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dsudis · 1 year ago

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Such a Gorgeous Sight

Written for @domaystic day 31: midnight snack! Featuring Dream, and Hob, and a midnight snack. (Not even innuendo, just snacking.)

Title of course from "Friday I'm in Love" by The Cure.

Dream woke up in darkness, as he often did. He had been dreaming—not a pleasant dream but not anything he would call a nightmare. No matter how often he reminded his successor that he need not be so gentle with him, the dreams he had about the difficulties and indignities of his new human life were always... manageable.

Tonight he had been dreaming about needing to do laundry. There had been several baskets of dirty clothes, his and Hob's mingled together. No matter how Dream tried to sort them into correct loads, there had always been more different colors of things lurking in each basket. It had been frustrating and confusing and tediously neverending, and then he had pulled one of Hob's favorite old t-shirts out and realized that he could ask Hob to help him with the sorting when he got home. Hob wouldn't be angry with him; Hob would always help.

Dream had woken up on that consoling note, and now he was wide awake and thinking about the actual laundry.

Hob had a tendency to put off doing the washing and yesterday he had declared "laundry bankruptcy" and called the New Inn's laundry service to ask them to also pick up several bags of his—their personal laundry. It was something that he evidently did not-infrequently, given that he already had the requisite laundry sacks in his closet, and he had been mildly rueful but not at all upset about it.

Dream had felt bad about it. He was capable of doing laundry; he ought to have noticed that Hob didn't like it and picked up the slack. It was something he could contribute.

He was... fairly certain he could contribute that. Hob really wouldn't get annoyed with him if he tried and then needed help. He would probably be pleased to be reminded about the existence of the laundry. After a few tries Dream would doubtless be able to manage it.

Dream rolled over onto his side to look at Hob, who was still fast asleep beside him. He liked watching Hob sleep, which was convenient because he often woke in the night and couldn't immediately get back to sleep. Watching Hob was rarely helpful in that endeavor; he had to stop watching Hob to quiet himself back toward sleep.

But he could watch for a while, first. Perhaps it would turn out that this was the very end of the night's darkness, and the sky outside the window would lighten and Hob would wake up and smile at him. Perhaps Dream would not need to turn away from him and shut his eyes and submit himself to another dream tonight.

He could not really see much of Hob in the dark, just familiar shapes and shadows. Hob was lying on his back, not quite snoring but making a little burr of a noise on every second or third breath which Dream found unreasonably endearing.

Dream could feel his mind quieting as he lay and watched Hob sleep, his anxious frustration about both waking and dreaming laundry ebbing away. This was the part that mattered, the part that was true and real: he and Hob were together in the most intimate and vulnerable parts of their lives. They shared their rest, their refuge, their stillness, and to this still point they would always return. The rest was merely logistics.

Dream reached out a hand, close enough to feel the radiating warmth of Hob's body without accidentally startling him awake. He closed his eyes, hoping now that he would stay awake a little longer in this perfect moment, this dark soft quietude.

As if on cue, his stomach twisted on emptiness, and awareness of hunger promptly eclipsed all the peace he had felt an instant before.

Dream turned over in bed and peered at the clock on his nightstand. It was meant for small children, but it worked just as well for Dream, who had no better luck making sense of numerical times than did children who had not yet learned their numbers. It did not show numbers at all; it showed an indication of the meaning of the current time.

Currently it showed the moon and stars that meant night: time for sleeping. There was no hint of the appearance of the sun which would indicate morning: time to be awake. Dream watched it for a while, hoping that the sun would make an appearance—the soft blue-purple of the moon and stars would start to fade into a brighter blue before the orange of the sun became visible.

The indigo of the moon and stars remained stubbornly the same, and Dream's stomach did not quiet either.

He needed to go back to sleep, and he wouldn't be able to until he got up and ate something. He muffled a noise of vexation into his pillow, and then sat up, shoving the covers back somewhat too emphatically as he did so.

Hob awoke with a snort and sat up as well. "All right, love?"

Dream felt a mingled frustration and fondness, but he was near enough to that sleepy still moment of communion to let the latter win. He leaned over and tipped his head against Hob's shoulder, and as automatically as a reflex, Hob tipped his head against Dream's and put an arm around Dream's shoulders.

"I'm hungry," Dream said with a sigh. "I can't get back to sleep."

"Mm," Hob said, squeezing him around the shoulders. "Want something warm?"

Dream nodded against Hob's shoulder, and did not either ask Hob to fix it for him or tell Hob he could manage by himself.

"Mm, could do with something myself, now I'm awake," Hob said. He pressed a kiss to Dream's forehead and then moved away to get out of bed. Dream followed suit, shrugging into his dressing gown while Hob merely stretched and made for the bedroom door wearing nothing but the boxers he'd fallen asleep in.

