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It’s maybe six months before Peter sees Jean again.
He’d spent those six months trying, painstakingly, to rebuild some semblance of a normal life outside of Spiderman, and he thought he was succeeding for the most part. He spent time with Ned, who, now the floodgates had opened, was remembering more and more about him by the day. He had dinner with Frank twice a week, even though he was still dubious about his chilli recipe; but Frank had looked sheepish behind his usual veneer of vague hostility, when he’d asked Peter over the first time.
“The least I can do, after,” Frank waved his hand in the general direction of Peter’s almost-fatal gunshot wound, “you know, that, is to make sure you’re eating real food. Swing by about seven.”
And that was that.
Peter does see MJ a lot- it’d be hard not to, considering she lives with Ned, and Peter’s there several times a week building Lego’s and eating their food. It used to feel like someone was hollowing out his insides with an ice cream scoop, like every cell in his body was burning up one by one, every time she looked at him without remembering anything. Now it just felt like being hit by a car, which is bad, obviously, but like, manageably bad, on the Peter Parker Pain Scale.
On the whole, his life is going reasonably well, at least compared to the last few years. He has people who know his name, and they would probably care at least a little if he died. The bar is in hell, but at least he isn’t, like, limbo dancing under it anymore.
So, when he comes home after stopping a bank robbery (which, light work, now he’s gotten his arachnid issues under control. He doesn’t understand why criminals even bother anymore, he’s on fire),and sees Jean sitting on one of his rickety kitchen chairs, he’s understandably a little surprised.
“Uh. Hi?” He says, tentative, because the last time he’d seen her she’d saved his life, but she’d also made a pretty definitive attempt at killing him before that. Understandably, given the circumstances-it’s not like Peter had any room to talk about resorting to extreme measures after the loss of a loved one. He might be the poster child for that particular unhealthy coping mechanism, so he couldn’t judge. Even so, you can’t blame a guy for being too careful.
Jean is looking at him in that slightly unnerving way she has, like she’s seen every inch of the inside of your head and is being a little judgy about it.
“Um,” he starts, because one of them has to say something, “how’s it going?”
She looks at him for another beat. “All your mugs are chipped,” she tells him, flat, as if that’s a normal thing to say to the guy you almost killed the first time after said attempted murder. He’s not holding a grudge or anything, but still.
“I guess?” He half-asks, a little lost. “Jean, are you-”
“You shouldn’t drink out of chipped mugs,” she says, ignoring him entirely. “Unglazed clay traps bacteria, it’s bad for you.”
Peter isn’t entirely sure what to say to that. “Okay? I’ll get new mugs, I guess- Is that why you’re here? To critique my ceramics collection?”
Jean looks away, fiddles with her sleeve. “No. I wanted to see if you were still living like a weird cross between a frat bro and a monk who’s disavowed all human comforts. Which, obviously, you are.” She looks around at his, admittedly, barren living space with barely concealed distain.
Peter, very briefly, considers being insulted. It’s not like living like this was a choice- it’s kind of difficult to get your affairs in orders when not a single person in the universe remembers your name, when you don’t legally exist. But it’s not like he can complain about that to Jean, who, frankly, has had it a lot harder than him over the last few months. His spartan living area seems like, as Yelena would say, small potatoes, when you compare it to Jean’s sister being kidnapped and murdered.
So, instead of defending himself and his, yes, incredibly shitty apartment, he just hums thoughtfully.
“You know,” he tells her, considering, “it sounds like you just wanted to check on me.”
“I don’t,” she says, very quickly, which tells Peter he’s completely correct.
He can’t help but think that it’s sweet, that she clearly cares even though she wants to do anything but. Jean looks like she’s trying to look casual, but really looks nervous and unsure, and Peter is violently reminded that she might be a telepath capable of massive amounts of destruction, but she’s also a teenager. A very lonely, very scared, very powerful teenager, who hasn’t had anyone in her corner for a really long time. Gee, he wonders what that’s like.
He thinks about those years of being alone. He thinks about what he needed; what he wanted.
Peter smiles at Jean, and watches some of the tension drain out of her. “You hungry?”
