(A/N): Hope you enjoy! Thanks for reading.
...
I know who you are, Peter Quill, and I am not some starry eyed waif here to succumb to your… your pelvic sorcery!
"I'm not, you know," Gamora says to the ceiling, sitting at the scarred table, body straight.
"Not what?" Quill's at his computer, fingers pecking away as he types up a progress report for Nova Corps.
"Some starry eyed waif."
"What are you—"
Gamora exhales, frustrated, and drops her clasped fingers to her lap. Really, Quill. What is it like for one's mind to be so—
"Oh."
Good, Peter. "But that thing you did? Saving me. It was… Thank you."
"Yeah. Well." The sound of Quill's pecking stops. "You'd have done the same."
She would have, wouldn't she? Certainly, she would have. The thought of it twists up her guts, strings them about, presses at her organs until they stutter.
Peter Quill.
Peter Quill.
It's stupid, really, the thoughts she has of Peter Quill. Infuriating, to be honest. Peter Quill.
She'd stab any enemy of his cleanly through the eye, would charge into a volley of bullets, throw herself on an detonating bomb, she thinks, would rip out the throat of the man who laid a hand on him. She would. She really would. It's not sentimentality. It's sharp, cold integrity. It's logic.
Quill's already done it, more than once. Offered to die.
For her.
That's not sentimentality, either. That's blind heroism.
Or is it sentimentality? Peter is fairly sentimental. He's had girlfriends—one night stands, he insists, only to extract information—and he smiles at children and strangers, and carries in his pocket a letter from his dead mother. He can't stand to let civilians come to harm, and he lets Rocket use his cassette tapes because he knows he quite likes them sometimes, and he keeps mementos from various planets in a metal safe beneath his bed.
Could it be? What if it is? Gamora inhales, gets to her feet. "I'm not," she repeats. Here to succumb. To you.
Quill looks up at her.
"I know."
...
They're friends. In a determined, tight-jawed way that suggests it would be all too easy for them to fall into something More. Like two acrobats balancing on a suspension wire, constantly tugging themselves back into equilibrium. It's annoyingly tricky. Gamora, however, does not cower in the face of a challenge. She has an impeccable poker face and makes use of it at every available opportunity.
Very purposefully, she doesn't touch him. Not that their fingers don't brush on occasion, when passing weapons back and forth, not that their upper arms don't sometimes make contact when moving around the Ship's cramped galley, and not that they don't inspect each other for injuries after a round of rough physical combat with some galactic pisscouch, hands sliding along each other's knee caps and calves, feeling for snapped bones. But.
There are no touches of significant intent.
[Because if there were, it would mean something. They would mean something. She and Quill are not the kind of friends who can do that. She doesn't exactly know why. They just aren't.]
They are also not the kind of friends who talk to each other about more private things. Like the females that emerge from Peter's room three times a week at least, hair mussed and eyes alight with a gloating triumph that leaves Gamora to sip Rocket's revolting French blend and watch them gather their scattered garments in impassive silence. Drax sometimes catches her pissy expression and raises an eyebrow, his gaze taking on a more knowing edge. Gamora rolls her eyes every time. She isn't jealous.
Jealousy would mean wishing she was in those women's place. She doesn't.
[Much, anyway.]
...
There are explosions. There is an alien who kidnaps Quill and leaves him drugged and beaten and chained to a board, determined to inflict outstanding methods of extortion. The tormentor is dead before nightfall, Gamora's godslayer jutting from between his scarlet retinas.
Peter's clothes are in a heap beside the door. Gamora swallows. She trains her eyes on his upper half and begins sawing through the metal bonds, wary of going too far and cutting into his flesh.
They aren't soft with one another.
How can they be, when day and night involves hundreds of death-watch announcements, a near-miss with a raxifin blade, Rocket's jittery, caffeine-and-alcohol fuelled rage, some underwear possibly belonging to another Zen-Whoberian woman, broken glass and bruised knuckles and an empty fridge at 4 am, blood and filth all over the Ship [scalp wound packed with rust and grit, trail from the doorway to the bathroom; both of them, wounded and groaning and giggling?]
