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“I know we haven’t seen each other in a while, but -” Ilya’s words are interrupted by a keening, throaty whine from Shane’s open, twisted mouth - “I don’t remember you being this sensitive.”
They’re celebrating their collective win at the All-Star Game, this time in Ilya’s hotel room. Ilya presses another kiss onto Shane’s chest, right above his nipple. Shane’s back arches up and off the bed as he moans.
“Jesus,” Ilya mutters, dumbfounded. He leans in again, experimentally, to wrap his lips around Shane’s nipple, his hand reaching up to grasp loosely at Shane’s neck. Shane bucks his hips up, seemingly without realizing, since he does it with such force he throws Ilya off of him.
Ilya clambers back on top of Shane, shaking his head in wonder. He leans in to press a chaste kiss to Shane’s lips. The lips part and he releases another throaty moan.
“So good,” Shane whispers, groaning.
“Tell me. Hollander. What is?”
Shane bucks his hips up again. Ilya reaches underneath his own body to press his hands against Shane’s hipbones, steadying him.
“Jus- just everything. You.”
Ilya chuckles lightly, shaking his head again. His fingers descend lower, traveling along the waistband of Shane’s boxers. They’ve been at this together for so many years, but with such long gaps in between, Ilya doesn’t take any of it for granted. He lets his fingers dance on that soft skin, following Shane’s happy trail, as his eyes drift up to Shane’s in a silent question.
Ilya finds that Shane’s eyes are squeezed shut. Ilya removes his hand from Shane’s boxers and he cries out, his wail so pained that Ilya freezes for a moment, his heart thundering in his chest.
“Hollander?” Ilya’s voice comes out croaky.
“P- put it back,” Shane pants. His hips have already escaped Ilya’s hold and are bucking up again. “Your hand.”
“Oh,” Ilya breathes, relief flooding his chest. He places his hand to cup Shane’s girth loosely through his boxers. Shane throws his head back and arches up into the touch, moaning, and then -
His head falls back against the bed, and he sags. Ilya feels something wet seep through the cloth.
“Uh.” Ilya can’t come up with the right words.
Shane, for the first time in a while, opens his eyes again. He catches Ilya’s gaze and immediately buries his face into the crook of his arm.
“Hey, hey,” Ilya tries, climbing up Shane’s body until his head is above Shane’s head again, where he gently pries Shane’s head away from his arm.
“That’s embarrassing,” Shane whispers, blush coating his face.
Ilya shakes his head, his own pulsing hard-on brushing up against Shane’s groin. “No, it’s not.”
“You look shocked,” Shane argues.
“Well,” Ilya starts, then stops. “I am, a little.” Shane winces and turns his head away. “Sorry, sorry,” Ilya laments. “It’s just. I don’t remember that happening before.” ‘That’ meaning Shane coming nearly untouched within the first few minutes of hooking up.
Shane looks down at where their crotches are inches apart. Ilya follows his gaze. His head feels floaty at seeing that Shane is hard again, already.
“We don’t have to…” Shane trails off. “Keep going. If you don’t want to.” There’s something vulnerable, almost scared, in his big brown eyes. Ilya would do anything to wipe that look right off his face.
“Are you kidding me?” Ilya leans down and swipes his tongue from Shane’s collarbone up his neck, fusing their lips together once he’s high enough. Shane moans, low and thready, the entire time. Ilya smirks against Shane’s lips. “That was so.” He kisses him. “Fucking.” He kisses again. “Hot.” He reaches down, squeezes Shane’s length through his boxers, and revels in the sight of Shane digging his nose into Ilya’s neck for reprieve.
They make quick work of removing each other’s clothes. Ilya takes Shane’s boxers off slow and steady, dragging the cloth down Shane’s legs with his teeth. The simple sensation of the air hitting Shane’s cock is torture enough for Shane to dig his nails into the mattress and arch up off the bed like he’s possessed. Ilya leaves the boxers in a tangle by Shane’s feet, desperate to go nearer to Shane when he’s like this, all needy and wanting.
Ilya climbs back on top of Shane to press a wet kiss to his mouth, one hand cradling Shane’s face and the other reaching down to tug at his cock.
One tug. That’s all he does.
Shane comes hard into his hand.
Ilya tries his best to keep the surprise out of his face. Shane tries to cover his face again, this time by burying it into the crook of Ilya’s neck. Ilya strokes the back of his head and waits for him to reemerge, like a frightened pillbug uncurling.
When his face finally drifts back into Ilya’s line of sight, he looks somehow so innocent, even with his come all over Ilya’s hands and hips. “I want to keep going,” Shane whispers.
Ilya tilts his head at him. “Can you?”
Shane simply nods down to their hips. Ilya sees Shane is hard again. Ilya’s jaw drops open.
“You’re okay?” Ilya asks.
Shane fidgets underneath him. Suddenly, his gaze is elsewhere, anywhere but on Ilya. Ilya reaches down to latch his fingers onto Shane’s chin, forcing his gaze back up.
“Hollander.”
“I’m fine.” Ilya stares down at him, unconvinced. “It’s - it’s nothing.”
“Something is on your mind.”
Ilya tugs Shane’s chin side to side, testing his grip. Shane lets him. “Just a busy few months.”
Ilya bites his lip. “You would tell me if something is bothering you, though?”
Shane responds, although he’s staring resolutely at Ilya’s nose rather than at his eyes. “Of course.” He hesitates, fiddling with his fingers. “Everything feels, just, so much,” Shane mutters.
“In a good way or bad way?” Ilya stares back at Shane quizzically.
“Right now, good way,” Shane insists, his nose brushing up against Ilya’s. “I want this. So badly. I want you.”
Ilya opens his mouth to respond. But Shane wasn’t done, it seems.
“Inside me,” he clarifies. “And I might, um, come a lot more. During that. But I still want you to keep going.”
Ilya is not sure he’s heard anything hotter than that in his entire life. He presses their foreheads together, huffing, and nods against Shane, moving Shane’s head up and down with the motion. “Okay then. On your back.”
Shane flashes him a crooked smile. “I am on my back.”
“Oh. Right,” Ilya mutters, shaking his head. Shane giggles sweetly, and with Ilya’s hand wrapped loosely around his throat, Ilya can feel the vibration. Ilya breaks into a small smile too at Shane’s joy. “Okay, Hollander. It was not that funny.”
Shane simply shakes his head, his chest jumping with his laughter. Ilya scoffs, hiding his own amusement with faux irritation.
“I got confused, mister born-again virgin,” Ilya scoffs.
“‘Get on your back,’ he says,” Shane paraphrases, chuckling. Above him, Ilya presses his lips together into a fine line.
