Archive of Our Own

It has been six weeks since the divorce.

Six weeks of an empty house. An empty bedroom. One half of the closet, empty. The pantry cupboards are more bare than they've ever been before. Art missing from the walls, books missing from the shelves. Empty, empty, empty.

Dream drifts through the house like a ghost. He feels like a ghost. The things he touches seem to pass right through him; he might as well be naked, for how much attention he pays to his clothes. He might as well be skinless, flayed, organs open to perusal, because he doesn't feel those, either. He might as well be dead.

No. His therapist has told him that he should attempt to curb any suicidal ideations. So, not dead, but transparent. Smoke. A mist. An insubstantial, wisping thing that does not sleep and barely eats and drifts through his empty, silent house and does nothing of any worth, and provides nothing to no one, and is nothing.

He sits in front of his laptop and stares at a blank page. Nothing comes to him. His agent has told him to take his time. There is no limit on grief, Jessamy has said. His last projects had been large ones, and he has no shortage of money off of which to live. Calliope had asked for very little in the divorce. She had only wanted to get away, away, away from him, him and their empty house and the empty bedroom, as quickly as possible.

It has been four months and two weeks since Orpheus died.

Since you killed him, Dream thinks. He sluggishly moves the mouse over the Scrivener icon. He does not click it. What is the point? His limbs are made of lead and the rest of him is mist. Mist cannot write, and it certainly cannot make the dreams of other would-be writers come true. He cannot even make his own dreams come true. If he could, Orpheus would be here, alive, well. He would not be a pile of ash taken back to Greece to be scattered in his mother's homeland. He would not be only a memory of a pale, thin figure in a hospital bed hooked up to innumerable tubes and wires, his curls limp and bedraggled, his mouth open around a ventilation tube.

Dream closes the laptop. He pushes it aside. He goes to his bedroom, empty but for him, the ghost that inhabits it, and lays down to try and sleep.

He fails, as he has been doing, continuously, for the past four months, and two weeks, three days and sixteen hours.

He could call Matthew, he thinks. He turns his head, slowly – everything is slow, everything is not-quite-real, everything he touches turned to the same translucent incoherence as the stuff of which he is made – and peers at the bedside clock. He has not removed his clothes. He thinks he ought to, but then, he also had not changed out of his joggers and t-shirt from this morning, so in a way it is like he never left the bed at all.

It is almost midnight, which means that Matthew will likely still be awake. Dream is not certain what the time is in Louisiana, where his friend's most recent assignment has taken him, but he thinks that London is...several hours behind? He would need to get his phone to look up the conversion, and even though he has just had the thought of calling his friend, the act of actually moving and picking up his phone, even though it is there, right there on the nightstand, seems insurmountable.

Four months. Two weeks.

Orpheus had been so still, at the end. Nothing left of him, in much the same way that there is now nothing left of Dream. Calliope had wept.

"His heart beats," she had said, demanded, had grabbed his hand and forced it to his son's chest. "Feel it! Feel it! It is beating! He is alive!"

There had been a heartbeat. Strong and steady, and nothing like Orpheus' laboured breaths when they had first been allowed to see him in hospital, when the wounds had been fresh and red, the bruises mottling his face vivid purples. There had been a heartbeat, yes, but there had been nothing beneath it. He had always associated his son with birdsong, with the twitter of nightingales, with music. Music had underscored everything Orpheus had done. His voice had been a song.

He had been silent, save for his heartbeat.

Dream turns onto his side. This puts him within easier reach of his nightstand and, in a burst of energy that he is not certain he will ever be able to recreate, he gropes for his phone. It is a minor miracle that he does not knock it off the table and onto the floor; he is certain that it would remain there until the end of time, if he had. But it is here now, in his hand, and he can see the reflection of himself in the shiny, black screen. He looks terrible. He does not need to be able to see fine details to know that. He cannot remember the last time he showered. He thinks it might have been two days ago, but time has blurred to the point that it, like everything else, seems meaningless.

He is allowed to think that life has no meaning. His therapist had not said anything about that.

Dream jabs his thumb against the home button, briefly thankful that Jessamy had shown him how to unlock his phone with his fingerprint, for he thinks if he had to input a passcode he simply...wouldn't. But holding his thumb against a button for a second takes little effort, and then it is only the nigh-insurmountable task of scrolling to Matthew's number, and opening his profile, and hitting the call icon.

He manages, somehow. He cannot, in the following minutes, recall exactly how he did it, but he finds himself staring at the screen, Matthew's photo made large just before the call connects.

"Hey buddy," Matthew says, drawing the vowels out into a sound like a hesitation. "What's up? How're you feeling?"

Dream considers this question. He thinks he may consider it for slightly too long, because Matthew sighs, deeply.

"Okay. So, about the same, then."

"Nothing has changed." He is surprised by the sound of his own voice: raspy, a bit thready. When was the last time he communicated with someone in any way other than email? Jessamy has called and left messages, but though he listens to all of them he has not responded to a single one. He answers her emails.

Death had left him a message as well, but it had only been the one. I'm here if you need me, little brother. She is not here. She has never been here, always coming and going for work. She tries, but she always falls a bit short.

Desire had sent him a text. Let me know if you want me to take you out. Dream had been unsure if Desire meant 'take out' in the context of a party – which Desire is very good at – or 'take out' as in 'cause the death of,' which...he assumes Desire would also be very good at.

"Nothing's gonna change if you don't do anything to change it," Matthew says. Dream turns onto his back. The bedroom is silent. He has, without noticing it, taken his normal position on the right side of the bed, though there is no one else to share the bed with. The realisation makes his eyes feel hot, but no tears come. Ghosts wail and scream and lament, but they do not truly weep.

"What would you suggest I do?" he asks.

"I don't know. Go out? Sit in the sun? Start working again? Shit, man. I haven't been where you are." Dream makes a noise of agreement. "Maybe start with trying to get some sleep, though. Isn't it like, midnight in London?"

Dream turns his head to look at the clock. "It is now," he intones, and Matthew snorts.

"Nothing's gonna get better if you don't start treating yourself better."

I killed my son, Dream thinks. Does that entitle him to 'feeling better?' To closure?

You will never mourn him the way I now mourn him, Calliope had spat at him. That had been even before the divorce, at the first hearing when Dream had pleaded his case before the hospital's chosen arbiter. It had been the first of several meetings, each more contentious than the last. By the final hearing, Calliope had not even been able to look at him. She had insisted that her legal counsel stand between her and Dream.

The judge had ruled in favour of Dream, despite her sobs. No one had been happy with the decision. Calliope had filed for divorce the next day.

"Listen," Matthew says. "I think part of it is that you're all alone in that big, stupid house. It's too quiet."

It had been a house designed for three, is what Dream does not say. Now his son's bedroom is empty, all of his things taken back to Greece, and Dream is alone.

"I've been getting into this, uh, ASMR stuff lately. When I'm missing Abby, you know, it's nice to have some noise in the background. There's all kinds. People who do like, whispering and tapping on shit and..."

"I fail to see how tapping will help me sleep," he says. Matthew is silent for a moment, and then he makes a soft noise of triumph.

"Oh. There was a channel someone recommended to me...hang on. I'll text you the link. It's super small, super unpolished, but like, it might be what you need? Give it a try." There is a beat of silence, in which neither Dream nor Matthew say anything, and then Matthew says, "Dream. Boss. Buddy. Promise me you'll give it a try?"

Dream exhales. This is, his therapist has said, not quite a compulsion, but something that he needs to be mindful of. He is allowed to break promises if they cause an interference in his life. He is allowed to not make promises if he feels that he cannot keep them. There is no obligation that supersedes his own happiness.

He is, however...not happy. And so perhaps a promise will make it neither better nor worse.

"I promise," he sighs. "I will look at the link you send me."

He can almost hear Matthew's joyous fist-pump. "Yes. Okay. I'll text you as soon as we hang up. Have you eaten today?"

"I do not remember."

"Okay, so go make yourself some toast and beans or whatever it is you people do."

Matthew is a relentless bully, but it is well-meaning, and it is easier to obey the orders of someone else, as opposed to the circling nothingness in his own brain. Under Matthew's instruction he forces himself to rise, and to go to the kitchen, and to make a plate of toast. He even – again, to appease Matthew – puts some butter and jam on the toast, and sits at the table, like a real person, and eats it. He does not think he tastes any of it, but afterwards Matthew asks him, "Feeling any better?" and Dream is forced to admit that there is some measure of comfort to be had from eating.

He does not think he will remember it tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. Not without someone to remind him, and the house is empty save for him, and Matthew works. He can set as many alarms as he likes, leave himself notes by the score, but unless someone is here to tell him he will not remember to call Matthew. Not tomorrow, and not the next day. Not at all. He has the suspicion that he left most of his capacity for memory with Orpheus, when they took his body away.

"A little," he says. "Thank you."

"No problem, boss. I gotta go, okay? Gotta get some shut-eye. But I'll call you tomorrow when I can."

"All right."

"And check out the link I'm sending you, okay?"

"I will."

"Okay." Matthew hesitates. "And Dream...you aren't alone, okay? Like. There's people who love you. I love ya, man."

Unbidden, Dream feels a smile tug at his mouth. It only lasts for a moment, but it is...nice. A moment of reprieve in what has thus far been a sea of numbness.

"You are my best friend," Dream murmurs. "I am unaccountably lucky to have you. And I love you, also." It is easy to see the words, even if they provoke only the barest flicker of emotion. He remembers he was once described as 'intense.' Passionate. Calliope had compared his love to the sea, bottomless and fierce.

He probes the depths of his emotions now and finds them no more than skin-deep.

Still, for the moment it is nice to pretend.

They exchange goodbyes. Matthew does not demand any more promises from him, but he does make ominous sounds about Dream needing to answer the phone tomorrow when Matthew inevitably calls, and Dream is too tired to argue. The act of eating has sapped him of what little energy he has left, and so he returns to bed after he has hung up, leaving the plate on the table. He will clean it tomorrow. Or maybe he won't. His gaze may pass over it, the way his gaze has passed over the laundry overflowing the hamper, and his own reflection in the mirror when he dares to look at it, with the dark shadows under his eyes and the deep furrows that have carved themselves around his mouth.

He goes back to bed. He lays on the right-hand side, even though the rest of the bed is empty. He stares at the ceiling.

