#realizing one of my favourite corinthian headcanons is that he falls faster and harder than even hob

[landwriter]

Throwing vague Hobrinthian inspiration your way. You'd write them so deliciously.

Thank you!! Back in January I wrote 8K of them - I think it's honestly my favourite thing I've written or close to it <3 Just Like Love. The Corinthian comes across Hob in a hotel bar after he's stood up in 1989. Things don't go as planned.

Here's an excerpt from the continuation of that 'verse:

---

Hob Gadling isn’t his boyfriend. Hob is better. He’s a soldier, a hunter, a haunted man, and it makes every grain of the Corinthian sing to know that one of the ghosts rattling around in there is him. Of course it is. He’s memorable. Doesn’t change how good it feels, though, to have been followed across the Atlantic by something almost as hungry as him.

Hob is holding a plastic bag, and the Corinthian can smell the meat from here.

“Fresh from Lancashire,” he says, all fucking casual-like.

The Corinthian walks over, hooks a finger into the bag and pulls it open to see what it is. Black pudding, he thinks. He’s standing close to Hob, close enough to feel how Hob notices it, how his pulse quickens a little. He still smells like airports. He thinks Hob will wrap an arm around him, pull him in. Kiss him filthy right here in his kitchen. Hob doesn’t do anything but let him inspect his gift. He looks up, and pretends he’s disappointed about the offering instead. He should be.

“I’m not a fucking reptile in a terrarium. You don’t need to buy me crickets.”

“Well. Thought this was more on the mice side of the scale.” And then his face does that hideous English thing, where he’s obviously hurt but smiles and pretends he isn’t, which isn’t half as fun when it’s just his feelings. “But you don’t have to-” he starts, all fake cheer, and the Corinthian grits his eyeteeth.

“Stop making that face,” he says, and snatches the bag away. Sees too late Hob smiling a little, and realizes he was playing at being injured, just to get him to come closer. He sets it on the counter, and feels Hob close right up behind him. There’s warm breath on the back of his neck for a moment before Hob speaks.

“You sure? Maybe it’s a bit like feeding wild foxes. Shouldn’t do that.”

The Corinthian turns and uses his height to bully Hob against the fridge, presses him there, then murmurs into Hob’s ear, threatening, just the way he likes. “You think I’ll forget how to feed myself?”

Hob is already hard against his thigh and he tilts his head up, to kiss the side of his neck. His heart is thumping so steady and strong the Corinthian wonders if he’s got a bigger heart working in there, one to power all his hunger. A horse heart, crushed into his ribcage.

“Maybe I’d like it if you forgot,” Hob says. “Maybe I’d like to spoil you. Maybe I’d like you to try eating out of my hand. See if you don’t like it better, to be fed by another.” He says it flirtatiously, covering up the tenderness there with hunger, because he knows the Corinthian’s mother tongue. But he hears the tenderness in it still, and it ripples over his instincts like a different kind of threat. A different kind of snare. Still wire-sharp. He knows he’d draw blood if he struggled in it, even if Hob would let him go the moment he really did. That’s why he stills, he figures. That’s why he goes all limp, submissive.

Hob feels it. Hob knows exactly what he’s done, and he runs a soft hand over the back of his neck, like he’s tamed him. The Corinthian finally twitches away roughly.

“Kinky.” He grabs the forgotten sausage and starts slicing it to be fried. And Hob just laughs, like it was the joke they were making together all along.

---

Twenty minutes later, he’s kneeling on the floor, still wearing his apron that says #1 Grill Dad, and Hob is feeding a cut-up piece of fried black pudding to him. It’s overcooked. They’d gotten distracted. He licks a stripe across Hob’s palm and feels the small muscles twitch under his tongue. Hob’s hand withdraws, and comes back a moment later to stroke the back of his head, dull nails scraping invisible tracks along him. It feels good. He hates it, he thinks.

He leans forward, and nuzzles against Hob’s crotch. The denim chafes his cheeks. Hob groans and ruts into him, his idle hand on his head turned greedy, knotting into his hair. Hob pulls him off, and he looks up, mouth hanging open.

“You going to bite it off if I let you?” he asks.

“Will it grow back?”

Hob sucks in air through his teeth and pretends like he’s considering it too. “You want to take the chance and find out that it doesn’t?”

“Nah,” he says, and Hob laughs and unbuttons his jeans.

---

He blames it on being fucked stupid for the first time in weeks. He blames it on being dark in the room. He blames it on Hob wrapped around him from behind, possessive. “You’d really care for me, huh?”

Hob scoffs, then seems to realize he’s not fucking around. His hand comes around and finds the Corinthian’s throat, and he strokes a line along where his pulse should be. “Yeah. Yeah, ‘course I would.”

“You can’t save me, Hob,” he says.

Hob huffs a laugh against his shoulder blades. “Well, then you won’t mind me trying, will you?”

#asks #the sandman #cob! #the corinthian #hob gadling #realizing one of my favourite corinthian headcanons is that he falls faster and harder than even hob #gets it from his maker yanno #wip excerpts #my writing #just like love #hobrinthian #(but really cob)