Hob stood in a nest of woven shadows, so dark it was almost frightening. For a moment, he wondered if he had misjudged the nature of this dream- and then cool arms wrapped around his shoulders from behind, soft lips pressed to the side of his throat. A kiss that wandered across his skin until it found his ear, his temple, his cheek.
The darkness was soft under his skin as he lay back upon it. His companion crouched above him, skin glowing with a light all its own- and in that light Hob realized that it was not skin, but rather a sheen of delicate scales. Their edges shone like an oil spill, a million tiny iridescent rainbows.
"Oh, you're beautiful," Hob breathed, and his friend smiled that quiet, toothless smile that betrayed when he was pleased.
"This is your idea," Hob was reminded. "Your dream."
Then the stranger bent his fine neck and blew, lips pursed, a stream of golden fire across Hob's skin. It brought warmth with no pain, licking up his spine and across his fingers like a cat's tongue.
"And here be dragons, Hob Gadling."
Hob parted his legs with a shiver, an invitation to come inside. The stranger took it, the fine scales on his face turning the edges of his smile sharp; vast, silken bat's wings unfurled from his back to cover them both where they lay, bodies rocking slickly together in the dark.
Wings again. Hob knew he must really have them- they appeared too often not to be true.
~
The steadily rising sun seemed to bother Dream. In its light he twitched and thrashed, covering his eyes with the back of his hand. Hob, dutifully, tried blacking out the windows in the bedroom by layering the curtains with a dusty carpet, and that helped a little. But Hob wondered if what really bothered him was that all London was awake. So many people bustling about now, not thinking of his kingdom in the slightest.
Dream's cold fever continued to burn, and he showed no inclination towards leaving the bed. Hob could only guess this meant he still felt too weak to stand, but didn't ask for clarification. No sense in poking the bear.
Hob had taken to patting the silvery dew from Dream's skin with a cloth dampened in hot water, as a nurse might do for a feverish patient. The first time he'd tried he'd been given an acicular look from the god, but he was passed being scared away by haughty glares, and Dream hadn't protested out loud anyway. Perhaps Hob would have felt better, had he done so. Had his limbs shown any sign of steadying their constant tremor. As it was, everything felt too precarious.
"Can I get you anything from the shops?" Hob asked around noon, after Dream had rejected a ham toastie and another cup of tea. "Some kind of herb, or…I don't know, a crystal?"
Hob thought he knew the way to a shop of oddities from his flat- not the kind of place he had ever taken to visiting, but maybe they sold more than scam, if one knew what to ask for. Dream's upper lip curled, the very faintest of sneers.
"You would cure me with children's magic?"
"I would cure you," Hob said simply.
The sneer dropped, turning contemplative, and Hob found himself fixed for a moment under those dark eyes. Strange, how he hadn't noticed it before- just how very deep those irises seemed to go, like Hob was looking down into some endless well, or a mineshaft struck all the way through the world. All the way through the universe.
"Do you know what's wrong?" Hob asked him, and Dream looked away, laying the back of his hand across his eyes again. "I mean- have you ever gotten sick like this before?"
Dream didn't answer at first, and so Hob assumed that meant he wouldn't answer at all, an aspect of conversation with this entity he was rather resigned to- but then, with a shuddering breath, Dream surprised him.
"I think…the binding circle had a curse."
Hob felt something within him chill. He thought back to the night before- how long ago it felt now!- and the golden lines he had scratched away with the guard's baton. How the paint had sparked under his touch. How the pattern had resembled a mouthful of jagged teeth.
"Look."
Dream had pulled back the covers and now he was undoing the jewelled buttons on the coat Hob had stolen for him, the movements slow for the shaking of his long fingers. The undoing of each fastening revealed a little more of that pure-white, inhumanly smooth skin- until suddenly, it didn't.
Dream peeled the coat back to reveal his bare chest, and Hob couldn't help the little gasp that escaped him. There was a darkness on Dream- inside him, just under the skin, like a pool of squid's ink. Like a poisoning of the veins. A splatter-pattern that began at a point just below his ribs and sprayed across his taut stomach, up onto his breast. Hob could see it stirring. A malignant, living thing. It must have grown there when the sun rose- when the natural environment of the night-creature waned.
