Title: The Weather Outside Is Frightful
Fandom: The Sandman (TV 2022)
Pairing: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling
Rating: Teen
Length: 3400 words
Content notes: Emotional hurt/comfort, Panic Attack, PTSD, Dream of the Endless Is Not Okay, Cuddles & Snuggles
Author notes: Thanks to everyone in the discord who encouraged this!

Summary: In the Dreaming, the mood of the King of Dreams and Nightmares determines the weather. In the waking world, the same process occasionally works in reverse.



Dream of the Endless, being what he was, had no need to sleep and even less inclination to take the time to rest at times when he might theoretically benefit from doing so.

He was, however, embarrassingly susceptible to the lure of cuddling after love-making. Since Hob Gadling was (nearly) entirely human and did need to sleep, Dream found himself spending whole nights in Hob's bed.

What else was he to do, when Hob was sprawled over him, sleeping peacefully, occasionally mumbling something incoherent against his skin? Leave?

He could have, of course. He could recall many occasions when he had done that very thing. But for one reason or another--something about Hob, or something about himself since his period of captivity, or the intersection of the two--he found himself instead settling into Hob's bed and into the corporeal form he wore for these visits.

These hours were quieter than the rest of his existence. His awareness of the Dreaming dimmed, and he found that he could much more easily think his own thoughts about new creations or possible changes to the Dreaming rather than being constantly immersed in the flow of it. And if many times his thoughts instead turned to idly recalling other times he'd spent with Hob, or imagining future meetings... that was probably not a bad thing.

He had fretted about spending so much time in this manner exactly once to Lucienne. She had handed him a chart demonstrating how much of his time had been taken up by his obsessive approaches to his previous relationships.

Apparently, his liaison with Hob was "refreshingly healthy" by comparison.

Dream had yet to confide to her his suspicion that this meant that his love for Hob was therefore in some sense insufficient. Hob seemed happy, and Dream knew that his over-focus was precisely what had gone wrong in at least some of his previous relationships. Dream had no doubt that sooner or later something would go wrong as it always did, but there was no use trying to anticipate the event.

So instead, he lay in bed with Hob, listening to Hob's slightly raspy breathing and the dwindling sounds from the pub down below. He let his thoughts drift. Hob's bed was warm and soft and the weight of Hob's arm across his chest was a pleasant reminder of why Dream was staying here as he slid into a meditative quietude that was something like a doze.

Dream imagined possibilities for the next time he invited Hob into the Dreaming for a date. Hob had often expressed curiosity about the Nightmare Realms, and Dream was beginning to believe that Hob genuinely would enjoy such an outing, in suitable company such as his own.

He did not notice the way the patter of rain against the window, and the whine of rising wind about the eaves, blended with his imaginings of the restless seas of the Nightmare Realms.

Hob loved the sea; he had told Dream of a sailing voyage when he encountered a great leviathan here in the waking world, though he had come no nearer to it than had allowed the ship to survive unscathed. He would be delighted by a visit to the Nightmare Realms where he could swim with such creatures, could touch and speak to them and enter into their native domain.

He would be so happy, right up until they pulled him under and--

Dream opened his eyes and scowled at the ceiling. None of his nightmares would dare to harm Hob. That was impossible.

He ran a hand through Hob's hair, and Hob mumbled something and cuddled closer. A brief skim of his present dream showed nothing but a perfect contentment currently formed into the experience of both petting a dog and being the dog being petted.

Experimentally, Dream scratched lightly behind Hob's ear. Hob whined and pressed closer still, and Dream smiled and let his own eyes close.

The rain and the wind were louder now, covering the sound of Hob's breaths, stealing away the warmth of his closeness with their pounding against the glass. Dream found himself thinking of other possibilities for his future with Hob.

Hob, grief-stricken and furious, blaming him for everything that had gone wrong, saying, Everyone was right, they told me you would only bring me pain, I was a fool to ever let you touch me.

Hob, fading into a wraith before Dream's distracted and disinterested eyes, begging for more until Dream exiled him to some conveniently distant corner of the Dreaming.

