Chapter Text
“You look terrible. Did Jean keep you up all night?” Gwen teased, poking Peter’s shoulder as he tried his best to focus on the micro-chip in front of him.
“Yeah… not like that.” Peter shot her a look, catching on to her insinuation. “She… I think she was feeling homesick, had a hard time falling asleep… she’s had it pretty hard the last few years… it seems like she has a hard time escaping it, even in her sleep.”
“Oh… sorry that must have been annoying.”
“Less annoying and more concerning, she… worries me. She thinks she has to pay for a debt that she can never settle, to a world that can never love her. I just want to see that weight lifted off her shoulders.”
“Caleb help! Peter’s talking like he’s some kind of poet, what kind of medieval spirit inhabited our Parker?” Caleb snorted. Peter sank back in his chair and chuckled, pinching the bridge of his nose and testing his eyes as they readjusted to seeing the world at a non-microscopic level.
“Listen… I know that technically it's not my problem or my life but I just-”
“You love her.” Gwen finished, eyes off somewhere far from the lab. “I know how that feels.” Peter hummed, and something in the back of his mind felt warmed in the confirmation of how deeply he cared for her.
“Harry? Is he doing alright… From what you told me last night, Mayor Osborn has been pulling funding from almost everywhere in the city, including his start up. Is he doing okay?” Gwen sighed, rubbing her temples.
“He won’t tell me how he’s feeling. He keeps saying ‘everything’s fine’ in that irritatingly Osborn tone of voice, but I know Harry. I know that he feels all of the responsibility weighing him down. He’s chasing his father’s shadow, but he’s not Norman. No one can be Norman.” Peter winced. He’d heard the same thing from Happy in reference to Tony.
I wonder what Tony would tell me now… Am I living a life he’d be proud of…
“Who would even want to be in Mayor Osborn’s shoes right now. New York is having more outbreaks of mutants than most major cities in the world, and he’s doing all that he can to afford paying for the property damage the vigilantes and mutants caused by cutting funding for core infrastructure.” Peter’s eyes flickered to Caleb.
“You think that the mutants and heroes are to blame for-”
“Peter. Who else is to blame for these super-powered freaks’ damage? The Police, who have their identities public and can face repercussions against them or their loved ones at any moment? Or would you rather blame Mayor Osborn? Or the working people of New York?” Peter bit his tongue.
“I-... I don’t know, so many of the mutants are children, Caleb. I can’t see how you can blame them for something they can’t control.”
“Yeah, and how could you even consider most of them people. Look at that one devil in the ‘X-Men’. What’s his name, Nightcrawler? You can’t call him ‘human’. Just seeing the look in his eyes on the news is enough for me to be sure of that.” Caleb spat, finally setting down his tools.
Peter stood up, startling Gwen, who flinched away “Caleb, how can you say that about someone you’ve never met? Haven’t you heard that Nightcrawler-” The door to the lab swung open violently, and Otto stormed in.
“Parker. Stacy. Jefferies. Osborn said that he wants to see a demonstration before the exposé. He’s coming in 6 days.” Peter swore, collapsing into his chair and tore his hands through his hair.
“B-but Dr. Octavius, that’s 3 weeks earlier than we’d expected- We haven’t finished all of the testing! We can’t be sure about the long term side effects.”
Otto waved a hand as he stumbled to his desk in the corner of the lab, opening a drawer and pulling a flask, taking a slow chug, before setting it down.
“Gwen, we don’t have a choice. Either we show Norman something he deems worth re-investment and he sucks us into Oscorp, or he shuts us down and the last 11 months have been for nothing.” She turned to Peter, who’d leaned forwards, a renewed urgency informing his movements.
“Peter, you can’t be suggesting that we forego-”
“Gwen, as much as I hate to agree with Peter on this one, he’s right. We know that our research and prototypes can be the thing that lets so many people who have lost use of their appendages the ability to live normal lives again. We can’t let Osborn and deadlines get in the way of that-”
Peter tried to tune them out and focus on refining the neural pathways the chip was supposed to track when he felt something in the back of his mind stir. Warmth and calm blossomed there, but it was quickly replaced by confusion, and then calm again as it drifted off. Peter gasped softly, rubbing the base of his skull.