“Okay. That’s it.” He reaches both of his calloused palms down to grip at Shane’s hips, holding them tight like two handlebars. Ilya leans his own body weight off of Shane and flips him on the bed, Shane landing unceremoniously on his stomach, the plush mattress softening his impact.
Ilya climbs back on top, reaching his hand down to palm at the meat of Shane’s ass. “Oh god,” Shane murmurs, voice muffled against the pillowcase.
“You like that?” Ilya reaches both hands down to palm at Shane’s ass, pulling each globe apart. Shane practically screams into the mattress. Ilya, startled, drops his hands.
Underneath him, Shane whines. “Don’t stop.”
Ilya obliges, continuing to palm at Shane’s ass. He reaches over to grab a bottle of lube, sliding a bit of it onto his fingers.
“Tell me when,” Shane says, voice muffled where his cheek is pressed to the mattress.
“What is this, Italian restaurant?” Ilya chuckles, shaking his head. Still, he reaches up to stroke Shane’s cheekbone lovingly. “Okay. Now.”
Ilya fits one long finger inside Shane’s warm, throbbing hole, before he hears a long, drawn-out moan, followed by a stifled sigh. Ilya taps Shane’s back, curious. “Did you…?”
“Yeah,” Shane confirms, huffing. “Keep going.” Then: “You might need to go quick.”
Ilya nods, thrusting a second finger inside Shane and curling until he finds that sweetest spot that makes his toes curl. Once three fingers are in, he pulls them out, to which Shane groans and kicks his shins up to punt at Ilya’s butt.
“Patience, patience,” Ilya chides.
“Sorry. Just want you,” Shane croaks.
Ilya softens, lining himself up with Shane’s hole. He bends down to press a soft kiss to Shane’s back, right between his shoulderblades. And then he thrusts in, Shane’s soft heat enveloping his cock like they were perfectly molded to fit each other. Ilya groans at the feeling, but his sounds are dwarfed by Shane’s moan the second Ilya bottoms out inside him.
“Okay?” Ilya breathes, just barely holding himself back from thrusting at full force.
“Perfect,” Shane breathes. Ilya huffs, a tinge of pride bursting in his chest, before he runs his palm down the arch of Shane’s back and begins thrusting.
The smack of skin against skin gets drowned out by Shane’s moans of pleasure. Ilya can spot his toes curling and his face twitching with the force of it. Ilya, himself, feels like his skin is on fire with how good this feels: did it always feel this good? Did Shane always moan this loudly? And did he always come so, so many times?
Ilya knows the answer to the last one for certain: this, the coming over and over with no recovery time, is new.
When Ilya’s hips eventually stutter into an orgasm, he spills into Shane before collapsing alongside him in bed. He strokes Shane’s back, peppering small, warm kisses onto his shoulders and down his arms.
Ilya doesn’t need Shane to confirm it. He witnessed himself: In this one night, this one single encounter, Shane came six times.
Ilya wants to ask about it. He’d like to think he’d do it in a simple, a casual way: Hey, I’m really flattered by all this, so I’m asking more out of curiosity than anything: are you, like, okay right now? And also, since we’re on the topic, since when did your skin grow fifty times the nerve endings that it had before, where one kiss sends you reeling?
Ilya wants to ask Shane about it all. But then Shane is flipping himself around and burrowing his nose into Ilya’s chest, and the warmth from his body is all-consuming and his expression so goddamn sincere, that Ilya forgets what seemed so important to him a second ago. He rests his chin atop Shane’s soft brown hair and cards his fingers through it until he falls asleep.
----
The linesman is shouting something beside Shane, spit flying from his mouth. He should probably be listening.
He tries to, he really does. But, as is usual, he doesn’t hear just the lineman. He hears: “That’ll be $15.23, sir.” The jingling of coins in someone’s pocket as they reach for their pocket. Popcorn popping at the concession stand. “Excuse me, miss, where’s the bathroom?” A whiny, young voice. “Mom, I want a Hollander jersey!” Two teenage boys bickering and slapping each other: “Rozanov can take Hollander any day.” “In your dreams, fuckface.” Then, probably from the bench: “Holy fuck. Hollander looks high right now.”
Hayden’s voice is sharp enough to snap Shane out of his daze. “I gave you the warning. Stay still next time.”
Oh, he thinks, belatedly. The lineman was talking to him. He moved too early to the puck, something he’s been doing ever since the bite. “Sorry,” he mutters, more to himself than anything.
Ilya is sitting on the bench, chin in his palm. Shane can see him crystal-clear from here - he no longer has any need for glasses, another side-effect of the bite - and if he really listens closely, he can hear Ilya’s breathing from all the way across the ice. It’s quick and erratic. That is proof enough that the gears are turning in Ilya’s brain, wondering why the hell Shane’s reaction time is so off tonight.
Well. Shane can’t really answer that one, now can he?
The game ends with an uproarious, devastated crowd. It’s a home loss for the Metros. Shane skates forlornly to the edge of the ice. As the crowd files out, Shane hears Ilya’s familiar pattern of skating from behind him. He whips around fast, probably too fast, if Ilya’s surprised face is any indicator.
“Meet at yours tonight?” Ilya asks. His eyes are bright and his cheeks red, still joyous from their win.
Shane attempts to curl his fingernails into his palm; he doesn’t get very far with the gloves on. “Sorry. I can’t tonight.”
Ilya quirks his head, his eyebrows furrowing. “C’mon. Don’t be sore loser.”
Shane stiffens. He is trying hard to focus on just Ilya in front of him, not on the mindless chatter in the Metros locker room, but he still hasn’t quite mastered the art of filtering out all the excessive input his senses now receive. “It’s not that. It’s just, I’m busy tonight.”
He pictures his red hoodie, ski mask, and his blue pajama pants laying underneath a floorboard in his bedroom. Ilya skates closer to him.
“Busy with who?”
“No one,” Shane assures. “No one. You know I…” Shane trails off, but he can tell from the way Ilya’s heartbeat slows, relaxing just slightly, that he understands: You know I only do that with you. “I’m really sorry. It’s just - with our team schedule, I rarely get a night to myself these days.”
Ilya tugs his helmet off, his blond curls springing free and resting on his forehead. He pushes them away impatiently, his face forlorn. “Yeah. Okay, Hollander.”
Shane nods at him politely, eyes skating over the dwindling crowd around them on the ice. He maintains a distance between he and Ilya that others would perceive as collegial and nothing more. “I promise we’ll do something next time I’m in Boston.”
“Sure,” Ilya says, looking unconvinced. He sniffs and rubs at his nose, his face suddenly turning grim. “Just - Hollander. Stay in your apartment, okay? I watch the news. There are these subway killers. They were seen right near your stop. They are still not caught.”
