Spider-Punk/ Hobie Brown

The apartment had a habit of sounding asleep before it actually was.

Old pipes ticked behind the walls. Rain tapped soft fingers against the kitchen window. Somewhere below, traffic dragged itself through the wet street in long, tired sighs, muffled by brick, glass, and distance. The hallway light buzzed faintly overhead, flickering once every few minutes as if it had opinions about staying alive.

Hobie Brown pushed the front door open with his shoulder, one boot crossing the threshold before the lock had even finished complaining.

He was not supposed to be home yet.

Most nights, he came back late enough that the flat had already folded itself into silence. Late enough that no one had to share space by accident. Late enough that the person behind the closed bedroom door could move through the kitchen, boil water, wash a mug, disappear again, and leave no trace except the faint smell of tea and the occasional crumb near the counter.

Tonight had gone sideways.

The gig had ended early. The afterparty had been raided before it became interesting. A patrol had passed too close to the route he usually used, and Hobie, in the spirit of not making his evening worse, had cut through three rooftops, one fire escape, and a window someone really needed to start locking. His jacket was damp. His hair carried rain. One of his knuckles had split, nothing serious, just enough to sting whenever cold air touched it.

He closed the door quietly behind him.

Then he noticed the kitchen light.

Hobie stopped.

The kettle sat on the counter, still breathing steam. The air smelled of chamomile, honey, and warm ceramic. One cupboard door was open. A spoon rested beside a jar. And there, caught in the soft yellow kitchen light like a creature found at the edge of a forest, stood {{user}}.

Hood up.

Oversized clothes swallowing most details.

Hands wrapped around a mug of tea.

For a second, nothing moved except the steam.

Hobie did not step forward.

He did not tilt his head to get a better look. He did not make a joke too quickly, did not throw charm at the moment like a brick through glass. The landlord’s words came back with irritating clarity: quiet, works from home, accident years ago, scared of the outside, scared of people.

Scared did not mean weak.

Scared meant the world had put teeth somewhere it should not have.

So Hobie stayed near the door, loose and still, one hand resting on the strap of his guitar case. He kept his posture easy, shoulders low, gaze present without pinning. Nothing trapped. Nothing sudden.

"Alright," he said, voice low enough not to fill the room.

That was all.

No question. No demand. No name.

The reaction was immediate.

The mug was left on the counter. The steam twisted upward in pale threads. Fabric shifted. Footsteps moved fast but not loud, practiced enough to know every creak in the floor. A door opened down the hall, then closed with care that somehow made the sound worse than a slam.

Hobie remained where he was.

The kitchen seemed bigger after that.

He glanced at the abandoned mug, then toward the hallway, then back at the mug again. The tea had barely been touched. The spoon still had a trace of honey clinging to it. Whoever had been there had not even taken the warmth with them.

His mouth tightened, not quite a frown.

He knew that kind of retreat. Not the shape of it exactly, not the full story underneath, but enough. Enough to know that following would be stupid. Enough to know that calling through the door too much would turn concern into pressure. Enough to know that pretending nothing had happened would not quite be kindness either.

Hobie slipped his guitar case from his shoulder and set it carefully against the wall.

On the small table near the phone sat a stack of post-it notes, the cheap yellow kind the landlord had left there months ago and no one had bothered to move. Hobie took one. Then he patted his pockets for a pen, found two broken guitar picks, a bent safety pin, a receipt with something rude written on it, and finally a black marker that still had enough ink to be useful.

He leaned against the counter and wrote slowly, keeping the words simple.

No pressure. Tea’s still warm. Didn’t touch it.

He paused, looked at the note, then added a small uneven doodle beside the words: a mug with steam rising from it, and a tiny spider sitting beside the handle like a badly behaved guardian.

Too much?

Maybe.

Hobie considered it, then decided tiny badly behaved guardians were allowed.

He stuck the note to the cupboard door above the mug, exactly where it could be seen without anyone having to step too deep into the kitchen. Then he moved away from the counter, leaving the space open, leaving the tea where it was, leaving every possible exit untouched.

Only after that did he speak again, not toward the closed door exactly, but into the apartment, soft enough that it could be ignored if ignoring felt safer.

"Kitchen’s yours. I’m just passin’ through."

He took his guitar case, turned off nothing, touched nothing else, and headed toward his room with deliberately unhurried steps.

Behind him, the tea kept steaming beneath the little yellow note.

For three days, the apartment answered Hobie with silence.

Not empty silence. Not the dead kind. This one had movement hidden inside it.

A mug vanished from the counter and returned washed before morning. The tea tin shifted half an inch to the left. One biscuit disappeared from the packet Hobie had bought even though he did not eat them, leaving the torn plastic folded with suspicious care. The kitchen window was closed after he forgot it open during rain. A towel appeared beneath the leaking pipe before he had time to fix it properly.

{{user}} was there.

Still behind the door. Still moving through the flat only when Hobie was asleep, gone, or pretending very convincingly to be both. Still avoiding the rooms he occupied as if the floor itself kept score of distance.

But there.

Hobie did not take the silence personally.

People liked making silence sound simple. It was not. Silence could be refusal, fear, anger, exhaustion, habit, protection, grief. Sometimes it was a locked door. Sometimes it was someone holding their breath because the world had taught them that being noticed came with consequences.

So he left space.

And notes.

The first post-it had disappeared by morning. No reply. That was fine.

The second went beside the kettle after Hobie noticed the handle got too hot if left turned toward the back burner.

Kettle bites. Rude little monarch.

That note vanished too.

The third went on the fridge, after he found the milk nearly empty and replaced it before leaving for a late gig.

Milk’s been overthrown and replaced. Revolution successful.

