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He was fine.He was absolutely, perfectly fine.And the next time Thor asked him if he was alright in that overly concerned, earnest way of his, or placed a large hand on his back far too gingerly as if he was afraid Rocket would shatter under his touch… Well, he wasn’t quite sure what he would do, but it would involve either guns or explosives. Preferably both.Rocket scowled to himself, eyes fixed forward as he sat in the pilot’s chair as if nothing were wrong.Because nothing was wrong. He was fine.So he had been captured by another squad of evil scientists with dreams of grandeur and so they had dug around in him some more and changed him around and implanted new parts and by the end of it…“I know you’re hovering, Thor,” he grumbled without turning around, “I can feel you staring at me.”There was a rustle behind him as Thor approached him, his footsteps heavy. At least the rest of the Guardians had given them some privacy, preferring to avoid Rocket’s mood.He should be grateful they were staying on his ship until the whole of this thing was over, at least he didn’t have hordes of nosy, high-and-mighty Asgardians to deal with, but…One of his hands tightened on the controls, while the other went to his belly. He couldn’t feel them yet. Five new lives growing within him because some scientists had gotten curious about the experiments that created Rocket but thought it would be easier to use him to breed more of his kind than to start from scratch. Figured he would not only have the bad luck to run into evil scientists a second time, but into lazy evil scientists. He couldn’t feel anything different at all yet, he just felt sore, with scars still pink and fresh and barely healed at all.Rocket wasn’t in the mood to be grateful. He couldn’t feel the difference but he still could, he felt it deep in his bones and in the way his fur stood on edge whenever he remembered the helplessness and pain, the white walls of the lab and the bright lights…Thor’s hand landed on his shoulder, so very gingerly as he had been touching Rocket ever since he got him back. He hadn’t been tentative in how he got him back and honestly, hearing about him ripping apart the space station Rocket was held on was one of the hottest things Rocket had ever heard and he’d never forgive himself for not being awake to see it. Thor’s new cautiousness was annoying anyway. “I’m just saying it’s only been a week since we got you back, you still need rest.”Rocket gritted his teeth and for what had to be the hundredth time in this week, he contemplated shooting Thor in his far too pretty, kissable face. “Yeah, well, that’s too bad, cuz I’ve got a job to take us to,” Rocket said briskly and pointedly went back to piloting. Which happened to be his job right now. Which he was doing. Or would be doing, if Thor could stop loudly thinking concern in his direction and making a general nuisance of himself. “Riches to rob and all that, remember?”“It’s been a week,” Thor started, and Rocket huffed before he could get any further and all but leaped from the pilot’s chair.“I know!” he snapped and stomped off. He needed to build something that would blow up before he blew up. The situation was thus: Rocket, wielding two of his biggest guns, with Seldo IV’s biggest crime’s lords favorite jewels stashed in his backpack and his fellow Guardians at his side. About fifty heavily armed hired thugs in front of him.On the other side of that wall of dumb, muscly brutes: their escape shuttle.In other words: Rocket was finally starting to have fun.And then, just as he was getting into the groove of shoot and dodge and hit the button to detonate another carefully placed explosive, a suspiciously familiar light show started in the sky and Rocket’s mood soured.“Uh oh,” was all he got out before Thor landed at his side, hammer in hand and looking very Asgardian and most of all, supremely obnoxious.He dodged a blast, then yanked Thor down to dodge another one because of course the idiot’s flashy arrival would earn him the attention of all now-70 and counting thugs. Unsurprisingly, the light shown had also attracted reinforcements.“What are you doing here?” he growled.Thor gave him a wounded look in-between swinging that hammer of his and looking very handsome and murderous. “You’re pregnant! I can’t leave you to fight alone!”Rocket froze, his very favorite giant gun still aimed and ready to fire, the world around them still a chaotic battlefield full of bright lights, explosions and screams and… was that their escape shuttle taking off?They had never called it pregnant before. It was the one word everybody had avoided to spare whatever delicate sensibilities Rocket might have. And maybe he had almost freaked out when the doctors – he really hated doctors, had he mentioned yet that he hated doctors? – talked about having to cut him up once more for the Cesarean… Okay, maybe it had been a minor freakout.He was still fine.Now he looked up at Thor, and Thor looked down at him, looking very much like a startled mouse in the process.“Sweet rabbit?” he asked tentatively.He still felt sore and even though he knew it was too early, it felt like he could feel something move, squirm, within him.Rocket shook his head and shook off the unease, and then he yanked at Thor’s shirt and took to running because someone here had decided to bring a tank to a rocket launcher fight.“Less gaping, more fighting, thunders!”He took his own advice and lunged for the questionable cover behind a toppled statue, while Thor raised his hammer to the heavens and made lightning split the sky once more.It would be okay. Somehow, he would be okay. Not that he had ever been anything less than fine, of course. He ended up having to get the Cesarean, of course.And for the record, it went fine and he was fine and Thor needed to stop looking so damn concerned.So he had panicked when they needed to put him under in a surgery which looked far too much like the ones he had been experimented in, and when past and present started to blend into nothing but pain and fear as his consciousness slipped away.But he had been fine and it wasn’t like they ever stuck around to pay for the property damage.At the very least, it would be nice if Thor could stop giving him judging looks for sneaking a gun and two grenades into surgery. If anybody asked Thor, the litter was flawless.If anybody asked Rocket, Thor was an idiot.“They’re just baby raccoons,” he scoffed, taking petty satisfaction in it though he’d shoot anyone who called him just a raccoon, “they poop and fart and sleep.”