Hold Tight (4/6)
Status: Complete. Unbeta’d, we die like Hob doesn’t.
Series: The Hob Adherent series.
Fandom: The Sandman (TV 2022) Includes some comics canon, and some cameos from the wider Gaiman-verse, but it’s not necessary to know to enjoy the story.
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Discussions of grief and in-canon character death. Also includes some erotic content. Please curate your internet experience accordingly.
Relationships: Morpheus | Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling, Past Eleanor | Hob Gadling’s Wife/Hob Gadling (past), Hector Hall/Lyta Hall (past)
Characters: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Hob Gadling, Matthew the Raven, Desire of the Endless, Lyta Trevor-Hall, Daniel Hall, Rose Walker, Jed Walker
Summary:
Hob is tasked with his first quest as Vassal of the Endless, Morpheus is bad at using his words, Destiny thinks he’s so clever, Desire makes a confession, Rose Walker meets her Uncle’s boyfriend, and Lyta Hall punches Dream of the Endless in the nose. Or, the one where Hob Gadling turns into everyone’s therapist, and honestly, he ain’t mad about it.
Set at the end of Cling Fast - after the premiere of “Elizabethan Manor”, but before the Epilogue.
READ ON AO3 or below:
Chapter Four
"What," Morpheus demands, as soon as Hob enters his flat above the New Inn that evening, "Is that repugnant stain on your mouth?"
Hob resists the urge to check the mirror above the entryway table. He knows he got all of the lipstick off because Cassie had given him a makeup wipe. It must be some lingering metaphysical mark that Hob can't see.
"Desire kissed me," Hob says, not seeing the point in lying.
He toes off his shoes and moseys into the kitchen, where he finds Morph standing beside the counter, outrage clear in every line and curve of his corporation. Before him, an array of tea things is scattered over the work surface, and the electric kettle whistles high and shrill with Morpheus' eldritch fury.
Hob reaches around him to save the kettle from overboiling, sets it aside, then uses his closeness to crowd Morpheus against the cabinets and offer up the filthiest, most ardent kiss he can.
"Eugh," Morpheus says, when they part.
"Eugh?" Hob echoes, eyebrows bouncing. "I kiss you like that, and you say eugh?"
"You taste like Desire."
"I do not!" Hob says, indignant. "You're just being a drama queen. Besides, how would you know what your sibling tastes like?”
“Eugh!” Morpheus repeats, but he doesn’t push Hob away. Instead he does the opposite, lounging back against the counter and tugging Hob close by his beltloops, pressing them hip-to-hip. There is nothing urgent about it, nothing consuming, just the gentle comfort of basking in the warmth and touch of a person you love.
“Were you making me tea, duckie?”
“I was attempting it, yes,” Morpheus says. “The further away from being Dream of the Endless I become, the harder I find mortal tasks. I’ve never been human, not like my heir will experience. I simply… came into being as more and more humans prayed Morpheus the God of Sleep into existence.”
“Which means…?”
“I cannot simply reach into the aether of human consciousness and know how to do the thing. I must learn it. On Matthew’s suggestion, I have begun keeping a notebook. Today, we were writing down the steps for making hot beverages. I am certain that with enough repetition I will have no trouble, but I—” he hesitates, and Hob leans back a bit to get a good look at his expression. He looks determined, if a little out of his depth. “I want to ensure that in case I become consumed with learning a different task, I have steps recorded so that I may return to them. Matthew calls it ‘setting myself up for success’.”
“That’s smart,” Hob says. “Here, why don’t you finish this up then, while I go get out of my work clothes?”
“I will make tea for you,” Morpheus says firmly, more an affirmation for himself than a promise to Hob. “And then you will tell me what my grasping, greedy sibling wanted and why I should not smite them for daring to touch you.”
“That’s not a very nice way to talk about Desire,” Hob points out, as he walks to the bedroom, shrugging out of his v-necked jumper as he goes. “Especially considering how often you and I are under their influence, Mr. Bossy-Bedroom. If you’re not careful, they’re gonna pull a Satyricon on you when you’re human, just for the laughs.”
The poleaxed look on Morpheus’ face makes it clear that he hadn’t thought about that.
