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Chapter Text

Hob is accustomed to service. He spent most of his early life - that is, the period before his immortality - as a sellsword, his only cause being the temptation of payment sometimes swayed by a faint nagging sense of morality. Then he became a printer’s apprentice, a sailor, a soldier, a teacher…

And now, knelt between his lover’s legs at the end of the bed, he is a supplicant of an Endless. What a rare thing to be , he marvels, delighting at the pale expanse of skin before him, that which he has craved for centuries.

A boon of his many years, in fact, is that Hob has developed a patience far beyond that of any other living thing. He has waited to have his beloved stranger, to even know his name, and now he can exercise that patience…

…for both of them. 

Dream squirms pointedly on his back, knees held aloft in his hands, an action most undignified for the King of Nightmares.

“I do not like to be kept waiting,” he insists, lifting his gloriously mussed head of inky hair to stare accusingly at Hob. His eyes are blown dark as the abyss of space, and Hob’s breath catches - he will never be accustomed to the sight - but he resumes the slow drag of his tongue close to where Dream most wants him, licking a heated stripe over his marble-cool skin up the inside of his thigh.

“I can wait,” Hob counters, no less smug in the face of Dream’s affronted scowl, “And besides, I’d like to be kinder than just using spit as lube, darling.”

Dream growls irritably. “I do not need such base preparation. You know this.”

“Mmhmm. But do you want it?”

Dream’s eyes widen imperceptibly. But when you have spent as long as Hob admiring every inch of such a face, you see it plain as day.

“…yes,” he admits, “I want it.”

Hob grins. He has no intention of giving Dream what he wants just yet. Not when they have six centuries to catch up on, and countless more ahead.

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Hob can’t remember the last time he fucked someone under a tree in the great outdoors. It is always far less romantic than it seems in the stories - getting a splinter in your arsecheek is about as fun as it sounds - but he has never been one to turn down an offer. And being the utterly infatuated and desperately horny fool that he is, he cannot imagine denying Dream anything, let alone a tumble in the night-shrouded grounds of a very posh house at a very large wedding.

“We have to be quiet,” he murmurs, his hands pawing at the obscenely low neckline of Dream’s black silk shirt to get his fingers beneath it, skating over glorious alabaster, “As much as I like the pretty sounds you make, I don’t know if I’ll be able to look the bride in the eye again if we get caught.”

“There are other universities,” Dream offers, and as they kiss open-mouthed and hungry with Dream’s back to the broad oak’s trunk, Hob can taste the amusement on his tongue as readily as the red wine and the rich dark chocolate gateau they had shared for dessert. Pale fingers sink deeply into Hob’s hair, grasping locks of it just tightly enough to remind him that something so frivolous as human propriety isn’t going to stop Dream of the Endless from getting what he wants. And there is not an ounce of Hob able or willing to deny him.

He hums, pleased and pliant, as one hand remains and scratches pleasantly at his scalp, the other grasping beneath Hob’s jaw and tilting his head back. Hob offers his throat to his unfathomable lover without a second thought; the approving sound Dream growls against his hammering pulse affirms that he will be rewarded for his obedience.

“How do you want me?” he manages to ask, his own hands tight at Dream’s waist.

“On your knees,” Dream replies without hesitation, whispering at the crossroads of jawline and throat. He sinks in his teeth then before Hob can comply, and Hob is grateful for the loud music of the party roaring on without them, so that he may cry aloud at the heady sting and then sink to the dirt as his beloved demands. 

Chapter Text

Dream of the Endless is naked on Hob’s beat-up sofa, the fabric worn down by decades of use but thought of too fondly to be replaced. He is flattered that Hob has given him a thick blanket to sit upon, and has adorned the space around him with throw pillows and other soft furnishings, like some sort of doting bird building a nest for its mate.

“Are you comfortable?” Hob asks him, and Dream nods as he realises that he is, in fact. He seldom thinks overmuch of the comfort of his chosen form in the Waking, but spending more and more time here with Hob is giving him cause to do so. Hob treats his body as more than just a convenient vessel; to him it appears as some holy thing, containing the essence of the being he loves so ardently.

“I would like for you to be as well,” Dream insists, pulling at Hob’s arms where he is kneeling on the floor, also stripped of his clothing, “I have waited long enough.”

Hob chuckles and he rises as bid. “You and I both, sweetling. I… just wanted everything to be perfect. For you. Tell me what you want?”

“You are here. I do not know what else I could possibly want for,” Dream says, with sincerity enough that Hob finds he can only answer with kisses in place of words, pressing Dream back and back until he lays out beneath his love on the cushions so tenderly arranged for him. Hob fits between his thighs like he was meant to be there, and their bodies come together in much the same way, Dream’s pale legs wrapped around Hob’s soft waist and his arms wound around shoulders broad enough to carry the world.

The very same world which feels as if it tips on its axis as they move together, each thrust of Hob’s cock deep enough to have the both of them seeing stars. Hob’s heated breath at Dream’s throat rises and falls in sweet gasps and groans that Dream fights through the haze to commit to memory, just the same as Hob wants to still feel the sting of Dream’s nails trailing down his spine in the morning. When Dream topples over the edge of release first, spending over the two of them and chanting Hob’s name like a liturgy, Hob keeps going just to hear the sound. He follows soon after, and Dream pulls him impossibly closer, swallowing his moans of relief with an eager tongue and the faintest promise of teeth.

Chapter Text

“I’m not sure this is entirely necessary,” Hob admits with a laugh. He is naked, his warm skin exposed to the cool air of Dream’s quarters in the palace of the Dreaming. It is his first official visit as the King’s partner, and after Hob had gone out of his way to caress every other pillar and railing and step just to see Dream shudder each time, he cannot help but feel as though this is some sort of punishment.

But of course, he’s always been a glut for that kind of thing. And the blindfold is a very charming touch.

“ Your wandering hands have not gone unnoticed, Robert Gadling. I intend to show you just what sort of attention you have caught. ”

With this being his realm, and an extension of his essence in turn, Hob hears his lover all around him, even within him. He shudders, feeling the intensity of that unfathomable gaze upon him, and the cold touch of something tenderly pressed against his breastbone and then draped around his neck.

“That was rather the point, eh?” Hob counters, shifting on the bed beneath him, “I was enjoying the guided tour, don’t get me wrong, but… I can’t help myself.”

“ Hmm. At least you are aware of your own insatiableness. ”

“ Well aware, thank you,” Hob replies with a grin, “And I rather miss the sight of you, dear heart.”

A knowing chuckle rumbles through every inch of him. His cock twitches, and he has to bite back the frankly embarrassing noise that nearly springs from his lips.

“ Very well. Open your eyes, beloved. ”

The blindfold is gone. So is the bedroom, the palace walls, the windows offering a glimpse of the expanse of the Dreaming beyond…and in their place is only darkness, the void of the night sky. 

And the towering presence of Dream of the Endless.

Hob sits in the pillow of his palm, he realises, and he tears his gaze away from the twin stars burning at him in indisputable amusement to examine the gemstone nestled against his breast; a bright blood red ruby, hung on a thin golden chain, identical to the one Dream had worn in their very first meeting those many centuries before. He feels the awe of a man in the presence of a god, of something more than a god, as he lifts his eyes again. Perhaps he ought to be afraid. And yet he trusts Dream so absolutely that all he can do is stare up at his lover in utter wonder. 

“You look so… pretty, like this,” Hob offers weakly, realising that it is a feeble compliment but persevering all the same, “More like yourself.”

“ I am glad you think so, ” Dream responds, making no effort to hide the growing mirth in his celestial eyes. His other hand rises, his index finger nudging Hob’s legs apart. The smooth markless pad presses gently against Hob’s lower body, against his cock, and he is hard, more so than he had previously anticipated. 

“Fuck, this is… different,” Hob chokes, rutting without shame into Dream’s touch.

“ Is it acceptable? ”

Hob laughs breathlessly, already desperate. “Definitely one way to put it. Please, don’t-- fuck, please don’t stop touching me.”

The white pinpoints of Dream’s eyes start to flare as he watches Hob grind against his fingertip, cosmic light bursting from the coronas of his pupils. Hob cries out in ecstasy again at the sight, at the careful but all-consuming pressure of Dream’s attention, at the impossibility that this being has all their focus on him .

It does not take long for Hob to find his peak. Shorter still to the second, and by the third he is limp and pliant, whimpering Dream’s name as the Endless lowers his face and seals his lips in a vast kiss over Hob’s entire body--

Hob wakes alone. He has never felt so well rested, though it is likely he has a laundry day ahead of him.

Chapter Text

As an old drinking buddy of Hob’s once said, the best laid plans of mice and men often go to shit.

He had crafted the perfect romantic weekend; a B&B by the sea, a trip to the cinema, drinks on the beach, and a little excursion to an abbey ruin, for old times’ sake. All of that, and it would be Dream’s first ever ride in a car, as Hob had only just learned whilst loading their bags into the rental.  

And then the bloody thing broke down in the middle of nowhere.

It’s his own fault, Hob muses, as he waves his phone around in a vain search for signal. Serves him right for thinking they might go somewhere nice without being whooshed between dimensions, or whatever it is that Dream does with his sand.

“We are stranded,” Dream says, his skin a soft ghostly pale in the fading light of day.

Hob glances over his shoulder with a venomous look. “Thanks for the insight.”

“You are disappointed,” Dream continues, with an earnest sympathy Hob does not deserve, “You wished to woo me.”

Hob sighs heavily and drops the arm holding his phone aloft in defeat. “I… Yeah. Sorry. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised it’s already gone tits up.”

Dream draws closer, and Hob recognises a moment too late that there is a twinkle of intent in his eye as he snatches Hob’s phone from him. He would protest, but Dream’s mouth is suddenly a breath away from his own, icy blue eyes boring into warm honeyed brown.

“I can distract you. Whilst we wait for rescue.”

“Yeah,” Hob offers, eloquent as ever, “Please.”

And that’s how he finds himself in the front seat, jeans and boxers hastily pulled down to his knees. There shouldn’t be nearly enough room for Dream to crowd into his lap, but here he is, the crown of Hob’s cock caught in the cleft of his arse. The skin there is warm, wet, ready for him.

“Fuck, are you sure?” he gasps, “I know you don’t need—“

“Yes,” Dream moans, dropping slender fingers to wrap around Hob’s length and align them, and then he’s sinking in, and in, and in—

Hob bottoms out with a ragged groan, his head dropped back against the rest. His throat is bared, and immediately Dream is messily licking and nipping against his pulse.

“Let’s see how much you can take,” Dream murmurs in his ear, and then sinks in his teeth hard enough to have Hob seeing stars the same moment he starts to rock in Hob’s lap. They move together, a clumsy but no less satisfying rhythm dragging Hob to his climax begging for it, and Dream tumbling after him not long after. 

When a recovery vehicle finally does come, Hob hopes they don’t mention the fogged up windows, the smug aura emanating from his nightmare of a partner, or the glorious mottling of purple and red bite marks littered from Hob’s jaw to his shoulder. He can’t die at all, let alone from embarrassment, but it’s a near thing.

Chapter Text

Hob stares up at the sign in disbelief. “Love, this place has been fully booked since it first opened three years ago. How the fuck did you-- Actually, no, never mind. Don’t tell me. Let’s go in. Right now.”

Dream is hit with a tide of relief, linking his and Hob’s fingers and squeezing once. If all goes to plan, he will provide Hob with the romance that a consort of the Dreaming deserves.

They are seated in a surprisingly private corner of the restaurant. A bouquet of flowers - bold classic roses, red carnations, and delicate Sweet Williams - awaits them, as does a bottle of champagne so expensive that Hob refuses to touch it at first.

“I love you,” he tells Dream the moment they are alone, “I really, really love you.”

Dream cannot resist the amusement which pulls at the corner of his lips. “I suppose the adage persists - the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

“That was my strategy - you still ditched me for bloody Shakespeare,” Hob laughs, his joy louder and more freely given than Dream’s. He extends his hand and Dream takes it across the table immediately. Dream notes that Hob looks especially handsome by the glow of candles; the warmth of the flame has always suited him, far more than harsh modern lightning. 

He lifts a leg and bumps his suddenly bared foot with Hob’s under the table, before tilting it to tease along the inside of his ankle, up towards his shin. Hob’s eyes narrow, a questioning smile drawn. “What are you doing?”

“I know not what you mean,” Dream insists as his foot trails just that little bit further up. It is impressive how much Hob’s posture straightens. But he makes no effort to close his legs. Quite the opposite - they are left open, inviting. And his eyes remain locked with Dream’s, rich and dark as chocolate and just as tempting. Dream inches his foot up higher and higher until the tip of his toe teases the inside of Hob’s thigh, at which point Hob cracks, a brief sound barely subdued between his lips.

“Don’t,” he warns, with not nearly enough conviction to inspire Dream to adhere to it.

“Or what?” Dream purrs back, gaze heavy with satisfaction.

Hob’s expression darkens, his hands closed into fists on the table, and despite his status as an Endless, Dream shudders in the face of it. “Or I shall have to punish you later. Several times. And we might not even make it home first.”

“And that is intended to inspire me to stop?” Dream asks, just as he lifts the flat sole of his foot to the firm weight of Hob’s cock in his trousers and presses hard. Hob moans loudly, quickly snatching his hand up to muffle himself in the back of his fist.

“People are staring at us. At me,” Hob says weakly, and this time he sounds far more like he is pleading than threatening.

Dream is insufferably smug. “Let them see. Let them hear. We have not even eaten yet; you have much to look forward to.”

Chapter Text

The problem with immortality is complacency. Hob has avoided nightmares about the witch hunt for decades now, and perhaps this made him an easy target. 

The Cult of Burgess. A small modern chapter, but there is nothing left of them - Dream made certain of it. No mortal mind could comprehend the agony of their last moments, except perhaps the man curled in the midnight sheets of a king’s bed, his form wracked with the pain that he suffers in the Waking. Dream brought him to the Dreaming in the hope that if he could ease his lover’s sleeping mind first, the body would follow. But even here, Hob’s wrists and ankles are rubbed raw by the cuffs they bound him in. There are deep cuts in his skin, violent bruises, and he shudders, curled tightly in on himself.

“ Hob, ” Dream says softly, his anger long gone, his fingers feathersoft along a quivering shoulder, “ Look at me. ”

“Dream?” Hob whispers, his head snapping upwards.

“ You are safe. You are in the Dreaming, and you sleep in your own bed. They cannot hurt you now. ”

“I… I’m so sorry,” Hob says, voice cracking as a fresh tremor strikes through him.

Dream frowns, lowering himself to Hob’s side and moving to lay facing him. They are both naked, and Dream presses in, noting with a brief flutter of hope how the marks of torture start to fade as he takes Hob’s hands into his own.

“ Why are you sorry? ”

The only answer is silence, Hob turning his head to hide his face in the bedcovers as if ashamed.

“ Would you have me suffer this alone? Without care, to weep after? ”

“No,” he admits, defiant as ever, to Dream’s relief, “Not in a million years.”

“ Then let me show you that you are loved. ”

He cannot fix everything. But he knows how to kiss Hob’s skin, where the best places are to do so; a flutter of lips to Hob’s temples, to the inside of his wrists, and over his collarbones as Dream urges closer. With every kiss Hob heals a little more, and loses some of the coiling tension that has taken him prisoner.

“Touch me,” he pleads breathlessly, streaks still shining on his cheeks, “Please, Dream.”

“ You are certain? I… do not want to cause more harm. ”

Like a glimpse of sunlight through an awful storm, Hob laughs. Dream feels the sound wrap around his heart, bright and warm despite everything. “I need it. Need you, love. Please.”

