#it’s dreamling but only if you squint

[rainbowvamp]

There’s a difference between familiar and used to.

The feeling of being so tired after doing nothing like an ache in his bones is familiar. He’s felt it before. He knows what it is. He knows what it means. He knows that he’s going to have to work harder to get out of bed today. That objectively knowing the world is always getting better isn’t going to make him feel better. He knows that there will be lead in his feet all day. And weights on his smile. And a void in his heart. He knows that. It’s familiar.

Familiar doesn’t mean used to.

He thinks if he were used to this, he’d be able to power through it better. He thinks if he just had more self-control. More will power. More desire. He’d be able to talk himself out of his own downward spiral like he might be able to talk himself out of a 1000 meter free fall.

Except you can’t talk your way out of a 1000 meter free fall. Not any more than you can talk yourself out of the familiar ache of Everything is Too Much. He knows the only way out is through. To hit the ground, get patched up at A&E, and spend a while healing. He knows he needs to rest. He knows he needs to eat. He knows he needs to go out into the sun.

He also knows that he has papers to grade. And parents who want to yell at him because the best he can manage isn’t good enough. He knows that the school year isn’t over for another three months and testing season is just around the corner and so things are about to get worse.

He knows that.

He knows that, and it cancels out all the other things he knows.

And he stays in bed on a Sunday. Heavy like lead. Strapped down like his blankets are steel bars. He can’t move. It’s too much. Everything is Too Much.

He takes a deep breath and reminds himself that that’s okay.

You can’t embrace life without embracing all of life.

Sometimes life is depression. Sometimes life is overwhelm. Sometimes life is memories of drowning slotted between the feeling you get when there’s more work to do than you can manage and you think you should manage it anyway.

Sometimes that’s what life is. You have to take the good with the bad.

He twitches aside the curtain by his bed. Lets a sliver of sunlight fall across the back of his hand. It’s enough for now. Later he might able to muster more. It’s enough for now.

He lets the sunlight warm the smallest part of his hand and reminds himself that every fall must end. And every testing season must pass. And every parent who has no idea what his job is like eventually moves on to harass some other poor sod and then the thing starts all over again.

And every time it starts over it gets a little better. And he holds onto that hope, strapped into his bed by blankets that feel too heavy to move, and he lets himself sleep another hour, because it’s Sunday and he deserves to rest, even if he doesn’t feel like it. Sometimes rest is what your body needs, even if your brain disagrees.

And if he dreams of a pale hand holding his, sometime in the next century, then that’s no one’s business but his own.

[cuubism]

Rock Paper Scissors

Dreamling | Pre-Slash | 5.7k | AO3

Dream suddenly gripped the lapels of Hob's jacket with a startling fervor, arms stretched across the tabletop. His gaze bore into Hob's. "I beg, allow me to represent you instead." "Now what kind of man would I be if I let others fight my battles?" Hob said, prying his fingers off before his endless grip tore through the fabric. "Hard as it may be to believe, I'm actually not a bad hand at chess. Don't worry about me." "I do not find that hard to believe. However, as I have said, this is not chess. It is an intimate and punishing battle of minds." "Alright, so it's like Go Fish."

Hob gets challenged to a duel. Too bad his opponent has it out for Dream, and has no intention of playing fair.

--

the first fic I ever started writing for Dreamling a year and a half ago, then forgot about! 😂 then randomly decided to finish.

--

“ROBERT GADLING,” yelled an individual Hob had never met before in his life, “I hereby challenge you to a duel!”

Hob squinted at him. Said individual was standing across the darkened street, dressed strangely in a white tunic flecked with gold. Then again, Hob’s barometer for strange was a bit different than what was normal, so who was he to say, really.

“What?” he said.

Suddenly this person was much closer to him. Hob flinched back, but couldn’t move much, close as he was to the pub door. “We have business,” hissed his pale-suited challenger. It was a masculine figure, blond hair swished to one side, eyes like fire. 

Hob wasn’t impressed. He’d seen worse. Better, too.

“Listen, mate,” he said, “I don’t really have time for this. I’ve already got something on the books tonight. Come back tomorrow.”

He started to walk through the doorway, but the… creature?—he didn’t think it was human—grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “We have business,” it repeated.

Hob tried to shake off its hand, but its grip was like hot iron. It seared through his jacket and burned his skin. 

“What business?” he snapped. “I’m certain we’ve never met before, and my memory is actually pretty good, long as it is.”

The creature smiled, more like a baring of teeth. “You have courted those who have harmed me—and my ilk.”

“Not clearing it up at all.”

There was a sound like the swishing of a thousand ghosts, and then Dream was beside him.

Dream. How strange, still, to have a name, a history—well, sort of—to put to the face he’d circled back to over and over again for all these years. The name cut his friend into sharp relief—Hob’s shadow, finally united with the being who cast it. 

Where the pale stranger burned white-hot, Dream emanated cold. Hob had always found his friend’s cold aura strangely comforting. It didn’t feel dangerous and biting like the winter wind. Instead, it was the cold of lake water when one dove deep enough, a subtle and quiet draw to the otherworldly. 

Well. Usually it didn’t feel dangerous. Right now, it felt positively hypothermic.

Dream’s presence chilled the air until the stranger was forced to yank his hand away from Hob’s arm, shaking it out with a hiss. Hob’s breath fogged the air in front of his face, never mind that it was summer.

“Phaethon,” Dream hissed on one long, cold breath. “You are not wanted here.”

Phaethon pulled himself up haughtily. “I can go as I please. Night, or no night.”

“You may test that theory if you wish.”

Phaethon faltered, just a bit, before recovering himself. “I am here only to deliver a message. I challenge you, Robert Gadling, to a duel.” His blazing eyes flickered over to Hob, then back to Dream. “I did not believe you were one to violate the old rules of challenge, Lord of Dreams.” 

He bowed slightly. It felt mocking, which rankled Hob, who’d otherwise been keeping his cool. 

“Are you going to explain what this is about?” he said, for the third time. “I don’t appreciate being accused of things I haven’t done.”

Instead of answering, Phaethon said, “I’ve uncovered your history. There’s quite a lot of it, isn’t there? I wager it could make quite a bit of trouble for you, having all of that information turned over to certain parties. Human authorities. Occultists. Vampire hunters, they’ll love you–”

“I’m not a vampire,” Hob snapped.

“Doesn’t matter. Point is, we can do that, or, you can choose to face me directly.”

“What do you seek to gain from the challenge?” demanded Dream. He seemed to know more about what was going on here than Hob, which wasn’t comforting. Hob didn’t particularly want to get drawn into some kind of immortal creature game with obscure rules he’d end up tripping over.

Phaethon’s grin emerged one tooth at a time. “I want… your dreams.”

Hob probably should have been more troubled by this. Instead, he just frowned in confusion. “Not sure that’s in your power, mate. You’re aware who you’re talking to?”

He didn’t need to gesture to Dream looming over his shoulder.

“If you agree to the terms,” said Phaethon, a hiss like lava dripping over stone, “then the magic will bind us.” 

Dream didn’t contradict him, but his anger cooled the air until Hob felt like he was standing atop a glacier.

“I think I’ll pass,” Hob told Phaethon. “Feel free to try to reveal me. I’m good at disappearing.” 

He turned to go—

“Lord Morpheus.” Phaethon turned the beam of his gaze on him, sunlight ricocheting off ice. “Will you stand in his stead?”

Hob grit his teeth and, against his better judgment, turned back around. “Don’t bring him into this. Look, if I win your challenge, what do I get in return?”

“You may request whatever you like,” said Dream. “Such are the terms of the agreement.”

“Fine. If I win, then I want this: you never speak to or of me again. That means no threatening me, no using me to threaten anyone else, no telling anyone about me—nothing. Got it?” God, Hob just wanted to go inside and have a beer.

Phaethon gave him a little bow. “Fair enough. I accept the terms of this challenge.” 

Dream seemed aggravated; a trickle of energy, like black lightning, scurried up the back of his neck and disappeared into his hair. But he didn’t intervene.

Hob and Phaethon shook on it. Then Phaethon retreated into the shadows again, calling, “Tomorrow at midnight, Robert Gadling. I will see you then.” Then his eyes blinked out and he was gone.

Hob shuddered. Good riddance. He rather preferred his eldritch creature to that one, thanks very much.

“What was that?” he said.

Dream’s presence was warming again by small degrees. The atmosphere was now more like an industrial freezer than Antarctica. “A minor demigod.”

“Oh, minor. Alright then.” 

“They are occupied by petty troubles,” said Dream.

Hob looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but elected not to comment. 

“Come on,” he said instead, leading the way back toward the pub. “We’re supposed to be having an easy night of it, dammit!” He wasn’t about to let some minor demigod ruin his night. He never knew how many of them he would get with his friend.

Dream’s gaze lingered on the spot where Phaethon had disappeared, but eventually, like the sweeping of a long coat tail, he followed.

---

"So, a duel," Hob remarked as they sat down across from each other in the pub booth. "I admit, I haven't dueled anyone in a few centuries, but I can't imagine it'll be—”

"It is not what you are thinking of," Dream interrupted. He had folded himself into the booth seat like a stick insect trying to cram itself in a jar. It was an absurd image, the long black coat, the spindly arms on the tabletop. "It is not a fight of the physical form. It is a battle of the mind and will."

"You're going to have to elaborate."

"In such a challenge—” Dream began, but was interrupted by the arrival of a waitress, there to take their order.

"So, what can I get for you chaps?" she said brightly.

The idea of Dream being a chap was so hilarious Hob had to stifle a laugh. Yeah, maybe he wasn't taking the whole duel thing seriously enough. Oh well.

Hob ordered a beer and a plate of chips. When Dream showed no sign of speaking, he ordered for him, too.

“You can order whatever you like,” Hob told him, when the waitress had gone. “It is my pub and all.”

Dream picked up the laminated menu gingerly. It wobbled in his hands. He looked down at it with a flat expression.

Hob realized belatedly that he probably didn’t know what to order. How much had pub food changed since— God, 1910 or so? And it wasn’t like his friend would have had much time to peruse menus since, what with all he’d been up to.

“Just try the chips,” Hob said, taking the menu away from him. “We’ll see how far that gets you.” 

"I have no need of human food," Dream said, folding his hands back on the table.

“Sure, and I technically don’t need my left leg, either, but I do rather like having it.”

“You say strange things,” Dream murmured. “As I was telling you. In such a challenge—” 

The waitress returned with their drinks. Dream glowered at her. Hob thanked her brightly.

"So, you were saying?" he said, sipping his beer. "In such a challenge…?"

"In such a challenge—”

The waitress arrived again with their chips. Dream slammed his hands on the table, shaking the chips in their basket and making the waitress jump. 

"Sorry," Hob apologized, "we've had a bit of a day." Wasn't it always.

"In such a challenge," Dream continued when she had gone, in a tone that suggested he would not be stopped this time, "one must suggest a mind-form, which one's opponent will attempt to surmount and defeat. Then you attempt to defeat their new form, and so on until one challenger is victorious. It is… a predictive game, of sorts. If one can predict what one's opponent’s moves might be, one can choose forms to foil them. This can easily become complicated."

"So, it's like chess," Hob summarized.

