Archive of Our Own

It was 6:18 when Peter checked his phone and saw the date: Thursday, August 10.

It also showed him a few other things, too. The temperature would hit ninety-one that day. His rent was due in three days. Someone in New Jersey also had tried to sign into his email. He sat down and tried to deal with the email first.

His apartment was already warm. The little window unit pushed out a steady stream of cool air that smelled faintly of dust, and the blinds tapped softly against the sill. Peter sat on the edge of his bed with one of his hands braced against his lower back while the security page was loading in front of him. The ache had been there when he went to sleep. It was better than it had been two weeks ago and slightly worse than it had been yesterday, which was exactly what one would expect when a person took three nights off from patrol, decided for himself that he was healed, and then spent the next few hours catching men who had stolen an armored truck.

He changed the password of his email, drank some water from the fridge, and did the stretches that the physical therapist had shown him. He got through the first two of them. On the third, pain pulled at his side and he stopped going further.

“Good,” he said to no one present in the room. “Great. That’s definitely… progress.”

There was no particular reason to say the date out loud today. It was just another one of those days, like all the others in the last four years. He had known it before he checked, the way he used to know, before May came into his room with a plate, making far too much noise, certain that she was hiding it, and failing most of the time.

He went ahead and showered, found a clean T-shirt under a clean-enough sweatshirt, and ate the last spoonfuls of cereal out of the box. The milk in the fridge had also gone bad. He discovered that a bit late, though, while eating, so he ate it anyway, then stood over the sink for a moment with his eyes closed.

It wasn’t even one of those birthdays that people generally made a big deal about. He was old enough to know that they were supposed to get less interesting at his age, and it had been four years since he had thought about one at all. He folded the cereal box flat, rinsed the glass he had drunk the water from and then put the bad milk in the trash.

As the clock hit seven, he had the suit spread across the folding table. A seam below his left arm had split again on his last patrol he was doing. He threaded a needle, bent over the red fabric, and worked at it while the people in the building were waking up around him: the sound of water knocking in the pipes, a baby who was crying downstairs, somebody who was dragging a trash bag down the hall. On the other side of his wall, the man in apartment 3B sang half of the same song at least three times while he was getting ready for work.

Nobody knocked on his door.

Peter finished the seam, looked at it from both sides and had to redo a section because it was looking crooked.

As the clock hit nine, he went to the bodega. The owner there knew him as the thin guy who always bought too many bananas and came in after midnight with bruises more often than not. He simply nodded at Peter from behind the register and kept arguing on the phone call he was having about a produce delivery.

Peter picked up some bread, eggs, two bottles of sports drink, and a cup of instant noodles. Near the register, there was a clear plastic bag that held four slices of yellow cake. The frosting on it was too bright and had hardened at the edges. He looked at it for a good duration of time, enough that the owner’s daughter, who was doing her homework on a milk crate at the side, followed his eyes.

“Hey, mister. Do you want one of those?”

“No, I was just—no, thanks.”

“You know, they are just half the usual price today.”

“…That somehow makes me more concerned about it.”

She shrugged and went back to her worksheet. Peter paid for what he had, put the receipt in the bag, and took the long way back home.

At the corner of Forty-Third Avenue, an air conditioner came loose from a third-floor window.

Instinctively, his body moved before he could think about the consequences for himself. The grocery bag that he was carrying hit the sidewalk. Peter caught the unit with both of his hands over his head. The weight of the air conditioner drove the air out of him and sent a hot, tearing pain from his lower back up into his ribs, and his knees folded. One of them struck the pavement hard enough to split his jeans, and for a second his hands went numb around the metal. He forced the unit back up with a sound which was caught behind his teeth. Somebody screamed above him, and a bottle of sports drink rolled into a gutter on the side.

“…I have it,” he managed.

He backed away into the mouth of the alley, keeping his face turned away from the people on the sidewalk, and fired a web from beneath his sleeve. The unit lifted out of his hands and struck the empty fire-escape landing with a heavy metal bang. The pull on the line dragged at his injured back, and his knee nearly gave out again.

The woman leaned through the open window.

“Stay inside,” Peter called, his sweatshirt still pulled over his nose.

He shot a second web around the railing, securing the unit without stepping into anyone’s view. By the time the people below could have raised their phones, he had torn the first line from his wrist and disappeared farther into the alley.

Back at the apartment, one of the eggs that he had bought had broken and soaked the bread in the bag. He put both of them in the trash. Maybe the cake could have survived this, he thought, and immediately felt stupid for even thinking about it.

