LAS VEGAS ♔ DON'T THREATEN ME WITH A GOOD TIME

[morethanasidekick]

One of The Drunks - Panic! At The Disco

WHO || Kenzi, Paige, Bo, Groot, Rocket, You? Gatecrashers Others welcome.
WHAT || Vegas Baby!
WHERE || Pandora in Vegas, Nevada.
WHEN || March, 2018
HOW || Action Spam.

[ Kenzi had threatened Paige with a ladies night and of course, if anyone needed a night out it was Bo. The fact that there's also a talking Tree, a drinking Raccoon and... Drax? It's Kenzi. Why is anyone shocked by the people that she spends time with? She has ideas and they spin out of control and you just sort of hang on for the ride. It's her way. She may have casually mentioned they were coming here to a few other people, so if you happen to show up as well? The more the merrier.

The location itself isn't exactly filled with the garish glitz and glamor that a person generally associates with Vegas. Pandora has a British Pub meets modern day speakeasy feel to it. It's known for its signature cocktails with names like Panty Dropper and the Hot Little Mess and you can always count on live entertainment in the form of dancers, magicians, a band and of course, a DJ. It also happens to be one of the few clubs that has an open door policy where Shadowkind are concerned. Whether they'll be rethinking said policy after tonight? We just don't know. ]

Comments

[morethanasidekick]

[ Still she doesn’t speak, doesn’t try to give more or less. Her presence, her touch, even her gaze remains a steady thing as he works through the emotions and she’s far from unaffected by seeing him this way, seeing more of the real Quill that had drawn her in and now squeezed her heart with the things he couldn’t say as much as the things he could.

It’s that possibility, that resonates with her. Never knowing what would come next and getting caught up with the thrill of potential experiences while embarking on the unknown. It hits on something she never expected anyone else to be able to put into words and yet to see him talk about it. The depth of the emotion behind every word… Earth was his prison and damn it, that hurt her heart. ]

Sounds pretty incredible. [ A little compromised herself, though she’s probably better at masking that than he is. ]

Guess we’ll just have to fix that ship of yours, then.

[ And it sounds, not like a pipe dream but rather… an idea. One she’d had during a conversation with somebody else and had been sitting on it since. The kind of technology you’d need to create a weapon to kill a god? Sounds like the kind of high grade tech that’s a step up from the galactic equivalent of a tin can and some string…]

[starprince]

[ lmao his wisdom checks are too bad for him to pick up on the subtleties of her tone there. instead, he looks frustrated as the gate lifts on all the things he's been trying to shove off and forget about. ] Except to do that, I need my engine back. And Skye made it very clear they don't have any intention of handing it over. She told me that she thought I'd just turn and run away from all this like a total dick. [ that one still stings the most. partly because he is not sure... if she's right...

his face twists a bit as he sneaks a glance at her to read her reaction but it's too fleeting and women remain a mystery to him (sense motive 7) ] Malina said she's going to try to talk this Coulson dude around, but I don't think he's gonna budge.

[ there's a moment as he sort of glances towards the door, as if to make sure no one is coming in (???) before he adds: ] You can't mention this to literally anybody, but if it doesn't work, Malina and Kali and I are gonna go looking for it.

[morethanasidekick]

[ And she’d point out what she was getting at… if she thought it were immediately important but seems to her (look her Sense Motives are always going to be killer – but when she Nat 20’s, you screwed) that all of this, is maybe more to do with what he’s saying now than the simple fact that he’s trapped on earth. So she files it away, something for them to come back to later, instead letting him say what he needs to say as her hand stills against the side of his face. Her thumb brushing circles against his temple.

She doesn’t say anything at all until he’s finished, absorbing, processing and yet more than that watching the way the emotions play across his face and it occurs to her that all this time? He’s been holding this in and it’s like he’s been waiting for the moment to unleash it all. ]

Shame… I happen to know somebody who is stupid smart. Hack the government smart? If I could only mention to them that I wanted to know where one might go looking for an engine…

[ A ghost of a smile finally touches her lips as she starts with the one thing she knows might give him some hope and then slowly circles back to the rest of it. ]

And then… when and how you come or go is your choice. [ She lets that hang there for a moment before adding. ] Just like fighting that Scorpion when the Castle was attacked was your choice… and running back into the action to save more people was your choice… and joining the Knights instead of sipping Pina Coladas on a beach in Florida has always been your choice.

