#my sandman fics

[movedtodykedvonte]

*Spidey and the Sinister Six having their usual fight*

Doc Ock, landing a hit: You’re getting slow Spider-Man! Age finally catching up to you?

Spider-Man: You wish! I haven’t even hit my 30s! From those costumes I can already tell I failed to save you guys from those midlife crises! Sorry by the way.

Vulture: Watch it wallcr- wait… Did you just say your not in your thirties yet?

Spider-Man: Surprised that this spiders so young and spry? Well-

Electro: Dude I’ve been fighting you for at least 5 fucking years! How old even are you?

Shocker, joking cause he’s the only one who picked up no grown adult acts likes Spidey: Don’t swear in-front of the boy you don’t want him to pick it up.

Rhino: Christ! You’re tellin me I almost crushed some 12-year-olds skull all those years ago?

Spider-Man, regretting his quipping: I was not that young! Like just starting freshman year but-

Sandman, horrified as he’s the only one with a kid and dad instincts(as of my iteration): I could’ve killed a kid…

Shocker, genuinely curious: Are you even old enough to drink? Cruel to kill a man who ain’t had his first drink yet.

Electro: Please tell us you’re at least over 25 as of this fight. Hell, I’ll take over 21!

Spider-Man:….

Sandman, realizing just how young he really is: Oh my god.

Spider-Man: My birthday’s coming up soon so I guess it counts?

Doc Ock, exacerbated: It. Does. Not!

Vulture: What would your mother think if she knew her son was out here risking his life telling poorly constructed jokes?

Spider-Man, offended cause it quips slap: 1. My jokes are great 2. She and my dad are dead so-

Sandman, hysterical cause holy shit he almost killed a kid orphan: OH MY GOD!

[the-chamber-of-hoes]

Not pleased with the lack of new fics for my fav characters (hyper fixations) lately. The withdrawals are eating me alive

[densewentz]

The Duality of Dad

A silly little quickie thing because I'm going to the beach today and I'm obsessed with my boys

[skaikruswan]

Do you have a master list?

Hey :)

I assume you mean for the morpheus fics? No i don't, but you can find them all in one fic on ao3 or in this tag.

[rexwrendraws]

Saw a gifset of Morpheus and had the random thought that he'd make a fantastic children's picture book mouse character— and now I really, really want a fic where he appears in a kid's dream as a Kevin Henkes/Helen Craig/Beatrix Potter -esque mouse as to not scare them or something. I think it's something about Morpheus' usual mousey moue and big wet eyes that make it work in my head lolll Mousepheus!!

[fishfingersandscarves]

cries for 5 billion years about hounds by @xx-vergil-xx

[euzede]

(part 1)

"HeLLo HoBsIE."

"... Robin?"

"YeAh, y0U'vE bEeN CalLing mE tHaT... bUt tHaT's NoT mY NAmE. IF YoU wAnt, i CaN sHoW H1m to ¥oU..."

"N-no. Please, Del."

"SorRy."

"Is Dream here? Can I see him?"

"i SuPpOsE yOU c0uLd. YoU WOuLd. buT DReAm iS. aNGrY. fURIoUs. SaD. WoRr13D. sC4rEd."

[landwriter]

Hi! I hope you feel better soon!

This is a great prompt by @academicblorbo about Hob Gadling being the landlord of the Dead Boys. It has a wonderful fill already by @omgcinnamoncakes but I’d love to see what you come up with for it!

Alternative prompt from me if that doesn’t work for your brain: remember the date between Jenny and Maxine? How about one between Jenny and Esther? Poor Jenny is going to really question her taste in beautiful blonde women 😭

Thank you! I saw ‘landlord’ and ‘decades’ and blacked out. I love Hob having them as tenants. Maybe even before the modern day meeting in Sandman.

The Sandman/Dead Boy Detectives, 2.4k, G Dream/Hob, pre-slash, alternating/outsider POV, found family, a reunion and revelations etc.

---

Hob did not, strictly speaking, have tenants. It was more of a minor haunting. Pun intended.

The small room above the pub and below his flat wasn’t worth charging anyone rent for; when he first bought the building he had put a handsome oak desk in there and some bookshelves before wondering who he was possibly keeping up appearances for. Who was he going to take back upstairs that would stop and say, Wait, can I see your office? So he’d left it as more or less an abandoned room.

When he realized a pair of boys were using it as their clubhouse, he didn’t do anything at first. He saw them quietly coming and going a couple times, disappearing around the corner of the first landing. Brazen things. He meant to call after them, but the shout had died in his throat. He’d been young once. He still remembered the need to get away from it all. It was only when he went to check if they’d been making a mess of the room that he discovered it was still locked.

