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“Man, will you get out of the cabinets!”

“I’m not in your stupid—!”

“—you’re quite literally hanging out of—!”

“—take it easy, birdbrain! I'm just trying to find something that won’t taste like cardboard! I’ve eaten spoiled rations better than whatever you Terrans call food!”

Clinking of utensils, sizzling of pans, rhythmic clang of pots colliding — even standing in the same room, Rocket had to shout to be heard.

Sam purposefully dropped his spatula, creating a sound almost as loud as the shout that followed.

“Would you just let me finish cooking before you put your nasty paws all over my—!”

“—my paws are clean, you arrogant—!”

For a spacious lounge that had multiple corners holding an array of rooms, from a kitchen all the way to an entertainment space, there suddenly wasn’t enough fresh air for everyone to breathe.

The smell of Sam’s burning cooking oil only made that all the more difficult.

And as if their visiting guests weren’t enough, the straggling few who eventually arrived made things things all the more crowded — Vision was brought over at Thor’s request, with of course Wanda at his side, much to her content.

And Bruce was all but dragged along, much to his dis content.

The lounge was quickly packed, bustling with activity in every corner accessible. It was a far cry from the modest five who normally occupied the sofa’s.

Clint — one of those aforementioned five — sat at the kitchen island on a barstool that hunched his back forward, sipping casually on his beer while dead-center of the ongoing chaos.

“I’m telling you right now, rodent—!”

“—what I’d tell you about calling me a rodent!”

“There is quite a lot of people here.”

Vision’s voice came from Clint’s hip-side, his presence known only with the words he spoke. If he hadn’t said anything, he was sure to get lost in the abundance of bodies that shuffled in and out of the kitchen.

Clint threw the android a sideways glance, and then another glance when the initial sight of human blonde hair and pale white skin threw him for a loop.

A few weeks hadn’t been long enough for any of them to adjust to his new appearance.

“Sure is.” Clint gave an easy, firm nod — the shatter of glass stealing away anything that could’ve been said next. A wince got caught in the opening of his beer bottle as he swigged down the rest of his drink.

Foreign curse words followed, but were barely heard over the roaring music of the late 1970’s.

“It doesn’t feel weird,” Vision just barely managed to be heard over excitedly sung music. Clint considered that a feat, seeing as the android barely changed the volume of his voice — and the music was just that loud.

Swallowing the last of his drink, Clint sat the empty beer bottle down onto the island with a slightly-muffled burp.

“Nah,” he said, half into his fist, half out in the open, “it really doesn’t, does it?”

Clint twisted in his chair and looked around at the crowd; eyeing more people than he could keep track of all at once. But Vision wasn’t wrong — it didn’t feel weird. There was no urgency on his behalf for surveillance, no need to find a corner to oversee everyone with a full head count of occupants.

Alcohol aside, he felt the most relaxed he had in some time.

While the kitchen remained the most occupied, seeing as there was freshly cooked food being stacked all across the counter tops, there were still some folks who managed to find a secluded space away from the activity — no matter how difficult that task seemed to be.

Clint wasn’t even remotely surprised when he finally caught sight of Bruce, isolated at the corner of the lounge. His laptop sat on the window bay overlooking the courtyard garden, his back hunched forward while sitting on a bar stool he’d dragged away from the kitchen.

“Better get some food before it’s all gone, Banner!” Clint cupped both hands over his mouth when he called out to the scientist, making sure he was heard over both the music and the bad karaoke singing of the same music — loud enough to sound as if three men were singing it, but in actuality was only voiced by one.

“Everybody’s FEELING warm and BRIGHT, it’s such a—!”

“Give it a break, Quill—!”

The only response Bruce gave was a dismissive wave of his hand, his attention never once wavering from the screen of his laptop.

Not even the upbeat music and smorgasbord of food seemed to have any effect on his attention. Or his mood.

Vision noticed as much, and a tight furrow went on to wrinkle the pale skin between his brows.

“Pardon me for asking this…but is Doctor Banner—?”

“Yeah, no, he’s been a mess ever since Wakanda.” Clint reached for his bottle, only to realize it’d been emptied moments earlier. He tapped it mindlessly against the kitchen island, with no rhythm to the beat. “That whole thing with Venom got into his head, bad. He’s been tying himself up with his own meaningless projects ever since we got back. All of its distractions, if you ask me.”

Tired of holding his empty beer bottle, Clint opted instead for food — leaning over the island for the plate of chicken wings and grabbing one of the two remaining.

As he did, Vision kept his attention strictly on the window bay where Bruce sat, hunched over his stool and typing furiously on his laptop.

“I can’t speak on what happened, having not been there myself,” Vision paused, his head tilting slightly as he stared up ahead. Bruce was far too invested in his work to notice the attention that had found his way. “Still, I imagine going up against a creature like that must’ve been…something of a traumatic event.”

“Yeah, sure.” Clint chewed meticulously slow on the center of his chicken wing, only sparing Vision a glance once he swallowed his food in one single gulp. “But for who?”

The beat that followed softened Vision’s expression, every stress line in the pale skin of his face falling flat with abrupt realization.

“Oh.”

And then a fourth plate shattered in the kitchen, followed by Sam ’s, “If you don’t knock it off this goddamn second—”

“Rocket!” Gamora all but screamed across the lounge. “What part about behave are you not comprehending—!?”

“It ain’t my fault these dishes are so flimsy! Who makes dishes this flimsy, I mean, come on! Even Groot wouldn't trust these things to hold his twigs!”

“Mh-hm,” Clint sounded, reaching forward for the last chicken wing on the plate up ahead.

With his attention still directed towards Vision, Clint reached blindly — and failed to notice when a stream of red lights tangled around the plate, lifting the remaining chicken wing with ease and floating it far out of reach.

Only when he only grabbed thin air did Clint shoot his head around, managing to locate the floating chicken wing through zig-zagging bodies coming and going from the kitchen.

With the hand not pulling the food towards her, Wanda gave a fluid wave — all five of her fingers dancing with a grin highlighting the laugh in her eyes.

“Pick-pocketing appetizers now?” That laugh burst right through her when Clint pointed a overly-stern finger straight in her direction. He didn’t hesitate to admonish her, his eyes narrowing with his finger growing more ridged along the way. “I thought we raised you better than that, Maximoff.”

Whether it was in jest or not didn’t matter; Wanda’s laughter only grew louder. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath long enough to nibble on the chicken wing she’d stolen from him.

Clint kept up the act of chastising the young woman even as she slipped back into the crowd, rejoining Sam at the stovetop with excited movements of her hands; correlating with the seasoning he picked from the cupboard, having already prepped for the next meal to be made.

Vision spared glances from one individual to the next — eyeing Clint as long as he eyed Wanda, with silent contemplation that filled the lull in their conversation.

It was a total of four times he cleared his throat before he turned to Clint, and stiff as a board along the way.

“What I’m about to say may sound…particularly selfish, considering Doctor Banner’s current struggles,” Vision began, words nearly failing him for a moment. “But all things considered, I’m glad Wanda is, at least, doing better. After…everything. Particularly, from this year.”

Clint didn’t need Vision to get specific — he could’ve said little to nothing at all and the message still would’ve gotten across, even in his awkward-android ways.

It only hit harder as he kept on watching the red-haired girl from across the kitchen, long after she diverted her attention to the others.

There seemed to be an argument about how to season a cooking pan, but there were too many voices talking all at once to truly understand.

All Clint cared about was the smiles and laughter he could hear break through the music playing overhead, sounding of better days that were long since overdue.

“Yeah, yeah, you know…” Clint manged to get the words out even as he worked his jaw side-to-side, slouching so far over the island that his elbows were pressing against the counter top. “She needs this time off. It’s well earned.”

For a moment, his chin found its way to the cusp of his hands, until his slouch took him so far down it began to pull at the muscles in his aching and aging back.

“Leaving after the wedding, right?” Clint cleared his throat at the same time he straightened his back, using the moment of physical discomfort to disguise his vocal discomfort.

If Vision caught on, he didn’t mention it. Rather, he simply answered, “Tickets for Scotland are on her bedside. I must say, she’s…very excited.”

The argument grew louder from near the stove-top, where Wanda was pushing Sam away with her hand, laughing as he continued to make threats they could all hear were nothing but good hearted.

As unnatural as it felt, Clint forced a smile. “Bedside tickets. Well, if that isn’t romantic.”

Even without looking his way, Clint could see the grin that spread across Vision’s face — different now, far more human appearing than ever before. It was the same type of genuine happiness he’d seen from Wanda as of late.

Clint couldn’t deny what Vision had said; it nice to see Wanda doing better, all things considered.

Here, he could see that.

“Yeah, yeah, she needs the time off,” Clint spoke as if he were trying to convince himself of what he knew was already true. His head bobbed along to his own words, arms folding over his chest as he spoke to reality what would be reality regardless.

A whole year.

It was a whole year Wanda planned to go away.

The decision had come as a surprise, and an unexpected one at that. Just a few weeks ago she had announced it, and not even Steve had the heart to deny her request. Clint couldn’t fault her, either — no matter how hard he tried. And already being a father of three, he liked to think he’d perfected the skill of persuasion as well as he perfected the craftsmanship of his archery.

But with Wanda…well, he truly couldn’t find any reason to fault her. All the girl wanted to do was to go and live her life, take advantage of the opportunity her brother never got — an opportunity she never thought she’d get, either. A life full of war and loneliness, topped with a handful of near-death experiences — it was more than enough to warrant her a break from all that madness.

But here, at least, he could see her doing better.

“I’m glad she’s got you,” Clint cut through the stagnance of their conversation, leaning back slightly, folding both arms against his chest along the way. “You know, to be there for her.”

Vision kept his response as a single nod of his head, the quietest thing against the activity from the kitchen.

So when Clint didn’t hear a direct response, he physically twisted inward — arms still crossed, with an eyebrow arched as tight as he’d pull his bow string.

“You better be there for her.”

Clint’s voice didn’t need to reach over the volume of the kitchen chaos. The music could’ve been blasting through the ceiling speakers and his words would’ve still found a way through.

Vision tilted his head low, and with genuine sincerity at that. “I wouldn’t dare do anything but.”

There wasn’t silence that followed, but there weren’t words either. It was a pause long enough that unbeknownst to them both, the red tangles of airy magic had slowly begun to transcend their way, until a single chicken wing dropped down on the kitchen island — right where Clint sat.

Clint looked at the piece of fried chicken, briefly, before looking up and finding Wanda standing off to the side.

She waved again, as light and carefree as the last time — with a smile to match.

“You can do that?”

Wanda jerked her head to the side, that smile nearly running right off her face at Mantis’ sudden appearance.

As if noticing her distress, the two antennas on Mantis’ forehead began to glow; casting off a light as soft as the afternoon sun coming through the ceiling skylights.

Wanda nodded, with a smile that was a tad bit more stressed than before.

“I can,” she answered, quietly. “Yes.”

Mantis’ curiosity didn’t need to be vocalized — it was evident in the way she eyed Wanda from head to toe, fascinated, almost ecstatic looking.

And close enough that her antennas could’ve brushed against Wanda’s own forehead.

“And what’s your secret sauce, grasshopper?” Clint’s voice reached over the kitchen crowd from where he sat at the island, easily gaining Mantis’ attention — and diverting the spotlight from Wanda, who seemed visibly relieved. He took a large bite into his chicken wing before asking, “Tell me, why did SHIELD classify you a level four threat?”

“Wait — what? Hold up a minute!” Quill’s voice was heard at a volume no different than how he’d been singing. In fact, he raised his voice even higher to ensure Clint heard him from the entertainment space of the lounge; standing over the billiards table with a cue stick in his one hand, and a block of chalk in the other. “She’s classified as a level four threat? Four of what?”

Their back-and-forth semi-shouting caught the attention of the others, with various conversations dying out in favor of hearing what was being discussed.

“Five.” Clint didn’t even turn in his barstool to face Quill when he answered the question.

Quill spun to face the others, those who were nearby having directed their attention his way.

“She’s a four of five?” Quill used the tip of his cue stick to point at his chest, looking to the kitchen where Clint sat. “So what am I? I’m a five, right? I’m OP, I’m as high as they go, I’m—”

From the lounge, Rhodey was the one to answer, “Two point five.”

Sitting next to him and kicked back on the sofa, Tony audibly snorted into the mouth of his beer bottle, managing to sputter some liquid out along the way.

“Two point five?” Quill dropped the billards chalk without a care to where it rolled off, using his cue stick to express his incredulity — waving it forward with heated frustration. “Two point — I’m half-God! She was just larval that got touchy-feely powers! What kind of bogus, rigged, stupid system is that—!”

“She can get into people’s heads.” Clint turned around to face Quill —his expression as deadpanned as his muscles could manage. “SHIELD classifies that as a level four threat.”

The room grew noticeably quieter than before — the kitchen still stirred with cooking activities and lively conversation, but now the overhead music and the lyrics from decades passed took center attention.

It was Wanda who turned to face Mantis, her brows furrowed slightly. But out of curiosity more than fear.

“You can do that?” she asked, quietly, her accent seemingly thickening with each word.

Mantis looked around, the slight furrow in her own brow showcasing the same feel of insecurity Wanda showed moments before; suddenly put off by the many eyes that found their way towards her.

It was a tight shake of her head that argued their assumptions.

“No, I’m — it’s different,” Mantis spoke with clipped, timid words. She didn’t fight the long pause that followed. “To get in your head, it’s…it’s…— telepaths know thoughts. Empaths…feel feelings. We feel what you feel. Emotions.”

CLANK!

“That’s just great.” Rhodey leaned forward, placing his beer on the glass surface of the center coffee table with more force than necessary. “I’ve been emotionally compromised by a bug, Tones.”

Sitting on the couch cushion next to him, Tony smacked the back of his hand against Rhodey’s arm as the man stood to his feet, mechanical leg braces whirring through it all.

“The witch got into my head!” he playfully tossed back, along with a quick snap of his fingers. “Just think of it as an initiation.”

Rhodey’s glare was harsh enough to put Tony’s repulsor energy to shame — lingering long after he departed to the dining room for food.

And still, Tony smirked — never one to resist pushing buttons when there were buttons to push.

“Wait,” Peter peaked his head through the crowd in the kitchen, turning towards the lounge with a plate dangling precariously in his one hand — and dangerously close to losing his mountain of bacon with one wrong move. “Are you guys talking about reading minds? Isn’t that how I got initiated?”

“It doesn’t matter!” Quill couldn’t have swung his cue stick any harder if he tried. All fifteen balls took a hard hit from his one, bouncing across the billiard table with force. “So big deal, she can touch you and then say ‘you’re sad, you’re angry, you’re cranky because you didn’t sleep last night after that Dr’skin food ruined your stomach and you couldn’t stop having the bubble shits in a sketchy reststall of a fuel station off the detour from the ninth star system—”

“And there goes my appetite again.” Gamora pushed her plate of food away at the same time she stood from the dining room table, with Groot jumping off her shoulder as she left him behind.

His little legs took him as fast as he could towards the plate of half eaten nacho’s left on the table.

As she made her way to the kitchen for a fresh drink, Groot had no hesitation digging both his twigs into the abandoned nacho’s for himself; guiding the cheese-covered chip into his mouth and careless to the mess that he created.

