Chapter Text
The first time Lara-Jean Song-Covey met Peter Parker was at a decathlon competition in Washington, D.C.
She was just fifteen at the time. She served as a backup of a backup. Simply said, she only attended so that her school's team could compete.
Lara-Jean was quite happy to be picked and attend the competition. Her team knew to count on her as dead weight, and no one made a big deal out of it. It was something like a field trip for Lara-Jean and Lara-Jean only.
It was only logical, then, that Lara-Jean would sneak out to the lobby and hide in the lobby bathroom, which was the only place with Wi-Fi and signal, to FaceTime her older sister Margot and tell her all the circumstances and incidents of her long day.
She sat there for just over two hours before her whole phone turned pitch black, leaving only a stunned LJ staring back at herself in the reflection.
She pressed the power button, only to be shown a desperate 0%.
Lara-Jean huffed in annoyance and went to sneak back up to her room.
Only to realise, to her horror, that she couldn't remember the number of their room.
Standing on the fifth floor, looking like an absolute dummy, she wondered whether to risk getting caught by her teacher wandering the halls of the hotel or go to the lobby and ask for her room number, risking the hotel staff telling on her to her teacher.
Whichever option it was, it seemed extremely unlikely she'd come out of this mess with her reputation among her teachers unharmed.
She couldn't exactly just start knocking on every door on this floor, hoping to find someone from her school.
Or could she?
No!
Lara-Jean, come on. That is simply crazy.
Just risk it with the hotel staff. If you ask them not to tell, maybe they won't. Human kindness isn't dead, is it? Surely they'll have empathy.
Behind her, the elevator door chimed open.
Lara-Jean jumped at the sound, as it tore her out of her internal monologue.
A boy around her age, wearing Batman pyjama bottoms and a T-shirt with a slogan that read "You matter, unless you multiply yourself at the speed of light squared ...then you energy", stared back at her.
They made eye contact.
The boy awkwardly gave her a small nod and, with a smile, shuffled out of the elevator and down the hall.
Lara-Jean relaxed, having worried it was one of her teachers, and sighed quietly.
The boy stopped.
He looked at her over his shoulder.
Then he turned around.
"Can I help you? You're here for the decathlon competition, aren't you? Why are you standing out here? "
His brows were furrowed, and he looked genuinely concerned.
Lara-Jean's hopes grew.
Could he help her get out of this sticky situation?
"Ah, yes. I'm here for the decathlon. I'm from Adler High School."
"I'm standing here because it's... It's just that I've forgotten my room number." Lara-Jean awkwardly shifted her weight from one leg to the other.
The boy let out an amused snort and motioned to the phone in her hand.
"Why not call your classmates?"
Lara-Jean looked down at her phone guiltily.
"I don't have any power. Our room doesn't have good signal, so I snuck out of my room to call my sister. I hid in the lobby bathroom for the last two hours or so. My phone's dead."
The boy discreetly covered his face as he grinned and quietly snickered at Lara-Jean's situation.
Lara-Jean had to admit to herself that this was an absurd situation.
It could be solved very quickly.
She, however, was so afraid of being expelled or getting into trouble of any sort that her critical thinking was muffled by the sheer amount of anxiety.
Please excuse poor Lara-Jean.
She was sweating bullets as she stood there and, in her mind, believed her situation to be a matter of life and death.
When she could simply ask for help.
"Here's what we'll do," the boy offered. "How about I help you out?"
Lara-Jean blinked at the boy.
"How?"
"I'll go to my room, get a power bank, and try knocking on some doors I know aren't my school's. Even if I knock on your teacher's door, they don't know me, so there's no foul, no harm."
The boy shrugged, as though this were the most obvious solution in the world.
Lara-Jean nodded, her eyes glistening with appreciation.
"Really?"
"Yeah."
He gave her another small smile.
"It's no big deal."
It was, Lara-Jean thought, very much a big deal.
She had been standing in a hotel hallway, contemplating spending the night there rather than simply asking someone for help.
And now this boy in Batman pyjamas was volunteering to rescue her.
Maybe he was a rule-breaker? He was probably just nice.
Either way, Lara-Jean had never been so grateful to see a stranger in her life.