The Sandman CHBB Fic: To Be Brand New, Chapters 5-8

[dira]

Title: To Be Brand New

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

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

Chapter 5

Dream opened his eyes and found himself back in Hob's bed—still in the small body that had forced him to sleep the night before. The red ribbon was still bound around his wrist, and still had Matthew's feather tucked into it. He had turned in his sleep, now facing the middle of the bed rather than the edge, so he could see at once that the other side of the bed had been slept in but was now vacant.

Dream sat up and found that his suitcase had been set on the foot of the bed, and the red ribbon draped over it, leading out the door. Dream crawled out from under the covers toward his suitcase. He was still struggling with the latches when a knock made him look up; Hob was leaning in the doorframe, having tapped a knuckle against it to alert Dream to his presence.

The ribbon was still tied around his arm above the elbow, still binding them together.

He was wearing soft pants and a t-shirt, barefoot, his face darkly stubbled and his hair disheveled. He was smiling at Dream with unmistakable fondness. "Morning, love. You want a hand with that, or shall I bugger off and let you sort it out for yourself?"

Dream sat back, unable to summon the words to ask for help more explicitly; Hob nodded as if that had been a properly-worded request and came right over. His big hands effortlessly spanned the latches of the case and had it open in a moment. He smiled as he looked inside, and then he picked up the case and turned it around, so Dream could easily reach all the contents.

"Fashion sense hasn't budged, has it, my friend?"

Dream surveyed his options with satisfaction. There were a few variations on his black overalls, and an assortment of black, gray, and black-and-white shirts to pair with them, plus a black raincoat (lined with a print of silver stars) in case of inclement weather, and several pairs of pajamas in an assortment of styles. There were even pants to wear underneath the rest, since his borrowed nightshirt had made him aware of that particular lack.

He had not packed any socks, however, nor shoes. Those Hob had supplied were more than sufficient to his needs.

Tucked into a side pocket, there were a small brush and comb, and a nail brush and toothbrush of precisely calculated firmness for his present body's tolerance. Withdrawing these, Dream said, "I would like to wash before I dress for the day."

Hob smiled. "Of course. Want a hand? I'd like to see how your bruises are doing, too."

Dream nodded and raised his hands, and Hob's smile only widened as he hurried around to the side of the bed to scoop Dream up.

---

"Oh, before we get tangled up," Hob said, stopping short of lifting Dream out of bed. "Don't need this while we're both awake, do we?"

"Oh," Dream said, and then he pulled a black feather from the ribbon wrapped around his wrist. "This is important. I mustn't lose it."

Hob watched him look around and then lay it carefully on top of a shirt in his little suitcase, flipping a fold of fabric over it so it wouldn't blow away should a stray draft find it. When he'd done that, he presented his wrist to Hob, and Hob untied the ribbon from his wrist and then from his own arm, heaping the whole pile of red ribbon onto the bed to be dealt with later.

"Right, then, time for a wash." Dream reclined against Hob's chest as Hob carried him to the bathroom, seeming perfectly at his ease. Hob was starkly aware that they'd now spent more time together in the last twenty-four hours than in the six hundred thirty-some years before, whether he counted time in that dream of wandering under the sea or just the hours they'd slept side by side in Hob's bed.

Dream had his toothbrush firmly in hand, so Hob took him to the sink first, and with only a bit of undignified juggling got him set up with toothpaste and running water. Dream was very solemn and methodical about brushing his teeth, and very nearly managed to spit without dribbling on himself or Hob. Much.

Hob set Dream on his feet in the bathtub, and Dream promptly stripped off the t-shirt he'd slept in while Hob got the water on and soaped up a cloth. Dream was peering intently at his own knees when Hob turned back to him; he knelt beside the tub to join him in his inspection.

"That's looking a little better," Hob said, pointing to the tops of the bruises, at the bases of Dream's knees. "I mean, it looks uglier, but it's going green at the edges, and not as dark in the center, that means it's starting to heal."

"That is the way of some things, is it not?" Dream asked solemnly. "Worse before they are better."

"Darkest before dawn, and all that," Hob agreed, and then set to work, gently washing Dream clean. The bruise on his chest still looked just as dark as before, and Hob didn't remark on it. It looked to be a deep and bad one, and would take its time healing.

The raw places on his shoulders had scabbed over, at least, so Hob was very careful not to press against those spots as he washed and then rinsed Dream clean.

"Do you want to do your face yourself?" Hob asked, but Dream just shut his eyes and raised his chin, so Hob did that as well, then washed the nape of his neck and behind his ears. Dream's hair was softer than it looked when he was adult-sized, still a bit baby-silky despite the way it stood out in ungovernable tufts. Hob judged that it didn't urgently need washing, and sluiced a last round of warm water over Dream, making sure he was thoroughly rinsed clean.

Dream spread his arms when Hob returned with a towel, standing like a little prince and allowing himself to be dried off. Hob presented the bruise ointment with a questioning look, and at Dream's nod of approval, he re-anointed all the bruises, telling himself this would help.

"And would your majesty like a ride back to your clothes?"

"Yes, please," Dream said cheerfully, and Hob wrapped Dream up in the towel and slung him over a shoulder, raising a peal of laughter as he hauled Dream back to the bedroom.

Today Dream's shirt was black and patterned with white stars, and his new black overalls had a design of red flames around the hems that would exactly match his new red trainers. Dream took the black feather from where he'd left it atop the shirt and held it while Hob helped him get his clothes on, then tucked it carefully into his front chest pocket.

"Right, let me guess," Hob said, when Dream was all dressed. "Cheese on toast for breakfast? Perhaps with a side of bacon?"

Dream made a dubious face at the idea of bacon, though when Hob actually dished it up in front of him all doubt fled and Dream put it away like he'd just put in a sixteen-hour shift at the docks. Hob had guessed right for how much he could eat at a sitting this time, so there wasn't much for him to finish off at the end, and Dream was just as enthusiastic as he'd been the day before about helping with cleanup.

"So," Hob said. "I was thinking we should do a bit of a grocery shop, lay in a good supply of bread and cheese and see if there's anything else you might like to try while you're staying. And then when we're done with that we can see if we feel like just hanging about the flat or going out and about some more."

Dream nodded seriously, still focused on the last of the dish-drying. "I did not think to bring money with me, but—"

"Don't think of it, my friend," Hob said firmly. "Immortality's good for accumulating cash, and I'm only glad to be able to host you. It's what I was trying to say, you know, back when I told you about having the queen to stay—I really wanted to tell you that I had the means to host someone in grand style, if you ever cared to spend a night under my roof. And even if you don't care about having state apartments wallpapered in gold leaf, I'm glad to have you and be able to get whatever you need while you're here."

Dream's little forehead wrinkled, but when he handed the last plate over to Hob, his expression cleared and he nodded. "Then I thank you. And look forward to grocery shopping with you."

Hob smiled. "I'm just going to have a shower first. Ten minutes, if you need me give a shout."

Dream was back to looking dubious, but Hob pressed a kiss to the top of his head and headed to the bedroom to grab some clothes, and then to the bathroom. Dream trailed after him, and was standing by the bedroom door when Hob glanced back from the bathroom.

"Ten minutes," Hob repeated, and then closed the door behind him.

---

Dream was tempted to sit down right there and wait for Hob to return to him, but as soon as he was aware of that thought, he took himself away to the living room.

Ten minutes was not a long time, and Hob had not really gone anywhere; he was just out of sight for the moment. Dream had gone into the Dreaming without him, albeit with a physical tether to bring him back. Hob was in no danger of getting lost in the shower and being unable to find his way back out, so it was perfectly reasonable to have no such tether now.

Dream did not need Hob for anything at present; it was absurd to feel as if he'd been abandoned.

Dream collected his gallery book and tucked it into his overall pocket beside Matthew's feather. These were his connections to his siblings, and to Matthew, and through him to the Dreaming. He was not alone; he had no reason to feel that way.

He crept back to the little hallway that led to the washroom. He could hear the shower running now. He couldn't bother Hob; he had to manage on his own for ten minutes. He was ancient. Ten minutes was the blink of an eye.

Dream deliberately opened his eyes wide and then blinked them shut.

When he opened them again, the shower was still running, and Hob was still shut away from him behind that door.

Dream forced himself to turn away. He was being ridiculous. He should make some sensible use of his time. Hob was not ignoring him for ten minutes for no reason; he was preparing himself to go out in public. Dream should use the time to do the same. He was clothed, but of course Hob had made it clear yesterday that he also needed suitable footwear.

His sandals were still by the door, neatly aligned beside Hob's shoes. But he had wanted to wear the red trainers he'd picked out, and he didn't see them anywhere. Dream searched all around the living room and then the kitchen, and discovered a narrow closet housing a washer and dryer—and, up on top of the higher machine where Dream couldn't reach, his new shoes and the pile of lovely soft socks in different colors.

Dream tried to climb up onto the lower machine so he could reach, but there was nowhere to get a good grip, and his best efforts had him thumping painfully down to the ground. The flash of pain turned so swiftly to anger that Dream scarcely noticed the transformation.

How dare Hob buy these things for him and then put them where he couldn't reach them? How dare Hob act as if he would take care of everything and then leave Dream alone? Dream scrambled back to his feet and ran back into the living room, pacing here and there as the anger burned hotter and brighter in his belly. He needed some way to make Hob pay for what he'd done, to show him just how little Dream cared for Hob being so careless of him.

Anger churned in his stomach like something eager to escape. It didn't feel like a scream; it felt like—

Dream doubled over and vomited directly onto the rug.

He stumbled to his knees, coughing out the last of it. It burned his throat and mouth and nose, and...

It didn't feel like anger at all, now that it was out of him. It was disgusting and awful and he'd made a mess of Hob's rug, when Hob had just left him alone for—was it ten minutes? Surely it had been hours—surely Hob ought to have come back by now.

But why should he come back for one such as Dream, who had left him for so long without a word, without explanation? Who had only returned to him to make demands of him, a useless little creature who—who—

Who had vomited all over Hob's rug, making a horrible foul mess.

Dream got to his feet and dashed into the kitchen, snatching up the dishcloth Hob had used to wash the breakfast dishes. It was still damp, still smelled of soap; it would do for the rug, wouldn't it?

Dream knelt down beside the horrible wet patch—the sharp reek of it made his eyes water—and started trying to wipe it up. There was no way he could hide what he'd done from Hob, but at least he could do something, he could show that he was trying. Then Hob might not lose all patience with him and cast him out. The water was still running; he still had time to make it a little less bad.

His hand skidded off the cloth and right into the yellow puddle soaking into the rug just as he heard the water shut off.

Dream just stared at his hand, at the vileness on it. He'd tried to make it better and now he'd made it worse. Unbearably worse.

Everything seemed very, very silent, time itself seeming to stand still, and then he heard Hob call out, "Dream? How's it going?"

Dream's lips parted, and this time what poured out of him in a messy involuntary rush was a scream.

---

Hob was congratulating himself on fitting thirty seconds of staring into the mirror in wordless horror, a shave, and a hygienically complete shower into eight and a half minutes when he turned the water off and heard an ominous amount of absolutely nothing.

It shouldn't have been any different from the way his flat normally sounded on any weekday morning, when there was no one else around even downstairs at the Inn. But Dream was here, and quiet as he was, something about this silence felt too silent.

"Dream?" Hob called, grabbing a towel and hastily swabbing himself dry. "How's it going?"

There was the tiniest pause—some instinct had Hob lunging toward the bathroom door already—and then an ear-splitting howl. Hob shot out into the living room and stopped short at the sight of Dream—all in one piece, no blood evident anywhere—sitting on the rug with one hand held as far from his body as it could get, screaming fit to bring the house down.

Given he was all in one piece and feeling strong enough to make that much noise—and had his eyes screwed shut, not looking for Hob to save him—Hob took the few seconds to get the towel wrapped properly around himself before he knelt on the rug beside Dream. "Hey, sweetheart, what's—"

Dream flailed and scrambled away from him when Hob touched the wrist of the arm he was holding out straight, which brought Hob up short. It caused a stutter in the shrieking, and then at least Dream looked at him through tear-filled eyes, and wailed, "Don't! You'll get dirty too! It's my fault!"

Hob noticed, then, the rather nasty-smelling puddle on the rug, half-covered by a dishcloth. Dream had been sick, by the smell of it—though the fact that it looked to be a puddle of nothing but bile, not twenty minutes after he'd eaten all that breakfast, surely indicated that his digestion was continuing to work on its own mysterious terms.

"Oh, my friend, that's not your—"

"I was! Angry!" Dream sobbed, and then collapsed flat on the carpet and let out another teakettle shriek. Hob could see there was something yellow and wet on his hand, and winced.

"It's all right to be angry," Hob said, not at all sure Dream could hear him over his own screams—or was in any frame of mind to take in words, really. "Now, I'm going to get up and walk just over to the kitchen, so if you open your eyes you'll still see me, and now that I think of it, I'm just going to keep talking the whole time—"

Hob got up and walked backward to the kitchen, where he spotted the open door on the laundry nook, and Dream's bright red shoes tucked on top of the machine along with his socks. "Oh, was that—did you want your shoes, sweeting? I'm sorry, I shouldn't have put them where you couldn't reach, and I forgot to put your socks in the wash before you wore them," Hob grabbed the kitchen roll and headed back to Dream. "But I expect they'll be right enough without, once we get you sorted. Here, Dream, you can use this to wipe off your hand."

