Rocket Racoon & Gender Neutral!Reader: Heavy Is the Head
Summary: No sleep 'till Brooklyn? Try no sleep 'till the racoon and its friend downstairs find a new common enemy.
Rating/Tags: T (Reader-Insert; Gender Neutral!Reader Insert; second person POV; they/them pronouns used for reader; background relationships; Butt Monkey Peter Quill; Post-Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2; Pre-Avengers: Infinity War; the Benatar)
Pairings/Relationships: Rocket Racoon & Reader; Gamora/Peter Quill
Tag List: @imaginesfire
Ao3 Version
Word Count: 3,390
Request: "I was wondering if I could get a platonic Rocket Racoon x GN reader, like where they have a fight but they have such a strong bond that they can’t stay mad at each for long. I just love the idea of Rocket and the reader being best friends and having this special bond."
Requester: @itsscromp
Notes: Woo, got another request done! I finished this more quickly than I thought I would. I couldn't really figure out what I was going to do with the main idea, but I had an idea for the opening paragraph and decided to just get it down instead of spending weeks churning a motivation for an argument through my head. And things just kind of settled in as I went along. How nice.
Just an fyi, I haven't seen any Guardians of the Galaxy movies since Endgame, so there may be contradictions to later installments in this one shot. And this is my first time writing an explicitly gender-neutral reader, so I hope I did all right!
Heavy Is the Head
Peter Quill knew from the very moment he staggered out of his quarters in his boxers and t-shirt, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, that the situation had not gotten any better. Gamora stood at the end of the hall with her back pressed flat against the wall. She was already dressed, which was disappointing but typical, and drinking coffee, which was neither. Still, he figured that a man could hope. The ringing silence might mean he'd woken up to a ceasefire.
Gamora pursed her lips as though she could read the optimism in his thought and couldn't understand where he'd pulled it out of. Wordlessly, she held up a second mug of Drax's caffeinated sludge. Peter mumbled an approximate "thank you" before he gulped some down. The burning in his throat woke him up enough to tug her a little closer.
"Have I told you what a great girlfriend you are yet today?" he asked, and he'd just decided to give her a completely justified good morning kiss when a deafening crash resounded so loudly that the entire Benatar shook around him.
"Rocket, I am going to kill you! Painfully! Slowly! And boringly!" screamed [F Name] [L Name] from somewhere in the bowels of the ship.
Another tremendous explosion answered them, followed by one of Rocket's wild laughs. "Oh, I'd like to see you try! Remind me again whose fault it is that I'm still standing now? Huh? That's right! Not frickin' yours!"
"You would have done the exact same thing in my shoes, and you know it. You're such a bastard!"
"And you're an asshole!"
"I am Groot," chimed in the ever-helpful Groot.
"No one asked you!" you and Rocket said in unison.
Just as abruptly as it started, the shouting stopped. A cacophony of drilling and hammering and welding took its place. Peter sighed as he stepped away from Gamora.
"How long has this been going on this time?" he asked.
"Off and on for the past six hours," Gamora replied flatly. Her eyes were fixed unseeingly to the bottom of her now-empty cup.
"How'd I sleep through that?"
"Practice. And, somehow, snoring even louder than those two quarrel."
Peter winced, but he otherwise allowed the jab to pass without comment. "Okay. How'd Mantis and Dax sleep through this?"
"They left. Said something about camping when I saw them in the kitchen. If this goes on much longer, I might join them."
"If all the bickering is bothering you—"
Peter yelped and nearly dropped his drink as Nebula materialized suddenly at her sister's shoulder. Thank God for his lightning-fast reflexes; Drax's excuse for coffee could eat holes right through the floor.
"—I could just kill them for you."
"No," Peter said quickly. He threw Gamora a can-you-believe-your-sister sort of look for good measure, but she simply appeared intrigued by the suggestion.
"It might be our only option if you want to avoid abandoning the ship."
Nebula's pupilless eyes fixed on Peter’s face. He felt a cold chill run up his spine. "When I said I'd kill 'them,' I meant I'd kill both of them, not just [Name]."
"I got that. Thank you. The answer is still no," said Peter.
Nebula wilted before she skulked off to whatever dark crevice inside the ship she liked to spend her days sulking in. Gamora exhaled sharply through her nose as she peeled herself off the wall.
"I'll go talk to her. You," she shoved her mug into his vacant hand, "go fix this before she has a relapse."
