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It’s springtime in the skull.
Not really. The climate-control’s pretty steady here on Knowhere now, thanks to the chief engineer — who just happens to be Rocket himself, of course. The temperature really only goes down a few degrees when he turns it down —specifically, for the Knowhere Christmas Party — or when stellar winds buffet ice-asteroids into their path.
So it’s not really spring, but it feels like spring. All those little blue flowers blooming up the cracks in the Knowhere pavement, petals unfurling with the warmth of the manufactured sun. Rocket thinks he notices every time a new patch of ‘em show up, just like he notices when a fresh bunch blossom.
He notices these things.
He’s not sure when he started noticing ‘em. He supposes he’s always been pretty observant, at least about some things. Danger, for instance. Opportunities. Grifts. Sharp words. How Howard cheats at cards every frickin’ time. Some people — specifically, Pete — might even call him sensitive. But it’s only been in the last few circs that he’s started noticing other things as well — like these weird blue flowers. And how good coffee smells in the morning. And how happily Phyla smiles when she’s playing with the other Star Kids.
And how lonesome you’d looked when he’d first seen you on the skull.
The first few times he’d spotted you, he’d done his best to ignore you. New faces on Knowhere aren’t uncommon. In fact, it used to be normal to see people rotate in and out of the streets, on account of the skull being such a shit-hole. Too many of the universe’s poor and hungry had been forced to come work in the mines: borrowing years from the ends of their lives in order to survive for now. Meanwhile, the dregs of society — like himself — would also gravitate out to Knowhere: cutting deals they shouldn’t deal in, gambling on things they shouldn’t gamble on, drinking things they shouldn’t drink, and hiding from the frickin’ cops.
Things have changed, though — as much as it makes him uncomfortable to admit it. Nowadays, Knowhere is something of a — well, a haven. And not for violent shitbags, like before. No; now it’s a haven for, like, lost frickin’ souls or something. Rocket doesn’t like to think about it too much — it feels too poetical. Too sentimentalistic. More importantly, he’s always been the superstitious sort, so there’s a little bit of fear that if he acknowledges that truth — that Knowhere has become a place of safety and healing for refugees and rejects — then maybe he’ll fuckin’ jinx it.
Which is all to say, it wasn’t weird that you’d showed up. New kid, with big shiny eyes, taking in everything around you. A little bit of hope clinging to the corner of your mouth, like the galaxy hadn’t quite beaten it out of you yet.
He’d expected that springtime bloom to flourish — as sure as the weedy blue flowers that now grow up out of the cracks in the bone-pavement, right alongside the sparse grasses that he’d once kicked into submission. That’s what tends to happen for newcomers these days: they find a pocket of Knowhere that fits their shape perfectly, and it suddenly seems like the skull has been waiting just for them, since long before they’d even been born — maybe since the celestial itself had been formed. A home — a place to belong.
Sure, there are still some shitheads here and there — and that’s not even counting himself, though he knows it should. But in general, scammers and grifters don’t tend to stay skullside very long anymore — not once they realize that the city of Exitar and its surrounding communities have become a glittering constellation of found families, each looking out for one another between the stars.
Rocket doesn’t fuck around with shit like that, either. The newcomers, that is. The fresh faces all trying to find their way. He’s got his own found family to wrangle like a herd of flerkens drunk on a pile of fermented yaro root, and besides, he knows he’s a shithead himself. Or, as Mantis would kindly euphemize, a little bit rough around the edges. Either way, he’s not trying to fuck things up for the tenderfoots. He’s a genius about a lot of things, but being welcoming ain’t one of ‘em. And neither is people. So, despite the fact that all the old-timers seem to love their new captain — for reasons frankly frickin’ unknown — Rocket tries not to get in the way.
But he notices.
He notices everything.
Which is why he continues to notice you.
You’re as good as any of the rest of the newcomers. Better than some of them, if he’s being honest. A little reserved sometimes, but always ready with warmth in your eyes when someone talks to you. Unlike him, you’ve got the ability to make people feel welcome just fine. You find ways to help out in the community — things that speak to your strengths — but you’re understated too. Nervous when you feel like you’re being scrutinized.
Who wouldn’t be?
And the people of the community like you — of course they do. Rocket can see it, even when he suspects you can’t. You’ve got a good sense of humor. You care. They’re grateful for that. They resonate with that. You’re important to people.
