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valiantstarlights · 9 months

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[Enlightenment] Chapter 2: Boundaries

Chapter 1: Realizations

Dream goes to The New Inn in 2022 and is met with a polite but distant Hob.

CW: angst

In the wake of The White Horse Tavern closing not even after a year after his and his Stranger's centennial meeting, Hob decides that he should just stop trying.

It has been made clear to him that no one wants to be his friend just for the sake of being friends, and so he does the sensible thing and stops inserting himself needlessly into other people's lives.

He starts to categorize people based on how he knows them: co-workers, bosses, students, small business owners he buys his food from...

But never friends.

It's freeing.

He doesn't have to be anything to anyone anymore. He can fulfill his duties without expecting something foolish like friendship in return. It's a somewhat lonely existence, but it's a better one compared to the way he did things before.

And besides, he has been alone for as long as he can remember. Even before he became immortal, and even before his entire family died of the plague, he has always been alone.

Why didn't he see it before?

Hob as a child wanted to have friends too. But he was too him, and so his playmates always 'forget' to look for him every time he plays hide and seek with them.

It's funny, looking back on it now. He thought he was just so good at hiding that no one found him.

And so he stayed hidden. Past sunset, past curfew, past midnight, and until the sun rises again, child Hob sits alone in his hiding place, waiting for someone to find him.

No one does. And no one comes looking for him either.

His parents had far more important worries than wondering where one of their many children is, like actually finding enough food to feed them all.

For all Hob knew, they were thankful when he doesn't go home. One less mouth to feed and all. For all he knew, they had been the ones to tell his playmates not to go looking for him.

Six hundred year old Hob pities himself as a child. He should not have tried so hard. All he did was waste his time.

Winter of 1991 is when Hob realizes that he does not blame his Stranger for leaving as he did at all.

He must have been at the end of his patience with Hob, and Hob callously telling him that he thinks he's lonely would have been the straw that broke the camel's back.

Looking back on it, he deserved his Stranger's angry reaction.

What does Hob know about his life? For all he knows, his Stranger could have friends and family waiting for him to arrive as soon as he concludes his centennial meetings with Hob.

In fact, they were probably the ones who dared him into making Hob immortal, so they would get endless entertainment out of him.

Hob waxing poetic about chimneys? Amazing. He's such a hilarious little fool. Venison pasties being the best thing ever? Classic peasant Hob, only now he's masquerading as a lord.

It's fine. Hob knows he can be unintentionally funny sometimes.

But now that his Stranger has obviously and very definitively moved on, Hob hopes that wherever he is right now, he has already gotten himself another Shaxberd.

If he has, and Hob is certain that he has, then he is happy for him. For them.

He hopes that whoever his Stranger's new immortal is, they'll take care of him as he deserves, and tell him better stories that would survive through the ages, like Shaxberd's did.

He hopes he meets them someday. Not to be friends, of course. But just to thank them for taking care of his Stranger when Hob had been too incompetent to even have a meaningful conversation with him.

The old barkeep from 1989 builds the New Inn in the year 2000, just a stone throw's away from the White Horse Tavern, and Hob invests in it.

He has too much money now. And while he's adamant in keeping himself apart from other people, he still likes helping those in need.

He gives to charities, supports worthwhile endeavors, and funds the schooling of the kids who have aged out of orphanages. Sometimes he even helps them get their first jobs if they need it. Those he helps occasionally end up taking part-time jobs in The New Inn, and they never know that they were serving the person who funded their college education.

It's fine. Hob doesn't mind being anonymous. He would rather be anonymous nowadays, anyway. Just plain old Mr. Gadling with his plain looks and his plain life, studying to become a professor of history.

Maybe one day, far off into the future, he would manage to atone for what he has done during his years as a slaver.

He knows he never would, but he tries his best anyway.

The old barkeep dies in 2016 and wills Hob (who has remained anonymous) The New Inn.

Hob has no wish to deal with the minutiae of running an inn, however, and so he promotes a couple of folks to run the Inn for him, and gets them to hire more helpers if they need it.

He doesn't know whose idea it was to spray paint the sign in front of The White Horse Tavern pointing to the New Inn, or who keeps repainting it, but he lets it slide. Business is business, after all, and if it gets the inn more customers, then who is Hob to complain?

Most of the regular customers are locals who have been getting pints from the old tavern, but tourists also come by, and students from the nearby university where Hob teaches frequent the Inn as well. The tourists come for the good food, the students come for the free wifi, and Hob welcomes them all.

He arranges all of the customers neatly into their own categories (student here for the wifi, office worker here for lunch, food blogger, artist looking for a quiet spot, Thursday Game Night LARPers) and ignores the numbers occasionally slipped his way with free drinks.

He has no need for one night stands, and would rather not create a new category for them. He's found, over the years, that he likes having his own space, with no one bothering him, and he will not let anyone disrupt the peaceful home he has managed to build for himself.

If he wants to be pleasured, then he has his own hands, and online shopping sites to buy sex toys from.

He likes it better, he thinks. Being the master of his own pleasure and not needing to make the effort of pleasing anyone else. If he wants to go to sleep right after cumming, then he can. No more need for pillow talk or immediate clean up. And if he wakes in the middle of the night and wants to pleasure himself more, then who is there to stop him?

He might miss the words of praise given by his past bedmates, but he can easily conjure up similar words in his mind, in a variety of voices, making themselves repeat the same words over and over again without feeling guilty or needy, and he does not feel bereft.

He's already had enough of people. And no good ever comes from having lovers, especially if it's only him that loves and his feelings are never requited.

In 2022, when Hob sees his Old Stranger again, he smiles.

It's nice to see a familiar face once in a while. Just last week, he saw his neighbors from the 1960s selecting vegetables in the farmers' market. They are still together and looking as in love as they had been when they were younger. Hob avoided them because he doesn't want to be recognized and asked uncomfortable questions, but he's happy that the two of them could legally get married now.

"You're early," Hob tells his Stranger. Were he still hoping that the two of them could be friends, he would have said something stupid like, 'You're late,' and then his Stranger would get pissed off all over again, and it would just make Hob tired in the long run.

"Early?" His Stranger asks. He takes his seat in front of Hob. He looks skinnier than usual. Hob raises his hand so one of the waitresses would come over.

"Yeah, for 2089," Hob says. To the waitress, he says, "Hey, Dani, can I get a fry up, please? And a glass of fruit juice."

Hob is ordering for his Stranger not because they're friends, but because he looks like he needs it. He would have done the same for any homeless person he saw on the street.

And if his Stranger doesn't eat it before leaving, then Hob will. Hob doesn't order two plates because what would be the use of that? He knows his Stranger would be turned off at the sight of him eating. He has before, in 1589, so Hob knows not to do it again.

Dani the waitress, one of the kids he put through college, nods and goes to tell the cook to prepare the meal.

When Hob looks back at his Stranger, he is looking at Hob oddly.

"What?"

"I am not early for 2089, Hob," he says. "I am late for 1989. I meant to come, but was unable to." A pause, and the tiniest bowing of his head. "I apologize."

Were Hob still thinking they could be friends, he would have asked about what happened to make him miss their meeting. But he knows it's not any of his business, and he'd hate for his Stranger to leave without eating.

"Oh, it's fine," Hob says. He has already put his Stranger into the 'old customer from the old tavern' category, and it's never any of his business to ask about the customers' personal lives. He would help, if they ask, but he won't go out of his way to be an irritating person and pester them to let him help them. "Water under the bridge and all. How have you been?"

There, see? Hob can be polite without being friendly.

"I'm fine," his Stranger says. There was a brief pause before he answered. Hob noticed, but he ignores it. Hob from before would have obsessed about that tiny pause, but not this Hob. This one has learned his lesson.

"That's good," Hob says, smiling. "Listen, I ordered for you, but it's alright if you don't eat it. I'll just take it to-go and eat it for dinner. No pressure at all."

"I will eat it," his Stranger says.

Hob smiles wider. "Wonderful. It will take about 5 to 10 minutes before the food arrives."

Niceties out of the way, Hob resumes checking his students' papers. It's so nice to not make an effort at conversation. It had opened up his time for other more important matters. He wishes his Stranger had taught him that. Or maybe he was meant to learn by observation.

Ah, well. Hob has always been slow on the uptake.

"Hob."

He marks where he is on his student's essay with a finger and looks up. "Yes, Stranger?"

His Stranger visibly hesitates for a moment before he says, "My name is Dream. Dream of the Endless."

Dream of the Endless.

After 600 years, Hob finally gets a name.

He thought he'd be ecstatic. So over the moon with joy that he would jump to his feet and let out an exuberant laugh at finally knowing.

Instead he feels nothing.

He doesn't know what an Endless is, but it sounds pretty important and very much none of his business. He takes the information his Stranger provides him, and says with a smile reserved for new acquaintances, "Hello, Dream of the Endless. Pleasure to put a name to the face."

Hob asks nothing else, and says nothing else. He waits a couple of seconds for his Stranger, Dream, to say something else if he wants, but when nothing comes, Hob goes back to checking his students' papers.

Midway through reading another essay, Dream asks, "Have you been well this past century?"

"Hm?" Hob marks a student's wrong answer. "Oh, well enough, I suppose. Two world wars, moon landing, the internet...but otherwise it's the same old life. And yes, before you ask, I still wish to live."

His 1489 self would have been so excited to talk about the moon landing and the internet. He would have made powerpoint presentations, bought memorabilia to show off, and be such a nuisance that he'd get kicked out of the Inn.

This Hob knows better than to make all that effort, however, and so he doesn't elaborate. It's just like seeing someone reading a newspaper on the Tube, reading the headlines, and exclaiming, 'Did that really happen?' And the person reading the newspaper saying, 'Yeah. World's fucked nowadays,' and the conversation would end there.

"The moon landing?"

"Yeah," Hob says. "Americans went to the moon and planted their county's flag there in 1969. You can read all about it on the internet if you want. Too much history for me to summarize."

"I am not familiar with the internet."

Hob blinks at that. "Oh." He doesn't ask where Dream has been to not be familiar with the internet. For all he knows, Dream's new storyteller friend is from another planet. "Well..."

Then, quite unexpectedly, Dream says, "Will you explain it to me?"

Hob scratches his neck and looks at the dozen or so papers he has yet to check. "I suppose?" It wasn't in his plans to explain the internet to a supernatural entity, but for the sake of their centuries old deal, Hob supposes he can spare the time. "If you're sure?"

Dream nods, and so Hob starts talking.

Dream eats his food as promised, and when he polished that one off and still looked hungry, Hob orders another dish. And then another. And then another. He always waits for Dream to finish his meal before ordering again, in case he gets full midway through a plate.

Dream does not volunteer information about his sudden hunger for mortal food, and so Hob does not press him. Dani, thankfully, is the quiet sort who just does her job well and doesn't stick her nose where it doesn't belong.

For this reason, she is one of Hob's favorite employees, being smarter than Hob himself when he was her age.

As Dream eats, Hob explains the internet to him like how he would explain the internet to a time traveler from the 1800s.

Dream listens to him raptly. It's a little unnerving how focused he was. 1589 Hob would have loved to have him as his audience. 2022 Hob is just a bit weirded out, especially when he notices Dream's shoulders relax against the seat's backrest, like he's listening to his favorite radio station, at ease in his own home.

When Hob finishes explaining, Dream (surprisingly) has follow-up questions, and so Hob answers them too.

(He had to ask for water so he could soothe his throat after a lot of talking.)

If Dream doesn't ask, then Hob doesn't explain. It's that simple. He volunteers no information about his life, and certainly no personal anecdotes to accompany his explanations, because they're not close enough for that.

More than a couple of hours pass, and Hob starts gathering his things and packing up. It will be a while before The New Inn closes, but Hob still has laundry to do, papers to check, and plants to water. He tells Dream that it has been good seeing him and walks out of the Inn.

Dream follows him.

"Hob."

"Yeah?"

"I wish to bid you good night."

Dream...has been weird today. He has never bid good night to Hob before. Not even a goodbye, come to think of it. "Oh," Hob says, feeling wrong-footed. "Sure. Good night. Take care going back home."

He doesn't ask if their next meeting will be in 2089 or in 2122. Dream will show up whenever he wants to show up. Hob isn't going to wait for him. It's even only a coincidence that Hob went to the Inn on this date.

In fact, he hadn't even known that today was June 7th. He only saw the date when he looked something up on his phone for clarification.

"I was hoping we could meet again," Dream says, when Hob says nothing else and was turning to leave. "Perhaps same time next week?"

Hob mentally reviews his calendar. "Sorry, I have a whole day of lectures and a practical exam to conduct then."

Dream is not deterred. "May I ask when you will be free, then?"

Hob scratches his cheek. "I mean, I guess I'll be free on Friday, just after 5 PM?"

"Then I will see you," Dream says. "Here. On our table."

His statement makes Hob laugh. "There's no our table, Dream. But sure, I'll see you." He turns away and walks the short distance to his house.

He is sure that Dream will not show. But it doesn't matter, because Hob is gonna go to the Inn on that date and time to buy dinner anyway. Dream could decide to surprise him and show up outside of their centennial meetings, but it wouldn't affect his schedule at all.

Dream watches Hob walk away, and his heart breaks.

Is this what Hob felt when Dream walked away from him in 1889?

No. He must have felt worse.

Dream had walked away in anger, after saying words that he has regretted ever since they left his lips, leaving Hob uncertain if they'll ever meet again.

Hob had walked away just now after agreeing to meet with him.

But his manner is distant. Has been distant, throughout the day. He doesn't care if he sees Dream again. If Dream does not show up at the appointed time next week, he would stay and have dinner on his own. But he would not question Dream's absence. He would just put it down as yet another instant of Dream blowing him off again, like he did last time.

Dream should be pleased.

This is what he wanted, isnt it? For the two of them to be no closer than casual acquaintances? Because Dream had been too prideful to consider being friends with a mortal.

And now Hob is granting him his wish. He had taken Dream's words to heart and is now holding himself distant from him.

Just as Dream realizes too late that he doesn't want that after all.

After his stupid pride hurt Hob in 1889, after his lonely imprisonment when his most constant thought, the only one that gave him hope, is the memory of Hob's beautiful smile, and of seeing it again once he gets free...

He wants Hob to look at him how he has always looked at him before today. With friendship, and perhaps with something more. Except that might not be possible anymore.

Dream doesn't know what to do. He fucked up the one good thing in his life, and made Hob believe that he is nothing, when all along, he has been everything to Dream.

#dreamling #the sandman #my writing #good job my thumbs #not to snitch on OP but if you see an update on Enlightenment #it means that she's not okay and needs a hug 😊#but she hopes everyone is doing well! 🖤#fic: enlightenment

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orionsangel86 · 11 months

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Subtext Glorious Subtext! A Dreamling on Netflix analysis in The Sandman - Part 8

Reunited

Love means never having to say you're sorry - but you still should anyway!

8 chapters later we finally made it to the reunion! Phew! After a trip through 6 centuries and a whole emotionally rollercoaster of highs and lows, dramatic fights, flirtations, rain soaked break ups, angst filled abandonments, and everything in between, we reach the modern day once again and reunite with Dream as he stares sadly at the remains of the abandoned White Horse Tavern.

Now the audience knows exactly who he was returning too, and how important it is. What did Hob do when he discovered the White Horse was closing down? Surely he did something? We ask ourselves this as Dream looks down to find red painted arrows on the fence around the White Horse, directing him to a new inn literally called The New Inn.

Unsure what he will find, we follow Dream as he finds the New Inn and enters. @mimisempai did an excellent meta post of Dream's thought process during this reunion scene here which I adore (I admit I have used a lot of their gifs for this series so please give their stuff a reblog and give them a follow - gifmakers are the lifeblood of fandom and I wish I had the talent to do what they do).

I love how after all of the tension and clear discomfort he felt after leaving his sister, as he walked through the streets of London under the judging eyes of all those mortals who considered him "other", he finally finds somewhere he belongs. The tiny pause as he spots Hob sitting in the corner, and relief that passes across his face at that moment. He reorientates himself, and approaches.

