Archive of Our Own

“I cried,” Hob tells him. “Cried like a baby, and I’m not ashamed of it. Just incredible. I remember thinking that buttons were the peak of human invention, and all it took was a few hundred years of science and now we’re walking on the bloody moon.” 

Dream glides alongside him, impassive, but the slight turn of his head indicates that he’s paying attention. 

“You can watch it on YouTube—do you know what YouTube is? Well, you can, anyway. I think at least a hundred of those views are from me. Still tear up a bit, sometimes. Cor, a century from now, I reckon it’ll be another tourist destination. Can you imagine? Me! On holiday at the moon!” 

Hob, a consummate gentleman, holds open the door to the astronomy wing for Dream. 

“‘Course, you’ve probably been to the moon loads of times, haven’t you?” Hob continues, following him into the darkened halls. 

“I have not,” Dream replies. 

Hob is flummoxed. “Why not? ” 

Dream stares back at him. “It is a rock.” 

“And what do you think the Earth is? A floating conglomerate of lollipops and toadstools?” 

“I have had no business on the moon,” Dream states. “Rarely do I enter the Waking. Most places in this realm, I have only seen as facsimiles in the Dreaming.” 

Hob pauses in front of the lift and presses the UP button, shaking his head. “Imagine. A billion years old, the power to teleport anywhere, virtually indestructible, and the man’s made it three miles south of Manchester. It’s a damn shame.” 

“London is two hundred miles from Manchester,” Dream replies. 

"Two hundred miles physically. Emotionally, it's about the length of continental Africa,” Hob replies. 

"I have also been to Florida," Dream adds. 

"Oh, well. The moon daren't hope to compare."

The ancient lift doors creak open, and Hob waits for Dream to step in—consummate gentleman!—but this time Dream does not move forward. 

Hob presses a hand between razorblade scapulae. “Come on, Richard. I’m too damn old to take the stairs up.” 

“I will remind you again that I dislike this mundane appellation you have chosen, Hob Gadling.” 

“People who don’t give out a name for six hundred years get one assigned to them,” Hob replies. “Sorry. It’s the law. Anyway, you’re lucky I didn’t think you looked like an Edward back in the day.” 

Dream’s eyebrows lower. “Why?” 

“Will you get in already?” 

Dream steps into the lift. Hob follows, and presses the 8 all the way at the top of the column of buttons. 

“During the school year this place would be swarming with students on a night this clear,” Hob says, as the doors close in front of them. “You’re lucky it’s summer holidays. Of course, you’re also lucky to know a man with access to this kind… Dream?” 

Something is wrong. Very, very wrong.

Dream is a statue. 

He has frozen in place, white skin gone marble grey, not an eyelid twitching, not even the faintest rise or fall of his chest. His lips are slightly parted, and it makes his cheeks all the more skeletal for it. He is staring straight ahead. 

“Dream,” Hob says, with a bit more urgency. He pushes himself off the wall of the narrow lift compartment and reaches out—to grab which edge of this eerie sculpture, he doesn’t know—but stops mid-air when his brain catches up to his hand. “What is this? What’s going on?” 

Dream doesn’t reply. He doesn’t move a muscle. 

Except for his pupils. 

It takes Hob several seconds to notice that they’ve started to dilate. They move past that of a cocaine’s high, past that of a cat in the night, and keep going until the dark blue iris is eclipsed completely and the black pupil just keeps spreading outward into the sclera and up past the eyelids. 

“Dream!” Hob shouts, reaching out again, this time with the conviction of a deathless man who needs to help even if it hurts—

But then Dream vanishes, and his hand closes around air. 

The lift rattles its way up the shaft, slow and steady. The fluorescent light hums. Hob’s breathing is suddenly loud in the silence. 

Blinking, he sees the ghost of Dream before him like the negative of a photograph, and it’s only then he realizes that those ever-expanding pupils hadn’t been solid black, but glittering with the light of a thousand gaseous balls a million lightyears away. 

After six hundred years, Hob has learned that he has a problem with falling in love. As in, he has no guardrails, the speedometer is broken, and every cliff looks more beautiful than the last. He falls in love with a ringing laugh, the arch of an eyebrow, a lock of hair tucked behind an ear. And while he’s been repeatedly stamped with half a millenia’s various iterations of slut, Hob knows that isn’t it, precisely. 

Because what he has learned is that falling in love doesn’t have to be sexual, or even romantic. He loves the guy at the uni’s Costa Coffee and the way his hands fly over the espresso machine while he cracks off obnoxiously wrong answers to the trivia question of the day. He loves his ancient department secretary and the way she clucks over him when he forgets his lunch, and then tries to feed him the horrid tinned soups that she keeps in a drawer. 

And god help him, he loves the skinny gothic weirdo with the social learnings of a turnip who showed up thirty years late for a drink. And then did not even drink said drink. 

Hob has probably been halfway over the cliff since 1657, and after four hundred years of teetering on a brink, it had only taken Dream’s hands tightening convulsively around his sweating bottle of Wallops Wood—an involuntary movement, unconscious, the only flaw in his otherwise perfectly even delivery of, “I was involuntarily detained,”—and Hob was in fucking free fall. 

After six hundred years, Hob has learned that he has a problem with falling in love. Maybe in another six hundred, he’ll learn how to do something about it. 

“Normal,” Johanna Constantine declares. 

“You just looked at it,” Hob protests. 

She raises an eyebrow. “That’s all I need.” 

“I’m not paying you three hundred quid to look at it! I told you, my friend could be in serious danger—” 

“Listen,” Johanna interrupts, folding her arms over her chest. “I could break out the candles and the sage and make a nice little show for you, but I heard you were legit, so I thought I’d save you the time and the accidental fire alarm and just tell you upfront: that lift is completely fucking normal. No aura. No residue. No curse. No ghosts. Nothing.” 

Hob stares at her in dismay. 

“Mate. I’m not saging a bloody lift.”

“I just want to know he’s okay,” Hob says. “Please.” 

“If you’ve got DNA, I’ve got a locator spell,” Johanna offers, after a pause. 

Hob is fairly certain Dream’s existence supercedes DNA. 

“Picture?” Johanna tries. “Video? Voicemail?” 

Hob shakes his head. 

“A name?” 

He hesitates, but eventually, he tells her. 

She laughs. And laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and then hands him back his three hundred quid. 

Hob is a soft touch, and his students know it. Especially his grad students. This is why Hob can be found on many a summer night (especially if that summer night coincides with, say, a Lizzo concert, or the premier of the latest Marvel movie) up in the lab, doing his own data collection instead of asleep in his bed like all the other tenured astronomy faculty. 

Hob doesn’t mind. Unlike his grad students, he has an eternity on this planet, and he’s learned that every decade another Lizzo comes around. There’s always next time.

This is why he’s entering the physics building at nine o’clock on a Friday night. This is how he turns the corner and finds Dream standing in the darkened hallway, looming and silent like an obelisk hewn from the blackest of obsidian. He isn’t facing Hob. He doesn’t even seem to have noticed his arrival. 

Instead, he’s staring at the doors of the lift before him. 

He looks the same as always, with no indication as to why he’d suddenly left last time, nor any clue as to what he’s doing here now in the dark hallway of the physics building. His face is a blank slate. He is utterly still. 

“Dream?” Hob says tentatively. 

Dream flinches. 

His head snaps around, and now Hob sees that his eyes are no longer holes in the fabric of the universe but instead a human blue iris with a human black pupil. Wide with human fear. 

And then Dream is gone. 

