every time i look at Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (Caspar David Friedrich, 1818), i imagine anders. so random digital collage of anders before the gallows using some wot concept art and friedrich's piece – original piece included for comparison.
anyway here’s the going merry with all the cutie straw hats using graphics from the one piece wonderswan game: grand battle! swan colosseum.
i'm unhinged so each of the characters is individually cut out and placed onto the going merry, including usopp and the flag. it's printed cardstock in an acrylic cube. here's the size of it in my hand for size comparison. (and to see the tiny lil guys)
/bangs pots and pans together while shouting GAMORA LOVES PETER QUILL
anyway.
here's these idiots and their first kiss. written for a word prompt from @kitandkanoodle, "can we pretend i didn't just say that?"
or you can read it here on ao3.
When Peter thinks Gamora isn’t looking, he stares at her.
Gamora knows that he does this, because with all of her training, she’s learned to trust her instincts, and her awareness tells her exactly when she’s being watched. A number of times, she’s turned away from whatever holds her focus to see Peter, his green eyes practically glued to the way she moves, the curve of her cheek, the sway of her hair. He looks almost lost in her, so much so that he’s completely drowned in whatever reverie he falls into until she startles him out of it with a short, “Peter.”
He always jerks to attention, straightens up and fumbles to find something to pass himself off with. (“Uh, what? Just fixing this, uh, trigger; it keeps sticking, you know? Nothin’ to see here.”) Truth be told, she doesn’t mind the fact that he stares, and the longer it goes on, the more endearing she finds it. When they’d first left Xandar, as the Guardians were all trying to figure out how they fit together as a team, Gamora had bristled at the way he watched her, if only because she’d been quick to assume he’d been fantasizing or imagining something especially lewd – but a few quelling glares seemed to discourage him. He never did anything about it, either, so as she eased in his company, so did her response to his staring.
She became comfortable with Peter, and in turn, became comfortable with the way he looked at her.
It’s reverent, she comes to realize, something like awe lighting his eyes. Gamora doesn’t consider herself worth that sort of wonderment, but she sees it in his smile, in his gaze, and particularly when he’s just… watching her.
It’s strange to think she could inspire such a positive response in someone, after years of terror and intimidation (though she’s certain Peter is probably still a little afraid of her, if only because he knows how easily she could snap his spine, if she felt so inclined). When Peter looks at her, she doesn’t feel like a weapon; she doesn’t feel like some deadly blade, sharp enough that one touch could slice a man open. He treats her like a force of nature, with due respect and deference, but he doesn’t recoil when she reaches out to him, doesn’t flinch or brace himself for injury. If anything, he melts with a hand at his shoulder, when her fingers brush ever so lightly through his hair.
Gamora touches him, and Peter Quill suddenly looks like the happiest man alive.
But despite how effortless their interactions have become, how she indulges him in all the right moments, Peter still stares at her. She thinks sometimes he mumbles under his breath, snippets of words here and there, but today, for the first time in a while, she actually catches what he says.
“… Christ, I just wanna kiss you right now.”
Gamora looks up immediately from where she cleans Godslayer, an oiled rag in her hands, and her brows lift in response. “What was that?”
No, she absolutely heard him, enhanced as her hearing happens to be, and Peter starts suddenly, nearly dropping the bowl of bright teal cereal in his hands.
“I— wha—what? I didn’t— I mean, I didn’t say anything,” he scoffs, clearing his throat. “Or, well, I said I just wanna— eat this weird cereal right now. That’s all, dude.”
From where Gamora sits at one of the tables in the Quadrant’s mess, she can see the color rising in his cheeks. That flush makes it all the way to the tips of his ears before Peter tries to cover his embarrassment with a pointed bite of his food.
Gamora looks thoroughly unimpressed. “That was a terrible lie.”
“… It was an excellent lie, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Peter speaks with his mouth full, waving his spoon around dismissively. “Besides,” he pauses to swallow, “I can’t believe you would accuse me of lying, Gamora. I’m like, the most honest guy on this ship.”
That flat expression doesn’t budge. “That was an even worse lie.”
Peter’s lips twist slightly, his nose wrinkling. “Yeah, well. You know.”
“You said you wanted to kiss me.”
