A/N: so i drew upon some more emo angst for this one bc i'm edgy but also have some crap of my own going on this week but anyway, this one was inspired by these lyrics from the song "all of the stars" by ed sheeran (YEAH IT WAS IN THE FAULT OF OUR STARS LMFAO): "I can hear your heart on the radio beat. They're playing 'Chasing Cars' and I thought of us. Back to the time, you were lying next to me; I looked across and fell in love."
and ok those lyrics are just,,,, so soft,,, and also v starmora and also idk what else to say except enjoy !
Starmora Week 2017, Day 3: Song
Peter hates waiting.
Admittedly, he's not the most patient person out there, but the concept of waiting is often a cruel, nerve-wracking game for anyone in his line of galaxy-saving work. Waiting for the next crime to happen, waiting for the next big threat to the universe, waiting for the next horrible villains who thrive from others' suffering to pop up somewhere.
Their current job—it's so big, might as well call it an official mission at this point—is a mixture of the second and third of those scenarios, because, holy shit, Thanos.
And it's caused a lot of shit for them, okay, like, Peter hadn't planned on returning to Earth anytime soon, and he'd much rather it have been on his own terms, rather than because of arguably the biggest threat to the universe ever who's also viewed as his frickin' father-in-law by those who refuse to take Gamora's word for cutting herself off from Thanos.
(Both Peter and Gamora are so over evil dads.)
(Also, Peter's back on Earth, what the fuck?)
So, yeah, the Guardians are a bit of a mess these days because their two leaders are, uh, each going through some mindfuckery, to put it bluntly, while they're staying with Thor and these "Avengers" characters (holy shit, Captain America came back to life?!) in upstate New York. It's just far away enough from Missouri that Peter isn't completely freaking out, but the whole Earth thing in general is just mind-boggling.
It gets to the point where Gamora's emoting exclusively through brooding and Peter keeps bickering with anything and everyone that breathes so Rocket just ups and kicks them out of the entire freakin' building.
"No wonder Groot's such a mopey sap, he's got you two raisin' him," Rocket scolds them, shooing them out of the room with his paws. "Go get some fresh air or somethin', hell, go have some d'ast angry sex for all I care, which is disgusting, just don't come back until you're ready to be helpful assholes."
Then Peter's standing outside with Gamora, Rocket sliding the door shut in their faces.
Like Peter said, everything's weird right now, okay?
"Stupid raccoon," he mutters with a huff. "He's a stupid trash panda, thinking he can just boss his leaders around."
He starts pacing, arms crossed snugly over his chest. Gamora's still brooding with an uncomfortably distant look in her eyes, which follow him back and forth as he walks.
"It's not my fault we're back on freaking Earth where my mom freaking died after my dad freaking killed her," Peter rants, gesturing wildly with his hands in the air around him, "all the while waiting for freaking Thanos to show up and blow up this entire freaking universe, which has been left to us morons to defend, for whatever freaking reason. What the hell did we do to have freaking dads who are all freaking evil—"
"If you say 'freaking' one more time," Gamora interjects calmly, "I will punch you."
"Be my freaking guest!" he exclaims, stopping and whirling around to face her. "It'll probably be my only highlight on this entire freaking trip!"
She reaches her arm out in the distance between them, gently pushing her fist into his chest. "Consider yourself punched."
The eerie calm in her expression washes over him. He relaxes his shoulders with a sigh, laying his hand over her fist. "Sorry. For yelling. I'm not mad at you, just…everything."
"It's alright," she says quietly, stepping closer to him. "Perhaps Rocket was right. We're both very upset. Maybe we need a break from everything for a while."
"Angry sex?" Peter asks, raising an eyebrow.
"I'm not…angry," Gamora says, turning her hand over to intertwine their fingers. "I'm—I'm not really sure what I'm feeling."
He studies her for a moment, then nods. "I don't think I'm in a sex mood, anyway."
The corners of her lips turn up at that. She glances up at the sky, a faint breeze blowing her hair over her shoulders. "You never told me the Terran sky could be so beautiful."
He looks up at the sky as well. The sun had just set on yet another day spent back on Earth, but Gamora's words make him realize how disconnected he's been from his surroundings. The sky had always just been the sky to him as a child, after all, and Earth's display of stars easily pales in comparison to much of what Peter's seen during his travels.
So he hasn't spent much time looking at the sky since they landed.
It's…nothing new, again, considering everything he's seen across the galaxy, but it's beauty is familiar, in a more comforting way than every other Earth thing he's been confronted with since arriving. The sky's a mixture of blues and pinks and purples from the recently set sun, with the occasional cloud sitting here and there.
