Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Peter didn't exactly exchange a lot of words with his grandfather the last time he was on Earth. Or like, anytime as a kid. He’s always been more than a little intimidated by the man, hasn’t really thought they had anything in common. He’d hoped, coming back to Earth after thirty years, that they might connect a bit easier.

He hadn’t dared to expect it would be this easy, though.

“The Bowie?” His grandpa throws his head back and laughs as loudly as Peter’s ever heard him. Louder. “How many ships are out there named after Earth singers 'cause of you?”

“Just the three,” Peter says, smiling widely. His grandfather has, so far, taken all of this a lot better than he expected.

“I’m surprised – oh, thank you, dear.” Grandpa cuts himself off when his wife, who had graciously insisted on being called grandma, walks out onto the deck, where it’s long since grown dark, holding two bottles of beer.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Peter echoes, on his best manners in front of his step-grandmother.

“You’re welcome, dears.” She sets the bottles down on the table and levels a playfully stern look at his grandpa. “I’m heading to bed. Don’t you go staying up too far past your bedtime now.”

“Darla,” Grandpa stage-whispers. “Don’t make me look uncool in front of my galaxy-saving grandson.”

Peter snorts. “It’s totally cool to have a bedtime. Especially when your wife is as beautiful as grandma.”

“You’re almost as charming as your grandfather,” she informs him, patting him on the shoulder before she heads back inside.

“Classic Star-Lord charm,” says Peter, tossing a wink in her direction. He can’t help feeling a pang of sadness as he thinks of Gamora, of her reaction to his attempts at charm on the Orgoscope. To her reaction to all of his attempts at charm, actually. But none of those thoughts sting as much as the memory of her just before she left, that fleetingly genuine, unguarded smile that had seemed to transcend the gulf of time and mortality for just a moment. He hasn’t spoken to her since that day, but he has her code programmed into his comm, and he’s fairly certain it would work, even here on Earth.

Maybe he just doesn’t want to know whether she’d respond if he tried, though. Plus, that would negate his whole purpose in coming here. Which is learning to swim, metaphorically. Or something.

That makes him think of Drax, which gives him a whole other pang of sadness. Turns out it’s harder than he ever would have imagined, being around all of the same people every day for years and then trying to make it on his own.

“Meredith would’ve loved hearin’ you use that name,” his grandfather comments, bringing his mind back to the present. Mostly.

“I know,” he says softly. “That’s why I chose it.”

Grandpa gives him a watery smile. For a second, Peter worries he’s going to burst into tears, but then he gives himself a shake and gestures to the bottles. “They got beer in space?”

“They got all kinds of it,” Peter says. His grandpa’s face falls a little, so he quickly adds, “I’ve never had a Terran beer before, though.”

That gets his grandpa’s smile back. “Well, then. I missed a lotta your life, but at least I can share a beer with you while ya tell me some more about it, huh?”

Peter hesitates for just a second. He knows, really, that he needs to stop drinking. It hasn’t led anywhere good, and part of this whole learning to swim thing is probably learning not to depend on alcohol to drown his own thoughts. It’s not like he’s actually gone a day without drinking, though. Every time he tries, it just makes him shaky and sick until he gives in and has at least a sip or two out of the flask hidden in his pocket. So, surely he can have a beer or two and be perfectly fine, right? Especially since it appears to be so important to his grandfather.

“Hell yeah, you can!” he says enthusiastically, popping the cap off. He taps the neck of his bottle against his grandpa’s and tosses some back, repressing a moan of relief.

Yeah, this’ll be fine.

Gamora ought to be looking at her account balances. She’s expecting a modest-sized payment for this most recent job – which is fortunate since, in a moment of temporary insanity, she’d caught a fit of altruism from her sister and refused payment for her contribution to the shared efforts against the High Evolutionary. Something about how the knowledge that the Guardians have recently inherited a large number of dependent children had made her feel uncharacteristically guilty about the idea of taking any sort of resources from them. Still, she had agreed to that job infiltrating Orgocorp because she has been chronically short of currency since coming to this godsforsaken timeline. So her priority really should be verifying that she’s been compensated appropriately, then cleaning her weapons and browsing for another job.

Instead she finds herself scrolling aimlessly through the contacts on her holo. And if she keeps pausing on Quill’s code, well, that’s just because it’s new and therefore more likely to catch her subconscious attention. Absolutely not because she has any interest in contacting him. She has no interest in anything at all having to do with him.

He went to Earth because he has family there, says a new message from Nebula, flashing across the top of the screen to announce this latest reply to their conversation.

Okay, so she might be a little curious about him. It’s only natural. He's proven himself to be much less a fool than she originally thought; the way he fought, his quick thinking, the loyalty he displays to those he loves… Plus, she had feared that he’d never be able to see her as anything other than a shadow of the future version of herself that she’ll never be, but after barely more than a day, he’d seemed to grow to like the way she is now, too. Not that she cares what he thinks of her. She’s never cared for anyone’s opinion of her. Obviously.

She taps out another message to Nebula. Does he go there often to see them?

“Your fingers have been glued to your holo lately,” comes Stakar’s voice from the open door. Gamora only just manages to keep herself still, cursing internally; she should have heard him coming, had she not been so distracted by thinking about how she doesn’t care about Quill.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she says casually. With conscious effort, she keeps her feet where they are: propped up on the table where her weapons are currently spread out – the weapons she’s definitely going to start cleaning any minute now. It took her months to get used to the Ravagers’ casual way of operating; if she had ever sat in such a casual manner in front of Thanos, he would have picked her up by the neck and squeezed until she never dreamed of such a thing again.

“When you first joined us,” says Stakar, taking a few steps closer, the heavy impacts of his boots echoing off the metal plating that covers the hollow spaces for stolen cargo under the floor, “you would never have let your weapons leave your person, much less sit out on the table while your attention was elsewhere.”

At first it had felt like a necessary survival tactic, figuring out how to fit in like one of the crew. She had studied their habits and mannerisms as if she was on an assignment for Thanos, as if keeping up a cover was the only way to stay safe or be victorious. Later, it had become an act of rebellion: a cleansing of all the meticulous control she had learned to live with under Thanos. And now…Well, she isn’t sure she can say that it’s a genuine part of her, because she is still…not entirely certain where any part of her identity begins or ends, aside from the various niches others have encouraged her to inhabit. But it certainly feels more natural. She no longer feels like she has to monitor her behavior all the time, or like she is about to be discovered as an imposter and punished.

Still, there are some things she is unprepared to share openly. “Some things are more important than cleaning my weapons. Such as making sure I got paid what I’m due.”

“It seems odd that you have been talking to your sister for two weeks about that,” Stakar says knowingly, “when you elected not to take the payment from her.”

Gamora stiffens. “I told you, I will find a way to pay you the portion of it that I promised for your initial aid –”

Stakar waves his hand dismissively. “And I told you, you saved a bunch of kids and left the money for their care. We are calling it even.”

She purses her lips, studying him. She hasn’t known him to lie outside the context of completing a job, but life has taught her to be wary. “The Ravagers are much softer than I previously believed.”

He laughs and levels her with another one of those knowing looks. “I could say the same about the daughters of Thanos. Quite an uptick in transmissions between the two o’ you.”

“Have you been going through my records?” she asks, bristling.

“You use the ship’s comms when you call her,” he points out, immediately making her feel foolish. Obviously. She should never have called her. Wanting to hear her sister’s voice is no excuse.

“It’s good to keep in touch with family. All your family,” he adds, in far too pointed a manner for her liking.

“I have the Ravagers,” she says immediately. “I don't need more than that.”

Stakar shakes his head. “You don’t have to choose, you know?”

“So yeah,” says Peter, downing the rest of his beer and reaching for the bottle opener again. They’ve got a twelve pack on the table between them now, and he’s just getting started on his third. Or is it fourth? Hard to keep track while recounting his life’s story. Or many stories. Definitely all the coolest stories that he definitely wants his grandpa to know. “That’s how Star-Lord became a legendary outlaw.”

His grandpa is silent for a long moment before clearing his throat and taking a long swallow of his own beer. “Well. Ain’t that somethin’.”

Only then does it occur to Peter that he’s just spent at least a dozen minutes detailing all of the people he’s swindled and the shit he’s stolen. Plus several of the women he…well, seduced is such a crass way of putting it and definitely not the language he’s chosen, but probably what his grandpa heard. It also occurs to him, rather belatedly, that his grandfather might not actually appreciate the knowledge that Peter has been using the nickname his daughter bestowed on him to commit criminal acts. He chokes a bit on his latest swig of beer before he manages to speak again. “But! But that was just the beginning. There’s totally way more to the story.”

“I did figure that,” his says with a small laugh. “Seemed like a big jump from outlaw to galaxy-saving superhero. Unless you followed the example of that Harrison Ford in Star Wars, that guy your mother always liked so much —“

“Han Solo!” Peter exclaims, nearly knocking over his drink in his excitement. “I am totally Han Solo! I even have a furry sidekick!” His smile falters slightly, missing Rocket, but he takes a long swig of beer to hide it.

“The one you just got back from saving?” His grandpa asks, clearly having trouble following.

Peter nods, heart tightening again as he remembers how close they came to not succeeding. “My best friend. Though when we met, he was trying to capture me for a bounty on my head! Actually, that’s the beginning of the story of how I saved the galaxy the first time. I can tell you tomorrow, though, if it’s too far past your bedtime.”

Grandpa glares playfully, making them both laugh. “You kiddin’ me, Pete? I got all night.”

Gamora has never

had choices. Not really – Not in any sort of way that matters. She has never really had a family, either, aside from the way Thanos had twisted that word. At least, not one that she can remember.

And that’s the ironic thing, isn’t it? She has wondered, for years now, about the love that was lost on her homeworld. Wished that there was a way to regain it somehow, or if not that then at least to know what it might have been, had Thanos never –

But now there is another family that she doesn’t remember. And though she remains uncertain how she feels about that, she cannot quite shake curiosity about them.

Still, the Ravagers have been all she has had or needed for the past two years, and there certainly is a safe familiarity about them. At least, until now. She is used to Stakar being perceptive, but he doesn’t usually ask these sorts of personal questions. None of the crew are much for emotions or related thoughts, which has always been something she’s appreciated about them.

“Choose what?” she asks, keeping her voice carefully even. “My next job? Pretty sure I do have to make a decision there.”

Stakar plops down onto the chair next to hers; he’s not laughing or even smiling that widely, but he looks distinctly amused. “Choose between two worlds. The Ravagers are spread all across the galaxy, after all. You’ll find some anywhere you go. Even Terra, for example.”

She stiffens, fingers tightening around her holo; it’s only years of instinct that stop her from clutching it to her chest. “Why would I ever go to Terra? My only family is my sister, and she is on Knowhere.”

“I’ve met Quill a few times before,” Stakar tells her, ignoring her comment. “The leader of his old crew, Yondu Udonta, was like family to me. There was a long time there where I didn’t see him, until it was too late.”

“Why?” Gamora asks, curious despite herself.

Stakar shakes his head. “That is a story for another time. One for Quill to tell you himself, maybe.”

She scoffs. “Are you running a matchmaking service now?”

This time, he does laugh out loud. “You remind me of Yondu in some ways, Gamora. Real hard exterior. Pushin’ people away, hiding from people who care about you. Stubborn bastards.”

“I never met Yondu,” she deflects. “And I have no interest in Peter Quinn.” It sounds unconvincing even to her ears. She has known his name all along, of course. Her sister made certain of that, purely against her will. She had only ever used the incorrect one to make her disinterest perfectly clear to both of them, to communicate the absolute inevitability of her disappointing them before they had an opportunity to raise their hopes too much. But now…Now it just sounds forced and insincere.

Stakar’s look tells her that it’s such a bad bluff, he won’t even be dignifying it enough to call it. “You know what else I didn’t realize about Yondu until it was too late? He was real lonely, even while he claimed not to need anyone but himself and his crew. See, the Ravagers didn’t used to operate together the way we do now. Took Yondu dyin’ to bring the United to the United Ravagers.”

“How could I be lonely?” asks Gamora. “Not like I ever have any privacy around all of you.”

This is the first time he’s gone back in thirty years, Nebula’s message flashes on screen, because of course her sister would have this sort of exact wrong timing. I think you inspired him to do it.

Well, that is entirely unfair. If she were superstitious, Gamora might think that the universe is conspiring against her.

She swipes her finger over the screen, dismissing the notification quickly. She’s certain that Stakar hasn’t had time to read it, and equally certain that he had time to see who it was from.

He raises a single brow at her, but she keeps her face as neutral as possible. “Gamora, Gamora, Gamora. You and I both know that you can be lonely in a ship full o’ people.”

Peter has long since lost count of how many beers he’s had, but he knows he’s outpaced his grandpa by quite a few. But hey, he’s a lot younger than him. It would probably be concerning if his grandpa was matching his pace here.

“You talk about this Gamora like she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to the galaxy,” Grandpa says, with a knowing smile.

Peter practically melts, while at the same time trying not to cry. Damn, he really needs more booze. He chugs the remainder of his current bottle, belches, and says: “Oh, Grandpa, you have no idea. She’s so…strong, you know? So brave.” He lets out a heavy, dreamy sigh. “So pretty.”

“Am I gonna be able to meet this girl?” his grandpa asks.

Immediately, Peter reaches for another beer. He absolutely cannot tell the full story. At least not now. He’d need like twelve twelve-packs to be ready for that. “Probably not, uh… Something happened during the, um… Well, on Terra – Earth – you call it the Blip, apparently. So she doesn’t remember me. Or, well, okay, she does now, cause we met again just a few weeks ago. But she doesn’t remember any of the time we spent together before.”

Grandpa’s face falls noticeably at that, which is admittedly gratifying in a way. Peter’s gotten used to Nebula’s way of coping with her sister’s…situation…which has mostly been to dismiss anything resembling genuine emotion with a statement about how there is nothing to grieve since she isn’t dead. Which, in hindsight, makes a whole lot more sense with the knowledge that she’s been talking to Gamora this entire time. So it’s nice to have sympathy from someone new and unrelated to all the other complicated pieces of the situation.

But then it occurs to him that his grandpa has lost his daughter, his first wife, and – well, his grandson, until now. And that’s just the people he knows about. Probably he ought not to be pleased about coming back here and bringing more pain into his grandpa’s life. He takes another long swig of beer and pastes on a totally convincing smile. “It’s okay though! I mean, it’s not like she’s dead or anything. We can totally–”

“Might not have anything to do with aliens or space,” Grandpa interrupts, “but I understand how painful it can be to have someone you love forget you.”

Peter swallows with effort, thinking about how his mother went through periods of confusion before her death, how sometimes she wouldn’t recognize anyone around her. But he’s already made far too many assumptions about his Terran family. “You do?”

His grandpa nods, taking another drink of his own beer. “Before your grandmother died, her memory went. Some o’ the hardest years of my life.”

“Grandpa,” Peter whispers, chest aching. Already, he’s had so much more connection, so much more in common, with his grandfather than he ever expected, and now this? It’s not the kind of connection he would ever wish on anyone, but knowing that they have it… “And she didn’t remember you?”

“It was on and off at the beginning,” Grandpa says, picking at the label of his mostly empty beer bottle. “She’d recognize me sometimes. Other times not. Then it was all not. She never remembered me as her husband again but then she started to remember me as the fella who brought her breakfast. Or the fella who read to her. Or who took her for walks when it was nice out.”

Peter ducks his head as he swipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. He really needs more beer. They’re down to the last one in the pack, which he grabs and pops open, taking a swig before he can find his voice again. “How did you deal with that?”

“It was hard,” his grandpa admits, voice shaking. “I missed being who I used to be to her. Her husband. But then I started to appreciate what I was to her. So maybe I was just the guy that read her stories. So what? That guy made her smile. That’s all I could really ask for.”

Peter manages a tremulous smile, reaching out to pat his grandfather’s hand over the table, thinking of how goddamn brave he must have been. Braver than him.

Then he chugs the rest of his beer. “You got anything stronger?”

“I’m not lonely,” Gamora says dismissively. “I am perfectly content here.”

And, until a few days ago, she would have believed herself without question. In truth, she’s still not sure that lonely really encompasses what she’s feeling. She is more comfortable with this crew than she has ever been in her life, both physically and emotionally. She’s happy with her life as it is, which is more than she has ever been able to say, and what she has repeatedly told her sister anytime Nebula has tried to push her to do or be more.

But now…Well, she still isn’t unhappy. But she isn’t exactly perfectly content, either. She has to admit that there was something different about working with the Guardians. About working with Quill. A familiarity and a spark that had made it thrilling in a way she wouldn’t have thought possible. A feeling she would very much like to have again, dangerous as that might feel to admit.

“You know,” says Stakar, “I would have expected a daughter of Thanos to be a better liar.”

“And I would have expected Ravagers to smell worse,” she returns dryly. “Oh, wait.” She puts on her most disinterested expression as she picks her holo up again and responds to Nebula’s message, just to show that she doesn’t need to hide anything.

What does that have to do with me?

She looks up in time to see Stakar’s smirk. “Somethin’ else about the Ravagers you oughta know: once a Ravager, always a Ravager. Just ‘cause you might go away for a while, doesn’t mean you can’t come back whenever you want. Families are like that.”

His eyes flick to her holo, then back to hers. Gamora forces herself not to follow his gaze, but it’s a lot harder than it should be.

“Orange juice and vodka?” Peter asks, eyeing the cup his grandpa sets down in front of him. They’ve moved into the kitchen now for something stronger, and this was the first thing Grandpa suggested.

“Oh, yeah,” his grandpa says. He pours himself a smaller measure than Peter’s got, hands trembling as he holds the bottles. It’s something Peter’s trying very hard not to notice. “I caught your mom sneakin’ these more than once in her youth.”

Peter’s jaw drops. “What? No way! Really?”

Grandpa chuckles, an edge of nostalgia coloring his voice. “Oh, she was a hellion as a teenager. I bet you had that in common.”

“Yeah,” Peter says softly, thinking of how much Yondu would have agreed with that assessment. He takes a large gulp of his drink, hardly even tasting it as he downs half in one go.

Thinking of Yondu inevitably makes him think of Groot, which inevitably makes him think of that awful time when he had been both a rebellious teenager and grieving the loss of Gamora. Which makes him down most of the rest of his drink in a second gulp.

“Whoa!” His grandpa holds out a hand, palm forward in what Peter knows as the universal gesture for Stop. At least, he thinks. His head is starting to feel…slightly floaty. Probably mostly because it’s late, and maybe a bit from the alcohol. “This stuff’s real strong! Space liquor must be a whole lot stronger than the Terran stuff, judgin’ by how much you’ve already had.” He sounds vaguely impressed, but maybe also concerned.

Peter scratches the back of his neck, guilt trying to claw its way up through his chest. Or maybe that’s just indigestion. “Depends where it’s from, I guess? Like, Asgardian mead, man, don’t ever go near that stuff. Tried some once for the hell of it, pretty sure I lost, like, three days and a whole lotta brain cells. Xandarian beer’s more like this, though. Pretty mild. So if you ever decide you wanna try space booze, that’s probably your best bet.”

“I will sure make note of that,” Grandpa says, still eyeing him. Peter considers this from his point of voice: here he is, seeing his grandson for the first time in thirty years, and the first thing he does is drink like eight beers and chug a screwdriver, as he’d called this thing.

“Don’t worry,” he says, making himself set the drink down to demonstrate that he can. “I’ve got a major tolerance after all that space booze, and spending most of my formative years as a Ravager. All this is nothin’ to me.”

Grandpa nods, shoulders loosening slightly. Peter nearly lets out a sigh of relief; the last thing he wants to do is give his grandfather reason to worry about him. “Be that as it may, it is getting well past my bedtime. Let me show you to the guest room?”

“Oh, yeah, of course!” Peter says quickly. As much as he might not be tired, his grandpa clearly is, and he can totally stop drinking whenever he wants to. He only throws back the last of the drink because it would be a waste to leave it behind. “Lead the way.”

“Did you come here for a reason?” Gamora asks, when the silence has stretched into discomfort again. Or…more discomfort than she cares to tolerate. It never stopped being uncomfortable, really. Which is unfortunate, given how that conflicts with the convenient belief that being around this crew is easy, safe. Certainly in relation to her sister and the other Guardians. Isn’t it? “A reason other than trying to give me life lessons, I mean.”

Stakar laughs, a genuine sound, despite everything. Despite all of the ways she’s challenged and dismissed him. Despite the fact that she’s lied, and he knows it. “No, I think I’ve made my point. And I think you heard me, no matter whether you’re ready to admit it.” He stays only a moment longer, allowing his words to hang in the air with that gravity he always seems to exert – so different from Thanos’ authority, and yet she cannot deny she’s affected by it.

Gamora is still staring after him when her holo lights up with another reply from Nebula, and she jumps. Ask him yourself.

How can I do that when you just said he’s gone to Earth? she responds immediately.

She’s already hit send by the time she realizes how that sounds: that she did not simply say she doesn’t want to ask him, but instead presented an obstacle that she is certain her sister can easily counter.

Predictably, Nebula responds with: I believe there are vehicles capable of spaceflight somewhere around. You might even be able to pilot one, if the controls are simple enough. Before Gamora can even feel properly offended by that dig, another message comes in: The Ravagers aren’t holding you hostage, are they?

That is a dare from her sister if she’s ever heard one, and she’s heard plenty. There’s also the fact that the leader of the United Ravagers just all but told her she can come and go as she pleases, the type of freedom she has decidedly not had before, and is still getting used to.

Her fingers move almost of their own volition, tapping out a message before she’s given it much thought. I wouldn’t even know where to find him on Terra. She knows very well that Nebula will give her the tracer information for his comm, and then she will have no excuse not to do what she wants.

Screw it, she thinks; she is not trapped here. She’s not trapped anywhere anymore. She can do what she wants, go where she wants. And if what she wants right now is to talk to Quill again, then she’ll do that. It’s just curiosity after all.

It has nothing to do with the silver blush that hasn’t left her abdomen since she stood back to back with him on Knowhere.

It isn’t his childhood bedroom, thank gods.

Not that Peter expected it would be – not since he’d first managed to locate his grandpa and realized that he was no longer living in the same house. It would literally be impossible for his childhood bedroom to be here, in a whole other place, and that image makes him laugh. Which is probably mostly the alcohol making everything feel pleasantly fuzzy and light.

He loves that feeling. It’s the best feeling, really. Well, the best feeling that he can hope to have now. He would much rather have a hug from Gamora. Or a kiss from Gamora. Or even just five minutes with Gamora.

All at once, he’s struck by the memory of her poised to get on her ship, standing with her back to his. Of the way he could feel the tension radiating off of her, and…and he thinks the longing, too, though he can’t entirely say what for. Or even if he was reading her correctly.

Because as much as he might know the core of who she is – her honor, her goodness, her kindness – he doesn’t know her. Not in the way that he did before. And it doesn’t matter how much she opens herself up to the possibility, she will never be the person that he lost.

He grabs the pillow from under his head and covers his face with it with a frustrated groan. He is not supposed to be thinking about this; he’s here to reconnect with his grandfather, with his home planet. He just can’t stop missing Gamora. To be fair, he misses his whole Guardians family. He’s tempted to pull out his holo to message the group chat, just to say hi, see what’s up with them, but he’s afraid they’ll know what time it is on Earth and wonder why he’s awake, and he really doesn’t feel like explaining it. Plus, he’s a little drunk, and he feels like Rocket will be able to tell somehow, just through a message.

He tries to close his eyes, willing himself to sleep, but then he sees his best friend dying behind his eyelids, one of many horrible scenes that have been playing over and over in his mind the past couple weeks.

“Dammit,” he mutters, throwing the pillow off his face, kicking the blanket off his body. He needs another drink. Just one more. His grandpa will never notice.

Chapter Text

Gamora has not pulled a gun on anyone at the motel. Yet. Which she is considering an achievement, given the looks she got from the front desk all the way around to the room where she’s been told Quill is staying.

She probably shouldn’t be surprised by that. She did as much research as she could manage before coming to this backwater planet. Which was not very much, because Terra is fairly cloistered and has extremely outdated technology. She knows Thanos collected more information about it during the brief time that the space stone was there, but she cannot recall most of that now, since she was not directly involved in that mission. And it isn’t as though he shared that knowledge with the rest of the galaxy. So, really, she should have expected Terra to be like most other planets of its kind: as ignorant of other galactic races as they are of it.

But now she's outside Quill’s door, knocking without response, and if that lasts much longer, she will resort to violence. Really, what else can be expected of her?

"Quill!" Gamora shouts for at least the half-dozenth time. If this is not his room after all, she is going to murder the clerk at the desk. Slowly and painfully. "Quill, open the door!"

"Shut the fuck up!" comes the irritated voice of an older Terran woman, through the door of a different room. "People are sleeping here!"

"And you certainly are helping them by screaming," Gamora mutters, then huffs out an irritated breath and shoulders open the locked door she's been banging on.

“Quill!” she yells again as soon as she enters, ready to lay into him for failing to answer the door and leaving her out there feeling foolish, before her eyes adjust to the relative darkness and she realizes something is wrong.

For one, he is not in the room, though someone clearly has been. The small, rickety looking bed is disheveled, there’s a pair of shoes tossed haphazardly on the floor, and the end table by the bed has an empty, greasy paper bag and a plastic cup half full of some bright green liquid strewn over it. And though the overhead lighting is off, there is a bit of light coming from the partially open door on the other side of the room. And some rather unpleasant noises.

On alert, she steps over the backpack on the floor – definitely Quill’s – and shoves the door the rest of the way open to find the man himself, hunched over the toilet as he spills the contents of his stomach into it.

“Quill!” She shouts his name yet again, relief at having found him mixed with fear at having found him in such a condition. She kneels beside him before she can even think about it, mentally running through the limited med supplies she has with her and whether they will work on a Terran with no cybernetic enhancements.

“Whoa, what the –?” He looks at her, eyes glassy and confused. “Shit, hallucinations already?”

Gamora blinks at him in alarm, her mind already analyzing potential threats and responses as adrenaline floods her veins. Well, more adrenaline. She’s been on edge since arriving on this godforsaken planet.

Sometimes she thinks she’s been on edge her entire life.

“Hallucinations?” she prompts, because he hasn’t said anything else to further clarify the situation. He still doesn’t seem to be fully tracking her, either. For all that she had been tempted to write him off as weak and pathetic upon their first – well, first and second – meeting, Gamora has come to see the error in that judgment. The Quill she fought alongside was sharp, loyal, thoroughly competent despite the inherent weaknesses of his Terran body. Nothing like this.

He nods. “Wasn’t ‘sposed to be for another few–” He breaks off and gags, leaning over the toilet again, though there doesn’t appear to be anything left in his stomach to come up.

“Were you poisoned?” she demands. “Attacked?” She’s come here with the belief that space is far more hazardous than this particular planet. Having watched Quill hold his own against the Hellspawn, she certainly didn’t expect to find him in peril here. But perhaps she thought wrong. Terrans did, after all, foil several of Thanos’ attempts to collect the Stones.

“What?” he mutters. “No. Not that I know of.” He gags again, his entire body lurching forward in a way that looks rather painful.

“Then what the hell happened to you?” she snaps, panicked and frustrated and feeling helpless.

“Stopped drinking,” he says into the toilet bowl, eyes tightly shut.

She processes that, confused. Nebula had mentioned being concerned about Quill’s recent drinking, but surely had meant when he does drink, rather than when he doesn’t. “This is what happens when you stop drinking?”

He grunts. “This is why I haven’t stopped before. But I gotta.”

“Why?” she asks through gritted teeth. He is being annoyingly vague, though she recognizes that he is not well.

He doesn’t answer, just gags again, then mumbles as if he’s talking to himself. “I knew hallucinations were part of it, but I thought they weren’t s’posed to happen til day two. Dunno why it’s happening now. Knew I would hallucinate you. I thought maybe I could hallucinate not being sick at the same time, though.”

She leans closer to him, trying to get a better look at his face. She touches his forehead, wincing when she finds it warm and clammy. “You are not hallucinating, Quill. You’re throwing up into a toilet and I’m right here.”

It takes a concerningly long moment for him to stop gagging and turn back to her, still with an unfocused gaze. He blinks at her for a moment before reaching out a shaking hand to touch her face. She probably ought to stop him but instead she freezes, waiting to see what he’ll do. His fingertips brush her cheek very lightly, the touch so feathery that it threatens to make her shiver. She isn’t used to anyone touching her gently – Even her crew, for all that they love her, tend toward the rougher side of things.

For half an instant, Gamora allows her eyes to fall closed, allows herself to simply experience this. Then she remembers that he’s touched her this way before, on the battlefield when they had been fighting Thanos. When he had believed her to be someone else. Someone she will never be. And if he doesn’t even know whether she is real right now…

“Enough,” she snaps, catching his wrist and pushing his hand away. Were he anyone else, she would keep hold of that limb, possibly even break it. He isn’t, though, so she lets go.

“Whoa!” Quill gasps, teetering on his knees for a moment before falling over to one side as if he might be currently intoxicated.

He makes no effort to right himself, simply continues gaping at her as if he’s never seen anything like her before. “I gotta be dreaming,” he mutters. Without taking his eyes off of her, he pinches the skin at his side over his shirt…or at least, she thinks that’s what he’s trying to do. He ends up sort of poking himself with the tips of his fingers, perhaps even catching himself with his nail, because he lets out a little yelp. “Ouch!”

“What the hell are you doing?” she growls. “You weren’t such a hazard to yourself the last time I saw you.” Then she reconsiders, recalling the image of him nearly dying in open space, the strange sense of panic in her chest at the idea. “Nevermind. You were.”

For some reason, that seems to snap him out of whatever trance he was in, because he blinks a few times and looks at her with slightly clearer eyes. “Holy shit. Gamora? You’re actually here?”

“I appear to be,” she says dryly. “Now, would you like to tell me why you are here? I thought you were visiting your grandfather. Why are you throwing up in these filthy lodgings?”

“Didn’t think the clean lodgings would appreciate it,” he says, still staring at her.

“My sister is not here to stop me from punching you in the face this time,” she reminds him.

He shrugs, apparently unconcerned. “‘s nothin’.”

He isn’t afraid of her. He never has been, of course, but initially she was fairly certain that was simply because he mistook her for someone else. For the woman he loved. When in truth she is not a person made to be loved. Perhaps she was, once, as a child. But Thanos molded her into something else, and despite the fact that he has been gone for two years now, that damage is already done. Irrevocably.

So she is not someone to be loved, and she is not someone that Quill should trust, though he seems determined to do so. He especially shouldn’t be brushing off her threats in this diminished state, when he appears vulnerable to any sort of attack. Even one from another Terran. “It would not be nothing if I punched you in the face. It would very likely knock you unconscious. It might even fracture your skull.”

He surprises her by laughing dismissively. “Hey, might be an improvement.”

“What is wrong with you?” she asks exasperatedly. Her confusion is making her feel helpless, and she hates it.

“Told you,” says Quill. “Drinking. Or – not drinking, more like.”

Realization begins to creep in. “You are attempting to quit?”

He grunts and rubs his hand over his face. “Yeah. I knew my body wouldn’t like it when I stopped after I went and got it used to having alcohol so much.”

“I am familiar with the concept of addiction,” she informs him.

“Oh.” He blinks a few times. “Ravagers?”

“Yes.” She has seen what happens to certain members of her crew when they run out of units for their chosen vice. It is varying degrees of unpleasant, though as far as she knows, none of them have ever attempted to stop on purpose. “But it is also a useful interrogation tactic.”

He tilts his head, glassy eyes clearing a little. “Is that why you’re here? To interrogate me?”

“What?” she asks, horrified that he might think that, then horrified that she cares.

“You said addiction is good for interrogating,” he says, as if she might have forgotten. “Do you need information from me?”

“I was talking about when I worked for Thanos!” she snaps. Really, she should not have told him at all. What is it about this man that makes her say more than she should?

“Oh,” he says again. He wipes the back of his hand over his mouth, making her nose wrinkle. “Sorry. You don’t gotta interrogate me, anyway. You jus’ gotta ask, I’ll tell ya anything you wanna know.”

She immediately finds herself uncharacteristically at a loss for words. She casts about for a moment before settling on: "Do you actually intend to stop drinking?"

He certainly seems serious about it, judging by the discomfort he is already in, and the fact that she hasn’t seen any alcohol in the room. Which, she supposes, doesn’t mean that it’s not there…But her limited experience with addicts certainly suggests that when they are denied their vice, they are motivated to find some way to obtain it. Desperate, even. Hence the reason she’s learned it makes an effective interrogation tactic. Quill appears…not comfortable, exactly, but resigned. Even in his diminished state, she can see hints of the determination she witnessed in his efforts to save his friends.

He nods and then winces, his throat working as he swallows convulsively. For a moment it looks as though he might pitch into a fresh wave of vomiting, but then it passes. “Been drinkin’ way too much. ‘S bad. Bad for everyone.”

"Is that why you left Knowhere?" she presses. She had not anticipated that. And it certainly would go against what her sister told her, about thinking that she has somehow inspired that decision.

“Kinda,” he sighs. His gaze sharpens again, but turns sad at the same time. “I came to see my grandpa. But also because I need to…fix myself.”

“From your alcohol addiction?” she asks, growing increasingly concerned about his physical and mental state. There’s a half-empty bottle of water on the edge of the sink, which she grabs and hands to him.

He glances between her and the bottle for a second before he grabs it with a shaking hand. She’s surprised he manages to only spill a bit of it down his chin when he takes a drink. “That’s really only part of it. Mantis told me…well, Mantis through Drax told me…that I’ve been defining myself using other people my whole life, and I need to figure out who I am when I’m not doin’ that.”

“So you came here to be alone?” she asks. She is certainly not going to interfere if that’s what he needs, but the idea of leaving him here is not a pleasant one.

“No!” he says quickly, eyes wide with something like panic. “It’s not like… It’s not like I can’t be around other people, right? I just gotta learn to swim without using ‘em like a raft. I mean, I was with my grandpa up until yesterday. I just didn’t want him to see me like this.”

She sighs. “You’re not making any sense, Quill.”

“No, I guess not.” He sighs heavily, not quite an echo of hers so much as an amplification. He sets the water bottle down on the floor and wipes his mouth, then scrubs a hand over his hair, which is wilder than she has ever seen it and slightly damp with sweat. “My whole head is confused. This is why I didn’t stop drinking for so long. I’ve tried, you know? A buncha times. But it feels fucking awful.”

“I have never had the pleasure of getting drunk in the first place,” says Gamora, though she assumes he knows – or believes he knows – this about her. She cannot imagine it changing in any time she might spend – or have spent – with him. “Let me tell you, the Ravagers find that a perpetual disappointment.”

“Asgardian liquor’ll do it, if you ever wanna try,” says Quill. She probably ought not to be surprised by that response, but she is.

She doesn’t get a chance to respond, though, because the next thing she knows, he’s lurching to his feet and moving gingerly over to the small sink. He stands with both hands braced against the counter for a long moment, swaying the slightest bit as he finds his equilibrium. Then he turns on the water and splashes some on his face, a full-body shudder running through him.

He stays that way for a while, just standing with his eyes closed and water dripping off of his face. He looks miserable, she thinks, with an unpleasant twist in her gut at the sight of him like this. On instinct, she grabs the small towel hanging on the wall and holds it out to him, wanting to do something.

“Thanks,” he says quietly once he opens his eyes and sees her offering. After he drags the fabric over his face, his eyes look more focused, and that focus is directed at her. “Wait. So, if you are really here…why are you here?”

“My sister was worried about you,” she says automatically. It’s the answer she’d come up with on the ship on her way here, because the real answer – that she simply wanted to – would be too hard to explain without giving him…expectations. Of course, she hadn’t expected to find him with quite so much cause for worry.

Peter doesn’t look entirely surprised, though perhaps a little disappointed. Not that she can read his expression that well, or that she’d care even if she could. “Oh. That’s fair. She’s had to carry me outta the bar drunk more than once.”

Gamora hopes he can’t see that she is genuinely taken aback by that response. She knows that her sister has encouraged her to contact him – or to at least accept her attempts to facilitate Quill contacting her. She knew, even before meeting him again and witnessing it for herself, that he was grieving the woman she has never been and will never be. But somehow she has never anticipated…this. Before that was because she didn’t care. Because she avoided thinking about him almost violently. And more recently…Well, because despite the rocky start, she has come to see him as…strong. Capable. Nothing like this.

"How long is it --" She gestures broadly to the state he's in. "Like this?"

He shrugs, turning back toward the mirror, though holding her gaze in the reflection. "I've never let it get this far before. It's been like...half a day so far. The thing I read said it can last up to like three days like this. And worse. Then like...milder for a few weeks.”

"What were you going to do for three days of this?" she asks incredulously. She can only imagine what state she might have found him in if she had arrived a matter of hours later.

“Just this, I guess,” he mutters, gesturing vaguely towards the toilet. “Ride it out til it’s over.”

“You can’t do that on your own!” she says before she can stop herself, utterly horrified by the idea.

A look crosses his face like he’s going to cry or something, which also horrifies her. She sees his throat work for a few seconds before he manages: “You’ve been through way worse on your own. So has Nebula. And Rocket.”

“Yes,” she allows. Recovery from her enhancement surgeries had always been unpleasant, and that was nothing compared to what she saw in that footage of Rocket. Or what she knows Nebula’s were like. “But I don’t believe you’d let them do that now.”

“Of course not,” he says immediately, then sighs as he seems to take her point, head bowing over the sink again. “It’s just… You know, I made this whole big deal to the team about how I was gonna learn to survive on my own. I don’t wanna be all pathetic, asking for help like a week later.”

She finds her hand lifting towards his back, instinctively wanting to offer comfort. She snatches it back just in time, holding it firmly behind her back. “Does surviving on your own mean never needing help?”

He wipes roughly at his eyes, which have definitely gotten watery despite his attempt to hide it by keeping them downcast. Maybe it’s just a symptom of giving up alcohol, she tells herself. Maybe it has nothing to do with any sort of emotions. "No... It shouldn't, I guess. Everyone needs help sometimes, right?"

There’s a box of flimsy-looking tissues on the bathroom countertop. It’s a far less sophisticated dispenser than she’s accustomed to, but more of a convenience than she might have expected this place to provide. She grabs a handful and holds them out. "You really think I'm an authority on that?"

He laughs ruefully, wiping his face and then blowing his nose. "Well, you're helpin' me."

"Apparently so," she agrees, the knowledge that she is going to do exactly that slowly sinking in. She shouldn't want to be here with him, not when he's like this. She doesn't want to be here, of course. But it's also clear that she cannot leave him alone in this state. Especially not after having so recently witnessed the lengths he will go to for his friends.

He tosses the tissue into the small trash bin in the corner, making the shot neatly, which she can’t help but find impressive given his addled state. The smile that he aims her way would make her think he was drunk if it weren’t for…well. “You’re more than not so bad, you know? You’re cool. The coolest.”

It takes more effort than it should for her to tamp down the happiness that she feels at the compliment. “Because I handed you some tissues?”

His smile will not be deterred. “Cause you’re here.”

“Yes, well.” She brushes some imaginary lint off of her sleeve to avoid his eyes. “Apparently I’m here for at least three days.”

She may not be looking into his eyes, but she can’t miss the way his smile slowly widens until he’s basically beaming. “Are you sure? I don’t want you to feel…obligated, just cause I’m pathetic.”

“My sister would murder me if I left you here to choke on your own vomit,” she informs him, because that is the only reason.

Peter’s smile falls. “Nah. She loves you too much to kill you.”

“More the fool her,” Gamora says coolly, determinedly lifting her eyes back to his so he can see how much she doesn’t care.

He tilts his head, not looking particularly convinced. “You love her, too.”

Gamora looks studiously at her nails, suddenly very unwilling to let him meet her gaze, or even see her face too closely. Because this is where he is wrong about her. This is where she will disappoint him irrevocably, no matter what he thinks he may know or have learned about the person she is now. No matter how accepting he may be of faults in others. Because she cannot say that she loves her sister. She knows that she feels something for Nebula – something stronger and more hopeful than she ever experienced before leaving her timeline. Something that made her trust her sister enough to do exactly that. And she certainly did not like the idea of Nebula trapped on the High Evolutionary’s ship, certainly did feel the urge to protect her then. But love? Surely not. She doesn't even know what that would feel like.

“I wasn’t made to love anyone,” she tells Quill. “No matter what you may believe you know about me.”

"But you are your own person now, right?" he asks lightly, apparently unfazed by her response. "It doesn't matter what Thanos tried to make you. Either of you."

She bristles, annoyed at how astute he’s managing to be when his eyes are still glazed and his entire body is trembling. He’s concerningly pale too, actually – not that she is concerned. Just that it would be concerning, to someone inclined to feel such things about him.

“Go sit down,” she says abruptly, pointing through the bathroom door to the bed. “I don’t want you collapsing on the floor. It would be irritating to carry your sweaty body all the way to the bed.”

She briefly fears he’ll try to push the subject, but he just huffs out a laugh and rubs one of those shaking hands over his face. “I do sweat a lot. Not to brag.”

“Ew.” She wrinkles her nose and nudges him away from the sink with one hand, not letting her touch linger. “At least you smell marginally better than some of the Ravagers. For now.”

He laughs again and starts making his way slowly out of the bathroom and into the main room, his gait far less steady than it normally is. Not that she has made note of it. “You’re funny.”

“And you are remarkably tolerant of insults,” she says, staying behind to wet another small cloth with cool water before following him.

He sits on the edge of the bed and looks up at her, still smiling. “That sounded like a compliment to me.”

“Have you always been this irritating?” she grumbles, shoving the cloth at him. “Wipe your sweaty face.”

“If by irritating, you mean charming.” He obeys her command, wiping the cloth along his hairline and his neck. It might be concerning, how quickly more sweat has gathered there, if she cared about that sort of thing.

"I could simply kill you," she offers. "It might be more humane." It’s a threat she’s far too accustomed to making, though it’s changed meaning somewhat over the past few years. It had been genuine, always, when Thanos was her master. A weapon she had wielded as casually as her sword. And it certainly isn’t benign now, at least not when she uses it on jobs for the Ravagers. But it’s also become…a bluff, of sorts. A joke of the blackest kind.

Quill surprises her by laughing, the sound broad and genuine. She doesn’t think she will ever get used to the fact that he truly is not afraid of her. Or the fact that despite his being clearly physically miserable, his eyes are surprisingly light with mirth right now. “More humane to me or to you?”

"Both," she decides. His laughter is strangely attractive. She doesn’t want to know that. She definitely doesn’t want to make him do it more. That would be ill advised for any number of reasons.

He laughs harder anyway, until his cheeks are flushed and his face is once again shiny with a sheen of sweat. It’s possible his laughter might be a little crazed thanks to whatever the alcohol withdrawal is doing to his body. “You might have a point.”

“Nonetheless, we have already established that my sister would dislike it if I allowed you to die,” she says primly. She needs to put a stop to this laughter before it derails her completely. “So, since I am not going to kill you, what do I need to know to help you stay alive for the next few days? I know nothing of Terran physiology.”

His mirth does subside then, which she certainly does not regret. “I know I’m supposed to stay hydrated. I guess I should eat something at some point. That thingy I read about withdrawal warned that I’ll probably have hallucinations – hence, you know –” He waves his hand towards the bathroom, where he had been rather convinced she was a hallucination a matter of minutes ago. “Oh, and I might possibly be at risk of a lil’ seizure now and then.”

“Quill!” she says sharply, alarmed. That sounds far more serious than she was anticipating. “Did you bring any med supplies?”

He rubs the back of his neck, looking decidedly sheepish. “I might have a bandage or two?”

She nearly growls. “Oh good. That will be helpful in the event of a seizure.”

“It’s not like I knew I’d be going through alcohol withdrawal when I came to Earth,” he says defensively.

“And yet you decided to,” she says through gritted teeth. His lack of concern for his own safety is one of the most irritating things about him.

“I felt like I had to,” he says with something akin to desperation. For so much of her life, Gamora has leveraged that. Exploited that. She ought to view it as a weakness now, something to be used to her advantage. Instead she finds herself again wanting to touch him, to offer comfort of which she does not believe herself to be capable. “My grandpa noticed.”

"Your drinking?" she asks. It’s hard to picture him behaving as irresponsibly as he’s describing – which is ironic, given that she’s spent the past two years imagining him as the sort of pathetic lost puppy she would never wish to know. And sure, she’s seen glimpses of that part of him, but the rest…The rest of what she’s seen of him – being a leader, a fiercely loyal friend, an impressive fighter despite his physical limitations – is simply so compelling that it’s hard to remember the alternative. Yet she knows that if her sister is as concerned as he’s said, it must be bad. It must be bad for him to be as ill as he is now, too.

“Yeah,” he says, casting his eyes down. “I thought I could hide it from him. Just, you know, have enough to stay functional and to get some sleep. But um – It took more than I thought, to do that. And then I guess after a few nights of doin’ that, I had too much, ‘cause next thing I knew, I was wakin’ up in his kitchen with an empty liquor cabinet.”

“That does sound difficult to hide,” she says evenly, though her concern only increases. That is as bad as any Ravager’s addiction she has ever seen.

He shrugs one shoulder. “Luckily, I woke up before him or his wife did. Had time to clean up the place, put the empty bottles back in the cabinet. He told me they hardly ever drink, so I’m hopin’ I’ll be able to buy replacements and sneak ‘em back in before he notices they’re empty. He thinks I’m going off to explore the state a bit.”

“So you were truly here alone.” Why does that make her so sad? For most of her life, being alone was the ideal state, as the alternative was always being surrounded by her enemies. Seeing how much Quill cares about his friends, his family, and now to see him like this…This cannot be what he had in mind when he sought to “fix” himself.

“I just reunited with my grandpa,” he says sadly. “I didn’t want him to see me like this.”

She sighs. Apparently, she isn’t going to leave him here, so she might as well know what she’s getting into. Treat it like a mission, she tells herself. Gather information. Complete the objective. No need to make it personal. Even if she has no other reason to be here, other than the personal.

“Alright,” she says briskly. “Given what you’ve told me, I shouldn’t expect you to be lucid the entire time. What should I do when you have a hallucination?”

He bites his lip and she can see his throat working again, evidently trying not to get emotional, or trying to hide from her the fact that he is. She should be grateful for that, because she certainly doesn’t want to witness or have to deal with that sort of vulnerability. She definitely shouldn’t feel guilty that he feels the need to conceal it from her. “I’m…I’m not sure. I didn’t research anything about how to help.”

"What do you want me to do?" she asks, swallowing down her frustration at his callousness toward his own survival. She can certainly understand feeling the need to isolate while sick. She’s done that plenty of times, though under objectively worse circumstances. As soon as she’s gotten past that swell of frustration, though, she finds herself regretting the question. She’s fairly certain she knows the answer, and it isn’t anything she can give him. It isn’t anything he truly wants from her.

“I think – talking to me might help,” he says after a moment. “You know, like, remind me where I am. Maybe…maybe hold my hand or something…?”

"I will restrain you from hurting yourself," says Gamora, because she can’t allow him to get the idea that she will ever have the ability to sit by his bedside and offer real comfort.

The disappointment on his face is obvious, no matter how he clumsily tries to hide it. “Right, yeah, of course, thank you.” He reaches for yet another partially empty water bottle on the nightstand, grabbing hold of it with a hand that’s trembling so badly he can hardly get it to his mouth; and even then, water spills down his chin and neck.

She moves instinctively to steady his hand, not stopping to consider how that means she is basically holding it around the bottle. His eyes widen but he manages to take a drink without asphyxiating.

“Th-thank you,” he whispers. “My hands are being stupid. Can’t seem to control ‘em.”

“Yes, well.” She is still holding onto his hand, something she quickly rectifies once she notices, taking the bottle from him and setting it back on the table. The stupidity of his hands must be contagious. “I didn’t think you were spilling water on yourself on purpose.”

He snorts, which must have some ill effect because he winces and touches his forehead right after. “I hardly ever do that.”

She is obviously not going to get much useful information from him about how to complete this mission. Her holopad is an option, but she has so far deliberately kept herself from seeing how much information is available on Terran physiology on that network. “Is there a way I can research how to help you?”

“The phone my grandpa gave me,” he says, reaching his shaking hand into his pocket to pull out a piece of Terran technology. It’s smaller than she might have expected, given her rudimentary knowledge of less advanced planets, but larger than a standard comm. “It’s like a real primitive holo. But if you click that little Terra icon in the corner, you can search the Terran database.”

"All right," she agrees, taking it and doing that. The screen is flat but it responds to her touch easily enough, and most of the symbols on the screen must be contained within her translator, since she can read them. It’s much easier than she expected to find information about the dangers of Terran alcohol addiction, though most of it seems to comprise advertisements for treatment programs she guesses Quill would not consider attending. She certainly wouldn’t, in his position.

“We don’t have as much information, obviously, as the rest of the universe,” he rambles, flashing her a sheepish expression when she glances up at him. “But lots of Terran stuff. You can find every song on there!”

"What?" she asks distractedly, currently alarmed by the medical information she's finding. To be fair, she has no idea how severe his addiction is, but judging by what he’s told her and what she’s seen so far, he could be in serious danger. And he was seriously planning to do this alone.

“Every song,” he reiterates. “Like ever made on Earth. It’s all on there.”

"Is music -- medicinal somehow?" Gamora asks, still confused. Perhaps that’s an antiquated Terran belief. It would explain why he was so insistent on going back for his music player, and why it was playing constantly next to Rocket while he was unconscious.

“Wha–oh, no,” he says. “I was just tellin’ you other stuff you can find on there. Although, Earth music could totally be medicinal, ‘cause it’s the best music in the entire galaxy.”

“You are certainly very attached to it,” she says absently, still scrolling through the actual medical information. Apparently, he is likely to be feverish and experience an abnormal heart rate, which she can already hear when he isn’t talking.

“Course I am,” he says easily. “Music is the best. My mom cared a lot about it when I was a kid, and she showed me how awesome it is. And I showed the rest of the team.”

She sets the phone down for now and retrieves the bag she’s brought along, taking inventory of her med kit. It’s disappointingly limited, as she had not anticipated finding anything like this. “Nebula said you left your music player behind on Knowhere.”

“How much do you talk about me?” he asks with a rather cocky smirk for someone who was just violently throwing up five minutes ago. She only has to give him a brief, unamused look before his shoulders sag. “Music means more to me than anything except my friends. My family. Rocket loves that Zune and he almost…” He shakes his head. “So I gave it to him.”

"And you left them behind," says Gamora. "Along with your music. To be alone while you go through this -- illness." She’s struck suddenly by how lost he looks, how vulnerable. That despite her best convictions to see him as immature, as selfish, he is anything but. Not only was he willing to risk his life for his friends, he has given up a possession that clearly gave him so much comfort at a time when he needs it most.

“My drinking has caused them enough grief,” he says sadly. “My grief has caused them enough grief. I mean, you saw what I was like. Just a tiny slice of it and you were ready to throw me into the next galaxy.”

Again, Gamora finds herself at a loss, wanting to offer comfort but utterly incapable. So she does what she does best in a crisis, and focuses on strategy. She hands him the water again and two capsules from her pack. "Take these."

He doesn't even question her, taking them immediately and bringing them to his mouth with great concentration, as if he's a toddler only just learning hand-eye coordination. Only after he's swallowed -- after a couple tries -- does he ask: "What are they?"

She shows him the bottle. "Should help regulate your temperature and take the edge off the pain. You didn't recognize them?"

"My vision is a lil swimmy," he mumbles and shrugs. "Figured it was something medicine-y."

"But you took them," says Gamora. "Without knowing what they were. From me."

"’Course," he says easily. "I trust you."

She feels a thrill of fear at that. “You shouldn’t.” Not that she has any plans of hurting him, but she so easily could.

He shrugs, taking another drink of water. “It’s served me well so far.”

“I thought we had established I am not that person,” she says through gritted teeth.

His fingers clench momentarily around the bottle, making the plastic crinkle. “You’re the same at your core. The same good person.”

Interesting that she no longer feels the urge to punch him when he says that, though she still has no idea what to do with it. She is likely going to have no luck convincing him otherwise at the moment, so she determinedly changes the subject – or steers it back in the original direction. “You may be delusional already. Do you have any other clothing with you?”

“I should,” he says, tilting his head, eyes glassy with confusion. “In my bag over there. Did you wanna…borrow some? You didn’t bring any with you?”

“Of course I brought clothes with me,” she sighs. Perhaps he is actually delusional. “You need to change yours. You’re drenched in sweat.”

“Oh.” He looks down at himself, as if just noticing that he has a body. He grabs the damp neck of his shirt and makes a face at it. “Gross.”

"And remove your boots, unless you were planning to go somewhere." She opens his bag unceremoniously and selects the most comfortable looking items of clothing she can find. She has to admit that she’s tempted to go through this bag also, especially because it’s bigger than his backpack and therefore probably contains more information about the private parts of his life. But that temptation is exactly why she shouldn’t do that. She came here because she wanted to, because she is free to do what she wants. Tying herself to him – to his idea of what she should be – is not what she wants. So it is more important than ever that she keeps this to business. Practicality.

"I wasn't plannin' to leave this room for a couple days," he sighs. He stares intently at his feet, then sets his jaw and leans over toward his boot laces. Unfortunately his balance is still off, though, and he starts to topple over immediately.

“Whoa,” Gamora snaps, dropping the clothes she was holding on the foot of the bed and crossing quickly over to steady him. “All right. You focus on staying upright. I’ll remove your boots.” She doesn’t give him a chance to protest before she drops to her knees and starts on that task.

She holds her breath as she removes the first boot, going slowly so she doesn’t jar him too much when he’s already unsteady. She pauses then, glancing up to make sure he’s not about to fall over, and is surprised to find him staring down at her with tears in his eyes.

“Are you all right?” she asks, slightly alarmed. She doesn’t know how she could have hurt him, unless he has some kind of injury she failed to notice…

“I’m totally fine,” he says quickly, but his voice is trembling, despite what seems to be a concerted effort to act totally fine. “One shoe down, one to go. We’re halfway there!” His face lights up at that. “Whoa-oh, livin’ on a prayer!!”

Her concern increases. “What are you doing?”

“Singing!” he tells her. “It’s a new Bruce Springsteen song. Well, not new-new. But it’s new to me, I just heard it a couple days ago.”

She tries and fails three times to process that statement. “Are you hallucinating?”

“Oh–sorry, no I’m totally fine,” he says again. “I’m lucid. Mostly, I think. My head is kinda floaty, but I know where I am.”

Though she remains doubtful, he is at least holding himself upright, so she re-focuses and removes his last boot before standing up with her hands on her hips. “Shirt next.”

He's definitely blushing when she looks back at him again, and she’s struck suddenly by the undeniable intimacy of this situation. She’s thought about the fact that he is very clearly unafraid of her. That he trusts her. That she is seeing him in such an utterly vulnerable state, at least from a physical standpoint. She’s also become accustomed to the complete lack of modesty or privacy that comes along with having lived on a Ravager ship for the past two years. So the idea of having someone undress in front of her is not unusual. But Quill…Some part of him still sees her as his former lover, she’s certain, no matter how much he might be trying to get past that. And she…well, she has no idea how to conceptualize what he is or is not to her. But he certainly isn’t a stranger. Isn’t an infinitely platonic member of her crew. Isn’t an enemy anymore, either.

"My shirt is pretty gross,” he acknowledges, apparently sensing that the silence between them has stretched too far into awkwardness. Not that that statement makes it any less awkward.

"Yes," she agrees. "So let's change it."

Wincing and then nodding, he sighs and takes his shirt off with exactly zero coordination, so that it ends up stuck over his head. “Ah—fuck.”

"What were you planning to do if you were attacked in this state?" asks Gamora, freeing him from the shirt and definitely not looking with interest at his bare torso. He has a light dusting of curly hair on his chest, as well as several scars that immediately make her wonder about their origin. Also…freckles. Far too small a detail for her to have noticed.

She also should not notice the way the muscles of his arms flex when they fall back down after she gets the shirt off. He’s gripping the edge of the mattress with both hands, making the veins in his arms stand out and his shoulders appear even wider than usual. It’s irritating.

“I wasn’t exactly plannin’ on getting attacked in this motel room in the middle of Missouri,” he mutters. His breathing is accelerated as well, like the simple act of undressing is an effort in this state.

“Threats can be anywhere at any time.” She holds up the shirt she’d grabbed from his bag in one hand. “Are you going to put this on or not?”

He looks between it and her face. “Can’t exactly put it on when you’re holding it like that.”

She sighs and throws it at his face, watching it land to cover that stupid smirk. It’s no wonder his body is irritating when he is this irritating. “Better?”

His laughter is muffled by the shirt, which he makes no effort to remove. “Oh no! You were right, attacks can come from anywhere! I’m being attacked by my own shirt!” He lifts his arms as if trying to fight it off, then lets out a genuine yelp when he loses what little balance he had and falls onto his back.

Gamora moves instinctively to pin him to the bed before he can slide off of it, realizing only belatedly that that puts her half on top of him. Her hands are on his shoulders, one knee to the side of his hip, her other foot still planted firmly on the ground. It’s nearly an exact reversal of the way they had landed after he’d pulled her from the ship he’d programmed to self-destruct. Not that that particular experience is seared into her memory. Not that she’s been thinking about it in vivid detail every moment her mind is not occupied by something else – such as other thoughts of him. She practically growls in frustration at that thought.

“Whoa!” Quill exclaims, this time genuinely. The movement pushed the shirt off of his face, and his eyes are wide as he meets hers, though his expression is clearly not fear. More like…awe. And she can hear his heart pounding in an entirely different way from before, as if it might be trying to leave his chest and reach out for her.

She moves off of him just as quickly, snatching up the shirt and shoving it at his hands. "Put this on already. Or do I have to dress you like a child?"

“You’re the one who threw it at my face,” he mumbles petulantly, and she can hear the hurt clearly in his voice. Good. Safer that way.

Fortunately he’s able to pull on the shirt without further assistance, though probably more clumsily than he otherwise would. She isn’t sure what might happen if she truly had to dress him herself.

"Now these," she says brusquely, holding up the sweatpants. She turns away, determined not to look at him unless he asks for help or she hears clear evidence that he’s in distress. Fortunately he seems to manage well enough, because when she turns back at his soft throat clear, he’s in one piece and dressed in clean clothing.

Well enough is not well, though; he’s sweating rather profusely, neck flushed, breathing heavily. This level of exertion required for such a basic task does not bode well for the next few days.

“Sorry,” he whispers, eyes downcast. She’s unclear exactly what he’s apologizing for, nor does she know what to do with an apology, so she does all she can do and ignores it.

“You’re shivering,” she informs him. “Do you want to get under the blanket?”

She sees his throat work for a moment. “I guess, yeah. I don’t wanna sleep, though.”

“Good luck with that,” she says dryly, putting her hand on his shoulder to help him lie back. He grunts as his head hits the pillow. She doesn’t bother asking if he can pull the blanket up himself, simply yanks it out from underneath him and tucks it back over him with more gentleness than she would ever admit to out loud.

His fingers tangle in the edge of the blanket so desperately that his knuckles go white, clearly agitated despite the fact that she has just done more than she ever would have imagined to make him comfortable. Still, she’s painfully aware of how inadequate her skills in that department are. “The dreams are the worst, Gamora.”

She finds herself reaching out again before she’s even realized what she’s doing – Might not have realized it at all if not for the way his eyes have fixed on her hand as if he’s drowning and she’s offering a lifeline. Gamora snatches it back immediately, then regrets it. "I don't – know how to help with that."

“Me either,” he says, voice trembling. He presses his lips together, fingers toying with a loose thread at the edge of the blanket. “If only we had candles…oh! Music?”

"All right," she agrees, picking up the phone again. "You said this thing has it?"

“Yeah!” he says, brightening. “Search for um…search Fleetwood Mac!”

She does her best, but she must not have it spelled correctly, because none of the results she finds make any sense. Or maybe she’s just far too out of touch with Terran technology.

“You do it,” she snaps, shoving the phone back into his hands as she goes and fetches the old threadbare chair from one corner and pulls it up to the side of the bed.

His eyes track the movement of the chair. She can see the protest forming on his face before his eyes even reach hers again, as if he’s going to try to make some sort of gallant offer of sharing the bed. Hopefully, he can see her willingness to pull her sword if he even dares to voice such a thing in the glare she levels at him.

Quill bites his lip, but doesn’t say anything as she sits down on the chair. He just types something on the primitive device, scrolls a bit, then hits something that makes a slow rhythm start before he sets it back on the nightstand. She glances at the screen and sees a long list of songs that starts with one called Rhiannon.

Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night
And wouldn’t you love to love her

The melody is pleasant, not that she will admit that out loud. “This music is going to help your dreams?”

“Maybe,” he mutters, not sounding very certain. “Fleetwood Mac is the best band ever, so if any music could, it’s this.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” she informs him, but his eyes are already fluttering closed and he doesn’t respond. She crosses her arms over her chest and leans back, settling in for a long couple of days.

Would you stay if she promised you heaven?
Will you ever win?

Chapter Text

Peter’s first thought is that he has never been so hungover in his life. His head is throbbing in a constant rhythm that would make a pretty good rock song if it didn’t fucking suck so much. In between those beats, stabby needles are poking at the backs of his eyeballs, protesting the fact that they’re open. And his stomach – Well, he isn’t going to think about his stomach, because that might give it ideas about puking and then he’ll have to find a way to maneuver himself upright if he doesn’t want to die by drowning in his own vomit.

Maybe it would be better to just die. At least then, he wouldn’t have to deal with his head feeling like this. Unless hell turns out to be real, in which case it will probably feel like this forever.

His next thought is that he needs another drink, immediately. Desperately. Another drink might even be worth moving, especially if it will make him stop feeling like…this. Alcohol is the best for making him not feel whatever he’s feeling.

Only when he reaches for the flask he’s used to keeping on the bedside table does he arrive at a mostly-formed third thought, which is that he has no idea where he is.

“Here.” An impossible voice interrupts that thought, accompanied by an equally impossible hand shoving a bottle of water into his blurred field of vision.

He takes it on instinct, but then turns to gape at the impossible woman sitting in the chair next to the bed that he is apparently lying on. He blinks a couple of times and the room behind her swims into focus, along with at least partial awareness of where the hell he is. Earth. His grandpa. Passing out in the kitchen. Puking in a motel room. Gamora. Impossible, and yet…

“You’re supposed to drink it, Quill,” she tells him, reaching over to effortlessly twist the cap of the bottle for him. “Unless you’re about to vomit again.” She kicks the tiny, plastic trash can by the edge of the bed closer to him.

“I don’t think so,” he says, bringing the bottle to his lips with a shaking hand. It’s water, not alcohol, which he’s now remembering is deliberate and which really sucks but also pales in comparison to the reality that’s finally sinking in. “You’re really here. You stayed.”

She rolls her eyes. “I don’t remember stating the obvious being among the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, but maybe I need to do more research.” She jerks her head towards the phone on the nightstand, which is quietly playing Fleetwood Mac.

"Oh, gods," he whispers, his throat painfully tight now for an entirely different reason. "You're here." He knows that he's babbling and probably only further convincing her that he's not in his right mind – and probably he isn't, all things considered. But he's lucid enough to know that her presence here means far more to him than any intoxicating substance ever could.

