Chapter Text
Hob Gadling is sitting on his couch in nothing but his boxers. It's a nice, warm summer night, about 10 pm. It's Friday, and that gives him plenty of time for his task until he has to see his students again. His body aches all over, in some places worse than others, and the worst of all it hurts inside his chest. But one thing after the other.
In front of him, on the coffee table, is an assortment of tools: Some pliers, tweezers, a scalpel, a steel mixing bowl from the kitchen, gauze and tape, a wet rag, needle and twine. His hands are thoroughly washed and sanitized, he makes sure of that every time. He can't wait for the pain to be gone, to be filled with nothing but exhaustion and the ache of his body mending itself. And the hurt inside his chest, because that one doesn't go away. But everything else will. He gets to work.
The wound from the spear is first, because it's the easiest. The tip of it had just grazed his side, but after the tip came the shaft, and it was roughly cut, badly crafted. The splinter, almost as long as his palm, broke off and was driven into the wound by the force of the blow. It was the first time he'd passed out from pain after he had met Dream. He digs his fingers in with a grunt and they come out red, holding the jagged piece of wood. Blood seeps down and into the hem of his underwear. With the release of it the pain becomes the dull twinge of healing. He drops the splinter into the bowl, takes some gauze and tapes it over the graze.
The bullet in his shoulder is next. The angle is awkward, because he was shot from behind, but it's high enough that he can just about make it work. Squashing his finger into it with a wet sound, his arm bent uncomfortably, he prods around until he gets a hold on it. Out comes the musket ball, red and slippery, short at him by a farmer for trying to steal some of his eggs. He was starved for a year, then, and had spent the day before begging said farmer for them. It lands in the bowl with a clang and he feels blood running down his back. He can't reach it well enough to tape it, so he lets it stain the couch and reaches for the scalpel and the tweezers.
The shrapnel in his thigh and knee is the worst. He slices down, opens it up, twitching muscle and a glimpse of white kneecap on display. Picks it out with the tweezers one by one. He had knelt behind an abandoned cart when the shell detonated, and the trouble with carts is that there's a space under them. It had taken him almost a day to crawl back, the agony of it threatening to render him unconscious. Each piece sends a streak of pain trough him, like a live wire, sparking inside his body. Plink, plink, plink, make the small pieces, metal against metal, inside the bowl. It's taking ages, and he has to stop here and there, stretch his knee so it won't tremble, and wipe off the blood so he can see. Like getting tattooed, but more shitty, he thinks.
He makes an effort to keep his breathing deep and even, in through his nose, out trough his mouth, like women in childbirth are taught to do, Eleanor had told him. He learned it during one of his first wars, to breathe and let the pain flow through him, not letting it build up inside and incapacitate.
Then there's the hurt without the wounds outside, or the scars. He makes a curved cut under his navel, rummages around in the slippery wetness of his bowels until he finds the gnarled root and tugs at it with as much force as he can muster. Inch by inch he works it out, an ugly, twisted, ramified thing, holding fast onto his intestines with a hundred little veins. Women, children, men, packed tightly into the belly of a ship. The root writhes with a life of its own, laces its tendrils tighter around his guts. The clinking of chains, the sound of crying, the crack of a whip, the splash of bodies on water hit him like blows and he struggles to keep his grasp.
The hand holding the scalpel works fast, severing one taut line after another. After the last one snaps the thing goes still in his hands. He adds it to the growing collection of things he's taken out of his body. He never gets all of it out and Hob thinks maybe he shouldn't. It grows back from what remains in him every time. Hob thinks maybe it should. After carelessly stuffing the parts back that were tugged out, he sews himself shut with needle and thread.
Next is his belly. An incision just wide enough to fit his hand, fingers grazing his liver. He reaches for the smooth curve of his stomach, carefully tugs down the tight webbing around it, as steady as his trembling hand allows. Snaps the threads between his fingers. He was so hungry back then. It had felt like a small animal was chewing on his guts, every bite a spasm against the inside of his skin. He'd woken up gnawing on his own arm once. After a while it had felt like all his energy was twisted in nervous knots in his torso, his limbs cut off, cold and dead. With a splat , the threads join the keepsakes in the bowl.
At this point his boxers, couch and rug are a mess, soaked and stained.
Hob leans back, takes a moment to breathe. He's mostly finished. All that's left is the searing pulse in his chest. He tries every time, but the hurt and memories of it are both too old and too recent, always overpowering him before he manages to reach the source. They're starting to well up even now, when he hasn't even begun to make the cut. He succumbs to it willingly, takes the greatest gift, the biggest joy of his existence and turns it over to look at its ugly underbelly.
Loneliness fills him, sluices out of the wounds and cuts along with his blood. His mother and siblings. Eleanor. The baby. Robyn. Never more than 30 years in one place, at most. Different places, different faces, different clothes, different food, different homes. And then - then there's 1889. He'd botched everything up like he always does, in one way or another, and now he looks into his eternity alone. Alone, alone, alone, it echoes in the hollow hall of his ribcage, and a sob works its way up his throat. The one thing tethering his life, gone.
Suddenly there's a whooshing sound and Hob looks up, leans forward. In his living room, on the other side of the coffee table, stands Dream, cloak wrapped around him. Hob feels a little bit embarrassed. He's in no state for a visitor, mostly naked, red-soaked hands, blood smeared all over, open in some places. He can't even offer him a place to sit, because his couch is ruined, too. But before the apology leaves his lips, Dream looks around the room, furious, and speaks.
