( closed ) domesticity isn't so bad.

[godslay]

who: Peter Quill and Gamora
what: An evening in the life of ridiculous space dummies.
when: August 11th — right before the amnesia event.
where: Community housing: floor 13, room 4
warnings: None!


[ Despite the fact that they've only been in the city for over a month, it's become surprisingly easy to find a new routine. It's far more laidback in comparison to their usual fare – less scrambling for legal and slightly-less-than-legal jobs – and only having to share a room with Peter is much better than the way they'd all been living on top of each other back on the Milano. There hadn't been much of an opportunity to adjust to the Quadrant, but their apartment is cleaner than the overall ship itself, so it has that in its favor. (That excludes the general messiness that comes from living with Peter, but that's bearable.)

But everything feels easier. The weight of the galaxy doesn't sit on their shoulders, they don't have to report to the Nova Corps, they aren't constantly recognized by "fans" or otherwise so— it's different. Gamora has a normal (emphasis on "normal") job for the first time in her life, and though it also happens to involve killing monsters and protecting anyone meandering beyond the wall, she has something as mundane as shifts. She reports in, handles a squad of her own for the Guard, but then she goes home for dinner like everyone else.

But being home for dinner means that a regular meal at roughly the same time has become part of her schedule, and since hers and Peter's shifts tend to coincide more often than not, that usually means they see to their dinner together. They've managed to sample a good deal of the restaurants the city has to offer, and their fridge is generally full of whatever leftovers they've had for the week; they don't cook much, but they still somehow manage to sit to eat together most nights.

It becomes a habit. In fact, she'd be more surprised by Peter missing dinner than she is by how they've fallen into such a domestic routine.

And that's what it is, isn't it? Domestic. Living together, eating together, spending downtime together. Sometimes that includes Mantis (because Gamora has become oddly protective of her, tentatively treating her like any of the other Guardians), but sometimes, it's little more than absently keeping busy near or with each other in the hour or so they may have to spare.

(Though as the days roll by, she's become especially fond of something as simple as waking up in the morning to see Peter snoring softly in the bed across from her. Sharing space isn't new, surely, but with their unfamiliar surroundings and all of this change – both here and back in their own universe–, just seeing him helps.

It makes her smile, and somehow, for the first time in a long time, she feels less displaced.)



Tonight, she comes bearing a bag of pasta for their dinner in various red and white sauces. She's discovered that this kind of food is actually tasty, and though she'd never experienced any of these sauces before coming to this city, she's decided that the Terran ones Peter had her try are more than worthwhile.

She unlocks the front door, letting herself inside, and then kicks it closed as she heads to the small kitchen to set down their food. She starts going through the boxes, putting them out one by one, before going to fetch a couple of plates and forks for them both (while ignoring the small pile of dishes already in the sink; they should probably take care of that tonight, but she maintains that it's Peter's turn again).

She pauses long enough to pull out her communicator and fire off a text. ]

Hurry up if you want to eat before it gets cold.

Or I'm going to start without you.

[ Probably not, but still. ]

Comments

[nostalgiabomb]

[ It’s—

Nice.

Okay, maybe it’s not nice, the whole kidnapping thing. The whole getting yanked out of one reality into another, getting separated from his team (family) for the next, like, five years or whatever the hell. Maybe it’s not nice, not knowing how his friends are doing, not having his ship, not having the freedom to move from one place to another at a whim.

But Peter’s always been the type to run from his problems, to move and move and move until he’s left everything so far behind him that he could forget it all. It’s a habit he’s trying to break, to be fair to him. He’s trying to learn to live with the consequences, trying to learn how to let the past go, trying to learn how to live in the now and all the ugly, painful things that entails. After everything that happened – everything with Ego, the whole fucking mess – he was steeling himself to cope, to deal with it, but—

But.

—but there had been those handful of moments, he admits now. Just a handful, where he felt lost and drifting and unmoored, even with his family around him, silently offering support, and that must be how he ended up here. He’s guilty for it, but honestly? He’s glad he has an entire alternate universe between himself and those issues.

He’ll... he’ll cope. Eventually. Not now, but soon.

(Maybe.)