He’d crouched down and inspected the latch and found no marks at all. Huh, he’d said, and jiggled it again, and been a little more interested in whatever clever way they were getting into it after they disappeared up his stairs. Then he didn’t see them for weeks, and assumed they had gotten bored and stopped.

Until they came back. In the middle of an argument, striding through the pub like they owned it. Hob straightened up as they passed him.

“I cannot believe you broke the mirror.”

“I was in a rush! It’s not my fault you forgot you needed Arcana Incantatum after we arrived at the church. And found the demon.”

“I hardly forgot, I only made the mistake of assuming you would know to pack it by now.”

Hob raised his eyebrows. The boys disappeared into the back hallway. He followed them as they went upstairs, too preoccupied with their drama to notice Hob. They turned onto the landing, still carrying on. Even as they walked through the door. The locked, closed door.

Hob blinked. Then he drew his keys from his pocket and opened the door. The boys were still inside. One of them was pulling a mirror out of a backpack that was several times too small for it. They didn’t even look up, and Hob wondered how he couldn’t possibly have put it together earlier. He cleared his throat.

“Hello, boys.” That caught their attention. Hob grinned. “Seems we’re neighbours.”

---

Edwin abhorred getting involved with the living. He and Charles got along perfectly well on their own. They were a duo. An intrepid pair. Best mates, like Charles often stressed whenever he was about to ask something particularly ridiculous of Edwin. They were solid together. As solid as two ghost boys could be. The living, though, were messy and unpredictable.

Perhaps the most salient fact at present: Charles invariably became attached to them.

“He’s sad, mate. I can see it in his eyes.”

“You said those exact words in ‘94 about a dog. At least ask Hob himself.”

Before you decide to adopt him too.

Hob Gadling, irritatingly, was unobjectionable on every ground Edwin could think of. He had made no imposition upon them. When he found them, he only asked them their business, and then told them he was usually downstairs, or upstairs, if they needed anything they couldn’t procure themselves. He had an interest in rare and old books, as it happened. In explaining this, he had also hinted at being far older than his looks would suggest, which vexed Edwin twice over. He knew his curiosity would not be slaked until he talked to Hob, but then he would be the one getting involved with the living, and Charles would hardly let him forget it.

“Do you think he’s really immortal? Mate’s far too calm. Last week I saw him stop a fight downstairs by stepping right between these huge blokes. He just said something and smiled and they backed right off.” Charles lit up. “Do you reckon he’d teach me how to do that? Conflict de-escalation, innit? I could show him some moves with the cricket bat, I bet. Oh, do you think he’s a cricket fan?”

It was obviously a hopeless case, and since the Dead Boy Detectives never took on hopeless cases, there was only one course of action that remained. Edwin had long since disabused himself of the notion he needed to breathe. He had no beating heart, yet when he was startled, he would find himself clutching his chest. Now, he exhaled slowly through his nose in an entirely superfluous sigh of resignation. “Well, Charles, shall we go talk to him?”

---

When the millennium came around, Hob found himself celebrating it with his accidental tenants. There was something gloriously satisfying about being able to make a toast to the next one and have it taken seriously. He’d asked them if they had something better to do - spectral trouble to get into et cetera - and they both looked at him with almost identical put-upon and incredulous expressions.

Hob had a terrible suspicion they thought they were taking care of him as much as he thought he was taking care of them.

Edwin, with his insatiable curiosity and, deep underneath it, something Hob thought he recognized from himself: a sharp animal ferocity and a refusal to go until he’s good and done, natural laws be damned. Charles, still brightly, painfully alive for a ghost - who should be alive still, by all rights, but nothing of this life was fair - who joked to cover up hurt in a way Hob knew too, and glowed any time Hob turned so much as a kind word to him.

He wondered what they saw when they looked at him.

The year ticked over, and technology kept working. Charles grinned innocently and said he could probably possess the telly and break it that way if Hob wanted?

Hob’s heart twinged. He knew they weren’t his, not to keep, but it seemed that teenagers didn’t change at all over the centuries, even if the boys were only sort of teenagers in the way Hob was only sort of in his thirties. It didn’t change that they’d been punted from the mortal coil before having a chance to grow up, and figure out the kind of men they were, and make their own choices and fuck up and try to be better than their fathers, and everything everyone deserved. Hob had made more than his share of mistakes. They hadn’t been given the chance to make nearly any at all.

So they made toasts to the new millennium, to the detective agency, to themselves, all stuck out of time in different ways and refusing to move on for different reasons, and Hob allowed himself to think of Robyn and privately pretend that they were his all the same.

---

A week later, Hob was reminded of the other universal traits of teenagers when he mentioned his stranger and both boys began to grill him with terrifying alacrity. Before turning to his dating life, like ravening bloody wolves. When Edwin had asked, in a specifically nineteenth century manner that Hob remembered all too well, if Hob had always been unmarried, he’d nearly put his head in his hands.