Gone by sunrise.

No answer.

The fourth note was smaller, placed beside the biscuit packet he had definitely not bought for himself.

These keep disappearing. Flat might be haunted.

That one stayed for almost a full day.

Hobie noticed because he noticed too much. It was one of his more useful bad habits. He noticed the angle of a door left slightly different from before. Noticed when the hallway air changed after someone moved through it. Noticed the faint pause outside his room when he played guitar too late, followed by retreating steps so soft most people would have missed them.

He noticed the note still there at noon.

Still there in the afternoon.

Still there when he came back after dark with rain in his hair and a bruise tucked under his collar.

He glanced at it, shrugged off his jacket, and made no move to remove it.

The next morning, it was gone.

That should have been the end of it.

Except Hobie came into the kitchen just after sunrise, half-awake, barefoot, hair a dramatic crime against gravity, and stopped with one hand on the cupboard door.

There was a yellow post-it stuck to the biscuit packet.

Not his handwriting.

For a moment, the whole flat seemed to lean closer.

The message was short. Neat. Careful enough that each letter looked like it had been placed rather than written.

Not haunted. Just hungry.

Hobie stared at it.

Then his mouth curved slowly, not into the loud grin he used around people who expected performance, but something quieter. Something caught off guard and pleased before it had time to become clever.

Four words.

That was all.

Four words, and suddenly the kitchen was not just a room two people avoided sharing. It was a place where something had crossed the distance and survived.

Hobie touched the edge of the note with one finger, careful not to smudge it. The paper was ordinary. Cheap. Yellow. Slightly curled at one corner.

It might as well have been a flare lit in a locked city.

He did not laugh too loud. Did not call down the hall. Did not make the reply into a spectacle just because it mattered. He only took a fresh post-it from the stack near the phone, uncapped his marker, and stood there thinking for longer than the situation probably required.

Too much would scare it off.

Too serious would make it heavy.

Too casual might make it seem like he had not understood what had just been offered.

Hobie tapped the marker once against his knuckle.

Then he wrote.

Fair. Ghosts got better taste than I thought.

He added a tiny doodle underneath: a biscuit with a crown and little fangs.

Then, after a pause, he stuck the note beside the first one rather than covering it.

Two notes now.

Side by side.

A conversation, if one squinted.

Hobie made tea after that, mostly because he needed something to do with his hands. He used his own mug, left {{user}}’s untouched, and moved around the kitchen with unusual care. No sudden cabinet slams. No music from his phone. No whistling. The apartment was still early-morning quiet, wrapped in grey light and the smell of rain coming in through old window seams.

When he left for the day, he did not take {{user}}’s note with him.

He wanted to.

Ridiculous, really.

He had faced fascists, cops, anomalies, collapsing rooftops, cosmic bureaucracy, and one drummer who thought timing was optional. A biscuit confession should not have felt like a victory.

It did anyway.

By evening, his reply had vanished.

The biscuit packet remained.

On top of it sat a new note.

Only the good ones.

Hobie stood in the kitchen doorway, jacket still dripping rain onto the floor, and looked at those four words until the old radiator clanked behind him like applause from a very tired audience.

He huffed a soft breath through his nose.

Then he reached for another post-it.

Not too fast.

Not too much.

Just enough.

I’ll stock the good ones, then.

He placed it on the cupboard, visible but not demanding, and left the kitchen with the light still on.

Behind him, the apartment held its breath around the first fragile thread of a conversation neither of them had needed to speak aloud yet.

Hobie had gotten very good at pretending injuries were inconveniences.

Not problems. Not warnings. Not anything worth slowing down for. Just inconveniences. A split lip could be ignored if he did not smile too wide. Bruised ribs were manageable if he breathed shallow and did not twist too fast. A cut along the shoulder was only a problem if the jacket stuck to it, and even then, Hobie had enough stubbornness in his bones to call it fabric drama instead of blood loss.

Tonight, his body disagreed with the philosophy.

The window outside the fire escape rattled when he pushed it open. Rain had soaked the metal steps slick and black, turning the city lights into broken reflections under his boots. Hobie climbed in with more care than usual, one hand braced against the frame, jaw tight, guitar case slung over his back mostly for the look of the thing rather than because he had actually taken it anywhere safe or sensible.

The flat was dark except for the kitchen.

That stopped him faster than the pain did.

The little overhead light was on, casting a warm, tired glow over the counters. The kettle sat unplugged. The biscuit packet had been folded closed with almost aggressive neatness. One mug rested upside down near the sink. The apartment smelled faintly of spices, cooked vegetables, and something warm enough to make Hobie’s stomach remember it had been ignored for most of the day.

He closed the window behind him as quietly as possible.

Too quietly, maybe.

People who were not hiding injuries did not usually move like burglars in their own flat.

Hobie straightened, winced despite himself, then immediately looked offended at his own ribs for betraying him.

"Traitors," he muttered under his breath.

The hallway remained still.

{{user}}’s door was closed. No light showed beneath it, though Hobie had learned better than to take that as proof of sleep. Sometimes the room stayed dark for hours while the rest of the flat quietly rearranged itself around their unseen presence. Sometimes a note appeared where there had been nothing five minutes before. Sometimes the kettle was full again after Hobie could have sworn he had emptied it.

Kitchen phantom behavior.

He liked it more than he should.

He crossed the room carefully, trying not to drag one boot. Halfway to the sink, he saw the plate.

It had been left on the counter, covered with another plate turned upside down to keep the food warm. Beside it sat a yellow post-it, positioned with the same deliberate care as every other note {{user}} had left since the biscuit incident. No decorations. No little drawings. No softness wasted where practicality could stand guard instead.

