Chapter Text
There’s a tap on the door. BINX swears and drops their needle and then swears again when it immediately disappears into the pile of things on the floor, never to be seen again. She runs her hands over her skirt to smooth the fabric and soothe her soul enough to transform into Gwyndolin. She poofs out from underneath the radiator into Gwyn’s room as she hears another tap, and realises it wasn’t the door - it was the window. Three stories up from the ground. In the middle of the night.
They steel themself, inch towards the window, and then swiftly pull back the curtain to reveal Captain K.P. Hob hanging on to their flower box. They freeze. One of his claws breaks through the delicate driftwood, and he drops a little further down in their field of vision. Gwyn panics, and opens the window.
Hob swings himself up onto the window-sill, seemingly unperturbed by nearly falling who-knows-how far.
“Lady Thistle-hop,” Hob whispers. As a very large goblin, whispering does not come naturally to him, so it’s more like a growl. “I have come to apologise for my part in the strange rumours circulating about our conversation this morning, and the… relationship… that the Bloom believes to have come from it.”
“By climbing into my bedroom window?!” Gwyn hisses.
Hob’s ears flatten against his head. “Shit.” He levers himself onto his arms to start climbing back out into the dark.
“You have to come in now!” She says, pulling at his paws. “If you go back down again, you’ll be seen!” He nods, finally gets all his limbs inside and she slams the windows shut and yanks the curtains closed.
Hob stands in Gwyn’s completely unused room, seven feet tall and trying to take up as much space as a salt goblin. He bows his head, paws clenched behind his back. “I’ve fucked it up again, haven’t I.”
“No!” Their hands flutter up and down, wanting to touch him to reassure him, but knowing that, to the Courts, such a touch would mean something completely different. “No, you’ve done nothing wrong. You came to see a friend, and apologise for a miscommunication.”
“My lord and lady frequently remind me that I am only good as a blade of the Goblin King’s army, I really should just stop trying to speak to anyone.”
“Oh, Captain Hob, that’s not fair!”
Hob chuckles. “Our courts have differing definitions of fairness, Lady. Let’s not argue over something we are unable to agree upon.”
Gwyn tilts her head as she looks at him, continually surprised by what a like-minded person she finds in him. “Right! Right. Well - since you’re here, and people are talking anyway, why don’t we just do whatever it is they’re accusing us of doing?”
“Oh?” Hob’s ears and eyebrows prick up and Gwyndolin immediately blushes as pink as their hair.
“Oh, god, I just meant… getting to know each other! Chatting! Being friendly!”
Hob smiles, showing his fangs. She thinks that’s positive? “Ah. Of course.”
She smiles back, and gestures to one of the chairs with pristine, unrumpled cushions. He gingerly sits down, relaxing when it doesn’t immediately break underneath him, and she perches on the edge of the opposite chair.
“Would you like some tea?” She looks down into her lap, at a pocket-watch hidden in the folds of her sleeves. “At… midnight?”
He smiles wider. “Tea would be lovely, thank you.”
Hours later, and the conversation has flowed so easily that light is beginning to shine around the edges of the curtains.
Hob sighs. “I thank you for a lovely evening,” he says, standing up, “But I must be off before all the night is gone to cover our indecorum.” He bows, pulls the curtain aside just enough to open the window, and steps onto the sill.
Gwyndolin jumps up. “You haven’t done anything indecorous!” They say. Then they start to blush again. “Yet…”
Hob pauses, then takes his foot off the windowsill.
“To be clear, Lady Thistle-hop,” he whisper-growls, turning back to face her, “In the Goblin Court, rumpus and ruin are the most decorous of activities.”
Gwyndolin giggles.
Hob shrugs, and leaps.