Chapter Text
The first thing Peter had noticed were the giant bird-like things in the sky. They flapped their wings and let out loud squaaws as they flew.
He thinks they might've flew through a crowd of them while crashing down.
"We gotta fix this ship, bro," Peter says, following Ronan out of the Milano.
"As if it weren't obvious," the Kree responds, rolling his violet eyes and picking up his hammer . "First, we must find a civilization of some sorts. Or at least a valid water source, to refill our tank."
They don't venture far, because the sun is setting. Peter leaves the bright headlights of the Milano on. So they can find their way back if they get lost. All they have to do is look for the bright lights.
"This is really far," Peter says as he sits down by the stream of water before them. The sun has already set and it's dark out. " how're we supposed to get water all the way out here!?"
"We we'll find a way. Do not worry," Ronan reaches down and brushes his hand through Peter's hair.
"Well we better find a way soon, because I don't plan on sleeping out here we have no idea what the hell lives here. And judging from the giant footprint I stumbled in earlier, something really big lives here. And it'll probably crush me!"
"Nothing will hurt you, my love. I will kill it." Ronan vows. "Stay here. I will be back."
"Wait! Where're you going!?"
"To see if there are any useful plants around. Anything we can consume."
"But it's dark out here, and--" something shines in the bushes, reflecting the small amount of light filtering through the trees. Eyes. Peter recognizes the glow of eyes. He's had his share of fighting off beasties.
Had they been followed?
"Ronan," he says, voice hardly above a whisper. "There's something there."
"What do you mean?" Ronan turns around.
The bushes shift.
"Run!" The Terran screeches, leaping up and dashing past Ronan and back in the direction of the Milano.
The creature leaps out of the bushes and starts after him quickly gaining speed. It's long tail whips Ronan in the process and nearly knocks him over.
He doesn't get to look at the creature for long, because it disappears into the trees after Peter, but he sees that it is tall, as tall as he is, with a long tail, long claws, and sharp teeth. A giant reptilian creature.
"Ronan!"
Peter's repetitive screeches for help send Ronan into overdrive. He hauls his hammer up over his shoulder and moves with unnatural speed after the two.
He sees red when Peter trips and curls into a ball to protect himself as the beast rapidly approaches, hissing and screeching. It opens it's jaws and dives it's head straight down for Peter's neck, but the Terran shrieks and flops over, narrowly avoiding getting his neck snapped by the creature.
Once he's in close enough range, Ronan swings his hammer, striking the beast in the side of it's large, bony head and killing it instantly. He kneeled beside Peter on the floor and pulled him up.
"Peter! Are you alright!?"
Peter was shaking with violent sobs, but he stopped himself to glare at Ronan. "A dinosaur just tried to fucking eat me and you're asking me if I'm okay!?"
Peter's alright.
Ronan pulls Peter close and holds on to him for a while, until Peter's tears come to a stop.
"It almost killed me...it was gonna eat me--"
Ronan shushes him and pulls Peter away to look into his eyes. "I will never let anything hurt you."
"The dinosaur--"
"Is dead. It tried to hurt you. I killed it." He doesn't know what the hell a dinosaur is, but that's not important.
Peter takes a deep breath and wipes his face, "Yeah...okay, yeah. We should get out of here before something else comes after us..."
Peter only manages to stagger a few feet before tripping over something.
The something squawks at him loudly.
Alarmed, herolls over and looks, heart melting at the sight.
A baby dinosaur. An exact mini replica of the one Ronan just put to death...
Greenish-gray with Amber eyes and a blue stripe going down her side.
She's tiny, small enough for Peter to hold her with one hand if he really wanted to. She squeaks and trills at him, then hops behind a bush. Peter, being the idiot he is, crawls after her.
She didn't go far; She's hopped into a nest, where three unhatched eggs sit. The shell of a fourth lays crushed on the ground, covered in dirt. She's aware of Peter's presence, and she taps at the closest egg with her foot, squawking at him.
Ronan approaches behind him, "Peter, do not be foolish--"
But Peter's already grinning, reaching down for the baby who happily sways her tail when he scoops her up.
"She's so precious..." He turns around to face the Kree, and the blue man's already asking his head.
"No! We are not keeping that--thing! One of them just tried to kill you, Peter!"
"But you killed her mom!" He stroked the head of the tiny dinosaur. "We have to take her...she's gonna be all alone in this universe, without a family..." He turns his large puppy eyes on the Kree.
"There are three other eggs in the nest, Peter."
