Youre A Fair Bit Quieter Today Than Usual, Hob Says, Soft And Coaxing. Can I Do Anything?

“You’re a fair bit quieter today than usual,” Hob says, soft and coaxing. “Can I do anything?”

Those four words make the back of his throat sting. He grits his teeth.

Hob knows. He always knows. He clocked Dream in 1389 and he’s only gotten better at reading him in the past 637 years. Dream couldn’t hope to hide anything from him now.

Dream looks down at his lap. Hob’s attention doesn’t waver.

“I lost Jessamy today,” he says. “One hundred years ago.”

“Oh, darling,” Hob breathes. “I’m so sorry.”

Dream shakes his head. He’s not sure why. It just feels right. Perhaps a last ditch effort to deny his greatest loss in the last century.

The tears come now as they did that day in 1926 — hot, silent, and choking. Hob remains beside him, a warm and comforting companion to his grief.

“I had ravens before her and now I have Matthew but she was at my side the longest. They would hang around fifty years or so before moving on and that was fine with me. She joined me just after we met in 1789.”

“I wish I could have met her,” Hob says, and that brings on a fresh wave of silent tears.

Jessamy would not have liked Hob at the beginning but he would have grown on her like he did Dream. They would have been friendly by 1789 but seeing Hob take down two hulking guards with naught but a teacup for threatening Dream would have solidified him in her good graces.

He tells Hob this and can’t help the trembling smile that pulls at his lips as Hob laughs.

Hob and Matthew get on like a 14th century inn on fire (thatched roofs!) but Jessamy would have come to love Hob as Dream does. She was slow to warm but that hesitance hid an expressive and warm interior like he.

Matthew enjoys the occasional cuddle on the sofa or in bed but usually prefers to bed down on his own. Jessamy, on the other hand, never let the opportunity for a cuddle go unseized. She was always preening her feathers to get them to lie flat after a good nap in Dream’s lap, arms, or nuzzled between his neck and the collar of his coat. She often chose that spot when he was sitting still for extended periods of time.

“I don’t want Matthew to change—I like him just as he is—but I can’t help—“ He falters, breath catching.

“You miss that connection,” Hob finishes. “It’s hard, adjusting to a new normal, and it takes time.”

Dream’s hand trembles as he reaches for Hob. He catches that shaking hand between his own and kisses the fingertips.

“She was in my coat when they captured me. Technically, she was in The Dreaming, but when they took everything away, she escaped through my coat,” he swallows. “She was the last being I touched for over a century.”

He doesn’t move away when Hob wipes a tear from his cheek.

“I never got to,” he chokes on his breath, “to touch her again.”

He does move away when Hob shifts but realizes belatedly he wasn’t trying to touch him, only angle his body differently. But Hob released his hand without hesitation when he retreated.

“Sorry.”

“No, you’ve nothing to apologize for,” Hob says easily. “Tell me more, anything.”

“Mervyn got a few of the more artistically inclined residents of The Dreaming together and had them paint a mural in my castle of my ravens. Jessamy’s picture is the largest of the bunch. I don’t know how they remembered what they all looked like. Lucienne probably recalls them all and assisted.”

“I’d love to see it sometime.”

Dream looks up to find Hob watching him. Hob smiles at him, sweetly, encouraging. He feels as if he could face anything if Hob simply smiled at him like that.

“Can I tell you about how she died?” He asks, voice and body shivering.

“Of course, my love.”

The strength in Hob’s eyes lends Dream a bit of his own. He’s not told anyone the details of Jessamy’s death since he returned. The grief was too fresh and then he had work to do and it seemed unimportant to bother anyone else with.

But Hob looks him in the eye and says, “Anything,” and Dream believes him.

So you said queer history didn't start with Stonewall, which is not even surprising at all. However, that's all I've ever been told, so I don't know anything about the time before Stonewall. Do you have a tag, a masterpost, or some articles or something for me to read so I can learn about queer history before Stonewall? And I'm sorry if this comes off as rude or anything; I just genuinely want to learn the untold history of the community I'm a part of. Thanks 😊

First, thank you for coming to us, you didn’t come off as rude at all. 

Well, we don’t have a tag or masterpost, but I can create a list of articles we have up at this point (May 14, 2018) that focuses on queer subjects from before Stonewall.