**
Jean, as it turns out, is ravenous. They’d ordered Chinese takeout, then taken it up to the roof of Peter’s building to eat, since Jean had said Peter’s apartment “makes me sad, dude, like, do you seriously want to live like this?” Which, rude, but also totally true, so he lets it go.
She eats like she hasn’t had food since the last time Peter saw her, and he side-eyes her, going from a little worried to a lot worried.
“So, where have you been staying?” He asks, instead of outright saying “have you been homeless? Has anyone been feeding you? Are people being nice to you?” the way he wants to, because he thinks Jean would probably shove him off the roof if he voiced such overt concern for her health and wellbeing. Not that it’d kill him or anything, but it would be a natural stopping point for the conversation, which wouldn’t make him any less worried.
“Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters,” she tells him, with her mouth full in a way that May would have chastised Peter for when he was like, ten. He gets the same pang as usual when he thinks about her, but it’s less painful than usual, maybe more bittersweet than anything. He meant what he’d said- May would have loved Jean.
“Oh,” Peter says, because he knows very little about Charles Xavier and his school, other than a possibly made-up story he heard from Tony one time, about Professor X and Magneto having a bust up at some conference, and then Tony walking in on them making out in the cloak room afterwards. Peter had learned to take most of the stories Tony told him about other superheroes with a healthy dose of scepticism, so he doesn’t mention it to Jean. She’s traumatised enough.
“Do they, like, feed you there?” Peter asks, because he didn’t know it was possible to inhale sesame chicken, but she was giving it a try.
She snorts suddenly, laughing, sounding her age for once. “They feed me,” Jean confirms, “but Hank had some kind of argument with Prof, and now he’s on strike and won’t cook anything. The Professor can’t cook for shit, so this is the first time I’ve had food that isn’t boiled in a week.”
By the time she’s finished speaking and has gone back to shovelling food into her mouth, Peter feels marginally more reassured. He’d had visions of her living under freeways underpasses, or, more concerningly, mind controlling her way into some kind of luxury apartment complex. Jean enrolling herself in school, a school where they’d appreciate just how special she is, is by far the best case scenario.
“You like it there?” He asks, and she hums noncommittally in the particular way teenagers do when you ask them a question they don’t feel like answering. “Have you made any friends?”
She shrugs, mumbles “sure,” without looking at him, which tells him a) she has made a specific friend, who, b) she likes in more than a friend way. He’s quietly thrilled that she’s relaxed enough to have something as normal as a high school crush, but he has to be cool about it, or she’ll literally never tell him anything ever again.
He moves the conversation along, and watches Jean relax incrementally. She starts, haltingly at first and then with more confidence, to tell him a funny story about one of the other kids getting caught sneaking out after curfew, and Peter laughs along. By the time the sun is setting and Jean leaves, telling him she has to get back before the Professor sends someone out looking for her, Peter feels better than he has in weeks. He falls asleep easily, with the knowledge that Jean is safe, and cared for, and that she wants him to be those things too.
**
It keeps happening.
Every couple of weeks, Jean will appear in his apartment, disparage his life choices, and they get takeout. It happens in no dissernable pattern that Peter can make out, which means he can’t even prepare to have every facate of his life examined in advance, which seems unfair. The one time he points this out to Jean, she gives him a flat stare and tells him “life’s not fair,” in her Body-Hopping-Serial-Killer-Telapath voice, so he shuts up.
It’s not like it bothers him. Actually, it’s kind of… nice? He never thought he’d miss someone judging all his life choices, but apparently, spending four years almost completely isolated from other people means he’s thrilled when someone starts coming around to bully him in to being a functional human being. Peter wonders if that’s why he’s friends with Frank, too, since he does exactly the same thing, admittedly with more expletives involved.
He doesn’t worry about the possibility of Jean and Frank inadvertently meeting again, mostly because it doesn’t occur to him that it’s something that could happen. Peter knows they had some kind of interaction after he got shot, and it seems to have gone well enough; neither of them tried to kill the other, which is kind of the bar where both Jean and Frank are concerned. He’d just sort of assumed that things would continue on as they were; with his friends existing in their own orbits, never really coming in to contact with each other.
