Chapter Text
Hobie’s not used to colors like these.
Earth 1610’s colors don’t shift, they don’t breathe in time with the people of the city. Instead, pretty much the only surface that constantly creates new hues is the sky.
He thinks he likes it this way.
In Hobie’s dimension, Earth 138, the colors fold and shiver and soar around, never sitting still. They change based on the slightest shift in emotion and weather. Sometimes it ticks him off, to be honest.
As much as he doesn’t believe in consistency, Hobie has to admit the colors in Miles’s dimension have a lot of appeal. They’re reliable, he thinks.
Lord knows he needs something to depend on besides himself.
He sends a quick text to Gwen through his makeshift dimension-travel watch.
Made it here, imma let u know when I find him
- Hobie
K, thx so much 🙏
- Gwenny
Since he effectively quit the damned spider-cult Miguel led, Hobie’s only connection to the organization had been through Gwen. She, along with Pativr, Noir, Spider-ham, and Penni had been dishonorably fired by Miguel after “illegal and reckless dimension-hopping to assist a wanted fugitive”.
Personally, Hobie thought Miguel could take those charges and shove them up his ass. They were rescuing a captured teenager from an all-powerful anomaly villain and an evil version of himself.
As far as they were concerned, they had done the right thing. And without their action, the Spot wouldn’t have been defeated.
Whatever. Miguel could keep his stupid ego-boost position as the leader of the Spider Society, and the gang could keep patrolling the universe as they pleased, thanks to Hobie’s untraceable homemade watches.
Speaking of which, Miles had been absent from the group chat and all meetups for two weeks now. Of course, it was understandable for him to check out for a little while (he was about to go to university, after all), but this long with no communication was more than cause for concern.
Hobie was just supposed to swing by his apartment and make sure he wasn’t in trouble.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t as simple as he would’ve liked.
The first tip-off was the smell. The kitchen counter and sink were piled with dirty dishes and takeout containers, some clearly from a month ago. The entire apartment was dusty and smelled dank. “Oh shit…” Hobie whispered under his breath.
He quickly found Miles’s room and entered without knocking. The sight was familiar and horrible.
The smell was worse in here, a mix of sweat, alcohol, and trash. Dirty laundry was piled around the floor and closet. Abandoned art projects, energy drink cans, and miscellaneous garbage were strewn around as well. The bed was a tangle of sheets and pillows, but it wasn’t occupied.
“Miles?” He called into the room. “Man, you in here?”
No answer.
Hobie checked the other rooms next. The parent’s room was clean in the way a hospital was, sterile and too-empty. The bathroom was messy but not too bad. Mildewed towels in a pile and too many bloody tissues and used bandages in the bin.
Next, he went out the fire escape and climbed up.
The roof was mostly empty, save some old napkins and trash. He quickly checked behind the big AC units lining the edge. There, Hobie found who he was looking for.
Miles was passed out, a bottle of Absolut Citron poorly hidden beneath his green army jacket. A line of vomit trailed down his chin, and he shivered slightly even though the warm afternoon sun shone down on them both.
“Fuck, man,” Hobie said, crouching down to Miles’s level. “What happened to you?”
He shoved the bottle away from them both and gently wrapped Miles up in Hobie’s battle vest. Hobie stood with the teen in his arms and climbed back down to Miles’s room. By now, Miles was half awake but probably delirious, slurring and mumbling nonsense under his breath. He groaned and pressed his face against Hobie’s chest.
Hobie left the bedroom and opted to put Miles on the couch, knowing it was probably cleaner.
“‘Obie…” Miles slurred. “Not supp’sed t’ be here…”
“Well, I’m here anyway, aren’t I?” Hobie answered, getting a glass of cold water and a straw from the kitchen. He crouched at Miles’s side again and held the straw steady to the teen’s lips. “Can you drink this for me?”
“Mmh,” was Miles’s response, but he obliged and slowly sipped at the water. After a bit, he grimaced and turned away.
“Okay,” Hobie said, putting the glass on the coffee table. “Think you can sleep for a while now?”
“Dunno…”
“You don’t know?” Hobie pressed.
“They ‘ways find me when I sleep,” Miles answered, as if that answered everything.
“Well, can you try? For me?” Hobie asked again.
“Will you stop ‘m when he comes for me?”
Miles’s eyes were already closing when Hobie answered, “Of course, bro. I promise.”
Nightmares, Hobie thought. Should've guessed he'd be a wreck after... everything.
Miles was sound asleep now, breathing evenly. Hobie glanced around the apartment again. Kid’s been living like this way too long.
