Disclaimer: Nope, just a fanfiction writer. I would be a man, if I owned it, wouldn't I? So nope.
Story: Penelope Parker had a habit of picking up strays and attracting the wrong kind of men.
Set after various episodes.
Spoilers: Probably.
Warnings: Cursing and violence for now…hm, just in case since I'm usually writing it, bit of crazy humor, perverted humor, morbid or sarcastic humor, and maybe some sexual situations…
Pairings: Features Fem!Peter/Various Others, (main) Fem!Peter/Flint Marko (Sandman), Fem!Peter/Norman Osborn, Fem!Peter/Dr. Connors, Fem!Peter/Kraven
Love in Hopeless Places
Chapter Eight: Hold Onto Me
Penny looked at the man on her bed, snoring away like he had no troubles. She shook her head and grabbed her blanket at the foot of her bed and tossed it over the man.
She never really got Kraven.
The truth was, for the longest time the hunter had been coming to her home, crashing on her bed without a care. He was gentler here though, in contrast to how he was with her when he was playing her villain.
At least he wasn't drunk. In the beginning, he used to come here drunk. These days, he was sober when he climbed in through her bedroom window and tumbled into her bed.
"You apologize to White Tiger yet?" she asked him, poking his figure. He was knocked out, so she didn't get her reply. She just sighed and shook her head, leaving him behind as she went to her kitchen and prepared some tea and maybe a few snacks.
Kraven tended to eat her out of her house when he was there. The man seemed to be able to eat a horse.
"Don't leave, Petrushka," Kraven mumbled, blindly reaching out for her. She rolled her eyes. He seemed to always know when she was leaving the room, no matter that he was sleeping or not.
"Hush now," she grabbed his hand and squeezed. "I'm just getting tea and snacks."
He grunted before falling deeper into sleep. She shook her head and left her room. As she did so, she remembered the first time Kraven had appeared in her room.
"Nas izvlekut iz pod oblomkov, podnimut na ruki karkas. I zalpy bašennyh orudij. V poslednij put' provodjat nas~"
Penny froze, hearing the deep, male voice singing in her room. She was just outside of her door and had no idea who it was or why they were there. But she did get her web shooters around her wrists ready just in case. Taking a deep breath, she burst through her door, alarmed to find Kraven the Hunter sitting on her bed with his back against the wall and his legs sprawled out.
"Ah, Petrushka! You are finally here!" Kraven said merrily, as if he didn't just come to the city last week just to come after Ava and the White Tiger amulet.
Penny gave him a strange look, not sure whether to go on the offense or just…stay as is. He wasn't exactly jumping up to attack her or doing anything other than sing drunkenly on her bed. Wait, he was…drunk?
"What are you doing here, Kraven?" she asked, not really sure how to take the man's presence there.
He blinked blearily at her. "I am…reminiscing."
"And you had to do that here?" Penny asked incredulously.
He shrugged and smiled crookedly at her. "You are very good at being peaceful and not judgmental. I need that."
She stared at him, but he'd gone back to singing in Russian. He patted the spot next to him and she just sighed and came over, tentatively getting on her bed and crawling over to sit next to him. He was a large guy, so he took up a lot of space and she was a little too close to him for comfort. Still, he didn't do anything.
"What are you singing?" she asked curiously. She recognized the language, even if she didn't know how to speak or understand Russian.
"It is an old Russian war song," he told her as he shifted on the bed to get more comfortable, and uncaringly rubbing up against Penny in the process. "I will write it down for you sometime, Petrushka!"
"And why are you calling me that?" she asked irritably, since she had no idea what it meant.
"It is Russian for Peter –your first na –" She covered his mouth and narrowed her eyes at him.
"Don't say that!" she hissed at him. "And how do you know that anyway?"
She didn't know how he knew that, and she didn't know how he knew where she lived (which was more worrying) and who she was. Not even Harry or Mr. Osborn knew that her name was actually Peter Penelope Parker –a plague on her that her parents blessed her with. They had ordinarily thought she was a boy, found out she wasn't, and decided Peter was still a good name. To make up for the boyish first name, they went with the old-fashioned Penelope for her middle name, to which she went by these days or rather the shortened version of Penny.
So how did this guy find out?
"Ah, ah, Petrushka," Kraven chuckled. "I am a hunter. I must find out all about my prey –So Spidergirl lives here, and calls herself Penny, yes? Cute, little one."