But that little blue blossom of hope at the corner of your mouth never seems to grow into something that says, Oh, hey. I found it. My home. The place I’m s’posed to be.
“Nebs,” he says, one rotation when he gets back from a mission. It had been a particularly grueling one — ‘cause it had just been him and Adam, and that kid is sweet but he’s also a frickin’ moron. Rocket is half-sprawled on his barstool, nursing his third glass of Angargal’s and watching Steemie and Howard fleece the Broker at cards. Beyond them, the Boot of Jemiah opens into the street. There’s a lot of festivals on Knowhere these days — a big one at least each quarter, with a dozen little street-parties sprinkled in between — and this happens to be the night of one of those smaller celebrations. Drax says parties are good for kids — something about socialistic development — but Rocket figures there’s a good chance that the big Kylosian is just looking for excuses to laugh and dance with his adopted children. Nebula says it’s healthy for the other residents of the city, too — good for morale, she’d said — which he’s pretty sure is just her repeating something she’d heard from Mantis.
Either way, he’s not complaining.
The music filters over the speakers, and the Star Kids run through the streets with the local raccoon population at their heels, like they’re all wild, carefree little bandits and troublemakers. Strings of tiny plasma orbs hold all the bone-plaster buildings together like spiderwebs of stars.
“Yeah?” Nebs prompts when he doesn’t continue. She takes a sip of her own drink: ginsky with a splash of brown-sugar syrup, muddled up with crimson Gangalorian tart-berries.
Rocket shuffles himself restlessly in his seat. He tries to loosen the tension in his shoulders. “That new kid okay?”
Nebula’s silent till he looks over. She blinks at him slowly with her big, implacable dark eyes. “Which one?”
He scowls. “You know which one.”
Nebs doesn’t give him an inch though, and he sighs noisily.
“The Terran kid who popped up a few cycles ago. You know the one.” He settles himself again, ears flickering — then grimaces, and tips his head in your direction. Because you’re there: sitting on the edge of the street in front of one of the laundromats, smiling into the city, sipping at some watered-down drink. He’s not even sure if it’s got any booze in it. Rocket watches as another stranger wanders past and pauses to say something to you. You grin up at them and respond, but—
But. Something about that friendly little curve in the corner of your mouth just doesn’t sit right with him.
“Still looks—” He shifts uncomfortably, trying to find the right word. “—unsettled.”
It’s not unsettledness, though — not really. But Rocket doesn’t exactly have the lexicon to describe the thing that he sees in you. He just knows it’s familiar. Maybe, if he’d let himself be softer after he’d climbed up into the stars off HalfWorld — maybe he would have worn that look in his eyes, too. Something melancholy and wistful. And a little hollowed out, like you’ve gotten used to the feeling of hunger.
Like you’re so starved you don’t even notice how much it hurts most days.
Yeah, Rocket knows those feelings too well, and as far as he’s concerned, they’ve got no place in Nebula’s city.
The cyborg in question turns to her own eyes to watch you, and he knows she sees it too. For long moments, they sip their drinks in unison, observing.
Nebs speaks first. “Okay.” She raises her glass to her lips, and one brow arches in his direction. “What do you want to do, Captain?”
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The answer is, Rocket doesn’t know what he wants to do. He’s not sure what it is you need. And like he’s said — a million frickin’ times — he’s never been too good with people.
All he knows is that there’s a kinship there — some strange thing he can’t fully identify or name.
He thinks about it while he’s away on another mission, gone for cycles with Kraglin and Phyla and Groot. Can’t get you out of his head, really — wondering if you’re alright, if you’d found the thing that would finally let you put down some scraggly roots into the calcium-rich dirt of the skull. When he spots you again on his return — helping Ssssaralami with some random task around town — he realizes he’s got his answer.
Nope.
No, you haven’t settled into your skin here in the city. No, he still doesn’t know what to frickin’ do about it.
It’s not till the next Christmas party that he figures it out. Knowhere’s citizens continue to hold variations on the Terran holiday every time the multicalendar rolls around. It’s their way of honoring Pete and everything he’s done for them — and it’s an excuse to marvel at the pretty lights and tinsel, to hold another one of those giant parties that everyone seems to love.