It happens again, a week later. Then a third time, four days after that. Dream, standing before the lift doors like he’s waiting for someone to come out of them, only to disappear as soon as he realizes he’s been seen. 

Hob wonders if he is waiting for someone. 

(Not Hob, clearly). 

He wonders a billion, trillion things. Dream is trapped in a time loop. Dream has died and this is his ghost, stuck in its last few moments alive. Dream is astral projecting from another involuntary detainment. Dream just likes to ruminate in the hallways of universities after hours. Dream still wants to go see the observatory but he doesn’t know how to use the lift to get up there and for some reason he’s opposed to using stairs or magic. 

Hob’s students like him, but they don’t particularly want to hang out with him while they fiddle with IRAF settings and argue over who accidentally put in the wrong apparent magnitude for the white dwarf they photographed the night before. He can only pull a “just checking in” on them so many times before they’re going to start throwing pencils.  

In his dreams, Hob is drowning in the ocean. He chokes on water and strains against waves, and he doesn’t die but he does hurt—god he hurts—and in the deepest moments of REM he thinks he sees a bird flying overhead, black as night, cawing a herald for something monstrous stirring in the depths. 

Hob opens the door to his flat on a Tuesday evening, some two weeks later, and finds Dream standing on the other side. He almost drops his supper.

“I require your assistance,” Dream states. 

“Right now?” Hob asks, clutching the warm takeout box to his chest. “Also, hi, hello, nice to see you, glad you’re all right and not stuck in a time loop or anything.” 

Dream frowns. "...You remind me of my sister, sometimes."

"Oh, your sister. What's she, then, Good Manners of the Endless? Lady Basic Human Decency?" 

There's a twitch at the corner of Dream's mouth that Hob has come to know as the way a god smiles. "The one responsible for your gift." 

Death. Right.

"Well, I'm happy to help, whatever it is," Hob says, as he remembers what started this whole digression. "Has it got to do with the way that I keep finding you in front of the—" 

Dream's hand comes up lightning fast. "Do not name it." 

Hob pauses. 

"Names have power, Hob Gadling," Dream adds, a little more gently. The shadows around him start to recede again. 

Given the little shiver that always runs down Hob's spine when Dream says his full name, he supposes he's not in much of a position to argue with that. He is also completely certain that Dream is somehow aware of that little shiver.

Dream looks like he's about to say something else, and then he hesitates as his eyes fall on the box in Hob's grip. After what is clearly some consideration, he says, "You have brought home food to eat. I will wait while you consume your meal." 

"You sure?" Hob asks. "It's just from the chippy, I can reheat it later." 

"I would not have you distracted by hunger," Dream replies. 

Ooooof course. 

Hob toes off his shoes, hangs his coat, and heads toward the kitchen. When it becomes apparent that Dream plans to continue standing in the hallway like a complete misfit, Hob takes in a breath for patience, and doubles back. He tugs until Dream follows him kitchen-ward, and then installs him at the tiny table. 

Wrapped in layers of black and a plate of curry chips before him, Dream looks like nothing so much as a Ringwraith on lunch break. 

“Go on,” Hob says, gesturing with one hand as he cracks open a Diet Coke with the other. “They’re chips. You like them, remember?” 

‘Like’ is a generous term. They are what Hob can most successfully badger Dream into eating at the pub, probably because they are physically the smallest increment of food available. Dream has never given any signs of actually enjoying them. 

The look on Dream’s face conveys this. 

“These are chippy chips,” Hob argues, unwrapping the chip butty. He then takes a moment to be grateful that he’s dining with Dream, who has no idea that a chip butty with a pile of curry chips is not exactly a well-balanced meal. 

“There is a sauce,” Dream notes. 

“Curry,” Hob says. “Fucking delicious. Try one.” 

Dream prods at them with a plastic fork. 

“This isn’t like the Irn-Bru. I really do think you’ll like it,” Hob adds. 

At the mention of Irn-Bru, Dream’s head snaps up and his eyes narrow at Hob. He regards him with suspicion for a long moment, and then returns his attention to the chips. After long moments, he takes the fork and knife and measuredly cuts himself a piece of chip no longer than a centimeter. 

He chews for a good while before he swallows. 

“Well?” Hob asks, and takes a huge bite of bread and potato. 

“Salty,” Dream announces. 

He cannot be persuaded into eating more. Hob finishes his sandwich, and then pulls the chips and the fork toward himself. He eats them in large forkfuls. Chips are probably the best thing humans ever invented—and yes he does include buttons, chimneys, and rocketships on that list. 

“Kay,” Hob says, after he drains the last of his Diet Coke. He closes the lid of the takeaway box. “Hit me. What do you need me to do?” 

Dream surveys him for a moment, and then says, “In 1802 you were on The Bristol crossing the North Sea when a storm arose.” 

Hob’s mouth drops open a little bit. 

Doesn’t know why he’s surprised. He should know better than to try to anticipate Dream, at this point.

Hob makes himself laugh a little, but it comes out sounding nervous. “Uh. Yeah?” 

“The ship sank,” Dream continues. “All aboard perished—except you. Because my sister does not come when your soul calls for collection. Instead, you were kept alive in the throes of the storm, drowning and drowning, but unable to die.” 

Hob swallows. 

“Eventually the storm abated, and you no longer battled the waves. Instead you floated. You burned in the sun, you starved, and thirsted, and wept until you could no longer tread the water to stay above it, and then you drowned again—” 

“Okay,” Hob interrupts. “Thank you, Dream, I was there, I don’t need a blow-by-blow. Why are you bringing this up? How do you know this?

“For years afterward, you were tormented by nightmares,” Dream answers. 

Hob stares. “And you… you made those. You made my nightmares about drowning. Right.” 

“Not directly,” Dream says, shaking his head. “I create beings known as Nightmares—and Dreams—to influence the dreams of humanity on my behalf. My emissaries. Your dreams of drowning were primarily the work of a Nightmare known as Peyla.” 

“Fine fucking work,” Hob mutters. He runs a hand through his hair, trying to calm the beating of his heart. “Look. What does this have to do with me helping you?” 

“My sister and I have always had a special bond,” Dream continues, switching tracks, “for we are singular amongst all our siblings. You see, all of the Endless, we desire. We despair. We may be destroyed, and we may enter delirium. Only my sister and I were both gifted with boons that are ever unknowable to the Endless.” 

Hob waits for Dream to clarify, but he says no more. 

“You can’t dream," Hob says, at length.

Dream nods. 

“You, Lord of Dreams, cannot dream.” 

“None of the Endless are able to dream. Just as we are unable to die. It is a difficult thing, Hob, to create that which you can never receive.” 

“Yeah, I bet,” Hob agrees, though his brain can’t even begin to wrap around the concept of anyone making dreams, or a dream realm, or any of it, really. It’s just what you say when your friend admits that their job is hard. 

“In 1975,” Dream says, and Jesus H Christ, Hob is going to need actual Panadol for this whiplash, "you boarded a ferry to cross the Irish Sea, after one hundred and seventy-three years of not stepping aboard a sea-faring vessel.” 

“Yes,” Hob sighs. 

Clearly, Dream will get to his point when he bloody well wants to, and not a second sooner. 

“It was in large part thanks to your recurring nightmares of drowning, that you were able to eventually heal from the trauma of the incident,” Dream says, “and confront your fears.” 

Hob raises an eyebrow. “Sure. That, and enough rum to kill a herd of elephants.” 

“This is one purpose of nightmares,” Dream explains. “As any other part of the body, the mind heals best while at rest. Peyla provided you with simulated drowning experiences so that you could properly process the events and emotions you experienced—and to that end, you can now board a ship without being afraid. It was, as you say, fine work.” 