But it’s nice. A new world to explore, stuff to do that keeps his little, tinkerer’s heart satisfied. He has Gamora and Mantis – that familiarity that keeps him from going entirely insane with homesickness and loneliness. Peter’s used to being on his own, sure, but his time with the Guardians has spoiled the fuck out of him, and he finds he likes being able to turn to someone and have a chat, to have people to sit down to dinner with. It’s domestic as fuck, and maybe months ago, he would’ve balked at it all, would’ve felt smothered by the routine, but now—

It’s nice.

(It reminds him of home.)



Peter’s not far from the shared housing building, a plastic bag crinkling in his hand when he gets Gamora’s text.

Also, Peter’s that weird asshole who responds to texts with a phone call. It’s easier than trying to navigate the device one-handed while trying to not bump into anyone as he walks back. Whenever Gamora picks up: ]

I’m almost back. No need for threats, dude.

[godslay]

[ Avoiding phone calls is exactly why she texted him. She has to pause in the middle of rooting through their refrigerator in order to answer, holding the device against her ear with her shoulder. ]

How did I beat you here? I was the one picking up dinner.

[ She reasons that should have had her arriving after him, but here she is, boxes of food at the ready as she tries to find some of the strange juice they'd picked up on one of their arguably sparse grocery shopping trips. ]

[nostalgiabomb]

[ Sorry, Gamora. Peter will always prefer the quick route, and in this case, calling is faster.

Also runs less of a risk of him walking straight into a pole, which is an added bonus. ]

I took a detour.

[ And he hefts the bag, the plastic crinkling as he checks the contents. ]

Anyway I’m, like, literally walking into the building. Gimme like, two minutes.

[godslay]

Fine. Two minutes.

[ Does she say goodbye? Nah. It's much easier to just end the call and go back to fishing around in the fridge until she comes up with the juice.

Something else to add to the things she's laid out for the evening. ]

[nostalgiabomb]

[ Peter hears the way the line cuts, at least, and he makes a face as he pulls the comm device away from his ear. He grumbles to himself as he’s stepping into the lobby, as he’s walking onto the elevator— ]

Oh, okay, I’ll see you soon, Gamora. Yeah, no, don’t worry about ending the conversation properly. I mean, it’s only the polite thing to do. No, yeah, it’s totally cool, manners aren’t important or anything—

[ And he scoffs as the elevator doors slide shut.

In the allotted two minutes, the door to their shared apartment opens, admitting a still slightly disgruntled Peter into the space. He kicks the door shut, spotting Gamora. With an exasperated air, hands on his hips, ]

Uh. Bye, by the way?

[godslay]

[ At least Peter doesn't keep her waiting for much longer, and Gamora is content to flip through her comm device for those last couple of minutes it takes him to make it to the elevator and get to their floor. She doesn't look up at the sound of the door, only glancing around when Peter speaks. ]

I think you mean "hi."

[ She's clearly ignoring the criticism of that lack of goodbye, except: ]

Did you have anything else you needed to say that couldn't be said after the two minutes it took you to get here?

[nostalgiabomb]

I did.

[ He didn't. ]

But now you're never gonna know. [ With a slightly wounded air. ] Because you were rude to me.

[ He harrumphs as he heads to the fridge, depositing his bag on a nearby counter to pluck things out. ]

[godslay]

Then it must not have been that important if you don't still need to tell me.

[ Clearly.

But she comes around to lean against the counter near him as he starts to unpack his bag. ]

What is all that?

[nostalgiabomb]

[ He wads up the bag and stuffs it somewhere, because apparently Peter Quill, ever the pragmatist and recycler and full-time hoarder, saves his plastic bags. ]

Ice cream. It's a Terran dessert.

[ He suddenly realized earlier in the evening that they've been here all this damn time, and he still hasn't shoved ice cream in Gamora's or Mantis' face. Frankly, that's a crime.

As he's putting the little pint tubs into the freezer, he names off the flavors: ]

Chocolate. Vanilla. Mint chocolate chip. And last but not least—

[ This with a bit of a flourish, tossing the little pint up into the air, catching it with the other hand. ]

Rocky road.

[ ... which is technically just chocolate again, but Peter likes chocolate. ]

new thread to keep things tidy

[nostalgiabomb]

[ At this hour of the day, there isn't much to do. Even in this place, the world is still waking up. Shops are still being opened, folks just starting to head out to start their days. And here's Peter, wandering straight through the middle of it.

True to form, nothing looks familiar. Nothing nags at his memory. This place is just— alien in a way he hasn't experienced since he was a kid. Everything is new and different, and it should be exciting. It should be a new opportunity. It should be a chance to explore.

