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It's been a very normal, mundane, and drab sort of day when Hob comes home at the end of it. There's the standard London drizzle tapping away at his window, transforming the world outside into a melting blur of darkening gray shot through with bright smears from electric street lights coming on one by one.
Electric lights. Brilliant. Literally brilliant. They're all going to pay for it in the long run of course, but fuck is it nice to just come home and flick a switch - like so - to light a room up.
There's a corpse on his sofa.
The corpse is on its back, arms rigid at its side. Its skin has a drained, cold paleness with veins as gray as the current sky. The face is perfectly still and perfectly expressionless, with flat blue eyes open and unseeing towards the ceiling. The startling ghastliness of the corpse is offset by the soft black t-shirt, along with black pajama bottoms decorated with alarmingly cheerful blue stars.
This is also, increasingly, a normal part of his day.
"All right, love?" He asks, shutting the door behind him. The first time he came home to Dream lying out stiff and apparently lifeless in his flat there had been a bit more yelling and panicking, followed by careful explanations about what the unexpected sight of a pale and unmoving body with open, unseeing eyes showing up in a safe and comfortable space can do to someone who has been through a few wars.
It kept happening, which meant Dream did not actually understand. But now Dream always makes an effort to put his form into pajamas first, possibly with the logic that if he were dressed comfortably for sleep, then he couldn’t possibly look like a corpse. Which meant he was trying, even if severely misguided. It's more touching than it should be.
The corpse on the sofa routine all started when they became...whatever they are now. The best explanation Hob ever got was that a chunk of Dream’s duties involve delving into the vast unconsciousness of himself, sinking into the wild depths that were made of every dreaming mind that created him to make sure everything was flowing smoothly.
It was all very metaphysical in all the ways that Hob tries not to think about too much. When he compared it to a computer shutting down for maintenance, he got himself a curdled look of such offended disgust that he knew he was on the money. He compared it to sleep instead, which mollified Dream at the time.
In the past this deeper delving into himself was done from the throne room. Then Dream started showing up in Hob's flat every now and again, refusing to explain why. Hob isn't stupid, so he doesn't ask why after the first few times. Whatever the metaphysics of it, Dream wants to come here and lie on Hob's furniture being vulnerable in the Waking world, despite all his grumblings about said world. Dream may not be able to explain the want for a space outside of work to go to, but Hob gets the difference between grading papers at his office and doing it in his living room. The fact that Dream seeks this space out makes Hob's chest go all fluttery and hot, and he will never question it ever.
It's why he doesn't make a fuss about the fact that Dream hasn't figured out that he looks like a fucking horror movie prop when he does it.
“Obviously.” Dream rumbles in answer. His voice has a deep, slow resonance that's being dragged up from the darkest fathoms. It's a growling sneer, the sharp warning crack of a cliff face about to give. It says that asking things like “all right?” is the most low, simple mindedly human thing Hob could ask, because there is no reason Dream would be otherwise.
“That sort of day then? Budge up.” Hob tosses his coat to the chair, which earns him an annoyed huff of a sound, and shoves a space for himself by Dream's hip, which earns him a growl.
“What. Sort of. Day?” Dream asks darkly. He turns his head, slowly. His movements are always slow when he's coming up from his not-sleep, and Hob is always fascinated by the process. He imagines Dream reeling himself back from wherever he has gone to, a long thread of his consciousness spooling up to refill the shape of his body. The waxy deadness in his skin doesn't exactly liven up, but it becomes more luminous. The stiffness melts from carved stone to…well not relaxed but something with a bit more give to it than stone anyway. The eyes change the most. The empty flatness of them turns into a clear, bright blue. They're flashing with liquid fire when Dream looks up at Hob, even if the rest of him is still an angrily stiff bunch of sharp edges.
“Not a great one, I think.” Hob leans, propping his shoulders on the back of the couch with Dreams waist and arm against the small of his back. Dream turns his head with his jaw clenched, and Hob reaches out, brushing the backs of his curled fingers in the barest caress over the plane of Dreams cheek.
There's a nearly imperceptible tremor in the core of the body he's leaned himself against. The corners of Dreams mouth tightens, and his eyes flare, like that lightest touch has opened a raw nerve.
