Destruction

    “…because he—”

He looks back down to the screen in front of him, drags his finger across and taps an icon.

            “—he, and I quote, ‘told me I was built like a              brick shithouse’?”

"I am no bathroom."

He thinks this question over for several long seconds. These were serious allegations to be making, and he would not make them lightly.

"I would kill Nebula." Without question. Any who shared the beliefs and ideals of Ronan would die at his hands.

"I would lay with Gamora." She was strong, and less likely to break beneath his strength.

    It’s been two weeks, three days, nine hours and probably around 24 minutes, give or take a few either side to allow for error, since he last had the urge to smack his head against the nearest available wall.

       Make that zero weeks, zero days, zero hours and around, ooh, 2.4 seconds.

            “—you did what?”

"Wha—no!! Gross, man!” He doesn’t bother to hide the grimace from Drax’s question, and he’s really not feeling up to explaining the finer points of human headcolds to a walking wrecking ball. “Keep talkin’ about it, though, and we might revisit your last question.”

"What was my last question?" Surely, his last question would have been the one about vomiting from his anus. If they continued to speak of anus vomiting, Rider would vomit from his anus?

Because they are dead. Bodies long since rotted into the dirt, spirits resting in the place where they all go. Beyond.

Yet he can't seem to let them go. Drax finds himself reaching out to stop the child from running in busy streets when they land in Xandar, he looks for his wife when he rolls over in the cramped bunk that is his home now.

They are dead, he is not. Drax tells himself this every day. He is alive. He has people who need him, and Thanos needs to die for what he's unleashed on the worlds. He is alive.

"God, I hope not." He really hates throwing up. Not that he thinks anyone really enjoys it. That would be weird.

Blue blazes, he needs sleep.

"Will you.." His fingers twitch as he struggles to find the words that Quill had used. "Will you vomit from your anus?"

     ” —— you are lucky that your face is not the business of my fist.”

His expression flickers between confusion and aggression. Her tone is clear, but the words are not.

     ”My face is none of your business, Drax. Nor is it Starlord’s.”

   ”— who said I was angry?”

She is. It’s evident in the rigid set of her muscles and the tightness of her jaw — but she lifts her chin, as though trying to keep herself above it.