“Hey, Quill!” Rocket crassly called out from the kitchen, somewhere near the stovetop but noticeably lost in the array of people floating around. “We gotta get one of these for the Benatar!”

Cranking his arm back, Quill hesitated mid-shot on his cue-stick as he looked up and over into the kitchen. Both his eyes squinted when he caught sight of Rocket, standing on the counter-top next to where Sam was cooking.

“A griddle?” Quill called out, all while making sure his shot lined up.

Rocket waved a dismissive hand from over in the kitchen. “Yeah, sure, whatever you squishy Terrans call it.”

“I saw something like a griddle back on Knowhere!” Quill straightened his back, standing straight so he could point the cue-stick at Rocket. “Back when we were scrounging trades for engine parts. You wouldn’t let me get it because you said ‘there ain’t no flarking room for that hunk of junk!’”

Once again, Rocket waved a dismissive hand from over in the kitchen — somehow more dismissive than the last.

“Yeah, but that’s before I knew it could make pancakes.” Rocket pointed a sharp claw at the griddle in front of him, the steam rising up over his fur as Sam flipped the row of pancakes laid out in front of him. “It can make pancakes, Quill!”

The word pancake seemed to flip a switch in Groot’s brain.

“I am Groooottt!”

Almost immediately, he dropped the nacho filled tortilla chip that once consumed his entire focus — nearly slipping in melted cheese as he scampered down the dinning room table and all but ran into the kitchen.

“I am Groot! I am Groot!” The small voice excitedly chanted in high-pitched enthusiasm, but with the many conversations taking place, he was barely heard. “I am Groot!”

Quill made a noticeable face as he wagged his cue-stick towards Rocket.“I told you it could make pancakes!”

Rocket’s hand flopped in the most dismissive way possible yet. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t listening.”

If it were at all possible, Quill’s eye-roll could be seen all the way back up in space.

Rocket didn’t seem bothered. His attention stayed strictly focused on the cooking device in front of him; his eyes growing wide as Sam poured liquid batter onto the melted butter bubbling across the surface.

“You know,” Rocket went on to point a single claw at the griddle, “I could easily dissemble this heating device and rewire it into—”

“Man, shut the hell up and let me finish cooking my damn pancakes.” Sam didn’t even waste effort looking his way. He flipped a single pancake without sparing Rocket so much a glance.

Rocket frowned, making a noise — and most certainly swearing in foreign curse words — as he made his way off the counter-top and elsewhere in the kitchen.

Sam knew that without looking, because within minutes the sound of more breaking glass was interlude to the changing songs playing overhead.

“Get out of the kitchen, Rocket!” Gamora’s no-nonsense tone was sharper than any knife they had at their disposal.

And yet still, “I didn’t do nuttin’! Groot nearly tripped me—!”

“Have you never heard of you break it, you buy it?” Quill’s voice shouted along with the CLACK of billiard balls scattering across the table. “Keep it up and you’re paying every credit they charge us with—”

“With what!?” Rocket shouted back. “We haven’t had a job in months, and who’s flarking fault is that—!?”

Sam shook his head and flipped another pancake on the griddle.

“Captain America needs my help. There's no better reason to get back in,” he muttered to himself, the sarcasm in his voice as thick as the bottle of maple syrup that sat next to the plate of pancakes.

Drax approached that plate with a burp that could’ve rumbled the floor they stood on, not even hesitating as he grabbed the entire plate for himself — and reached over Sam’s shoulder as he used his bare hands to grab those still cooking on the griddle.

Sam watched, wordlessly, as the large man took all the pancakes off the griddle. Fully cooked or not.

With that, he twisted the cap off the bottle of maple syrup and proceeded to dump the entire contents onto the stack of pancakes, not stopping until the plate was drenched and soaked.

As Drax took a seat at the kitchen island across from Clint, Groot found a way to join him, climbing up the bar stool with tiny huffs and puffs echoing his efforts.

Hunched forward, the larger man dug into his meal — fork in one hand, knife in the other — with Groot digging both twigs into the pancakes for himself, chewing away at the massive stack one bite at a time.

Sam wasn’t the only one to watch wordlessly. Clint didn’t have a single coherent thought to speak out loud.

There had to be at least twenty-five pancakes on the plate.

And yet, Drax wasn’t showing signs of stopping anytime soon.

The breezy, carefree music took the place of their voices, shifting the atmosphere with something far less upbeat — and far less likely to be selected for an mutually unwanted Karaoke session.

▶• lıllılı.ıllı.ılılıılıı.lllııılı. Now Playing [Refugee] 0:15 ———♡——— 3:21 ◁◁ ▐ ▌ ▷▷

“Ohh, sing it, Tom Petty!” Quill pocketed his music device back into his jacket, immediately going for the cue-stick he’d set aside against the pool table. It made for a perfect microphone.“We did somethin' we both know it, we don’t talk too much about it—!”

Thor’s bold break of laughter easily overtook Quill’s deep-throated singing.

Though most didn’t know what the laughter stemmed from, they had no complaints hearing it over the greatly-exaggerated ‘twang’ that Quill bolted from the depths of his lungs — making it nearly impossible to hear who actually sung the classic song from decades ago.

“Don’t! Have! To live like a refugee!”

“Oh, how I’ve missed these little talks of ours,” Thor spoke in a sigh that lifted his chest high and came sinking down with him onto the sofa.

He spread out on the cushion, his arm reaching over the back of the couch and his legs far apart without a care to spacial awareness. The casual attire he’d since changed into made him fit in all the more with the group, blending in far more than their fellow space visitors.

It wasn’t that he needed to change clothes. Tony just got sick of Peter fumbling over his words because the Mighty God’s bulging-biceps kept distracting his already short and shot attention span.

“What’s it been, anyway? Two years?” Steve joined him on the opposite sofa, and opposite to where Tony already sat — with his leg crossed over his thigh and tinted glasses placed stylishly on his face, yet already slipping down the bridge of his nose.

They each sat alone on their own respective couch, but still in close proximity to one another — unintentionally finding a moment where only the three of them occupied the lounge.

Thor’s laughter grew softer in his answer. “I suppose, yes, that sounds right. And quite the time it has been.”

“You know,” Tony lifted his drink to his mouth as he said, “it wouldn’t hurt to give a little heads up the next time you decide to come crash landing on highly secured government property.”

Steve threw Tony a look, one that tried to look more aggravated than he actually was.

“While Tony’s not wrong,” Steve turned away from Tony — who was unapologetic as always — and gestured his own drink forward without consuming a sip. The bottle may have been brown, but the liquid was just that for him. Plain, average liquid. “It’s still great to have you here.”

While Steve drank with no consequence, Rhodey was clearly already feeling the effects of his drinks; busying himself in the kitchen as he somewhat audibly, excitedly, and slightly drunkenly exclaimed—

“—BOOM! You looking for this?”

Peter’s gasp could’ve very well been drunken as well, if the same reasons for Steve didn’t also apply to him — not to mention his drinks were limited to the small variety of alcoholic free juices in their now-broken refrigerator.

“Dude! That’s so cool!” Peter hesitated only so he could take a bite of food, garbling out, “And then what?”

The pause that followed was painfully awkward.

“What…what-what do you mean, then what?”

“Like, then what?” Peter was chewing something — it was audible in each muffled attempt of his words. A hard swallow freed his mouth to ask, “What happened next?”

Rhodey cleared his throat a few times before he finally answered.

“Well…then I had to file a report with the AMC to follow up with Major Commands of Air Staff — you see, the AFSOC, that’s the Air Force Space Command — there’s paper pushing after stuff like that, usually a mission detail, and then with that you make something they call a contingency plan, it’s essentially your plan B, C and D, and they gather that data and use it for any similar mission in the same classified — you stopped listening, didn’t you?”

There was a solid beat before,

“Huh?”

“This place is bigger!” Thor broke the lull of their conversation with a hearty smile and an equally hearty bout of enthusiasm — though a tight line did quickly crinkle the space between his brows. “Or so I think. It’s still tiny. But…also, bigger.”

Steve kicked back on the sofa, looking towards Tony to answer.

Tony simply gestured his drink forward.

“You know what they say. Gotta keep going to keep growing,” he rolled out each word with a smooth and easy effort, and a smirk to follow suit. “After all, a business like this — the more people on our side, the better.”

Thor nodded in agreeance, at first eagerly, and then with diminishing vigor.

“Yes, yes,” he nodded on, looking around the lounge with a weight that clouded his eyes. “These battles, they never stop coming our way, do they?”

It was the timeless lyrics from far back in the 1970’s that filled the place of idle conversation — as long as Quill’s music played from the overhead speakers, there was never truly a moment of silence between them.

                        ♫ Somebody, somewhere,
                    must've kicked you around some ♫
                      tell me why you wanna lay there♫
                                 and revel in your abandon ♫                        

Tony purposefully cleared his throat, breaking the lull as gently as he could.

“You know, not to turn the fun times into shoptalk…” he started to say, leaning forward to dispose of his near-empty beer bottle. “But the last time we saw you—”

“The stones, yes,” Thor easily interrupted, long before Tony had even gotten his bottle on the table.

Tony arched an eyebrow and Thor nodded his head some more, turning contemplative as the seconds passed.

“The infinity stones have proven themselves to be a mighty foe.” Thor frowned, deeply. “I’ve been seeking answers I cannot find…about many things.”

The energy that once played in the music seemed to have vanished, replacing the mood with something noticeably heavier.

Clint, already listening in with one ear, slowly but surely left the kitchen island once his curiosity couldn’t be contained.

“Thor?” Clint stopped where the couches began, leaning his hip casually against the armrest of the sofa where Tony sat. He gestured his beer bottle forward. “You okay there, big fella?”

Before anyone could open their mouths to speak, a crass shout sounded from the kitchen.

“Don’t get him started!” Rocket raised his voice so loud, it cracked at the edges — practically sounding desperate. “You get this blubbering mess started and—!”

“It all started with my father!” Thor boldly interrupted, followed by a groan from Rocket that was so loud, it echoed through the kitchen. That didn’t stop Thor from continuing on, leaning forward on the sofa as if the weight that burdened his shoulders was too heavy for even him to carry. “I found him to be missing. And it was in my search for him that I discovered my brother, Loki, had been well and alive all along.”

Tony leaned forward much quicker than Thor, absolutely no burden of weight keeping him from doing so.

“You wanna pass that by us again?” he quickly fired out.

“Loki’s alive, Thor?” Steve was hand-in-hand with Tony’s concern. They went so far to share a look — both saying different things, but somehow still communicating the same message.

No sooner after that, Steve looked back at Thor. “I thought you said he died, shortly before everything with Ultron.”

The mere mention of that name spoken was enough to bring Natasha to the lounge, her arms tightly crossed against her chest as she found a stance next to Clint. The music may have been lively and loud, but it wasn’t loud enough to overtake Thor’s voice — even if she hadn’t been discreetly listening in, she still would’ve heard him talking.

Unlike Thor, Natasha stayed quiet, waiting like the others to hear his answer.

“Yes, so I assumed,” Thor finally managed to say, his gaze caught on the rim of his metal cup, with eyes that seemed far away from the liquid that swirled inside. “That betrayal, it was…”

No different than the hours that had passed, Quill’s music kept the silence at bay. Vocal’s flew down from the ceiling with a raspy, warm, rugged tone, keeping his sentence hanging in the air as the classic rock song played on.

                                ♫ You see
                         you don't ♫
                                            have to live ♫
                                    like a refugee ♫

“It does not matter now,” Thor broke through the silence with a voice far weaker than any tone he’d used so far. Natasha went so far as to arch an eyebrow — suddenly put off by the display of emotion. “He has gone his way, and so have I.”

As Steve leaned further forward on his sofa, he shared another glance with Tony — who had since peeled off his glasses, busy tucking them into the opening of his polo placket where they could hang freely. He kept his eyes on Thor, no different than Clint and Natasha.

“Yep, off you’ve gone, all the way to space—” The crass voice called out from the kitchen, reminding them they weren’t the only five who occupied the lounge. “Time moves on, we get over things, we stop talking about things—!”

“Rocket!” Quill was the one to admonish him this time, giving Gamora a much needed break.

Rocket didn’t care. “You know damn well if we don’t stop him now, he’ll—!”

“—ever since the mechanical beast you named Ultron, I’d been plagued by a reoccurring dream,” Thor steamrolled right over him. “One of Asgard falling to ruins—”

“ —what’d I tell you!”

With a deep breath pulling his shoulders taut, Thor looked to the ceiling, the thickness of his beard catching the skylights glare and long locks of golden blonde hair that draped over his head.

He kept his gaze there, even as he kept speaking. “I had no foresight to see that the end of Asgard would come from my very sister, forcing the prophesy of Ragnarok on my people.”

Natasha’s eyebrow climbed higher up her forehead.

“You have a sister?”

Thor looked straight to Natasha, his voice firm when he answered.

“Had,” he corrected. “By blood only. My father’s first born, the Goddess of Death.”

For a brief moment — just a split passing hand on the clock — there was silence as one song faded out before another started.

Nobody seemed eager to touch that one, not any of the four who’d gathered around.

So no one did.

“She stole Asgard form us all. Destroyed it,” Thor eventually continued on, and so did the music. “Destroyed my hammer! In the midst of our first encounter, she threw me out of the bifrost, where I found myself on a planet called Sakaar. That’s where I found Banner!”

Just like that, Thor found himself in high spirits — twisting on the sofa so he could face the corner of the lounge.

“Banner! Hey, Banner!” Thor shouted across the room, waving his arm frantically in the air to be seen. “I’m talking about you!”

There wasn’t any possible way for Bruce not to hear Thor — and he did, going on to wave his hand dismissively, no different than before. If his back hunched any further forward, his nose would’ve been kissing the screen of his laptop.

Thor twisted back around with a beaming grin, all while pointing his thumb behind him where Bruce sat far away from the others.

“Banner had been on that planet since his departure from the place you called Sokovia — Hulk was, anyway,” he explained, eagerly, with a smile that pulled his lips tight. “Hulk even tried to kill me in battle!”

Thor gave a hearty laugh, a vast contrast to the mixed bag of expressions that painted the faces of everyone else.

“He almost won,” Thor chuckled with his words, his laugh growing much quieter as he kept nodding his head, over and over again. “He almost won.”

There was just enough silence to make things awkward for all five individuals — Bruce being the sixth, but too far away to pay any attention to the conversation at hand.

Tony noticed as much, making a face as he lifted his chin high to catch sight of the man nestled away in the corner.

“Brucey-bear, why didn’t tell us about any of that?” Tony called out, his lips tightly pursing together.

Bruce’s shoulders noticeably lifted as he took a deep breath in, facing the others with a shrug that dropped them low.

“Probably because I’m hearing it all for the first time,” he hesitantly admitted, the tint to his cheeks highlighted by the sunlight coming through the bay window. By habit, his one hand began to rub at the back of his neck; embarrassment showing clear as day. “I have no memory of Hulk on Sakaar. All I remember is being zapped back down to Earth, right here, by Doctor Strange — to give you that message, Tony.”

