NO GUTS, NO GLORY.

it feels like it burns at the point of contact their shoulders meet. it isn’t a show of force bred from passion like when they’re colliding into one another. this is different, this is coded in a way that had anyone else done it, quill might’ve been in their face. but it isn’t anyone else. it’s nate. it’s his husband. he doesn’t reach for him this time. he knows when to pull his punches, when one more point of contact between them that isn’t the check of shoulders might erupt into a show of violence. he thinks he can feel it bristling beneath nate’s skin, emanating from him like he’s a caged animal and quill’s only intent there is to berate him. it’s wrong. it’s all wrong. like his old, busted walkman started to chew the roll of tape as it played it and now the music between them is discordant and warbled. nothing makes sense. no, quill doesn’t reach for him physically, but he’s right there at his heel regardless. he’s there at his heel, he’s there with a hand against the door to keep it from breaching open. boot-clad foot joins, his stance sturdy. defiance is met in an equal tilt of quill’s jaw now. but where nate’s frozen demeanor cuts his, quill’s is built of something different. raw. tangible. still somehow open. “so, that’s how we’re doing this then? you’re gonna fuck off doin’ god knows what because … what? if this is some bullshit protecting me from whatever it is you and rocket have had to do all these years - i’m a big boy, baby.” a joke could’ve slipped in here if the tension between them wasn’t thick enough that even one of gamora’s blades could’ve had trouble slicing through it. another body. another person missing. “whatever it is you think i can’t handle, i can. you don’t want me to love you anymore? tough shit. that’s the thing about us, we’re both stubborn and bull-headed and … well, mantis called us stupid the other day and yeh, i kind of agree. you don’t get to make that call. you don’t get to decide what i can or can’t handle. you don’t get to run out of here and give up on us without giving me a goddamn good reason as to why. you wanna throw in the towel, nate? fine. i’m not gonna make that choice for you.” even if it would break him. “but you better tell me why because i’m not flying around this entire fucking galaxy wondering what it is that happened while i was gone and why you can’t even bear to look me in the eyes and i get no explanation about any of it. you don’t want us anymore, i deserve to know why.” he doesn’t touch him, he doesn’t, but he does move to get in his face again. “so, yeh, captain’s orders are that you either cough up the reason or you get to deal with the fact that my ass isn’t giving up on you or us. i know you’re not who you were before. i’m not stupid. i see it. i see it every single day, but i’m not askin’ you to be him. i’m not askin’ you to be the nate i met in the bar that night. i’m askin’ you to let me see who you are now and let me decide for my own self. and if you don’t like that… well, that’s tough shit, baby. ‘cause i’m not in the game of giving up. not when you mean everything to me.”

it's a testament to whatever broken thing still clutches on to the love that nate has for this man that he doesn't turn on him. not when he dogs his heels and talks in hailstones, words that he needs to hear but that strike hard enough to leave tiny, dark bruises all over his skin. even the missed joke leaves a bruise. especially the missed joke. a flash of sunlight through closed blinds. quill's always been like that with him. to him. quill is like sunlight.

quill is blocking his only exit and any other time, with anybody else, he would have reacted badly. brutally, even. ( he can see it play out. see himself gripping the back of his neck, driving his head forward to slam against the closed door. blood smeared at the point of impact. that thump of a collapsing body. he would have, with anybody else. )

maybe it doesn't show, but he's listening. he has one of his hands braced in front of him, against the door, his eyes forward, other hand balled tightly into a fist. elena told him sometimes he'd sleep with clenched fists. fists and teeth, a creased brow. she woke him up one night because he'd started to reach for the gun underneath his pillow, because even in sleep he was ready for war. they'd moved it to a drawer after that.

he's never done that here. never slept next to peter quill and felt anything but total peace.

he's listening.

doesn't move, doesn't visibly react at all until quill's words begin to taper and the full weight of how this has looked hits nate like another necroblast to the gut.

"— i don't want you anymore?" repeated with the upswing, so there's no meaning lost: it isn't a confirmation.

it's confusion. not cold but bare, genuine.

