#griombrioch

[griombrioch]

7.

7.  Post a snippet from a WIP

From the Hob-whumping oneshot that I might one day, eventually, possibly finish😅

----

“You were attacked in your sleep,” Dream supplies and his voice betrays none of the judgement Hob is expecting. Out of sheer politeness, he’s sure. Though Hob has never exactly known Dream to be polite in even the most lenient of terms. “Often.”

It isn’t about nightmares or not sleeping well. It’s about the vulnerability of being asleep. The fear of waking up in an unfamiliar situation, to uninvited hands on him, to pain. He opens his mouth to elaborate, maybe, but his throat dries up at the thought of having to recount what it was like.

He shudders.

“Yeah,” Hob gives an awkward, empty chuckle to try and dislodge the discomfort in his chest. He’s lived a long time. A couple years with some sadistic lowlife is nothing in the grand-scheme of things. “Anyway, like I said, it’s nothin’, Dream.”

“You did not tell me,” he says, “When I returned from Hell and asked you about the last century. You omitted this.”

“Dream, I-” Hob pauses, trying to think about how to word this without risking scaring Dream away or offending him. “You had just told me that you’d been in a cage for over a century. How could I possibly complain about anything? It was a couple years. Love, I’m fine-”

“Stop.”

“What?”

“I said stop.” A cool hand is suddenly tugging on his jaw. When Hob turns his head, Dream is no longer across the table from him, but knelt on the ground next to his chair. The King of Dreams, looking up at Hob-fucking-Gadling like he deserves it. “Stop pretending like your pain does not matter. Least of all to me.”

Hob swears he isn’t imagining the soothing swipe of his thumb against his cheek.

“I dislike anyone being refused access to my realm. But you…you are mine, Hob Gadling. Anyone who takes that right from you is committing a personal attack against me.”

“He’s long dead now, dove.” Hob gives a weak smile and raises his hand to cover Dream’s. “I’m afraid there’s no one to enact your revenge on.”

“A shame. I suppose I must let my sister know, then.”

This man is ridiculous. “Dream-” Hob starts, exasperation and maybe a little bit of fondness seeping into his voice. But honestly - who has he ever dated who was willing to torment some poor sod beyond the grave?

“Come,” Dream murmurs and rises to his feet with all the gracefulness of…well, an Endless. “Let me tend to your sleep.”

Hob doesn’t fight him. He lets Morpheus pull him up and stumbling to his feet. The stress of his worries has all but dissipated now that Dream is here. He knows that he wouldn’t let anyone hurt him.

Of course, he knows that anyway. Intrinsically. The idea of anything else seems laughable. But that isn’t quite how this shit works. He’s learned enough of that in his six hundred-something years on this earth. In watching his fellow soldiers cower against their sheets weeks and months and years after they’ve been brought out of the trenches.

[film-in-my-soul]

Dark | 1,369 | softestpunk / @softest-punk

Summary: Hob wakes to the sensation of being watched by the darkness in his bedroom. He loves it when Dream gets weird.

Werewolf Boyfriends; The Care and Keeping Of | 3,298 | softestpunk / @softest-punk

Summary: There are many benefits, Dream reflects during the full moon, to the keeping of a werewolf for a boyfriend.

Intemperate | 4,402 | cuubism / @cuubism

Summary: Was it like this for humans all the time? Dream wondered. This heavy anticipation in his chest, the bodily attention verging on pain? He hadn’t known it was possible to be so intently aware of another person, but there it was, Hob Hob Hob in the pounding heart he didn’t need, a compulsion that wasn’t intellectual or even particularly romantic, but rather a strained desperation that could only be soothed by touch.