Peter nearly chokes on his next bite of cereal, coughing and thumping his chest with his fist. “I— shit.” She can see him bite the inside of his cheek, his hand clenching around his spoon. “I’m— look, can we pretend I didn't just say that?” He actually looks… abashed. Genuinely embarrassed.
Gamora’s head tilts as she considers him, slowly setting her sword and the cleaning rag onto the table. “Why would we do that?”
He grimaces, dropping his spoon into the bowl and setting it all aside. Apparently, he’s lost his appetite. “Because we haven’t… you know.” He waves a hand, as if that illustrates exactly what he’s trying to say. “You know.”
“We haven’t kissed,” she finishes for him.
Peter blushes again. He tries to hide it by rubbing slowly at the back of his neck, unable to quite meet Gamora’s gaze. “Yeah, that.”
For all that she’s heard of Peter Quill and his escapades, of his pelvic sorcery and the trail of women (and others) and one-night-stands he’s left in his wake, she never would have thought this would fluster him. All the contact they’ve had leading up to this moment has been… brief. Sweet. Intimate, if not outright romantic. They’ve danced quietly to the music playing from his Zune; they’ve sat in the silent mess with a bottle between them, passed back and forth as Peter tells her stories from Earth, their knees pressed together or their fingers lightly tangled; they’ve even fallen asleep with Peter leaning on her shoulder as she strokes his hair. They’ve been close, but they haven’t… done this.
“I’m— sorry.” The apology is somewhat stilted, uncertain, because if Gamora has learned anything about Peter, it’s that sincerity is not his forte. He can spin words for days, talk himself out of nearly any corner he may stumble into, and he can defuse most situations with the right amount of silver-tongued babbling. Genuine contrition, however? His pride is usually far too overblown to allow for such a display.
But that… sounded honest.
“I mean it, just— forget I said anything. I’m not tryin’ to, like, pressure you or— I’m just. You can forget it, if you want. Pretend I didn’t say that.” His shoulders hunch up around his ears, and Gamora gets the distinct impression he’s about to try to make a quick escape to cover his own (imagined) humiliation.
She rises to her feet, closing the distance between them and cutting off his route to the door before he can bolt.
“I have no intention of forgetting it, Peter,” she says, and Peter’s eyes finally dart up to her face, like he needs to see for himself that she’s not fuming or about to lay him flat on the deck.
She reaches out to set a hand on Peter’s chest, and she can feel the way his breathing stops for a second.
“Gamora…” Careful, warning. Giving her a chance to back out.
Instead, Gamora reaches up, brushing a stray curl from his forehead. She takes another step closer, leaving only bare inches between them. “Are you going to kiss me or do you need written permission?”
The noise out of Peter catches in his throat, half-whine, half-disbelieving gasp, and she can tell he’s trying not to get ahead of himself, but as his hands come up to bracket her cheeks, he gives in.
So much of Peter goes into the things that matter to him. He’s often the one to look for all the shortcuts, the easy way out, but when he cares? Peter cares with every bit of himself. When it matters, he goes all in, and this is no different. She feels swept away in the heat of his lips, the genuine feeling that sparks between them. Kissing Peter Quill is like sunshine falling on her skin. Like the smell of grass after rain. Like the peace of looking out across a star-filled sky to the galaxies that lie beyond.
[whispers] am I allowed to send a prompt? Number nine ("you're in love with her") for starmora ur writing is the Best Thing Ever okay byeeee
OFC UR ALLOWED TO SEND PROMPTS. also wtf shhhh thank you dude gosh. ;o;
also over here on ao3 to make it easy, and then it’ll be below the cut! <3 i’m sorry it’s not like. actually peter and gamora interacting directly BUT.
“I owe you an apology.”
From where Peter sits with a laser solder in his mouth, he looks up at the sound of Drax’s voice.
“Uh… ” His eyebrows lift, and he reaches to pull the tool from where he’d oh-so elegantly been holding it between his teeth. “What exactly are we apologizin’ for here?”
Drax, in that imposing way of his, steps forward, and he almost seems… uncomfortable. Huh. Peter has to admit, he doesn’t see the big guy like that often.