Dream stiffened, lips pressing into an offended line. "It is not so simple as chess."

"Checkers?"

"It will not help you to think of it so." Dream took a chip and bit into it in irritation. "You just— oh." He stared at the chip. "These are quite pleasant."

"Can never go wrong with a good chip," said Hob, then furrowed his brows. "Haven't you had them in dreams before or something?"

"Presumably. It has been at least a century." 

Ah, yeah. That. "Well, they're frying them in veg oil instead of lard nowadays anyway. Kind of a different experience." 

Dream stared at him as if Hob made no sense whatsoever.

"Anyway," Hob continued, "am I even going to be able to create these mind-forms? I'm not exactly an otherworldly being." 

"The power is in you, though it may be more challenging to harness. And easier to let slip from your grasp. It is imagination, after all. Humans are good at imagination, though perhaps not so good at holding onto it."

"Hmm." Hob munched on a chip. "Okay. I'll work on my imagination." After seven hundred years or so of life, it was possibly a tool that needed some sharpening. 

"I admit it offends me greatly that Phaethon would presume to ask a human to fight in this way," said Dream. He suddenly gripped the lapels of Hob's jacket with a startling fervor, arms stretched across the tabletop. His gaze bore into Hob's. "I beg, allow me to represent you instead."

"Now what kind of man would I be if I let others fight my battles?" Hob said, prying his fingers off before his endless grip tore through the fabric. "Hard as it may be to believe, I'm actually not a bad hand at chess. Don't worry about me."

"I do not find that hard to believe. However, as I have said, this is not chess. It is an intimate and punishing battle of minds."

"Alright, so it's like Go Fish."

"Do not joke," Dream growled. Actually, he never truly growled. It was more like his voice dropped into a lower register than usual. Which was saying something. Hob interpreted it as a growl, though. "Do not joke when your existence is at stake. Your immortality cannot protect you from this." 

"Are you saying I'd be unmade if I lost?" Hob asked. It was a concerning thought, to say the least. It had been a long time since he'd had to concern himself with his own mortality.

Dream’s tongue ran over his lower lip. "Potentially. The terms of the fight do not state so, but I do not know how such a duel will affect a human. The strain of it may simply tear you to shreds. It nearly drained me, the last time I fought."

"Wait, you had a fight like this? Recently?"

Dream tilted his head, gaze paling in confusion. "I told you that I went to Hell to retrieve my helm." 

"Yeah, but you didn't tell me you had to mind-battle– who'd you mind-battle anyway?"

"The demon chose Lucifer Morningstar as his representative." Dream’s lip curled in distaste. "Hence, the near loss."

Hob looked at him in concern. "Are you alright, though?"

"Of course I am all right." He spoke it as two words, like the phrase had never before graced his tongue. Hob wanted to let out a long-suffering sigh, but managed to restrain himself. "I am Dream of the Endless."

"Mmhmm. Yep. Okay."

"You do not have to worry about me," Dream said stiffly, parroting Hob's words from before.

Hob thought that was evidently untrue, but decided not to mention the century of imprisonment or the multiple near-death experiences— could he die? Maybe it was more like multiple near-misses with eternal agony— since then. To preserve the relative peace of the moment. 

"So how'd you beat the devil, then?" he asked.

"I had everything to lose. Lucifer had nothing to lose, and only a paltry amusement to gain."

Was that an answer? Hob wasn't sure. 

"Okay," he said. "Well, I do have all of my dreams to lose, apparently. Plenty of incentive to win."

Ice crystallized along the rim of Dream’s glass, spreading from where his fingers pressed. “You speak as if you think I would ever allow this to happen.”

Hob raised an eyebrow. “I thought the magic was binding?”

“Only by honor.”

“And so… what would happen if you violated that honor?”

The words trickled out of Dream reluctantly. “One’s word would not be trusted again.”

“Right. Exactly. I can’t let you do that, love. There’s a whole eternity of words needing to be trusted after this.” It was tempting, honestly, to let his more powerful friend step in and handle this—especially as Hob still hadn’t gleaned what the hell he’d even done to piss off Phaethon—but ultimately, it wouldn’t be right. He’d never used Dream as a clean-up tool for any of his problems in the past, and he wasn’t about to start just because he now knew he was the Lord of Dreams.

Dream’s expression darkened further. He truly was capable of embodying shadow when he was annoyed; Hob didn’t know how he hadn’t figured out the extent of his supernaturalness sooner, honestly. “You would not let.”

“Hey. Come on. I’ve solved plenty of my own problems, haven’t I? Have a little faith.” Hob kind of wanted to pat his hand, but wasn’t sure it was a good idea. “You don’t think I can win a duel against this Phaethon guy?” 

Dream seemed uncertain about it, and Hob couldn’t help but feel a little offended. Sure, he wasn’t a supernatural entity, but Hob had gotten himself out of a fair number of scrapes, and without the help of any Endless, thanks very much! 

“His rancor disturbs me,” Dream said at last. “I do not know what you have done to offend him.”

“Nor I. Never met the guy.”

Dream seemed lost in contemplation. Hob let him, and kept eating the chips.

Eventually, Dream said, “Even if this loss did come to pass… you would always have a place in the Dreaming.”

Hob’s breathing stuttered. “With you?” he said, sounding much smaller than he’d expected. It was… an ill-considered response, to say the least. 

Dream shifted in his seat. “I am the Dreaming,” he said. “It is part of me, and I it.”

“I see,” said Hob. But the thought kept turning within him.

---

No more was said on the matter until their beers were drunk and their chips polished off and they were strolling out the door of the pub. 

As they crossed the threshold, Hob was struck by a realization. He slapped Dream on the breast of his coat, stopping him in his tracks.

"I'm an idiot! Of course it's not like chess. It's metaphysical rock-paper-scissors!"

"Are you intoxicated?" Dream asked wearily.

"Nope. Just happy to have my old friend around again."

Dream’s form, unbreakable as the darkness between stars, stuttered. Behind him, his shadow wavered.

Then he swept away, leaving Hob to catch up. 

---

They met again on the field of battle, so to speak.

Phaethon was there before them, melodramatic in his white-and-gold cape. Not as melodramatic as Dream, though, whose eyeliner seemed darker than usual, somehow, and whose cloak swept all the way to the ground, pooling more like liquid than fabric. He was very displeased about these events, Hob could tell.

Hob shook Phaethon’s hand formally. Once again, the touch burned him, but he resisted the urge to shake his hand out in pain. Then they stood across from each other. Hob wished he had a sword, but that was not this game.

"As the challenged party, you commence the duel," Dream told him, standing not far from Hob’s side as Phaethon paced before them, grinning. "You may choose your form and begin."

Hob had thought long and hard about how he would start. He didn't want to go too big, else the fight escalate beyond his control. Obviously, he didn't want to pick something weak either.

What was out there that had tormented mankind, sowing destruction, breeding fear and illness and death, while barely reaching higher than an ankle? 

Hob had lived through it. The choice was obvious.

"I am a plague rat," he started, and saw Dream’s eyebrows twitch. Impressed. Ha! "Hiding in shadows. Letting sickness into our food, homes, blood."

He saw the rats in his mind. Scurrying through tunnels, climbing into grain stores, unaware of what they carried. A seething mass of tails and slick fur and beady eyes, churning, churning, churning. 

Phaethon curled in on himself, limbs creaking, boils popping on his skin and pus leaking from his eyes. Hob flinched at the reminder of those times. Horrible, horrible times.

Mentally, Hob prepared for the counterattack. Paper beats rock. What beats rat? Dog beats rat. Cat beats rat. Famine, extermination fumes, plague doctors, modern medicine—

"I," Phaethon ground out, through the contortions of his body, "am a flood."

Oof. Good one.

"A swelling, raging river, decimating any town in my path. Washing rats down to their deaths." 

A phantom wave smacked Hob in the face and hurled him to the ground. It crashed over him, gallons and gallons of water, surging up his nose, into his eyes, down his throat. He choked on it. He drowned in it. Debris in the floodwaters bruised him till he felt like a branch spinning out in the current, rather than a human.

Then. He managed to take in a breath.

He staggered to his feet.

Dream was standing a step closer, like he'd lurched forward, but he forced himself back into stillness.

"I," Hob said on a gasping breath, pushing wet hair out of his eyes, "am a drought." Phaethon had taken it to another level? Fine. Hob would go scorched earth. "Whisking away all your water. Turning everything into dust."

Phaethon choked, throat suddenly dry. His eyes went bloodshot. His skin flaked and peeled, his lips bled. He clutched at his stomach as it heaved for water.

He could go rain again, Hob thought. Or ice age. Asteroid. Biblical flood—does that count if he already did a regular flood?

"I am famine," said Phaethon, when he'd recovered himself, though he was still rasping. "I wither crops without water. I starve everything that walks."

Hob's stomach caved in on itself. He fell to his knees, retching nothing but bile. His mind flashed back to his decades on the streets, so long without food he'd thought his stomach would start eating itself—and then it had. 

His arms shook. His body felt thin and liable to crack. 

"I," he croaked, still on all fours, "am an oasis. Rising from the desert, real, not a mirage. Offering reprieve." 

Too late, he realized this might restore his opponent. 

But instead, Phaethon creased and cracked, like he was the famine, persecuted by salvation. He clasped his stomach as if it was overfull; water poured from his mouth.

Water filled Hob's mouth, too, but it restored him. He climbed back to his feet.

Dream was definitely closer now. He wasn't imagining it. Still, he didn't intervene.

Phaethon was visibly weakened, but still he said, "I am selfishness. Infighting over limited resources. Society destroying its oasis."

Hob's limbs were torn in opposite directions. He yelled, but the invisible hands on him didn't let up, yanking at him like he was the final piece of food before everlasting deprivation. He pulled at them, but it was no use.

One of his shoulders dislocated with a loud pop, and he bit down on his tongue so as not to scream. Blood exploded in his mouth.

"I am generosity!" he yelled, blood dripping over his lips. "I am brother sharing with brother. Stranger sharing with stranger."

Dream was looking at him now like he didn't know what to make of him. Phaethon, too, was staring at him, but with a look of disgust. 

"High-minded idealist, are you?" he sneered. "What the hell is generosity going to—”

His expression broke in half. His hands shook; he picked at his nail beds until they peeled and started bleeding. His lip wavered and his eyes beaded with tears.

Hob didn't know what was happening to him.

"Shame," Dream breathed from behind him. "So clever, Hob."

Hob hadn't actually known what generosity would do, but he appreciated the compliment nonetheless.

"I," croaked Phaethon, through tears, "am memory. History and anger curdled to a resentment which no generosity can overcome."

He felt Dream’s eyes on him, as he no doubt feared the anger, the resentment he so believed that Hob held over his absence would surge forth again. But it did not, for Hob had never been angry with Dream. Angry with himself, yes, and that he felt acutely, along with the fear and hurt of Dream walking away, the stewing guilt of it.

Memory held more than anger. Mostly, for Hob, it held grief. Grief for his friend who'd been imprisoned for so long, while Hob went about his life, imagining him lonely, isolated perhaps, but never knowing the truth. Grief for himself, too, for he knew that to always blame himself for Dream’s behavior had also been unfair. 

