The Sandman CHBB Fic: To Be Brand New, Chapters 13-16

Chapters: 25
Estimated final word count: 140,000ish
Rating: Explicit

Relationships: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling, Dream & his siblings, Hob & the Endless, Dream & Orpheus, Dream & Daniel

Characters: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Hob Gadling, Daniel Hall, Destiny of the Endless, Death of the Endless, Matthew the Raven, Odin (The Sandman), Delirium of the Endless, Lucienne, Despair of the Endless, Desire of the Endless, Orpheus (The Sandman), Destruction of the Endless, Lyta Hall

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Additional Tags: Sandman: Brief Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Everyone Lives, Age Regression/De-Aging, Slow Burn, Like the Slowest Burn, Like One of Them Is a Pre-Sexual Child for the First 100,000 Words of the Fic, What If The Red String Of Fate Was Also A Toddler Leash, Touch-Starved Dream of the Endless, Protective Hob Gadling, Cuddling & Snuggling, Caretaking, Bathing, Bed Sharing, Crying, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Injuries, Illness, Depression, Suicidal Ideation, Explicit Sexual Content, Masturbation, Not Exactly Loss of Virginity But Not Not That?, Happy Ending

Chapters 1-4 on Dreamwidth
Chapters 5-8 on Dreamwidth
Chapters 9-12 on Dreamwidth

This fic is also posting (though more slowly) on AO3!

Check out all the gorgeous art by fishfingersandscarves on Tumblr!

Chapter 13

Dream dozed on and off in the bath, but didn't manage to sleep, and didn't ask to be taken out again, until Hob saw daylight creeping in from the rest of the flat. Then Dream held his hand up like he wanted it kissed, and Hob saw that goldfish tattoo on it, the edges peeling more than ever.

Delirium had put it there, and Dream had said he loved it. That was before he got lost, before Hob found him, before Delirium had said she would help him on his way, but... it was Delirium's mark on him, and Delirium had done something to him that needed to stop. He should have thought of this before, but he didn't think he'd noticed the goldfish all the time Dream had been sick, though he must have held and kissed Dream's hands a hundred times.

Hob supposed groggily that it had to happen that way, but he also peeled the damn tattoo off. It dissolved into light in his hand, an actual glowing goldfish that swam one circle in the air above Dream's head, which Dream watched with open-mouthed fascination. Then it rippled its way to the bathtub tap and swam into it with a last jaunty flick of its tail.

Hob said, "Your sister is a troublemaker, darling," and kissed Dream's still-upraised hand.

Dream blinked up at him, with his eyes properly focusing for the first time in a very long twenty-four hours. His voice was weak and scratchy but present in a way it hadn't been for this entire day when he said, "Hob? What..."

"Your youngest sister happened," Hob said. "And I haven't slept all night, and you've been poorly, so I think we should both go to bed now."

Dream frowned up at him for a moment, like he was trying to make sense of... probably a lot of things. Then his eyes closed, and he nodded.

Hob pulled the bathtub plug, checked that Dream was still safely propped on those sodden towels, and went to the hall closet to dig out a fresh, dry one. Dream picked his head up when Hob fished him out of the bath, and managed to more or less cooperate with Hob helping him out of his absolutely soaked pajama suit. He was a bit too floppy to stand like a little prince to be dried off, but having already done three rounds of this with Dream's most poorly limp noodle self, Hob managed just fine.

When he got back into the bedroom to dress Dream in another suit of pajamas, he discovered that someone—Destiny, presumably—had returned Dream's book to sit on top of the case. Dream had his head down on Hob's shoulder, and Hob said nothing, just tucked it back into its pocket inside. They could discuss Destiny and the book and all the rest of it when they had both had some sleep.

Dream's last clean pair of pajamas was the kind that went over his feet and zipped all the way up; they were a soft and fuzzy black with black and white striped ribbing at the wrists and around the neck, and the zipper pull was a little silver star.

"Don't let me forget to do laundry tomorrow," Hob murmured. "You're nearly out of clothes and there isn't a clean towel in the place."

Dream frowned. "I—"

"Shh," Hob said, because that had sounded like the beginning of I apologize or I will do it or some such nonsense, and Hob really didn't have enough brain left to handle it. "Sleep now. Laundry later. We'll remember well enough."

Dream met his gaze for a long, serious moment, then nodded and rested against his shoulder again, just long enough for Hob to carry him to the bed and lay him down. Hob did a quick round of the flat to be sure the doors were locked and lights were out, barely noticing how automatic it was now to keep the ribbon out of the way as it trailed him. He drew the bedroom curtains tight against the early morning sun and finally, finally lay down to sleep.

He dreamed, half aware that he was dreaming and that the dreams were ordinary, until suddenly he was very conscious that he was sitting on grass under the warm noonday sun, looking out over the sea, and Dream was there beside him.

Dream was small, but with that sense of being much more than what he looked like. Looking down at him, Hob realized that they were sitting, not just on grass, but on the grassy edge of a cliff. The sea was under their dangling feet, crashing darkly against a wall of stone. The sun sparkled on the swells further out, but didn't seem to reach the nearest waters.

Hob cautiously put an arm around Dream's shoulders, and Dream leaned into him.

"That is the way to my youngest sister's kingdom," Dream said, raising a little hand to point out across the sea. Hob could see a smudge on the horizon that was probably land, or what passed for it in this place.

"Not here to declare war, I hope," Hob said. "Destiny did say she was trying to be helpful, and that was what I thought as well, remembering what she said before she left. She wanted to help you along."

Dream looked up at him, and his eyes were black like they had been after he came back from that void place, but not empty like that. They were full of shining stars. "I will if you wish it. She made trouble for you, you said."

Hob decided not to think too hard about that, and bent to kiss Dream's forehead. "Not on your life, my friend. It wasn't so much trouble. I think she was right, and I hope that it helped you."

Dream sighed gustily, and Hob blinked his eyes open and found that he was lying in his bed, with one arm curled around Dream. The light in the room was dim, but it was obviously midday bright outside the curtains as it had been on that clifftop in the Dreaming.

"Are you feeling recovered?" Hob asked, while Dream was still blinking and settling back into himself.

Dream put one hand up to rub at his forehead in a startlingly adult gesture, and sighed again, and then lowered his hand and met Hob's eyes. "I... yes. I feel well, physically. I do not believe I have ever experienced anything like that before. It was..."

Hob raised his eyebrows as the pause grew longer.

"Unpleasant," Dream said. "Except also..." He met Hob's gaze for just a second, and then rolled forward, hiding himself against Hob's chest.

Well, that was answer enough, and he wouldn't push Dream to talk about it in more words than that right now. Hob hugged him close, ducking his head to press a kiss to his hair. "Good. Glad it wasn't completely awful for you, love. How do you feel about lunch?"

He felt Dream take a breath, and then go still, and Dream turned his head to say in a small voice, "Did I burst into tears because I thought about cold toast?"

"Quintessential human experience, being brought low by our own thoughts," Hob said, sitting up with Dream still firmly in his arms. "Ugh, that reminds me I've got to deal with all those damp towels."

Dream gave a distinct shudder, but also wrapped his arms firmly around Hob's neck. "Cheese on toast first?"

"Definitely cheese on toast first," Hob agreed, and carried him out into the kitchen.

---

Dream took his time eating his first good meal in more than a day, though once he started he was conscious of being ravenously hungry. He had no actual reason to fear making himself ill by eating too fast, but now he had a glimmer of how this body could be laid low, and it made him cautious.

He also preferred having something to pay attention to, while he let all the memories of the past two days fall properly into place.

He had lost himself in the Between, holding too little of his power in this form to navigate through that space; Delirium had brought Hob to him, and Hob had wrapped him up in that same red ribbon that Dream had thought was so unnecessary, and brought him safely back to the Waking world.

Delirium, in an impulse of helpfulness executed in Delirium's particular style, had rendered Dream literally delirious for something like twenty-four hours after she departed. He had had a fever, but that had probably been an incidental sensory embellishment on top of his inability to access most of his usual capacity for thought. He had remembered, mostly, who and where he was, but had forgotten nearly all context.

He had not had the wherewithal to be embarrassed about needing Hob to take care of him, and he had urgently needed Hob's care. He had wept over hypothetical cold toast and over not drying the dishes, and over a movie he had made Hob play for him six times in a single day, and over the petty discomforts of a mildly malfunctioning human-ish body.

He...

Dream looked up from his toast to Hob, who was munching on bacon and tapping something on his phone. "Did... did my eldest brother visit last night?"

"Oh," Hob looked a bit sheepish, as though he had any reason to believe Dream could possibly judge him now. "I, uh. I suppose I... called him? I got your little book from your suitcase, because it was the middle of the night and your fever seemed very bad, and I got worried that I should be properly doing something about it, not just dunking you in a tub whenever it seemed to be really bothering you."

"You got my book, and..." Dream was quite certain that he had not explained the way the book worked as his gallery to Hob, though he supposed that it probably had a certain uncanniness that Hob must have perceived.

"It fell open to that page—Destiny and Death, and I had to pick one," Hob said, glancing up briefly at Dream and then down at his phone again. "And you did say your older brother knew everything, so I touched the page and just sort of... asked him to come, and then he was there. I suppose if he knows everything he must have seen me doing that, so even if that's not how it's meant to work, he made it work anyway."

"That is essentially how it is meant to work," Dream said, and took another bite of his toast. "There are ritual words and so forth, but... likely that is not so necessary as the intention. And the other's willingness to hear you."

Dream would have called upon Death, or told Hob to, if Hob had asked him. She was his favorite, and she could have told Hob as well as Destiny could that there was no danger of Dream dying of his fever.

But instead Destiny had heard Hob's plea. He had come, and Destiny had said that he was glad to have saved Dream from the black hole. Destiny had laid his cool hand on Dream's head when Dream had the temerity to climb into his lap. He had stayed so long as he could, and he had smiled when Dream fretted about him being alone—being lonely.

He had told Dream that he was welcome in the garden. That he was invited.

Destiny had not said it as if it were something new, and Dream did not think his smallest and most incoherent self had been uniquely appealing to his elder brother. Destiny had meant that... that Dream was welcome. That Dream had a standing invitation to visit him. That just as Dream had not wanted to ignore Delirium turning up in the Dreaming, Destiny would not ignore Dream in his garden.

Destiny was the only one of them who had not been created to be a sibling to the others, but he wanted to be a good one, so much as he could. He cared about Dream, as his function allowed. He had even been affectionate, in his way, when Dream had been too addled to know better than to demand it.

And all the while Hob had been there. Hob had called upon Destiny for him—Hob who had been so terrified a day or two ago, of gods and of Lucifer, of all the vast realities that Dream dragged in his train.

Hob had gone into the Between for him, with only Delirium's guidance, armed with fifty yards of red ribbon. Hob had saved him, in that dramatic moment, and then equally Hob had been patient and kind for hours and hours and hours afterward through the tedium of Dream being a sickly, needy child.

Hob had wept for the reminder of all the people he wanted back and could never see again, and then watched the movie that made him weep five more times because Dream wanted to see it and could not stay awake through it. Dream had dared to offer his own troublesome, helpless presence as consolation for all Hob's losses.

And Hob had seemed to agree with him when he did.

Dream did not know how to think about any of that. It had been easier when he couldn't think about it. All of that had only happened because he couldn't think about what he was doing, and Dream didn't think he would trade any of the incredible occurrences of the past day for anything he could name.

Dream had spent twenty-four hours as a small, helpless, whiny child, and Hob had never laughed at him, never grew impatient with him, never showed any sign that he was tallying up a debt to be called upon later. Dream had demanded to be called only pet names, and Hob had called him love and darling and sweeting and dear heart and my joy, and never once had a word he said sounded false. Even in hindsight, he did not think Hob had been lying when he said those words.

Dream slid down from his seat, walked around to Hob's side of the table, and wrapped his arms around Hob's middle.

Hob didn't ask why. He just turned and bent down over Dream, hugging him right back.

---

After the dishes were cleaned and the laundry started, Hob looked down at Dream and said, "What do you think? Movie time? Go for a walk? Not a very long one, the wash will be done in half an hour."

Dream looked down at himself—he was still wearing the footie pajamas—and up at Hob—who was dressed no better, in a disreputable old t-shirt and his most ancient joggers, tattered at the ankles and with a few other holes worn in spots that shouldn't be showing in public.

Point made, neither of them was ready for a walk.

Then Dream looked toward the living room and said, almost managing to sound casual, "I think I would like to draw."

Hob did his best not to say anything or do anything that would be very obvious in Dream's peripheral vision, though he didn't think he could answer for whatever his face did at those words. He took a steadying breath, then reached down and gently ruffled Dream's hair. "Go to it, love."

Dream went, twiddling with the ribbon as he did, and Hob let himself lean against the dryer and take a moment to breathe.

Even if it was more little squares, it was something, and Hob had a feeling that Dream would allow himself more than just a page of color study today. Hob had done yesterday right enough that Dream could trust him a little more today, could relax that much more into being a child.

That was good—that was wonderful—especially because despite the morning's sleep Hob still felt absolutely emptied out. Yesterday had been a long slow crisis, capped by that awful memory of Robyn being ill, and...

Hob wiped away a few stray tears, but couldn't bring himself to try to force the memory away. Not today, not when he'd spent so much time telling Dream it was all right to cry and to be upset. He let the tears fall, let himself lean as much of his weight against the appliances as they would take.

He could hear Dream in the other room: quiet paper-rustling and then the soft sound of him coloring. Was it called coloring, when it was with pastels? Drawing, probably, when he wasn't just coloring between the lines of a coloring book.

Hob dried his face on whatever was at the top of the basket to be washed next—one of Dream's shirts, as it turned out. It smelled like nothing in particular, and Hob's heart clenched for a moment, thinking of how Dream's quest would end, and what would follow it. Would he just go back to the Dreaming, and maybe visit sometimes? Would he, accidentally or intentionally, leave one of his small shirts or his little socks and shoes behind, for Hob to remember that this had been real?

Hob couldn't even think what to hope for. He couldn't imagine what would fill the space Dream would leave in his life when he didn't need Hob to make his cheese on toast three times a day, didn't sleep in his bed every night. Hob forced away the thought of it, too much to begin to grapple with now.

Today Dream was in his flat, coloring and/or drawing with his pastels, happy or doing his best to be. Hob's life didn't have any space in it that needed filling just yet, and barely enough space for him to have quiet laundry-adjacent breakdowns.

He wiped his face one more time and put the little crumpled shirt back into the basket, and went out into the living room to find that book he'd been pretending to read a couple of days ago.

Dream didn't look up when he settled on the couch, and Hob forgot everything else he had been worrying about when he saw Dream coloring in what looked like wild scribbles of green, underneath similar scribbles of blue. He remembered the last bit of a dream he'd had before waking: that moment when they had sat together on the edge of that sea under the bright summer sun.

Dream did look up after Hob had been sitting there a moment, and he gave Hob a tiny severe look. "No peeking," he said, very nearly as blithely imperious as he'd been the day before.

He pulled his sketchbook down off the coffee table and settled on the floor under it, hidden from Hob's view, and Hob smiled and opened his book with a mutter of, "As you wish."

---

Under the table, Dream smiled at his drawing. He remembered enough from yesterday to know exactly what that meant, and he thought Hob knew that. He found himself whispering, "As you wish," to the page as he went on layering in shades of green, and then, "love, love, darling."

"What's that, dear heart?" Hob asked.

Dream grinned, because he was sure that Hob knew. "Nothing, my Hob."

"Ah, all right," Hob said, and a moment later Dream actually heard him turn a page.

Dream got up, retrieved the other box of pastels, and settled back under the table to consider how to add all the details he wanted to his picture. It was sloppy, childish, imprecise and inadequate, but it was something he could make, here and now, to begin to reflect all he felt at being here.

He selected the lighter of the two shades of black at his disposal, and began to sketch a small figure perched on the green ground, just before it fell away to blue.

He was occupied with blending—and blending, and blending—when he heard the washing machine make a noise. He waited for Hob to say something, or simply get up to attend to it, but there was nothing.

Dream scooted to the side of the coffee table nearer to the sofa, and saw Hob's hand dangling down. He wriggled out into the gap and knelt up, to see Hob had indeed fallen asleep. The book was on Hob's chest, the pages slightly bent under the weight of his other hand.

Dream thought he should probably tell Hob to get up and do whatever laundry things needed doing at this juncture; Hob had told Dream not to let him forget, after all, and falling asleep probably counted as forgetting.

But Hob was safe away in Dream's realm, and surely he needed the rest after his exertions on Dream's behalf yesterday and the day before. Dream blew softly over Hob's closed eyes, the best he could do just now to make sure Hob was sleeping deeply, and then he picked up Hob's dangling hand and laid it on his chest.

He kissed the knuckles before he let go, and whispered, "My Hob. Dear heart, darling, sweeting, love. My joy."

Then he slipped back under the coffee table and returned to his drawing, smiling down at it even when his tiny clumsy human fingers slipped and made a streak of blue in exactly the wrong spot.

He tore that picture from the sketchbook and set it aside before he embarked on another, and he had made a third and moved on to the fourth when there was a loud tapping at the kitchen window and Hob startled awake with a ridiculous snort that set Dream giggling helplessly.

"What," Hob said, and then reached down under the table without getting down where he could actually see. "Who's that? Is there somebody down there who let me sleep half the afternoon?"

Dream couldn't seem to stop laughing, squirming this way and that to keep out of the reach of Hob's questing hand. Hob made a sudden motion and caught him by the ankle, pulling him out from under the table and right up into the air upside down, and Dream shrieked with laughter as the blood rushed to his head.

Despite that, he heard it when there was another flurry of taps on the kitchen window, and Hob did too.

"Ah, that's what woke me," Hob said, and did something that left Dream, for the barest instant, hanging in the air with nothing holding him up at all, before he landed belly-down on Hob's shoulder, a little winded but laughing harder than ever.

Even that did not stop him laughing, not even when Hob carried him into the kitchen that way, opened the window, and said, "Hey, Matthew. His Majesty's got the giggles, so I hope you don't need any sense from him right now."

"Oh, uh, no, not really," Matthew said, accompanied by the sound of some wing-fluttering and clicking of talons against hard surfaces.

Dream wriggled around and down so that he was perched on Hob's arm and could actually see the raven standing in the sink. He put a hand over his mouth, which did not actually hold back his continuing laughter, but he hoped it showed that he was willing to listen.

Matthew bobbed his head a little nervously. "Hey, boss. Just wanted to check in and, uh, apologize for that thing where I got totally stoned eating that shiny frog and I don't even know how I got home but I kind of had a hangover, or something, for a while there. I feel like I missed something pretty important happening, but Loosh says everything was okay in the Dreaming the whole time, except yesterday it got pretty hot and rained about fifteen times, but only for two minutes at a time. So, uh, how's it going here? Everything good?"

Dream hid his face against Hob's neck and giggled because he couldn't begin to explain.

"Delirium didn't feed Dream a frog, but she did something with a goldfish," Hob explained. "Messed him right up too, but he's okay now, apart from the giggles, and I'm sure those will settle down sooner or later."

There was a little silence. Dream pictured the reaction Matthew and Lucienne and probably most of the Dreaming would have to being told Lord Morpheus had The Giggles, and giggled harder.

"Huh," Matthew finally said. "That's good, then. I'll, uh... I'll just go, then?"

"No," Dream yelped, seized by sudden inspiration. "No, stay! I shall send—" he broke off and giggled again, picturing Lucienne's face, and Matthew's face, and everyone's faces for all of time to come whenever they saw it. "I'll send—a picture, for Lucienne!"

He wriggled decisively, and Hob let him down, and as he ran away he heard Hob saying, "Get you a drink, mate?"

Dream laughed harder at that, and crawled under the coffee table, ripping out the picture he had been in the middle of and considering the blank page before him, and the pictures he had made so far. He wanted to strike a balance between something that was technically at least a little bit actually beautiful, and something that would make Lucienne laugh hard enough that she had to take her spectacles off and clean them on the tail of her coat.

He had seen her do that before, he was certain, but it had been a very long time.

He giggled to himself, grabbed a color almost at random, and started.

---

Hob made Matthew a coffee from a pod labeled Salted Caramel Latte, which he recalled had tasted fairly revolting. Matthew had eaten some sort of poisonous frog the last time he was here, though, so Hob figured that his taste in coffee was probably pretty solidly non-human. It was the one he'd asked for, anyway, so he could live with his choices.

Neither of them said anything until Hob set the mug down on the kitchen bench for Matthew to figure out how to drink from, and went to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer. They were both listening to the intermittent giggling and scribbling sounds from the other room.

Hob was in the middle of dumping most of Dream's clothes into the washer when Matthew said, "So, uh... so he's... doing good, then? He... he was in a pretty rough spot before all of this, just rain in the Dreaming for days and no sign of it stopping."

Hob paused with a pair of overalls in his hands—the ones with the flames at the ankles, in fact, that had allowed them to find Dream in that void place. "What do you... I mean, does anyone... do anything, when it rains in the Dreaming like that?"

"Just a lot of hunkering down and trying to keep dry, mostly," Matthew said. "Can't really fly when it starts pouring. He shut himself in his rooms, and no one can go in there without him letting us. We got the orders to never mention her name again, and that was all we could do."

All that bruising still lingered over Dream's heart, deep and dark. Love lost, love rejected.

"Was she..." Hob didn't even know what to ask. He'd never known there was a woman in Dream's life; he hadn't mentioned her at all in his time here.

"Fiddler's Green says this is sort of a pattern," Matthew reported. "This one, they dated for... a few months, I think? It was sort of longer but also shorter than that, because the Dreaming is like that, but... I don't think this was the most serious one ever, just the first one since he got back."

"Got back," Hob repeated, his hands clenching on the overalls. Maybe he shouldn't wash them. Maybe he should keep them somewhere, in case Dream needed to be found again. "He... he said something about being trapped somewhere. And Delirium said... she said his siblings knew, and didn't..."

"I, uh," Matthew said. "I'm pretty new myself, you know? I came to the Dreaming right after he got back, which was a few years ago now. But, yeah, he was... gone for a while, from the Dreaming. I mean like... like a hundred years. Things got pretty bad with him gone, and it seems like... it must have been pretty bad for him too. Where he was."

A hundred years.

All six times they had watched the part with Westley being tortured yesterday, Dream had reacted in some visceral way. He had whimpered, cried, shivered and clung to Hob like the torturers were coming for him next. It didn't look like that but it felt like that, he had said. I couldn't make a sound.

For a hundred years.

"Hob!" Dream shouted, and Hob flung the overalls into the washer like he might get caught with them, and hurried into the other room. He was realizing as he went that that Dream had sounded cheerfully bossy, and still on the verge of laughter. Not hurt, or panicked. Not trapped, or tortured, or alone.

Dream was looking around the room, so he didn't appear to notice the extra second it took Hob to get a smile on his face. There were several pastel drawings on the floor, obviously radiating outward from Dream's spot under the coffee table, and just one torn out of the sketchbook and laid on top.

Dominating the page was a wobbly tower of books, and it was amazing how, even though they were just a dash or two of color each, it was perfectly clear what they were and that they were about to fall. Down at the bottom was a tiny figure, his head covered in a wide-brimmed hat and his wide-flung arms were lost in the folds of a gray cloak much too big for him—the things Odin had been wearing when he came to Hob's door. Under that, it was just visible that the figure wore black overalls with tiny red flames around the ankles, and that under the brim of the hat, he was smiling so widely that Hob couldn't help grinning in response.

In the corner of the picture was a figure dressed all in purple, arms akimbo, dark brown head tilted to one side and revealing the shape of equally brown pointed ears. Again, though it was a very simple sketch, it was quite obvious that the person was not angry or menacing the little mischief-maker, but was thoroughly exasperated.

"Hob!" Dream said, grabbing his hand and tugging. "Where's the fixative? I don't want it to smudge."

"Uh," Hob looked around and spotted the higher shelf where he'd left it, then realized that Dream had immortalized a stretch of the books on the shelf in this drawing, as well as himself and... "Is—is that Lucienne, there?"

Dream grinned up at him proudly. "Do you think she'll like it? I want it to make her laugh."

Hob kept smiling, though he suddenly also wanted to cry for entirely different reasons than the hollow horror of what Matthew had been telling him in the other room. He knelt and hugged Dream fiercely and whispered, "She'll love it."

Dream hugged back for a moment, then wiggled decisively. "You have to spray it, so Matthew can take it to her!"

"Right you are," Hob agreed, and stood up to get the fixative, hoping it was reasonably obvious how to use it because he doubted Dream would be patient enough to let him look up a video.

---

Chapter 14

Hob insisted on watching a movie after Matthew had left. It was different to any they'd watched before, animated vignettes set to music, and Dream discovered a part of his inspiration for Lucienne's drawing that he hadn't ever seen from this angle.

He had put away the drawings he had meant to be for Hob, tucking them carefully behind the cover of his sketchbook to look at later. None of them were quite what he wanted, but his hands were too tired to do more today.

Later on that night, when he'd had a bath and dried off with a fresh towel, still a bit warm from the dryer, and gotten into freshly cleaned pajamas, also warm, Hob tucked him into bed and checked that his ribbon was firmly secured around his wrist.

Hob started to move away from him—he wasn't ready to sleep yet, which was fine, but Dream was suddenly seized with uncertainty. He caught Hob's hand, keeping him by the bed for another moment. Hob perched there, and covered Dream's hand with his other one, and gave him a gently inquiring look while Dream searched to put words to that sudden tide of worry.

It wasn't about Hob walking away from him, or not only that. He had the ribbon, and knew well that it would suffice to keep them together. It was about—

About going back to the Dreaming, though that was his own realm, his truest home.

He thought of Lucienne greeting him, helping him up off the sand, welcoming him back, and the knot in his belly tightened.

"Do you really think Lucienne will like it?" Dream blurted out.

Hob's entire face softened, and then he smiled. "She will, sweeting. Of course she will."

"But will she..." Dream didn't know how to articulate what he wanted to ask, and he wasn't sure he could blame that inability on his present smallness.

He had rarely spent very much time thinking hard about pleasing anyone.

He made certain gestures, gave gifts out of an abundance of power and resources, said simple words. He did not know if he had ever made something and wanted so badly for it to convey so many things—to be surprising, and humorous, but also well-enough-made so that not all of the surprise and humor came from its poor quality, and to express something of his gratitude for Lucienne's continued stewardship of the Dreaming as well as communicating that what he was doing while he was absent, silly as it seemed, was also real and important. He wanted her to understand, as well as being pleased, and he was aware that he was not gifted in the art of making himself understood.

Odin had forgiven him his silence at this strange time; he wanted to do better for Lucienne.

"Well," Hob said softly, when Dream had perhaps been silent for a very long time, one hand still clasped between Hob's and the other hand now fidgeting over Hob's knuckles. "You could go and see her, couldn't you? You could ask her what she thinks. Or at least try to watch her and see what she's done with it."

Dream suddenly imagined the picture he had been so pleased with a few hours ago, crumpled in a wastebasket or left unregarded wherever it had fallen, and tears filled his eyes, his chest aching with a new bruising pain.

"Hey, hey, come here," Hob said, drawing Dream onto his lap. "What makes you think Lucienne won't like it? Or wouldn't treat it like something very special and important? Has she ever—"

"I have never given her anything!" Dream burst out.

Hob was silent, but still held him close, rubbing a hand up and down his back.

"Lucienne was my raven, first. I helped her find her new form and gave her the position of Librarian when the Library began to grow, for there was no other in the Dreaming more suited to it, and I..." Dream swallowed, thinking of Jessamy, of Matthew. "I wished her to be safe, at the heart of my realm. I knew no other way to honor her, and all she had done for me."

"Well," Hob said quietly. "And you trust her to watch over your realm in your absence? To know what's important and what isn't?"

Dream nodded. "But that is work. A function. And then other responsibilities beyond her function! But I have never given her gifts. Never... things simply to enjoy."

"Do you have many things in your realm that are simply for you to enjoy?" Hob asked, which seemed a strange and irrelevant question, and one which was very difficult to answer.

He enjoyed his realm; he created dreams and nightmares and took pride in his work, and enjoyed seeing them serve their many purposes. The Dreaming as a whole was made to serve all dreamers, though it also suited his own preferences, particularly within the Palace.

"Taramis makes whatever food I request," Dream mumbled after a while.

"Well, I shall have to meet him sometime—we have something in common," Hob said, squeezing Dream a bit. "And does Lucienne get whatever she wants to eat?"

Dream nodded. He did not feel equal to explaining the arrangements for all the dreamfolk, and said simply, "She has all she requires for her needs, and she says she likes her rooms in the Palace very well."

"And if she wanted different ones," Hob said, giving him another squeeze, "would she tell you? Would you make them for her just the way she wanted?"

Dream nodded. "That is my duty. I care for all the dreamfolk and see to their needs. Lucienne knows that better than any."

"Mm," Hob said. "So you don't give her presents, you just supply everything she needs or wants."

Dream frowned, because that sounded like mockery despite the gentleness of Hob's tone and Hob's arms still firmly around him. "Yes."

"Yes," Hob echoed. "And does she like those things that you give her? Does she treat them like they're important?"

Dream thought for a moment of Lucienne's spectacles, which he had made for her shortly after she had become the Librarian. He had found her squinting at a page—a scroll, then, for this was long ago—and he had reached into dreams and found just the thing to help her see better.

She always wore them, ever since. When she wished to polish them, she always used something beautiful, and there was always a moment when she looked down at them in her hands and smiled just to hold them, even when she was not wearing them and therefore they were not doing anything useful.

Dream nodded against Hob's chest.

"I think she will like your drawing," Hob murmured. "I think she will take very good care of it. And if you get there and she doesn't, you just give a good hard pull on that ribbon around your wrist, and I will come and have a word with her about how she treats my friend and the present he gave her."

Dream was startled into a laugh, all at once horrified and wondering at the thought of Hob attempting to scold Lucienne for being insufficiently kind to him. "You could not!"

"As the kids these days say," Hob intoned, staring steadily into Dream's eyes. "Bet."

"Perhaps I should forbid you," Dream said, though he could not hold back a smile that belied his words. "As King of the Dreaming."

Hob raised his eyebrows, seeming completely unfazed by the notion. "Off with my head, is it?"

Dream shook his head. "Nothing so crude. What I forbid from happening in the Dreaming simply cannot happen."

That was... true enough, for a human dreamer like Hob, anyway.

"Mmm, suppose that depends on what you forbid," Hob said, frowning in the general direction of the wall. "Would you forbid me from speaking to her at all? Would you not allow me to meet her?"

Dream didn't really intend to forbid Hob anything, and certainly not that, but as soon as Hob suggested it he was seized with the urgent desire for Hob and Lucienne to meet as soon as possible. He thought they would like each other. He wanted them to like each other.

They were two of his favorite people. Two people outside his family who he was fairly confident cared for him, just because they did.

He was eager, then, to see Lucienne, to know what she thought of his drawing. He shoved at Hob and said, "I must go to sleep, to the Dreaming. Come to me when you sleep. I will—I will probably be in the Library. Then you may meet her."

"Looking forward to it, love," Hob said, pressing a kiss to Dream's forehead before he helped him get settled down on his pillow again, and tucked the blankets in cozily around him once more.

Dream thought for a moment that he might be too excited for sleep to take him, but the body he wore had become accustomed to this, and his realm welcomed him as eagerly as ever. He found himself immediately in the Library, in the corner few could find, where Lucienne had her desk. He was a little way down an aisle from it, in the shadow of the books, but he could see her sitting in her favorite spot, holding something in her hands and smiling down at it.

Without wholly intending it, Dream's hand went to the ribbon around his wrist, checking that it was secure. It was there, the red ribbon leading away into a shadow and disappearing there. He could follow it back to Hob any time he chose, and sooner or later tonight Hob would follow it to him.

He felt a little shift in the air, and when he looked toward Lucienne again she had gone still, and was holding the black rectangle against her chest.

"My... my lord?" she asked softly. She glanced down toward what she was holding, and kept her eyes lowered in that direction. "Are you there? I will not look if you wish me not to see."

"Do you like it?" Dream asked.

It was not what he had meant to ask. He had not meant to ask anything at all.

But Lucienne smiled, and adjusted her glasses, and then he knew that she did like it, and he knew what she was holding.

"I have framed it," Lucienne said, turning the black rectangle to reveal his drawing, behind a layer of glass. It looked perhaps even better, here in the Dreaming, than it had before. His intention was more visible, here. His laughter had sunk into the paper as he worked on it, his joyful anticipation.

Dream moved out of the shadow, right up to her desk, where he had to hold on to the edge and look up at his dear faithful Librarian, who was still smiling at him, her expression softer than he usually saw it.

"Hello, sir," she said. "You look as if your trip is doing you a great deal of good."

Dream bit his lip and clung tighter to the edge of Lucienne's desk, resisting the urge to hide. "You really like the picture?"

Lucienne's smile changed in some dimension he couldn't quite make sense of, even here in the Dreaming where all things should reveal themselves to him. But she was still smiling, and she nodded. "It is my favorite work of art, as of today. I have just been trying to decide whether I should hang it somewhere only I can see it, or if it ought to be visible to those who can find their way this far into the Library."

Dream pressed his cheek against the desk and considered who that might be. Few dreams or nightmares ventured so far in. Some of the Major Arcana might, occasionally. Gault, for her great friendship with Lucienne, but Gault of all dreams knew that sometimes change was necessary. Matthew, of course, but he must assume Matthew had already seen the drawing Dream had entrusted to him for delivery.

His elder sister might, for she sometimes entered his realm without even greeting him, only to borrow books from Lucienne.

"Do you think my sister would..." Dream did not know what to ask. She had been kind, for the moments she stayed, when she saw him this way. She had thought of Hob, and brought Dream to him, and for that alone Dream must be grateful to her to the end of all things.

"I think she will be very pleased by it, if she is allowed to see it," Lucienne said confidently. "And then she is very likely to come and pester you to make a drawing for her to hang on her wall."

"Oh," Dream said, and started trying to think of what he might draw for Death. It was much easier to make her laugh and smile; she looked for chances to do those things, and any excuse he gave her would probably be enough.

And she loved him. Any gift from him would please her, for that reason alone.

"I... could do that," Dream said slowly. "I would not mind that."

She might come to see him, if she wanted him to make a picture for her. He could tell her that he thought The Princess Bride was better than Mary Poppins. He could ask her if she had seen it, and perhaps invite her to watch it, if Hob did not mind.

"Then I shall hang it right here," Lucienne said, and placed the framed drawing on the wall beside her desk, where it obediently stayed as she wished it to. Nothing within the Library would dare to move from where Lucienne placed it, unless she permitted it; the privilege of borrowing from these shelves was enforced by the most basic nature of the Library.

When she turned back to him, Lucienne leaned closer, reaching out her hand to rest near to his where he clutched at the desk, but not quite touching. "All is well in the Dreaming, my lord. We are safe, and you have provided well for us. You need not be concerned on that account."

"I was not concerned," Dream said, aware that he lacked some of his customary hauteur in this form, and sticking his chin up all the higher to compensate. "Except over whether my drawing would make you laugh."

Lucienne's smile widened. "Indeed it did."

She studied him for a moment, and he knew he should say more. He had come because she was one of his favorite people, because he wanted to be near her, but now that he was here he hardly knew what to say. He could not climb into her lap as he would with Hob; they had a different sort of relation to each other.

He loosened his hold on the desk, and shifted his grip to hold on to Lucienne's fingers instead, where they rested so near. "Will you show me other things in the Library that make you laugh?"

Lucienne blinked rapidly, turning her hand to hold his in return. She was still smiling, though he caught a glimmer of tears in her eyes. "I would love to, sir. Yes. And if I miss any, you must point them out to me."

Dream nodded, though it was a long time since he had found himself laughing in the Library, and he doubted he would think of anything that she did not.

---

Hob stood just outside the bedroom door for a while, listening to Dream's breathing, waiting for any tiny twitch that might be a pull on the ribbon. When he peeked in, Dream had a tiny smile on his face, and one hand curled around the ribbon, but he was sleeping peacefully, entirely still but for the rise and fall of his breath.

After a while, Hob forced himself to stop watching, though he couldn't wipe the matching smile from his own face. He made a round of the flat, tidying up, tallying the contents of the fridge and cupboards. The art store delivery had arrived in the midst of Fantasia, dropped off downstairs as most packages usually were. Hob went and retrieved it from the kitchen landing and stowed it all neatly away, leaving just one giant sketchbook and one more set of pastels where Dream could easily spot them and just as easily ignore them if he wasn't feeling adventurous in that direction.

Hob got another load of laundry started, and then—after one more look at Dream, still smiling cherubically in his sleep—he went to the study and dug out the lists he'd started making before Dream showed up.

He couldn't put too much in motion yet, with Dream here. He wanted to be able to stay as long as Dream needed. Given how rapidly things had been happening in the past few days, he suspected that he was looking at perhaps weeks, maybe a few months more at the very outside.

If it turned out to be years, well, Hob had learned to make moving a fairly painless experience for himself. He could manage it for Dream, too.

But there was no scenario where he would be teaching this fall, and fall was very nearly upon them already. Hob forced himself to write a letter of resignation without really thinking about what it meant, and sent it off.

Then he made a nice flourishing check mark on the list.

He moved the laundry into the dryer, thought very hard about having a drink, and then looked down at the red ribbon around his wrist and smiled. There was something much better than that for him to escape into tonight.

Hob thought over all Dream had said about Lucienne as he got ready for bed. He had met Matthew, who seemed to be uniquely trusted, the first person from his realm who Dream had allowed to see him this way; he had met half of Dream's siblings, now, and didn't know what to think of any of them.

If he was reading things right, Lucienne was the person Dream loved and trusted most in the entire universe, the one whose opinion he was most anxious about, the one he'd raised as near to his own power in his realm as he could. He had not called her his friend, but even from what little he knew Hob could see that that would be an inadequate term for whatever they were. He had said she became the Librarian when the Library in the Dreaming "began to grow," and Hob didn't know exactly how Dream's realm obtained books, but that had to be at least as far back as the printing press, and maybe earlier.

Lucienne had been a fixture of Dream's life for at least as long as Hob had, and a much more significant one. He had wanted her protected, within all the fortifications of his realm, and entrusted her with its administration and defense in his absence.

Hob hadn't caught any implication of romance between them, but that more encouraged his centuries-old instincts interpreting her as Dream's consort than otherwise.

He was reasonably certain that Dream—or more likely Matthew, when speaking about Dream's pattern of heartbreaks—would have mentioned it if Lucienne were literally Dream's wife. So he was fairly confident, as he lay down in bed beside Dream and composed himself to sleep, that he was not on the way to meet Dream's spouse—only someone who meant everything to him that a spouse might, and surely valued and respected him every bit as much as he prized her.

No pressure, or anything.

Hob closed his eyes and focused on steadying his breathing, rubbing a bit of ribbon between thumb and forefinger and keeping his mind sternly focused on the count of his breaths and the fact that it was time to sleep. He had lost the knack of sleeping whenever he had the chance sometime during the last war he'd fought in, but he could not let himself think about that now.

He opened his eyes, expecting to see Dream's peacefully sleeping face, and instead he saw a bookcase. A whole row—a whole aisle—of bookcases, in fact.

He looked down at his wrist, and saw the red ribbon leading very definitely along the aisle to his right, wrapping around the corner. He hadn't followed it even that far before he was aware of a woman's voice.

"Fortunately," she was saying, in a reading sort of cadence, "the cat was fluent in French."

The dramatic pause following this statement was promptly filled by Dream's buzzsaw laugh, and Hob hurried forward to peek around the corner.

Dream was sitting on a thick cushion on the floor, facing a woman seated similarly. She wore a fantastic purple suit, and had dark brown skin and pointed ears, though Hob hardly thought he had needed even that much to identify Lucienne.

Who else would Dream allow to read him a picture book, and trust enough to laugh like that at it?

Neither of them seemed to notice him; Lucienne, holding the book facing toward Dream in the finest librarian style, turned a page, and read the next line. "Unfortunately, the cat was an ardent monarchist."

Hob couldn't get a good look at the accompanying illustration from this angle, but evidently it was just as good as the last one. Dream swayed with the force of his laughter, and Hob could barely hold back from laughing from sheer sympathy.

He must have done something, however silent he kept, because Dream's laughter tailed off and he looked directly to where Hob stood, on the other end of the ribbon that connected them. In his peripheral vision Hob saw Lucienne's gaze follow Dream's, and he forced himself to meet her eyes.

She was hugging the book to her chest and smiling at Hob warmly, almost fondly. Hob knew instantly that she loved Dream as deeply and steadfastly as Dream loved her, and that she knew enough about Hob to like him for Dream's sake. He could not help liking her in return, though he made sure to refocus quickly on Dream—he need not repeat the mistake he had made with Delirium, and have Dream being anxious that Hob would love another more.

Dream didn't look anxious at all, though. He was beaming, looking back and forth between Hob and Lucienne like seeing the two of them in the same room was making him so happy he didn't know what to do with himself.

"Hello," Hob said to her, offering a hand before he could let himself think too hard about the etiquette of meeting a dream librarian who was more or less the Vicereine of the Kingdom of Dreams. "You must be Lucienne? Dream has told me a little about you, it's amazing to meet you."

Lucienne's smile persisted, and she took Hob's hand in a firm, ordinary-feeling grip as she said, "And you are Hob Gadling—if that is the form of your name you prefer? I have learned much about you from the Library, and almost nothing from my lord, but I know you are a great friend to him."

"Hob, yeah," Hob said, and then looked down to Dream and said, "What does your Library know about me?"

Dream grinned up at him and raised his arms, and, well, that answered the question of how Hob ought to treat him in front of Lucienne (and whether he would rather have hugs from Lucienne than Hob, if he was comfortable with her after all). Hob scooped him up and Dream flung his arms wide and said, "The Library knows everything!"

"Thought that was your brother, knowing everything," Hob said, smiling helplessly down at Dream.

