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scifrey · 1 year

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Cling Fast: Chapter One

by Loysark

The Sandman (Netflix with some sprinkling of comics canon and Gaimanverse) Dreamling (Hob Gadling x Dream of the Endless | Morpheus) Unfinished PG-13 (for now) Unbeta’d

One Year Later

The problem with Hob Gadling is that–and he will admit to this–he really is a bit clingy.

Always has been.

And sometimes it bites him straight in the arse.

It worked out in his favor in his mortal life. He clung to hope and good hygiene during the Black Death, surviving his mother and siblings, however horrific it was to bury them all. He clung to optimism and discipline on the battlefields of Burgundy, making it out alive when so many others did not. He clung to his conviction that death was stupid and could be simply ignored in the face of the two strange nobles who had challenged him while out for a strongbeer with the lads, and he clung to hope that he hadn't condemned himself once he realized he'd stopped aging.

Hob clings to his humanity, reveling in its triumphs great and small, and mourning in its tragedies. (Especially those of his own making, in which case he clung to those lessons and his grim determination to make reparations and keep himself from falling into such greedy, cruel indifference ever again.)

Child-like, Hob clings to laughter and love, delights in the joys and the people around him. He clings to friendship, refusing to let himself grow bitter and detached from his fellow man. He clings to the comforts of good food, good ale, good people of all and any genders to swive, and clings to his personally-appointed responsibility to ensure those around him have the opportunity and freedom to do the same.

(There are no unhoused and desperate people in Hob's little kingdom of derelict historical sites and spacious parks. The minute he is made aware of a squatter, that person is offered a room above the Inn, a job in the kitchen, fresh clothing and medical care in whatever capacity is required. Addiction and despair are a hell of thing, and Hob knows that first hand.

He clings to the tenants of dignity and kindness, and though his catholic faith has been shaken and worn thin, he still believes in most of the commandments. He strives to treat those around him the way he would have wanted to be treated when he was the one begging on the streets. As for the others, well. Sacrilegious as it may be, Hob now worships another god above the Christian one, in all the profane mundanity of the Inn.)

And of course, Hob had clung to the faith that his Stranger would be there at the White Horse, waiting for him at the end of every century like a feast after a hard day's toil in the fields of life. Even when the Stranger swanned away in the rain in 1889, like the great dramatic ponce that he is, Hob had always clung hard to the desperate wish to see him again.

He'd even clung to the aspiration that he'd somehow, someday, make his Stranger want to stay.

(He'd succeeded in that one, too, though it took longer than Hob thought it would.)

Hob Gadling also clings to his name.

Which, with the wisdom of six centuries and a very pointed email from a script coordinator at BBC Two behind him, was a very silly thing to do.

If science fiction movies had existed in 1389, Hob might have learned sooner that using his own name (or some variation thereof) over, and over, and over again was probably a bad idea. And if not a bad idea, then at least a supremely sentimental and foolish one. But they hadn't.

In 1489, after the relief of learning that he hadn’t sold his soul to the Devil, Hob was struck with the wonder and awe of learning that he could have another century, if he wanted it (like plucking an apple from a tree, just there, easy as anything to just keep on not dying.) And then he was then struck with the horror of the realization that he was going to have to move. To leave.

He could not remain, unchanging, in one place. It was not safe. Already he was talked of, avoided, turned away from places he'd known if he returned to them too often. Caxton's shop gave him reason to remain in London for long stretches of time, but he returned to Essex to tend to his family's graves perhaps too often, and too close together.

There were people yet alive whose parents remembered Hob from their own childhoods. Unchanging Hob. Cursed Hob.

But how could he stay away?

His mother and father were buried there. All of his sisters, and their husbands, and their children, and their children. His little brother John, who had coined his nickname because he hadn’t been able to form his ‘r’s yet, and had died of blood poisoning brought on by an inflamed cut before the boy had learned how to say Hob's name correctly. John was buried under a tree that Hob made sure still thrived to this day, planted from the pips of the apple John had been eating the day he'd given himself the gash playing with their father's scythe.