Dust on Trial | 4,655 | Griombrioch

Summary: “And..” Hob pauses, “this was good for you? It’s what you wanted?” Dream closes his eyes and sighs out a breath he doesn’t need, if only to make another attempt at dislodging the rock in his chest. He knew what would happen when he approached his previous lover. He knew their nature, and he’d done it anyway. This is his fault. He just wishes the hole inside of him would fill. He despises feeling so hollow. “Oh,” Hob breathes then, as if understanding some complex problem that Dream himself cannot see, and the frown deepens. “Oh, you’re in a bad drop, aren’t you, love?”

all together now | 5,182 | Moorishflower / @moorishflower

Summary: "You know I do not require this of you," his lover says, and Hob swallows again. This time Dream doesn't even need to look; his eyes are still trained on Hob's throat. "Is it not so that human lovers keep aspects of themselves...apart from their relationships?" "Hiding a thing for obscure fetish pornography isn't quite the same as keeping an entire part of your personality locked up," Hob says kindly.

Please see below for more recommendations!

Handy | 5,612 | softestpunk / @softest-punk

Summary: Dream answers the door one beautiful September afternoon to a man so attractive he can barely keep it together long enough to get his sink fixed. Several weeks later, he runs into the same man in a lecture hall.

and oil for the light | 6,387 | Moorishflower / @moorishflower

Summary: Matthew eyes him with blatant disrespect. "You're one of those," he says. "One of those monsterfucker people. Gets off on tentacles and shit." "Tentacles," Hob says, affronted. "There's never been any tentacles." "Have you asked?"

how longingly | 7,333 | cuubism / @cuubism

Summary: Hob's fingers slip a little higher, just under the sleeve of his coat. He is still wearing his coat, yes, why is that? He feels very warm. "Could find out?" "Are you suggesting I should find some man to bed me?" "Some man," Hob repeats, jaw working. His gaze is hovering somewhere around Dream's collar. "Some man who knows what he's doing, yeah."

I Wanna Hold Your Hand | 7,535 | Moorishflower / @moorishflower

Summary: Hands are such a human thing, Hob thinks. To make, and shape, and create. The elegance of thumbs. Fashioned by thousands of years of slow and careful evolution for the sole purpose of holding. He wants to hold Dream. To rub their fingers together, that singularly human grasp, to push their palms flat, and their chests close, and he's not sure if he wants to hug his friend or cry on his shoulder, because he should have been there. He should have known.

with both hands | 8,596 | Moorishflower / @moorishflower

Summary: Hob whistles, low and impressed, and makes one more turn to admire the extremely obvious handprint on his right arsecheek.

Licking the Spoon | 8,636 | Dira Sudis (dsudis) / @dsudis

Summary: "I have spoons in my flat," Hob added, feeling a little reckless with the surge of probably-unneeded adrenaline. "Loads of spoons." His friend raised his eyebrows at that, and jerked his hand away from the spoon on the table, but he didn't follow it by walking out, so Hob hadn't gone too far.

Ecdysis | 8,647 | Moorishflower / @moorishflower

Summary: The manner in which an animal routinely casts off a part of its body (often, but not always, an outer layer or covering), either at specific times of the year, or at specific points in its life cycle. The door swings open, and Hob looks up, as automatic as a blink or a breath. He’s not expecting anything. It’s been three months and four days, six hours and thirty-nine minutes, and all he had been told was more than once a century. Dream is standing in the doorway. He looks like hell.

Relief | 8,753 | softestpunk / @softest-punk

Summary: "Your daydreams," Dream pronounces, standing there with his hands in his coat pockets, looking Hob's body up and down like it's a fascinating puzzle. "Are exceptionally loud." Oops.

Fell In Love With a Pisces Moon | 10,651 | LikeMmmCookies

Summary: Dream visits Hob 33 years late, but then he keeps coming back and Hob doesn't know exactly why. He finds Dream isn't the same man he once knew, but he's still in love all the same.

just find the feeling, pass it on | 10,784 | ThirtySixSaveFiles / @thirtysixsavefiles

Summary: There is a new temple in London. This is not so unusual. Dream has been…away, as his sister says, for over a century. Even had he not been, he does not map the Waking so thoroughly as to always see these things when they start. Places of love, of devotion, spring up from time to time. He leaves them be; they are not, generally speaking, his business. What is unusual is that this one is shaped like a pub, and it is very much his business. Dream contemplates The New Inn as he approaches.