"Christ," he said. "Does that hurt?"
Dream did not answer him.
(Yes.)
"You should have said something," Hob murmured, though of course, he was saying something now. Dream's head cocked on the pillowcase, watching him. Hob's own hand reached out without his really intending it to. The room had suddenly taken on an odd charge, like the air just before a distant lighting strike.
Dream's skin was soft to the touch, almost impossibly so, the way a child might imagine a cloud to feel- but the cold was there, a cold that sucked the warmth from Hob's own fingertips, and when they brushed over the mark of the curse he felt something under the skin shift- felt it bubble. Dread scuttled down his spine like a beetle.
So could he be blamed, when his fingers began to roam elsewhere?
Away from the curse Dream was still cold, but not so unbearably so- closer to how he usually was, how Hob remembered him. All those dreams. They had taught him a thing or two.
Hob's palm smoothed over the taut muscles of Dream's belly, and he was rewarded with the very tiniest sound. A sigh that would have been a moan, coming from anyone else. Hob dared look up- Dream's eyes were half-lidded, his fingers curled against his own temple, head resting imperiously on the pillow. A contented, feline indolence.
"...does that help?" Hob asked under his breath, his hand traveling lower still, finding the point of one sharp hipbone just beneath the blanket.
Dream's lips parted, but he did not speak. Hob felt not unlike a Spanish bullfighter, waving his red flag in the ring. Pushing to see just how far he could go.
Hob bent, and pressed a kiss to Dream's fair skin, right over the heart. Or at least, where the heart should have been, on a man- of course, Hob didn't know if he had one.
Cold fingers carded through his hair, slightly sharp nails brushing against his scalp. Hob felt a smile of his own growing against that white skin, and he absorbed it into another kiss, this time to the strict line of a collarbone. Again, at the base of that long throat. His hand and mouth were traveling away from each other, searching for opposite extremities, stroking down the thigh and kissing the line of the nerve that made Dream shudder-
-a sudden, loud clattering at the window. Hob jumped with a swear, his heart stuttering in his chest. Something scrabbled on the glass.
"Your Majesty!"
"Jessamy," breathed Dream, and he reached out for the carpet, flinching as the darkness peeled back to blinding mid-afternoon light. Hob knelt over the bed to help him, hoisting the window up so Jessamy could fly inside, and she landed on the pillow by Dream's head, her beak nibbling his exposed ear in loving greeting.
"How does my kingdom fare?"
Hob settled himself back on the bed to listen, his mind maturely resigned to a postponement of the activities- though it would perhaps take the warmth in his groin a little longer to settle down.
"It's- it's fine," Jessamy said, and even Hob heard the little note of uncertainty in her voice. "It's well. News is spreading of your return, sire, and the dreams and nightmares are assembling in expectation."
"But?"
"But- well- it's nothing to be concerned with, really."
Dream stroked Jessamy's head with one finger, waiting. Unconvinced, Hob could tell by the sour set of his lips.
"It's just- with your absence- well. You are the heart of the Dreaming. Without you, there has been some…decay."
A pause.
"And some of your subjects are yet to return. From other worlds, that is."
She spoke these last words in a little rush, as though ashamed. Dream blinked slowly, considering. Hob's eyes found themselves catching on the silvery sheen of his skin, where it was lit by the sun it looked like diamonds- and the inky blackness on his still-bare chest pulsed, clearly hungry to spread.
"I knew that latter truth already," Dream murmured. "And the decay…will be rectified upon my return."
He sounded confident enough that Hob believed him.
"Find them for me," Dream commanded Jessamy, and she hopped back to the windowsill at once, perfectly attentive. "The recalcitrant nightmares. Report their whereabouts- but do not let yourself be seen."
"Yes, your Majesty. And- forgive me- what will you do?"
Dream looked down at the stain on his skin and placed one white hand across it, a furrow in his brow.
"I will rid myself of this curse."
The white-breasted raven bowed, and then she took flight, vanished as quickly as she had come.