Does that mean that he's addicted to being with her? Losing her has certainly felt like the most painful withdrawal imaginable.

And really, if he's honest with himself, he hasn't been able to let go of the idea of getting her back, in the same way that even now, he can picture himself going to the rather seedy-looking bar next door and ordering a meal. Knowing, the past two years, that Gamora was alive and out there somewhere in the universe…It’s let him imagine that there was a way to escape the pain and the loss, that all he really needed to do was find her again.

"Against my better judgment," she tells him, neatly shattering that illusion again. Not that he hasn't already begun to accept that there's nothing easy about this.

“Right,” he says, pushing that thought as far away as he possibly can. “Nebula sent you cause she was worried I’d drink myself to death here?”

She narrows her eyes – those impossible, dark, beautiful eyes. “No one sends me anywhere. I do what I want to do now.”

He smiles, chest aching in another way now, though the rest of his body continues to ache in every other way. “That’s awesome, Gamora. You deserve to do whatever you want.” He reaches instinctively for her hand where it’s currently hanging off the armrest of the chair, not even thinking about it. She tracks the movement of it, but allows him to rest his hand gently on top of hers. “I’m so happy for you.” He’s so happy for her he could cry. He might actually be crying.

She arches a brow at him. “Did you somehow get drunk again? Or are you delirious already?”

That’s more amusing than it probably should be. “You’re funny. You’ve always been funny, you know that?”

“No,” she says, sounding wary but not as if she dislikes the idea. “I don’t.”

He rubs his forehead with his free hand, pissed at it for hurting so much when he’s having an actual not shitty moment. “You’ve got this real dry sense of humor. Observational.”

“I am frequently surrounded by absurdity,” she says dryly. “Such as now.”

Peter laughs again helplessly, which hurts so much that it actually makes little stars pinwheel across his field of vision. It's excruciating, and also the best thing he's felt in literal years. Because – all right, so this isn't Gamora exactly as he's known her. He can accept that. He's trying to accept that. But she is still Gamora and these are parts of her that his soul has missed so much. "You callin' me absurd?"

"Very," she says in that exact dry tone, sending him into yet another wave of slightly hysterical laughter.

"I'll take it!" he gasps, fumbling as he tries to clutch both his head and his stomach simultaneously. He's nauseous and his head is splitting and still, he can't stop laughing. Several minutes pass, probably, before he's able to regain some semblance of composure, gasping for breath, tears streaming down his face for multiple reasons. Only then does it occur to him to think how absolutely unhinged he must look, how everything he's been doing must look to Gamora. He clears his throat. "Sorry. I'm sorry that I'm– in this state. And that you have to deal with it."

She crosses her arms over her chest – damn, he must’ve let go of her hand at some point in all the pained clutching – and shrugs. “Not like it affects me.”

“Right,” he says with practiced nonchalance, trying to ignore the pang he feels at Gamora’s outward denial of caring about anything; it’s so difficult not to think about how far she’d come before Thanos ripped those four years of experience away from her. “Did sitting in that chair for…however many hours it’s been affect you?”

“No,” she says immediately.

He sighs. He doesn’t know what he was expecting. “Are you sure? You can use the bed –”

“I’m not sharing the bed with you,” she says firmly, also predictably.

“I meant separately, gees,” he mutters. “We can take turns.”

She fixes him with a look. “You can’t even fully open your eyes right now. I don’t expect you to be able to sit upright in a chair for hours at a time.”

He grunts in acknowledgement, squinting in pain. “Are you also expecting me to need the trash can right now? Cause –” He breaks off and gestures vaguely. Without a word, she lifts it up so he only has to turn over onto his side and empties his stomach into it.

“Yeah, you can definitely give up the bed right now,” she says dryly. He heaves in response.

Gamora has never felt so helpless in her life.

Well. That's probably an overstatement.

She has certainly felt helpless while under Thanos' rule. More than she is now, though she has spent the past two years very carefully separating herself from those emotions and barricading them off as thoroughly as she can. So that isn't the sort of helpless she is feeling now.

But, she remembers – against her will – that she also felt utterly helpless watching Quill drift in space, the life slowly leaving his body, replaced by the cold emptiness of space. That was undoubtedly worse than this. And uncomfortably similar, too.

She doesn't want to think that she's developed any particular feelings about Quill, beyond the most basic curiosity. She definitely doesn't want to think that she's developing an attachment.

Yet here she is, sitting by his bedside like some sort of heroine on one of those Krylorian teledramas. Watching him sweat and struggle against the blankets as his body attempts to purge itself of his addiction's toxicity. Feeling something twist behind her sternum every time he unconsciously mumbles her name.

Or – not her name, she's pretty sure.

Like now, when he’s throwing his arm out towards her as if he can somehow sense where she is even in sleep, forehead creased as if in pain. “G’mora?”

“Are you going to be sick again?” she asks, pointedly ignoring his hand.

“Again?” he mumbles. His eyes are still closed but he seems to be waking up. His heart rate is certainly increasing. It’s also becoming more irregular, one of the symptoms of withdrawal she’d read about, along with the delirium that is getting worse with each passing hour.

“Yes, again,” she snaps, telling herself she is only irritated, not concerned. “You’ve thrown up at least four times today. Do you not remember?”

He whimpers, which is almost worse than the plaintive mumbling of her name. “I don’t even know where I am.”

“Opening your eyes might help with that,” she says dryly. When he just whimpers again as if in pain, she sighs. “Earth. In a shitty motel where you decided you needed to be a damn hero and confront your addiction.”

“That sounds like the kinda dumbass thing I would do,” he mutters. Finally, he opens his eyes, squinting as if he’s staring directly into the sun rather than the inside of a motel room with the lights off and the fading daylight coming in through the blinds. “Why is it like, five hundred degrees in here?”

"It isn't." She hesitates for a moment before touching his forehead, then curses at the obvious fever. It isn't as if she didn't know he was feverish before, having watched him sweat and shiver in his sleep. But this…This is alarming. She isn't familiar with the way Terran body temperature should feel, but she knows the heat she can feel radiating off of him is far too much. She also knows the page of medical information she read earlier indicated that if his temperature becomes too high, that will be a life-threatening emergency.

Before she can think of anything to do that might help, Quill leans into her hand, pressing his forehead against her palm with a little moan of relief. "That's better."

Gamora finds herself oddly moved by the sounds he makes, the way he leans into her touch rather than away. The way that he trusts her to care for him when he is so vulnerable, stupid as that may be. She snatches her hand back. "I'm not your girlfriend."

He makes another small sound in the back of his throat, this one terribly sad. “I know. I miss you.”

“So you’ve said.” She stands up to go grab another cloth from the bathroom, figuring there has to be at least one clean one in there. The option she finds looks as if it’s supposed to be a hand towel, but it will do. She wets it with cold water, wrings it out, then brings it back out to place over his burning forehead.

He whimpers again, though he doesn’t lean into the cloth the same way he did with her hand, even though this is cooler and thus should feel better. “Thank you. More. Please?”

“Another cloth?” she asks, uncertain and disliking the feeling. This really just solidifies why she is truly the last person in the universe who is qualified to be taking care of someone in this condition.

“Anything,” Quill says quietly, with an edge of desperation.

She debates for a moment; she knows very little of fevers, as she’s long had modifications that ward off most illnesses and has never exactly played nurse before. He is overheated, but she doesn’t want him to freeze either if she covers him in cold fabric. Finally, she settles on grabbing a few more pills from her bag along with a bottle of the electrolyte drink she had brought with her and all but shoving them at him. “Take these.”

He takes them with what is surely far too much effort. His hands are shaking so badly that he nearly drops both pills and drink several times, and then he struggles so much with swallowing that Gamora is fully prepared for him to vomit again. He gets them down eventually, though, then shudders as he wipes his mouth clumsily. “Th-thank you. That stuff’s disgusting, though.”

She happens to agree regarding the electrolyte drink, but it’s ironic that he’s chosen now to complain about it, all things considered. She’s always felt that if she was in bad enough shape to need it, she probably deserved the displeasure of the taste.

“That should help in a few minutes,” she tells him, heart aching peculiarly at the sight of his misery. She has caused plenty of suffering in her time and never has it bothered her this much to witness. Sometimes it’s even brought satisfaction. Not that she thinks she is responsible for his suffering now. She cannot be blamed for his choice to confront these particular demons now, or even for his addiction. He is the fool who fell in love with her future – past – whatever other self. “This seems – much worse than before.”

“I ‘member the withdrawal thingy saying it gets worse after the first day,” he says, struggling so much to get the cap back on the bottle that she swipes it from his hands and does it for him. She only brought so many, no need for him to waste any by spilling it all over himself.

“Did it say what can be done to help?” she asks, despite having done her own research while he was asleep.

“Don’t remember the helpin’ part.” He pats the towel on his head. “Like this, though. This cloth is my friend.”

He says it so genuinely that she gets that chest-ache feeling again, which is absolutely unacceptable. Especially so many times in one day. “Good. Because I am not.”

Using the hand still on the towel, he pushes it farther up his forehead, apparently just so he can stare at her in confusion. “What are you talking about? Of course you are.”

“You want me to go get you another towel?” she asks, deliberately harsh, deliberately ignoring the earnest look in eyes. “Then you could have two friends.”

It is, unfortunately, impossible to ignore the way his face falls at that… The way something in his eyes dims. The way his face scrunches up as if he’s angry when she can see the tears in his eyes. The way he shoves the towel off his forehead so that it flops onto the mattress and turns his head into the pillow, his voice muffled into it when he says, “Screw the dumb towel.”

Gamora shrugs and opens her mouth to take another jab, then closes it again, feeling absurdly like she's been punched in the gut. Can he not see that this is exactly why she's no one's friend? "Quill…"

“That’s me,” he mutters into the pillow. “No-friend Quill.”

"Don't be absurd," says Gamora. If he doesn't stop being pitiful, how is she supposed to stop feeling bad? She would very much like to stop feeling bad. It is ridiculous that any part of her might feel sympathy…or even guilt for having upset this confused, foolish man.

“I’m not absurd,” he protests, wiping his face on the pillow as if that will hide the tears that keep falling. She would very much like those tears to be hidden, so she could stop being aware of them. So she could stop wishing herself capable of providing real comfort. “I’m cold and hot and nauseous, and I miss all my friends. Plural. Cause I got way more than one.”

"You chose to take time away from them, didn’t you?" He is giving her a headache.

“I still miss them, though,” he says sadly. “I always miss my friends when I’m not with them. Including you, by the way. You don’t have to consider me your friend, but you’re my friend.”

She opens up a fresh bottle of water and drinks about half of it before responding, because the only reason her throat feels tight has got to be that she’s dehydrated. “How do you figure?”

He sighs and turns his head again, so that his cheek is smushed up against the pillow but he’s looking at her with those red-rimmed eyes. “Friends are people you care about. I’ll never stop caring about you, so you’ll always be my friend.”

“You only care about me because you are–confused about who I am,” she insists, despite the fact that he has said numerous times that he’s aware of the difference between her and the Gamora he knew before. Despite the fact that she still thinks about the warmth that bloomed in her chest when he said she ain’t so bad the way she is.

She makes the mistake of meeting his gaze, which is steady and bright despite the glassiness of fever. “You’re Gamora. From Zehoberei. Kidnapped by Thanos. Turned into a weapon. Came out a good person anyway. Willing to risk your life to save others, even if you don’t like to admit it.”

“I am a Ravager,” she says firmly, plastic crinkling in her fist as she clenches the bottle. “I steal from everyone. I only care about units.” She absolutely will not tell Quill that she refused to take the payment from Nebula.

“That part of you is new,” he admits, watching her with a gaze that isn't overtly knowing, yet still makes her feel uncomfortably seen. "People don’t have to stay exactly the same forever to still be the same person, right?”

"I don't know," she says warily. She doesn't recognize herself most of the time. It's hard to believe that he does. She feels nothing like the person he's described loving. But nothing like the person who took pride in serving Thanos, either.

“We’ve all changed over the years,” he says thoughtfully. Then he moves in an almost violent rush to abruptly kick off all the bedclothes.

Gamora jumps instinctively. "What was that?"

“‘m too hot,” he complains, reaching for the hem of his shirt and trying to pull it off without actually moving the rest of his body. "I take back when I said screw the towel."

"You're feverish," she reminds him. She's struck, suddenly, by his absolute vulnerability, by the contrast to the strength and competence she witnessed in him before. She retrieves the towel and carefully places it over his forehead again, adjusting it so that it ought to be comfortable.

He looks at her with tears in his eyes, as if she’s just done something far more difficult for him. “Thank you. Really. You’re a good friend.”

"You're delirious," she tells him, though there's no bite in it.

He laughs, tears falling. “Both things can be true.”

She can't exactly argue with that. "Fine."

He grins so widely that it looks like he's trying to unhinge his jaw. “You admitted it! You’re my friend!”

She growls at him but doesn't deny it.

The worst part is that it feels so real. It feels like he’s really in a bar on Xandar, celebration and dancing and laughter and friends all around him. He could really be grinning up at Gamora as she lays a hand on his shoulder, giving him that fond little smirk she loves to throw his way when he’s getting a little tipsy. He could really be asking the bartender for another round, catching it in his palm as the glass slides down the bar to him, then tossing his head back in unison with Rocket and Drax as they drink them all in one go.

It feels so real that it’s hardly surprising his body comes to awareness before his mind. At first, it’s the stifling heat all over his body; then it’s the scratchy, achey, emptiness that starts in his stomach and spreads through his entire body that makes him need alcohol more than oxygen.

As his mind finally starts to come to as well, he’s aware of Gamora’s presence and very little else.

“Hold still.” Her voice, deep with irritation, cuts through the fog. Something cool and damp settles on his forehead, a small amount of relief coming with it.

Peter blinks blearily, his eyes stinging as he forces them open. He's still conscious enough to realize that he's in a bed, that Gamora is sitting on the edge of the mattress, leaning over him. And he isn't quite delirious enough to have forgotten that she died – as if he could ever forget that, ever be lucky enough to be blissfully unaware again – but time feels like it's bleeding together.

He reaches out for her instinctively, fingers brushing her arm with no strength at all in his grip. She flinches away and he feels a stunningly sharp flare of anger lancing through him at that rejection. He needs her – he needs her and she's here but she won't–

No, that isn't right.

What he needs is a drink.

A fucking drink, just one, and everything will be all right. Or, like, survivable at least. Because he knows he wants to die if he doesn't get one immediately.

"Please," he rasps, reaching out again, though this time without purpose. "Please."

"Please what?" Gamora prompts, still sounding more irritated than anything else.

"Drink," says Peter, through a throat that feels like shards of glass.

A bottle is pressed into his hand and the relief surges through him before he even brings it to his lips; the relief is immediately crushed by disappointment when he tastes the disgusting, non-alcoholic electrolyte crap.

“Ugh,” he sputters, coughing. That at least wakes him up enough that he fully opens his eyes and can more clearly see Gamora giving him an unimpressed look. “Not that. Alcohol.”

That unimpressed brow of hers climbs up even higher. “Unless there’s something about Terran anatomy I don’t know, that would defeat the purpose of going through withdrawal.”

“Aw, fuck,” he groans as the full reality of where he is and why finally slams back into him. “Why the fuck did I think this was a good idea?”

“I don’t think you had much of a choice,” she tells him. “Now drink what I gave you.”

He makes a face, but he tries for her; he takes the tiniest drink he can manage and still it makes him feel sick. “It’s disgusting. Gamora, seriously, please. Just one drink. Not enough to–to black out or anything. Just to take the edge off. I can’t–I can’t do this.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “Are you giving up? You didn’t strike me as the type.”

“No,” he says a bit petulantly, because as miserable as he is, he would still rather die than disappoint Gamora. Actually, he would just rather die than do any of this. Does that count as giving up? Probably. So probably he has to stay alive. Unfortunately. “Not givin' up. Gonna keep goin’. Just – just too much all at once. Need to go slower.”

“By having me give you alcohol?” she asks, still sounding suspicious. This Gamora has always been suspicious of him. Hasn’t trusted him from the very beginning, no matter that he trusts her implicitly. It’s not fair. None of this is fucking fair.

“Just one,” says Peter, aware on a distant level that he sounds like he’s whining, that even the Gamora that he knew before would have refused to tolerate this. Would have refused to enable him. But she isn’t here, and that’s the whole problem, isn’t it? If she was here, if she hadn’t insisted on confronting Thanos alone, if she had just gone right then –

“No,” she says firmly. “You can have water or the electrolyte drink. Or I can stab you. Your choice.”

He might find that funny, if he weren’t so fucking hot and desperate. “Being stabbed doesn’t sound too bad right now. Or at least knocked over the head so I can pass out again.”

“You’re in bad enough shape without a head injury,” she informs him. “Here.” She switches out the electrolyte drink for a bottle of water from the nightstand. “Drink. You’ve sweat out at least two bottles worth in the past couple hours, you need to stay hydrated.”

He glances down at his body, though it’s mostly hidden beneath the blanket. If he concentrates, he can feel how disgustingly damp his clothing is, the way it clings to his body, but otherwise he feels oddly disassociated from it. The sensations he is feeling – hot and itchy and achy – almost feel like they’re in his brain rather than his body.

“Sorry,” he mutters before taking a drink. The water is, at least, slightly better than that replenishing crap. It also feels less sticky when his shaking hand makes him spill some onto his chin. “I’m not usually this bad.”

“I know,” she says, her voice a little softer. “I saw everything you did to save your friend.”

“Yeah, well,” he whispers, suddenly feeling his eyes fill with tears again. He vaguely recalls reading about how mood swings are a part of alcohol withdrawal, but really, who is he kidding? He doesn’t need anything extra to make him emotional as hell. He’s been on the verge of tears like constantly for years now. Hell, that was what started him drinking in the first place. Or – drinking this much, anyway. He’s been drinking in general for what feels like his entire life.

“Well?” Gamora prompts. She hesitates for a moment, then gingerly lifts the damp cloth from his forehead and uses it to wipe his cheeks before replacing it.

Peter chokes on an unsuccessfully muffled sob, the gesture of even the smallest modicum of care threatening to overwhelm him. It also makes more tears fall, pretty much defeating the purpose of what she’s just done. He swipes clumsily at them with the back of his hand, nearly managing to dislodge the cloth before she fixes it again. It really runs the risk of turning into a whole vicious cycle of crying and wiping and fixing until she finally stabs him. He clears his throat. “Well, Rocket almost died because I was drunk. If I hadn’t been drinkin’, that whole thing –” He breaks off and shrugs helplessly.

“Wouldn’t have happened?” she finishes for him, brow raised. “Did you send the golden idiot after Rocket because you were drunk?”

He snorts, which makes him feel even more light-headed. That’s inconvenient. “No, of course not. But I could have helped more if I was sober. Maybe he wouldn’t have been blasted in the chest.”

“Or maybe you would also have been blasted in the chest,” she tells him. “Then you wouldn’t have been able to help at all. And you did help. I am certain your team couldn’t have saved him without you.”

Some more of those stubborn tears make their way down his cheeks now. Little though he might feel he deserves the praise, the fact that it’s Gamora giving it to him – Gamora now, Gamora who could barely look at him without disdain just a few weeks ago – makes it impossible not to feel grateful. “Thank you.”

A slight green blush rises to her cheeks that fills him with affection that is as impossible not to feel as the gratitude. Whatever she’s feeling must be too much for her, though, because she looks away and deflects. Classic Gamora. “Just an observation. Like that you haven’t eaten anything in hours.”

The mere thought of food makes his stomach roil. “Don’t need ta give my body anything more to throw up.”

“All right,” she agrees, shrugging in a way that almost manages to look like genuine apathy. “Not my problem if you make yourself sicker.” She gets to her feet and stalks toward the bathroom.

For a moment Peter feels a surge of panic, worrying that she’s about to leave, that she’s finally realized how pathetic and disgusting he is. For four years, it felt like he was living the most surreal of dreams – Being with Gamora, being loved by Gamora, cared for and accepted by Gamora – It was so much more than he ever dared hope for himself, so much more than he’d ever even known he’d needed. Despite her constant loyalty, he never quite managed to get past the fear: Not of illness or injury. Not even of Thanos, despite her terror, her certainty – rightly, it turns out – that he would eventually be her doom… Peter was never able to get past the thought that eventually he would be the one to fail, to drive her away when she recognized his true, broken self.

And now…Well, at least in this moment, it feels like that’s finally happened. That the universe might have brought Gamora back, in a sense, but he…well, isn’t it evident?

The sound of her footsteps approaching the bed again makes Peter open his eyes, bracing himself for her to tell him that she’s leaving for good. Instead she takes the cloth off his forehead and replaces it with a fresh one.

Heart pounding, all he can do is gape at her for a long moment as he processes her continued presence. A slow smile spreads over his face, ignoring the tears that have started falling again. “This is my new favorite cloth. Cause my friend gave it to me.”

She rolls her eyes. If he’s not mistaken, which he very well could be, there’s a bit of a smile tugging at her lips that she’s trying to hide. “Can I get you anything else?”

He’d love a hug, but he’d have to be way more delusional than he is to ask for that. He is, however, just delusional enough to say: “Alcohol.”

If there was a smile on her face before, it has certainly fallen now. “No.”

“But–”

“Go to sleep,” she demands, plopping herself back down on the chair. Damn, so he’s apparently lost sitting on the edge of the bed privilege already.

“But–”

“I’m done with this conversation,” she growls.

“I’m not even tired,” he whines. “How am I s’posed to sleep when everything feels so gross?”

She doesn’t respond, at least not verbally. What she does is reach over to the nightstand and hit the phone a couple of times until the music starts up again, which must have stopped at some point while he was out of it.

Doesn’t matter what I say, only what I do
I never mean to do bad things to you
So quiet but I finally woke up
If you’re sad, then it’s time you spoke up too

He sighs and closes his eyes, seeing that she’s not going to budge. Maybe he can at least dream of being drunk again.

Gamora was telling the truth when she’d mentioned using the withholding of a mark’s preferred vices as an interrogation or manipulation tactic. She’s used denial of desperate needs plenty of times to her advantage. She’s also used the misery of withdrawal purely for the sake of torture, to break those Thanos had deemed worthy of punishment.

She has never been bothered by it before, or at least that’s what she’s always told herself. Any sense of empathy or guilt has been easy enough to pack away behind a wall of necessity, or concern for her survival. Sometimes she’s even been successful enough to find it satisfying, to be pleased by her ability to exert power through suffering.

But this…She is not even responsible for Quill’s experience of addiction or withdrawal. She knows this. It is ridiculous to feel any sense of guilt or responsibility for it. Even if his drinking grew out of grief for the loss of her…sort of. Even if it might have been ameliorated if she was able to be that person now.

She isn’t.

She won’t be.

These are not things that she owes him.

And yet, refusing his pleas for alcohol felt like a punch to the gut.

What if it was the wrong choice? Perhaps he was correct, that his body needed a slower transition. But then why would he have bothered with this withdrawal strategy, if he were capable of doing so in a less painful manner? Everything she had read indicated that for someone with his level of addiction — obviously severe — it’s better to simply never have any alcohol again. It seems he cannot be trusted with it.

She knows all of this, and yet watching Quill struggle in this disgusting Terran motel room tugs at every part of her heart she’s worked for her entire life to dull into senselessness. He’s been sweating for hours, burning up even with cool cloths on his head and yet apparently feeling so cold that he does his best to burrow under the blankets as he shivers.

The mumbling of her name gets worse every passing hour. It’s not just mumbling anymore, not just her name, but full sentences. Full conversations, even when he doesn’t seem to know where he is. Or who she is. Or what’s happening outside of his own head.

“G’mora,” he mumbles now, squirming under the blanket and batting weakly at it, as if it weighs far too much to get off himself. “Get ‘em off o’ me.”

“The blanket?” she asks. It’s already tangled around his legs and halfway down his chest.

“No—the hellspawn,” he whines. His eyes are still closed but he’s batting at his own chest weakly now. “They’re everywhere.”

“There’s nothing there,” Gamora tells him, though she’s unsure how much he can understand her. He’s just responded as if he could, but that could be a coincidence. He’s only intermittently been saying anything at all when she’s tried to interact the past few hours. And he’s clearly not experiencing reality in the same way that she is.

“Get ‘em off!” he insists, curling his fingers so that he must be scratching at his skin through the sweat-damp fabric of his shirt. “Get ‘em off get ‘em off, get–”

“Stop!” Gamora says firmly, kneeling at the edge of the bed to catch his hands before he can manage to hurt himself more. She holds his wrists for a moment, then plants both of his arms to either side of his body on the mattress, hoping that he’ll stay like that as she lets go.

All at once, he sits bolt upright and takes hold of her upper arms, fingers pressing in so tightly that she would read it as a threat if he weren’t so weak – both comparatively and in this state. His eyes are wide open now, still red-rimmed and bloodshot but also filled with a desperate terror.

“I told you,” he gasps, his chest heaving like he’s just run a thousand yards in fear for his life. “I told you to go right.”

“What are you talking about?” she asks, confused and concerned. He seems to be awake, yet he’s far from lucid. She pries one of her arms from his grasp far more gently than she could and turns on the lamp that’s sitting on the nightstand, thinking perhaps it being so dark in here is not helping.

That turns out to be the wrong choice, because he cries out as if in pain and squeezes his eyes shut only for a second before opening them again, panic taking over his expression. “Fuck, I can’t see. Everything is just light. Am I blind? Is this what being blind is like?”

“I don’t know.” Trying not to let his panic spark hers, she looks around for a solution and tosses one of the old cloths that’s long since fallen off Quill’s head over the lampshade, dimming the light. “Is that something that happens to Terrans when they quit drinking?”

He closes and opens his eyes several times until finally his pupils dilate again and he lets out a sigh of profound relief. “I can see. I can see you. Oh, thank gods. I love seeing you. It would suck so bad if I couldn’t see you anymore.”

“You must be delusional already,” she tells him, ignoring the way his obvious relief is making her calmer, too.

“Already?” he murmurs. His heart is pounding so quickly that Gamora finds herself struggling to hold onto that relief. It’s hard to believe that his fragile, unenhanced body can withstand much more of this. That she should still expect it to get worse. "'m not delirious. I've always loved seeing you, you're the most beautiful woman in the universe."

"Oh, you must stop," Gamora snaps. She does not want to hear his thoughts about her in this way. His thoughts that are so obviously not intended for her. That are only coming out of his mouth because he’s confused, because he is talking to a woman who is dead.

"Sorry I'm not blind," he mutters, his heart rate somehow accelerating even more. Is that from the conversation or the withdrawal or both? How much more can it take before the muscle just gives out? “Most people like compliments, you know."

"Stop trying to flatter me," she insists. "I'm not here for you."

Nevermind that she did, in fact, come to this godforsaken planet to see him. And stayed because he needed help.

“I’m literally just saying things that are true,” he says petulantly. “I barely even know where I am, by the way, so I dunno how I’m supposed to know what you’re here for.” Before she can tell him for probably the dozenth time where he is, he wraps his arms around himself as if giving himself a hug and shivers almost violently. “It’s freezing. Why is it so freezing?”

“It’s not and you’re not,” she sighs. “You are burning up. Lie back down.”

He either doesn’t hear her or doesn’t listen, instead fumbling to pull the blanket back over himself while still sitting. “Is that chair as uncomfortable as it looks?”

“What?” she asks, momentarily thrown by the non sequitur until she follows his gaze to the chair she’d been sitting on before moving to the mattress to stop him from ripping a hole in his abdomen with his own nails. “Oh, it’s fine. It’s hardly the worst place I’ve ever slept.”

He shrugs, which dislodges the blanket again so that he has to fumble to wrap it around himself again. “I know. But you have options. I don’t really wanna sleep again, if you wanna take a turn.”

“You need to stay in bed,” she says firmly. “You can barely hold up a blanket right now, Quill.”

He yawns, jaw popping. “I’m not tired, though.”

She is, but she is certainly not going to admit that. “I don’t care. Lie back down.”

“Fine, but I’m not tired,” he mutters, obeying her as he slowly lowers himself back down, with more than a little assistance from her.

By the time she gets the blanket back over his chest and the cloth on his forehead, he’s snoring.

Rocket is dying.

Peter can hear the gurgling, rasping breaths as his lungs fill with fluid, as the life support systems struggle to keep up.

He has the passkey in his hand, knows that he can save his friend if only he can get there in time. It feels like an endless gulf between them, though, an insurmountable distance when he’s feeling so weak. Still, he would rather die than fail Rocket, and he launches himself on legs that feel all but useless.

Running feels like moving through a pool of the thickest mud, each step he takes draining his own strength and yet advancing him toward Rocket far too slowly.

He gets there – just as he takes what feels like his last breath. Just in time to hear Rocket’s gasping respirations stop, and the monitors all simultaneously begin to scream.

“No!” he barks, rushing to the holo to upload the passkey. But when he reaches it, when he looks down at his hands, he finds his fingers wrapped around an empty beer bottle.

“No!” he breathes again, desperately, looking up to find his mother’s lifeless body stretched out on the gurney in the too-familiar med bay.

In the next instant, the ship blows apart in a fiery inferno, leaving nothing around him but the cold abyss of space.

He turns, expecting to see his family, his Guardians, standing on the edge of Knowhere as he dies, but instead he comes face to face with Yondu’s frozen body, hands still reaching towards him as if they didn’t burn him in a Ravager funeral years ago. Then he blinks and it’s his Grandpa, pushing him away to protect him. He blinks again and it’s Gamora, floating on her back in space, hair spread out around her. He has to get to her, he has to save her, he knows this part of the story – he has to get her his mask or she’s going to die.

It takes forever, even longer than it took him to reach Rocket. When he finally does, he reaches behind his ear for his mask only to find that it’s not there, because he left it in his apartment on Knowhere, because this isn’t that time, because Gamora is opening her eyes and looking at him without a hint of recognition. Her hair has changed. Her clothing has changed. The way she looks at him has changed. But her eyes – those beautiful eyes –

”Do you know where you are?” she asks.

”What?” He glances around at the abyss of space that is blurring now, indistinguishable colors and shapes coming in and out of focus, confusing him to the point of panic. When he looks back at Gamora, she’s standing somehow, they’re both standing, and she’s holding his hand but slowly backing away. “No, no, don’t go! Don’t let go! It’s dangerous!”

“I’ll be right back!” she snaps. Why is she angry? Her hand disappears and so does she, so does space, now there is nothing but darkness, hopeless darkness.

“Don’t go,” he whimpers, trying to reach back out for her with arms that feel like lead.

She doesn’t respond, though. Or he isn’t aware of it if she does. Maybe he is incapable of hearing now, because he certainly can’t see anything. Just more darkness. And all that he can feel is…well, it isn’t an all. It’s too many things. Hot and cold and pain and dizziness and –

And still, above all else, darkness. It feels like an entity of its own, an emptiness more complete even than that of space, so profound that it’s suffocating him, stealing his breath, pressing in from all sides until he’s certain his entire being will be crushed down to the size of an atom. Smaller, maybe. Isn’t there something smaller?

But that means he’s dying, he thinks. Doesn’t it? He must be dying.

That thought ought to be terrifying, ought to make him want to fight. Instead, all he feels is relief. If he dies, maybe he’ll get to see his mother again. Yondu again. Gamora again.

If he dies, he won’t have to hurt anymore. He won’t have to live in a world of loss.

He won’t –

Peter wakes with a jolt stronger and more peculiar than anything he’s ever felt before. It isn’t painful. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite.

All at once, the illness and pain recede, and he’s back in a shitty motel room on Earth, his heart pounding and his mind reeling with the speed at which it’s cleared.

His vision swims for another few seconds before Gamora comes into focus in front of him, removing a med back from his chest and leaning over him with her brow furrowed in concern. “G-Gamora?”

“Yes,” she says, her voice clipped. “Do you feel better now?”

His entire body is trembling and he’s sucking in air like his lungs have only just remembered how, but the feeling of being in a sauna on the surface of the sun has faded and he doesn’t feel like he’s going to vomit. “Yeah. Yes.”

She touches his forehead with the palm of her hand, which he leans into with a nearly blissful sigh. “Feels good,” he breathes. “Cool.”

“You’re still feverish,” she mutters. “But less so.” Her hand lingers for a few seconds, just long enough for him to notice she is shaking too, before she takes it away. “I hope that was the worst of this, Quill, because that is the one and only med pack I brought with me. And it is single use.”

“I’m feeling pretty dumb for not bringing more supplies now,” he croaks, his throat extremely dry. Before he can even ask, Gamora is handing him a water with the cap already off.

“Yes, well, I would’ve brought more too, if I’d realized the state you’d be in,” she sighs.

He spills a little water on himself as he drinks, but it feels good against his heated skin. “Was I–real bad? Just now, I mean?”

“Yes,” says Gamora. “I was saving the med pack for an emergency, since I knew it only had the one use. But – I believe you were on the verge of a seizure, or possibly even worse. Your heartbeat had gotten irregular. Not just incredibly fast, also sporadic.”

Peter swallows hard. He had known that this would be a miserable experience, and that it might even be dangerous. He isn’t a big enough idiot to have missed that entirely. But it’s possible that he’s gotten complacent with his own safety, having survived so many close shaves over the years. It’s also possible he’s stopped entirely caring whether he lives or dies, given how unpleasant living has been over the past few years. He feels an intense surge of guilt as he remembers how relieved he felt at the prospect of death only moments ago, and also sees how clearly rattled Gamora is at seeing him in such a state. And, okay, he also feels a little guilty about how much it pleases him to see that she cares. “I’m sorry. But um…You’da still come if you knew I’d be in this state?”

She gives him a look. “Obviously.” Then she pauses and clears her throat, studiously avoiding his eyes. “Drink more. You must be dehydrated with all that you’ve been sweating.”

“That explains why everything is wet,” he mumbles, finally taking stock of himself and the bed and finding them both alarmingly soaked. No wonder she had felt the need to use the med pack. “Gross.”

“I imagine it is,” she says plainly. “Drink.”

He obeys, hiding a smirk behind the bottle while he sips. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re kinda bossy?”

“Frequently.”

That startles a laugh out of him. He hadn’t expected her to admit it so easily. “Mostly Nebula?”

She shrugs a shoulder, finally meeting his gaze again. “And my crew.”

“Damn, I’d love to see you boss around some of my old crew,” he says a little wistfully, attempting to use those mental images to distract himself from the sudden discomfort of being in damp clothing on a damp bed.

“You have said you were a Ravager,” she says slowly, “but I don’t believe I know any of your crew.”

“Ah.” He swallows the lump of glass in his throat. Maybe someday he’ll remember that she…well, doesn’t. “Kraglin is the only one of ‘em still alive.”

“Lost in battle?” she guesses.

“No, it’s um–it’s a long story,” he says, then takes another small sip. “I don’t wanna bore you. Or make you sit on this gross blanket anymore.”

She looks back and forth between it and him, unmistakable compassion on her face. “Will the hotel bring us clean linens?”

“They should,” he says with a shrug. “Should be able to call ‘em on that.” He gestures at the old-fashioned landline phone sitting on the nightstand, sloshing a little water onto his hand.

Granted, he doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with Terran hotels. None as an adult, unless he’s counting the past couple of days, which…really don’t seem like they should count, given how out of it he’s been. But he does have some vivid memories of his one and only roadtrip with his mom, and he’s seen his grandpa using a similar phone in his house.

Gamora picks it up and holds the receiver in front of her mouth like a comm, speaking loudly. "Hello?"

Peter barely manages to suppress a snort. “No, um — it’s not like that. It’s super outdated tech. See those buttons? You gotta press one of those to connect it.”

She considers the buttons, then presses the first one and tries again. "Hello? Do you read me?"

He slaps a hand over his mouth, breathing heavily through his nose. He’s been so sad for so long, so sick for what feels like an eternity, that now…Now everything she does seems utterly delightful, the most hilarious thing he’s ever witnessed. Not that he’s dumb enough to think she won’t stab him for that thought. “Not just any button. Look at the symbols. See the one with the little person? That means the front desk.”

She shoves the receiver at him. "You do it."

His lips twitch but he obeys, hitting the button and putting the phone to his ear. The receptionist on the other end sounds like she’s popping gum when she answers: “Motel 6, this is Brittany. Can I help you?”

Taken aback by the brusque voice, Peter nonetheless turns on his charm. “Hello there, Brittany. This is Kurt in room 12. I hate to be a bother, but can you have someone bring some extra linens and towels?”

“Sure, Mr. Russell.” The line goes dead without another word.

Peter is certain that Gamora’s enhanced hearing enabled her to hear the boredom coming at him from the other end of the line. Still, he shrugs and grins at her. “Classic Star-Lord charm.”

Chapter Text

Though the hospitality is lacking at this motel, the service is at least fast. Gamora has only just gotten Quill to finish half a bottle of water by the time there’s a knock on the door, accompanied by a rather clipped voice saying: “Extra linens, Mr. Russell.”

She doesn’t even have to yell at them to leave them at the door, since the sound of retreating – stomping, really – footsteps follows right after.

“Why a fake name?” Gamora asks as she brings the pile of sheets and towels inside and dumps them onto the dresser. “Are you wanted on this planet?”

Quill shakes his head, then appears to regret it as that makes him squeeze his eyes shut. “Guess it’s not really necessary here, but it’s a habit. I usually just use the name of someone famous from Earth…Which might not be the best idea on Earth.”

“It does seem like it would make you more suspicious,” she says absently. She has mentally moved past the topic already, glancing between the bed and the clean linens, realizing there is about to be some maneuvering required. “We need to change the sheets. And your clothes.”

He opens his eyes to look down at himself again, then rubs the back of his neck in a manner she’s coming to recognize as shy. “Me and the bed are pretty gross. If you could just, um…help me to the bathroom? I should be able to shower on my own.”

"All right," she says warily. He does look better since she used the med pack, but still very far from being a functional…person. She is still having a hard time reconciling this with the man she recently watched practically do the impossible in the service of saving his friend. She is half convinced he's going to drown in the shower if she lets him attempt it on his own. On the other hand, the idea of assisting him in something as intimate as bathing…

“Trust me,” says Quill, evidently hearing the doubt in her voice. “What reason have I ever given you to doubt me?” Then he tips back the last of the water bottle and promptly chokes on it, coughing.

Gamora arches a brow pointedly.

“I’m totally breathing,” he gasps. “And I won’t be drinking the shower water so we’re good.”

She continues to give him That Look.

He sighs, looking increasingly chagrined. “Maybe I can just use a wash cloth. Take an old-fashioned Ravager bath, just run a damp cloth over myself.”

Gamora wrinkles her nose, thinking of how successful that strategy generally is for her crew. Which is not very. "I guess that's an option."

“Well, I didn’t think you’d wanna help me in the shower,” he says with a shrug, avoiding her gaze and picking at the damp blanket.

She doesn’t, of course. That would be inappropriate, crossing all sorts of lines she has been trying to avoid even going near. She is not his girlfriend; she doesn’t know how to take care of him, how to help him, how to do any of this, much less anything that involves seeing him nude. Regardless of the way her abdomen warms at the thought. “I can help you into and out of it. You need a proper shower.”

His eyes lift to hers. She can see his throat work. “I don’t want it to be uncomfortable for you.”

“If you make it uncomfortable, I will stab you,” she tells him with a shrug. Then she tells herself that she does not smile when he laughs in response.

“Deal.” He holds his hand out in what she thinks is a rather odd way to ask for help up, before she realizes he is offering to shake hers.

She rolls her eyes but complies, keeping his hand in hers and tugging gently, reaching for his other as well. “Come on. Slowly.”

“I’m the best at standing,” he mumbles, seemingly to himself. She helps him stand on concerningly unsteady legs, holding still for a long moment while he wobbles even with her hands for support. After so long in bed and losing the entire contents of his stomach, as well as sweating enough to soak a mattress, it’s hardly a surprise that he’s weak, but she doesn't enjoy seeing it regardless.

“Okay, I’m ready,” he manages, before she has a chance to say anything. He’s still struggling, but she’s forced to admit that he wouldn’t have been able to stand upright a few hours ago even with this amount of support from her. So he is improving, if much more slowly than she’d like to see.

“All right,” she agrees, shifting to wrap his arm over her shoulders for even better stability. It’s a perfectly mundane gesture, she tells herself – The kind of thing she has done with injured members of her Ravager crew countless times. It only makes sense, considering the relative differences in their sizes. Yet she doesn’t miss the soft sound he makes in the back of his throat, one that she’s relatively certain has nothing to do with pain or discomfort. She also can’t deny the fact that the sensation of being this close to him is…not unpleasant. Even when he is this ill. Even when he is more than a little damp with sweat. Something about it warms her in a way that has nothing to do with his body temperature. A sense of the pieces of her life settling and fitting together in new yet oddly familiar ways.

“You seem better than before,” says Gamora, because she needs to say something to bring herself back to the present. Before her thoughts stray into even more dangerous territory. She clears her throat roughly.

“Also wetter,” he mumbles, then chucklesweakly. “That rhymed.”

“You’re delirious,” she informs him, suppressing a smile when that makes him laugh again.

“I totally know where I am,” he says proudly. “Look, we made it to the bathroom.”

Indeed, they’ve paused just inside, Quill bracing himself against the doorframe with his free hand. Now that they’re facing the shower, she finds herself at a loss for how to proceed. She can’t very well toss him in there fully clothed and allow him to fall trying to get his own clothing off, but the act of undressing him completely is intimate in a way she can’t deny, no matter how clinically she tries to view it.

“What if you just help get me down to my boxers?” he asks. Apparently, he has been considering the same dilemma. “My clothes are soaked anyway, probably doesn’t matter if I leave my undies on in the shower.”

“All right,” she agrees, kicking herself for not thinking of that before they got him out of bed. His fall risk would have been much lower if they’d undressed him while he was still in bed, although that is an intimate act in itself. Not to mention the fact that she’d still have been supporting him on the walk to the bathroom, only without the barrier of a shirt between her hand on his back and his skin…

“Help me lean against the wall?” he suggests, jarring her out of whatever the hell that train of thought was. “That should make it easier.”

“The wall?” she echoes, surprised by that suggestion. It’s not as if she has ever done this before – certainly she’s helped clean and bandage injuries for members of her crew, has applied med packs plenty of times. But she has never assisted anyone in such a vulnerable state, and she can’t help but find herself feeling that propping him against the wall seems oddly impersonal. “You don’t want to just…lean against me for support?” It’s probably a dangerous thing to offer, but it feels right.

"The wall is better," he tells her, obviously speaking from experience. "So you can use both your hands."

"For what?" she asks, frowning.

His eyes widen then, and he flushes. "Sorry, I just... leaning on you while I do this takes more maneuvering than me leaning on the wall while you take my clothes off. You don't have to touch my bare skin to support me, you know."

So he has also considered that aspect, and he’s apparently trying to spare her. It probably shouldn’t be jarring to realize that at this point, given her experiences with him. Aside from those first few hours at Orgocorp – and on his ship immediately afterward – he has been nothing but honorable. Accepting. Longing for her to be someone else, but not pushing her in that direction either. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that he isn’t taking advantage of a potential opportunity to have her touch his bare skin. Still, as she gages his center of gravity and helps him rest against the wall, she can’t help making note and feeling grateful.

“Instruct me,” she says, doing her best to treat this like a mission. She can be detached about it.

“Um, shirt first?” he suggests awkwardly. The pink flush on his cheeks has been present in various shades over the past day as the fever took over his body; now, even though his temperature has decreased, the blush increases and even seems to spread down his neck.

She considers her options, then steps up onto the rim of the primitive Terran tub to get the extra height she needs to pull his shirt over his head with ease. For her, anyway. Quill has to shift his position several times, leaning his hips on the wall to keep his back free while she gets his shirt off, then letting his shoulders fall against it immediately after, panting.

“Do you need to sit down?” she asks, hopping down and examining him with concern. If her eyes linger on his chest and abdomen, it is only to take stock of his health.

He shakes his head minutely where it’s leaning on the wall, eyes closed. “Getting up is the worst part. Let’s just get this over with.”

“Do you want me to just–pull your pants down?” she asks, grateful that his eyes are closed so he can’t see the heat that has coincidentally risen to her own cheeks.

“Yep,” he agrees, emphasis popping the ‘p’ at the end. His hands are pressed against the wall, and she can’t entirely tell whether it’s from effort or to mask his embarrassment. Or both. Probably both.

She might hesitate longer, but he’s weak enough that she’s concerned about keeping him standing for longer than absolutely necessary. So she inhales deeply, hooks her thumbs into the waistband of his pants, and pulls until they fall into a heap on the floor. Clinical, she tells herself. Practical. A mission objective completed.

“Stay there while I start the shower,” she orders. But she makes the mistake of looking at him as she straightens. He still has his eyes closed, and though his flush has only deepened, he’s also shivering badly, evidently reacting to the cool air hitting his skin.

“I’ll be fine in a second,” he murmurs, still not opening his eyes but seeming to sense her gaze somehow.

Gamora shakes herself and moves to the shower, struggling longer than she ought to with the primitive controls before she figures out how to turn the water on. Then it takes her another few moments to determine the way the various knobs control the temperature. For outdated tech, it certainly feels far more complicated than the digital displays where she is accustomed to being able to simply program her desired parameters. Even on Ravager ships, where showering is a far less popular pastime than she might wish. “How warm do you use it?”

“Usually pretty hot,” he says quietly. “Maybe I should go cold now for the fever. Or hotter cause I’m fucking freezing.”

She grunts in acknowledgement, recognizing the dilemma. He is shivering, but the heat from his skin is still radiating enough that she can almost feel it from feet away. Deciding to meet somewhere in the middle, she holds her arm under the spray until it feels lukewarm, then turns back to him. “Ready?”

He finally opens his eyes, wetter than usual. “Yeah. Thank you. Seriously.”

She holds his gaze long enough to nod once, then puts her hand out for his. The last thing she needs right now is for Quill’s emotions to infect her. Clinical, clinical, clinical.

For all the consideration he put into making sure she wouldn’t have to touch his skin, it’s rather unavoidable now as she helps him step into the shower. It’s warm. Surprisingly soft. Smooth. Not that that matters. Nor does the groaning noise he makes as soon as the water hits him. She would think it’s a pained sound if it weren’t for the way he immediately tilts his head up towards it, bracing himself with his hands against the wall.

“Are you stable enough?” she asks, letting go of him but leaving her hands hovering next to him in case he slips.

He grunts an affirmative, leaning his forehead against the wall now too. He doesn’t look as though he’s about to lose consciousness or slide down the wall to the floor, so that is a definite improvement. And he does still appear to be lucid – much more so than just a little while ago, certainly improved since she used the med pack. Still, she’s struck by the vulnerability about him, the wordless sense of desperation, like he might be trying to find comfort in the water itself, or in the solid stability of the wall. It makes her want to reach for him again, maybe even get into the shower and hold him until –

Gamora clears her throat, shoving those thoughts back down almost violently. At this rate she’s going to need a cold shower of her own, especially given the way the skin on her abdomen insists on being practically aflame. If he had enhanced senses, he would be able to feel it. Actually, she needs to be careful that he doesn’t regardless. She can only imagine what he might think of it, not that she has any intention of explaining its meaning. Not that she can believe any version of her ever has.

“I’m going to change the bed linens,” she says to both of them, then realizes she ought to be checking in with him first. “If you can manage?”

He grunts again, what sounds like an affirmative.

“Yell if you need me,” she says, then tears herself away before she can do something foolish like offer to help him even more in the shower.

She works methodically and quietly to strip the soaked sheets and replace them with the clean ones, listening for any signs that he might need assistance. All she hears for several minutes is the sound of running water and his accelerated heartbeat, which she might be concerned about if she hadn’t read that it was normal for this kind of withdrawal.

The water turns off not long after she’s done with the bedding, for which she’s grateful because she’s running out of tasks to keep her hands occupied.

“Are you finished?” she calls, gathering up a towel and some clean clothes for him.

“Yes,” he grunts. That’s at least an improvement on the wordless grunting.

“I’m coming in,” she tells him a second before doing so. He’s got his back against the shower wall now, water dripping off his hair, running down his entire body. His boxers are clinging to his thighs, not that she notices. She does notice that his posture is slightly hunched, as if he’s trying to minimize the exposure of his — more sensitive areas.

She forces her eyes to his and holds the towel out for him. “Here.”

“Thank you,” he breathes, taking it with trembling hands and gingerly drying himself as much as possible. He’s already beginning to shiver again, though, the movement getting larger and more violent as seconds pass.

He’s clumsily toweling his hair when Gamora decides she can’t take it any longer. She needs to get him out of those wet boxers and into dry clothes. Not to mention back in bed before he manages to lose his balance or the strength goes out of his legs again. She could easily carry him if necessary, but she can’t shake the sense that it would be dangerous in ways having nothing to do with the physical. Another of those things that have an inherent sort of intimacy she has never allowed herself.

“Come on,” she tells him, stepping half into the tub so that she can brace her arms under his and help him climb out.

Quill moves with her in a way that suggests familiarity on his part at least – Like they’ve done this dozens of times. She doesn’t want to think too hard about what that suggests, that he might have been this ill or injured on a frequent basis. Though probably she ought to have taken that as a given, considering how reckless she’s seen him be. The truly surprising thing is that, for all of her inexperience, it feels easy to her as well. Like she might also have done it before. Like it might somehow be encoded in her genes.

“Sorry I’m getting you wet,” he says quietly, eyes on the floor. Or perhaps on his wet legs, which he couldn’t exactly reach without collapsing.

Instead of answering, she takes the towel from his hand and squats down to dry his legs with the same quick efficiency with which she’d changed the sheets, though it is more difficult to remain detached about it.

He’s holding onto the wall with one hand when she stands back up. “Thank you,” he whispers.

“Now you’re not getting me wet,” she says, avoiding his eyes because she knows she won’t be able to miss the emotion swimming in them. “How do we get you dressed?”

“I’ve never exactly done this before, either,” he mutters. She finds it difficult to believe he’s never needed help getting dressed, given how often he’d implied he’s been sick, drunk, or injured; then she realizes that by this, he means needing help in a scenario where it matters how much she touches him. The version of herself that he loved could certainly do this while touching him as much as she wanted – as much as he wanted her to. “How ‘bout you just hold the towel up like a privacy shield and I can kick my boxers off? Just close your eyes if you gotta catch me.”

“Obviously,” says Gamora, adjusting the towel to shield him and turning her face away for good measure. She hopes that also hides the entirely irrational hurt she can’t seem to help feeling at the realization that he doesn’t just seem to be sparing her sensibilities. Judging from his chagrin, his barely-concealed shame at being so exposed, he doesn’t want to be in this position with her either. And where he might previously have asked her to open herself up to the possibility of reclaiming her counterpart’s place in his life, he’s clearly realized that she is far too different, could never fulfill that longing for the woman he’s missing.

And even though the person she is now might not be so bad in his revised opinion, she isn’t deluded enough to believe she isn’t still very far away from what he wants. Which is good, she tells herself, as she maneuvers her hands to keep the towel in place while she hands him the clean pair of underwear. She shouldn’t want to be anything more to him. She doesn’t want to be anything more to him.

Then again…Why is she here on Earth if no part of her wants to explore those things?

“I got this,” he mutters, seemingly to himself. “I got this.” She hears shifting and rustling of fabric as he struggles to pull the clean boxers on without falling. His breathing and heart rate pick up too with the effort the simple task requires in this condition.

As soon as she hears the elastic of his boxers snap into place, she drops the towel and moves to support him with both hands on his shoulders, alarmed by how exhausted he already is. “Take a break. You can lean on me if you need to.”

He all but melts against her immediately, forehead against her shoulder, letting her support all of his weight. So he’s at least not that reluctant to be close to her.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. It takes considerable effort for her to not to shiver at the way his warm breath brushes her neck. “Fuck, I hate this withdrawal shit.”

“Me too,” she says vehemently, on his behalf. He certainly does not deserve to be going through this.

He lifts his head sooner than she expects – not wants, this has nothing to do with what she wants – and smiles at her with a tenderness that surprises her. “It would be a billion times worse without you here.”

“You’re in no condition to be doing this on your own,” she agrees, suddenly struck by how close his face is to hers. It ought to be off-putting, being in such close proximity to him when he’s still so unwell. Not to mention…when she knows how he still thinks of her. Who he still wishes she could be. When she knows that he has even believed her to be that person at times over the past several hours, as the hallucinations and delirium took hold. Nothing about this is a good idea, and yet – And yet she finds that she wants him even closer. Wants to do more than simply support his weight, wants to wrap her arms around him and –

“I think I can manage the shirt now,” Quill says, his voice breaking into her thoughts, jarring her back to the present. To all of the reasons why she cannot act on the strange temptations she can’t seem to stop experiencing.

Fortunate timing for both of them. Maybe because he’s sensed the tension building between them. Maybe because he’s aware of the direction her thoughts have taken, and he doesn’t want her to act on them either. Which absolutely shouldn’t be disappointing to her.

“Of course,” she says firmly, taking a step back and holding the shirt out to him stiffly. His arms are trembling as he lifts them, giving her an unobstructed view of his entire abdomen. Not that she looks. She does help him pull the shirt down when it gets caught over his head again.

“Thanks,” he says, voice weak. “You’re a real good nurse.”

She snorts. “You’re delirious.”

His smile turns crooked, and oh is that unfair. “How long are you gonna use that as a comeback?”

Gamora grabs the pair of sweatpants she’d brought in because she needs to get him dressed, not because she needs an excuse not to be looking at that smile of his. “As long as you continue to be delirious.” After a second of debate, she squats to the ground to help thread the pants over his ankles.

Peter emits some sort of strange, squeaking noise. She looks up to find him gaping down at her as if he can’t believe what she’s doing and she rolls her eyes. “I’m not going to pick you up off the floor after you try to put these on by yourself. So take the help or you’re going to be sleeping on this floor.”

“I’m not–I don’t mind the help,” he says, voice higher-pitched than usual. “I appreciate the help.”

Now it’s her turn to flush, not because she’s embarrassed about having provided him assistance but because she is utterly unfamiliar with that sort of a statement. To be fair, expressing appreciation for one another is not totally foreign among her Ravager crew. But that is done in a far more off-handed manner, and minimized in the same breath. Much more frequently, she and her crew express affection for each other through teasing, ribbing, sometimes being as annoying as possible.

She is not accustomed to the sort of earnest gratitude that Quill is expressing for her now, and she has absolutely no idea how to respond. She doesn’t want to hurt him by being dismissive, but she also doesn’t want to give him unrealistic expectations, either. He needs to know that she is not developing any sort of softer feelings about him. And that she isn’t going to.

“I’ll help you to bed,” she says finally, deciding to simply move on.

Quill nods, apparently accepting that, and allows her to assist him in crossing the room again, this time without comment. At first she thinks that’s out of consideration for her, but she quickly realizes it’s because he’s still struggling, using all of the energy he can muster to stay upright.

She settles him onto the bed as efficiently as possible, helping him lie back gradually rather than simply collapsing as his body seems to want to do. He’s panting, face flushed from the exertion.

“This–should not–be this hard,” he pants. “Stupid body.” He winces and keeps his eyes downcast, avoiding hers. So maybe the blush in his cheeks isn’t only from exertion.

“I know you’re usually stronger than this,” she says, wanting to make him feel better for some odd reason.

It must work, because he lifts his eyes to hers and smiles. “I can usually even manage my own clothes.”

She snorts inelegantly. “I figured as much, since I don’t recall needing to help you into and out of the Orgocorp uniform.”

“Handled that all on my own,” he says with exaggerated pride. Then his eyes widen, as if he’s just come up with a brilliant idea. “Imagine if we had to wear those awful Orgosentry uniforms.”

“I would not have helped you with that,” she says immediately, lips twitching with amusement despite herself. “Those organic suits were disgusting.”

His smile widens. “Do you think their undies are made of organic matter, too?”

“What?” she manages, before choking on laughter. She tries her best to suppress the sound but is only moderately successful. Okay, maybe significantly less than moderately successful, because while she doesn’t exactly laugh out loud, she does make a decidedly undignified squeaking noise. She does her best to play it off as a cough, hoping that maybe he’s still too delirious to notice, nevermind what that would mean about the state of his health.

He grins, obviously not having missed it and also apparently able to tune out his physical discomfort when focused on tormenting her. “Their whole suits were made of organic stuff, right? So I bet that includes undies. Unless they go commando. Then that would be real organic.”

Gamora shudders at that mental image, though she has to also admit that there’s still a giggle trying to bubble its way up in her chest. She would not have been able to imagine finding anything about Orgocorp – or any of the High Evolutionary’s ventures – amusing prior to now, and yet. And yet here she is, imagining what it would feel like to wear one of those awful flesh suits without undergarments, all thanks to the ridiculous Terran who currently lacks the strength to even stand up unassisted. “Oh, gods. Stop!”

Instead of heeding her command, he continues brazenly: “Do you think the insides of the suits are sticky, too? I bet they are! Most of the other stuff in that place was sticky on the inside.”

She tries to answer, but she’s busy fighting a losing battle with her own amusement, covering her mouth with one hand and practically doubling over with the effort. Even then, she’s unsuccessful, making noises that are practically giggles and utterly unlike anything she would expect to come out of her mouth.

This appears to only encourage him. “Or maybe they only get sticky after you wear ‘em! If they have undies, they’re totally sticky too!”

“Quill!” she practically shrieks, collapsing into the chair next to the bed and giving up on her battle with her own amusement. She clutches her stomach with one arm, now having a full-on giggle fit, and reaches out with her other to touch his shoulder without even thinking about what she’s doing, pushing weakly. “Stooop!”

“Imagine getting a wedgie in those!” he says instead, through his own uncontrollable giggles.

“It–it would be flesh up your–up your–” She dissolves into a fresh fit of laughter, head bowing forward to rest against the edge of the bed

“Up your butt!” Quill finishes for her.

"I was -- going to say ass," she gasps. Then she hiccups, which predictably makes her cackle harder, which makes her hiccup again, which…Even with the Ravagers, she cannot recall an occasion on which she has laughed this hard. So hard that it hurts, that she actually worries for a moment that she might lose consciousness if she cannot stop laughing long enough to get air.

“Ass!” Quill repeats gleefully. He’s cackling too, hard enough that she can feel the bed shaking with it. It’s such a stunning contrast to his illness over the past day and a half, to the fear that’s haunted his dreams, the grief that’s threatened to suffocate him for the entirety of their acquaintance. Despite the fact that he is still not well, there’s a warmth about him in this moment that’s almost magnetic. He looks…luminous. And also utterly irreverent. This is clearly not new territory for him. Which probably shouldn’t be a surprise, given his own Ravager past.

"Rump," Gamora suggests, when she’s able to speak again. She wants to see him continue to laugh. She wants to see him laugh until he fears his inability to adequately catch his breath.

He lets out a high-pitched giggle, the kind of noise she might expect from a small child. “Hiney! Booty! Badonkadonk! Tushy!”

“Unfair advantage!” she accuses. “You were a Ravager a lot longer than I’ve been.”

“I–I–” He starts to speak several times, but each time is interrupted by his attempts to inhale through the giggles. His entire face is flushed red and he’s wheezing so shallowly that she would be worried if she weren’t in a similar situation. If she hadn't just been aiming to do this to him.

“I got all sorts of curses stored up here,” he finally manages, poking himself in the forehead with one finger, which then goes down to the bridge of his nose, seemingly on accident. “All sortsa ass-related shit. Ha! Get it? Shit!”

“Oh gods,” she gasps, reaching out and grasping his hand before he manages to poke himself in the eye with it. “Don’t make me think about that in sticky, organic matter underwear!”

“Eew!” he exclaims through a wide grin. “Gamora! That’s gross.”

“You’re the one who brought it up!” she protests, sitting up now that she has somewhat controlled herself. Controlled her laughter, anyway. She is still flushed, almost giddy, and she is still holding his hand, toying with it absently.

“Nuh-uh,” he says, sounding as silly as she feels. “I just said the word. You’re the one who brought up the – the shit in flesh pants!”

"You brought up the flesh pants." Her laughter has finally slowed enough that she notices their positions, pausing as she takes that in. She’s sitting upright now, no longer half collapsed onto the bed, but his hand is still clasped between both of hers. His palm is warm and shockingly large in contrast to hers. She finds herself fascinated by it. And she still doesn’t let it go.

“Did I?” he asks innocently. “Sounds like I was delirious.” His tone remains undeniably playful, and then the man has the audacity to wink at her. He has spoken repeatedly of Star-Lord charm, and though she cannot deny that he’s very attractive, she has yet to be moved by any show of intentional flirtation. When he isn’t trying, though? When he’s simply being his unguarded self? Oh, that has the potential to be dangerous.

“Most definitely,” says Gamora. “Is that going to be your excuse for anything gross or nonsensical you do from now on?”

“Maybe.” His eyes drop to their joined hands and she hears his breath catch for a moment, his heart rate accelerating for reasons she doesn’t think are at all related to his illness. Then he looks back up to meet her gaze again. “But hey, since I’m delirious, you think they got flesh thongs too?”

If she answers out loud right now, she knows she will just burst into laughter; so instead, she takes control of his hand and uses it to cover his own mouth, which only makes him look happier and only slightly muffles his voice. “Is that a no?”

“It’s a shut up, Quill,” she says, unsuccessful in her attempts to stop herself from snickering, though it’s at least stifled. “You’re delirious.”

He chuckles under their hands. She once again feel the warmth of his mouth from the gaps between his fingers. “Wish I could be delirious enough for my stomach to stop hurting.”

That sobers her slightly. “Are you going to be sick again?” She removes her hands from his, ignoring the sense of loss she feels at that. “Do you need the trash bin?”

“No, no,” he says quickly, hand falling from his mouth. “It’s not like, nauseous, just…icky. Ouchy. It’s been like that the entire time, only everything else felt so much worse that I hardly even noticed it. Now that I feel better in other ways…” He shrugs, eyes downcast. “Really makes me wish I had some alcohol to dull the pain – not that I’m gonna ask you for it again.”

She stares at him, taking all that in at the same time that she tries to ignore the way it makes her feel a nearly painful sympathy for him. “I can understand the appeal of an escape from pain.”

He lifts his eyes to hers. “Tried anything that helped?”

“Stabbing things,” she says immediately. “Beating my crew at cards.”

His eyes light up with interest. “Got any cards with you?”

“No,” she admits. “I seem to be unprepared for any number of situations on this planet.”

The crooked smirk that spreads across his face does several things to her insides, which are difficult to ignore. “Lucky for you, I got tons of games on my holo.”

Gamora arches a brow, aware that she’s smiling but unable to suppress it. “Are you inviting me to defeat you?”

He shrugs one shoulder, already fumbling for his holo on the nightstand. “We’ll see.”

Chapter Text

Peter is fairly certain that Gamora is going to defeat him at cards. Even if his head didn't still feel like it was full of toxic sludge, even if the rest of his body didn't feel like it might currently be getting stretched between the chill of space and the fiery inferno of the High Evolutionary's dying ship…Even when he's been in his absolute peak health, he's never met a competition of any sort where Gamora couldn't beat him. In fact, she's so innately competitive that if she can't actually win on skill alone, she's completely willing to change the rules or cheat to achieve victory.

