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Peter groans, rubbing his eyes, thinking maybe it was time to give up. Or at least take a break.
His room is messier than it's been in months thanks to how much time he just spent tearing it apart.
Now he's got clean and dirty clothes haphazardly strung about like it was his personal decorating scheme, and even after turning all the pockets inside out of every pair of pants he owned, his zune was still missing in action.
He looks about his upturned bedroom, not sure which his next target for wrecking/searching should be. Sure, he sifted through his junk drawers, but maybe he needs to dump them out?
He knows it's in here somewhere. He was still listening to it last night when he kicked off his boots in his closet, so tired he barely took the time to get undressed before he collapsed into bed.
He might suspect Groot, but li'l dude was pretty good about asking permission before borrowing it (Peter may have some slight separation anxiety regarding the device- he was fine being away from it, and fine with Groot listening to it off on his own, but when he couldn't find it and didn't know where it was- it was thinking he lost it that freaked him out).
Besides, he had made enough noise banging around his room halfway through his search for Groot to come investigate, and when Peter asked him, the little tree said he hadn't used it in days (he then quickly made an excuse of “I am Groot” and ran off before he got roped into helping Peter look, or- god forbid- help Peter clean up the mess he made while looking).
He's still trying to decide if dumping out drawers or turning his closet inside out is the best way to go when his deliberation is interrupted by someone calling his name.
“Peter! Peter!” Gamora shouts, excitedly rapping on his door before just bursting into his room (not bothering to wait for an invitation to come in).
When he sees what she's carrying in her hands, he sighs, shaking his head. “I just spent the last 20 minutes looking for that so I could listen to some music while doing repairs, you know. I should've known you had it.”
He doesn't sound surprised. Exasperated, but not surprised.
Gamora doesn't seem to care. She doesn't apologize or even acknowledge his wasted time, can't be bothered to even pretend to be sorry or give a damn.
“Peter! I found it! I found it!” She rushes, an almost childish energy about her. She grins at him, smiling expectantly, and it's pretty goddamn adorable.
Peter crosses his arms, looking thoroughly unimpressed. “You can't say you found it when you're the one who took it.”
Her brows furrow for a second, then she realizes he's talking about something completely different than she was.
“No. Ugh,” Gamora groans, like he was so slow for not getting what she meant immediately. “The song. I found the song!”
“Huh?”
“This one. It's this one,” she says, shoving the zune in his face for him to read the screen.
He actually has to take it from her and hold it himself, since he couldn't exactly see what it said too good when she was waving it in his face. He doesn't recognize it. Must be one of the newer ones.
“Whaddya mean 'you found it'? What'ja find?” He glances back down at the song title and information. “I don't think I've even listened to this one yet, Gamora. What are you talking about?”
Gamora makes an impatient huff at his confusion, which he probably would've had a snarky remark for because seriously, she's barging into his room and then has the audacity to be annoyed by him- but she was obviously very excited to show him something, and it was super duper cute how childishly frustrated she was that he didn't get it right away. It was incredibly endearing, eager and almost innocent in a way Gamora usually wasn't, so he kept his mouth shut.
“Us song,” she says, like he's supposed to know what that means. “My us song.”
“Huh?” He manages to sound even more confused then before. “What the heck are you talking about?”
“That- that thing you say,” Gamora purses her lips, struggling to put into words what she actually means- it's his Terran phrase. What about this was so hard to get? “You call it an us song,” she tries again. “When 'fooled around and fell in love' starts playing. Us song. For you and me. You say 'fooled around and fell in love' is the us song we have. You always say that about it.”
“Uh, no,” he's quick to correct her. “I always say fooled around and fell in love is our song. Cause it is. It's totally our song.”
“Semantics,” Gamora mutters under her breath, rolling her eyes. “Our song,” she corrects, dragging it out like a petulant child which is, yup, adorable.
