Title: Licking the Spoon
Fandom: The Sandman (Netflix)
Rating: Explicit
Length: 8600 words
Content notes: Light dom/sub, oral sex, sensory seeking, sensory exploration, touch-starved Dream, tickling, spooning
Author notes:
Summary: "I have spoons in my flat," Hob added, feeling a little reckless with the surge of probably-unneeded adrenaline. "Loads of spoons."

His friend raised his eyebrows at that, and jerked his hand away from the spoon on the table, but he didn't follow it by walking out, so Hob hadn't gone too far.





Hob sat for a moment in silence, staring at the stranger—his friend—who was, somehow, finally here. There was a pause where an ordinary person might have explained himself, or actually apologized, or said anything, really. Hob's friend just sat there, smiling at Hob for a moment and then looking down at the table between them. He raised one hand to rest his fingers on the edge, and rubbed at a little water spot.

It was a world away from his friend's usual cool self-containment. He was normally so still, so aloof, he might not have even been entirely present, but now he was intensely involved in his examination of the table.

Hob did what he always did with friends, or people he'd like to befriend. He smoothed things over. "Shall I tell you what I've been keeping busy with, then, while you were keeping me waiting?"

His friend looked up a little sharply at that, nodded, and then said quietly, "I'd like that, yes. I... like to hear about things. The way you describe them."

"Ah, well, I knew it wasn't just my good looks that kept you coming back," Hob said. He heard what he was saying halfway through and realized that he'd never actually tried flirting with his friend before, and possibly that would be a misstep. He'd gotten used to it, the last few decades, being Out And Proud and indulging himself in that sort of thing.

His friend didn't seem to mind, though. He studied Hob's face for an extra few seconds, not quite meeting his eyes but actually, Hob thought, studying Hob's looks in a way he might never have before.

"They are good," his friend pronounced, confirming that suspicion and raising the usual dozen other questions. "But no. I come back because we agreed upon it. I do keep my word, when I can. And I am sorry."

"I know," Hob said, automatically swallowing all the much more worrying questions raised by that when I can. "Well, let's see—most recently I'm teaching," he gestured to the papers on the table, and started describing his current courseload. That led naturally to stories about students, and the essays he'd foolishly assigned them and now had to read.

Before long he was on a roll, rambling about this and that as he always did during these meetings. His friend was much as he'd ever been, but... not quite. He listened intently, never distracted by anything going around in the busy pub around them, and that was as it had always been.

But his hands moved. He fidgeted, in the smallest of ways. He ran a thumb over the edge of the table, then settled his hand on its surface and ran his fingers over the edge of the paper Hob had just finished marking when he sat down. That apparently didn't suit him, and he shifted his hand slightly, settling his little finger on the pen Hob had set down there. He rocked it ever so slightly back and forth, back and forth, and Hob kept talking as if he hadn't noticed a thing.

He soon drained the glass of beer he'd had in front of him when his friend arrived, and ordered a coffee next. His friend murmured a polite, "Nothing, thank you," to the waitress and tucked his hands into his lap.

Not as though he didn't want to be touching anything, but as if he thought he shouldn't.

By the time Hob's coffee arrived, his friend was working one finger over and around the corner of the table's edge and Hob was exerting six and half centuries of accumulated self-control to keep from staring. It was half a genuine accident when he knocked the coffee spoon halfway across the table, but Hob kept a straight face and took a sip of his coffee as if he hadn't noticed the clatter of it, and wasn't watching to see what his friend would do.

His friend stared at the spoon for a moment, long enough for Hob to put his coffee down and start talking again. He kept his hands wrapped around the warm cup, with the vague idea that he could show his friend that he too liked to touch things, and chatted on about the bits of the 70s and early 80s he could remember.

His friend looked at Hob—at his face, not meeting his eyes but studying him again—then at his hands, then at the spoon again. Then, moving with slow deliberation, he picked up the spoon.

For the next hour, while Hob rationed out his coffee in slow, cooling sips, and talked utter nonsense that he scarcely heard as it came out of his mouth, his friend played with the spoon. There was no other way to describe it. He held it in one hand, and then the other, never as if he had any notion of how to use it to eat food. He held it like a pen—or like a knife, when the waitress came up too quietly behind him—or, when Hob had dismissed the waitress, ran his fingers over the curve of it.

He traced it with the pad of each finger, then his thumb, then drew his fingers down the whole length of the handle over and over until Hob was half-hard from the innocent (surely innocent, surely his friend was not doing this just to torture him) suggestiveness. Hob also gained the impression somehow that his friend was working very, very hard to resist the urge to put the spoon in his mouth.

Possibly Hob himself was dying for the spoon to go into his friend's mouth. Hard to say, at this point.

Hob had been talking for hours when he noticed the angle of the light sinking toward the June sunset, nearing nine o'clock now. The pub would get more crowded shortly; Hob, coming here for the thirty-third consecutive seventh of June since the White Horse had closed its doors, hadn't particularly believed his stranger—his friend—would turn up. He hadn't bothered to make any arrangement for them to have their own space, just claimed the table he liked by the fireplace.