He stops her hand.
Gamora drops to her knees, looks resolvedly at a freckle on his knee. "Are you in pain?"
"No," he breathes, reproachful, as though it's a stupid question; no, as though she's too good to cause actual pain. He stops Gamora's hand, holds it still. She knows he's thinking of something specific, has been reminded of something, doesn't know what, doesn't mind what. It's fine. He'll be asleep soon, anyway. His eyes are already closing. Gamora touches him lightly, with two fingertips, right below the jaw.
"I love you," he mutters, chin lolling to chest.
What?
"Love you," he says again, muffled.
Right. It's typical, mumbling one's indefinites and maybes and nots while drugged, dehydrated, mostly unconscious.
Gamora keeps working.
There's a hell of a lot of doubt at this point, anyway, as to the antecedent. Of the pronoun you.
"Gamora?" Quill says.
Well.
...
She's angry.
Everyone else sees to Quill, makes sure he's comfortable, checks that his bandages are clean.
Gamora stays downstairs. Her heart feels like an exothermic reaction.
...
"What the hell's wrong with you?"
Peter stands in the doorway to the galley, bathrobe hanging haphazardly from bruised shoulders.
She ignores him. "New record."
"What?"
"Quickest you've been back on your feet after a major injury."
He ignores her, too. "Why didn't you check you on me? Rocket and Drax have been camped out in my room 24-7."
"I saved your goddamn life, Quill."
"Ever heard of aftercare?"
She flushes. "Whatever. Sorry."
"Which is it? Whatever or sorry?"
Gamora shoots to her feet as if she's been shot. "I have other work to do. I'll talk to you later."
"Gamora, you can't just—"
She shuts the door hard behind her and walks to the window, fingernails biting into her palm.
...
"You know you're being thickheaded, right?"
"Excuse me?"
"About you and Star-lord."
"Don't call him that," Gamora snaps, flicking a bit of dried blood from the serrated edge of her godslayer.
Rocket laughs. "Someone needs to teach you how to deflect."
She grits her teeth.
"One of you should just say something."
"What are you even talking about? It's 3:20 in the morning and I am not in the mood to discus—"
"I may not be the most observant of creatures, but this is pretty damn evident."
"What is?" It's an exercise in futility and she knows it.
"Quill, pretty expectedly, being head-over-heels for you. You, not so expectedly, being head-over-heels back."
"You're an imbecile."
"I'm correct."
"No." Gamora puts her weapon aside. "No, you're not."
"You're in denial."
"Wishful thinking."
"I know you have the balls to admit this. What's blocking you up?"
She wrinkles her nose at him. "The balls…?"
"Figure of speech, woman. On Earth it means—"
"I do not care what it means. You're imagining my affection for him and I won't have it."
"Sooner or later, he's going to breach the subject. I'm just giving you a heads-up."
"I doubt it," she says smoothly, picking up her godslayer and flicking off the overhead despite her stomach's lurching. "Goodnight."
...
They are arranging maps on the floor of the den when it happens. The Kiss.
The Kiss of Significant Intent.
Gamora very rarely finds it necessary to assign anything capital letters, let alone italics, but there are exceptions. Like Quill. He isn't everything, but he contributes a key element to her everything. She'll be damned if she accepts a mimicry of his resplendence. Forced to revise her metamorphosis from a solitary warrior to a solitary warrior with a Peter.
Romantic bullshit. She doesn't recognize herself.
She rubs her temples. Messes with the maps. Studies coordinates with no substantial comprehension.
She's totally unequipped when it comes to desire, but she can interpret a shift of the eyes, a nibble of the lip. Micro movements. Quill wants her.
Gamora's toes curl. She sits back on her heels so he won't notice.
Quill is sexual. She is, unless pressed, asexual. This is the first and most insignificant setback in a series of obstructions for them as a… Gamora grimaces at the word Couple.
