I see your "Dream yelling at Desire because 'how dare you make me have feelings for Hob!!'" and raise you "Dream yelling at Desire because 'how dare you make Hob have feelings for me!!'" because it's the only logical explanation for why Hob would claim to want someone like Dream
[ cat screaming crying . jpg ]
Dream storms into Desire’s realm, steps thudding on the uneven floor, rage propelling him forward. He cannot remember ever feeling such anger, such betrayal towards his sibling, not even when he had learned they were behind his imprisonment.
Desire’s games have always gone too far, but this is beyond trying to teach him a lesson, this is beyond what Dream can reconcile, this is simply cruelty.
“YOU,” he thunders, the air shaking around him as he stalks up to where Desire is lying casually on a chaise lounge as if they haven’t just ripped Dream’s one comfort in this life out from under him. “How dare you.”
“Brother, dear,” drawls Desire, popping a grape into their mouth with not a care in the world, “it is rude to simply fly in without even knocking on the door. You wouldn’t like it if I did it to you.”
Blind with fury, Dream grabs them by the throat and hauls them to their feet. Desire lets out a choked gasp, genuinely startled by his vitriol. Their pulse trips under Dream’s thumb.
Desire cannot be killed through something as simple as strangulation, but it truly is tempting to try. “What,” Dream snarls, grip tightening, “what have you done to Hob Gadling?”
Desire blinks at him, torn from their alarm by confusion. “Whomst? Listen, I know you know everybody’s name and their kinkiest fantasy but I honestly can’t be bothered with the details, you’re going to have to fill me in.”
The rage in Dream’s core only flares hotter. “Enough of this charade, you know exactly what you’ve done.”
“No, seriously, I have no idea what you’re—”
Dream whirls away, leaving his sibling staggering in the wake of his grasp. “Was it not enough?” he demands, staring sightlessly into the gleaming red curves of Desire’s realm. “Was the vortex not enough? Was a century of imprisonment not enough for you?” His voice cracks halfway through, and it’s mortifying. “Truly, your hatred of me is untempered by even the slightest compassion.”
Desire’s voice is quizzical when they next speak. “I am starting to wish I was behind whatever this is that seems to have pierced you straight through the heart. I’m afraid my own arrows have missed that organ thus far.”
“Hob Gadling,” Dream insists, but Desire’s seemingly-genuine confusion has him wavering. It’s not like them not to revel in their own victory, and oh, this has been a victory, Dream feels laid lower than even a century in a cage had managed. “You are manipulating him.”
“Once again, I don’t know who that is. But he’s clearly excellent ammunition so I’m certainly going to find out once you leave.”
Dream flexes his hands at his sides, summoning his control. If Desire truly was not behind this, then he’s already made a mistake in coming here. Best not to offer anything else.
Being in Desire’s realm makes this stoicism difficult. The very space brings emotions to the surface, drags feelings up from his stomach that he’s tried so very hard to tamp down. He tastes blood at the back of his throat, his stomach churns, his skin prickles with sweat.
Desire stalks up behind him, sensing all of this. “Now I am curious,” they murmur, dragging a finger up his shoulder, over the collar of his coat and along the back of his neck. “Now I must know what’s go you so riled up.”
“You think you have earned such things?” Dream says through gritted teeth. His heart is pounding hard and uneven such that it physically hurts in his chest, the weight of the Threshold bearing down.
“No need to earn, you can hide nothing from me here.” Desire circles around him to his front, dragging their finger along his collarbone until it lands right at the base of his throat. They look at him from under their lashes, all smug satisfaction. “You are all tangled up in the realm of Desire, aren’t you?”
Dream moves to storm off, but Desire blocks him, nails pressing into his skin.
“Nah-ah, no running away. Let your little sibling help you, hm? As you may know, I am rather wise in matters of the heart.”
The look on Desire’s face is craftiness, glee, not charity or wisdom.
“I neither need nor wish for your assistance,” says Dream, voice hard. “On this, or any other matter.”
