Chapter Text
“NO, NO NO PLEASE NO..” Lamine screamed, laying on the ground, hand raised to protect himself – though it won't stop the incoming blow, it's all he can do. He's breathing loudly, exhausted from the fight and looking up at his opponent. The scream is in agony, pain, clutching his injured arm. The shadow of the figure approaching him looms over his head.
“Spare my life, just this once..”
His baby brother stared at him for a second and then KO-ed him with the pillow in his hand in cold blood.
“You know he doesn’t understand what you say right? Sometimes I think you do these elaborate scripts because your horrible acting won't ever be accepted in theatre..” Gavi barks, barely looking up from his phone but neither his baby brother nor Lamine pay mind. When he was done with watching his brother making a fool out of himself, he took his little legs out of the room, leaving the youngsters alone. “What’s got your panties in a twist?” He flopped down next to Gavi who opened his arm, letting the younger boy cuddle up to his side, looking at the phone screen the older had been glaring at for the past 5 minutes. The messenger is open and it’s Pedri. Pedri is Gavi’s amazing boyfriend that Lamine likes way more than his own friend. He’s a great guy, sweet and soft, funny and very supportive. He has more than once told Gavi that he got so lucky that someone like Pedri puts up with someone like him and well, Gavi has more than once slapped the back of his head for that.
He looks up back at the brunette whose lips are twisted in a frown. “We were supposed to go out today but Pedri hasn’t responded since morning. Now I feel like a fucking idiot and… you know I shouldn’t, he’s probably just busy but...”
“Doesn’t sound like Pedri.”
He says casually and Gavi immediately springs up, looking at him with big eyes, “ Right?! If this was anyone else in the world, I’d think it’s no big deal but it’s my Pedri , he would’ve told me if he was not available last night. I’m worried. I don’t know if I should make this about myself or worry if he’s unwell... you know how he is, he takes care of everyone but himself... what if he’s sick and that’s why-” Lamine cuts off his rambling, “Just go visit him.” Gavi pouts again, deflating like a balloon, “I don’t want him to think I’m overbearing, what if I turn up and he’s really just busy and doesn’t like it… or he has a co-worker or his mom over and I'm just there stupidly crying about not getting attention and they realize I'm such an awful person and he deserves better and convince him to break up with me!” He rambles quickly.
Lamine sighs, it’s not like he’s in any state to give relationship advice himself. His only two relationships have been the biggest fails ever, both with girls as well. He doesn’t have any idea of what to say. Personally, he knows both him and Gavi are a little too affectionate and they both work well as friends but they can be a little too much for people. He knows Pedri is a great guy but... what if he isn’t? He doesn’t want to encourage his friend into something that’ll hurt him. It’s annoying to see Gavi sulk like that, his sad face is stupidly affective and ever since Lamine has become an older brother and spiderman, he has become rather protective of his family. And Gavi is – he hates to admit it but – like a real brother to him.
Defeated, he puts on his mask, “I’ll swing by his apartment to see if he’s fine. Stop making that face.” Gavi’s eyes light up and he tries to jump to hug him but the younger quickly dodges him, sending the short man tumbling down on the floor, it does make him laugh seeing Gavi make a fool out of himself. Before he can add another request on top of it, Lamine is already out of the window.
***
Fate is such, he's barely been out for half an hour – the sun hasn't even set yet but he sees Pedri – as in Gavi's boyfriend Pedri – come out of a flower shop with flowers in his hands. It makes his chest tighten. Fucking hell, he had just consoled Gavi back at home and here is his boyfriend that Lamine had held such high opinion of, strolling around in the city buying fucking flowers. He decides to get down from the streetlight and swings towards the man, landing right in front of him. Pedri's eyes widen at first, then he smiles. “Spiderman?!”
Oh right. He's not Lamine right now. He's a stupid superhero in his stupid suit, stupidly mad at his stupid friend's stupid boyfriend.
