kids, more often than he would usually just because Hob confesses that's bored as fuck and it's nice to have some company and someone to talk to, and he brings different book options for Hob to pick from. They end up talking too, and Hob eventually admits that he likes hearing Dream read from the other rooms because he's really great with the kids. Super patient and chill, always answers all their questions even if the question is utter nonsense, and it reminds Hob of when he had his own son.

(Eleanor and Robyn were in a car accident. It took her immediately, took Robyn a few agonizing days afterwards, and Hob can't keep from choking up as he tells Dream. Robyn was five. He had been married to Eleanor for nearly a decade. Dream merely says that he understands, and though he says no more, the look on his face is enough for Hob to know he really, truly does.) Of course, the day comes that Dream shows up and Hob's room is empty and his sister is like, "Sorry, little brother, but it's against HIPPA for me to give you his contact information... JK, haha, he actually left me his phone number specifically for you, here you go."

[avelera]

Banana Daiquiris (4277 words) by Avelera Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Sandman (Comics), The Sandman (TV 2022) Relationships: Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling Summary: Set during the events of Hob Gadling's trip to the Renaissance Faire in "The Wake". Hob falls asleep at the Renaissance Faire and dreams of a beach. His dead friend, Dream, is there, and so his brother, Destruction. Except Dream, it turns out, is not dead and Hob is not dreaming but is, in fact, really on a beach on the other side of the world. This is a hell of a thing to have to explain to his (probably soon-to-be-ex) girlfriend.

--

Hey all! I wrote a short (for me) joke-y Retired Dream AU fic because the concept made me ugly laugh and I thought I'd share it with you all! Hope you enjoy!

[questing-wulfstan]

#écrimûre : a masterpost of Mûre's fanfictions for The Sandman

+ What is a comb worth to a King ?

Dreamling | Teen And Up | 1377 words | Canon Compliant “... well, I would have expected the King of Dreams and Nightmares to have bed hair but you don’t actually sleep, do you ? How is it, your hair is as tangled as if you did ー and did not comb for several nights ? And how does it not look remotely the part ?”

+ Of dormice and teapots

Dreamling | Gen | 2391 words | Alternate Universe Hob Gadling used to not be so fond of dormice indeed; yet somehow or other and irremediably since he had started cohabitating with a creature who likewise relishes burrowing in paper, it has become his term of endearment of choice. There is much more than his sole typing cadence to Dream’s similarity with the small animal, after all. an ad lib of @nicolodigenovas's Reassurance

+ Of the manifold devices through which stories are told

Dreamling | Teen And Up | 2514 words | Canon Compliant #Hob wanders in the library of the Dreaming the night that follows his 1489 meeting with Dream #Dream has to deal with it In which a raven contemptuously picks on a worm and finds out there is more to his love for books than burrowing in their paper.

+ On the ductility of the constituent matter of bodies : an essay by Robert Gadling, PhD

Dreamling | Explicit | 2451 words | Canon Compliant Dream of the Endless is Shaper of Form, among a multitude. His own form above any other, for reasons diverse and counting pleasure among their number. Robert Gadling is a privileged witness of the phenomenon. an expansion of my ad lib on @lenreli Morphussy drabble

+ An EPIPHANY of POPPIES upon the BATTLEFIELD, or Robert Gadling and Delirium of the Endless' Adventures through No Man's Land

Gen | Explicit | Graphic Depictions of Violence | 27k words | Hob Gadling rescues Dream of the Endless from the Fishbowl April 1940, On a French battlefield, Hob Gadling doubts his will to persevere in being alive for the second time of his existence. He swallows morphine in the hope to soothe his horror-scarified mind, and summons a mirage of the stranger who occupied his thoughts as the patron of his immortality. In a Japanese psychiatric ward, Delirium of the Endless is alerted by Dream's irruption in her realm, who she found missing when she sought his company on her quest for the Prodigal. Disappointment overcomes her as she finds it was but an image of her brother conjured by a mortal, and so it does Hob when her eruption dismisses the vision. Delirium will not resign herself to her exponential loss of brothers however, neither will Hob Gadling withhold his aid from any entity in distress, whether the stranger or his younger sister ; they just might hold the might to liberate Morpheus between their four hands … written on the occasion of the @endlessbigbang 2023, with brilliant showstopping spectacular cover and illustration by the talented incredible amazing @mock-arts