Table of Contents (scroll past for the start of chapter 1):

Since these stories are mostly one shots, I have a table listed below so you can find the specific story you're looking for. Pairings, warnings, and genre listed, unless they directly spoil the plot. Keep in mind that unless a story says that it's in the same continuity as another story, it's an entirely separate thing. Some stories do contradict each other!

$ for Continuity A

# for Continuity B

Otherwise, separate one-shot.

One Meat Lover's, To Go: Humor, Peter centric, no warnings, no pairings

When the Chips are Down: Drama, Peter/Rocket, no warnings, no pairings

Knives: Humor, Gamora centric, no warnings, no pairings

$ Ain't Nothing Like Me 'Cept Me: Drama, Original '90's Comic Guardians, offscreen limb loss. no pairings

# This is Why I Hate the Vet: Drama, Peter/Rocket/Groot, bone breakage, offscreen surgery (no blood), no pairings *fan favorite

Aqua Vitae: Drabble, whole team, implied offscreen character death, no pairings

# Here's Lookin' at You, Kid: Drama/Humor, Gamora/Rocket centric, no warnings, Peter/Gamora pairing, *fan favorite

# Fix-it Felix: 4+1 story, Rocket centric, no warnings, no pairings

# One Rocket, In a Box, As Ordered: Humor/Action, Drax centric, no warnings, no pairings

We All Have Dead People: Drama, Rocket centric, one character worries whether others are homophobic/transphobic, no pairings, *this chapter is very divisive. Some people utterly love it, others have expressed distaste due to subject matter (discussion of being gay/transgender).

$ The Eighth and Ninth Dwarves: Drama, Peter/Yondu/Vance Astro, no warnings, no pairings

One, Eight, and Nineteen: Humor, Groot/Rocket/Drax, no warnings, no pairings

Cheer: Humor/Fluff, Peter centric, no warnings, no pairings *fan favorite

He Says, She Says: Humor, 2008 Andy Lanning Guardians, no warnings, one spoiler pairing

$ Two Things are Certain: Humor, Yondu centric, no warnings, no pairings

Worth: Drama, Peter/Rocket, no warnings, Peter/Rocket pairing if you squint really hard *fan favorite

# Crybaby: Drama, Peter/Rocket centric, no warnings, no pairings *fan favorite

Remember Them: Drama, Drax/Rocket, offscreen character death, offscreen body modifications, no pairings *fan favorite

Nova, We Have a Problem: Drama/Family, Everybody!, offscreen experimentation, Rocket/Groot if you squint really hard

Hey all! For NaNoWriMo I'm doing a series of short GoTG stories. I love the movies, but I wet my teeth on the comics a few years ago (I'm a massive Sam and Max fan and Rocket/Groot are basically Sam and Max IN SPAAAACE). I am trying to write 50K (about 2K per day), but as some of these stories may be longer than others, this won't be updated daily. Plus I still am working on my other ongoing fic.

Please leave me prompt recommendations. I can't guarantee I'll do them all, but suggestions welcome and will be used shamelessly with credit to the suggester. Especially if you can suggest something interesting to do with Gamora. She's not as important in the 2008 comic run so I'm not good at characterization with her. Feel free to suggest comic or MCU prompts, I'm going to do a mix of both.

[1] One Meat Lover's, To Go

Groot noticed it first. He spent most of his time with his feet grounded in the terrarium Rocket and Drax had built for him on the upper deck by the galley, so of course he knew what was going on in one of the two areas most commonly used by the rest of the team. Sure, he could walk around the ship at this point, but the soil and fertilizer system Drax had set up just felt right.

So, when Peter sat up with a data pad in his hand, groaning for the third late shift in a row, Groot knew the curiosity was getting the better of him. He unrooted himself and shakily ambled over to a seat next to Quill. He was reading, silently mouthing words off the pad. Groot boiled them both some water, dropping a heaping spoonful of the flavored caffeine powder the rest of the team practically lived off of into Peter's mug, offering it carefully to his friend.

Quill looked up. "Todah, Groot."

Groot looked puzzled at Quill, sitting down with a bemused look on his face.

