an unsent letter: June 1791

You have never touched me, and yet at night I lay awake and swear I feel your hands upon me. The soft touch on my shoulder of an old friend. The hard touch on my neck of a captor. Your body that is lithe, and yet holds power I could surely never know. Your mouth that could pin me in place with just one word. 

If you told me to stay like a dog, I might just do it. If only to please you. If only to earn one single smile. So rare to look at, but so utterly glorious. I stand at an altar dedicated to you and worship the idea of you, because in truth I know nothing about you. More unknowable than God himself, and all the more tantalizing. Do you mean to keep me always wondering? I don’t even ask anymore, who you are, what you are. I’ve accepted you will never tell me, but I am filled with the desire to know. You who visits once every hundred years to have a little chat about the state of the world. Ever changing, but always the same. 

I would venerate you like a god if you asked me to. I think I know you would never ask me to, though. Not you. You’ve never wished such things from me, and perhaps that’s why I wish to give them. I wish for you to hold me in whatever way a god might hold a simple being and I wish to show you my affections, paltry offerings though they may be in comparison to the power you surely command. Is it not worth more to be offered all that a destitute has than to be offered some of what a rich man has? At my poorest, I’d have given you the shirt off my back. At my hungriest, I’d have given you the food from my mouth. This devotion expects no reward, and it receives none. It is given because it would feel wrong not to. When you come close enough to touch but stay always out of reach, I only look from this ever shortening distance and offer up everything I have in honor of you. 

Ask it, and I shall complete it. Want it, and I shall gladly give it to you. Whatever you wish for, be it in my power, I would deliver from my hand into your untouchable grasp. You with a gaze like starlight, distance and unknowable but through hours of scrutiny you would never allow. I observe as I can, once every hundred years. Would that I were an artist so I might paint your likeness onto canvas and capture it forever. But no canvas could do you justice. No canvas might capture your essence with the clarity I have in my mind’s eye. I think of you in dreams, often I wish they were real that I might reach my hand out to feel the skin of your hand, face, shoulder. Would that I were a sculptor that I might cut your likeness into stone, more at home there than any canvas, but still imperfect, still incomplete. No stone might capture the depths of your eyes or the perfection of your faintest smirk. I close my eyes and see you looking at me with those dark eyes in the firelight and I wanted you. I wanted to taste and feel and smell you, but I kept myself at bay. Even in dreams I keep myself at bay because you are the untouchable, unknowable thing and I am just a man who cannot die, dying to stand beside you once again. To take your words into my ears and your breath into my mouth. I put my lips to the cup you might have drank from, had you drank anything at all, and I imagine the taste of your mouth. Fire or Ice or both. 

The knowledge that this longing may one day destroy me does not stop me from feeling it. I have no love for tragedy, though I fear I may be living in one. Every time you walk away I think I must be the most unlovable man on this plane or any other, but then you come back, and I know I am the luckiest man on earth. 

The glory of our centennial meetings is that they happen, every time, without fail, and I am always relieved to lay my eyes upon you.

How can I wait another 98 years to see you? When I feel consumed by even the thought of you? 

I would offer myself to you if you would just accept me. 

I would offer anything if you’d stay. 

——

This letter, written while half mad with sleep deprivation, met a waste bin and was carried away to be burned like trash. In the book of unsent letters it has edges that are charred and ink stains that obscure the bottom two lines entirely, though if one willed it to be so, they would be visible. 

----

AO3

New AU just dropped: Regency dreamling but it's less Jane Austen inspired aristocracy drama and more laughing gas fueled Romanticism at the Pneumatic Institution shenanigans

It started out as "I think Hob would have a flair for the theatrical and be a fun teacher" and "At some point Hob must have dabbled in science", which added up to "Hob would have loved hanging out with Davy, guy was famously Theatrical and very for spreading science knowledge" to "didn't he repeatedly refuse to die at the pneumatic institution even?" to "never forgetti this was the romantic chemist who was chums pals buddies bros with the romantic poets" to "Wait! kubla khan was written in a dream" (and admittedly, here a break was taken to look at the camera like i was in the office at the line "beware! beware! his flashing eyes, his floating hair!" near the end of the poem before Coleridge got interrupted by some mystery dude in the waking) to "Coleridge was one of the people who frequented the institution to get high on nitrous" to "Well what if they meet out of schedule completely on accident then"

And now we're 100+ pages deep in research over the brief but extremely passionate love affair that Chemistry and Literature had before tragically parting ways. Because sure, I do not need to be 100% historically accurate and pinpoint the exact date at which Hob freshly out of the slave trade and now active in the abolitionist movement might have met a Thomas Beddoes who was campaigning to stop the anti-freedom of speech "gagging bills", but every time a thought like "Nitrous oxide seems right up Delirium's alley, maybe she should be involved in this fic" i end up finding out that Davy hallucinated a young girl every 10 years since discovering the gas and I am compelled to pull even more from reality. Like finding out that Davy used to do dramatic storytelling at the White Hart Inn of his town when he was a teen (and in case you're curious from what we know of his lectures and letters it would not be unreasonable to picture him jumping off a chair to amuse his audience, or selling his soul for the boon of storytelling either.)

