Please don't be mad, please don't be mad, please don't be mad and pleasanton'taskwheretheflarkIwasbecauseIdon'twannatalkaboutit! Thought Rocket, almost pleading as he held out the flower-patterned ceramic as a peace offering.

He nearly fell over from the force of Groot landing on his face with a delighted cry of 'I am Groot!'

"Yeah, yeah, you big softie," the raccoon grumbled with unnecessary gruffness as he patted the top of the plant's head. "I missed you too." He set the pot down and began the arduous struggle of peeling the sapling off his face. A minute or so into wrestling with Groot, he realised for the second time that he was being stared at.

Quill and Drax (who for some reason was wearing a shower cap?) were looking at him with the same wide-eyed, open-mouthed look that suggested they'd seen a ghost, whereas Gamora was regarding him coolly, her arms crossed over her chest. No doubt the assassin had already taken in his ship, his clothes, the cut on his forehead, the way he was leaning slightly to one side to keep his weight off his bad leg, the sickly-sweet perfume he was wearing and had decided that something didn't add up.

Damn her.

"What?" Rocket demanded, in what he hoped was his usual semi-hostile way.

It did nothing to stop Drax from being Drax, and only confirmed Rocket's suspicion that Gamora was onto him (and possibly pissed which meant his days were numbered), but at least it knocked Quill out of his stupor.

"'What?'" the Terran threw his arms up in disbelief. "That's all you have to say?"

"Well I only said anything because you were all staring at me!"

"Three hours Rocket, we said three hours! We've been here for six and-"

Making placating gestures with his paws, the raccoon chose to cut off his fearless moron of a leader with a healthy dose of sarcasm. "Okay, okay. I'm very sorry Captain, Quill, sir. I promise and swear by all of my munitions that I will never again be out past my curfew." Rocket scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest. "So I got a little bit sidetracked, no harm done, right?"

One of the few buildings in the vicinity still left standing promptly chose to collapse in on itself.

"I was told you were dead," Drax confessed, in his usual blunt manner that told Rocket nothing about what the Destroyer had made of this news.

The raccoon opened and shut his mouth, shook his head and decided that a) he didn't want to pursue that line of dialogue and b) the best defensive measures were offensive ones. "So what if I was late!? Noone gave Drax any crap about Ecury and we were there for three cycles!"

"Ecury isn't a black market filled with people trying to kill us!" Quill protested, pointing at the large alien Rocket had crash-landed into.

"See and that's the problem!" Rocket snapped. There was an awkward pause as he recalibrated that sentence and realised it made no sense and now he looked like a d'ast frickin' idiot. Oh well, too late to back out now. "You, Quill, have an irrational hatred for black markets!"

It was a lame retort, but somehow still one the former ravager took offence to. "No I don't!"

Drax placed a firm hand on Quill's shoulder. "Yes, you do. There is no shame in it."

"So what if shopping took longer than expected?" Rocket went on, taking advantage of Quill's confusion and managing to successfully pry Groot off of his muzzle. A solid two for one. "You have any idea how hard it is to haggle for things when you live with a bunch of do-gooders who won't let you steal-"

"Rocket," Gamora took a deep breath, which told Rocket that she was far, far beyond pissed and that he would have to choose his next words very carefully. "Stop it."

Still the raccoon forced himself to meet her gaze with a defiant glare. She doesn't know. She doesn't know. She doesn't know. She can't know! "Stop what?"

"Pretending that that," she pointed at the ceramic sitting innocently between them. "Is the only reason we came here. By the way, real sloppy way to fake your death."

Rocket blinked. "You… know about that?"

"Oh yeah, we do," Quill beamed and pulled out an infoglass from his satchel.

"Is that my-?"

The tablet was spun round, proudly displaying a zoomed-in holo of a young four-armed reptiloid girl squeezing to death the 'cute' little intergalactic hero she'd seen on the holonet. Rocket winced. He'd forgotten all about the barkeep's daughter. Honestly the whole faking his death thing didn't feel like it was part of the same cycle anymore...

"Delete that!" Rocket snapped, and were it not for the fact that pouncing on the tablet would give his leg away (and they already knew something was up, they didn't need to know he was injured) he'd have ripped the infoglass out of Peter's stupid humie hands.

"Nope!" Quill took a step backwards and snapped a holo of the raccoon currently glaring daggers at him. "I like the new threads."