Scenes from a University AU the Author Did Not Intend to Write | 10,880 | softestpunk / @softest-punk

Summary: Dream and Hob, throughout their time at university together, dancing around one another until something finally gives.

by the minute | 11,267 | issylra / @issylra

Summary: "Why don't you tell me your name?" "Hob." Quite possibly the worst fake name Dream has encountered thus far. There's another pause. "I mean. Not Hob." A punched out breath. "Fuck." "You don't know your name?" "Of course I know my name. But I'm not sure you're supposed to know my name."

Consummation | 11,462 | Moorishflower / @moorishflower

Summary: Cōnsummāre, To perfect, to consummate. Cōnsūmere, To devour, to take wholly or completely. Turns out, shoving all of your repressed desires into a box lined with teeth will spectacularly backfire when eventually you have to open the box up again. Or, Hob Gadling demonstrates his ability to code switch and Dream goes off the rails a bit.

Saint Morpheus | 11,882 | landwriter / @landwriter

Summary: “Kneel,” said Dream. Hob knelt before him. Dream pressed his own thumb to his lips and wet it. He took Hob’s chin in the other hand and tilted his face up. “Some do this with ash. To acknowledge death. Mortality. It would not befit you,” he said, and smudged his wet thumb in a sign upon Hob’s forehead. “Now you wear my mark,” he said. “I have always worn your mark, my Lord,” said Hob. “Then remember you are mine and to me you shall return,” Dream said.

Wolf and I | 12,054 | Moorishflower / @moorishflower

Summary: "Shuck," the beast says. "How quickly the memories of men fade! I am no paltry devil, little red. I am the son of the great wolf Night herself, first and foremost among stories! I am older than the seas and the forests! I am..." "Beautiful," Hob breathes. Hob Gadling, hunter for King Richard, is called to fell the wolf that has decimated the deer of Cannock Chase. He finds more than he bargained for waiting for him in the woods.

On sexual dimorphism in C. urophasianus | 13,177 | Moorishflower / @moorishflower

Summary: "I must court you," Dream pronounces, and Hob drags his attention away from the flowers. Grimaces slightly. "You don't have to," he says. "This will only last a week or two, and then we can go back to being, you know. Normal boyfriends who aren't being driven insane by the urge to put every shiny object in the flat in the bloody bed with me."

Once Upon a Time | 14,055 | softestpunk / @softest-punk

Summary: Hob knows the point of storytime at the library is to give parents an hour’s break and maybe a chance to grab a coffee with some other parents at the library café and enjoy the company of other adults for a little while, but when the moment comes to leave Robyn, he can’t face it. Robyn’s all he has left in the world and he really doesn’t want a break, he wants to keep him in his bloody pocket always. But he needs time to be with other kids, away from his hovering wreck of a dad, and so Hob decides on a mature, reasonable solution. He hides behind one of the bookshelves. Which is why the first he ever knows of Dream is his voice.

Midnight in Bloom | 14,389 | CeruleanHeart

Summary: A peculiar species of flowers is spreading in the Dreaming, maddening its residents and threatening to overtake the realm. When Morpheus himself falls under their spell his only option is to confront all the desires for an old friend he’s had long buried within his heart before his own passion can consume him.

Bloodhound | 15,712 | Moorishflower / @moorishflower

Summary: It's a square gem in an antique gold setting, real antique gold, with the sort of dullness to the metal that tells its age. There's nothing particularly ornate about it. The ruby itself is a simple cut – he’s not a jeweller, doesn’t know what to call it precisely, but it’s square-ish and bevelled at the edges – but it catches the light in such a way that it makes it seem like it has a thousand facets all across the surface of it. The rain creates a stippled effect, and even through two separate panes of glass Hob can see his reflection peering back at himself through the ruby’s deep face. £2500, says a placard set in front of it. Early 1900s RUBY pendant - real!!!

in the absence of memory | 16,089 | softestpunk / @softest-punk

Summary: A freak accident renders Hob unable to remember the beautiful man who strides into his hospital room and declares himself his husband. But oh, does he want to. He knows he's loved this man for centuries, that nothing could make him forget. The best he can do is tell him that, and wait. Meanwhile, Dream of the Endless experiences being Hob Gadling's beloved spouse, without any of their past hanging between them, and agonises over the realisation that Hob could have loved him if only he'd been better.

an allowance of pleasure | 16,860 | softestpunk / @softest-punk

Summary: Even a being as powerful as the Lord of Dreams may have things to learn. Even a human as insignificant as Hob Gadling may have things to teach. Luckily for Dream, Hob's supplies of tea, biscuits, and patience are bottomless.

