loki and peter's bromance has gotten the most screentime so i don't need to delve super deep into it here, but like, in my head, peter is basically the guardians' tendency to adopt strays all condensed into one person. he's the entire reason they're like this. i've said this before but i never intended for ohtmb to become a full length story, let alone a series, until peter grabbed loki by the arm, looked me in the eye, and said "this is my friend now. no take backs" and he just??? made him a guardian of the galaxy???? meanwhile loki is completely stunned that anyone other than his brother might genuinely want him around. hell, he barely believes that thor does! and peter keeps proving, over and over again, that he likes loki and he wants him to be a part of the team. (it's worth mentioning that between being a thousand years old and the magic powers, peter just thinks loki is so goddamn cool. loki does not know this.) that initial invite -- "i'm not a part of your team" "yeah, but you could be" -- that was the first time anyone other than thor asked him to stick around, it was the first itsy bitsy crack in loki's armor, and that kind of thing sticks with loki for a while. also, as evidenced by the frost giant reveal, peter is the guardian that loki is most likely to turn to first, mostly because he has the excuse of, like, y'know, he's the captain. of course i'd go to him first no it's not because he's my best friend shut up

for gamora, in my universe loki didn't know she was the daughter of thanos until later - she was already taking every excuse she could find to be away from thanos by the time loki fell into his hands, so ohtmb is genuinely the first time he ever sees her. he was a little miffed that she hid that from him, but like, who is he to judge people for keeping secrets? gamora was the second person to invite him to join the guardians, which was the first time he actually started to believe they might mean it, and she was the first person to offer him genuine advice on how to move forward after thanos. loki deeply, deeply respects her. she's definitely the guardian whose opinion he values the most.

i've said this before, but i love to think of nebula and loki's relationship as basically ron swanson's "i once worked with a man for three years and never learned his name. one of the best friends i ever had." they do not talk about their feelings they do not talk about their traumas they barely even TALK except to ocassionally ask if the other one wants to spar, and yet. and yet. they get each other so well. loki's almost on a level with gamora in terms of understanding nebula, and in some ways he even relates to her *more* than gamora does. he will never ever ever say this out loud because he likes keeping his insides on the inside. either way, nebula is the easiest one for him to quietly share space with. they're both bringing that "i can just be in the same room and that counts as hanging out" antisocial cat energy to the table

now, mantis! loki is, like every single other guardian, extremely protective over mantis. she has that sort of childlike innocence that none of the others (except for groot, the actual child) have, despite her having a whole heaping pile of traumas to rival everyone else's. and all of them, loki included, knew her for just a few days before they were like "i guess i have a baby sister now" and they never questioned it. the empathy throws another curveball in there: loki is so unbelievably guarded all the time, and being anywhere near mantis is deeply unsettling at first. no one is allowed to know what he's really feeling! and obviously he learns to trust her eventually, enough that touching her is done with barely a thought anymore, but a part of him also recognizes that it's.... kind of a relief? he's spent so long hiding and lying and keeping his feelings under wraps that it's become a very difficult habit to break, even when he wants to. mantis helps him get around that without actually having to do anything. (she can sense that and is very pleased by it. she likes helping her friends, and it's always a relief for her when her abilities can be used for something good.)

drax is a fantastic exercise in loki shedding some of that high-and-mighty attitude because he's been forced to recognize that someone lacking intelligence (or at least the kind of intelligence he's used to) can still hold a lot of value anyway. drax gently getting information out of that little kid while loki's in the background like ????? was so important to me. he's smart in a way that loki could very easily dismiss, and not too long ago he probably would have, but he doesn't. also, drax was loki's first encounter with genuinely wanting to help someone when it had no benefit for himself, just wanting to save them, and then not being able to. he still feels some kinda way about drax losing his leg. anyway, he and drax get along shockingly easily on a day-to-day basis, mostly because even when loki does bring out the barbs and say something nasty, 99% of the time it goes over drax's head and loki doesn't even have to bother feeling bad about it.

oh, groot. groot groot groot. loki absolutely loves being the fun uncle who's constantly helping this kid break rules. if someone tells groot he's eating too much candy and he's gonna make himself sick, loki will magic some into his room because come on, fuck the system, and besides, if he gets sick, he gets sick! then he'll eat less candy anyway. (he firmly believes he is the only one who does things like this for groot. he is incorrect.) there is also a part of him, a part that he doesn't let himself dwell on, that recognizes that groot is the only one among them all with a lifespan even approaching loki's. again, he doesn't let himself think about that very much, but the thought's... there. he'll address it eventually, maybe.

okay so you know that trope of, like, constantly bickering friends who you swear must hate each other but then the minute shit goes down and they need to work together it's like OH. oh i see. they're exactly the same brand of insane, that's why they're friends. that's loki and rocket. they're always either furious with each other and at each other's throats, or they're in cahoots and everyone else needs to start running. (side note: if loki was around for the gotg3 plot he would have gone the classic survivalist route a la hela, being like "no we CAN'T fight the high evolutionary he's too powerful and we will all die, we'll find some other way to help rocket" right up until he sees what the high evolutionary actually did and then he's just like. hm. okay. i am going to turn all of his internal organs into snakes or die trying. how fast can we get there)

last but certainly not least: loki didn't know what to make of kraglin at first, since they barely interacted outside of loki knocking him out that one time, but he knows that for some reason he's sort of unexpectedly... comfortable? around kraglin? like it's just easy to be around the guy. he doesn't know why, they've barely even spoken to each other. but then one day they got very, very, very drunk together by accident on a foreign planet when they were between missions, and kraglin awkwardly held his hair up while he puked into a trashcan and then he started filling the silence with some dumb stories from when peter was a little kid, and loki had this drunken moment of clarity like "ohhh. he's a big brother. that's why it's easy to be around him" and he absolutely 100% never revisits that thought while sober.