Dream hesitates a moment longer, just to be sure. “ Do you trust me? ”

Hob’s hands roam over Dream’s body in place of words, both of them gasping as they find one another and touch with the expertise of familiarity. They kiss, swallowing pleasured sounds and ignoring the taste of tears, hands wrapped around one another’s cocks and bodies pressing closer, closer, until it feels as if all one knows is the other. 

“ I love you, ” Dream promises, encouraged by how Hob can only gasp in response. He comes first, rutting into Hob’s fist with a cry of relief. And it is not long before Hob finishes, the last of his injuries fading from his skin as Dream catches his jaw in long nimble fingers and kisses the breath from him.

Chapter Text

The surest way to Hob Gadling’s heart is to tell him that he’s a good boy. It is a lesson that he has learned through many, many lovers over many more years, that they can get whatever they want out of him so long as he is praised for it. But being with the anthropomorphic manifestation of the dreams of all living things has broadened Hob’s horizons a bit. And their approach to sex is no exception.

When Dream gives Hob praise, he insists it is easy because he is only telling the truth, and that alone makes Hob blush, tugging at his ear coyly in the way Dream so adores. There is something about Dream’s voice that does it for him too, the deep sound of it at once soothing and electrifying, making even the most innocuous words charged with appeal.

As much as Hob enjoys it when Dream says nice things to him, he is learning that he might like it just as much when he is cruel.

Those with less experience than Hob, and more inclination to care about those sorts of things, might see his current situation as somewhat degrading. He is naked, knelt at the feet of the Dreamlord’s throne with his lover’s palm pressed hard into his jaw. He is being forced to look up, to keep his focus on the king’s face and not on his deliciously flushed cock standing tall amongst robes of celestial black.

“Won’t you let me taste you, love?” Hob murmurs, brown eyes blown darker with want. He is grateful to be kneeling - his arse stings with the shadows of Dream’s hands still littered over his skin.

Dream tuts. “ I told you to be quiet. ”

“You did,” Hob agrees, shifting to grant his aching dick even a hint of friction. But as if sensing his intent, Dream pulls, forcing Hob to straighten up. It coaxes an eager gasp out of him, a breathless prayer akin to a murmur of please.

“ And yet you still speak. ”

“I’ll be so good, I promise. You just have to let me--”

“ You will be silent. ”

“Let me touch you,” Hob continues, undeterred, “You know how good I can be, how good I can make you feel, if you would just--”

“Shut up,” Dream growls. His fingers tighten around Hob’s chin, hauling him up clumsily to his feet until they are practically nose to nose. His anger is palpable in the coronas blazing around his twin star irises, but Hob grins with victory. Dream can try to be as scary as he wants, but Hob knows he’ll get his way in the end.

“Make me.”

Long marble fingers dig deep into his hair and push. Any noise of protest Hob might have made is quickly muffled by the weeping crown of Dream’s cock pressed between his lips. He moans around it, dipping as low as he can. The Dreaming permits far more than the waking world, and Hob swallows him with ease, his heart dancing with joy at the sounds ripped from Dream in turn. Dream thrusts into his mouth, rocking back and forth with increasingly ragged breaths he does not usually need. Riling him up has had the intended effect, and Hob doubles his efforts, keen to bring his beloved the release he craves. 

He can taste Dream’s imminent climax at the back of his throat; the tang of sea air fills his lungs with each drag of his tongue over Dream’s shaft, and the sharp promise of lightning tingles across his skin. When Dream comes, he buries himself in Hob’s mouth, pressing his lover’s nose to the curls at the very root of him, and bucks up further still with an almost anguished cry.

Soothing circles are rubbed into Hob’s scalp as he is drawn back, gasping for air, delirious with the satisfaction of his work. Dream blinks at him as if he is a marvel, beyond the comprehension of even a being such as an Endless, and Hob knows he will be rewarded for being a good boy after all.

Chapter Text

The White Horse Inn, 1689.

Dream maintains indifference, but he is not immoveable. Even in their brief acquaintance of the last three hundred years, he had developed a care for this man, for the highs and lows he lives through. And this is the lowest that anyone could fall to. He holds back the question, just for a moment, but when Dream speaks he refuses to acknowledge how his voice is affected. How he almost fears the answer.

“So do you still wish to live?”

Fresh tears break though Hob’s unshaven face still glistens wet from those which fell before. Dream braces himself for the words he had expected to hear two centuries previous.

“Are you crazy?” Hob asks, and through the sorrow an impossible smile blooms, “Death is a mug’s game, I’ve got so much to live for.”

Dream huffs. His disbelief is evident now. But that smile reminds him of the reason he keeps coming back, one he has denied himself for years uncountable.

“Show me,” he says, and he leans forward to cup his hand gently around the comely shape of the other man’s jaw, roughened by a contrarily handsome beard, “Show me your passion for life, Hob Gadling. Let me see what it is which drives you.”

Hob blinks at him but does not flinch away. Around them the tavern empties of the gawking patrons, those who had ignored Hob and other poor souls like him, until only he and Dream remain at their table. Dream shifts his thumb to brush it over Hob’s lips; dry broken skin is instantly smoothed, and Hob’s eyes flutter closed, breathing a warm sigh over the pad of Dream’s thumb.

“No one has touched me so kindly in ages,” Hob says, and Dream cannot halt the smile which blooms at the confession, “You would have me, when everyone else has turned me away?”

“ Yes, ” Dream urges, and the table and chairs have vanished. Hob falls backwards onto a bed softer than any he would ever have known, and Dream immediately straddles his middle, his regal black vestments falling away as sand until he is bare. Hob stares up at him with wonder, that same expression he wore when they met the second time, the one where Dream had told him his only interest was in his experiences, not him.  He knows now that those words had been a lie. 

Fingers brush the flowing ebony hair from Dream’s shoulders with a tender reverence, those same hands stained with ink from the press of Caxton, before warm lips kiss along Dream’s shoulder. The starving Hob beneath him grins at the unseen presence at Dream’s back, only for a moment, and then returns his focus solely to the being sat across him. 

“You’re a greedy thing, aren’t you?” Hob says, “All of us here know hunger, love. What it’s like to want something we think we can’t have. But all you had to do was ask, and you could have had any one of us.”

The realisation stirs something deep and secret in Dream’s chest, at the same moment that more hands begin to roam over his pale skin - the Hob under him lifts dirty fingers that tease his nipples, another pair smears ink down the sides of his ribs, and another has digits that smell faintly of cigar smoke as they push past his lips. 

“Open up,” Hob’s voice whispers in Dream’s ear, “There’s a good little lordling.”

Dream eagerly takes them, moaning softly as he feels a slicked cock press between his buttocks at the same time that the thick fingers delve into his mouth. It catches on tight muscle for the briefest moment and he trembles, too much all at once, but he doesn’t want it to stop. Palms bracket his waist as more play with his hair. Dream cannot see any of them except for the vagrant between his thighs, but he would know the touch of the man he loves better than any other, even in multiples.

“Are you ready?” the mouth at his ear asks, and Dream nods desperately. Hob presses in, bottoming out inside of him with a ragged groan that echoes in many voices around Dream, as if each and every version of Hob that he has known over six hundred years feels the tight heat of his body around their cock.

Dream chokes on the fingers fucking his mouth, struggling to swallow around them as he rocks back to take more of Hob, as much as he can. His own cock weeps unattended until a fist wraps around it, the knuckles bloodied from the fight with Constantine’s men, and Dream loses himself to fucking and being fucked, all senses overwhelmed by Hob, Hob, Hob…

He comes with a cry of his lover’s name, spilling over the naked skin of their stomachs, and then it is only one pair of hands pulling him closer. Hob steals his weakening pleas with anchoring kisses as they move together through their shared climax, Hob’s fingers tracing soothing patterns up and down Dream’s back until he is grounded, until once more it is just the two of them in Hob’s bed. 

“You okay?” Hob asks him, chuckling breathlessly into Dream’s hair.

Dream offers a weak laugh in return. “Yes, I am… more than that. Are you? Was that… strange?”

“To watch? Maybe a little, yeah. Never thought I would be jealous of myself, let alone half a dozen of me at once, but… it works for me. And it clearly works for you, so I can’t complain.”

“I have… one thing to say,” Dream admits, managing to lift himself to rest over Hob and meet his eyes.

Hob’s brow knits with concern. “Oh?”

“I think you ought to have a beard again.”

Hob’s laughter vibrates through him, and Dream smiles as he rests his head over an enduring heart, settling into the bliss of the man he loves beneath him. In any century, in any lifetime, he cannot imagine wanting to be anywhere else.

Chapter Text

Hob’s realm cannot shift and change as the Dreaming does, nor is it truly a facet of the man who rules it, but it is his. This is undeniable. Dream can feel the embrace of Hob’s presence in the lecture hall as well as he would have felt the man’s arms around him, and he is certain at this potency that his students do as well. It is a place of knowledge, of sanctuary. A place where one can speak their mind without hesitation or judgement. It makes him love the man all the more. 

Hob turns at the sound of footsteps descending the stairs to where he is setting up at the desk at the front. “Bit early, aren’t we? That’s alright, I could use a hand with the--”

He blinks at Dream.

Dream stops where he is on the stairs and blinks back.

“Hello, Hob,” he says, surprising even himself in being the one to break the brief silence, “Is… something wrong?”

Managing to retain some semblance of sense, Hob suddenly moves, stepping quickly to the bottom of the stairs and holding out his hand for Dream. “No! No, it’s just… I didn’t expect to see you. Here. Today. At all.”

“You told me I should see you in action at a convenient time,” Dream explains, his tone teasing as he takes it, “Now is a convenient time.”

Hob smiles, a charming rosy colour rising in his cheeks. This is odd to Dream, as he assumes it to be a comfortable temperature. Hob’s sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, and the buttons of his shirt are undone low enough to allow a glimpse of the hair on his chest, certainly enough to keep him cool.

“I am glad to see you. I’ve missed you,” Hob admits with a laugh, though conversely he seems to stiffen under Dream’s touch, pale fingers fondly tracing the shape of his jaw. 

“You have missed me?” Dream repeats, dropping his voice in the way he knows Hob likes, and the pieces fall into place. Hob shivers, and his hands find Dream’s wrists and tug.

“I have a surprise for you,” Hob admits, leading him to the desk, “You weren’t supposed to see until I saw you later, but… I don’t suppose you locked the door on your way in, did you?”

A faint click echoes through the lecture hall, and Dream smirks. “We shall not be disturbed.”

“Right,” Hob chuckles, “You promise you won’t laugh?”

“I swear it,” Dream says, perhaps more solemnly than necessary, but he is grateful to see Hob relax just a little for it. Hob glances at the door as if to assure himself of their privacy before he sheds his trousers and underwear, and Dream feels how much more rigid he is in each movement. His cock springs free of its trappings, weeping at the head, and Dream regards it with a sudden enthusiasm that has him dropping to his knees. He wets his lips, hands bracketing the top of Hob’s thighs, his mouth poised to taste the pearly arousal gathered at the crown--

And Hob pushes him away. Gently, but denying his advances all the same.

Dream lifts his face, stormy blue eyes darkened with want and narrowed in question.

“I’m flattered, but I’m not your surprise. Not on my own,” Hob murmurs, his gaze sparkling with immeasurable fondness. He turns, and Dream continues to frown until he is face to face…

…with a ruby, mounted in gold.

It is plastic, that much is obvious. But the effect is not lost on Dream, the false but still blood red gem nestled neatly between Hob’s buttocks. His lover owns an array of toys, a more private dedication to human ingenuity, but this is not one which Dream has seen before.

“It’s a plug,” Hob offers in Dream’s awed silence, “It’s been in all day.”

Dream hums approvingly, his long fingers settling around the rim of the fake stone and tugging gently. “And if I were to take it out?”

Hob bites back a noise that is dangerously close to a whine. “I… I’d want you to fuck me. It’s been keeping me ready, and I can’t wait anymore.”

“You want me to take you? Right here? Right now?”

“Yes, god yes, please,” Hob laughs shakily, his knuckles bleeding white on the edge of the desk, “I’m all yours, Dream. Fuck me. I need you.”

Dream submits himself to very human actions; Hob tenses as he hears a zipper pulled down, and black skinny jeans are shucked low enough for Dream to take himself in hand. Hob’s body clings to the plug, and Dream takes great satisfaction in the sounds his love makes as he pulls harder, shallowly fucking Hob with the toy.

“Please, Dream. Just… take it out, please, I need you to—“ Hob begs, cut off with a sound close to a howl as Dream finally eases the plug free and throws it aside. The blunt head of his cock soon follows in its wake, and Dream sinks into him slowly, until he is buried to the hilt and Hob squirms against him.

“You have imagined this all day, haven’t you?” Dream asks, easing himself away slowly before burying his cock inside Hob again with enough force to knock the air from his lover’s lungs, “I can taste the daydreams at the back of your mind, the fantasies of me bending you over your desk just like this.”

“Dream, yes, fuck, yes, don’t stop—“

“ Quiet,” Dream growls in his ear, one hand lifted to yank at Hob’s hair whilst the other digs hard into his hip, “You must be quiet when I am talking.”

Hob ought not to have the breath to spare, each harsh thrust forcing it from him, and yet he laughs anyway. “I… I can try.”

“You will,” Dream tells him firmly, “And you will touch yourself. 

No hesitation prevents Hob from doing as Dream permits. He is caught between his own palm and the merciless fucking of the Endless at his back, shivering in the sheer overwhelming pleasure of his oversensitive hole being so thoroughly claimed. All the while he bites back the desperate noises clawing at his throat, his cock leaking all over his fist each time Dream slams him against the desk.

“I want to see you fall apart like this,” Dream continues, “I want to see you come, knowing it is because of me, because all you could think about was being fucked like this.”

“Yes, I-I couldn’t think of anything else. Nothing but you,” Hob agrees, and is rewarded for it with quicker rolls of Dream’s hips, driving into him over and over until he falls, calling out his lover’s name and spending over the desk. There is cum all over his hand and the table, and a few unfortunate bits of paper which are now inevitably beyond salvation, but all Hob can find it in him to care about is the way Dream’s hips stutter in a few last clumsy thrusts before he buries himself deep and spills inside Hob, his own cry of ecstasy smothered in the meat of Hob’s shoulder. 

They stand together, shaking and panting, as Dream peppers somewhat apologetic kisses over Hob’s skin. And despite the state they are both in - or perhaps because of it - and the precious seconds ticking away until responsibility comes to kick him in the arse, Hob laughs. 

“Well, I’m glad you liked your surprise, after all.”

Chapter Text

Dream recalls that Hob did tell him what the marathon is in aid of. And yet all he can really think about as Hob crosses the finish line, grinning at him all the while as the distance between them closes, is how much he wants to feel those muscular calves crossed behind his own back.

“You must think I’m a madman, running in this heat,” Hob says brightly, snatching a water bottle from a nearby table, “But then you’re the one in all black, so—“

“It does not affect me. Not like… other things do,” Dream says, his eyes dragging down from Hob’s face over his heaving chest, his thick arms, his comely waist, and those legs practically made perfect for exertion, before that lingering gaze trails slowly back up to his handsome face.

Hob’s smile falters, his charming brown eyes widening as he sips from the water he was given. “What, really? I’m a mess, love. You’re fucking with me.”

“Not yet. And not in public, as you have so often reprimanded me about.”

Breathlessness and shock are not a fair mix for someone trying to take a drink; Hob chokes at Dream’s blunt response, spluttering on what would have otherwise been a refreshing mouthful of water. 

“Well, forgive me for not wanting to be arrested for public indecency,” he manages to reply, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Dream is struck by the urge to taste the mix of sweat and spit, and indulges it, his sweet pink lips stark against Hob’s skin.