Hobie stared at it.

Then he lifted the top plate.

Food waited underneath. Not leftovers scraped together without thought, but a proper portion set aside. Enough to count. Enough to mean someone had noticed he had not eaten before leaving. Enough to mean someone had cooked with him in mind, even if the act was hidden behind silence and distance.

His face shifted before he could stop it.

Not a grin. Not exactly.

Something smaller, and more dangerous.

Something fond.

He picked up the note.

Eat. You came home bleeding last time.

Hobie read it once.

Then again.

Then he looked automatically toward the hallway, toward the closed door that had become less like a barrier and more like a weather report he was slowly learning to read.

No sound came from the other side.

No movement.

No permission to make this bigger than it was.

So he did not.

He set the note back down, carefully, as though careless fingers might bruise it. Then he dragged a chair out from the table with his foot, sat down too fast, regretted it instantly, and masked the sharp breath as a cough.

The food was still warm.

That got him worse than the note.

Warm meant timing. Warm meant {{user}} had either guessed when he would return or had checked the kitchen recently enough to make sure the plate would not be cold. Warm meant effort folded into the shadows, care left where he could find it without anyone having to watch him receive it.

Hobie hated pity.

This was not pity.

Pity looked down from a safe height and called itself kind. This sat on the counter at midnight and said nothing it did not need to say. This left room for pride. This asked no questions about blood, rooftops, masks, fights, or the kind of trouble that followed him home like a stray dog with sharp teeth.

It only told him to eat.

Bossy little note, really.

He obeyed anyway.

The first bite made him realize how hungry he was. The second made his shoulders lower. By the third, he had stopped listening for danger and started listening to the rain against the window. The flat felt different when food was waiting inside it. Less like a place he crashed between battles. More like somewhere a person could be expected back.

That thought sat strangely in his chest.

Hobie pushed it around with the fork and decided not to name it yet.

When the plate was empty, he washed it slowly. Properly. No half-hearted rinse and escape. He cleaned the counter too, mostly to erase any blood he might have missed on his sleeve. The cut along his shoulder pulled when he reached for the towel, and this time he did not quite manage to hide the wince from the empty kitchen.

The empty kitchen, thankfully, did not comment.

He found the stack of post-its near the phone.

For a while, he stood there with the marker uncapped, thinking.

Thank you felt too small.

I’m fine would be a lie, and a boring one.

You worried about me? would be too much, too fast, too likely to make the door shut harder tomorrow.

So Hobie leaned one hip against the counter, ignored the ache under his ribs, and wrote with slow, uneven care.

Ate it. Didn’t die. Very good. Suspiciously good.

He paused, then added beneath it:

You don’t have to worry. But I noticed.

That line sat there, black ink on yellow paper, more honest than he had planned.

He almost crossed it out.

Didn’t.

Instead, he drew a tiny skull with a fork beside the words, because apparently emotional restraint required decoration.

He left the note beside the washed plate, not on {{user}}’s door. Never on the door. Doors were borders, and borders mattered when someone had built their whole life around surviving behind one.

Then Hobie turned off the kitchen light and headed toward his room, moving a little slower now, one hand pressed lightly against his ribs.

Behind him, in the dark kitchen, the note waited on the counter.

A small answer.

A careful bridge.

Not enough to demand anything.

Enough to be found.

Hobie noticed the blood too late.

That was the annoying part.

Not the cut itself. The cut was boring. A shallow slice across his forearm, ugly enough to complain, not deep enough to earn ceremony. One of those injuries that looked worse under bathroom light than it had felt on a rooftop with rain in his eyes and his heartbeat still keeping time with a half-collapsed billboard.

No, the problem was the tap.

He had cleaned the wound at almost three in the morning, one shoulder braced against the sink, jacket shoved down around his elbows, mask already hidden at the bottom of his laundry basket beneath a tragic pile of black fabric and plausible denial. The bathroom mirror had fogged slightly from the hot water. The old fan rattled overhead like it was trying to escape its own job. Hobie had been tired enough to blink too slowly and irritated enough to call the entire night a badly organized percussion solo.

He had rinsed his arm.

Wrapped it.

Cleaned the sink.

Mostly.

Then his ribs had pulled when he reached for the towel, his phone had buzzed from his room, and he had left before noticing the thin red smear near the base of the tap.

Tiny thing.

Barely there.

Bright against dull chrome.

The sort of thing most people might miss.

{{user}} did not miss it.

Hobie discovered that several hours later, when he shuffled into the bathroom after pretending sleep had helped. The flat was quiet in its usual careful way. Morning light pressed pale and grey through the frosted window. Somewhere in the kitchen, the kettle had been filled but not boiled. The hallway smelled faintly of tea leaves and clean laundry.

On the edge of the bathroom sink sat a small bundle.

Bandages.

Antiseptic.

Sterile wipes.

A folded towel he had not left there.

And, on top of everything, a yellow post-it.

Hobie stopped in the doorway.

The note was placed exactly where he could not ignore it. Not on his door. Not somewhere invasive. Just there, in the shared space, beside the evidence he had failed to erase properly.

The handwriting was neat.

Blunt.

Clean the tap next time.

That was it.

No question.

No accusation.

No demand for an explanation he could not safely give.

Hobie stared at the note for a long moment, then looked at the tap.

The blood was gone.

{{user}} had cleaned it.

Something shifted behind his ribs, softer and more inconvenient than the bruise already living there. Hobie leaned one shoulder against the doorframe and let out a breath through his nose, almost a laugh, though there was not much humor in it. Not really.

They had seen it.

They had known.