An hour passes. Two hours. Sleep does not come, the same way that sleep has not come for the past four months, and two weeks, and three days. However many hours, and minutes, and seconds. He thinks he could name them down to decimals. Femtoseconds. He cannot remember to bathe himself or eat, and he cannot bring himself to sleep, but he can remember the exact time that the life support was turned off, and the exact time that Orpheus took his last breath, and the exact one-hundredth of a second when his lungs seized, and for a moment he had doubted himself, for a moment he had thought I'm killing him, he is still alive and I am killing him, and then it had been done.

Sleep does not come, and sometime in the very early morning Dream remembers that he has his phone still poised on his chest. He has passed the last several hours in a fugue state, not quite slumber, not true rest, and his eyes feel heavy and strange. Still, he is aware enough to be able to look at the link that Matthew has sent him.

He had promised.

Dream taps the link. He does not have much battery left, but thirty percent is enough to watch a single video. The link opens a YouTube channel. It does not look particularly complex, as far as these things go. There is no banner at the top, no logo, no branding. The icon is a picture of a pair of hands holding a book in an anonymous lap. There are more than twenty videos that have been uploaded since May of last year, and all of them are titled similarly: Making us breakfast while you read, and, Sitting with you while I grade papers, and, Cleaning the house with you. None of these things seem like the typical fare of ASMR videos, as far as Dream is aware, and the channel's numbers seem to reflect it. There are only a hundred and thirteen subscribers, and most of the videos appear to have only a handful of comments each.

And yet whoever this is has been dedicatedly uploading video after video, receiving very little commendation in return, for almost a year.

Intrigued despite himself, Dream goes back to the very first video, uploaded last May. He thinks, in a vague sort of way, that he ought to go and find some headphones. Those are integral to the experience, are they not? He does not know where his headphones are. He has not used them in months, and so he does not move.

The video loads, opening with a slant-angled view of a tidy little brown couch, in a living room that is crammed from floor to ceiling with bookshelves. There is a shuffling sound, the microphone picking up distortion. Someone mutters, "Ah, bugger." Then the audio clears, and a figure moves into view of the camera. The angle is such that their face remains unseen, but they are wearing a worn West Ham shirt and jeans that have gone so soft and thin at the knees that the denim has turned white.

"Hullo, love," a voice says. It is a man's voice, low and smooth. A London accent. The man puts his hands into his lap. He has good hands, Dream thinks vaguely. Thick fingers and broad palms, hands that, years ago, would be used to the plough or the sword. These days, hands like that might do anything. The man is currently using them to gesture: soft, sweeping motions that draw Dream's eye. "How was your day?" There is a brief pause, as though the man waits for an answer. Then he says, "I'm sorry. Wish it could've been a better one. Do you want me to make you a cuppa?" Another pause. There is something in the man's voice. It is not the calculated smoothness of someone attempting to elicit a reaction. There's a rough edge to it, and it takes Dream several more seconds of listening to realise that the man sounds as though he is on the verge of tears.

This video has less than a hundred views, and only four comments. Are you okay? asks the top one. Working through some stuff, thanks mate, is the response.

"Come here," the man says, and shifts aside on the couch, making room for a second body that does not appear. He rearranges himself as though he is not alone, though, and there is something soothing about the familiar noises of a body existing in the same space as another. The camera is not of high quality, but the microphone is decent enough, and Dream can hear minute shifts of fabric as the man moves, and the sound of his breathing. "Lemme hold you for a mo'. You want to hear about my day?"

Dream is surprised to find that he rather does. There had been no information in the channel's biography, only a notation that had said 'email for requests only.' The email had been rdgad89. It might have been a gmail account, but Dream is no longer sure.

"Well, today I spent nearly fifteen minutes fighting with a chip & pin...don't laugh, you know how bollocks I am with technology. Love it, though. Every new thing is fascinating, you know? But Christ, some of it isn't made for people like me. Sometimes I think I'd have done a bang-up job as a mediaeval peasant. Wouldn't have to worry about anything except ploughing fields and going to church."

There is a pause, and the man huffs softly. It is nearly a laugh, but not quite. "I know. I should know better. Mediaeval peasants lived rich and interesting lives and reducing them to little more than dumb labour does them a disservice. I did write the book, you know. Still. Bet they didn't have shite to say about chip & pins."

The conversation continues one-sided, with the man talking about a day he'd had once in May of last year, to a person who did not exist, and still does not exist, but for the moment it is easy to lose himself in the cadence of another voice. For the moment, he can pretend that the person this man is talking to is him. It is not ASMR in the way that Dream is familiar with it, and he suddenly understands why this channel has so few subscribers. People looking for actual ASMR are no doubt disappointed.

What this man is offering is a lack of silence. Familiarity. Comfort.

The man's voice drifts off after a time, and for the remaining six minutes of the video it is only the sound of him breathing, humming occasionally, his fingers stroking his own arm, the shift of fabric. There is the faintest hint of traffic sounds in the background, to match what Dream currently hears outside his own bedroom window, but for some reason the video is easier to focus on. The man has drawn his legs up to his chest, keeping them slightly parted, as though he anticipates another person to join him at any second.

No one does.

Thirty seconds from the end, when Dream is preparing to end the video, the man inhales deeply. It sounds wet, and Dream realises only a second before the man speaks that it is the sound of a man who has begun to cry.

"Miss you," the man says. "Miss you every goddamned day. I hope this helps."

Then the man reaches over the view of the camera, and the video stops.

He only has six percent battery left. Dream subscribes to the channel before he forgets, and then, in a move that he thinks would impress even Matthew, he rolls over and fumbles down the side of his mattress for the phone charger. He plugs his phone in, and then lays it on the nightstand.

It still takes another thirty minutes for him to fall asleep, but, once he does, he sleeps for seven hours straight, the longest uninterrupted rest he has had for four months, two weeks, and three days.

+++

The man does not give his name. He does not give his age, or his location, though he does speak often of a university, and Dream deduces that he must work for one, either as a professor or as administration. In one of his videos, a more recent one, he talks about being thrown a birthday party. "Honestly," he says, "I think I stopped caring about my birthday when I turned thirty-five? Not that I begrudge the party. Love a good party. But I think I'll start acknowledging it again when I hit a proper milestone. Forty-five, maybe, or fifty. Ha. Yeah, you're right. We only age in decades, now."

In each video he talks as though there is another person with him, but there never is. It is only ever him, this man who is somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five, who wears jeans so worn and well-loved that Dream can sometimes see the shadow of his skin through the worn thighs, who, in the videos from July and August, is wearing short sleeves which reveal dark hair dusting leanly-muscled forearms. In one video he is wearing white shorts, and Dream discovers that his thighs are just as furred. That is the video in which he talks about going out and 'playing footie with some mates for the first time in a while.' Dream wonders what 'a while' means. He wonders who it is that the man misses.

There are more than fifty videos. The man has been uploading one, faithfully, every few days since last May. Some months there are fewer videos, and on those months the man almost always apologises. He lifts his hand to his unseen ear, moving as though he tugs at it in regret or embarrassment.

Dream skips around most of them, fascinated. He devours them, thirty seconds here, a minute there, and barely realises when noon has come and gone.

"What did you have for lunch, love?" the man asks, and Dream's stomach growls. He does not feel rested, precisely, even after seven hours of sleep, but he does feel hungry, which he has not felt for...days, perhaps. Longer. He remembers to eat only when he becomes too shaky to do anything else. Matthew has occasionally texted to remind him.

The fridge is grossly empty, but there are cup noodles in the pantry. Dream opens the packaging of one, and is halfway through filling the kettle before he remembers that the cup noodles are there at all because Orpheus had sometimes grown so involved in his music that he, like his father, would forget to eat. He has to stand at the counter for several minutes, then, waiting for the nausea to subside, before he is able to force himself to continue past the instinctive, desperate notion that he does not deserve to eat.

He fills the kettle. He turns it on. His phone, laying screen-up on the table, sits paused on the last video, the man's hand half-raised. Dream swallows around a sudden burst of anxiety and fumbles to turn the video back on.

"–member it being better than this, but maybe that's nostalgia talking. I must be getting old. Can't handle fish and chips anymore."

"I'm having a cup noodle," Dream tells no one in particular. He is certainly not telling the man in the video, who cannot hear him, and likely would not care even if he could. The sound of his own voice is, again, almost startling. He drank some water this morning, however, and so it is not as rough. Not as unused.

He is surprised that he remembers he drank anything. He is surprised he remembered to drink.

The kettle sings, adding an accompaniment to the sound of the man picking up the camera and carrying it with him. The video resolves into a view of a kitchen, and then a stove. There is the sound of cupboards opening. Pots being jostled. The man reappears on screen, setting a pan down onto the hob.

"Curry?" he asks, and Dream finds himself nodding absently along to the sound of someone making food that isn't for him, in a house that is not his, and yet the sounds are so familiar, so normal, that he can almost pretend they belong to him. When the man begins to hum – some tuneless, interchangeable pop song that Dream vaguely recognizes but could not put a name to if his life depended on it – he remembers that there are dishes from the previous night that need to be done, and when he bins his empty cup noodle his eyes do not skim over the plate on the table as they usually would.

He puts the plate in the dishwasher. There are other plates in the dishwasher, ones he had forgotten about, which have begun to grow a fine patina of mould. Dream wrinkles his nose. The video continues to play, now with the sound of running water, a pan being set into the sink.

He runs the dishwasher for the first time in...he isn't sure how long. Weeks, perhaps. He thinks it must only be weeks, because there would be more mould if it had been months.

"Am I weird for liking to do my dishes by hand?" the man asks. Dream, privately, thinks this is exceedingly strange, but he has also never been one to perform chores. There had been a maid, growing up, and they had hired a per-diem cleaning service after he had married Calliope.

He stops in the middle of the kitchen. The man continues to talk, pleasant background fuzz to Dream's overheated brain. He wonders if Calliope is going through this same process. If she, also, is in an empty flat, in an empty bed, with a silent phone. He thinks probably not. She has eight sisters who love her, who had protested vigorously when she had announced Dream as her husband. They had not believed he was good enough for her. They had not attended the wedding.

They had been right, unfortunately, though there is no way they could have known that Dream would be the death of their sister's son.

The dishwasher chugs along, filling the otherwise quiet flat with a new layer of noise. Dream carries the phone to the living room, where he sits on the sofa that he has barely used for the past four months (two weeks, four days), folding his feet up beneath himself.