In her absence Dream turned away from the light, and Hob hurried to pull the curtains closed again. In the electric semi-dark that remained, Dream did not look nearly so imperious, so effortless. There was an ill sheen to his beautiful skin. Hob realized that his tremor had stopped in Jessamy's presence- but now it was back again, and a touch more violent than before. Dream's eyes, clouded and angry, stared out at nothing.
"Hey," Hob murmured, and he put a hand to Dream's bare shoulder. "It's gonna be alright. You'll fix your kingdom…show them all what's what."
Won't you? Hob didn't want to even imagine the possibility of a world where he didn't, a world where this was too much for him. Hob had lost plenty over the centuries- friends, lovers, children, wives- but to lose this creature- his one constant- that would be- no, he wouldn't think of it.
"It's humiliating," Dream mumbled bitterly into the pillow. "for one of the Endless to be so weakened."
"Mm-hmm," Hob hummed soothingly, and then he heard the words. "...the Endless?"
Dream stilled suspiciously, and Hob knew without a doubt that he was debating whether or not to elaborate.
Come on, baby. I think I'm owed that much, by now.
"My kind," Dream replied at length. "My family."
"Oh," said Hob, and he found himself surprised. Dream had always seemed such a solitary entity- the only thing of his nature that Hob had ever encountered. He realized that, in all the centuries of speculation, he hadn't ever considered that Dream might have something so domestic as relatives.
"Are they, like, the other Greek gods?" 'Morpheus', after all. Hob knew he was pushing it with the questions but, well.
Dream shrugged his fine shoulder dismissively.
"Humans have all kinds of names and categories for us," he said. "Morpheus…Thanatos…"
"Thanatos?"
Dream smiled a secretive, almost sly little smile.
"My elder sister. You are of her making, you know."
No, he did not.
"It's been a while since I've studied the classics," Hob told him. "Remind me?"
"You might call her the Grim Reaper."
"Oh."
(Jesus bloody Christ.)
"She has spared you her gift."
"Why?"
Nevermind 'what', he could guess that, nevermind 'how', it didn't matter. But 'why' - that was probably the most important thing in the world. The question every man wished they could ask their God.
(And is that not what he was?)
Dream pressed his face into the pillow, his eyes sliding closed, the stars turned off for once. How easy it was to forget, with that frail figure curled in his bed, just how unimaginably inhuman this thing was.
"I think…to teach me a lesson."
The words escaped on the softest of sighs.
Hob ran his hand down Dream's back, feeling the chill of him, the silk, the raised ridges of all his fine, hollow bones. Six hundred years, with no promise of ever stopping. And why- not because of who he was, or what he had done. Not because he was special, because his life had some great meaning. Because of some sibling spat between inconceivable, omnipotent, eldritch gods. Surely, it could have been anyone- Hob had just been in the right place at the right time. Just like any other human.
…
What a bloody relief.
Hob almost laughed with it- the release of that burden he had been carrying in his chest.
"Hob."
"Yeah?"
"I need a knife. One with a blade of pure silver."
"Alright," Hob said, and he bent to press a kiss to the top of Dream's head. "I'll get one for you."
~
Hob stood upon a bank of red sand by a slow-moving, glittering river. Buried in the silt were the bones of the drowned, skulls and ribs and spines, so old now they had long crystallized into jewels of every sort: diamonds, amethysts, emeralds.
Lounging on a flat rock in the middle of the river was his friend, and Hob knew him to be an underwater creature this time- a nixie or naiad, skin shimmering wet, pale from a sunless keep. Beautiful, and inhuman, and dangerous. Wonder and fear.
(Dreams and nightmares.)
"Come," he said, beckoning Hob across the water, and he had no need for siren song- Hob followed him without question. Would always follow him, wherever he was asked to go.
The water was pleasantly cool, and Hob found he did not swim through it but rather walked, his movements made slow and luxurious by the pull of the waves.
"Are you going to drown me?" he murmured against the naiad's lips when the first kiss fell apart. His companion hummed, considering this, and he stretched his bare figure across the stone like a commanding cat, the sight pouring heat down Hob's spine.
"Perhaps," he replied. "One of these nights."
And he pushed Hob's shoulders effortlessly beneath the water, a river as deep and dark as an ocean.
