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Lyla forces Miguel home after about 45 consecutive hours at HQ. He’s been catching cat-naps that don’t stretch longer than an hour where he can, curled in dark, tight corners. Lyla manually locks his platform and screens to sleep mode after the third time he trips over his own feet, sleepy and stumbling.
When he gets back to his apartment—seeing more traffic from Peter B. in the past week, after his first visit—he finds the door unlocked. It immediately puts him on edge, since he locked up after himself when he left last.
Miguel nudges the door open with his fingers. With a flick of his wrist his claws slip out neatly, silently, and he shifts his bag of groceries higher in his other arm. With the door open he inhales sharply and lets his mouth fall open, the air from his apartment filtering over his tongue.
The scent that he catches hold of has his hackles smoothing, though, and his claws snick back into his sheathes without conscious effort. Leather and a smoky, nutty smell tells him exactly who is in his apartment, and the denseness of it lets him know his visitor has been there a few hours already.
Miguel has to admit that of all the Spiders with the disregard for authority and sheer ballsiness to do it, Hobart Brown is at the top of his list for who he’d most expect to break into his apartment.
“Is there a reason you’re here?” Miguel asks quietly, heeling the door shut behind himself. He kicks off his boots and peers into the sitting room as he passes to the kitchen. Hobie’s wicks poke over the back of the couch, where he’s messing with some gaming console on the TV Miguel hasn’t used in weeks.
“What? That bum can visit but I can’t?” Hobie calls. Miguel snorts and starts emptying his bag. He tsks under his breath when he realizes he’s bought the lactose-free milk that Gabriella drank, instead of the whole milk he prefers.
“Bum? Are you talking about Peter B.?” Miguel asks absently. He hears the rustle of clothes and near-silent footsteps, and then Hobie appears in the doorframe.
“Who else?” He says, and crosses the kitchen to the island where Miguel’s groceries sit in a sad little circle. He picks up the milk and bobs his head in a nod. “Nice, I’m lactose-intolerant.”
Miguel lets his chin drop to his chest with a sigh but pulls a cup from the cupboard anyway and hands it over. Hobie mumbles some British form of a thank you and fills the cup to the top before passing the capped milk back.
“Where did you get the gaming console?” Miguel asks. The milk is the second last to go, half a cup filled for Miguel with a few Oreos left out of their package. Hobie squints at him.
“Are you askin’ if I nicked it?” Hobie asks suspiciously. There’s a smear of milk at the corner of his mouth. Miguel rolls his eyes and dunks his first Oreo into his cup, claws out sneakily to keep his fingers dry.
“I’m asking because it’s not mine, and I’m curious.” Miguel says dryly. Hobie relaxes a little at that and shrugs.
“Just one from my Earth.” He says, and the evasiveness is enough for Miguel to guess that it is stolen. He doesn’t ask, though—can’t make himself care. He hadn’t made a comment when Hobie stole the tech to build his own dimensional watch, why start now?
Miguel tucks his Oreo into his mouth, the cookie perfectly saturated, and eyes Hobie. Battered but clean clothes, mismatched and patched socks, his jawline too sharp. Miguel can smell the faintest hint of hunger coming off of him, a tired, wan scent. When was the last time the kid ate?
A la mierda todo.
“You hungry?” Miguel asks, resigning himself. He knows it’s a foolish question since a Spider is always hungry. He turns to his freezer and pulls a pan of lasagna out that he had made a few days prior with Peter B. peering over his shoulder without waiting for an answer. Hobie makes an interested noise as Miguel slides it into the oven and starts it up.
“Show me the games you have?” Miguel asks. Hobie bobs his head and turns back to the sitting room. His guitar is leaning against the wall the TV sits on, a small, battered bag tucked under it.
Miguel sits with Hobie until the lasagna has thawed and cooked sufficiently, and then spoons about eighty-percent of it onto Hobie’s plate, not complaining about eating in his sitting room as the kid shovels the lasagna down. Hobie takes his plate to the sink without being asked and the two of them wipe the plates down and set them to dry.
“Old man.” Hobie says after a few moments of silence. Miguel grunts to show he’s listening. The menu music of Hobie’s game plays cheerfully in the background.
“You’ve killed someone,” Hobie says, and Miguel goes still, claws scraping against the plate in his fingers. He sets it down on the drying rack.
“I’ve killed, yes.” Miguel says. He doesn’t imagine the way sudden exhaustion tugs at his words. Hobie’s head dips, turned away just enough that all Miguel can see is the clench to his jaw.
“Hobie,” Miguel says gently. The kid sets the plate onto the countertop carefully, with exaggerated focus, like he’s aware of how easy it would be to break it. “Tell me what happened.”
“Did you ever have a Norman Osborn?” Hobie asks. He leans forward, over the sink of sudsy water.
