They sing all they and they haunt me in the night
It wasn't hard to see that Quill really wanted them to be friends.
At first Rocket thought he just hoped they'd get along. But he'd explain every single metaphor he forgot to translate to solid and objective truth to Drax, never touch Gamora's sword, always water Groot's pot and not once did he ask why Rocket had screamed himself awake for the fourth time in a week. In fact, he never asked. Never pushed it.
(It was so unrealistically respectful it almost made Rocket want to give tragedy a chance to catch him again, if he didn't know any better. Oh, but he did. He knew better.)
So it was at least relieving to point out Quill's flaws. His unhinged obsession with music was unbearable. A plague, a punishment for all their sins together, which weren’t little, and they were paying for every single one of them.
Their lives gained a soundtrack of their own. And if that was the sweetest thing someone could do for a loved one, to share their most precious and valued secrets as private as the songs Peter used to listen to when he had no one, then Rocket missed bitterness. Sometimes, when he was sure he was probably two or three years away from going deaf, he'd realize he was a day closer to not having to listen to that insufferable noise ever again and it made him want it to happen sooner. It never did.
Peter wouldn't give their ears a break. There was music playing all day and everywhere, during fights, during dinner, breakfast, lunch, in the living area and it'd always come blasting from his quarters when he wasn't the one in the pilot seat. He'd sing and dance like he thought he owned every song and tried to coerce them to join him. The little sprout that someday would be as huge as Groot was a lost cause and Gamora would sometimes give in. Drax would rather swim in a pool of bubbling sulfuric acid than even think about being a part of it, and Rocket…
He didn't know what to do anymore. He'd yelled some of the most unprecedentedly horrifying insults to date, turned off their sound systems, even humbled himself enough to try to be polite once or twice, and thought about breaking Quill's Walkman in half when he wasn't looking. But then something disgustingly wise and empathetic in the back of his head reminded him of how it feels to break someone's only path to joy when they're not careful enough and how it'd be better to get a broken rib instead, and he woke up to his own scream that night too. The thought of getting rid of Quill's Walkman never crossed his mind again.
Maybe Peter was just acting like an annoying brat because it'd always be delightful to feel the pleasure of drinking up someone's ire. Maybe he was just fucking stupid. Or maybe it brought him an unlimited and consistent source of bliss when everything else seemed dangerously fleeting and he wanted them to have it too, because you wish the best for everything you love.
And maybe that's what made Rocket angrier. Kindness.
He knew hate and cruelty and it had a pattern. It was familiar and what's familiar is safe because it can't be unstable. It wasn't about to jump on his back from the shadows. But Peter's dumb and genuine smile when he sang to annoy him, his hands on Gamora's waist when he convinced her to dance just for five minutes and her hair swirling in the space between them, the gentleness when he watered Groot's pot even though he was never responsible for any of them, that was new. New is uncertain. It's risky. New is frightening like being strapped to a metal table, waiting for something he had no clue of but knew it was gonna be sudden and painful. New is too vulnerable.
Trust is a trap to give someone a lot to lose. He couldn't fall for that again. He'd let them dance and sing if they wanted and find better ways to waste his time. It's easier knowing when their tenderness is about to shift into hate.
“Why the fuck you like this damn thing so much?” He'd asked on accident at some point, because it was late and he was tired and he was gonna be deaf in two years anyway.
“Oh, what?” He could still hear Peter's smile. The dumb and genuine one. “This? Well, I don't know, maybe ‘cause it has some of the best music you'll ever hear? ‘Cause it's the best thing Earth’s ever created? No. ‘Cause it's funny when I turn the volume up and you start whining.”
Rocket scoffed and kept working. The gun he was trying to fix had nothing wrong with it anymore for about half an hour already. “I hope it explodes. In your face.”
Quill laughed. Turned the volume up in spite. Then took in a breath. “Alright. It's, uh… My mom gave it to me.”