Hob, kissing someone who could actually make him happy, scarcely seeming to notice Dream at all, his rejection an afterthought.

Hob, choosing Death's gift at last to escape Dream's insistent advances, cast into Hell for the sake of Dream's pride.

Dream opened his eyes to remind himself that Hob was still in his arms, still happy and content, only to find that Hob had rolled away, and lay now with his back turned. It was something he often did, Dream knew, with the very small and quiet part of his mind that was not suddenly wailing about being alone, alone, trapped and helpless and alone, no one to touch for a hundred years.

No one is coming. No one will help. No one even cares.

Dream wanted to speak, wanted to cry aloud. It wasn't even his own determined pride that stopped him now--not even his conclusion that negotiation was impossible.

His throat was simply too tight to let a word pass. He could do nothing at all; he could control nothing. He was useless, strengthless. He tried to raise a hand and it trembled, tried to reach for Hob and fell short. Tried to wail out his frustration and terror and made only as much sound as an insect might.

"Hm?" Hob raised his head and Dream froze entirely, all those visions beating in his brain. Hob would hate him now, would send him away, would have forgotten his name, would scorn this inexplicable weakness. "Dream?"

Dream shook his head. He could say nothing, couldn't even move, could only wait for the inevitable.

Hob turned over to face him and Dream couldn't even close his eyes, couldn't even hide from what was coming.

And then Hob's hand was on his cheek, warm and gentle and kind, and Hob said, "What is it, love? What's wrong?"

Dream couldn't speak, couldn't think, could only look at the cold, cold glass that kept him trapped.

"Ah," Hob said, as if Dream had actually responded to him. "That's all right. Come on, then, I've got you."

Before Dream could begin to guess what Hob was talking about, Hob was sitting up, tugging Dream up with him. He wrapped a blanket around Dream, tugging it up over Dream's head like a hood. Hob used the whole length of his body to push Dream out of the bed, coming with him all the way. Dream found he could move, could stand and walk, when Hob kept an arm wrapped firmly around him, when he only had to match himself to Hob's movements.

There was a pause when Hob, oddly, stopped to push the bedroom door all the way shut, making sure that it latched. Then he was guiding Dream again, leading him not to any of the usual places in the flat but down an odd little hallway to a door Dream had never seen opened before.

It was very quiet inside, once Hob shut that door as well, and utterly dark. It smelled like books--old ones, nearly as old as Hob himself. It felt like a very small space, or at least a very full one. The effect was somehow the opposite of his sterile cage; he felt very much like an animal which had retreated to the safety of its den.

"Here, now, this should do," Hob murmured, and tugged Dream down to sit on something that creaked gently under them. Hob pulled Dream against his chest, fitting Dream between his thighs and wrapping his legs over Dream's, embracing him wholly and tucking the blanket around him. "Is that better, love?"

It was immeasurably better, but Dream was so bewildered by whatever had just happened--in his own mind and also in Hob's immediate reaction to whatever he thought was happening--that he only nodded against Hob's shoulder, cuddling closer.

"That's all right, then," Hob murmured, before breaking off to yawn. One of Hob's hands rubbed warm circles on Dream's back while the other kept a firm grip on him. "We're safe as houses here--good solid old building, withstood plenty in its day. Might lose a shingle or two, but I've been over every inch of that roof and it's not going to leak on us, nor give us any other trouble to fret about. Wouldn't keep such treasures here if it would, now would I? Yourself being first among them, of course."

Dream had no idea what Hob was talking about, but he could feel himself--his foolish, corporeal body--calming the longer Hob talked. Dream had always liked listening to him.

Positioned this way he could hear the steady beating of Hob's heart, could feel the words vibrating in his chest as he spoke. His voice was low and gravelly in the night, and he yawned occasionally but did not stop talking, rambling about work he'd done on this building and its centuries-long history through various renovations.

It occurred to Dream, slowly, that he had in fact had something very like a nightmare, for all that he had been conscious the entire time. Hob was comforting him as if he had, the way humans so often consoled each other, except that he was also behaving as if there were something in particular that Dream had had a nightmare about, some fear he could demonstrate was groundless. Something that had been more immediately pressing in the bedroom than it was in this quiet, crowded, lightless space.