Hob has never heard Dream talk this much before. 

“I cannot dream,” Dream says, and then… hesitates. His eyes flicker, and the barest bob of an adam’s apple betrays a swallow. “I… cannot dream. But. If I did. If I were to dream, it would be of a cage.” 

And then he says no more.

The words hang in the air for a long and terrible minute, allowing Hob the time to dig up involuntarily detained and put it together with cage and come up with a truly horrific answer. 

Hob regrets holding this conversation while postprandial. 

And then—

Oh, buggering hell. The lift.

“You’re afraid of it,” Hob says, astonished. 

Dream looks down, and doesn’t reply. 

“Er—of course, I’d say that’s pretty fucking understandable,” Hob adds hastily, because it turns out that Dream looking humiliated has a direct line to his heartstrings and he wants to find the words that will make that face go away. Right now. “You’ve never heard of post traumatic stress? Shellshock? You were put in a fucking cage, love, of course you’d be nervous about small spaces, that’s just your brain being smart. That’s just self preservation. You’ve got nothing to be embarrassed of, nothing at all. I’ve known blokes who—”

“I require your assistance,” Dream interrupts, staring fixedly at the table. 

“Anything,” Hob says. 

He doesn’t know any therapists, let alone one that’s credentialed to help an anthropomorphic personification of dreams with his PTSD, but damn if he’s not going to hunt one down tomorrow. It’s summer holidays. He has lots of time. 

“It shames me profoundly, that I should even ask this—” 

“Dream,” Hob interrupts. “There’s no shame. Not between us. And not for something like this. I want to help you.” 

Dream’s eyes flicker up to him, just for a moment, and the naked fear there makes Hob’s heart skip a beat. 

“I require you to simulate a nightmare for me ,” Dream pronounces. His shoulders have gone stiff, and his hands have gone to fists. “I must be thrust into that which I fear, against my will, so that I might relive my experiences and emotions in a safe space. I must do this until I have properly processed the ordeal I underwent, so that I may resolve this issue. You will help me do this.” 

For the second—perhaps third—time, Hob’s jaw is hanging open. 

“You what,” he says, eventually. 

“I have obtained a binding spell,” Dream says, and from his pocket comes the ominous clank of iron. 

“No,” Hob says immediately. 

“There is none other I would trust—” 

“I am not doing this.” 

“Hob—” 

“Absolutely not.” 

“You must under—”

“No! Dream, I’m not locking you up and tossing you into a torture chamber so you can self-induce panic attacks!” Hob cries. 

Dream is looking up, now, and his eyes are dark with anger. “And what do my Nightmares do to you in the cold watches of the night, Hob Gadling?” 

“That’s different—” 

“Do you consent to your nightmares? ” Dream demands, rising to his feet. “Are they not thrust upon you against your will? Are you not trapped in my realm, night after night, to relive your worst memories over and over again? Do you not beg for release, and there is no quarter given?” 

He’s right, of course. 

Hob doesn’t care. 

“No,” he says, and folds his arms over his chest. 

“There is no other way. I cannot allow this—this impairment to continue. There is too great a risk that it will one day be used against me and plunge my realm back into chaos. I will not allow this. If you will not help me, then I will—” 

“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” Hob interrupts, rising to his feet as well to meet Dream head on. He realizes a second too late that his hands are reaching out, and he stops them just before they make contact. 

Dream stares down at where Hob’s hands hover above his own. 

Well, fuck it. 

Hob grasps the slender, cool hands and squeezes them. “Dream,” he says, gently now. “I will help you. But not like that. Okay?” 

“I am the King of Dreams,” Dream declares, and Hob resists the urge to reply with a deeply sarcastic oh really you’ve never mentioned. “I have shaped the hopes and fears of humanity for millennia. I have made a careful study of your nightmares, that I might understand their root function, and I—” 

“Hang on,” Hob says, “it’s been thirty years since I last had a—did you send me drowning nightmares these last two weeks?” 

Dream averts his eyes. “Research was required. I am unfamiliar with the psychology of most humans, but our… companionship has granted me some clarity, when it comes to your mind. You were the most sensible choice. I. Apologize for any discomfort it may have caused.” 

Hob thinks that somewhere in that speech, there was something that could theoretically be extracted, melted down and reforged into a compliment. 

One day, Hob will learn how to love people that are kind, and well adjusted, and emotionally intelligent. 

“Dream,” he says, with great patience, “do you know how I got on that boat in 1975?” 

“Your nightmares—” 

“No. Because I was with my fucking friends, you absolute knob.” 

THE CONVERSATION THAT STARTED IT ALL

Hob looks up from his laptop, and exhales silently. “What happened to The Bourne Identity? ” 

“Finished,” Dream replies, and serenely turns the page of Nature Astronomy. “I enjoyed it very much. The themes of identity, rebirth, and the self-destructive nature of man were remarkably meditative.” 

“Er,” Hob says. “Well. I think most people like it for the car chases and gun fights, but all right. Glad you liked it.” 

“These observations on gravitational waves are highly erroneous,” Dream replies. “They have no relation to the formation of black holes.” 

“I’ve told you before not to read those,” Hob says wearily. 

“I have heard that it is beneficial to a relationship, to express an interest in one another’s avocations.” 

“Well, unless you can magically invent the technology to capture the correct data, and then the software to process it, and then the mathematics needed to interpret the results to prove your theories, Dream—it does me absolutely no good to hear how our current observations are incorrect,” Hob says, not for the first time. Or the second. Or the third. 

Dream glowers. “I merely wish to help.” 

“Science is about proving and disproving. I can’t just roll up to the annual AAS meeting with eight new hypotheses about the universe and because Lord Morpheus of the Dreaming told me so as my methods, results and analysis sections.” 

“I would not have these struggles if you had chosen to study history instead,” Dream declares, and sets the journal on the table with a thump. 

Hob bursts out laughing. “Me? Study history? I lived it, I don’t need to study it.” 

“It would be a logical choice.” 

“First of all, just because I lived through history doesn’t mean I was paying attention to it—unless you mean the best place to get a steak and kidney pie in Soho in the 1870s, and then I am absolutely your man. Second of all, who wants to sit around and talk about things that already happened to people who are already dead, when you could be exploring the universe? Lightyears and lightyears of unknown galaxies out there, just waiting to be discovered!” 

“The final frontier,” Dream intones. 

Hob beams. He loves it when the evidence of his own corruption shines through. “Exactly!” 

The corner of Dream’s mouth is crooked upward. 

“Hey,” Hob says, with sudden inspiration, “when was the last time you even saw how the humans are looking at the stars? Galileo?” 

“Dreams of outer space are ubiquitous in the Dreaming.” 

“Yeah, sure, but when was the last time you saw a telescope? Do you even know the kind of shit we’ve invented to get all this supposedly incorrect data?” 

“It is not… all incorrect,” Dream allows. 

“Flatterer,” Hob says dryly. “Come on, let me show you my lab. We’ve got the second best large array in the UK—after MRAO, of course, posh bastards—and we just got a new solar scope last year, it’s fantastic stuff.” 

“You do not need to complete your work?” Dream asks, indicating the abandoned laptop. 

“I can do it later. Come on, it’s the perfect night for it—a waning crescent and everything!” 

“Very well,” Dream says, and allows Hob to pull him to his feet. “Let us go to your telescopes.” 

They stand before the doors of the lift the way some men stand before the edge of a cliff. 

(Well. Not Hob. As previously mentioned, he has a tendency to leap off of cliffs with certain abandon.)

(Perhaps not Dream either, being as that he’s not technically a man.) 