"is — is that ... that's what you think? that i — that i'm doin' this because i —" he isn't looking at him yet; his head tips back a little and a breath blows through him, long and shaky. "you're everything," he says, and it's so hoarse and so quiet that if quill hadn't been this close, he might have missed it. "everything, you understand? i couldn't live without you. i didn't. but i didn't have a choice. rocket, he's — we've — look, if it wasn't for him, i wouldn't be standin' here. but we weren't living. i couldn't do that without you. 'n now that you're — i can barely remember how to live with you. i don't mean —"

he's trying.

another breath.

"i don't mean it like i don't want it, i j— i just don't — i don't know how'm supposed t—" he drags a hand over his face. wants to slam his own head against the door, so he doesn't have to have this conversation. so he says the only thing that makes any sense at all, the only thing that never went away. if it had, maybe this would be easier.

all the shit he had to go through. all the shit. everything he went through. three years of veiled darkness that quill can’t begin to guess at. that neither nate or rocket will let him in on. unknown. dark. lost. three years and everything changed. three years that quill can’t feel or account for. sand uncollected beneath his fingers in an hour glass he hadn’t known was turned. the shift in energy this time is jarring. he should’ve anticipated it. maybe he did. maybe; if he hadn’t been in the frame of mind of need and sentiment and dredging up everything he’s kept stowed away in the depths of his chest. he sees the change in nate’s expression. the way his eyes go from yearning to something else. something unreadable and shadowed. something untouchable. cold. so fucking cold. quill’s desire to backtrack almost meets that of his desire for the man before him, but he has to quell both. belt unfastened and dangling where it is still as a sorry testament to what they can’t indulge in. “no,” he says, and it comes out clipped. not mean. not even firm, but clipped. short and to the point. he starts again, this time no hesitation found in the way he grabs for nate’s wrist. stay. stay here. don’t close off. “i know you don’t wanna talk, i get it. baby, i know… but we have to. we have to … i can’t -” he wants to kiss him again. he wants to put this as an afterthought between them, lose themselves in one another’s warmth. rekindle the flame that’ll keep that cold at bay. with everything he wants to tell him, he refuses to lay it out under these circumstances. not just yet. “all the shit you had to go through… what shit, nate? tell me. i don’t know how to - fuck, i don’t know how to make things better when you’re keepin’ me at arm’s length. we don’t do that, yeh? we don’t push one another away like that. that isn’t us. let me meet you where you are.” it’s another risky move, given the sudden ice in the room, but quill makes to hold nate’s face again. to leverage that point of familiar contact. to will their eyes to meet again. “i need you to know i’m not leavin’,” a weighted beat, a second and nothing more; he holds nate’s gaze. and deadpans a simple: “and neither are you.”

i know,  he says.  i get it,  he says.  the first thing nate wants to tell him is, no, you don’t.  fingers close around his wrist and he stiffens with a look, a warning look, like firing a gun into the ceiling: he doesn’t rip himself away, but he could.  he wants to make it clear that he could.  some dormant part of him — not gone, just buried deep enough that nobody can dig it out — knows that quill is right.  that they do have to talk.  they have to lay it all on the table and deal with it,  together,  because anything less won’t work.  because they don’t do that.  this isn’t them.  isn’t him. 

tell me,  he says.  as if all nate has to do is debrief him, throw in a couple of anecdotes and bad puns, dress it up like he’s selling the script to a new indiana jones movie.  quill used to love listening to his stories.

he wouldn’t love listening to this one.