Tony’s lips pursed even tighter at the mention of memories from earlier that year. He jerked his head in the direction of the lounge, signaling for Bruce to come over.

“Stop being a party pooper, Doc Green, join the cool kids already.”

Bruce arched his eyebrow, questionably. “I’m working on your wedding present.”

Tony’s mood changed faster than his Iron Man jetboots could take off.

“Never mind then,” he waved his hand, almost excitedly, as he turned back around on the sofa. “Keep at it, then, busy bee — productivity makes progress, and all that good hoopla.”

The look Steve proceeded to give Tony was too indiscernible for words, but the wink Tony gave in return — that was as Stark Charm as the man could ever get.

And Steve’s look of disappointment that followed when he caught on — well, no different than Tony, it was every bit true to his Captain America nature.

Thor remained oblivious to it all, taking the lull as an opportunity to pick up where he’d left off.

“It took many days to get off Sakaar, and a timeless battle until we saw our escape. Once free, we went for Asgard, me and my friends…and even my brother. Confronting my sister, saving what people we could, but…ultimately, we fled the ruins of our home. She, and Asgard, are no more.”

The weight to Thor’s words were almost as heavy as the man himself, weighing down on the room with a somberness no music could lift.

Steve frowned, leaning forward on the couch to bring himself closer.

“I’m sorry, Thor,” he said, sincerely. He let a break separate his next words. “I can see how it’s been a hard time for you.”

Tony wasn’t quite was sympathetic.

“And Loki?” he asked, a little too quickly.

Steve jerked his head to Tony, his face speaking what his mouth didn’t — ‘ Not appropriate timing, Tony. ’

Tony gave him a face in return — ‘No time like the present, Rogers!’

“Oh, my brother,” Thor chuckled quietly, still oblivious to the two men’s silent communication. Caught up in his own thoughts, he allowed the lines around his mouth abate with a smile. “He came with us, at first. With the Asgardian’s, in our search for a new home. I was hopeful. Oh, I was hopeful. I thought…”

Thor let his words slip away from him, caught in a memory that took his voice and with it, the story he told.

It was clear in the sharp clarity of his crystal blue eye where his pain laid — the vivid hazel of his other eye standing out in the moment of emotion, looking as displaced as he clearly felt.

“The first morning of our journey…he was nowhere to be found on the ship,” Thor spoke quietly, with a rumble that sounded like stones to his throat. “I thought we had fixed our ways. Our father, Odin, brought us together. Loki once said it was poetic his death should split us apart.”

Thor dipped his chin low, moving his wrist slightly to swirl the amber liquid sitting inside his metal cup. He cleared his throat twice before looking up again.

“He had decided his home was elsewhere, I suppose.” Thor forced a smile that was strained at the edges. “Loki, he battles his own demons. He must be the one to fight them.” A hard swallow moved the nodule in Thor’s throat. “That weaselly, greasy bastard. I do miss him.”

The only sound keeping tension away from the moment was the startling CLACK of pool balls bouncing off the table, followed by Quill ’s enthusiastic, “YES, baby! Do better than that, I dare you—!”

“Well, Peter, if you would let me have a turn—”

“I traveled with my people, for a short time,” Thor continued on, just like the changing songs from Quill’s playlist. “But I realized, just like my brother…it was not my journey to go on. Their journey was not mine to embark.”

The noise from the kitchen persisted, even as their conversation went on. Though Tony had long since stopped paying any attention to the troublesome raccoon, others like Clint still couldn’t stop watching as the tiny, walking, talking tree continued to stuff its equally tiny face with pancakes.

There was no denying the complete surrealness of their current guests.

“So how’d you come across…” Clint silently gestured to the Guardians with his head, unable to look away as he watched while maple syrup dripped down Groot’s mouth, all the way to the toes of his twig legs.

It practically drenched the spot where he stood on the kitchen island.

Thor exclaimed with a gleeful, “The Reigning champions of The Genitalia Wars!”

“That’s not—!” Quill quickly interrupted, wagging his cue stick left and right until it made a wobbling noise. “We were undercover, we took a job—!”

“You took that job,” Gamora hastily corrected, “we got dragged into it.”

Thor clapped both his hands together with enough booming resonance that even Groot suddenly stopped eating.

“These good people, I saw their warrior strength — I saw their hunger for battle!” Thor spoke with genuine excitement, earning the attention of the others if only because of the passion he had for his tale. “It was shortly before we fled captivity from Sakaar — Banner! You were there!” Thor twisted back around to face Bruce. “Tell our friends how Hulk dragged us into the Grandmaster’s Great Genitalia Wars!”

Bruce’s dismissive wave came at the same time as Quill’s frantic, “It’s not what it sounds like—”

“The Genitalia Wars were fierce, bloody! A combat of the people I’ve never seen the likes of before!” Thor laughed — a little too loudly for everyone’s comfort. His renewed enthusiasm practically rattled his bones, the grin that overtook his face day and night compared to mere moments earlier. “It was still while trapped on Sakaar that I encountered these fine people, fighting with honor in a way I’ve only ever seen in the hearts of Asgardian’s! They joined our side to win the Grandmaster’s Genitalia Wars, where we forged unity together!”

Quill stressed, again, “We took a job—”

“YOU took that job, Quill!” Gamora shouted back.

“I promised them their victory in our battle, if they could promise their aid in our escape to Asgard,” Thor eagerly explained. “And victory, did we see! Oh, you should’ve seen the Grandmaster’s face when Hulk led the way to triumph as champion—!”

“Oh, did he, now?” Tony couldn’t have whipped his head over to Bruce any faster.

Bruce proceeded to give Tony a gesture that was far from a dismissive wave.

“It was then that silly, strange man came and took you away, Banner,” Thor kept on, completely oblivious to the silent banter happening between the two men. While Bruce kept his finger high in the air, and Tony a smirk that was every bit his flavor, Thor’s brow creased with a sudden tightness. “I had no idea of what happened to you — I thought for sure you had perished there on Saakar!”

Clint noticeably squinted an eye as he gestured his drink off to the side, lazily pointing where the game of billiards was taking place.

“And so…” he trailed off, confusion already vividly laced in his voice. “You guys exchanged pen pals or something…?”

A sharp gasp sounded from across the lounge.

“We are pals, yes!” Mantis’ delighted chime couldn’t have reached any higher in pitch. Along with another shatter of glass from the kitchen.

Tony looked to the ceiling, briefly.

Steve caught glance of him; for a moment wondering if the man was calling for patience, or for his armor.

“These people — you see, I never thought I’d see of them again! They meant nothing to me!”

Thor’s enthusiasm felt misplaced with the words he spoke. Steve went as far to arch an eyebrow, and even Natasha looked on with an uncharacteristically expressive face.

“It was in our journey to find a new home that our ship was forced to land on a nearby planet for supplies and sustenance,” Thor continued on, never one to easily understand their social cues. “By the fates of Odin did I happen to find the Reigning Champions there! Surely it was a sign — someone across the nine realms speaking through to me, saying what needed to be heard at a time I needed to hear it most…”

Thor’s voice trailed off as he looked away, almost distantly, the cup still clenched in his hand but the rim neglected to touch his lips.

At the same time, another clatter sounded from the kitchen.

“I told Quill to hurry up and get to the Bentar running before he saw us,” Rocket droned on from across the lounge, slamming a kitchen cabinet shut along the way. It caused a rattle of noise that echoed through his tangent. “None of you listened to me! I’m tellin’ ya, all of this could’ve been prevented if we had just ditched Mantis at the fuelstop—!”

“We weren’t ditching Mantis!” Quill shouted back.

“And now we’re stuck with him! Congratulations!” Rocket wasn’t shy to holler in return.

“I knew my place was not on our ship,” Thor, to no ones surprise, kept on — even as their bickering continued, just more noise added to a room full of activity. “I knew my home, it laid elsewhere. That…that is what I believe was spoken through the nine realms. And to find it…I needed to venture on my own. And so I asked these good people if they would open their doors to me—”

“—you broke down into a blubbery wet mess until Gamora felt bad enough to let you stay!” Rocket hastily butted in.

Thor failed to notice, “And it is in my travels with the Space Lords—”

“How many times have I told you that ain’t our flarking name—!”

“—that I hope to find a home of my own.” Suddenly, against then harsh layer of chatter and activity nearby, Thor’s voice grew quiet. His face softened, noticeably, but with less grief than before. The lines that deepened the skin around his eyes weren’t that of sorrow, but surety. “And perhaps, though hope is thin, I may find my brother again along the way.”

Not even Quill striking against billiard balls could make the moment that followed any less uncomfortable than it already was.

That much, to everyone’s surprise, Thor wasn’t oblivious to.

“I apologize,” he started to say, leaning back against the couch as if to distance himself from the others. “I know that the mere mention of my brother here on Midgard brings up sour memories—”

“The past is in the past.” Steve held an open palm in the air, stopping Thor right in his tracks. He nodded, firmly. “Family’s important, it’s understandable.”

It had always been hard to gauge the Asgardian for his emotions — always stoic, always firm in his resilience. Steve was more than surprised to see that barrier had broken down since they last were together.

There was now an opennesses wearing on Thor’s sleeve now. If Steve didn’t know better, the God of Thunder almost looked relieved — heartened at the acceptance to his burden, regardless of the history attached to it.

“Yes, yes, right you are.” Thor nodded, many times, before coming to a stop. “Of course, Loki is adopted—”

“Still family.”

This time, it wasn’t anyone in the lounge who spoke up.

All heads turned over to the entertainment space, finding the source of words to have come from the green skinned woman at the pool table. She bent over with her cue stick ready to strike, barely giving those in the lounge a single glance when they all turned to face her.

Standing behind Gamora, Quill pointed his own cue stick in her direction.

“What she said,” he needlessly added.

No one spoke up to disagree.

For a minute, only the music played overhead — a new song overtaking the last, with no song having repeated itself so far.

It was certainly a wide range of tunes in Quill’s collection — no doubt all of which was as outdated as the music player it originated from, but at the very least it kept the atmosphere in the lounge steady; calm and positive, even when dialogue had taken a more somber tone.

Though the conversation came to a halt, things weren’t necessarily quiet. Rather, there was a loud contemplation that followed — internal, and brief. But still there.

“I thought the world of my brother,” Thor broke that shared introspective with his own thoughts spoken out loud. His vulnerability was genuine, bringing a shared nostalgia to the group that grounded them all. “I thought we were going to fight side by side, forever. But at the end of the day, he’s him…and our paths diverged a long time ago. Still. I hope to see of him, once more. To start anew, in this new chapter of our lives.” Thor brought his cup to his mouth, hesitating before it could touch down on his lips. “But if I should never see of him again…so be it.”

And with that, he tossed his drink back, taking a mouthful that emptied the cup dry.

Thor noticeably sniffed when finishing, and swallowed twice for good measure — ruffing his hand through the thickness of his beard in hopes no one would pay any mind to the spasm in his throat, even long after finishing the remains in his cup.

Tony noticed.

“Losing Asgard can’t be easy on you.” Tony looked Thor head-on, his eyes bare and unwavering, with his glasses folded and tucked into the dip of his polo shirt.

“That was your home,” Steve chimed in, scooting a little closer to the edge of the sofa — at this point, the coffee table was the only object that put distance between them.

Thor started out with a nod, one that eventually brought his gaze up to the others. He found each individual in the room — Tony, Clint, Natasha — before firmly settling on Steve, allowing a small smile to tug at his mouth.

“Yes, but…Asgard is not just a place,” Thor finally managed, far quieter than anything he’d said so far. “It’s a people.”

A voice that was normally as resounding as the lightning he’d summon from the skies had suddenly softened, almost beyond recognition — and yet remained as powerful as ever before.

No music could overtake it, no pandemonium from the kitchen, no chit-chat from all corners of the lounge. It was heard, loud and clear — and for Steve, he needed to sit with it for a moment longer than anyone else.

Tony hummed next to him — Steve heard that. Clint made a sound himself, responding more in expression than anything. Steve saw that, having given the archer a quick glance right alongside Natasha; who, per usual, spoke in her own ways. The smallest squint of her eye, a slight arch to her brow.

It was the small things Steve had gotten to know over time, the small things he’d gotten to know about them. It wasn’t even with effort he’d done so. Time had simply had its way with them all, forging bonds between them as natural as the conversation they had now.

“Home is a people.” Steve turned back to Thor, landing on his gaze with a smile in return. “I like that.”

SCREEEeecchhhHHH!

“Yeah, well,” Rocket used both his arms to drag a barstool away from the kitchen island, the legs audibly scratching against the floor as he made his way further into the kitchen. “The Bentar’s guest room is getting a little crowded, so if you wanna unpack your bags here—”

“Rocket!” Both Quill and Gamora simultaneously chided — doing absolutely nothing from stopping Rocket as he used the barstool to reach up for the range hood of the stove.

“What!?” Rocket was already pulling off the range hood’s filter so he could dig his paws inside. “I’m just saying. They seem like a welcoming bunch — stay a little while. Or forever. We won’t know unless you give it a go!”

Quill rolled his eyes as he reset the pool table, aligning the different colored balls inside the wooden rack. Gamora had already departed for the kitchen — most likely to stop Rocket from dissembling whatever he could get his paws onto next.

Steve gave them a brief glance before turning his focus back ahead.

“Well, Thor, as long as you’re here,” he started to say, with a genuine grin to follow suit, “you have a home with us. It doesn’t matter how long you stay—”

“Eight days,” Rhodey curtly interrupted, making his way out of the kitchen as an argument between alien and animal began to increase in volume. At this point, Rocket said more in foreign swear words than he did anything in English. “They need to be flying their asses back to space in eight days—”

“I am Groot!”

The high-pitched shout was so sudden, even Tony looked back to the kitchen — immediately regretting the decision when he caught sight of the tiny tree bouncing up and down on his feet, his twig arms pumping up and down with childish excitement.

Rocket climbed down the top of the stove’s range hood, earning a hard pressed look from Gamora along the way. One that he easily ignored.

“You can’t swim — you just ate!” Rocket pointed a sharp claw Groot’s way. “You can’t swim on a full stomach!”

Both twigs fell to Groot’s hip, planting firmly there as if he were still rooted in a pot himself.

“I am Groot!”

Rocket’s jaw dropped as quickly as he dropped from the range hook. “ No, it doesn’t matter that we’re on vacation — that rule still applies!”

Gamora cocked her head to the side as Rocket walked away from her, his tail swishing with a heated motion that arched her eyebrow high.

“Rocket, if Groot wants to go swimming, then let him—”

Rocket kept walking away, throwing his arm in the air as he called back, “ You take him swimming, then! I don’t want any part in this!”

Groot sounded out with an excited cry, quickly running off the kitchen island and leaving Drax to finish the remaining pancake left on the plate.

A hasty shimmy took Groot down the leg of the table, and his knees buckled when he landed to the floor, stumbling a few steps before he finally took off.

Right as he did, Drax let out a burp so loud, so long, and so hard — it startled Groot into running faster.

Drax then proceeded to lick his plate clean. And then some.

Paying no mind to any of that, Thor went on to give a light laugh, one that matched his easy going smile.