“But there is a matter.” Desire leans in and speaks right in his ear. “I can smell the heartsickness on you, Dream.”
There is nothing Dream can say in response to this. Any denial would only be read as falsehood, for Desire does not lie – of late, Dream feels sick with wanting in Hob’s presence, hunger so sharp it turns over into nausea, much like the first time Hob had pushed him to eat after his captivity. How cruel, then, to have his pain eased, his desires sated by a reciprocation that cannot possibly be truly felt.
There is nothing to say, so Dream doesn’t speak. Silence, of course, is its own answer.
“You know, if there’s one thing I have always admired about you, big brother, it’s your willingness to destroy yourself for the sake of passion,” Desire continues. “You’d think that’d be my sort of thing. Who’ve you lost yourself on this time? Demigod? Demon? Dryad? Vampire?”
Dream glares at them, but does not speak.
Desire’s face absolutely lights up as they realize. “Oh. My. God. Is he human? Dreeaaammmmm, my my, maybe your little time out did change you, after all.”
Dream turns away, refusing to give them the satisfaction of confirming. Though he knows this reaction is also a confirmation.
Desire claps their hands. “Oh! I’m so proud of myself. Look at this! Look at the softness of your heart. Look how I can bruise it.”
Dream’s heart, indeed, gives a painful thump. “Should you dare to touch him, even the old laws will not protect you.”
Desire sighs, flopping back onto a couch, legs crossed, head propped in their hand. “Why bother? You’ll destroy it yourself, and that’ll be much more fun.”
I hate you, Dream thinks, like a petulant child. He hates, also, how any argument with Desire makes him feel that way, feelings crowding at the surface of his skin, throat tightening, mind spinning in a chaotic churn. His muscles clench so hard he thinks they might have snapped, were he human, then he forces himself back into a semblance of ease.
There is no extracting himself from this situation with any dignity.
“Interfere with my affairs again,” he warns darkly, “and I will destroy you.”
Then he storms out of the Threshold.
“Love you too!” Desire calls after him, a grin in their voice. “Good luck with your human!”
--
When he’d found Hob at the New Inn, thirty-three years after he’d meant to arrive, Dream had not known how he might be received. Friendship extended once may not be extended again after so brutal a rejection, and so prolonged an absence, no matter that the latter offense was not within his control.
Being met with a smile, then, and an easy acceptance of his apology, like Hob had already forgiven him long before Dream had stepped through the door, had been a revelation. Something had settled in him that he had not known was knocked askew. Could there, truly, be one thing in his life that was allowed to be easy? Where Dream’s missteps were not met with scorn or vitriol or world-shaking consequences, but with grace and the chance to try again?
It seemed improbable, but still Dream had grabbed for it with cold, shaking fingers. Had held that unlikely flame between his palms. Had watched as it grew, hotter and brighter with each smile Hob sent his way, with each gentle brush of fingers as he pressed cups of tea into Dream’s hands, with the hug Hob finally managed to wind him into, once Dream had told him of the true reason for his absence in 1989.
Hob’s grace, Hob’s generosity in inviting someone, something like him into his home, into his life… Dream did not quite know how to hold it, so unlikely it was. He tried, though, oh he tried. And he swore he would not mess it up, not like he had when Hob had first offered his friendship.
He has now, quite royally, messed it up.
He very much doubts Hob will be so generous this time.
He finds Hob where he left him, sitting on the couch in his flat, a book in his hand. He doesn’t seem to be concentrating on it; his thoughts feel scattered in ragged, disturbed daydreams.
He doesn’t even startle when Dream materializes next to him. Though he knows it can be startling to humans, Dream has not been able to break himself of just appearing where he needs to – traversing the long way from point to point is not how he works. But aside from the occasional, teasing, I have a door, you know, Hob never truly complains about these disturbances to his day.
Dream means to offer him an apology. To say, I should not have walked out when you said that you loved me. To say, I am supposed to be better, I am trying to be better.