Tears slipped from his eyes. He looked over at Dream, who was still watching him warily.

Memory had far too many facets for Phaethon to use it as an effective weapon.

"I am forgiveness," Hob said, closing his eyes against a fresh welling of tears. He didn't know who he was forgiving. Himself, or Dream, who still seemed to need absolution from Hob, no matter how Hob told him he didn’t.

"I am hatred!" Phaethon snarled. His voice had gone animalistic in a last ditch effort to come out on top. But forgiveness clanged around him, pulling tears from his eyes, undermining his viciousness. "I am division even forgiveness cannot mend."

Just like that, he opened up the path for Hob to take his king. Checkmate. Game over. Rock paper scissors shoot.

"I am love," Hob said quietly, even as a sob caught in his throat as the memory of all the hate he'd witnessed in his life, the hate he'd participated in, and the fear, long-held, that even Dream might hate him, for his wrongs, or for overstepping, pulsed back to the forefront. He could never hate Dream, though. No matter what.

"Love can be easily destroyed," snapped Phaethon, but he was wavering. 

"But it always comes back," said Hob. Unwitting, he looked over his shoulder at Dream.

His friend was already looking directly at him. That tinge of red, so terrible and familiar now, was back along his eyes. He didn't speak, not to Hob. Hob followed his gaze as he looked over Hob's shoulder and spoke to Phaethon.

"Do you have a counter?"

"Love?" Phaethon laughed hysterically. "You brought love to a duel?"

"I believe Hob brings love everywhere he goes," said Dream, and Hob whipped back around to look at him, eyes wide. The tiniest smile was dancing on Dream’s lips.

Then a blade erupted from Hob's chest.

Blood sprayed. His heart stopped beating—actually stopped, he felt it. The sword had pierced right through it. He scrabbled for it with clumsy hands, but the blade shiiiinged back out before he could grab it. 

Blood spattered Dream’s face. Those pretty lips parted, eyes widened, the lordly bearing wiped from his expression leaving only a person, shocked and wounded. Hob would never forget that look of startled horror for as long as he lived. 

Which wasn't looking to be that long.

He fell to his knees, blood pouring from his chest. No use trying to stop it. It would mend itself, in time, but that knowledge did nothing to stop the instinctive rush of fear. He was dying. He was dying.

He fell on his side. Blood soaked his shirt. All told, it took maybe ten seconds after getting speared like a wild hog—

—for the world to completely blink out.

---

Hob's chest ached like a bitch when he woke. 

He was still on the ground, bloody mud around him, soaking his clothes. Oh. That was mud made from his blood. How horrifying. 

He opened his eyes in time to see Dream lifting Phaethon from the ground by his neck. His hand was a vice grip and Phaethon choked, scrabbling at his fingers for breath.

"TREACHERY," Dream snarled, louder than Hob had ever heard him. His voice boomed across the empty park. "I will unmake you."

"I'm not one of your creatures, you can do nothing to me," said Phaethon, but his assuredness flickered.

Dream’s being was a black hole eating light. "Watch it happen."

Hob coughed, dirt trapped in his throat, and shoved himself up on his forearms. Dream froze, and turned slowly to look at him, Phaethon still clasped in his hand like he weighed nothing. Dream’s attention was like being in the path of a comet.

"Hob," he said. "Are you alright?"

Hob knew, in that moment, that if he asked Dream to spare Phaethon from whatever fate he had in mind for him, he would comply. And what power that was. Hob didn't want to be the one doling out mercy or punishment, like a judge at the gates of Hell. But damn if it wasn't a thrill to have Dream look at him like that.

"Of course I'm all right," he said, with a bloody grin. "I'm Hob Gadling."

Dream smiled too, a ferocious smile, like that of a wolf.

Hob didn't tell him to spare Phaethon.

Apparently, they both had some savagery in them.

---

"So why did he kill me?" Hob asked later, when he'd showered all the blood off—God he loved modern showers—and they were both sitting at the kitchen table in his flat, drinking tea. Well, Hob was drinking tea. Dream was just kind of staring at it. "I mean, the cost of losing wasn't even that high. Not on his end, anyway."

"He was not interested in you at all," said Dream, still not looking at him. "I dragged the truth from him while you were… gone. This was all a ploy to get to me. To hurt me—indirectly, of course. Such a lower being could never hurt me directly."

"Wait." Hob tried to grapple with this. "You— are you saying I was like a kidnapped princess?" 

Dream frowned. "If you insist. The point is, he did not plan to let you walk away. By winning, or by killing you, whichever he could accomplish." 

"Damn. Maybe I should have let you fight for me."

"No. You represented yourself admirably. More than admirably. You won the challenge, fairly, and did not try to kill your opponent to do it." 

Praise from Dream always hit Hob somewhere deep. Possibly because Dream only said such things when he meant them. Possibly just because it was Dream saying them.

“Well, thanks for handling him in the end,” Hob said, instead of voicing that sentiment.

Dream nodded solemnly. “I would not allow such harm to befall you without interfering,” he said.

Hob took a sip of his tea to avoid showing how he felt about that quite so obviously on his face.

“Why did he want to hurt you, then?” he asked instead.

“He is the child of a sun deity,” said Dream.

“And… that… means…?”

“Sunlight chases away dreams. We are natural enemies.”

Hob frowned. “What about daydreams?” 

“Daydreams may take place during the daytime, but they exist in the darkness of the inner mind,” said Dream.

“Ahhhh.” Hob nodded sagely. Yeah, sure, that made sense. One hundred percent. Absolutely. “I don’t know, I feel like some dreams can survive in the daylight. Thrive, even.”

“Perhaps next time I have an altercation with a sun deity, I will call upon you,” Dream said, a bite of sarcasm in it. “To see if you can banish them with this mindset.”

“Don’t give me that cheek,” Hob admonished. Dream’s mouth popped open in offense, but Hob plowed on, “Just have an open mind about it, that’s all I’m saying. Who knows, maybe you guys are in a symbiotic relationship or something, instead of enemies. You help people see what could be possible, and they balance it with reality.”

Dream was silent for a moment, thinking. “Perhaps,” he said at last. “But I do not think approaching them in this manner will serve me well, at the moment.”

“Maybe not if they’re going around attacking you,” Hob conceded, and Dream cracked a small smile.

Sun deities, Hob thought. Really, life was full of such strange and interesting things.

“So when you went to Hell,” Hob started. Dream tilted his head, but didn’t seem thrown by the change in subject. “What did you wager in exchange for your helm? The game makes you wager something, right?”

“It was the demon who chose the other side of the wager,” said Dream. “He demanded I remain in Hell and serve him for eternity, if I lost.”

Hob was glad he’d put down his tea, as he’d probably have dropped it. “What? Was the helm really worth that risk?”

Dream leaned back in his chair, lips pressed tight in offense. Or maybe hurt. “I am nothing without my tools of office,” he said.

“That is not true,” said Hob, surprised by his own vehemence. Nothing? He thought he was nothing?

“I could not have restored the Dreaming without them,” Dream insisted.

“Okay, fine. They’re important for your job. But that doesn’t mean you’re nothing without them.” Hob went to lay his hand over Dream’s on the table, hesitated, then decided, fuck it. Dream started when their skin touched, but didn’t move away. Hob repeated his words, with even more emphasis this time. “You’re not nothing.”

Dream met his gaze, challenging. Hob didn’t back down.

“As you wish,” Dream finally said. Which wasn’t actually an agreement. “I can concede that the ruby breaking was ultimately beneficial to my power. But the helm is my symbol of office. To leave it in the possession of a demon is a continual humiliation to my realm and station.”

“Okay, I’m hearing you,” Hob said. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Dream should be able to get his helm back. But he didn’t want Dream to risk horrible punishment for the sake of his pride. Better to slink away alive to try again another day, or so Hob felt. That wasn’t Dream, though.

“Just be careful, okay?” he said. “Even if you lost your helm and everything, and everyone in Hell thought you were pathetic—which, by the way, not sure Hell’s opinion is worth much anyway? but that aside—I’d still rather have you here than the alternative.” He threw Dream a smile, hoping he didn’t take offense to the idea that he could possibly be pathetic. “It wasn’t ‘The King of Dreams and Nightmares, et cetera’ that I missed for all those years, you know?”

“You did not know who I was, then,” Dream pointed out, but he seemed contemplative.

“I liked who I did know,” Hob said. “My friend.”

“Your friend,” repeated Dream slowly. Finally, he did pick up his tea, and took a sip. “A powerful title indeed, if you would have me when it is the only one I carry.”

“If you say so,” Hob said, which brought a small smile to Dream’s lips. If Dream wanted to think of it as a title akin to his kingship and endlessness and whatnot, then Hob would bestow it on him with gladness, and with a warm sense of honor that nestled right in his heart.

“It is…” Dream added, at length, “a meaningful title. To me.”

Rare, those expressions of feeling from Dream. Hob couldn’t help but to bask in them like a cat in a sunbeam. He remembered how Dream had looked at him during the duel. Love always comes back. Worth it, all the strife, to see Dream look at him like that, he thought.

“You defended me,” Dream said. “To prevent me taking the duel in your place. To protect me when it was not warranted.”

Wasn’t warranted. Hob really wished Dream would just learn to let Hob care for him.

"Would have even if I'd known it was you he truly wanted," he said. “I missed my friend for long enough. Wasn’t going to let something happen again when I could get in the way of it.”

“Your friend,” Dream said again. As if savoring the words. His lips tipped up again in a small smile. One just for himself.

Hob squeezed his hand on the table. A grounding touch, a reminder. “And don’t forget it.”

Dream turned his hand over on the table, and squeezed back.

[valeriianz]

Smutty fic idea prompts - 36 is just perfect for Dreamling please?

36: A rolls sleeves up/takes shirt off, revealing body hair to B. B has no idea how to act normal around A anymore.

Hob dresses up as Sexy Santa for a staff party and Dream absolutely loses his cool <3

-----------

These days, Dream finds himself as the newest addition to Johanna Constantine’s friend group. It’s quite nice of her, if not a little presumptuous, to drag him along to nearly every social outing and local music show in order to introduce him to as many people in her network as possible. The only reason they are still friends, Dream and Jo, is the small mercy of her not putting up a fuss when his social battery has been drained and he awkwardly dips out.

The best thing to come out of these adventures, at least, is meeting Hob Gadling.

Hob and Jo go way back, or so she’d announced the first time he and Dream had met. At a bar where the lights were low but Hob’s natural charisma and warm smile had radiated through anyway. They got along immediately, exchanging intellectual conversations where Hob had surprising takes and kept Dream’s interest; kept the dialogue fresh and spontaneous. Dream didn’t even need to contribute much while sharing a space with Hob, he could simply sip on his gin something-or-other and listen as Hob went on passionate rants about revolutions or human invention over the past centuries– each time they met up he’d go down a 100 years. Or complaining about how washed up Shakespeare was (an argument Dream allowed himself to fall into and they’d talked about all night, much to Johanna’s chagrin and massive eye roll, muttering a very clear “nerds” under her breath).

Chemistry aside, Dream also couldn’t deny how… effortlessly attractive Hob was.