Peter spluttered, but after a few seconds of trying, he could think of no better retort to hurl after her than, "I don't think murder counts as a drug, so it's not exactly a relapse, is it?" Gamora obviously did not deign to react to this weak comeback. Now he had three problems, two empty cups with no indication of when Drax might return to make anything more to fill them, and zero girlfriends to spend the morning cuddling with. And he couldn't even blame you or Rocket or Groot for the absence of the last; with or without the constant commotion, Gamora had probably never spent a Saturday in bed before in her entire life, let alone to do something as unproductive as snuggle.
Maybe if he introduced knives into the snuggling? No. Best to leave some doors unopened.
"Rocket, give me back my wrench right now, or so help me—" you shouted.
"So help you, you'll what? Stab me in the back with it? " Rocket asked.
"You can't even stab people with wrenches!"
"I am Groot!"
"Whose side are on you?" you demanded.
More drilling. More hammering. More welding. A dull throbbing took up residence in the space just above Peter's left eye. His shoulders slumped in momentary defeat. Then he squared them and stood up straight and tall. Yondu wouldn't have let any of the Ravagers get away with this sort behavior for this long, and Peter wasn't about to let any of his crew get away with this sort behavior either. Knowing he wasn't likely to get any alone time with his girlfriend until he put an end to this fight only added a more rapidly-ticking time clock to his opportunity to resolve things without bloodshed.
An ear-splitting shriek issued from below. Its pitch exceeded even that of the construction clamor still going on. Peter could not tell which of the three beings down there the noise belonged to. He grit his teeth when the only response to said noise was an increase in wall-rattling banging. Mentally, he pushed his ticking time clock back just a bit. Tackling some bizarre form of family therapy would be difficult enough with Rocket lobbing insults at him for clutching two empty coffee cups in his hands like a lifeline the entire time.
And okay, yes, maybe Peter only made a detour to the kitchen to put off the inevitable. You and Rocket were grown adults. What were the odds that you'd still be fighting by the time he carefully washed and dried and put away his and Gamora's coffee mugs? He felt confident things would cool down by the time that he stepped back out into the hallway.
"Give that back to me right now!" you screamed.
So the odds had not been as good as he'd thought. Now he really had no excuse not to make his way downward to where he knew you and Rocket had spent the majority of the last two days.
More clattering, this time of footsteps echoing off the metal floor of the Benatar's lowest level. These grew louder and louder as Peter drew closer to the source of the commotion. His headache grew in intensity as well.
"I don't think so. This is my tool. Not yours," said Rocket.
"You gave it to me as a gift! You can't just decide to take it back."
"Oh, really? Why don't you stand back and watch me?"
"It's bad manners, jackass!"
"So it's good manners to abandon your best friend for a bunch of useless loot strewn across the ground?"
"I am Groot!"
Something hard shattered to pieces.
"Great job. Now neither of us can use it. Are you happy now?" Rocket asked.
"Happy?" you echoed. "Happy? I'll tell you when I'll be happy. It'll be when—"
"That's enough!" Peter said. The door slid up to give him his first good look at the damage done to the hangar bay. It looked every bit as bad as he'd imagined, and probably worse. He wondered if they'd done enough favors for the Nova Corp lately to convince them to give the ship a patch job. Everything looked like it had barely survived a bomb, save for the two hulking mechanical suits sitting on opposite sides of the room. Had you and Rocket planned to settle your differences via some sort of giant mech battle? Honestly, Peter wouldn't have been surprised. But before he could ask, Groot spoke up:
"I am Groot?"
Peter side-eyed him. "Yes, you, too."
"I am Groot," he muttered.
Normally, such language would net Groot a time-out, but Peter had bigger fish to fry at the the moment—namely, the two bristling figures glowering at each other with disdain from in front of whatever the hell they had been building all this time. Each of you had seen better days. You had angry red welts where your welding goggles had pressed into the skin around your eyes for too long; a thick layer of ash caked much of Rocket's fur. Multiple slashes marred his jumpsuit; your right sleeve was entirely burned away. As Peter watched, you each tensed as though to lunge for one another.
"Hey! What's the matter with you two?" he asked.
"You know exactly what the matter is." Rocket pointed an accusatory claw in your direction. "They decided picking up some rare piece of junk was more important than making sure that I didn't bleed out on our last assignment!"
"Rocket, you ditch the rest rest of all the time to steal treasure when we could really use your help. And you didn't bleed out. You're perfectly fine."
"The point is that I could have bled out. I only didn't because Drax fell out of the sky right on top of me just in time."