Expect me to never actually finish this, partly because all this pneumatic institution lore comes with the territory of being a chemistry clown that has to try and concentrate on non-creative work, and partly because now we're outlining "okay but what if lake district house. What's the 1810s equivalent of 'bruh.' for when the Corinthian finds Dream being moved by Frankenstein" instead of actually writing the original plan of "Hob does a science!" or the version it evolved into of "you know what's better than whatever the everloving fuck was going on in the pneumatic institution of bristol in late october 1799? Well that same mess, with all the nitrous inhaling and all the unconfirmed love affairs But add a particularly melancholy Dream of the Endless (recently reminded of his status as a father and as an entity who should not fall seriously in love with mortals) meddling and possibly casually sleeping his way into inspiring the first wave of absolute messy bitches we call romantic movement, a Dream of the Endless who immediately picks up his meeting with now-no-longer-a-slave-trader-but-a-prototype-NHS-research-assistant Hob Gadling from where they left off (that is to say: with intense eyefucking)"

an unsent letter: 1782

I must be the biggest idiot on this planet. I have done a great many stupid things, Stranger, but I think this might well and truly be the stupidest.

Tell me, how does one manage to fall in love with a being they have known for 400 years and 4 hours all at once? How does one manage to love someone they cannot call by name? Have you put a spell on me? Called me to you with the siren song of your voice and left me entranced by it?

Is it fair to put the onus on you when you have done nothing but be good to a man who hadn’t felt kindness in any volume for 80 years? Maybe it was building before that, but I know that meeting in 1689 is the one that sealed my fate. I know that day has been played again and again in my mind, a constant comfort in the years when I was still destitute, and a driving force behind my desire to be better off now. I want to be worthy of you in a way I haven’t wanted to be worthy of someone since my dear Eleanor, God rest her soul. 

I can never have you. Not like I had her. She and I were at least some modicum of equals. Equally wealthy, and equally zealous for life. I doubt whatever mortal wealth I could accumulate would ever measure up to you and your otherworldly nature, but it is the only thing I can do. The only thing I can offer. Physical means that you could almost certainly provide for yourself if the nature of your clothes and jewels are anything to go by. 

But not very many desires of the heart are well thought through. The nature of hearts is that they are irrational, and I love that about them, but damn if it doesn’t make everything that much harder. 

I want to impress you. I want you to look at me like… 

I want you to look at me like I have earned your respect. Or like I am your equal. Like you care for me.

Interested, is what you said, 300 years ago. You were interested in my experience. I don’t think I can ever share this part of my experience with you. I wonder how interested you would be if it were someone else I loved? You weren’t particularly impressed by Eleanor, but maybe it was just me you were unimpressed with. I can admit that I was a braggart in those days. 

Perhaps, when next me meet, I will try my hand at humility. At least in some respects. Maybe it will keep my head on straight. Stop me from doing something that I regret. Saying something I cannot take back. I have seven years to steel myself for it, at least. Maybe by then I can hide these feelings. Maybe by then they will be settled and dimmed, so they no longer torture me with thoughts of what can never be.

—

The edges of this letter are charred. Hob threw this letter into his fireplace and had a passing thought of burning offerings to gods. He wonders if the stranger will receive the letter, and there is a footnote, written in ash, prompted by that thought.

—

Please don’t hate me for this.

actually, unsent letters morpheus is a he/they who uses they/them in the dreaming and he/him in the waking.

babe. babe wake up. you can bind single pages into a book. i can make the letters book. i can make the letters. book.

guess who finally started working on the letter's continuation again!!! :)

i am simply too cold to get out from under the covers and post the last chapter. i’m gonna do it anyway, because i love y’all. i hope you appreciate the sacrifice i’m making.

gonna make hob a doctor. just briefly for my own amusement.

real line i just wrote

“i would cut off my right arm to hold you with my left. I would pluck out my left eye to see you everyday with my right,”

Hob Gadling. My Guy. Are You Okay?

oh my goodness. i forgot to eat today (thanks adhd meds)

so im gonna do that but then it’s the victorian smut letter!