Shane forces his face to remain blank, revealing nothing. Inwardly, his heart thumps incessantly against his chest. “I don’t know much about those guys, but. Okay.”
Rozanov shakes his head, shuddering as if disturbed. “I don’t want to scare you. I just mean - until the police or this Spider-guy takes care of them, please stay safe, okay?”
Shane feels his chest tighten at the mention of the ‘Spider-guy.’
“I always do,” Shane says, gritting his teeth. He offers Ilya one more small smile that he hopes conveys everything he’s feeling, while at the same time nothing of what he’s thinking. Then he hops off the ice, head down, and tries very hard to forget the sound of Ilya’s unmistakable sigh that rings in his ears long beyond the distance anyone else would be able to hear it.
----
Montreal is cold tonight, the streets desolate. Shane paces the thin alleyways between apartment buildings, searching for anyone else to help before calling it a day.
Shane yanks his mask down lower where it slid up, revealing a thin patch of skin by his neck. He tugs his threadbare hoodie closer to his chest, shivering. He wished he had swapped it out for something warmer, but he really thought he’d be working up a sweat with how much he planned to exert himself tonight.
Back when he first got bitten by the spider, he stayed up writhing in bed with a fever worse than he’s ever experienced. The day after, though, Shane felt invincible. It wasn’t long before he found himself slipping out into the night with a mask shielding his identity, spending hours testing the limits of his newfound strength and stickiness.
He stumbled into crime scenes by chance, at that point, not yet stupid enough to actively seek them out. The first time he witnessed a car crash, he hesitated for just a beat, weighing what it might mean for someone to see him intervene, despite the mask. That night, he lifted a car off a helpless pedestrian and carried her to the nearest hospital.
Tonight looks a little different. So far, he has helped an elderly woman up an escalator, picked up baskets of bell peppers that poured out onto the street from a delivery truck, and walked a young woman home.
He paces the alleyways, bored out of his mind. He spots a dented metal trash can up ahead to his right. Experimentally, he flexes his hand and punches into it. He is rewarded with the pleasant screeching sound of metal giving way to his hand as if it were water, a clean hole punched right through the material.
“Still got it,” Shane huffs to himself, self-satisfied.
In one particularly narrow alleyway, he lifts out both of his arms, stretching them to their full wingspan. He uses the stickiness of his hands to climb up the alleyway with only the strength of his fingertips, his legs dangling uselessly below him.
“To think -” he mumbles to himself as he climbs, cutting himself off when he loses his grip and hangs from the stickiness of just one hand before regaining his balance - “to think, I could’ve spent tonight with Ilya.” He sighs deeply, shaking his head. Then, he amends: “To think, I could’ve spent tonight getting fucked.”
He reaches the top of the walls on either side of him and chooses one of the two roofs available to him to flop his body onto. He rolls onto the building, gravel crunching under his body, and huffs. He rises to his feet and busies himself admiring the view of the Montreal skyline. Then, because he’s just so goddamn bored, he overlays the skyline with a mental image of Ilya’s V-line, two sharp lines that slope lower and lower.
A fist to his stomach throws a wrench in his fantasy.
Shane stumbles, teetering over the edge of the rooftop. He barely manages to stabilize himself by pressing a lever on a new device he created that encircles his wrist. His makeshift ‘webs’ are a mixture of glue, Borax, and deconstructed athletic tape. The stretchy material shoots out as Shane falls back, attaching to a chimney with enough strength that it yanks Shane upright.
“It’s that vigilante fucker. Get him,” Shane hears a voice yell out behind him.
He can’t yet see all his attackers, but hears four distinct pairs of footsteps closing in on him. Before he has time to locate the final one, there’s another fist jamming into his ribcage.
“Ow,” Shane mutters, cradling his side. What wonderful superpowers, he thinks, to have super strength, super stickiness, super healing, yet no super-pain tolerance. “Let’s talk about this, fellas.”
One man on each side drag him further onto the roof by his armpits. He kicks and thrashes as they take him. One of them scolds: “How the hell did he find us?”
“By accident! By accident, I swear,” Shane insists. He swings his arms out with all his might and manages to throw both men off of him.
“He’s enhanced,” one warns. Shane’s eyes zero in on this man, and how his build is suspiciously similar to the WANTED posters he’s seen plastered all over the city. Shane’s gaze flits from one man to the next.
“You’re those subway guys,” Shane whispers, his heart dropping to his feet.
One of them smiles at him leeringly, extending an arm as if to shake his hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Spidey.”
Shane almost considers shaking the hand, wondering if he somehow charmed his way out of this encounter, but then his eyes zero in on the arm. There’s a gun cradled in it, pointed right at his heart.
Shane side-steps the bullet just barely. It grazes his side rather than stopping his heart. That dodge he’s pleased to say he learned from hockey, not from crime-fighting. “Look, I don’t know if you guys know this but -” Shane just barely misses a fist to the face, and another bullet whizzes past his leg in the interim - “I’m really what they call a ‘friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.’ I specialize in sweet old ladies and - and I really don’t go out much, because I have quite a hectic day job, which - fuck, I probably shouldn’t be volunteering this information -”
“Can someone shut this fucker up already?” The man brandishing the gun from earlier screams.
Shane spots two of his goons aiming their fists in Shane’s direction at the same time. At the last second, he backs away, so they both collide into each other and fall into a heap. He stoops down low next to one of them, mutters “sorry” by his unconscious ear, and yanks out a tuft of hair from his head to stuff in his hoodie pocket.
Shane opens his mouth for some witty quip when he stands. Instead, his whole body lists to the side. Shane cradles his ribcage through the hoodie. When he presses the skin, he hisses.
“Not so ‘super’ now, are you?” The remaining two men, including the one with the gun, smirk back at him. Shane considers his options here: he can fight these men, possibly die, and, his mind unhelpfully supplies, never see Ilya Rozanov again in his life.
Or, he can pass along the evidence to police and run away like a coward.
He opens his mouth to speak but can’t manage anything but a weak “gotta run.” Then he’s shooting his slime-athletic-tape hybrid webs in the direction of a lamp post across the road, jumping off the roof, and hoping he lands in one piece.
He does, although he also careens with a thud into the lamp pole on his injured side. He disentangles himself from where he’s dangling from his webs and falls the remaining eight or so feet onto the sidewalk on all fours.
“Shit,” he huffs, wheezing. He limps his way out of this network of streets, back to the alleyway behind his apartment complex, where he stores his civilian clothes. He slips his shirt off, shivering and wincing every time he has to raise his arms above his head. “Spidey is going into early retirement,” he curses. “Fuck this. Not doing this shit anymore.”
He drags himself to the back door of his apartment complex, groaning as he makes his way up the steps. When he finally gets to his door, he types “1919” and hardly waits for the beep that lets him in before he’s pressing his entire weight against the door and fumbling his way inside.