His stranger might play at haughty unconcern toward all other beings, but Hob really didn't want to see what he'd do with his knife-grip on that spoon if someone bumped into him or put an unwary hand on his shoulder.

"Would you..." Hob said, and the stranger tensed, obviously catching the shift in tone from idle storytelling to a real question. Hob barely let himself pause as he registered it. "Like to come up to my flat? It's just upstairs—I, ah, own the building, so it's convenient. And," Hob smiled a little, recalling his friend's objection the last time Hob had suggested taking their meeting elsewhere, "I'm fairly certain no one's lying in wait for us."

His friend's eyes widened just a fraction, his shoulders squaring, and Hob instantly felt his own senses sharpen. If someone was lying in wait for his friend—his friend who had more or less stated that he hadn't met Hob in 1989 or any of the years since because he couldn't—then Hob would defend him, just as he had before.

"There's a staircase round the back, we can go through the kitchen," Hob said, hearing a note of battlefield-calm in his own low voice. "The staff know me, they won't question it, and anyone who tries to make trouble for me or my friend in this pub is going to get a lot more trouble coming back at them."

His friend seemed to relax a little at that, though he sounded the same sort of calm as he said, very low, "I do not need to be protected. But... there are dangers. It is possible that they would try to get at you. My friend."

Hob smiled to hear him say it again, despite the warning. "Well, I suppose you'd better walk me home, then. Make sure I get there safely."

His friend nearly smiled in return—what Hob would have counted as getting a smile from him, before he'd seen the real thing for the first time a few hours ago. "I suppose I should."

Hob glanced down at the sound of a little click, and saw that his friend had set down the spoon, but still had his hand resting over it.

"I have spoons in my flat," Hob added, feeling a little reckless with the surge of probably-unneeded adrenaline. "Loads of spoons."

His friend raised his eyebrows at that, and jerked his hand away from the spoon on the table, but he didn't follow it by walking out, so Hob hadn't gone too far.

They did exit through the kitchen. Hob needed some more information about just what sorts of dangers he should be looking out for, and in the meantime he'd much rather let his friend rifle through his silverware drawer than deal with what they might find waiting for them in the alley. They made it to the door of Hob's flat unscathed, and his friend hesitated once Hob had let himself in.

Hob caught the sleeve of his coat—not the arm under it, just a pinch of fabric—and tugged gently, just once, before letting go. "Come on, come in. Tell me what might try to get at me because I'm your friend, if nothing else."

His friend looked grim—even more grim—at that, but stepped inside. Hob waved him in the direction of the sofa while he turned to close and lock the door; when he turned back his friend was still on his feet, holding out a palmful of sand.

Hob kept very still, recalling what he'd done to Lady Joanna Constantine with a palmful of sand like that, but his friend didn't blow it into Hob's eyes. He only said, "His name is The Corinthian. He is a nightmare."

The sand rose up off of his hand, taking on color to form the image of a handsome man, fair-haired and smiling, wearing sunglasses. His friend's finger's twitched and the sunglasses fell away to reveal more teeth where The Corinthian's eyes should have been.

Hob eyed the sand, and the teeth, and said slowly, "A nightmare. Literally?"

The sand fell back into his friend's palm, and he returned it to his pocket. "Yes. And I am the King of Nightmares. Oneiros. Morpheus. Prince of Stories. Lord of the Dreaming. I am Dream of the Endless."

"Ah," Hob said. Not any of the things he'd ever guessed, but not altogether surprising, now it was said. "And this Corinthian, he's... an anti-monarchist type?"

The King of Nightmares, Et Cetera, really very nearly smiled at that. "Not from any political conviction. He simply believes he ought to run loose in the waking world, terrorizing mortals as he sees fit. I meant to unmake him years ago, but I was... unavoidably called away. The Corinthian has grown only more arrogant in my absence, and I do not know what he might try next. He has hidden himself from me, so I could not be certain he had not found you."

Hob nodded slowly. "No use going for the eyes on that one, I suppose."

"No," the Lord of the Dreaming agreed solemnly. "But..." He dug out just a few grains of sand from his pocket and flicked them gently toward Hob. He felt them land on his cheek, warm and soft as a touch, and instinctively pressed his fingers to the spot for an instant before he dropped his hand.

"I will know, now," the Prince of Stories said, "if he so much as sets his sights on you. I shall come at once. If he dares to target you, it will be his undoing."

It was not the first time in Hob's long life that someone had promised, with utter grim seriousness, to kill someone for him, but it was the first time he'd felt no compunction at all about accepting the promise. What else he felt, he decided not to think too hard about while his friend was still in his flat.

"Well," Hob said. "That settles that, then. Now, I believe I promised you spoons." He turned on his heel and headed for the kitchen, half certain he would hear some uncanny sound heralding his friend's abrupt departure.

He didn't hear anything at all until he was digging into the silverware drawer to pull out his entire stock of teaspoons. He dared to look back, then, and was rewarded with the sight of his friend, whatever his name was, standing in the kitchen doorway.

He looked uncertain, but he'd also shed his coat, leaving him in Hskinny black jeans and a soft black tee.

"I do not require," his friend started to say, and Hob threw caution to the wind, plucked one spoon from the lot, and held it out so that it nearly touched his friend's lips.

