A/N: (The italicized texts are meant to be moments that don't fit in this linear jump off for the beginning of Mantis and Rocket bonding. If I tried to write an entire linear narrative for these two, I'd be shooting myself in the foot because Rocket needs soooooo much time to adjust to liking a person, let along loving a person).

Rocket couldn't help but be offended that none of the other guardians had asked him how he felt when they'd picked up two new recruits. They hadn't even held interviews, or whatever the equivalent might be when it came to finding new people to help them guard the galaxy.

It was just rude, excluding him like that, no matter how you sugarcoated it.

Although, he supposed, that he had at least brought in Kraglin, and Kraglin was the most useful by far. Out of all two of their new teammates, the ex-ravager was at least prepared when it came to the opportunity for combat. He also knew how to pilot a ship, which was handy for obvious reasons (Quill had been moved down the list from the second-best pilot to the third according to the raccoon, whom felt no greater joy than when watching Stardork's face grow red and indignant every time he was told so).

But the other newest member of their team…

Had Nebula decided to stay and not go off to murder Thanos, a suicidal mission if Rocket had ever heard one, Mantis might've had the privilege of being second runner-up on Rocket's list of most disliked team members.

As it stood, the woman, with her huge eyes that stared vacantly at everything from the many colorful buttons and levers on the Quadrant's control panel to the shape of Rocket's implants from beneath his jumpsuit, looked about as dumb as every other being he'd misfortune of encountering.

The short of it is that they're on a mission to find confirmation that the medical center they've infiltrated is indeed a lab dealing in illegal experimentation.

"You are terrified." Mantis whispered.

But the worst of it is that they're huddled in a closet, amid unused IV racks and defibrillators, the kind of junk that has Rocket's fur bristling and his tail twitching with mounting anxiety.

Rocket had never feared being separated from the rest of the team during a mission unless the consequences of such were dire. When you were in the moment, and having a hell of a time while killing as many as your multitude of bombs, canons, and good old fashioned plasma guns allowed, you lost touch with reality easily. And yet, he was without any weapons to speak of, without any guys to shoot, and cramped into a shadowy little room with only Mantis, the last person on the team he'd ever wanted to get stuck alone with, there with him.

Rocket glares at her in the darkness, hyper-aware of that prickling sensation of fear inside and out with Mantis's fingers just barely touching his arm.

"Tell me somethin' I don't fuckin' know already."

His venomous tone is enough for Mantis to take her hand back, and he doesn't feel an ounce of pity for the hurt look on her face. She's got no business putting her mitts on him and embarrassing him like that, even if there's no one to hear her insipid comments on his emotional turmoil.

Rocket returns to scanning outside of the vent in the door they're behind. The sight of the tabletops where people had no doubt been clamped down and prodded with needles and illicit drugs makes him itch for a grenade to throw. If he had his way, Rocket would blow this whole facility sky high, but the promise of units and the ire of the rest of the guardians keeps him tame.

There also happens to be two men just outside, dressed in hazmat-looking suits with full hoods and a window of plastii for them to look through. Their backs are turned to Rocket, but he can just make out the billow of chemical smoke coming from whatever they've got going on the tabletop. There's a known scent in the air, the smell of flesh burning, paired with the chemicals that's sickening. He just knows that they're doing illegal shit to something living, or something that had been alive beforehand.

Rocket can't prevent himself from growling audibly the longer they sit there. Panic has all his nerves shot, but there's nothing for it when the sound of his disgust is amplified in the small room.

Well, shit.

The door swings open and both Rocket and Mantis are being hustled out without warning. Rocket snaps his jaws on whatever he can, wherever he can as he's gripped around his tail and his arms are tugged hard in the direction of the stretcher tops. He attempts to dig his claws into the steel floor but it makes little difference before he's hoisted high into the air and the life is being squeezed out of him via the gloved hands wrapped tightly around his throat.

He's lost sight of Mantis in the struggle for some time, more preoccupied with the intense panic that has him thrashing around in the grip of these grotesque excuses for scientists. He scratches desperately at the vice grip around his throat and manages to pull down one of the gloves in the flurry of things. The sound of his captor's groan of pain drives Rocket to absolutely shred at the purple skin beneath the suit and then he's free.

Rocket makes quick work of climbing the scientist's shoulder to punch in the plasticized mask and knock him off balance. He continues to pummel and scratch with all his might, riding the panic attack turned adrenaline high as he does so.