So, when he comes through his front door one night after patrol, covered in soot and dust and exhausted in that bone-deep way that means he’s going to crash for at least twelve hours sometime in the near future, and realises that there are two people in his apartment, he’s a little confused.
“Oh. Hello?” He says it like a question, too tired to make any intuitive leaps that might explain why Frank Castle and Jean Grey are sitting at his kitchen table, glaring at him like they’re his parents and he’s home after curfew.
“And where the fuck have you been?” Frank growls at him, and Peter all but snaps to attention, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t.
Then he remembers that he’s a fully grown man, and also, you know, Spiderman, and that he can do what he wants.
“I’ve been out fighting crime, where do you think I’ve been?” He demands, because really, where else would he be? He has no life, to the extent he had such an extended crisis about it that his powers went haywire. It’s not like he’d be at the mall.
“We know that,” Frank snaps back, and Peter doesn’t have time to even think oh, so it’s we now before Frank is gesturing violently at the TV. The TV that is showing some admittedly distressing footage of the burning building he’d been saving people from collapsing, along with a banner telling the viewer “SPIDERMAN UNACCOUNTED FOR AFTER BUILDING COLLAPSE.”
“Oh,” Peter says, because yeah. That looks bad.
“I thought you were dead,” Jean says in an awful, quiet voice, and when he looks at her, he can see that she’s deathly pale under her shock of red hair.
“No calls, no texts,” Frank is ranting now, building up a real head of steam, “just straight to voicemail, not so much as a ‘hi Frank, don’t worry about me, I’m alive, I’m just not answering my phone because I’m a fucking asshole.’”
Peter fumbles in his pocket for his phone, and is met with a blank screen when he tries to unlock it. “It’s dead,” he says nonsensically, because obviously they’re already aware.
“Yeah, we know that dipshit,” Frank yells, “which is why we both came to your shithole apartment, to see if you’d come back here to bleed out without telling anyone you were fucking dying. Again!”
Oh, Jesus, Peter thinks, horrified. Evidently, they’re more traumatised by his last brush with death than he is. For them, it was a huge, life-changing ordeal; for him it was Tuesday. He obviously isn’t used to having people worry about him anymore, let alone having them worry enough to converge on his apartment in case he’s come down with another incurable case of being fatally stupid.
“Oh God, I’m sorry,” he blurts out, and he really is. Both of these people have super terrible memories of him nearly dying, and he’s just walking around with a dead phone like an idiot. “I’m so sorry.”
Frank, at the clear, abject horror in Peter’s voice, visibly deflates. He is, contrary to what Daredevil keeps telling Peter in his typically ominous way on his rare forays into Hell’s Kitchen, a total softie, at least when it comes to people he cares about. Peter has been neatly slotted in to Frank’s mind as one of said people- and apparently, so has Jean, if the way Frank drops a hand on to her shoulder is any indication.
“Shit, kid, don’t apologise to me,” Frank sighs, as if he hadn’t been the one reaming Peter out for being incommunicado. “Apologise to her; she’s the one who’s been freaking out since we got here.”
“Have not,” Jean shoots back, but it’s half-hearted, lacking any real venom. She’s still got a pallor that Peter is incredibly concerned about, as well as a look in her eyes he doesn’t like. Overall, she’s giving off a general aura of despair he’s really not happy with.
“Hey,” he knees down, so he’s on a level with her, still sitting at his table where they’re had dinner a hundred times. “Jean. I’m really sorry if I scared you. I’m okay- I promise, I’m okay.”
“I wasn’t scared,” she lies blatantly, but considering her hands are still shaking, it’s not particularly convincing. “I just… They were saying you were dead, and then I got here and you weren’t-”
“I know,” Peter says, taking a risk and putting his hand on hers. “I’m sorry. I should have called.”
“You should have,” she says, with a little more bite in her voice; Peter thinks that’s a good sign. “We’re getting you a portable charger immediately.”
That breaks the tension a little, and Peter and Frank both laugh.
