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Hob had something he’d longed to discuss with Dream since perhaps the 18th century. Yes. That long.
Were they any ordinary couple in any ordinary relationship without six hundred years of pining and one-sided conversations, he would simply sit Dream down on his sofa with a mug of cocoa and an excessive amount of marshmallows, and like a responsible adult talk about it. But the previous instance of him bringing up things he’d longed to discuss with Dream since the dawn of civilization, resulted in Dream storming out into the night as if he had insulted him from head to toe, so Hob couldn’t be blamed for dawdling.
Hell, it had taken him over half a millennium to muster enough courage just to suggest they could meet more often, and he needed another half to recover from it. But another six hundred years? Of wanting and hating himself for wanting? He wouldn’t be able to stand it. Especially when they had finally disclosed their hearts to each other.
So here was the plan.
Invite Dream over for a film night. Cuddle with him and let him watch the film.
The cuddling part was not consequential. The film was. The ending, to be precise.
As Belle and her no-longer-beast-but-human prince danced together, Hob watched Dream watch the ending. Dream was impassive as always, and his pretty profile made it harder for Hob to discern his moods.
“So what do you think?” Hob asked after a not so casual gulp of cocoa. He would prefer at least a beer, but he needed a clear mind tonight.
“It is an old tale,” Dream said. “The elements of which could be traced back to Ancient Greece.”
“Yes, go on with your research paper.” Hob wrapped back his arm around Dream’s shoulders. “A pretty old tale, right. Heard it and watched it dozens of times. Still, the ending always kills me.”
Dream shifted his gaze from the rolling credit to Hob, and slowly lifted an unimpressed brow. “I fail to see how it is killing you at the moment.”
“Because it has already killed me when the prince was brought back to life. Your sister is just running late.”
Dream huffed. “Do you prefer it to be a tragedy, then?”
“Happy ending is nice. I love happy endings. It’s just the part of the Beast turning back to a human doesn’t sit right with me.”
“He was inflicted by a curse which could be lifted by the act of true love. He had learnt to love Belle and was loved by her, and thus the spell was broken and he returned human.” Dream explained in all seriousness that Hob had a feeling such a curse did exist in the world, but he was too afraid to ask.
“Logically.” He nodded. “But personally I want him to remain a beast.”
“What purpose might it serve in the story?”
“It doesn’t need to have a purpose. Just look at him.” Hob played it back to the last scene of the film. “This. Just a normal guy you will find on the street. There is nothing interesting about him.”
“Interesting,” Dream said. “Perhaps you find him uninteresting because he has completed his character arc, leaving no more conflicts in the story to hold your interest.”
“Or no more claws to hold it.”
Dream now lifted another brow at him. How can a man lift his eyebrows in such a charming way, Hob had no idea. But then Dream was not a man to begin with.
“Are you saying you are interested in his bestial appearance?” Dream asked with the same haughtiness he had had when he first spoke to Hob in the 14th.
And of course there was no other response Hob could make other than “Yeah, that’s right.” with a suggestive grin, but instead of making Hob’s dream come true like any sensible partner would, Dream tilted his head, thumbing at the handle of his empty mug as if it was an unsolvable puzzle Hob had thrown at him.
“In a sexual way?” he said.
“Yeah,” Hob said, suddenly not so sure with his words, with Dream squinting at him like he had committed an unspeakable crime. “You should know that your lover, I, happens to be one of those people.”
“What people?”
“Those who have, academically speaking, monstrous desire. Or … in a plainer term,” he added as Dream looked more confused about it. “Those who would be more than glad to fuck a monster.” He rushed the last part in a mumble. Somehow it felt wrong to say fuck in front of Dream, even though he had done it so many times when they were together.
The look Dream gave him was exactly that of the cat served with a salad, although Hob wasn’t yelling at him at the moment. “Why would you humans find sexual appeal in other beings that are not of your species?”
“You tell me. You are the wet dreams of everything.”
“I do not cause them. You are the ones who conjure those dreams, and they belong more to my sibling’s realm than mine,” Dream said. “So you would like the prince to remain a beast for your desires, even though you know he would suffer from it?”
“That’s not what I wanted to say.” Hob sat up as his heart leaped to his throat. “You are not … He’s not like … He is a fictional character. You can do whatever you want with him, but you aren’t. I don’t want you to change yourself for me, or even suffer for my sake.”
Dream stared at him. The same way he had when Hob had said he was lonely.