The other bastard has Mantis's back pressed to him and is grasping her antennae in one fist, ignoring her cries to be let go. He yanks her head to one side and Mantis screams at the exact moment Rocket spies a syringe being pushed into her neck. It's filled with a grey-white, syrupy liquid that Rocket recognizes straightaway.

Before making sure that the guy he's pinned down is fully knocked out, Rocket launches himself at Mantis's capture and sinks his teeth right into the doctor's jugular. He feels deep, visceral satisfaction when a gush of blood fills his jaws and leaks down the front of his jumpsuit.

"Mantis." Rocket sighed, not bothering to hide the relief in his voice as he spotted said bug lady and made a beeline directly toward her.

Mantis's antennae perked up at the call of her name. She was hunched beneath a fallen beam between the corridor walls on either side of them, covered in ash and grit. It was unnerving just how long it took for the rest of her to react as Rocket skittered the rest of the distance to her, how her large eyes were barely focused on his own while he began to run his paws over her arms and shoulders.

He was uncharacteristically gentle as he probed her torso, noting the scrapes, forming bruises, and gashes, and he hissed upon finding what he'd feared most. Pieces of shrapnel had embedded themselves into Mantis's shoulder blade and her left side.

"Rocket?"

Mantis's voice sounded too far away to Rocket's hypersensitive ears. "Are you okay?"

Rocket reared back to look at her face, mouth contorted into a reflexive snarl.

"What d'ya mean: are you okay?" Rocket mocked her while he began to slowly pull at a piece of metal that jutted from near her collarbone. He growled when the fucking thing didn't even budge under his strength, and in the back of his mind, Rocket was sure that he'd eventually have to go digging around it with his claws to pry it out.

There was silence, save for Mantis's quiet crying, as Rocket worked (frantically) to try and dislodge the offending object from the woman's body. To her credit, Mantis had hardly moved – but then that didn't exactly put his mind at ease, as he was fairly certain that she had a concussion from being knocked backward after taking the hit.

"I didn't see you when it happened," Mantis sniffed. "I didn't know if you were there with me."

Rocket stilled in the middle of pressing at her wound, from stemming the trickle of green blood, as one of Mantis's arms wrapped around him. Warmth seeped in beneath fur and skin, familiar yet no less potent. It wasn't quite tangible, and yet the sensation reached every nerve. Mantis's relief – relief because of him, because of his presence, over him simply being alive and with her - made Rocket shudder.

Team meetings weren't often that productive.

"What?! But tech is my thing!" Rocket shouts.

They were rarely this ridiculous, though.

"Are you seriously trying to make this about you right now?" Peter shouted back, his hands flew to his hips as he stared the raccoon down.

Gamora sighed in frustration behind them, "Don't act like you haven't done the same thing, Peter."

"What?!" Their leader swung around to face her. "When?!"

"It is about me! I'm the one that rigs up everything we need on a daily basis! I don't need her to get in the way!" Rocket yelled, in no mood to let those idiots start a lover's spat.

"You're the one who brought up that Mantis needs training in the first place!"

"Yeah! I meant like self-defense, not takin' my place!" Rocket said. "How's she gonna know how and what to blow up when we're in the line of fire anyway? You think just any lifeform can come in and build a bomb just like that?!"

"You will teach her," Drax spoke up for the first time since they'd called a team meeting.

"ME? I'm s'posed to teach HER?"

Peter's hands flew back up. "Who else, man?"

Groot had managed to get onto a seat by himself after spending the better part of their powwow trying to climb his way up (he still wasn't tall enough to reach the height of the table itself), making it in time to give Rocket a pointed look. "I am Groot."

Rocket scoffed, "You're on their side?!"

Gamora walked forward, placing one hand on the frame of Groot's chair, and "You said so yourself, 'tech is your thing'."

"No one else knows the mechanics of our weaponry as much as you do, and no one," Gamora said coolly, pausing to look between Peter and Kraglin, the latter of whom had the decency to gulp and look some form of ashamed, "has bothered to inspect the Quadrant inside and out like you have."

Her gaze returned to Rocket's, fixing him with a deadly calm stare in spite of his angry sneer. She was looking down her nose at him, assuming neutrality when they both knew that she was going to win this argument.

Their battle of wills-style staring contest ended when Gamora looked up and over him. Rocket followed suit, only to see that her attention had fixed on the subject they'd all spent twenty minutes arguing over.

Mantis stood away from the crowd, timidly fidgeting with the pleats of her suit. It wasn't long before she felt all eyes on her and looked back at them intrepidly.

