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Dream was sitting in the front row of Hob’s class.
Now, on any normal occasion, this would be, at first, unsettling and then, second, an utter delight. Hob had been seeing Dream regularly since the beginning of August, when he first showed up at the New Inn. A month later, the pattern of once a century had turned to once a week and from there to every day in a staggeringly short period of time. He knew Dream’s name which was, in fact, Dream (and apparently there was a laundry list of other names for him from over the many, many years of his existence, none of which he’d bothered to tell to Hob before then).
Hob knew where Dream had been the last 106 years. They’d cried about it and everything.
Well, Hob had cried, and Dream had managed to look profoundly devastated whilst staring into the middle distance, eyes limpid with unshed tears. They’d hugged about it, after. Mostly for Hob’s sake, who had been the one to hug Dream, but at least he didn’t resist the gesture.
Another week later, they’d done considerably more than hug. It was, all told, possibly the best month of Hob’s entire life. Which, at 666 years (fuck) was saying something.
The problem was it was the first Monday of the fall semester and he was already struggling with the new course material. The thing was, Hob was primarily a Medievalist, because he liked to stick to his strengths, like dazzling a room with his perfectly fluent Middle English. It was his mother tongue after all and he had an accent to make the late Prof. Tolkien weep, mostly with horror, since Hob had been the furthest thing from an aristocrat at the time and his peasant English still had a particular twang to this day that was lost on all but the most ardent scholars.
But: budget cuts, limited staff, the fucking Tories, etc etc, and needs must, he’d been asked to give this year’s introductory course on 20th century history which, coincidentally, he’d also lived through, and read through, and so he—like an idiot—had said yes, how hard could it be? And here he was.
And here Dream was. In the front row. Watching him. Intently.
Hob had stuttered through his notes, made some strangled attempts at rattling off the syllabus, gone over the reading list aloud for good measure to stall for time, and tried to make his way through the speech he’d written specifically for this day. The one about how important it was for humanity to know their past if they were to navigate the future, however, the course couldn’t possibly cover everything in one semester, etc etc, and some other vaguely philosophical-sounding twaddle.
By then, thankfully, there wasn’t time to get into his opening lecture recapping the relevant bits of the 19th century (also a familiar friend), so he listed his office hours, and as a “treat” gave everyone the gift of an early exit to kick off their semester gently but, more importantly, to give them time to drop the class if they realized they’d made a horrible mistake.
All of that out of the way, Hob finally got the chance to crouch down on the floor in front of Dream, in the very front row to ever so gently and politely ask the question that had been devouring his brain since he caught sight of the Lord of Dreams and King of Nightmares studying him like a bug.
“Hello, love,” Hob asked in a strained but hopefully good natured tone. “May I ask to what I owe the pleasure?”
Dream regarded him, which did very little to alleviate the sense of being studied under a microscope when Dream tilted his head to the side and said in that deep rumble, so incongruous with his slight form, “Is it not enough that I wished to see you?”
“Any time you wish,” Hob agreed and—because he was a sap and he doubted the warm glow of being the focus of Dream’s attention would alleviate any time this millennium—felt himself blush. “A little warning next time would go a long way, though. See, the 20th century is hardly my strongest subject, academically that is, I’m still getting my sea legs as it were. If you want a real treat, you should swing by tomorrow afternoon for Early Modern England: Politics, Religion, and Society.”
Hob winked. “My magnum opus, my tour de force, peppered with undiscovered truths so avant guard and borderline dangerous for someone of my antiquity to voice that it sends my colleagues into paroxysms of rage at my lack of academic hedging for the wild claims I make that they—for some reason—cannot disprove because they are true. I could give it in my sleep too, you know, if you wanted to steal me for a few moments mid-lecture…?”
“Hmm,” Dream acknowledged but did not seem particularly intrigued by the offer and Hob deflated a little despite himself. “I thought you quite capable today, in this class.”
“Really?” Hob blurted. “This one? Oh, love, please allow me to demonstrate to you how much better I can do than the stumbling mess you saw today. I swear, my performance is usually far more adept than that travesty.”
