Kinda makes me feel like I'm being crushed

Of all the things love had done to him, none had been slightly less visceral and irrecoverable. 

Rocket had always been sure it was only a matter of time before they found him. But the years passed, his walls started to crumble down and he got complacent. There were so many things he shouldn't have done. All the times he'd been reckless, drawn attention, forgotten too much about where he came from. He'd been putting his friends in danger again for the same reasons as the first ones while the crippling terror in the back of his mind cooled down to comfortable monotony. Just a little bit of fresh air. A second of normalcy.

It was a mistake. He knew it'd be. 

But now, as he closed the door of the High Evolutionary’s cell and stood on the other side of the glowing red bars, none of that seemed particularly important. Nothing was clear enough to scare him. 

He didn't want to talk. He wanted to sit in the dark without moving a finger for the next two weeks.  

Rocket could still feel the knots in his fur when he walked away, wondering how in the holy universe he'd be able to keep that thing five minutes away from home without smashing the coffee mug on his head every morning and stabbing his neck with the shards, but he'd find a way. He's done worse. He's done so, so much worse. 

There were children screaming, people weeping, animals howling and some other blurry things he couldn't quite see or feel. He sat on a cracked bench and shivered from head to toe until Nebula found him.

It went unnoticed at first, covered by the violent turbulence of the battle, but Knowhere would need a little more than friendship and good wishes to re-establish. Their apartments were in shambles, the HQ they'd just finished settling after weeks of hard work looked like it'd been munched and spat out by a cow and the Bowie still smelled like ashes and clotted blood, but at least it wasn't threatening to fall apart on their heads if someone closed a door a little harder. The severed skull of a dead celestial had a few months of boring peace before going back to its favorite task – falling apart. 

The discomfort, if any, was brushed off with sweet ignorance. They could deal with the rest later.

It didn't take much for Rocket to accept their company this time, because all his protective aggressiveness had been replaced by a tinge of guilt and sheer exhaustion. He'd been unconscious for about two days and he'd gladly take a good nap if they even cared to ask. He was half-dead enough to skip the mandatory attempts to convince himself he'd rather be alone, and so disgustingly soft he wanted to make up for all the stress he'd caused them. 

He looked up at Quill and tried to find that same sweet ignorance in him to pretend his friend's face wasn't still slightly swollen and red from the little trick he pulled to retreat the Zune like a fucking clown. “C'mon, just choose a damn song already.”

“Rush me and I'll kick you off the bed,” Peter threatened, though his hands were pretty much squeezing the life out of Rocket and the faint smirk on his face was pretty damn stupid.

It actually made Rocket tighten his grip on the blankets. It could be the dreadful exhaustion or maybe he was just in shock, but all the pride and stubbornness had been purged out of him. 

They'd seen him twisting and foaming at the mouth, his chest bare and its bonus scars brought by the privileged sight, the files he fought so fiercely to forget and the humiliating fear he had on his face for at least 80% of the time. Besides, Nebula had practically had to drag him to the Bowie, his legs were resting against Drax and Groot kept sporadically reaching out to brush his fur, all without a single and lonely protest. There was nothing left to protect, nothing to hide. They knew everything.

He was trying not to acknowledge that. 

“Oh!” Mantis suddenly screamed in his ear and he didn't really mind as long as she kept running her fingers through his tail. “Play the one about the rainbows.”

“Ugh, no,” Peter answered and for a second Rocket felt him flinch, but he could've made it up or mistaken it for his own ridiculously unceasing shaking. “We played that one at least three times in the MedBay already.”

Rocket blinked. “You guys played music in there?” 

Quill's eyes hesitantly raised from the Zune. “Well, yeah.”

Rocket heard the hum of a song, faltering and increasing to the phantom pressure squeezing his head. He didn't know why his teeth began to chatter. “Why?” 

“What a thing to admit

When someone looks at me with real love

I don't like it very much

Kinda makes me feel like I'm being crushed”

The silence kept bleeding through the gaps between the verses. “We… I didn't know where you were,” Peter stuttered. “I was trying to let you know you were home.” 

