write like you need it to survive

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

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

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

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

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

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

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

Check out all the gorgeous art by fishfingersandscarves on Tumblr!

Chapter 17

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Natural enemies, your oldest sister called us."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hob squeezed him tight. "Lunch?"

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

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

---

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

And then Hob... kept reading.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

 

Chapter 18

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh," Hob said. "Ticklish?"

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream's hand opened and closed in mute demand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream tried, but their unsteady motion made him shift in response, which made them laugh out loud, which made Dream laugh too. Still, when they ran into something it was only the swinging door out into the main room of the Inn, and it gave way easily, making no impact on their unsteady progress.

Desire never fell, nor did their grip on him falter; Dream was holding on tight himself and not properly looking around, but he felt it when they entered a dim, narrow space, and looked up to find that they were behind the bar. The floor here was tiled, and Desire crouched down to set him on his feet again, so that they were both hidden from anyone beyond.

They were both utterly silent for a moment.

Nothing happened.

"Why are we hiding?" Dream whispered.

Desire looked mysterious and said nothing.

"Desire," Dream whispered, "why did we just do that?"

Desire went on looking mysterious for another moment, and then their smile stretched wide, and their shoulders began to shake with silent laughter.

Dream felt himself grinning just as wide. Desire wasn't laughing at him, just as they hadn't done anything to him. They had done it together, running off and hiding—just because it was funny to be hiding, to be where they oughtn't be, where no one knew they were. He started laughing, as much with joy as because it was funny, slumping into Desire with the force of it.

This time Desire did fall, collapsing from their crouch to lie on the tiled floor, and Dream fell with them. The little startling impact of it didn't hurt, really, but there was a moment when—when it could have felt like it hurt, when it could have felt like being hurt, or being let down. But Desire was still laughing, curling an arm around him, and Dream snuggled into them and laughed harder.

---

Hob did Dream's hot chocolate first, so it would be cool enough for him to drink it sooner; Desire could burn their mouth or not as they chose.

When the grumbling and hissing stopped, something made Hob hesitate with Dream's mug in hand. He set it down gently on the kitchen bench, registering the really complete silence of the rest of the flat. He didn't call out, but walked in quick strides into the living room, where Dream and Desire were missing and the door to the inside staircase was standing ajar.

He walked over to the door and listened, and then he heard, down at the bottom of the stairs, the unmistakable sound of Dream laughing.

Hob leaned his forehead against the doorframe and kept still, letting the distant sound of Dream being happy soak in. He was all right; he was happy.

Hob ached a little to be near him, to be the cause or at least the witness of his happiness, but... he thought of that great black bruise on Dream's heart, and the way it had scarcely budged at all over the days he'd been with Hob. Dream needed more love than one human could give him, needed to mend breaches Hob knew nothing about.

He pushed the door open a bit wider, and then took a seat on the sofa and experienced the very strange sensation of being alone in his flat for the first time in nearly two weeks.

---

Eventually Dream stopped laughing and sat up, looking down at Desire as they went on laying on the floor. He had never seen them look so young, and it had been a very long time since he had seen them look so purely and simply happy. Despair had looked nearly as happy when he gave her a picture that showed how he understood her function.

Desire was just looking at him.

They pushed up on their elbows as he thought it, looking him up and down more obviously, still seeming wholly pleased with all they saw.

"You are doing just magnificently," Desire said. "Wanting things, and getting them, and realizing what else you can want, and wanting that too. I cannot think when I have been so proud of you, my brother. I had nearly given up."

"I think I..." It was hard to think about, hard and cold and drenched with rain and much bigger than his current self. He curled down as he struggled to remember, wrapping his arms around his knees and wishing for Hob and hot chocolate. But his sibling was here, and they sat up and slung an arm around him, and smiled gently at him when he looked up.

"I think I had," Dream admitted, dropping his gaze and nestling into Desire's side, which was not as soft and comfortable as Hob's but nearly as warm. "Given up. I think... I thought I had. But then I... there is a child, and I saw him in the Dreaming, and I saw the way everyone loves him, and cares for him, and I saw how that shapes him, and I..."

"Wanted," Desire said, and it was not a question.

Dream looked up at them, startled by the implication, and even more startled to realize he had not suspected it at any moment before now. Had not thought of it at all. "You...?"

"I felt it," Desire said, giving him a little squeeze. "What could I do but feel it, when you called so strongly on all that I am? You were an ocean battering at a dam. You wanted it more than you had let yourself want anything in such a very long time. And perhaps I just..." They raised one hand, and made the tiniest motion with one finger, as if laying just the tip of a finger on imaginary scales. "Encouraged you, just the tiniest bit, to really feel how badly you wanted it. No more than that, brother, I promise you. You didn't need much help."

Dream looked up at his sibling's face, and knew that they spoke the truth. He remembered the teetering moment when he had felt that rushing torrent of wanting and still could have turned back, could have pushed it all down and gone on the same as ever. He had always been so certain that he could not change, could not deviate from his path.

Until he did, just because he wanted to badly enough—because he had been aware of how badly he wanted it.

Dream stood up and wrapped his arms around Desire's shoulders, thinking of what it might have been like to stay where he was, cold and alone, his misery flooding the Dreaming, his hopelessness creeping ever further toward the inevitable end.

"You changed everything," he whispered. "My sibling, you have saved me."

"Just you remember that," Desire said, hugging him back. "The next time you get cross."

"I swear it," Dream murmured. "I swear I shall."

Desire made a long thoughtful noise, and a part of Dream was suspicious about how soon they might intend to put that promise to the test, but the greater part of him was feeling utterly weightless with relief. His sibling cared for him, had helped him to do this unspeakably important thing he was doing, had reached out to him before any other.

They had helped him to change, when he had believed he never could, and had still left him free to shape that change for himself, to find the good and bad and strange in it.

"You know, Dream," Desire said. "We're in a bar."

Dream did draw back then, giving his sibling a dubious look. "Yes. You brought us here."

Desire smirked and stood up: they were tall enough to study the bottles on the shelves at the back of the bar. "I mean, we should sample something, while we're here."

Dream searched for a fault to find with this logic, and could not. Marc had always served them anything they asked for in the kitchen, including an ale for Hob. Surely he and his sibling would not be begrudged a little of this or that from behind the bar.

He thought of the grapes, and said, "Is there a Riesling? I think I would like something sweet."

Desire looked down at him for a moment and said, "Are you sure you wouldn't rather—"

Dream huffed and looked for something to climb on. He could read labels perfectly well, if he could see them, and if Desire was somehow going to decide to play the elder sibling now...

"All right, all right, here, let's see—ice wine! That's got to be the very sweetest, right?"

Dream nodded, mollified. Desire picked up the bottle and set it on the bar, then climbed up onto the bar to reach the glasses above it. Dream mutely held his arms up to be lifted after them, and had to wait until they had chosen glasses and set them down before they spotted him.

They huffed, but climbed back down and boosted him up to perch on the wooden bar, then hoisted themself back up. "You could say when you want something, you know. I mean, I know nonverbal signs are a big improvement, I'm proud of you, but it's more efficient sometimes to just say."

"Hob," Dream said, and then stopped short, knowing that he didn't want to finish that statement though he didn't quite know why, or what would be better.

"Oh, yes, none of us can compete with Hob," Desire said, but they did not sound very sincerely annoyed by it. Dream blushed anyway, without really knowing why.

Desire saw, and smiled wider, showing teeth. "Oh, Hob," they repeated, and finally opened the bottle and poured the pale gold wine into two lovely stemmed glasses. "Come, brother, you can't be so passionately devoted to a human without coming in for a little commentary."

Dream felt as if that were inarguably true and as if he wanted to argue anyway, but... he was missing something from this conversation, and didn't quite know what. He picked up his glass, wrapping both hands around the bowl of it—though it was a small glass, suitable for a dessert wine—and took a long drink from it to cover his confusion.

For the barest instant, the honeyed taste he expected flowed across his tongue, but it was almost immediately drowned out by a foul, rotten flavor that filled his mouth and made him gag, spewing the horrible stuff out all over the bar—and Desire.

His sibling was frozen for a moment, their own untouched wine glass still in their hand, as the liquid dripped from their hair and face.

Dream opened his mouth to apologize. He had ruined everything, they had been getting along and he had ruined it, he could feel tears threatening and knew that crying would only annoy Desire more, but he couldn't find the words to make it right.

Then, incredibly, they smiled, and then began to laugh.

Dream began to laugh too, but nearly choked on the lingering awful flavor of the wine. He spat again, away from Desire this time, trying to clear it from his mouth and hoping his sibling would laugh more.

They did, but they also said, "Here, baby brother, here, I think you've given yourself a more unrefined palate than you're used to in this form. A cocktail is probably in order."

They offered him a glass—something they must have drawn from their power to create, for he hadn't seen them pull anything from the bar. The contents of the glass were deep red at the bottom, fading to pink at the top, where fizzy bubbles were escaping and a single bright red maraschino cherry floated alongside the white-and-red striped straw.

Dream took the glass, and Desire waved a hand at themself, doing away with the mess as well as both wine glasses; they now held an identical glass to Dream's, and sipped from it with every sign of enjoyment.

Dream took a cautious sip of his own, and found that though the fizz tickled his nose from the inside, the drink was pleasantly sweet, with a little sharp pomegranate flavor cutting through. It was just right to scour the awful taste of that wine—surely the bottle had gone off?—from his mouth.

"Thank you, my sibling. That is very nice."

Desire grinned. "Just what you wanted?"

Dream smiled back and then ducked his head, kicking his bare feet as they dangled off his perch on the bar. "Just what I wanted." He glanced up at the rows of bottles and said, "Do you think a different wine..."

Desire laughed so hard they landed sprawled out on the bar, and they utterly refused to fetch down another bottle and try again, but Dream didn't really mind. He liked the drink Desire had made for him.

When Desire finally stopped laughing, they started telling him a story about a mortal child, around the same age Desire looked now, who had been just as determined as Dream to partake of some forbidden wine. It was just the same story that had played out billions of times before with billions of children, but Desire made it new and wonderful and wickedly funny, painting the child's desires and dreams in vivid detail—and the way reality diverged from them just as sharply.

Halfway through the story Dream had to set down his lovely fizzy red drink so he wouldn't spill it everywhere; he was laughing too hard to be sure of his grip. Shortly after that, he nearly fell right off the bar, but Desire caught him safely, and kept a hand on his shoulder to steady him while they finished telling the story.

When they finished, Dream found himself talking eagerly, easily, telling Desire about the things he had wanted and gotten in his sojourn here in the Waking world.

He only noticed how much he was talking about Hob when he saw Desire smirking down at him, but the smirk was fond, and they didn't actually laugh, or even interrupt him to make more pointed remarks. The longer they let him talk, the more he relaxed, and the easier it was to keep talking.

Dream was starting to be aware of being hungry—he had eaten the cherry from his drink, and was thinking of inviting Desire to come back upstairs for lunch—when Desire's hand tightened on his shoulder. Dream stopped short, and then he heard it too.

Someone was moving about in the kitchen. The Inn would be opening soon, and their hiding place would no longer be hidden at all.

Dream's eyes went wide, looking up at his sibling. He had been certain they hadn't done anything wrong—not really wrong—but he was not so sure when he thought of Marc or Irene walking in and finding them sprawling on top of the bar.

"Shall I get us out of here?" Desire asked, their voice and smile nothing but warm.

Dream remembered that they liked him to say things, so he said, "Yes, please," as he held up his hands.

They smiled wide, showing their teeth, and took his hands in a firm grip, giving him a sharp little tug that tumbled them both into nowhere.

---

Chapter 19

Hob got off the couch when he heard the sounds of the kitchen opening up downstairs, figuring he might need to run a bit of interference for Dream and Desire. He hadn't heard any sounds that seemed like them making a mess—just the occasional faint burst of Dream's laughter, once in a while the rise of enthusiastic young voices—but better safe than sorry if Desire got offended by Marc or a hapless dishwasher.

There was no sign of anything out of the ordinary in the kitchen, though. Hob went through into the taproom, just in time to see Colin, who must have the early bartending shift, frowning at a bottle of ice wine before tucking it back onto the shelf behind the bar. Everything else was silent and still.

Fuck.

Hob ran back up to the flat, racking his brain for what to do next.

---

Dream cried out in instinctive dismay at finding himself in the void between worlds, but at the same instant he realized his hands were still held tightly in his sibling's grip. He could not see them, but he could feel them. He was not alone.

"Shh, Dreamy," Desire said. "You're safe with me, and in just a moment we'll step out the other side, back in Hob's flat, right where you want to be."

That was all right, then. Dream gripped tightly to Desire's hands and said, "Why did we stop, then?"

"Just a word in your ear," Desire said. "Here where you don't quite have ears as such—where you are not quite so firmly planted in that adorable little child's body you made for yourself, because I think it is making you forget, a little, that there are other kinds of desire that you left out of yourself when you made yourself so small. You're doing a wonderful job wanting and having, my dear darling brother, but there is still more to want and more to have, if you would let yourself be just a little bigger than this."

Here, in the Between, he understood readily what Desire meant: he had placed himself in a body too young for sexual urges, for the vast and complicated romantic feelings he had been consumed by more than once before.

He had, perhaps, done it on purpose, as much as he had done any of this on purpose. He had been mourning the demise of his relationship with Thessaly, after all, and that had been a part of what he envied in Daniel Hall's existence. Love that could be simple; desires that could be straightforward and harmless.

He understood, too, why Desire had been smirking at him that way while he talked about Hob, and why they had not articulated their amusement to his small self in the material world. They had been kind enough not to draw attention to what Dream had made himself able to forget.

"You think Hob would..."

"Oh," Desire said firmly, pressing so close that even in this in-between space where their bodies did not quite exist, he could feel the warmth of their breath on his ear. "My sweet brother, I know."

They would know, if anyone would; desires were their domain.

Dream shuddered, feeling himself shift between forms, feeling this small part of himself come near to dissolving altogether in this confused moment of wanting and not-wanting. "Desire, please—"

And then Dream blinked, because he could blink, and looked up to see that he was held, not in Desire's hands, but in Hob's familiar arms.

Hob was standing at the top of the kitchen stair, the open door to his flat before him, looking down at Dream with as much bewilderment as Dream felt.

"Well," Hob said, "that's one way to sort out not being able to find you. But where's—"

"Right here!" Desire called, and Hob looked immediately more exasperated than confused, and carried Dream into the flat and thence into the kitchen, where Desire was perched on the bench beside the coffee machine, holding a pod and pouting theatrically. "You promised me a mocha latte, and you never made it."

Hob shifted his grip on Dream and strode over to pluck the pod from Desire's fingers, putting it briskly into the machine and snapping it shut. "I seem to recall you promised a thing or two yourself, Desire of the Endless."

"So I did!" Desire agreed. "I did let Dream try ice wine, which I can't think did him any harm, given he spat it out all over me—"

"Sibling," Dream hissed, and Hob and Desire turned oddly identical fond looks in his direction.

"You did say you would remember, the next time you were cross," Desire said, wagging a finger at him. "And," they refocused on Hob, "then I gave him a Shirley Temple instead. And then we popped into the Between just for a moment between downstairs and up here, so that I could point out to him that as lovely a time as he's been having in his current form—"

"Desire," Dream snapped, but of course they did not heed him.

"There are probably other things he could have even more fun with if he decided to be full-sized. I did tell him I thought you would be amenable," they added, smiling extra wide. "Can't help being aware, you know how it is."

"I don't, actually," Hob said, but he sounded a little choked, and his cheeks had gone very red.

Dream put a hand to one, frowning. He knew what Desire was talking about—they had just told him. Sex, and love-love, and all of that. He had managed to forget for an entire fortnight how important such things could be; now he remembered, but in the same way that he remembered that the drink Desire had given him was called a Shirley Temple. It was simply a fact, and one that didn't feel very important when he was cuddled in Hob's arms where he belonged.

Hob was staring up at the ceiling, though, and his cheeks were very red.

Hob looked down at him, and then he said, in careful tones, "Dream, sweetheart, do you mind just staying here with your sibling a bit?"

Dream narrowed his eyes. "Do you need to go in the other room and scream?"

Hob nodded.

Dream suspected that this was a reasonable reaction, even if he mostly felt bereft in advance at the thought of Hob's absence—but then Hob would return, which would almost be worth it. He nodded back at Hob.

Hob kissed his forehead and then sat him on the kitchen bench, picking up a mug and popping it into the microwave before Dream could even realize what it was.

"This is for him," Hob said, looking only at the microwave. "Shouldn't be too hot to drink once it's done, so you get it down for him, yeah?"

"Yeah," Desire said, almost gently, before Hob turned on his heel and strode out. They drummed their fingernails in the quiet that followed, a sharp staccato that broke through the gurgling of the coffee machine and the hum of the microwave.

Dream sprawled out on his belly on the kitchen bench, and reached for Desire's hand, and the lovely smooth red of their lacquered nails.

"Do you like them?" Desire said, sounding amused again.

Dream nodded without looking up, tilting Desire's hand back and forth to study the shine of the perfect red.

"Do you want me to do yours?" Desire asked.

Dream looked up at his sibling with wide, hopeful eyes.

---

Hob made it to the study, found the pillow, and then his knees went wobbly and he was sitting on the floor staring at it, thinking of Dream pressing it to his face, laughing, pressing his little hands to Hob's mouth and giggling his bizarre rusty laugh.

He had looked faintly annoyed at his sibling's revelation, but he hadn't... he hadn't reacted to it, not like Hob had. Dream had heard the same thing Hob heard, but... he had heard it like a little kid, no matter how much of Hob's friend was in there. It didn't mean anything to him right now, that was obvious.

That wasn't new, really. Hob had had a suspicion for hundreds of years that his stranger didn't really take that kind of interest in humans—or at least, not in Hob. There had been that moment in 1789, that lingering look, but his stranger had shut that down in the next second. Hob had figured the look meant something else, something uncanny and unknowable, and his silly crush was not much different from imagining himself fucking any other impossible idol.

Desire hadn't, technically, told Hob that Dream was interested, or could be when he was built to be interested in anyone at all. But they'd bothered to tell Dream that Hob was interested, which strongly suggested that that was relevant information.

Desire couldn't help being aware, after all. Apparently.

Hob pressed the pillow to his forehead and let out the noise lurking behind his gritted teeth, which was a sort of growling groan that choked off toward the end, the tension unspent.

Dream might—they could—he—if—

Hob had wanted for so long while believing it was all impossible, and now—

Now it was still impossible, clearly, because Dream had chosen to spend some time being more or less a child.

And now it was more possible than it might ever have been, because Dream had chosen to trust Hob with himself in this form, because they exchanged words of love and reassurance daily, had promised each other forever in one way and another. With all of that, Hob couldn't begin to imagine that Dream would get his adult libido back and want anything trivial.

Would he? Or would it all be different when he was big again? Would he want Hob to be his... his dad friend while Dream looked for love elsewhere?

Hob managed to laugh at himself, then, sort of—more laughing than crying, in that muffled howl, though undeniably some of each.

He didn't know anything, really, that he hadn't known before. His friend both was a child and wasn't a child; his friend would return to his old form at some point, and things between them would be inevitably changed, and there was no knowing exactly how. And in the meantime, they had this time together, which was precious and necessary, and he would shower upon Dream all the love that was suited to this child's form.

Whatever came next, he would find out when it came. He was lucky to have Dream here with him, lucky to be a part of Dream taking this time to learn to be loved. He couldn't ask for more than that.

Well, he could, because he had always been greedy, always wanted more and more and more of any good thing, but he did know that there were limits. He didn't want anything that Dream didn't want, or wasn't ready for, or wasn't in the mood for right now. He couldn't look at Dream, small as he was, and want more from him, things that would confuse or distress him to be asked for.

If it was possible, later—if Desire thought that that kind of love was part of what Dream needed to be whole—well, his sibling had told Dream what they needed to tell him. Hob only knew about it because he'd tried to be clever at the door, trying to protect them both against a being he should know better than to try to extract promises from. This awkward awareness was his just reward for that.

He pressed the pillow to his face and tried a few more screams, just to be sure he'd gotten them out. By the last he just felt tired, and that was as good a place to land as any; he set the pillow down and went back out to see what Dream and Desire had gotten up to in the meantime.

They were still in the kitchen, both still sitting on the bench, Desire sipping from their mocha, Dream from his hot chocolate—and now Dream's fingernails were painted, a shiny and perfect black to match his sibling's red. Hob smiled, and it was easy to smile at Dream when Dream was here in front of him, with his nails freshly done up and his eyes all wide and hopeful.

"Looks gorgeous, love," Hob said, coming over to get a better look.

Dream smiled up at him and turned his hand so Hob could see his thumbnail, which was adorned with a red tongue of flame, matching today's overalls, which Hob suspected were Dream's favorites even though he never actually stated a preference for one garment over another.

"Perfect," Hob agreed, pressing a kiss to his forehead. "Very you, my joy."

Dream leaned forward and nodded into Hob's chest, and Hob gathered him up and hugged him close, mug and all.

"Well!" Desire said brightly. "I believe my work here is done. Do explore the rest of the groceries, Dream, we never got as far as the apricots and peaches. You'll love those."

Dream picked his head up enough to say, "Thank you, my sibling."

Hob made himself look over again, to see the cheerfully naughty kid hop down from his kitchen bench, blow him a child's play-flirtatious kiss, and saunter to the door, letting themself out without a backward glance.

After a moment, Hob managed to go over and turn the lock behind them, the click of it loud in the flat, which felt calmer and quieter—but otherwise not really noticeably different—for their absence. It could have been much worse, Hob realized. They could have done what Delirium or Despair did, could have made Dream—or Hob himself—want more than what they had now. They could have made this a real mess, an utter nightmare, and they hadn't.

Hob looked down at Dream. "That went well, didn't it?"

Dream ducked his head and squirmed so that he could sip more hot chocolate, though Hob could see the mug was nearly empty, mostly a prop now. Hob carried him to the kitchen table and sat down, settling Dream on his lap so he could see him a little more easily.

Dream set the mug on the table and then spread his hands on the edge, admiring his shiny black nails and the little symmetrical flames on his thumbs. "I don't..."

Hob curled both arms around Dream's middle, holding him securely, and didn't push for more.

"I don't feel it," he said finally. "What they said. I know, but... It is a story. Not me, not as I am now. Apparently I cannot even drink wine like this. It tasted awful."

Hob pressed a kiss to Dream's hair and nodded. "Makes sense. You made yourself this way for a reason—you needed a break from your work, and a break from other things, too. Matthew mentioned you were... pretty broken up, before all this."

Dream tilted his head, and Hob straightened up enough to see the pensive little look on his face. "Yes. Thessaly—the Thessalian. A human—immortal, like you, though—not the way that you are, because of my sister's gift freely given. Thessaly is a witch—a seeker after power. She has found a great deal of it, over three thousand years, but she is not satisfied."

Hob nodded slowly. He didn't think he'd ever met this Thessaly—not to know, if he had—but he understood the general type.

"You would never have been like that, I do not think," Dream went on, frowning now at his thumbnails.

"No," Hob agreed. "I always wanted to live, but I wasn't looking for anyone to tell me how to make it happen. I just believed I could, and got bloody lucky. If I hadn't," Hob shrugged. "Don't suppose I would have known the difference, when it came to it. One less silly braggart in the world, and me off to another adventure, finding out what comes next."

Dream nodded. "You wanted—want—to live because you take joy in your life as it is; if you had to give that up in order to live, it would seem pointless to you. Thessaly... has not the knack for joy, I think. I admired her—she stood up to me—and I wished to be in love, and she wished to be loved, but ultimately... she had her own interests to pursue, and we did not know how to..." Dream waved his hands. "To stay. To last."

Hob gave him a squeeze. "That's hard," Hob agreed, rather than pointing out that Dream hadn't said anything that indicated that this power-seeking witch had liked him at all, as a person, or that he'd liked her for anything other than being difficult. He'd known for well over six hundred years now how not to criticize a friend's romantic choices, no matter how transparently disastrous they seemed to be from the outside.

"My former wife," Dream said, and Hob's whole body locked up for a moment.

Dream stayed silent until Hob had taken a couple of careful breaths and unclenched a bit. "Didn't work out either?" Hob asked.

"No," Dream said. "In the end I suppose it was the same. She was powerful—a muse—Calliope, she is the muse of stories, you see, so we were well matched. And she always had her own work, her own domain. We were together for... some decades. We did take joy in each other, in shared creation, in... other things. But we could not last. We never lived together. I think we were both always trying to... put off the time when we would be finished with each other. And then she didn't want to put it off anymore."

"I'm sorry about that," Hob said, because that did sound like a pretty good relationship, and a run of a few decades would probably have been enough to see them through their whole lives, if they had been human. Immortality made till death do us part a much higher bar.

Dream looked up at Hob. "I... do not want to be finished with you. I do not want you to be finished with me. Not ever."

"Well, you've only known me six hundred years," Hob said, blinking back the stinging in his eyes, the clench in his heart. We could, he might, maybe... "Give it another thousand or two, you might want a bit of space—or I might! Two thousand years, I'll probably be able to catch a spaceship and go see some new sights, hey?"

"But anywhere you went, you could still come to the Dreaming when you sleep," Dream offered. "You could tell me about it."

"I could," Hob agreed. "And I'd have to get a spaceship cabin where I could keep your picture on the wall. I did make a promise."

Dream smiled up at him, showing all his little white baby teeth, and then looked around the kitchen and said, "Is it time for lunch now? Can we watch The Princess Bride after?"

---

There was cleanup to do in between lunch and The Princess Bride—they had dug the peaches out of Desire's shopping bag, and by the time they'd finished lunch Dream was sticky up to the elbows and across half his face.

Hob sat him by the kitchen sink to wash him up, and he realized as he did that Dream's cheeks had rounded out noticeably since he'd arrived. Hob hadn't noticed it happening, but the curves of them were properly convex now; he even had a soft little pudgy bit under his chin, which also needed washing.

Hob gave him a towel to dry his hands and face, which Dream did with the same meticulous care as he dried dishes and utensils; when he was finished Hob ran a hand over his hair—unruly as ever but clean and shiny. "You're starting to look as if you've got someone looking after you."

Dream looked up at him thoughtfully for a moment, patting his face with a corner of the towel as if he was trying to feel what change Hob had noticed. "I'm glad," Dream said finally. "That it shows."

Hob pressed a kiss to his forehead and then started on the dishes.

They sat side-by-side on the couch to watch the movie, Dream cuddling into his side with Hob's arm draped over him. He rested heavily against him, but his eyes stayed fixed on the screen from start to finish—the first time, Hob realized, that he had really seen the movie all the way through when he could make sense of it.

And it was obvious that he was focused very intently on making sense of it: a story about stories, a story about true love. It was no surprise that he had wanted to see it again, in light of whatever his sibling had told him.

Sure enough, when the movie ended, Dream was still frowning intently. He looked up at Hob and said, "It wasn't just Westley and Buttercup."

"No," Hob agreed.

"Who loved each other," Dream elaborated, still frowning. "Inigo loved his father. The grandfather loved his grandson, and the grandson loved his grandfather. Count Rugen..." Dream's nose wrinkled, and Hob smiled.

Dream focused on him again. "Which do you like best? Which one would you want?"

"Oh, well," Hob said, torn between knowing with perfect certainty his answer to that question, and needing to say what Dream needed to hear. "I think... for humans, at least, it's never good for us to have only one kind of love, or one person to love. We need to be loved like the grandson is loved when we're small, so we can learn to love people like his grandfather loves him. And we need friends—"

"Like Inigo needed Fezzik," Dream put in. "And Westley needed both of them."

Hob smiled. "Just so. And for me, I need that Westley-and-Buttercup kind of love, too, but, I mean—" Hob waved a hand. "We hardly get to see it in the movie, really. They have all these big feelings about each other, but they don't really get to know each other, or find out what all those big feelings amount to, when they're trying to go on with their lives together. They will, I'm sure, but... no, if I had to choose one kind of love from the movie to have for mine?"

Dream straightened up a little, watching intently, and Hob was aware that his answer mattered, not just because he might be able to tell Dream something about how the world and love worked, but because it mattered to Dream how Hob wanted to be loved.

"Miracle Max and Valerie," Hob said firmly. "Any day of the week."

Dream's lips parted, his frown deepening; he looked back to the now-blank screen of the TV like it might tell him something.

"Shallow little creature," Hob said, ruffling Dream's hair. "You didn't even look at them, did you? They're old, they're ugly—but they got that way together, staying together. They helped with each other's work, but even when Max couldn't do miracles anymore, she stayed with him. When the chance came along, she got him to try again, even though he was scared, and she helped him to do it, and she stood beside him through all of it. And the heroes go off to storm the castle, and Max and Valerie are there in their home, together, watching them go."

"They... shouted at each other," Dream said slowly. "But... even when she called him a liar, she..."

"She was helping him," Hob agreed. "She was making him face what he didn't want to face. She didn't just throw up her hands and walk away; she made him listen. She stayed. All that time he was too scared to try, she had stayed with him."

Dream looked up at Hob again, and Hob did his best to smile, and knew it wasn't much of one. "That's what I can't have," Hob said. "Can't grow old with anyone—can't grow old at all, but I can't stay with them while they grow old, either. Can't stay in one place, with one person, more than twenty years or so. But if I could, if there was someone..." He shrugged. "That's what I'd choose. No question."

"Hm," Dream said, and then slid off the couch and went to the coffee table to pull out his pastels and sketchbook.

Hob sat for a while, just watching him, just basking in the fact of Dream, present with him and safe and visibly thinking very hard, but happy enough for all that. Then he got up to make tea and hot chocolate before he got back to work on the books in the study.

