greenspace (greenspace) wrote in avengers_logs, @ 2020-09-20 15:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | -complete, gamora, peter quill |
Who: Star-Lord and Gamora
What: Get in a fight and get important medical information
When: Right after Peter and Nebula have a snarkathon on the net
Status: Complete
Notes/Warnings Quite a bit of swearing while they're fighting with each other and some discussion of reproductive health.
When Peter heard the Benetar’s main door slide open, he called out, “In the galley…” He grabbed a handful of chips and took another swig of Corona.
It was bad enough feeling vulnerable about needing to discuss the potential consequences of their sex life, Gamora thought, walking into the galley. Now she needed to figure out how to navigate the fact that her sister was being weirdly possessive after showing literally no interest
in Gamora‘s relationship before, without taking sides between the two people she cared about most. Who, if she was being honest, we’re both right, since they were both acting like wired children who needed a nap.
“You wanna finish the fight or talk about the other thing?” She asked, taking a chip out of his hand. “My guess is you wouldn’t be drinking if we were taking off in the near future.”
“Your call,” Peter set the empty beer bottle down, “I thought before we burned a bunch of fuel, we’d use the comm unit and talk to one of the Nova Corps docs.” He leaned against the counter, frustrated that he had no idea how they had handled this issue before.
“Does Nova Corps have my—” She paused, thinking of the real question. “Why does Nova Corps have my medical records?” There were times that Gamora felt like she had been living this life forever, and times that she had to remind herself that to everyone here, she was one of the good guys, not a wanted assassin.
She shook her head, pulling open the refrigerator, “Would it kill you to try to be a little nice to my sister?”
“Nova Corps has all our records. We got arrested by them,” he shrugged, ran a hand through his hair and looked at Gamora.
“Really?”
“Well seeing as she’s the only reason I exist in this timeline at all, yes. Really.” Gamora sighed, popping open a tall slender can with a wave printed on the side and taking a sip of the fizzy alcohol. “I know she’s impossible sometimes, Peter, but she’s my sister. And I feel guilty because we're happy and she’s..” she trailed off, taking another sip.
“Who picked this out? Drax?” She asked, making a face at the fruity drink.
“No clue,” Peter rolled his eyes, “Your sister lost her shit on the net and I’m the issue?” He folded his arms over his chest, “You tell me, when have I ever gotten in the way of you hanging out with her?” He made a jacking off motion.
“That’s right, I haven’t. Ever.”
“Did I say you’re the issue?” Setting down the drink, Gamora pulled herself up to sit on the counter. “Peter I’m here. With you. This is where I want to be. I will deal with my sister, and the fact that I’m pretty sure her problem is with me not you, later.”
She sighed. “Look, I told her that she can pick fights with you if you do something stupid, but she can’t pick fights with you about me.”
Peter forced his shoulders to unknot, adjusted the headphones slung around his neck, opened another beer and took a long swallow. He didn’t want to fight, he was also sick of trying and failing, “Do you want me to stay while you use the comm unit or is that a grown up conversation?”
He took another drink and fiddled with the cable that connected the headphones to the Walkman clipped onto his belt.
“Hey…” Gamora reached out, pulling him toward her. She told herself that Baby would definitely apologize to Johnny and smooth things over. But Johnny wasn’t having a childish snarkfest with Lisa in public.
“You fighting with Nebula doesn’t change anything for me,” she said instead. “Unless you want nothing to do with my psycho family? I’d get it.”
Peter stared at Gamora, “Me fighting with her?” He shook his head incredulously and blew out a long breath, “This conversation is a really bad idea, and as the fucking king of bad ideas, I can tell you that with some real goddamn authority.”
Ignoring his own advice, Peter pulled away, “Fucking accusing me of thinking I was the center of your world and then accusing me of walking away. That's fucking bullshit and you know it.” Everything in him did want to walk away from the entire complicated mess.
Gamora closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. “Peter… you are the center of my world. I certainly hope you know that by now.” She tried to figure out exactly when this had gone off the rails and become somehow her fault.
“I just wanted you to quit sniping back at her. Reacting when she gets like that… it isn’t worth it.”
Peter’s jaw tightened, he didn't like seeing Gamora in pain, didn't like that he was part of what caused it, “Yeah, I figured that out. Right after you called me a child. I get it, Gamora. I do, you smacked me down in public because you knew you could and that I would stop. I don't have to like it, but I get it.”
