30s | she/her | art | fanfic | general mayhem Fanfiction Masterlist | Art Masterlist on tumblr for the first time since 2016 ☾⋆⁺₊⋆ i came back for the anthropomorphic raccoon
In preparation for the upcoming 'final' chapter of Rack&Ruin, is there any lore about BlackJack... or Blackjack and Rocket that you'd be willing to part with? Lore that won't be included in the 'final' chapter ofc. Any tidbits or any amount of lore of this au would be a absolute treasure. For one example, im very curious about how vol3 went down in this au...
ahhhh so this might be boring but i wrote it 'cause you asked lol. keep in mind, i sorta think there are countless jacks the same way there are countless rockets, and this is just one interpretation of him. it's long, and maybe a little suggestive here and there, and kind of angsty. but hopeful, i think.
also i spent way too much time writing this so if there is a delay on the last audiotransmission, it's absolutely because of this. i hope it tides you over. [also uhhh minimal editing]
before we begin, let me ease your mind a little. in the present day, jack has met pretty much all of rocket's living family. nebula seems ceaselessly annoyed at him, but she tolerates him — which is good, because she's kind of jack's boss. at least, as much as he permits anyone to be his boss, which is pretty rare outside of specifically "rocket in the bedroom." mantis isn't on the skull full-time these days, but she is fascinated by him. she thinks he's very cute, and — charmer that he is — jack has no problems leaning into that and letting her ruffle his whiskers from time to time. he treats drax with a mocking slap-to-the-ass whenever he sees the big kylosian, which drax allows bemusedly because jack once told him it was a standard greeting for his people. and he's only talked to pete once — the night starlord left knowhere to return to terra — and the guy had seemed distracted. but it had gone decently, as far as jack could tell.
as for the new guardians — they're fine. he mostly interacts with them when he's training up his little defensive militia for the skull, made up largely of local volunteers and retired bunnies. phyla's a cutie, adam is (accidentally) hilarious, and cosmo and kraglin are more-or-less tolerable. the only one he really cares about is groot, because groot belongs to rocket — and anything that belongs to rocket matters.
notably, jack suspects most of the guardians — the originals, at least — have figured out he's sleeping with their precious captain. he'd guess nebula and mantis both know shit's serious — at least as serious as it can be when he doubts rocket's actually called him his boyfriend — partner — whatever — before. drax is probably aware, though what value he's assigned to their relationship is yet to be determined. and groot — well. jack’s not sure what groot knows, but the kid does seem to look at him with a squinty, speculative expression every time they run into each other.
ah well. they'll all figure it out soon enough, now that jack and rocket have had their little talk, all while poor clover-blossom was waiting on them.
here's the thing.
hares are pretty solitary creatures, for the most part. this particular version of blackjack has people he cares about, vaguely — he's got a sense of responsibility to his mercenary brigade, after all, and to the old hellspawn he used to be in charge of. there was his ex-wife, once upon a time, but what he’d once thought of as a spark had gradually revealed itself to just be an increasingly-intensifying series of hostilities — in her end, mostly — that had culminated in a sorta violent divorce that had really wounded jack’s already-limited feelings.
suffice it to say, he isn't close with much of anyone — i'm not sure he even knows how to be, really.
sure, he’s skilled when it comes to flattering, cajoling, manipulating, and charming — knows how to get what he wants, basically — and he also mostly knows how to take care of people (a roof over their heads! bandage their injuries! make sure they have food and water, like pets!). and, the truth is, he generally likes people — but not because he sees himself as part of a community, or because he's got solid, deep relationships with them. just because they're interesting and amusing, and a little endearing.
again, kinda like pets.
no, i think — outside of rocket and later, clover — intimacy and vulnerability are pretty rare for our boy jack. in fact, it sort of mirrors rocket's own difficulty with intimacy and vulnerability: similar at a glance, but almost opposite when you look closer.
like, rocket might be the cranky, growly junkyard dog, but he wants so bad to go home with someone, you know? to find his forever-family. he's got a huge heart and is always taking more people under his wing, even if he pretends to be reluctant.
conversely, jack is the dog who's pure, playful mischief: always willing to chase the ball and steal treats. but it doesn't really occur to him to want any other life than the one he's got, which is mostly: being a free agent, living (comfortably) with other lowlifes in the junkyard, and having rocket for himself — and later, clover.
you see, fundamentally, rocket is someone who understands people because he's empathetic down to his core: so much so that he's desperate to hide it, to protect that soft, fragile hidden heart. while jack understands people because he's something of an anthropologist, i guess. he figures out what makes his chosen people happy, and then it becomes his mission to make sure they have it.
(granted, it's been a little easier with clover, because he and rocket met when they both still had some growing and changing to do).
once you understand this about jack, we’ll. you'll understand a little more why volume three didn't change at all. at least not on the surface.
let's back up a little further.
earth-616 (or -199999, depending on your preference). saturday, june 30, 2018 according to the terran calendar, or exactly thirty terran-days after the snap. eight days after captain marvel hauled nebula and stark out of deep-space, and seven days after thanos was killed in the garden.
maybe rocket was drunk. maybe he was laying in his bunk, crying silently up at the ceiling. maybe he was building or breaking some shit. maybe he was snarling at tony or cap. whatever it was he was doing, he was most certainly grieving when he decided to ask nebs if she wanted to hang out with him for a bit. he was gonna head up to the stars, see if kraglin was still around.
check on jack, though he didn't say that.
nebula said yes — and maybe he shouldn't have been surprised by that, because she had real limited options when it came to getting off this backward mudball. but she did say yes, and the rest was sorta history. the concept of the guardians somehow persisted, despite their limited numbers and copious fuck-ups.
and jack — jack hadn't disappeared. one fuckin' person from rocket's life before was still kickin.' and not only that, but it seemed jack’s mercenary brigade had survived the snap in overwhelming numbers, though fuck only knew why. something like 68% of them had made it. a backward, degenerate miracle, rocket had figured — the universe's perverse joke. it would take that extra 18% from somewhere else, rocket had been sure — somewhere probably more important. some starving planet's agriculture, maybe, or an extra fifth of braincells from some genius meant to cure universal syphilis, but who now, instead, would suddenly lose their capacity for short-term memory or like, knowing how to breathe.
still, rocket had been selfish enough to be grateful.
fast forward about three terran years. that's two-point-one-nine circumrotations of the intergalactic multicalendar, for those of you doing the math at home.
jack's little mercenary outfit was working a number of pockets across the stars, but they'd just gotten a particularly cushy little contract over on knowhere, surprisingly enough. jack himself had gone in with that group, knowing what a fuckin' cesspool it was, and expecting a lot of resistance to say the least. rocket himself had always kinda liked that about knowhere. the unpolishedness of it all had made him feel comfortable. the scrappiness. it was a place where nobody minded if you said too many esses or fucked-up your words, that was for sure. it had always felt as far from the high shitbag's city as rocket could ever get.
and the guardians weren't doing terribly. kraglin had been handling the third-quadrant remarkably well. they'd been using it as an unofficial base of operations since ego, but it had gotten kinda lonely without a crew kickin' around. still, kraglin had made peace with his new role ferrying supplies to and from needy planets, and it had at least given him the opportunity to break up his solitude by meeting the locals. the big humie idiot had gotten married at least three more times since thanos' death.
as for rocket and nebula themselves — well, they spent more time on terra than rocket would prefer. terrans were so fuckin' needy, and obviously thought that the guardians' time and service to the galaxy was worth less than carol danvers', because nat was constantly comming them to demand they come back to "earth" for some stupid trash-boat mission or whatever.
still, the new guardians had begun to feel like family. enough so that rocket had finally floated the idea he'd been sitting on for a while, which was settling down at a new base of operations. somewhere both the benatar and the quadrant dock, refuel, and maybe put down roots. a space station, maybe, or an abandoned satellite.
or, even better — a skull.
the upkeep on the godskull had never been great — as far as rocket was concerned, the griminess was part of the charm — but the place had definitely seen better days by then. in fact, rocket had witnessed the deterioration in real-time — stopping by every-other-quarter or so to see jack, and watching the city fall apart a little more each time. it was what had first given him the idea that maybe, just maybe, the collector didn't care about the place at all anymore. that maybe the elder would be thrilled to get rid of it.
rocket had mentioned it in passing to jack, who had seemed ambivalent, only clicking him an obnoxious wink and saying, i knew you liked fucking me, old man, but i didn't realize it was enough to make you buy a whole friggin' space-station.
rocket had snorted. yeah, well, it's a perk. if you decide to stay, anyway. he'd cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. if we let you.
the hare had raised his palms in mock-surrender. hey, i'm a contributing member of the community, asshole. a friggin' businessman. an entrepreneur. a fuckin' — job creator, or whatever.
rocket's lip had curled. gross.
point is, i'm a goddamn pillar here, jack had retorted with a smug grin. me an' my girl. you can't kick us out.
rocket had blinked. you're still seeing her?
the hare had slapped a dramatic, broad-fingered palm to his scarred heart, letting his lens-covers click and flutter before closing them dreamily.
i'm gonna be seein' her for the rest of my life, dickhead.
a quarter passes. then another, and another. almost another, as the guardians try to save up money. it's hard, when everyone's so desperate. historically, the guardians' financial accounts had pretty much relied on taking out despots who'd been hoarding resources for generations, and then scooping their pay off the top before the wealth got redistributed. the lesser-paying jobs — the ones we take 'cause we gotta, as pete used to say, 'cause they need us, and nobody else will — are pretty much all that's left right now. at least, unless the guardians wanna start working for the wrong people.
and that's not something rocket is interested in going back to anymore. not with his family’s goodness still hanging over him like a burial shroud.
point is, they scrimp and save — and when they finally take their lowball-offer to the collector, the entitled whiny shitstain folds like a house of cards.
they probably coulda bought the whole skull for a frickin' song and a dance, at that point.
fast-forward a little bit more. nebs and kraglin and rocket have been settling in for about a cycle and a half now, getting organized. rocket's been scoping out places to stay — hasn't stumbled across his future mechanics'-shop-turned-apartment yet — but he's mostly been crashing in his bunk on the benatar or with jack in the apartment above o'hare's. he's even seen jack's girl once or twice, in passing.
pretty thing. rocket tries not to think about it — about her — about the countless stories he's picked up and secretly hoarded like units over the circs.
it's at the end of that cycle-and-a-half that rocket has the idea. the impulse, really. he sprawls in bed beside jackie, both of them naked and sharing a clove cigarette as they stare up at the ceiling. jack takes a drag and hands it to rocket, who holds it up in front of his nose and studies the twisting blue wisp of smoke that spirals from the end.
you should join us, he says abruptly. no lead-in, no sugar-coating, nothin'. be a guardian. we could use more numbers. he swallows, wondering why his throat's so tight. hating that his heart's beating so hard, 'cause he knows jackie's big stupid ears can hear the change in rhythm. rocket smirks to try and cover it up; inhales slowly on the cigarette to try to steady himself. 'sides, i know you gotta be bored as fuck, now that you gave up leadin' the brigade.
jack snorts — then cackles. rocket's fur ripples, and he clenches his teeth before forcing himself to hand the cigarette back casually.
no thanks, jack drawls, snickering like the clueless idiot he is. why would i wanna get locked down when i got everything i want right here?
rocket grimaces, then slants a bitter glance in his bedmate's direction. does jack know how that sounds? like he's not just talking about the guardians-gig, but the — whatever-this-thing-is, between them? rocket's learned he's got an unfortunate habit of reading the worst in what other people say, and he's been trying to do better about it, but for fuck's sake.
but all he says, dryly, is:
money's not bad.
then he hesitates.
i mean, it's usually better. but we actually saved a lot on this junker of a skull, so we're in a good situation. and i bet, soon, we’ll be makin’ money hand-over-fist again.
jack only cocks an ear at him skeptically, like rocket’s missing the point. you know i'm no-one's second-in-command, dipshit. not since i left halfworld.
rocket's fur ruffles again, prickling along his spine. beneath the loose bedlinens, his tail puffs in agitation.
it's not like that, he snaps. we're pretty much all frickin' equals.
jack waves a dismissive hand, the clove-smoke unspooling across their shared space. uh-huh. you're tellin' me nobody's in charge? a disbelieving scoff. please. i bet they practically call you captain.
rocket had turned his head in the pillows to stare at him, all but gaping. me? what? fuck no.
another snort, another scoff from jack.
thanks, but i'm good. i got my coffee-shop. i got a nice little mountain of money from Dyvynities Inc, that'll prob'ly last the rest of my life — especially with you losers running the skull. bet you're about to make this whole place a lot more livable. he takes another drag. plus, i'll be gettin' residuals off the brigade till it goes under. if it goes under. and most importantly—
he shrugs, and lifts both his hands in a what-can-ya-do? gesture. the smoke trails from his cigarette.