“Hey there.. fellow good citizen.” He cringes and he sees Pedri make a weird face as well, awkwardly standing like he really wants to run away.
“Um.. are those flowers for your… mother?” He wishes someone had a muzzle for his mouth so he would stop embarrassing himself.
“No.. no they're for my boyfriend.”
They stare at each other. Or well, Pedri stares at his mask obviously.
“Boyfriend?”
The pale man takes a little step back and Lamine is almost offended, but on the flipside he deserves it a little. “Um not to argue but, is that your business? Aren't you supposed to like.. stop robberies and stuff.. oh, I bought these I promise. Here look at the receipt..” He starts patting his pockets for the paper and Lamine rolls his eyes in his head. How the hell is he supposed to interrogate Pedri when he's doing his friendly neighbourhood superhero duties? He's only making this weirder, the more he stands, the more attention he's gaining from the people walking by. Not that he's ungrateful, the popularity is very much appreciated but.. he doesn't want to be stared at when he's doing best friend work.
“Yeah yeah man.. I just asked because.. I.. I um, I like those flowers! What are they called?” Wow Spider-Man , he curses, what a wonderful way to not look like a total freak.
Pedri chuckles at that thankfully, “they're just white daisies and peonies. My boyfriend likes them and.. I guess– well, I hope they can be enough of an apology. I totally forgot about our date while doing my paper and I bet he's worried now, I mean i would've been too for sure.. fuck I'm sorry why am I telling you this, sorry, fuck, sorry I'm just stressed.” Lamine only shakes his head. “That's okay man, I'm sure he'll just be happy to see you.”
“Yeah?” Pedri looks up at him with so much hope, Lamine thinks why did I even question this man for a second? He's just as perfect as we think he is.
“Yeah. Good luck mate.” He says, patting his shoulder awkwardly and giving him a thumbs up before he swings away from that street. He hopes he hasn't completely blown his reputation right there, but then again, all anyone will think is that the Spiderman guy is a bit dumb, which doesn't make him feel good, but he can live with it. Once he looks around and everything looks fine; he considers calling Gavi but since Pedri is very much on his way anyway, there's no point in ruining that surprise.
He goes back and forth, keeping an eye out on the city. Sometimes he feels less like a protector and more like a bird up here. Just sitting and observing all these people go on with their days, push past someone to reach somebody else. The cars go on, honking like crazy, the drivers cursing each other and threatening to jump out of their cars to fight. It's almost a little jarring, under his suit he's almost disconnected from reality. From regular human life. Especially on days like today, when he doesn't have school and just swings around the city the whole day.
Unlike police, he doesn't have an emergency hotline and therefore, even on relatively calm days he can't go home because there would be no way to encounter them if he doesn't see it himself.
Soon, he finds himself in a very familiar neighbourhood. And okay, screw you guys for guessing it. Yes it's where Pau lives. He has a few excuses in his mind, like the fact that he did patrol around here as well even when he didn't know the boy lived here. So it's not like he's here strictly because of him – he just happens to be part of the reason. Stop smiling at him! It’s not funny, he’s really being honest… okay maybe there’s a small lie in between there, but it's none of your business!
Luck’s palace has finally opened its gates for Lamine ever since that day, he has been giggling in his bed as he texts Pau back and forth and his cousin sister that was visiting them last week had (multiple times) thrown stuff on his head for being ‘gross’. He silently mouthed back a fuck you when his mom wasn’t looking. Unfortunately, as unable as he is to be silent – his mother now knows he likes someone but, fortunately, as nice as she is – she hasn’t bugged him to tell her about it. And he’s grateful for it, because even he’s not sure of what he has to do currently. He’s worried.
He doesn't realize he's been zoning out and almost hits the pole in front of him. “Fuck!” He's about to turn when he's stopped by someone screaming. It's a girl. He quickly spots her under the low lights on the otherwise empty street – she's pushed off by the person next to her, he can't really see clearly who the person is, but the attacker is tall and he has snatched the girl's handbag. He's wearing a mask to cover his face, wearing all black that's rather body hugging.. It's almost like a supervillain from a children's movie. The man spots him, or well he assumes it's a man. He can't know considering he's rather far away and the person is all covered up.