Damn. Fuck. He had done it again, hadn’t he?
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Hob swallowed. It wasn’t raining tonight. The quietness in the living room rang in his ears. At least there weren’t tears in Dream’s eyes this time, and Dream was still clinging to his mug of cocoa even though he had finished it half an hour ago. He looked soft like this, without his coat and boots. Soft. And very much human. “I know since the beginning you are not human. Though didn’t know what manner of creature you are, back then. King of Dreams and whatnot. But I know you are not us. And I just want you to know you have no need to make yourself human for me. You can go all fear-not me like you had the first time we met. I wouldn’t mind at all.”
He took Dream’s hand into his own. It was slightly cooler than his, but nothing inhuman like. Pale knuckles and black-painted nails. As perfect as a sculpture.
“Fear-not you?” Dream said.
Of course it was the only thing he heard. “You know, your wings and eyes and feathers. What people now call biblically accurate angels.”
Dream made a face like he had eaten a bug. “You saw me as an angel when we first met?”
“Couldn’t think of another word to describe you.” Hob grinned. “And you are always an angel to me.”
He leaned for a kiss, but Dream stopped him with a hand against his chest, looking somehow alarmed.
“Do I also appear as a biblically accurate angel now?”
“What? No.”
“What do I look like, then?”
Hob blinked, and blinked. “You know what you look like.”
“How I perceive myself is irrelevant to how you perceive me.” Dream set down the mug and laced his hands together on his lap, as if he was posing on his throne for a portrait. “Describe my current appearance.” He added as if it occurred to him as an afterthought, “If you would.”
Hob just loved him being a haughty prince.
“All right, if you want me to drown you with compliments. But I’m afraid I can’t wax poems for you like that twat could. But you are … pretty. Never seen any man be this beautiful. Your hair is the colour of ebony. A raven wing. A mess but the most gorgeous. And there are stars in your eyes like they are holding the entire universe within.”
Hob didn’t mean it, but he was smiling like a lovestruck fool again. It would usually make Dream smile his little smile, but Dream looked more baffled.
“But I look human,” he said, sounding more like a question than a confirmation, as if it hadn’t been his choice to appear as the most gorgeous man with the most kissable lips and bluest eyes for Hob in recent centuries.
“Since the 17th.”
“So you had been perceiving me as an angel until 1689? What changed that stopped you from seeing me as such?”
“What?” Hob said, getting as confused as Dream looked. “Why are you acting like you had no idea what you looked like at all?”
“How I perceive myself is irrelevant to how you perceive me.” It was that convoluted and vague statement again. “And I would like to hear it from your perspective. Tell me your tale, Hob Gadling.” Dream’s voice slipped back to the dark, storm-brewing one he had in his realm, and the image of the White Horse, the taste of ale before hops, the scents of roasted meat and spicy herbs, rose from the bottom of Hob’s mind as he said, “From the beginning.”
“Did I hear you say you have no intention of ever dying?”
It was the voice, sweet and deep and echoing with each syllable like the bells in Canterbury Hob had heard in his youth. The sound of Heaven.
He was never a religious man. Never liked going to church since he had been a boy, once he had learnt there were people buried beneath the floor, rotting under their feet while they prayed. If some crusader held him at knifepoint and demanded him to quote a line from the Old Testament to have himself spared, he would simply fight back with his teeth and nails because he could never remember a word from it.
But he knew the angels and devils and the Revelation and Apocalypse. People talked about them as often as they warned of fae or changelings. But no one had ever mentioned a voice, dark and deep as the shadow of something loomed over him like a silent eclipse.
He barely knew his letters, having no use for them in his entire life. Knew not Latin nor the fancy Norman French the noble liked to keep among themselves. But he was certain there was no word in any language in this or any other lands that could capture what stood before him. Eldritch, perhaps, chthonic, kaleidoscopic, words he had picked up only centuries later, but none was close.
Wings, he saw. Black, iridescent feathers like that of a raven, spreading out like claws as dozens of wings folded and unfolded themselves in all impossible angles, appearing out of nowhere and vanishing into nowhere.
It had no face. Only eyes, countless of them, hidden between the feathers, forming out of the feathers, peering down at him as if from between clouds, from the high heavens, to judge him as if it was the very day he would die. As if he had already died.
Did I hear you say you have no intention of ever dying? It had asked, with the sweet voice which Hob would have thought belonged to a beautiful, mortal man.