What the hell-
“Peter..? Are you okay…” He looked up and was met with 3 pairs of eyes staring at him, a mixture of concern and worry on their owners’ faces.
“Fine.” He replied shortly. Gwen opened her mouth to interject, “really Gwen, I’m okay. I need to make a quick phone call, but I need to finish this prototype tonight, so you can run trial runs and get the sample size we need to show Osborn.”
“Make your call Parker. Then it’s going to be a long night, so might as well go to the campus store and grab some drinks.” Otto sat down at his desk and began rifling through the blueprints, searching for the updated ones.
“Thanks Doc. I’ll be right back, I promise.”
“I know you will… and call me Otto… all of you. You’re more than lab aids to me. Regardless of how things turn out, I’m so proud of the work we’ve done together.” Gwen, Peter and Caleb shared a look, trying to hold a face for Otto. They all felt it. Norman had no intention to support the project.
Peter ducked out of the silence that had stifled the lab, dialing a number and letting it ring.
Beep. One ring…
Beep. Two rings…
Beep. Three rings…
Click. The line connected.
“Hello? Peter, is everything okay-?” A kind, albeit concerned voice rang on the other end.
“Hey Kurt… I have a favor to ask…”
o.0.o
“Bobby..? Are you awake?” a smooth, calming voice called into his pitch-black room. Robert Drake had no interest in making any acknowledgment towards the voice.
Maybe if I hide in this room forever…
“Hiding in her isn’t going to undo what happened Bobby…”
“You think I don’t know that.” He spat. The temperature in his room dropped, and Bobby stumbled off his mattress and to the door, flicking on the light.
“What do you want, Scott.”
“I’m here to check on you Bobby. I know that you and Kurt are closer-”
“We’re not close. He’s nice, but none of you know anything about me.”
“... you’re right. I’m sorry. But Kurt had to go out and do something, and Kitty and I were worried. You haven’t eaten since you got here-”
“I haven’t even been here for a full day.”
“I know… but as someone who also awakened their X-Gene… I know that you’re starving.” Bobby fell silent behind the door, and Scott sighed.
“Listen… I know that I can’t completely understand the pain that you’re going through right now… but I know how you feel… I promise that getting a little food in you and seeing some faces will help.”
“How can you pretend to know how I’m feeling?” Bobby murmured. Scott fell silent for a moment, before sighing.
“Do you remember the Blip, Bobby?”
“Yeah… I was Blipped when I was 14… I came back and all of my friends had graduated… I felt like my life had been stolen from me.” Bobby said, opening the door a crack, his eye peeping through.
“Yeah… When I Blipped… It was my 19th birthday… I was flying with my dad and my younger brother. It was one of the first times he let me fly without his help… While we were in the air, I disappeared.” Scott’s voice broke for a moment.
“When I came back… I was alone in a field in the middle of Pennsylvania. I hitch hiked back to my childhood home, only to find it abandoned. So I tried to contact an old family friend. He told me what happened that day. The plane crashed. My father passed away on impact, but by some cruel twist of fate, Alex survived… He was disfigured, and incapable of taking care of himself, but my mother clung to hope… clung to him like her last anchor to the world.”
“Where were they..? Did you reunite with them…” Bobby asked, opening the door. Scott’s eyes scanned his face. He noted the ways his cheeks glistened with ice crystals, unable to even cry, because his body was so cold. Scott reached out, and grasped his shoulder comfortingly, taking his red glasses off to reveal the tears streaming from his own tightly closed eyes.
“My mother took care of Alex for 7 months after the crash. Until the doctors told her that he wasn’t going to make it… they found her in her bathroom a few weeks later. She overdosed.” Bobby’s shoulders shook, and Scott crossed the threshold and wrapped comforting arms around the shivering boy.
“I know the guilt you’re buried beneath, waking up is hard. Facing the mirror is painful. But for Alex, my mom and my dad, and everyone else, I have a responsibility to live on.”