He’s so out of it, in fact, that he doesn’t register a second heartbeat in the room until he has already stepped inside. And that is odd, because this heartbeat is one he would recognize anywhere.
Fuck, his hazy mind supplies. Ilya.
----
Ilya had been waiting around for so long that he actually falls asleep on Shane’s bed. When the front door opens, he startles awake with a groan, rolling off the bed and somehow landing on his feet.
He waltzes to the front door and smirks at a wide-eyed, stoic Shane.
Shane’s gaze trails down Ilya’s bare chest, down his muscled torso and back up. For a moment, his eyes appear glazed. Then, they turn sharp. “You weren’t supposed to be here.”
Ilya chuckles, unperturbed. “Hello to you too, Hollander.” Shane is dressed in one of Ilya’s favorite sweaters to see him in: this blue piece that tapers off at his thin cord of a waist. Ilya takes a step closer, curious. “I know I interrupted your night alone. But you know…” Ilya approaches Shane, who stands frozen, and strokes Shane’s cheekbone with his knuckles lovingly. “Whatever you were going to do on your own, you can do with me here too.” He smirks knowingly.
Shane, reluctantly, leans into Ilya’s touch. “Rozanov…”
Ilya shushes him, stroking Shane’s face down to his jawbone. “Hollander. I’ve missed you.” He quirks his head to the side, playful. “Have you missed me?”
Shane nods against Ilya’s palm. “You - you know I have. But…” His gaze drifts sideways, to the rest of the apartment. He doesn’t finish the sentence.
With the hand that’s not stroking Shane’s face, Ilya reaches up to Shane’s tight waist, gripping onto it like it’s his. Last time they were alone together, Shane threw his head back in a moan once Ilya grazed his waist, the simple touch already so overwhelming for his sensitive skin.
Today, Ilya does the same thing, grabs Shane’s waist hard like he owns it. Shane hisses, his face contorted into a wince.
Ilya drops his hand, startled. “Hollander?” Shane turns to move away from him, but before he can, Ilya grabs onto the edge of Shane’s sweater, tugging it up.
His entire side is a patchwork of mottled, purple bruises, traveling up from his hip to the top of his ribcage. Ilya has never seen bruising so gruesome and expansive that not even a patch of Shane’s pale skin shows throughout the whole stain.
Shane pulls Ilya’s hand off of his sweater, so the material falls back over the bruises like a curtain. Ilya’s face contorts into something murderous.
“Hollander,” Ilya urges, voice deceptively level. “Who did this to you?”
Shane’s eyes widen imperceptibly, his fingers fidgeting at his sides. “Okay. Okay. I’ll - um, I’ll explain.” He raises his arms in front of him placatingly, as if worried Ilya will lunge at him. “Just calm down.”
“I am fucking calm!” Ilya bellows. He takes a step forward, hands reaching for Shane’s hips, but Shane side-steps him. “Hollander. Shane. Shane.” The moment Ilya says the name once, he can’t stop. “Please. You need - you need hospital.”
“No.” Shane shakes his head, resolute. “No hospitals. It’s fine. It - it heals -”
“It’s fine?” Ilya shakes his head, his stomach churning. “Come on. What happened?”
Shane seems to weigh what to say for a few moments. It’s too long, as far as Ilya is concerned.
“Hollander.”
“Um. Okay. So,” Shane starts, his fingers twisting. Ilya notices how he’s standing with a bit of a lurch, favoring one side. “During the game, one of the guys checked me into the board.”
Ilya shakes his head firmly, managing to move one step closer to Shane. “Hollander. Do not do this. Do not lie.”
Shane’s face turns grim. “But that’s what happened. It was the game.”
“The game? I was at the fucking game!” Ilya screams, gesturing wildly.
“You were distracted. You didn’t see,” Shane tries, voice shaky. “It was just a body check.”
“By what? A fucking bulldozer?” Ilya laughs mirthlessly. “No. Come on. The truth, Hollander.”
Shane presses his lips together. “Ilya…”
“The truth,” he intones, harsher this time. “So I can figure out who the fuck I need to kill tonight.”
Shane’s face falls. “Please.” His voice cracks. “You’re scaring me.”
Ilya untenses just slightly. Shane has shrunk into himself a bit, his arms layered over his side protectively, as if worried Ilya will try to reveal the wound again. “Okay. I’m sorry.”
Shane chews on his lip. “Can we just forget about this?”
Ilya’s face twitches. When he speaks, his voice is mournful. “I can’t. Shane. You are hurt.” He says the word like a knife is twisted into his own gut, like it pains him. He shakes his head regretfully. “I can promise you not to go after anyone. Not if you don’t want me to. Just please. Tell me.”
Shane feels pinpricks of tears behind his eyes, and he blinks hard to bat them away. To tell the truth requires more than just telling Ilya what happened tonight: he would have to tell him everything. And he knows the next question that would follow: For how long? That answer would reveal the true depth of Shane’s lies: his newfound strength that he’s been careful not to overuse on the ice, his sensitivity, how overwhelmed his senses get these days, and how he’s been spending his free time parading around in a mask.
A memory of early on, a month after Shane was bitten, bubbles into Shane’s head unwillingly. His mother was scrolling on Twitter. When she got to one video, she scoffed.
“The police need to get this man off the streets,” she hissed. Shane slid closer to her on the couch, resting his chin on her shoulder to get a better view. He tensed when he did: it’s a video of him, masked, lifting up a car.
“He’s - he’s doing a good thing, though, isn’t he?” He clears his throat. “Saving someone?”
His mother shrugs. “Sure. For now. But there’s no bravery in hiding behind a mask. If you ask me, they need to bring him in.”
“Who? The government?”
“The police, to question him. And they need to run tests too. I mean, this thing is a freak of nature.”
Ilya’s voice interrupts Shane’s thoughts, but one phrase sticks past all the rest: Freak of nature.
“Hollander.” Ilya speaks up, louder this time. “You with me?”
“Yeah,” Shane mutters. “Yes, sorry.”
Ilya bites his lip. “You are in pain.”
Shane doesn’t deny it. He’s still cradling his side.
Ilya approaches him, his arms held out. “Lay down then. Let me help you to the bed.”
Shane takes a stumbling step back. “No, that’s alright.”
Ilya’s eyes widen. He marches closer with more purpose. “Shane -”
“I said -” and then Shane sees Ilya reach for his sweater again, going so far as to grab onto it. Ilya lifts it upward once more, desperate to check the wound, and Shane panics. He pushes Ilya away from him with both hands.
Ilya stumbles backwards with such force that his back slams against Shane’s bookshelf. Ilya collides with the wood with a groan, the sound of the impact seeming to swallow up all the air in the room. Four books fall off the shelves completely, one of them smacking Ilya in the shoulder on its way down.