“I can ensure we are not noticed for a short while,” he suggests, his eyes flicking up to meet Hob’s, “If you want to find out what we can get away with?”

The world slows. Everything is muted and blurred like one is watching through a patterned window. Dream kisses his hand again, his usually cool lips searing, and Hob swallows before he replies.

“You’re a nightmare,” he chuckles, and it is all the confirmation Dream needs, practically glowing with approval as he pulls Hob to a nearby bench. It is unoccupied, and Dream pushes Hob down to sit on it before falling to his knees between parted legs.

“I am yours ,” Dream corrects, long fingers trailing along the inside of Hob’s legs and pushing the damp fabric of his shorts upwards. He buries his face in Hob’s groin, nipping at the skin on the inside of his thigh, and Hob gasps above him.

“Mine?” Hob asks, a trembling grin teasing his lover, “All mine?”

“All yours,” Dream echoes, and diverts his attention instead to the waistband of Hob’s shorts, tugging them down. Hob barely has time to appreciate the brief bliss of cooler air around his cock before Dream dives in and takes him between his lips half-hard. He lifts a fist to bite into it, eyes desperately darting about. But no one seems to notice they are even there, and Hob feels himself drop back against the bench. 

Dream hums around him; the taste of Hob here is beyond description, hot and slick and alive, so deliciously mortal that his own cock aches in protest. He is utterly surrounded by the scent of him, the essence of what makes him so tempting to Dream, and it draws the hum into a moan of need. In his mind, Hob has earned this; he has given himself in the service of others, as he has so often done, and this will be his reward. There is no need for a paltry medal when he can have Dream’s mouth swallowing him down into his throat, hands pinning him in place so that all he can do is fuck against Dream’s tongue.

Hob’s own hand cups the back of Dream’s head so reverently that it is the first time in the lifetime of the Endless that he has felt fragile. He loses himself in it, in being used but so adored at the same time, and feels his own climax searing along all of his nerves as the thrusts of Hob’s hips into his mouth quicken and stutter.

“Dream, love, I… I’m really close,” Hob admits with a broken laugh, “Can I…?”

The affirmation he seeks is given as Dream squeezes his legs firmly. Hob pushes as deep as he can, thrilling all the more with how his lover groans approvingly at the stretch of his cock in his throat, and then lets go. Dream swallows him down, letting Hob fuck him for as long as he needs, and does not gasp or hurry to wipe his spend-smeared lips when Hob finally releases him.

“Take me home,” Hob tells him, running his thumb through the mess of Dream’s mouth, “I want to show you just how good that was. And… maybe have a shower first.”

“I am amenable to one of those two suggestions,” Dream counters, and the sand whisks them away before Hob can even hope to protest it.

Chapter Text

Dream arrives at the now familiar pub to a crowd of unfamiliar faces. Regular patrons brave the throng of strangers to stake their claims at the bar, and he finds Hob behind it for once, having just emerged from the cellar after changing a barrel. His hair is tucked behind his ears, pleasantly displaying the five o’clock shadow along his jaw and the glisten of sweat over his brow. He has rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, exposing arms thick with muscle and covered with hair that hides the scars of a life long lived.

Dream notices in the same moment as he does that he must have caught himself on something - a thin trickle of crimson streaks down his wrist. Hob pauses and lifts the wound to his lips, sucking it clean at the exact moment that he meets eyes with Dream across the room.

Dream feels the blush rise on his cheeks, an involuntary reaction of a body that becomes more human with every visit to the Waking world, it seems. With every time he sees Hob, and gains a new appreciation for what it is to be human in the first place.

Hob drops his hand and grins at him, and Dream smiles coyly back, thinking about how Hob’s breathing is heavy from his labours and how he wants to bury his face there in thick hair damp with sweat and--

A woman stumbles into him, laughing drunkenly, and Dream carefully rights her before sending her on her way. When he looks up again, Hob is serving a gaggle of loud young men, pouring out shots of a dark thick liquid and laughing along to whatever joke they share. He edges closer, dodging more wayward revellers until he practically bumps elbows with the carousers. 

“Thank you, gentlemen. Look after each other!” Hob says, a fondness in his eyes for the group as he tucks a tip into his back pocket and they wobble back off to where they have staked their claim.

He then turns his attention to Dream, and his gaze is harder, more focused. Warm brown seems almost black in the low light, and Dream cannot help but wonder if this is a little of what Hob feels like when twin stars hone on him with such intensity.

“Hello gorgeous,” Hob says, just loud enough to be heard over the din of partygoers, “What brings you in tonight?”

“I wanted to see you.”

“Yeah? And why is that?” Hob asks, his smile only growing wider. This close, Dream can faintly sense the siren song of whiskey on his lips, pairing nicely with a tease of his cedarwood cologne and the promising tang of sweat beneath.

Yet Dream tips his head, feigning confusion. “Do I need a reason to visit the man I love?”

Hob laughs. “Nice try. I saw the way you were looking at me before, darling. You aren’t subtle. If we weren’t in public right now, I’d…”

Dream’s eyes narrow as Hob trails off, and then he feels it, brushing at the edge of his awareness like the delicious scratch of stubble against his skin. Hob stares at him, his bright and winsome smile fading to a smaller but more curious expression as he shows Dream what he wants.

They are in the small corridor behind the main space of the pub with Hob’s back to the wall. The music from inside thrums through him as Dream brings his injured wrist to his mouth and sucks, coaxing fresh blood out of it once more. It smears over his sweet pink lips and Hob kisses him, tasting the coppery tang of blood and the sting of salt as they squirm against one another. And then…

They are against the door just outside Hob’s flat, the music from below still loud enough to be heard, and loud enough to mask the desperate sounds Dream makes as Hob bites and sucks at his neck. His hand slips down the front of sinfully skinny black jeans, fisting around Dream’s cock and jerking him roughly. Dream clings to him, nails digging into his arms, and then…

They are in Hob’s bed above the pub. Dream is naked, spread out before him with every pale inch begging to be kissed. Hob is above him, one broad hand encompassing Dream’s narrow wrists over his head as he fucks him. Dream is tight, but he takes Hob’s cock like he was made for it, his own leaving a pearlescent trail over his abdomen as Hob ruts into him again. Hob is still wearing his shirt, though it is unbuttoned all the way, and Dream lifts his head to get a taste only to be forced back down again; he could break away any moment if he truly wanted to, but Hob knows that he enjoys forfeiting control like this, to show Hob that he trusts him and loves him and wants him.

And then they are back in the bar. They are so close that their noses brush, and a few of the pub’s patrons are staring, but Hob doesn’t seem to care. He steals a kiss then, the chaste press of his lips to Dream’s even as the embers of his imaginings still burn between them. 

“I finish in an hour,” he tells Dream smugly, “Why don’t you have a glass of wine while you wait?”

Chapter Text

The Endless did not need sleep. Dream had been very insistent when Hob initially offered for him to stay the night, though he appreciated the pyjamas lent to him, and he was still there when Hob first came to. There had rarely been quite so pleasant a sight to wake to as Dream’s eyes, cerulean as the most glorious summer day. Their limbs were tangled together, warm and content, and it took a great deal of effort for Hob to fight off the most restful sleep he’d had to date.

“Sorry. Can’t have been pretty,” he had greeted Dream with an awkward laugh, “Not to mention the snoring.” 

But Dream had smiled, a soft wonderful thing which rended Hob’s heart clean in two. “On the contrary, I find you as captivating asleep as you are awake.”

“Oh. Did you… watch me all night?” Hob asked.

A brief discussion of boundaries followed over tea and a hearty breakfast; Dream promised he would refrain from staring at Hob whilst he was unconscious. He was still welcome to stay, though there was no obligation to remain, only if he wanted to. And it became a regular habit after that.

On this particular morning Hob wakes to Dream leaning over him, his brow pulled down in an endearing state of perplexity. Hob blinks, rubbing away the sleep sand in his eyes, and waits for an explanation.

“You were dreaming very loudly last night,” Dream tells him plainly.

Hob blinks. “I… Was I? Can’t say I remember much of it.”

“You imagined being asphyxiated. By me.”

It all comes back in a sudden vivid flash. The alley alongside the White Horse, back in 1889, and Dream’s knee is rammed up between Hob’s thighs, his pale fingers wrapped around Hob’s neck. It is not how that night really went, of course, but Hob spent subsequent months of denial wishing it had, that Dream turned back around and pinned him to the wall and fucked an apology out of him.

“And…” Hob forces himself to respond, “how do you feel about that?”

Dream tips his head, contemplating the question - and the man who asked it - in an unnervingly aquiline way that makes Hob feel like a field mouse scurrying about beneath the hungry gaze of a hawk. “You enjoyed it. The feeling of helplessness. Seeing a glimpse of my power even when you did not know what I truly was; the strength I held, the things I was capable of.”

Hob swallows, and Dream’s hand shoots upwards to press against the bob of his Adam’s apple with the pad of his thumb, just hard enough to make Hob’s breath catch as he does it. 

“I would like to see you in that state, by my hand,” Dream continues, voice dropped to a pitch that hits Hob straight in the dick, “Would you enjoy it?”

“Yes,” Hob says plainly, perhaps a little faster than his pride is willing to acknowledge. Yet what more is there to say? He ought to be terrified of Dream, knowing what he does of the King of Nightmares, and the idea of being utterly powerless beneath him. But then again, Hob Gadling has never been one to do things as he ought to, and the idea which should frighten him instead has him already so hard that all he can think about is Dream’s thumb tracing every hardened breath. 

Dream smiles, his eyes darkening to the twin suns that Hob could not have coaxed up for him in even his wildest fantasies. His fingers wind around Hob’s throat and push, and immediately he is left gasping. Just enough air to keep him in the moment, but the world tips on its axis, and a heart that cannot stop beating still kicks hard at the possibility. 

“Come on, lover,” Dream purrs, straddling Hob and grinding mercilessly against his cock, “You have to work for it.”

Hob gasps weakly for air he cannot have, his eyes watering, and still he grins like a man possessed. His hands grip the bed sheets, waiting to be told what he can have. “P-please, can I… Will you…?”

“Will I, what? Tell me what it is you want, my dearest one. Whatever you wish for.”

“F-fuck, I want…” Hob stammers, and then chokes as Dream tightens his grip, his hips rutting up into the cleft of Dream’s arse and marveling for the hundredth time - through the heady combined haze of a lack of oxygen and blinding lust - at how slick he is. 

Dream shushes him. “I know. You may have it. You may have me. ”

He shifts and then takes Hob to the hilt in one swift movement. It should be embarrassing, how close Hob is already, but he does not have the air to apologise as Dream rides him hard, each lift of his body easing the pressure on Hob’s throat for just a moment before he slams himself down again. Hob has a litany of praise trapped under his tongue, black spots dancing across his vision as he clings to the sight of Dream fucking himself on his cock. He comes just as Dream leans down and steals that last trace of oxygen from him in a kiss. Shaking, his hands scrabbling for Dream’s hips to hold him there, Hob gasps desperately for air as the vice around his neck eases off gradually.

“Fuck,” Hob laughs, shaky and rough but no less genuine for it, “I get what the French were on about now. La petite bloody mort, indeed. ”

Dream huffs against his throat where he has settled. It is a pleasant sensation over the bruises blossoming there. “I will permit you this one joke, awful as it is, and assume it is because you are delirious. But do not bring up my sister whilst you are still inside me ever again.”

Chapter Text

The New Inn is packed wall to wall. Hob pinches a cigarette from one of the young women he speaks to out the front of the pub, and Dream feels her thoughts fixate on the way their fingers had brushed, just for a moment. He watches from a distance, contemplating if he should come closer, and it is not the first time he has seen someone’s attention fixate on Hob in such a way even just tonight.

He cannot blame any of them, of course. He is more than aware of how irresistible he is; Hob’s quick wit and comely build make him the type of charming rogue that no one has been able to resist for as long as he has chosen to stay alive. But Dream also acknowledges that tightening in his chest, the way his jaw jumps as she flutters her eyelashes at Hob and says something he cannot hear as she leans close, but it is almost definitely an attempt at flirting. He can tell because of the way Hob slowly smirks, tips his head, and says something back which has the woman practically swooning.

A bolt of something hot, something possessive, strikes Dream where he stands. Would it be considered inappropriate by modern human standards for him to stride in and kiss that smirk from Hob’s lips, soundly enough that no one could question who he belongs to? Most likely. 

Yet Dream finds he does not care in the slightest. And so he moves. Hob barely has the time to register the blur of black that collides with him before the cigarette is torn from his lips and he is dipped in a searing kiss which has a few of the regulars whistling.

“Watch out, Robbie! Your boyfriend’s here!” someone calls belatedly to a chorus of laughter. When Dream lifts a briefly dazed Hob back up onto his feet, the woman is long gone. He makes no attempt to subdue the satisfaction dancing upon his lips.

“I could feel you staring over there,” Hob says with a laugh, brushing his hand down Dream’s arm and then linking their fingers together, “Wondered how long it would take you.”

“You were taunting me on purpose?”

“Maybe a little. But you can’t blame a man for being curious,” he admits, “Now, are we just going to stand here and make everyone else jealous, or are you going to steal me away and ravish me?”

“Robert Gadling, you are not using a pick-up line on me. ”

“I think I just did.”

“I would have you reconsider how wise it is to continue to test my patience, lest you be forced to beg for my forgiveness,” Dream murmurs, his voice dropping low in that dangerous way Hob always thrills for.

“Oh yeah? Is that a threat or a promise?”

Sand swirls around them. The crowd that had previously been drinking with Hob would remember him and Dream stumbling off into the night at that moment, resolving to tease him about it later. In truth, Hob realises, Dream must have deposited him in his bed above the pub, and then brought his sleeping mind to his own personal chambers in the Dreaming. His naked body is cradled by silken sheets as dark as the night sky, and Dream towers above him, everything about him just that little bit bigger than it is in the waking world.

Dream wastes no time. Hob’s knees are pressed up practically beside his ears by long grasping fingers, and any hope of protest is quickly shot down as Dream’s impossibly prehensile tongue teases at his arsehole. Hob laughs in surprise, squirming against a hold he could not break unless he truly did not want it. 

“Didn’t realise I’d gotten under your skin quite so much there, love,” Hob says. It is not an apology, as he knows Dream would not want him to give one so easily.

Dream hums, the sensation so intense where Hob is most sensitive that it already makes him whine, pressing his hips down to the slick press of Dream’s tongue. Dream presses in deep, deeper, and Hob fights to breathe through the initial burn stretching gradually into pleasure. There is a glancing blow of the tip of that tongue against his prostate and Hob cries out, immediately missing that pressure.

“Dream, love, please,” he pants, “Do that a-again? That felt… fucking incredible, and I--”

“I told you, you would be begging,” Dream responds, the words reverberating through Hob’s entire body despite not being spoken aloud. Hob shudders, his cock bouncing against his stomach as Dream fucks him with his tongue, smearing trails of pre-cum through the sparse hair on his abdomen. 

“Please,” Hob repeats weakly, “Please, Dream, I need it. Need to feel--!”

Another tease. Something akin to a caress, so deep inside that Hob feels certain he will remember the sensation when he wakes.

“You are mine,” Dream continues, “You belong to no other. Such as you have abused your tongue for a purpose other than my pleasure, I shall punish you accordingly.”

“Fuck, love, m-my sweetest Dream, please,” Hob hisses, managing to rock with what little movement he can achieve as his lover has pinned him, “I need to, need to come, want to come on your t-tongue, darling… Please let me?”

“Beg.”