Deep brown eyes that seemed to sparkle with barely contained mischief, chocolate dark hair with brush strokes of greys that unfairly complimented his face, and a seemingly permanent five O’clock shadow that Dream never imagined would leave him staring and daydreaming… alas, he’d discovered quite a few new things about himself around Hob.

Like how he’d imagined on more than one occasion, how easily he’d be able to lift Dream, how those broad shoulders and chest, thick biceps that even a cable knit sweater couldn’t hide– might manhandle his own body, lifting and bending him into submission. Dream ached with it; the possibilities. Was dying to kiss Hob’s plush mouth, his gaze fell to it enough, or feel the stubble of Hob’s jaw under his own palm, under his lips, along the inside of Dream’s thighs.

Hob was everything Dream was not; roguish, masculine, and unbearably kind. It was no wonder Dream had developed a crush from their very first meeting.

And maybe Hob was interested too, if you squinted. He always offered Dream a ride home, set his hand on the small of his back, his shoulder, and never seemed to stop smiling in his presence. Dream was never very good at picking up cues though– his prior relationships had been him making the first move, striking immediately at what he wanted, courting in the most by-the-book manner, before he was ultimately either rejected or caught up in a love affair that burned out before the year was up.

He didn’t want to do that with Hob. Dream held back, kept his desires at bay… because he truly enjoyed Hob’s company. It would be devastating if Hob rejected him, or worse, fell into a relationship and then realised Dream was… too much, too fast, too methodical. Dream wasn’t sure he could handle not having Hob in his life now that he’d met him. He was determined to keep him around, even if it meant remaining friends. Dream could work with that, could suffer quietly and go home after a long night of drinking or dancing and being subjected to Hob’s ever-present smile, his unwavering gaze, the warmth his body radiated, even feet apart. Could hold onto those images and sensations and close his eyes, take himself in hand, and work himself to climax in the safe darkness of his own bedroom, clenching his teeth and imagining how it might feel if it were Hob’s hands on him instead.

All of Dream’s self restraint comes crashing down about a week before Christmas, at the staff holiday party Johanna had invited him along to.

Because Hob is sitting on a large red velvet chair at the back of the venue, surrounded by cotton snow and boxed presents, wearing absolutely nothing but a Santa hat, explicitly short red and white trousers, and black boots.

It’s a mockery of what you’d see at perhaps a mall: Santa waiting to greet children and ask what they want for Christmas while his elves putter around and keep order. This is…

Obscene, is what Dream’s brain provides before it completely resets and replaces the word with animal noises.

He’d overheard Hob and Johanna talking about this, how they had a “sexy Santa” every year (because Jo’s office was mostly comprised of women who voted on it every year, vastly sweeping the competition to the point of tradition). And to save on money this year, decided to find a Santa who would do it for free, hence Jo asking Hob to do her a solid.

Dream felt heat rush through his entire body, unable to look away as Jo, Matthew, and him walked out of the foyer and into the thick of the party. Dream heard Johanna speaking, but couldn't decipher her words, his brain wiped clean by the reveal of Hob’s body, something Dream had only imagined in the safety of his own head, and kicked himself over the exclusion of hair.

So much body hair. Thick, dark hairs covered Hob’s chest like a pelt, rolling down his abs and scattered out around his soft belly. It was enough to make Dream’s mouth water, a ringing sound began in his ears, making him dizzy as he forced one foot in front of the other.

Dream had only met Hob a couple months ago, while the weather had just turned cold and they’d both only seen one another buttoned and bundled up in high necklines and long sleeves. To see Hob nearly completely nude was a shock to Dream’s system. And holy shit, Dream wanted. He had to know how those thick hairs felt between his fingers, digging them in while he sat on Hob’s lap, grinding his hips down while his own naked chest slid along Hob’s. What sounds Hob would make while Dream petted and pulled and rubbed his cock along the swell of Hob’s furred stomach.

And then Hob spotted them coming in, his smile dazzling as he stood up and waved.

Giving Dream a fantastic view of his legs, which were just as thick and strong as Dream had fantasised, and just as hairy as his top half. As well as a view of how those pants rode up enough to make Dream question if the man was wearing underwear.

Dream stumbled to the nearest restroom, locking himself in a stall and attempting to breathe and calm his erratic heart beat.

Friend, friend. Hob is your friend. Dream chanted to himself, keeping his hand out of his pants and taking deep breaths as his blood circulation regulated itself. Don’t make it weird.

Dream didn’t know how to socialise on a good day, and how with a half naked Hob in the building– shamelessly on display and humouring drunk female staff as they boldly sat on his knee– Dream felt himself shutting down entirely, spluttering and stumbling over his speech with enough velocity that he feared he'd glitch and spark out, setting the place on fire. Or at the very least, melt into a puddle of goo, the remains of his dignity soaked into the hardwood floor.

Dream tossed back drink after drink, matching Jo’s pace if only to distract his wandering thoughts, losing his jacket somewhere in the scuffle and rolling up the sleeves of his black button down.

Johanna’s laughter snapped Dream back to the present, looking down at the red solo cup in his hand and Jo standing across from him, visibly swaying on that spot. Dream doesn’t remember what he’d said to elicit such a reaction, but felt his lips curl anyway. 

“What’s so funny?”

“You, dreamboat!” Jo’s laughter simmered down to a pleasant chuckle, if not a little devious. “I thought– nah, can’t be. But holy shit, you like Hob, don’t you?”

It took several long, embarrassing seconds to figure out what Jo just asked him. Dream felt warmth spreading up his ears.

“Of course. He’s my friend–”

“Nonono–” Jo stepped into Dream’s space, landing a heavy hand on his bony shoulder. “You like him. I can tell, because you haven’t spoken to him all night.”

Dream swallowed. The alcohol was affecting his brain, sloshing it around and rendering him speechless.

Johanna smirked. “Am I wrong?”

“You’re a menace, Constantine.” Dream said, pushing her hand off him and sliding his gaze sideways to find Hob rubbing the tops of his thighs. It’d been well over an hour since they’d arrived, Dream wondered how long Hob had been sitting there, playing a role he clearly wasn’t enjoying anymore.

Jo inclined her head.

“He likes you too.”

Dream’s head snapped back to meet Jo’s eyes, searching for that tell of humour or sarcasm, and finding none.

She leaned in conspiratorially. “He told me not to tell you. Thinks your eyes are ‘dazzling’ and your hands are pretty–” she makes a face at that one. “And that your hair looks– and I quote– ‘like raven’s feathers’.”

Dream swallows, his throat suddenly dry.

“When did he tell you this?”

Jo huffs a sigh, taking a sip from her beer, her lips making a smacking sound off the bottle’s mouth.

“The night after I introduced you two.”

Dream’s heart flips over at the revelation. 

Johanna winks and shoves at Dream’s shoulder. “Now go say hi before you break his heart.”

Taking Johanna’s advice seems like a death sentence, but Dream is just drunk enough to summon courage, finishing off his drink and setting the empty cup on a random surface, before forcing his shoulders back and finally making his way towards Hob.

The smile that breaks across Hob’s face once he spots Dream is staggering, and it strikes Dream down more so than before, informed with the knowledge that Hob might like him as much as Dream does.

Dream slips his hands into the pockets of his slacks, affecting nonchalance as he finally stands before Hob.

“Hello, Hob.”

“Hey, Dream.” Hob tugs on his ear, looking up at Dream. His entire body seems to relax, even slouching a bit in the chair. “Was surprised to see you here.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I know parties aren’t really your thing.”

Dream hums, his eyes selfishly taking in their fill. This close to Hob, he can catalogue every hair, curve and freckle in greater detail, storing the information away for later.

And with Hob looking up at him, giving the illusion of superior height, an unmistakable flicker of arousal begins low in Dream’s belly. 

“I can be persuaded, from time to time.” Dream smiles, coy. The alcohol gives him a confidence boost and relaxes him further. “I apologise for not visiting you sooner.”

Hob waves it off. “I honestly didn’t expect you to. I know this is… a lot.” He gestures to himself and laughs self-deprecatingly. “I only agreed to be Sexy Santa because I owe Jo a favour.”

“It’s a fetching look on you,” Dream says, flinging himself into the deep end. He bites his bottom lip as Hob actually looks twice up at Dream, his smile falling into something like disbelief.

“O-oh. Really?” Hob laughs, but it’s small, doubtful. Dream will have to remedy that.

Dream takes a long breath, grounding himself, licking his lips before speaking what he’d wanted to say to Hob all night.

“I believe it’s my turn to ask Santa what I want for Christmas?”

The prettiest pink flush rises up Hob’s cheeks. His lips part as his eyes rove across Dream, down and up.

Despite what Johanna said, Dream feels himself shake with nerves as he tips forward, touching the top of Hob’s thigh before slowly lowering himself onto it. His eyes never leave Hob’s as he goes, silently asking for permission and receiving a nod once he’s fully seated.

Hob’s hand instantly curls around Dream’s narrow hips, holding him steady, locking him into place both upon his lap and in his gaze; wide and dark and focused.

Dream crossed one leg over the other, settling his hands on his knees, which inadvertently causes him to sway that much closer to Hob. He can feel the heat of his body, this close. Can smell something sweet and earthy, like sandalwood and pine, mixed in with something tangy that makes Dream’s mouth water. He has to hold back the urge to close the gap between them and shove his face in Hob’s chest, into the crook of his neck, under his armpit and lose his sanity. Abandon all pretence and inhale Hob like a wild animal, scent and mark him with his teeth and tongue and–

Hob swallows. Dream watches the way his Adam’s apple bobs, fascinated.

“Are you messing with me?”

Dream cocks an eyebrow. “You think me capable of jokes?”

Hob laughs, soft, wonderful. “You are. You’re the funniest person I’ve ever met.”

His thumb is pressing into Dream’s side, caressing back and forth, sending spikes of electricity through his veins and heating him up from the inside.

“No one thinks I’m funny,” Dream says matter-of-factly. 

“Well, you make me laugh,” Hob says simply, his other hand coming across Dream’s front to lace his fingers together, forming a snare around Dream that ignites something within him. “You challenge me, keep me on my toes… keep me guessing.”

Dream’s heart beats so hard against his ribs it nearly hurts. He wonders if Hob can hear it, how he makes his blood race a mile a minute. 

“I’m being very serious,” Dream takes a breath. “But if you deny me, I’ll just say I’m drunk.”

Hob laughs again, his hold around Dream tightening and nearly causing Dream’s knee to bump into Hob’s crotch.

“Are you drunk?”

Dream is very aware that they are in the middle of a party, and although the people around them seem to be paying them little attention, it would probably be inappropriate to follow the path enticing him to resituate himself on Hob’s lap to instead straddle him. To grind his barely contained semi against Hob’s flimsy excuse for shorts, while winding his arms around his shoulders and kiss him stupid.

Dream leans forward, brushing his lips along the shell of Hob’s ear and lowers his voice.

“Not enough to not know what I want.”

Hob groans, Dream can feel the vibration in his own chest as he pulls back just enough to see how his eyes have fluttered shut, swallowing again before opening his eyes and focusing on him.

“And what do you want, Dream?”

