Chapter Text
The house Gamora's purchased is nice. Very nice. A solid home with a wood exterior, an outside lounge area on a deck with a firepit, enough rooms for each of them, and a large, lakeside piece of land with enough space to land their ships. They chose to keep their ships further from their home. The Milano stays in a small clearing in one corner of the land, closer by to the home so they can quickly get to working on repairs, Yondu's ship stays parked on the opposite side of the land, on top of a very large, flat rock.
"I take back all the shit talkin' I did," Rocket says, stepping in to the fully furnished house. The dark wood floors and wood walls seem cozy enough. "This place is actually kind of nice."
It resembles a family vacation cabin. Or maybe some kind of oversized summer camp cabin, with a more home-y feel. A large space for many people to say.
Gamora rolls her eyes and holds the door open with her foot as Mantis steps in. Drax is still a good distance from the door, walking hand-in-hand with Peter, who's taking in the sight of all the trees and blue sky in awe.
"It's just like Terra," he says happily, "Except Terra is bigger, and the trees are brown and green."
Drax glances at the trees around them. The bark on the trees is gray-ish black.
As they approach the house, Peter lets go of Drax's hand and skips past Gamora and in to the house, slowing down to take everything in. "It's...ours?"
Gamora gives him a sharp nod and he grins widely, running deeper in to the house to go explorer his new home as the others settle things in.
The house is definitely large enough for each of them to have their own rooms, with an extra room that they'd decided to keep all of Peter's toys and other items in.
Drax steps aside as Peter rushes past him and in to a bedroom. It's sub-consciously decided that peter gets the master bedroom, since he's unofficially the Captain of the rag-tag team. Any of his belongings that survived the Milano’s crash will be placed in the room. And the room across the hall can be his 'play room'.
Rocket passes by Peter, who's got his face pressed up against the sliding glass door that led out back. The door opened to a raised deck, with a few stairs on the far side that led down toward the sandy shore of a lake.
“Outside!” Peter exclaims in Rocket’s direction, slapping at the glass.
“Not right now,” Gamora interjects as she passes, taking hold of one of Peter’s hands, “after dinner. Rocket can take you outside to go swim later.”
“Me? Why me?! I don’t like sand or water in my fur!” Rocket protests, giving her a pointed look, to which she returns with a stern glare that has him sighing and agreeing to take Peter outside after dinner. He’ll drag Groot along for extra help and, as he watches Peter happily make his way away from the door and through the living room, satisfied with the decision and already distracted with something else, he thinks that maybe it’s not so bad an idea. Peter could use some time outdoors.
While Peter explores the inside of his new home, the others work on getting settled in, bringing what they can from the nearby Milano, hoping to get their belongings out and clear the ship in preparation for repairs. Peter’s Toy Chest is one of the first items Drax hauls inside, and he places it down in the middle of the living room, immediately catching Peter’s attention.
“Play as you wish, little one,” Drax says, motioning to the box and earning himself and enthusiastic ‘thank you!’ from Peter as he rushes toward the box and immediately drops down to sit beside it, opening it up and digging through it’s contents to find which items best suited his mood.
He settles for four lizard-like creatures with long tails and sharp claws. Rocket had been the one to buy them for him (Peter was adamant that he wasn’t leaving the shop without taking the ‘velociraptors’ home and Rocket had agreed to buy him one but ended up with four because Peter insisted that they shouldn’t separate them from each other “because then they’d get sad and miss each other”.) Carefully, he sets each raptor down on their two feet, neatly setting them side-by-side, making sure they don’t fall over before returning to his box to pull out various other items, small cars, a few small plastic animals, and some half-built lego structures that had been completed and gently put in to the box, but were most likely crumbled doing the Milano’s crash. It’s not a big deal. He can salvage what remained and build up from there.
When he’s finished, he stands up and looks down proudly at his work. A few small buildings constructed of plastic bricks that he deems Animal Town. The residents of Animal Town, the little plastic bears and space-cows and fish and birds, either on top of the structures or scattered between them, and each velociraptor still lined up side by side. An exciting scene waiting to happen, but not without one last thing.
He looks around for the others, who have been in and out of the house, clearing the Milano and bringing items back to the house in boxes. Wandering in to the kitchen, he finds Gamora unpacking one of the boxes, slipping plates in to one of the many cabinets. She greets Peter with a soft smile and asks, “Do you need anything, my love?”
“Mantis?”
“She’s outside with Drax,” Gamora says, motioning to the direction of the front door. He minds his manners, giving her a soft thank you before making his way out of the kitchen and to the front door.
Outside in front of the house, Mantis and Drax are chatting, presumably taking a break from their many trips to and from the Milano. Peter wastes no time nearly skipping up to Mantis, interrupting the conversation as he takes her hands in his own and lightly tugs, indicating that he wants her to come with him.
“Play!” He says. Mantis feels the surge of excitement coming from him, the direct touch feeding his emotions right in to her. As much as she loves it, she cuts it off quickly, keeping her powers under control. She was still new to learning to develop emotions of her own, and in order to do that, she had to cut down the use of her powers. She had to create her own feeling through her own experiences.