Cool lips met his, long legs wrapped around his waist; a pleasure that was slow-blooming and fierce. Hob clung to him, for it would be so easy for him to slip away in the water…too easy, for Hob to accidentally let go…
And that was the last thing he wanted.
~
When Hob returned to the apartment the sun was just beginning to make its decline in the western sky. He had needed to go to a few shops to find a blade of 'pure silver'- plenty of strange looks he had gotten, insisting that a coating or alloy would not suffice. He was fairly certain that the occult-looking thing wrapped up in his jacket would do, though. The unpleasant, knowing look the old woman in the store had given him had reassured him of the knife's purpose.
Inside, things were not as he had left them- to Hob's surprise Dream was on his feet, wearing only one of Hob's white sheets like a robe. He had pushed some furniture out of the way to leave a space of blank wood on the floor and he paced across it, pouring what looked like the last of Hob's brandy from its decanter into organized drops and streaks.
"...what's all this, then?"
"Magic," Dream said, in the same tone with which an aristocrat might describe performing a kitchen boy's chores. "Done and undone with the same methods."
"I have your knife."
"Good."
Dream held out a shaking hand, and Hob handed him the blade, hilt-first. The air smelled of alcohol fumes and rain. Hob took off his jacket and folded it over the back of a nearby chair.
"What can I do?"
Dream didn't answer at first, looking carefully around at his work; a pattern of liquid on the boards, the meaning of which Hob could not decipher. Then he placed the decanter on the table and stepped into the center of the space he had cleared, the knife still held loosely in one hand.
"Light the circle."
Dream gestured to a matchbox on the table.
Hob opened his mouth- old wooden building, downtown London, third floor- and then ultimately closed it. Worse things, he reminded himself; far worse things.
Dream watched him officiously as he knelt, striking the match head against the strip to create a small fire. Another light to be dwarfed by the stars in his lover's eyes.
"Are you sure?"
"...yes."
That had to be good enough.
Hob dropped the match into one streak of alcohol and stepped back in a rush as the entire circle caught fire. Clearly, whatever mix he had lit wasn't just brandy, for the flames that had sprung forth were blue- and they stayed burning in the pattern Dream had drawn for them, not spreading out in search of more fuel. The sight was still startling but, even as Hob leaned away from the fire, he did not feel any heat- nor came there the crackling sound of burning wood. No, this fire was silent, and it seemed to burn on nothing.
Magic. Well then.
"What's next?" Hob asked with some mix of eagerness and trepidation, but Dream did not answer. He inspected the fire for a moment with his head cocked, still frowning, the look of someone putting off an unpleasant act. When it seemed he could not find any fault in the burning circle, he raised the knife.
"Wait-"
Hob saw in the angle of the blade what he was going to do, and all the blood in his body seemed to freeze; but he was far too slow. Too slow to even reach the edge of the circle before Dream plunged the knife into his own chest.
It sank therein to the hilt.
"Dream!"
Hob hovered at the edge of the fire, unsure if he should leap across it or not- rationally, he knew if he broke the spell the consequences could likely be worse, but irrationally his lover had just stabbed himself with no warning, and Hob was still bound by the fear of losing him.
…but Dream did not seem to be in pain. His brow was furrowed in concentration as he dragged the knife down, cutting a steady line along his breastbone from which there poured no blood. When it was done he unsheathed the knife from his flesh and raised his opposite hand over the wound, his fingers curled to claws. His lips were moving, murmuring words Hob could not understand.
And then he saw it. In the slit of the wound the blackness was moving- twitching and wriggling like a trapped eel. Slowly Dream pulled his hand away through the air over the wound and the curse was dragged out with it, kicking and screaming like any dying thing.
The process seemed to take forever, with how Hob's heart beat hard and iron-hot in the back of his throat. He watched the unclean thing clinging to Dream, tendrils sucking desperately on the bloodless edges of the wound- in the back of his mind he swore for a moment he heard it, a high-pitched and anguished animal shriek.
Then suddenly the last of it gave way, and in its momentum the curse flew from Dream to the edge of the circle, where it was caught by a tendril of blue fire. In that instant, like a wildcat pouncing, the entire circle collapsed, all the fire rushing towards the thing on the floor. It burned blue-white and writhing, and Dream knelt, striking the bundle through its core with the silver knife.
