Second Chances Rpg

Who: Gamora and Quill
Where: In their ship
When: After Peter demonstrates his intergalactic ability to make a j@ck@ss of himself
What: Use their words like grownups
Warnings:Peter has a potty mouth. Also he's happy to see Gamora. Really happy to see her. Fortunately, the little tree keeps everyone PG13



It had taken three trips to the dumpster and more paper towels than Peter wanted to admit, but the main deck of the Benetar no longer looked like a mutiny had taken place. He’d thought about seeing if Ogard was reachable in this reality, decided he didn’t need the whole trust and communication and then went in search of a beer. It was a short search… as there was none.

Peter didn’t know when he’d stopped listening to music every day, but when Gamora had said something about it, he realized it was one more part of himself he’d let go after he’d lost her.

You’re probably going to lose her again, asshole, he told himself as he scrolled through the Zune, shrugged and hit shuffle. His ears were immediately assaulted by the shrill wail of guitars and Alice Cooper screaming Welcome to my Nightmare. Peter decided the last thing he needed was an angry woman screaming at him and pressed shuffle again.

He sat down at the table near the nav station and began plotting course trajectories as It’s just a silly phase, I’m going through… filled the air.

“Iamgroot. I AM groot! I am Groooot,” Groot babbled on Gamora’s shoulder as she carried him onto the ship. “And then what?” she asked, trying not to sound weary of the 1500th “and then…” in his story of his adventures.

Groot yawned and added, “I am groot?”

“Yeah sprout, I bet Daddy would love to hear all about how you defeated the pigeon overlords, but you also need to get to bed soon.” Gamora wasn’t sure whether to be happy that the ship wasn’t silent or to read hidden messages into the lyrics of whatever Peter was playing. She was afraid of the message she might hear, it would only make things worse. She set Groot on the table and he scampered toward Peter.

“Hey…”

“Hey…”. Peter listened to Groot, “Man, I get it. You can’t let pigeons start talking smack,” he picked up the baby tree and interrupted, “Dude. No, you can’t talk like that. You can’t cuss until you’re big enough to dock the ship. It’s a rule. I don’t know who made the rule. It doesn't matter who made the rule, you gotta follow it.” He patted the trunk of what had once been one of the bravest crew mates he’d ever had and swayed a little with the music, “...I’ll show you how to dock the ship when your roots can touch the foot pedals and you can see over the hand controls without sitting on anyone’s lap.”

Peter stepped toward Gamora, trying to read her expression, “Should I put him to bed?”

“I’m coming,’ Gamora said. “But no more snacks tonight okay? This one already ate more ice cream than someone that small should be able to fit in their trunk.”

She led the way to Groot’s room, still set up for the teenager he had been before…before everything. At least the floor wasn’t covered with wood shavings. She remembered the perpetual standoff between Peter and Groot about cleaning his room and doing literally anything besides playing video games, and wondered when they would suddenly become uncool again in the eyes of their little sapling.

“We should probably fix your room up again.” He smiled down at Groot, “You don’t think I’m boring, do you?”

After a sleepy denial, the sapling lifted up his head and mumbled, “iamgrootiam” and yawned, reaching for Gamora.

“You wanna’ kiss…,” Peter had been about to say ‘my girl’ and stopped himself, finishing the sentence with, “your mom?” He rubbed the little guy’s back and handed him to Gamora.

Gamora cuddled Groot, and then laid him gently on the pillow, bending to kiss the top of his spikey little head. “You know how much we love you?” she asked, smiling and stroking the side of his face as he mumbled, “Iamgroo..” his little eyes drifting closed.

She straightened, reaching unconsciously for Peter’s hand, like she had almost every night they had put Groot to bed. It didn’t occur to her until her hand was already brushing his that he might not interlace his fingers with hers and pull her close.

Peter grabbed her hand like she’d thrown him a lifeline and enfolded her in his arms, “Gamora, I’m sorry. I think that was the biggest dick move I’ve ever pulled and that’s saying something.”

