Chapter Text
"Anok!" That was Hobie's first word.
Nah, that's just a quip, his real first word was bunny, although God knows why, he had never seen one. Prezzy Osborn had run the city since his generation were little ones and harmony with the environment wasn't really a part of his fascist repertoire.
Hobie grew up playing in toxic waste spills from the Osborn building that would turn your hair green and lips temporarily blue (and sometimes kill you, but such is life, the older kids told him, their hair streaked with every color of the rainbow), surrounded by people who lived in holes in the wall and only crept out at night for concerts and drugs and all other manner of illegalities.
For the most part, the only decision he got to make for himself was what decaying building or streetcar he wanted to sleep in that night.
He learned how to properly nick food by the time he was 6.
He nearly got caught and had to run from the police for the first time at age 7 (he really did believe in anarchy at that point, being 7, and remembered screaming a little, "all cops are bastards!" as he made his escape).
Suffice to say, he learned a healthy lack of respect for authority figures real quick.
His da had always been "out of the picture," his mum said, "but that's alright Hobs, we'll make it okay, you and me." She was a lovely thing, his mum. She had gentle eyes, even if her mouth was frequently drawn into a hard line. Always putting flowers and things in her hair, she was perfumed by dandelions and carnations and whatever else Hobie picked for her on any given day, and he thought she smelled better than any of the high-class women's expensive chemical cocktails.
She died when he was 8 in a gas leak.
He had watched the lights blink out over the city skyline that night in all the penthouses and homes (anywhere with electricity, really). Should be them, he had thought furiously, wiping hot tears from his eyes. It should be them. His eyes cracked and blistered. He had sniffled, and clutched his hands in his hair, as if if he held on hard enough, it would become hers. The concrete lip of the building's roof bit into his hands. He had bitten his lips hard enough to make them bleed, until someone with dark hair and tan skin sat down next to him and whispered, "why don't you just scream?"
He did. Hobie screamed. He screamed loud enough to set off police sirens, and burst eardrums, and bleed out a promise through ragged lungs that he was coming for them. That someday it wouldn't always be people like him. Someday it would be their turn.
"It will be," he had whispered, voice hoarse.
The boy next to him grabbed his hand and held on. Hobie squeezed hard.
“It will be,” the kid echoed, voice soft.
It will be.
Hobie was used to unfair. And he would be alright.
But he would also grow up with a rage big enough to drown the city.
Lucas had been there since the beginning. His parents had kicked him out when he told them he was a boy, so the two of them had a marvelous time as baby street-rats.
They screamed a lot.
Lucas's dark hair, which he would spike up all liberty-like later, was as green as Hobie’s in that nasty water, as well as his tanned skin (Hobie always harbored a little wondering if his was green too, you just couldn't see it).
They grew up surrounded by kids who were much of the same, and millennials who had already done it all and were even worse. Back then, the choice in uniform was either police-in-training or leather and spikes, and being the angry little bastards they were, it really wasn’t a choice.
The two of them decided to start a band while they were still pre-pubescent.
They snuck into this fancy guitar re-stringing place after dark, with intentions of two guitars, an electric for Hobie and a bass for Lucas.
("Gotta have a bassist," Hobie had told him.
"Shouldn't it be you?" Lucas had asked, looking Hobie down and then up, craning his neck to go all the way because Hobie was tall, even at 12.
"Nah, bruv, I don't got the fingers for it. Ya need lithe little fingers for that." He grabbed Lucas's hand and shook it by the fingers. Lucas gave him a disbelieving stare, one that pulled his eyebrows up and dropped his mouth open. Hobie just shrugged. "And you've got that made."
Lucas ran his tongue over the inside of his mouth but chuckled. "Fine, you lanky tosser.")
And that's how they got here, crouched on the fire escape, Lucas hot-wiring the window's alarm and Hobie hovering over him. Lucas finally let out a little gasp and grinned up at Hobie, then pulled the window open. He crawled through it, Hobie on his tail, and the two of them emerged in some sort of back office. Lucas was practically dancing, and Hobie would be rocking out a bit himself if he wasn't so distracted. But he bit his lip as his gaze fell on the mahogany bookshelves, the little golden globe on the desk, and the box upon box of extremely expensive guitars lining the walls. Hobie's fingers trailed over the boxes back here, the countless euros (or at least countless to him, who had never even had a meal worth more than 7€) that went into each one dancing in his mind. He stopped next to one with a depiction on the side of a guitar made of solid glass, with a spot to pour water and goldfish in to swim around. What a fucking blatant show of pointless wealth. His hand crunched into a fist and he resisted the urge to punch the box, only out of knowing this was a nice neighborhood where the police definitely would respond to a noise complaint, even though they couldn't be bothered when his tax bracket was literally dying.