The fire was extinguished. Hob had to blink a few times to clear his eyes, and when he had he saw that the blade was clean, stabbing nothing but his wooden floor. The curse- or whatever it had been- was gone.
Hob rushed to Dream's side, Dream who still knelt over the blade, the white sheet trailing out behind him like a cape.
"Dream, oh my God! Are you okay?"
Hob's hand found that thin chest, looking for the wound- but there was nothing save fair, undamaged skin.
Dream was watching him, an amused smile tugging at the edges of his lips. The trembling had abated, Hob observed- and the coolness of his skin felt more natural than it had before. Felt more like it was supposed to, that was.
"Oh, bloody hell," Hob said with a great sigh, falling back on his heels. "You should have warned me."
"Hmm."
Then Dream leaned in, closing the distance between them, and kissed Hob on the mouth.
It was chaste, a tender bird's peck. Hob wondered if it might mean 'thank you'. He didn't quite have time to process the gesture- or to return it- before Dream was rising again, his hand held out in offer. Hob took it, and with surprising strength Dream helped Hob to his feet.
"Okay. That was- that. How do you feel? Are you- are you better now?"
"Perhaps," Dream murmured vaguely. "...but I am not myself again, not yet."
"Yeah, probably not," Hob said. "You need to recover from that, yeah?"
Wound or not, the act had been violent. Dream was watching Hob with that lofty amusement again, which Hob didn't think was deserved; he'd just bloody stabbed himself, and an hour before that he'd been too weak to get anywhere without Hob carrying him.
"I need to retrieve my tools."
Whatever that was supposed to mean.
"Shouldn't you take a rest, first?"
"Rest," echoed Dream, and he entwined Hob's warm fingers in his own cool ones. "Yes, the sun has set."
Dream turned to him, the lights in his eyes flickering with something Hob couldn't name. His heart stuttered. With the way Dream smirked, perhaps he had felt it. Soft lips found the shell of his ear, a sigh breathed there. A cool breeze that brought with it the promise of spring.
"Come to bed, Hob Gadling."
Hob's tongue was tied in his mouth like a teenage boy's, but he did as he was told. Dream would have made an excellent fairy, or vampire, for so effortless was this seduction, for how helpless Hob felt before it.
Hob was undressed under cool hands and the sheet fell uselessly away, and when he leaned in to kiss Dream made no objection. These kisses, too, were tender, and Hob was marveling at how it felt- here, for the first time, in the waking world- to have this breathtaking thing in his arms…
They fell into the bed- perhaps Dream pushed him, for it was Hob's head that ended up on the pillow. Dream looked down at him, dark hair brushing his forehead, and from this distance Hob could almost see constellations in those pale eyes.
"What do you want?"
Hob would probably give him anything.
"Sleep," Dream whispered, a command that came from everywhere. "Sleep, and dream of power, my love."
A glimmer of something silver in the corners of his eyes- the scent of the faraway desert. Sand.
"I will come and take it from you."
~
Hob stood at the heart of the earth. Here it was, the furnace, the core of the planet, and each of its beats lasted a century. Here was the wellspring for all life, the place from which the world-blood flowed.
"It's amazing," Hob said to the black-furred wolf that lay by his side, though he couldn't have said if the beast understood him. "I am so lucky."
Overgrown claws clicked on stone. The wolf rose, all its bones apparent under its thin pelt, and it took a few steps towards the fire.
"Be careful," Hob told it. "Don't forget I love you."
The wolf looked back at him, and Hob extended a hand, the palm of which it licked once.
Then it turned to the fire, and tipped back its head to howl.
~
When Hob woke it was gradually, and without any pain. He became aware slowly of the mattress beneath him, the press of the pillowcase on his cheek. A window must have been opened, for he could smell fresh air, and hear the shifting of the curtains.
Hob reached out across the bed, expecting to brush against something silken and cold. His hand only found more mattress, and more mattress, and then the hard interruption of the plaster wall.
Hob opened his eyes. He was alone.
The watch he had left on his bedside table told him it was nearly ten in the morning, and suppressed sounds of the city outside told him it was Sunday; so, no days had passed him by unwittingly. He had slept a normal night's sleep.
