#chl03ph0b1a

[raccoonfallsharder]

tbh mcu cinematic universe rocket has the vibes of a overwhelmed single dad

who, this guy?

i dunno lil lucky clover

i don’t see it

[raccoonfallsharder]

ive been thinking, what do you think rocket’s love language is??? >3<

hey bby. i've been thinking about you a lot lately and i hope you’re doing well ♡ i've been thinking about this question a lot, too. it’s such a good one and i’m so glad you asked!

i wrote a little about rocket's gift-giving tendencies a while ago, and briefly touched on love-languages in general. but i think it might be hard to parse out what he's like when you first meet him, you know? he's so damn prickly, keeping everyone at arm's length. his words are always so sarcastic and dry that they're practically crackling apart. plus, one time, you tapped his shoulder for something, and he startled and bared his teeth at you in a full-snarl before recognizing you.

doesn't like to be touched, you'd noted to yourself.

i’d guess that it takes at least a few cycles before he starts acknowledging you when he doesn't have to. and thank god he finally does, because you'd been starting to feel really lonely and isolated up there. drax and mantis are always off causing mayhem and pete's constantly trying to convince gamora to sneak off somewhere, and groot's buried in his game most of the time.

but once the two of you actually start talking, it probably isn't too long before rocket warms up to you. you're clever, and warm, and you seem like you really care, which he manages to casually inform you is rare in his experience. and sometimes, when you're having a bad day — staring into the melancholy void, bones flooded with a kind of sadness that feels too pervasive and constant to take you by surprise anymore, or maybe numb with old memories, and thoughts of a future that hollow you out — sometimes, when you're having a bad day, you catch him watching you with something in his eyes that feels like recognition. familiarity. connection.

those are the days he's extra nice to you — at least, by his standards. bringing you a warm fresh cup of your favorite hot beverage of choice, or grudgingly offering to teach you how to fly the benatar.

pete's always muttering about his unspoken thing with gamora, but this feels like a real "unspoken thing": the silent comfort of someone who seems like he understands you, without ever uttering a word.

it's on one of these days — when rocket’s made you breakfast, even though your sleep has been all fucky lately and you missed the first wake-shift meal that the others had shared that rotation — that you find yourself staring at the rim of your coffee-mug and your plate of grilled orloni, watching the steam curl out of your bowl of synth-cinnamon indigarran-oats. and you ask him about it.

what's your love-language?

he blinks over at you, ears flattening in confusion. my fuckin what?

your love-language. you hesitate, then take a bite of your oats. they're a little too hot, but they don't burn your mouth, and you're surprised by the pleasantness of the texture. they're the perfect amount of sweetness, too. it's a terran term, i guess, you tell him thoughtfully. it's basically, like, how you like to be acknowledged. appreciated.

he doesn't respond, and you don't look up from your meal — still feeling morose, maybe, in the first few hours of wakefulness.

like, some people like to be told nice things, you say with a casual wave of your spoon. to be reassured that they're useful or good, reminded that they're important to someone. that's called words of affirmation. for other people, there's something called quality time...

and you go on to explain each one to him.

i thought maybe you were a gifts-person, you tell him at last. on account of the breakfasts and the coffee and the guns. but then i thought, maybe acts of service? you're making pretty much every thing you give me. and you sometimes do my dishes.

you wrangle up a tired grin for him, realizing you've been rambling, and he hasn't spoken a single word. when your eyes meet his, you realize he's gone utterly still: not even a flicker in his ears or a twitch in his tailtip.

i dunno, he admits at last, slowly. his head cocks to one side. i don't tell people i like ‘em or appreciate ‘em very much. i don’t really tell people nice things at all.

you blink back, and feel yourself soften. you tell me nice things just fine, you tell him, lifting your coffee mug pointedly. you spare him a lopsided little grin. when you want to, anyway.

he snorts.

so how do you like to be told them, then? you ask gently. nice things, i mean.

he shifts from foot to foot: awkward. i dunno, he repeats. considers, then opens his mouth to speak ~ grimaces, and shakes his head. i don't think i, uh. i don't think i ever got enough to know.

his voice crinkles at the end, like he's embarrassed by that — as if he thinks he's the one to blame. as if, had he only been more lovable...

you'd been feel distant and pensive all morning, but something inside you is suddenly distilled: a purpose, maybe. one you've grabbed for yourself.

you don't need to be ashamed of that, you tell him abruptly. that shame belongs everyone else in your life who should have loved you, and should have made sure you knew it.

