Work Text:
Peter’s reaching the top of the stairs to the hall where his locker is when he first picks up on the commotion. There’s a crowd clustered at the lockers, ogling at something Peter can’t see yet. He has a baseline of curiosity about what’s going on but high schoolers will make a big deal out of the smallest drama, so he doesn’t expect much and isn’t exactly dying to find out. What ever the group is clustering around must be right next to his locker, though, so he’ll have to forge a path through the horde anyway.
When he finally breaks through the mass of students Peter rears back at what he finds. His locker, Peter’s locker, the locker everyone is gathered around, is adorned with a note. Except ‘note’ doesn’t seem to do it justice. A thick page of fancy cardstock is affixed at the exact center of his locker door by a small but powerful magnet embedded in the paper. The note bears a poem, printed in a calligraphic script with metallic gold ink and signed with simple initials by hand.
My armor is red
Arc reactors are blue
I think you’ve got mad skills
So can I go to prom with you?
TS
Peter gently pulls the note off his locker, his brow furrowed. Surely it was put on the wrong locker? It was clear who it was from, to him and everyone else. It didn’t say it was addressed to him, though. Someone could’ve easily moved it from a different locker, and that kind of thing would be right up Flash’s alley. Skeptical, Peter flipped the card over for any other information. And his eyes bugged out at the handwritten text there.
Peter.
Open when alone.
TS
Open? Peter turned the card to examine the edge. Sure enough there was another layer, with the magnet doubling as a clasp. He flipped the card to the back, reread his name. Flipped it to the front, reread the poem.
Tony Stark. Renowned heir to Stark Industries and famous teen superhero, Tony Stark, was really asking him to prom.
Peter held the note in one hand at his side, opening his locker with the other and organizing himself for his first set of classes. Once he had what he needed he headed back to the stairs, curious gazes and mutterings following him. He still had some time before class would start, and he was pretty eager to open the note and find out what else was in it.
When he reached the top landing he slipped behind the eternally propped open door that led into the hallway and grabbed the key that was propped on the hinge. With that he unlocked the rooftop access stairwell and climbed that too.
He dropped his backpack before sitting down beside it. Holding the note up, he watched the script glitter in the bright mid-morning sun. Then he gently pried the magnet clasp open.
It was blank… until a blue light shimmered over the surface. Peter quickly realized the light came from the magnet, a tiny slit in its edge projecting it. Words appeared, projected over the paper from the magnet:
[Identity verified. Decrypting message.]
Then a different, brighter light flashed up and down the surface before shutting off.
Peter gasped as a new design appeared. It was another poem, in fine silver lettering, backed by a glittering spiderweb pattern:
I’m caught in your web
So don’t let me go
I promise not to tell anyone
About my favorite superhero
TS
Peter had a dopey smile on his face for the entirety of his first class that day.