Ilya stares back at Shane in shock; Shane returns the gaze, his eyes filled with horror.
Ilya pushes himself upright until he’s no longer leaning against the bookshelf. He rotates his arms in their sockets, wincing slightly, his expression tight. Shane, meanwhile, stares down at his hands in alarm.
“I - I didn’t mean to,” Shane explains shakily, still holding his hands out like they have a mind of their own.
Ilya stares up at the ceiling for a long moment. “Okay. So that’s how this is, huh?” He blinks harshly up at Shane’s chandelier before craning his neck back down to Shane and his splayed, accusatory hands. Ilya turns around, headed for the bedroom. When he returns, he’s wearing his shirt again.
Shane calls out to him as he heads for the front door. “Ilya,” he tries.
Ilya looks back at him, his eyes wide with hurt. “Funny. I thought we trusted each other.” His gaze drifts down to Shane’s sweater. “I won’t make that mistake again.” And then he’s slamming the door.
----
The Raiders play and win against the Admirals. In the locker room afterwards, Marlow claps him on the back. “Hell of a speech you gave,” he snarks, rubbing Ilya’s back.
Ilya gives him a stiff smile. “Do not wait for me. I will meet you at the hotel.”
Marlow shrugs. “Whatever, Roz.”
Once the rest of his teammates have filtered out, Ilya sits down on the wooden bench and pulls out his phone. There are no new messages from “Jane” since they last spoke, and Ilya hasn’t sent any of his own either.
He clicks out of Messages and opens Twitter. He scrolls through the hashtag Spider-Man, noting news clippings and fanart of the odd superhero intent on keeping Montreal safe. Some people go so far as to track Spider-Man’s sightings, although they can never pin down why he chooses to patrol on the nights that he does.
Ilya takes a look at this so-called Spider-Man sightings calendar and finds it looks oddly similar to their sports calendar: Long lulls of no activity followed by back to back sightings.
“Hey, Spider boy,” Ilya mutters to himself. “You look after the little guys, right? Look after a certain ‘Shane Hollander’ for me, would you?”
----
Shane’s side is fully healed by morning. He knew it would be, yet his powers still befuddle him.
In the months between when Boston and Montreal compete against each other again, Shane throws every minute of free time he has into patrolling.
It’s easier, somehow, to be himself when hiding behind the mask than to be himself as “Shane Hollander.” Spider-Man helps old ladies with their groceries and takes selfies with young boys; “Shane Hollander” gets poked and prodded for a cologne campaign, drenched in a woodsy scent that he himself finds repulsive.
Spider-Man is a carefree hero, single by choice. “Shane Hollander” is a professional athlete who lays awake at night fighting spells of nausea, picturing the one face who single-handedly compels him to get up in the morning. In true Shane fashion, he saw the last good thing in his life, so stomped all over it.
No, not it. Him.
He pushed Ilya. He hurt him. His groan ringing out when he collided with the bookcase keeps Shane up at night. He almost can’t fathom the thought of doing the same at their upcoming game. He thinks he’d rather fake an injury than guard Ilya.
In case Shane had any confusion about what day his game against Boston is taking place, his stomach sure reminds him: The morning of, he wakes up and his gut twists. He just barely makes it to the toilet before he collapses over it, heaving, emptying the meager contents of his stomach into the bowl.
He feels the weight of his cell phone in his pocket and contemplates the ramifications of calling in and saying he's too sick to play.
Then an image flashes into his head of all the young, eager Canadian fans pressed up to the glass, one after the other donning “Hollander” jerseys.
“Fuck being famous,” he mutters to himself, head bowed and arms straining to hold himself up above the toilet. He thinks suddenly of Ilya again, of how the only affection deemed ‘permissible’ between them would be as teammates on the ice, and he dry heaves again. “Fuck. Being.” He spits into the toilet bowl. “Famous.”
——
Ilya sizes Shane up with his eyes as they skate to the center of the rink. Shane gazes back at him expectantly, bracing for whatever wisecrack or insult he comes up with today to mess with Shane’s head.
His head is already quite scrambled, to be frank: Shane can hear Hayden’s low pep talk he gives himself on the bench from all the way across the ice, plus the sound of a thousand mouths chewing on hot dogs across the stadium. Most blaring of all is the sound of Ilya’s heartbeat in front of him: a steady thump, thump, thump.
Ilya locks eyes with Shane. He opens his mouth, and then, to Shane’s surprise, shuts it. He presses his lips together and stares up at the linesman, awaiting the puck drop.
Shane is so crestfallen at being ignored that he forgets to look up too. Ilya’s stick snatches the puck so quickly that all Shane can hear for a few seconds is the shrill ringing of the home fans, his fans, booing. Shane knows that booing only spurs Ilya on, and in a moment his theory is confirmed: Ilya scores a goal and embraces Marlow the same way he might have embraced Shane, had circumstances been different.
His coach pulls Shane mid-shift. A stinging voice in his ear asks him: “The hell is going on with you, Hollander?”
Shane squeezes his eyes shut, trying desperately to extricate just his coach’s voice from the uproarious crowd buzzing in his ears. Everything feels too much.
“Sorry, coach,” he manages, clearing his throat.
He rides the bench as his team leads them to victory. He cheers alongside them and blinks away any other feelings in his gut besides relief he didn’t sabotage the entire game.
Ilya looks back at Shane as he skates off the ice. It’s a long look Shane might mistake for concerned if he didn’t know any better.
In the locker room, Ilya doesn’t text him. To be fair, Shane doesn’t text either.
For the first time in years, neither makes an effort to meet post-game. And Shane is fine, he thinks - or at least, he will be. He has to be. When he gets home, he tugs his Spider-Man mask down over his blotchy, tear-streaked face and jumps out the window.
——
Tonight’s patrol is uneventful as ever. How come no one wants to commit crimes on a breezy Tuesday night? Shane thinks. Or, more specifically, how come no one wants to commit any crime tonight that distracts him from the impending dread of Ilya Rozanov being in the same city as he is, but not in the same bed?
He’s just finishing up his last heroic task of the night before turning in, if you can even call it that.
“Do you want me to bring you some soup?” An elderly woman named Sue asks him as he carries her ten bags of groceries back to her home in one trip.
Shane stumbles slightly, not from the weight of the bags but from attempting to balance them all in his arms. “Oh, no thanks. It’s fine.”
She gives him a dirty look. “You look hungry. Where is your mother?”
“She’s at her house,” Shane answers, before remembering his whole ‘secret identity’ thing. “Um - I mean, she’s - I - well, yeah. Uh. She’s a good person.” He looks around this residential street for a wall he can bang his head against.