Hobie had already promised himself he would, but there he renewed it with clenched teeth and a screaming soul that he would be so goddamned skilled at this, better than all of these goddam fascists with their fancy-ass aquarium guitars, and he was going to do it with their fucking stolen goods. He would play so loud, would crank his amp way past 11, and he would blow this place away.
The door to the office was opened and Hobie stepped away from the boxes and leaned over Lucas in the doorway, looking out over the colorful, neon-lit playground for the rich and various guitars hung in fancy glass cases.
Hobie's lip quirked up, his new lip ring glinting in the low light. He made a cheers motion.
"Eat the rich," Hobie whispered, ducking beneath one of Lucas's spikes as they strutted in with nimble fingers and unsavory intentions.
"Rather eat you," Lucas whispered back as he fingered the strings of a bass guitar, with a shit eating grin that stretched out his face and made his teeth flash.
Hobie gasped theatrically and playfully punched him. "You dirty little fiend! You're s'posed to be my role model!"
"Yeah?" Lucas said.
Hobie's eyes caught on something shiny and he walked past him to the prettiest, most expensive guitar in the store, mounted high on the front wall. Lucas padded over and joined him and the two of them stood, basking in its red-and-blue lightning-bolted glory and the silence of the locked shop and the fame they were gonna have once they pulled this off.
Lucas's voice was awed. "Maybe you should've thought of that before you taught me how to steal."
--
Once they had the instruments (and that most expensive, extremely gorgeous guitar that was more a piece of machinery than anything), the rest of the band fell together pretty quick. They got this kid Bonnie with a wicked big afro to play back-up and sing, because Lord he could sing, and he could sing loud. Gerome, a freckled red-headed Irish immigrant, came in as their keyboardist. Both of them were pleasantly anti-label and ready to scream. Then all they needed was a drummer.
Hobie met her at a concert. Him and the boys (tentatively calling themselves the Beatle Slayers, after this cool oldies band they'd heard on vinyl at the record shop) had snuck in over the chain-link fence to avoid being X'ed up and were having a banger of a night, their predetermined goal to find a drummer mostly drowned out by the band onstage screaming punk rock, but then Hobie caught sight of her.
Her hair was tinged pink, and she was shining in the stage lights, dancing with a kind of effortless grace and a bit more refined than anybody who had grown up of the streets. Places like this got all sorts of townies looking to take a night off from their very exhausting lives up in their decked-out golden houses, but something about the authenticity of her didn't feel like that.
He unslung his arm from around Lucas's shoulder and pushed his way over to her, hand stuffed in his pockets.
She turned and looked at him before he was even halfway there. His eyebrows rose, but he kept on path. Her eyes were blue, he could see, as he got closer and her narrowed gaze remained locked on his open one and her features were pretty, all sweet and delicate.
"'ello love," he said, sliding in next to her against the grain of the pushing crowd. "Bit far from home, aren't we?"
"Not your buisness, beanpole," she bit. Oops. Scratch sweet and delicate.
Hobie drew himself up to his full height. "Eay, no need to get miffed, dearie." He ducked down again so he could be sure she'd hear him. "Names Hobie," he said into her ear over the band and press of bodies. "Hobie Brown." He took her hand and kissed the back of it. Her skin was soft and her nails were chipped and painted black, with splashes of pink across them. He winked at her. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
She watched him the whole time, but didn't pull her hand away. Her eyes were still steel but Hobie was calling it a win. "Gwen," she finally said.
'Gwen what?' he almost asked, but he bit it back. Best not to push.
"Where ya from, Gwenie?"
"Already told you, not your problem."
He took a dramatic breath and rolled his eyes. "Well, I'm from the eastside meself. Only down here cause my mum's on the drums." He side-eyed her for a reaction.
Her eyes lit up. Bingo.
"Your mum's a drummer?" she asked, tone a hitch away from breathless. Hobie almost felt bad.