killing isn’t new.  the legendary nathan drake has a body count racked up on earth that goes  beyond  counting.  he could justify it, most of the time.  shoot them before they shoot you, right?  he could justify it on those nights where he’d wake up in a cold sweat and thought he was seeing gore on his walls, and every shadow looked like a pile of corpses:  he’d had no choice.  and most of the time, it worked.  but no matter the numbers back then, he’d never executed anybody.  never taken life in cold blood, only necessity — or what passed for it, in his own scrambled brain, and that was enough of a band-aid.  there is no justifying what he’s done for the last three years.  looking into somebody’s eyes and squeezing a trigger at point-blank range.  slitting a throat and watching somebody else choke on their own blood, watching until the last twitch.  a bystander with a broken spine.  a guard with a hole blown straight through their midsection big enough to tear them in half.  he’d once strangled a jovian with his bare hands until he felt a crunch of bone and even then, he’d kept going.  that was a week after quill died, a random that stood between him and rocket and the lead they were chasing.  all it took was a week. 

quill wants to meet him where he is, but where he  is  is somewhere that he’s been trying to protect him from since the moment he came back.

hands cupping his face, again.  eye contact again.  maybe he should just say it.  maybe he should say it just to prove that it’s too much and that no one, none of them, not quill or drax or mantis, not groot,  none of them  will want him around after this.  rocket already knows.  he’s the only one who knows.  the only one who  gets it.  but maybe, just maybe —

a thought that's gone with the shift in quill’s tone when he tells him that he isn’t leaving.  that  he  isn’t leaving.  that dormant part of him knows how he means it but that doesn’t matter.  not right now.  not when he’s like this, cold and rotten and untouchable.

he pulls free of that contact and his chin lifts, that age-old posture of defiance.  a muscle tics in his jaw.  “oh yeah — ?  that an  order,  captain?”

low and cutting.  wrong.

anchors are supposed to hold you steady; the anchor of his hands in his shirt, the anchor of their eye contact, the anchor of … his mouth. his mouth against his in a bruising kiss. an anchor is supposed to stand strong, and it’s what he wants to be through the panic attack he feels happening, but quill is weak against the flooding current of emotion and sensation. he’s only a man when up against where nate leads them. his mouth opens to him before he can pull together the wherewithal to even consider where this is going. where it could lead. and would it be so bad if it did? quill’s hands move to cup either side of nate’s face, gentle but firm. their teeth collide. their breath a mingled audible thing. one gasps, the other inhales. who is who? does it matter? he missed this. he missed him. he missed the feel of him beneath his hands. the fucking taste of him. the way they fit together in so many ways. something tumbles and falls in the midst of movement because quill’s guiding nate to push him against a wall, seeking that furthered contact between them. chest to chest. mouth to mouth. heart to heart. but it’s here, feeling the racing of their own hearts finally in a rhythm that makes sense, that he’s forced to pull himself from the heat and the warmth. they can’t. nate’s not okay. he can’t. he won’t do this to him. “nate,” he murmurs, his mouth finding his again, but the kiss is softer this time. a feathering away from the friction and the promise relief they both want to chase. he could. he should. to ruck up his shirt and feel the muscled lines of his body all but foreign to him now. to tear away their clothes and claim here, here, and there with his mouth, with his hands. to relearn every bit of him. quill swallows, adam’s apple dipping, and draws back a few centimeters. his voice is ragged, torn with emotion and raw need, “baby. baby, hold on, hang on -” one hand falling from nate’s jaw, he presses it against his chest, holds it between them. to quell panic. to apply brakes. to anchor himself even when they’re both free-falling. this time, he allows the brush of their noses against one another. “we gotta… my love, we gotta - ” talk. we have to talk. it sounds stupid on his tongue. like the words are bloated and can’t find air. beautiful, he’s beautiful still. nate is beautiful beneath his hands. with a kiss-swollen mouth. “not right now. not like this.”

a lifetime ago ago, in a hospital somewhere he can't name, he'd had a buildup of fluid around his lungs. the term they'd used was pulmonary edema. all he remembers is not being able to breathe until they'd stuck a needle through the wall of his chest and let the pressure out. that's what this feels like. this is the needle in his chest; this is the release. he can breathe again. he can breathe for the first time since that fluid built up and he spent three years drowning in it.

quill cradles his face, pushes him against the wall, kisses the life back into him, and for a minute, nate forgets. where he's been, what he's done. what he is. for a minute there's nothing but this and them and everything feels right even though it's not. it's nowhere close — it's just close enough.

it has to be enough.

his mouth is sucking heat to the pulse point of quill's throat when quill tries to talk again. nate ignores it. finds his waistband and starts to pull, to unfasten, to ride this out in the only way he knows how outside of violence, but he doesn't let him. he's bracing a hand on his chest and putting distance between them. he's stopping this. he's telling him 'no' without telling him, and it knocks the wind from nate's sails.

there's the pressure build. there's the fluid around his lungs.