He spent that afternoon in the suit, moving through Queens. There had been nothing large enough to make the news today. A delivery van blew through a red light. Two men tried to snatch a purse and learned, rather quickly, that the webbing did not come out of wool. A little boy on a scooter had lost his mother outside a pharmacy, and Peter stayed crouched beside him until she came running from the next block. As the clock hit four, he stopped behind a rooftop water tower and ate the bodega sandwich, which had been flattened on one side in his backpack but was still warm from the afternoon heat.

On his birthdays, May used to call him from work to tell him not to look in the oven — which was how he knew there was something in the oven, and which he remembered now, stupid as it was, with a half smile.

Peter crushed the empty wrapper which was in his hand and put it in his backpack.

His phone suddenly buzzed with a beep sound.

It was a message, from the number that Yelena used for herself.

Spider-Man, I need you at the New Avengers headquarters tonight at seven. It is not an emergency, so do not come crashing through a window or swinging across the city like a maniac. Use the roof. And also keep your mask on, but I know that you would do this without being told. Just be there at seven.

Peter read the message he had just received on his phone once again.

Hi, is this a mission or something? He typed it and sent it.

On the other side, the typing indicator first appeared, disappeared and then returned.

No, it is a favor. Nothing has been stolen. I will explain to you when you arrive. That is all I have for now.

Peter started typing another question in response to this, thinking, Weird. He looked at it for a moment, then deleted it, and put the phone away. Whatever Yelena could have wanted, she had seemingly decided that he was already coming.

As the clock hit six-thirty, he considered not going, for a minute. The headquarters was not on his way anywhere, and Yelena’s instructions also tended to contain more weapons than her wording mostly suggested. His back also hurt from the incident that afternoon, on top of the pain that it already had. His suit also smelled like hot pavement now. He could go home, wash it in the sink, make eggs—

He remembered the broken eggs.

So, as the clock hit six fifty-two, Spider-Man landed on the roof of the New Avengers building and found the access door propped open with a sack of flour.

Huh, he thought.

The stairwell there smelled like kind of a burnt cake, and one floor down he found the door open and the room inside full of red and blue decorations. A red plastic tablecloth was covering the long table, blue streamers hung loosely from the ceiling, and paper spiders had been taped to the windows. Most of them had eight legs, though one of them had nine. On the far wall, sheets of printer paper had been joined into a sign that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SPIDER-MAN in red marker.

Peter’s spider-sense went off a second before a loud pop cracked beside his head. He moved without thinking and ended up on the ceiling, one of his hands stuck above him and the other aiming at the room. Jean moved at the same time that he landed on the ceiling. She stepped into the space he had just left and raised her hand, stopping the cap of the party popper a few inches from her face. The silver paper stayed frozen around her while Yelena stood nearby holding the empty tube.

Then Yelena lowered the smoking tube. “That is not a normal reaction to confetti.”

Peter came down from the ceiling and looked at the tube in Yelena’s hand. She turned it over and read the label.

“That was supposed to go over your head,” she said. Peter just looked around him for a moment.

The silver pieces which burst out came down all at once. Jean let the cap fall into her hand and set it on the table beside her. She was wearing the same dark green jacket that Peter had remembered, a yellow hood bunched at the back of her neck. Her hair was longer than the last time that he remembered her. Or maybe it only looked that way because it was not wet and stuck to her face this time.

“Jean?” Peter said.

“Hi.”

She said it like they had just seen each other on a random Tuesday, not as if the last time she had touched him he had been bleeding onto the floor of a ruined government building. Peter tried to think of a normal next thing to do or say, but could not find one.

Behind her, Bob was standing on a chair with a roll of tape wrapped around his wrist. Frank also leaned against the counter by the sink, dressed in black, and his arms folded. He was the only person in the room, according to Peter, who kind of looked like he had come to an evacuation rather than a party.

Yelena spread both hands. “Yeee. Surprise. Bob, you can stop fixing the sign now. He has seen it.”

“I was fixing the R,” Bob said. He climbed down with the tape still wrapped around his wrist. “I thought we were counting first. Sorry. I might’ve misunderstood.”

“Counting ruins the surprise,” Yelena said.

Peter looked at the sign Bob had been fixing, and then at the cake that was on the table. It was covered in red and blue icing, with two large white eyes on top of it and a small plastic Spider-Man pushed into the middle. He looked back at Jean.

“…How did you know that it was today?”

Jean moved the stack of paper plates closer to the cake without looking at him. “I told her that it was today.”

Yelena put the empty party popper on the table. “Color me surprised when she came here and asked me to arrange a quiet dinner. There are only five people here, so this is quiet.”

“Only two Avengers,” Bob added, then glanced at Frank. “I mean—”

“I’m not an Avenger,” Frank said.

Peter looked at Jean again and found her watching his left side, where his hand had settled over the sore spot without him noticing this time. He moved it from there, but she was already frowning.

“You’re still hurt,” she said.

