Peter wasn't really sure how it got to this, but then again, this was pretty much what his life had come to. He'd made his peace with that. Besides, he thought the Revengers was a pretty cool team name. Not as cool as the Guardians of the Galaxy, but still cool nonetheless- he could respect a good team name when he heard one.
From what he understood- these were the two space faring members of the Revenger team (they said their third member was a human who preferred to stay on Earth). The Guardians were just two clicks outside of Melpomene when apparently Thor was two clicks outside of Melpomene too, and long story short now Peter was host to a team Save the Universe reunion of just the non-human members.
That's why he had two drinking Asgardians on his ship right now.
Technically the second Asgardian (was her name Valkyrie?) was just a friend who Thor wanted to introduce to the rest of the people who he saved the universe with.
Whatever. Mini-team reunion (Peter couldn't just call it catching up with friends, even though Thor called him his friend- he introduced everyone that way- if he met you once, you were his friend).
Peter liked Valkyrie. She was cool- much cooler than her sidekick golden boy. Something about her reminded him of Yondu- probably how much she smacked Thor upside the head.
"Have you met my friend Rabbit yet?" Thor asked, turning towards Valkyrie to evidently make introductions when he saw Rocket walk in the room. (Rocket might be the one exception to Thor's introducing everybody as friend despite not actually being friends- the two were unusually buddy buddy, especially for someone as confrontational and hostile as Rocket usually was).
Valkyrie narrowed her eyes and looked between the two, the small furry creature standing near the doorway and the man sitting next to her, before she promptly smacked the latter upside the head without spilling even a drop of alcohol.
Thor, meanwhile, lost a good quarter of his drink via the sloshing that accompanied being hit upside the head by a valkyrie.
"Have you ever seen a rabbit?" She asked, looking at him like he'd just said the stupidest thing she'd ever heard.
"Of course I've seen a rabbit," he scoffed like he was offended by the question, all while rubbing the back of his head. Even half-drunk and with her nondominant hand, she still smacked very hard. "That's how I know he is one. Trust me, on Migard they have ridiculous variations of animals. Like dogs. They have real dogs on Migard, but they only refer to them as wolves. The other creatures they call dogs are weak, tiny, yappy things that have everything that makes them a dog bred out of them, and they get so small and unintimidating that humans literally carry them around in their knapsacks. And they are so cute," Thor emphasized, smiling brightly at her like he was talking about something wondrous and not 'tiny, yappy things'. "And soft and fluffy and always happy, and if you ask really nicely, most humans will let you pet their dog things, and they love being pet," he continued excitedly. "Some of them even like to be held! Before Earth, I couldn't imagine ever picking up a pup that didn't immediately try to snap at me. I love holding earth dogs. I'll show you one someday. So humans have real dogs, and then they have 'dogs'," he told her, making air quotes and everything. "They have many variations of species on earth. Rocket is clearly an earth rabbit. Just not a real rabbit. He's a 'rabbit'," Thor said, this time raising and lowering his eyebrows with the air quote motion. "He's a weird Migard version of a rabbit, but he's still a Rabbit."
Valkyrie blinked, giving him a blank look the first couple seconds after he finished speaking.
"That might be the dumbest shit I've ever heard," she said, completely deadpanned.
"How would you know! You've never been to Migard!"
"Is he even from Migard?" She asked, directing the question at Thor. They were both too caught up arguing with each other to notice that Rocket had left ages ago. He went to go get himself a snack before coming back, because watching them fight was a great way to stave off boredom. Before he came back to the room, he invited Drax to come too, so they could make a bet on who would win if this argument came down to blows. Rocket had his money on the surly chick with one hell of a smack. "They have animals all over the universe, case in point, dogs on Asgard and real dogs on Migard. And unlike you, I actually know what animals look like. Look at him!" Valkyrie exclaimed, throwing her hands in Rocket's direction. "That's not a rabbit! That's a badger! He's clearly a badger, Thor. I don't know how you missed that. How can you not know a badger when you see one?"
Really, it was moments like this that made her think maybe he was a lost cause. Did his new eye even work right?
"You calling him Rabbit all the time is just insulting," she continued lecturing, even though the argument could be made that talking about Rocket like he wasn't even in the room was even more insulting.
Meanwhile, across the room, Rocket could tell that even Peter and Gamora sitting at the table were now invested in where this argument was gonna end. This was entertaining. This was probably the most fun he'd had all month.
"He's even got the stripes and everything!" Valkyrie claimed. "He's a badger. I can't believe that no one's corrected you on this yet."
Rocket padded over to Quill on the other side of the room without the two even noticing, slipping by the background of this conversation that he could totally hear, because the whole ship could hear.
"Which one is worse?" He asked Quill, since he had no real reference point. "I don't know which one I should be offended at. Are they any better than Raccoon?" He kept his voice slightly hushed, even though he was pretty sure nothing save a supernova would break up their fighting.
"One, you shouldn't be offended at Raccoon, cause you are one," Peter answered disinterestedly, still pretending to read his data pad instead of listening in on the near shouting match going on in the same room. "Two, it's rabbit. That's definitely the worst one. Rabbits are all cute and fluffy and nonviolent. So not you. Badger, on the other hand, is pretty badass. Badgers are cool and badass. That would be a good superhero name. The Badger. Badgers are awesome."
The argument never came to blows, unfortunately (from Rocket's perspective).
He hung around a couple minutes more after the two tipsy Asgardians had quieted down, in case it was just the eye of the storm or something, but no. He went back to his room a few minutes later, making Peter promise to let him know if they start brawling.
After that there was a few minutes of amicable silence in the common room, but even that was soon broken, because quiet was something that didn't exist on this ship.
"Marmot!" Gamora suddenly shouted out, and everyone's head turned to her, even Thor and Valkyrie swiveled around as she yelled out again. "Hedgehog!" This exclamation came with a snicker from the highly skilled, extremely deadly assassin. She was looking at something on her data pad and quietly laughing to herself.
"Wait, no, he's a wallaby! A wombat! Rocket's a wombat!" Gamora laughed, just cracking herself up.
"Hey babe, whatcha looking at?" Peter asked, taking the data pad out of her hands to see since she was too busy snickering to herself to answer his question.
He had to scroll up to the top of the text before he understood what was going on. It turned out that Gamora had pulled up a list of Terran mammals, and was just shouting out whatever ones she thought sounded the funniest, and cracking herself up in the process.
Yup, that's his girl right there. Getting in on the joke and just cracking herself up with lame humor and snickering at random words on a list.
Gamora was clutching her sides across the table from him right now, laughing so hard it had become soundless, and he was pretty sure she was mouthing wombat over and over to herself as she chuckled breathlessly. God, she was too cute.
But there was definitely something he needed to set straight, so Peter turned to the two Asgardians and whispered "He's a raccoon."