"Ani mitzaer," he said, before vigorously shaking his head. "Uh, sorry. Can you understand me now?"

Groot nodded. It was weird, Groot's translator never made errors.

"Ugh, great, now I lost my place," he said sighing, before quickly adding, "Not your fault, Groot. And thanks for the drink." Peter gulped down a large sip, choking on the hot beverage.

It was Rocket, naturally, who found out next. If Groot knows, Rocket always does too; the Grootvine spreads rumor faster than a brushfire.

The next night Rocket makes a big show of changing out Groot's fertilizer cell and a "dead" bulb in his sun lamp. Peter wasn't an idiot. But when he realized Groot overheard him, he knew it would snowball. So he just kept reading his tablet, this time saying the words aloud as he read, instead of simply mouthing them.

"I am Groot."

"No, man, it isn't you. I can't understand it either."

Peter looked up from what he was reading, gaping his mouth in and out like a fish, pointing at Rocket. After a few deep breaths, he spoke.

"Course you can't understand it. It's English."

"Ing leash? Terran language?" Rocket cocked his head to one side, curious. Peter remembered that despite his crass mannerisms and tough demeanor, Rocket was the smartest person on the ship by a wide margin, with Groot in a distant second. Aside from heavy weaponry, languages seemed to be a ting Rocket liked. He could understand Groot, of all things, and had actually tried teaching some to the rest of the team one night to abject failure. Nobody else could hear the undertones in Groot's speech, let alone decipher them.

"Yeah. I don't think your implants have it. Have to add certain languages custom."

"What's with the desire to read Terran literature all of a sudden?"

"You heard about the Chitauri attack on Ear-Terra. The Nova Corps is trying to wrangle a team to serve as diplomats and officially welcome humanity to the sentient universe. But, as we don't have translation implants back home, even if Nova sent a team with English, or, I dunno, Chinese added to their software so that they could understand what humans said, there's no way anybody on Earth will understand THEM. So, I'm trying to learn to read at the level of not-a-fourth-grader. Haven't had much chance to practice speaking or reading English in the last two and a half decades. Nova Prime wanted me to write up a primer on learning English, but I'm not much better than asking a kid."

"Gimmie," Rocket replied, pulling his booster chair up next to Peter's seat. "This will be nineteen."

'Nineteen?" Quill asked skeptically.

"Nineteen languages I'm fluent in. Start talking, hairless."

The following night, Drax sat down, and he was prepared to learn. Peter was expecting being ignored (they all had their own share of weird hobbies) or, at worst, lightly ribbed by Rocket and Gamora, but he wasn't expecting a freaking classroom. Like, with lined note paper and everything.

Drax brought a notebook and an inking brush, of all things. Freaking calligraphy paper.

"Proper handwriting is important. Particularly for expedited communication in a classified meeting," Drax simply remarked as he took his place at the galley table.

Peter expected Gamora to come the following night, and she was already there, with a pen and paper in hand before he'd even been ready with that evening's lesson (with extra work for Rocket, as he was already reading Dr Seuss. After three days.). What he wasn't anticipating was the plate of chocolate filled cookies.

"Rocket looked up Milano in English, and said it was a pastry. I did not believe him until Groot found some images from the Terran internet. As it seems, occasionally Rocket can choose not to pull stupid stunts on people."

"Did you make these?" Peter asked, fearing the worst. Gamora was an assassin, a sharp wit, and a wonderful companion. But a cook, she wasn't.

"Drax did. I only assisted in converting the recipe from Terran weights and measures to Xandarian."

Peter knew he would eventually tell the crew about family names. But, hey, tonight, he had free cookies.

He bit into one, and it tasted like home.

It was all of two weeks before Peter was having serious- like giving instructions on repairing the broken cold storage serious- conversations with Rocket in English. Groot could clumsily type out sentences in a free tablet, and enjoyed watching old episodes of I Love Lucy they could manage to catch from old broadcast waves. Drax's excellent penmanship led him to studying Earth calligraphy, and loopy copies of old illuminated manuscripts were tacked to the grating in the cargo hold. Gamora continued to work with Drax on food, and their dinner table slowly became an English-only zone (except Groot, but extenuating circumstances), complete with Drax's attempts at spaghetti and meatballs or tacos with the ingredients they had on hand.

