hey, spiderman!
˚⁎⁺˳ . ⊹ Ilya Rozanov didn’t grow up in Boston, so he’s not familiar with the friendly neighborhood icon Spiderman — at least until he runs into him in an alley and then proceeds to proposition the superhero on a rooftop. Then he’s more familiar than most.
˚⁎⁺˳ . ⊹ male!reader, ilya x reader. reader is spiderman! reader is a senior in college, 22 years old. ilya's 21. implied sexual content, nothing explicit. if you saw my should i write this prompt, intro is pretty much identical :)) just a couple sentences edited/changed
˚⁎⁺˳ . ⊹ taglist: @cassandra-reborn-anew
“What the fuck is this?” Ilya asks, baffled, leaning over Cliff’s shoulder to glance at his phone screen. “Who is this idiot swinging around?”
Cliff barks a laugh. “Yeah, sure, Roz.”
“No, seriously.” Ilya reaches down and plucks the phone from Cliff’s grasp, rewinding the video to watch the shaky footage of a masked stranger flinging himself off a building, swinging on a white rope to reach the nearby rooftop. “Is he… is he dressed as a fucking spider? Is that a web?”
“You seriously don’t know who Spiderman is?” Cliff replies, indignant. “Does Russia not have supes?”
“Of course we have superheroes, asshole. We just don’t have morons in spandex.”
Ilya’s still watching the grainy video footage, a series of clips slapped together, jaw slightly agape as the man lands deftly on the hood of an armored truck going at least 70 miles an hour.
“What did you say name was? Spiderman?”
“Uh, yeah. He’s kind of a big deal in Boston. Local, though.” Cliff replies. “Saved me, once.”
Ilya glances up, bemused. “Yeah? From what? Waterspout?”
Cliff grins. “Ha-ha, asshole. Nah, I was walking back from a girl’s house, cut through an alley, and got jumped. Guy pulled a knife, and I thought I was a goner, and then Spiderman appeared and rocked his shit.”
He leaps up to continue his story, making broad, sweeping movements with his arms and legs in what Ilya’s sure is a patently inaccurate physical recreation of Spiderman’s movements.
“And then he was like, psh —” Cliff shoots his arm out, palm-up, middle and ring finger tucked in, “and stuck that bastard to the wall for the cops. Then he walked me home.”
“Did he kiss you goodnight, too?” Ilya drawls, and Cliff leverages himself off the bench and plucks his phone from Ilya’s hands, then tucks it into the top cubby of his locker.
“You should ask the other guys,” Cliff replies. “Everyone has a Spiderman story. Surprised you haven’t met him yet.”
“Maybe because I do not walk through dark alleys at night,” Ilya grouches, but stands with Cliff, urging him out into and onto the ice. “Is called common sense. You do not need superheroes when you have common sense.”
He does, however, when he’s sure Cliff is gone, pull aside the new rookie and demand to hear his Spiderman story.
//
“This is fucking delicious,” You say, tugging your mask up over your nose so you can take a bite of the burrito you’d snagged from the place down the street from your apartment.
Nobody responds. God, you should hope nobody responds — you’re dangling off the top of a building, feet swinging in the frigid open air of a winter Boston night; it’d be terrifying if someone answered you.
You can still remember distinctly when you’d been in a similar situation a couple of months ago and Deadpool had popped out of fucking nowhere, and scared you so bad you’d fallen off the roof.
Hopefully Deadpool wasn’t back in town. That’d be a fucking nightmare. He always disrupted your routine, and you had a pretty good thing going for you right now.
Your schedule was comparatively lighter senior year; just a couple of seminars, labs, and a junior-level engineering class you were TA-ing. As a result, you had the extra time on your hands to break up the inevitable increase in drunken brawls as hockey season started to get going. You kept meaning to catch a game, but Raiders tickets ran for about 300 bucks a pop, and you needed the cash for rent and textbooks.
Below you, there’s a loud crash as a group of guys clamber out of a bar, flooding onto the sidewalk, shoving at each other. The trashcan they knocked over clatters against the pavement, spilling empty fountain drinks and fast food wrappers.
“Walk slow,” you yell around a mouthful of burrito. One of the guys squints up at you, face brightening when he recognizes the classic blue and red of the suit, and waves.