“Some time ago, we had a conversation on the Milano,” he explains as he takes a seat across from Peter, perching on the stool usually reserved for Rocket. Peter had been in the middle of fixing up his guns when Drax came to find him in the Quadrant’s armory. But Drax has got that serious look going on, which Peter realizes means the dude really wants to talk, so he has the good manners to reach over for the jury-rigged speakers Rocket made for him to turn down the music pouring from his Zune.
(He doesn’t set his blaster aside, though, because he kind of wants something to fiddle with.)
“We had a lotta conversations on the Milano, buddy. Which one’s this?” he asks lightly, flipping a panel open on the gun’s side.
“I found you staring at Gamora,” Drax intones heavily, “and I told you that she was not the one for you.”
Peter remembers that pretty vividly, thanks to the mention of Drax’s “engorging nether regions”, and he huffs out a light laugh. “Yeah, yeah, I remember that one. You don’t gotta apologize for it.” He doesn’t mention that Drax was absolutely wrong about Gamora, because hell yeah, she’s a dancer. But that’s Gamora’s thing to share, whether she chooses to or not.
“No, I believe I owe you my sincerest apologies.” There’s enough insistence in Drax’s voice that Peter actually looks up at him again. “I was wrong.”
Well. Okay, Peter wasn’t expecting a whole owning-up-to-a-mistake kind of deal, because, really, the Guardians as a whole aren’t great at that sort of thing.
“Dude…”
Drax holds up a quieting hand, and though Peter could keep trying to yak over him, he shuts up for a second.
“I was wrong, because I assumed that what you wished to pursue with Gamora was something of a physical nature for your own sexual gratification.”
Peter wrinkles his nose. While it’s a totally fair assumption, given his past behavior, he didn’t think he’d been acting like that. Though Drax has a hard time with nuance, so maybe Drax was the only one picking up on it?
(Shit, he hopes Gamora didn’t think that the entire time.)
“It has become clear that you are not looking to participate only in copulation. Obviously, you’re in love with her.”
… Boy, Peter sure is glad he took the solder out of his mouth, because he might have accidentally swallowed it with the way he chokes out a seriously undignified noise.
“Wh— dude!”
Drax blinks steadily at him. “Am I wrong?”
“I— I mean— Drax, you don’t just—” Peter splutters for a moment longer, then finally puts his gun on the worktable, groaning as drags his hands down his face. “You didn’t, like, say that to her, did you?”
“Why would I? I assumed you had told her yourself.”
“No, man, we haven't— you know, like—” He huffs, still covering his hand with his mouth, and he mumbles into his palm, “I dunno if she’s… ready to say it yet.”
Or if she feels as intensely about him as he does about her. Which, okay, would sting a little bit, but he knows she has feelings for him, so… if she’s not ready to say something so serious, that’s okay. They’re going at Gamora’s pace, and— and yeah, okay, maybe he’s a little-bit-a-lot-over-the-fucking-moon for her, but he doesn’t want to rush it by just coming out with that.
Drax considers Peter with a low hum. “When I professed my love for Hovat, I presented her with a mighty beast I had slain in glorious battle. She painted my chest with its blood, and that was how I knew she shared my affections.” There’s something… wistful in Drax’s face as he describes the, admittedly, kind of gross courtship ritual.
… Different strokes for different folks, Peter supposes.
“Perhaps you should do something similar. Gamora is a warrior; she would appreciate a display of strength and virility.”
“Uh… I might pass on the whole blood-smearing thing, dude.”
“It is very sensual.”
“Drax. Ew.”
Drax shrugs in a “your loss” sort of way.
“But I still believe you should tell her. Gamora has spent many years without that level of intimacy.”
“… She told you that?”
“She told me of her parents.”
Ah. Well, makes sense, Peter has to reason. Living nearly her whole life under Thanos’s thumb didn’t… exactly make for a loving environment.
… Fuck, has she even like, had anyone around to say “I love you”?
(Peter conveniently doesn’t think about the last time he heard someone say it, either.)
YOOOOO part 1 of a birthday gift for @kitandkanoodle. i was only going to write one thing, and then i ended up with two things half-written so i finished both.
basically, peter is shit at dealing with his grief and trying to cope with anything at all, and gamora is there for him anyway.
you can read it here on ao3!