Lamine decides it's time to step in and swiftly shoots a web at the thief's leg to stop him from going anywhere but the man quickly gets rid of it with one claw – and holy shit are those metallic nails?!?! Okay, so he might have just encountered an actual super villain – or something close to that. But why would you go around robbing… college girls if you were.. you know what, fine. Maybe he has to take the longer route. As soon as he jumps down right in front of this mystery person, quickly shoots another web and pulls the bag back from his hand.
“Uh uh, that's not a very nice thing to do to a lady… I can show you where you can buy this edition though.” He dodges the knife thrown his way and oh shit he really underestimated the situation, either this man is desperate or he's crazy enough to try and kill for one bag. “You know, my mom taught me to reply with words and not knives.” He shoots another web and the same annoying metallic nails pierced through it with ease.
He's really thankful for all the gym sessions he doesn't ignore, this is the first time he has had to fight someone this long. The guy is not necessarily strong but he's agile and his nails are really menacingly sharp and he seems to know a thing or two about jumping around cause, fuck that's supposed to be Spider-Man's thing! Not random evil guy with a black mask on. He'll be lying though if he says he isn’t impressed… all this skill is a bit much for a street robber and all this effort is a bit much for someone's college books.
Lamine grabs the wrists and finally webs them together, immediately webbing them to his torso and then the legs – the man is cornered. At least for a while. He swings the bag around, “really man? What can you even get from selling this? Maybe dinner..” The dark eyes look up at him menacingly, “what is it to you, spider boy. ”
The guy's voice is deeper than he expected, though it fits him in a way. “It's a lot to me since you're terrorising this poor nice girl right here. And you fought way too much for a bag. But maybe you're just a psychopath who likes to steal bags, I wouldn't know! Tell me!”
Stupid mistakes are such that you don't end up learning your lesson from the first time. He barely steps back, his mask is a little torn when the claw comes and he has just about grabbed the man when he sends another claw at his chest. Oh fuck, he's bleeding a bit. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes little boy.” The masked guy sends him a flying kiss and hey that sort of teasing is also Spider-Man's thing, NOT random guy with a mask on! He stumbles and before he can think of chasing, the man has hopped behind the bike of a man waiting that he had failed to notice and they ride away.
What a disaster.
He turns to the girl and she's picking up her wallet that has fallen out. “Thanks for salvaging that. I really needed my ID and wallet.. even though I did hope you would be able to get my bag entirely.” She beamed at him and for some reason, her face reminded him a lot of somebody else.
“Yeah about that.. sorry, I tried my best but.. well as you can see, these thieves are becoming vicious, man!” He laughed and scratched his head awkwardly. Wow, not only did he lose miserably, he also had an audience for that. Maybe luck's door has not opened for him yet after all.
“It's okay, I really need my wallet and I have that. Well – those files were also important for the company but.. we'll deal with it. We'll just have to scrape the current model and reprogram a few things and probably… sorry! I speak too much..” She smiled sheepishly and Lamine nodded. Well he could relate to that, talking too much is his speciality in a sense, besides swinging around and being spider boy (fuck, that guy got him good, this nickname sucks.)
“Ah there's my brother!” He turned his head to see where she's pointing. Is he allowed to constantly take statements back? Because he really wants to. Maybe luck is with him because that's Pau walking towards him. “Nice brother you have there.” He blurts out and the girl raises an eyebrow at him. “I-I mean he looks like you'll be safe with him.” Lamine really needs a filter. He almost hugs Pau out of instinct but stops himself and gives them a quick salute. “Well that's all then, hope you get home safe.”
Lamine is a little embarrassed of how fast he runs off but he's had enough talking to people and making them feel Spider-Man is a fool today, he doesn't need more of it.
***
“Lamine!”