“No. I mean, a little, but that’s normal. Normal for me. Not normal, generally.”

“Sit down on the chair there.”

“I’m okay standing.”

“He ain’t,” Frank said from beside the counter.

“Thank you, Frank. Very helpful.”

Jean pulled out the chair and waited beside it. Peter sat, mostly because everyone had started staring at him and no one was saying anything either. She went around the table, put two slices of pizza on a paper plate, came back and set it in front of him, pushed a bottle of water towards him, and took the seat beside his.

Yelena watched them for a moment before saying, “So, Spider-Man. Are you going to introduce her properly? The government file explained the possession and the attacks. Castle explained to me the part where she saved your life. Nobody explained to me when she became your girlfriend. Is this one of those enemies-to-lovers—”

Before Yelena could have finished what she was saying, Jean said, “I’m not his girlfriend,” and reached for a plate on the table. She picked up two of them by mistake in her hurry, put one of them back, and kept her eyes on the table. Bob quietly pulled a napkin from the stack, and Frank watched her over the rim of his coffee in his hands.

“No,” Peter said. “Right. She’s not.” He took a breath. “This is Jean Grey. Yelena already knows her—”

“I haven’t met her,” Bob said.

“Oh, right. Sorry.” Peter started again. “Jean is my friend. We met when—okay, so, when she was controlling people, but she couldn’t do that to me, for whatever reason, that’s a whole thing aside. And after that I helped Damage Control arrest her, which was a mistake. Helping them was the mistake. Not meeting her. Meeting her was fine. That sounded—”

“Stop,” Jean said under her breath, putting the plate down.

Peter stopped. “She’s my friend,” he said after a moment. “A close friend,” he said with a smile.

Yelena looked at him. “This was not even that difficult of a question.”

“I can start over.”

“Please don’t,” Jean said.

After a moment, Bob said, “Oh yeah, hi, I’m Bob. I know Yelena here. I mean—I’m on the team. We heard about some of the things that had happened with Damage Control.” He said it a little too fast, like he had been practicing it for some time.

Frank had been quiet by the counter. Jean looked over and found him as he was watching her.

“You in anybody’s head right now?” he asked.

Her hand stopped on the plates, and she answered him in a small voice, “No.”

Frank kept looking at her for a moment.

“Frank,” Peter said.

“What?”

“She saved my life.”

“Yeah. I know.” Frank glanced at him, then back at Jean. “Wasn’t what I asked her.”

“I said no,” Jean said.

Frank picked up his coffee. He stood there for a second longer, and then went back to the table. Only after that did Jean let her fingers uncurl from the plate.

To break the silence, Yelena picked up the knife kept on the table and began cutting the cake. The inside of it was red velvet, and the white icing eyes were turning pink when the cake was put on the plates.

Meanwhile, Bob brought Peter a small black pouch with a metal clip. He didn’t hand it over right away. He turned it once, checked the clip present on it, and then held it out.

“I took it off an old climbing harness,” he said. “The plastic ones, I didn’t trust them to stay on whenever you go upside down. There’s a thing where they flex and pop. I tested it on the service stairs.” A pause, and then, “Though not while swinging. You’d have to try that part for yourself.”

Peter checked the hinge, opened the pouch and found bandages, sealant and a pair of folding scissors tucked inside. He took the scissors out, opened them once and put them back. “Oh, these are useful. I’m always trying to cut bandages with—yeah. Thank you, Bob.”

Yelena pushed a paper bag toward him while he was still closing the pouch. Inside were three pairs of red socks with small black spiders on them, held together with a rubber band. Peter worked it loose and took out a pair.

“I don’t know what size you are,” she said. “I asked the woman in the store, but she wanted your shoe size, which I also do not know. These stretch. They should be fine.”

Peter held one of them against his hand, then smiled and folded it back over the other. “Yeah, I think they’ll fit. Thanks, Yelena.” He put them beside the pouch and checked the bag to make sure he had not missed anything.

They all sat and ate around the table. Peter rolled up his mask only far enough for him to eat, and then pulled it down again when Bob asked for a picture together. Yelena caught Jean by the sleeve and brought her in from the wall. Frank stayed by the sink and appeared in the background most of the time. Bob had put a newspaper picture of Spider-Man saving a city bus inside the card. Peter read the names under it and packed the card and the gifts into his backpack.

Peter started to zip the backpack, then took the card out once again. There were crumbs present in the bottom of the bag. He tipped them into his hand, found the sandwich wrapper underneath, and carried both of them to the trash. When he came back, Bob was looking through the photographs on his phone, and Peter leaned over to see. “Could you send me that one?” He waited while Bob did, then put the card in the front pocket and moved the socks around so nothing would bend it. His phone lit up with the picture. Peter opened it, looked toward Jean, and put the phone away when she turned in his direction.

