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The lobby of Stark Industries was a masterpiece of glass and ego, but Flash Thompson was currently finding it very difficult to breathe as Peter Parker—who was apparently on a one-man mission to befriend the entire world by sheer force of will—offered him a piece of sugar-free gum with a smile that felt like a localized solar flare. Flash was midway through formulating a defense mechanism involving a sneer and a comment about Peter’s thrift-store flannel when the private elevator chimed with a sound like a choir of angels and Tony Stark stepped out, looking like he’d just spent three hours wrestling a Dyson vacuum and losing. Tony’s eyes locked onto Peter, and before the tour guide could even finish the sentence "And here we have our CEO," Tony was marching across the marble floor with a look of frantic, parental accusation. "Peter, I’ve been looking for you for twenty minutes because I need to know why the toaster is now singing Shake It Off in Mandarin, and why my lab coats are suddenly iridescent!" Tony announced, ignoring the thirty stunned teenagers who were currently watching their hero argue with the class nerd. Peter’s face went through four distinct stages of mortification before settling on a shade of red that matched the Iron Man suit, his hands flying up in a desperate, flapping gesture. "I told you, I was calibrating the linguistic sub-routines and the glitter was an accident, Dad!" Peter yelled back, the word slipping out with a jagged, accidental finality that caused a collective, earth-shattering silence to fall over the Midtown decathlon team. Flash Thompson’s brain officially left the building, his jaw dropping as he realized his long-time rival and current hyper-fixation was not only a Stark, but was currently pouting at the world’s most famous billionaire while covered in a faint, lingering dusting of pink glitter.
Flash’s internal monologue was currently nothing but a high-pitched, dial-up internet screeching sound as he watched the "Dad" bomb detonate in the middle of the lobby. He had spent years—literal years—convinced that Peter Parker’s "Stark Internship" was a desperate lie made of cardboard and sad dreams, but as he watched Tony Stark freeze, a slow, terrifyingly smug grin spreading across the billionaire’s face, Flash realized he was the one living in a delusion. "Did you hear that, FRIDAY? Record it. Put it in the 'Victory' folder and play it at every Christmas party until the sun burns out," Tony crowed, looking like he’d just won the lottery instead of being yelled at by a teenager covered in craft supplies. Peter looked like he wanted to physically dissolve into the floor tiles, his eyes darting toward Flash with a look of pure, unadulterated panic that made Flash’s heart do a weird, stuttering flip-flop. Flash tried to say something—to demand an explanation, to ask why Peter was pansexual and apparently a secret prince of the tech world, or maybe just to ask what flavor the Mandarin-singing toast was—but all that came out was a faint, pathetic wheezing noise. Beside him, MJ was casually sketching the scene with the cold, calculated precision of a war reporter, while Ned looked like he was vibrating high enough to phase through a wall. "You... you're a Stark?" Flash finally managed to choke out, his voice cracking in a way that was definitely going to haunt him for the rest of his life. Peter turned to him, the pink glitter on his cheekbones catching the light in a way that was distractingly pretty, and rubbed the back of his neck with a sheepish, lopsided grin. "Surprise? Also, the gum is still sugar-free if you want it, Flash," Peter offered, and Flash seriously considered just laying down on the marble and letting the tour group walk over him.
Flash didn't take the gum. He couldn't. If he reached out, Peter might see that his hands were shaking, or worse, the contact might cause Flash’s heart to actually exit his ribcage and flee for safety. Instead, Flash did the only thing he knew how to do when his world was tilting on its axis: he doubled down on the hostility. "A Stark? Seriously? What, did you get tired of lying about the internship so you just decided to bribe a billionaire into a paternity test?" Flash spat, though even to his own ears, he sounded less like a bully and more like a man having a stroke. Tony Stark turned that terrifying, genius gaze toward Flash, raising a single eyebrow. "Actually, I'm the one who did the bribing. And for the record, kid, he’s got my eyes—and my penchant for ruining expensive appliances," Tony remarked, claping a hand onto Peter’s shoulder in a way that looked disgustingly domestic. Peter looked like he wanted to die, but he still had that stupid, hopeful look in his eyes as he looked at Flash. "It’s okay if you’re mad, Flash! We can talk about it later! Do you want to see the R&D labs? I can get us past the level four security!" Flash just stared at the shimmering pink glitter on Peter’s face and felt a deep, soul-crushing sense of defeat. He was in love with a chaotic, glitter-covered billionaire prince who thought "friendship" was a contact sport. Flash turned on his heel, marching toward the elevator before he could do something humiliating like cry or ask for a hug. "I’m not going anywhere with you, Parker! Get away from me with that sugar-free crap!" he yelled over his shoulder, ignoring the way Ned was already laughing and MJ was definitely drawing him with "heart eyes" in her sketchbook.