Peter Quill was a man on a mission. It wasn't some expensive bounty, a desire for a really good bottle of booze, or even something that would make him need to get off-radar for a few days. No, what was bothering Quill was something on a deeply personal level, even as he hounded around the ship and ripped open closets, compartments and upturned boxes.

His coat was missing. His red leather jacket with all of its stains and deep, meaningful history had just up and vanished before he'd been able to put it on this morning.

"Where the hell is it? I told you we shouldn't have stopped at Knowhere again!" He thought of some grubby blue kid, wearing the damned thing and dragging it around through the dirt because he was too short. Well, at least the kid would be warm. That thing had thermo-weave in it and was toasty when you needed it to be and cold when you didn't.

He expounded on these small details as he searched high and low for it, not caring if anyone was looking at him like he was some kind of moron or like he'd gone absolutely insane. "It has a tear in the right shoulder when some asshole decided to fire at me. I showed him! Just like I'll show whatever damned idiot has made off with my coat!"

For all of his thundering and shouting, Quill was starting to notice something. He had a train following him, two green-ish colored shapes and one small, wooden one that were following him at all times. Someone was missing, someone importa-

He turned on his heel, facing the three that were following him. "Where's Rocket?!" It was all making sense. Rocket would've known there was thermo-weave in it or that it was leather or something. He pictured it now, Rocket digging out the insulation to protect a metal coil or making the soft leather into a grip for one of those guns of his.

Peter's search took a different turn now. Rocket's room was empty, his workshop in the hangar bay didn't have any scraps of leather on it (Quill checked. Three times. Once with a magnifying glass for even the smallest hint of a fiber.). As far as everyone aboard was concerned, Rocket was missing. Nowhere to be found.

"That... that dick!" Peter shouted, slumping down into the command chair. "He's stolen my coat and now he's just... just gone off and found himself in trouble. Now we're going to have to rescue him just to get my coat back!" Quill felt his lips turn down into a pout, hands folding stubbornly over his chest. He was acting the very image of a spoiled child and he didn't care.

"Perhaps our small friend has simply heard your thunderous shouts and wishes to not be found?" Drax offered. "He may well have heard your various threats to 'skin him alive' and 'leave him on some sun-baked asteroid with a single shot blaster' if you find him." It made sense. The worst kind of sense. Peter felt his frown deepen.

"Well, he shouldn't have taken my coat then, should he?" He grumbled, pressing his chin down to his chest as he sunk a bit further in his seat. He felt something small tugging at his leg and he ignored it. When the tugging didn't go away, he finally forced himself up just to look down at the floor.

Groot was out of his pot, 'hand' tugging firmly on Peter's pants leg. He was gesturing in a direction and making a circling motion. "I am Groot!" He said in the smallest, most comical voice that Peter had ever heard. He didn't need to know Flora Colossus speak to know that was pretty much the universal symbol for 'follow me!'

He took great care not to trod on Groot as he walked, the little plant beast hurrying ahead of him with his legs and arms pumping in a jogger's run. He made sure to watch for any sign that Groot was going to turn or stop or make a sudden movement. That was something he didn't need Rocket screaming at him for, stepping on Groot. Even if he was going to flay the deviant alive and cook him when he found the raccoon with his coat.

Groot stopped and that made Quill stop. They were just there, sitting in a hallway, with no doors or vents or anything around them. Groot pointed at the wall and Quill just felt an eyebrow raise in question. There wasn't any tiny voice that said that the plant thing was Groot. He just kept pointing, until Quill finally stooped down to look at the wall panel he was pointing to.

Just there, at the top edge of it, he could see the faint little claw marks decorating its surface. They looked like they found the edge and pulled it out, but the other scratches were ones from... It dawned on him. They were scratches from pulling the panel back into place.

Quill drew out his pocket knife swiftly and wedged it into the slight gap between panel and wall, popping it open with a bit of force and some grunting on his part. The section of wall slumped to the ground and revealed something Quill had never thought he'd see.

Rocket was curled up into a little ball, just like an animal would sleep, his shoulders wrapped up in Peter's coat. It took him a few moments of heavy thinking to realize just what might be going on. What was it that raccoons lived in on Earth? Nest... shelter... den. Den. Rocket had made himself a den. A private little sanctuary. In the wall of all places.

Quill bit down on his lip. Why did Rocket feel the need to hide like this? Hide that he was making his own private sanctuary in the ship? Quill decided to take a proper look inside. Besides the obvious, Rocket sleeping in his jacket, the terran found a photo that had been rather methodically shredded until it was just a single person standing alone. It was a group picture of the Guardians, the focus of the tearing was Quill.

That didn't surprise Quill as much as the little cassette player that the raccoon had cobbled together, the soft sounds of Blue Swede's 'Hooked on a Feeling' filtering softly into that little compartment. It looked rough around the edges, pieces from the ship that Rocket thought wouldn't be missed had been thrown together to form the functioning player.

Rocket's eyes opened as Quill looked in, the brown eyes unseeing for a moment before they filled with the twinkle of life. Peter could only watch in horror as Rocket's eyes started widening like dinner plates, pupils dilating in the center of his eyes.

"Shit. OH SHIT!" Rocket slammed his head on the top of his literal hole in the wall as he tried to stand upright. He clutched onto his skull as pain lanced through it before he hobbled out. He tossed Quill's jacket into his face before Peter could react, his feet scrabbling as he tore ass down the hallway.