He stopped talking and stilled, but didn't pull back.

"Didn't ask what you require, my friend," Hob said. "I offered."

His friend reached up slowly and delicately took the spoon from him without his fingers brushing Hob's. He stared down at it, much as he'd stared at the table after he first sat down.

Hob leaned against the sink, fistful of spoons in hand, and waited.

"My siblings generally call me Dream," he said, pressing his thumb into the bowl of the spoon. "You could, as well."

Hob touched the spot on his cheek again where his friend had marked him. "Dream. That's nearly as to-the-point as Hob Gadling."

Dream flashed him a wry look, then dropped his gaze to the spoon again. "I wasn't... It's not that it's a spoon."

Hob tightened his grip on the rest of his spoons and barely breathed.

"I was... taken. Kept. A prisoner. For a very long time. They took everything from me. My tools. My clothing. I was sealed in a sphere of glass, as part of their efforts to bind me to this form, and to the waking world. I was cut off from the Dreaming. Limited to a human body. And there was nothing to touch, or feel, and... I thought often of what you said, about how hungry you could become, when you didn't eat, but didn't die. I did not feel that kind of hunger, but..."

Dream fell silent, as if he'd run out of words. Fair enough—that was more than Hob had ever heard him say, and on a difficult topic.

Hob made himself breathe, and keep still, and not demand to know useless things like whether the people who'd done that were still alive and available to be killed in any number of personally satisfying ways. The Lord of the Dreaming had stormed out when Hob had the temerity to call him a friend; he was pretty sure the people who kept him locked up naked for decades had to be nothing but a faint dusting of ash by now. Perhaps he'd fed them to his better-behaved nightmares.

"Well, then," Hob said, the confident tone of pure bullshit and forward momentum coming out as it generally did when he needed it. "Sounds like you could use more than just a spoon to touch, couldn't you? Let's see."

Hob glanced around and found the butter crock first. He didn't know if Dream would have the same visceral fondness Hob himself had for the stuff—it tasted, always, of security and prosperity—but that was hardly the point. He took one of the teaspoons and dipped up a little spoonful of butter to offer to Dream.

Dream stepped closer to take it, without arguing this time, and Hob noticed that he'd lost both his boots and his socks, assuming he'd worn any under them. He was standing barefoot in Hob's kitchen now, holding one clean spoon and one with a curl of butter, looking nearly as baffled as Hob felt by this circumstance.

"Just something to taste," Hob said. "I know you don't really eat much, but..."

Dream murmured, mostly to himself, "I should have had an apple after all," and then Hob was treated—subjected—to the sight of Dream's pink tongue flicking out, cat-like, to lap delicately at the butter.

Hob turned away sharply and grabbed the sugar bowl next, dipping up a spoonful of that. When he turned back, he was confronted with the sight of Dream pressing the flat of his tongue into a teaspoon, eyes closed in concentration as he licked every last trace of butter away.

Hob was going to blame his body's reactions on the fact that he had wound up not needing to fight for his or anyone's life. Adrenaline had to go somewhere, right? Nothing to do with any other thoughts he'd ever had about his friend in the past six hundred years. Just hormones and neurotransmitters and things.

Dream's eyes opened, focused directly on him, wide and blue and beautiful.

Hob smiled gamely and offered him a spoonful of sugar before he turned away again to rummage through his collection of condiments.

Behind him, Dream made a thoughtful, pleased noise. That meant that he liked sugar, and absolutely nothing else that should affect any other part of Hob. He grabbed the jar of Nutella, and scooped out a bit of that.

He started to turn, to offer the spoon to Dream, but his shoulder collided with Dream's chest.

Hob froze, staring at his friend pressed up against him, close enough to kiss. His lips were always a bit redder than Hob expected them to be, and he was looking at Hob very intently.

Hob raised the spoonful of Nutella; Dream leaned into him and licked it, making a thoughtful noise as he did. Hob felt the little hum through his entire body.

He closed his eyes, forcing himself to actually think, and then said, "No, ah... no people to touch, for all that time, either?"

"It did strike me as ironic," Dream said quietly, and Hob could feel his breath. "That I had been so offended to be told I was lonely, only to find out what it really meant to be alone."

Hob opened his eyes and found that Dream's eyes had gone so dark he could see the faint light of stars in them, and also he had managed to end up with a tiny curl of Nutella caught at the corner of his lips. Hob shifted his grip on the spoon so he could wipe it away with his thumb, and Dream's tongue swept out again, pressing to the pad of Hob's thumb.

"Right," Hob said, and slid his thumb along Dream's tongue, just to see if Dream would let him. Dream parted his lips and sucked Hob's thumb into his mouth, then tilted his head and licked firmly over Hob's thumbnail. "Yes. Perhaps... not in the kitchen, then."

Dream stepped back so sharply that Hob felt cold from the loss of contact; his damp thumb still hung in the air, and for a few seconds Dream's lips still formed an O where it would fit. "Where?"

"Bedroom's traditional," Hob said, daring a smile and feeling a whole new wash of reckless excitement, because they were doing this, it was happening. "But I expect you know that."