you nod once, firmly — too lost in your own thoughts to catch the slight widening of his eyes, the clench of his fists, the way his tail tucks in against his ankle: all vulnerability.

we have a new mission, you say instead. top-secret. just you and me.

yeah? his voice is thick with curiosity, and something else.

mmhm, you nod. figuring out what your love languages are.

you spend the next quarter making it a point to find new ways to show him how much you care for him — pretty much every rotation. notes of appreciation, picking out one specific trait or action of his that you've been impressed by or secretly adored. translating it painstakingly into kree so he could read about how clearly you'd noticed it, how you'd remembered it, how much it had meant. read it, and keep it. with your spoken words, too, you shower him in praises and compliments, both alone and in front of the rest of the crew. each time, he scoffs and scrubs the back of his hand over his whiskers. but you can tell he's glowing under all that fur: flustered, and flattered, and so fuckin pleased that his toes are probably curling in his boots.

then you test him out with little gifts of your own: left for him here and there, or shared and explained in detail while you hang out in the dim cockpit after everyone else has gone to sleep. treats and sweets. he likes chocolate-covered espresso beans, you'd learned, though they're a dangerous thing to give him. bottles of booze, too. and little bits of tech, no matter how old or broken — though you’ve found he particularly likes the shiny bits. he grins at each one, looking smug and satisfied, and his pockets grow heavy with whatever library of treasures he’s decided will bring him good luck today. he pulls them out on occasion to rub his thumbs over them, or look at them bemusedly: perusing his little gifted treasures. sometimes when he catches you watching him, he even winks at you before shuffling the clinking bits back into his pockets.

once or twice a cycle, you'd also tried to do his chores, but he'd only seemed annoyed by the effort. you'd though that meant you could write off acts of service as one of his love languages, and you’d almost done it, too. but then one night, purely coincidentally, you'd cut up some bandages for him after a fight. he'd actually teared up at the kindness: shameless silver puddles rivering into his fur-covered cheeks. after that, you'd realized that even sitting by his side and handing him tools while he works will make him sigh with contentment, the muscles easing in his shoulders in something close to peace.

and you can't dismiss quality time, either ~ not with the way he starts demanding your presence all rotation long. these days, he’s refusing to take side-commissions if you're not on his team. he stays up late with you and plays Krylorian card-games while you read in the copilot's seat, or tinkers with gadgets while you doze off on the unused mattress in his bunk.

cycles pass. you think about asking him again. have you decided yet? which way you like to receive messages of love? which means the most to you?

but you don’t. you expect you've learned the truth already — which is that rocket has just been too love-starved for almost his entirely life.

he'll take whatever kindness you want to give him.

it’s okay, though, you tell yourself. you're happy to oblige him.

so you relax into this new routine of camaraderie. there are still melancholy mornings and hard days, but each seems easier than the last. you spend each day giving each other the best you’ve got, and growing closer. i like to think that, in time, you both realize that you've become more and more confident that even when things are at their worst, you're not alone in them. your respective memories may sometimes haunt you and the future might feel like it’s looming; the universe might seem large and empty, but the two of you have each other.

and the sky is forever and beautiful.

it's not until another two quarters have passed that it happens. you're chilling in your own quarters with him: you, sprawled and reading on the bed; him, seated on the floor and leaned against the edge of your bunk, tinkering with something. some vague part of you is aware of him hissing and rolling his shoulders — trying to work out the tension and the muscle contractures that you've slowly realized are a part of his daily life. he can’t help it, and neither can you. his pain is just the natural result of all his knotted sinews, contorted around prosthetics and implants — the screws and bolts driven deep into whatever natural bones he still has left.

so you're not consciously aware of his grumbling, indrawn breath or his hitching shoulders — no. you're too used to it. you just keep reading on your datapad, unthinking — lost in the companionship of the moment, the quiet clatter of his work, the words on your screen.

which is the only reason why you casually drape one arm down off the mattress, your hand sifting through the fur along his shoulder and sinking under the strap of his jumpsuit: soothing and easing the twisting muscle with an instinctive squeeze of your furrowing fingers, a thoughtlessly-kind and careful knead of your palm.

perhaps you should have realized. you're pretty sure you know what he used to be, after all — before some monster got their hands on him and turned him into the person he is today, the person you're so grateful to know. and what you think you remember about his original species is this:

two-thirds of the sensory perception areas in a raccoon's cerebral cortex are dedicated to touch. they learn primarily through the palms of their hands, the sensitive pads of their fingertips. they see things based on the brush of the whiskers that bristle from their claws; they recognize things they've held cradled in their hands — even if it was only once, years ago.