Jean was trying to get the canvas bag onto her shoulder when Frank stopped beside her and held out a narrow paper sack. “Found a copy. Place on Ninth had it.”

Jean looked inside, then back at him. “You could’ve told me you were going. I would’ve given you the money.” Frank shook his head and reached past her to open the service door. Jean folded the top of the sack down before putting it carefully into her bag.

Frank held out a hand for Peter’s backpack as Peter lifted it off the chair. “Come on, Red.”

Peter hesitated, then passed it over. Frank told Yelena he would take them downstairs. She nodded and went back to fitting the leftover cake into its box while Bob cleared the paper plates. Jean waited by the open door until Peter reached her, and Frank followed them through, letting it close behind him.

△▼△▼△▼△

Frank opened an equipment room on the floor below and handed Peter his backpack before stepping out. Peter set it on a bench and began getting out of the suit. The fabric stuck under his left arm. He pulled a little harder, and the pain caught him halfway through the movement. For a moment he stood with his arm still raised, trying to get a breath in without making it worse for himself. He lowered it slowly and braced his hand against a metal cabinet. The metal was cool under his palm. He stayed there until he could straighten himself, then worked the sleeve loose without pulling.

By the time that he had his sweatshirt on, there was sweat along his hairline. He packed the suit beneath the gifts, put on his cap and opened the door. Frank looked at him but said nothing. Peter tried to lift the backpack onto his shoulder, stopped, and held it by the top handle instead. Jean shifted her canvas bag to her other hand and reached for it. “Let me carry that.”

“It’s okay. I can—” Peter stopped when she kept her hand out. He passed her the bag, and she put the strap over her shoulder while Frank locked the room.

“Take the train,” Frank said. “No roofs tonight.”

“Was that decided while I was changing?” Peter asked.

Frank pushed the stairwell door open and held it open while Jean and Peter went through. Peter turned back to thank him, but Frank was already pulling the door shut. He raised a hand before it closed, then followed Jean down to the street.

The station was hotter than it had been outside. Peter took his cap off while they waited there and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. When the train arrived, they found two seats near the doors, and Jean put the bags between her feet before sitting beside him. The train jerked as she settled down. Her hand went toward Peter’s side, but then stopped just short of him and dropped to the backpack strap instead. “Sorry, the bag slipped out,” she said. Peter looked down at it, wedged between her shoes, and then moved his foot to make more room for her. Jean pulled the canvas bag closer too. A folded ticket came up with one of the handles, and Peter caught the time which was printed at the top of it: 5:10 A.M. Below it was the name of a town that was nearly three hours north of here. He was still reading it when Jean folded the ticket again and pushed it down beside the cake box.

“You got on a bus at five-ten?” he asked.

“It was a little later. The bus was late today.”

Jean bent to pull the canvas bag away from the doors. She said Yelena had some records that she wanted her to look at, and Peter turned toward her. “The Damage Control ones? She sent me those last week. Did you get a different—”

“No. The same ones.” Jean sat back, keeping one hand around the bag’s handles. “I wanted to check something in them. There might have been pages missing.”

Peter opened his mouth to ask, then looked down at the bags instead. “Oh. Okay.” The train went into a tunnel, and the windows turned dark enough for him to see their reflections. His backpack was resting against Jean’s leg. She pushed the paper sack from Frank farther into the canvas bag and kept looking out at the tunnel, although there was nothing much to see in the dark.

“The cake needed some time to cool,” Jean said after a while. “That was why I went early. The first one wouldn’t come out of the pan, so I had to start again.”

Peter turned toward her. “You made two? I thought the one at the party was—”

“Yelena bought that one.” Jean looked down at the canvas bag and moved the paper sack away from the cake box. “After she saw what happened to mine. Bob found another pan, so I tried again.”

Peter looked at the bag too. He had nearly asked Yelena about Jean one night when he was in the hospital. Her name had sat in an unfinished message until his phone went dark, and the next morning he had deleted it. Frank had said that she was safe. That was all he had known until she stepped in front of him at the party. Peter took his cap off and rested it on his knee. Jean was still looking out of the window, so he sat back beside her and let her finish when she was ready to do it.

They got off at his stop and walked back to his building. Jean followed him up to the third floor and waited behind him while he unlocked the apartment. Peter pushed the door open and went straight to the chair, dropping his keys into the bowl on the way. He had left a towel and a clean shirt on the seat that morning. He picked them up, looked around for somewhere to put them, and only then noticed she hadn’t followed him inside the apartment.

“Oh—come in. Sorry, I thought you were behind me.” He put the clothes on his bed and pulled the chair out a little. “You can put the bags down. You’ve been carrying them the whole way.” Jean stepped inside and set his backpack against the wall, then eased the canvas bag off her shoulder, keeping one hand underneath it. Peter left the chair for her and went back to close the door.