Given the heated look in his starry eyes, Dream knew exactly what he was doing. And even if he'd always been cool and distant with Hob before, the Lord of the Dreaming probably knew his way around something that so very many dreams were concerned with.

Though, actually, if he was getting the sex-dream version of events, he might not be all that familiar with how normal mortals went about it at all.

"I know many things," Dream said, voice gone even deeper than its usual velvet rumble. "But you have invited me into your home; the choice is yours."

"Yeah," Hob dropped all the spoons with a clatter, and started shrugging out of his jacket as he headed for the kitchen door. "Bedroom, then." He paused in the lounge to kick off his own shoes, noting as he did that there was no sign of Dream's coat or boots anywhere, but then Dream was pressed up against his back, nuzzling at his throat, and Hob had to get moving again or they would be doing this on the floor in front of the door.

He reached back and caught Dream's wrist, then headed for the bedroom door—closed, as always, because his bedroom and study were where he let himself be conspicuously eccentric. The bedroom, in particular, was usually good for a few incredulous remarks even from people he trusted enough to allow past the threshold.

Hob turned as he stepped inside—into the little space left by the curtained and canopied bed, which had been custom-built inside the room, currently decked out in its summer-weight draperies, embroidered with a profusion of multicolored flowers—and watched for Dream's reaction.

All he got was a pleased smile. "This is... fitting."

Hob grinned. "Yeah, you know. Formed my idea of what a proper bed is around 1585. Anything else just seemed like making do."

"And you should not have to make do merely to fit the current fashion," Dream intoned solemnly, while wearing a silky-soft t-shirt and skinny jeans.

Hob snorted. "My feeling as well, obviously." He tugged his own t-shirt up and off, and then had to stop and smile at Dream's obviously riveted attention, one hand already reaching out for him. Hob dropped the t-shirt and caught Dream's hand, tugging him over to climb into the bed.

Dream made a positively indecent noise as soon as he touched the fur lying across the end of the bed—the weather was nearly too warm for it, but Hob had been letting himself have Nice Things this week, preparing for another annual disappointment and the attendant minor existential crisis.

And now he was getting extra unimaginably Nice Things instead: thirty-plus years of disappointments made up to him all at once.

Hob let go of Dream and scooted away from him as he got his own jeans undone. Dream didn't appear to notice; he sunk both his hands into the rich brown fur, then rubbed his face against it.

Hob sagged against the bed and gave himself a little rub. He couldn't remember when he'd been this thoroughly turned on from a few scant touches, but then his friend had always been something else. No surprise if he affected Hob like nothing else could.

He seemed to hear the thought, or maybe Hob just hadn't managed to be entirely silent with his hand on his cock. Dream looked up sharply from enjoying the fur. His nose wrinkled in an expression of haughty displeasure, though that didn't seem to be entirely directed at Hob; he shook himself once, and his remaining clothing dissolved into mist. Naked, he stalked over to Hob on all fours, slinking like a cat.

And very like a cat, he batted Hob's hand away from where he didn't want it to be. Hob put both hands behind him, managing not to laugh mainly by being barely able to breathe as the naked Lord of the Dreaming settled astride his lap.

"I like these jeans," Hob said breathlessly, warned by some minute tensing of Dream's eyebrow.

Dream didn't move, and nothing happened.

"If you vanish them you have to bring them back exactly the same later," Hob explained. "Or else you shall have been very rude to your host."

Dream smiled a little, so Hob figured that at least the important parts of what he'd wanted to say by that had gotten across. "Are you equally attached to your pants?"

"Negotiable," Hob allowed, and then Dream smiled wider, showing a gleam of teeth, and Hob was naked, and the bedcurtains dropped into place all around them, enclosing them in an endless rain of brilliant blooms.

Hob expected things to proceed rapidly in predictable directions after that—he was unmistakably ready to go, and Dream looked much the same—but Dream reached for his wrist, tugging his hand around between them. He met Hob's eyes again, looking for something, and Hob just looked back.

There was no rush. Hob hadn't forgotten, just because his cock was hard, that this was about the fact that Dream had been locked away alone for an age with no one to touch. He didn't know what that might have left him longing for—or what he might never want at all. He wouldn't have bet on Dream wanting an enclosed space—the dark blue winter hangings probably would have had to stay open, if they'd still been up, no matter how cheerful Hob found the pattern of embroidered gold stars—and he wasn't going to bet on whatever Dream would do next. He was just going to wait for it.

Dream drew Hob's hand up to his mouth, and with an expression of grave concentration, he sucked Hob's thumb into his mouth.

Hob grinned and wiggled his thumb just the tiniest bit against the hot softness of Dream's tongue. Dream's nostrils flared imperiously, and he shut his eyes and sucked on Hob's thumb like there was nothing else in the world.

Hob's cock begged to differ, but Hob had just decided to be patient, and these days he could usually stick with a good plan for at least ten minutes before he got distracted by a better one.

Dream let up on the sucking and parted his lips so that Hob could see his thumb resting on Dream's tongue. Dream worked his tongue over the pad of Hob's thumb, and then over the nail, and then licked all the way down to the heel of his hand.

Hob was sweating, his cock throbbing. He bit down on his lip and reminded himself that he was keeping still, being patient, letting Dream figure out what he wanted.

