There were a lot of things that Peter Quill did well. Feelings wasn’t on that list. He tended to push them away or bury them so far down that he couldn’t find them without a bulldozer or just make a joke about it. Which was why he hadn’t realized that sometime over the past year, he’d developed feelings for Taisia. They’d always gotten along, they’d been on a team together for a while and he’d missed her when things were realigned and he wasn’t working with her anymore. Then of course there had been the whole Disney thing last Valentine’s Day and the corset. Not that he’d seen anything or that anything had happened but it had made an impression.
They still saw each other around Atlantis, they talked,, they were friends but he didn’t think that she would go out with him if he asked her. There was the age difference for one thing which didn’t bother him but it might bother her, or more precisely her parents, and they could both kick his ass. So could Tai for that matter. Over the spring and summer, he’d spent a lot of time with Daisy and they’d both gotten memories which had resulted in him really looking at himself and seeing things he hadn’t seen before. He actually had some insight into himself and who would have ever expected that?
Which was why he had noticed when Taisia’s friend from home had shown up around Christmas and how happy she was and he was a little jealous. Maybe more than a little so he had done his usual thing and pretended he wasn’t. Then Dude went home and he wanted to ask her out but he still couldn’t do it and then finally he sucked it up and asked her to go to the Mardi Gras party with him. She’d said yes and then she’d gone on a mission in the middle of the night. Now she was back and he was anxious to see her and trying not to show it. He waited until she’d had time to settle in and then he walked over to her house and knocked on the door.
It’d been one hell of a trip lately, between the mission and coming home to more family it was cool but damn a lot seemed to happen while they were gone, Taisia barely had any time to think straight with everything going on. She had been home for a little while now and was eating some chips when she heard a knock at the door. She didn’t hear footsteps from either Flounder or Wanda, sighing she got up and opened the door.
“Hey,” she said a little surprised to see Peter there, she hadn’t really expected to see him, hell, she was pretty sure he thought of them as just friends. “What’s up? Want to come in?”
“Welcome back,” he said with a grin and stepped inside. “Not much is up. It’s actually not crazy right now. Things were batshit while you were gone but I guess you’ve heard about all that.” He walked further into the living room and sat down in a chair. Peter always made himself no matter where he was. “We had vampires here, I guess you were chasing vampires wherever you were and COS managed to get into intake and zap a bunch of people home,” he shook his head. “Hopefully they didn’t leave anything else behind to screw things up.”
It was a lot more information than Taisia was really expecting from a hey what’s up kind of question but she nodded all the same. “Yeah, heard about that, weird seeing Mia so young too.” She commented about one of the vampires he was talking about. “Yeah, there were some vampires, but not the evil want to kill you kind, more the tortured brainwashed kind.” Taisia found herself sitting on the couch. “Did I miss anything else?”
“No that’s about it. There was a day where people just fell asleep in the middle of wherever they were. Like someone fell asleep in one of the letters on the sign of Pizza Planet,” he laughed. “I’m just glad that one missed me.”
“I don’t know, you could have looked good drooling off the side of a letter,” Taisia teased with a smirk. She really couldn’t help herself with that one. “I can see the headlines now.”
“I don’t drool in my sleep,” he said, pretending to be offended. “I can’t believe you would even suggest such a thing.” Rocket said he snored but Rocket said a lot of stuff and if he’d drooled in his sleep, he was pretty sure there would have been photographic evidence.
“And here I thought sleeping on the side of a letter would be the bigger news,” Taisia teased with a smirk. “And I have seen you drool,” she added, mostly, partly, jokingly.
He rolled his eyes and gave a snort. “Okay so maybe you have but it was an isolated incident,” it was fun, being able to talk to her this way, it was one of the things that he’d enjoyed when they had worked together. He liked the team he was on now but he still missed his old one, especially Tai. “So where did you go? It was your home world wasn’t it?”
“I’m sure we would have gotten a lot more,” she paused. “If we measured,” Tai added.
The mention of her mission she paused. “Yeah,” she started. “But not really, it might have been my home world but it didn’t feel like and I didn’t see a lot of it that I knew.” Taisia didn’t know a lot about the prison first hand until she went.
“I haven’t been anywhere familiar but that’s not a big surprise really,” he shrugged. “I don’t even know the names of some of the planets I’ve been on. I take that back, the last mission I went to was on Terra….Earth, I mean. The place where Clarke came from but it was way before she was there so it was her past. All this time business gets confusing.”
“It was still the same planet, just a different part of it that I went too,” she confirmed, Taisia thought the whole just a planet thing was weird given how vastly different planets could be. “Heard that was a tough mission,” given the people who got kidnapped from it.
“Yeah it was. A lot of weird things happened.” Like people who were trapped inside pictures. “COS is full of nut jobs but we kind of already knew that i guess.” Peter knew he should get to the point of why he was here but he found himself at a loss for words which no one would believe if they knew him at all but Taisis was different, he’d never met anyone like her and well he might as well just say it.
“Look, I’m not the best at saying things, at least not things that matter but I was wondering if maybe you’d like to go out with me? Like we could go to dinner or something. I would have asked you after the Mardi Gras party but you snuck away in the dead of night.” he grinned. Everyone who went on the mission had left suddenly and it wasn’t long after that when the vampires showed up and all hell broke up.. “I’ve wanted to ask you for a while now but I didn’t know if you’d go and also I thought you’d think I was too old for you but that’s not a big deal to me, we’re both adults even if some people might argue that I’m not really that much of an adult but yeah, I wanted to ask if you’d go out with me.”
Taisia shrugged, they all knew there were a lot of freaks in COS but that was a different story. She let it go when he started talking again and raised an eyebrow.
“That’s a lot of words for asking a pretty easy question,” Taisia teased and smiled, she hadn’t really thought about the age difference but she knew it was going to come up with her parents if anything really did happen between them. “Yeah, I’ll go out with you, but you better have a better idea than just dinner.” She added.
“I promise. We can do dinner and then you pick what you’d like to do after that. As long as it’s not going shopping because I would hate that,” he made a face. “But I can’t see you picking shopping either.” Which was why he liked her.
Taisia raised an eyebrow, “So, your idea is for me to have the idea?” She couldn’t help teasing him about that one, given she’d said he had to have a better idea than just dinner.
“I came up with dinner and thought we could go to Stone since you can have pizza or pasta there depending on your mood. Plus I know you like it…..so since a date is two people then I think both people should get to pick part of it.” It seemed logical to him but Peter wasn’t known for his logic.
Yeah, wasn’t exactly what Taisia meant, at all. “Okay,” she said with a smile and a shrug. “Guess one of us has to have the fun ideas,” Taisia added with a smirk. “So, when is this dinner?”
“Tomorrow night? Is that good for you?” He hadn’t been sure that she’d say yes so he hadn’t thought that far but she had and he was happy about that. “And if you’d rather go somewhere else besides Stone, just let me know.” God he sucked at this. No wonder he never really dated anyone. Not that you could go on a date when you were flying around in space all the time anyway. He just hoped Taisia wouldn’t give up on him.
“Stone’s good,” Taisia wasn’t really that picky of an eater so she was pretty open to anywhere that had food. “Yeah, tomorrow night it is.” She agreed with a smile. She was looking forward to it but she also wasn’t going to get her hopes up, she knew better.
“Awesome. Then I’ll come by about seven? Give us both time to get home from work and all that.” He wasn’t certain what her schedule was exactly, probably pretty similar to his but there were always variations.
“Seven it is,” Taisia agreed with a nod, that would give her enough time to get everything done and be ready for the night.