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"I can't believe you still had more of these stashed down there," said Quill, brandishing one of those silly bobble head toys in front of Yondu's face.
Quill had been down in Yondu's personal storage space just below his quarters on the Eclector. Yondu told him he could use the spare parts he had stored down there for the new ship Quill was refurbishing, but he didn't say he could nose around through his personal items!
"How come you never gave it to me?"
"Because ya never earned it," Yondu answers gruffly. "Ya turned into a pain in the ass teenager! Plus ya weren't interested in winning toys no more. Must I remind you about, Hot Babes of the Eastern Quadrant!"
Peters cheeks flush. "That wasn't even my magazine! It was Kraglins', who stole it from Scrote, who stole it from Halfnut. And by tomorrow I technically won't be a 'pain in the ass teenager' anymore."
Yondu feels a pang of some strange feeling in his gut at the reminder.
Ugh... He should be happy the boy is eager to finish his own ship and strike it out on his own. Quill certainly caused him enough trouble over the years! There's no way he would miss having him around all the time. Would he?
"It would look pretty awesome on the Millano's dash," still palming the toy. "So, can I have it?"
Peter gave Yondu that look. Not just any look. The Look. That pleading, pathetic, damning look! It could bring grown men to their knees. And has! So many times he and Peter had used it to run a scam.
Although, he'd never admit that he himself fell victim to it more times than they ever used it to scam someone. What Quill lacked in cunning and ruthlessness, he seemed to make up for with charm.
For a moment, Yondu sees Quill as if he hadn't aged a day from the innocent babe that first arrived on his ship. Even now, as a young man his face still held most of its child-like qualities.
The strange feeling that began in his gut now crawled its way into Yondu's head and he shamefully gets caught in memory.
-oOoOo-OoOoO-oOoOo-
"So, can I have it?" Says a little voice from long ago.
Yondu can feel the little boy at his side tug gently on his sleeve. He looks down at Quill holding up a huge display case of toy ships. His eyes grow wide as moons, while his lips tremble and hold a tight pout. The boy looks as if the case of toys would make him happy for the rest of his life.
This is it. The Look.
How can Yondu deny him?
The boy had been watching the other Ravagers take what they liked. He had earned some plunder as well he supposed.
Him and the gang were salvaging the place anyhow. They had received a lucrative tip about an abandoned refueling station that had yet to be dismantled by the company that owned it. And of course the Ravagers would be all too happy to help with the dismantling.
"Sure boy, take what ya want."
At this point, Quill had only been with the Ravagers a few weeks and Yondu was actually glad the boy spoke up and was asking him for something.
That was the problem in the beginning. Quill always had difficulty telling Yondu what he needed. And Yondu, for the life of him, had no clue what Tarren children required aside from food, water and toilet. So it didn't help their situation that the boy was shy and frightened and rarely voiced his opinion. But what could he have expected when the boy had been through so much and was in such new and strange surroundings.
However, in the past few days Quill was beginning to speak up more about the things he needed. And now, for him to have the boldness to ask Yondu for something that he didn't need but just wanted, seemed like an even bigger step in the right direction.
If the boy were to become a true Ravager, he would need to lose his shyness around Yondu and his men, right? At least that was how Yondu had first validated his reasons for spoiling the boy.
"So, can I have it?" Peter boldly asked not a few days later after acquiring the toy ships. Grinning from ear to ear, he was holding up some little bobble head toy that had been sitting with a group of others by the register. The thing sort of resembled a Terran dog.
Now this was a little different. Yondu had to land on Xandar to resupply the ship. He had taken Quill into the trading outpost there only because the boy had seemed restless. Before, when Quill asked Yondu for the toy ships, they had been on a job. The boy even helped load some of the items they scavenged back onto the Eclector, so in a way, he had earned them. But this would be more like giving the boy a true gift, something he didn't earn.
Well, not even a gift. A gift at least celebrates something; a birthday, a holiday, an accomplishment. This would just be handing the boy something for no reason and Yondu had a feeling this would not make the boy a good Ravager, probably just the opposite.
Just as Yondu feels the no rising in his throat, Peter hits him with that damning, round eyed, pouting stare. The Look. Before Yondu knows what's happened he's paying for both the supplies and that ridiculous toy!
