Work Text:
Peter had heard Richard angry before.
He had heard him angry in vacuum-sealed docking bays, in war rooms, in busted-up cockpits with smoke pouring out the panel seams, in alleyways on planets whose names barely fit in a mouth. He had heard him furious, offended, righteous, wounded, blazing. Richard Rider did not do anything small. Not victory, not grief, not love, and sure as hell not a fight.
But this was different.
This one had turned cold in the middle.
That was always worse.
The Milano sat moored to the outer platform like a sleeping animal, hull lit orange by the station lamps. Beyond the viewport the black of space stretched out with all the usual arrogance of it, endless and quiet and not the least bit interested in what two idiots did to each other inside a ship.
Richard stood in the centre of the hold with his helmet off, brown hair damp with sweat from patrol, jaw firm enough to crack teeth. Peter leaned on a crate of salvage bound for Taserface's buyers like he didn't have a care in creation, arms folded, face gone to that infuriating blankness that meant he cared too much and would rather swallow glass than show it.
Richard jabbed his finger at the half-sorted cargo. "I'm not doin' this anymore."
Peter's eyes didn't move off him. "Doin' what, exactly?"
"This." Richard flung both hands wide. "This thing where ya act like you're Star-Lord when it suits ya, prince of Spartax when it's convenient, and then the second that raccoon comes callin' with a score, you're crackin' vaults with him and sellin' the take to every cutthroat wearin' a Ravager patch."
Peter pushed off the crate. "Careful."
"No, you be careful." Richard laughed once, short and humourless. "I'm out there bustin' my ass keepin' half the galaxy from eatin' itself alive, and every time I turn around I gotta wonder if my boyfriend's gonna be on the wrong side of the arrest."
Peter's mouth flattened. "You know damn well I ain't robbin' hospitals and orphanages, honey."
"Don't call me honey when you're standin' in a room full of stolen tech."
"It ain't stolen."
Richard barked a laugh. "That's cute. Real cute. You got Rocket haulin' in scores off half the trade lanes in this quadrant, Ravagers linin' up to buy whatever the two of you lift, and I'm supposed to what, nod along 'cause Peter Quill calls it business?"
Peter's accent hardened the way it did when his temper climbed, all old Colorado dust and flint. "You don't get to come onto my ship and tell me who I am."
"I'm tellin' ya who you keep choosin' to be. Somebody easy to leave. You're better than this. You know that, right? Or you used to. Star-Lord's supposed to mean somethin'. And instead you keep crawlin' back to people who taught ya theft before they ever taught ya loyalty."
Peter's eyes turned hard as ship metal. "Watch your mouth."
"No. I'm done watchin' my mouth for you." Richard stepped closer. "I have tolerated the heists and the fencin' because I love you. Because every time I thought, this is it, this is where I draw the line, you'd grin at me or kiss me stupid or say it's one last job, one last favour, one last run. There's always one more."
Peter's voice sank low. "You done?"
Richard had expected pushback. Shouting, maybe. Peter dragging a palm through that strawberry-blond hair and cursing him out, or hauling him in by the jacket and kissing the fight out of him the way he sometimes did when they were both too proud to apologise first.
He hadn't expected this. Glacial. Punishing calm.
It made his own anger wobble.
He swallowed and tried again, quieter, rawer. "Pete. I can't keep doin' this. I can't be Nova and sleep beside a man who keeps makin' himself an enemy of the law."
Peter smiled then, and it wasn't a nice smile. Small and mean and tired. "Law," he repeated. "That what you are now? Law?"
Richard flinched like he'd been slapped.
Peter saw it. Didn't stop.
"You used to know better than most that the helmet ain't holy, Rich. Worlds are crooked, governments are crooked, kings are crooked. But you put it on, and suddenly you think in straight little lines."
Richard's face went red with hurt before it went white with fury. "This ain't about a helmet."
"No? Sounds like it."
"It's about me askin' the man I love to stop runnin' with thieves."
Peter turned away first, which somehow hurt worse than yelling would have. "Then maybe you oughta love somebody else."
The silence after that had edges.