—i can't leave my clover-blossom. what would she do without me?
grimacing — even though he's positively greedy for news of jack's girl these days — rocket asks the question. he asks it in spite of the fact that he gets the same answer every time. he asks it in spite of the fact that it only ever makes jack more annoyed at him. he asks it because it needs to be asked, and because he needs to know.
you're still stringing that poor girl along?
the hare glares, maybe more venomously than rocket’s ever seen before.
fuck you, old man. i told you to stop saying that shit.
a couple rotations later — still marinating in the ghost of that conversation —it slowly occurs to rocket that he doesn't actually care that jackie doesn't want to be a guardian. the little shit is safer at his stupid coffee shop, anyway.
so why's he still thinking about it? rocket wonders.
and then it occurs to him that actually, all he'd really wanted was for jack to meet what was left of his tattered, fucked-up, makeshift family.
and then it occurs to him that he'll probably never get to introduce his stupid, moronic, off-and-on-again, sorta-boyfriend to any of the rest of them.
not to dumbass drax, who would've laughed so uproariously over something so stupid that jack would have treated the kylosian like a fuckin' animal in a zoo, trying to get him to do it again.
and not to idiot pete, who had brought music back into rocket’s life, and who had been the best friend rocket had ever had outside of groot, and now nebs.
and not — fuck — not to his lost son, who had just been starting to become, like, a selfless frickin' adult or whatever, and who would probably never get a chance to grow up, and who maybe would've wanted to know his dad was seein' someone.
hell, not even to that kinda-sweet new chick with the antennae, who'd probably fall in love with jack immediately.
and certainly never to gamora, who is — rocket is pretty sure — gone-gone.
like, forever-gone.
and not to lylla, or to teefs, or to floor, all of whom are also forever-gone.
and what if in the next stupid mission or fight, kraglin and nebula die too? then what?
for fuck's sake, then what?
so, of course — on the heels of this terrible revelation — rocket gets wasted that night.
he barely keeps himself from brawling in the streets of the city he now apparently owns — narrowly prevents himself from disillusioning the locals, who still look at him with big eyes and apparently like to tell stories about how the guardians of the galaxy were formed right here on knowhere! they all seem to think he's better than their previous landlords, anyway, and so far, rocket doesn't think he's given them too much of a reason to realize otherwise.
instead, he crawls off to one of the mechanical rooms on the third quadrant and cries tears that are probably like 90% straight skullfuck moonshine, falling asleep with a stuffy, sniffling nose and wet whiskers till nebs finds him a half-rotation later, sighing as she coaxes him awake with surprising gentleness and a cup of still-warm coffee that she must've gotten from you, because it's definitely the best cup of coffee to ever come outta frickin' o'hare's.
at that point, rocket abruptly decides that maybe it's for the best that jack had turned him down. 'cause there's no way that nebula, daughter of thanos, wouldn't see right through that idiot-hare's bullshit. nebula's like — unimpressable. flattery and charm don't work on her, and after being manipulated all her life by the mad titan, it won't be easy for anyone else to do the same.
honestly. if there's anyone left in the known universe who could withstand jackie's charm, it's probably rocket's cyborg-bff.
so, uh. dodged a bullet there, maybe.
(of course, you and i both know that if rocket had said to jack, look, asshole, i just want to introduce you to the family, jack would've perked right up and agreed immediately. he would‘be known what that had meant — even if he still wouldn't trust that rocket had known what it had meant).
to be honest, though? rocket's probably right. it probably would have been disastrous. nebula would have been so skeptical of jack's charm. she also would have figured out quite quickly that they were fucking, and it only would have made her more suspicious of jack's motives. she probably would've gone into full what-are-your-intentions-with-my-bestie?-mode, and while jack might've found it hilarious, i don't think it would have ended well.
not yet, anyway.
so, in the meantime, rocket just keeps fucking his boyfriend on occasion: staying above the coffee shop between missions, or meeting up with him at the Boot, or giving him access to the mechanic's apartment once it's been gutted and refinished. and around a circ later, the snap is undone, and everyone who was lost to the infinity stones comes back. and then the guardians headquarters get officially built, and they upgrade a bunch of shit on the skull, and rocket sorta starts liking all the losers who live there? and then there's like, a christmas party or something?
and rocket fucks his boyfriend some more, and he doesn't ask him to meet his messed-up, dysfunctional family again, even after they've been returned to the mortal coil. and jack doesn't really care that much, because he doesn't think about it.
because hares are solitary creatures.
and then volume three happens.
i don't think the guardians know much about jack up until this point.
he's just some shady guy who rocket hangs out with when they're skullside, no different from the randos playing poker at mantlo's or the boot. they think he's, like, a former assassin? or a mercenary or something? they know he was previously considered a pretty dangerous guy on the skull — but rocket vouches for him, and apparently he's been, like, giving out free food at the café or something, since way before rocket and nebula had even purchased the place?
and the guardians themselves are all, well, criminals — most of 'em are even murderers — so? that seems like enough of a reason to give the guy a chance?
still. sometimes, nebula sees the hare enter rocket's apartment late at night — seemingly with preprogrammed access to the biolock — and she wonders if they're fucking. or mantis gets a little too close while they're at the bar, and she claps her hands over her mouth and tries not to ask if they crushes on each other.
drax, at least, is oblivious. and pete's too wrapped up in his own pain to notice anything odd. and neither nebula nor mantis really pursues the topic, due to their respectively suspicious and hopeful natures.
so when rocket gets injured by an invading sovereign for reasons unknown, nobody thinks to make sure the local coffee-shop owner knows about it. they're already gone — blasting their way across the stars to rendez-vous with ravagers on their way to friggin' orgocorp —when jack hears that his lover might've taken a fatal hit.
jack's fucking enraged.
he paces. he trashes his apartment. he trashes the coffee-shop (thankfully, clover's tucked up in her apartment, probably sleeping or listening to rakk n' ruin on her headphones; later, she'll assume the ravaged shop is the result of the fight with the hellspawn — a notion which jack will, out of some foreign sense of guilt, correct somewhat sheepishly). he almost trashes rocket's place: "breaking in" (if one can call it that when he’s basically got the key) and instead burying himself in all the blankets on rocket's terrible bed. from there, he briefly considers hopping into his own little micro-ship and taking off after those idiot-guardians. he thinks about trying to storm knowhere's new cockpit and staging a little mutiny — letting that idiot former-ravager, krang or kagling or whatever the fuck his name is — serve as secondmate for a few hours, till jack can bring the skull to dock on orgocorp or halfworld or wherever the fuck they ended up.
he thinks about telling clover, too. tries to decide if he should bring her with him, or leave her here. tries to decide whether he should take her with him in his micro-ship, or bring her to knowhere's cockpit, or keep her safe and tucked away in her apartment.
his lenses click and whirr, and there's a terrible, stinging pressure in his chest and behind his mechanical eyes. his teeth grind, and he never wishes more than he does in this exact moment that he was capable of crying.
now. understand: all this indecision is very unbecoming behavior for the former leader of the black bunny brigade.
but frankly, jack does not give a single shit.
and before he can make up his mind, the skull's already heading toward new coordinates, with steemie blueliver's voice coming over the loudspeaker to tell folks to get inside and stay safe.
so of course, what else is jack to do but go outside?
he heads first to his girl's apartment. orders her to hunker down and stay safe, like she had the day of the firefight on her street so many circs ago. tells her he'll be back to check on her as soon as he can, but not to worry if it takes a little longer than she'd think, because he might be helping with clean-up, too.
of course, by clean-up, he means killing people and getting rid of bodies, but she doesn't need to know that.
then he comms whatever remaining, retired Bunnies are left on the skull, and he heads out into the streets: intent on coordinating some kind of defense in case it's needed. because, well, the skull has been his home for circs now. his girl lives here, and she loves it. she loves all the people who come into her shop, begging for treats. and his idiot-lover lives here too, and if anything, that dickhead might love it even more than jack’s girl does.
and to be honest, jack likes the locals, too. they're entertaining. amusing. kinda endearing, in a weird way.
yeah. like pets.
goddamn, he thinks sourly, when he sees the fleet of hellspawn coming in. unfortunately, he's pretty sure it's an entirely new generation of war-animals. he thinks all of this would (probably) be a lot easier if he recognized some faces. maybe he could pull some strings — not that these guys tend to be very communicative when their hostile state is activated.
of course, it's not really all that surprising that these are all newbies. the high evolutionary ain't exactly known for keeping his cannon-fodder alive for long.
so anyway, this is where we would see the most difference in volume three on the screen. it wouldn't be much — barely noticeable, really. jack's just in the background while the camera focuses on kraglin having his moment of spiritual guidance, or cosmo being a very good dog. meanwhile, our guy is trying to get these loser-civilians — all of 'em gone way too soft in the circs since the guardians took over, in his opinion — to mount some sort of viable defense against the hellspawn.
that's all. only a ghost of his presence in the narrative. barely noticed, really.
easily dismissed.
afterward, limping and still sore, physically exhausted and bodily drained — and emotionally fuckin' depleted — rocket seeks him out.
jackie.
his baby-bun.
his annoying, stubborn brat of a sort-of boyfriend.
luckily, jack’s been preoccupying himself with thoughts of clover ever since they got everyone off the arête. he’d seen rocket from a distance — with his own two mechanical eyes — and the bastard had seemed fine.
jackass.
the old man had then disappeared from the observation deck in the aftermath, prioritizing whatever dumbass guardians-debrief had needed to happen.
it had only reignited jack's fury. yeah, about rocket being injured, of course. and about himself, not being informed.