for a raccoon, to touch things is to know them.

you've watched the way he handles his flight controls, his mines and firearms, every screen and set of buttons he's ever come across. as soon as his fingers dance over them once, he's got them memorized.

doesn't like to be touched, you'd thought when you'd first met him, but that's not quite right, is it? it's only that someone else has wounded him — taken that strength of sensitivity and turned it into something vulnerable, something that could hurt. and maybe doesn't like to be touched really just means likes it so much that it feels dangerous.

rocket doesn’t bare his teeth this time. he doesn’t even shake you off. instead, his hands still, and you feel his shoulders sag under the firm press of your probing fingers. his head rolls back on his neck, and he groans in a way thy turns into something else: a rumble under his fur, low and hollow.

a purr.

that's it, he manages to mumble. you stare at him, too stunned to look away even as your hand keeps moving of his own accord. his eyes close, and his wire-tight tension continues to soften under your touch. he sounds half-wondering, and half-asleep already.

that's my frickin' love-language.

headcanons & imagines | navigation | fanfiction masterlist related imagines: love languages part one: gift-giving/acts of service | petting rocket till he purrs | rocket "fixes" your car | raccoon sensory perception

stars & raccoon divider by @/thecutestgrotto | support banner by @/saradika-graphics

[raccoonfallsharder]

tbh rocket in the 2021 video game looks like a cute lil man with his beard i wanna braid it

looooook

i have so many thoughts about this lil guy and his goatee. i already started writing about it in my LENGTHY fuckin list of eidos-rocket headcanons that i'm trying to post in july (i'm so close to being done watching the game but then i feel like i gotta go find all his lines somewhere tbh because i can't just rewatch it 4+ times like i have with the movies). but honestly, this guy is the most vain rocket, i'm pretty sure. his fur is SO fluffy and sleek. and that little beard is so well-manicured and maintained and flowy. he's got lil beads in it. what a cutie.

(i may have said this before but like, he for sure stole beard-oil from some spartoi dickhead at some point, just for laughs? but then got addicted to how nice it made his fur feel. eventually he had to find a knowhere vendor who could reproduce it for him on the cheap)

like all rockets, i'm sure he hates being touched without consent, though it probably looks something like "hey, get your krutackin' mitts off the fur!" ...but once he trusts you? he's for sure gonna let you groom him. he loves the way it feels when you comb through his fur delicately, dividing and weaving together the surprisingly-silky strands. sometimes he'll even let you choose the beads, as long as they match his overall aesthetic.

(depending on your relationship, this could definitely become a steamy situation. i imagine you sprawled across him in his hammock, braiding his beard while he lays on his back with a hand tucked under his head and the other tracing your shoulderblade with a light, prickling claw. for sure there's been at least once that you were helping him with it in the common room - fully-clothed and actually innocent for once, with him sitting on the couch and you on your knees in front of him. pete walked in, saw you, turned bright red, and backed out of the room like he'd just seen something that would scar him for life. look there's an undeniable intimacy to it)

headcanons & imagines masterlist | main masterlist banners by @/thecutestgrotto and @/saradika-graphics

[raccoonfallsharder]

this question just came to my mind and has been lingering around in my noggin so

if rocket raccoon were to get his own solo movie, what kind of plot would you want to see???

CLOVER BLOSSOM! i missed you ♡ i hope life is treating you to a hundred gentle kindnesses and tasty snacks. this is a great question — thank you so much for asking it!! — and i really wrestled with it. because i think it’s actually so important for our guy to be part of an ensemble cast? he’s been solo for far too long? the map of rocket’s entire life and so many pieces of his identity (especially in the mcu) are based on this aching, painful tension between loneliness & connection: the forced alienation at the hands of his abuser and an uncaring universe; the self-inflicted isolation of his survival strategies and fears and guilty conscience — versus love, empathy, support, communication. joy-sharing. trust. friendship.and not only finding these things, not only offering them — but letting himself accept them, too. letting himself embrace them for himself.

so i think any movie i’d like to see with mcu-rocket would have to have some sort of relational component. (not me, writing way too much raccoon-smut.)

i’ll be honest. i think we got robbed in not seeing gunn’s short film about rocket meeting groot & tibius lark. i would love a rocket & groot film so much, and i'd love to use this as the (really long) cold open for the start of "my" movie. we would zip through the star-systems and asterisms, zooming in on whatever rancid incarceration-space-station gunn had in mind [feature coordinates here], and sink straight from the stardust right down into the pit-prison. rocket, groot, & lark would already be there — rocket trying to figure out his own escape.