"Love a good spicy curry," the man says. "Sometimes I'm in the mood for something that will burn my nose hairs out, you know?" There is a pause. Dream fills this with his own thoughts. I do not. I eat the same foods, over and over. It drove my wife insane. I have never been very adventurous, though I inspire adventure in others.

"I know," the man says. "You prefer a pot roast to pad thai, but still." For a moment his words uncomfortably vibrate alongside Dream's own thoughts, just enough dissonance that he knows it is not a direct answer, but strangely parallel all the same. He wonders who it is the man talks to. A loved one? The unnamed, unknown person that he misses? An invention of his own mind? Dream has always been good at spinning out stories; as a young man, he had lost himself often to the corridors of his imagination, to the endless frustration of Desire and Despair, who would rather he had played with them at their own games. They had enjoyed gossip. Learning things about people. Desire had liked to make dolls kiss, and then have elaborate, soap-opera-esque breakups. Sometimes there had been murder involved, but the dolls had always gotten what they wanted in the end. That had been very important to them, that everyone got what they wanted.

Dream, much older at that point, had always been able to imagine a happy ending for others, but had significantly more difficulty doing so for himself.

He pours himself a glass of water and makes himself drink it. Then he pauses the video. The comments section is...depressingly bare. A few commenting on how much better the audio quality has gotten. One that appears to be from someone who knows the man, 'Hllblzer666' who comments cant believe youre still keeping this up mate, call me 4 drinks mayb? Dream lingers over the empty comment box for long minutes, listening to the dishwasher churn unhurriedly along.

He does not text with any degree of quickness. It is a constant source of amusement to Jessamy, and befuddled annoyance to Matthew, who tells him often that if he is able to type at ninety-five words per minute he ought to be able to text 'at least faster than a sloth.' There is something about the phone that stymies him, however, and it takes him long minutes to both compose and then to enter his comment into the box. It is long enough for him to think better of it. It is long enough for him to tell himself, several times over, that this man is not beholden to him, owes him no promises, and does none of these videos for Dream specifically. Yet he cannot help but feel a brief burst of kinship for the unknown man, and, specifically, for that moment in the very first video, unwatched by so many, when in the final seconds the man had revealed a portion of his soul.

Thank you for this, Dream types. I have recently been going through. A difficult time. And your videos have reminded me to eat something, and run the dishwasher. He considers adding more – that he is divorced, that he lives in an empty, silent house that is slowly driving him mad, that he killed his son, God, his son, his only son, but none of that is...helpful. Or, indeed, the business of anybody but him and his lawyer.

He hits 'submit' before he can second-guess himself. The comment appears under his username: Dreamking01. It must have been Jessamy's work. He had not even realised he had a YouTube account.

He spends the rest of the day laying on the couch. It is, at the very least, a different locale than the bedroom, the sheets which are beginning to be uncomfortable because he has not been able to wash them, the pillows that no longer smell like anything but himself. The couch is practically new territory, and though he does not sleep, he does doze for a time, and when he comes to full consciousness it is night again.

I should shower, he thinks vaguely. The thought struggles to form edges, and then wisps away. He returns to the bedroom.

He does remove his old joggers and put on some newer ones, so perhaps that is progress.

+++

You're welcome, the reply says, several days later. I make these videos for people like you n me. Makes my heart glad that people are getting something out of them. Cheers mate.

Dream stares at the words for a very long time. For the second night in a row he has remembered to charge his phone, and the sky is the limit as far as what he wishes to do with it today. He could email Jessamy. Ask for a bit more time. He could text Matthew.

He could watch more of this man's videos.

'People like you and me,' he'd written. It does not specifically confirm Dream's suspicion – that the quiet weeping at the end of the first video was the result of some personal misfortune – but it goes far to reassure him that these videos are not...performative. That they are real.

He is aware that it is dangerous to think of any internet personality as 'real.' Difficult not to, however, when the next video he cues up to watch as he makes himself drink water, and eat a plate of hastily-made eggs (with the last two eggs in the fridge), is one where the camera is set on a tripod facing down a hallway. It has a view of a partially-closed door, through which a soft light bleeds, and there are sounds coming from within. The microphone must be set closer, perhaps in the room itself, because Dream can very clearly hear a cupboard open and close on squeaky hinges, and the man says, softly, "Really do need to oil those."

There is something different about the way he says it. Everything he has said previously, save for that one, desperate Miss you, has been for the benefit of the camera. Directed towards the viewer as though they are there, with him, as though they answer his questions. This, however, has the feel of a comment made to himself. There is no follow-up, no pause for an imagined answer followed by a soft laugh or a huff of breath. Dream feels as though he has heard something private. Something not intended to be heard.

It is...oddly titillating. He shakes the feeling away. It had hardly been a salacious comment. There is nothing particularly interesting about hinges that need to be oiled.

And yet.

There is the sound of a faucet running, interrupted by something passing briefly beneath it. A cap being opened. And then the familiar sound of someone brushing their teeth.

It is, somehow, more normal, more common than every video or clip of a video that he has watched thus far, and Dream feels, unbidden, tears spring to his eyes. The tears are even more surprising than his reaction – he had thought he could no longer cry, dried up inside like a mummy – and he dashes them away, taking a deep, shuddering breath as he listens to the man begin to hum through his full mouth.

He does not recognise the song, but he does not need to: he remembers walking past the bathroom in the morning, the door, like this one, partially open, and hearing Orpheus shuffling about inside. He remembers how sometimes he had caught a glimpse of his son – he had only been fifteen, not even grown yet – in the months before he had been attacked, how Orpheus had done this same thing. Hummed, or sang, or mimicked the sounds of instruments as he had brushed his teeth. Sang in the shower. God, he had sung all the time. He had always been able to tell when Orpheus was unhappy, because the house would be silent.

The humming stops, and the man spits, followed by the sound of him rinsing his mouth and spitting again. Soft footsteps on tile, muffled briefly at the end, and then the squeak of a tap turning, and the sudden roar of a shower. How many days has it been since Dream showered? He stares down into his half-eaten plate of eggs, but receives no answer. When he touches his hair, it feels...unpleasant.

He leaves the eggs on the table and proceeds halfway down the hallway before he reconsiders. Makes himself turn around and scrape the eggs into the bin. He has eaten so little over the past several weeks that there is not even enough rubbish in the kitchen bin to smell.

He puts the plate in the sink. The video continues playing, the sound of the shower now interrupted by the presence of a body standing in front of it. The man has begun to hum again, and as Dream retraces his steps down the hall the tuneless crooning becomes off-key singing. "If I lay here," he warbles. "If I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world?" Dream doesn't know the song, but some part of his brain must remember it, from a commercial, from a TV programme, because he finds himself nodding along as he turns on the light in his own bathroom, as he methodically strips out of his joggers and his grey t-shirt, as he looks at himself nude in the mirror for the first time in months.

God, when had he gotten so thin?

He turns on the shower, accompanied by the sound of the man segueing haphazardly into a different song. "They expected me to find somewhere, some perspective, but I just sat and stared..." This is one that Dream has heard before. It had played on the radio while he had been writing, the sound of Orpheus moving about the living room. He had hated it, at the time. He writes best in silence, listening only to his own thoughts. He had told Orpheus to turn it off.

Let him listen to his music, Calliope had said.

He can listen to his music in another room. Where I am not working.

When he first steps beneath the shower it feels sharp. Too much sensation, too hot, and Dream cringes back against the tiles like a fearful animal. His hair plasters down to his skull, and only the continued sounds from the phone he has left on the counter convince him that he ought to see this through. Gradually he relaxes, the heat not quite as overwhelming, his skin becoming used to feeling again. The first tentative pass of a soapy flannel over his chest feels like pouring paint stripper over a worn wooden fence. It takes off layers of him at a time, opens him up to heat, to touch, to the sound of another person in a shower much like this one, but so far away that he might as well not be real at all.

Perhaps it is that unreality, that remove, that allows him to leave another comment afterwards, even before he has dried or dressed himself. He stands, dripping on his bathmat, thumb moving hesitantly over each letter and smearing condensation across the phone's screen.

I remembered to shower because of this video, he writes. Thank you for singing. He bites his lip. Stands and drip-dries on the mat and considers leaving it there, because this man likely has no interest in the lives of his commenters, and even if he does, it does not make him any more of a known person. He is a faceless figure on the other side of a camera. He has been very careful not to reveal his face. That must mean something. He likely values his privacy. He likely will not care that Dream has fixated on that single, brief moment of vulnerability, the choked Miss you lodged in his brain like a bit of grit in an oyster.

My son would sing, he types, before he can convince himself otherwise, before the clambering demons of his insecurities catch up with him. Matthew, he thinks, would be proud of him. Confused, but proud. Now that he is gone the house is silent. Your videos have brought me some relief.

He bites his lip harder. Swears that he tastes blood, just before he adds, at the very end of the comment, - Dream. Then he hits 'submit' before he can second guess himself further. He will be able to delete the comment later, he reassures himself. The man had not responded to his first comment for several days, and so he likely has plenty of time, and it is not as though there are scads of people in the comments section who will see. Even less likely that anyone will recognise him. None of the books he has written have his name on the cover.

Dream only realises that he has been standing and dripping for several minutes when gooseflesh breaks out over his arms. He shivers, and puts the phone down, though he lingers over it for a second before he lets it go.

Dangerous, he can hear Despair's voice telling him. His second-youngest sister works in technology; she would know better than most. Forming parasocial relationships with YouTubers is the sort of thing that teenagers do, Dream.

All the same, he has remembered to shower today. He ate. Now he dries himself, and brings both clothes and phone to the bedroom, and realises that he has no clean clothes left save for some yoga pants left behind by Calliope.

He wears them. No one is around to see, and they had been nearly the same size anyways.

+++

He does not have to wait several days for a reply to his comment. He barely has to wait several hours. Dream is in the middle of attempting to sort laundry when he receives the notification, and gladly abandons the seemingly Sisyphean task in favor of checking his email.

My son played video games, the response says. Too loud and all the time, but now I miss it. He was 18.

'Was.' Dream focuses on that word. It is so small, and yet in three letters it seems to encompass the whole of human existence. Was. Used to be, but no longer. At some point there was a boy who liked video games, who frustrated his father, whose father loved him enough that he remembers him now to strangers on the internet, and that boy is gone, and is not coming back.