“It can be hard for me to associate with the living too, you know. For obvious reasons.”

Charles had turned to Edwin and hissed “See? I told you.”

Right in front of him. Nobody had taught them manners.

“Manners, Charles,” replied Edwin loftily. “We will, of course, respect your privacy. A man is entitled to his secrets.”

“You’ll go upstairs and rifle through my personal things, is what you’ll do,” said Hob.

Charles coughed to hide his laugh. Edwin flushed and looked away. Hob snorted, and told them about Eleanor and Robyn. Properly. It was a strange relief. He’d told the story wrong for plausibility’s sake so many times he had been worried he’d forget the truth of it one day.

They had listened, and been remarkably quiet until Charles piped up and offered to set him up with a ‘really fit’ ghost. Hob had roundly shut that down. Woefully, not all explanations were satisfying enough. Charles cornered him again the next morning while he was cleaning the bar.

“No, mate, I still don’t get it.” Hob was about to say he no more wanted to be with someone who couldn’t feel pleasure from his touch than someone who would grow old and be taken from him while he stayed the same, when Charles went on, bafflingly, to ask, “Why don’t you meet your mysterious friend more often than once a century?”

Hob sighed. “Adults are often busy, Charles.” Nevermind that he had begun to wonder the same since the eighteenth century. He’d always just assumed time passed differently for his stranger.

Charles just laughed and perched himself on the bar top. “Ooh, low blow. We’re busy too, you know. Plenty of cases to solve.”

“Really,” said Hob. “You’re busy. Right now.”

Charles waggled his eyebrows.

“Charles, I am not a case,” said Hob, sternly as possible. “I’m not even a ghost. He’s not a ghost. No ghosts.”

“We could investigate. Maybe ghosts are involved. What even is he? Why every hundred years? Is it some sort of Persephone situation?”

Hob bit his lip against shouting I don’t know! I don’t know anything about him! Instead, he tried to smile, and felt it come out as a wince instead. “He’s very private.”

Charles scowled. “Yeah, obviously. You don’t even know his name. He can’t be that good of a friend if he’s too busy to see you more than once a century.”

Hob couldn’t see the expression on his own face, but he saw Charles’ shocked reaction well enough. It was so long ago for him, and still Hob knew at once what Charles saw now: that first time you manage to visibly hurt a grown-up’s feelings, people who seemed too old and too stern to actually feel pain, when you’d been going around kicking at them like a new foal, just to stretch your legs.

“Sorry,” said Charles, instant regret chasing his surprise. He was a good kid.

“It’s alright,” said Hob. He meant it. He looked down at the shining bartop. His hands were restless with the urge to light a cigarette. He gave in. It wasn’t like Charles would be dying of lung cancer any time soon if he decided to follow Hob’s example. “I don’t think he would say he’s very good at being a friend either. Truth is, I’d love to see him more often. But we had an awful fight the last time we met. If he forgives me, I’ll have to ask.”

“Mates always make up,” said Charles earnestly. He was such a good kid.

“I suppose they do.” Charles still looked sorry, and Hob clapped him on the shoulder. “Hey. Thanks for looking out for me, Charles.”

Charles beamed at him. “Always. We’ve got your back, me and Edwin.”

---

Charles couldn’t bloody believe it. Hob’s friend was here. There was nobody else it could be. He and Edwin were watching from a nearby table, pretending to be absorbed in their own conversation. Neither man noticed them. They were too busy looking at each other.

He couldn’t imagine spending more than a century apart from Edwin. The way Hob had talked about him and his stranger over the years, it sometimes seemed like they were best mates too, no matter how little they saw each other. He was dead sure that’s what had Hob looking so gutted when he thought nobody was looking. He had known they would make up, though. Maybe now Hob would be happier.

“Charles, we really ought not eavesdrop,” hissed Edwin. Right as he scooted his chair closer, the cheeky hypocrite. Hob and his friend were talking too quietly to properly hear, their heads bent together. Lots to catch up on, Charles reckoned. A hundred years. He couldn’t stop thinking about the number. It seemed impossible. Funny, he couldn’t imagine that long away from Edwin, but he could imagine spending that long being best mates. There was nobody he’d rather hide from Death with.

Hob’s face was doing something strange as his long-lost friend talked. Then Hob moved and grasped him by the shoulders, so tight that his knuckles stood out in relief. The man said something in low tones and Hob shook his head, and then pulled him in for a hug. The man stiffened and then relaxed, and his arms came up around Hob’s.

Their cheeks both looked wet.

Charles swallowed and it felt suddenly a little like he was choking. He should look away, only he couldn’t.

“They must be great friends,” said Edwin softly.