New Stranger | 20,709 | softestpunk / @softest-punk

Summary: It’s been three months since Hob Gadling attended the funeral of his oldest friend when he walks into the basement café of a bookshop on Tottenham Court Road and sees him behind the counter.

Shelter | 23,345 | softestpunk / @softest-punk

Summary: 1924. Roderick Burgess' continued attempts to control Dream result in a shattered cage, eternal sleep, and one very human, very cold, very hungry, very naked, VERY angry Endless. Several days later, Captain Robert Gadling opens his front door, and said very human Endless falls into his arms.

The Knight of Cups | 25,720 | softestpunk / @softest-punk

Summary: Hob had fought Lucifer, as Dream’s champion, with his bare hands, rushing in where angels would fear to tread, heedless of anything but the desire to protect.

spilled ink and daffodils | 31,625 | issylra / @issylra

Summary: "I love your tattoos," Hob mimics, in an overly lovestruck tone of voice. He bats his eyelashes for good measure. "Do you have more? Can you show me? It's totally okay if you have to take off your clothes, by the way. I just want to appreciate the artistry." Dream fixes him with what is probably supposed to be a blank stare, but Hob can see the way he's biting back a smile. "Are you done?" "Painting for the day? Yes. Teasing you? No, probably not."

By the Laws of Magic | 32,125 | Lenore

Summary: It’s 1959, and Hob Gadling is working at a London auction house, amazing his colleagues with his uncanny knowledge of art and artifacts from the 14th century on. When he gets the assignment to catalogue a family library at a place called Fawney Rig, he looks forward to a working vacation in the country. What he finds is a house with a preternatural chill where odd disturbances happen daily, an ornate carved door with a secret clearly hidden behind it, and visions of his mysterious stranger every time he turns around.

You're the One I Need | 39,086 | Moorishflower / @moorishflower

Summary: "Uh-oh," Delirium says. Dream studies the car, the white smoke billowing out from beneath the bonnet, listening to the alarming clunking noise that the engine is making. On his hip, Orpheus, unusually solemn child that he is, gazes soulfully at the car. "Caw boken," he declares.

A Man of Good Fortune | 43,308 | softestpunk / @softest-punk

Summary: Captain Robert Gadling, a man with a fortune of a hundred and twenty thousand pounds in war prizes, needs a well-bred omega to fulfil his ambition of styling himself a gentleman. Dream d'Endless, a penniless divorced omega with an ancient name, requires an alpha to provide for his son, Orpheus. Their purely practical marriage seems like the best solution for everyone. If only either of them were inclined towards practicality.

grist for the mill | 56,226 | jamais_vu0

Summary: The rumor that Hob Gadling, the human who tricked Death herself into granting him immortality, has finally decided he's lived long enough and consented to die is sweeping through the supernatural community like wildfire. It even spreads to the Dreaming, where Dream handles it about as well as could be expected. It is, to say the least, a bit of a shock to Hob Gadling himself, who is still very much alive- and increasingly in need of rescue.

On Broken Wings | 57,191 | Konstadt / @blueberrymffn

Summary: Hob Gadling has seen the same man sitting still like a statue every day for a week and looking terribly upset, all he really wants is a peaceful lunch break but he can't bring himself to ignore someone in need - especially a very gorgeous someone who looks like they're on the verge of a breakdown. A chance meeting becomes far more, and gives Morpheus a means to heal.

The Uses of Adversity | 65,825 | MonstrousRegiment

Summary: What led Hob Gadling — at the time known as Robert Stranger, because he’d been in a permanent state of pettiness from 1889 to about 1904 and now he was stuck with it — to the dank, cold, and dark basement of the Burgess house on March of 1957 was not so much coincidence or fate as it was curiosity. Yeah. Cats isn’t the only thing it kills.