“No,” Miguel says. “I’ve never had a—an Osborn.”
“I killed mine.” Hobie says, and he usually speaks in a quiet, flat tone, but his voice is monotone now. “I beat his head in with my guitar. In the street. He’s the reason I became a Spider.”
Miguel nods slowly. He thinks, for a moment, of Tyler Stone and Aaron Delgado, and what he would do if he were put in the same room as them. He can’t judge Hobie—he wouldn’t, even if he could.
“The deaths—the people you killed. Does it ever go away?” Hobie asks. He’s still turned away, and he wishes Hobie would turn to face him, so he could get a gauge on the kid’s expression. He doesn’t need to ask what he means.
“No, it doesn’t.” Miguel says tiredly. He wants to reach out, but he doesn’t quite know how. “You carry that weight. Especially someone like you. Like most Spiders.”
“Someone like me?” Hobie asks tightly. His fists are white-knuckled on the counter.
“You see people as people.” Miguel says. “You see everyone as a chance to save a life. All the good Spiders do. And when you kill someone—it’s easier if you didn’t want to. It’s easier to deal with it after. Killing someone that you want to hurt—that you want to kill—that’s harder to deal with. Knowing that you’ve done something that you shouldn’t want to, but you still wanted to— “
Miguel cuts himself off and shrugs tiredly. He doesn’t know how to explain something like this to Hobie. It’s something that Spiders have to come to terms with on their own.
“What, that makes it sound like you’re excludin’ yourself. ‘Good Spiders’.” Hobie says, turning—finally—with a frown. Miguel can’t stop the twitch of his lip.
“I’ve killed people, yes.” Miguel says, not haltingly, but choosing his words with care. “But it’s the ones I wanted to kill—I don’t carry that the same as the ones I didn’t want to kill. I don’t feel bad about it. Not like I should.”
Miguel expects Hobie to turn away again; he expects the kid to go, seeing as Miguel just admitted to not feeling guilt about killing other people, but—Hobie nods, as if understanding, and his shoulders relax a touch.
“It’s good to talk to someone about this, kid.” Miguel says, instead of answering the question Hobie won’t ask. Hobie screws up his face at the word “kid” and glares. “Another Spider would get it best, but it doesn’t have to be.”
“And you? Who’d’you talk to?” Hobie asks—accuses, really, and Miguel lifts his eyebrow.
“You don’t need to know that.” Miguel says levelly, because it sounds better than I cry myself to sleep at least once a month and try to pretend all the bad things I’ve done were for the greater good.
“Bullshit, I don’t need to know.” Hobie snaps. Miguel feels his other eyebrow go up as well. “What, is Lyla who you talk to? A computer?”
“You know she’s more than a computer,” Miguel sighs, and Hobie turns to face him fully, brow furrowed. “If I need to talk to someone then I know where to find them.”
Hobie grinds his teeth together, shifting and looking away. He always acts so old—so collected, when compared to the other three hooligans, but he’s only seventeen. Miguel needs to remember that.
“When was the last time you slept in a bed?” Miguel asks, placing the last dish on the drying rack. Hobie shuffles again but this time in a more evasive manner. Miguel nods and doesn’t press.
“Take the guest bedroom.” Miguel says. He fusses with the wash rag to keep from looking at Hobie and making him uncomfortable, or drive him to fleeing. “You can stay on the couch, if you want, too.”
He leaves the conversation gracelessly, heading right into his room and getting ready for bed himself. When he finishes in the shower—skipping the sonic wash and going for real hot water this time—Hobie is sitting on the couch in ragged flannels and a music-note patterned bonnet, starting up with a new game on his console. Miguel settles on the couch beside him.
If Hobie isn’t upset with being in the same room as him—willing to stay in his apartment, knowing that Miguel hasn’t regretted all of the people he’s killed, like a normal, well-adjusted person should—Miguel can’t tell. The kid has his legs curled up underneath his body and smells relaxed, well-fed; it makes Miguel relax a little, too.
He feels himself gradually relax into the back of the couch. Having another warm body in the room with him—a reassuring scent, the hum of Hobie’s heart—settles Miguel in a way part of him wants to fight. He wants to deny this kind of softness.
Hobie’s avatar starts stalling out, going still for periods of time before meandering across the screen again, and when Miguel glances over he sees that the kid has conked out on the back of the couch, curled over the controller. He’s careful when he pulls the controller from his hand and tips him over, until Hobie’s head is resting on the cushion. Miguel fetches a blanket for him and then scoops up the patchy bag Hobie has with him; after removing any buttons or chains, he tosses the dirty clothes into the washing machine.
It’s easy, that night, to fall asleep with the scent of smoky leather in his nose and the sound of Hobie’s steady heartbeat.