“Yeah,” he managed to croak. We won’t ever need to have a reunion like this because I’m never going to lose you, mate. I won’t let them take you. It was stuck behind the phantom lump in his phantom throat. His hand, without him telling it to, reached out and grabbed hold of Edwin’s. Edwin squeezed it hard, and Charles knew he didn’t have to make his voice work after all.

Then the man pushed Hob away, but only far enough to grab his face and pull him back again, thumbing over Hob’s cheeks, and beside him, Edwin honest-to-god gasped, and then Charles momentarily forgot how thoughts worked too.

---

It happens thus: in the New Inn, just next door to the White Horse, some 639 years after they first met, Hob Gadling and Dream of the Endless share their first kiss. Neither, if they had bothered to think about it, would have intended to have an audience, but it’s a well-known fact that some kisses cannot wait, and theirs was chief among them, being that it had so much to say, and was so very long overdue.

I missed you, it said, and I came back, it said, and Please don’t go away from me again, and I could not.

And atop them, like blankets, were laid invisible the daydreams of those who saw them, including two long-dead boys, whose dreams were woven from the fresh and unaccounted-for possibilities of Hob kissing his mysterious stranger. Another man, thought Edwin. His best friend, thought Charles. Dream was the only one who could have heeded this, but he did not, because Hob Gadling was holding him tight and daydreaming loudly of this kiss and more, of this today and tonight and tomorrow, ever greedy and ever easily pleased, and Dream could hear nothing at all over their clamouring and comingled joy; the bright gold daydream between the scant space of their bodies that sounded so much like at last.

[swanimagines]

MELODY OF THE NIGHT | MORPHEUS

Summary: You've been distancing yourself from Morpheus, because you know he's an Endless and can't be romantically involved with humans, but you can't bear being with him while knowing you can't have him. He comes over to your house and demands to know what's the matter. It ends unexpectedly.

It had been weeks. You had known it was forbidden for Endless to be romantically involved with mortals, but your stupid heart had still developed feelings for him. It had been too painful to endure, so you willed yourself not to visit The Dreaming anymore, and avoided Morpheus in your dreams as well - not that you actually had the power to do that, but Morpheus knew when someone didn't want him to appear so he didn't.

When your doorbell had rang, you had to admit that you hadn't expected who was on the other side of the door, even when it should have been obvious. Morpheus stood there, looking as gorgeous as always. Compared to you - messy hair, looking like you didn't sleep properly, in your t-shirt and sweatpants.

"Hi, um... sorry, I'm kind of busy here," you mumbled to him, not really even looking at him.

Morpheus sighed, clearly knowing it was a lie. "May I come in?"

It wasn't really a question, but you still nodded. He came into your apartment and closed the door behind himself. You tapped your tea mug nervously as you stood in front of him. You didn't know what to say to him, really. You were embarrassed, angry, and frustrated all at once. Your emotions made you feel out of control, which in turn only increased your frustration and your embarrassment.

"I do not understand why you will not talk to me," Morpheus said, his voice soft. He looked hurt, or maybe just disappointed.

His words hit you like a hammer. You took a deep breath. "Because I... I just... I can't visit you anymore."

He frowned. "Why?"

"I don't want to talk about it." you replied quickly. If you told him, you knew he'd sigh and explain what could happen. He would also say he doesn't love you back.

This time, Morpheus didn't press any further, but he did look upset. He stayed silent after that for several minutes. Eventually, he spoke again. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No!" you exclaimed. You shook your head, trying to get some of your thoughts together. "No, it's... it's me."

Morpheus moved closer to you. "Then why..."

"Just leave me alone," you snapped. "I told you I don't want to talk about it, and I mean it."

"But-" he started, but you cut him off.

"Dream, please, stop," you pleaded. "You've already caused enough trouble by showing up here. Just go away."

"I do not understand," he whispered. "What happened?"

"Nothing happened," you muttered. "And I can't let anything to happen, I can't control... just leave me alone."

Morpheus seemed truly confused now. He didn't seem angry, though, and he didn't argue. He just continued to stare at you, his expression unreadable. "You are one of the first humans I consider a friend. I need to know-"

Next thing you didn't even think about doing. Your feelings just rushed forward, spilling over and you grabbed his coat and tugged him close and pressed your lips against his.

Morpheus froze, just as you had expected and you pulled back before he had a chance to, breaking off the kiss. You stared into his eyes, panting slightly. "This is why I've been avoiding you," your voice broke mid-sentence, tears now cascading over your cheeks. "I know it's wrong, we can't be together."

"What?" Morpheus asked, bewildered.

"I love you," you admitted. It felt like the hardest sentence you ever uttered. "I can't keep it in, I just keep thinking about how I want to wake up with you, and I dream about you all the time, and I hate myself for feeling this way. I ruined our friendship the moment I developed those feelings for you, and I'm sorry, but I can't stop loving you, and I can't bear to see your disappointment in me."