---

When he entered the Dreaming that night, Dream found himself in his private quarters in the palace for the first time since the first night he had spent with Hob. He was not under the bed this time, but perched on the edge of it. He had the red ribbon tying him to Hob, promising that Hob would join him before too long, but for now he was alone.

He was still in his small form, wearing black pajamas spangled with white stars. He had had the whole day, more or less, to consider what Desire had told him, and what Hob had said, and what it could mean.

Just a little bigger than this, Desire had said. They had not meant incrementally so—as big as they were in the Waking when they visited him, for instance. They had meant that he would need to be adult in form—but though it would resemble the form he normally wore, such a form could still be smaller in the essentials. He could still leave most of Dream of the Endless there under the bed.

That, too, could be a part of this sojourn, this quest, this way of learning what he was missing.

But it would change things. To Hob's eyes he would be much as he had ever been; Hob would be bound to treat him differently. Some of those differences might be, as it were, desirable, but...

Dream had spent a good part of the afternoon tucked under Hob's arm, and much of the evening resting against his chest as Hob read to him—the stranded astronaut's travails continuing—and... he liked that. He still felt hungry for more of that, greedy for it. He was not done being small.

But he was curious about being big, and... this was what the Dreaming was for, was it not? For possibilities, for exploration, for the space to make choices that need not last beyond waking.

It had never been that for him, but it could be, this once. He could grant himself such a space.

Dream hopped down off the bed and reached into the mass of darkness under it, sifting his fingers through it, tugging at the parts of himself he needed for this, leaving behind what would only weigh him down.

He straightened up, and up, into a shape—a height—that felt unaccustomed after his sojourn as his smallest self. He stretched each long, slender limb, noting that the ribbon was still in place, having smoothly adjusted to his thicker wrist. His pajamas had also adjusted, changing into a plain black t-shirt and black joggers.

Dream wrinkled his nose, looking down at his attire, and considered his options. He had more elaborate raiment, of course, but that was... bigger than this, suited to his greatest self—to the king in his kingdom, a being vaster and more ancient than any god.

As this fraction of himself, Dream was certain that joggers and t-shirt were correct, as his bare feet were correct, but... boring, as the clothes he normally wore in the Waking world were boring. Elegant and fashionable, of course, but... boring. Dream traced a fingertip in a swirling pattern down the front of his shirt, leaving an asymmetrical scattering of white stars down the front of his shirt. He shook each foot in turn, and small stars winked into view at each ankle.

He spread his hands, marveling at their reach, and noted that Desire's manicure had stayed in place, his nails glossy and black with red flames flickering on his thumbs. He breathed over his fingernails, adding the iridescent sheen of a raven's wing to the nails that did not show a flame.

There. That was better.

The dancing flames on his thumbs echoed the red of the ribbon around his wrist; Dream curled a hand around the ribbon and followed it out to his balcony.

He stopped short when he reached the railing, the view entirely failing to register as memory flooded in. He had not forgotten, not really, but the force and weight of the memory now was such that he could not overlook it. He had indeed brought back more of himself than just his height and reach.

He had stood here in the rain two weeks ago, mourning the end of his love affair with Thessaly. He had felt utterly desolate in the wake of her rejection, unspeakably alone, wholly bereft. Rain had poured down all over the Dreaming, giving form to his misery.

Tears came to his eyes now at the memory of how he had felt then, unable to even imagine being comforted, unable to fathom that he could ever recover from the blow.

He had not wept then. The skies of the Dreaming had wept for him, but his most complete self was far too controlled to weep.

And yet, what was it that he had mourned? Thessaly had not been kind to him, had called him by no names of love that were not at least half ironic. She had liked words that made a pet of him, that showed he was under her sway. He had not been her joy, had not been dear to her, though she had reveled in his power and his attention. He had showed off his realm to her, but she had shown him almost nothing of her own life in turn, had never shared with him the things that she liked best in the hopes that he would like them too.

She had certainly never been his friend.

He did not think, on reflection, that she had even liked him.

And still, he had mourned. He had grieved the loss of a chance, a possibility. A hope. A love he had never had from Thessaly, and probably could never have had.

It was nothing like the way he would mourn if Hob—

He could not even think of it; tears blurred his eyes and clouds gathered overhead at just the passing glimmer of the thought.

Dream tightened his grip on the red ribbon and jumped over the balcony's railing where it trailed down, following it into the garden below. The red ribbon led him through one path after another, and he was reeling it in, hand over hand, walking in longer and longer strides and then running in leaping bounds, giddy with eagerness to see Hob again with these new eyes.

He came around a corner and found Hob standing in a bower of roses. He was facing away from Dream—just by the tilt of his head and the set of his shoulders, Dream could see that he was fascinated by the profusion of flowers and tangle of vines around him—and Dream felt his heart leap in his chest and knew that Desire had been right.

He had not known what he was missing. He had not known he could love Hob like this, too.

He tugged at the ribbon that joined his wrist to Hob's, and rushed forward as Hob began to turn toward him.

---

 
 

Chapter 20

Hob opened his eyes in a dream—in the Dreaming—and he could feel that particular clarity that meant Dream was somewhere near. He knew he would remember this dream as clearly as he did any waking moment. He was face to face with an absolute wall of roses—all of them red, ranging from so dark a burgundy it was nearly black to vivid pure ruby reds and every shade in between. Some were just barely opened, many of them were fully blown, but Hob couldn't spot a single one still closed in the bud.

The smell of them was all he could breathe, and the blooms grew out of an impassable tangle of vines with no visible thorns.

Dream had been asleep for an hour or so now; Hob had a feeling he could see what his friend had decided to try, but he stood and studied the roses—the red, red roses—and told himself firmly not to make assumptions.

That lasted until he felt a sharp tug on the ribbon around his wrist. He followed the pull instantly, turning to see Dream running to him, beaming so widely that Hob could take in nothing but that absolutely luminous smile, and returned it with all his heart.

Dream stopped short, close enough to touch but not reaching out. His smile persisted as he looked Hob up and down, so frankly and unselfconsciously that he might have been no older than his small self appeared to be.

He looked, at the outside, maybe twenty years older—a man grown, but still a world away from the ancient bearing of Hob's familiar stranger. His cheeks and chin retained a bit of his newly-well-fed softness, and his porcelain skin was that of a youth who could not yet grow a proper beard.

But it was his eyes and his smile, bright and easy and eager, that truly made him look young—that and the way Hob found himself looking ever so slightly down to meet Dream's eyes. His stranger had always been just his own height, or a bit taller.

"Hob," Dream said, and he sounded like himself, except that Hob had never heard his stranger sound so cheerfully enthusiastic. "Hob, I want you."

"You have me, love," Hob said, because he couldn't say anything else—and then he couldn't say anything at all, because Dream was plastered against him, kissing him with puppyish fervor and about as much expertise.

Hob wrapped his arms around Dream's slim form—solid and strong, absolutely a man's body, but the way Dream leaned into him without reservation, barely leaving his feet on the ground, still set off every protective instinct Hob had. He kissed back, of course; Dream was irresistible and Hob wasn't even tempted to try.

Not, at least, until Dream slipped his fingers into the waistband of the joggers Hob had fallen asleep in. The feeling of Dream's fingers on hidden skin was, on the one hand, shockingly and wonderfully erotic, and on the other hand, made it obvious that they were Going Places.

Hob needed to ask one or two questions before they got there.

"Wait," Hob gasped against Dream's lips, and Dream jerked back immediately, looking so calmly curious about what they were waiting for that Hob had to kiss him just a little more. He pressed soft, lingering kisses to Dream's mouth that hopefully made his love and his attraction clear. Each one left Dream leaning in after it so that Hob just had to give him another.

Hob felt the roses at his back and realized he'd all but collapsed against them, Dream still pushing in against him every time he drew back. Hob closed his eyes and laughed, and forced himself to get a firm grip on Dream's shoulders, shifting him back a pace.

When he opened his eyes Dream was smiling, but now he did look uncertain.

"You have me," Hob repeated. "I'm yours, darling, in any way you want. I just—I just need to know what it is you want, and... what this is."

Dream blinked those wide blue eyes at him, his smile slowly returning, his lips now kiss-reddened and wet. "I want you, Hob. I want you to be my lover, and I want to love you that way—like Westley and Buttercup. Like Miracle Max and Valerie, I hope, when we've been at it a hundred years or so. And also I would very much like for us to fuck."

Hob choked a bit at that last, earning a coquette's smile from Dream, who was obviously pleased with that reaction.

Still, there was a bright openness even in that playfully coy reaction that made it clear that Dream wasn't really doing this on purpose. He hadn't very specifically chosen to look this young and unspoiled for the joy of shocking Hob; he had started from the version of himself he had been with Hob for weeks now, and added just enough to be ready to kiss Hob in a bed of roses, and this smiling, confident youth was the result.

"I'd like all of that too," Hob finally managed to say. "I just need to know... Dream, I went to bed a little while ago in the Waking, and my body is still there, right?"

Watching Dream visibly shift gears from "cheerfully horny" to "focused on his work" was almost painfully endearing, when Hob was already so desperately in love. "Yes. Bringing you here physically would be a much more involved undertaking, and... not good for you, if you were to spend much time here. You could, sometime, if you would like, but—"

Hob nodded quickly. "But right now, I'm back in my bed in London. But the thing is..." Hob raised his left hand and tugged at the ribbon—just a foot or two long, here—that connected them. "When I went to bed, the physical version of this was tying me to the physical version of you, who was still quite small."

Something closed off in Dream's eyes; he eased back from Hob, just an inch or two.

"And that's fine," Hob said firmly. "I don't mind one bit if you're big here and small there, or vice versa, or whatever you need to be. I just need to know that what we do here stays here and doesn't affect me there, if you're not the same in both places."

Dream's head tilted and eyes narrowed, thinking it through. "My small self is not a child, Hob. I will remember this, whatever shape I wear tomorrow."

Hob nodded. "I know that. I don't pretend to entirely understand it, but I know. But I also know that when you're smaller you don't understand or want what we're hopefully about to spend the rest of the night doing—"

That brought an eager glint back into Dream's eyes, and a little smirk to his lips that Hob wanted to kiss away immediately. He forced himself to focus.

"You can just put it down to a silly human thing if you like," Hob went on. "But please, Dream, my dearest darling love, can you make sure that I absolutely cannot come in my pants while I'm sleeping next to the version of you that looks three years old?"

Dream's smirk turned fond, willing to indulge Hob's limited human understanding. "If you require it, of course."

Dream's expression turned abstracted; he raised a hand and seemed to twiddle at nothing, as though he was looking for a switch to flip or setting to adjust. Finally his gaze settled on Hob again, his expression gone sheepish, and he said, "I think I left that part under the bed. Come with me, I'll fix it."

He took Hob's hand and tugged, turning to run back the way he had come, and Hob followed without question, even as he was wondering what exactly I left that part under the bed was supposed to mean.

---

Dream was enough of himself to make the distance from the rose bower to his private rooms a matter of just a few strides; he only let go of Hob's hand when he dropped to his knees beside the bed, reaching into the mass of darkness there to find what he needed. He made the necessary adjustment to the connection between Hob's Waking and Dreaming selves, and even remembered to make the change temporary—after this night's dreaming, Hob's body and his dreams would connect in the usual way.

When he had done that, he turned back to Hob, only to find that Hob had knelt down beside him, and was peering into the darkness under the bed.

Dream felt suddenly, breathtakingly exposed.

Of course Hob knew, by now, that Dream had done this on purpose, leaving so much of himself behind to be something smaller, but... now Hob could see it. Seeing was always different from knowing for humans like him. And if what Hob really liked, or respected, or was interested in, was that greater part of himself, the part that was far older and more powerful...

Hob looked over at him, seeming to ask some silent question. Dream had no idea what it was or how to respond to it, and after a moment Hob gave a little nod and lowered himself even closer to the floor. He reached one hand right into the darkness as he said, "Ah, there you are—there the rest of you is, I mean, my friend. I hope that this part of you is having a restful break as well."

Dream stared, stunned and baffled and helplessly in love, as Hob petted the mass of inchoate darkness that represented the greatest and most ancient parts of Dream of the Endless. Dream could feel it, distantly, for those parts of himself he had set aside were still, after all, him. He could feel that that part of himself, vast as it was, was even more baffled than the rest of him to receive Hob's concern and affection.

But every part of him was hungry for it.

As Dream watched, the darkness took shape under Hob's gentling hand, becoming the mantle that it had first been when Dream changed and set it aside, and then a long black coat with a starry lining. When Hob huffed a soft laugh and gave another lingering stroke to the nearest sleeve, the coat folded itself up with the distinct air of a cat curling up for a nap in a sunbeam, well pleased with itself and the world.

Dream felt that too, far off as it was: a restless, hungry part of himself was soothed as it had not been for a very long time.

"Good," Hob murmured to it. "I'm glad. You deserve a break too, you know."

One sleeve-end emerged from the neat fold to flip dismissively, and Hob laughed properly then, drawing back to sit on his heels and look over at Dream with an expression of such warmth—for him, just him, small and simple as he was!—that Dream could scarcely breathe.

"Well," Hob said. "That's us told. Now, should we pick up where we left off outside? Or would you like to—"

Dream could not find the words, but he could fling himself bodily at Hob, knocking him to the floor with another frantic kiss. There was a rug under them now, though Dream was sure he had knelt down on bare marble. The rug was deep black and plush and prevented Hob from banging his head when Dream tackled him, so that was just as well.

Kissing Hob was amazing, and as necessary as breathing, and only made him want more. Dream writhed on top of Hob, rubbing as much of himself against Hob as he could, until it occurred to him that it would feel better without his clothes in the way; he made his pajamas vanish, then whined in frustration when he realized that Hob was still wearing his. It would be rude to take them from him, but Dream could not summon the words to ask, could not think.

Then Hob's hands—big and warm and callused and strong, for all that they were gentle with him—closed firmly on Dream's hips, holding him still. Dream picked his head up to see Hob smiling up at him, his mouth all wet with kissing, his eyes so warm that Dream wanted to bask in them like sunshine.

"You really have no idea what you're doing, do you," Hob said, fondly, like that was a good thing.

"I want you," Dream insisted. He was sure about that.

"Oh, yes, I've gotten that impression," Hob said, and pushed his hips up under Dream, so that Dream was extra aware of the hardness of Hob's erection behind that silly layer of clothing. Dream knew that Hob could feel how hard he was too, right alongside him but not quite touching, not yet. "But you... darling, did you leave all the other times you've done this under the bed, too?"

Dream squirmed and frowned. "There are no other times. I've never done this with you before."

Hob raised his eyebrows, and Dream dropped his gaze to Hob's chest. The collar of his tee was stretched a bit; a little of his dark chest hair was visible above it, and Dream wanted to see the rest more than he had ever wanted anything. He had a dim, distant memory of Hob wearing only a towel, but he had not understood then. He would appreciate it now, if only Hob would stop staring at him with that patient expression like he could sit here all day.

"Never with a man before," Dream admitted.

Hob sat up, keeping that firm grip on Dream's hips, so that abruptly Dream was sitting in his lap rather than sprawled over him on the floor. Facing him, straddling him, naked and aroused, it felt nothing like being small and sitting in Hob's lap, and yet...

It didn't feel entirely unlike that, either.

Hob took one hand off his hip and caught Dream's chin, holding him still for Hob to kiss him, soft and sweet and shallow.

"Darling," Hob said, pressing their foreheads together, speaking into the tiny, humid space between their mouths. "I know you've had sex before. But you left that out, didn't you?"

Dream squirmed a bit, and said nothing. He supposed that technically Hob was correct, but he didn't want to think about any of those others now. That was why he had left it under the bed; he only wanted this to be about now, about him and Hob. About something entirely new.

"Do you think," Hob murmured, "that what you'd really like is to be looked after properly by someone who loves you?"

Dream shuddered, wrapping his legs firmly around Hob's hips, squeezing his eyes shut though he was too close for Hob to see him properly. Hob kept that grip on his chin and on his hip, holding him firmly in place, and kissed him again, even softer.

"I've got you, my joy," Hob murmured. "I know what you need."

Hob stood up under him, and Dream clung tighter, but Hob bore him just to the bed, which they were, after all, right beside. Hob laid him down on the cool sheets, coming with him because Dream was still clinging tight, and Hob's weight over him felt like a key in a lock, the answer to a riddle, something he had needed without knowing it. Dream let go, let himself sink into the bed.

Let himself be looked after.

Hob knelt up and stripped his shirt off, and Dream could look and look now, at the thick hair that covered his chest, leaving only his nipples exposed. Then Hob tugged down his joggers as well, and Dream could only stare at Hob's cock, which to Dream's eyes seemed to be exactly the ideal size and shape, standing up proud and eager against Hob's belly—for him, because Hob wanted him, because Dream had already pleased him just with kisses and touches and wanting, without being particularly skilled, without calculating for the best effect. Hob just wanted him.

And then Hob lowered himself over Dream again and kissed him and kissed him, straying from his mouth to lavish kisses down his throat and over his chest, touches of lips and tongue and occasionally teeth that left him feeling—not worshipped, nothing so distant. The rest of Hob's body rubbed against Dream's, his weight still present, the roughness of his hair exquisite against Dream's smooth skin.

Dream was being cherished, in every inch of his skin, every least part of his being, and that warmth twisted into heat and pleasure as it sank into him, singing along every nerve. Hob was making love to him in the most literal sense, and Dream knew, even with all the relevant memories tucked away under the bed, that no one had ever made love to him like this before. He would never have allowed it; it was simply not his role.

It was not the proper role for Dream of the Endless, King of Dreams and Lord of the Dreaming, at least as he had understood himself before. For Dream as he was now, just big enough to be naked in Hob's bed with Hob naked and wanting him, nothing could be more right.

"I think," Dream said, as Hob was kissing gently around the edges of the bruise that still marred the center of his chest, the thickness of his body parting Dream's thighs, "this was definitely something I needed to learn."

Hob laughed, looking up at him, but the gust of his breath brushed over his nipple, and everything but that pleasure went out of Dream's mind. Hob resumed his progress down Dream's body, kissing and petting him everywhere, teasing and tasting. Every touch was what Dream wanted, needed, and every touch made him greedy for more.

He was gasping out Hob's name on every breath, though he knew that he did not need to ask any more than he needed to breathe—Hob would give him all he wanted, all he did not know to want, and more. Hob would give him every good thing. Dream had only to feel it.

Hob's mouth closed on his prick, and Dream arched nearly off the bed at the heat, the pleasure, the feeling of being taken inside Hob's mouth, his body, the living heat of him. It was pleasure that was more than pleasure—it was a consummation, a completion in itself, and Dream learned all at once what it was to be given all he wanted and to be the very thing his beloved desired and was devouring. It was too much for him to contain, too much to give name or shape to what he felt; the taste of Candyfloss grapes burst across his tongue as climax swept through him, all the sea pouring through one breached dam.

Dream blinked and Hob was lying over him, smiling down at him with such abundant and obvious love that Dream could have gazed up at him forever, could have orbited him like a sun. He could feel life flourishing in himself under Hob's gaze like a new-made planet around the star that gave it its center, its warmth, its purpose for existing.

Hob was still smiling—laughing—kissing his nose and cheeks and mouth—oh, he had been talking just then. He had said all of that for Hob to hear.

"I think I did not make myself quite big enough," Dream murmured against Hob's lips. "I think I am overflowing."

"That you surely are," Hob said back, kissing him with lips and tongue that tasted sweet as Candyfloss grapes. "And you taste amazing, love. Do you want to stop?"

Dream discovered that he could tell where his hands were when they caught hold of Hob; the rest of his body followed from there. "More?"

"More," Hob agreed, and began all over again to drive Dream out of his mind.

---

Hob woke up feeling great, his whole body warm and loose and thoroughly relaxed, entirely satisfied, utterly certain that he was waking up beside someone he loved and trusted down to his bones.

Then he felt the tiniest tug at the ribbon on his wrist, and remembered exactly who that was. Hob opened his eyes to see Dream—the familiar small one he'd woken up beside for weeks now—sitting up in bed, watching him intently and fidgeting with the piled-up length of ribbon.

"Hey, love," Hob said, reaching out to lay a hand over Dream's restless one. "How did you sleep?"

"Very well," Dream said, still with that tiny frown, though his restless hand stilled under Hob's touch. "I am hungry. I am..." He did not exactly trail off, because his intent stare into Hob's eyes seemed to be the unspoken, perhaps unspeakable, end of the sentence.

"It's all right if last night bothers you," Hob said gently. "It's all right to feel strange or confused about it. I'm sorry if—"

Dream shook his head sharply. "I don't—I don't remember anything in great detail except how much you love me, and how much I love you, and how happy we were together. And the taste of those grapes."

Hob pressed his free hand to his face, laughing helplessly at that. He didn't know quite why Dream's bigger self had tasted of those grapes, but he surely had, and their mouths had been full of that flavor, one way or another, for much of the night.

When he lowered his hand to look again, Dream was still looking anxious. Hob sat up and pulled Dream into his lap for a firm hug.

"You really," Dream said into his t-shirt. "You really don't want—you don't mind..."

"I love you," Hob said firmly. "Big or small or strange shadow thing or whatever other shape you take, whatever we do together. I love you, and I want you here, and that's all there is to it. If you want to be small for another fortnight before you consider being big again, you should. If I need to go take my grownup feelings into the shower for a bit, I will, and that's not your problem."

Dream looked up at him. "Do you need to?"

Hob huffed. He wasn't physically sore—as Dream had promised, nothing physical had carried over from his dreams to his waking self—but he felt thoroughly loved up, and like he might be a little sick if he came anywhere near a green grape for the rest of the day. "Not just now, love. You took good care of me."

Dream reached up and patted Hob's cheek, then prodded gently at the underside of his chin, which had the same hint of softness it always had unless he was properly starving. "Someone should look after you," Dream told him. "I could..."

"You will when I need it, I'm sure," Hob said, catching Dream's hand to give it a kiss. "But I'm right enough for now, so how about I make us some breakfast? I think we still have those apricots your sibling brought."

"Do I like apricots?" Dream asked, relaxing against Hob's chest. The question seemed more philosophical than like he expected Hob to know.

"One way to find out," Hob said, and flipped back the covers.

---

Dream did like apricots, which were golden and sweet in a pleasantly different way from the grapes. And he liked cheese on toast, and he liked milk, and he liked Hob sitting at the table with him, discussing what they might do today. They had more of the astronaut book, and of course Dream would always have more pictures to draw. They could listen to music, watch movies, go for a walk—there were no end of places to walk to.

Halfway through cleaning the dishes, Dream abruptly realized what he wanted. "Hob," he said, keeping his gaze on the plate he was carefully drying, "I want to do something new. Something different."

"Oh!" Hob said, smiling as he rinsed a knife. "A challenge, is it? Let's see..." Hob stared at the window for a moment. It looked fine and sunny outside, and Dream was considering whether walking somewhere different would feel new enough when Hob said, "We could..."

Dream straightened up alertly, immediately eager for whatever unknown possibility Hob was considering.

"It could be dangerous," Hob said seriously. "If I tell you we have to go, we have to go immediately, and I will throw you over my shoulder and run if I think it's necessary."

Dream wriggled with excitement at the possibility—especially given that he was entirely certain that Hob would keep him safe, no matter what danger threatened.

"And you'll have to wear your new wellies," Hob added, and Dream thrust the dry plate at him and jumped down from the bench to go and find him, Hob's laughter following him through the flat.

---

Barely an hour later, after Hob had checked several things on his phone and set several timers and alarms on it, they descended some narrow stone stairs to reach the muddy edge of the River Thames, exposed by low tide.

"I have a feeling you're going to be better than a metal detector for mudlarking," Hob said with a smile down at him. "Centuries of stuff gets washed up by this river, you never know what you might find."

Dream bounced a bit on his feet, looking this way and that along the rocky little margin between a stone wall and the water, which, even on a sunny late-summer day, radiated cold. Then he turned his back to the morning sun, watching where he placed each step as his shadow fell before him. Hob followed closely—he had made their ribbon into a tether between them, doubled and tied around Hob's waist and threaded through the straps of Dream's overalls.

"Won't keep you from getting washed away," Hob had said sternly, tying it, "but it will give me a chance at catching you if you slip into the water."

Dream gave the water a wary look and then returned his attention to the possibilities of the mud and rocks underfoot. Some instinct made him stop and peer into the space between two rocks; Hob crouched beside him and helped him tug one up, and Dream crowed at the sight of a glint in the widened crack between them. He scrabbled at it, and pulled free a—bracelet? Earring? Some sort of metal hoop with many shining beads dangling from it.

"Oh, that's a right one!" Hob said, and offered a plastic bag for Dream to drop his find into. Dream reached down into the crevice and turned up a small bead that might have once been attached to the hoop, but nothing else.

Beside him, Hob hummed and reached over to a spot nearby, brushed the surface of the mud, and plucked out a small round object—a coin. "Sixpence," Hob said absently, and dropped it into the bag with Dream's things. "Let's see what else we can find."

Dream jumped up and went on, eagerly studying every rock, every stretch of mud. He found several glass beads of different colors, a strange greenish glass bottle with the word POISON worked into the glass, and an intricately carved pipe. Hob found five more coins and a small rock with a natural hole through the middle, which Dream thought was the best thing either of them had found—though Hob was very entertained by the POISON bottle—until Dream dove after a glimmer right at the water's edge and turned up a perfect little turtle, which, when rinsed in the river, proved to be made of amber, its shell inlaid with thin layers of gold.

Dream studied it from every angle. The brown of the amber, from some views, looked just like the brown of Hob's eyes, and Dream had no idea who had carved it, who had decorated it, who had lost it. This was an object which surely had gathered the echoes of many dreams, but here and now it was a blank slate, as if the river had washed all its history from it. As if it could be simple, as if it had begun its existence here by the edge of the river with Dream and Hob.

Dream looked up to ask Hob what he thought of it, and saw that Hob was standing in water that came up entirely over his feet, lapping at the ankles of his wellies while Hob rinsed something in the water that chimed metallically in his hand.

"Hob?"

He turned at once and came to Dream with a smile. "That's lovely, isn't it?"

Dream nodded and held it up. "Do you think it could go on your shelf? With the frog, and the cat?"

A soft expression crossed Hob's face, only to be interrupted by a blaring alarm from his phone.

"Ah, fuck, tide," Hob said, straightening up sharply and shoving whatever was in his hand into a pocket. "Hold on tight, lovie," he said, and then scooped Dream up into his arms. One of Dream's boots nearly came off, having sunk into the mud while he was holding still; he yelped in dismay and angled his foot to hold onto it, and it came away with a great mucky splash.

Hob did not quite throw Dream over his shoulder, but he was running by the time they reached the nearest stair, a different one than they had come down by. This one was iron, and clanged horribly as Hob pounded up it, but it bore them to the safety of the street. Dream still had the turtle clutched in both hands, just as he was held tight in Hob's.

"Yeah," Hob said, after they had stood in silence for a moment, watching the tide climb the stairs after them, step by splashing step. "Yeah, I think it would look great on that shelf, love. You sure you don't want to keep it just for you, take it home with you?"

Dream shook his head, briefly picturing and then shying away from the image of the beautiful turtle he had drawn from the river, a tiny golden speck in the bare whiteness of his private rooms. "It should be with you. And I..."

"You'll see it all the time, because you'll be with me too," Hob said, not quite a question, but a thing said while he was looking away, concentrating on navigating them back to the street.

He made to set Dream down, once they reached the pavement, but Dream shook his head and leaned harder into Hob's chest. "I'll see it all the time," Dream repeated, nearly able to believe it. "Because I'll be with you too."

Hob kissed the top of his head and said, "Course you will, my joy," and then, "Fuck, which way did we walk? Are we in bloody Greenwich?"

---

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

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

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

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

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

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

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

Check out all the gorgeous art by fishfingersandscarves on Tumblr!

Chapter 9

Dream woke up in Hob's bed in the long slanting light of morning. Hob was still in the bed, or possibly back in it; he was peering at his phone, occasionally tapping at it, and the red ribbon was once again tied around his wrist.

The other end was tied around Dream's. He stroked his fingers over the crumpled places where previous knots had been tied, noting how Hob had never pulled it too tight; it was always exactly firm around his wrist without being uncomfortable. He considered pointing out to Hob that he had slept several times now, and was quite sure he wouldn't get lost in the Dreaming—indeed, he wasn't sure he'd visited there at all in the night just past.

But if he told Hob that, Hob would stop tying them together every time Dream slept, and... Dream liked that. He liked waking up to the evidence that Hob still wanted him here—that Hob wanted him to come back, and wanted Dream to be instantly able to find Hob when he did.

Worse, Hob might ask him whether he meant that he didn't want Hob to use the ribbon anymore. Even if he didn't answer, Hob might see the truth on his face.

Dream was... not very good at controlling himself, in this form.

Indeed, he found his face flushing hot just at the thought of Hob's imaginary concern and even more imaginary understanding, and he twisted sharply over to bury his face in the pillow. Naturally, this caught Hob's attention, and he felt Hob's hand come to rest on his back. "Not ready to be awake just yet, love?"

"I'm awake," Dream said into the pillow.

Hob didn't laugh out loud, but Dream could hear the smile in his voice, "Yes, clearly you are."

Dream had to peek then, just to see if his expression was as warm as it sounded. He accidentally met Hob's eyes, which were crinkled at the corners with a look of such fond amusement that Dream had to hide his face again immediately.

"Uh-oh," Hob said, and Dream felt a blanket settle over him. "Where's Dream gone? Has he gone off all by himself again?"

There was a part of Dream that wanted to be irritated with Hob playing such an infantile game with him, but it was drowned out by the part that was already giggling into the pillow and wriggling down the bed as though he might really be hidden from Hob by a blanket Hob had covered him with.