“Maybe the sort of day I could help you forget?” Hob murmurs. He hasn't decided exactly what he's offering when he offers it. They could just stay here, watching some meaningless picture while Dream stays pressed between Hob and the sofa, and Hob combs his fingers through that downy soft black hair until all the tension melts from him. Hob could make that milky, sugary lavender infusion Dream is fond of and kiss him slow and sweet for hours. They could have a wild shag or the easiest love making. Whatever will help ease the coiled tension that’s churning just beneath Dream’s carefully still surface. Anything.
The caress continues. Hob traces his fingertips up the edge of Dreams cheekbone and sinks them back into the wild black hair to cradle around that impossible skull. There's a suspicious scraping sound down by his hip.
“That better not be you clawing up my upholstery.” He hums, rubbing his thumb over the hairline at Dreams temple. “Come on love, what do you want?”
“What. I. Want?”
The stillness breaks. A hand snaps up and clamps around Hob's wrist. Dream surges up, sitting awkwardly with Hob nearly in his lap, his eyes flashing dark and his teeth bared close to Hob's mouth.
“You would offer yourself then? A sacrifice to what you would call a bad day?” Dream asks, his voice dropping into a hard scrape. There's a sharp prick against the skin of Hob's wrist as claws grow from Dream's fingers. “You ask for what I want?”
“Obviously.” Hob repeats Dream’s earlier answer back at him. This is always the most uncertain part, when Dream is in one of these moods. This night could go a million different ways, but Hob finds himself keen for any of them. Any that keep Dream right here with all of his attention, snarling or otherwise, right on Hob that is.
There's a hiss of sound, sharp and explosive. The sharp pricks against Hob's skin turn into bright bursts of hot pain, and he feels the wet slide of blood down the inside of his arm. There's a shudder, and Dream suddenly curls down against him with his forehead ground into the curve of Hob's shoulder at the base of his throat. It's an awkward reach, but Hob brings his far arm around to run his palm up the knobbed curve of Dreams spine.
“It's alright, love.” He whispers. The slump is not a loosening at all. Hob can feel the jerky tension in every line of Dream’s body, and his love feels like a spring winding tighter and tighter.
“No.” Dream spits. “You ask what I want. The things I want. You are foolhardy. Brash. You understand nothing. Ignorant.”
“Flattery gets you nowhere, my Dream.” Hob keeps running his hand up and down Dream’s spine, thinking that he really is wound up if those are the best insults he can come up with.
There's a bizarre, inhuman sound. A sharp, jagged, snarling grind. Dream's other hand splays against his ribs, vibrating and sharp. The Endless goes quiet again, and Hob keeps stroking his back, happy to wait for whatever comes next.
“The way you say my name.” Dream whispers. “I want to open your ribs and make you say it. I want to pull each apart, one by one, like the petals of the rarest flower. I want to splay them, pin them. Expose the secret parts of you. I want to see how your lungs fill and shrink when you say my name, when you scream it. I want to see how your heart beats when you dream of me. I want to put my hand around it and feel the precious fluttering of it when I punch my fingers through the chambers. I want to feel it burst like the most wondrous fruit plucked out and crushed in my grasp. I want to feel the pockets of your lungs crackle against my palms when they fill with air. I want you to be screaming my name when I do it.”
His hand moves as he talks. Long fingers drag along the valleys between Hob's ribs, slow and methodical. They're also shaking, a sharp electric buzzing of claws through Hob's button down shirt.
That sort of night then?
“If you're trying to scare me off, you’ve already done that sort of thing in a few of my more exciting dreams.” Hob points out.
“I want to do it here.” It isn't even a whisper now. It's just an exhale shaped into words. Hob notices that it isn't a threatening snarl, or the low purr of Dream enjoying the build up to a grand old violently nightmarish time. There's a shivery dread. A horror deeper than the obvious goriness of it all.
“You fantasize about killing me?” Hob asks, curious. Ok fine, it wouldn't actually kill him, but it would feel like it.
“You can't die.”
It's an immediate response. Breathless. Rapturous. Terrified. Hob is starting to get the idea of what's going on here.