"He knows what will happen," Dream said. "But the Library has every book ever written, and every book never written."

What was it Destiny had called him, that night? The Lord of What Is Not? And Prince of Stories was one of his titles in his little book.

"So if I asked you for..." Hob trailed off, not even sure what to ask for.

"Any book that you would like to see," Lucienne said. "Any book that ever existed, or—"

Hob knew, then, exactly what book he wanted to ask for, and should not. He pressed his lips together, hiding his face against the top of Dream's head for a moment before he could gather himself to say, "What was that you were reading when I came in? I hate to interrupt, and it sounded like a good time."

"Ah," Lucienne said, and when Hob dared a glance in her direction, she had an understanding look, and she turned around the book in her arms instead of pressing him about what he actually wanted. "This is the Infinite Edition of Remy Charlip's Fortunately, which was called into existence by the many, many children who wished for Ned's adventures to continue without end. It is likely to be different when I open it again."

"Well," Hob said, finally daring to look at Dream, who was giving him a thoughtful look but didn't say anything. "Would you mind starting over, then? I think we could all use a good laugh."

Dream hesitated another long moment, just looking into Hob's eyes, and then he nodded and unleashed a brilliant smile. "It is very good for laughing."

Hob sat down on Dream's cushion, and Dream lounged in his lap as if it were a throne, while Lucienne took her own seat and opened the book again. "Fortunately, Ned was invited to a surprise party."

---

Hob woke up with a chuckle still on his lips, his ribs and cheeks both aching from laughing all night.

He looked for Dream right away, and found him sitting up on the other side of the bed, the mass of red ribbon drawn into his lap and mostly hiding something that Dream was resting both hands on. His expression was solemn and knowing; seeing him, Hob felt the last of the laughter die.

He sat up and reached out, but couldn't quite bring himself to touch Dream or whatever was under the ribbons.

"It is very rare for a dreamer to have borrowing privileges from the Library," Dream said quietly. "But Lucienne and I both trust you not to abuse it. The book must and shall return to the Library at nightfall, but for this day..."

Dream drew it out, and Hob's breath caught, because he knew that book well.

It was nothing printed by a press; it was meant to be a book of accounts, but Eleanor had been an erratic record-keeper at best, and the book's contents were less than half ledger entries. Hob took it with a trembling hand.

"It was—it was burned, wasn't it?" Hob asked. He had looked, sometimes, at auctions and private archives, but he had never found a trace of any book from the Gadlen household, nor any of the private papers.

"It was, in the Waking world," Dream said softly. "But the dream of it lives on."

Hob raised the little leather-bound book near enough to breathe in the smell of it, and a sob caught in his throat at the familiarity: the whiff of Eleanor's favorite perfume that lingered on it, the ink that had now and then spattered her fingers. He had loved that she could read and write—skills he had not gained himself in his first century—and would peek at anything from her pen, even her little household account book, just to see the way she formed her numbers and letters, the way she doodled little pictures between more businesslike entries.

When he lowered the book and let it fall open, it opened at the page he had revisited so many times in the years after Eleanor died.

She had never drawn any likeness of herself, but she had made this little sketch of Hob's face and Robyn's cheek to cheek, showing the ways they did and didn't resemble each other in a few flowing lines of ink. Robyn had inherited Hob's cleft chin and dark eyes, but he'd had Eleanor's sweet little nose and, as a child, lighter hair than either of his parents.

Hob hadn't been able to bear looking at this drawing after Robyn's death, but he had held the book during many a long dark evening of drinking, feeling closer to both of them just for having it in his hands. No doubt some half-wit witch hunter had decided it was his book of spells and flung it into the flames.

Now his eyes traced the lines over and over, seeking to embed them in his mind. He wondered if he had tracing paper anywhere, if he could draw a sketch near enough to this to serve as a reminder, and then his brain caught up with the 21st Century. He looked up at Dream, who was watching him with a gentle, benevolent expression only slightly bizarre to see on someone who otherwise appeared to be about three years old.

"Can I take a picture of this?" Hob asked. "Will that—is it really here? Can a camera see it?"

Dream nodded gravely. "It is as truly present as the bottle of wine I once brought you, or my clothes and toothbrush. It must return to the Library when the loan ends, because it is a thing which Is Not, and must continue to Be Not. But there are many things which Are Not, and yet records of them persist. And should those records ever be lost, the book itself will always be safe in the Library of the Dreaming, and you will always be able to find it there."

Hob set the book carefully aside, and lunged across the bed to catch Dream in a crushing hug. "Thank you, my friend. Thank you so much, I—I cannot—"

"I know," Dream said simply, his little arms curling around Hob and hugging back as fiercely as his small size allowed. "I know."

---

Dream waited quietly, cuddled against Hob's side, while Hob photographed each and every page of the little book. Hob's dreamself had all but shouted his request for it when Lucienne had told him he could see anything he liked, though he had said no word on the level of his dreaming awareness. Lucienne had instantly agreed to Dream's suggestion of a special loan, under the circumstances, and Dream felt warm with happiness at having done his dearest friend a good turn.

He had done well by Lucienne, too, for she had loved the picture. And she had liked Hob, and Hob had liked her too—but it had been Dream he held against his heart all through the night as Lucienne read to them.

Dream could hear Hob's heart beating now, his ear pressed to Hob's ribs as Hob tenderly turned each page of the little book, taking one photo after another. When Hob's stomach growled, it was so loud that Dream jumped, and Hob was startled into a rather damp laugh.

"I'm sorry, darling," Hob said, tugging Dream close again and kissing the top of his head. "I'm neglecting both of us, aren't I? Eleanor's book will wait; those of us still alive need our breakfasts."

Dream turned his face to hide it against Hob's body, and did not say that Hob need not concern himself with Dream's needs just now. He did feel rather hungry.

Hob didn't ask again, or demand an answer from him. He scooped Dream up and got on with their day. There was a very nice breakfast, and washing up and putting on fresh clean clothes that smelled just a little bit like Hob's flat and a little bit like Hob's own clothes. Dream decided that this was rather an improvement on their pristine new-made state, which had smelled of nothing at all.

When that was done, Dream returned to his drawings while Hob had a shower, leaving him some privacy to consider his previous day's work.

Hob treasured Eleanor's drawings though they had all been very simple little things, revealing a good eye and a steady hand, but no great artistic gift. He would not judge Dream's own efforts too harshly.

By the time Hob returned, dressed in his own clean clothes and carrying a laptop and notepad, Dream had put the finishing touches on the very first drawing he had attempted and set it out on the coffee table for Hob to find.

He was, all in all, rather pleased with it. It showed himself and Hob—recognizable, he thought, even from behind and at a little distance. Hob's arm was around him, but his own black hair tufted up visibly above that. They were sitting in that green cliffside meadow of Hob's dream from two nights ago, looking out at the sea and the blue sky.

They were peaceful, and content, and together inseparably, the grains of pigment that represented each of them blending into each other inextricably. Dream liked looking at that almost more than he liked the interesting swirling variations of green and blue that made the sea and the meadow and the sky.

Hob stopped short when he saw it, giving Dream a long moment to bask in the wondering look on his face. Then Hob knelt down, curling an arm around Dream just as the Hob in the picture held that Dream against his side.

"Love," Hob said, and then said no more. His eyes had gone shiny again, and he was smiling a smile that looked like it might hurt, and was still worth smiling anyway.

Dream pressed a few gentle kisses to Hob's cheek and temple, and then curled his own arms around Hob and leaned into his hold.

"I love it," Hob whispered. "I love it, darling, and I'll keep it forever and ever. No matter where I go or who I am, I'll have this hanging on my wall."

Hob had had to be many people in his six centuries of life, and no doubt had had to leave behind many possessions. Eleanor's book had not been so much lost or abandoned as forcibly taken from him, but it was surely bringing to mind all the things lost in the inevitable moves that were an immortal's lot.

"Wherever you go or whoever you are," Dream said, as stoutly as he could in this small form, "you shall always be my friend. And if ever you lose this drawing, I shall make you another."

Hob put both arms around Dream and hid his face against the top of Dream's head, and Dream nestled close and felt very pleased with himself indeed.

He was not, he assured himself, competing with Eleanor's book. That was gone, and Hob could not keep it. Dream was here, and could give Hob something he could keep. Just as he had when he began his drawing, he wanted only to give Hob a gift, some tiny token to show a glimmer of how happy he was here with Hob.

Dream wasn't done yet, either. He had noticed the new big sketchpad that Hob had left on top of the refrigerator, and the new box of pastels with it. He could make more pictures for Hob, bigger and better ones, enough to wallpaper the entire flat. And Hob would love them, because he loved Dream, and the making of those drawings would be enjoyable. Fun.

He sighed happily, leaning more heavily into Hob, provoking a breathless little laugh. Hob let go of him and said, "I'd better find the fixative for this. Would it be any use to ask Lucienne how she framed hers, or does it just work properly no matter what because she says so, in the Dreaming?"

Dream didn't know; surely Lucienne could find out anything anyone needed to know, but her own framing process probably had been more one of intention than of technique. Hob didn't wait for or seem to expect an answer, wandering off to find where he'd moved the bottle of fixative, muttering to himself as he went about the perils of tidying up and how he never could find things after he put them in very sensible places. Dream smiled after him and then looked down at the picture again. He could almost feel Hob's warmth around him, just looking at it.

His attention was drawn away sharply by the tinking sound of someone tapping on glass—not from any of the windows, but from the bathroom.

Dream knew at once who he would find there, and he rushed off to see, though he had to pull himself up as far as he could on the sink to look into the mirror above it.

He had been right; Despair was on the other side, looking through.

"My brother, Dream," she said. "I hold your sigil and call your name. May I come through to you?"

Dream opened his mouth to say yes, for he was very fond of Despair and would not like to say no to her when she had taken the initiative to visit him—just as Delirium had. It must be that Delirium had told her where he was, and now she had come to see him. So soon, practically as soon as she knew where she was, she had come to him.

He felt almost breathless with love for his both his younger sisters, but before he could speak to invite Despair in, he heard Hob say, "Dream? Did you hear something?"

"In here, Hob!" Dream called back. "My sister wants to come and say hello!"

---

 
 

Chapter 15

Hob followed Dream's voice to the bathroom. First he saw Dream, standing on tiptoe and clinging to the edge of the sink, smiling up at the mirror.

Then he saw the woman in the mirror, and before he knew what he was doing he had snatched Dream up into his arms and turned to put himself between them. Dream let out a peal of his rusty, ragged laughter, as though Hob were going to toss him in the air or flip him upside down next, but Hob was too busy eyeing the woman to reassure Dream with silliness.

He didn't know if Dream ought to be reassured.

There was nothing obviously threatening about the woman, aside from the fact that she was looking out of Hob's bathroom mirror from some gray place that was not of this world. She stood barely taller than Delirium, and looked like any ordinary woman who was going through a rough patch; her hair was dark blonde, ordinarily dirty and stringy, but not entirely covering her face like the Ring girl. She was wearing a rather frumpy but cozy-looking jumper.

She was smiling, just a bit, as she looked up at Hob and Dream.

The words Dream had said finally got through to Hob's brain: this was his sister, of course.

This was Despair.

Hob had never, ever let her into him. Not once. Not even in 1673, when the only alternative had been to go a bit mad. Never, ever had he despaired.

But she was not only her name, or her nature. She was Dream's sister, and Dream was now tugging on Hob's shirt, wriggling a bit and saying, "I like her, really, Hob, can't she come in? Please?"

"You ask a human's permission, brother?" Despair said, and her voice sounded ordinary, if a little flat.

"This is Hob's home," Dream said firmly, unhesitatingly. "I am his guest. It is up to him to decide who else may come in."

Hob wanted to say no the way he wanted to keep breathing in and out, the way he wanted to keep his grip on Dream instead of letting him fall. It was like fighting a reflex, forcing his body to do something truly unnatural, but she was Dream's sister, and Dream was asking.

The only way Hob could do it was to take his eyes off her and look at Dream's sweet, hopeful face as he said, "It's all right. She can come in."

Dream looked up at him for a moment that made it obvious that Hob hadn't managed to sound at all normal about that. He squeezed a little hand on Hob's shoulder—the one out of sight of the mirror—gave him a solemn nod of reassurance before he looked at her again and said, "Come through, my sister."

Hob backed away to the bathroom door, not wanting to see how this worked and also not wanting to take his eyes off the mirror, but there was no horror movie lunge through the mirror. Despair simply appeared, standing on the bathmat. She followed without a word, smiling a grim little smile, when Hob continued backing away all the way to the living room.

Dream's picture of the two of them was still on the coffee table, still unsprayed with fixative, and Hob was torn between wanting to snatch it up just like he had Dream, and not daring to give her any sign that it mattered that much to him.

"Can I, uh," Hob cleared his throat. "Cup of tea?"

"Thank you," she said, with a rather regal nod, and sat down in the armchair. "Dream, what have you been up to? Delirium told me a little, but..."

Dream wriggled and Hob let him down, because he couldn't refuse to. Dream went right to Despair, leaning against her knee and beaming up at her; Hob turned away toward the kitchen, and walking away from Dream felt exactly like walking into the sea alone. He did it anyway, step by weighted step.

---

Dream gazed up at his sister, delighted to be able to do so; she was different from this angle, vast and soft and welcoming.

She smiled back after a moment, her most secretive little smile, and ran a hand over his hair. "You need not tell me if you do not wish to, my brother," she said.

"No, I will," Dream said. "I will. I am simply enjoying your company for a moment, first."

She ducked her head, but that did not hide the way her secret smile widened—not from him, not now.

"I have been doing... nothing that seems so momentous, if I were to describe it," Dream added, frowning a little as he tried to think of the words. "I made myself small, as you see; I left most of myself behind, so that that which is most... myself, could be small enough to be..."

Loved.

He knew the word, and he had lived the reality for days, and he still could not quite say it.

His sister's hands touched tentatively at his shoulders—not quite on the bruises, but uncomfortably close. He looked up at her, and then smiled again and raised his arms as he would have with Hob, and let her lift him into her lap. He leaned against the soft, warm bulk of her body, and felt himself relax a little further.

"You were never anything smaller than yourself, Dream of the Endless," she said quietly, as if it were a secret. "Were you?"

She was not asking merely about whether he had ever done anything like this before. She had been something else—something smaller—before she became Despair. She had been someone like Daniel Hall; there was a part, a facet of her that was just her, who had been someone else before she was his sister.

He did not know that person's name. He never had; he had not even wondered.

"I was not," he said. "But you were. Do you remember it?"

She sighed, and her arms came around him, giving him a squeeze that he recognized was more for her own comfort than for his, though it still felt nice. More than that, he was glad to be a brother who could comfort her, if only by holding still while she held him. "I do, in a way. I had already lost much of it by the time I took my place, and what I do retain I do not enjoy thinking of. It was a life that prepared me for this existence."

Despair had been—not human, but something very like a human. And for a human to live a life that fitted them to not merely despair, in themselves, but to become the queen and embodiment of all despair... no. It could not be enjoyable to remember, even for one who came to treasure all other manifestations of misery and hopelessness.

"Are you preparing, however belatedly, for yours?" Despair asked, still very quietly, as if it were a secret.

"Odin said that I had found a strange tree to hang myself on," Dream confided, rubbing his cheek against the texture of her jumper. "In search of some wisdom I am wanting. I did not think of it that way to begin with, but I think... he is right. I think I am learning all over again how to Dream. And Hob—my friend, he—he is..."

He loves me. He is teaching me to be loved. He permits me to love him, small and inadequate as I am.

Dream could not say any of that.

"Right, here we go," Hob said briskly, coming in with three mugs. "Tea for the lady, tea for me, and cocoa for Dream. Still a bit hot, love, so I'll just set it here for a moment."

He suited action to word, setting down the best smelling mug—which was decorated with several cartoon cats—on the coffee table, and then holding forward two that did not smell nice at all toward Despair. "Didn't know how you take it, so I guessed," Hob said. "Honey and lemon, or sugar and milk?"

The honey and lemon one was in a cup similar to the one Hob had offered to Odin, though not the same one; the sugar and milk was in a mug decorated with a multicolored stack of books, reminiscent of Dream's drawing for Lucienne.

"Thank you," Despair said, and took the honey and lemon mug from Hob's hand. She sipped it, and looked up at Hob with a different sort of half-hidden smile as she said, "Barely even tastes like you spit in it at all."

"Despair!" Dream was more startled than scolding; he knew she was teasing, and she so rarely teased anyone at all. She must like Hob very much.

"Ah, well," Hob said, settling into the nearest spot on the sofa, curling his hands around his own mug of tea. Dream squirmed around on Despair's lap so that he could keep a good view of Hob over there. He could see Hob's returning semi-smirk as he said, "Covers the taste of the strychnine, you know."

"Hob!" Dream yelped, swinging a foot out in a kick that only connected with Hob's knee as glancingly as it did because Hob obligingly swung his leg out to meet it. "Do not poison my sister! She is your guest!"

"He didn't really," Despair said, taking another sip of the tea and patting Dream absently. "He wouldn't keep anything like that in the house with you here, I'm sure."

Hob bit his lip and his gaze darted away from Dream; when Dream tried to see what he'd looked away at, he spotted a rather battered tin tucked on top of some books on a low shelf. It would be out of sight, at a casual glance, from someone of average adult height while they were standing. Dream squirmed, but Despair did not let him go immediately, as Hob would have, and Hob got up and grabbed the tin and left the room without a look back.

"I can find it!" Dream called after him.

"You can try!" Hob called back, and Despair laughed softly and hugged Dream tighter against her.

"So, you have not already explored every inch of this place, then," Despair observed.

Dream sighed, relaxing against her again, and shook his head. "When I wish to be active, we go out for walks and things. Or—" Dream bit his lip, just as Hob had done a moment before, and then decided that this, at least, he could say. This was not so much. "I have been... drawing. Or coloring. I have been making art, such as I can."

"Such as you can," Hob scoffed, returning. He went over to a different bookshelf and picked up Dream's first effort, the little impressionistic landscape he had made at the art store. "Is this not art? Is this not bloody gorgeous?"

Dream watched Despair's face as she studied the little picture held so carefully in Hob's hands. He could not tell anything of her reaction until she looked down at him, and then her face softened from its habitual grimness, and she smiled a smile that had no hook hidden in it.

"It is lovely," she said.

Dream couldn't help grinning back, his face aching a little with the wideness of his smile. "I can make one for you!"

Again he wriggled toward getting down, and again Despair held on. Her smile dimmed, and she said, "I could not keep it, my brother. My rats would devour it."

Dream's own smile ebbed away, and he thought of Despair's gray and misty realm, full of mirrors but little else. Could she never have anything nice? Anything to enjoy? He supposed she could not; that was her nature, and the nature of her realm.

But it was not Dream's nature, and perhaps it was not the nature of a brother—not of a good brother, at least—to simply accept that.

"When they do," Dream decided, "I will make you another picture, and another, and another. I am your brother forever, am I not? Forever you should have something lovely, even if it is forever being lost. Hob, can you get that big sketchbook down? A bigger picture will last longer."

Hob gave him a soft, warm look, and came right over to Despair, close enough to touch her as he cupped his hand around the back of Dream's neck and kissed the top of his head. "Course I will, darling. And then I'll find that bloody fixative—it probably tastes awful, that might put off the rats for a bit."

He picked up the drawing Dream had made for him from the coffee table and took it with him when he went to the kitchen, handling it as tenderly as he would hold Dream himself. Dream smiled, watching him go, and then turned that smile up toward his sister again.

---

Even by the standards of this week, it felt deeply and disturbingly strange to sit and drink tea, trading occasional cordial barbs with Despair of the Endless, while Dream was out of sight. Hob could hear him—he seemed to be having little arguments with himself from time to time, and sometimes he hummed little snatches of music. He had insisted he needed to work on Despair's picture all by himself, monopolizing the kitchen table with the sketchbook that barely fit on it when it was opened, and all three sets of pastels.

Hob was wondering if he could sneak a glance by pleading a need for more hot drinks—Dream had taken his cocoa with him, or rather permitted Hob to carry it into the kitchen for him and place it just so to one side of the table. Hob had his tea, and his English civility, and Despair.

He was pretty sure that she was amused by him. He could see a sort of resemblance between her and Death—nothing about their actual appearances, just a kindred feeling about them. Death must also have been amused, back in 1389, to hear some peasant spouting off about how stupid it was to die just because everyone else did, and how Hob Gadling never would. He had to assume she'd been amused, for him to have wound up immortal, or else she'd been trying to do something ironic and it had backfired spectacularly.

He remembered the warmth of her smile, when she turned up on his doorstep with her brother in her arms, and thought that whichever it had started out as, she was pretty entertained by him these days. He had to be a pretty fun joke, for Death, the guy who just kept refusing to die.

That wasn't the kind of amused Despair seemed to be by him. Despair seemed a lot more like a cat watching a wounded mouse scramble around looking for an escape. Sooner or later, her crooked little smile said. Sooner or later, she would have him.

But she never said that, or anything else Hob could respond to with, Fuck you, I won't let you, now get out of my house. That sentiment was taking up an increasingly large section of his brain the longer they sat here, very politely despising each other, because she was his guest and Dream's sister who Dream really, really wanted to draw a picture for.

This was better than her having her arms about Dream, though. Better that Dream was in the kitchen, giggling to himself now in his tiny eldritch way, well out of Despair's reach. Hob could keep an eye on her this way, at least.

For all the good that does you, her eyes said, as she took another tiny sip of her tea.

Hob took a sip of his own, which had gone cold, because they'd been here for ages, just sitting. He ought to be doing more, ought to be doing anything other than just sitting here watching her watch him—was that her? Keeping him in place somehow, making him think he just had to give in to the madness of allowing her over his threshold?

He narrowed his eyes; she smiled and went back to studying his books. "Such a lot to pack up," she said lightly. "Or leave behind. However will you choose?"

"I have a system," Hob said, and considered telling her about it. On the one hand, he could so rarely tell anyone about the system and it was actually very complicated and interesting; on the other, he had no doubt that with her sitting there looking at him the misery of having a system for deciding what he could take to his new life and what had to be lost when he left behind the old would be inescapable.

No. He would tell Dream about the system, later. He probably ought to check his email, see if he'd had any response yet to the resignation he'd sent last night, but... not now. Not with her watching him. The weight of her attention made it easy to sit still, to do nothing, to wait and watch her, always watching him.

Dream called out, and Hob was on his feet instantly, as if he had never kept still a moment in his life; it was only when he saw Despair getting to her own feet with a slightly different sardonic smile that Hob realized what Dream had said. "My sister!"

Still, Hob strode into the kitchen ahead of her, and Dream grinned impartially at him from a face liberally smeared with several colors of pastel, though he also looked past Hob eagerly.

Hob stood aside from the doorway and watched as well. He was rewarded with the sight of Despair's face as she saw Dream's wide, happy smile of greeting, and the picture he had made for her. Her mouth softened out of that fish-hook twist and into something almost sweet, almost wondering.

Hob had to follow her gaze and look properly at Dream's work. He noticed the rainbows first, maybe because he was looking for the source of the incredible variety of colors Dream had smeared on his cheeks and forearms, all over both hands and up his arms to his pushed-up sleeves, which were also thoroughly besmirched.

The rainbows occupied the whole top of the page, arcing and intersecting into each other, dimming as they dripped downward...

But no, he was looking at it backward. The whole lower half of the picture was flames, reds and oranges swallowing up the blackened silhouettes of buildings, bodies, skeletal trees. The flames rose into clouds of smoke and ash, and from the ash, rainbows shot up in all directions, so thickly they blocked out any hint of a sky. The colors started out dim and murky, but got purer and brighter as they rose away from the fire.

It was a beautiful picture, and the message was so gorgeously, defiantly clear that Hob couldn't help grinning so wide his face hurt, even as tears prickled at his eyes.

Everything could be lost, destroyed, ruined beyond repair, and still there was joy to be found. Rainbows in the smoke. Dreams, even in despair.

"Oh, my brother," Despair said, a little audible emotion leaking into her voice. "You know me so well."

Dream was still grinning, and stood up on his chair, reaching out his arms to his sister. Hob turned away to find the fixative, giving them a moment together before, he very much hoped, Despair departed from his home for good. When he turned back, Dream and Despair were hugging, and Hob focused grimly on spraying the fixative in even sweeps to keep from trying to snatch Dream away from her.

As soon as he'd finished, Dream turned toward Hob—toward the picture, really, as he leaned down and blew over the surface of it, making the fixative dry much faster than it should. Then he looked up at his sister again, still with that huge pleased smile. "Remember, my sister. When it is gone, you must tell me, and I shall make you another. You should always have something beautiful, even if it is always being lost. There are always more beautiful things."

"There is always more to lose," Despair agreed, reaching out to ruffle Dream's hair and ending with a caress, drawing her hand down over his cheek. "You do understand." She finally let go, reaching to take hold of the poster-sized picture instead. "Farewell, my brother, until then."

She turned away, took a few steps, and vanished as she crossed through the kitchen doorway. Hob felt her absence, just as he'd felt Delirium's; a weight lifted off him, and he felt suddenly capable again, filled with energy, ready to get on with things. He hadn't felt sad in her presence so much as he'd felt oppressed by the weight of some horrible inevitability, and now she was gone and he could feel again that he was going to live forever, and he could do anything.

He tried not to grin too widely or actually bounce on his heels as his attention returned to Dream, who slumped a little where he stood, his smile melting into weariness. He had been so excited to see his sister, and as glad as Hob was to see the back of her, it hurt to see all of Dream's joy in her go too.

"Here, love," Hob said, going to him and gathering him up in his arms. "How about a bath? Get all that off you, get you some clean clothes, and then we can get back to our day."

"I used up all the red," Dream murmured against his shoulder, melting into him.

"All the red from the sets you were using," Hob corrected. "I'll just dig out the backups."

Dream sighed, melting more heavily against him. Hob gave him a firm squeeze and a kiss on top of his head and took him into the bathroom to peel him out of his clothes.

The bruises on his shoulders and chest still stood out starkly, showing a few lighter colors at their edges but still dark in the middle. Now his pale skin was also marked in rainbow colors up his arms and on his face. Hob smiled at the sight, for all that Dream was drooping. Hob might have been tempted to take a picture for posterity, but... not now. There would be other times, hopefully, when Dream would get himself enthusiastically messy and be pleased about it instead of drained.

For now, Hob moved him over into the bath once the warm water had begun to fill it, and Dream sighed and sat quietly, letting Hob clean him up.

It wasn't until he was washing Dream's hair that Hob found what Despair had left: a jagged red gouge in the soft white skin behind his ear, with what looked like a single drop's worth of blood dried at the end.

Hob just stared for a moment, feeling all his instinctive opposition to Dream's sister harden into implacable rage as he realized what she had done.

She had left her mark on Dream, just as Delirium had. She had taken his joy in her, and replaced it with despair, and now Dream would be weighted down under that smothering hopelessness until God knew when.

Hob took his hands off of Dream and let them close on the edge of the tub, instead, where he could do no harm with a white-knuckled grip. Words rose to his lips, and he kept them to a whisper because he could not hold them back, and he did not want to frighten Dream, who loved his sister—and yet it had to be said.

"Despair of the Endless," Hob hissed, turning his head to speak toward the mirror though he kept his eyes on Dream—on that bloody scratch, those wearily slumping little shoulders already bearing such bruises. "You have shed blood under my roof. You have forfeited your guest-right. You are barred from my home and my hearth from this day to the end of time. Despair of the Endless, you are not welcome here."

Dream looked up at him with wide tearful eyes, and Hob was mostly just glad that he'd already washed Dream's face, so he wasn't dripping all sorts of improbable colors. "She is my sister, Hob."

"Yeah, and she hurt you," Hob said, softening his voice as much as he could manage, which was... definitely less than usual, judging by Dream's continued forlorn expression. "She hurt you while you were in my care, love, and I can't just let that go by. I'm not swearing vengeance, and I don't mind if you talk to her through the mirror or anywhere else you like, but I can't have her in my home again. I just can't."

Dream dropped his chin nearly to his chest and mumbled something that Hob understood, after a few seconds' delay to puzzle it out, as, "I promised her."

Hob sighed, and then realized he'd been halfway through rubbing shampoo into Dream's hair and got back to it, cradling Dream's bowed head in his hands and working gently, careful to keep the suds away from that scratch until he could clean and bandage it. "You promised you would make her another picture, you mean?"

He stilled his hands, so that when Dream gave a tiny nod, he felt it. Hob resumed lathering and said quietly, "I won't tell you not to, love. Your art things are yours entirely, to do with what you will, and she's welcome to call through the mirror or send messages. If a talking rat turns up on the doorstep, I'll let it speak its piece. We can go somewhere to meet her, if you like, to hand off your next masterpiece. But in my home I will keep you as safe as I can. Always. Even from your sister."

Dream tilted his head back and Hob let him, his hands stilling again to just hold him as his tears dripped down his temples. "You cannot protect me, Hob."

"I can try," Hob returned. "To my last breath, my own joy, I can try."

---

Dream sat in the bath, only dimly aware of the warm water around him and the gentle touches of Hob's hands. His sister was gone; all three of his sisters now had left him behind here. And Despair had left him with the knowledge of how futile his quest here was, how wholly doomed.

Or perhaps not doomed. Perhaps simply a part of the inevitable process. He had left most of himself behind—most of what was truly Dream of the Endless, and not this mewling little facet, desperate to be loved.

He had separated out that which could and must be destroyed, and he had made it so very breakable. It would be so easy to—

Dream's whole body jerked, and he let out a yelp of protest. Only then did he realize that he was out of the bath, wrapped in a towel and held on Hob's lap while Hob did something that stung horribly behind his ear. He buried his face in Hob's chest, feeling tears start again as the immediacy of that sharp pain faded.

Hob was holding him close, murmuring apologies and reassurances even as he patted the hurting spot dry and then smoothed a bandage into place. Dream could not help raising his own hand to the spot to poke at it, but the bandage was something smooth and soft that seemed nearly to blend into his skin. He could not even complain that it itched or bothered his ear; in a moment he would doubtless forget it was there.

He wept the more bitterly for that, and Hob held him closer, rocking him gently, and did not admonish him.

---

Hob didn't bother with clean clothes when Dream's weeping tailed off enough to get him dressed. He put him straight into his softest suit of pajamas, the fuzzy ones with the feet attached, and tied the red ribbon to both their wrists for good measure.

Gathering up the whole mass of ribbon revealed Eleanor's little book, still lying on the bed, with the last third still unrecorded. It would go back to the library at nightfall, and Hob didn't think he was going to have any more attention to spare for it before then; it hurt to let it go, but Dream was limp and miserable in his arms, and Hob had always prioritized the living.

Dream had promised he would be able to find the book again, anyway. Hob left it there, untouched.

He went and lay down on the rug beside the coffee table with Dream an unresisting weight on his chest. Hob got his phone connected to the big speakers, and scrolled through until he found a good album to start with.

Dream didn't respond to the music, even when Hob turned up the speakers to proper wallowing-in-my-feelings levels, not until they got to the bridge of the first song.

And some days I don't miss my family
And some days I do
And some days I think I'd feel better if I tried harder
Most days I know it's not true

Dream's little hands clenched to fists in Hob's shirt, and Dream drew in a sharp audible breath, but made no other sound. His grip didn't relax, and Hob felt him starting to tremble, and he wrapped his arms around Dream and held him close.

Hob let himself think, then, of 1673. The year he had belonged to Dream's youngest sister for a while; the year Despair had thought he would be hers instead.

There was a night he remembered. Probably it had been more than one night, or there had been many such nights scattered through the years before 1673; he didn't trust memories that felt so clear to be really accurate, especially from that century. But whether it was a story he had made of it for himself or what had really happened—he remembered a particular night that felt like this late summer afternoon.

He remembered the weight on his chest, the effort of breathing. He had been starving for a long while, had passed in and out of the phases where he didn't really notice. He was in a phase where he felt hungry again, and he could feel some precipice at his feet as he huddled in a half-sheltered corner.

Hob had known he couldn't go on that way much longer. Starving was about to break him, one way or another. Starving, and waiting.

He was sixteen years from his stranger's return, and sixteen years shouldn't have felt so long to him by then; he was more than sixty years on from his trial as a witch, nearer to seventy since Robyn's death, and that still felt like an eyeblink.

But sixteen years, just then, when he was so hungry and had been so hungry for so long, was more than he could bear to imagine. It had sunk into a certainty he didn't question, by then, that he wouldn't truly be able to change the direction of his life by his own efforts. He had tried, several times in the years since his fortunes had fallen, to repair them, to make a way and a life for himself. Now and again he had gotten a little toehold for a time. He found some steady work here or there, for weeks, for months. He began to imagine that he was on his way up again, and then it all fell apart and he fell back down into the cold dark water, to fight and fight again to get his head above the surface.

But he had fought, and fought, and fought, and never thought of giving up and letting the dark water take him.

And then came that night. He was too hungry to sleep, but he was so weary he couldn't bear it, and he had known something had to break. He would run mad, or he would simply run out.

Running out had seemed like an attractive prospect in some ways. He could admit that nothing would get better. He could just... stop trying, and let events take their course. He didn't know what would happen to him, if he even could die, if he would be dragged to some leper colony or poor hospital, or if the moss would simply grow over him. Or perhaps he would die, if he at last stopped the endless struggle to keep his life.

Maybe all this time that was truly what had kept him alive: his determination. Maybe once he let that go, he would expire. He had felt none of the fear or horror or anger or revulsion he would have felt at any other time. That night, teetering on that brink, it had seemed no better or worse than his other options.

All he had to do was give up his last little shred of hope. All he had to do was believe that his stranger wasn't coming at all, that those interminable sixteen years before him was the same as never. All he had to do was give up, and he could lie down and stop.

Tears trickled from Hob's eyes as the music played, as Dream lay quiet and heavy on his chest. He remembered how much it had hurt, and how desperately he had wanted to stop hurting, stop caring, stop looking ahead to more days that would be just as bad as the ones before, or worse.

He remembered how little it would have helped to have anyone tugging at his arm and telling him tomorrow might be better. He made himself feel it, and remember it, because he knew that until that scratch on Dream healed, there was no use trying to make him feel any differently. He was down at the bottom of that well that Hob had just that once peeked into, in all of his long life.

He didn't know how many times Get Lonely had looped when his stomach growled, and he heard Dream's stomach make a mournful little noise as if in answer. The sunlight was slanting low, which meant it was well into the August evening.

He left the music playing, but stood up, still carrying Dream with him, and said, "Sorry, love. For now we still have to eat."

Dream let out a little keening sound and turned his face against Hob's shoulder, and Hob felt the heat of tears, though he didn't think Dream had actually cried at all while they were lying on the floor.

"I know," Hob said quietly, though he knew he didn't really, and couldn't. Even back in 1673 he'd chosen the other option: he'd gone a bit mad, and spent a few months convinced every day that today was the day He Was Coming. He had accidentally founded a minor congregation of Dissenters convinced Hob was a prophet of the Second Coming, who incidentally kept him fed until he came around enough to flee London for a decade or so.

Now as then, the main thing was that they still had to eat. Hob pulled out the Double Gloucester and started slicing.

---

 

Chapter 16

Dream did not walk in the Dreaming when he slept that night, did not even float in the Sea of Dreams. He drifted in a lightless void, and was excruciatingly aware that he had been here before, and would end up here again. There was so much nothing in the universe—even in him, the sum of all dreams. There was so much silence, so much absence, so much emptiness, waiting to swallow him up. Waiting for him to stop struggling against it and give in to the inevitable.

There was so much—light. He squinted against it, and blinked, and found that Hob had opened the shade on the bedroom window, let it retract all the way, so that the summer sunlight poured in directly into Dream's eyes.

"Oh, sorry, sweeting," Hob said, coming over to cast a merciful shadow on Dream as he scooped him up. "Come on, anyway. Time for breakfast."

Dream shook his head against Hob's shoulder. "I'm not hungry."

"That's all right, love," Hob said, squeezing a little tighter and pressing a kiss that was just a vague pressure on top of Dream's head. "I am. You can just drink some chocolate milk, if you don't want any toast."

Dream drank some chocolate milk, when Hob put the cup in his hands and the straw to his lips. He might have eaten something as well—whatever it took to keep Hob's arm around him, Hob's voice gently cajoling, within the bounds of what his small and weary form could manage. He didn't think he slept again, but the nothingness swallowed him up, blotting out breakfast and everything else that transpired until he found that he was sitting in Hob's lap facing the coffee table.

Hob was seated on the rug. On the coffee table, within Dream's reach, were the black sketchpad and a fresh set of pastels. There was music playing, Dream realized, when his own name caught his ear. The unrelenting strum of the guitar seemed to propel the singer toward some doom to which he was quietly resigned.

We have bad dreams the night he rolls in,
We have bad dreams the night he rolls in,
And we try to keep our spirits high,
But they flag and they wane...

Dream sighed agreement, staring at the empty black page before him. Hob must have opened the book to a fresh page for him; he could not imagine what Hob expected him to put there. It was already complete, perfect in its stark emptiness.

Tears dripped from Dream's eyes as he looked at it, feeling how far he was himself from such perfect simplicity, from such a clean and complete end.

It had never felt like such a curse, such a burden, to be Endless, until now; he had never let himself feel it, never let himself be small enough to be so crushed by it. All that time to come—even if he did what he had made so easy for himself, even if he let this facet of himself end... Even to do that would be so much effort, would take so long and probably hurt into the bargain, even more than he already ached, even more than it hurt him just to exist.

"Hob," he said, turning his face away from the page and its impossible goal. He had not thought of saying anything, but his small body had learned some new reflexes, as impossible to hold back as the tears that streamed from his eyes. "Hob, it hurts."

Hob had had one arm around him already; now the other came up to cup the side of his face, and Hob pressed kisses to the top of his head. "What hurts, darling?"

"Me," Dream whined, cringing from the word as he spoke and still unable to stop it bursting free. "Me."

"Oh, love," Hob murmured, turning himself away from the coffee table so that Dream did not need to put such effort into not looking at the sketchpad, the perfect emptiness he could not reach. "I'm sorry you're hurting, my darling. Can you think of anything that wouldn't hurt you?"

Dream found that both of his hands were clutching at Hob's bare forearms, his fingers digging into Hob's skin. He ought to let go, but that seemed as impossible as everything else.

"Don't let go," Dream said, even though Hob had to let go. They both had to let go. Dream had to let everything go, let himself go, let the end come and take him away. That was the only thing that would truly make the pain stop: he had to reach the end, somehow.

Still, here and now, he was clinging and crying and whispering, "Don't let go."

"I won't, my joy," Hob promised him, though he could surely promise no such thing. "I won't."

---

Between his little bouts of obvious distress—which Hob almost preferred, because at least then he could be consoling—Dream mostly seemed... absent. He was listless and silent, resting quietly against Hob. It didn't seem to matter what Hob did or didn't do, during those times. Nothing seemed to make a difference.

When he nerved himself up to set Dream down on the bed, ribbon firmly tied around his wrist, and visit the bathroom for a few moments, Dream scarcely seemed to notice. He hadn't moved at all, when Hob returned, and didn't reach for him when Hob gathered him up.

Hob hugged him close anyway, reminding himself firmly that Dream still felt it, even if he was too sunk in his despair to respond. He still needed to know he was loved, even when he couldn't show it. Hob kissed his head and gathered up all the ribbon, and took Dream out through the door that went to the flat's outside staircase. It was late afternoon, not too hot but good and warm, and there was a bit of sun shining still, slanting over the city.

Hob sat down on the top step with Dream cuddled in his lap and breathed in the outside air. You couldn't really call it fresh, though it had improved vastly from the last couple of centuries. Still, it was different to being in the flat, and it was good to change things up, to feel the sun and a little breeze, and hear people coming and going.

Dream didn't so much as twitch, and Hob told himself not to peek at the bandage behind Dream's ear. It would be obvious when Dream was better, and until he was better, he just needed someone to wait with him. Hob sang to him quietly, when a song drifted into his head, or talked, when he thought of something to say. Sometimes he just watched the clouds go by.

He supposed he ought to get on with his own business, since it didn't make any obvious difference to Dream what he was doing, but... he could spare a day or two to just be with him in this. Nothing was more important.

The sun was sinking low when Dream stirred for the first time in hours. "Hob?"

"I'm here, love," Hob said, squeezing him tighter and wriggling his toes to remind himself that his feet were still attached.

"Where is my book?" Dream asked.

Hob felt cold run down his spine, and gripped Dream tighter. "It's safe, love. It's with your other things."

Dream wriggled a little, though he made no real attempt to escape Hob's hold. "I need it, Hob. Please. I need it. I need my sister."

"Dream," Hob said, barely a breath, feeling frozen with horror. He couldn't even begin to hope that Dream meant one of his younger sisters, not with that flatness in his voice. Not with the way the last day and night had gone. "No, please—"

Dream did push against his hold then, and Hob loosened his grip enough for Dream to look up at him, solemn as ever with that little furrow between his tiny brows. "Hob?"

Hob's eyes filled with tears at the thought of never hearing his friend say that again. "Please," Hob whispered. "Don't leave me, Dream. Not yet."

Dream reached up to lay a hand on Hob's cheek and the tears spilled over as Hob struggled against the urge to yank Dream into his chest, to wrap him up in red ribbon until he couldn't move a muscle.

"Please," he repeated, and still couldn't seem to speak above that half-frozen whisper.

"I must," Dream said. "It is the only way, Hob. I must go to her. She is kind. It will not hurt, and then it will be over."

"But then you will be gone," Hob pointed out. "From me, from your sister Despair, who you promised to draw pictures for. From your brother Destiny, who invited you to come and visit him. From your youngest sister, who came to find you. From Lucienne. From Matthew. We will all miss you so dreadfully, my darling. Don't leave us. Not yet. I know it hurts, I know—I know you must be so tired of it. I know I'm asking more than I have any right to ask of you, but please. Don't go. Not today."

"It will be all right," Dream insisted. "There will be another. The Dreaming knows him already. He will be Dream when I am gone. He will be better. He knows how to love. Everyone loves him."