"Let's see, I know he told me how to find him," Hob continued, and the mattress shook a bit under Dream as Hob moved around on the bed. "He's got to be here somewhere, doesn't he? He wouldn't just leave me all alone."

Dream had done that many times, without a second thought, leaving Hob for a hundred years at a time, but there was no hint of real resentment in Hob's voice. There was none of the poison under the sweetness that such a remark from one of his siblings would have carried.

Hob's hand patted gently around all the parts of the pillow where Dream's head wasn't, and Dream squirmed down a little farther.

"Hmmm, not there," Hob said. "I know there's a way, though..."

Dream yanked on the ribbon still tied to his own wrist.

"Oh, yes!" Hob said. "Stupid me, there it is!"

Dream watched from under the blanket as the ribbon began to slither away, as Hob evidently began reeling it in. Again the thought intruded that this was very silly, and childish, and he ought not to put up with it, but the small body he wore was vibrating slightly in anticipation of what would happen when Hob pulled the ribbon all the way in.

Dream knew that he should wait, that he would spoil it if he didn't let Hob finish whatever he was doing. As soon as he thought of that, the fear of spoiling it collided with the eager anticipation, and then he couldn't hold still at all. Dream burst up out of the blanket, landing on his feet on the bed, throwing his arms up and not making a sound.

Hob was sitting on his side of the bed, a great length of red ribbon wrapped in tidy loops from his hand to his elbow, but he immediately looked up and laughed as Dream popped up. He didn't seem to notice that Dream didn't know quite what to say to continue the game.

"There you are!" Hob cried, his whole face lit with his smile as he spread his arms, only a little hampered by the ribbon wrapped around the left one. "Dream! I missed you! How have you been?"

"I missed you!" Dream echoed back before he even considered what would be a coherent answer. He flung himself into Hob's lap, which earned another laugh and a tight hug, and Hob smacking kisses against Dream's hair.

"Well, now here we are together again, so that's all right," Hob said. "What would you like for breakfast, my friend?"

Dream shrugged, snuggling into Hob. He was confident that Hob would make him something he liked, and it would probably involve melted cheese on top of bread.

"Hmm," Hob said. "I was thinking of getting out the blender, making a big smoothie with lots of spinach and kale..."

Dream leaned back and squinted at Hob. He did not particularly look as if he really meant that. Dream was not at all sure he owned a blender and was confident that there had been no spinach or kale in the kitchen the day before.

"Or we could make some more cheese on toast," Hob offered. "Maybe with apple slices?"

"Yes, please," Dream agreed, snuggling back into Hob's shoulder, and he felt Hob's silent laugh shaking him just a little.

"Right you are," Hob agreed, and so they began a new day.

---

Hob was a little scared to try it, but the day had gotten off to a solid start, so once they had all the breakfast things sorted, Hob set out Dream's new sketchbooks and pastels on the coffee table and said, "Why don't you give these a try while I take a shower?"

Dream looked up at him solemnly. "Ten minutes?"

"It might be fifteen," Hob allowed. "You want me to set a timer?"

Dream shook his head, glancing sideways at the paper and pastels. "I can wait. I won't make a fuss again."

"Well, if you feel a fuss coming on, just," Hob gestured, "come right over to the bathroom door and knock on it, right?"

Dream nodded, gaze still fixed on the paper.

Hob decided to believe, at least for the next fifteen minutes, that Dream really wanted him to go away so he could try out his pastels without an audience. "Okay, then. Back in a tick. Or fifteen minutes."

Dream didn't respond at all this time, though he was still just standing there looking at the pastels without moving to touch them. Hob made himself turn away and not look back, letting Dream have a moment to sort himself out.

Hob forced himself to redirect his own thoughts as decisively: he could use a few minutes to do his own sorting out. Most of his time before Dream woke up this morning had gotten taken up with the extremely visceral realization that while Dream could have a 50% cheese-based diet, Hob's own guts were not particularly pleased with that plan. He had skipped the cheese and stuck to whole wheat toast and apple slices this morning, and felt a bit better for it.

As he savored his time alone in the shower, Hob poked around his thoughts to see if there was anything he needed to spend a bit of time on. All of yesterday's dramas seemed to have settled into place overnight, so he was more or less able to accept that there had been some gods about the place and now they were gone and Dream was still here. Hob had had no dreams of undersea exploration to help with that, as far as he recalled, but he had slept well and deeply with Dream sprawled, as well as someone so small could sprawl, over the other side of the bed.

He had been snoring when Hob woke up this morning. The sight and sound of it had been so human and so adorable that Hob had lain there staring. He had been every bit as transfixed as he'd been that time a leviathan had risen out of the sea in sight of his ship.

Hob found himself smiling at his shampoo bottle and shook off that thought, trying once again to check whether he was building up to another bout of needing to go scream into a pillow. He didn't always notice before it was urgent, even in less bewildering circumstances than the last couple of days.

It had taken him a few centuries to learn to introspect at all, and he was still apt to forget all about it if he was distracted. Given anyone other than himself to focus on, he was much happier to be absorbed in them than in himself. His bed had been empty for years before Dream took up his new place in the other half; Hob hadn't wanted to get involved with someone when he knew the time to end this life and begin another was coming.

He ought to get on with that soon—he needed to give notice at the school any day now, and start making all the preparations for moving.

Hob rinsed his hair, mentally reviewing the checklist, and he realized that his body was going full speed ahead toward the next part of the shower routine. He was half-hard from the sheer habit of a wank under the warm water.

It had been a couple of days since he'd had time for this, with Dream around, but Hob had never been one to neglect the call of pleasure for long, even if it was just a quick and solitary orgasm.

Hob got a grip on himself—and snickered a bit at the pun, even in his own head—and got to it. This was one of the loveliest things about the last seventy years or so: all the opportunities to be warm and wet and good-smelling and take some time over himself. He let his thoughts drift as he worked himself up, random images flitting by his mind's eye. That woman by the cheese counter yesterday had had a laugh Hob would like to hear in bed, and there had been that fellow inspecting peaches like he knew exactly what he looked like and wanted someone else to know it too.

Then, just as things were getting properly good, his train of thought slewed over into his most familiar, most safely impossible fantasy: his stranger. That intense gaze going hot on him, those beautiful graceful hands handling him with the same confident tenderness that bloke at Sainsbury's had used on the peaches. And if Hob managed to say just the right thing, please him just the right way, maybe his stranger would even—

Hob came over his own fingers at the thought of his stranger laughing at him in bed. It was only as he turned under the water to rinse away the mess that he realized he hadn't been assigning the laugh of that woman by the cheese counter to his stranger. He'd done that countless times over the years, filled in what he didn't know about his stranger with details from an ordinary stranger—but he hadn't had to do that today.

His stranger was named Dream, and Hob knew what it sounded like when he laughed. At least he knew what the toddler-sized version of him sounded like, and he could more or less guess how it would sound from the full-size version. That was what he'd imagined, just before he came: the version of Dream he'd met all those other times, laughing that rusty hinge laugh in the deep soft register he'd always spoken to Hob before.

Was that weird? That might have been a little bit weird.

Well, he could just pack away the weirdness into the same locked box in his brain where he normally kept his fantasies about his stranger when he wasn't actually wanking to them. All of it was just as impossible now as it had ever been, if not more so.

But this was no time to try to calculate what Dream being with him here like this, as his small self, meant for the odds of him otherwise having the least bit of interest in Hob in the way Hob had always harbored an interest in his stranger. Now was the time to finish washing up and make sure that the Dream currently in his flat wasn't quietly losing his mind just outside the bathroom door.

---

Dream could not quite look directly at the pastels and sketchbooks Hob had laid out, especially while Hob was standing over him with that air of hopeful good cheer. Even when Hob walked away—even when Dream heard the bathroom door close—he still stood just peeking sidelong at the things on the coffee table. He dug his toes into the rug and found his fingers at his lips, his other hand reaching into the pocket of his overalls to check again that he had his book and Matthew's feather.

He clasped both hands together and held on tightly. He did not need to check with anyone. He did not need to soothe himself or have an excuse not to speak. No one was expecting him to do anything in particular; even Hob would not be offended if Dream did not use the pastels.

Hob would be very pleased if he did, though. He had carried Dream's little scribble from the art store so carefully. Dream went to check the sketchbook it had been tucked into when they left the store; there was no sign of it there.

Dream looked around the room, and discovered the drawing propped up on a bookshelf, obscuring a few of the spines. It was at Hob's eye level, as though he wanted to be sure he could look at it often.

Viewed from this distance, with the child's eyes he had given himself, it looked... nearly worthy of being looked at.

He forced himself to look away from it before he could begin to scrutinize. It was a child's coloring. Dream had taken the form of a child, so that was to be expected. Hob clearly thought well enough of it; he still scarcely grasped what Dream was capable of in his true form.

Dream had never created anything for Hob, before that picture. Even the picture had not really been created for Hob, nor had Dream actually bestowed it as a gift. And yet Hob treated it as something worthy of being cherished.

Hob deserved better than that. He deserved to have something beautiful made just for him, something that could express even a little of the way Dream felt being here with him, so safe and cared for, so bathed in happiness.

Dream went to stand before the two trays of pastels, considering colors. He always gravitated to red, but there were five different red or red-adjacent colors between the two sets.

He would just have to experiment.

---

Hob was listening intently as he dried off. He wasn't at the fifteen-minute mark, but he was starting to suspect that Dream had no idea how long fifteen minutes was or how to tell. He waited until he was mostly dry and had a towel around him before he opened the bathroom door and stuck his head out. "Dream? All right out there?"

It felt very much like tempting fate, but he was feeling thoroughly relaxed after having a proper unhurried shower, so when there was no answer at all he didn't panic right away. He just crept out to where he could see into the living room.

Dream was kneeling at the coffee table, working intently on something. "Dream, love?"

Dream made a small, vague noise, obviously too absorbed in what he was doing to pay any attention to Hob.

Hob grinned triumphantly and headed into his bedroom to get dressed at a decidedly leisurely pace. He ducked into the study and picked up a book he'd been halfway through reading before Dream turned up on his doorstep. He doubted he was going to get any further through it today, but he was fairly certain that Dream would prefer Hob to at least appear to be busy doing something else while he worked on his art.

Hob's heart sank a little when he finally stepped out into the lounge and got close enough to see exactly what Dream was doing. He wasn't making a picture or anything that looked like just having fun: he was coloring small precise squares of each of his colors, in what appeared to be a strict color spectrum order. He had just gotten started on the different greens.

He noticed Hob and looked up, and a horribly uncertain expression crossed his face, like he knew this wasn't the way Hob had meant him to color with his pastels. Dream looked like he thought he might be in trouble.

Hob immediately crouched down and slung an arm around him, smiling for all he was worth. "Look at you! Very organized, aren't you? Got to try everything out to see how it looks before you get on with your masterpiece, right? Me, I'd probably just start right in on scribbling, but I guess that would be very..."

Hob paused, giving Dream a sideways look. The anxious expression had evaporated, but he wasn't laughing quite yet.

"Abstract expressionism," Hob finished, and then Dream did give a little giggle in his distressed frog way. Hob grinned and gave him a bit of a side hug. "Anyway, don't let me interrupt, I've been meaning to finish this book for ages now. Let me know if you find you need more colors or different paper, right?"

Dream nodded, now kneeling up straight, chin up, and he reached confidently for the next color green. Hob kissed the top of his head and went to lie on the sofa where he could easily peek around the book at Dream. He also got his phone out to check on the status of his order from the art store; it hadn't shipped yet, so it probably wouldn't be too late to call up and add on to it.

Dream didn't make any requests, though, just occasionally wiped his hand impossibly clean on his overalls and kept on making his neat little squares. Hob actually did read a little of his book, though mostly he just basked in not being alone, in knowing that he could just start talking all about his day or anything else that crossed his mind. He could tell Dream about things that had happened hundreds of years ago, or about his plans for his next yet-to-be-chosen new life, and Dream would understand and keep his secrets safe.

He could probably even ask Dream questions, now that all the big secrets were out in the open. Hopefully all. Hadn't there been something yesterday that Dream had carefully talked around? Apart from how well he knew Lucifer.

Well, set that to one side. Hob could ask Dream about himself, his realm, his raven pal. About any other gods he had better relationships with than he had with Loki—though, considering that Dream had said Hob was his dearest friend on any plane of existence, maybe he'd better not. Might be a sore subject.

Still, they could talk. They could be real friends, and Dream could feel comfortable and safe here, and Hob could go to sleep every night knowing that he was off to visit his friend's kingdom.

Hob was watching Dream deliberate over two shades of purple when there was a knock on the door.

Dream immediately slapped the cover of the sketchbook shut, but he looked to Hob before moving any further, and the big version of him was only the faintest shadow. Hob was pretty sure he only saw it because he was looking for it, having seen him flickering between forms before.

Hob shook his head. "Probably just the groceries, love. Nothing to worry about."

Dream didn't argue with him, but the faint shadow of his other self got a fraction more visible, and the look on his face stayed dubious. He trailed after Hob as he went to the outside door and opened it.

Hob grinned at Trevor, one of the usual rotation of delivery guys, and one of those who would generally humor Hob to the extent of chatting a little. Trevor asked no questions about the cheese-heavy order. Hob was prone to getting very excited about one food or another sometimes, though, so Trevor probably hadn't noticed anything unusual. Hob collected all the carrier bags and wished Trevor a good day; when he shut the door behind him, he looked down to see Dream already dragging a bag over toward the fridge.

Hob smiled fondly and let Dream do what he could while he started putting away the rest.

When everything was sorted, Dream scampered back to his sketchbook and got on with finishing his spectrum of colors. He had laid it out just right, so that his succession of squares exactly took up the whole sheet. Dream stared at it for a while and then began blending the squares into each other, making a perfectly blended gradient that wound down the entire page.

Hob wondered if he should compliment it, but Dream didn't look up or make any move to show Hob what he'd done. After a moment he pushed the sketchbook aside and grabbed the book of black paper and a red pastel.

Hob returned his gaze to his book, settling in for Dream to cycle through this all day, so he missed what happened next. He only heard Dream make a noise much closer to a literal growl than that small body ought to be able to produce. Hob looked over at the sketchbook, and saw that the red square had gone a bit wonky, looking like something Hob would draw instead of Dream's perfectly neat coloring.

It was no wonder; Hob could see Dream's little hand all but spasming around the pastel he still held. A child as small as that couldn't possibly keep having perfect fine motor control for hours on end, no matter who was driving.

Dream was scowling down at that crooked red shape like he was about to set the whole sketchbook on fire, or flip the table, or banish all his art supplies to Literal, Actual Hell. Looking at him now, it was suddenly easy to believe that that was a place Dream had visited more than once, and briefly ruled, if only on a technicality.

Hob made a noise of his own, more of a groan than a growl, since he was merely human himself. He rubbed his eyes, then set his book aside and stretched ostentatiously, letting out a big sigh as he did.

When he concluded the performance by looking over, Dream was watching him with only a hint of wariness in his expression. He did, at least, seem distracted from his own violent frustration.

"I think I've been sitting still too long," Hob announced. "Need to stretch my legs a bit. What do you say to a ramble?"

Dream decisively closed his sketchbook and said, about as stiffly as physically possible for an approximately humanoid child, "Very well."

---

Dream was well aware that Hob was managing him, but he also could not deny that Hob's methods were effective. Given the choice, Dream would rather not repeat the previous day's prolonged loss of control, though he had scarcely any idea of how to go about avoiding it. This form he wore was intensely vulnerable to the vicissitudes of feeling.

As his greater self, when such emotions threatened his control, Dream simply... did not permit himself to feel them. The thwarted emotion expressed itself through the Dreaming or else dissipated, allowing Dream to carry on with his duties.

He had thought they dissipated, anyway. The hurts marked on this small body suggested that at least some of them had lurked within him, biding their time.

And so he permitted Hob to make things easier for him. He allowed himself to be distracted from the frustration he felt with his body's limitations—and the absurdity it laid bare, for what was he thinking, wasting time this way? If he wished to produce something that would be pleasing to Hob, if he wished to be of any use to anyone, he knew how. He had only to be himself. All of himself.

But his greater self could not—would not—spend hours on a ramble through Hob's London neighborhood walking hand in hand with Hob, or borne on his shoulders whenever Hob thought Dream might be tired of walking. His whole self would not be smiled at by passersby—and would be forced to know all their dreams as soon as he looked at them.

Not forced. That was a ridiculous way to think of it. He simply would know, because that was his nature, and so he would be aware of each person he passed as a dreamer—as one of his own responsibilities.

He and Hob passed many people, as they went from one shop to another, and then to a small green, and then to a café which served toasted cheese nearly as good as Hob's along with chocolate milk.

Hob, for inscrutable reasons of his own, had a green salad. He offered Dream a taste, so Dream tried one attractively deep-green leaf from it, and felt his entire small body reject the bitterness of it. Hob laughed, but also supplied him with a napkin to spit it into and a sip of water to clear his mouth before he returned to his own lunch.

There was chocolate cake with strawberries after that, which seemed a very handsome way to apologize for the disgusting leaf business. Dream was happy to forgive Hob entirely after that.

All the time, Dream was surrounded by other people at the nearby tables—to say nothing of the waitress coming and going and flirting far too much with Hob—and knew nothing about any of them. None of them weighed upon him as they normally did; he caught no echoes of the dreams of those who had prepared the food or washed the dishes they ate from. Nothing distracted him from Hob except his lunch, and both were equally wonderful.

Dream had always intentionally blocked out his awareness of most of Hob's dreams, so it was not strange to be cut off from them now. At first he had not wanted to know too early what the outcome of his wager with his sister would be—and then he had not wanted to spoil the surprise of what Hob would tell him every hundred years.

And then Hob was out of his reach.

And then Hob was his friend, and Dream had had the idea that privacy was something friends should grant to one another.

Now here they were, and Hob was talking so easily and brightly that Dream could hardly wish for more insight into him. Anything Dream might want to know, Hob would doubtless tell him sooner or later.

They strolled to another park after lunch, and Dream had barely taken in any of what Hob had talked about in the past few hours, but he felt vastly better than he had before.

Hob had done that for him. Hob had set himself to make Dream feel better, and knew what would help even when Dream himself did not, and now Dream felt better.

Dream searched himself for a way to express it—to name the happiness he felt in this moment, and the gratitude he felt that was not a debt or a subtraction from his gladness, but a vital component of it.

He looked up at Hob, who met his eyes and fell silent, smiling with a gently expectant expression. It was clear that he was looking forward to hearing whatever Dream might say.

Dream might not command all of himself at this moment, but what there was of him was the Prince of Stories, the lord of innumerable realms of fantasy and imagination. Somewhere within him were all the words applicable to all possible emotions and circumstances, and yet he could summon nothing sufficient to speak to Hob right now.

Still, he could find a way to communicate. Dream raised a hand slowly, and just when he saw Hob begin to bend toward him, raising his own hands to meet Dream's, Dream slapped his raised hand against Hob's hip and shouted, "Tag! You're it!"

He ran away at full speed across the green, and in Hob's laughter he heard all the warmth and all the joy he had wanted to express. He looked back and his own laughter broke free as Hob sprinted after him, and trailed in his wake as he ran on and on.

Dream wanted to run forever through the green-dappled sunshine, with Hob always just behind him, but then it was almost equally wonderful to have Hob's hands catch him and swing him up into the air. Dream's laughter crystallized to a shriek of delight, and when Hob pulled him in close to press kisses to his cheeks Dream went limp in his arms in perfect contentment.

That was when he noticed the raven waiting for him on the pathway just ahead.

---

Chapter 10

Dream went rigid in Hob's arms, and Hob's head jerked up in instinctive response. He shifted his grip on Dream to a more secure one as he looked around, and then he saw what Dream was staring at. There was a raven on the path ahead of them—Matthew, Hob thought. He was almost positive it was Matthew and not just a raven.

Dream wouldn't have reacted like that to just any raven, and Hob was actually certain that it wasn't one of Odin's.

After a long time that was probably really only seconds, Dream's rigid freeze dissolved into a wriggle toward freedom. Hob set him down and stayed close beside him as he walked forward.

Matthew kept still, just waiting, and Hob took a moment to look around. No one was paying any particular attention to them, but Hob still moved to block Dream and Matthew from the most obvious lines of sight from the street.

Dream, meanwhile, knelt down facing Matthew. As small as he was, that put the diminutive Lord of the Dreaming and his raven nearly eye-to-eye. "Matthew," Dream said quietly. "What is it? All is well here, but you can see that already."

"All's well in the Dreaming, too," Matthew said. "Uh, pretty much. Just... Lucienne said I should ask you what to do, because your, uh, your sister showed up at the gates. Your youngest sister. She says she wants to see you. And Lucienne thought you probably would have wanted to see her, if she wanted to see you. But you're... away right now."

Dream rocked back slightly where he knelt, but he did not stand. Hob searched for it, but he didn't think he could see that flickering shadow of bigness around him. He didn't know if that was a good sign or a bad one right now.

"Matthew," Hob said. "Could you... give us a minute?"

Matthew hesitated, shaking out his wings in a very recognizable human-like fidget. "Boss?"

"Yes," Dream said slowly. "Please, Matthew. I will confer with Hob."

"You got it," Matthew said, and sprang into the air. Hob watched him as he flew away, taking up a perch in a tree perhaps five yards away.

Hob looked back to Dream, and found he was still kneeling there, watching Matthew just as Hob had done. Hob crouched down and rested a hand lightly on his back. "What are you thinking, my friend? What do you want to do?"

"I... do not know," Dream said slowly, frowning in thought. "I think... I think that I am doing something important right now. But... I do not like to ignore my siblings. They call upon me as rarely as I call upon them."

"Do you think she's in trouble of some kind?" Hob asked. "Do you think she needs your help?"

Dream shrugged, his gaze sliding from Matthew to the pavement in front of him as his frown deepened. "Matthew would have told me if Lucienne perceived that there was any danger. If Delirium is present in the Dreaming, nothing can harm her there, and she is very congruent to my realm, so she will cause no lasting harm by her presence there. But I... I am her elder brother. I would like to be a good one."

Hob let out a breath and sat down all the way on the pavement, cross-legged.

Dream, still frowning and not looking even in Hob's direction, crawled into the lap Hob had made for him, and Hob's arms curled around him just as automatically.

"What do you think would happen if she saw you like this?" Hob tried.

Dream jolted at that, looking up at him with his face gone entirely childlike in surprise, no trace of that frown remaining.

"It's not just a choice between ignoring her or going back to your realm," Hob pointed out gently. "You could tell Matthew to bring her here, couldn't you? If it's just that she wanted to see you, she could come and see you."

Dream's brows drew together again as he thought it through, gnawing briefly at his lower lip. "I... am her elder brother," he repeated. "She is the youngest."

"Yeah," Hob agreed. "I don't know about Endless—" though he was actually pretty certain as he said it that what he was about to say absolutely applied, "but for humans, sometimes being an older or younger sibling, and especially being the oldest or the youngest, that can be something you get stuck in. Something that limits you. I don't know your sister, but maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing for her to see her elder brother being... littler than her, for once. It might give her a chance to be something other than she usually is."

"She is... very changeable, herself," Dream said into Hob's chest, curling up like he wanted to hide himself in Hob's arms. "Perhaps she would not..."

Dream didn't seem to have an end to that sentence, and Hob didn't feel ready to guess at it. "Do you think you could trust her to see you like this?"

"She might... laugh, or say silly things," Dream said slowly. "But I do not think she would hurt me. Or intend to hurt me."

Hob squeezed him a bit. "Would you like me to tell her, if I think she's hurting you and doesn't realize she's done it?"

Dream looked up at him again; he had caught that shift from the question of whether to see her to planning how it should go.

He didn't object.

"You need not," Dream said quietly. "She... I know how she is. And I know that you... you will be with me."

"Course I will," Hob promised easily. "You're my best friend."

---

Dream tried to imagine what was going to happen if Delirium came to see him as he was now, in the Waking world. Much depended on why she had gone looking for him in the Dreaming, and he knew better than to think that he could predict that.

She was one of his favorites among his siblings; she had been the easiest of all of them to love, in her first self, and Dream found her scarcely more difficult in her current form. She was frequently more confusing, however. He always felt on the wrong foot with her, always as if he ought to be doing better at the task of being her elder brother.

He had lost the knack of whimsy around the same time she lost Delight.

Perhaps he could be better at it, as his present self. He had certainly laughed and played more in the last few days than he could remember doing for many eons before that. Perhaps Delirium was a test, or a lesson, in the quest for wisdom that Odin had named this journey of his.

In any case, Hob had put his finger on the only way out of the impossible dilemma. Dream could not bear to ignore Delirium, or have her turned away without even seeing him, and neither did he feel ready to return to being his whole self, or to be in the Dreaming as this small self. That left one option.

"Matthew," Dream called, not raising his voice much but putting that intention in it which would call Matthew to him.

The raven flew down to him in a single smooth glide, and only bobbled the landing a little. Dream chose to ignore that minor infelicity.

"Return to the Dreaming, and ask my sister if she will follow you to me. You may bring her here. Hob and I will await you."

Hob gave him another little squeeze—encouragement or approval—and said nothing.

Matthew shuffled a bit but said, "You got it, boss," and flew off again, vanishing from the Waking world as soon as he was on the wing.

Dream took a deep breath and heaved it out on a sigh, and Hob's grip on him tightened again an instant before Hob stood. "You want to stay out here?" Hob asked. "Not see her at the flat? We're not that far, if we go in a straight line."

Dream shook his head. "This is better. Delirium can have... unpredictable effects on people. It is best that she not be too near to too many of them."

It was scarcely a day since Dream had last brought something dangerous to the New Inn. He would not actively invite another.

The green was relatively empty, and a safe distance from the busier streets and pavements that surrounded it. Hob carried Dream away from the path they had been on, finding a shady spot between two trees, which felt even more sheltered. He sat down again, settling Dream in his lap, and Dream leaned back against Hob's arm and looked into the sky, watching for Matthew's return and Delirium's arrival.

Nothing happened.

It was possible that she would not listen to Matthew, or not want to follow Matthew into the Waking. Perhaps she had come to him in the Dreaming for a specific reason. Perhaps she needed something that was only possible there.

Dream squirmed around to lean against Hob's other arm, and watched a different part of the sky, which was equally empty of ravens and sisters.

He sighed. Anything could be happening right now, in the passage from the Dreaming to the Waking world. That was Delirium's nature. Perhaps he should go back, just to see? He could take Hob with him, and...

On the other hand, perhaps she was not coming at all. He had not told Matthew to come back to him if Delirium said no, had he? Would he think of that? Lucienne would, surely, but then Lucienne must be very busy looking after the Dreaming for him. He really ought to go and see, but that would defeat the purpose of sending Matthew to bring Delirium here.

He thought about asking Hob how long it had been—surely it had been hours—but when he looked up Hob smiled down at him with no sign of concern at all.

A cascade of soap bubbles poured forth from nowhere, popping to reveal a wildly fluttering Matthew and a blur of iridescence that resolved into Delirium. She seemed very tall and impossibly small, both at once or oscillating rapidly between the two, before she abruptly settled into her usual shape, clad in a black leather jacket over a rainbow striped sundress. She had a sandal on her left foot that laced up to her knee, and a purple light-up sneaker on her right. She dropped down to sit facing Hob with her legs crossed just as his were.

Dream thought she was about the size she usually was, which would be quite a lot shorter than Hob but still considerably taller than Dream's current shape. She had one blue eye and one green, and there were swirls shaved into her hair where it was buzzed short as velvet on one side, while the other side was a wild puff of multi-colored curls.

Her dress and jacket were battered, her striped tights torn at the knees—but her knees, under them, were whole and unhurt.

Dream wasn't sure if he would have thought to notice that, before. He wanted to show her his own knees, where they had been bruised and now were healing, but he also wanted to hide behind Hob. He settled for plugging his thumb into his mouth and watching her.

She was watching him, her eyes wide and intent, her head tilting as she took him in from every angle. She was smiling, her teeth crooked and the piercing in her lip flashing in the sun, and she kept smiling wider and wider until looking at it made Dream's own face ache in sympathy. Dream felt Hob jolt a little when some line was crossed, and he saw Delirium's gaze dart away from Dream and settle on his friend behind him.

"Oh," Delirium said, "Hello! You're my brother's friend, aren't you?"

"I am," Hob said at once. "We've met a time or two, haven't we?"

Delirium's smile got smaller and a little sly. "Once or twice or geranium. Or Saturday?"

Dream looked up at Hob who was shaking his head ruefully, still looking at her. "Yeah, sounds about right."

He didn't look down at Dream until Dream tugged on his sleeve, and even then his gaze lingered for a long second on Delirium before he met Dream's eyes. "I've done a lot of interesting drugs," Hob half-explained. "And had a few impressive fevers in my time, too. And things got a bit... rough, in 1673."

"Ohhh, 1673," Delirium agreed, and Hob's gaze went right to her again. "You were mine for just a little while, then, weren't you? My next sister thought she would get you that year, but you were mine, mine, mine."

"Just for a little while," Hob agreed, squeezing Dream again, but his attention was still fixed on Delirium. "But now here we are, and you've come to visit your brother!"

"Yes, my eensy-weensy teeny-weeny big brother!"

Dream jumped when she reached out and tickled him. He had still been watching Hob, but now he glared at Delirium, who took her hands back. "Oops. Not all the way eensy. You're still you."

"I am always myself," Dream said stiffly, though he thought he should ask her to try tickling him again, or if she wanted to play tag, or anything that would not be sitting here and speaking to her just as he would if he were perched on his throne.

The words still came out chilly despite what he wanted, or at least wanted to want. "Why have you come to see me, my sister?"

