#eventual hobrintheus
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and if I get burned, at least we were electrified - Chapter 1
On their next meeting, Hob realizes the pattern.
The man (vampire? werewolf? some otherworldly being?) comes after Hob every 100 days. The irony of this is not lost on Hob. Of course Hob would end up with not one, but two mysterious otherworldly strangers with a penchant for refusing to give Hob their names, forcing him to come up with nicknames in his head. He can’t very well name them Stranger 1 and Stranger 2 though, so Hob decides that his centennial friend will remain The Stranger, and his new unintended sparring partner is now Murder Stalker.
---
Hob Gadling interrupts The Corinthian in the middle of a murder and explodes him back to The Dreaming. The Corinthian comes back for revenge. Hob keeps finding new ways to blow him up. At some point, it becomes something more.
Aka enemies to fuck-buddies to lovers.
Keep reading below, or read here on AO3
Hob Gadling is not sure what drove him to take a smoke near the dilapidated White Horse tavern instead of just outside The New Inn, but he’s now wishing he'd stuck closer to civilization as he would’ve completely avoided the mess he’s currently in.
It had been a late night at The New Inn, as end of semester time tends to be. It’s his worst kept secret to his students that he tends the bar there, and without fail, he always ends up entertaining a handful of them on the last day of finals. Hob’s glad he’s popular with his students, it not only keeps him gainfully employed, but also brings him an indescribable sense of achievement, knowing that he’s affecting so many young minds so positively.
He’s riding high on the feeling of a semester well done, so he decides it's a great time to take a walk when he dips outside for a smoke after his students leave. This deviation from his normal routine is exactly how he finds himself witness to a murder.
When Hob thinks about it later, he realizes the area is fairly secluded, The New Inn is just far away enough, and loud enough, that no one would hear any sort of scuffle, or hell, even screams. Not to mention the old White Horse demolition site, which people generally avoid like the plague at night, is just steps away, making it more than an ideal place to hide a body if need be.
But he has no time in the present to think about these things, because he’s rushing in to save some poor bloke that’s just been stabbed with his pants around his ankles.
Hob thinks at first the poor man is the victim of some homophobic attack, but upon coming face to face with the man’s attempted murderer, Hob concludes there is absolutely no way the blond in front of him is heterosexual.
He looks like he just walked off a spread in GQ magazine, incredibly fit and with bed-mussed hair. He’s wearing a tailored beige suit and also, bewilderingly, the darkest shades Hob has ever seen on anyone, in the absolute dead of night. Hob thinks the man must be blind, but he's quickly disavowed of the notion when he tries to wrestle the knife out of the man's hands.
Hob realizes very quickly the man is a lot faster than he is, even with the quick reflexes he's developed over the centuries. Hob briefly wonders if his reflexes really aren't as fast as he thought, or maybe he's just drunk, then decides it doesn't matter because he's completely overpowered either way.
The man slashes a deep line in Hob’s throat, and he collapses as he begins to choke on his own blood. No matter how many times Hob gets stabbed, shot, or broken down, he can never get used to the pain that comes with each new injury. Immortality may have its fair share of perks, but pain tolerance is definitively not one of them.
The bespectacled man looks all together far too pleased at his handiwork because he stares for a few seconds watching Hob gurgle through his blood, and then he has the audacity to lick his lips. It would be a downright sinful look at literally any other time, and Hob hates himself for still finding a literal murderer attractive while he’s bleeding all over his favorite shirt.
Seemingly satisfied with his handiwork, the blonde man turns around and returns to his work on his original victim. Hob can hear the telltale squelching as knife meets flesh and he realizes through his otherwise hazy vision that he's removing the other man's left eye while he is still alive.
Hob wants to throw up but forces himself to lay still, willing his breathing to be as quiet as possible to not alert the murderer barely a few meters away from him. He’s sure that the other man is too engrossed in his task to notice that Hob has stopped struggling to breathe, but even if he did, he probably would have just thought Hob eventually bled out. When Hob feels his vision begin to clear and the wound on his throat close up just enough to allow him the shallowest of breaths, he looks around to see what he can utilize to stop the man from continuing his gruesome activities.
Hob ends up putting together a crude Molotov cocktail, utilizing his torn bloody shirt, a lighter in his front pocket, and some discarded bottles near his feet that blessedly still have their vodka inside them. He knows it's a long shot because the man moves far too fast to be purely human, but Hob's been around long enough to know most things, mortal or not, are not immune to fire. Hob sends a mental plea to whatever deity may be out there looking out for him, and then uses the last of his strength to chuck the crudely thrown together bomb at the man's back.
The man doesn't quite burn up the way a human being might. He screams at a pitch Hob’s never heard before when he realizes what’s struck him, and then suddenly his body is just….disintegrating? Except that's not quite right, either, all Hob knows is that the man is there one moment, gone the next, and there's no body, or even the smell of burning flesh to prove he was ever there.
The only thing that remains of the mysterious serial killer is his dark round sunglasses, which Hob crushes under his boot in a moment of pettiness. Then he pulls out his phone and calls for emergency services.
The constable stares at him suspiciously while Hob gives his statement, but there’s no murder weapon and Hob manages to cover up the stab tears in his shirt with a cardigan he keeps in his bag. Absolutely everything of Hob's is now soaked in blood, which makes him even more suspicious looking, but there's clearly no defensive wounds on him thanks to his expedited healing, so the police eventually buy his story that he came upon a man bleeding to death and tried his best to resuscitate him.
Unfortunately the poor bloke is long dead by the time he’s hauled into the ambulance. He's lost too much blood, and he’s missing an eye, and the thought that this mysterious murderer did not fully complete the job he set out to do should not spark something dark in Hob's ego, but it does. It's just as well though that the man died anyways, Hob's not sure the man would be able to process the sheer fuckery of what's happened tonight, his death covers up his murderer as much as it does Hob’s immortality.
Hob makes a note to look up demon exorcists when he gets home, then collapses on the bed, the adrenaline of fighting for his life having worn off. He decides he'll just burn the sheets and his clothes in the morning before he drifts off to a dreamless sleep.
Thank God tomorrow is Saturday.
—
When the blond man reappears, Hob is both surprised and not at the same time. He knew the man was not dead, but he also hadn't been expecting to see him so soon after their first encounter.
He's also not entirely surprised the man has tracked him to The New Inn. Hob's on a smoke break and as he lights up his cigarette, he notices the man smiling at him in the shadows from behind a brand new, not crushed, pair of dark rimmed glasses. Hob has barely a second to react before he’s staring down the long blade of a dagger that's far too close to his right eye. Hob briefly mourns the loss of his cigarette (they're so expensive these days), thanks his lucky stars he brought his coat with him, and pulls out his own weapon hidden within.
Hob doesn't believe in leaving things up to chance. He knows the man saw his face and he also knows the man is some sort of supernatural entity, and the buggers are a lot more resourceful than your standard run of the mill human. So Hob knows he's a marked man and frankly, anyone would be pretty pissed to be exploded back to Hell, or wherever this guy came from. For all that Hob is immortal, he can still be hurt or captured, and he hasn't lived all this time without running into a few of the things that go bump in the night, as well as the various ways to get rid of them.
Hob was woefully unprepared last time for his encounter with the blonde supernatural murderer. This time, Hob's got a few tricks up his sleeve, courtesy of the descendent of one Lady Johanna Constantine, who, hilariously enough, shares a name with her great -great-great-great grandmother.
"You're not going to be sending anything back to Hell with that horrible accent of yours," the blond mocks, blade barely missing Hob's check. Hob honestly thought he knew what type of being he was, but the man only laughs when he tries to douse him in holy water, and what the hell is wrong with his pronunciation anyways?!
Hob had spent the last 3 and a half months practicing dodging daggers and he's still too slow to match the other man blow for blow. Hob prepared for the eventuality of none of his carefully laid plans working but he's still so angry that not only has none of it worked, but that the blonde also finds his efforts so fruitless that he has time to mock him.
"Horrible accent, says the American," Hob shoots back disdainfully, shoving his blade towards the other man and missing spectacularly. Hob’s going to need new sparring partners if he hopes to survive any future knife fights with him.
The man laughs again and Hob wills himself to not imagine that laugh in a different situation. He really, really needs to get out more if he's still finding himself attracted to a being that is currently trying its damnedest to cut his eyes out.
Hob knows for all his immortality, his stamina still has a limit, and he’s close to reaching it. The man must be able to tell too, because he redoubles his efforts to get at Hob’s eyes, and he’s so focused on that task that he doesn’t notice the talisman Hob’s able to stick on him when he gets just a little too close. Hob whispers one final spell, and even behind the shades, he can tell the man’s eyes widen in shock once he realizes what Hob has done.
Hob smirks as the man is ripped apart, returning to wherever it is he goes when he needs to regenerate his body. He may not be a demon, but protection talismans still had their uses against him, and Hob makes a mental note to go reach out to that lovely coven of witches he happened upon in Edmonton.
He's also going to have to tell Johanna that nope, the eye stealing murderer he's dealing with is not a standard demon from Hell. He's already dreading the conversation. Johanna's initial help had not come cheap for Hob and he just knows she's going to charge some exorbitant price from him to do additional research.
—
The third time they meet, the man is angry. Hob takes advantage of his less precise movements and leads him away from The New Inn, closer to the secluded area near The White Horse, where they first met. He eventually wrestles the blonde into a pair of iron forged handcuffs. They don't burn at the man's wrists, which confirms he isn't Fey, but they also don't break apart no matter how hard the man tugs at them. Hob did forge them himself, thank you very much, so he knows that even the strongest human would be hard pressed to break them without the aid of some extreme force.
“Pretty kinky,” the man says, flexing the cuffs behind his back. “Didn’t think we were at this stage of our relationship Robert.”
Hob knows it shouldn’t shock him that the man knows his name, he did track him down at his place of employment for Christ’s sake, but the surprise must show on his face because the blonde stranger laughs.
“Of course I know your name, sweetheart," he says in the most condescending American drawl Hob has ever heard in his life. "I’ve been thinking about sinking my knife into you all day and all night.”
Hob very pointedly ignores the double entendre and reminds himself that eyeball stealing murderers do not make for good bed partners.
“Little unfair of you to know my name, when I don't know yours, sweetheart," Hob shoots back and he swears he sees a little shiver go down the blonde man's back at the pet name, even if it was delivered sarcastically.
"Tsk tsk Robert, no wonder your little tricks aren't working on me, you don't even know who or what I am," he goads, clearly enjoying having the upper hand in knowledge.
“Well, if you’re not willing to tell me that, then I guess I’ll just have to find something else about you,” Hob says and reaches for the blonde man’s glasses. The resounding snarl is so ferocious, Hob forgets himself and stumbles backwards in fear. The man must be sensitive about his eyes, because the next thing Hob knows, the cuffs are broken and it’s a race against time to see who can recover their weapons the fastest.
Hob manages to launch an old grenade from his war days at the man as he picks up his signature knives, and the resulting explosion is loud enough to shake The White Horse. Hob doesn’t stick around for the aftermath but he hears the sirens in the distance as he hurries home as discreetly as possible.
—----
On their next meeting, Hob realizes the pattern.
The man (vampire? werewolf? some otherworldly being?) comes after Hob every 100 days. The irony of this is not lost on Hob. Of course Hob would end up with not one, but two mysterious otherworldly strangers with a penchant for refusing to give Hob their names, forcing him to come up with nicknames in his head. He can’t very well name them Stranger 1 and Stranger 2 though, so Hob decides that his centennial friend will remain The Stranger, and his new unintended sparring partner is now Murder Stalker.
Hob has also tried to ply Johanna with information about The Stranger, but he had even less information on the man he’d been meeting for drinks over the centuries than he did on the man currently trying to harvest his organs. It's rather depressing. Johanna had also made fun of him for his physical description of The Stranger and told him "Mate, if I had a shilling for every dark-haired, dreary, brooding supernatural being roaming around London alone, I'd be a goddamn millionaire!"
So yeah. Hob's not doing too great in terms of the research regarding either of the supernatural entities he's somehow found himself embroiled with.