The apartment looked smaller with her inside it. Clean laundry covered half the couch, a bowl with dried tomato sauce sat beside the sink, and the window over the fire escape was still open an inch. Peter picked up the bowl and put it in the sink, running some water into it while Jean found a place for her bag. “Sorry, I cleaned up this morning, but...” He looked over at the couch. “I did the laundry. I was going to put it away before I left.” He turned off the tap and wiped his wet hand on his jeans, then gathered the clothes and carried them to the bed. The shirt he had moved off the chair was already there. He put the rest on top and came back for a sock that he had dropped.

Jean took off her jacket and laid it over the chair before bringing the canvas bag to the table. “Could you get me a plate? And two forks, if you have them.” Peter opened the cupboard above the sink. There were three plates inside. He moved the white one aside and took out the old one with a blue line around the edge and a chip in the side. He had brought it from May’s apartment, along with two mugs and a box of kitchen things he still hadn’t unpacked yet. He found two forks in the drawer and put them on the plate.

By the time he turned around, Jean had set two white takeout cartons and a container of rice on the table. She handed him a plastic serving spoon while she reached farther into the bag, then took out a jar of chocolate frosting with a spoon still in it. The bakery box caught on one of the handles. Peter held the bag open for her, and she worked the box free, looking at the bent corner before setting it down. Frank’s paper sack went beside the laptop. Peter put the plate and forks between them and moved his notebook to make room.

Jean opened the bakery box and stood looking into it for a moment. The cake was small, with a dip in the middle and a thick layer of chocolate frosting. One side had been pushed against the cardboard, leaving some of the yellow cake bare. She took the blue candle out of the box and set it on the lid, then reached for the spoon in the frosting jar. “That wasn’t like that before,” she said. “I thought I had it flat on the train.” She scraped some frosting off the cardboard and tried to spread it over the damage, but it brought more crumbs loose. After another attempt, she put the spoon back in the jar.

Peter looked from the cake to the cartons beside it. Jean had started peeling the tape off one of them, and he could smell the food now. He glanced down at the two forks on the chipped plate. “Jean... I never told you about this. What May and I used to do.”

Her fingers stopped on the carton. She looked at him, then at the plate, and put the carton down without opening it. Peter pulled out the chair and sat. “Was it when we were on the island? When you saw her?”

“Yes.” Jean stayed on the other side of the table. “It came with that. The date, and then you were in the kitchen with her. She was putting things out. You kept trying to get your finger in the frosting.” She looked briefly at the jar. “I thought I was still in the same memory, but the room was different. You were younger.”

Peter rubbed at the mark around his wrist, where the edge of his web-shooter had pressed into the skin. “What else did you see?”

“The cake. The two of you eating, and part of the movie afterward. Not all of it.” She drew the loose tape away from the carton and left it stuck to the lid. “I knew it had changed. I should’ve pulled away then, and I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

He nodded without looking up. The candle had rolled into the fold of the box lid. He picked it up and held it between his fingers for a while before asking, “Did you see how she died?”

“No.” Jean shook her head. “No, Peter. I didn’t see that.”

He let out a breath and put the candle down. Jean waited, then reached across to close the box. Peter caught the edge of the lid before it came down. “No, don’t. Just... leave it a second.” She took her hand away, and he kept his on the cardboard until she stopped trying to put things back in the bag.

The air conditioner rattled in the window. Jean sat on the end of the couch beside the table, her hands resting between her knees. Peter could see where she had tried to fill the low part of the cake. There was much more frosting there than around the edges.

“May started using one candle after we set the smoke alarm off,” he said eventually. “I was eleven. She wanted a picture before I blew them out, but she couldn’t find her phone, so we were standing there with this cake just... melting. Then she found it, and I blew them out right underneath the alarm.” He looked up at the one above his own door. “She was on a chair waving a magazine at it. I kept telling her I could take the battery out, but she wouldn’t let me climb up there.”

Jean glanced at the blue candle. “So the next year she only used one?”

“Yeah. Same cake, one candle. She still took about twenty pictures.” His mouth moved a little. “Most of them were blurry. She’d say my name right when she took it, and I’d turn.”

Jean reached into the canvas bag and brought out a small box of matches. She set it beside him without saying anything. Peter pressed the candle into the cake, a little to one side of the sunken middle, and struck a match. The first one broke. He put it down and tried another, holding it to the wick until the flame stayed.

He shook the match out and watched the candle. May used to get impatient if he took too long, leaning over to check how much wax had run down the side. Sometimes she would start taking the plates away before he had finished deciding, and he would have to tell her to wait. He sat there longer than he meant to. When the first drop reached the frosting, he leaned forward and blew it out.