God, it’s been a hell of a day.
Just once, Peter would like it if anything could go right for them. Sure, the Guardians get shit done, and they usually come out the other side pretty okay (except on… a couple of occasions, but Peter’s done a halfway decent job shoving every last detail of Ego into a dark, tiny box that he never has to look at). But everything always seems to get more complicated than it needs to be. Playing escort to a Nova Corps delivery ended with a bunch of would-be robbers trying to blast the Milano outta the stars. Picking off a gang of thugs on a tiny moon went from six guys to thirty-six. And a gigantic, spine-covered pterodactyl thing nearly carried Groot off to its nest while they were trying to shoot down a second one of those weird assholes.
Scratch that – it’s been a hell of a week.
Peter likes to be on the move, likes to always have something to do, but lately, they’ve just been getting hammered over and over again by the kinds of crazy jobs that will wring a guy out. He’s exhausted, and fuck, he needs a vacation.
Maybe like, six vacations. All in a row.
The Nova Corps can call somebody else for their stupid deliveries.
Peter’s mood seems to be shared among the rest of the Guardians. They all stalk off in various directions once they’re back on board the Quadrant: Rocket takes Groot down the corridor, muttering about how he oughta be more careful and, “what the hell were you thinkin’ waving at those damn things? Use some friggin' common sense next time, is that so much to ask?”; Drax excuses himself with a short nod in Peter’s direction, and he can see the big guy heading off towards the training area Gamora had set up on one of the upper decks – dude’s probably gonna punch some shit, and Peter can’t say he blames him; Kraglin and Mantis beat a hasty retreat before Peter can check in on them, and Gamora—
Shit, where did Gamora go?
He only has time to see her disappearing around the corner of one of the halls. She’s off in the direction of her bunk, so… maybe she wants some time alone?
Something heavy sits in the pit of Peter’s stomach when he realizes that. Not that he blames her or anything; Gamora can be a pretty solitary person, and he knows she needs peace and quiet to clear her head (and Peter Quill is anything but “peace and quiet”), but… today was shitty. This week has been shitty, and he finds that all he wants to do is sit with his best friend and maybe commiserate over some godawful alcohol, and then just go the fuck to bed.
… It’s kind of hard to do that when Gamora has up and disappeared, though.
But Peter knows better than to prod or try to be close when she clearly isn’t going for it, so he doesn’t trail after her. Maybe she just needs to unwind in her own way, and he can respect that.
Instead, he hauls himself off to the captain’s quarters, ditching his jacket, his boots, leaving his Zune on his worktable along with the other little odds and ends that sit there. He hasn’t disturbed much of Yondu’s leftover crap (no matter how many times it hits him that Yondu is gone, that it doesn’t matter what he does with all this shit left behind); it’s still oddly preserved, despite how messy Peter naturally is. His clothes may be all over the place, but Yondu’s knickknacks, his valuables, his holos and wardrobe— Peter hasn’t moved it around, not any more than necessary.
(Peter doesn’t think this place feels like his yet.)
Like the refined man that he is, Peter leaves a trail of clothing behind him on his way to the private bathroom in his quarters. He tells himself he’ll pick it all up later – but, in reality, he probably won’t until he gathers everything up for a gigantic load of laundry. He should wash things at least semi-regularly, Gamora’s told him on more than one occasion, but, you know. Details.
As he stands in the shower with the water beating down on his shoulders, he leans his forehead against the wall with a slow, shuddering sigh. He’d been so close to just flopping down into bed and passing out for the night, but he knows he’s dusty and gross and covered in weird pterodactyl… whatever, so he needs a shower. But, fuck, he just wants to sleep for a year.
Preferably with Gamora.
But apparently that’s not going to be a thing, so he resigns himself to cleaning off and rinsing his hair before he steps out to wrap a towel around his waist.
Official agenda for the evening: get in bed, stare at ceiling, listen to something he hasn’t heard on the Zune yet. That’s a pretty okay way to send off a shitty week, right?
