Did This For School Assignment.

Did this for school assignment.

Lord of Dreams freshly plucked out of the Dreaming. Of course you couldn’t resist, Hob :).

the funny thing is that I originally sketched out and shaded a different version of this (Dream clothed only in his skinny jeans - I’ll put it under the cut, hint spicier though - only a little :)). It was nice I guess, but then I looked at it and thought: you know what would look great draped over the edge of the sofa? Dream’s shadowy dress from this (x) post. yes, I have to redo this from scratch now :). and I’m happy that I did. I prefer this one more - I think it has more soul to it and is more soft and playful. sigh

but don’t wanna waste the first version and I think some of you might like… so feel free to keep reading if you’re curious

Keep reading

read this while “the predatory wasp of palisades is out to get us” by sufjan stevens plays in the background :’)

Inspired by this absolutely precious dreamling art by @anabimelo ! <3

The first time, Dream doesn’t do it on purpose.

He visits the New Inn as he has taken to doing a little more often than perhaps he should, and finds Hob with bruised skin beneath his eyes and a stack of unmarked exams scattered all around him.

“I can return at a better time if you are busy?” Dream offers; he would very much like Hob’s company, but he dislikes seeing him tired like this—much more, he would dislike adding to the reasons for it.

“Stay,” Hob requests, doubt flickering across his face before he nods at the bench beside him.

Dream has been finding himself increasingly incapable of denying Hob anything. He very carefully ignores the implications of said condition.

“Are you certain?” he asks. “You appear to be stressed.”

“All the more reason for a break,” Hob says, waving him off. “You could tell me about… just anything, really. News of your realm? How is the rebuilding going?”

Dream has been trying to become better about this—telling Hob his name and his purpose, all those minute implications that come with it—and so he does.

He speaks of the restoration process of the library, and Lucienne’s tireless work. He spins the stories that make up the inhabitants of the Dreaming and their various histories, while life in the pub keeps playing out around them, a comforting lull that never once disturbs their quiet bubble.

Hob listens, even as his eyes seem to grow heavier, exhaustion radiating off of him.

The first time is not on purpose, and so when Hob Gadling rests his head on Dream’s shoulder, drifting off into his realm, Dream freezes. He is painfully, viscerally aware of the warm weight of Hob’s head, the hair tickling his neck, the soft cadence of Hob’s breathing now pressed against Dream’s side.

Within his chest, something awfully close to a heart is thrashing against its bone-coloured constraints.

The implicit trust is almost overwhelming, would be too much if it wasn’t Hob; Hob, who is muttering a name in this early stage of sleep that he has learnt only months ago, pressing his nose into Dream’s neck as if to build himself a home there.

Dream can do little but breathe, can do little but wrap the magic of his realm around them so that he can carry Hob to his bed without waking him.

He lingers, for the briefest of moments, witnessing Hob’s sleep.

He ignores the blooming tenderness within his chest, too.

While the first time was an accident, the following instances are not.

Hob doesn’t mention it the next time they see each other, as their meetings spill over from the Inn to strolls through London’s early autumn streets and into Hob’s flat. They huddle up on Hob’s sofa, as Hob talks about anything and everything, and nudges Dream to do the same.

So he does; he talks about Matthew and Rose and Jed, about his siblings and his plans for the Dreaming. He lets his voice drop low, lets it drag and curl through the room and wrap around Hob like the magic of lullabies that people dream of.

When Hob’s head comes to rest on his shoulder once more, Dream forgets that he does not need to breathe. He forgets the weight of eternal responsibility that usually presses down on his spine, forgets the phantom coldness of glass and steel, and comes alive beneath the steady, never-ending rhythm of Hob’s breathing. --- So it becomes a habit. Selfishly, Dream builds himself a sanctuary between the sleeping mind and the waking form of his only friend.

He allows his voice to coax Hob into his realm and pretends not to see the knowing glint in Hob’s eyes. He talks of his past and his present and his future as if of gifts that are simple to hand out, and he offers them all up at Hob’s feet for the comfort of his warmth against Dream’s shoulder. For how, without fail, Hob’s calloused hands will find his. How, without fail, once Dream puts him to bed after taking his fill of the warmth, Hob’s fingers will still curl into the insubstantial fabric of Dream’s clothes as if asking him to stay.

It has nothing to do with him, really, and there is only so much Dream can allow himself to indulge. So he never does, no matter how much the longing is threatening to swallow him whole—to lie down beside Hob, to press his nose into the tender skin of Hob’s throat. To pull the covers over them and bask in Hob Gadling’s warmth as if he were the sun and Dream the thawing ice of early spring.

So he never does, until one night, Hob’s grip on his clothes does not loosen; instead, he blinks up at Dream with drowsy eyes that are full of fond exasperation.

He shouldn’t be, is the thing. No mere human should possess the strength to tear themselves out of the Dreaming’s grasp—not with Dream’s attention on them, with no nightmare or outside force to throw them back to waking.

Hob Gadling has not been an ordinary human in a considerable time. He is blinking up at Dream, slow but awake, awake, awake. He says, “Stay. Please.”

Dream’s throat is dry, air stuttering through insubstantial lungs; part of him is tempted to step back into his realm and the safety of its loneliness.

Hob’s fingers are still warm against the skin of his wrist. Beneath the exhaustion and the hope and the quiet confidence, Dream can read the nervous anticipation as if in bold letters.

You have been staying for months now, he seems to say. Will you let me stay with you too, finally, finally?

