Chapter Text
There were a lot of things Eleanor had said to him in the months she was sick before she died. Hob thought a lot of that time for many reasons, not the least of which was her insistence he bond with their baby and feel him before he was born so it wouldn’t be so scary when he finally arrived. She believed that those months before were crucial just to increase that feeling of togetherness so it was solidified when she passed. She’d planned everything, arranged everything, and did everything for both him and Robyn until her time of death.
Hob thought about those things as the hour approached three in the morning and Morpheus had not moved even a centimeter from him since he had fallen asleep. Sleep wasn’t something that usually troubled Hob, but his mind wouldn’t turn off. Not from Morpheus, not from Eleanor, not from the bloody bastards who’d hurt him and irrevocably changed him. Sure, there were parts of his Morpheus still there. Hob could see it when he sang on karaoke nights or got completely engrossed in pretend play with Robyn. He felt it in some of their quieter moments over the last weeks when every second spent just the two of them was rediscovering bits of each other like lips and breaths and sounds that came from the tiniest steps towards intimacy.
He thought about Morpheus’s dream and those women and how it wasn’t so crazy because he’d had a dream himself, with three women, that had taken him on a journey far from this life because he’d been, as they’d said, at a crossroads. It had been a dream that started as a nightmare, a strange It’s a Wonderful Life place where he had not met Morpheus as a boy. It had been a dream without the pain of him, but also without Eleanor and Robyn. It had been void of that great, big love and the truest joy of fatherhood and he’d hated every bit of it until the end, when he’d found a glimmer of hope. He thought that maybe he’d tell Morpheus of it one day.
He thought about the way he felt things. Eleanor had told him that he felt things deeply, too deeply and too much sometimes. She’d said it was why she couldn’t marry him, even if his heart had been in the right place, because he felt things for a man he’d loved before and still loved despite the heartache. She’d said he was like a penguin that way, that he mated for life, and he was still the only human being she could imagine being a father to her child because he would love him so deeply there would never be a doubt in their boy’s mind that there was someone who would always help him understand his connection to the world and his ability to fly in it.
He thought now more than ever that it was impossible to protect the people he loved most. He could try and sometimes he’d succeed but he couldn’t be everything and everywhere all at once and he hated it. He thought of Morpheus and he thought of Robyn and how he didn’t feel like it would ever be enough to give his son the tools to navigate the world and yet he knew, there was nothing to do but to let him go when it was time.
“You still think loudly,” Morpheus grumbled in a deep, sleep heavy voice.
“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” Hob murmured with a small laugh that he pressed to Morpheus’s hair.
“I do not sleep that deeply anymore, not without being heavily medicated. I can feel the way your breathing is changing and you sometimes quiver.”
“And that’s something you remember?” Hob asked, a little astounded by such a revelation.
“I like to think I remember all things but I am sure there is much of which I’ll be reminded as we go,” he whispered through a yawn. He shimmied closer and tucked his head more beneath Hob’s chin.
Hob didn’t know if the revelations of the evening allowed Morpheus to just let go of any inhibitions when it came to their proximity, but ultimately it didn’t matter why. He wanted to be closer and Hob wanted nothing more, especially now. Any of his own hesitancy had pretty much flown out the window with all of the things Morpheus told him.
“Do we need to talk more about it?” Morpheus asked, his voice now muffled against Hob’s chest.
As much as Hob wanted to say no, that all of it would be best left in the past, he knew that wasn’t something either of them could, or should do. “Well yeah, we do but not now. Over time. It’s just fresh in my mind now so I can’t stop thinking about it. And I get it. Why you didn’t want me to know. How you thought that was protecting me. It was in a way. Then, and I guess how it could have now. But I don’t want you to protect me like that ever again. Not that anything like that will ever happen again because I swear to God, I will -“
“Shhhh,” Morpheus pressed the sound against the skin at Hob’s throat. He lifted a hand to thread his fingers through Hob’s hair. “There will be no need. We will see to it.”
Hob noticed it in those moments, the way his breathing had picked up and then calmed again with the way Morpheus held him. He closed his eyes and thought about all of the things they did still need to talk about. The medication, the therapy, Morpheus’s work. Despite all of it, what Hob said was, “I don’t want you to go back. To L.A. We haven’t talked about it and you haven’t mentioned it, but I don’t want you to.”
He felt, more than heard Morpheus sigh. It was a heavy thing that Hob couldn’t help but feel sink into his own bones.
“I have been thinking quite a lot about the direction I would like to go. More and more, I have felt like I do not wish to go back. I do not even know if I wish to act anymore. Lucienne has been sending me projects but none that I have read have drawn me to them more than being here.” Morpheus pulled back just a touch and looked at him. “What I mean to say is that I think I have already made my decision. I just have to see what it encompasses.”