"Well," Delirium said, dragging the word out into seven or eight wavering syllables, "I asked Desire first, because I was in Desire's house when I thought of it, but they said no. And then I asked Despair and she said no, so then I went to ask you but you weren't there even though I could feel you there, but Lucienne said I could have tea but I had to wait and then all the tea turned into bubbles and those little dinosaurs made of sugar and then they kept melting when they tried to fight each other?"

Dream could feel Hob vibrating slightly all around him, and Hob's mouth pressed against the top of Dream's head—not one of the kisses Hob gave him so freely, but just a way to hide his laughter.

"What," Dream said grimly, "did you ask Desire and Despair? Did you mean to ask something of me?"

"Ohhhhhh," Delirium said, raising her hands in a gesture that clarified nothing. "Um. I think you... probably you're going to say no, too. But maybe if your friend...?"

"Did you come here," Dream interrupted icily, "to speak to Hob Gadling? Or to me?"

"Oh!" Delirium said, her hands fluttering up like butterflies but still mostly hand-shaped and approximately attached at her wrists. "I came to see you! Because your raven—" Delirium looked around and Dream followed her gaze to Matthew, who froze in the act of shaking some piece of litter he'd picked up.

Delirium shook her finger in his direction. "Oh no no no, Mr. Matthew, you shouldn't try to eat that."

Before Dream could stop her, it had turned into a brilliantly-colored frog. Matthew let out a squawk and dropped it but then pounced on it again, and Hob said, "Is that poisonous? Aren't the bright ones usually poisonous?"

"It shall not harm him," Dream said, summoning all he could reach of his power to make it so.

"But it might make for a fun day!" Delirium added, as Matthew spat out the frog and then pounced on it again.

Dream turned his attention squarely back to his sister, confident that no permanent harm would befall Matthew.

"What," he said as firmly as he could, though his heart was racing a little from the exertion of bending reality as sharply as he just had while in this shape, "did you wish to ask me?"

Delirium focused on him again, and her face went through a few strange contortions and then settled on a plaintive seriousness. "I want to go look for our brother who went away," she said. "I miss him. Do you miss him?"

Dream slumped in Hob's hold, and felt a fresh sharp pain over his heart, and knew that there would be a bit more of that bruise, the next time he looked.

How could she ask that question, so simply, as though it had a simple answer?

How could she ask that question, as though the answer could be anything but what it was?

"I..." Dream said slowly, and he found that it was hard to speak at all. He felt something shivery in his limbs, prickling in his eyes, and he clutched at Hob with both hands.

"I've got you," Hob murmured, his arms tightening gently around Dream. "I'm here, love. I've got you. You can say whatever you need to say."

"I can't," Dream blurted, and the word came out as a sob. "I can't, I can't, I can't I can't I—"

Dimly he heard Hob saying something not to him, because now Dream was crying and couldn't even speak and still Hob was paying attention to Delirium. The bruise over his heart hurt worse, at that, and he wailed aloud. But then he felt Hob's grip on him change and tighten further, and Hob stood up, still holding him. Hob started walking, swaying more than his steps required, and Dream hid his face in Hob's chest and let himself weep without restraint.

He didn't know exactly what he was crying for. He didn't know if I can't should be I can't help you search for Destruction or I can't say how I miss him or I can't let myself miss him or I can't bear to speak to you about this or I can't stop myself.

The last was the only one that mattered right now. He couldn't stop crying, couldn't help shrieking his hurts into Hob, but Hob just kept walking, rocking him, holding him tight, and Dream clung on with all his strength. There was not much strength left over from hauling in enough breath to keep crying, to keep his heart beating despite the sharpness of the pain in it, to keep existing in any material form at all when he hurt and was so, so tired of hurting.

When the people who he loved were the ones hurting him.

When even Hob—

Dream turned his head and let loose a scream right at Hob's face, though he could not pry his aching, water-streaming eyes open to see what effect it had. Hob stopped walking but still held him, all the time Dream was shrieking and after he ran out of breath. Then Hob just stood still and swayed, bending his head close to Dream's and singing softly.

It was a lullabye, the words old and time-softened in Hob's mouth so that they meant almost nothing in themselves. Dream felt all the layers of love and loss in the song, far more relevant than the lyrics. Whoever had sung this to Hob, and everyone else he had ever sung it to, they were all gone now. All lost to him. Only the song remained.

The song, and the love, and Hob.

Dream let out a soft keen and squirmed up so that he could wrap his arms around Hob's neck, pressing a few messy kisses of his own against Hob's throat. Hob hadn't meant to hurt him. Hob made it better when Dream was hurting. Tears kept streaming from his eyes, and Hob kept singing, until Dream was too exhausted to do more than hold on and, with some effort, breathe.

---

Hob looked around as Dream got quieter. Delirium was lying on her back near where she had first sat down, bubbles drifting up from her hands as she waved them toward the sky.

So that was... probably all right then.

Matthew was closer, though still far enough away that he and Hob could both pretend he hadn't heard any of that. Hob loosened one hand to wave at him. When Matthew flapped a wing back, Hob crooked a finger.

Dream didn't stir as Hob crouched down, and Hob wasn't sure if he'd cried himself to actual sleep again, or had just gotten worn out enough not to pay any attention to what was happening. Either way, Hob figured he might just get away with not having left the house with any of the sort of emergency supplies that people who were responsible for real small children always had on hand.

"Matthew," Hob said, very quietly but not whispering, because whispering attracted attention. "Could you go to my flat, and get the box of Kleenex off the coffee table, and bring it here?"

It was possible that this was a stupid thing to ask a magical immortal dream raven—who might or might not have eaten a poisonous/hallucinogenic frog while Hob was distracted—to do, but Dream didn't actually pick his head up to say so, and Matthew just looked at him for a long moment. Delirium didn't seem to notice, and the sky didn't crack open and rain down cosmic judgment upon him, so Hob figured he was doing all right.

Then Matthew gave a bobbing raven-ish nod, jumped into the air, and vanished before his wings beat a second time. He was back, dangling the Kleenex box from his talons, just as he reached Hob's head-height. It took a bit of fumbling for Hob to actually retrieve some tissues from the box while Matthew tried to fly at that height while holding them, but they managed it by turning in circles, and on the third rotation, just as Hob managed to bring a handful of tissues to his cheek, Dream picked his head up and blinked swollen, bloodshot eyes with tears still lingering on the long black lashes.

"Here, darling," Hob said. "Do you want to wipe your face a bit?"

Dream unwound one arm from around Hob's neck to give it a try, and even managed to blow his own nose mostly into the tissue without prompting. The rest landed on Hob's shoulder, and Dream frowned and mopped it up but didn't vomit or scream or start crying again, so Hob figured they were coming out ahead.

Hob balled up the tissues and shoved them into a pocket. "Thanks, Matthew. Could you put those back?"

Dream blinked in the raven's direction and gave a little nod, and Matthew vanished again.

Dream let out a gusty sigh and slumped back down against Hob's less-damp shoulder, and Hob rubbed his back and swayed a bit.

"I do miss him," Dream said, very quietly.

An impossible number of—hummingbirds? no, they were multicolored flying goldfish—swarmed all around them and then coalesced into Delirium, standing at Hob's elbow, which she barely came up past. She had a solemn expression on her freckled face, and a few tear-tracks leading down from her different-colored eyes, and bits of grass and a leaf caught in her multi-colored curls.

"I miss him too," Delirium said. "But I think maybe it's not time to look for him after all. Maybe it was really time to look for you?"

Dream took a sharp, shuddery breath at that, but didn't burst into fresh tears. He reached out one small hand, and Delirium pressed a kiss to it that left behind, not a lipstick print, but a crookedly-applied temporary tattoo of a bright orange glittering goldfish with one green eye and one blue. It was already peeling at the edges, and took up almost the entire back of Dream's small hand.

"Thank you," Dream whispered, his voice shaking. "I love it. I love you, my sister."

"Wanna hear a story?" Delirium asked.

Dream nodded against Hob's shoulder, but obviously that was enough.

"So," Delirium said, and began winding one finger into her curling hair. "A while ago I went for a walk..."

Hob sat down when it became obvious that this was going to be a very long and meandering story in what he gathered was Delirium's usual style. After a while Dream squirmed around to sit facing her in Hob's lap, sucking his thumb and otherwise at rest.

Hob let himself laugh out loud at the story as it wound along, because he thought that Delirium was at least reasonably likely to be trying to make Dream laugh. She didn't seem deterred by it, at least, so Hob went on laughing at the funny bits, squeezing or jostling Dream a little each time.

Dream let out a tentative little giggle—which started out sounding like a mostly normal giggle and then somehow turned into a baritone screech right at the end—at the third time the llama showed up. Hob met Delirium's eyes and felt a shared burst of probably entirely misplaced triumph. Dream laughed twice more before she wound to a bewildering and unsatisfying end.

He didn't laugh at Delirium's dramatic conclusion—"And then it was definitely Tuesday!"—but Hob did laugh, and couldn't stop laughing, and eventually that got Dream both laughing and trying enthusiastically to shush him.

The laughter was mostly relief; Hob felt like they'd come through something significant, surviving Delirium's visit and getting Dream to laugh and enjoy his sister on her own terms, beyond that solemn and exhausted little declaration of love.

If Hob was still left with a thousand more questions about this missing brother of theirs who apparently they did talk about sometimes, well, obviously it was Delirium's nature to leave a lot of unanswered and possibly unanswerable questions in her wake.

Delirium popped up to her feet and curtseyed, and seemed to get distracted halfway through the motion.

Hob turned his attention to Dream and said quietly, "Hey, love, it's just about teatime—why don't we ask your sister if she'd like to come back to the flat with us for a cuppa? I bet she'd like cocoa almost as much as—"

Dream had gone still when Hob started talking, but he tore himself away and Hob stopped short, his stomach dropping sharply as Dream's expression turned on a dime from silliness to something cold and furious.

"Ask her yourself if you like her so well," Dream hissed. "I shall find my own way."

"Dream!" Hob yelped, reaching for him and trying to stand at once, stumbling on numb legs—how long had they been sitting there?

By the time he found his feet and looked around, Dream was gone. Not just out of reach, or out of sight, Hob somehow knew, with a surge of something that wanted to be panic, which he ruthlessly suppressed. Dream was gone, and that meant Hob didn't have time to feel anything about that fact.

Hob looked around again and found that Matthew was lying on his back, wings stretched wide, talons flexing in slow motion. He was very obviously in the midst of whatever kind of trip a raven could have after eating a poisonous frog, or whatever else Delirium might have slipped him while Hob wasn't looking.

Hob went over and scooped him up as he called out, "Delirium?"

She was there at his elbow when he looked down, no dramatic swarm of goldfish this time.

"Dream's gone," Hob said briskly. "Can you tell where he went? Matthew, can you?"

"Hmmmmm," Matthew said, his wings fluttering a little in Hob's grasp. "Got a. Leaf? Petal. Fingerprint?"

"Feather," Hob said firmly, though he knew that wouldn't help anyone sober up faster. "He's got one of your feathers. Delirium?"

"Ummmmm," Delirium said, revolving slowly on the spot where she stood. "Where did he say he was going?"

Hob opened his mouth and then closed it sharply. "He... he just said he would find his own way. I mentioned going back to the flat, and he got angry at me all at once. He thought—he said—"

"He doesn't want you to like me better," Delirium said seriously; for a moment her eyes swam with the same mix of blue and green, nearly matching each other. Lines appeared around her eyes and on her forehead, showing the strain of the effort she was making. "He needs someone to love him best. He thinks that means, love him only, because he can't believe anyone would choose him if they had another choice."

Hob winced and opened his mouth to say something, but hadn't figured out what to say before Delirium added, "They don't, usually, so that makes sense."

Hob winced harder. He had asked about bringing Delirium to the flat, when Dream had set that as a boundary—and he had implied he would offer Delirium cocoa, when he had gotten it for Dream.

"Right," Hob said. "But do you know where he's gone? How to find him? I don't think it was just that he ran off, he—"

Delirium tilted her head unnervingly far over, and then said, "No. He's... somewhere else. But when I look for him all I can feel is the him that's still in the Dreaming. It's a lot bigger than the him that isn't. And I don't know Matthew well enough to find his feather. Do you have anything that's just this piece of Dream's? Anything he made, or..."

Hob thought of the sketchbooks—that perfectly blended snaking gradient, that one wonky square. He didn't think it would be right to show either of them to Delirium—and he wouldn't let her touch that drawing Dream had made at the art store, either—but he had a feeling that this was important, and urgent. They needed to find where Dream had gone now. If he hadn't just zapped himself back to his realm and the rest of himself—and Hob didn't think he would do that in a fit of temper, when he had hesitated so deliberately about doing it for his sister—then he could be anywhere, and he was small and upset and had to be mostly exhausted, after the day they'd had.

"Yeah," Hob said. "Yeah, there's stuff at the flat. Can you get us there faster than walking?"

Delirium grabbed his hand, and the world turned immediately sideways, the sky flaring pink as a herd of unicorns galloped around them. Everywhere their hooves touched the earth a frog was cut loose from the earth and flung into the roiling, bubbling candy floss sky, and they screamed the tones of Hob's first digital alarm clock as they went.

He closed his eyes. None of it went away, but he could focus on holding tight to Matthew, who he cradled in one arm, and clinging to Delirium with his other hand.

"Oh!" She said, which made Hob open his eyes on a swirl of colors and spiders and crystalline notes, which abruptly resolved into the landing of the staircase at the outside door to his flat. "I thought," Delirium said, shaking herself a little and then looking up at Hob. Her eyes were two different colors again and her curls were defying even more gravity than before. "Maybe I shouldn't come inside. Dream didn't want me to come inside."

"Right," Hob said. They had something to do, and he needed to not try to make sense of anything he'd just seen. There wasn't time. "Stay here, I'll be right back."

Hob let himself into the flat. He grabbed a towel and laid Matthew down on it in the kitchen sink, just in case the rest of his trip happened to have consequences, and then he ran for the bedroom, and Dream's suitcase.

---

 

Chapter 11

The Waking world was only a step from the Dreaming, and only a step from any of his siblings' realms as well.

The trouble was that Dream was small, and angry, and perhaps about to start crying again, and too tired to cry anymore or run anywhere. He was far too tired to hold a single goal in his mind, and in truth the only thing he really wanted was to be back where he had run away from, in Hob's arms.

He just wanted it to be a version of Hob who wouldn't like Delirium better, and wouldn't let her see Dream's awkward attempts at drawing with his pastels, and wouldn't give her all the hot cocoa that had been supposed to be just for Dream, and wouldn't laugh at her stories and dance with her and kiss her hands and—

Some of those things perhaps hadn't happened yet.

Dream wasn't sure, because Dream wasn't anywhere and Time didn't reach here. Dream had taken that step out of the Waking world, away from Hob, but he had not decided for certain where he was going when he did. To the Dreaming? To his elder sister's realm, to seek sympathy he probably would not find? To Destiny's realm, for the peace and quiet of the inevitable?

To Delirium's realm, to run wild and break things before she could ruin everything that ought to be his?

To Despair?

Any of them might have proven a satisfying choice, but he had not chosen, and so he was lost, adrift in nothingness.

Everything was both light and heavy, dark and also too bright. He was everywhere and nowhere, could go anywhere and was inexorably trapped in nothingness.

He thought of the black hole.

He thought of his mother.

He had not expected to be rescued then.

He did not expect to be rescued now.

This was his own fault entirely, for one thing. For another, he could not gather himself enough to expect anything.

There was a goldfish on his hand. He thought it might be able to lead him somewhere, if he could only find the words to ask it to help, but no words came.

---

Hob rushed back out of the flat with a messenger bag slung over his shoulder and Dream's flame-embellished overalls in hand. Dream had worn them the day before, and had wiped pastel dust from his hands onto them at the art store; even with his simply human eyes Hob could see a faint glittering residue against the black. Dream had almost certainly made the overalls themselves for his small self, which had to connect them to that part of himself, or so Hob hoped, though he would bring out the other contents of the bag if the overalls didn't work.

Delirium was perched on the stair railing halfway down in a way that defied gravity, but Hob didn't have time to wonder about that. He hurried down to her, holding out the overalls and unable to think of a word to say to explain.

"Hmmmm," Delirium said, wandering through about fourteen different notes and more syllables as her fingers spidered over the embroidery of the flames in a way that made Hob's eyes ache and his inner ear protest. Her fingers wandered up to the pocket where Matthew's feather and the little book had been kept, though Dream had carefully deposited both into today's overalls, which had little silver stars instead of flames.

"I think maybe..." Delirium let go of the overalls and they just floated in the air, and Hob realized that he was floating, too, and so was Delirium.

The stairs were gone, and the ground, and the inn, and London. The whole world, in fact, had vanished—or rather they had departed from it. They were in some sort of strange void, silent and empty and featureless, white as a blank page or an impenetrable fog.

And then Hob heard a tiny, snuffling breath, and he flung himself, with everything he had, toward where Dream must be. He touched a soft fluffy shock of hair first, and resisted the urge to grab. He ran his hand down over Dream's cheek—tearless and dry and still, but warm as it should be, at least—and down his throat to his shoulder, and from there he could hook two fingers under an overall strap and haul Dream in against him.

Keeping his grip on Dream with one hand, Hob reached into his messenger bag with the other, and pulled out the whole mass of red ribbon. He didn't even try to find an end, didn't bother about tying little knots to each of their wrists. He just wrapped all the length of it around them both, tangling them messily together in bonds that had held them to each other before and would not break now, when they were needed most.

"I've got you," Hob gasped, when the ribbon was all wound around them and he could use both arms to hold on to Dream. "I've got you, sweetheart. I'm here. I've got you. Let's just go home, you and me. I'll make you a cocoa, and we can watch a movie, what do you think of that?"

Dream twitched a little, and then Hob felt tiny fingernails digging into the skin of his arm. As if the sound was coming from a mile away in a gale he thought he heard Dream say, "With marshmallows?"

"Sure," Hob said, curling his whole body into a ball around Dream, feeling the ribbons pull tight in some places and drift loose around them in others. He had a horrible feeling that there was no air here, and no sun. Any minute his body was going to notice that and realize even he could not survive in a place like this. "Yes, darling, with marshmallows, let's just go home."

There were bound to be marshmallows down in the kitchen, or at the bar, or somewhere. It wouldn't matter if they could just go—

Hob took a sharp breath, and straightened up to find that he had landed on his feet in the kitchen. Dream was in his arms, blinking up at him, and the fifty yards of red ribbon was tangled around both of them. Over by the sink, already dropping one trailing end of the ribbon, stood Delirium, and Dream's other pair of overalls was puddled on the floor at her feet.

She was looking down at Matthew, who didn't seem to have budged since Hob set him down in the sink.

Hob felt tears run from his eyes, sudden and hot, and hugged Dream as tight as he could while slightly hampered by a loop of ribbon cutting painfully into his upper arm. "Thank God, love, thank—thank you, Dream. And you, Delirium."

Dream picked his head up, moving in slow motion, and looked over at his sister. Hob tightened his grip, but Dream just blinked and said, "Thank you, my sister. You have... saved me."

Then he looked up at Hob and just stared at him, and Hob stared back.

Dream's eyes were all black, no hint of blue, no trace of white. There was only darkness there—but not emptiness. Hob could feel how wonderingly Dream was looking at him, the way Hob might gaze up at the stars, just drinking in an awe-inspiring sight. The same way Hob was looking back at Dream right now, alive and in one piece in his arms. "Hob. My friend. You came for me."

"Course I did," Hob whispered, although a whole load of delayed panic was looming over him, and some distant part of his mind was categorizing that void he'd found Dream in as scarier than Odin and Loki and Lucifer and God and all the angels combined. "Here, let me just..."

Hob staggered over to pull out a kitchen chair and more or less collapse into it, and then started trying to figure out how to extricate himself and Dream from the ribbon. He was hampered somewhat by the need he still felt to be holding on tight to Dream with at least one arm at all times, but finally Delirium offered him one of the ends of the ribbon, and Hob started winding.

"No one came before," Dream said, his voice still eerily calm. "I was trapped, and I couldn't make a sound, and no one came."

Hob stopped winding the ribbon, holding what he'd gathered as he wrapped both arms around Dream again and squeezing him tight. "I'm sorry, darling. I didn't know. I wish I had come then too. I always want to find you."

It was no help, but nothing could help whatever had happened however long ago—this might be the answer to why his stranger had missed their usual meeting by thirty-two years, or it might be something that had happened thousands or millions of years ago.

Still. Someone ought to say they were sorry. Someone ought to tell him they bloody cared, and Hob could do that much.

Dream rested in his hold for a moment, and then wiggled a little, and looked over at his sister. She was perched on the kitchen bench now, sticking her finger into a coffee pod and licking the powder off.

"I did know you were stuck," she admitted. "Sort of. I don't always know all the things I know, Dreamy. But I think I did know, because you were gone-gone. And then we had a family dinner and everyone said you were supposed to be where you were and we shouldn't interfere. So I didn't look for you. And Destruction told us not to look for him, too, that was a family dinner. But he's been gone ever so much longer than you were. But not gone-gone really."

Hob tried to keep his expression still through all of that, but he couldn't help looking down at Dream, whose eyes were looking mostly human now, though the blackness at their center still looked deeper and darker than could possibly be right.

Dream looked up at him in the silence that fell after Delirium trailed off, and then whispered loudly, "I like you better than all my siblings put together."

Hob smiled, and felt obliged to point out, "I couldn't have found you on my own today—Delirium did help, this time."

"You made her," Dream said confidently. "If you didn't, she would have forgotten all about me."

"I would never forget you!" Delirium insisted, then tilted her head and added, "But I might have forgotten that there was this little eensy weensy piece of you here. I might have just remembered that most of you is in the Dreaming. You're not usually all in pieces like this."

Hob did not let himself think of the Dream in his arms left alone and forgotten in that void for who-knew-how-long. He squeezed Dream again and said, "Well, that didn't happen. Delirium helped me come and find you, and we brought you back home together. So that's a pretty good day, in the end."

"She still can't have my cocoa," Dream mumbled.

"The cocoa is all yours forever and ever," Hob said firmly. "I won't give any of it to anyone without your express permission. Just don't go running away from me like that again, or I'll have to drink it all myself with a lot of booze poured in, and then where will we be?"

"Nowhere," Dream said, and then giggled to himself like a drowsy chainsaw.

---

For a long while after he was back in the Waking world, in the bright warm familiar space of Hob's flat, in the secure hold of Hob's arms, Dream still felt as though he were partly back in the place between realms, floating in nothingness.

He was awake, and aware, and marveling at having been rescued so improbably, by Hob and by his youngest sister and by the two of them in combination. But he was also still drifting somewhere else, where he could feel nothing at all and expected nothing at all.

It was as though he had come apart, or been frozen. He was thawing in the warmth of summer in London in an upstairs flat; he was being pressed back together by the fundamental force of Hob's hugs. Things happened around him and he knew they were happening and responded appropriately, but he wasn't entirely present—and not in the usual way, where he was such a vast being that he was never entirely present anywhere.

He was small now. There was not very much of him at all. He could not be entirely present while parts of it were still frozen, still lost.

At some point the movie playing in front of him came into sharp focus—a recently-made sequel to the Mary Poppins movie, showing Mary returning unchanged—although played by a new actress—to the Banks family a generation later, to play essentially the same role all over again.

Dream's hands tightened on the mug of cocoa that Hob was helping him to steady. He took a sip of it, because it smelled very good, and it was possible that he was hungry, but he was also beginning to be annoyed again about how little a Mary Poppins story was actually about the title character. He realized that he was really, fully conscious, and the movie didn't matter at all compared to everything else.

Dream looked up at Hob, and found Hob watching him intently.

"You saved me," Dream said. "I was lost and you saved me. You came for me."

"Yeah, love," Hob said, and Dream was dimly aware that they had perhaps already had this conversation more than once. Hob showed no sign of being impatient with it, though, smiling fondly down at Dream and still holding him close and warm and safe.

Dream looked down at his own hands and saw the slightly-peeling goldfish tattoo on the back of the right one, and looked over at his sister, who was sitting, sort of, in the armchair, with her waving feet uppermost and head dangling, an empty pickle jar on the floor beside her along with two emptied coffee pods. Her gaze was intent on the movie.

"Delirium?"

She looked over at once, and she smiled. "There you are, little big brother!"

"Here I am," Dream agreed. "Thanks to you. You came and found me. You brought Hob to find me. I was lost and you saved me. I needed help and I couldn't ask for it, but you came anyway."

Delirium nodded, and flipped onto her feet and came over to perch on the edge of the couch beside him and Hob. "I know we're mostly bad at helping each other. But I love you. And I was glad I could help. And now you've found all the little bits of yourself, so you're ready to get back to being my big brother, aren't you? Even if you're little."

"I still cannot help you find Destruction," Dream said. "Not at this time."

Delirium looked at him for a while, just looking, as if he were something pleasant to gaze upon. Eventually she smiled again, as iridescent tears slipped from her eyes. "I know," she said. "That's okay. You need to do what you need to do."

Dream nodded. "I think it is important," he said slowly. It seemed self-evident to the point of absurdity, but he still felt as tentative as he sounded when he added, "I think... I think I am changing, in a way that matters."

"Well," she said, grinning brightly, the tears flapping away from her cheeks in the form of tiny dragonflies. "I know all about that! Except I can't tell you how to do it, because I don't really remember. But here's something for the journey, anyway!"

She leaned in and kissed all over his face until Dream was giggling helplessly and at the same time trying to push her away and trying to land his own kisses on her face. He succeeded a few times, at least, and when she drew back, he said, "Your hair is even prettier than Death's."

Delirium grinned brightly at him, and she said, "I'll tell her you said so!" and was abruptly gone.

He felt Hob jerk slightly and then Hob said, "Did—did all of that—"

"Yes," Dream said. "That's just the feeling of reality not having to fight against her influence anymore. It feels like waking up or attaining sobriety, but nothing changed in you just now, only her presence departing. Everything you remember happening in the last several hours did in fact happen."

"Huh," Hob said. "Weird. It's getting late, should we have supper? You must be ready for another round of cheese on toast by now, after all that excitement."

Dream, reminded, sipped more of the hot chocolate and shrugged. "After the movie?"

Hob had paused it at some point while Dream and Delirium were talking, he realized.

"Have you actually followed any of it?" Hob asked doubtfully.

"Not... as such," Dream admitted.

"Cheese on toast, then," Hob declared, and Dream sipped a little more hot chocolate and didn't object to being carried into the kitchen.

---

Dinner was a quiet affair. Dream seemed worn out by the day, and munched his way through his cheese on toast with his gaze slowly drifting around the kitchen. Sometimes his attention landed on Hob, and then he would just... look. Not like he expected anything, not with that stoned, shocky wonder of the moments just after they'd returned. It was just like he wanted to rest his eyes on Hob.

Hob had been doing that a lot for the last few days, so he could hardly object. The first time or two he said something, but Dream would just sort of nod and keep watching him, and Hob wasn't going to attempt to have an actual conversation with him like this. He could have filled the silence, but it didn't seem necessary tonight.

Dream eventually finished eating his cheese on toast, and ate a bare handful of raspberries, more like he was humoring Hob than like he wanted them. He did help with the washing up like usual, and tried to hide his little smiles when Hob told him he'd done a good job at it, but his cheeks were pink with happiness.

He held his arms up as soon as the last utensil was dried, and Hob gathered him up immediately into a firm hug, and found Dream was squeezing back the best he could, with his arms around Hob's neck and his legs wrapping around Hob too.

"Hob," Dream said. "I think I would like to sleep now. I am tired."

"You know, my friend," Hob said, "so am I." He scooped up the mass of red ribbon from where he'd left it on the table while they were eating, and took the both of them straight to bed.

---

Hob dreamed of roaming through ominous smeared-pastel landscapes, bruised skies and raw bleeding sunsets, sunrises that lit the clouds like a hectic flush, dark seething seas and long meandering shadows. Everything seemed foreboding, but there was never any actual danger to be seen.

Dream was always in his arms, firmly anchored by the red ribbon that connected their wrists. He was heavy against Hob's chest, leaving his hands and arms and shoulders aching with the strain, but the moment when Hob's grip would fail never quite arrived. He always found he could keep walking and keep holding on, and the colors faded one into another as he went.

He wanted to ask Dream what this place was, but he was never quite sure it was that kind of dream. Dream himself never seemed entirely present; he was only a warm sleeping weight in Hob's arms, infinitely precious but not available for light conversation or tour guiding.

That was all right. Hob didn't need to understand. The strange swirls of color were beautiful even while they were dreadful, and Dream was his dearest friend even while he slept in Hob's arms and weighed down his steps. Hob kept holding on, and kept walking.

---

Dream woke up in Hob's bed, in Hob's arms. Something felt vaguely wrong about the situation, but he couldn't remember what it was. He sat up, flinging the blanket back, and the cool air felt delicious against his skin.

Then it just felt cold, and like he was going to come apart, or like he would get separated from Hob again and get lost.

He had the ribbon, though. The ribbon was very important: it was red, and red was his color, the only color that really mattered. Dream wrapped it around his arm, above where it was tied. Around, and around, and around, and...

---

Hob woke up feeling a bit cold but also curled around something—someone—wonderfully warm.

He opened his eyes and blinked a bit, trying to make sense of what he saw. It was Dream he was curled around, Dream already awake before him and sitting up while Hob curled instinctively around him. Hob had put him to bed in his little soft pajama suit, black with a print of white stars all over, and a moon over his heart, and a few stray comets hidden among the rest.

Now he was all in red. Not red clothes—he'd wrapped the whole fifty yards of red ribbon around himself, and it was about as much of a tangled mess as Hob had made of it while floating in that impossible void outside reality.

Swathed in red satin ribbon, Dream was frowning down at his hands, running his fingers back and forth along the short length of ribbon connecting the whole mess around Dream to Hob's wrist. Hob sat up, and Dream turned his head at the movement, but a bit slowly, as if he was moving underwater; his eyes when they finally met Hob's were still blue, but glassy and not quite focused.