Instead, just as Hob looks up, the words that trip out of Dream’s mouth, pushed by the flurry of Desire’s realm still pounding within him, are, “Did you speak truly, Hob Gadling?”
Which is a ridiculous question. Dream does not think he has ever heard Hob speak a lie. Still, Dream must have the answer.
Hob’s expression shifts through several incarnations, none of which Dream feels capable of reading. Finally, it settles on the same soft, exasperated understanding Dream remembers being presented with when he’d said, I know thirty years is truly quite late, at their reunion, before he’d told Hob why he was late.
Grace, then. He is to be offered grace, again.
His emotions are still so close to the surface that he has to physically swallow down what he feels about that.
“Of course, I did,” Hob says, and there’s a hint of nerves in it, but he pushes through, he always does. “I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”
His gaze is genuine, open, and no, Desire had not lied – Hob’s feelings are no manipulation of theirs. And while it is tempting to search for other answers, spells or illusions or any number of other causes, Dream knows, deep down, that he will come up empty.
Hob’s feelings are true, are his truth, confounding though that is.
Dream no longer feels capable of holding any of this in his hands.
Instead, he kisses him.
It’s like he is pulled forward by a force outside his own body. He goes to Hob like he had gone to the sugar in the tea Hob had made him, that night at the inn when Dream had first realized how long it had truly been since he’d eaten; he goes to him like he had gone back to the Dreaming after being freed, returning home breathless, lost, changed.
Hob catches him against his mouth, hands cradling Dream’s face. His grip is solid and warm, and he kisses Dream like he looks at him like he speaks to him, with a care Dream hardly knows how to accept. He leans into it anyway, he leans in.
“I wasn’t fishing for a kiss when I said that, you know,” Hob says when they part, still lingering close enough that Dream can feel his heat, his breath. “I meant it in more of— well, that way, for certain, but really, any way you wanted to take it.”
“Any way,” Dream repeats, not sure he comprehends Hob’s meaning.
“Yeah, you—” Hob cuts himself off, letting out a breath, thinking. His hands slide from Dream’s face down to his shoulders, and he holds him there. “I. You just. I want you to know that you’re loved. Not demanding anything of it. Just telling you. Take it however serves you best.”
Dream stares at him, his whole being tripped and restarted at a new rhythm, and Hob gives him a sad smile.
“It’s too big to hold,” he says, and taps his chest. “In here. And besides, I wanted you to have it.”
Dream had had it. Only he hadn’t quite known what he had. The sunshine of Hob’s smiles, sustaining him, a bridge between distant points of light.
Finally, he manages to say, “I felt it. You have been my succor. My… only.”
Hob has captured him more effectively than Burgess’s snare, but this capture is not a prison. It hurts, oh, it aches, but it never wounds.
Hob smiles at him again. There’s still something pained in the creases around his eyes. “I know.”
He’s still touching Dream. His hands run over him, up his neck, over his throat, along his collarbone, and—
catch, on the collar of his shirt, above his heart.
“What happened?”
His voice is tight, now, worried, and— yes. There are bruises on Dream’s chest, crawling up over his breastbone. He had felt them form, and hadn’t stopped them.
Hob’s expression darkens further the longer he looks; he drags the collar of Dream’s shirt down, trying to see how far the damage spreads. “You’ve got bruises all over you. Dream, what happened?”
What happened is Dream stood in the Threshold and his heart beat so hard it drummed right through to the surface of his skin. What happened is it hurt so badly his form shifted to give reason for the pain.
“Desire,” he says, and he does not mean his sibling.
Hob doesn’t seem to understand, but he smoothes a hand over Dream’s heart as if to wipe the bruises away. Dream could will his body to return to its original, unharmed state, but he does not. He lets the blood stay pooled beneath his skin.
Hob sighs, tugging Dream’s coat tighter around him, shielding him from further injury. “Come here, you. You strange creature.”
