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"Miles home?" Jefferson asked, shrugging out of his work jacket.
"Sí," Rio answered, leaning over to kiss her husband. "He's in his room, has a friend over, though. The punk one."
Jeff grunted and headed for his son's door.
"So, I read about the lace code," Miles was saying.
Jefferson froze in the hallway then snuck up closer to the frame.
"Yeah?" his friend asked.
"Yeah. Did you really kill a cop?"
Well, at least Miles didn't sound excited about it.
"Hah," his friend said, without any humor at all. "Yeah, a couple. You sure you wanna talk about this? It's dark and depressing as shit. Boring, too."
Miles' mattress creaked as if he were leaning forward. "Hey," he said softly, "I wanna know everything about you, Hobie."
Hobie sighed. "Alright. Don't say I didn't warn you though."
"Was it your cop friend?"
"Cop friend?" Hobie asked, sounding absolutely disgusted.
"Well - The one you were close to, you know what I mean."
"Close can mean lotsa different things, love."
Jefferson's eyebrows shot up to his forehead in surprise.
"Mhm," Miles hummed. "I see what you're doing."
Hobie sighed again and the bedframe hit the wall as he presumably flopped back on the blankets. "It was my da, alright? Hobart Brown Senior, first Black cop on the streets o' New London. And yeah, it was him."
"You… killed your dad?"
"He wasn't like yours. Well, maybe once. I dunno, he was a cop all my life, maybe he joined to make a difference an' provide for his family and all that. But even if he did, one bad apple spoils the bunch and he definitely spoiled rotten."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Beat my mum. Me, too, but him beating her is what I remember best. The only way she could get away was to run, so she took me an' did that when I was five, ran all the way to my nan's."
"Hobie…."
"No, please, I gotta finish if I'm gonna finish and I ain' done yet. He found us, 'bouta year later, waited til Nan was out the house and Mum was proper sloshed but not yet loutish, beat Mum to death right in front o' me. So then I ran out on my own. Spent all my time squatting in empty flats, sleeping in strangers' beds, learning how to play the guitar and dismantle the government, and getting high, drunk, or both between cigarettes. Karl's the best, spent way too much of his time dragging me outta places I had no sense being. Then I got bit infiltrating an Oscorp lab, liberated a canal boat from a man with way more than he needed in my escape, and found better things - Spider-Man things - to do as self-prescribed therapy instead of smoking, sex, vodka, and Vicodin."
"Was it hard to quit?"
"Hardest thing I ever done, to tell it true. I'm sober two years now and it's still hard."
Miles hummed. "So was it… was it justice for that? Killing your dad because he killed your mom?"
"Nah," Hobie grunted. "I hated him, and I wanted him dead, and I got in a lotta trouble over it, but none goin' after him directly. He was my da, though. You can hate someone and want 'em dead and love 'em and want 'em to change all at the same time. He never did change, though. Got worse, like supervillain worse, so I made a choice to protect everyone else like I could never protect my mum."
Silence lapsed for a long time, then Hobie spoke again, quieter this time. "Everyone was cheering, congratulatin' me. And all the while, I was wishing I was someone else - with a different dad, one who loved his kid, yanno?" He blew out a great sigh. "Visited Nan after. We both cried. She thought I was dead all along, and I'd missed her like hell. She's great, though, she's… she's Nan."
"Hobie," Miles murmured, and then there was a pause and then the wet sound of a chaste kiss.
"I'm over it," Hobie said, voice cracking.
"Okay," Miles said before kissing him again.
"Anyways, you know how it is. I'm a queer Black punk from New London wit' a queer indigenous best friend an' we beat the shit outta fascists in our spare time - which is all of it 'cause school's not about learning, it's about training kids to conform to the demands of the capitalist work week from the moment they get outta diapers. Like 99% of the time it's kill or be killed for us. Ain' no one to leave villains tied up for, especially when they're cops, too. So the laces, yeah? Tells my community I got their backs, I ain' afraid to protect 'em however they need, even when it's more complicated than it should be for me. Especially then."
"I'm sorry -"
"I'm not," Hobie interrupted. "I'm not," he said again, quieter. "It's the paradox of tolerance and all that. You can't make a safe space for sheep if you're letting wolves in, right? We're in the saving people business."
Miles sighed. "Yeah," he agreed. "Love you. Hate that the world can't save itself for once."
Hobie chuckled. "Yeah," he said, "but then we never woulda met. An' that'd be a damn shame given how I love you, too."
Jefferson swallowed, closed his eyes, then slipped away to the kitchen to find his wife.
"Hey," Rio said, "can you tell the boys that dinner's ready? Oof -"
Jeff bundled his wife into his arms and buried his face in her neck. "I love you," he said.
Rio relaxed into his hold. "I love you, too," she said. "Rough shift?"
"No, not really," Jefferson said. He opened his mouth to share what he'd overheard, then shook his head. "I'll set the table, then I'll go get them."
"Okay," Rio agreed softly. "Te quiero, mi vida. Whatever it is, we'll get through it together."
Jefferson smiled and leaned down to kiss her, then remembered the other thing he'd overheard. "I'm pretty sure Miles' punk friend is also his punk boyfriend."
Rio froze. "And he didn't tell us? Ay, what if we've been making a bad impression this whole time? Go ask Hobie what his favorite meal is, I have time and this will keep as leftovers. Go, go," she shooed her laughing husband out of the kitchen.
Jefferson knocked on the door frame that time, biting back a smile as the bed groaned under the weight of two teenage boys springing apart as fast as they could. "Can I come in, Miles?"
"Yeah!" Miles called, sounding a smidge distracted.
Jeff pushed open the door to see Hobie lounging against the wall, hands in his pockets, eyebrow raised. He glanced pointedly down at his blue laces, then looked up and gave the boy a single nod of respect.
Hobie's lip curled in disgust, but after a long, awkward moment, he nodded back in acknowledgement.
It was a step.
"Rio wants to know what your favorite meal is," Jefferson said.
Hobie's eyes sparkled mischievously.
"If you say beans on toast," Miles warned.
Hobie threw his head back and laughed. "Naw, man, I wouldn't inflict your poor uncultured tastebuds on that. Curry with rice 'n' peas is good. Pork or beef if you've got it, but I ain' picky."
"Very Caribbean of you," Rio said from behind her husband.
"Should be," Hobie said, shrugging, "seein' as mum's Jamaican, straight down from the Windrush, yeah?"
"¿Hablas español?"
"Mi Patwa mejor."
Rio cast a sideways look at her husband. "I approve of him," she said, as if daring him to disagree.
Jefferson grinned and held his hands up in surrender. "You're always welcome here, Hobie," he said, then followed his wife back to the kitchen and picked up a knife to start chopping.
"He doesn't seem like a cop when he's at home," he heard Hobie say, just loud enough to carry.
"And who are you when you're at home?" Miles teased back.
"Just Hobie. Hobie Brown. Miles Morales' boyfriend."