“How? How can you forgive yourself?”
“Because I know they’d forgive me… and there was nothing I could’ve done,” Scott patted him on the back. “C’mon, what do you want to eat? Kitty and I will do our best to make your favorite food.”
“What are your cooking credentials?” Bobby’s lips curled into a shy smile, and Scott tousled his hair.
“Kitty never ceases to impress me by making some of the most disgusting sounding combinations good. And she makes a mean melt.”
“And you?” Scott coughed and looked away.
“My forte is high protein food…” Bobby laughed softly, wiping away some ice crystals from his eyes.
“So you’re a gym rat. All you know how to cook is chicken, with salt if you’re bulking, and rice.” Scott threw his hands in the air.
“Woah- that’s kind of insulting, I season my food, and I like making stews, pork and stuff.” Bobby hummed, and they began walking down the expansive halls of Xavier’s dormitory.
“So unless I’m trying to get jacked like Hulk, I should steer clear of cooking advice, huh?”
“Yeah, Scott spends more time in the gym than Johnny, and that’s saying something, because I think Johnny is more interested in how pretty he is than I am half the time.” a bubbly voice called from the wall.
“Kitty, don’t do that, you’ll give the poor kid a heart attack if you speak out of the wall.” Scott sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. She laughed and phased fully through the wall, smacking his shoulder.
“Is that Johnny’s hoodie?” Scott mused, a wry smile sliding across his lips. Kitty froze, hiding her hands in her black sweats.
“Have you ever considered that I might just like ROLE MODEL too?”
“Yeah… but I vaguely remember you telling me that you were busy when he was in town… so unless you guys were busy together then that would have to be Johnny’s… which is weird, bc knowing Johnny, he wouldn’t give that-” Kitty covered his mouth, her face a deeper red than the lenses of Scott’s glasses
“Bobby, ignore this guy, I phased inside his head, and he has no brain.”
“Or tact apparently… So who's Johnny?” Bobby grinned, eager to get the inside scoop.
“Johnny Storm is my best friend-”
“Boyfriend. Also a member of the Fantastic Four” Scott supplied, prying her fingers off his face and throwing an arm around Bobby’s shoulder. “You should see how awkward they got when Xavier accidentally read Johnny’s mind and-”
“Enough Scott!” Kitty pleaded. Bobby chuckled, and the three bantered as they walked down the main staircase to the first floor.
“So, Bobby, who do you trust to make ya lun-” she paused as she glanced at the clock. “Okay, more like dinner.”
Bobby hummed and stared at the grin on her face that screamed pick me! Pick me! “Well, I feel like there’s a right and a wrong answer to this question. So Kitty, I’m going to go with you.” Scott clutched his heart in mock offense.
“Well if she gets to pick dinner, we gotta pick a movie to watch. What’s your vibe? We have chick flicks, rom coms-”
“Do you have The Art of Racing in the Rain?” Scott choked softly, and Kitty hid her face.
“Is that your comfort movie..?” Scott asked, avoiding the shaking shoulders of Kitty, who had begun sniffling.
“Kind of, it's a movie I used to watch with my dad before he passed. My ma named our old puppy Enzo when she read the book. So it became my dad and I’s tradition to watch it with Enzo when it came out after she passed.” Scott placed a gentle hand on Bobby’s shoulder.
“Thank you. For sharing something so personal to you with us. C’mon Kit, I’ll help you make the sandwiches, Bobby, feel free to rent it on Amazon, I don’t think we own it on CD. Xavier doesn’t get out as much as he used to with the younger mutants, so we don’t have many movies that are newer than like 2017.”
“Old fart-” Kitty coughed, giggling as Scott went to smack her shoulder, but his hand phased through and he stumbled.
Scott cleared his throat, running a hand through his hair, glinting a golden-red in the late afternoon sun. “I uh… I’m going to go check in on Kurt- Peter seemed like he needed something relatively urgently, and I’m concerned Jean might be struggling with her powers again.”
