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She’s holding my hand. She’s holding my hand.
Remain calm.
It wasn’t exactly the first time Peter had held a girl’s hand, true; it technically wasn’t even the first time he’d held Gamora’s hand. But it was the first time he’d held it while walking alone through the trees, like a casual thing that real couples did. So, yeah, he was internally freaking out a little.
Gamora might have noticed.
“Are you okay?” She asked, stopping to face him suddenly.
“Why? Is my palm sweaty? I’m not nervous! Your hand’s just warm.”
“What? No, not that. Your hand is fine.” She gave it a squeeze and his insides jumped a bit. “I mean… you look tired.”
Ah. So that was why she wanted to talk to him. He’d been wondering why she asked him to take a walk in the woods again (though he certainly wasn’t about to question her on it; he’d take the alone time with her any way he could get it).
“Yeah, just… dreams, you know?” He didn’t especially want to share the content of his nightmares -- at least not yet. “You seem tired, too.”
“Yes,” she said, looking down at their joined hands. It was very likely she was having nightmares, as well. They probably all were.
Peter doubted she’d be any more eager than he was to talk about it, though, so he changed the subject. “You wanna listen to some music?” He asked, digging the Zune out of his pocket. “Yondu, uh…” He paused, blinking away a sudden itch in his eyes. “He put all my old mixtape songs on here. Plus there’s a bunch of new ones. I mean, some of them are weird – the 90s must have been a strange time – but I haven’t gotten to listen to a lot of ‘em yet, if you wanna -”
She took pity on him and cut off his rambling. “Sure.”
He handed her one of the earbuds and she put it in, shuffling closer to him so they could share. Their hands remained linked as they listened, and Gamora even swayed a bit to some of the songs.
His happy dance was back in full swing, the allusion to their nightmares more or less forgotten.
He remembered it the next day, though, when Gamora did something kinda... off.
The team was spread out in the Milano’s cargo hold (well, as spread out as they could get in such a small space), mostly doing their own things. He and Rocket were working on fixing up the ship; the others helped when they could, but the two of them were the only ones who really knew how to do it. (Okay, so it was mostly Rocket. But Peter totally helped.)
He was just putting on an aero-rig to do a ceiling repair when Gamora abruptly appeared next to him.
“What are you doing?” She asked.
“Uh, I’m gonna fix those wires.” He pointed to the wires that were definitely not supposed to be hanging down from the ceiling and giving off sparks. “Is that… okay?”
“Of course,” she said. But she fidgeted, crossing her arms and staring at him in a way that looked almost worried.
He bristled a little. “You think I can’t handle it or something?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She rolled her eyes and marched to the other end of the room.
Peter stared after her for a moment, trying to guess what she was thinking, but he’d never been very good at that.
He did his best to shrug it off, but the entire time he was reconnecting the wires he could feel Gamora’s eyes on him. Then as soon as he came down she was completely back to normal, acting like the exchange had never happened.
She was being very confusing.
Communication being the key to a healthy relationship and all (or so he’d heard), he decided to talk to her about it later. It took a while to get her alone, but he finally caught up with her that night just as she was about to go to bed.
“Gamora!” He called from the other end of the hallway. She stopped with her hand on her bedroom door. When he reached her, she gave him that affectionate smile that he’d started to think of as his, and he felt a little punch drunk for a second.
“Hi,” he said, like an idiot.
“Hi,” she said, like she was amused at his idiocy. “… Is there anything else you’d like to add?”
“Oh, yeah! I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, you seemed a little weird when I was using the aero-rig earlier.”
“I’m fine.” Her jaw tightened in a way that suggested otherwise. “Just tired.”
That didn’t really make any sense. She clearly didn’t want to talk about it, though, so he let it go for the moment.
“Right,” he said, and then fell into silence. He cleared his throat, shoving his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels; now what? “Uh… g’night, then.”
Gamora gave him a brief, searching kind of look, then leaned over to give him a peck on the cheek.
“Good night, Peter.” Then she turned and went into her room, leaving him in the hallway wondering if a person could feel light enough to actually float away.
The next night, she helped him out with his nightmare problem. When he woke up that morning, feeling the most well-rested he had in days, Gamora was practically hugging him in her sleep. He ended up staying there for a full hour after he awoke (she’d been saying she was tired, he reasoned, so he couldn’t disturb her; it had nothing to do with how whole and content he felt being wrapped up in her arms).
He eventually had to wake her up when he heard approaching footsteps. He was pretty sure she would have stabbed him if he’d knowingly let one of the others discover them like that.
As it was, she only blushed (adorably) for a moment, told him good morning, and dashed off to the shower before Drax walked in.