“Fuck, I can’t… I can’t fucking think straight. Please, let me come. Please. You know what I need--”

The full pressure of the tip of Dream’s tongue bears down on him. It thickens inside him at the same time, stretching Hob around it to the point where it is too much, and he comes with a cry loud enough to echo through the entirety of the Dreaming. It is the most divine sound Dream has ever heard, of this he is certain, and thus he coaxes a chorus of them as he fucks Hob through his climax, only withdrawing when his partner is sobbing for him to do so. And then Hob is wrapped in long pale limbs from behind, cool lips kissing almost apologetically along his shoulder.

“You’re a bastard,” he tells Dream fondly, “A rotten jealous bastard.”

Dream hums. “And you are a glut for punishment. I would have you no other way.”

Chapter Text

Hob did not see Dream eat for six hundred years. Even in their meeting in 1689, when Hob had ordered enough food to feed ten men and had still left some for his stranger out of hastily recalled courtesy, not a single morsel passed the pale pink lips he had already been fixated upon for centuries.

So when he finally convinces Dream to eat in the New Inn, and watches as he brings honey-slicked halloumi to his mouth, Hob feels that he has made an error in judgement. Gone are the words he might have said next, the subject of conversation immediately forgotten in favour of his concentration fixed solely upon Dream tasting such a simple thing. And when Dream starts sucking the last of the honey from his fingers, his thick eyelashes fluttering open and his eyes locking with Hob’s, it is a sight far too obscene for a sunny Thursday afternoon. 

“Upstairs,” Hob says immediately, his voice a touch higher than he would have liked.

Dream smirks. “Pardon?”

“We’re finishing these upstairs.”

Hob chucks the halloumi into a fresh dish - decades of starvation has made him reluctant to waste food even when his dick takes over from his brain - but brings the bowl of honey into the bedroom with him. Dream is naked, his immaculate fair skin just begging to be marked, and Hob is not going to deny him.

He steps up to the bed, kneeling between the open invitation of Dream’s legs. He dips two fingers into the still-warm honey before swearing a slow trail of it from his lover’s collarbone, down his ribs, across his abdomen, and into the sharp jut of his hip. Taking the time to add a few more streaks of gold - over the sides of Dream’s ribcage, one under his jaw, and glancing brushes of sticky fingers over dusky nipples that coax a shuddering breath from the Endless - he then rocks back onto his heels and sheds his shirt.

“I thought you wanted to dine together,” Dream says, every sinewy inch of him radiating with smug arousal.

“I’m not hungry for food, you cheeky bastard. You knew full bloody well what you were doing.”

“And yet you have given me what I want. What we both want,” Dream purrs. He dips two long fingers into the pool of honey that has welled in a hollow at his clavicle, and then lifts the hand to Hob expectantly.

Hob takes them into his mouth and sucks, his tongue working away the proffered treat like it is the finest ambrosia. He moans around Dream’s fingers, and then quickly wrenches them away with his own hand around Dream’s narrow wrist.

“ Don’t move,” Hob warns, leaning in to kiss the words into the glistening trail along Dream’s sternum.

Dream is confident that he can obey. But Hob is relentless, not letting a drop of honey go to waste. His stubble scratches over Dream’s skin in the wake of his hot mouth, his lover cleaning him so thoroughly that he almost feels rubbed raw by the time Hob’s sweetened lips sink down around his cock. Dream squirms, hands fisted in the sheets as Hob swallows him with ease. He fights to keep his hips still, to be good for Hob, but it is torturous to deny himself the heat of Hob’s mouth as his lover takes him with such swift and practised ease. 

Drawing back, Hob licks his lips, marvelling at the sweetness of the honey and the sea salt tang that is Dream close to climax.

“You can move,” he tells him, his smile echoing that smugness that Dream had previously worn, “Tell me what you want.”

“Fuck me,” Dream whimpers, “I would be yours. Please, I need you.”

Hob knows that Dream will be ready for him. He slots his partner’s shaking legs around his waist, and when he takes Dream it is as slow and gentle as his mouth had been over alabaster skin.

But it does not last. Hob rocks into him, faster and faster with Dream pinned under him. Their fucking is erratic, desperate, and Dream begs and pleads for release as the hair on Hob’s body rubs against all the oversensitive places on his own.

Finally he finds his release, coming hard and loud enough to drag Hob with him over the edge. They lay together, stuck with sweat and spend and honey, and Hob resolves then and there that he has many more things for Dream to try. 

Chapter Text

Upon further experimentation, Hob is delighted to learn that Dream of the Endless, the king of perfect dreams and darkest nightmares, immortal and immovable and sometimes utterly insufferable, has a weakness.

A sweet tooth.

He fills his cupboards to tempt Dream with whenever he happens to visit. And there has never been a better time in all of Hob’s years for food; if one shop doesn’t have it, the next one will, and if not you can have it on your doorstep at the click of a button. Hob plies Dream with Kit Kats, Jaffa Cakes, and Oreos. He bakes for him, and insists on dessert whenever they venture out for dinner.

There is a market alongside the Thames most nights, a popular hub for cuisines of all kinds. Hob’s intention was to let Dream try whatever he wanted, maybe discovering a few new things for himself. But the wide eyes of his lover reveals their true destination - a stall laden with a bounty of candy in every colour and flavour imaginable. 

At Dream’s timid pleading glance, Hob sighs. He cannot help the roll of his eyes, but it is fond, evidence that he will not deny Dream what he wants. “You can have one thing.”

And he cannot fault Dream’s selection. It is a classic, swirled with rainbows and dusted in sparkling shards of sherbet, a long and thick spiralled lollipop. Hob is sure it would be wrong of him not to stare. And so he does. He watches as Dream sucks the sweet into his mouth, a smear of blue and yellow across his bottom lip. He drags it out slowly with a quiet satisfied sound which shoots straight to Hob’s groin. 

“You’re doing that on purpose,” Hob accused, “You’re such a tease.”

When usually he might have expected satisfaction, instead he is met by Dream shooting him a questioning frown.

“Fuck, really? No, no way, you’re teasing me. You know exactly what you’re doing,” Hob insists, taking Dream by the wrist and dragging him off to a suitably quiet corner of the market, closed for the evening and out of sight from the crowds. 

Dream’s brow only furrows further, but he allows himself to be led. “I thought you said you were hungry. Is something wrong?”

Hob chuckles, shaking his head as he pushes Dream up against a brick wall. He takes the lollipop from him, nods pointedly at it, and then sighs with exasperation at Dream’s continued confusion.

“Love, it’s a cock. Look at it.”

Dream blinks. His gaze trails from the lollipop - still glistening with his own saliva - to Hob’s eyes, darkened and sparkling with want. His mouth forms a small oh, and Hob takes a moment to delight in the rosy pink that rises in pale cheeks before he dives in to taste the sticky sweetness lingering on Dream’s lips. They both hum, and Dream vanishes away the lollipop, resolving to investigate further what other foodstuffs might inspire such passion in Hob before dragging his lover closer by his hips.

“You imagined I was taking you in my mouth,” he murmurs, crushing his body against Hob’s and groaning in unison with him as their clothed wants meet, “With the same fervour.”

“Fuck yes, of course I did. How could I not?” Hob replies with a rough laugh, “With your pretty mouth, it’s like you were made for it.”

“Made for you. For sucking your cock,” Dream counters plainly, and his hands drop to Hob’s trousers, nimble fingers making quick work of the fastenings before tugging his jeans and underwear out of the way. Hob’s dick springs upwards, and Dream drops to his knees without any need for coaxing, smearing the mix of candy and spit down Hob’s length as he swallows him eagerly. Hob bites down on his bottom lip to prevent himself from crying out, but is only further spurred on by the hint of sherbet he finds there.

“Fuck, my darling, my only, I need--” Hob pants, stifling another desperate noise as Dream’s nose buries itself in the curly thatch at his root without gagging once. Hob’s fingers wind into Dream’s hair, tugging in the way he knows his lover likes, and is rewarded with a groan so deep that it feels as though it settles into Hob’s bones through his cock.

They remain there in the shadows, Hob desperately rutting into Dream’s mouth and driven mad by how his skin sticks ever so slightly to Dream’s lips with every thrust forward. A slender hand settles under his bollocks, cradling them and rolling them gently every time Dream swallows him down again, and the pad of a finger teasing at his arsehole sends Hob cursing over the edge of his climax. 

Dream finds that he enjoys the taste of Hob intermingled with sugar and sherbet. He wastes not a drop, and because he is a generous lover, he shares it with Hob once he is on his feet again.

“Oh, you have no idea what you’ve set yourself up for,” Hob murmurs, pausing to lick and nip at Dream’s fuck-swollen lips as his partner mewls in half-hearted protest, “We’re not done yet.”

Chapter Text

Dream is not accustomed to the act of giving a gift. Even still, he has been long considering how he might repay Hob for their relocation to the New Inn, for finding them a meeting place even when there was no sure sign that Dream would return at all. The only true way in his mind to reward such dedication is with a boon, but when Hob has lived as long as he has, Dream is unsure what would prove ample payment.

He hopes a surprise will suffice.

Hob returns home from his place of work, his hall of stories which Dream so covets, and exhaustion leads him straight to the bedroom in place of a meal. It has been a long day, and he wants nothing more than to slip into slumber and be reunited with--

“Oh, fucking Christ,” he hisses, flicking on the bedroom light and finding a shadow occupying the bed. The shock quickly wears off when he realises it is Dream, and is then again reinstated when he fully registers the sight on his bed.

There are still the limbs he knows stretching on forever, legs bent daintily at the knee with arms at the elbow to prop Dream up. Cerulean blue fixes upon Hob where he hovers in the doorway, framed by thick dark lashes, fluttering against high rosy cheeks and milky pale skin. But Dream’s hair is longer, spilling in glorious silky tresses over narrow shoulders, and framing nicely the pert breasts and softer stomach of his lover. Between Dream’s legs is the usual dark thatch which Hob so enjoys, and the glimpse of a sweet cunt, exposed as Dream shifts his legs and reveals it. Dream is already so wet with arousal that it makes Hob’s mouth water.

“That’s… a good look on you,” he offers, swaying where he stands.

“Welcome home, lover,” Dream says with a grin as Hob physically startles at the lighter note of his voice, “Won’t you join me?”

He needs no further invitation. Hob falls to his knees and crawls the rest of the way like a pilgrim climbing the stairs to a saint, trailing searing kisses along the inside of Dream’s thighs. His stubble scrapes the sensitive skin there in just the right way to cause Dream to squirm beneath him. When his tongue finds the delicate shape of Dream’s sex, he tastes the sharp-juiced apples he stole in his childhood, the first time he’d tried the bitter zest of a lemon, and that signature hint of ozone tingling over his tongue like the promise of a storm.

“This was for you,” Dream rasps, and though the words are protesting, his hands only coax Hob’s mouth closer, “It was not my intention for you to attend to me. ”

Hob draws back just enough for Dream to see his eyes sparkling with fond amusement. “I’m enjoying myself plenty, my sweetling. But if you insist, I would see you atop of me. Such a pretty thing you’ll be, riding my cock. Would you like that?”

He punctuates his words with a kiss over Dream’s clit, and it rips a moan from him, teased further by the warmth of a chuckle over his aching cunt. Hob rises from his supplication and flops onto the bed next to Dream, no small amount of delight at how Dream wastes no time in undressing him.

Long fingers sink into the thick hair on his chest as Dream clambers astride him. There is a moment where he in turn is teased, where Dream drags his wet pussy over the weeping crown of Hob’s cock in a slow drag that has him groaning with need. Their eyes meet and it is over; Dream sinks down and takes Hob inside him to the hilt, punching the air from Hob’s lungs at the sight and the feeling. Dream is so perfectly made to take him that he knows he will not last.

And Dream makes no effort to give him the chance. He bounces in Hob’s lap, the sound of their joining so filthy and slick that it drives all thought of romance from their minds. Hob clings to Dream’s narrow waist tight enough to bruise, and when he drops a hand to press his thumb to Dream’s clit he throws his head back and wails.

“Please, Hob,” he whimpers, “I would… find my pleasure with you? Please?”

“Yes,” Hob hisses, rocking up to meet Dream every time. He falls over the edge first, burying his cock in the tight heat of Dream’s cunt with a stuttering cry. Dream tumbles after him, collapsing atop his chest and shuddering in his arms as they clumsily take their last. 

Chapter Text

The White Horse Inn, 1389.

“Did I hear you say you have no intention of ever dying?”

Hob ignores the bared teeth around the table - a man is more than his instincts - and gives the pale stranger his best winning smile. They do not often see children of Night in these parts, but it costs nothing to be polite. 

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, that’s right.”

“Your kind are not often as long lived as mine, but it is not unheard of,” the stranger says, with faint amusement, “You must tell me what it is like. Let us meet here again, Robert Gadling, in this tavern of the White Horse in one hundred years.”

Hob startles as he is named so easily, but does not falter. “A hundred years’ time, on this day?”

The stranger nods. Hob’s smile widens, spurred on by how his pack bristles around him at striking a deal with such a creature. “I will see you in the year 1489 then. But before you go, maybe I can give you something to remember me by? Something to convince you to come back, in case you forget our compact?”

The stranger’s eyebrow raises. “What might you have to offer me?”

Hob downs the dregs of his penny ale and then rises to his feet, just that little bit too close to the stranger. He can scent the death on him, the biting tang of coppery blood and damp soil. It shouldn’t excite him, and yet it calls to him almost as sweetly as the moon herself.

“Got enough for a room upstairs,” he says, patting the fat coin purse at his hip, “Saves us rolling around in the hay like beasts, aye?”

Noises of disgust from his pack are ignored in favour of Hob losing himself in the stranger’s face. Has he been enthralled? Has he lost all good sense with the full moon so close? It doesn’t matter. Hob knows what he wants, and he sees it in the stranger’s eyes too. The mirrored want, the need, the hunger.

“Very well,” his stranger says, smiling wider with a glimpse of fangs, “Lead the way.”

It is not the most resplendent lodgings. If Hob had his way, the pale stranger would be laid out on silks and furs. As it is, the wooden frame creaks beneath them, the straw mattress scratching at Hob’s knees as he fucks into the body pinned beneath his own. His stranger moans sweetly as Hob fucks him on his hands and knees, a rough clawed fist jerking his cock as Hob drives himself harder and deeper into lifeless cool flesh. 

“I want to feel you let go,” he growls in the stranger’s ear, “I want to feel you come on my cock, revenant lord, and know you’ll be back for more in one hundred years.”

“Yes,” his stranger hisses, rocking back to meet him and then moaning sharply in chorus to the slap of skin on skin. He trembles under Hob as climax rips through him, and wails aloud as Hob sinks his teeth into the narrow shoulder rubbed raw by his stubble.

Hob’s mouth is flooded by a taste unknown to him, one that is beyond description. It tastes like the infinite black of the cosmos, the coming storm, and the eternal silence after the end of all things.

And he drinks. And drinks, and drinks…

And he comes, his groan of pleasure and its relief consuming him utterly as he fucks his stranger through it. 

The next thing he registers is laying on his back, panting like a dog. He watches the stranger replace his clothes with fluid precision, and then sits up as he hesitates at the door before leaving.

Another smile, sharp as daggers. “One hundred years, Robert Gadling. Do not let me wait.”

Chapter Text

All the books that Hob keeps exist in Dream’s vast library, of course, but it would not have necessarily occurred to him to summon these particular volumes, especially not when it comes to the man who owns them. Hob has shown Dream that he has tastes that others might consider… unusual, but nothing which has proved as such to the being responsible for all the imaginings of sleep.

Not until now, anyway.

He waits for Hob to return from a night out with colleagues. The man barely makes it through the door before Dream is upon him, dressed in a robe that shifts and spirals like smoke.

“Forbidden Love,” Dream murmurs against his lips, when Hob does not resist being pulled to the bed, or having Dream kiss the beer and chip grease from his mouth as they go.

“Eh?”