Morpheus stared at you for a long moment, watching you sniffling in front of him, before you felt a hand sliding down your cheek and wiping away your tears. "Where did you hear we could not be together?" he asked, gently.

"I... I found it in a book. You had fallen in love with a woman named Nada and the Sun punished her for it."

Morpheus was quiet as he thought about that. "It is true," he then said. "But rules have changed since then. You are not allowed to rule The Dreaming with me or marry me until you are dead, but I am allowed to love you."

His words echoed in your head for a moment before you registered them, and looked up at him. "What?"

"I have loved you ever since we first met," he explained. "I cannot help it. I will never stop. Even if you stop talking to me, even if you stop visiting me, I will always love you. I needed to know if I can fix our friendship, but I did not know you feel the same way about me, and that is why you stopped visiting me."

You blinked at him, almost thinking this was a dream... or at least a daydream. But it felt too real to be one - and in dreams, you knew Morpheus would be controlling what he'd say."

"So you love me?" you asked hesitantly.

Morpheus nodded. "Yes. Yes, I do love you."

You stared at him for a few moments longer, unsure what to say, before you felt your lips growing into a wide smile. "Well, I love you too," you said, pressing another kiss on his lips, and this time, he returned it.

And on that moment, you knew it - this was going to work. Even though it was a risk to love him, you were willing to take it - because you believed he deserved your love more than anyone else in the world.

---

Requests are always open! FANDOM LIST | PROMPT LIST(S) | RULES (READ!!!)

[disc0bandit]

everyone go read the fic where dream keeps getting summoned into hob's living room cuz he has a vial of his sand there

[venomous-qwille]

eyo so I've been drawing these gitm guys a lot lately in magma, so here is a collection of them!!

[densewentz]

Take Your Kid to Work Day (with Dream's decidedly more alarming version of an artist rendering their kid's drawing)

[the-apocrypha]

Cottagecore Series DVD Bonus Features

By popular request: the deleted scenes of how Dream and Hob ended up confessing their respective Big Secrets to one another. Below the cut are a series of conversations that take place a few days after Dream announces his pregnancy with Orpheus, and they are incredibly angsty. They also heavily feature abortion as a conversation topic. These were originally written to intercut with at least two miracles but didn't end up working out due to tone issues, and also don't really work as a standalone fic, so. If you're interested--enjoy!

The possibility of a child—their child, their own, of them—had occasionally crossed Hob’s mind, in the same way that other fantastical things like dragons and public libraries did. Fleeting. Unformed. Simple, wonderful little daydreams. 

The reality of it was both impossibly more exciting and terrifying than he could have ever imagined. 

Hob thought of a beautiful child with tiny pointed ears and glowing amber eyes. He thought of a babe born to the world still and pale, never to draw a single breath of life. He thought of all the stories his mother used to tell him, the skipping games and the toy swords and songs that lived inside of him, waiting to be passed down to someone small and new. He thought of a fae child, enamored of the forest and magic and books of learning, with little use for its mortal father. 

Once, when Hob was young, his mother had been called to help an ewe who had been laboring for the better part of the day. Twin lambs, both trying to emerge at the same time.

They’d had mutton for dinner, that night. And for many nights after that. 

Hob could not stop thinking about it. About everything.

What if the child came out completely human. 

What if the child came out completely fae. 

“You told me once,” Hob said, the words leaving his mouth even as lead weights sank pits into his stomach, even as his heart said don’t ask this don’t ask this don’t do it, but he had to, he had to know. “You told me once. That it took you a very long time to grow up.” 

Dream paused. “Yes,” he said, at length. “But time in the realm of the fae is not so… linear as it is here. It is—it was subject to neither law nor order. Time was fickle. Changeable.” 

“You said that it was almost a hundred years.” 

“That was… a guess,” Dream said. 

Hob stared. 

“It was unusual,” Dream added. He did not meet Hob’s eyes. “It. It was a choice I made. The rest of my siblings came of age much faster than I.” 

“How fast?” Hob asked, heart in his throat. 

Dream swallowed. 

“How fast?” 

“The child is half mortal, Hob it should not—it will not age as a fae child would. It cannot, it—it will not have the same power, the same gifts, and moreover, the laws of this universe would not allow—” 

“Oh, you know that, do you?” Hob asked, eyebrows raised. “Like you knew that a mortal man couldn’t get you pregnant in the first place?” 

Dream flinched. 

Hob sighed, and scrubbed at his face. “I’m just. I’m just thinking. We don’t know what we’re going to get, eight months from now—” If they were going to get anything at all. “—and we’ve got zero precedent to go off of, here. It. It could be anything. It could grow like a human and take sixteen years and be done. But, it could also…” 

“It will not,” Dream said, but there was a traitorous wobble in his voice.