Hob sat for a moment in the sunlight, rubbing at the stubble on his cheek. Then, deciding there was nothing for it, he rose and fixed himself breakfast.
The flat was just as he remembered it- which was to say all the furniture was back where it belonged, undisturbed by black-magic rituals. His clothes were folded on the chair where he usually kept them, and the brandy decanter was full once again. It was as though everything he remembered had been…well.
Had been nothing but a dream.
(Though he knew now that dreams were not 'nothing', not by any stretch of the imagination.)
After tea Hob pulled back the carpet in the living room, searching the floor with his fingers.
"Ha."
There was a nick in the wood- a sliver of it cut away, where a knife had been rammed.
"Forgot this, you cheeky bastard."
But the moment of triumph was short-lived. Another lover might have left a note, some promise of return; with Dream there was nothing.
He'd be back, Hob told himself, a reassurance he didn't quite believe. He'd be back.
(Wouldn't he?)
Dream made no appearance that day, which did not concern Hob much. The afternoon was mild and sunny, a weather he didn't think Dream liked; and everyone was awake, anyway. Hob had plenty to busy his time with. When evening came he returned to the flat and tried to do something other than pace around from room to room, waiting for the shadows to transfigure themselves into a familiar shape.
On the second day Hob found himself watching the rooftops as he attended to his affairs, trying to catch the flash of a white breast. There were plenty of crows, and once he did see a raven, but when he raised his hand to it in greeting it only flew away. Either it had been instructed to ignore him, or- much more likely- that particular bird wasn't under the king's command.
That night, Hob went to bed early, and as he fell asleep he spun all his thoughts around Dream; he did not know how to control where he went when he slept, but surely the call would be recognized. Recognized, if not acknowledged. But when Hob woke the next morning it was to the frustrated realization that he had dreamt of nothing.
On the third night, Hob reminded himself sternly that Dream was probably very busy, repairing the 'decay' or whatever Jessamy had said. Perhaps things weren't going so smoothly. Dream probably didn't have time to drop in on a human- and it had only been a few days, anyway.
On the fourth night, Hob grew frustrated, and went down to the pub instead of waiting. He had saved the god from a pretty sour predicament, might he say so himself, and that was all he got? He didn't even know if Dream was well- or if he had overexerted himself following that exorcism (for lack of a better term) and now lay in a ditch somewhere, too weak to move. How was Hob to know if Dream still needed help?
On the fifth day, Hob drove out to the manor of Roderick Burgess, thinking vaguely that he might find something there. What, exactly- a 'clue' like in some detective novel? Or Dream himself, standing in the wreckage and relishing in his malicious work? Perhaps. When he arrived, however, the place was swarming with Scotland Yard, and a few of the detectives seemed a little too interested in his car for him to stick around.
On the sixth night, Hob poured himself a generous glass of the brandy and wondered bleakly if he was going to have to wait until 1989. There was no doubt that a creature like Dream would approach 'time' in a manner different to humans- he certainly approached relationships in a manner different to humans. And Hob, damn him, had no way of telling him so.
On the seventh night- one week to the day since Hob had freed Dream from the cage- he returned to his apartment, and this time, it was different. This time, it was not empty.
Hob knew this even before he set foot within. The door was ajar, the knob twisted out of its setting; obviously it had been opened by force. Whoever had done it clearly hadn't known how to pick a lock properly- or if they had, they hadn't cared enough to do so.
Hob looked at the door for a moment, frowning. Then he stepped inside.
Crime wasn't exactly rare in this part of town, he thought as he crossed the threshold, eyes watching the darkness. It could be- and likely was- just a regular break-in; perhaps the thief was gone already. Dream would not need to do something so brutish to get in. No, it couldn't be Dream.
The light in the kitchen was on.
Hob approached slowly, rolling up his sleeves in case there was need for fisticuffs; the fearlessness of a soldier who could not die. He did not hear the rummaging he might expect from a petty thief looking for silverware. What he did hear was the clink of a glass, placed down upon the table.
Hob stepped into the room.
"Oh, hello there," said the stranger.