if that stupid prick would just admit what they were, then maybe jack wouldn’t have been kept in the friggin’ dark. maybe the loser-guardians would’ve come to find him, and he could’ve helped.
and then maybe, if rocket had to be hovering on the edge of death, jack could’ve been right there next to him. holding his stupid, pretty, callused hand.
but rocket won’t admit it, and jack hadn't been informed, and the whole situation had probably been a lot more dangerous than it had needed to be because of course nobody had thought to ask him.
jack had considered hunting the bastard down. crashing whatever little meeting the guardians were having like a jealous housewife, and dragging rocket back to one of their apartments — preferably by his stupid, luxurious striped tail.
but no. he's got better things to do than waste his time on someone who can't even admit that they love him. so instead, jack forces his attention toward making sure his retired bunnies are okay and sending them off to their homes.
and then getting back to his girl.
he'd known that clover, for her part, would be exactly the balm he’d needed and wanted. she'd briskly check him over for injuries, in that no-nonsense way she always uses when she pretends that their relationship is platonic or professional or whatever.
when she pretends he’s not winning her over a little more every rotation.
jack’s been hanging at her place most days after the coffee shop closes, but he hasn’t conned his way into a sleepover yet. tonight might give him the perfect excuse. she'll grimace and roll her eyes at his over-the-top remarks, try not to laugh at his crude comments and lewd jokes, and it'll soothe away all the rawness that still burns inside him when he thinks about rocket, and about the most-dangerous brush with death his dumb-lover’s had since they’d friggin’ met, and about how nobody bothered to tell jack what was happening.
and about the terror of losing rocket.
and about how mad he is.
and about how much he wishes he could cry.
he doesn't, though. can't, on account of the lack of tear ducts. so he kicks rocks moodily while he heads to clover's: stuffs his fingers into his pockets and whistles a sad attempt at a jaunty tune through his broad front teeth while he strolls toward clover’s neighborhood, pretending everything’s fine.
which is where rocket finds him, and says — gruffly — that they need to talk.
jack's bottled-up rage melts into almost panic so intense that his heart nearly stops. it’s a replacement heart, issued to him by HalfWorld manufacturers, of course — much stronger than his old hare-heart — but the impulse to just let it shudder to a halt or jerk into overdrive is still there. he freezes, mid-stride, eyes flicking and clicking, before rocket clears his throat gruffly and continues.
heard what you did. reactivating the bunnies around here. keeping the city safe.
...oh. maybe this isn’t a bad talk, then.
yeah. okay. can the conversation wait? jack asks, masking any leftover trepidation with annoyance.
what he’s thinking, of course — what you and i know he’s thinking — is that he really just wants to get rocket into bed. rocket doesn't let jack dom him very often — and frankly, jack's got no desire to dom him very often — but frankly, the hare thinks he friggin' deserves to be in charge tonight. more importantly, he needs this old bastard's silvery fur and ragged scars under his hands: tail wrapped in fist, teeth sunk into the nape of his lover's neck to hold him steady while he fucks into him.
he needs the concrete tangibility of rocket's body, warm and safe under his own.
rocket, of course, picks up none of this. let's be forgiving: he's coming off his own series of adrenaline spikes. he's just been retraumatized like, five times over in the last day-and-a-half or whatever, and he's received the benefits of a medpack — but also the drawbacks of using one without any hydration, nourishment, or sleep. which means he's fucking exhausted, and his head's kinda swimmy and pulsing, and his vision's a little fuzzy. plus, he's just been informed that almost his entire frickin' family is retiring from the guardians, and two of 'em are leaving the skull. indefinitely.
and rocket's not the most emotionallistically-intelligent in the best of times — but he's kinda an extra-mess now.
so the new captain of guardians just rolls his eyes and tells jack to stop being a brat. and when the hare doesn't say anything for a minute, rocket pinches his brow — he just knows the incoming migraine is going to be stupid — and bites the inside of his cheek. hard.
then uses whatever's left of his energy to try real hard not to be an asshole.
heard what you did, he says quietly. for everybody. i'm— his voice cracks. stupid. —i'm real glad you're okay. and i'm real glad you were here. he clears his throat again. you did a real good job, jackie. activating those leftover bunnies. keeping the, uh, civilians safe. defending this place.
for a moment, jack's constant inner monologue ceases. it's rare — seems like only rocket and clover have ever been able to evoke this particular reaction — but his inner voice just turns off as he tries to churn through what rocket's saying. the compliment he's paying.
the praise.
his skin gets all hot and itchy beneath his fur, and the red sheen that tints his vision suddenly seems more pink. one foot thumps the street, quickly stifled, and a hum rises in his throat before he can swallow it down.
then he blurts out: careful, old man. i might start to think you like me.
rocket lets out a strangled grunt, pinching the space between his brow even harder. for fuck's sake.
then the new captain of the guardians of the galaxy releases the most long-suffering sigh in the known universe, stares up at the dome above the streets, and rolls his eyes back toward jack. his voice grits back into gravelly, exhausted irritation.
it's time to stop being a dickhead, jackie. you got talent and skill, and we need you here, in case somethin' like this happens again. your li'l coffee-shop's cute—
—it's important, jackie interrupts coolly, then shrugs. pillar of the community or whatever.
yeah, okay, rocket agrees, too tired to argue and not really interested in it, either. he knows it's the place jackie's girl works — knows she got the little brat to feed people freely during some of the skull's darkest hours. knows it's important for the city's morale. or something. but we need you working on other things too. we need you training up — i dunno, volunteers or something. make sure this place has a decent, organized defense when the rest of us aren't here to protect it or whatever.
jack scoffs. you just want me under you — in bed and outta it, he sneers, a little meanly. and who can blame him? he's still a little salty about the last rotation-and-a-half of chaos, of not knowing if rocket was alive or dead.
you won't be under me, rocket retorts, baring his teeth. city-stuff's gonna start being managed by nebs. you'll have to meet with her. taunting — because he knows his bunny well — he adds, it'd mean you got included in the big conversations, goin' forward.
jack’s ears twitch.
rocket sighs. hitches a shoulder, and casts a calculating look toward his lover: letting his sharp, predator's gaze take in everything, in spite of his own exhaustion.
might as well do it now, rocket says carefully. casually. it'd give you a chance to meet pete and mantis before they leave.
jack pauses. pretends to hesitate — for all of five seconds. then says, fine, but i'm not stayin' long. i gotta get back to my girl — told her i'd check in when everything was clear, make sure to let her know i'm safe.
a pointed glare, which rocket misses.
instead, the new captain lets out a slow, measured breath, trying to hide his own relief. that's fine, he says, and hesitates before throwing an arm around his lover's shoulder: giving a careful squeeze as he turns jack toward the observation deck and the guardians' quarters.
the gesture's a little too intimate for anyone watching to assume they were just-friends, but a little too casual for them to be certain of anything else.
jack swallows harshly. rocket does too. their reasons are slightly different, but far more aligned than either of them realize.
let's go, rocket manages to grit out, his own mechanical heart thumping loudly in his chest. i want you to meet 'em.
before we miss 'em completely.
—and that's how jack meets the family.
Rack & Ruin. | navigation | fiction masterlist
18+ only | rocket x f!reader x blackjack | 10/11 parts
skulls dividers and support/mdni banners by @/saradika-graphics | titlecard, ombre green, and ombre glitter dividers by me!
The alarms never stopped. They had been screaming for so long that eventually they ceased to sound like alarms at all and became part of the Arete itself, as ordinary as the red emergency lights pulsing across steel walls, the smoke leaking through damaged vents, the distant impact of explosions and the terrified cries of thousands of animals who did not understand why their world had suddenly begun tearing itself apart. In one of the smaller containment rooms, two young raccoon girls huddled together in the farthest corner of their cage. They were barely more than children, scarcely half the height Rocket would be when he found them, and both bore the evidence of what the High Evolutionary’s people had done. Metal braces reinforced limbs that had been cut, altered and reconstructed while their bodies were still growing. Scars vanished beneath dirty fur. One girl was naturally light silver-grey, although weeks of grime had dulled the sheen of her coat, and enormous piercing blue eyes watched every movement beyond the bars. Her sister was much darker, her natural silver-grey coat overtaken by extensive partial melanism that spread in irregular charcoal and ink-black patches across her face and body. Her tail was almost entirely black, its rings reduced to ghostly variations in the darkness, and brilliant emerald-teal eyes burned against the shadowed fur. The darker girl could not scream. The structures in her throat that should have made sound had been surgically removed long ago. When another explosion rattled the cage and animals shrieked throughout the laboratory, her mouth opened instinctively, but nothing emerged. She merely grabbed her sister’s paw harder.
There had once been four of them. The two girls had slept beside a tiny pale-blond sister with red eyes, probably the runt, and a cinnamon-red brother whose strange pirate-gold eyes had always seemed too bright for the miserable room in which they lived. Whatever biological connections existed between them had long ago become irrelevant. They were siblings because they were all each other had. They slept tangled together for warmth, shared the meager pellets pushed into their cage, groomed one another around painful pieces of metal, soothed one another after procedures and learned the increasingly elaborate gestures through which the mute girl communicated. Then, only weeks before the Arete began to fall, the cage had opened and two were taken. The remaining girls had fought desperately. Their little blond sister had bitten someone. Their brother screamed. The darker girl had tried to scream until the scarred emptiness in her throat hurt. None of it mattered. The door closed behind their siblings and they never returned. Eventually the surviving girls learned where they had gone. The incinerator. Failed specimens, unwanted animals, discarded material. The exact words were less important than the truth. Their brother and sister were dead, and overheard conversations told the survivors that they would soon follow them. So for weeks the two girls had lived with the knowledge that every set of footsteps approaching the cage might be the last thing they ever heard. When the Arete began collapsing around them, they did not know whether to hope. Doors opening had never meant freedom before.
Rocket had already seen more than enough by the time he reached their section. He moved through the Arete opening cages as quickly as his hands could work, shouting directions, clearing locks, ushering terrified animals toward the route Cosmo was maintaining between the station and Knowhere. He could not afford to think about every cage too deeply. Every laboratory smelled too much like childhood. Every surgical scar belonged to a language his body understood. The High Evolutionary had carved him open, rebuilt him, forced intelligence into him and then despised him for becoming intelligent enough to see his creator clearly. Rocket had survived. Lylla, Teefs and Floor had not. Now he moved through another kingdom built from the same cruelty, releasing everything he could before there was no kingdom left to escape. He opened one cage, then another, then another, and suddenly stopped. Two raccoons stared back at him. Not ordinary raccoons. Children. Altered children. For several seconds the alarms, explosions and animal cries seemed to vanish. Rocket could only see the metal integrated into their small bodies, the scars, the shaved patches where fur had never fully returned. His chest tightened so sharply that the first word slipped out before he could stop it. “No.”