Dream has been finding himself increasingly incapable of denying Hob anything; Hob’s constant, gentle tenacity renders it impossible, at last.

“As you wish,” Dream murmurs, and means, please; I would stay for as long as you have me.

Hob smiles up at him as if he understands, and once Dream has stretched out beside him, Hob reaches for him. The blanket is spread over Dream, and Hob’s hand finds his wrist, unerring.

“Could’ve just done that weeks ago,” Hob says with a sigh, pulling him close with a light arm around Dream’s waist that he could slip out of if he so pleased.

He doesn’t; he stays silent instead, tension unspooling as his body melts into the warmth of the bed, the scent of Hob around him—its own kind of lullaby.

“Thank you,” Dream says, the words slipping off his tongue in a rare moment of missing deliberation. He can’t bring himself to mind.

Hob hums, a small, content sound before he presses his lips to the crown of Dream’s head. He pulls Dream a little closer yet, and then he drifts back off into Dream’s realm as if it all really is as easy as this, for him.

Dream breathes in, and lets the quiet joy seeping off of Hob’s mind fill the cold cracks within himself. He breathes out and presses his nose into the crook of Hob’s neck, feeling at home for the first time in over a century.

i am displeased

The rescue goes wrong.

Hob is shot and chained. Close to the glass cage but still too far away to reach the rune circle.

He very nearly dies from blood loss, before they deign to patch him up roughly. When Alex Burgess comes to them and demands answers, Hob remains silent like his stranger. Alex pleads with him and when that doesn’t work he rages.

The man is a wreck, having two prisoners now and not even wanting one. He paces before Hob, then the glass prison, pleading or demanding answers which neither of his prisoners are willing to give him. But even when he rages, Alex never raises a hand against Hob, who would make an easy target. He even seems to flinch away from that kind of violence and doesn’t even let the guards do something. In the end he always leaves empty handed and with instruction to the guards to inform him should anything change.

Hob keeps silent, he wouldn’t normally be good at that, but the last thing he wants is to give their jailors any kind of information about his stranger, even when he thinks that he wouldn’t even have much to offer. So he only glowers at the guards or Alex or Paul when they come down.

He knows Paul pleads with Alex to at least let him go, try to make him promise not to come back and just forget everything, as if he ever could. So he just stares them down, every time they try.

They give him food and water in contrast to his stranger, who doesn’t even seem to have air. Hob contemplates not eating, it’s not like it would kill him, but as he is about to kick the tray with food away from him, his stranger sends him a sharp look.

They stare at each other for a moment, a silent argument between them, before Hob relents and eats the meal. They remain silent for days, in case of his stranger even motionless.

But then the guards change again and one of them gets closer for the first time. Not too close, always mindful of the rune circle but still closer then others have dared.

The guard looks at them for a moment, before he opens his mouth and Hob seriously wants to smash his head in.

The guard starts with taunts before he gets over to leer at his stranger and Hob wants nothing more than to strangle the bastard. The guard of course turns to him then, laughing and taunting them both, even trying to touch Hob.

He very nearly loses some fingers for that. His partner steps in then and drags him away. Hob snarls at them, the only sound he allows to escape. The guard doesn’t try again to get close to Hob after that but that doesn’t stop the taunts.

But those are not a real problem for Hob at least, he heard far worse in his life. What makes Hob far angrier is the reaction from his stranger. He had been tense more than usual when the guard had come close and very nearly moved, when the guard’s focus had shifted to Hob. And he hadn’t given up his tense posture since, even when the guard left.

Hob hates it, it looks too much like fear and he never wants to make his stranger afraid.

Hob wants to tell him that it was okay, he is fine, it is nothing he can’t handle but he will have to use his words. And he really doesn’t want to give their captors anything they could use against them, so Hob thinks about a way to reassure and soothe his strangers’ worries.

And then he has an idea, if he can’t use his words to reassure then he can use them to distract his stranger from their situation and give him something to lose himself in.

So Hob starts to talk, in a low voice only meant for his stranger he starts telling him stories. 

Old and new tales, tales he heard all over the world and collected in his long life.

He tells his stranger all the old folk tales he heard in his youth, all the stories told around fires in the short times of rest between battlefields in foreign lands and those he later printed on paper. Hob tells him the stories he told his son on long winter days by the hearth and those he had learned from his darling wife. All the stories he heard on the streets and later on ships from other sailors, and even later the ones he learned from those he had wronged and then freed and would forever make up for. He tells him the stories he heard in pubs around the world. And those he had told and heard in the trenches, when he and his fellow soldiers tried to keep warm and starve of the fear and homesickness. The stories which were told at lavishing parties and those told between rubble and in bunkers to keep the fear of bombs away. And Hob tells him those newer ones he had been reading before he heard of his friend’s predicament. He tells him old classics and new classics. Romances and tragedies. Life Stories and myths. 

The basement is empty and cold and his voice echoes even when he tries to keep it down. He doesn’t care, Hob keeps his eyes on his stranger, ignoring the guards and only speaking to his friend. 

He only stops when Alex Burgess comes down, after he gets informed by the guards of what is happening. Only then is Hob silent or in the few fitful hours he gets to sleep, always supervised by the guards so nothing will happen. However when Hob is awake and only the guards are sitting at their desk in the corner he will tell the stories.        

And the more he speaks, the more his stranger relaxes his posture. Never completely but he doesn’t hold himself like a too tight coiled string anymore. And between Hobs words there is reassurance, they will get out of here and until then Hob will tell stories and they will wait together. After all they have time and Hob learned long ago how to be patient.