He was a man- an American, as was instantly apparent from his manner of speaking. Tall, young, well-dressed, blonde. Sitting at Hob's kitchen table with a glass of brandy and his decanter, as comfortable as if he owned the place.
He was probably very handsome, but it was hard to say; though the light was dim, he wore a pair of fashionable black-out sunglasses that hid his eyes completely.
"Good evening," Hob answered, and he leaned against the kitchen door frame, looking the other man up and down in bemusement. "What are you doing in my flat?"
No point in dodging around it, he figured. The stranger smiled charmingly, revealing a set of white, perfectly straight teeth, and he gestured to the second chair at the table, where Hob now saw a second glass had been placed. Hob just raised his eyebrows.
"I wanted to talk," said the stranger. "Forgive me for…overestimating your hospitality."
"And what would we have to talk about?" Hob asked, smiling back in spite of himself. He had the feeling he was staring down a wolf in the woods- best not to show any fear. "I've never seen you before in my life."
"No," the stranger agreed, and he took another sip of Hob's brandy. "But we have a friend in common."
"A 'friend'?"
That could only possibly be one person. Or one not-person, Hob supposed.
"Something like that," said the stranger, and for a moment his smile lost its control, and took on the quality of a razorblade. "Now, I'm here because I think he cares about you."
A pause; Hob wasn't going to answer that one way or the other. The stranger licked his upper teeth and Hob felt a chill run down his spine.
"Well, as much as he cares about anyone- which I assure you, is very little. Perhaps it would be better to say, you matter for some reason."
The stranger suddenly stood, his movements betraying a graceful athleticism, and Hob had to restrain himself from flinching. The other man was a good deal taller than he was- possibly stronger, too. At least Hob would have experience on his side, should it come to a fight.
(...wouldn't he?)
"So I was wondering what he might do," the stranger continued, his voice taking on a mocking swing as measured, predator's steps brought him closer across the kitchen floor. "What he might agree to…in exchange for you."
He had a knife in his pocket, Hob saw the shape of the handle, saw the stranger's fingers reaching for it, as casual as could be. Hob took a step back, sucking in a breath. Something about this felt wrong. The way the stranger's head blocked out the light from the overhead lamp- Hob had fought his way out of worse situations than one man with a weapon, hell, Hob couldn't die, and yet- and yet something about this was frightening in a way he didn't think he'd ever been frightened before, not in real life. Instinctual terror, rabbit-and-wolf- like he was defenceless- like the most that Hob could do was back away, wait until his back found a wall and then he was done for.
The stranger's knife gleamed, well-polished under the electric light, and Hob's stomach churned with dread.
He should run, or at least raise his fists, look for a weapon of his own- but all his limbs felt oddly numb, and it was almost too much already just to swallow the terror rising in his throat.
It was getting closer, that broad grin, that sharp knife, the stranger was almost upon him-
-why couldn't he do anything, why was he frozen like this-
-trapped, as though in a nightmare-!
"CORINTHIAN."
A clawed hand curled into the fair hair on the stranger's head and yanked his neck back, pulling him to the floor. The knife fell from his hands, but Hob was barely watching. He was transfixed by the arrival of this new horror: a monster had appeared.
It was an abomination made of roiling shadows, all black distortion and cutting, killing edges. A mass of limbs tangled together, animal and human; Hob spotted a hooked talon, a bat's thrashing wing, a raven's tail feathers. Bones and scythes and devil's horns, twisting and mutating, writhing in pure, unmistakable fury. The American cried out, scrabbling like a child in an attempt to free himself but the beast dragged him away, back to the kitchen like he was weightless. All the lights in the flat were flickering, surging, and even the shadows that had been ordinary before were made wild, taking on monstrous faces that jeered and snarled, bent out of shape and into demons unrecognizable.
"My Lord- please-!"
On shaking legs Hob made his way back to the kitchen door. Inside, the shape of the monster had settled some, and Hob recognized it now.
Dream- but no, this clearly wasn't 'Dream'.
Nightmare held the blonde man in the air by the throat, lips peeled back from venomous white fangs, so long they nearly touched his bloodless lower gums. His cloak was made of feathers and blades, sharp enough to cut air, and all the shadows in the room danced around him in wicked ecstacy.
