#v; intergalactic planetary

[beatfreesmysoul]

❛ what are you listening to? ❜ (Sakura OTAT)

Sometimes, despite his best efforts to appear otherwise, the thought of potentially never leaving this dimension joined every other weight upon his shoulders, suffocating in both number and intensity. It would be the final straw, the final push in a life that had been busier than usual in taking from him instead of giving. The need for space and air deepened at night, when everything was quiet except racing thoughts and escalating fears.

He had retreated to the roof, eyes locked on the stars as he played one song on repeat to recapture that moment, that feeling he'd had back then: that everything would be all right, no matter how hard it got. That everything could be better as long as there was music, dancing, and people willing to share them with others who didn't have them.

Having kept the audio low enough to hear if someone called out for him, Quill heard her voice, moving his head slightly so he could peer over the roofline and down at her. "'Let's Hear It for the Boy' by Deniece Williams, 1984 from the Footloose soundtrack. Least, it is from my dimension. Did they make it here?"

@survivics

[beatfreesmysoul]

@eideticspider pressed play!

For someone that had raised some alarm bells in his head the first time they had met, by the time she had helped him find his way back to his own universe, Peter could see why some other version of him had befriended Cindy. She was laid-back, witty, confident, and capable in a fight—and most importantly, she was an easy person to be around. Those were few and far between.

Yet without knowing her story inside and out like she apparently knew his, there was something there, certain reactions, turns of phrase occasionally that had him contemplative as they made their way toward, then eventually reached his ship. He couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but it felt like a restlessness to him, an urgency to seize the moment like at one point, maybe she hadn’t had the chance to.

Or he could be reading way too deep into something that wasn’t there, but…as someone who had felt that way in the past, he just had a hunch that he wasn’t that far off.

Letting his gaze drift across the blessedly familiar outline of home, his invitation came as a casual offer, belying the underlying motivation behind it.

“Y’know, you’re currently the only person that’s got me out of another dimension an’ back into my own. Least I could do is offer a couple hours seein’ somethin’ other than another New York City in a pretty great ship with really great music.”

[beatfreesmysoul]

@xenjoyedthat pressed play!

After three decades in space, not many things threw Peter Quill for a loop anymore. His 'weird' was the galaxy's normal, and one of the two opposing forces had had to shift, to adapt. With the more recent revelation of his own origin, he was the last guy who had the place to think anything outside of Earth's norms was something that should rattle him.

Even so...the sheer magnitude of a multiversal task force and its HQ was enough to disconcert, to have him searching for anything to focus on, something to center himself in what felt like a maze of masks and webs.

As so often was the case for him, the hint of a faint melody had him relaxing, a slight lean toward the sound to see if he could pick up on some words, recognize the tune.

His gaze rove over the space until he found the song's source, what looked like a hologram of someone nearby standing near the speakers. Maybe she was waiting for a call from one of these eight bajillion spider-people?

"What'cha listenin' to? Don't think I've heard it before."

[beatfreesmysoul]

❛ you look like you've got something to say. ❜

@xenjoyedthat pressed play!

In a flood of red and blue, with occasional black and white thrown in, green became even more vivid when it appeared in the corner of his vision. All it had taken was a drift of his gaze, the habit of a lifetime to assess and respond to potential trouble, and every other object blurred out of focus, every other sound dimmed except one from that singular view screen.

He heard Gamora's laugh again. That irreplaceable sound that had soared through his atmosphere, filled it with all the light and warmth that it could ever hold, the sound that had become the most beautiful song he had ever heard. Every hall he walked through, every room he sat in, every view he took in--all felt hollow, void without the potential of him saying some ludicrous thing (easy enough to do) in the hope to see that lift of silver brows, that fond eye roll and to hear that laugh echo in the space, in his heart.

"...She survives in every other universe, doesn't she."

If anyone would know that, it would be the person beside him, the one who held the threads of Fate in their hands as she parsed through them--well, the code strings of Fate, perhaps.

"Not surprisin', really. She's the most capable, fierce, intelligent, an' powerful woman in the galaxy. It'd take a real idiot to fail her so much that she'd die in the way she feared most." In the hands of the monster that had already taken so much from her, alone...not dying among her friends.

He tore his gaze from the view screen, sensing what might be a concern of the other, a placating hand lifted. "Don't worry, Lyla--even if I could, I'm not goin' anywhere that'd cause ya'll any more work. Every reality of her has better odds the further away I am."

He didn't have to be an AI or from the future to calculate that, just a man who consistently got close to people only to lose them.

A smile he didn't feel graced his features, a forced lightness in his step and tone as he began to walk away.