The girls recoiled. The darker one immediately moved in front of the silver child despite trembling badly enough that Rocket could see it. Her emerald-teal eyes fixed on the weapon in his paw, and he realized what she was looking at. He lowered it at once, then deliberately placed it on the floor. “Hey. Easy.” Neither girl relaxed. Rocket crouched so he was less imposing and kept both paws where they could see them. “I’m not gonna hurt you.” The silver girl stared at him with a strange intensity that gradually pushed through her fear. Her gaze moved across his ears, muzzle, mask, hands and ringed tail, then down to herself, then back to him. Her lips parted. “Raccoon.” Rocket went still. “Yeah.” She looked at her sister, then at Rocket again. “Like us.” He followed her gaze toward the braces around her limbs and swallowed. “Yeah, kid. Like you.” The darker girl began moving her hands. Rocket could not understand the gestures, but the silver girl could. “She wants to know if they made you.” That question struck harder than anything else had. Rocket looked down at the machinery integrated into his own body. “Somebody did. A long time ago.” The girls watched him. “It hurt?” the silver one asked. Rocket could have lied. He didn’t. “Yeah.” The darker girl’s paw drifted toward the scar around her throat. Rocket noticed properly for the first time, and something vicious unfurled inside him. “What did they do to you?” She immediately shrank backward. Rocket forced his anger down. “Not mad at you.” The silver girl touched her own throat. “They took her voice.” Rocket stared. He knew surgical damage. He knew what deliberate removal looked like. He imagined hands cutting into a child’s throat because someone had decided her ability to speak was unnecessary. His claws dug into his palms. “Yeah,” he said after a moment, softer now. “Somebody made me too. But they don’t own me.” The girls did not understand. Rocket gestured toward the cage. “And whoever did this to you doesn’t own you either.”
He reached toward the locking mechanism and both children scrambled backward in absolute terror. Rocket froze. The darker girl actually grabbed the inside of the cage door as if she could hold it shut. It took him a moment to understand. The door itself frightened them. He slowly withdrew his hand. “Okay. We do this differently.” He sat down on the filthy floor several feet away. Another explosion shuddered through the Arete, but he ignored it. “I’m gonna unlock it. I’m not gonna touch either of you. You wanna walk out, you walk out.” He pointed toward the corridor. “Whole place is coming apart, so staying ain’t a great option, but you come out yourself. Got it?” The girls exchanged gestures. Finally the darker child gave one small nod. Rocket opened the lock housing, bypassed the dead electronics and released the mechanism. The latch clicked. Both girls jumped. Rocket did not open the door. He sat back. “There.” The silver girl stared. “You aren’t opening it?” Rocket shrugged. “Unlocked. You can.” That changed something. The darker child approached first, slowly enough that every movement seemed deliberate. She touched the door, immediately withdrew her paw, then touched it again. Rocket remained perfectly still. She pushed. The door opened perhaps an inch. Nothing happened. She pushed farther. Then she looked back at her sister. The silver girl joined her. Together they stood at the threshold, holding paws. Rocket waited. Eventually one small silver foot crossed the line. Then another. The darker girl followed. Both were outside. The cage remained open behind them.
Rocket said nothing about the magnitude of what they had just done. There was no time, and he suspected making the moment too large would frighten them again. Instead he stood carefully and asked if they could walk. Both nodded. Rocket looked at the badly fitted metal around their legs. “That wasn’t what I asked. Can you walk without it hurting?” Silence. “Thought so.” He pointed toward the silver girl’s brace. “Too tight.” Then toward the dark girl’s hip. “Yours is pulling.” Her paw immediately covered the area. Rocket lifted both hands. “Not touching. I know bad hardware when I see it.” The silver girl stared at his own implants. “Can you fix it?” Rocket answered without hesitation. “Yeah.” He saw how intensely they looked at him and amended, “Later. First we get out.” They followed him into the corridor. The silver girl made it only a short distance before stumbling. Rocket turned. “Nope. You’re not walking.” She immediately protested that she could. Rocket crouched and held out his arms rather than reaching for her. “You can either let me carry you, or we can argue while this place blows up.” The darker girl began signing. Her sister hesitated, then translated, “She says you’re small.” Rocket stared at the child, who barely reached half his height. “You’re calling me short?” For the first time the silver girl’s mouth twitched. Rocket pointed at the darker one. “She’s got jokes.” Eventually the silver girl allowed him to lift her. She was frighteningly light. Rocket adjusted his grip around the braces until she admitted it did not hurt. The darker girl insisted on walking.
Groot found them several corridors later. He hurried toward Rocket, then stopped when he saw the two children. His expression softened immediately. The darker girl stared upward and upward and upward until she had taken in the entire enormous tree. She moved closer to Rocket despite herself. “He’s okay,” Rocket told her. Groot crouched several feet away and gave a gentle wave. “I am Groot.” The silver girl blinked. “Tree.” Rocket snorted. “Yeah.” Groot looked faintly offended. “I am Groot.” “She ain’t wrong.” The silver girl made the tiniest laugh, as if surprised by the sound herself. Groot noticed the dark girl’s limp and extended one huge wooden hand. She backed away. He immediately stopped. Rocket said, “He can carry you. He ain’t gonna drop you.” Groot looked scandalized that such a possibility had even been proposed. The child studied his open palm, then slowly put one paw into it. Groot lifted her as carefully as if she were made of glass and settled her against his shoulder. She gripped a branch. “I am Groot,” he said softly. Rocket glanced up. “He says you’re safe.” The girl looked at him. Rocket nodded. Then they moved again.
The route to Knowhere was unlike anything the girls had ever seen. Cosmo had telekinetically brought Knowhere against the Arete and maintained an airtight connection between the two enormous structures, allowing thousands of animals and people to cross directly. When Rocket reached the passage carrying the silver child while Groot carried her sister, both girls stared. “What is that?” the silver one whispered. “Knowhere.” She frowned. “What?” “A place.” Her attention suddenly shifted toward Cosmo, visibly glowing with strain as she held the connection together. “Is that a dog?” Rocket followed her gaze. “Yep.” The darker girl signed rapidly from Groot’s shoulder. “She wants to know what the dog is doing.” Rocket said, “Holding this whole thing together.” Both girls stared at him. “With her brain,” he clarified. “Telekinesis.” Blank expressions. “Brain powers.” The darker girl signed again. Her sister translated, “She says that’s really cool.” Rocket grinned. “Yeah. It is.”
Then they reached the actual boundary between Arete and Knowhere, and both girls went rigid. Behind them was every room they had ever known. The cage. The procedures. The place from which their brother and sister had vanished forever. Ahead was something incomprehensibly open and alive. Rocket felt the silver child stiffen in his arms. “What’s there?” she asked. Rocket considered. “Food. Beds. Clothes. Bathrooms.” The girls looked bewildered by most of the list. “People who ain’t gonna experiment on you.” That they understood. The darker girl signed something, and her sister hesitated before translating. “She asks if there are cages.” Rocket’s chest tightened. “Not like this.” Another series of gestures. “Who owns us there?” Rocket stopped walking. He stared at both children. “Nobody.” The silver girl frowned as though the word itself made no sense. Rocket pointed at her. “You own you.” He pointed at her sister. “She owns herself.” Then tapped his own chest. “I own me. That’s how it’s supposed to work.” The silver girl looked toward Knowhere. “Can they send us back?” Rocket answered so quickly that doubt had no chance to enter. “No.” She stared. “Even if we’re bad?” Something in Rocket cracked. “No. You screw up, somebody might get mad. You break something, you fix it. You hurt somebody, you apologize. You do something stupid, I tell you it was stupid.” Groot made a quiet sound. Rocket glared at him. “Not the time.” Then he looked back at the girls. “But nobody throws you away.” The darker girl watched him for a long moment before finally nodding. Rocket started walking. They crossed onto Knowhere.
For Rocket, it was simply another step in an evacuation. For the girls, it was the first time they had ever left the place that had defined the boundaries of existence. The Arete remained behind them. The darker girl looked back once. Only once. Then she turned away.
Knowhere overwhelmed them immediately. People ran in every direction receiving evacuees, carrying injured animals, organizing food, shelter and medical treatment. The first medic who approached caused both girls to tense violently. The silver child dug her fingers into Rocket’s fur. Her sister practically climbed behind Groot’s neck. Rocket raised a paw. “Stop.” The medic did. “They’ve been experimented on. You explain everything before you touch either of ’em.” The medic nodded. “Of course.” “And they stay together.” The medic suggested separate examinations would be faster. Rocket’s answer was immediate. “No. They stay together.” The darker girl looked at him. Rocket held her gaze. “Together.” Some tiny degree of tension left her shoulders. Nebula arrived moments later and stopped when she saw the children. Her eyes moved over their braces and scars, then lingered on the damage to the darker girl’s throat. She understood enough. “Like you?” she asked Rocket quietly. His jaw tightened. “Yeah.” Nebula said nothing else. When the medics began preparing their equipment, she only instructed, “Explain every procedure before beginning.” Rocket glanced at her. The understanding between them required no elaboration.
The examinations were painfully slow, but Rocket refused to hurry them. Every harmless action had to be demonstrated first. When a scanner appeared, the darker girl would not allow it near her until Rocket held out his own arm and had the medic scan him. “See? Doesn’t hurt.” Only then did she offer her paw. The results were exactly what Rocket feared: malnutrition, dehydration, old fractures, inflammation, scar tissue, cybernetic components that no longer fit their growing bodies and implants so deeply integrated that removing them might do more damage than leaving them in place. When the medic gently moved the silver girl’s brace and she winced, Rocket immediately ordered them to stop. “We need to assess it,” the medic began. “You assessed it. It hurts.” He looked at the girl. “You okay?” She automatically nodded. Rocket gave her a look. After a pause she admitted, “It hurts.” Rocket nodded. “Better.” Confusion crossed her face. “Not the pain. Telling me. If something hurts, you say it.” He looked at her mute sister. “You too.” The darker girl gestured toward her throat. Rocket shook his head. “You got hands, don’t you? Point. Sign. Hit me if you have to.” He reconsidered. “Maybe don’t hit me unless I deserve it.” Her mouth twitched.
The throat scan was worse. Rocket insisted they only discuss it after the girl herself agreed. The laryngeal structures had been deliberately removed and the surrounding tissue heavily modified. There might someday be possibilities for reconstruction or a synthetic voice, the medic explained, but before they could continue, the dark girl shook her head hard. Rocket immediately said, “Then no.” The medic hesitated. “But in the future -” “Her decision.” Nebula’s voice joined his. The girl looked between them. For the first time in her life, two adults had looked at her damaged body and decided the person who should determine what happened to it was -her-.
When the examination ended, Rocket assumed he would leave them somewhere safe while he returned to the work still waiting across Knowhere. The moment he said, “You can stay here,” both girls froze. He immediately realized how badly he had phrased it. “No. I didn’t mean forever.” The silver girl looked frightened. “Where are you going?” “Got stuff to do.” “Can we come?” Rocket looked at their exhausted faces. “You need to rest.” Her voice became tiny. “We can be quiet.” That nearly killed him. “That’s not what I mean. You don’t gotta earn staying somewhere.” The statement confused them almost as much as everything else. Rocket rubbed his face. “Look. You sleep. I do what I gotta do. Then I come back.” “When?” Rocket looked at the time. “One hour.” The darker girl immediately glanced toward the display. He noticed. “One hour. If I’m gonna be late, I tell you.” The silver girl asked, “Promise?” Rocket held out his paw. “Promise.” She placed her paw into it. Her sister added hers on top. Rocket stared at the little pile of hands and felt something in his chest shift. Groot volunteered to stay. The girls visibly relaxed. Rocket left.