And the thought of giving up his name, the name that was in parish register, the name of the people he'd once called family, the name that was on gravestones that he meticulously cleaned once a decade, the name that lingered on the map as a single crossroads in the middle of nowhere outside of Maldon that nobody remembered used to have a little cottage by the side of it, the name that only his Stranger spoke anymore…

Well.

That wasn't something Hob was capable of doing.

Hob wanted to know who he was.

He changed year after year, century after century, and the world changed with him. The only thing that stayed the same, amid all the advances, amid all the handkerchiefs and chimneys and playing cards and playwrights and iron works and steamships and personal computers, was his name. His only constant.

It was the only thing he still had.

He couldn't give it up.

Clingy.

And that's how the television historians find him.

“I’m not doing it,” Hob tells Morpheus. The King of Dreams and Nightmares is squinting at Hob's phone, which Hob had thrust into a face with a Here! Read this! as soon as the being had seated himself for their weekly conversation.

They're outside today, the weather sunny without being glaring, and warm without being too hot. They're outside today, the weather sunny without being glaring, and warm without being too hot. Somehow, some spindly Forsythia's broken through the gravel drive in the corner of the Inn closest to their table, though Hob doesn't remember planting it. Maybe it was someone from the horticultural society—he wouldn't put it past them to do some guerilla planting, they're always dropping hints about his window boxes. Doesn't matter, the yellow looks good as a background for Morpheus' goth twink look, he'll keep it.

It's too early in the day for most of The New Inn's afternoon patrons, so they've got the front garden of the Inn to themselves for now. Hob has maneuvered Morpheus so he's sitting in the shade of one of the umbrellas. He may be a powerful eldritch celestial being, but Hob has learned that his nose can burn just as easily as any human with the same complexion.

The bonus of being seated outside means that Matthew can join them. The raven is currently on Morpheus' shoulder, running one beady black eye over the text of the email alongside his king.

Hob watches Morpheus' face for any indication that he agrees with Hob, that this is a spectacularly bad idea.This might even be a situation so bad that Hob has to fake his own death and move on sooner than he'd wanted to.

He'd rather not. He likes The New Inn, he's proud of what he's built in this community, he doesn't want to go anywhere. He's already seeding the idea of a nephew that Dennis hasn't met yet, but who would be just the right age to inherit his uncle's business ventures in a decade or two. If he has to leave now, it would screw up everything.

Morpheus doesn't seem inclined to comment until he's both read and digested the email Hob shared with him, so Hob busies himself with fussing off inside to the bar to pour his own pint. One of the perks of owning the place. Besides, Dennis is busy with training a new server, and Hob is the only one allowed to touch Morpheus' wine, anyway.

He returns to the table with an ale for himself, bowl of unsalted peanuts and a pint glass of water for Matthew, and the sweet vinsanto from Santorini that Hob had imported specifically for his friend, much to both Dennis' and Hob's savings account's mutual disgust. Dennis, because it cost an arm and a leg and he wasn't allowed to sell it to the snobby city boys trying to impress their dates, and Hob's savings account because it cost an arm and a leg.

And Hob should know how much that actually cost, because he once paid for a full-length portrait of himself that included not just an arm and a leg, but two of each, and those of his grown son Robyn besides. Hob doesn't have to wonder where that portrait is right now, because according to the obnoxious email it's apparently back in Gadlen House, which the National Trust was allowing the production team to use for the filming. The portrait had 'gone missing' after Hob had been drowned, and located again in the 1950s among a stash of art a group of on-the-run former Nazis had been trying to offload on the black market.

Hob had been sorely tempted to steal it back for himself when he'd seen the news of the discovery in the paper. But by then he'd been living in a pokey little flat in one of the newly rebuilt parts of London, with no way to restore or properly preserve the painting. Though it pained him, he let it go to the National Portrait gallery, where—after several years of being locked away in a basement for a thorough cleaning—Hob had shuffled along in the line tourists to catch a glimpse of his son's face for the first time in three hundred and forty-six years.

And if he then spent the next two hours weeping on the back steps of Canada House, well, it's not like anyone alive to witness his despair at the time was still alive to tell of it now.

He hasn't been back to look at it since.

He won't be able to avoid it, though, not if he says yes to the plea to join the costumed cast of experts already signed onto Elizabethan Manor House. Which he has no intention of doing.