“Did you forget where your room is?” He asked Peter.
“Uh… yeah. Let’s go with that.”
Gamora didn’t say or do anything he thought was unusual that day, so Peter figured maybe she was only tired before. Or maybe she just didn’t get a chance to act weird because he and Rocket spent every daylight hour finishing up the wing repairs, the last thing they needed to do to get the Milano ready to leave the following day.
He didn’t see much of the others except at meals, but Gamora was perfectly normal then. She even smiled indulgently when he winked at her for no reason or made his Terran references that no one got. But still, there was no denying the fatigue written on her face, and it continued to bug him all day.
He finally figured it out that night.
It was somewhere around two in the morning and Peter was awake, though thankfully not because of a nightmare. He’d forgotten to have dessert, so he was in the ship’s kitchen making a sandwich with whatever crap was left in the fridge (look, he couldn’t help it that his stomach wanted at least four meals a day, okay?). The Zune was on the kitchen counter, playing on low.
He was busy making two slices of bread dance, because he was 100 percent a grown man, when he heard Gamora’s voice behind him.
“Peter!” She said loudly, making him jump. “There you are!”
She stood at the archway between the kitchen and the hall, hands on her hips and glaring at him like he’d left the toilet seat up (which he hadn’t, right?... no).
“Was I supposed to be somewhere else?” He asked, fairly baffled.
“It’s the middle of the night, you’re supposed to be in bed!”
Peter’s first instinct was to get defensive (what, did he have a bedtime now?), but as he was opening his mouth to yell back, something gave him pause.
He made a couple of quick observations. She was in the black shirt and shorts she wore to sleep, her hair tussled, so she’d clearly just woken up. But that wasn’t what had concerned him – it was her demeanor. Her voice was strained, she was breathing faster than usual, her eyes were wide… that was fear.
His heart instantly clenched. “Gamora, you have to tell me what’s wrong,” he pleaded.
“Nothing’s wrong!” She insisted, crossing her arms. “You were just… you weren’t… Argh!” She closed her eyes forcefully and Peter recognized that gesture as something he used to do after his mother died.
She was trying to un-see something.
He took a cautious step closer to her. “Was it a nightmare?”
Her shoulder jerked a bit but she said nothing. She opened her eyes and Peter could practically read the pain in them. “Gamora, trust me with this, please. I told you about mine and it helped, it really did.”
“There’s nothing you can do about this.”
“Try me. Come on.”
“You can’t –“
“I can’t stand to see you like -”
“You don’t understand –“
“Then help me –“
“I thought you were dead!” She shouted, so loudly and suddenly that Peter physically recoiled from shock.
She continued to yell, hands balled up into fists next to her head and eyes scrunched as if in pain. “I saw your ship explode! And then you didn’t make it to the extraction point and I had no idea if you were going to survive and I have to re-live it every night! I see you die every night, Peter.”
She sounded utterly exhausted by the end of it, shoulders deflated and hands over her eyes and there was nothing Peter could have done to stop himself from striding over and hugging her. She stiffened for just a second before wrapping her arms around him and squeezing back.
This at least explained why she was afraid of him using the aero-rig the other day; if he dreamed about her death every night, he’d be a bit paranoid about her safety, too.
“It’s okay, I’m here,” he whispered, stroking one hand up and down her back. “I survived, Gamora, I’m fine. Look, feel me, I’m here.”
“I know, I…” Her breath hitched and for a moment he was afraid she was going to cry.
He grabbed her shoulders and pulled away enough to see her face. Her eyes were the slightest bit glassy, the closest he’d ever seen her come to shedding a tear. It made his chest absolutely ache because he couldn’t think of an easy fix for this.
He did the only thing he could think of – she needed to remember he was alive, right? “Feel me breathe,” he said, bringing her hand up to his chest.
They were quiet for a moment, Gamora watching her hand rise and fall with his chest, Peter watching her. It seemed to restore her calm a little. Her breathing had slowed, nearly matching pace with his. He kept his hand on hers, stroking the back of it with his thumb. His chest hurt again, looking at her, but in a more pleasant way.
When she raised her eyes to his she was just so close, her lips parted slightly in a way he could hardly resist; all of the sudden it was like he was being pulled towards her.
Gamora leaned in too, lips only inches away, and for a second he thought this is it. But then he noticed the water still swimming in her eyes and he jerked away. “Wait, wait! I don’t want –“
She frowned, her expression closing off and her hand slipping off his chest. He immediately realized how that had sounded. “No, I mean – I want to kiss you. Holy shit, I want to kiss you. It’s just… I didn’t want our first kiss to be because you’re upset.”
“How did you want it to go, then?” She asked, a hint of humor in her voice.