He also tried looking up supernatural entities that eat eyes but all he got was some Quora article on a recurring nightmare some people seem to be having about having their eyeballs eaten. Hob knows not to discount the power of dreams, he's met one or two genuine psychics who have shared their dream visions with him, but something tells him his Murder Stalker probably isn't some nightmare come to life in the real world.
Probably. Hob's never heard of dreams and nightmares becoming corporeal beings, but after everything he's seen in the last decade alone, it's as good of a theory as anything.
Back to the present predicament though.
Hob is currently attempting to wrap a silver chain around his still unnamed Murder Stalker, and all he gets for his trouble is delighted, mocking laughter.
"Jewelry? For me? I'm more of a gold man myself, Robert, but I won't ever say no to silver."
And with that, the man yanks the chain right out of Hob's hands and wraps it loosely around his neck, completely throwing out the theory of werewolf or vampire. Hob curses his impulsive purchase of silver bullets, but Johanna had been very persuasive when she'd sold them to him. He also may have been a little (a lot) more drunk than he'd intended. Damn the woman and her insane alcohol tolerance.
Hob wonders if he can get a refund, then decides he'd have more luck trying to convince his Murder Stalker to give up killing entirely and move with him to a farm in Surrey and take up sheep herding.
He's broken out his thoughts by the sound of a blade hurtling through the air and Hob has enough time to barely avoid taking a knife to his fucking eye. The blade nicks his ear, and takes some hair with it before it lands in the tree behind him.
Maybe he should start wearing protective eyewear in the near future.
"I thought you wanted my eyes intact, you maniac!" he yells, barely avoiding a second dagger that comes straight at his face.
"Not my fault that you're not paying attention!" his Murder Stalker yells back, the feral grin Hob’s grown used to back on his face.
Hob thinks that just for that he’s going to be petty. It’s not like he has any other blindingly good ideas in his arsenal for today anyways, so he yanks the first knife out of the tree, whispers a quick spell into it and throws it back at the man. It explodes spectacularly in his hands when he flawlessly catches it, just like Hob expected him to.
Hob smiles as the man starts to disintegrate, then remembers an entirely different theory he'd wanted to test out just for shits and giggles, and yells, “See you in 100 days Corinthian!” right as the man disappears.
—
"How did you know it was me?" The Corinthian asks him the next time they meet, curiosity evident in his voice.
Hob grins. “I didn't. But thanks for confirming!” He gets a slash to his thigh for his troubles.
“It was really just a lucky guess,” he continues, trying to distract The Corinthian while he works to set up a rather complex spell. It is by far his most outlandish attempt to determine what kind of being the man is. “I was up late one night and one of those terrible American true crimes shows had a whole episode on The Corinthian! Everyone thinks it's just a legacy passed down from one serial killer to another but it's just been you all along, hasn't it?”
The smile Hob receives from the blonde is absolutely blinding. Who knew otherworldly beings just wanted acknowledgement for their accomplishments, just like everyone else?
“Look at that, little Robert finally figured something out about me, took you long enough,” the man (no, The Corinthian, he finally has a name) says.
“Cut me some slack!” Hob shoots back. There, the trap is finally set. “Some of us have other full time obligations to tend to, we can’t all just be running around murdering people.”
Hob really hopes no one at The New Inn will question why nearly all the salt that was supposed to last for the rest of month is suddenly, inexplicably, just gone. He’s already ordered a new batch that’s supposed to come in next week. In the meantime, the chips will just have to suffer being on the bland side.
When he lights the salt circle on fire, he can really only hope that no one thinks to call the fire brigade on him. The poor White Horse tavern is supposed to be preserved as a historical site, for fucks’ sake, and here Hob is, using it as his own personal supernatural fight club.
The Corinthian looks around his supposed trap, unimpressed.
“Do I look like an eldritch horror to you, Robert?” he sneers, kicking the salt away and dissolving months worth of effort in seconds.
Hob shrugs. “I’m running out of otherworldly beings you could possibly be. And I actually haven’t confirmed whether or not you’re hiding some slimy tentacles under that coat of yours. All I know is that you love to murder, do questionable things with eyeballs, and everytime I blow you up, you don’t come back for 100 days. Why every 100 days anyways?"
"I don’t have to tell you a damn thing," The Corinthian bites back, and yep, he most definitely offended at being mistaken for an elder god with tentacles. Hob pointedly does not think about whether or not tentacles would be a deal breaker for him.
“I’ll show you a horror,” the Corinthian threatens, and Hob kicks his backup plan into action. He’s never made a flour bomb before, but the general idea is pretty simple. Flour dust and a spark. Hob grabs the second knife The Corinthian had thrown at him and aims it at the discarded bag of flour he’d left sitting atop the roof of the White Horse the night before. While The Corinthian is distracted and coughing up the unexpected spray of flour on his person, Hob flicks on his lighter and tosses it towards the blonde.
He’s pretty sure he can hear The Corinthian cursing at him through the explosion for ruining his coat.
Hob adds flour to his to-buy list and whistles while walking back to The New Inn.
—
On the 6th meeting (Who's counting? Certainly not Hob), The Corinthian finds him in a rather precarious position. Hob never thought he’d be glad to see The Corinthian of all people, but really, anything beats having to become an experiment for some crazy occultists who seem to think drinking his blood and harvesting his organs are going to make them live forever.
There's six of them and one of Hob, and although he holds his own in a fight with them for a good hour thanks to all the stamina he's gained while fighting The Corinthian, Hob knows he is still outnumbered. He’s starting to lose hope that he can avoid being forced to where they want to take him, but his prayers are answered in the form of a vengeful blonde, who clearly does not take kindly to his recurring meeting being interrupted by outsiders.
Between the two of them, Hob’s able to take down two men while The Corinthian manages the other four. Hob doesn’t even feel bad that they’re all dead, the better the message to send to any other potential cults that may or may not be following him around. He kicks the body of one of the occultists just for good measure.
“Fuck these men, do whatever you want with their eyes, they got what's coming to them,” Hob says, not even bothering to hide the disdain in his tone. “Stupid fucking cultists.” Hob’s been around long enough to be hunted by more than a few cults, and he knows that they know nothing other than their own selfish greed. He’s lost more than a few good friends to cultists, so he feels absolutely zero remorse for their deaths and for letting The Corinthian harvest their eyes.
Hob’s snapped out of his dark thoughts towards the cultists when he hears The Corinthian’s knives cutting through flesh and Hob’s curiosity gets the better of him. He turns just in time to see two very aggressive eye mouths slurp up one of the dead man's eyeballs in one, two, three quick bites.
The Corinthian looks up from his snack and grins at Hob with all three mouths, his face bare for the first time in front of Hob. His glasses are tucked into his front coat pocket, and his cheeks are covered in a mixture of eye vitreous and blood. His tongue darts out absently to catch the liquid nearest his lips, and Hob, to his horror, finds the sight the most erotic thing he's ever seen in his life.
Well then.
The Corinthian almost immediately registers Hob's arousal, and his grin somehow grows even more feral. In between one step and the next he's suddenly crowding Hob up against the nearest flat surface, which happens to be the back exterior wall of The White Horse, and then he’s licking into his mouth while pressing his thigh in between Hob’s legs. Hob finds himself grabbing a fistful of blonde hair in one hand, The Corinthian’s ass in the other and yes, that’s just about as firm as he’d imagined it in his dirtiest fantasies alone in his flat.
In the dead of night, there's nothing but the sounds of their frantic panting and hips rutting against one another fully clothed. Hob is pretty sure the Corinthian doesn't even need to breathe, the bastard, but Hob does and he uses the opportunity to nip at The Corinthian's lip in warning when he pulls back.
"For the record, if you even try to take my eyeballs…" Hob starts, getting ready for a fight to erupt, but the Corinthian only laughs and kisses the rest of his sentence away.
"Yes, yes, you'll blow me to kingdom come and then some, I know the drill baby," he replies breathily, and begins to suck a deep bruise into Hob's throat. Hob is pretty sure he's using more than one mouth down there and he just somehow knows sex with The Corinthian is just going to absolutely ruin him for any other partners for the future, possibly forever.
When he's satisfied with the frankly massive hickey he leaves on Hob's throat, The Corinthian pulls away and sends him a grin that has heat shooting straight down his spine.
"Besides," he adds, "I've had my fill in the eye department, what I want from you is going to be so much more fun," and the purr in those last few words is enough for Hob to make the executive decision to not have his first time with this gorgeous creature be in the middle of a pile of dead bodies, no matter how fitting the motif. The Corinthian deserves to be worshiped on a bed, and Hob is all too willing to sacrifice his own mattress if it means he gets more than a quickie in the back of a crumbling inn.
"I've got a flat not far from here," he pants in between kisses.
"Ooo inviting me to your home, Robert? How dangerous." The Corinthian replies, his tone dark and inviting.
"As long as you promise not to get things too bloody, you're welcome to stay,” Hob says, and he finds that he means it.
"Good to know we can negotiate some blood play, baby, come on, take me home,” The Corinthian purrs and Hob doesn’t need to be told twice. The walk to his flat is mostly a blur, but once they reach their destination, The Corinthian does not hesitate to bodily push Hob into his bedroom.
Hob's thankful for his flat above The New Inn for a multitude of reasons. It's not only close to where he and The Corinthian meet every 100 days for their fight, but Hob's had the floors and walls soundproofed to block all the noise that comes from downstairs, making it also ideal for him and the Corinthian to be as loud and violent as they want.
The Corinthian is just as dominating in bed as he when he fights, and Hob comes so hard he's pretty sure he sees God. He has a brief thought that The Corinthian could probably take his eyes now and Hob wouldn't even notice, but one look at the other man tells him he's just as blissed as Hob from their lovemaking.
It doesn't last.
Within 10 minutes of their mutual climaxes, The Corinthian is scrambling around for his discarded clothing. When he's fully dressed, he delivers a brutal kiss to Hob's still bruised mouth before waltzing towards the door.
"See you in 100 days baby," The Corinthian coos and then in the blink of an eye he's gone and Hob is left alone in his flat.
It's the first time The Corinthian has left Hob by his own will and with all his body parts intact.
Hob lets his head fall back on his pillow and thinks to himself that he is totally fucked in the head.
Johanna is going to have a field day when Hob next talks to her.
—--
They fuck like rabbits the next three meetings. It's quite possibly the best sex Hob has ever experienced in his almost 700 years of life. The meetings always start the same, The Corinthian tries to kill him, Hob somehow subdues him (it's the cuffs, it's always the cuffs) and then instead of exploding the serial killer back to wherever he came from, Hob drags the man upstairs to his flat above The New Inn. Sometimes the blonde opens up for him like a flower, allowing Hob to tease him within an inch of his life. Other times, it's The Corinthian who sets the pace, and it's always brutal and unrelenting. He nearly bends Hob in half when he thrusts into him, and Hob loves every second.
He hadn't ever considered it before, but now that he's been with the Corinthian more than a few times, Hob realizes that he's glad to finally have a bed partner that knows the full lengths of his immortality. The Corinthian Isn't afraid to be just on the other side of rough and painful during sex, and Hob does his damn best to give as good as he gets.
On their tenth meeting, The Corinthian doesn't even make an attempt to try to slaughter Hob for his eyes first, he simply corners him in the alley behind The New Inn during a smoke break, and bites his way into his mouth. Hob’s barely lit cigarette is crushed underneath their feet, and he thinks that if The Corinthian were trying to get him to quit smoking, this was a fantastic way to go about it.
It's only after he goes back inside and someone screams upon seeing him that he realizes The Corinthian smeared blood all over his clothes. Blood Hob knows doesn’t belong to his supernatural fuckbuddy. His stomach sinks at the thought of some poor innocent being used as foreplay for the two of them and resolves to tell off the blonde in their next meeting. He'd rather go back to their old arrangement and risk his own immortal life than add to the already extensive body count he knows The Corinthian keeps growing (maybe, just maybe, Hob has an extensive file on The Corinthian and all his murders overseas and in the UK).