First, only because sexual disharmony seems to be 'the most base level of conflict in a relationship', if she is to believe the drivel she found on the internet.
[Ridiculous. And the other setbacks can go to hell.]
She doesn't give a flying fuck about sexual orientation or gender identification unless it's work related. She herself doesn't even identify as asexual. She identifies with no one. Labels make her pissy. Especially Whore, which gives her a sick sense of irony to retain a term so laughably incorrect. But it has served her well in the past and she doesn't plan to discard it now.
But the point—sex. Gamora doesn't care about that, to put it mildly. Peter does. However, Gamora cares about Peter. So, in a roundabout way, she will care about their sexual encounters.
There. Fixed.
As for affection?
She has studied it only for the purpose of being able to navigate in the world, of having a vague understanding of the symbiosis it yields. She sees it all over creation; the masses falling in and out of it, trying on new partners like trying on new clothing to wear. What she has with Quill isn't affection. It's More.
There is no definition of More. But she's pretty sure she's feeling it now. The hell out of it, in fact.
Does Quill feel More?
Initially, she wanted nothing to do with that. An inkling Peter was interested in her when they first met, and she shut him down, waiving his misplaced feelings because Quill was [and still is] Quill, and Gamora was [and still is], if she's being frank, horribly fascinated by him. She didn't want him getting the wrong idea. Didn't want to jeopardize one of the few friendships she'd ever had.
She can't remember the precise moment when More happened upon her. Maybe it was when Quill abandoned the safety of his pod in favor of giving her his oxygen and saving her life. Or maybe it was when he belted Play that Funky Music White Boy at a karaoke bar on Xander so Gamora could steal a set of keys from under the bartender's nose. Maybe it was when Quill admonished Drax in the middle of an argument for calling her a green whore one time too many. Or maybe it was when he woke her in the middle of the night with a beer and a copy of a movie he called The Breakfast Club. Peter Quill kept being superb and Gamora kept allowing his superbness to affect her, damn it.
She rifles through her stack of papers, systematizing the maps by planetary order. Quill is beside her, bandages off for the first time in weeks, humming under his breath. Gamora looks at him, strange warmth scraping along her vertebrae.
She says it. Quick. Like ripping off skin. "This wasn't my original objective. But," as if announcing her oncoming death, "I believe I have feelings for you."
Peter smiles. "Yes, you do." Continues sorting Earth-616.
Wait.
What the hell.
Gamora is mystified. Which is a rare occurrence.
Quill lifts a stack of maps, aligning the edges. "You're methods aren't the subtlest." He isn't even looking at her, just smiling slightly, eyes crinkled at the corners.
"Pardon?"
"You researched how to engage in sexual relations with a human while I was sitting right next to you."
She frowns. "When?"
"Monday."
"You were out on a private mission then."
"Only for the first half of the day. You didn't notice. Clearly."
"Work related," she lobs.
"You Googled How to have sex with my human friend."
"Almost human." Is it safe for a heart to beat this hard? She shifts, discomfited. "You didn't say anything."
"The concept of timing must be alien to you." The pun isn't lost on her. Quill idly scratches behind his ear, ducking his head. His face is rosy from blushing.
Gamora wishes she didn't find his demeanor so becoming. It's annoying. "You're annoying," she grouses.
"Yeah, well. I never learn, do I?" He swallows. "Come here." Reaches for her. A hand on the nape of her neck. The rustle of forgotten charts under their knees. The Kiss of Significant Intent. Something that should have been fierce and hot and maybe a little hungry. Fumbling hands, shuddered breaths, and trembling bodies. But Gamora is petulant for a moment, stunned by the turn of events. She accepts Quill's kiss, but negates to accommodate him by tilting her head to one side or opening her mouth further when he licks her lips. [She cannot not kiss him back, though, as much as he irritates her. More happening upon her again, More.]
They've disturbed their work.
Gamora is perfectly alright with that.