A considerable part of Hob's brain immediately had many, many questions, but the best part of him stayed focused on what mattered here.

"I love you, Dream. And I don't think there's anything wrong with the way you love, except that maybe you could stand to get more practice at it. Please, love, no one can replace you. No one will be the same as you. Even if I might love him—I love you, now, and I will grieve all my life, forever, if you leave me. You are precious to me, my darling, and no other could make me forget that. Even when you are sad and tired and quiet, I want you here."

Hob blinked his eyes clear to see that Dream was crying now too, shaking his head.

"I'm sorry," Hob repeated. "I know it hurts. I know it's hard to stay, but please, please stay. Just a little longer. Just another day."

Dream heaved a sigh, but settled himself against Hob's chest. "Not today."

"Thank you," Hob whispered, giving him another squeeze, terror still speeding his heart. "Thank you, darling. Thank you."

Dream just sighed again, and lay still in his arms. Hob took another few breaths, letting the worst of the adrenaline subside, and then took them inside and poured them each a drink: chocolate milk for Dream, and Scotch for himself. Just a little. Just to warm away the cold that clung to him despite the summer day, remembering Dream's small matter-of-fact voice. I must. It is the only way.

He went on holding Dream until well past dark, and eventually realized that Dream had dozed off against his shoulder. Hob took him to the bathroom then, coaxed him awake long enough to wash his face and brush his teeth, which Dream did very slowly but without real protest. Hob changed him into fresh pajamas, and when he went to retie the red ribbon he held the end of it to the center of Dream's chest, right over his bruised heart, and wrapped the ribbon harness-like around each of his shoulders before bringing it back to tie the knot at the center.

Dream looked faintly, wearily amused by this. "I gave you my word, Hob. Not yet."

"I know that, love," Hob said. "And I do thank you. But all the same, I'm going to be keeping a firm grip."

Dream sighed, but said nothing more. Hob tucked him in to sleep and didn't let himself think about the possibility of that side of the bed not being Dream's anymore—about that side of the bed being empty.

About someone else being Dream of the Endless.

He kissed Dream's forehead and whispered, "I won't be far behind you, my darling. See you soon."

Dream heaved another sigh, but said nothing, and his whole body went limp in sleep. Hob stood for a long moment, watching him, and then he went to Dream's suitcase and pulled out the little book, keeping his body between it and Dream as he slipped out of the room and firmly closed the door.

Hob looked around the flat, but everywhere was too close to Dream, even with that door closed behind him. He went out the back door again, shutting it firmly behind him. He sat down on the step, and there under the night sky, he opened the book and looked at the picture of Dream's eldest sister, her gentle smile and her spreading wings.

He couldn't make himself touch the ankh she wore, couldn't make himself ask. He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to bring her here, but...

"Hob Gadling," she said, and his head jerked up as he reflexively snapped the book shut.

She was standing a few steps down, leaning on the railing, so she was looking him right in the eye. She smiled. "I didn't think you would ever call on me."

"I didn't," Hob said, resisting the urge to lean back away from her.

"You didn't," she agreed. "I just popped in for no reason at all." Her expression softened. "Except that I'm worried about my brother, and I think you are too."

"Despair was here," Hob blurted. "She did this to him, she—"

Death was shaking her head softly. "She didn't make him feel this way, Hob. This was in him. It has been for a long time. Despair just—" Death made a little fish hook gesture. "Let it out."

Hob wanted to protest that Dream had been fine, but... he thought of his stranger, all those hundreds of years ago, and the sadness that hung around him all the time. The look on his face in 1689, when he asked Hob if he wanted to live—with tears already in his eyes. He had expected Hob to say no, but Hob didn't think those tears had been mourning for him. Dream knew the kind of pain Hob had been through in that century. He had known it for a long time; that bruise over his heart was ground in deep.

Hob looked at Death—she must know, and she might even be willing to tell him what the root of all this was for Dream. But Hob didn't want to hear it from her, and it wasn't going to be anything Hob could fix, any more than his stranger had been able to fix all that had grieved Hob in 1689.

Death looked back at him, still smiling gently, still leaning on the railing instead of sitting. Like she was waiting for something. Like she had been paying attention—not just to her brother, but to Hob.

"It was you, wasn't it?" Hob asked. "Back at the start, in the White Horse. He let me think he was the one who decided it, when he told me to meet him there again in a hundred years, but... that's not in his power, is it?"

Death shook her head, her smile turning a little mischievous, her curls bouncing cheerfully. "I had brought him there that day. He'd been withdrawing more and more from the Waking world, and I wanted him to see."

"See..." Hob stared at her. "See me?"

She nodded. "I'd seen you before, you know. Many times, you'd come close to me—a few times you were right on the cusp, but you never looked for me. Never saw me, certainly never so much as considered taking my hand."

"You... you see people when they die," Hob said slowly, putting together what she meant. "Or when they're about to. Well, I'd had my share of close calls before then, but..." A little jolt, the awareness of a near miss, flashed through him, six hundred thirty-five years late. "Was I—that night, were you there because..."

"Thirteenth time unlucky, or so I thought," Death said. "Truly, I was hoping to persuade my brother to take you in, for I knew you would not be content going on to any normal afterlife. Some few of the dead live on in his realm—some as ravens, his messengers and constant companions. They are the closest things to friends he allowed himself for a very long time—until you."

"Matthew," Hob realized. "He was... he died? And went to the Dreaming instead?"

Death nodded. "He is very good for Dream, I think. But I thought you would be, too—and I was not wrong, after all, even if it went a different way. When I heard you say it, Dream gave me such a look, and I realized it would just be so much funnier if you didn't die at all, ever. And it got Dream to visit the Waking every hundred years to look in on you."

Hob smiled, and then looked down at the book in his hands and felt his heart seize, his eyes fill with tears. "But he—he wanted to call you today. He... He said it's..."

"I think it's a good thing, really," Death said gently, and Hob jerked a little as her hand settled over his, but it was just a touch. His heart still beat just the same. "All of this, it's been in him for a long time. But he never let himself know it, and I don't know if he would have without Despair stepping in. I think he would eventually have just... found a way to make it happen."

"Fuck," Hob whispered, thinking of Loki, the scorpion Dream had set free. The threat he had made sure was neutralized—because he was here, with Hob, and there would have been people caught in the crossfire. "He... he was close, wasn't he?"

"I think he was," Death agreed softly. "But I think he's getting further from it now. When Dream first changed like this, he called on me and on Destiny—and Destiny said that this had changed everything for Dream. His whole path is different than it would have been otherwise. I have to believe it means that has changed. Not that he won't come to me eventually, but eventually so will you, and so will the whole universe."

Hob looked up at her, startled. "You don't... you don't want him to? I mean, you're Death, you..."

She smiled sadly. "I am Death, and I am his big sister. When he takes my hand for the last time, that will mean that I have to let him go—and then he will be gone from me as from everyone else who loves him. I never know where people go, after. I only guide them on the way. It was the same with Despair—the one you met, she is the second of her name. I don't know where the first one went, but I know I will not see her again before I die myself, and that will not be until all other things have passed."

"Then if he—if he calls to you tomorrow," Hob said, not knowing what he could ask. "I got him to promise not today, but if tomorrow..."

"I'll come if he calls to me," she said softly, and squeezed Hob's hand. "And I'll tell him what you told him. Wait a little longer, because we'll miss you when you go. For all that his feelings are truly his, they're at flood stage right now. In another day or two he's going to start remembering everything else he has been learning with you. He's going to remember that living won't always hurt this much, and that it has its compensations."

Dream could, Hob realized, start learning to actually cope with his feelings instead of just refusing to feel them, something that Hob had learned a lot about in the last century or so. Dream might just be able to find a firm footing for the rest of his long life, instead of papering over this abyss that had evidently been there all the time Hob had known him.

He thought of Dream in 1889, that brittle rejection and hasty retreat from Hob raising the idea of loneliness. He thought of Dream, already so breakable, suffering a hundred years of imprisonment and torture.

Yeah, this had been coming for a long time.

"Still don't like your middle sister," Hob muttered, and Death actually laughed, a deep melodious sound entirely unlike Dream's rusty bullfrog croaks.

"You and Despair are natural enemies, true," she said. "But she is a loyal sister, and she has done Dream a kindness, I promise you."

"He," Hob said, and then realized it was a bit ridiculous. But when he glanced up at Death, she had her head tilted, waiting to hear what Hob had to say. Her hand still rested over his, gentle but entirely present.

Hob cleared his throat and tried again. "He drew a picture for her. She said he shouldn't, said the rats would eat it, but he said he would just draw her a new one whenever she needed it. It's beautiful, you should see it."

"Lucienne and Despair? You tell him I want one next," Death said firmly. "And—" she took her hand off of Hob's and reached over as if she were reaching out to someone else, except there was no one there, just shadows, and then she was holding a beautiful red apple. "Give him that from me, all right? Don't wait for him to ask about me, just—give him that. I don't know if it will help, really, but it's a very good apple."

"Sure," Hob said, and took the apple without quite touching her hand. "I'll tell him you—"

But she was already turning away—already gone. Hob blinked at the semi-darkness of the area behind the Inn for a moment, and then looked down at the apple in his hand, which was still there, and still definitely an apple.

Hob set it on the nightstand on Dream's side of the bed, where he would be sure to see it in the morning. The book he tucked away again, safely out of sight.

---

Dream had traversed vast deserts before, had walked through the dusty cold expanses of worlds without atmosphere, without any detectable life. Stones and worlds still dreamed their slow dreams in such places, and many creatures dreamed of them.

This corner of the Dreaming was colder, darker, more lifeless than any of those. It was not stone under his feet, nor even sand; it was the dust of dust, mere particles ground down to almost nothing, all their identity and individuality spent, all their dreams extinguished, all potential exhausted.

It kept slipping underfoot and Dream did not know why he kept walking. It was cold, and dark, and his legs were absurdly short. He could make himself taller—he could make this place more congenial—but instead he kept walking.

He was following the ribbon, he realized. The ribbon extended from the black bruise that marked his heart, and led on into the nothingness. Hob had said he would be here; he had promised. The ribbon would lead Dream to him.

It was cold, and dark, and Dream was tired. He knew that if he sat down he wouldn't get up again; he forced himself on for another step, another. He was gathering his strength for another step when the dust shifted underfoot. He stumbled and fell, the impact knocking the wind out of him.

He would never be able to get up again. He knew that. He couldn't summon the energy even to scream in frustration. He had not given up, not on purpose. He had meant to go on, he would have gone on, but now he couldn't.

He couldn't.

He was too small, too tired, and the cold and the dark were too oppressive.

He would never reach Hob now, and he had not meant to give in, but it would make no difference. He couldn't get to where Hob was.

He raised his hand to the ribbon, still anchored in his chest. Hob had given it to him, to keep him close. Hob had wrapped this ribbon around him once before, when he was lost. Hob had told him...

Dream closed his hand around the ribbon and tugged.

It was not much of a tug; he could not find the strength to bring his other hand to the ribbon, or even to pull more than once. His grip faltered, in the dark and the cold, though he kept his fingers loosely curled around it.

After a long, long time, he felt the ribbon flutter against his fingers, as if someone at the other end shook it. As if someone on the other end was moving.

As if there was someone on the other end.

Dream opened his eyes, and saw a shadow approaching from a long way off, with the vivid red of the ribbon stretching between them.

A long time later—or an eyeblink, ten minutes or perhaps fifteen—the movement of the ribbon in his hand became obvious and rhythmic, and he could hear footsteps padding closer in the dust. He opened his eyes again just as Hob reached him, and saw Hob smiling as he gathered Dream up against his chest.

"There you are, my darling," Hob murmured. "Been looking for you. That ribbon does come in handy, doesn't it?"

Dream nodded against Hob's shoulder, listening to the beating of his heart, feeling the warmth of Hob's body slowly chase away the cold.

"Were you going somewhere?" Hob asked. "I can carry you if you like."

Dream shook his head. "Just to find you," he whispered.

"Oh, well," Hob squeezed him as he settled down on the ground, and here in this dream place Dream felt himself squished into a slightly different shape, letting himself become someone who fit here in Hob's arms. "That's all right then. I've got you, and you've got me, and we've both got this lovely bright star to sit under, so we'll be fine until morning, don't you think?"

Dream frowned. There had been no stars shining; it had been dark, and formless, and cold.

But he had seen Hob approaching. He had seen the red of the ribbon. There had to be some light.

Dream opened his eyes and looked first at Hob's upturned face, smiling up into some faint glow that illuminated his features. Then Dream followed his gaze, searching the depths of the vast dark sky. Eventually he saw the star at zenith—faint, and flickering, but definitely there.

After a while Dream realized that it was a star, which meant that it was not its own fire that flickered; it was some obstacle that obscured it, clouds or mist blocking its light. As he went on watching he found he could see the clouds shifting, and soon his eyes were so accustomed to the star that even when the clouds hid it from him, he could still detect its glow lighting up the shapes of them, revealing their movements.

"That really is the most beautiful star I've ever seen," Hob said after a while, and Dream couldn't help but huff—not quite a laugh, but the idea of one.

"What?" Hob said, jostling Dream a bit and smiling down at him; he had understood the not-quite-laugh for what it might have been, clearly. "What's funny about that? What star is it?"

Dream sighed, settling against Hob again and looking up to where the star's light was growing stronger, warmer, though it was still the only star shining in all that blackness. "It is your star, Hob. The one you always follow. It is no wonder it shines over your head, no matter where you are."

"Oh," Hob said, looking up again, smiling up at it as at a dear old friend. "That's what hope looks like, then?" Hob looked down at him, frowning a little. "Can you see it, love?"

"I can," Dream said, and did not add, but I couldn't until you were here, until you told me where to look for it.

After a time he added, "It is a part of me. An important part."

"Ah, well," Hob said easily. "There are bits of me that I've lost track of, time to time. Gone decades sometimes without remembering to clean behind my ears, but there they still are anyhow, when I finally think of them."

Dream raised a hand to touch the place behind his ear, and his fingers encountered the bandage that Hob had so carefully and lovingly affixed. "Just so."

Sometimes Dream closed his eyes, but whenever he opened them, the star was there, a little brighter each time. When he closed his eyes, Hob's arms stayed steady around him, and Hob's heart beat audibly under his ear, and Hob's breathing in and out was as steady as—

"Oh, look at that," Hob said, "there's the sea. Can you hear it? I think I can hear it now."

Dream opened his eyes, and saw the distant waves, still dark, but with glints of starlight reflecting here and there. Their crashing was distant, but he could hear it, filling the world with its relentless rhythm.

Dream opened his eyes again, and though the light was not much brighter the red of the ribbon was vivid before him, and the tawny color of Hob's skin, the blue of Hob's t-shirt and the soft cream of the sheets. The world was so full of colors Dream could barely breathe for a moment, and it took some time for him to understand that he was back in the Waking world, lying in Hob's bed, still cradled in Hob's arms.

Dream tipped his head back to look at Hob's face, though what he mostly saw was Hob's chin, sprouting dark stubble. Not all of the little hairs were the same color, showing different shades of brown, and a few were pale silver, almost translucent. From this angle Dream realized he could also see tiny hairs inside Hob's nose, and he wriggled up a bit to peer more closely at them. He could not see their color properly, but then from this angle he could see the pinkness of Hob's slightly parted lips, and the smooth skin of his cheeks above where his beard would grow, and the tiny lines around his eyes, and the lovely swoop of each of his eyelashes, and...

Hob's nose wrinkled, making a dozen interesting new lines, and then he blinked. His eyes went wide, and Dream stared into them. He could see all the little filaments that made up the colored part of his eyes, the tiny variations in the deep brown before it gave way to black. It was all so interesting, so significantly present.

"Hullo, love," Hob murmured, his voice gravelly and low, and Dream blinked and scooted back a little, so that he could see Hob again, and not just the colors and textures that made him up.

"Hullo, my Hob," Dream echoed back, and Hob smiled at that.

"Something for you there," Hob said, nodding toward Dream's side of the bed, and Dream wriggled over onto his other side and then sat up, catching sight of a flash of red which proved to be an apple, not only perfect but familiar somehow.

"From your sister," Hob said behind him, and Dream looked back to see Hob sitting up too. "She stopped by after you were asleep—dropped that off, and said she wants a picture too, if you're doing any more."

Dream crawled across the bed to the nightstand—to the apple.

It was identical to the apple from that day he'd spent with his sister, years ago. She had offered him an apple, and he hadn't wanted it then.

He was hungry now, and the apple looked lovely; he picked it up in both hands and took as big a bite as his small body could manage. The apple was crisp and cool, sweet and juicy and good.

Dream looked over at Hob as he chewed—Hob who was kind and dear and an assemblage of fascinating colors, who had given him apple slices with his cheese on toast, who had bought different kinds of cheese for him to try, who had given him this apple, even if Dream's sister had given to him first.

Dream wanted to say something about the feeling welling up in his chest, but when he swallowed the bite of apple and opened his mouth, the sound that came out was a sob. There were suddenly tears streaming from his eyes and down his face.

"Oh," Hob said, and then Dream was in his arms again. "Is it—what is it, darling? Do you—"

Dream clutched the apple, because he was going to have another bite as soon as he could manage it. "It's—so—nice," Dream wailed.

Hob squeezed him closer. "Yeah?"

"It tastes nice," Dream sobbed, lowering his nose and catching a whiff of the lovely apple smell that just made him cry harder. "And she gave it to me and that was nice too! I never let her before, I said I didn't want any!"

"Ah, well," Hob rubbed his back gently. "Maybe you weren't hungry that time, or you just weren't ready. But now you know you like apples, and you know you like it when your sister gives you nice things. I bet you'll remember, the next time."

Dream couldn't even form the words to object, to put words to the horror of his certainty that he wouldn't. "I'll—I'll—" He wailed helplessly.

"Easy, darling, keep breathing," Hob murmured, and then took a few illustrative deep breaths himself.

Dream followed suit for a moment, but that just gave him enough breath to scream at length. "I'll get big and then I won't care because it's just nice and I won't know that's important!"

He turned his face into Hob's chest and sobbed for a while, until he had to turn his face to get a cool breath of air and saw the apple he was holding—now starting to turn a little brown where he had bitten it, which made him shriek wordlessly with the horror of having waited too long to eat the apple. It was spoiled, now, and he had only had one bite and—

"Here, here, let me," Hob murmured, taking the apple from Dream's horror-slackened grip. He took a bite—he actually bit right into the brown part! Dream stopped crying in pure boggled disgust, but Hob smiled down at him and said, "You're right, that's a nice apple. Here, take another bite."

There was nothing but white left now; Hob had bitten all the bad part away, and revealed the good.

Dream did, sniffling prodigiously as he chewed. It was quite a nice apple.

But only nice, only a simple little lovely thing. Nothing that his big self would think was important; nothing he would remember to get hungry for. When he was big he would be thinking about big things, and miserable things, and things too enormously miserable for Dream to really hold in his head right now, though remembering the existence of them made fresh tears run from his eyes as he swallowed.

Hob held the apple close to his face again, and Dream took another bite and sniffled some more and chewed. "I wanted to—I wanted to die," he said, clutching Hob's shirt with both hands.

"When you were big?" Hob asked. "Or just now?"

Dream nodded against his chest, then leaned over to take another bite of the apple. "Both," he said mournfully, before he got on with chewing.

"But now you don't?" Hob said. He didn't sound like he had last night, pleading with Dream not to call on his sister, and Dream buried his face and cried harder for a moment, remembering the fear, the anticipated grief in Hob's voice, and the way it had only barely moved him. He had been deep in the dark, far from any light, deep in his sister's mists—but that dark place was inside him, was a part of him, and it had been for a very long time now.

And still, now he was out of it far enough to see light, to taste this apple, and he remembered: he had hope. He didn't want to die. He just wanted everything to stop hurting so much.

It all hurt so much less, like this. But when he was all of himself again, when he took that crushing weight back on his shoulders...

"But I will again," Dream said. "When I'm big I will."

"Then I'll remind you," Hob said, as if it could be that simple. "Not just every hundred years, right? Every night when I come to see you, and every day if you come to see me. Every hour, if you're around. I'll remind you about apples, and hot chocolate, and all the pictures you're going to draw, and The Princess Bride, and running around at the park..."

Dream sniffled some more, and took another bite of the apple, and said, "Can we go to the park today?"

"We can absolutely go to the park today," Hob promised him, and Dream thought that maybe, for today, that would be enough.

---

The Sandman CHBB Fic: To Be Brand New, Chapters 17-20

Chapters: 25
Estimated final word count: 140,000ish
Rating: Explicit

Relationships: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling, Dream & his siblings, Hob & the Endless, Dream & Orpheus, Dream & Daniel

Characters: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Hob Gadling, Daniel Hall, Destiny of the Endless, Death of the Endless, Matthew the Raven, Odin (The Sandman), Delirium of the Endless, Lucienne, Despair of the Endless, Desire of the Endless, Orpheus (The Sandman), Destruction of the Endless, Lyta Hall

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Additional Tags: Sandman: Brief Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Everyone Lives, Age Regression/De-Aging, Slow Burn, Like the Slowest Burn, Like One of Them Is a Pre-Sexual Child for the First 100,000 Words of the Fic, What If The Red String Of Fate Was Also A Toddler Leash, Touch-Starved Dream of the Endless, Protective Hob Gadling, Cuddling & Snuggling, Caretaking, Bathing, Bed Sharing, Crying, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Injuries, Illness, Depression, Suicidal Ideation, Explicit Sexual Content, Masturbation, Not Exactly Loss of Virginity But Not Not That?, Happy Ending

Chapters 1-4 on Dreamwidth
Chapters 5-8 on Dreamwidth
Chapters 9-12 on Dreamwidth
Chapters 13-16 on Dreamwidth

This fic is also posting (though more slowly) on AO3!

Check out all the gorgeous art by fishfingersandscarves on Tumblr!

Chapter 17

There was some face-washing and nose-blowing and breakfast-eating before Hob got Dream into actual non-pajama clothes. Dream was already drooping so much by then that Hob limited their outing to the green just across from the Inn, which had some very nice lawn and trees for running around.

Dream looked up at him when they got there and said wearily, "Do we have to run?"

"Not a bit," Hob assured him, giving his little hand a squeeze. "We can stroll, or sit, or lie down in the sun."

Dream looked up dubiously at the brightest spot in the overcast sky and said slowly, "My sister told me once that it was good to walk barefoot. But..."

But practically the first thing Hob had told him, when he got here, was that he couldn't go out without shoes, and Dream had taken it to heart.

"Ah, well," Hob said, sitting down right there on the grass to take off his own shoes. "That's my no-longer-a-medieval-peasant hangup more than anything, though you do want to watch where you put your feet in London. The grass here is probably all right, but you never know when you might step in something you'd really rather clean off your shoe than your own foot."

Dream gave the grass around them a very dubious look, but when Hob was finished getting his own shoes off Dream sat down and offered his sandaled feet, and Hob took those off, too. He tucked one of Dream's sandals into each of his own shoes, to carry them all together, and offered his other hand to Dream, who took it and held on tight.

Hob watched where they were walking, carefully leading Dream onto the thickest, plushest grass; Dream kept his own head down, too, watching where he planted every step. When they had crossed the whole length of the green, the sun was shining a little more visibly through the clouds, and Hob tugged him toward a nice sunny-ish patch. "Here, love, let's sit a moment on the ground, that's even better than walking on it. Don't have to worry about what you'll step in that way."

Dream turned around in actual circles, scrutinizing the spot Hob had chosen—holding Hob's hand all the while, like Hob was twirling him in a dance—and then nodded gravely and sat. Hob sat beside him, dropping their shoes on the other side, and wriggled his toes into the grass.

Dream stared intently at his own feet while flexing them against the grass, like he was making sure he did it right, and Hob just smiled and closed his eyes, turning his face up toward the sun.

After a while, Hob heard Dream move, and cracked one eye open to see that Dream was walking in a circle around where Hob sat, lifting each foot high and setting it down with intense precision. He stepped right over Hob's ankles on one pass, then swung wide around his feet on the next.

Hob closed his eyes and let him get on with it; anything that kept him present in his body and in the world was probably all to the good right now. He just sat and enjoyed the sunshine, such as it was, up until Dream plunked himself down into Hob's lap, firmly enough to make Hob's breath go out.

Dream made a small dissatisfied noise, grinding his shoulder and cheek into Hob's chest, and Hob smiled down at him and said, "Sorry, is your seat not quite to your liking?"

Dream tilted his head back, frowning, and pointedly pressed a kiss to the center of Hob's chest while still frowning, then went back to trying to physically burrow through him.

"Ah, right, you love and cherish your seat, it's just not quite in the right spot," Hob said, and though he managed to say the words lightly it still did something to his heart when Dream nodded grumpily into his chest, accepting Hob's summation.

"Are you more in the mood to recline, then?" Hob asked, when he had his voice under control. He suited action to words, flopping back onto the grass.

Dream let out an audible sigh of contentment and starfished out all his limbs, so his fingers and toes were touching grass while he was otherwise draped entirely over Hob. When Hob tentatively laid a hand on his back, Dream made an approving sound and gave a little wiggle, snuggling into him more decisively, and Hob couldn't help smiling.

Hob studied the sky for a bit, but the clouds seemed to be thinning. They would only need to move a little to be in shade if the sun got properly hot, but for now they should be able to stay right here until Dream wanted to move.

Hob let his eyes close, basked in the city sounds and the warm weight resting on his chest, and waited for the next thing.

---

Dream's black sketchbook was still set out on the coffee table, along with two sets of pastels, both with the red colors restocked from whatever supply Hob had squirreled away. Dream felt the tug of it—not quite like a black hole, but definitely like the rug was tilting him gently in that direction. It was easier to kneel by the coffee table than it would have been to go anywhere else, and this time when he looked at the black sheet before him he saw a blank page instead of a cosmic emptiness.

His sister had requested a picture. He had meant to make one for her; Lucienne had mentioned it to him before Despair visited.

Dream sighed. He was going to have to have a word with his younger sister about all of that. He did think she had meant well, but...

Hob wandered in while Dream was still thinking, now wearing a shirt whose shoulders were not grass-stained and with a laptop tucked under his arm. He crouched down beside Dream and said, "Planning your masterpiece?"

"Considering the odds that Despair did what she did, in the manner that she did, specifically to antagonize you," Dream said, though in point of fact Hob's appearance had quite broken his concentration on that topic.

"I did joke about poisoning her tea," Hob admitted. "So maybe that's on me."

Dream shook his head and wagged an admonitory finger, which made Hob grin.

"Shall I go say her name to the mirror until she turns up in it so I can apologize?" Hob offered, still grinning. It would not, Dream gathered, be a particularly heartfelt apology—but nor was it clear that Hob's teasing was the greater fault of the two.

Dream shook his head. "Probably it is best that you speak to each other as little as possible. You are..."

"Natural enemies, your oldest sister called us."

Dream nodded, his gaze sliding away from Hob to the black paper at the mention of Death. "You are always following your star; she is always trying to extinguish it."

In his peripheral vision, he saw Hob's shoulders square up, his chin lifting, and Dream smiled as he stole a sideways look at his dearest friend—even now, even speaking solely in metaphors, he could not help but bristle against Despair's efforts. Hob relaxed when he met Dream's gaze, and he smiled again. "Right you are, I'll just let her alone. So long as she lets you alone."

"Mm," Dream said, turning his gaze firmly down on the sketchbook. He could see a long future of mediating these joking-but-also-deadly-serious spats between his sister and his...

Dream blinked, catching hold of that thought and examining it more closely, a little afraid it would evaporate when he did.

He could see it, though. He could see Hob being a part of his life—every hour, Hob had promised him, just this morning—for a very long time to come, though he could not imagine what that life would look like. As surely as any of his siblings would continue to be his siblings, something in him believed that Hob would continue to be his... Hob.

The fear was there, too. Knowing that he now envisioned that future meant that it could all go wrong. He could lose Hob; surely it was most likely that he would.

He could feel that hope burgeoning though, the hope that was more than hope. Faith. Certainty. He knew, logically, that it would be shattered sooner or later, but right now... Hob was his, and he could not persuade himself to focus on the inevitable end when it was not yet happening.

Even as he thought it, Hob stood up and walked away from him—but only to the other side of the coffee table, to settle on the couch with his laptop.

Dream smiled down at the invitingly empty page. He would do his work, and Hob would do whatever Hob was doing, and yet they were together. There would be lunch, later; his body would not let him remain immersed for too long.

He had better get started, then. Dream reached for the red and scrawled a confident curve against the darkness.

---

At some point Hob glanced over and Dream's drawing was a recognizable apple with one bite taken from it, rather larger than life-size. Hob smiled at the drawing and its meaning, and went back to working out next-life logistics and responding to emails from suddenly-former colleagues.

The next time he looked up, his whole body jolted at the thing on the page which was half still a pastel drawing and half a startlingly photorealistic gigantic apple.

Dream must have noticed his reaction, because he looked up with a smug little smile and then went back to blending with his left hand, dabbing in tiny white highlights with his right. Hob watched, mesmerized, as more and more of the apple turned real under Dream's hands. After several minutes, Hob realized that Dream had taken both hands away from the picture and that was a good time to interrupt him. "Hey, sweetheart, how about a break for lunch?"

"Hmm." Dream set down the white pastel and flexed his tiny hand, which trembled a little as he did. "Yes. Perhaps this is a good time."

"Perhaps," Hob agreed, getting up, and then he leaned across the table to snatch Dream up and flip him upside down, swinging him up so his bare feet brushed the ceiling. Dream let out a startled little shriek, not quite a laugh but not unhappy either, and Hob slung Dream over his shoulders sideways, like one of those pictures of Jesus carrying a lamb, and bore him off to the kitchen for cheese on toast.

Dream did actually eat without needing to be prompted much, but with nothing like his usual voracious appetite. He took delicate little bites of his toast and his apple slices, and seemed almost relieved when he cleared his plate, slumping against the table.

"Do you want to help me tidy up, love?" Hob was more than half hoping he would admit to feeling poorly and bow out, but Dream nodded determinedly and cleared his plate, and sat by the sink to dry while Hob washed. Hob went as slow as he could himself, because he didn't want it to be too painfully obvious to Dream how slowly they were moving, but it took very nearly longer for him to dry their plates and cups and a couple of knives than it had taken them both to eat lunch.

Dream slumped where he sat when Hob took the last knife from him and put it away, and when Hob reached for him, he leaned heavily into Hob. With his cheek on Hob's shoulder, barely above a whisper, he said, "Hob?"

"Yeah, love," Hob said softly, getting both arms securely around him, itching to get the ribbon back in place, holding them both together.

"Could I lie on the floor and listen to music?"

Hob closed his eyes for a moment, all at once aching and thrilled—because Dream had managed to ask for exactly what he wanted, to give Hob a sense of how he was feeling even if he couldn't say it clearer than that.

"Of course," Hob said. "You want me to lie down with you?"

Dream nodded, then said, still very soft, "Maybe... just for a song. Or two. And then if you would... stay close by? That would... you don't have to."

"I will," Hob promised. He carried Dream to the living room and lay down on the rug, scrolling through his collection of albums by The Mountain Goats, since he suspected that Dream had a pretty specific set of expectations for the music in question by now. "Do you want one of the albums we listened to already?"

Dream shrugged, then squirmed a bit, then hummed a bit of "Wild Sage."

Hob gave him a one-armed squeeze and started Get Lonely playing again.

After the first couple of songs, he felt Dream give a little jolt during the silence between tracks, and then he squirmed away, and Hob let him go. Dream landed himself facedown on the rug, his face turned away from Hob, and Hob leaned over and murmured, "I'll be right back," in his ear as the music started.

He collected the red ribbon—he would never doubt it again, after it had led him to Dream in that dark night in the Dreaming—and his laptop. The song was only half over when he settled beside Dream on the rug again.

He tied the ribbon around Dream's wrist, and tucked a fold of it against Dream's palm, and then got himself firmly attached as well before he opened his laptop and settled back in to get a bit of work done while Dream lay quietly on the floor beside him.

Every so often, when he was thinking about what to type, he would settle his hand on the top of Dream's head and let it rest there a while.

---

The next morning, Dream looked at his nearly-completed picture of the apple, which was perhaps four-fifths splendid and one-fifth not at all splendid yet. He felt the task before him like—like Fezzik sitting on him.

He must have sighed out loud, because Hob made a sympathetic face and said, "Not ready to tackle that yet? Want to help me do book review?"

"What's book review?" Dream asked, rather than admit that he couldn't face such a simple task as working on a drawing, though he had slept soundly all night with Hob beside him, and woke to a fortifying breakfast with his dearest friend.

"Oh, well, every so often I go through all my books and decide which ones to keep, and which ones to let someone else have the pleasure of keeping," Hob said. Dream thought there was something under the lightness of his voice, some sadness—but letting go of books would probably always remind Hob of the books he had lost with no choice in the matter.

He ought to have a friend with him, then, for such a task. "I can help," Dream said, though his small form betrayed him and his voice wavered into something like a question as he said the simple words.

"So you can," Hob agreed, and led Dream into the study, which was even more crowded with bookcases than the front room. "Let's start in here." Hob began by taking, not books, but an assortment of small knickknacks off the shelf, handing some to Dream to be carried over to the desk. Dream found that he was holding a stone frog and a painted porcelain cat, of two entirely different aesthetic styles. He was still staring at them, deciding which he liked best or whether their greatest appeal was in their absurd contrast, when Hob's hands gently closed around each of his. "Thanks, love, let's put those on the desk so I can dust them before I put them back."

Dream let Hob take them and found his own palms were indeed besmirched with dust, but it wiped off easily enough onto his overalls as he watched Hob set the two figures next to each other, a little apart from the several others he must have placed while Dream was distracted. "Are you going to keep them?"

"I most certainly am," Hob promised. "Now, the books. Mainly I think I'm going to need you to just remind me that your library, or whatever library I donate it to, will still have a book if I let it go, so I don't need to hold on to everything forever personally. Can you do that?"

"It is certainly true," Dream said, coming over to crouch beside the stack as Hob took all the books from the shelf he'd cleared of other objects and piled them all on the floor, making a tower nearly as tall as Dream.

He thought of the picture he had drawn for Lucienne, and felt his mouth curve up into a stiff, awkward smile as he looked up at Hob, raising his arms in imitation of his own representation in the drawing.

For a moment Hob just smiled back at him, fond but not understanding, and Dream felt his heart sink, his smile falter.

It meant nothing, really, for Hob not to recognize the unspoken reference; Dream ought to say something, to make himself properly understood, or else accept that his dearest friend could not read his mind.

Then Hob's smile widened, and he said, "You need a hat, though! And a cloak!"

Dream grinned, startled into it, and when Hob said "I've got just the—" and made to step past Dream, brushing up against the books and toppling the pile, Dream put his hands up to catch them, already knowing they would fall, and laughed for the first time in what felt like a very long time.

Hob grabbed—at him, at the books—and managed to catch neither, but a hard corner shoved right into Dream's belly, knocking the laughter and breath right out of him. Dream couldn't make a sound then, even while Hob scooped him up and patted his back, saying, "Breathe, darling, breathe, breathe, just a little sip first—"

Dream discovered that he had forgotten for a moment how to breathe when he remembered. He felt a great blossoming relief as he inhaled—he could breathe, he was alive—which was almost instantly crowded out by the pain in his belly, the pain of Hob hurting him, however accidentally. He kept inhaling, deeper and deeper, until he couldn't anymore, until the pain overwhelmed him, and then he screamed.

Hob's arms tightened around him, and he felt kisses pressed to his ears, to the top of his head, and faintly he could hear Hob saying things. He couldn't hear them; he could only hear the pain in his belly and his own screams, and the ringing in his ears in between them.

Hob didn't let go. Hob didn't stop making soothing sounds; he swayed, still holding tight to Dream, and on a breath in Dream found he didn't want to scream anymore, and he let out a soft hurting sound instead. There were tears on his face, and his whole body was trembling, tensed around the ache in his belly.

"I've got you, I've got you," Hob was murmuring. "So sorry, love, never meant to hurt you. Especially when we were having a laugh, I can't believe I spoiled that—what a prick, right? What a shit—"

Dream managed to drive his knee into some soft bit of Hob that made him stop talking with a startled little noise. Dream sniffled and managed to say, "Do not speak ill of my dearest friend, Hob."

Hob squeezed him tighter and then took a few slow deep breaths—Dream had not struck him hard enough to make him forget how, evidently. He nestled into Hob's body, feeling the warmth of him, the steadiness of his breathing. His belly didn't really hurt at all, once he relaxed a little; it had only been the shock of it.

"Well," Hob said. "Hard not to think ill of someone who knocked a whole stack of books into my best friend, I suppose."

"Think what you like," Dream said, as sternly as he could manage while snuggling himself into Hob for all he was worth. "But you shall not say such wretched things."

Hob huffed an almost-laugh and said, "As you wish."

Dream pressed his face into Hob's shoulder, hiding his smile. He had been laughing. And Hob had understood him. And if the moment had promptly shattered due to the Waking world's tedious rules about gravity and inertia and so forth—still. Now there was this moment, which was also very good.

"Oh, hey," Hob said, in a tone of new interest, kneeling down. "That's where I left it—do you know this one, Dream? Piranesi?"

Dream picked his head up to look—the name was familiar, but the slim hardcover book in Hob's hand, its dust jacket showing signs of some abuse though it seemed to be a quite modern edition, did not connect with that faint recognition. "I believe I missed it."

"I—" Hob frowned, hesitating. "I don't know if you'll enjoy it, actually, now I stop and think. It's... well, it's about someone who is a prisoner, but he doesn't know that he is one, so for most of the book he's very content in what he thinks of as his home."

Dream thought of an offer his mother had made once, to make a tiny universe, just big enough for him—him and one other person to hug him and stay with him and make him not so scared. "Is he all alone?"

"Not quite," Hob said slowly, with reluctance Dream could feel all through his body as he sagged back to sit on his heels. "He... he has someone who visits him, every so often. On a schedule, actually. I really shouldn't have—"

"It is not a book about you and me," Dream said firmly. "And I am not a prisoner. I am a guest in your home."

"More than a guest," Hob said, as he apparently had nothing to quibble with in the rest of Dream's statement. "I don't want you to feel like a guest."

"Then I will point out that I am content in my friend's home, and I do not think I am wrong to feel so," Dream said. "And the book does sound interesting. Would you read a little of it?"

"Just, tell me to stop if you don't like it, right?" Hob said. "It made me think of you when I first read it, but it's all right if you don't like it."

"What a strange first line for a book," Dream said, squirming around to settle himself properly in Hob's lap as Hob settled himself more comfortably on the ground, amid the scattered books, before several bookcases they had not yet even begun to survey.

"Ha ha," Hob muttered, but Dream could hear the real smile in his voice, could see it in the crows' feet that bloomed around his eyes as he fumbled to find the proper first page of the book. He cleared his throat, and his mouth moved as if he wanted to say something else—more explanation or hedging, Dream suspected—but then he shook his head slightly and began to read. "When the Moon rose in the Third Northern Hall I went to the Ninth Vestibule to witness the joining of three Tides. This is something that happens only once every eight years."

Hob glanced down at him, as if to check whether he had been excessively discomposed by the idea of a moon rising and tides flowing within a hall.

Dream had lived for the whole span of the universe in the Palace of the Dreaming where such things were perfectly possible, if not quite common, as Dream did prefer an orderly distinction between inside and outside to be observed throughout the palace. He looked up at Hob with patient expectation, waiting for the next line of the book.

Hob smiled and pressed a quick kiss to his forehead, then went on reading.

After a time, though he remained fascinated by the story, Dream found himself squirming ceaselessly, and Hob stopped at the end of a chapter and said, "Why don't we go walk a bit?"

"Only a bit," Dream said, already jumping to his feet. "I want to know what happens next!"

"We can bring the book with us," Hob promised. "Find some nice spot and sit and read some more, how's that?"

"That will do," Dream agreed, until he looked up at the window and saw the rain.

He was still bouncing in place; he still wanted to walk somewhere. "I brought a raincoat," he recalled. "It's in my suitcase!"

He ran off to find it, with Hob trailing after him.

---

They did go for a walk, Dream in a tiny black raincoat with star-shaped buttons, and Hob carrying Piranesi in the same messenger bag he'd carried into the void to find Dream—and, more to the point, carrying an umbrella big enough for Dream to fit under while walking at Hob's side.

Hob had no doubt that by the time Dream had walked off his fidgets he would be carrying Dream as well as the umbrella, but he could manage that. He could manage anything, when Dream was interested in a story, in a walk, in stomping through puddles, in being alive.

They spent a couple of hours in a corner at a coffee shop, Dream on his lap and Hob reading softly, right into his ear. He went through two cups of tea while Dream nibbled through a couple of biscuits, and that was enough to keep him lubricated for reading aloud the whole time.

He didn't think he was an especially good reader—his lectures were always best when he barely had to refer to his notes. He heard himself stumbling over words, having to go back and repeat things, and he couldn't do voices or anything, though really there was only the Other and in Hob's head...

Well, in Hob's head, the first time he read this, he had sounded not a little like his Stranger; Hob had been prone to cast himself in the role of Piranesi, with a wide beautiful world to explore and a mysterious well-dressed Other monitoring his progress. Now, reading it to Dream and given all that he knew of what had happened to Dream in the past century or so, he found himself putting Dream in the hero's place; he gave the Other something like Destiny's measured cadences, when he remembered to.

Dream didn't complain about his reading, or about him eventually getting a bit hoarse and needing to take a voice break to walk back to the flat. He washed and dried Dream's feet first—he had insisted on wearing his sandals, as wet feet were apparently preferable to wet socks; Hob really ought to get him some wellies—and then took a moment to dispose of all that tea. When he got out of the bathroom Dream was lying across the foot of the bed, his cheek pillowed on Piranesi, looking exhausted and just barely awake.