[ Because, no Peter… she doesn’t actually believe you’ll walk away, but it should be your choice. ]

[starprince]

[ halo - lotte kestner

her initial words finally draw his focus off from the fixed point in space that he seems to be otherwise staring at, and there’s a lot that flits through his eyes as he processes what she’s saying. surprise, definitely, that she not only has an idea for a different (potentially smarter) way to go about getting what he needs, but that she volunteers it at all. there’s something in that that seems to move him deeply, like a slight but powerful adjustment to the orbital path of a planet, and the hope that sparks there in his eyes keeps them locked on hers as she continues.

she goes on to list all those ways in which he hasn’t made the cowardly or the easy choice, things that he might have even considered to himself to be non-decisions, things that were the obvious path at the moment as far as he’s concerned, but the way she frames them and the way she looks at him clearly force him to re-evaluate them for himself in some way. this girl with zero reason to bullshit him, and a past history of being painfully up front about his flaws, fixing him with wide earnest eyes, and clearly implying that his choices have been heroic and not just self-centered seems to hit deep in the core of him. To be not only exactly what he needs in this moment, but also to be something he just really needed to hear in general, especially from someone he didn’t have any reason to think was just trying to protect his feelings.

in a way, it’s a million times over the same effect of someone actually deigning to call him star-lord, and to believe he could be - and already is - the kind of person his mom would be proud of.

it doesn’t go unnoticed, not to peter, or to kenzi, what that means to him, and what it does to all those walls of denial that he has carefully constructed and preserved about how he’s beginning to feel about her as well. she practically watches the shift happen behind his eyes as he stares at her with a look caught between wonder and appreciation, and it’s clear that she doesn’t need to be getting him off to render him speechless either as he gets caught off guard by his own emotional response to her. he swallows slightly, a semi-audible noise, as if all the moisture has left his mouth, and his hand skates up her spine delicately as he figures out what to say to that, as he seems to realize just how much his feelings are probably clearly spelled out on his face right now and that the longer he goes without responding, the more vulnerable it will leave him.

all he comes up with is: ]

You’d do that?

[morethanasidekick]

[ He's right in that, she wouldn't tell him what he wants or needs to hear right now, because the truth is? It doesn't help. Its like using a band-aid to cover a bullet wound and sooner, rather than later, the pain would be that much worse for it. His being heroic had never been in question for her and not just because he'd rushed in without a thought for himself. It wasn't even that he was a Knight, or that he went back out there to try and help on the day of the attack. It was, in truth, what he had done later that week. A simple conversation that likely meant very little to him but had stayed with her for whatever reason. He'd come and checked on her and instead of bragging about his great deeds? He'd spent that time trying to talk up her own, even though they'd both known the most she had done that day was simply be in the wrong place, at the worst possible time. Being a hero wasn't about being brave. It was in the things you did afterward, the way you lived without even really trying. Anyone could have saved the day, but not many people care about the little people after the fact and as somebody who had spent her whole life, being one of those little people? She understood better than most that real heroes don't wear capes.

That ghost of a smile lingers on her lips as she sees the emotion playing out on his features, the realization that maybe? He's more than what that Skye girl said to him and her thumb continues to move in light circles against his temple as if she can magically calm the tumble of thoughts in his head that have clearly been turning him into knots.

Its that shift in his gaze that finally sees her hand still, a breath inhaled on a barely audible rasp as he looks at her and it feels like the intensity of his gaze is stripping back the layers that she's built up over the years. She realizes she was wrong in thinking he'd ever seen her before - the day of the attack. This is what it feels like to have somebody really see you and it's enough to make her heart seize in her chest, Kenzi left exposed in a way that she's never truly been comfortable with, not even with Bo. She was always so careful to only allow people to see the parts of her she wanted them to see. To give them the version of herself that would be the most palatable, at least to those she likes but she can't do that right now. Not with him looking at her like this. Not with the unending silence hanging between them.