“Forbidden Love,” Dream repeats, this time with a low rumbling chuckle, “The Volumes of Depravity, acts seven through twelve. Ten Thousand Leagues Inside Your—“

“Ah,” Hob offers weakly, “You, uhh, you found those, did you?”

Dream turns them both so that the back of Hob’s legs hit the bed. He falls, wide-eyed, his chest heaving and skin flushed with life as he watches Dream start to shift and change before him. A  shimmer of scales rises up the peaks of his face. His eyes fill with inky black, dark as the deepest parts of the sea. Obsidian claws slowly extend from the tips of bony white fingers, and the cloak around Dream’s lower half starts to drift up around him, swaying like it is carried on a current but occasionally twisting as if the fabric in turn has a mind of its own.

Tentacles, Hob realises. His lover, now at least two feet taller than usual, bends over the bed and over him with a smile that flashes shark-like teeth.

“Many men feared the Kraken, in an age long past,” the nightmare rasps, “but you crave it.”

And Hob grins, the impossible man that he is. “So, who’s going to top?”

Dream chuckles, the sound long and rolling, terrible and dangerous as thunder. “You will be at my mercy, Hob Gadling. You are prey, and you will submit.”

Hob is grateful to have not been much attached to the clothes ripped from him. He can be patient when the moment calls for it, but now he is writhing with anticipation, tendrils coiling around his legs and up between them. Dream watches silently, still looming over the bed as some great shadow, but the hunger in his eyes as Hob is taken betrays him. At an eager shape pressing against him, into him, Hob keens weakly and pushes himself down on it. Thicker forms pin him to the bed by his wrists and ankles, sucking marks of possession into his skin as if there were any room for doubt. Slick tentacles twist and tease over Hob’s nipples as another fills him alongside the first, the two shifting back and forth in tandem at a maddeningly quick pace.

“Love, I--” Hob says, but whatever it is he might offer, plea or protest, is smothered by another of his lover’s appendages pushing into his mouth. Hob moans around it, swallowing it with practised eagerness as the others inside him take him harder, deeper…

He comes with tears glistening on his skin, matching the pearlescent spend that spurts from his untouched cock. Dream immediately smears it across Hob’s abdomen, bringing wicked sharp claws coated in it to his lips. And he hums with approval as his beloved trembles beneath him, knowing it is certainly not in fear. 

Chapter Text

“The occasion where I showed you all versions of yourself. You’ve been thinking about it,” Dream murmurs into Hob’s throat, as he pins him to the trunk of a tree in the gardens of the palace. It is the closest thing to an ‘outdoors’ that Dream could offer. Hob’s legs slung around his narrow waist allow Dream to bury his cock to the hilt inside him, grinding forward at a slow pace that keeps them both creeping closer to orgasm. 

Hob huffs, his fingers playing with the hair at the nape of Dream’s neck as he trembles tellingly against the tree. “Yeah, I… wondered what it might be like, me and half a dozen copies of my stranger. Can’t blame a man for being curious.”

Dream smiles. It is a satisfied expression, but there is a glimmer of something beneath which Hob recognises as pure mischief. 

“Name one.”

“What?”

“Name one year that we met, one version of me that you found the most attractive.”

Something at the back of Hob’s mind insists that this is a trap, that any answer he gives will be offending in some shape or form. But then he remembers that his lover is the Shaper of Forms, and that this really is just a game to him, and a way to satisfy Hob, to bring him pleasure. 

He contemplates his answer with some care, all the same.

“1689,” Hob concludes, and then curses softly as Dream fucks him just that little bit harder - in approval, he thinks, “You were divine that night. Heaven sent.”

“Nothing of the sort, this you know. And you… like my hair longer?”

Hob manages to nod his head, smiling at how hesitantly Dream says it, and he is rewarded with a kiss. There is a shift, one that Hob has come to recognise as the realm bending to its king, and then arms wind around him from behind. As Dream draws back, Hob sees pale skin flushed pink as it disappears into the high collar of his black shirt, framed by silky black tresses of hair.

“Does this suffice?” the new Dream behind him murmurs, and Hob can feel the blunt press of a second cock at his hole. 

Too tight, he thinks, too much.

“Yes,” he says instead, squirming between them, and there is pain for only a moment before he is full, more full than he can ever remember being in his long and eventful life.

The Dream in front of him closes his eyes and rocks forward harder. Hob is helpless, split on two perfect copies of his lover as they fuck him in perfect sync, one pair of hands bracketing his legs as the other tugs at his own aching cock. 

“God, I can’t—“ Hob moans, trembling, the air torn from his lungs before he might plead for anything more.

“You can’t?” Dream whispers in his ear, “What is it, beloved? You cannot what?”

Hob laughs without breath. “I can’t wait to come like this. Want to. Really want to. Please, I… I need to.”

“Oh, you should not have said that,” Dream chastises with dark amusement, and Hob feels a cold sort of dread settle in alongside the molten heat in his gut, “We are only just beginning. You will not come until we are done with you.”

Chapter Text

“Always a treat to see you, sweetheart,” Hob says in greeting with a sunny grin and a wink. He is incredibly casual for a man that is stark naked and being draped in vines by a harried-looking makeup artist, but such is their line of work. 

Dream offers him a small smile in return, much more than most get out of him. “And you, Gadling. Did you enjoy your trip to Spain?”

“Oh yes. Look at this tan, for starters,” Hob laughs, “Now, you’d best get those boxers off before Cori sees you, darling.”

The ready use of pet names has Dream a little weak at the knees. It used to frustrate him, but now he craves it, finding himself anticipating whenever they work together. Luckily the rest of the porn industry has caught onto their rare chemistry - Dream and Hob are making a new film together every few months.

They see each other a little more regularly than that, but they are strictly professional visits, of course.

There is a bed of moss and flowers, both Dream and Hob’s bodies sparkle with glitter, and there are two dozen fairies watching their every move. Dream would insist he is not an exhibitionist despite his line of work. He is more accustomed to smaller sets, minimal cast and crews…

“Come over here,” Hob’s voice cuts through the nerves. Dream meets his eyes, and his breath catches in his throat.

Hob has an array of fresh wildflowers in his hair, strung together with vines and clover. He wears a sheer dark green robe and nothing else, every ounce the fairy king Oberon. 

“Here, my little Puck,” he says again, patting his leg where he sprawls on the bed, “Almost time to start.”

Dream goes to him like he is enthralled. He settles between Hob’s open legs, trailing a finger along a sparkling line on the inside of his thigh, and revels in how the man beneath him shudders and smiles.

The director calls action, and Dream loses himself in the fantasy.

His pale skin will be covered in marks; Hob’s teeth leave roses and carnations at his throat, and the tight possessive grip of Hob’s fingers bruise bouquets of violet and orchid into his waist as Dream rides his cock. Every sound Hob coaxes out of him is genuine, every breathy moan and desperate gasp marking this as the best film they’ve ever made together.

Chapter Text

Hob knows that his partner’s form adheres to those who behold him. But it also occurs to him that Dream doesn’t need some of the things which he nonetheless gives himself when he is with Hob; a cock as tall and slim as he is, pale skin that flushes rosebud pink, sweet sensitive nipples to tease and pinch, and a tight hole shaped to fit Hob like it is made just for him. 

Perhaps it is, he realises, and this proves such a strangely moving thought that Hob forgets for a moment that he is in his bedroom above the New Inn, and Dream is sat in his lap. The wet heat wrapped around his cock clenches, and Hob is quickly brought back around as Dream rakes his nails down his hairy chest and leans in to moan loudly in his ear.

“Please, beloved. Permit me m-my release,” Dream says around the sound, “Tell me that I might c-come for you.”

“No, not yet. You’re still far too put together. Sentences and everything,”

Hob sighs in falsified disappointment, restraining himself in such a way that even he is impressed by his own strength of will.

It is tested as Dream whines petulantly against his throat, bucking between the glorious stretch of Hob’s cock buried inside him and the cruelly tight pinch of fingers curled around the base of his own. Hob stills his hips and Dream protests again, without words, grinding fruitlessly where Hob has him pinned. He is an Endless, and could fight against Hob’s hold at any point. But he doesn’t , and that is somehow infinitely more arousing than most other things Hob’s lovers have done for him. 

“Is it really what you want?” Hob asks, running his hand up and down Dream’s back in a mockery of a soothing motion as the other still grips his lover’s cock.

Dream nods, burying his face in the stubble-roughened but welcome shape of Hob’s jaw. “Please, I want— ah, I want to come. Please, Hob, I—“

He wails as Hob rocks up once, a sharp thrust that fills Dream to the hilt, hitting a prostate that he gives himself purely for the pleasure of being fucked by Hob. 

“Yes! Right there!”

“Like this?” Hob asks innocently, though the strain in his voice gives him away as he bucks upwards again, and again, and again…

Dream is incoherent; Hob takes no small amount of pride in reducing his once distant stranger into a babbling mess, even as he feels his own imminent orgasm coiling heatedly in his gut. Both hands fasten at Dream’s hips and move him, pulling him down onto Hob’s cock every time he thrusts forward. 

“Let go, love,” he murmurs, “Let me see you. Let me hear you.”

Dream throws his head back as he comes, Hob marveling at the sharp pale lines of his neck and shoulders as he fucks him through it. It is hard to resist after that, and he finds his own release with Dream slumped against him, still moaning weakly as he lets Hob use him to completion.

“You are wicked,” Dream accuses him, but Hob hears the satisfaction as smooth as silk in his voice, “You will pay for this.”

“I’ll hold you to that, sweetling.”

Chapter Text

The university building is new enough to have air conditioning, but it is unfortunately rather temperamental. On an unusually warm April day in one of Hob’s more enthusiastic lessons, it is proving a rather heated experience. Dream has seen the collective unconscious fantasies of all humankind, and he can say with absolute certainty that presenting the history of the printing press has never been sexier.

The shirt Hob wears, a flattering shade of navy blue, has been rolled up to his elbows. The fastenings at the front are undone just low enough to offer a glimpse of his glorious chest hair, glistening under the harsh lighting, and his voice is a little breathier than perhaps is appropriate.

The air shimmers with daydreams. Dream can taste how the vision of Hob sweating and grinning like a madman has affected the class, and it only furthers his own hunger. It grants him no small amount of satisfaction either to know that Hob is his, that these poor souls can only crave when he has the real thing all to himself.

“And next week, we’ll plan that trip to see a real press in action!” Hob enthuses, “Now go on. Don’t overdo it today. Take it from me, heatstroke is a bitch.”

The ready curse has a few of the students laughing - and half a dozen of them wishing that Hob would call them a bitch - before they disperse. As the door closes behind the last, Hob’s attention settles immediately on his partner. 

“Come here,” he says sharply, so unexpected that Dream flinches.

“I… beg your pardon?”

Hob huffs impatiently, crooking his finger. “You heard me. Do as I say.”

Dream finds himself drifting closer without thought. He is too stunned by the severity in Hob’s tone to register that he is even doing so.

“Give me your hands,” Hob instructs, and once he has seized Dream by the wrists, he presses his marble-cold hands to the sides of his neck and groans. The sound sinks right into Dream’s gut, sending a shock of want through him as he feels Hob’s pulse thud hard beneath his palms.

“You are far too hot,” Dream admonishes, “It’s… making you delirious.”

“Take my fucking clothes off,” Hob demands, already panting, “I need you to touch me everywhere.” 

Dream blinks. “We have discussed being naked in public—“

Hob mutters an outdated curse and yanks Dream close by the collar of his peacoat, moaning against the sweet relief of his lips. As they kiss, Dream hesitates no longer, and soon his inhumanly chilled hands roam over Hob’s sweat-shining skin as his shirt is peeled away. He lowers his mouth to taste the salt at Hob’s throat, at his chest, feeling Hob shiver at each drastically cooler touch. 

“God, I might actually come,” Hob chuckles breathlessly, “Take me home, darling. I want a cold shower, all the windows open, and for you to fuck me so roughly that all of London can hear.”

Dream growls, and as they disappear in a swirl of sand, he vows to make Hob’s every wish come true. 

Chapter Text

Many centuries ago, there was a village that could not sleep. The hours of the day were haunted by exhaustion, and the nights by a hellish insomnia. Time lost all meaning as true rest evaded each and every soul.

The villagers hatched a plan. They would make a sacrifice to the King of Nightmares in the hopes of releasing themselves from his ire. And they selected a fitting tribute; a recently returned son of the village, who was followed by a reputation of thieving and swiving, whose blood would be sweet with sin…

There are ropes biting at Hob’s wrists and ankles, and a slab of stone at his bare back. The moon and stars glow above, visible through a gap in the trees, and the night is quiet. The last thing he remembers is drinking in the tavern, and then… nothing.

“Hello?” he calls out, “This isn’t funny, you know. It’s bloody cold, for one!”

“Hush.”

A whisper, almost indistinguishable from the sudden breeze shaking through the dark canopies above him.

“Who’s there?” he demands. His heart quickens, but he will not let on that he is afraid, not when he is already so vulnerable.

”You have been left here for me, Robert Gadling.”

Things click into place and Hob curses under his breath. Superstitious idiots have left him to die. And there is no god here, just a lunatic dwelling in the forest, abusing the fear of peasants to do as he pleases.

“Show yourself!” Hob shouts defiantly, “At least let me see the face of the bastard who’s going to bleed me dry.”

A figure emerges. The man is tall with skin as pale as the moon above, and his eyes resemble the pitch of night and shining stars. He wears a sheer black robe cut obscenely low, and he glides across the glen, a creature of smoke and shadow. 

Beautiful, Hob thinks despite himself, like magic made flesh.

”I have many names. But your people call me Morpheus, the King of Nightmares.”

Hob scoffs, but the chill of the night makes him shiver. “You’re going to kill me then? You could at least untie me. Seems unfair.”

“Some would say that all life is ultimately unfair. Would you die this day? Or would you live forever?”

Hob blinks.

“What’s the catch?” he asks, “If I choose immortality.”

“You will be sworn to me. I know you, Robert Gadling. You wish to fight. To fuck. I would permit you both, until the stars burn out.”

The casual offer has Hob’s cock twitching in traitorous interest. He is grateful that his betrayers at least thought to keep his trousers on lest it be more obvious that just the suggestion has aroused him.

“You would make me a warrior and a plaything?” Hob asks, “Little else but a tool for your own satisfaction?”

“Yes,” Morpheus agrees, the twin stars in his eyes glittering with anticipation. 

Hob grins. “That does sound like the better option. How do we seal the deal? I guess we could do it right here.”

“I carve my sigil into your skin,” Morpheus explains, and withdraws a shard of obsidian from within his robe, “The pain will be intense, but brief. And then you will be mine.”

“Oh, is that all?” Hob laughs, “I can take it.”

Morpheus gazes upon him with a hunger more vast than Hob could ever fathom. Silence makes him all the more unnerving to behold; there is something aquiline in his movements, the assessing tip of his head reminds Hob of the ravens he saw on the battlefields. 

Then Morpheus brings the shard down between his ribs, and he chokes, fighting all instincts to writhe from the agony as it pierces skin and flesh.

“Good,” Morpheus hums, the words sinking into Hob’s bones like a balm, ”You take pain well.”

Hob rasps, an impossible laugh, and then hisses as the obsidian is pulled back and slowly dragged up over his chest to where his heart thunders beneath its point. “I… I can’t wait to show you h-how well, my lord.”

“Neither can I,” he responds, bringing the shard up to his pale lips to taste Hob’s sacrifice upon it.

Chapter Text

“Look at him.”