Instead, Peter stops into a coffee shop to waste a few hours – at least until it's late enough in the day where he doesn't feel like as much of an asshole for day-drinking.

He checks his pockets; earlier, he had been so focused on finding his Walkman that he didn't notice the other things he had on hand. A slim wallet with some sort of card, which he assumes is for payments. A set of keys, which he assumes goes to the apartment he'd just left.

(Floor 13, Room 4.)

He grits his teeth and shoves the keys back where he found them.

And beyond that, he has a comm device, identical to the one Gamora had shown him earlier. He spends a while acquainting himself to it, skimming back through whatever bullshit got tossed onto the network. (There's his mug again, asking about that weird music player, and he frowns at it before marking it and moving on.)

Throughout the day, a couple of strange posts crop up with puzzled responses, and he wonders if he should vindicated or concerned that he may not be the only one missing chunks of themselves. For now, he doesn't feel much of anything, numbly tapping through. He wanders, after that, moving around the city without an aim, trudging up and down the pathways without seeing anything around him. (His Walkman. Mom's tape. Gone. And how the hell did it happen? He'd been protecting that damn thing with his life for over twenty years. How could he allow it to be destroyed?)

He ends the day sitting in a shitty bar, paying for his drinks with a stolen card. (Peter doesn't know how long he'll be here, after all. Doesn't want to dip too deeply into his own funds if he wants to get shitfaced drunk.) With a bit of liquid courage in him, he dives more thoroughly into his comm, plucking up his own posting history. It's a lot of the stupid bullshit he'd expect of himself, if he's honest. Little hiccups, here and there, where he recognizes he's withholding information, and even that's par for the course.

What really catches his attention is that weird fucking smile he rarely put on. Crooked and bright and out of character, triggered by him apparently remembering something, though he hardly knows what.

It becomes less of a mystery, though, as he dives into whatever else is stored on this stupid thing. Pictures of random stuff. Stupid, silly private text conversations between himself and his alleged teammate – a lot of it seemed to be of her calling him "ridiculous." Photographs with Peter holding the device aloft, aiming the camera at him and the woman. The oldest photos show her exasperated, but as he swipes through them, her expression softens, until she's smiling ever so slightly. And his own smiles shift, go from the easy, roguish smirks, to something more genuine, more heartfelt. Crooked and bright and earnest – and almost exclusively when his gaze in the pictures shift to Gamora, rather than the screen.

(He digs up an old voice message: "So is— Does that mean you wanna go?"

"Yes, Peter, I want to go. With you.")

What the fuck has he gotten himself into?



Floor 13, Room 4.

It's well into the evening when he finally finds his way back to the Community Housing, the hour late enough to start edging into the morning. The keys jingle in the lock, the door swings open, and Peter, with nowhere else to go, reluctantly creeps through. It's dark inside – and little wonder, considering the time of night. He glances around as he carefully shuts the door behind him, pocketing the keys. He hits the switch for the light over the stove, deeming it soft enough to not disturb the room's other occupant.

The intention, of course, was to use the light to orient himself, to switch it off as soon as he figured out the best path to take in the dark. Instead, his gaze catches on a takeout box on the counter, to a little note in a neat hand.

"For Peter."

Guilt and uncertainty sour in his gut, and he sinks down in a chair at the table, scrubbing his face.

What the fuck is he supposed to do? ]

as the pain c o n t i n u e s

[godslay]

[ Little wonder that Gamora continues to be a light sleeper. Her eyes snap open as soon as she hears keys and the front door, and she first finds herself greeted with—

An empty bed across from her in the dark.

She didn't expect anything different, if she's honest, but it's still an uncomfortable pang of something that she can't quite articulate. Acute hearing picks up the sounds of Peter in the kitchen, and for a moment, she just lies there, staring at his bed, but when she doesn't hear the bedroom door open, she finally pulls herself up to go investigate. She could try to go back to sleep, could try to ignore everything that's happening and continue to give Peter space, but... He came back, didn't he?

She can't just leave that alone, can't just pretend like nothing is different while this big, empty forgetting hangs between them.

Can she?

(Does he need more space? Is it better if she isn't there?

She supposes she'll find out, given that she's already stepping out of the bedroom.)