Or at least…In the four years he knew her, those things were true. He guesses that maybe they might be different now. Probably he shouldn't assume. Still, it’s seared into his mind as such a core characteristic of hers that it's a relief to hear her talking about defeating him with this level of bravado. Even if he'll need to process the fact that she apparently plays games with her Ravager crew. That he won't be the one to introduce her to the concept of competing for fun rather than survival. He recognizes he should be happy for her, and he is. Really. It's just…also bittersweet.

"I'm pretty good at cards, you know," he tells her, only half to hide the fact that he's still fumbling pretty badly with his holo. "I was with the Ravagers for most of my life."

She reaches out to steady his holo from the back so he can use the screen more easily. He does his best not to get outwardly emotional at that. “But you’re delirious now.”

“Gonna make it real embarrassing if I win, then,” he says with false bravado. It’s not like he really cares if he wins, anyway. He just wants to play with her.

“Maybe I’ll just stab you, then,” she says, shrugging one shoulder and pulling a laugh from his throat.

“If I win?” he asks, pulling his game library up and projecting it so they can both see it easily. “Or instead of playing the game?”

“Haven’t decided yet,” she says, making affection for her warm his chest.

“C’mon,” he says cajolingly. “I’ll even tell you which games I’m better or worse at if you want.”

Her eyes flick over the many different options on display. “No need. You can choose.”

He sticks his tongue out as he scrolls through, trying to make the right decision. Most of these, he’s played with her before, but obviously not that she remembers. He can also guess a few of the games she might have already played with the Ravagers. Figuring she might feel best with one of those, he asks, “How ‘bout Black Jack?”

“Sure,” she says casually, with a glint in her eye. “If you don’t wanna give yourself half a chance with one I haven’t played before.”

He smirks. "Trust me to have a clear enough head to teach ya anything?"

Technically the holo has instructions for each game, and video tutorials if needed. One can even enable a training mode that will show potential moves for every turn. But that's lame, and he's always made a point of avoiding it, playing games by memory of how he's been taught by others. And he wants to do the same for Gamora now.

"I like to live dangerously," says Gamora, the barest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

“You do, don’t you?” Peter murmurs, fond. While he wouldn’t have described the Gamora he knew before as a daredevil, she was often the first to leap into danger. Trying to take on Thanos by herself comes to mind, much as he wishes it wouldn’t. Much as he wishes she hadn't. But this is not that woman sitting across from him now. She has made that abundantly clear and he wants to respect it. Really. “Ever played Go Fish?”

"I am not familiar with fishing, no," she says a bit bemusedly.

He laughs softly. “There’s no actual fish in this game.”

Gamora wrinkles her nose. "Then why is it called that?"

It’s probably absurd how happy that predictable reaction of hers makes him. He truly doesn’t expect her to be exactly the same as her counterpart or anything, but it’s nice that this is another constant: how much she hates names that don’t make sense. “It’s kind of an analogy. You’ll see when we play. If that’s okay?”

“If it makes more sense than the name,” she grumbles adorably.

“It totally does,” he promises. He sets the holo on his lap and drags himself into more of a sitting position on arms that are still weak, though stronger than they were the last time he was lucid. “You gotta sit across from me so we can’t see each other’s cards.”

She glances between his face and the bed for just a second before nudging his legs under the blanket. “Then move these.”

He curls them up immediately, sitting cross-legged. Once Gamora settles across from him, positioned practically in a mirror image, he swipes his hand over the holo projection and the game automatically deals them each five cards.

“No cheating,” she tells him, pulling her holographic cards close to her chest. “I’ll stab you.”

“I would expect nothing less,” he says, the simple sense of camaraderie he’s beginning to feel warming him even more than the fever had. He doesn’t bother to tell her how often he’s seen her cheat at games, since she’ll just tell him that wasn’t her. And, to be fair, he knows it technically wasn’t…but given what he’s seen so far of her approach to competition, he won’t be at all surprised if that’s consistent too.

“What will you do if I cheat?” she asks, almost as if she can sense his thoughts. Or maybe it’s just that they do still think very similarly in a lot of situations. Peter isn’t sure he’ll ever stop being surprised by that. Even in four years together, he found himself constantly astounded that he was, in many ways, actually a good partner for Gamora.

“Not much I can do in this condition,” he laughs. Physically, at least. But hey, since when has Terran frailty ever deterred the Legendary Star-Lord? “How ‘bout…make up words for everything that don’t make any sense?”

“Oh, I will kill you,” says Gamora, in a tone that he’s pretty sure means she’s equal parts horrified and delighted with his ability to come up with such a fitting threat. At least, that’s what it would have meant before.

He cackles, elated. “But it’s supposed to be a good deterrent, right? So this must be real good.”

"Why are you so pleased by my threatening you?" she asks incredulously. "Do you truly not want to live?"

He blinks at her, taken aback by the shift in tone. “Oh–no, it’s not that. It’s just…I know you’re not actually gonna kill me, you know?”

“You don’t know,” she insists, glaring at him.

“You’ve had a ton of opportunities to kill me, and you never have,” he points out, undeterred. “And before you accuse me of thinking of you as the future Gamora, when I met her the first time, she actually did try to kill me. And I still trusted you–her–completely like a day later.”

She sniffs, unimpressed. “That’s just foolish.”

“I’m alive so far,” he says, flicking absently through his cards without really seeing them.

She looks even more unimpressed at that. “You almost weren’t.”

He shrugs. “I almost wasn’t lotsa times, and none of those times were ‘cause you tried to kill me.”

“I just watched you nearly die!” she snaps, slamming her fist down onto the mattress hard enough that he can feel the vibrations from it. She appears to regret the outburst immediately, retracting her hand to hold it in her lap and avoiding his gaze.

He watches her for a moment, touched by the sign that she cared – that she cares – however much she’s trying to hide it. He tries not to let his emotions show either, not wanting to make her uncomfortable, but his voice is definitely gentler. “That wasn’t cause of you, either.”

"No, that was you being a reckless idiot," she snaps, still not looking at him. Her fingers twist in the outer fabric of the threadbare comforter that's covering the bed, and Peter thinks about how easily she could rip it without even noticing. The same way she could injure him without any conscious thought, simply instinctive actions and her innately superior strength.

She never has, though. Never will. He's certain of that in any universe and any time, no matter how she might doubt it. That's exactly what her anger now is demonstrating – That no matter how many times she might claim indifference to him, his disregard for his own safety has upset her.

Peter sighs, so familiar with this reaction that he has to restrain himself from reaching for her hand, bringing it to his chest so she can feel his heartbeat, prove he's alive. He has a feeling she would not appreciate that right now. Or possibly ever. The thought of never being able to comfort her that way makes his chest ache. Then again, the fact that she even cares enough to scold him makes him feel practically giddy. "Sometimes I also live dangerously, I guess."

"It's stupid," she growls. "Now teach me this game."

He debates for a few seconds whether to push the issue, try to get her to talk about her feelings, but dismisses the idea pretty quickly. Even if he weren’t still feeling lightheaded and vaguely sick, getting Gamora to talk about her feelings had been like pulling A’askavariian teeth even years into their relationship. Trying to get her to open up before their relationship had been a great way to get her to shut down even faster.

“Okay,” he says softly, re-focusing. “So. The goal is to get as many matching sets of cards as possible. You need three of the same type, so like three hearts or three Orloni. When you have a set, you put them here.” He gestures to the designated holographic square between them, one for her and one for him.

“How did I get the set?” she asks, already intent.

“This is where the fishing comes in,” he says eagerly. “We each have seven cards. Each turn, you’ll ask me if I have a certain card. Like, do you have any stars? And if I do, I give you all the ones I have. If I don’t, I say go fish and you draw a card from the deck.”

She still looks skeptical. “That has nothing to do with fish.”

“It’s an analogy,” he explains patiently. “Cause when you’re fishing, you never know exactly what you’re gonna get, right? Just like when you’re taking a card from the deck.”

He watches Gamora consider, apparently deciding whether to further challenge the logic of the name or take him at his word. She's much calmer now, though, so he's calling this a win either way. "All right. Fine."

He grins. This is the part where he’s sure the game will capture her newfound Ravager sensibilities. And her good old competitiveness. “Okay, so here’s a catch. If you ask for a card and I say I don’t have it, but you think I’m lying, you can call me out. Then I have to show my entire hand. If I was lying, you get to take the card plus you can steal one of the sets I already have. But if I was telling the truth, you give me one of your sets and you have to show me your whole hand, too.”

"So that implies that one can always lie in this game," says Gamora, her eyes bright with interest.

He tilts his head in acknowledgement. “But guess what happens if you get caught lying and you don’t have any sets for me to steal: You forfeit and I win automatically. So it would be a risky strategy.” Not that he expects she would abide by that rule if she were to be caught by it.

She tosses her hair back in that beautiful, haughty way of hers. “Or I could just stab you.”

“That is definitely not in the rules,” he informs her with badly suppressed laughter.

“It’s in mine,” she says, unconcerned.

He fails to hold in a loud snort at that. “It sounds like your rules are either you win, or you stab me.” Her response to that is just a shrug, so he shakes his head fondly and moves on. “How ‘bout we say no lying until we have at least one set to steal? If you stab me, it’ll be real counterproductive to all the keeping me alive you’ve been doing the past couple days.”

She nods once. “When do we know who wins?”

Privately, he thinks that it’s whenever she decides she’s won. Out loud, he says, “We play ‘til we run out of cards. Then whoever has the most sets wins.”

“All right,” she says, eyes flicking over her cards. He can see her mind working, forming strategies, at least some of which will certainly involve cheating. “You go first.”

He smirks, not surprised; she always wants to see her opponent’s first move, to see how much of their own hand they’ll show. “Got any Orloni?”

She looks back and forth between his face and her cards. He’s mildly surprised when she hands two over.

“Hey, thanks!” he says, pleased. He doesn't for a moment trust her to truly cooperate or continue playing by straightforward rules. But it does make sense that she needs time to work out her approach. And he certainly isn't going to complain regardless. Spending time with her doing anything at all is his idea of winning. He sets the two cards she’s given him down along with the two he already had. “So now we can each draw two cards from the deck, so we can always hold at least seven at a time.”

She nods and draws, then waits for him to do the same, observing every detail of his movements with such singular intensity that he really wouldn't be surprised if she could read his mind.

"Your turn," he says pleasantly.

She considers her hand. "Give me all your quantum asteroids."

“Yes, ma’am,” Peter says fondly, handing over the one he has.

Gamora puts it down with two of hers and draws again. Then she grins at him, a feral, merciless thing. "Let the lying commence."

He bursts into laughter. “I don’t think you’re supposed to announce that you’re planning to lie.”

“I didn’t say I was planning to lie,” she says primly. “Just that we’ve reached the point where our agreement to not lie no longer applies.”

“Uh-huh,” he mutters, Super Convinced. “Got any comets?”

They go back and forth like that a couple of times, asking for cards and handing one over, until Gamora demands to have his star cards. He responds with a smirk and a “Go fish.”

Her eyes narrow immediately. “That’s your claim that you don’t have any?”

“I don’t have any,” he says plainly. “So, yes.”

Gamora keeps staring him down but he’s got his best poker face on, which is pretty damn good even when he’s not feeling his best. He’s bluffed his way to winning many a card game even while blind drunk, so he’s not super worried he’s going to give anything away. Although, if anyone can break his poker face, it’s always been her. “You can accuse me, if you’d like to.”

“But I haven’t,” she says coolly. She leans forward slightly, gaze unwavering.

“You haven’t gone fishin’ yet, either,” he points out. The urge to squirm becomes harder and harder to resist; not because he’s worried that she’s going to catch him in a lie, but because he’s never been unaffected by her attention. She even puts her chin in her hand, making a show of it. It’s making heat rise to his cheeks. He’s nearly giddy with it.

“I’m still deciding if I’m going to accuse you,” she says, leaning even closer.

He mirrors her movement, hunching forward to lean more towards her too, and flashes her a crooked smile. “You ain’t gonna psych me out, you know. My answer is still go fish.”

She remains undeterred, leaning closer still. She's leaning so far forward now that she's practically lying on her stomach, though her legs are still crossed in an impressive show of flexibility. And still she's staring at him, making his breath catch in his throat.

Peter leans close enough that his head distorts the holo image where it contacts the projection. "You trying to see my cards? That's cheating, you know."

"Maybe they're reflected in your eyes," she whispers. "Making observations isn't cheating." She fixes her gaze on his, like the image might actually be discernible there.

"It is if it shows you my cards." Peter stares right back, feeling hypnotized by her gaze. "Yours aren't."

"Oh, good." Is he imagining it, or does she sound a bit breathless? Probably that's just wishful thinking.

He swallows, holding himself as still as he can while weak and shaky, fearful of breaking the moment. "Does that mean mine are?"

"No," she whispers, barely audible. "But one can hope."

"Hope is important," he breathes, eyes flicking all over her face. He hasn't been this close to her in so long.

"Yes," says Gamora. Then she shakes herself, straightens, and picks up two cards.

He remains leaning forward for a few seconds, dazed, before he slowly sits back up too. If it weren’t for the faint, dark green blush that lingers on her cheeks, he might think he’d hallucinated the last minute. “You, uh–you only had to pick up one.”

“Oh.” She blinks a few times, looking between her hand and the deck of cards, before she moves to put one of the cards back.

“Now we gotta shuffle the duck,” he says, voice cracking. He clears his throat, trying to get his bearings back. “Cause you know what that card is.”

She glares at him, picks the card back up from the top of the deck and throws it at him.

“Hey!” He laughs and flinches back, holding his hand up to catch the card as if the holo image could actually make contact with him. “I don’t want it!”

“But now you’ve seen it, too,” she says with a self-satisfied smirk.

He shakes his head fondly and puts the card back, waving his hand over the deck it so it shuffles itself. “Doesn’t change the fact that we gotta shuffle.”

She shrugs a shoulder. “Your turn, then.”

“Wha–oh, yeah,” he mutters. He looks back at his hand, then smirks mischievously. Pasting on his most innocent smile, he recalls the last card she’d asked for. “Hey, you got any comets?”

"Wait," says Gamora, eyes narrowing in suspicion. Whatever magic held her gaze pinned to his only a minute ago, it's passed. She is solidly back in hyper competitive mode. "Don't you have to have a card to ask for it?"

He shakes his head, enjoying this more than he should. Most people wouldn't dare mess with Gamora this way. Most people would know that there will be consequences. And, okay, he knows too. But if he's gonna lose anyway, he sure as hell is going to enjoy it. "I don't recall that in the rules, no."

She presses her lips together. "But the goal is to make sets, is it not?"

"It's to make more sets than you by the time we run out of cards," he confirms, just barely managing to contain his glee. This is going to be so good. "So, if I can gain a set that you would otherwise have…"

"Fine," she growls and throws another single card at him.

He giggles, taking it happily and adding it to the two comets that he did, in fact, have all along, making a neat set. Then he pantomimes tipping an old-timey Terran hat to her. "Thank you, ma'am."

"Peter Quill!" she half-shrieks. "You filthy liar!"

Absolutely delighted, he practically preens, shimmying his shoulders and watching her with delight. She’s so damn pretty when she’s angry. “You’re the one who said to let the lying commence.”

“I also warned you there would be consequences,” she says through gritted teeth, a dangerous twinkle in her eyes.

He shrugs, making no effort to hide his smugness. “I thought that was just if I won, right? I haven’t won yet. Unless, of course, you’re giving up…?” He trails off, running his finger along the top edges of his cards contemplatively.

The way she’s glaring at him, he wouldn’t be surprised if he suddenly caught fire. “Give me all your M ships,” she demands, holding out her hand towards him. It is definitely not a request.

He bites his lip over the grin he can’t suppress, debating for a bit whether it’s worth it to keep going down this dangerous path. Deciding it’s not – not on their first game, anyway – he hands over the one ship he has. “I’ll take that as a no on the giving up, then.”

She slams down her new set with such force that the pixels of the holo projection scatter briefly before snapping back into place. “Never.”

A laugh escapes him, though he tries to disguise it as a cough. “G-got any moons?”

She makes a subtle – well, what she thinks is subtle, which means actually about as subtle as Drax – show of looking back and forth between him and her cards before she responds. "Go fishing."

Well, that's equal parts interesting and adorable. He pauses for a moment, pondering what he's intended to take away from that interaction. Even if she thinks she's being sneaky, she clearly intended him to notice something in her behavior, given the way she's telegraphing it. That could mean that she's lying, but he thinks it's more likely intended as a trap: She isn't lying but wants him to accuse her, so that she'll have an excuse to demand to see his hand as well, not to mention steal one of his sets of cards. That would be very like Gamora.

Well. The Gamora that he knew.

He snorts, but doesn't try to accuse her of lying. He just picks from the deck. "It's go fish."

"That's what I said," she informs him. "Do you have any gas giants?"

"Oh, right, of course," he says, delighted as always by these slight translator differences. Even in four years, she never got any less stubborn about refusing to acknowledge them. "And nope. Go fish."

She draws a card but she glares at him suspiciously the entire time. He decides not to push it by immediately asking for her gas giants, though he is tempted. “Satellites?”

Again, she very deliberately pauses for a few seconds before she speaks. “Go fishing.”

Deciding to go obvious, too, he squints at her and tilts his head as if trying to see her face from a different angle. “Not sure I believe you.”

“You don’t?” she asks, sounding genuinely affronted.

He snorts. “Do I believe that the person who declared that the lying would commence isn’t lying? Having a little doubt about it.”

Gamora tilts her head at the opposite angle to his and taps her fingers on the bedspread, saying nothing. Peter still has his doubts, but she’s just convincing enough that he’s not willing to risk it. “Alright,” he says, leveling his head and drawing a card from the deck. “Maybe you’re telling the truth.”

“Maybe I am,” she says loftily, then holds out her hand again. “Orloni.”

He hands over the two that he has, which is completely worth it when she smiles like the F’Saki who got the Orloni and sets it down with her one. He even gives her a moment to bask in her satisfaction before he says casually, “Hey, you got any gas giants?”

"Such a shame that you don't," says Gamora. "Since I only have one and that doesn't make a set."

His lips twitch. He's enjoying this far more than he should, probably. It isn't lost on him that she would probably be able to tell when he's lying if she actually knew him. But he is focused on shoving that thought down as mercilessly as possible. He is enjoying this. Using any advantage he has, while he has it. He puts on his most nonchalant tone and his most charming smile. “Never said I had to put the set down right away, did I?”

"No," she agrees. "But I think you're asking because you were lying before. The same way you were about the comets." She gives him another look that might be menacing if he didn't find everything she does absolutely adorable.

“Guess you’ll find out in a second,” he says, holding his hand out expectantly. He wiggles his fingers like the cards are small animals he might be able to entice.

Gamora hands it over, watching him intently.

Peter meets her gaze the entire time he tucks the card into his hand, then pulls out the two he had and sets down the three.

“I knew it!” She slams her fist into the mattress with an angry yet triumphant look on her face.

He throws his head back and laughs, not even caring that the movement makes him dizzy. “Guess you shoulda accused me, then.”

“I did,” she points out. There’s that dangerous glint in her eyes that makes tiny warning bells go off in his head. He’s always been real good at ignoring those, though. “Just now.”

“Yeah, yeah, I guess,” he chuckles. “I meant formally accuse, then. In the game.”

“Don’t recall any stipulations on when or how we had to make the accusation,” she tells him, throwing his phrasing back at him.

He snorts. “It’s obviously too late once you know I have the cards, Gamora.”

“But I accused you before I knew,” she says. Oh, that glint has gotten even brighter.

“And then you gave me the card!” he says incredulously, finally catching on to what she’s trying to do here.

“Yep.” She reaches out and scoops up the set he’d just laid down, placing it with a flourish onto her side. “So these are mine now.”

He cackles and points at her accusingly, completely failing at sounding serious because he’s so goddamn delighted. “You sneak! That is totally not the rule!”

Gamora shrugs, the movement casual but her face absolutely luminous with pleasure that makes his heart soar even as he’s getting his ass thoroughly kicked. As he knew he would. Her response is no surprise either. “Take them back, then.”

Peter considers, holding in laughter as he looks between her and the cards. “I’m not quick enough to avoid getting my hand stabbed.”

"What a shame," she drawls, with absolutely no sympathy. Ironically, that response still manages to make something warm bloom in his chest.

Still laughing, he wipes the tears of mirth off his cheeks. “I guess It’s your turn, then.”

She considers. "Give me your wormholes." Clearly she still hasn’t learned the art of asking nicely in this game – or maybe she’s just rejected the idea, which somehow makes it all the more endearing.

“I would if I had any,” he says innocently. Gamora might be fundamentally incapable of reining in her competitiveness, but sometimes…well, sometimes he’s the same way with his inner legendary outlaw. “But you’re gonna have to go fishing.”

She narrows her eyes. “Are you lying?” she asks bluntly.

Taken aback, he considers for only a second before he takes the card from his hand and gives it to her. “Yes.”

She takes the card and puts down her set with distinct smugness, then continues to look at him expectantly. “Don’t you have to show me your whole hand now?”

“What?” He laughs. “No. That’s only to prove if I’m lying or not. I admitted it and gave you the card.”

“You might have more,” she points out.

“Is that a formal accusation?” he challenges.

“It already was,” she informs him. “I asked if you were lying, and you admitted to it.”

He opens and closes his mouth several times, trying and failing to come up with an argument. She’s not wrong, is the problem. “Shit. You and your technicalities.” He turns his cards around, though he doesn’t have any more wormholes. He can’t even be mad; besides the fact that he should have known she’d play this way – he blames the delirium – there’s also the fact that she is adorable in her intensity. Even in a children’s card game, she is determined to win by whatever means necessary.

She rakes her eyes over his cards, obviously memorizing them, before swiping another of his sets. “For lying.”

“I’m getting the accusation in writing next time before I admit anything,” he grumbles, turning his cards back around. “Got any more comets?”

Gamora flashes him an overly sweet smile and hands one over. “Just picked this one up.”

Peter is not at all convinced that she just picked it up. In fact, he thinks it’s very likely that even though she gave him some earlier, she might have saved one or more for the sake of keeping her options open. But she’s remembered the precedent she just set, that lies earlier in the game can be called out later, with consequences. So she’s covering her bases, as she always does. It would be admirable if it didn’t –

No, who is he kidding? It’s definitely admirable. And totally hot.

“Thank you,” he says, trying to echo her saccharine tone but laughing through it. Also choking a bit on the realization that he really probably shouldn’t be thinking of her as hot right now. Or possibly ever again. But how can he help it when she’s doing…this? He puts down the set of three comets and draws two more cards before looking at her again. “Gee, I wonder what card you’ll ask me for next?”

Sure, it’s possible that she doesn’t have matches for any of the cards she memorized from his hand, but he’s pretty sure he’s not that lucky.

As expected, she gives him a predatory grin and holds out her hand. “Suns, please.” Because, sure. Now she can be polite about it.

He sighs and hands them to her. “You know, I thought I was being all upstanding and honest by telling the truth after you asked. I didn’t realize you were tricking me.”

She scoffs. “Bullshit.”

“Ain’t got any bullshit cards,” he says cheekily. “You got plenty, though, huh?”

Her smile only grows, utterly unrepentant. “Nope. Go fishing.”

His jaw drops. “That was not me asking for a card!”

“Sounded like it to me,” she says loftily. “Now give me your Orloni.”

He lets out another dizzying laugh before giving it to her. There’s no point arguing this. “Gods, I’d forgotten how literal you can be with these things.”

Gamora’s body freezes and the smile falls off of her face so rapidly he might as well have torn it off. “Forgotten?”

He freezes too as he realizes his mistake. “Sorry, sorry!” he says quickly. “I didn’t–it’s just–it is a trait you share with…yourself.”

Unsurprisingly, that does not help. If anything, she just looks angrier; he’s half expecting her to shove him into the headboard like she’d done with the comm system. “Do you have any idea how fucking unpleasant that is? After twenty years of Thanos acting like he knew my own mind better than I did?”

Horror seizes his chest. He wishes she had shoved him. “No. I never thought about it like that.” In fact, he hasn’t really thought about it at all, has he? Not…Not from her perspective, really. He’s imagined that she might be disappointed – certainly in him specifically. In learning that he was the one she – He cuts that thought off savagely. He’s imagined she might be scared or confused. He’s imagined she might have doubts. But this whole time, he’s been so certain that everything would be all right if she just allowed him an opportunity to reintroduce her to her family. Former family. Whatever.

Not once has he stopped to consider how it must feel to her, knowing what she’s just escaped, to have anyone else assuming that they knew her mind better than she could. Assuming that she will act in specific ways, have specific feelings. Fit into a specific role.

But he knows, of course, now that he’s thinking about it like that. He knows that Thanos spent twenty years molding her into exactly the sort of tool he wanted. He even claimed to be doing it in the name of love. Of family.

Peter’s throat works, nausea that has nothing to do with alcohol withdrawal trying to claw its way up his chest. "I'm sorry, Gamora. I never wanna make you feel that way. I know that you know your mind better than I do."

She fixes him with a hard gaze. "Do you? Because you certainly seemed to think otherwise before."

He makes several attempts to swallow down the guilt before he’s able to speak. “I wasn’t really thinking before. I was just…wanting. Grieving. I didn’t realize it at the time – how much of a dick I was being, expecting you to be…you know. That’s part of why I came to Earth.”

A very small portion of the anger melts from her face, replaced with confusion. “What does Earth have to do with it?”

“Nothing exactly,” he admits. He’s hardly been able to articulate his reasons to himself, much less out loud, but he’d do anything for her. Any version of her. “It’s more that this is the place I came to start the whole learning to swim thing. To stop defining people based on what they are – or were – to me, you know?”

Gamora does not look impressed; gods, but he loves that haughty tilt to her chin that she gets when she’s unimpressed. He always has. “Yet here we are.”

“I’m a work in progress,” he says, feeling kind of defensive. He’s doing his best here. “I only just realized it’s a thing I gotta work on.”

She shrugs a shoulder. “Then I’ll leave you to it once you’re recovered.”

Panic’s fist clenches around his heart. He ducks his head, trying to hide his distress at that. “I don’t need to be, like, completely alone or anything to work on that. That kinda defeats the purpose of working on how I view people, right? If I can’t even be around ‘em.”

It’s possible he may have been overreacting a bit when he’d been thinking that way initially. It’s possible he’s overreacted more than a bit to a lot of things over the past couple years. He’d blame it on the fact that he’s never felt particularly smart without Gamora around to support him but, well. That’s the problem, isn’t it? It’s one thing to enjoy being around her, and he sure as hell still does. But it’s a problem, he realizes now more than ever, to feel dependent on her in order for him to be a responsible, functional person.

"Didn't you come here to not be around people?" she counters. She sounds half curious and still half skeptical. Which is fair, much as he dislikes it.

Peter sighs. She’s forcing him to reflect again, which is really one of his least favorite activities. He might know that he can’t depend on Gamora to make him work through difficult things but damn, she sure is skilled at it. Even when she barely knows him and probably doesn’t want to care. "I came here cause...My whole life, I've been thinking of my grandpa as this rough dude who pushed me out of the room when my mom died. If I'm tryna start thinking about people as why they are, rather than who they are to me, then...he seemed like a good place to start."

“And I interrupted that,” Gamora concludes softly.

He gapes at her, genuinely shocked. “What? No, you – Gamora, I was alone in a shitty motel room, throwing up into a toilet and losing my damn mind when you found me. You interrupted me trying to do something alone that could have killed me.”

“True,” she says slowly, only sounding half-convinced.

“You’ve already helped me so much with–with all of this,” he says earnestly. “And… Listen, I don’t want you to feel like you need to be here to help me.” He really, really doesn’t want that. As much as he’d like her to stay by his side for the rest of his life, he is working on that. “But you being here is helping with the whole self-exploration thing I’m doing. It’s helping me to get to know you. As you are now.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” she asks, voice so quiet he almost can’t hear the doubt in it. Almost.

“I would like to,” he says, just as quietly, hoping she can hear the sincerity in his voice.

She’s silent for a moment that seems to stretch on forever, gaze unwavering until eventually, a slight flush rises to her cheeks and she looks down at her cards. “It’s your turn.”

"What?" he asks, thrown for a second. Then he remembers: cards. So apparently she has decided to move on. Which probably shouldn't be surprising, given the way it's strayed into rather emotional territory. The cards were originally supposed to be an escape, after all. "Oh! Right. Sorry." He clears his throat, trying to refocus on the game. "Um...Asteroids?"

"Go fish," says Gamora, and he doesn't miss the fact that she gets it right this time. It feels oddly meaningful, that now is the moment her translator's algorithm has finally had enough experience with this aspect of his speech to perform correctly.

He draws a card, not even bothering to try to figure out if she's lying. His mind is far too addled, emotions still running far too high. "So, um. Do you have a favorite game that you've played with the Ravagers?"

She shrugs casually. "Any one that I win."

Peter huffs out a laugh. "Are you admitting to losing at some of them?"

"Maybe they're all my favorite," she counters.

"Good point," he allows, relaxing a bit. The emotional whiplash is making him dizzy, again. At least it's for a better reason than alcohol withdrawal. "It's your turn."

She looks slightly dazed herself; he takes a small measure of comfort in the fact that he’s not the only one thrown off by all the directions this conversation is going. “Moons?”

He hands her one, too focused on trying to get to know her to think about game strategies at the moment. It’s particularly difficult, since he has to remind himself not to assume that things are the same for her now as they were for those four years he knew her. “Are you as devious when you play with the Ravagers as you are in this game?”

That gets a tiny smile out of her; or maybe that’s just satisfaction from putting a set of cards down. “Turns out it’s fun, not being concerned with honor.”

He nods slowly. That he can understand. “It did have a kinda freedom to it, yeah. Living by a simple code. Got any stars?”

“Steal from everyone,” she recites, not bothering to look at her cards. “Go fish.”

He draws a card. “And no hurting kids. Though I didn’t learn that part of the code ‘til way later. My crew sure as shit didn’t care about hurting me.”

Gamora makes a thoughtful noise. “Stakar has always talked about that as a way to ruin things for everyone. Comets?”

“Go fish,” he tells her absently, distracted. “Has Stakar told you anything about Yondu?”

For a second he thinks she’s going to accuse him of lying, but she draws a card. The look of consternation on her face seems related to her answer: “Some. That he was stubborn. Pushed people away, pretending not to need them.”

“Stubborn is an understatement,” he says softly. “And Yondu is probably the one Stakar means when he talks about ruining everything. Got some hearts?”

“Go fish,” she tells him. “And he is.” She waits for him to draw a card, one of the last remaining in the deck, before she reaches across and casually swipes one of his sets.

“Hey!” He practically squawks, mouth agape. “What was that for? I haven’t lied!”

She shrugs. "Ravager code. Maybe you forgot it, even though I just said it not even five minutes ago." She looks radiant, so pleased with herself it’s almost painful in the very best way.

He has spent the past two years imagining Gamora alone and scared, though he guesses he probably should have known she’d be more resourceful than that. Still, no matter what scenario he's envisioned, none of them ever featured her doing well. He's been so certain that she couldn't be happy or loved or fulfilled anywhere other than with the Guardians – because that's how he felt, he realizes with equal parts guilt and horror. He has been projecting his own need for her onto…well, her. No wonder she sees him as a selfish dick. That's certainly how he's been acting.

It's bittersweet, realizing how wrong he's been. Seeing her so happy, all by her own devices.

"Oh my god, Gamora," he groans, filled with genuine warmth and fondness strong enough to mostly overpower everything else. "That's cheating."

"Not by my code," she says sweetly.

“There's no your code or my code here," he insists, grinning way too hard despite himself. "There's the rules of the game!"

"Stop me, then," she challenges.

He debates for half a second, glancing back and forth between her beautiful face and the cards. “That’s not fair. My reflexes are slow right now.” He may not trust himself to swipe his cards back from her, but he pulls his remaining sets closer to himself playfully. “Can’t believe I have to protect my cards from you.”

Her smirk is not entirely nice. “I take it your Gamora wouldn’t have done this.”

That blow lands directly in his chest, releasing his next breath with a whoosh of pain. “N-no,” he says quietly, voice trembling just slightly. “Not so boldly. Y-she cheated at games constantly, but usually when I pretended not to look.”

“Well. I’m not her.” It’s no comfort that her smirk falls at his reaction; he can practically see the facade of anger and indifference that she slams into place over whatever vulnerable emotion she’s feeling that she doesn’t like. As much as he’s trying not to assume he knows things about her, that is something he learned to read on her face very early on. Both times.

“You are real unpredictable,” he says, managing a small smile. It’s not like he could ever predict everything she – her counterpart – did or said, but it was easier. Then again, that was after four years.

“Good,” she says tightly, though her tone suggests that she is not actually pleased.
At least, if he’s interpreting it correctly. “Maybe then you’ll get over your expectations.”

And that, he thinks, is the whole problem. Even now that he’s recognized the selfishness of his thoughts the past few years, even though he’s fully committed to working on his less-than-healthy dependence…It’s hard to shift his perspective. It’s a constant struggle to remind himself that he is, by default, judging everything she says or does against four years of experience she doesn’t have. Not to mention several years of experiences he knows very little about. It’s a whole mind fuck, and he’s not even functioning at his best.

This also isn’t about him, though. Or – it isn’t primarily about him.

“I didn’t think about how weird it would be,” he says slowly, struggling to articulate what he knows he needs to get across, “having a bunch of people I didn’t know having all these expectations about what I should do or be. I mean if – If our positions were reversed, or something. Not – Not trying to say that I could ever know exactly what it’s – It’s not about – I’m –”

“Maybe,” she interrupts, clearly in challenge but also sparing him from rambling further, “I am also unpredictable because I am sick to death of living a regimented life.”

Another thing he hadn’t really considered. He’d considered being with the Guardians the ultimate freedom for her, but being a Guardian is also a role with a purpose, a direction, a certain set of expectations. She’d sort of gone from one extreme with Thanos to the other almost overnight, without a chance to explore what she wanted to do on her own. Not unlike Mantis, he supposes. “The Ravagers are definitely not the routine type.”

She snorts, relaxing slightly. “Not unless you consider stealing a routine.”

“There is that,” Peter says, shoulders loosening a bit too. “Along with a buncha beating each other up and trashing the ship. Unless that was just my crew? My crew was the worst of the worst, so a lot of the shit I grew up with…I dunno if it’s normal Ravager shit or if it was just my asshole crew.”

“There’s some of both of those things,” Gamora tells him. “Take your damn turn.”

“Oh.” He shakes his head, looking at his cards to remember what he even has. “Um. Helmets? And I can’t imagine any of them beating you up.”

“Oh, they’ve tried,” she says with a look of dark amusement. “Go fish.”

He does, taking the second to last card left in the deck. “I bet that turned out super well for them. Are they still alive?”

“Minus some minor appendages,” she says casually. And, gods, it really should not be so hot to hear her say things like that. Not that he’s surprised by his reactions to her at this point. She looks at the cards in her hand. “Happen to pick up any more suns along the way?”

He has, unsurprisingly, given how many times she’s told him to go fishing during the course of the game. He hands over the two and watches her add them to her thick stack of sets. “I like the vagueness of that wording. What exactly constitutes a minor appendage in this scenario?”

“Do A’askavariians really need all their tentacles?” She arches a brow, toying with the cards in her hands in a way that is probably subconscious but nevertheless makes her look equal parts beautiful and deadly. Which is how she always looks, but still. Extra. Or maybe he’s just extra aware of it because of how much he’s missed her. Or because he’s delirious.

Peter chokes on a laugh. “I’m guessing the answer is no.”

“Not based on my experience,” says Gamora. “But he certainly did need to learn the cost of unwelcome advances. Particularly in the form of pretending to spar with me for an excuse to make physical contact.”

A red hot spark of anger flares in his chest, a feeling he does his best to tamp down. The urge to protect her, even from a danger that has already passed, is strong, though he’s well aware she’s far more capable of protecting herself than he’s ever been. He makes himself focus on the cards in his hand. “Sounds like he deserved to lose the essential ones, too. Got any more M ships?”

“Go fish,” she tells him. “We reached an understanding.”

He takes the last card from the deck. “Now we just take turns asking each other for cards ‘til we run out of the ones in our hands. Was the agreement that he’d stay away from you and you’d let him keep the rest of his tentacles?”

“Pretty much,” she says, with that haughty, self-satisfied tilt to her chin again that manages to dispel most of his anger. “Give me your stars.”

He does, and they go back and forth a few more times – she gives him two comets, he hands over a moon, she gets the last Orloni and he gets an asteroid. She lies about not having any trees so she can take the last of his, then flashes him a shit-eating grin once they’re both out. “Shall we count?”

“You first,” he says, amused. The size of her pile would seemingly render that needless.

“Seventeen,” she says without actually going through her pile.

“Been keeping count, huh?” he mutters, not surprised. “Hang on, I actually gotta count mine.” He sorts through the ones in his pile, making a show of it. “Four…five…hang on.” He loosens a fold in the blanket to reveal the six comets he’d stored there. “Six.” Then he lifts up the hem of his shirt to shake out the hidden Orloni, then pulls the ships from behind his back, all the while struggling to keep a straight face at the sight of her growing indignation.

“Eight,” he finishes finally, grinning so hard his jaw actually hurts. “Damn, you still beat me.” He thinks the muscles of his face have forgotten how to smile over the past couple years. He’s definitely lost his stamina for laughing in that very particular way he does only with Gamora. Sure, some of that is probably related to the fact that he’s still feeling like shit thanks to the alcohol withdrawal, but his life recently has been decidedly lacking in fun and humor.

“Peter Quill!” Gamora exclaims, gaping at him.

“Oh, you cheated plenty too,” he says dismissively. “Better than me, since you won.”

“That is the most important thing,” she agrees, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips despite the fact that she is still trying to look indignant. She’s slightly flushed, her eyes sparkling even in the low light of the motel room, and he can’t help feeling that there’s…something between them.

Something that’s more good than bad, even if it’s a bit of both.

“Just wait til I’m not delirious,” he brags.

“I have seen you not delirious,” Gamora reminds him, the smile definitely winning out over any other expression she might be trying to show him.

“Okay, but we haven’t played cards before,” he insists, inordinately proud of himself. Of the way she’s looking at him. Of the fact that she’s still here, despite everything.

“True,” she allows. “Well, then I’ll look forward to it.”

Peter grins, pleased. “I’ll watch out for your loopholes next time too.”

“I’ll come up with new ones,” she promises lightly.

“New game, new holes,” he says, then giggles because he’s the height of maturity. Also because they’re talking about the future. Because, even though he’s still nauseous, sweaty, and craving about a dozen beers, he’s also feeling much better than he has in a long time.

“I’ll consider that part of my prize,” says Gamora, then reaches across and steals every last one of his completed card sets.

Chapter Text

“Youthfulera not only reduces the appearance of wrinkles and stimulates hair-growth, we GUARANTEE you will feel ten years younger within the first week of –”

“Quill,” Gamora calls to the closed bathroom door. “Your antiquated Terran phone is playing ads again!”

“Can you not skip the ad yourself?” He calls back.

“I’m busy,” she says, sitting in the room’s only chair and tapping away at her non-antiquated holo. This message to her sister can’t wait; she’s just thought of the perfect comeback. ‘So is your face.’

The bathroom door opens and Quill comes out, pulling a T-shirt down over his chest, still damp from the shower. Her eyes track the movement down his bare skin, noting the hair and the musculature that’s evident with the way he’s stretching.

“Try Youthfulera today to begin your youthful era again! Get it now for only –” The annoying man’s voice finally stops when Quill reaches the nightstand and taps the phone, replaced by the much more pleasant sound – not that she’ll admit it out loud – of Terran music.

I got a timebomb in my mind, mom
I hear it ticking but I don’t know why

“Why do you get so many ads for anti-aging technology?” Gamora asks, carefully averting her eyes back to her holo when Quill turns to face her.

“Stupid targeted ads, I guess,” he mutters. “My grandpa gave me the phone, it thinks I’m his age.” He narrows his eyes at her, looking pointedly at the way she’s sitting, leaning back with one leg draped over the arm of the chair. “And this is you being too busy to reach over and hit a button?”

She ignores him at first, distracted by how good he smells. It’s at least partly the fragrance of shampoo and soap, which admittedly have very little to do with his actual…person. Though living on a Ravager ship certainly does make her appreciate his commitment to basic hygiene. But in addition to the more artificial scents, she can detect clean skin and…and something she cannot articulate, except with the realization that it’s made the stubbornly silver skin on her abdomen warm even more.

Gamora shakes her head. She should not be smelling him unless it’s to point out that he stinks in an entirely unattractive way. Except that he doesn’t. And he isn’t weak or clumsy anymore, either. She wouldn’t exactly call him well, but he is so much better than the past couple of days that it’s practically jarring. There’s a solid warmth to him that has nothing to do with fever, a lightness she has only seen in glimpses before.

Abruptly, she remembers that he’s spoken to her. The question – more of a challenge, really – filters back through the haze of her…less logical thoughts. “I’m always too busy for your dumb Terran technology. And I’m speaking to my sister.”

It’s a mistake, probably, admitting that. He is going to want to know what they’re discussing and she’s not about to admit that he is the topic at hand.

“That’s awesome,” Quill says, sounding sincere even though he bites his lip nervously immediately after. “Did you, uh…tell her what a mess I’ve been?” He gestures vaguely to the bed, as if it can somehow convey all the suffering he’s experienced on it.

Gamora hesitates, because she has and is now suddenly concerned she has violated his privacy in a much more major way than going through his backpack. He came here without telling anyone, including both his blood family and his chosen one, and meant to suffer through this alone for reasons she still does not entirely understand – not that she cares to. Nor does she care about his privacy. She doesn’t care about anything other than units and survival. But Quill has trusted her these past few days, and if she has betrayed that trust it would feel…wrong, somehow.

Apparently, she has once again been silent for too long, because Quill jumps in after a moment, running a hand through his already curly, untamed hair. “Not that it’s any of my business what you say to your sister. Obviously. I was just, you know…wondering how much shit I’m gonna get from the others for not telling them what’s going on.”

“I only told her you were quitting,” she says, trying not to sound too defensive. “And that you needed my help, unless she wanted to drag herself down here to do it herself. I didn’t tell her any details.” That would require her to be invested in his situation, which she is most certainly not.

Quill runs a hand through his hair again, this time like he’s trying to comb it. Fingers are not a hair grooming tool, of course, so all he manages to accomplish is making it stick up even more wildly. Gamora resists the urge to close the space between them and help with it. She has a brush in her bag and not inconsiderable skill with hair, she could –

But no. She absolutely is not going to touch him, especially now that he no longer truly needs her help. She clearly needs to get some distance from him before she does something stupid. Stupider than her behavior so far.

“Wait.” Quill pauses, apparently having just come to some sort of realization. “I thought Nebula sent you here to check on my sorry ass. She didn’t want a full mission report, details included?”

Gamora freezes, caught, suddenly irritated that he’s well enough to have managed to catch her in the fact that she’s forgotten her own excuse for coming to this planet, which means he is in danger of discovering that she’s come here solely to see him…of her own accord.

“Oh, she did,” she says casually. “But she expected me to just drag your drunk ass back to Knowhere, not stay here and assist you.”

He doesn’t entirely appear to believe her, but he nods slowly anyway, something in his eyes that’s far too sincere for her liking. “Thank you for that. It woulda been real embarrassing after my big ol’ speech about taking care of myself, to have to be carried back after just a couple days. Not that they don’t already know what a mess I am.”

She grunts noncommittally, unsure what to do with that kind of sincere gratitude. Personally, she thinks he could have asked for help, but she does recall that his ‘big ol’ speech’ about being able to survive on his own was the reason he didn’t. And it’s not like she has much ground to stand on, as far as asking for help goes.

“You’re slightly less of a mess now,” she says generously.

He snorts. “Thanks to you. I really underestimated how difficult this would be.”

“Obviously.” Uncomfortable with his sincerity, she changes the subject as naturally as she’s able. “What are you gonna tell your grandfather?”

“Shit,” he mutters. He sits down heavily on the edge of the bed, the mattress bouncing slightly with the force of it, and sighs. “I dunno. I told him I was exploring the rest of the state, so I guess I should figure out some stuff I woulda seen.”

“Right,” she says eagerly. A task. Tasks are good. She can help him with a task and that will give her something to focus on besides…well, anything personal about him. And anything she may or may not happen to be feeling. Plus, it definitely seems strategically beneficial to get their stories straight. She has no idea who might be asking, but she is not about to admit to spending the past several days alone in a motel room, caring for him. And she has already nearly managed to blow her own cover story. “Right, I’ll help you do that before you go. Which seems to be now.”

He blinks at her, looking like he’s not quite following. Maybe he is still delirious, to some extent. “Go?”

“Back to your grandfather’s,” she says with more patience than he deserves at this point. “That is your plan, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah.” He looks suddenly unsettled, as if he hasn’t spent the morning bathing and packing up his few belongings with a sense of resignation that seems to indicate he is planning to vacate the motel in the very near future. “What um…What are you gonna do?”

She hesitates, unsettled herself now. She has been trying to avoid thinking about this, because if she is ostensibly here to make sure he’s not going to die from this mess he’s gotten himself into, then her job would be done. While he’s not completely better, he’s certainly not helpless anymore. The worst of the symptoms have passed and he’s equipped to handle any minor ones.

And yet. It’s not as though she actually expected to find him in this situation when she made the impulsive decision to come here. But admitting that would mean admitting she came just because she was curious about him, wanted to interact with him again. And she can barely even admit that to herself.

“I’ll stay in the area for a while,” she says, with the most casual half-shrug she can manage. “Just in case you need any more help. It’d be pointless to keep you alive through all this just to have you die on the way back to your grandpa’s.”

It’s extremely difficult to maintain that casual demeanor when his eyes actually light up at her words, damn the man. “Right, yeah. Totally! I’m sure he’d love to meet you.”

"No," she says reflexively, and probably much too fast. "Absolutely not." And then she regrets that response, which is ridiculous. She is not here to meet his family. She is not here to get attached. Those are not things that she does. Will do. Whatever. But then…Then why does she feel so guilty about the fact that she knows her answer will hurt him? Why is she disappointed by the fact that she cannot fulfill the hope she sees in his eyes?

She doesn't want to be the person he expects her to be. The one he knew before. She isn't that person and never will be.

And yet…And yet there is a small part of her that wants him to act as if she were. Wants to know what that's like. Twelve percent of her, maybe.

"No?" Quill echoes, face falling in exactly the way she's predicted. Annoying that she knew precisely how he would respond.

"No," she says again, because it's not like she can change her mind now. "I'm not here to meet your family. I am not your girlfriend."

“I know that.” Why does the pain in his voice and his face make her feel so miserable? She is telling the truth. Better that he get any expectations out of his head as soon as possible. “Girlfriends aren’t the only people who meet someone else’s family. Hell, it’s not like –”

He cuts himself off but she knows what he was going to say; the other version of herself, the one she will never be able to live up to, never met his grandfather, either. Never got the chance. Quill is probably thinking of how much better this would have been if she could be the person he remembers, if he could introduce her to his grandfather as his girlfriend like they’re in some kind of horrible Krylorian romance film.

“I don’t care,” she says harshly, telling herself she is only angry that Quill still has these expectations. Certainly not because she’s hurt by the comparison. “I said I’d stay in the area, not shack up with you at your grandpa’s house. I’ll stay in my ship.”

“Right.” He looks down at the ground, avoiding her eyes, or more likely trying to hide whatever dumb emotions he can’t keep off his face. He’s far too expressive for his own good. She has no idea how he manages to be such a good hustler when the occasion calls for it. “Where, uh – where’s your ship?”

"Empty field, not too far from here. Cloaked, of course." She's actually a bit worried about her ship – Not because she has any particular attachment to it, but because this stupid planet doesn't actually have available docks for spacecraft and she cannot afford to pay Stakar back for any harm that might come to it.

"Hey, mine's in an empty field too!" says Quill, brightening again as if simply discovering that they've done similar things with their vehicles is enough to have restored some of his good humor.

Surely he can't be that affected by her, can he?

Almost as if reading her thoughts, he holds out his hand, palm out. "Empty field high five?"

Gamora rolls her eyes, but obliges him, being careful not to slap his palm too hard. He is, after all, still healing. And also Terran, therefore fragile.

She'd thought it was a relatively small gesture. A safe one. But for some reason his eyes light up again, like she has just done the best thing he's ever seen.

"Hey!" he says with clear, utter delight. "You know what a high five is!"

That is why he’s so damn excited? “Obviously. It’s a Ravager thing, isn’t it? Isn’t that also where you learned?”

His jaw drops in an expression of indignation, but amused indignation, like he’s happy about being offended. “No way! None of my crew had any idea what a high five was til I came along and taught ‘em!”

She frowns, thrown by all the turns this conversation is taking. “Then who taught you?”

“My mom, I guess,” he says with a shrug. “It’s a Terran thing. Yondu said he’d never heard of it before…” His eyes widen and he gasps with another expression of incongruous joy. “I indirectly taught you the high five!”

“Because you think you taught all the Ravagers?” she asks skeptically, definitely not fighting a smile.

“I know I taught all the Ravagers!” he exclaims. “No one I’ve ever met outside Earth has ever known what it was without being taught.”

She crosses her arms over her chest as if that will keep her amusement at bay. “You said your crew was exiled. How could they have spread the high five to the other factions?”

“I know at least a couple of ‘em were still in contact with the other Ravagers,” Quill says, an infuriating smirk on his face. “So, unless there was some other Terran who was kidnapped by the Ravagers to teach ‘em this kinda stuff, pretty sure that was me.”

She leans forward in the chair, resting her chin in her hand as she meets his gaze and arches an eyebrow. She can’t say why, but this feels like a challenge. And one that is…fun. “Maybe there is.”

Gamora expects him to argue, if only good-naturedly. He argued more than good-naturedly early on, when they had first met – well, again. He had tried to claim then that he was the only true Ravager between them, and for a moment she thinks he might get territorial like that again. Instead he just smiles in a way that is oddly soft. In a way that reminds her of her stupid silver abdomen yet again. “I guess you would know better than me.”

It ought to annoy her, that he isn’t taking the challenge as she’s expected. It would be much safer to be annoyed. But she finds herself captivated by his gaze, by the soft warmth in them. By the way this moment feels like it’s about much more than Ravager or Terran traditions, even if she has no way to articulate what else it’s about.

“There isn’t,” she whispers, struck by the sudden need to be sure he knows that they are, in fact, connected in this way.

His smirk transforms into a softer, almost tender smile. It matches the soft tone of voice he’s suddenly taken on when he says, “Oh. Good. Somethin’ unique about me.”

There are far too many unique things about him: the way his hair curls, particularly that one piece that is currently insisting on falling forward over his brow; the depth of emotion he lets shine through his eyes, his expressions; the gentleness in him, despite all he’s been through; the warmth he makes bloom across her abdomen.

The extremely dangerous way he’s making her feel. When did she lean so close to him? She could count his eyelashes if she wished. Which she does not.

“We should go,” she says, standing so abruptly that she nearly knocks the chair over. “I’ll help you figure out what to tell your grandfather on the way.”

“Oh–yeah,” he says quietly. “Leaving. Okay.”

If the soft expression on his face has changed, she will never know because she refuses to lift her eyes, making a show of examining the room for stray belongings. She needs to get the hell out of this small, enclosed space with this man; it’s doing things to her that she does not appreciate.

The fact that her abdomen had already been betraying her before she came here is one she studiously ignores.

It feels weird, being back at his grandpa’s house.

Weirder, even, than the first time. Before things had felt much easier than expected; he’d been much more welcome than he’d hoped. It had been a relief, discovering that he still had that connection here. That he could be – well, if not entirely honest about his life, at least mostly truthful.

Plus, there’d been the age-old social lubricant helping him out: alcohol.

Now he can’t tell his grandfather the truth of where he’s been. Now he has to paste on a smile and tell stories, put all of his hustling skills to good use. He’s confident that he can keep up the charade of everything being perfectly fine, because he’s confident that he can bluff his way out of any situation anytime.

It’s just that it feels…wrong, misleading his grandpa. He’s here trying to make amends, to be a better person, and yet here he is, making up stories about his awesome adventures over the past several days.

And a not insignificant part of him is still thinking about Gamora. Wondering where she is, whether she made it back to her ship okay. Whether she actually will stay in the area, or if this is the beginning of another long stretch of no contact from her.

Be grateful, he reminds himself — which he is; grateful that he’s able to have any contact with her at all. Even if she wants nothing to do with him after this, he will be grateful that she’s out there somewhere, doing what she wants to do. Whether or not that involves him.

“Did you see anything outside Missouri?” Grandpa asks, reminding him that he’s supposed to be recounting his fictional adventures right now. Odd, to be making up mundane stories when his real life sounds so much more unbelievable.

“Didn’t even stray that far outside St. Charles,” Peter says, because lies are more believable the closer they are to the truth. “Went to St. Louis, saw that big arch. Went to the zoo and the botanical gardens there. Earth has some real pretty plants.”

This story doesn’t exactly help him stop thinking about Gamora, since she helped him come up with his fake itinerary. Right before she ordered him not to restock his grandfather’s liquor cabinet, because she didn’t trust him. Which hurt but was not uncalled for. He wouldn’t trust himself, either.

“Oh, Darla loves the botanical gardens,” Grandpa says, which makes Peter grateful that it’s late enough for Grandma Quill to have already gone to bed. He did not research the gardens well enough for an in depth conversation with someone.

“Oh, yeah?” he asks. This is one of the techniques he’s learned for hustling, particularly when he doesn’t know enough about the subject at hand – ask the mark for their own opinions and experiences, get them talking by showing interest, then say things that feel relatable. It’s a great way to earn trust and learn valuable information that he can use strategically later. It’s just that even thinking about his grandpa as a mark right now is making his chest ache. But hey, these are the consequences of his own stupid actions. He’s not here to make his grandpa worry about his drinking problem. “It’s real pretty this time o’ year. What’s her favorite part?”

“The butterfly house,” Grandpa says immediately. “I like to tease her about it, ‘cause she says she’s goin’ to see the flowers but we both know she’s goin’ for the butterflies. I think she could spend the whole day just sittin’ there watching them, if I didn’t eventually drag her out of it. Too damn hot at my age.”

“Yeah!” Peter says brightly, as if he has any idea what a butterfly house is. A house like this one that someone has filled with butterflies? A tiny house built for butterflies? Probably not, since Grandma Quill apparently spends time in there. Still, best to keep it vague. “I never knew those existed before! We definitely don’t have ‘em in space.”

“Figured you’d have everything out there,” Grandpa says, still congenial, so apparently he hasn’t said anything majorly wrong. “Any other planets have butterflies?”

This, thankfully, he knows. “Nothing they call by the same name, but tons that just look like ‘em! Lots of animals that look the same across all kindsa planets, actually.” He leans back in the porch chair, hands behind his head, fully prepared to steer this conversation back into safe territory for the rest of the night.

“How ‘bout I grab us a couple beers?” Grandpa asks, standing up and neatly shattering all of his illusions of having any control over the situation.

“Oh, no, that’s okay,” he says quickly, trying to sound casual. “I already drank enough of your beer the first few days I was here, I don’t wanna drink it all.” Not to mention the liquor cabinet he’s still gonna have to restock at some point…

Grandpa just snorts and waves his hand dismissively. “Nonsense, this beer is dirt cheap.”

He swallows, scrambling to come up with an excuse when all he really wants to do is say yes, please. Just one beer can’t really affect him that much, anyway. Surely, a couple days of withdrawal won’t completely wipe out his tolerance. He can handle one drink.

He’s just opened his mouth to respond, not even sure whether he’s going to say yes or no, when there’s a loud knock on the front door.

Peter nearly jumps out of his skin, adrenaline running so damn high that the knock might as well have been an explosion. Gods, he thought he was doing better.

He was doing better, at least with the delirium and the withdrawal. And even the cravings had felt manageable, when they'd been leaving the motel. Making up details of his supposed adventures in Missouri had helped too, right up until he'd learned that there's beer in the house. He can picture where it will be in the fridge, can hear the sound of the bottle popping open, can feel the warmth of it sliding down his throat, dulling the sharp edges of the world. It would be so easy to say yes, to –

Peter mentally shakes himself and looks at his grandpa. "You expecting someone?"

Grandpa shakes his head, frowning a little. "Not unless Darla made plans and forgot about 'em again." He says it lightly, but there's an unmistakable note of worry in his tone. Abruptly, Peter remembers what he's learned about his biological grandma and the way she'd forgotten nearly everything at the end.

Meanwhile, the knocking isn't going away. In fact, it's reaching an alarming volume, like someone might actually be trying to break down the door.

“I’ll see who it is,” Peter says firmly, concerned at what might befall his grandpa if there’s someone threatening on the other side. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.” He’s annoyed at himself for leaving his blasters in his backpack, but he does slip a small knife from the hidden sheath in his boot on his way to the door.

“I’m coming, hold yer horses!” he yells at the literally shaking door. If the curtains weren’t drawn over the windows, he would peek out to assess the situation; as it is, he’s worried the person is going to lose what little patience they have if he waits much longer. Positioning himself so he’s mostly behind the door, knife held at his side, he pulls it open quickly.

“Do you have any idea what time —“ He cuts himself off, jaw dropping at the sight that greets him.

Standing there, fist still raised to knock — more like assault — again, is Gamora. A rather irritated Gamora. “What took you so long?” she asks, shouldering her way past him while he stands there like a useless lump.

Did he accidentally already give in and drink a bunch of beer? Is he hallucinating again? She’d told him only a matter of hours ago that she wasn’t coming here, wasn’t going to meet his family. Surely she can’t be here, standing in his grandpa’s living room, glaring at him like he’s done something rather rude — like she isn’t the one who nearly broke the door down.

"Wha –" Peter blinks, still having trouble breathing, much less forming words. It might be a residual effect of the withdrawal. Or it might just be the effect of being in Gamora’s presence, especially when he wasn’t expecting it. When he's just been resigning himself to the fact that he might not see her again for a good long time. "It's nearly midnight! And it's not like I was expecting–"

"Well you should have been," Gamora cuts him off, a strange edge to her voice that he can't quite read. It's…pressured somehow. Not quite like she thinks they're in danger, but there's definitely an urgency to it that doesn't seem to fit the situation. "I told you I was just going to go check on my ship and then I'd meet you here. If you thought it was going to be too late for that, you should have told me."

"What?" Peter repeats, feeling like an idiot. None of what she's saying makes any sense. The part of his brain that's grasping for reason thinks that she's wrong, but…well, it's Gamora. And it's not like he's been in his right mind recently. "You said you were gonna–"

"Check on my ship," she repeats, louder. "And then meet you here. Like we discussed."

Her eyes are wide, brows raised almost like she’s surprised but it doesn’t quite look natural. Then she tilts her head minutely towards the back of the house and glares at him even harder, and it finally clicks: she’s trying to tell him something without actually saying it.

If only he wasn’t too dazed to figure out what that is.

“Meet me here,” he repeats slowly, watching as relief passes briefly over her face. So he hasn’t completely lost his ability to read her, at least, even if it took him far too long to realize what she was doing; she’s never exactly been subtle. “Right. Which we definitely talked about.”

“Obviously,” she says, then reaches past him to close the front door, since he’s still standing in front of it like a dumbass. She lowers her voice to a whisper now that she’s standing much closer to him – he can feel her breath against his face when she speaks: “I want your grandfather to think –”

“Pete?” Comes said grandfather’s voice as he steps into the room, causing Gamora to jump away from him, hand going behind her back, though at least she doesn’t draw her sword.

“It’s okay,” Peter says quickly, mostly to his grandpa but a little to Gamora. “Grandpa, this is uh–this is Gamora.” He gestures stupidly to her, as if he might not know who he’s talking about.

"Hi," says Gamora, dropping her hand with a deliberate slowness and relaxing into a casual posture that's gotta be a product of her time with her Ravager crew. It's disconcerting, one of those incongruities that makes it painfully clear she is not the same person he knew before. Still, she's here, and he can't help thinking that she looks good standing in his grandpa’s living room.

"Gamora," says his grandpa, looking back and forth between the two of them for just one more moment of confusion before it clicks. Peter can practically see all the pieces fall into place, and he spends half a second wondering whether his own expressions are this obvious. "Oh, yes, Gamora. Well, ain't it a pleasure to meet you after all."

Gamora nods to him and then turns back to Peter, resting one hand on her hip. "You know, it's not very nice trying to surprise people like that. Especially not when I'm sure your grandfather was surprised to see you in the first place."

"Surprise?" Peter repeats dumbly. "I wasn't tryin' to surprise anyone…"

It certainly surprises him when his grandpa takes a step closer and claps him on the shoulder, grinning. "It's okay, Pete. I could tell you weren't tellin' the whole truth about what you've been doin'."

“Wha–you could?” he asks incredulously. Is he losing his ability to hustle now, too? Or maybe Gamora and his grandpa are in on this together, some kind of super elaborate prank. The Ravagers love pranks, and Gamora loves challenges, so he can totally see her being into that. Though he still thinks it’s more likely that he’s laying in that dingy motel room bed, hallucinating all of this.

“Sight seein’ all on your lonesome, huh?” Grandpa shakes his shoulder a little, an affectionate gesture that reminds him absurdly of Yondu. “You coulda told me you wanted to see your girlfriend, you know?”

Peter freezes with panic – this is the last thing he needs, for his grandpa to scare Gamora off with this kind of talk. “Oh, I wasn’t – she didn’t –”

“Mean to barge in,” Gamora finishes for him, her hand gripping his forearm. “I wouldn’t want to impose if you don’t have room.”

“Nonsense!” This time, it’s his new grandma who answers, coming in from around the corner in a thick, fuzzy robe. Despite the fact that they must have just woken her up, she’s got a wide, genuine smile on her face. “Any friend of Peter’s is welcome. Nice to meet you, dear. I’m Darla.”

Peter continues to panic, absolutely certain that he needs to do something to stop this misunderstanding in its tracks before Gamora ends up stabbing everyone. If only he could get his brain and his feet and his mouth to work together.

“Nice to meet you, Darla,” says Gamora, in a tone that’s so sweet, Peter nearly laughs. It’s not that he doesn’t know she can be genuinely kind and caring, it’s just that since meeting…well, this her, Gamora has refused to acknowledge that part of herself, much less show it.

But here she is, showing it now, like it’s perfectly natural. And maybe it is, if she’s learned to hustle with the best of the Ravagers. But it’s still adding to the sense of absurdity Peter is experiencing, to the suspicion that he’s actually still unconscious.

And then she steps forward and hugs his grandma, as though she hasn’t always hated being touched by strangers.

The Ravagers have always been big on casual touching, so perhaps she’s developed an immunity.

“I wish Peter had told us you were coming,” Darla says when she pulls away from the hug, glaring at him while smiling, letting him know she’s not actually mad. Probably. “I would have had tea prepared.”

“Oh, I don’t want you to go to any trouble,” Gamora says easily, sounding for all the galaxy like she’s been raised on the same midwest manners. “I understand if you don’t have room for me here –”

Grandpa interrupts her this time. “Of course we have room for you. There’s a daybed in the office if you’d prefer a separate room from Peter’s…?” He trails off with a question in his tone, and Peter nearly sighs out loud in relief; finally, Gamora will be able to set the record straight without his family pushing her to the point of anger about the whole girlfriend thing.