“It could,” Hob insisted. “It could, Dream, and we just. I just want to be prepared for that. I want you to be prepared for that.” 

Dream stared, like the whole world was crashing down around him. As if he had not considered this at all. “No.” 

“Yes.” 

“Hob—” 

“But, listen—listen, it’ll be okay,” Hob said hurriedly, and took Dream’s hands into his own. Put on the bravest face he could muster. “Whatever happens, it’ll be okay. I promise. I’ll be with you every step of the way, for. For as long as I can be. Even if it means being stuck in the terrible twos for an entire decade. You just might have to do the teenage years on your own, that’s all. And. You know. The thousand years that come after that.” 

Dream closed his eyes. 

Hob tried desperately to rally. “And, hey! The good news is, at least I won’t be around to give any dodgy sex talks when it comes time for that, since I obviously—” 

“Hob,” Dream said. 

“Though clearly pregnancy prevention isn’t your strong suit either,” Hob allowed. 

“Hob.” 

Dream’s eyes were open again, and they were full of tears. 

“Hob,” Dream said again, and it caught in his throat. “Hob, I—I am not going to live for another thousand years.” 

Hob frowned. “But—”

“I made,” Dream said, and with the next blink the tears spilled over, “a bargain.” 

The reason that Hob had kept it a secret for so long (was because he was a coward) was because, in his opinion, there had been no good that would come of the truth. 

Dream had assumed that the people of Eskham had turned against Hob for being a hedgewitch. He’d assumed in turn that mortals were prejudiced against any being with magic, which was a category that happened to include the fae but more importantly included Hob, who did not have the ability to summon tornadoes or fell ancient oaks. Dream still sweetly seethed about the injustices Hob’s own people had done upon him. He had yet to even once seem concerned for his own safety. 

This was fair. 

Dream had, after all, taken out an entire village of mortals in one wrothful fell swoop. 

Now, Dream had confessed what had happened in the aftermath of that massacre—what he had so readily sacrificed, to save Hob’s life—and it had been devastating in its own right. It had left Hob awake at night, imagining what it would be like to grow older and older and older, while his child did not. 

But it had also pulled on the string that unraveled whatever remained of their tapestried joy at the possibility of impending parenthood. The happiness was gone. The happiness should never have existed in the first place, because the ache of its absence was far worse than to have never known it at all. Hob could not believe he ever felt such simple, mindless elation at what had quickly become a question to which every answer was more horrifying than the last. 

Hob thought of a babe with perfectly pointed ears, stolen away in the night, drowned in the river. 

Hob thought of a child with huge, phosphorescent eyes, tied to a stake above a pile of dried tinder. Screaming.

Hob thought of black-nailed teenager who had had forty-odd years of childhood with its parents before they succumbed to old age, and left their child alone in a world it did not belong in. Orphaned. Ostracized. Hunted. 

It filled Hob’s stomach and left him unable to eat. It pressed down on his chest at night, and he could not sleep. 

And he knew what he needed to do. 

At the same table where Dream had confessed not three days ago, Hob sat himself heavily on the bench. 

Dream stared back wanly. He’d spent most of the morning vomiting copiously, which perhaps made this timing even worse, but Hob knew if he did not say it now he might never say it at all. 

“Dream,” Hob said carefully. The words stuck in his throat like glass, and they tore him open one by one as he forced them out. “There’s. The other day, when you told me about the bargain you made. I—there’s something that I should. Something I should have told you, before—something. Something.” He swallowed. “Something I. Something.” His nails dug into his palms. His heart was pounding in his ears. “Something—” 

“Hob.” 

Dream’s hand splayed across his chest is like ice on fire. Hob sucked in a breath, and relished the burn. 

He seized Dream’s hand in his own. Looked Dream in the eyes. Prepared to pull this one last thread of sanity for the person he loved more than anything in this world. 

“Something,” Hob said unevenly, holding onto Dream like a lifeline, “that I should have told you a long time ago. About. About Eskham.” 

Dream tilted his head, brows drawing together. “Eskham?” 

Hob nodded. 

“What about it?” Dream asked. 

He had no idea. He had no clue. 

“That day,” Hob said, and he was gripping Dream’s hand hard as if he could prevent the inevitable withdrawal. “When they came for me.” 

And Dream nodded. He reached out with his other hand to rest it on Hob’s forearm—a gesture meant as supportive that only served to make Hob’s stomach drop to new depths. 

But this was not about him. This was not even about Dream. It was about their child, carried one day into a town square with pitchforks at its throat and devil spawn in its ears. It was about deserved truths. 