"It's mad," Hob says when Morpheus finally sets down his phone and takes a contemplative sip of wine. "And it's infuriating besides. I'm not ready to cut this life short. I just hammered out a book deal that should help me get access to research fellows who can influence policy for—" he gestures down the park, at the construction fencing blocking off the degrading shell of The White Horse.

Morpheus flicks an eyebrow at Hob, and he takes it for the challenge the Endless means it to be.

“Oh, come on! Captured or killed, you said, and look,” Hob cuts his hand at Morpheus in demonstration. He doesn’t need to say it. They both know what he’s referring to. “Tell me this is a supremely bad idea.”

"If you really thought it was a bad idea, Hob, you would not be entreating me to confirm it."

Blast. Got me there.

"I dunno, Hobsie, I think it's kinda nifty," Matthew says, hopping down onto the table to help himself to the bowl of peanuts.

"Nifty?" Hob echoes, aghast at the raven's choice of word. "I think it's a way to end up in a lab being experimented on for the rest of eternity."

"Look, speaking as a former human," Matthew offers, "We're pretty damn dumb sometimes. If you walk in there and tell 'em that what they think is true is true, then why would they have any reason to think otherwise?"

"Occam's razor," Morpheus agrees. "They will believe you are the fifteen-times great-nephew of Sir Robert Gadlen the Third because you will confirm it is so. There is no reason for anyone to believe otherwise."

"So wait, hold on—you're encouraging me to do this?" Hob asks.

"Yeah! Imagine, our boy on TV!" Matthew caws, stretching his wings in a very human gesture like punching the air. "You're gonna be a star, baby!"

Hob snorts into his pint. "It's an educational docudrama about life in a manor house in Elizabethan England. Henrietta Butler and Glenn Davies make one of these every year. They film it all in a few months and change up the greenery and clothing to make it seem like time is passing, and pretend they've been living in the past for a full year. It's not a Hollywood blockbuster."

"Not yet," Matthew insists. "But some casting director's gonna see your natural charisma on camera, and scout you, and then bam!"

"You just want me to do movies so you have an excuse to hang around the sets," Hob teases the raven.

Matthew puffs up like a soot sprite and pointedly sticks his beak into the water glass so he doesn't have to answer.

"I for one find these programs enchanting," Morpheus offers. "The inspiration they provide Dreamers is wonderful, and the stories they return to the public consciousness thrive once more. They breathe new life into old tales, and restore Lucienne's books at the same time."

"Yeah, but does that mean it has to be me who does it?" Hob asks softly, spinning his half-filled class in circles between his fingers. "I'm sure they can find some other expert in Medieval and Elizabethan domestic history with, you know, dark eyes and a cleft chin."

Morpheus tilts his head like a bird, curious. "And would you be happy with that, Hob? If they hired someone else to play you in the story of your own life?"

Hob sighs. Morpheus has hit the nail on the head.

Clingy bastard that he is, Hob doesn't want someone else wearing clothes approximating his favorite gold-and-black double, to look into a camera and talk about Eleanor, and Robyn, and poor lifeless wee John as if he had any right to speak of Hob's life and loves like they were his own. He doesn't want them to film in his house, and talk about the way things used to be, and get it wrong. He doesn't want interpreters to, well, interpret.

He wants to share the truth.

Once upon a time, Gadlen House had been what Hob had envisioned Heaven to be. For nearly a century, his life was everything he'd ever wanted, the fulfillment of every dream he'd ever clung to. There was plenty of light, and warmth, and laughter, and dancing. There was more food than he could ever eat, more alcohol than he could ever drink alone, more comfort and fine clothing than he'd ever dreamed of while he was burying his little brother in a peasant churchyard.

Gadlen House held his own private paradise within its walls.

And, he knew now, he had erroneously thought that it was all that his Stranger would judge him on as well. He thought his continued immortality was contingent on living well, and back then he had misunderstood that to mean material wealth, the flamboyance of his successes, and the vigorousness of his family life.

He’d learned in the last year that Morpheus wasn’t judging him at all, had no opinion of his choices and what he did with his life outside of what caused other Dreamers to suffer, and what he did in the world meant nothing to the King of Dreams and Nightmares. There was no mistake Hob could make that would strip him of his Stranger’s gift, though he hadn’t known it.

