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landwriter · 1 year

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Dirty Work | Corinthian/Hob | 1.6K | T fake marriage, true love, gardening, domestic curtainfic with an unsolicited side of angst, retired!corinthian, the corinthian loves rural england because he’s the hottest piece of ass for miles, hob loves rural england because the corinthian is safe with him there (and also the stars are lovely at night)

for Domaystic Drabbles, Day 5: Learning Something New

---

“What-” asked Hob. He paused, took a sensibly calming breath, and found himself feeling not much more calm for it. Onward, then. “-the fuck are you doing?”

The Corinthian smiled winningly up at him from under the brim of Hob’s favourite tilly hat.

“The fuck does it look like?” he drawled.

“Gardening.” Having a nervous breakdown, he thought, loudly and uncharitably. It was early. Not these-days early. Fourteenth century early. Lauds early. The robins weren’t even out yet. The sky was still a deep and restive blue. He was irritable. Owing less to the hour, and more to waking up to a cold, husbandless bed, to an instinctive panic crawling up his throat that saw him search through an empty house with increasing dread, before he finally looked out the back window and saw a nightmare. Turn of speech, of course.

It looked like a giant vole had been through. A giant, ruthlessly handsome vole, who remained at the scene of the crime wearing nothing but silk pyjama bottoms, now stained with vegetal viscera. The damage was extensive. And apparently not quite complete. He was still extracting a stubborn bit of Reynoutria japonica. The Corinthian grunted, muscles jumping in his arms, prised the cane loose, and then rocked back on his heels with a little huff of satisfaction. He paused to wipe invisible sweat off his face with the back of his hand, in a move, Hob was cooly certain, designed to attractively smear a bit of dirt across his forehead. The Corinthian abhorred a mess. Unless he’d made it himself. He caught the expression on Hob’s face and preened.

Hob made himself scowl again. On principle, if nothing else. “You’ve dug up most of the flowers, too.”

“Seen better.”

“It’s half four. You can see nowt and fuckall.”

“Couldn’t sleep.” His voice was perfectly casual, which meant it had been a truly awful night. I’m sorry, Hob wanted to say. It’s not fair. It was just supposed to be. But that’s not the sort of thing the Corinthian wanted to hear from him. Not a thing he could bear hearing, really.

“Should’ve woken me,” he said, in lieu of what he couldn’t, and walked over and took his mouth in a hungry kiss to say the rest of it properly. The Corinthian softened into him, making pleased sounds and sliding a hand under his shirt, but Hob could still feel it, all the coiled-tight misery. It practically twanged through the air. Sometimes, he thought it was nothing less than cruelty, what Dream had done to him and named a mercy. But he wouldn’t say that either. They didn’t talk about it. Not like that. “Jesus. You’re like a puppy,” he said, laughing, when the Corinthian finally let them pause to catch their breath. “Can’t be left alone or you’ll get bored and chew up all my socks.”

The Corinthian blinked at him, pupils blown wide in the morning dim. It was still a weird sight. Wrong. “They were shitty socks, Robbie.”

Hob snorted and turned around to take inventory of his garden. The spreading clump of invasive knotweed he’d really been meaning to get around to at the weekend (so he said every Monday) had been surgically obliterated and lay in a tidy pile. The overgrown nettle and bramble was gone. It had gotten a little wild, sure. But Hob had thought it pretty, in a tangled sort of way. And the entire bed of begonias he’d inherited with the cottage was uprooted. He’d never liked those, at least.

“They were passable socks,” he decided, and left it at that. “You’re getting me new ones.”

“The best,” agreed the Corinthian. “We’re starting over. Making something better.”

“As pretty as you?” Hob asked, just to watch him squirm a bit.

“You’re disgusting,” said the Corinthian.

“Wrong answer,” said Hob, singsong. “Nothing could be as pretty as you.”

“You’re messed up in the head, Hob, you know that?”

“’Course I do. It’s why you married me.”

“Pretty sure it was for the sex.”

Hob grinned. “Come inside, then, Mr. Gadling. The garden can wait.”

They weren’t married, of course. They were just strange and scandalous enough for the village already, without living in sin. More and more often, Hob found himself forgetting it had started as a joke. That when the Corinthian said ‘my life partner’ he was winking at Hob. But he said mine in other ways, ways he trusted and knew better, and so Hob didn’t mind much at all. Not that he’d mind it being real, either. He wouldn’t. He wanted to cling to the Corinthian. Keep him safe. And maybe it was old-fashioned of him, but being his husband, swearing an oath to cherish and protect, it would mean he could.