He’s pushing his hair away from his face as he wanders back out of the shower, scrubbing the heel of his hand over his eyes, but he stops up short when he realizes he’s not alone in his quarters. He immediately refocuses, tense and at attention, ready to respond (despite the fact that he’s basically in nothing but a goddamn towel), and—
There’s Gamora, sitting on his bed with his Zune in her lap, her curls pulled away from her face in some half-braid that’s left a few stray locks of magenta falling around her cheeks. Instead of relaxing, Peter’s breathing just sort of stops for a minute, the wind knocked right out of his sails – and fuck, seeing Gamora does that to him when he doesn’t even realize it.
She doesn’t glance up from the Zune, though she clearly knows he’s there.
“I’m glad you showered,” says Gamora, still not looking up from the MP3 player. One of the earbuds is tucked neatly into her ear, the other hanging freely, though unlike his old headphones, it’s harder to make out what she’s listening to from a distance. “Whatever you fell in today was disgusting.”
Peter wrinkles his nose, something like mock offense. “Hello to you too.” He wanders over to a pile of clothes (clean ones, despite the fact that he hasn’t put them away), plucking up a pair of sweat pants. He looks over his shoulder at her, a little tentative. “You wanna like, turn around for a second or something?”
“I’m fine.”
“… I’m gonna be totally pantsless, dude; this is me warning you.”
“I’m aware of that,” comes the bland reply, but Peter supposes that as long as she’s fine with it, it’s whatever. He shrugs, then abandons the towel in favor of his sweats. He doesn’t think he sees Gamora watching, but he also thinks he might have caught the briefest flicker of her attention before she looks to the Zune again.
It’s only after he turns back around to look at her that he realizes she’s sitting with a bottle of something against her thigh on the bed, and he heaves a massive, relieved sigh.
“God, you’re the best. Like, the actual best.” He wanders to the bed, flopping down next to her and reaching across her lap for the booze. She doesn’t grab his wrist or try to stop him, instead letting him unscrew the cap and take the first swig as she pops the headphone from her ear to set his Zune aside. Peter winces as the liquor hits his tongue, and he swallows with a grimace and a rough exhale. “That shit could melt your eyes right outta your skull. Damn. You’re not kiddin’ around today.”
“You looked like you needed it,” she admits.
Peter looks down at the bottle instead of Gamora, smoothing his thumb over the label. “Not sure what might’ve given you that impression. Couldn’t be more fine. Doing great, actually. I’m the picture of—“
“Peter.”
… Man, she’s good at cutting off his rambling. She doesn’t let him talk circles around himself to bullshit out of any corner he runs into, and as much as he may need that, fuck, he hates it sometimes. She makes it so hard to pretend like he’s fine, to act like nothing’s getting to him – and that’s how he has to be, right? He’s the stupid leader, he has to keep it together at all times.
And it’s so goddamn hard.
“… I’m okay,” he tries again, somewhat more subdued this time.
“Is that another lie?”
Peter shrugs, and instead of having to speak, he swallows down another mouthful of the… rubbing alcohol? What even is this shit? Strong and pinkand probably pilfered from the Quadrant’s little bar.
Whatever, doesn’t matter. It’ll do the job no matter what it tastes like.
He offers the bottle to Gamora after he’s had a third gulp, and though she takes it, she doesn’t immediately move to drink. Shifting closer, she stops when they’re hip-to-hip.
Peter tenses for all of a second, and then—
He just sort of slumps to the side, leaning against Gamora’s shoulder. An arm curls around his waist, and he feels her turn to make it easier for his forehead to tuck against her throat. Okay, this is… nice, actually. Really, really nice.
He sees her set the bottle down out of the corner of his eye, and then her fingers are winding into his hair, wet as it is, and Peter goes practically boneless against her.
“Fuck,” he breathes.
Gamora presses her lips to the top of his head, and Peter wants to do nothing more than sit and relish this contact. He’s so damn tactile, and he’s sought out ways to fill that need in so many different places, but nothing, nothing soothes him like being close to Gamora.
“Can’t things just go— sort of okay for once? Like, when shit goes sideways, could we maybe not think someone’s going to die for a minute?” His voice is somehow— hoarse. Roughened. He doesn’t lift his head to look at Gamora.
At first, there’s no response. Gamora continues to run fingers through his hair, like she’s taking a moment to compose herself and her answer. “Groot was going to be fine, Peter.” She says it softly, and something about the sympathy beneath it all makes Peter’s gut twist.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t know that. We didn’t know that.” He straightens up, dragging his hand through his hair when he puts distance between them. “And I’m not— I don’t just mean today.”