There are vast hands holding Hob, far larger than any other that have gripped him. One spans the entire lower half of his face, and he whimpers into the cool skin, his mouth leaving a mess of spit and blood from his bitten lip across it as the other practically spans his left side from ribs to hip. The cock inside him is huge, and the Dream that fucks him with it - not his Dream - leans down to rumble darkly in his ear. The fingers at his side press down, into the slight bump in his stomach at the impossible cock slowly fucking him senseless, and Hob moans, the sound broken and desperate and echoed by his Dream across the room.

“You see how he enjoys it? The sight of me taking you apart, as my Hob does the same to him?”

The other him bites roughly at his Dream’s neck, his hold a mirror of the Dream that ruins Hob in turn. He is not as big, but just as rough, chasing the high needy sounds that Dream makes with every unforgiving thrust of his cock and every harsh drag of his teeth.

Chapter Text

Hob Gadling is familiar with drowning. In the metaphorical sense; in debt, in grief, in loneliness. But also very much in the literal sense. He remembers the cruel burn of water in his lungs, the instinctual gasping for air that would be the end of anyone else, and the utter terror that had wracked him…

This is different. Dream’s cock is heavy in on Hob’s tongue, coated with cum, and it tastes like sea spray and ozone. The blunt crown of it grazes the back of Hob’s throat over and over. Perhaps it has only been a few minutes, or it could have been hours - the Dreaming offers no reliable sense of time passing - but Hob’s stomach feels heavy and full as it would be after a satisfying meal, his lover rocking into the plush of his mouth just far enough to choke Hob a little each time.

“Beautiful,” Dream tells him, long pale fingers cradling Hob’s jaw as one stretches far enough to feel the gulp of his swallowing.

Hob manages to moan softly in response; the sound is abruptly cut off by Dream pushing down into his throat and climaxing again, and Hob feels his mind blank, blissful, knowing he can let go and come back around to twin stars watching over him.

Chapter Text

“You’ve been to see Gilbert today then?” Hob remarks.

He turns and makes no effort to hide the amusement on his face as Dream frowns at him, swirling into his living room in a dusting of sparkling sand. The mystical entrance is not quite as affecting now as it used to be, but Hob still can’t resist coming closer and brushing a few lingering flecks of Dream’s essence from his shoulder. How could he not, when the cut of the sheer black robe Dream wears sits in a way that begs for Hob to fasten his mouth over sharp clavicles and a column of marble that bears no pulse?

“How did you know?” Dream asks.

Hob only hums at first in response, leaning in to taste the lingering scent of honeysuckle and jasmine at his lover’s throat. Though Dream’s curiosity has not yet been sated, he sinks happily into Hob’s embrace, and allows himself to be backed towards and laid down upon the sofa as Hob clambers after him. 

“You smell like wild things,” Hob murmurs, with the reverent tone of a poet writing an ode to their beloved, “Petrichor, fertile earth, the first summer morning. Pine needles and apples and—“

“Enough,” Dream insists with a rumbling laugh, deep and devastating as thunder, the sound thrilling under Hob’s lips where they are pressed to his lover’s sternum. Hob sinks between Dream’s legs, the two of them seamed from thighs to chests, and languidly rolls their hips together. The laugh turns to a growl, and Dream’s silver birch fingers sink into the meat of Hob’s buttocks. Hob feels Dream’s hardness wrapped in the sheer twilight draped around him, feels it echoed in his own cock, and just the thought of losing his jeans rids him of them.

“Keep it on,” Hob insists, feeling Dream’s robe start to fade as well, “Let me fuck you with it on.”

“As you wish,” Dream whispers, and the gasp that escapes him as Hob’s cock brushes against his own is as soft and holy as a willow shaken by the breath of a god.

Chapter Text

It was a summer morning in 2025, and Dream felt the bed dip next to him. 

“Happy anniversary, darling.”

He lifted his face from the warmth of Hob’s bed - their bed - at the sound of his husband’s voice. The sovereign of the Dreaming did not require sleep in the way that mortals did, but he was beginning to enjoy it, finding that it only strengthened his connection to his realm when visiting as a guest as well as a ruling lord. 

His eyelids were heavy with lingering lanquidity, but he smiled at Hob, moving without thought to make room for him.

“It is not our anniversary,” Dream pointed out, his eyebrows drawing down in confusion as he realised what Hob had said, “We have not yet been married for a year. That is the traditional amount of time, is it not?”

Hob chuckled and brushed strands of wild black hair from Dream’s face. He rested on his side, propped up on an elbow, and the morning sunlight made him glow with inextinguishable life. There was liquid gold in his eyes, and Dream wanted to lose himself in it.

“Ah yeah, I could’ve been more clear about that,” Hob admitted, “Not the anniversary, but still an important one. It’s the seventh of June.”

Dream startled to sitting up, blinking at Hob. In growing so accustomed to seeing Hob every day, it had slipped his notice. “Six hundred and thirty six years ago today.”

Hob grinned. “Seems like we blinked, doesn’t it? And here we are.”

He lifted a hand to rest Dream’s jaw in his palm; it fit perfectly, something he had been delighted to learn. One of many things in Hob’s mind that meant they were made for each other in some cosmic way, that their bond was inevitable.

“Here we are,” Dream echoed, with no small amount of wonder in his voice. He had not been the most benevolent entity. And yet he shared a bed, a home, and a life, with a person who made him feel as though he deserved the love that Hob gave him.

“We ought to celebrate,” Hob mused, his hand trailing from Dream’s face down his neck, over his collarbone, and down his chest. His eyes followed where his fingers trailed before snapping back up to Dream’s face, his gaze teasing but still asking for permission.

Dream nodded. In truth, though he hid it well, he had waited too many centuries to deny even a moment of Hob’s touch. Of his love. 

They were both naked, so there was no delay. Hob and Dream seamed their bodies together, mouths and chests and hips and knees, the awkward bumping angles and subsequent laughter of a comfortable - human - moment of intimacy. They did not get very far, content simply to be in the arms of the other. Hands wandered over skin well mapped, taking paths worn down by love and lust, and Hob fixed his mouth to the spot at Dream’s throat which always had him blinking in bright coronas. Dream fixated as he often did upon Hob’s chest, carding his fingers through coarse hair and teasing the dusky pink nipples that pleaded to be touched.

They moved together as though they were one body, one soul, one bright star bursting into a supernova as a climax tore through them both.

In the New Inn below, the patrons and staff all felt the worries of the day leave them. They daydreamed absently of pleasant things as they chatted and drank and ate in good company, and when they reached their beds that night, they each found the best sleep they had ever had.

In the Dreaming, the banks of every river and lake burst. Trees heaved with every fruit imaginable, ripe and juicy and begging to be bitten into. There was a great tremor felt by every dream and nightmare, and the stained glass in the throne room of the palace was at once cast in a riot of colours awash with glittering gold. 

Lucienne pushed her glasses up her nose and sighed.

It could be worse, she mused, remembering how not so long ago their home had been a barren wasteland, At least they are happy.

Chapter Text

It is dark in the aquarium after hours, but the tank is eerie blue, lit by bioluminescence. All the creatures in this enclosure are from a deep trench known amongst fanciful academics as the Dreaming. It is an apt name, Hob thinks, as something dark drifts through the water beneath him, its tail sparkling like a night sky blooming with stars. Moon-white hands with webbed fingers grasp his ankles and gently tug, eyes of a blue so bleached it is almost white blinking up at him, curious as ever.

“You are bare,” Dream observes. He is so named because, as the largest and most powerful lifeform found in the trench thus far, he has been designated as the ‘Dream King’. But both he and the researcher he has bonded with prefer just the first part of the name.

Hob glances down at his own naked body. “Oh, look at that! I left my wetsuit behind. Silly me.”

Dream chuckles - or at least, that is what Hob assumes the gravelly sound is, something akin to the rumble of an undersea volcano, as he trails the tips of claws along the inside of Hob’s thigh.

“Still bracing myself for getting in there though,” Hob adds, though the shiver that runs through him is not fully from the chill.

Dream’s hand teases higher until it settles in a loose ring around the base of Hob’s cock. He is half hard already, and at the glimpse of a tongue darting out over pale pink lips, it twitches in Dream’s palm. Hob suppresses a moan as he tests pumping his fingers gradually up and down Hob’s length; he has never been particularly noisy, but there is a first time for everything, and Dream is weirdly good at this for someone who has never done it before.

“You still want to try?” he asks, “You’re sure?”

Dream nods. “You explained to me how humans copulate. I… think it would be pleasurable for us both.”

Hob admires the colour that paints Dream’s skin; if human he would have perhaps flushed a softer hue, but instead his sharp cheeks blossom in coral pink. He imagines that same colour placed in the perfect centre of Dream’s narrow hips, a peek of orchid flesh framed by the dark of his tail as marble bleeds into midnight blue scales. 

Now or never,  he muses, pushing himself into the water, and before he can even think to fight the urge to gasp in shock at the cold, Dream’s lips are on his. A sinuous tail coils around him, and he feels the promising heat of Dream’s slit rub against his cock. He keeps his breath, even as Dream - impatient in all things, he has learned, including this - grasps him less gently than before and guides his dick into the slick warmth of his body.

Then they are moving upwards, up enough for their heads to break the surface. Hob throws his head back and gasps for air only to immediately groan with it, not needing to keep himself afloat as Dream writhes against him. It is not quite as rhythmic as sex usually is for Hob, with no support from any kind of surface, but there is no room to complain as Dream’s body sucks greedily at his cock in a way none ever have before. Webbed fingers grip at his hips to keep the angle as Dream fucks Hob relentlessly. He can only cry out, his own hands grasping for purchase on Dream’s shoulders, as he shudders through his impending release.

“You feel so good,” he insists, “Don’t stop, darling, just keep-- Ah, yes! Yes! Perfect, so perfect for me…”

The praise is too much for Dream. As Hob finally climaxes, Dream pulls him in close and bites, his teeth made for prey sinking into the juncture of Hob’s throat. It is in the wrong place to be any cause for concern, but Dream keeps him above water all the same, as Hob writhes in a blissful mix of pleasure and pain.

And when his colleagues ask about the wound the next day, Hob waves them off, laughing about getting a little too comfortable around the Dream King. They don’t need to know about the matching ones on his flank, his thighs, or the particularly charming one bruising the meat of his arse. Or the fact that he intends to return the favour, placing a mark over the gills at Dream’s throat, just subtle enough to hide away from anyone else.

Chapter Text

What was the phrase? Always a bridesmaid, and never a bride? In this case it is always the wingman, and never the lucky bastard going home with someone pretty after a few drinks. Hob is very good at setting his friends up, yet still can’t find someone for himself.

Watching the latest successes walk out of the New Inn, Hob sighs with defeat and heads for the staff smoking area at the back. It tends to be quiet, and he could do with some time alone.

But it is not entirely empty. His gaze lands first on a flame that sparks up in the dimly lit alley, and then on the icy blue eyes that reflect it, snapping to him.

“You’re, uhh… not supposed to be back here,” Hob offers.

“Neither are you,” the stranger says, his voice annoyingly smug as he removes the lit cigarette from his lips, “And yet here we are.”

Hob huffs. “Don’t suppose you have another of those, do you?”

He nods to the cigarette pinched between the stranger’s fingers. Instead, the man holds it out to Hob. 

“Thanks,” Hob says, barely hiding the thrill that runs through him as they touch, Hob’s warmth stark against the cooler brush of the stranger’s skin. He lifts the cigarette to his mouth and drags deeply, feeling the sudden hit of nicotine settle his nerves somewhat, until he looks at the stranger again and shivers under his unending attention.

“Are you waiting for someone?”

“No,” the man answers plainly, and then offers his hand again, “You may call me Dream.”

“Robert. But I prefer Hob.”

They shake hands, their grasp lingering a little longer than it should. Hob sees those pretty thin lips twitch into a smirk, and finds himself briefly wondering if they would look so satisfied wrapped around his—

“Are you waiting for someone?” Dream asks, cutting through Hob’s thoughts abruptly.

“I… think maybe I was.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Dream warns, and Hob wonders faintly when he had ventured so close. Their cigarette has been dropped, long forgotten, as they share the same breath.

“Wouldn’t do what?” Hob challenges, and he leans in more, just enough to graze the end of his nose against the stranger’s.

“Tease me.”

“Why not?” Hob presses, “Is this not what you want?”

Slim fingers grasp his hips, and Hob’s mouth parts reflexively even when what he wants is still denied him.

“It is. But you will regret it,” Dream insists.

Hob chuckles. “Life’s too short for regrets, sweetheart.”

Apparently satisfied, Dream answers with a crush of lips, and Hob can barely think before the heel of a hand grinds confidently against his dick. He groans, Dream swallowing the sound greedily, and starts to wonder if maybe his luck is turning after all. 

Chapter Text

“You are not sleeping enough,” Dream remarks. The pair share a counter in the workshop; Dream tests the mechanisms on a new watch, and Hob is nodding off over his tablet, the harsh glow washing out his usually warm features. 

Hob startles and then offers Dream a drowsy smile. It is a rare pleasure to see a top agent so unguarded; Dream cannot help but be pleased, even if the reason is not something to be celebrated.

“A spy’s work is never done, darling,” Hob says, stifling a yawn.

Dream shakes his head fondly. “Come. I have something that might help.”

He waits for Hob to stand, then gently takes his arm and steers him towards the kitchenette. Depositing him on one of the stools against the island, he busies himself with boiling the kettle and fetching a sachet that Hob squints at.

“What have you got there, love?” 

Dream huffs softly. “An old family trick. It has proved helpful in subduing a mark when necessary.”

Hob’s eyes widen. “Strong stuff then?”

“Enough for you to rest,” Dream confirms.

There is a small bedroom off the side of the workshop where Dream crashes sometimes, and with the steaming brew in one hand and Hob’s own in the other, he leads him inside.

“I thought I was supposed to be going to sleep?” Hob asks, and grins at Dream, “Not often that I do much of that when I’m in a room with you and a bed.”

“You say that as if the bed is required,” Dream says as he kisses Hob’s cheek and then hands him the mug, “But no. You will sleep. Drink this. I am not going anywhere.”

Hob does as he is told. The mysterious tea-like beverage has cooled just enough when he sips from it, and even as he sheds his clothes, he feels heavier. Dream waits patiently for him to crawl into bed, and when he does, Dream follows. Pale lips - almost inhumanly cool - trail down over Hob’s bare shoulder. Hob hums, the sound catching in his throat as long fingers wrap around his cock.

“Supposed to… sleep,” Hob argues, but he struggles to keep his eyes open and give Dream something even close to an admonishing look. Especially seeing as he hardly feels like complaining.

Dream grins, his bottom lip caught between his pearly white teeth. “Relax. I have you.”

Hob moans as Dream quickens his pace, though he barely has the energy to rock into the fist around him. He feels like steam, hot and fluid and drifting, and Dream brings him to completion with sweet murmured words that he barely registers as a deep blissful sleep claims him at last. 

“And you’re out,” Dream whispers affectionately, kissing Hob’s cheek before rising to fetch a clean cloth. He collects the neglected mug of chamomile tea on the way out, deciding he might have one of his own to soon join Hob in the land of dreams. 

Chapter Text

“Are you sure about this?” Hob asks, dragging his fingers through his hair to pull strands into a loose bun.

“I am not put off by the prospect of many bodies in one place. There have been bacchanalian orgies in my honour, in the realms of man and fae and more besides,” Dream answers from the other side of the bedroom door, and Hob nearly chokes on a laugh as it opens behind him.

“It’s not that kind of club, I’m afraid, but—“

Having only just regained his breath, now it is knocked from Hob’s lungs at the sight of Dream of the Endless languishing in the threshold. He is more than familiar with Dream’s shape by now, and yet the outfit he wears leaves nothing to the imagination. Sheer black fabric covers him from head to toe, the long sleeves and skirt feigning modesty despite their diaphanous make. And he wears nothing else beneath the gauzy dress either, a belt at his waist cinching the fabric barely enough to conceal the cock underneath.