Wearing light pajama bottoms and a shirt that's far too big (Peter's, though she'd stolen it the week before when it had gotten haphazardly mixed in with her own laundry), she pauses in the doorway that leads out into the rest of their living space. ]

You came back.

[ Though it isn't timid (because Gamora doesn't do timid), her tone is tentative, testing. ]

[nostalgiabomb]

[ The door creeks open, and Peter pulls his hands away from his face. Even in the dim light, his uncertainty shows on his face, something lost and confused and wounded, before he tries to hide it away under his usual masks. ]

Where else was I gonna go?

[ It's supposed to be a joke, but there's a brittle, bitter edge in his voice. He should feel guilty for that, too, but does he even have it in him to feel more guilt?

Probably, if he's honest, but that doesn't mean he wants to.

He licks his lips, glancing up at her nervously. ]

Didn't mean to wake you.

[godslay]

[ Gamora shakes her head, a gentle dismissal. ]

I sleep lightly.

[ Something, she supposes, Peter wouldn't know anymore.

Stepping across the room, she closes the distance between them so she can reach for the chair across from Peter. Her movements are deliberate and telegraphed, to give him the opportunity to... what, she isn't entirely sure. Get up himself, maybe. In a room alone with someone he doesn't know, doesn't trust, she could understand wanting to maintain some level of separation.

(It must feel so foreign. Alien. She knows she would be far likelier to be a bristling, defensive creature, in Peter's shoes – always on alert, waiting for the attack.) ]

Where did you go?

[ It's not a demand for a location or a need to know where he went and why, but rather, wondering what he'd seen of the city.

(And maybe wondering if anything might have jogged his memory.) ]

[nostalgiabomb]

[ He doesn't tense when she approaches, but that's only because he's well-practiced in seeming unbothered, in looking at ease in his own skin. He still watches her approach warily, all the same.

She might be able to smell his answer before he actually speaks it aloud. The smell of alcohol clings to him, even if he doesn't appear drunk. He spent a great deal of his night nursing the few drinks he had purchased, but long enough in the bar that the scent still sticks with him. ]

Walked around the city. [ Without much inflection. ] Got a couple drinks.

[ He glances over at her. ]

You don't have to beat around the bush. I know you wanna ask if I remembered anything.

I didn't. I don't.

[godslay]

[ Years of maintaining that same flat, unaffected expression allow Gamora to keep the disappointment out of her face. It feels strange to be... guarded around him again, like he's almost as much a stranger to her as she is to him. ]

It seems foolish to expect any immediate change.

[ Which is perhaps more an admonishment for herself, at this point.

She hadn't done much, but she'd at least poked around her communicator while he was gone (half-hoping to see a notification from him), and she'd seen a few others asking questions. ]

But it doesn't appear to be an isolated incident.

[ That's— somehow heartening to her, if only because it means more people will be searching for a solution. ]

[nostalgiabomb]

[ He offers a hum of acknowledgment. He'd seen the posts, skimmed the confused responses. But it's not like there's just— a magical cure for forgetting. It's not like someone is just going to find some miracle cure they can make into a smoothie to fix everyone's memory problems.

He studies her for a long moment, as close to an impassive mask on his face as he can manage. It's not quite as well put-together as Gamora's, because frustration and uncertainty still stand out in his eyes, but in any other instance, it might be passable. ]

Listen.

[ Slowly, reluctantly. He cuts himself off, gaze flitting off to one side before he forces himself to watch her again. ]

Listen. I'm gonna ask you something. And I want you to tell me the truth. Okay?

[godslay]

[ Gamora isn't exactly uneasy, but she's not sure where Peter's going with this. ]

... All right.

[ She doesn't think it could hurt, at this point. She doesn't know what he might ask that would pose a problem or prove to be detrimental – and if it's about filling in whatever blanks he may have left behind, that could only help, right? ]

Go ahead.

8/21 and what the fuck i'm sorry this is so long

[nostalgiabomb]

[ This week sucks.

It's the only thing Peter can say with any certainty, which, considering what happened to kick the week off, isn't saying much.

This whole time is awkward and lonely and strange. Peter doesn't ship out after that first night, as he probably should. He continues to crash at their shared apartment, despite almost every instinct in him screaming at him to just go. To sever those ties while the getting was good. The woman – Gamora – had given him an out, had stepped aside when he meant to leave, but she had followed it up, too, by telling him to stay.