He pulled back just enough to look at her face, “I don’t know why I got so amped up, but it was bullshit..”

“No,” Gamora felt like she could finally breathe as she relaxed against him. “I was in a pissy mood, and I know it was stupid that you telling me to let the kid play set me off. But then I was trying not to pick a fight in front of strangers, and just twisted everything up inside and made it worse.”

She laid her head on his shoulder, wrapping her arms around him. “I don’t have a bitch, Peter. I know we can’t spend every second together. It doesn’t keep me from overthinking shit, especially with my father, and dying and you....”

“Also, I’m the worst mom of all time,” she confessed, pulling back, but avoiding eye contact, embarrassed by the amateur parenting fail and still more than a little freaked out, “I was all moody and looked away for a second and your little kid hasselhoff wannabe was halfway across the city. I almost had a heart attack Peter, how is he so fast? Luckily I met some people who helped me track him down, living his best little badass life. I don’t even think he noticed.”

“Nah, my mom lost me all the time, she always found me,” He tilted her chin up to look at him, “We can’t smother him, he’s gotta be a little badass if he’s gonna grow up to be a Guardian.”

He kissed her, “Come to bed with me, if we’re gonna talk, it better be where we don’t wake up Mr. Walkabout.” Peter led her the short distance to their cabin, “Check it out, I cleaned. He unlaced his boots, pulled them off, and then sat on the bed.

“You know how much I love you?” she asked, looking around the room, which was starting to feel like home again.

She took her own boots off, leaving them next to his and moved to stand between his legs. “Are we actually talking or are we naked talking?”

“I'm thinking more than I ever thought possible, because you're still here.” He tried to keep his voice light, but couldn't. Staring up at her, seeing the caution in her eyes, Peter couldn't believe that out of all the people who'd risked their lives to pursue her, she'd chosen him.

After Thanos had taken Gamora from Knowwhere, during the time he'd still had hope, Peter had told himself that when he found her, he'd do everything right, that he'd show his gratitude to the stars by being everything she deserved. He’d blown that over and over.

“I love you more than I thought I could love anyone,” Peter wondered when those words would stop being terrifying. It felt sometimes that by saying them out loud he was acknowledging that the universe had a hostage. Leaving the words unspoken was conceding defeat.

The faint sound of metal creaking and the ship’s systems humming cocooned them as he dimmed the lights to half. Peter looked up, meeting her eyes and letting her see the need that was never far from the surface. He brought her hands to his lips and kissed them, in order to keep himself from sliding his fingers under the hem of her shirt, “I want to get naked with you, but I think we should actually talk first.”

He gave her a sideways half smile,”If you don't want to talk to me, that's okay too,”

“Peter, I think we need to stop giving each other choices that feel like traps.” Gamora crawled around him onto the bed, pulling him down with her as she stretched out. “I know everything feels off, but we trust each other with our lives…” The look on Peter’s face when he pulled the trigger was something that would be etched in Gamora’s mind forever, that moment when she still believed that if she couldn’t spend his whole life with him, they could at least control the ending of hers. The plan had been naive, and didn’t account for the reality stone, something she should have thought of. It had been her job to think of everything, and she missed the most important thing.

She settled against him, resisting the urge to trail her fingers across his stomach in a move to distract them both from saying the hard things to each other by connecting physically. “We need to trust the little things too. Like that we’re going to be snippy at each other sometimes, and that things are still fine. That’s how we work. Every time you give me an out though, it makes me feel like I’m failing. Like you want me to take it and walk away. I never wanted to die, Peter, I was just stupid enough to think that if I controlled it, I could be the one to stop him, and then you… and our whole family…. would be safe.”

As Gamora curled against his body, Peter tried to make sense of his own thoughts and what Gamora had said, his brow furrowed, “I don’t want you to feel like you’re failing or like I’m trying to trap you…” He put his elbow behind his head, “Gamora, I don’t feel like I have the right to demand a goddamn thing from you.”