Thank you for commenting, the reply continues. Really does make me happy. Can't say that it gets better because I dont think it ever does. But it gets easier to think about. Dunno what you're going thru but if it's anything like me, you aren't alone. You don't have to be.

- Hob

Dream swallows, and swallows again, and cannot seem to get past the damnable lump in his throat, calcified around the three letters, was. He does not know how a person can be reduced to so small a word, and yet they regularly are. Orpheus was. He was bright and beautiful and Dream had not loved him the way he should have. He had been obsessed with his work, with his words, and Orpheus was his son but the work had always come first. Orpheus was his son, and was supposed to have been the most important thing in his life, and he had been. Important enough that, when he had brought his new girlfriend home, Dream had warned him.

It would be better for you to wait, he had said. You're young. She's young. If the love is real, wait. Secondary school is cruel to girls like her. They will be cruel to you, too.

I'll protect her, Orpheus had said. I'm not afraid. Eurydice had been a tall, gangling, ever-present shadow beside him. The last time Dream had seen her, before everything, she had still been struggling with learning how to apply makeup. She’d worn too much eyeshadow, the cakey sort purchased cheaply at Superdrug, and her worn trainers had traced arcane patterns on the hardwood floor. There had been a hole in the arm of her jumper, mended with different-coloured thread, that his eyes had returned to again and again.

He had not attended her funeral. He had not thought he would be welcome.

Dream sits for long minutes, still as stone, amongst the detritus of his unwashed laundry. He has not thought of Eurydice in months. He has not attempted to contact her parents; he doubts they would want to hear from him now, and he is not certain he ever learned her last name, besides.

Orpheus had been important, yes. And Dream had still failed him.

It is not until an hour later, when Dream finally feels able to move – and promptly discovers that he cannot, because both of his legs have fallen asleep – that he remembers that the man had signed his own comment. He scrolls back to it, heart thumping uncomfortably in his throat, and stares for long seconds. Hob. That isn't a real name. Then again, 'Dream' is hardly a real name, either, and yet that's what is on his own birth certificate. Hob. A nickname? Short for...Hobart? Who names their child Hobart in this day and age?

He ruminates on it as he sets his phone to the side and, quite without realising that he's doing it, begins to sort his laundry once again.

+++

He watches the videos every night.

Perhaps that is obsessive, but they help him sleep. He has not slept this much, with such regularity, in a very long time, and as the weeks pass, and the month turns over, and he finds himself nearing the most recent videos, Dream returns more and more often to the reply that the man, that Hob, had left him. You aren't alone. You don't have to be.

He is. Calliope will not speak to him except through an arbiter. Jessamy has given up calling him. Even Matthew texts more often than he calls. He has not heard from any of his siblings in weeks. They are giving him time to grieve. They are giving him space. It has been five months and one week since his son died. Since, grieving, Orpheus had slammed his way out of the house, and Dream had assumed he was going to visit Eurydice's grave, and then several hours later he had gotten the call.

Three of Orpheus' assailants are in prison. The police had been unable to find the fourth. Sometimes, when Dream lingers in that between-space that is not quite sleep, and not quite waking, he imagines hunting the man down himself, for he is almost certain it was a man. The other three had been. He imagines finding him, and taking bloody vengeance. In his fantasies he is a massive, smoke-wreathed monster, a nightmare of titanic proportions, a dark thing lined with teeth and blood.

And then the fantasy bursts, and it is only him, lying in a cold bed, in an empty house.

Alone, yes. And he goes back, again and again, to Hob.

The video he watches now was posted four months ago. It is one with fewer views, possibly because there is actually very little sound in it. He has found his headphones for this one, because it is the only way that he is able to hear all of it.

In the video, Hob – for the man in the videos must be Hob – is lying on his side, facing away from the camera, the lens angled slightly down so that the view terminates at his neck. He is wearing a worn, heather grey t-shirt that is peppered with holes, and a pair of blue tartan boxers that look newer. His chest rises and falls gently, and through the magnification of the headphones Dream is able to hear him breathing. He is unsure if Hob is actually asleep – the video is only twenty minutes long, and during that time Hob only shifts slightly, never turns over – but there is something uncomfortably and thrillingly intimate about the scene all the same. He has set the phone on the pillow next to him, angled such that he can still see the screen through one eye as he lays on his side, and even though the headphones are uncomfortable in this position he has not moved for the past thirty minutes. He has replayed the video twice.

Hob sighs, the sound almost not caught by the microphone at all. He moves slowly, legs rubbing together, arm shifting. Dream could believe him actually asleep, and yet what sort of man would post a video of himself sleeping for the perusal of strangers online?

The sort of man who would make this channel at all, he suspects. The sort of man who once had a son, and no longer does, and misses someone terribly. Is it his son he misses? Someone else? The videos have given Dream a fair idea of wherever it is that Hob films, what he has to assume is the man's house or flat, and he has never seen any evidence of anyone else.

He feels as if he knows this man.

Dangerous, he hears again, and he knows, he knows. He is developing an unfortunate fixation, and his therapist would tell him that he ought to try and redirect his attention to something that is more acceptable. His therapist, however, is not here, and there is nothing else that is more acceptable. He has done more for his own self-care in the past month than he has done in all of the combined four months preceding it. He has showered, eaten, done laundry. He is sleeping again, only short bursts at a time now, yes, but real sleep.

Because of Hob. His videos. His willingness to bare himself to an uncaring world. Because he, somehow, has kept living, while Dream has become a husk of a creature, incoherent, a ghost.

His eyes have begun to droop, exhaustion struggling to claim him. It is almost a new sensation, for how long it has been since he felt it. Still, he resists. Opens a new comment, on this video specifically, and types: I miss my wife. More than that, however, I miss someone beside me in bed. I have been described as...aggressively 'clingy' while I sleep. She tolerated it.

Thank you again for your videos.

- Dream

He falls asleep to the quiet sounds of Hob breathing, the video repeating itself for the third time.

+++

This time, the reply does not come for two days. Dream feels a brief surge of anxiety the next morning – he has overstepped, he has been too much, a constant and unwavering problem of his – but then he receives a call from Calliope's arbiter, requesting that he search for and release to his wife a specific picture of their son that he is no longer certain he even has, and all thoughts of YouTube videos and comment sections fly from him. He spends an entire day combing through every closet and storage box in the house, and by the time that he finds the picture (hidden in Calliope's work desk, which she had not bothered to take with her when she had left) he is wrung-out, flayed, his eyes sore from the desire to weep and the complete inability to do so. He emails the arbiter back – he cannot bring himself to call – and afterwards he sits in the middle of the empty living room and hangs his head, and remains very still, and very quiet, until the early hours of the morning, when hunger finally drives him onwards and forces him to the kitchen.

He makes himself another cup noodle, and leaves himself a note on the fridge (have groceries delivered) that he is not certain he will remember to look at, and he falls asleep sitting at the kitchen table, noodles half-eaten, and does not wake until past noon the next day.

My wife snored, the reply says when, squinting against the afternoon sun that leaks through the shades, he checks his emails upon waking. She hated it. Thought she sounded like a pig. I thought it was darling. Its been longer since I lost her but sometimes something happens and it smacks me in the face again.

it's been really nice reading your comments. Reminds me why I do this.

stay safe, Dream. You aren't alone.

- Hob

Dream stares at the reply for a long time. Minutes pass. An hour, maybe? He isn't certain. He keeps coming back to my wife and lost her. Then, like a lodestone, he is drawn again and again to You aren't alone. It is the first time that Hob has addressed him. Other replies have been signed, but could, ostensibly, be directed to anyone.

For the first time, he replies to Hob's reply.

I feel less alone for the presence of your videos.

- Dream

Then he closes out of YouTube entirely, and places an order for groceries.

+++

Spring comes to London, wet and dreary and dull, and Dream relearns how to cook for himself.

Neither he nor Calliope had been chefs. She had focused on her poetry, while he had lost himself in his prose, and more often than not they had ordered takeaway when they were newly-married. Then, when Orpheus had been born, they had made the conscious effort to purchase healthier meals...though still the ones that came pre-prepared, and needed only to be assembled and placed into an oven or heated on the stove. It had been an expense that had seemed, at the time, well worth it. Now Dream curses his lack of foresight. He has enough money to live off of, yes, but not enough money to be frivolous, not if he does not pick up work soon, and he cannot afford a meal delivery service.

Noodles, fortunately, are easy. He watches videos of Hob chopping vegetables, making breakfast, sitting and eating a sandwich, and he follows along with them. Leaves comments on each: I am attempting to make spaghetti tonight. I have never done this before. My ex-wife and I ordered in more than we cooked. - Dream

It's a step forward mate. Spag's easy at least. Add a pinch of sugar to the sauce. Trust me. - Hob

He does. The sauce is too thin, but the taste is fair enough, and the sugar cuts through the acidity of the tomatoes. Dream eats an entire plate of spaghetti and regrets it immensely afterwards, when he lays a hand on his belly – taut as a drum – and finds himself too full to move without discomfort.

He replies to Hob's response: Ate too much. I have not been eating well for...some time. Your suggestion of sugar was a fine one. Thank you. - Dream

Maybe smaller steps forward, then. Here's a recipe that I made constantly after Robyn passed. it's absolutely NOT good for you but when you just need to put something in your mouth it does the trick. took me three months before I felt like I could taste things again, and I think this was the thing that did it.

Stay safe, Dream

- Hob

It is a recipe for a chicken and ham casserole. Hob is correct in that the ingredients look horrendously unhealthy – there is such a preponderance of cheese that Dream finds it mildly concerning – but it also promises to be easy, fast, and cheap. When next he places a grocery order he adds chicken and gammon steak to the list, as well as wild rice, and frozen peas, condensed cream of chicken soup and evaporated milk and, yes, enough cheese that he instinctively looks at the recipe and thinks that cannot be right. It is an extremely American recipe. He wonders if Hob has travelled. He wonders if Robyn is the name of his son or his wife. He wonders if Hob thinks about him, a man even more faceless than Hob has made himself, a man he knows only through YouTube comments.