“Whatever you’ll give me,” Dream wets his lips. His hands venture up, tentatively brushing his knuckles against Hob’s bronze skin, fascinated at how snow-white his own appears against it. His fingers uncurl as he dares himself to properly touch; pushing into the soft flesh at Hob’s sides and drinking in the unmistakable sound of a choked off whine from his friend.

“I’ll take anything, Hob.”

“Holy shit–” Hob whispers, his head lolling back, exposing his throat which Dream violently refuses to latch his mouth on to.

“Okay…” Hob clears his throat, his eyes swinging over to gauge Dream again. His pupils are blown wide, hunger clear in its depths. “Okay.”

He’s looking at Dream’s mouth as he speaks again. “Meet me out back in 10 minutes?”

Dream bites back a smile and nods, his heart soaring as he climbs off Hob.

Johanna gives him a knowing look as Dream stumbles back into the crowd to find his jacket and coat, managing a wave (great, now he owed her a favour as well) before all but running out of the building to make good on his promise to Hob.

Hob makes good on his offer as well; indeed giving Dream everything he’d wanted. All night.

[merinsedai]

Dreamling Abbey

My fic for the @the-centennial-husbands-bigbang !!

No lie, guys: I decided to do this after coming out of a heart scan at the hospital on the sign up deadline. The thinking being: I could have a dicky ticker here, why not try something new? And this was perfect because if there's one thing I know about myself, it's that I need a deadline.

And so here we are.

I am MOST affronted by how hard this was?! And how bloody long it took me (mostly because I spent a lot of time staring into space or relentlessly googling 'did they have xyz in Edwardian England) All you wonderful, talented writers have made it look so easy that all that effort came as somewhat of a shock. Honestly, I am deeply saddened that the copious amount of Dreamling fic I have voraciously consumed in the past 18 months has not magically made a fantastic author out of me. Why does osmosis not work for writing?

If you read, I hope you enjoy!

(The ticker's fine, by the way. Not dicky at all.)

Art by the fabulous @lalaithquetzallicaresi Thanks for squeezing me in there, lovely! ❤

Pairing: Dream/Hob

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 50k

Warnings: Rape/Non-Con elements

Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Downton Abbey Fusion, look it's Downton Abbey but Dreamling omegaverse. Sorta. If you squint, I'm not sure Julian Fellowes would approve, If you haven't seen Downton it definitely won't matter, because I've unashamedly just stolen bits and pieces and thrown the rest to the wind, Attempted Sexual Assault, Rape/Non-con Elements, Non-Consensual Kissing, Pining, period typical attitudes to gender. If you reframe gender to include alpha beta omega dynamics, omega rights paralleling the suffragette movement in England, Minor Violence, lots of vague references to classic cars, mention of unethical medical procedures, Time and Night are bad parents, Omega Dream of the Endless, Alpha Hob Gadling, Hob Gadling Loves Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Dream of the Endless│Morpheus Needs a Hug, Unbeta'd

Read chapter 1 on ao3

Fic Summary: Lord Morpheus is the eldest child of the Earl and Countess of Endless, an ancient family hiding huge debts behind a fine name. As an omega, Morpheus cannot inherit his father's title or the family's ancestral home. His function is simple: secure a match that is both socially advantageous and financially viable, thus securing the future of the estate and the title of Earl of Endless for his offspring. The family believe that their troubles are solved when Morpheus dutifully (if reluctantly) becomes engaged to his wealthy cousin, Patrick. However, all their carefully laid plans are thrown into chaos when Patrick drowns on the ill-fated Titianic.

Now Morpheus is navigating treacherous waters of his own and discovering how tight the ties of family loyalty bind him. Will the charming and handsome Duke of Crowborough prove his saviour? Or will the wealthy yet odious Sir Roderick Burgess ensnare Morpheus in plans of his own?

Meanwhile, the family’s new chauffeur, one Robert Gadling, is muddying the waters of Morpheus’s existence even further- where is the line between a servant and a friend? Can Hob help Morpheus see that life exists beyond the confines of family and function?

Chapters below the cuts and in subsequent reblogs, should you wish to read it here on tumblr.

Chapter 1: Complications with the Great Matter.

April 1912.

The papers had been late this morning. Not that Morpheus notices their tardiness. Serious daily newspapers are the preserve of his father and since Morpheus has little interest in the society gossip that proliferated on the pages of The Daily Sketch, the only periodical he is allowed in his room, he rarely bothers to glance at it. However, the large photograph blazing across the front page is so arresting that he finds his eyes drawn to it immediately, ignoring all else on his vanity to take the paper and read.  It is bad news of course, the papers rarely print anything but.  ‘DISASTER TO TITANIC ON HER MAIDEN VOYAGE’ boldly proclaims the headline, beneath which is black and white image of the doomed liner, adjoined by one of her seemingly also doomed captain, John Smith. Morpheus’s eyebrows draw down as he reads the brief article: so many presumed dead, so few saved.  They would know people, of course. His mother knew the Astors, and they had dined with Lady Rothes only last month. Still, the privilege of first class likely meant they would be amongst the survivors. Those below decks… on their way to a better life, well they would not have been so fortunate. What a tragedy, Morpheus sighs and closes the paper. This news rather put his own woes into perspective-

The door bangs open and Desire flounces in without so much as a by your leave, as is their way. 

“Dream!” they shout without preamble, then glance at the newspaper in his hands with a slight moue of disappointment. Being the bearer of bad news is something Desire takes a measure of delight in, “Oh, you’ve seen already, Huh,” They shake their head, before bending over Morpheus to look more closely at his paper, hand gripping his shoulder. This close, the smell of the perfume Desire favours- a rich and spicy aroma deliberately chosen to overwhelm their natural omega scent- makes him wrinkle his nose and move his head away. Desire’s fingers tighten on his shoulder and they huff in amusement. They are not strictly allowed to wear perfumes but Desire goes their own way with everything.  “When Jessamy told me, I thought she must have dreamt it!” Desire continues in a low tone, meeting Morpheus’s eyes in the mirror.  “To think, we were just talking about that ship the other week. Remember how excited old Lucy Rothes was? Supposed to be unsinkable- ha!”

“Every mountain is unclimbable until they climb, so every ship is unsinkable until it sinks,” Morpheus responds neutrally, putting the paper down and shrugging Desire’s hand off to stand. Desire moves with him, smoothing their hands over the non-existent wrinkles on the shoulder of his jacket before adjusting his already meticulously placed tie pin. Morpheus endures the attention for a moment before once again moving away. He does not enjoy this close scrutiny and Desire knows it, but it is always a delight of theirs to make him feel uncomfortable.

“Hm” Desire hums then shrugs, “Come on, now you’re all sorted, lets go to breakfast. Aponoia said she saw the telegram boy come by. I want to find out if there’s any more news. Won’t it be something if someone truly important drowned? Gossip for weeks.”

***

The papers always print bad news. Of course they do. But that news is viewed through a detached lens. Shocking, of course, but not too close to home. Telegrams though- that’s different. They take that news and make it personal. 

Breakfast had proven to be a fraught affair. Their father had been away from the room when they first arrived, speaking with their mother so they were to learn, but he had soon been back and imparted the news of their family’s misfortune to his children with unusual brevity. Then he had left without saying anything further, leaving the three of them to process the news alone: the news that Patrick Endless, their wealthy cousin and Morpheus’s fiance, had been aboard the Titanic with his father, James and neither were listed among the names of the survivors. Morpheus had not felt like eating further and had removed himself back to his rooms with his siblings following uninvited (though not strictly unwanted). He had wanted to think but he also knew the danger of getting lost so deeply in his mind, so Desire’s sniping and Aponoia’s quiet presence would be… grounding. 

The stupid thing was that Patrick was not even meant to be on that cursed ship; he and his father weren’t expected in New York until May. Why? He thought Why did they go? And without saying anything? Perhaps Patrick had planned to telegram from New York- a boast and a surprise. 

“Turns out that the lure of the Titanic’s maiden voyage was too strong.” Desire says as if reading his mind, and with a hint of mischief in their golden eyes. They lounge dramatically against the doorframe whilst Morpheus stands and stares out of his window, gazing at the grounds below. It all looks so quiet, so normal. Why doesn’t he feel sad?  Desire continues, “They wanted to be part of history and now they are history.”

“Desire,” Morpheus chides half heartedly. It is a crass statement but he can’t find it in himself to react more strongly. Maybe they are looking for a reaction from him, or maybe this is now how his sibling processes strong emotions. It certainly seems in character. Aponoia has not yet spoken. She just sits unmoving, staring vacantly ahead, toying with the ring on her finger, turning it over and over. He himself feels oddly disconnected from the news. How is one meant to react upon learning that their intended had been so suddenly and shockingly killed- drowned in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, their frozen corpse not even recovered, just left to sink and rot in the sea. Dream blinks slowly, probably not like this, he thinks vaguely. He feels there should be some weeping and wailing involved at the very least. 

But there is only numbness.

***

“Uh, I detest black,” Desire flounces into the room the next morning whilst Morpheus is busy writing in his journal. He enjoys writing, it helps to order his often scattered and rebellious thoughts. 

Jessamy, the maid he shares with his siblings, has just finished fixing his hair and is busily setting his bed to rights, plumping the pillows and smoothing the coverlets.  Desire regards themself critically in Morpheus’ tall mirror, turning this way and that. Aponoia trails after them silently. She is also dressed in black and it makes her look even more wan and washed out than usual. As for Desire, their outfit may have been the requisite black, but it still looked to Morpheus to be sufficiently rakish as to raise their parents’ blood pressure. Hardly proper mourning material. “At least going into mourning won’t ruin your aesthetic, Dream dear,” Desire stretches languidly and collapses back on the just-made bed, smiling thinly. “Always a silver lining somewhere.”

“Full mourning still seems a lot for a cousin,” Morpheus replies vaguely. He tries to pay little attention to his siblings, bent over his journal and writing quickly. The habit of diary writing was born of necessity: a strategy to help quiet his mind, he’d been told, but now it is a pleasure. 

“But not for a fiance,” Aponoia’s voice is quiet. There is no accusation in her tone, only the retelling of fact.

Morpheus huffs slightly. “He was not really a fiance.”

“No? I thought that was what you call a man you’re going to marry?”

“I was only going to marry him if nothing better turned up,” he turns the page and continues writing.

“Morpheus! What a dreadful thing to say!” Desire looks simply delighted. “Poor dear Patrick was absolutely besotted with you. It was quite pathetic to witness really- your indifference and his lovelorn obsessiveness,” they shudder theatrically. “Perhaps it’s a good thing he drowned; saved him from a miserable life with you as husband.”

“You dare suggest I would have been a poor husband to him?” Morpheus demands, slamming his diary closed and rounding on his sibling. Desire shrugs insouciantly, fiddling with a diamond earring.

‘“Well you didn’t love him. Barely liked him. And he wasn’t the cleverest where you were concerned, but he would have seen it sooner or later, and hated you for it. Of course, I could wish an unhappy marriage upon you, dearest brother. But Patrick? He deserved better.”

‘Better?’ Morpheus raises his eyebrows. Desire’s words were often full of spite towards him but this was such a quick switch around from mocking Patrick to defending him. Was there something here he had never seen? Never bothered to look for, in truth. “You would have considered yourself a better prospect, my sibling? Taken what I would have discarded?” He raises his eyebrows in challenge and they glare at each other for a moment, then Desire drops their gaze.