(Another part of him, though, the part that motivates him to return to the apartment, tail tucked between his legs, keeps sounding off at the back of his head. It asks, "Is it really so bad, letting someone in?")

Peter does his best to keep out of Gamora's way, as he's sure she does for him. They cross paths rarely when their returns to the Community Housing happened to coincide, whether from the both of them returning from work, or from when Gamora was preparing for an early shift just as Peter returned from a long night out. And when they did run into one another, their conversations were stilted. Uncomfortable. Peter was a gregarious bastard at the best of times, able to put on a charming smile and chat up marks or random passersby whenever the fancy struck. He tried to put that skill to good use, but Gamora seemed more liable to shut it down than she was to entertain it. As the week dragged on, he stopped trying as much.

And in that week, he tried to see what it was he saw in her, what it was that made her the Diane to his Sam. She was fucking gorgeous – that much he knew from the word Go – but beyond that? There wasn't much to gauge. She tolerated him, at best, was patient with him to a point, but there wasn't anything there to really latch onto. But maybe that was her choice, knowing that he wasn't quite the man she remembered.

(It never occurs to him that the reason she shuts him out so completely is because he's done the exact same. But that's just how he is, keeping himself in a sort of protective shell.

Setting up walls helps to keep himself from being vulnerable.)



But a week passes. The stonewalling from Gamora is driving Peter crazy, but work and a lively nightlife helps him cope, to a degree. He explores and tinkers during the day whenever he has a shift assigned, and during the evening, he wanders his way into bars. Flirts up whoever catches his eye – though whenever someone asks him home, whenever they mention a desire for "a little more privacy," Peter always stalls.

(He thinks of that flicker on Gamora's face, where she looked every bit as lost as he felt. There and gone again in the blink of an eye.)

"I'm gonna have to pass," he always says with an apologetic smile.

A week passes. Peter doesn't know that he's ever felt as lonely as this. Life aboard the Eclector was rough, certainly, and he spent a great deal of time silently berating his crewmates. Taserface, with his stupid fucking name and the sort of attitude reserved for Saturday morning cartoon villains. Halfnut, with his stupid cackling laugh and stupider haircut. Retch, with that twisted sadism that left him kicking puppies or kids when they were down.

God, he hated the Ravagers.

But somehow, he hates this more.

Because Gamora, at least, tries to be nice to him, but she's so cold and distant all the time, and it's just— weird. At least if she were pissy at him, if she had an attitude at him, he'd know how to cope. As it stands, he's never had to deal with anyone like that for such an extended amount of time.

A week passes, and Peter starts to wish he remembered something of whatever time he and Gamora might have once spent together – because if he did, then maybe she'd loosen up? Maybe she'd warm to him? – but he never does. Nothing nags at the back of his head like a half-remembered song. Nothing ever tugs at him, like a bur catching on his sleeve. Nothing comes, and he starts to think the loss of those three months is permanent.

(Three months, they both say, but Peter thinks it's more than that. What little Gamora offers by way of their old life tells him he's changed a great deal. Far more than anyone would in just three months' time. He keeps the thought to himself, though. She already resents the loss of those three months. If she finds out it's more, he worries she might shift that resentment onto him.)

A week passes, and just as he's getting off his shift with the Perimeter Guard, someone stops him. The fact that he had to be retrained meant that everyone was more than aware of his loss of memory, though at least with them, the change in personality is minor enough that no one gives a shit. They tell him they might have found a cure, and that they're passing out cups of tea outside that should solve the problem.

Despite his better judgment, Peter takes the cheap little cup with its cheap little lid on his way out, eyeing it warily on the entire journey home.

For once, he's in the apartment at a reasonable hour, staring down at the reheated cup with all the wariness of someone staring down at a fully loaded gun. He shouldn't get his hopes up, he tells himself. Even less so, what with the warnings of possible side effects. How much would it suck to cope with all that nausea afterward, only for this shit to not work? And it probably wont, because why the fuck would a special tea reverse memory loss? Setting aside that losing blocks of himself should be impossible in the first place, why would an innocuous red leaf solve his problems? He might as well just dump this shit and save himself the disappointment and the possible sickness.