“If anyone could calm her… it would be Peter though. I mean, you know how she sees him. She says that the voices got quieter for the first time on Roosevelt Island when he held her.” Kitty replied, walking through the island that separated the kitchen from the living room to get started on dinner.
“That’s true… Still I want to check in, it's my responsibility while Xavier is gone searching for Banner and the prototype.” Bobby looked between them, trying to fit the new names into the puzzle that was the world he’d been sucked into.
“Who’s Peter?”
o.0.o
Peter had felt the low hum of emotions that he couldn’t identify as his own for several hours by the time that Otto decided to call it quits for the night. Gwen and Caleb had long since left, and Otto had told him to go home, but he’d stayed until midnight running extensive diagnostics on the data that Caleb had gathered from his trials.
He sighed as he locked up for the night, closing the computer lab door, and turning the weathered copper key until the door clicked. He winced as he rolled his shoulders back.
“Damn, who would’ve thought that getting 6 hours of sleep and then sitting in a chair for nearly 14 hours wouldn’t heal the damage a bullet does.” The feeling in the back of his head fluttered between frustration, anxiety and guilt.
“Hey Jean… I’m assuming Kurt woke you up..?” Peter smiled sheepishly as he turned around and found himself face-to-face with a grumpy telepath. She’d tied her hair up into a pony tail with a pencil she’d likely found in his bedside drawer.
“Is that my..? Where did you find my Midtown High hoodie? I swore I lost that at Ned’s a few months back.”
“Parker. When was the last time you did your laundry?” Jean’s tone told him he didn’t need to answer that question.
“Okay, that’s fair, I’ve been running between ESU, Spider-Man duties and sleeping at Ned’s a lot… so I guess it makes sense that it would be somewhere deep in a hamper…” Jean sighed, but in the back of his mind he felt like he could feel her concern pressing against his brain.
“You need a roommate to keep you accountable, can’t you ask Johnny to move in with you or something? I bet Ned would probably tolerate a roommate who only sometimes shows up with a usually fatal amount of bullet wounds casually riddled throughout his body.” Peter laughed softly in spite of himself, earning a kick in the lungs from his ribs.
“Well… Johnny spends more time in Space or at the F4 tower, and I wouldn't ask him to try and afford NYC rent. And Ned lives with MJ and Paul… so safe to say that’s off the table.” There it was. Jean’s face contorted at the mention of MJ, and a wave of nausea, guilt and self-loathing bombarded his gut.
Peter doubled over, breathing through his nose “Okay, wow there’s a lot to unpack there, are you doing that on purpose?” Jean froze.
“W-what do you mean?” Peter exhaled and then walked over towards her, he felt the emotions swing. He could barely track them. Fear, guilt, fondness, trust, safety… more things that Peter conveniently ignored.
“So it really is involuntary… Jean last night… did you feel or like, hear me calling out to you when… whatever was happening happened?”
“Yeah… was that your consciousness touching mine? How did you even manage to do that?” Jean looked into his eyes hesitantly, searching as if his held the answers she wanted.
“I tried my best to replicate the feeling that it felt to hug you with my consciousness, like I did on Roosevelt Island… and then you started saying a ton of people’s names… and then mine, and I felt something like a connection open. And now it kind of feels like I can… feel your emotions to some extent.”
Jean took a step back, covering her face with her hands. “You what?” she whispered, mortified.
“I’m sorry, I know it probably feels like an invasion of privacy-”
“Thank you Captain Obvious, when did you take the Super-Stupid Serum” she groaned, her emotions unreadable as the signals became more mixed.
“I just… I didn’t know how I opened it, so I didn’t know how to close it… and also it helped me know if you were okay.” She bit her lip, hands trembling as she took them out of his stolen sweats.
“If it gives you peace of mind, I guess I can deal with it… Would you mind if I opened a connection between us… permanently? Because I don’t have your number like Kurt or Scott… but I still want to be able to communicate with you like they do.”
Peter blinked. “You know I’d give you my phone number in a heartbeat right?”
“Yeah. I just didn’t know how to ask.”
“You could’ve asked Kurt or Scott.” Peter smiled kindly, “here let me type it in.” He fiddled with her phone for a few seconds, before flipping the camera and getting close to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.