Hob stops in the doorway and turns back to his lover. “You… did realise that once you’re human, the Endless are going to have as much sway over you as they do me, right?”
“I… had not thought of it that way,” Morpheus says and purses his lips.
“Don’t worry,” Hob says as he kicks off his jeans and unbuttons his dress shirt just enough to get it up over his head too. “I have it on good authority that the rivalry between Desire and Dream of the Endless is at an end.”
A clatter in the kitchen has Hob worried enough to peer around the door frame in just his pants.
“Babe? Did you drop something?” No answer comes from the kitchen, but no sounds of breaking crockery or a broom, either. "Are you okay?" More silence. "Morpheus?"
The answer that Hob finally gets is thin and strangled-sounding. “Desire told you this?”
"In more words than not," Hob agrees. "Swore by something called the first circle that they no longer wished you harm?"
Hob doesn't know what swearing sounds like in the dark and ancient languages of the Endless, but he imagines it sounds a lot like the noises Morpheus is making right now. Deciding to forego lounge clothes, Hob throws on a ratty old housecoat (a hundred years old if it's a day, a floor-length, full and flowy, peackockish thing he'd picked up during the height of the 1920s Orientalism trend), and pads out to the kitchen.
Morpheus is leaning over the counter, hands braced on the edge, knuckles whiter than the normally human-pale complexion he wears in the Waking. His veins pop out on his inner-arms, tinged with a blood-blue that didn't used to be there before the Dream-child had been born.
"Was Desire the one who tasked you with this quest that takes us to New Jersey?" Morpheus asks, a bit of Endlessness leaking out of his voice.
He must be a lot more upset than he looks, Hob thinks.
"No," Hob says honestly, stopping beside Morpheus to lean his hip against the fridge. The tin of Hob's favourite loose-leaf tea is on its side, the contents dashed across the countertop, which explains the clatter Hob heard.
"But Desire visited you this day?"
Again, there's no point in sharing anything but the truth with Morpheus. "Yes."
"Why?"
Hob thinks about the best way to answer that while he gently nudges his lover aside to clean up the spilled leaves and finish making up the pot. Eventually he settles on: "They were made aware that I would be visiting the Walkers and asked me to help them repair their relationship."
"What relationship," Morpheus snarls, but his voice is slowly regaining its mortal timbre, so he must be calming down some. "They sired Rose and Jed's mother, and then abandoned Unity. There is no relationship to repair."
"Exactly," Hob says gently. "And they want to change that."
"Desire will never change," Morpheus spits. "They are a being of grasping want, and immediate gratification, and petty jealousies, and satisfaction-in-the-moment. Their memory is short and their motivation is petty."
"But aren't desires also long-term aspirations, and future goals, and putting in the work to achieve the longed-for outcome?" Hob asks as he cleans the tea off the counter and rights the tin. "Do you think marathon runners have any less desire in them than sprinters? Or the people who get up at 5am every day for years to write the novel of their hearts before the rest of the family wakes? Yeah, desire is Mr. Wickham and Mr. Willoughby. But it's also Mr. Darcy and Col. Brandon.”
"You and your romance films. It is charming how much you love love, inamorato, but they will never change," Morpheus repeats stubbornly.
"Why not?" Hob asks. "You did. You are. "
"Choosing to relinquish my Function is not the same as personal growth."
"I dunno, duck," Hob says. "Knowingly stepping away from a toxic working environment that doesn't make you happy or fulfil your soul in order to protect your mental health sounds an awful lot like 'personal growth' to me."
The kettle, which Hob had set back on the base to re-boil as they talked, clicks off. Hob lets Morpheus go through the ritual of filling the infuser and setting up their tea tray while he chews on that response.
"You are determined to approach things from a human perspective," Morpheus grumbles, which is how Hob knows he's won this round. Hob carries the tray to the living room, and sits down on the armchair so Morpheus can sprawl on the sofa in order to most effectively demonstrate the extreme level of his supposed emotional agony.
Hob would never dare say it out loud, but Desire and Dream even pout the same way.