His cheeks were still very pink, and Hob made himself smile and tried not to wince too obviously when he set his hand over Dream's forehead to feel the fever roaring there.

Dream didn't ask what he was doing, just went on looking up at him in the same unquestioning way his eyes had settled on Hob while he was eating last night. Hob probably ought to have noticed this then, but Dream had only seemed tired, and Hob had been pretty well knackered himself.

"Dream," Hob said, and Dream immediately scowled and jerked away, falling over in his tangle of ribbon and pulling Hob after him.

"Don't call me that," Dream said, scowling, his words imperious but with a hint of a plaintive whine that made him sound nearly as young as he looked. "That's not what you call me."

"I'm sorry, my friend—"

"No!"

Hob raised his eyebrows and started trying to figure out how to untangle them. It seemed clear that whatever state he was in, Dream wasn't going to be able to tell Hob what was going on, so Hob would just have to manage until he could. "No? What do I say, then?"

"You say, good morning, love," Dream insisted. "And you call me darling and sweetheart."

Hob found the end of the ribbon nearest his wrist and started unwinding it from around Dream. This was strange and concerning—and probably Delirium's doing, given the timing—but he wasn't going to make it better by making Dream more upset, so he kept his voice warm and steady when he spoke. "Good morning, love. You certainly have gotten yourself into a tangle, haven't you?"

Dream narrowed his eyes, and Hob couldn't help smiling despite the strangeness. "Darling," he added, dropping a kiss on Dream's hot cheek, "Sweetheart." Dream presented both of his hands for kissing, and Hob kissed his palms, folding little fingers down to hold the kisses in, for all the good kisses would do against this impossible fever.

One thing at a time. He had to get Dream out of the ribbon so they could both get out of bed. Dream might not have bodily functions, but Hob did, and he could see that getting two minutes for a private piss might be a matter of some negotiation while Dream was like this.

"Sweetheart darling love," Dream mumbled to himself, admiring his freshly-kissed hands while Hob managed to sit up again and resume unwinding. "My Hob," he added, a little louder, squirming over to prop his head on Hob's calf, entirely unconcerned with the way Hob had to shift him this way and that to get at the loops of ribbon.

"Of course yours," Hob murmured back, giving his nose a little tweak as he wrapped his end of the ribbon around his own arm to keep it out of the way. "Who else's would I be, hm?"

Dream frowned up at him for a moment, glazed eyes tracking nothing in particular, and then he shook his head and repeated, "My Hob. Only mine."

"All yours, my sweet darling love," Hob agreed, folding over to drop another kiss on his hot little forehead, and Dream seemed satisfied with that for now.

The unwinding took a good fifteen minutes, and was interrupted occasionally by Dream holding up a little hand, or tugging on whatever part of Hob's shirt he could reach, so that Hob would give him another kiss and another endearment. Dream repeated each one quietly to himself, and by the end of fifteen minutes Hob could feel his heart in little shattered pieces and absolutely was not allowing himself to wonder how rarely Dream had had such things said to him, that it was all he wanted now when he was feeling so poorly.

When he had Dream all freed of the ribbon—or at least, untangled from it, as it was still anchored to his wrist and to Hob's—he asked, "Should I untie this?"

Dream looked up at him with an impossibly forlorn expression—Hob would swear his eyes had gotten bigger, like a cartoon character's, but he couldn't look away from them to really check. "Are you still mine? All mine?"

Hob sighed. "All yours forever, darling, but I do need two minutes in the bathroom. I'll leave it tied, shall I? I won't be long at all."

Dream heaved a sigh and held up both hands to be kissed. He couldn't seem to summon the energy for more upset than that, which was almost more alarming than the rest of it. Hob hurried through the bare minimum of morning bathroom time, wracking his brain for what he could usefully do for Dream.

It had to be something Delirium had done—she'd said something, just before she vanished, about helping him on his way. And even if not for that great obvious clue, Dream wasn't human; he couldn't possibly get sick the way a real child would. The fever was something metaphysical, not something Hob could treat with any of the medicines that he was vaguely aware existed for this sort of thing nowadays. He certainly couldn't take Dream to a doctor; that was bound to be an even worse idea than letting one get too close a look at himself.

The main thing would just be to look after him through it, then. He would keep Dream as comfortable as possible, and continue calling him pet names and snuggling him until he was back to himself. Or at least the version of himself that was one meter tall and wanted to eat cheese on toast three meals a day.

With that settled in his mind, Hob headed back to the bedroom, where Dream had wrapped a few loops of ribbon around his hand and was absently gnawing on it. On the ribbon bit, at least, not his own skin, but still.

"How about some breakfast, love?" Hob tried, scooping him up and unwinding him again.

"Not hot," Dream said, and then abruptly burst into tears. Hob hadn't even managed to get out of the bedroom, so he sat down on the bed, and cuddled Dream until he stopped crying, which only took about a minute and a half this time.

"What was that about then, sweeting?" Hob asked.

"I don't want hot toast," Dream said into his shoulder, sounding so mournful that Hob was torn between laughing and bursting into tears himself. "But then I thought about cold toast. Don't make me eat cold toast with cold cheese!"

Hob hugged him tighter and absolutely did not laugh or cry. "I would never, darling. I'm sure we can find you something lovely and cold to eat for breakfast. Strawberries and cream, how about that?"

Dream's whole body jolted a little, but he didn't sit up as he would have yesterday, or wriggle out of Hob's grip and run to the kitchen. Today he just nodded against Hob's shoulder and said, still mournfully, "That sounds nice."

Hob stood up again, resuming the trip to the kitchen, and Dream whispered against his shoulder, "Darling, sweeting, love," like a miser counting over his coins or a dragon admiring his hoard. Hob held him tight and did not stop for his own weeping fit.

---

Strawberries and cream, with sugar sprinkled on top, was nice. And it was red, which was good. Dream felt very red himself today.

Hob made his own breakfast of eggs and toast, and ate it, in the time it took Dream to make his thoughtful way through half the bowl of strawberries and cream. He had to stop after each bite to lick grains of sugar from his fingers, or trickles of red juice. And it all tasted very good but he did not seem to be as hungry for anything as he'd been before.

And Hob was so very far away, on the other side of the table.

Dream swiped a cut strawberry through the whipped cream, and held it out to Hob.

Hob smiled that warm, soft smile—not red at all, a very cozy sort of deep dark brown—and then he leaned across the table and wrapped his hand around Dream's. He ate the strawberry and cream right from his fingers before pressing a slightly sticky kiss to Dream's hand. "Thank you for sharing, love."

"Love," Dream echoed to his hand as he took it back and licked it clean again. He could not seem to keep count of how many times Hob said it; he didn't know how many times would be enough. Every bit of the hunger he didn't feel for food, he felt for those little words that Hob gave him so freely, so easily.

Eventually he got near enough to the bottom of the bowl to feel no more interest in eating. Hob took the bowl as soon as Dream pushed it away, ate the last couple of strawberries, and washed it, all before Dream had the thought that he should be drying. Hob hadn't waited for him, hadn't brought him over to the sink or given him a towel. He had done it all without Dream and now Dream couldn't help at all.

He burst into tears again, and at once Hob was there, gathering him up and holding him, rocking him and whispering soft words to him—new ones, among the ones Dream had named to him. "Dear heart," he murmured, and "my joy," even though Dream was crying and not joyful at all, and yet he could feel the amber-brown truth of the word, curling warm around him. He was a joy to Hob—Hob's own joy—even if he was not to anyone else including himself. He was dear to Hob's heart. He was Hob's, as Hob was his.

When he was still again, Hob murmured, "What did I do this time, my dereworthy darling?"

"I dry the dishes," Dream said. "You didn't wait for me, you did all of them!"

"Oh, love, I'm sorry," Hob said, rocking him again. "I didn't think you'd want to today, I thought you were feeling a bit poorly and would rather just rest. But here, there are a few left, do you want to dry those?"

"Poorly?" Dream echoed, remembering that there was something that had felt wrong to him when he woke up today. Maybe red was not quite the word for how he was feeling, or not the only word. "What's poorly?"

"Hmm, do you feel a bit tired even though you've just woken up?" Hob said. "Or like everything is more difficult than usual, or takes longer? Or like you're just perishing hot and it makes you not feel like doing anything at all? Or like your body hurts here or there or maybe all over, even when there's no reason for it?"

Dream did feel all those things, and something more, something bigger than any of them. Something very wrong that he could not name, and not being able to name it was part of it.

But Hob was here. Hob had come and found him when he was lost, and untangled him when he was all tangled up, and made him strawberries and cream when he couldn't eat toast. Whatever was wrong, Hob could fix it.

"I feel poorly," Dream declared, and found he was crying a bit again. "Hob, I feel poorly."

"I know, love," Hob said, rocking him and kissing his hair. "Happens to the best of us sometimes. That's all right, I've got you. Do you want to dry the last bowl for me, or shall we leave the dishes and go watch a movie?"

"Not Mary Poppins," Dream said firmly. "A different one."

"I believe I know just the thing," Hob said, and carried him to the sofa.

---

 

Chapter 12

Hob laid himself down on the sofa, settling Dream on his chest where he could fall asleep or cry at will, since those seemed likely to be his two main activities today. Dream nestled in and turned his face expectantly toward the television; this time Hob didn't faff about, and quickly pulled up The Princess Bride.

He did pick his head up and give Hob a considering look over the establishing shots of the kid lying in bed, too ill to play, though it wasn't the withering glare it might have been any other day.

"Wait for it, wait for it," Hob whispered, smiling. "It's going somewhere."

Hob tilted his head to watch Dream's face when the grandfather arrived with a book, so he saw his eyes go round and his lips part in wonder.

"It's a story about a story?" Dream whispered.

Hob wrapped his arms tight around him and hugged him. "I knew you'd like it."

Another time Dream might have grumped that he didn't like it yet, but today he wound his fingers into Hob's t-shirt and went on watching with those wide, wondering eyes. It wasn't the same rapt attention he had given Mary Poppins—he faded out from time to time—but he was clearly enjoying it, right up until Westley was strapped down to a table and tortured, and then he let out a scream along with Westley and hid his face in Hob's chest.

Hob winced and paused the movie. "Sorry, love. He's going to be all right, and—"

"It felt like that," Dream sobbed into his chest. "It didn't look like that but it felt like that! But I couldn't say anything! I couldn't let them know!"

Hob sat up sharply, hugging Dream all the while, as a cold horror ran down his spine. Dream had said it yesterday—No one came before. I was trapped, and I couldn't make a sound, and no one came.

Hob hadn't let himself think too hard about what that meant, especially the part where Delirium had said she knew, that all Dream's siblings knew, and that they had decided whatever was happening to Dream was as it should be, and none of them would help him. While he was being tortured. While he couldn't make a sound.

"I'm sorry, darling," Hob whispered. "I'm so sorry. We can stop—"

"Does he get out? Will he get out?" Dream demanded. "Will he find her?"

"Yes, I promise," Hob pressed kisses to Dream's hair between the words. "Yes, this is a story about true love, so even when it seems like he won't get out, he will, and he will find her, and they will live happily ever after. I promise you. I wouldn't show you a movie where it all went wrong."

"It's not her fault," Dream sniffled. "She doesn't know. She would do something if she knew, but she doesn't know."

"She would fight all of them herself if she knew what they were doing," Hob promised. "She would never stop looking for him. She loves him just as much as he loves her, and she would never forget that."

"I want to see that part," Dream decided, squirming in Hob's grip so that he could see the television again. "Let's watch it some more."

Dream let out little teakettle keening sounds through the rest of the scene with Westley on the table, but Hob didn't try to shush him, just kept on holding him close. He could make all the sounds he wanted, here and now.

Hob, as always, was caught by surprise by I want my father back, you son of a bitch, and shed a few tears of his own for that. He was almost immediately distracted by Dream crawling up, planting his knees in Hob's gut, and setting his hands—even those felt hot—on Hob's cheeks. "Are you all right, my Hob? Are you poorly?"

Hob couldn't help smiling, blinking away those tears. He reached up to ruffle Dream's hair. "No, love. Just always makes me think of all the people I'd like to have back if I could."

Dream nodded solemnly and then folded down a bit clumsily to mash kisses against Hob's wet cheeks. "It's all right," Dream said seriously. "I'm here. You have me."

In an entirely different mood, Hob might have pointed out that there were a lot of other people Hob missed, but then in another mood Dream wouldn't have been awkwardly but very earnestly trying to console him. "That's right, dear heart, I've got you back. And you've got me back. So we're doing all right today, aren't we?"

"All right," Dream agreed, flopped back down on Hob's chest, and was asleep before Hob had managed to draw a full breath.

Hob lay still and watched the rest of the movie play, not even a little bit tempted to move.

---

Dream woke up and saw that the television had returned to the screen where Hob had selected The Princess Bride. He had missed the end of the movie.

Hob was lying still under him, resting one hand on Dream's back.

Dream tried to swallow, and couldn't quite. "Hob," he said, and his voice croaked. "My mouth feels poorly."

There was a little pause, and then Hob firmed his grip around Dream and got up off the couch, saying as he did, "Well, let's see what we can do about that."

Hob fixed him a cup of something to drink that tasted a bit orange and a bit bubbly-sharp but mostly just sweet, and Dream gulped it down eagerly. Hob kissed his head and refilled the cup, but this time Dream only needed another sip of the sweetness; his mouth and throat felt well enough again, though the rest of him was still poorly.

He nestled into Hob's shoulder again and said, "I missed the ending."

"We can go back and watch it from where you left off," Hob said easily, heading back toward the sofa with the cup in his hand. "Or just start over."

"Start over," Dream decided. He liked this movie. He didn't want to rush to be through with it.

---

They ended up watching The Princess Bride six times before the day was done. Hob didn't mind particularly; it made a comforting backdrop to the little trials and travails. Sometime during the second run, Dream began to shiver, and Hob pulled down the blanket from the back of the sofa to wrap him in. The third run was interrupted for a lunch of ice cream and, when that didn't help Dream's overheating enough to stop him lying on the floor whimpering, a tepid bath that Dream fell asleep in.

When they cycled around to another bath after three more viewings, the sun was nearly down, and Dream was willing to put on pajamas once Hob toweled him off and anointed his bruises. The ones on his shoulders were showing signs of improvement, the ones on his knees nearly gone, but the dark mess of bruising over his heart looked like it was only getting worse. Hob's own heart ached as he murmured comfort and applied arnica as if that could do any good.

But he had to believe that the act, if not the ingredients, would help. How else could Dream come to know he was loved but by Hob doing all the loving things he could?

Once he was in his pajamas—this suit was all black silk with white piping, and white buttons up the front—and the ribbon was tied around his wrist again, Hob laid him down on his usual side of the bed. Dream starfished on the mattress, and Hob didn't even try to cover him with a blanket before he headed back to the bathroom to see to his own needs. He had never changed out of last night's pajamas, but once he brushed his teeth and splashed some water on his face, he realized how clammy and uncomfortable they felt. He changed into fresh clothes of his own, untying and then retying the ribbon as necessary, before he lay down across from Dream.

It was only when he settled his head on the pillow that Hob realized Dream wasn't already asleep; his forehead was scrunched into a tiny frown, his eyes barely open, just reflecting the smallest gleam of light.

"What feels worst, love?" Hob murmured, reaching across to touch his cheek and then his forehead. He felt no hotter than he had coming out of the bath, at least.

"You went away," Dream murmured.

The red ribbon had been tied between them all day, but clearly that wasn't enough reassurance now; even when he was hot enough that he needed to be submerged in water, Dream hadn't liked to let Hob out of his sight, and he had only slept while Hob was holding him.

"Come here, then," Hob said, scooting a bit closer so he could reel Dream in by his little reaching hands. Hob curled over on his side and tucked Dream in close. Dream nuzzled in against his chest, took one deep breath, and went limp.

Hob lay there for a while trying to remember the last time he'd been ill himself. He hadn't caught anything going around in a few hundred years; even the dodgiest street food or most suspect leftovers never caused him a twinge these days.

Back in his soldiering days he'd had a few rounds of assorted camp dysenteries, but even then he'd been impervious to most of the common coughs and colds and such. The last time he remembered being really ill was the plague the first time around, but... he didn't ever think about that, and he didn't want to start now.

Before that, though, he was sure he had been a time or two, when he was small. He supposed if he had been ill enough for it to be notable, it had also been bad enough that he wouldn't ever have remembered much about it. He rarely attempted to remember any part of his own childhood; Robyn's early years had stirred up what memories he still had two hundred and some years on, whether Hob willed or nilled it.

Nowadays all he could muster up was the memory of remembering back then.

Hob could really only call one thing to mind that didn't feel like just a story he'd passed down from himself to himself over the centuries. He had just one scrap of sense-memory from his childhood, one ordinary moment out of thousands.

His mother had been sitting near the fire, and Hob had curled up on the floor beside her feet, out of the way of her spinning and on the other side of her from the hearth so she wouldn't tug him away and scold him. He didn't, in the memory, feel particularly small or young, but then he would have been as big and as old as he'd ever been at the time. He did remember how neatly he fit in that spot, how his cheek rested against her thigh, and he could smell her, the kind of familiar body-smell that most people had spent the past hundred years frantically scrubbing off and covering up.

It was the one part of the memory that felt truly real, when he could remember it clear enough that the scent of her came back to him, warm and rich and human and alive.

She hadn't had time to be cuddling him or carrying him about as he did Dream, but she would drop her left hand to his head now and then, when she could pause in her spinning for a moment. And she had told him stories, he was almost certain. Not anything particularly improving or educational—no Bible stories or fables with morals. She had told him stories about being brave and adventurous. She had taught him to be curious, to wake up every day wondering who and what he might discover.

He couldn't remember any particular story she had told him, only the fact that she had; he couldn't remember if the moment he remembered was a specific moment or the accumulation of many, whether she had spoken to him as she spun or kept silent.

But he could remember how she smelled, and how it felt to tuck himself safely in against her body, and he could remember her hand sometimes resting for a moment on the top of his head.

Hob wasn't aware of the slip from memory into dreaming, but at some point he looked across his mother's lap and saw Dream, small enough to fit on her other side. But that meant that he was much too close to the fire, practically in the flames. Even before Dream made a sound of pain Hob was lunging toward him, out of that dream and into the waking world, where Dream was writhing across the bed, whimpering with his eyes shut tight.

"Oh, love," Hob sighed, trying to scoop him up, which only turned the whimpers into outright cries. Dream struggled against him, and Hob could not bear the thought of raising a fresh bruise on that petal-soft skin. He gave up and let Dream writhe away, and then ran to the bathroom, wetting down a few flannels to bring back to the bed.

Dream quieted a little as Hob swabbed him off, and he realized that he was saying, almost chanting, "I'm here, darling, I'm here, I won't leave you."

By the time the flannels were all nearly as warm as Dream himself, Dream had quieted enough that he only whimpered as Hob gathered him up and took them into the bathroom again. Dream startled awake—or nearer to it—when Hob turned the light on, and curled into Hob with a whimper.

"I'm here, lovie, I've got you, I won't let go," Hob murmured, filling the tub again. He rearranged them so that Dream's feet caught a bit of the pouring water on its way down, for whatever cooling effect that would have. "You'll feel better soon, sweeting, you'll—"

He couldn't say what it was: the memory of his own mother so near the surface, or just some trick of Dream's weight on his lap, or the accumulation of a day of helplessness over a feverish child, but for a moment everything around him blurred.

Hob kept talking, because for a moment it was 1586, and he was holding Robyn, waiting out the same ague that Eleanor was taken with. Hob had only been able to try to keep him cool—even the physician had agreed that such a small child could not be bled to fight the fever. Someone had asked him about sending for a priest to shrive the boy, and Hob had refused.

There had only been one help he wanted to call upon: he had wanted to find some way to reach his friend, three years early, and beg his help to save Robyn's life. A priest, after all, would say Robyn had gone on to a better world if he should die that night in Hob's arms—he had been christened already, and too young for sin. But Hob would take no comfort from that. Hob had wanted only this life for Robyn, to keep him in the world. It would have been monstrous to lose him so young.

Hob was dimly aware that that night had passed. Robyn's fever had broken, and Robyn had made a full and rambunctious recovery while Eleanor lingered abed, not in danger but needing her rest, for more than a week afterward. Hob had spent much of every day chasing after his son, coming to love him more and more with every hour and letting himself forget what a fragile creature he dared to love.

Here he was again, holding someone small and feverish and fragile in his arms, and he did not know if he had done everything he could to help. He had been certain, in the light of day, that nothing could really harm Dream, that this was a gift in the guise of a curse, and would pass in time.

Now, deep in the night, he could only wonder: what if he was wrong? What if Dream didn't need consolation—what if he needed help?

Hob lowered him into the half-full bath, keeping an arm curled around him so that Dream could relax into the water without his head going under or water getting into his ears, which he didn't like even when he was otherwise perfectly well. Hob let his own head hang down, watching the water level continue to slowly rise, and tried to think of what he possibly could do if Dream needed help.

Hob had stayed well away from all things magical for a long time now. He was aware of a few other fellow immortals, but didn't know how to contact them, and had no idea if they had powers or connections that he'd dare to call upon for Dream's sake, when Dream was so much more vulnerable than he had been even a couple of days ago when facing Odin.

Dream had the feather that let Matthew find him, but so far as Hob knew even Dream couldn't use the feather to call Matthew. He had sent Matthew on his mission to Odin from inside the Dreaming, while he slept that first night in Hob's bed. Dream clearly wasn't able to sleep well enough to reach the Dreaming, and even within his realm he might feel the effects of whatever Delirium had done to him. Dream as he had been today seemed unlikely to know how to fix this, even if he were in a place where he could.

There was one other thing Dream had, which he kept always close to him like the feather. There was the book of Dream's family, which was clearly more than just a book. Those pages for Night and Time had ensnared Hob somehow, and each of the pages for his siblings probably also held more than just those images. He'd noticed at the time how hurriedly Dream had turned pages and then set the book aside after Hob tried to touch one of the pictures.

He didn't want to think of what would have happened if he touched the picture of Night, or of Time.

But if he touched the picture of Delirium, would he be able to ask her what was happening to Dream and when it would be over?

On the other hand, if he touched the picture of Delirium, would Hob himself be affected? Were all the pages traps for unwary humans?

Hob knelt there by the tub, tipping handfuls of water over the crown of Dream's head without letting any run into his eyes, watching his little grimaces of discomfort slowly relax into something like sleep.

He needed to do something.

There was only one way he could even possibly attempt to do anything.

When Dream dozed off again, Hob shut off the water and shoved a few towels in around Dream to keep him propped up, and then ran back to the bedroom.

He had helped Dream change into his pajamas the night before the fever became obvious, and at that point Dream had taken feather and book from his overall pocket and tucked them into a pocket inside his suitcase. They had stayed there all day today, with Dream still in his pajamas and apparently unconcerned with them.

Now Hob opened the suitcase and reached cautiously into that pocket. He let out a shaky breath in relief when his fingers brushed feather and board book, and he carefully withdrew the book and then hurried back to the bathroom.

Dream was lying still in the bath, so still that Hob dropped the book and laid one hand on his chest, the other on his cheek. He told himself he was being ridiculous—Dream was still visibly flushed pink and also wasn't human—but he breathed under Hob's hand. His cheek was warm, and after a couple of breaths he pressed into Hob's palm.

"All right," Hob said, a little too loud in the night-quiet. "All right. I..."

He looked around and saw the book on the floor, fallen open to the first pages Dream had shown him: his elder siblings, Destiny and Death.

Hob's gaze went to Death first—she had brought him to Hob, and he was almost certain that she must be the reason for his own immortality.

But sister or not, benefactor or not, he could not call Death closer to a sick child. He could not.

Destiny... Destiny knew everything, Dream had said. Destiny, surely, would know why this was happening, and what should be done. He had to know what was going to happen; that was the whole point of him.

Hob didn't let himself wonder whether this would be useless. If it was, he would know soon enough. He took his hand off of Dream's chest, wiped it dry on his shirt, and pressed his fingers to the gleaming book in the picture of Destiny.

"Destiny? I suppose you know who I am and what I'm doing, and that I'm here with your little brother and he's—poorly—" Hob's voice cracked on the word, remembering Dream saying it and bursting into tears as if he'd never felt anything like it before.

There was a rustle behind him, an unmistakable presence, and Hob jerked his hand away from the book and twisted to look up, keeping his hand still on Dream's cheek.

A figure shrouded in gray filled the bathroom doorway, a book held in his arm and connected to his wrist with a chain. His face was invisible even with Hob looking up from his knees.

"Is this how he's supposed to be?" Hob asked, when the silence had stretched unbearably. "Is this what I'm supposed to be doing?"

"This is all as it appears in my book," Destiny said, which seemed like a yes. "You are correct to surmise that Delirium intended to encourage Dream further along his chosen path. She was... being helpful, as best she could."

"Is he going to get better?" Hob demanded, dimly aware that he probably shouldn't be addressing the actual personification of actual Destiny in quite this way, but also miles and centuries past caring.

"He will," Destiny intoned.

Hob nodded, and couldn't figure out what to say other than Thanks, you can go now, which he was very sure was not the right thing to say at all.

He looked down at Dream again, and found Dream looking back at him.

"Hob?" Dream croaked.

"Hey, love," Hob said. "How are you feeling?"

Dream wrinkled his nose. "Wet. And poorly."

"Yeah," Hob said. "It's been that kind of day, hasn't it? Can you sit up, do you think?"

Dream held up his arms, and Hob wasn't going to get out of this without being drenched no matter what he did, so he gathered Dream up to perch him on the edge of the tub. He twisted, and—

There was a towel. One of his own towels, from his hall closet, being held out to him by Destiny, who had evidently known Hob would need that.

"Ta," Hob muttered, and turned back to dry Dream off—but Dream had spotted his brother, and was staring up at him with those glassy eyes.

He was frowning.

Hob wrapped the towel around him, but that didn't distract him a whit.

"You," Dream said, in his tiny croaky wavering sick kid voice, "are not a very good brother."

Destiny gave a stiff, shallow bow. "I was not one, when I came into existence. I must fit all acts of brotherhood into the interstices of my function, when and as I may. It is apparent to me that my efforts are rarely satisfactory, but I am only and exactly what I am."

Dream blinked up at him for a long moment while Hob rubbed him dry, wondering whether there was any point to getting him into another clean set of clothes. Destiny hadn't said when Dream would get better, and that pink flush on his cheeks was already starting to intensify, though that might have been to do with the way he was glaring at his brother.

His expression brightened very suddenly. "You did save me, though. I tried to talk to Mother and she—but you brought me out. There was no way out, but you summoned me to you."

"I did what I had to do," Destiny said, with the cadence of a proverb, or a prayer. "And you will recall that—"

"But you helped me," Dream insisted, starting to frown again. "Even if it was because you had to because of your book, that's you. You helped me. No one else could, but you did."

There was a long, long pause, and then Destiny sat down in the doorway, legs crossed and book in his lap. "So I did. And I was glad of it, my brother."

Dream leaned into Hob for a moment, and then, quick as a cat, he launched himself out of Hob's arms and into Destiny's lap, wet pajamas and trailing wet ribbon and all. He giggled in rusty-edged triumph and flung his arms around Destiny's shrouded neck.

Destiny folded in the arm not holding the book and patted Dream's back, saying, "I sat down so that you could do that. This, too, was written."

"But you still did it!" Dream said, sing-song with happiness. He released Destiny's neck and sank down into his lap, looking up at him with those wide, wide eyes. "Will you stay for a little while?"

"For so long as I may," Destiny said, and raised a hand to rest it on Dream's forehead.

---

Destiny's hand on his forehead felt cool, and his lap was nice and comfortable. It was cooler than sitting in Hob's lap, which probably wouldn't be nice most of the time, but Dream was feeling poorly and perishing hot. Destiny felt just right, as if it were written that he should be.

Dream had never sat like this with Destiny before, he was certain. Destiny would probably say that was because it was never in the book before, but it was never in the book before because Dream had never been just like this before, and Destiny... Destiny was letting him be how he was now, even though it was different to how he was before.

And Destiny had saved him once, just like Hob and Delirium had saved him. Just like Alianora had saved him, once, when Desire sent her to him. Just like Desire...

He didn't want to think about Desire.

His thoughts wouldn't hold still, and even Destiny's hand on his head didn't feel so nice and cool anymore. Dream kicked his feet sharply against the bathroom rug, squirming a little.

Destiny said, "Your fever is rising again, little brother. You will feel better in the water."

Dream twisted away enough to look up at him, where he could see as much of Destiny's face as he ever could. "Are you leaving? Like Mary Poppins?"

Destiny didn't seem to know exactly what Dream meant, and Dream couldn't think of the words to explain.

From behind Dream, Hob said, as his hand settled on Dream's back, holding him up, "He means, will you be all alone when you go? Will you be lonely there?"

Destiny's mouth curled up just the tiniest bit, but Dream was close enough to see his brother smile. "I am never alone in my garden, little brother. And I will not be lonely when I go. But you may always visit me there, if you are concerned."

"Always?" Dream said, with vague thoughts of showing up just to bother his brother, who was always perfectly in order. He had a sense of why he wouldn't, didn't, hadn't, but it slipped away from him in the pleasure of seeing Destiny's smile curl up by another tiny fraction.

"Always," Destiny agreed. "Though Lord of What Is Not that you are, you have never much liked spending time in the Garden of What Is and Shall and Must Be."

"Hmmm," Dream said, because he knew his brother was right—his brother was always right—but he could not quite hold everything Destiny said and meant in his mind. "But I'm allowed."

"You are invited and welcome," Destiny promised, and Destiny always meant what he said. "But for now you are poorly, and you should have another bath."