“Say cheese!” He grinned as she tried her best to hide her face, but it was too late. She’d already been clipped, and he set about cropping it, before handing her phone back.
“If you change that, I’m going to consider it a personal slight. And I’m going to think you hate me.” She sighed and shoved him gently.
“Okay webhead… Whatever…” she twirled the frayed strings of the hoodie around her fingers. “So uh… commemorative friendship dinner? Because I kinda slept until Kurt woke me up like… 3 hours ago.” Peter laughed.
“Kurt got caught in traffic huh, I called him at like 5:30… and yeah, you in the mood for the Pizza Parker Special?” Jean stared at him in awkward silence for a few seconds, before he lips curled into a smile, which she hid behind the sleeves of his sweatshirt.
“You’re actually a cornball… y’know that?” She giggled. “Does the Pizza Parker Special come with a free ride via web-slinger?”
“It’s not that far… only a few blocks down. And also my shoulder and ribs still hurt, and I’d like to see Parker Airlines keep its 100% arrival rate with all passengers on board. But my hand is free. And you get to pick the mind of a man who’s working on the cutting edge of prosthetics-”
“I think I’ll pass on the second bit… but um. A hand would be nice. Just so I don’t get lost in the crowds of people walking around at midnight…” Her eyes glowed in the lamplight as they walked out of the campus and to the street.
“Thanks.” Jean’s head swung to his.
“I’m not sure if you could tell… but things in the lab aren’t going too well.” Peter paused, giving her space to stop him. She kept quiet as they crossed the street, towards one of Peter’s comfort spots.
“You can tell me Peter… y’know I’m here for you too right? You save everyone all of the time, but you need someone to listen to Peter. You’re doing better, I can tell, but not even you know the differences between you and Spider-Man anymore… Let me be here for Peter…”
His next breath was shaky, “thank you, Jean. That means more than you know… Ned and MJ were that a long time ago. But I think meeting me again as Spider-Man has kind of led to them seeing Peter as an extension of Spider-Man… Sometimes I wish they never knew I was Spider-Man at all.”
“Well, tell me about yourself then Mr. Parker.”
“Okay Ms. Grey…”
o.0.o
Kurt sighed and looked down at his watch. 1:21 Bobby, Scott and Kitty were probably well into their movie marathon, so he had time before he needed to be home. That didn’t mean that he liked being kept waiting.
“Remy. You're finally here.” Remy grinned and clapped his back.
“Lighten up on me Kurt, I was only a little late, turns out Oscorp got wind that I’d stolen a prototype, the one you asked me to grab.”
“You covered your tracks right?” his tail flicked in irritation, and the glint in his eye made even Remy uncomfortable. He held up a hand and pulled the collar out of his bag.
“You don’t hire Remy LeBeau without paying for a professionality clause. Which is to say that I did.” Nightcrawler nodded.
“Thank you Remy. How’s Anne-Marie, any closer to finding a solution that isn’t… this thing,” he snarled in disgust, gesturing to the collar as he took it in his clawed fingers.
“Not for the moment my friend. She’s been meaning to visit the mansion as of late, but it's been difficult with her connection to the Brotherhood, and now that Oscorp’s on our back…”
Kurt nodded. “Yeah… I hope you know that the doors of the Institute are open to you both. I mean that Remy.”
“Of course I know that… but after what Xavier did…”
“He’s a good man who means well Remy… but I can understand why you feel that way. Say hi to Anne-Marie for me.”
“I will. Tell Kitty, Scott, Jean, Warren and Emma hello for us.” Remy shot him a slanted grin, before jumping down a fire escape.
“Let us know what you find from that Kurt, I’d like to know how to reverse engineer it in a pickle!”
“Of course Remy. I’ll have Peter send you the information he gathers.”
“Peter? Is that the boy that Jean... I see. I suppose he’d be better qualified than most to disassemble it.”
“Yeah… He certainly is.” Kurt’s smile faded. “I hope he finds a way to forgive himself, when he sees what his accident has transformed into.”