WHAT. Nebula gets her flying car and almost hits Peter with it. WHERE. New Asgard! WHEN. Ummm before Wild Vallo. WARNINGS. Some very empty threats and Peter’s ugly af fishing outfit. STATUS. Complete!
There was nothing outside of the car to show that it belonged to Nebula. There was just a feeling, a sensation. It was parked outside of Knowhere, and no one had claimed it, but if someone else saw it first they no doubt would. But she was also a paranoid wreck when it came to gifts (except from the Guardians) and Nebula scanned it first. Nothing abnormal. No explosives. Once she was sure of all of that, she finally approached the car.
She was not expecting the door to just slide open for her. No stupid dumb handles needed. Nebula’s eyes narrowed, but she made a note to mention that part to Quill later on. She slid into the driver’s side seat, behind the wheel, and the door closed behind her.
“Greetings, Corpsman Nebula.”Corpsman? She’d never been part of any Corps ever, and the only one she knew of were the Nova Corps. Shudder. Nebula growled under her breath and hit a button to try and turn off the voice. It caused music to blare into the car loudly and-- well, that would do. A few minutes later and she had her handle on things - sort of - and the car lifted off into the air to circle around Knowhere.
Nebula was a skilled pilot, but had never flown a car before (or driven a land one like this), and it was a rocky start. She circled around the giant celestial skull she called home a little too close for comfort. More than once. “Shit. No- NOT that way you piece of shit.” The car went into a dive near the shore and Nebula tried hard to course correct.
Peter was fishing and dressed for the occasion. And yeah, he had heard all the old man jokes – not just from his very mean girlfriend, but from Nebula, Rocket, and even Groot, but he didn’t care. There was a reason these clothes were worn when doing what he was doing, and it was because they were helpful. The pockets were all full of things, and the hat kept his head from sweating.
None of this had stopped his so-called family from teasing the shit out of him, but whatever. He may huff and puff about it, but he’d put up with it forever as long as he got to have them.
Or as long as he lived, assuming he didn’t get bowled over by a goddamn flying car.
Luckily, he heard it before he snapped his head in that direction to see it coming. His eyes went almost comically wide, and with his heart pounding, he made what felt like the most logical choice and dove into the water. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than being hit, even as his fishing pole flew out of his hands.
Nebula was able to turn almost in time. First, she’d over-corrected and then over-corrected again, and then she’d gotten distracted by Peter wearing the most idiotic outfit she’d ever seen in her entire life. That had given her pause, because she’d seen it before, and each and every single time she had to snort and mutter idiot under her breath.
Affectionately.
Because that was what Nebula did, especially with family. But that left her reflexes a fraction too slow, and Nebula had to swerve at the very last second. She pulled the car around with a quick turn and slammed on the brakes to stop right above the docks and where Peter had dove in. It took her a second to find the button to bring the window down and she leaned out to look down at the water. “HEY, did you feel like a swim or something?”
Peter sputtered as he dragged himself back out of the water and onto the deck, blinking up at the head sticking out the rolled-down window. Now sopping wet, he glared up at Nebula in a way that was about as intimidating as a drenched cat.
“I felt like not getting rammed into by a flying car!” he called back, whipping his hat off to start wringing it out. The fishing pole was a loss, and his day was pretty much at an end after his badly thought out not-plan there. He was going to have to go home to take a shower and get dry. “What the hell are you doing in that thing?”
Nebula shrugged. “I would have avoided you.” Probably. It was said with an air of confidence, even if that was not all that true. She might have avoided him. Or bumped him lightly on purpose. Gamora would have gotten mad at her for anything more serious.
She would have gotten mad at herself for anything more serious. A good portion of the time spent in the last few years had been looking out for Peter, even if he might not have realized it.
Now he was sober, and he had Gamora, so what did he need Nebula for?
“I don’t know. It was here, and it called me Corpsman. So I decided to fly it.” She was always a woman of very few words, and gestured to the passenger side seat. “Get in, loser.”
“Dude, I’m drenched,” Peter pointed out. “Unless that thing has some built-in dryers, you don’t want me in there.” Sure, it was his own doing, but he still wasn’t going to get into some fancy flying car just to soak it with seawater and end up sitting in a puddle of his own making. That was too gross even for him.
“Oh shut up,” Nebula rolled her eyes but looked to the console anyway. It had a lot of buttons and most of them she had no idea what they did. She pushed one, and lights started flashing on the inside and the outside of the car. “Ugh. Not that.”
Pushed another, and very loud music started blaring from the speakers. The sun is shining in the sky, there ain’t a cloud in the sight - She’d heard that song before, on the Benatar, the Bowie - it was from their ship playlist. “Strange.”
Another button, and that did it - the passenger side seat was suddenly enveloped in protective plastic. “There.”
Peter didn’t know what there meant in this context, but he knew Nebula. He knew she wasn’t accepting refusal, and there was no arguing with her once she got her mind set. He’d just have to drip dry in the damn car, and she’d take them back to Knowhere eventually. It was a pretty cool car.