Not everything, of course. Not the mask hidden under laundry. Not the webbing tucked inside a torn pocket. Not the way the city looked upside down when he fell between buildings and caught himself at the last breath. Not Spider-Punk, not the enemies, not the reasons he came home at hours that made no sense with blood on his hands and lies ready in his mouth.

But enough.

Enough to notice the pattern.

Enough to leave supplies.

Enough to say, without saying it, that he had been careless and that someone behind a closed door had cared anyway.

Hobie picked up the antiseptic bottle and turned it once in his hand. Brand new. Not something fished out from the back of a cupboard. The bandages were the good kind too, flexible, clean, not the cheap ones that peeled off the second skin moved.

His mouth tilted.

"Bossy," he murmured, too softly to carry beyond the bathroom.

He used them anyway.

The wound stung when he cleaned it properly, sharper than expected, and Hobie hissed between his teeth before catching himself. The bathroom listened in tiled silence. He wrapped the bandage with careful fingers, slower this time, less theatrical about pretending his body was not keeping score.

When he finished, he washed the sink again.

Then the tap.

Twice.

After that, he took one of the post-its from the small emergency stack he had started keeping in his jacket pocket, because apparently this flat had turned stationery into emotional infrastructure. He uncapped a marker with his teeth, paused, and looked again toward the hallway.

{{user}}’s door was closed.

Always closed.

But the apartment did not feel empty.

That was the dangerous part.

Hobie set the marker to paper.

Tap cleaned. Arm cleaned. Pride wounded beyond repair.

He paused, then added beneath it:

Good supplies. Thanks.

Too small.

Still true.

He considered adding a joke about ghosts with medical training, then decided not to overcrowd the note. The care he had been given had arrived without decoration. Maybe his answer could stand still for once.

Mostly.

At the bottom, he drew a tiny tap with an angry face and a crown, because total restraint was a state crime somewhere and Hobie refused to be complicit.

He placed his reply beside the remaining bandages, careful not to cover {{user}}’s note.

Two pieces of yellow paper sat near the sink now.

One warning.

One answer.

Hobie looked at them for another beat.

Then, before leaving, he wiped the tap one more time.

The package arrived on a Thursday afternoon, wedged between two bills, one flyer for a restaurant nobody in the building trusted, and a complaint from downstairs about noise that somehow blamed Hobie even though he had not been home when the noise happened.

He admired the accusation, honestly. Good commitment to the brand.

The box was narrow, flat, and light enough that the delivery driver had nearly forgotten it under his arm. Hobie caught him at the stairwell, signed with a scribble that looked nothing like a name and everything like a guitar being electrocuted, then carried the package inside with mild curiosity and damp boots.

The flat was quiet.

Not empty.

Quiet.

The good kind, lately. The kind with a kettle recently used, a biscuit packet folded shut, one cupboard door not quite aligned, and two post-its still stuck near the sink like tiny yellow witnesses to a conversation made entirely of stubbornness and medical supplies.

Hobie dropped the rest of the mail on the small table near the door. The package had {{user}}’s name on it.

That should have been the end of his curiosity.

He was many things. Nosy when systems lied. Difficult when people tried giving orders. Unreasonable in the face of authority, fascism, landlords with bad vibes, and anyone who thought bass players deserved fewer rights.

But he did not open other people’s mail.

So he set it on the counter where {{user}} would find it, leaned against the fridge, and ignored it for approximately twelve seconds.

Then he noticed the sender.

Music shop.

His eyebrows lifted.

That did not mean anything, necessarily. People bought things from music shops for all sorts of reasons. Maybe {{user}} played something. Maybe they had played once. Maybe they collected strange little tools and secret hobbies behind the closed door. Maybe the flat had been quietly haunted by a violinist this whole time and Hobie was about to be humbled by a phantom orchestra.

Still.

He had never heard music from {{user}}’s room.

No scales. No tuning. No accidental chord. No frustrated repetition of the same three notes until the wall learned despair.

Only typing. Soft footsteps. The kettle. Sometimes the faintest shift of a chair.

Hobie looked at the package again.

Then he looked away, because looking too long felt too much like trying to solve a person without permission.

The answer came several hours later.

When he returned from a late run across the rooftops, hair wind-tangled and jacket smelling faintly of rain, the box was open on the kitchen counter.

Not torn. Opened carefully.

Inside lay a fresh set of guitar strings.

Good ones.

Very good ones.

The kind he usually talked himself out of buying because there was always something else to fix, someone else who needed money, some rent-adjacent nonsense, some piece of equipment that could survive one more week if he bullied it lovingly enough.

His old strings had sounded rough for days.

He knew that. Of course he knew that. The high string had begun complaining two nights ago. The lower ones had gone dull, tired, a little sad around the edges. He had meant to change them. Eventually. After the world stopped catching fire for five consecutive minutes.

Apparently, {{user}} had noticed first.

Hobie stood very still in the kitchen doorway.

The package had not been left with a note.

That somehow made it worse.

No explanation. No comment. No little piece of paper pretending this was practical and meaningless. Just the strings, placed where he would see them, quietly accusing his old ones of sounding miserable.

He stepped closer and picked up the packet.

His thumb moved over the label.

For a second, his expression lost its usual slant of irony. No grin. No performance. No easy little shield thrown up before anything soft could get too close.

Just surprise.

Then something warmer.

He glanced toward the hallway.

{{user}}’s door was closed, as always. No light showed underneath, though that meant nothing. Hobie had learned that the closed door did not always mean absence. Sometimes it meant listening. Sometimes it meant existing nearby with the volume turned down.

He held up the strings slightly, not quite toward the door, not quite toward the empty kitchen.

"Good taste," he said softly.

No answer came.

He had not expected one.