“Yeah, sure, Spiderman! Have a good night!” He shouts, words slightly slurred, and you watch as he comes close to colliding with a lamppost. You give him a thumbs-up, keeping an eye on the group to make sure none of them try to get into a car, and relax when the guy stumbles into the street to flag down an Uber.
It takes another fifteen uneventful minutes to fully polish off the burrito and look around for something to wipe your greasy fingers off on, then clamber back to your feet and pull the mask down over your mouth.
Your brain is keeping track of several things at once, buzzing with what you refuse to call your “tingle” — the wailing sirens three blocks down, which the paramedics seemed to have under control; a screaming fight at the apartment over on Fifth, which you’d tried to break up exactly once before realizing it was some twisted form of foreplay; and…
Someone’s yelling. You leap to the opposite edge of the roof, peer down over the lip of the building, and, yeah — someone is beating the shit out of a couple of guys.
You take a second to watch it before realizing you should probably break it up. There are two beer-bros sprawled on the ground, toques pulled low over their eyes, while a blond man slams his fist into a lanky guy’s face.
“Woah, woah,” You call, dropping down into the alley and snagging the lanky man with a web to pull him back until you can let him down gently onto the pavement next to his friends. He’s out cold. “Are we practicing kindness?”
The blond man looks up, eyes squinted tight with rage, and you do a double-take. “Holy — Ilya Rozanov?”
“Get out of my way,” Rozanov spits, Russian accent low and angry. “This is not your business.”
“Think it might be, buddy. ‘Neighborhood’ in ‘Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman’ refers to this one. Also, I think if I leave you might kill someone.” You respond, still slightly startled. This is Ilya Rozanov, right?
A guy in your Comparitive American History class, who sits right below you, always has the Raiders games playing on his laptop during lecture. Whenever you were feeling particularly bored, you’d prop your head on your hand and watch over his shoulder as Rozanov darted around on the ice. The man in front of you looks pretty much identical.
“Spiderman?” Rozanov asks, suddenly looking more interested. “Good. You can arrest them, yes?”
“Don’t have jurisdiction. Police kicked up a big fuss about it, even when I said I’d pay for my very own shiny little badge,” You say, eyes still tracing Rozanov’s face. “What’d they do, anyway?”
“Spiked a girl’s drink,” Rozanov responds, and your face sours.
“Alright, call the cops. Ask for Jimmy Kowalski,” You say, turning around and digging your foot into the lanky man’s ribs to flip him over, applying more pressure than strictly necessary. He rolls over to clump in with his other friends, who Rozanov also presumably knocked out. Jesus Christ.
You web them up, a thick layer that traps them against the wall of the alley, as Rozanov gets off the phone with the police.
“They will get punished, yes?” Rozanov asks, and you nod.
“Yeah, Jimmy was raised by his mom and has three daughters. He’ll slap ‘em with as much as he can. I’ll also keep an eye on them if I see them around.”
“Should cut off their dicks,” Rozanov grounds out, and you laugh.
“Yeah, that sounds about right.” You deliberately turn your back, already slinging a web onto the fire escape above your head. “Well, duty calls. Sure would be a shame if someone happened to rough ‘em up a little more while I was gone.”
Rozanov grins.
//
“Mozhno mne nemnogo?” You ground out, cognizant of how stupid you probably sound. Can I have some of that?
“Mm, no. Is terrible. Try again.” Rozanov snipes, peeling back the layers of foil on the burrito.
“Duolingo says I’m real good,” You mumble back, pointedly avoiding eye contact.
“Duolingo is wrong,” Rozanov chides. “Is stupid app for stupid people.”
You obligingly repeat the halting sentence to him in Russian, focusing on drawing out the correct vowel sounds. Rozanov makes snappy corrections on your pronunciation immediately.
Losing patience, you groan and snatch the burrito out of his hands, pushing up your mask and taking an obnoxiously large bite. You weren’t sure why Rozanov had asked to hang out if he was going to be an asshole the entire time.
Well, maybe “asked” had been a strong word. More like ambushed you — he’d been waiting on the roof for you when you’d arrived, leaning up against the raised edge.
“Well, hey there, creeper,” You’d drawled, trying to hide a small frisson of panic — your “tingle” hadn’t even let you know someone else was up here.
Rozanov had pushed up, messy curls peeking out from under his toque, and nodded at you. He’d been holding a cigarette in between the fingers of his right hand, and had brought it up to take a deep, intentional drag, blowing the smoke into your face.