My Stranger, My Dream | 67,154 | SigniorBenedickofPadua / @signiorbenedickofpadua

Summary: Hob has been around death. Living in London throughout multiple plague outbreaks and fires, as well as making a living soldiering and dabbling in banditry, will do that to you. What he doesn't know is that Death has been around Hob as well. He has no idea that when his Stranger left him that night in 1389 after their first meeting, the woman who came up to him, laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “Good luck, friend,” was Death incarnate. Hob doesn’t know that he is one of few things in this world that has been Touched by Death and lived. Had he known this, he might not have been as confused as he is when his body slams into the floor of a dim, candle-lit cellar and he finds himself surrounded by hooded figures and a gold circle on the floor. That is all he manages to perceive before everything goes blurry and consciousness slips away from him again. Here in the Darkness.

Music When You Speak | 72,075 | The_KickIt_Domain / @ml-nolan

Summary: "I should have asked you earlier, but I don't suppose you'll still be in town tomorrow?" Hob says. "It'd be lovely to see you again." The man truly looks regretful as he says, "We won't." It was worth a shot. They hardly know each other. There's no reason for the sick film of disappointment settling over him. "Ah, well. I'm happy to have met you anyway," Hob says, subdued. "Are you doing anything right now?"

If I Please You | 112,103 | Moorishflower / @moorishflower

Summary: “I’ll guard you for a night,” Hob says, “and say I please you, you can either pay me for a day’s work, or keep me on ‘til you reach where you’re going.” “Do you know the way to Canterbury?” the lord asks, and Hob nods. “Oh, yes. It’s a few days’ ride, not more than three or four, by my memory.” “Then you shall have three days to please me, Robert Gadling.”

would you let me know?/ I could make some time if you wanted | 150,934 | BeatnikFreak / @beatnikfreakiswriting

Summary: Dr Hob Gadling's been assigned a new colleague to co-teach his second year class, Dr Dream Oneiros, who is both utterly beautiful and completely unable to act like, y'know, a human being. But Hob's nothing if not indefatigable, especially when faced with a fascinating man who probably needs to talk about his feelings more, and who listens to every stupid thing he says like it's the most profound poetry.

Master Reclist · Personal Masterlist · Blog Nav.

[meadowziplines]

#IFD2024 Feedback Fest: 10 Gen Sandman Fic Recs

10 Dreamling Fic Recs // 10 Gen Sandman Fic Recs // 10 Femslash Sandman Fic Recs // 10 Fic Recs For Other Fandoms

I have not provided additional cw’s beyond what is in the summary; please check work tags before reading.

I didn’t tend to include authors whose works are already quite popular. Also, it was hard picking these and I love many more fics! And feel free to tag in authors whose Tumblr handles I don’t know.

(G-T)

[G] when only dreams remain by Karalyn/@karalynlovescake (507): Dream has always been drawn to stories, and the stories of the humans whose lives his sister touches compel him.

[G] Readings by lookninjas (995): Rose Walker spends the month before her first book reading (her first reading as a published author of her own book that is being published because she is about to be a published author which she is not freaking out about at all, she’s fine) giving readings in her dreams.

[G] one for sorrow by Morcai (1.2k): And that’s the problem, of course. He cannot focus because there is something wrong. Something, somewhere is wrong. Out of place. Disjointed. He can feel it, like an itch in his teeth, like a whine just barely on the edge of hearing, like any one of ten thousand sensations that dreamers have felt over the eons that are not unbearable, but will not allow peace.

[G] Basement Dreams by ramenlover (509): Jed Walker's past attacks him each night. Luckily he knows someone who can help.

(This whole 'Uncle Dream' series is excellent.)

[G] You Have but Slumbered Here by Eighty_Sixed (36k): Morpheus begins visiting Hob Gadling's dreams. Meanwhile, a growing darkness threatens the Dreaming.

