Chapter Text
The first time it happened, she could barely hold herself back.
The barista's smile was doing something complicated to her mood. It wasn’t exactly subtle, at least not to Jean and definitely not to anyone with a working pair of eyes. She lingered a little too long over Peter's change. Then she tucked a strand of auburn hair behind her ear and laughed at something he'd said that wasn't even that funny. Jean would know. She had been on the receiving side of his stupid jokes and references for way too long.
He is cute, isn’t he.
The thought came to her, bright and unguarded, before she could even stop it. She hadn't meant to listen. Peter had drilled that into her from the beginning: she shouldn't be inside someone's head without their consent. But some thoughts arrived like a bulldozer in an empty room.
Jean stared very hard at her mint chocolate chip ice cream, absently picking at the hem of the oversized hoodie she'd borrowed from Peter and looking out at the shops outside draped in a yellow glow. She tried her best to ignore the ache that surfaced when she saw Peter smiling at the barista, too.
“Why am I like this?” Jean muttered to herself.
Peter remained happily oblivious to everything. He thanked the barista, tugging absently at the sleeves of his faded hoodie as he dropped back into the seat across from Jean like three different sets of eyes hadn’t followed him across the floor.
The café was small, tucked away in a quiet corner with only a handful of other customers. Somehow, Jean still felt suffocated.
"You okay?" he asked, frowning slightly at whatever was visible on her face.
"Fine."
Jean didn’t believe herself one bit. Something ugly and unfamiliar was curling low in her chest, and it took her a long, humiliating moment to recognize it for what it was.
She had never been jealous of anything in her life. Not like this. And perhaps that was what frightened her most.
Because the day had been perfect.
A few weeks ago, she had been standing outside NYC with nowhere to go. Getting off the bus hadn't taken much thought. It was only after her shoes touched the cold pavement that reality had set in.
She was nervous about coming back to this city. Nervous about the millions of thoughts that seemed to thunder through the streets, each one another voice demanding her attention. Nervous about the newspapers and television reports that still carried her face, her crimes, her rage.
But more than any of that, she had been nervous about him.
She had never prayed to a god. What kind of god could have taken her sister from her? What kind of god could have left her alone to face the world?
Yet that afternoon, standing outside Peter's dingy apartment, she found herself doing something dangerously close to praying.
Not to any god she knew. To fate. To the universe. To whatever cosmic force that might, for once, be willing to give her what she wanted.
Please.
She didn't need much. Just somewhere to belong. Someone who wouldn't look at her and see only what she'd done. Someone who wouldn't leave.
She knocked. For a moment, there was nothing.
Then she heard shuffling on the other side of the door.
“E.V., for the love of—turn that off!”
His voice. Groggy. Exasperated. Familiar. Jean's heart gave a painful little thump. He was here. That was probably a good sign.
The locks finally clicked, and the door swung open.
Peter stood there looking as though she'd dragged him out of bed, his hair a mess and his eyes still heavy with sleep. The sight of him was so wonderfully ordinary that something inside Jean broke.
His expression shifted from astonishment to something softer.
“Jean?”
Just her name on his lips. That was all it took.
Her breath caught in her throat. She barely managed to take another before she stumbled forward and wrapped her arms around him.
“Please...” Her voice came out embarrassingly small. “Can I stay with you? I don't—I just don't want to be alone anymore.”
For half a second, Peter simply stood there, clearly caught off guard. Then his arms came around her. Strong and certain. Jean sagged against him.
She hadn't realized how badly she'd needed someone to hold her until that moment. She closed her eyes and breathed him in, letting the warmth of his mind wash over her without ever reaching for it.
For the first time in what felt like forever, she felt at ease—not on the run from the next danger that wanted to tear her open. She finally believed that she had him.
And, perhaps more importantly, that he had her.
The first days that followed were a learning experience.
Peter took to having her around remarkably quickly, which surprised Jean more than she cared to admit. He'd been living on his own for four years and, by all appearances, had never expected anyone else to share his space. Yet he adjusted to her presence with an ease that made it seem as though she'd always been there. Jean, in turn, took every opportunity to prove that she wasn't going to be a burden.
She tried to turn the dingy apartment laden with asbestos into something resembling an actual home. She learned where Peter kept everything, reorganized his kitchen after discovering the horrifying state he'd apparently considered acceptable, and took it upon herself to keep track of his medication.
Peter, naturally, tried to avoid taking half of it. Jean caught him every time. Before long, it had become a routine: her nagging, his complaining, and neither of them questioning the quiet domesticity that had somehow grown out of it. It was simply something they did now, and both accepted it readily.
And somewhere along the way, the apartment stopped feeling like Peter's place.
It became theirs.
Or at least, Jean let herself believe it had.
Which was why, right now, the sight of another woman smiling at him could make something inside her twist so painfully.