And then the most bizarre expression Hob had ever seen dare to cross Dream’s face did so, so bizarre Hob even forgot to throw in the roguish grin he’d intended at his mention of performance. It was a look of actual uncertainty. Had he not already been crouching, Hob might have fallen to the floor.
But then Dream nodded, and the expression was gone, replaced by his usual impassive self-assurance. “Very well, Hob. I shall attend your other course, if that would please you.”
“I would love to have you,” Hob said fervently, entirely truthfully, but so unsettled by that look that he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something.
Dream did indeed attend his course on Early Modern England that Tuesday. But then, Wednesday morning, perfectly punctual, Dream was there once more in the front row of the 20th c. survey course. This time, Hob was a bit more prepared for the occasion and managed to make it through his retrospective and lead-up opening lecture on the 19th century without a sidetrack into forgetting his ability to speak, but only just.
Because Dream was intent again. Utterly focused as if hanging on Hob’s every word. It would almost be flattering if it wasn’t so bloody weird.
Things finally came to a head that Friday.
Dream was there, again, and at the end of the class when Hob asked for everyone to turn in their analysis of that week’s reading, Dream waited until all of the other students had dropped off their homework, made the requisite small talk, and then their exit, before he too approached Hob’s podium. Hob was already halfway to shifting from professor mode to boyfriend mode (which were very different modes, all right, he was a professional) when Dream withdrew from some previously nonexistent inner coat pocket several pages of what appeared to be parchment, covered with the most exquisite handwritten calligraphy Hob had seen this bloody century.
Then Dream, almost shyly, deposited the pages on the top of the stack.
“You are having me on, right?” Hob said. He took up the pages in sheer disbelief and squinted, vaguely wondering if he should submit them to the local museum as some sort of Platonic ideal of the beauty written English could achieve.
Until his squinting revealed that the contents of those pages were, indeed, an analysis of that week’s reading on the final days of Queen Victoria’s reign and, even more shockingly, seemed at first glance to be an actual analysis of the actual fucking reading, and not some smart-arse counter-argument about the truth of those years as understood by the entity that could see Victoria’s actual dreams. “This cannot be real.”
To Hob’s astonishment and growing horror, Dream blushed. Not a shy blush, but one of embarrassment, and quite possibly anger that briefly sent Hob hurtling, out of body, back to their 1889 argument.
“It is customary for you to interrogate your students on their chosen avenue of learning, Hob Gadling?” Dream said stiffly.
And, finally, the penny dropped.
“You’re attending my class,” Hob said blankly.
“I should think that much was obvious,” Dream said and nodded to take in the room around him. “I am here.”
“You’re attending my class as a student,” Hob said or rather, very nearly shouted, directly into Dream’s face. Dream recoiled slightly, looking like anyone might when a slightly sleep-deprived assistant lecturer who couldn’t quite remember if he’d brushed his teeth that morning shouted at them from a few inches away. Hob lowered his voice to a frantic hiss. “Not to just… watch me go about my weirdo human life and take potshots at me, or as some sort of kinky student-teacher roleplay thing…”
“What?”
“…But actually to attend my class,” Hob gaped. “You did the reading. You did the bloody homework.”
At that, Dream straightened and raised his chin imperiously, but there was a sharp, almost defensive quality to the gesture. “And?”
Hob was fairly certain he’d have to learn to unhinge his jaw if it was to drop any further. “But why?”
“I was under the impression that it was customary to do as requested in a punctual manner when seeking out a master with greater knowledge,” Dream said, with a chilly expression that was just this side of an aristocratic sniff at the low manners of the peasant before him. “As a mark of respect. Perhaps I was mistaken.”
“Greater knowledge? How in the fucking world could I possibly have greater knowledge than…” Hob stopped dead and slapped a hand to his forehead. “The 20th century. Because you were… Oh my God, love. But…I thought by now you could just read everyone’s dreams or whatever, and you’d have the whole thing figured out now that you’ve got your tools back?”
The look Dream gave him was almost pitying. “And I would have thought you well acquainted with the fact that not all humans have lived so long a life as you. There are very few dreams that remain for me to sample from over a century ago and I do not share in my sister’s realm such that I would be allowed to speak with the dead.”