"I am Groot!"

Rocket sighed and sagged in defeat. "Thanks. Killer discount. Didn't come in your size. And before you ask, no, I didn't steal i-" He cut himself off with a squeak as fresh pain spiked up behind him. The raccoon did a half-turn, and found his tail locked in the jaws of another one of his former cellmates… and not one he particularly liked.

His ears fell flat against the back of his head, Cosmo's malevolent laughter reverberating inside his skull.

"We meet again, 89P13! You have no idea how long I have been waiting for this moment!"

"Oh crap." Imminent beatdown aside, keeping his ordeal a secret had just gotten a dozen times more impossible because of course the universe would throw a mindreader at him.

"Oh da! Ever since you left me on Contraxia, I was wondering what would be the most appropriate form of my righteous anger. What would reeeeeeeally get under your stitched-together skin?" She relinquished her grip on his tail, and crouched low, tail wagging in a blur of excitement.

Rocket swallowed audibly. "Er- guys… a little help here?"

"We already agreed to let the dog have their way with you," Drax shrugged. "It is out of our hands."

"Da! We had agreement!"

"What agreement?"

In response to that, Gamora gave Cosmo a grudging nod. "Go easy on him."

"C'mon guys, this isn't funny!" Rocket snapped, a note of desperation in his voice.

Quill put on his headphones and turned up the music.

It really sucks to have friends.

It was another four hours before the Guardians were ready to leave Corix 85 for good.

The outer hull around Rocket's room had needed half a dozen stitches to be made airtight again (though really it was a miracle it hadn't been blown open completely), the Milano's windshield had to be replaced, Groot had to be repotted (he wasn't supposed to be walking yet), the table had to be welded back together, the remains of the Hadron Enforcer had to be mourned over, Rocket's new ship had to be stripped of it's interior, crammed full of Gamora's siblings and subsequently attached to the Milano via a tow rope (which meant the entire journey to Tharvis K-8 would have to be done without jump-points), and finally, Rocket had to be talked into boarding.

"I ain't sharing a ship with some mangy, mind-reading mutt," the raccoon crossed his arms over his chest and shot Cosmo a glare. "Don't want her fleas getting into my fur."

"I do not have fleas!"

"Rocket, we don't have time for this!" Quill groaned, not at all used to being the voice of reason in any discussion. "You heard Gamora, it's only a matter of time until more of her crazy siblings show up and I'm not even sure how we managed to beat the first four! Unless you want to face an entire army, we've got to-"

"I don't got a problem with leaving!" Rocket snapped, and jabbed a claw at the spacedog. "I got a problem with her. Either ditch the stray or come pick me up later."

"You can always ride shotgun," Quill gestured behind them at the four faces of the Black Order squished flat against the windshield of the one man spacecraft Rocket had 'borrowed' from 'some jerk, why do you care?' The raccoon growled, but he'd been growling non-stop for the past few hours. "And if you fancy your chances against Thanos you're welcome to stay. Maybe Drax will be willing to join you."

Rocket opened and shut his mouth, grit his teeth and stormed up the ramp without another word. He made the mistake of stomping forwards on his bad leg and was unable to hide the pain that rippled across his face, but took another determined step forwards before Quill could comment on it.

Unfortunately, Star-Lord's stupid, long humie legs meant that it was all too easy for the terran to catch up to him. "Look man, if it wasn't for Cosmo, I'm not sure we'd be having this conversation right now."

"You make that sound like it's a bad thing," Rocket grumbled, exchanging glares with the dog in question as she padded past.

"She saved my life, you know."

"Yeah, and she bit my tail, smashed me into the ground and covered my face in slobber. Am I supposed to be grateful?"

Peter sighed, pressing a button so that the ramp folded itself back into place with a hiss. "We only got Cosmo to help us because we were worried-"

"I know you're idiots, Quill-"

"About you!" the terran cut him off. Rocket had no response at the ready for that, so Peter went on. "Whatever you were doing was taking forever and you weren't answering your comms and we live in a big and dangerous galaxy. We just wanted to make sure you were okay."

For a moment, complex emotion seemed to well up inside the raccoon and Quill was sure that he'd finally pierced the rock hard shell of the roasted krakulat and had gotten to the soft and squishy insides-

"Like I said, I know you're idiots." Rocket turned away and limped determinedly towards the fridge.

