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cuubism · 9 months

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Zero [complex math verse]

cw for disordered eating eating disorder storylines can be very triggering so please mind this content warning as it applies heavily to the entire fic

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Hob is almost to his data structures section—running a bit late, as per usual—when he gets a call from Death. He picks up as he’s rushing up the stairs to the Comp Sci building.

“Hey, Hob,” she says before Hob can even tell her that he only has like thirty seconds to talk, actually. She sounds fatigued. “Can you go pick up Dream from the Maths building?”

Hob pins the phone between his shoulder and ear as he tugs open the door. “‘Pick him up’? Is he okay?”

“He asked me to come get him, but I can’t leave this patient right now.” Hob can imagine her leaning against the wall, hand pressed to her forehead. Why didn’t Dream call him?, Hob wonders. He’s usually much more available than Death, at this hour. “I asked if he wanted an ambulance, and he said no, but if you can’t go get him then—”

“Wait, wait.” Hob stops in the middle of the hall, stomach swooping. Someone walking behind him swears as they have to swerve to avoid hitting him, but he ignores it. “An ambulance? I thought you said he was okay.”

But... she hadn’t said that exactly, had she?

“He will be,” Death says, which doesn’t fill Hob with much confidence. But he turns around and heads back for the door, heartbeat picking up with each step.

“I’m going now, I’m not far.” The undergrads are just going to have to cope with not having discussion section today. He doubts they’ll be too unhappy about it.

“Thanks,” says Death, with relief. “Text me when you find him? And you should bring some food, if you have it.”

Oh.

Fuck.

Hob had been afraid something like this would happen. But he can’t exactly force Dream to pick up better habits. Horses and water, and all that.

“Yeah, yeah, I will, thanks,” he says, and walks faster.

Hob is going to be upset with him.

The thought circles Dream’s mind as he sits crumpled on the bench outside the classroom he’d been working in, head on his knees, hands clasped behind his neck. Nothing feels real. Everything is spinning and swaying. He might pass out. He might throw up. He hates throwing up. Hob is going to be upset with him.

It’s exactly what he was trying to avoid by calling his sister instead. Death will be upset with him, too, but she’s chastised him before. Dream is used to it. The same words coming from Hob will be a different matter.

He should have known that she would be busy, and would call Hob. Even if she could come to get him she would likely call Hob after. He should have known. He sits with his head pressed to his knees and waits for the inevitable.

Either Hob was very close by, or more time slips past Dream’s notice than he realizes, but it feels like only a few minutes before he hears Hob’s footsteps coming quickly down the hall. He doesn’t know what it means that he can recognize Hob’s footsteps. Or that Hob had known which classroom to go to. The one Dream always prefers to work in.

“Dream?” Hob crouches in front of him, trying to meet his eyes, but Dream can’t lift his head from his knees. It’s the only thing keeping the world from tipping over on him. Hob lays a hand on his arm. “Hey, love. What’s going on?”

“‘m dizzy,” Dream murmurs, voice small. He hadn’t realized how much his shoulders were shaking until Hob touched him. He thinks that’s distress more than physical shakiness. But Hob’s presence soothes him more than he’d expected. Even if Hob chews him out, he doesn’t want Hob to leave. He wants Hob to hold him. He just wants Hob to hold him.

“Okay.” Hob’s voice is quiet and calm. He brushes Dream’s hair behind his ear, though it’s not long enough for that to do much. “Sit up for me for a sec? I’ll help you.”

Dream is helpless but to follow Hob’s voice. He starts to sit up. His vision is still spinning. Hob wraps an arm around his middle and bodily lifts him up until he’s leaning back against the wall, then sits beside him on the bench, their thighs touching.

He meets Hob’s gaze. Hob is close enough that he doesn’t appear to waver as much as everything in the background. He looks beautiful, he’s a savior, an angel.

Dream’s brain is not working very normally right now. Not that it ever is.

Hob looks more concerned than angry with him. But Dream doesn’t have much time to study his expression before he’s turning to dig in his bag and pull out his water bottle. He uncaps it and hands it to Dream.

“Drink that. At least half of it. Slow.”

He goes back to digging in his bag as Dream sips the water carefully. Hob is very steady, underneath the concern. No panic. Good in a crisis, Hob. That’s interesting.

Hob watches him drink the water, then hands him a package of cheese crackers he’d pulled out of his bag. Despite himself, Dream laughs, weakly, as he takes it. “Do you always have food with you?”

“You’re not the only one who forgets to eat lunch, I just accommodate for it.”