He brings the bags all the way to her front doorstep but hesitates when she invites him inside. She half rolls her eyes, but lifts a wrinkled finger up to tell him to wait there. He does, hopping from foot to foot on her front porch in his makeshift superhero suit, until she comes back with a ziplock bag filled to the brim with soup and a straw.
She sticks the straw in and shoves the bag towards him. “Here. Drink on the go.”
Shane smiles softly at the unusual presentation of soup, although she can’t see it from underneath the mask. “Wow. Thank you, really. You didn’t have to.”
“With great power comes great responsibility, young man.” She smiles at him sadly. “You’re responsible for taking care of yourself. You look after our neighborhood, but who looks out for you?”
He stares back at her grimly, his eyes prickling with tears. But who looks after you?
He does, Shane thinks. Or, he amends: He did.
He waves at Sue weakly as she shuts the door on him. The quiet night is punctuated by crickets chirping. Shane can spot a bunny rabbit hopping around on a neighbor’s front lawn. He watches it, a lump in his throat, for a few minutes before he forces himself to move.
He decides to swing his way home, as it’s the quickest mode of transport he has tonight. When he gets back, maybe - just maybe - he’ll text Ilya. He could casually, nonchalantly, ask how his night is going. Ask if he’s feeling cold in his bed. If he wants someone there to warm him up.
It would mean a step back in their relationship, in all the progress they’ve made to turn casual, meaningless hookups into something real. But if that is all Shane can offer Ilya anymore, he’d rather have it than nothing at all.
He shoots a web out onto a fire escape and launches himself into the air, landing on the roof of a red-brick apartment building. He grins devilishly as he sticks the landing, wishing absurdly that anyone was awake on these Montreal streets to see it. For his next jump, he shoots another web around a chimney on the top level of an adjacent building, the farthest he’s ever swung. He does a backflip in the air before sticking the landing again.
He shakes his shoulders out, adrenaline coursing through his veins. The next time he shoots out a web, he jumps in tandem with it. It’s only when he’s free falling in the air does he realize that the web he shot isn’t long enough to grab onto anything.
Still in the air, Shane frantically shoots out another web from his second web shooter. He can hear the jam of the mechanism above the ringing in his ears. Well. That’s it, I suppose. He curls into himself, a little pillbug soaring through the sky, in an attempt to brace a fall he knows will be agonizing.
He’s ready to feel everything, for his entire body to feel lit on fire, when he hits the ground. Instead, he feels nothing.
----
Ilya checks the hotel alarm clock as his phone rings. “Two in the morning, huh?” Ilya curses in Russian, rubbing his eyelids roughly to rid himself of sleep. He grabs his phone to see “Jane”’s name lighting it up.
Ilya sits up abruptly. He yanks on the phone to unplug it. Sparing a glance to Marlow sleeping soundly in the bed next to him, Ilya steps out into the hotel hallway, boxers and all. He picks up the phone, but he doesn’t say anything, not at first.
On the other end of the line is low, heavy breathing. It’s Shane, Ilya can deduce that clearly. Ilya clears his throat. Still, all he hears is more breathing.
Finally, Ilya folds. “Hollander?” He mutters into the phone.
“Oh,” Shane’s voice on the other end wheezes out. “Ilya. Great.” More heavy breathing.
Ilya readjusts the grip of the phone in his hand. “Hollander, what’s going on? Are you okay?” He pauses, considering the time. It’s not in Shane’s character to go clubbing after a win, but maybe Ilya doesn’t know him as well as he thought. “Are you drunk?”
“So, uh. I can see why - why you’d think that.” Shane coughs into the phone. “I know you don’t want to see me. It’s just, it really hurts.”
Ilya’s heart drops. “What hurts? Where are you?”
“I dragged myself back. It’s just, I can’t really go to a normal hospital, um, which sounds really stupid, but. Yeah. I know you don’t -” he cuts himself off, coughing again - “want to see me. But I didn’t know who else to call.”
Ilya curses under his breath. “No, no, Hollander. Shane. I want to see you. Where are you?”
Shane groans into the phone.
“Hollander!” Ilya’s grip on the phone is white-knuckled and unrelenting. “Come on. Answer this one thing. Are you at home?”
“Yeah,” he whispers.
“Is it as bad as last time?”
Shane makes a sound like he’s giggling, only it descends into another cough. “Worse.”
“Fuck,” Ilya mutters. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. I’m coming. I’m coming. Keep talking, okay? Hollander? Who is your hockey legend? He retired in 1980, remember? The name, tell me their name!” Ilya shoves his legs into a pair of slacks and snatches the keys to Marlow’s rental car from the nightstand.
“Ilya Rozanov,” Shane murmurs into the phone.
Ilya holds the phone against his neck as he curses. He brings it back to his ear. “No. Hollander. Can you hear me? Do you understand the question?” Ilya slams the elevator button for the lobby.
Shane is quiet on the other line.
“What is his name? Come on, your legend? The only person you ever think about on the ice?”
Shane groans again.
“Come on, I know you know it. Gordie who? Gordie who?”
“Rozanov,” Shane hisses out, pained. “Ilya Rozanov,” he repeats, like he’s casting a spell.
Ilya throws his head back against the elevator walls until they ding to a stop, and then he’s running out, past the front desk and into the gargantuan parking lot.
He keeps Shane on the phone the entire time, his heavy breathing on speaker. Ilya keeps asking him questions the entire drive. Shane doesn’t answer, except to call Ilya’s name back out to him as if he forgot it.
Ilya slams on his brakes outside of Shane’s complex and opens the car door in the same movement, so much so that his body lurches forward a little with the car. He runs up to Shane’s door and presses ‘1919’ into the lock, feeling an odd sense of deja vu.
He opens the door with a swing, and it bumps into something solid that emits a low groan. Ilya looks on in horror, shutting the door behind him. He finds Shane crumpled up on the hardwood floor in the entranceway.
“Look - looks worse than it is,” Shane chokes out.
His right leg is bent at an odd angle, scraped and dripping blood onto the floor. He’s cradling his right side with palms that are cut and raw, and his skin seeps blood through his white t-shirt. The source of the blood looks, seemingly, like the largest rug burn known to man along his ribs.
Ilya sinks down onto the floor, cradling Shane’s head with his hands. “We will fix this, yes?” He manages, his stomach turning. Shane attempts a nod with his head in Ilya’s hold. It comes out as more of a twitch.
“Let’s get you to bed, okay? Is that okay?” Ilya asks. Shane gets a sudden flash of how his earlier refusal to let Ilya help him to bed ended with Shane pushing him away.
Shane squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“No, no, no,” Ilya insists. “No. None of that. Come on.”
