"Peter, Peter, wake up," is the first thing he hears when brought out of a downright blissful sleep. He opens his eyes for a second, groaning. It's the middle of the night. Or, at least the middle of the ship's artificial night and day cycle. He's so tired. He can barely see Gamora's outline leaning over him, shaking his shoulder almost frantically.

He knows he should get up. Or at least ask her what she wants. Why she's waking him up at- he looks at his wrist- at four freaking hours before she usually wakes up. Gamora's the early riser of the two of them- she knows that. There's certainly a valid reason she's waking him up in the middle of the night.

But he's too tired to use logic like that. He's too tired to reason. That's his excuse for why he just rolls over and buries his face in his pillow, trying to block out whatever's keeping him from going back to sleep.

"Peter, don't you dare go back to sleep," Gamora growls, grabbing him by the shoulder and ripping him back to face her.

"S'what?" He grumbles, scrunching up his face and refusing to open his eyes.

"Peter, I think I may have been poisoned," Gamora tells him, sounding only mildly panicked. Which, for Gamora, meant she was freaking out.

Okay, that was something big. That was pretty serious.

He sat up, forcefully blinking his eyes in an attempt to wake up his brain. It was working, albeit slowly. "Poisoned? How would you be poisoned? We haven't left the ship in a week."

"I don't know. I've been upheaving for hours. We need to go- go to a med center, or something, the- the baby, if I've been-"

"Wait, this is just cause you've been feeling sick and throwing up? The only reason you think you've been poisoned is cause you've been throwing up?" She opens her mouth for a second, but before she can get out a sound, he says "It means vomiting. So you've just been sick and vomiting and that's what makes you think you've been poisoned?"

"How many times do I have to tell you? My body mods keep me from falling sick like the rest of you- minus Groot. I don't catch sicknesses like you do, Peter. Vomiting is a regular experience whenever your frail immune system fails to fight off whatever foreign contagions you come into contact with, and I have to take care of a very whiny you when that happens. I do not get fevers and chills, or sneezing and vomiting, or tired and whiny like you do when you fall ill. I have had exactly three instances in my life where I have 'thrown up', and all three were attempts on my life. I don't know how it happened, but I must have been poisoned at some point in the past 24 hours. I have vomited five times in the past two hours. I thought my body would have expelled the ingested toxin by now, but I feel even more nauseous than before. Something must be wrong. We need to find the nearest hospital or med center so they can check on the baby. I've never felt this awful before in my life from something like this."

"Gamora, the baby's fine. This is probably just morning sickness, you know?"

From the blank stare he receives, he gathers that no, she didn't know. "It's the middle of the night," she tells him, looking at him like he might be the idiot in the scenario (truth be told, he was the idiot in most scenarios).

When she has no idea what he's referring to, he figures it must just be a colloquial thing, and that she probably knows it by a different name- morning sickness wasn't really self explanatory, now that he thought about it. Other species probably had a lot better things to call it- humans sucked at naming things sometimes. Like calling the throwing up at all hours of the day because you're growing a freakin' baby thing morning sickness.

"No, no, it's not something that just happens in the mornings. That's just what they call it. Must just be a Terran term then. It's when you're throwing up cause you're pregnant. Not cause you're really sick or cause you've been poisoned. It's just a normal pregnancy thing."

Gamora's eyes widen with a gasp. "It's your Terran child that's doing this to me!" She accuses.

"Hey!" He whines. "I'm half Terran. That means he," Peter says, pointing to her stomach, "is only ¼ Terran."

"My body mods keep me from getting sick like you do. It's your part Terran child that's inhibiting my body mods to the point that I'm actually sick. I've never been sick before! It's awful! Wait, if I'm able to get sick now then there's no telling how much and in what ways my body mods have been compromised from your ¼ Terran baby. We need to go to the med bay and check the levels-" she shifts to stand up, but Peter catches her wrist and stops her.

"Gamora, calm down, there's nothing wrong with your body mods," he tells her reassuringly, giving her a soft tug back down to him, and Gamora reluctantly settles back in next to him on their bed. Peter strokes her wrist, visibly easing her tension at least a bit.

"You're not sick cause you've caught something. You don't have any illness or whatever. You're growing a whole person in your stomach right now. That's what makes you nauseous and throw up. Not because you've caught some illness, you're just making a brand new person in your stomach, which is understandably going to make your stomach feel sick from time to time."

Gamora's whole being relaxes at this, he always know just how to calm her.

"But it is still your ¼ Terran child that's making me vomit, regardless of how it's accomplishing it," she says coolly.

"It's not my fault! Or my biology's fault!" He denies, voice shrill, throwing his hands up in the air. "It's a pregnancy thing, not a human thing. That kid's a quarter Terran, a quarter god if you'll remember, and it's half Zen Whoberi. Don't, er, expecting Zen Whoberi have pregnancy symptoms too?" He asks, eyebrow raised. He didn't know why he didn't think to ask her this before. He guessed he just sorta thought it'd be more or less the same. "Or even different ones if not throwing up and feeling nauseous? There's gotta be some pregnancy symptoms in every species, right? How would anyone know they were pregnant until they started showing and looking pregnant then, right? Nausea seems like a pretty intuitive one for, I dunno, bipedal whatever we both are, and like Drax. But maybe not. Are there Zen Whoberi specific pregnancy symptoms?"

Gamora looks down, a sudden seriousness overtaking her as she draws circles on her knees over her pajama pants. "I... I don't actually know. I was too young when..." She trails off.

Peter grabs her hand and gives it a squeeze, and she smiles up softly at him.

He didn't mean to bring up any painful memories, but it kind of came with the territory, both of them having pretty messed up childhoods and now they're about to have a kid of their own (that they're gonna love the hell out of and protect them no matter what).

"I'm sure there's some extensive list of pregnancy symptoms of both Zen Whoberi and some human symptoms that even I don't know about. We can look it up later when we feel like it."

Gamora nods in agreement, letting out a sigh before laying back down and curling into Peter to drift off to sleep.

They soon followed through on the plan to research symptoms of both their species. Apparently, nausea and vomiting were among the most common symptoms for Zen Whoberi pregnancies too. Peter took this as a huge win, considering how their child was only a quarter Terran, while it was half Zen Whoberi when the Zen Whoberi parent was actually carrying the kid.

Peter took all of this as a victory, whooping, "I told you so! Not my fault at all! This is all on you, Gamora! My biology is great, and it's all your fault! Says so right here! You throwing up all the time isn't my fault!"

"Maybe so. I'm still blaming you though," she tells him, unable to suppress her sly grin.

AN: Just the typical 'recently saw Guardians of the Galaxy 2' story and author is now full of Starmora feels. Don't mind me.