Gamora, of course, isn’t about to prove him right anytime soon. “I’m more than happy to share with Peter.” She turns to him with that same overly wide smile she’s been giving his grandparents. Despite the fact that he recognizes it as not completely sincere, she still manages to dazzle him with how gorgeous she is when she smiles. “Why don’t you show me there now? We can let your grandparents get to sleep.”

He gapes at Gamora, no idea what to say or do right now. It seems like she wants to share the room with him for whatever reason, and seems to want his grandparents to think their relationship is more than what she’s been insisting to him that it isn’t. Unless she’s expecting him to deny it anyway? Trying to figure this out on his own feels impossible, and yet depending on her for the answer feels like the exact opposite of learning to swim or whatever he’s trying to do.

After a few moments of him not responding, she lays a hand on his arm. “It’s all right. Your grandparents clearly know that we’re together.”

“And we know you’re both adults,” his grandma says. Then she sends a meaningful wink in his direction, which sets his face ablaze.

“Come on, Peter,” Gamora says firmly, through her pasted on smile. “I’m tired and I’m sure your grandparents are, too.”

He looks into Gamora’s eyes, where he’s always – when he’s with her, anyway – been able to look to find his way in uncertain situations. He may have no idea what’s going on, or why she’s doing this, but her eyes, at least, seem clear and sure. Even the first time he met her, after just a day or two, he’d sensed something in her he could trust; someone he would follow to the ends of the universe.

“You got it, Gamora,” he says with a soft smile. “Right this way.” He clasps her hand gently in his to take her to his room – their room now, he supposes. It must seem to his grandparents like he’s the one leading her, but he knows who the shepherd is between the two of them.

Chapter Text

Peter is still not entirely sure what’s happening, even as Gamora closes the bedroom door behind herself and takes in the small guest room where he’s been staying. Everything feels surreal, like it might actually be a dream or hallucination.

Maybe it would be better if it was, because then she wouldn’t truly be seeing the complete mess he’s made of this room in the short time he’s been occupying it. Then again, if it’s real, he probably shouldn’t just be standing here mutely as she looks at it.

He clears his throat and tries to retrieve any remnants of his Star-Lord Charm. He is, after all, good at that even when it’s one hundred percent an act. “Did you uh…get used to sharin’ a room?”

Gamora turns toward him from where she’s been surveying the room and crosses her arms. “You think this is about what I want?”

Well yes, he does? Particularly given that he’s expressed no preferences here. He’s actually tried to clarify the situation so that she wouldn’t get stuck in these awkward circumstances, but she’s persistently torpedoed that effort, presumably because it was what she wants.

He tilts his head. “No. ‘Course not. It’s about…me?”

“Obviously,” she says dryly. “What else could it be?”

“I dunno,” he tells her. He could come up with about a thousand guesses, but most of them feel far more hopeful than he wants to let himself imagine; plus, his head is already pounding from the whiplash of all of this. And the lack of alcohol. This would be easier with alcohol. “One second I’m trying to set my grandparents straight about our situation cause I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable and the next you’re switchin’ it all up!”

“Keep your voice down,” Gamora hisses. “Where is your Terran holo? Play some music so they don’t overhear us.”

“Didn’t know this was a damn clandestine mission,” he mutters, pulling his phone out and just pressing play on the first song it suggests, turning the volume low enough not to disturb his grandparents' sleep.

Got lost in a familiar face staring back at me
And those sunken eyes, they’re like a time machine

Gamora takes a tiny step closer so he can hear her above it. “And I didn’t spend all this time helping you go through withdrawal just for you to end up passed out drunk on your grandfather’s floor.”

Now he’s really glad he didn’t say any of his guesses out loud. “Hey! That’s…probably fair.”
"So." She gestures vaguely, the same way she’s been looking around the place. "Shared room."

Peter nods slowly, trying to swallow down his guilt over the fact that she’s felt the need to be here to watch him, when that was a thing she didn’t want to do earlier. For a moment he considers trying to argue with her again, to claim that he doesn’t need this kind of support. But then he thinks about the beer his grandpa was trying to offer him right before she arrived. And about how difficult it was to turn down then, not to mention the fact that now the knowledge of its location is present in the back of his mind, like a small time bomb. So, she isn’t wrong about the fact that he needs someone to watch his back for the moment. At least she cares enough about him to not let him relapse. So that’s cool. “Thanks for not ratting me out to my grandpa.”

“Of course I won’t,” says Gamora, and he thinks he might hear the smallest, subtlest note of hurt in her voice, despite the fact that she’s trying to hide it. He probably ought to feel guiltier about the surge of hope he feels from both her statement and that realization.

He offers her a small, genuine smile. “When you came bursting in all dramatically, I didn’t know what to expect.”

"Knocking on the door is dramatic?" she counters. “I thought it was a typical part of Terran culture.”

“It is the way you did it,” he teases. “I thought you were gonna bust the door in”

She sniffs haughtily. “Terran architecture is appallingly flimsy, if that is all it would take.”

“That is the door’s fault, yeah,” he says fondly. He rubs the back of his neck, uncertain what to say or do now that they’re here. Even though he understands her performance downstairs better now, he still feels like he’s two or three steps behind her. “So that’s why you came here? Cause you were worried I’d drink again?”

She nods once, firmly, arms crossed over her chest as if daring him to argue. “I should’ve been more strategic in the first place, but I didn’t realize how high the relapse rate is for alcoholic Terrans until my sister pointed it out.”

“Good call there,” he admits, even as shame crawls its way up his spine, both at the fact that she doesn’t trust him and the fact that she’s justified; he was probably about two minutes away from relapsing before she burst in. “I feel real itchy for a drink, so I can hardly blame people for giving in.”

Gamora looks him up and down. “You’re hiding it well.”

“Not to brag, but I got a lot of experience hiding this,” he says with exaggerated bravado. He narrowly resists the urge to do finger guns.

"Will you tell me?" she asks, with that concerned intensity that feels so incredibly familiar. "If you're tempted? You don't have to tell anyone else, but tell me."

He’s doing his best not to assume anything about her but really, for all that she might be on a different path and have different experiences, he still recognizes all those core parts of her. She can be her own person and still be…well, true to herself in some universal Gamora way, right?

“Yeah,” he breathes, hope clawing at the space behind his sternum even as he tries to tell it to chill the hell out. He’s always told her things he never told anyone else and he’s missed that so much. Sure, he doesn’t love having to tell her that his addiction is still alive and well, but it’s a kind of intimacy he never expected to have with her again. “I assume you mean more than like, the constant itch? Cause that’s always.”

She considers. "I don't know. It seems like I should be aware of that too."

“I’m gonna end up telling you that every coulpa minutes,” he warns her, but he can’t stop smiling. No expectations, he reminds himself, and yet…and yet she’s here. She came here even when he’s not at risk of dying from the withdrawal, just because she doesn’t want him to relapse. She hasn’t even used Nebula’s concern as an excuse for doing so – and he’s not entirely convinced Nebula was the reason she ended up in that motel in the first place.

“Well, don’t get annoying about it,” she tells him, her nose twitching in an obvious tell that she’s trying not to smile. He is absolutely not going to insinuate that he recognizes that.

“I guess you can always stab me if you get tired of it,” he says instead.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she says, her smirk unmistakable now as she reaches out and pokes him between the ribs with one finger, lightly enough to make him giggle but firmly enough that he doesn’t squirm.

“Tired of it already?” he asks, then laughs louder when she pokes him again, this time on the other side. “I haven’t even felt like drinking! Not in the past two seconds, anyway.”

Gamora arches an eyebrow, holding her finger like she’s threatening him with it, as if she doesn’t just look super adorable. “Good. Just demonstrating.”

“Oh, gotcha,” he says, still giddy from the simple fact that she’s touching him. And that even if it isn’t exactly affectionate, it’s also not for a reason that’s strictly necessary. Not like when he was so sick that her only choices were to support him or to deal with even more dire consequences. So this has to mean something, right? “Thank you, I mighta forgotten.”

"I did hear that Terran memory can be flimsy," says Gamora, taking another half-step toward him, still brandishing her finger. All at once, he realizes that she’s wearing her rings again. That she must not have lost or sold them like he’d assumed when he’d first seen her on the Bowie with her Ravager crew. It’s simultaneously jarring and familiar, another sign that maybe she isn’t quite as different as she thinks.

“Nebula is really spreading shit about me,” he says, pretending to guard his sides. So okay, maybe they’re both using Nebula’s intervention as a convenient excuse.

She pokes him in the middle of his belly. "Yep."

“Oh, no!” Peter squeals, moving his hands there.

Gamora goes for his sides again, and even as he finds himself growing breathless with laughter at the continued onslaught, he can’t help thinking this must be because at least a small part of her wants to be touching him. She’s more than proven her point otherwise.

“This is gonna make the stabbing mean less as a deterrent, you know,” he says, because he can’t help but tease her even though he doesn’t want her to stop at all.

“I’ll just do it harder then,” she says, then her eyes widen a split second later. A beautiful, dark green blush rises to her cheeks to match the heat in his.

He lets his arms fall from his sides slowly, putting them behind his back in a deliberate show of trust. “Maybe that’ll make it tickle less, then.”

“Will it?” she murmurs, taking a tiny step closer and looking up at him through her lashes. She’s close enough he could count them, if he weren’t so busy being hypnotized by her eyes. “That’s not a normal reaction to being stabbed.”

“Must be a Terran–thing!” he says, letting out the last word on a shrieking laugh because she’s once again poked him right in the stomach.

“Shh!” She scolds, swatting at his shoulder and lowering her voice to a hiss. “Unless you want your grandfather to make assumptions!”

He guffaws, amused but obligingly lowering his voice. “This is your fault: you tickled me! And you’re the one who insisted on sharing a room.”

"Oh, I intended for him to assume we're -- together," says Gamora, with that casual sort of bravado that’s at least a bit false…but also…Also he thinks he hears something more in it. Or maybe that’s the near-delusional hope he can’t ever seem to fully extinguish.

Peter tries not to flush even more with noticeable pleasure. “Then the loud giggling can only help.”

"Well yes." She blushes too, then runs her gaze over the length of his body in a way that makes him feel hot all over. He is really, really trying not to jump to conclusions here – not based on his past knowledge of her counterpart, or on anything he might hope to be seeing in her current actions. But he’s felt that very specific interest in her gaze several times now, and it’s getting to be nearly impossible to deny. Even if she were a complete stranger, he’s pretty sure he would recognize this kind of chemistry, try as she might to hide or deny it. "But -- do you want him making assumptions about what we're doing right now?"

Knowing —assuming, he supposes — how intimate she considers sex and nudity, he sobers slightly and nods. “Good point. I don’t wanna be rude.”

“Exactly,” Gamora says, with clear relief. She doesn’t say anything else, though she continues to look at him, and stand close to him, and the dark green blush on her cheeks doesn’t fade even after several silent moments.

He shifts from one foot to the other, feeling as if he should do something to make her feel more comfortable, only he’s still so unsure how to act around her now. Not that he had any idea how to act around her the first time around either, with the Guardians newly formed and his heart newly awoken with love for her, like a preteen with his first crush. He kind of feels like that again.

“So, um–” He clears his throat. “How do you want to–?” He gestures awkwardly back at the single bed in the room, then rubs the back of his neck, realizing that’s probably not the most comfortable question. “There’s no chair in here, but I can sleep on the floor.”

“No, you can’t,” she says immediately, hands on her hips. “You’re still recovering, Quill, you are not sleeping on the hard floor.”

Relieved that she at least hasn’t insisted on taking the floor herself yet, he nods. “I know we didn’t exactly sleep at the same time in the motel or anything, but sharing that room wasn’t too bad, right? We can totally share the bed, too.”

Gamora is quiet for a moment, her gaze shuttering though he can see the muscles in her throat and jaw moving. He can’t tell whether that’s good or bad, though – Whether her reaction indicates an immediate aversion or something…else. Something she might not want to admit to herself. There he goes with the wishful thinking again.

On the other hand, it’s really, really hard to completely dismiss the possibility that she might feel something for him when all of his hopes were validated before. When he believes that the parts of her he fell in love with – that fell in love with him – are still here, memory and experience be damned.

“That would be – tolerable,” she says finally. “Since there isn’t much room in here for another solution.”

Peter nods once, firmly, forcing himself not to break into the shit-eating grin that’s threatening. He also absolutely does not allow himself a fist pump. He does, however, hold his hand out for a high five. “Deal.”

Gamora returns it immediately, then snatches her hand back, like she realizes how eager she’s appeared. "If you behave inappropriately, I will stab you for real."

“And I would deserve it,” he says sincerely. He knows he’s been unfair to her, has tried to pressure her into doing and being things she sees as contrary to her own best interest. He is not going to do that again, even if it kills him.

She nods once, firmly, but doesn’t say anything else.

Again, Peter wracks his brain for the right thing to say in this situation. He used to be so good at being smooth and charming and making people feel at ease; that was always an act, though, is the issue, and he’s never been able to keep up that kind of act with Gamora.

“Do you want first use of the bathroom?” he asks, finally remembering that part of the bedtime routine.

“Maybe if I knew where it was,” she points out, making him laugh. He’s certain she could find it in half a second if she wanted to, but he’s not about to pass up the chance to spend any extra time with her. He can even be a decent host.

“Let me give you the grand tour,” he says with a regal half-bow, relishing the way her lips twitch in response. “Right this way.” He steps around her, opening the bedroom door and gesturing to the door directly across the hall. “It’s the guest bathroom, so we don’t have to worry about sharing it with my grandparents.”

She looks at the door, then at him, and raises an unimpressed brow. “I expected a lot more out of a grand tour.”

“Well…” He pauses, scratching the back of his neck again. He has always wanted to impress Gamora. Had even gone so far as to tell her things that were not exactly true, early on. Well, early on the first time. He may have…embellished things a little, showing her around the Milano. And telling her about Earth. He could do that again now, if he wanted. He thinks she would believe him, or at least believe him as much as she did then. But he finds that he doesn’t want to, because this is different, and it isn’t just her that’s changed. He is different now too. The past two years have worn some of the shine off the classic Star-Lord Charm, to be sure. But also there might be a part of him that’s just…outgrown the need for some of it.

“There’s not much more to see, honestly. My grandpa’s — grandparents’ — room, but they’re in it now. You saw the living room and the kitchen. The backyard is pretty, I’ll show you that when it’s light out.” She’ll like that, he thinks. At least, assuming she still appreciates flowers and plants.

She nods. "All right."

He tries for a few seconds to think of something else to show her that might impress her, but comes up blank again. “Do you have enough clean clothes? Or anything else you need?”

“I have all I require,” she says simply.

Alright, he thinks, that’s his fault; it took months the first time for her to ask for things that were not absolutely necessary for her survival, and sometimes not even those, seeing it as a sign of vulnerability to admit to needing anything. As much as he’s trying not to assume things about Gamora now based on Gamora then, they do share the same first thirty years of life experience. It would hardly be a surprise if this reaction was the same.

“Well, lemme show you where stuff is,” he says casually, taking two steps to lead her into the bathroom and flip the light on. “Cause the Terran bathroom situation is a little different than on ships.”

“I believe I am capable of determining which of these things is the toilet,” Gamora says dryly, but she follows him inside and watches him expectantly.

“Yeah, the toilet works basically the same,” he admits. “The sink is important, though.” He turns the faucet on, then shows her the liquid hand soap that apparently smells like clean linen. “Terrans still rely on water for washing their hands after. There’s no light tech or anything here to sanitize otherwise. I’m sure you noticed that in the motel bathroom, too.”

She makes a face. "I did. Primitive.”

He shrugs a shoulder. “I know. The shower is nice, though, ‘cause Terrans use water for everything and they don’t ration it like we gotta do on ships. You turn this handle to make it hot and this one makes it colder. Towels are here. Oh, and you’re welcome to use the soap and stuff that’s in the shower, my grandparents said it’s here for guests. Terran hospitality thing.”

Gamora looks warily at the shower, though with clear interest. "I have no way to reimburse your family for the expense."

“Oh, it’s not—it’s super cheap here,” he assures her, abruptly remembering how water had seemed an impossible luxury to her before, too. That was a product of growing up on Thanos’s ships and space stations, so there’s no reason to think it will be any different now. “I was afraid of that, too, but the water is like unlimited here.”

She continues to look skeptical. “Unlimited?”

“I mean, I’m sure there’s a limit to most things,” he allows. “Including water. But like — you saw the shower and stuff at the hotel, right? I know you didn’t use the shower but it woulda just kept going if I left it on after I did. Terra is like, mostly water.”

“I assumed you knew what you were paying for,” she says with a shrug. He doesn’t miss the way her eyes keep drifting towards the shower, though.

“I did,” he says casually. “Like, fifty bucks — units — a night for the entire room, which includes all the water use.”

Her eyes widen, then narrow like she’s trying to detect a lie on his face. “That can’t be right.”

“I’ll show you the receipt if I can find it,” he says, then thinks better of it when he realizes he’s not even sure he got a receipt. “Or I’ll have my grandpa show you his water bill. But I’m telling you, there’s no expense.”

“All right,” she says, shrugging and crossing her arms in that way that means — meant, in the past — she’s not convinced but she’s done arguing about it.

He knows better than to push. “Anyway, I’ll uh, leave you to it. We can go grab any of your stuff you left on your ship tomorrow if you want? Or go shopping for Terran clothes!”

"You don't have plans with your grandparents?" she asks. It takes him a moment to process what she’s asked, because he’s been expecting an outright refusal. Instead she sounds…interested.

“I promised my grandpa I’d help his neighbor with her lawn,” he admits. More than a week ago, actually, he thinks with a stab of guilt. His grandpa hasn’t mentioned it again, but he can’t help thinking it’s yet another example of coming back after so many years only to act like a total ass. Ironic how he’s spent his whole adult life thinking that reuniting with his grandfather could only disappoint him, only to realize that he is the disappointment here. “But that should only take like an hour.”

She gives him a concerned look. "In this climate?"

He tilts his head, confused. “What’s wrong with the climate?”

"It's hot," says Gamora. "And you could barely stand up yesterday."

“Oh. That.” He winces. It’s embarrassing having her point this out, though he once again can’t deny the thought that this kind of concern seems to suggest she feels something more than indifference or disgust toward him. “I’m totally fine. All I gotta do is push a mower around.”

“What’s a mower?” she asks, eyes narrowed. “And how hard is it to push?”

“It’s just a machine for mowing lawns,” he says with a shrug. It’s not like he’s ever actually used one before. All his knowledge of them comes from vague memories of seeing other people use them, or comedic mishaps with them on sitcoms. “It’s got blades on the bottom to cut the grass as you push it. It can’t be that hard. Just hard enough that an old lady can’t do it.”

“Then I’m doing it for you,” Gamora says firmly.

As if his ego hasn’t already taken enough of a blow; now she doesn’t even think he has the strength of an elderly Terran. “I’m totally stronger than an old lady.”

“You’re still recovering,” she reminds him. “And likely dehydrated. I don’t need you passing out because you pushed yourself in this heat.”

He thinks – wishfully again, perhaps – that he can hear true concern in her voice, so he acquiesces. “Fine. But I gotta help at least a little.”

“You can explain how to use your outdated Terran machinery,” she says generously.

He huffs out a rueful laugh. “Deal.” He holds his hand up for another high five, which she grants him even though she rolls her eyes at the same time.

"I'll, um, give you some privacy," he says, flushing again. He hasn’t forgotten the near-painful intimacy of having her help him in the shower when he was too sick to manage on his own – both the familiarity of it and the contrast to the times she’s helped him in the past. And it isn’t like he’s about to offer her help in the shower now – he does value his life, much as it might seem otherwise – but it’s still not a situation he ever would have imagined sharing with her even a week ago. "Unless you need anything else?"

She shakes her head firmly. “No, thank you.”

Peter nods and heads back to the bedroom as promised. He looks around, partly to distract himself from thinking about – or worrying about – what’s going on with her in the other room. But also because he hasn’t exactly planned for anyone to see this room. And, okay, Gamora definitely did glance around it earlier, but that doesn’t mean he can’t improve it now. He can at least dump the pile of dirty clothes he’s brought back from the motel into the hamper his grandma’s provided. And, okay, he’s still a little too dizzy to bend over for every stray sock, but he can kick those under the bed.

He pauses halfway through shoving a pair of boxers away because the sound of the shower running reaches his ears. He smiles slowly, perhaps happier than he has a right to be that she’s allowed herself this small pleasure, rather than insisting on going without because she doesn’t need it.

It’s a quick shower, so quick that he’s still shoving stuff under the bed by the time the water cuts off, but hey, better than nothing. He’s in the middle of trying to hide a dirty bowl he’d used for cereal a few days ago into the drawer of the nightstand when Gamora walks back into the room, hair wet and dripping onto her shirt.

She squints at him. “What are you hiding?”

“What?” he asks stupidly. It takes him a second to process the question, distracted by how pretty she looks with her hair wet like that and the water drop that’s sliding down her cheek. “Oh! Nothing. I’m just cleaning.”

“What’s in the drawer?” she asks, not believing him for whatever reason.

His cheeks heat, but he sighs and pulls the drawer open so she can see. “Bowl I forgot to take down to the kitchen.”

She only looks slightly less suspicious. “And under the bed?”

“Do you have x-ray vision or something?” he mutters, though he has to admit that she doesn’t need it, that she has always known him well enough to see through his bullshit. Embarrassing as this might be, it would be worse if that were no longer true. “Some dirty clothes I had thrown on the floor.” So much for impressing her with his quick cleaning prowess.

“Not alcohol?” she presses, and suddenly he understands.

It isn’t just that Gamora is being her naturally suspicious self, or that she’s developed a sudden curiosity in him. She’s come here because she’s convinced he’ll relapse otherwise, and she’s taking that very seriously – as she does every mission she’s deemed important. It’s sort of flattering, in a weird, backwards way. He’s watched her drop everything to save Rocket, a relative stranger. Now she’s apparently decided to do the same for him, in spite of everything.

“No, I swear,” he says vehemently, rubbing at the back of his neck again. “You can look. If you wanna see dirty underwear, I guess.”

"No," says Gamora. "But I'll be watching." She pulls her hair into a loose knot tied around itself.

“I’ll be good,” he says absently, watching her hands; he’s always been amazed by her ability to do that kind of thing with her hair. Plus, she looks so pretty with her hair up. And down.

Realizing he’s been staring and she’s still looking at him with suspicion, he mentally shakes himself. Physically shaking himself still makes him dizzy. “Are you uh, okay in here if I shower real quick?”

“Go,” she tells him. “But I’m keeping the bedroom door open, so I’ll see if you sneak down to the kitchen.”

“It’s almost like you don’t trust me,” he says lightly, with offense he’s only trying to make sound feigned. He wouldn’t trust him either, but it still hurts.

She shrugs, unrepentant. “That’s the whole point of my being here.”

“I know, I know,” he sighs. As much as it pains him that the only reason she’s here is because she doesn’t trust him not to relapse, he remains incredibly grateful that she’s here at all. He gathers up some clean clothes – from his bag, not even from the floor, so that’s a step up from what she’s seen before. “Bathroom and back. No detours.”

She grunts in acknowledgment, definitely a Ravager habit she’s picked up. It’s cute on her.

He hurries to the bathroom before he can tell her that.

He rushes through his shower too, definitely not because he’s afraid she’ll decide to up and run while he’s in there. Or disappear. Or it’ll turn out that he really is still lying on a shitty motel bed, hallucinating. Worrying that she might be in the next room being disgusted by his dirty laundry is hardly the most romantic of fantasies, though. It’s possible. Real. And she’s here when that’s all he’s wanted for such a long time.

Those thoughts make him hurry even more, wanting to get back to her as soon as possible. He takes the time to brush his teeth though; no way he’s gonna have gross breath if they’re sharing a bed. Not that he expects… He just doesn’t wanna be gross.

He knows he doesn’t need to give her warning that he’s done, given her enhanced hearing, but he opens the bathroom door slowly anyway before coming back into the bedroom.

Gamora has made herself comfortable while he’s been gone, and she makes no attempt to hide it. She remains where she is: under the blanket on the bed, leaning back against the headboard, holding his phone in her hands like she owns it.

She arches a brow at him as if in challenge. He supposes another person, or even him at another time, would be upset at someone going through his stuff without permission. But this is him and this is Gamora, lying comfortably in a bed they’re going to share – platonically, but still – using something of his; she could be smashing his phone with a hammer for all he cares.

“Looking for some more music?” he asks casually, turning away from her while he puts his dirty clothing in the hamper to hide how wide he’s smiling.

“If I was, it appears I’d only be able to find advertisements,” she says, her tone flat.

“Terra is real ad-happy now.” When he faces her again, she’s put his phone back on the nightstand and is looking at him expectantly. He crosses his arms, uncrosses them, brushes imaginary lint off of his shirt while he tries to figure out what he’s supposed to say or do. “Do you um…need anything else before we go to bed? Go to sleep, I mean.”

"What are the options?" she asks, sounding mostly curious but also a bit of challenge in her tone.

He shrugs. "Food? Water? More blankets or pillows?" His instinct is to offer her literally anything he’s ever had access to and then some, but he knows that kind of declaration would only weird her out.

“Got a secret food supply in here?” she asks dryly. She’s joking, but if he knows her – and he thinks he does, at least to a point – she probably hasn’t had anything to eat in the past couple of days besides ration bars. Which he knows are perfectly adequate for her nutritional needs, but not at all satisfying.

He also knows she’s unlikely to accept anything else at the moment, but he’s still going to try. “No, but my grandpa said we can help ourselves to anything in the fridge. Terrans do have that technology, by the way.”

For a moment he thinks he sees a hint of temptation on her face, but as expected, she shakes her head. “I am not here to impose.”

“Me either,” he says with another shrug. “My grandpa is super happy to have us here. I was worried about that too, but he’s missed out on so many years of my life that I think he wants to make up for as much of it as possible.”

"Your life," she says pointedly. "Not mine."

He sighs, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. She’s just so goddamn stubborn. “And you’re here as part of my life. I know, I know, that you’re not my girlfriend,” he says quickly, cutting her off before she more than opens her mouth to protest. “But my grandpa thinks you are. Which is your fault, by the way.”

Gamora doesn’t hesitate to roll her eyes. “But I know that I’m not.”

“Even if he knew everything, he wouldn’t want you to go hungry,” he insists. “Neither would my grandma, by the way. First day I was here, she offered me like, everything they had in the fridge. I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t do the same thing in the morning for both of us.”

“We’ll see,” she says with the sort of finality that means she is done with this conversation.

“You know where the fridge is if you change your mind,” he says, not surprised when that doesn’t get a response.

Now out of ways to procrastinate, he makes his way to the other side of the bed and carefully crawls under the blanket without touching her. His palms are sweaty with nerves, and leftover withdrawal symptoms he supposes, even though he knows Gamora doesn’t want…well, him. This is completely platonic. He’s just a man, sharing a bed with a time-displaced version of the woman he loves who has no memory of that love but can mostly stand him now.

Almost as if reading his thoughts, she shifts to stretch out on her side with both hands under her head, watching him intently. He can’t read her expression, much as he wants to, but she looks…not relaxed, exactly, but not terribly uncomfortable either. Curious, more than anything else. Certainly not as anxious as he currently feels – but then again, she has far less investment in the state of things between them than he does.

He mirrors her movement, deciding that is the safest bet, and offers her a tentative smile. "Thanks. For coming here."

She nods, still looking thoughtful. For a moment he thinks she’s going to say something, but then she changes her mind – or maybe he’s misinterpreted to begin with, because she stays silent.

"We can find lotsa good Terran food to make it worth your while," he assures her, already thinking of all the things he knows -- thinks -- she'll love.

"Such as?" she asks, interest apparently piqued.

“Terra has the best pizza,” he says eagerly. “You ever had pizza?”

"No," she admits. "It's always looked unappealing."

“Oh, just wait!” he says enthusiastically. “We gotta get pizza tomorrow. It’s bread and cheese and like, any other topping you want! My mom used to get so much pepperoni — it’s like a spicy sausage thing.” Her nose wrinkles adorably, but she doesn’t comment. Knowing that her aversion to spice before had to do with her enhancements, he feels fairly safe in assuming the same is true now. “We’ll totally skip those. My mom just really liked spicy stuff.”

“Are there Terrans who eat pizza without the spice?” she asks predictably, most likely not wanting to appear weak. Once again, her desire to not appear weak to anyone had been a product of her upbringing when he knew her before, so he’s confident in his assessment.

“Absolutely,” he assures her. “Most pizza isn’t spicy. I liked mine with just plain cheese, but Terrans put just about anything on pizza.”

She nods, the skepticism on her face fading somewhat. “Like what?”

“Any veggie or meat or even sauce,” he says, mentally combing through his hazy memories. There is one kind he remembers being another favorite of his mother’s; “There’s this one kind that has ham – meat – and pineapple – a fruit – on it. It’s real yummy.”

“Cooked fruit?” she asks, interest definitely piqued.

“Super good cooked fruit,” he says eagerly, already considering when he might be able to get some for her. “It’s good not cooked too, super tart and sweet. If you pass me the phone, I can show you.”

She hands over the phone like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and rolls a little closer to him, chin propped in her hand as she waits for him to show her the picture he’s promised. For a moment he has an overwhelming sense of deja vu, feels the stirring of a hundred thousand memories of all the times they’ve shared a holo screen this exact way. Of all the things he’s tried to show and tell her about Earth without actually being here. Of all the times she’s encouraged him to come back for a visit, before Mantis ever even considered the concept. Weird to think that’s part of her legacy too.

Shaking himself back to the present, Peter searches for an image quickly and then turns the screen so that she can see both the exterior of the fruit and what it looks like when it’s prepared for eating. “This is a pineapple. It’s awesome on pizza and by itself and lots of other different ways. But uh, you gotta believe me that you’re gonna want to try it because you’re gonna hate its name if you think about it too hard.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “Oh? Why is that?”

“‘Cause it’s another one of those Terran words that doesn’t make sense,” he says, aware that he’s babbling and that he might regret bringing this up if her reaction is anything like he’s expecting. But, hey, it’s either this or lie in bed next to her thinking about how she doesn’t love him and probably never will. Annoying her is totally better than that. “Wait til you see a pineapple and an apple side by side. They look nothing alike.”

“An apple?” she asks, reminding him once again that even on Terra, he makes Terran references she doesn’t understand.

He quickly types it on the phone and shows her the picture. “A crunchy fruit.”

She frowns as she takes it in for a few seconds. “Then what’s a pine?”

“It’s a kinda tree,” he says, searching for that too and showing her. “But pineapples don’t grow on it.”

She’s only looked at this one for half a second before she lifts her eyes to glare at him. “I hate them all.”

“Nooo,” he says, poorly stifling his laughter. Her reaction is so predictably adorable, he can’t help it. “They taste good. Except the tree, I mean.”

“Their names make my head hurt,” she declares, which sobers him slightly, even though he knows – thinks – she’s exaggerating.

“Then we’ll eat them to punish them,” he assures her. “Slay the fruit, take no prisoners!”

Gamora wrinkles her nose. Adorable. “My sword could take the tree, too. Not that I have plans to eat one.”

“Groot will be relieved,” he says lightly.

Her expression transforms into one of mild horror. “He’s no more a tree than we are the Orgoscope.”

“Gross, Gamora,” he says, giggling. “I don’t wanna eat the Orgoscope either.”

She groans and rolls her eyes. “Now you’re gonna start with the flesh jokes again.”

Peter pulls his most innocent face, delighted at the opportunity to tease her some more. It turns out that teasing her is one of the safer things he can still do. And one of the things that still feels relatively normal between them. “You’re the one who brought it up.”

“I did not,” says Gamora, in that tone that means she’s lying and is doing a very bad job of it, but also knows she’s doing a bad job of it and knows that he knows.

He sputters with amused indignation. “It was like thirty seconds ago!”

She shrugs, the corners of her lips twitching, though that’s her only tell. “Nope.”

He rolls his eyes, affectionate. “Right. I brought up the Orgoscope out of nowhere.”

“Yep,” she says in the same tone. Which, he realizes, is eerily similar to the tone he often uses for this sort of response. She’s definitely copying him, whether she realizes it or not.

“Dunno why I keep doing that,” he says with exaggerated sincerity.

"Probably the delirium," says Gamora, in the dryest deadpan he’s ever heard.

“That side effect that just lasts forever,” he laments.

"Yep," she says again, popping the p the way he often does.

That makes him smile wider. "It was definitely supposed to go away by now. After a couple days, I mean."

She arches a brow. "You don't know when now is? Definitely delirious."

He rolls his eyes dramatically enough to make a younger Groot proud. “You totally know what I meant, Gamora.”

To his surprise, she smirks and nudges his leg very lightly with her foot, so lightly he might have thought he imagined it, were he actually still delirious. “Do I?”

“Unless you’re delirious too.” Tentatively, he nudges her leg the same way she did to him, and doesn’t get stabbed or punched in return.

In fact, she might even shift her legs a little closer to him. “If I understand your delirious reasoning, does that make me more or less delirious?”

Well, that makes his head spin. “I am definitely too delirious to answer that. Also, we gotta stop saying delirious. It doesn’t even sound like a word anymore.”

“Delirious,” she says immediately, predictably. Less predictably, she leans closer so that he can feel her breath brushing against his face as she repeats it several times, as if brandishing a verbal weapon. “Delirious, delirious, delirious.”

“Jus’ making noise now,” he mutters, trying to sound normal even though she’s managing to steal his breath just by being so near. She’s not pulling away, either.

“Delirious,” she repeats. Then, for some unknowable, Gamora reason, she blows air at his face.

He shivers as that makes the hair over his forehead tickle the skin there. Following her lead, he does the same to her.

“What are we doing?” she asks, voice low and soft. She still hasn’t moved away.

“No idea,” he says softly. She’s close enough that the ends of her hair are touching his forearm where it rests on the bed. Close enough to feel her breath, even now that she isn’t intentionally directing it at him. Close enough that he could touch her with just the smallest of movements. It’s agony, knowing that he can’t. Shouldn’t. Respects her far too much to make that kind of assumption, to make her feel any amount of pressure to…be that to him. No matter how much he might miss it. “If I say you started it, you’re probably just gonna say I’m delirious.”

“I might be delirious,” she says instead, surprising him.

Peter opens his mouth to tease her about that, then closes it again when he realizes that she still hasn’t moved away. That she’s actually leaned the smallest bit closer. Her gaze dips to his mouth and then back up again. Then back down, like she can’t quite help herself. Something has shifted – is shifting – in the tension between them. He’s felt this before, he thinks – on Knowhere, a lifetime ago. On Berhert. A different time, debatably a different woman, but he knows in his bones that she’s thinking about kissing him. Wants to kiss him. If he just leans a little closer, just manages to keep the spell between them from breaking –

All at once, he clears his throat and makes himself move away. Because, goddammit, he’s just been doing exactly what he keeps promising her not to do. He’s been assuming. Interpreting her behavior as if he knows her, as if she’s…someone other than herself. And it doesn’t matter how much it hurts, he is not going to break his promise about working on that. “Guess it’s contagious, then. Or you saying the word so much summoned it to you.”

At first, he avoids her eyes while he waits for her response, shame rising like fire in his cheeks about the way he was just thinking of her. Then a few seconds pass in which Gamora neither moves nor speaks, and he hesitantly lifts his eyes to her face to see why.

Is that…hurt he’s seeing on her face? It’s at least confusion or uncertainty. Her brows are creased and her lips are slightly parted as if she’s going to speak but can’t figure out what to say, and her eyes are shining with –

And now he’s doing it again, thinking he can read her face the way he used to. But the thing is…even if he hadn’t known her counterpart, he’s always been pretty good at reading facial expressions. And oh, that is definitely anger he’s seeing on her face now for the brief second before she determinedly shutters her expression and spins onto her back, away from him, and her voice is decidedly sharp when she says: “This conversation is stupid.”

All right, so he has for sure done something wrong. He would be able to read that body language from a complete stranger from five hundred feet away in the dark. “You sure it’s not delirious?” he asks as lightly as he can.

“Go to sleep, Quill,” she says flatly, turning onto her other side to put her back to him completely.

He bites back a sigh, frustrated and confused. Still, whatever he’s done to upset her, surely it’s better than pushing for more than she’s willing to give. Right?

“Gotcha,” he says quietly. “Well, um. Good night.”

No response. He stares at the back of her head for a few heartbeats before giving up and stretching to flip the lamp off. He’s well and completely ruined the good moment they were having. A goddamn Star-Lord speciality.

Chapter Text

Gamora dreams of her homeworld – Of empty fields and fallow land, depleted soil where fertile crops ought to be, dry riverbeds and desert where water once flowed. Some of the images are memories, or at least what feels like memories since she can no longer ever be sure.

But it isn’t just the fields that are empty, isn’t just the absence of precious life-sustaining resources.

The people are gone too, streets deserted and buildings crumbling.

She has lost someone, she knows instinctively, though she cannot say who or where. Just that there is someone she needs to find, here among the ghosts and the ruins and the –

She jolts awake to the sound of her name, momentarily thoroughly disoriented, heart pounding. She reaches instinctively for the dagger she always keeps beneath her pillow, only recalling where – and when – she is when she finds it missing. Only then recalling that she isn’t alone in either the room or the bed. By her own doing.

If not for her time with the Ravagers, she probably would have done bodily harm before regaining enough consciousness to think better of it. But now…Apparently she’s become at least somewhat accustomed to spending time sleeping around others who aren’t looking for any vulnerable moment to attack.

She clears her throat. “Quill?”

It’s still dark in the room, the barest bit of light coming through the window, but her eyes adjust immediately thanks to her modifications. Quill is lying on the other side of the bed on his back, hands laced tightly over his chest, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I’m sorry – I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she asks, alarmed and still very disoriented.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” he whispers. “I just really, really want a beer.”

“I’m not getting you a beer,” she says immediately.

“No, no, I don’t want you to get me one.” He sniffles, which does nothing to slow the tears. She wishes he would stop that; he has no right to make her heart ache like this with sympathy for him. “I want you to not let me get one.”

“Oh. Well, then I’m not going to let you get one.” Since she’s apparently not going to have to get up and fight someone, she falls back onto the mattress again so she doesn’t have to look down at him anymore either.

She can practically feel the sigh of relief he lets out. “Thank you. I wanted to let you sleep but I couldn’t stop myself from going to get one.”

"You know where there's beer?" she asks, alarmed. Certainly she assumed he knew how to get some from a store. Part of her reason for coming here after all was the concern that he would attempt to replenish his grandfather’s liquor cabinet and get himself into trouble that way. But surely he isn’t saying that he thinks he would have been able to leave the house and drive a car somewhere to purchase beer without her noticing?

Does he think that he knows her that well, or that she would be so unaware? Did he know a version of her that had become complacent enough for that to have happened?

“My grandpa offered me some earlier,” he whispers. “I said no but I know they’re in the fridge.”

She sighs. "Fantastic." It’s arguably less alarming than some of the possibilities she’s just been considering, especially in terms of what it says about his beliefs about her. But it does complicate the situation. And it definitely heightens her concern for him, which is really just terribly unfair. She would like it to stop immediately.

He winces. “I know. It’s a real good thing you came here.”

Gamora grunts in acknowledgement. “So what should I do now? To help you?”

“You don’t have to do anything,” he says with a tiny shrug. “I just needed you to be awake so I can’t sneak out.”

“I’m not gonna lie here, awake, and watch you suffer,” she tells him. Aside from the fact that she hates seeing him in pain, inaction makes her think and her thoughts have been betraying her more and more lately. Particularly regarding the man next to her.

He swipes at his cheeks roughly with the back of his hand. “Talk to me, I guess? Distractions help. All I can think about is that beer in the fridge. Like, my brain knows I shouldn’t go get the beer, but my body keeps tellin’ me I need it.”

There are already fresh tears on his cheeks. It really shouldn’t bother her as much as it does. “Tell me about it, then. If talking helps.”

He’s apparently given up on wiping the tears away, because he laces his hands over his chest again, squeezing so tightly she can see his knuckles turning white. “It’s like…you ever have thoughts you just can’t stop thinking? Even though you keep telling yourself to stop thinking them?”

“Yes.” Constantly, around him. Impulses too, like the urge she’s currently fighting to reach over and cover his hands with hers. She almost gives in, but then the memory of him pulling away from her last night after she leaned closer – definitely not about to do something as stupid as kissing him – slams into her mind and she grips the sheet instead.

“It’s not even like I wanna drink to forget right now,” he says, with that naked honesty of his. He could be using that skill to manipulate her – She’s certainly seen him use a heartfelt plea to his advantage, after all. Just like she’s seen him cheat at cards. But somehow…somehow she doesn’t think that’s the case now. She doesn’t want to think that’s the case now. “It’s like—my body just thinks I need it to survive. Like it’s water or air or something.”

"That's how addiction works, isn't it?" she says softly. She’s seen it, though never in a way that made her care as much as this. She’s had the thought that she easily could experience it for herself, if she ever discovers a substance that actually helps with the pain from her modifications. Not that she is looking for one.

“I guess, yeah,” he sighs, wiping futilely at his eyes again. “Fucking sucks.”

"It'll get easier," she tells him, and hopes that's true.

For a moment he smiles – small and a little bit shaky, but absolutely genuine – and she experiences that sensation of impossible warmth in her chest, a softness that again tries to compel her to reach out for him. But then his face falls, breaking the moment. “I dunno what to tell my grandpa next time he offers me a beer. I never turned one down before.”

“And you fear he’ll be suspicious if you do,” she concludes. It’s not a question but he nods anyway, an anxious yet slightly hopeful glint to his eyes as he looks at her, like he thinks she might actually be able to solve this problem. Even though it shouldn’t be her problem, that look makes the idea of disappointing him unacceptable. Nevermind that a few weeks ago she might have taken pleasure in disappointing him.

It only takes her a few seconds to come up with a solution; Ravagers are always ready with a cover story. “Tell him I don’t like it when you drink.”

His eyes widen. At first, she thinks she’s horrified him with her suggestion somehow. He quickly dispels that thought when a huge, amazed grin takes over his face. “That’s brilliant! And it’s not even a lie!”

“Exactly,” she says smugly, failing in her attempt to suppress her own smile. His grows even bigger in response to hers, which makes the heat from her malfunctioning abdomen spread so that it feels as if he’s warming her entire body with just one expression. It’s a disgustingly sentimental thought. Her mind must be addled from being woken so suddenly.

“I shoulda thought of that,” he says after a moment, but he’s still grinning, still looking far too pleased, given the situation. Still affecting her in ways she would rather not acknowledge. She can’t even bring herself to be annoyed with the way he’s semi-crediting himself with that statement.

“Probably,” she teases, and for another few seconds, it’s as though they exist in this ridiculous, small bubble of lightness and warmth. As if they haven’t been brought together by tragedy, by suffering. As if he didn’t still wish she was someone else.

His face falls again almost exactly as she has that thought, almost as if she’s managed to broadcast it somehow. She has just enough time to feel a stab of guilt before he says, “I wish I didn’t know where it was. The beer.”

Nothing to do with her, then. She feels more guilt at that, at her assumption, but it’s overwhelmed by relief. And also worry for him. “Want me to go smash it all?”

“No thanks,” says Quill, though his expression warms again, a hint of his smile returning. “I think that would give my grandpa more questions.”

“I can always pretend to be a scary alien,” Gamora points out. She knows that Terrans are notoriously afraid of the rest of the galaxy. Which, to be fair, has not been helped by any of Thanos’ actions.

That dark thought doesn’t seem to occur to Quill, as he huffs out a quiet sound that’s almost a laugh. “That could be helpful if he discovers the empty liquor cabinet before we refill it.”

“We’re waiting before we do that,” she says quickly. There’s no way she’s letting him around that much temptation right now.

That gets no argument from Quill. “Good call. It’s hard enough just knowing there’s beer here.”

“I’m not letting you near any of it alone,” she says fiercely, telling herself she’s not being caring or reassuring or anything soft like that; it’s definitely a threat.

Not that he takes it that way, judging by the tremulous way he smiles, the way his voice shakes slightly when he says, “Thank you. I thought I could be stronger.”

“I don’t think you’re weak,” she tells him. All right, there’s no way she can pass that off as a threat. A momentary slip.

“I feel kinda weak right now,” he whispers, not quite meeting her eyes. She can see the vulnerability in them anyway, even if she couldn’t hear it plain in his voice. It strikes her that, despite his professed weakness, it takes a great amount of strength to display that kind of vulnerability. More strength than she has.

Still. She is not going to let him be alone in this. Not allowing herself to hesitate this time, she reaches out for his hands, separating them from their tight grip on each other to hold one in hers.

She doesn’t miss the way that he responds to her, the way he moves easily and immediately under her touch, lacing his fingers with hers and holding on so tightly that it would probably hurt, were it not for the difference in strength between them. He was this way with her in the motel, too – implicitly trusting in ways that feel utterly foreign to her. Ways that she has never been meant to deserve.

She’s been telling herself that it’s only because he’s mistaken about her identity, somehow still deluding himself into thinking she is the same as his lost love.

She still believes that, in her gut. But she’s also forced to admit that there are moments now when she doubts it. When she’s started to think that maybe, on some level, he does accept that she is her own person. Maybe he likes her anyway.

Or maybe he’s just lonely and desperate. Much safer to stick with that assumption.

“Still craving beer?” she asks, because she has to say something before her thoughts get any more dysfunctional.

“Better now,” he tells her, and she can see the moment where he considers taking it further, into that false bravado of his. But then he decides against it, biting his lip and meeting her eyes. “But it’s still…there.”

The Gamora he wants her to be would probably know exactly what to do to help him with this, she thinks. Probably would have known how to make him feel better immediately, been confident in her knowledge of him and her own capabilities to solve it for him already, the goddamn beacon of perfection she apparently was.

Not that she’s jealous. Especially not of herself, or a version of herself that she’ll never be. That she lost the chance to become, when she jumped forward in time. That would be absurd.

Nor does she care that she has to admit to Quill that she doesn’t have the answers. “Should we just…keep doing this?” She squeezes his hand briefly, which for some reason makes his lips quirk up again, so she supposes that, at least, was the right thing to do.

“This helps,” he whispers. Then his smile falls yet again. She wonders if it’s as exhausting as it looks, experiencing that emotional whiplash. “I’m sorry, I don’t wanna keep you from getting sleep. I just don’t trust myself right now.”

“This is why I’m here,” she reminds him. Reminds them both.

“Right,” he says, eyes downcast for a second. The fact that her reminder has hit him like this means she was absolutely right to say it. So why does it make her chest hurt?

He recovers quickly, a soft look in his eyes and in the tiny upturn to his lips that makes her chest ache in an entirely different way. “Well, this helps. It’s the laying here doing nothing that makes it hard not to think about drinking.”

The problem, of course, is that she is now out of things to offer, which means that they are back to lying there doing nothing. He has not done anything that could be construed as pressure, of course. He has been – and continues to be – completely honorable about that, now that he seems to have recognized her perspective. And now that the haze of intoxication is lifting, though she suspects that his grief is just as intense as ever. But despite his lack of expectations, despite the fact that he seems perfectly happy to take whatever she is offering, she feels the sense of impending failure if she can’t think of another way to help him.

She racks her brain but has absolutely no idea what more to say. But then it occurs to her that maybe she does know what to do. Touching him – touching anyone, really, aside from an opponent in battle – remains a foreign concept to her. But she’s seen how he responds to it, hasn’t she? She knows how strategic an action it would be. And she’s come here to continue battling his addiction – When has she ever been one to back down from using all available advantages in a fight?

Telling herself that she is only being strategic – as she always has been – Gamora rolls onto her back and reaches for him. “I don’t know what to say. But I can do this.”

At first, he just stares at her with that slightly slack-jawed look of amazement that’s beginning to look familiar to her. It’s like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. She tries not to blush or let it flatter her, reminding herself that it’s because he’s seeing someone else when he looks at her, but it only partially works. Especially since he moves much more slowly than she suspects he would if he were truly seeing her as her counterpart, scooting closer and carefully resting his arm over her torso as if afraid she’s going to snap and stab him at any moment.

Or, she can’t help but think, maybe it’s because he’s giving her time to change her mind if she wants to. It’s a kind of consideration she never would have expected from him, and yet he’s shown it over and over again. He telegraphs his every move and does it slowly, only resting his head on her shoulder after she accepts the rest.

“Thank you,” he whispers, his warm breath brushing her neck to go with the rest of his warm body, radiating heat everywhere they’re touching. His arm, even over her shirt, seems to be making her warmer than the stubborn glow on her abdomen that’s growing stronger at the indirect contact.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” she whispers back, though surely he must be aware of that. She wonders if this feels strange for him – if not wrong per se then at least disorientingly surreal. The way it had felt for her when Nebula – this Nebula – took her hand for the first time, embraced her for the first time. Not unwelcome and not entirely unfamiliar, yet different in a way that’s equal parts intangible and profound.

A shudder runs through him, followed by another, and a couple of choked breaths. For a moment she worries that he is bothered by the way she’s doing this, or by the way she is…Well, the way she is. But then she tilts her head back just far enough to see his face where it isn’t completely concealed against her shoulder and realizes that he’s crying again, his expression a mix of anguish and something that looks like relief.

He catches her looking and sniffles, looking uncertain. “I don’t know what I’m doin’ either. Well – I'm real good at crying, I guess. Got a lot of practice.”

She hesitates for another moment, debating what to say. But it only takes a second before it comes to her. “Well, you are delirious.”

He blinks at her once, twice, then bursts into laughter so loud it startles her. But not in a bad way. It takes considerable effort for her not to smile in response. His laughter truly transforms his already attractive face, and does something to the rest of her that she’s becoming less able to ignore every minute. “Damn, is that why I’ve been crying my whole life?”

“Must be a Terran thing,” she says with as straight a face as she can manage.

“Must be,” he says quietly. Then he sniffles and tries to wipe his damp cheek with his upper arm, which succeeds in smudging some of his tears. Before she can hesitate, she cups that cheek with her hand and gently wipes away the remaining moisture with her thumb, feeling Quill’s breath stutter against her wrist as she does. Her hand lingers there, as she tells herself this is just an extension of using touch to help distract him. It certainly has nothing to do with how surprisingly soft his skin is or the intoxicating look in his eyes, so close to hers.

Her fingers have drifted dangerously close to his lips before she finally catches up with herself and snatches her hand away. She is getting carried away, lost in the strangeness of this situation. That’s all.

“So, we’ll just stay like this until it’s late enough to get up,” she says firmly. “To keep you from relapsing.”

Quill clears his throat, slowly lowering his head to rest against her shoulder again. “Right. Yeah. Th-thank you.”

She nods once. This is strategic, and that’s the end of it. Though she does have to put her hand somewhere, so she lets it rest against his arm. It’s just another sensible action. Totally safe and objective and distant. Just like all of this.

Gamora looks doubtfully at the vehicle in front of them.

It isn’t so much that she knows Quill has been up since the small hours of the morning – She has had plenty of sleepless nights herself and knows that it’s perfectly possible to be functional after one. She also suspects that he has not slept well in years, maybe even longer. So her concern isn’t that he’s too tired to safely pilot a vehicle. It also isn’t the show of emotional vulnerability that she witnessed from him during those same pre-dawn hours. If anything, she thinks of that as a sign of how much he is facing, how hard he’s fighting his inner demons.

No, her concern has nothing to do with his current state. It has everything to do with his skills. Also the fact that this vehicle looks just as ancient as the last one she watched him nearly crash.

“Did your grandfather train you on how to operate this?” she asks skeptically, watching as he tosses the borrowed keys up in the air and then neatly catches them. His dexterity is impressive, and she hates that she’s noticed.

“Nah,” he says dismissively. “No worries, though. I’m one o’ the greatest pilots in the galaxy. I can fly – or drive – anything.”

She arches a brow at him, a deliberately unimpressed look. “Like the vehicle on Counter-Earth?”

That apparently catches him off-guard, judging by the way his jaw drops a little. The keys are already in mid-air again, yet he somehow manages to catch them even though he’s gaping at her. “What – did Nebula tell you about that? ‘Cause if she did, she was just mad that she couldn’t figure out how to open the door.”

She makes a mental note of that to potentially tease her sister about later. “I saw you from your ship. You didn’t exactly seem like an expert, unless it’s customary to drive a car across your neighbors’ front yard.”

There’s a definite blush rising to his cheeks, but he crosses his arms over his chest and levels a challenging look at her. “You see that before or after you went through my backpack?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says immediately, mirroring his posture and willing herself not to blush.

Quill smirks. “That picture just fell outta my backpack, huh? The one that was way at the bottom?”

“Yep,” she says, popping the ‘p.’ If there’s any skill she’s honed with the Ravagers, it’s how to dig her heels in on a lie.

“I don’t care if you went through my bag, you know,” he tells her, surprising her.

Probably it shouldn’t be a surprise, given how open he’s been about everything else. Given the way he seems to trust her implicitly, has trusted her implicitly even when she was giving him every reason not to. Even when she was threatening him, waving a gun in his face, throwing him into a console on his own ship. She’s been telling herself he was stupid for that, mistaken for that. But…he hasn’t been, has he? Because, even when she wanted nothing to do with him, she never intended to harm him. Never wished him harm from anyone or anything else, either. So who is the true deluded one here?

“Good to know,” says Gamora. She files that information away for later, when it might actually be important strategically. But for now, she’s already committed to her lie, even if she has the feeling that he knows she’s lying. Convincing him isn’t the point. Refusing to yield is. “I’ll keep that in mind if I ever do go through your bag. Which would definitely be for the first time, since I didn’t before.”

“Yeah, sure,” he says easily. “Well, I didn’t drive across someone’s lawn then.”

She shakes her head. “I saw you do that. You have no evidence or witnesses for your accusation.”

“You only have yourself!” He grins, looking so pleased one would think she was agreeing with him rather than arguing with him. To her surprise, she realizes she’s smiling as well. She tries to tell herself that she enjoys friendly arguments with her crew as well, but she doesn’t recall feeling quite this much satisfaction from those.

“Fine,” she says, forcing her expression to clear. “You have one chance, because I don’t want to walk. If you can’t do it, I’m hitching my own ride.”

“Deal!” he says immediately, opening up the door and slipping into the driver’s seat. She’s careful to study the way he does it so she doesn’t repeat whatever mistake her sister made on Counter-Earth. There’s no trick to it that she can discern, the door opening when she pulls the handle. This will make it easier to tease Nebula about it later.

The inside of the car looks just as archaic as the outside. It has about as many knobs and buttons and levers as a ship, but all of them look like they came out of the back corner of a run-down junker shop. Her apprehension about Quill’s ability to operate it grows.

He looks around, taking it all in, and lightly touching a few things. He keeps up the facade of nonchalance, though she doesn’t miss the fact that he’s stalling for time as he figures things out. “You hitched a ride before?”

She gives him a look. “What, did you think I walked to the motel? And here?”

He shrugs. “Well I wasn’t really thinkin’ about how you got to the motel. I was just happy you were there.”

“You were just out of your mind in withdrawal,” she amends, not wanting to think about the implications of his claim. He doesn’t really mean it anyway. He means he would have been glad to have had her other, future self there. “And yes, I hitched rides. My sword can be very persuasive.”

Quill snorts, his expression shifting to something that is most definitely suggestive, if not outright lewd. “Hell yeah it can.”

She blinks. Surely he doesn’t find her sword…attractive in that way, does he?

Gamora doesn’t get an opportunity to examine that thought further, though, because Quill finally inserts the keys he’s gotten from his grandfather into what must be the designated slot and turns them. The vehicle roars to life with an alarming amount of noise, including the voice of a familiarly irritating Terran man:

” – reduces the appearance of wrinkles and stimulates hair-growth, we GUARANTEE you will feel ten years younger within the first week of your thirty day risk-free trial! People will notice or your money back! Try Youthfulera today to begin your youthful era again!”

“If you don’t shut that off,” she says conversationally, “I’m going to shoot it until it shuts itself off.”

He laughs, as usual more amused by her threats than anyone ought to be from a daughter of Thanos. “I’m workin’ on it, I’m workin’ on it.” He’s got his tongue between his lips in concentration as he presses and turns every button and knob in this antiquated machine until finally the advertisement cuts off to be replaced by the sound of a song.

I run away with you if things don’t go as planned
Planning big could be a gamble
I’ve already rolled the dice

She finds that her foot is tapping to the beat without her permission and she stills it forcefully before Quill notices. There’s an annoyingly soft look in his eyes that tells her he might have anyway.

“Are you also working on moving the car?” she asks before he can comment.

“Patience, grasshopper,” he says in a weird, low voice, like he’s trying to sound older than he is.

She frowns as she watches him pull a few more levers, wondering if they’re having a translator issue or if she’s just missing something. Either way, she doesn’t like it. “Are you calling me that because grass is green?”

“Wha–no, no,” he says quickly. In his alarm, he does something that makes the car lurch, causing her to brace her hands on the dashboard in front of her. He takes hold of the steering device as they slowly stagger out of the driveway. “It’s from a movie. It just sounds cool.”

“If you crash this thing,” says Gamora, “you will get injured far worse than I will.” Which is a good thing, she tells herself. If she can’t be fully in control of this situation, at least she is better-suited to survive it. It definitely isn’t adding to her concern for him and his Terran fragility. In fact, she has none of that. It would be absurd if she did.

“Well,” says Quill, “guess you shouldn’t be too concerned about it then. Since you don’t care what happens to me, right?” His tone is clearly an attempt at light teasing, but she thinks she can hear an undercurrent of hurt beneath it. Not that she cares. She most definitely does not care. Which is the point.

“Sure,” she says sarcastically. “I don’t care what happens to you. That’s why I stopped you from killing yourself in that shitty motel. Also why I came here to make sure you didn’t relapse the second your grandfather offered you a beer.” Only belatedly does she realize she’s implied that she does in fact care about his safety. And…okay. So maybe she would prefer that he isn’t dead or otherwise terribly injured. That isn’t the same as caring for him, is it?

“You did do those things,” he says softly, far too softly for her liking. Mercifully, they’ve come to a stop at the end of the street, dictated, she’s learned, by the large red sign on the side of the road, and Quill has to pause. “Which way?”

She’d nearly forgotten that she would need to navigate for him, as they’re going to her ship. Thankfully, she made deliberate, mental notes on the way she’d taken to get to the motel, then to his grandpa’s, from there, so she immediately points to the left. Quill steers that way far too quickly; one of the back wheels scrapes against the curb, bouncing the car slightly and causing Gamora to reach up and grasp the handle that’s hanging from above the window.

“Sorry, sorry!” He grips the steering device and gets them quickly in the painted lane on the road, but she doesn’t let go of the handle.

“You were not nearly this bad at piloting the ship,” she mutters.

“Thanks,” he says with a smug smirk. “And I’m still not as bad at this as you were at piloting the Bowie.”

She gapes at him incredulously. “I saved you by piloting the Bowie!”

“Sure,” says Quill, still smirking in that infuriatingly attractive way. “After you almost squished us.” His lips are just the smallest bit crooked at the corners and that combined with his reckless steering gives him a roguish look that has no business suiting him as well as it does. Not that Gamora is into that type of beings. Or any type of beings, in fact. Hasn’t she proven that to herself more than once?

“That had nothing to do with my piloting abilities,” she protests, “and everything to do with your ship being a piece of junk with broken controls.”

“Hey, no slandering the Bowie!” he protests. “She’s easily the least-junk ship we’ve ever had!”

“Least doesn’t mean not junk,” Gamora retorts. “And I’d like to see you do better with jammed controls.”

“They weren’t jammed, actually,” he informs her. “They’re just designed for Groot to pilot. So, actually, she was functioning perfectly well.”

Gamora pictures Groot, with his larger size and strength. Well, that makes sense, kind of. He would probably pull the accelerator clean off an average M-ship without half a thought. But still. “Okay, then how do you expect anyone else to pilot it? Like, say, when Groot happens to be on a planet that’s about to explode with no way off.”

“There’s a switch that changes the strength required,” he tells her. “I didn’t exactly have time to describe it to you when we were, you know, on an exploding planet and trying not to get flattened.”

That also makes sense, but she’s indignant anyway. “Then it’s hardly my fault I couldn’t handle the controls! Turn right.”

Quill takes this turn a lot smoother than the last, even though he’s using only one hand on the wheel now, his other resting on the console between them. He’s leaning back too, in an irritatingly calm way, as if it wasn’t just five minutes ago that he could barely get the car to move. He is a good pilot; she will give him that. Not out loud, though.

“And I’ve driven exactly two actual cars in my life now,” he says, gesticulating now with the hand that’s not on the wheel. It makes his bicep flex as he moves it, which she tries not to notice.

She shrugs, unrepentant in her accusation. “That’s more Bowies than I’ve piloted.”

He barks out a laugh, surprising her both with its vehemence and how much she likes being the one to draw that reaction out of him. “Ya got me there.”

“That means I win,” she informs him.

He gapes at her for a moment, an expression that’s somewhere between outrage and appreciation. It’s an odd combination on him, and yet it strikes her as oddly fitting. Not the bravado he so often hides behind. Also stupidly attractive. Like all of him. She really is going to have to stab him if he doesn’t stop with that.

“How does that mean you win?” he sputters when he manages to find his voice. He sounds like he’s trying not to laugh, which is…not the reaction she is accustomed to in this sort of competition. Though it is very much what she expects from her crew, so maybe it isn’t so novel after all. Surely one day she’ll stop being surprised to find herself free of Thanos, won’t she? Someday she’ll stop expecting only betrayal and violence from those around her. She has to believe that’s the case, or else…Or else what is the point of any of this?

“Less experience,” says Gamora, bringing herself back to the present. “Better performance.”

He sputters again before he manages to find his voice. Which is…oddly satisfying. All of his supposed experience with her counterpart – with her – and she has thus far been able to keep him off balance. “How do you figure that?”

She shrugs. “How many cars have you saved me from an exploding planet in?”

To her continued surprise, he throws his head back and laughs loudly, still managing to keep the car perfectly steady even with only one hand on the wheel. “You are ridiculous,” he says, with a grin that suggests it’s a compliment. “Fine, fine, you win. Your prize is telling me how to get to your ship.”

“That does not count as a prize,” she says, trying not to visibly react to the pleasure she’s feeling at winning. And his odd compliment. And the way his smile makes him look so much younger, less worn down by life. “I was already doing that.”

“You’re telling me step by step,” he argues, still smiling. “All I know about where you actually hid the thing is empty field. And what do you want as your prize, then?”

“Empty field is all it is,” she tells him. “Just keep going down this road. In a minute, there’s a big red barn and you’ll turn right.”

He nods, and it strikes her how willing he is to take her directions. He’s expressed no doubt in her ability to navigate, which makes her wonder if it’s something about her or her or if he’s just that trusting of everybody. “Well yeah, but there’s a lot of fields in this area. There’s gotta be something. Like, I parked my ship in a big ol’ field, and there was a creepy, abandoned shed in it.”