Yondu privately scolds himself afterwards for giving in to Peter, but it's too late, the boy has already poisoned him somehow. This, Yondu clearly remembers, is where the pattern began. Because from then on he found it difficult, almost impossible, to deny the boy anything!
Yondu couldn't help it, he liked indulging the boy. He liked to see his satisfied smile. He liked to be looked at with something other than fear. It was all so new to him.
But truthfully, when Yondu really thought about it, he knew he was only spoiling Quill because part of him was still guilty.
Damn his guilt!
All those kids! Probably just as cute and special as Quill. One day he'll make sure Ego gets his!
No. No. He won't go there anymore. Best to ignore... That.
As months worth of toys and trinkets accumulated at alarming rates, so did his crew's complaints against the boy.
A boy!
At first Yondu gives no credence to their claims. How could grown men have such trouble getting along with such a small unassuming creature as Peter Quill? They must have just been jealous that Yondu's attention was pulled elsewhere.
After all, the boy's care was just another job on top of the many duties he already had as captain. Yondu's usual late night carousing with the crew had taken a backseat to his busier schedule.
It wasn't until Kraglin came to Yondu several weeks later that Yondu came to realize he may have a problem on his hands concerning Peter.
A soft knock on the door of Yondu's quarters announced Kraglin's arrival one evening after dinner.
"Come on in Kraglin."
"Hiya Cap. Can we sit down and uh... talk a minute?"
"Oh no! If you're gonna start complaining about the kid too, I don't wanna hear it!"
"Not all of what the crew is saying is untrue." Kraglin smartly makes his tone gentler. "The boy is causing problems and he only seems to be getting worse. He runs wild around the ship and thinks he can do whatever he wants."
"Come on! Grown men can't handle one kid!"
"Cap, the boy is dangerous and he is gonna end up hurting himself or blowin' us all to hell!"
The prospect of Quill getting hurt gives Yondu pause. "Whatcha' mean, dangerous?"
"Well, just the other day when I was flyin' the ship, I had my back turned for not even a minute and that crazy kid comes outta nowhere! When I came back he already pressed half the buttons on the main counsel and somehow he started the sequence to take us outta lightspeed. If I wasn't there to stop it we woulda' slowed right into a path of a asteroid!"
Yondu knew sometimes Kraglin had a tendency to exaggerate, but unlike most of his other crew, he would never outright lie to Yondu. So, begrudgingly he had to admit there could perhaps be a problem.
"Fine. Let's go pay our little friend a visit."
Moments later, Yondu and Kraglin found themselves in front of Peter's quarters. Kraglin raises his hand to knock but Yondu snatches his hand away before it makes contact.
"A surprise visit will get us to the bottom of this faster," says Yondu in a harsh whisper.
Kraglin nods his head and swiftly opens the door.
Just as Kraglin steps over the threshold, he lets out a high, inconspicuous yelp. Yondu grabs him by the back of his jacket just before he nearly falls flat on his face.
So much for surprising the boy.
Yondu takes in the massive pile of junk Kraglin nearly fell over and quickly realizes that the whole room is in a state of utter disarray. Piles of toys and trinkets loom around them like miniature mountains dotting the landscape of childhood.
Through all the mess however, Peter is nowhere to be found. After their gazes take a quick tour of the room they meet each other mirroring the same dumbstruck look. Before Yondu or Kraglin even have the chance to utter a word of bewildered comment, they hear a muffled thumping above their heads.
Looking up, Yondu notices the air duct take a slight jostle. Following its winding path he sees the intake vent above Quills bed wide open.
"What the f -," Yondu cuts off Kraglin's inquiry with a silencing finger to his lips.
With an abrupt thud and a cloud of dust, Peter lands perfectly on his bed. If Yondu hadn't been looking squarely at the vent the small boy just tumbled out of, he would have thought with all the mess that his eyes had played tricks on him and Peter had been sitting there the whole time. The telling cloud of dust, a little curious, however.
Upon closer inspection however, the boy looked far from the innocent babe Yondu decided to keep around. This child looked less like a boy and more like an ethereal rogue spirit of chaos haunting the Eclector; wild, grimy and a little frightening.