Peter grins and places the overgrown lizard against his chest and zips up his jacket, leaving enough room for her to poke her head out. "Then we take them all."
She does. And from between her little teeth, the end of her tongue sticks out in a little blep. She is not afraid of them. Nor does she aim to attack them.
Peter reaches down to gather the three eggs, holding them securely in his arms. He's never seen such large eggs in his life, but he handles them with ease.
"All of them."
"No." Ronan says. "That's dangerous Peter! Peter--" The Terran is smirking at him, though. He's taking them.
"I will not kill it if it tries to eat you in your sleep," he grumbles finally, watching Peter stand with the eggs and the baby.
"It's not gonna eat me. Look at it."
"You don't even know what it is!"
"'Course I do!" Peter says, grinning when the reptile reaches her neck up to lick his chin. "She's a velociraptor!"
"A...nevermind." Ronan shakes his head. "It's not gonna stay little forever."
"Um, she's little and cute right now. That's all that matters."
Ronan raises an eyebrow.
"C'mon! She's smaller than Rocket! How much harm can she do!?"
She bit everything. And anything that she would fit in her jaws, she took with her. Where she thought she was going was a mystery to Peter. She'd take whatever she could (socks, clothes, Ronan's boots, even Peter's Heaphones. She just picked them up with her little teeth and walked away. Of course, Peter chased her down and gently pried them from her mouth.)
She never made it more than halfway out of the room before Peter caught her every time.
She, for some reason, was not fond of Ronan's boots, though. Maybe they intimidated her? She could probably fit inside of one...
The Kree did not find it as amusing as his Terran counterpart when he woke up and his boots were on opposite ends of the ship.
The ship they were, fortunately, almost done repairing.
"Hey, come back here!" Peter says, chasing the sprinting baby raptor as she made off with the corner of the bedsheet tucked in her jaws, dragging the emote blanket behind her as she held her head up proudly. "Blue!"
He had named her, too.
He calls her Blue. Because she has blue stripes. She is the only one with a name.
The three eggs still remain unhatched, on the other bed in the ship. Peter has them wrapped up in a thick blanket under a heat lamp to keep them warm.
"Blue!" He steps down on the end of the blanket, watching in amusement as the raptor falls over. "C'mere, silly girl." He scoops her and the blanket up and cuddles her close. She trills and nuzzles at his face.
"I imprinted on her," Peter had said to Ronan when the Kree questioned why it hadn't tried to bite his face off. "Im her momma now."
"That sounds fake...but okay..."
Ronan didn't like it much...
It was little, but loud. It barked and squeaked and honked all the time, it tried to eat everything, and it stared at him with it's giant yellow eyes.
Peter calls it a 'she'.
Ronan does not care what it is.
It's annoying.
Peter lets it sleep in the bed with them, too. It sleeps on his Terran's chest, curled up like a dog.
He carries it everywhere, too. He even puts it in his lap when he sat at the table.
It sits on Peter's shoulders when he's out repairing the wing of the ship.
Sometimes Peter stuffs it in the front of his jacket so he doesn't have to use his hands to hold her up.
Sometimes it climbs on to his head and ruffles up the soft orange hair.
And it always stole his favorite pair of boots.
He will admit, as annoying as the thing is, it is kind of cute cute. And it's cute with Peter. Together, it's almost unbearable. But he still doesn't like it, or get why Peter has fallen in love with it.
He even holds it up in the air and dances to his music with it. He claims that it enjoys it.
Blue, Peter calls it.
"Her name is Blue and she's a girl."
He's tired of Ronan calling her an "it."
Ronan tentatively reaches out to pet her, the way Peter does.
He's not scared to touch her. He's picked her up several times and glared her down when she tries to run off, dragging his boots by the laces. She hangs her head and gives him big, sad eyes. She knows she's done bad when he glares at her like that. But he never finds the time to sit there and pet her. He can't be bothered.
Peter grins, he holds her up so both of the beings (which could, honestly, both be identified as 'blue'), are face to face. This time with no glares from Ronan, and no sad puppy eyes from Blue.
They stare at each other for a moment, and then Peter giggles and moves her forward, purposely causing her snout to bump against Ronan's nose. He pulls her back slightly, and then does it again, making a "mwah" sound when the end of her snout taps Ronan's nose.
"Dinosaur kisses!"
"Peter," Ronan glares at him. It is not funny. At least, not to Ronan. But Peter's giggling like a child.
His glare fades when Blue happily laps at his face with her tongue, tail whipping back and forth, like an excited dog.
