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Gamora: Track Eight—Come and Get Your Love
The fact is, it’s a ship-wide problem.
Well, he says problem.
What he means is that it’s a...pervasive sort of issue. And it’s not like Peter minds—if he’s honest, he thinks it’s kinda fucking awesome. He likes not having to shake it solo when they make a planet-side stop for a score of a less-than-Infinity-Stone level of BAD. He likes that there’s a certain rhythm to life on the Milano that’s less about the way the songs move along her frame—which is a thing that he knows—and more about the way the music moves through more living beings than just him, now—which is a thing that is new, a thing makes the mix actually-factually live up to its name in a way it never did before; in a way that makes him think this is what his mom had hoped for, in making the tapes, in giving them to her tiny little menace who was always looking up, never watching where he was headed: maybe this is what she had in mind.
In, like, a manner of speaking.
But yeah, so, they’re all digging the epic soundtrack of their grand adventures and whatnot. No one complains that there are only four cassette-sides to cycle through. As Peter’s found over the years, even just the one installment never really got old.
So two volumes? Fuck, now they’re basically golden.
And really, he should be impressed that they do as well as they do, because, like, look at them. With their collective fuckton of issues, the fact that any of them can mosey around to a baseline is a triumph, or something. Probably.
So getting any of the lyrics right kinda ranks up around the point of “cosmic miracle” or some shit.
But still.
“Perpendiculaaaaar!” It’s rough, and loud—real fucking loud over the splashing of water. And wrong, it’s also very wrong, but: Gamora’s got a nice enough voice, really.
“Common guitar love!” Peter stops outside the door where, if he squints, he can see the swell of steam creeping out, and, well. At least she got one of the words right. That’s good.
“Go and rub it if you like it…”
It takes everything he has not to snort at that one, loud enough for her to hear it; which means he has absolutely nothing left to stop the stiffness that rises—oh hell-o—in his crotch.
Because. It took everything not to laugh.
You understand.
“Come and getcha lug, come and getcha lug, come and getcha lug now!”
And really, if he’s honest, he doesn’t have the heart to point out that her...inventive lyrical stylings are not only wrong, but make absolutely no sense. He doesn’t have the heart to correct her. Doesn’t want to risk making her stop.
He also doesn’t have the extra balls to lose, if she finds him loitering like this while she’s in the shower.
So. Y’know.
Rocket: Track Four—Moonage Daydream
“I'm an alligator!”
Progress, is what it’s called, when Peter doesn’t yell back No, you’re a racoon, dumbass!.
Progress is what it’s fucking called. Boom.
“I'm a Myndai-fucker coming for you!”
Actually, Peter likes those lyrics better. He hooked up with a Myndai, one time. Fantastic legs. Like, damn. Absolutely worthy of having a song about them.
Anyway.
“Spoken like a big monkey butt, and I'm messing up my brains for the world.”
Peter’s head snaps upward from where he’s sitting, polishing his epic fucking score from some Spartoi asshats, and screw progress, dude: big monkey butts?
“What the actual fuck, man?”
Rocket looks up from whatever bomb-thing he’s not putting in a goddamned box, face slack before it screws up in indignation, and his fur’s already standing on end as he snaps back:
“Groot never gets the words right. Why aren’t you all up on his case, huh?”
And Peter laughs, and wonders if there’s anywhere in the galaxy he can get himself a track of some song by a Groot, just to stick it to his favorite annoying-as-all-hell rodent.
And Rocket shrugs, and goes back to singing about primate asses, and Peter never knew that life could be this fucking good.
Drax: Track Ten—Escape (The Piña Colada Song)
Peter’s half asleep when he hears it, and it takes him a few seconds of stumbling and heavy-eyed blinking to decide: nope, not a dream.
Happening. For real.
And as the lines come together in his foggy mind, he really doesn’t want to know what a “piña colada” is in Drax’s brain.
“And getting fought in the rain,” Drax murmurs to himself, sharpening his knives, and Peter’s starting to wonder whether there will come a day when those knives will get so damned sharp that they’ll just slice each other into oblivion and Drax will have to find a new fucking hobby.
“If you have hacked a brain…” Drax hums on, oblivious, and right, yeah. So.
Today’s obviously not that day.
Peter stifles a yawn and pours himself a shot of Achernonian whiskey, which is the strongest shit he’s had on his own ship in a long fucking time. Volcanic planets, man. You know.
“I have to get you by tomorrow—doom!”
Peter nearly chokes before he’s downed the glass.
“And cut through all of your face!”
Oh. Oh, fucking...
Fuck.
“At a bar full of malice! Where you will not escape,” Drax is carrying on gleefully—or, well, basically as gleefully as Peter suspects he’s capable of—when Peter passes back through, throat half-scalded, and mind a little bit fucked, all things considered.
He’ll chalk that up as a decent enough night.
Groot: Track One—Hooked on a Feeling
Ever since he grew out of his pot, Groot’s much more inclined to, like, swaying to whatever’s being said, or more aptly, being sung. He’s got some epic moves when it comes to the Jackson 5 that even Peter’s a little jealous of. Almost.
Because Peter’s not going to be jealous of a tree. He’s just not.
He might not have any pride left, but there are lines, man. There are, like, standards.
Or something.
That said: Groot’s developed a particular fascination with the first track on the Mix, and his weird fucking tantric concentration on the cave-man chanting at the beginning’s almost disturbing, really.
If he’d not basically blown himself to twigs for them, Peter might have been a little scared at the intensity in his eyes, every time the song plays.
Honestly, Peter might still be a little scared. But just a little.
No pee this time.
But yeah, whatever, sure, everyone’s got a favorite track, it’s fine, and Peter doesn’t think much of it until one day, Groot’s got a barky hand on the controls to the player when Blue Swede starts blaring.
“Groot,” Rocket starts, “what—”
Ahhhh, ahh-ahhh, ahh-ahh’m! is what comes through from the speakers.
“I am!” is what Groot says with a joyful kind of shout, before he turns up the volume of the hooked on a feeling part to drown out the way he rumbles, “Groot!"
But then the volume’s down to not-quite-ear-splitting again, and Groot’s smiling even wider as Peter feels his own expression slackening, because, because—
“I am!”
And then, up to deafening again as Groot’s mouth moves inaudibly around his own name: high on believin’.
“Well, shit.”
Rocket says it, staring slack-jawed, and Peter’s grinning ear to fucking ear, because of all of them, of all of them, of course it’s Groot who manages the right fucking words, and Peter doesn’t even need some song by some tree-man elsewhere in the cosmos, now.
He turns the smuggest expression he thinks he’s ever worn onto Rocket, and hell, for Peter? That is saying a thing.
“Right,” he smirks. “Your argument? In-fucking-valid.” Peter’s grin stretches out to bare teeth: “Alligator.”
Rocket scowls. Gamora turns her face away, but her shoulders betray humor. Drax nods, and mutters: “Not truly an alligator. Not truly. Metaphor.”
Groot sprouts half a fucking forest in pride, and, well, damn.
Of all the scores he’s ever had, Peter’s never made out quite like this.