Instead he laughed. Gotta giggle at the sheltered ones, it keeps 'em on their toes. "Nah, f'course not," he said. "My mums dead as a doorknob. Has been since I was eight. Raised by the community, I was," he said. "How bout you?"
Hobie was nearly proud he was getting her to respond to things sans insult. She blanched briefly at his words but it faded quickly (but not so quickly that Hobie didn't make a mental note of it). "Just my da," she said.
Yeah, so definitely not a downtown girl. Lord knows none of them punks had anything as luxurious as parents.
She had turned towards the music, and the light was playing in her hair again, making his chest do all sorts of little butterfly things, and Hobie decided to go straight for the kicker. He nodded to the stage. "You play, Gwenie?" he asked.
She nodded. "Yeah, I do. Drums."
So he was right. Of course he was right. She was a drummer. He studied her. But did she have enough bones in her to run with them? She looked pretty soft, and he knew that her hands were. But she wasn't as flat-out stupid as a lot of the other townies that thought they could just strut in here.
She looked back up at him, and Hobie got the feeling she would always know when he was looking at her. "What?" She asked, her tone incredulous and her gaze sharp.
"My bands lookin' for a drummer," he said slowly.
Her face flickered but she didn't say anything.
He cocked his head and tried to peel back her skin to look straight into her soul. "Just tryin' to decide if you've got enough stuff," he spoke to her. In the loudness of the concert, it came out quietly.
She stood up straighter and her eyebrows painted themselves into two dark slashes on her face, her jaw clenched. Her hand rose and swung but Hobie caught it, one inch from his face. Firey, she was. Hobie found he liked it. He cradled her hand in his, now that he knew the bones beneath it were hard enough to match the soft exterior. She glared back at him.
He quirked his lip up. "Yeah, I think you'll be fine," he said to her. He gave her a lopsided smile. "What say you, Gwenie?"
She looked like she was gonna pull away, and he could tell that she was considering it just on principle of his own actions, which were surely considered dastardly by her heightened standards. But she looked briefly back at the band onstage, and Hobie caught the side of her face as it glowed from the pulsating laser lights. Her eyes shone. He knew, then, that he had her.
"Yeah," she said, taking a breath. "Yes."
"Great!" Hobie yelled, throwing his arms out. "You're gonna love them," he said, pulling her to his side and exhilarated because he was finally going to be in a real band. "We're the Beatle Slayers," he said, "name pending, and someday we're gonna be the best band in all the fuckin' UK!" He grabbed her on the shoulders and steered her through the crowd, the look on her face wide but mercifully not regretful. He waved down Lucas, the smile on his face threatening to split into a black hole and swallow all of Britain.
"Guess what mates! We've got ourselves a drummer!"
--
“Are you sure about her?” Lucas had asked him, the moment they got a second to themselves, after the whirlwind that was introducing Gwen to the band and listening to her biting remarks and the swish of her hair through the wholeness of their group.
“Yeah, I am bruv,” Hobie told him, thinking back to her steely bones. “She’s made ‘a tougher stuff than she looks like.” He looked at her, at the focus in her eyes as she set up her drum kit in the dining-room-turned-practice-space of Bonnie’s dingy little (stolen) apartment. Her movements were smooth- a pointed toe here, a dancer's arc there. The light drifting in through the dirty window was dusty, but she somehow made it look artful instead of filthy, as it gathered up in her hair. She was like something from a movie, really. Or a dream.
“Alright,” Lucas had said. “I trust you, Hobie.”
Hobie chalked the forlorn look on his face up to worry.
They got a cooler name like two nights in with Gwen. Gerome had jumped onto Bonnie because Jesus Christ there was a massive spider in the floor, and Lucas was just laughing from the counter, and Hobie was inclined to join him from his spot on the sagging couch. Gerome was screeching. Gwen was due to show up any moment for their practice time, but nobody remembered that when faced with the huge eight-legged monstrosity on the floor.
But Gwen obviously remembered, because she walked in the door with ballet slippers and a bag slung over her shoulder and said, "What're we screamin' about?"
"Giant spider," Hobie told her.
Lucas shuddered. "Nasty bugger."