Hob Gadling sits to one side, apparantly grading some papers, indicating that in this century he is a teacher of some kind. Without even looking up he pauses, aware of Dream's presence before even seeing him, even after all these years. He looks up slowly and his face lights up. It's glorious. Its so dramatic. It's such a relief to see.

After 133 years, there is no doubt, no questioning, no hurt shown, just immediate joy at seeing Dream again, and just a touch of that cheeky flirtation that we have come to associate with Hob. His first words: "You're late."

The way Dream smiles in this scene is unlike anything else we've seen from him so far the whole season. In a complete 180 from how he was acting at the start of this episode, and in a dramatic turn from even how he reacted to the other humans who looked his way on his return to Hob, Dream is open here, relaxed, at peace, content. All things we have NEVER seen from him before.

In the comic scene in 1989, as I previously showed in Chapter 7, the reunion between Hob and Dream went as follows:

Hob is nervous here, but in the show, in 2022, Hob has already had to deal with being stood up, and instead upon reuniting with Dream he keeps it light and playful, indicating to us that all is already forgiven - Hob's love for Dream shines through regardless of apologies and explanations. He doesn't need them, he's just happy Dream returned to him. Now unlike the comic, Dream apologises here anyway. This is particularly significant because Dream at this point in the comics is still rather resistant to apologies. It's another indication of how quickly the show is changing Dream. Where Hob clearly doesn't need the apology, Dream still gives it.

After Dream sits down he reclines back in the chair, relaxing. His body language significantly different from every other meeting we have seen, where he always sat rigidly and uncomfortably - always at odds with his surroundings, never quite fitting in. This time it's different. In accepting Hob's friendship, he has found a place on Earth where he belongs, where he can find comfort and acceptance regardless of how "other" he may be. This is something that the comics do not show, ever. But it's clearly important for the show.

I love the above gif because it gives such a clear indication of how happy they are to see each other again, the way they hold eye contact with each other and the scene ends with that gorgeous smile of Dreams. The smile that replaced this moment in the comics:

That significantly changes certain foreshadowing in the text, which I wrote about separately in this meta. I won't go too deeply into those changes again here, but basically I believe that this change means Dream has chosen life (symbolised by his return to the friend that refuses to die) rather than death (symbolised by his going back to the birds to listen to the sound of wings and therefore longing to hear them in death) - It's potentially changing the trajectory of the story leading eventually to the events of the Kindly Ones, but we are in early days and I don't want to speculate too much on events the show won't be tackling for a long time yet.

What makes this reunion scene so compelling beyond anything I've mentioned above, is how it is a beginning. The audience does not get to see what happens next, but oh do we want to. This is a classic fanfiction gap in the making. After everything we have just been through, after all the highs and lows of their developing relationship over 6 centuries, finally they are reunited and ready to take their relationship to the next level, its compelling stuff. Added to this the conversation that Dream has with Death earlier on in the episode, we can assume that Hob finally gets that all important name, and an explanation of what Dream is after all these years. It makes sense that he would get this in the show based on the various clues and information given to us so far even though he never does in the comic.

So then we have to consider what this reunion scene is saying in the subtext that isn't immediately obvious in the text. Many shippers would have already picked up on these things without really paying too much attention, because fandoms always tend to be more savvy and able to pick up on what the subtext is telling them than a general audience.

Firstly, the red arrows - whilst it is never textually confirmed that Hob painted those arrows, it is heavily implied in the text. Who else would add directions to a new inn to the fence outside a pub that was closed 30 years ago? Who else would possibly be looking for the White Horse in 2022 and even need directions? Only Dream. So Hob MUST have painted those arrows. This then further implies that Hob had something to do with the New Inn. Once again the audience is asked to fill in the gaps here. Even the name The New Inn has implications behind it, because of how obvious it is. There is a clear message laid out here in the few shots we get - the red arrows directing from the White Horse to the New Inn, the name being the New Inn, everything here screams of Hob, forever waiting, forever hopeful, the eternal optimist, spending 30 years working out a way to send a message to his stranger, to please find him again.

This Hob is someone who saw his only connection to his strange companion lost to him, but who was determined not to lose hope. This Hob cared so much that it's implied that he has spent 33 years painting and repainting grafitti on an old fence, ensuring that he will be found again. This Hob found a new pub, or he found a good site to build a new pub, or he invested in a new pub, but either way, it is strongly implied that he has involvement in the new pub, since such a name as The New Inn is also a direction in itself. This is a Hob who waited in the new pub for 33 years. He is seen to be marking papers of some kind, indicating that he has students, that he is a teacher, and yet he is doing his work in the pub which is not all that common. It raises the question of how much time he spends in this pub? We don't know the date that Dream shows up to reunite with Hob - other than it being set in summer - so how often does Hob spend his days waiting here? Even if he does own the New Inn, and sticks around to keep an eye on it and manage things, he is still doing his other job from the table in the corner. The most obvious interpretation is that Hob has spent the better part of 33 years sitting in this new inn, hoping that Dream would find him again. Was he prepared to wait a whole century?

This is an insane level of devotion from Hob. This is the biggest deviation from the comic by FAR. The show moved the timeline and in doing so, they have drastically shifted the nature of Dream and Hob's relationship simply because no normal person would surely care that much about someone they only meet once a century, especially when that person got mad and deserted them when they dared to call them a friend. The only way such devotion can really be explained is by assuming that the devoted person is harbouring some pretty intense feelings for the one they are devoted too. It reads as pretty damn romantic in my opinion. The only time I have seen similar devotion is... well, in Destiel. (sorry to keep bringing it up but i WAS a Destiel meta writer for years and I keep finding comparisons which are driving me a bit mad).

It's difficult, in my opinion, not to read Hob's devotion to Dream by the modern era as more than platonic. It's easy to argue that he is pining for Dream, that he desires him in more than one way. It's easy to read it as love. Possibly even as romantic love. Whilst Dream's feelings are less clear, we can see from his body language and general comfort upon reuniting with Hob that he finds himself in a place he can relax. That the show chose Dream's reunion with Hob to be the ending of the show version of the Preludes and Nocturns Sandman book instead of his implied longing for death, just screams to me that this particular relationship is going to be more important in the show version of the story going forward. Dream is more comfortable in this moment with Hob than he ever is at any other point throughout the show - even in his own realm in his own throne room (seriously I went back and watched it all again, the boy never relaxes outside of this one particular scene).

But if that hasn't yet convinced you that the creators of the show are trying to tell us something about Dream and Hob, we only need to keep watching to get to the final scene of this episode. Before we have even cut away from Dreams smiling face as he stares lovingly at Hob, we hear the beats of a new song begin to play. Desire by Bob Moses introduces us to Dreams sibling of the same name.

We cut to the Threshold of Desire, where Desire themself stands in their gallery and says "attend sweet sibling. It is I, Desire. I stand in my gallery and hold your sigil..."

and who else initially throught they were talking to Dream? Because I think it's intentionally meant to be vague here. Despair uses she/her pronouns, so wouldn't it be clearer for Desire to call her their sister? But the gender neutral term adds to the confusion. Is Desire calling on Dream? Is Desire involved in Dreams reunion with Hob? Does Dream feel desire for Hob and that is why Desire is getting involved? (literally all these thoughts went through my head when I first watched the show and raised my eyebrows thinking maybe they really were going that way with Dream and Hob before finally Desire clarifies by referring to Dream as their brother who escaped his cage. It was a jarring moment.)

In the comic, this scene with Desire and Despair takes place at the very start of the Doll's House book, following Tales in the Sand. It makes sense to add moments like this to the end of each episode to leave a cliffhanger and encourage the audience to keep watching, but this particular cut to Desire has multiple implications. Yes its good to introduce Desire properly and therefore introduce the next arc of the season, but its also SO obvious to cut to Desire right after Dream and Hob's reunion. It's textbook subtext. Queer Coding 101. It's storytelling via clever editing. Six centuries of meetings, six centuries of building a tentative friendship that has included some pretty heated moments and finally upon the modern day reunion we see our main character truly smile whilst relaxed and happy and comfortable for the first time and THEN we cut to Desire. It's perfect. Chef's kiss.

Whilst we don't see Hob again for the rest of the season, the fact is that their reunion was left tantalisingly open ended for fans and audiences to speculate, imagine, and explore via their own works. The creators basically left fans with a delicious writing prompt to sink their teeth into and I 100% believe that was intentional. We will see Hob and Dream meet again in future episodes, and after seeing how well they adapted Men of Good Fortune, I am practically foaming at the bit to find out how they plan to adapt the dream meeting in Season of Mists.

As a conclusion to this behemouth of a meta analysis, I can only repeat what I said back in my introduction - the Men of Good Fortune sequence of episode 6 is a subtextual masterpiece of queer coding. It is writer acknowledged that they intended for it to come across as romantic and tropey. They full expected fans to ship the characters. Whether this means anything in terms of where the show will take Dream and Hob's relationship remains to be seen. The show is already extremely queer, and we've all seen the hilarious homophobic reviews bemoaning the fact that "all the characters are gay! ALL OF THEM!" so at this point I think the creators should just lean fully into it and bring Morpheus himself out of the closet. After all, he's a non human multi-billion year old personification of a concept, why on earth would he only have a preference for human shaped females? How incredibly boring for a creature of dreams!

I've separately talked about how Hob is technically already canonically queer (depending on how you interpret Jim's gender) so it's hardly a stretch for him either. There isn't really anything holding them back. The way their relationship develops in the comics already supports a romantic interpretation, especially the ending. But look, I'm not one of these people that needs to scream about ships "going canon" and I am fully against any harrassment or angry messages being sent to Neil or the creators because people feel that it SHOULD be canon based on the subtext already provided. I have no idea what they are planning with Dream and Hob in future episodes of the show, but wherever they take them, I am fully on board this ship.

Thank you for reading! If you have questions or comments please interact, I thrive on interactions! My ask box is open and I will try to answer any questions within the space of a few days (unless its a meaty meta ask in which case I will take my time and throw my whole meta brain into it).

Link to Dreamling Meta Masterpost and other chapters

#Dreamling #dreamling meta #the sandman #sandman meta #dreamling week #dreamling week 2023 #dream of the endless #hob gadling #sandman comic spoilers

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avelera · 2 years

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I saw very few fanarts about HOPE! Hob and I were disappointed that there aren't many fanfics about this. The idea is so good. Have you ever thought about writing about it? I imagine all Endless would be switched, of course. By whom, I don't know, but Hope is among them. And then we have Dream, an emo poet and artist in ancient Rome/Greece who is having a hard time following the death of his son and separation from his wife. And he still has his family situation. And finally, he finds Hope.

So @fishfingersandscarves is writing this AU right now! I think it's really intriguing, especially since Hob Gadling = Hope Godling has a certain pleasing linguistics to it, as if Hob is hiding in plain sight with his name.

I would probably not write a simple role reversal where Dream is a mortal made immortal and Hob is something akin to an Endless. Mostly because fishfingersandscarves has that on lock already and I don't think I'd have anything to add that matched the quality?

But, I think if I did write this scenario I'd consider a couple angles:

1 ) I'd consider one where Hob has always been Hope, he knows he's Hope, but unlike Dream he lives among people on purpose because he loves them and people having hope is sort of his thing. Why was he in a tavern in London in 1389? I mean, have you seen that century? It was horrific to live through. Hope was right where he needed to be. Dream does not know Hob = Hope but Death knew. She did not give him his wish, she just wanted her brother to meet this other mysterious entity and played along with Hob's "mortality" because she knew Dream would be resistant otherwise.

^^ this is the one I'm least likely to write but I think the idea of Hob knowing he's supernatural and just not bringing it up would be funny and certainly it would serve Dream right for how mysterious he is. XD

Now, for the fic I'd actually write:

2 ) Once upon a time, Hope and Dream were inseparable. It's right there in the name, hopes and dreams go hand in hand. Also, like Morpheus, Hope is a god or divine entity from Greek mythology. Hope, or Elpis in Hesiod's Works and Days is the last entity who remains within Pandora's Box when all the evils are set loose. (Granted, Elpis is female but we can fudge that for the purpose of fanfic. Also, I don't see a need to make Hope an Endless-style being with 6 H-named siblings. Hope/Elpis is one of the children of Nyx, just like Death and Sleep, by the way.)

Now, for the purpose of the fic, imagine one day Hope goes missing. Perhaps it's because of Pandora trapping Hope, perhaps it's like Destruction going missing. One day, Dream's other half, Hope, is just gone. Dream is shattered. Perhaps it marks the beginning of Dream as the dark, brooding figure we know because of course, what are Dreams without Hope? Nothing but anxiety and nightmares and despair. Dream has never forgotten Hope. Indeed, when battling Lucifer, he can still think of no stronger force, no stronger entity than his lost other half, Hope.

However, it turns out Hope isn't dead, or even if he is captured, he found a way out: manifesting from one lifetime to the next as a human, in order to walk among them. He doesn't even know he is Hope, after all, Hope requires that you don't know how things will end, you just believe they'll get better. It is his very nature to believed in without evidence.

But even if Hope doesn't know his own nature anymore, a sacrifice to carrying out his task, Death does know where he is. And finally, at a point where she truly believes Dream might "leave this plane forever" she decides enough is enough and to reunite them. Granted, this isn't the Hope Dream knew, it would be unfair to his current existence to load Dream up with those expectations. He has no memory of their time together. But the love is still there. Hope, or Hob as he knows himself in this life, is immediately attracted to Dream. Dream is attracted in return, but in his case, it just irritates him further, this nagging sense that he knows this person, this nagging sense that Death is trying to force him to make a friend he doesn't want, this nagging sense that he likes this "mortal" regardless, and how dare this man pull him out of his millennia of melancholy at the loss of his other half?

So Dream spurns Hob, he rebuffs his attempts to know him better, he flies into a rage at the very suggestion they could be friends. He hasn't had a friend in thousands of years and he isn't about to start again now with this upstart. But he keeps getting drawn back. He tells himself it's for the 100 years wager but then, that one ended in 1489 didn't it? Yet he keeps returning.

Because of course, Death couldn't give Dream back his Hope as he once was. That person is gone. Those memories are gone. She could only give them a fresh start, Hope as he is now, if only Dream would open his eyes and realize Hope has been right in front of him the whole time.

#dreamling #hope godling

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esmeriandreamer · 1 year

Text

So I've been going through some old roleplays I've done with people, and one of the stories I wrote with my friend is just.. the perfect plot for a Dreamling fic??? Like, it fits these two so well, and I might write it myself- But if anyone in the fandom is inspired by this, feel free to take the idea! and also link me to it please and thank you <3

(Please note: This would be a medieval fantasy AU where there is magic, but the Endless siblings aren't their actual anthropomorphic personifications. Maybe they have minor powers over their domains, or they just have their nicknames, I say go wild with it-)

Okay. Let us set the scene.

Through some shape or form, Morpheus, one of the Endless princes, is cursed to see his first spouse die in a horrific way before his eyes. This, of course, scares away any potential suitor when they find out about this curse, because fuck that, they're not too keen on dying in a horrific way??

So, the king and queen decide on a plan; Morpheus will just have to marry some commoner who nobody would really miss, somebody who would've probably keeled over from illness within a month or three, so the curse will claim them and Morpheus will be free to find someone he wants to marry without y'know, constantly fearing he'll see them die a traumatizing death-

Enter Hob Gadling, an ex-soldier with no family, who the royal guards just plucked out of a local tavern, under the guise of "providing a special service for his country". He gets taken to the palace and is freshened up a bit, before going straight towards the chapel to marry the prince.

Morpheus is very much Not Pleased with all this, and after the wedding ceremony, once they are alone, he tells Hob about the curse. That he doesn't know when Hob will die, could be hours, days, months, or even years, but he will be dying a gruesome death and Morpheus will be forced to watch it happen. So, y'know, he's sorry this guy had to be roped into all this, he seems nice, it's a shame he'll have to die.

Yet Hob seems to take it pretty well, for someone who's been told they are now fated to die in terrible pain and all that jazz. He just smiles and basically goes "Welp, then I'll enjoy the remaining time I've got I guess- Life is still very rich and I intend to enjoy it by your side, your highness."