Dream makes the casserole within the week. It is, as promised, fast, and cheap, and filling. There is something deeply comforting about the saltiness of it, making him wonder if he has become deficient in some vital minerals during what feels like a long, fruitless sleep from which he is only now beginning to awaken. The steam curls up from the plate, wisping around his cheeks like grey cat's tails, and perhaps it is the salt, or perhaps it is the new information he has been gifted (Robyn, he thinks, and how Hob ends so many of his replies, stay safe, as though he knows how Dream had thought, before, when he had wondered if life was still worth it). Perhaps it is because of something else that he has no knowledge of and never will. But whatever the reason, on a Tuesday evening, sitting at his kitchen table with his head hung over a plate of partially-eaten chicken and ham casserole, Dream heaves a shuddering breath and begins to sob.

It lasts for only a second. It lasts forever. He weeps until it is painful, and the tears still come afterwards, though he no longer has the energy to fight them. He is forced to lay his head cheek-down on the table, pushing the plate aside, until the shaking abates, though the tears themselves do not stop for long minutes.

Afterwards, he blows his nose. He finishes the casserole, which is not as good lukewarm as it had been piping hot, but the salt is still good. He rinses the plate and puts it in the dishwasher.

He leaves a comment on the very first of Hob's videos. He posts it before he can review it, his thumb flying over the keyboard, and damn his therapist and damn Despair's voice in his head telling him about illusory experiences and parasocial breakups. He is full and warm and he has showered today and his laundry is no longer overflowing, there are clean dishes in the cupboards, there is food in the fridge, and he is alive. Somehow, against all odds, against his wishes, Dream is alive, and if that is not worth commenting on then he is not sure what is.

Sometimes I feel almost human again, he posts. I think it is because of you. Please feel free to ignore this comment.

- Dream

Then he ladles the casserole into tupperware, and puts the dish into the sink to soak, and he goes to bed.

+++

For the first time in six months, one week, and two days, Dream wakes with an erection.

It feels, strangely, like a betrayal. It feels wrong, and he lays in bed for a half-hour, hoping desperately that it will go away. His dreams return to him in fits and starts, and they do not help in the slightest: wavering images of broad, tanned palms with thick fingers cupping his hips, a mouth blazing wet kisses down the length of his spine, teeth taking hold of the lobe of his ear and tugging. A calloused thumb rubbing over his nipple, an upsettingly familiar voice whispering, There you are, love.

He stares at the ceiling, refusing to blink for fear that in the darkness behind his eyes he will remember more. Then, when that does not help – only makes his eyes dry and sore and heavy – he takes himself in hand and endeavours to bring himself to orgasm as quickly as possible.

It takes very little. He touches himself, and it makes him gasp. He turns his head into the pillow, writhing on sheets that are clean at last, and he huffs, and he grits his teeth, and he makes a soft, pathetic mewling sound when he spills over his fingers. Afterwards he wipes himself down with a tissue and seethes, and is not certain why he feels so angry with himself. He circles back, again and again, to how it feels like a betrayal.

His son is dead. His wife is gone. No longer even his wife. What right does he have to feel good? To move on? To feel human again?

Dream lobs the tissue towards the bin and misses abominably, and then, because it has become his wont, he checks his email on his phone.

Would you like to email me? the reply from Hob says. It's in the profile. I do think I'd love to hear from you.

Hope you're well

- Hob

He is suddenly glad that he dealt with his persistent problem before he checked his email, for Dream is abruptly certain that if he hadn't, if he had looked at this reply before, he would not have been able to keep his mind from drifting. The phantom, almost-there memories of dreams would have coalesced, and then he would have had to contend with the fact that he was actively fantasising about a man whose face he has never seen, whose voice he has only heard on a recording, whose videos he has been watching in order to fall asleep every night, and who he has almost certainly formed an unhealthy fascination with.

But he did not check his emails first, and so he is able to, sort of, almost, pretend.

I would like that as well, he responds, before he can think better of it. He is beginning to suspect that there has been no point at which he has thought better of anything. He is beginning to suspect that Despair and Desire would laugh at him, if only they knew.

His thumb hovers over the button. He has not signed this reply. He is not sure if he should. It feels like a strange formality.

In the end, he taps 'submit' without signing his name. Then he forces himself to roll out of bed, to pick up the tissue where it had fallen on the floor, to shower. He tries to make rice porridge for breakfast, one of the few things he remembers making for Orpheus, primarily when he had been sick. Calliope had had some extended family in London, and they had sometimes brought over trahanas, from which Calliope had made a thin, hot soup. She had added feta to it in large chunks, but it had always been one of Dream's secret, guilty pleasures that Orpheus had eaten his porridge more readily. He suspects it had been because he makes it sweet, with honey and almonds and cream, the way he makes it now.

It is a fine distraction, right up until it isn't, when he finds himself sitting at his kitchen table, empty but for himself, with a bowl of hot rice porridge and the unfortunate knowledge that he has still somehow managed to be too much, this time too much for even himself. It is not, he thinks, done to transpose sexual feelings upon someone you have not met, out of sheer gratitude for the fact that it feels like they see you. This is not the same situation as celebrities or musicians. This is a real man, who has thus far been very kind and understanding, who is reaching out to another grieving father and offering comfort, and Dream is the one who is turning it into something it is not. Because he is too much.

If he were a stronger man he would message Hob back. Apologise and thank him for the offer, but he thinks perhaps it would be wiser to maintain some distance between them. He does not want to make Hob uncomfortable. Perhaps, when he is feeling more stable, he might message again. He would enjoy the opportunity for friendship.

He would enjoy even more the opportunity for another body beside his, in his exceedingly empty bed, an arm over his waist, his leg tucked between someone else's thighs. Calliope had slept on her back, and in the later years of their marriage, when their communications had been breaking down even before Orpheus' death, she had often risen in the night and gone to the guest bedroom to resume her rest. She had found him too clingy. She had used to find it charming.

They had always worked better as lovers, Dream thinks, as opposed to partners. Orpheus had been the balm that had soothed that hurt, but it had never truly healed.

He eats his porridge. He nearly cries again when he first tastes it, but by some miracle manages to hold himself together. He puts the dish in the sink to soak.

Perhaps if I email him it will clear this from my system, he thinks. Perhaps I need only get to know him as a person, and these unfortunate feelings will fade. Perhaps he is far older than I have been assuming. He is assaulted, abruptly, by the mental image of a man with Hob's build, with Hob's thick fingers and broad palms and dark-furred thighs, but instead of a few charming lines of grey at his temples he is a man with salt and pepper in his chest hair, with silver threading throughout his dark hair, perhaps even entirely silver, and Dream feels his mouth go dry with want.

Far younger, then, he tells himself desperately, and that is easier. He cannot imagine himself keeping a younger lover. Yes, perhaps Hob is younger than he thought, or perhaps he has unfortunate habits that would make him unsuited as a romantic interest but perfectly acceptable as a friend, or perhaps...

He is aware, on some level, that this is what his younger siblings would call 'a reach.' Yet he has always been very good at spinning out stories.

Still, he dithers. He runs a load of laundry. He looks at the bathroom and grimaces; he finds an ancient bottle of bowl cleaner and a toilet brush under the sink, shores himself up, and cleans at least that part of the room. He considers the usefulness of calling the cleaning service they had used before, and then reminds himself that they is now he. He hesitantly Googles their prices, and then reconsiders.

He emails Jessamy.

Please send me the five most recent briefs you have received and I will consider them, he types. Then, in a burst of consideration, adds, I am not doing...well. But I think I am doing better. Thank you for your patience with me.

He does not need to wait long for a reply, as though Jessamy had been hovering over her laptop, waiting. I'll send them right over! her email reads. Please call or email or text me if you need anything, Dream. I can't tell you how glad I am to hear from you. I was worried. Seriously, anything you need, please let me know. :)

He feels himself smile. It is slight, but it is there. Jessamy has taken good care of him over the years, ever since his first agent, Lucienne, had retired. She is quicksilver, darting, bubbling over with lighthearted, always-kind gossip, and he suspects that he can trust her not to send him any potential manuscript concepts that are too close to what he is currently dealing with.

And then there is nothing else to do that does not also require that he leave the house to make purchases, or else order something through Doordash. He could sleep, he supposes, but for the first time in months he feels...not rested, still, but caught up. He is no longer running on a deficit; Dream is surprised to find that, indeed, he no longer feels so thin. He is still, physically, underweight, but the core of him, what had felt like mist and starlight, insubstantial things, has solidified. He feels as though he could touch something, anything, and be recognised as real.

He could touch someone. Hold someone's hand. Kiss someone.

You are not getting it out of your system by avoiding the problem entirely, he chides himself, and sits himself down in front of his laptop for the first time in what feels like weeks, opening it and settling in to compose an email.

Hob, he writes. I do hope you allow me the liberty of addressing you as 'Hob,' for I know no other name by which to call you. If this is an egregious overstep on my part, please inform me.

Firstly, my name is Dream Murphy. Yes, that is my real name. You can feel free to Google me and you will be able to find not only my occupation, but also likely some news articles that will provide some insight into my reason for watching your videos. I hope this places us on more equal footing.

Secondly, thank you. I am not certain there are words enough to adequately convey the gratitude I feel, but thank you all the same. Two months ago I was a shadow of myself. I could not sleep. I barely ate. Your videos are comfort enough that I feel I have been able to make myself live again, despite how often I do not wish to. This is, perhaps, an unfair burden of knowledge to place upon you. I will understand if you do not wish to continue our correspondence. However. You deserve to know that you have, through your kindness, brought someone back from the brink of oblivion.

Dream pauses. This is getting...heavier than he had anticipated. He does not need to expound further, no matter how he wishes to wax poetic on the miracle that Hob has worked. The man is now in possession of a name, and presumably has the capability of looking it up. He will be able to make his choice from there.

He bites his lip. I would very much like to keep talking with you, he continues. For I have inferred that we have a shared grief, and I have been told that grief is easier weathered with a companion. If I have not put you off entirely, I look forward to hearing back from you. But. Again. I will understand if you have no desire to do so. I have been told that

He hesitates again. This treads perilously close to revealing an insecurity that Hob likely has no desire to know, and certainly has no need to know. Yet it feels disingenuous to have come this far, to have written this much, and to not probe at the crack in the foundation of him that has now come to light.

He backspaces several times. I am aware that many consider me 'too much.' he types instead. I will not be offended if this trend continues.

No, he will not be offended. He will only be disappointed. Saddened. He had thought, in the beginning, that Calliope was the perfect match for him, someone to meet his fire and his ardour blow for blow. Someone who had been able to not only keep up with him artistically, intellectually, sexually, but also someone who had been able to look past all of his foibles and faults.