i broke outta eleven prisons. this one ain’t no different.

lark will start storytelling, explaining his history with groot — then extracting rocket’s promise to take care of the flora colossus. perhaps, in the course of this conversation — a word i use loosely — lark would express a certainty that rocket would benefit from groot’s company as much as groot would benefit from his.

it’s good to have friends, lark might remind him.

once he’s secured rocket’s promise and groot’s safety, lark dies — which is when rocket uses lark’s leftover (robot) bodyparts to build a means of escape. then, as gunn described, rocket and groot burst upward from the pit, escaping their prison.

[roll marvel opening logo, with all the superimposed images in the letters being frames from rocket & groot comics]

we’d reopen in space, in some ship rocket had stolen from the prison. our two heroes have gotten far away already, and are about as safe as two fugitives with bounties on their heads can be. rocket would be trying to come up with a plan to get rid of groot while still honoring his promise to lark (more or less). he hates what he’s gotten himself saddled with, but he’s not going to break his word, either. lark had mentioned that groot had come from planet x/taluhnia, so rocket decides he’ll take the flora colossus back to his home planet and drop him off — wash the dust from his hands, and go back to hunting bounties and blowing up moons. good deed complete.

groot tries to protest, but rocket doesn’t understand him yet. still, groot’s distress is obvious. rocket only rolls his eyes and pushes onward, more and more irritated by his new ward.

unfortunately, when they arrive on taluhnia, rocket discovers that groot's people are long gone, and his planet is being systematically destroyed: flora colossi slaughtered, forests leveled in the name of planetary harvest. enter our villain: something more-or-less (depending on how cartoonishly-comicky you want to go) inspired by beavertron incorporated, under the advisement of shareholder castor gnawbarque (from blue river score, 2017). a little hacking on rocket’s part informs the duo that taluhnia is not the only planet beavertron has its hands all over. the company's a real piece of work, colonizing and destroying dozens — maybe hundreds — of cultures and planets in order to seize their natural resources.

groot is horrified by this additional information, of course: so many planets, at risk of being destroyed like his own. rocket is starting to understand groot a little better — he can at least read his body language and expressions — and though our little ringtailed guy is disgusted by beavertron, he still tells the flora colossus not to overreact.

don’t you know anything? this is just how people are.

rocket does, however, get super-frustrated when he realizes that his plan to dump groot on taluhnia can no longer — under any stretch of the imagination — be considered sufficient in keeping his promise to tibius lark. it gets him incredibly pissed, i'm sure — pulling his whiskers, probably kicking some grass — before finally sighing with his whole fucken chest and admitting that he guesses he's gotta blow up a frickin' coorporation now, 'cause how else is he gonna get rid of his adopted idiot?

oh rocket. i love it when you try to justify why you're doing something good.

anyway, highjinks ensue. rocket and groot probably manage to incapacitate gnawbarque — maybe there’s a collective somewhere that will pay good money to put this monster on trial. maybe beavertron collapses without gnawbarque, or maybe it hovers in the background to return for a future movie (perhaps volume two or three involves a heist at beavertron headquarters — trying to get some information down the corporation for good).

when the chaos settles and justice has been (more or less) administered, groot stands in the midst of a flattened taluhnisan old growth forest — bereft. rocket stands beside him, grappling with the increasingly-clear knowledge that groot really is the last flora colossus, and maybe this is the moment that our guy begins to realize how much he has in common with his new friend. i imagine rocket tries to offer some comfort — like he did for nebula in infinity war. a gentle, awkward pat on the hand, which groot tenderly and gratefully accepts. i imagine groot seeds as much of the forest as he can with his glowing spores, helping the leftover plantlife grow into something lovely and alive — but not sentient. the planet of taluhnia becomes a bittersweetly-beautiful living memorial.

and i imagine they both cry together. and perhaps that's when rocket begins understanding groot’s speech — fully, for the first time.

and then — standing side-by-side, silhouetted under the taluhnisan sky — rocket says, you know, i could probably bring in some bigger bounties if i hired some muscle. make more money that way.

oh rocket. i still love it when you try to justify why you're doing something good.

and then my babies fly off into the stars together.

[roll credits]

our post-credits scene will just be a montage of groot and rocket in various prison cells, with rocket nonchalantly saying i broke outta ## prisons. this one ain’t no different. on repeat. ad nauseam.