“You have every right. Our relationship has never been tentative and questioning, it’s always been more like…. Crashing into each other,” Lifting her head to look him in the eye, Gamora watched Peter’s face. She considered reminding him that she demanded murder, and he did it, because he loved her, and that there was nothing he could ask that would ever match that. But something was going on with him and she didn’t want to make it about her.

“But right now, this is not us. We’re not scared of arguing and we don’t pull punches. We know each other, and have each other’s backs, and if we aren’t on the same page, we force each other to figure it out.” She itched to touch him, but managed to keep her hands still. “What’s going on?”

She’s right, Peter thought, she usually is. He began toying with the edge of Gamora’s shirt, “After I pulled the trigger and Thanos took you, I thought I could get you back. We just had to find you.” He took a long breath and blew it out.

“When he admitted that he’d…” Peter paused and swallowed, “... admitted that you were actually gone.” He coughed, “Something broke in me. Gamora, I lost my shit. Mantis had him mostly asleep, Parker was trying to get the gauntlet off him. But I couldn’t stop hitting him. I didn’t care about anyone else on the field. I didn’t care about anything, I just wanted to hurt him.”

Closing his eyes and focusing on the feel of Gamora’s body against his own, Peter started again,”I managed to show up at the end, but barely.” He felt his throat constrict, “Gamora, I’ve never needed anyone the way I need you. Then you were gone and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t pull it together.”

Gamora closed her eyes against the pain in his voice. “Peter…” There was nothing she could say that would erase what she put him through trying to be a hero. And he had been torturing himself with what her father did to them for months. “Baby, this is Thanos we’re talking about. He had all but one of the infinity stones. He tortured us with the reality stone, and we’re the fucking Guardians of the Galaxy. You really think a bug woman and a teenage bug-wannabe would have defeated him that easily? That doesn’t make sense to me.”

Pushing herself up to half-sitting, Gamora bent her head so her face was inches from his. “I don’t deserve a man who loves me this much, Peter. My insistence on going after my father is the whole reason he was able to use me to get the soul stone. But you aren’t blaming me. Only yourself.”

Peter tangled his fingers in Gamora’s thick, dark hair and brought her lips to his own. He kissed her desperately, as if touch could ward off a universe of loss. Dragging his lips from hers, he resisted the urge to pull her into his lap. “Your father would have come for you no matter what. You know that.”

“If I had died you would have mourned me, I know that. But you would have kept it together for our crew. You wouldn't have turned into a shitshow.” He ducked his head, not wanting her to see the dull red of his face.

Anger flared in him, “When I pulled the trigger, I thought the next thing I’d see was you exploding out of existence.” His eyes were clouded and his jaw tight as he tried to find the words,”I don't know if killing you myself would have been better than knowing he had you and not knowing what the hell he was doing. For fuck’s sake, Gamora, he called you his favorite daughter, he was so obsessed with you.”

He coughed again, “I didn't know if he had killed you quickly like I was supposed to do or if you spent the last hours of your life being tortured.”

“Peter, if you had died,” Gamora paused, shaking her head. “We both know that I would have gone stone cold killer. I’d be gone. The crew wouldn’t matter if you were gone, Peter. We are not a family… we are not anything without you. All I would have been is a different kind of shitshow.”

Gamora closed her eyes, replaying the last day with Thanos. As usual he hadn’t touched her, just made her watch him tear Nebula apart. “He didn’t… not like you’re thinking. It was more psychological torture. My whole life.” She wasn’t sure that Thanos hadn’t known about the need for a sacrifice before they got to Vormir. Why else would he have taken her when she was fighting so hard. And Thanos didn’t leave anything to chance, that’s where she learned to plan for every contingency. But what she remembered most vividly was the fear. She had planned to die, asked Peter to pull the trigger, but when it came to the end… she had been scared out of her mind. “In the end, at the edge of that cliff.. It wasn’t about all the heroic ideals. The only thing I could think about was you.”

Pulling Gamora onto his lap, Peter cradled her against his chest. It always amazed him how someone as strong and deadly as she was fit so easily in his arms. “I would give anything to take that pain away from you.”

