Chapter Text
Gwen had just gone through some of the worst experiences of her life within a matter of maybe a half hour at most? Her hands were shaking, as she felt the beginnings of a panic attack, trying to suppress it until she got to Society with Jess and Miguel.
The portal was not a pleasant experience whatsoever, and Gwen had felt like she’d been on a nauseatingly fast roller-coaster, except it was more like her atoms had been rearranged rather than inertia making her sick. Gwen, Miguel, and Jess had gone through the portal and were making it up the stairs to HQ, in awkward silence, Jess only occasionally saying something to Gwen to watch her step, or simple phrases like that, not prompting her to tell Jess about what had just happened. The last place Gwen wanted to be was a crowded society, and if she still had a room to go home to she’d want to stay there.
Her head was cloudy and her legs felt like noodles, this was too much, and cruelly, the silence was unbearable. She longed for someone, Miguel, Jess, anyone, to talk, even for the purpose of just acting as white noise. Miguel wordlessly gestured for them to step into the elevator, LYLA startling them all.
“Hey girlies, how are you doing?? And Miguel, I guess.” She quipped, bubbly as ever, Gwen grateful to her for the sound of her talking. Jess then answered LYLA.
“We’re holding up fine, thanks. Did the anomaly get safely secured?”
“Yup, canon still intact.”
“Good, good.”
LYLA then dissolved, much to Gwen’s dismay. Miguel and Jess were silently arguing with each other, Gwen painfully aware of the subject being about her. They were both trying to act like she wasn’t there with them in the cramped elevator, and Jess and Miguel both being stupid tall didn’t help the case. She was thankful when the elevator finally stopped, Gwen flabbergasted as she scoped in just how many spiders were there in the Society.
“Dang.”
“This is the lobby.” Miguel replied, not chiding her for language, which she didn’t even think he really cared about. They passed a couple groups of spiders, some of which were utterly gawking at Gwen, and she wasn’t exactly sure why. They passed Ben Reilly, whom Jess and Miguel greeted in unison as Ben openly brooded about his past, on the verge of a breakdown, sweeping his hair to the side.
“Is he okay??” Gwen asked, not sure if she should be worried or scared, not getting an answer.
Just then, she saw a tall kid, close to her age she’d presume, with multiple piercings, and… a really cool outfit and hair. She was lost in thought as Miguel practically squawked at the cool person.
“ Hobie! Where the shock have you been? No one at HQ has seen you in WEEKS.” Miguel seethed, Jess completely unimpressed, but Gwen wasn’t too sure if she was annoyed with Hobie or Miguel.
“Oh, you know, around.” This Hobie person smiled for a moment, dodging Miguel’s question, before noticing Gwen. “Oh, sweet, a new cult member.” Jess gave him a scowl, as she tried i̶n̶d̶o̶c̶t̶r̶i̶n̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ telling Gwen to not engage with him.
“Just ignore him.” Jess urged, deadpan as Hobie wasn’t affected by her. Oh, she’s definitely annoyed with Hobie. Not Miguel.
“What’s your name?” He asked her, Gwen noticing he had a horrifyingly British accent. Cockney, if we’re getting technical.
“Uh- Gwen. Gwen Stacy.” She managed to choke out, a slight glimmer in Hobie’s eyes, a look she couldn’t decipher.
“Haha, no way. As Miguel so kindly stated, my name’s Hobie, Hobie Brown. S’nice to meet you, Gwen.”
He put his fist slightly forward for a fist bump, which Gwen reciprocated. Dude, this guy was cool. He was switching through art styles and colors, which she’d already noticed certain people from universes had different styles, like Noir, Peni, Miles, Miguel, even Gwen herself. but this was different. It was like he was straight out of a 70’s fanzine, constantly changing color and had newspaper text and headlines surrounding him. They started up a conversation, ignoring the fact that Miguel and Jess were there. They ended up just dipping and leaving the two to their own devices, because “She needs friends because she went through multiple traumatic experiences within like half an hour, lol.”