“I guess it doesn’t have to be this exact one,” Hob offers, instead of pressing the UP button as he had previously intended. “It’s a bit old, you know. They have bigger ones that don’t rattle as much. Oh, you know what, there’s one at M&S that’s made of glass! Then you could see outside, there’d be light, you—” 

“No,” Dream says flatly. 

“It’s just down the road.”

“Glass would be… worse.” 

“Right,” says Hob, after a beat. “So. This one, then. You’re sure.” 

“Yes.” 

He presses the UP button now, and moments later the rattling of the cart in motion starts up from somewhere high above them. 

“Remember the breathing exercises we talked about,” Hob says. “In through your nose for four seconds, hold for seven, and then breathe out through your mouth for eight.” 

“These exercises are designed to stimulate the human vagus nerve, which I do not possess,” Dream says. 

“How do you know? Got yourself CAT scanned, did you?” 

“This body is an anthropomorphic manifestation—” 

“Yeah, but it’s still a body,” Hob emphasizes. “With nerves.” He grabs Dream’s hand and holds it between his own. “Temperature. Touch.” 

Dream’s hand convulses. 

Hob shakes his head, and places a hand over Dream’s chest. “Heart beat. Why beat your heart, if you’re not trying to pump blood into your lungs?” 

Dream stares at him. 

The doors of the lift open. 

“Breathe,” Hob instructs, and lets their joined hands drop down but doesn’t actually let go. 

He’s found, over the last few months, that Dream will never initiate physical contact, but he has never once pulled away from it either. Given that Dream of the Endless is also not known for hiding his opinions, Hob is pretty sure this means that he actually enjoys being touched. One day, Hob thinks—give it a hundred years or so—and Dream might just reach out and touch back. 

Hob squeezes Dream’s hand lightly, and tilts his head toward the lift. “When you’re ready, love.”  

And then Dream does what he was unable to do on his own, all those nights standing alone in the midnight halls of the astronomy wing, and steps forward into the lift. 

Hob follows him. 

Inside, the single fluorescent light flickers as always. Hob leans over to press the 2, and then turns to face Dream. 

But Dream isn’t watching him. He’s watching the doors close. There’s no expression on his face as they slowly come together, but there’s a suspicious glitter in the pupils of his eyes. 

“Don’t look at them, look at me,” Hob says, taking Dream’s other hand in his. 

He is, of course, ignored.

The doors close, and Dream goes frighteningly grey. 

“Breathe,” Hob says, squeezing his hands. “In through your nose, come on, together—one, two three, four—” 

The lift jolts as it starts its ascent, and that’s the last thing Hob knows before the world is plunged into darkness. 

They’re standing on a beach. The sky is overcast but the waves are gentle as they lap at the shore, and Hob can only see water over one horizon and gently cresting sand dunes over the other. A cool, salty breeze ruffles his hair. 

Dream stands before him, eyes wide and full of stars, chest heaving like he’s just finished a marathon. He’s still holding Hob’s hands. 

“Dream?” 

The voids of space stare back at him. 

Funny, that this all started with a journey to see a telescope. 

“Apologies,” Dream says roughly. “I. It was not. My intention.” 

“...Are we in your realm?” Hob asks, though he knows the answer. 

Dream nods. 

“Huh,” Hob says. “Didn’t know humans could come here while we were awake. I am awake, aren’t I? 

“Yes,” Dream answers. He’s regaining control over his breathing, slowly but surely. “I am. Holding you here. Don’t let go of my hands.”

Hob nods, as he certainly hadn’t been planning on it, and looks around again. It’s a beautiful scene, if a bit desolate. Dream had mentioned a library before. Must be on the other side of the realm. 

Then everything goes black. 

Hob blinks, and they’re standing in front of the doors to the lift. It’s still dark. He wants to look at his watch to check the time, but Dream has his hands in a death grip. 

“I should not have done that.” 

“It’s been a while since I had a seaside holiday,” Hob says lightly. “Warn me, next time. I’ll pack my swimming trunks.” 

Dream doesn’t reply. His face is blank, eyes blue, and his breathing is back to his baseline of Likely Heroin Overdose. 

“There’s stairs just down that hallway,” Hob tries. 

“Again,” Dream decrees. 

Of course.

This time when the doors of the lift open, Dream doesn’t hesitate before striding inside like he’s got something to prove. His long coat billows out behind him and catches Hob at the ankles. 

The doors begin to close. 

“Breathe,” Hob tries again, as he sees Dream’s skin start to lose color once more. “Remember where you are. Breathe in—one, two, three, four—” 

Dream isn’t listening this time either. His eyes are fixed on the closed doors, and they’ve gone starry once more. 

Hob keeps talking anyway. “—you’re not trapped, you’re here with me. You’re safe. This is just a stupid machine built by stupid, puny humans—” 

The lift jolts. 

They’re on the same beach, though the breeze that whips at Hob’s face is a little stronger. Across from him, Dream trembles and takes in great gasps of air. His cheeks are flushed, bright with color in a way Hob has never seen before. 

“Dream—” 

“The binding spell would bar me from this cowardice,” Dream says, scowling. 

“The binding spell is not an available option,” Hob replies. 

Dream glowers at him.

“Also, it’s not cowardice.” 

The wind is making Dream’s hair even more chaotic than usual. Hob wants to make a follow up joke about swimming trunks, but it doesn’t seem like the right time for that sort of thing. 

“Look,” Hob says, when Dream’s starry eyes fall shut. “Maybe we should break this down into steps. Like, today, we can focus on just getting inside the—” 

“Name,” Dream snaps.

“Inside it,” Hob corrects impatiently, “and, then just, I don’t know, letting the doors close. Then we get back out. That’s it. And then we break for a few days. We don’t have to do it all in one—” 

They’re standing in front of the lift again. 

“—day,” Hob finishes. 

Dream doesn’t reply. He reaches out and presses the UP button. When the doors open, he practically drags Hob inside the lift, and Hob begins to genuinely think that Dream might get through this on rage alone. 

But then the doors start to close, and Dream goes wooden. The color drains from his face and his eyes are flooded with black and his mouth is open in silent terror and Hob is standing there saying, “Come on, Dream, listen to me, look at me, focus on my voice,” as the lift jolts to life yet again, and— 

The wind in the Dreaming is not gentle this time. It whips at Hob’s face and creates a swirling vortex of Dream between his hair and his coat, and the sea is no longer gently lapping at the shore but crashing into it with vengeance. 

Dream snarls in frustration, yanks on Hob’s hands, and—

They stand before the doors of the lift yet again. 

“Dream—” Hob tries. 

“Be silent.” 

Hob sighs internally. 

He says nothing as they file into the lift. Dream stands with his back so stiff it’s like his spine’s been replaced with a yardstick, and his coat seems to crackle with energy. 

“Okay,” Hob says, as he presses the 2 button once more, “so you know the doors are about to close, and that’s when you panic, so I want you to—” 

“Silence,” Dream barks. 

Hob obeys. 

The doors slide close. 

This time, the lift doesn’t even start to move before the world blinks away. 

Dream tips his head back toward the stormy skies of the Dreaming, and screams in fury. Lightning flashes, and a wave breaks on the shore that drenches them both to the chest. 

“Dream,” Hob yells, over the rumble of thunder. 

Dream’s head falls to his heaving chest, and his nails dig into Hob’s forearms. 

“Again.”

Again, they enter the lift. Again, the doors close. Again, Dream panics and yanks them into the Dreaming, realizes what he’s done, and then sends them back into the Waking. Again. And again. And again. 