When Hob turns on the news a few days later, it's to a breaking report of a known child molester being fished out of the river with no eyes.
Hob weighs the pros and cons of the knowledge, and decides that one less terrible person on the street isn't the worst price to pay for one of the best orgasms of his life.
He still decides against telling Johanna Constantine of his new arrangement with The Corinthian. She'd reacted poorly to his last story and called him a lunatic for even entertaining the man in his bed.
"Next time you even think about that eye fucker," she had berated him over a round of drinks, "You must think instead, WWJD: What Would Johanna Do? And I can tell you, she would not fuck a demon!"
"But he's not a demon, remember? The exorcism didn't work!"
"Not the fucking point Hob. Not the fucking point at all."
—
While waiting for their eleventh meeting, Hob decides to do a bit of research.
When he’d finally confirmed The Corinthian’s identity, Hob had absolutely devoured all the information he could about the United States’s most prolific serial killer. His murders date back almost a century, and there’s thousands of theories on whether The Corinthian is actually a family of murderers or some sort of cult.
If only they knew the truth.
The victims had started out quite randomly, as serial killers tended to do. A schoolteacher here, an office worker there. Hob finds that while plenty of the victims are homosexual men, there are some women thrown in there too. Never any children though. Interesting.
But as Hob goes through the reports on The Corinthian's latest killings, he notices a markedly different trend dating back to…oh just short of a year and a half after he and Hob had begun to meet regularly.
As far as Hob (and the general news) can tell, The Corinthian right now is only exclusively hunting down other known criminals. Some of which are other serial killers the police themselves have had trouble tracking down. In fact, were it not for The Corinthian carving out their eyes and leaving their bodies lying around, there’s a chance those same killers would still be on the loose.
Huh. Well then.
—
“Been noticing a lot of dead criminals missing their eyes lately, had a change of heart?” Hob asks one night after a surprisingly vanilla bout in the sheets. There hadn’t been any stabbing attempts this time. Progress.
The Corinthian hums in consideration as he pulls his coat on. “No, they just happen to be my favorite types lately.”
“Favorite? And only lately?”
The Corinthian grins and nips at Hob’s neck affectionately.
"You've made me realize I like it when my food fights back." Then, considering the discussion closed, the blonde moves to leave.
Hob, in what can only be described as a moment of insanity, grabs The Corinthian sleeve and says "Stay."
"Stay?"
—
The Corinthian stays the night. Hob uses his tongue to convince him to stay another night. On the third night, The Corinthian leaves with no warning and Hob wonders if his type isn't just men who are allergic to attachment. At least this time he's getting a little bit more out of the arrangement, but his heart feels heavy all the same.
To both their surprises, The Corinthian doesn't even make it the next 100 days before their next encounter. He shows up to Hob's flat in the middle of one of the worst rain storms of the summer, looking like a drowned cat.
Hob immediately knows something is different, and while the logical part of him is screaming Danger! Murderer! Do not engage! Hob's feet move backwards to let The Corinthian into his flat. He peels the man's wet coat off him and settles him onto the couch, then goes to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
The silence between them is heavy.
"I'm glad you're here. I've missed you," Hob tries for casualness even though he can feel his hands shaking. Holding back from touching The Corinthian is one of the hardest things in the world, he thinks.
The Corinthian snorts. "You've missed me? Pretty bold of you to say to the man that's been trying to disembowel you for the better part of a decade.” Hob hasn’t heard The Corinthian’s defensive tone in quite a while. It’s surprising, but with the way things ended last time, maybe it isn’t at the same time.
“I've been keeping up with you in the news, you know. Looks like you've been having a field day in America.” Hob thinks as long as he can keep talking, he can keep The Corinthian from leaving again.
The blonde man grins, as if he’s in on a joke that Hob won’t understand. "I'm a murderer,” he chirps, standing from Hob’s couch, ignoring the tea Hob’s given him. “I kill people for fun. It's what I was made to do.” He says this last sentence quite pointedly, and ah, Hob thinks he understands now.
"So I've noticed," Hob replies. "You’ve got a pretty large body count that goes back pretty far. But you've been killing different types of people lately. What was it you said back then? You like it when your food fights back?"
"Entirely your fault by the way.” The Corinthian snaps.
“All right,” Hob placates, then takes a deep breath. “So then…let me help you.”
“What?” It’s clearly the last thing The Corinthian is expecting to hear. Hob takes advantage of the shock and continues to push his, admittedly, wild and crazy proposition.
“If it's my fault that you can only eat a certain type of food, then let me help you. London's chock full of criminals that get away with horrible things too, it’s not exclusive to America.” Hob says matter of factly. “The way I see it, you're doing humanity a favor by keeping this up, aren't you?”
The Corinthian laughs, but Hob can tell it’s not genuine. There’s an old hurt there, he can tell. Something or someone probably tried to keep The Corinthian from killing all together, and he didn’t take too kindly to that.
“See, you're running on the assumption that those types are the only ones I'm killing.” The blonde says. “For all you know, there’s dozens more bodies the cops just haven’t found.”
“Then we'll work on that,” Hob says, matter of factly.
“Work on it?” The Corinthian repeats, incredulous. “What makes you think you can control me?” he challenges.
“I don't think that,” Hob says honestly. “But all relationships have to put in some compromises, so I don't think it's too much to ask you to be a bit more discerning with your murders.” Hob pretends he doesn't hear the choked "a relationship?!" in the middle of his soapbox and presses on.
“Look, I'm not going to beat around the bush, I don't know what you are or why you feel so inclined to murder humans, but if it really is in your nature, then it is what it is,” he shrugs and when he meets his eyes, he can tell The Corinthian knows he’s telling the truth. Hob’s been alive for a very long time. He knows that Death is inevitable for almost everyone and he also knows that there's no rhyme or reason to who gets to live and who gets to die.
"I've had enough brushes with supernatural entities, especially in the last few years, to know that there are things I just can't assign human morality to" Hob continues. "And that's fine. But you and I keep coming back to each other, and I'd like you to stay. I think you want to stay too."
Hob thinks he must be an idiot for telling yet another supernatural being that the reason they keep coming back to him time and time again is for his companionship but damnit, the man isn't his Stranger, he's somehow become more in less amount of time, and isn't that something? Hob's always worn his heart on his sleeve anyways and he can't deny that somewhere along the line, he’s fallen for this fucked up, inhumane creature, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t at least try to see if the spark between them is just that, a spark…or something more.
The Corinthian is silent for a long time, but he doesn't leave, and that alone is enough to give Hob hope.
“You are infuriating Robert Gladlen,” he finally says. “Fine then, let’s see what being a kept man looks like. If I get bored, I’ll just take your eyes in your sleep and leave.” The feral, self deprecating smirk is back but Hob doesn’t care. He feels himself grinning like a fool. The smile on Hob’s face must be unexpected because The Corinthian’s smirk slides right off his face just as fast as it had been put there. Hob decides to go all in.
“It's Gadling,” Hob says, stepping into the other man’s space and taking his hands in his. “My original name.” He presses a kiss into The Corinthian’s knuckles, taking note of the slight shiver he receives in response. “You can even call me Hob, if you'd like.”
"Hob Gadling," The Corinthian tests out the name, and Hob finds he really likes the way he says it. "What are you, some sort of medieval peasant?"
“Something like that,” Hob says lightly. He thinks he’d tell his whole life story to this infuriating being if he asked.
“I've changed my mind,” The Corinthian declares loudly, pulling his hands away and raising his arms dramatically. “I can't be seen with a poor man like this, my reputation will suffer.”
Hob thinks he may be walking on clouds. “Sure, sure. Now I don't know about you, but I'm starving, and not for eyeballs. Dinner then?”
“Only if it’s not that garbage you serve at this third rate pub downstairs.” The Corinthian sneers.
“Hey! There's nothing wrong with my pub food!” Hob argues. “You’ve never even been inside, I’d like to point out, so how can you tell me you hate the food?”
"What was that you said about all relationships having compromises?” The Corinthian says with what looks like a genuine smile finally on his face. “Well my compromise sounds like a nice Wagyu Steak, any idea where we can get one?"
"Christ you're going to be expensive, aren't you?"
"The best things in life are, Hobsie,” The Corinthian laughs.
“Now hang on just a second!”
#hobrinthian#eventual hobrintheus#the sandman netflix#the sandman fanfic#the corinthian#hob gadling#they're serial killer boyfriends your honor#I can't believe I forgot to post this on my tumblr lol#but here it is#mystuff#seiya writes#seiya writes hobrinthian#seiya writes hobrintheus
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Random AU idea that’s been percolating slowly in my head, but loose Once Upon A Time AU?
Basic idea is Lyta doesn’t give up on trying to get Daniel back at the end of Sandman, but goes even further hardcore and breaks into the garden of Destiny and straight up takes him on and thru some sort of magic + heartbroken madness+ righteous fury takes his book and rewrites her story to get Daniel back.
But beyond that Lyta wants all these beings that hold themselves so high to know the true pain their actions can inflict on mortals, and uses the books power to flips all the Endless out into the world as Humans with no memory of their past lives—and brings Morpheus back with them.
And now they’re all living miserable lives that have some sort of link to their function but in a way that makes them miserable but they can’t seem to break away from (like, Death is a doctor but always seems to lose the patients she gets close too? Desire is out there being ignored and never wanted by anyone and is separated from Despair, ect. Sorry it’s been a crappy couple weeks so my brain is shot for ideas on this exact part 😅)
There is one hiccup in this—Daniel, back to being a little boy, still has a connection to the Dreaming, and manages one night to bring the book The Sandman back with him from the Library. It’s not the full book, he doesn’t know his and Morpheus’s canon fates but between the book and his odd dreams he knows something has gone wrong with reality and the Endless and that he needs to find the Dream King and put things right with the world.
So he manages to find Morpheus and now has to convince him he’s the Dream King and his estranged siblings are the Endless and they have to find their sigils that have been scattered in the Real World to fix things.
Neither of them realize at first what putting things back to how they were will mean for them both, but eventually they do and are faced with the dilemma of fixing the world meaning Morpheus dying and Daniel losing his individuality/family (Lyta is not evil btw just really really scared to lose her kid and desperate to stop this Murphy guy who seems to be threatening her life) and trying to find a way to fix things without ending it the same way.
And Hob’s here somewhere too but I’m not sure which part I’d want him to take? Maybe he’s the Charming stand in to Dream’s combined Snow White role and he’s in a coma cuz he was dreaming of Morpheus when Lyta rewrote reality and it scrambled his brain? So he’s kicking around in the Dreaming trying to fix th8ngs from that side too/keep the kingdom from crumbling again?
(Destruction is probably also out there still as himself and can still remember the old reality)
((Tempted to have the Corinthian in a Hook-ish role and have it be a Hobrintheus AU))
Honestly this whole thing happened due to listening to this fan song while thinking about Sandman and it all scrambled in my head and poof xD
youtube
For reference to how the song AMV’d into my head: Daniel =Emma’s part, Hob and Dream = Snow and Charming’s part, Lyta= Regina’s part, Corinthian =Hook part and really don’t have a Rumplestiltskin part😅 Loki maybe? Oh! Maybe he as vengeance for Dream sending the Corinthian after him tells Lyta how to screw with Destiny’s book? With her not realizing he was the one who even stole Daniel in the first place oooh I like that it makes Corinthian as Hook work even better yeah!
(If anyone wants to do anything with this please feel free !)
#might do more art for this later but it’s late and I’ve got a busy weekend#but thanks for indulging this little thing x)#my art#the sandman#sandman comics#sandman spoilers#ouat#ouat au#dream of the endless#Daniel hall#destiny of the endless#Lyta hall#dreamling#hobrintheus#the corinthian#death of the endless#desire of the endless#destruction of the endless#sandman au#pattycake productions#hob gadling
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No pressure but are you currently writing any new fics that you wanna publish 👀 asking for my hobrintheus obsession
you know what, friend?? i DO actually! this is a very stupid and very self indulgent thing i started a little while ago and, hey, i finished! because i am still too fond of the walkers and the chaos boyfriends. wherein jed poses the question "how would the corinthian wear invisalign" and ruins everyone's life with it:
It starts with Jed.