"See, she likes you! You just gotta give her some time!" Peter says, megawatt smile stretching across his face. "Your boots, though...THATS a different story. She doesn't like those things."
Ronan reaches up to take Blue from where she sits in Peter's cupped hands. It doesn't look like a comfortable sit, though. Peter's hands don't cradle her enough. She looks like she might fall. He's got a hand under her, supporting her from below, and another on her chest, to keep her from actually falling. It really doesn't look to comfortable.
Maybe he should...just hold her instead...
Ronan takes hold of her and cradles her in the crook of his arm, the way he's seen Peter do before. Like an infant. It appears to be more comfortable for her.
She looks up at him with happy eyes, long tail moving side to side and the end of her tongue poking out from between her teeth. She's actually really really cute.
The next time they sit down to eat, she clambers her way up Ronan's leg and settles down in his lap. He does nothing.
Whenever they sit together in the cockpit, she makes herself comfortable on the closest lap.
When they sleep, she wedges herself between the two of them.
"You," Peter says thrusting Blue into Ronan's arms. "Get mad at her for me. I can't--she's too cute!"
"What did she do?"
Peter holds up his favorite red jacket. The right sleeve has been torn off.
"I don't know what happened to the sleeve, either! I think she ate it!"
Ronan holds the growing raptor from under her arms. She's almost too big to hold with just his hands.
He says nothing, but glares as her.
She hangs her head, knowing she's done something wrong.
"Bad girl," Peter scolds, pointing a finger at her.
"I told you she would tear stuff up," Ronan says, placing her on the floor. She apologetically nudges at his leg before hopping off.
"I can't get mad at her, though," Peter frowns. "She's too damn cute."
"She will destroy many more things in the future. You know this, yes?"
Peter nods.
"Then I suggest you keep your tape deck safe," He says, looking over Peter's shoulder. He can see her with the walkman in her jaws, heaphones dragging behind her. "I don't think she enjoys it as much as you do..."
Peter turned around faster than the speed of a bullet and sprinted for her. "Blue! No! Bad girl!" He snatches her up off the ground and holds her up so that they're face to face. He wants to scold her more; get angry at her for chewing on his walkman (luckily, without causing damage.) But...she's too cute.
Tail wagging, Blue stretches forward and licks Peter's face happily as the Terran frowns. She chirrups and jerks forward, bopping her nose against Peter's.
"Dinosaur kisses," Ronan mumbles to himself, smiling.
Peter keeps the Walkmam safe from Blue, but he does not keep himself safe from worry.
"Do you think they're dead?" He asks Ronan.
He's been hovering over the unhatched eggs. He's getting anxious. He's been pacing. It had been almost a month.
Shouldn't they have hatched by now? Shouldn't they have hatched a long time ago?
"We cannot tell," Ronan says, placing a hand on Peter's shoulder. Blue has herself atop the Kree's head, a foot on each shoulder, and an arm framing each side of Ronan's face. Her chest and long neck rest on Ronan's head. "We must give it time."
"Time...yeah..." He falls silent. The only sound is the soft hum of the engine.
"Do not be discouraged," he steps closer to Peter.
Blue leans forward, her blunt claws digging into Ronan's shoulder as she tried to lean forward and lick her Terran papa's face. (Thankfully her claws were not sharp. Peter had made sure to file them down from time to time.)
Though, she was not careful. She leans too far forward and topples over.
Instinctively, both Ronan and Peter reach forward, their arms working together to catch her and hold her up.
Peter shuffles a bit closer and looks down.
"I'll try not to...besides, we've got out arms full with this little trouble maker..."
She sits up and honks at both of them, tail swishing about.
Peter is deep in the best sleep he's had in days when he's awoken.
Blue's squawking and barking like crazy, perched up on his chest. She's eyeing the eggs on the bed opposite to them.
"Wha'samatta, girl?" Peter mumbles sleepily as Ronan sits up beside him.
She honks at him, long and low, and she begins jumping up and down on Peter's chest. She's got his full attention now.
He too, sit's up, and Blue hops off of him and over to the other bed, clambering up and squawking at the eggs.
Peter gets up quickly, dragging the sheets down with him and nearly tripping to inspect the source of Blue's alarm.
Underneath the light of the lamp, one of the eggs twitches--and through the thin cracks on the surface, a tiny hand with equally tiny claws pops out. Quickly, it is retracted, and then a tiny orange eye peeks through the hole. The first thing it sees is Peter.