“Scariest thing you've said to me, that was.” He observes with some interest. It's true, after all. He's just learned that his immortality fuels his love's apparent wish to vivisect him in the plane where they both know it would hurt the worst, where the violence of it would be all of the bloody screaming reality without the cushioned fantasy of the Dreaming. Dream admitted that in a way that was clear that he thinks about it regularly. It is, objectively, a scary thing to learn. There it is. Horrifying and alarming. Huh! How about that. He doesn’t pretend to be surprised at himself when his cock twitches against his jeans. The only thing he isn’t sure of is if it’s the violent idea itself, or the fact that Dream is very obviously holding himself back from affectionately mauling him right this instant.
He's still petting his hand up and down Dream's spine, and he can feel the way his love bunches in on himself with a cracked whining sound that makes Hob's chest ache like his heart’s already been torn and exposed for the soft tender thing it is. There are talons still scraping anxiously at Hob's ribcage. There are still claws dug into his arm, but with less force than before. Dream is tense, already in a state, and in the fine process of working himself up into what could possibly be a legendary tantrum of self loathing.
“Right.” Hob declares, coming to a decision. “First thing: put a pin in that idea. I have to sit on it a bit and work up to it, but I did just get a little hard there, so it's not entirely off the table. I don't think that's what you want right now though.”
Dream froze with shock halfway through that, and Hob knows the best course of action is to keep moving before that impossible head has enough time to tangle itself up in a new way. The hand on Dream's spine sweeps up and grabs Dream by the nape, hard.
There is an explosive hiss of incredulous shock when Hob yanks him back. The face that Hob pulls off of his shoulder has wide obsidian eyes and a snarl with a wicked set of fangs. He holds the nightmare scruffed, meeting glittering dark eyes while his heart pounds with what isn't nearly enough actual fear.
“You want me to stop you.”
Dream’s eyes widen further, the hand on Hob's wrist drops lifeless to the sofa. Hob watches a burst of pink bloom across the unnatural white of his cheeks before the response is wrestled back down. Dream’s eyes narrow, but he's watching Hob closely.
“You are. Incapable. Of stopping me.” He growls. It's not a threat, just reality. Which is how most of Dream’s threats go.
“You're going to let me though, I think.” Hob says. He digs his fingers a little into the hard muscle of the back of Dream's neck, and takes several mental notes on the way the nightmare’s head lolls back and the hand on his ribs goes still. Hob turns where he's sitting to bring one leg up on the sofa, to bring himself closer to the odd monster he loves so dearly. He pulls Dream further, already feeling dizzy at the way the jagged, black eyed nightmare with his luminous white skin and razor teeth goes pliantly until he's leant back, practically being dipped with Hob over him.
“I think you need to let go, love. But you don't like what you might do if you let go.” He says with a smile. “How about we try things my way hm? You let go, but you hand the reins to me. Let me take charge.”
Dreams face goes through some fascinating shifts. He gazes up at Hob with such a raw, wounded want that it looks painful before the expression flinches when Hob's other hand comes up to stroke his cheek again. There's a jerk though Dream's limbs, and Hob is sure the joints are doing things that would make him feel queasy if he looked.
“You…here?” Dream asks, and his voice is thin and sharp and shivery. Hob knows why Dream’s clarifying that, and why here is making Dream writhe and flush with his mouth stretched a little too far on teeth that weren't meant for a human jawline. Hob knows that things feel different for Dream, when he's in the Waking. He's a creature of thought and idea, and touches in the more physical Waking world come across stronger than he's used to, more overwhelming. It’s not that Dream never bottoms, or even that he never submits. But it’s always in Dream’s own realm, where his submission isn’t really submission at all, but a coy play where he acts up the part of a sweet wilting fae lover or a wanton hedonist. He has a harder time staying in control of the situation, when they’re in Hob’s world, where there are less heated fantasies for him to sink himself into.
And the Dreamlord would never admit it, but Hob has noticed the way he keeps showing up in the Waking world to initiate things, even if it's just to cuddle up against Hob and find ways to get petted until he turns into a shivering puddle of nerves. But cuddling here is one thing, this is something else, something new.
“Here.” Hob nods, stroking his thumb slow and firm over Dream's nape, feeling the little vibration that goes down Dream's spine from that point. “I need you to say you want me to though, ok?”