Ilya slips his arm underneath the crook behind Shane’s knees, the other hand strong and secure across his shoulderblades. He scoops Shane up and walks him to his bedroom. When they get to the bed, Ilya seems to hesitate, standing over it with Shane in his arms. Eventually, he works up the nerve to deposit him gently onto the bed, his head resting against a pillow.
“M’ getting it dirty,” Shane moans, twisting his face into the pillow.
Ilya simply pets his head, pushing his hair out of his face. Ilya’s knuckles stroke Shane’s cheek. He leaves to grab ice packs from the freezer and an entire roll of dampened paper towels.
“There’s a first-aid kit,” Shane adds, voice muffled. “Kitchen.”
Ilya nods, turning back around to rummage through the kitchen. He finds some antiseptic wipes and jogs back to the bedroom, tearing one open with his teeth.
He lifts Shane’s t-shirt up where it sticks to his side and notices dirt and gravel in the burn. “This will hurt, okay?”
Shane nods.
Ilya pauses. Looks around the room and up and down his own body. He shrugs his fleece jacket off and presses the fluffy collar of it against Shane’s mouth. “Bite down on this.”
Shane reluctantly opens his mouth and snaps his jaw over the soft material. Ilya bends down and begins dabbing at the cuts. Shane cries out, muffled through the jacket, and Ilya flinches at the sound.
“Sorry,” Ilya whispers, continuing to wipe the cut. “My love,” he adds in Russian. “I’m sorry.”
When he’s done, he tosses the wipe into the trash can and stares down at Shane’s leg.
“This is broken.” Ilya presses the leg lightly with his thumb and forefinger, and Shane groans in pain. “I cannot help with this. You said no hospital?”
Shane shakes his head, spitting out the fur coat. “No hospital.”
Ilya bites his lip, running a hand through his hair and tugging. “What about private doctor? I can find someone in the city. They can come here, yes? You would do that?” Shane stays quiet, his nose twitching. “Shane. Please. I just want you to feel okay.”
Shane stares up at him from the same bed they first made love in. His eyes are glassy, his eyebrows furrowed. “Aren’t you going to ask what happened?”
Ilya flashes him a sad, rueful smile. He strokes Shane’s cheek again, a resigned look on his face. “I think, if you wanted to tell me, you would have.”
The second Ilya’s fingers brush his face again, Shane’s face crumples. The tears he’s been holding in all night spill out, one thick drop sliding down Shane’s face. Ilya swipes at the tear with his thumb.
“Shane…” Ilya drifts off, his fingers dancing over Shane’s face like he’s trying to memorize its curves.
“You’ve heard of Spider-Man, right?”
Ilya pauses, his fingers stilling on Shane’s face. His gaze turns venomous. “He did this?”
Shane whines, a low and pathetic sound in his throat. Ilya leans in and kisses his throat, quelling it. “No. No. But you’ve heard of him, right?”
Ilya’s face turns blank now. “There is internet in Russia, yes.”
Shane groans and squeezes his eyes shut again. “There’s no other way to say this. Um.”
Ilya, meanwhile, busies himself by tearing open another antiseptic wipe. “This one may hurt more, because your hands are sensitive, hm? I know. I’m sorry. But -”
Shane forces his eyes open. “I’m him. I’m Spider-Man.”
Ilya drops the wipe. It lands with a plop onto Shane’s chest, right below his collarbone.
Without his powers, Shane would question whether Ilya even heard him. His face is impassive, betraying nothing. But Shane can hear Ilya’s ear-splitting heartbeat quicken within his chest. “Ilya,” Shane tries, reaching his injured arm out to paw at Ilya’s leg. “Say something.”
“Okay,” Ilya whispers, gulping.
“No, no.” Shane feels panic rise in his voice. “Say more. What - what are you thinking about?”
“Alright.” Ilya reaches for the wipe on Shane's chest, petting the skin underneath it. “I am thinking, do you get better faster? As Spider-Man?”
Shane tilts his head. “You mean, my injuries?” Ilya nods. “Yeah. I heal really fast.” Shane watches as Ilya’s shoulders, which were tight around his ears, sag. It’s like his whole body deflates. He stumbles a little and rights himself with a hand on Shane’s bed frame.
“What about your side, though? All the cuts? They do not hurt?”
“They do hurt. But it’s temporary.” Shane tugs up his shirt. Ilya can see the cuts have already begun to scab over. “This should be gone in a day. My leg, I’m not too sure.” Shane wiggles his toes for good measure. “When I asked, what are you thinking, I meant more so -”
“And who did this, then? Who hurt you?” Ilya’s eyebrows furrow. “Some super-villain?”
Shane smiles wryly. “Nope. This was my own doing.” He gestures down to his bloodied body. “I invented these - well, ‘invented’ is too strong a word for it. I’ve been making my own sort of webs with athletic tape. I jumped off a building, not realizing I ran out.”
“And before?”
Shane’s eyes twinkle. “Before, like last time you were here?”
Ilya nods.
“I kinda got jumped. By those subway guys.” Ilya’s face darkens. “But they’re in jail now. All of them.”
Ilya cracks his knuckles. “That’s too bad.”
“Ilya.” Shane stares up at him, his eyes wide and his voice small. “Are you mad at me?”
Ilya sits down on the edge of the bed. The only part of Shane’s body within arm’s reach are his legs, so Ilya strokes his shins. “No. Not mad. Never mad.”
“I lied to you,” Shane adds, voice frantic. “I had so many opportunities to tell you, but I didn’t.”
“Okay,” Ilya shrugs. “It was your secret to tell.” He scoots up on the bed so he can interlace his fingers with Shane’s, injuries be damned. “Who else knows?”
Shane attempts to sit up in bed and winces. Ilya stops him with a gentle hand to his chest. “No one,” Shane admits. “You, now.”
Ilya squeezes their hands together. “Why even start this? Helping people you don’t know?”
Shane shrugs against the bed. He squeezes Ilya’s hand harder. “I tried not to. I tried to just ignore it - the changes in my body, the powers, everything. But -” Shane clears his throat, gulping. “When you can do the things that I can, but you don’t, and the bad things happen, they happen because of you.”
Ilya lifts their fused hands together to press a kiss against the back of Shane’s hand. “This is how I know you are better person than me. I would have robbed a bank.”
Shane laughs, an unexpected and beautiful thing. A smile creeps onto Ilya’s face too.
“The other thing I am wondering. You have superpowers, yes?”
Shane nods, a light blush coating his cheeks.
“So you have a secret identity?”
Shane nods again.
“So you thought: hm, what is the best, most casual day job I can get. Ah, yes: Professional hockey player!”
Shane chuckles again, shoving at Ilya’s shoulder with his palm. “You’re an asshole.”
“Sure, I’m an asshole. But am I wrong?”