Sappho, the Poetess

Kristina, King of Sweden

Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, and Occam’s Razor

Josephine Baker, a Woman with Eclectic Talents

Queer Women and AFAB People During the Holocaust

Magnus Hirschfeld, the Founder

Institute of Sexology, a Place of Learning

San Domino, Gay Island

The Bitten Peach and the Cut Sleeve

The End of the World War 2 Series

Vita Sackville-West: Creating a Legacy

Langston Hughes: the Poet

The Marriage of Jane and Paul Bowles

Bjornstjerne Bjornson, the Advocate

Osh-Tisch, the Warrior

The Trials of Oscar Wilde

Sir Ewan Forbes, the Doctor

Frida Kahlo: Lover of Self and Others

Albert D.J. Cashier

The Golden Orchid

Queen Christina, Queer Codes and Queer Coding (Part 2)

Queen Christina, Queer Codes and Queer Coding(Part 1)Different from the Others, the Beginning

The Story of the Ladies of Llangollen

Wilfred Owen: Dating Your Heroes (And Writing Through Hard Times)

Virginia Woolf: Struggling (And Never Being Perfect)

Tamara de Lempicka’s Legacy

Tamara de Lempicka’s Life

Federico Garcia Lorca: Words that Scared a Country

Bricktop, and the Happy Ending

Bricktop, the Fabulous

Frank Kameny

Sophia Parnok, Russia’s Sappho

Annemarie Schwarzenbach

Alan L. Hart, Part 2

Alan L. Hart, Part 1

Defining Identities in North America, Part 2

Defining Identities in North America, Part 1

Alan Turing

Hatshepsut

Hamish Henderson

Elagabalus, the Empress

Billy Tipton and the Question of Gender

Takatāpui

Yukio Mishima

Kitty Genovese

Catherine Bernard: A question in studying asexual history

György Faludy

Edward Carpenter

Dawn Langley Hall

Zimri-Lim, King of Mari

Coccinelle

Lesbia Harford

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs

Frieda Belinfante Part 2 

Frieda Belinfante Part 1

Eleanor Rykener

Redefining the Dandy: The Asexual Man of Fashion

I hope this helps! 

Can I just talk about how jarring seeing gifs of Dream from the beginning and end of season 1 side by side is. Because he's VISIBLY gained weight and I understand the reasons but now I need a fic exploring how he's growing healthier after his imprisonment and his face filling out. Like Johanna seeing him months after getting his sand and the rude woman telling him he's gained weight.

Cause I've seen fics where Hob notices how thin he is because episode 6 is barely a week after everything calms down, I think, and he's still recovering. I want Hob just having the most powerful urge to feed him and succeeding and getting to see him getting stronger.

so here's the thing, about dream's relationships. they rarely last longer than a couple months, though we only have a small sample size as to why

and merv says this, at one point, and while merv's opinions on dream are always to be taken with a grain of salt, he is at least someone who's seen most of them fall apart

but from dream's perspective, we know he's never stopped loving anyone, once you have his heart you have it forever, even if he's not always the best at showing it, and is easily offended when he thinks you're rejecting him

so i think, what's likely happening here is, dream will put a lot of effort into courting someone, that we've seen, but once they get cemented in his brain as a thing he's not going to easily lose, he a) loses track of time, and b) finds it harder to keep prioritising that courtship over all of the other million things that need his attention at any given moment, which reads to anyone else as dream's stopped loving me

and i think about how dream is the most neurodivergent endless after delirium, and how many adhd symptoms are very dreamlike, with the skipping from one thing to another with no need to explain the middle, or the major difficulty regulating emotions

...how's that object permanence working out for you there, buddy? the "what no it's only been like, three days since we last talked, not seven months" trait is strong here, huh? "i still love you and last i checked you loved me so how could things have possibly changed in my absence?"

(kinda see that one with him being surprised the dreaming was so fucked up after a century's absence, too)

relationship degradation mechanic broke, local endless does not have a concept of time away from someone making you care less about them and is very confused and angsty over the whole affair

though hey if nothing else the dreamling shippers are in luck here bc if there's anyone in the world who's not gonna be offended by or stop caring about dream after long absences, that would be the one!

The Sandman | the quiet devastation of Lord Morpheus 

LUCIENNE: With you gone as long as you were, the realm began to… decay and crumble.

MORPHEUS: Had they so little faith in me? Do my own subjects not know me?