“Happy birthday, Peter,” Jean said.

He looked at her, then down again. “Thank you.” He pulled the candle out and laid it beside the matches. There was something else he wanted to say, but when he tried, nothing came. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve while Jean finished opening the food.

The cartons held noodles and larb, with the rice packed into a separate plastic container. Jean pressed the serving spoon into it and got most of the rice in one solid piece. She looked toward the microwave. “Can I warm this up?”

“Yeah. Hang on, that button doesn’t work.” Peter got up when she pressed it a second time. “The thirty-second one still does. I keep meaning to fix the other one, but then I just use that.” He pressed it twice and went to the cupboard for the remaining plates. One had a crack near the rim. He kept that one and put the white plate in front of her, then filled two glasses with water.

While the rice turned inside the microwave, he asked, “How did this turn into all the stuff upstairs? The sign and everything.”

“Frank gave me Yelena’s number before I left. He said she was still looking into the files. I called to ask if I could use the kitchen. She wanted to know why, and I told her.” Jean leaned back against the counter. “I said I didn’t want a lot of people. She said she understood. When I got there, Bob was cutting spiders out of paper.”

Peter smiled into his glass. “He showed me one with nine legs.”

“I know. He asked me whether you’d notice.” She looked toward the cake. “He helped with that, too. He found the pans and went through the instructions with me. The first one was fine until I tried to get it out.”

“You didn’t let it cool?”

“I thought I had.” Jean opened the microwave and tested the rice with the spoon. “Bob said to give it longer, but I’d already turned it over. Half of it came out. The other half...” She glanced at Peter, who was trying not to smile too much. “Yelena took one look and went out to buy the other cake.”

“Was she helping before that?”

“She kept opening the oven to check it. I asked her to stop, so then she stood next to me and asked me to check it.” Jean took the rice out with a dish towel. “And Castle came in while I was doing the frosting. Yelena had told him I was there.”

Peter moved his glass so she could put the container down. “Oh.”

“He stayed.” She began serving the rice, then added, “Mostly by the door.”

Peter did not ask what Frank had said. He took the forks from the chipped plate and handed her one. Jean pulled the table a little closer to the couch so she could sit down, and he returned to the chair. She gave him most of the noodles. When she turned to put the empty carton aside, Peter reached across and moved some onto her plate.

“I did eat upstairs,” he said when she looked back.

“So did I.”

“You had about two bites of pizza. I was sitting next to you.”

Jean looked down at her plate and started eating. Peter left the rest of the noodles where they were and tried the larb. He had barely swallowed before he had to turn away and cough into his elbow. Jean reached for his water, but he already had it. She picked up the receipt instead.

“It says mild.” She checked the label on the carton, then took a small bite herself. Peter watched her stop chewing quite so quickly. She reached for her glass and drank before looking at the receipt again. “I asked for mild.”

“Yeah, I believe you.” He pushed the rice closer to her. “Try it with more of that.”

They ate slowly after that, adding rice whenever they got too much of the larb. Jean eventually folded the receipt and put it under the empty carton. Peter asked which restaurant she had gone to, and when she told him, he said May used to order from one a few streets away. He had forgotten the name. He could remember where it was, though, and the fish tank by the register that never seemed to have any fish in it. Jean asked whether the food had been this hot, and he said May always ordered it that way for herself and then tried to swap when it arrived.

By the time they had finished, the rice container was nearly empty. Peter gathered their dinner plates and left them in the sink, rinsing the forks before bringing them back. He pulled the cake box closer and went looking for a knife.

“She usually bought this, you know,” he said, opening a drawer. “The cake. From the grocery store.”

Jean looked up. “She bought it?”

“Most years. I think the one you saw was when she tried making it herself. She hid the box from the store in the oven after that. I wasn’t supposed to know.” He found a butter knife and came back to the table. “Hers sank in the middle, too. She just kept putting frosting in it.”

Jean looked at her cake for a moment. “I spent ages trying to work out what she’d put in it.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“No, I know. You didn’t know I was making it.” She took the frosting spoon out of the jar and rested it on the lid. “I thought I remembered enough.”

Peter cut a wide slice and tried to lift it out with the knife. The bottom stuck to the cardboard, and when it came loose, the slice began to fold. Jean slid the plate underneath it while he caught the top with his fingers. They got it onto the plate, although the frosting was now on his hand as well. Jean passed him a napkin and used another to wipe the edge of the plate.

He took a forkful while she was still looking at the broken slice. The edges were a little dry, and there was enough chocolate in the middle that he mostly tasted that. He took another bite, this time from the yellow part, and moved the plate closer to her. “It’s good.”

“You don’t have to say that.”

“I know.” He swallowed. “The frosting’s doing a lot, but... I like frosting.”