Hob tended to run warm; Dream did not.

Dream followed Hob to the kitchen, where Hob immediately went to the refrigerator for milk and then located a saucepan. "Cocoa?"

"Yes, please," Dream said, considering the possibilities for a solid snack to accompany it. He spotted the paper bag on the counter, holding the last of the bagels from the Proper Bagel Place Hob had taken him to a couple of days ago, pointing out the crucial identifying features—closed on Saturdays, faded picture of a venerable old rabbi framed on the wall behind the counter, only sold bagels and a few accompaniments.

The bagels would be best toasted now, and would be challenging to slice, but Dream rolled back his sleeves and fetched the bread knife. Hob had shown him the way of it—fingers and thumb here and here, knife below the opposite hand and cutting away from it toward the bench, start slowly. He bit his lip, following the steps with painstaking precision, carefully choosing his place to cut to make two even halves.

He smiled down at the halves of the bagel when they fell open onto the bench, and there was a low whistle from Hob's direction—less than a yard away in the little kitchen, within quick reach of both Dream and the first aid kit stowed under the sink. But neither had been necessary tonight; Dream had done the thing himself.

He looked over at Hob with a smile and said, "Bagel?"

Hob grinned. "Yes, please."

Dream took the last one out of the bag and cut it just as neatly as the first, and then placed all four halves in the glass-fronted toaster oven. This was another new addition to the kitchen: Dream could simply watch things turn brown and take them out when they looked finished, instead of having to wait for a toaster to pass its inscrutable time.

With Hob as backup, Dream felt confident enough to fetch butter and cream cheese and a plate before returning to peer at the bagels, which showed no signs of being toasted yet. Hob was still peering drowsily down at the saucepan, the light over the stove falling golden on his dark head. He was slouching a bit, his bared belly rounding out gently over the top of his boxers, and Dream wanted to kiss every soft part of his beloved; more than that, he wanted to make him a good snack and take him back to bed.

This was also a kind of stillness. This too was a part of that quiet connectedness, waiting together in the dark.

"I love you," Dream said softly.

Hob glanced over, not at all startled, already smiling warmly before his eyes met Dream's. "Love you too," he said, and then rummaged in a drawer and passed Dream a butterknife.

Dream huffed softly and got the cocoa mix out of the cupboard, passing it to Hob before he returned to watching the bagels.

The stillness of waiting soon turned into a dance of practicalities—getting out the toasted bagels as Hob stirred chocolate into the heated milk. Dream hissed and stuck a burned finger into his mouth but got on with distributing butter and cream cheese onto the bagel halves while Hob was pouring cocoa into mugs.

They sat together on stools drawn up to the kitchen bench, shoulders pressed together, eating and drinking in silence. Dream had eaten one entire bagel half and drunk most of his cocoa when Hob noticed him gingerly crooking his burned finger. Hob caught Dream's hand and inspected the little pink line, then brushed his lips over it. "Want something for that?"

Dream shook his head. The sharp small pain of it was already fading, and he was growing sleepy again now that his stomach was feeling warm and full. "Want to go back to sleep."

Hob kissed Dream's finger and released his hand, returning to his own bagel and cocoa, eating and drinking in a businesslike fashion while Dream sipped and nibbled and leaned ever more heavily into Hob.

"Go on," Hob muttered, when Dream was down to the last bit of his bagel. "One last big bite, love, and then back to bed. You know I love watching you eat."

Dream rolled his eyes, but gave Hob the most sultry look he could manage while shoving the last of a bagel topped with cream cheese into his mouth. Hob wiped the corner of Dream's mouth clean with his thumb, licking away cream cheese while watching Dream chew.

As soon as Dream swallowed Hob leaned in for a kiss, as warm and soft and simple as the rest of it.

Then there was nothing but leaving all the dishes in the sink for the morning and Hob towing him back to bed by the hand, as if Dream might get lost on the way. They settled in together, and as the darkness and quiet deepened around them again, Dream thought that no interrupted sleep could have been more restorative than this midnight waking.

[this fic is also on Ao3!]

#fic #dreamling #the sandman #domaystic2023 #midnight snacks #softest sleepiest loves

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jomiddlemarch · 10 months ago

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While You Were Sleeping

Chapter 3

It had been an unseasonably chilly day according to their hosts, so the windows of the suite were closed tight, curtains drawn, all outside noise muffled. It was late, the staff all gone to their rooms, and they’d both finished their evening ablutions, the tap shut off. They lay next to each other in the bed, having mutually agreed to go to sleep. There was nothing but the darkness leavened with silvery blue moonlight and a soft, all-encompassing quiet.