"YOU HAVE DEFIED ME."
"No- please- your Majesty-"
The stranger kicked at nothing, his fingers clutching and twisting at Nightmare's arm, but the hold that clawed hand had on him was unrelinquishable.
"YOU CONSORTED WITH MY CAPTORS."
"Don't take me- don't- please, I can do better, please, mercy-"
The sunglasses fell from his face and Hob saw for the first time that what he kept behind there were not eyes but rather mouths, the lips slack and spittled, the teeth gnashing and chattering in fear.
"Your make has too many flaws," hissed Nightmare in the voice of a serpent, bending his arm to effortlessly bring the other creature closer to his own glistening fangs. "I will unmake you now."
"No- no- NO-!"
And then he began to dissolve, burning to ash from the inside out and flaking away. Powerless. A destruction that could not be fought against. Dust replaced skin, then muscle, then bone- all that was left were the three sets of teeth, hovering in the air- and then those were gone, too.
A moment was all it took- and then Nightmare's grip was empty.
The shadows began to settle in the aftermath, slowly- and a touch reluctantly- retreating to their proper stations. Nightmare looked at the space where the other thing had been, and then something in him seemed to soften, too; the cloak was just a cloak now, shadow-black and silky, pooling on the floor as opposed to cutting gashes through it. All the other limbs and faces had tucked themselves away under it, and the silhouette of the figure shrunk until the edges that remained were only the familiar ones.
"Dream," said Hob hoarsely, and Dream turned to him, his hand slowly relaxing the death-grip he'd had on the air. "You…hey, you got your ruby back."
Stupidly, Hob gestured to the red crystal on Dream's chest, but the other being did not look at it in turn. He seemed to be studying Hob very closely, cold eyes flickering up and down, a scrutiny that appeared clinical.
"Are you hurt?" he asked after a moment.
"No," Hob answered. "Scared shitless, though."
And with that declaration he sat in the seat he had been offered earlier, and took a swig of the brandy straight from the decanter.
Dream stayed where he was, still watching Hob with an almost uncomfortable closeness, but Hob didn't really have the wits to care.
"That guy- I guess you knew him?"
"The Corinthian. A rogue nightmare."
"Ah, yeah," Hob said mindlessly, and slowly Dream moved over to the table, resting on it white hands that still, Hob observed, had on them the vestiges of hooked black claws. "D'you know what he was going to do to me?"
"..."
"Dream?"
"...pluck out your eyes and eat them."
"Oh, my God."
Hob took another swig of the brandy, and willed his own trembling to stop.
"Well, thanks for saving me."
Dream looked up at him, surprised.
"You're welcome."
A quiet fell between them that was not uncomfortable- at least, not for Hob. Dream was sitting at the very edge of the seat the Corinthian had vacated, his pale fingertips tracing some pattern on the table's surface. Hob took the moment to engage in a surreptitious examination of his own: Dream certainly looked better than he had when he'd been lying, sickened, in Hob's bed, but he did not seem wholly well, either. His skin had a certain sallowness to it, the bones too close to the surface. His eyes, when they met Hob's, were ringed with black and purple shadows. Immortal, sure, powerful, for certain- but fragile, also. Fleeting, also. Something to be treasured, not taken for granted.
(Just like any dream.)
"I don't want to see you only once a century in the waking world," Hob said. "Not anymore. I'd like some of this to be on my terms, love."
Dream looked at him, his expression shuttered and wary, and his hands stilled in their spellcraft motions across the tabletop. Hob waited- he had long learned patience, when it came to this one.
"Your life…" Dream began slowly, "...should be free, Hob Gadling. You are not bound to any force. You can choose your own path."
Hob considered this for a moment. He understood what Dream meant- and so he really did think.
"Alright," he concluded. "That's true. And I'm choosing you."
He grinned, and put a hand out over Dream's own, catching that cool palm in his.
"So come around, yeah? After work, or- if you ever need help. I'd love to grab a pint."
Dream entwined their fingers, there was that tiny smile again, the expression Hob now recognized as fond.
"Perhaps."
Hob chortled at that, and kissed him. He felt Dream sigh in contentment, a cool little wind passing by his cheek.
So that was that, then.