He returned forty-three minutes later. Not because he had rushed. He simply happened to finish early, or so he told himself. The second he entered the room, both girls snapped their heads toward him. The darker child leapt from where she sat beside Groot and ran into Rocket hard enough that he staggered. The silver girl followed a heartbeat later. Rocket froze with two tiny bodies wrapped around him. Groot watched from across the room. “Not a word,” Rocket warned. Groot said one anyway. Rocket ignored him and slowly wrapped his arms around the girls. “I told you I’d come back.” The silver child pressed her face into his chest. “You did.” Rocket closed his eyes. “Yeah.” His tail curled around them without conscious thought.
Food became the next lesson. Rocket discovered what they had been given in captivity and stared in disbelief and irritation. “Pellets?” The silver girl nodded. “What did they taste like?” Rocket remembered exactly what they tasted like. She shrugged. “Food.” Rocket’s ears flattened. “Food tastes like something.” He marched toward a kitchen, opened cabinets and began laying out options. The girls stared. “What do you want?” Nothing. He realized that question was too broad. “Okay. This or this?” He held up two foods. They slowly learned to choose. Fresh fruit stunned them. The silver girl bit into something sweet and stared as though the laws of reality had changed. “What?” Rocket asked. “It’s sweet.” The dark girl immediately tried one and her emerald-teal eyes widened. Rocket had to look away for a moment. They ate too quickly, and when he told them to slow down, both froze in fear. “Not in trouble,” he corrected immediately. “You’ll make yourselves sick. There’s more.” Neither believed him. “And more later.” Still nothing. “And tomorrow.” That word drew both sets of eyes toward him. “Tomorrow?” “Yeah. Food tomorrow too.” The silver girl whispered, “Every day?” Rocket looked at them. “Every day.”
Clothing arrived through Knowhere’s communal generosity. Someone found old children’s shirts, pants and pajamas. Everything was too large, but it was clean and soft. The girls did not understand why they needed clothes at first, then became fascinated by the fact that they could keep them. One shirt went on backward. One pair of pants fell straight to the floor. The darker girl’s furious expression sent the silver child into giggles, and Rocket lost whatever dignity remained when he began laughing too. “I’m sorry,” he said, very clearly not sorry. The darker child gestured furiously. Her sister translated, “She says you’re smelly… and tiny.” Rocket’s jaw dropped. “I rescued you.” That apparently provided no protection. By the time the clothes were tied and rolled into something wearable, Rocket announced that the next day he was taking them to Knowhere’s market for clothes that actually fit. “Tomorrow?” the silver girl repeated. “Yeah.” Again, that tiny word seemed miraculous.
Their first real bath became an adventure of its own. The girls had been cleaned before, but never bathed for comfort. Warm water was unfamiliar. Soap was suspicious. The notion that they could choose the temperature almost seemed absurd. Rocket demonstrated everything on himself before asking them to try. He washed around their scars carefully, explained every touch and immediately stopped whenever either indicated discomfort. When he approached the darker girl’s throat, her body went rigid. Rocket handed her the washcloth instead. “You do that part.” She stared at him. He backed away. “Your body.” She cleaned the scar herself. Later the silver girl discovered bubbles could be blown into Rocket’s face, and whatever solemnity had survived the evening died instantly. Her sister joined the attack. Rocket retaliated. Water ended up across half the bathroom. By the time both girls were clean and wrapped in enormous towels, Saphire’s silver fur had fluffed into a ridiculous cloud and her darker sister’s coat revealed itself properly for the first time: rich charcoal and black melanistic fur broken by remnants of pale silver-grey, a nearly black tail with its rings only faintly visible, and emerald-teal eyes shining from the dark mask. Rocket looked at her. “Huh.” She signed something. Her sister laughed. “She says now you smell worse.” Rocket stared. “I’m starting to regret giving you rights.”
The first night was harder. Rocket showed them the beds and they immediately climbed into the same one. He did not argue. When he turned off the light, both panicked, so he turned it back on and left it dim. When he walked toward the door, neither child lay down. “What?” The silver girl looked embarrassed. “Bad dreams.” Rocket frowned. “You ain’t asleep yet.” Her answer was devastatingly simple. “They come when we do.” Rocket looked at the bed, then at the girls, then sighed theatrically. “Move.” They made room. “This is temporary,” he announced as he climbed between them. Both nodded as though they believed him. Within minutes the silver child had moved against his side. Her sister followed. Rocket stared at the ceiling. “Bed was designed for two.” No one cared. His tail curled around them almost automatically.
The nightmares came anyway. The darker girl woke first, body jerking violently, mouth open around a scream that could never emerge. Her paws clawed at her throat. Rocket was awake instantly. “Hey. Hey, look at me.” Her emerald-teal eyes found him but did not recognize him immediately. “You’re here. Knowhere. No cage.” Her sister woke and reached across Rocket to grab her hand. Rocket touched one shoulder, then the other. “Both here.” He hesitated, then added without thinking, “All three.” The darker girl stared at him. Rocket had unintentionally placed himself inside their equation. Before that night, safety had meant ‘sister plus sister’. Somehow Rocket had just volunteered to become the third point. He began humming because he had no idea what else to do. The silver child settled first. The darker one remained awake longer, listening to the vibration of Rocket’s chest. Eventually her eyes closed. Rocket stopped humming. They opened. He sighed. “Seriously?” He started again. Her eyes closed once more. So Rocket kept humming until both slept, then a little longer because apparently that was his life now.
The following morning brought the first enormous breakfast. Rocket had wildly overestimated how much food two tiny raccoons could eat because he had no idea what they liked and therefore made everything. Eggs, toast, fruit, potatoes, pancakes, drinks. The girls stood in the doorway staring. “Breakfast,” Rocket announced. “All of it?” the silver girl asked. “Not unless you wanna explode.” They needed lessons in utensils. The silver child held a fork wrong. Her sister inspected hers like a potential weapon. Rocket demonstrated patiently. Pancakes produced immediate reverence. Syrup nearly produced catastrophe. Fresh berries seemed supernatural. One girl disliked something and tried to force herself to eat it anyway. Rocket noticed. “You don’t like it.” She froze. “Then don’t eat it.” The idea that preference could override obligation was so alien that she stared at him. Rocket shrugged. “Now you know.” Her sister experimentally pushed something aside. Rocket did nothing. She watched him, waiting. Nothing happened. Slowly, she smiled.
That afternoon Rocket fulfilled another promise and took them to the market. Both clung to his paws as they walked because Knowhere was still enormous and loud and frightening, but curiosity was beginning to fight fear. They discovered clothing could have colors they liked. The silver girl gravitated toward practical clothes and pockets. Her darker sister was drawn toward deep jewel tones, greens, blacks and anything visually interesting. Rocket held up one garment. She made a face. “Okay, no.” Another produced an even worse face. “You got expensive taste.” They left carrying several outfits each, all altered so nothing rubbed painfully against their braces. Rocket bought them small bags as well. “What are these for?” “Your stuff.” The silver child frowned. “Our stuff?” Rocket pointed. “That one’s yours. That one’s hers. Nobody takes anything out without asking.” Both girls stared at the bags. They opened them repeatedly as they walked home, checking that the little possessions inside had somehow remained there.
Days accumulated. Then weeks. Rocket adjusted their painful braces as they grew. He taught them how to read and write. Knowhere residents gave them books because everyone quickly discovered the two children could devour information with frightening speed. One day someone gave them a large illustrated book about gemstones, crystals and minerals. The book contained page after page of colors, chemical structures and cultural meanings. The darker girl became entranced by a polished black stone. Onyx. She pointed at the page, then herself. Rocket looked from the stone to her mostly black melanistic coat. “Onyx?” She nodded. Rocket said it again, this time as a name. “Onyx.” Something changed in her face. It belonged to her. Then, several pages later, she found jade. Emerald green, almost the color of her eyes. An identity crisis immediately began. She flipped between onyx and jade, then attempted to combine them. Rocket jokingly suggested “Jadyx” and nearly created a disaster when she seriously considered it. Eventually she returned to Onyx, with Jade remaining an affectionate secondary possibility. Her silver sister later found sapphire. The brilliant blue immediately reminded everyone of her eyes. When she eventually wrote it, however, she chose Saphire, a spelling that belonged specifically to her. Rocket glanced between the book and the child. “Book says Sapphire.” She looked worried. “Is mine wrong?” Rocket tapped the page. “That’s the rock.” Then tapped what she had written. “That’s you.” Saphire smiled.
The laboratory identifiers disappeared from their lives. Rocket refused to use them. “No numbers,” he said. “You’re Onyx. You’re Saphire.” The girls had selected their own identities from a book someone gave them merely because they thought two curious children might enjoy pretty minerals. The High Evolutionary had spent their early lives deciding what they were. Now two little raccoons had looked at the universe and decided what they would be called.
Their personalities emerged more clearly as safety became ordinary. Saphire was soft-spoken, observant, playful and frighteningly clever. She adored machines and quickly began haunting Rocket’s workshop, asking endless questions about circuits, propulsion, tools and systems. She could be petty in an almost elegant fashion and displayed an early talent for passive aggression that Rocket considered both impressive and deeply irritating. Onyx was more visibly fiery. She had a temper reminiscent of Rocket’s, though not quite as explosive, and being mute did absolutely nothing to make her quiet. Her face, hands and entire body communicated constantly. She developed increasingly sophisticated signing, wrote whenever she needed to communicate with people who had not yet learned, and discovered physical art with an almost ravenous enthusiasm. Paint, charcoal, sculpture, metal, clay, fabric, anything she could shape became another language. Beneath that expressive fire was a deeply philosophical mind fascinated by identity, psychology, morality and the question of why people became what they became.
Knowhere began calling them ‘the Chaos Twins’. The nickname emerged after enough harmless pranks, unauthorized experiments, altered signs and suspicious mechanical noises convinced everyone that Rocket’s daughters had become a community-wide hazard. Saphire planned. Onyx improvised. Saphire could modify a mechanism so that a tool honked whenever Rocket picked it up. Onyx could create a perfect visual decoy. Groot became their willing accomplice. Rocket complained constantly. Secretly, every prank delighted him because frightened children did not play tricks. Children who believed mistakes meant death did not deliberately test boundaries. Every ridiculous prank said something Rocket never needed them to articulate: we believe we will still belong here afterward.
The separation anxiety remained. At first Onyx and Saphire operated under a simple law: they must remain together. They had lost two siblings and could not tolerate the possibility of becoming one instead of two. Before long Rocket was absorbed into that rule. If he left, they needed to know where he was going. If he said he would return in three hours and came back three hours and twelve minutes later, Saphire knew the exact difference and Onyx informed him through a spectacularly judgmental stare. Rocket began giving precise times. He commed if he was late. He always came back. Groot became part of the circle too. Gradually, the girls learned that people could leave without disappearing forever. Rocket learned, perhaps unwillingly, that he had developed the same habit in reverse. He slept better when both girls were home. He checked the time when they were late. He became irritated when they forgot to comm and insisted irritation was entirely different from anxiety. Groot never believed him.