Yondu and Kraglin round on the boy, stepping into Quill's personal space. But instead of being intimidated as they expected he would be, he only sat stoically shooting them his deadly pout. The Look.
Damn that Look.
It truly hits Yondu just then that Quill has been manipulating him; that pouting look, those wide innocent eyes. His men were right. And he has been a fool! His humiliation quickly turns into anger.
"WHAT THE HELL DO YA THINK YOU'RE DOIN' BOY!"
He grabs Peter roughly by the collar of his dusty t-shirt, pulling the boy up from the bed so he could look him in the eye, standing Peter up on tiptoes, his cute pouting look quickly erased and replaced with fear.
Good. You better be afraid, boy.
"I hear from my boys you'd been causing a ruckus around MY ship! And didn't I tell you you're not to leave your quarters without me or Kraglin. You know where that air duct goes boy!?! Goes to the ships exhaust in the engine room. You coulda' been burnt up extra crispy! But that's okay, saves me and my boys the trouble of havin' to cook ya for dinner! They ain't ever tasted Terran before. You break the rules again, Quill and your DEAD!"
Yondu shoves Peter back down onto the bed, hard, to make his point. Doing so he hears an incriminating jingle from the boy's pockets. The fear is still in his eyes but that adorable pout made its return to his lips. The Look. Again!
He was still being manipulated!
Just as Peter's hollow, I'm sorry tumbles off his tongue, Yondu demands he turn out his pockets.
The boy has the nerve to hesitate at the command! This is much worse than Yondu thought.
"NOW!" He snarls.
The contents of Peter's pockets only further prove the boy's guilt. There was a big bag of Yondu's missing sweets that he was about to accuse Kraglin of stealing - knowing the man's insatiable sweet tooth. The small jingle was just some half units in change but the bigger more damning jingle was Kraglin's keys to the flight deck!
The boy wasn't only spoiled, manipulative and disobedient but he was a thief too!
Yondu feels his anger rise to near breaking levels. Maybe I will eat him, he thinks darkly.
He snatches the keys and sweets away, "THIS IS THE LAST STRAW, BOY! YOU'RE GETTING PUNISHED!" Pointing his finger in Peter's face.
"Kraglin, go out into the hall and bring in that storage cart."
After a beat, Kraglin comes through the door wheeling in the large container with a satisfied smile on his face.
"Ya see all these toys and trinkets ya conned me outta'? They're gone! You didn't earn um'."
Yondu starts grabbing as many toys as his arms could carry and dumping them roughly into the container. Kraglin gives an amused chuckle at the torment painted on Peter's face and happily helps Yondu with the task.
"Wait. You can't -"
"WHAT WAS THAT, BOY!?!"
"N... nothing," Peter stuttered out weakly, his eyes coated in the luminous glass of tears as he sank back down to his bed, shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.
Yondu almost feels sorry for the boy. Almost. But he could have gotten himself killed! How else is he going to learn he did wrong?
YOU could have gotten him killed, says a voice Yondu usually tries to ignore.
When the task was finished, the room looked as empty as the day Peter first arrived on the Eclector. Yondu began pushing the now full cart of toys out the door.
"NOOOOOO!"
The blood curtailing sound of Peter's cry does something terrible to Yondu's insides. He turns to the boy hoping Peter hadn't just spontaneously combusted from some sort of strange Terran illness.
"Aren't we forgetting this?" Quill is hopping up and down trying to reach the backpack Kraglin is holding high above his head just out of his reach.
"GIVE IT BACK! GIVE IT BACK!" Yondu is a little dumbfounded by Peter's unusual hysteria over his backpack when he hadn't made a peep over all the other toys he took back. His tears were running down his face like open flood gates now and his short gasping breaths made Yondu wonder how long he could keep that up before he passed out. The boy was beyond himself!
But then he notices the Terran music box hanging out of the pack's pocket, the music box Quill always seems to have on him. Yondu never asked Peter directly, but he has a sneaking suspicion that the music box has something to do with his mama. His dead mama. Because that's how it went with all these kids. It was the same story with Ego; the mama died and the kid needed to be taken home to daddy.