Pau is pouting at him, sitting beside him on the bench, the wind making his hair all fuzzy. He smiles up at him apologetically, raising his head to sit up straight. “Yes yes, and Spider-Man did what then?”
He had been delighted to be able to join Pau for lunch but then his friends Marc and Prim had also jumped in – like the bastards they were – and sweet Pau had of course nodded in agreement. The school canteen was much warmer than sitting outside but he could care less. But one look at the newspaper abou t “Spider-Man is a menace ” (there were many articles like that and he had long learned to ignore them), and Pau looked like his face lit up, chatting excitedly about the superhero. Mind you, Lamine isn't humble enough to say he didn't like those praises but… somehow the fact that Pau didn't know it was him rubbed him the wrong way.
Spider-Man almost felt like another guy that he was competing with – which is stupid because it was himself – but he felt weirdly jealous. He had been chivalrous.
Seeing the boy shiver a little, after all it was quite windy today and he wasn’t appropriately dressed to cut that down, he had taken off his jacket - which was rather warm compared to the flimsy shirt Pau was wearing and extended it towards him, “ you look cold, here ”. Pau looked at him with a little surprise and was a bit shy but clearly happy to take it. He whispered a soft thank you that was almost lost in the background noise. It made him feel his face was running hot as well, they had been doing that for quite some time, and ‘that’ as in skirting around the dangerous line of flirting. He felt delusional at first because, hell, he had liked this boy for quite some time and it wasn’t exactly the most surprising thing if his brain was picking up simple signs of friendship as hints but.. But then people started noticing, his friends pat his back that he finally was making progress.
He knows it’s not confirmation entirely. He barely knows what his own head is thinking but… whatever direction they’re going, it’s nice. Oh and he definitely wants to kiss Pau silly but he’s not admitting that to anyone. But he does want to do that, if you must know.
It all has to mean something, Pau has been beaming when Lamine walks him to the bus stop, he’s always excitedly waving at him and making his group join them at lunch - there’s a Marc among Pau’s friends too and he’s way better than the one Lamine has (don’t tell him that or he’ll cry). Not to forget three days ago Pau gifted him cookies that had apparently been made by his sister but decorated by him and he had held back tears and stuttered like he was in those gacha youtube videos that nine year olds make and he absolutely does not watch, don’t ask him how he knows anything about it. Marc, as in Bernal, his friend had screamed ‘he is in LOVE with you dude… hand baked cookies... i read this on tumblr, if a girl gives you hand-baked cookies you are the man of her dreams.’
Pau, as in Prim, not his gorgeous wonderful crush but the braindead friend he has added, ‘but it wasn’t given by a girl…’ ‘Well the man of HIS dreams then, you idiot. It’s about the emotion, besides its 2024! What if Pau is like... nonbinary.’ Marc rolled his eyes and Lamine almost wanted to throw the cookies at them but they were his treasure and he wouldn’t waste it on them.
Lamine had also helped Pau with English and he was really proud of that one, also really thankful that he had taken English seriously. They had almost been threatened to be kicked out of the library but Pau said it was worth it and.. he’s just a smitten teenager who couldn’t keep himself from kicking his feet when he thought about that. Now as they sat, their hands brushed and he was damn sure it was consciously on both ends, he felt a little cold himself but damn the cold, it wouldn’t let him kill his tough guy persona.
“You can take it back if you’re feeling..” Pau had noticed and tried to take it off but he stopped him, “no, this isn’t a big deal... and anyway i’d feel much worse if you caught a cold, Cucu.” Admittedly, it was a little corny and no he didn’t rip this off howtoflirtwithyourcrush.com or getrizz on tiktok. It succeeded in making Pau smile and they had almost entered a personal space of heart eyes.
And then Bernal and Prim, his idiot friends had immediately mocked him right in front of Pau. “Oh cucu... are you cold” Bernal said in a mimic weird voice which did NOT sound like Lamine and Prim batted his eyelashes which were NOT pretty at all, unlike Pau.