Richard's breathing went ragged. He'd cooled before, from worse fights than this. He always did: snap, rage, pace, come back softer, all bruised honesty and bad jokes. Peter knew that about him. Counted on it, maybe.
"You really mean that?" Richard said, quiet now.
Peter stood with one hand on the cockpit arch, broad back turned, voice flat. "I mean I'm tired."
Richard waited.
Peter didn't turn around.
"Fine," he said. "Fine. You wanna keep runnin' scores and sellin' to cutthroats so bad, go do it forever, for all I care. But I ain't gonna stand here and smile while ya throw yourself away."
Peter gave him nothing. Not a word, not a look, not even enough anger to prove any of this mattered.
"If that's what you want, then maybe I should leave for real this time."
Still nothing.
It was supposed to make Peter spin around. Supposed to make him say Don't be stupid, Rich. Supposed to end the fight.
Peter only said, "Door's behind you."
Richard stared at him in naked disbelief for one horrible second, then yanked his helmet up, slammed it on, and walked out with every bit of dignity he had left. The hatch hissed shut behind him like something with teeth.
Peter stayed facing the wall until the external sensors told him Richard's signature had disappeared into the station traffic.
Then he kicked the crate hard enough to cave in the side.
Peter expected a comm the next day.
Not a long one: Richard wasn't a sonnet writer. It would've been something fast and irritable and soft underneath the bark. You still bein' an ass? Or I hate you. Lemme in. Maybe just a ping, and then Richard at the dock a minute later pretending he'd only come by for a charger or his spare gloves.
Nothing came.
Peter told himself good.
On the second day, he told himself Richard was being dramatic.
The third day, he called him twice and cut off both times before they connected, furious with himself for doing it either way.
By the fifth, he took a job with Rocket out past the Kree scrap lanes and spent the whole run glaring at the open space like it had personally offended him.
By the seventh, he'd given up sleeping right.
The ninth night, he went through old messages with a drink warming in his hand, listening to Richard's voice until the sound of it started to hurt more than the silence had.
On the twelfth, he found one of Richard's shirts jammed behind a locker latch, stood there holding it for a long while, then stuffed it back as if the cloth itself had caught him doing something shameful.
He didn't tell Rocket any of it. Didn't ask around to see if anyone had seen Nova. Didn't say Richard's name out loud, because the second he did, it might turn real in a way he wasn't built to survive.
Peter Quill had been left before, orphaned, abandoned, traded, betrayed, used. He knew the shape of departure. Knew how to sneer at it before it bit deep.
But this was Richard.
Richard, who burned hot and forgave fast.
Richard, who always came back.
Richard, who maybe hadn't this time.
It took Peter longer than it should have to admit Richard might actually be gone. That admission caught up with him on Kallus Reach, coming down the loading ramp of Taserface's trading post after offloading a haul he and Rocket had lifted off a Kree cargo haulier the week before, jacket draped over one shoulder, both blasters riding low.
The post was an ugly slab of metal docked into the carcass of a dead freighter, rust-red corridors, mismatched bulkheads, laughter too loud to be entirely sane. Peter had just hit the outer hangar when something small and blue shot across his path.
He stopped.
On the deck, in front of his boot, sat a creature roughly the size of a palm and the shape of a loaf of bread.
A loaf of bread wearing a bootleg Nova armour.
Peter blinked once.
Rounded plush body. Absurdly stubby limbs. Four tiny toe-nubs planted wide like it was trying hard to look formidable. A miniature gold Nova Centurion helmet fitted over a face that was mostly eyes: huge, offensively huge, the kind of eyes evolution came up with specifically to blackmail a person emotionally.
The creature looked up at him.
"Tsum tsum!" it declared.
Peter checked both shoulders, just to be sure the universe wasn't running some kind of public joke at his expense.
No one.
He looked back down.
The little Nova thing stamped a foot. Blue energy fizzed around it.
Peter dragged a hand over his eyes. "Nope."
"Tsum!"
"Nope."
He crouched, narrowing his eyes at it. The helmet. The blue trail. The gold starburst. The attitude. Sweet Lord above.