Hobie desperately recalled the past few months, looking for any kind of sign the depression had gotten this bad. He fidgeted with the spikes on his belt as he remembered more and more times he should’ve noticed.
How Miles never shows skin outside his face, even when he doesn’t wear the suit.
The loss of appetite, how he ate less and less except when someone pointed it out. He never seemed to eat by choice.
The drowsiness and dark circles under his eyes, which the team had mostly laughed away.
And the mood swings, how Miles would go from practically emotionless to full of rage, snapping at them with very little prompting.
They’d chalked it all up to just stress and teenage-related emotions, but they should have connected the pieces. They should have known.
Hobie should have known.
He went through this, too. A while ago. After his first kill, the first head taken by his guitar, he fell into what his therapist friend called a “trauma-caused behavior regression and extreme depressive period”.
Long story short, it was not fun.
But Miles…
He’s only a few years younger than Hobie, but he’s not even in college yet! He’s just a kid.
Heh, I guess that’s true for most of us, though.
Yeah. Most of the spider people Hobie knows were bitten in their teen years. They were never given the chance to really grow up. Not in the healthy way, at least.
Maybe that’s why Hobie grew a soft spot for Gwen and Pavitr and Miles. They needed support. They needed to be able to look at someone and know, you’re like me.
But he failed. He failed Miles in the worst way.
Okay, what do I do now? He thought, rocking back and forth in his heeled combat boots.
What did I need?
Well, the first thing he would’ve wanted was just a cleaner space. You can’t get better unless you’re in an environment that encourages healing.
Hobie finds some big trash bags under the sink and starts by sweeping the empty containers into them. He also goes through the fridge and cabinets and throws away everything that’s expired or just plain gross.
He fills the dishwasher and starts it, then rinses the remaining dishes in the sink.
Hobie moves on to the bathroom, grabbing the moldy towels and tosses them in a pile near the door for laundry, then takes out the trash. He scoops up older bandage wrappers and tissues and miscellaneous garbage, including an empty Tylenol bottle and a receipt for two bottles of Absolute Citron.
Lastly, he goes to Miles’s room. He strips the bed, picks up the laundry, and tosses what he knows is trash and not some half-finished art project. There’s all sorts of miscellaneous trinkets and books and art supplies strews across every surface, and he leaves those for now, reasoning that he’ll help pick them up when he actually knows where they go.
He tosses the trash bags in the dumpsters downstairs, and starts a load of laundry in the building laundromat. Hobie gets a few stares from an older lady also doing her laundry, but he ignores her. He’s got better things to do that be snarky to the elderly.
Now the apartment’s still a bit smelly, and it’s far from clean, but the trash is out and it looks less cluttered.
Now what?
Good food, Hobie decides. He knows a few good healthy dishes from living on his own for so long, and he gets to work.
After wiping down the counters and pre-rinsing the dishes he’ll work with, Hobie starts preparing homemade chicken soup. He has to quickly pop back to his dimension for fresh chicken and chives, then he’s back to work.
This version of the dish is heavy with broth and calories, but nothing too rich so Miles won’t be sick. It’s a personal favorite get-well meal of Hobie’s.
He checks on Miles again, gently switching his battle jacket for a warmer quilt he found in a closet. Miles stays unresponsive, but he’s breathing and doesn’t seem to be dreaming.
That’s better than when I found ‘im, at least.
Now, last step, removing hazards.
Hobie searches the apartment for anything Miles could use to hurt himself. He finds a mostly-empty bottle of tequila under Miles’s bed, as well as a box of shaving razors in the bathroom. He takes the pills he thinks are easily overdosable.
He finds an old gas-station brand lighter and an exact-o knife on his desk and confiscates those, too, just to be safe.
If he going a bit overboard? No, not really, Hobie decides. When he was in his rough spots, he would’ve really appreciated someone taking away his razors and lighters instead of just telling him to stop.
Because it’s really not that easy, is it?
Hobie feels… wrong, checking Miles for self-harm marks, but he has to confirm. If he knows specifically what Miles is struggling with, breaking down the addiction will be easier.
He gently, so gently, lifts the sleeve of Miles’s jacket, and takes a glance. Pale, raised slash marks criss-cross across his arms. Hobie assumes there’s more elsewhere, too, but doesn’t check.
At least there doesn’t seem to be burns, which are terrible to treat and slow to heal.
Hobie goes back to stirring the pot of soup, and assesses what he knows.
