They decided to remain docked on Nova for a couple days afterward, to clean up the animals and restock the ship. There had been more of the creatures than Rocket guessed, and although he didn't regret rescuing them, he did lament stumbling over them and stepping in droppings all day. They each had six legs and shaggy white fur, and an excess of droopy whispers bristling from their furry faces. They peered at Rocket day and night with golden eyes like twin moons. They were temperamental animals, sweet and serene one moment, and biting him the next. The whole thing made Rocket incredibly tense.
It didn't help that he and Drax were on the rocks. Rocket was too proud (surprise, surprise) to simply ask what the hell was going on, so instead he threw himself into rehabilitating the animals, and pretended not to be hurting. When Drax tried to kiss his neck or lure him to bed, he waved him off, saying he was too busy. Of course Drax knew he was lying. But as long as Rocket refused to talk about it, there was nothing he could do.
On the second morning of their not-fight, Rocket woke up at the kitchen table where he had eventually passed out, and felt that Drax had draped a blanket over him in the night. Why am I mad at him, again? He asked himself. The real culprit was Rocket's never ending compulsion to drive away anybody who loved him, but at the time, he remembered Drax pulling away his hand in the market, and hardened his heart.
Later that day they sat together in silence on the floor of Drax's quarters, each with one of the animals in their laps, running brushes through their long, matted fur. Rocket in particular had been brushing for days, to the point where his hands cramped, and still he'd only made it through half of them. The irony was not lost on him that he felt more empathy for these dumb creatures than for any sentient being he'd ever met. They reminded him of himself, of course. They had been experimented on, and ultimately cobbled together, by some higher power. They'd had no say in their fates.
But Rocket also felt jealous of them. They were dumb animals, and seemed to have no memories to torture them in the black hours of the night. The two times that he'd spent the night away from Drax, he'd been woken many times by nightmares, and balefully watched the creatures slumber around him.
"Have you decided what to call them?" Drax asked.
"Nah. It's not really up to me. I mean... I have no idea what they are, so I can't really chose the name for 'em."
Drax snorted. "Everything is named by someone. Swords do not title themselves, and neither do trees, or-"
"Raccoons?"
The large man fell silent. "Are you angry with me?" he asked, as he continued to brush the creature chirping in his lap. It sang sweetly as he untangled it's knotted coat.
"No! I told you that already. You got a problem with your ears?"
"My ears are functioning normally," Drax answered sullenly.
Rocket peered at him out of the corner of his eye, and felt bad about the miserable expression he found on the man's face. "What?" he asked, even though Drax had said nothing.
"I have missed you in the evenings," he said, keeping his eyes glued to the whiskery animal in his lap. "I know you suffer from night terrors. I do as well, and without you, they have increased."
"Ah, yeah. That's the only reason, right?" Rocket made a universally recognized motion with his hand and poked his tongue against the inside of his cheek, making it bulge obscenely in time with the jerking gesture.
"No. I also enjoy your company. Why are you pretending to brush your teeth?"
"You idiot," Rocket said, head lolling back against the cot as though talking to Drax exhausted him. "It's-"
"A blowjob. I know. I was only joking."
Rocket laughed. "You always surprise me. Flark. Why do you do this to me?" He clapped his hands over his eyes and the furry creature on his lap scrambled away, where it got into a honking scuffle with Drax's animal. Rocket groaned. "Okay. Why did you act weird with me at the market?"
"Weird?"
"When I tried to hold your hand." As if he just remembered, and had not been obsessing over it for the past two days, he added, "And when I called you babe. Like I freaked you out."
Drax watched the animals roll around on the carpet for a long moment. It annoyed Rocket that Drax always took long pauses when asked a serious question, like he was putting together a careful answer that Rocket would be unable to rebuke. Eventually he said, "I worried that the others might suspect the nature of our relationship."
Well, there it was. It cut Rocket surprisingly deep to hear it. "Ah. Obviously you would want to hide it. After all, you're screwing a monster," he snarled.