"It is entirely too early for me to be havin' a breakdown in public."
The creature huffed, somehow, with no visible mouth worth the name, and yet Peter had never seen anything project indignation so cleanly.
He reached down with two fingers, picked it up by the sides, and held it out at arm's length.
It kicked all four stubby toes furiously. "Tsum tsum tsum tsum!"
An almost hysterical laugh tried to climb up Peter's throat. He strangled it dead. "You ain't real."
The plush creature wriggled, glared, and then, with the offended dignity of a very small emperor, smacked one soft paw against his thumb.
Peter looked at the paw.
Then, because grief made a person do strange things, he flicked the creature away.
It let out a cry of pure outrage and pinwheeled through the air.
Peter turned and walked.
Three steps later, something shot after him in a blue streak and slammed into the back of his head.
"Son of a bitch."
He spun to find the tiny Nova hovering at eye level, arms out, legs tucked, crackling with blue light and moral offence.
"Tsum!"
"Don't gimme that."
"Tsum tsum."
"I am grievin', you little hallucination. I do not have time for this."
It folded its stubby arms and hovered there, sulking.
Peter laughed once, dry and mean. "Great. Now my delusions are judgin' me."
He turned again for the hangar. The thing followed. He sped up. It sped up. He hit the Milano's ramp, spun round, and the little Nova nearly bonked into his nose before braking in a shower of blue sparks.
Peter leaned down until they were eye to eye. "Listen here, Bean. I am not takin' you with me."
It pointed to itself. "Tsum." Then it pointed to Peter. "Tsum." Then it clasped its tiny paws together and tilted its whole body in the most transparent plea Peter had ever seen out of anything, living or otherwise.
He stared at it a long, exhausted beat.
"Absolutely not."
He boarded and sealed the hatch.
A muffled thump sounded outside. Then another. Then nothing.
Peter stood with his forehead against the sealed hatch, eyes shut. For one stupid second he nearly opened it again.
Instead he muttered, "Get a grip," and went for the cockpit.
The little Nova was already sitting on his dashboard.
Peter froze.
It lifted one stubby arm in a cheerful little wave. "Tsum!"
Peter looked back down the corridor he'd just walked, then at the vents, then at the sealed canopy. "I hate space magic."
The creature beamed, or the plush equivalent, bounced once, then pat-patted the dash beside itself like it was inviting him to sit down and behave.
He put both hands on his hips. "You suspiciously look a lot like somebody I am not in the mood to think about."
Its bounce faltered.
Peter caught the flinch.
Good, he thought, savage and petty. Oughta sting a little.
The satisfaction lasted about half a second. Because it wasn't mocking him, it was just there. Small and stubborn and strange.
The Bean lowered its head. "...tsum."
Peter exhaled through his nose. "Damn it." He dropped into the pilot's seat and scrubbed a hand over his face. "You got a name?"
"Tsum!"
"'Course you do."
It straightened proudly.
He peered at the station lights blinking beyond the canopy. "I'm callin' you Bean."
The little Nova jerked back as if it had been personally insulted. "Tsum tsum!"
"That's what you are."
It slapped both paws against the dashboard and let out a squeak so piercing it sounded like a toy being stepped on.
Against every ounce of good judgment he had left, Peter nearly smiled.
Bean stayed.
Peter tried to leave it behind twice in the next three days.
The first time he set it on a fuel platform out on Cinder's Orbit with a ration cube and a curt, "You'll be fine." He got ten paces before a blue streak shot over his shoulder and Bean landed on his head like an angry hat.
The second time he locked it in a storage compartment aboard the Milano after waking to find it asleep on his chest like a warm little stone. Ten minutes later, the compartment door buzzed open from the inside, and Bean floated out, dragging one of Peter's socks behind it like an accusation.
He gave up pretending afterwards, not because he enjoyed it but because he was too exhausted to keep losing.
Bean developed habits.
