Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Oh but imagine Dream glimpsing Hob back in 1389 and immediately deciding they’re getting married right now and whisking him away to The Dreaming, Hades and Persephone style, and Hob thinking “wait so I just got kidnapped by an actual king of dreams, who is hella hot, was granted immortality and it seems my job for the rest of the eternity is to get my back blown by him and also be married to him and, and I cannot stress this enough, I am a Medieval Peasant [TM] and he is a King so I fail to see a single downside to this situation???”
And so Hob Gadling marries Dream of the Endless and they go back to the White Horse every 100 years to have a cute anniversary date.
And of course Hob spends a lot of time in the Waking World because you have to have interests outside of marriage and spending a decade or two pretending to be a Totally Normal Human is Hob’s hobby?
Bonus:
- bodyguard Corinthian (“seriously I don’t need a guard” “yeah I hear you but Dream said if you get hurt he’ll remake me with no genitalia so as far as I’m concerned, anyone who gets within 20 yards of you is getting their spleen removed through their nose” “but I want to go to the market!” “Well then pick one that is the opposite of busy!”)
- awkward courtship after literally kidnapping someone to marry them? “I gift you this flying horse and a star from heavens and the first flower of the first spring and I’ll build you castle with 100 chambers and…” meanwhile Hob is already done because he wants to seal the deal right now before the KING OF DREAMS decides to change his mind
- obligatory meet the family shenanigans
- 3 minutes after Burgess kidnaps Dream, Hob hadoukens him through a wall and saves his man
WHEN the sandman netflix adaptation could have easily changed the date for dream and hob gadling’s meetings to fit 2022 into the schedule but instead made dream miss their last meeting while he was imprisoned and considering how the one before it went it was easy for hob to assume that dream would never meet him again but instead he never gave up hope and when the pub closed down he left directions to the new inn in case dream changed his mind and 23 years later dream got free and did meet him there thus likely setting a new location and date for their meetings to symbolize their newer stronger bond as friends
Morpheus, who was once worshipped as a god in Ancient Greece, would know the significance of having a temple built for you. A place to be worshipped, petitioned, a place solely meant for that specific diety
Imagine, if Hob was indeed the one who built The New Inn, how meaningful that would be to Morpheus. Hob built this place for him. A prayer through action that Hob’s stranger would return to him. A petition made every day in Hob’s upkeep of the graffiti pointing from the old inn to the new one. This is the temple Hob has erected and dedicated to his stranger in the hope, the prayer, the dream that he would one day come back to him.
in which dream can read hob like a book; he is the prince of stories, after all
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where does one find the line between the threshold and the dreaming? is it not gossamer-fine—tangible and ephemeral bound up in a nebulous knot?
it is no hardship for dream to sense what is in hob gadling’s mind that night. barely the effort of an afterthought.
hob is desiring him.
dream raises his teacup to his lips and takes a measured sip of strong darjeeling, as hob regards his mouth with ill-disguised heat from across their little table.
“speak plainly, hob gadling,” dream says. “is there not something you would ask of me?”
he watches hob struggle for a suspended moment in a purgatory of unspilled words and untold wishes.
the sharp snap-crackle of the logs in the fireplace, the clink of china as dream sets down his cup, the thrum of hob’s want like the heartbeat of a living thing, loud in dream’s ears.
then: “i would like you to stay,” hob says. “just the once. for one night.”
in hob’s gaze lies all the longing leander had felt, just before he succumbed to the waves; and in the determined set of hob’s jaw dream glimpses odysseus, eager to dash himself upon the rocks. the great stories will always return to their original forms.
dream considers him. “and what would you have us do,” he asks, “with our one night?”
hob did not expect the question, but dream can feel his answer. knows hob should like to come around the table, and fold down to the floor, and find a place for himself between dream’s spread knees. knows he would tug the ribbon from dream’s hair with reverence. knows hob aches to learn the taste of him, for dream’s lips to scald his skin.
ALT