He had worn her down, in the end. Vacillated too often between overwhelming passion and remote coolness. Eventually, the things that had seemed to make them so compatible had been the chinks in the armor that had let in the killing blow. He has begun to think that he does not need his passion met. He needs it banked. A warm hearth, instead of a blazing pyre.

He is getting older, Dream thinks wryly, and signs the email, I eagerly await your response, whatever it may be. Until then, I remain your hopeful epistolarian.

- Dream Murphy

Then he sends the email.

+++

There are many news articles about the tragic events of half a year ago. The Telegraph had run a piece, as well as several local newspapers. Eventually, with the news of a trial, the Guardian had also stepped in on the action.

There is only one article that Dream thinks is worth reading, and it is not the one that anyone has read. People enjoy sensation. Action. Tragedy. They do not enjoy knowing that the person about which the article is written was a real person, with real hopes, and real dreams.

The Harrow Times wrote: Eurydice Aulonaed was sixteen when she was murdered. Saying that he 'enjoys' this sentence implies the wrong tone of emotion, and yet if there is anything about the situation that Dream could be said to enjoy, it is the Harrow Time's acknowledgement that Eurydice had been murdered. It had not been an accident. It had not been a tragic fall. It had not been her fault. She had been murdered.

There is poetic symmetry there. Orpheus, also, was murdered.

Eurydice Aulonaed was out getting dinner with her friends (names withheld by request) when she was approached by a group of men outside of a petrol station late Saturday evening.

"They were doing the, you know, the catcalling thing," one friend is quoted as saying. "They were asking us what we were doing out so late, and did we have anyone to walk us home, and...and Eurydice told them to shove off. They didn't like that."

The friend describes how one of the assailants grabbed at 16 year-old Eurydice's arm and attempted to restrain her.

"He got really weird about it and shoved her away after a second. But then he started talking about all the things he was going to...to do to her. It was awful. Awful stuff. We grabbed her arms and we started running, but they chased us. People watched them chase us and they didn't do anything. And then we turned a corner, and Euri...she was wearing her new Viper heels, and it was only, like, the third or fourth time she wore them, and she turned too sharp and she fell..."

Eurydice Aulonaed sustained a traumatic brain injury as a result of her fall, as well as multiple fractures, breaks, and internal injuries from the assault she suffered afterwards. Despite the best efforts of emergency personnel, she passed away at the scene as a result of severe intracranial haemorrhage.

+++

Another evening passes before Dream has the courage to check his email again, and during that time he sleeps.

He dreams, again, of warm hands smoothing down his spine, fingers tickling along his ribcage. You're so thin, a voice says. He knows the voice, and stretches towards it, begging with his body and his mouth.

Please, he says, and the voice laughs. It is soft, gentle laughter. Broad palms cup his arse, pull him closer. He ruts against a soft-furred belly and listens to his unknown lover hum fondly, feels lips press to the side of his neck as they rock unhurriedly together.

Do you want to try the other way 'round this time, love? his lover asks, and Dream nods eagerly. Yes. It has been a very long time since he slept with a man, but the few times before he had bottomed, simply because he had been so desperate for sensation, for touch, that it had made more sense to allow himself to be handled. Now he rolls atop his lover and peppers kisses over the stubbled throat, feeling the vibrations of laughter under his lips. He reaches down between them, ruffles the hair on his lover's thighs, slips his hand into the shadowed hollow there and finds him already slick and open.

Got myself ready for you, he hears.

Then Dream opens his eyes, startled awake by the sound of a car grumbling to life outside and by the throb of his own insistent arousal. He blinks up at the ceiling for several moments, orienting himself in time and place, and then makes a strangled, guttural noise of frustration before shoving his hand down his joggers. He brings himself off quickly, his annoyance only serving to heighten the unfortunate experience, and he comes in his pants like a teenager with a bitten-off wail and vague flashes of memory flickering behind his slammed-shut eyes. Hob, he thinks before he can stop himself, and when the aftershocks have finished and he withdraws his hand sticky and wet from his pants he turns himself over onto his belly, drapes his arm over the edge of the bed to avoid making a further mess, and shouts into his pillow like a child having a tantrum.

This cannot continue, Dream thinks, once he has finished. It is an unfortunate truth that sometimes simply yelling is enough to quell the demons of the mind, and he knows that it is only a matter of time before he has this precise issue again, and again, and again. It will continue to happen until either he hears back from Hob and his overtures of friendship are rebuffed, or until he...does something. About it.

Dream flips himself onto his back again, staring at the ceiling. He can hear the voices of his siblings chiding him even now. You look like a haunted Victorian child, Desire would say. Is it so terrible, having a crush on somebody?

Lots of relationships are formed out of mutual grief, Despair would tell him. Then, with a sharp little smile, she might add, They don't often last, but they do happen.

What will be, will be, Destiny would say. Dream grimaces. His eldest brother is unhelpful as always, even in his own mind.

Maybe it isn't a bad thing, letting yourself want again, Destruction would say. This, out of all of his siblings, is perhaps the advice most worth heeding. Destruction has long-since escaped the drama and the infighting of their complicated family, and as far as Dream is aware he is living a far more fulfilling life because of it. He tries to work through the threads of this particular narrative, resting his tacky hand on his bare stomach.

You've done enough punishing yourself, maybe. What happened to Eurydice wasn't your fault. What happened to Orpheus wasn't your fault, either.

He could have been a better father. Supported his son. Perhaps there had been a conversation they'd had, a decision he'd forced Orpheus to make, and if he had been more lenient, if he had been more open, more accepting...perhaps, on that night, Eurydice would not have been out in Harrow with her friends, wearing her new four-inch Viper heels. Perhaps she would have been visiting Orpheus instead, and he would have found them curled together like puppies on top of Orpheus' bed the next morning. Perhaps. Perhaps.

You can't populate a life with maybes, the Destruction of his imagination tells him. You can't keep looking back at everything that's already behind you. You can only keep moving forward.

Dream flexes his fingers. Wrinkles his nose.

First, perhaps, he can shower.

He does feel better after cleaning himself. Infinitely more human and alive, so much more so than he has for the past six months that after he steps out of the shower he has to stare at himself in the mirror, unsure if he truly is the same man. He's put on a bit more weight; his ribs no longer stand out like the rungs of a ladder, and his sternum melts smoothly into his belly, rather than dipping inwards. Dream smears his fingers through the condensation on the mirror and studies the eyes that look back at him. Orpheus had inherited his eyes: blue like the sky, like cornflowers, like a still, calm lake.

But it's his own eyes in the mirror, and Orpheus is dead, and whether he forms an ill-advised relationship with a stranger on the internet or not is not going to change that fact. There's only him, trying to keep going. Only Dream.

He dresses perfunctorily, and finds, after he has done so, that he is wearing jeans instead of joggers. He hadn't even realised that he reached for them, and Dream touches the insides of his thighs, where the denim is crisp and new. Nothing like the worn-thin white patches of Hob's jeans. You are acting like a schoolboy with a crush, he chastises himself. He has no proof that Hob will even answer his email, let alone in the affirmative.

Still, he is smiling to himself when he finally checks his phone.

Hello, Dream (still can't believe that's really your name. Thought you picked it because it was pretty!)

I can't begin to tell you how glad I am you emailed me. You can tell I'm excited because I'm using actual real person punctuation and grammar (I've got my work laptop open for this and everything!).

I'll be honest that when you first started commenting I didn't think much of it. I started doing those videos after my son Robyn died a year ago and I've gotten a few people telling me that they helped and I thought you were one of them, and you'd move on pretty quickly and stop commenting.

(You can probably find news articles about Robyn, too, but I'll just tell you that he was killed in a bar brawl. It was stupid. There wasn't anything anyone could have done differently.)

(And I didn't look up your name by the way, if you want me to know you'll let me know.)

Anyways. You didn't stop, and I started looking forward to seeing the progress you were making and, well. When you started signing your comments I thought...Okay. Honestly I thought that you were STRANGE, because what sort of name is 'Dream' and who signs their youtube comments? LOL But everything you were saying was so close to everything I remember feeling right after Robyn died that it felt like I knew even before you mentioned your son. It sort of felt like I knew you.

So much for the proper grammar and punctuation am I right???

All this is to say that I don't think you're 'too much' so far (who even says that??) and I would like to get to know you better. I don't know if you're in the London area, but if you are I'd fancy meeting up for a pint, and if you aren't we could always keep emailing or do a video chat or something. You'll have to bear with me though I'll need to get one of my students to help me set up the video chatting program or whatever it is. (They're the ones who helped me choose a microphone and a camera and all that)

(How many videos have you watched so far? You commented on the one of me sleeping, I remember. Please tell me you didn’t notice the drooling, think I might perish of embarrassment if you did)

Hope to hear back from you

Robert Gadling aka Hob :)

Right below that signature is a second signature, reading:

Dr. Robert D. Gadling

PhD Medieval History, MA English Literature

King's College, London

He/Him

along with a kcl.ac.uk email and a phone number, presumably going to the man's office. Dream covers his mouth with his hand, something warm and shivery and long-buried fluttering in his belly.

He sends an answer so quickly that it is a wonder he does not break the phone.

I live in Lower Clapton, he types. My employment is such that I am able to meet you whenever is convenient.

I...am excited. Also. Please forgive me if I am awkward. I have spoken to fewer than five distinct people over the past six months. I look forward to meeting you.

Fond regards,

Dream Murphy

And then, inspired, maybe, by the flutter in his belly that has been moving steadily up into his chest, growing more distinct as it goes, he adds at the very bottom of the email,

P.S.

I did, indeed, view the video of you sleeping. I fail to see why you should feel any embarrassment. I found it soothing. Drool notwithstanding.

He had found it more than soothing. It is the video he watches most often in order to fall asleep, and the one, Dream suspects, that has been the trigger for his ongoing fantasies.

He cannot tell Hob that, though.

He leaves the email as it is, sending it almost as quickly as he had typed it, hope blooming tentatively in the garden of his chest.

+++

Saturday at 5? Hob's response had read. The White Horse Tavern in London? Hope that isn't too far for you.

It's not. Dream has nothing but time and, having accepted a manuscript brief from Jessamy, he will shortly have both time and money. He need not worry about transportation, and he has enough savings still to be able to treat himself.