“Peter, I can’t—we still have to get more things off of the ship and I—“
“It is fine,” Drax cuts in, smiling at the two. “Go play with him. There is only a few boxes left on the Milano and I can get them without help. I am strong.”
“Thank you, Drax!” She yells over her shoulder, peter already dragging her back in to the house.
The last time he let her play with him, she made a great He-Man. Now it’s time to see if she’s great at being a velociraptor.
Peter crouches down to pick up two of the toys, holding them out for Mantis to take. Thankfully, she gets the hint, kneeling beside Peter as he takes the other two in his hands. She’s still not sure what he’s getting at, but she goes along with it. Lucky for her, Peter decides to give instructions.
“Dinosaur attack the city,” he said, looking at her very seriously as he moves one of the velociraptors closer to one of the LEGO structures that has a little plastic pig sitting on top of it. He then uses the dinosaur to push it over, causing the pig to fall down, then pretends to make the dinosaur eat the pig. “Then dinosaurs eat the animals. Okay?”
She thinks she understands, so she nods and follows Peter’s lead as he makes the plastic dinosaurs creep in to the city. She does as he does, using the dinosaurs to shatter the little brick buildings and maim the innocent citizens of Animal Town, hearing him giggle. When he makes dinosaur noises, she mimics him, making her velociraptors growl and roar as well.
For once, the giggle that follows is her own. Produced from her own enjoyment and not from her powers replicating someone else’s emotions. It’s a wonderful feeling, and she doesn’t want it to stop.
The two of them sit in the living room for a while, velociraptors in hand. Once Animal Town is destroyed, the velociraptors fight Captain America and He-Man. And they obliterate both of them and eat them for dinner. Then, the four little dinosaurs go on an adventure to explore their new home, laughter and dinosaur-noises filling the house as the two run off to go play in every room that’s not the living room.
“It’s gone awfully quiet.” Rocket notes from his spot on Groot’s shoulder. It was quiet, almost silent in the house, except for the kitchen, Where Drax, Rocket, Gamora, And Groot sat, finally relaxing after their long day.
“Too quiet,” Gamora nodded. Complete silence with a kid in the house usually meant something suspicious was up. She stood, setting her glass of water down on the table, and headed out of the kitchen, Rocket leaping off of Groot’s shoulder to follow.
She peeks in to each bedroom as she walked down the hallway, not finding Peter or Mantis in any of them until she reaches the last one. The play room. Immediately, she softens, smile forming on her face as she puts a finger to her lips and indicates for Rocket to hush.
“I’m not even talking, why are you shushing me?”
“Shhh!” She beckons him closer, and he pushes past her leg to step in to the room and she what’s got Gamora all smiley.
On the floor of the room lays Peter and Mantis, both curled up and nearly touching their foreheads together. Both of them are asleep. The pair seems content, Peter’s even got one of the dinosaurs loosely clutched in his hand, and Rocket can’t help but smile as well.
“Do we wake them up?” He asks.
“Not yet,” Gamora whispers, stepping away from the door. “Let them sleep for a little bit. We can wake them in an hour, when dinner is ready.” She doesn’t want to disturb their nap, especially since Peter had been having trouble sleeping recently. If he was able to catch up on some well needed rest, she’d allow him to nap anywhere he wanted.
Peter is still in his headspace when Gamora wakes him (and Mantis) from their impromptu nap for dinner. He doesn’t know exactly how little he is, but he’s big enough to eat without extra assistance, excluding the occasional wiping of his face by Drax. Gamora suspects it has something to do with her promise to let him swim after dinner. He’s too excited to take his time by having someone spoon feed him.
He finishes before everyone else and, still, patiently waits for the others to finish before asking if he can go for a swim, and can’t stop the grin from spreading on his face when Rocket, only slightly reluctant, agrees to take him outside, telling him he’ll be waiting out back on the deck with Groot.
When Peter emerges out back ten minutes later, he’s dressed in a completely new outfit. He’s dawns blue swimming shorts and a red and yellow, striped, sleeveless shirt. His skin smells of some kind of protective lotion that he’s been coated in to protect his soft Terran flesh from becoming burned and irritated by the sun. Rocket can tell Gamora’s the one who dressed him. She took precaution. Drax would have just yanked Peter’s shirt off and told him to go have fun. He can be helpful in many ways, but fashion is not his forte. It wasn’t any of theirs. Rocket wore the same three jumpsuits, Drax never liked to wear shirts, Groot didn’t wear clothes, and Manrs had only ever worn what Ego had given her to wear. Gamora was the best when it came to picking out clothes, and the outfit that she’s chosen compliments both the big and little sides of Peter. If Rocket were a fashion nerd, he’d give an in-depth review.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” The boy is brimming with excitement, his four dinosaurs cradled in one arm (because they HAD to go explore outside, too!) while he reaches out with his free hand to take hold of Groot’s. Three of them descend down the steps at the far end of the deck and gross the small stretch of grass to reach the sandy shore of the lake. Gamora watches in the doorway, where she has a clear view of the three of them tentatively stepping in to the water, while Mantis lingers somewhere behind.