Hob left him to it and went to gather up the fallen books, sorting them—fairly painlessly, because he really did have a system—into keep and let go. In pretty short order he had enough in each category to fill a box; he could run down and see what produce boxes were handy around the kitchen, but he checked first on Dream, and found him still not quite asleep. He was closer to awake now, and when Hob leaned over him Dream raised his arms to be picked up.

Hob squeezed him tight. "Lunch?"

Dream nodded against his shoulder, but then twisted away from him; when Hob realized what he was doing he bent to make it easier, and Dream snatched up the book and held it against his chest.

"Lunch and then more story," Hob agreed, and carried him to the kitchen.

---

Dream wept, sprawled across Hob's lap, throughout the story's dramatic conclusion—the horrifying revelations and brutal disaster, the doomed efforts to save what could never be saved, the quiet decrescendo to the inevitable, impossible choice and the vast and irretrievable loss.

And then Hob... kept reading.

Dream sat up, bewildered, as he listened. It wasn't the way he had thought the story would or could end, but nor did it strike a false note. This was no pat fix for a tragedy—no King Lear with Cordelia happily married and sitting on a throne—but simply... a way for things to be all right. Bearable. Not perfect, but better than before. Not all was lost, nor stayed lost for all time; so much beauty and kindness yet remained.

Dream realized that Hob's voice had fallen silent, and that he was staring at the back of the sofa as the story fell into place in his head. He looked up at Hob.

There were tears lingering on Hob's cheeks, but he was smiling. "You like it? I really like it. The way it ends. Figuring things out, and going forward. Finding the good again."

Dream nodded, fresh tears leaking from his eyes. He nodded harder, unable to speak, and not wanting Hob to think his tears meant he was unhappy—but Hob had cried too, and was smiling.

"Yeah," Hob murmured, tugging Dream into his arms again. "Yeah. Just like that."

Dream snuggled into him, enjoying the embrace, but when he had wiped his face dry on Hob's shirtfront no fresh tears followed. The thought of the ending of the story, and what it might mean, was too much to think more about right now. Furthermore, lunch had been a very long time ago.

"Hob," Dream said, turning his face so he could speak freely. "I'm hungry."

Hob laughed. "Me too. And I think we're running low on just about everything now, so what do you say we go downstairs and let Marc do the cooking?"

Dream nodded. "We could get... nachos."

Hob laughed louder at that, but he didn't argue or demand explanations about why Dream suddenly felt brave enough to deviate from their established routine. He just made sure Dream put his shoes on before they went downstairs.

---

When they came back up after eating dinner in the bustling kitchen, Dream headed for the coffee table as soon as his shoes were off. There really wasn't much work left to do on Death's picture; he could have done it this afternoon, while he listened to Hob read, but he had been absorbed in listening. Now he felt that unspent energy in his hands, eager to pick up the pastels again.

Hob paused to ruffle his hair and then took the boxes he had brought up from the kitchen into the study. He would be putting books in them, Dream was vaguely aware, but he was already absorbed in his work, perfecting the shine on the last curve of the apple, blending and highlighting just so to make it look real.

It seemed as if he had only just begun to work on it when he realized he was finished. He stood for a moment smiling down at his work, flexing his hands against the front of his overalls to clean them and to remind himself not to touch where there was no further need. One more smudge here or there would only detract. It was just right now.

Dream picked his head up and looked around; Hob was nowhere in sight, and no ribbon bound them together, but Dream could hear quiet thumps coming from the study, where Hob had taken the boxes. Dream ran in that direction, calling out as he did, "Are you sorting books? Do you need help?"

He stopped short in the doorway, at the sight of one entire bookcase emptied, like a mouth with all its teeth fallen out.

Hob knelt in front of it, putting books into a box; two other boxes were stacked up beside him. One box had DONATION written on it; Dream could see no corresponding label on the other.

Hob looked up from the books and smiled. "Hey, love. All done with your drawing? Need the spray done?"

Dream nodded, focusing on Hob standing up and coming over to him rather than the empty bookshelves and the boxes. He held up his hands, and Hob swooped Dream up into his arms as soon as he reached the doorway, giving him a squeeze as he carried him away.

Hob stopped and carefully picked up the drawing, and carried it and Dream into the kitchen, where he laid the picture on the bench and sat Dream beside it. He fetched the fixative from on top of the refrigerator and sprayed the picture, then offered it to Dream to blow on.

When Dream looked up from doing so, his sister stood in the kitchen doorway, watching them with a soft warm smile that showed all her teeth were right where they should be.

Dream grinned at her, and Hob turned in her direction and let out a startled noise. "Someone ought to put a bell on you, madam."

"Are you proposing to try?" She was still smiling, and though she now crossed her arms before her and made a half-forbidding expression, the smile didn't waver, nor did Hob show any sign of being displeased to see her.

"I am not," he said. "Here," he added, and offered the picture back to Dream. "You want to do the honors, love?"

Dream nodded, and Hob lifted him down to the floor so that he could run to the doorway. By the time he reached his sister she was kneeling, so that he did not have to look up far to see the wondering expression that came over her face.

She looked at Dream, and then looked up at Hob. "You did give it to him, then."

"Course I did," Hob agreed, crouching down on Dream's other side and touching his finger to the blackness just beyond the bitten part of the apple. It would stay lovely and white and edible forever, made of pastels and secured with fixative. "And he said it was very nice to eat, and nice of you to give it to him, so that's a result."

"You don't need the reminder," Dream allowed, holding the picture closer to her. "But you remind me. That there are nice things, even in the middle of so much emptiness."

Death's smile turned a little sad, and he could almost see it in her dark eyes, her slightly parted lips. He could almost hear her wanting to tell him that the universe was not empty, that it was full of dreamers as well as the not-yet-dead. She wanted him to believe in big things, wonderful things, and things so immensely wonderful that they could carry them both through all their duties for all the days until it would all finally end.

She looked down at the picture again, and said softly, "I'm glad I can remind you, little brother. Next time maybe I'll bring you something nicer still."

Next time, because this time was, inevitably, almost over. He thought of asking her to discuss Mary Poppins, to stay and watch The Princess Bride with him and Hob, but he knew what the answer would be. His sister's presence was always fleeting: a nice thing in a sea of absence, liable to go a bit off if he lingered too long over it.

"I shall look forward to it," Dream said, instead of asking for what he could not have, and he leaned in to hug his sister as she held the picture safely out of the way.

"So—shall—I," she said, alternating the words with kisses pressed to his forehead, as though she had heard what he did not say. As though she saw the hurt of the unspoken and unspeakable words, and wanted to kiss it better—and yet could not stay and listen for the words themselves, and so prevent the hurt altogether.

"Goodbye, then, my sister," Dream said, taking a step back and finding Hob right there behind him, warm and steady and waiting for him. "I hope you will enjoy the picture."

"Now and always," she said with a smile that retreated from him as she spoke, for she was standing up and turning away, and then she was gone.

Dream turned, and sagged into Hob's waiting arms. "Don't be angry with her," he murmured.

Hob squeezed him tight, and did not say anything to agree or disagree, and did not let go.

---

 

Chapter 18

Dream was tired after his older sister left, but it wasn't like the complete collapse after Despair left; for one thing, Dream hadn't gotten that happy yet, so the fall wasn't so far.

But he also came back to the study and sat with Hob while he sorted books, and asked questions about the ones Hob lingered over, and listened with what seemed to be actual interest to Hob's replies.

Hob stopped to stare for a while at a little chapbook—barely more than a zine, but they had done a nice job with it. Hob wasn't at all sure any other copies survived. It was poetry, written by a gay man about his lost lover, published in 1985 shortly before the poet himself died as well. He didn't know how long he'd been staring when Dream came over and put his little hands over Hob's where he cradled the book.

"My library will have it," Dream promised him, solemn and sure despite his tiny child's voice. "And the library you give it to will take very good care of it."

"Yeah," Hob said, clearing his throat, trying not to think of how many times he'd read and reread these little poems in the second half of 1989, and for years after. They weren't technically brilliant, but they were honest, and real, and they had something in them that Hob had needed. Words for the loss that he couldn't speak of, couldn't acknowledge to anyone else, the loss both abrupt and long-anticipated.

He didn't need this book anymore, but someone else would. Hob set it gently in a donation box, and then turned and wrapped his arms around Dream. "How about we get ribboned up and go to bed, darling. That sound all right to you?"

Dream nodded against his shoulder, and wrapped his arms firmly around Hob's neck. "My Hob," he murmured.

"My—" Hob would have choked on saying love right now, though the word was so heavy on his tongue he couldn't summon another that would mean something less. He swallowed and finished, "Dream."

---

The days which followed passed much the same as that one, though he and Hob managed to remain almost miraculously unvisited by any of Dream's siblings for more than forty-eight hours in a row.

Dream worked on new pictures in fits and starts—he had an idea of a picture for Delirium, but found when he sat down to it that what he really wanted to do was to draw a picture for Destruction. Delirium had wanted to find him, and Dream knew that if the circumstances had been any different, he would have gone with her. He did not know how they could possibly find the Prodigal if he did not wish to be found, but Dream missed his brother too.

Hob found him weeping over a blank page, a stick of blue in his hand, and sat down beside him, curling an arm around Dream's shoulders. "Shall I put some music on?"

Dream nodded, and the familiar strains began to play. When the album started over again, Dream leaned over the page and began laying down the first swirls of color.

He might not be able to give the picture to his brother, but that didn't mean he couldn't make the thing anyway. The teardrops that fell onto it, he decided, were an artistic feature.

When his hands got tired, Hob asked him if he'd like to watch a movie, or listen to another book. Dream asked for a book immediately; he knew that Hob was technically not an especially gifted performer, but the fact that he was reading to Dream, making the story happen for him and experiencing it with him, made it far superior to simply watching some recordings.

When he sat in Hob's lap as Hob read to him, he could feel the story in Hob's body—not just the breath he used to speak it, but the way he would preemptively tense up and hold Dream tighter whenever anything distressing was about to happen, or the way he would shift a bit, trying to watch Dream's face and the page at once, when something funny or exciting occurred.

This was the way stories were meant to be shared, Dream thought, as Hob embarked on the profanity-laced story of a stranded astronaut. This was how children often did first experience stories—but Dream, though he knew the stories and the dreams that grew from them, had never been held on anyone's lap and read to until now.

He liked it. He had had no notion of how much he could like it, but he did.

At night, they visited the Dreaming. The very first night after they finished Piranesi, Dream took Hob wandering through the halls of the Palace, finding all the windows and discovering what strange sights each one looked out upon. Matthew found them halfway through the night and trailed after them; Hob always put out his arm for Matthew to perch on when they came to an interesting sight, and Dream found that this was an unexpected pleasure, knowing that his friend and his raven got along so well together.

On the nights that followed, they stayed in the library, finding a different cozy nook each night. Some nights Hob would read to him, and some nights they would sit and page through different books, content to be quiet together.

One evening after supper, Dream was in the bath—he had felt rather inspired that day, and as a result had smeared pastel colors in a surprising number of locations on his body. Hob was washing his hair, his hands as big and warm and gentle as always, and then he said, "Oh, hey. I suppose it's been five days, hasn't it? This is starting to come away."

He tugged at something behind Dream's ear, and Dream made a face at the sensation of something peeling away from his skin. It was the bandage Hob had put there, he realized, covering the wound Despair had made, letting all his sadness out.

He did not feel as though his sadness had all gone back to where it had been before, though he supposed this had been a good day, as his days with Hob went. He had only cried twice, and once it had been because they were all out of green grapes, which he considered a very reasonable thing to cry over.

But he had been excited when Hob offered him a mysterious package that arrived in the post, and more excited when it proved to contain bright red wellington boots that would keep his feet dry the next time they went for a walk in the rain. He had tried them on and smiled, and Hob had walked up and down the stairs with him three times while he made certain that they fit well. He had been smiling nearly all the time then, even though he had felt tired when they reached the top of the stairs for the last time. He had liked the feeling of Hob's hand holding his. He had been... content. At least until he wished for grapes.

"Is it all better?" Dream wasn't sure what answer he expected, or wished for, but he felt he did have to ask.

Hob made a dubious noise. "It's healed over, but you can still see the mark. You're on the mend, at least."

And then Hob ducked his head down and pressed a kiss to that spot, behind Dream's ear. The skin was tender for having been covered for so long, and Dream shivered a little at the touch.

"Oh," Hob said. "Ticklish?"

And then he ducked his head further and—did—something—that made his lips buzz against the skin of Dream's shoulder, making a shocking damp noise. Dream couldn't help laughing even as he jerked away from the contact, only to lean toward Hob again immediately, holding out his arm in offering. Hob was smiling, laughing a little himself before he did it again and again and again, making Dream laugh and flail until he splashed Hob so comprehensively that he stopped, sputtering and reaching for a towel to wipe his face.

"Well, that's what I get," Hob said, smiling as he went back to working the shampoo through Dream's hair. "Glad you're feeling a bit better, anyway, love."

"I am," Dream said, and it was even true.

---

An hour after breakfast on the day after Dream's bandage came off, he was sitting and drawing. Hob suspected that he was getting to the point where he might realize he was tired, or else Hob might need to artfully distract him before he got frustrated with himself. Hob was debating which it was going to be today when there was a knock on the door—not exactly loud, but somehow resonant.

Dream's head jerked up at once, looking toward the sound, so Hob didn't think he had imagined that it wasn't an ordinary knock. He headed for the door, keeping himself between it and Dream; Hob looked back just before flipping the lock, and saw Dream standing in the kitchen, frowning a bit with his head tilted to one side, like he could still hear that knock echoing.

Hob positioned himself so that he could slam the door shut again if he needed to, his whole body braced between the opening and Dream.

He felt a bit silly when he peeked through the crack and saw it was just a kid standing there—old enough that it wasn't shocking to see them on their own, but too young to be very obviously a boy or girl. Then they looked up and he saw their uncanny golden eyes, and a much-too-knowing smile stretching pink lips unadorned with any makeup, and he knew he wasn't being silly at all. His gaze dropped to the heart pendant they wore, already knowing he would see it.

Hob didn't take his eyes off them, but called back over his shoulder to Dream, "It's your sibling. Desire."

Desire grinned, showing beautiful white teeth—adult teeth, looking quite improbably uncrowded in a tween's mouth. "I couldn't let my twin have all the fun."

Dream heaved a sigh audible from where Hob was standing, and said, "You may as well let them in. Or make them go and fetch—"

"Ooh, this lovely bag of produce?" Desire said cheerfully, and Hob was certain that they hadn't had a reusable shopping bag full of fruit a moment before, but they certainly did now. "Grapes and raspberries and—"

Hob had relaxed a little from his brace against the door; he nearly slammed it shut when Dream crashed into the backs of his thighs. "What kind of grapes!"

"Green," Desire said cheerfully, without so much as glancing down at the bag. "Seedless—hmm, some special kind? Candyfloss, it says on the label. Only available seasonally, even in this day and age. They must be very sweet..."

Dream thrust a hand out past Hob, into the narrow gap of the door.

Desire, still looking Hob straight in the eyes, arched an eyebrow.

"If you can swear that you'll do him no harm, however small," Hob said sternly, "then you may come in."

"Oh, I have no interest in derailing whatever this is," Desire said, gesturing up and down to indicate both Hob and Dream's still-reaching hand. "I've been waiting eons for my brother to admit to wanting anything at all."

Dream's hand opened and closed in mute demand.

Hob stood firm, and pointed a finger downward at the cosmic personification of all Desire, who wouldn't come up to his shoulder if he let them get close enough to tell. "Yeah, but you're not about anybody getting what they want, are you? Are you going to show up with nice things and then spoil it all so he can go on wanting?"

Desire laughed, again sounding far too knowing for a child who looked no more than twelve, but they also knelt down and pulled a bag of green grapes—labeled, just as they'd said, Candyfloss—out of the bag. "Here. A gesture of good faith. Go on and eat some, Dreamy—be sure they don't turn to nothing in your mouth."

They got the bag open and brought it to Dream's hand, and Hob reached in and nicked one for himself, just to be sure, while Dream managed to haul out an entire stem full. Hob popped a grape in his mouth and couldn't resist looking down to see Dream cramming three into his mouth at once, his cheeks rounding out as his eyes went wide. He looked up at Hob, and he felt his own face making much the same expression.

The grape really did taste almost unnervingly like candy floss, while also tasting like a grape. Dream had scarcely swallowed before he was ripping more grapes from the stem and cramming them into his mouth, in absolute sugar-fiend mode.

Hob peered out the door again, where Desire was standing up again, holding the bag—the rest of the grapes were visible right on top—and looking confident and amused and still very much like a child, incapable of anything worse than mischief.

"Are you going to actually swear?" Hob asked.

"I swear," Desire said promptly, "by the First Circle, to do my brother no harm this day, directly or indirectly, for his own good or my amusement or any other purpose."

Hob squinted at them for a moment—that sounded like they hadn't left themselves any loopholes, but also like there could be space in it for a loophole and he just hadn't thought of it.

Dream, unhelpfully, was still audibly scoffing down grapes, clearly no more concerned about this sibling visiting than any of the others.

"If you do something to him, something you feel is harmless but, say, educational," Hob said, "will you tell me what it was before you leave?"

"Ooh, yes, if you like," Desire said cheerfully. "Really, though, I have no plans to do anything, except possibly feed him an inadvisable amount of whatever he wants to eat."

Hob sighed. "Been doing some of that myself. All right, then, come on in."

Hob picked up Dream, who was still clutching his half-denuded stem of grapes and eating them as fast as he could rip them free and shove them into his mouth. He headed for the sofa with him, and glanced back to see Desire neatly closing the door and flipping the lock shut behind them, exactly like a responsible child letting themself in after school.

Dream went still when Hob hesitated over where to sit, and Hob looked down to see him—cheeks still distended with grapes, the last of them still clutched in his hand—frowning at the picture he'd been working on. He slowly dragged his gaze up to Hob, and then over to the door to see his sibling coming in.

Dream chewed and swallowed hurriedly, opened his mouth with his brows drawn together, but evidently still didn't know quite what to say. This was the first look he had gotten at the way his sibling looked, which obviously wasn't quite their usual appearance.

It was rather interesting, Hob thought—they hadn't made themself the equal of Dream's current form, but... they had come halfway. They were definitely a child, but still bigger and older and wiser than Dream appeared. It was more than any of the others had done to move toward Dream's present state, and Hob had no idea what it meant.

From the look on his face and the ongoing silence—Desire simply stood just inside the door, looking back at Dream with a mischievous smile—Dream didn't know either.

Desire reached up and wound a finger into their short shock of blond hair. "Could I have a... mm... mocha latte? Do you have that?"

Hob sighed and looked down at Dream again, who looked up at him hopefully. "Yes, and your hot chocolate," he agreed. He had left Dream alone with Despair long enough to make tea, after all, and Desire had promised not to hurt him.

He set Dream down, and headed to the kitchen without letting himself look back, no matter how badly he wanted to.

---

Dream stood by the coffee table, eyeing his sibling and also resisting the overpowering temptation to eat the rest of the grapes—they were really very good and he had been wanting some even before Desire turned up. Desire came a few steps closer but didn't sit down or speak, obviously waiting for something.

The grumbling sounds of Hob's coffee machine started up, and Desire's smile immediately widened. They hurried over to the other door out of the flat, the one that went down to the Inn's kitchen, unlocked it, and beckoned to Dream with a look of wholly playful naughtiness.

Dream remembered, so forcefully it shook his small body, how it had been when Desire was his favorite sibling, when they played games and had secrets together. Without a single coherent thought, he ran to them, reaching up a hand to hold theirs. They took it, holding tight, and led him through the door and down the stairs to the kitchen.

It was dim and quiet; the Inn was not open for business yet, and it was too early for anyone to even have come in to begin preparations yet. Dream froze on the bottom step, and Desire, who had already taken a step away from the stairs, turned back.

They were still holding his hand, and they did not let go, nor did they force him to follow, though they surely could have. "What is it, Dreamy?"

Dream stuck out one bare foot. "Can't go barefoot in the kitchen. It's a health and safety violation."

Desire cocked their head, considering. Dream could run back up the stairs and get his sandals, but they were by the kitchen door, not this one, and then Hob would see him.

He could commit one very small health and safety violation; Marc was not here and would not know, nor was he likely to be very wroth with a child as young as Dream appeared to be.

Dream bit his lip, looking back over his shoulder, out at the kitchen, considering.

Desire huffed and came closer, kneeling down on the step. "I'm big enough for this, at least. Come on, little big brother. Let me help."

"Oh," Dream said, and wrapped his arms cautiously around Desire's neck, pressing himself against their side so they could get their arms around him.

They stood up and wobbled a little under his unwieldy weight, and snickered at the awkwardness of it all. Dream giggled, hiding his face against their shoulder, which somehow made them stagger again, and they squeezed him tighter and hissed, "Hold still!"

Dream tried, but their unsteady motion made him shift in response, which made them laugh out loud, which made Dream laugh too. Still, when they ran into something it was only the swinging door out into the main room of the Inn, and it gave way easily, making no impact on their unsteady progress.

Desire never fell, nor did their grip on him falter; Dream was holding on tight himself and not properly looking around, but he felt it when they entered a dim, narrow space, and looked up to find that they were behind the bar. The floor here was tiled, and Desire crouched down to set him on his feet again, so that they were both hidden from anyone beyond.

They were both utterly silent for a moment.

Nothing happened.

"Why are we hiding?" Dream whispered.

Desire looked mysterious and said nothing.

"Desire," Dream whispered, "why did we just do that?"

Desire went on looking mysterious for another moment, and then their smile stretched wide, and their shoulders began to shake with silent laughter.

Dream felt himself grinning just as wide. Desire wasn't laughing at him, just as they hadn't done anything to him. They had done it together, running off and hiding—just because it was funny to be hiding, to be where they oughtn't be, where no one knew they were. He started laughing, as much with joy as because it was funny, slumping into Desire with the force of it.

This time Desire did fall, collapsing from their crouch to lie on the tiled floor, and Dream fell with them. The little startling impact of it didn't hurt, really, but there was a moment when—when it could have felt like it hurt, when it could have felt like being hurt, or being let down. But Desire was still laughing, curling an arm around him, and Dream snuggled into them and laughed harder.

---

Hob did Dream's hot chocolate first, so it would be cool enough for him to drink it sooner; Desire could burn their mouth or not as they chose.

When the grumbling and hissing stopped, something made Hob hesitate with Dream's mug in hand. He set it down gently on the kitchen bench, registering the really complete silence of the rest of the flat. He didn't call out, but walked in quick strides into the living room, where Dream and Desire were missing and the door to the inside staircase was standing ajar.

He walked over to the door and listened, and then he heard, down at the bottom of the stairs, the unmistakable sound of Dream laughing.

Hob leaned his forehead against the doorframe and kept still, letting the distant sound of Dream being happy soak in. He was all right; he was happy.

Hob ached a little to be near him, to be the cause or at least the witness of his happiness, but... he thought of that great black bruise on Dream's heart, and the way it had scarcely budged at all over the days he'd been with Hob. Dream needed more love than one human could give him, needed to mend breaches Hob knew nothing about.

He pushed the door open a bit wider, and then took a seat on the sofa and experienced the very strange sensation of being alone in his flat for the first time in nearly two weeks.

---

Eventually Dream stopped laughing and sat up, looking down at Desire as they went on laying on the floor. He had never seen them look so young, and it had been a very long time since he had seen them look so purely and simply happy. Despair had looked nearly as happy when he gave her a picture that showed how he understood her function.

Desire was just looking at him.

They pushed up on their elbows as he thought it, looking him up and down more obviously, still seeming wholly pleased with all they saw.

"You are doing just magnificently," Desire said. "Wanting things, and getting them, and realizing what else you can want, and wanting that too. I cannot think when I have been so proud of you, my brother. I had nearly given up."

"I think I..." It was hard to think about, hard and cold and drenched with rain and much bigger than his current self. He curled down as he struggled to remember, wrapping his arms around his knees and wishing for Hob and hot chocolate. But his sibling was here, and they sat up and slung an arm around him, and smiled gently at him when he looked up.

"I think I had," Dream admitted, dropping his gaze and nestling into Desire's side, which was not as soft and comfortable as Hob's but nearly as warm. "Given up. I think... I thought I had. But then I... there is a child, and I saw him in the Dreaming, and I saw the way everyone loves him, and cares for him, and I saw how that shapes him, and I..."

"Wanted," Desire said, and it was not a question.

Dream looked up at them, startled by the implication, and even more startled to realize he had not suspected it at any moment before now. Had not thought of it at all. "You...?"

"I felt it," Desire said, giving him a little squeeze. "What could I do but feel it, when you called so strongly on all that I am? You were an ocean battering at a dam. You wanted it more than you had let yourself want anything in such a very long time. And perhaps I just..." They raised one hand, and made the tiniest motion with one finger, as if laying just the tip of a finger on imaginary scales. "Encouraged you, just the tiniest bit, to really feel how badly you wanted it. No more than that, brother, I promise you. You didn't need much help."

Dream looked up at his sibling's face, and knew that they spoke the truth. He remembered the teetering moment when he had felt that rushing torrent of wanting and still could have turned back, could have pushed it all down and gone on the same as ever. He had always been so certain that he could not change, could not deviate from his path.

Until he did, just because he wanted to badly enough—because he had been aware of how badly he wanted it.

Dream stood up and wrapped his arms around Desire's shoulders, thinking of what it might have been like to stay where he was, cold and alone, his misery flooding the Dreaming, his hopelessness creeping ever further toward the inevitable end.

"You changed everything," he whispered. "My sibling, you have saved me."

"Just you remember that," Desire said, hugging him back. "The next time you get cross."

"I swear it," Dream murmured. "I swear I shall."

Desire made a long thoughtful noise, and a part of Dream was suspicious about how soon they might intend to put that promise to the test, but the greater part of him was feeling utterly weightless with relief. His sibling cared for him, had helped him to do this unspeakably important thing he was doing, had reached out to him before any other.

They had helped him to change, when he had believed he never could, and had still left him free to shape that change for himself, to find the good and bad and strange in it.

"You know, Dream," Desire said. "We're in a bar."

Dream did draw back then, giving his sibling a dubious look. "Yes. You brought us here."

Desire smirked and stood up: they were tall enough to study the bottles on the shelves at the back of the bar. "I mean, we should sample something, while we're here."

Dream searched for a fault to find with this logic, and could not. Marc had always served them anything they asked for in the kitchen, including an ale for Hob. Surely he and his sibling would not be begrudged a little of this or that from behind the bar.

He thought of the grapes, and said, "Is there a Riesling? I think I would like something sweet."

Desire looked down at him for a moment and said, "Are you sure you wouldn't rather—"

Dream huffed and looked for something to climb on. He could read labels perfectly well, if he could see them, and if Desire was somehow going to decide to play the elder sibling now...

"All right, all right, here, let's see—ice wine! That's got to be the very sweetest, right?"

Dream nodded, mollified. Desire picked up the bottle and set it on the bar, then climbed up onto the bar to reach the glasses above it. Dream mutely held his arms up to be lifted after them, and had to wait until they had chosen glasses and set them down before they spotted him.

They huffed, but climbed back down and boosted him up to perch on the wooden bar, then hoisted themself back up. "You could say when you want something, you know. I mean, I know nonverbal signs are a big improvement, I'm proud of you, but it's more efficient sometimes to just say."

"Hob," Dream said, and then stopped short, knowing that he didn't want to finish that statement though he didn't quite know why, or what would be better.

"Oh, yes, none of us can compete with Hob," Desire said, but they did not sound very sincerely annoyed by it. Dream blushed anyway, without really knowing why.

Desire saw, and smiled wider, showing teeth. "Oh, Hob," they repeated, and finally opened the bottle and poured the pale gold wine into two lovely stemmed glasses. "Come, brother, you can't be so passionately devoted to a human without coming in for a little commentary."

Dream felt as if that were inarguably true and as if he wanted to argue anyway, but... he was missing something from this conversation, and didn't quite know what. He picked up his glass, wrapping both hands around the bowl of it—though it was a small glass, suitable for a dessert wine—and took a long drink from it to cover his confusion.

For the barest instant, the honeyed taste he expected flowed across his tongue, but it was almost immediately drowned out by a foul, rotten flavor that filled his mouth and made him gag, spewing the horrible stuff out all over the bar—and Desire.

His sibling was frozen for a moment, their own untouched wine glass still in their hand, as the liquid dripped from their hair and face.

Dream opened his mouth to apologize. He had ruined everything, they had been getting along and he had ruined it, he could feel tears threatening and knew that crying would only annoy Desire more, but he couldn't find the words to make it right.

Then, incredibly, they smiled, and then began to laugh.

Dream began to laugh too, but nearly choked on the lingering awful flavor of the wine. He spat again, away from Desire this time, trying to clear it from his mouth and hoping his sibling would laugh more.

They did, but they also said, "Here, baby brother, here, I think you've given yourself a more unrefined palate than you're used to in this form. A cocktail is probably in order."

They offered him a glass—something they must have drawn from their power to create, for he hadn't seen them pull anything from the bar. The contents of the glass were deep red at the bottom, fading to pink at the top, where fizzy bubbles were escaping and a single bright red maraschino cherry floated alongside the white-and-red striped straw.

Dream took the glass, and Desire waved a hand at themself, doing away with the mess as well as both wine glasses; they now held an identical glass to Dream's, and sipped from it with every sign of enjoyment.

Dream took a cautious sip of his own, and found that though the fizz tickled his nose from the inside, the drink was pleasantly sweet, with a little sharp pomegranate flavor cutting through. It was just right to scour the awful taste of that wine—surely the bottle had gone off?—from his mouth.

"Thank you, my sibling. That is very nice."

Desire grinned. "Just what you wanted?"

Dream smiled back and then ducked his head, kicking his bare feet as they dangled off his perch on the bar. "Just what I wanted." He glanced up at the rows of bottles and said, "Do you think a different wine..."

Desire laughed so hard they landed sprawled out on the bar, and they utterly refused to fetch down another bottle and try again, but Dream didn't really mind. He liked the drink Desire had made for him.

When Desire finally stopped laughing, they started telling him a story about a mortal child, around the same age Desire looked now, who had been just as determined as Dream to partake of some forbidden wine. It was just the same story that had played out billions of times before with billions of children, but Desire made it new and wonderful and wickedly funny, painting the child's desires and dreams in vivid detail—and the way reality diverged from them just as sharply.

Halfway through the story Dream had to set down his lovely fizzy red drink so he wouldn't spill it everywhere; he was laughing too hard to be sure of his grip. Shortly after that, he nearly fell right off the bar, but Desire caught him safely, and kept a hand on his shoulder to steady him while they finished telling the story.

When they finished, Dream found himself talking eagerly, easily, telling Desire about the things he had wanted and gotten in his sojourn here in the Waking world.

He only noticed how much he was talking about Hob when he saw Desire smirking down at him, but the smirk was fond, and they didn't actually laugh, or even interrupt him to make more pointed remarks. The longer they let him talk, the more he relaxed, and the easier it was to keep talking.

Dream was starting to be aware of being hungry—he had eaten the cherry from his drink, and was thinking of inviting Desire to come back upstairs for lunch—when Desire's hand tightened on his shoulder. Dream stopped short, and then he heard it too.

Someone was moving about in the kitchen. The Inn would be opening soon, and their hiding place would no longer be hidden at all.

Dream's eyes went wide, looking up at his sibling. He had been certain they hadn't done anything wrong—not really wrong—but he was not so sure when he thought of Marc or Irene walking in and finding them sprawling on top of the bar.

"Shall I get us out of here?" Desire asked, their voice and smile nothing but warm.

Dream remembered that they liked him to say things, so he said, "Yes, please," as he held up his hands.

They smiled wide, showing their teeth, and took his hands in a firm grip, giving him a sharp little tug that tumbled them both into nowhere.

---

Chapter 19

Hob got off the couch when he heard the sounds of the kitchen opening up downstairs, figuring he might need to run a bit of interference for Dream and Desire. He hadn't heard any sounds that seemed like them making a mess—just the occasional faint burst of Dream's laughter, once in a while the rise of enthusiastic young voices—but better safe than sorry if Desire got offended by Marc or a hapless dishwasher.

There was no sign of anything out of the ordinary in the kitchen, though. Hob went through into the taproom, just in time to see Colin, who must have the early bartending shift, frowning at a bottle of ice wine before tucking it back onto the shelf behind the bar. Everything else was silent and still.

Fuck.

Hob ran back up to the flat, racking his brain for what to do next.

---

Dream cried out in instinctive dismay at finding himself in the void between worlds, but at the same instant he realized his hands were still held tightly in his sibling's grip. He could not see them, but he could feel them. He was not alone.

"Shh, Dreamy," Desire said. "You're safe with me, and in just a moment we'll step out the other side, back in Hob's flat, right where you want to be."

That was all right, then. Dream gripped tightly to Desire's hands and said, "Why did we stop, then?"

"Just a word in your ear," Desire said. "Here where you don't quite have ears as such—where you are not quite so firmly planted in that adorable little child's body you made for yourself, because I think it is making you forget, a little, that there are other kinds of desire that you left out of yourself when you made yourself so small. You're doing a wonderful job wanting and having, my dear darling brother, but there is still more to want and more to have, if you would let yourself be just a little bigger than this."

Here, in the Between, he understood readily what Desire meant: he had placed himself in a body too young for sexual urges, for the vast and complicated romantic feelings he had been consumed by more than once before.

He had, perhaps, done it on purpose, as much as he had done any of this on purpose. He had been mourning the demise of his relationship with Thessaly, after all, and that had been a part of what he envied in Daniel Hall's existence. Love that could be simple; desires that could be straightforward and harmless.

He understood, too, why Desire had been smirking at him that way while he talked about Hob, and why they had not articulated their amusement to his small self in the material world. They had been kind enough not to draw attention to what Dream had made himself able to forget.

"You think Hob would..."

"Oh," Desire said firmly, pressing so close that even in this in-between space where their bodies did not quite exist, he could feel the warmth of their breath on his ear. "My sweet brother, I know."

They would know, if anyone would; desires were their domain.

Dream shuddered, feeling himself shift between forms, feeling this small part of himself come near to dissolving altogether in this confused moment of wanting and not-wanting. "Desire, please—"

And then Dream blinked, because he could blink, and looked up to see that he was held, not in Desire's hands, but in Hob's familiar arms.

Hob was standing at the top of the kitchen stair, the open door to his flat before him, looking down at Dream with as much bewilderment as Dream felt.

"Well," Hob said, "that's one way to sort out not being able to find you. But where's—"

"Right here!" Desire called, and Hob looked immediately more exasperated than confused, and carried Dream into the flat and thence into the kitchen, where Desire was perched on the bench beside the coffee machine, holding a pod and pouting theatrically. "You promised me a mocha latte, and you never made it."

Hob shifted his grip on Dream and strode over to pluck the pod from Desire's fingers, putting it briskly into the machine and snapping it shut. "I seem to recall you promised a thing or two yourself, Desire of the Endless."

"So I did!" Desire agreed. "I did let Dream try ice wine, which I can't think did him any harm, given he spat it out all over me—"

"Sibling," Dream hissed, and Hob and Desire turned oddly identical fond looks in his direction.

"You did say you would remember, the next time you were cross," Desire said, wagging a finger at him. "And," they refocused on Hob, "then I gave him a Shirley Temple instead. And then we popped into the Between just for a moment between downstairs and up here, so that I could point out to him that as lovely a time as he's been having in his current form—"

"Desire," Dream snapped, but of course they did not heed him.

"There are probably other things he could have even more fun with if he decided to be full-sized. I did tell him I thought you would be amenable," they added, smiling extra wide. "Can't help being aware, you know how it is."

"I don't, actually," Hob said, but he sounded a little choked, and his cheeks had gone very red.

Dream put a hand to one, frowning. He knew what Desire was talking about—they had just told him. Sex, and love-love, and all of that. He had managed to forget for an entire fortnight how important such things could be; now he remembered, but in the same way that he remembered that the drink Desire had given him was called a Shirley Temple. It was simply a fact, and one that didn't feel very important when he was cuddled in Hob's arms where he belonged.

Hob was staring up at the ceiling, though, and his cheeks were very red.

Hob looked down at him, and then he said, in careful tones, "Dream, sweetheart, do you mind just staying here with your sibling a bit?"

Dream narrowed his eyes. "Do you need to go in the other room and scream?"

Hob nodded.

Dream suspected that this was a reasonable reaction, even if he mostly felt bereft in advance at the thought of Hob's absence—but then Hob would return, which would almost be worth it. He nodded back at Hob.

Hob kissed his forehead and then sat him on the kitchen bench, picking up a mug and popping it into the microwave before Dream could even realize what it was.

"This is for him," Hob said, looking only at the microwave. "Shouldn't be too hot to drink once it's done, so you get it down for him, yeah?"

"Yeah," Desire said, almost gently, before Hob turned on his heel and strode out. They drummed their fingernails in the quiet that followed, a sharp staccato that broke through the gurgling of the coffee machine and the hum of the microwave.

Dream sprawled out on his belly on the kitchen bench, and reached for Desire's hand, and the lovely smooth red of their lacquered nails.

"Do you like them?" Desire said, sounding amused again.

Dream nodded without looking up, tilting Desire's hand back and forth to study the shine of the perfect red.

"Do you want me to do yours?" Desire asked.

Dream looked up at his sibling with wide, hopeful eyes.

---

Hob made it to the study, found the pillow, and then his knees went wobbly and he was sitting on the floor staring at it, thinking of Dream pressing it to his face, laughing, pressing his little hands to Hob's mouth and giggling his bizarre rusty laugh.

He had looked faintly annoyed at his sibling's revelation, but he hadn't... he hadn't reacted to it, not like Hob had. Dream had heard the same thing Hob heard, but... he had heard it like a little kid, no matter how much of Hob's friend was in there. It didn't mean anything to him right now, that was obvious.

That wasn't new, really. Hob had had a suspicion for hundreds of years that his stranger didn't really take that kind of interest in humans—or at least, not in Hob. There had been that moment in 1789, that lingering look, but his stranger had shut that down in the next second. Hob had figured the look meant something else, something uncanny and unknowable, and his silly crush was not much different from imagining himself fucking any other impossible idol.

Desire hadn't, technically, told Hob that Dream was interested, or could be when he was built to be interested in anyone at all. But they'd bothered to tell Dream that Hob was interested, which strongly suggested that that was relevant information.

Desire couldn't help being aware, after all. Apparently.

Hob pressed the pillow to his forehead and let out the noise lurking behind his gritted teeth, which was a sort of growling groan that choked off toward the end, the tension unspent.

Dream might—they could—he—if—

Hob had wanted for so long while believing it was all impossible, and now—

Now it was still impossible, clearly, because Dream had chosen to spend some time being more or less a child.

And now it was more possible than it might ever have been, because Dream had chosen to trust Hob with himself in this form, because they exchanged words of love and reassurance daily, had promised each other forever in one way and another. With all of that, Hob couldn't begin to imagine that Dream would get his adult libido back and want anything trivial.

Would he? Or would it all be different when he was big again? Would he want Hob to be his... his dad friend while Dream looked for love elsewhere?

Hob managed to laugh at himself, then, sort of—more laughing than crying, in that muffled howl, though undeniably some of each.

He didn't know anything, really, that he hadn't known before. His friend both was a child and wasn't a child; his friend would return to his old form at some point, and things between them would be inevitably changed, and there was no knowing exactly how. And in the meantime, they had this time together, which was precious and necessary, and he would shower upon Dream all the love that was suited to this child's form.

Whatever came next, he would find out when it came. He was lucky to have Dream here with him, lucky to be a part of Dream taking this time to learn to be loved. He couldn't ask for more than that.

Well, he could, because he had always been greedy, always wanted more and more and more of any good thing, but he did know that there were limits. He didn't want anything that Dream didn't want, or wasn't ready for, or wasn't in the mood for right now. He couldn't look at Dream, small as he was, and want more from him, things that would confuse or distress him to be asked for.

If it was possible, later—if Desire thought that that kind of love was part of what Dream needed to be whole—well, his sibling had told Dream what they needed to tell him. Hob only knew about it because he'd tried to be clever at the door, trying to protect them both against a being he should know better than to try to extract promises from. This awkward awareness was his just reward for that.

He pressed the pillow to his face and tried a few more screams, just to be sure he'd gotten them out. By the last he just felt tired, and that was as good a place to land as any; he set the pillow down and went back out to see what Dream and Desire had gotten up to in the meantime.

They were still in the kitchen, both still sitting on the bench, Desire sipping from their mocha, Dream from his hot chocolate—and now Dream's fingernails were painted, a shiny and perfect black to match his sibling's red. Hob smiled, and it was easy to smile at Dream when Dream was here in front of him, with his nails freshly done up and his eyes all wide and hopeful.

"Looks gorgeous, love," Hob said, coming over to get a better look.

Dream smiled up at him and turned his hand so Hob could see his thumbnail, which was adorned with a red tongue of flame, matching today's overalls, which Hob suspected were Dream's favorites even though he never actually stated a preference for one garment over another.

"Perfect," Hob agreed, pressing a kiss to his forehead. "Very you, my joy."

Dream leaned forward and nodded into Hob's chest, and Hob gathered him up and hugged him close, mug and all.

"Well!" Desire said brightly. "I believe my work here is done. Do explore the rest of the groceries, Dream, we never got as far as the apricots and peaches. You'll love those."

Dream picked his head up enough to say, "Thank you, my sibling."

Hob made himself look over again, to see the cheerfully naughty kid hop down from his kitchen bench, blow him a child's play-flirtatious kiss, and saunter to the door, letting themself out without a backward glance.

After a moment, Hob managed to go over and turn the lock behind them, the click of it loud in the flat, which felt calmer and quieter—but otherwise not really noticeably different—for their absence. It could have been much worse, Hob realized. They could have done what Delirium or Despair did, could have made Dream—or Hob himself—want more than what they had now. They could have made this a real mess, an utter nightmare, and they hadn't.