Hob blinks. His wordlessness seems to delight Dream, his high cheeks flushed the same sweet pink as his hardening prick.

“That’s… what you’re wearing?” Hob manages to ask, feeling Dream’s attention zero in on how his Adam’s apple bobs to punctuate the words. He wets his lips with his tongue, and then seems inspired by it, stepping into Dream’s space.

“It is not appropriate?” Dream asks with a smug smirk. Hob shakes his head with a chuckle, unable to fathom how such an infinite and omnipotent being could be so fucking cheeky.

“For a night out? Maybe not,” Hob admits, and then his hands drop down and around Dream’s body to grab his skinny arse in both hands and pull them flush together, “But for me to hoist up this skirt, bend you over the kitchen counter, and eat you out until you beg for me to fuck you? It’s perfect.”

It is Dream’s turn to be struck silent, and Hob laughs and kisses him hungrily before he can say anything clever. 

“Come on, pretty thing,” he murmurs, biting at Dream’s lips, “Who needs a tribute orgy when your most loyal follower wants to make you scream his name?”

Chapter Text

Hob clears his throat. “So. Bacchanalian orgies, eh?”

The rumble of his lover’s laugh echoes through the Dreaming like thunder. The king brushes a few errant strands of hair from Hob’s face as he sits in his lap; Dream is sometimes different here, bigger and paler and sharper, but still undeniably beautiful. 

”A few. Some I attended as a guest, others were simply a tribute,” Dream explains, far more casually than one would expect. But there is a knowing edge to his sonorous voice that has Hob shuddering astride him.

“And… did you enjoy them?” Hob asks.

Twin stars narrow in on him, sparkling with curiosity. ”I suppose I did. And what of you? In your many years, you must have attended your fair share of such hedonistic gatherings.”

Hob clears his throat. “I, uhh… haven’t actually. Ever.”

Dream seems genuinely taken aback by the confession, which Hob takes some small amount of glee in, but he continues.

“I’m a little… possessive? When it comes to my partners?” he says, feeling Dream’s hands grasp him just a bit tighter, “Not very good at sharing. I don’t think I’d enjoy it.”

”But, my beloved, how would you know if you do not try it?”

The Dreaming shifts around them, their bedchamber tilting with the susurrus of sand to a marble forum glowing in firelight. Laughter rings out through the night, accompanied by the clink of chalices, a valiant solo harp, and a scattering of moans and gasps of ecstasy. Faintly, Hob can hear the thwack of leather on skin, and the distinct cries of pleasure-pain that come with flogging. He turns his head to look, his cock twitching with unanticipated interest, but long fingers grasp his jaw and pull him back before he can catch a glimpse. He is at once under the spell of the coronas in Dream’s eyes again, their light bursting with arousal, and he feels his clothes slip from his body in another rush of the Sandman’s authoritative element. 

”Hedonists of Morpheus, attend to me,” he commands, and his voice alone brings the orgy to silence, ”Your Lord Shaper brings his consort. I would give him the sweetest dream, with you all to bear witness.”

Hob cannot find it in him to protest. He is achingly hard without so much as a thought, and he squirms in Dream’s lap, keening up to place a kiss on his lover’s cheek.

“You’re going to fuck me in front of all of them?” he asks in a harsh whisper, his voice more desperate than he had anticipated; he is taken aback by just how much he wants. He grinds down against Dream, feeling the impossible cock of his lover’s true form thicken and pulse under him. He then laughs, the sound giddy. 

”Yes,” Dream says simply, and he tips Hob back easily to marvel at the body of the immortal he claims, ”I would have them all know that you are mine, and mine alone.”

”Now who is possessive?” Hob teases, but any further words are smothered by Dream’s hungry mouth upon his own.

Chapter Text

The woods betray Hob to their master. Every stride he takes, he stumbles and trips, gasping desperately for breath as the trees lean closer together to block his path, and twisting roots and vines grasp at his ankles. Thorns have ripped his clothes to shreds and torn his skin, but the pain is forgotten to the fear as Hob keeps running until he reaches a clearing. 

Compared to the cruel forest that surrounds it, the grove is idyllic. Soft grass cushions his bloodied bare feet, and each step sends up the sweet perfume of clover and petrichor. Small white wildflowers practically glow in the moonlight; they mirror the stars twinkling in the night sky above.

”Nowhere left to run,” an awful voice rumbles through Hob’s mind, and he feels the heat of a predator’s breath at the nape of his neck, ”Surrender, and be shown mercy.”

Hob spins around to face the beast, but it retreats into the darkness of the border of woodland. All that marks it is two huge eyes, twin stars blazing in both irises, reflecting Hob’s fear back at him with a primal hunger.

“What do you want?” Hob challenges, his fists clenched at his sides and chin raised in defiance even when he knows it is futile. He is unarmed, exhausted, and almost entirely naked.

Another rumble hits him like thunder, only this time it is something akin to amusement. ”Your flesh. Your heart. Your very essence. All of you shall belong to me.”

“What are you?” Hob demands, “Who do you think you are, to claim anything from me?”

”I am Dream, king of this realm. Surrender.” the voice says again, and then its vessel finally emerges from the sentinel trees. It is easily two feet taller than Hob as it rears up on its back legs; a mix of man and wolf and midnight sky, awesome and terrifying. The glistening of its ivory fangs shines wickedly, as do its obsidian claws and those same twin stars blazing in its eyes. 

Hob draws himself up to his full height at the same time. “Never.”

The lupine creature draws its lips back into a viciously sadistic snarl. The next thing Hob is aware of is that he can’t breathe, the huge beast pinning him in the grass with its front paws on his chest, and a hot wet tongue laving up the edge of his jaw to taste the sheen of sweat.

”You will be mine. I will take what I want from you, and leave you wanting still.”

What little remains of Hob’s clothes are stripped away by the tips of those obsidian claws. They barely catch on his skin, but every time they do, Hob hisses quietly. The undeniable pleasure-pain has him squirming naked beneath the beast, and by the time he is entirely bare, his prick aches traitorously with arousal.

”Ready to be fucked and bred. Nothing but a toy for me,” Dream approves, and an impossible thick cock nudges Hob’s legs apart, slipping in the mix of sweat and slick. The hair on Hob’s thighs and arse is already glistening wet, and his hole twitches under the pressure of the crown attempting to split him open. Hob fights to pull away, but Dream keeps pushing against him, rocking insistently until he finally breaches his flesh. 

Hob cries out. It’s too big, but his body swallows the length and girth of him almost eagerly. He moans, weeping and shuddering on Dream’s cock, both of them in chorus as his beast-cloaked lover starts to fuck him harder and faster. The chase had both of them keyed up and it shows in the erratic rhythm set as they rut in the mud and moss of the meadow. Hob can do nothing but take it, and he comes untouched, spurting his seed over himself and the huge paws that pin him beneath. His clenching drags Dream over the edge with him, an abominable howl heralding the slick wet heat that fills Hob’s insides like molten ecstasy.

When Hob has just about gathered his senses again, Dream is a man once more. Or at least, he has taken on the shape of one. There is still the glint of a predator in his eyes as he gazes at Hob hungrily, and his ivory teeth are a little longer and sharper than usual when he speaks, his palm possessively cradling Hob’s stomach.

”All mine.”

Chapter Text

Roberta Gadling still has to pinch herself sometimes. In the year 1389 she had been a sellsword, a woman outfighting every man in the game. Then a beautiful pale stranger approached her table, promising  immortality only for the price of a simple conversation every one hundred years. She accepted, and now here she is more than six centuries later, living with things that she would not have ever been able to conceive in her wildest mediaeval imaginings.

Her lover being one of them.

Not only is her Stranger the personification of the dreams of all living things, but she is also difficult to resist. One drunken night following a delayed centennial reunion had them falling into one another’s arms. Now, Dream comes and goes, welcome in Hob’s home and in her bed whenever she pleases. 

A voice purrs Hob’s name from the doorway to the bedroom, and she lifts her gaze from the particularly riveting book she is reading to meet Dream’s eyes. She expects to be asked a question, maybe as to what her plans are for the rest of the day before they are reunited in the Dreaming later, but then her focus snaps to alabaster skin and black lace, and all coherent thought leaves her head save for one choked sentence.

“Is it my birthday?” 

Dream smiles, her pose as languid and sinuous as a cat where she leans in the threshold. “No. But that does not mean you cannot be surprised, hmm?”

Hob finds herself rising from the sofa, her book quickly forgotten as she crosses the space between them. Her hands settle on Dream’s narrow waist, on the garter belt that holds up sheer stockings over her lingerie, covering very little and leaving even less to the imagination. Her eyes in turn rove over perfect small breasts adorned with flowers of midnight silk and matching appliqué, and sharp collarbones dusted with a sweet rosy hue. 

“Then what’s the occasion?” she asks, pressing her thumbs into the meat of Dream’s stomach and leaning close to kiss along the edge of her clavicle. 

“No occasion,” Dream replies, readily leaning in to receive Hob’s touch. She bends herself forward until they are seamed at the hips, and gasps prettily as Hob mouths at her throat.

“No way,” Hob chuckles, “You must have a motive, darling.”

“Is it so hard to believe that my motive was simply to inspire lust in you?” Dream counters, her long pale fingers now clinging to Hob’s forearms, “I wanted to know what you would do to me, seeing me like this.”

Hob pulls back just enough to allow Dream to see the sparkle of amusement in her eyes, the depths of warm welcoming brown turning darker with arousal by the moment. Through them, Dream can see what her lover intends; she feels the heat of Hob’s clever mouth between her thighs, the slick and insistent press of her tongue over Dream’s cunt and clit, and the way it will feel to come against the lips that always kiss her so sweetly and praise her so kindly. She sees how Hob wants to stretch her open with fingers scarred by battle and stained with ink many hundreds of years ago, and see her climax over and over, until every inch of her pale skin is flushed ruby and roseate. 

“How’s that?” Hob asks, grinning like a wolf, knowing that Dream could see and hear and taste every part of her fantasy.

Dream sinks her fingers into Hob’s hair and pushes her down insistently, the satisfaction of finally having that welcome tongue against her barely-clothed cunt only outdone by the success in her endeavour.

Chapter Text

As Dream’s mind wanders, the warmth of life radiating from his beloved still dozing on his chest, he cannot help but ponder that which brought him here. Six hundred years or so, give or take a few decades, he and Hob made a deal. They met and spoke and parted ways once a century, and then after missing one appointment and making several successive ones to atone for it, they had allowed themselves to fall in love.

Friends to lovers. A tale as old as stories themselves.

And it is glorious.

Dream feels the memories at the edge of his mind and allows himself to bask in them. Their first kiss, so tender and cautious, Hob’s fingers sunken into his unruly hair. Their first fuck in the Waking - immediately after, as two immortals had never been quite so impatient in all existence - where Hob had nearly choked himself on Dream’s cock before riding himself to completion on it. He recalls the sweet bouquet of bruises at Hob’s hips where pale fingers had sunk into his flesh, and a matching meadow at his throat where pearly teeth had left their mark.

Their first fuck in the Dreaming had been laid out amongst those same blooms. He made Hob come from eating him out, bent in half over himself and sobbing for release by the time Dream allowed him to have it. He had fucked Hob again, and the bed of grass and soil became a crescent moon, cradling Hob’s shape like it was something divine - because to the King of Dreams, of course, it is. The glistening tears of Hob’s desperation became a sea that sparkled like the surface of a diamond, and they tumbled beneath the waves together, a tangle of limbs until they sunk into the seabed with Hob’s cock rutting between Dream’s thighs.

Pearls of cum spilled in the silt, and Dream coveted them like stars, both of them writhing unhindered in the vast galaxies of the outer edges of the Dreaming. So much potential. So much to be made and created and undone as often as Dream and Hob came undone at the other’s hands. Their passion seemed without limit, without end…

…and then Hob had begun to wake. So Dream had found himself in Hob’s cosy flat above the pub they called home, in the arms of the man who had waited for him to return with no guarantee that he ever would.

Because he loved him.

“You’re thinking very loudly,” Hob mumbles into Dream’s clavicle, punctuating his half-hearted complaint there with a kiss. 

Dream hums. “Did you mean it?”

“Yes. I take it that kind of vow is binding in your realm?”

“It is. For all intents and purposes, we are one.”

Hob lifts his head to grin at Dream, and in the Dreaming, the heat of summer matches the same coiling low once more in his belly.

“For better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health,” he says with a nod, “Now, husband of mine, what would you like for breakfast?”

Chapter Text

Hob has his back to the low wall, gasping for breath as bullets break off the plaster above his head. They haven’t figured out that he is here yet, but the bastards seem to just be firing at all corners of the room, hoping that something will stick. If he can just stay quiet enough that they won’t check this side of the—

”Fuck,” he chokes, as Dream swallows his cock like he is taking a lungful of air, “Angel, maybe now is not the right—“

Dream squeezes his fingers into the meat of Hob’s thigh, making it clear he will not take no for an answer. And he’s so bloody good with his mouth that whatever further argument Hob might have had is cut off in favour of biting back another groan, the fingers of his hand not currently clutching a pistol sinking into Dream’s hair. It will smell of gun oil and gunpowder, but then again, he knows Dream likes that. And the satisfied purr that escapes Dream just at the realisation sinks right to Hob’s root, and he bucks upwards, chasing the soft velvet at the back of his lover’s throat.

“Alright, just… go easy on me,” he hisses, “You know we’re in trouble here, you… You beautiful menace.”

He feels rather than sees how Dream grins smugly around him, sending another bolt of pleasure through the molten heat in his gut. He could die right now, Hob realises, and could happily go without heaven or hell when knowing the clutch of Dream’s throat around his cock as he comes. 

Chapter Text

Teacher conferences are the worst. Hob knew this before he left, of course. But there is a special sort of agony in trying not to start a fistfight with some smug prick in tweed when he is incorrect about something you actually lived through. And to top it off, the one person who might understand this particular problem has sworn to keep his distance until Hob is home.

He loves Dream. However, he spent enough time moping after 1889 to be cautious about any more grand declarations. True, this time they had at least progressed into kissing and fucking and Dream staying to sometimes be there when Hob awoke, but he didn’t want to just assume anything.

All the same, there is a small amount of trepidation in Hob’s heart as he boards the coach home to London. As his eyes flutter closed in the Waking, he opens them in the Dreaming, and its monarch awaits him.

”I would not be delayed a second longer,” he tells Hob, before pulling him into his arms, kissing his mouth, jaw, and neck with unusual haphazardness. 

Hob laughs, his own hands sinking to the small of Dream’s back. “I missed you too, min hertes. Tell me, what did you—“

Dream shushes him, and with strength of an Endless who will not be denied, the next thing Hob knows he has been divested of his clothing and tossed bodily onto the bed. His lover crawls up over him with a hungry mouth that sears against his skin. 

”Close your eyes,” Dream growls against his hip bone, the scrape of teeth making Hob shiver. Hob does as he is told, and then immediately sees stars along the inside of his eyelids as a tight ring sinks around the base of his cock, at the same moment that the wet warmth of Dream’s mouth sucks messily over the crown. 

“Oh fuck,” Hob gasps, hands scrabbling at the sheets of the bed as he bucks up helpessly into Dream’s lips. He is allowed to move as he pleases, his partner swallowing every inch of him with no complaint, but the seal around his root means he shall find no release, not until Dream permits it.

He sobs, pleads, prays, curses… and when he is freed, his spend marks the marble skin of the face of the King of Dreams, and he has to pinch himself.

At that, he wakes on the coach with a frustrated grunt. Thankfully the journey is not booked overmuch, his fellow passengers are all occupied with their phones and books, and if anyone notices the stain in his jeans poorly hidden by his hastily wrapped jacket, they are too tired or polite to say anything about it.

