“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.
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 The device looked as outdated as the same type of old school gadgets Peter would find back during his dumpster diving trips — and the same kind of out dated stuff he’d dissemble with his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,
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.
Peter didn’t share that same expression.
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?”
And slowly shook his head.
“No,” he drawled out — hesitatingly, based off the look of unadulterated shock Quill was giving him.
“What!?” Quill 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 on Earth!”
Peter kept shaking his head, slower by the passing second.
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.
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.”