Jean lowered her eyes to her spoon again. She didn’t want to feel this way and she certainly didn’t want Peter to know that she did. She wanted to forget the whole thing as quickly as possible.
So when Peter started rambling about the latest antics of J. Jonah Jameson, she was more than happy to lend her ear, asking questions here and there. Peter’s humility always surprised her. This man had sacrificed everything for a world that didn't even remember what he'd done for it, and now he was sitting across from her, drinking coffee and perfectly content to take pictures for a man with a Hitler-stache.
“So now Robbie’s all pissed off and won’t talk to Jonah. And little ol’ me has no assignments for the time being,” Peter said, running one hand through his hair.
Jean smiled faintly. “You sound disappointed.”
“Honestly?” Peter shrugged. “A little. But it's probably for the best.”
“Why?”
“Because I don't think either of us needs to be worrying about work right now.”
Jean raised an eyebrow. “Either of us?”
“Yeah.” Peter gestured toward her with his coffee. “You especially.”
“Peter—”
“I'm serious. You don't need to find a job tomorrow. You don't need to figure out what you're doing with your life. And you definitely don't need to start throwing yourself into crime-fighting.”
Jean frowned. “I could help.”
“I know you could. You could probably crush Tombstone like a bug.” There was no accusation in his voice. Somehow, that made it harder.
“But that's not what I want you doing right now.”
“Then what exactly am I supposed to do?”
Peter took another long sip of his coffee.
“Get to know New York.”
Jean tilted her head and looked at him, waiting for him to continue.
“You've been here, what, three weeks? And most of that has been you learning where I keep the plates and threatening me with bodily harm if I skip my meds.”
“I have never threatened you with bodily harm.”
“You threatened to throw out my entire supply of frozen pizza.”
Peter smiled as Jean pouted.
“You should see the place properly. Museums. Parks. The great food. The shitty food. The really weird tourist-y stuff. There's a lot more to this city than what happened to you here.”
Jean was quiet for a moment.
“So that's why you brought me out today?”
“Partly.”
“And the other part?”
Peter shrugged.
“I thought you might like the ice cream.”
Jean looked down at her cup. Blue.
For half a second, she was somewhere else. Sara's blonde hair flashed in the sunlight as she walked to the blue ice cream truck. Jean could almost hear her excited voice. Then the armored SUVs came.
Soldiers poured out. The hiss of the tranquilizer. Sara crumpling to the ground. Jean running towards her. Hands forcing her sister down. And then darkness.
It hurt a little less every day. But it still hurt.
Jean blinked, and the café came back into focus.
“It's mint chocolate chip.”
“You said you liked it.”
“I do.”
“Then there you go.”
Something warm settled in her chest. It was such a Peter answer.
No grand gesture. Just you said you liked it, so I remembered. She looked at him again. Peter was already talking about something else, apparently having moved on from the subject entirely. He really did want her to have a life here. Not to throw herself back into danger. Not even to repay him.
Just... to live.
And yet somehow, even that kindness made the knot in her chest tighten. Her eyes flickered briefly toward the barista.
You have no claim on him.
The thought was immediate and true. Peter could talk to whoever he wanted. Laugh with whoever he wanted. Find someone attractive. Fall in love someday, if that was what he wanted. Jean had no right to be hurt by any of it.
She knew that. She also knew, with an uncomfortable certainty, that there was another possibility she'd been trying very hard not to consider.
Maybe Peter didn't see her that way at all. Maybe he didn't see her as a woman. Maybe, to him, she was simply Jean.
A friend?
A person he'd saved. Someone he cared about and wanted to help.
The thought shouldn't have hurt. But it did and Jean lowered her gaze again. What right did she have to expect anything more?
She couldn't forget what she had done.
Every meal she cooked, every room she cleaned, every time she reminded Peter to take it easy, every time she patched him up after he came home tired and bruised carried the same unspoken message.
I can be useful. I can make up for what I did. I deserve to be here.
Her sins haunted her. What she'd done to innocent people who had never deserved to become casualties of her mission. She had been a villain. There was no point pretending otherwise.
So how could someone like Peter ever look at her and see someone worth loving?
Someone worth choosing?
Jean swallowed. Peter kept on talking.
That’s okay.
After all, Peter had already given so much of himself to other people. Jean had no right to expect that he would give any more of it to her. And there was one person in particular who made that painfully obvious.
MJ.
Jean had tearfully told Peter everything one night. Not because he didn't already know it.
He knew about V-Max. About the people who had been caught in the chaos of Jean's pursuit of her sister. He knew what she'd done to Peter himself. And he knew what she'd done to MJ.
How she'd controlled her. How she'd made him believe, while they were still fighting each other, that MJ remembered him.
Jean knew all of it.
That was the problem. She couldn't understand how Peter could know all of it and still wake up every morning, look at her, and let her stay.