“Thank you, my good friend, Steve,” he said, genuinely, reaching into the pocket of his jacket to retrieve a small bottle from inside. With his other hand, he twisted the lid off, storing it away in the same pocket as before. “Know that for the time I am here, I’m happy to be with you again — please be honored to know that I consider you both my brothers in arms.”

As Thor poured some of the liquid inside his cup, Tony and Steve exchanged a look — amused, to say the least, at Thor’s never ceasing ego.

With a gesture of his hand, Thor motioned for Steve to take from his hold. The movement caught Steve’s attention, who quirked a smile when he took the small glass bottle from Thor.

From there, Thor lifted his cup, gesturing for Tony to do the same. Though his drink was nearly empty, he still brought his bottle forward.

They toasted, wordlessly. And without any words needed.

It was with impeccable timing that Tony finished his swig of beer right in time to catch Steve from trying to hold in his stifled cough, his face twisting into a hard grimace that pinched his eyes tightly together.

Tony arched a brow.

“That do it for you, Rogers?” he asked — eagerly, his curiosity peaking through a little too strongly.

Steve threw him a look, rubbing his bottom lip with his thumb and moving his jaw side to side. He needed to swallow a few times before answering.

“I’m not sure what it is,” he managed through a tight expression, handing the bottle back to Thor with a tight lipped, but still very polite smile. Thor wasn’t offended, not even as Steve went on to say, “Not sure I’ve ever been drunk before.”

Tony craned his head around to face the far corner of the lounge, so suddenly it nearly gave himself whiplash. “Need anything, Bruce? Your drink good? Wanna place an order for the smorgasbord? Would you like a back massage?”

Even with the skylights putting a glare against his glasses, Bruce’s deep concentration on his project could still be seen in his eyes. He didn’t even bother to give Tony any acknowledgment, deciding instead to continue typing away in a fit of hyper focus.

When Tony turned back to Steve, the man still had that look to give.

Tony, already making moves to slip back on his glasses, met that look with another wink that quickly became hidden behind stylish frames.

But not before earning the slightest smirk from Steve — a twitch of his upper lip, in all reality.

Tony saw it.

By the time he had his glasses back on, Thor had already twisted on the couch to face Bruce, his zest renewing a spark of energy inside of him.

“You know Banner, I do greatly miss the Hulk,” he called out, grinning ear-to-ear. “A fun friend, he is!”

A hard scoff shook Bruce’s back, so loud it could be heard all the way from his corner of the lounge.

“Yeah, well, Hulk has had his fair share of excitement since leaving Sakaar,” Bruce kept typing as he spoke, though he did spare a glance to Thor at least once along the way. “After…Venom, I think he’s gunna be taking some much needed time off.”

Crossing the length of the lounge to take the stairs, Drax was the last of the group to hit the steps — Gamora, Groot, and Mantis were already out of sight as they left for the downstairs pool, but the words Drax heard kept him from following.

“Venom?” Drax immediately turned around, returning to the lounge with a sudden disinterest in swimming. “What is this Venom you speak of?”

It was hard to say what noise belonged to what person — everyone had their own share of reactions, from groans that Clint took with him all the way back into the kitchen, to Tony’s drawn out breath of air, exhausting the entirety of his lungs in one single breath.

“You would’ve loved that one, Thunderbolt.” Tony threw a look in Thor’s direction, who seemed simply enthralled at what he was hearing.

It was a sharp contrast to everyone else — even Natasha wore her ordeal openly on her face, biting back a sigh as she took a seat on the armrest next to Tony.

“We could’ve used him for that one,” she needlessly added, tucking her hands deep into the crevices of her armpits with a palpable sense of discomfort.

A long silence fell. Long enough that both Thor and Drax quickly turned their attention to Bruce, fervently anticipating an answer that no one else seemed eager to provide.

This time, Bruce noticed the attention on himself. He looked to Thor, found himself briefly staring at Drax, and ultimately answered — with a demonstration of hands —

“Big monster.”

Drax belted out a laugh that startled them all.

“You weak Terrans have fought a beast!?” His laugh grew louder, followed by the roar of, “Ha! There’s no way—!”

“Got the scars to prove it, Walking Wikipedia,” Tony quickly, and curtly, cut in. The unamused look on his face said the rest — this wasn’t a discussion they wanted to have. Not any of them.

“And this beast was here? On Terra?” Drax never did pick up well on subtly. His excitement only grew from there. “Then we will stay here until I conquer a Terran beast!”

Watching the game of pool take place from where he sat at the dinning room table, Rhodey hiccuped into the rim of his bottle as he stressed,

“Eight days.”

Mid-swig, Rhodey’s chest bounced with another hiccup. He didn’t seem to care, going on to swallow more of his drink right after.

Quill struck his cue stick against the billiard balls before standing up straight. “Drax, we’re not sticking around here so you can—”

“I long for battle!” Drax argued, without hesitation. Five large steps brought him to the billiard table, with his hands clenched tightly into fists near his bare chest. “It has been ages since we’ve fought the flesh of another! I want to feel the throat of my prey beneath my fingers as I choke them into the pulsating agony of—”

“Drax.” Quill immediately put his cue stick aside, laying it gently across the pool table as he took quick but cautious steps towards his friend. “Dude. Chill out—”

Drax smacked his hand away. “This…this stillness! This quiet. It doesn’t depress you?”

Partially listening in, Steve craned his head around to face those not far behind him.

“I lived through the great depression,” he commented, with a smirk. “Things can only go up from there.”

“The great depression?” Rocket threw a closed fist down onto the dinning room table, bouncing a few loose forks and spoons along the way. While others ate, he pouted. “This is the great depression! We just going to sit around and yap all day long, or we going to do something!?”

Quill passed by the table on his way into the kitchen, gesturing his arm openly to Rocket as he walked on by.

“Go swimming with Groot and the girls!” he suggested, going on to point at the stairs where Gamora, Mantis, and Groot had since departed.

Appalled, Rocket jumped onto the dinning room table — much to Rhodey’s displeasure.

“You know I don’t swim!” Rocket crassly called out, his right leg stomping down on the table and rattling the plate Rhodey was trying to eat from. “I don’t get wet!”

Quill spun dramatically fast on his heels to face Rocket, long before ever crossing the threshold of the kitchen.

“Oh, you don’t get wet?” he repeated, strutting forward with an eyebrow arching higher than the skylights. “What about that time on Exita—”

Rocket scampered across the surface of the table, his tail swinging wildly along the way. “Don’t you dare tell that story—”

“C’mon, man!” Rhodey exasperatedly huffed, pushing his plate aside once Rocket’s tail flopped down into his food.

“What happened?” Peter’s voice called out from behind Quill — a little too eagerly at that. His interest in the conversation was only outmatched by his appetite, where he continued to devour the plate of bacon sitting in front of him, one piece at a time.

Sometimes two.

Three if he was really caught up in the conversations taking place.

Which he currently was — his wide eyes bouncing between Quill and Rocket with a smile that made it hard for him to keep chewing.

Quill went right for three pieces himself, taking off Peter’s plate with a smile as large as the bacon itself.

“Alright, so hear this little man—” Quill bit right into the bacon, going on to talk with muffled chews that garbled his story. “I’m standing there, knee deep in Wuruum on Seknarf Nine, all while face-to-face with this crazy rabid Hellhound—”

“No, you were not!” Rocket’s voice shouted from out of sight.

Quill shot his head around, not even bothering to find Rocket when he shouted back, “Yes, I was!”

“He was not,” Drax dryly added, standing motionless from off to the side, folding both arms firmly across his chest.

Quill threw him a look next. “I was too! ”

The silence that followed argued that statement more than anyone else could.

Even Peter, who looked on with unsureness, could feel his smile growing more tepid with the passing seconds.

Quill looked to Rocket — back to Peter — somehow found Drax along the way — back at Rocket, and almost immediately rolled his eyes when Rocket did that thing with his hands and hips.

“Aright,” Quill kept his head low as he reached inside his jacket pocket, pretending he needed to look down to see what he was doing with the music player in his hands. “So in hindsight, the Hellhound wasn’t that rabid—”

▶• lıllılı.ıllı.ılılıılıı.lllııılı. Now Playing [Gimme Shelter] 0:48 ———♡——— 4:30 ◁◁ ▐ ▌ ▷▷

                                ♫ Oh, a storm is threatening
                         my very life today ♫
                                            if I don't get some shelter ♫
                                     oh yeah, I'm going to fade away ♫

The story continued on, with Drax intermittently correcting Quill along the way — much to Quill’s intolerance to his interjections.

None of that mattered to Peter, who listened on with an enthusiasm so charged and genuine, it managed to hype up Quill even more along the way.

“And then, the next thing I know these two giant fangs are barreling down on me faster than the speed of a Jump Point—”

“That’s so cool!” Peter breathed in awe. “What’s a Jump Point?”

Rocket rolled his eyes as he listened on from the kitchen, standing on the barstool he’d dragged to the stovetop; but this time so he could gather a plate of food for himself.

“Go swimming, Rocket, go swimming,” he muttered with nothing but pessimism, scooping out whatever contents filled the pot on the stove and pouring it over the other contents that filled his plate — which was already stacked to the brim with one of everything that had been laid out. “One of these days I outta take the fuel thrusters and jam them right up Quill’s—”

A large arm reached over his shoulder.

“Don’t gotta take everything all at once, you know,” the voice sounded from his left side — Rocket shot his head around, catching more bicep than he did face.

“Huh?” Rocket harshly tossed back, squinting one eye practically shut until that arm withdrew and a face could be made out.

Steve grabbed a plate from above Rocket, motioning it towards the numerous pots and pans that sat out in front of them.

“The food,” he gently answered. “We can always make more. There’s plenty to go around.”

As Steve began to load his plate with large but modest portions, Rocket scoffed from off to the side — making his next scoop all the bigger.

“Yeah, well,” Rocket crassly bit back, “where I’m from it’s take before it’s taken from ya.”

With that, he added a final slop of something to his plate, satisfied with the weight only once testing it out for himself.

Up and down, and then up again — Rocket smirked.

And then immediately dug into the food, one handful at a time.

Steve watched on with a curious eye, and a very noticeable arched brow.

“You know,” Once he finished filling his own plate, he turned to Rocket. “Believe it or not, I can understand that.”

Rocket slowed his chewing, one motion of his jaw at a time. Eventually, he stopped all together, giving Steve a look that rivaled audacity in its rawest form, mixed with undeniable cynicism only a face of his nature could hold.

Steve saw that look. It brought on a smirk, almost as if he forgot what it felt like when people didn’t know every single minute detail about him.

The concept of Captain America was a foreign to Rocket as Rocket was to Steve. Steve looked to his plate, forming the words in his head before he spoke them aloud.

“When I took the serum that made me who I am today, I swore I’d do everything I could to protect people like that,” he mentioned, turning his head to the side to catch Rocket’s eye. “That little guy, always having things taken from them. I was one of them. So trust me, I get it.”

Rocket’s look of audacity only grew from there.

“Wait.” Rocket pointed a claw at Steve, one that dripped with gravy — or so Steve assumed, based off the biscuits, eggs, and chicken wings that covered his plate. There was also signs of a hot dog somewhere off to the side. And definitely pancakes underneath. “You willingly let people experiment on you?”

Steve went to answer — only to pause before his vocal cords could make any attempt at a noise.

His face then fell flat, and immediately twisted up tight.

Ultimately, after a long, drawn out, and increasingly awkward pause —

“My situation was a little…different, from others,” Steve humbled himself, forcing a modest grin that spoke of his understanding.

Even with humility in his own spoken errors, Rocket still scoffed, digging his paw into the pile of food on his plate with no care to the mess he made.

”Yeah,” he muttered, before shoving a handful of food into his mouth and garbling out, “I’d flarking say so.”

The tension was undeniable from that point on. Steve fiddled with his fork, taking a bite or two along the way but suddenly too occupied in his own head to keep eating.

He let his gaze wander, briefly, with no intent on landing anywhere. Huddles of different activities took place across from him, some folks being invested in the on-going game of billiard balls, while others simply invested themselves in hearty conversation.

One person in particular caught his attention.

“You should meet my friend, Bucky,” Steve didn’t waste a beat once he saw the man in question.

Bucky wasn’t doing anything in particular — it appeared a conversation between him, Natasha, and Clint had taken his interest.

What they spoke of exactly was hard to say from a distance; but at one point Natasha laughed, and shortly after he could see Bucky give a thin, shallow grin.

“Bucky who?”

Rocket looked back and forth, up and down — he only stopped when Steve gestured lackadaisically to the side, using his finger as a way to give direction.

Rocket found Bucky, but only thanks to the glimmer of black and gold that glistened across the lounge, his artificial limb caught up in a ray of sunshine that came through the skylights.

“Oh, he’s Bucky,” Rocket’s tone changed word by word, lifting with a sudden enthusiasm. The thrill that dripped in his voice was almost as thick as the gravy that dripped down his plate. Or was that maple syrup? “Oh, the wonderful and terrible things I could do with that arm.”

A break of laughter sounded from a different corner of the lounge, where Thor threw his head back in a fit of hysteria while Bruce hid his face away from anyone’s view, the story being told clearly bringing him humiliation — and Tony, much delight.

Steve was distracted by the moment, where as Rocket remained fixated without any break in his focus.

“You’d think he’d sell me that arm?” Rocket’s question was enough to reclaim Steve’s attention, his head jerking back over with an eyebrow arched high into his hairline — genuine disbelief coating his features.

Rocket noticed, following up with an all too casual shrug and an equally casual, “You know, for the right price.”

Steve paused.

“No, I...” Another pause nearly become a stretch of silence. Steve shook his head long before he spoke. “I don’t think he’s looking to get rid of it.”

Rocket worked his mouth in many directions, his face making a few different expressions as he noticeably pondered on in thought.

“Everyone’s got a price,” he finally settled on saying, quietly enough that Steve just barely heard him — but he heard him, nonetheless.

Clearing his throat, Steve looked away, awkwardly, forcing himself to find his plate to be the most interesting thing in the lounge.

Seventy years in the ice certainly didn’t prepare him for this.

He kept his focus on his food, even when a shoulder brushed past him — a body sliding seamlessly into the kitchen as if the marble floors were a skating rink.

“Thank you, I’ll take some of that — thank you.” Quill quickly and easily grabbed one of everything that laid out in front of them, passing by Steve and Rocket with a twirl of his body that took him to the next counter top. “Ohhhh, and that, please. Awesomesauce, thank you.”

No different than Rocket, Quill had overfilled his plate to the brim, causing a mess behind him as he made a straight beeline for the lounge.

For every chip that fell off his plate, he swept it to the side with his foot.

Gamora, still playing billiards by the entertainment side of the lounge, gave him a noticeable eye-roll as he did.

The sofa’s had since been cleared, with its prior occupants having made their way to different areas of the room — Thor’s loud laughter clearly came from the corner Bruce had tried to seclude himself in, much to the scientist’s ever growing discontent.

With four sofa’s and two armchairs, Quill still managed to pick the only couch where there was a single occupant left sitting — plopping down on the sofa next to them with his plate of food resting comfortably in his lap.

“It’s Peter, right?” Quill pointed a finger at Peter, his other hand digging for a tortilla chip buried deep within a heaping load of salsa and cheese.