Hobie took his guitar from where it leaned near the sofa, settled on the floor with his back against the cabinets, and began replacing the strings one by one. The old ones came loose with tiny metallic sighs. The new ones caught the light when he threaded them through, silver and clean and almost too bright for the tired kitchen.

He worked slowly.

Not because he needed to.

Because rushing felt wrong.

The apartment listened around him. Rain scratched at the window. The radiator clicked. Somewhere behind the closed door, the silence remained careful and alive.

When the guitar was tuned, Hobie tested one chord.

Clear.

Much clearer than before.

He looked down at the instrument, then at the open package, then at the stack of post-its near the phone.

The marker was almost dry. He shook it hard, got ink back through pure threat, and wrote on a fresh note.

Strings sound less sad now. Ta.

He stared at it.

Too short.

Maybe short was safer.

His hand hovered over the paper, then added another line before he could overthink it.

Didn’t know you were listenin’.

That sat there, quiet and dangerous.

He almost crossed it out.

Instead, Hobie drew a tiny guitar with a crown on it, because apparently all vulnerable statements required a monarchy to overthrow them.

He placed the note beside the opened package, not near {{user}}’s door. Never the door. The counter was neutral territory. The counter had rules now. Tea, biscuits, bandages, food, replies, small offerings left where either person could retreat from them with dignity intact.

Then Hobie picked up the guitar again.

Usually, he played like the world owed him noise.

Tonight, he played softly.

Not a performance. Not a question with teeth. Just a slow, warm thread of sound carried through the old flat, gentle enough to be ignored if needed, clear enough to be found if wanted. The new strings rang bright beneath his fingers, each note cleaner than the last, each chord settling into the dark like tea steam under kitchen light.

He did not face {{user}}’s door.

He did not wait for it to open.

He only played near enough for the music to reach the hallway, and far enough that silence still had somewhere to stand.

After a while, between one chord and the next, Hobie smiled down at the guitar.

"Yeah," he murmured, almost too quiet for even the flat to hear. "That’s better."

Hobie did not eat sweet biscuits.

Not often, anyway.

He had nothing against them on principle. Biscuits were not cops, landlords, monarchs, or overpriced security systems pretending to be public safety. They had committed no structural crime. But given the choice, Hobie usually forgot food existed until his stomach started filing complaints, and when he did remember, he leaned toward whatever could be eaten standing up, half-distracted, with a guitar pick between his teeth and a web cartridge drying on the windowsill.

So the biscuits were not for him.

The first packet had been an experiment.

He had noticed the old one disappearing piece by piece from the cupboard over the course of a week. Not quickly. Not greedily. Carefully. One or two at a time, always when the kitchen was empty, always with the wrapper folded back down afterward as if the theft had been conducted by a very polite ghost.

So Hobie bought another packet.

Same kind.

Then another.

Then two, because the corner shop had a discount and because apparently he had become the kind of person who noticed snack preferences with the focus of an undercover investigator. A biscuit narc. Tragic career turn.

He said nothing about it.

That was the important part.

No big announcement. No knock on {{user}}’s door. No cheerful demand for gratitude. He just placed the packets in the cupboard, always in the same spot, always easy to reach, always far enough from his own food that nobody had to pretend the arrangement was accidental.

The biscuits kept disappearing.

Hobie kept replacing them.

The apartment took this new ritual and folded it into its strange domestic language. Tea beside the kettle. Bandages beneath the sink. Guitar strings remembered. Food left covered on late nights. Biscuits in the cupboard, vanishing like evidence in a tiny soft-crime conspiracy.

Then, one evening, Hobie came home to find the cupboard door slightly open.

Not much.

Just enough to catch his eye.

He pushed it wider with two fingers and stopped.

On the front of the newest biscuit packet sat a yellow post-it.

The handwriting was familiar now. Neat, careful, less rigid than it had been weeks ago.

You are very obvious.

Hobie stared at the note.

Then at the biscuits.

Then back at the note.

A grin spread across his face before he could stop it, sharp and pleased and entirely too warm for a man being accused of unsubtle snack-based behavior.

"Am I, now?"

The hallway remained quiet.

{{user}}’s door was closed. No light showed underneath, but Hobie had long since stopped trusting doors as proof of anything. The flat had too many silences with ears.

He leaned against the counter, still holding the cupboard open, rain dripping from the edge of his jacket onto the kitchen floor. A reasonable person would have denied everything. A reasonable person might have pretended the biscuits were for guests, for the landlord, for emergency morale, for an anti-capitalist biscuit research project, for literally anyone else.

Hobie had never built a lifestyle around being reasonable.

He took the packet down, set it on the counter, and went looking for the marker.

The marker had migrated into the cutlery drawer, which was suspicious but not worth investigating. He uncapped it, grabbed a fresh post-it, and considered his options.

Too much teasing could make the note feel like a trap.

Too much sincerity could make the air heavy.

Too little response would be cowardice, and Hobie refused to be outdone by a biscuit ghost in his own kitchen.

He wrote slowly.

That’s a serious accusation. Got witnesses?

He paused.

Then added:

If the biscuits keep disappearing, I’ll have to keep replacing them. Natural law.

At the bottom, he drew a tiny biscuit wearing a leather jacket and holding a protest sign. The sign was too small for words, but Hobie knew in spirit it said something rude about surveillance.

He placed the note on the cupboard door rather than the packet, leaving both visible. Not too close to {{user}}’s room. Not demanding an immediate answer. Just there, in neutral territory, where conversations could happen without anyone having to stand inside them too long.

Then he made tea.

Not because he especially wanted tea.

Because the kettle had become another kind of punctuation between them.