Oh, there. Rocket was bad at this. “She should've kept it.”
“You suck, y'know that?” Rocket felt him sit next to him and shifted forward, hunched over the gun like he had no clue he wasn't alone. “You really don't like it? Like, at all?”
“We like it?” Rocket asked, and the High Evolutionary chuckled like he'd never had his hands inside his ribcage before. His fingers were solely warm against his fur now.
“No,” Rocket scowled. His fur bristled. “If I wanted to listen to some stupid noise I'd just scream.”
“Hey! It ain't noise, it's feeling.”
“What, you're listing reasons for me to hate it even more now?”
“Can’t we just talk?” His face hardened, but he crossed his legs on the floor when he should've left. “You're just proving my point! It's something to rely on when you can't word things. You're around people, man, you gotta know how to communicate.”
“This recording is over five thousand years old,” Sire explained, with all his graceful calmness and kindness and then there was a gun in his hand and Lylla’s body was bleeding at Rocket's feet because he shot her when they were defenseless. But now he was smiling so patiently, so fondly.
“There's nothin’ wrong with my communication, thank you very much,” Rocket scoffed, held the gun a little tighter and closed his fist around a screwdriver. “I'm sure I tell you everything I want you to know, don't worry.”
Quill just sighed. Rocket wondered how much longer it'd take to scare him away. “How about I find something else and you give it a chance, and if you still hate it we'll never have this conversation again?”
Rocket's hands flew to his ears and pressed them down against his head even more than they already were. He couldn't wait to be deaf. “I wish you liked silence.”
“You asked me why it mattered so much, I'm trying to show you,” Peter shrugged. “I want you guys to know me.”
Rocket stared at him with narrowed and empty eyes and tried to understand how someone could give him a choice if not to snatch it from his hands the second after. How there could be intimacy without interest and care without an open mouth with bloody teeth at the end, when he'd already let himself be swallowed.
But they were so good. Awkward and rude and unpredictable and even cruel at times, but there was an undeniable goodness within each one of them. What a waste. Maybe, if they'd met a few years earlier. Maybe, if Rocket was still naive and susceptible to believe not everything he loves is already dead. But they were too late.
He clenched his fist around his shirt. He knew the end. “Quill, I'm working.”
“You'll be thanking me in a few days, you'll see. I'll still find something you like.”
“We like it?” Rocket asked. The High Evolutionary smiled, an open mouth with bloody teeth.
Rocket's whole body winced. He jumped on his feet, shoved Peter's chest so abruptly he almost fell on his back and growled like someone had loosened up his leash. “I said no!” His upper lip twisted. “If you push it one more time, I'm blowing off your eardrums!”
He walked off and didn't look back, holding the key in his pocket with cold fingers until he couldn't feel them anymore. To remind him of what he couldn't have.
Not so long after, a failed mission took them to a frozen planet.
They crashed in the snow when the darkness of the night was their only company. Not a single soul came to help and neither to finish the damage the impact couldn't, and that's how they guessed they were on their own. It somehow made them complain a little less.
Rocket had already checked the engine and was now taking care of some dangerously sparkling cables as they complained in the back because less doesn't mean nothing and crashing in a ghost land ruled by the cold wasn't the most joyful incident they could've faced.
Their frustration brought a wave of relative silence that lasted fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes for Quill to finish bandaging up his arm, and then it started again.
“Yes, I know that love is like ghosts…”
As soon as the first accords hit Rocket's ears, his blood started bubbling in his veins. “Oh, cut it, Quill!” He snapped.
Quill's head still moved faintly to the beat before he huffed an answer, “Look, I know you're insanely bitter and apathetic, Rock, but maybe just cover your ears!”
“He's not wrong, Peter.” Gamora miraculously took his side and Rocket felt an evil sense of childish satisfaction rush through him, spiteful and selfish. “We don't know what’s out there. If we're too loud, something might mistake us for prey.”