“But you could read, right?” Hob protested. “With that library of yours? You could just…”
“Read which books, Hob?” Dream said softly. “In what order? When shall I know that my understanding is complete, or even if I am on the right path? I thought, in my pursuit of knowledge, my best course of action would perhaps be to seek out a teacher, and Lucienne agreed.”
Oh. Oh. That… actually made a fair amount of sense.
“So you’re here. You’re really here to take my course,” Hob repeated, probably sounding less like a wise professor and more like he’d been concussed.
“Whom else could I trust?” Dream gave Hob a pointed look that was nevertheless haunted. “Not only for his long perspective but for his… discretion?”
Mother of God, oh shit, that was right. Dream was a king. He had a realm to tend, one populated by what, from the sound of it, were not the most biddable of subjects. There was something about a rogue nightmare causing him particular trouble, one who had been wandering the world with free rein for the last century while Dream was imprisoned. Because Dream had been imprisoned. For over a century. What must it be like, for Dream to have not only his own ignorance to contend with but the perception of his ignorance that he must guard from his subjects?
Actually, maybe Hob should throw in a special lecture on the evolving, or rather devolving, role of monarchy in the 20th century?
“So you want to be my student, specifically,” Hob marveled. “My actual student. To learn from me.”
Dream’s expression tightened and his lips twisted to look, more than usual, like he’d bitten into a raw lemon. “I fail to see how much clearer…”
Eyes gone wide, Hob’s hands moved of their own volition to clasp Dream’s magnificent jawline that he’d fantasized about in ways that weren’t entirely sane for over six hundred years. “Dream, I swear to you, on my soul and on the love I hold for you, which I value even more,” Hob said, gazing perhaps a little too intensely into Dream’s eyes, but turnabout was fair play, “That I will teach you everything I know and everything you wish to know—and, very likely, a great many things you never wanted to know—about this past century. And that is just to start.”
Dream looked, in his usual understated way, like he just realized that maybe he should regret triggering an academic’s adoration of their field. “The chosen content of this course should suffice.”
“Oh, no,” Hob said fervently. “This is a survey course, my love, we’re barely going to scratch the surface. Give me a moment.”
He pulled Dream’s face close and smacked a kiss against that alabaster cheek before releasing it to scroll frantically through his phone. “I have a reading list here, all the books that I couldn’t include in the curriculum for some absurd reason like my students needing sleep or to have time for other coursework. Nonsense. Anyway, none of that will be a problem for you. I’ll get this printed up and you can give the list to Lucienne.”
Hob sent the list with a touch of his finger to the printer, another gorgeous gift of the 21st century. “Frankly, I’m not sure how useful dreams have been for understanding history from, you know, the waking world’s perspective so I’m also going to send you along my teaching schedule for this year. Oh, and the schedules of a few other professors in my field who do top notch work, if you ever find the time. Between the lot of us, we’ll have you well underway to your own professorship before long.”
Hob glanced up from his phone, grinning at Dream who looked back, bemused.
“This is a passionate subject for you,” Dream said softly.
“Getting the chance to teach you is a passionate subject for me,” Hob agreed, feeling excitement thrill and bubble within him. “Half my students don’t give a fuck more than half the time. You have no idea what a joy it will be to have someone around who actually cares sitting in the front row.”
A thought occurred to him and he made another note. “I’ve got office hours too, you can drop by any time you... Well, more than you already do, and I can help you through anything you’re having trouble with. Even when the course is over, you can drop by and ask me whatever you need to know and I can promise you utter discretion. Mum’s the word. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be quoting Die Hard and singing along to the Spice Girls with all the other 90’s babies. Who knows, someday I might even introduce you to the Internet, once I work up the courage.”
Hob startled at a cool fingertip on his chin and he raised his eyes from where they’d fallen once more to his phone to find Dream looking at him, softly. “Then it appears that I could not have found a better teacher.”
For one so commanding, Dream kissed as if he always feared he was asking for too much and so he was going to make this one count. Gentle, at first, and then forceful, hungry. Capable of utterly obliterating every trace of higher thought in Hob’s head.
When Hob managed to remember himself, blinking under the classroom’s fluorescent lights like he’d just awoken from a coma, Dream was gone.
“Fuck,” Hob said, with a great deal of feeling. “He forgot the reading list.”