Hob looked down at Dream. "That went well, didn't it?"

Dream ducked his head and squirmed so that he could sip more hot chocolate, though Hob could see the mug was nearly empty, mostly a prop now. Hob carried him to the kitchen table and sat down, settling Dream on his lap so he could see him a little more easily.

Dream set the mug on the table and then spread his hands on the edge, admiring his shiny black nails and the little symmetrical flames on his thumbs. "I don't..."

Hob curled both arms around Dream's middle, holding him securely, and didn't push for more.

"I don't feel it," he said finally. "What they said. I know, but... It is a story. Not me, not as I am now. Apparently I cannot even drink wine like this. It tasted awful."

Hob pressed a kiss to Dream's hair and nodded. "Makes sense. You made yourself this way for a reason—you needed a break from your work, and a break from other things, too. Matthew mentioned you were... pretty broken up, before all this."

Dream tilted his head, and Hob straightened up enough to see the pensive little look on his face. "Yes. Thessaly—the Thessalian. A human—immortal, like you, though—not the way that you are, because of my sister's gift freely given. Thessaly is a witch—a seeker after power. She has found a great deal of it, over three thousand years, but she is not satisfied."

Hob nodded slowly. He didn't think he'd ever met this Thessaly—not to know, if he had—but he understood the general type.

"You would never have been like that, I do not think," Dream went on, frowning now at his thumbnails.

"No," Hob agreed. "I always wanted to live, but I wasn't looking for anyone to tell me how to make it happen. I just believed I could, and got bloody lucky. If I hadn't," Hob shrugged. "Don't suppose I would have known the difference, when it came to it. One less silly braggart in the world, and me off to another adventure, finding out what comes next."

Dream nodded. "You wanted—want—to live because you take joy in your life as it is; if you had to give that up in order to live, it would seem pointless to you. Thessaly... has not the knack for joy, I think. I admired her—she stood up to me—and I wished to be in love, and she wished to be loved, but ultimately... she had her own interests to pursue, and we did not know how to..." Dream waved his hands. "To stay. To last."

Hob gave him a squeeze. "That's hard," Hob agreed, rather than pointing out that Dream hadn't said anything that indicated that this power-seeking witch had liked him at all, as a person, or that he'd liked her for anything other than being difficult. He'd known for well over six hundred years now how not to criticize a friend's romantic choices, no matter how transparently disastrous they seemed to be from the outside.

"My former wife," Dream said, and Hob's whole body locked up for a moment.

Dream stayed silent until Hob had taken a couple of careful breaths and unclenched a bit. "Didn't work out either?" Hob asked.

"No," Dream said. "In the end I suppose it was the same. She was powerful—a muse—Calliope, she is the muse of stories, you see, so we were well matched. And she always had her own work, her own domain. We were together for... some decades. We did take joy in each other, in shared creation, in... other things. But we could not last. We never lived together. I think we were both always trying to... put off the time when we would be finished with each other. And then she didn't want to put it off anymore."

"I'm sorry about that," Hob said, because that did sound like a pretty good relationship, and a run of a few decades would probably have been enough to see them through their whole lives, if they had been human. Immortality made till death do us part a much higher bar.

Dream looked up at Hob. "I... do not want to be finished with you. I do not want you to be finished with me. Not ever."

"Well, you've only known me six hundred years," Hob said, blinking back the stinging in his eyes, the clench in his heart. We could, he might, maybe... "Give it another thousand or two, you might want a bit of space—or I might! Two thousand years, I'll probably be able to catch a spaceship and go see some new sights, hey?"

"But anywhere you went, you could still come to the Dreaming when you sleep," Dream offered. "You could tell me about it."

"I could," Hob agreed. "And I'd have to get a spaceship cabin where I could keep your picture on the wall. I did make a promise."

Dream smiled up at him, showing all his little white baby teeth, and then looked around the kitchen and said, "Is it time for lunch now? Can we watch The Princess Bride after?"

---

There was cleanup to do in between lunch and The Princess Bride—they had dug the peaches out of Desire's shopping bag, and by the time they'd finished lunch Dream was sticky up to the elbows and across half his face.

Hob sat him by the kitchen sink to wash him up, and he realized as he did that Dream's cheeks had rounded out noticeably since he'd arrived. Hob hadn't noticed it happening, but the curves of them were properly convex now; he even had a soft little pudgy bit under his chin, which also needed washing.

Hob gave him a towel to dry his hands and face, which Dream did with the same meticulous care as he dried dishes and utensils; when he was finished Hob ran a hand over his hair—unruly as ever but clean and shiny. "You're starting to look as if you've got someone looking after you."

Dream looked up at him thoughtfully for a moment, patting his face with a corner of the towel as if he was trying to feel what change Hob had noticed. "I'm glad," Dream said finally. "That it shows."

Hob pressed a kiss to his forehead and then started on the dishes.

They sat side-by-side on the couch to watch the movie, Dream cuddling into his side with Hob's arm draped over him. He rested heavily against him, but his eyes stayed fixed on the screen from start to finish—the first time, Hob realized, that he had really seen the movie all the way through when he could make sense of it.

And it was obvious that he was focused very intently on making sense of it: a story about stories, a story about true love. It was no surprise that he had wanted to see it again, in light of whatever his sibling had told him.

Sure enough, when the movie ended, Dream was still frowning intently. He looked up at Hob and said, "It wasn't just Westley and Buttercup."

"No," Hob agreed.

"Who loved each other," Dream elaborated, still frowning. "Inigo loved his father. The grandfather loved his grandson, and the grandson loved his grandfather. Count Rugen..." Dream's nose wrinkled, and Hob smiled.

Dream focused on him again. "Which do you like best? Which one would you want?"

"Oh, well," Hob said, torn between knowing with perfect certainty his answer to that question, and needing to say what Dream needed to hear. "I think... for humans, at least, it's never good for us to have only one kind of love, or one person to love. We need to be loved like the grandson is loved when we're small, so we can learn to love people like his grandfather loves him. And we need friends—"

"Like Inigo needed Fezzik," Dream put in. "And Westley needed both of them."

Hob smiled. "Just so. And for me, I need that Westley-and-Buttercup kind of love, too, but, I mean—" Hob waved a hand. "We hardly get to see it in the movie, really. They have all these big feelings about each other, but they don't really get to know each other, or find out what all those big feelings amount to, when they're trying to go on with their lives together. They will, I'm sure, but... no, if I had to choose one kind of love from the movie to have for mine?"

Dream straightened up a little, watching intently, and Hob was aware that his answer mattered, not just because he might be able to tell Dream something about how the world and love worked, but because it mattered to Dream how Hob wanted to be loved.

"Miracle Max and Valerie," Hob said firmly. "Any day of the week."

Dream's lips parted, his frown deepening; he looked back to the now-blank screen of the TV like it might tell him something.

"Shallow little creature," Hob said, ruffling Dream's hair. "You didn't even look at them, did you? They're old, they're ugly—but they got that way together, staying together. They helped with each other's work, but even when Max couldn't do miracles anymore, she stayed with him. When the chance came along, she got him to try again, even though he was scared, and she helped him to do it, and she stood beside him through all of it. And the heroes go off to storm the castle, and Max and Valerie are there in their home, together, watching them go."

"They... shouted at each other," Dream said slowly. "But... even when she called him a liar, she..."

"She was helping him," Hob agreed. "She was making him face what he didn't want to face. She didn't just throw up her hands and walk away; she made him listen. She stayed. All that time he was too scared to try, she had stayed with him."

Dream looked up at Hob again, and Hob did his best to smile, and knew it wasn't much of one. "That's what I can't have," Hob said. "Can't grow old with anyone—can't grow old at all, but I can't stay with them while they grow old, either. Can't stay in one place, with one person, more than twenty years or so. But if I could, if there was someone..." He shrugged. "That's what I'd choose. No question."

"Hm," Dream said, and then slid off the couch and went to the coffee table to pull out his pastels and sketchbook.

Hob sat for a while, just watching him, just basking in the fact of Dream, present with him and safe and visibly thinking very hard, but happy enough for all that. Then he got up to make tea and hot chocolate before he got back to work on the books in the study.

---

When he entered the Dreaming that night, Dream found himself in his private quarters in the palace for the first time since the first night he had spent with Hob. He was not under the bed this time, but perched on the edge of it. He had the red ribbon tying him to Hob, promising that Hob would join him before too long, but for now he was alone.

He was still in his small form, wearing black pajamas spangled with white stars. He had had the whole day, more or less, to consider what Desire had told him, and what Hob had said, and what it could mean.

Just a little bigger than this, Desire had said. They had not meant incrementally so—as big as they were in the Waking when they visited him, for instance. They had meant that he would need to be adult in form—but though it would resemble the form he normally wore, such a form could still be smaller in the essentials. He could still leave most of Dream of the Endless there under the bed.

That, too, could be a part of this sojourn, this quest, this way of learning what he was missing.

But it would change things. To Hob's eyes he would be much as he had ever been; Hob would be bound to treat him differently. Some of those differences might be, as it were, desirable, but...

Dream had spent a good part of the afternoon tucked under Hob's arm, and much of the evening resting against his chest as Hob read to him—the stranded astronaut's travails continuing—and... he liked that. He still felt hungry for more of that, greedy for it. He was not done being small.

But he was curious about being big, and... this was what the Dreaming was for, was it not? For possibilities, for exploration, for the space to make choices that need not last beyond waking.

It had never been that for him, but it could be, this once. He could grant himself such a space.

Dream hopped down off the bed and reached into the mass of darkness under it, sifting his fingers through it, tugging at the parts of himself he needed for this, leaving behind what would only weigh him down.

He straightened up, and up, into a shape—a height—that felt unaccustomed after his sojourn as his smallest self. He stretched each long, slender limb, noting that the ribbon was still in place, having smoothly adjusted to his thicker wrist. His pajamas had also adjusted, changing into a plain black t-shirt and black joggers.

Dream wrinkled his nose, looking down at his attire, and considered his options. He had more elaborate raiment, of course, but that was... bigger than this, suited to his greatest self—to the king in his kingdom, a being vaster and more ancient than any god.

As this fraction of himself, Dream was certain that joggers and t-shirt were correct, as his bare feet were correct, but... boring, as the clothes he normally wore in the Waking world were boring. Elegant and fashionable, of course, but... boring. Dream traced a fingertip in a swirling pattern down the front of his shirt, leaving an asymmetrical scattering of white stars down the front of his shirt. He shook each foot in turn, and small stars winked into view at each ankle.

He spread his hands, marveling at their reach, and noted that Desire's manicure had stayed in place, his nails glossy and black with red flames flickering on his thumbs. He breathed over his fingernails, adding the iridescent sheen of a raven's wing to the nails that did not show a flame.

There. That was better.

The dancing flames on his thumbs echoed the red of the ribbon around his wrist; Dream curled a hand around the ribbon and followed it out to his balcony.

He stopped short when he reached the railing, the view entirely failing to register as memory flooded in. He had not forgotten, not really, but the force and weight of the memory now was such that he could not overlook it. He had indeed brought back more of himself than just his height and reach.

He had stood here in the rain two weeks ago, mourning the end of his love affair with Thessaly. He had felt utterly desolate in the wake of her rejection, unspeakably alone, wholly bereft. Rain had poured down all over the Dreaming, giving form to his misery.

Tears came to his eyes now at the memory of how he had felt then, unable to even imagine being comforted, unable to fathom that he could ever recover from the blow.

He had not wept then. The skies of the Dreaming had wept for him, but his most complete self was far too controlled to weep.

And yet, what was it that he had mourned? Thessaly had not been kind to him, had called him by no names of love that were not at least half ironic. She had liked words that made a pet of him, that showed he was under her sway. He had not been her joy, had not been dear to her, though she had reveled in his power and his attention. He had showed off his realm to her, but she had shown him almost nothing of her own life in turn, had never shared with him the things that she liked best in the hopes that he would like them too.

She had certainly never been his friend.

He did not think, on reflection, that she had even liked him.

And still, he had mourned. He had grieved the loss of a chance, a possibility. A hope. A love he had never had from Thessaly, and probably could never have had.

It was nothing like the way he would mourn if Hob—

He could not even think of it; tears blurred his eyes and clouds gathered overhead at just the passing glimmer of the thought.

Dream tightened his grip on the red ribbon and jumped over the balcony's railing where it trailed down, following it into the garden below. The red ribbon led him through one path after another, and he was reeling it in, hand over hand, walking in longer and longer strides and then running in leaping bounds, giddy with eagerness to see Hob again with these new eyes.

He came around a corner and found Hob standing in a bower of roses. He was facing away from Dream—just by the tilt of his head and the set of his shoulders, Dream could see that he was fascinated by the profusion of flowers and tangle of vines around him—and Dream felt his heart leap in his chest and knew that Desire had been right.

He had not known what he was missing. He had not known he could love Hob like this, too.

He tugged at the ribbon that joined his wrist to Hob's, and rushed forward as Hob began to turn toward him.

---

 
 

Chapter 20

Hob opened his eyes in a dream—in the Dreaming—and he could feel that particular clarity that meant Dream was somewhere near. He knew he would remember this dream as clearly as he did any waking moment. He was face to face with an absolute wall of roses—all of them red, ranging from so dark a burgundy it was nearly black to vivid pure ruby reds and every shade in between. Some were just barely opened, many of them were fully blown, but Hob couldn't spot a single one still closed in the bud.

The smell of them was all he could breathe, and the blooms grew out of an impassable tangle of vines with no visible thorns.

Dream had been asleep for an hour or so now; Hob had a feeling he could see what his friend had decided to try, but he stood and studied the roses—the red, red roses—and told himself firmly not to make assumptions.

That lasted until he felt a sharp tug on the ribbon around his wrist. He followed the pull instantly, turning to see Dream running to him, beaming so widely that Hob could take in nothing but that absolutely luminous smile, and returned it with all his heart.

Dream stopped short, close enough to touch but not reaching out. His smile persisted as he looked Hob up and down, so frankly and unselfconsciously that he might have been no older than his small self appeared to be.

He looked, at the outside, maybe twenty years older—a man grown, but still a world away from the ancient bearing of Hob's familiar stranger. His cheeks and chin retained a bit of his newly-well-fed softness, and his porcelain skin was that of a youth who could not yet grow a proper beard.

But it was his eyes and his smile, bright and easy and eager, that truly made him look young—that and the way Hob found himself looking ever so slightly down to meet Dream's eyes. His stranger had always been just his own height, or a bit taller.

"Hob," Dream said, and he sounded like himself, except that Hob had never heard his stranger sound so cheerfully enthusiastic. "Hob, I want you."

"You have me, love," Hob said, because he couldn't say anything else—and then he couldn't say anything at all, because Dream was plastered against him, kissing him with puppyish fervor and about as much expertise.

Hob wrapped his arms around Dream's slim form—solid and strong, absolutely a man's body, but the way Dream leaned into him without reservation, barely leaving his feet on the ground, still set off every protective instinct Hob had. He kissed back, of course; Dream was irresistible and Hob wasn't even tempted to try.

Not, at least, until Dream slipped his fingers into the waistband of the joggers Hob had fallen asleep in. The feeling of Dream's fingers on hidden skin was, on the one hand, shockingly and wonderfully erotic, and on the other hand, made it obvious that they were Going Places.

Hob needed to ask one or two questions before they got there.

"Wait," Hob gasped against Dream's lips, and Dream jerked back immediately, looking so calmly curious about what they were waiting for that Hob had to kiss him just a little more. He pressed soft, lingering kisses to Dream's mouth that hopefully made his love and his attraction clear. Each one left Dream leaning in after it so that Hob just had to give him another.

Hob felt the roses at his back and realized he'd all but collapsed against them, Dream still pushing in against him every time he drew back. Hob closed his eyes and laughed, and forced himself to get a firm grip on Dream's shoulders, shifting him back a pace.

When he opened his eyes Dream was smiling, but now he did look uncertain.

"You have me," Hob repeated. "I'm yours, darling, in any way you want. I just—I just need to know what it is you want, and... what this is."

Dream blinked those wide blue eyes at him, his smile slowly returning, his lips now kiss-reddened and wet. "I want you, Hob. I want you to be my lover, and I want to love you that way—like Westley and Buttercup. Like Miracle Max and Valerie, I hope, when we've been at it a hundred years or so. And also I would very much like for us to fuck."

Hob choked a bit at that last, earning a coquette's smile from Dream, who was obviously pleased with that reaction.

Still, there was a bright openness even in that playfully coy reaction that made it clear that Dream wasn't really doing this on purpose. He hadn't very specifically chosen to look this young and unspoiled for the joy of shocking Hob; he had started from the version of himself he had been with Hob for weeks now, and added just enough to be ready to kiss Hob in a bed of roses, and this smiling, confident youth was the result.

"I'd like all of that too," Hob finally managed to say. "I just need to know... Dream, I went to bed a little while ago in the Waking, and my body is still there, right?"

Watching Dream visibly shift gears from "cheerfully horny" to "focused on his work" was almost painfully endearing, when Hob was already so desperately in love. "Yes. Bringing you here physically would be a much more involved undertaking, and... not good for you, if you were to spend much time here. You could, sometime, if you would like, but—"

Hob nodded quickly. "But right now, I'm back in my bed in London. But the thing is..." Hob raised his left hand and tugged at the ribbon—just a foot or two long, here—that connected them. "When I went to bed, the physical version of this was tying me to the physical version of you, who was still quite small."

Something closed off in Dream's eyes; he eased back from Hob, just an inch or two.

"And that's fine," Hob said firmly. "I don't mind one bit if you're big here and small there, or vice versa, or whatever you need to be. I just need to know that what we do here stays here and doesn't affect me there, if you're not the same in both places."

Dream's head tilted and eyes narrowed, thinking it through. "My small self is not a child, Hob. I will remember this, whatever shape I wear tomorrow."

Hob nodded. "I know that. I don't pretend to entirely understand it, but I know. But I also know that when you're smaller you don't understand or want what we're hopefully about to spend the rest of the night doing—"

That brought an eager glint back into Dream's eyes, and a little smirk to his lips that Hob wanted to kiss away immediately. He forced himself to focus.

"You can just put it down to a silly human thing if you like," Hob went on. "But please, Dream, my dearest darling love, can you make sure that I absolutely cannot come in my pants while I'm sleeping next to the version of you that looks three years old?"

Dream's smirk turned fond, willing to indulge Hob's limited human understanding. "If you require it, of course."

Dream's expression turned abstracted; he raised a hand and seemed to twiddle at nothing, as though he was looking for a switch to flip or setting to adjust. Finally his gaze settled on Hob again, his expression gone sheepish, and he said, "I think I left that part under the bed. Come with me, I'll fix it."

He took Hob's hand and tugged, turning to run back the way he had come, and Hob followed without question, even as he was wondering what exactly I left that part under the bed was supposed to mean.

---

Dream was enough of himself to make the distance from the rose bower to his private rooms a matter of just a few strides; he only let go of Hob's hand when he dropped to his knees beside the bed, reaching into the mass of darkness there to find what he needed. He made the necessary adjustment to the connection between Hob's Waking and Dreaming selves, and even remembered to make the change temporary—after this night's dreaming, Hob's body and his dreams would connect in the usual way.

When he had done that, he turned back to Hob, only to find that Hob had knelt down beside him, and was peering into the darkness under the bed.

Dream felt suddenly, breathtakingly exposed.

Of course Hob knew, by now, that Dream had done this on purpose, leaving so much of himself behind to be something smaller, but... now Hob could see it. Seeing was always different from knowing for humans like him. And if what Hob really liked, or respected, or was interested in, was that greater part of himself, the part that was far older and more powerful...

Hob looked over at him, seeming to ask some silent question. Dream had no idea what it was or how to respond to it, and after a moment Hob gave a little nod and lowered himself even closer to the floor. He reached one hand right into the darkness as he said, "Ah, there you are—there the rest of you is, I mean, my friend. I hope that this part of you is having a restful break as well."

Dream stared, stunned and baffled and helplessly in love, as Hob petted the mass of inchoate darkness that represented the greatest and most ancient parts of Dream of the Endless. Dream could feel it, distantly, for those parts of himself he had set aside were still, after all, him. He could feel that that part of himself, vast as it was, was even more baffled than the rest of him to receive Hob's concern and affection.

But every part of him was hungry for it.

As Dream watched, the darkness took shape under Hob's gentling hand, becoming the mantle that it had first been when Dream changed and set it aside, and then a long black coat with a starry lining. When Hob huffed a soft laugh and gave another lingering stroke to the nearest sleeve, the coat folded itself up with the distinct air of a cat curling up for a nap in a sunbeam, well pleased with itself and the world.

Dream felt that too, far off as it was: a restless, hungry part of himself was soothed as it had not been for a very long time.

"Good," Hob murmured to it. "I'm glad. You deserve a break too, you know."

One sleeve-end emerged from the neat fold to flip dismissively, and Hob laughed properly then, drawing back to sit on his heels and look over at Dream with an expression of such warmth—for him, just him, small and simple as he was!—that Dream could scarcely breathe.

"Well," Hob said. "That's us told. Now, should we pick up where we left off outside? Or would you like to—"

Dream could not find the words, but he could fling himself bodily at Hob, knocking him to the floor with another frantic kiss. There was a rug under them now, though Dream was sure he had knelt down on bare marble. The rug was deep black and plush and prevented Hob from banging his head when Dream tackled him, so that was just as well.

Kissing Hob was amazing, and as necessary as breathing, and only made him want more. Dream writhed on top of Hob, rubbing as much of himself against Hob as he could, until it occurred to him that it would feel better without his clothes in the way; he made his pajamas vanish, then whined in frustration when he realized that Hob was still wearing his. It would be rude to take them from him, but Dream could not summon the words to ask, could not think.

Then Hob's hands—big and warm and callused and strong, for all that they were gentle with him—closed firmly on Dream's hips, holding him still. Dream picked his head up to see Hob smiling up at him, his mouth all wet with kissing, his eyes so warm that Dream wanted to bask in them like sunshine.

"You really have no idea what you're doing, do you," Hob said, fondly, like that was a good thing.

"I want you," Dream insisted. He was sure about that.

"Oh, yes, I've gotten that impression," Hob said, and pushed his hips up under Dream, so that Dream was extra aware of the hardness of Hob's erection behind that silly layer of clothing. Dream knew that Hob could feel how hard he was too, right alongside him but not quite touching, not yet. "But you... darling, did you leave all the other times you've done this under the bed, too?"

Dream squirmed and frowned. "There are no other times. I've never done this with you before."

Hob raised his eyebrows, and Dream dropped his gaze to Hob's chest. The collar of his tee was stretched a bit; a little of his dark chest hair was visible above it, and Dream wanted to see the rest more than he had ever wanted anything. He had a dim, distant memory of Hob wearing only a towel, but he had not understood then. He would appreciate it now, if only Hob would stop staring at him with that patient expression like he could sit here all day.

"Never with a man before," Dream admitted.

Hob sat up, keeping that firm grip on Dream's hips, so that abruptly Dream was sitting in his lap rather than sprawled over him on the floor. Facing him, straddling him, naked and aroused, it felt nothing like being small and sitting in Hob's lap, and yet...

It didn't feel entirely unlike that, either.

Hob took one hand off his hip and caught Dream's chin, holding him still for Hob to kiss him, soft and sweet and shallow.

"Darling," Hob said, pressing their foreheads together, speaking into the tiny, humid space between their mouths. "I know you've had sex before. But you left that out, didn't you?"

Dream squirmed a bit, and said nothing. He supposed that technically Hob was correct, but he didn't want to think about any of those others now. That was why he had left it under the bed; he only wanted this to be about now, about him and Hob. About something entirely new.

"Do you think," Hob murmured, "that what you'd really like is to be looked after properly by someone who loves you?"

Dream shuddered, wrapping his legs firmly around Hob's hips, squeezing his eyes shut though he was too close for Hob to see him properly. Hob kept that grip on his chin and on his hip, holding him firmly in place, and kissed him again, even softer.

"I've got you, my joy," Hob murmured. "I know what you need."

Hob stood up under him, and Dream clung tighter, but Hob bore him just to the bed, which they were, after all, right beside. Hob laid him down on the cool sheets, coming with him because Dream was still clinging tight, and Hob's weight over him felt like a key in a lock, the answer to a riddle, something he had needed without knowing it. Dream let go, let himself sink into the bed.

Let himself be looked after.

Hob knelt up and stripped his shirt off, and Dream could look and look now, at the thick hair that covered his chest, leaving only his nipples exposed. Then Hob tugged down his joggers as well, and Dream could only stare at Hob's cock, which to Dream's eyes seemed to be exactly the ideal size and shape, standing up proud and eager against Hob's belly—for him, because Hob wanted him, because Dream had already pleased him just with kisses and touches and wanting, without being particularly skilled, without calculating for the best effect. Hob just wanted him.

And then Hob lowered himself over Dream again and kissed him and kissed him, straying from his mouth to lavish kisses down his throat and over his chest, touches of lips and tongue and occasionally teeth that left him feeling—not worshipped, nothing so distant. The rest of Hob's body rubbed against Dream's, his weight still present, the roughness of his hair exquisite against Dream's smooth skin.

Dream was being cherished, in every inch of his skin, every least part of his being, and that warmth twisted into heat and pleasure as it sank into him, singing along every nerve. Hob was making love to him in the most literal sense, and Dream knew, even with all the relevant memories tucked away under the bed, that no one had ever made love to him like this before. He would never have allowed it; it was simply not his role.

It was not the proper role for Dream of the Endless, King of Dreams and Lord of the Dreaming, at least as he had understood himself before. For Dream as he was now, just big enough to be naked in Hob's bed with Hob naked and wanting him, nothing could be more right.

"I think," Dream said, as Hob was kissing gently around the edges of the bruise that still marred the center of his chest, the thickness of his body parting Dream's thighs, "this was definitely something I needed to learn."

Hob laughed, looking up at him, but the gust of his breath brushed over his nipple, and everything but that pleasure went out of Dream's mind. Hob resumed his progress down Dream's body, kissing and petting him everywhere, teasing and tasting. Every touch was what Dream wanted, needed, and every touch made him greedy for more.

He was gasping out Hob's name on every breath, though he knew that he did not need to ask any more than he needed to breathe—Hob would give him all he wanted, all he did not know to want, and more. Hob would give him every good thing. Dream had only to feel it.

Hob's mouth closed on his prick, and Dream arched nearly off the bed at the heat, the pleasure, the feeling of being taken inside Hob's mouth, his body, the living heat of him. It was pleasure that was more than pleasure—it was a consummation, a completion in itself, and Dream learned all at once what it was to be given all he wanted and to be the very thing his beloved desired and was devouring. It was too much for him to contain, too much to give name or shape to what he felt; the taste of Candyfloss grapes burst across his tongue as climax swept through him, all the sea pouring through one breached dam.

Dream blinked and Hob was lying over him, smiling down at him with such abundant and obvious love that Dream could have gazed up at him forever, could have orbited him like a sun. He could feel life flourishing in himself under Hob's gaze like a new-made planet around the star that gave it its center, its warmth, its purpose for existing.

Hob was still smiling—laughing—kissing his nose and cheeks and mouth—oh, he had been talking just then. He had said all of that for Hob to hear.

"I think I did not make myself quite big enough," Dream murmured against Hob's lips. "I think I am overflowing."

"That you surely are," Hob said back, kissing him with lips and tongue that tasted sweet as Candyfloss grapes. "And you taste amazing, love. Do you want to stop?"

Dream discovered that he could tell where his hands were when they caught hold of Hob; the rest of his body followed from there. "More?"

"More," Hob agreed, and began all over again to drive Dream out of his mind.

---

Hob woke up feeling great, his whole body warm and loose and thoroughly relaxed, entirely satisfied, utterly certain that he was waking up beside someone he loved and trusted down to his bones.

Then he felt the tiniest tug at the ribbon on his wrist, and remembered exactly who that was. Hob opened his eyes to see Dream—the familiar small one he'd woken up beside for weeks now—sitting up in bed, watching him intently and fidgeting with the piled-up length of ribbon.

"Hey, love," Hob said, reaching out to lay a hand over Dream's restless one. "How did you sleep?"

"Very well," Dream said, still with that tiny frown, though his restless hand stilled under Hob's touch. "I am hungry. I am..." He did not exactly trail off, because his intent stare into Hob's eyes seemed to be the unspoken, perhaps unspeakable, end of the sentence.

"It's all right if last night bothers you," Hob said gently. "It's all right to feel strange or confused about it. I'm sorry if—"

Dream shook his head sharply. "I don't—I don't remember anything in great detail except how much you love me, and how much I love you, and how happy we were together. And the taste of those grapes."

Hob pressed his free hand to his face, laughing helplessly at that. He didn't know quite why Dream's bigger self had tasted of those grapes, but he surely had, and their mouths had been full of that flavor, one way or another, for much of the night.

When he lowered his hand to look again, Dream was still looking anxious. Hob sat up and pulled Dream into his lap for a firm hug.

"You really," Dream said into his t-shirt. "You really don't want—you don't mind..."

"I love you," Hob said firmly. "Big or small or strange shadow thing or whatever other shape you take, whatever we do together. I love you, and I want you here, and that's all there is to it. If you want to be small for another fortnight before you consider being big again, you should. If I need to go take my grownup feelings into the shower for a bit, I will, and that's not your problem."

Dream looked up at him. "Do you need to?"

Hob huffed. He wasn't physically sore—as Dream had promised, nothing physical had carried over from his dreams to his waking self—but he felt thoroughly loved up, and like he might be a little sick if he came anywhere near a green grape for the rest of the day. "Not just now, love. You took good care of me."

Dream reached up and patted Hob's cheek, then prodded gently at the underside of his chin, which had the same hint of softness it always had unless he was properly starving. "Someone should look after you," Dream told him. "I could..."

"You will when I need it, I'm sure," Hob said, catching Dream's hand to give it a kiss. "But I'm right enough for now, so how about I make us some breakfast? I think we still have those apricots your sibling brought."

"Do I like apricots?" Dream asked, relaxing against Hob's chest. The question seemed more philosophical than like he expected Hob to know.

"One way to find out," Hob said, and flipped back the covers.

---

Dream did like apricots, which were golden and sweet in a pleasantly different way from the grapes. And he liked cheese on toast, and he liked milk, and he liked Hob sitting at the table with him, discussing what they might do today. They had more of the astronaut book, and of course Dream would always have more pictures to draw. They could listen to music, watch movies, go for a walk—there were no end of places to walk to.

Halfway through cleaning the dishes, Dream abruptly realized what he wanted. "Hob," he said, keeping his gaze on the plate he was carefully drying, "I want to do something new. Something different."

"Oh!" Hob said, smiling as he rinsed a knife. "A challenge, is it? Let's see..." Hob stared at the window for a moment. It looked fine and sunny outside, and Dream was considering whether walking somewhere different would feel new enough when Hob said, "We could..."

Dream straightened up alertly, immediately eager for whatever unknown possibility Hob was considering.

"It could be dangerous," Hob said seriously. "If I tell you we have to go, we have to go immediately, and I will throw you over my shoulder and run if I think it's necessary."

Dream wriggled with excitement at the possibility—especially given that he was entirely certain that Hob would keep him safe, no matter what danger threatened.

"And you'll have to wear your new wellies," Hob added, and Dream thrust the dry plate at him and jumped down from the bench to go and find him, Hob's laughter following him through the flat.

---

Barely an hour later, after Hob had checked several things on his phone and set several timers and alarms on it, they descended some narrow stone stairs to reach the muddy edge of the River Thames, exposed by low tide.

"I have a feeling you're going to be better than a metal detector for mudlarking," Hob said with a smile down at him. "Centuries of stuff gets washed up by this river, you never know what you might find."

Dream bounced a bit on his feet, looking this way and that along the rocky little margin between a stone wall and the water, which, even on a sunny late-summer day, radiated cold. Then he turned his back to the morning sun, watching where he placed each step as his shadow fell before him. Hob followed closely—he had made their ribbon into a tether between them, doubled and tied around Hob's waist and threaded through the straps of Dream's overalls.

"Won't keep you from getting washed away," Hob had said sternly, tying it, "but it will give me a chance at catching you if you slip into the water."

Dream gave the water a wary look and then returned his attention to the possibilities of the mud and rocks underfoot. Some instinct made him stop and peer into the space between two rocks; Hob crouched beside him and helped him tug one up, and Dream crowed at the sight of a glint in the widened crack between them. He scrabbled at it, and pulled free a—bracelet? Earring? Some sort of metal hoop with many shining beads dangling from it.

"Oh, that's a right one!" Hob said, and offered a plastic bag for Dream to drop his find into. Dream reached down into the crevice and turned up a small bead that might have once been attached to the hoop, but nothing else.

Beside him, Hob hummed and reached over to a spot nearby, brushed the surface of the mud, and plucked out a small round object—a coin. "Sixpence," Hob said absently, and dropped it into the bag with Dream's things. "Let's see what else we can find."

Dream jumped up and went on, eagerly studying every rock, every stretch of mud. He found several glass beads of different colors, a strange greenish glass bottle with the word POISON worked into the glass, and an intricately carved pipe. Hob found five more coins and a small rock with a natural hole through the middle, which Dream thought was the best thing either of them had found—though Hob was very entertained by the POISON bottle—until Dream dove after a glimmer right at the water's edge and turned up a perfect little turtle, which, when rinsed in the river, proved to be made of amber, its shell inlaid with thin layers of gold.

Dream studied it from every angle. The brown of the amber, from some views, looked just like the brown of Hob's eyes, and Dream had no idea who had carved it, who had decorated it, who had lost it. This was an object which surely had gathered the echoes of many dreams, but here and now it was a blank slate, as if the river had washed all its history from it. As if it could be simple, as if it had begun its existence here by the edge of the river with Dream and Hob.

Dream looked up to ask Hob what he thought of it, and saw that Hob was standing in water that came up entirely over his feet, lapping at the ankles of his wellies while Hob rinsed something in the water that chimed metallically in his hand.

"Hob?"

He turned at once and came to Dream with a smile. "That's lovely, isn't it?"

Dream nodded and held it up. "Do you think it could go on your shelf? With the frog, and the cat?"

A soft expression crossed Hob's face, only to be interrupted by a blaring alarm from his phone.

"Ah, fuck, tide," Hob said, straightening up sharply and shoving whatever was in his hand into a pocket. "Hold on tight, lovie," he said, and then scooped Dream up into his arms. One of Dream's boots nearly came off, having sunk into the mud while he was holding still; he yelped in dismay and angled his foot to hold onto it, and it came away with a great mucky splash.

Hob did not quite throw Dream over his shoulder, but he was running by the time they reached the nearest stair, a different one than they had come down by. This one was iron, and clanged horribly as Hob pounded up it, but it bore them to the safety of the street. Dream still had the turtle clutched in both hands, just as he was held tight in Hob's.

"Yeah," Hob said, after they had stood in silence for a moment, watching the tide climb the stairs after them, step by splashing step. "Yeah, I think it would look great on that shelf, love. You sure you don't want to keep it just for you, take it home with you?"

Dream shook his head, briefly picturing and then shying away from the image of the beautiful turtle he had drawn from the river, a tiny golden speck in the bare whiteness of his private rooms. "It should be with you. And I..."

"You'll see it all the time, because you'll be with me too," Hob said, not quite a question, but a thing said while he was looking away, concentrating on navigating them back to the street.

He made to set Dream down, once they reached the pavement, but Dream shook his head and leaned harder into Hob's chest. "I'll see it all the time," Dream repeated, nearly able to believe it. "Because I'll be with you too."

Hob kissed the top of his head and said, "Course you will, my joy," and then, "Fuck, which way did we walk? Are we in bloody Greenwich?"

---

The Sandman CHBB Fic: To Be Brand New, Chapters 21-25 (Master Post)

To Be Brand New

Total word count: 140,000ish
Rating: Explicit

Relationships: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling, Dream & his siblings, Hob & the Endless, Dream & Orpheus, Dream & Daniel

Characters: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Hob Gadling, Daniel Hall, Destiny of the Endless, Death of the Endless, Matthew the Raven, Odin (The Sandman), Delirium of the Endless, Lucienne, Despair of the Endless, Desire of the Endless, Orpheus (The Sandman), Destruction of the Endless, Lyta Hall

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Additional Tags: Sandman: Brief Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Everyone Lives, Age Regression/De-Aging, Slow Burn, Like the Slowest Burn, Like One of Them Is a Pre-Sexual Child for the First 100,000 Words of the Fic, What If The Red String Of Fate Was Also A Toddler Leash, Touch-Starved Dream of the Endless, Protective Hob Gadling, Cuddling & Snuggling, Caretaking, Bathing, Bed Sharing, Crying, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Injuries, Illness, Depression, Suicidal Ideation, Explicit Sexual Content, Masturbation, Not Exactly Loss of Virginity But Not Not That?, Happy Ending

Chapters 1-4 on Dreamwidth
Chapters 5-8 on Dreamwidth
Chapters 9-12 on Dreamwidth
Chapters 13-16 on Dreamwidth
Chapters 17-20 on Dreamwidth

This fic is also posting (though more slowly) on AO3!

Check out all the gorgeous art by fishfingersandscarves on Tumblr!

Chapter 21

Dream's boots were mostly clean again by the time they got back to the flat, but Hob still made him take them off on the step outside. "They'll be easier to get properly clean when the mud's all dried," Hob explained. "It'll knock right off then."

Dream looked anxiously at the sky which was, admittedly, still clear and blue. "But if it rains..."

"Then they'll get wet again," Hob said, picking Dream up. "And then sooner or later they'll dry. We're bringing enough Thames muck in with our treasures and our ribbon, we don't need our boots as well."

"Will the ribbon be all right?" Dream asked, focusing on the most important part.

"Course," Hob said easily, and went directly to the kitchen sink. He sat Dream in his usual dish-drying spot and then emptied various pockets onto the bench beside it, but the ribbon went straight into the sink itself, to be rinsed out and then lathered with soap. Hob's hands working through the foam looked, Dream thought, rather like it felt when Hob washed his hair.

Dream looked up at Hob; his hair was swinging down to his chin, shadowing his face as he ducked his head to focus on the ribbon. Dream wondered what it would feel like to wash Hob's hair.

He could, if he were bigger.

He looked down at his small hands and remembered in a way both vivid and disconnected—what a human would call dreamlike, he suspected—running larger hands through Hob's hair again and again, while Hob... did something that Dream liked very much.

"Here, love, give me a hand," Hob said, and Dream let that memory dissolve away in favor of helping Hob to rinse the soap from the pile of ribbon and squeeze out all the remaining water.

When that was done, Hob laid towels over the kitchen table, and set out the ribbon in long loops dangling nearly to the floor.

"Be dry in no time," Hob promised. "Definitely before bed."

After that there were the rest of their treasures to clean; Hob set aside two gold beads and a silver ring and said they ought to go to a museum.

Dream bit his lip. "But... my turtle?"

It was lovelier than any of those; surely many people would want to see it if they could.

"Ah, well." Hob winked at Dream. "That one can be our secret. I'm going to be donating loads of things soon anyway, I think we can consider the turtle a fair trade. And we'll keep it just as safe as the museum would, won't we?"

Dream frowned, thinking of the books Hob had been sorting, even while he clutched his turtle safely to his chest. "You... you put the other books in boxes, too. The ones to keep."

"Oh, yeah," Hob said, his eyes on the little coins and beads. "Time to move soon—been here about as long as I can manage. No need to rush, so far, but... it's always good to go before it comes to that."

Dream had another memory, this one not dreamlike at all—Hob in rags, dirty and battered, telling him how his neighbors had turned against him, tried him as a witch, drowned him.

"Hey, hey," Hob said, and Dream realized that he was weeping when Hob gathered him up and held him tight, rocking him as Dream hid his streaming eyes against Hob's shoulder. "Hey, it's all right now, my darling. We're safe."

"But—but before—" Dream sobbed into Hob's chest, overwhelmed at the horror of it, of people who knew Hob turning against him, people like Marc and Irene and—and Evelyn, people who were perfectly lovely, and then...

"Shh, shh, that's a long time ago now," Hob murmured. "Truth is I keep wondering if it might not be all right, nowadays. Most people just let each other live even if they're different; maybe they'd let me be too."

But Hob didn't say he was going to risk it, and Dream clutched him tighter at just the thought.

"I won't let anyone hurt you," Dream promised. He could be as big as he needed to be, for that. He could bend the very fabric of the universe, to make it true that Hob was safe, that no one feared or hated or hunted him.

"Thank you, sweetheart," Hob said, sounding unconcerned but not insincere. "Might have to take you up on that, sometime or other. But this time I think I'll be all right. Been planning for this a long time, setting things up to be ready. Got a few choices for places to go—what do you think, somewhere sunny?"

"Somewhere far away," Dream insisted, clinging tighter to Hob.

"Oh, well, we can do that," Hob agreed. "I'll go to the farthest one I've got when I'm done sorting through things, how's that?"

"Or sooner, if there is any danger," Dream said firmly, tilting his head back to look up into Hob's eyes.

Hob looked down at him for a moment without saying anything. He was smiling a little, but not as if he thought this was a joke. As if it made him a bit happy that Dream was worrying.

"Sooner if there's any danger," Hob agreed. "It'll be easier this time, anyway. I won't be all alone when I get there."

"Never," Dream swore. "Never again. I will be with you."

Hob smiled a little wider, and kissed Dream's forehead, and Dream tugged him down so he could kiss Hob's cheeks and his nose, wrapping his arms tight around Hob's neck and pressing as close as he could get.

None of it felt like it was enough to express how he felt, how he wanted Hob to feel, but Hob held him close all the same, submitting to his urgent affections until Dream felt a little less frantic.

Eventually, he was calm enough to take his seat by the sink again while Hob finished cleaning up their finds. After that they went to the study, and Dream put his turtle on the desk beside the cat and frog. All three looked dramatically different from one another, so much so that they looked perfect together, even better than any of them alone. Someday perhaps he would find another; eventually there might be a whole family of them, mismatched and yet each perfect in itself, each one part of the chaotic and beautiful whole.