There was, however, things that Hob could do to make his companion more or less likely to want to spend time in his company. Like the contents of his heart and the kindness of his influence in the world, and the good and generous things he put out into it—

He’d been a boor. Looking back, he can see it. His behavior, as the youth in his survey courses would call it, had been "super cringey" at their 1589 meeting. He'd only cared about showing off, and very little about his table manners besides. He doesn't blame Morpheus for being repulsed.

And the idea that Hob is being offered the chance to rewrite that memory a little, that appeals.

Robert Gadelin the Third was more than he had shown himself to be at the White Horse that night. And he wants Morpheus to know that. Wants Morpheus to see. (And yeah, okay, millions of viewers all over the U.K. too, if he has to).

Hob hadn’t been just brash self congratulations, and talking with his mouth full, and throwing gold at his problems.

He'd been a good and doting father; he'd been a devoted and generously loving husband. He'd read Robyn stories and took him riding. He'd lounged in the solar listening to Eleanor play her lute, and danced with her even when it was unfashionable to dance so much time with one's own wife at a party. He pulled her into dark corners and behind curtains to lavish his love upon her lovely plump curves every chance he got. He’d spent a lot of time with his head up her dress to make her sigh and laugh, or in her lap listening to her accounts of her day. He'd been a fair and thoughtful master, giving his staff the freedom to speak to him,, to be honest about their problems and his own failings, to feel safe enough to entrust themselves to his care, and humble and proactive enough to live up to it.

He'd loved life, and he'd loved his wife, and he'd loved his son, and he'd taken his role as patriarch and patron seriously.

And the world deserves to see that side of the man who anybody who toured Gadlen House know only knew as the Witch Knight who'd been drowned for his attempts to defy God and rebel against the natural order of the world.

Hob wants to see if he can find the little toy duck he'd carved, which used to be pulled along on a string behind his son. He thinks he left it in a chest of things Eleanor had set aside for the new baby—leftover clothes from Robyn, little socks, and tiny bonnets, along with the little golden rattle that the queen had gifted Eleanor when she'd visited the summer Eleanor had been gravid. He wants to crawl along the floorboards and see if the skirting panel in his bedroom still comes loose, see if his sword from Agincourt is still hidden in the wall, and discover what state it's in. He wants to hold the hairbrush that he used to wield in the evenings to smooth out his wife's hair, hold it to his face and try to catch a whiff of the rosemary oil that she would use on wash day.

He wants sit in his chair by the fire in the withdrawing room, and close his eyes, and hear the crackle of the wood, the soft murmur of the servants in the back passages, the laughter of Robyn as the boy learns to walk, learns to sing, learns to read, learns to fence, and ride, and fight, and tell him he's off for a cheeky bit of revelry with a local chit down the tavern—

He doesn't at all want to do any of that with a camera trained on him.

"I'll tell everyone what a hack Shaxbeard was," is how Hob admits that he's starting to give ground to the idea.

"You can try," Morpheus replies with a smirk.

This is now their weekly game. Hob actually doesn't mind the plays the man wrote, especially once he learned that the stories themselves came from Morpheus. What he does resent is that old Billy Boy is remembered as a genius, when all he really was, to Hob's mind, was the hand that held the quill and wrote down what the King of Dreams whispered in his ear. And so they play tug-of-war over the man, teasing all the way.

"What if someone figures it out? What do I do then?"

"They won't," Matthew croaks.

"But what if they do? The world is different now, in little ways. I grew up believing in angels and demons, and, you know, God–” here he gestures ironically at Morpheus, who nods magnanimously with wry humor. “And it turns out they're real."

Hob's since done business with or provided favors to several of Lady Constantine's descendants. And like any good immortal, he pays attention when there are rumors of another like him around. He's met The Bookseller of Soho, and even traded him a few rare first editions when he was looking to fund purchase of the White Horse. Hob thinks he may be fae, with that thistledown hair, but he can't prove it.