It was beautiful. But in the most otherworldly way.
Hob swallowed dryly, no longer tasting the sweet ale on his lips. He should have at least attended the sermon when they had passed a church earlier the day, to learn what one should act when facing a being such as this. An angel, was it? There was nothing else who would have beautiful wings and a divine voice and curve light around its form as easily as breathing. An angel, he must be. But not Death.
Hob sucked a breath to put back his smile. “Yeah, that’s right.” And what would he do about it? Smite Hob right where he sat and dirty his pretty feathers?
“Then you must tell me what it is like,” said the strange being. “Let us meet here again, Robert Gadling, in this tavern of the White Horse in one hundred years.”
At that Hob’s men laughed together as if they had just heard a terrible joke. Even Henry, who would pray for his wife and daughters every night, jested that he would be the Pope by then. It was either that it was a norm to have a celestial being drinking with you in a tavern and Hob had spent his whole life somehow totally ignorant of it, or he was trapped in a fever-induced dream even though he didn’t remember when he had gone to bed and when he had even got sick. No matter which, he could only play along, could he not?
So he grinned and accepted the arrangement, however insane it sounded and looked.
He watched the angel shift and blend into the shadows, disappearing without a trace. And he sat there, nursing his drink, waiting for this dream to be over, to wake up in a bed or on the ground or even in a pigsty somewhere, but he just sat there. Tasted the thyme and yarrow in his drink. Felt the rough planks of the table against his palms. Heard the others laugh and mumble and on and on, and the distant bells after evensong faded with the setting sun. And he was still there.
He couldn’t sleep that night. And it was until the next morning he dared to ask his fellows about what had actually happened, pretending to be too drunk to remember a thing.
“I didn’t say anything strange, did I?” he asked when they were saddling their horses.
“You always say strange things, Hobsie,” Edwin said. “Be more specific.”
“I think I made a bet with someone. Was it you?”
“Right. And you owe me your pouch and your sword and your horse now. Hand them over.”
“I don’t remember losing anything. Yet.”
“Now you remember.” Edwin huffed and swung himself up his horse. “It was that little lording. Came over when you boasted that you’d never die.”
“A little lording?” Hob paused. “What was he like?”
“A little tall. Black hair. Acting just like a spoiled brat from those noble houses. The kind you would try to swive if you weren’t that drunk.”
Hob made no comment about it. They left London. And for months he avoided going back to the White Horse, wary of whatever the hell they had put into his ale.
“You were not drugged,” Dream said. “Nor were you inebriated enough to hallucinate the whole exchange.”
Hob had to shake his head to blink off the centuries-old memories that played before his eyes as clear as a 4D film. “Nice trick you pulled, love,” he said, perplexed and a little turned on, because that power of Dream had given him a new insight into mindfuckery. “It was what you pulled on me back then, wasn’t it? To scare me?”
“I never intend to scare you,” Dream said with a hidden smirk on his lips. He was now cuddling with the stuffed raven which was supposed to be nesting in Hob’s bed but had somehow ended up here on the sofa with them, because apparently even an eldritch being like him had a soft spot for cuddle toys. Just look at him like this, Hob would never use the word scary to describe him.
“Glad to hear that, then.” Hob pressed a kiss on Dream’s cheek. “‘Cause you saw my students at our pub for trick-or-treating last week. You were just at the same level as they were.”
“But I recalled you being scared the next time we met,” Dream said.
“What? Me? No.”
“Then tell me. What happened next?”
Hob died a year later. That was it.
Should be it, were he not by some inexplicable power brought back to life after he had been struck down by a mounted knight on a battlefield.
He had died. He was certain about it, as certain as anyone would having their chest pierced by a lance and head trampled by a destrier. But he woke some time later with a start among the dead bodies, totally unscathed except for the bloodied hole on his tunic, not even a scar left where he had been stuck, as if it was just a nightmare he had been through.
But he had been through a similar day like this. Surreal but also grounded by the smells around him, horrid and sickening this time, the soft, blood-stained earth beneath his hands and knees as he crawled up from among the bodies, and the cries of ravens hovering over the field—
A hundred years.
Hob stiffened.
The haunting sight of the strange angel before him, all wings and eyes, whispering of a hundred years, emerged in his mind like some nights it would when he was deep in his sleep.
He wasn’t a religious man. But he knew the story. He wasn’t born in a stable. There weren’t any wise men coming from faraway lands just to bring him gifts for his birth. And he certainly couldn’t walk on water or come back to life after death. So it had to be something to do with the beautiful being he had seen in the tavern a year ago.