Morpheus can't help but admire the other's optimism a bit, but he tells himself that no matter what, he will not get attached to this man, because it'll only hurt more in the end. He tries to avoid Hob at the castle, but fate/the Plot keeps steering them back together into the same space, and spoiler alert, the prince starts to like this guy more and more, even though he knows it's gonna hurt when Hob perishes.

And then one day, while out on a ride together or something, Hob gets kicked in the chest by a horse, which would be breaking every rib and undoubtedly puncturing all the possible organs in that region of the body. And Morpheus, as stated by the curse, has front-row seats to the "Watching your husband choke to death on his own blood" show, sitting there all alone.

Only problem is... Hob doesn't die..? Like, he's clearly choking, but the bruises seem to slowly.. disappear? And he slowly stops choking on his own breath?? He even begins to cough and sit up???

Cue Morpheus freaking the hell out because huh???? How the fuck??? And Hob is just complaining that ow, fuck, that hurt like a bitch, can he please get some water?

More incidents like this start happening, to everyone's confusion but Hob, who seems to believe he's just ah.. very sturdy.

Hob's food gets poisoned with something that would've killed three grown men, and he gets violently ill, but a week later he's back to normal, and the spy on the staff who did the poisoning gets exposed because they cannot hide their extreme confusion as to how someone survived a triple dose of Night's Kiss???

Someone's fire spell goes wrong and Hob should've been burned to a crisp, but he's only got some first and second-degree burns, that'll heal, he's sadder about the fact that one of his fave new outfits got destroyed :c

A drop from the tower, the tallest one in the kingdom? Yeah, that one. Geez, it was high, and he has some broken bones, but he'll be okay, bones heal within a month anyway, right? (Right?, he asks, to a horrified but kind of impressed Morpheus, who can't even bring himself to tell Hob no at this point-)

Hob falls into a very strong river current, which sweeps him under and must surely drown him ten times over, but two hours or so later, Morpheus is met with a very soaked and chilly Hob, who climbed out of the river a few miles downstream and look, he even caught his prince a fish or three during his little adventure ^^

It's not until Hob 'dies' in a way that cannot be explained by having a strong immune system or being able to muscle through some pain, like.. I dunno, a decapitation or something, that Hob goes "Wait a second, weird idea, but maybe I'm immortal?"

"YOU THINK???" - Morpheus, on the verge of a nervous breakdown at this point-

And also at this point they realize that wait a fucking second, Hob literally cannot die, and the curse cannot pass on to a second spouse, holy shit, Morpheus gets to keep him- And it'll be cute and whoever/whatever gave Hob immortality in the first place goes "Okay, sure, your hubby can live forever too, here you go-"

Really tempted to write it now, but feel free to steal this word vomit idea of mine if you want- xD

#dreamling #dream of the endless #hob gadling #fic idea #the sandman

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mimisempai · 2 years

Text

Every evidence of your presence is precious

Summary

Dream finds a hat and a pair of gloves well exposed in Hob's apartment and asks him for explanations. Although he was prepared for surprises with Hob, he did not expect this one.

What if Hob had brought home the hat, cloak and gloves that Dream had forgotten when he left in a huff...

Notes:

After I realized this fact, canonical fact that Dream left without his stuff, I had to write this.

On Ao3

Rating G - 1319 words

Hob was finishing drying his hair in the bathroom when he heard Dream's voice coming from the living room, "Hob, what is this?"

He walked out of the bathroom, confused, and headed for the living room.

On the doorstep, he stopped and swallowed.

Dream was leaning over a corner shelf on which was a top hat and a pair of gloves lying next to it.

Hob had no intention of hiding it, but he didn't expect Dream to find out so quickly.

He chose to answer simply, "A hat and a pair of gloves."

Dream turned to him and, placing his hands on his hips, he admonished Hob, "Robert Gadling, it's obviously more than that, I can see they look vintage but perfectly in good shape and moreover the gloves are artistically placed on the hat brim. Hm?"

Hob blushed slightly, and, his eyes shifting from the hat to Dream's inquisitive face, he could not help but blush slightly.

"Ha!" interjected Dream, "I knew it! There's a story behind these objects."

Hob muttered, " Hell yeah, there's a story. You can tell."

He let himself fall back onto the couch as the emotions from that day came flooding back threatening to overwhelm him.

With his eyes closed, he felt Dream sit beside him before taking his hand and saying, "Hey, it's okay if you don't want to talk about it. I was merely curious."

Hob opened his eyes to look at him and chuckled softly, "You really have no idea have you?"

This time Dream really looked puzzled and asked, "Why? Should I?"

Hob chuckled softly, "It's true that it's a little hard to remember everything you wear when you're billions of years old. I can understand that."

Dream raised an eyebrow and asked, "You mean these are mine?"

Hob simply shrugged.

Dream's expression changed as he seemed to realize when exactly.

The memories were vivid in Hob's mind.

"I'll tell you what, I'll be here in 100 years' time."

Hob tried to run after the stranger whose name he still didn't know, and continued shouting, "If you're here then too, it'll be because we're friends. No other reason, right?"

But his stranger disappeared into the night without looking back.

"Fuck!"

Hob turned his head toward the tavern, rain dripping from his hair onto his neck, onto his suit.

He was going to have to go back into the tavern, if only to get his things.

When he entered and approached the table, he swallowed.

On the chair next to the one where his stranger had been sitting was the hat and gloves he had arrived with. Hob put on his own cloak and hat, then took the stranger's hat and gloves before walking over to the tavern keeper.

He asked her, "My friend just left suddenly and it seems to me that he had a cloak with him. Do you know if-"

The tavern keeper replied immediately, "Yes my good man, it's hanging here."

She pointed to a black cloak, the only one with this color. Hob walked over to it and draped it over his arm protecting the hat and gloves then went out to face the rain once again.

Protecting his precious burden in his arms.

"All this time?" asked Dream gently, snapping him out of his reverie.

Hob nodded, refusing to meet Dream's eyes, feeling even more embarrassed. Dream would probably find this extremely creepy. It was after all.

Who kept this kind of thing after all?

Dream gently grabbed his chin and, turning Hob's head to force him to look at him, he asked, "But why?"

Hob swallowed several times before answering in a voice from which he could not hide the emotion, "Because it's yours."

Dream let go of his chin and pushed back a damp lock that fell on Hob's forehead and let his hand linger on his lover's cheek.

There was like a glint of wonder in his eyes as he said with a soft voice, "You kept that hat and those gloves, like this here, all this time because they were mine, despite the way I was cruel to you and despite the way I left."

Hob leaned his cheek into Dream's hand and replied, "You know I never blamed you for what happened that time. Even I could see how much pain you were in. Until that day when sometimes I had tough things to go through in the hundred years between us, I only had the idea of finding you to keep me going. But after that fateful night, I had something. Something physical that reminded me that the moments we shared were real. Tangible proof that it had actually happened. So that's why they're there in plain sight."

Dream said to him softly, wonder not hidden in his voice, "Every time I think I know you, every time you reveal something new and surprising to me."

Then Dream threw his arms around Hob's neck and pulled him against him as he crushed his lips to his lover's in a passionate kiss.

Much later, as they caught their breath, entwined together on the couch, Dream asked, "Hob, now that I recall, didn't I also have a cloak that night?"

Hob refused to look at him and muttered, "Please don't ask me that."

Dream chuckled softly, "But now I want to know, Robert Gadling, because obviously you know something about that cloak."

Hob buried his face in the crook of Dream's neck and shook his head, refusing to answer.

"Please..." said Dream in a pleading voice.

Hob didn't look up and simply said, "Read it in my thoughts, I don't have the courage to tell you."

"Are you sure?"

Hob nodded his head against his neck so Dream just closed his eyes.

Hob closed the door of his apartment, and with a jaded expression, carelessly threw his bag and shoes in a corner. He did not turn on the lights.

Then he went to a chest of drawers in the living room and opened the first drawer from which he took out a piece of black cloth carefully folded.

Then he lay down on the sofa and unfolded the black cloth which was a cloak.

He covered himself completely with it and buried his face under it.

He stayed a long time like that before getting up, folding it with reverence and putting it back in the drawer where he had taken it.

Dream saw several similar scenes, always when Hob seemed to have had a difficult day or moment. He would get the cloak from the drawer and wrap it completely around himself, sometimes sitting on the couch. Or in an armchair. Or on his balcony. And always afterwards he looked less distressed as he carefully folded the cloak and put it back in the drawer.

Dream came out of Hob's mind and said nothing.

"Dream?"

Dream did not answer and Hob looked up, worried about what he would read on his lover's face.

What a surprise it was when he saw the lord of dreams blushing.

He asked softly, "You're not grossed out?"

Dream tightened his arm around his shoulders and replied, visibly moved, "how could I be disgusted? All these years you found comfort in a cloak just because it belonged to me. There's nothing disgusting about it, on the contrary, it's rather humbling to me."

He gave Hob's temple a lingering kiss and resumed, "However, promise me that from now on, instead of seeking comfort from my cloak, you will seek it in my arms."

Hob chuckled at him and replied, "Deal."

Dream kissed his hair then cradled Hob's head under his chin before tightening his embrace around him.

Hob finished by whispering, "I wouldn't have it any other way anyway."

He didn't need any more memories to remind him that this was real because reality was Dream and he was holding him in his arms.

_________

Still not beta'd

Still not my native language

Still hoping you'll enjoy this story 🥰

Still thanking you for bearing with me 😝

Dreamling Masterlist here

#the sandman #the sandman netflix #dream of the endless #hob gadling #dreamling #dreamling fic #centennial husbands #centennial boyfriends #morpheus #morpheus x hob #hob x morpheus

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best-wishes · 2 months

Text

Don’t Look Back Part 4: Third Iteration

Beware, it’s part 4, to find the beginning of the story, it’s here

CW: Major Character Death, kidnapping, Canon typical violence

When Hob woke up in 1589 once again, he was not surprised. He had let everything go in the fire, knowing he would either wake up for good, or wake up at the White Horse.

This time, Hob was determined to understand exactly what was happening to him, why he was trapped in this loop. And for this, he had to find the being responsible for his immortality.

Hob hastily dressed up. The last known location of his mysterious patron was with Will Shaxberd, so he had to start here. With a bit of luck, the guy was still there. Otherwise, maybe he and the wannabe playwright could share notes.

He had overheard, he thought, the number of the room Shaxberd was staying in, it was, however, many decades ago, and Hob would not have been able to recall it to save his life. He had to resort to asking one of the maids in the corridor to point him the right door.

Hob knocked loudly. When he had no answer, he banged with more force, and was greeted by a groan and a spell of curses.

After a long minute, the door opened. A dishevelled Will Shaxberd was looking at Hob with eyes that were part incredulous, part scandalised.

"What, pray tell, have I ever done to you to deserve being awakened so loudly?"

"I’d say you spent last night seducing my guest with your talk of poetry, but I am not here to make you pay in anyway. I wanted to inquire whether you knew of his whereabouts?"

"What? Why?"

"Because I am stuck in a difficult situation that I assume is of his making."

"Well then, good luck, because I do not think his kind ever goes back on their deals."

"His kind?"

Will seemed to hesitate, so Hob added.

"You know what, I propose you take some time to prepare yourself and then meet me downstairs for a meal. You’re my guest. This way we can share notes on our mysterious patron."

Hob had almost thought he had failed to convince Shaxberd and that the man had decided to run in fear of Hob’s strange behaviour, but the guy showed up as Hob was finishing his first serving. Most of the breakfast was, as usual, what remained for the feast he had arranged for the day before. It meant that it likely surpassed anything Will had sampled in his life.

"So, what did you talk about when he came to you last evening?" Hob asked after Will started eating.

"You first. You seem to know a lot more about me than I do about you. I do not even know your name."

"Sir Robert Gadlen."

"So, Sir Gadlen, you said the mysterious man was your guest. Am I correct in assuming that this was a planned meeting?"

"Yes, it was planned, we had agreed to meet in this tavern, on the 7th of June 1589."

As Hob did not elaborate, Will pressed on.

"Tell me more, have you met before? What is his name? Do you have a deal with him, and what is it? If you want to share notes, as you claimed, you need to tell me without me needing to pull out your teeth."

Hob sighed.

"You are right. I have a longstanding agreement with him, if one could say. We have agreed to meet in this tavern, once every century."

Will’s eyebrows rose so high Hob feared they would leave his brow entirely.

"Yesterday was our third meeting. We struck our deal on the 7th of June 1389, then met again on the same day in 1489, and then yesterday."

"Immortality. It’s your deal, he made you properly immortal."

"Yes, and no. It’s more complicated, and that’s very much why I’d like us to talk. But I have been alive for two hundred and thirty-five years, or for…" Hob paused to calculate "…nearly three hundred, depending on how you count."

"I have to say, it is hard to believe. If I had not met him last night, I would not believe you at all. Yet, he offered me the same kind of gift, though in a different form. Immortality. Mine is to be the immortality of poets, the one of Homer, the gift to write stories that will spur the dreams of men for the centuries to come."

One would have to be a poet to ever wish for this brand of immortality instead of enjoying a proper endless life. Hob did not understand, nor did he wish to. Will Shaxberd was an idiot.

"Our deal was this one: he would grant me inspiration for every play, song or poem that I wish to write, and he would ensure they are not forgotten through the ages. He said his ex-wife made the same deal with Homer himself. In exchange, my first and my last plays have to be stories of his choosing."

It made sense, a frightening amount of sense. Hob did not know what kind of being his patron was, a god, a Fae, or something else entirely, but he was apparently someone who dealt with immortality and stories. Both Will and Hob had received a brand of eternal life. Hob was never remembered, but always present, while Will would be forever celebrated, but mostly absent. And in exchange, they had been asked for stories, Hob for the authentic experience of an ordinary human through the ages, Will, for plays that all would know and re-enact.

"And it works. Already, in one night, I have written more verses that I find worthy than ever before in my existence. Ideas are buzzing and popping into my mind, like bubbles coming up to the surface. Truly, if I had not felt it so powerfully, I would not believe your claim of eternal life."

"So, after you made your deal, he left?" Hob asked.

"Yes. He said he would come back to me at a later date to provide his instructions for the first play."

This was good news, one more chance for Hob to find his patron before 1689.

Hob’s hope must have shown on his face, because Will asked him:

"Why are you looking for him? You have not told me what you are looking for, or what you could be expecting of me."

Hob took a deep breath, and started narrating his problem, how he had died in 1621, then come back in time to 1589 again, only to die earlier in 1609 and be back to 1589. How he had tried to change everything, and died again even earlier in 1595.

"You see, it is my fourth time living the 8th of June 1589. And I have no idea if any of my previous lives was even real. They certainly felt real, but how am I to know, since no one ever remembers them but me?”

The playwright nodded. Hob continued.

"I want to find him to ask him what the hell this is about. What is real? Am I doing something wrong? What does he want from me?"

"I can see where you are, but I fail to see how I could help."

"You are my only link to him. He made a bargain with you, similar to the one he made with me. But you are not immortal. He is bound to be back into your life before 1689. Maybe I can catch him, ask him what is happening. I would ask you to consider another bargain, with me.

"I would like you to promise that whenever he comes back to you, you will reach me as soon as possible by sending someone, an errant boy or girl, to me. I will remain close by so that I can intercept him swiftly. And in exchange, I can sponsor your career. What do you say?"

---

Will accepted, of course, the deal was way better for him than it was for Hob. They ironed the details, so that Hob would be close by whenever their patron would appear, including Hob accompanying Will when his troupe travelled.

It was only after, once Hob was back to his own room in the Inn, that he truly realised what his deal with Will Shakespeare meant.

He was not going back home.

He had not even thought it through before deciding it, but when the realisation hit him, he knew there could be no other choice. He could not do it again, not knowing what would inevitably happen. He did not have the strength of mind to go back, and enjoy Eleanor’s and Robyn’s presence in his life, knowing that seven years from now, he would have to lose it all over again.

Were he to go back home right now, and see Eleanor’s young face again, he would break there and then.

Better not to go. Maybe, if Hob was absent from her life, she and Robyn would be spared.

Hands trembling, he went to the cabinet where the liquor was stored, and served himself a generous cup of brandy. He emptied it in one go. The spirit burnt his throat and he nearly coughed at the assault.