Quiet falls between them. “… I know.”
Of course she knows. Of course she gets it because Peter feels like a goddamn open book with her, just all laid out on the table so she can see every embarrassing part of himself he usually hides under a quick laugh and a broad grin or the kind of aggravated standoffishness he’d learned to perfect with the Ravagers. She sees through it all, and she leaves him spread out and—
Fuck. He should just go back to drinking.
He reaches for the bottle she set on the ground, not quite able to drag his eyes up to hers. This time, when he straightens up, she sets a hand on his wrist, the other bringing her arm back around so that she can cup his jaw. He doesn’t resist when she tilts his face towards her, but he doesn’t quite raise his eyes to meet that piercing gaze, either.
“We make it through, Peter,” she says, soft and gentle. “It’s what we do.”
And that is how they deal, isn’t it? The Guardians may be losers, and they may have all lost so damn much, but fuck, they’re survivors too. They carry on. They move forward. They make something of themselves.
Green eyes flicker up to settle on Gamora’s, and that softness is waiting for him there. He’s so used to reading sympathy as pity, but there’s none of that in Gamora’s face now. She doesn’t think he’s pathetic, but she… feels for him instead. She feels with him after all of this bullshit, all this heaviness. Maybe these close calls lately aren’t what’s getting to him. Maybe it’s the remains of a dead man that live in his room like ghosts all their own, and maybe it’s how little he’s let himself— feel everything.
He’d rather keep it all in that dark, tiny box.
But for now, Peter doesn’t say anything. Neither does Gamora. He reaches up to rest a palm on her cheek, drawing their faces together until their foreheads touch.
They stay like that – close, breathing each other in, but they don’t break the silence. They don’t need to. At some point, the bottle is abandoned on the floor once again, and they both end up rearranged on the bed. Peter’s head rests on her stomach as she takes a pillow properly, and she lets him fidget with his Zune for a while as she makes herself comfortable. He passes her one of the earbuds, and in the quiet of his quarters, Here Comes the Sun filters gentle and sweet between them.
As her fingers wind into his hair again, Gamora listens, before she speaks again, “I like this one.” He can’t see it, but he can hear that soft smile he knows has to be there.
“Thought you might.”
They don’t speak for the rest of the night – not really. Some of Peter’s bullshit comments on and off, a mention of a song name or two, but they both seem content with the companionable silence until they’re ready to fall asleep. Peter ends up resituated to rest his head on a pillow, and Gamora curls up against his back, an arm reassuringly tight around his waist as she nuzzles against his neck.
And as shitty as this week has been? This is a pretty great way to end it.
a prompt fill for @kitandkanoodle — starmora - “You need to wake up because I can’t do this without you.”
this can also sort of double for starmora week, day 5 (hurt/comfort – just without the comfort). :))))
This is bad.
No, that's an understatement, because this is a fucking disaster.
When things go to shit for the Guardians, they really go to shit, and a simple job suddenly turns into an ambush. The ambush turns into a retreat. The retreat turns into a damned scramble for a place to hide and regroup.
They make it to a cave carved into the slick, rainy rockface of the cliff they'd been chased across, and Gamora ushers Peter inside to get them out of the line of sight of their enemies. The blaster fire died off minutes ago, but she already assured Peter she can still hear them in pursuit, and that means they aren't safe.
"Move, move," she hisses as they rush deeper into the cave. Now, Peter can hear the Kree overhead, pounding footfalls through the layers of rock. He can't help the way he holds his breath, like that might divert them, and Gamora only stops when the Kree do. One of her hands curls around Peter’s upper arm, the other holding the hilt of Godslayer tight. Peter has his blasters at the ready, repeatedly glancing over his shoulder towards the darkened speck of an entrance.
And then the plasma shots start all over again – but instead of coming from the cave’s entrance, the blasts hammer the ceiling above them. Peter and Gamora both nearly jump out of their skins with the sudden thunderous sound filling the cave, and Peter grits his teeth, ready to bolt or—
Fuck, can they get through? Shit, no, the rock’s too thick – Peter knows that much.
