WHAT: Clinic reunion snuggles WHERE: Chakrabarti Clinic WHEN: After the Flipped Vallo final battle WARNINGS: Mentions of injury, death ART CREDIT: Unclear, the links are broken, but Pinterest link STATUS: Complete
If you asked Peter to describe exactly what the hell had landed him here – in a bed at the clinic, hooked up to monitors and groggy as fuck, aching pain permeating just about everything he could feel – he couldn’t tell you.
The portal had been causing all sorts of shit the past couple of days. Defense was low on people because, to literally no one’s shock, most of the people who’d volunteered for the Rescue Team were on Defense. That left everyone pretty much on call 24/7 and he was no exception. Once shit got gnarly, he was right up in there with Rocket taking out anything that came through. They were getting pretty good at it, and he was keeping in touch with Gamora enough to know what the plan was and when it was all going down.
But when that day came, those portal monsters that, honestly, they’d been crushing pretty good, had ramped up. And with all the violence, there were the Echoes – weird, wispy, almost-mirror images of them that got more solid over time and put up a fight of their own, something that had been happening on the other side but brand new on this end of things. It added to the chaos, and he’d admit he’d been getting his ass handed to him pretty hard. But at some point, he’d heard a crack, felt this blinding pain on the back of his head, and he was out.
Then he woke up here. He’d never been to the clinic, but he could put two and two together like anyone else. He blinked the blurriness out of her eyes and turned his head, only to let out a sigh of relief when he saw the face beside him.
“You’re back,” he breathed, grinning tiredly at Gamora.
“You’re in a hospital,” was Gamora’s reply to that, spoken in this tender tone that was exclusive to them.
This alternate version of Vallo was… an experience, she’d give it that. There were many faces she knew, but her top priority was to bring Nebula back home, and that had been accomplished (along with everyone else that had been taken through that damn thing). A part of her ached for the version of her sister that existed there – the one with the emojis, who cracked jokes and broke into frequent smiles. To leave her behind there, and not have at least one of them be with her was something that was going to nag Gamora for a while.
But their Nebula was back, with all her grunts and scowls, and things were, for the most part, corrected. They could rest after two weeks of clusterfuck.
Gamora didn’t expect it to be here, squeezed into a hospital bed that barely gave any wiggle room to a second occupant. She was slender enough to make it work. “You got your ass kicked out there, Star-Lord,” she snorted quietly, reaching over to brush a curl from his forehead. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I got my ass kicked out there,” Peter replied. There was nothing currently in his expression that indicated he had any problem feeling that way, though. If anything, he was staring at Gamora with starstruck eyes. She’d been gone for ten days, and he’d not been happy about it, even if he understood. Nebula was gone, and she might be on the other end of that portal, so of course Peter had expected Gamora to go.
That didn’t mean he hadn’t had his bratty moments about it. He’d lived without her for too many years after all the bullshit with Thanos. Anything that put her life in jeopardy wasn’t going to sit well with him, no matter how much of a badass he knew she was.
“You doing okay?” From what little he could see, she didn’t look too beat up, which was a good sign. “How’s Nebula?”
Bruises had bloomed across her skin at best, the discoloration along her jawline present but ultimately fading. Her cybernetics were kicking in, mending all those damaged cells faster than a normal recovery process. “Back home,” Gamora answered him, trailing a finger down the side of his face, feeling the prickle of facial hair against her skin. “They’re going to visit soon. It probably won’t end well for the staff.”
The best, realistic route was to brace themselves for a headache induced by some chaos, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I’m okay. Tired. Worried. Or I was before you woke up.”
Peter leaned into her touch, raising the arm she was lying against to wrap around her. He grimaced briefly, reflexively, but the pull of pain faded pretty quickly. Whatever drug or potion or whatever kind of cocktail they had hooked to him seemed to be doing its job. He’d have to ask what the hell happened to him next time staff came in, but as long as he was alive, he didn’t really care right now.
“Sorry,” he murmured, pressing his lips together. “For worrying you, but I guess I should probably be prepared to be sorry for Rocket and Nebula, too, huh? No way they’re not gonna fuck some shit up here.”
“Don’t forget Groot,” Gamora chuckled, the exhaustion ebbing to make room for contentment. She was home. Nebula was home. Peter wasn’t in the best state, but he was okay. They’d seen one another in various forms of wounded — part of their jobs, out in the galaxy and here in Vallo — and yet it would tangle her insides into knots every time.
A kiss was pressed between his brows, and from there, lips on skin, she continued to speak. “We can bring you home and keep you in the medical bay for another day or two,” she offered. “We’re not strangers to tending to injuries. You might be more comfortable there.”
“I don’t want to be stuck in any medical bay,” Peter grumbled. He figured he didn’t have much of a choice in that, given he’d obviously blacked the fuck out from some kind of head trauma, and the rest of him was feeling sore, too. Vallo had a lot of cheats to speed up recovery, but he was probably going to be down and out for a little while even after he was able to get back on his feet.
“Or,” Gamora paused to contemplate another option, shifting while on her side (it was the only way she could slip into this bed with him, and the fit was tight). “We could wrap you up in a med-pack. I could keep you in our bed, but you know my bedside manners - they can be terrible.”