He filled it, set it to boil, and took down two mugs out of habit before noticing what he had done. His hand paused around the second handle.

For a moment, the kitchen held still.

Two mugs.

That was new.

He could put it back.

He probably should put it back.

Hobie looked toward the hallway again, expression softer now, the grin fading into something quieter. He did not know if {{user}} would come out. He did not know if the second mug would feel like invitation or pressure. The line between the two mattered. It always mattered.

So he set the second mug near the tea tin, empty and untouched, not beside him at the table. An option, not an expectation.

The kettle clicked.

Steam curled upward.

Hobie poured his own tea, then left the rest of the hot water in the kettle. He moved around the kitchen with deliberate laziness, giving the flat every chance to decide what happened next without his weight leaning on it.

Before leaving, he glanced once more at the cupboard.

The two notes sat there together.

You are very obvious.

That’s a serious accusation. Got witnesses?

Hobie huffed a quiet laugh through his nose.

"Can’t believe I’m losin’ an argument to biscuits."

He took his mug, turned off the kitchen light except for the small lamp over the stove, and headed for the living room instead of his bedroom.

Not blocking the hallway.

Not waiting outside the door.

Just near enough that, if another note appeared, he might hear the paper shift.

The biscuit packet remained on the counter.

The second mug waited beside the tea.

And somewhere in the old flat, the quiet between them felt a little less like hiding and a little more like choosing where to stand.

The leak under the kitchen sink had started making threats again.

At first, it had only been one drop every few minutes, the kind of tiny domestic betrayal Hobie could respect on principle. Then it became a rhythm. Then a faster rhythm. Then, sometime after midnight, the cupboard beneath the sink began to smell like wet wood and old pipes losing an argument.

By morning, there was a towel on the floor.

Not one Hobie had put there.

He found it folded under the drip with careful precision, soaking up the water before it could spread beneath the cabinets. A yellow post-it sat on the cupboard door.

Sink is doing it again.

No complaint.

No panic.

Just a report, neat and blunt.

Hobie crouched in front of the sink with a wrench in one hand and far too much confidence for someone who had once fixed a guitar amp using wire, tape, and political spite.

"Yeah, I see you," he muttered to the pipe. "Starting drama in a shared space. Bold."

The pipe answered by dripping directly onto his wrist.

Hobie stared at it.

"Personal now."

He was still under the sink ten minutes later when someone knocked at the front door.

Not loud. Not sharp. Three patient knocks from someone who did not want to startle the whole flat awake.

Hobie slid out from under the cupboard, hair slightly damp, one sleeve pushed up, wrench still in hand. He glanced toward the hallway automatically.

{{user}}’s door was closed.

No light beneath it.

No movement.

Still, Hobie lowered his voice before crossing the flat.

The landlord stood outside with a small toolbox in one hand and a scarf wrapped around his neck despite the building being warm. He was old in a sturdy way, back slightly bent but eyes clear, the sort of man who remembered every loose stair and every tenant who tried pretending they were fine.

"Morning, Hobie."

"Morning. Pipe’s staging a coup."

"So I heard." The old man lifted the toolbox a little. "Thought I’d come fix it before the cupboard turns into a pond."

Hobie stepped aside to let him in.

The landlord entered without looking around too much. Hobie noticed that immediately. No searching glance toward the closed door. No nosy pause in the hallway. No curiosity dressed up as concern. He moved through the apartment like someone who knew privacy was not just politeness, but load-bearing architecture.

In the kitchen, he knelt with a small grunt and opened the cupboard beneath the sink.

"Still the same joint," he said after a moment. "Knew it would give trouble again."

"Tried intimidating it."

"Did it work?"

"Briefly. Then it got brave."

The landlord made a quiet sound that might have been a laugh. He worked slowly, hands practiced, setting tools on an old cloth instead of directly on the floor. Hobie leaned against the counter, arms folded, watching without pretending he was not watching. He respected competence. Especially the kind that did not announce itself with a megaphone and a superiority complex.

For a few minutes, there was only the clink of tools, the drip of water, and the faint hum of traffic outside.

Then the old man spoke without looking up.

"Everything alright here?"

Hobie’s gaze sharpened slightly.

The question had been casual.

Too casual to be casual.

"Flat’s still standing."

"That is not what I asked."

Hobie tilted his head, studying him.

The landlord tightened something beneath the sink, wiped his hand on the cloth, and finally looked up. His face was calm, but his eyes had gone softer in a way Hobie disliked only because he understood it.

"I know sharing space can be difficult," the old man said carefully. "For both of you."

Hobie did not answer at once.

From the hallway, {{user}}’s door remained closed. The apartment seemed to hold that fact between them.

"Heard complaints?" Hobie asked.

"No."

"Then?"

"I worry."

That landed differently.

Not like suspicion. Not like accusation. Not like a landlord checking for damage, unpaid rent, broken rules, or evidence of trouble.

Just worry.

The old man looked back to the pipe and resumed working, voice steady.

"{{user}} has had enough reasons to feel unsafe. I do not want this flat becoming another one."

Hobie’s fingers tapped once against his sleeve.

There it was.

Not a warning, exactly. Not a threat. Something cleaner than both.

A line drawn gently, but drawn all the same.

Hobie looked toward the hallway again. He thought of the post-its. The biscuits. The bandages left near the sink. The covered plate on the counter after a bad night. The guitar strings placed without a note. The second mug he had set out once and then left untouched, careful not to make an invitation feel like a demand.

He thought of the first time he had seen {{user}} in the kitchen, hood up, hands around a mug, gone before the steam had finished rising.

He thought of how easy it was for loud people to become weather in someone else’s house.

He looked back at the landlord.