Gamora adjusts their connected hands, moving them down between them. She takes a noticeably deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment.
"You can still find Earth impressive, even after being, like, almost everywhere in the galaxy?" Peter questions, glancing at her.
She opens her eyes to meet his, a small smile tugging at her lips. "It's your home, Peter. Of course it's beautiful."
Um, okay, that's not allowed.
Something between a scoff and a sigh comes out. "You're going to be the death of me, Gamora."
Now her smile's larger—teasing, even, a welcomed change from the darkness that had haunted her eyes just minutes before.
"It's nice out here," she says. "Let's stay for a while."
Evil dads are scary, returning to your traumatic home world is scary, but at least it's (somewhat) bearable when you don't have to deal with it all alone.
That's kind of been the recurring theme within his and Gamora's relationship, Peter reflects—traversing through life's challenges together instead of alone, between Ronan and Ego, now about to add Thanos to the list. They've grown because of these experiences, both individually and as a team.
Ego had been combatted with dancing and "let's take a walk"s to deal with the horrifying anxiety that came before and afterward.
Thanos is being combatted with stargazing and "let's just lie down on the grass and look at the sky for a while" instead.
Maybe walking had been the choice activity then because they needed the extra stimulation to keep things from getting completely awkward between them, since they hadn't quite known each other as well as they do now, or maybe they just really liked walking. Peter doesn't know.
What he does know is that, somehow, Rocket's stupid outburst in which he kicked them out earlier has turned out to be a pretty sweet deal.
"I think that's Orion's Belt," Peter says, pointing up at a faint line of stars. Earth's view sucks, Earth's pollution sucks, the lights from the Avengers' Facility sucks, but, fuck it, they're stargazing.
Gamora actually laughs. "Is that not just a line of stars?"
"You know what else is in the shape of a line?" He gives her a pointed look. "A belt. Therefore, line of stars equals belt."
She rolls her eyes. "It's creative, I suppose."
"A lot of constellations are based on old mythology and stuff," he says, drumming his fingers against her knuckles in time with the music playing softly from his Zune between them. "People way back in the olden days didn't exactly have cool tech stuff to keep them entertained."
"We had many folktales passed down among my people as well," she says, turning her head to look at him. "I don't recall any of them being quite as…abstract."
"Well, okay," he huffs, pointing to another group of stars, "there, Big Dipper. It's like a big spoon."
"That one makes more sense," she says, her attention back on the stars. "Any others?"
"Uh…" His eyes search the sky for more, but between the lack of visibility compared to rural Missouri and the many years since he's so much as glanced at the Earth night sky to identify constellations, he's drawing a blank. "I used to know the others."
"I see now why they call you Star-Lord," she says dryly and, for whatever goddamn reason, it's, like, the funniest thing he's heard in nearly a week, and he just bursts out laughing. To his credit, though, she joins him in laughter several moments later.
For a moment, everything around them is gone. No Thanos or Avengers or Guardians or anything, it's just the two of them, and when Peter turns toward her, catching her mid-laugh, he swears he falls in love all over again.
"Babe," he gasps out between giggles, his hands fumbling to hold hers. "I love you."
She calms down more quickly than him, still grinning from ear to ear when she nods. "I love you, too."
His laughter finally subsides, leaving him sore in his cheeks and ribs. He sighs, curling closer to her. "I needed that."
"I didn't realize I was so funny," she says, and he almost loses it again—must be the delirium of the absurdity of their current predicament catching up with him—but he contains it in a quick chuckle.
"I'll be honest," he says, "I didn't think you could be funny, period."
"You underestimate me," she teases.
"And here I thought I was overestimating—"
Peter's cut off by his own laughter as Gamora suddenly launches herself on top of him, grabbing him by his shirt with a laugh of her own. The force of her movement and his squirming sends them rolling in a strange fit of totally-in-denial-of-reality giggles drowning out that one song about chasing cars, or something, playing from the Zune.
Gamora eventually gains the upper hand in their wrestling as she straddles him, holding his hands back on the grass. He briefly recalls their first meeting on Xandar, and the way she'd looked down at him then, and it's hard to comprehend just how much has changed since then. "Do you concede?"
"Never," he gasps out, cheeks flushed and burning from the stupid smile he knows he's wearing. (Fortunately, Gamora's got a dumb smile of her own on right now, too. Except it's not actually dumb it's, like, really, unfairly pretty.) "You're on my turf now!"
Summoning the power of the Earth within him (maybe not), he pushes his hips up with his legs just enough to loosen Gamora's grip, allowing him the chance to break his arms free of her grasp. He turns them until he traps Gamora under him.
"Do you concede?" he asks, turning the question on her.