Groot got the brunt of her babying. She was very much tough love with everyone else, and Peter could get pouty sometimes.
“You’re the best of the options I’ve got,” Peter retorted with a grin. None of the Guardians were known for having fantastic bedside manners. They were all kind of assholes in their own ways, and that was what he loved about them. “Maybe I should just stay here and let people who are paid to be nice to me nurse me back to health.”
Gamora’s lips tipped into a smile. “That’s probably the more reasonable route - and most fair,” she confirmed. “It’s not the most comfortable, but I’ve no immediate plans and plan to stick around until they give you a clean bill of health. They’ve got some kind of -”
Her nose twisted, and she looked up to squint at the bag of some kind of potion that was feeding into an IV in Peter, and she reached over to flick at the clear tube. “Concoction in here to help with healing. This place has an incredibly low death rate.”
That was supposed to be a comforting statement, by the way.
It actually was a comforting statement. They had some workarounds in the galaxy that had helped him out of dicey situations, but he didn’t think he’d ever gotten this close to dead before. Other than when he got dusted and technically dead for five years, but for him, that had been in the space of an instant; he wasn’t sure it counted.
“Good. Not really all that into the option of being dead. I feel okay already, too,” he said. It was slow-going, but the ache was tolerable. Whatever it was they were pumping into him was doing its job pretty well. It had already woken him up. “I’m sorry I worried you, though. Seriously. I’m gonna be fine, I swear.”
“I don’t hold it against you, Peter,” Gamora assured with an exhausted chuckle, peppering the side of his face with a set of soft, slow kisses for a moment there. Coven drama that kidnapped her damn sister aside, she had missed him. She thought their reunion would have been under less dire circumstances and back home, but she was content to stick by his side. “I’m glad you were able to lend a hand with people that brought you here immediately once you suffered a terrible loss in combat.”
Lovingly, she was poking a little fun at the fact that he had his ass handed to him. They were those kind of assholes sometimes.
“You fucking suck,” Peter replied with a huffy laugh. He tried to shift a bit and found it wasn’t aching terribly. He managed to turn enough onto his side to give Gamora a little more space to stretch out, though he kept his arm around her so she couldn’t get too far. “You should sleep, babe. You sound tired.”
Gamora made a noise of protest but didn’t immediately say anything. The most she shed from the day’s clothes were her boots, neatly set aside in the corner of the room, though her jacket needed to come off if she was going to get really comfortable. “You’re awake,” she settled on, pulling her arm from the final sleeve before tossing the garment onto one of those tragically uncomfortable hospital chairs.
It was better to press into Peter this way, and she let her head fall back against the other half of the pillow. “And I missed you,” she added, swiping her thumb across his bottom lip. “I’m resting by being here with you.”
“So you’re only sleeping if I sleep, huh,” Peter murmured, smiling softly at her. She was stubborn as fuck, but he understood it. He was, too. Not a lot of people could bend his will, but Gamora had always been that force to be reckoned with. “Missed you, too. A lot.”
More than a week had passed since he’d last seen her, and he was so relieved she was back. He acknowledged her being gone was necessary, and there was no way it wasn’t going to happen with Nebula missing. But hell if he hadn’t been a little freaked on the inside the whole damn time.
“So, will you close your eyes if I do?”
Ah, so he was going to get her that way, wasn’t he. “I might,” Gamora mused, slipping her leg between his to help save space in this sad excuse for a bed – though they’ve both slept on worse things throughout the years. “You could use more sleep,” she added. “I think we’ll both eventually wake up to the dulcet sounds of Rocket telling someone off down the hall, and Nebula using her jet-pack in an inappropriate space in an hour or two.”
The arm that wasn’t stuck with an IV shimmied across the small space and wound around Gamora’s shoulders to pull her closer. The other stayed where it was, resting right on her hip. Peter was tired, too, he could admit that. He wasn’t sure if it was a side effect of the beating he’d taken or the cocktail they had him on now to help him heal. But he was pretty sure if he closed his eyes for too long, he’d fall asleep again in no time.
He tipped his head down to kiss her forehead, then said, “Well, guess we should get what rest we have before that happens, right?”
“That’s convincing,” Gamora chuckled, slipping her arm up his back, face burrowing into the crook of his neck. It was good to be in Peter’s arms again, circumstances be damned. She breathed him in, fatigued but content. “If you love me, hum me a song.”
They slept to music often, something quiet in the background while they were trying to catch sleep – either by laying together or exhausting themselves with other activities to get them sleepy. There was an unfortunate lack of soundtrack in that other Vallo..
“I got you,” was Peter’s reply. The white noise of hospital things around them wasn’t going to cut it, no matter how tired they were, but he had a whole soundtrack in his head that would work perfectly. And no one knew Gamora’s favorites better than him.
So, closing his eyes and leaning his cheek against her head, he started to hum rhythmically. A few notes in, it became clear what it was, even without the lyrics sung.
Hey ya'll prepare yourself for the rubberband man
You've never heard a sound
Like the rubberband man
You're bound to lose control
When the rubberband starts to jam