‘Forgetting’ is… not exactly it, Dream thinks as he picks open the package and takes a cracker, eating it slowly. He still feels more nauseous than hungry, but he knows Hob won’t let it be until he eats it.

No, he has witnessed Hob skip a meal when in the throes of some engaging problem, but he always makes up for it later. Or by carrying around snacks, apparently. Whereas with Dream… it is not exactly forgetting.

He eats the crackers one by one, mechanically. Barely tasting them. Fortunately, the food cuts the edge of nausea in his stomach instead of exacerbating it, and he no longer thinks he’s in imminent danger of throwing up. Or passing out. That would certainly upset Hob.

“There you go, love,” Hob soothes him. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

Hob could have gone into the medical field instead if he wanted to, Dream thinks, somewhat deliriously, swallowing his final cheese cracker. His bedside manner is very good.

Or perhaps this is just because it’s Dream.

The thought makes him want to cry, but he doesn’t. He just stays still as the world starts spinning a little less, and Hob takes the water bottle and empty snack package back and shoves them in his bag, then tugs on Dream’s arm.

“Alright, why don’t you lie down.”

“This is a public hallway,” Dream complains, albeit weakly.

Hob sighs in exasperation. “We’ve slept on classroom tables before. Besides, this is a university, everybody’s seen weirder shit in public than this. Lie down.”

Dream acquiesces, and Hob guides him to lie down on the bench, his head on Hob’s lap. It’s pleasant, like that, and the world spins less and less. Hob pets his hair, and Dream closes his eyes.

“Are you going to make me go to A&E?” he murmurs, after a few moments of quiet.

“Depends how you feel in twenty minutes or so.” He sighs, and there’s a shake to it. “But I think you’ll be okay, love. Just give it a moment.”

Dream will be okay, until Hob decides he’s recovered enough to chastise him for his behavior. For now, he just lies there quietly and enjoys the settling feeling of Hob’s hands in his hair.

Hob doesn’t ask him what he did to himself, or why. Perhaps he’s judged Dream too tired or incapacitated to talk about it right now. He just keeps steadying Dream, quietly, his hands ever-moving.

When several minutes have passed, Hob asks, “How are you feeling, darling? Do you want to go home?”

Darling. Hob calls him such sweet things when Dream is nothing but difficult to him. “I would like to go home. Please.”

Hob helps him sit up, bracing an arm around his shoulders. But the room, thankfully, has stopped spinning. He gets Dream to his feet, and Dream doesn’t sway. Hob picks up both his bag and Dream’s from the floor and slips them over his shoulder. He wraps an arm around Dream’s waist. And silently, relieved to be standing again, Dream follows Hob home.

Dream’s flat is closer to campus, so Hob takes him there, gets him settled on the couch and makes tea and pushes a box of biscuits into Dream’s hands, and all this before even telling Dream off for his behavior. Dream is not a child, he knows perfectly well how much sustenance a body needs to sustain it, he knows that it is unwise to go without eating, so why doesn’t Hob tell him so? Chastise him for his foolishness?

Dream sits curled up on the couch. Turning the box of biscuits over and over in his hands, unopened. Finally, Hob sits beside him with his own tea.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

Dream can’t manage to get himself to open the biscuits. He sets the box in his lap, but picks up his tea as a compromise that will hopefully ease Hob’s worries. It does not work, based on Hob’s expression as he watches him do it. Dream sips his tea anyway. Hob’s put a lot of honey into it. Correctly deducing that Dream hasn’t had enough sugar or anything else today.

Instead of responding, he tears up.

Hob puts both of their mugs back on the coffee table and pulls him into his arms.

Dream presses his face into Hob’s shoulder. Tucks his hands in against the warmth of Hob’s body, pressed between his back and the couch. Crawls halfway into his lap. Hob wraps his arms around him and holds him close. Dream feels like his soul is pattering around and only staying contained by the boundaries created by Hob’s body. He doesn’t know what that feeling is.

Hob strokes his hair, murmurs against the shell of his ear, shh darling, it’s okay. Dream is a pathetic cowering creature soothed by Hob’s touch. That feeling. It’s fear. He’s scared. Scared of himself. That he can lose such control while grasping so tightly for it.

“Thank you,” he finally manages, something he should have said earlier, but means more than he can say, “for coming.”

“You could have called me, you know.” It’s not accusatory, but a little hurt. “It’s okay if you’d rather have Death, just—”

“It is not that. I—” He pulls back to see Hob’s face. Hob wipes the tears from his cheeks. “Death has told me her feelings on the matter before. I was… apprehensive to hear yours.” Death, also, has seen Dream at lower points than this. She can hardly think less of him. The same is not true of Hob.