Carefully, he put the stopper back, and put the bottle back into storage.

He knew the danger. He had been trapped by it, during his first life, after Robyn’s death. An endless cycle of drunkenness and hangover, that brought relief only to take it back by the next morning. He could not risk falling to it again, not when he had a clear goal in mind.

---

Retrospectively, one thing Hob should have expected was that Eleanor would never let him go without a fight. Or rather, without a hunt.

It had started with a poster on the outer wall of the White Horse. Hob was coming back to the Inn for the evening. The weather was lovely, the streets basked in the slowly sinking sun. The portrait was illuminated by a single orange ray, making it look like one of the golden idols of Constantinople.

Hob found himself face to face with himself. The likeliness of the drawing was amazing. Eleanor’s talent for sketches was honed by years of practice, most of them using Hob as a model. Eleanor drew her husband all the time. Hob loved it. Maybe it made him a vain man, but he could never grow tired of the way she would look at him when she was trying to capture his image on canvas.

The drawing was a simple inked sketch, on a leaf that had been covered in wax to protect it from humidity. A note asked for information on Sir Robert Gadlen, with a reward from his wife. Icy cold pooled in his belly.

Hob checked around him for a moment where no one would notice him, and, with trembling hands, ripped the piece from the wall. He rolled it up and hid it in his pocket. Swiftly, heart beating fast in his chest, he slipped through the main room of the White Horse to the stairs that led to his rented room.

Something had crystallised in Hob’s heart, the moment he had seen Eleanor’s sketch. Until now, he had had no plans, except for keeping Will Shakespeare close by to try and find his stranger. He had, purposefully, refused to consider his future this time. He had shied from what he knew, deep down.

He was not going back home. Not this time.

Sitting on his bed, fearing his leg would stop supporting him the moment he started thinking about it, he let out the piece of paper he had ripped from the wall.

He would recognise the style among a thousand. The way she always hesitated with the shadows around his nose. She used to swear at Hob’s nose, during her drawing sessions. Hob grazed the line of the drawing’s nose with his fingers. She would lovingly caress it with the tips of her fingers, when he held her in his embrace, feeling the shape to better capture its image next time.

He wanted nothing more than to go back, and let her touch him like that again. He wanted nothing less than having to pass the tips of his fingers over her face to close her eyes once again.

He let a deep breath out of his lungs.

He could not, would not go home. Twice already, he had tried in vain to change Eleanor’s fate, and twice he failed. Hob was the only one whose fate changed, the one around whom everything revolved. If he was not there, if he was absent from Eleanor and Robyn’s life, maybe they would be spared? 

Was he really believing that his absence could avert their fate? Or was he only lying to himself because he could not muster the courage to face them once again, knowing full well how soon he would lose them? 

His musings were interrupted by the voice of the innkeeper, coming up from downstairs.

"Yes, Sir Gadlen has been residing here for the last fortnight. I can show you in, Sir."

Hob startled, instantly on his feet, century-old reflexes taking over. He had been a wanted man for long enough that his feet knew their way without his brain’s input.

Hob grabbed his bag, stuffing the drawing into one of the outer pockets. He opened the window onto the courtyard, sat on the edge and, grabbing the window sill with both hands, let himself fall toward the courtyard. The fall was not very high, and he could absorb the shock rolling onto the soft ground.

He was covered in dust. Good. He brought his brown stained hands to his face, and rubbed dirt on his brow and cheeks. The filthier he looked, the less likely to be recognised as Sir Gadlen.

From the bottom of the courtyard, he heard the innkeeper astonished gasp as he entered the abandoned room.

Hob opened the small door to the back alley. He knew the maids did not care much for locking it up in the evening, as they needed to go back and forth too many times during the night’s service.

Closing the door behind him, Hob walked faster in the darkening alley. He needed to join a crowded street, to lose any one tailing him. Already, he heard the clamour of the innkeeper, trying to find his mysteriously disappeared knight.

Hob had not yet paid this week’s dues, the man was probably very motivated not to lose him.

The sun was setting when Hob finally stopped walking, hopping from one busy street to the next. He had no plan on what to do next. He ended up in a dingy tavern, much less standing than the White Horse, but not the worse he had visited. It was not the place one would expect to find Sir Robert Gadlen.

Hob booked a room, and immediately asked for some hot water to be brought up so he could wash up a bit before supper. The dirt on his face had mixed with the sweat of his frantic escape from the White Horse, to make him quite the disgusting look.

He would have to find a barber, first thing in the morning. Short hair and a clean-shaved face would go a long way to make him look nothing like Robert Gadlen.

Hob ate his supper in a sort of stupor. By the time he finished his stew, it was getting tepid. He could not even remember the flavour of the broth after cleaning his plate. The flight had been such a rush, he had had no time to process his decision, or what it implied.

He was not going back home.

Meaning that if he was not sent back once more the next time he died, he would never see Eleanor or Robyn again. It seemed impossible. It seemed inevitable.

Hob could not go back, not without breaking entirely, he knew it. He could not, not without any hope of saving either of them. His only remaining hope was that the curse was attached to Hob himself. That if he was not in their life, then they would not need to die on their appointed day.

That night, Hob dreamt of the fire again. He was lost in the smoke, calling Eleanor’s name and Robyn’s, coughing after each cry. His eyes were blinking furiously from the heavy smoke, blinding him. The smoke was filling his lungs, and he could not breathe. His legs failed him, and he fell on the ground. Eight-year-old Robyn was sitting next to him.

"Hello Father." He said with a cold voice.

Hob tried to answer, only to be stopped by another coughing fit.

"You abandoned me, did you know? You went to save mum from the fire, and then you decided not to come back. I became an orphan that day. Did you know what would become of me? How I would die in a gutter after a short life of hardship and abuse, just because you could not come back to look after me? How does it feel, being so selfish?"

The tears in Hob’s eyes were not only because of the fumes.

"Do you even consider us like human beings, Father? Or are we only decor in the play that is your life, ceasing to exist as soon as you leave the stage? Did you think I would not survive you, and live on my own?"

Robyn stood up, and looked down on Hob’s dying body on the ground.

"You abandoned me, like I was not even real. I hope you suffer for a long time in this personal hell of yours, Father. Goodbye."

---

"My Lord?" Lucienne interrupted Dream's reading.

Dream looked up from his notes. He had not noticed her arriving, so engrossed in his reading. So far, the search for Destruction was going nowhere. Dream needed to understand what was destroying the world again and again, and without Destruction to guide him, he was in a dead end.

"If I can borrow a minute of you time? You left me a note asking me to warn you when William Shakespeare would finish writing the play you commissioned."

Lucienne presented him with a brand-new book.

"It just arrived. I checked, this is the final version."

Dream contemplated the inkpot on the desk in front of it. It was very tempting to throw it out on the next window. The sound of broken glass would be satisfying, for one. The vacuity of the universe would be revealed. Lucienne would be furious, but she would forget about it with the next reset of the universe anyway.

The loop had started again when Dream had been absorbed in his quest. He had missed the start again. Lucienne was clueless once more.

Dream felt lonely. It was a bit surprising, because he didn't usually care much for company. He missed being able to trust Lucienne with his problems. He missed discussing literature with Fiddler's Green. He missed people who would remember him, and what he had told them last time he had seen them.

"Sir, are you alright?"

Dream stood up from his chair, sending his notes flying around. He was going to find the source of this disturbance. He had all the time in the world, after all. And then, when he found it, he would obliterate it.

---

The first thing Hob did, the next morning, was to find a barbershop. In his experience, and he had been running from the authorities often enough during his first century of life, a good haircut and a clean shaved face made a long way toward being unrecognisable. Together with a change in style, it was enough for Sir Gadlen to disappear and Hob Gadling to take his place.

At least, it worked well enough on Will Shakespeare, when Hob went knocking on his door at the end of the afternoon.

A storm had been brewing all day long, mirroring Hob’s inner turmoil. A heavy atmosphere had settled over London, cloud lazily accumulating over the streets until it was nearly dark in the middle of the summer afternoon. The heat was made unbearable by the humidity. If Hob’s hair had not been cut short enough to stand straight on his head, it would have been curling now.

It finally broke just as Hob was making his way to Will Shakespeare’s current residence. By the time he was knocking at the door, he was dripping with water. He actually had to hit the door as hard as he could so that the sound would be heard over the sound of the rain.

"Who…?" Will started asking as he opened the door. He stopped. "Sir Gadlen? Is that you?"

"Yes, and no. Call me Hob for now if you please."

"Hob?"

Will was looking at him with doubt, as if expecting a joke.

"May I enter? It is a bit wet, if you have not noticed."

Will opened the door wider, and stepped out of the way so that Hob could pass the threshold.

He stood there, not wanting to drip everywhere. Soon, there was a puddle at his feet.

Will closed the door, dampening the sound of rain. He left and came back a minute later with a towel for Hob to dry himself. Hob had removed his boots in the meantime, and his socks. Every bit of him was drenched. He was fortunate the temperature was warm enough that he did not feel particularly cold.

"What may I do for your service, Sir Gadlen?" Will asked once Hob was dry enough.

"Please, Hob for now. I’m…having a break from being Sir Gadlen for now."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean my wife is looking for me, and I do not want her to find me."

The playwright was looking at Hob with a hint of disapproval.

"Do you mean to tell me you are running away from your wife and child, Sir Gadlen? Not very worthy of knighthood."

"I’m not running away from them! I’m trying to save them." Hob protested.

Will raised an eyebrow.

"Are you? By abandoning them?"

"If I go back, I know exactly how it ends. I have lived through it three times already. She dies in seven years, and my son dies in nineteen. Nothing that I can do could stop it. I tried changing everything, on my last life with them. We moved to France, settled in Paris. We knew no one, our lives could not be more different. She still died exactly as before."

Hob stops, the hurt of this failure still raw enough to clench his throat.

"I am the only thing that was the same in every life they lived. I am the one who was cursed, along with eternal life. Cursed never to be able to settle and enjoy a long and peaceful life. I am the one cursing them, with my love. Maybe…Maybe if I am not there, if I keep far enough from their lives, they can escape fate."

Will was not saying anything. Hob did not know whether it was a good thing.

"I have to believe this, because if I do not, I have no hope left."

Will stood up and went to a cabinet in the corner of the room. He came back with two tumblers and a bottle of amber liquid Hob guessed was brandy. He poured two generous glasses, and handed one to Hob, before settling again into his chair.

Hob was tempted to swallow it all in one go. He did not. He remembered using alcohol as a clutch, during his first life. How easy it was to fall into the habit, to drink for the stupor and forgetfulness.

Instead, he sipped the brandy. It was not up to par with the ones Sir Gadlen had at home, but it was still pretty good for Hob Gadling’s experience.

Silence stretched for a long time. Will was the first to break it.

"How may I be of help?"

"I need a new identity. Sir Gadlen needs to disappear. I wanted to ask if you could hire me, for the menial work you need for the plays. When you are my age, you know how to do a little bit of everything. I can’t act, obviously, but I can build, work wood, sew, things like that."

Will nodded.

"This is not entirely my decision, but I shall plead your case."

"Thank you, Will."

The silence resumed. Hob had finished his drink and had no intention of having another. He was contemplating the bottom of the glass, as if he could find answers there. He felt as empty as the container.

"Sir…Hob?" Will hesitated.

Hob sent him a questioning look.

"I suppose you cannot tell me about the future?"

Hob stopped for a moment.

"I do not see why not," he answered, bitter. "After all, I have tried to change the future many times before. It never made the smallest difference, one way or the other. My last wife was in the know, I had told her about my previous lives. It did not help her escape her fate. So, why the hell not? Ask away, I shall answer whatever I am able to."

"Is it true, what *he* promised me? That my plays would be remembered after I die, along the centuries?"

"I cannot tell you about centuries, the farther I’ve lived are the 1620s. But yes, it is true. In every life I have lived, you are considered the greatest playwright Britain has ever known."

The man let a sigh out, dazed.

"I don’t know what to say."

"I am not sure there is anything to say. Do not let it go to your head, you’re not there yet."

---

"Hob! Hob, wake up!"

Hob groaned. It was Will Shakespeare, pounding on his door in the middle of the night.

"Whaddoyouwan?" he mumbled in response.

"Hob, open up!"

Hob turned around under his covers. The temperature in his bedroom was frigid, the fire’s embers barely giving any heat. He did not want to leave the warmth, but he knew he would have to, if he wanted to revive the fire and avoid waking up in the morning in a room where there was frost on the inside.

"I’m coming, stop making noise." He grunted.

Covering himself the best he could, he went to open the door to the excited playwright. Will entered immediately, closing behind himself. Hob set himself to revive the fire so that they could both talk without freezing. Discussing with Will Shakespeare was not how he had thought he would spend his time between sleeps. but it was not unwelcome.

For two years now, Hob had been working alongside the man, not as an actor, as he could not take the risk of being seen and recognised. Eleanor had desisted with the main chase for her disappeared husband, but there were still portraits of him in circulation, offering a reward for information about Sir Robert Gadlen.

Instead, Hob was tasked with every job that was hidden from the public, from building decor to mending costumes… It was not an unpleasant life, and most importantly, it was different enough from the repeated lives of Robert Gadlen that he would not be reminded too often of everything that he had lost.

Eleanor and Robyn were still often at the forefront of his mind, and he missed them immensely. Every time, it only strengthened his resolve to stay away. It was the sacrifice he was doing for them. He left them to protect them from his curse, in the hope that fate, so intent on striking Hob, would spare them if he did not approach them.

The embers turned into timid flames, and he stroked them again until the fire was roaring. Will had settled himself in one of the armchairs in front of the hearth, Hob joined him on the other.

"So, what was so urgent that you had to rouse me before my time?" He asked.

"He has come back to visit me tonight. Our mysterious patron."

"Where? Take me to him?" Hob immediately jumped to his feet. Why wouldn’t the fool begin with the important news?

"Calm down, Hob. He visited me in a dream."

Hob deflated.

"I was sleeping, and he was there. We were in a throne room, grander than I have ever seen. The poetry that I could write, describing that room alone…"

Hob interrupted him.

"Please do not. To the point."

He knew Will, the man would never get to the point in less than an hour if he was left to his own devices.

"Right. He was there, marble white skin in a dark toga, looking at me with two star-filled eyes. He told me about the first play he wanted me to write for him. Except, instead of telling me using words, he inundated my mind with images, sounds and feelings, and something more than I could not put into words even if I could live as long as you do."

"Can you at least tell me what the play should be about?"

"He wanted the play to celebrate the departure of the Fae from this plane, whatever that could mean. He said we would perform in front of the real Queen Titania and King Auberon."

"You mean Queen Titania is real?"

"Why would she not? You’re an immortal man, made so by an immortal entity that can visit my dreams and inspire creation."

Will was right, it was not more absurd. It gave Hob a lead on whoever their mysterious patron was, and how Hob could find him. After all, it was never difficult to find the fair people in England, though most would try to avoid them. Hob had certainly made his best to steer clear from them until now. It would have to change.

The performance was his chance. A planned rendezvous with his mysterious patron, where he could confront him about being trapped in the 16th century. All he had to do was not to lose Will Shakespeare until then.

---

Hob swore when he reached the top of the hill. From where he was standing, he could see that the play had already started. The troupe was playing in the middle of the meadow, the audience installed on the gentle slope of the hill where the giant man had always been present. The Man of Wilmington was sitting.

Hob did not even stop to think about how absurd it was. The audience of the play was obviously not ordinary, comprising creature of all kinds of shapes and colours. Their clothing was dyed in colours that could not strictly be described with words, and their shape seemed not quite comprehensible by the human mind, like distorted reflections on the water.

It was Thomas’ fault if Hob was late for the only meeting he could expect with his patron for the next century. Two nights ago, the idiot had gone too far from camp to piss, and broke his leg in a muddy ditch when he was traipsing in the dark. At dawn, when the crew had noticed him missing, Hob had volunteered to find him, thinking he’d just gotten lost.

He had found the guy, half sobbing, half sleeping, covered in mud. It had only taken one look at the unnatural angle his leg made to see that the leg was broken. Moving the man only slightly had him howling in pain.