"I only want to be useful." She regarded him, as open and earnest as she'd ever been. It was painful how desperate she was to help, so much so that Rocket had to valiantly control his gag reflex just looking at her.

Fine.

He looked away from her wide eyes to the brace around her neck, a reminder of how she'd almost died on his watch.

Fuck it. Fine.

There was no night and day in space. The stars surrounded you in a sea of black constantly when you weren't planetside and susceptible to a regularly rotating sun.

There was what you could call a system for sleeping on the Quadrant, of course. It went more or less like this: You slept when you want, where you want, and if you don't want to sleep, but the rest of the crew does, you sure as shit better not do anything to jeopardize that (unless, ya know, the ship was being attacked).

That was unless your name was Groot and you had a curfew for a reason.

Rocket had been sitting in a room where one of the Quadrant's engines could be accessed. He'd unofficially claimed the space as his workshop shortly after destroying Ego, and it was where he spent the better part of his alone time working on whatever he wanted. One of the better outcomes of upgrading to a bigger ship had definitely been being able to have a larger private space where he could put together the odd bomb. He didn't have to hear Peter or Gamora bitching at him for leaving his gadgets strewn about where they could be set off at any moment as much anymore.

The engine room also doubled as a stationary place, which meant that Groot, whom would inevitably get lost without on-sight direction, knew exactly where to go if he needed Rocket for whatever reason. The tiny Flora Colossus didn't spend quite as much with Rocket as the original Groot had, but he had his moments where the raccoon was the friend that Groot felt safest with.

Groot also happened to know that Rocket often stayed up late, and it seemed like Groot had decided that tonight was going to be a night to try sneaking up on him, never figuring it out that Rocket's senses were sharp as knives. He always knew where Groot was, no matter how well the twig hid in the shadows.

"Ya know I hate it when you hover," Rocket sighed. Much of his attention was still on the blaster in his paws as he spoke. "Jus' come out already. I ain't mad at ya for being up past your bedtime, Groot."

He was met with further silence, until –

"I am not Groot." The soft, lilting voice has his ears swiveling back in immediate alert, black lips drawn into a snarl.

He watched as Mantis came out of the shadows slowly, head bowed and looking at the floor as if it were fascinating compared to a pissed off cybernetic raccoon.

"The fuck are you here for?" Rocket growled, feeling a mite or two of satisfaction as the girl cringed at his words. She probably didn't even understand what that word was, but his tone was enough to get her shaking in her boots, so to speak.

Still, she didn't scurry away in fear as he half-assumed she would. Instead she stood there, nervously wringing her hands.

"I – I wanted to come and apologize." She said slowly.

"Ha!" Rocket laughed a completely sarcastic and not-at-all-real laugh. "I don't need your apologies, lady. I don't need apologies from anybody."

"Yes," She continued, still looking at the ground. "Drax said that you would not accept it, but I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry anyway."

He huffed, practically slamming the holt of the dismembered gun onto the grey, tectonic floor. Mantis jumped where she stood at the sound, finally looking up in alarm (as if he was actually gonna shoot her. Seriously.)

Rocket pinched the bridge of his snout. "Well, Drax was right for once in his thick-headed existence. You came and you said it. What're ya still standing there for?"

Big black eyes blinked at him from the half-dark; Rocket was almost sure this girl was taking a long ass time to just process what he'd said. He had no idea how Empaths used their abilities, but he figured that this one just had to be a rare breed of stupid to not recognize his foul mood, which was growing fouler the longer he had to put up with her being there and invading his space. Couldn't she at least see that he was working?

He was about to say as much, just about to, after withstanding the awkward quiet that had permeated the room which was fast becoming unbearable.

Until Mantis burst into tears. "I'm sorry for thinking you were a puppy!"

"I'm sorry for calling you a puppy in that lab! And on the ship all the time! And even on Berhart, whether you heard me or not!" She continued to wail, again heedless of Rocket's mood shift as he gawked at her as well as her volume. She wasn't just wailing, she was wailing loudly.

"Gamora explained it, that you hate it when people treat you like a pet! And I felt it, in the lab, when we were hiding together!"

Mantis kept on, frame starting to shake, as Rocket put down the blaster to dart toward her, stopping less than 10 feet in front of her.

"Hey!" He yell-whispered. "Quit that cryin'! You're gonna wake everyone up from here to Xandar!"

