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“My lord,” Lucienne said, biting off every word, iron in her voice. “The acid from your fangs is damaging the books. Either change form or go somewhere else.”
Dream of the Endless was the personification of the unconscious minds of all things that dreamed. He was billions of years old and unimaginably powerful. He did not sulk.
He was, perhaps, feeling a tad grumpy.
He vanished from the library and Lucienne breathed a sigh of relief, as she felt him leave not only the library but the Dreaming as well.
Hob Gadling was in the kitchen when an unspeakable monstrosity appeared in his living room. It was so tall that it had to bend nearly double to avoid hitting its head on the ceiling. It had an improbable number of mouths, all of which held fangs as long as a human hand, and which dripped a horrifically vile substance onto his rug, which sizzled and burned away where the droplets landed. Hob had long since taken to buying the ugliest rugs he could find, just so that he could feel satisfaction when something like this happened.
“Hullo love,” he said, leaning out of the kitchen to greet his husband. “The acid fangs again? You must have had a hell of a day.”
The monstrosity let out a low growl that ended in a whine.
“That bad? I’ll finish the dishes later,” Hob said, drying his hands on a towel. He picked up his phone and ushered the frightful being over to the couch.
“Here, look. One of my students sent me this video of a porcupine eating tiny pumpkins.” He angled the screen so that as many of the creature’s eyes as possible could see the video. “Did you know porcupines were that cute? And listen to the noises! I always thought of porcupines as mean spiky things, but look, you just want to pet it!”
The creature huddled on the couch next to Hob suddenly became significantly smaller, and instead of razor-sharp spines, it was covered in long porcupine fur and quills. The acid fangs were gone. It made a plaintive rumbling sound of inquiry that was vaguely reminiscent of the porcupine in the video, but several octaves lower. Hob gasped in delight.
“Oh that’s lovely,” he said, reaching out a cautious hand to stroke. “If I had a tiny pumpkin I would give it to you.” The being sitting next to Hob glared at him with all of its eyes.
“No? Ok. There’s a whole series of this little guy,” Hob said, scrolling. “Oh no, in this one he’s wearing a tiny hat and eating a biscuit.”
The porcupine-creature made a sound of discontent.
“Enough of that? Let’s see what else we can find,” Hob said, and pulled up a video of a black cat that was sitting on top of a box, holding the flaps closed with its body, while an orange cat, trapped inside the box by its brother, struggled to escape.
“That’s you and Desire,” Hob said conspiratorially, and then laughed at his own joke. He turned to look at his husband, whose quills were disappearing and now had just the one mouth and was, ah yes, slowly turning into a cat.
“See, that’s better, love,” Hob said, reaching out to pet the black fur. “You want me to put a movie on, or should we continue to look at cat videos?”
The cat looked meaningfully at the window where a birdfeeder sat in view. Unfortunately, since this was London, the grey, rainy day meant few birds were showing up at this particular time.
Dream made a noise that was not particularly cat-like, but which was extremely pathetic.
"No worries, sweetheart," Hob said, stroking Dream's fur and scratching behind his ears. "I've got just the thing."
Whoever invented Cat TV was a genius, Hob decided. He wasn't sure what it meant that his husband always enjoyed bird-watching, regardless of his apparent level of humanity or lack thereof. But there were never as many birds in the city as he would have liked, so instead Hob wrapped a blanket around his currently mostly-feline husband and streamed calming Youtube videos of birds to the telly while he went to make a pot of the tea that Dream liked. There was no guarantee that he would actually drink it, but it would be nice to have in case he wanted it.
When he came back a bit later, armed with tea and his husband’s favorite biscuits (favorite among ones that could actually be purchased at real stores in the waking world that is,) he found a very human-shaped Dream on the couch, burrowed almost completely under the blankets.
“There you are,” he said, coming over to the couch to wrap his arms around Dream.
"Hob," Dream said, plaintively, his voice sounding rusty with stress. "You left."
Hob smiled involuntarily, as always, at the sound of his voice.
"You knew exactly where I was," he admonished. "And if you'd called, I'd have let the kettle boil itself dry while I came to make sure you were alright."
Dream did not reply; he knew that this was true.
“Hey, you’re fine, I’ve got you. We’re up to speaking in human language already, you’re doing fantastic. Can you tell me what else you need?”
Two hands emerged from the blankets and extracted themselves from the hug to take hold of Hob’s own hands.
“Ok, a little snuggling, a little hand holding, such a hardship,” Hob said, brushing his lips gently against Dream’s neck and jawline. “Don't know why you’re always so insistent that you ask for too much. Can’t hug you properly if you're holding both my hands though, so just let me know.”
Two additional human-shaped hands emerged from the blankets and wrapped themselves around Hob’s chest. He laughed in spite of himself.
“Clever solution to that little problem. Well done, love.”
(Hob had, so far, only had to throw a punch at two beings who had complained within his hearing that he coddled Dream too much. Mervyn Pumpkinhead had at least fought fair- as fair as any dreamkin might at least- and didn't hold a grudge. Desire didn’t fight fair, but had been so surprised that they hadn't had time to really retaliate before the rest of the family had pulled them apart.)
Dream hugged him tighter, trying to snuggle closer without letting go of his hands.
"You do not have enough hands."
Hob let out a snort of laughter.
"I've received a lot of criticism about my many shortcomings over the centuries, but that’s a first. "
"You could have as many as I wanted. In the Dreaming."
"I've got time for a little nap, if that's what you want," Hob said. "But not if whatever got you so worked up is going to just make things worse again."
There was a pause while Dream considered this.
"Lucienne likely postponed my further obligations when she saw me leave. In my previous state."
"She's a very smart woman," Hob agreed. "How about this? We'll go into the bedroom and I'll see if my usual two hands can do everything you need, and if not, we'll head to your realm and experiment with additional hands?"
Lucienne paused in her filing as she felt the tingle of awareness that informed her that Lord Morpheus had returned to the Dreaming. It was... far sooner than she had anticipated. She waited to see if the thunder that had been deafening earlier in the day were returning, but there was no sign of it. After waiting a few more moments, she continued with her work; Lord Morpheus would call her if she were needed.
It was peaceful for at least fifteen minutes, until Matthew came flying into the library at top speed chanting "what the fuck, what the fuck?" under his breath.
Lucienne sighed.
"Yes, Matthew?" she asked, not really wanting a response.
"Uh, nothing," Matthew said, audibly flustered. "The boss is back."
"Yes, I had noticed," Lucienne said. "I take it from your rather dramatic entrance that Mr. Gadling returned with him?"
"Yep."
"I would have thought by now you'd know better than to disturb them in my lord's chambers," Lucienne said wryly, then paused. "Unless of course they're at it in the throne room again."
"I do know better than that, thank you," Matthew said offended. "I ran into them in the hallway just outside of the throne room, fully clothed. And I'm pretty sure they were just holding hands."
Lucienne frowned.
"What's the problem, then?"
"Loosh," Matthew sighed. "You don't want to know how many hands."