Happy Valentine's Day, My Love

Happy Valentine's Day, My Love

Happy Valentine’s Day, My Love

As you might have guessed this one was written for a Valentine’s Day challenge. It was to write a microfiction about Valentine’s day, and I chose to write this dark, gruesome, twisted love story. I couldn’t post it at the holiday due to contest rules, but it seemed that October would be a fitting home… There was something powerful about standing over a man whose whole heart was in your hands. He…

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Perfectly Quiet

Hello Hello, welcome to this weeks response to the six-sentence story prompt of the week FILM. I wanted to write something in the horror genre for Halloween, but while it is horrifying, I didn’t quite hit the mark. Follow our narrator as she returns to a perfectly quiet house, which can be one of the worst things when the house shouldn’t be empty! She knew something was wrong from the moment she…

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So everyone’s talking about the Goncharov main theme, but how about the music from the farewell scene?

Inspired by this absolutely precious dreamling art by @anabimelo ! <3

The first time, Dream doesn’t do it on purpose.

He visits the New Inn as he has taken to doing a little more often than perhaps he should, and finds Hob with bruised skin beneath his eyes and a stack of unmarked exams scattered all around him.

“I can return at a better time if you are busy?” Dream offers; he would very much like Hob’s company, but he dislikes seeing him tired like this—much more, he would dislike adding to the reasons for it.

“Stay,” Hob requests, doubt flickering across his face before he nods at the bench beside him.

Dream has been finding himself increasingly incapable of denying Hob anything. He very carefully ignores the implications of said condition.

“Are you certain?” he asks. “You appear to be stressed.”

“All the more reason for a break,” Hob says, waving him off. “You could tell me about… just anything, really. News of your realm? How is the rebuilding going?”

Dream has been trying to become better about this—telling Hob his name and his purpose, all those minute implications that come with it—and so he does.

He speaks of the restoration process of the library, and Lucienne’s tireless work. He spins the stories that make up the inhabitants of the Dreaming and their various histories, while life in the pub keeps playing out around them, a comforting lull that never once disturbs their quiet bubble.

Hob listens, even as his eyes seem to grow heavier, exhaustion radiating off of him.

The first time is not on purpose, and so when Hob Gadling rests his head on Dream’s shoulder, drifting off into his realm, Dream freezes. He is painfully, viscerally aware of the warm weight of Hob’s head, the hair tickling his neck, the soft cadence of Hob’s breathing now pressed against Dream’s side.

Within his chest, something awfully close to a heart is thrashing against its bone-coloured constraints.

The implicit trust is almost overwhelming, would be too much if it wasn’t Hob; Hob, who is muttering a name in this early stage of sleep that he has learnt only months ago, pressing his nose into Dream’s neck as if to build himself a home there.

Dream can do little but breathe, can do little but wrap the magic of his realm around them so that he can carry Hob to his bed without waking him.

He lingers, for the briefest of moments, witnessing Hob’s sleep.

He ignores the blooming tenderness within his chest, too.

While the first time was an accident, the following instances are not.

Hob doesn’t mention it the next time they see each other, as their meetings spill over from the Inn to strolls through London’s early autumn streets and into Hob’s flat. They huddle up on Hob’s sofa, as Hob talks about anything and everything, and nudges Dream to do the same.

So he does; he talks about Matthew and Rose and Jed, about his siblings and his plans for the Dreaming. He lets his voice drop low, lets it drag and curl through the room and wrap around Hob like the magic of lullabies that people dream of.

When Hob’s head comes to rest on his shoulder once more, Dream forgets that he does not need to breathe. He forgets the weight of eternal responsibility that usually presses down on his spine, forgets the phantom coldness of glass and steel, and comes alive beneath the steady, never-ending rhythm of Hob’s breathing. --- So it becomes a habit. Selfishly, Dream builds himself a sanctuary between the sleeping mind and the waking form of his only friend.

He allows his voice to coax Hob into his realm and pretends not to see the knowing glint in Hob’s eyes. He talks of his past and his present and his future as if of gifts that are simple to hand out, and he offers them all up at Hob’s feet for the comfort of his warmth against Dream’s shoulder. For how, without fail, Hob’s calloused hands will find his. How, without fail, once Dream puts him to bed after taking his fill of the warmth, Hob’s fingers will still curl into the insubstantial fabric of Dream’s clothes as if asking him to stay.

It has nothing to do with him, really, and there is only so much Dream can allow himself to indulge. So he never does, no matter how much the longing is threatening to swallow him whole—to lie down beside Hob, to press his nose into the tender skin of Hob’s throat. To pull the covers over them and bask in Hob Gadling’s warmth as if he were the sun and Dream the thawing ice of early spring.

So he never does, until one night, Hob’s grip on his clothes does not loosen; instead, he blinks up at Dream with drowsy eyes that are full of fond exasperation.

He shouldn’t be, is the thing. No mere human should possess the strength to tear themselves out of the Dreaming’s grasp—not with Dream’s attention on them, with no nightmare or outside force to throw them back to waking.

Hob Gadling has not been an ordinary human in a considerable time. He is blinking up at Dream, slow but awake, awake, awake. He says, “Stay. Please.”

Dream’s throat is dry, air stuttering through insubstantial lungs; part of him is tempted to step back into his realm and the safety of its loneliness.

Hob’s fingers are still warm against the skin of his wrist. Beneath the exhaustion and the hope and the quiet confidence, Dream can read the nervous anticipation as if in bold letters.

You have been staying for months now, he seems to say. Will you let me stay with you too, finally, finally?

Dream has been finding himself increasingly incapable of denying Hob anything; Hob’s constant, gentle tenacity renders it impossible, at last.

“As you wish,” Dream murmurs, and means, please; I would stay for as long as you have me.

Hob smiles up at him as if he understands, and once Dream has stretched out beside him, Hob reaches for him. The blanket is spread over Dream, and Hob’s hand finds his wrist, unerring.

“Could’ve just done that weeks ago,” Hob says with a sigh, pulling him close with a light arm around Dream’s waist that he could slip out of if he so pleased.

He doesn’t; he stays silent instead, tension unspooling as his body melts into the warmth of the bed, the scent of Hob around him—its own kind of lullaby.

“Thank you,” Dream says, the words slipping off his tongue in a rare moment of missing deliberation. He can’t bring himself to mind.

Hob hums, a small, content sound before he presses his lips to the crown of Dream’s head. He pulls Dream a little closer yet, and then he drifts back off into Dream’s realm as if it all really is as easy as this, for him.

Dream breathes in, and lets the quiet joy seeping off of Hob’s mind fill the cold cracks within himself. He breathes out and presses his nose into the crook of Hob’s neck, feeling at home for the first time in over a century.

Coming out of my cage and I’ve been doing just fine

Gotta gotta be down, because I want it all

It was only a fish

IT WAS ONLY A FISH

The Last Petal

Hello and welcome to this weeks Friday Picture Prompt response. This one is a follow-up/ AU ending to a tale as old as time. What is a certain curse ended a different way. Follow our man or well, monster, as a rose goes up in smoke. He watched as the rose began to evaporate, his hope along with it.  He howled, as he thought of what it would be like to be stuck like this for all time, but it…

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