Dream drew back a little and studied Hob's hand with the attention Hob had seen scholars devote to obscure manuscript fragments. After another moment he drew Hob's fourth finger into his mouth, working over the pen callus with his tongue and then his teeth, and Hob stared up at the canopy and accepted that he might come from having his finger licked. If he did it certainly wouldn't be the worst way he'd gotten off in the last six hundred and fifty years.

A moment later he had to look, because it felt like—yes, Dream had just brushed his lips over Hob's knuckles, a bizarrely courtly gesture when they were both already naked. He followed it by licking, with the pointed tip of his tongue, along a vein on the back of Hob's hand, and then brushed his lips up and down the back of Hob's hand. He blew across Hob's skin and did it again, and Hob realized he was just... feeling it, the texture of his skin and the fine hairs there.

Hob had now and again spent a moment or two caring what his body looked like, but he'd never given much thought to how it felt apart from taking care with a close shave sometimes. Now he was discovering—as Dream discovered it—his entire body as a variety of textures. He watched in fascination, occasionally shivering at the oddity of the sensations, as Dream minutely examined the length of his arm—the spot at his wrist where the hair got thicker and darker, and then above the elbow where it was nearly all gone.

Dream made an interested noise when he spotted the hair in Hob's armpit.

Hob sagged back against the bed, raising his arm over his head to grant him access, but said, "I may punch you if you tickle me. It's a reflex."

Dream looked like he thought being punched might also be an interesting sensation to explore tonight. Hob dug his right hand into the pillow behind him and sank his left into the coverlet. Dream might find it intriguing, but Hob didn't fancy breaking knuckles on any of the bony parts of his friend that he'd be apt to hit if he threw an unconsidered punch.

Dream made another fascinated noise, shifting over to lie along Hob's right side, and Hob realized that in tightening his grip he'd flexed a bit. Now Dream was tracing Hob's biceps with the tip of his tongue and Hob was staring fixedly at the canopy again. At least it didn't tickle.

It was only a temporary reprieve, though. After another moment Dream did in fact nuzzle into Hob's armpit, and then some soft touch—a brush of lips, maybe—made Hob wriggle all over, sucking in a breath through clenched teeth. He managed to keep his hands still, kicking out hard with one foot instead.

Dream drew back and studied him for a moment, probably waiting for Hob to tell him not to do that again.

Hob worked his jaw and resettled himself and said not a word.

Dream did it again, but more so, and Hob let himself writhe and snarl and kick a bit, because that obviously wasn't putting Dream off. Probably the opposite, in fact, if Hob hadn't misread that dark glint in his eyes.

When Dream finally let up, Hob sagged into stillness, gasping a bit. He waited until he'd mostly caught his breath he looked down to meet Dream's gaze, only to find that Dream was looking down Hob's body.

Hob had not gotten any less hard during that round of torture, and he wasn't going to any time soon, if Dream kept looking like that.

"You can touch that, if you like," Hob offered, very generously. "Won't even complain if you want to lick."

"We shall see," Dream said, making that sound vaguely like a threat, which unfortunately also did nothing to discourage Hob's cock. He kept that sternly unamused expression even while reaching over with his right hand to Hob's left armpit.

Hob shifted his grip on the covers a little to make it easy, and giggled this time—it was funny, and he deserved it—before he shifted into frantically squirming without actually trying to escape.

When Dream stopped—or a moment after he'd stopped, when Hob had caught his breath and something resembling his composure—he found that Dream was studying his own crooked fingers with a dangerously thoughtful expression.

"No," Hob said. "Tickle me all night, but no, mercy please, not that."

Dream raised his eyebrows.

"You can't tickle yourself, it doesn't work," Hob said firmly. "And if you ask me to tickle you even after I've begged you not to, I will try, but I don't want to find out what your reflex response to it is if you don't like it."

And someone who had been so deprived of intense sensation—who was, even now, keeping his own hard dick angled away from Hob's hip, touching Hob absolutely nowhere else—was going to fucking react to something like tickling. Hob wasn't actually sure he'd make it through sex with Dream without him getting overwhelmed in some way, but at least that was apt to be a good kind of overwhelming.

"Mm," Dream said, lowering his hand to rest very lightly on the center of Hob's chest. "Another time, perhaps."

"Got plenty of time," Hob agreed, keeping his voice cheerful and barely breathing under the butterfly-light touch of Dream's fingertips.

Dream moved—flowed, impossibly gracefully—back up to kneel astride Hob, who stayed flat on the bed, spread out for Dream to explore. He did tug down a pillow to rest his head on, so he'd have a better view if Dream decided to explore anything lower down, but Dream stayed focused on Hob's chest.

Dream himself was nearly entirely hairless from the neck down, so Hob supposed it stood to reason that Hob's thicket of chest hair was a point of curiosity. Dream brought his other hand down and scritched all ten fingers through it, slowly flattening his palms against Hob's pecs.

Hob gave up on not interrupting him and took a deep breath.

Dream made an interested little sound at that, and Hob saw him take a deep breath of his own, eyes fluttering half-shut as if he were savoring the sensation of it.