The most insane part of it all was that Dream did attend all the classes Hob held and he did the homework. The bloody homework. The Lord of Dreams, King of Nightmares, Shaper of Forms, Dream of the bloody fucking Endless, did the homework that Hob assigned to university students who had barely seen two decades on this Earth.
And of course, Dream’s essays were fucking gorgeous. Hob wasn’t sure why he’d ever expect less from the being who inspired bloody Shakespeare but he was seriously considering submitting them to the British Library as era-defining works of literary genius.
Which was how Hob got his idea.
It was a long-shot, probably nothing to get too excited about for the very high likelihood it would fail. Dream was a busy… entity, likely to get pulled into some world-ending apocalypse again or to simply lose interest once Hob’s requisite course on the 20th century ended or, Heaven forbid, Dream simply grew tired of Hob (and Hob thanked whatever higher power that could possibly outrank Dream for every day that did not happen).
But, bit by bit, Hob assembled his grand plan, all aided by Dream’s perfect attendance record for his lectures, impeccable test scores (one had to wonder if he could just pluck the answers from the thought of those around him, but Hob had the odd but genuine sense that Dream was too honorable for that) and of course, Dream’s essays that nearly brought Hob to his knees weeping in awestruck envy.
Time was funny for immortals such as them. Some days, it crawled. For example, June 7th, 1989, which Hob had spent waiting in the White Horse for Dream, not knowing he’d been imprisoned, had been an agony of seconds dragging themselves like wounded soldiers across his consciousness, leaving a bloody trail in their wake.
Then, sometimes, Hob woke up and realized a decade had flown by hardly without his noticing (also the 1980s, cocaine was a hell of a drug). Maybe it worked that way for Dream too.
But between Hob’s meticulous planning, a bit of administrative fuckery, a couple of exams Hob had convinced Dream to attempt, mostly on a dare (he was delighted to learn that Dream was helpless when it came to turning down a well-intentioned challenge) and a few years of Dream flitting around to all of Hob’s courses, the pieces fell into place.
The fact that Hob chose June 7th, which he liked to think of as their anniversary, to present Dream with his well-earned gift was largely a lucky coincidence, mostly because it had taken that long to receive it from the printer. Hob had intended to take Dream out to dinner as well, make a real date night of it, but somehow they’d gotten stuck necking on the couch and he wasn’t one to ruin a good thing.
It was only when Dream began to pluck insistently at Hob’s shirt that he snapped-to, long enough to bat Dream’s hands away before they got too distracted. “Wait, wait!”
Dream stopped and his hands fell to his sides so suddenly that the old cliche of a puppet with its strings cut came to mind. He sat utterly still on the sofa beside Hob, eyes watchful and glinting slightly with their own light as evening fell outside.
Fortunately, Hob had tossed his briefcase beside the sofa in the rush to free up his hands so he could juggle an armful of desperately amorous Dream Lord. So it was close enough for him to root around in it, holding up a hand for Dream to calm down, all right, the man was polite to a fault sometimes when it came to this sort of thing. And then with a flourish, Hob pulled forth the hardbound folder that protected the precious cargo. “Aha!”
With all the aplomb so momentous an occasion deserved, Hob swiveled on the couch to present to Dream Hob’s painstakingly assembled gift. Which, in the name of perfect accuracy, was really a gift Dream had given himself.
“What is this?” Dream said in his typical monotone that Hob felt he was getting good enough at parsing these days to hear as Puzzled and Wondering.
“Your diploma, my liege,” Hob said proudly and gestured for Dream to take the protective folder from his hand.
Dream opened the folder and stared at the elegant piece of personalized cardstock within it, emblazoned with the name Dream Gadling. “I do not understand.”
“So…” Hob drawled. “You’ll have to forgive the name. I managed to squeak you into the system by claiming you were my husband. After that, it took a bit of administrative chicanery, some favors I now owe to certain department heads that I might have to fake my own death to avoid, and finally the submission of one of your essays to certain scholarship funds which, I’m told, brought various parties to their knees, weeping at their sheer beauty… and I managed to get you not only a full ride but also to get certain relevant organizations to ignore that you don’t technically exist in the waking world. All of that aside, I really thought you deserved some credit for all the courses you were putting up with just to watch me lecture so… here you are, the proud owner of a degree! A Bachelor of Arts in History, in fact. And one, I might add, you well and truly earned. Which I believe makes you the first of the Endless to graduate from university. A momentous achievement for any family to be proud of.”