Peter went to nod, but before he could even twitch a muscle—

“I’m gunna call you Little Peter, that way there’s no confusion,” Quill steamrolled right over him, finding the largest nacho chip in his mountain of dip and bringing it straight up to his mouth.

Peter nodded — rapidly, as if afraid he wouldn’t get it out in time. Any faster and his head might’ve fallen right off his shoulders. It was a downright feat it hadn’t already.

“Yeah, yeah, totally, that’s — yeah, cool, that’s…that’s cool,” he stammered on, painfully, undeniably enthralled with Quill’s presence even when the man nearly choked on a tortilla chip. Twice.

It was sometime between his second choking fit that Quill reached a hand inside the inner pocket of his jacket, rummaging around until he retrieved what he was looking for.

“Wait, is that the thing your music is playing from?” Peter fired off the question before he even heard it in his head.

It was a habit of his.

A bad habit, according to May.

One he showed no signs of fixing anytime soon.

“Sure is!” Quill excitedly answered, flipping over the rectangle device to showcase front and back. The device looked as outdated as the same type of old school gadgets Peter would find back during his dumpster diving trips — and the same kind of out dated stuff he’d dissemble with his bare hands and rebuild into something far better.

And yet, despite all that, Quill still beamed at it with pride.

“This bad boy holds three hundred songs, can you believe that? And the battery power — man, this thing is a beast, longest it’s ever stayed on was almost a full cycle. Almost got there, it was super close, would’ve made it if Groot hadn’t wanted to play Dolly Parton that night as his bedtime song.” Quill admired the device with a softening smile. “Tell you what, I didn’t have nothing like this when I was your age. Nothing close to it.”

Peter sat up a little straighter on the couch, his confusion easily overtaking his curiosity. The thing looked a bit like something May had tucked away in her bedroom closet, so old that it was gathering nothing but dust and cobwebs beneath an old and worn out box of extra blankets and pillow cases.

Still, he asked, “What is it?”

Quill never looked away from the device in his hand, not even as he answered,

“It’s a Zune.”

The device could’ve come straight from Mr. Stark’s lab, still warm from fresh innovation, and Quill’s tone of wonder and expression of delight wouldn’t have changed a bit. There was a sense of awe for the small, slightly beat up, obsolete equipment that lit up his face with childlike happiness. If the word joy had a picture next to it, Peter was pretty sure Quill’s face would’ve done the job perfectly.

“A what?”

Peter didn’t share that same expression.

Not even close to it.

Quill snapped his head over at a speed that nearly knocked his nacho’s right off his lap.

“A Zune,” he stressed, eyebrows lifting so high up his forehead it somehow managed to lift some of his mustache too. The blank stare Peter proceeded to give only intensified that look of disbelief. “Wait, you’re telling me you don’t know what a Zune is?”

Peter blinked.

And slowly shook his head.

“No,” he drawled out — hesitatingly, based off the look of unadulterated shock Quill was giving him.

“What!?” Quil exclaimed, twisting his hip on the couch to face Peter, spilling a few nacho’s onto the floor near his feet as he did. “No way! What are you talking about, I was told these things are super popular down on Earth!”

Peter kept shaking his head, slower by the passing second.

“No.”

His tone didn’t change.

Neither did his expression.

Quill didn’t stray far from his disbelief, but there was no denying the growing tint to his cheeks was starting to look eerily similar to the crimson red of his jacket.

Embarrassment painted on his face like his features were a canvas.

And Peter couldn’t resist the smirk at that.

“Well…they should be!” Quill lifted the device for show, and yet kept it protectively close to his chest — Peter’s growing smirk may have had a part in that. “This tiny guy — three hundred songs, dude, three hundred. My walkman couldn’t even dream of coming close to that! And it’s all on one — don’t gotta flip the deck or nothing! This is state of the art! You kids have no idea how lucky you got it!”

Peter gaped, jaw to the floor and all.

“Dude…” The words almost didn’t form. Just like Quill, he twisted inwards on the couch, facing the man head-on. “You have an actual spaceship…and you think that’s impressive?”

When Peter pointed a single finger at the Zune, Quill’s face proceeded to scrunch up with painfully obvious insult.

“It is,” he bluntly bit back.

Peter almost laughed.

Almost.

He gave himself credit for that.

“Here, lemme — hold up.” Peter didn’t waste another second, lifting a bit off the couch so he could reach into the back pocket of his jeans.

His mouth twisted to the side as he dug for his phone, barely retrieving it from the hole that was his pocket — and the actual hole that he kept forgetting existed in this pair of jeans.

It suddenly made sense why he lost his change on the way back from Delmar’s the other day. He just figured May ran it through the wash by accident.

“You want a good collection of music?” Peter shuffled an inch closer to Quill on the sofa, showcasing his phone to see — what could be seen through the many cracks that shattered screen of the device. The pad of his thumb scrolled in all sorts of directions before landing on what he wanted. “It’s the Internet, dude. This is all online.”

For a man with a spaceship parked outside, Quill looked down at Peter’s phone like it was the rarest gold in all of existence.

“No way…” he barely whispered under his breath, hesitantly reaching for Peter’s phone — who handed it off like it was no big deal, even as Quill held it in both his palms like a newborn baby bird.

“Last year I created this playlist with my friend — uh, girlfriend — well, she was my friend at the time—” Peter rambled on as Quill proceeded to scroll through his phone, using his pointer finger instead of his thumb to navigate the screen. “And I don’t know if we’re actually there yet, I mean, she’s kinda my girlfriend but we also haven’t said it yet but she was my friend at the time we created this playlist together, so if we’re talking about things in that sense then we weren’t dating yet, because our first date was like, three weeks ago when I took her to our junior year prom, and that went really well actually, I think she really likes me, which would be super cool cause I really like her and I’ve never had a girlfriend before so—”

Peter took a in deep, much needed breath.

He really need to learn when to stop.

“Anyway,” Peter picked up where he left off, using his hands to motion alongside his words. “There’s like, five thousand songs on here. Probably, anyway. Maybe more? It’s getting really big, actually, now that I think about it. It started small, just me and her. We tried getting our friend Ned into it but his mom won’t pay for the subscription to the app. But anyway, then Wanda — that girl, uh, that one right over there — she joined us.”

Peter pointed over to the kitchen at Wanda when he spoke, but Quill didn’t bother looking at the red-haired girl in question. His gaze was locked intently on the phone, with wide eyes that started to glisten in wetness underneath the ceiling skylights.

Meanwhile, Peter gestured to his phone like it was nothing.

“And then, uhm, well, this crazy stuff happened where I ended up in Africa, and I met this really smart girl named Shuri — super smart, total genius. Anyway, and now she’s in on it now, too — all this African tribal stuff, that’s totally her. And there’s a lot of kinda funky foreign bands, it’s actually really cool, I like it. I listen to a lot of it when I’m studying, it helps me focus.”

The more Quill’s finger scrolled the screen, the more his eyes lit up. The scrolling showed no signs of stopping — and neither did Peter, so long as no one told him to.

“There’s no theme or anything, we all just sorta throw songs in that we like. You can browse all sorts of music and add songs to your collection. MJ has her own taste in music — that’s my girlfriend. Uh — friend. She’s a girl who’s a friend, any way. Her taste in music is really different, but cool. Mine’s kinda everywhere, I like it all. And then Wanda — Wanda’s is cool cause she’s got her stuff, but she also spent time with Doctor Strange over spring break —he’s this magician kinda guy — but he doesn’t wanna be called a magician. He does magic, though. Sorcerer stuff. Anyway, she went and hung out with him and he’s into this really old people music — kinda like what you’re listening to right now — and she added a lot of that to our playlist as well. So it’s kinda like Doctor Strange is in it too.” Peter paused. Just for a second. “Huh, never really thought of it like that.”

Only once Peter stopped talking, for good, did he realize how quiet things had gotten.

When he looked over at Quill, the man’s next blink shed a drop of liquid down to his plate below, tainting his nacho’s with salty tears.

Peter frowned. “Are you crying?”

Quill immediately ran his forearm across his eyes, going on to pinch the bridge of his nose tightly until his eyes couldn’t squeeze shut any tighter.

“No!” Quill cleared his throat. More than once. “Maybe. A little.” The warble in his voice betrayed him.

Peter arched an eyebrow, but for once, he kept his mouth shut.

Not even the music playing overhead saved Quill from any embarrassment.

“You know, weddings are just—” Quill rubbed at both his eyes with clenched fist, hiding any of his sniffles behind poorly timed coughs. “Weddings are a really beautiful thing, you know, love is — it’s really magical, actually, and the last time I checked it’s socially acceptable to cry at wedding’s—”

“This isn’t Mr. Stark’s wedding,” Peter interrupted, a beat full of confusion separating what came next. “And…and you don’t even know Mr. Stark.”

The obvious was brushed off as easily as Quill brushed away the emotion from his face, going on to clear his throat one more time before he faced Peter again.

“Well, I know him now, and really, I think it’s all just very beautiful, the thing he’s got with his gal is something a man could envy, and-and-and you know, who doesn’t love a good wedding, and-and—” Quill swallowed, hard, as he regained his composure long enough to ask, “and do you think we can take what you have and put all of that into this? Please? Pretty please?”

Peter laughed — humbly, looking down at his cell phone with the screen cracked in eight different directions and battery barely holding on at fourteen percent.

But he had to admit, the playlist was pretty cool.

He really liked that MJ came up with the idea.

Scrolling against the crack on his screen, Peter’s eyes caught every song he knew she added to the bunch.

He really did like her taste in music.

There was a lot about her that he liked.

Briefly distracted, Peter snapped himself out of it — looking up at Quill with a toothy grin that reached all the way to his eyes.

“I think Mr. Stark can get you something even better before you leave,” he suggested, gesturing to his phone before pocketing it away — this time in his front pocket to avoid any holes in the back. “His technology is like, super advanced. He’s kinda a big deal down here on Earth. His stuff is one of a kind.”

Quill met Peter’s toothy grin with his own.

“That’s awesome, dude.” Quill slapped the back of his hand against Peter’s collarbone, readjusting himself on the sofa so he could lean back further into the cushions, relaxing casually with his plate in his lap. “I’m glad your old man’s cool like that.”

Quill dug in for a nacho at the same time Peter opened his mouth to correct him.

“My dad tried to kill me.” Quill went to take a bite of his chip, only to stop halfway there. “And then he died.”

Just like that, Peter’s mouth shut almost as fast as he tried to speak.

Quill crunched down on his nachos, working his jaw as he chewed and spoke — his words mixing with salsa dip and tortilla chips.

“Then my real dad, not my real dad but you know, my real dad — he saved me from dying.” Quill went for another tortilla chip, digging it deep into the salsa but stopping before lifting it off the plate. A pause froze him. “And then he died.”

Peter opened his mouth to speak again.

This time, he didn’t know what to say.

Quill filled the silence with another loud crunch of chips and dip.

“But it’s all good!” he eventually exclaimed, a little too enthusiastically. His mouth was still full of food as he spoke, with crumbs freely spitting from his mouth. “Cause I got the tunes, and so long as I got the music, no matter what happens, my song is always gunna be there to get me through the rough times.”

Peter suddenly perked up.

“Your song?” he gasped — like Quill, a little too enthusiastically. As Quill relaxed against the couch cushions, Peter sat closer to the edge. “Wait, are you in a band or something?”

Quill threw him a look.

“No, man!” Quill reached for his Zune, using it to gesture towards Peter’s pocket where his phone laid tucked inside. “You know, my song!”

Peter raised an eyebrow, but otherwise looked like a deer in the headlights.

“You’re seriously telling me that you don’t have a song?” Quill gestured his Zune more zealously towards Peter’s pocket. At this point he was waving his hand hard enough to create a breeze. “A song you always listen to, a go-to song that captures everything about you, a song that’s all about you, a song that’s just…yours?”

A pause turned into a stretch of silence, sans the upbeat guitar strumming that dated back generations before Peter’s birth.

Young and green as he was, Peter timidly shook his head.

Quill immediately put his plate of nachos to the side, practically bouncing on the sofa as he sat upright and closer to the edge like Peter.

“Here, hold up — just wait a minute.”

Quill immediately went for his Zune, manually clicking on a few buttons with the pad of his thumb. Each click he made synced with the music overhead, changing the songs that played with only a slight delay to his movements.

Nobody seemed to notice — or care — as the soundtrack to their night suddenly switched up at a speed no ear could keep up with. The songs skipped before they even started, and yet the activities around them went on uninterrupted.

Sam hovered over Rhodey at the pool table, watching as the Colonel swayed side-to-side with the cue stick held loosely in his grasp.

His arm pulled back, and in doing so his elbow knocked into a beer bottle placed on the corner of the billiards table.

Sam barely caught it in time.

“Man, you are wobbling that cue-stick—”

“Shut up, Sam, you’re just afraid I’m about to beat your ass at—” Rhodey hiccuped. Hard. “—at a game of pool after eight beers.”

“Ten,” Sam easily corrected, reaching for Rhodey’s elbow only for him to jerk it away. “And no, I’m afraid you’re going to poke your eye out with that thing—”

CLACK.

“Shit!”

“Yep.”

Any curses of Rhodey’s that followed were drowned out by the rich, soul-heavy tunes of the 1970’s , with lush harmonies as smooth as the vocals that followed.

▶• lıllılı.ıllı.ılılıılıı.lllııılı. Now Playing [O-o-h Child] 0:17 ———♡——— 3:17 ◁◁ ▐ ▌ ▷▷

Peter watched, wordlessly, as Quill very passionately went on to sing,

“Ohhh child, things are going to get easier.” Quill snapped his fingers, with precise rhythm to the beat.” Oh-hh child, things are going to get brighter.” Each snap was more passionate than the last. Peter didn’t think that was possible. “Oh-hh child, things are going to get easier. Ohhh-hhh child, things are going to get brighter.”

Without warning, Peter startled back as Quill—

“Some day, YEAH!” Quill shouted, his high pitch signing ringing out with a belting enthusiasm. “We'll put it together and we'll get it undone. Some day! When your head is much lighter!”

In the midst of his head-banging, enthusiast, passionate soul singing, Quill managed to catch a glimpse of Peter’s bare-faced expression.

It earned a hard stop from his otherwise gratuitous singing.

“No?” Quill furrowed his brows, confused.

Peter shook his head.

“No, I uh…” Peter looked to the ceiling as the music played on, wracking his brain for anything that came even remotely close to Quill’s slightly off-putting obsession he had for the song of choice.

Sure, he had his favorite songs. Peter could name a handful right now, way better than he could remember anything from history class. And then there were there songs MJ listened to — he liked her taste in music a lot.

He liked her a lot.

                       ♫ Some day
           we’ll put it together and get it undone ♫
                           some day ♫
                when your head is much lighter ♫

Peter shook his head, looking away from the ceiling that had nothing to offer him. No matter how hard he chewed on it, his mind kept coming up short. Whatever Quill had, whatever connection there seemed to be with the song — Peter wasn’t sure that even existed for him.

“Nope,” he popped the P in his answer, practically shrugging his shoulders to his ear lobes. “Nothing I can think of.”

Suddenly, Peter realized that even with the wide-array of never ending songs in his collection that put Quill over the moon, there wasn’t a single, individual one out of the bunch that stuck with him.