“That day,” Hob said again. He swallowed against a dry tongue. Against the heart that was trying to escape through his throat. “That day. The mob. They weren’t looking for me.”

Dream stared. 

Hob’s heart was pounding so hard he thought he might be sick. 

He watched, as Dream’s face went from confusion, to realization, to—

Bloodless. 

Grey. Dead eyes and parted lips. Staring, but not seeing. 

“I—defended you,” Hob made himself say. “I wouldn’t tell them. Where you were. I told them that I loved you, that you were just as natural as any other creature in this realm and that I would rather die before I let any of them hurt you, and—” 

Dream yanked his hands back. 

Hob tried to hold on, but he wasn’t quick enough. Not strong enough. 

“You,” Dream whispered. 

“I don’t regret it,” Hob said frantically, almost angrily. He was losing control, the tidal wave of panic and horror sweeping him out to a roiling sea he could not swim in, and he barely knew which words would leave his mouth when he opened it again. “I haven’t regretted it for a single second, Dream, not once, not ever, I’d have burned on that stake a thousand times over before I let them touch you, I’d—” 

And Dream bolted. 

Hob leapt to his feet to follow—but his calf muscle seized, and he careened to the side and just barely managed to grab the table at the last second. Stood there, panting, gripping the table as his calf cramped hard enough to render the entire leg useless. Staring at the empty doorway. 

He deserved this, he supposed. 

It didn’t make it hurt any less. 

The summer air was thick and sweet beneath the canopy of the forest. The trees mostly blocked the breeze, but so also the warmth of the sun, which made it about as pleasant as any place was during the midday heat. They were sat at the base of an ancient yew tree that Dream favored, not far from the cottage, and had been for some time. Ravens chattered and rustled softly overhead. A large halo of bird shit was slowly accumulating around them. 

Dream inhaled as if to speak, for the third time in about as many minutes. This time, though, the words came. 

“I do not want. Our child. To be hunted.” 

Hob closed his eyes. “I know.” 

“We do not know what powers it will be born to. What features it will be born to.” 

Unspoken—the slimmest chance, the highest hope, that it would somehow be born wholly mortal. 

A mortal body. A mortal magic. A mortal lifespan. 

“We’ll do whatever we have to, to protect them. Whatever it takes. You know we will,” Hob said, and even as anxiety turned his stomach over, rage flared through him hot and fast. “Anyone that tries to lay a finger on our child, I’ll—I’ll kill ‘em. I would. Anyone. Everyone. And if they think I’m terrifying just wait until they meet the thirty-foot forest nightmare right behind me that can summon hail and rent the earth.” 

Dream swallowed. “Hail and earth. Did not save you.” 

Hob tightened his grip around Dream’s waist. “Yes it did.” 

“You—” 

“Yes it bloody well did. You saved my life that day, you fought, and if you hadn’t been there I—” 

“If I had not been there,” Dream interrupted darkly. He barked one harsh, bitter laugh. “If I had never inflicted myself upon you in the first place, then no mob would have ever come for you at all. You would be—” 

“Lonely,” Hob said. He tried desperately to keep the frustration from rising. “I told you. I would have been lonely, and bored, Dream, and I would have died in that house feeling as if I’d never truly lived at all. You are the best thing to ever happen to me.” 

“I nearly killed you,” Dream said. 

“You saved—”

“And now,” Dream continued, staring into the depths of the forest, “I have attempted to thrust a child upon you, without your consent. I have tried to sentence you to spending the rest of your meager years consumed in the care of a creature that will only suffer as a result of my own hubris—my own selfishness—and it will resent us. It will hate us. It will hate me, and it will be right to do so for—” 

“Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,” Hob said, scrambling around in front of Dream, and cupping his face. 

Dream stared determinedly to the side, with eyes that were red-rimmed and shiny. His breaths came uneven and jagged. 

“You and I both know that you didn’t get pregnant on purpose,” Hob said fiercely. “You didn’t know better. I didn’t know better. Right?” 

“Hob—” 

“This isn’t something that you’ve done to me. To us. Neither one of us is to blame here. Not one little bit. And it wouldn’t matter anyway if it was, because whatever happens, you know that we’re in this together. We’re going to do what we always do, and make it work. Figure it out. Pregnancy, childbirth, parenthood, all of it. Together. Yeah?” 

Dream set his jaw, and at last met Hob’s eyes. Slowly, he reached up, and pulled Hob’s hands away from his face. 

“You argue. That we are absolved of any guilt, for what strife our child may face in life. Because we held no intention of conception, in our couplings,” Dream said. 

“...Yes?” Hob said, eyebrows raising. “I don’t think we can be blamed for bringing a child into the world when we didn’t know it was possible in the first place.” 

“Incorrect,” Dream disagreed. 

Hob opened his mouth, but Dream continued too quickly. 