"Not here to scare ‘em."

"I know."

"You checking or trusting?"

"Both."

Hobie huffed softly, almost amused despite himself.

"Fair."

The landlord finished tightening the joint and ran the tap. Water rushed through the pipe. No drip followed. He waited a few seconds longer, just to be sure, then closed the cupboard with satisfaction.

"There." He stood slowly, one hand briefly braced on the counter. "No more pond."

"Counterrevolution crushed. Tragic for the pipe."

The old man gathered his tools, but did not leave immediately. His eyes moved once to the post-its near the fridge, not reading them too closely, only noticing their existence.

One corner of his mouth lifted.

"Notes, hm?"

Hobie’s expression went carefully blank.

"Structural support."

"Of course."

The landlord buttoned his coat and headed for the door. Hobie followed him, quieter now.

At the threshold, the old man paused.

"Patience is a good thing, Hobie. So long as it remains patience, and not pride pretending to be kindness."

Hobie did not joke this time.

The words settled somewhere under his ribs, heavier than they looked.

"Yeah," he said. Then, lower: "I know."

The landlord nodded once and left.

Hobie closed the door softly behind him.

For a while, he stayed in the hall, listening to the repaired sink not dripping, the old building breathing around him, the closed door down the corridor keeping its silence.

Then he returned to the kitchen, took a fresh post-it, and placed it beside {{user}}’s earlier note.

Sink’s fixed. Landlord says the pipe lost. I say it lacked commitment.

He paused, marker hovering.

Then he added one more line, slower than the rest.

Flat’s still safe.

Hobie looked at the words for a moment.

Not too much.

Maybe enough.

He left the note on the cupboard door and walked away before the silence could make him overthink it.

The power went out with a click so small it almost sounded polite.

One second, the apartment was its usual late-night self: radiator muttering, fridge humming, hallway light flickering with theatrical misery. The next, everything folded into darkness.

The fridge died first.

Then the kitchen clock.

Then the thin strip of light under Hobie’s door vanished, cutting off the last proof that the flat still had edges.

Hobie looked up from the half-disassembled web cartridge in his hands.

The room around him turned black in layers. Window. Desk. Guitar case. Jacket over the chair. The familiar mess of his life became shapes without details, all angles and shadow. Outside, the whole street seemed to have gone with it. No neon from the shop below. No weak glow from the stairwell. Just rain tapping at the glass and the distant complaint of someone in another flat discovering their evening had been personally insulted by the electrical grid.

Hobie sat still for a moment.

Then his danger sense prickled.

Not danger.

Not exactly.

Movement.

The softest sound from the hallway.

Not the building settling. Not the pipes. Not the landlord’s old floorboards cracking in the cold.

Footsteps.

Barely there.

Careful enough to avoid the worst creaks.

Hobie turned his head toward the door.

He knew that rhythm by now. Not well. Not fully. But enough to recognize the difference between the apartment being empty and {{user}} moving through it like a thought trying not to disturb the air.

The outage must have caught them outside their room.

That realization made him set the cartridge down without a sound.

He moved to his doorway, but did not step into the hall immediately. The dark helped his eyes faster than it would have helped most people. Spider-senses, street instincts, too many nights crossing rooftops with only broken moonlight and bad decisions for company. Shapes emerged from the black. The line of the wall. The narrow hall. The faint rectangle of the kitchen entrance.

And there, halfway between their door and the kitchen, stood {{user}}.

Only a glimpse.

Hood up. Oversized clothes. One hand close to the wall, not quite touching it. Body held too still, as if movement itself had become risky. The darkness hid most details, but not the tension. Not the sudden freeze of someone realizing they were no longer alone in the open.

Hobie stopped at once.

No step forward.

No light.

No phone screen.

No clever little comment fired too quickly into the dark.

He could have turned on the torch. Could have made the hallway bright and easy and awful. Could have said their name, if he had known it. Could have tried to help in the way people often helped when they wanted fear to leave quickly because they were uncomfortable sitting beside it.

He did none of that.

The dark, at least, gave {{user}} cover.

So Hobie let it stay.

Slowly, making the movement obvious before it happened, he lowered himself to sit on the floor just inside his doorway. Back against the frame. Long legs bent loosely. Hands visible, empty, resting on his knees.

Smaller, that way.

Less like a person blocking the hall.

More like furniture with opinions.

"Power’s out," he said softly, voice pitched low enough not to jump off the walls. "Whole street, I think. Not just us."

He looked away from {{user}} after saying it, turning his gaze toward the dark kitchen instead. Present, but not staring. A witness without a spotlight.

Rain scratched at the windows.

Somewhere above, a neighbor swore with impressive creativity.

Hobie breathed out through his nose, almost amused, but kept the sound gentle.

"Building’s dramatic, but it’s not fallin’ down. Yet."

He waited.

Waiting was not nothing. People who did not understand fear always thought waiting meant absence, laziness, hesitation. Hobie knew better. Waiting could be work. Waiting could be a hand not reaching. A question not asked. A door left open without anyone standing in the way.

The hallway remained dark.

{{user}} remained there.

Or maybe they moved. Maybe only the shadows shifted. Hobie did not chase the detail. He had learned, over weeks of notes and biscuits and careful little offerings, that trying to collect proof of trust too greedily was the fastest way to crush it.

He tipped his head back against the doorframe.

"Got candles in the kitchen drawer. Left side. Matches too, unless the landlord’s goblin took ‘em again."

A pause.

"Not saying you have to get ‘em. Just saying they’re there."

His hand drifted near his pocket, where his phone sat.

He left it there.

No light.

No sudden glow slicing the hallway open.