They went inside, and left the garden as it was, turned up and nearly unrecognizable. Like an open wound. All the dangerous and unsightly parts torn out. Scoured clean. Hob tried not think about how it felt so familiar. He was pretty sure the Corinthian already had. Had, in fact, done it exactly because of that. Because he’d wanted to know what Dream had felt, doing it to him.

---

Hob stood in his garden. “What the fuck,” he said again. In three months, it had been transformed. There was a new riot of colour and texture, brought only to heel with perfectly sculpted boxwoods and a cobbled path that undulated through the garden in a way, Hob felt confident, that was actually mathematically significant. The perfumed air fairly buzzed with insect life. In his periphery, a group of swallows darted through an immaculately pruned apple tree he hadn’t known he had, and then skimmed low over the bergamot, calling out to one another. It wasn’t a tame garden. It was the sort you wanted to watch all day, breath caught in your throat.

“It’s a start,” said the Corinthian mildly.

“It’s the bloody grand finale, is what it is.”

“Just did a bit of pruning and bought a few bedding plants. Nothing special. Was hoping you’d like it.”

Hob looked sidelong at him. The Corinthian wore a small, modest smile. He made a noise of disgust. “Cut that out.”

“Aw,” said the Corinthian. He thought it was terribly funny to pretend to be English and see how long before Hob noticed and begged him to stop. He didn’t do an accent. He just wore it. It made Hob want to crawl out of his skin, which in turn made the Corinthian mercilessly hone his impression. Dark mirror of humanity, indeed. Old habits die hard. Hob was sure he didn’t sound like that. Most of the time.

“You’ve done this before,” said Hob, staring accusingly at splendour of it all.

“Nah,” said the Corinthian, looking so proudly out on his work that Hob knew he was telling the truth. “Didn’t know jack about gardening. But I’ve learned,” he said, and meant so much more than gardening. He turned, grinning at Hob in his perfect garden with his perfect teeth. Except, Hob noticed, one of his incisors snagged a little on his bottom lip. He felt his heart lurch in his chest, another beating step further into smote devotion. The Corinthian looked back at the garden. “Good thing the fucker made me so damn curious, huh?”

He was fucked.

---

“It’s dirty work,” his supposed husband was loudly saying, despite being perfectly clean and unblemished. “But somebody’s got to do it.”

Hob rolled his eyes from where he was hanging the washing in their own garden, then looked into the neighbour’s anyways.

“Bless you, Ian,” said Mildred, beaming up at him. She bustled inside and reappeared with a fresh lemon loaf. The Corinthian grinned at Hob across the fence as Mrs. Martin hugged him goodbye. As if it would make him jealous. She was eighty-four. Far too young for either of them.

Five minutes later, Hob was viciously stabbing a slice of lemon loaf. “This has gotten out of hand. You’re being a do-gooder.”

The Corinthian pulled a hurt face. “It would’ve spread back to our garden.”

“I can’t believe she felt up your biceps. Like you’re a choice cut of meat.”

He smirked in a way that said I am, aren’t I? “You threatened by her, Hob?”

“No,” said Hob, and then chewed. “Fuck. Maybe a little. This is incredible.”

---

In October, the garden was named a runner-up in Kent Life magazine’s Amateur Garden of the Year, 1990. Mrs. Martin patted Hob’s husband consolingly on the shoulder and announced the Appledore Ladies Baking Club was unsubscribing in solidarity. All twelve of them.

The entire village, Hob slowly realized, had become besotted with the Corinthian. He was a Yank, but he was their Yank now. He’d endeared himself by sharing his dahlia tubers, lending out his wickedly-sharp secateurs, and most of all, smilingly dismissing any praise about his prodigious gardening abilities by saying, in his syrupy drawl, “I guess I just like pretty things.” Then he’d wink and say, “That’s why I married Hob, you know.” And whoever he was talking to would smile in spite of themselves, and tell Hob he was very lucky indeed.

He was. He’d just never felt guilty for his luck before.

That night, Hob murmured it into the back of his neck, soft and human-warm. “I think I hate him for it. Still. Even now. I didn’t know I even could.”

It was the first time he’d said it aloud. It felt like scurvy. Like a mended bone breaking again, in the silence of the little bedroom. But in his arms, the Corinthian only snorted.

“Of course you can. It’s the most normal thing about you.” Hob smiled into his nape. The Corinthian rolled over, and traced a hand across Hob’s sternum, landing, as he always did, on one particular puckered scar between his ribs. “You know what’s fucked?”