“Ignorance acquits us from blame in the conception of this child, yes.” Dream’s hand moved, in the periphery of Hob’s vision, delving into the folds of his robe. “But we are not without agency, in these early months of pregnancy.” 

Dread swung sudden and hard into Hob’s chest, like a fist. 

“...What do you mean?” 

Dream held out his hand between them, and uncurled his fingers. A cluster of flowers rested there. 

Tansy. 

“It sings to me of… release,” Dream said. His thumb brushed over golden petals like spikes. “Of choice. Liberty. Of the harmonization of poison and medicine, as one.”

Hob took in a deep breath, because he was, for the first time in days, hopeful. 

Hob was also terrified. 

Hob was sick, sick, sick, sick. 

“I believe,” Dream whispered, eyes boring in Hob’s, “that it would be enough. To—take care of it.” 

There was a cup of water on the table, steaming and yellow with tansy. 

Choice, Dream said it sang. Release. Liberty. The harmonization of poison and medicine, as one. 

But to Hob, it was silent as a grave. 

Dream was holding the cup so tightly his knuckles had gone white. The steam had long disappeared from the cup, leaving only a stagnant yellow tonic. Hob had offered to leave the cottage twice and allow Dream some privacy, and on the second time Dream had grabbed his hand, hard, and he hadn’t let go since. 

Hob’s fingers ached where they were threaded through Dream’s, but he did not complain. 

He sat in silence, and watched Dream raise the cup to his mouth. 

Watched him inhale. 

Watched him close his eyes. 

Watched him press the rim of the cup to his lips. 

Watched as Dream froze, and was perfectly still for an eternity save for the tremble of the cup in his grasp—

And the cup slammed down onto the table, sloshing poison everywhere, and Dream gasped, “I cannot. I cannot, forgive me, Hob, I—” 

Hob grabbed him and pulled him in hard. “It’s okay—” 

“—I cannot do it, I cannot—” 

“—you don’t have to—” 

“I should,” Dream snarled, gripping the fabric of Hob’s tunic and pushing back. There were tears streaming down his face. “I should end it, I should be rid of it. It is. It is the only humane option, the only option that guarantees that—that—” 

“I know, love,” Hob said miserably, his own throat going tight and hot. “I know that. But—” 

“Hob,” Dream choked out. He tried to inhale, but could not. “Hob, I can—hear it.” 

Hob’s heart skipped a beat, and his mouth went numb. “Y-you—” 

“I can—” Dream slapped his hands over his mouth. He stared at Hob in horror. 

Dream, who could hear the songs of river stones and the herbs in the garden. Who communed with foxes and ancient oak trees alike. Who had come to Hob with news of this pregnancy but without explanation as to how he knew. 

“You can hear it,” Hob repeated blankly. 

“I should not have told you,” Dream said, shaking his head. His eyes were blank and unseeing and wet with tears. “I. I should not have told you, I told myself I would not, I—it should not matter. It does not matter.” 

“What does it sound like?” Hob asked. 

Dream looked up at him. His mouth opened, but no words came out. 

“Dream, what does it sound like?” 

He shouldn’t ask. 

He couldn’t not know. 

“Like. A songbird,” Dream whispered. 

A songbird. 

“The most beautiful—” Dream choked on a sob. “The most beautiful songbird, Hob, the most wonderful songbird in the world.” 

And Hob. Hob, quite abruptly, could not imagine a world where he did not one day get to hear that song. He could not imagine a world in which he did not get to hold their child in his arms this winter and instantly fall in love with whatever features the world had seen fit to give them, mortal or fae or some splendid combination of both. 

He could not imagine what it would be like, for Dream to sit at this table and drink down poison and then listen to the song of their child go silent. 

Dream sobbed in his arms. He begged for forgiveness—from Hob. Their future child. The universe. I have failed, he said, over and over again. Selfish, and weak, and worthless, he named himself, and he would not be consoled with any combination or repetition of words Hob had to offer. 

But still, the tansy sat untouched. 

Eventually, it went out the window. 

And the songbird lived another day.

[rexwrendraws]

[AO3 LINK] 🪸 My illustration for Hell or High Water by @teejaystumbles for @the-centennial-husbands-bigbang !! I was super, super excited to illustrate for this fic, check it out for some very cool Little-Mermaid-meets-Innsmouth Dreamling vibes 🌊 :D

[fishfingersandscarves]

i'm excited to show dream's board book for To Be Brand New by @dsudis for @the-centennial-husbands-bigbang (dream's helm lenses are made with reflective paper! so irl you can look at yourself on the page)

link to the high rez illustrations

[mayhemspreadingguy]

I did these illustrations for @beholdingthegaytimes 's fic 'It's Only Forever, Not Long At All' which is a part of The Endless Big Bang 2023.