Nothing in particular he could say, in Quill’s words, was all about him.

Peter wasn’t really even sure what the song would be about, if he found it.

He wasn’t really sure who he was, to begin with.

Worthy of being brought back to life. That much he knew.

But why — well, that was a question that plagued him no different than Parker Luck.

And with it came the added pressure he wasn’t even sure Spider-Man could withstand, mutated abilities and all.

“Oh, dude. We’ll fix that.” Quill crashed right through Peter’s ruminations, and not a second too late. Peter already had to shake his head a little too much like a wet dog, frantic to get out of his thoughts and into the present moment.

Looking back over at Quill, Peter watched as he frantically scrolled through his Zune with an excitement only a new born puppy could contain.

“I’m getting you a song,” he eagerly insisted. “I’m an expert at getting people’s songs — just ask Gamora.”

The timing was impeccable, as Gamora casually climbed the stairway up to the lounge; pool towel swung messily over her shoulder and the tips of her red hair damp with wetness.

“Oh!” Quill twisted at the hip to face her, watching as her bare feet left wet footprints the further she entered the lounge. “Gamora! Gamora!”

Gamora didn’t stop to face him, but she did at least slow her speed.

“Tell Little Peter all about my songs!” Quill just barely managed to catch her attention, stopping her briefly when she bent over to unroll the cuffs of her pants. Her feet were still damp with water, showing evidence of having dipped her toes into the pool.

“He has songs. Many of them,” Gamora dryly answered as she unrolled the fabric to her pants. The leather shined with a bit of the wetness of pool water. “He will make you listen to them for hours.”

Quill flopped his hand all about, even as Peter fought back a smirk.

“No, not that,” Quill drawled out, somewhat annoyed, but mostly unphased. “How good am I at nailing people songs?”

With the pool towel still draped over her shoulder, Gamora reached for the fabric and pulled it off in one swift tug. She was bent over when drying her calves and feet, sparing Peter a look along the way.

“I like the song he picked for me,” she answered, succinctly.

Peter leaned forwarded, ultra-curiously.

“What was it? Your song?” he asked, sitting forward even more — the edge of the couch was no longer a thing for him. Only his agility kept him in place.

Gamora switched from drying off one leg to the other, looking away when curtly answering,

“That’s none of your business.”

The deadpan answer was almost enough to steal away the music playing overhead. Peter looked away from Gamora and back over to Quill, staying on the latter with a bit of growing confusion clouding his smile.

Quill, however, still remained unphased.

“It’s a good song,” Quill insisted, without ever looking away from Gamora.

Peter quirked an eyebrow, high — but otherwise kept to himself. If the alien assassin said he had a good taste in music…well, he wasn’t going to question that.

More specifically, he wasn’t going to question her.

Even had he wanted to, he wouldn’t have had a chance. Before Peter could gather a single coherent thought into a sentence, a cup was suddenly forced into his line of sight.

Peter went cross-eyed trying to distinguish what the item was. It took many blinks until his vision regained focused.

“What’s this?” Peter looked at the cup with furrowed brows, turning it left and right to examine its every detail. It was glass, allowing him to see through it. “Orange juice?”

When the cup gave him no answers, Peter craned his head behind him where the source of the drink came from.

Tony used an index finger to guide his stylish frames up the bridge of his nose.

“Screwdriver,” he answered, casually, with a pat against Peter’s shoulder as he walked away. “Drink responsibly.”

Peter gaped, flopping around on the couch until he was facing Tony as the man walked on.

“You’re only giving me this because you know it has like, no effect on me!” he hollered, completely unable to resist the grin Tony had long since deemed ‘little shit.’

“Not true.” Tony spun on his heels to face him, finger pointed at Peter even as he kept his pace across the lounge — walking backward the entire time. “It just takes a exorbitant amount. Enough to clean out an entire vineyard.”

Peter made a face, far from ‘little shit’ and more in the likes of ‘whatever, Mr. Stark.’ A quick sniff of his drink led to another, and another after that; his enhanced senses picking up on the vodka that the orange juice had easily drowned out.

Barely alcoholic or not, it was a drink.

One that, Peter realized, Mr. Stark trusted him with.

“It’s your one and only for the night, so enjoy,” Tony said from near the entertainment space, grabbing a cue stick from Rhodey to join their game of billiards — not that Rhodey could do anymore rounds, what with his swaying. “Consider this my bachelor party. The age appropriate one for your attendance.”

Peter stared at the drink for far too long — he knew that, because when he looked up again, Steve had already helped sit Rhodey down on the couch across from him.

A firm pat to Rhodey’s shoulder to ensure he was okay, and the Captain rejoined the others for a game of pool; their chitchat spawning the occasional laughter and loud-mouthed banter that felt more relaxing than Peter figured any alcohol could be.

Alcohol, right.

Peter dry-swallowed, hard, looking down at the cup with a tight V creasing his forehead.

It wasn’t that he was afraid to drink — an absolutely silly thought, what with Mr. Stark being right in how much it would take to even have an ounce of an effect on him. No, that wasn’t the problem at all.

“Oh, so when I try to help the kid broaden his horizons,” Clint hollered out from the kitchen, half-irritated and half-amused, “what with responsible adults in the room to watch him, I'm somehow a bad influence. But when Stark does it, suddenly no one has anything to say about underage drinking?”

Peter shot his head up from the drink and over to Clint.

It was that.

It was totally that.

“He was younger then!” Tony hollered back from the pool table.

Clint’s voice drew closer as he crossed the lounge. “Bullshit, we’re talking eight months ago!”

Peter brought the drink to his mouth, letting it sit on his lips long enough to get a taste. It was just orange juice with a little bit of vodka thrown in, he knew that. But still, knowing that just earlier this year Mr. Stark didn’t trust him enough for the same thing —

— being worthy enough to be brought back to life —

Peter took a swig. And then another for good measure.

No pressure.

There was no pressure at all.

“You know, now that there’s hindsight…” Bruce’s voice was suddenly sharper in clarity, and closer in proximity than anytime before.

Peter finished his double-swallow gulp just in time to see the scientist had left the kitchen, with a plate full of food he was eager to take back to his corner of the lounge — it was clear in his fast steps away from the others.

Still, Bruce stopped his pace for a brief moment, pondering out loud.

“Had we allowed Peter to drink that night, we probably would’ve discovered the extent to which his enhanced metabolism would’ve effected the use of painkillers. Would’ve prevented those issues we had down the road.”

Tony’s CLACK of his cue-stick was practically harsher than the last, causing the balls to hit roughly and land in many different directions — a bad shot that put him out of the game.

He noticeably eyed Bruce, who immediately retreated back to his laptop in the far corner of the lounge, cautiously and carefully taking his plate of food with him.

“Enhanced metabolism?” Quill watched the game of billiards from where he sat on the couch, slumped down into the cushions with a plate of food sitting comfortably on his stomach. “What’s that?”

It was somewhat-hard to understand what question he’d asked, what with his words being garbled out of his mouth. His voice was more hot dog than it was anything else.

Tony had a quip on his tip of his tongue, but turning around to rest his cue stick against the wall, he caught a passing glimpse of the kitchen to his right.

It wasn’t unusual to see people off to the side having their own conversations. The day had been long and full of socializing to the likes Tony had only ever seen at his Stark Industries conferences.

Only here, and much to his relief, everyone got along. He couldn’t ever say the same about the conferences.

So knowing that, he wasn’t entirely sure why it was off-putting to see Natasha tucked away in the corner, having an entirely too quiet conversation with Barnes.

Crass laughter recaptured his attention.

“It’s when you eat like that,” Rocket pointed a sharp claw at Quill’s consumption of multiple hotdogs, all while nodding in the direction of the billiards table where Steve stood with the others, “but you look like that.”

Quill nearly shot up.

Nearly.

“Are you calling me fat!?”

Rocket laughed.

Even when having put his plate of food to the side, Quill struggled to get off the sofa — so slouched down, his legs withered above him as he fought to sit upright.

Rocket’s laughter continued.

“I ain’t calling you skinny, Quill!”

“Gamora!” Quill heaved in three heavy breaths as he finally sat up on the couch. He had to brush away bangs of hair that got in the way of his face from his laborious efforts. “Do you think I’m getting fat?”

The music overhead seemed to have ended at the worst possible time for Quill. It made Gamora’s silence all the most awkward — telling him more than her words ever could.

“I think…” Gamora struggled to speak. The absence of music only made that more obvious. “I think…that you and Thor have been…spending much time together simply…enjoying yourselves.”

The scoff that followed was dramatic enough to be heard throughout the entire lounge.

“I can’t believe this!” Quill reacted exactly how she expected. And then-some. “Nobody thought to tell me sooner?”

“I was afraid you were gunna eat me!”

“Rocket!”

▶• lıllılı.ıllı.ılılıılıı.lllııılı. Now Playing [For What It’s Worth] 0:12 ———♡——— 2:37 ◁◁ ▐ ▌ ▷▷

The melody from above switched no different than the many times before it, with the vocals of a band from long ago swimming out of the overhead speakers.

                                ♫There’s something happening here
                         what it is ain't exactly clear ♫

On his way into the lounge, Tony passed by the kitchen — and noticeably made a handful of passing glances to the occupied corner.

It was hard not to.

“Being enhanced is what Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum are,” Tony finally kept his attention in one place, looking away from the kitchen and keeping his gaze on the couches that filled the lounge. His arms folded over his chest with surefire cockiness. “It’s having your genetic makeup altered by external sources — one of them can lift fifteen-tons, and it’s not who you think it is.”

From behind Tony and still at the billiards table, Steve made a face.

Peter made a face as well, but having chugged the last of his screwdriver, Tony couldn’t tell if it was because of the comment or the alcohol he consumed.

“I wanna take them on!” Quill discarded his plate of food onto the coffee table, jumping off the sofa with an obnoxiously loud clap of his hands. “C’mon, I’m half-God, I can take it!”

“You’re a two point five to SHIELD.” Clint took Quill’s spot next to Peter, kicking his feet up on the coffee table and pushing Quill’s plate aside along the way.

Sam struck his billiard balls at the same time a laugh broke his focus, making for a terrible shot, and a hard-pressed look from Steve.

Who, admittedly, was more amused than he was upset.

“This is great news!” Thor clapped his hands together, far louder than Quill’s — and far more unsettling. The only thing more exuberant was the footsteps that bounded him into the lounge. “So the boy can take to battle!”

Even with music playing overhead, and many other conversations taking place across the lounge, there was never a moment where everyone and possibly the floor below them couldn’t hear Thor.

He was just that bold.

Mantis, having heard all the way across the room, gasped with excitement.

“Wait!” she practically inhaled her words, leaping forward with large skips taking her across the lounge. “Is there going to be a fight?”

“Finally!” Drax’s cheer nearly reached the same volume of Thor, a both impressing and frightening feat. “Some excitement!”

Tony definitely gave himself whiplash this time around, twisting so hard at the hip to face the Asgardian that he could feel the ache in his lower back from the movement.

“Absolutely not.” Tony held out a hand, uselessly, to stop Thor. “No — God of Asgard, don’t you dare—”

Thor, expectedly, barreled right through him.

And Peter, watching from his place on the couch, froze harder than Cap in the ice.

“Holy shit,” he breathed out, his heart racing a thousand miles an millisecond. “Holy shit, holy shit—”

“I’ve trained Peter well.” Natasha raised her beer with a smirk, leaving the kitchen to join those in the lounge. A wink accompanied what came next. “I say let them at it.”

Tony twisted the other way to face her, ripping off his stylish frames just so he could point them her way.

“You’re trouble,” he bit back, his glare only growing harsher as her smirk grew wider.

Meanwhile, Peter was on the verge of hyperventilating.

“I’ll take you on, boy of spiders!” Thor bolted at a volume no music could overtake. Each hammering step vibrated the floor beneath them. “Come at me!”

“Point Break, if you don’t stand down this very second!”

“Holy shit—!”

Bucky watched from the kitchen island; a cocked eyebrow the only part of him that displayed any amusement to the scene unfolding. Otherwise, his face remained neutral as could be, even as he took a swig of his beer and burped out the excess carbonation.

The sudden mayhem from the lounge kept him from hearing as claws climbed up an empty bar stool.

Bucky took another swig of his beer — right as Thor went hurtling towards Peter, completely ignorant to Tony’s harsh rebukes and Drax’s cheers of incitement.

As he gulped back a mouthful, he managed to catch sight of the rodent that plopped down next to him.

“How much you willing to take for the arm?” Rocket’s legs swung back and forth with a carefree attitude that failed to match the intent behind his words.

Bucky didn’t spare him a glance.

Only from the corner of his eye did he look at Rocket, briefly, before immediately returning to the flurry of activity happening straight ahead.

“Not for sale.”

Rocket opened his mouth to speak, but in place of his voice—

The CRASH! that vibrated the very walls of the lounge was more than enough to silence the room, music included.

Peter’s startled gasp kept that silence at bay.

“I am so sorry!” he cried out — all in one panicked, heavy, squeaky breath.

The floors were still shaking when Thor let out a vigorous laugh.

“I like this one!”

 

 

---

 

 

The night kept on right alongside Quill’s playlist, with conversations flowing easily even when the music failed to do the same.

They shared stories well past the afternoon and far into the evening; some tales being far more captivating than others — most being Thor’s, something that not even Tony could argue much with. Not much else came close to his stint of slavery with a literal fire demon from the depths of the nine realm’s hell.

Turned out there was only so much of Venom’s terror they could use to one-up the God of Thunder.

Though some parted ways together, like Wanda and Vision, most trickled out on their own accord. It left just a handful of them remaining in the lounge as the evening came to a close.

The music stayed playing through the speakers as Thor told of his adventures full of valiancy and heroism, but like the activity around them, even that dimmed away into the night.

“I’ve missed this, my good friends,” Thor spoke gently against the music and softly into the rim of his cup, his words giving a slight echo against the metal. “This camaraderie of ours. It’s been greatly missed.”

He swigged back the drink like it was average water, somehow managing to time his gulp perfectly with Rhodey’s groan — who was haphazardly slouched on the armchair furthest from them all, a beer in his one hand while his a forearm laid resting over his eyes.

Tony threw him a quick glance, his eyebrow noticeably lifting with a smirk. He hadn’t seen his friend so drunk since their college days.

“Doors always open,” Tony easily responded, lackadaisically gesturing his cup forward at Thor while casually propping his ankle against his other knee.

There was jut enough space between him and Rogers, who shared the couch alongside him, that he could move comfortably without much resistance. It helped that Clint sat off at the very end— it helped even more that he sat on the armrest instead of an actual cushion of the couch.

Tony threw the archer a glance and immediately rolled his eyes. Even with just the handful of them remaining in the lounge, the agent always found a way perch himself somewhere high. Just like the hawk he was.

In looking that way, Tony caught the end of a fluffy tail walking on by.