‘Yes,’ they say softly, vulnerability etching their features momentarily. “Would that I were eldest and not… as I am. Then I would have taken him like a shot.”

They stand, shields quickly  going back up. “Well,” they sniff pointedly, looking away from Morpheus and towards the door,  “It’s not so bad I suppose. Mama says we can go into half mourning next month, then full colour by September. A shame we have to spend the summer so drab- and miss the season down in London!- but at least we’ll be ready for shooting parties in the autumn.  Come on Appy, let’s leave his lordship alone. He clearly craves solitude. To think,” they sneer, “and write in his stupid diary.” They flow out the room without a backwards glance, Aponoia dutifully trailing in their wake.

Morpheus sighs and turns back to his journal, opening it and staring at the blank page but not picking his pen back up. Desire and Patrick… not that he thought Patrick had returned any sort of affection to his younger sibling but still, had he really been so blind?

“I was so terribly sorry to hear the news, my lord,” Jessamy offers quietly into the silence of the room as she finishes adjusting his bed again. “You say these things but I know you are sad. Whatever you say.” “You are a dear,” Morpheus murmurs. “But I do not feel as badly as I should. I do not really know… what I feel.”  That is probably a bad reflection upon me, he thinks. The truth was that beyond the normal amount of grief that came with the sudden and untimely passing of an acquaintance, Dream felt nothing.  Patrick had hardly been a grand passion. They had known each other since childhood but had been thrown together through circumstance rather than any actual attraction and they had barely anything in common.  So no, he was not as sad as he should be and that was what was really making him sad.  This marriage would have been a thing of duty. Their family was old, old enough indeed to have had plenty of time to rack up considerable debts. A lack of money hidden behind a fine name. Morpheus’ marriage to Patrick would have secured the estate’s future, shored up its ailing finances and kept the title very much in the family. As an omega, Morpheus would never have been able to inherit his father’s title but his children could, if they were alphas. And now, there was no marriage, no money and a very uncertain future ahead of them. Morpheus’s one duty, his one function in society, was to secure a good match and that duty lay so heavily upon his shoulders. If only Olly had stayed- but no, there was no use in dealing in ‘if onlies’. Practicalities only, and practicalities meant marriage. And soon.

[delta-pavonis]

July Kinkfest Day 1

The Sandman || Dreamling (Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling) || Rated E || 559 words

Prompts: Begging | Degradation | “You have to tell me what you want.” (I'll call this inspired by all three prompts, but the first is the big one here.)

Warnings: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hob gets to be dark (as a treat), D/s (if you squint), would be eventual D/s if I kept writing, Hob uses magic, what if dark!Hob is the one who captures Dream in 1916?, what if Dream is already thinking about planning for the events in The Kindly Ones?

Author's Notes: Eh, a day late. This went a completely different direction as I was writing it. Like, screeching tires change in direction. But I like it, despite it only being kinky if you squint. Don't worry, Day 2 will be kinky enough for both of the posts.

“Never.” His Stranger snarls, leaning forward to pull against the bindings on his wrists. The runes carved into the simple leather cuffs burn gold and the captive sinks back against the wall with a hiss.

“Never say never,” Hob sings, purposefully off-pitch and off-putting. “Over five-hundred years you have made a fool of me – no more, darling.” He shakes his head as he paces. “No more.”

Stars in the void-black eyes follow Hob back and forth, but he says no more. Pity, that. 

“You are the one who gave me this gift. You are the one who spurned my friendship. You are the one who will suffer the consequences.” Hob stops and turns to stand facing his Stranger. “This is, in no uncertain terms, your fault, my dear.”

The captive lifts his lip in a sneer and his rage radiates off of him in tangible waves. They crash up against the darkness seething out of Hob and create visible sparks. 

Hob takes a half-step towards the captive and his darkness expands, curling along the floorboards, seeking out their target. His power pushes against the aura around his Stranger, eating away at it, like acid. Those black-space eyes narrow at him.

Another half-step forward and more of his Stranger’s aura is degraded. It is a slow erosion, but he has time. Hob has nothing but time.

Another half-step. Then another. Successive constricting circles of power ring around his Stranger and Hob is honestly surprised it is this easy to trap an Endless.

Unless… 

Hob inches forward once more and inhales sharply. Now that he is feeling for it, it is obvious. 

It is Hob’s turn to snarl as he surges forward, closing the distance and grabbing his Stranger by the hair, pulling with enough force to snap his head back so that he has to look up at Hob from where he is forced to kneel. “You are letting this happen, Dream of the Endless!" He was hoping to extract that name from his Stranger by force, but his anger overwhelms his plans. "You allow my power to gnaw away at yours. Tell me what your game is!” 

They stare at each other, Hob panting with the physical exertion of maintaining his hard-won magicks. The panting means that Hob’s lips are already parted when Dream surges upwards and covers Hob’s mouth with his. 

For a moment Hob gives in, swaying into everything he has ever wanted, and then he stumbles backwards with a shout. “What the fuck?”

“Capture me.” Now Dream is panting, body trembling with emotion. “I don’t want this any more. I can give you the power.” He strains against the cuffs again, tilting all of himself towards Hob, and while the runes light up once more, Dream does not hiss in pain. “The ruby around my neck. Take it. I will show you how to master its power. I will show you how to use it to master me.” 

Hob has no idea how long he watches with wide, unbelieving eyes as his Stranger tries desperately to get across the floor to him. 

Eventually even the Endless sags down, arms held limply aloft by the cuffs chained to the wall. The sound Dream lets out is something Hob absolutely refuses to believe is a sob. 

Except then Dream, his Stranger, whispers, “Please, Hob. Please take me away.”

[themirokai]

Can I interest you in some more fluffy Dreamling? How about 1800 words of Hob having Feelings about needing to leave the New Inn behind before people realize he doesn't age and Dream being (more or less) helpful?

With thanks to @once-in-a-blue-moon-rising for the helpful beta and whoever started the idea that the New Inn was Hob's temple to Dream.

Worship is up on AO3 and and all of it is below.

He was at Robyn’s funeral. Again. Still. Forever. The pain squeezed his heart, a physical feeling that forced thick sobs out of his throat. 

His son, his clever, brave boy, was gone. Hob had waited so long for a family and now… and now… 

“Hob?”

He pulled his hands away from his face to see the mysterious stranger from the White Horse Inn facing him over the grave. 

No. No, that was Dream. Robyn had died hundreds of years ago. Dream was his lover. Hob gulped back his next sob and reached for him. 

Dream gathered him into his arms and Hob tried to grasp at his robes only to find them made out of shadows. Dream kissed his forehead and Hob felt the garment become solid in his hands. He clung to Dream, burying his face in his chest. 

“I have taught you how to navigate the Dreaming, Hob,” Dream said gently, “why would you come here when it brings you such pain?” 

“I didn’t,” Hob gasped, still struggling to orient himself, “I don’t…” 

“Hm.” 

Hob could hear the frown in Dream’s voice. He felt Dream’s cool thumb draw a line across his forehead and the overwhelming emotion of the funeral faded away. He looked up to see one stark white hand make a dismissive gesture and the graveyard fell away, replaced by a cliff overlooking the sea. 

Hob took a deep breath of the salty air and shook his head, releasing his grasp on Dream’s garment. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking out at the sea, “I don’t know what happened. I haven’t lost myself in a dream in…” he squinted, thinking, “must be well over a year now. I’ve gotten so good at coming straight to you.” 

“I felt you enter the Dreaming,” Dream ran a hand up and down Hob’s arm, “but when you did not come to me, I thought there was somewhere else you wished to be.”

Hob snorted. “If I’m dreaming then I want to be with you.” 

“Yes,” Dream said, “when I felt your sorrow I realized that your location was unintentional.” 

“Thanks for coming.” 

“You know I always will.” 

Hob draped his arms over Dream’s shoulders and leaned in to kiss him. 

When they eventually parted, Hob found that they were in a cozy room with a plush couch in front of a hearth with a crackling fire. Dream plucked two glasses of wine from the side table, handed one to Hob, then pulled him down to sit on the couch. Hob gladly pressed himself against Dream’s side and took a sip of the wine. 

“Something is troubling you,” Dream said. 

Hob shrugged. “I must have been thinking about Robyn before I fell asleep.” 

Dream hummed in disagreement. “That memory represents loss for you. Is there something you fear to lose?” 

“No, I-”

The voice of the history department dean sounded in the room. “I swear you haven’t aged a day since I first met you, Robert! It’s got to be, what, 20 years now? How do you do it?” 

Hob sighed and rolled his eyes, then nudged Dream with his elbow. “Could you not do that, please?” 

“I did nothing,” Dream insisted, “this is still your dream, Hob.” 

Hob groaned and rubbed his hand over his face. “Then I need to get better at controlling that.” 

He quickly set down his wine glass and wrapped his arms around Dream’s waist, easily pulling him into his lap.  Hob marveled as he always did that Dream’s weight in the Dreaming bore no correlation to the size of his body. Dream shifted so that he was straddling Hob’s lap. 

“If this is my dream,” Hob said, “then I want it to be about making love to you, not my fear of loss.” 

Dream smiled and Hob reached up to grasp the back of his neck and pull him down into a kiss. 

When Hob awoke, body still tingling with the pleasurable sensations of his dream, he was happy to find Dream in his arms. A benefit, he thought as he pulled Dream closer, of having a supernatural lover who didn’t sleep, was that he never had to worry about waking him. 

“Couldn’t bear to let me go?” he murmured into Dream’s shoulder. 

“Something like that.” Dream smiled at him. 

Hob kissed Dream’s shoulder and shifted with a contented sigh to rest his head on his chest. Dream stroked the hair at Hob’s temple repeatedly and Hob lost track of how long they lay like that before Dream broke the silence.

“Hob?”

“Mm?” 

“The voice in your dream.” 

Hob groaned. “It seems a bit unfair that I fell in love with you before I knew that you could see my subconscious.”

“You suspected.” Hob couldn’t see the smirk, but he could hear it. 

“I did think you were a vampire for a while.”

Dream scoffed, then stroked his hair in silence for another moment before continuing. “I do not wish to look into your subconscious mind. I would much prefer that you talk to me.” 

Hob blew out a frustrated breath. “It’s not… I don’t know. It’s not something that should make you have to come rescue me from nightmares! It’s really not a big deal.” 

“Someone has noticed that you have not aged in twenty years?” 

“The dean,” Hob sighed, “my boss. Frankly I’m surprised it took this long.” 

“You will have to move on then,” Dream said. 

“Yeah,” Hob muttered. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head to kiss Dream’s chest. 

“That is what is troubling you?” 

Hob shrugged.

“You have uprooted your life many times,” Dream said gently, “why is the prospect of doing it again making you dream of your son’s funeral?”

“It’s different this time!” The words flowed more easily when he didn’t have to look in Dream’s eyes. “Before, I always knew I would be coming back to the White Horse to see you. The world kept changing but that stayed the same. It was the constant. But then the White Horse was gone and the New Inn was my constant.”