She began to shake, dropping into a crouch with her hands over her eyes. The antennae that usually stood like stalks above her forehead had started to droop down while she continued to sob.

"But I'm sorry! I really, truly am sorry!"

Rocket reared away once a particularly high-pitched whine flew out of her mouth. The sound of it was like getting a stab directly in his hearing implants.

"God! Lady! Take it easy already! I get it! You're sorry!" He covered his ears. "Apology accepted or whatever, just stop cryin'!"

Slowly but surely, his hasty forgiveness brought Mantis out of her stupor. After a few moments, the woman's whining and whimpering quieted to a bout of hiccups and quiet sniffles until she finally looked at Rocket again with those ginormous eyes.

"Yeesh."

Once he felt confident that she wasn't going to start bawling again, Rocket walked back to where his gun lay. He sighed in resignation as he felt Mantis pull herself up and follow him – at least it was better than having her pierce his eardrums and/or having to deal with everyone getting out of bed and scold him for making her cry.

As long as she was quiet, Rocket figured he could do his best to ignore her presence. He sat back down and began where he'd left off with assembling its pieces into formation, acutely aware of Mantis deciding to sit crisscross in front of him and watch. He detested hovering, that hadn't been a lie, but the process of putting his weapon together had a calming effect. Soon he was finished, and took a moment to appreciate how, when he held up to the starlight, its shiny cobalt and grey metal gleamed.

Mantis gasped quietly as she too stared at the firearm, reacting as if it was a firework display.

"It's beautiful." She breathed. The light from the shining metal reflected in her black eyes. "Will I be able to make something like that too?"

Rocket pulled the gun back down and into his lap, already unscrewing the barrel to begin taking it apart.

He stilled.

Oh, yeah. I'm supposed to be teaching her stuff.

He hadn't exactly forgotten, but he'd had serious doubts that the rest of the crew thought he was going to teach Mantis how put a blaster together – or any kind of weapon. He'd planned to do the bare minimum in fact, and simply give her the rundown of the Quadrant such as where the emergency exits were, and where she could find the autopilot when they were all too busy to fly the ship themselves. As far as maintenance, it wouldn't hurt to show her how to change a lightbulb or two either, but handling weapons? No.

That was his job.

"Uh…" Rocket moved to tell her as much, but there was that hopeful expression on her face that made his stomach churn. "Well…"

"You put it together so quickly!" Mantis went on as if he hadn't said a thing. "I barely saw your hands moving before you were done."

The raccoon's chest instinctively swelled with pride. "Of course not! Ain't anybody that can put a gun back together to blow a guy up better 'an me!"

"Oh!" Mantis exclaimed, imperceptive to his conceited boasting, or uncaring if she had wits enough to try and get on his good side. "You must have the fastest reflexes in the galaxy!"

"You got one thing right, lady." Rocket grinned at her wickedly. He'd already taken his weapon apart piece by piece during their short conversation and was building it up again. "No dog can come close to my abilities."

Mantis's expression faltered at his sobering words, as though she'd forgotten the ten minutes' prior when she'd been crying her eyes out in apology.

"That is true." She said softly. One of her hands left the safety of her lap to land on the cool floor beneath them and she began to trace the line between two metallic plates. "I should have known that. It was thoughtless of me to treat you like that, when I know what it's like to be thought of as a pet."

"Yeah?" Rocket flashed her his teeth in a mean grin. "When you were Ego's pet?"

Mantis nodded, teary-eyed. "Yes. I was treated terribly when… when I was Ego's pet."

Rocket gazed at her, taking in her obvious distress over having to recall living with that Jackass of a planet. He could feel the uncomfortable prickle of what was fast-becoming a commonplace emotion with him: guilt.

"Drax told me that you could'a put him to sleep." Rocket said suddenly. "So, why din't you do that and high-tail it outta that shithole?"

In the back of his mind he knew that it wasn't that simple, that it wouldn't have been that easy. When you were raised by abusive, psychopathic assholes, you were conditioned to believe that you were powerless and inferior. It became like second-nature.

Hell, Rocket not only knew what that was like, but in the back of his mind he could just barely recall believing he might actually die without those scientists. The very same scientists that had torn him apart and reassembled him for kicks.

Likewise, he knew it was unfair to be so hostile to this girl, but being defensive was second-nature too. He didn't know how many hands that fed him which he had bitten in all his years, but that was a mild sort o' metaphor for Rocket anyway. It would be better to say he'd blown up guys for doing little more than looking at him wrong, so Mantis was, admittedly, getting more courtesy from him than most for would for wanting to pet him in the first place.

