Who: Peter and Gamora What: Gamora gets practical about life on Earth. When: After this Rating: Green
Gamora had left the door unlocked so Peter could let himself in after he’d replied to her saying that’s how he preferred it. She sat on the couch, legs crossed and fingers nervously tapping onto her knees. She wasn’t in a good mood, either; the realization she had gotten to wasn’t a happy one and she wasn’t pleased that it seemed the obvious one. But at least there was Peter. And at least, maybe they could try to send a message to the others wherever they were.
When she heard a knock, Gamora sighed before saying, “It’s open, Peter.”
-- Though he’d never proclaim himself to be perceptive, especially when it came to women, Peter was pretty sure he read some negative tones in Gamora’s text. Anytime sometime said that they needed to talk, it didn’t typically come from a happy place. From his experience, anyway. When Yondu said it what he was actually meaning was that he was going to kill him or maim him so Peter usually ran for the hills. When a woman he’d been ghosting said it, he also would run for the hills. Yet for whatever reason when Gamora said it, he went running right to her. What was that about? Unspoken things, probably.
He heard her call out to him and knew without question that this was something not good. Turning off Sounds of Silence from his Zune, he then pocketed his earbuds and sighed. Peter opened the door and stepped inside. He found her sitting on the couch of her room and she looked about as happy as she sounded. “You’re fidgety,” he said. He sank down next to her even though she hadn’t told him to, because well, there wasn’t really room for many boundaries of personal space on their ship, and those habits kind of extended to their living quarters on Terra, too. “What’s up?”
-- Gamora wanted to lash out and admonish Peter for pointing out that she was fidgeting, but he was absolutely right and didn’t deserve to be the one who got the brunt of her bad mood. Even though he often did. But then, he often deserved it. She sighed instead, this time, and was glad she didn’t have to tell him to sit. Turning to him, Gamora hesitated, sighed, then opened her mouth to speak - but hesitated again. She looked away as if gathering strength to admit out loud something she didn’t like one bit.
“Peter… I’m starting to think we’re not going back home any time soon. We’ve been here for a while now, and considering all that’s happened so far I don’t think Dr. Strange has had time to brush his teeth let alone find a solution for his time dimensional breakage or whatever it was he did.” She swallowed, fingers tapping on her knee some more. “I think we need to start considering a more permanent place to live. And to get money.”
-- Avoidance was one of Peter’s personality traits when it came to pretty much anything serious. It was almost like he was allergic to serious things, really. If he addressed a situation, then that made it real. He didn’t want to talk about the severity of the situation they were in, but he knew she was right. As Gamora spoke of the fact that they were stuck where they were with no clear solution about when they were getting out, it became all the more apparent to Peter how dire this actually was. It could be worse, sure. He’d definitely been in worse predicaments, but that didn’t mean this was a good thing.
Peter had been tempted keep his music on so he wouldn’t have to hear what she had to say, but she probably would’ve thrown his Zune across the room if he’d tried that. Instead, he obviously had listened to her and was trying to process what he wanted to say before he actually said it.
“Yeah,” he replied. Profound, Peter. “I know,” he went on to say. “I’ve been actively trying not to think about that but you’re right. We might need to reach out to Stark or Dr. Strange about getting credentials for jobs so we can make money. We’re gonna need to find a place to rent where they don’t ask a lot of questions unless Stark or Strange can concoct backstory for us in that regard, too.”
-- There was something else, which Peter had just happened to mention, that had Gamora feeling some type of negative way. She growled in frustration and threw her head back, looking up to the ceiling as though the truth was harder to admit now. “I don’t like owing these people for everything! Like some helpless little child!”
Despite her protest, however, Gamora had to finally admit that they both needed somebody, and it wasn’t as though her distaste for owing anyone was limited to Stark and Strange. “Stark’s got his own mess to contend with. I guess we could go bother Strange again. I know we need some form of identification, usually a driver’s license, and social security numbers for most if not all things. So let’s start there?”
-- Peter could understand where she was coming from. He hated owing favors. It was much better when he was in a position where people owed him, but that didn’t happen all that often. Gamora’s frustration was shared, but he also didn’t see a whole hell of a lot of other options they had going for them. Peter was born on Terra, yes, but as far as anyone knew of Peter Quill he’d been abducted and likely was presumed dead by this point. They were going to need fake IDs, some sort of credit report and yes, social security numbers. He had no idea if the Doc could help them or not but he was probably the best person to reach out to.
“Yeah, starting there is probably the best course of action. I don’t like having to rely on him or anyone else anymore than you do, but we’ve got seriously limited options here.” At least they were proving themselves useful by helping out when the situation called for it. If they kept a good relationship with all these people and proved to be trustworthy allies, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to owe them. Or maybe they wouldn’t hold it over their heads. “You’re gonna want two bedrooms, right?” He asked, lightening the mood as best he could. “I mean, that’s gonna be costly… One bedroom would be cheaper, maybe easier to come by. I’m just saying.”
-- Once again, when Peter mentioned the limited options, Gamora sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. This wasn’t the worst her life had ever been, far from it, but neither was it the best, and at least things had never hung in the balance. There had always been certainty, even in uncertain times, that she could depend on herself and knew what was what at all times. Now even that wasn’t true anymore. At least Peter was here, with his not-so-subtle insinuations, awkward flirting perhaps - she never knew.