"what?" his voice a low rasp. color in his face for the wrong reasons. "you're not s— we gotta what, huh? talk? the hell we do. c'mon, quit screwin' around."

don't. don't do this. don't you do this. not you.

not right now. not like this.

but quill isn't backpedaling and nate's expression shutters, hardens, becomes a closed door. a blank wall.

through the fissures of the facade he’s undoubtedly had to build up for himself, quill can see him. and he’s brought back to that night at the bar so many years ago. when quill confused massachusetts for missouri and there was nothing on earth as appealing as nathan drake. it still holds true, but earth couldn’t hold what they discovered that day. no, it’s taken over the entire cosmos now. it’s survived despite every odd pressing in against them. he looks at him now, gaunt, hollowed out around the eyes, worn through. harder. rougher. the edges of him whittled away to become this killing machine or else. or else he’d perish. or else he would’ve followed suit. or else. quill sees all that, but he still sees the light in his eyes. he still sees that smug cock of a grin and the devil-may-care attitude. he still sees nate. “you, uh … you remember the night we met?” quill’s voice is a soft echo to the admission nate’s left bare between them. he speaks only for him. there’s a hint of laughter; something dusty and forgotten when the tension since coming back has been too thick to breathe. “i dunno about how a lot of the beginning parts went ‘cause i didn’t know it was possible to drink as much shit as we did, but there are parts i can’t forget, too.” once more, he brazenly recovers distance between them. only this time, quill is reaching for his shoulders, right hand sliding to rest at the nape of nate’s neck. a memory tapped into for the both of them. it’s dangerous, what he’s doing. the rush of sentiment that floods him when they touch is damn near consuming. it could leave them torn open from the inside out with no hope of suturing it back together, but he has to try. he has to do something. “you told me… when i was eggin’ you on to take me to your place and didn’t wanna stop kissing you, you told me you’re not the sort to back out.” the pressure he applies to the hand at his neck is gentle, coaxing even. quill takes a breath, dipping forward just enough. he could’ve had their foreheads touch, could’ve brushed the tips of their noses against one another. too much too soon and this could rupture. but he holds fast. he licks his own lips, voice a trembling whisper. “baby, i need you to not back out. i know… i know too much has happened for either of us to be what we were back then, but we don’t have to be that. we can be new. we can be somethin’ stronger. but i need you to do that.”

is it still just a facade when it bleeds everywhere, until everything is a matching shade of red?  this thing he’s become is malignant.  it’s cancerous.  it needs to be cut out.  and somehow, despite it all, the years and the red and the silence, this horrible strain between them — somehow, quill knows exactly where to start the incision. 

the night they met.  that hand was there for balance, or under the guise of balance; ironic, then, that when quill does it now, nate feels like he’s vaulting into free-fall.  i never back out.  he’d said that, hadn't he?  he’d meant that, but he isn't that person anymore. there's a terrible dichotomy of past and present that's railing against this and it's all he can do not to turn heel and run.

pressure. pressure that holds like a dropped anchor and won't let him slip away.

no.

he knows this touch, this smell. this warmth. he knows this.

no.

for three years, he'd felt as dead as quill was. and he was, nate thinks: he was dead. he was gone. he's here now but what if it doesn't last? what if it happens again? what —

baby. he's calling him back and he's close enough to kiss and that's when it sinks in like teeth. nothing about him feels real unless it's beneath these hands.

nate moves, trembling. fighting it. fighting it until he has his fingers curled into the fabric of quill's shirt and his other palm pressed against the heavy thud beneath his sternum. here. alive. i need you to not back out. i need you to do that. his breath catches when their eyes do and he tries it — he tries to pull away. he tries to pull away but he doesn't let go of his shirt.