And then an unmistakable growl.

For a moment, neither of them said anything. But it was clearly a moment where they were both working out what to say, how to react, and in Hermione’s case, choking back a squawk of laughter which Draco would be sure to see as rudely mocking. Likely to, anyway.

“I beg—”

“You never beg,” Hermione interrupted, turning on her side so she could see him better. “You were going to ask for my pardon and you needn’t.”

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said. He sounded embarrassed. To be fair, if such a sound had come from her body, she would have wanted to spontaneously combust or Apparate to the moon, preferably a one-way trip for the first intergalactic Apparition that was reliably documented (she didn’t count that report from Durmstrang—if anyone got there first, it would be one of the up-and-comers from Uagadou, probably that tall witch from Lagos who sang all her incantations like Maria Callas.)

“You didn’t. I was a little startled, but not especially surprised,” she said. It was easy to be more open in the shared bed, the quilted counterpane rendered silken with the moonlight, everything around them soft, intimate. Draco seemed like another person, a man she’d never met before, except that she recognized him better at night or at least she allowed herself to admit she liked what she discovered. Very much indeed.

“No?”

“I will say you’re quite a bit louder than Harry ever was,” Hermione said, a naughty part of her unable to resist teasing.

“My shame is complete. Depthless as the Lost Sea, countless as the stars,” Draco said wryly. He was regaining his equanimity, though an additional growl, possibly louder than the first one, made him pause and Hermione chuckle.

“Don’t feel bad about it,” she said. “You’re hungry, there’s no shame in it. No surprise, either. You missed lunch. And dinner.”

I missed you, she didn’t say but thought. Nothing tasted as good without you there, she didn’t add but heard her voice murmuring.

“I got caught up with some of the regulatory issues, their legal system is sometimes completely orthogonal to ours. It’s both fascinating and infuriating,” he said. “Lost track of time, I suppose.”

“I understand. It happens to me too, I get immersed in whatever I’m researching and then I come out of it, it’s like I’m surfacing from swimming underwater and it’s hours later, leagues away. The Ravenclaws call it perdu-trouvée, I guess Flamel was known for it too,” she said.

His stomach growled again, somehow with even more volume.

“I’ll go find something, there must be something in the kitchen,” he said.

“Don’t,” she said, reaching over to lay a hand on his shoulder. He grew very still. “I noticed you weren’t at lunch and dinner. I made…arrangements for us.”

“Arrangements?” he repeated.

“I knew you missed both those meals and that you wouldn’t ask anyone to get you something to eat—”

“It’s ill-mannered. Here and at home, unless there’s a House-elf available and I know how you feel about them,” he interjected.

“I know. I knew you’d say all that, do all that. Or not do, as the case may be. So I did,” she said, dropping her hand from his shoulder. She could feel the warmth of him, the restraint, as if it had been branded like a rune into her palm. “I suppose I’m living down to all your Pureblood supremacist inculcated expectations of me, but I knew we’d end up here, with your stomach growling louder than a dyspeptic dragon grumbling over its hoard.”

“The only expectation I’ve ever truly had of you is that you’ll exceed whatever measure or possibility I could ever conceive of,” he said. “I admit that as a child, I expressed this very poorly.”

“As a child? You were a child in seventh year?” Hermione said.

“I was slow to mature,” he shrugged. “Unlike some. And I didn’t have access to a Time-turner to help me along.”

“I got a hamper. For you,” Hermione said. Draco was starting to take the conversation into uncharted waters and if she was going to navigate them, she at least wanted to get some food into him first. “A basket from the kitchen, so you could have a midnight snack. A meal, actually. Like a picnic. I asked them to include a cloth, cutlery, proper stemware.”

“I know what a hamper is, Hermione,” he said.

“I wasn’t sure if the Wizarding aristocracy had picnics or only elegant teas held in plein air. Harry was raised with Muggles, the Weasleys just Levitated their kitchen table into the garden because of the gnomes, and Neville and his gran prefer walking tours with Thermoses filled with tea and a packet of cheese and pickle sandwiches. I was afraid to ask Luna,” Hermione said.

“They always say you’re the brightest witch of our age,” Draco replied, choosing not to comment on the Weasley gnomes, the Longbottom predilection for non-magical Thermoses and the questionable reality Luna Lovegood inhabited, in favor of praising her with nary a smirk to be seen.

“Of your age, her age, they say. Not our. Not like I’m the most brilliant witch of the current, post-Dumbledore era,” Hermione said, frowning. She’d had a plan for this midnight snack revelation, and he was derailing her and while her plan had some accommodations built in, they were all centered around the idea he’d reject picnics or eating late at night or find it all terribly plebian. Not that he’d offer compliments that she didn’t deserve with what sounded like utter sincerity.