“I know even small apartments with the least amount of amenities cost a lot of money here in this city.” She replied instead, trying to keep the amusement from her face. Or the fact that in a split second it occurred to her that sleeping with Peter’s arms around her might provide the rest she hadn’t had since they had arrived. “I need little more than a bed to sleep and a place to change my clothes, we can find a way to wall off even one bedroom, if we put our heads together.”
-- ...And Peter Quill was shot down. Not the first time, one thousand percent not the last time. He took it in stride. When push came to shove, he knew Gamora cared. And honestly, he liked the way things were. They’d fallen into the safety of having those unspoken moments. He didn’t want to lose that, run the risk of losing everything and or worse -- losing her. So if they were going to continue to dance around what was there, that was fine. At least they’d be dancing, and he was phenomenal at that.
“I’m sure we’ll find the perfect abode to settle down in,” he said with a smirk. Of course, what that meant was he was going to be sleeping on the couch or the floor, but that was fine. “And hopefully the Doc can help us figure out what we need to do to find jobs.” All kidding aside, he knew that this was hard for her. It sucked for him, too. He didn’t like being in a place where he knew it, but he didn’t really know it the way he used to. Having all the resources right there but not being able to act on that or pull from them was really frustrating. “We’re gonna be okay, Gamora,” he said, a little softer, a little more serious. “Whatever we have to do, we’ll figure it out.”
It wasn’t as though Gamora had shot him down as effusively this time as all the others, because nothing was as certain to her as in previous times. She didn’t trust him to have realized that, though, and maybe it was for the best.
-- “The perfect abode would be our ship.” She murmured wistfully, but then spared Peter a smile because he was trying to cheer her up, and she didn’t want to appear ungrateful. She did spend a little longer mulling over what MJ had taught her any person needed to be a citizen and take advantage of that status. “We need forgeries. Including experience catalogues and multiple addresses that all link back to Stark or Strange so they can provide references of how great we were at the jobs we never did.”
Gamora sighed deeply again. This was never that hard where they had come from. Even for such a prestigious organization as the Nova Corp, they hadn’t needed to jump through so many hoops but apparently here having the skills to aid the needy in dire times was seen as a negative, judging by what had happened to Stark.
At least Peter understood, or tried to. He was trying to make her feel better, and Gamora really appreciated it. Perhaps because of that, she felt a little more willing to let go, and so she leaned her head into his shoulder - one could say she’d scooted over to a near stage of snuggling. One could, but they better not.
-- The perfect abode would be their ship, but they both knew that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. It was an unfortunate reality that they were just going to have to accept. Peter had hoped in the beginning that they were going to find their way back to the ship and resume their life together with their friends. But those chances seemed to be fading pretty fast. Everyday the were on Terra in this reality was another day they weren’t back home, and another reminder that they were stuck in the world they were in. They had to survive, they had to move on.
“Hopefully one of them will help us,” he said. “Or both. Maybe they can at least point us in the direction of getting fake IDs made. “That’d be a start.” Peter wished he could be more help to her and to himself. It sucked being from the actual planet but knowing very little about it and having no resources whatsoever to pull from to aid their transition. If it happened after the late eights, chances are he didn’t know about it.
Feeling her head on his shoulder, Peter slipped his arm around her. He wasn’t going to draw vocal attention to it, but he was definitely acknowledging it in his touch. “I’m sure they’ll help us. They have no reason not to.” He’d not done anything stupid to piss anyone off so far, so that was at least something.
-- It was so much to think about and sort out that it almost gave Gamora a headache. But she would approach it as she did anything: one step at a time, calmly and effectively. First she would contact Strange, and they would go from there. “I’ll talk to Strange soon, and let you know. There’s no need for the both of us to double down on things until we need to.”
When Peter put his arm around her Gamora closed her eyes for a second, almost humming her satisfaction at the comfort of human contact. Or rather, Peter contact. Barring the hug she’d given Nebula, she was hardly one for touching or being touched by just anybody.
“I’m glad you’re here with me.” She said after a moment’s silence. Gamora didn’t like to make these sort of feely confessions, but she’d made a bigger one at Yondu’s funeral; it was not that terrible to say what she had. Unless Peter didn’t reciprocate.
-- It was very easy to become overwhelmed in all this. Sure, he was having fun with some of it. Catching up with the times, on a surface level, was pretty entertaining most of the time. He’d only let himself go down the rabbit hole of digging deeper into the state of the world beyond pop culture a couple of times. And while there had been some pretty great progressive changes in society, there were also a lot of terrible things that he didn’t know if he was ready to hear about or read about all at once. In addition to trying to catch up with the world, he was trying to keep up with what was going on right now with all the people they were now interacting with. A headache was understandable, to say the least.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’d probably forget to ask something.” She was better at that sort of thing. Peter was better at the socializing stuff and putting himself out there to make friends with all these people, though that wasn’t any fault of hers. It was just their personalities and one of the many ways they actually did balance each other out.
Her quiet confession was unexpected, but warmed Peter from within. To say something like that, in addition to not going totally rigid when he wrapped his arm around her spoke volumes to Peter. “I think you’re stuck with me for a while,” he replied, and brushed her upper arm with his fingertips. “Sorry, not sorry.”