This prompt is what led us here (✪ω✪)
Love your brain @simps-for-rocket
Rocket Raccoon ♰ gn!reader
Rocket watches. Not openly. Not carelessly. But deliberately enough that it stops being an accident.
It starts innocently enough—purely accidental, purely logistical. He needs to reroute water flow. Check heat levels. Make sure the ship doesn’t flood because Quill decided leisure was a human right and not a structural liability. And somehow, every time Rocket ends up lingering in the corridor outside the washroom, you’re already there.
Steam curls out when the door slides open, thick and warm, clinging to the air like it doesn’t want to leave. The scent of soap and heated metal follows—clean, human, unmistakably you. Rocket tells himself he’s cataloguing it for maintenance reasons.
Rocket tells himself a lot of things.
Humans are strange with water. Vulnerable. Soft. They strip down to nothing and stand beneath it like they trust it not to hurt them—like it’s comfort instead of threat. Watching you exist so easily in something he had to train himself not to fear does something sharp and curious in his chest.
He starts noticing details before he realises he’s allowed himself to.
The way your posture changes when the water hits your shoulders. How your head tips forward just slightly, like you’re giving the weight of it permission to touch you. Tension leaves you in stages—neck first, then spine, then the rest of you slowly follows. The glass fogs just enough that Rocket has to fill in the blanks himself, and that might be the worst part.
Or the best.
Hard to tell.
He lingers longer than necessary.
Not close enough to be obvious. Rocket’s good at that. Leaning against a panel that doesn’t need fixing, tail tucked around his ankle like he’s relaxed instead of coiled tight with interest. His eyes track movement through distortion—your silhouette bending, stretching, palms braced against tile. He notices the rhythm of you. The way you move when you don’t think anyone’s watching.
Nothing explicit.
Just enough to make his brain start asking questions it doesn’t need answered.
His curiosity isn’t hungry.
It’s reverent.
Observational. The way he studies unfamiliar tech or rare components—looking for patterns, weak points, consistencies. Water slicks your skin differently every time. Sometimes it beads and rolls. Sometimes it clings like it doesn’t want to let go. Rocket wonders, not for the first time, how close he’d need to be to feel the heat of you without the glass in the way.
Wonders how long he’d last pretending not to notice.
That thought sticks.
So he installed the damn hot tub.
Rocket doesn’t tell anyone though. It isn’t for everyone. It’s for him. And—if he’s being honest, he wants you in it with him. Purely because it recreates the conditions where he keeps seeing you at your most unguarded.
He eases himself into the water like it might still betray him. Fur bristling. Jaw tight. But the heat sinks in slowly, patiently, and his body relaxes despite him. Muscles loosen. Breath evens out.
Then the door opens.
Rocket doesn’t look right away.
He listens first—the shift of your weight, the quiet pause when you register him there. Steam thickens, catching the light, blurring the room into something private. When Rocket finally glances up, it’s casual.
His focus is not.
You’re damp. Not soaked—just warm. Skin faintly flushed, water clinging in places his brain very unhelpfully lingers on. He doesn’t leer. Doesn’t grin. Doesn’t bare teeth or make it obvious.
He just allows himself a longer look than necessary.
Longer than polite.
Shorter than obvious.
His tail flicks beneath the water, slow, intentional. He shifts slightly, letting the bubbles obscure him while he takes you in properly—the way you hold yourself when relaxed, the way your attention keeps drifting back to him before you remember not to stare.
He notices that too.
From then on, water becomes a pattern.
Rocket times his tub sessions around your routines without admitting it to himself. He always seems to be there when you pass by—half-submerged, steam curling around him, eyes heavy-lidded like he’s resting when really he’s tracking every small change in your posture.
Then one night while watching you linger near the doorway longer than usual, he offers it—no words, just a tilt of his clawed paw toward the water. The gesture is subtle, almost casual, but loaded, this is mine, but I want you here. The tub is his domain, carefully engineered, private, the only place on the ship he finally feels this calm and in control.
And yet… he wants you there. Wants to see how you fit into it, how your presence changes the warmth, the steam, the way the water moves. It’s an invitation without pressure, and the slight raise of his eyebrows is enough to let you understand that it’s okay…more than okay—it’s exactly how he wants it.
He likes watching you react to the heat. Likes the subtle lean of your body toward the warmth. Likes that you don’t flinch at the sight of him in water—like you recognise this version of him as something earned.
The perverted part—Rocket admits it quietly—comes from wanting to understand.
How you wear your body when you’re comfortable. How water slides over you and leaves you softer instead of guarded. How close he can get without breaking whatever fragile, domestic thing is taking shape between you.
One night, you sit closer than usual. Close enough that condensation drips from your elbow into the tub. Rocket watches the ripples spread, fascinated by how something so small can disrupt everything around it.
That feels familiar.
Your knee brushes his thigh. Accidental. Not corrected.
Rocket doesn’t move. Doesn’t grab. Doesn’t test.
He lets himself enjoy the awareness.
The warmth. The proximity. The quiet thrill of being allowed to notice without being pushed away. His fear stays quiet, tucked under trust and steam and the growing certainty that water keeps leading him back to you.
And Rocket, who has always learned best through repetition—decides this is a habit worth keeping.
Not just the tub.
But the way you soften near him.
The way his curiosity sharpens instead of turning ugly.
The way water has stopped being something that takes—
—and started being something that gives.