Listen. I only have 4k words left before I hit the 50k mark and I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna finish the letters fic tonight.

i just wrote the letters after hob loses Eleanor and Robyn. I am sad. you can have them tomorrow because i have been grading for the last 6 hours and can no longer see straight.

hob in the dreaming just minding his own business:

dream: *drops a book on a table that was not there three seconds ago*

hob: hey buddy… there a problem?

dream, glaring at the book: yes

hob:

dream, still glaring:

hob: …wanna share?

dream: do you truly believe i do not care for you?

hob:

hob: what the fuck??

dream, opening the book that is hob’s letters (written and unwritten) and pointing to one from a couple weeks ago:

the letter: “…and maybe sometimes i still wonder if you’ll come back. if you’re just amusing yourself with me…”

hob: what about that says i don’t care about you?

dream: it implies that i do not care for you. do you think so little of me?

hob, breaking out of that weird dream space where your brain just accepts stuff and actually analyzing what is going on: wait, no. hold on. how do you have this?

hob, scanning through a set of letters he wrote on an artistic kick in the 1700s: no really! how do you have these?

dream: my realm contains every book ever written and unwritten.

hob: and so you read my letters?

dream: they were addressed to me

hob: no. no. they were not addressed to anyone. they were unsent.

dream: i’m clearly the intended recipient.

hob: you are not. i never meant you to read these.

hob: i never even wrote some of these! i just thought this one.

hob: did you read all of them??

dream:

dream: yes.

hob: what the fuck?

cw: references to sex

--

“Come here, Hob Gadling, and let me kiss you as you deserve to be kissed.” Dream slides his hand down Hob’s neck to take his hand and guide him around the countertop, taking hold of Hob’s hip as soon as it is in reach and pulling Hob’s body flush against his. 

“Fuck.” Hob whispers, and Dream smirks. 

“If you are amenable.” 

Hob’s face is still a little damp with tears, but his smile is no less bright for it when he registers what Dream has said. “Cheeky fucking-” 

Dream knows what Hob means to say, but his mouth has better uses than to insult an Endless. Namely, kissing, and perhaps making a few more delectable noises, like the throaty little whine that he lets out when Dream’s lips are on his again. 

Dream thinks he could get use to this. Easily. 

A never sent letter from Hob Gadling to one Nameless, Beautiful Stranger

dreamling fandom, I offer you this:

You sit across from me and I have the nearly irrepressible urge to reach across the table and lay a hand upon you. I wish to know if your skin is as cold as it looks. If your hair is soft to the touch. If your clothes are as fine as your manners or finer. I want to lay my head against your chest and listen to the beat of your heart. 

(Do you even have a heart? Does one such as you have a heart that beats like any mortal man or are you above such frivolities as lifeblood and souls?) 

I was to take your skin into my mouth, the taste of your fingers, shoulders, abdomen, lips. I want to memorize the smell of the inside of your thighs and the back of your neck. I want to know what your mouth feels like, what your breath tastes like, not just what they look and sound like.

I want to touch like I’ve never wanted anything, and I have wanted many, many things. 

I want to strip you bare and see your body. Worship you. I want to make you a king in my heart, prostrate below you, kissing your ruby, your ring, your feet. I want to feel your touch, your hands (will they be gentle?) against my skin, the back of my head, digging into my hair and gripping like ownership, like power.

(Take what power I have and make it yours. I give it to you freely and without coercion.) 

(Perhaps beauty is it’s own form of coercion, but I would never speak such blasphemy against you.) 

Make my eyes meet yours, give me the permission to look upon you as few others have. Eyes dark as night, but glittering with stars. Mouth soft and almost smiling. I cannot know if you are pleased or amused by me, but it doesn’t matter. A smile is a smile, whether it be with me or at my expense. I would sacrifice anything, everything to put just one upon your pink lips.

I don’t know if you’d be hot or cold. Fire or ice. Burning of one kind or another await me, I know. I am happy to have it, to burn for you, if it means that you may lay a single hand upon me, in friendship or in something else. Something other. That limbo space between lovers and friends where people meet but do not define themselves. I ache for your hands like I have never ached for another's, but the simplest touch would subdue me. 

I would be yours if you would but ask it of me. 

I would never love again, if you would but accept my love, a gift intended (I know this now) only for you. I was built from stardust to love only you in a way that is more complex than the love of man, but still so much it’s mirror.