Rocket had hauled out the snow cannon — his own special invention — and he’d watched from the corner of his eye while Drax had wrangled you into helping hang giant plastic snowflakes. The big idiot had seemed utterly clueless about that strange bit of unrewarded hope lingering at the corner of your smile, just waiting for sunlight or rain or whatever it needed to blossom. It had been annoying — almost infuriating — to watch. Even so, the Kylosian had belted out his thunderous laughter so many times that Rocket had lost count, letting it echo over the whole damn city. And sometimes, when Rocket had swivelled his ears in your direction, he’d been able to pick up on your laughter, too.
He’d liked the sound. It had felt like home. It had felt like it fit.
The party is a success, as per frickin’ usual. The lights are a splay of color and glow, and the music has him tapping his feet, and everyone’s laughing and happy. A thin layer of snow dusts the cracked bone-concrete and the awnings and terraces, drifting in eddies and swirls in the manufactured breeze — collecting in soft little sapphire-shadowed blankets against the spindles of grass and few remaining sprays of blue flowers. His eyes skate over them and find you in the crowd: smiling, greeting people, handing out cups of hot cocoa — which as far as he can tell is a sorta sweet, creamy, coffee-like drink with an unfortunate lack of booze — to the Star Children.
You look happy, he tells himself. You clearly got friends. The spot between his brow crinkles. So what the fuck is he so worried about?
Normally he might scoff at his own apparent sentimentalism — but for some reason, he feels vaguely offended instead. And worried, still.
He broods to himself, sulking so sullenly at his own inability to let shit go that he almost misses it. The music thins and the cocoa’s all been drunk, and the snow cannon’s only puttering out weak little puffs of flakes. People start heading home in clusters: arms linked and laughing, telling each other about the presents they have waiting in their little apartments and nooks. They’ll continue their festivities there: gathering at friends’ and loves ones’, telling stories and sharing memories, getting merry-drunk and eating midnight feasts together, sleeping over on trundled-mattresses and wall-beds and sofas, or maybe canoodling on their couches and in their hammocks.
And then his eyes find you again: perched under an archway of multicolored lights, fresh as spring amidst the snowdrifts and flowers, big-eyed as a baby owl.
And so, so alone.
There’s an urge — strong as any of the self-destructive impulses he’s ever had — to call out to you. He has to bite his voice back so abruptly that his sharp teeth clack painfully against each other, and he slams one fist into his manufactured sternum to keep the words in check. But he’s not sure he even remembers your name right, and he’s pretty sure you’ve never spoken to him before. So that would be weird, right? Maybe he should go get Drax, since you’d chatted with him earlier while decorating — tell the Kylosian to invite you to Groot’s for the old Guardians’ get-together tonight. Or Nebula. Nebs “interviews” all the new citizens of the city, though Rocket suspects it’s more of an interrogation. She must’ve talked to you before. It wouldn’t be weird if she invited you, right?
He collapses the cannon quickly, and then looks out over the street again: eyes scrawling through the velvet-blue shadows for you, hunting between the gold and ruby flickers of light.
But you’re already gone.
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The next mission becomes an unexpected string of operations, taking Rocket away from the skull for over a quarter. That’s not exactly true: Knowhere follows the Bowie at a leisurely pace, and at least twice, the new Guardians layover for a quick nap and a refuel. The next big holiday is around the corner by the time they actually get skullside for more than a rotation: the Anniversary of the Liberation of the Arête.
They really need to figure out a better name for it.
Mantis had said it would be a good thing to celebrate: a symbolic welcoming of refugees and newcomers, every circumrotation, like clockwork. Drax had said it should serve as a birthday party for the Star-Children, since no-one really knew when they’d been born. If they’d been born, so to speak. Later — over drinks, of course — Nebs had also mentioned it was a birthday of sorts for him, too. For Rocket. On account of finally being freed from all the things he’d been running from — emotionalistically as well as flesh-and-bone monsters, he supposes. An anniversary for his becoming the new captain, too, and Nebs becoming — well, she hasn’t picked a title yet, but some kinda leader for the city.
Which is how the weird little celebration has become such a mish-mash of traditions. Ssssaralami and Hoobtoe have resurrected a bastardized version of Luphomoid honeycakes in honor of Nebula: tiny sugar-sweet yellow loaves glistening with an even sweeter citrus glaze. Apparently, kids on Luphom would get them for their birthdays.
Nebula doesn’t remember much from before her time with Thanos, but the first time she’d bitten into one of Hoobtoe’s honeycakes, she’d gotten this look on her face. It had taken Rocket a moment to place it, but he’d figured it out pretty quickly. The giant purple jackass might have surgically removed Nebs’ tear ducts, but apparently, he hadn’t been able to completely stomp out her impulse to cry.