Hob looks sad to hear this. “My feelings are that I’m concerned. Did you eat anything today?”

“…No.”

“What about yesterday?”

Dream thinks. He must have, surely? “I think so.”

“I can make you stuff, you know,” Hob says. “Whatever you want. I don’t mind.”

This is the last thing Dream wants. For Hob to think this is somehow his fault.

“If you’re forgetting I can just come get you whenever I’m eating,” Hob continues. He’s only growing more distressed at Dream’s silence.

How can Dream tell Hob, who cares so much and wants to help, that he does this on purpose? That he doesn’t forget that he’s hungry, but rather ignores it? Or worse, relishes in it? That he has done so for a long time. That it makes him feel sharper. In control of himself.

That once broken, habits are, it turns out, very hard to pick up again. Even when that habit is eating.

“It is not so simple, I’m afraid,” he says, ducking his head.

“No, I guess it wouldn’t be.” Hob bites his lip, looking away. “Why, then? I want to help you, but I don’t…”

“It makes me feel better,” Dream says. “Until it doesn’t.”

Like today. He pushed too far. But it’s only when he does go too far that the reality of what he’s doing comes back to him. It’s easy to forget, when he is used to it.

Ironically, he knows from experience that it will be easier to eat better in the next few days, now that he’s shocked himself back to reality. It will be easier, until he slips again. He doesn’t know how not to slip.

When he finally looks back up, Hob is already looking at him again. He looks sad. Dream doesn’t want him to be sad.

Hob takes Dream’s jaw in his hand, strokes his thumb over Dream’s lower lip. “You scared me, seeing you like that.”

Dream should probably apologize for his behavior. Instead, all he can do is lean in again to press his forehead against Hob’s. He knows Hob wants to fix it, to offer solutions, but all Dream really wants is his touch. Hob’s touch fixes more for him than anything else.

“I’m gonna stay over,” Hob says, cradling the back of his head. “And we’re going to have dinner.”

It is, in fact, almost dinnertime, Dream realizes. No wonder he felt overcome, after having nothing until now. Hob will insist on him having something, he knows. It still feels… strange. To be having something.

He tucks his face into Hob’s neck. “Very well.”

“Will you eat some of it?” Hob asks, petting his hair again, tugging the short strands between his fingers. Dream thinks it must be soothing to him to do so.

“Yes,” he says. “However. I don’t want you to think that this is your responsibility to fix.” Or that you can. Hob is very very good at taking things apart and fixing problems, but if he digs his hands into this one he is going to get his fingers jammed in the unsteady gears of Dream’s brain. He is only going to get hurt in trying.

“Maybe not,” says Hob, and, like he heard what Dream didn’t say, continues, “but I can feed you one meal so let’s start with that?”

Does Hob understand how much comfort he brings? Can he possibly?

“I love you,” Dream murmurs, almost unintelligible for how close he’s pressed himself to Hob’s body.

Hob kisses his head. “I love you, too, my darling.”

He bundles Dream closer so their limbs are all tangled together. Dream loves that, how he can feel each pressure point where they touch. “Will you tell me more about it? When you feel up to it. The more I get how you feel, the more I can help you.”

As a child, Dream’s favorite number was zero. Some mathematicians would insist zero was not actually a number, but rather the absence of one. That was exactly what Dream liked about it. The nothing defined by the everything around it. Zero was foundational, and yet it was not even properly there at all.

Sometimes Dream felt like zero. The less he ate the more he felt it. It was easier to be nothing than to let the everything in.

“You are insistent upon trying to help me,” Dream says.

“Yup.”

“Because,” Dream realizes, with a hard swallow, “you love me.”

“Exactly. You get it.”

Dream twists their fingers together and squeezes. If Dream is zero, Hob is like infinity, so boundless that he can’t help but let it engulf him.

Perhaps one day Dream will be able to explain it all to him in better words than that.

#definitely NOT inspired by real life. lol #cw eating disorder #complex mathematics #this fic is part of the ongoing Let Dream Get Hugs agenda #hob out here a whole millennial calling dream shit like dear heart and my darling. old school romantic. they were made for each other #bc did you know all dream ever wanted in life was to be called dear heart and my darling. ok that's all #(he also likes being called baby. anyway)#dream of the endless #my writing #dreamling #hob gadling

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fallout-fucker · 1 year

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Sole Survivor Headcanon

Kind of OC based but it's also vague (Although Minutemen leaning) so like. If your Sole wasn't a soldier or lawyer. Or anything. Just a skill-less bastard. You might like this. Enjoy.