He pulls Dream in, though he does not have to pull hard. Dream tucks his face into Hob’s neck, reveling in the warm scent of him, woodsmoke from the fireplace down in the inn where they’ve now spent many a long evening, basking in the heat of the flames. Hob’s arms go around him.
Absolution. Dream does not think this is a gift that has ever been granted to him.
“I would also love you,” he says. “If you would accept it.”
“If I would accept it?” Hob repeats. “Darling, your love is a privilege.”
Dream’s heart, in all its bruises and blood, finds rhythm again, and he thinks, though he certainly doesn’t pull away from Hob to check, that his skin clears up partway, too.
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thinking about a Blast From the Past steddie au tonight. like, think about it for a second--steve as the sweet, well-meaning himbo raised in a fallout shelter and eddie as the cynic who shows him the world as it is:
The year was 1962, and an atomic bomb had just dropped on top of the Harrington household.
Okay, not really. It was actually a fighter jet that suffered a mechanical failure just above the little plot of land the Harringtons called their home, but Walter Harrington took it differently. Far differently.
See, the thing was that the man was living in a state of paranoid delusion over the Cold War--terrified of the possibility of an outright nuclear holocaust over the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Soviet Union. He had been carefully building a fallout shelter under his home for his wife and possible children to live in with the works--canned food, running water, and even a working television.
And one day they went in and simply never left. The explosion right when they closed the door was tangible proof that the nuclear war was happening right above them.
A few years later, around 1968, a baby boy was born in a fallout shelter with no one but his mom and dad to keep him company.
They raised Steve the best they could, even if Walter Harrington was a mad genius and Madeline Harrington was a borderline alcoholic. Even if the boy was living in a perfect little time capsule of the fifties and early sixties. Walter made sure to educate him right and teach him how to be a sociable gentleman--even if he had no idea what swear words or the concept of sex were. That was for another time. Although, twenty-four years came and went for Steve Harrington, his father still owes him 'another time'.
Steve Harrington grows twenty-four years in perfect seclusion, but that changes at the flick of a switch.
The year is 1992: supplies are dwindling Walter is growing sick, and Steve is tasked to bravely set foot in the nuclear fallout to retrieve more material. (The only reason why Walter assumes they can even get more stuff is because he observed the outside world when the shelter unlocked and mistook it as a post-apocalyptic mutant society.)
The moment Steve made it outside his little bubble, he was utterly fascinated by the world--how different the people were outside of his television and his little books, how bright the sky was outside, how the irritable man on the bus wouldn't accept the money he tried to give him, how the bus moved and didn't fling him right off his seat.
(He even saw an adult bookstore. Dad told him that those things were filled with poisonous gas. How were they even to operate if they were filled with poisonous gas? That's dangerous and totally inconsiderate of the general public's safety.)
Anyway, he tries to follow the grocery list that Mom and Dad gave him the best he can, stocking up on poultry and tissue paper and the works. But by the end of the day, he doesn't know where he came from. Not a single sign or building or person can give him a single clue where to go.
After a few hours of wandering, suitcase in hand, he comes across a store with WE BUY BASEBALL CARDS written on the window.
Golly, Steve loves baseball cards--could look at Dad's collection for hours, and with the collection he has, he could make a pretty penny selling them for supplies. Despite the little hobby store being beside an adult bookstore with poisonous gas, he scampers right in.
"I see you're looking to buy baseball cards," he says breezily to the gruff, scary-looking man behind the counter.
"That I am," he replies.
Steve pulls a few from his jacket's inner pocket. "Well, these are a bit old, you see, but I was hoping you still might be interested."
The gruff man yanks them from his hands, a spark in his eye. He looks delighted to see them, and it fills Steve with an excitement he hadn't felt at all today. Nobody has been this happy over something he's done today. "Woah," he gasps, then covers it with a cough. "Mickey Mantle rookie season...how much do you want?"
"I was hoping to sell all of my cards, actually!"