That gets a furious, low hiss of a growl. Dream’s eyes flash and he snaps his mouth full of razor teeth with the sound like a bear trap. Hob lets him squirm and hiss and shudder. He's always such a trembling little thing, like there is too much going on inside for his outer shell to hold in. One day, Hob is going to properly catalog all of the ways his cosmic power of a lover shivers like a leaf when he thinks he's keeping himself all grim and stoic.
“You. Wish me …complicit.” Dream hisses, the words grinding out from his chest, as there's no way the wide maw of needle teeth is currently capable of speaking that clearly. “You would have me voice it. Admit to it. To be brought low and ragged.”
“I want your consent,” Hob huffs a small laugh, which might not be the best response but God does he love this proud twit, “you pretty, deranged little thing. I'm not doing anything if you don't actually want me to, and we can stop at any point. It's important to me that you get that.”
“My consent,” Dream spits, and this time there's a tearing sound when he does start clawing up Hob's upholstery, “is that I am allowing it.”
On paper, true enough. Dream is thrashing and snarling and gnashing his monstrous teeth with eyes like flaming pits. He's also kept in place by the weak, flesh and blood human hand holding him by the back of the neck. The only reason Hob is able to scruff him and have his head tilted pliantly back to expose the long white throat, is because Dream is letting it happen.
“I think you would allow me to do a lot of things you don't want me to.” Hob says gently. The thrashing stills, the snarling quiets, Dream's teeth finally shrink down into more standard shapes.
“There we are.” Hob breathes, smiling. His chest feels like it may burst, like Dream may end up getting his dark little fantasy after all. It's more than any man could deserve, seeing the way Dream goes quiet and panting, eyes fixed wide and blue again as they stare up at Hob. He keeps the hold on Dreams neck, and smoothes the other hand back through Dreams hair.
Dream makes a thin, fragile sound, eyes flashing black before returning to their clear blue.
“I need to know you actually want this, darling.” Hob explains again. “Not just that you're allowing it. I can't go thinking that you might just be going along with what you think I want from you.”
There's a shift of movement, more of a little squirm than the furious thrashing from a few seconds ago. Dream clenches his jaw together and stares, eyes glittering with new wetness. Christ. Hob is going to get a complex. It can't be good for his ego, having Dream like this.
“Yes.” Dream finally whispers, swallowing thickly. He even nods with little jerky movements against Hob's grip. “I want…what it is, you are planning. Here. In the Waking. I want you to have me. Your way.”
Hob rewards him with a hard kiss, mostly because if he doesn't get his mouth on those quivering pink lips he might explode. Dream goes lax with a whining sound that is absolutely going to give Hob a complex. Plush lips part immediately under his, as sweet as anything. Then teeth flash against his mouth, still sharp and wild but followed fast by Dream’s tongue lapping hungrily at the bite. There are hands clawing at him again, pawing at his back, twisting in his hair, digging into his hips. Dream is doing some impossible wiggling and Hob realizes that there is more than one pair of legs hitching around his hips and tangling between his own legs. It must look like he's snogging an enthusiastic spider.
“Enough of that.” He chides, pushing a hand on Dream's chest. Teeth sink into his lip again, and there's a low growl when Hob pulls his head back so Dream can't start trying to get his tongue down Hob's throat. Or trying to affectionately bite his lips off. “Shush. Lie back, and settle down dearest. Christ, you're all wound up.”
Another small push does the trick. Dream goes down with a little huff when his back hits the sofa. He’s suddenly as meek as a kitten, if that kitten had blood on its lips and a sharp intrigued glint to its eyes. Rather like a kitten then, actually.
Not that Hob is thinking much about kittens. He's far more focused on the way Dream’s skin has gained a more human flush to it, on the curious little chirrup noise that comes from him. He's looking up at Hob with swollen pink lips and his eyes still blue, but the dark blue of a deep ocean. The shirt he's wearing is stretched at the collar, revealing the tantalizing dip of his clavicles, and his ruffled hair is the most adorable thing Hob could imagine. It's such a flip from the snarling monstrous thing Hob had scruffed less than a minute ago, and all of it is so wonderfully Dream. Objectively terrifying in his violence, objectively sexier than sin.