“That’s why they’re wrong and you’re the brightest witch of our age,” Draco said. “Though I also prefer most brilliant. More gravitas to it. But I believe I’m upsetting your plans. There’s a midnight snack to be consumed, picnic-style, if we want to keep from waking the whole building with my obstreperous digestive system.”

“You’ve managed to be both incorrigible and correct, so I’m just going to get the hamper and you’ll eat,” she said.

“We’ll eat,” he said. “Surely you don’t think I’m going to gorge myself in front of you while you don’t take even one bite.”

“Fine,” she said, getting out of the bed and going over to the wardrobe that held her clothes and right now, an oversized but magically lightened hamper she would have struggled to lift without the enchantment. As it was, she made it only halfway back to the bed before Draco came and took the basket out of her arms and carried it the remaining distance, allowing her quite the delicious view of his delicious arse in his pinstriped pyjama bottoms, not a sight she would ordinarily have imagined could be erotic.

“Do you want to open it or shall I?” he said, kneeling on his side of the bed and his side of the hamper. Hermione hiked up the hem of her nightdress so she could sit cross-legged on her side and gestured for him to go ahead. He lifted the lid and took out the cloth first, spreading it out between them, then began to narrate as he took out one item after another.

“Orange pippins, grapes, Double Gloucester—you had them source Double Gloucester for me? Carr’s water biscuits, those little spanakopita-like things they had the first night and they’re still warm, a jar of olives, some sort of savory pie—”

“Pork, with sage and a little thyme,” Hermione put in.

“There’s a tureen—”

“Potage parmentier,” she said, before he opened the lid and spilled any. “The tureen is charmed to stay at the perfect temperature for serving.”

“Brandy snaps, jam roly-poly and macarons?”

“Those are pistachio. It’s not an allusion to you being Slytherin,” Hermione said. “There ought to be a Chenin Blanc and a flask of Earl Grey tea to go with the meal and dessert.”

“This isn’t a snack, it’s a feast,” Draco said, settling back on his heels. Even in the moonlight, which etched everything in silverpoint, she could make out the flush in his cheeks. “And it’s all my favorites. Every single one."

“Yes. As I said, I thought you’d be hungry,” she replied.

“A sandwich would have been fine. Some bread and butter,” he said. “How did you know—"

“Brightest witch, as you said. I pay attention to details, they’re important,” she said, smiling, but meaning it. Harry and Ron would be taken in by just the smile. Draco wouldn’t. “I know you strive to require nothing from people now, but that’s not how I operate. And I’ve been hungry before, it’s not something I take lightly.”

I want to see you satisfied, she didn’t add. It was enough to think it. This time…

“We didn’t eat all these things here,” Draco said.

“No, I did some research. Reached out to access primary sources,” she said.

“You contacted Narcissa?” he asked. Could a person be aghast and impressed in only three words? It seemed he was. It also seemed he called his mother by her first name, a fact she filed away for later consideration.

“Andromeda. We belong to the same book club. It wasn’t a message out of the blue,” Hermione said. “I remembered you ate all the brandy snaps when we were at Hogwarts, you glutton. It’s a wonder you had any teeth left in your head.”

“You must like brandy snaps too,” he said. “I assume that’s why you noticed me eating more than my fair share.”

“It was at first,” she said. When they were hunting Horcruxes, she’d thought about him, how he’d looked so eager taking some from the platter, how he’d closed his eyes with the first bite. How ordinary his delight was and how it changed his face to have a moment of simple happiness. There was less darkness around him now, which she attributed to being fifteen years out from being under the thumb of a megalomaniacal chimerical soul-shredded monster who was quite frankly rather boring when he wasn’t being utterly annihilating and then, of course, his pompous father had been relegated to the Endless level of Azkaban. She wanted to see Draco’s face when he ate a sweet now, what expression there would be in his grey eyes when he opened them and looked at her.

“Let’s start with them, then,” he said. He offered her a brandy snap, waiting for her to take it out of his hand. “You did agree I wouldn’t eat alone.”

“Do you often eat dessert first?” she said.

“May I make a confession?” he asked. She nodded, dimly aware she held a brandy snap in her wand hand and that Draco had glanced down at her mouth after he spoke. “Sometimes, it’s all I eat. Sometimes, all I want is to taste something sweet, Hermione.”

#dramione #one shot becomes multichapter #hermione granger #draco malfoy #hermione x draco #hermione POV #midnight snacks #fake married #post hogwarts #diplomat!hermione #lawyer!draco #slow burn #romance #world building galore #there was only one bed #so much food #fluffy

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