It rode his shoulder through market streets, paws hooked in his collar, helmet tipping in alert little turns while it watched everything with scandalously large eyes. It slept in the crook of his elbow whenever he dozed in the cockpit. It wedged itself between him and the console when he drank too much, squeaking its disapproval and physically shoving the bottle away with both paws. It loved the instrument panel best of all: Peter would glance up from a route map and find it perched among the lights like some ridiculous royal idol, glowing blue from underneath, monitoring readings it had no business understanding.
Except sometimes it did understand.
One night a pirate mine drifted into their blind spot, and before Peter's sensors caught it, Bean launched off the dash, slammed both paws to the proximity alarm, and screamed, "TSUM!"
He hauled the Milano hard to starboard half a second before the mine ignited.
Silence. Then Peter looked over to find the tiny creature sprawled belly-down across the console, panting in squeaky little wheezes.
"Huh," he said.
Bean lifted its head weakly.
He reached over, cautious, and scratched one finger between the ridges of the mini helmet.
Bean went rigid. Then melted, collapsed straight into the touch with a warbling little trill, all outrage gone in an instant.
Peter yanked his hand back as if it had bitten him.
Bean cracked one eye open, plainly offended that the petting had stopped.
"That ain't fair," he muttered.
It made a smug little noise and curled up right there on the dash, paws tucked under.
He looked away first.
There were moments it hurt too much to have the thing near.
Bean flew like Richard. Not perfectly: the body was too rounded, the limbs too short, and it was fundamentally comical. But the way it dashed to shield the person it claimed as its own, the way it hovered with one side tilted like it was leaning on an invisible hip, the way it crossed its tiny arms with offended dignity, all of it made Peter look away more often than he cared to admit.
One evening, drifting between systems with the cockpit dark except for instrument glow, he found Bean perched on the back of the co-pilot's chair, watching him.
He'd been playing an old message: Richard's voice, tinny through the speakers.
Pete, if you're hearin' this, you left your damn gloves in my quarters again. I swear ya do this on purpose. If I trip over one more jacket of yours I'm ventin' the whole lot. Call me back.
He replayed it three times before shutting it off.
Bean climbed down from the chair in slow, careful hops. Crossed the console, then his shoulder, then settled against the side of his neck with a tiny sigh, plush body warm from whatever curious energy ran it.
Peter didn't move.
A small paw patted his jaw once.
He laughed, and the sound came out worn at the edges. "You really are the devil."
"Tsum," Bean said, soft.
He swallowed. "He said he was gonna leave."
Bean became still against his neck.
"I thought he was bluffin'." Peter's mouth twisted. "Rich gets hot, then he cools down, then he comes back. That's how it goes." He watched the starfield. "Figured he'd show up the next day hollerin' about how I'd stolen his shampoo or somethin' equally stupid." A beat. "Ain't came."
Bean's grip clenched on his collar.
He went quiet a while. Then, because space was too big and he was too tired and a man could start talking to a plush delusion under the right conditions, he said, "I loved him mean. That's the truth of it."
Bean's head came up.
His voice dropped, rough. "I knew he'd chase me. Knew he loved me enough to be the one who came back first. So I let him walk thinkin' I had one more day to fix it. That was an ugly thing to do."
Bean squeaked. Not the usual chirpy, indignant noise. Something smaller. Broken.
"Yeah, well." He shut his eyes. "Ain't askin' for absolution, darlin'."
Bean looked at him a long second, then did the strangest thing. It leaned forward and gently pressed its helmet to his cheek.
The gesture was so exactly Richard it hollowed him right out. Richard did that when words went bad, knocked his forehead against Peter's temple, once, twice, like a stubborn animal demanding honesty.
He turned his face into the little helmet before he could stop himself.
"Damn you," he whispered, no longer sure if he meant the creature or the man it kept making him think of.
Bean stayed there until he fell asleep in the pilot's seat.
The galaxy continued to behave as it always did: remaining dangerous.
Peter accepted jobs because movement was simpler than remaining idle. Heists with Rocket that paid too well to turn down. Pickups. Escort runs. A recovery off a dead moon where the gravity came in rude little bursts and Bean spent half the trip indignantly stuck to the ceiling. A stop at a station full of smugglers who laughed at the tiny Nova riding his shoulder, right up until Bean lit one starey-eyed drunk's sleeve on fire with a miniature gravimetric burst.