“You're horrible for my ego.” Hob declares, sitting up kneeling between long legs that are still clad in the damn cartoon star pajamas. Dream answers this with a velvety pleased sound, and Hob feels legs bent around his hips and hitched up his waist and one bends a knee up on his shoulder-
“Ah-ah, stick with two.” Hob taps at one of Dream’s thighs before getting to work unbuttoning his shirt enough to tug it up over his head. “We're in my world right now, so we’re doing things my way. With a human shape. And stop eyeballing my ribcage, thanks. I told you we're putting a pin in that.”
He can hear the displeased hissing sound, and decides to give Dream a pass on that. There are times where words seem to lack the correct expressions for the Prince of Stories, and he has an astounding repertoire of inhuman, and even inorganic, sounds to fall back on. Despite his orders to stop with the rib stuff, there are long hands on his sides as soon as his shirt is tossed away. When he looks down, Dream’s eyes are half lidded and dark, fully fixed with stark hunger on Hob’s exposed torso.
There's a scrape of claw, smoother than before, and the bright line over his side goes right to his prick. It is…so tempting…to change his mind and tell Dream to have at it. Just to see what would happen, to see how it would feel to get torn apart by something that loves him so much. Except there's a little tense pinching at Dreams mouth, even as his eyes darken further and his hands spread over Hob's ribs to feel them expand with each breath.
“Hands to yourself.” Hob decides for both their sakes. He taps a finger between Dream’s eyes in chastisement, and nearly loses that finger when teeth snap up towards it. Dream is fast, but he's used to getting away with things, so there's only a surprised hitch of sound when Hob grabs under his jaw and shoves his head back.
“My way.” Hob reminds him, surprised at how low and rough his own voice comes out. His breathing picks up when Dream arches his head back against the base of the armrest with a thin sound of breathy want. The dark eyes are wide and blue again, there's a flush over that stunning face, and Dreams lips are parted on little panting breaths that make his chest flutter like a birds. Hob's cock is already uncomfortably tight in his jeans, his skin is prickly hot, and he hasn't even gotten Dream out of the stupid pajamas.
“Yes.” Dream breathes, pulling his hands away from Hob's sides. Hob gentles his grip, turning it into a caress. His thumb glides up to smear over the blood still on that plush bottom lip, smudging crimson and wet across it. It's not his brightest move, considering the fact that Dream just tried to take a finger off, but instead of sharp teeth there's just the softest, gentlest touch of Dreams tongue darting out against the pad of his thumb.
“That's good darling. Christ, you're gorgeous. Put your hands on the armrest over your head. Wonderful.” Dream’s arms move slowly, tentatively, up over his head to rest his hands on the couch. He keeps his head tilted back when Hob releases him, with his lashes lowered so he can watch Hob with his eyes slivers of deep blue. Hob hooks a finger in the loose collar of his shirt and gives a light tug. “Get rid of this for me love, that’s good.” The shirt melts into a fall of sand that vanishes before it hits the floor, exposing the long, lean lines of Dream. He’s perfectly displayed, the soft pinks and silky paleness belying the hard coiled muscles beneath. Dream is as much fantasy as he is nightmare, and he stretches out like a work of art. The line of his throat to his sternum, the sweep of his sides to the little dips of his armpits leading to the twists of muscles in his arms, the flat dip of his stomach leading to the sharp juts of his hipbones that were perfectly made for Hob’s hands to curve over them just so. Dream is a feast laid out just for him, and he intends to indulge.
“Keep your arms up there.” He orders softly, feeling the little seismic shimmers beneath his hands when he finally leans down over the prone Endless. Dream isn’t the only one who feels a bit cannibalistic sometimes, though Hob is more metaphorical with it. He sets his own teeth, blunt and human, to Dream’s exposed throat, right where the pulse will be when Dream remembers that he’s supposed to have a heartbeat. The taste of his skin is electric, a live wire of shock on Hob’s tongue. Dream seems cool and detached, but his skin burns like a furnace against Hob’s lips, only burning brighter when Hob sucks and bites and licks at the little section of flesh he’s set himself too until he feels it begin to flutter with the simulation of a heartbeat.
