I Might Be In Love With Wanda Now Too.

I might be in love with Wanda now too.

the raccoon, the witch, & the roadtrip. part four. south dakota.

the raccoon, the witch, & the roadtrip masterlist prev | next [est june 11] | main masterlist

angst, comfort, friendship, & fluff for @hibatasblog rocket & wanda | part 4/7 | word count: 1864.

rocket and wanda get in a fight.

During a watch party for Avengers: Endgame on Twitter, Markus revealed the idea to team Wanda with the Guardian of the Galaxy captain actually made it into several versions of the film's script. "We had whole drafts with Wanda on a road trip with Rocket," Markus wrote, "but after the Vision plot in Infinity War, nothing we came up with was anything but wheel spinning for her character." CBR

They don’t stop until Rapid City. Wanda looks like she might actually be ready for a nap — her firestorm-eyes somehow blunted by exhaustion — and Rocket himself could go for a few drinks, which is apparently not a thing you’re allowed to do if you’re in a moving vehicle in this corner of Terra. 

Stupid, he’d scoffed at the witch. M’not even the one working the frickin’ pod.

Car, she’d corrected mildly, and she still hadn’t let him have a drink. He’d thought about swiping some booze at one of the so-called rest-stops, but then he’d felt all twisted-up inside about sneaking a drink when it was clearly something she didn’t want him to do. In some ways, she reminds him of Gamora — too serious, carrying way too much for her skinny baldbody shoulders — and the thought of fucking around with her rules when she’s got so few of ‘em just makes him feel small and low.

Sometimes he misses the days when screwing with someone brought him twisted shreds of meanspirited joy. 

Time to be the captain, he thinks bitterly.

By the time they find a hotel with a vacancy that doesn’t look like a shithole — not that he minds shitholes, of course, they kinda feel like home to him; but Wanda’s muttering something about bedbugs and reminding him that Natasha’s paying  — well, by then, he’s a little worried he’s not gonna get a drink after all. There doesn’t seem to be a bar within reasonable walking distance — not that he can see. But when they check in, he can see from the corner of his eye that there’s a bar attached right to the frickin’ lobby, and he thinks maybe Terra doesn’t completely suck after all.

The witch is so exhausted that it actually doesn’t take long for her to drift off this time — at least, not by his standards. He can hear her heartbeat suddenly thumping her awake every few minutes for the first half-hour or so — but eventually, her stifled breaths of wakefulness spread out and smooth over. 

It’s not that he’s trying to sneak out. He hasn’t done that since — well, since Pete was around, and that was mostly just to fuck with an easily-annoyed Star-Lord. Really — and Rocket would never admit it if asked — he’s pretty sure that, like himself, the witch finds it easier to sleep when she’s not alone. 

So he putters around, quietly working on a series of tiny linked infrasonic mines made from some scraps he’d squirreled out of Nat’s sound system and a pocketful of things called earbuds he’d swiped at one of the fancier rest-stops. Once he’s sure Wanda’s asleep, he scrawls a note for her — hoping he’s remembering the written Terran language Pete had insisted on trying to teach the Guardians before everything went to hell. Rocket had picked up a fair amount of it, even if he’d pretended disinterest. 

He wishes he hadn’t been such a frickin’ dickhead about it.

witch -  goin to lobby bar. see you in mornin. r

He snags one of the access cards out of the flimsy paper envelope that the front desk had issued them, and carefully eases the door shut behind him. Currently, the plan is to let the poor witch sleep, and to get so wasted while she does it. He’s been sober for cycles now, and he frickin’ deserves it.

Down the hall he goes, whistling a jaunty tune, tail swinging casually behind him. On the way past the ice machine, the door of another room opens. Some baldbody woman looks out, then drops her eyes to his. She blinks, goes white, and closes the door right back up again. He shrugs — weird — and hops in the elevator. He ain’t a fan of the little crack between the floor of the hotel and the little metal box, dropping down countless stories to the basement below. Don’t Terrans know how to make any safe tech? He tries not to think about being in a deathtrap while he hits the button labeled G, which Wanda had explained was for ground floor. 

On four, the elevator pauses and a man nearly steps in before noticing Rocket. The interim captain of the Guardians of the Galaxy offers a friendly, nonthreatening mock salute. 

“Hey, guy.”

The man goes white, and steps back out of the elevator, suddenly gripping his messenger bag in front of his belly. Rocket frowns as the doors slide shut.

Terrans are so frickin’ weird, he thinks again.

The elevator dings and the doors slide open, and Rocket grins at the sight of the bar, with all its glass bottles reflecting molasses-brown shadows and amber light.

“Hello, gorgeous,” he murmurs, and strolls across the tiled floor and through the little entryway. The bar is nearly empty — perfect for penance-drinking. He leaps delicately onto a stool at the bar. “I’ll take the hardest thing you’ve got,” he tells the bartender — a slender humie with thick, darksilver hair. The man blinks at him, eyes growing wide and face turning to ash. “The whole bottle,” the captain clarifies, suddenly recalling that Terran humies tend to distill some of the weakest liquors in the galaxy.

“I — I don’t think I can do that,” the Terran says thinly. His eyes flicker over Rocket, ears to tailtip.