Drax beat him to it, picked up a beer from the top shelf and held it down to the raccoon's height. "We most certainly are. After all, only a fool would be delighted by your continued existence."

Rocket snatched the can out of his hand with a half-hearted snarl. He opened his mouth to say something (presumably mean), thought better of it and shook his head. With a sigh and a slump of his shoulders, Rocket made his way towards the cockpit. "Let's just get the flark off this planet already."

"I am Groot?" inquired the sapling from where his pot sat on Rocket's chair.

"Yeah, yeah, Gammy was right."

"I am Groot?"

"Nothing happened!" the raccoon snapped, pulling the navigation system down to his height and flicking through various nearby destinations. "Where we heading?"

"Tharvis K-8," Gamora supplied, already strapped into her seat and waiting impatiently for take off.

Rocket bit back a growl as he keyed in the coordinates. "Now I wish I had stayed behind."

"What's wrong with Tharvis?" asked Quill, as he clambered into the cockpit holding a beer can of his own.

"It's the first prison he ever broke out of," Cosmo supplied, hopping onto the terran's lap for a lack of her own seat.

"Second," Rocket corrected, slapping the navigation system back into place. "And stop doing that! I don't want your voice in my head and I don't want you lookin' at my thoughts. Bad enough I can't frickin' shoot you."

"You still owe me eighteen units."

"If that's what it takes to keep you outta-" Rocket dug into his pockets, before remembering grimly that his clothes and everything in them had been incinerated a few hours ago. "Drax, can I borrow eighteen units?"

"Well a past jailbreak shouldn't be a problem," Quill went on, as Drax handed a unit slip to Gamora who handed it to Rocket who tossed it in Cosmo's general direction. "Our records have been cleared and we're y'know, the Guardians of the Galaxy."

"A clear record's one thing, but I'm pretty sure I scratched the warden's eye out and if I learned anything today it's that some folks can hold a frickin' grudge." Rocket shuddered, strapping himself besides Groot and instinctively wrapping his tail around the sapling's pot.

"Cheer up man," Quill leaned over to give the raccoon a friendly punch to the shoulder. "Dey said these guys are some of the most wanted folks in the Galaxy- Nova's likely paying a small fortune for them. And y'know you did take out the big guy all by yourself so if you want to haggle for a quarter of it, by all means. I promise to at least consider it."

"Sure, whatever," Rocket sighed, slumping in defeat as Quill fired up the engines.

The Guardians shared a look of concern between themselves as the silence stretched on.

Eventually Gamora gave voice to what they were all wondering. "What happened?"

"Nothing happened!" the raccoon insisted. "Why do you guys keep asking me that?!"

"It is not like you to suddenly express disinterest in money," Drax explained. "Either you have been replaced by a skrull or something more urgent is weighing on your mind."

Rocket winced, and figured denial was a lost cause if even Drax had noticed something was up. "I-okay something happened!" Rocket scratched at his chest, incredibly glad that the seating arrangement meant he didn't have to face anyone. "But I dealt with it, okay?"

"I am Groot."

"I'm fine!"

"You sure man?" asked Quill, wearing an expression of genuine concern. "Coz you kinda seem a little-"

"You'd be pretty pissed if some dumbass humie incinerated all of your stuff!" Rocket snapped, going back on the offensive. He jabbed at the walkman hanging from Quill's belt. "I notice your music box ain't scratched."

"My walkman's not going to blow up just because someone fell on it!"

"And how would you like it if your stupid, oversentimental Captain hired some rabies-infested stray to bite you on the tail-"

"I do not have rabies!"

"Screw you, Cosmo!"

"Quill does not have a tail."

"Thanks Drax, I hadn't noticed!"

The Kylosian smiled. "You're welcome."

Quill took advantage of Rocket's temporary speechlessness (Drax's way of saying things had a tendency to do that to people) to get a word in. "And how would you feel if you heard one of us just up and died?"

The question caught Rocket off guard. Unprompted, a memory played out in his mind's eye.

The gunshot was deafening. Lylla stared up at the ceiling, the light fading from her eyes as they sought out a sky that wasn't there.

The raccoon shook the thought out of his head, uncomfortably aware that they'd all seen him phase out. "I'd be thrilled!" he snarled, with not nearly as much menace as he'd meant for it to carry.