Gwenie dropped her bag down on the couch next to Hobie and he watched her dig around in it for a moment before emerging with a hammer of some sort. She leaned over the back of the couch and held it out to Gerome, who was still shaking and clinging to a much shorter Bonnie, and was basically just being held by him at this point.
"Give 'em hell," she told him.
Gerome grabbed the hammer with wonder and slowly dismounted off a weary looking Bonnie. He nodded seriously at Gwen, who saluted him.
The he turned around a smashed a fucking hole in the floor.
"Gerome!" Bonnie shrieked.
"The spider!" Hobie called out, pointing after it as it scampered towards the kitchen.
"Don't send it to me, I don't want it!" Lucas cried, fully climbing onto the counter.
Gerome ran after it and swung with the hammer again, but Lucas shrieked as the spider darted away at the last second.
"Ya sound like a little girl, Luc!" Hobie called. Bonnie moaned loudly and stared at the hole.
"Don't just stand there!" Lucas yelled. "Get the damned thing!"
Gerome swung and popped another hole in the floor.
"It's giant," Bonnie wailed, "how the 'ell do you keep missing?"
"I'm doin' my damned best," Gerome ground out.
"Quite the chaos causer, Gwenie," Hobie told her, laying over the back of the couch next to her. "You've got the makings of a true anarchist."
"Thanks," she said.
Gerome smashed another hole in the floor, to Bonnie's crying dismay, as Lucas hopped from foot to foot on top of the counter.
"I think," she said.
"AHA!" Gerome yelled. There was a great, giant crash and then a whoop of victory. "I've got it!"
"Took you long enough," Lucas groaned, collapsing on the counter.
"The king is dead!" Hobie said, grinning like a madman.
"The spider has been slain," Gwen added, a soft smile on her lips.
The spider has been slain.
Just a second. Hobie rather liked that.
He glanced up at Lucas, and the look on his face told him he was thinking the same thing.
Hobie cleared his throat as Gerome wiped the hammer off and walked to give it back to Gwen. "Imma propose a little name change in honor of our darling Gwenie here," he said. "Any naysayers to... Spider Slayers?"
Gwen snorted. Gerome smiled (perhaps a little too proudly) as he handed the hammer to her. Lucas nodded serenely from his splayed-out spot on the counter and closed his eyes. Bonnie looked up from where he was mourning the holes in the floor, but even he nodded.
So Gwen spread her arms out from her position on the center of the couch and turned her chin to the heavens. "Let it be so," she said.
And thus, the Spider Slayers were born.
And damn, the Spider Slayers were good.
They booked their first gig within a month of being a full band, and they got tons of jobs from there. Bonnie said he thought it was probably because everyone wanted to see Hobie and Lucas’s infamous stolen goods in action, but Hobie assured him that that was just the hook- everyone stayed for the music. The punk rock nation was like a web. They even developed a bit of an avid fanbase, most of which were young like them and with only a couple with pedo-stye mustaches thrown in the mix, so Hobie and Bonnie got the chance to punch more than a few creepy wankers with wandering hands at after-shows and in dressing rooms and parking lots alike.
When the five of them got onstage, Hobie could feel it, the promise in his veins, the one where he would use this to tear the system to the ground. The pounding of the drums, the thrum of the bass, the screech of Bonnie's voice, there were nights Hobie thought he could die there, on the stage, and do it happily.
Gwenie absolutely owned the drums. He had questioned her, when they first met, but now he would regret it if he believed in regrets. She put her whole heart and soul into those fucking things every night and it showed in the way her skin shone and her eyes glowed whenever she finally opened them from a particularly grueling solo.
She had told him, once, that he looked the same way. Like he was high on something really good. That it made him look really good.
He knew he looked really good, he was Hobie motherfucking Brown. He was literally a model for Lucas's little fashion stint (and he would do it again as an odd job for years to come). He didn't need her words, and, of course, his self esteem was already plenty high, not subscribing to labels or opinions or anything other than himself and what not- but it did make his fingers itch just a little more for strands of pink hair instead of guitar strings.
At some point, Gwen just moved in with them all. She didn't say why, but it was hard to miss the tearstained tracks down her pink cheeks the afternoon she had showed up unexpected on their doorstep. Of course they let her in. They told her it would be tight, with it being a studio apartment holding four people (now five), and they told her they were technically illegal squatters anyway and the house was in no means paid for, But Gwen had bit her tongue and told them it was perfect.