Jean gave him a doubtful look and tried some. He watched her chew, then put her fork back into the cake. They ate from opposite sides of the plate. When she found a particularly thick patch of chocolate, she scraped some off and put it on his side without looking at him.

Peter reached down for the napkin that had slipped off his knee. The pain caught before his fingers reached it. He stopped with his arm hanging beside the chair, then tried to straighten and had to grab the table. The plate jolted toward the edge. Jean caught it in the air and set it down, already getting up from the couch.

“Peter? Where is it?” She came around beside him, one hand gripping the back of his chair. “Your back?”

“Yeah. Just—give me a second.” He kept his hand flat on the table and waited for the tight pull under his ribs to ease. “I’m okay. I moved wrong. It was worse a couple of weeks ago, so this is actually—”

“You kept saying that before.” Jean’s voice was quieter now. He turned his head enough to see her. “That you were fine. You were still talking, and then you...” She looked down at his hand on the table. “You wouldn’t answer me.”

Peter stopped trying to explain. He stayed where he was and took a careful breath, then another. Jean waited beside him until he could sit back. When he reached for his water, she let go of the chair and picked the napkin up from the floor. She carried it away with the empty cartons, then began rinsing the serving spoon at the sink.

“Frank told me you stayed,” Peter said. “Until they could take care of me.”

Jean kept her back to him. “He told you that?”

“Yeah. When I woke up.” Peter shifted his feet until he could sit without pulling at his side. “I asked where you were. He said you’d gone, and you were okay, but... that was about it.”

“I couldn’t stay there. They were still looking for me.”

“I know. I meant afterward.” He waited until she turned the tap off. “I didn’t know you’d left the city. Not until later. And then I didn’t know where you’d gone.”

Jean dried the spoon with the dish towel. “I didn’t have a phone.”

“You called Yelena.”

“There’s one at the house.” She put the spoon on the rack. “I called about the records. And she said you were still in the hospital, so I asked her to let me know when you got out.”

Peter looked toward the canvas bag, where the ticket was still tucked away. Jean told him Yelena had called when he went home, and again after she had seen him. She had said he was healing. Peter asked if Yelena had mentioned the armored truck as well, and Jean gave him a look.

“That was on the news.”

“Oh. Right.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “They made that look worse than it was.”

Jean turned back to hang the towel over the oven handle, and he decided not to try to explain that either.

“I nearly asked her for your number,” he said instead. “A few times. I just didn’t know if you wanted... I mean, you’d left. I thought maybe you were trying to get away from all of this, and I didn’t want to start calling you about—well, I wasn’t going to call about anything. I was just going to ask how you were.”

Jean faced him again. “You could’ve asked.”

“Yeah. I know. Then I’d left it a week, and it felt weird to ask. And Yelena would’ve wanted to know why.”

“She asked me that.”

Peter looked up. Jean was looking at the towel again, although she had already hung it straight. “I told her there were things in the files I wanted to check with you.”

For a moment he watched her. Then he smiled, and she left the towel alone and came back to the table. She picked up the paper sack from Frank and held it out to him before he could say anything.

Inside was a used copy of The Day the Earth Stood Still, in a case with a crack across one corner. Peter turned it over. Someone had written WORKS above the barcode in black marker. He opened it to check the disc, then looked at Jean.

“The title wasn’t clear,” she said. “I described the robot to the man in the store. He gave me the newer one, and I didn’t know there were two until Castle saw it.”

“He went out for this?”

“He asked what else I remembered. I said it was black and white, and he took the other one with him when he went for coffee.” Jean sat on the couch again. “He didn’t tell me he’d found it.”

Peter ran his thumb over the split in the case before putting it beside the laptop. He cleared enough space on the table for the computer and slid the disc into the drive. It made a rattling noise that went on long enough for Jean to lean forward, but the menu eventually appeared.

“It does that,” Peter told her. “Usually it’s fine.”

“Usually?”

He clicked play before she could ask anything else. The music came through much louder than he expected, and he hurried to turn it down. Jean moved her glass away from the laptop while he brought the cake plate over, with the rest of their slice still on it. He left the chair and sat beside her on the couch.

For a while they watched without talking. Peter remembered more of the movie than he had expected to, including where May would start asking questions about something that had been explained ten minutes earlier. He used to pause it and tell her, then ask whether she wanted to finish another night. She always said she was watching.

Jean leaned forward to take another bite of cake. There was a small smear of frosting near her wrist. She noticed him looking and checked her sleeve, then rubbed it with the edge of a napkin. Peter turned back to the screen.

“Our copy used to freeze somewhere around here,” he said. “May would get up and hit the player before I could stop her. I kept telling her it was the disc, and she was going to break the player as well, but it worked once, so...” He shook his head. “After that she did it every time.”