The word ‘Dad’ came almost accidentally. One night, long after Rocket had already become their father in every meaningful way, he tucked them into bed. Saphire was barely awake. Onyx was already half asleep beside her. Rocket adjusted the blankets, checked that nothing pressed awkwardly against their braces and started toward the door. Behind him came a tiny, exhausted voice. “Goodnight, Dad.” Rocket stopped so abruptly that one foot remained suspended. He turned. Saphire had already closed her eyes. “What?” She barely stirred. Rocket approached. “What’d you call me?” Saphire had no idea what he meant. Then Onyx opened her eyes. She had heard. A slow smile spread across her face. Rocket immediately pointed at her. “Don’t.” Onyx deliberately signed one word. Dad. Rocket froze again. “Yeah, I know what that means.” Onyx pointed directly at him and repeated it. Dad. Rocket tried to brush it away. Onyx refused. The joking expression eventually softened. She signed it one last time, and this time there was nothing playful about it. Dad. Rocket swallowed. “Yeah.” He leaned forward and gently touched his forehead to hers. “Goodnight, kid.” By morning Saphire remembered nothing until Onyx told her over breakfast. She turned scarlet beneath her fur. “Was it… okay?” Rocket put down his fork. “Yeah. More than okay.” Saphire smiled. Then, now completely awake and fully aware of what she was doing, she said, “Okay, Dad.” Rocket stared. Saphire calmly returned to breakfast. Onyx collapsed into silent laughter.
Rocket had opened a cage expecting to rescue two more victims of the High Evolutionary. Instead two little girls had walked out, and somewhere between the Arete, Cosmo’s bridge, medical scans, warm baths, oversized clothes, pancakes, gemstone books, nightmares and promises kept, he had become their father without noticing when it happened. Years later Saphire would finally tell him the part neither girl had been able to speak about when they were small. There had once been four. Their pale-blond sister and cinnamon-red brother had been taken only weeks before Rocket arrived. They had gone into the incinerator. Saphire and Onyx had overheard enough to know their own disposal was approaching. “We were next,” Saphire would tell him. Rocket would remember the way Onyx had tried to hold the cage door shut. He would remember the terror when the lock released. He would finally understand that when he opened their cage, the girls had not thought rescue had arrived. They had thought someone had come to take them to die.
That knowledge would devastate him. Rocket would inevitably wonder what might have happened had he reached them several weeks earlier. Saphire would have to remind him that he could not save children he did not know existed. Onyx would eventually do something else with the grief. Gifted with near-photographic memory and extraordinary artistic skill, she would paint the family that should have existed. She would not paint the dead siblings as she remembered them, tiny and terrified inside a cage. She would paint them grown. The blond runt would become an adult woman. The cinnamon-red boy would become an adult man. Their crude childhood enhancements would be replaced by the comfortable technology Rocket would undoubtedly have designed as they grew. They would wear clothes reflecting personalities Onyx could only imagine. Groot would tower behind them as their big brother. Rocket would stand among all four raccoon siblings as Dad. Onyx would know it was not memory. It was possibility. A life stolen before anyone could discover what those two children might have become.
The High Evolutionary had built his entire philosophy around the belief that life needed someone superior to decide what it should become. Rocket’s life with Onyx and Saphire became an answer to that belief. He never demanded that Saphire become an engineer simply because she possessed extraordinary technical talent, though she eventually became one anyway and one day built an entire spacecraft beside him. He never demanded that Onyx make her art useful. He gave her paint because she wanted to paint. He learned her language because she deserved to be understood. He adjusted their cybernetics because they hurt, not because he believed their bodies needed improvement. He taught them to read because they wanted to know things. He took them to escape rooms because difficult puzzles delighted them. He gave them tools and books and food and privacy. He let them fail. He let them annoy him. He let them become obnoxious enough to earn the affectionate title of Chaos Twins from half of Knowhere.
Most importantly, Rocket gave them repetition. Ordinary, almost boring repetition. Breakfast tomorrow. Clothes still belonging to them next week. A bathroom door that remained private every time they locked it. A father who returned when he said he would. A brother who still loved them after arguments. Food after mistakes. Home after bad days. The same bed after nightmares. The same warm brown tail curling around them when they needed it. Trauma had taught Onyx and Saphire that anything could disappear without warning. Rocket slowly taught them that some things stayed.
He could never undo the Arete. He could never restore Onyx’s biological voice. He could not erase the scars, recover the other two from the incinerator, or give the girls memories of an ordinary infancy. Their near-photographic memories ensured that forgetting was never really possible anyway. What Rocket could do was make the past stop being the only story their bodies knew. A door could open and lead somewhere safe. An adult could approach without hurting them. A mistake could remain only a mistake. A medical tool could touch them after permission and stop when told. Darkness could mean bedtime instead of a laboratory shutting down for the night. Someone leaving could mean they would return.
During their first weeks, whenever nightmares tore either girl awake, Rocket would touch one, then the other and repeat the same simple information. “Onyx. Here. Saphire. Here.” Then, eventually, he would include himself. “Rocket. Here.” Groot too, if he was nearby. Everyone accounted for. Nobody taken. Their childhood survival instinct had once been brutally simple: stay together, because separation means death. Under Rocket’s care it slowly transformed into something gentler. They could separate because they trusted one another to come home.
And perhaps that is what truly defines Rocket’s rescue of Onyx and Saphire. He did not merely get them off the Arete before they could be thrown into an incinerator. Survival was only the first door. What mattered was everything that came after it. He taught two children who had been waiting for death to expect tomorrow instead.
For most of their lives before Rocket, every open cage door had meant pain, experimentation, loss or death.
Then one day the lock clicked.
A brown raccoon stood on the other side.
He did not drag them through.
He stepped back.
He let them open the door themselves.
And this time, when Onyx and Saphire crossed the threshold, they got to keep going.
“Who owns us there?” Rocket stopped walking. He stared at both children. “Nobody.” The silver girl frowned as though the word itself made no sense. Rocket pointed at her. “You own you.” He pointed at her sister. “She owns herself.” Then tapped his own chest. “I own me. That’s how it’s supposed to work.” The silver girl looked toward Knowhere. “Can they send us back?” Rocket answered so quickly that doubt had no chance to enter. “No.” She stared. “Even if we’re bad?” Something in Rocket cracked. “No. You screw up, somebody might get mad. You break something, you fix it. You hurt somebody, you apologize. You do something stupid, I tell you it was stupid.” Groot made a quiet sound. Rocket glared at him. “Not the time.” Then he looked back at the girls. “But nobody throws you away.”
I've been playing a lot of marvel rivals and I keep looking at rocket's summer skin >///< Can't help but imagine how much he's gonna tease and bully his s/o while sipping on summer drinks.
there’s still time left in summer, right? we have a whole additional month before autumn technically starts in the the northern hemisphere… so i’m not too late to this ask, right?? especially not when it comes to rocket, who can bop over to a resort planet whenever he wants to (provided he has the units to pay his way into all the little luxuries he enjoys — or knows someone who owes him enough favors). or sometimes the timestream just spits him and his lucky little reader out on a nice beach somewhere, even if it had been the middle of winter wherever he was before.
gn reader, definitely suggestive content.
edited to add: i wrote this tired and did a bad job editing lol sorrrry
in either case — by stealing or sneaking — rocket will be making sure that you are wearing the smallest little swimsuit he can possibly con you into. he particularly likes the ones that are held together only by a pair of strings at your hips. in fact, he’s pretty sure that his new favorite summer pastime is just sprawling in a lounger with a cold drink in his hand, playfully snapping at your little swimsuit-strings whenever you walk by. the way you always squeal with alarm and bat your hands at him — like you really think he’s gonna bite ‘em loose and leave you naked in front of all these losers — and the way you do it every flarkin’ time… well. it’s cute, and it makes him throw back his head and cackle.
so be forewarned: more than once, you’ll catch a mischievous nip to your hip or outer thigh. or a lick — rough and cold with his most recent mouthful of piña colada, the glass stud-piercing like a frozen little snowball in the middle of his tongue — slicking a mischievous stripe over your beachsalt-skin.
of course, when you toss him a pouty glare for scaring you, he’ll only arch a brow and wink at you from under his floppy forelock and the wide brim of his hat, showing off all his pointed teeth.
look, this is standard rocket-behavior at the beach. he ain’t any less susceptible than the next guy when it comes to the paradisaical lure of a pretty island with a hot sun, a cool breeze, a glittering ocean, and you. all that sea-salt just softens him right up, and he doesn’t even care enough to resist: any bitter external shell melting immediately into a greater-than-usual willingness to flirt. he’s even showing real affection, without any apparent need to cover it in gruffness. oh, and then there’s that whole increased-possessiveness-thing going on too, where he just wants to show you off to everyone and remind ‘em you’re his. don't forget that one.
all of which ultimately makes him only more dangerous to your sanity.
you’ll have to try to keep your head while he licks his chops and wolf-whistles, calling you a beach-bunny in that condescending, filthy tone of his. he’ll swat the exposed curve of your ass and admire the jiggle every time you stroll by him. tell you to get back over here when groot strolls up with two margaritas in tow and hands him one. and when you do return to his side — pretending annoyance even though your heart is thrumming like a hummingbird, tapping your toes in the hot sand with your hands on your hips or arms folded across your chest — he only grins again and lunges forward to lick another cold stripe right up the center of your bared abdomen.
what the fuck? you’ll shriek, jumping back and glancing around at all the other heroes and mercs on the beach.
he’ll only shrug, smirk widening into a sharp and sinful grin.
wanna use you as my salt-rim, he’ll say, voice rasping with smug satisfaction.
honestly? you wonder how he even finds time to enjoy the beach when he barely takes his eyes off you. he’s already right beside you, before you’ve even noticed the sand sticking to the sweat-sheen on your sun-hot skin. he makes a show of “dusting it off” for you: palming and pinching you through the diamond-dust grit and microscopic seashells, secretly delighted at the opportunity for his sensitive fingers to map your body through new textures.
not to mention his obsession with sunscreen.
look: sunscreen is a must for his little terran cutie, regardless of whether or not you think you’re prone to burning. as a lifeform with fur, he thinks he knows the kind of damage direct starlight can do to any naked humie flesh (he actually overestimates it quite a bit, terrified you’ll simply fall apart if left outside and unprotected for too long). the point is, he ain’t takin’ any chances with your safety — and the opportunity to slather you in cream every couple of hours isn’t exactly a hardship, either. rocket particularly enjoys watching you sunbathe or splash in the glittering ocean while he drinks a slushy, frozen-pink rum-punch with both hands wrapped around the glass — then beckoning you in for a new application, so he can rub his chilled hands all over your hot skin, snickering when you flinch and twitch and growl at him.
of course, if you behave yourself — letting him lotion you up like a good li’l beach-bunny — he’ll give you a rum-punch kiss afterward that’ll make your toes curl in the sand and a moan break from your lips: forgetting about the people around you, forgetting all your irritation with him; fingers twisting in his collar and bruising his purple flowers, tunneling through the surprisingly-fluffy puff of white fur at his chest and throat.
on the other hand, if — after your sixth sunscreen-application in a single afternoon — you try to tell rocket that he’s overdoing it, he won’t listen. he’ll just roll his eyes, shake his head, and ask if you really want him to bite your flarkin’ ass in front of all these other beachgoers.
you doubt he means it — the first time.
but hey. at least you don’t make the same mistake twice.