Dream cleared his throat.

Hob's back-rubbing hand stopped and crept up to rub knuckles gently against Dream's cheek. "You there, love? With me?"

"I have been here all night," Dream replied, though his voice still failed to come out perfectly steadily.

He could have remedied this. He could have changed his form. He could have left.

He could have behaved as though he didn't want Hob to comfort him and dote upon him. If only he had in fact wanted Hob to stop doing those things.

"Mm," Hob said, and pressed a kiss to Dream's hair. "Don't get many storms like this in the Dreaming?"

"Storms," Dream repeated, and felt himself freezing all over again, as he had when Hob first woke.

He'd looked at the glass, when Hob asked what was wrong--but not the glass of the cage he'd been remembering. The window, where the rain was crashing, driven by a howling wind.

Dream was starting to realize what must have happened, and reflexively he motioned for his sand, but Hob's hold on him tightened as if he knew that Dream was about to leave. As if he still, despite all that, didn't want Dream to leave.

"You think," Dream said slowly, "that I am frightened of a storm."

There had been no sign that Hob believed Dream was being as pathetic and ridiculous as that, and yet...

"Well," Hob said, still holding on tightly, perhaps as if he believe that those flatly-spoken words were the prelude to Dream taking himself off in yet another fit of pique. "You said it, love, not me. But I know you told me that in the Dreaming, you control the weather, and I'm guessing here you don't, or we wouldn't have a proper gale blowing out there. And that's got to be an uncomfortable thing, being in a place you don't control, when normally you do."

Dream sighed and melted against Hob, all of his burgeoning offense and eagerness to flee swamped in an instant by a tide of bewildered affection. How could Hob be so generous to a being like him? How could he so nearly perceive what Dream had experienced, and treat it as something deserving of this kindness and care?

"It is," Dream said, only realizing as he spoke that he meant to try to explain--but Hob did deserve to understand. "Not that, quite," he went on. "I often do not intend to influence the weather in the Dreaming. It reflects my mood, when I am feeling strongly one way or another. Rainstorms are generally..."

He shuddered, momentarily struggling against a tight throat, thinking of all those rainstorms.

Hob said nothing, but went on holding him, and after a few seconds returned to rubbing his back in that firm, steady rhythm.

"Indicative," Dream eventually managed. "Of losses."

"Ah," Hob said, and held Dream tighter still; Dream could feel memories thronging to the forefront of Hob's mind, his own griefs returning to him, and his voice was rough with emotion when he went on. "Stands to reason, then. Of course. I'll make sure and check the weather, next time you stop by. That way you don't get caught off guard, right?"

Dream nodded. "I will... remove myself, next time. If knowing the cause does not eliminate the effect."

Hob went still under him. He didn't loosen his grip, but Dream could feel a sudden wariness in him, even before Hob's words emerged in a cautious tone. "Is that... what you want? To make sure you don't feel it again?"

"I cannot simply," Dream started, and then stopped at the realization that it made very little difference what he felt here, in the waking world, in this deliberately limited form. It was not him, driving that rain outside, that desolately howling wind. Whatever was flooded or washed away or blown down by the storm tonight, it would not be his doing.

He had no obligation to stop feeling anything here. He would do no harm to his kingdom, nor anyone else.

Except, possibly, Hob. But Hob was still holding him here. Hob had brought him into this room full of treasures--a windowless room, he finally realized, protecting old books and delicate items from exposure to the sun, and equally protecting Dream from the sound of the rain and wind.

Hob, clearly, did not think it was unquestionably a good idea for Dream to feel as little as possible, though he had done all he could to help him find his present equilibrium when he was lost.

Hob would not leave him alone in his private quarters in the palace and wait for the rain to end--for Dream to be able to force the rain to end. Hob did not want him to simply get through the unbearable sadness--or grief, or loss, or loneliness--as quickly as possible so that it would stop destroying everything around him.

"You," Dream said slowly, "cannot wish me to visit you simply to... to..."

