Chapter Text
Living with the other mutants was nice but Jean could always hear the timer of Peter's eventual exit in the back of her mind. He was happy being a teacher, of course. He got along with mostly everyone and being in a like-minded community did wonders for his mental health. But she could see in the way he would stare at old posts or how he would laugh on the phone the way he craved to return to New York. The city needed him. They were crying out for him to come back to his home.
This burned. All she wanted was for Peter to stay with her in the school and to work together towards whatever future awaited them. The redhead simmered as she waited for the eventual day Peter would have to tell her goodbye. She found herself lying awake at night, hoping so badly that something would force him to stay with her. She asked for a calamity. A curse to come raining down from the heavens and trap him permanently. It was wicked to desire, but Jean was never good.
It only made sense that her wish would earn her a massive concussion and a confession.
Jean had decided to go out with Lorna when she sensed it. A being unlike anything her mind had ever come across. Powerful but infantile, clearly having been cobbled together in a hurry. Her chest was tight as she shushed the other teenager and waited with bated breath for the mysterious presence to emerge. And when it did, it hit hard. Both girls froze before the massive robotic being proceeded to grab the car they had been in moments earlier. Crushing it like an empty can with its janky hands. Effortlessly. The message was clear– This wasn't coming to kidnap them. No. It was here to kill them all.
"We have to take this thing down before it gets to the school." Lorna yelled as she threw the wrecked car right at the thing, only for it to bat it away.
Jean licked her bruised mouth and nodded. "Don't worry. I got this."
The girl flew in the air, her power pratically frying the atmosphere with how much killing intent she had. They were so close to the school. So close to Peter and her classmates. To the younger mutants who had been beaten and starved by the humans who claimed to love them. No way in hell was she letting this amalgamation of humanity's hate come and tear all of them to shreds. Her head was splitting from how awful her headache was, but she refused to stop. She stared straight ahead. Unmoving as the monster thundered towards her.
"Not so fast!" Her green-haired companion came darting out like a bullet as she struck.
She snapped her fingers, and an EMP pulse hit like a bottle rocket. Fast and messy, Jean was always surprised by the amount of power the mutant had at her disposal. Lorna merely shrugged and commented that she got her mutation directly from her birth father, though his was a more powerful variant. Either way, Lorna caused the metallic horror to freeze and let out a screech as it began to malfunction. It wasn't enough to stop its rampage but gave Jean an opening. One she absolutely refused to let go to waste.
"Don't trip over yourself."
Jean spoke softly as she thrust her hands out and the Sentinel began to bend the knee. Thick droplets of blood came out of her ear as she did so, the strain of controlling something so massive breaking her brain. She could see Lorna was making quick work of the beast too, the girl's control of magnetic forces working to her advantage. Still, the teenagers were fighting a structure that was built to kill their kind, not even bothering to subdue them. The redhead panted as she forced the monster onto its knees before her ears popped and it was torn into smithereens.
"Jean!" Lorna screamed as the telepath collapsed into a heap on the snowy ground. Blood stained the earth in a halo-like shape under her head.
The other girl ran over and dropped to the redhead's side, pulling her head into her lap. "Jean! Jean! Wake up!"
"The robot that Jean destroyed was merely a prototype, and it knocked her out cold. There's no telling what a fully formed Sentinel can do." Charles Xavier stated as the group stood, waiting for the redhead to awaken from her brief coma.
Peter ground his teeth together as he tried not to snap. He had been teaching an afternoon biology class when he felt like someone had shot him in the back of the school. His spidey sense went haywire, and if one of his students wasn't capable of making a force field, he would have hit the entire class with a desk. It was a display of his spider acting out pure instinct as it sensed Jean being injured miles away. He was beyond pissed that she and Lorna, two kids, had been attacked in broad daylight without anyone knowing.
"Peter, I understand your anger." The professor was reading his enraged thoughts and immediately tried to quell them.
The spider gripped the unconscious teenager's hand for dear life as he let out a strangled exhale. "These Sentinels are made by the government?"
"Private equity really," The professor answered before giving his star pupils a knowing glance. "Scott and Ororo have received word that they're lobbying to use them nationwide."
"And you all are only telling me now?" Peter's leg bounced up and down as he tried not to lose what little control he had over his more unstable parts of himself.
Seeing Jean like this in the infirmary, pale as a sheet with her mind who knows where, reminded him of Aunt May. It reminded him of losing his parents. He hated it, and he couldn't think clearly knowing that she got this way trying to protect him. He knew that a good amount of the student body doubted Jean and her right to be there due to her standoffish nature.
But Peter knew that she cared a great deal about everyone there. He could see it in how she would stay up late helping the younger students with their homework and going with Scott on trips to pick up new residents. She put herself at risk to promote the school and to keep it alive.
She loved them, in a way. Her heart was just guarded from all the pain she had been through, pain he promised to keep her safe from. And now, she was lying in agony all on his watch. Peter held her hand to his mouth and kissed it. Inappropriate, but everyone in the room already knew that they had a close bond.
Numerous staff had raised an eyebrow at how he let Jean sleep in his bed still and how he would take her out to town all the time. Peter knew he should stop, that he should set boundaries, but he couldn't. They were connected through their similar traumatic pasts and grief in a way that he had never experienced with anyone else before.
He wouldn't shut her out when she needed him. "When will she wake up?"
"Hank said tomorrow at the earliest. Friday at the latest." Scott responded with a tone that told Peter he got what the arachnid was going through.
Scott was someone Peter had grown to like as a friend. Over the past nine months, they had plenty of time to talk as both teacher and student and as colleagues. The mutant was incredibly understanding of Jean's mindset, even if he didn't have that close of a relationship with the girl, so Peter trusted Scott to look out for her.