What? Like all he had done in his whole life were good deeds that made him worthy to be resurrected? When poor people and innocent children died every day with no one shedding a tear for them? Like he had never cut anyone’s throat for coins, fuck with any man and fuck them like he would with any women?
There was only one explanation for this.
It wasn’t an angel he had met in the White Horse.
“It was the only thing you were right about me,” Dream said, looking as amused as a cat holding down a thrashing mouse with its paws.
“Shh,” Hob said. “I was saying—”
If it wasn’t an angel, then it must be a demon.
Those eyes, those black, blade-sharp feathers, they looked more of Hell than Heaven.
Hob already knew what he would face before entering the White Horse, before sitting down and looking up from his table at the same heavy shadow which blotted out the candlelight around them, because he had already seen it in his dreams: burning hooves, horns, faces changing from lamb and goat and raven, half-hidden behind magnificent wings.
It was a wonder no one screamed at such a sight. Perhaps because it was true in the story, that the Devil wore different faces for different men. So while all the others only saw a man, like his fellows did a century ago, Hob saw this strangely beautiful creature.
“Hello, Hob,” the strange thing said, just like a man would, damn his large, pretty, goat-like eyes.
“Have you ever questioned your sanity, Hob?” Dream asked.
Hob paused midway drinking. He had refilled their mugs while he was talking, but Dream didn’t give him a chance to even take a new sip. “What?” he said.
“Because I do, now,” Dream intoned, leaning back against the sofa with his head thrown back, as if he had got bored with Hob’s story. “Which is something I should have done the day I first saw you.”
“What?”
Dream smiled at him. “Do you know why my sister granted you your wish?”
They had never talked about it, and Hob never bothered to ask. But now he was curious. “Because I’m a handsome man?”
Dream made a look that was the equivalent of rolling his eyes. “Because I told her I doubted any sensible creature would ever crave an eternal life.”
“And you were wrong.”
“I was right,” Dream said. “For you are surely not sane.”
It was Hob’s turn to roll his eyes.
He said he wasn’t a demon, but with no explanation of what he was, and his appearance next century didn’t give Hob any clue either. Ravens, serpents, winged lions, and hawks and polyhedrons and glimpses of twilight and thousands and thousands of forms. He was everything, all at once. It hurt Hob’s head just by glancing at him, but Hob couldn’t look away, just like a moth to a candle.
It was clear he was something beyond Hob’s comprehension, perhaps even beyond all mortal men. He had said he was interested in mortal life, so Hob did his best to tell him his mortal life in the last century, but he simply raised a hand which was also a claw and feather and limb at Hob in the middle of it, and asked of the name of the lame playwright who just happened to be sitting in the tavern with them that night.
And off he went. Clicking his black hooves and cat paws and bare feet on the floor, he left Hob and sought that twat for a talk.
Hob went to watch A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1596, only because he wanted to have proof to tell the world how bad a playwright that twat was. But all those slipped out of his mind as soon as the fae appeared on stage, and it struck him with an epiphany the moment Bottom’s head was cursed into a donkey’s.
The fae. Of course.
What else could shapeshift, grant one immortality, and be interested in mortals and strike bargains with men without asking for their souls?
And it mustn’t have been simply a cursed mortal like Bottom or Tam Lin, or a little fairy like Rumpelstiltskin or Puck that Hob had been seeing over the centuries, because even though he always stayed out of an arm’s reach, Hob could feel the power within him, humming in the air like an ancient tune.
Could he be King of Fairy?
No. There was no way for the Fae King to be interested in a mortal like him. No matter. He had plenty of time and plenty of books to figure it out.
But then he no longer had the heart to figure out anything else.
When Hob returned to the White Horse at the end of the century, he had no answer in his heart, and barely a filthy rug on his body.
His stranger—Hob had decided to call him, a suitable name for an unnameable creature like this—was already waiting for him by the table. He had taken a human-like form that night, wingless, tall and dark, wrapped in a black robe with a large ruby around his neck. His face was that of a horned lamb, but nothing demonic, unlike the second time they had met. A silver laurel wreath rested atop his head, that reminded Hob of fauns, Pan, ancient gods from distant lands.