Dream sighed, because Destiny was right again, and thinking hard about his brother not being Mary Poppins was far too much effort. He was tired and hot and didn't want to do anything; he leaned himself back against Hob's supporting hand, and Hob laughed a little and scooped him up and into the bath.

By the time Dream looked back toward the door to say goodbye, Destiny was already gone.

Hob, though, Hob was right there kneeling by the tub and looking down at him with a little worried line on his forehead.

"It's okay, Hob," Dream told him. "I'm still here with you."

"Well, thank you very much for that, my joy," Hob said, smiling and making different lines on his face that Dream liked much better. Dream looked and looked at them until he couldn't keep his eyes open anymore, and then he didn't.

---

 

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


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

Chapter 1

Rain had been falling in the Dreaming for several days when the boy wandered in. It was not the first time he had done so, but it was the first time Dream truly took notice of him; he was so small and bright and cheerful, the only creature in all the Dreaming who was untroubled by the storm.

He was a living child, not just visiting through his own dreams, but actually walking in the Dreaming—as he had been able to do since he had been able to walk, because the Dreaming had been his first home, where he was conceived. He had grown within the Dreaming as much as within his mother's womb, and the Dreaming would always welcome him back. Even the rain did not fall too heavily upon him.

The Dreaming knew him, and knew what he was for—and Dream knew it too. Here and now, with the rain pouring down, he could feel the line that led from him to the child. From his present misery to the child coming into his greatest potential.

Dream tried not to know it, but what good was there in the not-knowing? Was he not already as wretched as he could be? What would it aid him, not to know that his time was coming to an end, that his death was before him, and that the little boy now being lifted gently over puddles by Eve, hovered over by Matthew, doted upon by Cain and Abel as they dried him off and settled him by the fire...

That little boy would be the next Dream of the Endless, when this one had run his course.

The Dreaming doted upon the boy. The dreamfolk did not know, consciously, what they knew about him, and yet they knew he was theirs. They knew he was precious to the Dreaming beyond all other treasures. He was its future.

He would be better at it than the current Dream. His time as Dream of the Endless would be kinder, warmer, sweeter. He would understand his dreamers better, for he had begun as the most potent kind of dreamer: a mortal child. He would know how to love his subjects, because he had been loved—by his mother and father, first, and by Rose and Jed Walker, and now by the very dreamfolk who would be his subjects one day.

Dream, for all his powers, all his might, could not demand that anyone love him. His latest failure as a lover only made that more apparent. Thessaly did not love him and in truth he was not sure he had loved her, so much as he had loved the idea of her. Of being loved—of being beloved of anyone. That was the loss he could not stop mourning now.

He did not deserve it, could not earn it, and yet he wanted it more than he wanted anything. He could never have what was given so easily by everyone who met the child.

He could never have been what the child would be, because he had never been what the child was now. Even when he had been young as an Endless, smaller and less powerful than he was now, he had been Dream of the Endless. He had had his duties, his position. He had never been rocked in anyone's arms. From the time he met Cain and Abel, he had been their lord and protector, not a child to whom they told stories and offered sweets.

Dream was, he realized slowly, envious. Furiously so. The rain lashed harder through the Dreaming, pelted against the windows of the House of Mystery, and inside Dream's own self rage boiled up.

It. Was not. Fair.

Nothing was fair, and Dream knew that very well, and yet—

He wanted it to be fair. He wanted what he had never had, wanted to be what he had never been. He wanted that, and only that, with such wild, furious passion that he felt himself begin to crack apart.

There was a moment when he could have taken it back, could have resigned himself to the inevitable, could have stayed locked in his impotent grief playing out the same old pattern one more—one last—time.

But he did not take it back. He knew what he wanted, and he knew which part of what he wanted was something he could create for himself.

And so, he changed.

---

When he was aware again, his awareness was different—so different that he could not fully remember what it had been like before.

He was... small. He looked down at his small hands and small bare feet, and at the clothing he wore. Soft black overalls, embellished with silvery stars on the chest, and a black-and-white striped shirt.

The overalls had a pocket in the chest. Dream reached into it and pulled out the book that had to be there. He held it in his hands for a moment, feeling unsure about whether to use it.

They might be angry with him. They might not come. They hadn't come sometimes before, and now... Dream had done this. Dream even knew how he could undo it.

At that thought, he looked around him, at the great black mantle full of stars which he had shed. He tucked his book away and got two handfuls of the mantle, and hauled it across the room to where he could hide it under the bed.

There. Now it would not be so obvious what he needed to do to fix it, and so perhaps they would not make him.

He did not want to fix this. He wanted to stay as he'd made himself.

But he didn't want to be alone. He couldn't bear to be alone. He didn't know what they would think, what they would say, when they saw him like this. They would know even better than he did that he shouldn't be like this.

But he was very small, and he wanted someone bigger than him, someone who would know what to do next. They were the ones who always knew. He drew his book out again and opened it to the correct spot, and he looked at the pictures of his eldest brother and sister.

"I touch your sigil," he whispered, though even that did not disguise the way even his voice had become so much smaller—perhaps a voice no one would listen to, perhaps a voice no one could even hear. "I say your name. Destiny. Death. I call you."

Destiny appeared at once, and Dream clapped his own book shut and hid it back in his pocket as he looked up, and up, and up at his brother, who looked down at him.

Even from this angle, Dream couldn't see the part of his face that the hood shadowed.

"I knew that you would call upon me, of course," Destiny said. "I know what you have done, and where it will lead. It is all written."

Dream looked up at him and wanted to ask Destiny to tell him it would be all right, then. Or tell him that it wouldn't be all right, so he'd know. Or—anything.

Destiny simply continued looking down at him.

Dream blinked against the feeling of tears stinging his eyes and shoved two fingers into his own mouth, sucking on them to try to fight the urge to say something that wouldn't get any kind of answer he wanted. He couldn't bear to hear himself ask Destiny for more, just to have Destiny stare down at him in silence.

Before he could speak, or begin to cry, Death appeared.

She immediately crouched down, so that she was nearly at eye-level with him as she looked him over.

Dream took his fingers from his mouth and reached out to do what he had never, ever done, and poked one of the springy curls of her hair.

Death let out a startled laugh, closing her hand over his. His own hand disappeared in her grip, and Dream was wholly distracted from the texture of her hair (as pleasing to touch as he had always thought it must be) by her hand, warm and strong and infinitely reassuring around his. He wiggled his fingers; she didn't let go.

"Dream?" His sister asked, as if to confirm that he was really himself.

He nodded, feeling bashful at the thought of what she might ask next. Death was holding the hand with the fingers he'd been sucking on, but his other hand was free. This time he tried his thumb in his mouth.

Death looked up at Destiny, then huffed and wrapped her arms around Dream, drawing him against her body before she stood.

Dream had always thought it must be unpleasant for babies and young children to be picked up and moved at another's whim, like objects, but his sister's motions were not troubling at all. And having her arms around him, being pressed against her side, was like her hand wrapped around his but multiplied by his entire body.

He had never been so safe. He rested his head on her shoulder, and played absently with the ankh around her neck.

"You couldn't have mentioned that you saw this coming?" Death was asking Destiny.

"It was an abrupt development," Destiny intoned. "Dream's path appeared to continue on a much more predictable line until it... did not."

"Wait, are you saying he surprised you?" Death demanded.

Dream swung his feet and smiled around the thumb in his mouth, feeling pleased with himself.

"My duties are neither simple nor predictable, whatever you may think," Destiny said. "His path has altered drastically today, as I said."

"Right, okay, but..." Death jostled Dream until he picked his head up. She tilted her upper body in a way that made space between them, and looked very steadily and seriously into his eyes and gently tugged his thumb out of his mouth. "Dream, sweetie, how long is this going to last?"

Dream couldn't summon the words Death obviously wanted from him, even with his mouth freed. He shrugged, hitching his shoulders up and then back down. She wasn't quite asking him to fix it, but... he didn't know when he would be ready to do so. He had no kind of plan, he just wanted... this.

"Because you're adorable," Death went on gently, "but I've got to work, and you—I think you made yourself like this because you need something pretty specific, and it's something I'm not going to be any good at for more than about five minutes at a time."

She was leaving him, just like everyone did. Just like always. He didn't know how long five minutes was here, but he knew that it wasn't enough time. He knew that it meant she was leaving soon. His eyes instantly flooded with tears which spilled down over his cheeks, and he stuffed his fingers into his mouth again so he wouldn't make a sound.

"Oh, Dream," Death said, fond and scolding at once, her smile turning wry but still so gentle. "This is what I mean, little brother, I'm no good for this. You need a human. You made yourself little and mostly human, so I'm pretty sure what you need is a human to look after you until this runs its course."

She glanced over at Destiny and added, "Hot or cold?"

"Precisely the correct temperature," Destiny returned, and Dream let out a half-choked sob and hid his face against Death's shoulder again. She let him, let him lean into her again, but she didn't wrap him up in her arms and keep him close like she had at first.

She was going to leave him. She was going to find someone to leave him with and then she would go away and he wouldn't see her anymore for ages, just like always. She wouldn't hug him or pick him up, wouldn't call him sweetie, wouldn't be warm and laugh when he poked at her hair.

She was asking Destiny something, but Dream could hear nothing above his own miserable crying.

And then, quite suddenly, everything changed. He was startled into silence and picked his head up to look around.

They were in the Waking world, in London, and a part of it that Dream recognized instantly. They were just outside the New Inn—the last place he had seen Hob Gadling in the flesh, after spending most of the day with his sister. She had encouraged him to drop in on his friend.

"He's the only human I can think of who you might be okay with like this," Death said. "I think he'd do his best for you. Don't you think?"

Dream had only spoken with Hob once since that visit—just before he had gone to Hell in search of Nada. They had met in Hob's dream, and Hob had wished him well. Since then Dream had been busy, and Hob had slipped from his mind as he usually did, in their century-long intervals.

But Death was right. There wasn't another human Dream could imagine entrusting himself to in this state, and he could not fathom Hob being cold or unkind or impatient, however much Dream might deserve it.

He nodded, swiping at his wet cheeks. Death wiped them clean with her thumb and said, "Well, let's go get you settled, then."

Because she was going to leave him, even if she was leaving him with his friend. Dream rubbed at one eye with his fist and did not cry.

---

Hob was running out of time.

It wasn't an urgent thing, not quite yet, not more pressing from one day to the next, but sooner or later his time in this life, this identity, would be up. He had lingered here for a long time, waiting for his stranger—his friend. And then his friend had turned up in the flesh—and again, more than a year later, in a dream—and Hob had still hung on.

These things came in threes, and he felt certain he was going to see his friend one more time. He didn't want to budge until he did. He didn't want to be hard for his friend to find; he had a feeling it would be important, that third meeting.

Still, when the time came he was going to have to go quickly. He could make jokes about moisturizing and hair dye, but he'd been here going on thirty-five years, and he couldn't make this life last much longer. He checked through his lists of things to do when the time came, considered what to pack up and ship off to secure storage where he'd be able to retrieve it in his next life. There were a lot of moving parts, a lot of tedious logistics to consider, but he was in the summer holidays now, so it was as good a time as any.

He was grateful to be interrupted, though, when someone knocked at the door of his flat. Probably one of the New Inn's staff, maybe asking him to come cover a shift at the bar or attend to some minor disaster. That would be good for distracting him from planning and paperwork for the rest of the day, likely.

Hob opened the door, and all thoughts fled.

The woman who stood there—he knew her. He had met her before; she was important to him. He couldn't put a name to the wryly smiling face, but he knew her, and she had a presence he couldn't ignore, a presence that told him she was much more than she appeared.

He barely tore his gaze from her to look at the child she held on her hip, but once he did Hob was even more utterly riveted.

It was his friend. He knew that instantly, as soon as he met those wide blue eyes he'd known for more than six hundred years. He had the same messy black hair, the same pale skin—the same hollow cheeks, which looked much different on a child's face.

He was a child of maybe three years old, underfed and wearing clothes—still, even now, all in stark black and white—a little too big for him. He was barefoot.

He was so small. He didn't feel nearly as otherworldly as he should—as the woman did. Whatever had befallen Hob's friend, it had changed him enormously, cruelly, and yet his friend was smiling up at him, smiling wider than he ever had. Hob couldn't help smiling back.

"Hello," the woman said, only barely managing to tear Hob's attention away from his friend. "We've not exactly met, but you are my brother's dearest friend, and he needs looking after for a while."

"Yes," Hob said, because there was no question that he was going to do whatever his friend needed, and whatever this woman asked of him. Still, he couldn't quite resist asking, "I'm sorry, you—I know that I know who you are, but I don't..."

"Death," she said with a warm, friendly smile. "Of the Endless."

Hob blinked a few times. He had a vision of her in a wimple, holding a mug, and he knew that she had been in the White Horse that night in 1389. That had to mean that whatever his friend had to do with it, it was his friend's sister who had made him what he'd been ever since.

"Well," he said, riding out that seismic shift in his whole understanding of his immortality and the universe in general. "Nice to properly meet you."

He tore his gaze from her and looked down at his friend, holding his arms out. A little to his surprise his friend reached right back and came to him as easily as any small child of his acquaintance ever had.

Hob was scarcely aware, just then, of the act of drawing his friend not only into his arms but across his threshold: into his home, and his keeping.

He was much more occupied with studying his friend's pale face, those hollow cheeks, the faint weary shadows under blue eyes that looked much too big for that tiny face. "Well, my dear little friend," Hob said, because the reference was irresistible, "what shall I call you?"

His friend... laughed. His expression was one of merriment, even if the sound that came out of his mouth was like a very small, very distressed bullfrog.

Clearly, whatever else had been taken from him, his knowledge of Prince Caspian was perfectly intact, for his friend said, "I'm not a dwarf! I'm Dream, of—"

His friend looked to where his sister—had stood. Where she stood no longer, and there was no laughter left in the tiny voice as he finished, his little hands clenching hard in Hob's shirt as he spoke. "The Endless."

His voice was deeper than Hob would expect from such a small child, but for all that it was still a child's voice. He sounded bereft as only a child could, left behind by his sister without a word of farewell.

Hob would never before have dared, but his friend was so very small, holding on to Hob's shirt so very hard, and his trailing words sounded so desperately, horribly unsurprised. He wrapped his friend—Dream of the Endless, younger brother of Death—in a fierce hug, pressing his cheek to the tousle of messy black hair as he murmured, "You're all right. I've got you. You're safe here."

It struck Hob suddenly, and he stepped back from the door, shutting it properly and then wrapping both arms firmly around his friend—Dream—as he looked rapidly around the flat. "Or at least—I'm going to do all I can to keep you safe. Dream, do you know—clearly something's... happened," Dream tensed in his arms, abruptly rigid instead of baby-soft, which didn't reassure Hob any. He cleared his throat and asked plainly, "Are you... in danger?"

Whoever or whatever had done this to his friend was surely infinitely beyond Hob's ability to fight or even understand, but there were things he could do to make Dream safer, if that was necessary.

"It was..." Dream stayed tucked tightly against Hob, and Hob still held him close. "It was not meant to hurt me. Perhaps it was... something I needed."

Hob relaxed his grip just a little, rearranging his barely-formed thoughts. He recalled the conversation he'd hoped they could have back in 1889, the way he'd been fumbling toward the idea that maybe his stranger—his friend—Dream—had needs that weren't met. Needs Hob could understand. Needs Hob had dreamed, even then, of being able to fill.

It wasn't hard to imagine what it was that Dream could get in this shape that he wouldn't otherwise—what it was that he needed so badly that this had... happened, in a carefully passive-voice sort of way. What it was his sister had brought him to Hob for, saying he needed looking after, rather than doing whatever Death Herself might do for a little brother who had been cursed into helplessness. Hob noticed that Dream had carefully not said that anyone had done this to him, and also that Dream still had not let go of his shirt, let alone making any motion toward freeing himself from Hob's grip.

Hob rubbed his tiny back with one hand, and felt Dream relax against him again, felt the motion of his breathing, the body-warmth of a child tucked against him. "Well, in that case, my friend—welcome to my home, stay as long as you like. Would you care for a snack? Something to drink?"

Dream took a long breath, and made a thoughtful little hum which was, in his child's voice, perishingly adorable. "I suppose not wine."

"Bit early in the day, and in your apparent life stage, yeah," Hob agreed. "Could just about manage a glass of milk and cheese on toast, if you like. Anything more complicated, we'll need to venture down to the big kitchen and ask Marc for help."

"A glass of milk and cheese on toast sounds... suitable," Dream decided, after another moment of frowning reflection, and Hob managed to nod back seriously instead of cooing at him.

This was still his friend, after all. And his friend was bloody half-starved, by the looks of him. Anything Hob could get him to eat was all to the good, even if suitable was a pretty faint endorsement.

"Coming up, then," Hob said, and headed for the kitchen, still carrying his oldest friend in his arms.

---

Dream didn't mean to make a sound. He wasn't even sure where the sound had come from; it was just hanging in the air, a high hurt whine.

Hob's expression was almost stricken enough that it might have come from him, but he hugged Dream again and ceased his attempt to set him down on the kitchen floor, which suggested that it had been Dream himself.

He was clinging to Hob in a way that also supported the idea.

"Gonna need at least one hand free to fix you something to eat, sweetheart," Hob said, words Dream could barely comprehend in the rush of relief and comfort that came from being wrapped tightly in Hob Gadling's arms. He was, in strictly physical form, even bigger and warmer than Death, and the perfectly calibrated pressure of his embrace satisfied a need Dream could not name.

Hob's hugs were, possibly, a fundamental force of the universe. Dream had had two now and felt more firmly knit into himself than ever before in his existence. If Hob had ever hugged him before...

But of course Hob had never hugged him before. Dream, as he had been before, had not invited hugging and certainly would not have stood for it had Hob ever dared to try.

Hob's grip on him loosened enough for Hob to look into his eyes again, and his expression was less distressed now—was calm and soft in a way that made Dream feel sure that everything was going to be all right.

"How about this," Hob said. "Do you think you can keep holding on just as tight as you have been?"

Dream nodded firmly. He would find it much more difficult to let go.

"All right," Hob said, and carried him over to the kitchen bench, propping Dream on it. "You don't have to let go all the way, but I'm going to turn around so I can carry you on my back, all right?"

It took some maneuvering, and Dream did have to let go just long enough to shift his grip, but in a moment he was clinging to Hob's back, legs wrapped around Hob's waist, and could watch over Hob's shoulder as Hob gathered the necessary items to prepare cheese on toast.

Dream found it much more interesting to watch than he would have expected before. It helped that Hob narrated each step, in between chatting about other times he'd cooked something similar in other circumstances. Dream stopped taking in the words while watching the bread toast, but Hob chatted on anyway, unconcerned by Dream's silence.

By the time Hob had the cheese on toast out from under the grill and on a plate, slicing it into strips he called soldiers, Dream could actually feel his mouth watering. He could not recall another time he'd wanted food in the Waking world the way he did now; he felt ravenous in a way that was so much more physical and absorbing even than when he had made his escape from Fawney Rig. There simply was not enough of him now to think of anything but the thing he wanted most.

"All right, all right," Hob said, holding the plate out of Dream's reach and taking it over to the table. He set it down, and while Dream was strategizing how to get himself within reach of it, Hob's hands landed on his sides, flipping him up off of Hob's back upside down.

Before he could think to be indignant, Dream was laughing; Hob hesitated with Dream held up over his head, meeting his eyes upside down. For a moment Hob looked worried, like he should not have done that—as if he had meant to respect Dream's dignity, as if Dream had any left after clinging to Hob like an infant chimpanzee to its mother for the past while. Dream couldn't stop laughing in any case, at the sensation of being held upside down, at the look on Hob's face, also upside down, at this whole absurd circumstance.

Hob finally smiled, laughing a little himself, and finished the motion, flipping Dream down onto his feet, right side up again and standing next to the chair most convenient to the plate of cheese on toast.

Dream scrambled up into the chair, scarcely noticing that Hob had stepped away from him until Hob returned, setting down a cup of milk as promised. Dream looked to him cautiously, and Hob said, "Might be a bit hot, maybe test it with your finger before you take a bite."

Dream accepted this recommendation, probing at the toasted cheese, which was still softly melty but only pleasantly warm to the touch. Then he picked up a piece and took a cautious bite.

It did burn the roof of his mouth a little, but it tasted—what had Hob said, all those years ago? Fucking brilliant.

Dream heard himself make more noises he hadn't intended—appreciative ones this time—and then he had no attention to spare for anything but eating, except when he paused to gulp milk.

He only looked around when the plate was empty, considering whether it would be satisfying or not to eat the last crumbs lingering on the plate.

Hob was standing at the kitchen bench, putting the finishing touches on something on another plate. He looked up a second after Dream looked to him, and smiled. "That went down all right, didn't it? Here, if you've got room left, you can try this next—toast with jam. Strawberry, it's nice and sweet, I think you'll like it."

Dream did like it. He didn't know if he liked it less than cheese on toast or if it was only that the strange sensation of a full belly was creeping up on him as he ate; he ground to a halt with half a slice of toast left on the plate.

He sipped his milk, considering what to do about it—Hob had given it to him, and he liked it. He wanted Hob to know that he had liked it, and that he was grateful. But he suspected that the pleasant fullness of his stomach would soon become something unpleasant. But it would also be unpleasant to disappoint Hob, or to reject what Hob had given him.

He had come to no firm conclusion when Hob said, "Had enough, then? Mind if I finish this off?"

Dream licked milk off his upper lip. "You are welcome to it," he said carefully.

Hob smiled so warmly that Dream was sure he'd done exactly the right thing, and ate the remainder of the toast in two bites. Dream sat back in his own chair to watch Hob eating; that felt almost familiar, except for the part where he could scarcely see over the table once he sat back, and also the part where he felt so warm and comfortable, like he never had before in the Waking world.

His eyes drifted shut, and then snapped open, a jolt of fear bringing him fully awake.

He did not want to return to his realm. Not yet. He had only just gotten to Hob, and he wanted to stay.

"Sleepy?" Hob asked, then tilted his head. "How's that work for you, Master of Dreams?"

"I do not sleep," Dream said firmly, though he had a feeling that that was not true for him in this form. He was fairly certain that this form would anchor him here in the Waking even if he visited his own realm in sleep, but...

He did not want to leave Hob yet.

"No?" Hob said. "Well, fair enough. Mind helping me with the washing up, then, my friend?"

"Of course," Dream said, getting quickly to his feet and feeling only a little weighed down by his full belly. He carried his plate over to the sink as Hob indicated, then hastened back to the table to collect his glass.

"Good work," Hob said, lifting him up to sit by the sink, and Dream felt warmth run through him, a silly curl of pride. He had helped; he had done good work. He knew it was ridiculous, knew that his true work—currently being neglected—was far more important and far more difficult, and yet...

Good work, Hob had said, and he'd smiled and picked Dream up. He'd kept Dream near.

He handed Dream a towel before Dream could make sense of what he felt, and Dream shoved his thoughts away in favor of meticulously drying each dish and glass and utensil after Hob had washed it.

When he looked up to offer Hob the knife he'd used to spread the jam, he realized that that had been the last. Hob was just standing beside the sink watching him, waiting for him to finish. But he didn't look impatient, and didn't tell Dream he needn't have spent so long carefully polishing the knife so that it was perfectly dry and shiny.

Hob just smiled and said, "You do have an eye for detail, don't you? Very nice."

He took the knife and towel both from Dream, putting each away before he picked Dream up again, settling him against his chest just as he'd first held him.

"Well," Hob said. "Now's the best time to go out and enjoy a fine sunny day like this, but I see you haven't got any shoes, my friend."

Dream tensed, instantly feeling caught out. He wasn't wearing shoes; he usually didn't, when he was in his quarters in his own realm, and so he hadn't thought about it. And now he couldn't make any—couldn't make anything. He had come to Hob with nothing, would be a burden on him—

"Hey, now," Hob said, chucking him gently under the chin until Dream looked up to meet his eyes. "It's no trouble," Hob said. "We can get you some at the shop, and then go for a nice ramble round the green, or we can stay in and order shoes off the internet, but then we can't go out today, and who knows when we'll get another day this fine."

Dream stared up at Hob, feeling paralyzed now by the choice, instead of by shame.

"Do you think you can handle people in shops telling you how adorable you are? I won't set you down for a minute, but you're little and they might try and touch you and talk nonsense at you. We can skip all that, but then you won't be able to try on the shoes till they get here, and you might not like the way they feel."

Dream bit his lip. "You... you would not let anyone..."

Hob tucked Dream closer against him with one arm and raised the other as if he held a shield with it, as if he would shelter Dream against a rain of arrows or hail of blows. "No one gets at my friend if they're not welcome, you have my word."

Dream nestled in, resting his head against Hob's shoulder. "I shall not mind if they say silly things, then."

Hob gave him yet another warmly engulfing hug, and Dream closed his eyes and thought of another thing Hob had said to him once, long long ago: This is what I always dreamed Heaven would be like.

---

Chapter 2

The shop was, thankfully, not as much of an ordeal as Hob had feared. The shoe store was narrow and leather-smelling, crowded with towers of shoeboxes, cramming in as much as they could in the shop's small footprint. The children's shoes were all the way at the back, and he and Dream had that section to themselves. The shop attendant let Hob handle measuring Dream's feet, supplied socks, and didn't object to Dream trying them on in a way that forced Hob to pay any mind.

"I'll take those too," Hob assured her, patting the pile of rejected socks, and when Dream deemed a pair acceptable, he put every pair on the rack in their basket.

After that, she was helpful but not too friendly, which was perfect. Dream decided on a pair of sandals (black with red accents) and a pair of trainers (red with black accents), and then managed to decide on wearing the sandals out of the store rather than the trainers. Dream even walked back up to the front of the store to pay, merely holding on to Hob's hand instead of giving any sign he wanted to be carried.

He walked experimentally back and forth behind Hob while Hob waited through the ringing up; Hob didn't want to stare, but couldn't stop stealing glances at the way Dream experimented with different strides and steps, prancing and then marching and then skipping.

The shop attendant cleared her throat, and Hob jerked his attention back to her, offering his card. It was on the tip of his tongue to offer some excuse for his distraction, and then he spotted the look on her face, the warm recognition.

She didn't say it; she didn't have to. She thought they were father and son, that it was perfectly ordinary and a fine thing for Hob to be fondly amused by Dream's antics.

Hob mustered up a return smile and forced himself to pay attention through the rest of the transaction, shoving down both thoughts of Robyn and worries about whether he was treating Dream too much like a genuine child, too little like his friend. Either Dream was in a state to care about his dignity, in which case Hob would certainly hear about any missteps just as he had in 1889... or Dream didn't care, and in that case he needed all the affection and indulgence Hob could show him.

He didn't know exactly what governed the shape Dream had taken when he changed into this small form, but the ethereal slenderness of his adult appearance was so obviously some variety of starvation when transposed to a child. Dream had certainly eaten like he'd scarcely seen food before—and even that was nothing to the absolutely gutted sound he'd made the first time Hob went to set him down, as if he needed to be held like other people needed to keep their blood inside their bodies.

Hob couldn't begin to guess whether this reflected anything about how his friend had come to be. Had he ever been a child before? Was Dream of the Endless something someone grew up to be?

But he'd said it was something I needed and Hob was beginning to get the idea that need wasn't even a tiny bit of an exaggeration here. So yeah, he thought he could do his part all right, as long as he didn't overthink it.

He was, inevitably, overthinking it.

He didn't notice the door of the shop opening, but Dream was suddenly plastered against Hob's leg, and that was the end of the time Hob could spend worrying about anything at all other than picking Dream up and giving him a firm hug. He nearly walked out of the shop without any of their purchases other than the sandals Dream was already wearing; it was Dream who tugged at his shirt and said, "Hob, Hob," until Hob remembered that anything other than Dream existed.

He scooped up the carrier bags and headed out of the shop with Dream safe in his arms.

---

They were halfway back to the New Inn when Dream began to feel a strange, restless sensation in his arms and legs. He tried to flex them without giving Hob the impression that he wanted to be set down, because he was still greatly enjoying being held so close, but they hadn't gone much farther when Hob stopped and shifted his hold on Dream so he could meet his eyes.

"Got the fidgets, my friend? The green's just up ahead, you can stretch your legs there."

Dream went absolutely still, and after another moment Hob started walking again, aiming them toward the nearest corner of the green. When they arrived, Hob knelt down on the grass, so that when Dream's feet touched the ground Hob was still at eye level with him, and Dream was still in his arms.

"Here you go," Hob said, making no move to push him away. "Want to try out those new kicks where you've got a bit more space to move?"

"New..." Dream repeated dubiously, looking down at his sandaled feet, "kicks."

"Mm, yes, I'm sure that's what the kids are saying these days," Hob said cheerfully. "Though you'll have to be careful how you kick anything in those."

Dream swung one leg experimentally, and the sensation of it was good, nearly as good as being hugged by Hob and far more urgent. He tried the other leg, then shifted away from Hob enough to try jumping up and down a few times, flinging his arms out as he did.

It felt good, felt right, but not enough, and he wasn't sure what to do next. He dwindled down to bouncing on his heels, looking around for inspiration. He could walk around the green—ramble, Hob had said before—but that didn't seem like enough, and yet he didn't know what would be enough. He couldn't just... jump up and down over and over again, while Hob knelt there watching him.

Could he?

Dream was still debating with himself when he noticed Hob setting down the bags of his new shoes and socks.

Hob was smiling, and he reached out—Dream hadn't really moved far from him at all—and tapped his fingers against the center of Dream's chest. "Tag. You're it."

Dream frowned at him. "We're not..."

Hob got to his feet and started backing away. "I mean, if you don't want to win, that's fine, you can just stand there and not even try. You can forfeit if you like."