Sole being trusted by so many factions just for breathing is so funny actually. Like they deadass crawl out of a cave, freshly traumatised, and told they're a General? Because they helped someone? Cool, yeah, sure, uh-huh. That's a great amount of pressure to handle on top of their circumstances.

I like to think that everyone also assumes they're insanely clever. It's not that Sole isn't, per se, but everyone treats them like a genius. A prodigy. People have told Sole they understand why Preston trusted them so much because the Commonwealth 'needs their level of knowledge and intelligence to get better'. To which Sole is always bewildered, because their 'extensive level of knowledge' is just. High school level. Basic science lessons.

They know about evolution and stem cells and stuff. They know how disease and antibodies work. They're praised for changing people's opinions on vaccination when, with the help of Curie, they start a campaign to bring back vaccines. Their goal was to fight the viruses that had been brought back from near extinction from 200+ years of no healthcare system, no scientists and doctors to cure them. A tilt back in the direction of accessible Pre-War healthcare.

Sole knows history. They know what to watch out for, how to spot tension between factions. They know how to avoid more war, lessons learned from textbooks and late nights with post-it notes. They know how to piece together a scale and pin point the tipping point to stop it before shit goes down because they did a project about it on a WW1 assignment. The Great War. The irony is not lost on Sole when they contemplate that name for too long.

They're decent at Maths. Decent enough to make sure the caps and donations to the Minutemen are being put to good use. To make sure the book keeping is up to code and every cap is accounted for, and what it should be put towards. Like trying to bring back vaccines from 200 years ago. Negotiating with Vault 81 to let Curie use the old lab there goes way more smoothly when they've got the caps to make a worthy case for the cause.

Sole knows why people assume their mind is unmatched, though. In a way it is, sort of, they suppose. Since education is rare in the Post-War world, and even then it's not at the level it was Pre-War, Sole just seems smart. Everyone thinks they are.

Sole never knows how to handle it.

Are they complicit for letting people believe they're a genius? Should they keep up the charade so people listen to them? The thought keeps them up at night. Preston laughs at them for it.

MacCready reminds them of the many times they looked like a dumbass in every other circumstance where they lacked knowledge. 210 years of missing out on General Wolrd Stuff will do that to ya. It's not necessarily their fault, but he still likes to drag them for the time they got food poisoning because they didn't realise some of the new plants had to be cooked before consumption.

Every time someone acts in awe of Sole's intelligence, MacCready snickers because he was there in the early days. Sole had hired him to watch their back. Soon enough he became their mentor on how to shoot a gun properly. How to maintain it. What to eat, what not to eat, what to definetly not eat. How to make sure mole rat meat is 100% cooked. How to safely remove as much radiation as possible from water and food when you have only basic supplies. He would never think Sole is stupid. They know a lot compared to most people, but learning how to survive and knowing how to count are very different types of knowledge. No, he'd never think they're stupid. But he definetly humbles them, which Sole is actually happy about. He still affectionately calls them an idiot and reminds them of the time they tripped over their own laces, alerting the radstag they were hunting of their presence. And the food poisoning thing. And the incident with the bucket. And when they almost touched a deadly plant because they thought it would look nice in a vase they found.

Thing is, Preston taught them basics of how to shoot and fight before they left Sanctuary. MacCready picked up the workload when he met Sole and realised they'd likely get them both killed if he didn't. Cait showed them hand to hand combat and lockpicking. Everyone at some point taught Sole something. So Sole goes red from embarrassment when being complimented on their mind, because they know they're gonna get an earful from their friends later. Affectionately bullied. You know Deacon has some blackmail level information from the months he followed them. They all sit at Sole's kitchen counter and share stories of Sole's embarrassing misadventures over breakfast. That's just what a family does.

#Sole Survivor #Preston Garvey #Robert Joseph MacCready #MacCready #Cait #The companions all (Within reason) move to Sanctuary and basically live together agenda #Seperate houses but they all go to Sole's kitchen for breakfast eveey morning.#Sole doesn't know how they keep getting in. They're there before Sole is even awake. Codsworth always has their drinks ready #I'm pushing my 'As much as they say theh hate each other all of the comps secretly love each other or do eventually'#Looking at you Danse #They're a family baby. Their the equivalent of Millennials and Gen Z not being able to afford homes in their economy #So people live with their best friends instead #Sanctuary is just a commune for all of Sole's friends and found family #'It takes a village'. Duncan and Shaun literally have a village. So many aunts and uncles bro #I love thinking about everyone being close. They're like pack animals. Mess with one and. You have at least 10 people hunting you #This deserves it's own post tbh #I wanna make a companions headcanon post based on them as a found family #Fallout #Fallout 4 #Deacon

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