“Nothing will prey on us for as long as my unparalleled strength lives!” Claimed Drax. No one cheered. “However, if the worst happens, I refuse to die to this unbearable melody.”
Rocket stared at Peter with a merciless smile like he could already taste his blood on his tongue, and by chance, it tasted just like the pleasure of winning a battle against someone who adores you. Quill just looked down at his Walkman. “C’mon, guys…”
“Oh, they sing all day and they haunt me in the night
Oh, they sing all day and they haunt me in the night”
He got up, mumbling the lyrics under his breath like he'd written them all and held out his bandaged arm to Gamora. She rolled her eyes, sighed, shook her head, unwillingly muttered “stop” one or four times and then took his hand. His teeth shone bright blue under the panel lights and he glanced right into Rocket's soul, which nearly made him rip out one of the wires he'd just fixed with his bare hands.
“What ain't living can never really die
You don't want me, baby, please don't lie
Oh, but if you're leaving, I gotta know why”
The song echoed and swirled around the Milano, through the snow and beyond the mountains. Rocket gritted his teeth and tried to ignore Peter and Gamora’s feet scratching the floor with a hoarse squeak and their quiet giggles. He needed to finish what he was there for and then find somewhere dark and unfathomable to disappear.
And then it hit him that this song couldn't be five thousand years old.
The cables sparkled in his hand like fireflies. They didn't sound like Sire at all. Neither like the first friends he killed. Gamora's laugh wasn't Floor's or Lylla's or Teefs’, it wasn't Sire’s or Theel’s. Peter's insistence was just insufferable instead of frightening. Drax's presence was comforting and never threatening. They were nothing like anything he knew.
He looked back and saw no hate. Quill and Gamora had their hands clasped and smiled so big they were almost red, he could see Groot dancing in his pot and even Drax’s feet were rhythmically and discreetly tapping the floor. Rocket felt something tugging at the corners of his mouth and suddenly the wires didn't look so ruined and demanding anymore. Suddenly, being stuck in the snow wasn't the end of the world. Suddenly, being stuck with them wasn't even an inconvenience.
He couldn't ever undress his regret. They could never know where he came from and he could never tell them. They would never bring back Floor and Teefs and Lylla, he'd never feel safe again because safety costs innocence and he didn't have that currency anymore. He'd have to live soaked in sorrow until the end.
But he wasn't dead yet. And neither were they.
“I don't feel it ‘till it hurts sometimes
Oh, go on, baby
Hurt me tonight”
He didn't notice he was singing along until he felt a rumble in his throat. Peter's hand shaking his shoulder to the song's rhythm didn't feel like Sire's fingers crawling through his guts and turning him inside out at all. Even then, when he asked Rocket to join him and Gamora (he didn't even try to convince Drax this time), he yanked Quill's hand away with a scoff and the biggest smile on his face. He sang the rest of the song, and then the next, and the next, and the next after that until the lights were off and all the cables were in their right place.
When everyone had left and the Milano was almost entirely faded in the dark, Quill stopped in the hallway and looked back. “See?” His eyebrows were raised. Rocket was so happy he wanted to punch him in between them. “What’d I tell you?”
“I don't remember, you never shut up,” Rocket scoffed and forgot to pretend to be annoyed. But just for a second. “I hope it's ‘I’m sorry, Rocket, none of this would've happened if you were the captain ‘cause I'm a shit pilot.’”
“Or maybe it's something to do with the words ‘find’ and ‘something’ and ‘you like.’”
Rocket smiled back. Damnit, he was getting too attached again. He suddenly felt the urge to commit the most unforgivable and irrecoverable heresy to make them want him dead. But he smiled back. “Yeah, yeah, then keep looking. Maybe you'll be quiet if you're busy.”
Rocket walked back to his quarters with a golden sphere of bliss flaming between his lungs, but it also burned and stung like a wound.