“You hear that?” Rocket was heard, but not seen as he made his way across the lounge — reminding Tony that they were more of them left in the room than he’d come to believe. A CLAN-kK and CLUNG-RkR followed the voice somewhere near the dinning room. ”Make yourself at home, find yourself your own little space. Lemme go get some boxes, we’ll move you right out—”

“Thank you, Stark. Truly, I mean it.” Leaning forward just slightly, Thor allowed the coffee table to be the only thing separating them. His eyes met Tony’s, even with Tony’s veiled behind tinted glasses. “But I cannot settle where I am simply comfortable. I meant what I told you. I must go on from here. It’s the only way for me to…to find who I truly am.”

Though a tint of yellow hid his eyes behind stylish frames, the smile that hit Tony’s lips was seen even behind the glasses that covered his face.

“Well, we’re glad you’re here for the wedding, at least,” Tony said, making a cheers motion with his mostly-empty mountain glass, one that he’d been debating on topping off for hours now.

A high-pitched, exhausted yawn came from the kitchen table.

Only a handful of eyes looked to where Groot laid on his side, wrapped in a dishcloth he utilized as a blanket, and what Tony almost swore was a marshmallow for a pillow.

Furrowing his brows tightly, Tony looked to the kitchen where Peter sat at the island, his suspicions confirmed when he found the open bag of marshmallow’s laid out next to Peter’s textbooks.

That’s right, he’d almost forgotten — the kid had refused to leave with Wilson and Barnes sometime earlier in the evening. It was only when they compromised, after much debate, that he could hang around so long as he completed his homework. And stayed out of anymore reckless sparing matches with literal Godly beings.

Tony watched as Peter’s one hand dug inside the bag of marshmallows, grabbing one for himself as he simultaneously studied the test materials on his laptop.

The kid was giving trees marshmallows for pillows.

Tony looked down at his cup, going for whatever liquid remained inside.

“Yes! You and lovely woman named Pepper,” Thor belted out with renewed enthusiasm. He gestured his glass to Tony. “What a wonderful ceremony this will be.”

“I Am Groot!”

The tiny voice came in half-yawn, half-words, all while Groot flopped over to his other side — grabbing two beer bottle caps with his twigs and using them to delicately cover his eyes from the lights above.

“That’s a good point, actually.” Rocket climbed up a kitchen chair, dropping an armful of disassembled refrigerator parts onto the table that had been long since cleared of any plates and food from earlier. He utilized the space as a work bench, not breaking his focus as he mentioned, “Groot says he needs something to wear if we’re showing up to this yawnfest. Unless you want him au naturel.”

Tony was pretty sure he pulled a muscle with how fast he craned his head around.

“Uhm — that’s a hard no, Ratchet,” he said, firmly. “Limited seating, private event — sorry, no invitations to spare. Friends and family only.”

If Rocket had anything to say, it was overtaken by the hiccup that echoed across the lounge.

“Yeah, Tony,” Rhodey’s words slurred into one another like they were greased with oil. He tried to swallow his next hiccup, only to fail. Stupendously. “Friends and family only.”

Tony spun his head around, brows furrowed as he looked Rhodey head-on. Not that Rhodey returned the gesture — his forearm blocked his eyes no different than the bottle caps that Groot placed over his.

“Which means I’ll be there,” Rhodey couldn’t speak at a volume they could all hear. For those that couldn’t, they looked to Tony for answers. “Which means wherever I go…”

While nowhere no the intoxication level of his friend, Tony swore the alcohol he’d consumed was what caused a delay in his comprehension.

When it hit him, his face fell flat.

“Pepper’s gunna kill me.”

Tony looked back down at his glass.

He needed to top-off his drink after all.

“Oh, love,” Thor steamrolled right over Tony’s newfound predicament. It was no concern of Tony’s, who immediately stood from the couch to get a refill on his drink. “You know, the last matrimony I went to was that of my good comrade, Volstagg. Oh, what a warrior Volstagg was. A fierce man, strong — courageous.”

Thor’s gentle laugh filled the quiet space between them, right alongside Tony’s footsteps into the kitchen. Things had grown far quieter as the night went on, with less occupants and less energetic conversation to be had. The sounds of him rummaging through the cabinets was more audible than ever.

“The woman he wed, she was a dedicated spirit. But free, all at the same time,” Thor spoke in fond memory, the slightest of grins tugging at the corners of his lips. It earned a smile from those around him; Steve, Clint, Natasha — they all looked his way as they listened.

“The Temple of Union was no place for their ceremony,” he continued on, much to everyone’s interest. “So we took to the wilderness of Asgard and stripped the clothes off our back—”

“Oh boy,” Steve hid his words inside the opening of his beer bottle, swallowing down a mouthful in one gulp. For him, there was no blaming the alcohol on the pink that brightened his skin.

“It was a long twelve hours in the night, but when the Oathbinds were declared…” Thor’s grip on his cup seemed to tighten in the pause that followed. A heave of his chest let out the sigh that not everyone heard. “I do believe the golden halls of Asgard lit with a light like no other. As enchanting as that ceremony…and my good friends, and the love they once shared.”

The music faded out gently and softly. In the time it took for another song to play, no one had anything to say.

“That’s both very beautiful…” Natasha managed to speak against the silence, though the hesitation was there. “…and very disturbing.”

Perched on the armrest across from her, Clint buried his face into the mouth of his own bottle.

“I’m never going to a naked wedding,” he muttered into his drink.

From within the kitchen, Tony set his glass down onto the island, popping off the cork of a bulky bottle at the same time.

“Afraid the arrow isn’t big enough?” Tony smirked and winked, pouring a small amount of amber liquid to fill the bottom rim of this glass. Only once satisfied at the amount did he raise it to his lips — ignoring Clint’s look of exasperation, and Peter’s look of disgust along the way.

“You’re a man of many years, Thor,” Tony started, gesturing the bottle of liquor at Thor. “You wed yet?”

From within the lounge and spread across the sofa, Thor casually shook his head.

“Oh no, no. Never,” he said, earnestly, adjusting himself just slightly. “I think the closest…well, I feel confident in saying that would be Jane.”

The pause that followed didn’t go unnoticed. Tony took time in replacing the cork on the bulky liquor bottle that he sealed away. There was no rush to return it to the cabinet where’d it belonged.

As he took a sip of his drink, so did Thor.

“I wish her well,” Thor said, exhaling out the burn of his drink, “wherever she may be.”

There was a noticeable pause in the room. The hush, borderline whispered conversation between those tucked away in the entertainment space was nothing more than the distant background to their already playing soundtrack.

Of all of them, Rocket made the most noise — tinkering on the dinning room table with hushed mutters and curses. But even that remained quiet through it all.

“Somebody like that…” Thor forced a smile that was too tight at the edges. But still, the smile remained just. “You’re honored to even meet them.”

There was no denying that the words had impact. They held for a moment too long, giving a pause long enough that if Steve didn’t know better, he would’ve sworn the ceiling lights got brighter and caught a glimmer of Clint’s wedding ring along the way. Right at the time the archer decided to lift his drink to his mouth.

Steve had a feeling he was just seeing what was on his mind.

“You know, Tony,” he looked over and to the side, craning his head slightly to catch sight of Tony in the kitchen. The easy atmosphere of the night made it simple to say what came next. “I’m aware of how you and Pepper got together. But I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the story of how you two met.”

Even from all the way to the kitchen, the slightest tug of Tony’s brows gave way his muted surprise.

Even Peter saw that surprise, though he looked at Tony discreetly — or so he thought he looked at Tony discreetly.

Tony slapped the back of his hand against Peter’s shoulder and pointed a firm finger at the screen of the laptop, all without ever looking his way.

Peter rolled his eyes and went back to typing.

“Well, it doesn’t pull at the heart strings quite as much as the world war two lovebirds,” Tony wound up saying, snatching the bulky bottle off the counter top and taking it with him to the cabinets. His arm reached high as he placed it back on the top shelf.

Steve watched with a half-turned smile.“I’m sure it’s special in its own way.”

The bottle of liquor was returned and there was still a layer of amber left in Tony’s mountain glass; a layer he happily sipped on, taking the drink with him back into the lounge.

He didn’t get much further than past the kitchen island, going on to rest his back lazily against the counter-top, nonchalantly standing in front of where Peter sat.

Peter tried to keep at his homework, but with Mr. Stark’s back facing him, he wasn’t even sure if he noticed Peter had stopped.

After a long stretch of silence and multiple sips of whiskey from Tony, a sudden WHACK! echoed from the entertainment space.

“I shall tell you the story of how I met soul, Ovette.”

Every occupant, sans Rhodey, shot their heads to the corner of the lounge where the billiards table was placed.

Rhodey simply groaned at the obnoxiously loud slap that sounded.

“Oh boy, here we go again.” Quill covered his face with the handful of cards he held in his hand, sitting on a barstool at the billiards-now-turned-poker-table. While he, Drax and Gamora utilized actual chairs, Mantis simply sat cross-legged on the table itself.

Drax tossed his cards aside, letting them sprawl all over Mantis’ lap and flutter away to the ground. He twisted hard at the hips to face those in the lounge.

“It was on the hills of Luminara, on my home planet of Kylos, where I met my beloved,” he began to say, the depth in his voice ringing deep and sincere.

“Groot, cover your ears, little guy.” Rocket pulled the screwdriver from between his teeth, speaking up as he hollered from the dinning room. “You’re too young for this story.”

A high-pitched yawn followed almost immediately.

“I Am Groot!”

Flopping onto his side, Groot adjusted the marshmallow pillow beneath his neck, rolling his eyes when Rocket called out, “You weren’t tiny then!”

“The war rally raged on — everyone in the village flailed about, dancing.” Drax’s deep pitch gave the room back to him. He clenched both his hands into tight fists, bringing them to the bare skin of his chest with a robust emotion. “Except one woman. My Ovette. I knew immediately she was the one.”

Sitting on the corner of the billiards table, Mantis’ slowly lowered her deck of cards down into her lap, listening to Drax’s story with a growing smile.

“The most melodic song in the world could be playing, and she wouldn’t even tap her foot. She wouldn’t move a muscle,” Drax looked away from his group of people, finding eyes of the strangers and holding their gaze — uncomfortably holding their gaze. “One might assume she was dead.”

Clint nodded. Slowly. “That’s…”

Drax looked him head-on. “It would make my nether regions swell. ”

From on the end table, Groot grumbled as lifted himself from his sleeping position, picking apart his marshmallow pillow until he made two small plugs. His grumbles weren’t heard over the many who cleared their throats, shifted in their seats — did everything to express their sincere discomfort at Drax’s story.

One at a time, Groot stuffed his ear canals with the white sticky fluff, creating earplugs that blocked out the sound around him.

Leaning slightly to the side, Quill placed a hand casually on Drax’s shoulder; clasping down and holding firmly.

“I hear ya, buddy,” he said, turning his gaze straight ahead where the only other occupant sat across from him. “Sometimes you just look at somebody and you…you just know.”

Reshuffling the deck of cards, Gamora found Peter’s gaze and quirked an eyebrow — confused and annoyed, and the latter only growing with the passing time.

Quill simply smiled. “From the moment they put their sword against your throat.”

Almost immediately, Gamora rolled her eyes.

“You’re an idiot,” she barely managed to get her muttered response through the smile that threatened to break her veneer. A flip of her wrist gave the deck of cards back to Quill, who took it — along with her hand in his.

Steve looked briefly to the ceiling, catching the skylight and keeping his eyes there for a moment.

“When I first saw Peggy, I didn’t think a fella like me could ever get with a girl like that,” he let the words run off, for perhaps a second too long. By the time he looked up again, more than a few faces were paying attention to him. He smiled the insecurity away. “She helped me become who I am today. A person like that…they never leave you. They become a part of you.”

Thor was immediate in gesturing his drink forward, right in Steve’s direction. “Not even from the distance of Asgard to Minigard.”

Steve nodded back, almost in silent agreeance.

“Yeah, you know, I gotta say — it makes a difference.” With a sigh, Clint plopped himself down on the empty couch cushion next to Steve, brushing off his jacket once settled in place. “Never thought I’d see myself a married man. But when you find that person...”

Though most of the room waited to see if there Clint would add anything more, Steve was the one who decided to let the glimmer of the man’s wedding ring say the rest of what he didn’t.

“Ya'll are a bunch of sad saps.” A spark of electricity sounded along with Rocket’s crass remark.

Only a few looked his way - Tony, decidedly, did his damnedest not to see what havoc the creature was currently up to. He had more than his fair share of disbelief in a single day. He really didn’t have it in him for much else.

“Well, it was nothing like Randy Savage’s story over there,” Tony sarcastically tossed out, crossing both arms over the fold of his chest.

His hesitation was palpable. Even those across the room, like Quill, noticeably cleared his throat with discomfort. They all went right back to their game of cards with a clear intent of busying themselves.

Between himself, Gamora, Mantis, and Drax, it was only Drax who seemed interested in what Tony had to say. He failed to engage in their game; rather going on to stare intently and quietly as Tony stayed deeply reserved in his thoughts.

He wasn’t the only one. Steve looked Tony head-on even when the man didn’t seem to want to look his way, making it all the harder to gauge Tony’s response — or lack thereof.

Steve knew Tony was a private man, deep down inside. Past the covers of magazines and beyond the filters of the camera’s, he never let those near him truly see him. He kept things personal, painfully personal.

Just like Thor, he’d been surprised to see an openness wearing on Tony’s sleeve these days. It was side to him Steve felt like he’d been fighting for since the skies opened up above New York City, all those years ago now.

Watching as Tony stared at the bottom of his shoe, tapping his foot relentlessly against the marble flooring of the lounge, Steve couldn’t help but wonder if there was still a line between them that shouldn’t be crossed.

“It’s okay, Tony,” Steve started to say, one hand open-palmed in Tony’s direction. He gave him an easy out. “I was just curious. You don’t have to—”

“Don’t hit the brakes so fast there, Cap,” Tony cut through that out with seamless, effortless effect. His head shot up and his arms unfolded, allowing him to take a casual sip of his drink. “Pep and I, we…we go back quite a ways. Just gotta dust off some shelves to get that one out there.”

The sip that followed was purposefully long. Steve didn’t resist the small tug that kept his mouth half-turned, even as Tony stared off to nothing in particular, his gaze noticeably catching the skylight a few times.

Even the game of poker from across the room had gone quiet in his moment of contemplation.

“If my math is right, which it always is — that takes us…” Tony blew a hard breath of air through his cheeks. “Whew, nineteen years ago. Time flies when you go from running the world’s largest tech conglomerate to saving the world on a bi-monthly basis.”

With his back still pressed firmly against the kitchen island, Tony crossed his legs in front of him, letting his drink settle somewhere near the buckle of his pants.

He looked at Natasha.

A firm, solid beat passed by.

Natasha arched her brow not a second later.

“What?” she asked, simply — devoid of any tone to her voice.

Tony gave a smile. Nothing more than a smirk, partially hidden behind glasses that tinted his eyes with technology.

“You know the date I hired her,” he said, just as simply in return.

Natasha didn’t answer.

It earned a look from Tony — a different look. A cocky look.

“You know everything.”

Natasha was as skilled as they could come when it came to the inner workings of her field. They all had a feeling she could know the codes to nuclear bombs and not give off the slightest impression that she held such immeasurable information stored away in her mind.

Staring at Tony, it was the slightest twitch to her lip that eventually broke her expressionless face, taking away the facade that she normally held so ruthlessly in place.