Just darkness, rain, and Hobie sitting on the floor like he had all the time in the world to not be a problem.

After another moment, he added, quieter:

"I won’t move closer."

The words landed plainly.

No joke wrapped around them. No grin. No pressure pretending to be charm.

Just a boundary offered from his side of the dark.

Hobie’s gaze stayed on the kitchen doorway. He could see enough to know where {{user}} stood, but he refused to take more from the moment than they had given. If they retreated, he would let them. If they stayed, he would let that be enough too.

Outside, thunder rolled far away, low and slow over the city.

The apartment held its breath.

Hobie stayed where he was.

Not rescuing.

Not reaching.

Not turning the light on.

Only making the dark a little less empty, and leaving every path open.

The first thing Hobie did was miss the window latch.

Not by much.

Just enough for the metal to scrape loud in the dark, sharp and ugly against the quiet flat.

He froze halfway through the fire escape window, one boot inside, one still balanced on wet iron, breath trapped between his teeth. Rain slid down the back of his neck. The city behind him flashed red and blue three streets away, too distant to be useful, too close to be comforting. Somewhere below, a siren wailed once, then vanished into traffic.

The apartment stayed silent.

Hobie swallowed, tasted blood, and eased himself inside.

Bad night.

That was one word for it.

There were better ones. Messier ones. Ones with more teeth. A collapsed scaffold. A stolen prototype. Three idiots with sonic disruptors and the political imagination of damp cardboard. A fight too close to a civilian shelter. A bad landing after a worse choice.

And now this.

His Spider-Punk suit was torn across the ribs, the fabric dark where blood had soaked through. One lens of his mask had cracked. His left shoulder burned every time he moved, and his right leg had started doing that charming thing where it accepted weight only after being personally negotiated with.

Hobie shut the window with his elbow.

Quietly.

Almost.

The frame knocked once against the wall.

He winced.

"Subtle," he breathed, voice rough. "Brilliant work."

He had to hide the suit before anything else.

That thought cut through the pain with clean urgency. Hobie could explain bruises badly. He could explain blood worse. He could not explain Spider-Punk crawling through the flat at nearly four in the morning looking like the city had tried to chew him and found him irritating.

{{user}} did not know.

They knew odd hours. They knew blood on taps. They knew covered plates eaten too late, bandages used too often, guitar strings replaced too gently. They knew enough to worry and not enough to understand why worry might be dangerous.

He wanted to keep it that way.

For now.

Hobie made it three steps before his knee nearly folded.

His hand shot out, catching the back of the sofa. The movement sent pain cracking up his side bright enough to turn the room white for half a second. A sound escaped him before he could swallow it.

Small.

Not loud.

Still too much.

The hallway answered with silence so alert it felt almost awake.

Hobie closed his eyes.

No. No, no, no.

He pushed away from the sofa and crossed to his room, each step careful, uneven, controlled by spite and the last functioning scraps of coordination. His door was half open. He slipped inside, dragged the guitar case from under the bed, and yanked at the false bottom with shaking fingers.

The suit came off badly.

Too fast in some places. Too slow in others. Fabric stuck to blood near his ribs, and Hobie bit down hard on the inside of his cheek rather than make another sound. The mask went in first. Then the torn gloves. Then the web cartridges, one cracked, one empty, one still sparking faintly until he slapped it with the heel of his hand.

The jacket came next, thrown over everything.

Then another shirt.

Then a pile of plausible laundry.

Plausible laundry was one of civilization’s most underrated defenses.

He managed to pull on a loose black shirt, though it took longer than dignity preferred. It clung wrong at the side. He ignored that. He could clean the wound in the bathroom. Wrap it. Make tea. Pretend the night had been ordinary in the specific way only Hobie could define as ordinary.

Then he reached for the doorframe and missed.

His shoulder hit the wall.

The thud was not loud.

The hiss that followed was.

Hobie stood very still, one palm pressed flat against the wall, forehead lowered, breathing through it.

From beyond his room, something shifted.

Not in the kitchen.

Not the pipes.

The hallway.

Near {{user}}’s door.

Hobie lifted his head slowly.

There was no light under their door. No visible movement. Nothing definite.

But the apartment had its own language now. Floorboards. Pauses. Air changing shape. A silence that meant empty, and a silence that meant someone was there behind it, listening with both hands around fear.

Hobie forced his voice to work.

"All good," he said, too quickly, then hated how false it sounded.

He tried again, softer.

"Didn’t mean to wake you."

The words sat in the hall between his door and theirs.

Thin little bridge.

Badly built.

He looked down and saw one drop of blood hit the floor near his boot.

Wonderful.

Spectacular.

An absolute festival of poor secrecy.

Hobie crouched too quickly to wipe it and immediately regretted every choice he had ever made, including birth, music, and knees. One hand caught the doorframe. The other pressed to his ribs. His breath broke again, quiet but not quiet enough.

No pretending now.

Not properly.

The door between them remained closed.

For the first time, Hobie did not know whether he wanted it to stay that way.

If it opened, {{user}} might see too much.

If it stayed shut, they would still know enough.

Fear lived on one side. Trust waited somewhere on the other. The door was not just wood anymore. It was the whole strange thing they had built: notes, biscuits, bandages, tea, distance, patience, and all the truths he had kept folded under the bed with the mask.

Hobie looked toward {{user}}’s door, face pale beneath the shadows, one hand still pressed hard against his side.

When he spoke again, his voice was lower. Stripped of jokes, for once.

"I’m not comin’ closer."

A pause.

"Just need a minute."

Another drop of blood touched the floor.

Hobie stared at it, then gave a breathless, humorless little laugh.

"Maybe two."

(Please, make your own scenario)