First, Miles is depressed and self-harming. He probably has some kind of substance issues, if he's day-drinking and passing out.
Second, his parents are nowhere to be found. They must’ve been gone for at least a month, probably more. Hobie doesn’t think they were neglectful or abusive, but then Miles might have been covering up for them.
Okay, what now?
Hobie knows he’s going to stay in Miles’s dimension, at least until he can trust Miles to be okay. That might take a while.
So he’ll need to pop back to Universe 138 for some personal effects and find a way to get money that passes in this dimension.
Since Miles is asleep now and doesn’t look like he’ll wake up anytime soon, Hobie decides he should just go now. He turns the stove down to low and scrawls out a note that reads: went home 2 grab my bag, will be back before 6. soup on stove! He signed the note with a doodle of his personalized spider-logo.
It’s just after 5 now. I have plenty of time.
Hobie leaves the note on the coffee table and opens a portal. With one last glance around the room, Spider-Punk swings through.
In his sleep, Miles dreams of golden seizures, his body fracturing into light, his very molecules splitting like comets (and burning just as hot).
He hasn’t glitched in ages, but he remembers them. He remembers every. single. goddamn. second of them.
In his dreams, Miles never comes down from swinging. He never touches the ground, never stays on a wall long enough to breathe. Every time he gets close to the asphalt, his wrists jerk and he pulls himself (painfully) back up again. Like puppet strings, his webs tug him where he doesn’t want to go.
Down subway tracks. Through basements. Up towers, shiny-sleek and futuristic. Along alleyways and traps and labs and rubble and you don’t belong here and dead dads and killing uncles and mistake and murderer. Past watercolor eyes, looking at him with Miles what did you do and wild fangs screaming You were the Original Anomaly and a hundred people that were supposed to protect him going stop he’s getting away get him trap him stop him stop him.
This dream’s different. He’s not hurting. He’s not a murderer. He’s Miles-not-killer-not-mistake. He’s Miles-not-kid-not-yet-adult.
He’s Miles-the-teen-the-artist-the-Spider-Man.
In this space, the space between asleep and awake, where dreams come for him, Miles thinks of Hobie.
He sees a kaleidoscope of color and feels the vibrations of a deep bass in his voice. Hobie’s arms are warm, not burning like the glitching, but warm like the sun on your face after a good fight.
With Spider-Punk a strange, not unwelcome, character in Miles’s mind, he’s not scared of nightmares like he used to be.
“Well, I’m here anyway, aren’t I?” Hobie’s voice slices through the sleepiness like rays of sun through the surface of a pool.
Oh. Miles must have asked a question. He doesn’t remember it.
“Think you can drink this for me?” There’s a straw on his lips. He sips, cool water soothing his throat. Bits of consciousness start coming back to him.
Miles feels the slight scratchiness of the couch on his hip and ankles, where bare skin meets old fabric. There’s a weight around him, cool and warm at the same time. Leather, his brain supplies for him. Old metal. Bleach and paint.
Hobie’s battle vest.
A sharp pain in his head tugs Miles out of the comfortable void he was floating in. He grimaces, too overwhelmed for a moment to keep drinking. Unfair, Miles thinks stubbornly in his mind.
The straw leaves his lips and there’s a sharp clink of the glass being set down on the glass coffee table.
“Okay,” Hobie says. “Think you can sleep for a while now?”
The pain in his head’s subsided, and Miles knows the dim lull of unconsciousness will feel so much better than what’s out here.
But still…
There’s monsters in the void. Ones with vampire teeth and tear-you-apart metal claws. Ones that leave you in spray-painted gray then black then white worlds, inverting themselves over and over to get you.
“Dunno…” Miles recognizes his voice. It sounds far away, like it’s coming from the other side of a phone call.
“You don’t know?”
“They ‘ways find me when I sleep,” Miles answers.
“Well, can you try? For me?”
For Hobie…?
Hobie who helped Miles get away from Miguel, breaking countless laws and sacrificing endless Spider-Man resources for him.
Hobie, who lost parts of himself in the fight against Spot, letting the villain teleport entire limbs away just to stay between Miles and the danger. He’d gotten them back, of course, using a Spider-Healer to keep them, but still. The pain that must have come with that.
Hobie, who built watches out of scratch and performed magic-like maintenance on them regularly and spending too much time perfecting the design, just so Miles would never have to go through a glitch again.
“Will you stop ‘m when he comes for me?”
Miles already knows the answer and drifts off, feeling for the first time in weeks like he’s safe.
No dreams come for Miles then. Just warm bliss.