But it quickly becomes clear that getting through isn’t going to matter when the stone overhead starts to shake.
And rumble.
And fall.
A rock breaks off above their heads, dropping heavily directly to their left.
“Fuck!” Peter holsters his blasters, and immediately, he and Gamora are tearing towards the entrance. They both seemed to recognize at the same instant that they either had to get out or find themselves buried in that goddamn cave, and when the plasma shots keep coming, the rocks just keep falling.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Another heavy boulder smashes to pieces directly in front of them, a second following, and then—
Before Peter even realizes what’s happening, Gamora is slamming her palms into his chest and half-shoving, half-tossing him clear as a third boulder falls—
—and lands right on Gamora’s head.
Peter hits his back gracelessly, most of the impact saved by his mask protecting the curve of his skull. Dazed as he is, he lifts his head for a desperate scan of the cave, picking out what he can with the infrared filters, trying to figure out where he ended up.
“Gamora!”
His voice comes out on a hoarse croak, terror making his chest tighten as he tries to scramble to his feet, to stumble towards where she’d just been standing.
In a heap on the ground, Gamora lies crumpled, a hand cradling the back of her head. The boulder that hit her apparently broke on impact, smashed off to the side, and finally (fucking finally), the blasts above them have completely stopped.
Where the entrance used to be, Peter can only see a pile of stone.
But, fuck, that doesn’t matter, and he drops immediately to his knees beside Gamora. In the stillness of the cave, he can hear and see the shuddering rise and fall of her shoulders, and— okay, okay, that means she’s alive. Good, because that would have killed any other fucking person, but Gamora is built to hold up to a hell of a lot – apparently including a giant concussion.
“Hey.” Peter’s voice still breaks as he reaches out to carefully pull Gamora’s hand from her head, and with the filters on his mask, he can see the dark smear on her fingers. Fuck, that’s a lot of blood. “Hey, Gamora, let’s sit up, huh?”
Gamora makes a nondescript noise, but he sees movement as she tries to get her other arm underneath her, to push herself up. Her elbows wobble, and then give out, but Peter’s arms are under her before she can completely collapse again.
“Whoa, I got you, it’s— hey, you’re good, c’mon.” He struggles to find a lightness in his voice that he doesn’t feel, but he helps Gamora sit up onto her knees, supporting her upper body almost entirely as he steadies her. “There, see— c’mon, open your eyes for me, okay?”
“Peter…?”
She winces as she tries to speak. Her eyes are heavily-lidded, barely fluttering open as she tries to focus on the glowing red of his mask.
“Yeah, I’m right here. See? I’m here, you’re okay.” Peter reaches out to cup her face, thumb brushing over her cheek. He helps her keep her head up, even as her chin tries to dip towards her chest. “No, no, no, I need you to look right at me, okay?”
But her eyes are sliding closed.
“Gamora. Gamora.”
Whatever strength she managed to keep herself semi-upright seems to fail her, because Peter is suddenly left with the weight of Gamora fully in his arms. He swears under his breath, and fuck, he feels like he can barely breathe, can barely hear over the rush of his own frantic heart hammering in his ears, and no, no, she’s going to be fine. She just needs to hold out for her mods, just has to make it until her body can do something about the fucking head trauma, and— she can fix this. She’ll be fine. She can make it, but—
“Gamora.” The sound of her name is roughened by panic trying to claw into his chest, but he’s trying to be steady for her. He reaches up to quickly hit the trigger for his mask behind his ear, and with a flash of blue light, the metal recedes, taking the unearthly red glow with it. “Gamora, come on. You need—“
Deep breath. God, Quill, fucking pull it together.
“You need to wake up, okay? I— Gamora, you need to wake up, because I can’t do this without you.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Gamora/Peter Quill
Characters: Gamora (Marvel), Peter Quill
Additional Tags: Fail sex, bad positions lead to a bad time guys, or a hilarious time, depends on your point of view, this is just absurd and useless and i just wanted them giggling over ridiculous shit
Summary: Peter and Gamora try a new, completely ridiculous position, and it goes about as well as you might expect.
i’m at the point with my art where i’m trying to figure out how my style works for me, so have some silly in-between gamora! /o/ this palette was so cute i love it.