Hob was packing up books, and Dream could not be very much help with that; Hob was not hesitating, and did not presently need the moral support Dream could give. He looked up immediately when Dream moved away from the desk, his hands falling still. "What do you need, love?"

Dream frowned; that seemed a very complicated question. His hands opened and closed as he tried to work out an answer, and he looked down at them and said uncertainly, "Perhaps I will go and draw."

"That's a good thought," Hob agreed. "Let me know if you need any fresh colors or paper or anything, right?"

Dream nodded. Of course he would not hesitate to call upon Hob for those things. He was not sure that any of those were the things he needed—he did not think drawing was quite what he wanted to do, but it was an activity to which he could apply the strange restless energy in his body.

He hauled the biggest sketchpad out and laid it on the floor, kneeling over it and coloring first in great scrawls that gave some satisfaction to what he felt. He stayed for a long moment, staring down at the page. He could see where he could go, how he could develop those first impulsive bursts of color into a work that he would be pleased with, that would give vent to his feelings and be a joy to work on, but... something wasn't quite right.

Dream moved to a different side of the paper, then a different side again, tilting his head this way and that, leaning down near and kneeling up tall. He studied his stock of colors.

He heard a thump from the next room and was on his feet and running without a thought, at Hob's side before Hob had straightened up from dropping one loaded box of books atop another. Hob smiled at him, reached out and swiped a thumb over his forehead that came away bright golden yellow. "Sorry, love, did I distract you?"

Dream shook his head—he had already been distracted, even if he was unable to tell why—but he said without thinking or intending it, "You're too far away."

"Oh, well," Hob looked around the study. The shelves were mostly empty, and Dream saw that even most of the knickknacks that had covered the desk were gone, leaving only a handful other than the frog, cat, and turtle who were grouped together at the nearest corner. "I'm pretty close to done here, why don't I come and start on the shelves out there? That way you still have room to draw, and you'll know just what I'm up to."

Dream nodded vigorously, raising up his hands to Hob, who gathered him up immediately and kissed his head. "Really didn't mean to put you so on edge about this, love. We're safe now, I promise. I know the signs well these days."

Dream huffed into Hob's shoulder. "I am not frightened," he said, realizing as he spoke that saying so directly into the side of Hob's neck was perhaps not the most persuasive way. "I only... I want..."

He couldn't find the words, but he wrapped his arms and legs around Hob and hung on tight.

"Ah, well," Hob hugged him tighter. "Won't argue with that, love, not a bit."

It was much better, having Hob near. When Dream tired of drawing, Hob made him hot chocolate and read to him for a while; they were getting near to the end of the astronaut's story, and Dream both wanted to rush through it and didn't want it ever to end. He always wanted to be able to look forward to more of this, more sitting against Hob's chest while the story unfolded over him like a blanket.

When Hob stopped and asked him if he'd like to do something else, Dream nodded without thinking, though he didn't know what he wanted to do. He slipped down from Hob's lap and paced around the room, then hopped, waving his hands and arms, trying to find the thing that would be right.

He looked over at an odd sound and found Hob patting the surface of the coffee table as if it were a drum, in a steady cadence. "Try a march," Hob said. "High knees."

Dream tried it, swinging his arms emphatically along with each step, speeding up or slowing down along with the rhythm Hob set, and found himself laughing wildly when Hob made it too fast—only to laugh harder when Hob made it very, very slow. Then Hob started using both hands, and Dream gave up on marching. He began to hop and whirl, waving his hands and stomping with Hob's erratic beat, until Hob broke down laughing and Dream crashed into him, laughing too.

"Sorry, love, I'll find you some proper dance music," Hob said, kissing his cheek, and Dream froze.

Hob was right, though. Dream had been dancing. He had been reveling in the music, though it was only a simple beat. He had been immersed in the sound, and Hob's gaze upon him, and the things his own body could do as it moved through space.

"Dream?"

He shook himself. He felt it in every limb, how much he still wanted to move, to move more—to run, to fly, to spin and tumble and romp. "I have not danced in a very long time."

"Well," Hob said, brushing a thumb over Dream's cheek, making him aware that he was still flushed, and still smiling. "Seems like you needed it. Want me to put on some music? You can go back to just marching if you like. Doesn't have to be dancing."

Dream wriggled, feeling it very close to the surface now. He wanted something. He almost had it.

"I need to," Dream said, without knowing quite what the end of that sentence was, but sure that it was true. "You—pick music. And then I'll come in when it's playing."

Hob smiled. "Oh, a dramatic entrance? Yeah, okay. I'll try to find something good for you, might take a minute. When you hear it, come on out."

Dream nodded and then forced himself to stand up from his sprawl against Hob. He dashed into the bedroom and pushed the door shut, and then he realized.

He realized exactly what he wanted.

He took the feather and book from his pocket first, and set them down carefully on top of his suitcase. Then he got the overalls off, drawing in just enough more of himself to make it easy. Then his shirt, and his pants, and his socks, which had stayed wonderfully dry inside his wellies.

Then he shook himself all over and stretched, drawing in more and more of himself. He had made himself too small last time; this time he knew he could add more. Still not everything—he did not care to be distracted, and he was not finished yet—but enough to be something like himself as he normally was. Enough to be the one Hob would recognize without hesitation.

It took ages, and the blink of an eye, and then he stood in Hob's bedroom, nearly twice as tall as he had been a moment before. He was suddenly not merely without his clothes but naked, with Hob's bed before him and Hob just outside.

Eager awareness rushed over his skin, and Dream turned toward the bedroom door just as he heard music begin to play on the other side. It was very different to the music Hob had played for him when he was sad and needed to lie on the floor under the weight of it; Dream was already smiling even before he heard the words.

I'm coming out—I'm coming—I'm coming out—

The scratchy, driving electric guitar and the horns made him want to dance, just as he had wanted to a moment ago, but the too-apt words had him fighting The Giggles so desperately that he could scarcely move. When his laugh finally did escape it was a loud, long bray that doubled him over with its force.

"Dream?" The music was still playing, but he could hear Hob just outside the door, and only laughed harder as he realized how thoroughly he had botched the reveal he might have made. "Dream, darling—"

The bedroom door opened, and Dream could not stop laughing, could barely manage to turn his head to see Hob standing in the doorway. For a moment he just looked stunned, and Dream felt his laughter die in his throat, but then Hob grinned, and Dream let himself crumple all the way to the floor as his laughter escaped again.

---

When he was small, Dream's laughter sounded bizarre but basically harmless; the big version raised the hairs on the back of Hob's neck, like hearing horns on a battlefield. Except that it was still Dream, and he was still very obviously laughing, so hard that as Hob watched he collapsed to the floor. He sprawled there entirely naked and making such horrible sounds that a small part of Hob wanted to go find that vial of holy water he kept somewhere in the flat and douse him, just to be sure.

After about thirty seconds Hob was laughing helplessly himself, from the sheer weirdness of the noise and the way it just kept going on. He staggered over and sat beside Dream, who looked up at him with those bright, happy eyes, and reached out a hand. Hob took it, pressing a kiss to Dream's knuckles and laying his free hand on Dream's belly, just below his ribs, where he could feel the laughter fighting its way out of him.

The big ugly heart-bruise was still there, marring the center of Dream's ivory chest, but for the first time Hob thought it was starting to look different. It was still black at the center, but the edges now had a significant margin where it was fading to brown and even green. Hob stroked his thumb along the edge, and Dream's laughter stuttered and trailed off into something close to a moan. Dream's hand squeezed hard on his, and Dream looked up at him intently.

Hob's breath caught, getting a proper look at Dream's face for the first time since he'd opened the bedroom door.

This was not the sweet youth he'd taken to bed last night. Dream still didn't have the full gravity of his stranger; he looked, in fact, like Hob's contemporary, which was to say somewhere between thirty-four and six hundred seventy years old.

"Hello, my friend," Hob said, smiling. "Welcome home. It's good to see you."

Dream's lips parted in some small surprise, though he surely couldn't have expected anything but welcome from Hob.

In the next room, the song changed to the opening chords of "Starships" and Dream gave a little jolt.

"Ah, yes," Hob said, pushing up to his feet and tugging Dream's hand as he went. "Time to dance, darling. Or have you remembered why you don't?"

"I left that under the bed," Dream said, and this time it was so precisely his stranger's voice that Hob felt it all down his spine. Dream saw the reaction, and smirked so openly that Hob couldn't help skating a look down over the rest of him.

Now that they were on their feet he could see Dream had restored that inch or two of height he'd lost last night. They stood exactly eye to eye now, and Dream had evidently also reclaimed a bit more of the power he normally had, because Hob's gaze only just skimmed down far enough to catch a glimpse of his prick—about the same as last night—before Dream was abruptly fully clothed in skinny black jeans and the done bleeding t-shirt Hob had given him to sleep in that first night. It was stretched at the shoulders, riding up a little from the top of his jeans.

Dream's feet remained bare, and his black-painted nails had an iridescent sheen; the red flames on his thumbs actually flickered, not just looking like it because of the light playing on them. Hob took the hand Dream offered, and Dream tugged, leading him back out to the living room where the music was still playing.

Dream dropped Hob's hand at once in favor of dancing, in exactly the same style of a few minutes ago, twirling and hopping in the bit of open space in the living room, throwing his arms around like he had no idea how to use them. Hob hesitated for about a half a second and then joined in, spinning and hopping and stomping more or less on the beat, just moving through the same space where Dream was with the music all around them.

Hob caught Dream's hand when it came flying toward him, and Dream held on, beaming at Hob. They hopped around together, gazes locked, until they both started laughing. Dream gave a hard tug on Hob's hand, and Hob let himself crash into Dream—and was caught, and held close, with an arm around his waist.

Dream kissed him hungrily, but not with last night's unrestrained eagerness. This time, Dream knew what he was doing. Hob was happy to let himself be kissed, plundered, bent back over that arm around him, right up until the speakers blared out the opening to "Come On, Eileen," and he had to turn his head and laugh again, helplessly.

Dream snickered against his cheek, sounding like something stuck in a drain, and Hob loved him so much he could hardly stand it.

Meanwhile, Hob's stomach gurgled back hopefully to Dream's laugh, and Hob sighed and straightened up, catching Dream's hand again while breaking his hold. "Come on, sweetheart. Time for dinner. Would you like something other than cheese on toast? We could get takeaway, or—"

Dream kissed him again—softly this time, not starting anything, only hushing his tumble of words long enough for Dream to say, "I would like cheese on toast above anything. I would especially like you to show me how to make it."

Hob was struck utterly wordless, staring at Dream with wondering love, his lips parted but without a sound coming to them.

"By my count you have made it at least forty times for me since I came here," Dream added. "It is surely my turn, now that I have hands big enough to manage a knife."

"If you like," Hob managed. "You know I—"

"I do know. You have taught me well," Dream said, leaning in not for a kiss but just to rest his forehead against Hob's. "You are happy to look after me. But today I wish to do something different. A challenge; an adventure."

"Well," Hob said. "All right. First step is we go into the kitchen, I think."

"Hmm," Dream said, tipping his head back to look into Hob's eyes. He'd gotten both arms around Hob again at some point, and his eyes were very blue, his lips that bewitching dark pink they'd always been, and Hob had been saying something fairly sensible a moment ago. He couldn't remember quite what it was.

"Yes," Dream finally said, his teeth flashing in a smile. "Let us go into the kitchen."

Hob groaned, and pulled himself away from Dream more emphatically this time. "Come on, then. I expect this to be the best cheese on toast I've ever had."

In truth, it could be cold and soggy or burnt to a crisp and Hob would still eat it with joy, just knowing that Dream had made it for him, but Dream was an attentive listener with deft hands and a slightly alarming focus on the grill. Hob occupied himself with clearing the nearly-dry ribbon from the table, relieved to see that there were scarcely any visible stains, and the color hadn't run noticeably. He hadn't known what he would do if it actually was beyond repair.

Dream didn't take any notice of Hob fussing with the ribbon, focused as he was on possibly the first bit of ordinary cooking he'd ever done in his billions of years of existence. He was quite rightly glowing with pride when he plated up two shares of cheese on toast, bread golden and crisp, cheese just melted.

They had scarcely sat down at the table when Dream took a bite and immediately made a pained noise. Hob, with a heroic effort, did not laugh. "Oh, my joy. I'm sorry. Grownup mouths burn just as easily. But I'll suck your dick about it later if that will help."

Dream looked less mournful for a moment, then even more so. "I wanted to suck your dick," he said to his plate, only a little petulantly.

Hob was only human; he narrowly avoided choking on his own bite of slightly-too-hot cheese on toast at that, which seemed to cheer Dream up considerably.

"Well, it's not going anywhere," Hob said, when he could speak properly. "And a burned mouth usually heals quickly. Here, I forgot to pour us anything to drink, I'll go get—"

"Oh," Dream said, and then reached into nothing—Hob was reminded of Death plucking that apple from the air—and produced a bottle of pale wine.

Hob grinned and got up. "Ready to try ice wine again? Let me get some glasses, no need to go rummaging around in the ether for those."

"I did not rummage," Dream said, though with a cheerful light in his eyes. "Nor did I trouble the ether."

Hob squinted at him as he set down the glasses. "Are you going to tell me the ether is a real thing, too?"

Hob didn't know why that should come as a surprise after having Odin at this same table, to say nothing of having met five others of the Endless and Dream casually talking about his visits to Hell, but he was really fairly certain science had disproven the ether at some point.

"The term could be applied to various realms and places between them," Dream said as he poured. "The one from which you rescued me, for instance."

"Well, that's not a good place to go rummaging for anything," Hob allowed. "Apart from yourself."

Dream smiled and raised his glass to clink against Hob's.

The wine was perfectly chilled and very sweet; after another sip Hob got up and poured each of them a pint glass of water to go with it, and Dream accepted his with an only slightly rueful smile. They spoke little after that, eating and drinking in a silence that was not exactly comfortable; they were both too aware of what would come after for that.

On the other hand, it wasn't uncomfortable, either. This kitchen table dinner was nothing like a date, where he would have been sure of the objective but also aware of all the ways things might go wrong, needing to please, anxious to make things work. Hob knew they were going to bed after this, because he knew they both wanted to; he didn't know what that would be like, but he was sure they would both enjoy it.

The simmering awareness was something Hob hadn't felt in a long time; it had been years since he had a partner he was sure of like this, and he'd never had one who he could be as utterly sure of as he was with Dream. It was like basking in the summer sun, this feeling, knowing that in a little while they'd be naked and driving each other wild, but for now they were just sipping wine and munching toast and eyeing each other. Waiting for it.

---

Dream had brought into himself enough memory of his past love affairs to know that none had ever been like this. There had been cat-and-mouse games, lingering plays of disinterest, but never had he simply sat with any of them in a kitchen, eating a rather plebeian meal—though one, he was pleased to find, that his adult palate still enjoyed, at the same time he was able to appreciate the wine. Never had he been so certain that while ending the evening with sex was the expectation, his beloved would be equally pleased to watch a film or resume their impromptu living room dance. The music, indeed, was still playing, though it was obvious Hob had entirely ceased to pay any attention to it.

When they finished eating, Hob took his plate and glass to the sink, glancing over his shoulder at Dream to say, "Would you like to take a turn washing, too?"

Dream gathered his own things and rose to join him by the sink, taking his accustomed place at Hob's right hand, even if not actually perched on the sink's edge. "If it is all the same to you," Dream said, "I find I do not mind the division of labor we have already arranged."

Hob grinned and handed him a towel.

Dream found that the drying went much faster when his hands were of a reasonable size in relation to each item; it made him aware of how patient Hob had been with his small self. Indeed, his small self must have been more a hindrance to Hob than a help, and yet Hob had included him, treated him as if he were an essential part of the process, each and every time.

Hob turned a little, handing Dream a glass to dry, and Dream closed his hand over Hob's on it and kissed him. It was mildly awkward with both of them still facing the sink, with a wet glass clasped in their tangled fingers, but Dream had no words for the way he loved Hob, the way he needed Hob to know it, to feel it, to understand.

When Dream finally broke the lingering kiss, Hob tipped his head against Dream's shoulder and murmured, a little breathlessly, "Yes, my joy. Just so."

Dream took the glass from him and smiled down at it all the while he was meticulously wiping it dry.

---

When the dishes were done, Dream led Hob by the hand out of the kitchen and smiled indulgently when Hob realized he'd left a playlist of dance hits blasting this entire time. The silence when he turned it off seemed somehow louder than the music had been, and Hob stared down at his phone for a moment, wondering if he ought to put something else on, or say something, or...

Dream gently took his phone away from him, setting it down on the coffee table by the unfinished picture he'd begun that afternoon. Hob reached both hands toward him as soon as Dream turned back to him, and Dream smiled—nearly a smirk—and bypassed Hob's outstretched hands to catch the hem of his t-shirt and pull that up instead.

Hob laughed and let him have it, ducking his head to make it easy. For a moment Dream just stared at him, and Hob remembered that reaction from the night before—but instead of lying back and letting Hob take care of him, this time Dream reached for him, getting his hands on the soft flesh just above Hob's hips and ducking his head to nuzzle into Hob's chest hair.

While he was distracted, Hob reached for the back of the t-shirt Dream was wearing and started trying to peel it off him, mostly to see if it would come off or would have to be magicked away.

It took some doing—Dream made a distinctly irritated noise when Hob got it up to his armpits and started pulling harder—but it did come off without tearing noticeably. Dream snatched the shirt from Hob's hand and dropped it on the floor with Hob's, and then resumed towing Hob through to the bedroom.

Dream tugged back the covers and pressed Hob down on the sheet as gently as Hob normally laid Dream's small self down, and Hob could only smile up at him. "Your turn to take care of me, is it?"

"Yes," Dream said, settling himself astride Hob's thighs and reaching for the button and zipper of Hob's jeans. "And more to the point, my turn to suck you off."

"Well, in that case, let's get to it," Hob agreed, wriggling free of his jeans and pants as soon as Dream got them unfastened. Dream gave a little wiggle of his own hips and was nude again without having to peel his jeans off, and this time Hob got a proper look at his prick, bobbing at half-mast when it was freed, ivory skin gone ruddy.

Hob was only half-hard himself, though Dream's hand wrapping around him made his whole body jerk toward that touch, and even lying down he went a little lightheaded from getting hard so fast. Hob had his eyes on Dream's face, though, and the smug little smile, the rising flush on Dream's pale cheeks, was nearly enough to get him there all by itself.

And then Dream scooted further down the bed and folded over to take Hob into his mouth.

Hob bit his lip and tried to hold back, but he couldn't tear his gaze away from Dream, watching those lips part around the head of his cock. Dream went absolutely still for just an instant, not even breathing, and Hob bit his lip harder against the urge to smile.

Dream had said last night that he'd never been with a man before; he'd never done this before, clearly. Hob couldn't remember any of his own first times with any clarity anymore, but he felt at least as much tender sympathy as amusement, watching Dream try to play off that moment of instinctive hesitation.

It was only a moment, in any case. Dream twitched back into motion—his hips shifted side to side like a cat's, preparing to pounce—and he exhaled over the head of Hob's prick, and oh, that was so much. Hob was back to staring at the ceiling and focusing on not coming instantly.

Could it possibly count as instantly, when he'd had more than six centuries to want this?

Dream's mouth slid lower over him, and Hob made a helpless noise and had to look, had to see his cock disappearing between Dream's lips.

He met Dream's blue eyes looking up at him.

"Oh, fuck, my joy," Hob managed, and Dream's eyes narrowed in a smug smile that his mouth was too occupied to shape. After a moment Dream's eyes fluttered shut, and a little wrinkle appeared on his brow as he focused on what he was doing, but still Hob couldn't tear his eyes away from his dearest friend, his beloved, his Dream sucking his cock for the first time.

It felt very much like a first time; Dream did not appear to have a natural aptitude for rhythm in this any more than he did in dancing, and he didn't know which things Hob liked best. It all felt good—Dream was avoiding the really obvious errors that first-timers were prone to, so there was hardly any way for it not to feel good—but he'd do the thing with his tongue that made Hob properly incoherent for a few seconds, then move on to sucking a bit too hard. Hob was too lost in the wonder of it to think of actually offering more useful feedback than making enthusiastic noises and gasping pet names, and anyway if Dream was doing only Hob's favorite things this would be over very quickly.

Hob didn't want it to end. He would stay here forever, caught in the pleasure and awe of this first time, if he only could.

He was human, alas, and Dream might be inexperienced, but he was paying attention. All too soon he'd figured out the right pressure and was definitely doing the tongue thing on purpose, and he had a hand on Hob's balls, one finger teasing behind them. Hob's gasping endearments turned to helpless noises. He got his hand into Dream's hair and gave a feeble tug of warning that Dream utterly ignored.

Hob gave up with a last helpless gasp, coming all over Dream's cleverly curling tongue; Dream pulled back halfway through, and Hob made a broken noise and maybe grayed out a little after seeing his own come spattering on those plush lips.

He couldn't have been gone long, though; the next he knew was Dream kissing him, and Hob groaned and licked the taste of himself off Dream's tongue. His arms wrapped around Dream, hauling Dream's body down into his, so that he could feel the heat and hardness of Dream's cock against his belly.

"What," Hob managed between kisses. "Love—anything—have me."

"I will," Dream said, but he clearly meant that as a promise for later rather than a statement of immediate intent; he lifted his hips enough to get a hand between them and started jerking himself in quick strokes, his knuckles dragging against Hob's belly on every pass.

Hob tilted his head away from Dream's kisses, craning his neck to see, and Dream obliged him, kneeling upright and jerking himself faster. Hob couldn't choose which to watch—Dream's tight grip on himself, his cock already dripping pre down onto Hob's middle, or Dream's face, tight with hunger and then going ecstatically slack all at once, his sweet red lips falling open as he came.

Hob made a helpless wanting noise as Dream spent all over him, striping his chest hair in milky white. Hob dragged his gaze back up to Dream's face, and found the blue eyes fixed avidly on him, and grinned.

The night was just getting started.

---

Hours later, pleasantly sore—but no longer sticky, after a shower in which Dream had spent an absurd amount of time washing Hob's hair for him, and Hob had mostly focused on standing upright—Hob fell back into his miraculously clean and dry bed with a luxurious yawn.

"Don't go to sleep," Dream said sternly, tugging him to sit up. "Not yet."

"If you—insist," Hob agreed, not very convincingly what with the great yawn that broke the words.

Dream kissed his forehead and darted out the bedroom door, and Hob stared after him, too utterly happy and endorphin-drunk to wonder where he'd gone. It was adorable of him to be doing whatever he was doing; it would be such a pleasure to see him return.

He did return, almost at once, with his hands full of red ribbon, and Hob's eyes overflowed with tears, his heart aching now as much as the rest of him.

"It is my turn," Dream announced, sprawling beside him on the bed. He wrapped the ribbon several times around Hob's left arm, testing carefully with a finger to be sure it wasn't too tight before he tied a knot.

Only then did he look up to meet Hob's gaze. His uncertain expression softened at once, seeing the tears on Hob's cheeks and his no doubt incredibly soppy smile; he kissed the tears away and then tied the other end of the ribbon firmly around his own arm, and then tugged Hob down to nestle together in the middle of the bed.

"Now we can sleep," Dream declared, and Hob could not argue with that, falling into dreams already.

---

 

Chapter 22

Hob lost all track of the days—and nights—after that. In the Waking and the Dreaming, he and Dream made love, and danced, and read books to each other. They ate extravagantly in the dining room at Dream's palace, and whatever they could scrounge up or order delivered in Hob's flat.

Dream was occasionally small. More frequently he was a cat, particularly when he thought Hob was not getting enough rest; it was impossible to resist napping with Dream purring in his lap or on his chest.

Twice, so far, Dream had been a thing made of shadows and tentacles; the first time he showed up that way it was to invent several sex acts Hob had never imagined in all his long life, which were terrifyingly intimate and gloriously messy and suffused with such unwavering love that it all felt far more sacred than sinful.

The second time Dream turned up as the tentacle-thing, he just wanted to sprawl across Hob's lap and hear the last few chapters of The Martian while holding the book and turning pages for Hob so that Hob could cuddle him and read at the same time.

Sometime after that, when Dream was largely human-looking and adult-sized, he emerged from a shower with Hob and said, "Do you suppose we could eat downstairs, today?"

Hob's mouth opened automatically to agree, and then he winced. His heart broke a little as he said, "That's... probably not a good idea, love. They know you as the small version, and seeing you big will confuse—"

Dream, unperturbed, shrank into his small form and wandered off to find his suitcase to get dressed; Hob shook his head and toweled off thoroughly before following him.

Hob was half-choked, as they sat down at their usual table in the kitchen, with the worst kind of anticipatory nostalgia. This part of his life was about to be over, and he couldn't let on to anyone that he knew it, but he was too overcome with emotion to act anything like normal.

Dream had no such qualms, eating fried mozzarella and chicken fingers and smiling sunnily at Marc. They were nearly done when Dream tugged on Hob's sleeve and asked, "Is it time yet? Do we have to go now?"

"Ah," Hob said. "Not... not quite yet, love. We have time."

"We're going to the airport," Dream announced to the room at large, and certainly got Marc's attention. "We're going to see my niece who's older than me but she's still my niece."

Marc, drifting over, raised his eyebrows at Hob, who pulled together a smile while mentally blessing and cursing Dream for giving him this way out. Given an instant to decide, Hob took it and ran with it.

"Finally figured out a better long-term situation for him," Hob semi-explained. "So I'm flying him over today—tonight. I might be away a while, getting him settled and all."

Marc nodded, giving Hob a long and gently concerned look—Hob supposed it would be no secret to anyone that he had gotten awfully attached to this child he was looking after supposedly temporarily.

"We'll miss you, young sir," Marc said simply, and before too long there was a cake, and what seemed to be most of the staff gathering around to wish them a safe trip and tell Dream he would be missed.

Dream, for all it had been his idea, turned shy under all the attention; Hob was left to say their goodbyes to everyone, meeting eyes and squeezing hands and smiling and smiling and smiling.

"Do we actually need plane tickets?" Hob asked when they were safely back in the flat, their shoes set neatly by the door. Dream made himself big and transformed his clothes right along with him, leaving him standing in adult-sized black overalls and striped black-and-white shirt. He wiggled his toes in red and black striped socks, and then refocused on Hob.

"Of course not," Dream said easily. "You need not even carry the boxes. Only tell me where we are going—the farthest, you said."

"Yeah," Hob agreed, giving himself one last second to consider not doing this right now and accepting that it was best to make the clean break he'd been offered. "I've got a flat set up in America—in New York."

A strange expression crossed Dream's face, and he murmured, "Perhaps we shall see Rose in truth," and then turned sharply away, saying, "Think clearly of the place, please."

Hob stared at Dream's back for a moment—the niece wasn't an invention, then, and she was somewhere in America, perhaps even in New York. But it was clear that Dream wasn't ready to talk about that, and Hob, a little selfishly, wasn't ready either, not when he was doing this move today, now, on half an hour's notice. He would have so much time with Dream; he could chase down that mystery some other day.

"Right," Hob said, and he closed his eyes and pictured the flat, the address, the views from the windows and the furniture he'd chosen a few years ago.

He opened his eyes and he was there—and so were the boxes of books he'd chosen to keep, and Dream's art things were scattered across and stowed under the coffee table. The main part of the flat was open plan, so he could see all his kitchen things already arranged there, his coffee maker and pile of coffee pod boxes already set up on the bench, his kettle right beside them.

Dream turned to face him, and he had three small knickknacks in his hands: the frog and cat and his turtle from the Thames. "Where shall I put these?"

Hob smiled, blinking away tears, and said, "Let's take a look around and see."

---

Several windows in Hob's new flat looked westward over the expanse of Central Park. Dream gazed out across it, slightly southward, for long enough that Hob said, "We can go walking there any time you like."

Dream tore his gaze away from the southwest horizon and kissed Hob. "I think we should make sure you are thoroughly at home here, first," Dream said, focusing himself in this body, in Hob's arms, in this love he could bask in, this love he had needed—continued to need—so very badly. "The bed looks luxurious, but far too pristine."

"Well," Hob said, grinning right back, "we can do something about that, I'm sure."

Dream dispensed with his own clothes—and restored their normal proportions, tucking them away into the little suitcase which now stood just inside Hob's new walk-in closet—on the way to the bedroom. He flung himself facedown on the bed with his legs spread and his hips canted up.

"Hmm, whatever would you like to do," Hob said, accompanied by the soft sounds of his own clothes dropping to the floor. "You're being very subtle and mysterious, my joy."

"Am I," Dream said, turning his head to watch Hob over his shoulder, kneeling between Dream's spraddled legs. "I wonder how I can be—ahh."

There was no need to tease about being better understood, and Dream could spare no attention even to joke about it. Hob had bent to his task without hesitation, his tongue pressing to the furl of muscle at the entrance to his body. Dream could make himself ready for Hob with a thought, with a mere twist of will, but...

But then Hob would not have to prepare him, and Dream would not deny either of them the luxury of Hob's unhurried attentions. Hob licked, and pressed open-mouthed kisses, and teased now with a thumb, now with a fingertip, before he went back to the softer caresses of his mouth. With every sweet touch, Hob worshiped the place in Dream that would give way to him, that would allow them to join together.

And with every touch, he made Dream more desperately eager for that joining to commence. His cock was hard, wet already at the tip where the skin drew back, but there was no satisfaction to be had against the sheets of Hob's bed, not when he wanted Hob instead. He pushed up into Hob's mouth, those glancing touches of his fingers, which meant no friction at all. He whined, and Hob finally entered him, just the tip of a finger slipping through that ring of muscle now made soft and welcoming by Hob's attentions.

Dream pressed his face into the mattress and groaned, but he did not beg for Hob to hurry, or to desist.

Hob would take as much time as he required—as much time, Hob had admitted after the first time, as a human jaw's musculature would allow—and Dream would relish every moment of it, however maddening the wait could be. Almost more than the pleasure of Hob's coaxing mouth and gently entreating fingers, Dream could not resist the sweetness of it, the care that Hob took with him, to be sure that their lovemaking would be nothing but pleasurable for him—the more so, because they both knew such caution was unnecessary.

There was no time, here in Hob's bed, no need to look forward or back. There was only Hob's mouth on him, and Hob's finger sliding into him, stroking and teasing and amplifying everything. Dream writhed, the little bit he could without being in danger of making Hob stop; he was held fast by wanting more, a far more effective tether than any other Hob could possibly devise.

Hob's fingers, working inside, found the place that turned this from a prelude to sex into the thing itself, pleasure jolting through him and rising higher with every touch. Hob didn't hesitate this time, having learned Dream's preference the first time around, but Dream turned his head so that Hob could hear him as he gasped, "Yes, yes, now, now."

The rhythm of Hob's licks and kisses faltered, and Hob made a muffled sound against him—almost a laugh, and the humid puff of breath against him was its own pleasure. Dream found himself smiling too, laughing a little as he went on insisting, "Yes, Hob, yes, now, yes."

There was no mockery in Hob's laughter, only joy in him. Dream took an equal joy in Hob and in all they did together, but especially in Hob's fingers stroking inside him, Hob's tongue finding every impossibly sensitive place along his rim, Hob driving him onward relentlessly toward a shattering peak of pleasure.

Dream's pleas dissolved into noise, into gasps. His fists clenched in the sheets, his hips jerked helplessly, wanting more, wanting nothing but Hob, until all wanting vanished in a tide of perfect pleasure.

When he returned to himself, Hob's fingers were still inside him, gentle and patient. Hob was pressing kisses to the curves of his buttocks, and Hob's other hand petted up and down his thigh—simple caresses that were not too much for him even when he was replete as he was now.

Then Hob's finger curled inside him, a beckoning and a question, and Dream whined into the sheets and nodded. "More. More."

Hob gave him more, coaxing him back from satiation to hunger, easing him all over again into softness, readiness, until he was slick and wet and open and crying, "Hob, now."

Hob's fingers finally withdrew from him, and Hob's lips pressed a last lingering kiss before Hob was moving, and it was Hob's cock testing his opening, kissing and withdrawing, pressing just inside only to pull back. Dream planted his knees and pushed, and then he had Hob inside him, Hob's cock sinking deep, and Hob's body blanketing his, Hob pressing clumsy kisses to the back of his shoulder, the side of his neck.

"Oh, my joy, my darling," Hob murmured, slurring a little with the weariness of his mouth.

"My love," Dream returned, reaching back to catch Hob's hand and squeezing it, for he was no more articulate than Hob, if for different reasons.

Hob squeezed back and got his other hand on Dream's hip, holding him at the angle Hob wanted. Dream wailed into the sheets as Hob thrust into him, and the pleasure was too much and not enough and just exactly right. Dream was hard again, and he dragged Hob's hand down to his own cock as Hob fucked him. He did not want to let go, and yet he needed Hob's touch there.

Hob was laughing a little, his lips buzzing against Dream's skin, and he solved the problem by shifting his grip on Dream's hand. Dream gripped his own prick, with Hob's hand wrapped around his. Hob guided his movements, holding his hand and bringing him off all at once.

Dream started laughing too—it was so perfectly Hob, to find the way to give him every contradictory thing he wanted at once while still fucking him, still smearing half-kisses against his skin. Dream had never believed he could have everything he'd ever wanted, but Hob believed it enough for both of them.

Hob's laughter changed to a startled moan, and his thrusts got faster, harder, his grip around Dream's hand tightening. Dream kept right on laughing, knowing that it was laughing together that had brought Hob to the brink of coming, knowing that he would be—he was—laughing as he felt Hob come inside him, and still laughing until his breath choked off because he was coming too.

---

Hob nearly dozed off right there, sprawled across Dream in the ridiculous king-sized bed, but one lazy blink showed him that Dream had not forgotten, when moving the contents of Hob's flat from London to New York, to bring the ribbon. It was piled up by one of the pillows, which seemed an impossible distance, but Hob drew himself free of Dream and crawled to it.

When he turned back toward Dream, he found Dream had rolled over and offered his left arm, and Hob smiled blearily down at him and tied the ribbon in place, then tied it around his own wrist.

"Shouldn't be tired," Hob muttered, stretching out beside Dream and letting himself be gathered in. "It's even earlier in New York. Morning, still. We can go—" He yawned, dropping his head on Dream's shoulder, and was asleep before he'd decided what to suggest for lunch in New York.

Between one blink and the next, they were in Dream's bed in the palace. The bed, Hob noticed with amusement, had grown to the proportions of Hob's new one, though it had been fairly narrow the last time Hob remembered seeing it.

Hob pushed himself up on an elbow and looked down at Dream, who was sprawled on his back, his left arm still curled loosely around Hob. Dream looked up at him with heavy-lidded eyes, a little smirk curling his berry-pink lips—no doubt already considering what they could get up to next.

Darkness drew Hob's gaze down to the heart-bruise that still had not faded. It had shrunk to something Hob's hand could cover, but the center of it remained black as ever.

Hob traced the edges with one finger. "We're still missing something, aren't we, love? This still isn't healing, not like the others did."

"It is old," Dream said, sounding unconcerned, just as he always had. "No doubt it will take more than a few weeks to recover."

Hob shook his head, frowning. "It's not a bruise, really, though. It's a symbol—a story, isn't it? It's gotten better, so all of this is helping, but... there's something else you need, isn't there? Something you're not getting."

Dream went very still.

Hob looked up, and found that his eyes had gone black and starry. He leaned up and pressed a quick kiss to Dream's mouth. "I love you, Dream. I know you love me. But there's something, isn't there? You needed to be small, and you need to be with me like this, as... equals, I suppose, at least enough to be lovers, but..." Hob supposed, if he thought of it that way, there was an obvious gap.

"Is it that you need to be big, with someone else small?" Hob looked down at himself dubiously. "I suppose you always were something much bigger than me, when you were your whole self. Much bigger than your dreamfolk, too, but... is that what you need? Someone to be small and—"

Hob could feel it, almost real for a moment in the way that any idea could be in the Dreaming: himself in a child's form, held in Dream's arms, looking up at him with trust and love and—

The possibility vanished, dumping Hob back into Dream's bed with Dream scrambling away from him, pushing Hob away at the same time. "No," Dream said. "No, that is not necessary. We should—"

"Okay," Hob said, grabbing the ribbon that connected them to keep himself from being pushed back, to keep Dream from going out of reach. "Okay, that's—"

Dream yanked hard against the ribbon, and the snap of This dream is over was not so much words in Dream's voice as a reverberation of the whole universe around him.

Hob jerked upright and found he was alone in his own bed in the Waking—in New York—alone. He found he was clutching the end of the ribbon, and stared in horror at the frayed end where it had torn apart.

Dream was gone.

---

The rainbows faded from the sky more quickly than they had been accustomed to for the last several days. Clouds began to cover the blue, and within a moment transformed to utter blackness as a hurricane struck the Dreaming.

Dream howled back at the storm, and he was the howling of the storm; every drop of scouring seawater that lashed his creation was a tear from his own eyes. The wind that shook every inch of the Dreaming shook him first, and the eye of the storm was the emptiness of his own arms where he did not hold anyone small enough that they would be ruined when he failed them.

Hob had never been that small, even when he was nothing but a mortal peasant; he had said it himself. If his fondest dream had never come true, he would never have known the difference. He would have regarded death as only another adventure, and gone to it with the same eager curiosity he turned on his unending life.

Orpheus had been small like that.

Orpheus had been wonderfully, terribly small, and Dream had done nothing but fail him, and was failing him even now. Dream had made himself small enough to forget his son for a time, to heal some of the wounds he carried, but this had always been waiting for him. The grief that could not be mourned, the failure that could not be forgiven or moved beyond. The unfillable void that everything else spiraled around. The black hole he could never, would never escape.

And still, still, there was something smaller yet within him that wanted not to be alone in his agony. He remembered—such a small thing, from such a vast distance—screaming inconsolably on Hob's living room rug.

He remembered Hob, sitting somewhere nearby, speaking softly to him, never leaving him no matter how Dream raged.

If Hob were here now, he would stand against the wind and the rain and spread his arms wide, and Dream could go to him. Dream would not be alone, then.

---

Alone in his bed in the morning light of an unfamiliar flat, Hob stared at the frayed and broken ribbon and gasped for breath as if he were drowning. He couldn't see anything else, couldn't feel anything, couldn't think; he burst into tears and the sobs hurt, shaking his whole body as they emerged, and his hands ached from clutching the broken ribbon, as though holding on to the ragged end that remained could do anything now.

He had pulled too hard. He had asked too much. And now he was alone again and he couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't think. Couldn't reach Dream.

Hob squeezed his eyes shut and saw it again and again, Dream scrambling away from him, Dream pushing him away. He had grabbed the ribbon to hold them together, and Dream...

Dream had looked, just in that last instant, panicked. As panicked as Hob felt now, having lost him.

Hob grabbed a pillow and hid his face in it, forcing his breathing to slow and steady, letting the tears and gasps be absorbed together.

Dream had been scared.

In the last stretch of luxuriously unmarked time, Dream had become more of himself, day by day, leaving less and less under the bed, but he was still Dream. He was still Hob's beloved friend, his darling and his joy. He could still be frightened into a tantrum; he was just bigger now, and so was the tantrum.

He hadn't wanted Hob to touch him while he was screaming, that very first time he broke down. He had been too upset to even know he wanted to be comforted.

But in the end he had calmed down. He had leaned against Hob and let himself be held and soothed.

Hob raised his head from the pillow and looked at the ribbon again. Dream had not untied himself from it; he had not cut it. He had simply pulled away so hard and so fast that no mere length of satin could hold him back. He had not made any sort of choice.

This was not over yet. Nothing was decided.

Hob wrapped the whole remaining length of ribbon around his forearm, tucking the poor broken end in under the loops. He sat up and looked around the bedroom. The sheets were rumpled from him and Dream making love here, surely just minutes ago. Dream's little black suitcase with its star-capped corners stood just inside the closet door. Hob's own discarded clothing was scattered on the floor at the foot of the bed.

He left it there and rummaged in the bureau drawers, finding his own clean clothes all transferred exactly. He got dressed, ready to go walk in the park. It would be hotter in New York than London; he chose loose jeans and a light shirt. He went into the bathroom to wash his face, and saw that Dream's little toothbrush was in the cup beside his own, Dream's comb and nailbrush set neatly beside the sink.

Hob braced himself on the sink and cried a little, helplessly, but then he took a few deep breaths, washed his face and tidied up his hair.

He went into the study, where Dream's turtle was still on the windowsill, beside the frog and cat figurines Dream had taken such a shine too. "You'll see it whenever you like," Hob whispered, running a finger over the gold plates of the turtle's shell. "You'll be here all the time with me."

Hob's laptop was there, too, on the desk. Hob sat down and started it up, trying to think of what he could do other than wait for Dream to come back. Even if he could find Dream's book, he didn't think calling upon any of Dream's siblings would be helpful, except that...

He had thought of it when he met Death: she could have told him where that abyss of despair in Dream came from. He had thought, then, of Dream in 1689, the grief in his eyes as Hob told him his misfortunes that had not only been for Hob.

Holding Dream in his arms, when Dream was at his most helpless, had reminded Hob painfully of holding Robyn. Had that flash of a thought, the idea of Dream holding someone small in his arms, reminded him of a loss of his own? One he had never recovered from?

Dream had been married once before. He had said that he and his wife—the muse, Calliope—had taken joy in shared creation.

Hob opened up a browser and typed in a search.

There it was, the second line of her bloody Wikipedia article: Calliope had a famous son, Orpheus.

"Oh, fuck," Hob whispered. "Oh, Dream, my darling—"

He felt a presence behind him, and turned to find that the room had grown impossibly dark. Still he could see the even-darker figure in the far corner of the room, because his eyes were filled with stars. "It is a worse story than you know."

Dream sounded hoarse, and Hob knew that he'd been crying too.

Hob was on his feet at once, but he hesitated in the middle of the room; Dream had placed himself in the farthest corner. Chasing him would only make him retreat again.