Well, technically it starts with Rose getting Invisalign, which makes her mouth ache and forces her to talk with a lisp for four days. She still thinks she's lisping around the words that had previously come easy to her, but people keep promising she sounds normal. She isn't sure she believes them, but that's not important right now.
"What did you say?" she asks, staring at Jed from across the picnic table.
He makes a thoughtful sound over a peanut butter and jelly triangle, as if considering his own question again before he repeats it. That, and Rose bets he's trying to unstick the peanut butter from his tongue.
"Do you think Corinthian would get little Invisalign for his eye-teeth?" Jed eventually says, confirming that Rose had, indeed, heard correctly.
"....I don't know. I mean, I don't think he needs them for any of his teeth."
"Yeah, but what if he did?" Jed presses. "Are all his teeth connected to his regular teeth? Or what if he only needed them for one eye-mouth? Do you think it would make it hard for him see, like when you couldn't talk?"
Rose is as horrified by the train of thought as she is fascinated. "Maybe?"
"Do you think Uncle Morpheus would make little Invisaligns if we asked him?"
Rose imagines going to the King of Dreams and trying to explain that request, and she can't help but laugh. "Even if we could convince him to make them, Corinthian would never wear them."
Jed grins. "You don't know that! Maybe he would if we asked!"
"Eat your sandwich," Rose says instead, still too amused by the thought.
She accidentally passes it on to Professor Gadling
"I promise you sounded perfectly normal during your presentation," Professor Gadling chuckles three days later. It hadn't felt like she'd sounded normal, so Rose had lingered in the classroom until it cleared out so she could hound him to give it to her straight.
Rose huffs a sigh. "Every time I think I'm getting used to them, I have to change the trays out, and it makes me feel like I'm talking weird all over again."
Professor Gadling offers her a sympathetic smile while he finishes tucking papers into his bag. "You really can't tell from the outside anymore. And it's not like I would have held it against you if you sounded a little funny while you were presenting."
"I know, I know," Rose says, trailing out of the classroom with him. And maybe she shouldn't say anything, but Professor Gadling is one of the few other people in her day to day life who would appreciate Jed's bonkers thought exercise. "The other day Jed was asking me how Corinthian would use Invisalign if he needed them."
"What?" Professor Gadling asks, sounding amused but in spite of himself.
"Like if he would need little mini trays for his other teeth," Rose says, smiling when Professor Gadling laughs outright. "He wanted to ask Uncle Morpheus to make them, because he seems to think he can convince Corinthian to try them on if he has them."
Professor Gadling takes a deep breath, but the exhale shudders, and she knows he's trying not to laugh again. "That's...a pretty tall ask. Even for Jed."
"That's basically what I told him," Rose agrees. "I'll see you Thursday, Professor. Oh! Don't tell Corinthian I said any of that!"
"I can't promise that," Professor Gadling sing-songs on his way down the hall.
Professor Gadling must pass it on to Uncle Morpheus.
"I am not certain I understand this request."
Rose startles so badly at the sudden baritone in her previously quiet kitchen that she drops the spoon she'd been using to stir spaghetti sauce.
"Rose? Did you drop- hi Uncle Morpheus!" Jed says when he leans around the corner to the kitchen and spots the Endless standing in the middle of it. The Endless who had not been there thirty seconds ago and who did not see fit to announce himself before speaking up right behind her.
"Hello Jed," he says, and Rose doesn't have to look up from wiping spaghetti sauce off the floor to know Uncle Morpheus is giving Jed that small, almost-smile of his. She can basically hear it. "Have I arrived at an inopportune time?"
"No, dinner's just about done anyway," Rose says when she straightens up, setting the spoon in the sink. They're going to have to have the 'not randomly appearing in the house unless it's an emergency' talk again.
Unless, "Wait did we have dinner plans tonight?! Did I forget that?" she asks, snatching her phone off the counter to check her calendar. She definitely would have remembered family dinner, right?
"We did not," Uncle Morpheus assures her. "I require more information to complete the request you made of Hob Gadling."
Rose is grateful she's managed to convince Jed that there's more to life than chicken fingers, but she doesn't miss the way he's sneaking closer to where she left the garlic bread when he asks, "What did you ask Mr. Gadling for, Rose?"
"I didn't ask him for anything," Rose says, reaching over to pull the plate of bread closer to herself, smirking at the disgruntled look Jed shoots her for it.
When she looks back over, however, Uncle Morpheus is frowning at her.
"What? I didn't. I really don't know what you're talking about," she insists.
"You requested invisible linings for teeth," Uncle Morpheus says. "Hob said they were for the Corinthian?"
Jed immediately loses interest in the garlic bread, and Rose immediately regrets her conversation with Professor Gadling.
"The mini Invisalign!" Jed says. "Uncle Morpheus, you would know how Corinthian would wear them right? Would he need little ones for his eye-teeth?"
Seeing the bewilderment on the Dream King's face, Rose rubs her hand over her own and sighs. "They're like braces," she explains, reaching up to pop her top retainer out so she can show him. "For straightening your teeth."
"The Corinthian's teeth are straight by human standards, are they not?"
This time Jed sighs in the world-weary way of children trying to explain something they find very simple to adults who are overcomplicating the situation. "It's not about if his teeth are straight, it's about what if they weren't," he says, and Uncle Morpheus nods along, though Rose suspects he doesn't quite follow this, frankly, inane topic of conversation.
"You are speaking hypothetically," he surmises.
"Yeah! Cause they're all different teeth, right? So he couldn't just fix the ones in his mouth, he'd have to fix all of them! So some of them might need it but others might not!" Jed explains, waving his hands to better express how much time they'd sunk, unnecessarily, into thinking about this.
Uncle Morpheus nods again, this time looking contemplative. "Hob said something similar. And seemed equally driven to distraction. I suppose you will have to take this up with the Corinthian himself."
"I don't think anyone needs to do that," Rose protests, alarmed by how quickly this is getting away from them. But Uncle Morpheus is already holding a hand out to Jed, two sets of miniature, clear trays sitting innocuous on his palm.
Jed grins, grabbing them both. "Yes! Thanks, Uncle Morpheus!"
He inclines his head, and Rose does not miss the amusement he's clearly trying to keep off his face. "Best of luck in your efforts, Jed Walker."
"You really shouldn't be encouraging this," Rose points out, crossing her arms.
Uncle Morpheus makes a humming noise that, while small, rattles the spoon she’d set in the sink. "Perhaps. But I look forward to learning what you discover," he says vaguely. AKA he's also been thinking about it, and he knows as well as Rose and Professor Gadling that if anyone is going to actually get the Corinthian to indulge them, it's Jed.
"You aren't actually going to try and get him to wear those, are you?" Rose asks when it's just her and Jed in the kitchen again.
Jed, who is already pulling out a ziploc bag to keep the tiny alignment trays in. "Oh, definitely."
"You weren't supposed to say anything!"
Professor Gadling at least has the decency to look abashed, if not exactly apologetic when Rose corners him after class on Thursday.
"To be fair, you said not to tell Cor. And I didn't," he reasons over a sip of his oversized coffee.
"But you told Uncle Morpheus?! He made tiny trays, Professor! Jed has them!"
She feels slightly vindicated when Professor Gadling very nearly chokes on his coffee, sputtering for several moments before croaking out, "He what?"
"He showed up in our kitchen and just gave them to Jed. He was acting like I had asked you for them!"
"That...isn't how that conversation went," Professor Gadling mutters, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose.
Rose waves a hand at him. "Well? How did it go, then?"
"I thought he might know! He technically made Cor, right? So I figured if I asked, he might be able to just...answer the question."
Rose sighs. "But he didn't."
"No, he did not. He sat on my desk and asked me a bunch of questions about it instead, and then I had a dream about Cor at the dentist, and I don't actually know if that was from my subconscious or his."
Rose snorts softly and allows herself a moment to wonder at how delightfully strange her life had become that her history professor can say something like that and she fully understands him. It’s usually for the best not to think too hard about any of it, really.
“Look, all I’m saying is Jed is eventually gonna bring it up, and if he does? And if Corinthian decides he wants to stab something because of it? I’m going to send him to you.”
“Ooh, permission from Rosebud to stab her favorite teacher? That’s a new one.”
Rose is grateful that Professor Gadling startles as badly as she does, at least, both of them turning to stare, wide eyed and guilty, at the handsome nightmare leaning against the doorway to the classroom. He’s smirking at them in a way that suggests he heard way more of than than Rose would have liked him to have heard.
“Hey, Cor,” Professor Gadling recovers first, shouldering his bag and grabbing his coffee before walking over to greet him with a kiss. And while Corinthian is happy to return it he is, unsurprisingly, not distracted.
“Y’all gonna tell me what my dear Jed could possibly bring up that’s going to make me want to stab someone?” he asks, looping his arms around Professor Gadling’s waist and dropping his chin on his shoulder.
Rose shares a glance with her teacher and they both scoff and try to wave it off.
“That was…an exaggeration,” she insists at the same time Professor Gadling says, “It’s really nothing that serious.”
Rose watches Corinthian’s eyebrows knit together, and even behind the sunglasses she can feel him looking between them. “Neither one of you is very good at this,” he drawls.
“It’s stupid,” Rose insists. “And it’s really not important.”
“All right,” Corinthian says, shrugging and straightening back up, unwinding his arms from around her history professor.
“All right?” Professor Gadling repeats, catching one of Corinthian’s hand with his free one before he pulls completely back. Rose nearly rolls her eyes. They’re so sappy sometimes.
Corinthian lets Professor Gadling lace their fingers together, but he’s all teeth when he smiles at them. “Yeah, I’ll just ask Jed about it. I’m sure he’ll tell me whatever it is y’all don’t wanna say.”
Professor Gadling looks like he wants to argue that point but can’t figure out a way to actually do that. And Rose, well. She considers this a strategic opportunity.
“Well, have fun, you two! I have class!” she says, skirting around them in the doorway and hurrying down the hall, pointedly ignoring Professor Gadling trying to call her back and Corinthian cackling for it.
In the end, it also ends with Jed.
Because they were right that the only person who could possibly suggest something like this without being maimed is Jed. And moreover, Jed is probably the only person who could ask for something like this and get Corinthian to agree to it.
Rose makes a mental note, while she watches the microwave countdown, to have a talk with Jed. Wielding that kind of sway over someone like Corinthian was probably one of those “with great power comes great responsibility” kind of things. And Jed would definitely love to feel like Spider-Man, so it may actually work.
When the microwave beeps at her, Rose grabs the gel pack out of it and rejoins the others in the living room. Jed is wearing Corinthian’s sunglasses, which are definitely too big for his face, and Professor Gadling is leaning over the back of her couch.
“You didn’t have to do it, you know,” he says, leaning back with a chuckle when Corinthian, sprawled dramatically across said couch, swipes blindly at him.
Uncle Morpheus catches Corinthian’s waving hand and draws it in to brush a light kiss across the knuckles. Corinthian’s sneer shifts pretty quickly into something that Rose would consider a pout, but she keeps that thought to himself. Better not to give Corinthian any reason to choose violence when, so far, they’ve miraculously managed to avoid it.
Head propped in Uncle Morpheus’s lap and his other hand pressed over his face, Corinthian huffs.
“Rose, you got that damn heating pad or not?” he gripes.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it,” she says, walking over to press it against the back of Corinthian’s hand until he lifts it off his face and takes it, immediately laying the gel pack over his…eye teeth? Is that what they were calling them?
“And you’ve been wearing these damn things for how long now? That’s just fucking awful, Rosebud.”
Despite herself, Rose grins, dropping onto the loveseat next to Jed. “Couple months now. They only hurt like that for the first couple of days.”
Corinthian makes an unimpressed sound and tilts his head as if he’d be looking up at Uncle Morpheus if the gel pack weren’t covering half his face. “I think I get all the weird, teeth fallin’ out nightmares now. Human dentistry is just modern torture.”