Each time Dream is a little more crazed, pulls a little harder on Hob’s hand, and the waves in the Dreaming swell a little higher, and each time it seems like Dream panics earlier and earlier, losing any progress he might have started with, until finally, a dozen rounds later, the doors of the lift have barely started to close on them when the world goes black and—

They are in a hurricane. 

The ocean sprays into Hob’s face and the freezing wind slashes through it and makes it bite as it hits his skin. It’s raining so hard Hob is soaked through by the time the wave recedes, and he struggles to get his eyes open against the deluge. He tries to step away from the shore, but Dream has his hand in a death grip, and then another giant wave comes crashing down and a gust of wind slams into him with such force it sends him careening into Dream, who stumbles back toward the water and—

Hob grabs at him—

Sheets of rain swirl around them—

The sand gives beneath his feet—

A wave taller than either of them comes crashing down over their heads, and Hob is down. 

His head feels like it’s been snapped from his neck. There’s a ringing in his ears. There’s water, water all around, no ground beneath his feet and he can feel the current pulling him out to sea. He can’t breathe, he’s trapped under the water, he’s going to drown, he’s going to be lost at sea again, he—

The hand of God pulls him up out of the water, and Hob gasps for air. 

“Are you all right?” Dream screams, over the howling of the wind and the driving rain. 

Right. Not God. 

Not the God, anyway. 

They’re on the knees in the sand, Hob clutching at Dream’s sodden coat like a lifeline, coughing too hard to respond. There’s a wiry arm around his waist like a steel band. 

“Hob, are you all right?" 

Hob manages a nod. 

A wave crashes onto the shore behind them and the spray hits their backs, the flood of the tide rushing past them across the sand. As it starts to recede, the sand shifts beneath their feet, and Hob has a second to think oh shit—

And then they’re on dry sand. 

The rain is no longer driving down on them and the sudden loss of the wind leaves Hob’s hair plastered to his face. He stays on his hands and knees, taking in great gulps of air. After a few moments, he feels Dream change grip from his waist up to his shoulder, and then there’s a hand pushing the hair out of his face. 

Hob blinks water out of his eyes, and finds Dream about six inches away, and for the first time in the Dreaming his eyes are not endless galaxies but instead clear human blue. 

“I’m fine,” Hob manages, and then coughs. He lifts one shaky hand up to his head, which still feels like it was used to ring a church bell. 

Dream, just as drenched as Hob, is staring at him with an intensity that makes Hob uncomfortable, so instead he takes in their new surroundings.  

They’re still on the beach, but they’re in a wooden shack that Hob is very confident did not exist a minute ago. Through the doorway, Hob can see the hurricane force winds whipping the sand into the air, can see waves as tall as men breaking on the shore like thunder, but it’s warm and dry inside the shack. 

“You couldn’t have just fixed the weather?” Hob rasps out, trying to make his mouth quirk upward into a grin as he looks back at Dream. 

In return, he receives a glare. “You are shaking.” 

Hob coughs. “I fucking almost drowned, of course I’m shaking.” 

“I would not have let you drown.” 

“Well, you let me fall in.” 

Dream looks away. The hand on Hob’s shoulder goes loose. 

Hob closes his eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” 

“You speak only the truth. I should not have forced you to join me in this, Hob Gadling. I endangered your life, and it has only wrought my own humiliation. This entire pursuit was folly.” 

“Oh, now don’t start with that—” 

“I will return you to the Waking, where you will be safe, and take my leave of you.” 

“No you will not,” Hob snaps, and then coughs again. Snot drips from his nose, and he wipes it away with his sleeve. He sniffs the rest of it back up, and then looks up to glare at Dream. “No. You’re not getting rid of me. We’re going back to the Waking, and you’re going to actually let me help you, you impossible fucking creature.” 

“I have let you help me. It was not your failing, but mine—” 

“Yeah, okay, but you haven’t,” Hob says, properly angry now. “You haven’t listened to a thing I said, not one, you’ve just been dragging me onto that blasted lift and making—” 

“NAME.” 

“—making me watch you suffer, and yeah, I said its bloody name! It’s just a name! Names have power because you let them have power, you great numpty, it’s a lift. It’s just a lift.” 

Thunder rips across the sky above them, the kind that rattles your teeth and makes the ground tremble beneath you. 

Dream closes his eyes. “Hob.”

And then the doors to a lift appear in the shack, replacing an entire wall. It looks a lot like the lift in the astronomy building except somehow darker, and older, and more menacing. 

Another wall in the shack is replaced with another entrance to a lift, identical to the last. 

The third wall is replaced next. 

And then the doorway itself is replaced, closing them off from the storm completely. They are surrounded by four identical sets of lift doors. The shack seems to have shrunk in size by half, and the walls threaten to press against their shoulders. 

“Dream,” Hob says nervously, but when he looks over, Dream’s eyes have gone to galaxies and his skin has lost all color. He seems even more skeletal in the green light, and his clothes appear to be melting off his body. “Dream.” 

At once, all four sets of doors open with an ominous hiss. 

But instead of flickering, wall-carpeted carriages from the eighties like the astronomy building lift, each set of doors open to reveal an enormous glass sphere ringed with iron bands, and beyond it a dark room of stone and water. It suddenly smells of earth, and cigarettes. 

A gunshot fires, and there’s the wet thump of a body, too light and soft to belong to a human. An animal. Blood runs down the sides of the four spheres. 

Dream keens, naked, shivering on the floor. 

Oh, fuck. 

“Dream,” Hob says, on his knees beside him, bending down low with one hand on his back and the other locked around his forearm. They can’t lose contact. Dream is his anchor here, and Hob doesn’t know what will happen if he gets dropped back into the Waking and leaves Dream here like this. “Dream, love, listen to me. It’s not real. None of this is real, okay, this is just a dr—” 

He stops himself, because that’s certainly not going to work as a line of reasoning. 

“Clean that mess up,” a man’s voice says, from nowhere, and Dream lets out another terrible noise. 

Hob wants to grab Dream and whisk him away from this—hell, he wants to take them back to the Waking where reality would never turn on them like this—but he has neither of those options. They’re trapped here. 

“Listen to my voice,” Hob says, and wraps himself around Dream’s trembling, skeletal form, mouth right next to his ear. “Just my voice. It’s Hob. You know me. You know you’re safe with me. Take deep, slow breaths. Be here with me. You know it’s you, and me, and we’re together, and that means you’re not alone. You’re not in danger. Deep breaths, love, deep, slow breaths. Be here with me.” 

He talks for an age—hours, maybe years, absolute nonsense pouring from his mouth that he’s used before to settle injured cats and sick children and grieving lovers—and just as it had with all of them, gradually, slowly… it begins to soothe. 

The shack starts to feel just a little bit larger, and the glass cages around them start to come in and out of focus. The scent of salt trickles into the air. 

“That’s it,” Hob murmurs. “That’s it. Take a deep breath in for me, through your nose.” 

Dream’s chest heaves against his. 

“Come on. Breathe in—one, two, three—no, try again. Breathe in—one, two. Okay. Again, you can do it. Breathe in—one, two, three, four—yes, perfect, now out through your mouth, nice and slow, all the way to eight—five, six, seven—okay, that’s okay. Breathe in—one, two, three, four—” 

The lifts vanish, one by one, replaced by the wooden walls of the shack. Outside, the ocean is calm once more, and only a light drizzle patters upon the roof of the shack. 

Dream has gone quiet and still, except for the breaths that Hob counts out for him. His back is to Hob’s chest, and he has both of Hob’s hands clutched to his chest. 