She considers, trying to come up with something. Some distinguishing feature. But if there is one, it must be something distinctly Terran that she neither recognizes nor possesses a word to describe. She shrugs. “No. Unless we’re counting the big red barn.”

He furrows his brow, clearly pretending to give that very serious consideration. “I dunno. Is the barn in the field?”

“No,” she admits. “It’s more…on the periphery. Although we could debate the boundaries of the field, I guess.”

“Nope,” Quill says immediately. “No way. You admitted that it’s not part of the field, so no debate.”

Gamora sighs. “I did do that.”

“My field totally wins, then,” he says smugly. He looks far too pleased about it. And far too attractive while looking so pleased.

“How do you figure that?” she protests.

“It’s obvious,” he informs her. “Your field doesn’t have a barn or a creepy shed or anything like that, so mine wins.”

“Because of the creepy shed?” She crosses her arms. “I wasn’t aware that was a good thing.”

“Good, bad, doesn’t matter,” he says sagely. “If the requirement is having a creepy shed, my field wins.”

Well, there’s just absolutely no way she’s going to allow that. “Fine. But I just decided the requirement is not having a creepy shed. So now mine wins.”

“Oh, of course,” he says, sounding thoroughly amused. “I should have known you could change the rules to your own advantage.”

“Yes, you should have,” she says loftily. “This is the barn.”

Quill takes the turn easily, letting the wheel slip through his large hand like he’s been driving primitive Terran cars for his entire life. “That’s fine. My shed wins, though.”

She rolls her eyes. “By default. It’s the next turn there.” She points to the distant spot down the road, visible only because this area is so flat.

“I’ll take what I can get,” he says with a shrug.

It’s on the tip of her tongue to tell him he deserves better than taking what he can get and she only barely manages to bite it back. He’s proving to be dangerous to her self-control, or at least her body’s self-control. The stubborn warmth on her abdomen is certainly proof of that.

She keeps her mouth shut until Quill makes the next turn. “We should walk from here, so we don’t leave tire marks on the grass.”

“Don’t wanna make a path directly to it,” he agrees. He pulls off the road and into a patch of overgrown grass, pushing the lever between them to stop the car.

Gamora doesn’t get a chance to respond, or even to fully process the fact that for all her less-than-flattering thoughts about him, he’s been savvy enough to have the same strategic thought at the same moment she did. Instead he keeps moving, taking the keys from the slot in the car, tossing them into the air and neatly catching them before stowing them in a pocket with such smooth dexterity that he might as well be palming units he’s just stolen. Then he’s out of the car, slamming the door and opening the one on her side before Gamora has managed to react at all.

Quill grins and gestures to the expanse of grass outside the car like it might be one of those ridiculous carpets the damn Sovereign love rolling out. “After you.”

Gamora rolls her eyes as she climbs out of the car, but she does allow him to close the door behind her. It’s the kind of thing the Ravagers would never do for one another, but a courtesy people often showed to the daughters of Thanos out of fear. Quill is doing it for neither of those reasons, though, and she has to admit that it’s…nice.

She’s distracted enough by that sentiment and the subsequent realization of how stupid it is that it takes her a moment to realize that they are in direct sunlight and the temperature is decidedly elevated. “Wait. It’s a bit of a walk. Is that – wise for you right now?”

“I’m totally fine,” he says immediately, squinting in the sun. “I could walk all day.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, staring him down. “You’re barely a day out from being so incapacitated you couldn’t even walk across a room.”

He scoffs but rubs the back of his neck at the same time, a habit of his she hates that she’s starting to recognize. “It’s been like, almost two days. And I’m way better, thanks to you and your medpack.”

“The only medpack I brought,” she points out. “So if you try to pass out again, I don’t have anything to help you.”

“Good thing I’m totally fine,” he says with an infuriating smirk. “‘Sides, the sooner we get going, the sooner I’ll be out of the sun.” With that, he turns and begins walking into the field, turning to throw that stupid smirk back at her.

Not bothering to suppress her growl of frustration, she stalks after him. “Fine. Get yourself hurt. I’m not carrying you back.”

“I’m fine, Gamora,” he says, his smile morphing into something softer, more genuine, somehow more infuriating when she catches up to him. “I’ll tell ya if I need a break, okay?”

She tosses her hair back, forcing herself not to look at him. “I don’t care.”

“You sure seem like you care,” says Quill, tossing the words over his shoulder just as casually as he continues walking, a few paces ahead of her because he’s once again continued walking while she’s taken the time to appear unaffected. Which has probably made that plan backfire rather spectacularly, now that she thinks about it.

Gamora takes a couple long steps to catch up with him - For all that she knows he lacks in Terran physique, he certainly is tall and impressively built in terms of muscle mass. Which is a completely strategic observation. She is used to assessing those around her in case they turn out to be a threat. That’s all she’s doing now. “Well I don’t. Care.”

For some reason when she chances a look at him out of the corner of her eye, he’s grinning as if she hasn’t just doubled down on her apathy toward him. “Right. You don’t care so much that you came here because Nebula said I was in trouble, then you stayed here to make sure I didn’t relapse, and now you’re concerned that the sun is gonna be too hot for me.”

It’s the same argument she made in the car, when she was trying to argue that she didn’t care and ended up undermining her own damn point. The fact that he’s noticed and is now parroting it back to her is infuriating.

“I do not –” she begins, but doesn’t get a chance to finish, because a moment later he misses an uneven patch of ground and stumbles, requiring her to catch him.

His arms flail in a futile fight against gravity before she manages to get her own arm around his chest to stop his fall. This position just happens to press the front of her body up against his side and put his face barely inches from hers; even closer when he turns to look at her in amazement, as if she’s just saved him from falling onto a sword rather than grass.

“Thanks,” he says softly, a little breathless but otherwise unharmed. For some reason, though, she doesn’t move or let go of him, distracted by the freckles she can see crawling across the bridge of his nose when he’s this close to her. The warmth and firmness of his chest against her arm aren’t helping, either.

It’s only when she sees his eyes dart down to her lips, when she remembers feeling this same kind of distraction last night before he pulled away from her, does she come to her senses and back away so quickly that Quill stumbles slightly, nearly rendering her catching him pointless. Luckily, he rights himself easily enough, continuing to stare at her.

“You were saying?” she says loftily, marching ahead of him for a change.

“That it kinda seems like you do care,” says Quill, jogging a little to catch up because of course he hasn’t learned anything from his near-fall. His tone also remains infuriatingly smug. Like he’s pleased that he thinks she might care about him. Like he might have enjoyed that stupid moment they just shared.

They are basically at the ship now, close enough that if she were to keep walking, Gamora knows she would be in danger of running into its cloaked mass. She can hear the slight buzz of the holo field that’s obscuring it from view, can see the slight distortions if she looks for them. She has to guess that it’s her enhanced senses allowing her to detect these things, and for a moment she’s tempted to let Quill walk smack into it. She can’t deny the swell of anger and frustration she feels at the pleased expression on his face, the way he seems to want her to be concerned about him when she is trying so hard not to. When he so clearly does not actually want her to act on any of those feelings. When he so clearly does not want it to be her having them, even though he might be periodically confused about it.

But if she lets him run into the ship, he might hurt himself, or do something else to make her concerned. And that is the problem, isn’t it?

No matter how stupid or misguided or dangerous, he is right about what he’s saying. She does care, at least so far as not wanting him to be injured. Not wanting him to be sick, or in pain, or in despair. And she has cared practically since she met him.

Isn’t that why she's come here? Why she’s stayed?

Putting distance between herself and Quill made no difference before, so she doubts very much that it would be productive now. Probably she has no choice, then, but to let this fixation work itself out. It’s probably to be expected, considering how limited her life has been up to this point. Not unlike her penchant for sugary Xandarian sodas acquired shortly after joining the Ravagers. She’d managed to drink so many of those that now they strike her as practically repulsive. So maybe if she stops trying to fight this, she’ll accomplish the same thing with Quill. Even now, with her brain clearly addled, she cannot imagine tolerating him in any more than small doses.

“This way,” she tells him, and punches the button on her holo to lower the hatch on her ship.

Chapter Text

At first glance, Gamora’s ship looks like any Ravager M-ship. In a super weird, nostalgic way, it feels like stepping back in time into the Milano before the whole team had been housed in it. Not surprising, given that these ships are the standard among the Ravagers. But it’s definitely not just a normal, impersonal M-ship; it must either belong to Gamora or be one that’s reserved for her use, because there are little signs of her all over the place when he looks closer.

It’s a strange mix of things that surprise him and things that he finds achingly familiar. This ship is cleaner than his ever was when he was a Ravager, though certainly not as clean as he’d grown used to her…or the future version of her…keeping her space. There’s a Ravager jacket hanging from a wall right above a pair of boots that she must have acquired before her jump through time, because he knows there’s an exact match for them back in their old quarters on the Quadrant that he’s refused to get rid of. Not that anyone’s ever tried to make him.

There’s only one bunk on this ship, in the same place his had been on the Milano, and there’s a comb and some hair bands on the tiny shelf above it.

They’re nice, he notices. The comb is of good quality and has some simple decorations carved into the handle. And the bands are of varying colors and sizes, some for the small, ornamental braids he knows are important to her culture. Or – knew, technically, but he’s fairly certain there’s no way the traditions of her homeworld could have changed just because she skipped some time.

“This is – nice,” he comments, trying to bring himself back to the present. He means it sincerely, only he stumbles a bit over the word because all of this is so odd and bittersweet. Peter knows that this is the selfish, irrational part of him talking, but he still hasn’t figured out how to shut it off. Not without alcohol, anyway.

Because her ship is nice, in the ways that he has always wanted for her. She’s made modifications for comfort and convenience. She’s begun allowing herself small luxuries like the comb. And the evidence of the fact that she does still braid her hair, even if she hasn’t worn it that way in front of him. All things she’d needed encouragement to do before – Or at least, things Peter thought she needed encouragement to do.

He’s spent the past two years imagining her in a completely barren ship, if not alone entirely. He’s imagined her life empty without the Guardians – Without him. He’s been thinking of her as stuck the way she was when he first met her the first time. And now it turns out that maybe she didn’t need him to grow this way after all. Maybe all she really needed was time and space to figure things out. And he can’t deny that that leaves him feeling equal parts happy and lost.

“If it’s nice, why do you look like you’re about to cry?” Gamora asks, jarring him out of his self-indulgent train of thought so suddenly he jumps back slightly.

“Wha–I’m not.” He clears his throat in a totally natural, totally cool way. “It just–it reminds me of my first ship a little.” Which is true.

She arches a disbelieving brow at him, an expression he recognized in her after like, ten minutes of meeting her, so it definitely doesn’t count as assuming things. “It’s an M-ship. You must have been on dozens of them in your life.”

“Well, yeah, but it’s been a while,” he mutters, avoiding her eyes. He can hardly tell her the real reason he’s gotten so emotional, not when he’s already so afraid of scaring her away. He’s been afraid of that the whole time she’s been here, but the fact that they’re on her ship? Where it would be so easy for her to change her mind about staying here with him and take off instead? He’s gonna be as careful as possible.

In that vein, better try to get them both out of here quickly. “Do you need help gathering up your stuff?”

“I think I can manage it,” she says dryly, pulling a rough-looking bag out from under a storage hutch in the floor and slinging it over her shoulder.

"Yeah, of course you can," he says quickly, watching her. He's never doubted Gamora’s ability to be an absolute badass at absolutely everything. But seeing her ship, her things…her life now…It’s all a reminder of how little she has ever needed him. "But, you know, just 'cause you can do something on your own, doesn't mean you have to."

Gamora carries the bag to her bunk and stuffs a few stray articles of clothing into it. Either she already has most of her possessions packed, or she simply doesn't have many. It's tempting to assume that she doesn't, based on his knowledge of her from before. But he knows better than that. He is trying to do better.

"You sound like Stakar," she says, moving from her bunk into the small bathroom.

"Hey, that sounds like a compliment to me!" Peter takes a couple steps closer but is careful not to intrude too much.

She emerges so abruptly that she has to shoulder past him to move on, throwing a look over her shoulder at him. “You didn’t give the impression that you knew him very well before.”

“Not super well,” he admits, making himself wait a full three seconds before following casually after her. “But I know Yondu saw him as family when he was younger. And he leads like a thousand Ravagers, so he’s gotta be pretty cool. Plus, you like him enough to be in his crew voluntarily.”

Her lips purse, like she can’t quite come up with an argument for that even though she wants to – might want to, he reminds himself. She eventually settles on grunting in response and turning to climb the ladder to the cockpit, a process he has never been able to tear his eyes from in all the years he’s known her. Any version of her.

When he tries to follow her this time, though, she stops at the top of the ladder to glare down at him, arms crossed over her chest. Damn, but she’s gorgeous. He feels like a puny mortal worshiping a goddess from this angle. “Don’t come up here. I’m grabbing valuables from my stash.”

He rolls his eyes. “Gamora. You said yourself, I’ve been on dozens of Ravager M-ships. I lived on one for most of my life. You think I don’t know all the hiding spots?”

“The fact that they’re called hiding spots implies that they vary,” she says, raising her voice to be heard as she vanishes into the cockpit.

“I dunno,” he calls up from the bottom of the ladder. “Seems to me all M-ships are the same, so the number of places to hide things would be kinda limited!”

“Have any good ones on yours?” she asks, changing the subject in a smooth evasive maneuver. There’s the sound of something heavy being shifted and what he thinks is probably a false floor panel being raised. He doesn’t try to look, though, because he’s going to be honorable and shit.

“Hell yeah,” says Peter, perfectly happy to let her take him on a tangent. “Had one right by the pilot’s seat where I kept a whole buncha candy! Retch and Taserface looked for it every time they came onboard but they never found it.”

“What kind of a name is Taserface?” she yells over the sound of the heavy object moving back to cover whatever mysterious hiding place she has.

He snorts, thinking fondly of the way Rocket had made fun of that very thing. “A dumbass one. He was a dumbass dude, so it makes sense.”

Gamora pokes her head out through the opening, a look of adorable consternation on her face. “But why did he have that name? Were there tasers on his face?”

“His face did kinda look like someone electrocuted it,” he admits. “I think he was just an idiot who thought it sounded cool, though.”

Her lips purse. “Names that don’t make sense do not sound cool.”

That is such a Gamora complaint that it takes a great deal of effort for him not to get emotional again. Well, okay, he can’t help getting emotional, but he tries to hide it, at least. He’s not gonna give her any reason to want to get away from him. “Retch made sense, at least. He smelled so bad he’d make anyone wanna puke.” Which maybe isn’t the best thing to talk about if he’s trying to get her to want to be around him, he realizes a second too late.

Thankfully, she just makes a mildly disgusted face and starts her descent down the ladder. “I’ve got everything I need.”

“Cool,” says Peter, staring again and then very quickly looking away when she pauses to regard him over one shoulder. He plucks the car keys from his pocket and tosses them up in the air so that he can catch them again, because suddenly it’s completely intolerable to be standing still. “Cool, cool, cool. That’s great. Glad you got what you need.”

He hears rather than sees her finish gracefully descending the ladder and come to rest a few paces away from him. He keeps his eyes purposefully on the keys as he tosses and catches them a few more times.

“You do smell better than the average Ravager,” she comments, once again almost as if she’s sensing his thoughts. Not that he’s going to conclude that. Nor is he going to conclude that this is the same familiar chemistry on which their friendship was based before. Even if that would be a totally logical conclusion to make, given the evidence.

Peter grins, feeling like she’s just given him the galaxy’s best compliment. “Hey, thanks!”

She crosses her arms and rolls her eyes. “I said better, not good. The bar is very low.”

“I’ll still take it,” he says, happy regardless. That’s about as much as he’d expect her to admit to, not that he’s trying to have expectations. “Ready to get outta here?” He pretends to examine the keys again, but peeks up at her, anxious that she’s going to change her mind after all.

“As long as you stop being weird,” she says, once again shouldering her way past him to walk out, leaving him staring after her for a few seconds before he gathers himself enough to follow after her, squinting as the sudden sunlight hits his eyes. By the time they adjust, she’s already halfway across the field, and he’s still recovering from nearly dying in a motel room so he doesn’t run to catch up to her.

For a split second, he’s disappointed that her beating him to the car means he can’t open the door for her. But then he realizes she’s at the driver’s side, throwing him a decidedly smug smirk as she opens the door for him instead before walking to the passenger side.

Her sense of competitiveness about everything is so damn adorable. “Thanks. And hey, wait, I’m not being weird! Not any weirder than I usually am, anyway.”

She slides into her seat with easy grace, tossing her bag into the backseat. “You usually watch me and then pretend you’re not?”

Peter opens his mouth and then closes it again, not exactly lost for words but certainly lost for any intelligent ones. He takes the moment to get into his own seat and buckle the belt, his mom’s voice in his head from childhood making him do it on instinct. He tells himself that Gamora won’t notice his difficulty answering, that he’s made this look perfectly smooth, but of course he knows better. That’s the entire point, isn’t it? She’s just made it clear that she knows he’s full of shit.

“Um, I wasn’t,” he finally says lamely. Great, so maybe he can totally insult her intelligence while he’s in the process of making her feel weird. “Watching, I mean. Like, I was definitely seeing and it was in your, uh, general area ‘cause that’s where I was. But I wasn’t, you know, watching.”

“I don’t care if you were,” she informs him in a tone that he’s pretty sure he could peg for a lie from even the most random stranger on the street. It sounds suspiciously like all of her arguments about not caring for him.

“You don’t?” He pulls the keys from his pocket and misses the ignition slot several times before finally managing to insert it correctly. Possibly because he’s watching her more than it.

“I don’t,” she repeats. “I’ve decided that this is stupid. You clearly think you know me even if you don’t, and no amount of promising or trying to pretend is going to fix it. So I’ve decided I don’t care. Act however you want to. Maybe you’ll get it out of your system faster.”

He’s so distracted by that statement that he manages to turn the key far too hard and hold it for several seconds too long, the engine stuttering, until he finally releases it and the car hums to life. He hardly notices though, staring at her and not bothering to hide it. “What? How do you get that from me looking at you?”

She gives him one of those if looks could kill glares. “You’re looking at me because you think I’m someone else. You’re looking at me because you expect me to change into that person.”

“Oh my gods, Gamora,” he groans, his head falling back against the seat as he tries to gather himself. They’re still real close to her ship; he’s not going to scare her off by letting his frustration show. But damn, it’s hard not to be hurt by this when he’s been trying so hard. “I thought we were over this! Do you seriously think I still don’t know who you are?”

“Obviously you don’t!” she snaps. “Or you wouldn’t be looking at me that way!”

“What way?” he asks, matching her tone even though he doesn’t mean to. Apparently every version of Gamora is capable of making him rise to the bait better than anyone.

“Like I’m your lover,” says Gamora, as if that’s a totally disgusting thing to be. “Like you’re attracted to me.”

“I am not–” he starts reflexively, then huffs out a breath in exasperation. It would be a lie to say that he isn’t attracted to her. Hell, he’s been attracted to Gamora from the first instant he saw her, far before he’d known anything about any version of her. And he’s pretty sure that would be true in any universe at any time. “Okay, so you’re an attractive person. You really want me to pretend not to notice that?”

She looks taken aback when he risks a glance over at her. Not so much by the admission itself, he thinks, but by the fact that he’s made it. Then she shrugs, another affected gesture that he’s fairly certain is a cover.

“I thought we just established that I don’t care,” she says, in that same faux blase tone. “I just told you to get it out of your system. You were the one trying to argue that you weren’t doing that, in case you’ve lost track.”

“Oh, I’m on track,” he mutters, shifting the car into drive so he can give himself something else to focus on. Something other than the stupid pain in his heart. “You’re acting like you know exactly what I’m thinking and feeling at all times just cause I look at you, but if I even hint at knowing you a little, I’m trying to turn you into another version of yourself.”

He concentrates on pulling the car out into the road to keep himself from looking at her, as tempting as it is, especially when she lapses into silence for several seconds. When she does respond, he can tell she’s speaking through gritted teeth. “That’s different. And I am not acting like I know you.”

“Uh-huh,” he says bitterly. “You basically told me you can read my mind from a single glance at you.”

“Well, how does it feel?” she snaps, with just enough wobble in her voice for him to hear. “To have someone act like they know you like that?”

He sighs, losing some of the anger that he’d been briefly able to hold onto. In the past, he might have been able to hang onto it longer, but he doesn’t have the energy right now. Not completely, anyway. “I’m trying, Gamora. That’s the difference.”

“And what do you think I’m doing?” she asks, the hurt still evident in her voice. He’s fairly certain he can assume that. Probably safe to assume he’s fucking things up at any given moment, actually.

Peter forces himself to take another breath, blows it out again and takes a moment to focus on the road. “I dunno,” he says finally. He’s doing his best to stay calm but, well. No one’s ever going to accuse him of being overly mature. “Seems to me you’re doing everything you can to assume the worst of me.”

“Am I?” she counters, the ragged edge of her voice even more audible now. She’s still aiming for aloofness, but doing a poor job of it. “Seems to me I wouldn’t be here if that’s what I was doing.”

He can’t help but glance over at her then, at the way she’s got her arms crossed over her chest and is determinedly looking out the window. She might as well be holding up a sign that says ’Pretending not to care.’

“You’re right,” he says quietly. “That was a dick thing for me to say. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care,” she says, too quickly. No one is ever going to accuse her of letting things go easily.

Her stubbornness could surely set a record. “Well, I care. So I’m sorry. And also…thank you. If I haven’t made it clear, I am super grateful that you’re here. That you came and helped me and probably saved my life and definitely made my withdrawal a whole lot easier. Are currently making it easier, actually.”

She’s quiet for a long moment in which he makes himself focus on the road and not the heat rising up in his neck after that long, rambling mess of a confession. So much for not scaring her away by being too intense.

Finally, he can see her shift in the seat out of the corner of his eye, though her arms are still crossed. “Nebula would be pissed if I let you die.”

Peter sighs, telling himself not to be disappointed by that. It’s not like she didn’t already tell him that Nebula sent her here. He might just…allow himself to forget that small fact as often as possible if it allows him to think that she might be spending time in his presence because she wants to. Then again, she was apparently in contact with Nebula before – Maybe even for the entirety of the past two years, which makes his chest ache in a way he decidedly doesn’t want to analyze. But hey, she didn’t want anything to do with him then, despite Nebula’s involvement, so…surely that’s some amount of progress, isn’t it?

Plus, he really doesn’t want to keep arguing with her. Not ever, really, but especially not now when he’s getting the distinct sense that she’s trying to tell him something he isn’t understanding. Something he just very nearly derailed by getting upset.

“It’s still a lot of time spent helping me,” says Peter. “I mean, you coulda left as soon as you used the medpack on me. Or dragged my sorry ass back to Knowhere for Nebula to deal with herself.”

He can feel her looking at him, so he checks and sees her brow furrowed in surpris. Or consternation. Or both. She was probably expecting him to keep arguing, given her apparent estimation of his maturity. And he can’t blame her; he would have a few years ago. In the beginning. Another reminder that they’re both, in a way, different people now.

“Bout time you realized that,” she mutters.

“I might realize more than you give me credit for,” he tells her, unable to shake the hurt lodged in his chest from her accusation that he expects her to change herself.

She grunts, and for a moment he thinks that’s all the response he’s going to get. But as he makes the turn onto his grandpa’s street, she surprises him. “You do. More than I gave you credit for at first, anyway. When Nebula told me about you.”

“Yeah?” Peter asks eagerly, unable to contain his curiosity. He knows next to nothing about the events surrounding her appearing in this timeline, aside from the basics Nebula had told him. Gamora has barely alluded to it; in his presence, anyway. “What uhh…what credit did you give me?”

She rolls her eyes and huffs out a breath. Which is probably predictable, and probably what he deserves, but he can’t deny the instinctive hurt he feels about it anyway.

“Nevermind,” he sighs. They’re almost back to his grandpa’s driveway anyway.

“Don’t pout,” says Gamora, still sounding exasperated for a moment before she softens again. “I knew you were considered a hero, obviously. Founder of the Guardians.”

“I didn’t found the Guardians,” Peter interrupts. He isn’t sure why it’s suddenly so important for her to accept this after he’s taken sole credit for that accomplishment plenty of times. But, well…she’s made it clear that his focus on trying to pigeonhole her back into that life is its own form of selfishness. Even if he’s meant it only for her own good; it’s pretty presumptuous of him to think he knows what that is.

“Right, of course,” she says bitterly, proving his point. “You want to tell me she did. Which isn’t helping your case, by the way.”

Peter steers the car neatly into the driveway and puts it into park, but makes no move to get out. “We uh – We did it together, I guess. But I couldn’t have done it without – I mean, I couldn’t have done it alone.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asks, somewhere between angry and confused. “You asked me what credit I gave you, I told you, and now you want to tell me that’s wrong?”

“No, no, I didn’t mean–” He cuts himself off, because what did he mean? With a galaxy-weary sigh, he drops his forehead none-too-gently onto the steering wheel, closing his eyes as he tries not to cry from frustration. Not only can he not explain this to her, he can’t even explain it to himself. “I don’t know what I mean. I just want…If you give me credit for something, I want it to be totally real, you know?”

She’s quiet for another long moment before he hears her shift. He opens his eyes but doesn’t move his head; still, his peripheral vision is enough to see that she’s moved her hand to rest on the console between them, like she’s trying to make a gesture of some sort. “I do know. I feel the same.”

He turns his head on the wheel, resting his temple against it so he can really see her. There’s something soft about the look on her face, even as she seems to be trying to shutter her expression. “Cause you don’t want credit for stuff you didn’t experience doing, huh?”

"Why would I?" she asks. She still sounds cautious and a little hurt, but more tired than anything else. Which reminds him that this is probably just as confusing for her as it is for him, if not moreso. "At best, that would be dishonest. At worst, it's…expectations. Pressure."

"And Ravagers are always known for their honesty," says Peter, trying to make light of it a little, at least.

She snorts, but it’s barely more than a sigh. "I am more than any one thing."

"I know that," he says quickly, then regrets it as he wonders whether she'll see that as an assumption. Still, even if her experiences have diverged over the past two years, he knows how many years Thanos spent manipulating her into thinking she was nothing more than his weapon. "I mean, I've already seen that, Gamora. And before you tell me it wasn't you, I do mean you specifically. I was there when you helped us save Rocket. And when you rescued those kids. You gotta remember I grew up a Ravager, so I know none o' that's in the code."

“Yes, well.” She looks at the fingernails of her other hand in a rather transparent attempt to seem nonchalant. “I wasn’t about to let that purple maniac destroy even more lives.”

Tentatively, he rests a hand on the console next to hers, less than an inch away from touching it. She doesn’t move hers. “I’m gettin’ real tired of purple, egomaniacal douchebags hurting people, too. They could at least have the decency to be a different color.”

A laugh forces its way out of her throat even as she rolls her eyes, the kind of reluctant smile tugging at her lips that feels like a victory to him. What’s even more of a victory, though, is when she playfully nudges his hand with hers and says: “Peter.” He tries his best not to let the joyful hope that explodes in his chest show on his face, though he obviously fails because she quickly snatches her hand back. “Quill.”

That still doesn’t wipe the smile off his face or, he notices with glee, off of hers. “I’m just sayin’. It’s real unoriginal for them all to be so into purple. Someone should try yellow or something.”

“You are ridiculous,” she informs him. He takes it as a compliment. “You’ve steered us completely away from the point.”

He lifts his head off the wheel to effect a little bow with a flourish, hoping to get another of those smiles she can't seem to entirely resist. "One of my specialties." But then he recalls that she actually was trying to make a point before he ruined it by getting upset. One he thinks was probably important, if he can just keep his head out of his ass long enough to listen. He clears his throat. "Uh, what was the point again?"

Gamora rolls her eyes with what he might dare to call affection. "I was saying that I know you were watching me on my ship. Like you felt – Like there was something between us. And then you tried to lie about it, because you know that I don't want you to assume things about me that I didn't actually experience."

"Well, yeah," says Peter, biting his lip.

"And I've decided that it might be pointless for you to keep trying to hide it," she tells him. "Even if you're trying because I told you that was what I wanted. Maybe you should just – let your reactions be what they are. Get them out of your system."

He fights past the instinct to be defensive, the instinct that had taken over the first time she said that, and really, truly considers her. What he’d taken as an insult before now strikes him as a sincere offer: an offer to stop holding himself back, which she thinks – knows – he’s doing. “Even if I do just…react the way I want to, I’m not gonna assume stuff about you anymore. I know who you are. You know that, right?” There’s a desperate edge to his voice but hey, that’s his honest reaction.

Her eyes scan over his face. Despite the look on her face that’s undeniably softer than he’s seen it in some time, she shakes her head. “I barely know you, Quill. That’s also kind of the point.”

That hurts. He knows it’s true, but damn, it still hurts to be reminded that she sees him in a vastly different way than he sees her. “Maybe if you give me a chance, you’ll get to know me, then. I’ll try not to vomit or hallucinate anymore.”

Another reluctant smile tugs at her lips. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

He swallows past the lump in his throat. She may have given him permission to react however he wants, but that doesn’t mean he wants her to know how pathetically emotional he is. “Yeah. You are.” The rough catch in his voice probably gives him away.

Her arm twitches like she’s going to reach for him again, and he holds himself still in breathless anticipation. After another few seconds of watching his face, though, something shutters rather deliberately in hers and she reaches for the car door instead. “Sitting in front of your grandparents’ house all day is not the point. Come on.”

Even the slamming of the door can’t dampen the hope she’s planted in his heart.

Chapter Text

Peter is putting up a good front.

Wait, no. Scratch that.

Gamora pauses and forces herself to redirect her thoughts, because at the moment, they are getting far too personal.

Quill is putting up a good front, she amends, firmly. But then she considers the fact that she has decided to let this bizarre fixation with him run its course. And that probably means calling him by his first name, if that is what her brain has decided to do. Doesn’t it? So, Peter.

Peter has been acting as though he feels perfectly fine this morning, as though he has no bigger concern than achieving the promised maintenance of the neighbor’s lawn. And it’s true that he’s managed to make it through another day and night without actually seeking out the beer in the refrigerator, without relapsing. He’s managed not to wake her in the middle of the night again as well.

But she knows from the sweat-soaked sheets on his side of the bed, from the tension in his jaw and the slight tremor in his hands that he is still struggling. So she has gotten dressed as quickly as possible and piled her hair into a haphazard bun.

She has finally changed out of her Ravager uniform, though, having gotten alternatives from her ship. She’s made plain, functional selections today: sturdy black pants and a sleeveless black shirt that she tells herself is well-suited to the weather. And she has allowed herself the time for one small, ornamental braid in her hair, which she smoothes her fingers over one last time before leaving the bathroom.

The bathroom is right across from their bedroom – not theirs, just the room they happen to both be sleeping in – so when she opens the door, she can see directly into that room. Peter is sitting on the edge of the bed, holding his leg out in front of him as he struggles to pull his shoe on without bending over too far.

“Ah–got it!” he yells triumphantly before looking up at her. Then he pauses halfway through letting go of the laces, leaving him holding his hands and leg out as if frozen while he…well, there’s really no other word for it but gapes at her.

She tells herself she’s not at all gratified by that expression, or by the way his eyes linger on her bare arms and shoulders before landing on her hair. She’s not at all affected by the undeniable spark of joy in his expression when he apparently sees the little braid. His reaction to it is exactly the reason she hasn’t done anything to her hair before now, in fact. She hasn’t wanted him to think she was putting any effort into her appearance for him, hasn’t wanted to invite more comparison to the version of herself that he loved.

The fact that she’s put a tiny bit of effort into it now doesn’t mean anything other than that she felt like it. She’s not about to stop herself from doing whatever she wants to her own hair.

"It isn't for you," she says quickly, the words pouring out before she's even had a chance to consider saying them aloud. Which is not at all like her. She has always been the strategic, measured one among her siblings. This man is clearly terrible for her ability to function. Is that what her counterpart mistook for love?

But even as she has the thought, she knows it's an excuse, a distraction. She might not be able to imagine experiencing love herself, but she has stopped doubting that what her counterpart had was real. Not that she particularly feels like admitting that to Peter. That feels far too…intimate still.

He blinks at her, looking like he's coming out of a daze. Which…is probably exactly what he's doing. "I – what – isn't?"

"My hair," says Gamora, suddenly realizing how lame that sounds. And is. "I didn't do it for you."

She expects Peter to become defensive. He's demonstrated that he's plenty good at doing that, hasn't he? And, in this case, it would be justified. She has just told him that he should stop holding himself back, after all. She is being unfair.

"Well o' course not," he says instead.

Taken aback, she once again speaks without thinking. “What do you mean, of course not?” If she had any of her wits about her at all, she would have just left it at that. But apparently, she’s determined to dig her heels in with him.

He shrugs one shoulder before standing up and grabbing his necklaces off of the side table. Her eyes are also determined to zero in on the way his biceps flex when he expertly reaches behind himself to hook the necklaces on. “I wouldn’t expect you to do your hair for anyone else’s sake. You – your alternate self never did. Unless you’ve developed a penchant for altering yourself for the sake of others in the past two years.”

An annoyed noise wells up in her throat that she mostly succeeds in suppressing. He’s not wrong, which he obviously knows. And she can’t even argue for the sake of trying to prove him wrong anyway, because that would be arguing against her previous assertion.

Damn this man.

Deciding to finally do the logical thing and not engage him on this any longer – not just because she can’t think of a way to argue – she changes the subject. “Are we going to motor your neighbor’s lawn or not?”

He blinks like he's disoriented, which is just entirely unfair when he has been disrupting her equilibrium all long. Then again, if she has managed to do the same to him…

Well, she probably shouldn't want to have that much of an impact on him, given that their relationship can never even resemble what he had with her – What he had before.

"Huh?" is apparently the best he can manage even after several moments of gathering his wits. He shakes his head like that might somehow clear it.

"You said we were getting dressed to go motor your neighbor’s lawn," she reminds him, since he apparently requires it. "Since we didn't yesterday."

He had wanted to – had even protested when she had forced him to rest. Which he had very clearly needed after their outing to her ship, much as he had tried to hide it. And she remains concerned about his physical ability to handle doing anything outdoors today, though she has already forced him to agree that she will be the one doing anything requiring exertion.

"Oh!" He grins, like he's suddenly had an amazing realization. "Mow. We're going to use a mower to mow the lawn. And yeah, anytime you're ready!"

“Yes, motor,” she says, confused by his apparent need to repeat her words. “That’s what I said.”

To her surprise, that makes him smile even more, a slightly crooked smile that tugs at something in her abdomen. “It does use a motor. But there’s a separate word for the thing that cuts grass: lawnmower. I think one of our translators is missing it.”

She frowns. “Lawnmotor.”

That must still be wrong, because he still looks amused and…fond, she might say, if she were the type of person who recognized feelings like that. Which she does not, no matter what her curious skin disorder might think.

“Mower,” he repeats, which sounds the same to her. “You probably just don’t have a word for it. It doesn’t matter.”

She suppress a growl of irritation, not wanting him to know she’s affected by this. But she doesn’t like that she’s missing something. “I don’t like it. I’ll just use my sword.”

Peter laughs, which makes his eyes shine in a way she also doesn’t like that she’s noticing. “And I’ll cheer you on. You’ll look super badass.”

Then, because something on this planet is obviously causing her to go insane, she says: “You just want to see my ass in the air when I bend over.”
That certainly gets his attention. In fact, it does far more than disrupt his equilibrium the way he has been doing to her. He chokes on his next breath, making a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a cough. And maybe also a gasp, or something resembling a moan. She is not going to consider that possibility too hard. She is also not going to consider the way his cheeks heat, skin reddening as though he has actually been working outside in the sun.

“Oh my gods, Gamora,” he manages after a moment, his voice slightly rough.

Gamora feels her own cheeks heat in response to that, which is thoroughly ridiculous. She is embarrassed, she tells herself, because she is behaving like the sort of idiotic waif she has never wanted to be. It certainly has nothing to do with pleasure or satisfaction at the way she’s affected him. At the way it suggests he is attracted to her.

He clears his throat and bites his lip, apparently realizing that she isn’t going to respond further. “You aren’t wrong.”

She arches a brow. “You do want to see that?”

Peter runs a hand through his hair, sputtering again. "Not to -- I don't mean that like, that's the only -- cause I completely respect you and your body and your ass. And I wasn't even thinking about that when you brought up the sword thing. Well, okay, it wasn't my first thought. You've got a great ass, though." He covers his face with both hands. "Shut up, Peter."

She sighs, refusing to let herself be flattered. "I only look like the person you want me to be."

He tilts his head back and lets out a frustrated groan, hands dropping to his sides. When he lifts his head, the look he gives her is so obviously hurt that it twists something in her chest. “You look like yourself, Gamora. I know who you are. Why is that so hard for you to accept?”

“Because I’m not that person,” she says firmly, then forces herself to turn around and head for the door. That expression on his face is too much for her to bear. If she continues looking at him, she’s going to continue allowing him to affect her. “Let’s go use the damn lawnmotor.”

“Mower,” he mutters as he follows behind her.

She ignores him until they reach the kitchen, and she can hear the sounds of his grandparents talking in the living area just behind a wall. The door is there, she knows, and it’s cowardly of her to want to avoid seeing them just because she’s feeling strangely vulnerable at the moment. She pauses, bracing herself for putting on an act in front of them.

“Let’s go through the garden,” Peter says, after a brief pause beside her. She finally looks at him again to see him pointing towards the glass door that leads outside through the back of the house.

"Is that --wise?" It seems weak, taking what is obviously the easy way out, obviously the one that will allow her to avoid seeing his grandparents. Obviously the one he's offering because he can tell she has misgivings about that possibility, much as she hates to admit that he can intuit any such thing about her. He is good at reading people, though. Even complete strangers. It's what she's seen makes him so good at hustling.

He blinks. "What? Why wouldn't it be?"

"I don't know," says Gamora, aware that she's responded too quickly and that she sounds defensive. Aware that he will be able to tell, too. Still, she's committed to it now. "I keep telling you, I know nothing about Terran customs."

"True!" he says brightly, like he's immune to the way she's just snapped at him. Or like he understands that, too, and is still doing his best to make her feel comfortable. "So, yeah, it's totally wise. You might even say it's strategic 'cause the yard we're gonna mow is right next door and my grandma said there's a gate that connects 'em cause the neighbor and my – and my grandpa's first wife were real good friends. Plus! This way I can show you the yard."

“Why do you want to show me the yard?” she asks suspiciously. He looks far too pleased by this possibility. She’s seen that look on the faces of her crew members before, when they’re anticipating someone falling for a prank. Though, she had already seen the yard before she even knocked on the door; she’s not about to enter a building without doing a sweep of the perimeter. It was dark, but her vision is enhanced. She’s sure she would have seen anything nefarious.

Undeterred, Peter heads towards the back door and waves her on. “Cause it’s pretty. My grandma plants all kindsa flowers. I’ve seen birds and butterflies around, too.”

She follows him out into the sun, figuring he’s had neither time nor energy to set anything up in the backyard. “Is there also butter?”

“What?” He turns towards her, eyes squinting so much from the shock of the light that they’re barely open. She almost laughs, thinking he looks adorable — then she hits that thought with a blunt object. “Oh, no, butterflies don’t have anything to do with butter. At least, I don’t think they do.”

“Then why are they called that?” She scans the yard, as her eyes don’t suffer from that weakness — weakness, not cuteness — and sees nothing out of the ordinary.

It’s a pretty space, to be sure. That had been evident even in the dark, even as she had done her best not to notice, only to scan for threats. Which is what she should be doing now, in addition to encouraging Peter to hurry up and take her to the site of their planned task. He is far too distracting for his own good. And hers, apparently. She wonders how the Guardians have ever gotten anything done, given his propensity to find…diversions.

She is not going to be seduced by some flowers and green space – nevermind that there’s something about the smell of this yard that feels vaguely reminiscent of her barely-remembered childhood on her homeworld. Nevermind that diversions and fun had quite a bit to do with her decision to come to this stupid planet.

They are going to motor a yard, and that will be that. Well, and she might allow herself to point out the nonsensical nature of Terran naming conventions. That’s just practical.

Peter shrugs, squinting a bit less as his eyes apparently adjust. “I dunno. Some of ‘em are yellow, and so is Terran butter, so maybe that’s why? I guess then they would be related to butter, kinda.”

“Are they all yellow?” she asks skeptically. It seems like a wholly illogical way to name a species if only some members meet the specified criteria.

“No, they’re so many colors!” he says, sounding very excited about this nonsense. “You’ll see, and you’ll totally forgive them for having a weird name.”

“But will I forgive Terrans for misnaming them?” she mutters. She’s only slightly surprised when that just makes him laugh. His ability to go from one mood to another almost instantly, and even to not be affected by negativity around him, is…intriguing. Purely because it’s important to analyze those around her, to ascertain their threat level, of course.

He throws a grin at her over his shoulder, the sunlight casting a sort of glow around his messy curls. “Maybe not. I’ll try to bribe you with pretty flowers, though.” Then he winks and turns back around, leading her down a crooked, stone path. Gamora pauses for only half a second because she is not at all affected by that gesture.

Despite just resolving not to be seduced by the foliage, she does have to suppress a gasp when they clear the trees and bushes that had been hiding most of the garden from view. There are flowers and other plants of all different sizes, shapes, and colors, some in elevated wooden boxes and others in the ground. Her knowledge of Terran horticulture is extremely limited, but this seems rather extensive.

“This is – quite a bit of work,” says Gamora. Then it occurs to her that maybe she isn’t supposed to view it that way. Maybe she shouldn’t be pointing out the level of effort it would take for Terrans to perform this kind of physical labor, not to mention skill. She has noticed, after all, that Peter tends to get defensive when she points out his physiological limitations. She clears her throat. “I mean – it appears to be. I am, once again, unfamiliar with the Terran custom.”

“Of gardening?” He’s still smiling, still infuriatingly radiant in the light. So probably not offended by her assessment, then. In fact, probably obnoxiously pleased. She is going to regret this. “Yeah, it is! My mom loved plants and flowers, but she always said she wasn’t any good at keeping them alive. So she loved going to the house where my grandma – her mom – kept a really nice yard. And then…Well, you know my grandpa is remarried, right? I think I told you that. Anyway, my grandma now loves to garden too, so she’s always had a garden of her own. Kinda cool that they have that in common.”

It takes a few seconds for her to process all of that. Peter has a tendency to drop a lot of information at once, she’s noticed. It’s annoying and not at all endearing. Especially not now, as the thing that strikes her about that ramble is that his grandfather seems to have fallen in love with a woman who has a lot in common with the woman he loved previously.

“What’s the point of it?” she asks, gesturing broadly at the beautiful plants around them, steering the conversation back to the actual point, which is the garden. Not people. Not them.

Peter shrugs. “To be pretty, mostly. The flowers are good for bees and butterflies and birds and stuff. That’s what my mom said, anyway. Plus, there’s food planted here too. Tomatoes and cucumbers over there, some herbs and stuff.”

“Butterflies again,” she mutters, determined not to be drawn in.

“Yeah!” He exclaims, grinning as if he’d forgotten. “Here, let’s go over here, this is where I saw ‘em before.” He leads the way down the path between the elevated garden boxes, towards the back where the most colorful flowers are. She cannot help but admit, at least to herself, that they are quite pretty. She has always harbored a secret love of nice, soft things. She wonders if Peter is aware of that – in her counterpart.

“The butterflies?” she asks, hoping to cover any hesitation or distraction he may have picked up on. Does she want him to know about this particular longing of hers, for things that she can never have? If she allows herself to think about it, she both does and doesn’t. On the one hand, he would either have to intuit it from his knowledge of her counterpart, or he would need to be able to read her incredibly well. Both of those things make her uncomfortable. But she certainly isn’t going to tell him, and she isn’t going to pursue those pleasures for herself…

“Yeah,” says Peter. “I don’t see any right now, but that’s not too surprising ‘cause they’re kinda shy. I’m sure if we stick around a bit, they’ll show up.”

She hesitates. “But your neighbor’s lawn…”

“Can wait for us to look at some flowers!” he finishes quickly. And he looks so damn earnest and excited that she can’t even bring herself to protest any further. She just follows him as he leads her from one box to the next, finally stopping in front of one that’s filled with bushes bearing red multi-petaled flowers. His face lights up even more as he catches sight of them. “Oh, these are roses!”

She waits for him to elaborate, but he just continues to look at her almost expectantly. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“No, no,” he says quickly. Too quickly. “It’s just…okay, so it smells really good, but it also kinda smells like…you.”

She tenses immediately. “Me?”

“Yes, you,” he sighs. “I’ve been close enough to you to smell you, Gamora. Kinda hard to argue that.”

“I wasn’t going to,” she lies. He’s right, annoyingly, both about that being her first instinct and the fact that he can easily discern the way she smells. Much as she dislikes thinking about giving off any sort of smell.

He doesn’t call her on it, which also annoys her. A good argument might help get her thoughts back in order, from the way he and these flowers are discombobulating them. “C’mon, give it a shot.” He doesn’t pluck the flower, only takes a step back and gently tilts it toward her from beneath the red petals.

“Shooting it seems like an overreaction,” she says. Then she ducks her head to smell the proffered flower, not because she actually wants to smell it or anything, but because it helps hide the way she smiles when her comment gets a laugh out of him. Wouldn’t want him to think she likes the sound of his laughter.

“See, that’s one of the things I l–” He chokes on the words a bit, clearly having been about to slip up and say something they would both regret.

Gamora tenses for a moment, acutely aware of what he isn’t saying, what he might have said in another life. And why the hell does that thought give her a pang of sadness? She doesn’t want him to have feelings for her. She most certainly doesn’t want to reciprocate those kinds of feelings. Those kinds of emotions are not for her. That is the whole point of getting whatever this stupid infatuation is out of her system, and of encouraging him to do the same.

“One of the things I like about you!” says Peter, a forced lightness behind his words now. He’s clearly trying to salvage the situation, and she’s grateful for it, even if it is his fault in the first place. And even if she has very weirdly mixed feelings about it. How is it possible to have such mixed emotions about so many things?

“You like that I – smell like these flowers?” she asks.

“Well yeah,” he says immediately, as though that’s the most obvious thing in the galaxy. “But also, I like that you’re funny.”

She’s briefly tempted to ask if he loved it about her counterpart, but even in her head, it sounds far too bitter; too much like she cares. “I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

His raised eyebrow implies he doesn’t believe her. If he’s planning on calling her on it, though, he doesn’t get the chance, as he’s immediately distracted by the small creature that suddenly flits between them and lands on the flower she was just smelling.

“That’s a butterfly!” he says in a loud, excited whisper. He points at it needlessly. “Look!”

She does. It is pretty, she admits to herself, though smaller than she thought it would be. Its wings, slowly moving up and down with seemingly no purpose, are orange with black splotches. “It doesn’t look a thing like butter. Or any flies I’ve ever seen.”

“No, it totally doesn’t,” Peter says, completely unbothered. He holds out his finger again, not to point, but seemingly just to have it there like a particularly small branch. “I could never get them to land on me. I dunno —“ he breaks off on a gasp as another one flies in out of nowhere and lands on the end of her small braid.

She doesn’t jump because she’s not scared of it, but she does quickly jerk her body away, causing the butterfly to flutter off. Undaunted by its companion’s failure, another one flies at her face and she narrowly ducks out of the way in time. “What are they doing?”

“Trying to be your friends,” he says, sounding far too excited about this, practically in awe. He has been awfully eager to show her these creatures, and for half a second she questions whether that might actually be because he’s planned this as some sort of prank, planned to use the butterflies to humiliate her. She dismisses that almost as quickly though, because he just looks so…so genuinely pleased about this. “My mom said it was good luck if one lands on you!”

One lands on her shoulder, and this time she manages not to jump, just side eye it. "I don't know if I like this."

“They like flowers,” he reminds her. “And you smell like one. They just wanna hang on out with you.”

The whole idea of smelling like a flower feels odd to her. Flowers are soft and beautiful and…luxurious in the way that they serve no further purpose than looking nice. She has never been afforded such frivolity and even now that she is free of Thanos, even now that she is making her own way and pursuing the things that she wants. Well, some of the things she wants. She will not allow herself to pursue him.

“Do they just hang out out on the flowers?” she asks skeptically.

He shrugs. “I’m not an expert, I dunno. They probably just like the way they smell.”

“They can’t survive just by sniffing flowers,” she asserts, though she doesn’t actually know. She’d done some basic research on Terran species before coming here, but butterflies had not been among them. The article she read made it sound as though tiny aquatic creatures and algaes were the main species that populated Earth.

“My mom said something about them drinking nectar,” Peter says, his smile widening even more as yet another butterfly takes up residence on her shoulder.

She remains suspicious, though she is very careful not to move. They are pretty, she supposes. Especially this blue one that’s interested in her hand. “Do they think I have this nectar then? I’m outnumbered if they decide I do.”

“But not outstrengthed,” he says, still unconcerned. “They’re super delicate.”

That much is evident; she can nearly see through their wings. “Why aren’t they on you too?”

“I don’t smell like flowers,” he tells her, like it’s obvious. “Or you have some kind of secret, butterfly-whisperer power.”

That seems disconcerting in the same way that she feels when she thinks about her counterpart having had a whole other life, one she will never be able to experience. At least, not in precisely the same way. When she thinks about the things she shares with that other…self. About the expectations that leads others to have of her. Or maybe the expectations she has of herself. Of the stupid, meaningless silver on her abdomen. Whatever those thoughts are, they make her feel the same way she does now, when she considers the possibility that she might somehow have secret butterfly powers unbeknownst to herself, but not others.

"Because she had that kind of power?" she asks suspiciously. There are at least half a dozen butterflies on her now. She has a feeling there's at least one on her head, but they're so light that she can't be certain. And she isn't about to move her hand to check when there is also a butterfly on it. She doesn't want to hurt them, even though they're unnerving her.

Peter practically recoils at that question, the lightness in his expression dimming for the first time since they came out to the garden. It's almost enough to make her regret the question, if she was the kind of person who did that sort of thing. "What? No. Oh my god, Gamora, it was a joke. She never even came to this planet!"

She’d have known that if she thought about it. She knows Peter had never been back to this planet before now, aside from that very brief time when they’d all fought Thanos together. After the woman he’d loved was already dead. Not that she could know everything her counterpart would have done, but she certainly can’t see herself coming to this hot, humid planet without him.

She won’t be telling Peter any of that, of course. “How the hell should I know that?”

He rolls his eyes. “I dunno, apparently you think the future version of yourself could’ve developed a superpower related to Terran insects in the four years you skipped! So I can’t pretend to know how your thought process is goin’ right now.”

She sighs, which is apparently enough to upset the butterflies because they all fly away when her shoulders heave. She feels kind of bad about that, even though they were unnerving her. “It’s not my fault you tell bad jokes.”

A rough laugh tears its way from Peter’s throat, which doesn’t even surprise her. It does annoy her that she’s managed to get to know him well enough that she predicted that reaction, but she can at least tell herself that she’s only studying him the way she would a mark.

“My jokes are hilarious,” he informs her, a little smile on his face that feels like a peace offering.

"Well, the butterflies certainly seem to think so," says Gamora, gesturing to the way they're still hovering in a cloud around her, not quite ready to resettle. If they're planning to do that at all. Why should she be at all disappointed if they don't? She doesn’t want them to, just like she doesn’t want Peter developing any kind of feelings for her.

"Of course they do," says Peter, his smile widening into that slightly crooked grin that seems to be one of his super powers. There's certainly something inexplicably disarming about it. "They have excellent taste, like knowing that you're awesome. And see? If you don't want them sitting on you, just move around. Doesn't hurt 'em or anything."

And it apparently hasn't discouraged them much either. Some of the butterflies remain in the air, but not far from her. Others have already begun resettling on her shoulders. If she makes sure to keep extra still, it definitely isn't to avoid disturbing them again. "Noted. But I do have my sword, just in case."

He laughs very gently. "That seems like overkill. But hey, we're losing the point here! Did you like the smell of the roses? Before the butterflies distracted us."

She shrugs, not prepared to show her hand by admitting that she did enjoy the smell. Particularly not if he thinks it smells like her. "They don't smell bad to me."

“Not bad but not good?” he asks, smirking for some reason. “You don’t think you smell like them, do you?”

That makes her bristle instinctively, wondering if her other self did, but she refrains from snapping this time. She likes the happy expression on him. “I don’t think I smell like anything. Except sweat.”

“That just makes your natural smell stronger,” he informs her. “But hey, I don’t really smell myself either.”

She makes a face. “Does that mean you like the smell of my sweat?”

“It’s not like it actually smells like anything,” he says innocently. “It’s just—more, is all. I guess we all smell different to ourselves, though.”

“Or you’re just wrong.” It’s not like she’s about to tell him that she likes the way he smells.

He runs the tip of his finger over the petal of a flower, causing her to suppress a shiver as she pictures him doing that to her skin. Absurd. “How can I be wrong about my own senses?”

She pauses, because she’s also not about to admit that he’s got a point there. “You’re delirious.”

“Oh, of course,” he says, laughter in his voice. “So I might not even be smelling these right now?” He bends down again to smell the rose demonstratively.

"They might not even be here right now," she agrees, deciding to continue going along with the bit. She is very glad, of course, that he is not actually delirious. But maybe there’s a part of her that liked making him laugh a while ago. Maybe there’s a part of her that liked when he’d called her funny, especially because he’d seemed to genuinely mean her, the version of her that is here with him right now, in this garden. So she settles on the most ridiculous response she can muster. "Maybe you're sniffing Orloni."

“Oh no!” he laughs, exactly the kind of delighted reaction she was hoping to get. If that makes her feel like her chest might be filled with butterflies beating their wings then…well, she is not going to acknowledge that at the moment. “They don’t usually respond well to someone sticking their face this close.”

That feeling in her chest that she is definitely not acknowledging expands further, makes her feel oddly light. Weightless in a way that is decidedly pleasant. Riding that feeling, she leans in and gently flicks his nose with two fingers. "Oh no, I think one just bit you."

He giggles with a kind of childish delight she didn’t have even as an actual child, but that she finds strangely attractive in him. She especially likes that she caused it. “You think? You can’t tell?”

This time she pinches his nose between her fingers, enjoying the way that slightly distorts the sound of his resulting laughter before she lets go. “Oh no, one definitely bit you.”

“And you’re just letting them attack me?” he asks, hand over his chest.

She shrugs. “I’m merciless. Maybe the butterflies will protect you.”

“They won’t do anything without the command of their queen!” He gestures grandly to her, so she can only assume he means she is this queen, which in no way flatters her or makes her toss her hair and straighten her shoulders with pride.

The few butterflies that remained on her flutter away again at the movement. One brave one returns and lands on her shoulder. “Tragic.”

“Fine, just leave me at the mercy of the Orloni,” he says, taking a few more steps into the garden. “I’ll just keep smelling. Maybe I can find a flower — I mean, an Orloni — that smells good to you.”

“Sure,” says Gamora, watching him warily. He appears to be doing fine now, physically, at least in terms of navigating the garden. He’s still moving with that lightness, that almost careless grace she can’t stop finding incredibly captivating. Still, she can’t forget everything his body has been through, how quickly his balance and strength flagged on the way to her ship, how easily he had tripped and required her support to prevent a fall that very well could have been dangerous. She is here to keep him safe and she cannot allow herself to become distracted from that goal. Her sister will be disappointed if he gets hurt.

Even if her sister didn’t actually…send her here, per se.

“That sounds like a tall order,” she continues, because she doesn’t exactly want him to know the direction her thoughts have been straying, “but you do seem to like hopeless challenges.”

“Oh ye of little faith,” says Peter, heading toward a bunch of yellow flowers that are rather pretty. Not that she cares. He moves carefully as he bends to sniff one, so apparently he has learned something about his own limitations, at least for the moment. “Good, but not as good as the roses.”

“Well I wouldn’t expect Orloni to smell better than roses,” she informs him.

His resulting laugh is cut off when he smells another flower, a larger, white one that makes him pause for some reason, eyes widening and lips parting, voice soft when he says: “This one.”

“What about it?” she asks, watching him as he straightens up. There’s a sparkle in his eyes that might be tears.

“These were my mom’s favorite,” he whispers, tilting the flower gently towards her. “I don’t remember what they’re called…something like Garden…but I remember the smell.”

That makes it impossible for her to say something snarky, which she half wants to do to dispel the weird, soft emotions he’s stirring inside her. Instead, she accepts his silent offer and bends over to sniff the proffered flower. It does smell very good, almost fruity; she can see why his mother would appreciate it.

“I like it,” she admits, and is rewarded with a tender smile.

He takes another long whiff, closing his eyes. “It’s definitely the winner.”

So distracted by the look on his face, it takes her a moment to register the implication of that. When it hits, she stiffens and crosses her arms. “Over the roses?” It’s not that she cares, or that she’s particularly upset that he thinks something smells better than her – than what he thinks she smells like. It’s simply that she doesn’t like being misled.

Once again, she expects him to get defensive as soon as she’s said it. She would deserve that reaction from him, in fact. She knows that her competitiveness can be hurtful, has seen that in her sister time and time again, a holdover from the instincts Thanos has ingrained in her. And of course she also knows how tenderly he thinks of his mother, how high his esteem is for anything and everything he remembers from the time before she died. She can hardly blame him if he becomes upset by her implication that she might wish to challenge that remembered love.

But he doesn’t get upset, doesn’t tense or even flinch. Instead, when he meets her gaze again, she finds that there’s something impossibly softer in his eyes. Something that makes her chest warm and melt a bit.

“Well,” he says in a voice that is undeniably…fond, “maybe in a different way.”

The warmth that’s been blooming in her chest washes over her in a whole idiotic wave as she holds his eyes with hers, and it has nothing to do with the weather. For a moment she can't speak, can't breathe, can only look at him and his stupidly beautiful face.

“Yeah,” he whispers, more breath than voice. “Roses still win.”

Dimly, she knows she should say something or at least move away from him – when had he gotten so close? Or did she move closer to him? She’s certain he wasn’t close enough for her to count the freckles on his nose a minute ago. Or to need to tilt her head up to keep looking at his eyes. Hers are level with his mouth now and his lips are partly slightly and she wants with a ferocity so strong she forgets how to breathe.

She’s halfway to taking a step towards him when her brain finally kicks in and she remembers the way he’d pulled away from her, when she’d let this foolish desire make her forget that he is not for her.

That might be a flash of disappointment on his face when she takes a long step back, but that’s only because he’s forgetting who she really is. He has to be. “Are we going to moat the neighbor’s lawn or not?”

He snorts for some reason, a soft noise that sounds more affectionate than amused. “Mow. But yeah, let’s – let’s go.”

She follows behind him, annoyed at herself for apparently misspeaking and for staring at his backside while he walks. “That’s what I said.”

Chapter Text

Watching Gamora mow the lawn – or moat it, as she’s continued to say – is, predictably, very hot.

As promised, she has insisted on doing everything involving exertion herself, which basically means that he’s gotten to stand around cheering her on. Peter has always enjoyed displays of her strength and competence. Watching her lift the mower like it weighs nothing and rapidly slice the overgrown lawn into submission was undeniably sexy.

The problem is that it isn’t just hot in the figurative sense. The weather is also extremely warm and disgustingly humid, proving her point about both the climate of this planet and his current fitness for doing anything in it. The garden was shaded, at least. The lawn is…not. And the sun has fully climbed up to the middle of the sky now, beating down relentlessly.

He doesn’t exactly feel like passing out, which he takes as a sign that he’s getting better physically. But he does feel like going home for one of those nice, cold beers in the fridge, which is definitely a bad thing.

He’s obviously not hiding his discomfort well, because Gamora gives him a look as soon as she shuts the mower off. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothin’,” he says quickly. “Just admiring how you’ve conquered the grass.”

She surveys her work. “Is that what I did?”

“Looks pretty conquered to –” He forgets how to finish that sentence because she chooses that moment to put the lawn mower away by lifting it with one hand. The fact that she’s wearing a tanktop doesn’t help, since that makes the flexing of her muscles impossible to miss.

Once she’s stored the mower in the shed and kicked the door shut behind her, she walks up to him with her arms crossed and eyes narrowed. “You’re not okay, Peter. Are you ill?”

He sighs and rubs his hand over his face; doesn’t seem like he’s going to be able to bluff his way outta this. “No, no, I feel fine. The heat just made me think about the beer in my grandpa’s fridge, is all. Cause it’s nice and cold. Not because I want…” He breaks off again, this time because lying to her about this makes him feel even itchier than the heat. Especially after promising not to. “Well, okay, I also want alcohol.”

He expects to see disappointment on her face. To be fair, he’s been expecting that since…well, since the day they met. And not just…Not just from Gamora now, but from her counterpart as well. For all that he prides himself on his calm, cool, charming facade, there’s definitely a part of him that has never felt worthy, never felt like enough. That has always felt like he was hustling everyone.

And that was on a good day. He definitely hasn’t had many good days in the past couple years.

“All right,” she says calmly, breaking cleanly through his spiral of thoughts as easily as if she’d cut it with one of her many knives. And she doesn’t look disappointed or disgusted, he realizes, now that he’s looking at her rather than into the middle distance. She looks…thoughtful. He recognizes that look, he thinks, not just from her counterpart but from his recent experiences with her. She’s strategizing. “What do you want to do about that? Other than drink.”

“Um.” He draws a blank, having not thought past the fear that she’d think him weak for having such cravings. He used to do some things other than drink, didn’t he? Not much the last couple years. Alcohol was the only way to drown out the thoughts. When he couldn’t have that… “Only other thing I got is exercise.”

Gamora’s eyes scan him up and down in such an analytical way that he’s half-expecting a read-out about his physical fitness to materialize. “You can handle a slow walk. Maybe.”

Well, that’s a bit of a blow. He puffs his chest out and stands up as straight as he can, in what he hopes is a subtle manner. “I’ve been walking normal paced all day!”

“Slow,” she repeats in a flat, unimpressed tone that leaves no room for argument. Damn, but that’s a sexy tone. “You’re not returning to temptation right now. Let’s go.” Then she turns and starts walking – slowly, he notices – the opposite of the way they came into the yard.

“Go where?” he asks, following after her like an obedient dog. Not that he really cares where, honestly, since he’ll be with her.

She shrugs, though, and grabs his arm once he reaches her side. It’s just an attempt to slow him down, to make him keep pace with her, but he flexes anyway. “We’ll take the long way to your grandfather’s. You need time to stop thinking about the beer.”

“The long way?” he asks, even though he knows that she’s right. “We’re like…right next door.”

“Yep,” says Gamora, sounding as determined as if she were heading into battle. And maybe that is how she’s viewing this. Maybe that’s why she’s so willing to do it. “So we’re going to go the opposite way, and presumably we’ll eventually end up back where we started. I read that most Terran dwellings are arranged in a round or oblong fashion. But I also read that they use a measure of distance called ‘blocks,’ so I am unclear on the true shape.”

“It’s cause they’re kinda–rectangley,” he tells her, vaguely recalling the term from childhood. “Like a block.”

She doesn’t look impressed. She also hasn’t taken her hand off his arm, and he wonders if she might be keeping it there the entire walk. He’s suddenly motivated to walk as slowly as possible. “That’s stupidly imprecise.”

“Yeah,” he says fondly. “Yeah, it is. Terran names are like that.”