He took another drink from the bottle and wished it was something much stronger, “She’s your sister.” Peter shrugged and then said quietly, “Do you think I don't know who I am, Gamora? Because I know exactly who I am and what I want and maybe it might surprise you, but I actually like who I am. There are a lot of things I am willing to work on, but if you think I'm going to be cool having your sister lecture me, lose her shit on me and then the two of you blow up my phone with shit about how you love me even though I'm a childish asshole…. then I have no idea what to tell you. He looked down at the floor for a moment, before he said quietly, “Because I don't want another mother.”
Tired of the entire day, he leaned back against the counter and took another drink, “Maybe she was right, you had limited choices then, now you don’t. You deserve a man you can respect. If I'm not that guy by now, I don't know if I ever will be.” He wanted to pull Gamora into his arms and hold her until the world melted away, he couldn’t bring himself to risk being shoved away.
“I mean we're in this mess right now,” he gestured toward the comm unit, “Because I
wasn't acting like an adult and taking care of us both, but that's me right?” Peter wondered how much beer was on the ship, “Selfish and immature.”
Gamora wrapped her arms around herself. She had never understood how sentimental females spoke about heartbreak, but suddenly she was certain that if she didn’t physically hold herself together, she might actually shatter. It felt like there were a hundred landmines of things left unsaid. It didn’t matter that she had basically told Nebula that she would always choose him, because he didn’t need her. So much for life-mates, she thought, we didn’t even make it a week.
She slid off the counter, trying to choose an escape route. “You keep putting words in my mouth that I don’t remember saying. If you want me to tell you that it wasn’t
childish to keep poking Nebula when she was freaking out about something that’s literally none of her business, I can’t do that. But I never called you an asshole, Peter.” She turned away. “Or selfish, or a mess. I have never for a second thought you weren’t taking care of me. We just both got swept up in how amazing we are… were… together.”
“It doesn’t matter, I guess,” she squeezed her eyes shut. “But, I do know who you are Peter Quill. Good and bad and everything in between. I don’t have to like everything you say or do to love you. Or respect you…. I don’t know why you even think that. I.. I can go...”
She managed to walk out of the galley completely rigid, but couldn’t make it past their bedroom door without tears starting to fall. Keep moving she tried to tell herself, as she stalled, steadying herself with a hand on the door jam. She didn’t want to walk away. She had meant everything she said to Nebula. Especially that she wasn’t sure she could survive losing him, no matter how it happened. “Peter, I’m sorry,” She said finally. “It was out of line to say what I did publicly. I can’t promise I won’t fight with you, but it should be between us alone.”
Watching her walk away, Peter couldn't help himself, he did what he had been doing from the moment he'd first laid eyes on her, he followed her. When he reached the door, he stepped through into the room and turned, “I don’t need you to be in line.” He pulled the headphones off of his neck, unclipped the Walkman and put them down next to the bed.
“I don’t want you to go,” he said quietly.
“What do you want?” she asked, hesitating in the doorway. What she wanted was to walk into their bedroom, take off her clothes and distract him into forgetting that he was upset with her. But given everything he just said, that plan would likely backfire in the long run. “Because I think I also heard some things you didn’t say.”
“I want you to come here and lay with me,” he gave her as much of a smile as he could dredge up, “so we can hold onto each other and breathe.” He held out his hand, “Please.” He sat down on the bed, kicked off his boots and held his breath.
Gamora nodded and took his hand. She had to hold herself back from crashing into him bodily, grabbing on for dear life, and knocking them both over onto the bed. Instead she noticed the clean sheets and paused to take off her shoes before easing onto her side of their bed, pulling him down with her.
They adjusted to each other naturally, the same way they always did and she finally relaxed, cradled against his side, her head on his chest, matching her breathing to his. “I think you missed my point in what I said to Nebula,” she said finally after a long silence. “You are my everything.”
Peter swallowed hard and tried to find the right words, “You’re right, I missed that”. He inhaled the scent of her hair and stroked her back gently, “This place makes me edgy…” he felt his body relaxing, “I wake up and you’re here and I feel like we are going to be okay…..” His throat felt thick and fell silent.
Gamora tilted her head to look up at him. “I mean it Peter, I don’t care what the rules of this stupid reality are. Wherever you go, I’m going with you. Just let the rift try to stop me.” If that didn’t work, she was more than serious about the plan to explode the entire planet with herself on it so that this torture could stop happening.
She took a deep breath, thinking idly of balancing her knife on one finger. How much this relationship felt like that did when she was young, wobbling all over the place. “You are more than enough for me, you know that right?”