I ache to know what our skin feels like against each other. I long for the simplest, smallest contact. I long to reach across the table and touch your hand, and I don’t know if you know it. I hope that you do not know it. I hope you do know it. I want every part of you that you will give me, and I want to give every part of myself to you that you will take. 

My mouth begs to say a name you’ve never given me, on the tip of my tongue like a dream forgotten. 

I wish to know you like I have never been able to know another.

I content myself with meeting you, once every one hundred year, in the White Horse. I wish for you to once again be with me, for just a few hours out of my infinite life. Because a few hours of infinity, in the end, becomes an infinity unto itself. 

I will have you, in whatever way you will give yourself to me, until the end of time.

With eternal devotion,

HG

-----

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psssst look Art by @wordsinhaled

I wrote a follow up...

AO3

an unsent letter: August, 2022

Do you affect everyone like this, or is it just me? Was I doomed to always be wanting you from the moment we met, or is this a torture of my own devising?

How can you smile at me like that? Touch my hand. Call me your friend. It’s like you’re giving me everything I have ever wanted and I don’t know how to accept it. 

It feels unreal. It feels like a dream. You’re a dream. 

You still haven’t told me your name. I asked and you smiled at me like I’d just done something to amuse you, and then you laughed and asked me what I thought. Answering questions with questions. That’s the sort of thing a devil does, but you’ve already told me you aren’t a devil. What are you? I asked if you were a God and you said that was too lowly to describe your power. What does that even mean? What powers do you have? Would it have killed you to throw me one single bone? Anything at all?

You know, I haven’t written a letter to you in 33 years. Not since 1989. I’ve thought about it, half composed introductions made a thousand times over in moments of spare time, menial tasks, loneliness. I have thought about what I might say to you, how you might feel to learn about the marvels of modern computers, smart houses, queer liberation (do you care about queer liberation? I hope you do.).

I have thought about sharing my world with you time and again, and stopped before pen met paper, stopped before fingers met keyboard, because why should I write a letter you may never see? True, you never see any of my letters, and they’re more for me than they are for you, but there is something about writing you a letter that you’d never see because I’d never see you again that felt too… everything. Too sad. Too final. Too pathetic. 

I was prepared to wait, and I’m glad I did, but there was always the part of me that taunted and teased and told me that you weren’t coming back. I’d outlived my usefulness to you and I was meant to face the rest of eternity alone but for the passing faces of the mortal people I fill my life with.

I love those mortal people, but it was nice to have one person I couldn’t lose.

It is nice. I’m being maudlin. You’re back. I’ve missed you. Even if it’s another hundred years before I see you (I hope it isn’t. Please don’t let it be 100 years) I’m glad you’re back. I don’t know if I believe in God the way he was 1389 or how he is conceived of in 2022. I don’t know what I believe in. But I believe that it is whatever passes for a blessing these days to have just your smile aimed at me. To hear from your own lips the proclamation of our friendship. I feel alight with it. Aflame like the most holy fire warms my chest and mends me, makes me whole again after years of fracturing and chipping and trying to hold the bits of me together.

I could’ve faced eternity alone. But I’ve never wanted to. There was always a part of me that agreed to your deal on the off chance that I’d get to see you again.

I know that originally, you sought my downfall. I could see in your eyes that smugness that spoke of men born high who think themselves better, more knowledgable, than the lowly peasant they are speaking to. 

I wasn’t that far off, then, was I? 

Who are you? Do you know I can still feel your hand on my shoulder, where you touched me and wished me goodnight, hands like stone in temperature, and even in strength, but still with some gentleness that must be learned. I didn’t expect your hand to be so heavy, when you laid it on my shoulder, squeezed it to tell me I would sleep well. I didn’t expect to still feel the contact hours, days, later. The print of your hand has seared itself into my flesh and I am grateful for it. Every time I feel it, I think of you, I’m reminded of you. I remember your smile and your voice and that  laugh when I asked for your name. 

I dreamed of you last night. Felt that touch again. Just the same. The replaying of that moment again and again, same words, same touch, same friend. 

I wish, sometimes, that I had thought to ask for more. A handshake, a hug, a soft touch of lips to cheek or hand like we’re back in the Victorian times. Would you have let me, if I’d asked? I don’t think I’ll ever know, but I can’t help but wonder about it. I’ll always wonder about it. 

As ever, you consume my thoughts, and I wanted only to ask you a question. Maybe I’ll save this one, give it to you in 100 years. 

Thank you for coming to see me, friend.

---

AO3