A couple months later, Gwen and Hobie were yapping together in the Society cafeteria.
“How’re you holding up?”
“Fine, fine. Could be better, but I can't complain, I guess. Have you done the voting yet?” Gwen asked, changing the subject as she picked at her cafeteria food.
“Eh, I don’t really care for it. I’ll prolly vote at the last minute, or something, if at all.” Hobie was tinkering with his watch, probably setting off 34 different alarms at once, if it was on purpose we'll never know, but it probably was.
“Seems like a ‘you’ thing to do. I voted against it.”
“Can’t blame you, it’s creepy.”
“Tell me about it." She paused. "They need to name that thing or something, to put the edge off. Call it Max.”
“ Max? ” Hobie chuckled. “It’s a spider, not a dog.”
“Same thing. Anyways, it still needs one. The Go-Home Machine isn’t too friendly, in my humble opinion.”
“Humble opinions suck. But anyways, yeah. Don’t think Miguel would let anyone officially name it Max, but we could dub it Max, I think. He can’t say anything about that. So, its decided name's Max, that’s neat. Is that a reference to anything or just a stereotypical dog’s name?”
“.......Nope.”
“You took a little too long to answer that.”
“D’you have The Book Thief in your universe?”
“Never heard of it, makes sense, given the title.”
“Damn, I’ll have to show you it then, it’s really good, sad though. Like, really sad. It’s banned in some of the States, cause of it, I think.”
“Sounds right up my alley then.”
"I'll pick up a copy of it if I can find one for you," Gwen was about to explain the plot in extreme detail when they got notifications that they were needed for a mission to some Shakespeare dimension, Hobie having a look of disdain on his face as they got it, them both reluctantly finishing up their suspiciously public school-like Society cafeteria food and going on their way.
Much, much later, around 11PM local Nueva time.
Gwen had obviously been thankful to Miguel and Jessica for letting her join the Society after everything went down with her dad, but they all never really established where Gwen would stay. Miguel assumed she'd just stay at the Society for the rest of whenever, which she had been, since Miguel wasn't in a state to take care of a teenager and he slept in his office anyways, and he told Gwen that everyone at the Society was too busy to take care of her with their hands full with the canon and that she should figure something out for herself. If you asked her, it was sort of a sink-or-swim method on Miguel's part, but what did she know, I suppose.
In a completely different dimension in a different neighborhood from Chelsea it wasn't easy getting a solid place to live, and that wasn't even counting in the factor that she was a minor and couldn't rent out a place, not that she had the money to either. The 20 dollars in her suit pockets would equal nothing in Nueva York considering that the bill was completely obsolete because the entirety of Earth-928 switched from paper currency to digital currency, like, 70 years ago. Everything in Nueva was a lot more expensive than back home in Chelsea, and we're talking about New York here, for the higher powers' sake.
Gwen, with little options, did come up with a solution for her problem, no matter how temporary her solution was, it was a solution for now. Her solution was to camp out in a semi-unused storage closet in the Society. She slept on the linoleum floor of the closet, which was uncomfortably cold. As she succumbed to the lulls of sleep, she thought about her band members, about the last time she'd seen them. The looks on their faces as she quit, and the conversation she had with her dad afterwards.
"well, i quit, so... thumbs up."
It was almost ironic, how she hadn't known how the events would spiral out of control later that day. She bunched up the hood of her Spider-Woman costume to use as a makeshift pillow, despite knowing it wouldn't help much.
The next morning, she woke up to the sound of a closet door opening, the familiar clanking of platform-boots filling the small room.
"Crap, sorry- Gwen??" Hobie looked slightly confused as Gwen's eyes focused on him, getting up quickly.
"Hey, what's up?" She asked him, trying to be casual as if he hadn't found her out cold in a cramped closet, rather unconvincingly.
"Was looking for you. Why're you in a closet looking like you just died?" Hobie said, unintentionally blunt.
"Oof, that's mean. But anyways, I was... reading?"
"What are you reading in a glorified cupboard?"