Dream makes a punched out, high and wounded animal sound. The lean form twists and arches beneath him, and Hob indulges. He bites up under Dream’s sharp jawline and skims his hands over the smooth expanse of hot skin. Up from Dream’s sharp hips, exploring the shape of Dream’s own ribcage, digging his fingers into the valleys between each rib and making Dream jerk with a whining hitch of his breath. When he swipes his thumbs over the rosy pink nipples, Dream convulses with a sound like he’s been electrocuted, so Hob keeps the pressure on them.
Soon Dream is writhing again, and Hob is delighted to see a bruise at Dream’s throat when he finally moves to get his mouth further down on his collar bone. Since Dream is allowing himself to be marked, Hob marks him with little nips and bites interspersed with soft kisses.
It’s all going perfectly, until Hob sets his mouth at one of Dream’s nipples and sucks.
Dream makes a sharp keening sound, a cut off gasped whine of a cry. Which means things are still perfect. Perfect, except for the hand that comes down hard between Hob’s shoulder blades and leaves four hot lines gouged into his skin. Hob stops. He stills his mouth, his hands, everything, and Dream’s keening turns into a sharper growling sound.
“Hob-”
“Hands to yourself, I said.”
There is a fascinating bunch of sounds coming from Dream. A soft whimpering that swings wildly into a snarling snap. The hand on his back twitches, digging his fingers in before releasing them in short succession. Hob reaches back and gently, firmly, takes Dream’s wrist in his grasp. He pulls Dream’s hand away and looks up to meet Dream’s black eyes when he moves it unresisting, and presses it down against the arm of the sofa.
Dream watches the progress of his own hand with wide eyes, as if shocked at how easily it’s moved. His breathing hitches up rapidly as he tilts his head to watch Hob pin his wrist down.
“Hob?”
“I want you to keep your hands there, until I say you can move them again.” Hob instructs slowly, watching for every single nuance of Dream’s shifting expressions. It’s a lot to ask, to have Dream restrained at all in The Waking. It’s verging into some dangerous territory, but he hopes that if there aren’t any binds, if he makes it clear that Dream will be the one holding himself down…
Dream stares at his hands, glances at Hob, then looks back at his wrist. When Hob releases it, it stays exactly where it was put, and Dream nods with a small jerk of his head. Hob smiles with all the warmth he feels filling his chest, and the smile just grows painfully large when Dream gapes up at him with glistening eyes.
“I-”
“You’re perfect, my Dream.” Hob soothes, running his hands back down Dream’s sides. “That’s perfect, stay just like that my darling.”
Dream makes a hitched gasp of a noise and shuts his eyes. Hob is tempted to tell him to open them again, but he doesn’t want to risk pushing. Not yet anyway. He finally gets his hands to the waist of the soft pajamas, and tugs them down as far as he can with how Dream’s legs are spread around him. He pulls the waistband up and away from Dream’s cock, exposing the long and flushed line of it jutting sharply up towards one hip with the tip peaking red past the foreskin.
“Get rid of these love, that’s it.” Hob breathes as the pajamas melt away like the shirt, leaving Dream finally, beautifully nude. “Fuck, just look at you.”
Dream tucks his face against his upper arm, looking like he’s about to start hyperventilating. The breathing only gets faster when Hob strokes one hand up and down Dream’s side and presses his other palm to the searing line of his cock. It throbs against his palm, and his own twinges painfully. He only spares enough time to get one hand to unfasten and unzip his jeans, just to relieve the pressure before getting back to the vision before him.
“You’re doing so well, love.” He says, wrapping his hand around Dream’s cock and watching the way the long body jolts and twists. There’s the sound of rending fabric up by Dream’s head, but Hob gave up on this sofa a while ago.
“I know,” he whispers, pulling his fist in slow, long strokes. There’s a burst of hot wetness against his palm, and he gathers it to make the next stroke smoother. “I know, it’s a lot here, isn’t it?”
Dream makes a choked sound. He’s shivering, nearly sobbing with tiny whimpering sounds escaping from his gritted teeth and his hips moving in helpless little thrusts into Hob’s hand. He sounds pained, shattered, he’s the most beautiful thing Hob’s seen in all his long life.
“Hob!”