“Did you get another copy?”

“Eventually. I tried cleaning it first. Then I cleaned the lens in the player, because I thought maybe she was right about that part.” He smiled a little. “She stood over me the whole time asking if I knew where all the screws went.”

Jean smiled at the screen. A few minutes later her eyes closed, and her head tipped toward him. She caught herself before it reached his shoulder and sat up, rubbing at one eye.

“Do you want me to pause it?” Peter asked.

“No. I’m watching.”

He left it running. Jean tucked her feet farther under the couch and settled back, still trying to sit quite straight. Peter moved the plate from between them to the table so she had more room. She glanced at him, then let her shoulder rest against the cushion.

Later, during a scene neither of them had been paying much attention to, he asked about the town on her ticket. Jean told him she was staying a little outside it, in a house owned by a woman in her sixties. There was a room upstairs that she rented out. Jean helped with the garden and moved boxes of books from the garage for part of the rent.

“Does she know about...?” Peter lifted his hand a little, then put it down. “What you can do?”

“Yes. I told her before I moved in.” Jean glanced at him. “She’s fine with it.”

He nodded. “What kind of books?”

“Mostly birds. There are other things, but a lot of birds. She used to sell them, and now she wants them all in the house.” Jean drew one leg up under her. “I spent two days putting them in order by author. Then she came in and said she wanted them by subject.”

“She didn’t tell you before?”

“No. She thought I’d know.”

Peter laughed, and Jean’s mouth curved as she looked back at the movie. He asked whether she had finished, and she said there were still boxes in the garage. Some had lost their labels. She had started opening them before carrying them upstairs, because twice she had brought in things the woman wanted left outside.

The battery warning appeared over the film. Peter got the charger from beside the bed and plugged it in behind the couch. The cable would not reach where they had put the laptop, so Jean moved it nearer the socket. When Peter sat down again, they were both at the same end of the couch. Her knee rested close to his. He adjusted his sore side against the cushion and stayed there.

“Do you like it?” he asked. “Living there.”

Jean took a moment before answering. “Mostly. It’s quiet. I can walk to the store without anybody stopping me.” She looked down at her hands. “There isn’t much to do after everything closes.”

“What time’s that?”

“Early.”

He smiled. “Right.”

She told him about the garden while the movie continued. There were tomatoes along the fence, and something she was supposed to keep cutting back that seemed to grow again overnight. The woman had given her a book to help tell the plants apart. Jean had left it outside once, and now the pages would not close properly.

Peter asked whether she could use the house phone in the evening. Jean stopped talking about the garden and looked at him.

“Yeah. Why?”

“I was just... wondering how it worked. If it was in her room or something.”

“It’s in the kitchen.” She waited, then added, “Yelena has the number.”

He nodded and reached for his water. Jean returned to the movie, but when he put the glass down, she was still looking at him from the corner of her eye. He smiled before he could think of anything to say. She looked away and took the last bite of cake.

At ten thirty-five, Jean checked the ticket again. She held it for a while before saying she should leave; it would take nearly an hour to get back to the bus station. Peter paused the movie. They had not reached the end.

He took the disc out while she found her jacket on the chair. The bent corner of the cake box would not close properly, so he folded it back into shape as well as he could and made room for it in the refrigerator. Jean washed the forks and put them on the rack beside each other. When he turned from the fridge, she was rinsing the chipped plate, holding it carefully under the tap.

“You can leave that,” he said.

“I’m nearly done.” She dried it and handed it to him. He put it back in the cupboard, in front of the white plate this time. The DVD stayed beside the laptop.

Peter picked up his backpack from the wall to get it out of her way. The suit was still inside, underneath the gifts. Jean looked at the bag and then toward the open fire-escape window.

“Were you going out again?”

“I was going to see how I felt.” He shifted the strap in his hand. She said nothing, and after a moment he carried it to the closet. “Not tonight.”

Jean nodded and went back to checking that she had her ticket. Peter waited by the door while she put it into her jacket pocket, then opened it for her. She stepped onto the landing but turned back before going toward the stairs.

“Thank you for coming,” he said. “And for... all of it.”

She adjusted the canvas bag on her shoulder. “You already said that.”

“Yeah. I know.” He looked past her toward the stairs, then back at her. “You should probably go. For the bus, I mean. I’m not telling you to—”

“I know what you meant, Peter.”

He let out a small breath and smiled at her. She smiled back, briefly, and neither of them moved. He still had one foot against the door.

“I could ask Yelena for the number,” he said. “Or I could give you mine, if that’s easier. Not that I expect you to call. I just mean you could, and... I don’t know when would be a good time.”

Jean waited with her hand around the bag strap. Peter glanced down at his foot holding the door, then lifted his eyes to hers.