Jeez, why was it now Gwen decided to forget every single book that was ever written? She stared at him, going blank as she felt guilty, even though she hadn't done anything wrong. She sighed, as she decided to come clean.
"..I've been sleeping in the storage closet for, like, three months. The Society told me that I had to figure something out for myself." She didn't drop Miguel's name specifically, but it was implied, as Hobie's brow furrowed.
"That's not good for you, Gwendy. Why didn't they?" She only supplied a half-hearted shrug, not even really knowing the answer to that question herself.
"Well, I'm not letting one of my friends and honorary band members rot in a storage closet. If you want, you could stay with me on the canal boat, however long you need." Gwen's eyes lit up, as she took him up on the offer.
--
"Absolutely not." Jess said when Gwen had told her she was going to stay at Hobie's. She'd already gotten her things together (exactly one overdue by 2 and a half years copy of Fahrenheit 451 and her suit) and dropped them off at the boat, planning on telling Jess after. Clearly, that wasn't going too well.
"Why?" Gwen challenged her.
"Oh, well, first off, it's irresponsible and reckless to live with a friend. I've seen it happen with every pair of best friends who shared a dorm room when I still went to college."
"...That's kind of a stupid example. Besides, it's a lot better than my current living situation."
"Fine. If it happens though, I can't help. Just stay safe. You know how Hobie's dimension is."
"I'm aware."
The first couple of hours on the boat were... crappy, to put it eloquently. It was nice having a solid place for the first time in months, but Gwen had gotten seasick and spent the first day trying not to throw up. Luckily, she felt better at night as she laid on the spare mattress in Hobie's room. He'd mentioned having a band, so it made sense he had space for more than one person on the boat.
"Hey, Hobie?" She asked to see if he was awake.
"Yeah?"
"How does the canon work?"
"Shit if I know. Sorry, my bad. I'm not too sure, truthfully. I don't think it's all Miguel chalks it up to be though."
"Hm. What's today?"
"It's... January 30th, 1978."
"Wait, what?"
"Whoops. Forgot to explain that on the way here. Camden here's a little confusing. The year's '78 but it still has modernized stuff, you're in 2024, correct?"
"Yeah."
"Well, New London's a mix of modern-day Brooklyn and '70s-'80s Camden. It's weird, but we have the stuff you'd call 'vintage', but we also, for some reason, have smart toasters."
"Huh. Do you think it's weird that we're both typically either villains or dead in canon?"
"A little, maybe. It's odd that we're the exceptions. I haven't met another version of me yet that wasn't a villain and you're the only Gwen I've met that wasn't fridged."
"Hobie, why don't you have a consistent sleep schedule? It's like, 3 in the morning, man. We both shouldn't be awake." Gwen joked, lightening the mood.
"Sleep schedules are the way the government keeps you in line to work a 60 hour work week and work until you die."
"eh, I can't really sleep anyways. Are you gonna go to bed soon?"
"...no,"
"We should design entire airplanes within 5 minutes and compare blueprints and see whose airplane is better.
"Sure."
They went out of the living quarters and Hobie got out some large sheets of paper, and some pencils. They were about to start when Gwen felt something brush up against her. It felt vaguely fuzzy, but in a weird velvety way.
"Oh, hey, Carnie." Hobie casually said, as the vaguely cat-shaped 'animal' went up on the table, as Gwen started violently sneezing.
"What is it??" She managed to get out between sneezes.
"This is Carnie, they're sort of a cat, maybe a dog. Long story, but I got fused with a carnage symbiote like 2 years ago and me and Carnie thought the bloke who was fighting me was super lame so they helped me defeat him. They come and go sometimes, but they have a curfew." He pet the cat as it sat on the table, staring at Gwen.
"Oh, that's cool." Gwen petted the cat as she was temporarily relieved from the sneezing, as Carnie jumped off the table to go eat, as they worked on the planes for the rest of the night, ultimately going with Gwen's design for a plane, planning to build it sometime that week and they went to bed at around 5am.
Overall, it was a pretty successful first day on the boat.
Goodnight. :-]