"i ca— i can't. i —" breath drags out of him like he's choking on it. he can recognize a panic attack on other people but he doesn't recognize it now, just heaves, in and out, until he's seeing white spots and black threads, quill's heartbeat under his hand.

unsure of what he expected, he runs with what he’s given. a thin line of hope catching the light. mirage. oasis. illusion. for a brief second, the hold at nate’s elbow tightens. unbidden and instinctive in the way he seeks to indulge in that tension he feels emanating from him, to draw it from him. like poison from an infected wound. there and gone again, he relinquishes his hold. “yeah, well…. sorta. actually, no - ” quill fumbles, piecing himself together in a matter of seconds thereafter. this isn’t him. he doesn’t fumble when it matters. ( he fumbled with gamora and she’s dead now. he fumbled with thanos and they ended up here. he’s a liar. that’s what he is. ) “it was drax through mantis, but … you know, you know how they are. they’re worried.” another beat, weighted in everything he doesn’t know how to say. weighted in the obvious. weighted in a way he doesn’t want to add to the burden his atlas already carries. “i’m worried. which i guess isn’t really news, huh? s'probably obvious,” he presses on, side-stepping so that they’re face to face and he isn’t speaking to his husband’s side profile. husband. husband, still. husband always. “i know you’re not stupid,” quill says, “we all know mantis had a bit of a … well, silent spell for a few days. and it doesn’t take a genius to kinda piece it together. i don’t know what she saw, but … but, yeah. i’m here. you know that, yeah?” unveiled, quill searches the steely grey of nate’s eyes, holding fast and unwavering. searches and searches and looks through the black hole he finds. “nate…”

and for a brief second, nate almost breaks.  he can feel it, like a deep as bedrock shuddering before an earthquake; sooner or later those cracks will become fissures and then everything collapses.  there’s a part of him that craves the collapse.  that wants only to reach for this man — the man that he loves, who saved him in every way a person can be saved, his husband, still, always — and bury his face in his neck and never let him go again.

he hasn’t slept next to him in three years.  their room, the one that they’d shared, was sealed like a tomb.  after a while he forgot what quill smelled like.  how he sounded when he slept, when his breathing would even out.  how warm it felt when they would reach for each other in the dark.

safe. home. 

but three years is a long time.

i’m here,  quill tells him, and all nate can think is  but i’m not.  “yeah.  well.  she shouldn’t’ve looked.”

it comes out quiet and rough and the half-swallowed apology clogs his throat like bile.  he takes a breath.  starts again. 

cold. cold like the way you’re left out in space with no protection and death is instant. ( he’s almost been there before. ) cold like he’s just been ejected from the only home he’s ever truly known and there’s no lifeline in sight. quill’s eyebrows knit into a furrow. “uh, good. yeh, we’re fine. probably could go a week before we gotta fill up, but that’s …” cold like the trail of his words. and he could leave it there. maybe he should. mantis said nate is broken and i told her she’s stupid, drax said. broken. cold and broken. he could leave it there. nice talk, he wants to say, but he doesn’t. “what’s goin’ on?” in that head of yours. what’s going on with us. what’s happening. where are you? i miss you. come back to me. two more steps and he chances reaching for the crook of nate’s elbow. the graze of fingertips is all he allows, half anticipating more cold to permeate the air. “i don’t - listen, i don’t want to talk about fuel, nate.”

     can he stomach another week of this?  jury’s out, unless they find something to kill in the meantime other than all those rotting parts he's been carrying around inside. the question goes unanswered, because he's no more able to put this into words than he is of going back and changing what led to it. his regression wasn't small. most days, he doesn't recognize his own reflection.

quill's fingers graze his elbow and for a second, he's catapulted into a flashbulb of memory — an index hooked through belt loops, the press of a palm at the small of his back, a kiss to his shoulder in passing — but then it's gone.

tension rolls through him like a current of electricity. he remembers.