Hob ripped off a few sheets and scooted them in Dream's direction without trying to touch him again. "It's honestly not a problem, love. The rug is from Ikea, you don't want to know how many things I've washed out of it over the years. And it could be the finest thing I'd ever owned, and I still wouldn't want you to be upset over it."

Dream grabbed the sheet of kitchen roll with his sticky hand while Hob was talking, and the screaming tailed off for a few seconds, but as soon as Hob fell silent Dream let out another howl.

"Of course," Hob said softly, "sometimes you just get upset, don't you? And you might not even know why, once you're well into it, you just know that everything's awful and there's nothing to do but scream about it."

Hob tore a few more sheets from the roll and started blotting up the puddle of sick. Dream kept screaming, sometimes seeming about to trail off, sometimes keeping it going for longer than seemed physically plausible. Hob kept talking to him, no matter how loudly he was screaming or how he seemed to be winding down, staying where Dream could see him and repeating the same calm reassurances.

"And whenever you're ready, I'll help you get all cleaned up," Hob added after a while. "Anything you got on your hand will wash right off like it was never there, and if you want to change clothes or have a bath we can do that too. Not now, but when you're ready, we can take care of all of this and it will be just fine."

Dream kept right on screaming, and Hob kept up the low calm talking, wondering vaguely if he ought to time this, like someone having a fit. Of course, he didn't have the least idea how long was normal for a child who was actually an immortal eternal being to be able to keep up a tantrum.

What eventually happened, which Hob should probably have seen coming, was a firm knock on the flat door.

Dream scrambled away to get the coffee table fully between him and the door, and screamed even louder, possibly in horror at the prospect of having someone else see him right now. Hob got up off the floor, checked his towel was still properly in place, and went to answer the door, opening it just wide enough to speak through and keeping his body in position to block the view of whoever was on the other side.

It was Marc, which was no surprise, looking half amused and half concerned. "Everything all right then, boss?"

"Well, not bad," Hob said, rubbing his chin only to feel a sharp sting and pull his hand away bloody. He must have cut himself, shaving in such a hurry, and not even noticed till now. He wiped his hand on the towel, but judging by Marc's dubious look that didn't help matters much. "But I put my young friend's shoes on top of the dryer where he couldn't reach them while I was in the shower, so as you can imagine he has some things to work through."

Marc nodded, not particularly appearing to disbelieve him but also not accepting that Hob had things well in hand, which was fair given that the screaming had not abated at all and was in fact getting a bit more wild and ragged. Marc just stood there looking at him for a moment.

When Hob got it he sighed and nodded and then looked over his shoulder and called out, "Dream, darling, could you please tell Marc that you're upset but not because I've done you any harm that he needs to rescue you from before he gets on with his day?"

The screaming cut off into spluttery coughing, and then there was a pounding of little feet and a surprisingly strong shove on Hob's hip that actually did knock him off balance enough for Dream to worm around him. He shoved the door open a bit wider and planted himself in front of Hob—between Hob and Marc, as if to protect him.

There was a ringing, stunning silence for just a second as Dream stared up ferociously at Marc, his little face red and streaked with tears and snot and... spit, probably, on his pointy little chin. Then, at absolutely top volume that echoed horribly in the stairwell and had a painful-sounding rusty edge, Dream screamed, "He! Is! My! Friend! He! Would! Never! Hurt! Me!"

He took an ominously deep breath, during which Marc was already starting to back away, hands raised placatingly, and then Dream finished with an absolutely teeth-rattling crescendo: "Go! Away! Leave! Us! Alone!"

Dream whirled and buried his face in Hob's towel-covered hip, now sobbing rather than screaming.

Marc grimaced and mouthed—or possibly said, but Hob couldn't hear him over the ringing in his ears and Dream's only-slightly-muffled wailing—"Good luck, mate."

Hob gave him a wry smile and then bent over Dream to try to get a grip on him and pick him up. Dream didn't resist, letting Hob pick him up and hug him properly; his legs went around Hob's middle and arms wrapped around Hob's neck in an almost strangling grip.

Dream also pressed his tear-soaked snotty face directly into the bare skin of Hob's neck, which was an experience Hob hadn't had in a while. It brought an unexpected surge of horribly nostalgic fondness with it. He kicked the door shut and twisted the lock before carrying Dream back to the bedroom, where he could sit on the bed and bounce gently while mumbling soothing nothings and rubbing Dream's back.

It was such a relief to be able to hold him, to feel as if he was doing anything at all to be a comfort. It didn't seem to help for a long time, but gradually he felt Dream going heavier and more limp in his arms, until the crying tailed off to sniffling and then to grumbly little sleeping breaths.

Hob leaned back onto the bed until he could free a hand without any risk of Dream falling off his lap, and groped around behind him until he found the red ribbon. He didn't know if it was necessary, or if it would accomplish anything when Dream had already fallen asleep and Hob wasn't planning to join him anytime soon. Even if it did nothing else, it would let Dream know as soon as he woke up that Hob wanted to make sure Dream could find him right away, and that was worth doing.

He got the ribbon tied around Dream's wrist first, and tucked a fold of the ribbon into his little hands, and then tied his own end in place with Dream still cradled in his lap.

When that was done, he felt able to lay Dream down on the bed and clear off a space for him to be tucked in properly, packing everything back into Dream's suitcase and setting it aside. Hob went to the bathroom for a cloth to clean up Dream's face, and was faintly surprised by his own blood-smeared towel-wearing reflection.

He still made sure to get Dream cleaned up and tucked back into bed before he bothered getting his own clothes on, and by then his chin had stopped bleeding again so that part was easy enough to tidy up as well. After that he wandered into the kitchen to brace his hands on the bench and seriously consider the pros and cons of a cuppa versus lying facedown on the floor for a while.

He'd just remembered that he should clean up the puddle of sick on the rug before doing either of those things when a sharp rapping on the window distracted him from everything else. Hob jumped a little at the sight of the fuck-off huge bird there—he hadn't seen a raven that close since he had to convince a few that he wasn't carrion in the aftermath of a battle that ought to have done him in.

Hob stared at the bird, and it stared back at him for a moment, then spread its wings wide and deliberately pecked at the glass again.

That... wasn't just a raven, and Hob had the King of Dreams in vulnerable little child form asleep in his flat. Hob backed away from the window, watching the bird every step of the way. When it was out of sight he turned and hurried, checking that Dream was still in bed and then tugging the covers right up to his ears.

There was a louder, fiercer rat-a-tat on the bedroom window.

Dream didn't stir. Yet.

"Fuck," Hob muttered, and backpedaled out of the room, shutting the door behind him. As he hurried back to the kitchen he saw the raven fly back to that window—so it was just one, maybe, and not a bloody flock come to swarm into his flat. The raven pecked once at the kitchen window, and then waited again.

It wasn't trying to break in, so far.

Hob went to the window and opened it just a crack. "Do you come in peace?"

"Sure, yeah, scout's honor," the raven replied, sounding thoroughly American and also... like a raven that could talk.

Hob stared at it for a moment while the raven stared back.

"Why are you here?" Hob tried.

"Boss sent me to carry a message for him, told me to check in with him when he was done. He's got one of my feathers with him, so I know he's here somewhere, and from the way you're acting, you've got somebody here who's got you on edge about magical birds, right?"

Hob stared at the bird, thinking of the little black feather Dream had taken such care with—last night in the Dreaming, and this morning when he woke up. It tracked. No enemy of Dream's would know about that feather, would they? And Dream had kept it with him, like he wanted to be found. He'd said it was important.

Still, Dream had been shy of his subjects last night in the Dreaming, and Hob wasn't at all sure what he would want at this particular time.

"Did he tell you what he's doing in this world?" Hob asked.

"He said he had some stuff to take care of," the raven said. "But he was hiding under the bed while he said it and I noticed when he took my feather from me that his hand looked... smaller than usual. And also had a ribbon just like that wrapped around his wrist."

Hob nodded. That probably hadn't been an accident, Dream letting the raven see. "Yeah, he's... smaller than usual, is a good way to put it. And he's having a lie down right now, but you can come and wait for him inside, right? "

The raven nodded agreement, and Hob took a last few seconds to hope he wasn't fucking this up somehow and then opened the window, letting the raven hop in.

The bird just perched on the sink, which was a bit anticlimactic after all that. He looked up at Hob, who looked down at him until he realized they were both waiting for something to happen.

Hob took a step back. "I'm Hob Gadling, by the way. Or that's what your boss calls me, anyway—says something else on the papers. Get you a cup of tea?"

"I'm Matthew," the raven said. "This raven gig seems like a first-names-only kind of deal. Still too American for tea, though. Also, not to criticize your housekeeping or anything, but what is that smell?"

"Oh, right," Hob said, and ducked under the sink to hunt up the good carpet cleaner. "That would be your boss's doing. Sometimes it's rough being... smaller than usual. Body he's stuck in found an exciting way to express itself when he got properly unhappy."

Hob straightened up again with the cleaner and a few truly decrepit old rags, and did his best not to stagger when Matthew jumped onto his shoulder. He had a surprisingly delicate grip, not so much as puncturing Hob's t-shirt.

"Uh, sorry," Matthew said. "Kind of... habit."

"No harm done," Hob said, and headed to the source of the unfortunate smell. He had to stop for a moment at the sight of the dishcloth lying there. It had already been there when he came out; he hadn't had time or space to think anything of it until right now, but...

Hob swallowed hard, blinking firmly.

"You, uh... you okay? Is the smell worse for you?"

Hob shook his head. "No, it's just... he tried to clean it up so I wouldn't see. He couldn't, because he's... small, but he tried."

"Oh," Matthew said. "Oh, that's... okay, yeah. Got it."

They both remained still for another minute, not looking directly at each other, neither one making a sound.

---

Chapter 6

Dream opened his eyes and found himself in Hob's bed, and he had to cast his mind back to where he had been before.

He had not visited the Dreaming, in the sense that he had gone there overnight. He had been floating in one of the nowhere places, rocked in the sea of dreams without dreaming himself. This sleep had been more of an emergency shutdown by his overwhelmed body and mind, needing absolute quiet to recover.

And now he was recovered; he felt calm again, without any unmanageably vast emotion pounding at him from the inside demanding to be set free. He was still small, and...

He was clutching the red ribbon, which was bound around his wrist below the pushed-up sleeve of his shirt. Hob must have tied it there after Dream cried himself to sleep in Hob's lap.

Dream supposed that he should have been embarrassed at the undignified display he'd made of himself, but he found himself feeling strangely satisfied by it. Hob had held him and comforted him—but only when Dream invited it. Hob had waited by his side while he was locked in a pattern of irrational behavior.

Marc had indeed gone away when Dream demanded it, small though he was, little reason though Marc had to listen to the ravings of what must have seemed to him an overwrought toddler.

Dream sat up, and saw the trail of the red ribbon leading out of the bedroom door, which was closed. Dream frowned at this, but it seemed quite clear to him that Hob must have had a reason. Dream began tugging the ribbon toward him, curious to see whether he could actually summon Hob to him that way.

He had barely gotten far enough to budge the end of the ribbon disappearing through the door when he heard Hob call from somewhere else, "Dream?" Followed by the sound of Hob's footsteps approaching. "Oh, bugger, I shut the door—I'm sorry, love," the door opened to reveal Hob, fully clothed now and with the smear of blood cleaned away from his chin, leaving only a small dark line.

Dream raised his hands in a mute request to be picked up, and Hob stepped inside and shut the door again before coming to his side.

Hob picked him up and sat down on the edge of the bed, settling Dream on his lap and hugging him. Dream sighed and let himself relax against the warmth of Hob's chest, in the safety of his arms.

Still, eventually he did have to take notice of the fact that the door was shut—that Hob had made a point of shutting it again when he came in. "Hob?"

Hob cleared his throat and leaned back a bit, keeping his arms around Dream but finding an angle to meet his eyes. "Yeah, sweeting, I—you have a visitor waiting for you. Matthew," Hob added, before Dream could entertain too many alarming visions of who might have found him already.

"Ah," Dream said, and touched the pocket of his overalls where Matthew's feather was still tucked safely inside. "Yes. I sent him to carry a message for me, and... he seemed worried. I thought it would be..." What you would do, "Kindest. To tell him where to find me afterward."

Hob hugged him again, and kissed the top of his head. Dream tried not to feel too absurdly vindicated at this wordless approval of his choice.

"If you want to just speak to him through the door, I'll go back out and tell him to come close enough to hear," Hob said. "But we talked a little, and I don't think he'll say anything... untoward, if you let him see you."

"From Matthew, that might be worse," Dream muttered, but of course he could not order Matthew to be at ease with him, and the longer he was hidden away the less Matthew would be at ease.