He began, against every principle he owned, planning his life around it.
Left half a ration biscuit beside his plate without thinking. Kept a folded scarf on the co-pilot's seat because Bean liked to burrow in it. Cut a thumb-hole in an old fingerless glove and turned it into the ugliest little blanket in the galaxy after finding Bean shivering in the cooler-vent wash. When Bean got sleepy, its helmet would dip lower and lower until it eventually tipped face-first into his chest, and he started catching it before impact on pure instinct.
He also started talking to it too much.
"You'd hate this planet, sweetheart. Too clean."
"Don't look at me like that. I know this ain't legal. It also ain't illegal in a meaningful way I care to examine."
"No, I am not apologisin' to a customs officer. I got standards."
"That's stealin', Bean. You do realise the irony here?"
Bean answered in squeaks, trills, dramatic flops, full-body sulks. Sometimes it turned its back on him and sat there like a boiled dumpling full of righteous disappointment until he bribed it with candied starfruit.
Once, after he came back bloodied from a dockside scrap, Bean climbed onto his lap while he stitched his own side shut, frantically pawing at the medkit, pushing antiseptic wipes towards him one by one with panicked little chirps.
Dizzy, hurting, he stared at it. "You are impossibly cute," he said, before he could stop himself.
Bean froze with a wipe in both paws.
Peter stared at it.
Bean set the wipe down and looked up at him with wet, glossy eyes.
He cupped the small body in one hand. Bean pressed into his palm at once, trusting, as if it had always belonged there. He finished the last of the stitches one-handed, because he couldn't bear to set it down.
Peter stopped trying to pretend Bean was temporary.
It didn't stop being Richard. Didn't stop aching. Peter still woke some nights with Richard's name in his mouth and anger under his skin and shame sitting heavy in his bones. He still resented himself for landing exactly where Richard said he would: one more score, one more run, one more compromise. He still told himself it was too late, too late, too late.
But there was this creature now. This impossible, stubborn little Nova-shaped plush.
He found himself grinning when Bean stole his comm and sat on it, victorious. Found himself tucking the scarf more snugly around it while it slept. Found himself, once, after a rough jump through hostile space, clutching Bean to his chest so hard his own hands quivered.
Found himself kissing the top ridge of its little helmet before setting it back on the console.
The second after, Bean went perfectly still.
Peter watched it, wary.
Bean touched one paw to the spot he'd kissed, then made a small, hopeful noise that had no business landing the way it did.
"What?" he said. "Don't make that face."
Bean made the face harder.
"You're a manipulative little son of a gun."
It spread its paws helplessly and scooted closer. He gave it a long, suspicious look, then ran a thumb along its side. "I miss him," he heard himself admit.
Bean's eyes drooped.
"I'm startin' to think he really believes I chose all this over him." He said it to the stars, to the cockpit, to the dumb tiny witness in his hands. "I didn't. I was angry. And proud. And mean. That's different from not lovin' him."
Bean made that broken little squeak again and pressed its face into his thumb.
He kissed its helmet a second time, softer.
Nothing happened.
He laughed at himself, bitter around the edges. "Look at me. Confessin' my sins to a bean."
They were crossing the Velloran debris belt when everything came apart.
A Ravager ship hailed them on a secure channel. Peter clocked the transponder and grimaced before he even opened it. Taserface, a trading contact out of Yondu's old crew, the man Peter and Rocket fenced their hauls through more often than either of them liked to admit, big on sentimentality and bigger on selling out whoever stood nearest when the credits were right.
"Quill." Taserface's voice drawled through the speaker. "Heard a funny story. Heard Nova Prime's been sniffin' round my routes."
Peter's shoulders went tight. Beside him, Bean straightened up on the console, suddenly alert.
"Lotta folks sniffin' round your routes," Peter said, light.
"Yeah? Then why's there Nova energy all over your wake?"
His blood grew cold.
Bean stood.
He glanced at it, then at the sensor board. Three ships were already ghosting out from behind a broken frigate hulk.