"Oh, don't you go telling me what I can wish for," Hob said, in a stern tone thoroughly undercut by the way his gentle hands never left Dream, the way he was speaking nearly against Dream's skin. "Did you find it a barrel of laughs, listening to me when I came to you in 1689 and told you all my troubles? Or two weeks ago, when I spent a full hour bitching about my department meeting? Or the week before that when we watched that bloody movie and I cried through half of it?"

Dream had, in fact, been respectively: concerned that Hob would choose to die, and sympathetic to his reasons for it; fascinated and amused by the way Hob could make such ordinary aggravations into such an extensive rant; fascinated and mildly aroused by how deeply even a not-especially-well-constructed story could affect Hob.

He had not, at any time, wished Hob would stop feeling whatever he was feeling. He had not wanted Hob to go away, even back in 1689 when they were meeting for the fourth time ever and he'd thought he was about to belatedly win his wager with his sister.

He had also, judging by present standards, not been of any particular use in comforting Hob on any of those occasions. But Hob still seemed to regard all of those as ultimately satisfying encounters, given that he was citing them now in a tone that indicated a winning argument.

"I am sometimes... immoderate," Dream said, feeling somehow obligated to make one last effort to dissuade Hob from inviting this upon himself.

"Well, I've known that since at least 1889," Hob said, sounding purely fond now. "But I survived--oh. It was raining that night."

"Oh," Dream echoed.

He hadn't thought of that, but now that Hob named it, he remembered that tide of--something he hadn't let himself name and now couldn't pick apart into anything coherent. He had not been so firmly settled in the form he wore that night as he was in this one now, but his eyes had wanted to fill with tears when Hob spoke of loneliness. And then he had lashed out and fled back to the Dreaming, where the weather had been thundery but dry for days after.

"And, see," Hob said. "This time I managed not to send you running out into the rain, and you felt what you felt and didn't act like it was my fault, so we're both learning, aren't we? We can learn a bit more, any time it rains."

Dream found himself strangely--perversely--eager for it. He wouldn't get distracted this time, into panic at what he couldn't change. He might not even need to be afraid of Hob's reaction, or Hob leaving him, when that wasn't happening yet. He might just feel sad, and have Hob treat him like this until it eased.

He turned his attention beyond this dark, cozy little space, beyond Hob's body, beyond the limits of the form he presently wore.

"It's... still raining now," he said quietly, half muffled against Hob's chest.

"Yeah, seems set to go all night," Hob agreed, his heart beating just a tiny bit faster under Dream's ear. "You want to go back to bed?"

Dream shuddered at the thought of that cold glass looming so close. He would, of course, if it was where Hob decreed they should spend the night--he ought to, so that Hob could rest more easily. But Hob hadn't asked him if he would go back to bed; he had asked if Dream wanted to.

"Could I just..." Dream said, and then the firmly-closed door to this little room popped open.

From across the flat, Dream could hear the rain and wind striking the windows in another room, and he felt it clearly this time. He felt the sadness rising in him, even without any reason other than the rain. He tried to just feel it, to not reach for any particular grief, past or future, to attach it to.

"Can I ask an inappropriate question?" Hob murmured.

Dream felt tears welling in his eyes, but also felt immediately curious about where Hob's mind might have gone now. He nodded against Hob's chest, nestling closer into his unwavering hold.

"What's the weather like in the Dreaming when you're really, really horny?"

Dream was startled into a laugh, and it was easy to remember, with memories of the past stirring so near the surface--the earliest days of his marriage with Calliope, and the first glorious days with Alianora.

"It gets very hot," Dream said, the words coming strangely easily. "Too hot for any clothing to be comfortable. One wishes to be swimming naked, or reclining in the shade."

Hob breathed a little laughter back, and murmured, "Well, there's a silver lining to global warming."

Dream's tears spilled over, with those long-gone days still clear in his mind's eye, and he felt a little fragment of his sadness... not quite vanish, with that laughter and those easy words on his tongue. It seemed to be absorbed into this softer, more porous self he wore now, settling into its place.

The rain was still falling, and there was more grief behind it, and more tears pouring from his eyes. He turned his face against Hob's chest and wept.

Hob settled a hand on the back of his neck and held him and didn't let go.