Opening the passenger-side door, he heaved himself up into—oh, yeah, alright, so the seat had been covered in plastic. That made sense. At least he wouldn’t be ruining the upholstery or whatever else she could tease him about later on down the line. He pulled the door closed and looked around with a little bit of awe.
“So, Corpsman, huh?” He looked up at her. “Like Nova Corps?” It was the only corps he could think of off the top of his head.
Nebula grunted. She didn’t know the right answer to that question, and she didn’t ever really like not having answers. “Only corps I know.” She turned down the music now, even if keeping it loud was often the way the Guardians did it when someone wanted to be passive-aggressive. She’d done it before to all of them, but mostly Gamora, when she wanted to annoy her sister.
That thought gave her an idea, one she’d purposely kept out of, because Gamora’s life was her own and none of Nebula’s business.
But she was driving Peter around in a flying car and he had no place to escape to, so Nebula swooped the car around to the high skies, over New Asgard, and glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Are you planning on proposing to Gamora, or are you waiting for her to do it?”
“She said she was gonna do it, so I’m waiting,” Peter told her with a shrug. He didn’t think Nebula was all that serious, and he didn’t really think Gamora was serious about proposing, either. It was just how they were—joking, playing around. A serious proposal wasn’t something he was thinking too hard about because he didn’t need it, and he doubted Gamora was worried about it or thinking about it in any context outside of a joke.
Unless—
His head swiveled over to Nebula, his brows furrowing with concern. “Why? Did she say something?” Because if she would say something to anyone else, it was definitely Nebula, right?
Nebula’s mouth twitched. She couldn’t let herself smile, and wouldn’t, not while she swooped the car around and Peter was giving her that look. If she smiled, he’d catch onto her giving him shit, and she needed to make him sweat a little more first.
“If she did, I wouldn’t tell you.” That was true. But Gamora hadn’t actually said anything to her outside of the explanation, and Nebula had raised an eyebrow enough to get a glare from her sister. That had been enough from Nebula, since she wasn’t one to really understand the concept of marriage. “Marriage is weird. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t expecting something and going to be let down if she doesn’t want to get married.”
Peter knew that was true. They had their sisterly secrets, and he didn’t begrudge them that—most of the time. He wasn’t sure if this was one of those times where something really had been said or not, because Nebula had the best poker face in the galaxy, but he decided not to push his luck on it. He figured it was a safe bet there hadn’t been anything said that Gamora wouldn’t have said right to him. She wasn’t the kind to keep her thoughts to herself for long.
“I mean, I wouldn’t mind doing it, but I don’t mind not doing it either,” he said with a shrug. He wasn’t attached to the idea of marriage like a lot of Terrans were because he’d spent so little of his life on Earth. He and Gamora had been together for years before she’d died back home, and while he’d thought about it, he’d never been so invested in that idea that he’d started cooking up proposals. He was happy as they were now.
Nebula made a little noise of agreement. Good. At least Peter seemed to be smart about this and in general, had been doing better now that he had taken a break from alcohol. She was glad for that, but would never say it, the same as she’d never bring up the times she’d carried him from the bar, or had to make sure he hit the puke bowl rather than his bed, or- Well, stuff had been not great for a while there, back home.
She was definitely not saying any of that. Instead, she turned her head very slowly to look straight at him. Awkward in the tiny car, but Nebula made it work. “Keep her happy or else I’ll hit you with this car on purpose. Got it, Quill?”
Peter’s immediate instinct was to laugh and play that threat off as a joke. But this was Nebula – she wasn’t incapable of joking, but it wasn’t likely. He knew how protective she was of Gamora, and honestly, they all were now that they had her back. She wasn’t the alternate, brought-forward-in-time Gamora who didn’t know how to handle them—and didn’t really want to. She was their Gamora, and he knew he wasn’t the only one terrified that they could lose her on a disappearance list, just like the bunches he’d seen just in the short amount of time he’d been in Vallo.
He wasn’t about to waste any time genuinely being a dick. They joked around, but it was only jokes. If they got married, great. If they didn’t, great. He wouldn’t have any resentment for her because he loved her, and he knew unless something went very wrong again, he would be with her forever, even if they never upgraded from boyfriend-girlfriend status. There was nothing wrong with that.
So, he nodded at Nebula. “If you didn’t hit me with the car, I’d just jump back into the sea and drown on purpose,” he told her. “You know I don’t ever wanna hurt her, Nebs. She means everything to me.”
Quill seemed to actually want to do this right now that they all got a second chance, and Nebula could respect that.
Did respect that. They both wanted to make the most of this extra time with Gamora, with the Gamora they didn’t have at home, the one they’d mourned and lost.
Not that she’d say it. Or do anything other than grunt and nod. From her, that was a lot. Finally, eventually, after a long minute, she couldn’t resist tacking onto the grunt. “Me too.”
If he teased her about that, she would dive this car into the ocean.