There had been a time when he would not have cared. When he would have thought that no servant of his should be at ease in his presence. But... Hob would certainly not like to hear him say that. And Dream did not want to be the way he had been before.

He took a long, deep breath and heaved a sigh, then held out his wrist with the ribbon on it. Without a word, Hob untied it, and then untied his own and heaped the tangled pile of ribbon on the bed.

Dream eyed the distance to the floor from his comfortable perch on Hob's lap. "Should I walk, do you suppose?"

"Well," Hob said, standing up with Dream still in his arms. "If you're going to do the thing, we might as well commit to the bit, right?"

"Mm." Dream settled his head against Hob's shoulder.

"Just so," Hob agreed, rubbing his back, and then he had to use that hand to open the door.

Dream picked his head up as soon as they were out of the bedroom, too curious to resist the urge to peer around—and so he saw the moment when Matthew caught sight of him. The raven leapt up into the air from the back of Hob's sofa, flapping wildly for a moment before he settled back down in the same spot. His head turned frantically this way and that, as though seeking an angle of view which would resolve Dream into a shape he recognized.

Hob sat down in the armchair, and Dream shifted to perch on Hob's knee. He found his fingers pressing to his lips as they had when he faced his elder siblings. He sucked them into his mouth without a thought, letting his mouth work on them while he stared at his raven and his raven stared back.

Just when Dream was starting to think that he was being cowardly, that he really must speak first, must say something, Hob said, "So, Matthew, you said Dream sent you to carry a message? That went all right, then?"

Matthew jerked and flared his wings wide as if startled all over again, but he settled this time without taking to the air, and shuffled a little as he said, "Oh, uh, yeah, I was able to find the guy pretty quickly. I mean, it was... far, but... also not far? And I didn't get lost too badly or anything. Raven to raven and all that. And I definitely gave him the message."

"If he was wroth with you..." Dream said, and Matthew gave him another long look, then shook himself all over.

"No, he, uh... He was pretty understanding, actually, about the whole just-the-messenger thing. And I told him the thing you said about how if he had questions for you he should come by and ask you, because I really didn't know anything about it. So he... might do that. But he was pretty focused on, you know, doing the thing you told him about first."

Dream glanced up at Hob, who was smiling down at him fondly, as though Matthew's discretion were some game they were playing. "I can leave the room," Hob said, "if you'd like to speak freely."

Dream frowned, looking up at Hob more intently. There was something in him that wanted to be angry at Hob for taking this lightly, being so cheerful and easy about it—and yet Hob's words were an offer to respect his privacy in dealing with matters Hob knew nothing of.

Hob was... not demanding to know, not sulking over being excluded. His smile faded, and he said, "You know what, I just remembered I need to do something in the other room. I'll let you two talk. Matthew, give a shout if you need me for anything, right?"

"Sure," Matthew said, and Hob stood up, gave Dream a brief squeeze, and set him right back down on the chair where Hob had been sitting, then walked out of the room.

Dream watched him go, still not having said a word, then finally turned back to Matthew. "I apologize," he said, "for appearing before you in this... manner."

"Hey, no skin off my beak," Matthew said. "I guess when your job is kind of built into who you are like yours is, you gotta go a long way to have a relaxing break from it, huh? Plenty of people think, man, I wish I could be a kid again, not have to worry about my job and my bills and all that. Makes sense to do it if you can actually do it—and Hob seems like a pretty good friend, huh? He's looking after you okay?"

Dream raised a hand to his throat, remembering the way he had screamed at the last person who had asked him that question, the sheer force of his cries scouring his throat raw. It felt better now, and... it made sense for Matthew to ask.

"He is extremely kind," Dream said. "So long as the matter you handled is taken care of, I do not anticipate any other dangers here, so..." It struck Dream forcefully then how readily Matthew seemed to accept the idea that he had done this to himself on purpose, in order to... take a holiday? Relax? But Matthew had seen him in the presence of the rest of himself and had to know how readily Dream could have resumed it.

Matthew... thought he ought to have a relaxing break.

"I will be able to... continue my stay here," Dream said, unable to apply any more evocative language to what he was doing. "Please inform Lucienne of the situation, and return to me if there is any matter in the Dreaming she wishes me to attend to. I have full faith in her stewardship while I am away."

"Sure thing," Matthew said, bobbing a nod, "and I'll just... come by every so often, check in? Just in case you think of anything else or you need anything. I mean, unless you're planning on being back real soon?"

Dream heard a sound—the toilet flushing, and then the sink taps running—and glanced over his shoulder, but of course Hob was still out of sight. "I... have no firm date planned to end my sojourn here. If it will be a reassurance to you and to Lucienne, of course you may return as necessary to check in."

Matthew nodded, and Dream was struck with an awful thought. "When you return, inquire of Lucienne whether there were any... disturbances in the Dreaming, this morning. A little before you arrived here. If there were, you must report it to me at once, so that I may prevent it from occurring again."

"Ah," Matthew said. "Is that... does that happen? If you're here..."

"If I knew," Dream said as patiently as he could manage, "I would not have instructed you to find out."

"Right, right," Matthew said. "Okay! So I'll go find out what's what, and I'll report back if there's anything to worry about. No problem."

There was an ostentatious rattling of the bathroom door opening, and, reminded of what Hob would think of him, and the easy kindness with which Hob treated his staff, Dream swallowed his annoyance and eagerness for Matthew to be gone and said, "Thank you, Matthew. You have done well."

"Oh," Matthew said, seeming a little taken aback by Dream's effusiveness. "Yeah? I mean, of course. No big deal. See you soon, boss!"

Dream heard Hob walking toward them from the bathroom and turned in that direction just as Matthew flung himself into the air. The raven flew for a few brisk wingbeats straight at the spot where Hob would step into view—and ducked into the Dreaming just at the instant when Hob appeared, as Hob let out a yelp and threw up his arms to shield his face.

Dream could not help bursting out laughing, though he tried for a moment to stifle it. Hob's reaction had been perfectly justified—any human would do as much when a raven flew straight at their eyes at close range—but Hob's face!

And then Hob started laughing, so Dream let himself laugh properly out loud. He flung himself out of the chair and ran over to Hob—and his approach, of course, was only greeted with more laughter and smiles, and Hob catching Dream up in his arms to shake him just roughly enough to be funny, not painful or frightening.

"The bloody cheek!" Hob gasped. "Here I was, being polite, and you—you!"

"It was Matthew!" Dream protested. "I didn't tell him to at all!"

"Of course, of course you didn't, you would never," Hob agreed, his laughter dying down. "Now, I think before we got interrupted we were just about to go do some shopping."

Dream pressed his face into Hob's shoulder for a moment, considering the way Hob was rewriting the story of their day into something simpler and more pleasant. Humans did it all the time; Dream was just so rarely embedded in the process quite the way he was now.

He decided he rather liked it, in this particular case.

"I need my shoes and socks," Dream said. "You left them on top of the dryer!"

"Right! Right, so I did," Hob said, and shifted his hold on Dream to carry him over there. "Silly of me, don't know what I was thinking. Here you are—" Hob handed Dream the shoes, then also got all the socks down, piling them so that they were crammed between his body and Dream's until Dream started laughing again.

"Right!" Hob said cheerfully. "Let's get your shoes on and go shopping!"

---

"So," Hob said, carrying Dream away from the Inn and considering their possible destinations. "I had a thought, somewhere we might want to go before we do the grocery shopping, but it would mean taking the tube for a bit or else a pretty long walk. Are you up for a bit of adventure?"

"What sort of place is it?" Dream asked, and then shook his head. "If you think it's a good idea—"

"No, no, no point going if you're not going to like it, and if you need some time to think it over we can go another day. But I thought—you're used to being busy, aren't you? I think that's part of what went wrong this morning, I left you with nothing to do and you had to find a way to fill the time. If you're going to be staying a while, you're going to need something to be busy with sometimes, and you mentioned that you're used to creating, right? You... make dreams, don't you?"

"Ordinarily," Dream said, looking down at himself with a painfully shy expression. "But as I am now I cannot..."

"No, no, course not," Hob said. "And that'd be work, and we're not putting you to work in this state. But even after I stopped working as a sailor I liked to be out on the water sometimes, and even after I stopped needing to keep in practice as an archer it was fun to draw a bow now and then on a sunny day. So I thought you might still like to make things, even if they won't be anything like what you do normally. I thought we could get you some art supplies, or at least have a good wander round the store where they sell them, so you could think about whether you'd like to do something like that."

Dream squinted directly at him with an expression that left Hob with the distinct impression that it had never crossed his friend's mind before to do much of anything just for fun, without being an absolute master of his craft.

"If you're not ready to try that, we can just go get groceries," Hob went on, aiming for just the right pointed nonchalance. They could just go get groceries, of course, but...

"No, I want to go to the art store," Dream said decidedly. "It would be good to see what materials might be available."

"Good, good," Hob said, changing direction sharply to aim them at the nearest tube stop. "No need to buy anything if none of it suits you, of course, but I'll feel better when I need to do a bit of my own work if you've got something to keep busy with."

Dream's posture tightened a notch, and Hob could feel him winding up to a you need not.

"Might get some stuff on my own account, too," Hob said cheerfully. "It's been ages since I checked whether I've developed any talent for painting, might be time to try again."

Dream shifted against him, and Hob tilted his head to peek down at his little face. He could see Dream holding back a remark, and he grinned and jostled his friend in his arms as if he might shake it loose. "Go on, say it, say what you're thinking."

"There is always," Dream said, with great dignity that was devastating in combination with his three-year-old voice, the words with that particular quality of someone struggling to make a tiny mouth articulate them, "abstract expressionism."

Hob laughed so hard he had to stop walking, doubling over—flipping Dream somewhat upside down in the process—and then Dream was laughing too, and Hob gave in to the irresistible urge to pepper his cheeks with noisy smacking kisses.

Before Dream's giggles had quite tailed off—before he might start trying to squirm away in earnest—Hob reined himself in. He straightened up and settled his face into a solidly neutral expression, walking again toward the Tube stop as if he'd never paused.

Dream went on giggling a little more at that, but then he slumped comfortably against Hob's chest. Hob brought his other arm up around Dream to hug him closer, then said, "Now, this bit's going to get a little noisy and crowded," and dropped that arm from around him for just long enough to get out his wallet and tap it on the turnstile.

Dream's hands wound into his shirt, and Dream turned his body more tightly in against Hob's, but he picked his head up to look around as they went down the long escalators. They were well after the morning rush, so it wasn't crowded by the standards of the Tube, but there were definitely more people in closer proximity than they'd yet attempted to deal with.

On the other hand, this was the Tube, so no one paid them any attention or tried to speak to them. Dream unbent a little further by the time they reached the station platform, keeping his grip on Hob but actually twisting this way and that to look around at the people and the space.

Hob was so pleased by this evidence of curiosity and hopefully enjoyment that he only just realized the downside when he saw the lights of the approaching train.

"Head down, love," Hob said a little sharply, raising his hand to the back of Dream's head to press him down.

Dream obeyed instantly, his grip on Hob tightening, and that made it easy for Hob to be sure that one of Dream's ears was pressed against his body and he could cover the other with his hand before the train arrived with a piercing squeal of brakes. He felt the jolt in Dream's body at the sound—some of it still made it through, but hopefully it was muffled enough not to be awful for him.

Hob had misjudged his spot on the platform a little, but not badly; he only had to walk over a few steps to get to an opening door. A few people stepped off, and Hob stepped in and surveyed the car, considering the best spot to stand, and then a young guy scrambled out of his seat with a, "Here, mate."

Hob blinked at the kid and then at the seat and then realized once again that he was being seen as man with his hands full with his child and that was exactly the sort of person Hob himself would always give up a seat for.

"Cheers," Hob managed to say, a beat too late, folding himself into the seat and settling Dream onto his lap as the doors closed.

Hob waited until the train was in motion to ease his hand away from covering Dream's ear, though it was another minute before Dream relaxed enough to start looking around again. He kept his fists clenched tight in Hob's shirt and ducked back down against him at each stop, and Hob mostly managed to cover Dream's free ear when the brakes squealed. There were only a few stops before Hob was getting to his feet, murmuring, "Almost there now, love," into Dream's ear.

Dream breathed easier when they were above ground in the open air again, and so did Hob. It was only half a block from the Tube to the art supply store Hob had in mind. Hob smiled when it came in sight, and pulled open the door with a flourish, breathing deep of the smell of paper and paint and a hundred other things he didn't couldn't tease apart or name, all the racks and shelves filled with things for making other things.

It was fairly quiet inside; there were people in the shop, but all of them were intent on what they were looking for, except the clerk behind a counter near the front, who was intent on a sketchbook. Hob took a step farther inside, to be out of the way of the door, and then looked down at Dream, who had his fingers crammed into his mouth, the same shy gesture from when he'd faced Matthew for the first time. His eyes were wide, his gaze darting all over the place, and he was pressing bodily against Hob, as if all the things to look at were as loud as a braking train.

Dream abruptly hid his face against Hob's shoulder, and while he closed his arms firmly around Dream, Hob had had enough practice by now to look away for the cause.