Professor Gadling laughs and comes around the couch, nudging Corinthian’s legs until he grouses and obligingly lifts them enough to let the other man sit down. They are, of course, immediately dropped into his lap, probably with more force than is strictly necessary, but Professor Gadling just pats his shin.
“You think modern dentistry is bad? Imagine getting a cavity in the 1600’s.”
“I’m gonna pass on that, thanks,” Corinthian gripes.
“I am not certain a few minutes with the invisible linings warrants all this fussing,” Uncle Morpheus says, though Rose notes he looks amused and is still sitting there holding Corinthian’s hand and petting his hair. Enablers.
And, never one to pass up an opportunity to milk a situation, Corinthian scoffs. “You wound me, my lord. I let myself suffer to give some extra knowledge to your nephew, and this is how I’m repaid?”
“Oh, you want us to go?” Professor Gadling asks, moving as if to get back off the couch, but Corinthian curls his legs and presses him back down. He grins as he settles back on the couch, setting a hand back on Corinthian’s knee.
“You get what you needed, Jed?” Corinthian asks, tilting his head against Uncle Morpheus’s knee in their general direction.
Jed snickers. “Yup! You wanna keep the mini invisalign?”
“Hell no! I want you to burn them.”
“I don’t think I can burn them,” Jed laughs, and Rose groans when Corinthian grins on the couch.
“Oh, just hold on to um, then.”
“Don’t teach Jed how to start fires,” she protests.
Corinthian clicks his tongue and doesn’t even bother to pretend like that wasn’t his plan. “It’s a good skill to have! Never know when you might need it for…survival or something.”
“No fires,” she repeats, not really believing that it’ll stop either of them from trying to melt the retainers down.
“Do you feel any better?” Jed asks, pushing the Corinthian’s sunglasses up on his own head.
“I’ll be right as rain soon,” he promises before stretching a bit across Professor Gadling’s lap and leaning further into Uncle Morpheus’s hand like a particularly comfortable cat. “Might need a few more minutes, though.”
“So…” Jed says after a moment, dropping Corinthian’s sunglasses back onto his own nose before folding his hands seriously in front of his face. “If Invisalign can make it hard for you to see, would glasses help even if you don’t have any eyes?”
“Jed!”
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#the chaos boyfriends are raising chaos children#that's just how it goes#if jed said the word corinthian would murder a man#but he would not wear the invisalign again#hobrintheus#rose walker#jed walker#hob gadling#dream of the endless#the corinthian#fanfic#asking for a friend
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For the Valentine's Day prompts: 11 or 19 for Hobrintheus
I do want to do 19 as well, but to start, we're doing 11! Thanks for the prompt!! This was a ton of fun to write (and it'll be my first attempt at Hobrintheus as a pairing too!)
Pairing: Hobrintheus
Words: 1734
Warnings: None
Ao3 Link Here
Whiskey, the Corinthian decides, is one of humanity’s best inventions. And, judging by how happily Gadling’s partaking, he’s pretty sure the immortal man agrees. Dream, of course, is sticking with his usual glass of wine. Hob tried his best to get the Endless to try something else, but the Corinthian knew that was a hopeless endeavor. Still, he had to give the man props for trying.
Gadling’s arm was currently flung over his own shoulders, Dream sighing behind them as the trio do their best to make it up the stairs to his flat in one piece. He’s certain Dream’s kept the alcohol from affecting him, but where’s the fun in that? The Corinthian decided once Gadling ordered another round for them all that night that he’d let his Waking form feel the lovely burn and fuzzy feeling Whiskey provides.
Basically, they’re both shit-faced. And Dream’s their begrudging designated babysitter.
Sure, he could snap away the effects in an instant, but where’s the fun in that? It’s a lot more fun to lean into Gadling’s side and snicker along side the man about... fuck, what were they even talking about? He can’t remember. It was fucking hilarious though.
There’s a hand at his back, guiding him further up the stairs. How long do stairs need to be? Feels like they’ve been climbing since forever.
“Do not fall,” Dream’s voice is right beside his ear as the Corinthian takes another step up. Gadling’s leaning back, nearly pulling him along with him. He turns and sees Hob practically lounging across Dream’s front, still giggling. Dream’s looking down at him with rather... soft eyes. It’s an odd sight. Those eyes on his maker. He hasn’t looked at the Corinthian like that in... in a long time. Why doesn’t he look at him like that anymore?“
“How do you know I do not?” Dream says, his eyes flicking up to the Corinthian.
Ah. Shit. Guess he said that aloud. Alright, maybe he should be a little less drunk then.
The warmth in his form fades a bit, pushing him closer to tipsy than drunk. The world rights itself in an instant. He shakes his head, blinking away the fuzziness. He looks forward and sees they’re only a few steps away from the landing. Why had it seemed like forever just seconds ago?
“How’s who look at what?” Gadling replies, late to the conversation. Dream’s moved to wrap an arm around the man’s waist, clearly keeping him from tumbling down the stairwell.
“Do not concern yourself, Hob,” Dream says, that soft gaze returning to his eyes.
“Mmm... so many secrets. Always the secrets,” Hob mumbles, tipping himself forward to the point that the Corinthian needs to reach an arm out to make sure he doesn’t topple over. Hob, of course, just laughs as he starts the trek back up the few remaining stairs.
They do, eventually, get in the front door. No doubt helped by the Corinthian’s own growing sobriety. Dream closes the door behind them as the Corinthian helps Gadling to the couch. The man stumbles into the cushions, chuckles as he contorts his body into a normal lying position.
“Sharing is caring, Gadling. Up.” The Corinthian says, nudging the man’s legs up. He huffs in amusement as the man lifts his legs straight up to the ceiling. Once he sits, those very legs drop straight into his lap.
Dream circles back around, two glasses of water in his hands. One, he hands to the Corinthian, who just stares up at him in confusion. Dream kneels beside Hob’s head, raising his upper body and guides the glass to the man’s lips.
“Drink,” he says, his eyes flickering to the Corinthian as well. Hob eagerly chugs the offered drink with a satisfied hum. The Corinthian, for lack of anything better to do, also sips at the proffered water.
He watches the two of them as he drinks. That softness is still there as Dream stares down at Gadling. There’s also a softness in Hob’s eyes as well whenever he focuses too long on Dream, anyways. But that’s always been there. Man’s obsessed. Hell, he’d renovated this whole place just in case Dream decided to come back into his life. And every time he thinks he’s being sneaky, those big brown eyes of his just light up and stare all doe-eyed at the Endless.
Shit... they’re in love. Neither of them know it. Or Dream does and he’s electing to ignore it, which is both wildly in and out of character for him. The Corinthian sighs and sets the glass down on the small table at the side of the couch. Dream’s gaze shifts to him, a single brow arched in question.
Hob groans as he pulls himself up into more of a sitting position. His hands flop into his lap as he looks between the two dream creatures in his flat with that dopey smile on his face. Maybe it’s the whiskey, maybe it’s the thought that if Dream weren’t here, he’d gladly have fallen into bed with the man whose legs are sprawled across his lap. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s the small flicker of hope (or hunger, more accurately) that thinks maybe those soft eyes are aimed at him too.
He reaches out, hand holding the jut of Hob’s chin between his fingers. Those brown eyes stare up at him, wide, his lips parted. And isn’t that just a sight? “Ya know,” he drawls, angling his face towards Dream, but never letting his eyes stray from Hob’s own. “Your human’s pretty entertaining.”
“He’s not my human,” Dream replies.
Hob whips his face from the Corinthian’s hold and looks at Dream, brows pulled tight. “’m not?”
The Corinthian doesn’t even try to hide the snicker that leaves his mouth at Dream’s confused face.
“I— you are your own man, Hob. You do not belong to me.” Dream states, head tilted in curiosity now.
“Well,” the Corinthian says, leaning forward and pressing his lips against the side of Hob’s neck. The man inhales sharply underneath him but leans into the touch. “If he doesn’t want you, you can be mine if you’d like.”
Hob whimpers. Oh, now there’s a reaction, the Corinthian thinks. The air around them cools. He can feel the electricity thrum through the room and sees the shadows leeching out of Dream’s form.
“But...” Hob starts, arching his neck to look back at Dream who’s still kneeling on the floor. His maker’s eyes are no longer blue, but pitch black, twin stars glaring at the Corinthian before darting to Hob’s own. The air is tense. The Corinthian isn’t sure Hob can tell, not with the amount of whiskey still in his system. “What if I want to belong to you? To both of you?”
The Corinthian’s teeth chatter, the flame within him sparking at those words. The urge to bite is strong, but he resists. There’s time for that later. For now, he has to wait, like a patient hunter, waiting for its prey to fall into line. He lifts his lips from Hob’s neck and turns to Dream, arching his own brow, mimicking his maker’s earlier actions.
“Well? What do you say, Dream? He wants to be our good little human. Why don’t we give him what he wants?”
“He is intoxicated.”
Hob stretches his arm out, hand resting just below Dream’s face. “Please,” he whispers.
“See?” The Corinthian replies. “He’s begging for it.” He leans back down, nibbling the soft lobe of his ear. He feels Hob shiver under his touch. It’s a heady feeling.
There’s a hand on the back of his neck, pulling him away. Dream’s face is inches away from his own, and by proxy, inches away from Hob’s as well. “Corinthian,” Dream says, his voice lapsing into the deep echo that’s normally reserved for use in the Dreaming.
The Corinthian watches as Hob takes his outstretched hand and cups the side of Dream’s face. His maker turns into it, his lips open as if prepared to speak when Hob leans forward and kisses him. It’s amusing, almost, how Dream stills in shock. The Corinthian moves closer, smiling as Dream’s hand falls from his neck. He pushes his nose against the back of his ear, letting his tongue flick out to lick a strip up the skin and into the soft hair. Dream shivers. If he thought it felt good to see Gadling shiver under his touch, this is downright euphoric.
As Hob leans back, panting against Dream’s lips, the Corinthian whispers. “Let yourself have something for once, Dream. Don’t overthink it.”
Dream lets out a shuddering breath as he closes his eyes. His shoulders fall, whether in defeat or acceptance, it doesn’t really matter as the Corinthian turns Dream’s face to his and claims his lips for himself. Dream lets him, even kisses back as their lips move together, heads tilting for better access. There’s a head pressing against his shoulder. Thick but soft hairs brush under his jaw.
The Corinthian, for the first time in a long time, almost feels sated, the normal gnawing hunger within him calms. And as Dream’s lips leave his, those night sky eyes of his look... soft.
“Very well, my little nightmare. Perhaps you are right.” He whispers, turning to Hob who’s all but pressed against the Corinthian’s side as best he can in the odd sitting position he’s in. Dream reaches out, one hand curled against the Corinthian’s cheek, the other on Hob’s. “Perhaps I will just have to have both of you.”
“Good,” Hob mumbles into his shoulder. “Now get up here too.”
The Corinthian chuckles. “I think your poor couch is at max capacity. Why don’t we move this to your bed instead, hm?”
“Mmm, much better plan,” Hob says, making no effort to move.
Dream huffs. “I believe he may need some assistance in that matter, my nightmare.”
Sighing, the Corinthian pushes Hob off of him so he plops back onto his back. Hob groans in response. “Yup, think you’re right. I’ll wrangle him up for us.” He stands, giving Dream a wink as he hauls Hob up and over his shoulder, giving his ass a quick spank. Hob quite literally squeaks which makes the Corinthian laugh. Dream presses a kiss to Hob’s forehead before leading the way down the hallway to the bedroom.
Yeah. Whiskey’s a damn good thing.
#the sandman#dream of the endless#hob gadling#the corinthian#hobrintheus#ky writes#valentine's day prompts
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Listen. Listen. I see y’alls Corinthian humor crack mixed in with smut and I love it. I do. But imma divert our attention for a minute here
I need Hob to need very-bad-no-good-nasty things from the Corinthian. He wants hate sex. He wants hair pulling and knife play from the nightmare. He wants to indulge everything the M in BDSM stands for (and the Corinthian’s base setting is S so he’s gucci). Hob wants the Corinthian to hurt him (physically - Dream is enough of a dick for them both emotionally sometimes) into the right headspace. Because Hob has lived a very long life (by human standards) and he’s tried a little of it all. But with Corinthian he’s safe to indulge in playing around with all the b e n e f i t s immortality grants him in the sack.