“Damn straight,” Frank says, clapping a hand on Jean’s shoulder, albeit more gently than Peter would expect from Frank, which basically confirms that adoption papers have been filed. Jean doesn’t even try and take his hand off for doing it, which is means she’s not rejecting the adoption as a possibility yet. Maybe bonding over him nearly dying, twice, was the key to these two getting along.
“Pizza?” Peter asks tentatively, not sure if that will be a step too far.
But Jean and Frank both accept this easily enough, and later, when Frank is ribbing Peter, and Jean is laughing and taking another slice from the half-empty box, Peter thinks maybe this whole Letting-People-In thing is a good idea after all.
**
Now that Jean’s met one of his friends, the floodgates seem to have opened. The next time Peter heads out to go meet Ned, he finds Jean sitting on his apartment stoop. She holds up a grocery bag like it’s an invitation, or a peace offering.
“I got chips,” she tells him, a note of not-quite hope in her voice.
“Don’t you have school?” He asks, because he’s fine with her coming with him, but he feels like he should register some objection to her ditching this much. As like, an older, mentor type person in her life.
She scoffs. “There’s like, ton of kids there, and some of them have powers a lot more destructive than mine. I doubt they’d even notice I’m gone until lights out, and I’ll be back by then.”
Peter thinks about it for a second, then shrugs. He’s not her dad, and he honestly thinks spending time around people in the real world will probably be more beneficial to her than being locked away in a school with Charles Xavier. If Peter gives credence to half the things Tony told him, then he’s not the guy he wants socialising the telepathic former terrorist. Jean’s better off hanging out with Peter and Ned than she is with the guy involved in a long-term, world-peace threatening situationship with Magneto.
“We’re watching Star Wars,” he warns, and she starts to smile, because she knows she’s won, “and we’ll probably talk through the whole thing about science stuff you don’t care about.”
“I can handle it,” she grins at him.
“And you have to be nice to Ned,” he adds, because Jean’s natural affect is hostility until such a time she decides tolerate you, and Peter thinks that if she’s her usual apathetic self at Ned, he’s going to be sad about it. And Peter can handle a lot of things, but he’s had about enough of Ned being sad for a lifetime.
Jean looks a little offended. “Of course I’ll be nice to Ned. He’s your friend.”
She’s true to her word. Once they’re through the door, Jean holds out her bag of snacks to Ned like she’d offering him the key to the city.
“I’m Jean,” she says, shyly, like she’s expecting a negative response. Ned, who has been briefed on the Her-Sister-Was-Kidnapped-And-Murdered-By-Shady-Government-Forces aspect of the mind control debacle, doesn’t even blink. He grins, and ushers her inside the apartment, already chattering away at her like he’s met her a thousand times, and Peter follows them in, almost glowing with the triumph of having introduced two friends from different aspects of his life and them getting along.
Because as it turns out, Jean likes Ned immediately. It doesn’t seem to matter that she clearly doesn’t understand, or care, about a lot of the science talk happening. Peter gets the impression she’s not really a STEM enthusiast, although he realises he’s been remiss in asking her what her actual interests are. Do they have career day at Xaviers? Or are the only two career options on the table “X-Men” or “terrorism”? He makes a mental note to check up on that; he’s not going to let her get strong armed into some paramilitary force if she wants to be, like, an elementary school teacher or an optometrist.
Despite her complete lack of interest, she follows along easily enough, asking questions in the right places, so the conversation flows easily enough. Ned’s always been easy to talk to, at least for Peter; friendly and gregarious and eager to engage with new people. But Jean, Peter is realising, is actually trying, is making a real, concerted effort to be, not just civil, but outgoing, chatty, like Peter’s friend liking her is genuinely important to her. It’s enough to warm his cold, arachnid heart, it really is.
He’d have considered it a total success, if not for her reaction to his other friend in residence at the apartment they’re visiting. Because Jean might like Ned, but apparently, bafflingly, she really doesn’t like MJ. Peter doesn’t understand it at first. Jean isn’t exactly the warmest of people, considering everything, but the dislike seems more specific than her general misanthropy. Every time MJ enters the room, or speaks, or breathes, Peter can see Jean tense up a little more. The pattern continues for weeks, to the point where Peter can’t convince himself he’s imagining things anymore. The only one who hasn’t noticed is Ned, and that’s because he’s the only person not looking for any evidence of tension. MJ is clearly aware, and, Peter suspects, would have made a comment about it, if not for the previous body-snatching incident, which means Peter needs to be the one to bring it up.