Somewhere in the distance, Quill heard the sound of an electronic door getting slammed. That was a feat in and of itself, unless Rocket had somehow rigged his personal door to slam on cue. Peter let himself get to his feet, groaning a bit as his knees protested. He looked down at the hole in the wall again, frowning just a bit before he followed.

Rocket felt weak in the knees, his eyes blinked back tears as he huddled himself against the door to his room. His actual, assigned room, not his room. He bit his hand until he felt blood against his fingertips and screamed into it, trying to let off some of the frustration he was feeling build inside of him.

He needed to do something. Something. His fingers twitched a bit as he focused in on his pistol. It was perfect. He picked it up and carried it delicately over to his bed. He stripped it down to each individual screw, looking down at all the pieces before he started putting it back together. He had to hurry or the generator would break down.

No, no, no. Those were wrong thoughts. He looked down at his fingers fumbling with the trigger mechanism. He was doing this wrong. That meant Quill was going to be mad, instead of happy. He was going to get thrown out of an airlock for messing up his gun.

"Rocket?" The voice was soft, followed by a knock on the door. It waited barely any time for the procyon to get his act together before Quill pushed open the door to the room. He stopped when he saw that the mammal had his gun in pieces on the bed, hurrying to put it together.

Peter had long since resolved to not ask about these little... little quirks of Rocket's until Rocket was ready to talk about. He said nothing as he waited for the raccoon to finish putting it together and aim it before stripping it down again. Rocket grabbed a rag from his table and started cleaning each individual piece slowly, carefully, starting from the top left of the tidy pile he'd made of it on his bed.

"Siddown, Pete." The nickname made Quill frown, but he didn't argue against it. Quill was when Rocket was feeling fine, Star Lord was when Rocket was feeling sassy, but Pete... Pete was reserved for when Rocket was low. Or needed a favor. Or just needed someone to talk to and Quill was the only one who'd let him gab.

"Y'saw all m' stuff in that little hole, right." He didn't wait for the affirmative nod from Peter, simply placing the piece he was working on with the others and picking the next one up in the chain. He could see all the focus Rocket was using to not cry. "An'... y' got questions."

"Yeah, of course I do." The human let his lips frown. "But probably not the ones you're prepared for." Rocket just shrugged, moving onto the next piece, letting Quill continue. "The first one is, why keep it a secret?"

"Because.." Rocket paused a moment, looking contemplatively down at his injured hand. Rocket bit himself, Quill realized with a jolt. "B'cause I'm some d'ast idiot who doesn't even know what he's feelin'. No one taught me anythin' at that fuckin' place Quill."

Quill felt that same wrench in his heart he'd felt on Knowhere. "They didn't teach me nothin' about... about some damned idiot that made yer stomach all fluttery when you were aroun' him." Rocket stopped cleaning his gun, his fingers finding the edge of the rag he was using before starting to tear it. "About how it'd make you feel watching him gad about like it was nothin' with whatever bar floozy who slung his way. 'Bout how it'd make ya wanna cry if y' couldn't get another inhale of his scent."

"Rocket."

"Shuddup you fuckin' moron. Yer gonna let me finish so I don't have to think about... about. Fuck. I dunno. Lemme finish so I don't think about how the ship is going to fuckin' crash unless I do, alright?!" Rocket's eyes fixed on Peter's, cowing the human into quiet silence.

"THANK YOU." Rocket's voice rose for those words before he continued. "An' now that same moron is sittin' here in yer room an' all you wanna do is... is rub your hand across his stubbly, unshaven, gross as fuck pink face. An' think about how cute his blond hair is. An' want to go back and get the jacket that the idiot left in the hall cause it might still smell like him where his hands were. An' y' just want to scream from the top of a mountain that maybe, just maybe, somewhere along the way you developed feelings for this complete fuckin' stupid human guy who swaggered up out of nowhere and got you hooked on everythin' about him." Rocket had to stop to breathe, inhaling once. When he didn't say anything more, Quill took that as his cue.

"And what if the same moron maybe had feelings for some dumb ass raccoon that was sitting here tearing a rag into neat, perfect, one-inch squares?" Quill even found himself confused with the admission, but he kept going with it. He needed to speak from the heart, not give a speech that Rocket wanted to hear. "That as much as you really cannot get past the fact he looks like something from your home planet and shouldn't be on two legs and talking, you are absolutely head over heels with the smug little smart-ass and it hurts to see him heart-broken like he's forcing himself to be right now?"

"Y'... y' got feelin's... f' me?" There they were. The tears flowed freely out of the raccoon's eyes and stained the fur of his cheeks. Every semblance of some strong, independent and healthy raccoon dropped like a mirror being shattered. Rocket broke down. He barely felt Peter grabbing hold of him and dragging him into the human's lap. Holding him close and petting behind his ear, just where he liked.

"Yeah, I got feelings for you." Quill allowed himself a grin as he started to hum faintly to a familiar tune, one of twelve that were on that little cassette tape that could and did follow him through the galaxy for nearly thirty years. "I can't stop this feeling. Deep inside of me." His voice crooned, it wasn't even remotely close to the right tune. "Boy you just don't realize.."

Rocket picked up the tune and followed along. His voice was better than Quill's, but only marginally. "What you do to me.. When you hold me, in your arms so tight. You let me know everything's alright."

Their voices joined in a duet, belting out the tune for any and all to hear. "I'm hooked on a feelin'. I'm high on believin'! That you're in love with me!" If Rocket made his foot tap twice for every one that Quill did, the human didn't say anything. Right now, he just focused on holding Rocket in his arms and making him feel alright.