Still, he spends the rest of the week in a fugue of uncertainty, though he has already sent Hob his acquiescence. He should feel better. Yet, too fast, he tells himself as he is brushing his teeth. Too much, he reminds himself, as he is dressing for the day. Too soon, he thinks, sitting and studying the brief that Jessamy has sent him. Too soon, yes. It has only been six months and...

Dream freezes, struck with a sudden panic. He has lost track of time. Six months and how many weeks? How many days? Does Calliope track the hours the way he has been doing? If she doesn't, who will remember his son? He scrambles to open the calendar app on his laptop, counting backwards through the months until he finds the exact day, and then sighing as some tension in him releases. Six months, two weeks, one day. He could, if he were inclined, find the exact hour and minute.

How soon is too soon? he asks himself, staring miserably at the calendar. When am I allowed happiness? When am I allowed to move on?

And then, on the heels of that, You killed your son you killed your son you killed your son.

He shuts the laptop screen.

He goes to bed.

He sleeps.

+++

Hey Dream,

I'm sorry to have missed you Saturday. I waited around for a bit (a bit longer than a bit if I'm honest) but I figured if you didn't show after five hours you weren't going to. I just wanted to email and let you know I'm not angry? I know I come off a bit strong. My wife Eleanor, she liked to tell me that I didn't know how to hold any of myself back. That's just always how I've done. I figured with you saying people said you were 'too much' (still think that's bollocks) that I might've

I don't know. Sorry, I'm rambling (somehow still managing to do that in text).

Would still love to meet you. Maybe this is presumptuous of me, but I was sort of hoping that we could make it a date? That sounds absolutely insane when I put it down but there you go. I haven't tried to dip my toes into dating since my wife died but I thought, why not? This bloke seems nice and I don't really care much about looks and if it turned out you weren't interested or you weren't ready, we could still be friends. Not lonely together, you know.

I feel like I'm ruining my chances the longer I keep going so I'm just going to say that I'm still interested in knowing you. I still haven't looked you up, or your son, or anything. I want to get to know you, not the tragedy. They're different things, dove. Whatever it is that happened doesn't have to control you forever. I know it doesn't feel like it, but we are more than just fathers and husbands. We're fully realised people.

Sorry. Rambling still.

I'll still be waiting for whenever you're ready.

Yours fondly,

Hob

+++

"Dream, buddy, are you gonna pick up your phone or am I gonna have to fly in from fuckin' Baton Rouge to kick your ass personally? Boss? Please pick up. I'm worried, Jessamy's worried...she says you were doing really well? And now radio silence? Did you go and meet that guy? Do I need to fly in and kick someone else's ass? You just say the word boss, I'm serious. Please? Please, Dream. Please pick up."

+++

+++

Hello Mr. Murphy. Though I suppose I'm more than allowed to call you 'Dream' now, considering I am no longer your agent.

Jessamy Corbin has both emailed and called me, beside herself with worry about your current condition, and I do wish she had contacted me sooner, that I might have checked on you myself before things had reached this point. I knew that you were suffering through a great ordeal, but I had no idea it had gotten this bad. I had hoped – based on the limited contact I still maintain with Matthew – that you had begun the process of healing. I am well aware of how difficult this is, however, and so some backsliding is always to be expected. Shutting out everyone that you know and locking yourself in your house is what one might call more than merely 'some' backsliding.

There is precious little I can offer you, sir, beyond the grief I feel for you and with you, and a willing and open ear. I understand that your former agent is not what one might consider the pinnacle of close relationships, but I have always considered you more than simply my client, Murphy. I have always thought of you as my friend.

Please, talk to someone. Jessamy, or your friend Matthew, or this 'Robert' who has emailed me. Any of your siblings. Me.

You are not alone, sir.

Faithfully,

Lucienne Bucher

+++

+++

"Hello, Dream. Please understand that I would not be calling you this way unless it seemed dire. Your friends seem very convinced that it is dire. I..."

Silence. Then...

"I do not forgive you. I do not know if I ever can, or will. But just because I do not forgive you does not mean you cannot forgive yourself. I know...I know what you did was a kindness. I know. I hate it. I hate it with every part of me, and yet...But I have not called to try and convince you of this. I am calling because your friends are worried that you will do something to yourself, and so I am telling you do not. After everything we have been through, after how this has changed us...Orpheus would ask us to change for the better. He was...he was a good boy. He believed in people like that. He even believed that you could change. I cannot see it. But he saw more than I ever did."

"Please. Call your friends. Call your new man. Live."

+++

It's a Sunday afternoon when Dream comes to awareness, dragged from the fugue of his grief by the phone ringing. He ignores it. He has been quite successful at ignoring it for the past...

He is not sure. The last date that he remembers had been the Saturday he had meant to meet Hob at the White Horse. He hadn't gone. He'd laid in bed instead, simultaneously exhausted and unable to sleep. He hadn't dared watch any of Hob's videos, some part of him insisting that he did not deserve the solace they brought, murmuring over and over, you killed him you killed him you killed him. Logically, he knows that his grief has spiralled into a depression from which he is finding it impossible to extricate himself. Logic, however, does not seem able to penetrate the thick calcification of numbness that has covered him. Logic would dictate that he get up and feed himself, bathe himself, try to rejoin society. Logic would tell him that he ought to at least check his phone or his laptop to determine what day it is, and how long he has drifted like this. At least before he had been aware of the passage of time, obsessed as he had been with tracking the number of months, weeks, days since Orpheus' death.

How long has it been? How many months?

The phone stops ringing and, stricken, Dream continues to lay where he has been laying on the sofa, unmoving.

Then the doorbell rings.

The sound of it cuts through everything, his grief, his numbness, so startling is the brightness of it. Dream jerks upwards, and is nearly laid low again by a sudden rush of dizziness. How long has he been lying here? He's been eating something. He's been drinking, and using the toilet, otherwise he would be in a far more dire state than he currently is. His hair, though, is lank and plastered to his forehead with sweat, and his mouth is dry.

The doorbell rings again.

"Dream?" he hears, muffled through the wall. The voice seems vaguely familiar; whoever it is must be shouting in order to be heard. "Dream, if you're in there and you can hear me, please let me in? I know I'm probably the last person you want to see right now..."

They will continue shouting until he tells them to go away, Dream thinks. He heaves himself up again, and this time there is no spinning rush of blood to his head. He wobbles slightly on his feet, and then shuffles towards the door. The person outside continues to shout: "...but I'm worried. A lot of people are worried, and I know I don't really have the right to be worried considering I've never even seen you in person, but I...I am. Worried. Very.

Dream unlocks the door. When he opens it he has to shut his eyes against the sudden glare of sunlight, the noise of traffic, the breeze, the fresh air. All of it feels nearly painful to him, and he sways against the doorjamb, letting it take his weight before he falls. Perhaps he has not been eating as much as he thought he was.

"Christ alive," he hears, and manages to peel his eyes open a crack, because he knows the voice. He had not expected to hear it ever again, not unless he ever worked up the courage to watch...

"Hob?" he croaks, hardly able to believe it himself.

"Yeah. Yeah, I...Okay. Come on, love. Let's go inside and we're going to take care of you, all right?"

"I do not need taking care of," he protests, painfully aware of the fact that he is having difficulty standing upright for longer than several minutes at a time. He squints through the light, and then Hob shifts sideways, blocking the sun, and he is able, for the first time, to see the man's face.

He is no great beauty. He wears his dark brown hair slightly longer, a bit past his jawline, and has it pushed back from his forehead, which is high and clear. A few wayward strands of hair fall over his brows, heavy and dark, and even as Dream watches Hob puffs a breath through pursed lips to try and blow the hair away. His nose is the most characterful part of his face, larger, with a slight hook to it that Dream wants to run his fingers over; his mouth is generous even now, pulled as it is into a worried frown. There's a shadow of stubble on his cheeks, which makes Dream realise that he does not know the time, and he cannot bring himself to look at the sun for long enough to judge its position. He would not, even if he could. All of his attention is on Hob.

He is not beautiful, no, but he is handsome. Kindness shines from him as though he has swallowed a star, and when he ducks his head and smiles softly Dream feels his traitorous heart give a threatening squeeze.

"Come on," Hob says, and gently lays a hand on Dream's shoulder. "Can I come in?"

Dream swallows, and swallows again. You do not deserve this! something in him bawls, but it seems infinitely easier to ignore in the face of Hob's strength of personality. Dream understands, now, why the videos had captured him so – what he does not understand is how other people do not see this.

"I...yes," he says eventually, and that seems to be all the permission that Hob requires. He takes control easily and smoothly, guiding Dream away from the door and bustling him back inside. Hob shuts the door behind them. He leads Dream over to the sofa and sets him down with care.

"You look about as bad as I did," Hob muses. "Except I crawled into the bottom of a bottle, so at least you smell a bit better. It's a pleasure to meet you, by the way. You're even more beautiful in person."

Dream stares up at him. Hob reaches up and tugs the lobe of his right ear.

"I said that out loud, didn't I? Shit. And I said you look bad. You don't. I mean, you do, but you're also beautiful, and..."

"You are babbling," Dream says, and Hob clicks his teeth shut, and then grins sheepishly.

"Yeah. Sorry. Told you, didn't I? Bad habit of mine. So. Ah. Hello."

"Hello," Dream says, still not a hundred percent certain he is not hallucinating this entire encounter. "Are you real?"

Hob snorts. Theatrically pats himself down and then says, "I hope so. I really do, I've been looking forward to meeting you and I'd hate it if it happened when I wasn't real." He stands awkwardly, holding his hands in front of him. He has a messenger bag that rests heavily against one hip and he is wearing a blue button-down with a pair of reading glasses tucked into the front pocket. He is not, as Dream had briefly imagined, entirely grey, but there are a few threads of fine silver at his temples, and a few more in the lock of hair that keeps falling over his right eye.

It is, Dream thinks, like being lost in a desert for weeks and then being presented suddenly with a cup of cold water. It is like a persistent itch being treated with aloe, like seeing the sun rise after a long, dark winter. Relief breaks through the hard shell of grief that has encased him, cracks splintering deep enough to reach his heart and, to his horror, he feels his lower lip begin to tremble and hot tears flood his eyes.

"Oh," Hob says, in the three seconds of silence before Dream bursts into ugly sobs. "Oh, darling, okay. Can I touch you? Am I allowed?"

