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The colors are always the biggest adjustment.
Whether it be the lively, warm hues of soft Pavitr’s “Mumbattan”, or the flickering cool tones of sweet Miles’ “New York”, or the gentle smears of fierce Gwen’s watercolor world. Goddamn, even the clean, slick lines of Miguel’s cruelly efficient “Nueva York” could feel welcoming on the worst of days.
The colors swirl around him, sink deep into his pores, practically drip from his lips like honey with how much he craves it.
He coats himself in it, buries himself in it, like a blanket. Or a bunker, depending on how you look at it.
But it’s sweet. No, actually, it’s bitter. No, actually, it’s a mix of two. No, actually, it’s something else altogether. It’s something. At least it's something.
Home is...
Well, it’s not like home is nothing . He can’t say it’s nothing, not with the friends he’s made and the causes he backs and the life he lives. They are his everything, which would not be possible in Nothing.
And yet...
And yet he can’t help but feel a twinge deep in his gut every time he waltzes his way through a portal back into some inconspicuous alley in his home dimension.
He can practically feel the warmth draw away from his body like a creature retreating, like it knows better than to follow him where he’s going. Like it knows to when to keep safe, when to wave the white flag.
Unfortunately for him, that’s not exactly a viable option, now, is it? Not if he wants to wait up tomorrow still himself.
It’s not lost on him, like the others might think. He sees light return to Gwen’s eyes when she leaves his flat. As lovely as it is to have her there, as much as she loves him for letting her stay, as much as the place provides her refuge away from her own war, it does so by throwing her into a different one, which she does not have to claim ownership over.
In her world, hating the police is radical. In his world, hating the police is common sense, is having functioning eyes and ears.
So, when they cross through that portal and the slightest bit of tension leaves her shoulders, it’s not lost on him. When they step into a dimension where the colors of the world and its future all rest on their shoulders, lighter simply because they are not their’s, it is not lost on them. They know they’ll win the day, and although it’s not conscious, in the back of their mind, they know it’s okay if they don’t, because they can always go home. They know they have a world full of color to go back to.
He doesn’t hold it against her, though. He can’t, really. Not when he sleeps easier in beds that don’t belong to him. Fuck, not even a bed—he thinks he might sleep better on the floors of HQ than his own apartment.
He can fully relax—really let his shoulders sag and his posture droop, let his brain stop blaring SOS at him. His senses, ones he’s sad long before being Spider-Man, never truly go quiet, though.
Sure, that’s sad, but so what if it is? He’s not special for being pitiful. The whole world is a charity case with no funding that doesn’t even address the root systematic injustices causing the problem in the first place.
That metaphor might’ve run away a bit, but what hasn’t already?
Just like the warmth, just like the colors, just like this ridiculous metaphor, something leaves Hobie when he steps through the portal. In his worst moments, he no longer feels like a big brother, a mentor, an instigator, a trouble maker, a cause to believe in or a person to trust. He doesn’t feel like a person at all, just a survivor. Constantly on edge, always exhausted.
There’s nothing impressive about exhaustion.
There’s nothing admirable about surviving.
Bleakness is only profound to those to which it is unfamiliar, and Hobie knows bleak like an old friend, knew bleak before he could talk, before he could put words to the way his body sighed and his mind ached.
It’s no big deal that every now and then, after a colorful night with some of the most colorful people in his world, going home feels like persecuting himself to Nothing.
He’ll wrap himself in his blanket, guard his doors, and sleep in his old, greying room with an ache in his back and a flickering spark in his eyes. He won’t get a good night’s sleep, but the next day, he’ll get up anyways. He’ll survive.
He will.