He stroked the hair back from her face and traced the line of her jaw, “You’re the center of my world. I am so goddamn terrified and tired of losing you.”

Peter’s lips twisted in a wry self mocking smile, “While we’re on the subject, I'm afraid of my own fucking stupidity. Afraid I'll let you down again. Afraid that I'll fail you and me and everyone else. Afraid you'll never really forgive me, for the stupid shit I've done and the stupid shit I'm likely to do...and I'm so goddamn tired of secrets. I don’t want to do that anymore.” Leaning down to kiss her lightly, he drew back enough to whisper, “Can we do that?”

“We can do that,” Gamora slid her arms around Peter’s neck. “There was never anything that scared me before I met you, you know that? I think that this is what love feels like, Peter…. always being afraid.”

She kissed him again. It was so much easier to love him with her body than it was with words. Would they have ever gotten to this point if she hadn’t been about to die one way or the other? “You’re right. I know the whole ‘unspoken thing’ started as flirtation, but we used it as an excuse too often.”

The way that Gamora settled herself in his lap along with the touch of her lips was making logical thought more and more difficult. Peter couldn’t help but slide his hand underneath her shirt to caress her warm skin. He tried to focus, “I don’t know, ‘Mora. It can’t just be about fear,” his fingers wandered to the curve of her silk and lace covered breast.

“Maybe it’s just knowing that no matter what, there is another person who will fight for you even when you can’t fight for yourself.” He cupped her breast, feeling his erection straining against his zipper.

“It’s not an excuse we can afford anymore, baby.” Peter looked down at her, at the way the shadows played across her face and marveled at how lucky he was to have her. He continued, “Because when we stop talking, that’s when all the unspoken things turn into fear.”

Gamora sucked in a breath at the touch of his hands on her skin. She had heard that when you pair bonded for life, the physical eventually became less important, but she could not imagine a time coming when he stopped setting her body on fire. “I will fight for you, and beside you… and probably with you, for the rest of forever,” she murmured, kissing him again, slow and teasing, her tongue dancing with his.

Her hands tugged at the hem of his shirt, and she eased back to give herself space, breaking the kiss only to pull the shirt off over his head and let it drop on the bed, before reaching for him again. She straddled his lap, her hands sliding across the hard muscles of his back. “I love that we fit together perfectly,” she said, bringing her lips back to his.

Peter yanked her shirt over her head between kisses and groaned as the silk of Gamora’s bra met his chest, his hands went to her hips, rocking her against the line of his erection. He mumbled, “I need you so bad right now,” against her collarbone as his hands went to the clasp of her bra. He then froze at a small sound from the door.

“I am groot?”

Gasping for breath, Gamora lowered her forehead to Peter’s shoulder. She could feel how hard he was against her and she was so wet and ready for him, but their baby was already peeking in the door, needing their attention.

“Groot, we talked about knocking,” she tried to keep her voice gentle, but it came out raspy. “What’s wrong Sprout?” She looked around for her shirt, but she wasn’t sure where Peter threw it.

“I am GROOT,” the tone of the little tree was decidedly disapproving. He rubbed at his eyes and began trudging toward the bed.

Peter groped around on the bed, found his shirt and handed it to Gamora, “He’s trying to kill me, isn’t he?”

The cool air of the room hit Gamora’s back as she began to come out of the haze of his hands and lips. She pulled Peter’s shirt over her head, trying to cover some skin before she shrugged her bra straps off her shoulders and let it fall. “We love this weed, remember?”

She crawled off Peter’s lap and bent to pick Groot up off the floor. “You had a nightmare little guy?” She asked, snuggling his little body against her shoulder and climbed back into bed.

“Iamgroot, IAMGroot, I am Groot,” His sleepy little voice filled the room, and Gamora wondered how fast they could get him back to sleep.

