Jean Grey was a force to be reckoned with, Bruce had seen that on his first meeting with her. She was young, incredibly so, to be as accomplished as she was. For someone with as much ambition as she’d shown, she also seemed remarkably down to earth. But at first, the fact that she was so young had made Bruce a little wary to get to know her on all but the most professional of levels. He really didn’t want to seem like one of those guys, since he was sure in her career, Jean had run into plenty of them.
But it was another way she proved to have the same stubborn quality that he had so admired in Betty, carefully wearing him down and opening himself up to her friendship. And that was something Bruce felt incredibly grateful for as he handed Jean over some of the papers he’d collected for her. "I’ve been a part time professor here for almost a decade, and I’ve had students actually come to office hours maybe…fifteen times?“ He finished helping her tidy up and gestured to the chair reserved for students in a question before sitting down.
"It’s good to see you too. I figured it’d been too long, and if I didn’t drop by soon you’d come track me down. Not that I’m really here to engage you in some insane discussion about psych disorders. As fun as that is, I’m sure you’re over talking about the DSM-5 for a little while.” He smiled. "How’s the practice going? I saw the new signs from the street, they look great.“ Bruce chuckled. "That, by the way, is not me offering to be one of your first clients, as good as you are.”
Before coming to Deerfield, Jean’s only personal experiences in academia were as a student; sure, she’d T.A.’d a class or two, but her general impressions of her professors, and what they did, were from the perspective of one receiving the performance. To be the one up there, subjected to constant scrutiny-- about the material, about her demeanor, even sometimes her professional appearance. And, she found, the appraisals could be twice as vicious from the other faculty. It felt like everywhere she turned was a tenured staff member who deemed her, a neophyte to the field of education, unworthy.
That is, until she met the reclusive veteran professor of biology-- and anatomy; and microbiology! jean had thought, dazzled, when she heard of him-- Bruce Banner. They’d first met at the “gala of the sciences”, a mandatory dinner the chairs of the the sciences forced their faculty to attend. Over dry chicken and a sharp sauvignon blanc, Jean was grilled by her new colleagues about everything from her undergraduate professors, to her residency, to the summation of her thesis. She breathlessly provided the answers as the questions came, but there was always another. And no matter her response, it felt to Jean she was always found wanting. When Jean at last found a moment to excuse herself, she fled to the bar at the back of the room, sure that she was shaking. Sure she’d fall apart right there, in the face of their surgically-efficient. So it was to her comfort that she found someone in the back of the room who seemed to want to be there even less than she: the evasive Doctor Banner, she’d assumed. A shared look. A simple, friendly nod, and a murmured “hi”. That was the limit of their first interaction. But it was also the first kind gesture someone had shown Jean that evening, and it did her immeasurable good. She knew then that she wanted to get to know the quiet man.
Jean tucked her papers away, and crossed to sit in the chair adjacent to Bruce. Even though it was her own office, Jean had no intention of sitting across a desk to speak to him: far too formal, far too distant, and far too reminiscent of power plays she’d too often been subjected to. The other members of faculty had started to warm to her finally, but it still happened on occasion. “It’s amazing to me how rarely they come to ask their questions. You’d think I was terrifying, or something,” Jean grinned, crossing one leg over another. “On the other hand, if they were knocking down my door, I wouldn’t have time for our discussions, would I?”
“What?” Jean replied, her face a picture of shock. “You haven’t come to ask me if I think your roommate is a sociopath because she doesn’t like cats? A shame. Those questions from my students are exactly what I got my PhD for.” She laughed, a soft, bubbling sound she made often. “But you’re right-- in fact, I had “track down Bruce” on my calendar for tomorrow. You made it just under the radar.” She tapped his arm with a friendly grin before settling back into the chair. “It’s doing all right, I suppose. I’m still new here, so it’s taking potential patients a bit of time to trust me. But I’m doing well enough, even if I can’t get you to come see me yet.” She teased with another of her grins.