“I don’t understand what the problem is,” he tells her one night as they’re leaving. “When you were trying to kill me, you said you liked her. But now we’re cool, you don’t like her? What am I missing?”
Jean looks mutinous. “I wasn’t trying to kill you,” she says indignantly, even though that was absolutely what she’d been trying to do; Peter thinks it was justifiable, considering the circumstances, but he’d still like it on record that she sent murder-ninjas after him. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t say anything to her.”
“You didn’t need to,” Peter points out. “You were glaring a hole in her head the whole time. What gives?”
Jean shrugs, almost embarrassed. “Just… She makes you sad.”
That, admittedly, takes him aback a little. Because, yeah, he does get sad around MJ, heartbroken in a way that’s so familiar to him he barely even registers it anymore. She’s never going to remember him, and it’s his fault, mostly, and that’s something he has to live with. There’s nothing he can do about it, and there’s certainly nothing he expects MJ to do about it. They’re his feelings; that’s on him, not her.
“I guess the situation makes me sad, yeah,” he says slowly, “but that isn’t her fault. It’s pretty categorically my fault, actually; she hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“I know that,” Jean says, looking away from him.
“Then why don’t you like her?”
“I don’t know, okay?” she snaps. “but you’re sad when she’s around, and it makes me mad.”
Ah. Peter gets it now. It’s not that she’s blaming MJ for anything; it’s about Peter. It’s like when your friend in middle school gets dumped by their girlfriend of a week, and you vow to like, hate them forever. Except Jean isn’t twelve, and is apparently capable of holding a nonsensical grudge for a hell of a lot longer than the average eighth grader. He suspects maybe this is the first time she’s encountered this problem; from what he knows of her life, before, with Sarah, he’s not getting the impression that she’s had a lot of experience with being irrationally protective of your friends for stupid reasons.
“Listen,” he starts, trying to make his voice firm, even though he’s more amused and, honestly, touched that she’s willing to go to bat for him, “I get it. But if I’m sad, that’s my problem, not hers. Even if it makes you mad, you can’t go around being rude to people when my feelings are hurt, especially when it’s not their fault. You have to at least try being civil with MJ.”
Jean does, at least, look abashed at that. “Sorry,” she says, quieter than usual. “I’ll try to be nicer.”
Peter has to stifle a laugh. “Thanks for… you know. Wanting to look out for me, I guess,” he offers, to soften the admonishment a little.
She brightens a little. “Someone has to, since you won’t do it yourself,” she tells him, and he laughs, and the tension is lifted. After that, he sees her make a deliberate effort to be, if not friendly, then not outright hostile to MJ; the movie nights continue, and Peter thinks that if he had to have a new normal, after everything, he’s glad it’s this.
**
When Jean asks him to come to Xavier’s, he doesn’t really understand what he’s agreeing to. In his defence, she was characteristically vague about the whole thing, when she was explaining the whole thing to him.
“So, it’s like, a parent-teacher conference? I don’t think I’m even remotely qualified for that.”
“God no,” she snorts. “It’s just a day students can invite people they know to come and see the school. There’s going to be food, and demonstrations, stuff like that. The Professor said it was cool for me to invite you, so. I’m here. Inviting you.”
Peter feels like he needs a little more clarification. “Are you inviting Peter Parker? Or Spiderman? If this is a show-and-tell kind of situation-”
“They don’t know anything about you being Spiderman- well the Prof probably does, but he knows everything. I’m inviting Peter Parker.”
Jean is saying this in a very casual way, but Peter knows just by looking at her that this is somehow incredibly important to her. He doesn’t really understand why, and he should probably ask, but… But Jean generally doesn’t ask for anything. He doesn’t want to ask questions and give her the impression that he’s trying to get out of coming to her school event. So, he just agrees, and she looks so relieved that he knows he made the right decision.