Knowing that the boy was in the room was a great relief, as his opinion on Ororo wasn't as pleasant and Charles always seemed to be hiding something. Still, Peter was chittering like the animal that bit him, hearing that Jean wouldn't possibly wake up for another week. He needed her to be alright to not lose his entire fucking mind.
"Emma will take over your classes for the time being. You can stay by Jean's side for the next two weeks. Even after she awakens, she'll want you here." The professor said as he directed the two teenagers to leave.
Peter laughed humorously. "She won't just want me. She'll need me."
This comment was followed by thunder booming, the windows shaking from its sheer force. Ororo. The teenager made it clear she had mixed feelings about his work with the Avengers and the government, finding it to be a betrayal of mutant kind. It also didn't help that she believed Jean deserved better and was one of the few mutants not scared to say it to either of their faces.
The white-haired girl had the powers of a goddess after all. You could try to argue with her and be at risk of being swallowed up by a tornado or worse. Peter tried not to feel hurt by her comments, as he had invented the inhibitors and tried to turn Jean into the authorities in the past. He had made mistakes that had horrible implications, so her scorn was expected.
Still, he was human, and he hated the way she seemed to think he was taking advantage of Jean. He never would hurt her. He loved her, in a way. Romantic or familiar, he wasn't exactly sure, yet it was all so confusing. His spidery urges didn't help. Sometimes his brain just went into a feral state that treated the girl more like his property than an actual person. This kept him from properly acting on any of his feelings towards the girl.
Even as Jean pushed with her subtle comments and long stares, he would always bite his tongue. He never wanted to treat Jean that way. Like she wasn't capable of ripping the core of the earth at its center if she felt the urge to. The redhead was stronger than him, but his instincts screamed otherwise. It disgusted and frightened him, so he buried it deep down inside.
Like anything hidden, it eventually came out, and he clung to her like a broken child. Which the professor noticed and spoke on. "Your mind is plagued by her."
"She's like family to me," Peter sighed and watched her rest. "We both have no one."
"You have your students. Your allies. The Avengers." Charles argued.
The brunette's gaze darkened. "Do I?"
He didn't think he knew anyone out there like her, especially with fucjing death machines being sent to snipe her. If anyone in SHIELD or SWORD had a part in this, they were dead to him. Jean looked so small in the bed under a blanket with huge bags under her eyes. She looked innocent. She was innocent in his eyes, and nobody could tell him otherwise. He let out an irritated chirp as he laid his head down on her thigh and closed his eyes.
He could tell that Charles was observing him in a new light, but he didn't give a damn when it came to soothing her. Because he felt through their connection that she was sensing how upset he was, and he needed to fix that. It made no sense, but he knew that was what was happening, and he had to help her. His body felt so heavy as he listened to her breathing, waiting for her to talk to him. Pleading for her to open her eyes soon.
"You and Jean are more alike than I ever realized," Charles said in a brief moment of shock before stating in that usual wise tone of his. "She's going to wake up in a couple of minutes. I'll give you the room."
This was music to his ears, as he didn't want to deal with the man's riddles right now. Peter had so much he wanted to say. He had to apologize for his decisiveness as of late. He kept going back and forth on whether or not he would leave that month. It had been over half a year, and Frank was blowing up his phone about how people like Bucky Barnes were up his ass asking for his whereabouts.
He could only hide from his role for so long before the New Avengers and whoever else were sent to knock on the school doors. He didn't want to put any of the children at risk, so he knew he had to go. It was just painful knowing his absence would hurt Jean. He didn't want to be like the rest of the disappointments in her life.
"It's alright. As long as you write to me." The usually weak and rather heartbroken voice of Jean Grey awoke him from his own melodramatic stupor.
He smiled at her and felt a sharp pain in the back of his head as she read his thoughts. The girl frowned but shrugged and turned away. "You're leaving before the snow really picks up."
"Jean..." He started to explain, but there was no point when you had a literal omnipresent telepath speaking to you.
She continued to look away, her bottom lip trembling but no tears coming out. "Okay. Leave then."
"I have no choice." He sounded so pathetic, so whimpy. He was beside himself really.
The teenager shrugged again. "Okay." She was too tired to argue, her voice dying out from how dehydrated the poor girl was.
Peter felt like shit doing this to her when she was like this. His inner spider was screeching at him about how terrible a mate he was, and he felt sick. Not just from the word mate but from the knowledge that it was right about him. He was horrible for Jean. Horrible for abandoning her before telling her the truth.
He needed to confess. He needed to make her feel wanted. It was like something had been commanding him to do it for weeks anyway and he ignored it. Peter couldn't believe how selfish he was. The spider and the millions of nagging voices that told him to be there for her, to kiss her screamed at him.
"I care about you." No, that wasn't right.
His headache grew worse, and he tried again. "I need you, Jean. Without you, I'm nothing."
In the past, saying those words to anyone would terrify him. Putting that amount of responsibility onto Jean was wrong. Especially with her in such a vulnerable state. He was her teacher, for God's sake, and yet he couldn’t help but say it. He felt compelled to, like if he didn't now he would die. Jean froze, and her frown disappeared as she digested what he said.
For a couple of seconds, he worried that he had frightened her with his sudden intensity. Here he was going from being hung up on MJ and emotionally unavailable to acting like a clingy boyfriend. It was embarrassing to act so unruly, but hearing about her covered in blood without him by her side to save her terrified him.
She stared him down, her tone leaving no room for an argument. "If you need me, take me with you to New York. Let's tie up the loose ends together."