Sure enough, the clerk had come out from behind the counter. They wore a nametag which proclaimed them to be Evelyn and a button that said They/Them, and they were watching Dream with the sort of fond interest that told Hob he'd have been left to fend for himself if he hadn't had a child in his arms.

"Can I help you find anything?" Evelyn asked.

"Oh, well," Hob said, looking around and then down at Dream. "I wouldn't know where to start. He's the artist, really, I'm just here to take him places and work the chip-and-pin machine."

"Oh," Evelyn said, and then crouched a bit lower and said, in exactly the same amiable customer service tone, not at all the sort of croon people were prone to use with little children, "excuse me, young sir, can I help you find anything?"

Dream's head turned. He was still pressed just as tight to Hob, but he was looking.

"Do you know what kind of art you'd like to do?" Evelyn went on. "Were you thinking of sculpting—" Evelyn's hands made an expressive gesture of molding something, "Or more drawing or coloring?" They switched to mime holding a pencil and scribbling on a page.

Dream didn't answer right away, but Evelyn stayed right where they were, holding his gaze and waiting for an answer.

"Colors," Dream said after a moment.

Evelyn nodded. "Excellent choice, we have so many colors. Let's look over this way."

Hob followed them over to an entire wall of things used for coloring. Evelyn stopped on the dividing line between a rack of colored pencils and one of pastels, and said, "Now, do you think—"

Dream shot out a pointing finger toward the pastels, and Evelyn smiled. "Great! Would you like to try some? We have testers so you can try the different brands—"

Dream wiggled and Hob let him go so he could march over to the rack himself. Evelyn crouched beside him, at his eye level, and Hob's entire job was to reach down colors from the higher racks while Evelyn and Dream hung out at toddler-height, having what seemed to be a very engrossing discussion of slightly different colors and textures.

Evelyn was holding the pad of scratch paper while Dream scribbled on it here and there with different colors, and different versions of nearly the same color. Dream was nodding along while Evelyn explained something, and when the page was nearly full he set down the last pastel he'd used and started rubbing his fingers through the blobs of color, blending and smearing the colors he'd laid down here and there across the little square of paper, until...

Hob blinked at the eerie landscape, the blur of blue and purple that was suddenly a sky filled with ominous clouds over a desert vista of red-orange-yellow land. Hob thought he had to be just projecting something into blurs of color, but Evelyn looked up sharply with a distinctly are you seeing this? sort of expression, and Hob nodded.

"Well, that sheet's done for," Evelyn said, when Dream drew his color-smeared hand back from it, apparently satisfied with his little masterwork. "I'll just—"

With wonderful care, they detached the sheet from the pad without smudging Dream's colors, and offered it to Hob, who held out a flat hand for it. Dream just watched, head slightly tilted, eyes a little unfocused, as if he'd gone somewhere in his head and wasn't really back yet.

"So," Evelyn said, "you did that with the pastels from two different lines, so if you want to get those effects at home you would need—"

Dream drifted back into something like focus, nodding along as Evelyn proffered a few different pastel sets, then seeming to catch himself. He looked up at Hob with obvious uncertainty.

"Let's get that one and that one for now," Hob said. "Just so we're not carrying eight boxes on the tube. I suppose the shop has a website where we can order the rest?"

"Definitely, Evelyn said. "Delivery is quick, too. And you'll want fixative—" Evelyn pulled a bottle off another rack and demonstrated, spraying it over Dream's artwork to make it less vulnerable to smudging, then adding the bottle to the stack of pastels. "Do you have paper at home?"

"Ah," Hob said. "Probably not the right sort. Why don't we get a book or two? There are probably different kinds, right?"

"There are... a few kinds," Evelyn agreed, not quite laughing out loud at the easy mark with the credit card. They led off toward the paper, and Dream gave his color-smeared hand a thoughtful look and then wiped it off on the front of his overalls, which somehow picked up only the faintest iridescent smear of color though his hand was wiped perfectly clean.

Then Dream looked up at Hob, raising his hand hesitantly, and Hob smiled and took it with his free one, still carefully holding Dream's artwork on his other hand as they wove through the narrow aisles of the art store. Hob tried to mostly watch where they were going, but he couldn't help watching the wide-eyed way Dream was looking around at everything they passed, too fascinated to notice the people they maneuvered around.

Soon they fetched up at the racks of sketchbooks and canvases, and Dream's eyes went immediately to a pad of black paper. Evelyn crouched down beside him as he went to it, explaining that it would be all right for pastels and then showing him half a dozen other options, letting him stroke the pages to get a feel for their textures.

Dream cast a few longing looks at the enormous sketchbooks—there were some just about as tall as he was in this form—but made a very restrained selection of three pads that were no bigger than A4, two white and one black. Hob made a mental note to get some of the big ones when he ordered more pastels; Dream would probably fill these little ones before the week was out.

As they headed to the front of the store to ring everything up, Dream walked at Evelyn's side, asking them questions about using pastels on materials other than paper, which Evelyn fielded knowledgeably and matter-of-factly, as if they were chatting to any art student. Hob just smiled, bringing up the rear with Dream's impromptu masterpiece still balanced carefully on his hand.

Evelyn took it from him when everything else was piled on the counter. They wrapped the piece gently in tissue paper, tucked it inside one of the sketchbooks, and used masking tape to tape it shut to secure the picture inside.

Hob looked down at Dream and found him standing on tiptoe, both hands clutching the edge of the counter as he peered up over it.

He just stared down at him, smiling helplessly, until Evelyn cleared their throat and said, "You said you were here to work the chip and pin machine?"

Dream looked up at him then, still holding himself up to the edge of the counter, and Hob hurried to get his wallet out and get on with paying for whatever they'd bought. "Have you got..."

Evelyn held up a neatly written list of items he should buy. The shop's website was printed at the top of the note paper.

"Right," Hob said, taking the list and tucking it into his wallet along with his card once he'd completed the transaction. "Thanks so much, you've been wonderful."

"Yes, thank you," Dream piped up solemnly. "May your dreams be sweet and strange."

"You're very welcome," Evelyn replied, equally seriously. "May your dreams be colorful and adventurous."

Hob was left seriously wondering if this was a thing people went around saying to each other, or if Evelyn was just very good at going with the bit. He couldn't ask either Dream or Evelyn, but that was all right; all new slang, and all new friendships, started this way for him. He would simply have to wait and see where it went. For now he gathered up their bag of purchases, took Dream's hand, and headed out of the store.

As they headed back the way they had come, Dream's hand tightened on Hob's and he said a little plaintively, "Are we going on the Tube again?"

There was an obvious right answer to that question, and Hob gave it without hesitation. "No, no need. We'll nip across to the Sainsbury's and then we can walk home, it's not really that far."

Hob mentally pared down his shopping list for the expectation of needing to carry everything home in one hand along with Dream's art supplies, because he was bound to be carrying Dream in the other arm before they were halfway back, but that was all right. He could order groceries delivered or borrow from the inn's kitchen if they needed anything else very urgently.

Dream was content to walk at his side, and when they had to run to beat a traffic light, Dream was laughing his rusty hinge laugh by the time they reached the far side. Hob couldn't help grinning down at him, feeling an absurd pride in doing this right, finding ways for Dream to act like a kid and experience something of human life.

In the Sainsbury's, Hob picked Dream up so that he could see properly while they picked out apples and grapes and raspberries. Hob still marveled at being able to have just about any kind of fruit he could think of anytime he wanted it; Dream just wanted to minutely examine everything for blemishes. They found satisfactory specimens of everything, and then went on to selecting a few different kinds of cheese so they could branch out into a wider variety of cheese toasties.

Dream was leaning heavily into Hob's shoulder by the time they'd collected three kinds of cheese, and Hob settled into a comfortable hold on him, smiling fondly at the thought of him needing a little nap after this much excitement. The store wasn't laid out quite the way Hob expected, and he had to wander through a few aisles before he located bread, milk, bacon, and, finally, some chocolate. He hesitated a moment, musing over which chocolate Dream might like best, and was about to ask and see whether he'd fallen asleep when someone leaned past Hob with a muttered semi-apology.

They brushed against Dream as they reached, and Dream went immediately rigid, fists clenching in Hob's shirt—and Hob realized that it wasn't just that Dream was tired. He was trying to hide from everything around him—not just noise, like the Tube, but all the strangers crowding too close and probably the fluorescent lights, and who knew what else.

Hob had that experience now and then, if he really looked at everything in a big grocery store, and was aware of how much was available, how much he could choose from, how many different things he could try. It was paralyzing and on a bad day it could be weirdly terrifying, making him feel exactly like that Medieval peasant who the kids on social media thought would be killed by pop music and TikTok dances.

Dropping the basket, Hob wrapped both arms around Dream and took a step away from the woman who'd collided with him. He spoke softly into Dream's ear. "Darling? Do we need to go home immediately, right now?"

Dream's legs wrapped around his waist, clinging even tighter, but Dream said, "I want my raspberries. They're perfect."

Hob glanced back at the dropped basket, hoping he hadn't bruised anything. "All right. We just need to pay, and then we'll be outside and we can walk home. Fresh air, no one crowding you. Right?"

Dream nodded into Hob's shoulder and didn't relax his grip by one whit.

"Right." Hob picked up the basket, selected some chocolate more or less at random, and strode briskly toward the checkout stands. It was a bit of a challenge juggling Dream and the art store bag while checking out, and Hob was beginning to suspect that he would have Regrets by the time he'd lugged Dream and their shopping back home, but he managed and would continue to manage. He could handle this.

Hob was frowning at the misty appearance of the street as he made for the doors, and they slid back automatically just in time for him to watch the skies open up and a deluge hit the street outside. Alone, he would have just walked out into it anyhow—it was a warm day, and it would save rinsing the raspberries—but Dream and Dream's art supplies and that lovely delicate little picture wouldn't fare so well.

Dream sat bolt upright while Hob was still hesitating, and flung his arms around Hob's neck, painfully tight. "We can't! We can't go in the rain! My books!"

"I know, darling," Hob managed, and he gave Dream as much of a reassuring hug as he could without dropping anything this time. There was an overhang outside the doors, and Hob stepped out under it to look for—ah, yes. "There. Quick dash and we'll get a cab, right?"

Hob crouched down to rearrange the bags, and Dream willingly allowed him to tuck the art supplies between their bodies for best safety from the rain. His fingernails were digging into the nape of Hob's neck when he settled himself again, and he was definitely shaking now—the further change of plans had done nothing to settle him from his state of near-breakdown.

Nothing for it but to try to get him home before it turned to another actual tantrum, or as soon after as possible. Hob walked out to the very edge of the overhang and waved to the nearest cabbie until he got a gesture of response. He still had to dash to the other side of the street, but he managed to slide inside before Dream was out in the rain for more than a few seconds.

Hob called out his address as he was getting the door shut and settling their bags around him. "No music, no chat, tip you double if we get there before this one starts screaming or throws up."

The cabbie twisted to look back at Hob and Dream and then nodded quickly. He tapped something on his phone, and the music gave way to some sort of white-noise-and-birds-chirping track. Hob breathed a sigh of relief and sat back to hold on to Dream and hope for the best.

The downpour eased during the ten minutes of the cab ride, and when they got out in front of the New Inn it was down to just a heavy mist. There was a bloke sitting at one of the outside tables, wearing a wide-brimmed hat that shadowed his face as he sipped from a bright pink cocktail with a curly straw. Hob hadn't even known they had anything like that on the menu. He'd have to ask about it.

Sometime. Not now, because right now he was legging it for the outside staircase up to his flat.

---

Chapter 7

The sound of the flat door closing behind them made Dream feel like it was safe to actually breathe for the first time in what felt like hours. The breath came back out in a sort of high-pitched whine as Hob carried him through the flat, but at least not a scream.

Hob stopped walking and wrapped both arms, now unencumbered by groceries, firmly around him. "I know, my friend, I know, you've been terribly brave. What's worst right now?"

The sketchbooks and pastels in their plastic bag were still tucked between him and Hob. Dream pushed at them, panting for breath and still making helpless noises on the exhales. Hob took the art supplies away and—Dream watched them to be sure—set them down gently on the coffee table, then wrapped both arms around Dream again. "Better?"

"Wet," Dream managed to say on the next breath. It should not have been such a pressing concern—he was not very wet, and if he could just concentrate he was sure he could fix it for himself—but the clammy persistence of the situation was maddening, the way his formerly-comfortable clothes clung damply to his skin.

"Ugh, yes," Hob agreed, bearing him now swiftly toward the bathroom. "Let's get that sorted."

Hob peeled him out of his damp clothing in efficient but not ungentle motions and rubbed him all over with a towel, pausing as he got down to Dream's feet, which were in truth perfectly dry. "Oh, darling. Would you look at that."

Dream looked, and realized that the bruises had faded almost entirely from his shins. There were faint greenish shadows just below his knees, but no other marks remained. He put a hand to his chest at the same time Hob's head jerked up to look, but that dark bruise over his heart most assuredly remained—as did those over his shoulders.

Hob touched the tops of his shoulders with careful fingers and said, "Well, not bleeding, at least. We're doing something right."

"Of course you are," Dream said fiercely. "No one could be a kinder or better host, Hob."