“Can you come for me?” Hob asks in a rush, settling one hand on Dream’s sternum with the other stroking his cock faster. “I want to see you come, darling. I know you can go again if you do. You don’t have any use for something as mundane as a refractory period, do you?”
There’s enough of Dream’s brain still functioning that the teasing gets Hob a short growling sound, though it’s shaky and weak, muffled against Dream’s arm. He also starts fucking up into Hob’s fist, his cock dripping onto Hob’s fingers. Hob squeezes, and Dream’s mouth falls open on a ragged cry.
“Hob. Hob. Hob- Hob fuck me Hob-” Dream is panting the words, gasping them between little hitching cries.
“I will love, I will. Let me see you come first. Come on. That’s it darling, how did I get so lucky? I can’t believe you’re mine.”
At “mine” Dream’s back snaps up into a sharp arch. Hob has to hold his slender hips down with one hand and keep stroking with the other, growling half mindless praises in a wild rush. Dream bites his teeth down on a choked sound, a staccato whining cry as he shudders. His cock throbs in Hob’s hand, shooting come in perfect little pearly stripes on the pink flushed skin of Dream’s stomach and hips.
“Please please please Hob please-” Dream is still whimpering, his cock is still hard as iron in Hob’s grip, still dribbling come onto Hob’s fingers as he milks it in his hand just for the way Dream shakes. He’s all fantasy now. The nightmare-sharp lines of him are softened and his skin has a glowing sheen to it. There are little pink marks from Hob’s teeth that are only there because Dream wishes it so. Dream wants to be marked, wants to be claimed.
“I know darling.” Hob gasps out. There’s sweat dripping down the small of his back, and his hands feel uncoordinated when he shoves his jeans down enough to finally free his prick. “Fuck. I know darling. That was perfect. You’re perfect.”
“Please-” Dream writhes when Hob’s hands leave him, even for that short time it takes for Hob to get his jeans shoved down past his hips. “Come back. Come back. Need you. Need you in me-”
“Shh love, I’m here. I have you.” The shuddering quiets as soon as Hob settles a hand on Dream’s hip. “Christ, look at you. I had all these plans to get my mouth on every inch of you, you know. I was going to get those pretty legs up over my shoulders so I could eat you out until you’re crying. God knows when I’m going to get you this cooperative again.”
“Later.” Dream growls, and it’s such a flash of the usual imperious demand that Hob laughs, bright and warm and utterly helpless to this impossible creature.
“Yes yes, you got your way. Can you make yourself ready for me, gorgeous? I don’t have the patience to- fuck!”
He growled out the curse, because Hob had worked his hand down beneath Dream’s bollocks, fingers seeking and then finding Dream already slicked and hot and so open that his finger slipped into the silky soft heat of him.
“JesusfuckinChrist, you’re fucking spoiling me. I’m spoiling you.” He growls, and Dream makes an odd cooing sound of agreement. He’s soft and pliant and sweetly rocking his hips down against Hob’s touch. Every inch seems the perfect little dream, except for the hard twisted lines of his forearms leading to his hands tensed and digging his splayed, curled and clawed fingers viciously into the arm of the couch. There’s a little fall of soft stuffing that’s been building up on the floor and caught in Dream’s hair, and Hob can’t be bothered to give a single shit about furniture.
“Hob please - please I need to touch - I have to -”
“Shh love.” Hob soothes, though Dream makes a high sound of loss. “You’re doing so good, just keep them up there for me darling. I have you.”
He wants to be soft. He wants to be gentle. He wants to go slow just so he can watch every twitch and shiver when he pushes into his Dream, when he sees how Dream reacts to being filled like this in this realm. What must it feel like, when you’re so unused to the stark physical sensations? When having a body at all is more about the visuals of it, until Dream allows himself to become something fleshy and touchable like this. It’s a moment that should be savored, sinking into an open welcoming Dream so soon after he was a furious nightmare.
There’s a lot of shoulds. Ironically, it’s all that same physical reality that does it for Hob. In the Dreaming he probably could have sunk into the pink, hazy fantasy of it all. Here he feels the soft slick heat of Dream’s ass fluttering against the head of his cock. He hears the needy little noises Dream makes and the way he writhes serpentine to rock himself down with greedy abandon, all the stiff pride melted away into this gorgeous desperate creature. Hob manages to ease in until he feels the first ring of muscle stretch and then clamp around the flared head of his cock, practically pulling him in. With a snarled curse, his hips slam forward, burying himself to the hilt far faster, far rougher than he would any other time.