The man sputters incredulously. "All of 'em? Are you fucking with me?"
"I'm not sure what that means, but all I have are hundred-dollar bills and I need something smaller. Like, uh...ones, tens, fives..."
"Tell you what, I'll give you five hundred in small bills for all you got."
Steve smiles brightly. "Oh, that would be wonderful, sir--"
"Five hundred for a case-full of rookie season Mickey Mantles, Rick, are you fucking joking?" A deep voice cuts through Steve's thanks from the other side of the small store. He turns around to find a man leaning against a magazine rack, arms folded sternly.
The man is unlike Steve's ever seen before. Long, long limbs and big brown eyes that look traced with black and smudged around the edges. Pretty lips, too almost girl-ish, in the way they were big and plush like the women he'd see on the television. The strangest thing about him, though, was the curly hair that tumbled past his shoulders.
He looked mad, though. Madder than mad.
"Tell the poor guy you're fucking with him," long-hair-pretty-lips says to the man behind the counter, who bristles.
"Were you raised in a fucking barn, Munson? Who told you to interrupt on business?" Rick counters. Steve was really not appreciating the amount of f-words dropped in the conversation, it was uncouth.
"Sure I was!" Munson saunters towards the counter and Steve's eyes follow him like a moth to a light. "But my morals go past your business practices at this point. You remember the ninth commandment, yeah?"
"You shut your Goddamn mouth--"
"Excuse me sir, but I really don't appreciate how you're using the Lord's name in vain like that," Steve says firmly.
"See?" Munson smiles. It's like sunlight. "He gets it."
He plucks the baseball card from Rick's hand and holds it over his head when he tries to reach for it again. "See this little thing?" He says to Steve sweetly. "This guy costs six grand alone."
"Get out of town! Really?"
"Oh yeah, big guy. Selling the thing would give you a small fortune, and Rick over here is trying to con you out of it."
Steve frowns. "Is that true?" He asks Rick.
"Nothing but," Munson says in place of him. He slips the card back into Steve's hands and gives them a pat.
"The Hell is even keeping you here, Munson?" Rick sneers. "Did the gig you won't shut up about fall through like they usually do? Better to bum it out here than in your shithole apartment? Stop loitering in my damn store and make like a fucking tree. You're banned."
"Whatever helps you sleep at night," Munson says rolling his eyes. He looks at Steve, then the door, gesturing at it with a flick of his head. "I'll see you out, Beaver."
He walks them both out the door, stopping to gesture at Rick strangely--hands balled into fists with only his middle fingers up--before stepping outside onto the sidewalk.
"Well merci, Monsieur," Steve says appreciatively, because Dad taught him French was always to be used on such occasions.
"What, you're French?"
"Oh no, I'm"--he thinks back to what Dad told him if a mutant asks where he's from. Gosh, he thinks he's supposed to be--"out on business."
"And you don't even have a clue about the little business trick that Rick tried to pull?"
"No...no, I--"
"Yeah, doesn't matter." Munson shrugs. He smiles sympathetically at Steve before turning on his heel and walking off. Oh boy, what would he do without him?
He follows him like a lost puppy, that's what.
"...You going the same way?" Munson asks incredulously. Steve shakes his head.
"Well, I'm following you."
Munson stops in his tracks, blinking, and Steve almost runs into him in his state. "Me?"
"Well yes! Where are we going?"
"We?" Munson asserts. "I'm going back to my shithole apartment, and judging by that jacket you're wearing, you should be taking the next left and hop-skipping straight to the barber college."
"Oh, I'm lost, though."
"Aren't we all?"
"Say, did you just get banned from that hobby store because of me?" Steve says to change the subject.
Munson sighs. "Seems like I did, sailor. The place was shitty anyways, with that dickhead running the operation. Wayne could get better cards from a different joint."
...dickhead? Steve's never heard that leave the seams of anyone's lips before. "Dickhead?"
"Yeah, he's a real fucking loser. A walking talking penis capable of human speech."