Audiotransmission_10. [NEW AUG 12]
Crude Captain Has Been Lusting After You For Circs. Finally Does Something About It.
Rack & Ruin. | navigation | fiction masterlist
18+ only | rocket x f!reader x blackjack | 10/11 parts
you wait for jack to come back to you.
and wait.
and wait some more.
THERE'S ART FOR THIS FIC!: yo i am crying. the amount of love, support, and encouragement from you all for a fic that was meant to be a tripleshot and then got wildly out of hand.... god, it's literally making me weep. thank you from the bottom of my heart. i can only hope that this transmission (which wraps up a lot of emotional threads) and the next, final transmission (which tbh is mostly smut) ends up deserving of all this kindness, and giving you some of the comfort and joy that you all have given me.
AMAZING blackjack & rocket character designs by @chowdragun
the softest, most romantic image of clover, rocket, & jack by @secrethoneybeeswax
super-sexy cover art by @lachupacadabra [NSFW]
Some hazy part of you had grappled with the understanding that this audio was almost certainly about you: that there were probably less than a handful of people in the universe who the Captain would call coffee-shop-girl, and that Jack probably wouldn’t make you listen to a recording about some other coffee-shop-girl. The multicalendar date on the posting — sought through tear-glazed eyes — had seemed to confirm this suspicion. It had been his most recent addition to the Rakk n’ Ruin library, published only a few rotations ago.
Just before you’d started sleeping with Jack.
The possibility that this audio had been written about you had stirred a tumultuous new cramp in your belly: a twist of hope, so bittersweet that it was painful. Your body had clenched on the sensation in rigid denial — a stubborn refusal to let that hope infiltrate any other part of you. It had learned its lesson long before you’d made it to Exitar, and had only been proven right when you’d lost your job that night at the Boot.
Hope hurt.
Maybe you’d thought otherwise these past few circs. Maybe, like you’d told the Captain, you’d managed to hold onto the little scraps of yourself that had believed in good things, thanks to him and Jack.
But now you realize that the concept of happiness had been a faith you’d chosen to honor every day — as nebulous as coaxing a smile from a customer in a café, or watching a patron soften into the first warm, nourishing sip of a drink you’d made.
Happiness had been an idea that you’d convinced yourself to lean into — nothing more.
This moment, though — alone in your bed, with the Captain’s recording in your ears and Jack’s ownership still kissed into your skin — this moment hadn’t been softness and connection shared over a coffee-shop counter. This moment had been the gritty, granular particulate of a life spent teaching yourself to be alone and self-sufficient, confronted with a promise you weren’t sure would still be there in the morning.
Even if the audio had been written and performed with you in the Captain’s mind — wasn’t it safer to believe he’d only had a fleeting interest? Didn’t it feel safer, at least — to acknowledge Rocket’s apparent attraction to you had been solely and briefly inspired because of your proximity to Jack? Shouldn’t you logic yourself into having the lowest possible expectations, for the sake of your battered heart?
Maybe it had been tempting for a while: to convince yourself that you could have it all. But wasn’t it just as tempting to convince yourself that you couldn’t have anything at all?
NOTES: so i mentioned this above in the art section but i unfortunately had to split this chapter and i am not sure how the last chapter will land, because most of the emotional resolution happens in this first part. but i hope you enjoy and stick around till next week anyway, my loves (especially if you're looking for the smut lol)
WARNINGS for this chapter: angst. lots of dialogue. jack and rocket being the worst, most obnoxious idiots to each other.
Rack & Ruin masterlist.
18+ only | rocket x f!reader x blackjack | 11 parts | wordcount: pending.
navigation | fiction masterlist
you have two ridiculous, impossible, extremely-silly crushes.
one is on an audio-porn performer whom you've never met, but whose growly voice brought you comfort during a low point in your life. the other is on your fucking boss.
which is why you really don't have the bandwidth to start crushing on the captain, too.
CONTEXT: mcu-based with inspiration from the comics. mostly post-vol3 with references to major past events. while blackjack and rocket do have a pre-existing relationship, the focus is on reader in this story. limited physical description of reader / she does have hair.
skulls dividers and support/mdni banners by @/saradika-graphics | titlecard, ombre green, and ombre glitter dividers by me!
I've been playing a lot of marvel rivals and I keep looking at rocket's summer skin >///< Can't help but imagine how much he's gonna tease and bully his s/o while sipping on summer drinks.
there’s still time left in summer, right? we have a whole additional month before autumn technically starts in the the northern hemisphere… so i’m not too late to this ask, right?? especially not when it comes to rocket, who can bop over to a resort planet whenever he wants to (provided he has the units to pay his way into all the little luxuries he enjoys — or knows someone who owes him enough favors). or sometimes the timestream just spits him and his lucky little reader out on a nice beach somewhere, even if it had been the middle of winter wherever he was before.
gn reader, definitely suggestive content.
edited to add: i wrote this tired and did a bad job editing lol sorrrry
in either case — by stealing or sneaking — rocket will be making sure that you are wearing the smallest little swimsuit he can possibly con you into. he particularly likes the ones that are held together only by a pair of strings at your hips. in fact, he’s pretty sure that his new favorite summer pastime is just sprawling in a lounger with a cold drink in his hand, playfully snapping at your little swimsuit-strings whenever you walk by. the way you always squeal with alarm and bat your hands at him — like you really think he’s gonna bite ‘em loose and leave you naked in front of all these losers — and the way you do it every flarkin’ time… well. it’s cute, and it makes him throw back his head and cackle.
so be forewarned: more than once, you’ll catch a mischievous nip to your hip or outer thigh. or a lick — rough and cold with his most recent mouthful of piña colada, the glass stud-piercing like a frozen little snowball in the middle of his tongue — slicking a mischievous stripe over your beachsalt-skin.
of course, when you toss him a pouty glare for scaring you, he’ll only arch a brow and wink at you from under his floppy forelock and the wide brim of his hat, showing off all his pointed teeth.
look, this is standard rocket-behavior at the beach. he ain’t any less susceptible than the next guy when it comes to the paradisaical lure of a pretty island with a hot sun, a cool breeze, a glittering ocean, and you. all that sea-salt just softens him right up, and he doesn’t even care enough to resist: any bitter external shell melting immediately into a greater-than-usual willingness to flirt. he’s even showing real affection, without any apparent need to cover it in gruffness. oh, and then there’s that whole increased-possessiveness-thing going on too, where he just wants to show you off to everyone and remind ‘em you’re his. don't forget that one.
all of which ultimately makes him only more dangerous to your sanity.
you’ll have to try to keep your head while he licks his chops and wolf-whistles, calling you a beach-bunny in that condescending, filthy tone of his. he’ll swat the exposed curve of your ass and admire the jiggle every time you stroll by him. tell you to get back over here when groot strolls up with two margaritas in tow and hands him one. and when you do return to his side — pretending annoyance even though your heart is thrumming like a hummingbird, tapping your toes in the hot sand with your hands on your hips or arms folded across your chest — he only grins again and lunges forward to lick another cold stripe right up the center of your bared abdomen.
what the fuck? you’ll shriek, jumping back and glancing around at all the other heroes and mercs on the beach.
he’ll only shrug, smirk widening into a sharp and sinful grin.
wanna use you as my salt-rim, he’ll say, voice rasping with smug satisfaction.
honestly? you wonder how he even finds time to enjoy the beach when he barely takes his eyes off you. he’s already right beside you, before you’ve even noticed the sand sticking to the sweat-sheen on your sun-hot skin. he makes a show of “dusting it off” for you: palming and pinching you through the diamond-dust grit and microscopic seashells, secretly delighted at the opportunity for his sensitive fingers to map your body through new textures.
not to mention his obsession with sunscreen.
look: sunscreen is a must for his little terran cutie, regardless of whether or not you think you’re prone to burning. as a lifeform with fur, he thinks he knows the kind of damage direct starlight can do to any naked humie flesh (he actually overestimates it quite a bit, terrified you’ll simply fall apart if left outside and unprotected for too long). the point is, he ain’t takin’ any chances with your safety — and the opportunity to slather you in cream every couple of hours isn’t exactly a hardship, either. rocket particularly enjoys watching you sunbathe or splash in the glittering ocean while he drinks a slushy, frozen-pink rum-punch with both hands wrapped around the glass — then beckoning you in for a new application, so he can rub his chilled hands all over your hot skin, snickering when you flinch and twitch and growl at him.
of course, if you behave yourself — letting him lotion you up like a good li’l beach-bunny — he’ll give you a rum-punch kiss afterward that’ll make your toes curl in the sand and a moan break from your lips: forgetting about the people around you, forgetting all your irritation with him; fingers twisting in his collar and bruising his purple flowers, tunneling through the surprisingly-fluffy puff of white fur at his chest and throat.
on the other hand, if — after your sixth sunscreen-application in a single afternoon — you try to tell rocket that he’s overdoing it, he won’t listen. he’ll just roll his eyes, shake his head, and ask if you really want him to bite your flarkin’ ass in front of all these other beachgoers.
you doubt he means it — the first time.
but hey. at least you don’t make the same mistake twice.
I love getting comments on really old fics. It's like a little tap on the shoulder that says, "hey the art you create is going to last forever even if you don't think it matters anymore"
uhhhh i got a comment on rack & ruin that said next chapter is either gonna be super long or is gonna be split into another chapter and i commented back don't jinx me but uhmmmm here we are. you know me better than i know myself (╥﹏╥)
audiotransmission_10 will be out tomorrow.
audiotransmission_11 (the FINAL final transmission) will be out next week.
honestly, i'm a little worried that the majority of the emotional catharsis is happening in this transmission and that the next/final one will fall flat, but i promise i am doing my best for you, honest.
Audiotransmission_10. A PREVIEW. [EXPECTED AUG 12]
Crude Captain's Been Lusting After You For Circs. Finally Does Something About It.
Rack & Ruin. | navigation | fiction masterlist
18+ only | rocket x f!reader x blackjack | 9/11 parts
Sorry, honey. You were right — Rocket loves me back — but he ain’t interested in sharing. And you said you wouldn’t want to get in the way.
You grimace. Rinse your face again with cold water, just to try to shake yourself out of it. Slip into your boots and tighten the buckles and laces. Remind yourself, as you step out the door, that while you want to be with them, you want more for them both to be happy.
And that you do trust Jack.
You unlock the tambour door of O’Hare’s — a security measure that’s only really used out of habit these days — and hoist it up, letting it roll along its track with a warm, welcoming clatter. Inside, the coffee shop machinery gleams: shiny copper and mirror-polish silver, sloping lines that reflect platinum halos, leaving your vision bright with burn spots before you look away.
The café gives you some semblance of peace, at least. You glide smoothly through your routine: taking out the dough that had been resting and rising overnight, adding egg-washes to pastries, prepping the first pot of coffee for the regulars you know will be meandering in by the time an hour has turned over.
The door chimes. You greet Hoobtoe and her friends with cheesy drop-biscuits and coldbrew.