Hob pushed up his sleeve, baring the ribbon wrapped around his arm, and tugged the broken end free. Squinting into the darkness about where Dream's hands should be, he could just make out a glimmer of shining red.

"I'm sorry to hear that, love," Hob said softly, holding the end of the ribbon in both hands. "And I want you to tell me all about it, and I want to do anything I can to help you. But first, will you mend this? I think you can."

The red gleam around Dream's hands resolved into a length of ribbon, still tied around his wrist and trailing through his hands as he worried the short length between restless fingers. "It means nothing."

"It means what it means to us," Hob said firmly. "And to me it means something important, and so I am asking you, even if you think it's a bit silly: will you mend this?"

"It will never be exactly the same," Dream said, pale fingers rubbing over the frayed end, fraying it worse.

"No, nor was it after a dousing in the Thames," Hob agreed. "Nor after having knots tied in it a hundred times. It doesn't have to be the same to be ours, and be what we need it to be."

Dream's eyes met his, still dark and full of distant stars. Tears leaked from them, and Hob wanted nothing more than to draw Dream close and comfort him, but he needed Dream to take a step out of that corner first. He needed to know comforting was what Dream needed, and he thought Dream needed this as badly as he did.

"Please," Hob said. He had asked twice already, but didn't the most important things always come in threes? "Be here with me, Dream. Please, will you mend the ribbon, as best you can?"

Dream took a halting step forward, and then another. Hob could see now that he was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, neither one quite black. His bare feet stood out in the shadowy darkness as vividly as his pale hands and arms, and the ribbon seemed like the only color in the world.

"What if I cannot," Dream said even as he brought his hands to Hob's, touching the frayed ends together. "What if it is beyond even me?"

Hob gave a little tug, and touched his forehead to Dream's—they were the same height again. "Look, love, if you really can't, then you can't. We'll tie a knot in it and get on with our lives, or I'll get out the darning kit and make my best old hash of it. But I'll bet you can do more than you think you can."

A faint gleam of humor stirred in Dream's dark eyes; his mouth crooked in the faintest shadow of a smile. "What will you wager, my friend?"

Hob smiled back. "A kiss and a plate of cheese toast, and they're both yours either way. Come on, my joy. Just try."

Dream sighed, and the exhaled breath turned to sparkling sand as it fell over their hands, and the two broken ends of the ribbon glittered like stars and moved like serpents, finding each other and pushing together. The snapped threads reached to each other like tiny grasping hands, unwinding from their minute ply and then winding together again. Warp and weft undulated, finding their places, weaving back into a solid ribbon.

When Dream was finished, Hob could still see the place where the break had been—the bright satin finish had not been entirely restored, and the ribbon had a permanent slight wrinkle there.

Still, it was whole again. He and Dream were tied together again, the way they both chose to be.

It wasn't just the ribbon, Hob knew, even if neither of them was quite ready to put words to it yet. This was a promise, a commitment. They were bound to each other by Dream's choice to come back, by Hob's choice to ask for this connection, and Dream's granting of it. If there was nothing more between them than the last several days' blur of lovemaking and luxuriating in each other, Dream's bolt from him might have been the end—but they had promised each other forever, had won it with weeks of practice in loving and being loved, in centuries of returning to each other, faithful to their odd friendship.

They belonged to each other now, and that meant that Dream's grief was Hob's as well.

"Thank you, love," Hob said softly, catching Dream's mouth for a brief, chaste kiss. "Now I'll make you some cheese on toast and you'll tell me about Orpheus."

Dream's arms went around him, clinging tight, and Hob felt the shudder of a sob go through Dream's entire body. After a moment Dream gave a tiny nod, and he did not resist when Hob took his hand and let him out of the shadows and into the kitchen.

Hob had to let go when they got there, finding his way around the kitchen's new layout, only mildly disoriented at the way he kept finding familiar things in slightly wrong places. Dream stayed nearly in arm's reach anyway, only reaching out to switch on the kettle.

Hob frowned at it. It was the same kettle he'd had in his kitchen when he woke up this morning, in another country on the other side of an ocean. "Did you... did you change the plugs? Or the outlets? Or should I just... not think about it too hard?"

Dream made a not-entirely-reassuring thoughtful noise and then said, "Obviously it was simplest to change the plugs."

"Obviously," Hob agreed, and watched Dream's fingers move lightly over the box of hot chocolate pods. "Want me to start one of those for you?"

Dream ducked his head, not meeting Hob's gaze, but nodded. Hob leaned fully against him instead of stepping around, sneaking in a hug and another kiss while he got the pod from the box and put it in the machine.

When he got down a mug for each of them, Dream was very nearly smiling.

The smile faded as they sat down together at the table. Hob brought his chair over next to Dream's, so that they didn't have to make eye contact. He slung an arm around Dream's bowed shoulders, and then said softly, "All right, love. Will you tell me about Orpheus?"

Dream nodded, and took a tiny bite of toast, chewing and swallowing before he said quietly, "He was a beautiful child. I had never imagined being a father, but he was... a wonder to me."

Tears gleamed at the corners of his eyes; Hob took a bite of toast himself instead of wiping them away, forcing himself to be quiet and listen.

"I did not... approve," Dream said slowly. "Of his love of Eurydice. I thought..." Dream's gaze darted to meet Hob's, and his eyes were blue again. "Well. That is the part of the story everyone knows. He was mortal—Endless are not gods, and have no divinity to pass on to our children. We are personifications; my son was simply a person. Still he had his mother's blood. He could have lived..."

Dream swallowed with an effort that looked painful; Hob nudged his mug closer, and Dream took a sip and wrapped both hands around it when he lowered it, as though he needed the warmth.

"I told him," Dream whispered, his eyes closing. "I told him. She is dead, and you are alive. So live."

Hob winced. "That's... no more than I would have had to tell Robyn, in that situation."

Dream shook his head, and the tears spilled down his cheeks from under closed lids. "You would not have done it the way I did. Orpheus denied me that day—said he would be no more known as my son, only as Calliope's child. It was not Orpheus that we named him in his cradle—Orpheus means orphan. Fatherless. He rejected me so entirely that even the name I bestowed was lost to all memory; I cannot recall it even now."

Hob's own throat ached, and he felt his own tears spill. He had fought with Robyn enough times, but never like that.

"I failed him," Dream whispered. "I did not—I did nothing. Nothing to help him in his grief. I did not hold him in my arms. I did not even take his hand. I did not lie down with him and call upon the stars to sing funeral hymns, that he might know he was not alone when he was weighed down by his sadness. I did not tell him stories where the grief is not the end; I did not—"

Hob couldn't bear it anymore. He twisted in his seat, pulling Dream fully into his arms, mug of cocoa and all, but Dream kept speaking even as he began to weep.

"I did not—fix him something hot to drink. I did not—give him—food to eat, to remind him that life—life goes on. I spoke his true name for the last time that day, but I never told him what it meant—that he was dear to me—darling—that his very breath—his very existence—was sweet to me—that all my joy—" Dream's voice broke hard on that, and Hob barely held back a sob of his own.

"All my joy," Dream repeated hoarsely. "All my joy resided in him. And he took it all away with him, when he went down into the underworld. I did not tell him that I knew it hurt, and I did not—I did not beg him to stay. He was right to call himself fatherless, with such a father as that. Why did I not beg him on my knees? Why did I not tell him? Why did I not hold his hand?"

Hob got a hand on the back of Dream's neck and rocked him, as best he could, pressing kisses to his hair. "You didn't know, love. Who ever held your hand? Who begged you to stay? Did you look at him and think to yourself, I know how I could help, and—and just decide not to? Or did you just not know anything to tell him except that he had to go on? That was the only thing you knew to tell yourself, wasn't it?"

Dream's only answer was a ragged sob. Hob took the mug from his hands and set it on the table, and hauled Dream, awkward as he was at this size, into his lap to hold him tighter.

"It is worse," Dream went on, eventually. "The story you know was not the end. He returned to the world of the living alone, but still with my sister's gift upon him—and not laid so lightly as yours. He could not choose to refuse it. He grieved for years before he was set upon by the maenads, and when he would not join their revels, they tore him limb from limb, and even then he could not—he has not—"

Hob took a shuddering, horrified breath. He had not known until a fortnight or so ago that he had a choice about when his immortality would end; he had contemplated how he would manage without a limb or two, and had shied away from thinking of worse damage than that. Orpheus, who by Dream's description had probably wanted to die already...

"Wait," Hob said. "Wait, Dream, are you telling me he isn't dead?"

Dream froze, and then raised his head to meet Hob's gaze. His lips parted, but no sound came out, and that was answer enough.

Hob shook his head, reeling Dream in again. "Darling, love, you know what that means. The story isn't over yet."

"I swore," Dream said. "I said I would never..."

Hob squeezed him tighter. "What's that, to your son alive? What's that, to another chance to beg him on your knees to stay?"

Dream clung tighter, and that was an answer too.

---

 

Chapter 23

Dream's head was spinning at the sheer possibility of what Hob suggested, but he dared not believe it. "I cannot... there is so much, it has been so long. I cannot make it right. I cannot..."

"Ask for help, then," Hob murmured, still holding him close. "You said it was your sister who gave him her gift, wasn't it? You didn't fuck this up all by yourself, maybe you can't fix it by yourself either. That's what you've got me for, and that's what family's for. There's got to be something, Dream. The story's not over yet and you're the prince of stories. There must be a way."

"He was," Dream swallowed bile, swallowed arguments. "His body was destroyed. He does not truly live now, but—his head—"

"Christ," Hob muttered, and Dream could feel the horror of it rattle through him. "But—I mean—mostly dead is slightly alive, right? He's... conscious?"

Dream nodded. "He is an oracle, attended by priests in his temple."

"So not alone, that's good," Hob exhaled, and Dream, whole in himself as he was, could feel the imaginings boiling up through Hob's mind, the way he could not help but imagine himself in Orpheus' place. To be alone would surely be the worst thing, for Hob. "There are ways to make things better. There have to be ways you can help him, if he'll let you. But you have to talk to him, love, before anything else. You have to tell him you wish you'd done things differently, and that you want to try to be his father again, and better this time."

A part of Dream bristled at being told what he must do; a considerably louder part of him quailed at the task before him.

He was not ready. He needed more time. He needed to learn more, of how to love and be loved, how to care and be cared for. His quest could not possibly be complete, if he still felt so daunted by what lay before him.

But of course it was not complete. Of course he could not claim to have learned anything, while his son still called himself fatherless, and awaited his long-overdue death in a lonely temple.

"What if I cannot persuade him," Dream whispered. "What if I beg him, fall upon my knees and plead with him, and he only wants to die?"

Hob hugged him tighter, and he felt the heat of Hob's tears against his own skin. "I don't know, love. What then?"

"He cannot simply die for the asking," Dream whispered. "And yet to spill family blood is the one thing forbidden to the Endless."

"Is it," Hob said, in an entirely different tone, and his finger touched behind Dream's ear—the place where Despair had marked him.

"I think the Kindly Ones will not hunt my sister over a single drop," Dream said, allowing himself the brief distraction. "But it is why your words to her hold weight; you shall have what recompense you demanded for the harm she did to me, because my sister knows that in that drop of blood she transgressed. If I am to give Orpheus what he is bound to ask of me..."

"Can I do it for you?" Hob asked, as though that were a simple question. "I've killed enough, God knows, and if it's a mercy then it won't trouble me any more than those do."

Dream opened his eyes and stared at the shiny surface of Hob's new refrigerator. "I... do not know."

"Destiny would know, wouldn't he? And Death will know what's needed. And if it's to be goodbye... all your siblings should be there, shouldn't they? If this is a family thing?"

"Perhaps," Dream allowed, and he realized that this much he had done, at least for five of his six siblings: he would not fear to call upon them, and he did not doubt that they would come to Naxos when he asked them to, and offer what aid they could in the matter of Orpheus.

"You—you will come with me?" Dream asked, forcing the words out of a choking-tight throat. The question was barely a question, given how tightly Hob held him, and yet he could not have asked it of anyone else, and barely could now.

Dream felt a tug on his wrist, and realized Hob was pulling on the ribbon that still—once again, now that it was mended, and invested with all the meanings of that mending—bound them together. "Don't you dare leave me behind, my joy. Not for this."

Dream nodded, and moved them before he could lose his nerve.

Hob made a startled noise and jerked away a little at finding himself abruptly seated, not on his kitchen chair, but on the grassy ground under the single cherry tree that grew beside the temple. Dream remained in his lap, and they were both still clinging tightly to each other.

Then a boy with a gun popped up from the shrubbery around the temple and demanded to know where they had come from. Dream was on his feet, Hob scrambling up beside him and trying to put himself between the boy and Dream.

"We came by our own path," Dream said, and sent the boy to sleep before either he or Hob could get overexcited and complicate matters further.

The boy crumpled to the grass, and Hob, who had an instant before been ready to guard Dream against him, shot Dream a narrow look and rushed over to him. He rolled the boy onto his side and then unloaded the gun in sharp, efficient movements that made sunlight flash on the ribbon extending between them.

"Naturally I would not have allowed him to come to harm," Dream said, and dissolved the ammunition in Hob's hand to harmless golden sand. On reflection, the gun as well.

Hob shot him a stern look and then jerked his chin toward the temple, where an older man had appeared—the boy's grandfather, and the present hereditary priest attending Orpheus.

"Andros Rhodocanakis," Dream greeted him with a nod. "How fares my son?"

Andros studied him for a long moment, then said simply, "Our lord talked to me this morning. He warned me that today might prove an unusual day. He did not say how unusual."

Dream nodded, wondering if Orpheus might know already what Dream had come here to say, and so spare him saying it—but he knew it was an unworthy thought as soon as it crossed his mind. He remembered his smallest, most helpless self, demanding that Hob say good morning, love and darling and sweetheart. He had known all those words already, had known that he was loved and cherished, but he had needed Hob to say the words anyway.

Dream had to say what he had to say, and Orpheus would be within his rights to demand he repeat himself daily—hourly—for the next three thousand years. Dream would do so gladly, if it meant Orpheus lived so long.

Motion dragged his attention from the doorway into the little temple. Dream realized that Andros had gone to kneel beside the boy, and Hob was standing just out of reach at Dream's side.

Dream turned to him at once, and Hob pulled him into a fierce hug. "Just tell him," Hob murmured. "Start there, then we can figure out the rest. I'll be right here. I love you, my joy. My darling."

"My love," Dream murmured back, holding tightly. A part of him was well aware that he should not need such support and reassurance, but the rest was busy needing it very badly indeed, and basking in having it.

Eventually Hob's grip loosened, and Dream accepted that cue to let go, though he curled his fingers around the ribbon and let it play out through his fingers as he strode quickly toward the temple.

It was a small space, a single white marble room with arched windows. Orpheus awaited him on a marble slab; beside him, a vase was filled with lilac flowers.

Orpheus looked up at him with a sad, patient gaze, and Dream quickly crossed the small space and knelt down face-to-face with him.

"I am—sorry," Dream said. His voice was already shaking, his eyes already filling with tears; there was so much to say and he was stumbling already. "My son. If you will allow that you are—even if you do not. Even if you cannot forgive—I am sorry. I regret so much. I failed you. I did not know how profoundly, I did not understand then, but—I have begun to learn, now. And I am sorry. I love you. I have always loved you—I have always regretted. I—my—"

My joy. The words were on the tip of his tongue, blocking anything else, and he could not speak them, choked with grief, and with the fear of yet greater grief to come.

"Father," Orpheus said, and though he could not move, something in the direction of his gaze spurred Dream to raise a hand to touch, just one trembling thumb to his son's smooth cheek, and then his whole hand cradling the side of Orpheus' face.

His son again in truth; he wondered if he could beg Orpheus to say it again and again. Father. No name could sound so sweet to him as that did, spoken by his son again after all these years.

Orpheus' eyes half-closed in something very like contentment at Dream's touch, then opened again, focusing steadily on him. "You have changed," he said, his voice shaking with something like humor, something like wonder. "Mother visited me last year and told me you had freed her, and I thought you must have, but... you have changed far more than that."

"I have," Dream agreed. "I did not think it possible, but... I have had help. And I wish now to help you, if I can. I know that you—you have wanted—"

"To die," Orpheus supplied. "It is all I have longed for, ever since I failed my Eurydice. And yet... I fear it. But to live again, truly live... I think I fear that even more."

Dream raised his other hand to wipe away the tears which trailed from Orpheus' eye. "It is a fearful thing, my son. Life is pain, as you surely know. And yet there is so much to discover, so much love, so much joy all intermingled with the pain. If you die you must go alone to your end—even after you find Eurydice, you will drink the waters of Lethe, and forget even your love for her that drew you to her. For so long as you live, you may yet go on loving her, and—and you need not be alone. I will be with you, my son, as much as you will allow. I will help in every way I can, in any way you need. If..."

"You said to me," Orpheus said, his blue eyes studying Dream intently, despite the sheen of tears that still veiled them. "You told me—your life is your own. Your death, likewise. Always, and forever, your own."

Dream remembered it; he remembered all too clearly being the one who had said it, who had believed it. For a moment he could not even speak to contradict himself, did not know where to begin. He had changed so much, he could scarcely find words.

"But you also said that we would not meet again," Orpheus murmured. "And here you are, holding me as you have not since I was a child."

"My son," Dream repeated helplessly, and leaned in to press a kiss to Orpheus' forehead, to each cheek. "Oh, my son. The choice is yours, that is true. But please—I know that it hurts, I know that you are right to be afraid, but please—please, my darling, please choose to stay a while longer. Please, just live."

---

There was a grave under the cherry tree, belonging to Lady Johanna Constantine. She had been dead thirty years already when Hob and Dream met in 1889, and Dream mentioned the task she had done for him—something related to Orpheus, no doubt. Hob could see why Dream would have preferred someone who was nothing like a friend. Hob would have had a lot more to say to him in 1889 than just that he seemed lonely, if he had known about this place. About Dream's son.

He could hear Dream's voice rising and falling, and Orpheus' softer voice responding, though he couldn't understand a word either of them were saying. The language sounded something like Greek, but while Hob's rusty knowledge of the language had let him understand some of what the boy and old man said, this was beyond him completely.

He knew the sound of Dream struggling to make himself understood, though, and so he stayed close enough to go on hearing what he could, leaving plenty of slack in the red ribbon that trailed from his wrist to Dream's.

It was no hardship staying in place; it was a beautiful spot, the vast sky a deep blue arch over darker blue water. He could see another island—or possibly another part of this island—just across the way. There was a little villa there.

A man emerged; he was a tiny figure at this distance, but Hob could make out his flaming red hair. He seemed to look down and speak to his dog, who pranced around him, and then he put his hands on his hips and seemed to stare right across at Hob.

Hob stepped out of the shadow of the cherry tree and waved.

After a long moment, the man waved back, and then looked down at his dog again. Finally he walked away—not back into the house, but away from it along some path that soon went out of Hob's sight.

Even before he was all the way out of view, Hob was distracted by an alteration in the sound of Dream's voice; he turned toward the temple just in time to see Dream emerging, his face streaming with tears and split in a grin beyond anything Hob had ever seen on his face. In his arms, Dream cradled... a head, with dark hair and blue eyes that were stunningly like his own. It could only be Orpheus, and he was smiling too, and looking a bit teary with it as well.

"Hob," Dream said, turning that beaming smile on him without the joy in it diminishing by one whit, "I would like you to meet my son, Orpheus. Orpheus, this is my beloved and dearest friend, Hob Gadling."

Hob experienced an immediate and obviously wrong impulse to offer a hand to shake, and tugged at his ear as he smiled helplessly. "Hello, Orpheus. Amazing to meet you. Oh—do you—"

Dream had spoken in English, as far as Hob could tell, but he had heard the same thing when Dream spoke to the boy and the old man, and they had responded in their own language.

"I understand you," Orpheus said, in accented but beautifully melodious English. "And I am pleased to meet you as well. I understand you are responsible for my father's visit today."

"Oh," Hob said, because that seemed like a lot to take responsibility for. "Well, I... I encouraged him, yeah."

"You have done more than that, my love," Dream said warmly, and he came to stand at his side, leaning over for a quick kiss that did not trap Orpheus between their bodies.

Orpheus, when Hob glanced down to see his reaction, looked tolerantly amused, and said, "What is your plan now, father?"

Dream just stared down at him looking besotted for a moment, then seemed to come back to himself. "Ah. Yes. That... depends on what you want, I suppose." Dream looked at Hob, and Hob could see quite plainly in his eyes that he had absolutely no idea what he was meant to do next. Good as his intentions were, the little details of an actual life were still something he was going to need Hob to coach him through.

"We did talk about..." Hob prompted, restraining a laugh. "Calling your siblings, to see if there was anything to be done about Orpheus' predicament? To make things a little easier? And... should we call your mum, as well?" Hob suggested, looking down at Orpheus again. "Does she...?"

"It would be good to let her know that my circumstances are changing," Orpheus agreed, and Hob suspected that he was also holding back a laugh. "And I would be pleased to see my father's siblings again; it has been a very long time."

"I shall call them," Dream said immediately. "All of them, and—"

"No need to call me," said a new voice, in English with a bewildering slight Scots accent. Hob whirled and found an immensely tall and broad-shouldered red-haired man—the one from the villa?—it had to be, because his dog was there too, walking beside him as he approached. "Not that you could, really. But here I am, anyway. Hello again, lad."

"Hello, Uncle Olethros," Orpheus said. Dream's face had gone blank, his eyes very wide. "Have you met my new stepfather? This is Hob Gadling—he is human, but immortal, and wise enough to teach my father a great deal."

Olethros—the absent brother, he must be, though Hob knew Dream and Delirium had both called him something else—responded with a shout of laughter, and the dog said, "Well, now, that's a new development in the family."

Hob stared at the dog. Dream shook himself slightly and said, "We have not discussed the technicalities of Hob's relation to you, my son. He may not prefer that title."

Olethros laughed harder.

Hob said, well aware that his priorities were probably all in a muddle, "Did that dog—stepdad is fine, honestly, I've got a spare room now and all, you should come and stay, but—did you hear the dog? Is that..."

"Barnabas," Olethros contributed, unhelpfully.

"Barnabas," Hob repeated, and the dog sat down and raised a paw as if to shake. Hob dropped to his knees and then sat down; Dream immediately sat down beside him, his shoulder pressed to Hob's, Orpheus cradled in his lap.

Barnabas looked up at Olethros, and the big man's laughter trailed to nothing as he sat down too, facing Hob and Dream and near enough to speak quietly. His expression turned solemn as he looked down at his nephew.

"I'm sorry, lad," Olethros said softly. "Not sorry I persuaded you out of your first plan, but I could have done more for you. Could have given you a gift like my sister's, maybe, to spare you from destruction as well as death. Didn't think it through."

"I think it is safe to say I did not consider all the consequences either," Orpheus said graciously. "But I think... I do not regret the trying. Seeing her again, and..."

Orpheus' eyes closed, and a few tears streamed down his cheeks. Dream bent over him, murmuring softly in that language Hob couldn't understand; he pressed a kiss to Orpheus' hair that made Hob ache to be holding Dream that close, kissing him that way.

Dream straightened up and said gently, "I will call the others. We will do what we can for you, my son. It will not always hurt this much."

Hob dropped his gaze to his own hands as Dream turned his head and spoke to the air in that other language. He saw in his peripheral vision that Barnabas was sprawled across Olethros'—Destruction's?—lap, and Destruction was petting him with those big hands. Hob squinted at his hands, and then raised his gaze to his face. Was he familiar, somehow? Had Hob met him before?

Olethros was looking down at the dog, offering nothing.

"Destruction!!!" Hob jerked his head up just in time to see Delirium come tumbling out of nowhere in a cloud of butterflies before landing on her feet in front of Destruction. Her hair had turned nearly all red, the match of his.

He smiled again and jumped up, sweeping her up in his arms. "Look at you, lass! Pretty as ever you were, and I do believe you've grown."

Desire just hung there in his grip, looking uncertain despite all her eagerness to see him, and murmured a warbling, "Maybe?"

"Delirium!" A familiar-unfamiliar voice called out, and Hob looked to see someone who could only be Desire, in their adult form, coming across the turf, with Despair silent at their side.

"You did find him," Desire went on, as Delirium wriggled free of Destruction's grip and ran over to them. They hugged her briefly, and when they released her Despair reached over and took Delirium's hand.

"So you see, you didn't need my help at all," Desire finished as they reached the group of them, sweeping an amused golden glance over Hob and Dream, and then dropping gracefully to sprawl on the grass at Hob's left. "Not nearly as much as some others needed it. Hello again, Hob."

"Desire," Hob said, as neutrally as he could. Without quite looking at the figure sitting down on their other side he added, "Despair."

Despair snorted audibly. "You won a round, Hob Gadling. I will always win the game."

Hob wanted to fling himself bodily between Despair and Orpheus, who was clearly not at all sure about whatever decision he'd made to live. He settled for saying, "Will you? That sounds an awful lot like... hope."

"Oh no," Despair said, in the flattest possible monotone. "Not hope. My kryptonite. I'm melting." She paused a beat then added, without shifting her posture or raising her voice, "Meeeelting."

Hob tried to hold it back, but he couldn't; he laughed, and so did Desire, and Delirium and Destruction joined in, and—Hob looked over to see that the impossibly lovely musical laughter belonged to Orpheus, and that Dream was frozen staring at him, open-mouthed.

Hob saw a dark figure sit down on Dream's other side, but it still took until Dream himself looked over for Hob to tear his gaze from Dream and do likewise. Death had a soft, sad smile on her face, and Destiny was standing on her other side, though after a moment he too sat down, taking the space between Destruction and Death. Delirium was on Destruction's other side, still holding hands with Despair.

Hob reached over and put a hand on Dream's knee, not sure whether it was for his own comfort or Dream's. Either way, it felt good when Dream's hand settled firmly over his.

"My siblings," Dream said. "Thank you all for coming. I know not quite what to ask you, but I seek your aid and counsel. Orpheus and I are reconciled, and he has agreed to attempt to return to true life, if we can make a way for him."

"I think I've probably done enough," Death said, sitting back emphatically, bracing her hands behind her. "But—I'm glad, for both of you. I never wanted you to suffer for the boon I granted you, Orpheus."

"Aunt," Orpheus said, very neutrally.

"I cannot tell you what to do," Destiny said, filling what could have been an immensely awkward silence. "Nor what will come to pass. But I will tell you, my nephew, unique among oracles—even you and I may be surprised. What will be... sometimes is not. And you, after all, are the child of dreams."

Orpheus smiled a little at that. "Thank you, Uncle."

Delirium had crawled forward into the middle of the circle they made, looking at Orpheus nearly upside down as she tilted her head over. "I... could make you just a little bit mine. That might help?"

"I think..." Orpheus said slowly. "I think, perhaps, it might. But not at this time."

"I'll visit, then!" Delirium agreed, sprawling back nearly into Barnabas and Destruction. "I'll visit, and I'll ask! I'll—oh, hello, doggie—"

Delirium trailed off into mutters that seemed to be directed at the dog, and Barnabas seemed very pleased to be petted.

"I have recently been forbidden from your stepfather's hearth," Despair said, and Hob felt a chill run down his spine, suddenly terrified of what revenge Despair might take in turn for Hob's battling against her.

Her smile, however, was soft, and she looked only at Orpheus as she came to kneel before him and Dream, and laid her hand gently on top of Orpheus' head. "You have been a very fond and attentive nephew all these years," she said softly. "But I think I will take a leaf from Hob's book—and Death's. From this day to the ending of the world, Orpheus, you are forbidden from my domain. Grief and misery you may feel, but you shall not despair. In three thousand years, you have done more than enough of that."

"Oh," Orpheus said, his eyes going wide. "Oh, aunt—I—oh."

Hob could almost see the way hope dawned upon Orpheus, obviously for the first time in far too long. Dream's hand tightened hard on his, and Hob met his gaze and could have looked at nothing else but the joy in those eyes for all his days.

"And to go with that," Desire said, and Hob looked over sharply.

"Please," Orpheus said. "Please, do not... do not take my love from me."

"Oh, I would never," Desire said, sprawling forward on the grass to look at Orpheus eye-to-eye, their chin propped on one hand. "Dear boy, you desire so sweetly and completely, you could power stars. I would not deprive you of it for all the wide world. But—as I had occasion to tell your father not too long ago—" Desire made a flourishing gesture with their free hand. "There are always more things to desire. You may love your Eurydice and love others, too. You may love her and lust for all else that life can offer; it will make your sacrifice all the sweeter when you eventually permit yourself to be reunited with her."

Orpheus blinked rapidly, a flush coming onto his pale cheeks, and then looked up at his father. "But how—how shall I live like this? What was once my body is long since... destroyed."

He looked to Destruction, the only one who had not spoken since they had all arrived.

"Like I said, lad," Destruction sighed. "I ought to have warded you against it. Lately I have taken up creating little things, as a hobby, but..."

"They're not great," Barnabas put in bluntly. "You wouldn't want a body he made for you."

"Only one of us ever had any knack for creation," Desire said, still sprawled on the grass, rolling their eyes up in a parody of thoughtfulness. "Who could that have been? Hmm, someone whose kingdom is full of living beings he created..."

"Lord Shaper," Hob murmured, remembering Dream's cascade of titles.

"If you would permit it," Dream said, looking down at his son as Orpheus looked up, shining with hope and eagerness so much that he already seemed half-transformed. "I will take you into the Dreaming, and we shall see what we may do."

"Yes," Orpheus said, "Father, please."

Hob had exactly enough time to think that maybe he should let go of Dream, and then they were somewhere else again, sitting side by side on a black sand beach, the ocean that had been distant on Orpheus' island now crashing a few yards from their feet. The sky was as bright as it had been before, though the blue was... different.

He had been here before, he thought, but that had been just him and Dream.

Now Dream—still holding firmly to Hob's hand—was looking a bit sheepish, and Orpheus quietly amused.

"I can just, uh, get out of your way," Hob said, gesturing vaguely away down the beach and shifting his weight to rise. "This is... father and son stuff."

"You should stay near," Dream said, giving a little tug to the ribbon that bound them together. "You are here physically, not only in your dreams, and that can be perilous for a human."

"Besides, we may need your input," Orpheus said, sounding cheerful if a bit nervy again. "You're the only one who's really lived in the mortal world any time recently."

"Oh, well," Hob said, settling into place where he sat. "Bodies haven't changed much, I don't think. Happy to help you pick out clothes, though. And shoes. You might need shoes more than you think, these days."

"I shall certainly keep that in mind," Orpheus said, and looked up at Dream.

"Close your eyes," Dream directed, his voice gentle but so firmly authoritative that Hob's own eyes nearly closed in automatic obedience. "Think of yourself, as you were—as you could be again. Imagine a form that could feel like your own, like the home of your soul. I shall not impose it upon you, but help you to manifest your own true self."

Orpheus closed his eyes, and for a moment nothing happened; Hob bit his lip and tried not to even think too loudly about other possibilities. The modern world had all sorts of prosthetics, powered chairs, no end of things that could help Orpheus get around even if he could never be more physically whole than he was now.

But then, between one heartbeat and the next, he was there: dressed in tatters and rags, and most of his body looked no better, torn all to pieces and barely holding together. His neck and throat gaped with hideous wounds, and he was so smeared with blood it was hard to know what might be whole under it. One leg was gone below the knee, and his hands were so mangled that Hob had to look away, swallowing down his own instinctive horror.

This had to be what Orpheus had referred to—his body being destroyed. Hob had fought in so many wars, escaped so many wretched deaths—how narrowly had he escaped a fate like this, trapped in whatever fraction of himself survived?

"Will you not let yourself heal, my son?" Dream said softly, coaxing. "Even in dreams?"

"I shall not be that youth again," Orpheus said, and there was a choked, bubbling quality to his words. "I shall not be beautiful and unmarked—I shall not be your pride and joy, or my mother's, ever again."

"You are our son," Dream said firmly. "You are beautiful in my eyes even now, but I would help you not to suffer if you will allow it. Will you let me bind your wounds?"

Hob felt another presence, and looked up sharply to see a woman in white, tears on her face, kneeling on Dream's other side, reaching out a trembling hand toward the ruin of Orpheus' body.

"Healing is not my art, my son," she whispered. "And yet I, too, would do what I can to help you. Can you believe such a story for yourself? Can you believe that you will grow stronger, more whole, when you are free to truly live again?"

"Mother," Orpheus breathed.

Dream, still clutching Hob's hand, whispered, "Calliope."

"I assumed from your summons that I would be welcome here," she said, a little wryness in her smile, and an accent like Orpheus's coloring her words. "At least today."

"You are welcome," Dream said, darting only the briefest glance over at Hob before focusing again on Orpheus.

Hob met Calliope's eyes across her son's body; she looked curious, and not displeased, and then dropped her gaze to her son again, resting one gentle hand on his brow. "You are our pride and joy," she intoned firmly. "You have always been the finest creation either of us ever had a hand in, and so you still are. Will you not be created anew?"

"Not... exactly as I was," Orpheus insisted, though his voice was already clearer and stronger; his throat and chest looked whole, though Hob could see scars seaming his fair skin. "I cannot be unchanged."

"Not unchanged," Dream agreed. "We none of us remain exactly as we were, after our ordeals. But there is also healing. Learning. Growing, even long past the age of youth."

Orpheus sighed, resettling himself in his father's lap as more wounds healed, as his hands took recognizable form again, though thick scars striped them and his fingers were not all quite the right shape. His mother took one hand; Dream held the other, and Orpheus' body went on knitting together. The ragged wound of his left leg became a stump below the knee, while his right foot settled into a fairly ordinary shape.

Hob didn't know enough about prosthetics to imagine exactly what Orpheus might need, but he found himself picturing a pair of crutches with good padded grips and a lovely pattern of cherry blossoms down the whole length, and then he had the pair across his lap. When Orpheus looked over, Hob gestured to them. "These might be more urgent than shoes, just this second. If you want to try."

Orpheus smiled, and gave a tiny, tentative nod. He did not let go of Dream's hand, but let his father guide him as he reached for the handle of a crutch. Dream pushed up, guiding Orpheus to stand, helping him find the right grip on the crutch; Calliope came and took the other from Hob's hand, and steadied it on Orpheus' other side.

Hob stood too, and watched them both, watching their son stand and looking just as awed and proud as they must have the first time he'd done it as a baby, thousands of years ago.

After another moment Orpheus looked up, smiling again. "I can... I can do this. I can..." He swung the crutches forward, and then stepped after. "I can. Mother, Father! Hob! I can!"

Dream caught Hob's hand again, and Hob stepped closer, bracing Dream and forcing his own knees to be steady. On Dream's other side, Calliope stood with both hands pressed to her mouth, as they all watched Orpheus take his new first steps, safe in his father's kingdom.

---

Chapter 24

With every step Orpheus took, Dream could feel the manifestation of his body becoming steadier and more solid around him. It was not just an idea—no mere drifting dream—but something true which could be drawn into the Waking world and remain whole in itself.

It was not the form Dream would have crafted for his son, but he had asked Orpheus to dream himself, and he could not dispute that it fit him well. No physical perfection could be more right for a dreamer than the form they dreamed themselves; Orpheus would not have felt himself in a body that did not bear the scars of what he endured.

And despite the obvious disabilities, Orpheus was making his own way across the shore, poking his toes into the waves and laughing just as he had when he was a little child. Hob had known what he needed, to be just as he was and yet able to move through the world in his own way.

Dream looked over at his beloved, and found him watching Orpheus with just as much joy as Dream felt in his son. He remembered, though it had been lost in the rush of the moment, that Hob had readily accepted the appellation stepdad from Orpheus.

"Our son is a wonder," Dream whispered. "And you knew what he needed long before I did. I thank you, Hob. You have given him back to me."

Hob met his gaze with a misty smile. "Not exactly mine to give, sweetheart, but I'm glad I could—" Hob's gaze jerked sideways and he finished on a slightly different note, "help?"

Dream turned his own gaze to Calliope, who had stepped closer to them, though her eyes still followed Orpheus with a mother's fond attention.

"Oneiros," she said, in an abstracted tone that only a fool would take to mean she was not paying very keen attention. "You have taken a new companion, I see."

"Hob has taught me a great deal," Dream said. "He pressed me to come to Orpheus, to reconcile with him and begin to make amends. You see the results before you."

Calliope finally turned her eyes on Hob again; Dream felt his beloved straighten up under her attention, though at the same time his form altered to that which resided in the deepest part of his heart. He sported a full beard, and wore a peasant's simple tunic, as he faced the goddess before him.

Calliope reached out and took Hob's free hand—it too bore an older appearance, hard-callused and grimy—and raised it to her lips without hesitation, pressing an impassioned kiss to his knuckles. "I owe you a very great boon, Robert Gadling, for my son's sake."

"Oh," Hob said, and his voice, at least, remained that of his modern, educated self. "Oh, no, that's not—that's not necessary at all. I was... just trying to help Dream, really. He's been on a bit of a journey."

Dream was reminded where this had all begun, the question Hob had asked him. He tugged down the collar of his own shirt to peer at his chest, and found that the black bruise over his heart was gone—replaced with a dense tracery of scars, but healed.

"Hey," Hob said softly, turning toward him, touching that spot with gentle fingers. "Hey, that's looking better, isn't it?"

"You were right," Dream murmured, and then glanced over Hob's shoulder to see that Calliope had released Hob's hand and taken a tactful step back. She was watching Orpheus again, though her smirk was probably not truly directed at their son.

A moment later, Orpheus turned back toward them. "Father, will this really—can I really go back into the Waking, just like this? I can stay like this?"

He sounded as delighted as he had ever been with any toy or instrument Dream fashioned for him—though in those days he had never doubted that any gift his father bestowed was his to keep.

"Of course," Dream said, "if you are satisfied."

"Ah," Hob said, as Orpheus looked cheerfully down at himself, still certain that this was as he should be now. "Sweetheart, before we go anywhere, do you want... more... clothes?"

Dream glanced at Orpheus, whose raiment had mended itself when his flesh had healed beneath it, and back to Hob, whose tunic melted back into the casual clothing he had been wearing in the Waking world, loose lightweight jeans and a short-sleeved shirt that showed a glimpse of his chest hair through the open top buttons.

Orpheus looked dubiously at Hob's clothing and down at himself. His clothing flickered uncertainly—from a short chiton to something like Hob's medieval tunic, to an obvious imitation of the tight jeans and t-shirt worn by Andros' grandson, and then to something tattered and nondescript, the obvious end of Orpheus' ability to imagine how he ought to clothe himself.

"I know modern styles are going to be really different," Hob said in that same easy tone he had helped Dream to make choices a dozen times in the Waking world. "And it's going to be warm—maybe linen trousers and a button-down?"

The clothes Hob pictured appeared in midair, floating beside Orpheus, and he wrinkled his nose again and adjusted the colors—the trousers becoming a pale blue that echoed the darker shade of Hob's jeans, the crisp white of the shirt fading to a soft undyed shade. After another moment, the clothes wrapped themselves around Orpheus, one trouser-leg pinning itself up neatly. He shifted this way and that, considering, and looked to his parents.

Calliope had shifted her familiar gown into a similar pair of loose trousers and button down shirt—still in white, as was her habit—but apparently reassuringly similar to Orpheus' eye. Dream retained his own jeans, but allowed his shirt to become a button-down as well, in his usual black, unbuttoned far enough to let his new scars breathe.

"What of shoes, Hob? Or a shoe, at least," Orpheus added, looking mischievous in a way Dream had never believed he would see again.

"Mm, you could probably manage with a good sandal, as long as it straps all the way around and has a nice sole," Hob said, looking down at Orpheus' one bare foot. "Have to make sure the crutches adjust, though, it might throw you off a fraction otherwise."

Dream could feel another thought drifting half-formed in Hob's imaginings: an artificial leg of the sort many mortals used, which could then wear a matching shoe to whatever Orpheus chose. Hob did not make the suggestion, though, and Dream could feel that he was holding it back, not wishing to press too much upon Orpheus too soon. Dream pressed a kiss to Hob's cheek, and felt the old beard melt away under his lips, revealing the familiar smooth skin for him to kiss.

Orpheus, meanwhile, was manifesting a sandal to his own satisfaction, then trying the crutches again, glaring at them until they lengthened by the requisite small measure. The cherry blossoms curled obligingly into their extended space, decorating every inch of the devices, and Orpheus hummed a happy little tune, admiring them and himself.

When he looked up again, he looked almost young again, for all the scars he bore. "I'm ready now, father. Shall we return?"

"Of course," Dream said, keeping a firm grip on Hob for all that their ribbon still bound them. He tossed enough sand to make a portal for them all, and stepped through.

---

Hob took a deep breath of the clear salt air. The sun was sinking in the west now, late afternoon coming on in Greece—it would still be morning in New York, he thought. He looked around the little grassy area around the temple. Another man had joined the elder waiting by the boy, and he was staring intently in the direction of Delirium, who was dancing about on the grass, the dog capering after her and barking excitedly.

Destruction was still sitting where he had been near the tree; the rest of the siblings had disappeared while they were gone.

"Nephew!" Destruction jumped up as Orpheus came through, moving smoothly with his crutches. Hob saw Destruction take in the scars, the crooked fingers and missing limb. He hesitated for a moment, then continued with an only mildly visible effort behind his bright smile. "You look much better—I thought you might like that boon, so that you can't be hurt so badly again. If... I can still only apply it to so much of you as is here."

"I am as you see me, uncle," Orpheus said serenely. "I will not say no to a boon of protection, if you offer it freely."

"I do offer it freely," Destruction agreed. "If there's some reason you need it to change, later..." He hesitated, glancing over his shoulder toward the villa where Hob had first seen him. Then he looked toward Dream, then to Hob. "Things seem to be changing," he said slowly. "I believe I will... not go too far, for a time. You will know where to find me if you need me, nephew."