Steve gets queasy at the image he's concocted in his head. He leans against the nearest brick wall, his suitcase tumbling to the ground as he drops into a contemplative squat.
"Dude, what is wrong with you?"
"Well, the mental image that I..."
Munson's eyebrows scrunch before he reaches out a hand to Steve. He takes it, letting the man haul him upward. "Look, man, where'd you park your car?"
"I came by bus."
"Aren't you full of surprises."
"I am?"
"Okay look." Eddie raises his hands, palms splayed in the air. "It's your first time in Los Angeles, right? Everyone wants a taste of it, I know, and you're out for business and fucking famished. You got the opportunity to see the great big world outside of your little bubble and you got excited--but you took a bus and got mixed up in the middle of San Fernando Valley without a clue in the world. Am I correct?"
Steve listens in wonderment. So far, Munson's been correct in a way. He's convinced he might be psychic. He nods slowly and seriously just to see Munson flash that lighting-strike smile.
"Great, great. Which brings us to here. Correct again?"
"Oh yeah."
"Where are you staying?"
Nowhere, at the moment. Steve opens his mouth to say so, but Munson interrupts quickly. "Holiday Inn?"
"Yes, the Holiday Inn!" Steve says totally truthfully.
"Okay, cool. Cool." Munson claps his hands together with finality and starts walking. "The nearest bus station is a couple of blocks away if you take a right--"
"Don't you have a car?"
Munson stops in his tracks again. He turns to face Steve once again. "What's your name, sweetheart?"
Something warm pools in Steve's gut at the pet name. Something about the way those pretty lips form that word sends blood rushing to his cheeks. "Steve," he says.
"Alright, Steve." Oh boy, his name sounds even better when Munson says it. "Rule number one in Los Angeles? Never let a stranger drive you anywhere."
"If it makes you feel any better," Steve says sweetly, "I don't have a gun."
Munson pales, then starts running.
"Hey!" Steve cries and makes haste to follow him. "I must've said something wrong, please forgive me!"
"Nope, nope--get the fuck away from me, man!"
He grabs Munson's wrist to pull him back, which is a bad move since the man starts writhing around in his grip. "I'm not going to hurt you, sir!"
Steve drops Munson's hand and raises his in surrender. "See?"
"...Just let me get to my car."
"I'll give you a Rogers Hornsby if you take me to my hotel," Steve reasons.
Munson stills. "...That's like four grand, don't bullshit me."
He pulls the card from his jacket and presents it as evidence. "See? I was holding it back." He wants Munson to feel safe. "I got two." He reaches for the other cards in his pockets and pulls them out. "And-and all these other ones, too!"
"Okay, okay. You'll give me four thousand dollars if I drive you to your place?"
"Uh-uh!"
"That's it?"
"Yep."
"And I don't have to give you a quickie in the backseat or anything?"
"Yes sir--wait, what?"
Munson blows past his question like it didn't even leave Steve's mouth. "Can you stop with the sir crap?"
"Well, I'm sorry, sir--"
"My name is Eddie."
Eddie...Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. Wow, what a name. It's almost like something he's heard on the television.
"Why, it's nice to meet you, Eddie."
"Tolerable to meet you too, Steve."
Steve smiles shyly, then asks, "So are you a girl?"
"Excuse me?"
"Well it's just your hair...it's so long." Steve points at his as an example. "I've never seen anything like it before."
"Dude, it's 1992, every other guy looks like this--have you been living under a rock or something?"
Something like that. Steve shrugs.
"Well guys having long hair doesn't mean that they're girls, Steve, that's a given. It's not 1962 anymore." Eddie backtracks. "Well, I mean, dudes can have long hair and be chicks and chicks can be dudes too but that's not--"
"Oh, wow, my dad told me about one of those the last time he went here!"
"Oh that's fantastic, sweetheart," Eddie says, sugary-sweet. "But how about I drive you home?"
"That'd be a pleasure, Eddie."
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