She'd expected anger. Perhaps hatred. Maybe even disgust.
Instead, when she'd finally broken down and asked him how he could possibly forgive her, Peter had listened in silence, his jaw set hard.
Then he'd shaken his head.
“I can forgive you, Jean. But what happened to MJ isn't mine to forgive.”
She understood. At least, she understood what he meant.
Peter wasn't pretending that what she'd done didn't matter. He wasn't telling her that everything was suddenly okay. He was simply refusing to hate her for the rest of his life. That alone was more mercy than Jean knew what to do with.
MJ was different. Jean had taken something from her that Peter couldn't give back. Her autonomy.
And no matter how desperately Jean wanted to make amends, she couldn't decide for MJ whether an apology would ever be enough. She had promised herself that one day, when she was ready—and when MJ was ready—she would speak to her herself.
She would make things right as much as she possibly could.
Peter knew what she had done. He knew exactly what she was capable of. He had seen her at her worst. And somehow, he had still opened his door. Still looked at her like she was worth saving.
Except sometimes, in the quiet moments, Jean could feel the pain he kept buried.
She had learned not to pry. She never needed telepathy to know when something hurt him.
Sometimes it was there in the way his shoulders stiffened. Sometimes in the way his eyes went distant. And once, in the middle of the night, she'd felt his mind erupt with the remnants of a nightmare before he woke with a strangled gasp.
The memory of that betrayal still lived somewhere beneath his skin.
The way she'd taken everything he had been trying to do—everything he'd risked to save people—and twisted it against him. She had been the one who put that wound there.
Peter had told her he'd made his peace with MJ not remembering him. He'd told her he was happy to stay friends with MJ and Ned.
Jean believed him. Mostly.
But there were some wounds that didn't disappear simply because you decided to stop bleeding. And Jean knew better than anyone that forgiveness did not mean forgetting.
She glanced at Peter again.
He was halfway through another story now, his hands moving animatedly as he described something his supervisor had apparently done, at the lab where he was working.
Jean smiled despite herself. For all her uncertainty, all her guilt, all the things she could never take back, she was here.
She had a home. She had someone. Maybe that was all she was allowed to want.
Jean took another spoonful of ice cream. She tried very hard not to look at the barista again. She hopelessly failed.
As Jean finished her melted ice cream and Peter had already gotten up, the woman caught his attention one last time. She smiled, and this time Jean noticed something she hadn't seen before.
A small square of white paper had been stuck beneath his cup. There was a number written across it in red lipstick.
Jean's stomach sank. Peter picked up the cup again without noticing.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
Jean forced herself to stand on legs that started shaking out of nowhere. They made it three steps toward the door before Peter stopped. He was about to chuck the cup in a bin, when he noticed the paper.
Jean's heart gave a ridiculous little leap. She could hear her heart beating a mile a minute.
Peter pulled it free and stared at it.
“Huh.”
He looked back toward the counter. The barista was already busy with another customer. Peter glanced at the number again. For one horrible second, Jean wondered what he was going to do with it.
Then Peter shrugged and promptly tossed it into the bin. Jean blinked.
“Wait.”
Peter was already walking again.
“Come on, smarty-pants.”
She hurried after him.
“You're not keeping it?”
Peter glanced over his shoulder.
“Keeping what?”
“The...”
Jean stopped herself.
“The number.”
Peter frowned, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Why would I?”
They stood there, staring at each other.
Then his expression softened with sudden understanding or maybe he simply thought she was asking a very strange question.
“I don't know,” he said. “I just don't need it.”
And just like that, he continued towards the door. Jean followed him outside.
The afternoon air was pleasant, carrying the distant sounds of traffic and loud conversations through the streets. The city could be a bit disorienting at times. Peter walked a few paces ahead before slowing down, apparently realizing she'd fallen behind.
“Everything okay?”
Jean nodded.
“Yeah… yeah, everything’s great.”
It wasn't entirely true. But she couldn’t feel the knot in her chest anymore. She caught up with him and, almost without thinking, slipped her left arm around his right forearm.
Peter glanced down. Jean froze for half a second. She hadn't meant to do that. At least, she hadn't meant to think about doing it.
But somehow the gesture felt natural.
Peter had held her through nightmares. He had taken her hands when she couldn't stop shaking. He had hugged her when memories became too heavy to carry alone.
There was no hesitation in him when she needed comfort. So perhaps there didn't need to be any in her.
Peter didn't say anything. He simply adjusted his arm slightly so that she could hold it more comfortably.
Jean looked ahead.
The warmth spreading through her, had nothing to do with jealousy now. She still didn't know what she was to him.
She still didn't know whether he would ever look at her and see a woman standing beside him rather than just Jean. But for the moment, none of those questions mattered.
Peter was beside her. Jean tightened her arm around his.
And she didn’t care for much else.