Hob looked faintly incredulous at that, and Dream huffed and tipped forward into a hug, wrapping his arms around Hob's neck and squeezing as hard as he could without actually throttling his friend. After a moment Hob's arm came around him, patting his back gently. "Just thought you were having a pretty rubbish day, that's all."

"That is not your fault," Dream insisted. "Most of my days are rubbish days. I just don't usually—"

Hob's arms were suddenly very tight around him, and Dream realized what he'd said and hid his face against Hob's shoulder.

"But now I have my friend with me," Dream whispered. "So now if I have a rubbish day..."

Someone notices, beyond wishing that the rain would stop. Someone cares, just because I'm upset or not coping well with spending twenty minutes in a grocery store. Someone does all he can to help, far more than I could ever deserve.

"Bit less rubbish?" Hob murmured, when Dream could not muster words he could bear to speak.

Dream nodded emphatically against his shoulder.

"Good," Hob said firmly. "All right. Let's get you into clean clothes, and then we can put the groceries away and break out your pastels and sketchbooks."

Dream wasn't at all sure he wanted to attempt to draw anything on purpose yet, or even to look again at the little thing he'd managed at the art store. He would see all its flaws if he looked at it again, would see all the limitations of this form reflected in what little he'd created.

He did want to put some clothes on, however, so he did not object to being carried into the bedroom, and made his selections from the clothing in his suitcase and let Hob help him into fresh things.

When Dream was properly dressed again, Hob frowned a little and reached into his pocket, drawing out his phone.

His face did something very strange, and Dream felt a chill come over him. He knew, even before Hob said, "Someone's shown up and started asking questions about a strange little dark-haired boy. Is this..."

Hob turned the screen of the phone toward him.

Dream didn't know what exactly the image there looked like to Hob's eyes. Dream could sort of see that surface appearance if he squinted—a man smiling a little too wide, fashionably dressed but just a little too sharp.

Mostly what he saw was the truth: Loki was here. Loki had found him, and was downstairs right now, speaking to Hob's people about him. Dream had meant to prevent this, to prevent anyone being in the kind of danger that none of them realized they were in right now.

"Hob," he said, and then broke off at the sound of a sort of roar from downstairs, accented by a few sounds of breaking glass and then utter, horrifying silence.

"Stay here," Hob said sharply, and took off at a run.

"Hob!" Dream snapped, to no effect. He jumped down off the bed—noticed, with a little start, that it didn't hurt a bit to land on his feet—and then ran after Hob. He'd left the door open behind him, the one that led to the inside stairs down to the kitchen. Dream hurried down them, listening for screams, wails, anything. He could hear people talking, voices rising, but they sounded... excited?

Dream hesitated at the foot of the stairs, peering out into the kitchen. Several people were clustered near the doors to the front area, but they seemed curious, not frightened, speaking quietly to each other. The louder, excited voices were coming from beyond the doors. There was no sign of people left blank and confused. Whatever had happened, it seemed to be over, and perhaps Loki had not had time to do the worst sorts of damage to any of Hob's people, or any of the innocent bystanders.

But then what had stopped him? If he had come looking for Dream, thinking to find him off-guard and helpless...

Dream had gotten word to Odin. If one of Odin's ravens had tracked Matthew back to him, then Odin would have known where Dream was. Or he might have had other means of searching for Loki, once he knew to look.

Perhaps Dream had done enough, soon enough. Perhaps he had not entirely failed Hob or Hob's people.

Dream hesitated, still perched on the lowest step, wondering whether he ought to go back upstairs and pretend that he had obeyed Hob's peremptory command.

He shook off that thought as soon as it formed. Hob might have wanted to keep him from danger—which would have been foolish and impossible, had there been any actual danger of the sort Loki would bring to bear—but beyond that moment's impulse he couldn't have any expectation of Dream obeying him.

Could he? Should he? Did Dream owe him that, if he was going to reap the benefits of being small? Dream bit his lip, and shrugged his shoulders under the weight that wasn't on them but ought to be.

The motion of someone approaching him caught Dream's attention, and he realized that it was Marc. The group by the doors were now quietly back at their normal tasks, and Marc—who Dream had screamed at this morning, just hours ago—was coming over to him.

He crouched a bit, looking Dream in the eye, and said, "Can't have anyone walking about the kitchen barefoot, young sir, that's a health and safety violation."

Dream looked down at his bare feet, and up at Marc, and tucked his fingers into his mouth. He ought to apologize, probably, for having screamed at Marc before. But Marc clearly didn't want Dream in his kitchen, and there was no way the child he appeared to be could argue with that.

"Looking for Hob?" Marc asked.

Dream nodded.

Marc offered his hands. "Can't have you walking barefoot in the kitchen, like I said. But if you'll let me give you a ride, I can take you out to him. There was a bit of excitement, but it's all sorted now. You're safe."

That would certainly be preferable to any other option—being back with Hob, and able to hear and observe the discussion of what had happened. It would mean people looking at him and perhaps saying foolish things, but Hob would not let them be obnoxious. In fact, with Dream there, Hob would be more likely to cut things short and return to the flat.

Dream took his fingers from his mouth and surreptitiously wiped the dampness on his overalls before raising both hands in request to be picked up. He even remembered to say, "Thank you," as Marc lifted him.

Marc smiled at that, but said only, in a tone of equal gravity, "You are welcome, young sir." He held Dream against his side, and his hold was firm and secure, but Dream still held himself rigid, not relaxing into his body as he would with Hob. This was only a means to an end, a way to get to Hob. Marc was not his friend, even if he was kind and courteous.

As soon as they passed through the door, Hob looked toward them. Seeing Dream, he rushed over, his expression turning freshly worried from whatever he'd been frowning about before. He nearly snatched Dream away from Marc, and Dream was very glad to be back where he belonged, snuggling against Hob. He curled one arm firmly around Hob's neck as Hob murmured, "I haven't a clue what happened but it seems to be over, do you—"

"Could you..." Dream murmured. "I believe I know, mostly. Could you get someone to talk about it?"

"Ah," Hob said, and then gave him a hug and said a little louder, turning back to the person he'd been speaking to, "There, sweetheart, you're all right. He's all gone. Isn't he?"

"Oh yes," Irene said with a satisfaction Dream could hear quite clearly, even as he barely looked at her, preferring to stay tucked against Hob. "Em and Colin were doing a great job stalling him while I let Hob know that something was up, and then that man who'd been sitting outside—"

"Drinking a watermelon mojito in the rain," Colin, the bartender, filled in, "or pretending to, at least."

"Burst in and said he was from Interpol," Irene finished. "Took that sleaze into custody and marched him right out the front door."

"Sounded like some glasses got broken?" Hob said, sounding genuinely curious but not pointing out the roaring noise, which these humans' perceptions had already rewritten into a lawful arrest by some comprehensible authority and a perfectly logical exit through an existing door in material space. "Was there a bit of a scuffle?"

"Well, it was certainly startling," Irene said vaguely, an odd departure from her usual firm practicality. "No surprise if a few things got dropped."

Dream looked around and spotted the pile of glass Colin had already tidied away. There was a cut on his hand and another on his cheek; Dream blew in that direction, focusing what little of his power he had access to, to encourage those little hurts to mend as easily as the narrative had.

"Right, glad to hear that's all taken care of," Hob said, rubbing Dream's back with a firmness that Dream took as a cue to cuddle down against him again. "Let me know if anything else comes up, or if either of them turns up again. I'd better get this one home—we just got in from running errands, I think I left the groceries on the kitchen floor."

"The Gruyere," Dream said against his shoulder, not having to try very hard for a plaintive pitch—it was surely time to eat again by now.

"The Gruyere indeed," Hob said brightly. "Excuse us, won't you, I've got some gourmet cheese on toast to make."

Irene and Colin laughed cheerfully and returned to what they were doing, and Hob carried Dream back through the kitchen and up to the flat. He shut and locked the door firmly behind them and carried Dream into the kitchen where, Dream noted, the groceries had in fact been left on the table, not the floor.

Hob set Dream down on the bench, braced a hand on either side of him, and met his gaze with wide, wide eyes as he said, "Dream, love, I don't want to pry, but what the fuck?"

---

Dream looked back at him with wide eyes, biting his lip.

Hob kept his shoulders square and gritted his teeth against the impulse to take it back, apologize, frantically try to make it better. Whatever had just happened—and Hob didn't think Interpol had anything to do with it—had been enough to alarm Dream when he got a look at Hob's phone. It had to have put everyone in the New Inn in danger, and Hob had a right to ask, now that it was over, what the hell it was.

Hob kept repeating that to himself for nearly a minute while Dream sat there looking uncomfortable, but it was Dream who cracked first.

"You... may not like to know," Dream said, wrapping his arms around his middle.

Hob set one hand gently on Dream's shoulder, carefully avoiding where he knew those nasty bruises were. "I've come to know a lot of things that rattled me, in six hundred years. And in the past couple of days. This—is it over now? Are we safe now?"

Dream nodded, but mumbled down at his own knees, "It was my fault."

"Ahh, my friend," Hob said, and gave in so far as to pick him up again and hug him. "I'm not angry, given it all seems to have turned out all right. But I think this is a thing I do actually need to know, because it seems like you weren't at all sure it was going to go that way. Especially if there's anything else like whatever that was that might crop up while you're staying with me."

There was a long pause and then Dream said, "I do not think so," in such a small voice that Hob could not even begin to think he ought to be reassured.

"Come on, love," Hob coaxed. "I'm not angry, and I won't be, and I'm not going to tell you to go away. But now it's all over, can't you tell me what happened?"

"It is a long story," Dream said with a sigh, slumping against his shoulder. "We should put the groceries away."

"All right," Hob said, glancing around. "Just tell me who it was who came looking for you, and then we'll put the groceries away before you explain why."

Dream curled in against him, rubbing his face into Hob's shoulder for a moment before he said, "Loki. The trickster."

Hob stared at the wall and thought deeply about backing down on what he'd just said about wanting to know. "Loki, the Norse god. That Loki."

Dream nodded into his shoulder, still crumpled against him.

Hob's gaze drifted to the groceries and he went on staring for another minute before he remembered that he had, actually, made Dream a promise just now. He took a deep breath and gave Dream one more little squeeze. "Right, then. Time to put the groceries away, isn't it? And we should make sure your art supplies are okay, too. Do you want to go and get them?"

Dream sat back then and squinted at him, and Hob mustered up a smile.

"I didn't promise not to be gobsmacked," Hob said. "But I said I wouldn't be angry and I'm not angry, right? Go and get your things and I'll see if the raspberries survived all right."

Dream gave a definite little nod and Hob kissed his forehead and then set him on his feet. Dream hurried off to find the bag on the coffee table, giving Hob a moment to hurriedly examine the groceries—thankfully everything did seem to be unharmed, so he didn't have to secretly replace anything to avert another meltdown. He was still putting things away when Dream returned, arms wrapped around just the sketchbook with the tape holding it shut.

"Don't want to try the pastels just yet?" Hob asked, reaching down for the sketchbook.

Dream shook his head and gave it to him, and Hob set it gently aside on the kitchen bench while he finished putting the groceries away. "Hungry, then?" Hob asked. "Want to try a new kind of cheese on toast?"

Dream was standing behind the chair where he usually sat, his arms wrapped around his middle. "I have to tell you. What happened."

Hob wanted to insist that he didn't really, but that actually was the deal they'd made, even if he was now pretty sure he didn't want to know very much more about what a Norse trickster god had been doing in his inn today. It would be worse, he suspected, to now brush it off and say it didn't matter.

"All right then, we'll do that first," Hob agreed. "I suspect I'm going to want to be sitting down for this, so—"

Before Hob could pick him up, Dream turned around and walked back into the lounge, and Hob winced and followed him. The bag from the art store was still on the coffee table, tipped over with the boxes of pastels and the other two sketchbooks spilling out. Dream stood beside it, looking from the armchair to the couch, clearly trying to decide where to sit.

Hob's hands closed into fists against the impulse to scoop him up, and he stepped hurriedly around the coffee table to sit on the sofa without plowing right through Dream. He took the middle spot, and patted the cushion beside him. "Here, no need to be way over on the other chair. Come on up and tell me, let's get it over with."

Dream gave the armchair a long look—long enough for Hob to resolve that if Dream sat there to spite himself, Hob was going to go perch on the end of the coffee table to be close to him. Then Dream's little shoulders slumped, and he came over and climbed up onto the sofa beside Hob.

Again, Hob restrained the urge to reach out and pull him up, and it didn't really take him long to manage it. When Dream had settled himself, sitting very properly on the sofa with his feet dangling and his hands folded on his knees, Hob finally let himself just rest a hand on Dream's back.

"It began," Dream said, staring down at his hands. "Not long after... do you remember, I came to see you in a dream?"

"Do I remember waking up from that dream with the bottle of wine we'd been sharing on my bedside table?" Hob returned. "Yes, I remember. You—you said you were going somewhere, and I made a toast, and..."