Anyway, there are Luphomoid honeycakes and Terran birthday-candles, and these hanging garlands of yellow-and-gold paper-flags that Mantis had called bunting that drape between every building, following the jingling strings of tiny, clinking plasma-orbs. Rocket himself will be managing the tunes, sprawled lazily on a retaining wall at the edge of the street. The whole city seems to glow like sunshine through amber once it’s all set up — even when the manufactured afternoon light begins dimming into a pale lavender-blue that matches the tiny fresh flowers blooming in the fractured bone-pavement. Each stem slants and leans against the goldenness of the moment: a study of blues and luminous warmth.
He catches sight of you halfway through a Fleetwood Mac song — lighting candles on honeycakes, showing the younger Star Kids how to blow them out with a wish. When each slender wick sparks to life, it casts an amber glow on the panes of your face, painting you in syrupy golden light. You move in and out of the laughter like a ghost: touching a shoulder here, murmuring a comment to someone else there. You look pleased with everything around you. You look like you’re breathing it in. You look content.
But he doesn’t let you leave his line of sight. Not this time. His feet hang loosely, heels occasionally knocking against the bone-plaster as he quietly soaks up all the open-hearted joy flooding the streets. At the same time, his eyes follow the quiet, tricksome flicker in the corner of your mouth — sometimes out in the open, and other times hidden behind a startled laugh or a friendly grin.
It’s full of half-longing, and just one shade shy of forlorn.
Rocket notices things: the scent of melting wax and fresh honeycakes, the sound of Howard cackling at something a block away, the new springtime blooms of blue flowers painting the shadows, and the loneliness lingering at the edge of your smile.
So he notices when you back away from the crowds, your smile softening into something sweet and resigned. The Star Kids scramble through the streets once more, and the adults watch them with indulgent grins and bottles of booze, clustering in their own crescents and rings of easy familial comfort. He notices when you make your way into the open front of the Boot, and he only loses sight of you for the few seconds it takes you to climb to the upper level and make your way out to the mezzanine: half-draping yourself over the rail, watching the scene below with a tenderness — and a rawness — that he can see from two levels lower and all the way across the street.
He sighs — makes a show of his reluctance, even if there’s nobody to see it. Even if he doesn’t really feel it these days — not unless you count his own worry that he’s gonna somehow make things worse, mess things up for you, make shit harder.
“Okay,” he mumbles to himself, leveraging himself off the retaining wall. His gravity boots hit the bone-pavement with little twin clouds of calcium-dust, and he sweeps his tail over the backs of his thighs, brushing his pants clean while he reaches for his stein of the Asgardian mead that Mantis had brought back from her most recent trip to Terra. “Time to be the captain.”
He weaves his way between the clusters of people, offering up strained sideways grins and stilted nods of acknowledgement everytime someone says hey captain! or nice to see you, captain! or how’re things, captain? or we missed you this quarter! He pauses on the threshold of the Boot. The elevation-platform is deep inside the bar, so he has to navigate the warm smoky shadows and another couple-dozen people trying to greet him before he can get to the mezzanine himself.
But get there he does.
He pauses when he sees you. Nobody else is up here — the party’s all out on the streets tonight — and your back is to him. He can’t help but take in the curve of your spine and the slope of your shoulders. His ears twitch and swivel as they catch the beat of your heart, quiet and steady.
He should say hi, probably. At least clear his throat, to announce his presence. From what he understands, Terran humies got shit-hearing and an even-worse sense of smell, so you probably don’t even know that you’re no longer alone.
But he can’t make his mouth work — can’t think of what to say that doesn’t leave him sounding like a creep, or a stalker, or worse. So — in his most ill-advised move in recent memory — he simply sidles up next to you and leans his own elbows against the lower rung of the safety railing.
You jump a little when he enters your periphery. Of course you do. But he hears your exhale — and he thinks it’s one of relief.
“Oh,” you say with a quiet curve of a smile. “Hello, Captain.”
He grunts an acknowledgement. Perfect, he thinks at himself drily. Way to be frickin’ welcoming, asshole.
But you don’t seem perturbed. If anything, your shoulders seem to relax, and you turn your attention back to the city.
“You, uh—” His voice splinters. Stupid, he thinks, and tries again. “What’re you doin’ up here, kid?” Still, he sounds more accusatory than kind, and he winces.