"I was coming right back," you said. "You're the one that decided to rush ahead into a firefight without backup."
"I am Groot!"
Peter threw him a look over his shoulder. "Yeah. You're really not helping."
Groot stuck his tongue out at him.
Sensing that no help would be coming from him, Peter strode forward until he stood between you and Rocket. He held his arms straight out, his palms facing outward. Each of you earned a glare from him as well.
"Okay. That wasn't my point."
"Like you ever have a point," Rocket said.
"And even if you did, we'd take it more seriously if you weren't imparting your ‘wisdom’ while standing in your underpants," you added.
Rocket made a strangled noise that might have been a stifled laugh. But when Peter glanced at him, Rocket looked as angry and puffed up as before.
"So why don't you get to your stupid point and then get out of our way?" Rocket asked.
"Fine," said Peter. "My point is that I don't actually give two shits about what this fight is over. I just need it to stop. Nebula's getting antsy, and I told her she couldn't kill you two to shut you up. So if you don't make with the shutting, she'll probably kill me, and I don't really feel like dying over your petty spat!"
A beat of silence followed. Then Rocket drew the blaster at his hip and aimed it right at Peter.
"Because it's always about you and what you feel like doing, isn't it, Quill?"
Peter didn't think; he just ducked. The shot flew in a straight line over his head, through the air, and directly at you. You dived out of the way. Your mechanical monstrosity was not so lucky. It went up in flames. An alarm rang through the room just before the fire-suppressant gel dumped out of the ceiling and onto the chaos below. Now he smelled awful on top of of everything else.
"Rocket! I've been working on that thing for weeks!" you screamed.
"Don't blame me. Blame Quill. He's the one that moved his great, big head, and that's what I was aiming at!"
"You shouldn't be aiming at me at all!" Peter said.
But you and Rocket had already forgotten that he was there. You reached into the twisted, charred, sticky remains of whatever you'd been building, and pulled free from the wreckage a thick pipe. Rocket didn't wait to see what you planned to do with it. His beady eyes blinked once, then he turned and scurried for the opening into his not-so-little science project. Peter stuck out one leg, thinking maybe he could slow Rocket down, but, of course, the furry gremlin simply hopped over Peter's shin and continued on his way.
Blinding pain followed. "Shit! [Name]!"
You had smashed your pipe onto his leg mere seconds after Rocket scrabbled away and into what could only be graciously called a cockpit. Peter's worst fears were confirmed. A loud roar filled the hangar bay as the object stood up on two wobbly legs and a pair of headlights mounted on the front of blared directly into his aching eyes. Did you stop? Did you apologize? Did you so much as acknowledge injuring your captain? No. Your focus remained entirely on Rocket's robot.
Though he could no longer be seen, Rocket's maniacal laughter rang out once more through speakers mounted to the top of his mech. "What are you going to do now, huh? Think one lousy blunt-force object can take on this?"
Surely now you'd stop. Surely now someone would see reason. But to Peter's slack-jawed amazement, you stepped around him and raised your makeshift weapon high above your head.
"Come at me, then," you said. "That thing's going to have the exact same weak points everything you build does."
"Oh, you'd like to think that, wouldn't you?"
And with Peter standing in the middle of the floor, you and Rocket surged at each other. Rocket's ungainly Zoid whirred like a busted cassette tape with every clanking step. Clang! Clang! Clang! resounded with every blow you landed. All of this led to the very predictable moment lasers began to fly.
"I am Groot!"
Thank God one being on the ship kept their heads, or Peter might have been turned into Swiss cheese. Groot pulled him out of the way seconds before Rocket's scattered shot reached him.
"Thanks," Peter wheezed around the roots constricting his chest.
"I am Groot," Groot said as he released him.
"I think you're right. We need to get out of here. The hull can't take much more of this. Come on. We need to find Gamora."
"I am Groot."
"And Nebula, fine. Just get a move on!"
He and Groot made a beeline (tree line?) for the exit. Sparks wheeled through the air. Peter did not dare to look over his shoulder to see what further carnage had been wrought on the ship. A pang of regret filled his stomach—not for the Benatar. Kraglin owed him a whole host of favors, he figured, and what was one ship large enough for six when he had the entire Eclector under his command? But the true tragedy here was that Peter would be listening to Gamora and Nebula tell him "I told you so" for the foreseeable future.
Could going down with the ship be the lesser of two evils? No. Gamora would figure out some way to make her disappointment understood beyond the grave. If Peter didn't move fast enough, she might even die with him, and he'd be stuck listening to the women call him an idiot in stereo for the rest of eternity.
