i know, he says. i get it, he says. the first thing nate wants to tell him is, no, you don’t. fingers close around his wrist and he stiffens with a look, a warning look, like firing a gun into the ceiling: he doesn’t rip himself away, but he could. he wants to make it clear that he could. some dormant part of him — not gone, just buried deep enough that nobody can dig it out — knows that quill is right. that they do have to talk. they have to lay it all on the table and deal with it, together, because anything less won’t work. because they don’t do that. this isn’t them. isn’t him.
tell me, he says. as if all nate has to do is debrief him, throw in a couple of anecdotes and bad puns, dress it up like he’s selling the script to a new indiana jones movie. quill used to love listening to his stories.
he wouldn’t love listening to this one.
killing isn’t new. the legendary nathan drake has a body count racked up on earth that goes beyond counting. he could justify it, most of the time. shoot them before they shoot you, right? he could justify it on those nights where he’d wake up in a cold sweat and thought he was seeing gore on his walls, and every shadow looked like a pile of corpses: he’d had no choice. and most of the time, it worked. but no matter the numbers back then, he’d never executed anybody. never taken life in cold blood, only necessity — or what passed for it, in his own scrambled brain, and that was enough of a band-aid. there is no justifying what he’s done for the last three years. looking into somebody’s eyes and squeezing a trigger at point-blank range. slitting a throat and watching somebody else choke on their own blood, watching until the last twitch. a bystander with a broken spine. a guard with a hole blown straight through their midsection big enough to tear them in half. he’d once strangled a jovian with his bare hands until he felt a crunch of bone and even then, he’d kept going. that was a week after quill died, a random that stood between him and rocket and the lead they were chasing. all it took was a week.
quill wants to meet him where he is, but where he is is somewhere that he’s been trying to protect him from since the moment he came back.
hands cupping his face, again. eye contact again. maybe he should just say it. maybe he should say it just to prove that it’s too much and that no one, none of them, not quill or drax or mantis, not groot, none of them will want him around after this. rocket already knows. he’s the only one who knows. the only one who gets it. but maybe, just maybe —
a thought that's gone with the shift in quill’s tone when he tells him that he isn’t leaving. that he isn’t leaving. that dormant part of him knows how he means it but that doesn’t matter. not right now. not when he’s like this, cold and rotten and untouchable.
he pulls free of that contact and his chin lifts, that age-old posture of defiance. a muscle tics in his jaw. “oh yeah — ? that an order, captain?”
low and cutting. wrong.
“yeah. see, the thing is —” and he steps past him, shoulder-check and all, “you're not gonna stop me.”
it feels like it burns at the point of contact their shoulders meet. it isn't a show of force bred from passion like when they're colliding into one another. this is different, this is coded in a way that had anyone else done it, quill might've been in their face. but it isn't anyone else. it's nate. it's his husband. he doesn't reach for him this time. he knows when to pull his punches, when one more point of contact between them that isn't the check of shoulders might erupt into a show of violence. he thinks he can feel it bristling beneath nate's skin, emanating from him like he's a caged animal and quill's only intent there is to berate him. it's wrong. it's all wrong. like his old, busted walkman started to chew the roll of tape as it played it and now the music between them is discordant and warbled.
no, quill doesn't reach for him physically, but he's right there at his heel regardless. he's there at his heel, he's there with a hand against the door to keep it from breaching open. boot-clad foot joins, his stance sturdy. defiance is met in an equal tilt of quill's jaw now. but where nate's frozen demeanor cuts his, quill's is built of something different. raw. tangible. still somehow open. "so, that's how we're doing this then? you're gonna fuck off doin' god knows what because ... what? if this is some bullshit protecting me from whatever it is you and rocket have had to do all these years - i'm a big boy, baby." a joke could've slipped in here if the tension between them wasn't thick enough that even one of gamora's blades could've had trouble slicing through it.
another body. another person missing.
"whatever it is you think i can't handle, i can. you don't want me to love you anymore? tough shit. that's the thing about us, we're both stubborn and bull-headed and ... well, mantis called us stupid the other day and yeh, i kind of agree. you don't get to make that call. you don't get to decide what i can or can't handle. you don't get to run out of here and give up on us without giving me a goddamn good reason as to why. you wanna throw in the towel, nate? fine. i'm not gonna make that choice for you." even if it would break him. "but you better tell me why because i'm not flying around this entire fucking galaxy wondering what it is that happened while i was gone and why you can't even bear to look me in the eyes and i get no explanation about any of it. you don't want us anymore, i deserve to know why."
he doesn't touch him, he doesn't, but he does move to get in his face again. "so, yeh, captain's orders are that you either cough up the reason or you get to deal with the fact that my ass isn't giving up on you or us. i know you're not who you were before. i'm not stupid. i see it. i see it every single day, but i'm not askin' you to be him. i'm not askin' you to be the nate i met in the bar that night. i'm askin' you to let me see who you are now and let me decide for my own self. and if you don't like that... well, that's tough shit, baby. 'cause i'm not in the game of giving up. not when you mean everything to me."