Rocket’s brow pleats. “Huh? Why not?”

“Uh,” the bartender says, eyes siding nervously to one side, “we don’t serve… pets at the bar…”

It takes a minute for Rocket to be sure he’s understood correctly. His lip peels back from his teeth and he catches himself at the start of a seething hiss when the man shrinks back.  

Terrans are just morons, Rocket reminds himself. You’re s’posed to be the captain now. Of the Guardians of the frickin’ Galaxy. A good guy. 

Hang onto your frickin’ temper.

“Dude,” he manages to grind out between sharp teeth. “I ain’t a frickin’ pet.” 

“Wild animal, then,” the bartender mumbles, eyes nearly as big as Mantis’ had been, but much less kind. It sends a spear of leaden regret slides right through the fucked-up, half-shredded muscle of Rocket’s heart. 

That chick with the antennae, he’d called her. Why’s he always gotta be such a dickhead?

For once, he tries not to turn that pain outward, even though it’s always so much easier. Still, he can’t help but feel his fists curl and his ears flick back, flattening against his skull. “How many wild animals do you know that talk?” he asks the humie behind the bar, trying to be reasonable. “I’m a frickin’ Guardian of the Galaxy. An honorary Avenger or whatever. I fought Thanos for you assholes.”

I lost my whole family for you.

The bartender begins backing away, palms raised in surrender. “Look, I don’t know anything about you being an Avenger, but if you’re not a service animal, I don’t think you can even be in the bar—“

Rocket feels his eyes go round and his spit go sour. The fur on his back and neck and arms splays wide, and his tail puffs to twice its normal size. “A. What?”

The bartender looks like he’s going to cry. “I don’t know, man! For all I know, you could be rabid—“

“I ain’t rabid,” Rocket snarls, rising to his feet on his barstool. “I get my frickin’ shots—“

“—and we don’t serve raccoons!”

His jaw clicks shut. The sharp electric-shock of the word burns every nerve and short-circuits his brain, and all he can think is how much he’d give up for Pete to call him that shit-name again.

“What’d you call me?” 

He launches himself over the bar and lands on the mirrored shelf behind it, spraying bottles across the narrow space while the Terran shrieks and cowers. Glass and booze explode against the tile while Rocket spins and hooks his hands into claws, ready to rend. 

“I’m gonna frickin’—“

He’s springing through the amber and blue shadows when strands of light, as glowing-crimson as his own warning-beacon eyes, loop around his waist and tug him back, suspending him in midair. He tears at the gossamer-fine threads, but they slip through his fingers like mist.

“Rocket.”

He bares his teeth and glares upward. 

The witch. 

She strides across the lobby, smudged and tired, her red-star eyes spiraling and spilling molten fire. Her hair’s all tangled from whatever brief sleep she’d gotten, and her face looks white and pinched and pained. She must’ve woken, some part of him notices — smothered under the heat of his fury, his lashing tail and kicking legs. She must’ve woken, and noticed he was gone, and seen his note.

She looks concerned.

The front desk staff flinches away from where they’d been watching the scene unfold in the bar.

“Rocket,” she says gently. “Stop.”

“I will, sweetheart,” Rocket promises earnestly, still twisting and tearing at her threads of power. “Swear I will. Just lemme take care of this one jackass first—“

“No,” she says, stepping up next to wear he’s suspended, her face just a few inches from his. Her magic pulls him gently over the bar, closer to herself. “He’s not worth it.” She looks around the lobby, and some distant part of Rocket wonders how such a volcanic stare can suddenly look so utterly cold and remote. Is his own eyeshine is picking up the reflection of her light and throwing it back at her? He can picture it: four firestorm-eyes lighting up the entire hotel lobby. 

“Nothing in this place is,” she adds icily, and the ends of her hair begin to flicker and float in a wind he can’t feel.  His instincts suddenly shudder and go still: the freeze element of a classic flight-or-fight reaction. Something deep under his fur acknowledges the pure threat of her. The witch’s voice is dark, and crackling with raw red lightning. Something at the base of his spine recognizes it as the most dangerous sound he’s ever heard, and his ears flatten in alarm, puffed tail suddenly tucking in against his inner calf.  The silk strands of magic lower Rocket gently until his feet rest on the surface of the bar, but they don’t release him — not yet. Never mind that he’s not fighting anymore.

“You are a fool,” she tells the bartender, turning her molten eyes toward the baldbody still cowering behind the bar. She lifts a hand to point at Rocket. “This person is more than just an Avenger. He has saved the entire galaxy — a number of times. In all likelihood, he has saved you. Personally.” Her eyes skim the weeping bartender dismissively, then flick dismissively over the front desk staff and the two other patrons Rocket hadn’t even noticed, hiding near a potted tree that reminds him too much of a young Groot. 

“He’s no animal,” she tells them in that terrifying, midnight-voice. Honestly, Rocket wouldn’t blame any of them if they’d wet themselves. His own bladder suddenly wants to let go and it’s only his superior frickin’ aversion to embarrassment that keeps his body under control. 

“He deserves your deepest respect, and your deepest gratitude,” she tells them. Her eyes, still haloed in red radiance, hold onto the bartender.

“Now pour him a drink.”

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