Once the tea is steeped, Hob bitches the pot. Knowing that Dream is distracted by the sliver of his hairy thigh visible through the gap of his housecoat, he says, as nonchalantly as he can produce: "So why are you moving on?"
"A child comes," Morpheus says, as if that answers everything. It’s his rote response, practically a reflex at this point.
"You've said that before, and that still isn't an answer. At least not to me," Hob says with a small headshake and a depreciating laugh. "But then, I'm just some silly little human bloke with a big mouth."
"And a keen mind, and a generous heart," Morpheus rushes to assure him. "Do not devalue or speak ill of my beloved, Hob Gadling. I shall be cross with you if you do."
Hob laughs in earnest as he prepares his tea to his liking and then sits back in the chair. And if his robe slips open a little at the neck, well, let it never be said that Hob isn't above using the charms of his body to make confessions more rewarding.
"So explain it to me," Hob says. "Little happened in your realm that you didn't know about for you were the Dreaming. And sure you couldn't see what the Vortex hid, but you said the woman's baby was dreamstuff. You could have made it…" He gestures with his hand, fingers splayed, wrist limp, in approximation of how Morpheus scatters dream sand into the air. "But you allowed it to exist. Why?"
Morpheus shakes his head slowly, filling his own mug with as much sugar as liquid. Hob wonders how his lover can stand it when the tea he drinks is literally gritty.
"I wept as I unmade Gregory the Gargoyle," Morpheus confesses softly, stirring his sludge delicately. "It saddened me greatly to unmake Gault, and the Corinthian. They were mine. My children, and I had made the choice, and it was terrible, but it was my choice to make. I know intimately the pain of having no choice in the matter. Of having your child snatched away through no fault of your own." He meets Hob's eyes hare, and they both know they are thinking of Orpheus, and Robyn, and Wee John. That they are both the fathers of dead sons. "I could not… I could not choose to unmake that woman's child. Not on purpose. I could not do that to her."
"You know, you still haven't told me the woman or the baby's name."
Morpheus sips his tea and doesn't elaborate.
"Oh, okay, I see how that is," Hob says. "Keep your secrets then, Drama of the Endless. But you know, this doesn't explain why you're… 'giving up' isn't the right phrasing but… well, why are you doing …" he gestures at the tea things and the notebook on the kitchen counter, at the flat around them that is beginning to acquire black sweaters and socks, and raven-care paraphernalia, and leather-bound sketchbooks that Morpheus will not let Hob peruse. "All this?"
Morpheus (who has never in his existence has spoken without carefully planning his words) and Hob (who never in his existence has ever wanted to rush Morpheus) get all the way to the end of their mugs of tea before the answer is forthcoming.
Then he sets aside his mug, and licks his lips, and true to his nature, tells Hob a story.
"Once, when I was feeling very low, my sister Death asked me to accompany her to watch her work," Morpheus says, with all the cadence of an old-fashioned bard. "I told her that I felt empty and… and miserable, when I contemplated my life outside of my Function. That my torment and imprisonment had left me hollow, and my subsequent revenge had ultimately been meaningless."
Hob didn't want to be the one to bring it up, but there had been something unstable about his Stranger when he had first returned. Violent reactions to unwanted touch or unexpected changes, issues with being in tight spaces or tight crowds, sensory problems with loud noises, the way his eyes would dart around and his chest heave with breath Morpheus didn't need if he heard a glass break—it had been strange and awful, and Hob hadn't known how best to help him, then. But one thing had been clear: Morpheus, for all his power, had not taken the time to heal from his torturous ordeal.
It had worried Hob.
It doesn't worry him anymore. He was proud of how hard Morpheus had worked to understand and process his trauma, with Hob (and a few texts on PTSD and cognitive therapy) by his side.
Now, Hob reaches for Morpheus's hand, and Morpheus takes it, because it is a safety and a security that they have forged together. It's so much like that first night here, when Hob learned of his oldest and truest friend's century-long suffering, that he is struck with a wave of deja vu.
I love you, Hob thinks fiercely. I loved you then, too, but it was a small, new thing. Just an ember. It didn't burn yet. I didn't know, couldn't hope to know, how much I'd blaze in just one short year.
