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cuubism · 2 months

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I got myself emotionally invested in this retired dream chronic pain universe. Part 3 -- technically more like part 1, since it takes place before.

It's not raining in the waking world, but Dream's hair stays plastered to his forehead, and water drips down his bare shoulders. It's one of the last things he's brought with him from the Dreaming, the remnants of the cold, pounding rain.

Dream is wet, and freezing, the slide of each drop of water across his skin like ice, but the waking world is warm. It's summer, a hot one, he remembers--he was here just a few weeks ago, so the sticky, warm night should come as no surprise. But he feels it more vividly, the heavy air, and the darkness his eyes can't track as well as they once could.

He's human, now. He thinks.

He stumbles on new legs, half-blind, across the dark road, crashes into the front door of the New Inn with none of grace he usually expects of his body. He nearly falls, but grabs hold of the door handle to support himself just in time. It doesn't fall open. It's-- the New Inn is dark, the door locked. Of course, it's the middle of the night, the pub is long closed, but no matter how reasonable this may be, Dream whimpers, the sound catching low and raw in his throat.

He's in too much pain to feel embarrassed about it, never mind that there's no one there to hear it but the insects and rats and other things that come out at night when humans are asleep and dreaming. He can't sense their minds anymore, but they must be out there, still. It would be a welcome distraction to feel them, but instead he's left with only his own mind's silence, and the pains that make up this new personhood.

This new body hurts. His joints ache. His muscles protest. The weak light of the streetlamps sears his eyes, his ears feel as though they might pop, there's blood in his mouth from where he'd bitten his tongue on his journey back to the living, he needs it to stop, he needs it all to stop. He should have just taken Death's hand and been done with it.

He didn't because he had overestimated his willingness to leave Hob. He had thought he'd made his peace with it, until he'd been faced with the final choice.

He still needs to see Hob.

He can't just appear in Hob's home anymore. He can't just will this door to dream of openness and unlock itself. He has to find his own way in before this body gives out on itself and leaves him slumped in the unprotected doorway.

He twists and jabs his elbow, hard, breaking a pane of the door's glass, reaches in and, ignoring the way the glass scrapes his arm, the way it cuts and bleeds when it wouldn't have before, unlocks the door from the inside. Hob will forgive him, he thinks. He's forgiven Dream worse than a little broken glass.

Once inside, he lets out a cautious breath that almost tastes like relief. But he can't stop and consider it for long. Water, he thinks. He needs-- this new body needs-- water. He doesn't fully understand the signals, yet. But he doesn't think he can make it up the stairs to Hob's flat, not without at least-- at least-- something to drink, some rest.

He limps across the floor, careful to avoid treading on the glass with his bare feet. Eventually he makes it to the bar, collapsing against it, and makes his slow way around the bar top, leaning heavily on the wood, head swimming. Are human bodies meant to be this feeble, or is it only Dream? Is he simply too new? Too tired?

The bar has a tap Hob's poured him water from before, but Dream's mind is such a swirling mess of thoughts and sensations that he can't grasp what he's meant to be doing. And then he can't grasp anything at all, legs giving out underneath him and forcing him to slide down to the floor or else fall over completely. Would it be too humiliating to crawl up the stairs to Hob's flat? he wonders, panting for breath. Does he have any dignity left?

The door at the base of the stairs creaks open as Dream is trying to decide, a sliver of light from the stairwell spilling across the floor. "You've got one chance to leave peacefully!" Hob's voice calls out to what he must assume is a burglar broken into the inn. Hob, Dream thinks with a sigh, tipping his head back against the bar, but he can't catch his breath well enough to speak aloud.

Hob swings around the bar, dropping the bat he'd brought once he sees him. "Dream!"

Dream whimpers at the sight of him, feeling far more pathetic about the sound now that Hob is here, but he is so tired and everything hurts and Hob is silhouetted by the stairwell light like an angel. Dream has met real angels but only now does he truly grasp the appeal of the imagery.

"Hey," Hob breathes, crouching before him. His voice is so gentle. "Hey, love, what's-- Christ, are you hurt?"

"Water," Dream says, voice cracking, searching Hob's face with bleary eyes. "Please."

Hob immediately pours him a glass from the tap Dream hadn't been able to figure out in his current state, and crouches before him again to hold it out. Dream takes it, hands shaking so hard that water sloshes over the rim. He doesn't know if he'll even be able to drink it like this, he wants out, he wants out of this wretched body, he can't remember why he did any of this--

Hob's hands wrap around his, steadying them. He helps Dream raise the glass to his lips. "Easy, love."

Love, Dream thinks. Say it again. Not that Hob hasn't before.

Hob helps him drink about half of the glass, slowly. His concerned gaze is fixed on Dream but he doesn't ask questions yet. He sets the glass aside, then takes Dream's hands in his, giving them a squeeze. His touch feels loud and hot in this body, and it is everything.

"What's going on, darling? Are you hurt somewhere? You-- oh!" He squeezes Dream's hands again, experimentally. "You feel so warm right now. Do you have a fever?"

He looks closely at Dream again, worried. Dream says, "I am human now. I think."

"Human?" Hob looks him up and down, stricken. He will not like this, Dream thinks, with a pang in his chest. Perhaps he should have thought so, before doing it.