One month in and Rocket was making jokes and double entendres, and Drax and Gamora were holding most of their basic conversation. In freaking English.

By two months, English was their go-to language, and practically a secret code. They could yell strategy to each other in battle as loudly as they wanted, and their foes never could predict their movements. Eventually, English might become more prevalent in implants used by the people in the underworld that thought the Guardians might come knocking on their door, but, for now at least, they all had something that was theirs and theirs alone.

Three months in, and Quill submitted his first primer to Nova Prime for a very nice sum of money, edited by Rocket, with penmanship sections neatly made by Drax. Cultural and etiquette notes were provided curtesy of Groot and Gamora. Nova Prime was nothing short of shocked.

"Your entire team speaks English?" she asked, at a debriefing meeting once the primer was passed through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"Well, some more than others," Rocket said, pointing at his current perch.

Nova Prime gritted her teeth, deciding hard on what to say next.

"We are running out of time. Word from Asguard is that Frost Giants have been attacking several cities on Terra. We need to send a token of our aid, and an open hand to the Terrans sooner than later. If we do not, they will begin to believe the default state of civilization away from their own is aggressive and destructive. Proper diplomatic relations can come in due time, but we need to make first contact and offer our assistance before they turn outward to the universe with a hawkish gaze."

"You want us to represent Xandar?" Drax asked.

"It is not that I have no other options," Nova Prime finally said, weary, "but there are few. And Peter is from the planet, which may help. Will you go, with our blessing?" she asked, and then promptly added, "And our payment."

"How the heck we handling this, Quill?" Rocket asked, upon returning to the ship. "We enter their airspace, yell 'Take us to your leeeeeeadeeer' or summat and hope for the best?"

"Better idea," Quill said, after a few minutes. "Pizza."

"Pizza?!"

Rocket had to admit that this was actually a really good plan. It made the Guardians look a bit (okay, a lot) stupid, but this also meant that they would look a heck of a lot less threatening and far more relatable.

They were not going to a major city. They were not announcing their arrival. They were not tuning off the Milano's cloaking.

They were going to order a pizza.

Rocket put on the boots he wore when working in the engine room. Drax actually wore a shirt. Groot, currently just shy of Peter's height, borrowed some of his old clothing. Gamora muttered something under her breath that could almost be mistaken for 'adorable'.

Gamora and Peter scouted a good location, debating whether to stop close enough to a major city like New York or Los Angles or really go somewhere rural to make any government officials go a long way to them. As long as they steered clear of Alabama.

Eventually, they had decided on Ohio (mostly because Groot called it Ooooo-oooo), turned on the cloaking, and scanned the surface until they found a suitable suburb. Gamora landed the ship in an empty lot, and the five of them strode out of the vehicle.

"Yeah, can we have one Hawaiian pizza please?"

The person behind the counter, an eighteen-ish year old girl in blonde pigtails, just stared in shock. She would have thought these guys were costumed for some kind of party, but the tree person's proportions were just too off. Plus there was that raccoon in clothes sitting, arms crossed, on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, but it's no shoes, no shirt, no service," she finally squeaked out.

"Told you, Groot. Sorry bud, you'll need to wait outside."

Groot let out a low whine and pushed the door open, looking dejectedly at his too-large stumps, as Rocket shouted from his perch, "And Quill, if you're getting freaking cheese and fruit on the same darn pizza I ain't eating it. Get something else too."

"A side of cheezy bread."

"For us five, Quill? Really?" Gamora asked. "I don't think that's enough food."

"…and one meat lover's pizza. To go."

The rest of the transaction went by quickly and quietly, and Drax took the boxes with a simple "Thank you very much for the food," and the remaining three Guardians were out the door as quickly as they had entered.

"Boss?" the girl asked to an older man in back when the last of the group had disappeared.

"Yeah, Chelsea?"

"Did we just serve pizza to aliens? With Southern accents?"