“Fooled around and fell in love is your our song. I found mine. It's this one. This is my our song. I finally found our song! Now is not the time by ch-vur-ches. This is it,” she claims gleefully.
Peter makes a face. “What, no, there's only one our song. It's our song , not our songs . There's no such thing as our songs. Two people only get to call one song 'our song'. It's not a my our song and your our song sort of thing. It's just our song. There can't be two.”
“Well, then I'm changing it,” she decides. “This is now our song. This one right here. This is our song now.”
“You can't do that!” He whines. “You can't just change what our song is! You can't do that!”
“Then let me have my own,” Gamora says, like this is up for negotiation.
“I didn't decide that we can't have individual songs, Gamora. That's just how it works. You only get one song. I didn't make up the rules. There's only one our song. That's just how it is. Besides, you definitely can't change our song to one I haven't even heard before. It's supposed to be our song.”
“Then listen to it,” she says, putting the headphones on him without even asking.
It's paused in the middle, and he knows he's not gonna win a stare down with Gamora, especially when she has her arms crossed like she does right now, so he sighs and relents, starting the song over and pressing play.
He's not sure what he was expecting, but it's not the soothing beat that starts in his ears. He kinda regrets not already listening to this song, cause it has a nice rhythm just in the first few seconds that hits him in a nice way. He absentmindedly thinks that this is exactly the type of song that dancing to with Gamora's shifting barely even dancing works perfectly for.
He would probably feel self conscious about Gamora being this close and just staring at him, watching him for three minutes in silence while he listens to the music in his ears, but he can actually feel himself relax under the music's influence.
Gamora watches him intently, and he has slight little butterflies at the end of the first verse. Then comes the chorus.
Nothing now can ever come between us, as we hide and watch the cities burn, there is much that I still want to tell you, but now is not the time to speak of love.
He feels himself flush at the words. He didn't think a song that Gamora picked herself would have the word love in it. Cause it's not like she's told him that before.
She hasn't even said aloud she liked him, much less loved. The most direct thing she's ever said about them is that there is an unspoken thing.
She's still studying him so closely, and now his cheeks are burning, feeling way more self conscious than he thought he would. She's so goddamn close.
There's a little twitch at the corner of her lips when his face starts heating up, not quite a smile, but near to it. It's something he definitely would've missed if he didn't know her so well by now.
He knows she knows exactly which line made him blush. That's why the lip twitch happened. Gamora had enhanced hearing, and she was so close, right there watching him as he listened, and she undoubtedly could hear what line was playing when his face started burning.
He keeps listening, unable to tear his eyes away from hers as she looks at him intently.
Love and fear, I cannot be your savior, There is no violence in your heart, Warriors are both time and patience, But you and I are worlds apart.
Her expression is clear, unguarded. She's never stared at him so openly before. There's this nervous, good feeling in his stomach. He likes having her gaze on him.
When the song is over he stops the zune, pulling off his headphones. The air is surprisingly heavy, but not in a bad way. She's waiting for his reaction, almost bouncing on the tips of her toes.
“It's even more accurate. Specific. It even has our unspoken thing. That's our thing. Fooled around and fell in love doesn't have that. Us, and our unspoken thing, it's only present in this song. And- and there's the part about the warrior, which is-”
“Yeah,” he says, kinda quietly, interrupting her defending her position on making this their new song. “Yeah, your our song is pretty good. Now we've got our songs,” he says, his voice soft and sincere.
Gamora actually beams at that, and his heart flutters. He smiles back.
Alright, maybe they were two totally different styles, and didn't match at all. And maybe a couple was only supposed to have one our song. But screw 'supposed to'. Because Gamora and Peter's our songs were great.
As far as declarations of feelings go, Gamora only admitting to them having an unspoken thing, and then forcing him to listen to a song saying there is much that I still want to tell you, but now is not the time to speak of love and insisting that it was their song- yeah, that was pretty good. Pretty fucking fantastic if you asked him.