Taserface chuckled. "That little pet you been carryin'. Cute thing. Worth a hell of a bounty to the right buyer."
Peter's hand slammed to the controls. "You touch my ship, I'll decorate the belt with your teeth."
The channel cut. The first blast hit their port shields a second later.
The Milano bucked hard. Bean tumbled, caught itself in a burst of blue light, and zipped back to Peter's shoulder with a fierce little squeal.
"Hang on, sugar." He threw the ship into a dive between two drifting engine cores.
The chase went ugly fast. This was Taserface's crew, and Taserface had run cargo alongside Peter often enough over the years to know his tricks: they anticipated his feints, boxed his routes, cut off his clean escapes. The Milano took a hit to the rear stabiliser and started pulling left.
Bean leapt from his shoulder onto the damaged panel, paws spread, blue light pouring from it in a stubborn attempt to hold the readings together by sheer will.
Peter fired blind behind them and clipped one pursuer. "That's it, sweetheart. Keep her steady."
A second ship swept up on their starboard side and latched a mag-clamp to the hull.
Warning lights screamed. Boarding.
He cursed and slammed the ship into manual lockdown, but the outer-hatch alarm was already shrieking. Taserface's people were forcing through.
Bean whirled towards the corridor, radiating with light.
"No." He snatched for it and missed. "Bean!"
Too late. The tiny Nova launched down the corridor in a streak of blue.
Peter shot out of the cockpit after it, blasters drawn. At the hatch, two Ravagers had already forced the door halfway open. Bean hovered in the gap like a furious little star, throwing miniature gravimetric pulses that cracked teeth and snapped fingers. It was so small. Each burst visibly cost it something.
A heavy boot swung through the torn hatch and caught Bean midair.
The sound it made was tiny.
He shot the man in the throat.
The second Ravager barely got a weapon up before Peter caught him with the butt of a blaster hard enough to fold him. Then Peter was on his knees, hands trembling as he reached for the little body that had smacked into the far bulkhead and dropped limp to the deck.
"Bean."
It lay on its side, helmet crooked, blue glow wavering weakly under the armour lines.
"Hey. Hey, c'mon now." He gathered it up with a gentleness he hadn't known he still had in him. It fit in both his palms. "Look at me, darlin'. Come on."
One eye opened halfway.
"Tsum," it whispered.
He laughed, and it broke in the middle. "Yeah. There you are. My brave little fool."
The Milano shuddered under fresh impact. Alarms howled. Somewhere another hull-breach warning joined the chorus. He barely heard it.
Bean's glow weakened further.
"No." He bent over it, shielding it from sparks, noise, and the whole rotten galaxy. "No, you don't get to do this. You hear me? I ain't losin' you too."
Its tiny paw twitched against his finger.
"I'm sorry," he said. "About all of it. About him. About you. About every rotten thing I touched with my own hands."
Bean made a faint, aching sound.
He bowed his head until his forehead touched the little helmet. "I loved Richard Rider with everything ugly and good in me. Still do. Would tomorrow, too. I was just too proud to say it right when it mattered."
His tears hit the gold helmet and rolled off.
"I woulda chosen him," he said under his breath. "God help me, I would. I know that now. Too late, maybe. But true. So don't you go dyin' on me, little Bean. Don't you leave me holdin' another thing I loved after I was too slow to tell it so."
Bean looked up at him with enormous, dimming eyes.
Then, with what little strength it had left, it lifted one tiny paw and tapped Peter's mouth.
Once.
He frowned through the tears.
The paw tapped again, insistent.
Bean squeaked weakly and tapped a third time.
The third tap pulled a wet laugh out of him despite everything. "You choosin' now to be bossy?"
Peter looked at it. At the huge, pleading eyes.
Then, because the ship was screaming and the world was ending and he’d run clean out of reasons not to be soft, he cupped the little creature close and kissed its face.
Not the helmet this time. Not careless affection. A real kiss, warm and lingering, carrying every bit of love he had left to give.
For half a second, nothing happened.
Then the glow exploded.