Quill had the audacity to frown at him, doubt spelled out on every inch of his face. "And then you found our stuff crumpled in a ball next to a smoking pile of rubble and followed us into a sewer-"

"I taste what I touch and can smell an orloni from a quadrant out- no frickin' way am I ever following you into a sewer!"

"Fine," Quill shrugged. "Next time your stupid little ringtail needs saving, we won't bother."

"Good!"

"Good!"

"Fine!"

"Fine!" the terran huffed. There was an awkward pause, interrupted by a series of sharp indrawn breaths, and when Quill looked over he was startled to see that Rocket was rubbing tears out of his eyes. The sight was so disconcerting that he very nearly flew into Corix's moon. "Look man, I didn't mean-"

"Yes you did!" the raccoon snapped.

"I am Groot."

"No! No, it's fine, really! It's not like I ever expected any of you idiots to help!" Desperate for the familiar comfort of destruction, Rocket hurled his untouched can of beer at the controls, and as luck would have it, hit the playback button on the Milano's comm unit.

"Quill!" came the raccoon's voice, sounding far too desperate for his liking "Ahem, Quill, do you hear me? Gamora? Drax? Y'know, I'd have picked someplace nicer if I knew you guys'd be ditching me."

With almost feral chittering of rage, Rocket managed to wrestle off his seatbelt and throw himself at the comm, cutting short the rest of the message and fast-forwarding to the next one.

"Guys, I-I need an extraction."

With a snarl, the raccoon smashed the playback button again, fast-forwarding to the last message.

"Yeah, the explosions were me."

Rocket deleted the rest of the transmission but it was too late, the damage was already done. He could feel their eyes on the back of his head and there was an inexplicable pressure in his chest that made it impossible to breathe, he was panicking again, searching for something, anything that gave him a way out. He whirled on the spot and jabbed an accusatory claw at Gamora. "It's not my fault she didn't tell us about her psycho siblings!"

The assassin frowned at that. "I didn't feel the need to say anything because I assumed our stay would be a short one. I also didn't want to bring it up because you seemed hell-bent on Corix and I didn't want to make it seem like I was overruling your decision. Your turn?"

Rocket found himself at a loss for words. For a heartbeat, it was terrifyingly tempting to tell them everything. About Lylla, and Teefs, and Floor and how they had replaced him with some long-eared jackass and how he was going to have to get himself killed if he wanted to finally be free of the asshole who had created him. There was a bomb on his heart and it could blow up at any moment. He opened and shut his mouth. As much as he trusted them, he could already see their sympathy and concern turning to horror and disgust. He was just a freakish little thing, what right did he have to upend the whole universe?

"Alright," Rocket sighed, staring pointedly at his feet. "If you gotta know, some guys tried to nab me. That's why I ran into, yanno, the sewer, that's why I blew up the street, that's why I'm wearing this crap." He gestured at the stupid pink outfit. "Whatever. It's dealt with now. Finished. Over. Kaput." The raccoon sighed again, and idly scratched at his chest. "Can we please not talk about it?"

For a while noone spoke, and Rocket made the mistake of stealing a glance about the cockpit. Drax and Gamora were both stoic by nature and gave little away, but Quill looked downright guilty about pressing the issue.

"Go get some rest, man. I'll get us to Tharvis."

Rocket flared up with rage. No, no it was too easy. The idiots had no reason to be kind to him. He was lying to them. He was going to hurt them. He was going to get them killed just like Floor, Teefs and Lylla and all because he was too pathetic a coward to keep his mouth shut and die. "And where am I supposed to do that now that Quill's turned my room and everything I own to smoulders."

"I didn't-"

"Yes you did!" the raccoon snarled, and for a moment he hated every stupid thing about Peter Quill. "And you broke the Hadron Enforcer and smashed my aerorig! And then you had the audacity to get mad at me for not frickin' dying!"

"That's not-"

"Well I'm so sorry I disappointed you, Star-Munch!" Rocket went on, voice cracking. "You must have been so damn happy-"

"You know that isn't true!"

"He was crying actually!"

"Shut up, Cosmo!"

"I am Groot!"

"It's not okay! None of this is-"

"ROCKET!" Drax did not often raise (or for that matter, lower) his voice, but when he did it certainly got everyone's attention. "Use Quill's bed. He will have to stay up to pilot anyways."

"That… makes sense…" the raccoon swallowed, flabbergasted by Drax's wisdom and grateful for the escape it provided. He picked up Groot's pot from his seat and limped over to hand the sapling to the only person on board the Milano he trusted with them. "Make sure he doesn't stay up too late."