[raccoonfallsharder]

i need more eidos rocket fanfics PLEASE IVE BEEN STARVED

pretty please (╥﹏╥)

sparkly little holiday-gumdrop, my perfect frosted four-leaf clover, i have an eidos-rocket fic coming out in about a month. it’ll be the final story for this year’s borealis collection. i hope i do it justice (eidos-rocket always makes me insecure lol) and that it is everything you’re yearning for my love ♡♡

i am also considering having an eidos collection masterlist so you can just find all the eidos content more easily. maybe i’ll even add on eventually!

may your week be full of merry little lights and twinkly stars, and if you’re somewhere cold may you have lots of lovely things like quilts and hot chocolate and hugs (if you want them) to keep you warm. i hope you are experiencing restful nights full of quiet sleep and lovely, glittery dreams and days thy feel full of hope and love and the potential for happy futures.

[raccoonfallsharder]

i hope you have a happy hallows eve :D

you are always sweet as candy, little deer ♡ i hope you had a gorgeous starry sparkly spooky night and that the first of november brings you coziness, cocoa, and happiness. may this year bring you the loveliest and most restful of autumns. i hope you have time every day to curl up with a cute animal, drink a warm beverage, watch the seasons change outside your window, and be at peace.

(i’m kinda assuming you’re a northern hemisphere kid like me but feel free to return this product for a vernal replacement if needed)

[raccoonfallsharder]

i literally love your work and you idk why or how ive only been following ur acc for a week and yet i will defend you with my life i hope you eat your favorite food today and have an amazing day you talented gorgeous amazing pulchritudinous person

you’re so sweet?? an actual little cloud of candyfloss & fairy lights (ᵕ̣̣̣̣̣ ͜ ᵕ̣̣̣̣̣ ˶ )♡ thank you so much honeycomb. i will do my best to be worthy your high praise. you deserve a thousand kisses from happy sunbeams and a unicorn who will lay its head in your lap whenever you need comfort.

also your blessing is coming to fruition as we speak ♡ i’m about to head out to a late lunch at my fave indian place so let it be known that i gratefully attribute that to you & the lovely old lady who makes the palak paneer. thank you!!

[raccoonfallsharder]

I am hyper-fixating on gotg so hard right now, especially Rocket. It’s gotten so bad to the point that I literally start tweaking out when it’s mentioned and I start going on a 72 hour lecture on gotg. (Ｔ▽Ｔ)

SUSHINE. DAYDREAM. CLOVER BLOSSOM. BUMBLE BEE.

channel that energy. give that lecture. i will sit in that class. for fuck's sake there are so many nerd conventions you could probably actually register a presentation at and i'd be like. in the front fucken row (and i am never in the front row but for this, i would be). seriously last year i went to a nerd convention and attended an hour-long panel about writing smutty fanfiction ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and five million years ago when i was in undergrad as a lit/writing major, i did a whole giant end-of-term project for a poetry class about modern poetry being overlooked if it was embedded in pop culture media scripts - which meant i just got to talk about my favorite lines in my favorite shows for an hour

make your hyperfixations work for you (if you want to)

or just have fun thinking about them and send them to me lol

[chl03ph0b1a]

you are so sweet, i missed you too <33 btw this is absolutely amazing i wanna see this as an actual movie NOW

this question just came to my mind and has been lingering around in my noggin so

if rocket raccoon were to get his own solo movie, what kind of plot would you want to see???

CLOVER BLOSSOM! i missed you ♡ i hope life is treating you to a hundred gentle kindnesses and tasty snacks. this is a great question — thank you so much for asking it!! — and i really wrestled with it. because i think it’s actually so important for our guy to be part of an ensemble cast? he’s been solo for far too long? the map of rocket’s entire life and so many pieces of his identity (especially in the mcu) are based on this aching, painful tension between loneliness & connection: the forced alienation at the hands of his abuser and an uncaring universe; the self-inflicted isolation of his survival strategies and fears and guilty conscience — versus love, empathy, support, communication. joy-sharing. trust. friendship.and not only finding these things, not only offering them — but letting himself accept them, too. letting himself embrace them for himself.

so i think any movie i’d like to see with mcu-rocket would have to have some sort of relational component. (not me, writing way too much raccoon-smut.)

i’ll be honest. i think we got robbed in not seeing gunn’s short film about rocket meeting groot & tibius lark. i would love a rocket & groot film so much, and i'd love to use this as the (really long) cold open for the start of "my" movie. we would zip through the star-systems and asterisms, zooming in on whatever rancid incarceration-space-station gunn had in mind [feature coordinates here], and sink straight from the stardust right down into the pit-prison. rocket, groot, & lark would already be there — rocket trying to figure out his own escape.