Sealed in a sphere of glass, he'd said. Hob wondered how much air had been sealed in with him. Dream's nostrils flared as he drew in another deep breath, and then he folded downward, pressing his face into Hob's chest as he had into the fur throw. He rubbed his cheek against the hair there, then nuzzled in and inhaled deeply.

Hob looked down and wanted, desperately, to sink a hand into that dark messy hair, to touch right back and know what Dream felt like as Dream was learning him. Instead he tucked both hands under the pillow behind his head.

He wasn't risking Dream disappearing into the night on him again. Not this time, not when they'd gotten this far. Not when he had some idea of just how much reason Dream could have to run.

Dream dragged his nose up Hob's breastbone and nuzzled at the base of his throat. Hob swallowed hard, and Dream hummed and dragged a lighter touch—his lips, it must be—up Hob's throat to his Adam's apple.

Hob huffed a laugh and then obligingly swallowed again, and felt Dream feel the motion of it in his throat.

Dream moved again, tucking his nose under the back of Hob's jaw and breathing deeply. Hob let his eyes close when Dream's tongue flicked out, just the tiniest touch first and then a definite lick. Hob hummed approvingly, and Dream repeated the lick, and then dragged his tongue a different way and discovered the spot where Hob's five o'clock shadow started.

Hob waited for his reaction to that, and felt a warm exhalation and Dream's lips dragging very gently over the same spot, and then up onto his jaw. Hob smiled, remembering that sensation from the other side. Dream liked that prickle-tingle feeling on his lips, evidently, because he just kept going, tracing out Hob's jaw and cheek. Occasionally he pressed down for something almost like an actual kiss, sometimes nuzzled, but mostly he just kept on dragging his lips over and over Hob's skin.

Eventually Hob gave in to temptation and turned his head—not enough to catch Dream's mouth, not quite, but enough to make it clear where he'd like Dream's lips to go next.

Dream picked his head up enough to meet Hob's gaze—his eyes were still dark, still full of stars, but his mouth quirked into a wry little smile. "A suggestion?"

"More of a request," Hob smiled as best he could while panting. "I'll even beg, if—"

Dream cut him off with a kiss. Hob went carefully still under him, because it was the same curious brushing of lips Dream had applied to the rest of Hob's body, like he was trying out the sensation. Hob had already been naked in bed with Dream—his friend, his stranger—for a little while now, but it still struck him hard. After six hundred-some years, he was being kissed by that exquisitely beautiful man who'd walked up to him in a pub in 1389 and spoken a few words that had made his life into something impossible, something magical.

He didn't mean to kiss back, he just did. He'd scarcely tasted Dream's lips—which tingled against his tongue like no one else he'd ever kissed—before there were hands in his hair, holding on firmly, angling him just so. Dream's teeth scraped Hob's lower lip, and Hob whined a little and kept kissing him, finding his own hunger for this, so long ignored, bursting into ravenous life.

When his teeth closed on Dream's lower lip, Dream jerked back and stared down at Hob for a few breathless seconds before he said, imperious as he'd ever been, "Do that again."

Hob obliged him, and was rewarded with Dream pulling his hair in movements that felt involuntary, like Dream was finally losing track of whatever plan he'd begun with. After another moment Hob was squirming again, terribly conscious that Dream wasn't touching him anywhere below his lips, though he could feel the tantalizing closeness of Dream's body poised over his.

He didn't stop—Dream didn't stop—but he heard the question vibrating against his lips, through his bones. What do you want?

More, Hob said, licking into him, feeling starlight on his tongue, and Anything, and You.

Dream pulled away, and Hob only had time to make a single incoherent noise of protest before Dream was kneeling astride his thighs, touching a delicate fingertip to the head of Hob's cock.

"Oh, well, carry on then," Hob said, and pressed his knuckles to his mouth to shut himself up.

Dream looked amused, but also very, very interested, and he got that absorbed and fascinated look again as he trailed his finger down the length of Hob's cock and scritched through the hair at the base. Then he put both hands on Hob's thighs, pushing.

Hob spread his legs wide, making space for Dream to fit himself between them before he bowed his head and licked, his tongue pink and pointed, the touch so light Hob wasn't sure he felt it, except that it shot lightning through him from the crown of his head to his heels.

Dream licked his lips slowly, savoring, staring into Hob's eyes as he did it.

Hob remembered to breathe though ragged gasps were the best he could do.

Dream ducked his head again, licking with the flat of his tongue this time, like he really wanted to taste, wanted to feel. Hob's toes curled but he kept still, kept so very still, while Dream backed off to teasing brushes of lips.

Hob managed not to beg, but he squirmed eloquently enough to get Dream's hands on his hips, absolutely immovable. Hob groaned at the relief of knowing he couldn't mess this part up, that Dream wouldn't let him. In the next second Dream opened his mouth around the head of Hob's cock, and Hob cursed in whatever language came to his tongue, feeling at once the ordinarily stunning wet heat of a mouth around him and the impossibility of it being Dream, that tingle of magic that ran down his spine and danced on his skin and made him push all the harder.