He wanted to shrug it off, but the heat was building up behind his eyes as if he had a candle somewhere in his skull and Drax’s solemn and soothing agreement didn't help at all. “Yes. We specifically picked your favorite melodies from Quill's unending storage of tenebrous noise.”

Peter shifted in the sheets. “Woah, thanks, big guy.”

“And it's good to be alive

Crying in the cereal at midnight

If they ever let me out 

I'm gonna really let it out” 

Rocket let his chest be crumpled and undone like a piece of paper, something heavy falling on his lungs as if he were diving into a muddy river while it glowed and exploded. He used to have unwanted surgeries to the sound of his own screams and now his friends played his favorite fucking songs when he wasn't even awake for the sake of his comfort. He's been risking their lives all these years, hid just as much as he could, reacted to their kind tolerance with the worst sides of his rotten anger and they answered by stuffing him with more and more tenderness until all his unhealed parts were numb with love. 

“When I decided to wage Holy War

It looked very much like staring at my bedroom floor

But oh, God, you're gonna get it

You'll be…”

He wondered if it was possible for anyone to love someone as much as he loved every single person on that ship, and the unhinged and tearing urge to prove it made him want to cry even more. 

Rocket sniffed and let the tears fall. He wasn't trying to wipe his face anymore. “I killed my friends,” he didn't mean to tell them that, and most of all, he didn't mean to whine, but he couldn't hold back once it started. “He was, he said he didn't need us for nothin’ anymore, and I promised I'd find a way and get us outta there, but he-- he knew it, and I wasted their time, and I just let ‘em die.”

He was sure they didn't have the slightest clue of what the hell he was talking about, but it made no difference. It didn't matter as long as Drax's hands stayed on his legs, Mantis’ fingers and Groot's branches on his tail, Peter's hand brushing down his scalp almost hysterically and the silver stillness of Nebula's voice, unbelievably softer, “Unless you held the weapon, you didn't kill anybody.”

“No,” he was sniveling, choking, coughing, and something else that seemed like the parody of a scoff. He tried as hard as he could not to dig holes through their arms with his claws. “I don't care if I didn't open up their chest and break their fucking spines! I promised, I made ‘em believe they’d have a life outside, and then I was-- I was the only one who left, and they, they had to...”

“Rocket,” Quill was obstinately trying to wipe at his eyes to the best of his ability, but fresh tears would flood right back and Rocket couldn't even feel embarrassed anymore. “They'd forgive you.” 

Arms wrapped around him so unforgivably tight the bones that weren't already broken were now surely in danger. Love grew everywhere, it grew in the leaves Groot left on his matted fur and the tears he soaked their clothes in, in every single inch of that ship and the previous ones. Their ship, a house, a home to their family. Not even death could take that from him. 

“I'll tell you guys everything someday, I will,” He croaked, a quivering voice and shuddering breaths and a stuffy nose that wouldn't stop twitching and for the first time he wasn't trying to hate them.

Peter kept crushing the living shit out of him as though he hadn't put all their lives on the line for years just to keep them blissfully unaware. “You know we'll be here when you do,” he told him, “and while you don't, we're staying here too.”

“But it's good to be alive

Crying in the cereal at midnight 

But oh, God, you're gonna get it

You'll be sorry that you messed with us”

He latched onto them and would've tried to dig in and fit in their ribcage if he could. Grief was helpless and irreplaceable. It was the hole in his chest that probably wouldn't heal, that'd keep bleeding like it always had until there was no blood left to bleed. But he'd been reshaped, cleaned out from his worst irredeemable memories with water, soap and love. There was love, and it was flawed and laced with useless arguments and bursts of wrath, but there was love and it was palpable and incandescent like any other star outside the window. 

“Oh, God, you're gonna get it,”

Soon, sharing wouldn't have to be so frightening, but he knew they could wait, just like they always had. And just like it's always been, life would keep moving, scars would keep reopening, and they'd find a way, over and over.

“You'll be sorry that you messed with us.”