Gamora nodded, eyes focused on his leg even as she took in the way his arms were shaking. "You know, we have medpacks if you want one for your-"

Rocket shook his head. "N-nah, it's fine. I'll walk it off." He cleared his throat and gestured down the stairs towards the Milano's living quarters. "You don't mind, right, er- Quill?"

The terran only smirked at that, and it was as if Rocket's outburst had never happened, it was as if nothing had happened and they were still... friends. "Try not to get fur everywhere."

Ideally the raccoon would have returned the witty retort with one of his own, but his mind was spinning, his stomach was churning and his mouth was dry so he settled for a simple, sarcastic 'Ha-ha' and scrambled down the stairs to the relative safety of solitude.

"The beast sleeps," Drax informed the rest of the Guardians a few minutes later. "I would advise keeping your voices low so as not to wake him. Rocket does not like it when we speak of him while he is not present."

"Shouldn't you also be lowering yours?" Quill whispered.

"I hardly see the point, after all he is already asleep."

"I see he hasn't changed a bit," Cosmo sighed, leaping off of Quill's lap to occupy the raccoon's empty seat. "I thought saving the universe would maybe mellow him out a bit, but I guess jerkface will always be jerkface."

"I don't think he's normally this hostile," Peter leaned back in his chair, letting the ship cruise along the empty void. "Feels like he's always taking his rage out on me though."

"Drax is too easy a target, he is too attached to Groot and he finds me mildly intimidating," Gamora pointed out. "That leaves you and now Cosmo one of whom is a telepath, the other is three for three in your training battles. You have similar taste in music, you are both exceptional pilots-"

Quill beamed. "Did you just say I was exceptional?"

"She did."

Gamora rolled her eyes. "You're the closest thing he has to an equal, Peter."

"Would have been four to three if Drax didn't get involved."

"Not trying to say grass is green, but I feel like there's something 89P13 is not telling you."

"Rocket is indeed a beast of many mysteries," Drax agreed. "There are many things he does not tell us. He speaks not of his past, nor does he speak of the future. He does not speak of who created him, or why they would do so. He hasn't even told me his favourite colour."

"It's pink," said Quill, scrunching up his face. "Or at least, I think he said something like that."

"Yer gonna laaaaaaugh Quill," the raccoon teetered dangerously to one side.

"Promise I won't," the terran replied, similarly swaying on the spot.

"Alright, alright." Rocket cleared his throat and for a second it almost looked like he was sober. "My favourite colour- is PINK!" The raccoon promptly fell over laughing hysterically.

Drax sat in deep contemplation for a while, as if betrayed by the memory. "Why would he not tell me this?"

"Probably thought you'd think it's a girly colour or something," Quill shrugged.

"Pink is... feminine?"

"Yeah?"

"What about pink is feminine?"

"Has he told any of you about a 'Lylla'?"

The name sounded familiar to Quill, but he had no immediate recollection of where he'd heard it.

"It came up in court," Gamora supplied, frowning at something the terran couldn't see. "She's listed as an accomplice in a few of his earlier crimes, but that seems to be as far as anyone knows about her. Why do you ask?"

"I don't mean to pry, but sometimes when a mind is being turbulent thoughts... leak out." Cosmo stared at the floor rather shamefaced. "I'm not trying to look, I just happen to see. It's... usually nothing important. Right now he's also thinking about his teeth and floor! He... thinks a lot about those things."

"I see now why Rocket loathes this dog. She has no respect for privacy."

"That's not the only reason," Cosmo sighed and curled up in a ball. "I think mainly he doesn't like what I remind him of."

"And what's that?"

"Himself."

Footnote: Chapter was originally waaaaaaaaaaay longer but I've moved some stuff around planning-wise to help with story flow. Which is why I now get to update a day early! Yay!

Was a super fun chapter and also hard to write because while I do love typing dialogue it's kinda hard when you have four plus people in one room at the same time. I hope the argument/dramatics weren't too cheesy- it's not really my fortee but I do want this fic to be character-centric so there'll be a fair amount of this kind of squabbling. Lemme know what you think/how I can improve.

Next week- a flashback of sorts. I'm not going to say too much about it but I will say that the title is 'The Dog Days' so that should give you some idea of what it's about :P