"Do you know what she said to me when I had made my confession, Hob Gadling?" Morpheus asks with a weary huff.
"No, what?" Hob feels his face draw down into a frown to match the one sinking onto Morpheus' mouth. He has a feeling he isn't going to like what he's about to hear.
"She told me that I simply needed to embrace my Function, to remember that I serve humanity, and if I simply do so, I will be alright."
Hob sucks in a sharp, shocked breath. "That… sorta sounds like the opposite of what I thought you would have needed."
"I believed the same as you say," Morpheus confesses with a bitter twist of his lips. "What worked for my sister, what helps her achieve balance and thoughtfulness in and happiness in her Function… did the opposite for me. I followed her for a half a day as old men passed away alone. As a bride's honeymoon was cut short, and a young man just wanting to play with his friends was senselessly destroyed by a careless driver."
Hob squeezes Morpheus' hand three times— I love you.
Morpheus squeezes back.
"My sister Death finds fulfilment and pride in her Function. She is there for them, in the end. She is a friendly face and a warm smile for all. She is not the cause of their deaths. Her Function, as many mortals would say in the common vernacular, for her it sparks joy."
"But not you?"
Morpheus heaves a wistful sigh. "It did. Once. But when I told her of the hollow ringing of my heart in the vast cavern of the Dreaming, she told me I must just bang the gong of it harder. As if the thunderous rollback of the echo would fill me with serene music, and not become an agonizing cacophony. She assumed that because her Function is enough for her, that I must be the same. But instead of helping me find joy in my Function, it instead made it feel all the colder and more meaningless.” Morpheus scrubs his hands through his hair, frustrated with his inability to convey all that he’s trying to tell Hob. “Dream of the Endless is meant to fill mortal sleeping hours before they are met with Death with wonder and joy and inspiration. And I felt none of my own. Do you understand me?"
Hob slips from the chair to kneel at Morpheus's sweet socked feet, take both his hands in his own, and kiss the backs of them. "A little?"
"I was seeking connection on a personal level, brother to sister. She… denied me this. In a kind and well-meaning way, but denied me all the same. She spoke to me not as a sister, but as one Endless to another. She told me, not in so many words, but plainly enough, to stop my whinging and get on with it." Morph’s eyes shimmer with the mercury-silver tears, shoulders trembling with repressed emotion. "And I… I could not. I could only … I thought of you."
“I’m sure she didn’t mean it like that,” Hob says gently.
Morph looks earnest, like he's trying to confess something, trying to say more than simple words can convey. The prince of Stories has a whole tome behind his eyes, and Hob does his best to parse it.
"She reminded me that humanity is the reason I exist, and remembering that I serve humanity will return me to a place of happiness and she was not wrong, she meant it kindly, I must emphasize that… but it was the wrong advice in the moment because all it made me think about was you."
Hob tries not to let himself preen too much. "And then you came to find me at the New Inn. You let me keep you when I begged."
"Yes," Morpheus says, licking his rosebud mouth, leaving his lips shining in the growing twilight. "You only sought to connect with me on a personal level. You dubbed me ‘friend’, and asked for my name, and wanted to know the mundanities of my own preferences and experiences, and gave little care to the power and prestige of my Function. And I realized… this is what I want. I no longer desire the connection that solely comes from fulfilling my duties. I want only that of… you."
"Well, more than just me, I hope, duck," Hob says, tugging gently at his ear. "I can't be your, you know, only reason for existing."
"Not you, Hob Gadling, you vainglorious creature," Morpheus chuckles. "But... you, the most human of humanity. And therefore the representative of the whole.”
"Oh, duck," Hob says, turning Morph's hands over to lay kisses down the long, broken path of each of his lifelines.
"I have lost the joy of being Dream of the Endless," Morpheus says, with such gravitas, such candor, such fear that it seems as if he dreads Father Time and Mother Night themselves descending from the heavens to strike him dead for such blasphemies.
Hob kisses the plush mound of each of Morpheus' thumbs.