“Hello.”
You’d crossed over to him in two easy strides, leaned over, and pinched the cigarette out of his grip before putting it out against the concrete railing and throwing it over the side of the building.
Rozanov had blinked. “Litterbug.”
“Someone should tell Spiderman about this,” You’d grinned. Rozanov had not been amused.
“I came to ask how the girl was. Figured you might be back here. Saw you drop down from here last night.” He’d said.
“Oh!” You hadn’t expected that. “She’s good. I looped back and took her home, after. Little shaken up, but said that she’ll be okay. She wanted me to thank you.”
Rozanov had smiled. It lit up his whole face, tugging at the corners of his mouth and brightening his eyes. You’d swayed unconsciously into his space before you’d realized what was happening, and he’d plucked your dinner out of your hands before you’d withdrawn.
“Mm. Is this from TSK? Let’s split it. I haven’t eaten, yet.”
And then the bastard had started unwrapping your dinner. You’d made the mistake of letting him know you were “learning” Russian (answering Duolingo prompts between classes), and so he wouldn’t let you have a bite, either, until you could ask him for some in Russian.
Now, tucking into the soft beans and rice and tender pork wrapped in the tortilla, you’re grateful you opted to just steal it back.
Rozanov looks slightly startled. “I can see your mouth.”
“That’s what tends to happen when I eat,” You respond, smacking your lips obnoxiously. “Occupational hazard, one could say.”
“Da, thank you, asshole. I meant… you have a secret identity, no? You do not seem to be protecting it very well.”
“Eh. We’re in Boston. Doubt you’re going to stop every stranger on the street who even sort of looks like the bottom half of my face,” You respond.
“I might,” Ilya scowls. “Go Spiderhunting.”
“Why don’t you do me a huge favor and let the Green Goblin know you’re at it? He’d love that.”
There’s a beat of silence. You offer the burrito to Ilya.
“You want some? Dinner and a view. Man, I am killing it today, huh?”
He laughs — a low, deep sound that makes your heartbeat jump — and takes the burrito from you, sinking his teeth into the filling.
“Give me your number,” he says suddenly, holding out his phone to you. You raise an eyebrow, but obediently punch in the digits.
You highly doubt that Ilya has the technological know-how to do a backtrace on the number, but still give him one from an old-phone you’d rigged up that doesn’t connect to your real identity.
He nods, satisfied, and continues to eat the burrito.
“I would not, go, uh, Spiderhunting,” Ilya announces between bites.
You open your mouth to offer a bland thank you, and then he follows up: “Would probably put waterspouts out of work. Not in this economy, no-no.”
You shoot him an unimpressed look. “Yeah, laugh it up, chucklehead. Also, what the hell do you know about the economy? You make like three million bucks a year.”
He sobers for a minute, looking serious, and visibly shakes it off.
“Flatscreens are expensive these days,” He simpers back instead, sarcastic, and you laugh.
“Yeah, fuck you, dude.”
“All by myself? I thought you were supposed to be a helper, Spiderman.”
“And put your right hand out of work?” You grin, then drop your voice and affect his Russian accent. “Not in this economy, no-no.”
His eyes go to your exposed lips, heavy and hot, and you realize how close you’ve inadvertently gotten. Your gaze drifts down his body and traces back up, action almost involuntary.
Rozanov grins, feral, and spreads his legs slightly. Your eyes drop unconsciously to the bulge in his cargos, straining subtly against the fabric.
“Already? I haven’t even touched you,” You say, quirking an eyebrow.
Rozanov juts out his hips slightly. “Then fix that.”
You take a second to wonder What the fuck am I doing before you’re reaching out and yanking him into you, catching his lower lip harshly between your teeth.
//
“You did not.” Cliff grounds out, tape in his hand, still halfway caught on his stick, forgotten. “You got bad enough FOMO from our Spiderman stories that you whored yourself out on a rooftop?”
“Do not be jealous,” Ilya grins smugly. He’s not sure what FOMO means, but can infer based on how unbelievably bewildered Cliff is.
“I’m not jealous!” Cliff explodes. “I — Ilya, how the fuck did you even —“
“A gentleman does not kiss and tell.” Ilya responds primly. “Unless you want to hear that nothing about Spiderman was ‘itsy bitsy’ —“
“Nope! Nope!” Cliff yelps, leaping from his seat and pushing past the doors of the locker room.