A/N: Yep... I'm writing this. Rocket/Mantis smut fic because Mantis being 'Rocket-sexual' makes me laugh. Also, I just wanna be able to say that I could do it.
The creature bearing down on Mantis grinned wide, flashing the woman with rows and rows of tiny, sharp teeth and winding tongue that licked at its stretched, grey lips above her. Mantis quaked as strings of saliva dripped onto her head, closing her eyes so as not to face the look of a beast that very much wanted to take a bite out of her. She prayed that it would kill her first and eat her corpse after, although she would not be spared pain after being dragged off from the rest of the guardians minutes prior.
"Hey! Shit for brains!"
The onslaught of spittle raining on Mantis stopped when she moved out of the way enough to peer over her shoulder. She saw Rocket perched on the jagged hill's edge that she'd been dragged from, and her features relaxed as she beheld his furious gaze and tensed muscles in the fiery light of the sun. He was the first to race after her, and the first to arrive with burning strong anger at his heels on Mantis's behalf.
The sight of him took her breath away.
"Where's the hurry?" Rocket asked, sounding jovial. "I thought you wanted ta play wit' all a' us, but I'm beginnin' to feel left out here."
The creature hunched over her backed away, smart enough to realize it was being threatened by the firepower that Rocket had brought with him. Both it and Rocket growled at one another, silently daring the other to make a move.
Finally, the wolfish Thing walked backward on its reptilian-like feet and retreated into the rocky terrain.
He went in laughing that obnoxious, glee-saturated laugh of his and had two enormous guns blazing in either hand.
Mantis's body tightened as she watched at his retreating figure. A familiar feeling seized her at the sight, all too familiar, and yet the insect woman drew a blank as to what that powerful sensation was called.
It dominated her mind and body until she realized that she'd been mired to the ground floor for too long. Mantis rose carefully, her stomach fluttering so much so that she felt like she needed to laugh. She could feel her legs shaking when she was fully upright, and yet she risked falling to pieces to stagger toward the cave. The thought that she should help Rocket pushed through the mull of everything else until she was grasped by two pairs of hands on her arms.
Mantis looked up wildly, and saw both Peter and Gamora caging her in.
Peter looked at her, relief plain on his face. "Mantis."
"Are you alright?" Gamora asked.
She tried to nod, but became dizzy. "I am okay, yes."
"Are you sure?" Several indents appeared in Peter's brow while he brushed sand and dirt away from the woman's face. "You're not bleeding or anything, right? Did it bite you?"
Mantis shook her head, and smiled at their concern. The warmth that had been building in her lower belly retreated to a safer region in her chest until she felt toasty and loved inside, as well as flimsy. Could a feeling induce motion sickness? "I am, really –"
"Her foot is facing an unnatural angle." Gamora interrupted. Both she and Peter looked down to see Mantis's left foot twisted outward, perpendicular to her right. She could barely touch the ground on it.
"Here, we should," Peter kept brushing at Mantis's face to chase away the dirt and bits of hair before he wrapped an arm around Mantis and positioned her arm around his shoulder. "Get you to the medbay and check it out. There's scanners and antiseptic and… tutorials on handling cyber wolf bites, there. I bet. I mean, I'm sure."
He looked over the top of Mantis's dizzied head. "Will you get Rocket outta the cave and meet us back at the transport? I think we've got all we need otherwise."
Gamora nodded while Peter led his sister away from the audible carnage. Mantis limped next to Peter, but turned back in time to see Gamora moving to the mouth of the orange cavern stealthily. Distant howls, and Rocket's continued laughter, sent a shiver up Mantis's spine.
"Here. Lie here." Peter helped Mantis take her arm back, then gently eased her onto the cot. The quadrant had come equipped with many necessities preserved after the fallout on Ego's planet, and it was a miracle given their line of work that one of the most prominent necessities was the medbay.
He lifted Mantis's legs over the side of the cot and hissed sympathetically when he got a closer look at her foot. "Shit. I'm sorry I didn't carry you, Mantis. I didn't realize it was so bad."
Peter's hand wrapped around Mantis's the longer his eyes focused on her foot, and Mantis couldn't help but feel his worry and sorrow, along with the faint remainder of his previous fear and adrenaline, seeping into her. She was unsure of whether he knew what he knew what he was doing or if he had forgotten that Mantis could feel as he did through their contact.
Her happiness over his extreme concern for her was odd, as she was conflicted over whether taking pleasure in it was a bad thing or not when it made Peter feel so awful. Mantis's inner debate settled when she caught wind of the anger he felt at himself for letting her be pulled away from their family.
"Peter." Mantis's voice came out raspy. "Please do not be so upset. It was not your fault that I was dragged away."
Peter nodded vigorously – removing his hand from hers in the meantime – but he looked no less troubled. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. Still, it just ripped you from the rest of us, and nobody knew what was going on before you were… just gone."
"I should've been faster." Mantis's face fell at his words. She understood that Peter wasn't territorial, but that he did have a deeply-imbedded fear of losing those he cared about.