“In, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Out, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Good. That’s so good. Again—in, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Out, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight—” 

The linoleum floor of the astronomy department is cold and hard against his hip and shoulder, and Hob’s arms are empty. It is silent. It smells of dust and rubber bands.

He sits up, and finds Dream on the floor across from him, utterly blank-faced. He’s clothed again, sitting in his usual puddle of black fabric, and his hair is back to its Rod Stewart Gone Emo look. Like nothing ever happened. 

Feeling hollow, shaky, Hob focuses on sitting cross-legged to ease the press of linoleum against his tailbone. He places his hands on the cool floor beneath him, grounding himself. 

Dream stares back at him. 

You'd never know he was naked and sobbing, two minutes ago. Amazing what a little trip between realms can do.

"So, guess you can have nightmares after all, huh?" Hob says, eventually. 

"That was not a nightmare," Dream replies. "That was the near undoing of my realm. I have never lost such control in the Dreaming.” 

Oh. 

Well. 

Hob knows better than to expect a thank you—he’s tempted to prod for one with a good thing I was there to help, but he expects that Dream has probably been pushed quite far enough tonight. Also, he supposes it was a little bit his fault in the first place for losing his temper and doing exactly what Dream had asked him twice not to do. 

Still, though. 

“So,” Hob starts, “I know that I’m just a foolish, short-lived, feeble old mortal here—” 

“It was a mortal who imprisoned me in that—thing.” 

Hob isn’t quite sure how he’s supposed to take that. 

“...Right,” he says eventually. “Well. Anyway, as a mortal, I don’t know much, but I do know a thing or two about coming down from panic attacks, so I hope you’re aware that there is absolutely no way we’re getting in that fucking thing again tonight.” 

They both look at the doors to the lift. 

Dream looks back first. 

“I have endured the simulation of trauma,” he states. “Now I must take the time to process it before undergoing another repetition. This is how Nightmares work.” 

“Unfortunately,” Hob agrees. 

There is a long period of silence, but it’s comfortable. 

“Ever do I underestimate humanity,” Dream says, suddenly. “Countless lessons I have had, and yet still I fare poorly when put to the test.” 

“You know, I happen to be kind of good at teaching,” Hob says. 

“Next time I am to confront this deficiency of mine, I would have your guidance, Hob Gadling,” Dream says. 

“Anytime,” Hob promises. Then he raises a finger. “Except tonight.” 

“Tonight is for rest,” Dream agrees. 

“You know, on that note… Did you know that there’s a sequel to The Bourne Identity?” 

Dream raises his eyebrows. 

“It’s a trilogy,” Hob says, and then frowns. “Well, technically, there’s a trilogy, and then there’s a bunch more by another author, but it’s really just the original trilogy you want to read. I’ve got it back at my place. The second one, anyway. Lost the third one somewhere in a move…"

“I would enjoy more of Jason Bourne’s reflections on the duality of the self,” Dream says slowly. 

“Oh, yeah. Bourne Supremacy’s chock full of that.” 

Hob pushes himself up onto his feet, making a face at the stiffness of his bones. Sometimes he wishes he’d been made immortal when his body was ten years younger. Being perpetually on the cusp of middle age is to be always slightly uncomfortable while not appearing old enough to gain any sympathy for it. 

He brushes off his hands, and holds out a hand. 

Dream reaches up and takes it, pulling himself to his feet. 

“It’s also a film series,” Hob adds, as they start down the hallway. “Matt Damon. I remember seeing it in the cinema when it came out—hey, have you ever seen a film?” 

“Yes,” Dream says. “Once. ”  

“Did you like it?”

“It was pleasing.” 

“What was… no, wait, I want to guess. Twenty questions!” 

The corner of Dream’s mouth goes up just a bit. He knows this game. They’ve played it before, and the bastard loves a good riddle. 

“First question?”  

Hob grins, and bumps their shoulders together. 

Dream returns the following week. The first thing he does is pull out a battered paperback from within the folds of his coat, and present it to Hob. 

The Bourne Ultimatum

“Did you actually go into a shop and buy this?” Hob demands, delighted. 

“Is there another way to acquire a book?”

“Stealing, I guess. Who taught you how to use a chip and PIN machine, then?” 

“My realm borders the Morningstar’s. I am familiar with her inventions.” 

Hob stops flipping through the book and looks up. “The Morningst… Hang on, are you saying the Devil invented chip and PIN machines?” 

Dream raises his eyebrows. 

“A joke,” Hob realizes. “You’re making a fucking joke. Lord have mercy.” 

Dream looks pleased with himself. 

It’s not cute. 

“Well, thank you,” Hob says, waggling the book. “Glad to have the trilogy back together again. What’d you think?” 

“I have not yet read it.” 

“Oh, I see. Storing up future entertainment for yourself?” 

Dream hums. 

“Strategic.” 

“Hob Gadling,” Dream says, and the tone of voice alone tells Hob exactly what he’s about to say. “I believe I have sufficiently processed the events of last week. I would ask for your assistance on this night, if it is convenient for you.”

The Bourne Ultimatum whirrs beneath Hob’s fingers as he lets the pages flip past his right thumb over and over. 

“And you’re going to listen to me this time?” Hob asks. 

Dream inclines his head. 

“Let me make some coffee.” 

Historically speaking, Dream is offended by the entire concept of caffeine, but tonight he doesn’t say anything. This could be because he’s distracted by his upcoming go-round with the lift, or it could be because he’s the King of Dreams and is therefore aware of the fact that Hob has suffered a return of the drowning nightmares after their little adventure last week. 

“Blast,” Hob says mildly, as they stand in front of the doors of the lift once more. 

Dream looks over at him. 

“Forgot my swimming trunks,” Hob tells him. 

Dream drags in a deep, slow breath, clearly wishing that the Victorian Gothic Persona allowed for such mundane things as eyerolls. 

Hob presses the UP button. 

When the lift doors open before them, Hob takes Dream’s hand in his own. He lets Dream make the first move to take them inside. 

Having done a bit of research on claustrophobia in the past week, this time, Hob does not press 2. He doesn’t press any buttons at all. 

The doors, waiting to be prompted, do not yet close. 

“Face me,” Hob says, grabbing Dream’s other hand, and Dream turns obligingly. His face is very blank. 

The doors start to slide shut, and Dream’s head snaps around to watch. 

Hob jabs the DOOR OPEN button with an elbow, and the doors open again. 

“You must let them close,” Dream says stiffly. “I am unbothered as long as they remain open.” 

“I’m demonstrating the function of the button,” Hob replies. “As long as we’re not moving, this button opens the door. Okay?” 

“But we will be moving.” 

“Nope,” Hob disagrees. “Eyes on me. Don’t watch the doors close, just watch me, okay?” 

Dream obediently stares at him, though he starts to blink rapidly when the doors begin to slide shut again. 

“That’s it, don’t look. Just focus on me, and getting through the next ten seconds, okay. Take in a deep breath through your nose—Dream. Dream.” 

The doors have fully shut, and Dream has gone grey, and his hands clamp down hard on Hob’s. Stars shine in his pupils. 

“Remember, it’s just ten seconds. You can do this. Focus on me, only on me, and I’m gonna count, okay—two, three, four, five—”

Dream is staring at him with galactic voids where his eyes should be, lips parted in mute terror, and his hands are shaking in Hob’s, but he’s still here. He’s holding on. 

“Eight, nine, ten—”

Hob uses an elbow to hit the DOOR OPEN button, and the doors obligingly respond. 

“There,” Hob says, smiling widely. “Done.”

Dream’s gaze is fixed on the hallway. No longer confined, his hands start to still, and his breathing starts to slow. He turns and looks back at Hob with just a bit of sclera showing in his eyes. 