By the time Hob could drag Thomas from the bottom of the slippery slope, and carry him back to camp, it was well past noon, and the whole troupe had already gone, leaving only a donkey for them both.

Thomas had needed a makeshift splint, and rest after spending the whole night terrified and suffering in the dark. Hob let him under a thick blanket and went to gather suitable pieces of wood for the splint and a crutch.

It was the middle of the afternoon when they finally could get back on the road, Thomas on the donkey and Hob walking.

Hob had pushed Thomas and the donkey as much as he dared, which was not at all how much he wished he could have. Will had revealed their mysterious patron had given him a rendezvous for midsummer at Wilmington. Hob had to be there to confront him.

"The play has begun without us!" Thomas exclaimed.

"It’s not as if you could play," Hob remarked.

"No, but you should, Hobyn Goodfellow. Look, they have not finished the first Act, you can still be on time." Thomas said.

He was right, but there was no way Hob could get there in time, not with a donkey and a wounded man to manage. What he thought must have shown on his face, because Thomas added: "Go, what are you waiting for? Leave me here, I can manage the end of the road."

"Are you…" Hob started.

"Run, you fool!"

Hob did need to be told twice. He hurtled down the slope as fast as he could, losing his hat in the process. Who cared? He needed to be on time.

As he was speeding toward the carts, Hob caught a glimpse of black in the middle of the improbable colours of the Faery gathering. He was there. He was really there.

Finally, Hob would be able to ask him what was happening to him, why he kept coming back to their meeting. Was it a punishment for presuming too much? A test of his resolve to be immortal? Or was it a cruel joke from a bored god? How was Hob to approach him? Should he make himself humble and apologetic? Would he beg, if it was demanded of him? 

Hob had spent the last four years turning the expectations for this meeting again and again inside his head. He had imagined every first line, dreamt every ending. All of them were suddenly crowding his brain, leaving no room for the present.

As soon as Will caught sight of Hob, he hailed him in haste.

"Hob! Here you are, at last! I needed you in costume fifteen minutes ago."

Hob was hurried backstage, or what took place of it in this green scenery. He was given his costume and mask while he was struggling to focus enough to remember his first line. Fuck, he needed to stop overthinking.

The time for him to enter the stage came too fast.

As soon as he set the mask on his face, a miracle happened. Suddenly, there was no immortal Hob Gadling, no cursed Robert Gadlen. There was only Puck, Robyn Goodfellow, and the lines he was supposed to say. It was a transcendental experience, like the dream of a dream that was truer than reality. The world was false, artificial, but the story, the story held in itself a truth that reality could never approach.

When Hob removed his mask, backstage, it was time for the break. He looked at the inside of the thing, puzzled and dazed by what had just happened. He looked up, and his eyes met two yellow, malicious slit eyes. They were in the middle of a hairy brown face that belonged to a creature that was only vaguely human shaped.

"And Puck meets Puck - is that not preposterous?" The strange face said. "And what’s this I spy? Your mask?"

Hob could not see anything but these weird eyes.

"Oho ho ho, I do see sport here."

Hob’s eyes felt so heavy. Why was he trying to stay awake? He had been in the middle of a dream…Yes, it was midsummer, and he had been in the middle of a dream…

"You played me well, mortal. But I have played me for time out of mind. And I do Robin Goodfellow better than anyone."

It was the last thing Hob heard for a very long time.

---

Dream was annoyed. A weird itch inside his skull was bothering him. It was very much like a common human dream, the dream of knowing you forgot something important, but being unable to recall what. Out of desperation, he summoned the nightmare responsible for this. She looked like a small greying old lady. He explained his problem.

"Yes, this is usually what it feels like for them." She confirmed.

"What do the humans usually do, when it happens?"

"Most of them try to go back to where they were and what they were doing when the feeling appeared. This way, they can catch the train of thoughts they were having and find out what they're missing."

"I see."

Dismissing her, Dream started pacing around his throne room. Pieces of thoughts, landscapes and portraits were shifting on the three tainted glass panels behind the throne. Dream watched them dispassionately, waiting for the one that incite some reaction.

There. Titania. Oberon. Will Shakespeare. The itch had appeared immediately after the representation of a Midsummer Night's Dream.

He had noticed the first loop because he was looking for Will Shakespeare's works. He had noticed the second loop because Titania could not remember Will's play. He had noticed the third when Lucienne had come with the news that A Midsummer Night's Dream was completed. This was not a coincidence. This was a pattern. It was the way for the Dreaming, Dream's unconscious, to tell him where to look. In the Dreaming, there was no chance, only instinct in disguise.

Will Shakespeare was the key to the mystery of the time loop. Dream summoned Lucienne.

---

What happened next forever remained blurry in Hob’s mind. As in a dream, where the details of how one would go from one place to the other, Hob’s memories of the travel after the intermission was not entirely comprehensible to his mind.

He had been called, not by his name, but by a name that was his to bear for the time being, for the necessity of the play. The call had been irresistible, like falling asleep after a very long day. Hob’s mind had quieted, all occupied by his new orders.

He remembered a door, except it was not a door and it was actioned by the drawing of a man on a hill? It did not make a lot of sense.

Then, they had walked for a long time and not at all, it seemed like it was hours, yet the sun never moved in the sky. Hob was enjoying the summer sun and the soft grass under his bare feet, following a life of creatures. Every one of them was more fantastic than the next, some incredibly small, others way higher than Hob himself. They were sporting every kind of animal attribute, pelt, feathers, fangs, claws, yet they all spoke as clearly as any human to Hob’s ears.

When they finally stopped, they arrived in a city which looked nothing like a city. It was a city in the woods, a town without building. The trees themselves were forming walls and roofs of branches and foliage, bushes delimited paths and streets, brightly coloured flowers decorated the walls and windows.

Once again, Hob was called with a name that was not his, but borrowed, he did not know exactly how. The one calling him once again was tall. His traits seemed human from afar, but on a closer look, every feature was slightly off in a way that was terrifyingly inhuman. A face that did not resemble a face would be less disturbing and less alien than this strange otherworldly look. Hob was reminded of his mysterious patron of the White Horse, whose beauty had the same preternatural quality, though more fascinating and less frightening.

The man had horns and was dressed in a magnificent red armour, that he now asked that Hob helped him remove. Hob had no idea where even to start. His hands, though, knew. Fascinated, he looked at them untying the laces and buckles tying the crimson plates together. From up close, the colour was the tint of fresh blood, a particular shade that Hob remembered well from his soldiering days. As he touched the metal, he felt that it had become red as it had absorbed the blood of every foe the King of Faerie had shed the blood of, feeding from their life force and magic.

Confusion hit him like a punch. How could he know all that? What the Hell was happening to him? Where was he?

His fingers fumbled on the next buckle.

"Stop idling, Puck, and hurry up."

Puck? Yes, he was playing Puck. What was his line? Where was the prompter when you needed him?

"Fear not, my lord, your servant shall do so."

The King laughed.

"I should have guessed this kind of entertainment would please you, Hobgoblin. You always liked playing on words and rhymes. Will you speak in pentameter from now on?"

Hob, yes, he was Hob. That was his name, short for Hobgoblin.

Hob removed the last plate, and with a gesture, his King sent him away.

He walked in the strange city of trees for a long time, listening to the life of the strange folk inhabiting it. Eventually, he found a well, and noticed that he had not drunk water since morning, caught in the bustle of the play. He had spoken much, and spent a long day under the hot sun of the Midsummer. He was thirsty.

He found a girl by the well drawing a bucket from its depth with difficulty. He proposed to help her drawing it, in exchange for a few gulps of water from it. She looked at him funnily, and hesitated a long time before agreeing.

Hob easily brought the bucket back up, and without waiting a second, swallowed half a dozen long gulps of the water. It tasted delicious, flowery like honey yet rich as a broth, and he knew that this water could feed a man as well as quench his thirst.

"Thank you, beautiful young lady. What is your name, that I can sing your praise?" he asked.

"I am called Nuala."

Hob lost track of how the day ended. The night came, and every being in the city of trees gathered in a great clearing filled with tables laden with food. Bright fires were burning in the middle of the clearing, and around them musicians and dancers flocked like moths around a candle.

It was a familiar ritual in the midst of a terrifyingly bizarre company. It was easier to let himself be lost in the inebriation of the festival, to drink his fill of strange and sweet beverages, to join the carols and hop over the fires until his head was empty but for a pleasant buzz.

Nuala had joined him again, at one point during the short summer night. Now the festivities were drawing to an end, as sun, still hidden, was brightening the dark sky and hiding the stars.

"I watched you dancing," she told him as he was resting, lying upon the soft slope of a hill. Water was gathering on the tip of blades of grass, and Hob knew he should have been cold, but he was not.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I am Hob."

"Is that all?"

What a strange question.

"It is all that I can remember."

She nodded, understanding more than he did.

"Yes, I see that. Hob is all you can be now, with the mask you are donning."

Hob brought his hands to his face, touching his cheeks. He could recall putting the mask on for the play, but not removing it. Yet, grazing his skin with his fingers, he could not feel the mask anymore, only his own face.

"You are Hobgoblin, because you traded who you were away. Someone has to be Puck, and you have to play the role until you can pass the mask on to someone else and take theirs."

"I can remember I had another name, a longer name, but I do not know what it was."

"It was taken from you, in payment for the mask. It is not yours to remember anymore."

"What should I do?"

"I do not know. You should be the Hobgoblin. You have nothing else left."

Hob nodded. He was too drunk on mead and dancing to care.

---

"My Lord?"

Lucienne looked up from the ancient tome she was inspecting with a magnifying glass. Dream had been observing her for several minutes while she was assessing the damage and repairing it.

"Lucienne. You left a note. You said you found a clue in our search for the cause of the disturbance in the timeline."

Lucienne carefully set apart the damaged book, and reached to the drawer of her desk.

"Yes, my Lord, I think so. You told me to watch carefully over William Shakespeare’s works, as you suspected your first meeting with him was or is the trigger of the time loops you experienced."

"We all experience the time loops, not only I. That I am simply the only one to remember them does not make them less real."

"Of course." She took a small book from the drawer and gave it to Dream. "I have watched over Shakespeare’s new writings. This one has stayed changing and unfinished for a long time, but it looks like it took a more definitive form at last."

Dream read the title. The Love of Sisyphus. 

"This is Shakespeare’s last play. He has only just started writing it. It is about a man who meets a mysterious stranger in an inn, and gains immortality. Each time this man dies, he is brought back to the day he bargained for immortality."

"Hob Gadling."

"The main character is called Hob Gadlen, my Lord."

"Do you think the loop is linked to Hob instead of Will, Lucienne?"

"After reading this play? I have no doubt about it, my Lord. This story is too close to your own with Hob Gadling to be a coincidence. I believe Hob Gadling has confided in Will about his experience of the time loops. Read it."

Dream read the play like one looked at a crash, with a morbid fascination and an unshakeable desire to stop it from even happening. The tale is frighteningly accurate on details of Dream’s meeting with the man. There is absolutely no doubt the two men talked about Dream. How Will convinced Hob that it would be a good idea to play his story, Dream cannot imagine. Though the boastful knight he had met in 1589, so confident that he couldn’t be caught that he would come back as his own son three times in a row, could have been seduced by a promise of fame more that he would have been afraid from being outed.

Then Dream reached the death of Robyn Gadlen, and he wanted to throw the book by the window of his tower. He wouldn’t, because he had a healthy respect for Lucienne - and the certainty that she would flay him if he did. Dream had known it would happen to Hob Gadling. Feelings had warred in him then. A cruel thought of vengeance at the idea of the cocky idiot who called death stupid having to bury his own son. That was Dream had expected from the start, that was to witness this fall that he had agreed to Death’s proposition for the man. To wipe his arrogance, and his disrespect.

Yet, Dream knew this pain. He knew the agony of being immortal when his child was not. And, faced with the realisation of it, he did not wish it upon anyone else, not even a stupid arrogant man like Hob. No one deserved go to through this pain, and it brought Dream no joy to see another man fighting with it.

Hob’s loss of his wife and child was only the beginning of his suffering in the play. Again and again, Hob died, and was brought back to his meeting with Dream’s avatar in this story. Again and again, he had the joy of having his family back, and the pain of knowing he would lose them again.

Dream did not want to read more, yet he could not stop reading. The ending puzzled him the most. Hob Gadlen met with Dream’s alter ego once more, during a feast with the Fae. Then, the man confronted the mysterious stranger, before they left the stage together forever, Hob abandoning his part in the story and leaving his life behind.

Was it an attempt, from Hob, to find a way to avoid the time loops? Was it a plea to Dream that he had tasked Shakespeare’s to convey? 

There was a very simple way to find out. It was time Dream paid a visit to Hob Gadling’s dreams.

---

Hob checked around him from under the shadow of his hood before knocking on the wooden door.

"Nuala, are you there?" he muttered.

He heard the sound of wood on wood from the inside, and a ruffling. Nuala opened the door of her little house-within-a-tree, and let Hob in without a sound. Only when the door was closed, she started to talk.

"You chose your moment to come back, as always, Hobgoblin. The Lord Shaper has come visiting. Titania and Auberon are negotiating with him."

"Are they? Good, they won’t think about me."

Hob had been hiding for the last fortnight, after his last prank at the expense of both the King and the Queen. For the better and for the worse, Hob was Puck, the Hobgoblin. It was his role to trick and ridicule, especially the powerful. It was his sacred duty, even when he had to hide to escape the ire of his suzerain for long enough that the spirits cooled down.

Hob did not know how long he had been Puck. It did not quite make sense, in Faerie, were the seasons were not passing as they were on Earth. It had been long enough for him to get used to the mask he had been tricked into wearing, as his own flesh had been stolen by the former Robin Goodfellow. One Robin, in exchange for a Robert, one Hob for the other, it almost seemed like it was destined to happen.

Hob could have abandoned his mask, tricked another fellow human to get back to his own world. But if he had, he would have relinquished every hope to ever gain his own name and his own life back. Hob did not want to live as another for all eternity. He had time, time to trick Puck in turn and get his own name back. All the time in the world and any other.

Hob removed his hood and cape, and hung them, before joining Nuala at the table. She was serving them water infused with flower petals, her favourite. The water was hot already, she had prepared it for herself before Hob showed up.

"Why is the Lord Shaper here?" Hob asked after some sips.

"How would I know? He comes, from time to time. He hasn’t come since the time he invited the Court to the play where you were fetched."

"Do you think he would help me, if I asked him?"

Hob didn’t know why he asked. Why would the Shaper help a nobody like Hob, someone who didn’t even dream anymore? Yet, something, inside Hob, told him they knew each other.

Nuala laughed, and Hob let the idea down.

"The Lord Shaper is not known for being helpful, Hobgoblin. He is immensely powerful, much more than King Auberon and Queen Titania, but it only means you can have nothing that he would consider as a payment for helping you."

"Forget it."

Hob saw him, from afar. The dark shape of the Lord Shaper was achingly familiar, and Hob had to fight the urge to run after him and hail him. He had something to tell him, to ask him, yet he had no idea what it was. The memory was forgotten like a dream in the morning, fading as fast as one tried to piece it back together. There was a pain in Hob’s heart, like an old wound aching from time to time, that he did understand anymore, some piece of him that was stolen with his identity.

"Puck, you are back." Auberon had approached from behind as Hob was lost in his thoughts, watching the Lord Shaper disappear between the trees.

"My King, have you been missing me?" Hob asked, trying his best to infuse mischief in his tone, when he felt inexplicably bereft from the inside.

"You were wise to hide, Hobnob, for my fair Titania was very cross. You would have regretted overstaying your welcome."

"I am only glad that I am welcome again, Your Majesty."

"You are, my Puck, for what would the Court be, without his jester?"

"Very dull, my King."

"Very dull indeed. Come, I have need for a laugh. Sing something for me."

Hob started a bawdy song, and forgot his melancholy.