But basically Lamine had tried. He tried so hard to drift the conversation away from Spider-Man and to no avail, Pau was narrating how much he likes the guy with starry eyes.
“Well I don't like your tone.. he was really cool. My sister told me every detail.. I'm so jealous of her. I wish I was the one getting robbed instead.” He says in a rather sad voice and it makes Lamine chuckle, this silly boy that he likes so much is so endearing even when he's saying things like these. Marc, who has been listening to their conversation since Pau – the other one, Pau Prim – left to get a sandwich, leans forward and raises his eyebrow, “You want to get robbed so that this shady guy in a stupid suit can save you like a damsel in distress? I think he's an A grade pretentious dude who only does these things so he can get fans like you.”
Okay wow, it's not a stupid suit first of all, secondly he doesn't do this for ‘fans’. Fuck you too Marc, Lamine grimly thinks and is forced to seal his mouth shut but Pau isn't and he slams his hand on the table, immediately biting back. “It's not a stupid suit.. and he's so nice! He even saves kitties from trees. If he was someone who did this for people he'd try to profit off it. Have you ever heard of anyone being asked for money after Spider-Man saved them?”
Marc shrugs, “maybe he does.” I do not, Lamine supplies in his head. “He does not.” Pau responds.
“Okay okay.. I didn't know you were such a fanboy Cuba, try, I don't know going to the west side from here. Plenty people to rob you there.”
Lamine throws a paper napkin at Marc. “Don't suggest such stupid things.” He looks at Pau who's frowning and pokes his cheek. Pau goes a bit red, the blush evident and Lamine is a big liar if he says he doesn't enjoy that.
Marc had a devilish smirk on his face again, “well Pau, your crush isn’t exactly that unrealistic, so i don't blame you.” Lamine didn't like hearing that, screw his feelings. “I don't have a crush , I don't even know the guy… what if he's awful to talk to.” Pau replied in a matter of fact way. “Well you were the one saying he's all such a great guy..” Marc bites back. “I said what he does makes him nice.. Big difference. He could be someone I'd hate to be around, doesn't change the fact that he's doing an amazing job. Anyone with an intelligence of more than a 10-year-old can understand that.” Lamine and Prim crack up and Marc is defeated, mumbling a whatever.
“Can't believe I'm getting jumped for saying I want to meet the superhero!” He continues.
“Well why don't you just try waving him over one day.” Lamine is quick to grab the paper napkin thrown at him thanks to superhero reflexes. “As if he'll just be swinging by my place.. besides it'll be embarrassing, I'm not a child, he will think I'm a weirdo.”
Actually I'll find it rather cute, Lamine thinks. “Guess you'll just have to wait for your day then.” He says, then smirks, “besides, you have a way better person saving you from bad guys..” Pau rolls his eyes and gives him a little shove but he can see the smile creep back up on that face and it's not like Lamine hasn't embarrassed himself in front of many other people – if it can make Pau laugh, what's a few more?
Marc starts laughing loudly at him, breaking his previous good thoughts. “This loser thinks he's all that..”
The tall guy deserves the headlock he receives after that and even when he's apologising, Lamine doesn't quite let go till he's satisfied.
Later, when he was home, changing into his suit, he couldn't help but stare at it. His other one had been handed over to Gavi with a lot of requests and a lot of fake praises to butter the guy up. This new one seemed to almost mock him. He sighed, Spider-Man was in fact just Spider-Man and Lamine was Lamine. Even though they were the same person, they'd always be perceived differently right? Whatever he does as Spider-Man, no matter how much good he does, it'll just never be him.
His baby brother barges into his room and he almost screams, quickly throwing off his shirt. “What are you doing here little man?” The toddler looks up at him and he almost seems to be… side-eyeing him?! Before he can say anything else, he walks out. Right, that's what he needed. Judgment from his brother who can't even talk on top of everything else.
Being Spider-Man can be tiring sometimes…