“You were an assignment for me,” Natasha answered, easily, her head bouncing with an almost playful attitude. “I had no other choice but to know everything.”

Tony let a bit of white show beneath his smile.

“The date, then?”

The pause that followed was tense enough to have even those sitting away from the lounge drawn into the moment.

Quill was mid-draw of poker cards when he froze, eyeing Tony and Natasha from where he sat. His arm reached to pull from the deck, but got stuck halfway there.

Natasha eyed Tony, just as intently. Not breaking her stare, as if hoping he would break first.

Finally,

“July 18th, 1998,” she answered.

Tony snapped his fingers.

“On July 17th, 1998, I leave my office at Stark Industries HQ — good ‘ol LA, back in the day,” Tony perked right up, turning to the others with his smirk on full display. “Gave Happy the day off — idiotic move in hindsight, but as they say hindsight truly is twenty-twenty - because unbeknownst to me, I had acquired myself a friendly little stalker.”

It wasn’t just those in the lounge who listened to Tony’s story, told in every bit of personality the man could hold without his suits for aid.

Peter’s fingers dropped away from his keyboard, his typing coming to a slow stop as his his attention suddenly focused in on the conversation ahead.

“Couldn’t tell you her name now, they’re a dime a dozen — or so they became. Blonde, I remember that. Always the blonde’s,” Tony tsked, casually, before flapping his hand both ways in the air. “I’m halfway down the hallway when she jumps out at me, having hid behind this large, uh…” His fingers snapped. “Dracaena plant. This humongous dracaena plant that belonged in the Smithsonian's National Zoo. Don’t know why they had that thing in the damn office. I made them burn it. Anyway, next thing I know, she’s got her legs around me, screaming something about making babies — tell you what, never gave Happy another day off after that.”

Over on the sofa’s, Steve leaned forward as Clint laid further back in the cushions. They shared the same curiosity, but expressed it in wildly different ways.

“I’m dying to know how Pepper comes into all this,” Clint’s dry mirth was opposite to Steve’s growing amusement.

Tony gestured his drink out, fast enough that his glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose.

“Pepper doesn’t,” he said, quickly, using his free hand to snatch the glasses off his face. “Our head administrative aid, Virginia Potts, comes barreling down the hall, screaming at the top of her lungs — to this day, I’ve never seen a woman run so fast in four inch stilettos heels. It was magical.”

Tony fiddled with the glasses in his hand, twisting them left and right, spinning them back and forth between the crevices of his fingers.

“I turn my head and all I see is this…freckled, young, twenty-five-year-old woman holding up her hand before she…unleashed an entire can of pepper spray on the both of us.”

Without missing a single beat, Steve smiled.

“Pepper,” he came to realize, speaking softer than the sound of Tony’s glances settling on the kitchen island — placed somewhere next to Peter’s laptop, not that either of them really noticed.

Peter kept listening in on to the story, intently, though he was sure Mr. Stark didn’t even notice that he’d completely stopped doing his homework by now.

It didn’t matter to him.

This was way more interesting than any of Mr. Harrison’s assignments.

“Security finally arrived, took care of the crazy one — still going on about babies, even with a mouth full of pepper spray. Don’t mess with the crazy ones, I’m telling you. Brunette to blonde doesn’t help, either — it really is a thing with the blonde’s,” Tony laughed a little, bringing his cup to his mouth only to stop halfway there and decide against it.

“Luckily Obie was there that day. His office wasn’t far down the hall — got me to the company cafeteria, where I proceeded to pour every gallon of milk they had in the kitchen reserves straight onto my face. And that explains why I no longer drink dairy.” Tony looked to the group, his eyes landing directly on one individual in particular. He told Steve, “From there, I offered Pepper a job as my personal assistant.”

Steve’s response was held only in a grin.

Clint wasn’t as moved as Rogers was by the tale.

“Alright, let me get this straight,” Clint started, making a few grunts as he struggled to sit upright on the couch. “Pepper — as we know her — went ahead and physically assaulted both you, and the woman attempting to also physically assault you, and so you…hired her on as your assistant?” Clint tried not to scoff. He almost snorted instead. “Yeah, I see assistant skills in that story, it makes total sense.”

Steve threw him a look; it was too softened to be anything but amused.

“You see, Pepper — Ms. Virginia Potts — knew Happy was off that day,” Tony had a confidence in his voice that was borderline unbreakable. “She knew, because she knew my schedule like the back of her hand, if for no other purpose than keeping that company straight. Better than I ever did, better than I ever could. And she knew every employee in that building, and who was allowed access where. So when reviewing the access logs at the end of her day, she knew one name was off — the woman who had flirted her way into getting tier one access into the building.”

Clint caught on long before the pause that hung on Tony’s explanation. The brief lull that followed only added a layer of nostalgia to his voice that wasn’t there before.

“She proved her worth for the job,” Tony went on to say, to no one in particular and yet to everyone who listened. He cleared his throat, not just once. Not just twice. “A lot has happened since then. A lot.” His head ducked low, using the glass in his hand as the distraction for his gaze; suddenly noticing there was far more ice in the cup than liquid. “Through it all…I’ve never lost trust in her. She’s been the most capable, qualified, trustworthy person I’ve ever met. Nineteen years and Pep, she’s…she’s always been there. One way or another, no matter what it is — and when things go wrong, which they always do…”

Slowly, inch by inch, Peter lowered the screen of his laptop until it shut completely.

The only thing he could see was the back of Mr. Stark’s head as he spoke, and yet even the smallest movements seemed to say it all. Like Peter didn’t even need to see the man to know the meaning of what he said, and yet somehow — closing the screen to his laptop — it was like he needed to see every bit that he could.

Like seeing would make him understand what he was hearing.

Like he didn’t truly, fully, completely already understand what realization he’d come to.

“She’s always there. Always making sure I’m okay. Always making things okay.” Tony chuckled, just light enough for it to make a sound. “Even when I’ve been at my worst, she…it’s quite the impressive feat, but she always finds a way to rescue me. From it all. She’s, uh…she’s something else, that Ms. Potts.”

The quiet chuckles that rattled Tony’s back spoke of a smile that Peter couldn’t see, with his focus so far away it rivaled the home planet of the very aliens occupying the same room as him.

Peter’s mouth ran dry — painfully dry — with realization seemingly knocking the wind straight out of his chest.

Something clicked. It didn’t make sense why it made sense now.

But it did.

It wasn’t just that he liked a lot about MJ.

It wasn’t just that he liked MJ, a lot.

Peter inhaled his lips until they were all but gone, barely muttering out a tight, “Oh, boy.”

“My story was far better,” Drax’s attempt at keeping his voice discreet went nowhere. His voice was clearly heard from across the lounge. “His makes no sense.”

Quill slapped a fold of cards at Drax’s shoulder, who slapped his hand back at the fold of cards in return — and Tony looked away from them with a roll of his eyes so hard, he swore he briefly saw the back of his skull.

“You and Pepper really have gone through it all,” Steve was the first to break what ice had fallen between them. Sitting back on the couch, he remained genuinely sincere with his smile. “It’s admiring. I’m glad I get to be apart of this milestone with you both.”

Not typically one for conversations that led to open doors, Tony decided to finish off his water-downed drink with a final sip that had him exhaling out the burn.

“Yeah, you know, it’s uh — it’s long over due,” Tony said all in one breath, clearing his throat hard as he moseyed back to the lounge. He stood near his spot on the couch, but didn’t sit down. “I was a bit of a coward in the beginning. Things got messy when she took over SI. Not to mention we both almost let silly things get in the way — but honestly, what couple doesn’t?”

Tony looked down at his glass, empty of any liquid but still captivating his attention.

From across the way, the hushed-loud response came, “Ovette and I would never do such a thing. ”

Drax’s discreet voice was once again heard loud and clear.

Tony threw that corner of the lounge a dirty look.

He was starting to side with Rhodey’s eight day ruling.

“Next week, right around the corner,” Clint looked up at Tony from where he sat, his head cocking generously to the side. “Getting the pre-wedding jitters yet?”

As Tony settled down on the couch, Clint gestured his drink over to the others — narrowing his focus on Steve and Thor.

“I remember the night before my big day — almost ran back to the circus,” he told them both, half-smiling, half-embarrassed. “Would’ve gotten there too, if Nat hadn’t tackled me in the church parking lot on the way to my car.”

Sitting on the single armchair across from them, Natasha raised her glass to her mouth.

“You deserved that busted lip,” she easily responded, sitting with one leg so high up that her chin rested against her kneecap.

Clint furrowed his brows her way. “I looked ridiculous in my wedding photos.”

Natasha shrugged. “And who’s fault is that?”

Clint had a hasty retort on the tip of his tongue.

“Sorry Barton, no jitters,” Tony beat him to it, adjusting himself slightly against the sofa. He straightened the nonexistent wrinkles on his polo shirt along the way. “Not in my blood to get nervous.”

The pause that followed allowed for a moment of silence that Tony suddenly realized was true, actual silence.

For the first time all night, there was no chit-chat, there was no music — craning his head around, Tony looked to the source of where he knew the music was coming from, confused by the sudden dead air that had taken over.

Once his eyes found Quill, he saw the man messing with the device still tucked inside his jacket pocket. Things quickly made sense when Tony scantily made out mutters of ‘Sometimes it does this,’ and ‘ever since I let you borrow it, Rocket!’

The music eventually picked up again, once Quill caved and rebooted the device in a fit of his own frustration.

By then, Tony was long past hearing any of the songs that played. His thoughts, and the memories that occupied them, had suddenly become a unmalleable focus.

▶• lıllılı.ıllı.ılılıılıı.lllııılı. Now Playing [Lean On Me] 0:28 ———♡——— 4:17 ◁◁ ▐ ▌ ▷▷

                                ♫ Sometimes
                         in our lives ♫
                                 we all have pain♫
                  we all have sorrow♫

Tony didn’t typically like the conversations that led to open doors. They were messy, awkward, and uncomfortable. They made things difficult, they made people difficult.

But for one of the few times in his life, he couldn't shake the gut feeling that this moment — it felt felt like this was a door he was supposed to open. Like some of the others that he’d been dealt with before — people like Rhodey, and Happy. People like Pepper. And Peter.

He hadn’t regretted anytime he’d done it so far.

The statistics, at the least, were in his favor.

“But I will say that…uh, well…” A tightness to his throat had Tony reaching for his glass, consuming what little layered the bottom. It didn’t help ease his vocal cords any, but the atmosphere was easy enough to continue anyway. “When it comes to all this — this whole, you know, wedding. Stuff. Uh…”

The volume of music kept away any silence, but it didn’t lessen the pauses that separated Tony’s words. With nothing left to drink, he tapped a finger relentlessly against the empty glass. It filled the space of anything he could say next.

For what he didn’t say to fill the silence, Quill managed to do it for Tony — even late into the night and three rounds deep into a poker game very little of them seemed entertained by, Quill managed to find the energy to sing lyrics of the music playing overhead. Quiet, but audible nonetheless.

“Lean on me…when you’re not strong…and I’ll be your friend…I’ll help carry on…”

No one seemed perturbed by his behavior this time around.

In fact, Gamora hummed quietly along with him, laying down a card shortly before he did. Mantis swayed side-to-side with the music, and even Drax seemed to be enjoying the sounds that played.

And Clint eventually forced himself to look away from it all — because nothing was never not going to make that group of individuals anything but weird.

Some, however — like Steve, kept his attention focused steadfast. Even when Tony couldn’t do the same.

“Well, thank you,” Tony eventually managed, gesturing a hand out with no real purpose other than to loosen his tension. “For…those who are…you know, here. Still. After it all. Short and simple. We’ve gone through a hell of a ride this year. No one had to stick it out.” Tony purposefully dropped his head low, tapping his finger harder against the glass to cover up the sound of him clearing his throat. “You did. Stick it out, that is.”

Tony couldn’t have been anymore matter-of-fact with his words than he already was. For every bit as dry and honest as he was, he also failed to keep the facts strictly facts. There was a pitch to his voice that showed his nerves, rigid was they were.

It only widened the smile across Steve’s lips.

Natasha’s own smirk seemed to grow along the way.

Tony pretended not to notice any of that.

“It's funny, you know -I uh…just gotta say, that, uh…it's redundant, really, but, after...everything that’s happened, it, uh…well, with all that we’ve…point I’m trying to make is, uh — you know, you're not-you’re not just...a team. Believe it or not. You’re, uh…”

The further his words drifted off, the faster Tony tapped his finger against the empty glass. It was louder than anything else in the room, purposefully — and when his voice eventually failed to pick up, Tony made sure the tapping didn’t stop.

He pretended not to notice the looks sent his way.

But he did.

The silence he gave sufficed for what else he couldn’t say.

“You are very happy.”

It was against that silence a voice sounded — quietly, but all the mirthfully, as Mantis spoke up with a gentle fondness.

Tony whipped his head around, the words ‘emotionally compromised’ ringing through his ears no different than he was sure Rhodey’s hang-over was ringing through his head. The complete inability to read the room couldn’t have been anymore obvious with Mantis' interruption of empathy.

Emp—

When Tony found Mantis, ready of fire out a never-ending tirade at their newly acquired alien empath guest — the one who rated a whopping level four of five in SHIELD’s books — it took a full fledged two seconds to realize what he was actually looking at.

Mantis sat on the corner of the pool table, peacefully enthused, rocking herself back and forth to the tune of the music. She gripped her ankles as she swayed to the song, her own hands being the only contact she made with anything, or anyone, around her.

The burn that hit Tony’s cheeks may or may not have been from the distance that separated them, all the way across the room. And with no means of physical touch.

“Hey,” Tony snapped his fingers right in Thor’s direction, quick and urgent to distract. “He hasn’t seen Mr. Detention yet!”

Just like that, Steve’s groan could barely be heard over the slew of laughter that erupted — immediately followed by Rhodey’s own bemoaning, the sound from both men easily drowned out with the fast-pace, playful banter that was quickly tossed back and forth.

As Steve hid his face behind the palm of his hand, covering the smile that kept his embarrassment at play, the others excitedly encouraged the moment on with carefree jesting.

For a moment that made time feel alright, they enjoyed it — the music continuing on, but the lyrics hidden deep beneath their laughter.

                                ♫ For it won't be long
                         til I'm going to need ♫
                                            somebody♫
                                     to lean on ♫

“I did it!”

Until suddenly, Bruce stood from his barstool so quickly, so suddenly, it fell right to the floor.

“Holy sh—I actually did it!” The only thing louder than the sound of the chair toppling over was his excited shout, cutting right through the lounge in a way that made them all come to a sudden stop. “I can’t believe — this works! This can work! I actually did it!”

Not a single head didn’t look to the far corner of the lounge, finding Bruce at the window bay furthest from the couches. He stood tall, with both arms high in the air, and a bright glare from the moonlight causing a refraction against his glasses, already affected by the bright screen of his laptop.

As if just now noticing that glare, Bruce whipped off his glasses, turning to look at the window he stood next too — noticeably confused at the dark skies that greeted him from outside.

“D-does…” Bruce looked back to the others, gesturing innocently with his glasses to the outside window. “Does anyone know what time it is?”

The only response came in the form of a hitch-pitched yawn from where Groot slept.