“I’ve noticed,” she says with an adorably haughty sniff.

“Not all of ‘em though,” he says when they reach the front of the house and step onto the sidewalk, heading away from his grandpa’s house. “This part is called the sidewalk, cause it’s where you walk on the side of the road!” Not that he’d exactly remembered that upon first coming back.

“One name that makes sense hardly makes up for the rest of them,” Gamora says stubbornly.

Peter’s more than prepared to keep up this conversation, since he knows a ton of Terran words that draw that cute, stubborn nose-scrunch expression out of her. Or he would be, if he didn’t get distracted by a strange sight a few houses up ahead, on the other side of the street.

From Gamora’s narrowed eyes, he guesses she’s noticed as well. “Is that a different strategy for moating?”

“I don’t know,” he mutters, trying to look without staring at the woman on her knees in the grass in front of her house. At least, he hopes it’s hers. It would be even weirder if she was doing this to someone else’s house. “It looks like she’s…using a ruler and scissors to cut the grass. One blade at a time.”

Gamora seems to get the memo that tact is in order here – of course she does, because she's always been brilliant. And also because, no matter what she might insist on saying or even believing, she is still quintessentially Gamora, and they have always worked well together, right from the very start. Well. After the whole trying to kill each other over the Orb, anyway. Maybe that's another thing that doesn't change. Not the Orb thing, obviously, but definitely the part where he gets kneed in the balls.

Come to think of it, his balls technically are orbs, aren't they? At least on the inside?

Then he can't even pretend to follow that particular train wreck of thought because Gamora has fully linked her arm through his and is leaning in to speak in his ear. "The lawn motor was inefficient enough. I can only imagine how long that will take. Is it for some kind of competition? Or tribute?"

"Uh." It takes him a moment to process what she's said, because she's suddenly so close and she smells so good. Turns out roses and freshly cut grass are a hell of a good combination. But then he does take it in and realizes that she's referring to the weird yard sculptures on Counter Earth and makes a face. "No, I don't think so."

They’re passing the woman now, and they both make an effort to watch her without appearing to do so, but Peter’s pretty sure they could go up to her with a news crew and it wouldn’t make her look up from her task.

“Then what is she doing that for?” Gamora whispers once they’ve passed, throwing one last glance over his shoulder. Her hair brushes against his face when she does, giving him such a powerful whiff of her scent that he nearly stumbles.

“I dunno,” he says honestly. Even if he did, she’s wiped all thoughts from his head for at least the next three seconds. “It’s real weird. But sometimes Terrans are just weird.”

The smirk she sends his way bumps his thoughtless time up to ten seconds. “Surely not.”

“Not all of us,” he says, trying to match her smirk and probably ending up just smiling like a moron. “My grandpa did say people in this neighborhood have been acting extra weird lately.”

“Since when?” she asks curiously. He can practically see the analytical gears spinning in her head.

“A few months, it sounded like,” he tells her. “He just mentioned it in passing, I don’t think we should be con…cerned.” He trails off when he notices the strange decoration choices on an upcoming roof.

The shingles appear to be…infested. Well, whatever the word would be for an invasion of non-living beings, because these things are definitely fake. They look like they might be made of plastic, or possibly some other type of synthetic…fabric? Maybe Earth has developed new materials in the past thirty years. But either way, the things on the roof are an abomination. They’re bright yellow, but not the natural buttery brightness of flowers – more like the color of a neon sign. They’re roughly cylindrical in shape, with large, googly eyes. And most of them appear to be…wearing pants.

“Are they…models of some kind of Terran animal?” asks Gamora, following his gaze.

“Not that I’ve ever seen,” Peter says quickly. He thinks they look a little bit like the outdated Terran concept of little green aliens, but that isn’t quite right either. Still, they’re familiar somehow…

It comes to him when he searches the weird tableau again and notes that one of them appears to be wearing a Santa hat: He’s seen these things among the shipful of stolen decorations Mantis and Drax had brought back from their trip to Earth. So, presumably these are Christmas decorations. Only…it’s the middle of summer.

“I don’t remember seeing those the first time I walked through this neighborhood,” he says as they pass by. “I was pretty focused on finding my grandpa, though.” From one of the highest windows in the house, he could swear he sees a figure peeking out at them before a curtain draws shut and it disappears.

“It was dark when I arrived,” she says, as if he might have forgotten her dramatic entrance. “So I can’t say either.”

“I’ll ask my grandpa about it later,” he mutters. “Maybe they just leave their Christmas decorations up all year..on the roof.”

“My sister told me about your holiday celebration on Knowhere,” Gamora informs him. “She didn’t mention any oddly shaped, yellow monsters.”

While he doesn’t think they’re supposed to be monsters, he doesn’t know what else to call them, so he doesn’t bother to say so. “They were there. She mighta missed ‘em, though. We were mostly focused on, you know, the kidnapping.”

She doesn’t seem to be surprised by that, so he gathers Nebula told her about that as well. Then she confirms it by smirking at him and saying, “Is that not a part of the Christmas custom? My sister mentioned various other crimes that are part of it.”

Peter blinks, thrown both by the things they've just seen in the neighborhood and the abrupt change of topic. Sure, he knows that Kraglin had been telling his warped version of Terran Christmas lore, but he'd thought they'd cleared that up. And that Nebula, of all people, would be smart enough to know better than to listen to that kind of third-hand information.

Then again, he can't let himself forget that she has been in contact with Gamora the whole time, no matter how much that hurts. He has no idea when they might have discussed Terran holidays.

"Oh, did she?" His voice sounds artificially high and bright even in his own ears. Not that that's going to stop him from plunging onward. "Like uh…like what kinds of crimes?"

"Breaking and entering," she says immediately. Which he probably should have expected. "I don't think all those people consented to having a man come into their homes overnight. Plus, how could one individual possibly make all those gifts legally? This Claws man must be stealing them."

A laugh rips from his throat, whether or not she intended the mistranslation, loosening something in his chest. “The elves. The elves make them.” Maybe the yellow beings are supposed to be elves, now that he thinks about it.

Gamora looks unimpressed. “Nebula said they’re plotting a rebellion with Mrs. Claws. They’re obviously not being treated fairly.”

He totally guessed Nebula was the one responsible for that particular bastardization. “I think a few things – almost everything, actually – got misrepresented in this story. It’s just supposed to be a fun, happy story to tell kids on the holiday.”

“Terrans have a strange definition of fun and happy, then,” she says with a little toss of her hair. He’s so distracted by that for a second that he stumbles on his next step and nearly falls onto his face, only saved by Gamora throwing her arm across his chest to keep him upright. “Peter!”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he says instinctively. He’s a little out of breath, but he blames that much more on her proximity than a tiny little trip. She’s half in front of him, looking up at him with concern. Her eyes are so beautiful. “Just uh–just got my foot caught on somethin’. I’m fine.” Not that he’s in a hurry for her to move.

"Sure," says Gamora. He expects her to admonish him, to remind him to be more careful, because if he gets hurt again, she'll be stuck here even longer. She doesn't, though. Instead, she takes half a step closer, her gaze dipping to his lips and then back up again. She's so close that he feels intoxicated by her familiar scent again, feels like her very essence is a string tied around his heart, drawing him near. If she just leaned up on her toes, if he just ducked his head a little, then –

She steps back abruptly, with a firm pat to his chest that almost makes him stumble in the opposite direction. He is doing better though, because he manages to steady himself rather than needing further assistance.

"Hey," he says softly, when she meets his eyes again, and for a moment it's like they're still standing in that strangely intimate proximity, even with the distance between them now.

Gamora clears her throat, avoiding his eyes. Her voice is still soft, though, and a little breathless. "My sister did say it was a happy holiday for Terrans. She said it made you happy, when they did it on Knowhere. She wanted me to come and see it too."

“She did?” he asks, instantly imagining what that would have been like. How truly happy he would have been, had she been there, had he seen her. Then again, she’d clearly been doing everything she could to avoid seeing him, so even if she had come, he might not have known. That would have hurt worse, he thinks. If he’d found out later that she’d been there and he hadn’t known.

“She had this idea that I would find it pretty,” she says with a disdainful edge to her voice.

He knows better than to tell her that he agrees with Nebula. Her counterpart certainly would have enjoyed it, a thought that had haunted him the entire time the decorations were up. “They were pretty. I bet even Stakar woulda thought so.”

She snorts. “Perhaps Nebula should have tried to convince him, then.” She doesn’t give him a chance to even think about that hilarious image, though, as she grabs his arm again to guide him forward. “Come on, it’s stupid to just stand here in the heat.”

“It’s the sidewalk’s fault,” he mutters. This time when they start moving again he’s looking down, so he can actually see the obstacle this time before he embarrasses himself on it. “Or…it’s that. Is that…a toy soldier in the crack of the sidewalk?”

It is, in fact, a toy soldier. Seven toy soldiers, to be exact. He's only tripped on one, which is now facedown on the pavement – and, okay, he's totally calling it a win that he didn't also end up that way – but there are six more standing up in other cracks in the sidewalk, aligned in a sort of weird semicircle.

It looks more precise, somehow, than he would expect from a child just playing. There's an uneasy feeling growing in the pit of his stomach, and he's pretty sure it has nothing to do with either the heat or the lingering nausea from withdrawal. He does his best to swallow it down, because the last thing he wants is for Gamora to decide that Earth is just too weird for her to stick around.

"This is what Terran soldiers look like?" she asks, brow furrowed in concentration. Which really makes her look entirely too attractive to be fair.

"Well, I mean, they're people, obviously," he says quickly, because he doesn't want to mislead her. He knows that she dislikes being confused. "Not, like, green plastic. But yeah, pretty much."

She doesn’t look particularly impressed. “What are they doing here?”

“I have no idea,” he says honestly. “I used to play with these as a kid, but not like this. I definitely wouldn’t leave them lying around outside.” He starts to bend down, wanting to examine them closer, when Gamora stops him with her hand on his arm.

“I don’t need you collapsing out here,” she informs him. She holds both her hands up, like she’s telling a dog to stay put, and bends down to look at them. “They appear to be harmless.”

He’s still processing how hot that non-verbal command was, plus he has to deal with how she looks bending down, so it takes him a moment to respond. “Um… Oh, yeah, they’re just toys. Can you fix that one I knocked down? I feel bad for him.”

She turns to give him a look, brow arched, before setting the soldier upright. She even takes the time to align him with the others, which makes him smile; she’s always indulged his odd requests like that, even though she doesn’t understand them. Or. well… the alternate version of her always had. He’s still not sure how he’s supposed to think about behaviors of hers that are familiar to him but new to her.

"Are these – sentient?" she asks, looking at him over her shoulder. Then she turns back to the toy, like she might be expecting it to make some kind of tactical move while her attention is elsewhere.

"Oh, no," he says quickly, feeling a little ridiculous and a lot…homesick, for lack of a better word. Except it's for a time rather than a place. For those four years, when he'd finally felt – well, not complete, exactly. But safe. Accepted. And not that he doesn't feel those things with Gamora now, because he definitely does. It's just that…for all that he's enjoying the fun of reintroducing her to things, sometimes he just misses the comfort of her already knowing him. Like his stupid empathy for a plastic toy. That kind of thing confused her before, too, at first.

"Then why feel bad?" she asks, predictably. She apparently does trust him that the soldiers aren't about to come to life, though, because she stands up, rubbing her palms on her pants.

Peter sighs, feeling his cheeks heat. He should have anticipated this line of curiosity. "I uh – Well, I don't wanna be responsible for anyone else getting hurt. Also, it kinda reminded me of…some o' the ways I woke up after drinkin'."

“For the toy getting hurt?” she asks, still not understanding. He can’t blame her. But this – this is one of the reasons he loves her so damn much. One of the reasons he fell for her so quickly. Even though she doesn’t get what he’s saying, why the toy soldier matters or why his Walkman mattered, once upon a time on a Knowhere balcony, there’s not an ounce of judgment on her face. Nothing like the derision he’d grown used to from others in the universe. For all that she insists she’s just a mercenary Ravager, for all that her counterpart had insisted she was just a warrior and an assassin, she’s one of the most compassionate people he knows.

“It’s more of a representation, I guess,” he says shyly, trying not to show how emotional he’s suddenly gotten. “I know it can’t feel anything, but seems like someone must’ve cared about them, to put them here so deliberately.”

She nods slowly, some understanding dawning now. “Like the person who might care about the yellow aberrations on the roof?”

That pulls a laugh from him. “Like that. And Yondu, a little. He used to collect weird lookin’ dolls and stuff and arrange them on his dash.”

"Trophies?" asks Gamora, nodding like that makes sense to her. Like it's probably something her crew does as well. "As in – things he stole?"

"Oh," says Peter, considering that. It’s weird, now, realizing all the details he's forgotten about his childhood with Yondu. There are plenty of vivid memories, sure, but also so many blanks between them. So many things he took for granted so much that he didn't even commit them to memory. He rakes a hand through the hair at the nape of his neck, which has grown unpleasantly damp with sweat. "I mean, yeah, he definitely stole some o' them. But I don't think it was trophies in the sense of like…intimidating anyone or making a point. I think he just liked 'em. And they definitely weren't all stolen, 'cause people gave him some as gifts too."

"People like you?" Gamora arches a brow, perceptive as always.

"Well yeah," says Peter. "Although – I stole the ones I gave him so I dunno. Does that count as stolen or gifted?"

She tilts her head, considering for a second before she says with a decisiveness that leaves no room for argument: “Both.”

He’s always adored that tone of hers: the one that means she may not have known the answer before, but she’s decided what the answer is now and defies anyone to argue. “You’re right. Things can totally be more than one…thing.” That was a much more eloquent thought in his head; he blames the heat and the leftover withdrawal bullshit.

She must notice his flagging energy, because her expression shifts into Mission Mode as she puts her hand on his back. Apparently she can’t get enough control out of holding his arm anymore, not that he’s complaining. “Come on. We can leave these things here. Unless you want to take them?”

“No, no,” he says quickly, carefully stepping over them as he follows her guidance. “Whoever left ‘em here might come back for them.” To do what with, he can’t say. Not just because he has no idea what’s up with the weird shit in this neighborhood, but because Gamora’s hand on his back has put her so close to him while they walk that their sides keep brushing.

It’s very distracting. And, honestly, he’d much rather focus on that than the possible implications of anything else.

Butterflies don’t come out at night.

Or at least that’s what Peter claims, considering the variable accuracy of his knowledge having to do with his homeworld. Then again, she has to bear in mind that he was taken from here when he was scarcely older than she was, when Thanos came to her own planet. It would be easy to judge him for his failure to further his knowledge of the place in between but, well. Hasn’t she demonstrated for herself how little information the rest of the galaxy has on Terra? And it isn’t as though she has sought out any new knowledge of Zehoberei even in the past two years when she was relatively free to do so.

So, at least for the moment, she’s taking his word that butterflies do not come out at night. And her enhanced vision hasn’t offered any evidence to the contrary, at least in terms of the creatures they saw earlier in the garden.

But now, as they sit on the back porch with his grandparents, she is learning about an alternative: These bugs appear to be tiny black beetles with several sets of wings, their abdomens glowing in the dark as they rise from the grass, like a tiny cloud of stars.

“Fireflies,” Peter informs her. “‘Cause they look like fire, get it?”

“They do not,” she says immediately. They’re beautiful, but they look nothing like fire. “They look like lights.”

That makes Peter smile for some reason. It’s his grandfather, also smiling, who replies, though. “There’s another name for ‘em in some areas: lightning bugs.”

Gamora gestures triumphantly, turning to Peter. “That makes sense! What other nonsensical names have you been telling me that have a logical equivalent?”

He holds his hands up in surrender, laughing. “I totally forgot about that. I’m sure it’s just that one.” The way his laughter transforms his face, in addition to the light being cast over it by the outdoor lamps, makes it difficult to tear her eyes away. Luckily, being in the presence of his grandparents gives her a convenient excuse not to. In fact, she had better scoot her chair a little closer, just to keep up the ruse that they’re a couple. And lean towards him as she lightly slaps her hand over his chest in playful admonition. This act is very important.

It’s also apparently very effective, because his grandmother – Darla, she’d said to call her, but it feels too personal – puts her hand over her chest as she looks at them. Gamora does her best not to feel like a fraud. “In this young man’s defense, that is a regional difference. I come from the lightning bug region myself.”

“And where is that?” asks Gamora. It sounds like an infinitely more rational place to live. Now that she thinks about it, maybe all of the nonsensical Terran words Peter has been teaching her are regional, and he just happens to be from a particularly illogical part of it. The things they observed in the neighborhood this afternoon certainly seem to support that idea.

“Oh, east of here,” Peter’s grandmother answers easily. “We call it the east coast, though that’s only relative to the rest of this country.”

Gamora nods. “That’s a common way to refer to regions on other planets, too.”

“See?” Peter interjects a bit smugly. He glances at her hand, which is still on his chest, because that’s a totally normal place for it to be, right? Then he meets her eyes for a moment before smoothly bringing one arm around her shoulders against the back of her chair. It feels oddly – intimate, definitely the kind of gesture that indicates they’re a couple. An established couple. It’s the kind of gesture that Gamora is certain he made all the time with her counterpart. Which probably ought to remind her that she shouldn’t be doing this with him, that it will never really be for her.

It’s important to keep up the act, though, so she leans a little closer to him.

“See what?” she asks, looking up at him and meeting his smug smirk with one of her own. Looking at his lips this close is dangerous, not that it stops her eyes from being drawn and held there. “Evidence of a place with more rational names than the ones you’ve told me?”

His smirk widens just a little. She finally drags her eyes away from it to see that his eyes are focused on her lips, making her heart work a little harder. It doesn’t get any better when he meets her gaze. His face is so close. “Evidence that it ain’t my fault I don’t know ‘em.”

She leans a little closer to reply, since surely proximity will help make her point, but she doesn’t get the chance because that’s when she hears Peter’s grandfather whisper: “Maybe we should give them some privacy?”

Her eyes widen and she pulls back so quickly the chair scrapes against the patio floor; not far enough for Peter’s arm to fall away, but enough to break the trance she’s been in. She’d legitimately forgotten his grandparents were there for a moment. If she’d ever dropped her guard that way with Thanos…

“No, no, don’t get up on our behalf,” Peter says, his Smooth, Hustling voice turned on. “We didn’t mean to be rude.”

“Yes, my apologies,” says Gamora, quickly. She might not be as good at hustling as he is, but she is a Ravager. She knows how to take cues. Which is why she doesn’t fully pull away from him despite her alarm at her own distraction. That would be unwise, since it isn’t the sort of thing a real couple would do in response to such a minor interruption. It isn’t the sort of thing her predecessor would have done, she’s certain.

“No, no, no need to apologize!” says Peter’s grandfather, who’s also given Gamora permission to use his first name and whom she also feels odd addressing that way.

“You should be paying more attention to your girl than anyone else,” his grandmother agrees.

Gamora feels her cheeks flush a little further than they already were – definitely not because she’s pleased by that assumption, or the fact that Peter appears to have been heeding it even if the act isn’t genuine. Definitely just because it’s warm outside and she’s a little embarrassed about her lapse in discretion.

“That’s right,” his grandfather says with a grin that reminds her quite a bit of Peter’s. Not that she’s analyzing that kind of thing. “My grandson knows that’s how you treat a lady.” Then he winks before kissing his wife on the cheek, making her smile so widely that Gamora can’t help but smile too. She tries to hide it before remembering she probably should have that reaction.

“Well,” Peter’s grandmother says, smiling indulgently at his grandfather as she pats him indulgently on the thigh, “it’s past this lady’s bedtime. No, don’t rush on my behalf,” she adds, when his grandfather – dammit, Jason, she can’t keep thinking of them in such a long-winded manner – starts to stand up along with her. “You three stay and have a good night.”

She waves at them before heading back inside, Jason watching her fondly before turning back to them. “She’s always been early to bed, early to rise, my Darla.”

“I remember you being that way when I was a kid,” Peter says. She’s still close enough that she can feel his chest rumble when he speaks.

That makes Jason laugh. “Maybe compared to you and yer mom. Two of you were both hell if you had to get up before you were good and ready.”

“Oh, he still is,” Gamora says eagerly, feeling a little giddy at the fact that she has this contribution to make. To be fair, she has only seen Peter in the aftermath of both grief and alcohol withdrawal. She’s pretty sure both of those things have been contributing to his sleeping extra late, not to mention the way he’s been waking in the early morning hours due to nightmares. So maybe her teasing isn’t the most accurate or charitable.

But why should she care about those things? No one’s ever accused her of being a good person.

Well…except Peter. Which serves him right, in this case.

“Oh, is he now?” says Jason, not entirely a question even though it’s phrased as one. There’s a gleam in his eye that seems to indicate he’s teasing too, and very much enjoying this.

“He is,” Gamora reiterates, committing to this fully. “Do you know, he didn’t get up until noon the other day? I thought I’d run out of stretches and calisthenics to do.”

For an instant she worries that she might have gone too far, might have said something hurtful. But Peter just grins, as delighted as his grandfather, apparently. “Pretty sure there’s no danger o’ that. You’ve got as many o’ those as there are stars in the galaxy.”

She’s in danger of being oddly touched by that until she remembers that he only knows that because of knowledge of the alternate version of herself. He’s seen her stretching, but not often enough to make that kind of sweeping statement, surely. Though he’s often prone to exaggerating…no, this can’t truly be for her. None of this can.

“That would be impossible,” she says, before she can fall too far into that black hole of thought. “There are at least 100 billion stars in this galaxy.”

Peter laughs and rolls his eyes, squeezing her shoulders in a way that almost makes her lean farther into him. “So literal. It was totally a metaphor.”

Jason seems rather amused, too. “Not like Pete would ever say somethin’ besides the absolute truth.” At his grandson’s rather comical, exaggerated gasp of offense, he laughs again. “Hey, opposites attract, you know? It makes sense.”

She glances up at Peter – determined not to get distracted by his lips or his stupidly beautiful eyes – and whispers: “Is he talking about magnets?”

“It’s an expression,” he explains, in a loud whisper. “About people who are kinda opposites being into each other romantically.”

It takes her only a few seconds to tear her eyes away from him this time so she can give his grandfather an approving nod. “That’s actually a rational expression. Yet another example of logical phrases Peter has neglected to share with me."

Jason looks at Peter and good-naturedly shakes his head, apparently exaggerating the gesture for the sake of humor. "You'd better get on that, Pete. Your girl's got a good head on her shoulders." Then he turns back to Gamora before Peter has a chance to respond. "That's a longstanding tradition for Quill men. Fallin' for women far smarter than we'll ever be."

"Peter’s plenty smart," Gamora says immediately, all reason driven from her mind by a sudden wave of protectiveness toward him. It's because helping him recover and keeping him safe has been her mission, she tells herself. This man is clearly a liability to her judgment.

He's gaping at her in that distinctive way of his when she turns to look at him again, his cheeks slightly flushed a deep pink color that should make her think of manual labor, or possibly fever. Certainly not anything…intimate. "Well, sure. But he's not wrong – you're way smarter than I am. And way more badass." He turns back to his grandfather and cups a hand around his mouth, as though directing his fake, overly loud whisper. "Have you seen her sword?"

“Peter,” she admonishes, elbowing him in the stomach – carefully, because she doesn’t want to hurt him. Not in front of his grandfather, anyway. She also doesn’t want his grandfather to think of her as some violent…what, Ravager? Exactly what she is? Simply for the act. After all, that’s not the sort of woman a Terran man would want to be dating his grandson. She needs Jason to approve of her so she can continue to stay here and monitor Peter.

The way he’s grinning at the two of them, he seems fairly happy with her so far. Or perhaps his expectations are low, since most Terrans know next to nothing about people from other planets. And given what she knows of Peter’s father… “I have not, but I’m sure it’s a fearsome thing. How ‘bout I grab us all somethin’ to drink and you can show me? Gamora, do you drink beer?”

She feels Peter’s muscles tense before the word beer is even spoken. His heart starts beating so hard she might be able to hear it even without her enhancements.

“No,” she says quickly, and a little too firmly, if the way Jason’s eyes widen is any indication. She puts her hand on Peter’s thigh and squeezes in an attempt to calm him down; the man’s as stiff as a fried Orloni. “And I don’t want Peter to, either.”

Then she holds her breath. It feels especially ironic that she was just reminding herself that she needs to stay on Jason’s good side and now here she is, considering whether she’s going to need to turn to intimidation to stay between Peter and the beer. She has promised to play the scary alien if needed, and she is fully prepared to do that. Yet she finds herself feeling a stab of preemptive disappointment at that thought. She has spent most of her life surviving through intimidation, finding success through threats and violence. Having Peter’s grandparents look at her in a more positive light has been…nice. Even if it’s not real.

Peter looks back and forth between Gamora and his grandfather, a multitude of emotions she can’t interpret flitting in rapid succession across his face. Then he meets her gaze again, his eyes holding that impossible softness like he’s understood some fundamental truth of the universe, despite nobody doing anything to clue him in.

“Gamora um–” Peter swallows nervously, but his next words to his grandfather are firm. “Gamora’s reminded me that beer’s not really the best friend o’ mine.”

She can’t read Jason’s expression very well, but there’s certainly some type of understanding that crosses his face. Hopefully not too much understanding, since Peter didn’t actually want him to know about his addiction. Perhaps they’ve been too heavy-handed with their refusal.

“I’m his girlfriend, so he would do well to listen to me,” she says, trying to smile.

“Sounds like good advice,” Jason says, nodding once at Peter in a way that must communicate something, since the tension that’s been radiating off of him eases so much that she actually sinks further into his side where she’s been leaning. She doesn’t adjust herself.

“He needs to stay hydrated,” she decides. That’s a good excuse. “Water and electrolytes. It’s important when someone spends a lot of time off planet.”

She risks another glance up at Peter to see his face has visibly relaxed, too. “This is why you’re smarter.”

“It’s good to have someone who cares about your health,” Jason says, apparently having accepted this excuse. At least for now. “I hope I didn’t get ya in trouble by offering.”

Before she has a chance to assure him that he didn’t, Peter laughs and says: “She’s cute when I’m in trouble, so I don’t mind.”

Gamora wrinkles her nose at him skeptically. Cute is not a label anyone has ever applied to her – or at least, not within her memory. She also doubts that Peter truly thinks that of her, especially if he’s referring to times when they have been in disagreement, when he has truly been in trouble with her.

Still, she is not about to break the act by calling him out on it. She can continue to play along. She just has to keep reminding herself that she cannot afford to start believing it.

“See?” Peter reaches over and brushes the tip of her wrinkled nose with a finger, like she isn’t the sort of warrior that has brought entire civilizations to their knees, like she isn’t an assassin with hundreds of kills on her record. He grins. “That’s cute too.”

Jason clears his throat, just the tiniest bit awkward in the face of this display. “Well, we got plenty o’ water but I don’t know about electrolytes. There’s a twenty-four hour drug store about half an hour from here if you want to try there.”

“Oh, no,” Peter says quickly. “No, no, not that important. I think soda’s got lotsa hydrating stuff in it too! Basically the same.”

Gamora sighs. “It is not. I brought plenty of electrolyte drinks with me, if he dehydrates himself enough to need them.”

“Which means I can have a soda,” Peter concludes, making Jason laugh, that awkwardness melting away. Peter’s ability to disarm people like that in a conversation is one she underestimated at first. Thanos hadn’t exactly stressed diplomacy, after all. Yet, she’s seen how advantageous it can be, both on a job and in a regular conversation that Gamora has no idea how to navigate effectively.

He demonstrates that ability even more now, seamlessly directing the conversation where he wants it to go. “Maybe we can have some sodas while we talk about the weird shit going on in this neighborhood. We saw some wild stuff today.”

Jason arches his eyebrows at them, though he’s smiling. “Oh, don’t even get me started on that.”

Gamora looks up at Peter again and is completely unaffected when he winks at her before turning back to his grandpa. “We totally wanna know.”

Chapter Text

Peter is fully aware that he's had nothing stronger than soda to drink, despite his grandpa’s offer. Despite his earlier temptation and also that moment of blind panic, when he'd felt certain that he was about to lose the affection he's somehow managed to earn from this man he's spent his entire adult life avoiding.

He's extremely, painfully aware that he has not touched any alcohol, thanks in large part to Gamora’s intervention.

And still, as he sits on the bed in their – well, the room they’ve been sharing – he feels thoroughly buzzed, in a way that's far more pleasant than anything he can remember experiencing from beer. Or at all, really, in the recent past.

He's pretty sure this is Gamora’s doing too. Or at least…because of the act she's been putting on in front of his grandparents. He has to keep reminding himself that it's an act, that they aren't genuinely together in that way, and that they might never be. That he'll have to find a way to be okay with it, if she decides she wants to go her separate way, because he's promised both of them.

But still, it's nice to pretend for a while. There's a comfort and a familiarity in it that he's never found anywhere else. And no matter what she might think about being a different person, he's fairly certain this feeling means she isn't– at least, not in the ways that really matter.

Those thoughts are effectively wiped from his mind when the woman herself re-enters the room, fresh from the shower in her usual nightclothes: a black tanktop and black leggings. While he’s a little disappointed that her having her own clothing again means she isn’t wearing his to bed, it’s nice to know that she still chooses similar pajamas. Though, her counterpart had also enjoyed sleeping in his shirts.

“Are you going to shower?” she asks, then thoroughly distracts him from having any ability to answer by pulling all of her hair to one side and starting to braid it. She’s about halfway through it before she raises a brow at him, not stopping her movements. “Peter?”

“Wha – oh, showering, yeah,” he says quickly. That’s what he’s been waiting for, he remembers. His turn in the shower. “I’ll be right back. Don’t miss me too much.”

She doesn’t bother to respond to that stupid comment, which is probably for the best.

He showers quickly but thoroughly, part of him still afraid that she’s going to disappear while he’s out of the room. It’s not until he’s out and drying off that he realizes he’s neglected to bring any pajamas of his own into the bathroom.

“Aw, fuck,” he whispers, glaring at himself in the mirror. So much for seeming cool and suave and put-together. Though, who is he kidding? He’s never been able to keep up the Star-Lord charm around Gamora.

He sucks it up and raises his voice. “Gamora?”

"Yes?" she responds immediately.

“Can you bring me some clothes?” he asks, trying not to sound as embarrassed as he feels. “I forgot to bring a change!”

"What clothes?" she asks through the door, apparently less willing to go through his stuff without permission now.

“Just a shirt and some sweatpants,” he says, not wanting to make her uncomfortable.

"Do you rewear your undergarments?" she asks, and he can practically see the furrow in her brow, the way that her nose is wrinkled in judgment.

“Course not!” he says quickly. He’s already blushing, but the heat is spreading down his neck and chest now. “If um–if you could bring me some of those too, that’d be–neat.”

Neat? For fuck’s sake, he’s a disaster.

Gamora hesitates for a beat before he hears her again. “From your bag?”

“I think that’s where they are,” he says, wincing. He sighs and ties the towel around his waist, making sure it’s tight. “Or I could just come get them myself, if you want? I’m wearing a towel.”

This time, there’s no hesitation. “Do that. I won’t look.”

“Okay, I’m coming out,” he announces, projecting as much Normalcy as he can into his tone. He also sucks in and flexes as much as he can, just in case she does happen to catch a glimpse of him.

When he opens the door, he’s glad he did because her eyes snap right to his chest and stay there as if glued in place. Even as he enters the room and grabs his bag, she remains standing where she is, staring at him.

He doesn’t have to try to project confidence anymore; in fact, he has to try not to be downright smug. His original plan had been to just grab his bag and take the whole thing back into the bathroom, but he’s not about to deprive Gamora of a show if that’s what she wants. And it sure seems to be.

“Sorry I forgot,” he says, lifting the bag onto the bed with one hand in a far greater arc than necessary, flexing as he does. His ego gets a nice little boost when he notices her watching his arm’s progress raptly.

His clean clothes are in the bag just like he thought, even if they are all balled up and probably pretty wrinkled. It is, after all, the most efficient way to pack. Gotta maximize that space somehow. Plus, the first clean shirt he finds is the perfect shape to continue his show by throwing it up in the air and catching it, flexing all the way.

Gamora is still watching him when he looks back at her, and suddenly he’s struck by an incredibly strong wave of nostalgia and deja vu. How many times did he do things like this back when they were all living on the Milano? When the Guardians were first a thing? How many times had he caught Gamora, when she didn’t have a whole lot more memories of him than she does now, watching him, eyes glued to his arms, his chest, his mouth?

How many times had he played that to his advantage?

Peter arches a brow. “You wanna borrow some? I know you got your own now, but hey, if you wanna continue the Authentic Terran Pajama Experience, I’m totally prepared to be generous here.”

Gamora blinks at him for a moment, her expression vacant and distracted. “What?”

He holds out a pair of sweatpants towards her and shakes them a little. “You could borrow these, if you want some looser PJs.”

She looks between his hand and his face, brow furrowed. “I’m perfectly fine in the pants I have on. How would those even fit me?”

“You just roll the hem,” he explains, rolling his towel demonstratively. Her eyes dart immediately to his hip bone, exactly like he’d been hoping they would. He only has half a second to feel smug before she licks her lips absently, drawing his eyes like magnets.

She must snap out of her daze first, because he’s still watching her lips when she starts talking again. “Go get dressed, Peter.”

“Right–right.” He clears his throat and grabs his change of clothes. His momentary distraction doesn’t stop him from rolling his shoulders when he turns around for the bathroom, making sure to show the muscles of his back to best effect, certain that her eyes are on him even though he doesn’t turn around.

He finally lets the grin overtake his face when he closes the bathroom door, flushed with pleasure now rather than embarrassment. Regardless of how she might feel about him, he at least knows she’s attracted to him. He doesn’t need to know anything else about her to be able to tell that.

So, okay. She’s attracted to him. He’s…well, of course he’s attracted to her. He’s also completely, irrevocably, and hopelessly in love with her, and pretty damn certain he’s incapable of not feeling that way. Gamora could try to surgically remove that part of him and it still wouldn’t work. He’d just be a pile of dismembered shreds, still loving her.

Well, isn’t that a romantic fucking image.

Peter shakes his head at himself in the mirror, but he still can’t quite wipe the grin off his face.

He isn’t entirely delusional, of course. He knows that attraction isn’t the same thing as having genuine feelings for him. Genuinely caring.

But it’s not totally unreasonable to feel some hope, is it? He’s pretty sure that is how her feelings for him started when – Well, before. He’s sure as hell gonna enjoy this as much as he possibly can.

Shaking himself, Peter finally unwraps the towel and pulls on the clothes he’s retrieved from outside, reflecting that maybe it’s actually fortunate he forgot to bring them in here before. He takes another few moments to adjust the way his shirt falls over his shoulders, to tie the sweatpants low enough that they could very easily expose his hip bones again, and to run a hand through his rapidly-drying curls.

Gamora is already tucked into her side of the bed when he comes back out, melting his heart. He’s missed the innate intimacy of her side of the bed, of seeing her in her nightclothes, free of the armor she puts on for the universe. Not that she’s entirely let her guard down or anything. She’s rather obviously avoiding looking at him, scrolling through his Terran phone again like she can’t possibly take her eyes off it. That’s kind of a victory, though, if she’s so affected by his presence that she has to resist looking at him.

That’s what he tells himself, anyway.

“This says the butterflies wanted my bodily fluids,” she announces, not looking up from the phone even as he’s carefully sliding under the covers on his side of the bed.

He snorts. “What? It does not.”

Now she looks up to glare at him, though she can’t seem to stop her eyes from flicking to his hair, his shoulders, his arm again. Then she holds the phone screen up to his face so he can see.

“Butterflies may be attracted to the salt and sweat on your skin,” he reads, then laughs. “That’s a little different than the way you worded it.”

“They wanted to eat me,” she maintains, decidedly smug.

He rolls his eyes, full of affection. “Wanting to lick your skin is different than wanting to like, suck your blood.”

This, of course, does not deter her – not that he ever thought it would. He is familiar with Gamora’s competitive nature, her need to come out on top at all times. It’s not like he would expect this to be any different. She turns the phone back toward herself and scrolls for a moment until she finds the passage she’s been looking for.

“It says here that ‘because of their straw-like mouth parts, butterflies are mainly restricted to a liquid diet.’” She pauses to arch a brow at him, and Peter congratulates himself on being mature enough to not laugh aloud at the mental image of winged insects with dicks on their faces. Gamora continues with blissful ignorance. “Liquid diet sounds like blood to me.”

Peter snorts. “It means nectar, Gamora. Not blood. Unless you’re a flower, I guess.”

“You said they like me because they think I smell like a flower,” she points out immediately, her tone already triumphant in a way that ought to be obnoxious, but is really just adorable to him. “If they think I’m a flower, then they think my blood is nectar. So they want to suck my blood. You just said so. And it would hardly be the weirdest thing happening in this neighborhood.”

“Sure,” he says, amused. “Random toys on the streets, blood-thirsty butterflies. Could all be part of the weird shit here. Though, my grandpa didn’t seem to think there was anything actually bad happening.”

“Just because the butterflies can’t do harm, doesn’t mean they don’t want to,” she maintains, with a lofty tone and haughty tilt of her head and gods, she’s so fucking beautiful. He’s always thought so, of course, but the way she tilts her head like that really emphasizes how sharp her jaw is; she could cut him with it and he’d thank her.

“It does effectively make them harmless, though, doesn’t it?” he asks innocently. “If they can’t do any harm?”

She narrows her eyes at him in a glare that only makes him smile. She’s so pretty when she’s angry. And at every other time. “Individually harmless, maybe. As are the strange things your grandfather witnessed. But taken together, they could be part of something larger.”

“It’s definitely something weird.” Finally too tired to keep holding his head up, he lets it fall back onto the pillow with a sigh. This position has him looking up at Gamora, as she’s still propped on her pillow, so he can hardly complain about the view.

Her eyes remain narrowed at him, but now they’re flashing with concern. “We can talk about this in the morning. You need to rest.”

“But I’m not tired,” he says with an exaggerated pout.

He is, technically speaking, tired. Or at least, his body is. It’s crazy, really, how long his stupid meat suit is taking to get back to its usual stamina after just a few days of withdrawal sickness. It’s unfair, how ungrateful it’s being. Really seems like it should function better now that he’s not pumping it full of poison on the regular. But here he is, feeling completely drained by the day’s minimal effort and once again cursing himself for his failure to bring along some medpacks. Turns out, he’s been far more reliant on them than he’s ever realized.

And foolishly reliant on Gamora to think about packing such pragmatic items for him.

Well. At least that hasn’t entirely changed.

But still, tired as he is, he isn’t tired enough to pass out without having to face any of the thoughts he’s been trying so hard to avoid. Plus, going to sleep would mean missing out on this opportunity to just…share time with Gamora in bed.

“Fine,” she says. “Don’t sleep. I don’t care.”

“Fine,” he echoes, in a much lighter tone than hers. “I won’t.”

“Good talk,” she says dryly. For a moment they’re both silent, avoiding each other’s eyes, before she speaks again. “In my experience, intent to harm is rarely harmless, regardless of ability.”

There must be some experience behind that statement. While he could probably guess, he’s trying not to assume things. “What do you mean?”

She shrugs in a rather unconvincing show of not being concerned. “If someone has a strong enough desire to do harm, they’ll find the means eventually.”

He thinks about stories she’s told him of her other siblings under Thanos, and even just his own experience with assholes throughout the universe. Powerless now doesn’t mean powerless forever. “Good point. We should probably look into the weird shit, then.”

“We?” She turns towards him, arching a brow that might as well be an anvil she drops onto his chest, or a knife popping the bubble of camaraderie he’d been briefly existing in.

“Sorry, I didn’t— my bad.” Just because they’d been talking like the old days — the old days for him — doesn’t mean they’re actually planning a mission together or that she wants to stay here any longer than she has to make sure he doesn’t relapse or —

“Peter,” she says, cutting off his dumbass thoughts in a softer tone than before. She even reaches out and covers his hand with hers where it rests on his chest. “I’m obviously not going to let you do this on your own.”

“Oh, well, of course not,” Peter says quickly, the relief so intense it’s once again almost intoxicating. Or maybe that’s just the many waves of adrenaline converging. He can’t deny the way his heart leaps at the idea that she wants to do anything at all with him, much less this, much less making a promise about it while holding his hand. But then he remembers why she’s willing to stay, to spend any time on Earth: because he’s a mess. Maybe an attractive mess, but still a mess. And wasn’t the whole point of coming here to learn how to…un-mess his mess without obligating anyone else to help? He clears his throat. “I mean, I can totally do it on my own if you’d rather. If you don’t wanna stay, or if you do wanna stay but you just don’t wanna–”

“Peter,” she interrupts again, more firmly this time. “Stop being an idiot.”

He blinks. “That – uh – That might – be an issue? I mean, I’ll try. I’ll totally try, but I’m kinda–”

“Yes, I know, you’re good at being an idiot,” says Gamora, not unkindly. “That’s not the point. I came here to see you, and I promised to stay to make sure you’re all right. I’m not going to leave you or your family in potential danger.”

He’s so busy being touched by the obviously touching part of that statement that he nearly misses her subtle slip. When he does catch it after a second, it warms him from the inside out. “You came here to see me?”

It takes her a second too; he watches as the realization crosses her face, and he can practically see the war going on inside her head as she debates what to do. “No. What are you talking about?”

Ah, denial. A classic. That only makes him smile wider. “You just said you came here to see me.”

“No, I didn’t,” she says quickly, glaring at him. She also squeezes his hand firmly, as if she can force him to forget what he heard either through touch or sheer force of will. He’s not about to protest. “I came here because Nebula was worried about you. You must still be delirious.”

“Nuh-uh,” he says gleefully. “It’s all coming together now. I thought it was weird that Nebula woulda been so worried about me she sent you here, but then never bothered to check up on me herself.”

He can practically hear her cursing in her head. “I can’t speak to my sister’s mission follow-up. That sounds like her issue, not mine.”

“Right,” he says, thoroughly entertained and more than a little high on happiness. “So if I were to ask Nebula about it –”

She quickly cuts him off by turning onto her side and putting her free hand over his mouth, as if he was somehow about to tell Nebula out loud. “You’re hallucinating again.”

“If I were to ask Nebula, she’d tell me I was hallucinating?” says Peter, his voice a bit muffled against her palm. His lips brush against her skin without any particular effort on his part, and he’s gratified by the fact that he feels her shiver at the sensation. It’s possible he might make a point of huffing out another, bigger breath to elicit that response again.

“Yes,” says Gamora, though there’s a tremor in her voice that he’s fairly sure means she’s trying not to laugh. “My sister would also be able to tell that you’re hallucinating, because she knows that she sent me here. To check on you. Therefore she would know. That you were hallucinating.”

“If I asked her why you were here?” he presses, grinning against her palm. His heart is racing, adrenaline screaming through his veins with the kind of breathless hope he hasn’t felt in years. Not since…Not since he saw Gamora on that battlefield, after thinking it was an absolute impossibility.

And it’s not like he thinks anything is guaranteed now. But he also knows that Gamora is not as good of a liar as she thinks she is. He’s not even intuiting anything from his experiences of her counterpart – just from what he’s already learned of her. He can tell that she’s slipped in her admission of her real reasons for coming here, is probably backpedaling because she isn’t ready to acknowledge it. Which – okay, he’s really trying not to make comparisons, but it reminds him so much of that first…first time.

She finally seems to notice that she’s been touching his mouth for quite a while, because she rips her hand away, a flush rising to her cheeks. He can’t even be that disappointed by the loss of contact, because she doesn’t really move any farther away, and she’s still holding his hand. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“Nuh-uh,” he says, practically giddy. He grows a little bolder, shifting his hand so he can rub his thumb back and forth over the side of hers.

The color on her cheeks grows even darker, and her voice is softer when she speaks. “Then what are you doing?”

He shrugs a shoulder. “Touchin’ you.”

“Why?” she asks, an edge of suspicion in her voice. She still doesn’t pull away, though. She might actually get a bit closer, making it difficult for him to remember what she asked, much less formulate a response.

“Cause...I like it?” He doesn’t mean to make it a question, but he’s not sure what answer she’s actually looking for. “I like you.”

Her eyes narrow, the edge of suspicion now growing to cover her expression, too. “Why? Am I another distraction?”

Well, that’ stings. Not that he doesn’t deserve it, given all that she’s seen of his behavior with alcohol. “Of course not. I don’t see you that way, Gamora.”

“And this?” she insists, briefly lowering her eyes to their joined hands. The fact that they are still joined is a good sign, he thinks.

“I guess it is distracting,” he admits, not wanting to lie. Or – knowing better than to lie. There’s been more than enough hurt and miscommunication between them for such an objectively brief acquaintance. He would rather be honest, even if it’s at the cost of getting what he wants. Which, hey…that’s probably some kind of progress, right? “But that’s not why I like it. Or you.”

“Why do you?” she asks, meeting his gaze. It’s a genuine question, not a challenge. He can see a certain tenderness in her eyes, a vulnerability that’s been creeping in more and more.

For a moment he can’t come up with any words to answer, feeling lost in her gaze, in the possibilities it’s suggesting. In the way the world between them seems to be slanting and rearranging, reality shifting in ways he hardly dares believe.

“Lotsa reasons,” Peter says gently, aware that he needs to tread lightly, that he needs to be patient even if he wants to throw himself in wholeheartedly and then some. Her counterpart hadn’t exactly been ready to accept his love either. Not for months. And that was without any of the complications they have now. “You make me laugh. You don’t take my bullshit. You make me think about stuff I’d never thought of before.”

She purses her lips in a thoughtful expression, perhaps trying to poke holes in his statement. She must not be able to, though. “That is true.”

Irrefutable facts, then, are the way to go here. “You have pretty hair. And soft skin.”

That makes her roll her eyes, but with a smile tugging at her lips, which is one of his top ten favorite Gamora expressions. “You’ve hardly touched my skin.” He raises his brow at her as he pointedly traces a circle around the back of the hand he’s currently holding, which makes her roll her eyes again. “So you’ve touched my hand. That’s barely any of my skin.”

The hope she’s been stirring in his chest blooms some more, making him just brave enough to say his next thought out loud. “Is that an invitation to touch more?”

He figures there’s probably an even chance of her stabbing him for his boldness or giving him a chance to see where it goes. As hot as she is when she stabs stuff, he’s pretty damn pleased when she scoots the slightest bit closer to him and shrugs one shoulder. “Find out.”

Heart pounding, he loosens his grip on her hand so he can slowly move it down the underside of her arm, feeling the deceptively delicate skin of her wrist and delighting in the shiver she can’t seem to suppress. “Still soft.”

“Still a very small sample,” says Gamora. There’s a challenge in her voice, but also an invitation, he thinks.

“Smooth hand,” says Peter, trying to be smooth himself. Not that he has any kind of high hopes for the Star-Lord Charm around her. He knows his own weaknesses. Fortunately, they haven’t scared Gamora off so far. “Smooth wrist. That’s totally different from your hand, by the way, so we just doubled the size of my sample.”

"That's still like...less than twelve percent of my body," she says stubbornly. Which is definitely an invitation to keep going farther still. Either that or she’s going to stab him. Either way, it kinda feels like a win.

He bites his lip and traces one finger back up the inside of her arm to her elbow, watching her face. She shivers, letting her eyes half close for a moment. Then she opens them again and shifts closer, echoing his movements by running her fingers down along his jaw.

He shivers and tilts his head into her touch. “Not as soft as yours.”

"No," she agrees, running her fingers over the stubble he hasn’t trimmed in more than a few days longer than usual. "Rough here."

“Not too bad?” he asks softly, drawing tiny circles with his thumb over the soft skin of her inner arm.

“I didn’t say it was bad at all,” she informs him. Then she immediately makes him forget how to speak by using the backs of her nails along the line of his jaw. That must be some kind of innate Gamora instinct she has, to know he’d like that.

In lieu of any ability to form words, he carefully traces his fingers down her arm, past her elbow to cup her bicep, admiring the smooth, soft skin and the firm, strong muscles underneath. He feels said muscles flex and appreciates it whether or not it was intentional.

She’s close enough that he can see her throat work a few seconds before she gathers the words she might have been fighting this entire time. “You know this isn’t… I’m not promising anything here, Peter.”

His chest constricts, even though he’d been anticipating this in the back of his mind. It’s not like she’d come right out of the gate trusting him the first time around, either. He’d had to earn it then too. “I know.”

She searches his eyes, hand still on his face. “This doesn’t mean I’m your girlfriend.”

That also doesn’t surprise him, and yet also causes a pang in his heart. He may have hope, but he’s not delusional enough to think she’s changed her mind in the past five minutes. “I know that, too. We don’t have to label what we’re doing.”

There’s a strange sense of nostalgia in this, too. Not exactly deja vu, because this particular situation never happened between him and her counterpart. And, to be fair, he knows that the woman currently causing the firestorm of emotions in the pit of his stomach never shared any sort of anything with him prior to the past few weeks. But still. He’d imagined scenarios like this, back then – When he’d been able to sense the attraction from her counterpart, but had known that she was unprepared to acknowledge it as anything meaningful. That she might never be able to acknowledge that sort of meaning or emotion for herself.

He’d been tempted, of course, to propose just this sort of thing – Undefined pleasure with no strings attached. The sort of thing he’d done countless times before, with countless women whose names he hardly remembers. And that had been what had stopped him from actually acting on the impulse, then. He’d known almost immediately that Gamora was more than that, would always be more than that to him.

If she had been the one to initiate, though, would he have refused? He’s confident that he wouldn’t have then, and he certainly won’t now.

He’s always been hopeless for Gamora in this way: No matter the time, or circumstance, or even reality itself, he knows that he’ll do anything to be with her as much as he’s allowed.

“No expectations either?” she presses.

Hope and longing don’t count as expectations, he figures. “No expectations. I swear, Gamora. Stop whenever you want. We don’t do anything you don’t wanna.”

She scans his face for another few seconds before she nods once, expression relaxing. She doesn’t do anything else, though, just keeps looking at him. Slowly, he slides his fingers back down her arm to the back of her hand, tracing each of her fingers with his. “Am I allowed to declare your skin soft now?”

“You’re still only touching my hand,” she informs him. There’s a little uptick of her lips that makes his heart skip again.

“You’re right,” he says softly, feeling encouraged enough to lift his hand to her cheek, mirroring the way she’s touching his. “Is this okay?”

She leans ever so slightly into his touch; she might not even realize she’s done it. “You’re asking too many questions.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he whispers. He can do nonverbal cues. “Just stab me if you want me to stop.”

He swipes his thumb gently back and forth over her cheek, and this time she leans fully into the touch. “I’m good at that.”

“Getting messages across?” he asks, letting his thumb stray just to the corner of her mouth and back to her cheekbone. “Or stabbing?”

“Yes,” says Gamora, which is just so her that he can’t help the wave of delight that erupts inside him. He’s missed this – the spark of chemistry between them, equal parts trust, attraction, humor, and challenge. It’s unique in the sense that he’s never experienced it with anyone other than Gamora, though not exactly the same as before, because they aren’t the same people who met all those years ago.

“Yes?” Peter echoes, hearing the emotion, the warmth in his own voice. He’s still holding her gaze, still resting his fingers just to the side of her lips.

“Yes,” she repeats, then demonstrates by turning her head and nipping the tip of his thumb.

He giggles like an adolescent, cheeks heating again, not that they cooled down too much since his shower. At least now the heat is from desire. “Good point.”

"Of course it is," says Gamora, her own cheeks undeniably flushed. They would be warm to the touch – warmer than usual – if he allowed himself to touch them.

“Stabbing is usually pointy,” he whispers, like it’s a great revelation.

He watches as her brow furrows in confusion for a moment, then clears as the joke lands. She snorts. “That’s awful.”

“We must be having a translator issue,” he tells her. Then he summons enough bravery to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, caressing the shell of it with his fingertip as he does. “Cause my joke was awesome.”

“Are we?” She asks what he fervently hopes is a rhetorical question, because she steals his breath when she runs her fingers through the curls that flop over his forehead, nails just slightly touching his scalp. “This is much softer than the hair on your face.”

His eyelids flutter but he forces them to stay open, both because he doesn’t want to miss a second of this and because he’s trying not to act as totally blissed out as he feels. “Um. Oh, yeah, it is. Tried to use some oil on my beard once, but it’s too powerful. It stayed rough.”

“Quite formidable,” she says, with the tiny, teasing smirk that once again makes words difficult. It doesn’t help that her fingers have made it farther into his hair and she’s watching his reaction. She’d discovered this weak spot of his early on the first time around, too.

“Mhmm.” His hand finally remembers it can move and is making its way from her face to trace along her jaw and down to her neck, keeping the contact feather-light. “Can’t think of a better way to describe my beard.”

Apparently taking that as a challenge, she counters with: “Legendary.”

Here he was feeling a little self-conscious about the state of his beard, but apparently she likes it. “Holy shit, you’re right. It is legendary.”

"Stab, stab," she says, delicately poking his jaw with a fingertip to emphasize the words. "I made a good point."

His smile widens so much it hurts his cheeks and brings tears to his eyes as the pun lands. “You totally did!”

Gamora studies him, looking a bit surprised by his reaction despite the confidence she has always had in her ability to win at all things. There’s definitely pleasure in her expression, though, beneath the curiosity.

“I like when you make jokes like that,” he explains softly, recognizing her need to understand the reactions she’s provoked, to be able to shape her future actions accordingly. “When you reference something I said.”

"Oh." She blinks, considering. "Is that not -- typical?"

“Friends do it,” he says with a soft smile. It’s been a while since she’s tried to claim that she isn’t his friend, but it still pleases him when she doesn’t. “It means you were listening, you know?”

"Of course I was listening," she informs him.

He rests his hand on her shoulder over the fabric of her shirt, rubbing the material lightly between his fingers. “Lotsa people don’t.” That had been one of the first things he’d noticed about her that made him fall in love; all the way back to that balcony on Knowhere, when she’d asked about his Walkman. Even if she doesn’t remember and never will, she’s obviously still got that attribute.

“So it isn’t typical,” she surmises. She rolls fully onto her side to get closer to him, pressing one of her legs against his.

He inhales shakily and presses her leg back, all but tangling them together. “No. It’s special. You’re special.”

“Don’t tell me that,” she says, so abruptly he’s surprised she doesn’t pull away from him. He’s also surprised by the vehemence in her tone, considering how adamant she’s been to be seen as different from her past/future self.

He rolls with it, though. “Okay. Can I tell you that your skin is totally soft now?”

“Fine.” If she’s trying to sound unaffected, she’s failing; especially when he slides one finger under the strap of her tank top and she shudders.

“Your skin is totally soft.” He runs the pad of his thumb along the curve of her clavicle, then pauses to draw tiny circles at the spot where it meets her shoulder. He feels another tremor run through her body at that and gives himself a mental high five. She has always enjoyed being touched this way, and while he might be trying not to make too many assumptions based on her past self, he certainly is going to use that knowledge if it benefits her. Gamora deserves every good thing he can give her and then some.

“Your skin is softer than your shirt,” he tells her, because she hasn’t said anything else yet. She has her eyes half closed, and she certainly doesn’t seem to be minding any of this. Nor does she seem to be about to respond in words, so he keeps going. “Softer than your shirt. Softer than my shirt, which is pretty damn soft. Softer than a butterfly’s wing!” That last one is pretty inspired, if he does say so himself.

“You have not touched a butterfly’s wing for comparison,” she says. “For all you know, they could be razor sharp.”

“Would you like them better if they were?” he asks, electing not to point out that she doesn’t know he never touched a butterfly’s wing. Mostly because he hasn’t.

Her eyelids flutter, also reminding him of a butterfly’s wing. “Like what better?” There’s a breathy quality to her voice that definitely doesn’t remind him of a butterfly — it reminds him of that exact same voice, when he’s doing something she likes enough to lose her usual focus.

“Um—butterflies.” He’s not doing the best at focusing either, at least not on the conversation; he’s much more focused on repeating the motion that’s distracted her.

“Oh,” she says. She’s apparently got no plans to elaborate, not that he minds. If he hadn’t already lost track of what they were talking about, the way her eyes have strayed down to his lips would certainly do it.

“They’re um—they’re soft. I think.” He’s not entirely sure what he’s talking about anymore, but he is sure her skin is soft. He’s also sure that she’s inched closer. And that she’s still looking at his lips. And that she can hear his heart hammering away in his chest.

Gamora swallows visibly and then shivers. Her eyes don’t stray from his lips. “Oh.”

“Hard to ‘member stuff,” he whispers, letting the tip of his nose nuzzle hers. His head is swimming with her proximity, her familiar floral scent. He truly does feel intoxicated in a way that’s far more pleasant than that produced by any sort of substance he’s ever sampled.

"Delirious," she murmurs.

“Me too,” he whispers. He lifts his hand from her clavicle to cup her cheek, tentative.

She leans into his hand. "I meant you."

“What about me?” he asks, stroking her cheek bone with his thumb, feeling the familiar texture of her scars. Strange, that he’s touched them so many times, knowing that Thanos was responsible and yet truly had no idea of the magnitude of his power or malice.

"I don't remember," says Gamora, the warmth of her breath brushing his palm and making him shiver. He feels like all of his senses are especially heightened, an odd contrast with the floaty mess going on in his mind.

“You must be delirious too, then," he says, eyelids fluttering but again not closing.

She does the same thing, eyes half-closed but open enough that he can see the way they’ve zeroed in on his mouth. He recalls another night, her first night here in this room with him, when he’d been certain she wanted to kiss him and he’d pulled away, not wanting to make assumptions. How weird she’d acted after. At the time, he’d thought it was the right decision, but now…

It doesn’t really count as using prior knowledge of her, he figures; Even if she were a stranger, he knows the signs that someone wants to kiss him. So he only allows himself to hesitate for the span of a breath before closing the miniscule distance between them, letting his lips brush against hers.

She inhales sharply but doesn’t pull away; she doesn’t do anything else, either, just stays there perfectly still. He waits half a second for her to slap him or stab him or give him any other sign that she wants him to stop. When he doesn’t receive it, he takes his fate in his hands and presses his lips more firmly to hers, in what is unmistakably a kiss.

Somehow, probably because this is an incredible dream, she kisses him back, her lips moving softly but surely against his. Heart pounding in his chest, he nonetheless keeps the kiss tender and slow, even though all he wants to do is wrap his arms around her and never, ever let go again.

A low, happy, desperate noise rises up in his throat, all the words he doesn’t dare say insisting on expressing themselves somehow. But that’s okay, he tells himself. He can do this without ruining it with some stupid confession of love. He’s had years of practice denying his softer emotions around the Ravagers and really, is this any different?

Gamora mirrors the light tenderness of his first few kisses, and for that stretch of time, he can’t help being reminded of that other first time, when she had been tentative, shy about the difference in their experience. For a moment he thinks that this might unfold that same way, or similar enough, like so many other things have between them recently. But then she turns his world upside down again, literally.

Her next few kisses grow rougher and more assertive, wanting and urging the same from him. Then she shifts her weight and rolls them over so that he’s on his back, the length of her body pressed against his. Peter inhales sharply, as much as he can without breaking the kiss. He does loosely wrap his arms around her now, because she is clearly not thinking about stabbing him. At least, not yet.

He’d be perfectly happy to give up air if it meant he could keep kissing her forever, but Gamora somehow seems to sense his lungs’ limited capacity because she pulls away eventually. It means she sits up slightly on his lap, her hair falling down over his face, so that’s a nice consolation.

“Everything I said before is still true,” she says firmly, meeting his gaze. She’s not out of breath at all. “You know that, right?”

He wishes he had something super suave to say here, as he lays under her gasping for air. All he can manage is a nod, though.

“Seriously, Peter,” she insists. Apparently the nod wasn’t enough for her. “No expectations. This is just for fun.”

He nods again, still panting. He’d do anything for her; that’s been true for his entire life, and now is no different. Even if she doesn’t feel the same way about him. “Anything you want, Gamora.”

She watches his face intently while he can hardly do anything except suck in air and gaze up at her in wonder. If she’s looking for something, she must find it, because she gives him a nod of her own before lowering her face so abruptly he’s halfway through a gasp by the time she seals her mouth over his.

He moans and opens his mouth for her, more than used to letting her take control. Being a Ravager has also unlocked this part of her, it seems, since it had taken a while the first time around for her to be comfortable doing this. And there’s something different about this particular boldness of hers, too. Familiar and yet new, like all of her. Whereas before, she had needed encouragement, had worried that her roughness or control would harm him or ruin his trust, now she seems to be almost daring him to protest, to tell her that he’s expecting something else.

Which…okay, that’s probably fair. He’s talked up his relationship with her counterpart enough that she probably imagines it as saccharine as a Terran fairytale. He thinks that she’s worried about disappointing him in other aspects; of course it stands to reason that she would worry about this too.

Gamora runs her hands up his sides as she explores his mouth, first over his shirt and then under it, effectively ending his ability to think at all coherently about the weird complexities of this situation. His eyes finally close, overwhelmed by the feeling of her touching his bare skin, really touching it, for the first time in so long. He follows her lead, just a step behind her, running his hands along her back over her shirt.

The kiss lasts forever and not long enough; before he has the time to blink, she’s already kissing her way along his jaw and down his neck, surprising him with her immediate boldness. Delighting him too, especially when she reaches the curve where his neck meets his shoulder. When she starts to suck, he can’t stop himself from gasping and clutching at her shoulders, his body arching up to hers.

A blush rises to his cheeks, because she must be able to feel the effect she’s having on him now. Before he’s able to gasp out an apology, Gamora surprises him again by expertly rolling her hips down against him, tearing a moan from his throat.

She sits up then, perched on his lap like it’s her throne as she tosses her hair back and repeats the motion. It’s the gorgeous visual as much as the motion that makes him whimper and gape up at her in amazement.

“Fun, right?” she asks with an extremely attractive smirk that nonetheless causes a pang in his chest. She rolls her hips again, which helps.

He arches his hips up to meet hers. “Fun.” He used to do this just for fun, didn’t he? Sure, he’s madly in love with the woman, but that doesn’t mean he can’t do this for fun.

Before he's managed to regain any semblance of his composure or even really move beyond that thought, Gamora is reaching for the ties on his pants, once again surprising him with her boldness. She isn't quite brash enough to undo them without his consent, though – yet another implicit reminder that she's still the good person he's known all along.

He nods eagerly. “Are you sure?”

“Obviously.” Gamora rolls her eyes with that cavalier little smirk he's beginning to recognize as one of her Ravager trademarks. It might have been irritating at first but he has to admit it's pretty damn sexy now.

“Then yes, anything,” Peter breathes, staring up at her reverently, running his hands up and down her sides. If she's paying any amount of attention to his expression, he's sure she can tell how deep his feelings for her run, how much he loves her. But she seems to be stalwartly avoiding that.

She tugs at the hem of his shirt, even though she has yet to actually undo his pants. "Lose this.”

“Yeah—yes!” He reaches down and yanks it over his head, clumsy in his eagerness to the point that he nearly gets it stuck over his head. It would hardly be the first time; for him, anyway.

His hair is completely messed up and he’s panting harder by the time he tosses the shirt over the side of the bed. The blush on his face spreads down his neck and chest when he realizes she’s once again openly staring at him, eyes raking over his newly exposed skin.