“Out,” Hob says. 

“What?” Dream rasps. 

Hob pulls him toward the door. “Out. Come on, back into the hallway, hop-to.” He pulls harder, and Dream reluctantly follows. 

“Hob,” Dream says. 

The doors to the lift close behind them. 

Hob smiles, squeezes Dream’s hands between his own. “All done.” 

Dream blinks, and more and more sclera appear until there’s just the faintest ring of blue. “We are not done. This was insufficient.” 

“It’s a building block,” Hob corrects. “Today, we got to ten seconds. Next time, we can try for fifteen. Give us a couple weeks and maybe we can work up to a minute.” 

“You… mock me.” 

Oh, for the love of—

“No,” Hob says patiently, “I’m helping you, and I’m going to do it with—”

“I do not agree to this,” Dream says, wresting his hands free. “I am not a child, and I do not need to be treated as such. We will enter again, and this time you will count to fifteen.” 

“No,” Hob says. 

“You fear I will take you back to the Dreaming,” Dream decides. 

“No, I don’t.” 

“I will not suffer such a loss of control again. And we may… abstain from physical contact, if it will reassure you.” A hand is waved, and the doors to the lift re-open. “Let us re-enter.”

Hob shakes his head. “I’m not getting back in there, Dream. You said we would do this my way, and this is my way. We’re going to take our time—and Lord knows we’ve both got it. What’s the rush?” 

“You mistake urgency for haste,” Dream hisses. “Who are you to judge what I can and cannot handle?” 

“I’m your friend, and I’m trying to help you.” 

“Then we will re-enter, and continue the simulation.” 

“No. It’s too much, too soon.” 

“You will obey me,” Dream says, with a dangerous glitter to his eyes. The shadows around him begin to darken.

“I absolutely fucking won’t,” Hob retorts. “Not only are you not my king , you prick, but last time we did this your way, you ended up almost destroying your entire realm with a panic attack.”

“You understand nothing of my torments, you insolent—” 

“Really? Because I’m pretty sure I got a good glimpse last week.” 

“Then you understand why I must be rid of it!” Dream cries, and he crackles with sudden sparks. 

“That’s what I’m trying to help you with!” Hob shouts back, throwing up his hands in frustration.

Dream shakes his head. Shadows swirl around him in a vortex, lifting his coat, shading his face into something skeletal, his eyes into empty sockets. “You are not helping, you are toying with me—” 

“That’s not true—” 

“You claim to be my friend, and yet you betray me. You deny me aid, you deny me—deny me my peace, my freedom—”

“Dream!” 

“I MUST BE RID OF IT,” Dream screams. 

“Well, get in, then!” Hob yells back, gesturing at the doors to the lift, which have stayed open all this while. 

Dream stares back at him. 

Hob takes in a breath, in the sudden silence. “Go on,” he says. “Go inside. You know best, you don’t need me, just step on in and count to fifteen all on your own. I’ll wait out here.” 

Dream says nothing. His fathomless eyes are fixed on the lift, but he makes no move toward it. 

Hob waits. 

There’s one abortive motion, half a footstep, but then Dream is still again, and he stands there in silence. Minutes tick by.

The shadows recede. His coat settles back into a column. 

Dream closes his eyes, defeated. 

“Look,” Hob says gently, taking a step forward. “I get that you just want to be better. Believe me, I get it. But you were captured by humans, you were tortured by humans, and now you’ve got human trauma in that big old god brain of yours. So. I think it makes sense that you’re going to have to heal from this the human way, too.” 

Dream takes in a slow, shaking breath, and then lets it out. His eyes stay closed. 

“I am going to help you,” Hob tells him softly. “I’m going to take care of you, in the best way that I can. All I need you to do… is trust me.” 

Carefully, Hob reaches out his hand, slow enough that the sound of fabric whispering can be heard, slow enough to warn an emotionally spent anthropomorphic manifestation of the collective human consciousness who happens to have his eyes closed right now—

His hand closes around Dream’s. 

“Do you trust me?” Hob asks. 

Dream’s eyes open. They are human blue, wet with human tears. 

"Yes."

Dream doesn't say anything. 

He doesn't have to. 

"Shut up," Hob wheezes, gripping the handrail but definitely not leaning on it. 

Dream raises his eyebrows. 

"I'll have you know," he says, and takes in a breath, "I ran the London Marathon." 

…In 1996.

Dream tilts his head ever so slightly. 

"Almost there," Hob mutters, and then starts himself up the next flight of stairs with renewed determination. There's only two floors left. God on high, but he needs to start going to the gym again. 

Dream ascends alongside him, silent as a wraith. 

Ten minutes ago when they'd entered the astronomy wing, Dream had announced, "I will join you on the eighth floor.” Hob had, at that point, been mid-ramble about the 2005 Hubble survey of the Orion Nebula and just getting to the part where it had revealed the first ever pair of eclipsing binary brown dwarfs—and in his distracted excitement he’d said, “Oh, no, we’ll just take the stairs, come on.” 

Regrets. 

He has them. 

These are only compounded when, several minutes later, he opens the door to the observatory and finds Priya and Jamaal are still there. 

Jamaal is standing in front of the giant star chart on the wall, doing a sort of dance, and Priya is standing a few feet away filming him on her phone with a tinny hip hop song playing at full volume. 

Jamaal stops mid-moonwalk. "Professor Gads!" 

Priya glances over her shoulder at him, and grins. "Hey! What are you doing back here?" 

"What are you lot still doing here? It's two in the morning," Hob replies, blinking. The pillar of black at the corner of his eye right tells him that Dream has followed him inside. 

"Uh. Well, first Jamaal made me drink a Red Bull—" 

"That's a lie!"

"—and then we were gonna crunch through some of the spectrographs from tonight, but then that rubbish IRAF laptop broke—" 

"It didn't break, you tried to upload five gigs of data at once even though you know—" 

"—and it was taking forever to reboot, so then we worked on SPECS4 for a while, aaaand then we decided to make some TikToks? We should probably go to bed. Hey, who's your friend? Are you gonna show him Orion? Mate, you are in for something brilliant." 

"You two should definitely go home and go to bed," Hob says. 

Priya ignores this and waves at Dream. "Hi! I'm Priya, this is Jamaal. We basically live here. Sorry it's a bit of a tip." 

Dream inclines his head. 

"Hey Professor, have you got a TikTok?"

"You know I'm too busy with my OnlyFans for that, Jamaal," Hob answers. "Now please go home, don't drink any more Red Bulls, and get some sleep. I'll see you two tomorrow afternoon for stats conference. Ricky, this way." 

"Night, Professor!" Priya calls, as Hob pulls Dream through the door that leads to the equatorial room. 

"Ricky," Dream says. 

"Short for Richard," Hob replies. "You don't like it? Great thing about the name Richard, you know, it's got loads of nicknames. Ricky, Rick, Dick, Richie, Chuck—" 

"Your impertinence is appalling," Dream informs him. 

"Yeah, well, a cat can look at a king, and all that rot. Anyway! Welcome to my lab! Let me give you a tour.”

Hob has never needed a particularly responsive audience to talk at length and with enthusiasm—it’s what makes him good at teaching something as dry as astronomy—but he can’t say he’s not also keeping one eye on Dream’s every microexpression as he launches into a top-to-bottom explanation of Fitzy, his beloved forty inch scope. 