"I have lost the colour and thrill of being Nightmare King. The creativity doesn't move me. The plights of the Dreamers do not wound me. Their laughter does not fulfil me. Their wonder is stale and their terror tastes like ash. My duties are like a weighted and wet cloak. The burden of their care drags me down. I am… unhappy, Hob. I cannot serve my Function because it leaves me in miseries. And my miseries impede my ability to serve my Function. It is… time to hand the reins to one who can… who can dream again. For I have quite lost the knack of it."
"I'm so sorry to hear it," Hob tells him earnestly. He perches his chin on Morpheus's knee to peer up at him. "And I'm so proud of you for being able to recognize it. To choose to do something about it."
"It is you who is the source of that bravery, erasti," Morpheus says, meaningfully. He frees one of his hands to push Hob's loose hair back behind his ear, petting down the side of his bare neck.
Hob feels his ears go pink. "And so when the child came, you let it?"
"Morpheus, the God of Sleep, is no longer in his temples, nor supping at his altars. The old god is dead. The new must rise."
"So what do you want now, then?"
"You. Just you. Just… just this."
"You have it," Hob says urgently, rising on his knees to cup Morpheus' cheeks in his own hands, to draw him down into chaste, slow kiss. "You have me."
"I do. But I want to choose it, do you understand me?" Morpheus asks, dragging Hob up to straddle his lap so he needn't bend double for their gazes to be level. "Death told me to just accept my life and be happy with it as it was. To push aside choice. To simply follow the rules and it will be good enough, but she followed the rules and I suffered. When I needed help… in Fawny Rigg… she did not come. She knew where I was, she took Jessamy away and she left me there. True, I did not call on my siblings for rescue, but I did so to protect them from Burgess and his terrible greed. But she came for Jessamy, and she saw me, and she left me there. Do you understand?"
Hob pets his hair back, soothing. "I understand."
"She does not mean to be cruel, but what does Death really, know of life? Even if she walks as a mortal one day a century, she is never really human. She has never really loved and lost as I have. When I asked for help to find my purpose and happiness again, she… took me to watch a mother scream. She knew Orpheus, dandled him on her knee and whispered poetry in his ear to soothe him to sleep, and yet that was her solution. There were a thousand other beings dying in that same moment, but that is the one she took me to see. When I expressed my fear that I can no longer connect with humanity, she invited me to watch a baby die. I asked for her help and she did not help me. Not the way that you helped me."
Hob's frown has by now become a mighty scowl, but before he can say something he's sure he'll probably regret later, Morpheus adds:
"Do not mistake me, erasti. Death loves me. I was the first infant she ever held. Besides Destiny, and you, I will be the last being she escorts to the Sunless Lands. But just because she loves me does not mean that she knows how best to care for me. Not like you do, my beloved."
"I try," Hob says, infusing every syllable with the devotion and determination he feels. "I always will."
"I know. As I will for you. And so, it is time, I think… to pass the crown on to one who will not only wear it, but marry themselves to their realm as a monarch ought. I am a creature born of human worship and naming. The child is a creature born of Dreamstuff, created to be of them instead of over them. To the Dreaming he belongs, and in the Dreaming he will find his purpose, and his happiness. In ways that I…" Morph looks down at his palms, and picks at the callus that his pen nib has begun to leave on the inside of his middle finger. "I never fully have. Not in the way that the other facets of Dream of the Endless revel in or enjoy their function. I've always been… trapped by the constraints of what those who thought me up believed a god should be."
“Oh?”
Morph laughs, mirthlessly. "You humans! You are the only creatures in existence who believe your gods to be just as flawed, and petty, and greedy, and compassionate, and loving as you are. And as I am created, I am also thus. It has made me… singular among the other Dreams."
"You're not petty, or greedy," Hob says, but knows he looks dubious as he does. Hob has known him to be petty and greedy in the extreme.
"Oh, Hob, but I am," Morpheus corrects him gently. He settles his hands at Hob's waist, sliding his palms through the slit in the silk bathrobe, spreading his fingers over Hob's furry stomach like he can reach through it and fist his hands in Hob’s guts and merge their flesh. He probably could. " So greedy. But you see those as virtues, see the good that comes of those traits. You see them as flaws worth loving, rather than reasons to discard me."