"But seriously, how can you have this nice a place with this many recruits an' not have a decent sound system for music, huh? I'm tellin' ya, I can rig somethin' up in less than a week an' it'll sound like you've got live concerts goin' on here!"

[beatfreesmysoul]

@spiderbyhalf pressed play!

Nothing was out of the ordinary, for once; a rare quiet night that even such a restless soul as his enjoyed every so often. No, it would just be drinking a few beers, listening to a few songs, and trying to not let his mind slip to the past as the start of a familiar spiral.

Simple, right?

Then a knock came at his chamber door, prompting a sigh and stretch to his feet. No way was the delivery that fast—his plans were likely derailed before they had even properly started.

Some plans though.

Quill opened the door, the resigned look on his features shifting to hastily masked concern. His gaze lifted, the other's stature alone giving an indication of who had paid him a visit. Decades of talking himself out of situations before they fully escalated filtered into his mind, but maybe there wouldn't be a situation at all. Maybe this was a friendly, completely unannounced visit without his actual friend present. Maybe the guy just needed better beer than whatever they had in his dimension. Yeah, both totally plausible scenarios here.

"—You must be Miguel...O'Hara." Oh yeah, this is definitely giving the full name address vibes. "Peter Quill." He extended a hand, even if he suspected it might not be taken; in his experience, it was always the best indicator of not only the other party's intentions, but also getting across he wasn't that interested in anything but hospitability.

"Uh, not sure if you're more a beer or whiskey kinda guy, but I've got several of both if you're plannin' on bein' here for awhile. Delivery too, in like, thirty minutes or so." He took a step back, gesturing inside as he gathered his wits and braced for whatever this visit would entail.

"Nice to meet you."

[beatfreesmysoul]

@eideticspider pressed play!

What he had expected as another casual visit from a friend (visits he’d come to look forward to, as the guy who’d started valuing every friend he did have even more—losing enough of them tended to have that effect) quickly revealed itself as a search for support. Peter barely finished a greeting before her tears, her gasps for breath came, his brows furrowing in concern as he shut the door. Without hesitation he reached for the nearest blanket, flicked on the electric tea kettle before returning to Cindy’s side. Sliding down the wall with ease –it probably has his personal indent in it by now, the number of times he had sunk in similar despair to the floor—he wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, tone at his gentlest.

“This is your best friend, right? Even though she’s angry, or disappointed, or even hurt now, that doesn’t mean you’ve lost her. Just means you two are seein’ two different sides of somethin’ important t’both of ya that ya can’t understand how or why the other is seein’ it that way. Pretty sure my best friend has wanted to kill me just as much as he’s wanted to save my ass—an’ sometimes I give him pretty good reason to. But that don’t change how deep down, we care a hell of a lot about each other.”

Quill paused, trying to phrase the words as best he could. “Even if ya messed up, it doesn’t define you. Not your relationships either. These people care about you, an’ you them—an’ ultimately, that’s what’s gonna make this right.”

[beatfreesmysoul]

" See? That wasn't so bad after all! " It was pretty bad, plus the way Jessica tied the bandages looked like cute little bows. How embarrassing.

@antifearvemon pressed play!

Well—gotta admire the optimism.

His gaze lifted from the neat, precise, tie-dyed bandage bows, trying to focus in a world that felt like a re-run of My Favorite Martians or the Freedom Force or maybe even Scooby Doo. The fact that he wasn’t dead after free-falling into yet another dimension (really, he needed to look into why this kept happening) was enough to place this in the ‘not so bad’ category however, even if he had needed extensive bandaging up.

Quill gave her a smile, reserving the panic for internal as he tried to match her energy.

“Yeah, definitely have had worse! With how skilled your bandaging skills are, d’ya get a lotta people fallin’ from the sky here, or am I an exception?”

[beatfreesmysoul]

@survivics fast forwarded from here!

Things always came in cycles, right? Wherever one began, one could end. Maybe this was his cycle, the one he could never escape from—the one where he was left alone after having everyone and everything he could have wanted.

Green eyes matched the ocean’s turbidity, the waves tossed about in an endless swirl like his emotions every time they got so close to sending him home, yet failed. Her words come belying soft, yet hold the power to shake mountains, to lift the heaviest weight carried on shoulders close to breaking under it. Their tenor echoed one he had heard long ago, whether she realized it or not.

Peter halted, feet sinking into the sand as their eyes met, as he was finally old enough, weary enough to ask the question he never had the chance to ask that small-town waitress in St. Charles, Missouri.

“—How do you do it? How do you keep givin’, when all life’s done is take from you?”