Perhaps he was a pagan god. Like Thanatos. Hades. Hob wouldn’t be surprised to find ambrosia in the cup served for him. He grabbed it for a desperate gulp, not caring if it would trap him in the realm of fae or the underworld. Cold and sweet it wet his lips, washing off the bitterness that lingered in his mouth for months. Wine. And fine wine it was. The bread was soft and warm even. But whatever. It was the first meal he had had in days, perhaps even weeks, and he could eat a man’s shoe if it was on his plate as well.
The stranger watched him in silence, and he must have looked like a poor stray on the street to someone like him, god or fae or whatever creature he was.
Hob resisted the urge to wipe his mouth with his dirty sleeve, and took a breath to sit properly and tell his tale. Of how he had lost his wife and children. His house. His lands. Everything he had earned. Everything. And he hated every second of it.
“So do you still wish to live?” his stranger asked, no louder than a whisper. No more mirth or amusement in his voice.
The shadows from lit candles flickered over his face, which as Hob watched, morphed into a humanlike face, tight-lipped and furrowed-brow. As if he felt he was responsible for Hob’s suffering, his all-black eyes were glinting in traces of tears.
Hob’s heart both sunk and leaped at the sight. He had no idea. That he was as important to the stranger as the stranger to himself. He would go on, of course. There were many things he still wished to live for. But even if there was nothing left in the world he would look forward to, he would still live, to endure another century of suffering, and another, and many other after, lest his stranger shed tears for his death.
Dream was silent when Hob took a break from his story in favour of his drink. When he turned to Hob at last, it was that tearful look on him again, as if Hob had just said he wished to go with his sister now.
“It started as a wager between my sister and I,” he said. “With my cruelty. My intention to see you suffer. And yet I was the reason for you to keep going?”
“Love.” Hob reached for his hand to stop him from worrying the seams on the poor stuffed toy. “It was a choice you gave me, which I accepted willingly and happily. You aren’t the only reason I go on. There are many things I’d live for. You’re just one of them. Though a very important one. Come, you silly duck, cuddle with me.”
Dream let go of the raven and cuddled with him.
Even in a human form, the stranger was as striking and untouchable as he ever had been. He was dressed in all black, with the same ruby at his throat, hair long and combed beautifully in this century’s fashion. He could pass as a man in the crowd, but on a closer look, his form was too tall and slender to be a human, his ears were too pointy, his teeth too sharp, and stars were gleaming in his eyes, just like what Hob had imagined a fae would look like.
And speaking of fae. “That lad, Will Shakespeare,” he said. “You made some kind of deal with him, didn’t you?”
“Perhaps.”
“What kind of deal? His soul?”
“Nothing so crude,” the stranger purred, sending a pleasant shiver through Hob’s body.
Hob set down his teacup. The heat from the hot tea lingered on his fingers like some trace of magic. “He wrote you a play, didn’t he? Midsummer Night. He wrote it for you, in exchange for his fame or talents or whatever it was.”
The stranger titled his head, like a crow finding a shiny coin among a nest of straw. “Why do you ask if you believe you already know the answer?”
He didn’t deny it. And there was an amused curve hidden on his pretty lips.
Hob grinned. “Four hundred years, and finally I’ve learnt one thing about you. Now, who are you? Truly? What’s your name?”
The last question was merely a tease. He knew well a creature like this would never reveal his true name, but he would settle for an alias, and treasure it as he treasured every sight of the stranger.
He watched the stranger part his lips, but damn, before any word could come out from that pretty mouth, some Lady Johanna Constantine showed up and accused them of being the Devil and the Wandering Jew.
“If you had a nickel,” Hob said, “for every time someone mistook you for the Devil, how many would you have now?”
Dream was currently sprawling over Hob like an oversized kitten. He hummed without lifting his face from Hob’s chest. “I have no use for nickels,” he said. Fair enough.
Lady Johanna threw out a sketch of them onto their table, as if it was irrefutable proof that they were indeed what she thought they were.
He looked horrible. And was the figure sitting opposite him supposed to be his stranger? Who the hell had made this sketch? There was no way the stranger looked like that in the other’s eyes.
Hob wanted to take a better look at it, but one of Constantine’s men held the knife too close to his stranger’s throat. Iron or silver or whatever it was made of, he couldn’t risk it.
He splashed the steaming tea at one’s face and swung his fist at the other. It had been decades since he last fought with his fists, and it felt good, the smack of flesh and bones. One down and the other. He marched forth, only to stop at the knife Constantine pulled out at him. Not that he feared a tiny blade. But he hated to think that he had to hurt a woman.