“This whole thing began way after I began my hockey career. And it’s a pain in the ass more than it’s an advantage. I’m so - so sensitive, all the time: to sounds, to touch, to…” Shane trails off at the look on Ilya’s face.
“The last time we had sex,” Ilya begins.
Shane smacks his lips together. “Yep.”
“No refractory period is a superpower,” Ilya acknowledges, grinning. Shane shoves him again.
“Who taught you these words?” Shane complains.
Ilya twitches his head, like an idea has just occurred to him. “You can make these webs?”
Shane stares back. “Yes. With the proper supplies, I mean. They don’t, like, come out of my body.”
Ilya considers Shane’s response. “Would you ever… want to be tied up with them? Your own webs?”
Shane’s head shoots up from the pillow. He ignores the way it throbs. “Oh. I never thought about that.” He stares at Ilya’s open, inviting face. “But, yes. Without a doubt, hell fucking yes.” Ilya smiles at him, his eyes kind. “Tomorrow, maybe?”
Ilya eyes him quizzically. “No way. You’ll still be in bad shape tomorrow, no?”
Shane thumbs at Ilya’s lip. “I don’t know if it’s you being here or my healing, but I do feel a bit better.” Ilya gives him a disbelieving look. “I do! I really do. I wouldn’t lie.” Ilya shoots him another, even more disbelieving look. “Anymore. I wouldn’t lie anymore.”
Ilya sits up from the bed, reaching over to the first-aid kit to wrap each of Shane’s wounds in gauze.
“This is really not necessary,” Shane interjects, yawning and sagging against the bed as Ilya uses his teeth to tear off a larger strip of gauze. “It will heal regardless.” Shane bites back a hiss as Ilya wraps the dressing around a particularly deep cut.
“Humor me,” Ilya mumbles, the bandage between his teeth. Shane quiets after that, letting Ilya tend to him in comfortable silence.
Shane doesn’t remember falling asleep. But when he wakes up, sunlight is streaming through his windows and casting light onto Ilya’s shiny blond curls. Ilya himself is slumped over in a chair by Shane’s bedside, his head lolling and drool dripping onto his chest.
“You big doofus,” Shane whispers, stroking Ilya’s hair lightly. He doesn’t stir. “You slept in a chair all night? What for?”
The moment he says it, Shane follows the angle of the chair with his eyes and sees it pointed directly at the now ruffled, empty sheets Shane was laying in. He stares down at his body, wrapped in gauze like a present and feeling as pristine as a new car, despite the lingering ache in his leg. He presses a soft kiss into Ilya’s hair.
“All I wanted was hockey,” Shane whispers into Ilya’s hair. “For a long time. Then, all I wanted was to save the world.” Shane presses his nose into Ilya’s curls, inhaling his sweet coconut air. “Now all I want is you.”
----
At Shane’s insistence that yes, he is fully healed, they do experiment with Shane’s webs.
“You want me tied up, right?” Shane clarifies, standing in his boxers at the foot of the bed. Ilya is in front of him, toying with his web shooters like they’re a paper airplane.
“Is that even a question?” Ilya smirks at him. “Yes, Shane, I want you tied up.”
“Okay, so,” Shane continues, obsessing over the logistics of it, “I’ll go sit on the bed. I’ll spread my arms out so they’re easy targets for you. You press this button and aim for each of my wrists, okay?”
“What if I miss?”
Shane shrugs. “That’s okay.”
“Do I have to, like, pay you back for the webs I waste if I miss?”
Shane rolls his eyes. “No, Ilya, you don’t.”
Ilya turns the web shooter around in his hand, squinting as he places the barrel of it against his eye as if looking through binoculars. “Are the webs edible?”
“Not even in the slightest.”
Ilya repositions the web shooter so he’s peering through the barrel with his other eye. “Would you consider making edible ones?”
Shane thwacks Ilya’s hand, prompting him to loosen his grip on the web shooter. Shane snatches it back. “This is the least sexy conversation we’ve ever had, taking place before the most sexy thing we’ll ever do.”
“I enjoy cotton candy flavor,” Ilya adds, as if that is important.
“Ilya!” Shane snaps. They turn to face each other and find that they’re both fighting smiles. “Are we doing this or not?”
“Oh yes, Spider Boy,” Ilya teases, pressing his palm against Shane’s chest and pushing him back until his legs hit the mattress and his back falls against the bed. Shane squirms, both adrenaline and nerves coursing through his veins. Ilya leans down, grabs the web shooter, and presses hot, open-mouthed kisses from Shane’s mouth to his neck, chest, and down to the waistband of his boxers.
When he pulls his mouth off, Shane whines, throwing his head back against the bed.
“I want you against the headboard,” Ilya instructs. He spreads his own muscular arms out into their full, impressive wingspan, one hand still holding the web shooter. “Spread yourself like this. Legs, too.”
Shane obeys, spreading his wrists and ankles out, feeling his cock twitch in his pants. “Fuck,” he moans, his skin thrumming.
Ilya quirks his lips up, bringing his hands back at his sides and aiming the web shooter. He’s waving it around, Shane’s eyes tracking it to try to deduce which wrist he’s going for first.
When he finally aims and shoots, Shane feels an absurd, tight pressure against his groin. He stares down at his boxers, then back at Ilya. “What the hell! That’s my dick, not my wrist!”
Ilya has the decency to look sheepish, setting the web shooter down like it shot of its own accord. “Sorry, sorry! It was an accident!”
Shane shakes his head. The web does feel nice, a sweet and tight pressure on his cock, but he refuses to give Ilya the pleasure of seeing his reaction. “How was that an accident?”
Ilya smiles cautiously, blush rising to his cheeks. “Accident because I forgot it was not edible.”
Shane lowers his gaze back down to his boxers slowly. “As in, you wanted to eat this off of me?”
Ilya grins sheepishly again. “Of course.”
Shane stands up, half-walking and half-wobbling over to where Ilya is standing at the foot of the bed. He snatches the web shooter back and shoots two webs binding Ilya’s hands where they’re clasped in front of him. Ilya stares back at him, his eyes ablaze in arousal, and lets Shane push him onto the bed like he weighs nothing.
“First,” Shane announces, climbing on top of Ilya and maneuvering his bound wrists until they’re above his head, “you’re going to fuck me.” Shane’s hands trail up to the webbed bindings around Ilya’s wrists. “Then, goddamnit, we’re going to buy some supplies and create a new formula where we can eat these.”
Ilya smirks up at him, looking awfully pleased to be tied up and at Shane’s mercy. “So you're saying I win.”
Shane stares down at Ilya, at his birthmarks and blond curls and cheeky, self-satisfied grin. “No,” Shane whispers, leaning down to capture Ilya’s lips against his. “I do.”