(But he thinks of Gamora, of that brief slip in her mask: confused and hurt and something brushing so terribly, achingly close to grief that of fucking course Peter would recognize it, having seen it so often back on Earth, when Mom stared up at the stars—)

He downs the stupid fucking tea in a couple of gulps. It's not as bad as he thought it'd be, he thinks. He had expected something seriously shittier. It— actually tastes kind of good? Like, maybe if he were more of a tea person, he'd think about brewing this weird leaf a little more often. And maybe the surprisingly pleasant taste is a good sign.



There's a phrase Peter heard as a kid: "Praying to the porcelain gods." A coy euphemism for puking one's guts out in the toilet.

An hour after drinking the tea, Peter suddenly finds himself a religious man. ]

insert "this is fine" dog here

[godslay]

[ This week, as Peter would say, sucks.

Gamora quickly finds herself reacquainted with Peter and his Star-Lord grins that ooze insincerity. He's charismatic, just as he's always been, but Gamora has grown accustomed to their quiet exchanges of... something softer. It was like a trade (her own softness for Peter's more genuine smiles, that slip in the mask), but now, she understands why he's doing it; he's keeping her at a distance with his snide jokes and cool demeanor, and for her own sake, she finds that she does the same.

Distant, not hostile but not directly kind, either. She keeps him at arms' length – not punishing him for not being her Peter, but Gamora doesn't have any interest in entertaining his blustering or his attempts to pry her open for the same kind of regard she's offered him in the past. He isn't the man she'd grown so close to, and it's clear that with the time he's lost, the intimacy and... whatever it is they've cultivated is overwhelming for him.

Which is why she doesn't push any of it. She doesn't foist expectations onto him, doesn't do much more than make small offerings: doing the dishes, picking up the dinner she knows he'll like (or that he used to like) and leaving notes for him to find – because she learns very quickly that, while he may have elected to stay, that doesn't mean he necessarily wants to be around her. She doesn't ask where he goes or what he does (though she's not naïve, and she can smell liquor on him more often than not), and she doesn't offer much more than being... polite. She doesn't snap at him, doesn't pick fights, and after the third day, she's learned to stop looking across the empty space in their shared room to see his face in the middle of the night.

It's fine, she tells herself. He's coping as much as she is – but she also realizes that she really doesn't want to know how he does it.



The week continues to roll by. Gamora spends more time with the Guard, more hours in the training facilities. She pushes her body hard, spars with other squadmates or just focuses on something to run herself ragged. It helps, lets her clear her mind. She also ends up venting more of her frustration on whatever monsters she encounters over the week, ripping them to shreds with perhaps more force than necessary – but it's an outlet. A distraction. Gamora hasn't ever dealt with... these feelings before, this kind of hurt; she's lost a lot over the course of her life, but that was a different grief.

Somehow, it's so much worse to have Peter there but not; it feels like she's lost something so significant, and then there it still is, right in front of her face.

But... not.

He's Peter, but not the Peter she knew, not the Peter she'd grown close to, not the Peter who'd shared so many moments with her, who clearly wanted to be with her. Maybe that's something she's appreciated about him: he's made it very clear that he wants to be around her, to spend time with her, and she felt... valued. It was endearing, the way he'd trip over himself when he tried to ask her to the Masquerade, how he swept in to drag her onto the dance floor at Carnivale, and it had all felt genuine.

It's so difficult to go from that, from letting herself open up, to... this.

But for her part, she's doing what she can to shut it down, to box away those feelings so she can continue to do her job. Gamora is far from the type to buckle under the weight of these emotions, and even if this is a new experience (feeling this much for one person), she does what she can. She does what she knows best.

It doesn't make it easier, but it makes it bearable.



Gamora is getting off of a later shift when the night is finally over. No one actively mentions the tea to her (considering she didn't lose any memories, and she hasn't been all that forthcoming about what's sitting so heavily on her shoulders), and so she mostly just goes directly back to the apartment.

(With one quick stop to pick up a very basic dinner for them both, though she expects to toss Peter's in the fridge.)

She's genuinely caught by surprise when she opens the front door and finds the lights in the apartment are on. She assumed Peter would be out all night again, as he usually is, but maybe he's just about to leave; considering she has no honest clue about his schedule anymore these days, she can't vouch for why he might still be around.

Or maybe he just left the lights on. That might also be a valid explanation.

She takes her boots off by the front door (not necessarily realizing that there's a smear of monster blood left in the entry), before stepping into the apartment. She doesn't see him in the kitchen, but she does see the cup at the table.

Odd.

And then she hears the retching. ]

Quill?