The band (Hobie) loved having Gwen around. She liked poetry, which was so townie it was laughable, but she also said some really pretty stuff sometimes and quoted Shakespeare and wrote absolute bangers of song lyrics, so they kept the poking fun on the downwind. She drank coffee, and Hobie knew she and Lucas would sip slowly from little mugs on the fire escape in the morning at ungodly hours before any of the rest of them got up. She left her shoes everywhere and made up for it by stealing everyone else's ("if you had freaky big feet like me, you'd be usin' it for all you could, too," she said). And slowly, Hobie was finding pink strips on everything, that were either painted or just painted on his eyelids so he saw them every time he blinked.
He really liked pink.
--
Their biggest gig yet was halfway through the July that Hobie was nearing 16. It was in The Pit, this super cool abandoned indoor olympic-size swimming pool. It only popped up every month or so before everyone got kicked out again. It was lit with string lights and lasers and the occasional flash bomb, and was easily one of the top-tier play locations on any rockers hit list. Rumor had it there was even a secret backstage wall covered in police badges stolen from V.E.N.O.M. operatives who tried to shut the place down before it's people were finished.
Needless to say, the Spider Slayers were stoked. The excitement in their apartment that night was palpable, Hobie was jumping off the wall, yanking on his fishnetted top and leather mini skirt and jacket, and he and Bonnie and Gerome held an impromptu dance party in the kitchen to the amusement of Lucas and Gwenie. Hobie had drawn her in, spinning her a few times and loving the way her new haircut whirled around before she pulled away to find her shredded leather pants. Lucas had watched with a small smile.
The night only got better as the grabbed their instruments and hitched a ride with Bonnie’s older sister in her creaking pick-up and entered The Pit’s backstage somewhere around midnight.
They'd still had to get X'ed up before coming in, even though they were literally opening tonight, but Hobie pulled wet wipes out of his pockets and wiped it off as soon as they were backstage. He hated being branded.
Bonnie searched for the infamous wall for a couple minutes before sound check, all of them bouncing on their toes as the noise of the crowd grew steadily louder, until the bassist of the band they were opening for rolled their eyes and nodded their head towards the old pool’s record board. Bonnie and Gerome peeled it back, and sure enough, dozens of V.E.N.O.M. badges winked back at them. Bonnie cackled. Lucas snickered and Hobie could feel himself coming alive as the press of the crowd pushing in grew and the noise got louder and the air got headier and the hour drew closer and closer to one.
Lucas's eyes were shining and his grin was straining and Hobie could see something angry and powerful coiling beneath his skin. Bonnie was vibrating so hard his teeth were chattering. Gerome's green eyes were lit like acid surrounded by all the black. Gwen was clutching her drum sticks with such a fervor Hobie wondered if they would snap in half. She looked radiant especially, with stars drawn against her skin and her hair newly shaved off to one side. Like a proper punk rocker.
He told her so, and she smiled and raised a hand to run it over his eyes, which Lucas had drawn up with black and glitter and sharp edges. "Not so bad yourself," she said. Hobie could feel the pads of her fingers pressing lightly against his skin and he leaned into it, covering her hand with his own. He blinked and his eyelashes graced the back of her hand.
She leaned forward and watched it happen again, her wide blue eyes entranced. Hobie was entranced by her. She glanced up suddenly and her eyes met his, and Hobie was acutely aware of how little space was between her and him. Her eyes flickered downwards and he knew she was thinking the same thing. She leaned forward slightly and Hobie held his breath, his eyelashes fluttering closed when she was just so close, close enough to breathe her in, and he could feel the whisper of her lips against his-
"You're lovely, you know," she breathed softly. He felt the words move from her lips to his.
Hobie's eyes fell open and he took a fractured breath.
"What?" he whispered, voice breaking.
She leaned back enough so that he could see the whole of her eyes and she searched him, as he had her months ago, stripping him down to his barest bones.
"You're gonna do something big, Hobs," she said. "Something to shatter the world."
Hobie stared at her. He knew that. He had held it close to his heart since he was young, the hope and dream that someday, he would crack this broken reality wide open and build a new one. But he had never know she was watching him as closely as he was watching her.
Hobie leaned in again.
"Let's go, lads!" Gerome yelled.