Dream sucked, and Hob felt his mind cut out, language and anything resembling coherence deserting him in the flood of sensation. Not just the mouth—Dream's mouth—on him, not just the hands keeping him still, but everything, a hundred thirty years of waiting and his friend, Dream, here and wanting him, needing him, and all of it culminating in this.

It went on and on, every touch and every burst of pleasure stretching as if time had slowed, or stopped, to let him experience it more deeply, every nerve ending somehow magnified. His whole body was vibrating with it, his thoughts a smear of color and light and feel, feel, feel.

Coming felt a little bit like dying—the relief at the end of an unbearably building intensity—and just like that, Hob found himself blinking back to awareness a moment later. He felt drained by more than just the force of an orgasm, exhausted and so happy words couldn't express it, and he was looking up at Dream looking down at him, a faint line of concern showing between his brows.

Hob reached up and touched it, and Dream didn't recoil from him.

"Hullo," he murmured. "Was that..."

He glanced down, and realized that, no, that had not been good for Dream in quite the same way it had for Hob. Dream was hard as anything, shiny-wet at the tip, and all the muscles of his thighs and abdomen were tensed like he was desperately holding himself back.

"What would you like?" Hob asked, dropping his hand to Dream's knee. Dream was still straddling him, but his knees were tucked up nearly to Hob's armpits now. "What can I do?"

Dream frowned again, but he reached down and picked up Hob's hand as he did it. Hob let him have it, wondering if they were going to go all the way back to the beginning of the progression. He wasn't sure he could hold up through another round like that, but he also knew he wasn't going to deny Dream anything.

Dream did raise Hob's hand to his mouth—not sucking this time, but touching Hob's fingertips to his lips. They were very soft, and just a bit warmer than Dream's hand around his.

"I want," Dream said. "I want to feel your touch, but I—"

"Oh," Hob said, "yeah, all right then."

Dream blinked at him.

"You want me to touch you," Hob offered. "But you still want to be in control. You don't want me to touch you the wrong way, or even just in a way that startles you. But you want to be touched. No one's touched you in so very long, so you want it, but you need to control it."

"Yes," Dream said, and there was an unearthly vibration to it, reminding Hob that Dream probably had other, more King of Nightmares ways to solve this problem.

"So, yes," Hob went on, since Dream didn't seem to be leaping directly to mind control or dragging him bodily into Dreamland. "The way we humans manage that is what you're doing now. You hold my hand, you guide it, you put it where you want it. Use me to touch you."

Dream's grip on his hand tightened hard, but Hob didn't resist the pressure. He kept his gaze steady on Dream's, waiting for him to do what he wanted to do.

Dream pressed Hob's hand flat to his own chest first, and Hob let his eyelids sink low, only half-watching as he savored the feeling of all that sleek silken skin under his fingers. He was warm, and Hob couldn't feel his heartbeat or his breathing, but he could feel a strange humming energy to him—magic, or power, or whatever it meant to be of the Endless.

Hob was just glad that he no longer had sword calluses to snag on that fine skin, as Dream dragged Hob's hand slowly down his body, over the hard ridges of ribs, over tense muscle with almost no cushioning fat.

A part of Hob's mind started thinking of good hearty food Dream might like, how he could be sure his friend wasn't going hungry, but the rest of his thoughts were turned to buzzing static at the nearness of Dream's cock. He could feel the fever heat of it even before he touched it—before Dream touched himself with Hob's hand.

It was just the palm at first, sliding along the length of Dream's cock, and that was enough to make Dream inhale harshly. He did it again, guiding Hob's fingertips along his cock this time, and Hob felt his own cock trying to stir in sympathy though he wouldn't be ready for that for a little while yet. Dream felt so good, and it was obvious that even just that much touch felt unbearably intense to him.

"Is that what you want?" Hob asked softly, mostly just trying to gauge whether Dream was still aware he was there at all.

Dream's gaze darted up to meet his, and then dropped—to his mouth.

"Oh," Hob said. "Yeah? We can do that too. I'll hold still for you."

Dream made an inarticulate little noise and shut his eyes, wrapping Hob's hand around his cock—a little tighter than Hob would have guessed—and gave himself one slow stroke, then another. He was already breathing hard, a startlingly human-looking pink flush rising on his cheeks and spreading down his throat.

His other hand came to rest on Hob's cheek, and Hob parted his lips, showing his tongue just a little in invitation. Dream kept his eyes shut, still guiding Hob's hand on his cock, and pushed two fingers into Hob's mouth.

Hob kept still, as he'd promised, though it took a ferocious effort. He kept his lips parted, his tongue soft and lax under the press of Dream's fingers. After a moment Dream found a rhythm, stroking himself with Hob's hand and thrusting his fingers in and out of Hob's mouth at the same time. It was clear enough what he wanted, what he couldn't quite bear just yet.

He was gasping as he got close, and Hob could feel the hand guiding his start to shake, to falter. He looked up to meet Dream's eyes and found them closed, his face twisted in something like pleasure and pain at once, and he took a chance.

Hob tightened his grip, even as Dream's hold on him faded, and kept up the same rhythm Dream had been driving; he closed his lips around Dream's fingers and sucked.