The door could not appear quickly enough. He stretched his arm and fingers out for the panel that would open his and Groot's passage to the hall. But just as he touched its slick surface, you slammed your pipe into the wall right above it. Peter withdrew his hand with a yelp.
"Where the hell do you think you're going, Pete?" you wanted to know.
"I am Groot!"
"Fine. You can go.”
And Groot, traitorous Flora colossus that he was, took off without a second look at Peter.
The door slid shut behind him. Peter was now trapped in a room with one angry racoon in battle armor and one very angry being with a pipe. He tried not to betray any fear as he slowly turned to face you, but he found that somewhat difficult what with the way you continued to clutch at your pipe.
"Remember how I said I didn't want to die over your petty spat?" he said.
You leaped backward and pointed dramatically at Peter's face with your weapon. "Rocket!"
"What?" Rocked asked through the speakers.
"Did you hear that? He was going to abandon us here and let us blow ourselves up!"
"What?!"
"Now, wait a minute—" Peter began, but you didn't even let him finish lifting his arms in surrender.
"For what?" You thrust the pipe against your palm for emphasis. Peter winced at this; you did not. "For you to open the airlock and jettison us out into space?"
"Wow, real leadership qualities you've got there, Quill," said Rocket.
"I would never—"
But you cut off his protests by pressing one of his shoulders against the flat surface behind him. "Rocket's already hurt about being left behind to die on Archeopia, and your solution to that is to leave him behind again?"
The metallic clunking of Rocket's suit's feet preceded his appearance at your elbow. His cockpit opened with a hiss. "That's right! And [Name] doesn't even have their suit anymore. They wouldn't have a chance once we got ejected!"
"How is that my fault?" Peter asked incredulously.
"If you hadn't come in here and tried to make everything about avoiding Nebula stabbing you somewhere vital, Rocket would never have fired off that shot," you said.
"We weren't having any sort of physical fight until you decided to butt in," Rocket agreed.
"What was I supposed to do? Just let you guys keep screaming at each other until even Groot ran out of patience?"
"Yes!" you and Rocket shouted together.
"Okay, okay. Jeez." Peter took a shaky breath as he ran his fingers through his hair. This did not put an end to the abrupt calm. He hesitated, but the peace remained. "Well, it seems like you guys are getting along again anyway, so if you'll excuse me—"
"Not so fast." This time, it was the strong, hard fingers of Rocket's mech that yanked Peter back into the hangar. "You're going to need to offer us a little more restitution than that. After all, now that I have some time to think about, this entire squabble is your fault to begin with."
Your eyes lit up. "Hey, yeah! You're the one that told me about that stash of uru. If you hadn't done that, I'd never have ran off on Rocket to try to find some!"
"See? He owes us."
"Owes us what, though?"
"Hmmm..."
Rocket's eyes met yours in a way that Peter liked not at all. Unfortunately, the grip his metal fingers had on Peter's upper arm prevented any attempt at escape while you both communicated in that bizarre, silent way of yours. It was Rocket that spoke up first:
"You'll need a new suit before we can have our proper death battle."
You bit your lip and eyed Peter. "I don't he's got the smarts to fix mine, though."
"So we'll supervise him."
"With drinks?"
"Obviously with drinks."
"No," Peter said, then again, once more with feeling after you and Rocket had turned identical wicked grins on him, "No."
Did either of you listen? A better question would be did any of the Guardians of the Galaxy ever listen to him, their charismatic leader that they wouldn't have gotten anywhere without? The answer to both questions had to be a resounding absolutely not.
Something else Yondu would never have allowed a Ravager to get away with: Strong-arming him into patching up the burned husk of a destroyed mech suit. And for the added insult to injury, Peter had to do to that while a racoon and the racoon's best friend lounged on lawn chairs a few feet away, barking out "helpful suggestions" in between sips of margaritas. At least, he reasoned as the wires between his fingers sparked once more, you and Rocket were no longer fighting fit to destroy the ship. The rest of the team soon noticed this themselves and joined in the merrymaking at Peter's expense.
"When he's done with this chore, you should make him clean the rest of the hangar," said Nebula around her own drink. "It's filthy."
"Ooh, good idea!" you said.
"I like the way you think," said Rocket said.
“I am Groot!”
Peter scowled over the sound of clinking glasses. Gamora had been right as always. He should have just agreed to abandon the ship.