"A warrior does not concede," she says simply. "But a Zen-Whoberi is stronger than a Terran."
She twists her arms in just the right way to break out of his hold, allowing her the chance to flip them, and they're back to square one.
"Hmmm," he says, "if I refuse to concede, will you just stay on top of me like this all night?"
"I suppose I would have to."
He debates with himself for a moment. "Worth it."
And he relaxes under her grasp, laying his head back against the grass with a sigh. She rolls her eyes, turning her eyes from his face to the Zune beside his head.
"This is a fitting song, considering," she comments.
He hasn't really been listening since their little wrestling war started, but it's still the cars song. As the lyrics of the chorus play—"Would you lie with me and just forget the world?"—he realizes where Gamora's coming from.
"I guess I have forgotten the world while we've been out here," he says wistfully. "Rocket made a good call putting us on time-out. I'm surprised."
"We have a good team," she says.
"They look out for us," he says. "We all look out for each other. We got this. I think. Hopefully."
"That's already an improvement from what you were saying earlier."
Though he never "conceded" in their little game, Gamora lies out on top of him, resting her head on his chest, her ear pressing into the fabric of his shirt. She sighs, closing her eyes.
"Are you feeling better, too?" Peter asks, wrapping an arm around her.
She nods. "Everyone's still okay. Nothing has happened yet. I just try to keep reminding myself that."
"That's all we can do for now. We're all safe. We're all okay," he says, rubbing her back. He's not sure when Gamora had last gotten a full night of sleep; ever since they basically ran over Thor in space (yeah, Peter's not really sure what the hell his life has become, either) and he brought news of Thanos, Gamora's been a walking embodiment of exhaustion and uncertainty. She sees things every time she closes her eyes that, once she's described them to him, leave him feeling helpless, just holding her and trying to protect her from invisible, intangible enemies.
Well. When Thanos shows up, he'll be pretty freaking tangible.
And Peter's pretty anxious about the whole thing, too. The haunted look Gamora gets anytime Thanos enters her thoughts just leaves Peter angry. And sad. Pretty damn sad. (Like, he-cries-when-she-cries type of sad.) Meeting the person who caused all of that hurt is daunting enough for himself, but for Gamora?
He can't even imagine the feeling.
But she's trying, so he's trying. They're trying, to make it through this shitstorm together. He's on Earth for the first time since his dad killed his mom, she's about to see her abuser again, shit's about to go down.
"Please protect yourself, Peter," she whispers, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt more tightly. "I don't know if I—if I'm enough—"
"We'll protect each other like we always do," he says, moving his hand up to her hair. It's wet from rolling around in the grass so much. "We're going to kick ass—specifically, we're going to kick his ass, and if you and Nebula didn't already get first dibs on him I totally would've called it—and we're going to live out the rest of our goddamn lives in peace, just to rub it in after he's dead. I, personally, vote for a second honeymoon."
She turns her head up to meet his eyes. "Where should we go?"
"You pick."
"I'll think about it." She resumes the position her head had been in initially, facing his left side.
They fall into a brief silence, which is then broken by Gamora's soft yawn.
"I'm too comfy to get up," Peter says with a groan, tightening his hold on Gamora. "Is it a safety violation to sleep out here? I mean, it's not like we're Avengers, so do we have to follow their rules?"
"Hm," Gamora mumbles into his shirt, eyes already closed. "You never conceded."
"Oh, darn," he says sarcastically. "Guess I'm stuck under you for the night. What a shame."
She shifts her head, hand finding his in the grass for a last minute reassurance before she's off to inevitably fight Thanos in her dreams again. "Tell me something, anything."
It's their new routine of trying to make her think about something else in her final moments of consciousness (it has yet to work, but they keep trying, anyway, because fuck nightmares, right?). He closes his eyes. "Well, so remember that Orion constellation you oh-so-loved to make fun of earlier? Orion's actually this hunter dude from Greek mythology. He wanted to fight, like, every animal on Earth. I guess he's kinda like Drax…"
Soon, Gamora's fast asleep on top of him, his right hand tangled up in her hair and his left hand grasping her left. He follows her into the realm of sleep not long after.
"Wow. You did it," Mantis says, glancing between Peter and Gamora cuddled up on the grass outside and Rocket standing at the window beside her. "You made them feel better."
"See? It doesn't always take freaky empathetic powers," Rocket says proudly. "And it was totally worth seein' Quill's face when I lectured him for once."
He starts walking away. Mantis turns toward him with a frown. "Wait, Rocket, shouldn't we bring them inside?"
"Eh, the weather's fine," he says, shrugging. "They'll live."
"If you say so," she mumbles, following Rocket out of the room.