"You're not a monster. I love you." The abrupt way Drax stated the fact, even though the phrase had not yet become part of their vocabulary, struck Rocket like a bolt of lightning. "But when I am with you, I feel disloyal to the memory of my wife. If the others know, they may accuse me of forgetting her."
"Who would say that? Our friends wouldn't!" Rocket cried. But he could tell Drax really thought they might, because a tear rolled down his cheek, and he turned away quickly so Rocket wouldn't see.
"They would think it."
"Babe..." Rocket knew all about insecurity, but had thought Drax immune to it. It was strange to see the strong man cry. Suddenly he did remember something. "Wait, what about that stuff on your planet, about warriors getting it on? To stop sexual frustration, or whatever? You said that even men who had wives did it."
For a moment, Rocket thought that Drax had begun to cry harder, but then realized that the man's shoulders hitched with laughter rather than sobs. "What's so funny?"
"It really is not humorous. It's terrible."
"What's terrible?" Rocket asked, growing exasperated.
Drax turned back to him, a secret light dancing in his gray-blue eyes, and an embarrassed smile on his face. "I lied to you."
"About what, exactly?"
"On my planet, we have words to indicate homosexual and heterosexual relationships, and conflicts are born out of people's orientations. Also, our warriors to not typically engage in sexual activity with each other. I only said that because I wanted to bed you."
Rocket jumped up, and shouted, "You filthy dog! I fell for that line!" But he grinned in spite of his indignation.
"To borrow an expression from you... Sorry, but I'm not sorry. Your companionship has been worth tarnishing my honor."
Rocket fell on him like a whirlwind, pulling his ears, and at the same time planting furry kisses all over his his surprised face. "I should kill you, you jerk. You horrible, sexy, dirty bastard." Drax reached up and cupped a hand around Rocket's slender back, and pulled him into a deep kiss, Rocket's whiskers tickling his nose as his tongue darted out to taste his lips, and his heart thrummed painfully away in his chest. "I love you," he murmured against Drax's mouth.
Mmm," Drax replied distractedly, as his large but surprisingly nimble fingers stripped Rocket out of his clothes. Rocket thought that was fine with him, as those deft hands explored his entire body. Then Drax did 'bed him'. Rocket rode his length to control the depth, but he allowed Drax to grasp his furry hips. The bite of blunt fingernails against his skin drove him crazy. Babe, he panted, as the man below him trembled and writhed with the desire to thrust deeper, and Rocket said, I can't hold out, and then came onto Drax's belly with a short, sharp cry. Afterward he helped Drax finish off. It didn't take long, and he narrowly avoided having to clean a mess out of his fur.
Side by side on the bed, they caught their breath.
"You never noticed," Drax said. "I added them myself, yesterday, when you left to purchase the new enclosures for the animals."
Rocket had no idea what he was talking about, but then he saw them. The marks were easily missed, just a couple new scrawls of red in the already busy pattern across Drax's chest and shoulders- uneven lengths, spanning from just below the clavicle and up around to the nape of his neck. Rocket touched the raised welts gingerly. The ink was fresh.
"A long, happy life, and a burden," Rocket whispered.
"I hope you don't mind, I altered them slightly. To another of my race, they would show that I found my soulmate in someone who had previously been a friend."
"Soulmate?" Rocket gasped.
"I must warn you, however, that you will have to combat my wife for my hand when you arrive in the afterlife. Alternately, you may choose to coexist in a family unit. Is this alright?" Drax asked, as he wrapped an arm around Rocket's small frame, pulling him closer.
Rocket, who doesn't believe in an afterlife- Doesn't believe that any all-knowing being could give rise in a universe in which someone might take an innocent creature and put so much pain into it, and then give it intelligence so that it fully grasp the unending nature of that pain- didn't argue. Instead he said, "No problem. I'll beat the crap outta her. I'll steal her man" And then dozed off in Drax's loving embrace.