Dream leaned down to kiss the top of Hob’s head. “You hardly need wait 100 years or be in a specific tavern to see me. You can always reach me in the Dreaming now and I will come to you wherever you are in the waking world.” 

“I know, I know.” Hob turned his head to press his face into Dream’s chest. “It’s stupid and irrational but … leaving the New Inn when I spent so much time waiting for you there… when it’s the place where you came back to me…” he trailed off and tried to swallow down the emotion. 

“I suppose,” Dream said after a moment, “that it is not surprising that you would be reluctant to leave your temple.”

“My what?” Hob frowned.

Dream tucked one hand behind his head. “Your temple to me.” 

Hob sat up and turned to look down at him. “Hang on, what are you talking about?” 

“You constructed a temple to me in my absence.” Dream’s face bore the calm, pleased expression he always got when he learned a new rule for how something worked. 

“The New Inn?” Hob narrowed his eyes, perplexed.

Dream nodded with a smile that teetered perilously close to smug. 

“It’s a pub, not a temple!” Hob huffed. “And I paid people to renovate an old boarding house, I didn’t construct it!” 

Dream shrugged. “You had a place built for me. A place where you hoped and waited for me to come. I have been worshipped before, Hob Gadling. Do you think I would not know how it feels?” 

“Wait, I thought you weren’t a god.” Hob tried to grasp at anything to understand the turn this conversation had taken. 

“I am not a god. Over time certain cultures and individuals have worshipped me regardless.”

Hob knew he was losing the thread but couldn’t resist his next question. “What does being worshipped feel like?”

Dream closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “It feels like strength, and power, and love flowing to me.”

“And you think I worship you?”

Dream opened his eyes again and they were black with stars shining in them. “I know you do.” 

He reached up to grab the front of Hob’s shirt and pulled him down into a kiss. Hob leaned into the kiss but pulled back when Dream let go of his shirt. He lay on top of Dream’s chest, his chin resting on his crossed arms. 

“Why did you never say anything?”

Dream frowned. “What would you have had me say?” 

“I don’t know… ‘thanks for the temple, Hob’?”

“I thank you for the temple, Hob Gadling,” Dream smirked. 

Hob traced a curlicue over Dream’s shoulder with his finger.

“Have you got lots of temples?” he asked quietly. 

“None that are presently in use on this world.” 

“But you had some,” Hob pressed. “Probably proper marble jobs with plinths and whatnot.” 

“Some were like that,” Dream said, “some simpler, some more elaborate. The New Inn is perhaps not the most elegant temple I have received over the eons-” 

“Hey!”

“- but it is the most heartfelt. And the most meaningful to me.” 

Hob smiled softly as he let himself get lost in the blackness of Dream’s eyes. “I suppose I’ll take that.” 

Dream interlaced their fingers and brought Hob’s hand to his mouth to kiss. “We can return to the New Inn in dreams. And perhaps in the waking world in 2089.” 

Hob took a deep breath and closed his eyes, then pulled their hands towards him and kissed Dream’s fingers. “Yeah. That sounds good.” 

One Year Later

Hob waved as the Jeep trundled away from him down the gravel road. He felt a sudden change in the barometric pressure and grinned, then turned to face Dream who had appeared behind him in the open field. Dream stepped towards him, long black coat flapping in the breeze and then they were in each other’s arms, lips joined. 

“You seem extremely pleased with yourself today,” Dream remarked when they eventually broke apart. 

“Just had a very good meeting with an architect I’ve hired.” Hob grinned. 

Dream tucked a lock of Hob’s hair behind his ear. “An architect?” 

“I’m building you a new temple.” 

Dream froze. “What?” 

“I mean, it’s also going to be my home, but I figure if I unintentionally turned a pub into a temple, if I try I can probably intentionally make a house into a temple to Dream of the Endless.” 

Dream stood there, lips parted, studying him. Seemingly at a loss for words. 

Hob’s grin widened and he stepped closer, taking Dream’s face in his hands. “And I intend to spend most of my time there worshipping you.”

[thranduilland]

WIP word search game

I have once more been tagged.

thanks, @mentallyinvernation, I'll get you back for this, I promise.

The words this time were: punch, blue, fire, bed, rage, and inn. 

Snips below the cut

Punch dang had to go back to my pre Dreamling Bingo wips for this one lol (a young Roderick overheard Hob in 1889 and in 1916 has people track down Hob to use against Dream) CW blood/torture (sorta)

The guards hold Hob up by his shoulders and Hob meets Dream’s gaze. Dream’s eyes burn and he tries to blink away the tears, but they refuse to obey, and he feels them spill over as Roderick drives the sword forward, punching through Hob’s chest, but missing his heart. Dream flinches as the blood splatters across the glass of his cage, he squints through it as he hears Hob’s moaning gasps as the guards let him go. Hob lurches forward, vomiting up blood; it joins its predecessors against the glass and Dream’s nails dig into the flesh of his thighs as he forces himself not to scream.

Blue (Hob was possessed by a demon at the 1989 meeting)

“Hob. Open your eyes. I need you to look at me,” his stranger says, Hob does not want to listen, but there is something… about that tone that makes him willing to obey. He blinks open his eyes, whimpering as his body obeys him still. This is a dream. “That’s it, Hob. Look at me, please. You’re doing well,” his stranger praises him and Hob’s heart twists in his chest even as he turns his head to catch a too familiar blue gaze. “Hob Gadling. Hear me. You are not dreaming,” his stranger commands, his voice causing the hair on Hob’s arms to stand up. Power, Hob realizes. His stranger has used magic on him, but it… it isn’t anything like the slithering darkness he has become used to from the demon.

Fire (Shadowhunter Hob)

He is not with her when she dies, he is busy mediating an argument between the other two parabatai pairs when it happens. It feels like fire at first, a hot brand against his heart, flame burning through his lungs, then a sharp, cutting ache at the site of his parabatai rune. He screams, though, later, he doesn’t remember the screaming, only knows that he screamed because he gets told so. He screams, his legs buckle, and he collapses like a puppet with its strings cut. He doesn’t remember any of that, either, just the agony that sweeps through him in ceaseless waves.

He is not with her when she dies.

Bed (Eleanor was Shaxberd, she goes to the Dreaming after her death)

“I think you might surprise yourself, if you let things happen,” she tells him, rubbing her thumb over the back of his hand. “I do not mind if you stray from me. He is of the Waking. I am of the Dreaming. So long as you return to me, I have no quarrel. But I will have honesty, my Dream King. Do not seek his bed if it is me that you are after, and do not seek mine if it is his that you want.”

“I hear you, but I still think you are wrong about his attentions,” Dream says, lifting her hand to his lips and placing a chaste kiss upon it. “So, my Lady Eleanor? Will you be my queen?”

Rage well the search showed two close together so... (Hob gets possessed at the 1989 meeting)

It takes every ounce of his self-control to be civil, to not bring the New Inn down upon their heads in a quake of his rage. He will never be grateful to the Burgess’s for anything, but he thinks he is almost thankful for the indifference he mastered over the years of them bothering him in the cage, because it is that skill that he uses to not react at all when Hob screams for him to run.

He’s not sure how to feel about Hob’s continued care for him, even after the way Dream had treated him at their last meeting. That Hob would still seek to warn him, that Hob would still leap to his defence. Dream isn’t sure what to do with it and he doesn’t grow any surer as he speaks with the demon.

Admittedly, he should not let the demon get a rise out of him as he does, but they taunt him with Hob’s suffering, and he cannot help it. The New Inn heaves around them with his rage as he reaches forward to pluck the demon from Hob’s body. He flinches when he hears the snapping of bone and watches Hob’s body slump across the table. He grips the demon’s struggling incorporeal form in his hand and grits his teeth.

Inn (Hob is the son of Lucifer, he is the Hope in Hell)

June 7th, 1389, finds Hope settled in at the table in the White Horse Inn with his friends. He’s not sure exactly what gets them onto the topic of death, but he throws himself into it wholeheartedly. He still hasn’t given up hope, has gotten even more brazen with it. See, he’s decided he’s simply not going to die. He’s not sure how immortal he is, anyway, being an embodiment of Hope and the son of Lucifer Morningstar, but he imagines death should still very much be in the cards for him. But he’s not going to die. He’s not. He’s going to live forever or so he hopes.

Tagging anyone who wants to do it but post especially @mentallyinvernation as I threatened promised you I would

Your words are: disgust, light, respect, bleed, touch, sleep

[serenailith]

sleep, my love, and dream of me

for the @dreamlingbingo​ ! i’m so glad i signed up; writing this was fun.  

Square: d2, sleepy sex Rating: e Word Count: 1110 Ship(s): dream of the endless/hob gadling Warnings: maybe slight dubious consent if you squint?? Additional Tags:  human!au, alternate universe - no powers, sleepy sex, dreamling bingo, hob is not immortal, dream is not endless just a mere human, hob thinks it’s a dream until he doesn’t Summary: 

After a horrible, no-good, dirty, rotten day, Hob expects coming home to be better. Turns out, his luck isn't that great. Until it is.

Link: on ao3 masterlist

Hob somehow manages to fit the key into the lock, twisting it viciously. Unfortunately, as is his luck, the doorknob jams. He sighs and lets his head thunk against the door. Of course this would happen. It’s just his luck today, he supposes. First, there had been a car accident blocking the roads. Next had come the disastrous lecture during which two students got into a fistfight, followed by the fire at the New Inn when he’d gone in to eat dinner before heading home. He hadn’t had the energy or desire to go somewhere else for a quick meal.

The flat is silent when he finally makes it inside. Yet another thing gone wrong in his day, he grouses to himself as he drops his bag to the floor. He’d known he would be spending the night alone; he just wishes it wasn’t so fucking quiet and empty, not after today. Though his stomach grumbles, he bypasses the kitchen completely and heads to the bedroom.

He aches to go to bed, to pretend today never happened, but he smells faintly like smoke and much more like body odour. Damn summer days. So Hob stumbles toward the bathroom for a shower. He waits just long enough for the water to warm up then steps into the stall. The curse echoes in the room at the first touch of icy water against his skin.

Despite the lack of hot water, Hob forces himself to remain beneath the spray and scrub himself clean as quickly as possible. He ignores the way his teeth clack together and the shudders taking over his entire body. Thankfully, there is a clean towel waiting for him on the rack–his favourite, too. Fluffy and soft, just the way he likes it.

At least one thing’s going right.

In his half of the closet, he finds his second-favourite pair of pyjama bottoms. His favourite ones lie on the floor on the left side of the bed. His lips quirk into a smile at the sight. He may not be able to wear them tonight, but that’s okay. He doesn’t mind.

He hurriedly dresses, shivering the whole time, then crawls into bed between the sheets. A moment later, he shoves back the blankets and makes his way to his bag by the front door. Papers slip out of the bag as he digs for his phone, then, once it’s in hand, he goes back to bed.

I miss you, he types while curled into a tight ball to preserve body heat.

There is no response. His eyes burn, but Hob doesn’t let the tears fall. He expected this. Turning on his ringer, he sets his phone beside his head and closes his eyes. He might as well try to sleep while he has half a chance.