i broke outta eleven prisons. this one ain’t no different.

lark will start storytelling, explaining his history with groot — then extracting rocket’s promise to take care of the flora colossus. perhaps, in the course of this conversation — a word i use loosely — lark would express a certainty that rocket would benefit from groot’s company as much as groot would benefit from his.

it’s good to have friends, lark might remind him.

once he’s secured rocket’s promise and groot’s safety, lark dies — which is when rocket uses lark’s leftover (robot) bodyparts to build a means of escape. then, as gunn described, rocket and groot burst upward from the pit, escaping their prison.

[roll marvel opening logo, with all the superimposed images in the letters being frames from rocket & groot comics]

we’d reopen in space, in some ship rocket had stolen from the prison. our two heroes have gotten far away already, and are about as safe as two fugitives with bounties on their heads can be. rocket would be trying to come up with a plan to get rid of groot while still honoring his promise to lark (more or less). he hates what he’s gotten himself saddled with, but he’s not going to break his word, either. lark had mentioned that groot had come from planet x/taluhnia, so rocket decides he’ll take the flora colossus back to his home planet and drop him off — wash the dust from his hands, and go back to hunting bounties and blowing up moons. good deed complete.

groot tries to protest, but rocket doesn’t understand him yet. still, groot’s distress is obvious. rocket only rolls his eyes and pushes onward, more and more irritated by his new ward.

unfortunately, when they arrive on taluhnia, rocket discovers that groot's people are long gone, and his planet is being systematically destroyed: flora colossi slaughtered, forests leveled in the name of planetary harvest. enter our villain: something more-or-less (depending on how cartoonishly-comicky you want to go) inspired by beavertron incorporated, under the advisement of shareholder castor gnawbarque (from blue river score, 2017). a little hacking on rocket’s part informs the duo that taluhnia is not the only planet beavertron has its hands all over. the company's a real piece of work, colonizing and destroying dozens — maybe hundreds — of cultures and planets in order to seize their natural resources.

groot is horrified by this additional information, of course: so many planets, at risk of being destroyed like his own. rocket is starting to understand groot a little better — he can at least read his body language and expressions — and though our little ringtailed guy is disgusted by beavertron, he still tells the flora colossus not to overreact.

don’t you know anything? this is just how people are.

rocket does, however, get super-frustrated when he realizes that his plan to dump groot on taluhnia can no longer — under any stretch of the imagination — be considered sufficient in keeping his promise to tibius lark. it gets him incredibly pissed, i'm sure — pulling his whiskers, probably kicking some grass — before finally sighing with his whole fucken chest and admitting that he guesses he's gotta blow up a frickin' coorporation now, 'cause how else is he gonna get rid of his adopted idiot?

oh rocket. i love it when you try to justify why you're doing something good.

anyway, highjinks ensue. rocket and groot probably manage to incapacitate gnawbarque — maybe there’s a collective somewhere that will pay good money to put this monster on trial. maybe beavertron collapses without gnawbarque, or maybe it hovers in the background to return for a future movie (perhaps volume two or three involves a heist at beavertron headquarters — trying to get some information down the corporation for good).

when the chaos settles and justice has been (more or less) administered, groot stands in the midst of a flattened taluhnisan old growth forest — bereft. rocket stands beside him, grappling with the increasingly-clear knowledge that groot really is the last flora colossus, and maybe this is the moment that our guy begins to realize how much he has in common with his new friend. i imagine rocket tries to offer some comfort — like he did for nebula in infinity war. a gentle, awkward pat on the hand, which groot tenderly and gratefully accepts. i imagine groot seeds as much of the forest as he can with his glowing spores, helping the leftover plantlife grow into something lovely and alive — but not sentient. the planet of taluhnia becomes a bittersweetly-beautiful living memorial.

and i imagine they both cry together. and perhaps that's when rocket begins understanding groot’s speech — fully for the first time.

and then — standing side-by-side, silhouetted under the taluhnisan sky — rocket says, you know, i could probably bring in some bigger bounties if i hired some muscle. make more money that way.

oh rocket. i still love it when you try to justify why you're doing something good.

and then my babies fly off into the stars together.

[roll credits]

our post-credits scene will just be a montage of groot and rocket in various prison cells, with rocket nonchalantly saying on i broke outta ## prisons. this one ain’t no different. on repeat. ad nauseam.