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Hob waits until the familiar boot-heels have begun to clump diffidently down the steps towards him. Sips from his glass of water.
“It’s over there.” He points, without looking up, schoolmarmish as you please, towards the corner of the empty auditorium. “Between the fine old statue of our university’s founder, and the shiny new plaque explaining what an actual racist misogynist wanker he was.”
He keeps on gathering his notes together. ‘Gender Fluidity in Classical Mythology’ might be one of his favourite subjects, yet his prompt cards are still sketched over with daydreaming doodles and monotonously single-minded marginalia, none of it very much to do with mythology, except in that it’s all to do with his Dream.
And if he chooses to moon, for a moment, over the scribbled stars, and the love-hearts illuminated with his very best pink neon highlighter pen, then it’s a far better option at that moment, than gazing into his fiancé’s adorable anthracite eyes.
Because Dream of the Endless is about to get a proper telling off, and it’s taking all of Hob Gadling’s immortal nerve to go through with it.
“I’m talking about the location of the fire extinguisher?” Hob arches one eyebrow for emphasis. “You know, so we can put out all those burning looks you keep sending me, while I’m trying to do my job?”
Dream tilts his head as he glides nearer still, stopping on the other side of the lectern, a mercy for which Hob thanks All The Saints In Heaven, because the Devil knows he needs a bit of distance right now.
“I fail to see how you could possibly discern my admiring glance amid so many?” his lordship says.
“Don’t be daft.” Hob blushes, and hopes it doesn’t show, outside of the directed slant of the overpage clip-light. He fiddles with the slide carousel, balanced precariously on a wobbly stack of textbooks. “These students are here to learn, as should you be, if you’re going to attend my classes.”
“That is not what their dreams say, dearest,” Dream mutters, and the sheer bloody cattiness of his tone makes Hob’s nethers tingle, so help him.
“Good job my fiancé’s funnier and cleverer than all of them put together, then,” Hob says, his resolve to chastise Dream crumbling quicker than a biscuit dipped in a hot, milky cuppa. “And so sodding beautiful it makes my heart ache to look at him.”
“And yet,” Dream says, quietly, “you do not seem inclined to do so now?”
Hob has to meet Dream’s eyes, then, to reassure his darling how well he is loved.
Even when he’s been a bit naughty.
“Jesus Wept,” Hob says, and drops his pointer. As predicted, Hob looking at Dream does not make scolding him any easier, because he’s decided today to leave his pea-jacket and jeans at home, and is dressed in a high-collared, cinch-waisted, floor-length coat. The tight sleeves show off his frankly biteable biceps, and the sensuous fabric is a duplicitous black, sneakily trying to fool everyone into thinking it's really purple.
And, even though they’re living together now, and Hob has yet to catch his boyfriend in the act of actually applying eyeliner, there it is, in all of its smoky, smudgy glory, making Dream’s eyes as immortally blue as the sky in old paintings.
Hob fights with his face for a moment, trying desperately to keep it like stone, when inside he’s pure pulsing magma.
“As if I wouldn’t know when you’re staring at me,” he says, gruffly, wondering if it’s biologically possible to stop his mouth from watering. God’s Tears, but Dream’s scent is so sodding good, sharp and stormy in the closed air of the musty, venerable auditorium.
“I know your bloody smell, myne own herte. I know your footsteps, and your silhouette, and when you’re anywhere near me. I know when your side of the bed is empty, even with my eyes closed.” He lowers his voice, although they’re quite alone. “I know when you’re close to spilling, I’m glad to say. And I like to think I can tell when you’re feeling like a crosspatch, or when you’re glum, and need cheering. Or, when you’re happy, especially when it’s me that’s made it so. For all that you’re the very definition of the unknowable, I’m doing my best to learn you, my doveling, and believe me, I’ve reached the conclusion that nobody in the Universe could look at me quite the way you do. And neither would I ever want them to.”
There’s an increase in noise from outside the upper gallery doors. Not only do the students clamour to attend Hob’s lectures, but they tend to come early, too.