Chapter Text

The silk covering Dream’s eyes is blissfully soft. So is the brush of Hob’s fingers down his spine, from the nape of his neck to his shoulder. Dream kneels on the floor, bare, with his hands tied behind his back by a strip of fabric identical to the one around his head - easy to remove, if necessary, but offering the illusion of entrapment.

“Checking in,” Hob’s voice says from his left. Dream’s senses follow the sound of his shoes leaving a circle of sound as he drifts closer to Dream’s back.

“Green,” he responds immediately, unable and unwilling to hide the eagerness in his voice.

Hob chuckles. “Good boy. Relax for me now, sweetheart. Can you do that?”

Dream nods again, and allows his shoulders to drop back. He hears the whistle of the riding crop only a second before it makes contact with the skin of his buttocks, and he cries out at the sting of it, the sweet music echoing through the silence around them.

“Beautiful,” Hob praises him, followed by another thwack against his rear, “So good for me. Aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Dream gasps, “Blue. Please, blue—“

Another smack, and this time is harder than before. Dream yells in gratitude and pleasure. He rocks forward on his knees, afforded just the slightest bit of friction by his cock bouncing off his hip, and then hears Hob tut behind him. 

“Keep still for me,” he is reminded, “Can you do that for me, darling?”

Dream nods vigorously.

“Say it out loud for me.”

“Yes, I-I can. Keep still. Green.”

Another chuckle, and Hob’s approval is punctuated by three swift strikes - slap, thwack, crack .

Chapter Text

By day, Robert ‘Hob’ Gadling is a history professor at a prestigious university. He is bright, charismatic, well-loved by his students, and generally recognised to be a good man. But by night, he is a vital peacekeeper of London’s secret supernatural network. It is a dangerous society to belong to, offering far worse threats than an opportunistic lout with a knife, but to a man who cannot die it is a lucrative way to make money. Especially when you bring your partner - a child of the Endless, no less - to a particularly important business meeting.

Even more so when said Endless sits across your lap as you face down three South End vampires. There is no clearer sign of deference, and Hob tries not to let the mix of amusement and arousal show as one of the women very clearly fixates on Dream mouthing at his neck.

“We can… come back another time,” another offers, already moving for the door.

“No,” Hob says, simple but firm, and immediately the vampire turns back around. He gestures to the three seats in front of his desk. When Dream lifts his head to regard each of them, starry pupils burn with an intensity that makes two of the vampires shift from the mere thought of sunlight.

“You told me you would not extend your reach into Essex. You promised me as much, right here, in this room,” Hob says, shaking his head and then stopping as Dream continues to suck marks into his skin, “And now I’ve got fairies breathing down my neck.”

I am no Fae, Dream reminds him smugly from within his own thoughts, and Hob silences him with a subtle shift of his hips, pressing his hard cock against the soft shape of Dream’s buttocks. The sound which leaves his lover might be unnecessary, definitely for show, but it is obscene, and goes straight to Hob’s prick - breathy and high, making one of the vampires let out a breath she did not need. 

“We won’t do it again. We promise,” another insists, shaking her head. Hob sees it in each of them, the want and the jealousy. Only he knows what the blood of an Endless tastes like, and only Dream can sup from the immortal vitality that flows through his veins in turn.

“Good,” Hob says, “Now get out of my sight.”

He is grateful that Dream pushes a little of his power into his thoughts, as the words bear the weight of a being with far more true potency than him. It sends the vampires scrambling, a mess of muttered apologies as they practically collide with one another to get out of the room. 

When they are finally gone, Dream lifts his head, and mouths the words he speaks next with wet kisses along the pleasingly rough scrape of Hob’s jaw.

“Will you fuck me now, beloved?” he whispers.

Hob groans, ruts up again, his fingers in a vice around Dream’s slim waist. “Thought you would never ask.”

Chapter Text

Dream trails his fingers down the back of Hob’s neck and revels in how his partner shivers from the cool touch. There is a notebook currently claiming Hob’s attention away from him, covered in his charming scrawl for lesson planning, but Dream lacks the usual curiosity he bears for such things as Hob turns his head and frowns at him through the glasses that suit him so well.

“Can I help you, love? I really need to get this finished.”

Dream chuckles, lounging back in the dining chair he occupies beside Hob. “I am bored.”

Hob blinks. “You rule an entire realm, pet. I’m sure you can find something much more interesting to do than sit here and watch me write.”

“And I am certain I can give you something that is much more interesting to do.”

“If you say that I can do you—“

Whatever protest Hob might have offered next is smothered by the surge of Dream’s mouth, hungrily swallowing his words and the breath carrying them. Hob’s stubbornness may have gotten him through the highs and lows of over six hundred years of life, but it folds immediately as Dream clambers into his lap, pointedly snatching the pen from Hob’s hand without having to break away and tossing it far across the kitchen. 

“Nightmare,” Hob accuses halfheartedly.

“Yes?” Dream answers, as if he has just been summoned and not fondly named. Beloved hands grip tighter around his waist and pull him down just as Hob’s hips cant upwards, rutting a hardening cock against Dream’s rear.

“You can have me for an hour,” Hob promises, “And then I really have to—“

Dream shushes him. He will not be denied. And he knows that once Hob gives in, he will not want to stop until the evening air rings with the screams and sighs of the pleasure they both crave. 

Chapter Text

“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”

Hob hates that he loves how Dream smiles down at him. I do not know what you mean.”

Simultaneously keening up on his tiptoes and crooking a finger to coax his lover down to his level, Hob sighs. “Can I at least get a kiss from my very big and very scary husband before he goes off to fuck knows where?”

“I have told you already,” Dream protested, his nose brushing Hob’s all the same, “I must carry out my duties as King of Nightmares. They must learn their place.”

“Oh yeah?” Hob challenges, raising his brows with a dashing grin, “And what about putting me in my place?”

The growl that rumbles from deep within Dream is kept behind sharp teeth. For now. Unsatisfied with that response, Hob coaxes Dream along further; his clever fingers sink deep into wild ink-black hair and ruffle it all the more, and his mouth teases along the seam of his lover’s pale pink lips.

“Not going to take no for an answer. I want you to remind me why I’ve started to enjoy my bad dreams too.”

Colourless hands resembling the grasping branches of dead trees sink greedily into the meat of Hob’s arse. He is unceremoniously lifted and pinned to the wall, his regalia of the Dreaming’s king consort falling away in a rush of sand that matches the rushing of blood in his ears. 

“You will regret earning my ire, Robert Gadling. Have your reward for your impertinence.”

Dream fucks Hob with his tongue first, his legs slung over Dream’s shoulders. It is impossibly long, and even more impossibly prehensile, and Hob sobs his way through two orgasms in quick succession before Dream even touches his cock. Then that monstrous mouth swallows him down, licking away cum and sweat with a deep vibrating hunger that wrenches a third orgasm from him with a cry of pain and pleasure both. 

“Dream, darling, please—“

He is answered only by another possessive growl, by the claws of Dream’s hands breaking the skin on his thighs, and then he is roughly dragged downwards to his knees.

“I would have you choose,” Dream commands, “Shall I use your mouth, or your spent hole, for my cock?”

Hob shivers, the words making him aware of how spent and overwhelmed he is. “My m-mouth. Please.”

The blunt head of Dream’s cock presses to Hob’s lips. It is thick, and yet easily slides to the back of his throat in one gradual thrust; Hob is grateful that he does not need to breathe in dreams like this, otherwise he could not satisfy his king as he deserves. 

And when Dream finally comes down Hob’s throat with a roar that shakes the Dreaming itself, and Hob swallows dreamstuff and spend enough to actually feel full, it is that satisfaction alongside adoration that shines in Dream’s eyes before he departs.

Chapter Text

Hob glances at the PDF on his phone once more. His Latin is a little rusty but he thinks he can manage. What little he could make out of the ritual circle has been hastily scribbled onto the floor with dry wipe marker. The instructions call for black candles, but he only has an assortment of whatever things called ‘cool sea mist’ and ‘sweet dreams’ smell like, and they’re all a variety of blues and whites. And he didn’t have any blood to hand save for his own, but he did have Pinot Noir, and if it’s good enough for communion then it’s good enough for him.

Unless heaven is a little less picky than hell, in which case he’ll call it a night and be left with nothing but a disappointing hangover and reheated Chinese food when the morning comes.

Hob clears his throat and begins to read.

“Inflammavi, sanguinem effudi, maximum nunc mihi desiderium—”

The next thing he has been knocked flat on his arse, the shattering of his phone screen ignored in favour of the black hole that has suddenly eclipsed his open plan flat. Two eyes - resembling glowing stars in the infinite dark - glare at him accusingly from within the abyss.

“You know not what you dabble in, foolish human,” a voice accuses, “What need have you for the King of Nightmares?”

Hob swallows. “Uhh. I’ll admit, I… didn’t think this far ahead.”

A being manifests in the shadows. They are taller than Hob, their skin luminescent as a full moon, and their hair and robes black as the darkness they sprang from.

“I have come so far,” the being complains, “You have nothing to offer the Dreamlord?”

“Well, I didn’t say that,” Hob insists with a grin. He quickly scrambles to his feet and moves to unbutton his shirt before a thin pale hand stood his. A wave of that same hand disintegrates his clothing to nothing, and Hob stands bare with his cock half hard and his handsome tanned skin flushed head to toe.

“You will do nicely,” his visitor purrs with approval, “Give yourself to me.”

And that he does; Hob loses track of the tentacles that hold him aloft and taste where he is most sensitive, the teeth that come from innumerable mouths and leave their mark on every inch of him, and the cock far longer and thicker than any other that has taken him ruining him for any other that might dare to claim him from his new master. He climaxes with a cry that heralds the break of day, and then the King of Nightmares becomes his centennial friend, the one being he has loved for all his near seven hundred years.

Dream and Hob collapse into bed together as the dawn breaks, Dream’s body sprawled inelegantly atop of Hob as they both gasp for air. Hob thinks with some satisfaction that Dream should not need to breathe, but the fact that he does feels like a little victory all in itself.

“Roleplay,” Dream pants, nuzzling almost meekly at the countless bruises and monstrous love bites at Hob’s throat, “We may try that again.”

Hob laughs with what little air he has in his lungs, and agrees that yes, they certainly may.

Chapter Text

If any of Dream’s guests notice his knuckles paling even further against the edge of the negotiation table, they do not mention it. This is a very important meeting, as Dream had informed Hob several times before it began, but… well. If Hob happens to have an overactive imagination, that is hardly his fault, is it?

Dream’s eyes fix briefly on his partner by his side. Hob smiles at him, his brown eyes annoyingly loveable even when no one else can see the absolute filth playing out behind them.

In Hob’s mind, almost everything is the same. The only difference in his imaginings is that Hob himself is bare on his back atop the table, covering treaties and maps and other important parchments. His prick leaps where Dream is buried in him to the hilt, barely moving, just lazily grinding his own cock into Hob and choosing to ignore the sweet desperate sounds he makes. But there are no words. Hob knows that he cannot interrupt negotiations; he will lay still and keep the cock of the Dreamlord warm until his work is done. He may pant and whine and whimper as much as he pleases, especially every time the grind of his lover’s crown grazes against his prostate, but he cannot say a word.

A roseate flush paints the height of Dream’s cheeks, and he just catches Hob winking at him before a delegate asks if he is well. He assures them that he is fine, and smugly delights in feeling Hob tense beside him at the returned thoughts of all the things he intends to do to him when this meeting is finally over.

Chapter Text

“Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.”

Glancing at his terrifyingly silent phone before doing another lap of his bedroom, Hob finds that he cannot stop pacing. Could he pass this off as a joke? Probably not. The most forgiving consequence would be that it will be impossible to look his colleague in the eye on Monday morning. At worst, he loses his job and is faced with a sexual harassment case. 

Because he just sent a picture of his cock to the wrong person.

Hob does not even usually send steamy texts to other people, let alone full on dick pics. But he has had a couple of whiskies, and the woman he is talking to had asked very nicely, and she had first sent him a rather charming picture of her--

Ding!

A response. Hob sees the contact name - Morpheus Endless - and sags with defeat. Here it is, the beginning of the end.

He flops onto the bed and snatches up his phone, swiping to unlock it and accept his fate. But in place of what he might have been expecting, his fellow professor has not replied with anger, confusion, or threats of blackmail. Just one simple word.

Another.

Because he is a man, and a weak one at that, the offending appendage types a response in place of Hob’s brain at the same moment it commands him to wrap his free hand around it.

At least ask nicely.

A pause, and as Hob lazily fists himself, his mind wanders to thoughts of Morpheus opening the first text. Had he been surprised? Or has this been something he has expected since that drunken kiss at the faculty Christmas party? Hob recalls the heat of their bodies seamed together out the back of the pub, how he chased the lingering tang of red wine and cigarette smoke on his rival’s lips as they had rutted against each other like it was their first time doing anything at all, and it had been glorious. Hob had come in his trousers, and had hurriedly left the gathering and walked home in the dark, unable to stop thinking about how to - or if he even should - try to hide the blossoming bruises on his throat the next day.

Another, please. Perhaps this will incentivise you.

Those blue eyes glow at him from the attached photo, and the force behind them steals Hob’s attention so utterly that it takes him a full five seconds to register the cock as hard as his taking up the rest of the screen. It is a work of art, tall and slender like the man who sent it, and begging to be sucked or ridden until neither of them could move anymore, whichever of the two Hob could convince Morpheus of.

He’s so fucked. And he doesn’t even care. Hob has never looked so forward to a Monday morning in his entire life.

Chapter Text

If you had told Robert Gadling the night before this one that he would be kneeling at the feet of his most aggravating colleague, watching Morpheus Endless and the alluring bob of his Adam’s apple as he finishes the last of his red wine, then Hob would have probably laughed nervously and changed the subject. If you had proceeded to tell him that it was because of one missent dick pic, he might have at least asked for a little more information than that, perhaps with a handsome flush starting to rise in his cheeks.

As it is, Hob is covered in nothing but a handsome flush at present - save for the tight leather collar around his neck, and the adjoining leash gripped in the hand of a man who he was priorly convinced hated the very air he breathed.

“Good boy,” Morpheus murmurs, pressing his dress shoe a little harder against Hob’s cock. Hob whines, soft and breathy and sweet, but speaks not a word. He wants more of that praise that Morpheus gives so readily. He wants to feel it settle into his bones like soothing honey even as the desperation of arousal threatens to burn it away. He imagines it, warm and slick like the lube dripping down his thighs, his stretched hole fluttering as it clings desperately to the plug Morpheus had fucked him with before the introduction of the leash. 

Morpheus smiles, dressed head to toe in black like the nightmare he is, his gaze sparkling down at Hob wickedly as he tips his head and considers what he might do next.

“Why are you kneeling?” he asks, and then chuckles when Hob does not respond with more than pleading brown eyes blown dark with lust, “Very good. I expected a bit more bite from someone like you, Gadling, but you have been incredibly well behaved. I ought to reward you, hmm?”

He lifts his foot all at once and Hob groans brokenly, catching a glimpse of his own precum glistening on the sole. All of this is new, and his head spins with the possibility of whatever Morpheus might tempt him with next.

Two fingers tap twice on his shoulder.

“Green,” he blurts out, nodding even when the leather of the collar sharply reminds him of the bruising love bites beneath it, “So fucking green.”

“Excellent. Face down then, pretty thing. I want to see how well your tight hole takes my cock,” Morpheus instructs, his hands quickly and methodically unbuckling his trousers, “And I’ll tell you what a good boy you’re being all the while.”

Hob whimpers. It is humiliating, more so than anything else he has ever done before, and he loves it.