Dream wails. He finally moves his face away from where it was half hidden against his upper arm, and his expression is a shocked, shattered relief. His eyes are black again, but a liquid black compared to the sharp obsidian earlier. They shine beneath his lashes, which sweep dark and shadowed against the pink flush of his face. Except it isn’t pink, not when Hob actually looks. The blood colored flush under Dream’s skin has gone strange, blue and purple and shifting with a gleam of shadow. His skin is softened pearl, iridescent. Even the sound he makes hums in the air more than it makes any describable sound. It buzzes against Hob’s skin with pops of syrupy pleasure, with raw aching relief and want and need.
Which makes it all the more incredible when Dream gasps “Fuck!” with a hoarse shout and grinds himself down against Hob’s hips. Horrible. He’s horrible for Hob’s ego.
“Fuck, that’s it. Keep your face turned like that, let me see you love.” Hob pants roughly. He gets his hands on the crests of Dream’s hips, where they fit so perfectly for him to grasp and dig his fingers in to haul Dream up into each thrust. He fucks into Dream and lets go, snapping his hips against him again and again and again. Dream tears at the armrest, and there’s the gleam of diamond sharp teeth returning when his mouth opens on a constant stream of the gorgeous little cries that Hob punches out of him.
“Hob! Hob please I need to touch please please please-!” Dream whimpers the pleas like a mantra, each one spurring Hob on. “I’ll be good I won’t rip you, I won’t break anything please let me-”
“Almost darling. Almost.” Hob gasps, digging his own hands in when Dream wails and rips a chunk out of the sofa. It’s perfect, everything about him. He’s a nightmare, a dream, a perfect uncontrollable and unknowable thing that let himself be something animal and primal, that let Hob hold him down and take him. It’s so perfect and it can’t last nearly as long as Hob needs it to. He can feel the pleasure tightening low in his gut with a heavy urging that has him thrusting harder and faster than he intended. He barely has the mind left to aim his thrusts to get the perfect angle for Dream, not that Dream seems to need it. Dream’s cock is dripping again, flushed the same strange and gorgeous galaxy of colors as the bruises on Dream’s throat.
“Fuck! Fuck let me see you come again.” Hob snarls. “Come like this for me love. One more time. One more time for me, and I’ll let you touch.”
Dream is keening with tighter and tighter little gasps. Hob wouldn’t be surprised if he could make himself orgasm just at the promise that he would be allowed to touch, but he doesn’t care either way. Not when Dream is screaming with his cock twitching untouched, shooting more streaks of come over his shimmering skin.
“Fuck that’s it. That’s it. God yes.” It’s close, he’s so close. He’s rutting wildly towards his own crisis. “Go on love. You can touch now. You’re so good, you’ve been so good-”
He’s interrupted when Dream’s arms explode from the sofa. Despite his desperate promises Hob can feel talons punching through the skin of his back with searing pops of bright pain. There’s a wild snarling sound that has to come from Dream, because Hob’s throat could never make that noise. Especially not when Dream bites down on it with a mouth full of knives. Hob comes like that, with his cry choked off under Dream’s teeth and Dream making obscenely wet purring sounds through a mouthful of blood. Dream keeps moving against him, rocking down on him and fucking himself on Hob’s cock as if milking every last drop out of him.
Hob half wonders, without any real concern, if he’s about to get his throat ripped out despite all that effort to calm Dream down. But the teeth release from him as the last bright waves of his orgasm roll though him. His cock softens and slips free, and Dream settles with a small animal sound. Hob groans and collapses onto Dream, who makes a pleased little noise and sets to work lapping at the slowly bleeding gash at Hob’s neck.
“All right, love?” Hob manages after a moment, in a shaky repeat of his first question that kicked off this exciting evening. Dream has his limbs wound tenderly around Hob and is nuzzling under his ear, and Hob is perfectly happy to lie here like his entire purpose is to just let Dream pet and paw at every inch of him.
“Obviously.” Dream purrs, sounding so close to drunk that Hob can’t help but laugh.