And Dream just Does. Not. Get. It. Why would a human crave pain? Why does Hob keep returning to his nightmare for these experiences? So he watches. He watches and observes and eventually gets so overtaken by curiosity he lets himself mentally slide into Corinthian as he’s fucking Hob in a heavy scene.
At some point Hob has to explain to Dream how he gets different things from both of them. And stubborn Dream balks at that - Corinthian is made from him. He can be a nightmare if that’s what Hob desires. Maybe queue Dream & Corinthian switching rolls here. Dream relentlessly whipping his favorite immortal and Corinthian softly worshipping every lash and inch of his body.
Cause now that they can both do either roll? Hob has never been so giddy. The code/role switching good cop bad cop threesome we all deserve can now happen with Hob as the center of attention.
🫀 (putting my anon signature here since I’m pretty sure there are at least 3 of us haunting your asks now)
This is while Hobrintheus is the ideal throuple!! It's a horny Hob sandwich the softest most ethereal sex you can imagine on one side, and actual nightmare fuel on the other. What's not to love?
Ngl I do love the idea of Dream and the Corinthian role swopping. Like the Corinthian has to try and be this sweet, generous lover who wants to worship Hob with his body, and that totally goes against his nature so its a real exercise in restraint for him.
But also I do want the Corinthian to be allowed to use his pretty lil knife on Hob. Maybe with Dream directing him where and how, so nobody ends up bleeding out on the sheets (although secretly deep down Hob kinda wants to try that oops maybe they'll do it when Dream isn't around to have an Endless heart attack).
Maybe also Dream in his most nightmarish form + the Corinthian with his bloodlust up to the max tag teaming Hob? Dream still doesn't get why Hob would be into it but he's gonna do his damn best to give his pretty little human the most terrifying sex of his life <333
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and if I get burned at least we were electrified
and if I get burned, at least we were electrified
by starsniper
On their next meeting, Hob realizes the pattern.
The man (vampire? werewolf? some otherworldly being?) comes after Hob every 100 days. The irony of this is not lost on Hob. Of course Hob would end up with not one, but two mysterious otherworldly strangers with a penchant for refusing to give Hob their names, forcing him to come up with nicknames in his head. He can’t very well name them Stranger 1 and Stranger 2 though, so Hob decides that his centennial friend will remain The Stranger, and his new unintended sparring partner is now Murder Stalker.
---
Hob Gadling interrupts The Corinthian in the middle of a murder and explodes him back to The Dreaming. The Corinthian comes back for revenge. Hob keeps finding new ways to blow him up. At some point, it becomes something more.
Aka enemies to fuck-buddies to lovers.
Words: 11972, Chapters: 2/?, Language: English
Fandoms: The Sandman (TV 2022)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Categories: M/M
Characters: The Corinthian (Sandman), Hob Gadling, Modern Johanna Constantine (The Sandman TV), Dream of the Endless | Morpheus
Relationships: The Corinthian/Hob Gadling, The Corinthian/Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling, The Corinthian/Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling
Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, they're serial killer boyfriends your honor, The Corinthian is His Own Warning (The Sandman), starts out at hobrinthian eventual hobrintheus, BAMF Hob Gadling, Eyeball Consumption, eyeballs as breakfast, Hob is The Corinthian's sugar daddy, Possessive The Corinthian (The Sandman), Hob and The Corinthian have unrequited (for now) feelings for Dream, Angst, Mentioned Gun Violence
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I grabbed a 'tagged if you see this' from @dancinbutterfly ETA and then @gabessquishytum tagged me
three ships: Dreamling, Hobrintheus and Hobrinthian and I'm cheating to call that my first answer. Jon/Michael | the Distortion from TMA. Buffy/Spike.
first ever ship: In fandom? Original flavour Louis/Lestat in the bad old days. But original flavour Keith/Lotor is also a valid answer. Lotor's 80's character design was so cool.
last song: Ghost by the Indigo Girls
last movie: I am so utterly not a movie person, I think it was probably the David Wojnarowicz documentary I watched last August. It was goddamn awesome though.
currently reading: I'm in a read fanfic and only fanfic phase right now but I recently finished Naomi Novik's The Golden Enclaves and I'm trying to decide if I have the mental energy to tackle Nona the Ninth now. Harrow was so exhausting. Otoh, Gideon was pure fun. *hands*
currently consuming: The brilliant output of the Sandman fandom though I suppose I should get around to Warrior Nun season two eventually.
currently craving: this WIP to get itself finished
If you want a tag and you see this, consider yourself tagged!
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Bakerstreethound Masterlist
All my works are listed here. Will eventually organize it better. Check out my misc fandoms masterlist here. Theme dividers are courtesy of @firefly-graphics
Request Rules - Please Read!
5yr Anniversary Celebration Event
Strawberry Sherlock Masterlist
Kinktober 2022
Sherlock Holmes January Writing Challenge (2020)
BBC Sherlock:
Sherlock Holmes
A Single Touch
To Another Year
******
Berry Kisses (Strawberry!Sherlock)
Light in the Darkness (Request)
Strawberry Delight (Strawberry!Sherlock)
Anatomy of Boredom (short blurb request)
Blooming Chemistry (University Era Sherlock)
A New Horizon
Madness or Madly in Love? (Request)
Give Me One More Chance (Request)
Forget Me Not (Request)
Hold Me Close (Short Blurb)
Won’t You Stay?
Corrupted Evidence (Request)
Never Idle
Desperation Calls (Short Blurb)
Birthday Boy
A Thousand Wishes
******
Successful Year (Blurb Request)
Patience is a Virtue (Strawberry!Sherlock - Kinktober 2022)
Otter Paw Mittens (Strawberry!Sherlock Blurb)
Cuddles & Unruly Curls (Strawberry!Sherlock Blurb)
Rest my Darling
Adorable Otters (Strawberry!Sherlock)
Hold my Heart for it Bleeds (Request)
Feeding Sherlock (Blurb)
Tangled Sheets (Short Blurb)
Must be the Late Night Talking (Blurb)
For Once (Short Blurb)
Forever Yours (Kinktober 2022)
Fire & Ice (Kinktober 2022)
I’ll Take Care of You (Strawberry!Sherlock - Kinktober 2022)
Strength to Carry On (Short Blurb)
After the Storm (Strawberry!Sherlock -request)
Hair Product (Short Blurb)
Simple Evenings (Strawberry!Sherlock)
Graduation Nights, Old Regrets
Flight or Freeze
******
A Case of Mistletoe & Presents
Semester’s Dread
Atonement of Sins
Chocolate Covered (Strawberry!Sherlock)
Winter Wonderland
******
Summoning Angels (Victorian Era Holmes)
Ecstasy
Sweet Remedy (Strawberry!Sherlock)
Back in Your Arms
Until the Bell Tolls
Home At Last (sequel to Miss Me, Miss You)
Take & You Take
Miss Me? Miss You
My Bright Place
Dress Me Up
Save Yourself
Narrow Way
Fine Tuning
Where Pettiness Lies
Late Night Essay Night
Truth Be Told (mini-series)
Beautiful Chaos | Fear of Falling Apart | Truth Be Told
Sherlock (TV) Characters
Jim Moriarty: A Thousand Times
Mycroft Holmes: A Matter of Takeout | Agent M | Something Like This
Greg Lestrade: Not Your Prisoner | Worth It | Weight of Lies
Sherlock-Characters Masterlist
Misc Fandom Masterlist
Letters to Sherlock: Envelope 1 | Envelope 2
Series: Bad Liar (Complete)
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
Lost Boy (incomplete-discontinued): CH 1 | CH 2
The Grishaverse (Shadow & Bone; Six of Crows)
General Kirigan (The Darkling): Chasing Shadows
Bring the Light | In His Shadows
Tolya Yul-Bataar:
Heart of a Poet (platonic relationship)
Nikolai Lantsov:
Golden Mornings
Good Omens
Shelter of Wings (Crowley x reader x Aziraphale)
Angel’s Tea Under a Demon’s Wing (Ineffable Husbands x reader)
The Loyal Bentley (Aziraphale x Crowley)
The Sandman
Morpheus (Dream of the Endless)
Beneath the Moonlight’s Radiance (Kinktober 2022)
Lonely Dreams
Mine for Eternity, Yours for a Lifetime (Kinktober 2022)
Sleepless Nights (Headcanon/Short Blurb)
Domestic Dream (Headcanon/Short Blurb)
Safe With Us (Hobrintheus)
The Corinthian
Nightmare Calling
A Walk in the Park (Single!Dad)
Bridgerton
Benedict Bridgerton: Etched in Stone
The School for Good and Evil
Evil’s Undying Kiss - Rafal makes sure you know you belong to him
Peaky Blinders
Thomas Shelby: Solace
Stranger Things
Headcanon- Two Loves, One Heart- for being in a poly relationship with Eddie Munson & Steve Harrington
We Almost Forgot Movie Night
Steve Harrington
Floral Yet Woodsy
Smaug the Dragon
Worth More Than Gold - You never cared about the gold or treasures Under the Mountain. All you sought was some company and found the most unlikely of companions. Now, the dragon can’t bear to part with you despite his doubts.
Marvel
Namor
To Claim a King
Protector, Lover, Fighter
Our Future
The Moon Knight System:
Fading Lights
Under the Weather - When visiting Steven’s flat, you quickly find out he’s got a cold and with Marc’s help you do everything in your power to comfort precious Steven.
Yelena Belova:
Headcanons- Macaroni & Dances - for Yelena and her partner being soft.
Loki:
The Trickster & His Fae
Gilded Halls
Anything But Okay
Dr. Stephen Strange
Swirling Constellations (Valentine blurb)
One Half of a Broken Heart (request)
Unbridled Truth (request, platonic friendship to something more)
Five More Minutes (fluffy blurb)
Love that Binds, Love that Fractures & Forever Endures
Healing Hands
His Universe
Bleeding Out
Silence is Golden
Another One of Those Days
Another One of Those Days-Part 2
Overprotective
Wedding
Skurge the Executioner
Miracle
The Mandalorian
Mando (Din Djarin):
Or I Will
A Clan of Four
Starstruck - Repost
Not that Kind of Person
The Scars Between Us
Cobb Vanth: Ride ‘em Cowboy
Star Wars
Boba Fett: A Daimyo’s Wish
Poe Dameron:
Dearest Gomez | Estrella fugaz | Copilot | Not Solo | BB1 | Flying High
Inspired by the Addams Family- Dearest Gomez (Poe Dameron x reader)
Other Star Wars Characters
Mom (D-O the Droid with Mom! reader)
Ghosts of the Past (Finn)
What Doesn’t Kill You (Armitage Hux)
Darkness Calls (Rey)
Star Trek (aos)
Leonard McCoy
Night at the Museum
Southern Mornin’ Quick Drawl
Nobody but You
Not Alone
Best Night of Our Lives
Melt
In Your Arms
Wanted
Khan
Darkness Everlasting
So Wicked & Divine
Star Trek Masterlist
Seasonal Fics /Headcanons
Summoning Angels (Featuring Victorian Era Holmes)
Inspired by the Addams Family- Dearest Gomez (Poe Dameron x reader)
Falling Leaves & Sharpened Knives (Filled with OCs Anna & Ash, featuring Sherlock Holmes & Leonard McCoy)
Science of a Soul (Ichabod Crane x reader)
Tear Stains of the Heart
Headcanon - Forever at Peace - for being in a relationship with Victor and Emily (Corpse Bride)
The Power of the Dog
Phil Burbank: Lover’s Sorrow
Wonder Woman (2017 & 2020)
Maxwell Lord: Wishful Thinking
The Boys (Amazon Prime)
Billy Butcher: The Butchering
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and if I get burned, at least we were electrified - Chapter 2
Ao3 Link [Here]
Chapter Summary - The Corinthian and Hob have established a fairly comfortable relationship. But then it all comes crashing down.
