Peter
It had been eight months since they had heard anything from Gamora.
(She might join them, she needed time, that was all—)
“Get some rest, Pete. I’ll take over.”
Rocket didn’t have to look over Quill’s shoulder to know what he was looking at. It was the same screen he had been looking at every free moment for the past year.
“Quill…”
“In a minute, Rocky, I’ll—I’ll call it quits in a minute…”
The raccoonoid pulled a face at the nickname and sniffed at the air in disgust. Peter only called him that when he was drinking. Heavily.
“You said that twenty minutes and four shots ago. Come on, man. It don’t do none o’ us any favours for you to be wasted at the wheel. Stick. Whatever.”
His only response was a quite belch and the sound of a beer bottle clinking against the controls. Rocket sighed and padded over to the seat, snatching away the alcohol before the human could open the cap. That seemed to get his attention, and Rocket shook his head to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.
Peter looked awful, which compared to a typical human wouldn’t be saying much (if you asked Rocket), but compared to the regular... Quill-ness that their self-proclaimed captain exuded, it left the raccoonoid more than a little shook. The look in his eyes reminded him of Thor when he was at his worst, and the stench of beer and sadness wafted off of the man.
“Quill, when’s the last time you slept? And—ugh—showered?”
The Terran went cross-eyed for a moment while trying to focus on him. “You—hic—you’re one to talk.”
“I don’t sweat as much as you bald bodies do, an’ for your information, I showered this morning. Twice. Wanna know why? ‘Cause I spilt some highly toxic machine oil in my fur when you sped off to another dead-end stop on this dead-end search before I had closed up the engine.”
Rocket knew he should stop talking right there, and he could hear the irritated growl in the back of his throat before he let it out—flark, Quill, why are you doin’ this to yourself—?
“—What’s your excuse, jackass? Unless you think beer is an appropriate liquid to bathe in now?”
Peter’s eyes darkened and he started to half-stand, half-stagger out of the seat. “It wasn’ a dead-end, Rocky, we f—urp—found a-another lead, someone—someone saw her—.”
Rocket met his eyes and d’ast it all he tried not to look at him with pity, but—.
“Pete, buddy. I get it. We all miss her. But you know as well as I do that if she don’t want to be found, then we ain’t gonna find her—.”
“—oh, what do—what do you know, R-rock... raccoon? You—you don’t know wh-what I…”
The raccoonoid didn’t flinch as Quill stumbled over and leaned down to look him in the eye.
“You left us, man. If we—if we had been together, she’d still be here...and—and now you want me to stop—stop lookin’ for her...”
“I-I never said that, Peter. I just—you gotta to take a break, please—I wanna find her as much as you do, but—.”
“No, no you don’t—this is jus’ like you, Rocket, you—you wanna split the team, to—to run away from us, again...from your—hic —family!”
Rocket waited as Quill’s fist sailed towards him and missed by a considerable distance, striking the back of the co-pilot’s seat. Not that it would’ve hurt him—Peter’s hand-to-hand skills amounted to “floppy and useless” while drunk, and the words he said were painful enough to hear.
“I...I know you don’t mean that, Pete. Go on, then. I—I’ll see you in the mornin’.”
The man snorted and walked out of the bridge, leaving the raccoonoid alone with his thoughts.
Alone.
It’s during the bad nights, the nights like these that he wonders if he would be happier if he was alone again, and he hates himself for thinking that.
When Nebula comes to take the next watch shift, she says nothing about the tear streaks lining the fur of his face, or the shards of glass from a long-empty, long-broken beer bottle dusting his paws. She looks at the screen with her sister’s face and the same words that have been there for a year, and switches it off. She knows it'll be back on in the morning.
It always is.