Hob clamps his hands down on Morpheus's shoulders as his lover shifts and spreads his legs, allowing Hob to settle more fully against his pelvis.
"And so. There is your answer, Hob Gadling," Morpheus says, leaning up to paint his confession against the flesh of Hob's sternum, directly between his nipples. "Morpheus God of Sleep was born of human thought, and of humanity he now must become. Dream of the Endless is a being dedicated to its Function, and this facet of the jewel must be shaved off and polished anew, for it is dull, and scuffed, and scarred. But fear not, my dearheart, for the cutting shall come thick enough that the jewel can be buffed smooth. It can shine on its own."
"Hell of a metaphor," Hob says with a low whistle. "But I guess you invented them, so that's all right."
The flight is tolerable only because Hob throws back a handful of sleeping pills as soon as the plane begins to taxi away from the jetway, and he spends most of it in the throne room with Lucienne as they index a catalogue of all of the new denizens that had come into being along with the birth of the new sovereign. There are an alarming number of children's dreams of simple animated dogs.
Hob reaches his hotel room still groggy from the jetlag, the lingering effects of the medication, and the stomach-lurchingly erratic cab ride from Newark International airport. He’s happy to find Morpheus there, waiting for him. He’s lounging indolently in one of the armchairs, that fancy moleskin that Hob’s never allowed to see into on his lap, his fingers splotched with ink.
Morpheus takes pity on Hob and draws him a bath in the luxurious jacuzzi tub. He tucks himself into the water and makes of himself a bath pillow to keep Hob upright and protected as Hob begins to doze. Morpheus feeds him fruit and sugared nuts from the dreams of children and bakers preparing for the upcoming holy day, and coaxes the sweetest, most lazy orgasm out of Hob's body with teeth in Hob’s neck, and his elegant hands roving below the water line.
Hob wakes up ravenous, and orders a ridiculously American-sized portion of scrambled eggs, streaky bacon, toast, and coffee strong enough to damn near melt the spoon Hob uses to stir in his sugar.
Then Hob dresses. Spring has well and truly arrived in New Jersey, and it is warm enough for him to leave off his brown leather jacket and roll up the sleeves of his pullover. The air is tinged with possibility, and the faint reek of the Delaware River, which is different from, but at the same time, exactly like the Thames. The day is bright, and virtually cloudless.
Morpheus leads him through the old neighborhood, telling him the dreams of the colonial buildings that ring the nearby park. He converses with each curious corvid, makes a leg at the local regent of the squirrels, and awakens every sleeping blossom they pass by with a light tap of his elegant fingers.
"You're an honest-to-god Disney Princess," Hob tells Morpheus, crowding him up against the base of a statue of some Yankee war hero or another. Hob kisses the indignation out of Morpheus's mouth, and then adds: "I fucking love it."
"Dr. Gadlen!" someone shouts, from the cement pathway by the water.
Hob detaches from Morpheus and scans the crowd for the source of the call. "Rose!" he shouts back, waving his arm delightedly. Beside him, Morpheus smooths down his coat and hair, too majestic to do something so infantile as wave and whistle.
Rose and Jed pop out of the crowd and begin climbing the verdant green hillock toward them. Trailing behind Jed, a classically beautiful brunette woman veers onto the grass to follow him with a pushchair.
And in the chair sits a little boy. A tow-headed child with a guileless smile and emerald green eyes, exactly like the one depicted in the stained glass behind Morpheus's throne.
There comes a child, Morpheus had said, and Hob feels like an idiot for not connecting the dots sooner. The child. Who Morpheus has never named in front of Hob, but is clearly and obviously the one born to Lyta Trevor-Hall.
The one born to a woman whose husband was long-dead, but who was intimate friends with a Dream Vortex, who can make things like this happen with a mere thought and a wish.
Hob stands there, mouth agape, staring at the toddler like a complete and utter prat.
Before Hob can say any of this though, Lyta Hall catches sight of the shadow looming over Hob's shoulder. Her face darkens and hardens in fury. She shoves the pushchair at Jed to mind, strides across grass and right up into their personal space, hauls back, and punches Morpheus square in the nose.
PREVIOUS PART | NEXT PART