Dream is an attentive listener, as Hob talks about the design of it, the mirrors and the gears and the glass refractions, the adaptive optics and the deformable mirror that can change its shape a thousand times in a second, and then the spectroscope installed at the bottom of it. Hob pulls out a spectrograph (one of the ones abandoned by Priya and Jamaal) and starts explaining refraction of light, and red shift and blue shift, and the doppler effect and how it all extrapolates into motion and temperature readings. He talks about absolute magnitudes, and the brilliance of the original Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and why it was eventually replaced by a color-light diagram instead. 

And every time Hob thinks that he should maybe stop and just let Dream look at the damn nebula, there’s the raise of an eyebrow, or the tilt of a head that says keep going. 

It’s like teaching, but he only gets to talk about his most favorite things, in whatever order he wants, to someone with the apparent attention span of a well-rested Ritalin abuser. 

Eventually, Hob cuts himself off. 

“I could really go on all night,” he says, in response to the head tilt he gets. “There’s no end to this. Let me show you why it’s all worth it, though.” 

He leads them out of the dome with the solar telescope, down a hallway lined with dusty bookcases, and back to Fitzy, who has long since finished warming up. He hits the lights, and carefully makes his way down the stepladder to the center of the room. 

“Let me just get it back into alignment,” Hob says, stopping at the console just to the right of the telescope. He does a quick check of coordinates, and then opens the roof with the press of a button, rotates the scope two degrees clockwise the the press of another. He fiddles with the fine motors a bit more until he gets it exactly where he wants it, and then fixes the focus. Slides a few filters into place. “Okay,” he says at last, stepping back from the monitor. “Go have a look.” 

Dream hesitates. 

“I can see it just fine over here,” Hob says, waving at the monitor in front of him. “But I think you’ll like it better on the eyepiece. Feels more real.” 

Dream steps over toward the telescope. In the darkness, he’s just another shadow amongst shadows. Hob can just barely see him come to a stop before the viewing lenses, and grasp them delicately between his pale hands as he bends down to look. 

Hob takes a seat at the desk, and takes in the same view from his monitor. 

The Orion Nebula. 

It’s a spectral cavern of color and light, and tonight the light, the humidity and the temperature have all come together to provide an absolutely razor-sharp view of it, views Hob only gets maybe once or twice a year. Spidery dust lanes stand out in sharp relief to the rolling canyons and pillars of gas, arcs and bubbles that are the scars of stellar winds, bow-shocks, the burning cluster of suns in the stellar nursery… 

The Orion Nebula is one of the most well-studied in astronomy, given that it’s the closest nebula  to Earth. Hob has seen it thousands of times. It never fails to blow him away every single time. 

It’s several long minutes before Hob hears the quiet click of boots across the floor. 

“Well?” he asks, turning on the desk lamp and pushing the chair back a little. “What’d you think?” 

“It is so… small,” Dream replies, coming to a stop before Hob. 

“It’s twenty-four lightyears across,” Hob says. “That’s like… I don’t know, a few hundred million suns.” 

“No. You misunderstand. I mean that you have all spent hundreds of years—your minds, your wars, your disproven papers and your machinery, you have built all of this—” His hand comes up in a sweeping gesture. “—just to record a sliver of a universe in which your fractional existence is barely a component. It is ridiculous. There is no logical reason for humans to spend their lives desperately extracting such meager data from these mundane instruments, to study something you have no hope of ever reaching in the lifespan of your entire species. It is an impossible and pointless task.”  

Hob stares. 

“Well,” he says, eventually. “You could have just said ‘this is a waste of time’, but why use five words when you can make a whole speech, eh?” 

“You misunderstand me again,” Dream says, and he sits in the chair opposite Hob. In the glow of the lamplight, the tiniest crook of his mouth is visible. “It is wonderful.”  

Something in Hob’s chest glows.

“Oh,” he says. 

Dream smiles at him softly. 

“Well, that’s humanity for you,” Hob says weakly. “Give us an impossible task, and we’ll start chipping away at it anyway, just to see how far we can get.” 

“Yes,” Dream agrees. “I am learning this.” 

In the shadows of the room, his eyes shine for once not with stars, but with the reflection of the lamplight. Hob wonders if the stars in Dream’s eyes can be found on the star chart out in the workroom. Wonders if some day Dream will let him map them out, one by one. 

In total, it takes two months for Dream to be able to step onto the lift in the astronomy wing, and ride all the way to the eighth floor. A fast recovery, by human standards, but apparently glacial by the standards of the Endless. 

"You've been alive for millions of years," Hob says, exasperated even as he tightens his hold on Dream. Congratulatory hugs don't usually go on this long, but oh well. "So you spent two months unable to get into a box, who cares." 

"My siblings can never know." 

Hob squeezes him harder. "I'm so proud of you." 

Hob is dreaming. 

He knows he’s dreaming, because he’s standing on the fucking moon. 

It’s not the first time he’s dreamed about being on the moon, of course, but usually those dreams have an amorphous quality to them, with shifting landscapes and a spacesuit that will come and go, with asteroids that whizz past too close and secret tunnels beneath the rockfall. 

This feels real.

Before him stands a barren, rocky landscape that meets a horizon that is disconcertingly close (the Earth’s wider curvature, Hob’s mind supplies, means a three mile horizon becomes only a mile and a half on this tiny floating rock). He is standing at the edge of a vast crater, and to the left there are rolling hills, and to the right is a jagged fault line in the surface, maybe a mile wide, stretching out onto the horizon. Beyond the horizon… is the void of space. 

No stars. No lights. Just an utterly black abyss. 

“Hello, Hob.” 

Hob jumps. He leaves the ground by a few inches, and then floats back down. 

Dream stands next to him, a column of black against a black sky—except just to the right of his head, where there’s a waxing gibbous moon. 

No, Hob remembers. He’s on the moon. 

That little floating orb is Earth. 

“This is real,” Hob says, amazed. “Not real-real, but I mean. This is. I didn’t make this up.” 

“No. This comes from my memory, not yours,” Dream says. 

“I thought you said you’d never been to the moon.” 

“I went,” Dream states. 

“What—when? ” Hob demands. 

“Yesterday.” 

Hob boggles. 

“I visited your nebula as well—I have not been there since the earliest days of my birth, when I was but one more ripple of dust and gas across the endless span of my mother’s embrace.”

“Are you saying you were born in the Orion Nebula?” Hob says, positively agog now. 

“It was windier than I remembered,” Dream comments. 

Hob is partly waiting for Dream’s mouth to twitch just a little bit in his surprise I’m fucking with you kind of way, but it doesn’t come. He’s serious.

“So this is—this is really what it looks like, to be on the moon,” Hob says. He’s aware that he’s acting a little slow. Maybe it’s the dream. Maybe it’s the fact that Dream has taken him to the bloody moon. 

“My memory is faultless.” 

“So that’s actually the Rupes Recta? And—and this crater is Thebit, which means that those are Birt, Birt A and Birt B!” 

“Birt A and Birt B?” Dream repeats, with amusement. 

“Shut up, I didn’t name them. Dream, this is amazing. I’m standing on the moon!” 

“Yes.”

“Bloody hell.” 

“That is one realm over.” 

Hob stares. And stares. And stares. 

“You may explore,” Dream tells him. “No harm will come to you.” 

Hob steps forward carefully. He isn’t weightless, but there’s a lightness to his step that is both terrifying and thrilling. He steps again. Again. A few more feet forward, and the ground gives way to a sudden, steep cliff. Beneath him lies the immense spread of the Thebit crater. 

Hob looks back at Dream, holding out a hand. “Come with me?” 

Dream gives him a tiny, precious smile, and slides his hand into Hob’s. 

Hob laughs, squeezes it once, and then leaps into the unknown.