I decided to colour it because I have other things I should be doing ✨🎇

Working on a Dreamling kiss, too, so sharing a Dreamling kiss^^

Dead Boy Detectives headcanon

That Hob Gadling is their landlord; they have been renting the space from him for decades

You can see him in the background muttering to himself while sweeping the general mess they make. "Goddamn ghost kids nowadays have no respect, I have to clean up this mess, I have things to do, a Stranger to wait for"

“You are haunted, Hob Gadling.”

Hob grins around the screwdriver that he has clutched between his teeth.

“Am I now?” he asks. It comes out as garbled nonsense, but he knows Dream understands even if he does not answer. He finishes the last work on the generator, and climbs down the stepladder, plucking the screwdriver out of his mouth and turning his grin towards the darling eldritch horror he calls his boyfriend.

(He does not get a happy buzz at the word boyfriend, except for how he does, like nerve endings thought numb finally electrifying back to life.)

“By the trial and tribulations of my past?”

Dream is not amused, but when Hob leans forward and places a soft kiss to his pouting mouth, the sharp corners of him seem to soften like warm cotton. Hob was very pleased when he found out that as cool and aloof his boyfriend is, he is vulnerable to kisses. He has been using this uncovered secret to his advantage ever since, and he is sure Dream does not mind his weakness being used like this.

“You jest.”

“Only a little, dove.”

“I am serious.”

“You always are, which is why I am not.” When Dream glares again, the kind of glare that slides off Hob’s back like water off a duck, Hob lifts his hands up in surrender. “Okay, no more laughing, I promise.” He pulls Dream’s right hand in his, intertwines their fingers. Dream’s skin is soft like marble, cool to the touch. Hob loves it.

“There are ghosts living in your building.”

Dream says the words with the same gravitas usually reserved for groundbreaking news. Hob just shrugs though.

“I know.”

A pause. “You do?”

Sooooo… does fandom still think we’ll get a different ending?

I think Neil is probably talking about the comic, since its complete, and not the show, which is not. Neil is never one to give away any spoilers about works that are not complete, so I don't think its too fair to call this a done deal toward a fandom that hasnt yet come to terms with something that hasn't happened yet in the media they are watching. I don't think fandom (though no one can speak for a fandom as a whole) expects a different ending, but sometimes it can help and be fun to live in those what ifs without getting them shut down.

The show should NOT have a different ending in many ways, but a softer kinder story would be appreciated. Its not the 80s/90s anymore, and stories don't need to be so brutal in these already horribly brutal times. Its not at all a failing for anyone to wish for a happier ending to a tragedy. Even if the story would not be the same without its tragic ending. Besides, the comic does still have a hint of hope at the end there, and I will continue reminding people about that hint of hope (in an otherwise hopeless universe) until the show reaches its ending and we find out for sure. There is nothing wrong with a bit of hope at the end of a tragedy.

Yeah there’s nothing wrong with not wanting the suicidal character’s ending to be suicide …

I understand loving the comics … I do too — but the ending always felt hopeless to me.. so do I want the character I relate to…to have a better ending yes? No one is asking for a fairytale happy ending ..

Just one that doesn’t end in death and being replaced immediately with only 3 ppl actually mourning you.

We’re not in the same landscape as when the comics came out and Neil is not the same person he was when he wrote it. It’s not wrong to hope for well…. Some hope.

He does

TOM STURRIDGE as Dream of the Endless in "Lost Hearts"

Happy new year to everyone! Hope that 2023 will be kind to ya TvT

Listen, I can't blame y'all when His Excellence Neil Gaiman hisself compared it to Dream walking out on his date with Hob to hit it off with Shaxberd upon learning about Eleanor and Robyn, but I feel like fixating on this interpretation only of the scene is a disservice to Morpheus' overall characterisation over the season.

Have you noticed how Hob calls "his friend" over to his table and that doesn't phase Morpheus at all then Dream doesn't even ask him whether he still wants to live before putting an end to their meeting ? It's unexpected from someone otherwise so strict and set on protocols ー even when he storms out in 1889, he already had Hob's answer to that question. Yet he leaves 1589 Hob without having formally asked the one question that justifies their centennial meetings.

That is because Dream knows, oh he knows what Hob's Heaven is like. He's had a wife and a son of his own once, and he knew what eternity by their side would be like, once. And he knows Hob has everything but Death on his mind then. He also knows ー or so he thinks ー what Hob's answer will be the next century. For Hob Gadling alone was granted immortality, not Eleanor, nor Robyn. And Morpheus knows what outliving one's son is like.

Morpheus' work in this tavern of the White Horse is done, but he's also taken back to the most traumatic event of his existence, one he won't recover from in two millennia and he can't look Hob in the eyes anymore, he needs a distraction, something, anything but having to confront his revenant grief. And there's that playwright loudly willing to strike a bargain with higher entities for the ability to create timeless dreams for humanity and there's his distraction, there's an escape ...

Comes 1689, Morpheus is certain of the outcome of this meeting. Sure, it will have taken the bugger three time the hundred years Dream had predicted Death, but no matter because it is true : nobody can bear an endless existence.

Then Morpheus learns about not only the expected death of Hob's son, but that it happened much earlier than it should have, devoid of a fulfilling lifetime for Robyn and of psychological preparation for Hob. Scythed in the prime of life, much like Orpheus. And within a close time frame to his wife's departure, too. Hob is holding up a mirror to Morpheus' own misery and the King of Dreams finds himself on the verge of tears. He is no longer smug as he offers Hob what he thinks of as an eventual relief.

Yet ... Hob doesn't take it. Somehow, somewhere, Hob Gadling finds it in himself to resist the tragedy of his life, to chose tomorrow, to decide that whatever the future holds, it is worth being there to see it.

And that is really when something kindles within Morpheus. No longer mere curiosity but a devouring fascination for Hob Gadling, his hopefulness and his resilience. He latches onto that man who shares his misery yet seem to have overcome it, or anyhow accommodated himself to it.

And when they meet again in 1789, and fortune has smiled upon Hob Gadling once again, Morpheus is much more open, much more attentive, much more interested. Who knows if he might not have given Hob his name even, hadn't lady Johanna Constantine interrupted him ?

By all means, Morpheus doesn't process their blooming bond. He's the anthropomorphic incarnation of the human or really, the living unconscious : there are numerous things passing through his mind at all time that he does not process. To him, he's merely monitoring the puzzling glitch that is Robert Gadling's will to live still, and waiting for him to eventually, inevitably renounce his immortality.

So when another century has passed and Hod asserts that their meetings are unnecessary for he won't ever renounce being alive but proposes his friendship, Morpheus is left reeling, faced with how much he has in common with this 'mortal' and his envy for Hob's resilience and capacity to forge ahead.

Naturally he takes flight and makes for an escape, lest he finds himself ensnared by his own grief ...

TOM STURRIDGE as Dream of the Endless The Sandman 1.01: “Sleep of the Just”

The Sandman | moments of Morpheus being human 

obsessed with him just sitting there with his coat sprawled all over the steps

THE SANDMAN S01E09 - "Collectors"