It was something that had grown over time to become a larger, defining aspect of who Peter was ever since his mother had passed away. And it claimed more of his motivation to fight each day after the death of Ego and Peter's surrogate father, Yondu. "It could've been worse."
Peter remembered himself after a moment, and sniffed noncommittally before he leaned down below Mantis's cot and shuffled through the compartments below to find a scanner. Mantis wrung her hands while he upended a medkit and took out the largest device, unstringing wires with suction cups attached, and the two watched the cords spiral outward and crawl along the cot down to the floor and beyond.
"Now, I'm not a doc or anything." The captain started, sifting through their medical supplies to see if there was anything more useful, or at least something that would make Mantis's foot heal completely in a miraculous fashion.
"Uhhhhhh, so these… don't go anywhere specific… Right?" Peter turned the scanner on and stared at the reader screen with too-squinted eyes. "Oh, wait. It says 'place wires on pulse points and access of vitals including…"
The mortal man fiddled with the many wires, one eye on the scanner and the other trying to find the proper points on Mantis's body that counted as vitals. He eventually placed most them on her face and on either side of her neck and shoulders, and had asked where her heart was so that he could gently stick a wire on top of her sternum. He did so clinically, and finished it off by putting a suction cup between her eyebrows.
Mantis giggled, lifting a hand to tap the wire. "There are so many on my head already. Why do I need another there?"
Peter grinned, softly. "Well, it says put it over the Mind's Eye if your rituals so incline. Guess that means that some folk like to include their gods when they get scanned, because it makes them feel safer, so I thought we should try it too."
She grinned at him when he shrugged. "Just to be safe."
"Well, I do feel safe." Mantis agreed. She very much did, and wrapped her freed arms around herself in a hug when Peter looked as if he wanted to do so. He wouldn't risk worsening any further injuries to her however, not as long as the scanner was running.
It was some time before the scanner had analyzed Mantis fully, and Peter had filled the monotony of waiting for the results with a story about a boy who could never grow up and whose name was also Peter. Enraptured, Mantis couldn't help pouting when Peter had finished telling the story of how Tiger Lily was rescued by the dreadfully inept Captain Hook and his personal assistant Smee. He was called away by Gamora on the comm., but promised that he could finish the story after they took off from Satno.
She was still laid up on one of the Quadrant's infirmary cots, biding her time with practiced patience, when a commotion broke out down the hall.
At the telltale sound of one brusque, angry voice, goosebumps arose from her skin, and Mantis tucked her legs in that much closer.
Soon enough, Gamora was pulling a bloodied Rocket, whose clothes had been completely shredded and who was still locked in a fighting stance, into the infirmary. She kept her grip on his arm before patting the cot next to Mantis's.
"Sit down." She tugged him, like she was making to throw him onto it.
"I'll do it myself!" Rocket's teeth clacked as he ripped his hand away from Gamora's and stumbled an inch. The raccoon right himself with a glare at the green-skinned woman, who looked less than impressed. She spared a glance at Mantis and offered a gentle, sympathetic smile.
"Would you go already? Mom?" Rocket growled, and the near-purr brought Mantis's easygoing mood to a halt.
Gamora left shortly, rolling her eyes at Rocket's immaturity, and Rocket busily scrubbed at his face with slicked paws as Mantis stayed still.
The bud-like woman's eyelids slid down with the rapidly increasing potent feeling that she had endured on the battlefield. She'd realized while her mind had wandered in Peter's absence that, along with the body constrictions and the sweating that came with thinking back to how she'd been rescued, Mantis's mind would be filled with a sticking fog over Rocket.
The haze, that warmed her body and made her limbs stop working at the most inopportune moments, made her want to run and hide but it had returned again and again in her solitude as a faint alarm of sorts.
It had returned, fully-fleshed, then.
"Eh, bug lady? What're ya doin'? Did ya go deaf down there on Satno?"
Mantis doubled back, and saw Rocket looking at her pointedly. His foot tapped impatiently against the adjoining cot, though his impatience came at the same pace of the song echoing from beyond the doorframe.
"I've been askin' for the medkit for the last five minutes! Politely! What else do I need to do with you people to get a little cooperation, get on bended knee?" He sneered at her, but Mantis's energy was zapped. She didn't have it in her to get offended or let the pang of self-consciousness over her lethargy prompt some action on her part.
She'd never noticed how, with the right lighting, Rocket's eyes shone like the prettiest copper metal on a royal transport vessel before then. They were downright shimmering now.
"Tch! I spend all my time savin' our asses and when I have ta ask for a lil' help occasionally you all… all…" Rocket spoke like he was out of breath, gaze intensely fixed on Mantis while she sat and listened in dead silence.
Eventually they were both silent, though Rocket still panted somewhat, and Mantis was aware of the sweat on her palms accumulating in
"Why are we jus'…" Rocket's voice trailed away.
"Staring at each other?" Mantis finished quietly. Her insides curled at Rocket's peculiar look of confusion, and how she couldn't help but think it was delightful to every sense of hers.
This made more sense than it should have.
Mantis's whole body tingled, and she wanted to laugh and cry once again, knowing that what she was feeling love. Romantic, sexual love.
A/N: There's more. If you want more. O/O
