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Hob is like a star, burning brightly and with the passion to match. Sometimes Dream worries about the life cycle of stars, the ones that grow and grow and then become dim and collapse, supernovae. He observes Hob's hands, imagines how the warmth of them would feel against Dream's aching body and soul, and then puts those thoughts aside. They will not serve him well, nor serve Hob well, to dwell upon them.
He had welcomed Dream back with a smile and a jest, though he knew it had hurt. (Dream hurts, too, but for different reasons. A hundred years nearly immobile in a cage had left him unused to movement with this vessel. The shattered ruby reminded him of what pain he'd stopped feeling).
(The Waking hurts, loud and abrasive, and the Dreaming cries in pain as well).
Dream's hands cannot soothe the fractured earth, and he has difficulty crafting dreams. His hands shake, disturbing the sandy clay; his hands ache, uncoordinated. There is a crack in Dream's body that branches out into river tributaries until it is a vast river basin.
(Hob finds him in the Dreaming. Hob had always been a strong dreamer. Hob sees his shame and failure, bright and painful, its benighted blight.)
***
Dream is like a star, as untouchable and far from Earth as one; if he touches Dream, Hob thinks his vision would white out and his fingers would burn from the nuclear fusion of it. At first, he seemed cold, distant as the night sky, but now Hob knows he burns. There is so much beyond what Hob can perceive. Hasn't that always how it's been, though? Dream, against the stars, teetering on the edge of both forever and nothing at all.
(Achilles, Achilles, Achilles, won't you come down?)
Dream has one foot on the edge of a crumbling ruin, the other in empty space, breaking himself trying to fix the Dreaming, and Hob can see the exhaustion in all his features.
(Some of us love you).
"I am not Achilleus," Dream says, as though he could hear the song coming out of Hob's thoughts. "I was never such a warrior."
There is something in the starry riot of his eyes and hair that whispers otherwise, but Hob leaves it.
Later, awake, he wonders if Dream would fall like a meteor, or like a human being. He hopes he doesn't have to find out.
Dream has already fallen from grace – enough times that one more fall should not matter. And that Hob needs not come to his defense. When they navigate a street, and someone bumps roughly into him, he still stumbles with a noise of pain.
Hob grasps his elbow to steady him, and it is such a shining, painful moment of contact that he flinches. Hob lets him go immediately, with an apology, and Dream wants to tell him to try again, but says nothing. They continue to their destination – a bookshop – where Dream fidgets in pain and tells Hob stories about their authors.
He wants Hob to touch him again. He doesn't know how that would even work.
***
"The Earth is four point five billion years old," Dream says, on one of their monthly visits. "Sometimes I forget how young Earth's people are. Galaxies move. The stars have life cycles."
Hob has studied astronomy, on the side, in his current life. He thinks of galactic time scales at Dream's words. "They call it redshift and blueshift," Hob tells Dream. "The movement away from and toward each other. In another four and a half billion years, the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies are projected to collide."
Dream smiles, crooked and tired. "Do you still plan to be there, Hob Gadling?"
"Oh, yes," Hob says, and grins.
Dream appears for his monthly visit with Hob, and is so tired that he stumbles. Slides down the wall. It hurts. It is physical. It is all in his head. It doesn't matter anymore because it still hurts in the end.
"Dream," Hob says, crouching. "Are you all right?"
Dream has made oblique references to his absence in 1989. Hob is not a stupid man, and Hob probably suspects something happened. But this goes so much farther. The cracks in the Dreaming and himself heal, surface-deep, and there are parts he cannot bring back to glory at all.
"I –" he says, licking his lips. "It is not new."
"How long has it hurt?" Hob asks. "I've never seen you in pain before."
It hurt once, and then Dream stopped it up. It hurt once, and then all over again, and all at once. He cannot answer.
"I put it.. with part of myself… into another vessel. When I was younger. After my realm was invaded. It… the ruby, it broke." Dream's words scatter themselves, refusing to order the way he wants. He shuts his eyes, afraid of seeing Hob's face.