Life in the Waking World is pretty interesting for The Corinthian these days.
His tongue still fumbles awkwardly around the differences in slang over the pond, he hates that the weather in London makes his hair fall flat on his face no matter what he does to it, and he misses Taco Bell like an old drug habit.
And all of this inconvenience, he thinks, is for the immortal who’s currently asleep next to him, snoring something fierce right up against The Corinthian’s ear.
The Corinthian has never met anyone quite like Hob Gadling before. From their initial meeting, Hob has defied all of his expectations and then some. His immortality, first and foremost, should not have caught The Corinthian completely off guard, but it did. Hob doesn’t smell like other immortals, he tries his best to blend in with humans, to be average, unremarkable . To this day, The Corinthian cannot understand how the man pulls it off so well.
Especially because underneath that false unremarkable exterior lies a wild beast that may just be as ferocious and unrestrained as The Corinthian himself. He's clever and ambitious in all the ways a regular mortal is, but the centuries have allowed Hob to fully master the act of humanity. Hob has managed to bend the world to his will without showing his cards. It's performance art at its highest peak. It's a tenaciousness The Corinthian hungers for, something he realized he looked for in all his victims. The vivacity, that addiction to life and the willingness to, as they say, grab it by the horns and never let go.
It's why The Corinthian kept coming back time and time again, to test the bounds of that tenaciousness, instead of fucking off to do something else after his first few attempts had ended with him disembodied and transported back to The Dreaming. Having his corporeal form completely destroyed and then reformed hurt like a bitch, and he hated how long the rebuilding process took, but every subsequent trip back had left him wanting .
Lucienne had been less than impressed on his fourth trip back, he remembers.
"Ah, welcome back. I take it you've once again failed to eliminate your target,” she'd greeted, amusement barely concealed behind her glasses.
"Shut the fuck up Lucienne," The Corinthian had growled, already working on creating a portal to get him back to the Waking. It didn't take long. He'd gotten good at this with all the practice Hob gave him.
"You know Corinthian, maybe the Waking is trying to tell you something!" she yelled at his retreating back.
"Good thing I've never been good at listening." The Corinthian then gave her the bird on his way out to London.
Shortly after that, the cult happened. And then Hob had glimpsed his full face for the first time and The Corinthian was left gobsmacked by the desire radiating off of him. He's only ever been appreciated for his full appearance by one other being, and even so, it had never felt like this. It's delicious, it's dark and all consuming. It's everything The Corinthian didn't know he wanted, couldn't ever have imagined having, before that moment.
What started out as a simple revenge quest to stave off some boredom had suddenly turned to one of the best fucks off his life.
Afterwards, The Corinthian had tried not to make it a regular thing, but well, he's never been known for being a man who's able to reign in his vices. And Hob Gadling is such a strong vice he feels like the Original Sin itself. He doesn't flinch when the Corinthian bites hard enough to draw blood, leans into the blond's grip when choked, and the immortal will sometimes spend hours licking into his eye mouths while keeping three, sometimes four fingers buried knuckle deep inside The Corinthian.
When Hob wants The Corinthian to submit, and it's become a more regular thing, he takes and takes with brutal force, slamming his head into walls and twisting his arms just hard enough to leave a threat of dislocation. It's an echo of their old sparring fights, but Hob now knows The Corinthian favors his right side for an outright attack, his left for a feint. Hob also knows how much he loves those iron cuffs (forged by Hob, and made just for him), and loves testing the limits of their strength. It's the height of pleasure and pain that he knows neither of them have experienced with other human lovers.
And now here they are, playing domestic, where The Corinthian agrees to not murder anyone Hob doesn't explicitly approve of ahead of time, and in turn Hob spoils The Corinthian with anything he comes up with on a whim.
Well, almost anything.
"We are not getting a murder yacht,” Hob had said to him just the night before.
“Oh come on! It’d be so easy to get rid of the bodies with one!” The Corinthian argued back. “And the Channel will do all the cleanup for us!”
“Do you want to be on the radar of the British Royal Navy? Because that is exactly how you get on the radar of the British Royal Navy. Not to mention, I don’t know how to drive a boat, and I’m certain you don’t know either!”
The Corinthian does not pout on principle, but it’s an almost thing. Hob Gadling was a terrible influence.
“ He would get me a murder yacht,” The Corinthian declared, pointing to the television. Hob glanced at the screen and sighed loudly.
“Hannibal Lecter is a fictional character , Cory,” Hob said, exasperated. It’s not the first time The Corinthian had brought up the comparison, and really, if Hob didn’t want to be compared to a fellow doctorate holding intellectual with a DILF vibe and a hobby of murdering criminals for sport, then he really shouldn’t have let The Corinthian run free with his Netflix account while he's off tending to lectures.
Speaking of criminal murders, though. The Corinthian glances at the calendar on the wall above Hob's nightstand and grins when he realizes tonight's the night for their next job.
—
“ Another sex trafficking ring, Hob?” The Corinthian groans. It’s the third one in a row. “I know you're a bleeding heart for the helpless, but I’m starting to think you feel personally responsible here.” He probably does, in all honesty. Hob had mentioned to him how guilty he felt over participating in the slave trade in the late 1700s.
“I thought you liked the sex traffickers!” Hob exclaims, surprised. “Because there's always so many of them! You gorged yourself on eyeballs for days after the last one.”
“Yeah, sure they're great, but not so much when it’s what we go after every time . Where’s my corrupt CEOs, the drug lords, hell where’s another serial killer hiding, tell me, Hob!” Variety is the spice of life and while The Corinthian may be satisfied for now filling his palette with unrepentant humans, he still wants some flavor distinction amongst them from time to time.
"All right, all right, I promise you get to pick the next target after tonight," Hob assures him.
"Can it be-"
“No- we are not going to kill a Member of Parliament. There’s murder of the irredeemable every day man, and then there’s assassination , and we are clearly staying in the first camp, love.”
The Corinthian really doesn’t see the difference. Dead people are dead people, but Hob’s the mortal in this relationship, so The Corinthian just shrugs and decides to think on who he’d like for them to go after next. He thinks he’ll consult his little black book on the matter.
Hob thinks it's ridiculous that blond keeps a hit list, but then if he didn’t want him to, then he shouldn’t have bought The Corinthian such a nice leather bound journal in the first place.
—
Much as The Corinthian hates to admit it (and he'll never do it aloud), Hob is right about the gluttony of hunting down sex enslavers.
There had been at least six men guarding the shipping container that had come in to dock the night before. Two more are in charge of negotiating the handoff, and still another three show up as drivers to transport their "cargo".
In short, it had been a blood bath. None of the men had ever stood a chance.
The Corinthian doesn't quite have a stomach, so he doesn't get full, per say, but there does come a point where there's diminishing returns on the enjoyment he feels the more he eats in a single sitting.
For occasions where he hits that point, like tonight, Hob has acquired an extra refrigerator. It's an antique red monstrosity that the immortal had flown in from a shop in Oklahoma just because The Corinthian had complained one time that English kitchens were too drab for his tastes. The blond had made fun of Hob's peasant roots at the start of their relationship, but Hob is no peasant now. It’s another one of the ways the immortal is sin-incarnate, his willingness to indulge The Corinthian’s hedonism at the drop of a hat is both endearing and addicting. The Corinthian has more than enough mortal money of his own, but there’s just something extra enticing about spending another man’s wealth on unnecessary luxuries like this.
Sometimes, The Corinthian will wake to the smell of cooking flesh, and he'll find Hob has fried a pair of eyes for him in his homemade garlic butter. He'd then spend the morning hand feeding them to each of The Corinthian's eye mouths, before handing him a cup of black coffee. It’s domestic. It’s overindulgent. The Corinthian thinks he'll ask for them to be mixed with scrambled eggs tomorrow instead.
–
"I’ve got a surprise for you," Hob says once they've wrapped everything up at the docks. He stamps out the last bit of his cigarette before continuing. "Call it a bonus for a job well done."
"Dessert? You spoil me, baby," The Corinthian grins, unable to hide his excitement. Hob is good at surprises. So far, The Corinthian has yet to be disappointed.
The brunette drives them over a few bridges to a different shipping port on the other side of town. He makes sure that there’s no one on guard before he leads them over to a particular container, which he unlocks and leads The Corinthian inside. There's a few lights strung up on the inside, enough for The Corinthian to easily look at his prize.
Near the center of the container is a single man tied to a chair with a bag over his head. He sounds like he’s gagged underneath the bag as well. The Corinthian cannot help the little gasp of pleasure he lets out when Hob pulls the bag off.
The man is dressed in a three piece suit that was probably freshly pressed a day or two ago, but now sits wrinkled as a result of futile struggling. He’s got multiple layers of duct tape over his mouth, as expected. The Corinthian also clocks a newer Rolex model on the man’s left wrist barely hidden by a sleeve pinned together with solid gold cuffs. He looks like he would be incredibly well groomed if he weren’t currently rotting in a shipping container, with dark hair and sparkling blue eyes that are now comically wide as he takes in his two captors. The man cannot be more than 28 years old at most, which just screams Daddy’s Boy to the Corinthian. It’s his favorite type of meal.
“All for me, baby? You shouldn’t have.” The Corinthian purrs, and he can feel his eyes drooling at the sight, the smell, the exquisite taste, of the man’s fear.
“Only the best for you, love,” Hob murmurs in his ear, hands resting possessively at his hip, voice dripping with pleasure. The Corinthian shudders when Hob delicately removes his shades and places a tender kiss to each of his eye mouths, dragging his tongue along their teeth. They come to life under his attention, all soft sighs and heavy breaths. The man in the chair is now thrashing wildly in horror, his screams muted by the tape.
“His name’s Thomas Mason, Hob supplies. "Father’s done pretty well for himself in the United States, but he insisted on his kids being raised in the home country. Tom here is a little bit of a brat you see. Awful student too, he's been kicked out of at least three universities in London." The Corinthian snorts at the blatant offense Hob seems to take at this fact.
"Knocked up some poor girl when she was far too drunk to fully consent at a networking event," he continues. "And then he killed her when she told him she wasn’t going to abort. I have it on good authority that he’s buried her out in his mother’s country house. Naturally, Scotland Yard isn’t really looking into it since she was here on a student visa and his parents have more than enough money to make it look like she just got up and disappeared out of the country on her own. Her family’s absolutely distraught."
"Distraught, you say?" The Corinthian asks in mock concern. "Well, we can't have that now." He takes out his knives from their holsters in his jacket, and now the man in the chair is moving even more wildly in his chair, trying to tip it over, maybe hoping to break it and free himself. It won't matter, there's nowhere to go in the tiny container. The Corinthian cuts a line through Tom's throat to get him to stop thrashing and then begins to start the task of carving out those gorgeous blue orbs.
The start of the task is always the hardest. Humans are so sensitive when it comes to their faces, but they all give up soon enough, and Tom is no exception. It’s all in the thumbs, really. Once they’re sufficiently popped out, all The Corinthian has to do afterwards is sever the optic nerve, and bam, instant snack. Hob had winced the first few times he watched The Corinthian had done this while the victim was still alive (their memories are freshest when he does this, even if he stores them in the fridge for later), but now he watches with rapt attention, unable to tear his gaze away from The Corinthian's skilled yet brutal movements.
When he’s done, The Corinthian savors the taste of Thomas Mason’s eyes, drinks in the memory of hands choking the life out of a pretty little thing too young to be taken from the world, then revels in the feel of the cool dirt underneath his fingernails during the memory of her crude burial.
“She’s buried right by the rose bushes, near the west wing," The Corinthian says, and Hob’s proud, dark grin tells him he will, in fact, be getting breakfast in bed tomorrow morning.
–
They don’t argue often, but when they do, it always comes back to the same topic. The Corinthian doesn’t even know how or why they started talking about Dream, but he hates the way Hob prods about their relationship, asks about why everything fell apart and led The Corinthian to permanently leave The Dreaming.
“It's better the less you know about him,” The Corinthian says with a finality he hopes Hob will understand.
He doesn’t. "Why?” he presses. “Because you don't like talking about him?"