Hob wasn’t completely certain what that meant and again, they had to take their time getting through the mud of this and relearning each other with more than the few hours at a time they’d been spending together. He didn’t doubt himself or what he wanted even if he turned it over in his head more times than he could count. He wouldn’t fight the way he felt or how every bit of him moved towards Morpheus and simply always would. He just had to get that one thing off his chest, to make it clear like he hadn’t those years ago.
“We have time and you - we - don’t have to make those big decisions now,” he said. He wanted to say that anything Morpheus wanted to do, he could do from home. It came to him, though, that maybe that was too controlling and the last thing Morpheus needed.
“I was coming home,” Morpheus said then. “Before that night. I’d decided I’d had enough and nothing was worth what Burgess wanted from me. It was so foolish of me to go that night. I have accepted that the fault was all mine.”
Hob touched traced the perfect curve of Morpheus’s brow and marveled at everything so beautiful about him. Nothing would change that. “No, it wasn’t and I’m pretty sure no amount of me telling you that will help you believe it. You have to get to the place where you can put the blame on them, the people who deserve it.”
“You are wiser,” Morpheus said with a hint of a smile. Hob wanted to widen it, to return it to brighter days when he didn’t know this pain.
“I’m not. I just know we both have to forgive ourselves.”
“Hob,” Morpheus’s voice dropped to a depth Hob had never heard before and it was confusing in how it made his pulse race despite the nature of their conversation. He didn’t have much time to consider it before Morpheus was continuing. “You have nothing for which to forgive yourself. You have done no wrong. You carried the burden of heartbreak I laid upon you and yet, you are here. You are giving me this solace and your love. Still.”
“If I have nothing to forgive myself for, then neither do you,” Hob insisted. The anger that flared every time he thought of those men burned in his voice. “What happened was not your fault.”
“I made the choices,” Morpheus countered and Hob just shook his head.
“Choices born from trauma. Do I wish you’d chosen differently? Of course, but I can’t put myself in your shoes to say that I could have done it differently.”
Morpheus dropped his head back and tucked more against him. Hob felt the wrap of his fingers at the back of his neck and a shuddering sigh. He wanted so desperately to wrap around him, to help him see and feel safe enough to relieve himself of his burden. He wanted to cocoon Morpheus in his unbridled love until he was certain of his place in the light. Hob didn’t always feel he could be that, even with Robyn, he carried the guilt of allowing Eleanor to make a decision that ensured her death. For Morpheus he would and in so many ways he understood that they would be saving each other. He could be more and truly relish in the joy Robyn was and the absolute grace of having love.
“Will you accompany me?” Hob finally heard Morpheus’s voice muffled by his chest.
“Where?” He asked, though his first thought was anywhere.
“Los Angeles. I will phone Lucienne in the morning and begin the process of this move. I will have to go there just to see if there is anything there I want to keep. I don’t think there would be much but I do not wish to do it alone. We could even bring Robyn to DisneyLand.”
It had been clear from the very moment Morpheus met Robyn that there was a connection between them. What was, perhaps, unnerving about that was how comfortable with it Hob had been from the very beginning. He didn’t know if it was something to be attributed to the dream Morpheus confessed to having or that Robyn simply sensed not just safety of him but the need for his goodness. If anything was close to forgiveness, it was certainly a child’s trust. Whatever it was, it allowed Hob full access to his own feelings, to everything unresolved and the undying truth of his heart. So it wasn’t a surprise that Morpheus would suggest Robyn also go with them.
“You know I fall more in love with you every time you want him with us,” he said and if the hearts weren’t clear in his eyes, they were in his voice.
Still Morpheus pulled back once again and looked at him. “It cannot be anything but obvious now that I want you both with me all the time. My heart is no longer a cold, dead place and that is you and him and my sister.”
“I know. I just,” Hob paused just to gather himself. He didn’t want to lay it on too thick and sometimes the breadth of his emotions felt like that. “You know, when we were talking about it all, making all of our plans, when kids were always part of it, I imagined how it would be. It’s so different but maybe it only has to be because of how we got here. Maybe what really matters is that we did.”
“Wiser and still hopelessly romantic,” Morpheus said and smiled so fully it gathered even more strength in Hob’s chest. As if on cue, Morpheus touched him there and murmured, “My hope.”
Hob could probably find a thousand reasons why they shouldn’t rely on each other in such a way, that it couldn’t be about the ways they saved each other, but it was something that made them so deeply human and in touch with how they felt. So much of them steeped not in lost time but in what had not been lost.
Hob pressed his lips to Morpheus’s forehead and smiled there against his skin. “Sleep. Robyn will be up in just a few short hours and I imagine he’ll want you to take him to the toilet.”
Morpheus laughed and Hob heard the joy and every bit of welcoming to that very thing. He thought fully about no longer doing this alone and as Morpheus snuggled back into him like a sleepy cat, Hob allowed his own mind to quiet.