She should call Ava. This was technically her problem, since Kraven was the man Ava had beef with. Even if he seemed fascinated and attached to Penny.
"Petrushka, you smell nice," he muttered, and she realized he had slumped over to his side against her, and had rested the side of his face against her head.
She didn't have the heart to push him off, even though she had freaked out for a moment.
So when he fell asleep, she somehow ended up doing so too. When she woke up in the early morning, he was already gone.
Penny hadn't really gotten why he came to her then (still didn't), but she had let him in once and he'd come back several times without invitation.
"If you're coming back here again and making this a regular reoccurrence, you know I'm going to tell White Tiger about this," Penny told him exasperatedly when he came a second time, though she didn't say her teammate's name. He was probably already aware, since he knew who Penny was.
"Hn," he said uncaringly. "Da," he said to her, sounding confirming, but she didn't know what he was saying anyway. She needed to learn Russian. "Petrushka, do you have vodka around here?"
"No," she said in annoyance, huffing as she began cleaning up her room and putting things away. "Why would you think I have vodka in the house? And my aunt doesn't drink, not unless it's wine."
"Too bad," Kraven waved at her dismissively. "Vodka is very good. You should try it."
She gave him a deadpan look that he ignored, so she just said forget it and went back to what she was doing.
"I poletjat tut telegrammy, rodnyh i blizkih izvestit', Čto syn vaš bol'še ne vernetsja, I ne priedet pogostit'," Kraven hummed after.
"What is it called, the song you're singing?" Penny couldn't help her curiosity.
"Find out!" Kraven chuckled, and she tried really hard not to pout.
"Will you apologize to White Tiger? You know, about…what happened?" Penny brought up suddenly, asking awkwardly.
Kraven's face turned serious and he turned his head away from her. She decided that was probably too much right then, so she stayed quiet too and focused on her task.
"You are here now," she heard Kraven speak, and she stopped remembering and turned to face him as he leaned heavily against the entrance frame to the kitchen.
"I said I was getting tea and snacks," she said idly when she took the hot kettle carefully off of the stove.
"Da, I vaguely remember hearing you say that," Kraven muttered as he trudged heavily into the kitchen and sat at the table. "Your Aunt May is sleeping. I was careful to not be loud, Petrushka."
Penny snorted. "Looking at you, that's almost hard to believe."
"I am a hunter! A great one too," Kraven said proudly. "Of course I can be stealthy."
"Did you apologize to her?" Penny asked again, since he was awake, and his beaming face turned brooding as he glared at the table.
"Nyet," by now, she knew how 'yes' and 'no' was said in Russian.
"Will you one day?" she asked, keeping her tone light as she fixed the tea to their liking.
"I will try."
That made her pause and she chanced a glance at him. That was the most he was able to say on the subject since she'd decided to confront him about it.
"Have you talked to your brother?" she changed the subject, though she knew that it was another thing Kraven tended to shy from.
But he spoke more of it than he did of anything to do with White Tiger and the previous incarnations.
"Nyet," Kraven tapped his fingers agitatedly on the table. "Dmitri was easy to find. He just does not…wish to talk."
"I had a brother," Kraven said, visiting for the tenth time. "His name is Dmitri."
"Had? Is?" Penny questioned him.
"He does not want to associate himself with his family, especially…me. I was the older brother; he respected and admired me. He also resented me. In Russia, we are very…harsh with each other, especially in family. My father was war veteran from second world war –my mother from an old aristocratic family. That made it especially hard. Our father was hard on us, especially me. I was harsh on Dmitri in turn –abusive you can say. Our family was not a…good one."
Penny felt sympathetic at that and tentatively reached for his shoulder.
"You should try to find and contact him," she suggested. "Maybe it's time to let go of the past and move on?"
Penny, in the present, reached out again and grabbed his shoulder. "I don't think you should give up."
Kraven grunted, accepting the cup of tea from her with a frown. "It is more likely for me to give up the hunt than for him to want to talk again."
"Maybe you should," she laughed lightly. "Give up this whole hunting business and leave me and mine to our hero jobs. Maybe just be a TV reality host of your show –like the Crocodile Hunter."
He lightened up and laughed boisterously, though he took care to keep his voice low. "Ha! You think you will be rid of me? Why best wild, lame animals when I can hunt the great Spidergirl and show world I am greatest hunter?"