"Because he's dangerous!" The Corinthian snaps. "He tried to unmake me almost a hundred years ago, and if he ever gets out of his cage and finds out about you…"
"You're worried about me, pet?" Hob’s tone is light, but The Corinthian knows he’s trying to distract him from the threat of Dream’s return.
"Well you're not exactly the pinnacle of human safety if we’re being honest, baby." The Corinthian grumbles.
"I’m immortal, can’t die, remember?" Hob quips in response.
"Right, right, immortality from your eldritch Stranger that broke your heart," The Corinthian sneers back at him.
"Oof, low blow, Cory," Hob winces.
The use of the nickname cools his anger slightly, but only just.
"Is it?" he challenges. The Corinthian is not an open creature by nature, but Hob is also sensitive about his centennial Stranger. He claims he's told The Corinthian all that he knows about him, but The Corinthian finds it hard to believe that Hob had been meeting the same being for 600 years and somehow, inexplicably, does not even know his name. Then again, The Corinthian has not told Hob the name of his creator either. He doesn't know why, but the knowledge of Dream's name is something he wants to keep to himself.
Hob also won't talk about why he and his Stranger had a falling out either. He just knows the creature missed their 1989 meeting, and now Hob has no choice but to wait for 2089 to see if their relationship can be salvaged. The Corinthian, petty creature that he is, still refuses to set foot inside The New Inn, a place dedicated to someone else. He does, however, relish in the fact that shortly after he moved in with Hob, the immortal had begun to spend less and less time in the pub, possibly hoping for an earlier than 100 year sighting of his Stranger.
"All right, all right I get it," Hob placates, and finally throws up his hands in surrender. "No more creator talks, and no more stranger talks tonight, all right?"
"Or we could forget about them all together," The Corinthian tries, wishing to never speak about Dream ever again. Dream's gone, he's trapped, has been trapped for 100 years, and yet The Corinthian feels him at his back each night when he turns off the light and watches Hob sleep.
"Hmmm, I don’t think so," Hob says, thoughtful. "I can’t forget my old friend, yes he’s my friend damnit,” the immortal insists. “And even with your creator locked up who knows where, because you won't tell me, I know you can’t forget him either. And that’s okay. We don’t need to talk about them now, but a relationship is about moving on from past baggage so we’ll need to get there eventually, but it doesn’t have to be now, love.”
"I’ve tried for at least two millennia to move on already," The Corinthian admits, surprised at his own openness.
Hob smiles fondly, because he knows even getting that much out of The Corinthian is better than nothing, and then cups the blond's face gently between his hands.
"Well, you’ve never had me before, darling.” Hob says, tone back to reassuring and gentle. “I can’t promise to heal all your wounds and scars, but I’m going to do my best to love you as you are, murderous tendencies and all. And if your creator ever does get out of his cage, we'll deal with him together."
The Corinthian, even after spending years in Hob’s bed, is still not used to hearing the immortal declare his love for him. Hob offers his love far too easily, and he hasn’t even asked why The Corinthian has yet to say it back. He almost does, just now. It's on the tip of his tongue.
"You’re insane, you know that?" The Corinthian says instead. He’s not ready to inspect his feelings, not yet, not while he’s still taut as a piano wire.
Hob nods, like he knows what’s going on inside The Corinthian’s head, and maybe he does. "Well, you don’t live past the normal mortal expiration date without losing a few screws along the way," he says, and starts tugging The Corinthian towards the bathroom. “Come on love, let’s have a bath. I’ve got a new vintage I’ve been wanting to try out."
Later, when the Corinthian is drunk and spilling wine all over Hob’s overly large and posh bathtub, he thinks that maybe, maybe, this is probably what love is supposed to feel like. They're kissing like Hob doesn't have to get up in the morning for a lecture, and the slowness of it stirs something familiar inside the nightmare.
He thought he'd loved Dream once, until he realized that his creator's affection for him had been conditional on The Corinthian fulfilling his singular assigned function. No room for growth, no room for ambition, for reaching past the limits of the Dreaming. All of the reverence and blind worship had evaporated then. Dream only cared for himself and his stupid rules, his creations were simply there to serve him without question.
Hob is different though. Hob has rules for him, sure, but he indulges The Corinthian when he's done well, negotiates when the situation calls for it, and he doesn't make The Corinthian's thoughts and opinions feel less than, like secondary, unimportant things. He also doesn’t hold The Corinthian’s past crimes against him.
Yes, The Corinthian thinks when Hob finally pushes his cock inside him, slowly, gently, lovingly. What he's got with Hob is probably love. Or at least as close to it as he'll ever get with his nightmarish heart.
He'll tell Hob. Eventually. When the time is right.
–
Their next operation goes tits up.
Statistically, even the best laid plans can go awry when murder is involved, but The Corinthian supposes they really should’ve anticipated a mob boss having more than a dozen men for backup, even if he was just vacationing out in the countryside.
Good thing neither Hob nor the Corinthian can die. Hob’s healing is not nearly as quick as his, but it’s quick enough.
The Corinthian imagines Hob must look like something of an eldritch horror to the mob men when he gets up off the ground, an entire chunk of face missing, and then stabs his shooter in the neck. The resulting blood spray is lovely, and The Corinthian takes a moment to bask in Hob's handiwork before he continues to gun down the rest of their assailants.
God, he's missed having access to guns. The Corinthian has a small collection of antique rifles in his penthouse back in the States, and though he's never used them for more than target practice, he likes the heavy weight of such a small and unassuming thing that holds so much potential for death, resting in his hands.
Using other people’s guns against them though? That’s an entirely different feeling, one that The Corinthian is all too happy to indulge.
All total, there’s around 25 men dead in the villa after Hob and The Corinthian are through. More than double the amount they expected to be here. The Corinthian makes a note to pay a visit to his source later to personally thank him for the terrible intelligence.
“Hey Cory, look what I found!” Hob’s voice sounds throughout the otherwise quiet room.
When he locates the immortal on the other side of the bloodied living room, he sees that he’s thrumming with excitement about something. When he gets closer, Hob holds up a mostly mangled piece of flesh that the Corinthian quickly realizes is the part of Hob’s face that was blown off with a rifle. Surprisingly, the eye socket is fully intact.
It’s the most beautiful thing The Corinthian has ever laid eyes on, and he wants.
Hob then offers the lump, eye socket and all, to The Corinthian with a pained grimace that he looks like he’s trying very hard to pass off as a smile. The Corinthian is too shocked to take it right away. It can’t possibly be that easy.
Can it?
Hob notices his hesitation and sighs.
“Might as well have it, it’s a goddamn miracle it’s even intact the way it is,” the immortal grunts. “I can already feel a new one growing in, and let me tell you, it fucking hurts. Waste not, want not and all."
The Corinthian knows that he shouldn’t think too deeply about the gift, it’s borne out of circumstance rather than intent after all, but the irony of being freely offered something he’d spent years trying to carve out of the man’s face himself is not lost on him.
The Corinthian gently takes the eye from Hob and cuts around the tender flesh, then pops the ball into his mouth.
The memories hit him like a monsoon.
The Corinthian has consumed hundreds, perhaps thousands of eyes at this point in time, but consuming Hob is an entirely different experience.
Hob's eyes have, by default, seen far more than a regular mortal, and so there’s just more, more, more to be seen and more to be experienced. It feels neverending.
He feels Hob’s determination to never die, even in the days before he was granted immortality. His surprise when he realizes that he's stopped aging. His fear at thinking he'd made a deal with the Devil himself.
He sees the immortal's warmest memories, feels the touch of his first silk shirt, hears the sound of his son's first cry, tastes the flavors of his first meal after being dubbed a knight.
He also witnesses Hob's worst memories, the horrors of war over the centuries, the stabbing pain of hunger that would have killed another man, the smell of decay from the bodies lost to The Black Plague, the pain of each and every time his body breaks but doesn't die.
But above all, he feels love. Pure, unfiltered, unconditional love. Love for humanity, for his long life, love for The Corinthian himself.
Love for his mysterious Stranger.
The Corinthian chokes when he realizes who this stranger finally is.
It’s Dream.
Of course it's fucking Dream.
"Cory? Are you all right?"
No he's not fucking all right. Nothing is ever going to be all right again. The Corinthian has never needed to breathe but in this moment he feels like he is suffocating.
Hob is Dream's pet immortal. The one that Death had spared on a bet with Dream back in 1389.
The Corinthian thinks he's a fool. That's why Hob doesn't smell like other immortals, because he smells just like Endless, like The Corinthian, like Dream .
He also knows now that Hob was telling the truth about not knowing Dream's name or what he was all this time. Dream's always had a stick up his ass about personal information, the only reason The Corinthian even knew his creator had a pet immortal in the first place was because The Corinthian had tried to follow his master out into The Waking once, back when their relationship was still good, when Dream still indulged him, when The Corinthian hadn't yet begun to hunger for more.
Dream had shut him down so fiercely, Lucienne had had to step in on his behalf. She was the one who filled The Corinthian in on the date and its significance to their creator. And, most importantly, that Dream went to these outings alone.
It had been the first time The Corinthian had experienced jealousy, and it had ignited a fire in him he did not know how to tame. Why did Dream get to go into The Waking for nothing more than his own pleasure? To experience humanity when his own subjects could not? Who was this human who had impressed him so much, had captured his attention enough that he stole his creator away from the Dreaming, time and time again? None of Dream's other human companions had ever been able to sway him so.
It makes sense to The Corinthian now that the human was Hob. The Corinthian devours the memories of their meetings, quick snatches in time, insignificant in length yet so significant in substance. He doesn't know if he wants to tear Hob's throat out for daring to call his Dream his friend , knowing now that it means something more, or if he wants to cut Dream's eyes out for the way he looks at his Hob.
Fuck. When had he gotten so possessive? When had he gotten so soft ? He'd been thinking just a few days ago that maybe he loved Hob, had been picturing the rest of their life together, had been thinking of their future .
If he'd known this would be the consequences for consuming Hob's eyes…
No, he still thinks he would've done it anyways. Even in his panic, the taste of Hob is so unique, so unlike anything he's ever experienced, The Corinthian thinks he could probably go on forever without having to consume another set of eyes. That thought terrifies him more than the idea of Dream hunting him down to unmake him for all his crimes.
He has to leave.
"I have to go," The Corinthian says, perhaps a little too forcefully. Hob nods quickly with no argument. It means he’s already realized something is wrong.
"All right we can go, I just gotta make sure the cameras-”
"No," The Corinthian interrupts and he says it with such venom that Hob whips his head towards him in alarm. The Corinthian steels his nerves for what he’s going to say next.
“I need to go, Hob. This…this was a mistake. All of this.” He gestures between them.
"Wait what?! What are you talking about?" Hob's beginning to panic now and The Corinthian can feel his resolve weaken. But he has to go. He’s been a fool, no, he's been willfully blind this whole time. He thought he’d finally found something, someone that was uniquely his , but all roads lead back to Dream, and The Corinthian feels pathetic for thinking he could ever escape the reach of his all knowing and all encompassing master.
Hob may love The Corinthian now, but he was Dream's human first, and Dream will not take kindly to the Corinthian touching what doesn't belong to him. The Corinthian thought he'd been afraid of his unmaking before, but it feels secondary to this new fear. The fear that Dream will go to Hob, that Dream will spill all The Corinthian’s crimes at Hob’s feet, will turn Hob against him, and then finally, steal him away for his own.
He'd rather burn down the only good thing he's ever known than let Dream take it away from him.
“Goodbye Hob. It's been fun but now our time's up.” The Corinthian does not stutter.
Shit, he can feel the tears. His shades hide them for now but if he doesn't leave now, then Hob will see.
“Cory, wait! Talk to me, please , what's going on…?"
But The Corinthian is already gone.
#hobrinthian#eventual hobrintheus#hob gadling#the corinthian#the sandman fanfic#lots of angst near the end of this chapter#but don't worry#next chapter is dreamling fluffy vibes#sandman fic#seiya writes#mystuff#seiya writes hobrintheus#seiya writes hobrinthian
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