Yet, like a pungent smell, the melancholy did not leave Hob alone. He surprised himself, watching the stars by night in a meadow, looking for constellations in vain. He was under strange skies and the stars were as out of place as Hob himself in Faerie. He was haunted by the memory of other nights, long ago, when he went lying in the grass with his son to tell him stories under the summer night sky. His boy was fascinated by the myths and legends attached to the constellations, the story of Callisto the Great Bear, the legend of Cassiopeia, the myth of Orpheus and his lyre. After his mother died, they had spent many times together watching the stars by clear weather, as they both imagined that she was up there, with them, listening to the stories Hob told.

The details were missing, their names were lost and their faces blurry, yet the feelings were there, intact in Hob’s heart, waiting to surge again. He remembered the love even after forgetting the words of tenderness, remembered the longing even after losing the sense of time. He remembered the loss, too. He was missing a part of himself so fundamental only the shape of the emptiness inside him would define it.

Hob started coming back, every night, to look at the stars and wonder what else he could not recall. During the day, he would look out for a smell, a word, a sound that would give him back a precious piece of his past back.

He never knew if his nostalgia was what brought the former Puck to Faerie. If, like an itch, it bothered the current owner of the name to be remembered by the former one.

The one who had been Puck woke up Hob with a bucket of cold water, a morning of spring. The Hobgoblin had no home and no ties. As the jester of the Court, he was a vagrant, a free spirit. He belonged nowhere.

Hob opened his eyes, irritated at being the victim of a trick where he should have been the perpetrator. He looked at the one who had woken him, and his fury was replaced by shock.

In front of him was a rich man, well dressed and sure of himself. Hob knew, without a doubt, that it was himself he was seeing, himself as he should have been.

"Hello, good fellow!" the other Hob greeted him.

"You! You are…you are…" Hob stumbled, as he could not remember his name.

"I am Sir Robert Gadlen, of course!" Puck bowed mockingly.

It was not Hob’s name, only another layer of mist. Puck was dangling Hob’s name, just beyond reach. Robert Gadlen was close, but not enough. Not true enough for Hob to reclaim his life.

"What do you want?" Hob asked.

"Well, I wanted to see how you fared, being me. I have been me from times before time, and you’re pretty new at it. I was wondering if you were a good Robin."

"Oh, because I assume you have been a good me, then?" Hob quipped.

"I have been the perfect you, much better than you were. You were a bad Sir Gadlen, Hob, roaming the countryside with actors and playwrights while your poor wife and son were abandoned at home, worrying for your life! You were so bad that Will Shakespeare wrote a very successful play about your woes!"

Hob stood up, furious beyond words and ready to strike.

"I went back to your home, Hob, and found a lovely wife with a temper, and a great sense of humour. How we laughed, she and I, sowing chaos in the court of England. I must commend you for marrying such a bright woman, though I cannot understand why you would leave a jewel like her unattended. She had the most wicked instinct for the best pranks."

"Had?" Hob noticed with dismay.

"That is unfortunate, but she was only human. She had to die one day or the other, though I wish I could have brought her back to Faerie to be with me forever. I tried to trick her more than once, and she never fell for it! So Brilliant!"

The pain that hit Hob was achingly familiar. Like a wound reopened, again and again. She was dead, his wife was dead.

Puck kept talking, not noticing or not minding Hob’s turmoil.

"She knew I wasn’t you. She was suspicious at first, when I came back. She caught me, after a few years, and she found out I was a changeling. She kept me, though, because I was all she had. She went along splendidly."

Hob thought he could not pay attention to what Puck prattled. He found out he was wrong. As the fae kept telling Hob more about his life with Hob’s own wife, and about how he had raised Hob’s son, Hob’s heart was dying the death of a thousand cuts. Every word, every detail would remind Hob of his own memories with them, of the life he had lost on a trick of fate. The more he remembered, the more he suffered.

"Stop it! Enough! What do you want, you wretched thing?" Hob exploded.

He was standing, finding himself smaller than Puck, when he knew he should have been taller. He was Hobgoblin, and the other was Sir Gadlen.

"What do I want? Why, nothing, Hob, or at least, nothing that you can give me yet. I have been very glad, being you. I wanted to come back to see if you had done a good job being me in turn. I went to ask my Good King Oberon, and my Fair Queen Titania. I went to ask the people of Faerie about your joking and tricking and pranking. After the disaster of a knight that you were, I must tell I was not expecting much. I feared I would have to resume my role. Yet, I was delighted to see you have been serious about being the Hobgoblin. Some here have not even noticed you were not me! The fools."

Hob was gobsmacked. He had played himself. He had tried being good at what he was, and now it bit him in the arse.

"In the end, I have come to thank you, Hob. You are a great Robin Goodfellow, and thanks to you I have no qualms going back and live your best life. After all, little Robyn is waiting for me home. He is going to need me cheering him up, now that his mother is gone.

"See you, Hob. I shall come back for my name when I have had my fill being you. Fare well."

And with this, he was gone. And with him, he took Hob’s heart and his last hope.

---

"Lucienne!"

Dream entered the Library in a storm of feathers and papers. Jessamy was desperately trying not to hit a shelf, tossed around by the winds swirling in his wake.

There was no answer. This was highly unusual, Lucienne had always answered promptly whenever Dream had need of her. Because she was a former Raven, she was still attuned to his moods and needs through their connexion. She had to know he had need of her services.

He turned around uselessly in the endless shelves of the Library. Lines and lines of books were aligned, forming a labyrinth of alleys. He read the titles, trying in vain to understand Lucienne’s classification system. Order never came naturally to Dream. His nature was too changing, too chaotic for any form of order to ever stick. That was why, when the sum of every story ever thought had started growing exponentially, he had created the Library and appointed Lucienne to head it. Dream himself was utterly unable to file a book correctly, or to find a specific one without Lucienne’s help.

And he needed her help now. Hob Gadling’s dreams were nowhere to be found. No matter where Dream searched, how many times he roamed the Sea, the man was not within Dream’s realm. Dream had waited, one day, two, then a week, just in case Hob was skipping his night’s rest, to no avail. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, the infuriating man was not sleeping.

Dream had been tempted to call for Delirium right away. Humans kept too long from his domain were ineluctably attracted and trapped to his younger sister’s. Yet, Delirium was not known for giving straight answers, or giving answers at all.

First, Dream wanted to check Hob’s dream log in the Library, and for this he needed Lucienne to find the human’s file among the hundred million of them.

"Lord Morpheus!" Jessamy croaked from afar. "Lucienne left a note!"

Dream heard the sound of his raven’s wings behind him, and turned his head to find her gracefully turning around the corner. Advancing her legs, she folded her wings back against her body and landed on his left shoulder, light as a feather.

She was holding a piece of parchment inside her beak. The note, written in Lucienne’s elegant script, was brief, only stating that she was working in the archives in the basement, and that she would be back shortly.

Dream hesitated. The archives contained most of the documents pertaining to times that were not anymore and never had been. It was the place where the documents of universes that had been rewritten over, erased or destroyed were kept. They forever belonged in Dream’s memory, and thus to the landscape of the Dreaming, yet they were intrinsically dangerous. The simple reading of one of them could destabilize a timeline or create a catastrophic resurgence.

It was logical that Lucienne had much work to do there, with the many hiccups the universe had known of late. Yet, Dream disliked the idea of her going there, and he disliked the idea of himself going there even more. The place was full of reminders of previous versions of himself, versions that had not survived the trials of his function, versions he was loathe to confront.

He settled to wait, with a folio of Shakespeare’s work to pass the time. For every play, Dream could notice small changes from versions if the earlier universes. Elements that were previously speculations were stated as facts. Plays of which only the title had survived were printed in full.

Dream flipped the pages back to the start of the folio. The date was thirty years too early.

"Printed in 1593 by Hob Gadling"

Here it was, a confirmation of the direct connexion between Hob and Will Shakespeare. Hob Gadling had been a printer, a century before, though he had not understood the incredible cultural significance of the new technology. A hundred years later, the educated Sir Gadlen would not have underestimated the value of the printed word, and seen the interest of having recorded versions of Shakespeare’s verses.

Dream was so engrossed in his theories that he did not hear Lucienne coming back.

"My Lord? May I help you?"

"Yes," he said, hastily closing the folio. "I am looking for the dream log of Hob Gadling."

"The Hob Gadling? I thought you had said you did not want it accessible to anyone. Something about no one interfering with the bet between you and your sister Death?"

"That is why I need your help. I only want to know what is the date of the last known dream recorded for Hob Gadling. I have been trying to find his dreamscape for several night, with no success."

Lucienne nodded, and went to a large opened book on a wheel. It was a registry, where she recorded every dream log in existence and cross referenced it with other record about an individual, like their Waking memories or every story they imagined.

After a few minutes of research, Lucienne came back with a massive tome. It was old in design but looked otherwise brand new.

Dream looked away as she opened the book. His deal with Desire around the immortal man forbid that he interfered with Hob’s dreams and nightmares.

Dream heard Lucienne swear, and it took all his willpower for him no to turn toward her. Lucienne was never so uncouth.

"My Lord, what is happening to Hob Gadling? I have multiples dream entries for each day of his life, generally three or four of them. Hell, I have entries in the future, as far as the 1620s. Did you expect we would be finding this when you asked me? How is it even possible?"

"I do not know, Lucienne. It is the confirmation that I needed: Hob Gadling is the person at the centre of the temporal loop that we are currently trapped in. To my knowledge, this is the fourth loop centred around Hob Gadling that we are living, thus the multiple entries in his dream log. The end of each thread of entries will give us the date where the universe looped back on itself. Would you mind going back in the book and try finding the day of the first multiple dream entry?"

Hob’s dream log was long, and it took some time for Lucienne to pinpoint the start of the multiple dreams.

"Here, June 8th, 1589, my Lord."

"The day after we met."

Not only this loop was tied to Hob, it was also likely tied to Dream himself. Hob kept coming back to the day after their meeting. Why? How had he found the power to bend time to his will? Was he protected by another entity, shielding him from the influence of the Lord of Dreams, who was the only one who could detect the time loop?

If so, Dream was going to expose them and restore the Universe. But first, he needed more tangible proof. In the absence of Hob Gadling, Dream would have to go back to his last known connection, Will Shakespeare.

---

There was someone in the middle of Hob's kitchen. Hob had been going back home after an ordinary day of mischief at the Faerie Court. He wanted calm and quiet. He wanted some time to be Hob Gadling, instead of Hobgoblin.

After Puck had gone back to Earth, the magnitude of what Hob had lost had hit him like an anvil, heavy and useless if you didn't know what to do with it. He missed Eleanor, he missed Robyn. He had no idea how much time had passed, or if he had any chance to find them again.

The knowledge of what he had become, how much he had been shaped by his role in Faerie, made it all the more unbearable. He was, in many ways a caricature of himself. The need to prank and mock was as real as the need to eat and drink had been. Yet, it disgusted him.

Now, in Hob's sanctuary, in the only place he could try and remember who he was before he forgot entirely, there was an unwelcome visitor.

"You. Again. Am I to believe your parents never taught you never to trespass?"

The stranger smiled, a mesmerizing view. Like the teeth of a shark, just before it ate you. Hob had to repress a sudden need to ridicule himself. Shitty Hobgoblin brain. The more powerful the being, the more Hobgoblin wanted to make himself laughable. Despicable. Hob Gadling stood his ground in his own home.

"What makes you think I ever listened to what they told me?"

Their golden eyes glistened as they delicately plucked an apple from the basket in the middle of the tables. Nuala must have dropped them for Hob during the day. The apple seemed to grow redder in the being's hand. Perfect white teeth punctured the skin to bury into the flesh. Hob shivered. Do not make a pun. Breathe.

"What do you want," he asked.

"Wrong question, Hob. The real question is: what do you want? I know it, you know it."

"Why does it matter? I wanted a great many damned things. The universe doesn't really care, I live with it. End of story."

"It could very well be the end of your story here, Hob Gadling, you're right. Do you know what kills an immortal?"

Hob didn't answer. Was it a threat?

"Oblivion. Forgetting who one is can kill even the immortal, Hob Gadling. Or should I say Hobgoblin? How much of you is still the immortal human who wanted to live forever, and how much is now the jester of Faerie?"

Hob had been asking himself the same question every day since Puck had come back. He was unable to say if it had been a week or a decade. He had tried to mark the passage of time by counting days. He could not remember to count them most day, or maybe he could but he could not trust that he had not forgotten a day. The past was blurry, like Hob had time short-sightedness.

"I know what you desire, Hob Gadling. You want your life back, you want to be whole again. If you stay here, you will forget who you were, sooner or later. You will become Hobgoblin. You will never see you wife or your child again.”

See you on the other side.

Eleanor had said that. When? Why?

He had not met her, on the other side. He'd been too cowardly.

If he didn't do something, he would pay it forever.

"I'm here to offer you a way out, Hob Gadling." The stranger said.

The apple was gone. How long had Hob been thinking? The stranger stood up, and walked up to Hob.

It happened too fast. There was something sharp inside Hob's ribs. His belly was wet. The thing shifted inside him and caught his beating heart. The thrum ended, and Hob's body was eerily silent. He opened his mouth to talk, but breathing to push air through his trachea was too painful.

"I'm killing you, Hob Gadling. It's the only way you can escape this trap and not lose yourself forever. Try not to forget your goal, next time. Save my stupid brother."

---

Will Shakespeare was inspired. It was around midnight, and he was writing furiously without a pause, verse after verse of a new play. It was a potent sight, an inebriating smell for the senses of the Prince of Stories. The plot, the characterisation, the scansion of iambs like a music of words, all were feeding the Endless with a nearly religious fervour.

Dream was standing there, hidden in the dark shadows cast by the candle. This hour, in the heart of night, belonged to him like no other. It was a liminal time between dreams, were creativity was at his highest, fed by the sleep before and after.

Dream was there to speak with Will, but it seemed he had been called to this moment like by a prayer, as surely as if Will had burned Dream's name on a piece of paper. It would be sacrilegious to interrupt the playwright.

Instead, Dream inhaled a deep breath, enjoying the pure inspiration. He so rarely indulged, lately, in these old pleasures. Once upon a time, long ago, when he was first courting Calliope, they would spend most of their days inspiring poets all around the world, filling the world with rich stories and richer dreams. At first, it was a friendly rivalry, each driven to nurture better works of art. With time, it turned into collaboration, each challenge an invitation to build a corpus of stories more magnificent than ever before in the history of mankind.

He missed her.

Dream was lost in reminiscence when Will finished the scene he was writing. The playwright cleaned his pen, dried the ink on the last page and put them all in order. Then he grabbed the candle, turned around and froze, eyes fixed on Dream's corner of shadows.

He grew so pale Dream was worried fear had killed the man. Death did not come, though, so Dream stepped out of the darkness, lightening up the flames at the bottom of his cape in an effort to appear less frightening.

It failed. Will started shaking, the light cast by the candle moving erratically.

"Are you the Devil?" he said. "My Lord." he added as an afterthought.

"William Shakespeare."

"Yes?"

"If you had listened more attentively to what Hob Gadling told you, you would know that I am not the Devil."

"Excuse me, Sir, but I only know that you pretend not to be the Devil. I must say the flames burning ominously at the bottom of your cape are a giveaway. Surely the Devil could lie about his own nature. It would take the Devil's power to make a man immortal, after all."

"Are you not satisfied with my gift, then?"

"I am. It is everything I ever dreamt for."

"I know."

"But my friend Hob…He was not very satisfied with his, last time I saw him. He was looking for you. Did he find you?"

"No. I, too, am looking for him."

"I thought he had found you that day, when we played A Midsummer Night's Dream for your friends from Faerie. I never saw him again afterwards."

"He could have been tricked by the Fae. Which part was he playing?"

"Robin Goodfellow."

"Then it is likely he was trapped. Hobgoblin would have found very amusing to trap someone pretending to be him. The coincidence of their shared name, and the consonance of Hob Gadling and Hobgoblin would have proved a very strong net for Hob to be caught in."

"All this time, he's been trapped in Faerie? It's been more than a decade!"

"Time does not flow in Faerie as it flows here. It is immaterial. I know where and how to reclaim him now."

Dream felt it first like a missed heartbeat. He had no heart per se, but he knew the feeling well from living creature's dreams. Then the unease grew stronger, and Dream had trouble containing his presence inside his manifestation. His image broke, duplicating, blurring not only over space, but over time. Will Shakespeare's brain struggled with the nature of what he was seeing, and lost.