Hob scrubs a hand through his hair, lips pressed tight in stress. "Alright. Alright. Stories later. Can you walk?"

Wordlessly, Dream shakes his head.

"Up you get, then." And Hob gathers him up in his arms, rising to his feet with some effort. "Up you get. It'll be alright. I promise."

Dream is unsure of that. But as Hob takes him upstairs, moving quick, he indulges himself by tucking his nose into Hob's neck. Warm, Hob had said. But Dream still feels so cold, body still shaking all over. He can still feel the echo of the frigid rain and wind on his skin.

Hob is speaking lowly to him, he realizes. Dream had drifted off and missed part of it. But Hob says to him now, a quiet litany, "It's alright, lovey, it'll be alright," comfort in the repetition, like he needs to quiet his own nerves. Dream just takes comfort in the sound of his voice and the rumble of it through his chest.

Hob sets him down in his own bed--Dream still struggles to think of it as their bed no matter how much time he's now spent in it--and wraps a blanket around his bare shoulders, for Dream is still only wearing a pair of black pants, once loose, now soaked and stuck to his skin. "Can I...?" Hob asks, fingering the waistband, and Dream nods, so Hob swaps them out for a dry pair and then drapes another blanket over him, despite his previous concern about Dream having a fever.

He fetches a towel and goes about drying Dream's sopping hair, scrubbing until it's damp and fluffy instead of sodden, and then, Hob having let the towel fall down around Dream's neck, they just look at each other, Hob still with his hands lightly hooked under Dream's jaw.

Hob still looks stricken. He doesn't pull away from Dream, though. Dream starts to think that maybe it is not the very fact that he is human that upset Hob so much.

"Your eyes," Hob says, grief-stricken. "They're not--"

"What?"

"Usually when I look real close I can see-- I can see the stars in your pupils, even when you're doing the-- the normal eyes thing." Dream merely looks at him, blinking slowly. It's true, his eyes no longer reflect the starry matter of the Dreaming, nor does any other part of him. "Oh, Dream, come here."

Dream sinks into his arms, hiding his face in Hob's shoulder. Hob's arms come up around him, and for the first time, he thinks the shaking abates, somewhat. He no longer feels quite so cold.

"What happened?" Hob says.

"I died," Dream says, and Hob starts. "And then, I changed. I became this."

"Human?"

Dream nods.

"Christ. Okay. There's a lot more to that, I reckon."

"There is." A story for another time, though. Dream is so tired. "I am," he admits, "I am. Tired. Hob."

"I know, sweetheart. I was so worried about you last we met. Guess I was right to be." He raises a hand to his face, Dream thinks to wipe away tears. "Well. You can rest for a while now. At least. If you don't. If you have no... responsibilities."

"I have nothing," Dream says, and Hob squeezes him tighter to his chest. "I would like, I think, to rest here a while."

"Of course. You're not hurt, right?"

"I... hurt," Dream says. He is no longer cold but his body still aches in every joint. Is it normal, he wonders, for a body to hurt so? "But I am uninjured, I think."

Hob lets out a relieved breath. "Good. Good. I'm glad you came back to me, either way."

"I did not have anywhere to go," Dream says. If Hob casts him out he has nothing; it is not a position he feels comfortable being in, especially coming from where he was, but it is the inevitable result of how he's fallen.

"You go here," Hob says, with finality. "That's all there is to it."

His certainty is a balm while Dream's mind is still swimming and spinning. Perhaps he should have known that Hob, Hob who'd waited for him, Hob who'd built them a new meeting place and welcomed him, always, would take such a viewpoint. Would let his home become Dream's.

Hob finally lets him go, only to pick up his arm in light hands. "Uninjured," he mutters to himself. "You're bleeding."

Dream's forearm, cut by the glass, is still sluggishly weeping blood. "I broke in," Dream says.

Hob huffs, almost a laugh. "One day, somehow, I'll finally teach you to just knock."

Dream means to explain that he did not think it would wake Hob up, but surprises himself by laughing instead. It's true that he often would appear in Hob's flat, never remembering to knock first. It is strangely comforting to think of this remaining unchanged; perhaps not all must be upended.

Hob laughs, too, cradling Dream's head to his chest, careful of his arm. "You bloody strange creature, I love you so much."

"I will knock," Dream promises, which only makes Hob laugh again.

"No, no, I'll just get you a key and you can come and go as you please. I won't have you get locked out again when you need help."

Dream supposes he truly lives here now. It's a strangely nice thought. "Very well," he agrees.

Hob runs a hand through his hair, then lets him go so he can take up his injured arm once more. "Let's clean this up, hm?"

He bandages the cut, hands careful on Dream's skin. Yes, Dream thinks, watching him, he is glad he came back to Hob, glad he was swayed last minute to make a different choice. And when Hob is finished and Dream leans against him again, head tipped into his shoulder, he thinks of the empty road before him now, the lack of true obligation, other than to be here, to rest, and no matter how it all still hurts, for the first time in a long while he feels a deep, pure relief.

#come get ya hurt comfort #dreamling #my writing #i need this ngl. not the almost dying part the finally getting a break part XD #retired dream

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