“What?”

“Sometimes, I think I don’t.”

#cob #domaystic2023 #this is continuing to get out of hand dang nab it #domesticity: coping mechanism edition #the sandman #my writing #fic post #hob gadling #the corinthian #(sighs)#hobrinthian #gardening as a stress response am i right #also a sort of sneak preview of my Just Like Love continuation plans #continuing to be unable to write cob without dream as a living ghost haunting all their interactions #and frankly i like it that way #hope you do too!

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eve-lullabye · 1 year

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Where you compliment the hunter to distract him

Based off IDV

The Businessman, or Azul as it's shorter, is a very tricky hunter. He will come up behind you stealthily and whack at you with his cane. Or maybe you'll find yourself decoding, and a contract will shine in front of you freezing your movements. Whatever it was nothing was worse when he switched to his merform. Although he was confined to the water, it didn't affect his range. On the plus side, Azul could only switch to his octoform once per match.

So, when he switched into his merform in the middle of the Moonlit River Park. Well, that was unfortunate. What was more unfortunate was the fact that Edgar the Painter and Emma, our gardener, were pushing you to the bridge.

"I really don't want to go," you squeaked, trying to get out of their grasp.

"You need to buy us some time!" Edgar huffed. Tracy gave a worried smile.

"Should we really be doing this?"

"Tracy, just get your dummy to decode," Emma snapped back. "I haven't escaped a match in a while and if we need to sacrifice someone for it, then so be it."

Emma was understandably upset. If you didn't escape matches, no one will help you in the next. They might not even pair up with you.

"But is this reasonable? Edgar, please, tell me you're smart enough to realize how stupid this is," you pleaded to Edgar. You could see conflicting emotions flash through his eyes and hopefully clasped his arm.

"Sorry, [Name]," He sighed. Edgar wasn't completely to blame. Emma pushed for them to vote up a sacrifice to distract Azul.

Finally, you gave in, "Alright what do I do?"

"Think of something," Emma whispered. You glanced over the bridge to see the meroctopus swimming in circles at a slow speed. When you turned your head back to your teammates, they were nowhere to be found. Something cold wet and slimy wrap around your arms and toppled you into the river.

You failed underwater, trying to reach the surface. Something firm and strong wrapped around your waist, pulling you out into the air. You gasped, coughing and shivering. You looked down to see a tentacle, holding you. Slowly, your gaze followed it to where it ended. Blue eyes met your [e/c-colored] eyes. Azul smirked at his catch and was prepared to take you to a chair.

"You're pretty," you spoke without thinking. Azul's face flushed while he nearly dropped you.

"What?" He squawked. His tentacles writhed probably from embarrassment, but you were too mesmerized with his merform. You laid your hand on the tentacle holding you and curiously examined it.

"This is so cool! I have never seen you like this before!" You giggled gently tracing the suckers on the underside of the appendage. Now, he dropped you.

You surfaced and swam over to Azul with bright eyes. He, on the other hand, didn't want you anywhere near him. You quickly used your skill which forced you to Azul. You should have calculated where to aim it more carefully, becuase you were sent flying into Azul, whose appendages rose to either block himself or to catch you. One of them caught you by the foot and hung you upside down.

"You could have hurt yourself," Azul folded his arms.

"Do you have to stay in water all of the time?" You asked as he gently lowered you.

"Huh, w-well no," he responded, "I have to be in water."

"Aww, that's a shame," you sulked, "Your skin is really moist and smooth." The red cheeks appeared again, and you smirked, "You're so smart and powerful." Your flattering words embarrassed him further. "And good-looking." Azul froze at your last words. You slapped your hand to your mouth, "I did it again."

Sirens wailing broke the two of you from your little playtime. You worriedly looked to Azul who was dealing with internal conflicts.

"Fine," he huffed, avoiding your eyes and wrapping his tentacles around you. "Just this once." He lifted you and placed you back on the bridge before climbing out himself and switching to his human form. You beamed and jumped on him, hugging the hunter. Azul stumbled backwards with arms hanging in the air. He patted your head and pushed you away.

"I'll see you again, Zul," you sneakily kissed his cheek and used his shocked expression to your advantage. Running towards the exit, you met up with the other who congratulated your escape. You looked forward to be against the merman in future matches.

#disney twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland #octavinelle #azul ashengrotto #azul ashengrotto x reader #twst x reader #identity v #idv painter #idv gardener #idv mechanic #hunter x reader #identity v x reader

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