Hob had never quite thought about these things in this way. The dream had mostly slipped from his mind even as the wine had confirmed its reality, because the world had gone mad, right after. When it had stopped going mad everyone had seemed to forget that it had in shockingly short order. Hob had never stopped to think about the one leading to the other for anyone but him.

"That was when the dead came back," Hob said slowly. "Right after you visited me in that dream."

Dream looked up sharply at him. "Your dead?"

Hob shook his head slowly. "I mean—people I knew, yeah. But not... not the ones I wanted to see. Not Eleanor, or Robyn. Nor Peggy. I never told you about Peg, but..." He shook his head. "After the first day or so I took refuge in a church. Lot of people did. They couldn't come onto sacred ground, it seemed. No one talks about it anymore."

"People need to forget," Dream said. "And it is no coincidence that those you loved best were not among those who returned. It was not all the dead. It was those who had been in Hell, and Hell is populated by those souls who believe they deserve to be there. I..."

Dream looked away and said quietly but firmly, "I do not think anyone who had spent their life being loved by you could ever believe themselves deserving of such a fate."

Hob squinted. There was something there, something more than just Dream feeling guilty about Loki. "Was... was there someone you loved who did believe that?"

Dream gave a sharp little nod. "Nada. The first human I ever loved. The last mortal, for it was forbidden for my kind to be loved by mortals after what befell her. What I did to her. She spent ten thousand years in hell after she killed herself to be rid of me."

There was a lot to unpack there, and Hob had the feeling that there was a trap in it, or at least bait. He did not particularly want to let the words what did you do out of his mouth right now.

"I'm sorry," he said instead.

That got Dream looking at him—baffled, at least, rather than angry, twisting out of his perfect posture to face Hob fully. "For what? For my loss?"

"Yeah," Hob said, rubbing a little up and down Dream's back. "And for hers. Sounds like a pretty sad situation all around, really."

Dream stared up at him for a moment and then looked down, but he didn't turn away again. "It was... I was... I should have done better. I should have set her free sooner. I saw her in Hell shortly after I..." Dream trailed off and slowly looked up at Hob without raising his head.

Hob looked down at him and could almost feel whatever Dream wasn't saying, some pit yawning at their feet.

Another trap.

"We'll put a pin in that," Hob decided. "You saw her in Hell sometime before, and you didn't free her. Could you have freed her then?"

"I..." Dream's forehead wrinkled and his hands tangled together. "She asked if I loved her, and if I forgave her. And I told her the truth: I did still love her. I had not forgiven her. I still—it still hurt, that she would rather die than be with me." Dream's head jerked up and he added hastily, "She loved me! It is not that I forced her, I had no wish for that. She loved me, she wanted me. I knew she did, she said she did, but she... she would not be mine. She would rather be dead than mine. How could I forgive that?"

Those last words in that plaintive child's voice were nothing but sincere: Dream genuinely didn't know the answer to that question, could not imagine an answer to that question.

Hob ran a hand over Dream's hair, considering it. Hob had loved plenty of people, and there were people who'd been dead six hundred years who he still loved.

And he knew there were people in Hell who he still wouldn't forgive. He'd seen some of them, in those days before he'd found sanctuary in that church. Wicked, cruel bastards, people who had hurt him, people who had betrayed him, who had discovered his secret and used it against him—people who had never and would never, not for ten thousand years in Hell, repent of the ways they'd hurt him and other people.

"When she refused to be with you," Hob said slowly. "When you knew she loved you, but she wouldn't stay... that meant you still had to be alone. You had a chance to be loved and you still had to be without it. That... that was the worst anyone could hurt you, wasn't it?"

Dream didn't answer and didn't look up, curling in on himself more tightly.

"I'm going to pick you up unless you tell me not to right now," Hob said, and only waited a beat before he pulled Dream into his lap and hugged him.

After a moment of that, Hob felt steady enough to go on talking. "I think that if, when I was starving, I met someone who told me they wanted to make food for me, who could make food for me, and then, when that food was in front of me, they told me that they would keep it for themselves, or give it to someone else, or spoil it and throw it on a midden-heap..." Dream hadn't made a sound, scarcely seemed to be breathing, and Hob squeezed him tighter, and whispered, "I don't think I'd know how to forgive that. Even if it had been ten thousand years, I don't know if I could truly forgive that."

Dream jerked in his hold, chest expanding sharply like he'd taken a silent, convulsive breath.

"And I guess what I mean is, it's not up to me and I've got no right to say it," Hob said softly, still holding Dream tight, "but I forgive you. Whatever you did wrong... I understand it as much as I need to. I still love you, and forgive you, and want you here with me, and wouldn't wish you anywhere else."

Dream wriggled strongly enough that Hob loosened his grip, and then turned to press his face against Hob's throat, wrapping his arms fiercely around Hob's neck. Hob could feel the wetness of tears on his skin, and he sank back into the couch and rubbed Dream's back, nuzzling into his hair and making soothing sounds.

Remembering that morning, Hob avoided saying shh or anything else that Dream might take as a demand to calm down before he was ready. The crisis was over, and while it was solidly lunchtime now and Dream would probably be steadier for some food in his stomach, it would only be asking for another complete meltdown to try to make him eat before he'd told Hob all he needed to tell.

Eventually Dream squirmed and snuffled and twisted in Hob's arms, trying to discreetly wipe his face on his shirtsleeve.

"Oh, here, we can do better than that," Hob said, and reached over to a box to get a tissue—even more wonderful than the handkerchiefs he'd been so excited to tell Dream about, once upon a time. They went through a handful of the tissues, because Dream kept trying to clean his own face and running into the limitations of small and shaky hands. Hob tried to let him, and only cracked at the end, when Dream's face was clean but his nose was still obviously stuffed up, holding a tissue in place for him. "Blow through your nose, love."

Dream's little pinked-up eyes narrowed, but he blew his nose at impressive length and produced a seemingly impossible volume of snot accompanied by a truly horrendous noise.

Dream's whole face screwed up at the sight of it as Hob took the tissue away, and Hob grinned. "Better out than in, love."

He deposited that tissue with the rest of the crumpled damp pile for disposal when he could reach the bin. "Now, you were saying."

Dream scrubbed his hands over his face and nestled in against Hob with a sigh. "After that time when I saw her—a year or so after—Destiny called a family meeting. We had all scarcely arrived before Desire was taunting me, asking whether I had consigned any more lovers to Hell since last they had seen me. I walked out, and Death came after me and told me they agreed with the substance of what Desire said, if not the manner. That it was cruel and wrong for me to have left Nada in such straits for so long."

"Hold on," Hob burst out. "Had—in ten thousand years, had none of your siblings ever pointed that out to you? Had no one?"

Dream blinked up at him in what looked like genuine befuddlement that was as good as an answer.

"Don't—Dream, you're the one who put me right when I was making the most awful choices of my life. Don't tell me you don't see why it matters that they let you go ten thousand years without ever talking to you about it."

"I would not have listened," Dream said. "I... recently I have learned better about listening. Before I would only have quarreled with anyone who tried to tell me what I did not want to hear." Dream looked up at him. "As I did with you, when you told me I was lonely."

"Well, so," Hob said. "Just means you ought to have been getting more practice quarreling with people, I think. How else could you ever regret it? How else could you realize you were wrong? Take it from someone who's spent his life going around saying daft things like I've decided not to die."

"You did not listen to anyone's rebukes on that topic, as I recall," Dream said with a frown.

"Well, no," Hob allowed. "Turned out to be right that time. But I've said lots of equally stupid things, and worse, and think how wretched I'd be if I'd been allowed to go around thinking I was right every time."

Dream did not seem to find this reassuring, and Hob supposed he should drop it; there was nothing to do about it now, after all.

"Anyway, so you found out you'd been wrong," Hob redirected. "And you decided to go to Hell and put things right?"

Dream nodded and relaxed against Hob again. "That was when I visited you, and... a few others. I put my affairs in order. I did not know if I would be able to return; I had angered Lucifer, or so I thought, on my previous trip to Hell."

Hob didn't think he'd done anything, but he noticed that Dream had stopped talking, and then Dream was frowning at him, nose to nose. Slowly Hob realized that Dream was kneeling on his thighs to get enough height to do it, because Hob was staring fixedly at the far wall.

Hob shook his head. "Sorry. You said. You said Lucifer? Like... Lucifer?"

"We have been discussing Hell, Robert Gadling. As a very real place I have visited. You have indicated that you recall meeting its denizens when they were turned loose upon this world."

"Yeah, I know," Hob said weakly. "But... Lucifer?"

"Perhaps I should warn you that the Creator also figures into this story, a bit later on," Dream said.

Hob closed his eyes and bit his lip against the urge to babble half-remembered prayers while he reminded himself that if he never died, he never had to worry about either salvation or damnation. Therefore, as he'd cheerfully concluded back in the summer of 1489, thirty seconds before he'd stopped thinking about it forever, it really did not matter whether God or the Devil actually existed.

Except that they were people his friend knew, so it did matter a bit. As it turned out.

Little arms went around his neck and Dream nuzzled against his throat, his small weight resting firmly on Hob's chest. "I don't have to explain that part now, if it's going to upset you."

"I..." Hob tried to summon the will to say, convincingly, I can handle it, tell me everything, and just found that he couldn't form the words. "Yeah, maybe... lightly edit that bit, if you would, love. Just... for now."

Dream gave a gusty sigh and squeezed him tighter. "Of course. You are human. You are not meant to take in too much reality at once—I should know that better than anyone."

Hob let out a noise that was very nearly a laugh, still feeling a bit dazed. "Too right. Leave me a few illusions, if you would. Tread softly on my dreams and all that."

"I shall," Dream said solemnly, still using all the force of his tiny body to hug Hob. "I am sorry, Hob. To have upset you. And I am sorry to have been the cause of the incident today, and sorry to have put you and your people in danger of something worse."

Hob swallowed hard and blinked away a stinging in his eyes.

He hadn't ever meant to make a big thing of it, but he'd noted quietly to himself how, when Dream had come back to him in 2021, he'd said I owe you an apology but never... actually apologized. And now here he was doing it over practically nothing, and trying to be comforting, too.

Hob curled his own arms around Dream. "Well, we've gone a bit out of order, there, but as I said before—I forgive you. Now, before we get distracted again. You went to Hell for the second time a few years ago, after you'd stopped off to see me and left the most eye-wateringly expensive bottle of wine I've ever seen for me."

"I took it from the dream of a vintner's daughter," Dream said. "It was literally beyond price; the point was to enjoy it, so I hope that you did."

"I did," Hob assured him. He'd known well enough the peril of saving something fine for a special occasion—especially of attempting to save a bottle that old when it had already been opened once. And anyway, when he returned home at the end of that week after days spent cowering in a church with a significant portion of the entire population of his neighborhood, he'd badly wanted a drink.

He had maybe not savored it as much as it deserved, but he had certainly enjoyed it.

"I went to Hell," Dream said. "And I found that it was already empty; everyone had been driven out. The... being in charge had decided they no longer wished to be."

"To be... in charge?" Hob said. "Lucifer decided to retire?"

"Don't think too hard about it," Dream admonished, giving Hob a little pat on the cheek. "But yes. And they locked up the gates, and handed me the key, to do with as I would—so they were still angry with me, and had their revenge, because it became widely known among various gods and powers that I had the key and it was mine to bestow, or so they all thought. Various delegations arrived in the Dreaming to make their arguments about why they should be the ones to be given the key."

"Oh," Hob said, and he was back to suppressing laughter, thinking of his standoffish old friend having to deal with all sorts of delegations wanting to talk to him, bargain with him, flatter him into doing what they wanted. Revenge indeed, and it was funny as long as Hob did as Dream said and didn't think too hard about it.

"That is where Loki comes in," Dream added. "Even now I cannot begin to guess why, but Odin chose to include Loki as a part of his delegation, and brought him to the Dreaming. After everything was settled—"

"Wait, wait, you can't just not tell me who's in charge of Hell now," Hob put in. "I can't promise I won't swoon a bit if you say it's, I dunno, Thatcher or someone, but—"

"No, no, the Creator stepped in and designated two angels for the purpose," Dream said off-handedly. "So it all went back to the way it had begun, since it was by His command that Lucifer had ruled there for so long."

"Ah," Hob said, but he managed to shake off that feeling of coming loose from reality pretty quickly this time. "Right, okay, so after that ending which disappointed everyone, I'm sure—"

"Yes," Dream said, with a hint of remembered exasperation in his voice. "They all took their leave. Odin said his farewells, taking Loki with him. It was only later that I discovered that Loki had disguised himself and remained in my realm, having sent another of my guests with Odin in his guise, to be bound beneath the earth in Loki's place. I could not allow that innocent god to be tormented in Loki's stead, but Loki begged not to be sent back to his place of torment, and I... did not condemn him. I replaced the innocent with a dream of Loki, and let the real Loki go free."

Hob squinted down at Dream, struggling to make sense of that sequence of events and what he knew of the stories of Loki, trying to leave the superhero movies to one side as he was fairly certain those were about someone else. "Did... did Loki not..."

"Loki deserved to be there," Dream said tonelessly. "As much as anyone deserves such a thing. He is a betrayer, liar, manipulator, murderer. He committed endless outrages against his own kin and everyone else whose path he crossed. He would not stop; he could not. He is the scorpion in the story of the scorpion and the frog."