“But we’re wandering from the sodding point, here.” Hob folds his arms, in case they accidentally start a cuddle.
“Are we?” Dream looks down, and runs a finger, slowly, along the projector tube, from lens-cap to riser. Hob’s surprised the bloody thing doesn’t spontaneously extend itself to full erectness, because Dream has incredibly lovely fingers, slender, and long, and extremely flexible. “Usually, beloved, when you are determined to thrash something out, you are…relentless…” Dream throws Hob a private look from under his impossible lashes, even as a couple of students begin tumbling into the theatre, like multi-coloured leaves in their charity-shop motley, blown in by their own youthful enthusiasm.
Hob is just looking at Dream. Powerless to help himself from letting a soft smile beam across his old mug, and as always, he sees that loving light reflected right back at him, more muted, maybe, as it shines out from Dream’s shy, pale face, like the moon giving back the gift it gets from the sun, but clear and bright and perfect, all the same.
There’s a chorus of appreciative whistles from the seats right at the top of the hall, where Hob knows the cheekiest chancers sit, having been one himself, and so he stops grinning, shakes his head, and steps back.
He lowers his voice, because the front two rows are full, but are also strangely quiet and attentive. “Look, Dove, I want you here, really I do, but in future, you must promise to behave.”
“Surely, I am quiet as a mouse, and just as unobtrusive?” Dream says.
“Oh yeah, right,” Hob scoffs, in a whisper. “You, my naughty kitten, stand there, throughout my whole, entire lectures, looking like you want to you, you know, have me.” Hob drops his volume even more, which is a bad idea, because Dream, who is apparently hard of hearing all of a sudden, steps closer. "In fact,” Hob hisses, “it’s more than that, sweetheart, you look like you positively and absolutely intend to have me, at your earliest convenience. And more than once, too. And in all sorts of positions, not just, you know, the regular ones.”
“You mean..?”
“Yes. I mean all the ones we had to practice to get right.”
“Then, it is a highly accurate telegraphing of my desires,” his lordship says, as if pleased with himself.
“No,” Hob waves his hands a bit. “You can’t look at me like that while I’m trying to be a good role model and whatnot.”
Dream bites his lip. “Because you do not wish to see my ardour?”
“Of course I do, Dove. I love seeing it, best thing ever, but I do kind of draw the line at letting the whole university see it too? And it’s kind of unmissable. Like Godzilla shooting lasers from its eyes. Only, in your case, it’s sex lasers.”
“Sex lasers?” Dream says.
“Yes. You have sex lasers for eyes, alright?” Hob realises he’s less focussed on his well thought out, coherent argument, and more on the way Dream has just the nicest nose ever. “You might as well wear a flashing sign around your pretty neck that says ‘I am going to do incredibly dirty things to Professor Gadling the very second we get out of this stupid sacred place of learning’.”
Dream dimples. “But would it not be strange to people, if I was not enamoured of my betrothed?”
“It’s nowt but flattering, let’s face it,” Hob concedes. “But the problem is I start doing it back. I can feel myself doing it. And it’s not very professional, or fair, on that lot, is it?”
Hob nods towards their audience.
Dream has the decency to look contrite. Gorgeously, sexily contrite.
“Some of them are on scholarships to be here,” Hob adds. “Or work two jobs to meet the residence fees. And there I am, saying the words, yeah, but with my brain busy wondering if I could survive you doing that thing with your thumbs again. You know. The Thing.”
“You mean..?”
“Yes. Yes.” Hob scrubs through his hair, side-eyeing the silently watching front row. “The Thing with your thumbs. And your, er, tongue. The whole Thumbs-and-Tongue Thing.”
Dream stares at the floor. “My Beloved. I apologise. I am in the unique position of being…carried away by my passion for you. I am, I suppose, unpractised at feeling such an all-consuming emotion. Certainly, it feels like I have never truly loved, before I met you.”
Now Hob feels awful. A right prissy, officious sod.