The crushing reality of the moment came racing back in. The crowd, screaming, and the band backstage they were opening for setting up, and the sweat of all of them and him, in this little leather skirt.
Bonnie had already taken the stage, and Gerome was running after him. Lucas was watching him and Gwen, and his eyebrows lifted at Hobie as if to say, 'really?'
Hobie shrugged. "Just takin' advantage of the moment, bruv!" he called. Gwen blushed next to him and punched him on the shoulder. He pushed her right back.
Lucas just shook his head. "Save the sap for after the show!" he hollered, his black boots pounding as he ran onstage.
Gwen tugged her jacket down beside him and looked up at him, her face still blazing pink. "Shall we?" She said, twirling her drumsticks around and then racing off ahead of him, her ballet slippers (because of course she wore ballet slippers) silent in the otherwise ear-splitting din.
Hobie cracked a smile as he watched her take her place onstage, bright and star-painted. This time, he knew she was watching him back.
Hobie grinned and pulled his guitar off his shoulder and rolled his neck.
"We shall," he said.
And Hobie ran on after his band.
It was easily their best show.
Hobie's fingers were tingling and his legs were shaking as they took their final bow and he had never felt better. He was high as a fucking kite and he didn't even need drugs. Everyone was screaming, he was screaming, but he could barely hear it over the yelling of the crowd, all the people that had came here to see them, all the proof that he was good enough, that they were good enough, and the roaring in his ears screaming at him that HE WAS GOING TO DO IT!! He was going to rip it! To tear it down. Hell, he'd go right now. He was pretty sure he said so, because Gerome slipped his finger into the edge of his jacket and dragged him back when his feet were making frantic steps towards the door.
"Give it till you're eighteen, man!" The other band's bassist yelled, as they took the stage.
"I don't take orders," Hobie barked back, but there was no anger in it, only pure, murderous joy.
He whipped back around to his band and threw his head back and howled, because there had never been anything as wild and free and fucking beautiful as them right now. He loved them. He loved them all. He could drown in Bonnie's laugh, in the way Gerome was pulling on everybody, in Lucas's bright and burning eyes, in Gwen- Gwen was just gorgeous, there was no other way to describe it. She looked like a fucking fallen star.
Lucas slapped him on the shoulder. "That was it, man!" he yelled, bouncing up and down and twirling with a giddy smile on his face. "That was it!"
Hobie's happiness threshold broke all over again. "Yeah bruv, I told you!" he said back to Lucas, the biggest smile on his face, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him until they were two fizzing pops on the same jolted laughter. He stopped and laughed harder, because this was it. This was going to be it.
This was going to be it!
Hobie turned to Gwen to tell her that, because he loved her, too and he wasn't sure she understood yet just how much this could change a couple hoodrats' lives- and there she was, practically smirking at him in that glittery top and chains with the stars on her cheeks and in her mouth and absolutely stunning-
And she yanked him down by the collar of his jacket and kissed him, hard on the mouth.
It was bright and sparkling. Hobie threaded his fingers into her pink hair and rubbed his thumb over the stars on her face, cradling her head in his hand. Her fingers were soft on his.
When she pulled back her face was flushed and her eyes were glittering. Gwen, his Gwenie, his mind screamed. His world and now Gwen.
"I have to tell you something," she said breathlessly.
Hobie frowned. She looked away from him on purpose like she had done something wrong, and the bubbles in his head and heart started fizzling out. Had something gone wrong? Was she leaving? What could her pretty face and burning mouth possibly have to tell him?
"My da's a cop," she said. Her eyes met his and she bit her lip.
He stared at her.
Then Hobie barked out a loud burst of a laugh.
"What, you don't believe me?" Gwen said, anger clouding her pretty features. She opened her mouth like she was gonna say something else but Hobie held up a hand.
"No, nah," he said, chuckling, taking a deep breath to contain his laughter, "I Adam and Eve ya just fine, dearie, but you near gave me a bloody heart attack, actin' all suspicious like that!"
Gwen rolled her eyes and pushed him away by the stomach. "You twat!" she spit, but then she was laughing too, bright and peeling. She was glowing again.
Hobie grabbed her this time by the hips and kissed her again, just because he could. She was still smiling and Hobie wrapped his arms around her just a little tighter.
"I couldn't give a less of a shit if your da was damn Osborn himself, Gwenie," he mumbled against her lips.