One arm behind his head, the other encircling Gamora and Groot, Peter tried to ignore his erection and the feel of Gamora’s breast through the worn cotton of his shirt. He exhaled slowly, “Little man, you don't have to worry about that and you can't have my blaster. Pigeons are grade A buttmunches, but if we shot every buttmunch in the galaxy we wouldn't have time for anything else.”

Listening to the sleepy protest that made it clear that nothing was more important than eradicating the galaxy of shittalking pigeons, Peter grinned and thought of how proud Yondu would be at this little guy's sheer nerve. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Now it's time to sleep, right?”

He brushed his lips across Gamora’s temple, “Where the hell is our crew when we need them?”

“I never thought I’d say this, but I miss Mantis right now,” Gamora mumbled against Peter’s shoulder, then looked at the tiny tree. “Groot we talked about this on the way home, your new friend Molly said she’d help you punch them, but when it’s daytime, right? You’re not Batman, whatever that means. Now you have to go to sleep, or you’ll be too tired for the next battle.”

Gamora wished that she knew anything about being a parent. For the most part, they had always stuck with “the opposite of what our childhoods were like” as their basic plan for making sure Groot knew they cared about him, but she never would have gone to Thanos, or anyone on his ship, if she woke up scared. So she had no idea if it was okay to put Groot back in his room or if that would somehow scar him for life. She decided she wasn’t performing modification surgery or threatening to eat him, so putting him back in bed couldn’t possibly be that bad. “Okay, say goodnight to your dad, and I’ll take you back to your bed.”

At the word bed, Groot screwed up his face and hollered, “IAMGROOTIAMGROOTIAMGROOTIAMGROOT!” The little fists pounded on Gamora’s back, while his sturdy little feet kicked back and forth.

“Hey, now, we don’t hit and kick people,” Peter paused for a few seconds listening to the tiny tree and added, “Okay, you're right. I do hit and kick and shoot people, but we don’t hit, kick or shoot family. Only d-holes do that. You don’t want to be a d-hole, do you?”

Sighing. Peter said softly, “I know he’s got to sleep in his own bed, but maybe we can turn on some music for him?”

Groot had stopped kicking, but was now wailing like he was being tortured, fat tears rolling down the bark of his face. Gamora decided she’d rather be kicked some more, it was easier to manage than the tears, but she rubbed his little back trying to comfort him. She looked helplessly at Peter. “It’s worth a try, I guess. Do we just let him wind down here for a little bit? Or one of us could go lay in his bed with him until he falls asleep?”

Groot continued to mumble “IAMGROOT” over and over, his little hands clutched at the fabric of her shirt and his tears left wet marks on her shoulder. Gamora sighed, leaning back against the headboard in defeat.

“I’ll lay with him in his bed until he goes to sleep.” Peter gently took the exhausted sprout from Gamora, got up and walked him down the hall singing, ”And I knew, yes I knew I should leave…..When I heard her say, yeah….Come a little bit closer. You're my kind of man…

Walking across the hall, Peter laid down on the twin bed and settled Groot against his shoulder. He didn’t blame the little guy for wanting to be snuggled in with them, sleeping alone sucked. Yawning, Peter wondered if Gamora was asleep already.

Gamora wondered if this ever got easier. She thought about how much she missed Drax and Rocket. Not only because it had taken a village to raise this tree, and while he might swear a little bit less without Rocket around, she didn’t think it was a fair tradeoff.

She slid off her pants and climbed back into bed alone, deciding that Peter’s shirt was probably the most comfortable thing she could sleep in. She stretched out on the bed, wondering who would fall asleep first. Probably Peter, she thought, figuring she wouldn’t see him until morning.

Waking with a start, Peter realized that he’d fallen asleep with Groot. Gently disentangling himself from the branches that had twined around his arm as they’d slept, he got up and made his way down the hall.

He yawned again as he paused at the doorway. Moonlight streamed through the port in the roof, pooling on the bed where Gamora lay. The soft sound of her breathing made him smile. He stripped off his pants and carefully slid under the blankets, not wanting to wake her. I will never take this for granted, he promised himself.