That story, Hob knew better than the whole range of Norse mythology. A scorpion begged a frog to swim it across a river, promising faithfully not to sting the frog; halfway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, condemning them both to drown and explaining himself simply by saying, I couldn't resist. It's my nature..

He thought of the look on Dream's face when Hob showed him the picture on his phone. Dream had not been annoyed or angry or even entirely surprised. Dream had looked as if he'd just been stung by a scorpion, halfway across a river.

"If you knew that," Hob said, feeling like there had to be an obvious answer here but not knowing what it was, "why did you help him? Why did you set him free?"

Dream was silent for a long time. Hob listened to the bustling sounds of the inn's lunch rush down below, everything just fine, smoothing over something none of them had understood.

Finally Dream's shoulders rose and fell in a stiff little shrug. "He is a god, which is to say that he is a story, or the sum of many stories, all of them the same. He cannot be anything but what he is. The story always ends the same. He must do what he must; he must be what he is. And I..."

Prince of Stories, that was one of Dream's titles in his little book. Hob remembered the way all those names crowded in around that horrible mask that only just barely reflected a glimpse of Dream's eyes. The way everything Dream was, every definition of him, just hemmed him in on every side.

Dream knew what it was to be what you had to be, and do what you must. His shoulders had split open and bled from the weight of being what he was.

Loki had begged Dream not to condemn him to playing out that same story again, unchanged and unchangeable, and Dream...

"You," Hob started.

Dream shook his head sharply, abruptly pushing himself down from Hob's lap.

"I should go," Dream said sharply. "I should return to the Dreaming. I have work to do there." He seemed to waver before Hob's eyes like heat haze, like a mirage, small and tall at once like he'd been on the beach in that dream last night. Hob remembered the way Dream had clung to him when he first arrived, the way Dream had said it was something I needed.

"Dream," Hob said, and was interrupted by a booming knock on the door.

Dream froze and looked up, all at once thoroughly small again, and Hob stood up and put himself in between Dream and whatever was coming next.

---

Chapter 8

Dream blinked up at Hob, towering over him and standing squarely between him and the door—and then looked at himself, definitively small again.

It probably was the correct way to face this, really. And he certainly could not depart back to the Dreaming until he had seen it through.

He reached up and tugged on Hob's shirt. "It's all right."

Hob gave him an incredulous look, darting a glance at the door, just in time for that impossibly loud knock to sound again.

"For a given value of all right," Dream admitted, raising his hands up.

Hob lifted Dream into his arms and, with no further protest or even another request for explanation, carried Dream on his hip as he went to answer the door.

Of course it was Odin standing on the other side, rain dripping from his wide-brimmed hat, raven on his shoulder.

Dream stared at him; he could feel Odin's one eye staring back, though he couldn't quite see it under the shadows of his hat.

"Ah, yes, of course," Hob said, when neither of them had said a word for a moment, his voice coming out a little high but mostly steady. "Odin, is it? I don't think I can do you another watermelon mojito with what I've got on hand up here, but I can brew up some tea. Come in, so long as you come in peace."

Odin still said nothing and did not move for long enough that it seemed as if he was considering those terms carefully. Then he nodded. "I come in peace to your hearth, Robert Gadling. I offer no threat to the one who already has the protection of your house."

Hob nodded and took a step back from the door, and Odin finally stepped inside, his hat and coat and raven all dry as soon as he was out of the rain. He turned an expectant look in their direction—probably at Dream, really, who had continued to abdicate his responsibility to manage this conversation, resting against Hob's shoulder and watching this mere human stand his ground before a god while keeping a gentle, reassuring grip on Dream.

"Tea, then?" Hob said. "I could do a coffee if you don't mind pods."

Odin's head turned in the direction of the sleek black machine on the kitchen bench, the colorful boxes stacked beside it, and then he said ponderously, "Would your hospitality extend to a hot cocoa?"

"Ah, yeah, guess I've got some left," Hob agreed, carrying Dream over and rifling through the boxes until he found a mostly-empty one labeled as Odin had said. The beverage pictured looked much more like the chocolate milk Dream had enjoyed the day before than anything else, and Dream wound his hands into Hob's shirt to prevent himself from snatching at it to look more closely.

Hob took a pod from the box—there was exactly one left in the box after that, Dream noted—and put it into the machine, then turned away to find a mug.

Dream felt the moment when Hob froze in the face of deciding what mug to offer to a god standing in his kitchen and requesting a beverage, but before Dream could attempt to help, Hob rallied. He plucked a mug from the shelf, one of a set of white mugs with different blue prints; the one Hob selected had blue shapes that looked like six-petaled flowers or perhaps snowflakes.

He set it onto the machine just before its hissing noises erupted into a stream of brown liquid, and Dream leaned toward it, inhaling the sweet hot scent.

Hob patted his back and murmured, "I'll fix yours next, shall I?"

Somehow it was that moment that made Dream acutely, icily aware that he was indulging himself in being small and helpless, being carried about and tended to, under the eye of Lord Odin: Battle-God, Way-Finder, All-Father. Last they met, he had been a supplicant at Dream's throne, and now...

Dream did not hide his face against Hob's shoulder as Hob turned to offer the mug to Odin, but it was a near thing.

"Please, sit, make yourself comfortable," Hob said.

Odin nodded gravely and took a seat at the kitchen table, looking as perfectly deliberate and dignified in the kitchen of Hob's flat as he had in the palace of the Dreaming, sitting in the spot where Dream had wolfed down cheese on toast with all the restraint of an actual human child.

Hob, as he had promised, put the last hot cocoa pod in the machine and grabbed an entirely different mug, one of clear glass, to put under the spout. "I'm just going to fix another mug for my friend here. I understand we have you to thank for the quick resolution of that business downstairs? On behalf of all the humans in the potential blast radius, I thank you for that."

Odin took a tiny sip from his mug, nodded to himself, and drank more deeply. "Ah, Entusiasm. A fine choice. Well, you and your fellow humans are welcome, Robert Gadling. Preventing my blood-brother from harming the innocent is my duty, and I have done it. That he was free to threaten such harm is a matter I must discuss with the Dream-weaver."

Hob looked at him, and Dream didn't turn his head to meet that intent gaze. He didn't loosen his grip on Hob's shirt, and Hob's grip on Dream didn't loosen either. After another moment, Dream summoned words.

"I have already told Hob of it, Lord Odin," Dream said. "We can speak of it in his presence."

"It is you who has speaking to do, Dream-weaver," Odin said. "I have had half a story from your messenger: that Loki was free, and that you wished me to know it so that I might recapture him. And I can see a part of the story here: that you came to have reason to fear what Loki would do, and called upon me out of that fear."

Dream's fists clenched harder, but he could not deny it. "The people here see what I seem to be," Dream said quietly. "They would have tried to protect me from him. I could not allow them to be harmed because I sojourned among them."

"No," Odin agreed. "But it was not them Loki wanted to harm."

"No," Dream agreed.

He had always known. He had been bound by the rules of hospitality, the rules governing the Endless, by the nature of his duties. He could not harm Loki, who was his guest, and he could not allow Loki to harm another of his guests. If that meant that Loki was to be a blade at Dream's throat, a scorpion's stinger against his back—for the debt would gall him, and Loki was ever what Loki was—that had seemed... acceptable.

Even desirable, in a certain way. Something chaotic, something he would not be able to predict. Something different from the crushing inevitability of his own changeless existence. Something that could, at any moment, unravel everything.

Into the silence came the sound and scent of hot cocoa being dispensed. Dream turned away from Odin to watch it fill the glass mug Hob had chosen for him; Hob picked up the mug by the handle and carried it and Dream over to the table, taking the seat across from Odin and shifting Dream into his lap as though he had always belonged there.

Hob set the mug down where Dream could reach it, but kept a hand curled around it. Dream touched his fingers to the mug and jerked them away at the heat transmitted even through the glass. He tucked his hands into his lap to wait until the hot chocolate was less likely to injure him, no matter how good it smelled and how aware of his human-childish hunger he suddenly was.

He looked beyond the mug to where Odin sat waiting for Dream to offer some better explanation. As Dream watched, Odin raised the patterned mug to his lips and took another sip.

Hob's hand, the one not holding his hot cocoa in a mute reminder not to drink it yet, squeezed Dream's knee.

"I cannot offer a satisfactory explanation," Dream said quietly. "I do not suppose there is one. Loki begged on his knees for his freedom when I discovered him still in the Dreaming after you had departed with the innocent being Loki had ensorcelled to take his place. I was moved to grant his request."

"And then," Odin made a gesture toward Hob, and a sweeping gesture downward, indicating the people in the taproom below. "You were also moved to call upon me to revoke that request."

Dream nodded. He had said as much already. He genuinely did not know what part of this Odin thought he could explain any better, and he had no idea how to articulate any more of what he had been thinking when he let Loki go free. He had not thought very hard about it at the time, and had avoided thinking about it since.

Nor did he particularly want to think, even now, about what he had done to himself. What he had changed, when he knew himself to be a thing that did not, could not change.

Odin studied him in silence for so long that Hob took his hand off the mug and turned his palm up, a tiny gesture of offering.

Dream, who had nothing to say and no interest in breaking the silence merely to break it, wrapped both his small hands around the hot cocoa and took a careful sip. It was still quite hot, but it did not hurt him even as much as his first incautious bites of his cheese on toast had done.

It was fucking brilliant, and he could not help looking up wide-eyed at Hob as he swallowed the rich sweetness of it and felt it warming him all the way down to his center.

Hob smiled. "I'll order some more, shall I? I can see you're not going to be satisfied with only tasting hot cocoa once, even if we are in the middle of summer."

"Please," Dream said, and took another sip, startled to find that it tasted just as good and felt just as lovely as the first.

Movement in his peripheral vision drew Dream's attention to Odin again, and Dream found that he had tipped his head back, apparently already drinking down to the dregs of his own mug of hot cocoa. He set the empty mug down with a solid clunk, and cleared his throat in a pointed sort of harrumph.

"I can see that you are not ready to give answers," Odin said, "and I can see that that is an answer itself. It is a strange tree you have chosen to hang yourself on in search of what wisdom you are wanting, but it is clear you are deep in the travail of your seeking. No more could I have answered anyone's questions while I still hung upon Yggdrasil."

Dream wanted badly to insist that this was nothing as momentous, in his long existence, as Odin's self-sacrifice upon the world-tree which had made him so much of who and what he was. This was a whim, half-accident, and when it was over...

He could not imagine it being over, and he could not imagine what would happen when it was. He had nearly run from it before Odin arrived, and yet at the first challenge he had reverted to this small self, had flung himself into Hob's arms and Hob's protection. Dream was nowhere near being ready to depart from this state.

And he did not think he quite dared to contradict what Odin saw with the eye he still possessed. It had never been given to Dream to see the future; he struggled enough to make sense of the present.

"As you say," Dream finally managed, clinging to the perfect neutrality of simply acknowledging what Odin had said without quite agreeing to anything. "It has been only a day. I sent Matthew to you during the first night I spent here."

Odin's head tilted. "Early days indeed. I shall trouble you no further for now, Dream-weaver. No doubt the time will come when we may make better sense of things between us."

Dream nodded and stole another sip of his hot cocoa without taking his eyes off Odin.

Odin tilted his head just enough for Dream to glimpse his one eye closing in something that might have been meant as a wink, and then he stood, too quickly for Dream or Hob to react. He turned away from the table in a swirl of coat and raven feathers, took a definitive step toward nothing, and was gone.

Hob took a sharp breath in and then held very, very still for a long moment. Dream set his hot cocoa down and tried to twist to look up at him, when it had gone on long enough that it seemed concerning, but Hob firmed his grip on Dream and stood, setting Dream back down on the chair without meeting his eyes.

"Just a tick, love, need to go be a messy biological creature in the other room. I'll fix us some lunch when I'm done with that, right?"

Dream wrinkled his nose at the thought of what that would mean and nodded quick agreement, settling down to sip more of his hot cocoa while Hob strode away. He heard a door close, firmly but quietly; he had the distinct impression that Hob had taken care not to slam it.

That was strange.

Dream took a long sip of hot cocoa and then recognized another strangeness: the sound of the door had come from down the hall in the opposite direction from the bathroom. It had come from the direction of the room beyond Hob's bedroom, the only room in the flat Dream had not yet entered.

Hob would not be doing any of the obvious messy human things in that room.

Dream took another sip of his hot cocoa as he thought it through. Hob had asked for privacy. Hob had, if not quite lied to him, definitely misdirected. Perhaps Dream ought to let him be?

Dream would have told Hob to go away if he had been able to, this morning when he was so upset, and yet it had been so good to have Hob near him. He did not imagine that he could be as much of a comfort to Hob as Hob was to him, but he was uneasily aware that he was looking for a reason not to try.

He set down his mug and slid down to the floor, following the way Hob had gone.

Dream halted again when he was close enough to the closed door to hear little high-pitched sounds that sounded like no noise he had ever heard Hob make. It struck him that perhaps he ought to be his whole self for this; perhaps he needed to be more, to be of any use to Hob right now.