Gwen laughed lightly, so Hobie could feel it blowing across his face. He smiled with her.
She tucked her arms around his neck and buried her face in his neck. Hobie nipped her ear lightly.
"Though I'd probly ask you for his garage code, just for personal reasons“ he muttered. She laughed into his chest.
Yeah, it was easily their best show.
--
Gwen was braver than Hobie had given her credit for that first night. Her running from her law-abiding da got her enough brownie points anyway for it to only be a minor detail of her person. They had all been (and were still) liars, and none of them felt particularly inclined to hold that against each other. So after enough shows, none of them questioned if she really belonged with them, copper spawn or not. She had earned her spikes, so to speak.
And Hobie got to kiss her whenever he wanted.
No labels, Hobie didn’t believe in those. But she was his drummer, and he was her guitarist.
These were the bright days. All of them knew it. The world was too brilliant and vivid, there were too many opportunities and shit like that never lasted they knew. For now, the time and lights and world were theirs. And it was beaming and wonderful. But they all knew they would soon be running on borrowed time.
But Hobie loved all of them, and he hoped that would be enough. He loved with his heart full. He always would. Even later, he loved them like that, when he was couch surfing and then squatting in his own place- Hobie would always love his band.
--
The Spider Slayers had all become 'freedom fighters' by the time they were 14, part of the generation of pissed-on punks (reclaimed label, and the only one Hobie was willing to succumb to because it was one he helped make) that were slowly rising up against the neo-nazis running the UK. So when shit hit the fan bigtime in the biggest revolution attempt since the Dark Ages, of course they were the first ones to don spikes and boots and bastard-born teeth. Word was good old president Ozzy-Wozzy had nicked some kids off the street for one of his V.E.N.O.M. experiments and the majority of the city was pissed. Pissed enough to start something. Fires were breaking out all downtown, and of course the first priority was to get the little people back. But if you blew up a few government establishments, well, that was good, too.
They'd all gotten messages on their pagers at that point (although Bonnie's was broken and he had to borrow Gerome’s) claiming that this was a legit fight, with actual deaths. This was nothing new, people had been dying forever in this war. Being born in this community, born black especially, meant there was a 50/50 chance any copper you ran into would pull a gun on you. Everyone was willing to take a bullet if it meant the revolution would live another day. But this was a new game- for the first time in any of their lifetimes, instead of just being tailed by the police, they were being hunted.
But at 16 (and Lucas’s 17), the were prepped and ready.
Gwenie had held those drum sticks she had sharpened more to stakes, and he had his absolute weapon of a guitar, and Lucas had a baseball bat with nails and shit sticking out of it and Lord knows what Gerome was holding (although it looked like a beach ball filled with tear gas) and Bonnie had some little DIY flash bomb things.
But they had barely stepped on the site when Bonnie got spiked. Gerome was down with him, dragging him away, and the fire burning down Britain was brighter than Hobie had thought it would be. And growing up sleeping in boxcars, he had seen a lot of fire.
Bonnie waved them on, so they ran, but Hobie quickly lost sight of Lucas, sending prayers to gods he didn’t believe in on the wind after him, and his thick black boots were pounding on the pavement just to keep up with Gwen, who was sprinting to the hottest part of the fire (because she was a spitfire, was she not?)
The smell of sulfur was heavy in the air even before they got to the heart of the explosions, and Gwen was tugging on his hand towards the fire but something blew up, loud with shrapnel flying everywhere, and and Hobie's mind freaked and he planted his feet and yanked Gwen back because there was no way in the seventh ring of Satan's fucking hell he was letting her go in there.
She turned on him, angry words flashing on her tongue, but her eyes dropped to dead when she saw his face (which he knew was wide with fear, fear for her). She chewed and spit him out. "You better not be thinkin' what I think you're thinkin, Brown," (he cringed at that) "because you know it's-"
He let go and held up his hands and backed away. "t's not my choice, yeah," he said. Much as it pained him, for the first time in his life. There she went, pulling the fucking, 'you don't believe in snatching choices' card in the middle of a fucking fire. She was still looking at him with those angry eyes of hers. He loved her angry eyes. God, he'd better not lose her tonight.
He took a deep breath and smiled like he didn't care (he did) because she deserved to make her own choices without worrying about his opinions. "Yeah, I know love," he said. "Just worried bout you, t's all."