"My point is," Hob presses on, "The world is getting stranger and frankly, an immortal human may not be the first thing people think of but the stuff in the shadows is being exposed more and more these days. Nobody seems to remember the kraken rising from the deep, and the rain of fish, and the rising and re-sinking of Atlantis two years ago–”

“The what!?” Matthew asks. “I was human then, I don’t–!”

“The apocalypse that then wasn’t, yes,” Morpheus murmurs. “You are among the few who recall, Hob, because you are Touched by the Endless.”

Hob squints at Matthew, waiting for the raven to make a Touched by an Angel joke, but the bird seem to be too busy having an existential crisis over the world not ending. He’s muttering under his wing.

“Point is,” Hob goes on. “If I slip up, if I give too much away, somebody may actually believe it. The wrong somebody."

"How is this then: I promise to attend the thoughts and dreams of the cast and crew carefully. And if one should begin to presume more than they ought, I will unmake the dream."

Hob sighs and tugs at his ear nervously. Then he reaches out for Morpheus's hand. They have an unspoken agreement, now, to request and offer touch when one or the other of them is feeling unsettled. Morpheus curls his fingers around Hob's, and Hob feels his heart settling.

"I'd feel better knowing you had my back, yeah."

"Then it is done," Morpheus pronounces in that way of his that always makes it sound like Hob's made a deal at a crossroads.

"It is done, I guess," Hob echoes.

Matthew hops up to his shoulder to preen at Hob's hair teasingly. "Next stop, the big screen!"

"Well, the small one at least. Why did you want me to do this so much?" Hob asks.

"You dream of them," Morpheus says, and he doesn't have to add still because of course, still.

It doesn't sound like envy. At least, Hob doesn't think Morpheus is envious that Hob still dreams of lost loved ones. He spends plenty of time with Morpheus—more properly, with Dream—in the Dreaming. There's nothing to be envious of.

All the same, Hob's heart kicks in his throat, and he washes back down with a swig of beer. Matthew's preening becomes gentle and comforting. "Eleanor and wee John, and Robyn?"

"Yes. But the others as well."

"Others?" For a moment Hob is baffled, but then, with a little mortified jolt, he realizes Morpheus is talking about all of his past lovers. "Oh, Richard and, um, Isabella and…" he trails off, realizing that the being across from him may not want to be subjected to a list of his… indulgences.

"Oliver. Miranda. Francesca. Thomas. Agnes. Amanda. Emila. Elizabeth. Caterina. Saoirse—"

"Who's Saoirse?"

"The redhead in New York, 1906. She had the room above—"

"I remember!" Hob yelps, waving Matthew away as the raven chortles with laddish amusement. "God's wounds, no need to itemize every fuck I've ever had, jesu maria."

A little shit-eating smirk passes fleetingly across the corner of Morpheus' mouth. He's doing it on purpose. Twat.

"Would you not like the chance for closure, Hob Gadling?" Morpheus asks slowly. "Many Dreamers find ease to their grief after dreams of saying goodbye to their loved ones."

"I don't need to go to the House for that. They won't be there," Hob says. "That's the problem."

"Their stories remain."

"Their ghosts, more like," Hob says bitterly. He drains the dregs of his pint and wonders if it's more assholeish to abandon Morpheus to go pour himself another, or to text Dennis and tell the new kid to bring him one.

Morpheus shifts and squeezes their joined hands to keep his attention. "No. My sister greeted them both with all the warmth and kindness she bestows upon mortals, and led them gently to the Sunless Lands. You will find no restless, unhappy shades at Gadlen House, if that is what you fear."

Hob's throat tightens at the unexpected assurance that his family is in Paradise. That his selfish begging prayers for them to stay, to not go, to don't do this, to don't leave me here alone were, in the end, unheeded.

"But the stories remain. The wrong ones. Eleanor, and Robyn, and wee John… do you not think that they deserve to be more than just the tale of how they died? Don't you think their story deserves to celebrate how they lived? And do you not think that you deserve to be more than just the drowned Witch Knight?"

Which is just… such a low blow that Hob only barely resists the urge to kick him under the table.

“Fine,” Hob says, letting go of Morpheus to throw his hands up to the skies, to plead with Mother Night and Father Time to see what he puts up with in their son and his familiar. "Fine! I'm convinced. You can stop bullying me now. Give me back my phone, I have an email to send."

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