Dream cried out—softly, or loudly, or on a frequency Hob couldn't hear at all but felt in his bones—and he came, spilling over Hob's fingers, curling down over him. Hob gentled him through it with a few more slowing strokes, a few more soft sucks on his fingers, before Dream went still and collapsed with almost human ungainliness, as if he'd forgotten how to operate a body.

He lay awkwardly sprawled over Hob for a moment, and then wriggled and made an irritated noise, not really getting anywhere.

Hob managed not to laugh, and pushed up on one elbow to try folding Dream into a more comfortable position. He wound up on his side, facing away from Hob, and that worked well enough, as he seemed to have exhausted his resistance to touching skin-on-skin for the moment.

"Here, how about this," Hob said, cuddling up behind him, throwing an arm around him. "The other kind of spoons, also available at my flat whenever you like."

"Mm," Dream wriggled, settling himself, and Hob noticed that the post-sex sticky mess vanished off both of them. He caught Hob's hand and drew it back up to his mouth, touching Hob's fingers softly to his lip again. "Yes. Is this...?"

"If you shut the lights off," Hob said, "we can both rest a little, how's that?"

Hob pressed his face into the dark messiness of Dream's hair, and was asleep and dreaming sweetly almost before he registered the lights switching off.

---

Hob woke and knew he'd been dreaming vividly—not in the usual way, where memories replayed themselves overlaid with even more emotion than whatever he'd been feeling at the time, but vivid to his senses. His mother's bread, eaten with a bit of wild honeycomb, freshly stolen from the bee-tree outside their village. The warmth of a fire on his face and hands, the particular smell of the woodsmoke. The weight of an infant against his chest, silky hair against his cheek, and that milky baby smell. At some point he'd dreamt of standing in a vast wardrobe that seemed to contain every garment he'd ever worn, and he'd walked among them, running his hands and face over rough wool and washed-soft linen and rich silks and velvets and the suede of his favorite new jacket.

As the dreams faded, Hob realized he was still curled around someone—around Dream. He was breathing evenly, and holding Hob's hand pressed against his throat.

"Wasn't sure you'd still be here," Hob murmured, his voice falling automatically into the low softness of the middle of the night. He flexed his fingertips very gently, acknowledging Dream's hold but not contesting it.

"I needed a little time to... calibrate," Dream said quietly. "But I should return to my kingdom. There is much work to be done, and... you have given me some ideas."

Hob wasn't sure how any of this worked, but he had a feeling that a lot of people who didn't normally smell or taste or feel things in their dreams would be doing a lot of that in the nights ahead of them. He hid a smile in the darkness of Dream's hair and pressed a little kiss there.

"I understand," he said. "I'm going to have to finish marking those papers in the morning. But... this was good. I'm glad you..."

Words failed him, but Dream turned over to face him—back to being preternaturally graceful, he managed it without getting stuck or planting a knee or elbow anywhere uncomfortable. His eyes were, Hob thought, back to being a relatively ordinary stormy gray-blue, though in the near-total darkness he could only really tell that he didn't see stars glimmering in their depths.

"I am also glad," Dream said solemnly. "Glad that I found you here, and glad I did not wait longer. I... did not ask you..."

"Of course," Hob said softly, letting his forehead rest against Dream's. "Of course I still want to live, my friend. Things are just getting interesting."

Dream snorted softly. "I suppose they are. In a hundred years' time..."

"Who knows," Hob said. "We might all be uploaded to the cloud in a hundred years' time. Don't feel you need to wait that long, if you want to stop by again. Borrow a spoonful of sugar. Tell me what your nightmares are getting up to."

Dream touched him, a warm press of fingertips, where those grains of sand had marked him. "I will come to you when The Corinthian is dealt with, so you will know you need not concern yourself any longer."

Hob dared to catch Dream's hand with his own, and turned his head to kiss Dream's fingertips. "Or sooner. Or after. Any time, my friend. I'll always be glad to see you. That answer won't change any more than the other."

"I am busy," Dream said, without pulling free of Hob's gentle hold. "There is much to do in my kingdom."

"Yeah, you said that," Hob said, twisting onto his back, drawing Dream up over him. "But here you are anyway. Collecting inspiration."

"Inspiration is very important," Dream agreed, pressing his thumb to the corner of Hob's mouth, and Hob obliged him with a kiss, and more than that, safe in the dark where everything was touch and taste and scent, where he and his friend were only that, for just a little longer.

---

Hob woke again in the morning alone, the curtains of his bed already drawn back to reveal the early light creeping in. He sat up at the sight of the jeans he'd been wearing yesterday, folded neatly at the foot of the bed—except there were three identical pairs of them, all worn in just exactly the same way, and tucked beneath them there were...

Hob laughed, covering his face with one hand even though he was quite certain he was perfectly alone.

Three pairs of pants—not the kind he'd been wearing last night, but the really absurdly expensive designer brand he'd worn for a while in the 80s, and gave up at the same time he gave up a lot of silly luxuries and also cocaine. They had, he recalled, actually been very comfortable. These certainly would be.

"Thank you, my friend," Hob murmured, as he stood up and stepped into them, already thinking about when he might see Dream again.

Not long, he felt sure. Not long, but as sure as if his hundred years were coming up: Hob would see his friend soon, and they would have much to talk about.