“They are magnificent rabbits, just like you,” Thor declared solemnly, undeterred, and Rocket scoffed again, deciding that Thor was now being particularly Thor-like just to spite him. Or maybe to make him laugh. Not that he was laughing, mind you, he was just the tiniest bit amused, maybe, possibly.He turned his back on Thor and the makeshift cradle the Guardians had built for the litter out of scrap metal. His movements were slow and infuriatingly deliberate and he knew it would take a greater fool than Thor not to notice but just because he knew he was still aching all over and Thor knew that he knew that Thor knew… well, it didn’t mean he had to acknowledge it.Thor’s large, heavy hand settled on his shoulder, then slipped down to slide over his back soothingly, up and down, stripping Rocket of all protests before he could voice them. He was sneaky like that. Sneaky Asgardian; they’d always been like that. “Are you alright?”Rocket’s shoulders slumped.Yeah, he would be able to ignore it, unless Thor went and gave voice to it and thus, made it real.He sighed, more defeated than disgruntled, and turned back to Thor and the litter. “I will be,” he promised, his voice far gentler than he would bother with for anyone else. He reached for him, grasping his hand and giving it a squeeze before he let Thor go back to the soothing caresses. It felt nice, being petted like that, it lessened the ache that went down to his very bones, and if anybody other than Thor tried they would lose that hand.His body still ached where he had been cut open once more for the Cesarean but the ache went deeper than that. It was as if this surgery had reminded his body of every other old scar and old pain and they had decided to all flare up in sympathy.Rocket leaned against Thor, leaning into the solidness of his body, growing only more solid as he plopped down on the ground and stopped being so fucking tall. He peered into the cradle.There were five perfect little furry bodies in the ugly box, snuggled together on a thermal blanket in one large pile, with just tips of tails and tiny snouts peeking out of the raccoon pile here and there.“They don’t look much like anything yet,” he said again, trying to find the scorn from before within him and only half succeeding. “They sure don’t look like me.” He looked over his shoulder, right into Thor’s stupidly adoring face. “Or like you.” He thought for a moment. “Like rats, maybe. They barely even have any fur yet.”“You are right, they will need another blanket!”That… He grumbled a little when the comforting, solid feeling of Thor’s chest against his back disappeared as he went on some scramble for more blankets, but something kept him from arguing. Maybe it wasn’t the worst, Thor being so enthusiastic. It was kind of nice, actually, that he could look at these tiny creatures whose eyes hadn’t even opened yet, and wouldn’t for weeks, and feel… What? Fatherly?Rocket wasn’t even sure if he felt fatherly, or wanted to at all. Figured Thor would make it look easy. Stupid Asgardians.Suddenly Thor was back, a solid presence against Rocket’s back once more, fussing around him as he rearranged the blankets, then settling to wrap a large arm around Rocket’s middle and draw him close. He leaned into him again, letting himself relax. Thor’s fingers somehow avoided all the achiest places and found the ones where his gentle touches calmed him. It made Rocket lean more into him, made his own eyes grow half-lidded.“Does it still frighten you?”Thor’s voice had been hushed, particularly by his standards of quiet, and Rocket could have easily pretended not to have heard him over the hum of the ship. He didn’t bother. He felt wide awake now. “Your doctors said they’re like me, genetically.”There was Thor, nuzzling his head, the tips of his ears. Still soothing.Rocket frowned at the litter. The runt of them, one of the boys, was waking up now, wriggling and starting up a pitiful screeching which he knew would wake up the rest of them in no time at all. That was normal raccoon behavior. It was also normal behavior for any number of other mammal species, Thor’s own included. “The rest, we won’t know until they’re older.”They might have been like Rocket genetically, but the experiments done on Rocket had involved more than genetic modifications. Even he didn’t know or understand everything that had been done to him. That wasn’t even speaking of the second time he had been captured. Presumably, they had gone to all the trouble of giving a male raccoon the ability to get pregnant so they could breed more of his kind, a sloppy way to replicate his creation without going to the full troubles his original tormentors had gone to.He still wasn’t sure if he was hoping for it to turn out they had succeeded, or not. He wouldn’t want a life like his own for the squirming little bundles – they were so tiny, and looked even tinier in Thor’s large hands! – but he knew he would be crushed if he could never even talk to them.“We will love them either way,” Thor announced, and he sounded so serious again that Rocket wanted to mock him for it, except that Rocket knew he really was serious. There was nothing mockable about the way it made him feel.The largest of the litter, her fur a little darker than the others, woke up next and joined in the chorus. They really needed to give them names. Rocket just found himself hesitant to give them names before he knew what… or who they would be.“Well? What are you waiting for?” Rocket demanded. “It’s your turn to feed them.”“Of course.” Thor scooped up the runt, which was already his favorite and no amount of denial would keep Rocket from seeing the truth. The baby raccoon looked even smaller cradled in his large hand. The screeching softened, then picked up again as the siblings realized they had been separated.Rocket scooted away and watched Thor cradle first one, then two, and finally all five tiny raccoons against his broad chest, and make a proper mess of trying to feed them all at once – as usual, which was exactly why Rocket let Thor handle the feedings. It was hilarious, and he had been promised good credits for video evidence.He snickered to himself as he watched Thor try to juggle the babies and a pipette filled with milk, which looked just as tiny as the raccoon babies themselves in his large hands. There were tiny raccoons clinging to his shirt with tiny little claws, others tumbling back into his lap and Thor looking the happiest and most relaxed Rocket had seen him.Thor scooped up one of the babies just as he started an escape attempt, the runt was clearly coming after Rocket. “A little help here, sweet rabbit?” he huffed.Rocket brushed him off with a lazy wave of a paw and leaned back. “Nah. I’m good.”Oh, he was going to make a fortune with this video.