“I’m going to join them. I think a relaxing evening would be nice for everyone,” Gamora declares, stepping away from the door and heading toward the bedrooms to find her swimwear. Drax, opting not to change, goes straight for the door and out on to the deck, dragging two of the long deck chairs with him as he makes his way down the steps and out to the others.
“Are you going to swim as well?” Gamora prompts when she returns, startling Mantis who’d been standing still and watching through the glass door, caught up in watching the others interact. She’s wearing a soft yellow sun dress, the top strap of her swim suit visible over her shoulders. She’s got a few towels tucked under one of her arms as well.
“I...I don’t know how to swim,” Mantis says shyly. “Ego never felt like he needed to teach me. There was to need for me to swim on his planet. I spent most of my days in his palace or on his ship…” She also did not want to intrude on their close family moment. The guys already seem to be enjoying themselves, Groot and Drax each holding one of Peter’s hands as they stood waist-deep in the water. He appears to be enjoying himself even more than he had been when he was playing with Mantis earlier. “I also don’t have swimming attire.”
“Just wear what you have,” Gamora suggests, stepping out in to the deck with Mantis slowly following behind her. “You can always change leter. And you don’t have to go deep or get in the water at all, either. But if you do, we won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
“O-okay…”
Having taken note of the way Peter had taken Groot’s hand earlier, Mantis reaches over, making a grab for Gamora’s hand. Although Mantis’ powers are not working their magic, Gamora swears she can feel excitement and nervousness emitting from Mantis as she leads her off the deck and over to the sand, only letting her hand go when they’d reached the spot where Drax had placed the lounge chairs. At first, Gamora had wanted to jerk her hand away. To hiss about not being grabbed, but she understood that Mantis only wanted to be included without making it awkward, and she was learning from Peter, who seemed to have some kind of magic charm when it came to bringing people together as a family.
Gamora sets the towels down on a chair and peels her sundress off, dropping it on the sand beside one of the chairs to reveal a simple black bikini. Somehow, the simplicity suits her, and she wastes no time getting in to the water to join the others.
Despite not knowing how to swim, and a slight fear of drowning, Mantis follows, immediately clinging to Groot as soon as she’s close enough, and not letting go. Groot doesn’t mind, though. Rocket’s climbed all over him, and Peter has clung to him enough times, it’s a comfortable feeling, being held on to.
Peter certainly has his fill in the water. Swimming in it’s own was, as he liked to describe, totally awesome. And it became even awesome-er once he’d remembered, after the pair had delved a little deeper in to the water while encouraging him to swim back and forth between them, that he’d became practically weightless. And near weightlessness meant that Gamora could hold him with ease and no strain.
Although Gamora was extremely strong, the evidence having been seen with Peter’s own eyes in the heat of battle, she couldn’t exactly carry him for long. Not the way Groot and sometimes Drax could. Her bouts of extreme strength usually only emerge during the heat of a moment, in the middle of a fight.
But here, in the water, she didn’t need adrenaline or motive. She could hold Peter on her hip with ease, and he could rest his head on her shoulder…and close his eyes…and just dose.
“Are you sleepy, my love?” Gamora questions, lightly jostling him to wake him up.
“Mm-hmm.” He hums as nods against her shoulder.
“Do you want to get out?”
“Uhhhh,” He thinks about it for a moment. He likes it here, being able to hook his legs around Gamora’s waist while he pillows his head on her shoulder, one of the most intimate holds, but he also needs a break from the water, and maybe Gamora needs a break from holding him like this. “...Okay.”
“We’ll be sitting just over there if you need us,” Gamora says, taking Peter by the hand as he untangled from her and leading him toward the shore. When they approach the lounge chairs sitting in the sand, She swipes a towel off of one of them and uses it to dry Peter’s hair before wrapping it around him, then takes a towel for herself, neatly wrapping it around her midsection.
She sits out on the chair, letting the sun warm her rich green skin and welcomes Peter in to an embrace as he hesitantly crawls over her and positions himself sitting side-sattle between her thighs. His legs drape over one of her tights, and his lower back rests against the other, and he patiently waits for her to lean over and pick up the sundress that lays in the sand to dig through one of the pockets.
His content only grows deeper when she pulls out and presents to him a blue pacifier. Something he hadn’t seen in a long time.
“It was still in the drawer on the Milano. I washed it off earlier.” She’d also been careful to make sure no sand had gotten on to it, and he feels a warm fuzzy feeling spread through his chest when he takes it from her.
He replies with a soft, “Thank you, Gammy.”
He’s not sure exactly how old he is in his headspace at the current moment, but it feels right when he pops it in his mouth and leans over to lay against Gamora, gently burying his face in the crook of her neck to keep the sun away, eyes closed and relishing the feeling of her putting her arms around him and gently patting and rubbing at his back.
He feels safe, and loved, and that’s all he’s ever wanted to gain from this.