"And you're sweet to," she said. She stood on her toes and pulled his head down and kissed his forehead, and his brain was struggling to keep up with her soft lips on his head and palms on the sides of his face. She smiled up at him, because he towered over her, even at 16.
He could have kissed her, but instead he wove his fingers wove into her hair with hers on his face and just held on, gently.
Months later, he would wish he had held on harder.
But then she was gone, darting off into the flames in a flash of pink and Hobie was left in the scorching heat with nothing but a guitar and profoundly muddled brain.
He loved her, he thought, then, the figure of her soft lips still imprinted on his mind. Different than he loved anyone else right now. That's what made him go all apeshit and try to grab her. He would hate himself for that, if she was him and he was her. He'd have to buy her some new sticks or something to apologize.
He shook his head and realized he had been absentmindedly twisting the pink pin on his jacket (that he had gotten for her) in the middle of a fire. "No time, Hobs," he said aloud. Yep, gotta focus on saving lives.
But how was he gonna get in? The little people were probably already stuck in some dingy little prison cell in the Osborn building, and no amount of blowing shit up was gonna change that (even if blowing up Ozzy's shit was immensely satisfying). But there were no openings in that building, or even places that could be openings with dynamite and a little ingenuity. It was designed as a fortress, one strong enough that generations of rabble-rousers had been unable to find a way in. Nothing got in, and hardly anything got out, at least not anything that was beneficial to society-
Toxic waste, Hobie thought.
He knew how to get in.
He knew he had to book it, before anyone else got the wise idea to try to follow him. Self-sacrificing bastards, every one of them (he was one of them).
His hands slammed into the guard rails so hard he felt the reverberation into his teeth, right down to the new tongue stud he had gotten (and Gwen had loved) last week. The water was rushing below, and the stink of it, the absolute stench, rose up in plumes. It was green, it was acidic. It was everything he was fighting and everything he and his friends and his community would become to stop it.
He dropped into a crouch under the rail and leaned over the water. If he squinted, he could just make out the tube it was all pouring out of just under the surface. Yeah, I can prob'ly make that, he thought. If he got his frog legs on. Or else, he would just kick it like all the other hellraisers dying today.
"And what's one more anyway," he muttered.
He took a deep breath, his fingers grazing the cool metal of the bar. Just one little jump, he thought. And a whole hell of swimmin-
He heard her just as his feet were springing to jump off the precipice.
Only one girl in the whole UK wore ballet flats to a firefight.
"Bloody bollocks," she was muttering. "Of all the motherfucking bastard-born fascists, God I'm gonna fuckin' love kicking their flamin' asses to the ground tonight-" she was on her pager. Hobie knew because nobody got a foul mouth quite like that except his Gwenie when she was handing it to someone.
He bit his lip and scrunched his eyes shut. No, he thought. Don't look, Hobie. Don't look.
But what if he didn't make it back?
Hobie turned and took one look back at Gwen. Only one.
Turns out, one was all it took.
She was yelling at her pager one moment, and then she was not. Somehow she always knew when she was being watched (because of course the stars know when we're looking at them). He saw her see him, and knew he was being watched too. And then he saw her eyes widen when she saw what he was about to do.
"Hobie-" she said, her voice cracking. Her face crumpled. As crumpled as it had been that night when he found her on their doorstep. Hobie wanted to crumple right along with her.
She took a startling step forward and Hobie's heart jumped, because he knew this would happen, that's why he had ran here alone. Her face contorted with anger. "Hobie, you stupid fucker-"
"No," he said. Loud. The word echoing over the empty concrete.
This is my decision, his head whispered fiercely. Mine, me, who gets so little choices. He pinned her with his gaze. Literally tried to pin her to that fucking spot.
She held his stare, with the same rage he was using on her. She was quaking, he could see that from here. But she swallowed. A delicate bob in the filthy air, and he knew she understood. The solid rock of resolve settled a little harder in his chest. She took a step back.
Hobie stood, hanging backward off the guard rail. He watched her, and she watched him right back. The starlight danced over her fair skin and the soft bits of him clouded in his head, and he smiled.
He was scaring her, and he knew that. But if he moved fast enough, there were kids who wouldn't be.
"Sorry, love," he said.
He dove.