"Dream…"
"I cannot… perform my function," Dream says, not opening his eyes. "As I am."
"Please don't leave when I say this," Hob starts, and Dream deigns to nod as a promise. "I know you are powerful and can take care of yourself. But I'm very worried about you. I am … afraid for you, Dream."
Dream opens his eyes, and exhales. "I am … very old, Hob. And … much has happened in that time." A confession if there ever was one.
"Whatever kept you away – and you don't have to tell me everything, but you... you could if you wanted to – seems to have... brought your pains to the forefront," Hob says. "I just – I don't think anyone's meant to be alone."
Dream looks at Hob, finally. He does not know how Hob could remotely begin to mend the cracks, on top of the aches and pains that seem to come from inside, independent of the cracks. He does not know what to say, either. His head is still slumped against Hob's living room wall. Finally, he says, "I am very tired, Hob Gadling. I do not know how… to fix it."
He shuts his eyes again.
"Some of us love you," Hob says. Desperately, like he's afraid of something. Are they having the same conversation? What does Hob see? What is Hob thinking? "Let me help," Hob says. "Let me help you hurt less. Rest more."
Dream extends a trembling hand. Hob takes it. "And how would you do that, Hob Gadling?"
***
(Hob rubs salves into Dream's joints, massages the tension right out his friend's body. Dream stares, eyes wide and glossy, at Hob's hands. He's dissolving into Hob's touch. He closes his eyes.
"You are so warm," Dream murmurs, and sighs. "It seems we are now in each other's orbit. I…"
And he stops, Hob's hand delicately rubbing his wrist, easing out the pins and needles that frequently plague them along with the aches.
"Blueshift," Dream says, and opens his eyes, brilliantly lit by galaxies – the Andromeda and Milky Way. "Or, perhaps, the future. Moving toward each other."
Dream lifts Hob's hand to his mouth and kisses it. Hob's eyes widen, and then he kisses Dream on the forehead. His lips are a hearth fire).
(The circles under Dream's eyes have gotten less. The cracks in his chest have eased, some. Hob is like a star, burning brightly. His smiles send Dream to his knees, or close to it.)
(Hob knows he is not the only part of Dream's happiness, of any healing. Love does not fix everything. But it sure helps. Dream tells him sometimes, in bits and pieces, about his past, both ancient and more recent. Entirely coincidentally why-would-you-ask, Hob develops the urge fight multiple cosmic forces at how much hurt is in the being – person – next to him at the same time).
***
The first time Dream comes to him and allows Hob to see his tears, Hob almost weeps himself. He holds Dream, tight in the bone-crushing hugs he likes, and Dream clings. He kisses dark hair as Dream curls around him, shaking.
He soothes with Middle English lullabies, with sweet nothings. It is not just Dream's trauma, ancient and new, but the Anthropocene Epoch and its sixth extinction and the amount of dreamers are hard on his lover. They're working on a way to ease his responsibilities – Hob and Lucienne and Dream are, that is – and maybe even figuring out a way for Dream to retire. (Either as a human or a dream, lowercase d. The latter seems like it'd be easiest to adjust to).
Dream slowly goes limp in his arms, relaxing in the comforting deep pressure of Hob's grip, head against Hob's heart. When he's stopped shaking, has opened his eyes – blue again – Hob says, "Rest with me?" It is usually difficult to get Dream to rest, fall into the closest approximation of sleep he has.
This evening, however, Dream blinks up at Hob, before yawning like a cat, complete with slightly pointed incisors, and then nods. On the way to Hob's bed, his clothing shifts into soft pajamas, black with grey cats – an imitation of a pair Hob had stuffed him in once to put him to bed, after Dream had overworked himself and nearly fallen over in the New Inn once. Hob smiles.
Hob tugs him into his side under the weighted blanket, and Dream goes, burying his head in Hob's chest again.
"Good night, Hob," Dream murmurs. "Sweet dreams."