The door chimes. You hand the Broker his fluffy-whipped coffee sprinkled in cardamom, already waiting for him when he peers inside the shop.
The door chimes. You smile at Xlomo Smeth and start brewing a hot cinnamon-and-honey latte before he even asks.
The door chimes, and it’s an echo of every day you’d been waiting for the Captain — but worse. The first wake-shift rolls slowly into mid-day, and still, no Jack.
Every passing moment is a little more leaden: aching and heavy in your chest.
excerpt from Audiotransmission_10. [EXPECTED AUG 12]
Crude Captain's Been Lusting After You For Circs. Finally Does Something About It.
WARNINGS for this chapter: angst. lots of dialogue. jack and rocket being the worst, most obnoxious idiots to each other.
Rack & Ruin masterlist.
18+ only | rocket x f!reader x blackjack | 11 parts | wordcount: pending.
navigation | fiction masterlist
you have two ridiculous, impossible, extremely-silly crushes. one is on an audio-porn performer whom you've never met, but whose growly voice brought you comfort during a low point in your life. the other is on your fucking boss.
which is why you really don't have the bandwidth to start crushing on the captain, too.
CONTEXT: mcu-based with inspiration from the comics. mostly post-vol3 with references to major past events. while blackjack and rocket do have a pre-existing relationship, the focus is on reader in this story. limited physical description of reader / she does have hair.
I was debating pre- and post- smartphone existentialism with an older gentleman today and he stopped part way through and said “Why are you a security guard? Why aren’t you teaching this at some college somewhere?” And I didn’t know what to say so I went with “Well I used to make art but nobody pays an artist”
I want to invoke thought and wonder and introspection and encourage the passions of every soul I meet forever and ever and dig until I find the glorious potential for creation and experience and joy in every single one but unfortunately I must pay rent and so I stand, a meat shield, an NPC with unlockable dialogue
#capitalism brain tells you that anyone interesting must fight to the top of their interest#and precludes the possibility of everyone everyone everyone already being interesting
How would rocket react if he were to notice surgical scars from a top surgery? I imagine he probably wouldn't know what they are besides being surgery related and would feel a tad concerned. Like, what if he knew them for a good while but never saw them shirtless, then one day he just sees them... mabey helping clean up some cuts and bruises after a mission, or reader is about to go to bed, or mabey reader is just lounging around their home idk.
If this ends up being a prompt im a-ok with it being either romantic or platonic nor do I mind if it ends up having a bit more spice, you can do whatever with it.
I was originally going to ask this as a take what you need prompt but I didn't want to overwhelm you.
--LotusAnnon
hey bby. this is absolutely going into the take what you need queue. i am trying to write at least one a month (which puts it not being released till may sorrrrrry) but if life can chill tf out for a week or two, i'm going to try to power through a few scenes a little quick than that. when it is written, i will reblog this ask with the link, okay?
in the meantime, i think you're right - he would be concerned, at first. mostly because i think he's used to most people in space not having surgical scars unless they were operated on in some sort of dire circumstances (on the battlefield or in a lab like his, basically). for a surgery like this, he would have hoped you'd be taken care of in some fancy, cushy xandaran hospital that produces similar results with minimally-invasive robotic surgical tools, top-of-the-line healing tech, and medications that would reduce scarring to a couple teeny-tiny nicks. once you explain, he's mostly just muttering his annoyance about clumsy terran medical practices, because the surgery itself is not an uncommon practice in most of the intergalactic community. he's been around (and with) enough humie-types to have been familiar with the process and to have seen people post-surgery before.
the most important thing to rocket is whether or not you're happy with the results, and that your scars don't ache or itch the way his own scars do. if you ever offer the whiff of a complaint, he's off trying to figure out what high-grade creams he can purchase or steal to make your life a little easier. but honestly, as long as you're happy, he's happy.
hi, ive just been lurking around your account. It's honestly got me through the rough days in college. Anyway, I'm about to graduate now but idk, I've been feeling overwhelmed and I keep overthinking what life is gonna be like after I do graduate then I get overwhelmed and I start spiraling. Doesn't help that I lost my group of friends recently even tho we're about to graduate :,). if I can, may I request one about rocket comforting us after an overwhelming event + losing friends. Tysm :,)
babes. i know my response is like, months after the fact and, in a just universe, you'll have already adjusted to the liminal experience that is post-graduate life. you'll have found friends who are ready to take on this next phase of life at your side, learning with you and encouraging you and supporting you. you'll have found your first post-college job (if you didn't already have one lined up) and even though it will doubtless be imperfect, you'll be able to identify all the things it can teach you and your paycheck will be reasonable and your boss and coworkers will be kind and warm and understanding. those are my hopes for you.
that said, transitions happen throughout life, and there are always overwhelming events we'll doubtless run into in the future, and relationships we'll lose to time and change and life. so i am going to add this to the twyn queue, even though i might not get around to it for another couple months.
in the meantime, please remember that rocket knows firsthand what it's like to lose people close to him. he knows what it's like to leave a familiar environment behind, and head out into a whole wide universe all by himself. and he knows how overwhelming and terrifying and lonely it can be.
there is no doubt in my mind that he would sit beside you as many nights as you needed it, hip to hip — hand in hand, if you're okay with that kind of thing. he'd bring you each a milky fizz and stare up at the stars over knowhere's observation deck, and he'd agree that shit fuckin' sucks sometimes. but then he'd also remind you that you can do this, that you're not alone, and that you'll find a new crew of your own when your good and ready (or more likely, they'll find you).
and he'll tell you, look, kid. sometimes, you've got a certain idea about the future. you tell yourself you're gonna make great machines that fly, and you an' your friends are gonna go flyin’ together into the forever and beautiful sky.
and sometimes that dream comes true, but it looks so different from what you pictured that you don't recognize it at first.
but it still ends up better than you ever coulda frickin' imagined.
a feel like the new generation of fanfic readers NEED to understand that clicking on a fic (interaction) does nothing. ao3 has no algorithm. your private discord discussions of fic do not reach the authors. if you do not actively engage with writers they will stop posting. this isn’t social media this is community.
in 2026, remember how GOOD writing feels. remember how satsfying it is to get your characters to the point you have been dying to get to, where they will experience the love, fear, relief or whatever the feeling you want to bring to life may be. let this year be the year of writing, prgress and of satisfactory endings.
✩࿐࿔ take what you need masterlist | twyn queue [HIATUS]
fanfiction masterlist | navigation
fluff | gn reader | no use of y/n | anthology one-shot | ~ 1,756 words.
read take care of your frickin' scars on ao3 ✩࿐࿔
excerpt below the cut ~
the captain notices your top surgery scars, and he has some questions — mostly revolving around whether you're taking care of yourself.
NOTES: this was written for LotusAnnon, who requested it like, five months ago. it doesn't fit the typical twyn format since the request wasn't necessarily for any specific kind of support (more of just interaction/acknowledgement?), but you know rocket can't help but care and throw in his two-cents. plus i know you had originally thought about requesting this as a twyn so i did want to include it in the anthology regardless. i hope the scene itself is okay, love, and hits the mark of what you were looking for. ♡♡
The climate control in Knowhere is on the fritz, and it’s all Steemie Blueliver’s fault.
You know this, because the Captain of the Guardians of the Galaxy has a habit – annoying or endearing, the jury’s still out – of kicking one booted foot against your door, slapping your previously-hacked bio-lock, and then ranting in your general direction about whatever situation is currently wreaking havoc on his life.
All of which has led to your current circumstances.
Which is to say, you know that the climate control is on the fritz.
And you know that Knowhere is parked too close to a massive, late-stage star. And you know — firsthand, this time; no need for the Captain’s grumbling and snarling — that the heat is unreal. And your typical garments are just too fucking sweaty for this weather, so you’ve been sprawled topless on the comparatively-cool floor of your tiny studio-apartment, with an ice-cold Milky Fizz carton pressed to your forehead and your damp cotton shirt flung over the edge of the laundry basket. The wide window over your bed has been flung open, as have the doors to your tiny half-balcony. The whole apartment is begging for a cross-breeze while the vent-system coughs out the same sweltering recycled air, and all you want to do is to pass out. Sweet, cool unconsciousness would be such a welcome reprieve from your current home in actual, physical, fiery hell.
Of that, you are certain.
read more on ao3 ✩࿐࿔ for LotusAnnon ♡
✩࿐࿔ take what you need masterlist | twyn queue
need more reminders from rocket?
the world is hard, and sometimes it's difficult to complete daily tasks & take care of yourself (aka rocket bullies you for your own damn good).
feel free to ✩ request reminders ✩ via reblogs, asks, and tumblr or ao3 comments if they would be helpful for you. it may take me a hot minute to get to them depending on life n stuff, but i will do my best. ♡ view the take what you need queue to see upcoming installations & the current backlog. HIATUS: feel free to request things but i am going to be a little more selective about which ones i write, and they will likely take a long time to get through from now on.
this is about as wholesome as it gets (for me) i think. can be read platonically or romantically. mcu-based anthology, meant to take place post-volume-3, but headcanon however you want ♡
✩࿐࿔ take what you need masterlist
eat somethin. (wc: 576)
go to frickin bed already. (wc: 737)
get outta bed & get your shit done.(wc: 925)
take a damn bath. (wc: 1,375)
leave your frickin skin alone. (wc: 1,579)
take a fuckin study break.(wc: 1,020)
drink some goddamn water. (wc: 1,209)
stop destroying your frickin clothes. (wc: 1,609)
just buy the damn thing already. (wc: 1,271)
it's frickin laundry day. (wc: 1,923)
get some sunshine, sunshine. (wc: 1,614)
did you take your damn meds today? (wc: 1,288)
schedule your fuckin' appointments.(wc: 1,222)
do your goddamn dishes. (wc: 994)
brush your frickin' teeth. (wc: 1,774)
nobody fuckin hates you (wc: 1,231)
stop biting your goddamn nails (wc: 2,920)
take a frickin' shower (wc: 1,359 )
take care of your fuckin injury (wc: 2,102)
cook some goddamn food. (wc: 2,707)
clean your frickin room. (wc: 2,465)
stop hittin shit. (wc: 1,862)
do your frickin homework. (wc: 2,121 )
chill the fuck out. (wc: 1,499)
i'm damn proud a' you, kid. (wc: 1,639)
fuck heartache. (wc: 1,781)
stop frickin' apologizing. (wc: 1,207)
brush your fuckin' hair. (wc: 1,649)
stop bein' a jerk to yourself. (wc: 1,490)
do your damn stretches. (wc: 1,980)
enjoy your frickin' day off. (wc: 2,126)
try bein' nice to your reflection. (wc: 1,847)
stop fuckin' hurtin' yourself. (wc: 3,841)
time to fly, cupcake. (wc: 2,156)
lean into your markings, kid. (wc: 1,608)
slow down whenever you fuckin' can. (wc: 2,412)
comfort your inner kid, kid. (wc: 2,061)
take care of your frickin' scars. (wc: 1,752)
take what you need queue
if you find any of these at all helpful, they're meant for you.
teacup and teal line dividers by @/saradika-graphics | support banner by @/saradika-graphics | raccoon divider by @/thecutestgrotto. total wordcount: 62,848.