“Everyone here is used to it. They don’t mourn, they just wait for the replacement,” Peter thought about how many times he had lost her already, “I don't want anyone else. I want you, not some other woman who looks like you.”
He shook his head, “I know you say that, but I also know that I frustrate the hell out of you. Peter reached over and dimmed the lights.
“Of course you frustrate me,” Gamora murmured. “Because I see who you are when you’re not overthinking, or acting out, or self-deprecating. I see you when you adopt a bunch of teenagers who think space is as amazing as we do. I see you when you look me in the eyes and tell me you would do anything for me, and I know with every bit of myself that I can trust you with my whole life. I see that you would move constellations to find Rocket and Groot because they’re our family too. I know that you have risked yourself hundreds of times to save other people and that you’re the only one who could lead this ridiculous band of flawed, bickering, cranky people through the galaxy. I’m frustrated because sometimes it feels like this place cripples us. We don’t need to be heroes, so we just become the most bored, insecure, anxious versions of ourselves.”
She slid a hand across the fabric of his t-shirt and underneath to feel the warmth of his stomach muscles. She really needed to make that call, but she didn’t want to move.
Peter reached over and turned on the music and went stiil when her hand touched his bare skin. He listened to the first notes as they filled the room, “That’s part of it, we don’t need to be heroes, and there’s nothing worth stealing here.”
The curve of her breast brushed his arm, he blew out a low breath. How does she do this to me?. He’d gotten so hard, so fast, it was almost painful. “Gamora, we can’t…”
“I know,” Gamora resisted the urge to slide her hand down the front of his pants and tell him they could do whatever they wanted. Instead she took her hand away from his bare skin and pulled his shirt down. “I know.” She repeated, trying to convince herself that they couldn’t.
“It’s not that I’m freaked out by the idea, Peter,” she said, feeling like she needed to explain. “It wouldn’t be a ‘mess’ like you said before, okay?”
She paused, feeling awkward again. “I like that it’s just us right now, and if we…. I just want that to be a decision we make one way or the other.”
She pulled away reluctantly, sitting up. “I think we should make this call.”
“Do you really want me there or do you want some privacy and you can tell me what I need to know when you’re done?” Peter sat up and leaned against the headboard, wanting to pull her into his lap. He opened one of the small sliding panels in it and pulled out a box.
“We need to find out if these are safe to use until we figure out another option.” He opened it and pulled out a foil packet and handed it to Gamora.
“I want you there,” Gamora said. “This isn’t just about me, it’s about us. Let’s just do this okay?” She leaned over, pulling up the holographic panel and opened a comm link to Nova Corps, then blew out a breath as the nova-ceptionist put her on hold for the medical records department, who then put her on hold to speak with an actual physician. Like she asked for in the first place.
“Hey, Dr. Bakian, you saw me and the other Guardians of the Galaxy a couple years ago,” Peter smiled as the woman nodded and said hello.
“Anyway, it’s complicated, but Gamora and I are on Terra. We need to ask you about birth control….. and how likely it is that we could get pregnant if we weren’t using any.”
At the look on her face, Peter said, “Yeah, I know, The doc here wanted to cut off my junk, but that seemed a little drastic, and she talked about some hormone plastic thing for Gamora, which was when we figured we’d better call you. I thought we could use these until we could get to Nova Corp.” . He held up the condom package and at the doctor’s direction read the back. His eyes widened at the look of horror on her face and then began to listen as she talked.
Forty five minutes later, Peter swiped the panel closed, “What do you think?” He pulled Gamora into his lap and kissed her.
“I think you’re distracting,” Gamora kissed him again before breaking away to answer him. “Whatever the device is they have on file for future me having done makes the most sense. We can talk about the other options if you want, but I obviously chose that one for a reason: because I wouldn’t have to think about it. So we show up for our appointment, they insert a thing, and we can relax?”
“Sounds like that’s the plan, and in the meantime we keep these,” he tossed the box of condoms toward the trash basket in the corner away from you and stay away from Terran doctors that could kill us trying to keep us from reproducing.” He leaned his forehead against hers for a moment.
“I’m sorry about today,” he kissed down her neck, “I know we need to avoid”, he gave her a smirk, “Inserting a thing until after they insert a thing,” but we can still make each other feel good…….”. Peter trailed off his voice tinged with uncertainty, “We don’t have to do anything though. We can just hold each other until we fall asleep.”