Penny snorted. "I'm not so great a catch, Kraven." Like literally. Especially not in the 'girlfriend'/potential interest kind of way that phrase is usually meant for.
Lost in thought, she didn't catch Kraven getting up until he was practically in her face when she turned from the counter and was cornered by him. Trapped against the counter as he placed his large, muscled arms on either side of her, she blinked up at him in shock.
"Er, ever heard of personal space?" she weakly joked.
"Da," he said but still didn't move. "But you are greatest catch of all time," he said with emphasis, glaring intently at her and saying it purposely. "So do not put yourself down as if you are something weak and boring."
He backed away then and she watched him in slight confusion, though feeling oddly flattered for some reason. She had a sense there was something more to what he said in regards to her, but she wasn't sure what.
She took a deep breath. "Um, thanks."
He nodded distractedly, sitting back down. She turned to the counter to continue making sandwiches.
There goes the drunken singing again. She sighed as she entered her room, where expectedly the hunter lay on his front on her bed.
"Mašina plamenem ob''jata, vot-vot rvanet boekomplekt. A žit' tak hočetsja, rebjata, I vylezat' už moči net~"
"Where'd you learn the song from?" she asked, trying to get some info on it.
"My father," Kraven muttered, forcing himself to sit up. "He learned it from his war, and when I was born, sung it a lot. Too much," he said under his breath. "War change man, you know?"
She tried not to read between the lines.
"Nas izvlekut iz pod oblomkov, podnimut na ruki karkas. I zalpy bašennyh orudij V poslednij put' provodjat nas~" Kraven sung some more, grabbing a piece of paper and a pencil from Penny's side table. He scribbled something on it, before handing it to her. "There! I told you I would write down song for you."
In Cyrillic, Penny could guess it was what was the lyrics of the song. Not that she could understand it. She had just started learning Russian because of him.
"About time," she said in amusement, though idly she wondered again why Kraven chose to keep coming here.
"Smells wonderful, Petrushka," he mumbled and she scrunched up her eyebrows in confusion.
She looked to him and saw he was back to laying on her bed and unconsciously rubbing his face against her pillow.
Penny turned red and tried not to sniff at herself.
"You really should have vodka around here, Petrushka," Kraven picked up his tea, eying it as if he was gauging how much vodka he'd like to slip into it. "Good for soul, it is."
"Mmhm. Whatever you say," Penny replied doubtfully.
Hearing nothing back, she turned from the counter to see him at the table with his head in his hands. Biting her lip, she hesitantly came over and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him a little closer.
"In the corner, the old mother will cry, the father old man will drop a tear. And the young bride will never know what was the end of the boy. And there will remain a dusty picture, on the shelf with yellowed books. In uniform, with epaulettes. Now he is no longer married~" she sung the last few lines of the song he tended to sing around her, though in English.
He chuckled roughly in her arms.
"Ah, you learn Russian song, Petra?" he shortened the traditional 'Petrushka.'
"Mm," she just said quietly, squeezing him.
His heavily callused hands reached for her arms and grabbed tight, not letting go. Penny let him and didn't move away.
She still wasn't sure what was up with him, why he came here and to her, but she got bits and pieces.
And maybe that was enough for now.
Started 5/20/16 – Completed 5/21/16
A/n: I don't know why I love Kraven. I suppose because one of the first Spider-Man fics I read before deciding to write this story was a fem!Peter/Kraven story, which despite its flaws I was really amused and got attached to it, hence the need to write him into this story and be one of the main guys. So I hope you guys liked this chapter and enjoyed my version of him! Please remember to review~
Quick Points:
1. Petra/Penny: Usually when I do genderbenders, I tend to use the closest translation of the name as possible (and/or try to use the original name somehow). I almost went with Petra before writing this story, because literally Petra equals Peter and I already liked the name from Minecraft Story Mode. But I'd gotten really attached and used to Penny, so I ended up using it instead. But I compromised! I had this idea for the Kraven chapter long, long before about him using Petrushka/Petra for her because her name was actually 'Peter' and I did manage to be able to use the original name in the end XD
2. Kraven's song: Is an old Russian war song called "Na pole tanki grokhotali", which I learned and first heard about from "Daredevil" (haha, Marvel~).
Anon Reviews:
1. Guest: I could use Agents of Smash for inspiration, but I'm still just needing to find inspiration and an idea more…As for Hyrdoman, sure~ I could try to write something for him.
2. Leska: I'm always continuing ;D