When he finally breaks the silence, her reply doesn't come easily because she's sure that if she opens her mouth right now? He'll know that he's not the only one feeling something more than they might be ready for and if he knows. If he realizes just how much he already means to her then she'll somehow be giving him the power to hurt her. Not the her she wants him to see, but the real her. ]

Well... [ Forcing herself to speak. ] Yeah.

[ She can't look at him. She can't look at him and say it and so her gaze drops from his, Kenzi staring at the hollow of his throat as she pulls in a shaky breath and tries to shrug, like it's the nothing she wants him to believe it is when in truth? It's the very tip of so much more. ]

Of course, I would.

[starprince]

[ she would feel the warmth of his hand lifting towards her face, the backs of his fingers caressing her cheek in a gesture that's both tender and also designed to softly encourage her to look at him anyway. ]

Thank you. [ it's simply stated, all the sarcasm and levity that he's usually full of replaced with an earnest gravity to the two words. if she does look back up, she'd find the slightest hint of a smile ghosting across his lips, a sadder smile now that lets her see into the core of some deeper heaviness that he carries with him all the time, one that makes the things that really do bring him joy all the better for it. ]

[morethanasidekick]

[ The warmth of his touch sees her eyes flutter closed, the slightest pressure of her cheek as she instinctively turns into his touch. Her heart doing things in her chest she thought it incapable of as in spite of herself, she finds her gaze flickering up towards his face. Peering at him beneath a veil of dark lashes that do little to conceal the emotion that rises to the surface.

It's that sadness that reaches out to her and wraps around her and she has that sense, that she's truly seeing him for the first time as well. That she isn't the only one with too many layers and many easily fitted masks to show the world at any given moment.

Her thumb once again brushes against his temple, her mouth trying to settle with an expression of emotion but it merely causes her lips to twitch. The pressure of her touch to become a little heavier and after a moment she shifts to press her lips to the corner of his mouth. It's chaste in the way their kisses have never been and yet full of a tenderness that speaks more to the depth of her own feelings than the words she whispers against his skin. ]

You're welcome.

[starprince]

[ i'm not in love - 10cc, as the music shifts again...

his eyes fall closed as she kisses him, and he seems to just welcome the simple sweetness of it, almost crave it, his fingers ghosting down ever so lightly against her neck. his eyes crinkle with warmth at her words and he turns to brush a kiss against her temple as well, pulling her back down against his chest, his breathing slow and even. after the space of another moment of silence, he murmurs a confessed: ]

I like this. [ he looks like his motor mouth inclines him to clarify but seems to just decide to leave it there and see what she does with it. ]

[morethanasidekick]

[ He'd feel it, the slow, almost deliberate un-tensing of limbs as he pulls her against his chest. Like she's trying to tell herself that it's okay to want to do this, that the rug isn't going to be yanked out from beneath her if she allows herself to be here with him.

Her weight finally settles on top of him, the tension gradually draining away and she finds herself focused on the steady thud of his heart as her hand curls against his chest.

Those words hang there for a moment but like this, it's easier for her to accept them and with the slightest turn of her head as if to nuzzle against him, her answering words don't feel quite so terrifying. ]

Me too.

[starprince]

[ that actually seems to satisfy him, as though he wasn't looking for anything more than that. there's something about it that already feels like pushing the envelope for both of them, but he's surprisingly zen about it, no evidence of any impending freak outs to be seen.

his eyes drift back out to the stars for a few moments before he turns back to nuzzle back into her and close his eyes for awhile. ]

[morethanasidekick]

[ I'm Yours - Alessia Cara

She lays there with him until she feels his breathing even out beneath her, her fingers drawing featherlight patterns across his chest and she allows herself this time to imagine that, maybe it doesn't have to be a bad thing that she feels something more than just a casual attraction to him. Or at least, she really hopes that's the case because she's positive she can't stop now, even if she wants to.

By the time her eyelids become too heavy to keep open any longer that storm that had threatened to stir in her chest has shifted lower, settling into a calm fluttering that swirls in her stomach and while he's asleep and she thinks he can't possibly hear her words? They're whispered into the quiet of the hotel room as she presses a soft kiss against his chest. ]

Please dont hurt me.

[ Before settling against him with her face buried in the crook of his neck so she too can drift off to sleep. ]