“Oh. Babe, look, I’m sorry…”
Dream holds up a pale hand. “But, I will try to do better to not embarrass you with such overt displays of my longing. And I would further wish to assure you, my Hob, that my wanting constantly to make love with you is but a part of my limitless adoration.” Dream tentatively takes Hob’s hand in his own. Hob can feel the solid weight of Dream’s engagement ring against the rough, scarred skin of his palm. “You are my best friend,” Dream continues, gently. “You make my favourite little cakes, flavoured with sugared violets, although I know that the perfume of them makes you sneeze. You are strict with Matthew’s diet, against your kindly instinct to give him treats, because you know I am concerned that he will grow so heavy, that one day he will surely plummet out of the ether.”
Hob huffs a tiny laugh.
“You have held me when I have mourned my mistakes, and grieved with me over wrongs I cannot ever hope to right. Your natural good spirits lighten my very being, and you will never know how unfathomably grateful I am for that blessing alone, as I was born to darkness, and made with the sole purpose of birthing nightmares, as much as dreams.”
A sob wells in Hob’s throat.
“You are tolerant of me, and my peculiarities, even though you do not always understand why I am the way I am, and if I ever needed a Champion, you would fulfil that role without question, or a thought for your own safety.” Dream brings Hob’s knuckles up to his luscious lower lip, but does not kiss them. “You even make brunch pancakes for my family.”
Hob snorts a kind of a sob, a kind of a laugh.
“In short, you are my beloved mate, my equal, and my love, and I will endeavour to show my less…carnal inclinations when we are in your working environment, because I would not have you think for one single second that I do not respect your vocation, and your dignity.”
Hob cannot hear the rest of the room, now, the usual din of people settling, clanking devices down, stowing bags under seats, shuffling off hats and jackets.
“May I please kiss you,” Dream concludes, “before I resume my place at the back of the hall? I promise it will be decent.”
Hob frowns, pained. “I really am sorry, Dove. I’ve messed up here, good and proper. Blown a bit of harmless flirtation out of all proportion.”
“It is fine.”
“No. Look, it’s me, I’m the one getting hot under the collar. Letting myself get distracted is my problem, and I should have dealt with this differently. And I’m sorry.”
“Hob,” Dream says, softly, “your lecture is about to start.”
“Ok. Right. But….”
“Be at ease, My Beloved. All is well between us.”
Hob makes an inarticulate and apologetic harumph, angry at himself.
And Dream rises up on his tippy-toes a little, and Hob somehow knows to dip his head down, and shuts his eyes, as Dream leans in and presses a kiss to his self-condemning brow.
And it is a benediction. Something holy. Dream’s mouth is cool, and velvety as a dawny petal. Hob feels purified, and at peace. He feels like he was just promised forever.
They stay like that for a heartbeat, which for them is as long as it needs to be, and then in the end Dream rests his own forehead against the place he just kissed, so sweetly and demurely.
“I am completely naked underneath this coat,” he says.
Hob has been feeling tears forming in his eyes. He blinks now for a different reason.
“What?”
“Beneath this outer garment,” Dream says, matter-of-factly. “I have nothing on at all.” He starts to walk away, even possibly swishing the skirt of the coat a little bit, God damn him. “Not, as they say, a single stitch. Just a little scented powder, here and there, smoothed against my bare skin, to make the feel of the fabric even more pleasurable, as it rubs and caresses intimately, against the tender points and planes of this extremely receptive body…”
Hob looks Dream up and down. No. He doesn’t look at him. He ogles him.
“You absolute brat.”
“But do not fear, my beloved,” Dream adds, innocently. “I shall keep my eyes downcast for the duration of your talk, and refrain from shooting any more sex lasers at you. I can only trust that you, as a professional, will not in any way be distracted by my presence? My nearly naked presence?”
“You sodding menace. I will make you pay for this, when we get home,” Hob promises, though gritted teeth.
“I do not doubt it,” Dream agrees. “But until then, if you feel yourself becoming overly warm, then please avail yourself of the fire extinguisher, which I have on good authority, is somewhere over there..?”
And he goes to stand, not in his usual place, but directly in Hob’s line of sight.
Professor Gadling picks up his pointer. Sips from his glass of water. It’s going to be a very long hour and a half indeed.