He shifted awkwardly, but was pleased to see Gamora’s eyes once again clear. He could deal with the embarrassment if it pushed her nightmare from her mind; though he did wonder which of the thousand or so scenarios he’d imagined would be the least humiliating to tell her about.
“I kinda thought, maybe we’d just be listening to music one day, and I’d get you to dance a little, and then I would just… you know, kiss you.” He shrugged, trying to will away a blush.
She stared at him for a long moment, eyes searching his face.
“Okay,” she said at last.
“Okay what?”
“Okay, do that.”
His heart skipped at least three whole beats when he realized what she meant. He practically sprinted to the counter where he’d left the Zune and turned up the volume. But the song that was playing was too fast (also, what the hell was ‘Tubthumping?’) so he started frantically searching for another one.
“C’mon,” he muttered, trying to guess from the song titles what would be an appropriately slow and romantic one because he still hadn’t been able to listen to all of them.
“Is that Same Kitchen one on there?” Gamora asked.
“Sam Cooke,” he corrected instinctively. “But yes!” He found the song and pressed play, then set it back down on the counter and tried to give her his patented roguish grin. If her amused look was anything to go by, it probably came out more nervous than anything.
“Dance with me?” He asked in the smoothest voice he could muster, sliding back over to her and grabbing her hands. He felt a bit of déjà vu, but this time Gamora required no coaxing; she smiled that same little smile she had back on Ego’s planet, letting him move her in slow circles around the room. She also didn’t threaten to kill him this time, which was usually a good sign.
“I like this song,” she said quietly.
“It’s a good song.” He started humming along to it, so familiar with the rhythm that he didn’t need to pay attention to it – which was good, because at that moment he didn’t think he could’ve focused on anything that wasn’t Gamora if his life depended on it. He was captivated; the feel of her waist under his hand; the expression in her beautiful, dark eyes, completely free of tears; the way her lips were turned up just slightly.
They were halfway through the song when he just couldn’t resist any longer. He stepped a bit closer to her, slowing their movements so they were basically just swaying. If they were any closer she’d probably be able to feel his heart thumping through his chest. Still, he leaned in a little more, watching her eyes move down to his mouth and stay there.
Giving up on any semblance of dancing, he brought his hands up to cup her face. He whispered her name, paused for a moment with his lips barely an inch away from hers, giving her time to change her mind.
Instead, she let out the tiniest sigh. Then she titled her head again and her eyes flickered closed and he pressed his lips to hers because if he waited one more second he was actually going to explode.
He sort of felt like he exploded anyway.
Soft, soft, soft; her lips were so soft. Strong but delicate hands came up to grip his shoulders, fingers digging in as they kissed for what felt like hours and mere seconds at the same time. It was slow and deep and so damn intense that he had to back his hips away, lest she find out how much he was enjoying it.
He pulled away only to breathe, but even then they exchanged a series of quick, sweet kisses between breaths until Gamora took a small step back. He took that as his cue and slid his hands down, one to rest between her shoulder blades and the other to grasp one of hers.
She smiled at him and he fucking grinned back.
“That’s about what I imagined,” he said.
“I’m glad,” she said. Then she traded in her smile for a more serious expression. “And I…” She took a deep breath, seemingly steeling herself. “I am sorry for getting upset before. I woke up from a nightmare and wanted to make sure… make sure that you hadn’t…” she swallowed. “I wanted to check on you, and when you weren’t there or on that couch you like… I panicked.”
“Hey, I understand,” Peter said. He pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. “I’m sorry that you’re having nightmares. I promise I’ll usually be in my room at night, and you can check on me anytime.” He thought for a second. “Well, maybe knock first if you’re not sure I’m asleep.”
She chuckled and nodded.
“Besides,” he added. “We’ll be back on the Milano tomorrow, and it’ll be a lot easier to find me on there.”
“I did not think I would miss having less space,” Gamora said. “But it has its advantages.”
“Hey, you wanna spend our last night on this ship out on that couch?” He asked. “I would be willing to do that if it would make it easier for you to sleep, because I’m selfless that way.”
He winked, but he fully expected her to say no. It was one thing to just kind of fall asleep while they were already there, like they had last night, and quite another to plan to in advance. They were taking it slow, and she’d been more open with him in the past few days than she’d ever been, but she still needed her space.
She surprised him, however, by simply saying, “Yes. In a minute.”
Then she rested her head on his shoulder and they started swaying to the music again, even though the song that was on now was entirely too fast for their pace.
“Peter?” She mumbled into his chest. “What is an mmmbop?”
“Yeah, I have no idea. There are some bizarre songs on here.”
It didn’t really matter, though; at that point, they were dancing to their own music.