All Dream can do is nod, trying to gulp air past his tightening throat. Through a haze of tears he watches Hob drop his messenger bag and then seat himself gingerly beside Dream on the sofa; the proximity is awkward at first. He has not had anyone this close to him in months. But then, like a dam breaking, the wall of grief overwhelms him and he turns towards the offered bulwark of Hob's shoulder, pushing his face against its warmth and weeping harder. If Hob had not imagined this series of events upon his arrival, he does a good job of hiding it. His arm comes up, curling across Dream's back and pulling him closer as he makes a series of soft shushing noises.

"S'all right," he murmurs. "I'm here. I'm here. You aren't alone. You don't have to be alone anymore, I'm not going anywhere. You've been holding this in for a bit, yeah? S'okay to let it out."

Dream hiccups, and on the heels of that ungainly noise another sob breaks loose. He has, historically, not found crying to be painful, and yet now his eyes sting fiercely, and his throat burns, and his nose has become a tight, clogged mess such that every breath he drags in feels like rubbing his raw lungs over sandpaper. He wheezes and whimpers, every last trace of the ghost he had been banished by the encroaching dawn of Hob's presence, and by the time that the tears have begun to slow the shoulder of Hob's shirt is a sodden, mucousy ruin. Dream draws back and Hob allows him, a palm remaining between the wings of his shoulders, rubbing firmly.

"There you are," Hob murmurs. Dream turns his head, trying to keep his mouth shut as he coughs. "Feeling a bit better?"

"No," Dream says. In truth, he is unsure what he is feeling. 'Better,' perhaps, in that this is the first time he has cried like this...at all. Not even when Orpheus had died had he wept so fiercely, too horrified by the reality of what he had done, too numb with grief afterwards. So focused on remembering that terrible moment that he had completely failed to feel anything afterwards.

"That sounds about right," Hob says. His voice sounds suspiciously thick. "Can I go get you some water?"

Dream nods, and Hob hugs him tightly, one-armed, before releasing him. He does not seem to have any trouble finding the kitchen, but Dream listens to cupboards opening and closing for several seconds before it sounds like Hob has found the glasses. He is a poor host, he thinks, and closes his eyes, and leans back against the sofa. This is not how he had hoped to meet this man. He had wanted to make a good impression. He had wanted...

Friendship. Something more. Had dared to want at all, before mourning had come down over him like a cloak, shrouding him from sense.

Desire, unfortunately, had been right. No amount of punishment will bring Orpheus back. No amount of healing will, either.

"Here we are," Hob says, dropping back down into the seat beside Dream and proffering a glass of water. He takes it, but his attention is on Hob's face, and his red-rimmed eyes. Hob grins at him, a bit watery, and reaches up to rub a thumb along his cheek.

"Sorry," he says. "I just...I remember. Being here, like this, and no one being there with me. So I'm glad that I can be here for you, even if we're practically strangers."

"I feel like I have known you far longer," Dream admits. He makes himself drink, and the water is so cold and so sweet that it almost burns. He is suddenly thirstier than he has ever been in his life; he drains the entire glass in seconds, and Hob does not take his eyes off him the entire time.

"We could fix that," Hob says, once Dream has emerged for breath. "Let's see...You already know my name. Dr. Robert Gadling, I teach mediaeval history at King's...Oh! I'm turning forty-two this year." He pulls a face. "Not that it matters. I do a lot of reading boring old textbooks and manuscripts in my spare time, and sometimes on weekends I dress up in period-accurate chainmail and I go hit people with blunted swords." He grins at Dream's uncomprehending face. "I'm a member of the SCA. And, let's see...Oh. Probably the most important thing, considering. It's been...about a year and a half since my son Robyn was killed in a bar fight. My wife Eleanor died five years ago in childbirth.” The next words seem nearly painful to him, pushed out on a sharp exhale. “Lost the baby at the same time."

Hob reaches up and covers his mouth then, a muffled sound escaping from between his fingers. "Fuck," he says, and Dream fumbles to set his empty glass down on the floor. "You know, I keep thinking today's the day I can say it without starting to bawl, but..."

Hob shuts his eyes and shudders. A tear squeezes past despite his efforts, disappearing down into the crack between hand and cheek. Dream thinks about how readily Hob had offered comfort, despite barely knowing him, despite Dream's current state of dishevelment.

"May I...?" he asks, and Hob nods quickly, jerkily. They have achieved some sort of equilibrium, Dream thinks. Not quite a symbiosis, but a mutualism based in their similar griefs. He puts his arm around Hob's shoulder, feeling the dense, warm muscle shift beneath the thin shirt, and then draws him closer. He has begun to cry again as well, but at least they are not the desperate, painful tears of before. These are only remnants. Only ghosts.

Hob leans heavily against him and begins to silently shake, any sounds still muffled by the hand clamped over his mouth. He is very warm, and very present, and for the next unknown while they sit, bracing against each other, and let the grief slowly, slowly ebb away into stillness.

+++

"I don't know if you read my email," Hob says later. How much later, Dream is not entirely certain. It feels like it has been hours, but when he glances at the window he can still see the sun high in the sky, and no signs of oncoming evening. "Where I, ah, sort of confessed that..."

It takes him several seconds to comb back through his foggy memories of the past few weeks, but he does hit upon it, eventually. "A date," Dream says, and Hob beams at him.

"Yeah. I don't want you to feel like you need to answer now, obviously, but I wanted to make sure you knew that I was, well...I mean, I'm an adult, I'm perfectly capable of handling rejection and staying friends afterwards. And I really would like to be friends with you. It's just, you are very beautiful, and..."

He trails off, looking hopefully at Dream. They have ended up entwined on the sofa, and Dream finds this to be an exceedingly amusing conversation to be having considering that he has tucked his leg between Hob's thighs, and currently has his nose buried against Hob's shoulder. Normal people do not do this, he thinks. Do not form relationships so quickly. Do not listen to an unknown man speak for fifteen to thirty minutes at a time and develop a fascination with him. Normal people are not this much.

Yet Hob has not pushed him away. Normal people have boundaries, and Hob seems...indefatigably normal. Inestimably normal. He is the precise opposite of Dream in almost every way.

Hob is the one who mentioned a date first.

Dream turns onto his side, so they are more properly aligned chest to chest, and he does not feel beautiful, nor sexy, nor capable of being wanted in any way, and yet Hob's eyes track him, and Hob's hand comes up to rub its thumb over Dream's collarbone, and Hob's nostrils flare slightly when Dream licks his lips. His eyes are soft. Kind.

"You should know," Dream says, and when he stalls, when the words fail to come, Hob nods encouragingly. He swallows. "You...should know. What I have done. Before you make such offers."

"I doubt there's anything you could say that–"

"I killed my son."

Hob falls silent. It is not a judgemental silence. Nothing like the cold, furious silence of Calliope in the courtroom during their divorce hearing. Nothing like the empty silence of the house afterwards. It is, somewhat contradictory, a silence that invites further speech. Dream does not lift his head from where he has pressed it to the offered shoulder.

"My son Orpheus loved a girl who was...not well off," he says. It feels like he is outside of his body. Like the story he tells belongs to someone else, a fairy tale. "I warned him against pursuing her, at least until they were both older, when it would be…easier. He thought that I was simply against him loving her. His mother supported him despite my concerns. When she was killed, Orpheus was...Distraught. Enraged. I...did not know what to do. What could I tell him? 'Let her go,' I said. 'You are young. Grieve her, but keep living.' Nothing helped. The music that once filled our house fell silent. My wife did not speak to me, my son did not speak to me. I had known what tragedy would befall him, and there had been nothing I could do."

"You probably could have phrased it better," Hob says, and Dream feels a brief twinge of irritation that is almost immediately subsumed by pathetic, whimpering gratitude as Hob continues, "But that's the only advice you can give in that situation. Keep living. I'm sorry about his girlfriend."

"So was I. But I am not...personable. And every time I tried to talk to him, it only seemed to make things worse. He spoke to my eldest sister more readily than he would speak to me. I do not know what she said to him. I know what she says that she said. That she encouraged him to take heart, and face his grief with courage, and that he would have her support if he needed it. But. Seven...more than seven months ago, now. My son went out one evening. Out into the dark. And he did not come back home."

"The police told us that he had been beaten severely. They apprehended three men at the scene. The same men that…that killed her. A fourth fled, and is still at large. There...was a trial. I was there, I spoke...I do not remember what I said. My wife...my ex-wife, Calliope, stayed with Orpheus in the hospital, but he did not wake. He followed his lover down into the dark and then he could not surface again without her. It was my decision to take him off life support. I fought for it. There was only minimal brain activity, the doctors said. Even if he woke, it would not be my son. So I fought for it, and I won, and I killed him. I killed my son. I killed..."

"Hey," Hob says, and Dream realises that his breath is coming harder, faster, and that his fists have turned into claws where they are grappled onto Hob's shirt. A hand strokes down his spine, and Hob's thighs – a flash of memory, Hob's thighs muscled and covered in dark, curled hair peeking out from beneath white shorts – clamp hard around where his leg is tucked between them.

"You should not be here," Dream says miserably. "This is...no one does this. You are not...you do not have to be here. You owe me nothing."

"Wouldn't be here if I didn't want to be. I didn't spend two weeks hunting down all your friends and family trying to check on you just to get here and go 'oh, looks like everything's taking care of itself.'"

"You..."

Hob is determinedly looking past him. He coughs, delicately. "That's a bit not good, isn't it?" he asks, and Dream has no answer for him. What he considers 'not good' is, he suspects, wildly different from the general populace, because all he can think is that Hob, a man with whom he has exchanged dozens of near-anonymous comments online and only two emails, a man who he has fixated on as a source of comfort and, increasingly, pleasure, a man whose face he has seen for the first time today...had gone to such extraordinary lengths to make certain he was all right. To find him. To comfort him, based on limited knowledge and with no obligation to do so.

"You barely know me," is what he says, unable to voice the monstrous, greedy longing that is welling up in his chest. "We have barely spoken. You have only met me today."

Hob hums softly. "Well, stranger," he says. "How about we start at the beginning. My name's Hob Gadling. What's yours?"

Hob's arm is a warm band around his back, still stroking up and down his spine. He shows no evidence of discomfort. He looks...

Peaceful.

Content.

I want that, Dream thinks. He wants that easy happiness. He wants the promise of healing. He swallows around the reappearance of a lump in his throat, against the stinging in his eyes.

"Hello, Hob," he croaks. "My name is Dream."