[T] Red Flags and Butterflies by Griombrioch (2.2k): “Rose Walker,” Dream murmurs, announcing his presence. He steps across the carpet and kneels down in front of Rose. This woman who’d stared him down and given her consent to die by his hand. This child who had been forced into all of this because of his sibling. And himself, inadvertently.

The collateral damage from the petty fights of deities.

Twenty one years old.

“You are a child of the Endless. You do not belong on the ground.”

___

Or, the one where I write my need for Rose getting to work through trauma and Dream caring a whole lot about it.

[T] larks and katydids by mightybee4 (8.5k): He was a dream, a story, every fantasy and idea created in the universe. He was the abstraction of ideas, the clarity of thought. His body was formed from dreams made flesh, his appearance ever-changing; but in the circle of runes and glass, his body was no longer dream-stuff.

He was made of skin and bone, nerves and muscles, and he was sure if he dug his nails or his teeth into the soft flesh of his arms he would bleed; not like Despair, whose shedding of her blood was of her purpose, but like any animal ushered into a slaughterhouse, blood pooling indiscriminate and useless, indistinguishable from any others.

or: Dream under the conditions of absolute reality.

(M)

[M] descent by jamais_vu0 (4.5k): once he is done fussing with the raven that flew into his face, roderick burgess looks down at his new prize and feels his breath catch- for the first time, he understands the scope of what he is doing, feels the fragility of the divine cupped in his careless hands.

death should have black wings, he thinks, absurdly clear in the moment- but they are black, with a green shine like an oil slick, each feather tipped in pale gold. a starling’s wings, but vast enough to lift a man in flight, unfolded on the floor behind his prize, pressing up against the very inner edge of the circle. he stares, imprints the gold lacing onto his vision, stars in an aurora-painted sky, and aches with all the things he is not.

(dream of the endless has wings, and is made to suffer for this.)

[M] The Lady, Or The Tiger by jamais_vu0 (4.9k): “Dream of the Endless,” Roderick sneers, and taps the handle of his cane on the glass. Dream of the Endless blinks once, out of sync, but otherwise doesn’t respond. There is something terribly inhuman about him, something Ethel can’t define but recognizes on the same level of awareness that knows there is something lurking behind her in the dark.

They keep a tiger in the basement, in a cage of glass and willpower, she thinks to herself, and follows Roderick back upstairs and does not sleep at all that night.

(or, ethel cripps gets sick of roderick's shit and instead of stealing from him and running away, she frees dream from his cage)

[M] lilacs out of the dead land by tharkuun (7k): Dream of the Endless escaped the Burgess manor after driving every soul within it mad, but it cost him his own sense of self. Now free, he feels too much, he is too much, and he seeks out any way he can to bleed his excesses off and become a person again.

Or: Local Eldritch monster tries to become a person again: the fic.

[gabessquishytum]

Do you by any chance know the fic i'm looking for?

Dream goes to hell to get fucked by Luciefer. After he's having a bad drop. So he visites Hob for help.

It is very smutty, but i can't for the live of me find it again. :)

Sounds like a lot like you could be looking for Dust on Trial by Griombrioch!

Definitely a great fic, thank you for bringing it up!

[wordsinhaled]

so i read Dust on Trial by @griombrioch last night and am once again having an entire gentle dom hob situation over here

[roleplay-today]

22 year old literate writer here. Would actually die of happiness if I could find someone to write a Yusuf/Joe against my Nicoló in an Old Guard rp. I'm a big angst person. Smut is chill - although I'd prefer it not to be the main focal point. Would prefer a partner 20+ but absolutely must be 18+. My discord is griombrioch#8475. Feel free to reach out!

[griombrioch]

Hi hi! Loved the soft dom Hob hours - I saw you mentioned putting it on ao3 if you had liked it better, so I was wondering- what is your ao3 handle, if you don’t mind sharing it?

Oh I'm so glad you liked it! I'm working on a real soft dom hob piece (because I simply have brainrot now) that I will actually post to ao3 soonlike.

Here's my ao3! My handle is griombrioch, if the link decides to not work. I really need to pin a post with it or something so people can properly find my stuff lmao.