"What is happening?" the human heaved.

Dream could not answer. Words were now beyond him. He felt trapped, twisted, wrung out and disassembled at the same time.

The universe was rewinding back, and this time, being in the Waking, Dream felt the power of the spell. He was too late. The loop was starting again.

Before everything blacked out, Dream heard a very familiar laugh.

---

For the master post, it’s here

#the sandman #fanfiction #centennial husbands #centennial husbands big bang 2024 #don’t look back

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seiya-starsniper · 1 year

Text

and if I get burned, at least we were electrified - Chapter 1

On their next meeting, Hob realizes the pattern.

The man (vampire? werewolf? some otherworldly being?) comes after Hob every 100 days. The irony of this is not lost on Hob. Of course Hob would end up with not one, but two mysterious otherworldly strangers with a penchant for refusing to give Hob their names, forcing him to come up with nicknames in his head. He can’t very well name them Stranger 1 and Stranger 2 though, so Hob decides that his centennial friend will remain The Stranger, and his new unintended sparring partner is now Murder Stalker.

---

Hob Gadling interrupts The Corinthian in the middle of a murder and explodes him back to The Dreaming. The Corinthian comes back for revenge. Hob keeps finding new ways to blow him up. At some point, it becomes something more.

Aka enemies to fuck-buddies to lovers.

Keep reading below, or read here on AO3

Hob Gadling is not sure what drove him to take a smoke near the dilapidated White Horse tavern instead of just outside The New Inn, but he’s now wishing he'd stuck closer to civilization as he would’ve completely avoided the mess he’s currently in.

It had been a late night at The New Inn, as end of semester time tends to be. It’s his worst kept secret to his students that he tends the bar there, and without fail, he always ends up entertaining a handful of them on the last day of finals. Hob’s glad he’s popular with his students, it not only keeps him gainfully employed, but also brings him an indescribable sense of achievement, knowing that he’s affecting so many young minds so positively.

He’s riding high on the feeling of a semester well done, so he decides it's a great time to take a walk when he dips outside for a smoke after his students leave. This deviation from his normal routine is exactly how he finds himself witness to a murder.

When Hob thinks about it later, he realizes the area is fairly secluded, The New Inn is just far away enough, and loud enough, that no one would hear any sort of scuffle, or hell, even screams. Not to mention the old White Horse demolition site, which people generally avoid like the plague at night, is just steps away, making it more than an ideal place to hide a body if need be.

But he has no time in the present to think about these things, because he’s rushing in to save some poor bloke that’s just been stabbed with his pants around his ankles.

Hob thinks at first the poor man is the victim of some homophobic attack, but upon coming face to face with the man’s attempted murderer, Hob concludes there is absolutely no way the blond in front of him is heterosexual.

He looks like he just walked off a spread in GQ magazine, incredibly fit and with bed-mussed hair. He’s wearing a tailored beige suit and also, bewilderingly, the darkest shades Hob has ever seen on anyone, in the absolute dead of night. Hob thinks the man must be blind, but he's quickly disavowed of the notion when he tries to wrestle the knife out of the man's hands.

Hob realizes very quickly the man is a lot faster than he is, even with the quick reflexes he's developed over the centuries. Hob briefly wonders if his reflexes really aren't as fast as he thought, or maybe he's just drunk, then decides it doesn't matter because he's completely overpowered either way.

The man slashes a deep line in Hob’s throat, and he collapses as he begins to choke on his own blood. No matter how many times Hob gets stabbed, shot, or broken down, he can never get used to the pain that comes with each new injury. Immortality may have its fair share of perks, but pain tolerance is definitively not one of them.

The bespectacled man looks all together far too pleased at his handiwork because he stares for a few seconds watching Hob gurgle through his blood, and then he has the audacity to lick his lips. It would be a downright sinful look at literally any other time, and Hob hates himself for still finding a literal murderer attractive while he’s bleeding all over his favorite shirt.

Seemingly satisfied with his handiwork, the blonde man turns around and returns to his work on his original victim. Hob can hear the telltale squelching as knife meets flesh and he realizes through his otherwise hazy vision that he's removing the other man's left eye while he is still alive.

Hob wants to throw up but forces himself to lay still, willing his breathing to be as quiet as possible to not alert the murderer barely a few meters away from him. He’s sure that the other man is too engrossed in his task to notice that Hob has stopped struggling to breathe, but even if he did, he probably would have just thought Hob eventually bled out. When Hob feels his vision begin to clear and the wound on his throat close up just enough to allow him the shallowest of breaths, he looks around to see what he can utilize to stop the man from continuing his gruesome activities.

Hob ends up putting together a crude Molotov cocktail, utilizing his torn bloody shirt, a lighter in his front pocket, and some discarded bottles near his feet that blessedly still have their vodka inside them. He knows it's a long shot because the man moves far too fast to be purely human, but Hob's been around long enough to know most things, mortal or not, are not immune to fire. Hob sends a mental plea to whatever deity may be out there looking out for him, and then uses the last of his strength to chuck the crudely thrown together bomb at the man's back.

The man doesn't quite burn up the way a human being might. He screams at a pitch Hob’s never heard before when he realizes what’s struck him, and then suddenly his body is just….disintegrating? Except that's not quite right, either, all Hob knows is that the man is there one moment, gone the next, and there's no body, or even the smell of burning flesh to prove he was ever there.

The only thing that remains of the mysterious serial killer is his dark round sunglasses, which Hob crushes under his boot in a moment of pettiness. Then he pulls out his phone and calls for emergency services.

The constable stares at him suspiciously while Hob gives his statement, but there’s no murder weapon and Hob manages to cover up the stab tears in his shirt with a cardigan he keeps in his bag. Absolutely everything of Hob's is now soaked in blood, which makes him even more suspicious looking, but there's clearly no defensive wounds on him thanks to his expedited healing, so the police eventually buy his story that he came upon a man bleeding to death and tried his best to resuscitate him.

Unfortunately the poor bloke is long dead by the time he’s hauled into the ambulance. He's lost too much blood, and he’s missing an eye, and the thought that this mysterious murderer did not fully complete the job he set out to do should not spark something dark in Hob's ego, but it does. It's just as well though that the man died anyways, Hob's not sure the man would be able to process the sheer fuckery of what's happened tonight, his death covers up his murderer as much as it does Hob’s immortality.

Hob makes a note to look up demon exorcists when he gets home, then collapses on the bed, the adrenaline of fighting for his life having worn off. He decides he'll just burn the sheets and his clothes in the morning before he drifts off to a dreamless sleep.

Thank God tomorrow is Saturday.

—

When the blond man reappears, Hob is both surprised and not at the same time. He knew the man was not dead, but he also hadn't been expecting to see him so soon after their first encounter.

He's also not entirely surprised the man has tracked him to The New Inn. Hob's on a smoke break and as he lights up his cigarette, he notices the man smiling at him in the shadows from behind a brand new, not crushed, pair of dark rimmed glasses. Hob has barely a second to react before he’s staring down the long blade of a dagger that's far too close to his right eye. Hob briefly mourns the loss of his cigarette (they're so expensive these days), thanks his lucky stars he brought his coat with him, and pulls out his own weapon hidden within.

Hob doesn't believe in leaving things up to chance. He knows the man saw his face and he also knows the man is some sort of supernatural entity, and the buggers are a lot more resourceful than your standard run of the mill human. So Hob knows he's a marked man and frankly, anyone would be pretty pissed to be exploded back to Hell, or wherever this guy came from. For all that Hob is immortal, he can still be hurt or captured, and he hasn't lived all this time without running into a few of the things that go bump in the night, as well as the various ways to get rid of them.

Hob was woefully unprepared last time for his encounter with the blonde supernatural murderer. This time, Hob's got a few tricks up his sleeve, courtesy of the descendent of one Lady Johanna Constantine, who, hilariously enough, shares a name with her great -great-great-great grandmother.

"You're not going to be sending anything back to Hell with that horrible accent of yours," the blond mocks, blade barely missing Hob's check. Hob honestly thought he knew what type of being he was, but the man only laughs when he tries to douse him in holy water, and what the hell is wrong with his pronunciation anyways?!

Hob had spent the last 3 and a half months practicing dodging daggers and he's still too slow to match the other man blow for blow. Hob prepared for the eventuality of none of his carefully laid plans working but he's still so angry that not only has none of it worked, but that the blonde also finds his efforts so fruitless that he has time to mock him.

"Horrible accent, says the American," Hob shoots back disdainfully, shoving his blade towards the other man and missing spectacularly. Hob’s going to need new sparring partners if he hopes to survive any future knife fights with him.

The man laughs again and Hob wills himself to not imagine that laugh in a different situation. He really, really needs to get out more if he's still finding himself attracted to a being that is currently trying its damnedest to cut his eyes out.

Hob knows for all his immortality, his stamina still has a limit, and he’s close to reaching it. The man must be able to tell too, because he redoubles his efforts to get at Hob’s eyes, and he’s so focused on that task that he doesn’t notice the talisman Hob’s able to stick on him when he gets just a little too close. Hob whispers one final spell, and even behind the shades, he can tell the man’s eyes widen in shock once he realizes what Hob has done.

Hob smirks as the man is ripped apart, returning to wherever it is he goes when he needs to regenerate his body. He may not be a demon, but protection talismans still had their uses against him, and Hob makes a mental note to go reach out to that lovely coven of witches he happened upon in Edmonton.

He's also going to have to tell Johanna that nope, the eye stealing murderer he's dealing with is not a standard demon from Hell. He's already dreading the conversation. Johanna's initial help had not come cheap for Hob and he just knows she's going to charge some exorbitant price from him to do additional research.

—

The third time they meet, the man is angry. Hob takes advantage of his less precise movements and leads him away from The New Inn, closer to the secluded area near The White Horse, where they first met. He eventually wrestles the blonde into a pair of iron forged handcuffs. They don't burn at the man's wrists, which confirms he isn't Fey, but they also don't break apart no matter how hard the man tugs at them. Hob did forge them himself, thank you very much, so he knows that even the strongest human would be hard pressed to break them without the aid of some extreme force.

“Pretty kinky,” the man says, flexing the cuffs behind his back. “Didn’t think we were at this stage of our relationship Robert.”

Hob knows it shouldn’t shock him that the man knows his name, he did track him down at his place of employment for Christ’s sake, but the surprise must show on his face because the blonde stranger laughs.

“Of course I know your name, sweetheart," he says in the most condescending American drawl Hob has ever heard in his life. "I’ve been thinking about sinking my knife into you all day and all night.”

Hob very pointedly ignores the double entendre and reminds himself that eyeball stealing murderers do not make for good bed partners.

“Little unfair of you to know my name, when I don't know yours, sweetheart," Hob shoots back and he swears he sees a little shiver go down the blonde man's back at the pet name, even if it was delivered sarcastically.

"Tsk tsk Robert, no wonder your little tricks aren't working on me, you don't even know who or what I am," he goads, clearly enjoying having the upper hand in knowledge.

“Well, if you’re not willing to tell me that, then I guess I’ll just have to find something else about you,” Hob says and reaches for the blonde man’s glasses. The resounding snarl is so ferocious, Hob forgets himself and stumbles backwards in fear. The man must be sensitive about his eyes, because the next thing Hob knows, the cuffs are broken and it’s a race against time to see who can recover their weapons the fastest.

Hob manages to launch an old grenade from his war days at the man as he picks up his signature knives, and the resulting explosion is loud enough to shake The White Horse. Hob doesn’t stick around for the aftermath but he hears the sirens in the distance as he hurries home as discreetly as possible.

—----

On their next meeting, Hob realizes the pattern.

Hob has also tried to ply Johanna with information about The Stranger, but he had even less information on the man he’d been meeting for drinks over the centuries than he did on the man currently trying to harvest his organs. It's rather depressing. Johanna had also made fun of him for his physical description of The Stranger and told him "Mate, if I had a shilling for every dark-haired, dreary, brooding supernatural being roaming around London alone, I'd be a goddamn millionaire!"

So yeah. Hob's not doing too great in terms of the research regarding either of the supernatural entities he's somehow found himself embroiled with.

He also tried looking up supernatural entities that eat eyes but all he got was some Quora article on a recurring nightmare some people seem to be having about having their eyeballs eaten. Hob knows not to discount the power of dreams, he's met one or two genuine psychics who have shared their dream visions with him, but something tells him his Murder Stalker probably isn't some nightmare come to life in the real world.

Probably. Hob's never heard of dreams and nightmares becoming corporeal beings, but after everything he's seen in the last decade alone, it's as good of a theory as anything.

Back to the present predicament though.

Hob is currently attempting to wrap a silver chain around his still unnamed Murder Stalker, and all he gets for his trouble is delighted, mocking laughter.

"Jewelry? For me? I'm more of a gold man myself, Robert, but I won't ever say no to silver."

And with that, the man yanks the chain right out of Hob's hands and wraps it loosely around his neck, completely throwing out the theory of werewolf or vampire. Hob curses his impulsive purchase of silver bullets, but Johanna had been very persuasive when she'd sold them to him. He also may have been a little (a lot) more drunk than he'd intended. Damn the woman and her insane alcohol tolerance.

Hob wonders if he can get a refund, then decides he'd have more luck trying to convince his Murder Stalker to give up killing entirely and move with him to a farm in Surrey and take up sheep herding.

He's broken out his thoughts by the sound of a blade hurtling through the air and Hob has enough time to barely avoid taking a knife to his fucking eye. The blade nicks his ear, and takes some hair with it before it lands in the tree behind him.

Maybe he should start wearing protective eyewear in the near future.

"I thought you wanted my eyes intact, you maniac!" he yells, barely avoiding a second dagger that comes straight at his face.

"Not my fault that you're not paying attention!" his Murder Stalker yells back, the feral grin Hob’s grown used to back on his face.

Hob thinks that just for that he’s going to be petty. It’s not like he has any other blindingly good ideas in his arsenal for today anyways, so he yanks the first knife out of the tree, whispers a quick spell into it and throws it back at the man. It explodes spectacularly in his hands when he flawlessly catches it, just like Hob expected him to.

Hob smiles as the man starts to disintegrate, then remembers an entirely different theory he'd wanted to test out just for shits and giggles, and yells, “See you in 100 days Corinthian!” right as the man disappears.

—

"How did you know it was me?" The Corinthian asks him the next time they meet, curiosity evident in his voice.

Hob grins. “I didn't. But thanks for confirming!” He gets a slash to his thigh for his troubles.

“It was really just a lucky guess,” he continues, trying to distract The Corinthian while he works to set up a rather complex spell. It is by far his most outlandish attempt to determine what kind of being the man is. “I was up late one night and one of those terrible American true crimes shows had a whole episode on The Corinthian! Everyone thinks it's just a legacy passed down from one serial killer to another but it's just been you all along, hasn't it?”

The smile Hob receives from the blonde is absolutely blinding. Who knew otherworldly beings just wanted acknowledgement for their accomplishments, just like everyone else?

“Look at that, little Robert finally figured something out about me, took you long enough,” the man (no, The Corinthian, he finally has a name) says.

“Cut me some slack!” Hob shoots back. There, the trap is finally set. “Some of us have other full time obligations to tend to, we can’t all just be running around murdering people.”

Hob really hopes no one at The New Inn will question why nearly all the salt that was supposed to last for the rest of month is suddenly, inexplicably, just gone. He’s already ordered a new batch that’s supposed to come in next week. In the meantime, the chips will just have to suffer being on the bland side.

When he lights the salt circle on fire, he can really only hope that no one thinks to call the fire brigade on him. The poor White Horse tavern is supposed to be preserved as a historical site, for fucks’ sake, and here Hob is, using it as his own personal supernatural fight club.

The Corinthian looks around his supposed trap, unimpressed.

“Do I look like an eldritch horror to you, Robert?” he sneers, kicking the salt away and dissolving months worth of effort in seconds.