Peter recoiled with a shout as blue-white light flooded the corridor, illuminating the torn hatch, walls, his hands, his lungs, and the entire wrecked, aching world. The plush body in his palms went hot, then heavy, then impossible to hold in one grip. Light stretched limbs, unfolded a spine, broadened shoulders, turned softness into flesh.
Peter staggered, nearly went down.
When the light eventually snapped inward, Richard Rider collapsed into his arms.
Full-sized. Human. Breathing hard. Brown hair a wreck, face wan, Nova uniform scorched at the seams, eyes open with shock and exhausted hope.
Peter stared at him.
Richard stared back.
Neither moved.
"Pete?" Richard's voice came out rough, Long Island scraping through every letter.
Peter made a sound unfit for language and hauled him in hard enough to bruise. Richard gasped, then clutched back just as desperate, hands knotting in Peter's jacket, whole body shaking.
"You," Peter said into his hair, half wild with relief, half furious. "You tiny blue lunatic. You absolute menace. You was Bean."
Richard laughed and cried at the same time, face crushed to Peter's throat. "Yeah. Yeah, I was the damn Bean. Couldn’t talk, couldn’t write, couldn’t even send an ID ping. Every time I tried to tell you, the curse turned it into tsum."
Peter pulled back just far enough to frame his face with both hands, as if he might vanish again if he let go too soon. "How?"
"Cursed." Richard's breath was still ragged. "Long story. Some weird sorcerer on a patrol run. Said it'd break with true love's kiss, and before ya start — I know how insane that sounds. I lived it."
"You came to me."
"Course I came to you."
The ship quivered violently around them. A console blew out somewhere with a burst of sparks.
Neither of them moved an inch.
Richard's eyes went wet. "I thought you didn't want me no more."
Peter shut his eyes, forehead dropping to his. "I know."
"Thought maybe ya'd finally decided I was too much. Too loud, too angry, too Nova, whatever." Richard's throat worked. "Then you flicked me."
"In my defence, I thought I'd gone insane."
"Blue blazes! You flicked me like a bottle cap, Quill."
"You smacked me in the head."
"You deserved it."
Peter laughed, helpless, tears still running. "I do."
Richard touched his cheek, reverently, as if he'd missed the map of him. "You really meant it?"
Peter held his gaze. Nowhere left to hide now. No cold shoulder, no turned back, no pride worth the cost of this.
"With my whole soul. I love you, Richard Rider. Loved you angry. Loved you stupid. Loved you when I let you walk out that door, and every minute after." Peter swallowed. "If you still want me, I'll spend however long it takes makin' that right."
Richard's breath halted. "Pete."
Peter dragged his thumb along Richard's jaw, still half-disbelieving the warmth of him. "You were right, too."
"What?"
"About the thievin'." A small, wrecked smile. "Ain't sayin' every score me and Rocket ever pulled was worth what it cost, but I kept goin' back 'cause I knew how. Didn't have to think too hard about what it made me." He shook his head. "You weren't askin' me to be holy. Just to quit actin' like bein' raised by thieves meant I had to stay one."
Richard stared at him like he didn't quite trust his own ears.
"Should've listened the first time, darlin'."
The alarms shrieked again.
Richard looked past him towards the breach, then back, incredulous and helplessly fond all at once. "We are havin' a full relationship breakthrough while your ship is literally gettin' shot to hell."
"Well, honey." Peter slid a hand to the back of his neck. "Seems to be the only time either of us gets any sense."
Richard barked out a laugh, wet and beautiful, and then Peter kissed him again, simply because Richard was there, alive and solid, kissing him back with all the rough, fierce relief of a man returned from a very stupid fairy tale.
When they broke apart, Richard rested his forehead upon Peter's and gave him a watery grin. "For the record, Bean was a terrible name."
"You answered to it."
"I had no choice!"
"You stole my sock."
"Deserved."
"You slept on my chest too."
Richard's cheeks went pink. "That was strategic."
Peter's mouth went crooked. "Sure it was."
Richard brushed a thumb under his eye, catching the last of the tears there. Then, soft as gravity and twice as certain, he said, "Take me to the airlocks, Star-Lord. Let's ruin these idiots' day."