But you don’t seem to take offense. “Just watching,” you admit. Your words float out on the golden haze of the party below, falling like feathers onto the heads of the people just a few feet below. “It seems nice,” you admit, leaning over the edge of the mezzanine like you’re ready to stretch out one arm and try to touch — try to touch something, something only you seem able to see. Like there’s a bubble of warmth over the celebration below, and you think maybe you could dip the tips of your fingers in. Your smile is pensive and melancholy — as wistful as the way Old Groot’s seeds had floated through the darkness, golden and holy. “Is it?” you ask.
He blinks. “What?”
“Is it nice?”
He studies you, a curl of concern tightening his own brow. “S’what nice, kid?”
You open your mouth, then grimace and close it, shaking your head. Regret laces your brow, and that soft little hope at the corner of your mouth tightens. “Nothing. Never mind.”
He feels his ears perk forward, and he scowls. “Don’t make me guess. I frickin’ hate that.”
You flinch, and he flinches too — hating that he’s always so frickin’ rough and mean. He tries to think of what to say to make it up to you, to soften his own sharp edges, but you’re already shaking your head again — grappling with the words before you surrender them to the golden shadows below.
“Being part of something,” you say. Your voice is a parched little whisper, though he doesn’t think you mean for it to sound that way. “Being remembered. Being invited.”
His ears flatten against his skull as the lower edge of your lashes suddenly silver over, luminous in the reflected warmth of the city below.
“Being known.”
His whiskers twitch when you suddenly huff a sniffly laugh, using the cuff of your sleeve to scrub at your cheeks and eyes, even though none of your tears have fallen yet.
“Sorry, sorry,” you apologize, still trying to chuckle, even though it sounds strained. “That was — you don’t even know me. That was too much.”
Know you better than you think, he almost tells you — but again, that’s a frickin’ creepy thing to say. And he still isn’t sure he’s got your name right. But he only turns his eyes out to the street, too: following your gaze, letting you both linger in the sky.
Floating on a cloud of other peoples’ happiness and belonging.
He clears his throat. “Guess I don’t know you much,” he admits, which isn’t exactly a lie. “But I do know what you’re talking about. At least, I think I do.”
He hears your pulse jerk a little in surprise — feels the wide-eyed skepticism in your stare as you levy it against him. “You do?” It’s a doubtful little question. “Sorry, I just—” You gesture broadly to the streets below. “You seem like you’ve found your place. That’s why I asked you — if it was nice. You’re so well-loved. I mean, I guess it’s in the abstract way of strangers loving a hero—”
He feels his own brows rise at the accuracy with which you’ve picked apart that particular pain-point for him.
“—but also in the personal way of — of having a family. Friends. People who have seen you at your best and your worst, and have still decided you’re the one they want to spend all their moments with. Both the special ones and the mundane ones.” Your mouth twists into a little smile, but this time, it’s all sad. “People who would rather have a beer with you over anyone else, share a holiday-meal with you over anyone else, even fight with you over anyone else.”
He swallows. When did his throat swell so tightly? It’s an effort just to wet his own mouth and suck down his own damn spit. Something pricks silver along his own vision, and now — when he looks up at you — you’re radiant with blurred, wet light. Haloed with the sudden onslaught of his own fast tears.
“Just got lucky,” he admits, and his voice is so hoarse that he has to clear it. “And it wasn’t always like that. I—”
He swallows again — gestures with his claws out to the gold and the evening blue. Scoops his fingers through the night to encompass all the laughing children and chattering adults below, the raccoons searching for discarded honeycakes, the birds and the booze and the little blue flowers in the cracks of the pavement.
“I seen the way you were watching them — hungry for a you-shaped spot in the crowd.” He grimaces. “Like you think there’s one puzzle-piece missing and you’re just hoping, so frickin’ hard, that you’re the one that fits.”
There’s a sound caught in your throat, something surprised out of your lungs and stifled. Then:
“I’m glad you found your spot.” You say it like you mean it, too. “I’m glad you found your — your home.” He can tell by your voice that you don’t mean a place, but a family. The corner of your mouth curves, pensive and admiring, and wanting. “It seems like it came to you pretty naturally. Becoming part of something, I mean. Belonging. Even if you weren’t used to it before.”
He tilts his head up to you, and cocks it. Studies you carefully in the shadows: taking you apart, piece by piece. Peeling apart your loneliness like petals.