Hob shrugs. “I’m running out of otherworldly beings you could possibly be. And I actually haven’t confirmed whether or not you’re hiding some slimy tentacles under that coat of yours. All I know is that you love to murder, do questionable things with eyeballs, and everytime I blow you up, you don’t come back for 100 days. Why every 100 days anyways?"

"I don’t have to tell you a damn thing," The Corinthian bites back, and yep, he most definitely offended at being mistaken for an elder god with tentacles. Hob pointedly does not think about whether or not tentacles would be a deal breaker for him.

“I’ll show you a horror,” the Corinthian threatens, and Hob kicks his backup plan into action. He’s never made a flour bomb before, but the general idea is pretty simple. Flour dust and a spark. Hob grabs the second knife The Corinthian had thrown at him and aims it at the discarded bag of flour he’d left sitting atop the roof of the White Horse the night before. While The Corinthian is distracted and coughing up the unexpected spray of flour on his person, Hob flicks on his lighter and tosses it towards the blonde.

He’s pretty sure he can hear The Corinthian cursing at him through the explosion for ruining his coat.

Hob adds flour to his to-buy list and whistles while walking back to The New Inn.

—

On the 6th meeting (Who's counting? Certainly not Hob), The Corinthian finds him in a rather precarious position. Hob never thought he’d be glad to see The Corinthian of all people, but really, anything beats having to become an experiment for some crazy occultists who seem to think drinking his blood and harvesting his organs are going to make them live forever.

There's six of them and one of Hob, and although he holds his own in a fight with them for a good hour thanks to all the stamina he's gained while fighting The Corinthian, Hob knows he is still outnumbered. He’s starting to lose hope that he can avoid being forced to where they want to take him, but his prayers are answered in the form of a vengeful blonde, who clearly does not take kindly to his recurring meeting being interrupted by outsiders.

Between the two of them, Hob’s able to take down two men while The Corinthian manages the other four. Hob doesn’t even feel bad that they’re all dead, the better the message to send to any other potential cults that may or may not be following him around. He kicks the body of one of the occultists just for good measure.

“Fuck these men, do whatever you want with their eyes, they got what's coming to them,” Hob says, not even bothering to hide the disdain in his tone. “Stupid fucking cultists.” Hob’s been around long enough to be hunted by more than a few cults, and he knows that they know nothing other than their own selfish greed. He’s lost more than a few good friends to cultists, so he feels absolutely zero remorse for their deaths and for letting The Corinthian harvest their eyes.

Hob’s snapped out of his dark thoughts towards the cultists when he hears The Corinthian’s knives cutting through flesh and Hob’s curiosity gets the better of him. He turns just in time to see two very aggressive eye mouths slurp up one of the dead man's eyeballs in one, two, three quick bites.

The Corinthian looks up from his snack and grins at Hob with all three mouths, his face bare for the first time in front of Hob. His glasses are tucked into his front coat pocket, and his cheeks are covered in a mixture of eye vitreous and blood. His tongue darts out absently to catch the liquid nearest his lips, and Hob, to his horror, finds the sight the most erotic thing he's ever seen in his life.

Well then.

The Corinthian almost immediately registers Hob's arousal, and his grin somehow grows even more feral. In between one step and the next he's suddenly crowding Hob up against the nearest flat surface, which happens to be the back exterior wall of The White Horse, and then he’s licking into his mouth while pressing his thigh in between Hob’s legs. Hob finds himself grabbing a fistful of blonde hair in one hand, The Corinthian’s ass in the other and yes, that’s just about as firm as he’d imagined it in his dirtiest fantasies alone in his flat.

In the dead of night, there's nothing but the sounds of their frantic panting and hips rutting against one another fully clothed. Hob is pretty sure the Corinthian doesn't even need to breathe, the bastard, but Hob does and he uses the opportunity to nip at The Corinthian's lip in warning when he pulls back.

"For the record, if you even try to take my eyeballs…" Hob starts, getting ready for a fight to erupt, but the Corinthian only laughs and kisses the rest of his sentence away.

"Yes, yes, you'll blow me to kingdom come and then some, I know the drill baby," he replies breathily, and begins to suck a deep bruise into Hob's throat. Hob is pretty sure he's using more than one mouth down there and he just somehow knows sex with The Corinthian is just going to absolutely ruin him for any other partners for the future, possibly forever.

When he's satisfied with the frankly massive hickey he leaves on Hob's throat, The Corinthian pulls away and sends him a grin that has heat shooting straight down his spine.

"Besides," he adds, "I've had my fill in the eye department, what I want from you is going to be so much more fun," and the purr in those last few words is enough for Hob to make the executive decision to not have his first time with this gorgeous creature be in the middle of a pile of dead bodies, no matter how fitting the motif. The Corinthian deserves to be worshiped on a bed, and Hob is all too willing to sacrifice his own mattress if it means he gets more than a quickie in the back of a crumbling inn.

"I've got a flat not far from here," he pants in between kisses.

"Ooo inviting me to your home, Robert? How dangerous." The Corinthian replies, his tone dark and inviting.

"As long as you promise not to get things too bloody, you're welcome to stay,” Hob says, and he finds that he means it.

"Good to know we can negotiate some blood play, baby, come on, take me home,” The Corinthian purrs and Hob doesn’t need to be told twice. The walk to his flat is mostly a blur, but once they reach their destination, The Corinthian does not hesitate to bodily push Hob into his bedroom.

Hob's thankful for his flat above The New Inn for a multitude of reasons. It's not only close to where he and The Corinthian meet every 100 days for their fight, but Hob's had the floors and walls soundproofed to block all the noise that comes from downstairs, making it also ideal for him and the Corinthian to be as loud and violent as they want.

The Corinthian is just as dominating in bed as he when he fights, and Hob comes so hard he's pretty sure he sees God. He has a brief thought that The Corinthian could probably take his eyes now and Hob wouldn't even notice, but one look at the other man tells him he's just as blissed as Hob from their lovemaking.

It doesn't last.

Within 10 minutes of their mutual climaxes, The Corinthian is scrambling around for his discarded clothing. When he's fully dressed, he delivers a brutal kiss to Hob's still bruised mouth before waltzing towards the door.

"See you in 100 days baby," The Corinthian coos and then in the blink of an eye he's gone and Hob is left alone in his flat.

It's the first time The Corinthian has left Hob by his own will and with all his body parts intact.

Hob lets his head fall back on his pillow and thinks to himself that he is totally fucked in the head.

Johanna is going to have a field day when Hob next talks to her.

—--

They fuck like rabbits the next three meetings. It's quite possibly the best sex Hob has ever experienced in his almost 700 years of life. The meetings always start the same, The Corinthian tries to kill him, Hob somehow subdues him (it's the cuffs, it's always the cuffs) and then instead of exploding the serial killer back to wherever he came from, Hob drags the man upstairs to his flat above The New Inn. Sometimes the blonde opens up for him like a flower, allowing Hob to tease him within an inch of his life. Other times, it's The Corinthian who sets the pace, and it's always brutal and unrelenting. He nearly bends Hob in half when he thrusts into him, and Hob loves every second.

He hadn't ever considered it before, but now that he's been with the Corinthian more than a few times, Hob realizes that he's glad to finally have a bed partner that knows the full lengths of his immortality. The Corinthian Isn't afraid to be just on the other side of rough and painful during sex, and Hob does his damn best to give as good as he gets.

On their tenth meeting, The Corinthian doesn't even make an attempt to try to slaughter Hob for his eyes first, he simply corners him in the alley behind The New Inn during a smoke break, and bites his way into his mouth. Hob’s barely lit cigarette is crushed underneath their feet, and he thinks that if The Corinthian were trying to get him to quit smoking, this was a fantastic way to go about it.

It's only after he goes back inside and someone screams upon seeing him that he realizes The Corinthian smeared blood all over his clothes. Blood Hob knows doesn’t belong to his supernatural fuckbuddy. His stomach sinks at the thought of some poor innocent being used as foreplay for the two of them and resolves to tell off the blonde in their next meeting. He'd rather go back to their old arrangement and risk his own immortal life than add to the already extensive body count he knows The Corinthian keeps growing (maybe, just maybe, Hob has an extensive file on The Corinthian and all his murders overseas and in the UK).

When Hob turns on the news a few days later, it's to a breaking report of a known child molester being fished out of the river with no eyes.

Hob weighs the pros and cons of the knowledge, and decides that one less terrible person on the street isn't the worst price to pay for one of the best orgasms of his life.

He still decides against telling Johanna Constantine of his new arrangement with The Corinthian. She'd reacted poorly to his last story and called him a lunatic for even entertaining the man in his bed.

"Next time you even think about that eye fucker," she had berated him over a round of drinks, "You must think instead, WWJD: What Would Johanna Do? And I can tell you, she would not fuck a demon!"

"But he's not a demon, remember? The exorcism didn't work!"

"Not the fucking point Hob. Not the fucking point at all."

—

While waiting for their eleventh meeting, Hob decides to do a bit of research.

When he’d finally confirmed The Corinthian’s identity, Hob had absolutely devoured all the information he could about the United States’s most prolific serial killer. His murders date back almost a century, and there’s thousands of theories on whether The Corinthian is actually a family of murderers or some sort of cult.

If only they knew the truth.

The victims had started out quite randomly, as serial killers tended to do. A schoolteacher here, an office worker there. Hob finds that while plenty of the victims are homosexual men, there are some women thrown in there too. Never any children though. Interesting.

But as Hob goes through the reports on The Corinthian's latest killings, he notices a markedly different trend dating back to…oh just short of a year and a half after he and Hob had begun to meet regularly.

As far as Hob (and the general news) can tell, The Corinthian right now is only exclusively hunting down other known criminals. Some of which are other serial killers the police themselves have had trouble tracking down. In fact, were it not for The Corinthian carving out their eyes and leaving their bodies lying around, there’s a chance those same killers would still be on the loose.

Huh. Well then.

—

“Been noticing a lot of dead criminals missing their eyes lately, had a change of heart?” Hob asks one night after a surprisingly vanilla bout in the sheets. There hadn’t been any stabbing attempts this time. Progress.

The Corinthian hums in consideration as he pulls his coat on. “No, they just happen to be my favorite types lately.”

“Favorite? And only lately?”

The Corinthian grins and nips at Hob’s neck affectionately.

"You've made me realize I like it when my food fights back." Then, considering the discussion closed, the blonde moves to leave.

Hob, in what can only be described as a moment of insanity, grabs The Corinthian sleeve and says "Stay."

"Stay?"

—

The Corinthian stays the night. Hob uses his tongue to convince him to stay another night. On the third night, The Corinthian leaves with no warning and Hob wonders if his type isn't just men who are allergic to attachment. At least this time he's getting a little bit more out of the arrangement, but his heart feels heavy all the same.

To both their surprises, The Corinthian doesn't even make it the next 100 days before their next encounter. He shows up to Hob's flat in the middle of one of the worst rain storms of the summer, looking like a drowned cat.

Hob immediately knows something is different, and while the logical part of him is screaming Danger! Murderer! Do not engage! Hob's feet move backwards to let The Corinthian into his flat. He peels the man's wet coat off him and settles him onto the couch, then goes to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

The silence between them is heavy.

"I'm glad you're here. I've missed you," Hob tries for casualness even though he can feel his hands shaking. Holding back from touching The Corinthian is one of the hardest things in the world, he thinks.

The Corinthian snorts. "You've missed me? Pretty bold of you to say to the man that's been trying to disembowel you for the better part of a decade.” Hob hasn’t heard The Corinthian’s defensive tone in quite a while. It’s surprising, but with the way things ended last time, maybe it isn’t at the same time.

“I've been keeping up with you in the news, you know. Looks like you've been having a field day in America.” Hob thinks as long as he can keep talking, he can keep The Corinthian from leaving again.

The blonde man grins, as if he’s in on a joke that Hob won’t understand. "I'm a murderer,” he chirps, standing from Hob’s couch, ignoring the tea Hob’s given him. “I kill people for fun. It's what I was made to do.” He says this last sentence quite pointedly, and ah, Hob thinks he understands now.

"So I've noticed," Hob replies. "You’ve got a pretty large body count that goes back pretty far. But you've been killing different types of people lately. What was it you said back then? You like it when your food fights back?"

"Entirely your fault by the way.” The Corinthian snaps.

“All right,” Hob placates, then takes a deep breath. “So then…let me help you.”

“What?” It’s clearly the last thing The Corinthian is expecting to hear. Hob takes advantage of the shock and continues to push his, admittedly, wild and crazy proposition.

“If it's my fault that you can only eat a certain type of food, then let me help you. London's chock full of criminals that get away with horrible things too, it’s not exclusive to America.” Hob says matter of factly. “The way I see it, you're doing humanity a favor by keeping this up, aren't you?”

The Corinthian laughs, but Hob can tell it’s not genuine. There’s an old hurt there, he can tell. Something or someone probably tried to keep The Corinthian from killing all together, and he didn’t take too kindly to that.

“See, you're running on the assumption that those types are the only ones I'm killing.” The blonde says. “For all you know, there’s dozens more bodies the cops just haven’t found.”

“Then we'll work on that,” Hob says, matter of factly.

“Work on it?” The Corinthian repeats, incredulous. “What makes you think you can control me?” he challenges.

“I don't think that,” Hob says honestly. “But all relationships have to put in some compromises, so I don't think it's too much to ask you to be a bit more discerning with your murders.” Hob pretends he doesn't hear the choked "a relationship?!" in the middle of his soapbox and presses on.

“Look, I'm not going to beat around the bush, I don't know what you are or why you feel so inclined to murder humans, but if it really is in your nature, then it is what it is,” he shrugs and when he meets his eyes, he can tell The Corinthian knows he’s telling the truth. Hob’s been alive for a very long time. He knows that Death is inevitable for almost everyone and he also knows that there's no rhyme or reason to who gets to live and who gets to die.

"I've had enough brushes with supernatural entities, especially in the last few years, to know that there are things I just can't assign human morality to" Hob continues. "And that's fine. But you and I keep coming back to each other, and I'd like you to stay. I think you want to stay too."

Hob thinks he must be an idiot for telling yet another supernatural being that the reason they keep coming back to him time and time again is for his companionship but damnit, the man isn't his Stranger, he's somehow become more in less amount of time, and isn't that something? Hob's always worn his heart on his sleeve anyways and he can't deny that somewhere along the line, he’s fallen for this fucked up, inhumane creature, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t at least try to see if the spark between them is just that, a spark…or something more.

The Corinthian is silent for a long time, but he doesn't leave, and that alone is enough to give Hob hope.

“You are infuriating Robert Gladlen,” he finally says. “Fine then, let’s see what being a kept man looks like. If I get bored, I’ll just take your eyes in your sleep and leave.” The feral, self deprecating smirk is back but Hob doesn’t care. He feels himself grinning like a fool. The smile on Hob’s face must be unexpected because The Corinthian’s smirk slides right off his face just as fast as it had been put there. Hob decides to go all in.

“It's Gadling,” Hob says, stepping into the other man’s space and taking his hands in his. “My original name.” He presses a kiss into The Corinthian’s knuckles, taking note of the slight shiver he receives in response. “You can even call me Hob, if you'd like.”

"Hob Gadling," The Corinthian tests out the name, and Hob finds he really likes the way he says it. "What are you, some sort of medieval peasant?"

“Something like that,” Hob says lightly. He thinks he’d tell his whole life story to this infuriating being if he asked.

“I've changed my mind,” The Corinthian declares loudly, pulling his hands away and raising his arms dramatically. “I can't be seen with a poor man like this, my reputation will suffer.”

Hob thinks he may be walking on clouds. “Sure, sure. Now I don't know about you, but I'm starving, and not for eyeballs. Dinner then?”

“Only if it’s not that garbage you serve at this third rate pub downstairs.” The Corinthian sneers.

“Hey! There's nothing wrong with my pub food!” Hob argues. “You’ve never even been inside, I’d like to point out, so how can you tell me you hate the food?”

"What was that you said about all relationships having compromises?” The Corinthian says with what looks like a genuine smile finally on his face. “Well my compromise sounds like a nice Wagyu Steak, any idea where we can get one?"

"Christ you're going to be expensive, aren't you?"

"The best things in life are, Hobsie,” The Corinthian laughs.

“Now hang on just a second!”

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