"I did not say that," Dream snapped, and began stalking after Hob. It quickly became obvious that Hob's longer legs gave him an unfair advantage—Dream had to run. But as soon as he started running, Hob started backing away faster, so Dream had to stretch his small legs and race as hard as he could after him.

They were most of the way across the green before Hob, still hurrying backward, tripped and went down flat.

Dream discovered a new speed his legs could manage, dashing to Hob's side to be sure he was all right.

He was, of course; a second after Dream reached him he realized that nothing so simple as falling down would do Hob Gadling any harm. Still, it was a relief to see his smile, his brown eyes bright, his whooping breath making his chest rise and fall.

"Well," he said after a few gasps, "you going to tag me, then? You caught me."

Dream stuffed both hands into his pockets. "It's hardly a victory when you just tripped over your own feet."

Hob sat up. "There was a tussock, actually, I'm sure I tripped over that. And if you don't want to count it I don't suppose you have to—"

With no warning at all, Hob lunged at him, grabbing Dream around the middle and throwing him over his shoulder.

Dream let out an involuntary yelp as Hob jumped to his feet, taking Dream suddenly much further off the ground. It turned to a shriek as Hob started running back the way they'd come, and had broken down to laughter by the time Hob dropped him on his feet again, right beside the carrier bags.

Hob was already backing away before Dream was sure which way was up. Dream dashed after him without hesitation this time—and this time he was the one tripping over his own feet. Hob hesitated, but Dream scrambled back up and lunged after him, trying to take advantage, and this time he did manage to crash into Hob's thigh before Hob got away.

"Tag!" Dream shouted, and peeled himself off to run in another direction.

After several strides he glanced back, and found Hob only a little behind him, jogging along with one hand outstretched—just where Dream had known he would be.

---

About the sixth time Dream took a tumble, he didn't pop right back to his feet. Hob was chasing him at that point, so he strode over to him slowly, watching for signs of the sudden transition from hilarity to tears that struck young kids sometimes. Dream had probably tired himself out enough for it now.

When Hob crouched down beside him, though, Dream was just lying there peering at his hand, which he'd scraped in his fall. There was a patch of pink skin, not even blood beading up, but Dream studied it like he'd never seen anything like it before.

Maybe he hadn't. The King of Dreams might not have ever skinned his knees or elbows or palms, any more than he'd ever run wild over a patch of green.

"Want me to kiss that better for you, then?" Hob asked, when Dream didn't show any sign of doing anything but lying there. Better a sudden storm of tears or another proud little scoff of disdain at the offer than Dream just lost in whatever thoughts he was having about his little injury.

Dream sat up, and solemnly offered his hand to Hob. "Yes, please."

Hob tried not to look too taken aback. He cupped his hand around Dream's tiny one, warm and fragile and alive, and kissed the patch of scraped skin as tenderly as he knew how.

When he looked down at Dream's hand again, it was whole, and Dream was smiling slyly, like he'd pulled off a prank, tricking Hob into giving him a kiss.

"Ah, see, it worked," Hob said, smiling back at him. "Best medicine there is, a nice kiss to make it better."

Hob expected a tiny little voice to argue with him about the logic of that, but Dream just said, "Are we done playing tag now?"

"Yeah, I think that's about enough for one day," Hob said, and he was still speaking when Dream stood up only to wrap his arms around Hob's neck, already leaning against Hob's shoulder, ready to be carried away.

Hob pressed a kiss to his hollow little cheek before he thought better of it, and picked him up to go gather their things. Dream went limp against him, as if he had fallen asleep, or was just too tired to hold any part of himself up, and Hob let himself consider how long this might last. Would Dream vanish as soon as he fell asleep, or as soon as Hob did?

Or at the other extreme... Would Hob's next identity need to have another identity attached to it? Would he watch over his friend for years, watch him grow up into a new version of the man he'd known?

Gladly, he would, if it meant he could keep his friend safe, and know he was well—love him, and know he was loved. Gladly, if only for the joy of watching someone grow who he knew would never be lost to him as Robyn had been lost, as all others he had ever loved had been lost.

It wasn't any of the ways he'd ever dared to imagine getting to keep his friend around, but life was mostly like that. And in Hob's experience, the unexpected joys were the best of all.

Speaking of unexpected, Hob realized about ten feet away from the front door of the New Inn that he was about to walk in with a child no one had ever seen before in his arms. He only needed a half-second to make up his mind about that; Hob turned on his heel and headed around to the inn's back entrance.

It was a fine day, and getting to be time for the dinner rush, so Hob wasn't surprised to find that the kitchen door was propped open. He slipped inside and paused there, letting his eyes adjust and getting a feel for who was here and how much of a gauntlet he would have to run with Dream.

There seemed to be a pretty usual level of bustle—someone over at the sinks, a waiter loading up a tray, Holly plating and Tim tending the grill. And Marc, the New Inn's head chef if they were going to use a title that grand, was just coming out of the walk-in fridge and had stopped in his tracks, looking at Hob.

Dream squirmed just then, and Hob looked down. "What do you think of cadging some supper, sweetheart?"

Dream gave a pensive little hum, barely audible above the kitchen noise, and said a little plaintively, "Cheese on toast?"

Hob considered how to ask whether balanced nutrition—or eating enough non-cheese-based meals not to get horribly constipated—were things they needed to be considering, and whether Dream's answer would be more than an educated guess. He hadn't yet come to a conclusion when Dream's grip on him tightened, and Hob realized that Marc had come over.

"We can do the finest cheese on toast you've ever had," Marc promised. "And for sir?"

Hob rolled his eyes a bit; Marc looked back steadily. He knew there was a reason Hob had come round the back—and his instant understanding was most of the reason Hob had come into the kitchen instead of going for the staircase that would have taken them directly up to the flat.

That and he wanted to eat something more substantial than he would either be able to get Dream to eat, or want to prepare with Dream physically attached to him—which brought him back around to Marc's stated question. "Nachos?"

Marc looked amused, and glanced down at Dream. "Jalapenos?"

And, all right, maybe there had also been an element of what might Dream be tempted to taste in Hob's choice. Cheese on chips was probably close enough to cheese on toast to lure him into trying something slightly different; anything really spicy was likely to put him off.

Hob smiled ruefully at Marc. "Nah, not today."

Marc nodded, giving Hob's shoulder a firm squeeze. "Have a seat in the corner, then, I'll get you some drinks."

"He'll take a red," Hob threw after Marc as he walked away, and Marc didn't even dignify that with a look back.

Hob turned the opposite direction, carrying Dream back to the scarred old table—a relic of the White Horse, in fact, deemed too decrepit for front-of-house—where staff usually sat for meal breaks. All of them were busy with the beginning of the evening rush now, so he and Dream had the table to themselves, tucked away in their corner.

It felt strangely familiar, and Hob was about to make a crack about it until he sat down and settled Dream on his lap, and realized that Dream had a particularly troubled frown on his tiny face.

He looked up to meet Hob's eyes with a wary look that, particularly in combination with the table, gave Hob an uncomfortably vivid flash of 1689.

"Hob," Dream said, quietly but with palpable dread, "people are going to ask you questions about me, aren't they."

With a positively heroic effort, Hob managed to keep the serious, concerned look on his face instead of bursting out laughing at the way that Dream obviously regarded people asking questions as no less an ordeal than what Hob had lived through for most of the 17th century.

It shouldn't be surprising, given the last six hundred years; it actually explained quite a lot.

"I won't tell anyone anything true, obviously," Hob said quietly. "If there's anything you want me to say or not say—if I don't say anything people are going to sort of assume I'm your dad, which—"

Dream's expression twisted into a more emphatic miniature version of the look he'd gotten on his face when Hob coaxed him into trying a sip of drinking chocolate back in 1789. "You are not my father," Dream hissed. "You are nothing like him. He's awful. My sister promised I don't ever have to go back there, I won't—"

Hob pulled Dream into a tight hug half a second before he realized that Marc had walked up during that tiny tirade—and Dream, angled as he was on Hob's lap, had almost certainly seen him coming.

From the look on Marc's face, that was going to take care of answering any questions. Still, just to finish the thing off, Hob murmured, "His sister's an old friend of mine—much older sister, obviously. Things at home are... complicated, and she wanted him safe."

Marc nodded grimly, setting down a pint for Hob and a glass of chocolate milk with a curly straw for Dream. "I'll spread the word."

Hob waited until he was a decent distance away to whisper, "Well done," in Dream's ear, giving him another little squeeze before loosening his grip.

No need to mention right now that this meant Hob definitely needed to fake his death when this was all over. If Dream's adult self turned up at the New Inn anytime soon, there was a serious chance one of Hob's very loyal employees would take a run at him on suspicion of him being his own fictitious horrible father.

"He is awful," Dream grumbled as he shifted to sit farther forward on Hob's lap and investigated the glasses. He might have been talking to himself; he didn't really seem to expect Hob to respond to the words. "And I won't go back again."

Hob set a hand on Dream's back, rubbing for a few seconds before he could manage to say firmly, "Nor should you."

Dream looked over his shoulder at that, staring solemnly at Hob for a moment before he looked to survey their beverages again.

"You can try a sip of the ale if you like," Hob offered, summoning up a smile and a more cheerful tone. "Just a sip, mind."

This time Dream looked back at him with a decidedly repulsed expression. "No, thank you. But what is this milk? Why is it brown?"

Hob just barely managed to bite his tongue before teasing Dream about not knowing something, when he had seemed to know everything about everyone he met, back in 1889. There were obvious reasons that might not be the case anymore, and Hob wouldn't help by drawing attention to it.

"It's chocolate," Hob said, leaning forward to reach his own glass. "Much nicer than what we had that time when we were interrupted."

"Self-defense was the best use for that," Dream muttered, looking warily at his own drink, but he bent the straw to his lips and essayed a dubious sip.

He blinked several times, a comically shocked expression on his face; Hob drowned the coo in his throat in a long drink of beer, and by the time he came up for air Dream was gulping as best he could through the straw, his hollow little cheeks all but disappearing as he sucked.

Hob rubbed his back again and murmured, "Don't drink it all in one go, love, you won't have anything to drink with your toast."

Dream stopped to breathe and turned an absolutely world-class bereft and pleading look on Hob. "Wouldn't he let me have more if I drank it all? Wouldn't you?"

The crack about murdering your parents and then pleading clemency as an orphan would be a tad insensitive right now, Hob figured, so he just admired Dream's puppy dog eyes for as long as he could bear before he said, "Well, obviously we would, yes. But you won't enjoy your toast as much if you've already filled your belly with chocolate milk before it gets here."

Dream's innocent look was instantly replaced with a withering glare. "You could have said that to begin with. You need not lie to me, Hob."

"My apologies," Hob agreed solemnly, once again not letting himself react to the adorableness of that imperious tone in that tiny child's voice. He would probably build up a tolerance to it eventually, if this went on long enough.

Surely he would.

Hob didn't have time to worry too much about how many years he could expect to spend just giving Dream everything he wanted if this kept up, because Irene, the New Inn's manager, came walking briskly over with a very businesslike expression that meant Marc had already told her what was going on with Dream.

That, or she was about to let him know about some sort of catastrophe with the Inn, in which case Hob was going to fake his death tonight. Dream was as much as he could handle this week.

Luckily, Irene said, "I'll be getting everyone front of house in order. They all know better than to ever give anyone's whereabouts, but they've seen you take a... relaxed view to your own privacy."

Hob had, it was true, more than once announced loudly in the crowded bar that he lived just upstairs.

"Obviously the situation is now different and they will know to be particularly cautious with anyone asking about your young friend. They will know to alert someone else who can discreetly contact you with a photo or description of the person asking."

Hob nodded slowly. It was... very obviously not the first time Irene had contemplated how to protect someone from the possibility of an abuser or stalker coming looking for them, and Hob was glad that she was in charge, even if there was no need in this case.

"Ahh," Hob said, glancing at Dream, who was taking very tiny sips of chocolate milk and then savoring each one in his mouth like he was a wine snob with a glass of his favorite vintage. "That sounds good. It's... possible his older sister might stop by—not much obvious family resemblance, but... you wouldn't mind seeing her, would you, sweetheart?"

Dream licked his lip, giving himself the tiniest milk mustache, and said thoughtfully, "No. But I don't think she will. I have three sisters, though."

Hob looked up at Irene just in time to see her get a lid on the face she wanted to make at that matter-of-fact statement. "Right. We won't go straight for the cricket bat behind the bar, then, if it might be one of your sisters coming to visit."

Dream looked up at Irene, and Hob leaned to one side to get a proper look at Dream's face; his expression was very serious for a moment, his eyes looking so old it was impossible not to see the ancient being peering out of this child's body.

Irene took a half-step back, and Hob put a hand on Dream's tiny shoulder and squeezed firmly.

Dream dropped his gaze and blew bubbles in his milk.

Hob said briskly, "Cricket bat is definitely the last resort. We don't want anybody getting into any trouble over this—worst comes to worst, I've got friends who can get things sorted for him. Nobody needs to be a hero."

Irene smiled, still looking a little unnerved, and said, "Right you are, boss."

Dream's shoulder twitched under Hob's hand at that. Dream stopped blowing bubbles and took another tiny sip of his milk as Irene walked briskly out of the kitchen.

"I know you don't want anyone coming to your defense," Hob murmured, leaning in close behind him. "But it's all hypothetical. Right?"

Dream was silent, savoring his chocolate milk, for a few seconds too long before he said, "Of course."

---

Chapter 3

 

Dream meant to eat sparingly of his dinner, to avoid the sleepiness that had followed filling his stomach the first time, but his small self proved to have exceedingly limited self-control.

Marc's cheese on toast was excellent, as was to be expected of a professional working in a successful establishment such as the New Inn, though Dream refused to consider it categorically better than the version Hob had produced earlier in the day. Dream was apparently hungry again, however, because he ate all of it before he remembered that he did not wish to render himself helpless against falling asleep.

By the time he had finished, it seemed useless to resist sampling some of Hob's nachos, with their variety of toppings. The combinations of texture and flavor were numerous and so interesting that Dream entirely failed to stop eating before his belly began to ache with fullness.

The world was going smeary around him, and he could feel his realm tugging at him when the closing of a door made Dream aware that they were back in Hob's flat. Dream sat up, rubbing the sleep fiercely from his eyes.

"I don't want to sleep yet," he insisted. It only occurred to him when the words were hanging in the air that this was a protest with no useful target. Hob had not coaxed him to eat for the purpose of making him drowsy, and Dream had left behind the part of himself that had the power to force or withhold slumber.

"Well, I won't insist, but I think the writing is on the wall, my friend," Hob said. "And I meant to ask before—are you feeling any... other bodily needs?"

Dream squinted at Hob until he realized what he was being delicate about. "If I had the toileting requirements of a human child my size, I believe we both would have found out by now."

He did, even as he spoke, wriggle in Hob's grip, reaching for the fullest possible awareness of this small body's sensations. No urgency presented itself to his awareness.

"That was my feeling too," Hob agreed affably, sitting down on the chair nearest the door and reaching for the fastenings of Dream's sandals. Dream watched his nimble fingers and thought that he ought to insist on doing it himself, but the words did not leap to his tongue, and Hob would be finished before Dream could muster them. "But I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. And if anything should... occur unexpectedly, we can manage that."

Dream giggled at that, mostly to fend off the horrific notion of being caught unawares by such an unpleasant necessity. He was quite sure, the more he thought of it, that his firm feelings about such matters would have shaped the functioning of this body when he created it for himself.

But then, he had not told Hob that he was the one who had made himself this way. Hob would naturally expect that whoever had forced this transformation upon him would not have done so with the utmost concern for his comfort. "I shall... keep you apprised of any developments."

"See that you do," Hob said fondly, pressing a kiss to Dream's hair as he tossed Dream's sandals over to land on a mat near the door. Hob's own shoes were already there, and Dream stared for perhaps too long at the image they made, his shoes resting comfortably if untidily against Hob's.

They looked just as if they belonged there. As if he belonged here, in Hob's home and his arms.

And all he had had to do was... all of this, to get here.

Dream shook his head, pushing the thought away, and Hob said, "If you don't want to sleep yet, we should keep you busy. I can put on some music and we can have a little dance party, or turn on the telly and find something exciting, or—"

"I have a book," Dream said before he'd realized he meant to say it. "It has my sisters in it. All my siblings. Then you'll know, if..."

None of them was at all likely to come looking for him. But it was better to think of that, for now, than to think of who, or what, might. That was a matter to be dealt with when he was back in the Dreaming.

And he was not ready to return to his realm just yet. Once he was there, he knew he would feel the pull to end this self-indulgence, no matter how much he wished to prolong it. He was not at all sure which part of himself would win out, and for now... he had Hob, and a full belly, and a book.

"Oh," Hob said. "That would be lovely! And I'd be very interested to know more about your family, even if they don't turn up to visit."

Sharing the book with Hob would allow Dream to answer some of Hob's longstanding questions while barely having to summon the words at all—even if it was bound to incite far more questions than it laid to rest. Still, he owed Hob that, at least, for so readily taking him in and caring so kindly for him.

Dream withdrew the book from the front chest pocket of his overalls, making Hob startle a little. "That pocket bigger on the inside?"

"No," Dream said. "The book is just... portable."

Now that he had drawn it out where it could be seen and touched, the book was a child's board book with pressed-cardboard pages, each about the size of the palm of Hob's hand. In his own present state, Dream had to hold on to it with both hands, and even so he was glad for Hob's hand coming around under the book to support it.

Dream flipped straight to his eldest siblings' pages, not lingering on the cover or the first spread.

"My eldest brother is Destiny," Hob read aloud from the first page. There was a rendering of his brother there—a figure robed and hooded in gray, holding his book.

Dream touched the book, and felt the spark of connection in it; this was no mere image, but his brother's sigil in truth, and if Dream needed to, he could call upon him through it.

He could not imagine what need he might have to call upon Destiny again. He would only get the same response he had gotten the last time. Still, it was good to know his brother was there. The book still functioned here in the Waking world.

"My eldest sister is Death," Hob went on, having turned his attention to the image of Death on the facing page. "Huh, you know, it's only an illustration but I can tell it's her. I suppose I really might recognize your other sisters after this. Or your brother."

"He is not difficult to identify," Dream said. "The robe and book are permanent fixtures."

"Huh," Hob said. "Destiny—actual Destiny. Suppose that makes you the world champion in coping with a know-it-all big brother, doesn't it?"

Dream snorted. "My younger siblings might beg to differ, as they have to deal with Destiny and myself both."

"Ah, so you're not only bossy with mere mortals, are you?" Hob asked, his voice still warm and fond, his arms still holding Dream close.

Dream said only, "Death is also. Always right. In her areas of expertise. But she is better at being kind. Everyone loves her, when they finally meet her."

"Suppose that makes sense," Hob agreed, and gave Dream a little squeeze. "You're more of an acquired taste, are you? Sophisticated palates only?"

Dream ducked his head and said, "Do you consider yourself sophisticated, then, Hob Gadling?"

Hob laughed and pressed a kiss to Dream's hair. "In this area I think I might be considered a connoisseur, aye? I like you enough for everyone."

Dream didn't know what to say to that at all; he swallowed hard and turned to the next page of the book.

On the left-hand side was his own sigil, his helm rendered as an image. The lenses were shiny-black, and if he leaned away from Hob at an uncomfortably precarious angle, he could just see his temporarily human eyes reflected in them.

"This is me," Hob read, slowly, as if the words were difficult to decipher or pronounce, resting heavy on his tongue. "Dream of the Endless, King of Dreams and Nightmares, Lord of the Dreaming, Prince of Stories, Oneiros, Morpheus, Kai'ckul Anthropomorphic Personification of... you went a bit easy on me just telling me to call you Dream, didn't you?"

The words Hob read were crowded all around the edges of his sigil, holding its edges in place. Dream couldn't look away from his own eyes, reflected back in the darkness of his helm. It made him feel even smaller than he knew he was, small in a different way. He had to keep very still to keep both of his eyes aligned with the reflections. There was only one correct way to sit to get it right.

There was so little of who he was that could ever be seen.

Hob jostled him and the book both, tugging him back against the soft warmth of Hob's chest, and Dream did not look so closely at his page of the book again. It was his sigil; he knew it like he knew his own face. There was no need to look closer.

The next page of his book was an absence.

"My younger brother," Hob said, and Dream could hear the frown in his voice as he read the words that were negative space, there in the not-there-ness. "Is missing."

"We call him the Prodigal," Dream said as he turned the page, ready to move beyond all that. "He left us hundreds of years ago."

The next two pages interlocked with each other, each design sprawling into the other. Desire lounged at ease, golden eyes bright, crystalline red heart at the center of their chest. Dream's fingers itched to touch it, and he curled his small, soft hand into a fist to resist the urge.

Despair crouched on the opposite side, but her rats and her unkempt hair both crossed over the border of the page. Her ring glinted on her finger, and Dream drew his hand back from the book altogether at just the thought of its sharpness.

"The twins," Hob read. "My younger sibling is Desire. My younger sister is Despair. Something tells me you and your sibling get on like a house on fire, don't you?"

"Screams, flames, people running for safety," Dream muttered, knowing just what Hob meant. "We are... very different, and also too much alike. Our realms adjoin in a way that has never been easy for either of us."

That was not true. It had been easy, once, when the world was young—when Delight was the darling of the Endless, and their little queen. Before so much had changed, and so much had gone wrong.

Hob made an understanding noise, and touched a gentle finger to one of Despair's rats. Dream remembered him, looking much too gnawed-upon in 1689, and quickly turned the final page.

Delirium wavered across two pages, in her cloud of multicolored fish and strangely colored incoherent shapes which pulsed with power—one of those, or all of them, were her sigil. Just barely visible under the bright chaotic tumble of color was a shadow of the girl she had once been.

"My youngest sister is..." Hob trailed off, and Dream wriggled to see his face and found him squinting at the page. "I can almost read what it says underneath, but... not quite."

"Her name changed when she changed," Dream said. "It was long ago. This is who she is now."

"Ah," Hob said, and refocused his attention, his gaze tracking the winding path of the words, the way the letters straggled and changed size and color. "My youngest sister is Delirium. D'you know, I think I've met her a few times."

"I would not be surprised," Dream agreed, patting Hob's wrist. "Delirium spends most of her time wandering in this world."

It was a shame that Hob would never meet her as Delight—or perhaps it was a good thing. Hob loved life too much to want to be lost in Delirium's realm for long as she was these days. When she had been Delight, Hob would have belonged to her instantly and wholly; she would have been the truest expression of why he wanted to live and what he had been dedicated to for all these years.

Hob would never have looked at Dream with wonder and fascination again, if he had ever met Delight. He would not have bothered to meet Dream again, would not have called him friend, if he could have known her. She would have been his friend at once, the very first time she saw him.

Dream reached out and firmly closed the book, pulling it from Hob's supporting hand and setting it firmly on the side table. "Now you will know my siblings, if any of them should come here."

"Thank you for that," Hob said. "And just so we're clear—it's all right for them to come here? That's not a break glass and run emergency?"

Dream sighed, exhausted already by the sheer thought of any of his siblings—Desire—turning up to poke at him. "The Endless are forbidden from shedding family blood, and from killing ordinary beings who do not pose a threat to their realms. Their presence may have... strange effects on those nearby, but they will not pose a serious danger to me or you, or to your people."

"Hm," Hob said. "More of a terribly sorry, we were just leaving, can't be late, emergency, then?"

Dream smiled a little, imagining Hob donning the mask of the past century's English fashion for imperturbable politeness while protecting Dream from any importunity with the same ferocity he'd turned on Lady Johanna's henchmen. Still, he should not mislead Hob. "They will not come, but if any of them do it will be best not to try to turn them aside. It will not be a mere social call. Destiny and Death both know where and what I am and will not trouble themselves further; the others would find it fairly difficult to find me as I am now. If they put forth such effort, they would not do it lightly."

There was a little pause, and Dream leaned against Hob and listened to the silence of not being able to tell what Hob was imagining as he took in Dream's words. It was... restful, knowing he need not refrain from looking, or decide what to do about what he saw if he did.

He was really very tired.

His eyes flew open when Hob said, "Well, suppose that's a worry for another day, then. For now, we've got your sandals off and I can see how grubby your feet are—why don't we go get you cleaned up?"

"I can," Dream mumbled, looking at his feet, which were indeed stained with dirt and grass. He had not noticed, with the fine armor of his new sandals in place, but now he could not simply will the mess away. Perhaps he ought to have been more careful, or worn the trainers and socks.

"Ah, it's no trouble," Hob said, closing his arms around Dream as he stood. Dream nestled into him and let Hob carry him through the flat. He opened his eyes when Hob crouched down, letting Dream rest on his thighs while he reached for something—a towel, Dream found, from a basket of them under the sink. Hob shook out the towel and draped it over the lid of the closed toilet, and then boosted Dream up to sit on it.

Hob reached over and turned on the sink taps, saying, "That will take a minute to get warm. Here, we'll just get these out of the way—" and Dream watched Hob reach for the cuffs of his overalls and begin folding them back. Dream realized what was about to happen and thought he should say something, do something, but he was so tired, and Hob was taking care of him.

He just watched.

Hob's hands stilled as the first dark sign was revealed on Dream's bared skin. "What—Dream, is that—"

"Just a bruise," Dream said, recognizing it as he saw it. He had not intended to build such things into this body, but... he had been hurting. Perhaps it was inevitable that this form had borne the expression of that pain. "I have hardly noticed it."

He considered, now, that the flares of pain he felt with each step were not entirely usual, as part of having a human body. Though he was not at all sure he would have been less willing to be carried hither and yon in Hob's arms if that slight deterrent to walking upon his own small feet had not been present.

Hob was taking great care in turning back Dream's trouser leg by another fold, revealing more of the black bruise, just barely purple around the edges, which seemed to have flowed down his shin. Hob pushed the trouser leg up to his knee, revealing the livid point of impact at the top of his shin, the way that blood had flowed and pooled under the skin all the way down.

"Dream," Hob said, his voice very careful and controlled, his hands shaking a bit. "Is this—is this the only bruise you've got on you?"

Dream bit his lip and shook his head. "You need not—"

"You—Dream," Hob said, and sat back on his heels as he covered his face with both hands, his head bowed. Dream watched the sharp motion of Hob's breath, like a silent sob. "You should not—Mother of God, you're so small, how—"

Dream leaned forward and found he could just reach to stroke at the tense curve of Hob's shoulder. "It is from before. It is a... reflection, or an echo, of pain which was not physical. No harm has come to me since I have been this small."

"No?" Hob said, dropping his hands and looking Dream in the eyes with an expression of hurt that was near to anger. "You've only been dumped off on some bloke you've met all of eight times in your life. That didn't hurt?"

"I was brought safely to my dearest friend among humans," Dream corrected firmly. "Among... anyone, really, outside my realm. You are special to me, Hob, and I would not have come to you if I had not trusted you."

He did not know what he would have done, precisely, in that event. The Dreaming would be experiencing floods, perhaps. He might have thrown a tantrum suitable to his size, and stirred up hurricanes and earthquakes.

He would have... gone on, as he had always done.

Hob laid his hand over Dream's where it still rested on his upper arm, and then said, "I—Christ, I don't even know if I can hug you without hurting you, Dream. I don't want to hurt you. You know that, don't you?"

Dream looked down at the bruise, the place—one of the places—where he had taken the impact of falling to his knees for Thessaly, in spirit. He had not begged when she had ended things, but he had known his own willingness to beg, had felt something in him break in that moment. Humiliation and helplessness had struck him brutally enough to leave these marks.

They were not the worst of what he had suffered. They were not worse, he found, than this moment now, knowing that Hob felt helpless.

Dream slid forward, easing down onto his feet with the towel puddled under them, softening the surge of pain. Hob's hands were spread wide, not touching; Hob just watched while Dream took a tiny step in to press himself against Hob's chest, wrapping his arms around Hob's neck.

"You have not hurt me, Hob," Dream said against his shoulder. "You would not. I know you."

Hob's arms closed gingerly around him, not squeezing him tight as Hob had done before, but still holding him close. "Sorry," Hob murmured. "Sorry, you—I shouldn't be the one getting upset, I just—I thought we were making that up, saying you needed to be hidden away here to keep you safe, but we weren't, were we? You were hurting, and you need this."

Dream nodded against Hob's shoulder. He supposed it was a very human foible to react more strongly to this visible materialization than to the fact that Dream had told Hob he needed to be as he was.

"All right," Hob said, his tone getting firmer as he loosened his grip on Dream, gently guiding him to stand back enough for Hob to meet his eyes again. "All right. We're going to get your feet washed off, because that's what we came in here for. And then—I could put some ointment on your bruise, if that's all right? Help it heal, smells nice. What do you think?"

It was harder to read any human without access to their dreams, but it was still fairly clear to Dream that Hob was trying to calm himself by being helpful. If Dream said that Hob need not take such care of him, of an injury that wasn't even a real physical injury, Hob would only be left without any way to console himself.

And it was not as if Dream did not want Hob to care for him, bruises and all. "If you think that will be helpful. There is... my other knee, too."

Hob nodded, showing no outward sign of greater distress. "Right, okay. Is that... all of it?"

Dream shook his head.

"Okay," Hob repeated. "Well, one or two things at a time. Three at most. Only one bit we need the tap for, so let's get your feet done."

Suiting action to words, Hob boosted Dream back up to sit on the toilet again, the towel still more or less under him. He turned up the other leg of Dream's overalls just enough to expose his foot and ankle, then sidestepped on his knees to get a cloth and wet it at the sink. The water was steaming now, but Hob took his time lathering it with soap and then wringing out most of the water.

By the time he touched the cloth to Dream's foot, it was no more than pleasantly warm. Dream watched quietly as Hob washed each of his feet in turn, every touch gentle but efficient. He thought of the meanings of foot-washing, and wondered what sorts of memories and associations were rising through Hob's mind now, thoroughly invisible to his small self.