Mantis's face had twisted in an unidentifiable expression, but it looked like she was in pain with the way her brow furrowed. He watched her look down, black eyes trained on her own hands that were once again delicately folded in her lap, and the guilt inside his stomach made him squirm.

Rocket sighed, rubbing the back of his head. "Look, I din't mean to upset ya – "

"I think," Mantis started, "I think I was afraid to even think about leaving. There was nowhere else for me to go. Ego and his children were the only company I had, but Ego was the only one who remained at all times."

She looked back up at him meaningfully. "And there was no one to help me leave the planet. I didn't have a Drax, or a Groot, or a Gamora, or a Peter, or a Kraglin."

Mantis's gaze wavered slightly as soon as she became aware of the fact that she had Rocket's full attention. She suddenly looked… shy. "I didn't have a Rocket to help me find a way out either."

I was scared to leave, to be alone.

Rocket inhaled sharply, but his heart wasn't in it to try and make a mockery of her words (though he was acutely aware of several snarky responses that he could dish out if he wanted to).

"Prob'ly… Din't have a ship either," Rocket eventually supplied, a lame attempt to smooth over his own conscience.

To his surprise (and relief), Mantis understood him immediately. She perked up with a bright, only slightly creepy smile.

"No! I did not have a ship." She giggled, "That would have been most helpful too!"

Rocket had never liked to be touched and that wasn't about to change.

"So you just put your hand on somebody and you know what they're feeling?" He scratched at his neck idly as if he wasn't all that curious. He'd been feigning a lack of curiosity the entire time he'd forced himself to converse with the woman, to reign in the mixture of discomfort and anxiety (and genuine intrigue – Rocket did like to know anyone and everything he dealt with piece by piece).

"Yes." Mantis answered brightly. "I can sense emotions, and I can even…"

The girl had not stopped smiling since he'd deigned to speak to her, but here she faltered slightly. Her gaze shifted from side to side, switching to Rocket sitting there for a moment, before choosing her next words carefully.

"I can even help others when they are… stressed or angry, or scared."

"Yeah?" Rocket asked. "How so?"

"Oh. Well," She shifted around to face him better, shoulders tensed, "I can touch someone and alter their moods. If… If Drax was angry, I could make him feel amused or content instead. But only for a short while!"

Rocket's ears twitched. He contemplated this new information as Mantis continued to sit and fidget. She looked like a guilty Xandarian preschooler, fiddling with her own clothes as she was wont to do when afraid of what others might think around her. It was habit that had no doubt come from trying to appease Ego when she'd served him, and Rocket would be all-out lying if he said that it didn't bother him to see. There was no reason to feel guilty for telling him what she was capable of, he'd been the one who'd asked in the first place.

"Eh… Well can you show me how ya do it?" Damn his sudden sympathetic streak; the things he did for these people.

Mantis's head snapped up and she gawked at him freely before her perky expression returned. If Mantis's ginormous pupils were capable of producing stars, then Rocket was sure he'd see them right then, twinkling in her massive black ogles.

She nodded vigorously before her hand shot out and she reached for him.

"Wait," Mantis stopped short. "Is this another practical joke?"

"No, no," Rocket nearly snapped. He showed valiant restraint in attempting to keep still and remain casual when all he wanted was to get this over with. You'd think that after living on the ship for as long as she had that Mantis would be able to pick up on body language, and understand that Rocket was trying to retain some form of dignity.

Then again, she spent a good deal of time with Drax, and that guy was barely competent in interpreting how people felt himself.

"I want you to. Come on, show me."

She waited for an instant, long enough for Rocket to start getting irritated again. Damn it, but why did she have to look so hurt at the thought of him potentially biting her again, as he'd done on Berhart?

Slowly, Mantis's hand reached out toward him and gently rested on top of his head, right between his ears.

Rocket inhaled as though he'd been punched the moment she made contact. A tingling sensation fluttered in his chest and began branching out everywhere within his body, from his center to his head and back down to his toes. It felt like sunlight was streaming in and warming his fur.

And If he were being honest, he'd say it felt pretty damn nice.

"What… what is this?" He asked in a daze, not quite recognizing his own voice with how mellow and not-at-all acerbic it was.

"You're feeling what I am feeling right now!" Mantis was beaming once again.

He could barely feel her fingers move in gentle circles between his ears, and he found that he didn't mind it that much.

"I'm happy!"