“A degree,” Dream said blankly, more than usual, as he continued to stare at the diploma as if truly unable to comprehend its existence.
At the sight, some of Hob’s bravado left him, and it occurred to him that for all his clever schemes, it might simply be that Dream didn’t understand the point of acknowledgement by some human institution. “I mean… you don’t have to keep it, if you don’t want. I just thought it’d be funny and… well, you did earn it, after all, by attending all those courses and by writing all those bloody marvelous essays…”
Dream’s silence continued to stretch and Hob deflated further, his shoulders sinking.
“Sorry, I realize now how stupid it is, you don’t… It's not like you need a bunch of humans to tell you that you know something about history. You’re billions of years old, for fuck’s sake,” Hob sighed and reached out to take the diploma back.
Dream’s hands moved faster than Hob’s eye could track and suddenly, the diploma was clutched protectively to his chest. He lifted his unblinking gaze to stare now at Hob. “It is not stupid.”
“Oh,” Hob answered, in a vibrant display of his own cutting wit and intelligence. His hand fell back to his side. “Well in that case, you could, I don’t know, frame it if you want. Hang it up behind your throne or… by your desk. S’what people usually do to show it off. Anyway. I just wanted to make sure you got the recognition you deserve, after all the hard work you put in, and…”
And it was at that moment, Hob realized Dream was weeping. Now, weeping from Dream by some definitions was a very common occurrence and by others, not common at all. Dream certainly seemed to approach the edge of tears fairly regularly, for all manner of reasons including but not limited to whenever Hob said something particularly sweet to him. Actual tears though were extremely rare. So when a single, crystalline droplet slipped down Dream’s face while he stared down at the diploma in his hand, Hob completely froze.
“Shit,” Hob said, vaguely horrified that he’d made his lover cry, even if it was probably for happy reasons. Maybe. It was hard to tell with Dream. “So… do you like it?”
Dream’s lips drew to a tight line and he nodded, once, then said in a rough voice, “It bears my name.”
“Is that… surprising?”
Dream’s lips tightened even further and the lower one trembled, ever so slightly. His voice emerged in a whisper. “There are no works in the waking world that bear my name as their creator. It is not my purpose as one of the Endless to be known, only to inspire the great works of others. But… this. This bears my name.”
Hob was struck dumb by the thought, by the enormity of the number of works Dream had inspired over the years, and the fact that all of those were without recognition. To create dreams to spur the minds of men. To inspire bloody Shakespeare–there had to be some vicarious glow in that–but… always unacknowledged. Hob was probably the only person alive–and one of only a handful that had ever lived–who knew Shakespeare’s awakened talent was owed to Dream.
It might be nice, most of the time, to have that sort of anonymity but… with no other option? Hob knew he would be bloody furious, or at least painfully bitter, to never receive an ounce of credit for all that work. He might grow withdrawn, acerbic, dark, and brooding, and… oh. Right. So, Dream, in a nutshell.
Except that in Dream’s hand he now held his degree, one he’d earned with the work of his hand and his mind. One that bore his name and had nothing to do with his role as one of the Endless, one of those primal otherworldly concepts that at some point had developed a face and a dour, volatile, but at times surprisingly sweet personality.
“I’m proud of you,” Hob offered and when he saw the tremor that raced through Dream, who still clutched the diploma to him, Hob could not resist the urge to sling an arm around Dream and hug him close. “I’m serious. Take it from a man who didn’t learn to read for almost a century: you really accomplished something here. You showed the world that Dream of the Endless isn’t just a pretty face– and a being of phenomenal cosmic power, and a mind of untold vastness that contains the subconscious of all living things–he is also someone who can earn a history degree, all on his own.”
As silly as Hob felt for saying it, something in his words seemed to be getting through to Dream, seemed to almost be thawing some ancient, frozen hurt within him.
At the very least, the evidence of Dream’s tears began to fade and, finally, he offered Hob a faint smile, then leaned against him in silent thanks, hugging the diploma close.