On impulse, he juts his chin down to the street below. “You ever seen flowers like those before?”
He feels you blink, then adjust your gaze. “What—”
“The little blue ones,” he says. “They’re frickin’ everywhere.” He can’t help the fondness that warms up the edges of his voice. Wouldn’t want to. “Goddamn weeds.”
He watches as you squint at a patch of moon-blue blossoms down in the street. It’s prob’ly hard for your humie-eyes to pick out the details from here, but he knows you’ve seen ‘em before. How could you have avoided them?
“No,” you say slowly, drawing the word out after a moment. “I guess — they sort of look like an Earth — I mean, a Terran flower called daisy. But…” You trail off, and a whimsical smile touches your mouth. “They’re prettier. Almost the color of forget-me-nots.”
“Forget-me-nots?“ he echoes, curiosity coloring his tone the same soft hue as the flowers in question.
You make a thoughtful little noise. He decides he likes it when you do that.
“They’re a kind of Terran flower too,” you tell him. “There’s a lot of different, silly myths about how they got their name. I can’t remember all of them, but basically, they’re supposed to symbolize loving someone so much that you remember them, even when they’re — gone. Not around.” Your smile is wistful again. “Forget-me-not.”
Huh. There’s something about that story that tangles up the mechanical valves of his heart — messes with all his manufactured arterial tubing. It weaves itself with the familiarity of the flowers and the sadness of your smile, tying him in knots. He nods anyway, though — like he’s some sort of wise old sage instead of a mangled, gun-toting, hard-drinking goblin. Er, captain. Mangled, gun-toting, hard-drinking captain. Whatever.
“My point is, those flowers are frickin’ everywhere now. You can’t go more than three paces without finding a patch of ‘em pushing their way through the bone-concrete like they were dreamed up by this dead frickin’ god.” He scuffs the toe of his boot against the floor of the bone-plaster mezzanine, as if it were part of the skull itself.
You tilt your head and smile down at him: lopsided still, but genuine. And there’s something kind of golden about it, if he’s not mistaken. It’s almost like you match all the little lights and candles that are floating down below.
“I didn’t take you for the whimsical type,” you tell him, and there’s a touch of teasing in your voice.
He likes the feel of it — that lightness, that gentle and good-natured taunting. It feels like it fits.
“Are you kidding?“ He cants a biting grin up at you. “I’m frickin’ full of whimsy.”
A startled laugh puff its way over your lips. Out of your lungs. And he likes that too. You should laugh more, he decides — and he knows just the hodge-podge crew of frickin’ misfits to make you do it.
“Don’t think I like the implication I’m predictable and shit,” he drawls, and arches one white brow up at you. “But I’ll overlook it this once, on account of what a reasonable frickin’ guy I am.”
Another laugh filters its way up from between your ribs.
“The point is,” Rocket says, taking advantage of your distraction, “those flowers look like they been growing here forever. Like they belong here. But they’re newcomers, same as you and me.”
They hadn’t been here — not on his first dozen trips to the skull. It hadn’t been till he and Nebs and Kraglin had started dropping in regularly, right after the Snap, that he’d first seen them. He’d had to do a double-take.
They’d been so similar to Groot’s flowers — Groot Senior’s, that is.
Despite what he’d just told you, Rocket doesn’t consider himself prone to frickin’ whimsy — though Nebula had accused him of exactly that when he’d decided to turn the skull into a giant flying machine. But peering down at the strange new patch of blue petals, he’d suddenly pulled up a memory, clear as a starscape in the void of space: the last time Groot Senior had been skullside, during that whole mess with the power stone.
Hadn’t he made a flower, for some little humie gargoyle?
Hadn’t he given it to her — let her run off with it into the grimy alleys?
Had it left behind a seed or a spore?
Had it grown?
In the present, Rocket’s voice gentles, till the gravelly edges are soft as the silvery, scraggly grasses spilling out of the concrete-cracks too.
“Ain’t no thing living on the skull that came here naturally.“ He pauses and cock his head in consideration. “Well. ‘Cept maybe parasites in the mines, but that’s why we don’t go in there no more.“
When he looks at you, you’re silhouetted against the stringed plasma orbs that garland the city like ropes of stars, with the golden light of the party below painting you in shades of honey and amber. You’ve got a pleat in your brow, like you can tell he’s trying to say something, but you don’t trust yourself enough to know what it is.