He puffs out his chest, basking in her appreciation. “How bout you?” he asks, tugging lightly at the bottom of her shirt. He’s impressed by how even his voice sounds.

She doesn’t reply out loud; instead, she leans back and whips it over her head herself, throwing it the same way his had gone.

“Wow,” he says — or possibly just thinks. He’s had her body memorized for years, but he’s never stopped being in awe of just how damn gorgeous she is. He scans her from beautiful collarbone to beautiful abdomen. And that’s where he pauses.

For all those years he’s had her body memorized, the silver skin on her abdomen had been a part of the image. So much so that it takes him a few seconds to realize that this is actually notable.

He has never seen her without that very specific blush, has always imagined it as a permanent part of her. But he knows that it isn't, or – or at least in that instance hadn't always been. He remembers her explaining before how it was a core trait of her people, indicating the presence of a compatible life mate. How she had never expected to experience it herself, had been shocked to find her body displaying such an indication toward him.

It isn't like he's forgotten any of that, so really he shouldn't be expecting her to be silver now. Still, it takes another moment for the significance of it to sink in. When it does, he looks between it and her, slack-jawed. "Gamora.”

“What?” She asks, clearly irritated. Which is probably fair, given everything she's said about keeping this casual and fun. Then again, she's silver, which would seem to be the antithesis of those things.

Confusion wars with happiness and arousal making it pretty much impossible for him to react at all eloquently. "You're -- you're silver!”

"And?" she asks sharply. "You're bright red.”

Mind completely addled, he hardly even hears that. There are already tears in his eyes. "How--how long have you had the silver?”

“Why the hell do you care?” she asks sharply, her face transformed in anger impossible for him not to notice. It cuts through the clattering in his brain a little, but not nearly enough to clear up the confusion.

“What kinda question is that?” he asks, voice high-pitched, nearly shrill. “It’s pretty damn significant!”

“No, it isn’t!” she snaps, rolling off of him and pulling the blanket up to cover her chest while she glares at him with a vitriol he hasn’t seen since the Orgoscope incident. “Whatever you think you know, it’s wrong!”

A wave of ice washes over him, beginning at his hips where she’s no longer sitting and traveling quickly to his heart. He lays there frozen where she left him, staring at her as he tries to process what she’s saying. He understands that she’s had two years of different experiences from the Gamora he knew, but there’s no way that the ancient cultural traditions she’d told him about could have changed, much less her body’s physiology. “Okay… So what does it mean, then?”

“It means nothing!” she growls. The tension radiating off of her is so palpable it’s making him physically ache.

He forces himself to take a deep breath, trying to give himself some perspective here. After all, she’d been silver for two months the first time around before he actually found out, so it’s hardly surprising that she’s not ready to talk about it right now. Unless he’s being delusional… “I’m sorry, you just… your counterpart told me what it means to be silver to your people.”

"And you assume that applies to me." She picks up her shirt and pulls it back on angrily. "I knew you couldn't do this.”

“What—no, I—“ He panics, knowing he’s fucked things up, though he's also aware that he has no clue exactly how or how badly. “You are Zehobereiian!”

“Yes,” she says coldly, an expression he can't interpret washing over her face. It's something between anger and anguish, or maybe a mix of the two. “I am, by blood. But do you know what I am by history? A Daughter of Thanos. Whose death the Zehoberiians celebrated, by the way. Or did my sister only share that information with me?”

Peter swallows, heart clenching, horror clawing its way up the back of his throat like bile. Because, despite everything, Nebula hadn't shared that with him. Like so many things about this – about Gamora now. Things he realizes now that he probably didn't deserve to know, especially in his grief-addled state, trying to drink himself out of existence. And now, in his ignorance, he's hurt her. Again. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

She either doesn’t hear him or chooses to ignore him. “I told you not to get any ideas about this meaning anything. I should have known.”

“It’s not like I expected that!” He gestures to her now covered abdomen. “Can’t you see how that would take me by surprise?”

“No,” she says through gritted teeth, the tension in her jaw giving his teeth sympathy pain. “Because it doesn’t mean anything.”

“But –” he starts, then cuts himself off. Hadn’t he promised that he’d stop assuming he knew things about her based on what her counterpart had told him? As sure as he is that there’s no way her actual physiology or the traditions of the Zehoberiians could have changed just because she jumped forward in time a little, he doesn’t actually know anything about them aside from what she’d told him. What if Gamora now, with two years of experience he knows so little about, is right, and Gamora then had been wrong?

Or worse… what if the silver does mean she’s found a possible lifemate, but it’s not him? Maybe she’s been silver for years for someone on her crew, or for someone else. She hadn’t exactly acted like someone inexperienced with sex, like she had been the first-first time. But surely if she’s silver for someone else, she wouldn’t be here with him? Or at least not halfway to having sex with him… Would she?

“But what?” she practically snarls, after the silence has gone on for a while.

He opens his mouth to respond and can’t make any words come out, heart pounding so hard it blocks his throat.

Gamora glares at him for a few seconds before she lets out a frustrated grunt and throws herself off the bed, marching herself to the bedroom door. His panic only slightly abates when she heads to the bathroom instead of leaving the house altogether; the slamming of the bathroom door sounds nearly as final.

Chapter Text

Slamming the bathroom door is probably too dramatic a reaction, Gamora knows.

Peter’s grandparents are likely sleeping, given the hour. And she is still supposed to be his girlfriend, as far as they’re concerned. She should be polite to keep up appearances, for the sake of having made this trip something of a mission, if for no other reason.

But she is too angry to care about that right now. In fact, slamming the door feels like far too little a reaction for the rage simmering under her skin. She has to stop herself from going a step further and smashing the mirror or ripping the stupidly flimsy shower curtain to shreds.

All of that is irrational, of course, and would only punish his undeserving grandparents. Which is the only reason she doesn’t do it.

But it would serve Peter right. Stupid Peter Quill and his stupid soft, sentimental emotions, his stupidly attractive face, and curly hair, and muscular thighs, and –

She cuts herself off with a growl. Truly, if there’s anyone she should be angry at, it’s herself. She is supposed to know better. She is supposed to be a masterful judge of character, of strategy. She should have known that he wouldn’t be able to keep any of this casual, that even an attempt at casual fun would only complicate things more.

If she were the fanciful type, she might say the image in the mirror is smirking at her even as she glares into it, as if her reflection is daring her to admit that perhaps that isn’t the only reason she’s too blame.

She braces her hands on the counter, trying to reorient her world. She’s forced to admit now that it was denial on her part, telling herself that it would be impossible for her counterpart to have been silver, even though she is now. Still, the fact that Peter understands the significance of it – no, thinks he does – is something she didn’t anticipate.

Almost angrily, she lifts her shirt to expose her abdomen to the mirror, as if there’s any chance her coloring might have changed in the past five minutes. It hasn’t, of course. It might even be the brightest she’s ever seen it.

Definitely angrily, she turns on the sink and splashes cold water onto her face, then the stubbornly warm spot on her abdomen. It accomplishes nothing except making her shiver.

No matter what Peter might think, this doesn’t mean anything. It can’t. He isn’t for her. Nothing in this timeline is. The silver is an aberration and so is she. Her counterpart might have put stock in the ridiculous story her mother told her about the silver skin and lifemates, but her counterpart ended up dead at the bottom of a cliff. She will not make the same mistakes.

Acutely aware that she's procrastinating, she picks up the comb she left on the counter earlier and works it through her hair one tiny section at a time. A few years ago, she would have found comfort in this act, in keeping every one of her hairs rigidly in place, in wearing it like a warrior. At times, it had seemed like the only thing entirely within her control, and maybe that's what she's searching for in it now. Where she's felt liberated with the Ravagers in not needing to be so polished or regimented, in this moment it's making her feel…lost.

Dropping the comb, Gamora glares at herself in the mirror, then bares her teeth in true Ravager fashion. She is being ridiculous. She knows better than to care about this sort of thing. To want this sort of thing. To have any concerns at all what ridiculous notions a ridiculous man might have about her.

There is absolutely no reason for her to be longing for anything. Which is exactly why she ought to leave, ought to go back to her ship and her crew and put all of this nonsense behind her. Why she ought not to care whether Peter relapses, or anything else that may or may not happen to him.

Finally she decides the bathroom is beginning to feel more claustrophobic than the bedroom, so she makes herself go back.

She’s relieved when all the fears she won’t admit she had about Peter deciding to relapse while she was in the bathroom haven’t come true. In fact, if it weren’t for the music that’s playing quietly, he might not have moved at all.

Moving into the universe
And she’s drifting this way and that
Not touching the ground at all
And she’s up above the yard

His head turns towards her the second she steps in the room. She refuses to meet his eyes, forcing herself to focus on her annoyance at the fact that he’s still awake and not her relief that he’s not drinking; or the look of relief that crossed his face when she returned; or worse, the small, soft smile he tries to offer her that makes her abdomen feel even warmer.

She’s not thinking about any of that. All she’s thinking about is getting back into bed, as far away from him as the mattress allows. If she can just get to sleep, maybe she’ll wake up in the morning and this will all have been a dream.

Several minutes follow where the only sound is the music and Peter’s accelerated heartbeat that she can’t tune out. She doesn’t know what he’s thinking about that’s making it go faster and faster and she tells herself that she doesn’t care.

“I can um, turn this off if you want to go to sleep,” he says eventually.

“I don’t care,” she says immediately, almost before he’s finished speaking. She certainly isn't about to be able to fall asleep anytime soon. Not with the mix of emotions currently at war in her stomach, like multiple conflicting gravitational fields trying to tear a small craft apart.

He pulls the pillow over his face and whispers into it, so she wouldn’t be able to hear without her auditory enhancements: “I wish I had a drink.”

"Tough," says Gamora, though the admission tugs at something behind her sternum. So he might actually have relapsed while she was in the bathroom, if he had given in to temptation. Not that she cares on a personal level. It would just be a waste, after everything.

He snorts into the pillow, half a laugh. “It is.”

She sighs heavily, like she might be able to exhale the guilt that's currently trying to assert itself. "I still might stab you.”

“That might help me sleep,” Peter says, still muffled. “If I’m unconscious from the blood loss.”

"I'll get right on it," she says pleasantly. Not for the first time, she thinks that this man is insane in his utter refusal to be afraid of her. Then again, her counterpart clearly never followed through. That softness is probably why she's dead.

“Try not to get too much blood on the sheets,” he requests.

"That's going to be challenging if you want to be unconscious from it," she informs him.

“Damn,” he says, lifting the pillow off his face enough that she can see there are tear tracks on his cheeks. “Maybe you can just hit me really hard on the head.”

Impulsively, she reaches over and flicks his temple. The smile that spreads across his face, like that’s some sort of affectionate gesture, is so absurdly pleased that she finds herself smiling back against her will.

“Oh, I’m totally unconscious now,” he says through that smile, and with a little twinkle in his eyes.

It’s on the tip of her tongue to joke that he’s talking a lot for an unconscious person, but she’s acutely aware of the warmth that’s bloomed anew on her abdomen in response to his smile. If she responds, he’ll probably do something else that causes that malfunction again, and it will spiral out of control again. She’s already lost far too much control of this situation.

“Good,” she says, abruptly turning to face away from him. “I am also going to sleep.”

She holds her breath, waiting to see if he’ll try to keep talking anyway. He seems to take the hint, though, because she feels the mattress shift as he readjusts. Eventually, after a long while of his heartbeat and his breathing fluctuating wildly, they start to calm down, though they still don’t approach the familiar slow rhythm of sleep.

Gamora blinks in the dark, surprised at herself. What does it say, that she knows what he sounds like when he is truly relaxed, at rest? Would that not be the sort of intimate knowledge she might expect to have about a potential lifemate? In the sort of relationship – or potential relationship – which the silver is supposed to signify?

She is being ridiculous, she tells herself, narrowly avoiding the urge to make an actual sound of exasperation at these thoughts. The silver is not for him. It does not mean anything of any importance. And she knows how to recognize the way his vital signs change in sleep because that is the sort of tactical knowledge she has learned to observe for her own survival.

If she knows by the unusually long breath he takes that he is about to speak, it’s only because of those same instincts. “I’m sorry. Again. You were right about all the things you said. And you were right to be mad at me for reacting like that when I said I wouldn’t. I was just – I’m – just sorry.”

This would be a lot easier if he was as much of a jerk as she initially thought he was. “I don’t care.”

He lets out a sigh so deep the mattress moves with it. “I know. I do care, though. That I fucked up. So I’m just apologizing broadly to the room for fucking up. And for ruining the totally awesome moment. And for not being able to control my emotions when I said I would.”

The sincerity in his voice makes it impossible to come up with the biting response she wishes she could. “You should be,” is the best she can do.

His reaction – a short, sort-of-laugh – doesn’t even surprise her; another sign of the tactical knowledge she’s gained of him. “Emotions are hard to control when they’re surprised, you know? Mine are, anyway.”

“Mine aren’t,” she says automatically. She always has complete and total control over everything, including her emotions. The anomaly on her abdomen doesn’t count.

“Right.” She can hear the smile in his voice. “Well, I’ve never been good at hiding mine. My mom was always big on living with your heart wide open and all that.”

Once again, he’s made it impossible for her to say something cutting, unwilling as she is to say anything bad about his mother, whom he clearly loves so much. “That sounds like a good way to make yourself vulnerable.”

It certainly has made him vulnerable, hasn't it? His love for her counterpart was what allowed him to be so deeply affected by her death. What had led to his drinking in the first place. Or maybe that particular vice began much earlier, when he'd first joined the Ravagers, just a child grieving the loss of his home and family.

Not unlike her, when Thanos –

Stifling a growl, Gamora cuts those thoughts off. She and Peter have nothing in common. Certainly not anything as intimate as that. Truly, he's pathetic in his emotions and she shouldn't feel anything for him beyond disgust. And maybe pity.

She certainly shouldn't be attracted to him. And definitely not more attracted than she's ever been to anyone else in her–

This time she does growl as she quashes her stupid thoughts.

If Peter notices that – which he probably does – he chooses not to comment or otherwise react. Instead he shrugs. “Yeah, sometimes, but it’s worth it.”

Clearly he's both pathetic and foolish, then. Not admirable. Nothing that should be making him more attractive to her. This is why it's fortunate that she has such excellent control over her emotions, unlike him. “Look where it's gotten you.”

“In my grandpa’s house with you,” he says, voice infuriatingly soft. “Not a bad place to be.”

Sentimental idiot, she thinks. It’s a miracle that kind of nonsense hasn’t gotten him killed already.

She cuts that thought off when she realizes it’s Thanos’s voice in her head. “Not me,” she says through gritted teeth.

“You’re not the one laying here right now?” he asks, wry amusement in his voice. “That seems impossible. Are you a hologram?”

Before she can think better of it, she turns onto her back so she can properly glare at him and the stupid, tiny smirk on his stupid face. “You are only happy I’m here because you still see me as her.”

To her increasing irritation, that doesn’t get him angry and defensive like she’d been half-hoping it would. That would be a lot easier to deal with than the sad way he looks at her. “I know who you are. When are you gonna accept that I know that and still like you?”

“Never,” she says quickly. Because that’s impossible. He’s just delusional. “You saw the—the abomination on my skin and immediately thought I was her again.”

He shakes his head. “I thought… I thought it meant something. But I never forgot who you are.”

“What did you think it meant?” she challenges, though she can't quite make her voice as commanding as she'd like. She needs to know the answer, though. Both because she needs to understand what he thinks he's seeing in it and because she wants to know exactly how much her counterpart shared. For all she knows, he thinks it's nothing more than a biological function, like a species’ genitals becoming engorged with blood to better facilitate…breeding, for lack of a better term.

Oh, gods, she does not want to think about anything she might do with him in that way.

Suddenly she wonders if he did, when it was with her counterpart. Whether they had ever considered anything as ludicrously reckless as trying to have children. Surely not, with the specter of Thanos looming.

Surely not, for any number of reasons. Countless reasons, even.

Suddenly it’s even more important that she understands everything about that relationship with her counterpart, everything they had or planned to have. Everything that can never be for her. Then maybe she won't go getting such incredibly stupid ideas, like trying to have meaningless fun with a man so hopelessly sentimental.

“It means we're–” He cuts himself off, swallowing visibly. “Well. If it was for me…and if either of us was interpreting it as traditional Zehoberiians would…then it means we're…compatible. Our lives are compatible.”

Suitable lifemate, she hears in her half-remembered mother’s voice. One of the few thesmemories she has of her childhood before Thanos and it’s this saccharine drivel. Of course her other self had believed it. “How do you think the skin on my abdomen could possibly know that?”

He shrugs. “How does your body figure out how to do anything? Your brain, I guess. Your heart. I’m not here to question the science. This is just what – well, what your counterpart told me it means to your people.”

“I barely remember my people,” she says flatly. “Which means she didn’t, either.” Unless in those four years she had visited – but no. Nebula said she’d never been back there, when she warned her not to go herself. There’s no way she would have had evidence, aside from her own appearance. Which…

“When did her silver appear?” she asks, before Peter can reply. Perhaps there’s some explanation there.

The sweet, wistful smile that crosses his face makes her ache a little. Because of its foolishness. “Couple days after we met. After Xandar.”

Well, that’s annoyingly disconcerting, considering the timing of when hers appeared. “So she was certain it was for you?”

He nods. “She said she felt it for the first time when she saw me sleeping on the couch in our hotel suite on Xandar.”

She feels a strange sense of superiority that hers appeared at a more momentous time. Or at least, standing on the spaceport with him after nearly dying together (several times), after saving all of those children…She is no hero, but it certainly felt like an important occasion. "That seems -- rather mundane."

It takes him a moment to respond, one in which she can see how hard he’s thinking, though as far as the nature of those thoughts, she couldn’t say. So many things about him remain a mystery to her, even as others feel so uncannily familiar. “I guess. She pulled a blanket over me.”

That most definitely sounds mundane, even as she cannot help thinking about all the times she has done that for him recently: when he was sick from withdrawal, when he’s awakened from nightmares or with cravings…Then again, she was already silver when she did all of those things. Whatever that means. Or doesn’t. “Because – you were cold?”

The flush that seems to cover the majority of his body in the presence of strong emotion had faded some since her escape to the bathroom. And since her reluctant return. But now she watches as it darkens again, and feels her own heartbeat speed up a bit as she waits for him to speak. “I fell asleep in my bathing suit. So yeah, I must’ve been.”

Her jaw slackens a little as she pictures that, unable to muster a response while she’s distracted by the mental image of his chest and thighs dripping in water. It was bad enough when she saw him in the towel after the shower… “O-of course you did.”

“Guess she thought it was cute for some reason,” he says with a tiny shrug. “Or somethin’ that made the lifemate bell start ringing.”

With considerable self-control, she doesn’t look down at her own abdomen. “And that is how she knew to choose you?” She understands the tradition – myth, she insists internally – but she can’t imagine believing a lifemate would actually be for her. None of that is for her. Peter is not for her. And that doesn’t bother her at all.

“Not right away,” he says thoughtfully. “But she said it helped, cause before she didn’t think it could ever be for her, you know? Love. It helped convince her it was possible.”

That, she tells herself, is how she knows she is a different person now: it doesn’t matter what her abdomen is doing, she knows that kind of love is not for her. She doesn’t think she’s even capable of it. Plus, the way Peter looks when he’s talking about that version of herself? That’s proof enough that he isn’t for her, either. Not that it makes her chest ache to think about it.

"She must have been happy with you, then,” Gamora offers, possibly because she is a masochist. She doesn’t want to think about her counterpart being happy with things that she can never have. All at once, she feels a flare of anger at the way this absolutely insane sequence of events has unfolded. If her counterpart had been more careful, had not allowed herself luxuries like love or leisure, she might not have died at Thanos’ hand. Then he might not have gotten all of the Stones, might not have done the things that led to the fracturing of her original timeline.

Then she might not be here, alone, trying to scrape together a life from the remnants of things that were all meant for others. If her counterpart had not gotten herself killed, then Gamora would be…What, in her own timeline, meeting a Peter Quill of her own? Falling in love with him, like she cannot possibly do now? She absolutely should not feel any sense of loss about that particular aspect of this situation, and yet she cannot deny that she does. She would very much like to stab it out of her own chest with her sword.

“She was,” he says with that soft, tender smile and that soft, tender light in his eyes when he looks at her and sees someone else. “I tried my best, anyway.”

He does try. Clearly. Too hard for his own good most of the time. “My sister agrees.”

His smile widens. “Yeah? She said that?”

“Yes,” she admits. He looks way far too happy for her to burst that bubble; just because she doesn’t want to deal with him being sad if she does. “Why do you think she wanted me to meet you?”

“Cause she thought I could make you happy,” he says, half a question in his voice.

“We just established that, yes.” She tries to make her voice stern to discourage any more of this dangerous sentiment.

That does seem to dampen some of his enthusiasm. “You didn’t, though? Think I could?”

“I thought it was a stupid way to spend our last few minutes alive,” she says haughtily. It’s true, but more than that, she didn’t think Nebula could have been right about any of it. Gamora, in a real relationship of her own free will? With love involved? It was absurd – is absurd. Whatever incredible circumstances led to that happening for her counterpart became impossible as soon as she was ripped out of her timeline.

Yet again, she expects him to get defensive. It would be completely understandable. He is obviously still feeling emotionally vulnerable in an entirely different way than she is, and – No, scratch that. She is not feeling emotionally vulnerable. The only vulnerable one here is him and his recklessly kind, open heart. Sure, it might be his right to be upset and get defensive, but it’s his own stupid fault that he’s put himself in the position to be hurt.

Instead, he lets out a quiet laugh, which releases a tear that’s been teasing at the corner of his eye for a while now. He swipes it away quickly and tries to cover his reaction with a cough. "Your sister wants you to be happy. It's sweet."

Gamora scoffs, choosing not to tell him that she can see straight through that charade. “It’s nauseating.”

For some reason that makes him smile again, and this time there’s nothing bittersweet about it. It’s just wide and genuine, and she hates the way it warms something in the pit of her stomach. “You saying you don’t want her to be happy too?”

“I don’t care,” she says automatically. Caring about her sister’s happiness was beaten out of her at a very young age; more evidence that she’s not capable of love.

“Right.” Peter is still smiling, like the idiot doesn’t believe her or something. “Not the Ravager way?”

“Not my way.” Many of her crewmates are more capable of affection than she is.. She used to take pride in that. Strange, how it makes her feel deficient now. “And we’re not supposed to be talking about me.”

“Didn’t know we had an agenda,” he says, his smile morphing into an amused smirk that causes some sort of flutter in her stomach. Perhaps she’s diseased. A stomach virus might explain the skin condition. “What are we supposed to be talking about?”

She wants to ask him more about her counterpart and his relationship with her, but she doesn’t want to appear overly interested. Because he might take it as interest in him, which it absolutely is not.

Feigning as much disinterest as she can, she picks at a thread on the sheet and says: “Tell me about the Guardians. Since you want me to care about them so badly.”

He winces, perhaps rightfully guilty about being such an ass about it to her at Orgocorp. “Yeah, okay. Uh. Well, you know we formed after we saved Xandar from Ronan, right? Just like a week after you…your timeline split off.”

"And Groot was different." Nebula has told her that. Tried to use it as part of the argument for her to rejoin the Guardians, back when her sister still hoped for that. She had talked about the way Groot shared none of his predecessors’ memories, but is still very much a member of the family.

Which is stupid, considering that the situation is entirely different. It would be one thing to grow up, as Groot has, getting to know the Guardians as a separate being. She shares nearly a full life with her counterpart. Which just means that people make even more assumptions about her being the same. And she feels more pressure to be that way.

"Yeah, Groot now is actually that Groot's son, I guess. He's got the exact same DNA but...different experiences,” says Peter, almost as if he can read her thoughts.

Damn the universe mocking her with that timing.

“I can’t imagine that,” she says dryly, avoiding his eyes and the expectations in them.

“Yeah, well,” he says, a note of something in his voice. Sadness? Nostalgia? “He’s different but we all love him just the same.”

She can’t exactly argue with that; even if she hadn’t seen them interact, the way Groot is in itself is evidence of being raised with love. “True.” She looks up in time to see Peter’s face overtaken with a soft smile, full of affection.

“He’s a good kid,” he says fondly.

“With terrible language,” she adds. There may or may not be a bit of fondness in her own voice. Just because he was nice to her in their few interactions, not for any…soft reason.

“It’s not terrible.” He pokes her shoulder so tentatively that she can barely feel it, in a weak attempt at admonishment. “Everyone in his family can understand him.”

She sighs. Of course he would assume she meant that in the worst possible way. “You routinely call yourselves the Guardians of the Fucking Galaxy, then?”

He blinks at her a few times, clearly surprised. “Wait. What?”

“He told me I could be an honorary one,” she says, smug at knowing something he doesn’t. It was one of the few things he said to her on the balcony on Knowhere, before she left with the Ravagers.

With the benefit of her enhanced senses, Gamora hears his heartbeat stutter and then speed up exponentially, a reaction that she thinks is more than a little concerning. Especially considering that she doesn’t have another medpack in her possession. Yet another reason to regret that oversight.

“You can understand him?” Peter asks, his voice thready and breathless. Hopefully because he’s emotional for some reason and not because his frail Terran heart has chosen this moment to give out. That would just be irritating.

"For all of the last five minutes I was on Knowhere," she says warily. Not because his reaction is making her feel self-conscious – which would be ridiculous – but because she is concerned for his fragile health.

If anything, that response makes his breathing and heart rate increase even more. He’s grinning, though, so she’s fairly certain that he isn’t in the process of dying. Or maybe he is, and he just hasn’t noticed yet.

“That’s awesome!” he says enthusiastically. “And he told you you’re an honorary fucking Guardian?”

"If I wanted to be," she specifies, because she doesn’t want Peter getting the wrong idea again. Clearly he is especially prone to that. And also…Also, to be fair, because she was sort of touched by the way Groot had phrased it. She’s spent so much time staying away from the Guardians because she was afraid of being pressured to fill her predecessor’s role. Maybe a small part of Groot understands that on some primal level.

That still does nothing to deter Peter’s happiness; in fact, the affectionate edge to his smile only gets worse somehow, tugging at her sternum as if he’s shoved an invisible hook inside her and is pulling her closer with just his expressions. “Told you he’s a good kid.”

She hadn’t argued that. “Because he cursed at me?”

His laugh has a similar effect on her as his smile does. She holds herself determinedly still anyway. “I meant ‘cause he was considerate enough to say if you want. Besides, he didn’t curse at you, did he?”

She rolls her eyes. “In my vicinity, then.”

“Oh, no,” he says, obviously amused. “Did he offend your proper Ravager sensibilities?”

The absurdity of that notion is enough to force a laugh out of her, try though she might to remain aloof and not be pulled into Peter’s ridiculousness. “Terribly.”

“How have you recovered from such a shock?” he asks, hand over his heart.

“I haven’t,” she says, deadpan. She’s not at all delighted when that pulls another sound of amusement from him, entire face transforming in his amusement. “The Ravagers are always fucking proper.”

If Peter’s trying to feign a serious expression, he’s awful at it. “Fucking polite, too?”

“The most fucking polite,” she agrees, still enjoying this game, though the word fucking is beginning to lose its meaning from the number of times they’ve said it.

This time he gives up any semblance of acting serious, dissolving into delighted hilarity. She isn’t sure when it’s happened – which is incredibly and dangerously uncharacteristic of her – but at some point, they’ve drifted closer to one another. Close enough that she can feel the warmth of his breath on her face as he laughs. She probably ought to do something about that, but it feels…nice.

“Then why is it–” He pauses, gasping for breath as he continues laughing. “Why is it – not – fucking – proper – when Groot says it?”

Gamora considers for a moment. She may have started this as a joke, but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t have a comeback now. “Is he a Ravager?”

“He’s my son,” he informs her, his voice catching on the words, the humor dying almost as quickly as it’s begun. There’s something much softer in his face now, something that feels…poignant. “So yes.”

Gamora softens too, hearing the emotion in his voice. In a moment of temporary insanity, she reaches out to touch his hand. “I take it back, then. Very fucking proper of him.”

“He’s at least an honorary fucking Ravager,” Peter says in a way that makes it sound like far more of an achievement than most people would consider being a member of a group of thieves. Of course, it might have something to do with the way she’s now holding his hand, allowing him to caress the back of hers with his thumb. It’s hypnotic, almost, the slow circles he’s drawing. That, combined with the softness of his eyes and his smile, has some sort of power over her that draws her closer still, until she can feel his next exhale on her cheek.

She really ought to move away. Strange, how instead one of her legs has migrated close enough to touch his. “Maybe that’s why I can understand him now.”

His answering chuckle is more vibration than sound, one she can feel everywhere they’re touching — a list that’s somehow expanded to include their arms pressing together as they hold hands. “Every sentence needs at least one curse word for Ravagers to understand.”

“What was that?” she asks, tilting her head as if confused. “I couldn’t fucking understand you.”

He blinks, then snorts in amusement when he gets it. “Must be a flargin’ translator issue.”

“Krutacking right.”

Peter shakes his head. “You’re kinda ridiculous, you know that?” It’s an insulting word, she would’ve thought before hearing him utter it. But no matter the language, the affection is evidence enough that he means that as a compliment.

For a second she has no idea how to respond to that, how to take genuine praise from someone she has come to see as so legitimately good. Her initial instinct is to deny it, to say something self-deprecating. But somehow that feels wrong, feels like it will break the mood that she suddenly is extremely reluctant to violate. Then she remembers the joke from a moment before. “What? Somehow you went fucking incomprehensible again.”

He blinks at her for a beat, like he might also be slightly hypnotized by whatever it is unfolding between them. Then he bursts into a fresh wave of laughter, the sound warm and far more attractive than it should be. “My bad. You’re fucking ridiculous.”

“Much better,” says Gamora, her own voice threatening to break with mirth. “And thank gods I am, or I wouldn’t be able to understand any of the Ravagers.”

He feigns a moment of overly-dramatic epiphany, gaping so wide she could reach out and catch his tongue if she wanted to. “Thanks gods! Is that one of the reasons – sorry, one of the…uh….totally bitchin’ reasons that you like ‘em?”

"That they -- we -- curse?" she asks. This is not a thing she has ever considered before.

“Sure,” he says with half a shrug. “And just sayin’ whatever you want, whenever you want in general.”

“Oh, definitely,” she says easily. Thanos had been so rigid in his rules for how she was allowed to live her life, and the Ravagers are so completely the opposite that she’s thrown herself into that lifestyle with enthusiasm.

Peter doesn’t seem surprised by her answer, which would have annoyed her not that long ago. Does annoy her. “I’d say Groot is just trying to copy that, but he’s been cursing since he could speak.”

That doesn’t surprise her, which doesn’t annoy her because being able to predict things about him is strategic. Studying the way his fingers rest against the back of her hand is also probably strategic. “And where did he learn that from?”

“Rocket, for sure,” he tells her. “I never fuckin’ curse.”

She has to laugh at the absurdity of that statement, a sound that Peter seems to take as a personal victory judging by the wide, proud grin that overtakes his face. His stupid, open face. His infuriatingly beautiful face that’s a lot closer to hers than it was a second ago. Did she move or did he? It’s definitely not strategic that she can’t remember.

She is not going to kiss him again. She is not. Clearly he cannot be trusted to allow that kind of meaningless pleasure without getting dangerous expectations. Which, incidentally, is the entire reason she should currently be mad at him. Is currently mad at him. Definitely mad. And not going to make such a stupid mistake again, even if it would feel good for both of them, even if his proximity is making her want to kiss him in a way she has never experienced before.

Really, it’s a terrible injustice how he can simultaneously make her long for these things and demonstrate exactly why she cannot have them. At least, not without losing who she is. Who she is working so hard on becoming.

She ought to pull away, ought to sit up and roll over and barricade a line of pillows between them. Or maybe she could go out and find some rocks to do the job, actually. Maybe some slabs of Terran paving material. That ought to do the trick.

Instead she leans forward and presses her forehead to the side of his neck, because she is obviously being controlled by some external force that is entirely beyond her comprehension or ability to resist. At least she can’t simultaneously rest her head this way and press her lips to his.

She can, unfortunately, still hear the shuddery breath he lets out, and feel the tremor in his hand when he rests it lightly against her back. It’s difficult work to resist the urge to melt completely against him, to press her body against his and her lips to the warm skin of his neck, then his shoulder and chest and abdomen and —

With a jolt of panic, she realizes her hand has started playing with the hair on the back of his neck. What’s even worse are the soft exhales, not quite moans, he lets out with each touch. The warmth spreading through her body is almost as bad as if she had actually kissed him.

She tears herself away so abruptly that he nearly falls face-first onto the open mattress she leaves behind. The distance isn’t enough, though, so she turns away with her back facing him and screws her eyes shut tightly. Using the rocks as a blockade is seeming more and more necessary. “Go to sleep, Peter.”

The mattress shifts as he must be righting himself. “Right. Sleep. That’s what I was gonna do anyway.”

His heart rate and breathing tell a different story, but she doesn’t say anything; it’s not like hers are any calmer. And she is not talking to him anymore tonight. It’s dangerous.

Gamora rolls to the far edge again with her back to him, wondering if he’s having the same thoughts, picturing her movements without looking. Or maybe he is looking. She doesn’t know because she’s facing away from him. And also because she doesn’t care what he does.

To prove that point, she takes the pillow from under her own head and places it between them instead, a flimsy barrier but a symbolic one nonetheless.

“Um,” says Peter, definitely aware of that and probably considering a protest.

“No,” she says sharply, cutting him off without turning. “No, we are not going to do this. Go to sleep.”

Several times, she hears him take a breath and open his mouth to say something. She fully expects him to ignore her, to protest further, because she knows that he is utterly incapable of being quiet.

Except that…he doesn’t.

He clearly wants to, and clearly isn’t falling asleep anytime soon. But he doesn’t say anything else, and also doesn’t try to move the pillow or insist that she puts it back under her head. Which is infuriating in its own way, because it gives her no opportunity to further vent her frustration towards him and also because it means she now has to either go back on her own conviction or stick to spending the night in a thoroughly uncomfortable position. And she is definitely not doing the former.

Sighing, she reaches into her bag beside the bed and pulls out her holo, bringing up the conversation she was last having with her sister several days ago.

This was a stupid idea, she writes.

It’s fairly early in Knowhere’s day cycle, but Nebula responds right away. She never did sleep much.

What idea? comes through, immediately followed by: Must have been one of yours.

Gamora rolls her eyes, a much calmer reaction than she would have had to that kind of provocation even a few months ago. It had taken her a long time to hear the affection underneath her sister’s teasing, to get used to this kind of relationship with her. Sometimes she still has trouble believing it.

Coming to Terra. Seeing Peter.

It’s Peter now, is it?

She nearly curses out loud; she’s gotten so used to calling him by his first name that she’d forgotten she was still calling him Quill last time she spoke to her sister. This is the kind of slip-up that happens when she lets her guard down. Still, she can’t let Nebula know she considers it a slip-up. That would be embarrassing. That’s this moron’s name, isn’t it?

I’d say you could ask him, but obviously you’d rather message me about him for some reason.

She glances over at the pillow between them, as if he could have moved it without her noticing and be reading this conversation. It’s still there, of course.

He’s asleep. A lie. And this isn’t about him. Less of a lie, considering she hadn’t actually thought through what she was going to say when she sent the first message.

Oh, isn’t it? She can practically hear her sister’s sarcasm dripping through the perfectly ordinary text. What is it about, then? You developing a thing for another ridiculous Terran?

Gamora huffs indignantly at that response, apparently loud enough to get Peter’s attention, because he definitely isn’t asleep. She hears him open his mouth and take a breath, which prompts her to raise her head and glare at him over the pillow barrier. He is looking at her curiously, but clearly hasn’t moved into any sort of position that would allow him to see her screen. When she fixes him with eyes full of disapproval, he holds both hands up as if in surrender and then pantomimes zipping his lips. He even throws away a tiny imaginary key, which comes far closer to making her laugh than she will ever be willing to admit.

Yes, she writes back. You should see how hot his grandfather is.

She waits an appropriate number of seconds to picture her sister receiving the message and reacting in surprised disgust. Then she adds another message: Of course not. What do you think? I don’t have anything for any Terrans. Especially not ones named Quill.

You have a better chance of convincing me you’re into his grandpa.. Before her competitive nature can get too carried away with that challenge, Nebula adds: If this isn’t about Peter, then what is it about?

Caught, she hesitates with her fingers over the pad. Since she’s already implied that it’s about something, she can’t very well say it’s nothing, or tease her sister about simply wanting to say hello. Mentally casting around for ideas, she lands on the obvious. There’s something odd going on in this neighborhood. Possibly the entire planet.

As always, you are too generous with the details.

Gamora wishes they were face to face so Nebula could see her rolling her eyes. I was getting there. I know nothing of typical Terran neighborhoods, but Peter and his grandfather seem to think it’s unusual for the Christmas decorations to still be up this time of year and for people to cut their grass with a measuring device..

And this makes you fear for the entire planet?

No. But it is making the Quills uneasy. If something is happening to this planet, I’d like to get off of it before it does.

It’s the first time she’s admitted that in as many words, even to herself. And suddenly, now that she’s written them, she’s surprised to realize that they’re true. She’s tried to write off the uneasy feelings she’s been getting from the various strange observations, has tried to tell herself that she is simply not very familiar with this planet. And beyond that, she has tried to convince herself that she simply does not care if something dangerous is occurring.

But…well.

There seems to be an epidemic of caring about unfortunate things going around. Or maybe it’s just a disease that she’s contracted, and now it’s assailing her with repeated attacks. Maybe she ought to check whether one of her modification implants is malfunctioning. That might even explain the stupid silver on her abdomen.

Well, Nebula begins, her message just that single word and then an extended pause in which the holo indicates that she is typing something. Peter does have an irritatingly good sense about things like that. Probably how he survived being a Terran Ravager. If he thinks there’s cause for concern, you probably ought to pay attention.

This is not the reassurance she was hoping to get from her sister — a novel concept on its own, Gamora realizes, to go to Nebula for reassurance. Not novel for Nebula, obviously. You were supposed to tell me this Terran nonsense is a ridiculous thing to be worried about.

When have I ever done what I am supposed to do?

She assumes that’s a rhetorical question. Surely, Nebula sees the irony in it. For the majority of Gamora’s memory of her, Nebula had done, or tried to do, everything Thanos told her she was supposed to. Not that Gamora hadn’t, but she had been far more rebellious than her sister, often refusing to kneel or grovel before him.

And look at her now. The Nebula who came forward in time with her didn’t even recognize this version as the same person, could not fathom that she could actually defy Thanos when there was living, breathing proof right in front of her that she would have, were it not for the rift in time.

Too late, Gamora realizes the irony of that thought, considering how she feels about the future version of herself. Unbidden, her eyes drift to the pillow that divides her from Peter, a barrier of her own making. It would be easy, in theory, to simply move it. Perhaps the other barriers between them could be —

Her holo vibrates with another message, saving her from that dangerous thought. Maybe if you actually gave me any details I could help more.

I don’t have any more details, she writes irritably. This conversation is upsetting not only because she doesn’t want there to be an actual problem in the Quills’ neighborhood, but also because this conversation is making her feel like an unprepared fool. She has been trying to write off the strange happenings as nothing to worry about. It would be utterly unlike her to misjudge a real threat that way. And if she can no longer trust her instincts on one important thing, then…

Well maybe you should get some more details, comes Nebula’s response.

Gamora sighs, unable to deny that she’s gotten herself solidly involved in whatever this mess may be. There’s no backing away from it now, because even if she were able to tolerate the resulting ridicule from her sister, she knows that she would be thoroughly distracted by her own concerns. And if there really is a danger, well…She is alive because she has never been one to take threats lightly.

Fine, she writes back. Tomorrow. Peter’s– She catches herself abruptly before she can send this one, deleting the last word and gritting her teeth as she replaces it. Quill is asleep.

She powers the holo off without waiting for the response, not wanting to deal with it right now regardless of what it might say. Not wanting to deal with what she might end up saying.

Blowing out another breath, she glances over the pillow once more, prepared to actually discuss things despite what she’s just told her sister.

Except now, Peter actually is asleep, fatigue apparently finally having won out.

Gamora stares at him in the dark, wondering why the room suddenly feels so lonely.

Chapter Text

If Gamora had needed another reason to stay on Terra and investigate whatever is going on, she gets it at breakfast the next morning. And eats a large helping of it.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” she declares, reaching for another slice of this delicious, salty meat almost before she’s finished the first. The only reason she waits at all is because Peter’s grandparents are watching.

His grandfather – Jason, she reminds herself – chuckles. “Well, that’s certainly the highest compliment my cooking has ever received.”

“You know you’re the breakfast master,” Darla says fondly, rubbing Jason’s shoulder. “Though I think this might be more about the bacon itself than the chef.”

“Oh, it totally is,” Peter says, with the kind of wide, affectionate smile that almost makes her forget they’re just putting on a performance for his family. “I always knew she would love Terran bacon.”

She shoves another piece of bacon in her mouth, not as politely as she maybe should, but she is a Ravager. And it gives her a great excuse not to respond, especially since she’s trying very hard to avoid any more awkwardness after what happened – and didn’t happen – last night.

Not that she cares about any of that. Nor does she care about the fact that the pillow barrier ended up being every bit as inadequate as she had initially expected. So inadequate, actually, that she had found herself waking up with an arm and a leg thrown over not only it but an alarming portion of Peter’s body, the pillow compressed between them so that it only afforded a scant couple inches of protection. She is not going to acknowledge the fact that the enlarged space between her and the edge of the mattress would seem to indicate she was the one who moved closer in sleep.

Gamora does not do things like that, so it simply did not happen.

Besides, she’s fairly certain she managed to extricate herself from any kind of compromising position before Peter was awake enough to notice. Not that the besotted grins he keeps shooting in her direction do anything to assuage her concern.

This is an act, she reminds herself, as much for him as it is for her. And if he happens to be getting confused about who she is again, well, so much the better to sell it.

“That reminds me,” says Jason, breaking the silence just as it begins to turn awkward. “D’you two think you’d have some time to help out with some more chores next door?”

Peter glances at her at the same time she looks to him for the answer. He seems to be seeking her approval, so she gives him a single nod, figuring whatever he chooses is going to be the correct answer. “Of course. What does she need?”

“Do we need to motor the lawn again?” Gamora asks earnestly.

Peter and Jason let out nearly identical laughs. Darla leans over kindly and tells her: “It’s mow, dear.” Which sounds exactly the same to her, but she nods anyway.

“Yes, motor,” Gamora says, trying to enunciate it more clearly.

Judging by the lingering smile on Peter’s face, she is still saying something imperceptibly wrong. Did her perfect counterpart have a perfect translator, too? It seems unlikely that she would have had it replaced, but what does she know?

“Her lawn should be good for at least another week,” Jason says. “But that good-for-nothin’ son of hers –”

“Jason,” Darla says firmly, a light hand on his arm.

He sighs. “Her son isn’t helping with the physical stuff he used to do for her, and she ain’t strong enough to pick up the slack herself. Especially when he makes stuff worse, like the trash.”

Gamora pauses with a piece of bacon half-eaten, something about the word trash raising her suspicions. Peter seems to be feeling the same, since he raises an eyebrow at his grandfather. “The trash? We saw that it was taken out the other day…?”

“Some of it,” Jason confirms. “But apparently, he took out some of the bigger stuff and just left it, only brought some of the trash to the curb to be picked up. And she didn’t even see him do it! She hasn’t seen the kid in days.”

“But that – made the trash worse somehow?” asks Gamora. She might have a warped perspective from living with Ravagers the past couple of years, but it sounds like the kid just did an incomplete job. Frustrating, sure, much like some of her crew. But she isn't sure how that warrants this kind of concern.

“It would be bad enough if that was all he did,” says Darla, clearly having heard this story too – maybe even a different version of it, from different neighbors. “But he didn't just take some of the big things out of his own home's trash. The way I heard it, looked like he went up and down the block removing things he wanted and bringing them back home.”

“Heard?” asks Peter, through his own mouthful of delicious breakfast food.

“So he was scavenging?” Gamora asks at the same time, accidentally talking over him a bit. She starts to apologize, not wanting to look impolite in front of his grandparents, considering she is supposed to be his girlfriend. Even if she is a Ravager. When she looks at him, though, she finds Peter staring back, one of those stupid soft smiles on his face.

She mouths the word what? and he shrugs, still smiling in a very distracting manner. It makes her lips pull up to return the smile without her brain’s consent, in some strange, autonomous reaction her body has to him. Likely part of whatever disorder is causing her abdomen to react to him as well.

“Some of the neighbors are concerned,” Darla says delicately, drawing Gamora back to the actual conversation. She hopes his grandparents don’t notice the flush rising to her cheeks. “Not just about this boy — Colt — but a couple other people are acting a little out of character, too.”

“How so?” Peter asks. He’s still eating, yet something in his manner has subtly changed: his posture has straightened, his tone more focused. She’d noticed before, rather against her will, his ability to re-focus at a moment’s notice when the situation calls for it. It’s disconcertingly competent from someone she’d tried so long to imagine as a buffoon. She can see why another version of her might have found it slightly attractive.

Jason sighs and shakes his head. “Nothing as dramatic as Colt. Some people making odd decoration choices, like leaving Christmas decorations up longer than they ever have before. Random objects popping up along the sidewalks. Susan, a few houses down, has gotten real particular about the way her grass is cut.”

Gamora can’t help glancing at Peter again at that, and of course he returns the look with a nearly imperceptible eyebrow raise that shows he’s also remembering the woman they saw while they were out walking, cutting her grass with scissors.

“We saw the decorations,” says Gamora, taking a sip of the deliciously sweet coffee Darla has put in her mug. She's gotten used to Peter claiming that the Terran version of just about everything is the best in the universe, but she has to admit he hasn’t been wrong about much. “I mean – I think we did. I admit I am not familiar with Terran religious customs and Peter –”

“Well, last time I was here,” he interjects right at her pause, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like he knows how to anticipate the rhythm of her speech. And maybe he does. Maybe because they have the Ravager thing in common. She doesn't think it's because of her counterpart, since she has intentionally changed the way she speaks. “Last time I was here, the Christmas story didn't involve little yellow…things.”

“Beasts,” Gamora supplies “Yellow beasts, on a rooftop.”

Jason snorts. “Well, they're not exactly reindeer, are they?”

“Are those – creatures that come out in the rain?” Gamora takes another swig of coffee, deciding she hasn't had nearly enough caffeine for this conversation.

“No, no,” Peter says helpfully. “Rein. Like…the royal thing, I think? Anyway, they fly, and they are supposed to land on rooftops but they're definitely not yellow.”

“Royal creatures that land on roofs?” she asks, skeptical. She has never heard of such creatures, though Terra is clearly a strange place. “Are these yellow creatures attempting to impersonate them?” She has more questions, mind spinning with theories, but a laugh from across the table reminds her that she and Peter are not the only people in the room.

Her cheeks heat fiercely, even though Darla and Jason don’t seem to be laughing derisively. If anything, they’re looking between her and Peter with a fondness she doesn’t feel she’s earned. Darla, especially, is trying to hold back her laughter, but she looks like she wants to reach across the table and hug them. “This is quite the conversation.”

“We have the best conversations,” Peter declares proudly. He reaches over and briefly touches her arm, brushing her with warmth – even more when he smiles at her in that way she’s having more and more trouble reminding herself isn’t truly for her.

“I apologize,” she tells his grandparents, resolutely looking away from him. “I don’t want you to think we are not taking your request for help seriously. Please, tell us more of what’s going on in the neighborhood and how we can help.” And give her a task, a mission, something to focus on besides the man next to her.

“It might be nothin’ as likely as not,” says Jason, apparently reluctant now to interrupt the exchange she is having with his grandson. Which ought to be disconcerting – is disconcerting – except that all she can seem to bring herself to feel about it is oddly touched. She also realizes that she can see an awful lot of Peter in him right now, in the choice to rationalize away something he must know is concerning in an attempt to preserve a moment of happiness. She ought to know that for the foolishness it is, but right now Gamora finds it surprisingly poignant.

“It’s not nothing and you know it,” Darla says, smiling even though the exasperation is clear in her voice.

For a moment Gamora gets a vivid flash of herself and Peter, several decades from now, sitting at a table just like this. She imagines what it would be like to know him so intimately, and to be known in that way in return. For a moment that almost seems – nice.

Then she remembers that Peter has probably imagined himself sharing that kind of thing with her counterpart. Probably still does. She puts it out of her mind as quickly and violently as possible.

“You know we can handle anything, Grandpa,” Peter says smoothly, leaning back in his chair with the kind of easy confidence she has never had in social situations. “We’re Guardians of the Galaxy! And Ravagers.” He adds, winking her at her before she even gets a chance to consider protesting.

“Seems like an awful waste of your time then, compared to saving the universe,” Jason says, but he seems more or less resigned — especially when Darla glances at him again. “Okay, so I am kinda worried about what Colt has been up to. Or what happened to him. He didn’t used to be this bad.”

“He might’ve gotten involved with the wrong crowd,” Darla suggests. “Debbie — that’s his mother, whose lawn you helped with — was always worried about that with him. Impressionable, she called him.”

Peter nods, taking this in. He appears to have shifted into Captain mode again. Not that he’s neglecting the facade they’re keeping up for his grandparents; in fact, he casually drapes an arm over the back of her chair so that if she leaned back even a little, it would be as if his arm is around her. She stays resolutely still. “You said Debbie hasn’t seen her son in days, right?” He asks. “So he must be doing whatever he’s doing at night.”

Darla nods thoughtfully. “That would make the most sense. This neighborhood’s always been real small and close, everybody in everyone else’s business. Even after the Blip.”

“It got worse after the Blip,” Jason interjects, shooting a meaningful look at his wife.

Gamora knows about that period of time, of course – It’s not like it’s possible to exist in this timeline and not hear people talk about it one way or another. It’s made a convenient excuse, really, when she’s needed to ask about the past few years, that span in which her life diverged from…well, the person everyone wants her to be. Now she feels a stab of guilt at Thanos’s responsibility for it, at the role she – her counterpart, anyway – and her sister played in it.

“All right,” says Darla. “So it got worse after the Blip. Everyone got extra nosy, said it was because we all needed to look out for one another, never knew who might be here one day and gone the next. But it was also a way of people distractin’ themselves. Easier to judge other people’s tragedy than think about your own, you know.”

That’s far too insightful for Gamora’s liking. Not that she can personally relate at all; it just sounds profound. If she’s studiously avoiding Peter’s eyes, it’s only because she doesn’t want to see whether he relates.

He might, judging by the way he smoothly avoids responding to that particular statement. “So to keep from being seen by the curtain-twitchers, he does shit at night. Not everyone seems concerned about being seen doing their weird shit, though, do they?”

“That might be even stranger,” Jason acknowledges. “Not like anyone else is actually doing anything bad, though. Being super concerned about how even your own grass is cut ain’t wrong. It’s just…”

“Strange,” Darla supplies. “People developed all sortsa coping strategies during the blip, though. And when they came back from it.”

Her urge to ask whether Jason and Darla were among the blipped is easily quelled by the guilt that clogs her throat when she thinks about it. She wonders if Peter knows.

“So we’ll focus on the strange-and-bad,” Peter concludes. Gamora finally looks at him again, sees that he’s still in his competent Captain Mode. Not for the first time, she understands how Nebula and the rest of the Guardians have trusted him to be their leader for so long. He glances at her and throws her a smirk, which does not affect her at all. “We’ll have to be nosy, too. How do you feel about a stake-out?”

It had felt like a victory when Gamora agreed to the stakeout without him doing much convincing at all. Well, okay, he’d had to specify that a stakeout involved neither the steaks of any sort of terrestrial creature nor using stakes as weapons. And then he’d had to grapple with the fact that he’s never previously had to consider why this use of stakeout appears to be one of those peculiarly Terran terms, and that he does not, in fact, actually know why it’s called that on this planet. Even though he totally still considers himself to be the Ultimate Expert in all things Terran. Those credentials are just a bit more impressive when not on Terra.

Still, he’d been excited about the prospect of spending time with Gamora on a job, like old times. New old times. He’s not going to think about those semantics too hard. He’s also not going to think about the fact that he’s actually kind of worried about what might be happening near his grandpa’s home.

Unfortunately, not thinking about those things doesn’t leave much to focus on besides the tension he can feel simmering between himself and Gamora, heightened by the tight space.

Peter has done stakeouts before, as both a Ravager and a Guardian. He's even done them with just Gamora before, not that she'll remember that. But he's never done a stakeout in a car, and especially not in his grandfather's neighborhood.

At least he remembered to bring plenty of snacks.

"Catch." He tosses a Skittle up in the air towards her.

She catches it easily between two fingers, holding it out exactly where she caught it. “Now what?”

“You eat it, silly,” he says, amused. “You were supposed to catch it with your mouth, though.”

“You didn’t specify that,” she says as she chews.

He shrugs and tosses another one up in the air for himself, utterly unsurprised when Gamora reaches out and snatches that one, too. He grins at her. “I was trying to focus on this super interesting stakeout. Maybe another light will turn on in a window. Or one of the yellow beasts will come to life.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “Perhaps they’ll come for your yellow Skitters.”

“That would at least be more entertaining than the night has been so far.” He gestures broadly at the completely empty street in front of them, and the still, quiet house of the neighbor. “The way my grandparents were talking, I figured there’d be more action.”

“Would you even see the action if there was?” Gamora asks, reaching into the bag he’s holding to grab an entire handful of skittles.

He watches her fondly, though also confusedly. “Is that an insult about my eyesight?”

“You haven’t looked at the house for the past ten minutes,” she informs him.

“I totally have!” he protests, very pointedly looking at it now. “Just between snacks.” And admiring the way the light from the nearby street lamp illuminates her face.

"We've been talking about your ability to give instructions for the past five minutes," she reminds him. “And the yellow beasts. Which have not so far come for your Skitters. That would be far more interesting than just sitting here.”

“I can talk and look at the same time,” he informs her. “Like this. See, there’s a lady taking out her trash in a normal way. No scavenging or using weird tools for it.” He has to admit, it is going to get kind of boring if nothing happens. And he'll feel a little silly. But hey, he gets to spend time with Gamora regardless, so he's not about to complain. How can he not look at her when she's just right there,?

"I'm just saying," she informs him, "that it seems to go against what you said was supposed to happen on a stakeout. You made a big deal out of having to keep track of every tiny thing – Which I agree we should be doing, by the way. We have no idea how serious this threat might be.”

"You been on any stakeouts with the Ravagers, even if you don’t use that word?" he asks, doing his best to focus on the street in front of them instead of how sharp her jawline is and how it makes her even more beautiful when she's scolding him.

She nods. “At the Orgoscope. To study their security, mainly, and timing of their transports.”

That makes sense, he thinks, filing that into the new things he’s learning about her. That file is taking up even more of his brain now than it used to, unsurprisingly, with two entire years of change he wasn’t there for. At least he’s actually got hope now that he’ll get to continuing expanding that file.

“Are the yellow beasts on my face now?” she asks sardonically, making him realize he’s been staring at her again.

He shakes himself. “They could be. You never know.”

“That explains a lot about your approach to stakeouts.” Her smirk makes it extremely difficult for him to tear his eyes away from her and look out the window again, but in the end he’s glad he did, because he gets to be the first one to actually spot something.

“Someone’s coming out from behind that house,” he whispers, as if the person could hear him from outside the car and several houses away. He can’t see a ton of detail from this distance, but he’d bet it’s the son, Colt, that his grandparents are particularly concerned about. He’s wearing winter clothing despite the warm weather and he’s walking in a slow, stilted manner down the driveway, pausing every time he takes a step to look down at his feet, look back up, then move forward one more step. Rinse and repeat.

“It’s not a yellow beast,” says Gamora, her tone deadly serious.

“Nah, just a dude,” he says, huffing out a laugh despite the gravity of the situation. “Can’t tell what he’s doing, although he doesn’t look like he’s stealing anything.” HE really doesn’t seem to be too concerned with any kind of stealth, either.

“Scavenging,” Gamora corrects, though she sounds distracted, still caught up in watching their target. “Is he injured? Or elderly, for a Terran? I thought he was supposed to be the neighbor’s son…”

“It is her son,” Peter tells her, then considers. “I mean, assuming that’s the same dude my grandparents were talking about. And he doesn’t look old. Way younger than my grandpa.”

"My sister said Terran life expectancy is only a handful of decades," she says. "Does that not make your grandfather exceptional?"

He forgets, sometimes, how literally his friends take him when he tells them about Terra. “I was remembering wrong when I said that. My grandpa says it’s more like 80 on average, but it varies a lot.”

“How old are you?” she asks, still watching the man — Colt, presumably — shuffle down the driveway.

“Thirty-nine in Terran years,” he says shyly. “Which I think is about the same as Xandarian years, but I never bothered to figure out their conversion thing because who has time for math, anyway?”

Gamora takes her eyes off of the man only for a second to arch a brow at him, then wisely ignores his nervous ramble. She was always smart like that. “I wonder if your celestial genes affect your life expectancy.”

He shrugs. It’s not something he enjoys thinking about. His douchebag celestial father certainly affected his mother’s life expectancy. “I know I ain’t immortal. Hey, look, dude’s made it to the end of the driveway.” It’s not his smoothest diversion, but it accurate, which is probably why Gamora doesn’t mention it.

“He doesn’t appear to be taking out the refuse.” She leans forward for a better angle, casting even more light over her beautiful, sharp cheekbones.

It takes Peter a moment to respond in his distracted state, because the universe could be about to end and she would still be the center of his. He shakes himself, though, knowing that she wouldn’t want to hear that…and also because the Terran man’s behavior is becoming more of an immediate concern. “I don’t know but it seems like he has a goal. He’s coming this way.”

Gamora’s hand goes to her sword, which is at her hip as always, ready to be drawn and deadly at less than a moment’s notice. “We should be prepared.”

"Whoa, we don't wanna draw a bunch of attention to ourselves," he cautions, hand hovering over her arm. "He might have already seen us and he's suspicious." Also he’s far too familiar with her tendency to overreact and the relative fragility of Terran bodies – particularly ones that don’t have any Celestial genetic augmentation. Even if the guy does have something nefarious in mind, the last thing he needs is to be responsible for the murder of one of his grandpa’s neighbors.

"Exactly," Gamora hisses, apparently undeterred. "So we should be prepared."

“We can’t really observe his behavior if we’re busy fighting him,” he points out. This is an argument he’s had multiple times with every member of the Guardians, including her.

She spares him a rather unimpressed glance. “Or if we’re under attack.”

“He’s not gonna attack us,” he whispers urgently, as Colt inches closer. “But he might see us, and then he might not do the weird shit we’re supposed to be watching for.”

He watches the tiny shifts in her expression as she tries to find an argument for that, then he tries not to smile when he sees the furrow in her brow that means she can’t. “So we should stay out of sight and be prepared for an attack.”

Before he can point out how small the vehicle is, and how large he is in comparison, Gamora’s already crawling over the console and into the backseat. Then he gets distracted by the view of her ass and forgets he was gonna say anything.

“Why is this floor not flat?” she growls, kicking at the bump in the middle as if it will disappear. “Are there no compartments? What kind of archaic vehicle is this?”

“A Terran one,” he says, amused despite the urgency of the situation. Then he’s struck by a sudden brain-wave of inspiration and loses his mental filter. “We should make out!”

She blinks at him like she can’t decide whether to stab him or question his sanity. Possibly both, in that order.

Peter feels himself flush, realizing how that must have sounded to her. It’s not like he’s forgotten who – or when – she is. It’s just that sometimes things between them feel so familiar that his instincts kick in, jumping over all the lost time they still have to make up for.

He clears his throat awkwardly. “Gamora, look — Terrans use cars as make out spots all the time. So it would be, you know, good for the mission if we did that.”

She narrows her eyes, which has no right to be as hot as it is, the way she’s still crouched in the backseat. "Are you hustling me?"

“What—no,” he says, a little hurt. “I could seduce you way better if we weren’t running out of time. So like. Obviously this is just for distraction.”

“But why would we be making out here?” Her eyes are still narrowed, but at least now it’s partially from confusion. He’ll take that over suspicion. “It would be much more plausible if we were making out in your grandfather’s house with more privacy.”

He shakes off the memories of the night before when they very much were doing that. “This dude doesn’t know our whole backstory. It’ll just look like we’re two people hooking up in a car, it happens all the time. For all he knows, this is the only place we can get privacy.”

She considers for another few seconds, during which the dude makes it a step closer and is definitely getting close enough to see them, before she nods. “Fine.”

“Don’t sound so enthusiastic,” he mutters, awkwardly climbing over the console into the back, since she’s apparently not going to move. It’s better in the backseat anyway, according to the ultimate authority on such matters: Terran movies.

She does sit up to get out of his way as he plops down ungracefully onto the seat, rocking the whole car. That’ll only lend credence to the car hook-up atmosphere, so he calls that one a win, even if Gamora doesn’t look impressed.

“Why would I be enthusiastic about this?” she grumbles, rolling her eyes again before shifting up from the floor to sit on the seat beside him. Colt is now standing nearly even with the passenger side window of the car, though he still doesn’t seem to be intentionally approaching it. More…moving in this direction by chance. Still, Peter is not eager to test that.

And if he stays focused on the mission – and on the possible threat at hand – then maybe he won’t have to notice how much Gamora’s words sting.

Still, he hesitates for a moment longer, resting his hand against her cheek but not quite leaning in to kiss her. She is more than capable of shoving him away or stabbing him if she truly isn’t okay with this. The power is all hers. But if she really is just going along…

Then her gaze dips to his lips before she catches herself, and he recognizes it for what it is: desire that she isn’t willing to admit to herself. He’d seen it last night too right before he kissed her, and a ton of other times that he had tried not to get his hopes up about but that he’s definitely, totally sure he wasn’t imagining now. That’s what finally gives him the confidence to close the tiny gap between them.

It’s a more gentle kiss than a clandestine makeout session in a car ought to be, but he’s already afraid of pushing her so he’s sure as hell not gonna go from zero to warp speed.

Gamora, as she often does, surprises him. After only a few seconds, she grips his hair and deepens the kiss, nearly shoving him until his back hits the seat. “Isn’t this supposed to look like a hook-up?” she mutters, barely moving her lips away from his enough to do so, then nipping at his bottom one in a way that short-circuits his brain.

“Mmhmm,” he hums into her mouth. He wraps one of his arms around her and completely forgets about anything other than how goddamn right this feels. Colt who? The love of his life is practically in his lap, kissing him like she’s been doing it her entire life, like something about this is simply ingrained into their bodies like the silver on her skin –

Then she tears her lips away, plunging him into the ice-cold water of reality, though it gets warmer when she presses her mouth close to his ear to whisper. “How are we supposed to see anything?”

Peter blinks, struggling to bring himself back to the moment even after the unpleasant reminder she’s provided by pulling away. And by asking him…what was it that she asked him again? He could swear he used to be better at this whole mission thing. Must be getting old. Or maybe he fried some brain cells with his years of boozing too hard. “Wh–huh?”