“Where is he? I didn't assign - “ His eyes take Hob in properly, wander over his exposed body, something like dread showing on his face. He walks through the coffee table and sinks to his knees beside Hob's leg, takes Hob's hands in his.
“Hob, what are you doing? Stop. Why would you do this?”
“No. No, you see, there's so much pain inside, and I have to get it all out. It won't stop else. Will you please help me? I can't get my ribs open all by myself, let alone reach there. I'm not strong enough. I'll never get finished like this.” He swallows hard, and adds, “Please?”
“Help you?” Dream seems bewildered and Hob's heart sinks. Of course he wouldn't help him. What was he thinking? Clearly he was just here by accident. “No”, he sobs out, “please please, don't... leave.” again, he thinks, but doesn't say. The pain inside his chest flares.
Dream moves his hands away from Hob's and cradles his face, gently wiping at the tears with his thumbs. “Hob. HOB”, he pleads softly, “You have to wake up.”
Hob sniffles. “I'm... I'm not finished.”, he says confused, voice unsure. “Please? Please.” He takes hold of Dreams wrists, tainting the alabaster skin with crimson, and the following silence is unbearable. After a long moment of consideration Dream says: “As you wish. I will stay.”
With a relieved sigh, Hob lets go of him. "Here", he touches his chest, "you have to go through the ribs. There's... there's a knife and some pliers, there."
Dream chuckles. "I don't need pliers. Or a knife." He motions for Hob to move. "Lie down." Hob shivers as Dream helps him, putting a cushion under his head, propping his knee up, smoothing hair out of his face. As he bends over Hob, the light flickers and dims, blackness creeps up the walls and snuffs out the lamp, the only light filtering in from the street lamp and the moon outside. He seems to grow taller, more angular, eyes dark black pits in a face overrun with sharp edges and shadow. A gasp escapes Hob as he takes in the terrifying beauty of it, a thing so pale and powerful never meant to be seen, like a creature out of a deep cave.
He reaches for Dream's hair, longing to touch anything at all, and it swallows his hand up, biting at his skin like sharp wire. The minuscule grin he receives for that shows a hint of teeth too long and too sharp. There are hands on his chest now, and looking down he sees one of them changing, morphing, fingers growing into a set of elegant claws. They move to caress the edge of his ribcage and then up, almost lovingly, leaving behind a weeping gash. The pain takes a moment to bloom, as is natural with the sharpest of things, licking up hesitantly.
Changing his hand to its familiar shape once more, Dream reaches into the cut, holding him down with the other pressed tightly to his sternum. Dream's fingers are soft and careful against the arch of his lower left rib, sliding softly along and then below, encircling it. Without any warning he snaps it, effortlessly, like a small branch. Hob lets out a scream, and again at the next rib, and the next, alternated with harsh panting. Every touch in between is light and tender, dancing over opened skin and bare bone. He's crying in earnest now, every tall wave of pain as exhilarating as the crash into the trough of the absence of it, the feeling of gentle fingers heralding the coming of the next one.
When it stops, he opens his eyes and looks up. There are two pinpricks of light in the darkness above him, boring into his eyes, prying him open just like the cool hands did. The burning pain in his chest pulses and flares, choking him, and a low whine dies in his mouth.
The familiar creature looming over him lowers its face and drinks the scent of his tears with flared nostrils. Its voice is familiar, too, as it asks: “Do you want me to go on?” With an exhale, Hob manages a barely audible please.
Careful, slowly, Dream lifts the bottom of his lung and his hand goes in, in, in with an obscene squelching sound. Hob wants to arch into that violent touch, wants to impale himself on that stone-cold arm, but all he can do is lie still and let it happen. It causes his lung to bulge out, pressing deliciously against his broken ribs, opening up his chest like the maw of a blunt-toothed animal, glistening wet with every breath. The force of it renders his breathing shallow, even with the additional space, the short, rasping sound of it echoing from the walls. His thighs quiver and for some inexplicable reason he is hard, straining against the soaked fabric of his underwear. The physical and mental exertion is unendurable, but this time he doesn't have to keep his hands still, or his mind clear, because this time its not him that does the breaking and reaching.
Then the cold touches the scorching anguish at his core, slides around his hot, beating heart, and Hob moans at the relief of it. It's 1753 and he laughs out loud as he remembers a joke Robyn once told him. It's 1768 and he thinks of Eleanor's smile as he eats her favourite kind of pastry at a market stall. He sits at his table in his inn, and when he looks up from grading papers, Dream is coming towards him. He stands in front of his Tuesday afternoon class, lecturing, eyes never leaving the black-clad figure in the back of the hall.
The hand squeezes lightly, just once, and his heart feels like its about to burst, staggers in its rhythm and then jumps into a gallop, hammering rapidly against its cage. Hob doesn't know how he's still able to breathe through the pressure and pain of it all, but somehow he manages to get a lung full of air before the next onslaught of memory. He sits on a bench in a park, next to Dream, and their hands touch. He stands in an alley, late at night, getting pressed against a wall and kissed by cold lips, his hands buried in raven-black hair. He lies in a dark room, surrounded by a familiar scent of snow and electricity, of marble and salt, feels a familiar touch.
The fingers around his heart clench and his heart stops, his body pulling itself taut as he comes, tearing itself open at the seams of his old hurts and his consciousness shatters into a million pieces.
Hob Gadling is breathing hard as he wakes up, like he's run a marathon. His body feels lighter somehow. He is greeted by the sight of his boyfriend sitting at the end of his mattress, watching him, eyes blown wide with blackness and stars, his right hand and arm painted red almost up to his elbow.