“Point is,” he says, measuring out each word carefully, “you’ll find your spot. When you do, you might not even know it at first.” He swallows and peers down at the party again. “I sure as hell didn’t.”
He shrugs, and takes another swallow of his drink — empties the stein, and grips it loosely in his narrow dark hands.
“I liked my particular group of morons almost from the first moment I met ‘em,” he confesses into the flickering gold night. “Didn’t want to admit it. And then eventually, we became friends. And I’d — I’d have done a lot for them. To help ‘em, or to make their lives better. But I always kinda felt like I was the odd one out — unnecessary, you know? Easily—” His eyes drop down to the patches of flowers again. “Forgotten, I guess. Ain’t no thing like me ‘cept me, but still — I felt replaceable.” He licks his teeth and flexes his jaw, discomfort riding high on the back of his tongue. “Wasn’t till this day, two circs back, that I realized — I frickin’ mattered to ‘em. Really mattered.”
He cuts a glare up at you.
“Don’t go repeating any of that shit.”
You’re wide-eyed on him, your gaze practically owlish, and so shiny in the faint halo of the party below.
“So what I’m saying is, you’ll find your family. Your home. Whatever. You will. Even if you don’t recognize it at first, even if it don’t feel natural or whatever. But it’ll grow on you.” He gestures loosely at the flowers with his stein. “Or you’ll grow into it.”
He casts a sideways glance up at you. Your eyes are glassy with tears again, and your hands grip the railing — tendons straining in your knuckles. There’s so much want rattling along every bone and blood-cell in your body that he can almost taste it himself — or maybe he’s only remembering the ghost of his own loneliness, hollow and hungry.
But he’s full up on family these days — has enough to spare, in fact.
So he swallows.
“Till then,” he says slowly, “I guess you’re stuck with us.”
He hears your heart stumble; sees your face snap toward him in his periphery. But he only stares into his stein, the glass all glossed in golden light — and through the empty bottom or it, the people below: magnified, and glowing.
“What–” Your words tumble. “What do you mean?”
He shrugs one shoulder, lopsided. “Was thinking you’d fit right in with the Guardians family, for as long as you wanna stick around,” he says. The words are gruff against the warm breeze of Knowhere’s ventilation systems: rasping gently against the twinkling candleflames and the floating flecks of bone-dust, glinting like bits of pollen in the shadows and prisms of light.
“What?” you repeat, sounding more lost than you’d looked when he’d first caught sight of you up here, alone in the shadows.
He grimaces, and evades the question entirely. “You’ll hafta get used to ‘em. To us. We’re definitely an, uh, acquired taste. But the offer’s open — if you wanna hang out after the party tonight. Groot’s hosting.” He palms the back of his neck and winces. “Mantis brought him back somethin’ when she visited Pete on Terra last time — somethin’ called a carry-oaksy machine? — and I’m sure Kraglin and Adam are gonna wanna use it again, so frickin’ brace yourself.” He tilts his head at you. “Could prob’ly hook you up with some ear-plugs if you want ‘em.”
“I — what?” you say again, sounding utterly and helplessly perplexed, baffled by everything he’s telling you. Well, trying to tell you. You release your hold on the rail of the mezzanine, backing up a step or two.
Rocket sighs and turns toward you, leaning his back against the railing. His tail sweeps the air behind him, and he grips his empty stein by the mouth, letting it dangle from his claws.
“I’m saying you got a family right here, for as long as you want it,” he tells you, a nonchalant shrug trailing across his shoulders as if it doesn’t matter if you take him up on it or not. But it does. It matters to him. “Give us a shot, at least.”
He offers up a wry half-smirk that he just knows is a mirror of your own: a little bit of hope, etched into the corner of his mouth, hiding under everything else.
Waiting to bloom.
“Give us a chance to grow on you.”
Your eyes flicker from him to the golden wealth of light below the mezzanine, then back again. Somewhere in the streets outside, happy laughter rings out over the soft velvet crush of conversation. Somewhere, a Star Child blows out a candle on a honeycake. Somewhere, another blue blossom unfurls against a crack in the skull.
“Okay,” you agree quietly, and your smile tilts.
Rocket notices things: the familiar sounds of the city, right down to Cosmo’s joyful bark. The delicate touch of the skull’s ventilation system, cycling on a fresh and springlike breeze.
The soft little flower in the corner of your mouth, tilting into something more at peace than he’s ever seen it before.
.˚₊°༻✿*₊•❀•₊*✿༺°₊˚.