Gamora huffs out a sound of impatience, which is so familiar that it makes his heart ache. Instinctively, he leans closer again and for a moment he thinks she’s going to allow him to resume the kiss – Right up until she plants a palm in the middle of his chest.

“Peter. The Terran. How am I supposed to see this behavior that we’re supposed to be observing if your head is blocking my view?”

“Oh,” he replies, and then half a second later the meaning of her words actually sinks in. “Oh. Right. Hey, no problem. I can look up every few seconds.”

“How does that help me?” she grumbles, still so Gamora that he can barely function.

He allows himself to kiss her cheek. For the mission. “You’re not subtle about looking anyway, he’d catch on immediately.”

That earns him a growl of annoyance and a bite to the earlobe that doesn’t exactly make him sorry. In fact, it makes him turn his head to capture her lips again and return the favor with a far gentler nip that nonetheless tears a small moan from her throat.

“Why am I even here then?” she grumbles, muffled against his lips.

“Everyone knows you need two people for a stakeout,” he says absently, glancing up and seeing Colt right next to the car now, looking down at his feet.

He must tense, because Gamora tries to rip her mouth away from his to look out the window — completely proving his point about how obvious she is — so that he has to cup her cheek again to redirect her before she completely blows their cover. “He’s right there,” he hisses against her lips. “Be into it.”

In answer, she curls her fingers into his hair and tugs in what he imagines she thinks is a punishing manner; or maybe there’s something encoded into Gamora DNA that tells her how to make him moan. It’s an undeniably pleased smirk he kisses off her lips, so probably the latter.

“Perfect,” he murmurs into the kiss, not even sure what part of this he’s praising her for but knowing she’s goddamn perfect at it. Even when she’s once again lifting her head to stare rather obviously out the window.

“He’s moving the cans!” she hisses non-too-quietly.

“Shh,” he whispers, putting a finger to her lips in a way he certainly hopes looks like it’s a part of the makeout session. Gamora instinctively – or maybe vindictively, he can’t really say – nips at that too, sending a full-body shiver through him and momentarily making Peter forget what she just said.

Only momentarily, though. No matter how distracted he might be by her, he still has three decades of survival instincts that have kept him going in spite of himself. Plus, he’s definitely convinced that there’s something concerning going on here. Something that has the potential to threaten his grandparents.

“You coulda yelled that a little louder,” he admonishes, carefully lifting his head so that he can see too. He glances out the back window, though, and Gamora is right; The dude is in the middle of the street now, and so are several of the cans…which he appears to be placing in a meticulous row.

Before Peter can acknowledge her brilliant ability to see what’s right in front of her, though, she huffs out a sigh and sits back on her heels, crossing her arms. “Fine. Everything I do is wrong. I’m done participating in this stakeout.”

“What?” he asks, confused but also keeping an eye on Colt as he bends down in front of the trash cans, apparently examining something on them. “You’re doing great. ‘Sides, I don’t think that dude knows anything exists aside from those trash cans.”

“I don’t care,” she says flatly, not budging.

Peter takes his eyes off Colt to look at her with naked affection — and perhaps a little irritation. The whole anger-to-cover-up-insecurity act is very familiar to him. “C’mon, Gamora. You know you’re not subtle.”

“Then why even bring me along?” she snaps, making him wince slightly; his familiarity with her act doesn’t mean he’s ever been super good at dealing with it.

Still, he can see now that she’s actually hurt, and his attitude softens. “Cause you’re awesome in every other way. You noticed him moving the cans before I did.”

She narrows her eyes, unmoved. “And yet your only response was to tell me I noticed it too loudly.” She says that in a low hiss, considerably quieter than before. He does not point this out.

“I was only trying to tease you,” he hisses back to her. “Surely you understand that after two years of being a Ravager.” In fairness, his own experience with Ravager teasing has generally been less than pleasant. But still, even mean-spirited teasing is still different from outright insults, he’s pretty sure. And Gamora’s Ravager crew seems to have a significantly more positive relationship with her than Peter ever did with his…except Yondu and Kraglin.

"Sure," she says, unconvinced. "But I'll bet your perfect Gamora would have known how to do all of this according to your specifications." There’s that undercurrent of hurt again, unmistakable even over the clattering in his brain.

He blinks at her, trying to get it together and respond in something resembling a mature and measured tone. Then he bursts out laughing. “Are you kidding me? No way. I can’t count the number of times she leapt out of our hiding spot halfway through to attack.”

Gamora stares back at him, just barely not gaping. “Then what – how – ?”

“It’s fun,” he says with half a shrug. “How boring would this be if we both did it perfectly?” And also, anything is better when he’s doing it with her. Even when she’s being infuriating about said thing.

Infuriated about it too, apparently. “I would be less inclined to stab you.”

He winks; he can be infuriating too. “Less inclined to kiss me?”

She rolls her eyes and shoves at his chest, not gently but not nearly as hard as she could. “Are you even paying attention to the stakeout?” Which is not a denial.

“Duh.” Reluctantly, he tears his eyes from her to look back out the window at Colt, to whom he has definitely not been paying attention. “I’ve been watching him…measure the distance between the trash cans?” That makes no sense, but it’s the only way he can explain why the dude is lying on his stomach on the road with a ruler between the cans.

“Yes, you’re clearly on top of this,” Gamora mutters. “Rock solid observation.”

“I can’t help it that he’s being boring,” he complains. “Why don’t you tell me your brilliant observations?”

She flips her hair over her shoulder haughtily, a much more entertaining sight than anything happening outside. “I couldn’t observe anything while you were insisting on blocking my view with your make out.”

“Well you haven’t missed much,” Peter informs her, definitely not with any amount of smugness. It’s not frequent that he can best Gamora at something, and while he doesn’t typically mind that, he’ll enjoy having the upper hand while he can. “He’s just finished the second can.”

“Still measuring them?” asks Gamora, leaning closer as she tries to also see out the window. Peter decides then and there that he has absolutely no reason to help her by moving out of the way. This will help keep up the makeout facade, and it’s not like she can’t move him if she wants to anyway. “What purpose does that serve?”

“No idea,” he tells her, far more blithely than the situation warrants. Then again, she’s currently pressed against his shoulder as she tries to see. He gestures to his lap, extremely helpfully. “Come look if you wanna.”

She glares daggers at him for a moment – or at least she tries to. To anyone else, it would look extremely convincing and possibly terrifying. But he is an expert in Gamora Expressions – even if she were an entirely different person, he’s been studying her for weeks. So he’s confident in the minute smile he can see tugging at the corners of her lips, and he doesn’t miss the way her eyes rake over his body before she climbs into his lap with determination.

While she’s sitting sideways on his thighs, giving the impression that she intends to be looking out the window, she’s not facing the window. He’s always powerless before her, but when she’s looking down at him from her perch in his lap with a challenging smirk on her face, he can’t even muster up the strength to tear his eyes away. His head tilts up to get closer to hers — slowly, testing. She’d let him last time but last time also ended rather poorly. He’s nothing if not persistent, though. And her gaze definitely flicks to his lips, her head leans down. He’s half an inch away from closing the distance when she pulls away abruptly. “You are doing a terrible job of watching the target.”

He blinks a few times to remember where they are, then shakes his head. She didn’t even pull her knife out this time, so he’s not too dismayed. “My bad. Um—what’s he doing?”

Gamora shrugs. “I don’t know how Terrans’ minds work. You tell me.”

“I am a prime specimen of a Terran,” he says smugly, disregarding the fact that he’s only half. Gamora lightly slaps him in the shoulder with the back of her hand, which nearly makes him giddy at the affection in that admonishment. “Whatever he wants the trash cans for, he must need them in a very specific place. Don’t know what he’d do with the trash cans besides put trash in ‘em, though.”

“A trap,” Gamora suggests, because of course her mind goes immediately to ways that someone could use perfectly mundane objects in a malicious way. Then again, the suspicion that something malicious is happening here is exactly why they’re on this stakeout. “For the neighbors?”

Peter frowns, considering that. On the one hand, this definitely looks like an intentional setup for some reason. On the other, he’s pretty sure most people aren’t going to trip and fall over something as obvious as a bunch of trash cans. And even if they did, they probably wouldn’t get very injured, pathetic Terrans or not. “I dunno. They don’t look like a very effective barricade. Or snare, or whatever. And why would they need to be evenly spaced for a trap?”

“If you planted explosives in them,” she says, like it’s obvious. Like it probably should be. “Or something to emit an electromagnetic pulse. If you wanted to neutralize all of the houses on the street at the same time, you would want those things to be evenly distributed.”

He pauses, equal parts turned on by her ruthless efficiency in considering this kind of thing and alarmed that she thinks someone might be planning on blowing up or frying his grandparents’ neighborhood…and he can’t even convince himself that she has to be wrong. “Okay, let’s go see what he’s doing.”

Gamora does not appear impressed with that suggestion. “Go? Five minutes ago, you were convinced he was going to see us simply sitting inside the car. Now you want to get out?”

She might have a point there. “I think we’ve seen that he’s not interested in anything or anyone but those cans right now. But you’re right, we should probably wait til he leaves.”

“I’m always right,” she informs him, which makes him smile. Then she slides off of his lap to sit properly in the seat next to him, which makes him frown. Besides missing the contact, as pathetically touch-starved as that might be, it also makes it a lot more difficult to watch her instead of Colt without making it like, super obvious. And Colt is not exactly being entertaining.

“Maybe he’s trying to barricade the road,” he throws out after an interminable minute of quiet.

“Maybe,” she says noncommittally. “It would make more sense for them to be facing the other way if that were the case. It would take fewer.”

Peter grunts, accepting that. “It could be a code. The number and placement of them means something.”

That, Gamora seems to consider. “The number has increased since the last time we saw them.”

“Has it?” he asks, struggling to remember how many there were before. He admittedly hadn’t been paying as much attention as he perhaps should have, since he’d figured the neighborhood weirdness was harmless.

She nods. “The number of yellow beasts has not changed. Yet.”

“Then there’s the lady cutting her grass with scissors,” he mutters. “That’s a lot of weird shit. We should check out other neighborhoods too, see if it’s just this one.”

She considers that for a moment before nodding. “That's a good idea.”

Peter blinks, having expected an argument. He's half prepared to defend the suggestion before he's even realized she's agreed. “Thanks.” He rubs a hand over his hair, then the back of his neck, and offers her a smile that definitely isn't a little guilty. He wonders if she can tell that he expected her to disagree. “Good job noticing the numbers changing.”

Gamora shrugs dismissively. “Survival.”

He sighs, heart aching because he knows that's true, knows that she and Nebula made it through their shared childhood by being constantly on guard. But he also knows that she's selling herself short, something she really only does when it connects to the parts of her past she'd rather not acknowledge. “Skill. I told ya you'd notice things I wouldn't. One of the many reasons you're an important part of this stakeout!”

“Enhancements,” she counters, still resisting the compliment.

“Big brain power,” he says, pointing at her forehead, letting an inch of space remain between her head and his finger.

“Oh, you're right,” says Gamora, surprising him.

He laughs helplessly. “About time you realized.”

She taps her own temple, finger brushing his where it still hovers just barely not touching her skin. “I used my big brain power.”

Because he’s blinded by adoration for her, he moves his finger the miniscule distance it takes to rest on top of hers. One of her brows goes up slightly but she doesn’t break his wrist or anything. “Such a big brain. I can’t believe it even fits in there.”

“It’s a tight squeeze,” she says with that perfect, deadpan manner of hers he’s always admired. She lowers her hand so he does too, but his ends up resting half on her thigh, for which she also doesn’t break his wrist. If he’s not hallucinating, she might even shift herself closer. He definitely shifts himself closer. Her eyes totally, for sure drift down to his lips for like, the fifth time tonight.

Then he blinks and there’s practically a car-length of space between them now, Gamora all but pressed against the car door opposite him and looking out the window again. “I think he’s done.”

Dazed, he keeps staring at her for a few seconds before he finally turns to see what she’s talking about: Colt, slowly shuffling away from the now perfectly-aligned trash cans, heading back towards his house. And them.

“He’s gonna see us,” Peter says, glancing at her nervously. Is it better for them to risk getting caught or risk her slapping him if he suggests they make out again?

She must be able to read his mind, because she throws a look at him. “He’s looking at the ground.”

“Okay, okay,“ he mutters, holding both hands up slightly in a gesture of surrender. “So we won’t make out again. Yet. But hey, be ready to duck if he gets too close.”

“I’m always ready to duck,” says Gamora, with the utter certainty she always has regarding her skills in a fight. He isn’t about to argue with that, so he lets the silence stretch between them for, like, at least thirty seconds.

“He’s passed us,” he informs her the next time he risks a glance out the car’s window. “Going home, I think.” Colt has made his shuffling way to the house he came from, though he apparently has some kind of an issue getting inside, pausing long enough for Peter’s heartbeat to speed up before finally disappearing inside. “We should check the cans. See if there’s anything dangerous in ‘em.”

“Wait.” Gamora blocks him with a hand on his chest before he’s even started to move – and now he’s definitely not about to.

He does arch an eyebrow at her, though, wanting to know what she’s detected with her enhanced senses. Or her big brain.

“He’s still at the windows,” she hisses, as if Colt might be able to hear somehow through both the car and house windows. Apparently she’s gotten the memo about subtlety. For now.

“Well, shit,” he mumbles. He can’t make him out very well, but he’s definitely there, shadowy and creepy-lookin as he stands at the window next to the front door, staring out. “See, this is what I mean: you notice things I don’t.”

He doesn’t have to take his eyes off the house to know Gamora rolls hers. “Yes, the things right in front of our faces.”

“Sometimes those are easiest to miss,” he says sagely. Since Colt isn’t doing anything interesting, he relaxes back into his seat. “So I guess we wait.”

“It is a stakeout,” Gamora says dryly.

“It is,” he agrees, then grins. “Which means we have the perfect way to stay occupied while we wait: snacks!” He bends down to grab the bag of skittles, only some of which have fallen onto the floor. “It’s no beer, but it’ll do.”

“It better not be beer,” she says so fiercely it actually startles him. Then makes him absurdly happy; it’s nice that she cares, even if she’s not willing to admit it.

“Don’t worry, I know better.” He rolls a skittle between his fingers for a second, then sighs. “I s’pose I do still kinda want it, though. I mean—I don’t, but my stupid body keeps craving it.”

She glares at his chest sternly. “Stop it.”

He laughs, familiar fondness warming his chest. “Thanks. I tried telling it, but it didn’t listen.”

“And your body will listen to me better?”

“Pretty sure you saw it listening to you last night.” His chest seizes, the warmth of affection quickly transforming into embarrassment.

Her eyebrows shoot up and her cheeks almost certainly darken. Still, she doesn’t stab him. Or even look angry. She actually smirks. “True.”

Relieved, he lets out a breath and smiles shyly. “Skittle while we wait?”

“Skitters.” She opens her mouth expectantly. Peter tosses a piece of candy her way, enough affection expanding inside of him to warm the whole galaxy.

Chapter Text

Gamora is not certain when the suspect – Colt, Peter had determined, though that remains to be confirmed – stopped looking out the window. She is fairly certain it didn’t take the full ten minutes they spent in the car, tossing candy back and forth for each other to catch in their mouths. She won, catching fifteen to his nine.

“Your prize is that I’ll check out the stinky trash cans,” he tells her, once they finally get out of the car and step onto the deserted road.

“It is not, and you will not,” she says firmly. “You’re still too weak.”

“Gee, thanks,” he mutters. She ignores him, walking quickly to beat him to the trash cans so she can observe them for anything dangerous. The smell is almost enough to make her regret it, but Peter is far too fragile to allow him to get hurt if the alleged Colt did indeed set up a bomb of some sort.

After a scan with the holo determines nothing explosive is inside or around any of the cans, she crouches down for a visual inspection of the bases. They all appear dirty and completely ordinary.

“Did you solve it?” Peter asks, crouching down next to her. His heart accelerates slightly with the exertion, over which she tries not to be concerned. According to her reading, the physical effects of alcohol withdrawal can linger for weeks and it has only been a few days. He’s doing a lot better than he could be.

“Oh yes,” Gamora says dryly. “I’ve found the answer to all of it. The meaning of life and the universe, even.”

“Ooh.” He echoes her tone, waggling both eyebrows at her. “I can’t wait to hear what that is.”

“Skitters,” she informs him, giving him a smug smile. The way he laughs at that really should not be so attractive, should not be making her own heart accelerate.

“Candy is definitely one of the most important things in the universe,” he agrees. “In fact, I think you’re right. Candy is probably the meaning of life. At least one of ‘em.”

“Of course I’m right,” says Gamora. “I’m always right. The cans don’t seem dangerous, by the way. Or at least there’s nothing explosive in them according to my holo.” She glances at the readout again, just to make sure. It hasn’t suddenly changed now that Peter is close enough to be injured in an explosion.

“No clues about why Colt was so interested in them, though?” he presses, apparently more focused than he’s letting on.

“I didn’t think to run the motivation scan,” she says dryly, keeping her head down so he doesn’t see the tiny smile she can’t suppress in response to his laugh.

“What about –” he starts, but quiets immediately when she stiffens and throws her arm across his chest to stop him from moving. She can feel the moment his hearing catches up with hers and he realizes what she already has: there’s something moving in one of the cans.

Panic makes her chest seize. The holo showed nothing explosive but that still leaves so many dangerous possibilities. She should have just dragged Peter onto her ship the second she suspected something was going on in this place and gotten him as far away as she could. “Get back,” she hisses, standing up and pulling him to his feet with her.

He stumbles – perhaps she’d been a bit too rough – but she steadies him as she pushes him to stand behind her. “Gamora, it’s probably just a rat or something.”

“Hush.” She pulls her sword out and points it at the offending can. “And stay behind me.”

“At least you’re not overreacting,” he mutters. She ignores him and puts the tip of her sword under the edge of the trashcan’s lid. She hasn’t heard the noise again, but she’s not planning to wait until she does.

“What is a rat?” Peter clearly considers this to be something harmless, not worthy of the caution she’s showing. But she’s seen his judgment. For all she knows, a rat could be some sort of bizarre Terran explosive device impervious to holo scans. She curses herself for not running a lifeform scan on the trash cans.

“It’s an animal,” says Peter. “Kind of scavengers, I think? About the size of Orloni. Kinda act like ‘em, too. Cuter, though.”

“So those things really are everywhere in the galaxy,” she mutters, then uses her sword to simultaneously flip the lid off the can and tip the whole thing onto its side.

The animal that comes darting out has fur as dark as the shadows around it – except on its face, which has an unnatural, masked skeletal appearance. The thing arches its back and hisses, like it might be preparing to launch itself into a fight.

“Oh my god, it’s a cat!” Peter laughs, catching Gamora by the arm before she can react further. Which is really an incredibly stupid risk to take, incapacitating her sword hand without a single thought to the fact that she might react on instinct and stab him.

“You said that rats were the size of Orloni,” she protests. “That thing is definitely bigger.”

“No, a cat,” he repeats, as if that’s supposed to help. “With some kind of dust on its face. Looks freaky.”

Gamora doesn’t know anything about cats, but this creature is staring at her with enough intelligence that she is not ready to let her guard down. If it’s a harmless scavenger like Peter is implying, then why hasn’t it run away yet? If anything, it seems to have gotten calmer; the fur on its back is definitely smoothing out.

“Here, kitty kitty,” Peter says, crouching down and holding his hand out as if to coax the thing closer. “Who’s a pretty kitty?”

“Peter,” she hisses, grabbing his arm and yanking him back up to his feet once again. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Saying hi,” he tells her, like it’s obvious. “Relax, Gamora. Cats are harmless to humans. My grandpa used to have barn cats, they were real friendly.” He does that motion with his hand again, though he doesn’t try to lower himself to the ground this time.

“What if Colt put it in there for some reason?” She tries not to tense as the cat takes a few steps towards them, its nose twitching so much that some of the mess on its face falls off. “Perhaps it’s a part of this.”

Peter makes a cooing noise as the cat moves closer, nearly within reach now. “If he put this poor little kitty in there, then he’s a major asshole. More likely it’s just a stray, trying to find some food.”

Gamora refuses to lower her sword, even as the creature lets out a pitiful little mewl. “If it’s desperate for food, how do you know it’s not going to try to eat you?”

“Cats don’t eat people,” he informs her, as if that’s something she ought to know. Perhaps her counterpart –

She cuts her own thoughts off with a silent curse and steps in front of Peter with stubborn determination; if one of them is going to get attacked, she is much more capable of dispatching this beast than he.

“What do you want?” she demands. The cat tilts its head and blinks at her with its rather large eyes. It is sort of cute, now that some of the dust covering its face has fallen off. Not that she is about to let cuteness disarm her.

She holds herself stiffly as it takes the final step towards her and begins rubbing its face on her leg, making another one of those small noises.

“Aaw, it likes you,” Peter informs her.

She grunts, refusing to be charmed as the creature switches to rubbing her other leg. “First butterflies attempt to drink my blood, now this thing likes me?”

He leans his head around her shoulder. “You must have a way with Terrans.” Then he winks and she turns away from him so quickly that her hair smacks him in the face.

As he sputters, she glares at the cat, though she does finally lower her sword. “We have no food for you. And we have a job to do. Return to your trash receptacle.” It blinks up at her again. For all that Peter appears unfazed by it, Gamora is not convinced it’s as harmless as he believes. It mewls one more time before turning back to the trashcan line-up.

“Bye, kitty.” Peter actually waves at the thing as it continues walking past the trash cans and into some nearby shrubbery.

“You are far too trusting,” she informs him. It’s going to get him killed one day, a thought that unsettles her greatly. The Ravager in her takes over and she kicks the nearest trash can so that it falls over, smelly refuse spilling out onto the street – no feelings, only violence.

“You’re the one who just trusted that trash can not to explode,” he points out. Further annoyed that she can hear the smirk in his voice, she determinedly doesn’t look at him.

“I was investigating.” She repeats the investigative procedure with the remaining trash cans, until all are on the ground. Only then does she turn to face Peter, who is watching her with a decidedly amused smile; amused and fond, she notes with irritation. “If they were in some sort of coded order, it’s not readable now.”

He snorts, then wrinkles his nose in disgust. “It’s smellable, though.”

“I doubt there’s a code in the smells,” she says, even as she eyes the mess with some suspicion.

“Probably not,” Peter agrees. “Drax would totally claim he could sniff out a code if he was here.”

“Half my crew would do the same.” Not that she would want the Ravagers here to bear witness to her interactions with Peter, nor the objectively absurd mission they’re on to find out why trash cans and yellow monsters are menacing a Terran neighborhood. The idea of the Guardians, their gazes heavy with expectation, doing the same is equally unappealing; which is how she knows that she’s truly losing her grip on common sense when she says, “Why don’t you ask your team to come help?”

Peter furrows his brow, justifiably confused. “Help smell the trash?”

“Help investigate the neighborhood.” She huffs, irritated with herself. Still, it would look absurd if she backtracked now. “The reason we’re out here, scanning waste receptacles and being attacked by rats.”

“Cats,” he says absently. “And they’re way too busy to come to Terra for something like this.”

“Something like what?” she challenges. “Something that could endanger your grandfather?”

He sighs and gestures to the trash. “Something we have no proof of besides some people acting weird about trash and Minions on the roof. Speaking of – maybe we should go check those out, instead of standing here in a pile of garbage.”

Grateful for the excuse to get away from the smell, she leads the way towards the Minion house with only a second of guilt for leaving the mess on the road. She’s certainly left far bigger messes on jobs with the Ravagers. Peter glances back for more than a second, but he follows her without mention of it.

“I know you’re afraid of appearing weak in front of your friends,” Gamora says casually.

“I am not–”

“But it would be foolish not to call for backup if you have it.” Something Stakar often preaches to the Ravagers – a few of them in particular, like her, didn’t exactly follow that advice right away. She’s come to see the logic of it, though, now that Thanos isn’t around to punish her for ever needing help.

“It’s not like – okay, look.” He throws a crooked smile her way, which has no effect on her. “If there was something we needed backup for, I would totally call them. Or message them. Even Mantis can reply to messages, when she’s not hopping between dimensions.”

He pulls his holo out of his pocket and shows her what appears to be the latest message he received from Mantis: a picture of the top half of her head and her antennae, with only a small sliver of a star-studded sky in the background not taken up by the hide of an abilisk.

“That’s not a very informative picture.”

“No, it’s not,” he agrees, smiling down at the image fondly. “She’s awful at pictures.”

Odd, how often Peter says things that are objectively insults as if they’re compliments. He is strange that way. As is the way her chest tightens when he lifts his eyes from the holo to meet hers, that tender smile still on his face — no, it’s worse, actually, because she could swear it gets even softer. And her lips are doing it back before she even realizes.

“This isn’t the point,” she says abruptly, taking a step back because she’d somehow gravitated closer to him. Aware though she is that Peter used the picture of Mantis as an excuse to change the subject, she’s more than happy to move onto less dangerous territory. Whatever is going on in this neighborhood has got to be less dangerous than the things this man makes her feel. “We’ve reached the stupid yellow creatures. Let’s go.”

Where exactly they should go, she’s not sure. Up is the obvious answer, to get a closer look at the beasts. But Peter has been rather adamant about keeping a low profile, something the Ravagers aren’t usually concerned with, and this house has a lot of windows.

“This side has the fewest windows,” Peter informs her, leading the way across the grass along the side of the house.

She follows. “How do you know?”

“I’m always lookin’ for entry and exit points,” he says, shrugging one shoulder. “I know you and the Ravagers usually make your own, but this is a lot less obvious, you know.”

Begrudgingly acknowledging that neither the Ravagers nor Thanos really taught her to value subtlety, she allows herself to be ever so slightly impressed with Peter. Not that this is the first time she’s noticed his quiet intelligence; he’s deceptive with it, deliberately allowing himself to be underestimated. She’s seen him use that to his advantage more than once. It would make her feel guilty for being one of the people to underestimate him at first, were she the type to feel that sort of thing.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that she’s about to let him act like he’s physically invincible.

“What are you doing?” she asks sharply, watching the way he’s running his fingers along the cracks between bricks.

“Looking for footholds.” He touches the wall with his boot, seeing if it can gain any purchase.

“Seems like a pointless endeavor,” she says, attempting to keep her voice even, “since you’re barely strong enough to walk.”

He gapes at her, offended. “That’s a huge exaggeration, I’ve been walking all night.”

“Exactly.” She puts her hand on his chest and pushes him away from the wall, carefully so he won’t stumble. “You need to take a break. I’m going up.”

“I’m not even tired,” he mumbles, crossing his arms petulantly.

She ignores him and, after a cursory scan of the side of the house, bends her knees and leaps onto the small awning over the nearest window. It reverberates slightly, but hopefully not loudly enough for anyone inside to hear.

Glancing back at Peter – simply to make sure he hasn’t tried to follow her – she sees him gaping at her in a manner that’s becoming increasingly familiar. She turns around before he can see her cheeks darken.

While she might be able to jump the rest of the way to the roof, she doesn’t entirely trust the structure of the awning. Luckily, there’s an uneven brick a little ways up that she can reach with one foot, giving her enough leverage to raise herself up and grab onto the gutter. After that, it’s an easy pull and roll and she’s on the roof.

Peter lets out a low whistle and grins at her when she looks down. This time, she can’t help but return the smile. So she likes to show off a little; so be it.

“Scan the Minions,” he says in a loud whisper.

She rolls her eyes. “I know how to investigate something.”

The yellow beasts are disturbing up close, with their strange shapes and menacing smiles. A scan reveals nothing but plastic, though, and there’s nothing out of the ordinary about the wires supplying electricity. There are no listening devices or explosives. They’re filthy and don’t appear to have been moved in a long time, judging by the even layer of dirt all over them. She looks from every angle and can find nothing nefarious, aside from their general creepiness.

Frustrated, she glares at the nearest one in its stupid overalls and debates whether she can kick these things, too. All she does is move a few of them slightly to change the arrangement they’re in; if they’re some sort of coded message, at least she might have messed it up.

Facing the fact that she’s not going to get anything else out of this, she jumps back down to the grass, landing easily in front of Peter. His eyes follow her body as she stands up straight. She doesn’t even notice the rush of warmth in her abdomen – what warmth?

“Well?” he asks, gesturing up to the roof.

“Nothing,” she growls. “They’re just stupid, plastic –”

Abruptly, she freezes. Peter opens his mouth, brow knitted in concern, and she shushes him with a finger to his lips before he can even speak. “Listen.” She can see the moment his hearing catches up to hers in the widening of his eyes; there’s movement in the foliage behind them. Someone’s approaching.

Her hand itches to draw her sword, but Peter did have a point when he said they shouldn’t draw attention to themselves. She doesn’t want to embarrass his grandparents or anything. So how do they justify their presence on the side of a stranger’s house in the middle of the night?

Peter’s warm breath brushes over her finger where it’s still resting against his lips. They’re soft; soft against her finger now, and they were soft against her lips in the car and her neck –

Perfect. She grips the front of his shirt and tugs, turning them both and pressing his back against the side of the house. He stumbles but she keeps him upright easily, both hands now firmly against his chest. He’s gaping at her even more dramatically than before, slightly breathless when he speaks. “Whoa, what–?”

“Cover story,” she whispers, before crushing her mouth to his. She can’t remember the exact reason, or excuse, he’d had for their car make-out, but if that was a plausible reason for them to be sitting in a car in the middle of the night, surely that goes for being on the side of a house as well.

Peter obviously agrees, because after uttering one shocked noise into her mouth, he wraps his arms around her waist and returns the kiss enthusiastically. She stays alert, listening as the rustling noises get closer, but it’s important for the act that this appears genuine, obviously. That’s the only reason she lets out a little moan when he tightens his arms around her waist to lift her slightly off her feet. Surely that’s also the only reason Peter sucks at her bottom lip, and the only reason her fingers clutch at his shirt just above where their chests are pressed together.
‘
The fact that she becomes momentarily distracted from actually listening for the sounds of whoever is approaching is immaterial, or – oh, screw it. So Peter’s a good kisser. And his chest is firm and his arms are strong around her and he smells good – so what? She’s a Ravager. Ravagers are allowed to appreciate things that make them feel good. Attraction doesn’t have to mean more. To her, anyway. Peter, well…

He pulls away first, gasping for breath. She’s ready to give him about five seconds to suck in some more air before she goes in for more cover story, but then his face transforms into a wide smile as he looks at something over her shoulder. He’s already laughing by the time she turns her head to reveal the identity of the person who had been approaching them. And of course, because this is how absurd her life has become, it’s not a person at all.

“You again,” she sighs. The creature only meows in response.

Peter’s laughing so hard that his hold on her loosens and she slips out of his arms with no regret at all for the loss. The cat approaches them with less trepidation than last time and once again begins rubbing its face on Gamora’s leg.

“At least you got all that dust off your face,” she mutters. She glares at Peter as well as she can manage while fighting the twitching of her lips. “This isn’t funny. It could have been dangerous.”

His laughter fades but his smile doesn’t. Her face aches from trying not to return it. “So you’re admitting cats aren’t dangerous now?”

“For the moment.” It looks up at her with its wide eyes. “I still don’t have anything for you.”

“It just wants to be your friend,” Peter informs her. He squats down, which she permits because he’s still leaning against the wall, and holds his hand out for the cat. It stays pressed up against Gamora’s leg but reaches its head out to allow him to stroke it.

“How do you – hey!” She pulls her leg away abruptly, causing the cat to let out a pitiful noise. “Why is it vibrating?”

Peter laughs again, making her cheeks heat even more than they already were. “It’s purring. Relax. It means it’s happy – hang on.” He ducks his head. “She’s happy.”

Still suspicious, she doesn’t come any closer. That the shadow from the nearby tree is helping hide the flush on her face is only a bonus. “Well, I’m not. We haven’t gotten anywhere with this stakeout.”

“Sure we have.” Peter stands up slowly. She resists the urge to help him. “Clues just don’t always make sense right away. And we have a new friend.”

“A friend who lives in trash cans?”

He shrugs. “She’s so friendly, maybe she’s just lost. We can ask my grandparents if they know anyone missing a cat. Or maybe she can just come home with us!”

“Absolutely not,” she says firmly. “That thing is not getting its fur all over my stuff.” She realizes only belatedly that she didn’t fight the term home and vehemently shoves that aside.

Peter doesn’t argue, but something in the way he’s smiling at her says he’s not exactly discouraged.

She puts her hands on her hips and narrows her eyes, first at the cat, then the man. “No. We’re not here to pick up strays. Got it?”

The cat tilts its head at her, apparently also undeterred. That’s fine, Gamora thinks, because she remains unmoved.

The fact that the cat ends up in their room is only because she doesn’t want her to startle his grandparents if they wake up and find an unknown creature in their house. The fact that it ends up in the house in the first place, well… That’s entirely Peter’s fault. They’re his grandparents, so if he wants to bring an animal into the house so badly that he cups his hands together and sticks his lower lip out in a pout while they’re standing on the front porch, then so be it. She just doesn’t want to deal with him making any more stupid faces.

“What should we name her?” Peter is currently sprawled out on the bed, still fully dressed, letting the cat walk across him as she sniffs around.

“Nothing,” Gamora says, turning around so she doesn’t have to watch them as she brushes her hair. She had taken a shower and changed while Peter spent the past ten minutes being entertained by a furball.

“Nothing isn’t a very good name.” The teasing is clear in his voice; she rolls her eyes. “I was thinking something more like Mittens. Cause she’s got these little white mittens on her paws!”

She looks at them over her shoulder and sees that Peter now has the cat sitting on his chest while he holds one of its paws, shrouded in white fur while most of the rest of its fur is black. “That is not a mitten.”

“Well, not literally.” Peter drops her paw and starts petting her head again. She gives up on staying turned away. “But it still fits.”

She sighs and makes quick work of braiding her hair. “Didn’t you say she could belong to someone already? That means she probably already has a name.”

His face falls, which has some sort of synchronous effect on her heart. “I guess. But who would let a poor little kitty roam around all on her own like this? Fending for herself in trash cans.”

Gamora tosses the hairbrush onto the dresser and crosses her arms over her chest. “You want to get attached to something that could be taken away? Fine. Be devastated later. Your choice.”

His eyes meet hers and something in them makes her face heat yet again. His words are even worse. “Maybe it’s worth it, you know? To get attached to something. Even if you might not get to keep it forever.”

“This is ridiculous,” she growls. Her entire body is tense, her heart pounding from the softness in his expression but she can’t make herself look away. “I don’t care about your dumb new pet. We’re supposed to be investigating.”

Thankfully, he tears his eyes away to look at the cat. “You’re not dumb, are you Mittens? Maybe you can help us investigate. I bet you have lots of information in there.”

He taps the creature’s head and it leans into his hand and Gamora wills her heart to calm down. Peter has said plenty of ridiculously sappy things before; this particular piece of sap wasn’t even explicitly about her, though she wouldn’t put one unit on those odds. She’s not about to go, what, believing his nonsense? Believing he actually sees her as –

“Ridiculous,” she repeats, harsher than before. Hands balled into fists at her sides. Narrowly resisting the urge to stomp her foot in the sort of tantrum that she did exactly once as a child before Thanos ensured she’d never dream of it again. “If you’re not going to take this seriously, why am I even bothering to help?”

Peter looks at her again, just as soft as before but sad now, too. Like he knows something about what she’s thinking or why she’s thinking it or what she’s feeling when he doesn’t, he can’t, because she doesn’t even know it herself. “Gamora. Of course I’m taking this seriously. Do you want to go back out and inspect every trash can on the block? Cause I will totally do that.”

The statement would sound sarcastic had anyone else said it, yet she believes that he would. That would be preferable, she thinks, to resting. The only reason she’s staying on this damn planet is because of the danger that might be present, after all; maybe if they focus only on the investigation, then maybe she’ll truly believe that.

The cat nudges Peter’s chin and he pets it absentmindedly, still focused on Gamora. There are dark rings under his eyes. Where he’s normally constantly restless, he hasn’t moved at all except to pet the newly christened Mittens since they got back. His heart and breathing rate are elevated. A few days ago, she watched him nearly die in a motel room.

“Maybe later.” She’s not going to let him go to sleep with his boots on, but she placates her emotions alarm bell by taking them off of his feet roughly and without warning. He still has the nerve to smile as he thanks her. “We’re getting some rest. Keep the cat on your side of the bed.”

Said creature eyes her when she pulls back the covers, also not gently, and climbs under them. She’s not optimistic about its respect for boundaries, even as Peter gives her a thumbs up and says, “You won’t even know she’s here.”

Somehow, she doubts that.

Chapter Text

“Peter.” Ding. “Peter.” Meow. “Peter Quill. You have two seconds to mute your holo before I mute it permanently.”

It takes him a few tries to blink the world into focus. “What–” He pulls his head back and sputters on a mouthful of fur. Mittens mewls but otherwise doesn’t budge from her spot curled up on the pillow next to his head. Gamora, on the other side of the cat and the pillow, is up on her elbows to glare at him. There’s barely any sunlight coming in through the window yet, but he could see the irritation on her face in complete darkness.

“Your holo won’t shut up,” she informs him.

He grunts and rolls onto his back so he can reach the nightstand, where his holo is lit up with a dozen notifications. “Sorry. Must’ve forgotten to turn it off last night.”

“Clearly.” She huffs and falls back fully onto the bed. Mittens nuzzles at her cheek and Gamora ignores her. “Is there anything wrong?”

Peter forces himself to tear his eyes away from that adorable sight to squint at the too-bright light of his holo until the messages swim into focus. “No, it’s just the group chat. Mantis sent a picture of half of her face and some pink sand in the background. They’re trying to guess where she is.”

He turns the sound off even as more messages keep coming in.

Rocket: Can you just tell these idiots where you are?

Drax: What idiots?

Mantis: I don’t know where it is. The abelisks are driving.

Drax: They cannot drive.

Nebula: No one engage with that.

Rocket: Groot says it looks like fun. I think it looks coarse and stupid.

Nebula: What’s stupid is talking about this when we have work to do.

Drax: I am building and messaging at the same time.

Rocket: I can see you shoving snacks into your mouth. Groot’s the only one doing any actual work.

Peter smiles, mostly fond but a little sad to not be there with them. There’s finally a long enough pause that he can get a message in. Groot, take a break, bud. Let Drax do some actual work on…what are you working on?

Drax: I am building a school for the children!

Nebula: WE are renovating an existing building to turn it into a school.

Rocket: Flargin kids everywhere.

Nebula: You’re not fooling anyone. You’ve got three baby raccoons in your lap right now.

Mantis: I want to see a picture of that!

Rocket: How bout I send a picture of one of their eyes and a little bit of the ground in focus?

Drax: Why would you do that?

“We should still be sleeping for another hour,” Gamora grumbles. Peter blinks to readjust his eyes and see her with her face half-buried in the pillow. She needs less sleep than he does, but that doesn’t mean she’s happy to be woken up before she’s ready – a trait that’s only intensified from her time with the Ravagers.

“Sorry,” he says fondly. “It’s working hours on Knowhere.”

“Sounds like it’s talking hours,” she mutters.

“That tends to be the same thing.”

He turns back to his holo, intending to turn it off, but apparently in the time it took him to have that brief conversation with Gamora, it’s completely derailed.

Mantis: We don’t have any updates on what you’re doing, Peter!

Rocket: Groot also wants to know, for some reason.

Literally only ten seconds later, Rocket again: Too busy to answer, I guess.

Nebula: He’s probably busy with his dumb investigation.

That sets off an entire storm of messages, everyone asking what the hell she’s talking about with varying degrees of politeness. Thankfully, he’s able to answer before Nebula does.

Peter: We’re just trying to figure out why my grandpa’s neighbor is lazy.

Rocket: He’s Terran. It comes with the territory.

Drax: What are you talking about? We are not there.

Not wanting to get into why Gamora is here – he doesn’t even fully understand it himself – he sends one of the dozens of Mittens pictures he took last night.

Gamora kicks him under the covers, much more gently than he knows she could. “The light is as bad as the noise.”

“Alright, alright.” He sends the gang a digital wave then turns the holo off. “Nebula told them we were investigating something. I had to explain.”

She turns her head on the pillow to face him. He can just see her raised eyebrow over Mittens’ fur. “Should’ve been easy, since we haven’t really investigated anything except trash and one roof.”

“We’re totally gonna investigate for real,” he says, unbothered. “We just gotta figure out how to get information out of the neighbors. Without stabbing anyone.”

“Are they not capable of speech?” she asks.

“Well–probably,” he admits. “But I don’t think it’s gonna be as easy as just having a conversation. If people have something to hide, they’re gonna be difficult.”

Gamora lifts herself onto her elbows again, on her stomach this time. It’s apparently important that he see her unamused expression. He’s certainly not complaining – she looks gorgeous, with the pillow imprints on her cheek and a few locks of tangled hair in her face. “What should we do, then? Make out until the answers reveal themselves?”

He grins. “I mean. It couldn’t hurt to try.”

Her lips twitch, but she fights the smile he knows is in there. “I could hurt you.”

“I know.” He rolls onto his side to face her. “I’m down with trying to talk to them first. As long as we promise not to resort to stabbing.”

“No,” she says simply. He laughs, which makes Mittens mewl in protest.

“Okay, okay. We can go back to sleep first.”

“You’ve already woken me up,” Gamora says with a warning glare. He’s never been one for heeding warnings, though.

“Well, I’ll see you in an hour, then.” He closes his eyes and begins loudly snoring, cackling when Gamora yanks the pillow out from under his head. Mittens hisses and hops off the bed. He has no regrets.

It’s not like Peter is annoyed that speaking to the neighbors turned out to be so easy. It’s just anticlimactic, is all, after how much he’d talked it up to Gamora. Someone could have at least tried to chase them off, made them spy from afar, given them an excuse to make out against a tree. But no, everyone had to be nice and friendly and so open that they’re finished in time to make it back for Grandma Darla to be pulling chocolate chip muffins out of the oven. For later, she tells them, then hands them each one anyway.

They’re at the table in the backyard now. Gamora has finished her entire muffin and is barely pretending not to be eyeing the rest of his. The butterflies haven’t dared to approach today with Mittens laying under the table, tail twitching.

“Catch,” he says, just before tossing Gamora a chunk of muffin. She catches it in her mouth and grins, which is enough of a thank you for him.

“That is the easiest interrogation I’ve ever been part of,” she says before she’s quite finished chewing.

“You didn’t even stab anyone,” he says charitably.

She snorts and leans back in the chair, arms crossed over her chest. Her legs stretch out under the table towards him, her boot brushing against his. “That’s not what made it easy. We barely even introduced ourselves before Debby told us everything her son ever did.”

“Not that you ever exaggerate.” He bravely nudges her boot in return, leaving it next to hers when her only response is to raise one brow. “I can expertly pick out the important parts, if you need a summary.”

Her eyes narrow. “Colt was always a perfect angel. Lived at home his whole life til he got in with the wrong crowd. Now he disappears for days at a time, has a temper, is obsessed with rearranging things in the house, and refuses to go to the doctor. Did I miss anything?”

“You didn’t cover his favorite school subjects and what he liked for dinner, but I’ll let that go,” he teases. She acts unamused, but he sees that lip twitch again. “And he refuses to go back to the doctor.”

“I stabbed someone once for being that pedantic,” she informs him, voice dry. He’s long gotten over the weirdness of being turned on when she says stuff like that and just embraces it.

“Promises, promises.” He winks and takes – frankly impolite – pleasure in the slight flush that creeps into her cheeks. “What about Susan?”

“Are you going to ask me to repeat every conversation we had today?”

He shakes his head. “Just asking for your thoughts. She liked you better than me.”

Gamora purses her lips, but doesn’t deny it. Susan, the woman who seems to be cutting her grass every day to keep it the exact same length, had been fascinated by Gamora. At first, Peter was worried it was some alien fetish, or that she just loved the color green that much, but turned out she was just super into conspiracy theories involving space. They had to redirect the conversation several times and tell her twice that they had no idea how to build a pyramid.

“She said she’s always cared about things being even,” Gamora says. “Your grandmother said basically the same thing, just that it’s worse now.”

“Grandma didn’t say anything about memory issues, though,” Peter points out, which had been Susan’s primary concern. She trailed off in conversations a lot, which he’s trying very hard not to associate with his mother towards the end of her life. Susan is probably about the age his mother would have been, had she lived.

Gamora shrugs a shoulder. “Didn’t sound like Susan told anyone else, aside from her doctor. She said she could’ve forgotten, though.”

She’d said it jokingly, but she didn’t actually seem that amused. To distract himself from feeling bad for her, Peter bumps Gamora’s leg lightly with his, where they’re all but pressed up against each other under the table. She bumps back more firmly, always competitive. “At least we found out why the Minions are still on Bobby and Jo’s roof.”

“But they’re not actual minions,” she mutters. He tries not to laugh at her distaste for inaccurate names. “Freaky yellow beasts that Bobby thinks protect them, somehow.”

Peter nods and sinks down farther in his chair, more of their legs rubbing together. The conversation with Bobby and Jo had taken the longest, and been the strangest. Bobby didn’t talk very coherently and often didn’t seem to hear when others were talking to him. Jo, his wife, was extremely patient with him. Married for 50 years, she told them, and he’d never been like this before. Until a few months ago, when he disappeared and came back days later with no memory of where he’d gone or why. The cops said it was just dementia, happened all the time to people his age. Jo didn’t sound fond of the theory, but she didn’t have another one. And apparently his doctor agreed with the police.

Jo also insisted on serving them tea, which was decent for being hot leaf water. Gamora dumped hers in a plant when Jo wasn’t looking.

“Did Jo tell you anything when I was gone?” Peter asks curiously. After finishing his tea, he’d gone back to the living room to talk to Bobby, or try to, leaving Gamora alone with Jo. Divide and conquer, he hoped. Maybe if Susan was more comfortable with Gamora, Jo would be too. But Gamora had seemed unsettled when she followed him into the living room a few minutes later, telling him it was time to go. She refused to say anything more at the time.

She’s going to refuse now as well, apparently. “No.” The way she glares at him and rapidly pulls her leg away from his to tuck under her chair suggests otherwise. Whatever it is, he knows better than to push her. “Did Bobby?”

“He said yellow is lucky, the Chiefs haven’t been the same since Len Dawson left, and it sucks to get old.”

“That doesn’t sound very helpful.”

“It wasn’t. Only helpful thing was –”

Both of them, at the same time, complete the sentence: “the doctor.”

Peter can’t help but grin. He figured she’d pick up on the same thing he did. “The only thing all these people have in common is the same doctor.”

She smirks, a predatory and gorgeous glint in her eyes. “Let’s pay him a visit.”

Gamora knows nothing about Terran doctors, but this one doesn’t look like anything special from the outside. It could be a small house if it weren’t for the sign out front advertising Dr. Young’s Primary Care. It’s mostly alone on this street, joined only by a restaurant even a Ravager would hesitate to go in and an empty building with a for sale sign.

“This should be easy,” she says, tapping the hilt of her sword. She and Peter are standing across the street behind some trees and overgrown weeds nearly as tall as they are. Mittens had followed them most of the way here before running off after some sort of rodent, and they hadn’t seen her since. She could tell Peter was concerned, but she had survived on her own this long.

“What should – Gamora.” Peter sighs and puts his hand over hers, not even flinching when she narrows her eyes at him. “We’re not going in there pointy-end first. We don’t even know if this dude has anything to do with the problem.”

She shakes his hand off. “So, we’ll find out.”

“Without causing a huge scene and alerting everyone to our investigation?”

She rolls her eyes. He’s so insistent on this subtlety thing. It’s not something she’s used to with either Thanos or the Ravagers. It’s not something she’s good at, not that she’ll ever admit that out loud. “Fine. What do you want to do, then?”

“I haven’t gotten that far yet,” he tells her, unconcerned. He’s got his holo out, though, pointing towards the building. “It’s occupied right now. But I can get the whole layout of the place with this.”

“So I can break in later?”

“So you can – hey, no.” Peter looks at her, comically betrayed. “So we can break in later.”

“You’re still recovering.”

Now it’s Peter’s turn to roll his eyes. “You wouldn’t let me climb a roof last night. Okay. Whatever. But I once broke into a high security Krylorian vault while I was sick with the worst flu of my life, and got out with three bags of gems. I can handle a little Terran doctor’s office.”

“Your history of reckless behavior isn’t impressive,” she says, only partially lying.

“It so is,” he mutters. “I’m also the Terran here. I’m gonna be there with you to break into a Terran building and steal Terran information. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it right.”

She’s not sure if she likes the look on his face. “What is the right way to do this?”

Peter turns that smug smile directly at her, which has no effect on her at all. “I’m glad you asked.”

“That is ridiculous.”

“It’s one hundred percent necessary! The black clothes will help us blend into the dark.”

“No, I get that.” She looks pointedly at his cheeks. “But the black tape across your cheeks is necessary because…?”

“Because you wouldn’t let me use your eyeliner.”

When she glares in response, he only giggles – actually giggles – and keeps moving ahead. The darkness of the night sky hardly matters when there are streetlights every few feet. The light bounces off the two strips of black electrical tape Peter had placed across his cheeks, insisting the marks were needed for Terran burglaries. Since she is not a Terran, she firmly refused. Which did nothing to affect Peter’s bizarre enthusiasm for this routine breaking and entering. He’s even insisted on playing music on their way.

I want you, all tattooed
I want you bad
Complicated, X-rated
I want you bad, bad, bad, bad, bad

“Doesn’t playing music make sneaking around pointless?” Gamora asks as they round a corner, the target building now in sight.

He doesn’t even stop flailing his hands in the air – playing air guitar, he’d explained before – to answer. “I’ll stop when we go inside. But if anyone is around, they won’t think we’re doing anything wrong because why would we be so loud if we were?”

The logic is questionable at best, but he’s the one who cares about being subtle so she doesn’t argue. “And the dancing?”

“That’s just for fun.” He dances slightly in front of her and turns around so he’s walking backwards, facing her. “C’mon, give it a try.”

She puts both hands on his shoulders and tugs him back to her side. “I already don’t want you to be doing this. Stop pushing it.”

“I’m totally fine,” he assures her, but he stops dancing. “I barely had to nap today.”

“You’re making it worse.”

He mimes zipping up his lips, and manages to shut up until they reach the backdoor of the doctor’s office. It takes less than a minute, so it’s not all that impressive, but she knows how difficult it is for him to stay quiet.

“I got this,” he says, whipping out his holo to bring up the schematics of the place they’d gotten from their scan.

“I could do it faster,” she informs him.

He throws her a smirk. “Kicking the door in doesn’t count.”

She shrugs, and maintains an unimpressed expression as he takes a small tool out of his pocket and manages to unlock the door after only a few turns in the knob. Over the past two years, she’s seen the Ravagers use a myriad of strategies to gain entry to places, so she’s not surprised Peter is skilled at the task. She is surprised he did it so quickly with such an archaic tool, but she’s not about to tell him that. His grin is smug enough.

The office is predictably dark as they enter. Her eyesight adjusts easily, and she points Peter to the panel on the wall that’s counting down the seconds until an alarm blares. He taps his holo to it and it stops almost instantly.

“Now for the fun part.” He grins and flips a switch that turns the lights on, revealing that they’re in a small room with a basic kitchen and table set-up. “Must be the breakroom.”

She snorts. “I didn’t recognize it without trash everywhere.”

That gets a laugh out of him, which begets an absurd swell of pride from her. “Weird how only the Ravagers decorate that way.”

“I’ve seen one of your ships, too,” she points out. They exit the breakroom and enter a hallway, making their way to the lobby.

“Once a Ravager, always a Ravager,” he reminds her. Then, as if to prove it, he hops onto the counter separating the waiting area from reception and jumps down on the other side. She doesn’t miss the way he winces at the landing.

She follows him over the counter without wincing or even touching it. “One more stunt like that and I’m carrying you out of here.”

His eyes track her movements, mouth slightly agape. “You say that like it’s a threat.”

Gamora takes one step towards him and he raises his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, I get it. Three strikes, I’m out.” At her blank look, he elaborates; “It’s a Terran sports thing. Remind me to take you to a baseball game sometime.”

“Do I also have to remind you to hack the computers?”

“What’s the rush?” he teases, sitting down at the chair and connecting the holo via its universal adapter.

“I thought the point of this was to get in and out quickly so we don’t get caught.” She begins her job: rummaging through the drawers and files for anything that might be useful.

“No one will be coming back til the morning,” he says dismissively. He presses a few keys on the computer’s keyboard, almost as archaic as the locks on this building. “Besides, this transfer will take like five minutes. There’s hardly any capacity for storage on Terran computers.”

“I’m glad your job is easy,” she grumbles. None of the papers she’s pulling out mean anything to her. Much of the writing is so illegible her translator can’t make sense of it, and even if it could, she has no experience with doctors unless one counts Thanos, so it probably wouldn’t make sense to her anyway. She resists the urge to stab them in her frustration. As much as she didn’t want Peter to risk his fragile health on this venture, she’s not certain she could have done this on her own. Unless she simply stole the computer.

“Want some help while this uploads?” There’s too much kindness in his tone, too much understanding, as if he knows without even seeing her face that she’s irritated.

“No. This is all useless.” She stands and kicks the drawer shut, causing the cabinet to shake.

“We figured most of the information would be on the computers,” Peter points out, voice still gentle. “Doesn’t mean this isn’t a two person job.”

She crosses her arms and leans casually against the counter. “Doesn’t it?”

“We gotta watch each others’ backs,” he says, like it’s the simplest thing in the universe, like it’s something she’s gotten used to even being free of Thanos for two years; even trusting some of the Ravagers doesn’t mean she trusts them that much. Alarmingly, she can’t think of anyone she trusts as much as Peter, except Nebula. She wonders if he feels the same.

Unbidden, the conversation with one of the Terrans from earlier – Jo, whose husband hardly seemed lucid – floats through her mind. In the few minutes she’d been alone with her in the kitchen, she’d confided far too much in her. Gamora is a stranger to this woman; what is it with Terrans and trusting everyone they meet with their feelings?

“I’m worried I can’t give him what he needs anymore,” Jo had said, voice as wobbly as her hands where they held a teacup. “Sometimes, I can’t even tell if he recognizes me.”

Uncomfortable, Gamora nodded. “I… am sure you’re doing your best.”

Jo smiled thinly. “I am. But what can you really do when the person you love suddenly starts acting completely different? Not like I can change it. Or change me.”

Gamora stiffened, even more uncomfortable. “Perhaps you should treat him as the person he is now.”

Jo sighed. “I’m trying, dear.”

Because something in the Terran air had infected her brain, Gamora didn’t let it go there. “It must be difficult to face someone you loved when they’re not the same anymore.”

“Love,” Jo said. “Ain’t past tense, honey. He could grow a second head and run away to join the circus and I’d still love the man. That’s why you young people are splitting up so much these days. You gotta love the person to their core, not just who you think they are when you meet ‘em.”

“Gamora?”

“What?” she snaps, pushing off the counter and standing up straight, on the defensive.

Peter tilts his head at her. “Nothin’. You just got quiet.”

There’s so much genuine concern in his voice and his face and probably his dumb, fragile Terran body too. Not for the first time – not nearly – she wonders what he’s seeing when he looks at her. Who he’s seeing. He claims he sees her. Jo claims she sees Bobby. Could he…

No. That’s a completely different situation, and she’s not going to let whatever nonsense is sweeping through this Terran town infect her.

“I’m bored,” she claims.

“Hey, I get it.” Peter swivels the chair around, taking stock of the materials littered across the counter. “The transfer is almost done. Just enough time for a little game.”

“Is this really the time for a game?” she asks, despite the fact that she’s one who complained about being bored. While the Ravagers are much more inclined to have fun on jobs than she was used to with Thanos, it’s only been two years for her. Maybe it’s Peter’s near lifetime of being a Ravager that makes him this way, but she suspects it might just be…him.

“Anytime is game time if you play a game.” He grabs a piece of paper and folds it several times. His fingers are large but surprisingly dexterous, able to turn the sheet into a small triangle almost before she can blink. Not that she’s paying that much attention to his hands.

“What kind of game is that?”

“Table football!” he declares. “Or something like that. I’ll have to ask my grandpa, I think he taught me when I was a kid. Here, sit down.” He gestures to the other chair. She almost refuses out of pure stubbornness, but she is kind of curious. “Awesome! Now hold your hands like this.”

He demonstrates a strange formation of fingers, stretching the thumb and forefinger of each hand and letting the tips of his thumbs touch, so they make an incomplete box in the air. She follows his example and he smiles as if she’s accomplished a major feat.

“Now, I gotta flick this thing,” he explains, placing one corner of the triangle onto the counter and holding it steady with a finger, “so that it goes through your fingers. Your fingers are the goal.” He does that, and it flies through her stretched out fingers to land in her lap.

“One point! Your turn.” He returns his fingers to the goal formation. It seems far too simple.

“How do we determine the winner?” she asks, setting up the triangle as she’d seen him do. She leans this way and that to calculate the best angle, ignoring Peter’s stupid smile and the stupid way his hair flops onto his forehead when he imitates her.

“Whoever has the most points when the holo finishes?” he suggests.

“But you went first,” she points out. “You have an advantage.”

He shakes his head, a soft laugh escaping him. “Fine. We’ll call that the practice shot, it doesn’t count.”

“Better.” She allows herself a smile when she flicks the triangle through his finger ‘goal,’ and indulges in his high five.

“One point Gamora.”

“Zero Peter,” she says, which for some reason amuses him even more. There’s this shine in his eyes when they play games like this – or when there are butterflies on her shoulder, or she’s trying a new food, or any number of things since she’s gotten here – that makes her feel as though he’s seeing more than she realizes she’s showing. Or maybe he just is that fond of her –

Peter interrupts her thoughts by shrieking and pushing his chair, and himself, away from the counter. “What the hell just touched me?”

Gamora’s on her feet with her sword out before he’s finished speaking, ready to face whatever is lurking by their feet and show it no mercy when it steps out from the shadow and –

“Mittens?” Peter exclaims from behind her. She hadn’t even consciously processed stepping in front of him.

Gamora sighs, more exasperated than relieved to see the creature emerge. She sheathes the Godslayer. “How did she get in here? Did you leave the door open?”

“Of course not,” he says, though his eyes drift towards the direction of the back door, as if he could see it through the wall. “Maybe there’s a window – oh, shit.”

A red light flashes, accompanied by a robotic voice: “Warning: window entry sensor triggered.”

“Dammit, Mittens.” Peter rips the holo away from the computer and powers it down, at the same time bending to scoop Mittens up with his other hand. “We gotta get out of here.”

Gamora is already leaping back over the counter and reaching to take Mittens from his arms so he can climb over. “Did you get everything we need?”

“Probably.” He’s only marginally more careful getting over the counter this time than the last. “But I don’t really wanna try to explain this to Terran law enforcement, so we should probably – ah, okay, get out!” He nearly shouts the last bit when she takes his hand and tugs him after her so they can exit the way they came, Mittens mewling against her chest.

“Less talking, more doing,” she says. The back door is closed, so she kicks it open and doesn’t give Peter time to close it behind them, focused on getting him and Mittens away from any possible danger.

“Gamora, hey, slow down!” he whisper-shouts. She ignores him until they’re around the building, across the street, and mostly hidden in the same copse of trees from which they’d originally scanned the place. She puts Mittens down and hides Peter behind a tree, then peaks around to monitor the building. There’s no sign from the outside that an alarm is going off and Mittens has scampered off, so she turns her focus back to Peter.

He’s breathing heavily, and when she concentrates she can hear his heart rate is accelerated. Hers is too, from the adrenaline, but Peter’s the one she’s concerned about. Not that he seems particularly bothered; leaning against the tree for support, head back and breathing hard, he’s still managing to grin like they’ve just done something fun. She feels an immediate stab of remorse at the way she’d rushed him out. She should have picked him up and carried him, she was just worrying about him exerting himself. What if he’s laughing because he’s becoming hysterical? That could be a symptom of alcohol withdrawal in Terrans and she’s finally pushed him over the edge.

She doesn’t realize she’s rubbing her hand across his chest, feeling his heart beating and his lungs expanding as if she can will them to calm down, until her eyes make it up to his face and she realizes he’s stopped laughing. He hasn’t stopped smiling, but it’s become softer; just a little quirk of the lips and a tender look in his eyes that’s becoming entirely too familiar to her. And his face is far too close.

It ought to be simple for her to move her hand, to tear her gaze away from his; it should be the simplest thing in the galaxy, really, to step back and pretend she’d never even touched him. So why is she not moving? Why is she holding still when Peter slowly lifts his hand to rest it over hers? Why, why, is she leaning up while he’s leaning down, so close she can feel his breath against her face?

Oh, yeah, she thinks, when their lips meet; because his proximity effectively obliterates her reasoning skills, makes her body respond before her mind catches up. She stands up taller, wrapping her arms around his shoulders to press their bodies together. His heart is hammering, she can hear it as loudly as her own pounding in her ears, and she can’t entirely blame the adrenaline because it’s only getting faster.

Then he tilts his head to deepen the kiss and she stops thinking altogether.

His hands are on her back, then one is on her waist, then it’s covering nearly her entire hip. She doesn’t want to admit that she likes how big and calloused his hands are, but she can’t help the soft sound that she presses into his mouth when those rough fingers brush against the skin of her lower back. Her shirt has ridden up with the way she’s got to stretch to align their bodies just right.

For all that she’d been worried about his stamina a moment ago, that seems to have deserted her along with her common sense. She all but shoves him against the tree and hooks her leg over his hip, relishing the way that makes him groan into the kiss – a kiss that is far too laden with heat, sparks in her abdomen that spread like fire through her entire body. She is overcome with sensation, even more than the first time she kissed him. The slide of his tongue against hers, that stupid black tape rubbing against her cheek, the silk of his hair when she cards her fingers through it.

Peter needs air sooner than she does, a misfortune that she refuses to let get in the way of her all-consuming want. The kisses she presses to his neck aren’t gentle or soft, they’re desperate, and so is Peter’s moan when he throws his head back to give her better access.

“G’mora,” he pants. He doesn’t elaborate and she doesn’t give him a chance. She yanks the neck of his shirt to the side so her mouth can get to even more skin. She feels wild, light-headed with desire. It only gets worse when she shifts her hips and she can feel the evidence of his desire. Not that there was any question, with the way he’s writhing against her. She sucks at the skin where his neck meets his shoulder and he literally whines, hands clutching at her waist to pull her impossibly closer. She sucks hard, without mercy; she wants it to leave a mark, for the skin to be darkened with blood and so sensitive that every time his shirt brushes against it he remembers this, remembers that she’s the one who did this to him, that he belongs to her –

She pulls away so abruptly that Peter lurches forward and has to grip the tree to steady himself. Her heart is pounding and it’s not just with arousal; she’s suddenly terrified of the storm raging inside of her. Peter is still gasping for breath, staring at her with his mouth agape, his eyes dark, his hair an absolute mess; he looks wrecked and she’s terrified that she looks the same. She can’t, she can’t, she can’t do this.

“We should get out of here,” she says, tearing her eyes from his and looking at the office building, which still appears calm from the outside. “Come on.”

While her wild emotions won’t let her leave him behind, she can still refuse to look at him when she grabs his arm and pulls him along. She can still leave this place behind, and everything that happened is going to stay behind with it.

She’ll stab it if it doesn’t.