A warm hand wraps around his hip, slips beneath the band of his pyjamas, and Hob lets out a soft sigh at the touch. It’s syrupy, almost a haze of sensation, even as he shifts to provide better access. Long, slender, familiar fingers trail up the length of his stiffening cock. Teeth nip at the side of his throat, the curve of his shoulder, before the voice comes:

“I missed you, too, my darling.”

Hob’s lips curl into a dopey smile at the voice of his partner. His fiancé. His future. “You’re here.”

“Of course. I know how you hate to sleep alone.”

“As if I’m–” Hob starts before Morpheus curls his hand into a fist around Hob’s cock, thumb sweeping over the tip. “As if I’m the only one,” he chokes out.

“Hush, love.”

Sleep still clings to the edge of Hob’s consciousness as Morpheus strokes him; he drifts closer to the edge of awareness before slipping back toward the depths of sleep. The pressure and rhythm on his cock stays the same, which helps lull him even nearer to his dreams. Or maybe this is a dream, brought on by a horrible day and missing Morpheus.

It must be a dream, he thinks, when the hand disappears. Cool air meets heated flesh, and Hob groans as he decides to ignore his arousal. Having a wank always feels sad to him now that he has Morpheus in his life. Morpheus, who has never left Hob dissatisfied, both in bed and out. Morpheus, who should be here now but isn’t because he has to finish writing his novel before his publisher decides to terminate the contract.

“Fuck,” he whimpers when something wet and warm probes at his hole.

He immediately pushes back, sighing when the finger slips inside with hardly any resistance. What a wonderful dream. So realistic. Hob gives into the desire for the fantasy to play out. He only hopes there isn’t too much of a mess to clean up in the morning.

One finger becomes two becomes three, then they’re gone. He whines, no please don’t stop, before his breath is stolen by the hot length pressing into him. He lets out a sharp exhale when bony hips come to press against his arse, the cock fully sheathed, and an arm wraps around his chest to hold him tightly. For someone so wiry, Morpheus has always been strong. Stronger than he looks, really.

“This is real, isn’t it?” Hob whispers into the dark, swatting at Morpheus when all he does is laugh in response. “This isn’t a dream?”

Morpheus pulls back slightly and rocks forward, a gentle motion that does nothing to answer Hob’s question. Deciding it isn’t worth it to ask again, Hob presses his fingertips to the flesh of Morpheus’s arse, nails digging into skin, and urges his fiancé on. Morpheus obliges with a kiss on Hob’s neck.

The dreamlike quality doesn’t fade even as Morpheus moves faster. His hand drifts along Hob’s chest, down his stomach, to grasp firmly at his cock. With each thrust, he pushes Hob’s hips forward into the circle of his fist, and Hob lets out a breathless whimper when Morpheus bites down on his shoulder. The bedframe squeaks quietly in time with Morpheus’s movements, as he fucks into Hob with care and precision.

Hob comes at the sharp sting of another bite, this one meant to leave a mark, and the tightening of fingers around his cock. Morpheus’s soft moan is muffled in Hob’s hair as he spills into Hob a moment later. They lie together in silence for a few minutes, both catching their breath–and struggling to stay awake, in Hob’s case.

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end: Morpheus pulls away and clambers out of bed, ostensibly to wash up.

Hob is asleep before Morpheus comes back.

[meiluu]

Simon “Ghost” Riley x Reader(female, but no descriptors are used)

Word count: 900+

Warnings: Mentions of death and violence…, hurt/comfort, angst(if you squint) and fluff.

Summary:

After a rather difficult mission, reader (codename: Lyra) has a rough time dealing with the aftermath of said “successful” mission. Though Simon is there when she needs him most :)

Reader(Lyra) POV

Dirt and grim stuck to your face, but it served as a useless distraction from this twisted feeling in your gut. Or more specifically where your heart was. It was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance mission, to scout out a cartel that was hiding in a small village in Egypt, gather intel so that we could come back and take them out. But that was completely thrown off that table when a disturbance occurred within the village, to help the villagers get out.

Being with 141 and even before joining the team you had been through, to put it bluntly “shit”. But nothing can truly prepare you for seeing an innocent get caught in the crossfire, especially a child at that…

So here you were, still in your tactical gear, holed up in one of the on base briefing rooms trying not to fall into a complete sobbing mess. Every scenario runs rampant through your mind at all of the “what if’s” you could have done to save that kid but a nasty bitter thought told you that the kid was already dead and you can't do anything about that.

Heavy footfalls take you out of your bubble, but a creak of the door opening has you standing straight up turning your back to it. The door softly shuts, and you are left standing in silence, you already know who it is. Their presence has become all too familiar now, grown accustomed to it over your time with 141.

“Lyra…” his voice has that gruffness to it, but this is soft like he's worried you’ll somehow escape from his view.

You go to respond but a choked whimper leaves you instead. He walks up behind you, looming over you but it is not in a sense to intimate you but to shield you. Big hands gently turn you to face him, you don’t fight him. Meeting his eyes, tears begin to well up, he pulls you into his chest giving you shelter. Then a warm hand runs down your back and begins to caress you, and it's like the flood gates open.

Sobs leave you as you cling onto him, slowly he lowers the both of you back onto the floor letting you hold onto him like he was your lifeline. Because in that moment he was, Simon had always been there for you, someone where you each found comfort in one another. He was someone whose silence was awkward but instead was a warm comforting blanket that would protect you when you needed it.

Time seemed to pass in a weird way, but eventually your sobs quieted. “I’m sorry.” you really didn't know if you were apologizing to simon or to the little girl you couldn't save, maybe both…

“No, don't apologize for any of this.” he was firm in his statement leaving no room for doubt .

Sniffling quietly you nod your head and agree with a ‘ok’. For the time being you both sat huddled together relishing in the comfort that you both so rarely get to have. Raising your head from his chest meeting his eyes, you murmur a ‘thank you’ and a deep hum leaves him in response. “I’ll always be there when you need me… please don’t hide from me” simons voice holds so much comfort and paired with that look in his eyes that can only be described as adoration you nod in acknowledgement.

“Same goes for you Simon.” holding his gaze, seeing his eye lighten up at the indirect promise.

—

Afterwards you and Simon eventually leave the briefing room you both had holed up in and regroup with the rest of 141 and head down to the mess to grab some food before you guys go back to your bunks.

Stripping off your tactical gear and quickly washing the grim you had accumulated off of you, then finally changing into baggy sweats and an old military t-shirt, you head towards your cot. Snuggling up underneath the wool blanket exhaustion brings you swiftly into a dreamless sleep.

Simon “Ghost” Riley POV

Glancing across, I see her finally at relative peace… seeing her like I did today hasn't happened in years. I never want to see her ever in such distress like that again, but I know it's useless to make such demands when so much of that is out of my control. But I'll be damned if I don't try.

Feeling so useless was something I was not accustomed to, but today I had felt in an abundance. And I hated it. Our mission couldn’t have gone worse, although we were able to get what we wanted and it felt as if our gains didn't add up to the pain that occurred.

I know she’s strong, probably stronger than me but seeing her so defeated made me feel this wrenching pain inside of my chest. Caring for her and seeking comfort in her was risky considering our job but without her comfort that I’ve grown used to for the past few months, I would feel so… lonely. Though I'll be taking that admission to my grave.

Leaving my thoughts behind I look back over towards her, watching her curly into her pillow seeing the rise and fall of her chest, a wave of comfort gently washes over me.

Laying in my cot I relax at the fact that she's no longer in distress, her comfort brings my own along with it. Closing my eyes, I give in to my exhaustion I've gathered throughout the day.

a/n Lyra is a constellation (a harp), that's where I got the name <3

[kittynannygaming]

[Dreamling Bingo 2023] 03

02/25 - You’re here - 04/25

Square: E1 - Half-human

Title: Uld Ases' Dreamling Bingo 2023    

Rating: G

Word Count: 221

Ship(s): Dream of The Enless|Morpheus/Robert ‘Hob’ Gadling

Warnings: Mention of experimentation, mention of sequestration

Additional Tags:

Summary: Dream receives some shocking news

Link: AO3, 

For @dreamlingbingo​

“Where is he?” The King of Nightmares was beyond pissed. The person who made Hob disappear (because Dream refused to think that Hob died) was crying.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know. They didn’t tell me anything.” Nightmare squinted his eyes.

“Who are they?”

“We don’t know, they are the people who keep us prisoners. I could get out because they wanted me to do it. Because, we are yours, at least in part.”

“What do you mean?”

“I heard them, when I was younger and I pretended to sleep. Between the moment Burgess summoned you and the moment you woke up, they took something from you they could experiment on. They didn’t get far until the discovery of DNA and the in-vitro. After that, they created us, from a human mother and, well, you.” Nightmare took a step back like he was punched.

“You’re my child.”

“Children, we’re a dozen.” Nightmare put his hand on the half-human’s head, very gently.

“Tell me, my child, what is your name?”

“They didn’t gave us one, only numbers, but I like Astraeus.”

“Astreus… The God of Dusk, Stars and Planets. Of the Art of Astrology. Very well. Come with me and tell me everything you know.”

They both disappeared in a whirlwind of sand, without seeing a pair of eyes looking at them mournfully.

[slow-burn-sally]

I would like to know about Pride and Prejudice and Sandman please (for the last ask game)

FRIEND THANK YOU

Pride & Prejudice

Favorite female character: I'm gonna mix things up and say Charlotte Lucas. She knew what was up. She married Mr. Collins and settled into a nice life without needing to be swept away by romance. She was like hey, I'm kinda plain, and he's got money and he's not bad looking, and I respect that. I found myself thinking the same thing, but I'm also very attracted to 1995 and 2005 Mr. Collins.

Favorite male character: Again, I could have said Darcy, but no. I'm mixing it up yet again. Mr. Bennet! He's got so much sass and so much dad humor. He truly loves and supports his family without putting up with too much ridiculousness. I love him.

Worst female character: Lady Catherine Debourge. Fuck her. She sucks. She was very well played by the actors who were cast for both those versions, and I remember her being delightfully horrible from when I read the book. Excellent villain. I hate her. (*squints* not sure if I'm supposed to actually think she's a "worst" character, or just respect her for how horribly she's written...)

Worst male character: MR. COLLINS. He's horrible. But also I love him. Just a very good "bad guy". I love how villains in Pride and Prejudice are just douchey regular people. Mr. Collins is a stunningly well written obnoxious, unctuous creep, and I love (hate) him for it.

OTP: Lizzie/Darcy

BROTP: Lizzie/Mr. Bennet (best father-daughter team since the dawn of time).

NOTP: eh... don't really have one. Catherine De Bourge's niece and Darcy?

The Sandman

Favorite female character: Lucienne. She just rocks. Her calm, steady, classy demeanor. How she puts up with her boss' workplace shenanigans while also supporting him. Also, she's hot.

Favorite male character: HOB GADLING. Nuff said. He's amazing your honor.

Worst female character: Johanna Constantine. Idk she just didn't butter my toast.

Worst male character: We don't have to name names (because he doesn't have one), but it involves kittens and I can't speak of it.

OTP: Dreamling!

BROTP: Dream/Matthew! (matthew is close second for best male character).

NOTP: Again, I don't really have one. I only really ship dreamling, but all the other ships I've heard of seemed cool.

thanks again for this! it was so fun!