[ (Because he's "Quill" again, and he has been since that second day, since they ran into each other again the morning after he agreed to stay.)

She automatically assumes he must have already been drinking, that he's had too much or something too weird for his stomach to handle, and she just sighs as she goes to fill a glass of water for him, leaving their food on the counter.

Following the noise to the bathroom, she pushes open the door to look down on him. ]

I assume this means you won't want dinner.

[nostalgiabomb]

[ He doesn't hear when she steps into the apartment, doesn't even really hear when she calls his name.

He's otherwise occupied, after all.

They'd said the tea could have side effects, though whatever volunteer he had accepted the cup from had done their best to downplay it. "Hey, at least you'll have all your memories back, right?"

Fucking asshole.

Because Peter feels fucking awful, and shit, it's only been an hour? What the fuck? The only upside, right now, is that he's pretty much puked out everything he could, which means he's more or less just dry heaving. Which, okay, that still sucks, but he's pretty sure he's probably done by now.

He spits into the bowl, flushing it all away, and flops back onto his ass, cursing under his breath. Of course, that's when Gamora steps in, and he jerks away in surprise, knocking into the bathtub ]

What the hell? [ Breathless, though his voice is thick and rough. ] Shit, Gamora. Knock first.

[ He swallows against the sour taste, wiping at the corner of his mouth with the back of his wrist. ] How long have you been here?

[godslay]

[ If it weren't for the fact that he's clearly not feeling well, it might almost be hilarious to see the way he practically leaps out of his skin when she opens the door. ]

Not long.

[ Though long enough to still hear the last of his heaving, which was so very pleasant.

She steps closer, holding out the glass of water to him. Her expression is still careful, still removed as she appraises him – something really must not have sat well or maybe he's actually sick? She can't help the edge of concern that rises in her chest, but given how much she doubts it would be welcome, she does her best not to express it. ]

My shift just ended.

[nostalgiabomb]

[ He kind of wishes she'd step out and leave him to his devices – it's what the other Ravagers did, and it's what he's used to. A stern voice barking, "Pull it together, Quill," a reminder that he was still expected to show up for his shifts, and a door slamming shut behind the Ravager's retreating back.

When she steps further into the bathroom, he glances up a little warily from where he's settled in, back against the tub. He's flushed and bleary-eyed, and his general expression reads pissed the fuck off, but he takes the glass from her.

One would think Peter has learned his lesson on drinking things handed out by strangers, but apparently not. He offers only a quick nod of thanks, taking in a mouthful of water. He rinses his mouth, then twists and leans back over the edge of the tub to spit it into the drain. After that, instead of drinking again from the glass, he presses it against his burning forehead.

Then, because deflection and humor are his favorite defense mechanisms, ]

You know you've got goo on your pants?

[godslay]

[ Gamora retreats again after she's handed him the water, standing by the door with her arms crossed over her chest.

At his question, she glances down, taking stock of the edge of her pants, and that sure is monster blood smeared up her leg. ]

Occupational hazard.

[ The reply is bland, a little flat and dismissive. She'll change (fortunately before she sits on their couch or anything else), but there had clearly been something more pressing than whatever else ended up trailing home with her. ]

If you're staying for the night, what I brought to eat isn't very rich. It should be fine on your stomach.

[ And whatever he'd done to it. ]

Or I can put it in the fridge.

[ Considering that's what she's done for most of the food she brings home for him, it won't be a change of pace. ]

[nostalgiabomb]

[ The idea of food makes him pull a face, and he grunts out a disinterested sound. ]

Fridge.

[ Is the more verbal answer. And after a second, he tacks on as an afterthought, ]

Please.

[ He's rusty when it comes to using his manners, okay?

He pulls the glass away from his forehead to drink from it, finishing off the water in a few greedy gulps. He scrubs at his face, taking a deep breath. ]

I'll get out of here in a sec. [ Because after a day of work and getting covered in monster good, he imagines she wants a shower. ] Just— lemme catch my breath.

[godslay]

Take your time.

[ She shrugs, stepping towards the door. ]

I'd rather you puke in here than in the rest of the apartment, Quill.

[ At least the toilet is in easy range.

But she doesn't mind letting him have the bathroom for now, and she finally leaves him to his own devices to go take care of the food. She sets Peter's in the refrigerator, and after a moment of thought, does the same for her own. She's not especially hungry, she realizes. ]