"I will," Orpheus agreed, and Destruction stepped over and bent to press a kiss to Orpheus' forehead. A faint glow seemed to wash over Orpheus' body, barely discernible in the afternoon light. He stretched each arm, waving his crutches, and smiled up cheerfully at his uncle.

"Thank you," he said, and looked over at Dream, still smiling brightly.

"Yes," Dream said, "I thank you as well, my brother—for your kindness to Orpheus, and for coming today, though none could call upon you."

"Ah, well, your man flagged me down," Destruction said cheerfully, nodding in Hob's direction.

Dream looked over quizzically at Hob, and Hob shrugged and gestured to the villa across the way. "I just waved, really. I don't know why, seemed like the thing to do."

Dream looked in that direction, and then back up at his brother. "All this time, you have been so near?"

Destruction looked faintly uncomfortable, looking away toward Delirium and Barnabas. "Not all the time. But... it started to feel like the place to be. Like something was going to happen, you know? I never thought it would be this, but... I'm glad I didn't miss it."

"I am also glad, my brother," Dream said, and Hob had a perfect view of Destruction's startled expression when Dream threw his arms around his brother's broad shoulders and pulled him down into a brief, fierce hug. "Please," he said quietly. "I understand, but... do not go too far, I beg you. We miss you when you're gone."

"Oh," Destruction said, blinking down at Dream. "I... I'll keep that in mind. I can't... I can't come back and be as I was."

Dream shook his head. "I understand. But you are our brother still. We love you. I—I made this for you." Dream glanced around as he reached into nowhere—into Hob's flat, Hob suspected, and the stack of carefully spray-finished pictures separated by sheets of tissue paper.

Sure enough, what he offered to Destruction was a picture, one Hob had stared at for a long moment after Dream finished it. It might have been the source of Hob's odd sense of familiarity, but he didn't think that was it; it showed three figures from behind, one with red hair wearing rough plain clothes, one with black hair dressed all in black, and one who was Hob himself, with shaggy brown hair and wearing a tunic that harkened back to his peasant days. They were walking off across a beach, into a gloriously colorful sunset.

Destruction smiled at it, and glanced up at Hob before returning his attention to Dream. "I love it, brother. You have mastered pastels! I have taken up some artistic endeavors myself, you know—I—"

"Pavement artist!" Hob half-shouted, the memory finally falling into place. "1853!"

Destruction tilted his head and smiled. "Ah, yes. I thought you seemed familiar. You were a generous soul, and a patron of the arts, to be sure."

Orpheus and Calliope were both giving Hob almost identical baffled looks, not at all displeased, and he shrugged. "I meet a lot of people. I'm immortal," he added, since he wasn't sure Calliope knew anything about him at all. "Have been since I ran into Dream and Death in a pub in 1389—Death thought it would be funny. And she wanted me and Dream to be friends."

"Did she tell you that?" Dream asked, returning; Destruction was headed off in Delirium's direction. "It was a wager. I must confess I bet against you enjoying her gift as you have."

"She said she brought you there on purpose, to see me," Hob insisted. "I mean, I think Chaucer was at the next table over, you probably would have wandered off with him if I hadn't caught your eye."

"But catch my eye you did," Dream said, slanting him a smile as he wrapped an arm around Hob's waist. Hob had just decided not to argue with him over that sweetly revisionist version of how they met when everything changed around them again.

---

It occurred to Dream, in the timeless moment of transition, that perhaps he ought to have discussed their destination with Hob, whose offer of his spare room had perhaps been made in a moment of distraction. Also, they had left Hob's flat in some minor disarray—food had been left out on the table, and the bed in Hob's bedroom would make it obvious what had happened there.

Dream made a few small adjustments to the space as they arrived, whisking away detritus from the dishes and stacking them beside the sink, tugging the bedroom door gently closed. Still, he watched anxiously for Hob's reaction as Hob took in their surroundings.

He only smiled, and slung an arm around Dream in a brief sideways hug. "Ah, good. We can sit a bit more comfortably and talk—welcome to my home, Orpheus, Calliope. Orpheus, the spare room is yours if you like; I think it might take a little doing to get you settled in the world. Everyone wants paperwork and cards saying who you are, these days."

"Those can be arranged," Dream said firmly. "And money and so forth."

Orpheus was still just gazing about the room, which was comfortably furnished with a longer and shorter sofa and armchairs, a coffee table currently covered with Dream's art supplies, and the black rectangle of the television. Empty bookcases awaited the contents of the boxes stacked up beside them, but the only decoration was the views from the large windows.

Orpheus seemed to be peering down with interest at the rug, which was patterned in several bright colors. At the mention of money he glanced up with an expression of some interest, and Hob said firmly, "Still, you're better off staying with family until you get used to things—the city is going to be a lot more than what you've been used to."

Now Orpheus did glance toward the windows, and his lips curled a little. "So it is. I thank you, Hob—Stepfather. I will be glad to stay." He took his hands off the grips of his crutches and turned them back and forth, saying, "I think I will not be playing the lyre, in this new life."

"Ah, well, lots of ways to make music these days," Hob said easily. "We'll get you a good computer and some editing software and you can do all sorts of things—set it up with voice commands, too, if your hands get tired."

Orpheus looked even more interested. "Niki showed me an app once on his smartphone..."

"Oh, yeah, we can do a lot more than that," Hob assured him. "Can I get you anything to eat or drink, before we get to that? I've no idea what time it is anymore, but it's been quite a day."

Orpheus' expression turned yearning for a moment, and then rueful. "I shall have to learn all over again how to have a body. Now and then the priests would put a drop of honey on my tongue, or drops of water..."

Orpheus' longing for cold clean water—for the chance to truly drink it down—was so sharp that the glass materialized in Dream's hand with barely any act of will. He stepped over to Orpheus, about to offer it, and then realized that Orpheus could not easily take it in hand, nor had he ever used his new-made hands to manage a drinking vessel.

"May I," Dream murmured, bringing the rim of the glass nearly to Orpheus' lips.

Orpheus' eyes went wide before he nodded a quick assent and opened his mouth. Dream raised the glass just enough to let the cold water trickle gently into his mouth, resting his other hand on the back of Orpheus' neck, and Orpheus' eyes slipped shut as he drank.

Dream tipped back the glass after a few swallows, not wishing to force too much upon him, and Orpheus shivered a little as he opened his eyes again. Dream felt a satisfaction he rarely had— something far beyond creating a new dream and seeing it flourish. Orpheus was alive because of him, and Dream had successfully supplied what he needed to remain that way.

Calliope had stepped close to Orpheus' other side, and there were tears standing in her eyes and a smile on her face. She knew this feeling, of course; she had borne Orpheus from her own body, nourished him from it in his youngest days, when Dream had had little to do with him other than admiring how quickly he grew and how beautiful he was.

Dream had not known what he was missing, until now.

"Come," Dream said, stepping back to give Orpheus space to move. "Come to the kitchen. Hob is right; we should eat."

Hob was already in the kitchen, setting out plates and filling glasses of water. Dream summoned an array of dishes that would be luxurious and appealing to Orpheus without straying too wildly from what he had known before.

Orpheus took a little time to settle himself in his seat, working out how to prop his crutches within reach but out of the way. Hob tugged Dream away from watching his progress by saying, "What, no cheese on toast?"

"Later, perhaps," Dream said, smiling over at Hob. "I know how to make that the slow way."

Calliope made a rather fondly amused noise, and Dream absolutely did not blush, but did materialize a suitable glass of wine and pass it across to her.

When Dream looked back over at Orpheus, he had discovered the plate of sliced bread, taking an enormous bite without adding anything to it at all. Dream made a small noise of protest and found himself echoed by Hob and Calliope both; Orpheus looked up with wide eyes, freezing for just a moment in mid-chew.

"No, no, go on," Hob said. "Just—there's butter, and honey, and cheese..."

Orpheus relaxed a bit, chewing and swallowing before he said, "It is very good bread. But I will try some with butter, if you like."

The rest of the meal consisted largely of the three of himself, Hob, and Calliope nibbling at the various dishes mostly in order to coax Orpheus into trying the ones each of them liked best. He dutifully tried nearly everything, though he pushed back Calliope's favorite spiced olives to her, and his expression turned very polite over one of the bright orange cheeses that Hob was very fond of.

He only ate a very little of the apricot, but that was likely because he was getting full, and his hands were tiring; it was a long time since he had eaten anything at all, and his new body still had much to learn about living.

Regardless, it was a joy to watch him eat, to see him try things and react to them, whether with pleasure or otherwise. Even the halting, tentative moments of Orpheus' scarred hands were beautiful to see, for he grew quicker and more confident minute by minute, learning his body anew with the motivation of the food before him. It was a wonder to simply be in his son's presence, and seeing him well fed made Dream feel as satisfied as he ever had with his own belly full.

When Orpheus finally insisted that he could eat no more, they all retired to Hob's sofas; when Orpheus asked about the boxes stacked up by the bookshelves, Hob said, "Oh, well, I just moved this morning—with Dream's help, so there was no tedious shipping things from London, but I haven't had a chance to start unpacking yet. Those are my books."

"Oh," Orpheus said, studying the boxes with fascination. "So many?"

Dream's heart seized as he realized the magnitude of what Orpheus had been deprived of—even the Library of the Dreaming had been a paltry thing, the last time Orpheus might have ventured there. He had never been as interested in stories as in music, but...

"This is just what I decided to keep when I moved," Hob said, grabbing the nearest box and bringing it over to set at Orpheus' feet, near enough for Calliope to reach as well, for she also looked interested in the contents of Hob's shelves. "You're welcome to any that catch your eye—all in English, but I'm happy to help if that's a difficulty. I've been working as a teacher, the last decade or so."

"I... do not know," Orpheus said, and accepted the first book Hob picked up from the box, a battered paperback edition of Pride and Prejudice.

Calliope made a rather fondly approving noise, running a finger over the cover, and leaned over to see what else the box held. She promptly got into a cheerful argument with Hob over a book he didn't have, but Hob was happy to argue for his favorites (and his system of choosing books to keep and books to leave). Orpheus, sitting between them, leafed through any book they handed him, or listened when they took turns reading favorite passages aloud, but seemed as content as Dream was to simply watch.

Dream did take the precaution of sending books over to rest safely on the empty shelves, whenever the stack of those no longer under discussion got precariously high. Orpheus' first impression of books would not be improved by them falling on him.

The afternoon light was slanting long over the park when Orpheus touched Hob's hand and said quietly, "Hob? Could I have a word with you? In... another room?"

Hob swept a quick glance over Orpheus and smiled wryly. "Of course, sweetheart. Don't worry, it's not far."

Dream frowned, wondering at the reassurance—all the rooms of Hob's flat were visibly not far from one another—but Orpheus seemed to know what Hob meant. He let Hob help him up and sort out his crutches before leading him away in the direction of the spare room Hob had promised to him—and, Dream realized when he heard the inner door close, its en suite bathroom.

Ah. That was a matter on which Hob was the only one likely to be readily helpful.

Dream saw the little wrinkle of Calliope's nose as she arrived at the same conclusion, and then she shot Dream an amused look. "If our son is to be so human again, it was good of you to think of supplying him with a human parent to help him along."

"It was... rather the reverse order," Dream said, though he did not doubt Calliope had already realized as much.

"He is good for you," she said, glancing down again at the red ribbon that led into the other room. "I am glad to see you so well."

"And I you," Dream said. "You spoke of your sisters, when last I saw you—finding a way to change things. Have you...?"

"It is an ongoing project," Calliope said, with a little roll of her eyes. "But I believe we are making—"

He saw her attention leave him, a part of herself called away to some other matter. It was a familiar sight, and he knew he had done the same to her just as often—knew that Hob and Orpheus would see him so abstracted soon, as he must begin to resume his full duties in the Dreaming before much longer.

He rubbed a fold of the ribbon between his fingers, and waited patiently.

Calliope sighed as she focused on him again. "I'm sorry, Oneiros, I must go. My mothers wish to have words about what has changed with Orpheus—they have always resented him, and I will not have this new start spoiled for him."

Dream would not lightly take on the Three-In-One, but he could see a mother's indomitable determination in Calliope's bearing as she rose, her raiment changing to the traditional style. He rose with her, and said, "If there is anything at all I can do..."

"I shall not hesitate," she said, and suited action to words, stepping away into elsewhere without another glance.

Left alone, Dream gathered up some of the scattered books and carried them to the shelves, and considered.

What would a mother not do, when her child was threatened?

---

Hob's day had already been full of a truly staggering number of surprises; teaching a hero of ancient Greece to use modern toilet facilities and furthermore how to properly wash his hands was just one more.

"Technically you and I don't have to worry too much about germs, but we don't need to spread them around, either," Hob explained, while Orpheus carefully dried his battered hands. "And honestly, I don't know what it will be like for you--it might be that you can still get the sorts of sickness that won't kill you, so you should probably be careful until you know."

Orpheus nodded solemnly, got his crutches settled again, and followed Hob back out to the living room.

Dream was there alone, absently conducting a stream of books as they rose out of a box and placed themselves on the shelves.

"Oh!" Hob said, "We should show Orpheus—"

"Fantasia," Dream finished along with him, beaming his brightest smile. "Yes, I agree. Orpheus, do you need anything to eat or drink? Would you like to try watching a musical moving artwork?"

"I'm well enough, Father," Orpheus said, going over to take his place on the sofa again. "Mother had to go?"

Dream nodded, his bright smile turning quickly to an anxious look. "She will return when she can, I am sure, but it did seem to be an urgent matter. If you need anything..."

Orpheus shook his head, settling back. "I am content, Father. I am a grown man, after all. You need not look after me every moment."

Hob bit his lip and busied himself with the remote control, giving Dream a moment to respond to that one.

Dream went and sat beside Orpheus, and after a moment gingerly put an arm around him. Orpheus immediately sagged into his side. "This is something I have been learning," Dream said. "Something Hob has been helping me to understand. The need for those we love is a part of being alive. Your mother and I may need reminding, but we love you, and we wish to be with you when you need or want us to be."

Orpheus sighed, an almost musical little sound, and nestled closer to Dream. Hob settled himself on Dream's other side and started the movie, and Dream's hand slipped into his almost immediately, and squeezed tight the first time Orpheus straightened up with a gasp to stare.

It took them hours to get through the movie—Orpheus wanted to go back and watch things again, once he realized that was possible. He also needed another bathroom break, an hour or so in, which seemed to be in part a chance to come down from being rather overstimulated by the music and animation and, Hob would guess, probably also everything else that had gone into the day.

Hob was certainly looking forward to falling into bed in the not-too-distant future.

When they returned, Dream had cleared his art supplies from the coffee table, replacing them with three mugs of hot cocoa and three plates of cheese on toast. He had turned down the overhead lights, too, so the room was dim and cozy, lit mainly by the paused image on the TV screen.

They sat and ate and drank, and Orpheus seemed to enjoy everything enough to satisfy Dream; Hob felt absurdly touched to have also rated a mug of cocoa, even from Dream's presumably infinite Dreaming supply.

They barely watched any of the second half of the movie; twilight had fallen outside, and a full warm belly had Orpheus dozing off against Dream's shoulder almost as soon as they sat back to watch again.

Hob watched Dream notice that Orpheus was asleep, and watched him settle in to enjoy his son dozing on him, curling that careful arm a little more firmly around Orpheus' shoulders. Before too long, he pressed a kiss to Orpheus' forehead and murmured, "Wake up, my son, just for a moment. You will sleep better in your own bed."

Orpheus made a noise of protest—also startlingly musical, as if music just poured out of him whenever he wasn't careful to stop it—but opened his eyes and said, sounding very young, "I don't want to walk."

"Then you need not," Dream assured him, and gathered Orpheus into his arms to carry him. Hob hurried ahead, turning back the covers on the bed so Dream could lay Orpheus down and tuck him in.

Orpheus caught his hand when he made to straighten up, and Dream stayed there, bent over him. "Please, Father," Orpheus murmured. "You told me so many times how important bad dreams are, but..."

"Not tonight," Dream assured him. "You have not truly slept in three millennia. The Dreaming will welcome you back with nothing but joy tonight, my darling. Your dreams will be sweet, and your sleep easy."

Orpheus smiled, and his eyes drifted shut even as Dream laid his hand down, adjusting the blanket to cover him.

Hob caught Dream's hand and gave it a squeeze, but made no other move to budge him; they stood there together as the darkness deepened, watching Orpheus sleep.

Finally Dream gave a tug, and Hob followed him from the room, feeling all the day's excitements weighing on him. He'd be glad to crawl back into their bed and sleep the night through, and his mind was already halfway there when Dream stopped him just as he opened the door to their bedroom. "Hob."

Hob turned, already bracing at the tone of Dream's voice. "What is it, love? Do you—do you have to go somewhere, too? Or was Calliope..."

"I am concerned," Dream admitted. "As it was a matter regarding Orpheus, and those of her family who hold a grudge against him. But she vowed to settle the matter."

Hob leaned against the doorframe, considering. Calliope was a muse, he knew that. He didn't know how that ranked, in a world with gods and Endless and all the rest, but Orpheus was her son, and compared to that... "Wouldn't want to get in her way, then."

"No," Dream agreed, but he was looking down at the ribbon between them—he had found the mended spot, and was rubbing it between finger and thumb. "Hob, if I..."

Hob had very genuinely no idea what the end of that sentence might be. He waited, and tried not to fidget as the silence stretched ominously.

"If I," Dream repeated. "If there was another mistake I made, in the past."

"I'm sure there must have been plenty," Hob said, feeling a bit relieved and knowing the relief was probably premature. "God knows I've made thousands, in six hundred years. Millions, maybe."

Dream nodded, and didn't look up. "If there was a particularly bad one. Involving a mother, and... her child."

There was something off about the way he said it. "Her child?"

"Arguably," Dream said, his voice getting smaller, "in a certain ontological sense... also mine."

Hob narrowed his eyes, running back the conversation. "Did you take her child from her, Dream?"

Dream looked up sharply, then shook his head. "I... I have not. But he is the heir to the Dreaming, and so, if I were gone..."

Dream had told him that, when his despair was weighing heavy on him. There will be another. He knows how to love. Everyone loves him.

"He would... become... you?" Hob said, trying to imagine it. Death had told him that, told him it had happened once to Despair, but she hadn't said anything about what happened to the other person who became them.

"He would be... greatly changed," Dream said. "It was what I meant to warn his mother about, but... I was angry, and..."

Hob winced. "You told a mother that you were going to take her—her child? Her baby? How old..." Hob, trailing off, had a sudden feeling that he knew.

"He was... not yet born, when I said it," Dream admitted. "He is just three years old now."

This had always been about Dream's son, then. Just not his eldest.

That was not the most pressing point, however.

"You told a pregnant woman," Hob said slowly. "That you were going to take her child from her. My joy," Hob caught Dream's hands and squeezed as reassuringly as he knew how, but also just a little harder than that. "You know I love you, and I'm sure it was more complicated than you've said, but that does rather cast you as the wicked witch in the fairy tale."

Dream winced, and probably not because it was physically possible for Hob to squeeze his hands hard enough to hurt him.

He squeezed back, and nodded. "I... realize. I had never thought there was any use in trying to set that right, but..."

"But today's been a day for setting things right," Hob agreed. "Well, what's one more?"

Dream actually looked Hob in the eye again—just looked, for a long, long moment. "You would help me, even with this."

"I would help you," Hob said firmly, aware of making a vow that he would keep all his days, "with Orpheus, and with this, and with a thousand other things, if you just keep telling me what's gone wrong and letting me stay by you."

Dream tugged him forward, and Hob let himself lean into Dream's body, hiding his face against Dream's shoulder as he added, "I would like to get some sleep, though, eventually, so if we're going to go speak to this woman tonight..."

Dream pressed a kiss to his temple. "I hope to speak to her tonight, but I shall send a message now, and ask her to meet me—us?"

"Us," Hob said firmly, much more easily now that he knew he would get to sleep.

"In the Dreaming," Dream finished. "That is where this all began, and perhaps the only place I can make sure she will understand, and believe me when I tell her the truth of things."

"Right," Hob said. "Do you... need help with, um..."

"No, my love," Dream murmured. "My joy. You may sleep. I shall write a letter, and send Matthew to carry it. Would you like me to tuck you in?"

Hob considered straightening up and saying, no, of course not, and then he nodded against Dream's shoulder.

Dream's deep, warm chuckle against his ear almost didn't sound inhuman at all, and Hob was almost asleep already.

---

Matthew, when Dream had explained the errand, looked more uncertain than Dream expected.

"You know the way, do you not?" Dream said. "You know Daniel, and he and his mother live with Rose and Jed. You look in on them now and again."

"Oh," Matthew said, looking up at Dream with a little shake of his wings. "You, uh... you knew that, huh?"

"Just as I know that you have encountered Daniel on his visits into the Dreaming," Dream said patiently, still holding out the letter. "If you have noticed any enmity toward myself, that is what I am seeking to resolve."

"No, that's the thing," Matthew said, "everything seems real nice at their house. Lyta doesn't really seem worried. Except when Daniel's bed turns up full of sand, but even that's more of 'how did this happen again' thing, not a curse you, Sandman, my mortal enemy thing."

"Well, I shall be able to set her mind at ease on the matter of the sand," Dream said. "And if she is not concerned, then she will not be upset to hear from me, will she?"

"I mean, that's the question," Matthew said, dubiously, but he finally took the letter. "Will she?"

---

 

Chapter 25

Dream left Hob's sleeping self to drowse in a hammock overlooking the impromptu picnic being attended by much of the Dreaming to celebrate Orpheus' return. His son's dreaming form was sometimes ghostly, sometimes for a moment almost whole, but at all times moved effortlessly among the many dreams who had, of course, known him from infancy and were eager to welcome him back.

There was food, and dancing, and music emanated from everywhere. Now that the first rush of frantic festivity had settled down, there was mostly a great gathering of dreamfolk, content to be in one place together. Dream had not seen so many of them gathered in... a very long time. He had forgotten that they liked to have things to celebrate.

The Fashion Thing was surrounded by open trunks, assembling a wardrobe for Orpheus, which Dream would gladly transfer into the Waking once she and Orpheus had come to an agreement about trouser lengths and the advisability of a three-quarter-length coat and warm hat with autumn coming on. Lucienne had already prepared a substantial trunk of books, and now stood by Dream eating a slice of cake and watching the proceedings with a fond smile.

Several other dreams were assembling a collection of instruments which currently would require a considerably larger space than Hob's flat to house them all; Dream had his eye on a few of them to take along. Orpheus had seemed intrigued by the possibilities of some of the smaller drums.

All was well. Hob had just begun to snore—Dream was trying not to be too obvious about finding the sound of it adorable—when something shook the picnic-grounds. The blue of the sky became distinctly clouded, and a hush fell.

Hob jerked upright, looking around, and Lucienne went still. "My lord, is that..."

"Not a new vortex," Dream murmured, clearing the sky, waving a reassurance to Orpheus and the rest of the dreams, who all promptly returned to their revels. "Just... the last aftershock of the last one. I hope."

Lyta had entered the Dreaming—and Rose was with her. Neither of them were happy.

Hob appeared at Dream's side, and said, "Is that..."

"Yes," Dream said. "We should be going."

Orpheus was being plied with neckties, and resisting strenuously, but he was laughing as he did.

"Lucienne," Dream murmured. "You can... manage things here?"

"Of course," she said easily, having returned to eating her cake. "Do let me know if any research is required."

"I think we will be all right," Dream said, and drew Hob with him as he stepped aside and into the heart of Fiddler's Green.

A sofa had already materialized for Rose and Lyta, who were sitting at opposite ends of it; another appeared, facing them, for Dream and Hob. He nudged Hob to sit, and went to kneel at Lyta's side of the sofa.

There were tears on her face, and she was wringing her hands in her lap. Dream gently adjusted the tenor of the dream, making sure that she and Rose were entirely lucid—and just a little past that, so that they would not only remember this dream but believe in it, with the certainty of a vision.

"Lyta Hall," Dream said, when she focused on his face, and he spoke softly and gently, knowing that she would hear it in the portentous tones of prophecy. "I am sorry. I am sorry to have ended your time with Hector so hastily, and I am sorry to have caused you any anxiety over Daniel."

"Well," Lyta said, wiping at her eyes again, "you did, and I was furious for a while, but it was three years ago. I was moving on, and I thought everything with Daniel was handled, until I got that letter tonight. Rose said I wouldn't have to worry, and then... she said it was over, and everything was fine, and I thought she meant everything."

"I'm sorry!" Rose said, curling toward Lyta on the sofa but still leaving a significant space between them. "I... I sort of... forgot, after the whole dream vortex thing was settled and I realized Dream was just trying to protect everyone, that... that Daniel was different."

"But you still do not understand how or why," Dream put in gently. "And I think it would be best if you did understand, both of you, as you are Daniel's family. You realize, of course, that your pregnancy was unusual."

Lyta laughed, a little incredulously. "Yes! Yes, I realize."

Dream nodded solemnly. "Hector refused Death when she should have taken him to the Sunless Lands, and whatever lay beyond; he became a true ghost, for love of you. This is very rare, and it is rarer still that such a lost spirit can last more than days or weeks retaining any sense of itself at all. That he lasted until he found his way into the Dreaming, as Rose began to break down the walls, was a testament to his strength of will, and his love for you. But it meant that what was burned up, to keep him as whole as he was, was the Dreaming. Was me."

"I'm so sorry," Rose whispered, wide-eyed. Lyta reached over and took her hand, holding it tight.

"You could not help manifesting as a dream vortex," Dream said gently, and bent space enough that he could pat her knee in a suitably avuncular fashion without moving away from Lyta. "Just as Hector had no idea that he was harming anyone—just as neither of you realized that you were using the essence of another being to give substance to the child you created together."

Lyta blinked slowly, taking this in. "So when you said that Daniel was yours, you meant..."

"Quite literally," Dream agreed. "Any DNA test performed in the Waking world would show you and Hector to be his parents, but the very stuff that he is made of came from me. He is, on a metaphysical level, made out of me."

"And you're going to take him away," Lyta whispered, more stunned this time than angry or afraid. "Because he... does he belong here? He seems so happy, he seems normal—"

"Other than the sand," Rose muttered.

"Sand could be normal!" Lyta insisted, a little wildly.

Dream turned down the intensity of the dreamscape just slightly, as Lyta and Rose both seemed to have absorbed the essential points.

"I will not take him from you," he said, and both of them focused instantly and wholly on him. "He is precious to me because he is mine, but what I love most about him is how well he knows how to love, and to be loved. I would not wish to take him away from his mother, and the family you have made for him, and ruin that. I..."

Dream swallowed, and the next words came with an effort, but he pushed himself to go on. He had made sure they would believe this dream; that meant he needed to tell them the truth in it, and this was an important truth.

"I would like to be a part of that family," Dream said. "To what degree I can be. It will be important for Daniel to know me, because... he is the heir to the Dreaming, borne of the Dreaming. When I am gone, he will become Dream of the Endless." Focusing on Rose, he added, "What the Corinthian believed you could do by force, Daniel will someday do simply by his own nature."

"But does that mean you..." Rose looked surprisingly stricken, while Lyta was back to being stunned.

"I hope not to die for a very long time to come," Dream said. He glanced over his shoulder, thinking this might be a reasonable time to make them aware of Hob, but Hob was gone. There was only the trail of the red ribbon, leading away into the tall grass of Fiddler's Green.

Dream stretched out his awareness along that line, and smiled. Hob was busy; that was all right.

Focusing on Rose again, Dream said, "But I have begun to think that I might like to step down, eventually, and I think that Daniel may well grow into the role. He seems very fond of the Dreaming already."

---

Hob knew very well that he was only present to be Dream's moral support, and maybe also because Dream had realized that it was a good idea for Hob to know the really important things that were going on with him. Like having a child.

From the moment Dream knelt down in front of the dark-haired woman who Hob somehow immediately knew was Lyta Hall, watching them was like looking into a slightly too-bright light. All the colors of the scene before him were somehow over-saturated, every word they said sounding like something that was going to engrave itself on his memory for all time.

And it wasn't just what they were saying in front of him; it was like everything was being footnoted for him, context downloaded into his brain with almost hallucinatory clarity. When Dream apologized for ending your time with Hector, Hob saw the house Hector Hall had built for Lyta in the Dreaming, saw the single night's dreaming that stretched into months of happiness for the two of them as her long-wanted pregnancy progressed. He also felt the way the intrusion into the Dreaming had hurt Dream, had cracked the very fabric of the Dreaming apart—had terrified him in a way he refused to let on to anyone, when he and the Dreaming had scarcely recovered from his century of captivity.

And then Dream had discovered two lovers refusing to be separated by death, playing out an inevitable tragedy—Orpheus and Eurydice all over again, only now the underworld they were tramping through, causing earthquakes in, was Dream himself. So he had banished Hector with no gentleness at all, had been cruel to Lyta in her shock and grief. In doing so he had turned Rose, the burgeoning dream vortex who was also his niece, against him.

But Lyta and Rose clearly understood it too, now. They understood what his apologies meant, how much he regretted what he had done—or at least the way he had done it, because Hector had been long-dead, and could not simply take up residence in the Dreaming the way Matthew had. That part had been inevitable, and they understood that now. They listened when he told them what Daniel was, too.

That was about the time that Hob became aware of a presence somewhere behind him. There was no sense of threat in it; Hob turned his head just far enough to recognize, out of the corner of his eye, a child, of a size his whole body immediately ached to gather into his arms. He was wearing green overalls and a blue-and-white striped shirt, the brightly colored version of exactly the outfit Dream had worn when he arrived on Hob's doorstep as his small self.

Hob peeked.

The child crouched down into the grass to hide, but everything from his wild tuft of curls to his bright laughing eyes remained visible.

Hob covered his eyes, and then peeked through his fingers.

The child giggled, high and sweet.

Hob dropped his hands, and the boy turned and ran away toward the trees. Hob checked over his shoulder, but Dream and Lyta and Rose were all intent on each other, discussing the question of just who and what Daniel was. Hob could see very well that Daniel was a mischievous toddler running off into the woods alone; he gave chase.

Daniel's giggles trailed back to him, leaving Hob in no doubt of his direction. Hob saw the glimmer of water ahead and put on another burst of speed when he heard a splash and the abrupt halt of Daniel's laughter, but he found Daniel standing at the very edge of a wide stream, looking up at a portly gray-haired man dressed in thoroughly Victorian style, including a capacious overcoat. The man was obviously blocking Daniel from wading any deeper, and he looked up at Hob and smiled.

"Ah, Mr. Gadling. How do you do? I am Fiddler's Green, or you may call me Gilbert. Is our young friend with you?"

"Could be," Hob said, offering his hands to Daniel, who immediately raised his own arms in the same gesture Dream had always used. Hob scooped him up, settling Daniel on his hip, where he felt all too right, snuggling immediately into Hob. "Fiddler's Green, the sailors' heaven?"

"The dream thereof," Fiddler's Green said genially, and gestured around him. "I am largely a place, though at times it is more useful to be a person. As when a certain young man needs someone to play with." He tapped gently on Daniel's nose, and Daniel giggled again and snuggled into Hob more emphatically.

"Dream's just having a word with his mum," Hob explained, because apparently this was just life in the Dreaming. "Lyta."

"Oh, Lyta's boy, of course! That does explain a great deal about you," Fiddler's Green said to Daniel, who wriggled around in Hob's grasp, looking back over his shoulder. Hob looked back as well, just in time to feel a tug on the ribbon around his wrist, and see the distant shape of Dream waving to them.

"Looks like it's time to go back to mum," Hob informed Daniel.

"Mama?" Daniel said. "Mama here?"

"Mama's here," Hob agreed, turning to walk back. "Well, she's—"

The incongruous sofas in their meadow were abruptly right in front of him, though Hob was sure he'd chased Daniel well out of view. "Here."

He carried Daniel over and sat him on the couch between Lyta and Rose, who were both looking at him with enough interest that Dream had probably told them some things about him. "Hello."

Lyta smiled.

Rose said, "Wait, if you're six hundred something years old, did you ever meet Shakespeare?"

Hob groaned, and looked over at Dream for support, but Dream was now kneeling in front of Daniel, holding up a tiny pouch.

"This is for your sand," Dream said firmly. "You need not use so much of it, and you certainly should not leave it to make a mess of your bed that your mother has to clean up."

"Sand!" Daniel crowed cheerfully.

"Your sand is special, and you should look after it more carefully," Dream insisted, but he allowed Daniel to catch hold of the little pouch. "You must tell it all to get inside the pouch when you go home, and keep it there. You only need a few grains to come here or to go home, not great piles of it. If you cannot get the trick of it, I shall come home with you and show you."

"I can!" Daniel insisted, with all the confidence of a three-year-old discussing a task he had never attempted. "I can tell sand!"

"See that you do," Dream said, though his stern tone was undercut by his smile. "Your mother knows now that she may tell me if you do not."

Daniel looked over at Lyta, wide-eyed. "Mama?"

"I will, too," Lyta said, doing slightly better than Dream at sounding stern. "I've already had to replace the washing machine twice."

Daniel held up the little pouch in her direction. "Sand, Mama!"

Lyta's eyes went misty, and she gathered him into a hug and whispered, "Sand, baby."

"If you would like to join us," Dream said, "there is a small celebration in progress on the grand lawn—welcoming my son Orpheus home. I am sure he would like to meet Daniel, and both of you. He has never had a cousin before," Hob added to Rose.

"Orpheus?" Rose darted a wide-eyed look at Lyta, who was still focused on Daniel. Rose lowered her voice and said, "Orpheus, like, Hadestown Orpheus? Because Lyta listened to that soundtrack non-stop for like a year after Daniel was born. She will cry."

"Rose!" Lyta snapped, "Shut up!" There were tears on her cheeks already, but she was gathering Daniel up, looking in the direction Dream had gestured.

---

Hob opened his eyes to the quiet-but-not-silence of a shared bed, and found himself draped over Dream. He picked his head up to see how Dream felt about that, and Dream gave him a heavy-lidded smile and tugged him back down. Hob was perfectly content to settle again.

He lay still, letting his dreams and memories of the past day fall into place. He had spent much of the night drowsing on a picnic blanket with his head in Dream's lap, still recovering from all the excitement. Evidently Dream wasn't bored with that yet, because here they still were.

And here they would be, day after day. He had been dimly aware of Dream talking with Lucienne, taking reports from various other dreams—doing his job as King of Dreams and Nightmares, because he was all back in one piece now. And he was still with Hob, had made room for Hob to be with him.

They could live this way, now. Hob had an entirely fresh new start in his new place—he was almost positive he knew where he had stashed the identity documents that went with this flat, and if he had misplaced them Dream would probably be able to conjure up new ones for him from wherever he was getting them for Orpheus. There was no need to scramble over any of the usual logistics; he was already settled here.

And he wasn't alone. He had Dream in his bed, a stepson in the room down the hall, and a houseful of something like family—people who knew his secret, and had secrets of their own—just across the way in New Jersey. This was the beginning of a whole new life, a whole new kind of life, and the heart of it was him and Dream, lying here in the early morning quiet together.

Hob pressed a kiss to Dream's chest, dragging his lips over the messy knot of scars at the center. No more bruising there, now. Dream was whole again, even if, like Orpheus, he bore the marks, and might bear them forever. Hob kissed that spot again, then traced a line with his tongue, feeling the minute changes of texture.

Dream's hand closed on the back of his neck, Dream's other arm hauling Hob more fully on top of him.

Hob glanced up to meet Dream's blue eyes going dark, and saw the flush beginning to rise on his cheeks, and he smiled and went back to exploring Dream's chest, rocking his hips idly against Dream's thigh. They had nowhere to be this morning, and it was early yet...

A sudden staccato drumbeat sounded from the other end of the flat. Dream jerked under him, startled, and turned his head toward the sound, obviously entranced by the evidence of Orpheus nearby, experimenting with some of the instruments Dream had summoned here from the Dreaming for him.

Hob put his head down on Dream's chest and laughed. "I'd forgotten this, about having kids. Family. It means they're around."

"We shall have plenty of time to ourselves," Dream promised, his arms wrapping around Hob in a much more family-friendly hug. "He will no doubt wish to travel before very long."

"No doubt," Hob agreed, still smiling. Orpheus switched to a different drum, trying out a slower, more meandering beat, and then the two together. Hob thought he could hear someone else clapping along, and then two voices singing; Calliope must have returned. Hob seemed to recall seeing her somewhere at the party in his dreams last night—talking to Destiny, maybe? But that had to mean whatever she had been worried about was settled now. "Come on, let's get up. They'll be needing breakfast."

"I shall summon ingredients," Dream said, sitting up at once and hauling Hob up with him, which startled another laugh from Hob. "Toast is important at breakfast, is it not?"

"Mm, he can try it with jam," Hob agreed. "Eggs and bacon..."

Dream was already dressed as soon as he got out of bed, and Hob trailed after him, taking a little longer to get ready, but no less eager to find what this day would bring.

---

Calliope still refused to reveal anything about her confrontation with her mothers other than that it was settled now, and Dream had known that when he saw her speaking with his brother in the Dreaming. Destiny's function encompassed that of the Three-in-One, and while Dream had never known him to exert authority over them, conflict between them could not, by their nature, endure.

And Destiny had come to the picnic to see Orpheus singing and playing in the Dreaming, and had gone away satisfied that all was as it should be.

Orpheus himself, oracle that he was, seemed well content. The previous night's weary refusal to walk had vanished into ever-increasing ease with his crutches, and clearly he was pleased with his selection of drums.

After Calliope had departed, with many compliments for the breakfast Hob and Dream had supplied, Orpheus was eager to see what lay beyond Hob's flat—and to carry his music there as well.

Hob agreed that, so far as he knew, the great Central Park visible from the flat was an appropriate place for music. The weather was cooperating, clear and not too hot, so at mid-morning Dream, Hob, and Orpheus set out for the grand expanse of green at the center of the city.

Dream found it easy to move through the vast density of human dreamers when most of his attention was on Hob and Orpheus. And, too, strangers seemed to notice nothing strange or unnerving about Dream, when he was busy clearing a path for his son, holding hands with Hob as they each carried one of Orpheus' chosen drums, discussing with both of them possible plans for the day.

With them, this was a world where Dream could fit—could belong. He could have another life here, many lives, when his time as Dream of the Endless was done. And in the meantime he could tend to the Dreaming while his loved ones slept and journeyed there; he could create new wonders while they were busy with their own interests, and come back to them for supper, or breakfast, or a walk in the park.

Though it was still early in the day, Orpheus was not the first musician to reach the park, and he stopped before each performer they came across, listening with interest to their music. He would often hum softly with them, or tap out a rhythm on the handles of their crutches; most of them noticed him and smiled, recognizing a fellow creature of music.

The paths here were wide, paved in black and easy for Orpheus to navigate on his crutches. Dream let him lead, and Hob seemed not to even notice where they went, letting himself be tugged along by Dream's hand while he looked avidly around. "I haven't been here in decades," he said at one point. "It's all so different now, but I still recognize so much—I love places like this, that grow and change but don't feel strange to me." He glanced over at Dream, smiling with the same wonder he had bestowed on the park, and added, "It feels like catching up with a friend."

Dream tugged him into a kiss, and it was a long moment before he remembered to look around for Orpheus, who had continued on ahead without them. He stopped as Dream was watching, studying the bridge that arched over the path they were on. It was wide, creating an arched tunnel over the path, and as Dream watched Orpheus stepped just within the bridge's cover and tilted his head.

Then he sang a single, perfect note, and listened to the way it echoed in the space.

Orpheus glanced over his shoulder and called back, "Here! This is the spot!"

"Well, that's us told," Hob muttered with a smile, and tugged Dream to hurry up to Orpheus with the drums they were carrying. Dream conjured a folding stool for Orpheus to perch on, and Orpheus chose a position where he could prop his crutches safely behind him as he sat to play and sing.

Then he shooed them away, and turned himself over to the music.

Dream and Hob wandered off under the bridge's shelter, listening to the way Orpheus' rhythms and the eerie melody of his wordless song played off brick and stone and pavement. They paced back and forth, listening, and Dream watched as, in ones and twos, others wandering the path gathered to listen.

As his audience grew, Orpheus' song changed from something haunting to a joyful tune, accompanied by a quick, complex beat. People tapped their feet or clapped along; children whirled and hopped and danced. Through it all Orpheus was smiling, singing, creating something new, something beautiful, something that would never exist in quite the same way again. Something he shared with everyone here—including Dream.

"Hey," Hob whispered in his ear. "Hey, look who's here."

Dream turned his attention to the crowd again, and he spotted Daniel first, wriggling emphatically in Lyta's arms. Lyta was staring at Orpheus, and after a moment she gave in to Daniel's obvious wishes and set him down, and the child began to dance among all the other children, laughing for sheer joy.

Dream felt a spasm of grim, resigned envy at the sight of Daniel, and then remembered that he need not any longer. Daniel was a part of his family, his apprentice; Lyta was, if not a friend, not his enemy. He could go and join them. He could even...

He glanced over at Hob, and he could see that Hob had understood even before he did.

"Go on," Hob said softly, giving his hand another squeeze. "You know you want to. I'll be right here when you get tired of it."

Dream kissed him one more time, flinging his arms around Hob's neck, and then made himself small enough to be held up in Hob's arms. Hob hugged him tight, and Dream felt again the way an embrace from Hob was strong enough to hold him together, to knit himself—all of himself, this time, nothing left under the bed, nothing hidden away from himself—into this small form, making all secure within.

Then Hob pressed a kiss to the top of his head and bent, setting Dream on his own feet, now clad in bright red trainers.

Dream ran at once into the milling chaos of dancing children, not needing to look back to know just where Hob was standing, watching over him. He caught Daniel by the hand as soon as he reached him; they were perfectly matched, dark and bright, both small, both much greater than they appeared.

Daniel knew him, just as surely as Dream had always known Daniel; they could not mistake each other. Daniel tugged him into a wild, spinning, hopping dance. They both laughed as they whirled and jumped, and their laughter blended into the music as if the melody had only been waiting for them to add their voices to it.

---

THE END