But that’s how he’s ended up at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, all the way out in Rochester, at what is clearly an event for family, no matter how Jean has framed it as some kind of open house. Peter is surrounded by doting parents and siblings, and Jean is giving off “please pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” vibes about it, so he can’t even bring it up. He just lets Jean lead him around all her classes, where all her teachers give her glowing reviews (they obviously aren’t aware of the sheer amount of time she’s spending away from the school, and Peter isn’t going to rat her out), and Jean keeps looking at him out of the corner of her eye with a little smile she’s trying to hide, like… Like she wants him to know she’s doing so well. Like she wants him to be proud of her.
And he is. Peter is beyond thrilled that her story got a happier ending than she ever thought possible, that she’d made it through the tragedy that was her adolescence and come out the other side as close to a normal kid someone like them could be. It’s just, before this, he didn’t really think Jean wanted or needed his approval. But she’s showing him her school work (which is, admittedly, exemplary, considering how much time she spends skipping school to come to see him; he wonders if there’s any kind of scholarships Xavier would recommend for her to apply to, because clearly the kid’s going places, and one of those places is going to be college, if he has anything to say about it), and tentatively introducing Peter to some of her classmates and their parents, while hedging around what her relationship to Peter actually is.
Because that’s what this is, he thinks, feeling incredibly stupid. That’s what the whole thing, the showing up to make fun of his apartment and check he’s living like a human being, the being nice to his friends, the caring, has all been about. To Jean, he’s not Spiderman, the guy she’d first met in the DODC prison. He’s Peter Parker, the guy who got shot for her, and told this girl, devoid of family and friends and everything a teenager should have, that she did have someone; she had him. She’d decided, apparently without telling him, that she didn’t just have him; they both had each other. Peter has evidently acquired a kid sibling without actually noticing that this has happened.
He expects to freak out. Peter has been without family for a long time; he lost his parents, then Ben, Tony, May, MJ and Ned, hell, even Happy. He’s not even sure if he remembers how to be family, anymore. Except he clearly does, because he’s been doing it for months. They’ve been getting takeout and talking shit, going to Ned and MJ’s, sitting at his kitchen table in his terrible apartment while Frank cooks and bickers back and forth with both of them. She brought him to family day; he must be doing something right.
So, instead of doing anything counter-productive, he relaxes. He’d felt out of place, before, amongst all the parents and siblings; now he doesn’t have to. He’s here with his kid sister. So, when Jean gets shifty and says she’s going to talk to her friend Scott for a minute, he feels safe enough to raise a knowing eyebrow at her, because he knows that tone of voice, and suspects he knows the identity of the kid she was crushing on when she first turned up at his place. He’s proven correct when he gets a scowl and a slug in the arm, but when she leaves to go find her “friend”, Peter grins at her back as she leaves, and thinks that the whole sibling thing feels pretty natural, considering he’s only just realised he has one.
Later, he’s waiting to catch the bus back from Rochester, Jean sitting with him at the stop, and she must have overheard at least some of what he was thinking earlier, because she brings it up.
“I don’t want another sister,” she tells him, flat in the way she gets when she’s trying not to be emotional about something. “I had Sarah, and she was the best, and I don’t need anyone to replace her.” She pauses. “But I’ve never had a brother before.”
“I’m an only child,” he tells her, feeling like he should at least warn her, “so I might not be any good at being a brother.”
“You’re doing fine so far,” she tells him, smiling a little, and he grins back, warm and happy in a way he hasn’t been since before he got bit by that spider and the Parker Luck kicked in for real.
He nudges his shoulder against hers. “I guess we’ll figure it out.”
They go back and forth as the sun sets, and when the bus pulls up, and he waves at Jean through the window until she disappears from view, he feels more himself than he has in years. He would never say it out loud, lest Frank somehow intuit his line of thought and come by to yell at him, but he’s actually kind of grateful he got shot. It hurt like hell, and he could do without the dying part, but- but he thinks he’d be worse off if he hadn’t been. He has people now; people he knew before, and new people who he doesn’t think he could live without.
Most importantly, he has a new sister. He thinks the bullet was an okay price to pay for Jean.