Hob moved away from him and came back with the cloth damp but free of soap, to wipe all traces from Dream's feet. He dried them with the end of the towel Dream was sitting on, then moved away to rinse the cloth, standing up when he was done to shut off the taps.

The silence seemed very loud, without the rushing of water. Hob opened the medicine cabinet and retrieved a small jar, then, after a hesitation, a couple of other items. He tucked them all into a pocket before he turned back to Dream. "Do you..."

Dream mutely held up his arms, and Hob smiled tiredly and leaned in to scoop him up, handling him so gingerly that Dream knew he would have to show Hob all of himself just to set his mind at ease.

Hob carried Dream into his bedroom, and set Dream down at the foot of the bed, immediately turning away to rummage through some drawers.

"Haven't got a lot to lend you, but I'm guessing you might want to change to something a little softer to sleep in." Hob stood with a bundle of soft black fabric in hand, shaking it out to reveal a t-shirt that looked rather too small for Hob to wear, though it would be more than ample for Dream in his current state.

The white script on the front, faded with washing, was an elongated cursive. The Mountain Goats, it said, and below that, done bleeding.

A hopeful sentiment, if possibly premature.

Dream bent his head and poked at the fastening of his overalls. His small fingers struggled with the clasp—and then Hob's hands were there, hovering around his, a silent offer.

"Please," Dream said, reaching up to put his hands on Hob's and draw them closer.

Hob undid the fastenings so quickly and easily Dream almost couldn't see how he did it, and then Dream wriggled to get the top half of the overalls to fall down around his hips. He tugged at the hem of his shirt in a further silent request for help. Dream had a foreboding feeling that even if he could pull it off for himself, it would hurt in a way that would be obvious to Hob—not that anything would be hidden from Hob once it was gone.

Dream closed his eyes as soon as Hob gingerly tugged the shirt up enough to cover his face. He kept his eyes closed through the silence that followed, though he had to clasp his hands together against the urge to fidget or cover himself.

There was a very small sound, and then a warm hand on his cheek. "Dream, sweetheart."

Dream opened his eyes.

Hob was crouching before him—looking up at him slightly, due to the height of the bed Dream was perched on. There was a faint wetness smeared under Hob's eye, but he was smiling now, even if his expression looked somewhat pained.

"Thank you," he said softly. "For showing me. Do you mind if I touch just—close to it, for a moment? Just to be sure you're not hurt beyond what I can see?"

Dream actually looked down at himself then, and grimaced at the sight of another black bruise, this one covering most of the center of his chest. Covering his heart, showing all the pain of love rejected—love longed for and not received.

"I know no one actually punched you in the chest," Hob said apologetically. "But I'm not going to rest easy until I know your little ribs are all intact. If—if you don't mind."

Dream raised his arms, mutely making space for Hob to touch, though he felt a twinge of pain in his shoulders as he did, and sighed a little when he caught sight of yet more bruising there.

"One thing at a time," Hob said, bringing his hands up to wrap around Dream's ribcage, very nearly spanning the whole of it. Hob's hands were distractingly warm against Dream's bare skin, close as a hug but with no pressure applied. "Deep breath for me, my friend?"

Dream inhaled cautiously, waiting for pain—waiting for the grip around him to tighten cruelly and allow him no more air.

Neither happened. The dull ache in his chest sharpened a little with the movement, but there was no stab of something broken inside him. Hob's hands moved lightly over his skin, feeling gingerly at the lines of his bones but not seeking to contain him.

"All right," Hob said, "that's—fuck me, you're bleeding."

Dream's eyes flashed open and Hob's grip on him did tighten then, just for an instant that matched Dream's panicked useless motion toward nothing in particular.

"It's not much, it's all right," Hob said hastily. "Just—the tops of your shoulders there, a couple of spots are raw. Looks like you've been hauling bricks, love."

Dream shrugged at the thought, craning his head this way and that to see the dark bruises that painted his shoulders; he could just barely see the flecks of brighter red that had caught Hob's attention. "My function is to serve all that dreams. My kingship over the Dreaming is an office of creation and control, not a sinecure."

"And it's been weighing heavy, I take it," Hob said. It was not a question, and Dream did not need to answer. "All right. Antiseptic on those, arnica for the rest. Won't take but a minute. Let me know if I press too hard, right?"

Dream nodded, already confident that Hob would not. Dream's eyes drifted shut as Hob got to work, first daubing the antiseptic onto the sharpest points of pain on his shoulders and the back of his neck, and then the herbal-smelling arnica was laid in long, gentle strokes over the bruises. The light, purposeful touch was almost hypnotic, and Dream was barely keeping his eyes open by the time Hob coaxed him to raise his arms for the t-shirt meant to serve him as nightclothes.

Hob murmured something soft and reassuring, guiding him to lie down, and Dream nodded and mumbled back, kicking his overalls off so that Hob could treat the bruises on his legs. There was another series of gentle touches and medicinal smells, and then Hob scooped him up only to set him down a moment later on something even softer.

Dream jerked upright, realizing that he had been lying against a pillow, about to be tucked into Hob's bed.

"Still not ready to sleep?" Hob asked, almost hiding an amused look.

"No," Dream said, grabbing at Hob's hand. "Not yet, I can't. Not—I can't go alone. I don't know if I can find my way back."

Hob frowned and sat down on the edge of the bed, returning the grip of Dream's hand. "All right. Do you want me to lie down with you? Hold on?"

Dream bit his lip, considering. "I don't think it will help if you're not asleep too. You won't come with me into the Dreaming if you're awake, and—" Dream looked to the window. A shade was drawn over it, but it was still obvious that it was far from dark. A child's bedtime, but not Hob's, he was fairly certain. "I don't think I can stay awake as long as you."

Hob shook his head. "And I daren't take anything to make myself fall asleep when I've got you to look after. Is there any way to... anchor you here?"

Dream thought for a horrible moment of a golden circle of runes, and found himself crawling into Hob's lap without consciously deciding to do so. Hob hugged him—not so gingerly as the last time, now that he knew where not to press. "You can't," Dream said. "You wouldn't... lock me up. You wouldn't."

"Lock...?" Hob sounded honestly horrified, and his arms loosened in a way that was the opposite of what Dream intended. "Never, my friend, you must know that. I would never force you to stay—though I'd recommend not going too far alone, while you're like this."

"No," Dream said, more confidently. "I know. I know you wouldn't."

Hob couldn't, and Dream probably shouldn't have found an utter lack of magical ability so reassuring at this moment—but Hob didn't need to know those things, and the fact that Hob had never felt any reason to seek such knowledge was one of the things Dream rather liked about Hob.

"I don't suppose I could give you a pocket full of pebbles to mark your path," Hob said. "Not that kind of place, is it?"

"No," Dream said, but he knew where Hob was drawing the idea from, and tried to think of other suitable stories. "What about—a thread? A string? It could be tied around my wrist, so even if I let go..."

"Hmm," Hob said, and then he stood up with Dream still held in his arms and went over to a chest of drawers and rummaged through two different drawers that seemed to hold all sorts of odds and ends. Finally he came up with—not thread or string, but a reel of red ribbon, half an inch wide and satin-shiny.

"Here we are," Hob said. "That's wide enough we won't have to worry about you cutting off circulation." He returned to the bed and sat again, wrapping the ribbon a few times around Dream's small wrist before he tied a careful knot. "And the other end... should it be tied to something here, or to me?"

"To you," Dream said at once, and Hob simply nodded and began unspooling the ribbon. There seemed to be enough length that Hob would be able to move around the flat unhindered while still being tethered to Dream. He tied the other end of the ribbon around his own arm, up near his elbow—to keep it out of the way of whatever he needed to use his hands for, presumably.

"All right," Hob said. "Now you'll be able to find your way back to me, won't you? And I'll be able to find you when I go to sleep, hey?"

He could hear that Hob didn't entirely believe that last, but Dream nodded firmly. "You shall. You shall be able to find me. And I will not lose you."

"All right, then," Hob said, moving Dream back down to the bed where the covers were turned back. "Let's get you tucked in. You need anything else? Drink of water?"

Dream could feel sleep dragging at him, his realm calling to him in a strange attenuated way. He had an important task to complete there; it was just as well that it would be some time before Hob would follow him. "Just... don't close the door?"

"Right you are, love," Hob said, tugging the covers over Dream and pressing a kiss to his forehead. "Sleep tight, and I'll see you soon. Give a tug if you need me, I won't be far."

Hob reeled out the ribbon as he went, and Dream watched the red length of it catching the light. Hob turned the bedroom light off and left the door open enough for Dream to see the brighter line beyond, and a bit of the trail of red leading away.

He heard some music begin to play beyond the door, soft and low, and let it follow him down as he closed his eyes, this time with intent. Recite the songs that kept me whole, on the day I hand over command control...

Dream wrapped both hands around the ribbon and held on, just in case, and then he was rising up weightless from his sleeping self, slipping out of Hob's bed and into the shadow under it. There was a passageway there, and in another moment he was in the Dreaming, the sound of Hob's music and the warmth of his flat fading behind him.

The ribbon stayed solid in his hands, so that was all right. He would return.

---

Chapter 4

 

Hob payed out the ribbon in a neat line until he got to his study, where he dropped the lot on the floor in favor of turning on some music. He went over to the fold-out sofa, picked up a throw pillow, and smashed it over his face so he could scream a bit without being audible over the music.

He stopped after the first scream and listened, watching the length of ribbon leading out the door. There was no sound from elsewhere in the flat, no movement of the ribbon, and Hob couldn't imagine that Dream wouldn't give some sign—come to him or call for him or give a tug—if he'd heard Hob scream like that.

There was nothing, and that had to mean Dream was safe on his way to Dreamland and couldn't be touched by Hob having a carefully modulated breakdown in the next room.

He put the pillow to his face again and screamed some more, letting himself feel all the horror and rage he'd been holding down. Those raw places on tiny shoulders, skin broken open under a cruel burden. Those vicious bruises covering far too much of that little body. Those tiny ribs, whole enough but far too close to the surface. Those little feet with their hardened heels and faintly scarred toes. No shoes, and he'd looked ashamed when Hob pointed it out.

All of it screamed of a child uncared for. Unprotected. Unfed.

Unloved.

Hob knew that inside the tiny body, this was still his old friend, ancient and powerful—but he had always known that there was something in his friend that could be hurt. Hob had seen those blue eyes swim with tears more than once. Now the hurts were made plain, carved into his skin where Hob could see them, not hidden behind black clothes and a standoffish manner fit for a god. Now his friend had come to Hob, given himself into Hob's care, and all that pain was Hob's to try to care for, to protect—but first, Hob's to feel.

He'd stopped screaming and started crying at some point, which was at least a bit quieter. He could let himself breathe while he sobbed into the pillow, inhaling cool air and crying out the pain. Dream's pain, not his, but small as he was, Dream was as stoic as ever, so perhaps Hob had to feel it like this for it to get out at all.

When he was only sniffling and leaking tears, Hob got up and went to the kitchen. He splashed a bit of water on his face, found a suitable whiskey and poured himself a double. No more. After a healthy swallow of that he could face slipping to the bedroom door and peeking in.

Dream was sleeping, curled on his side with both hands wrapped around the ribbon. His little face was serene, and Hob could see the slow motions of his breathing.

"Safe travels, my friend," he murmured, for it seemed a more apt wish than sweet dreams. He left the door open the same few inches and returned to the study.

He unlocked a drawer and drew out a notebook with half its pages covered in the same untidy hand though the words meandered through half a dozen languages. He selected a pen and began his account of this day, laying it down where he would be able to close the cover on it and set it aside.

When he'd done that, he might even be able to sleep.

---

Dream came through into the Dreaming in another shadowy gap, under another bed. Most of the space here was taken up by a mass of darkness lined with stars—his mantle, the greater part of his power and himself, which he had shed and hidden here.

He only needed a little of it now, just for a moment, so that he could attend to the problem he'd identified. He didn't have to take back the fullness of himself.

He took a moment to think it through, to be sure he only needed to do this one thing now.

It wasn't Hob who had made him think of it, but Hob's people, the staff of the New Inn, when they saw him in this small and vulnerable form. They—mere mortals, breakable as Hob was not—intended to protect him. They would try to conceal him, to stymie anyone who came searching for him, thinking that they only had to fear the dangers that humans could pose.

They did not know what manner of being might come looking for Dream of the Endless, if they discovered that he was residing in the Waking world in this fragile form. Dream could not let Hob or any of Hob's people be harmed in his defense, if there was any way to prevent it.

There might be unanticipated dangers; Dream would have to be prepared to take back the whole of himself if any danger threatened. He did not know how much damage could be done in the Waking before he would be unable to repair it, and he did not wish to find out with Hob looking on—or Hob hanging in the balance.

He thought it through carefully. His siblings were not a threat, or not one he could do anything about. His nightmares were presently under control, and the Dreaming itself was in good order—if, after the last few days, fairly waterlogged.

Dream was on good terms with the great powers—he had done good turns by both the Creator and Lucifer in recent years, and the current lords of Hell had no quarrel with him. He had an enemy or two contained within the Dreaming, but the power of his realm would hold in his absence, with so much of his own power still resting within its bounds.

The fae as a whole were not displeased with him; any individuals who might cause mischief could be guarded against with the old precautions—iron over the doors and such. He would speak to Hob about it.

But there was one being Dream could think of—one god loose in the world who could and would harm mortals without a care. Dream had done Loki a kindness in setting him free, but Loki was the sort who would look on a favor owed as a debt, and then as a grudge. If Loki should somehow learn of Dream's sojourn in the form of a child, he would not hesitate to do him harm, and he would not care who else he hurt.

Dream had known his nature when he let Loki go, but Loki had been no imminent threat to him or his, then. He would not attack Dream at his full power, nor seek to intrude on the Dreaming. It was the Waking world where he would roam, and Dream had not considered himself to have any vulnerabilities there.

Now he did, and now he must guard himself.

He could not think of another similar threat to concern himself with, so for now he had only one task. That made it relatively simple.

Dream wound a hand into his mantle, flipping just a corner of it over himself so that he could wield a fraction of his power.

"Matthew."

He heard a fluttering of wings, a clicking of talons, and then Matthew came into sight, walking across the floor. He stopped just outside the shadows under the bed, peering in but seeming to see nothing that revealed the truth.

"Boss? You... okay? We were all getting excited when the rain stopped, but... looks like you're hiding under the bed. Didn't even know you had a bed, but maybe it's just for hiding under?"

"As you see, Matthew," Dream said. The deep resonance of his own true voice felt strange, when he was still clinging to his smaller, simpler form. He had never been a child to play dress-up—there had never been any point in imagining what he might grow up to be, for he had always been exactly as he was. Still, he thought that it must feel a little like this, if he had ever been a child destined to grow up into the Dream King.

He wondered if Daniel—

No. He did not wonder. He had no time to wonder about that. He had a task.

"I have some matters to see to elsewhere. It will take some time. Now I need you to carry a message, as swiftly as possible."

Matthew fluttered enthusiastically. "You got it, boss, can do!"

"You must seek out Odin, or his ravens if they are easier for you to find. You met them when they visited the Dreaming, did you not?"

"Ah, we didn't exactly bond," Matthew said. "But yeah, I know 'em. They'll probably know me, right?"

"They will recognize an emissary of the Dreaming," Dream said firmly. "Whichever you find you will inform them: Loki is at large in the world, and must be apprehended."

"Loki," Matthew repeated. "Loki, who... came to the Dreaming that time with Odin. He... escaped? And you knew?"

"I permitted it," Dream said crisply. "If Odin wishes to question me, he may seek me, but the essential fact is that Loki is free and must be found."

"Okay, uh..." Matthew's hop and flex of wings seemed anxious this time. "Yeah, that's. I can see how that's... shit, boss, that's really bad, isn't it? He's like... really dangerous."

"He is," Dream agreed. "So you must not delay in carrying this message for me."

"But you, uh—not to question you, boss, but... you can't..."

"Not at this time. As I said, there are other matters I must attend to. Elsewhere."

"Elsewhere, like, out there? Where Loki is?"

"The sooner you fly to Odin," Dream reiterated patiently, "the sooner he will not, in fact, be there."

"Yeah, I'm on it, no problem, but—are you sure you shouldn't take somebody with you? Just to... know? Things happen, boss."

"I am aware, Matthew," Dream said sternly.

Matthew still hesitated, fidgeting, and Dream wondered what Hob would say if he were present for this conversation—once he had stopped exclaiming over the wonder of a talking raven.

Hob would reassure someone who was worried—who was not entirely wrong to be worried. Dream did not think he could hug Matthew, for a variety of reasons, but he could try to find another way.

"Once you have carried your message, you may come and find me to let me know," Dream said.

Matthew looked brighter at that, then said, "Uh... find you where exactly, boss?"

Dream could tell him where, except that Hob might well take him on some sort of outing, and Dream did not wish Matthew to become more anxious over being unable to locate him. Any attempt to follow his sense of Dream of the Endless would only lead Matthew back to the space under this bed, since most of himself would remain in this spot. Dream had no token of his waking self to offer to Matthew—he could not spare the ribbon, certainly.

He racked his brain for another way to draw Matthew to himself. Dream's raven would be able to find Dream on any plane, and be able to find his way back to the Dreaming from anywhere, but what would lead him surely and swiftly to Dream in his present state? He needed another tether, a lodestone, something that Matthew would recognize instinctively—

"Ah," Dream said. "Matthew, would you give me one of your feathers? I will keep it with me, and you will be able to sense that part of yourself wherever I carry it, and so find me."

"Yeah?" Matthew said, preening at himself immediately despite the hint of skepticism in his voice. "Huh. I guess I haven't ever shed many feathers, have I? Wouldn't really have noticed it."

"It will work in part because I will it to work," Dream admitted.

"Ah, yeah, I guess I should have figured that," Matthew said, head now tucked under one wing. "Can't just give you a little fluff that might blow away, but the big ones are kinda important, so—ah!"

Matthew straightened with a feather held in his beak. It was perhaps two inches long, with a bit of pale fluff at the base and then the black vanes touched with violet iridescence. Dream scooted closer and held his hand at the very edge of the shadow, where Matthew could reach it to give him the feather.

"Uhhh," Matthew laid the feather in his palm, which was not as wide as the feather's little length. "Boss?"

Dream closed his hand on the feather and shifted himself safely into the shadows where he could tuck it into the ribbon wrapped around his wrist. "Did you have a question, Matthew?"

"You, uh," Matthew said, and shifted his weight from foot to foot for a moment, clearly considering what to say. "You... need me to take a message, and when I'm done I'll come find you and make sure everything's okay. And carry any other messages you need carried."

"Correct," Dream said. Matthew's tone made it very clear that he had noticed the change in Dream's appearance, but if he was not going to ask questions... he would find out soon enough.

Dream thought he would rather handle that when Hob was with him. Hob had not asked questions, or treated Dream as if his smallness made him ridiculous. If Matthew asked difficult questions or made humorous remarks, Hob would know how to answer him. Dream would need to say very little.

"Right you are, boss," Matthew said, backing away. "Be there before you know it. Lickety split." Matthew hesitated for another beat, but Dream had no more to say, and Matthew bobbed his head one more time and then turned and leapt into the air, disappearing out of the Dreaming even before he reached the window.

Dream closed his eyes and kept his arm wound into his mantle, using the fullness of his power for just one more moment, making what he had not thought of before. He got a firm grip on the handle with one hand, and then tugged on the ribbon with the other, and willed himself to follow it to Hob.

---

Hob's attempt to record the events of the day trailed off into barely-legible musing about fun carefree child-appropriate activities Hob might introduce Dream to if he stayed around long enough. He hadn't gotten far before his hand was cramping too badly to go on—he'd written several frantic pages already—and he tidied away pen and notebook into the locked drawer.

He checked on Dream first—still sleeping, still clinging to the ribbon—and then wandered around the rest of the flat. Even knowing how much of their time they'd spent out and about, it felt strange that Hob had had a child in his home for much of the day and there was no trace left behind but a pair of sandals by the door and a tiny book left face down on the end table, plus a couple of carrier bags from the shoe store dropped on the coffee table.

Hob sat down again where he'd first sat with Dream and picked up the book again. He half expected it to be blank, or wholly unreadable, now that it was out of Dream's hands, but it continued to be a thing that had a definite material existence despite its profound uncanniness.

Hob stared for a few minutes at the front of the book, which was mostly taken up by an image of a huge rounded ruby gem like the one Dream used to wear to their meetings. There had been no sign of it when Dream had come to him at the New Inn, nor today, and Hob somehow knew that the image on the book was only an image. A representation of something that did not exist in the way that the other things in this book definitely did have a very real existence.

In the red depths of the gem, words swam—My Gallery or possibly My Family. Hob kept thinking that he could find the angle where it definitely said one thing or the other, and eventually gave up when he realized that he already had a headache and this was making it worse.

He opened the book to the beginning, which Dream had skipped over when showing the book to him.

Hob was immediately aware that he should not have done that.

One page was the night sky—not an image of the night sky, not a magically significant representation of the night sky. He was looking at the actual night sky, though he did not recognize any of the stars he could see. Something—a wisp of cloud or perhaps a nebula—spelled out words: My mother is Night.

He could see her there, sort of, the shape of a woman in the infinite depth, but once again he could never quite look right at her and see what he was seeing. There was only an impression, infinitely far away. The longer he looked the more he became aware of one particular darkness in the midst of her, and when he finally focused on it, he couldn't look away. He could feel the pull of it, dragging him into a blackness from which he would never escape.

Some loud sound from outside jerked Hob's attention away from the book, and he was stunned and incredibly relieved to find that he was still in his flat, the last of the summer light still lingering in the sky outside. He laid one hand over the dark page of the book and used the other to turn on a lamp before he risked looking at the other page.

This one was, in a way, the opposite of the dark page. It was light, bright, full of movement—or, not movement, but simply constantly showing a different view, which his poor brain interpreted as movement. Nothing moved or grew exactly, but it was different in every second, every time he tried to look at a different part of the image to try to make sense of it.

There was no making sense of it. There was a man—an elderly man—an infant—a youth—a being, ever-changing, impossible to get a grip on in any sense. In the constant changing of the shapes Hob somehow read words: My father is Time.

Hob heard the particular sound of Ian-the-closing-bartender's van starting up out behind the Inn, which meant that it was past closing time, cleanup was done, and the last of the staff, including Ian, was heading out for the night. He reflexively slammed shut the book in his hands, and only then managed to look around.

His whole body felt stiff, as if he'd been holding the exact same position for hours. It was full dark outside—as dark as London ever got, anyway. Hob rubbed his burning eyes and wondered if he had even managed to blink while he was lost in staring at Time's page of the book.

"This explains so much," he murmured, trying to imagine Dream ever having been parented by two such merciless—beings? Concepts? Anthropomorphic personifications?—as those representations of Night and Time in his book suggested. No fucking wonder he needed to take a second try at childhood.

Hob set the book back down exactly where Dream had left it. He checked the locks on the doors, checked the windows were shut, swinging his arms and legs as he went to shake some life back into them after that unnatural stillness. He brushed his teeth and made a mental note to locate a toothbrush for Dream in the morning. He had some spares, but he didn't think he'd ever had the forethought to buy a toddler-sized toothbrush to keep on hand—nor a change of clothes, nor anything else Dream might need in the days to come.

They could figure that out tomorrow, Hob decided. He tidied away their haul from the shoe store, made sure all the lights were out—took one last long look at Dream's book to be sure it was closed and face down—and then, finally, Hob let the ribbon lead him back to the bedroom.

He checked on Dream, first, not just peeking from the door but going to crouch beside the bed. He looked to be sleeping peacefully, breathing evenly. Hob reached under the covers just enough to be sure he wasn't lying in any kind of puddle, but no warning smell wafted out, so he wasn't surprised to find only dry sheets and a warm child.

When Dream was tucked back in again Hob stripped down to boxers and t-shirt and climbed in on the other side of the bed. He tossed the mass of ribbon off the foot of the bed, thinking vague tired thoughts about strangulation hazards—but surely Dream wasn't as vulnerable to that as an ordinary child, and if Hob got tangled up sooner or later he would manage to untangle himself.

Hob's eyes closed and he lay for a while just feeling the particular sensation of lying in a bed with someone he loved, feeling the warmth of another body nearby and hearing Dream breathing. He hadn't dated much since Dream had found him at the New Inn a few years ago. He knew exactly why, and he knew it was hopeless—Dream showing up like this, sharing his bed like this, probably only meant it was more hopeless than Hob had ever imagined.

Still. Dream had come back for that third visit, and it looked to be a long one. And even if this wasn't any of the ways Hob had ever imagined sharing a bed with his oldest friend, it was good to be near him. Good to be trusted with his sleep, with his care.

Hob's hand drifted out as he shifted, getting comfortable, until his fingertips just rested against one pointy little shoulder blade. Then he could feel Dream's breathing as well as hear it.

Just on the edge of sleep he remembered Dream saying solemnly, You shall be able to find me, and Hob dove into his dreams without hesitation.

---

Hob was standing on a beach of black sand. He thought the water must be behind him—he could hear it—but he didn't look around. He only had eyes for Dream, who was sitting primly on the sand, his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms wrapped around his bare bruised legs.

The red ribbon shrank between them as Hob approached, until Hob knelt down in front of Dream and the ribbon was just a foot or two, swooping gracefully between them.

"Hullo, my friend," Hob said, and then he realized that he couldn't quite tell if Dream was his usual size or the little version Hob had fallen asleep beside. He was both at once, or there was a trick of perspective—he was small and close enough to touch, or big and farther away in some dimension Hob couldn't cross.

"Hello, Hob," Dream said, and his voice was a child's voice, a little weirdly deep in the way that some kids' voices were, but only that.

Hob closed his eyes and shook his head, focusing, and when he opened them again Dream was definitely the small version. Hob sat back on his heels and opened his arms, and Dream clambered into his lap immediately. But he curled down and didn't look at Hob's face as he said, "I think I... I could be different. Here, at least. I can be the way you see me."

"Do you need a break from being small?" Hob asked, though he thought the answer was obvious from the way Dream pressed into him, the way Dream couldn't look him in the eye while offering to be something else. Dream was taking a break from being big, and he wasn't done with that yet.

Dream shook his head. "But I could. If you—"

"Don't worry about me, my friend," Hob said, hugging him tight. "If you need to... stretch a bit, or be something else for a while, that's up to you. But I don't mind you being small when we're awake, and I don't mind it here either. I'm honored, in fact, that you let me see you this way."

Dream slumped into him, making Hob aware of how carefully rigid his posture had been.

Hob rubbed Dream's back and finally looked around a bit. The black sand beach stretched away to either side; mountains bounded this space. Hob peeked over his shoulder and saw the sea stretching to the horizon, nearly as dark as the sand. The sky overhead was bright white overcast, the daylight coming from everywhere and nowhere.

Nothing moved but the waves.

"So," Hob said, loosening his grip enough to jostle Dream a little in his lap. "What shall we do tonight? Do you have things you have to do here, or are we just enjoying a night at the seaside?"

"I already did what I needed to," Dream said, and gestured at a diminutive suitcase Hob hadn't noticed before—an old-fashioned black leather case with metal caps on the corners in the shapes of stars. Hob did not coo at the adorability of it, but it was perhaps a good thing that Dream was still hiding his face. "I... I could show you other places, where... my subjects are."

Hob heard, loud and clear, that this would mean Dream's subjects seeing their king in a less-than-dignified state. He was still just wearing that oversized t-shirt Hob had dug up for him, his bruises still livid down his shins—and he still looked right about three years old.

"Actually," Hob said, "I was thinking if I could dream anything, I'd like to dream of the sea."

Dream sat back at that, looking up to meet Hob's gaze—to gauge whether he was being let off the hook, Hob thought. Hob wasn't lying, though, even if he had only been thinking he'd like to have that dream for the past twenty seconds or so.

"I made my living as a sailor from time to time," Hob explained. "And I more or less learned to swim, but I've never been able to like being submerged in water—having my face under, especially." Hob grimaced and shook his head, finding that his memories of being drowned crowded back into his mind more readily here than they did when he was awake.

Dream's expression turned gently concerned, and he reached up and brushed his fingers over Hob's temple; Hob could almost feel the way he nudged those memories out of the way.

"So I'd like to dream of just... walking underwater," Hob explained, when he could speak again without fighting the choking feeling of water filling his throat. "See the fish and seaweed and things, feel the water around me, and not get scared. I think if you were with me it would only be a nice dream, wouldn't it?"

Dream's expression turned pensive. "I could control it better—offer more verisimilitude—if I were... entirely myself. But I think we could manage something adequate, if you don't mind..."

This was, Hob thought, possibly the equivalent of persuading Dream to do a crayon drawing or finger paints, and he thought Dream rather needed something like that.

"I'd like to try it with you, just as you are," Hob said. "Maybe we can try it again sometime when you're feeling more yourself, but there's nothing wrong with starting small."

"I suppose if you have never experienced it in life, you will hardly know the difference," Dream said, a little sly amusement creeping onto his face.

"Oh, yes, I tell you the thing I'd like best to dream about and now you start taking the piss," Hob returned, grinning all the while. "I see how it is."

"You haven't seen anything yet," Dream pointed out. He jumped up from Hob's lap and was reaching up to hold Hob's hand before Hob had even made it up to his feet.

Hob felt a moment of trepidation as they walked into the water, right about the time it was up to his waist, but that was also when he noticed that Dream was walking blithely through the water, also exactly waist deep despite being three feet shorter than Hob.

Hob grinned, then, sure that this was going to be a wonderful dream, and plunged forward to get stuck into it.

---

Continue on to Chapters 5-8 on Dreamwidth!