But his greater self was not better than his small self—not at things like this. If he were the whole of himself he would be stiff and awkward in the face of a human's distress, even when the human was his friend. Especially when the human was his friend.

If he took back all of himself, today might fade into insignificance, swamped by the billions of years of experiences of Dream of the Endless. He might not know how much it had mattered that Hob sat near him this morning, not touching after Dream drew back from being touched, but still near him, still speaking to him so that he would know he was not alone.

Hob was alone right now. Hob shouldn't have to be alone.

Dream moved forward again. He had to use both hands on the doorknob, but it turned for him, and he was admitted to a room that was crowded and cluttered with many things Dream could not spare any attention to look at.

Hob was sitting on the floor with something soft pressed to his face, making mostly-muffled noises of distress. He was shaking.

Dream hurried to him and didn't hesitate this time. He let his instincts guide him; he circled around behind Hob and leaned all his small weight against Hob's shaking back, throwing his arms over Hob's shoulders to hug him as best he could.

Hob froze. "Dream?"

"I'm here," Dream said, racking his brain for all the things Hob had said to him while he couldn't stop screaming. Hob hadn't coaxed him to stop or told him to calm down. "It's all right to be upset. You don't have to be alone. I'll stay—"

Hob twisted in Dream's grip, getting an arm around him and tugging Dream into his lap, which suited Dream just fine.

"Tell me if I squeeze too tight," Hob said, his voice shaking a little, and Dream wrapped his arms around Hob's chest and squeezed with as much strength as his present form could muster while Hob clung to him.

Hob's breathing started to get fast, as if he were frightened—as if he were only frightened now, when there were no more gods to face, no more danger to his people. Only the idea of it all, and Dream well knew the power an idea could have.

"You did very well," Dream murmured to him. "You were very brave and calm and sensible."

"I gave Odin his cocoa in a bloody Ikea mug because all I could think was he's Scandi, right? And he knew its bloody name."

Dream let up the squeezing to try rubbing a little circle on Hob's shoulder blade. "I believe that means you were correct. He seemed pleased, in any case."

Hob let out a wheezing sound that might have been a laugh, and then returned to breathing fast and silent, clinging to Dream. After a long moment he said, "That's—maybe that's worse, though. A god, knowing—"

Dream, hidden against Hob's chest, frowned. He was fairly certain he had explained his own nature to Hob... but then perhaps that was the problem. It often happened in dreams that a terror too great to face was channeled through another form.

Hob had meant to hide this from him.

"Hob," Dream said, trying to draw back enough to see his face.

"Not you," Hob said immediately, tightening his grip. "It's not—I know you're even more than that, but you're—you're my friend, Dream. And, if I'm honest, I don't know what a bloody Endless is so I can't even begin to get my head around it. But I know what the gods are. And I've had two of them under my roof today, and I just... just need to..."

Dream, held fast in Hob's grip, could just reach the pillow Hob had dropped when he reached for Dream instead. "Would you like to scream?"

"I would, thank you," Hob said, and when Dream held the pillow up Hob tipped his face down into it and howled, clinging tightly to Dream himself all the while.

That meant that Dream could feel the scream where it started in Hob's chest, could feel the way Hob's whole body trembled a little around his. The pillow muffled the scream to a level that was not painful in itself, and Dream knew that Hob was not wroth with him, but still the physical sensation of it shook something in the little body he now wore.

Dream's breathing went uneven, and he felt the prickle of tears gathering in his eyes, but he kept pushing the pillow as firmly as he could against Hob's face, hiding his own face against Hob's shoulder. Tears leaked from his eyes, and he made his own little keening sound, but it was lost under the screams.

Dream managed to cut himself off when Hob stopped to take a longer breath than before, but this time Hob's scream collapsed, after a few beats, into laughter. It was still a wild sound with as much distress in it as humor—but the humor was there now, too. It still shook through Dream's entire small body as Hob held him close, but now that meant that he found himself giggling helplessly along with Hob's unhinged whooping. When Hob tried to pull back from the pillow to let out the laughter Dream laughed harder, pushing it into his face as though he would smother his dearest friend.

Hob let out a little cry that was much more playful before devolving into laughter again, squirming ineffectually as he tried to escape the pillow without loosening his hold on Dream. Finally he got a grip on it—with his teeth, evidently—and before Dream could try to adjust his own hold the pillow slipped away from his hands. Hob spat out the pillow and resumed laughing. Dream was laughing too as he tried to cover Hob's mouth with his own small hands, while Hob promptly began pretending to bite at his fingers without ever actually closing his teeth where he might cause pain.

When Hob's laughter trailed off, he converted to smacking kisses against Dream's palms and fingers and wrists, until Dream managed to swallow his own shrieks of laughter and settled down to stillness in Hob's arms.

Hob pressed a last lingering kiss to Dream's forehead and then sat back, loosening his grip so that Dream could look him in the eyes.

"Right," Hob said, his voice serious but a bit of that laughter still brightening his eyes. "Thank you for that, my friend. I feel much better now. And I think we've both earned our lunch, haven't we? Are you ready for experimental gourmet cheese on toast?"

Dream nodded, trying to make his expression very solemn. "The Gruyere."

"The Gru-fucking-yere indeed," Hob agreed. He got the words out evenly but his mouth stretched into a grin by the end of them.

Dream grinned back, feeling like he had done something important and done it well.

---

Gruyere on toast went down well, and Double Gloucester on toast went down even better, which to Hob's mind confirmed that Dream currently had very human-like tastebuds. He then proceeded to polish off nearly the entire punnet of raspberries, which left Hob in continuing doubt as to whether he had anything like a human child's stomach capacity—but no matter, Hob was already adding things to the grocery cart on his phone, so they would have more raspberries (and more Double Gloucester, and hot cocoa pods, and another loaf of bread and pound of butter just to be on the safe side) delivered tomorrow.

Dream helped gamely with tidying up after lunch, drying each dish and utensil with care and a little frown of concentration that Hob manfully resisted cooing over. When that was done he was drooping a little, and Hob said, "Why don't we go sit on the couch and digest a bit? Do you like movies?"

Dream blinked at Hob from his perch on the kitchen bench and then raised his arms to be gathered up, still frowning a little as he said, "Yes, for they are stories, though I have rarely... watched any. As such. Could we..."

Dream trailed off, and Hob figured he could see where the hesitation was coming from. "Got a request, then? I've got a good collection, and I'm knowing in the ways of finding what I haven't got, so we can probably track down whatever it is."

He braced himself for something obscure—anticipated with delight that Dream might want some very early silent picture, because Hob had a silly nostalgic fondness for those and a collection of them to rival any film archive's, which reminded him that he probably ought to find some way to get a few more of the lost ones found this year.

"Mary Poppins?" Dream offered in a tiny voice. "My sister said I should watch it."

"A classic!" Hob said, setting aside both the disappointment at being asked for something easy and the temptation to say something about the value of recommendations from sisters who abandoned you with near-strangers. "Yeah, I'm sure I've got that one somewhere, let's see..."

Dream cuddled readily into Hob's side and watched with apparent interest as Hob found the right streaming service and paged through the offerings until he found the right film. Hob went slow and fumbled a bit to give Dream plenty of time to look. He might have a few of his own picks the next time Hob offered him his choice of movies, not just his sister's suggestion.

Still, within a very few minutes they were watching Mary Poppins on a screen wider than Dream currently was tall, and Hob let himself just enjoy the Technicolor and all for a few minutes. He meant to check out after that, to spare himself Dick Van Dyke's idea of Cockney—he had some art supplies to shop for on his phone while Dream was distracted—but he happened to glance down at Dream to see how it was hitting him, and that was it. Hob was caught.

Dream was fascinated, eyes wide and his mouth hanging slightly open as he stared at the spectacle of a proper old movie musical. He smiled and laughed here and there, shoved his fingers into his mouth when old man Banks seemed cross, but he was at all times absorbed in the movie—he never looked up at Hob to see how he should be reacting. He was too busy just... feeling it, and Hob couldn't look away from the sight of his friend so immersed in anything.

Even Dick Van Bloody Dyke couldn't ruin that.

Two hours flew right by, and then it was the end—Mary Poppins was going away again, and Hob felt his heart actually aching in his chest as he watched Dream's eyes well with tears. They spilled over, running down his hollow little cheeks in tracks lit by the reflection of the television screen, and Hob gave up and tugged Dream into his lap, wrapping both arms around him as he continued to stare at the screen. The tears poured down, but his breathing stayed steady, and he kept his eyes on the screen as if he were staring down the sun.

He watched exactly until the figure of Mary Poppins with her umbrella had vanished into the distance, and then he scrambled around to hide his face in Hob's chest and sobbed, "Can we watch it again? Can we start over?"

"Of course we can," Hob said, keeping one arm firmly around him and rubbing his back with the other, staring bemusedly at the credits beginning to roll and trying to figure out what was going on in his head—it could be a toddler thing or an Endless thing, and was probably an unholy combination of both. "Do you... want to take a moment, first?"

Dream shook his head firmly. "I want her to come back to them! She shouldn't go off and be all alone!"

Hob winced, thinking of his stranger, walking away alone at the end of each of their centennial meetings, back to his work as Dream of the Endless, which had left him with that bruise over his heart, those heavy marks on his shoulders from bearing what no one could help him with. All alone?

"That's all right, then, she'll come back," Hob promised, and returned them to the start of the movie.

Dream snuffled into Hob's chest for a few more seconds, but turned around as soon as Bert spoke, wrapping both his little arms around Hob's arm, as if Hob might possibly let go of him.

He was less perfectly enraptured this time, more obviously engaged in thinking about what he was watching; from the frequency of adorably tiny frowns, Hob thought Dream was well on his way to having Opinions or possibly an entire TED Talk about Mary Poppins. He felt almost giddy at the near-certainty that he would get to hear absolutely all of Dream's thoughts on it, just as soon as he was done formulating them, if not sooner.

Hob did manage to do all his shopping, this time, and Dream relaxed enough to half-doze through the animated part, which was, Hob felt, the exact way the movie ought to be seen, with the weirdest bits merging in and out of dreams. Which raised a lot of questions about how Dream had ever experienced movies before now, since he definitely liked them but had rarely watched any. As such.

Well, he was watching this one now, and in Hob's opinion doing an excellent job—he startled fully awake as they all popped back out onto the sidewalk and got right back to his frowning. This time he didn't cry at the end of the movie; he scowled as Mary Poppins vanished into the distance.

"The movie has her name," Dream said, "but it's not really about her. It's not her story. The Banks family learns things, but she doesn't. No one knows anything about her, what she really wants or cares about beyond going around giving children adventures, and she doesn't learn anything about herself. She doesn't—doesn't—"

"Change?" Hob offered.

Dream froze at that, and then wriggled free of Hob's grip. "She doesn't have to. She doesn't have to change. She's just right the way she is. The way she's meant to be. Her story—but it's not her story."

"Mm," Hob said, reminded why he hadn't gone for English as his subject. "I'm just going to—I'll be right back."

Dream nodded distractedly, and when Hob had made his trip to the bathroom and returned, he was still pacing in little circles, glaring at nothing, not looking at the pile of art supplies on the coffee table.

"They want to know her," Dream burst out, without looking in Hob's direction. "They want her to stay."

Hob went and sat down on the floor next to the pastels, reminding himself firmly that they were only talking about Mary Poppins, and said, "Yeah. That's true."

"But she can't stay," Dream insisted, pacing. "She is what she is. But—"

Hob kept his expression solemn and did not pull out his phone to take even the stealthiest of videos. Dream kept on arguing himself in literal circles for the next hour, but halfway through dinner he started, if Hob wasn't mistaken, writing his own Mary Poppins fanfic in the form of a rant delivered mostly to the table about things that would be better. He still wouldn't look directly at Hob.

Hob just kept up the encouraging noises through the meal, and doing the dishes, and putting in some laundry. Dream acceded to a bath, and halfway through Hob washing his hair he went silent. Hob tilted his head to see if Dream had, just that abruptly, fallen asleep, but Dream just looked back at him.

"Am I talking too much?" he asked, having spent the best part of three hours with barely a pause for breath, going on and on about the movie he'd just made Hob watch twice through.

"You are talking exactly the right amount," Hob assured him. "I'd tell you if you weren't."

Dream did not look entirely convinced, but he leaned into Hob's hands cradling his head.

He didn't speak again until Hob was gingerly drying him off, dabbing more salve onto his bruises.

"I just wish she didn't have to be alone," Dream said quietly.

"Well," Hob said, not meeting Dream's eyes and keeping his tone matter-of-fact, not the least bit ironic or pointed. "She's very clever. I bet she knows a way to find someone to spend time with, if she doesn't want to be alone. I bet she could even find a friend, if she put her mind to it."

Dream looked up, looked him straight in the eyes, and Hob's heart clenched at the expression there, something like wonder and something like hope. "Like I did."

"Like you did," Hob agreed, barely tempted to shed any tears of his own as he gathered Dream up to get him into his pajamas and tuck him into bed.

---