So he paused just to give her the chance to flee, but she stood guarded. Well, they would take their own leave, then—
A wisp of golden dust brushed past his cheek, and he turned to just in time to catch the stranger blowing magic at Constantine, which pulled her down to her knees and made her plead under her breath.
Ghost, his stranger said. Whatever it was. Whatever he was.
Though the next time they met, the stranger looked totally human. No fangs or horns or claws. Nothing strange on him that would tell Hob he wasn’t human, as if finally he realised he had forgotten to put on his glamour for Hob, as though Hob’s heart was a thing he must work hard to ensnare.
The stranger sat across from him in the warm gaslight, relaxed and soft, with even a small indulgent smile playing on his lips, looking simply like a man drinking at a table at the end of a long day, in the company of an old, dear friend. And Hob thought, you are just like me, aren’t you?
And the rest is history.
Hob waited, and waited. And a hundred and thirty years later, his stranger, his friend, his love, returned to him one day in spring. He said he was Dream. Not an angel or demon or god or fae, but the embodiment of dreams and nightmares. Whatever he was, Hob loved him all the same.
“You see,” Hob said, combing Dream’s impossibly soft hair with his hand, “You don’t have to force yourself to be a human for me.”
“I see,” Dream said. “And you are the one not seeing, here.”
“What?”
Despite Hob’s protest, Dream disentangled himself and settled back to his regal posture in his seat. “What do I look like now?”
Hob squinted, but Dream was the same pretty man he had been seeing since 1889. “Just like what I’ve told you.”
“And what do you think I would look like in the eyes of a cat?”
“What?” Why were they talking about cats?
“A cat will see me as a cat,” Dream said, each word slow and deliberate as if they were etched on stones. “As a wolf will see me as a wolf. A human will a human. If they did not believe I was something else.”
“What?”
“What I look like depends on how you perceive me. Had you not noticed it was when you believed I was the Devil, I looked like the Devil, and when you believed I was a fae, I looked like a fae, and not the other way around?”
“What … Hang on. So if I see you as Cthulhu cuddling with a stuffed toy now, you’d change into Cthulhu cuddling with a stuffed toy?”
“You could not change me. Rather, you change your perspective.” Dream smiled. “Imagine a gem.” He flicked his hand and a rectangular-cut ruby similar to the one he had worn appeared on his palm, spinning in the air. “You can only look at one facet at a time, but you can always adopt a different angle to view it.” The ruby shifted into an emerald, then a teardrop-shaped aquamarine, an oval sapphire, a perfectly round diamond, then spun back into a ruby, gleaming in its enchanting shades of blood. “It is always the same gem you are looking at. Only from different perspectives.”
Hob gawked at the ruby, whose facets now shifted and morphed inside and outside of it, like the video he had watched some years ago, about the fourth dimension and 3D projections of hypercubes or something. “So you are like a 4D cube? So I’m in love with a 4D cube.”
The look Dream threw at him was murderous.
“All right.” Hob tore his gaze away from the ruby. He felt like his brain would melt out of his ears if he stared at it for any moment longer. “What perspective do you prefer I adopt, then?”
Dream hummed. “Do you prefer I look at you from this angle”—he disappeared and popped up in front of Hob, startling him into a gasp—“or from this angle?”
“For fuck’s sake, love!” Hob clutched to his chest. He was that close to dying from a jumpscare. “Didn’t know you could do that here. And without sand.”
“There are still many things you do not know about me,” Dream purred adorably like a cat with its cream. It was easy to forget he was a transdimensional eldritch being that spanned through all the universes out there. That was why he could always scare the hell out of Hob whenever he did these. And the worse thing was, Hob was really into it.
Hob pulled Dream onto his lap for a kiss. “So you’re saying you wouldn’t mind me seeing you as a human?”
“I would like to ask you instead, are you disappointed that I look human now, like you were with the prince?”
“I was just worried you were forcing yourself to do this for my sake,” Hob said. “But of course I would love to see your other bestial forms.”
“Because you are one of those people.”
Hob grinned.
“Then rest assured, Hob Gadling.” Dream grabbed Hob’s shoulders, his eyes all dark and glimmered with stars as he towered over Hob. “Even though my appearance depends on how you view me, I could always force a certain perspective on you.”
And he shifted, oh, lord, into stars and eyes and limbs, and Hob would have fallen to his knees were he not pinned against his sofa at the moment. Oh, lord.