Why hadn't he questioned what he was doing sooner? All those kids! Damn Ego!
Damn me.
"Let the kid keep his Terran crap!"
"Fine." Kraglin drops the bag into Peter's desperate arms.
"Ouf!" Before he runs back to his bed with his backpack he makes sure to accidentally stomp down on Kraglin's foot.
He sure is a feisty one.
Once he's back in his bed, he wraps his little body around his pack so tightly that if anyone attempted to take it again, Peter would surely be taken along with it.
The boy's tears began to dry and his breath returned to its natural rhythm within seconds of securing his beloved Terran treasures. Watching Quill hold so tightly to his backpack - probably missing his poor mama - Yondu feels such a strange misplaced feeling. A feeling almost like... jealousy? Was he actually jealous of the kid's mama? Or maybe the feeling was pity. Perhaps a bit of both.
No, that can't be right. The boy has an unfortunate way of eliciting feelings in Yondu he'd rather not contemplate too deeply. Terrren's are just… strange.
Satisfied that the boy seems to be calming himself down, Yondu turns to leave.
"Wait," says a small voice.
Yondu turns to look back at Peter. When their eyes meet he notices some of the fear creep back into Peter's features. The fear that was there the day they first met. Something twists in Yondu's gut and he decides he likes Quill's manipulative pout better.
Damn this boy! Making me feel... confused!
"Speak up, Quill! I told ya, you could ask stuff whenever ya want. A Ravager always speaks his peace."
"You... you said, I didn't earn them. But H... how do I earn them back?"
Yondu looks back at Peter trying to hide his dumbstruck slack jaw. The boy had managed to throw him around another loop. He hadn't thought of that! This boy is a true Ravager if he's ever seen one. Smart as a whip.
Apparently, the kid knew more about how punishments worked than Yondu did, but Yondu, quick to cover up his faux pas adds, "Oh, I almost forgot to tell you that you won't be eating with us in the mess hall at mealtimes anymore. Instead you'll be stayin' in your room all day and cleaning up the mess after we eat. And if ya do good cleaning, maybe I'll consider giving ONE of your toys back in two weeks!"
Yondu slams the door and leaves with Kraglin, not wanting his soft, confusing feelings to leach out somewhere and poison the boy or him any further.
About a week into Peter's punishment, Yondu starts to notice a dull, lifeless feeling about the ship. He tries to focus on his morning duties but the feeling is really grating on his nerves. He has finished taking his weekly inventory of supplies and is now about to run a systems check in record time.
Life aboard the Eclector could never be dull. Could it?
Scrote was still betting Halfnut to do stupid things. There was always some loud argument to break up or some louder laughter to join into in the mess hall. There was always some big heist to plan or some hot tip to follow up on. But it all just seemed so dull.
Could he actually miss that chaotic boy's antics; his pranks on the crew, the silly Terran dances he does down the halls, his quiet way of tugging on his sleeve to ask for something, his manipulative pout, his disobedience, his thievery! No. What the hell was he thinking! Of course he doesn't miss him. He's gotten more done in a week than he has since that boy arrived!
Perhaps these Terrans just have some sort of strange ability to mess with your mind.
Finally overcoming the treacherous feelings of that morning, Yondu gets a break that evening from his busy day. He would never get a moment to relax like this with Quill on the loose.
Just as he sits down in his favorite chair, stretching his legs across his desk, a knock interrupts his peaceful retreat.
"Come on in."
It's Kraglin of course, probably with some problem any of them were capable of handling themselves.
Yondu interrupts Kraglin before he speaks, as he usually does. "If somebody else can handle this, go find somebody else," he says on a sigh.
"But you told me to come to you with anything I had about the kid. If you're too busy I could ask -"
"Out with it Kraglin, what's the problem with Quill this time?"
"The kid ain't eatin' much these past couple of days."
"Ain't eatin', huh. Ya think he's sick?"
"I don't know, Cap. You said just to give him his food and leave cause he's being punished. I never asked him. He just ignores me anyway with those things in his ears and his music box playin'. When I come back for his plate most of the food's still there."
Could punishing a child truly be such a difficult part of their care? Yondu thought it would have been the easiest. Scolding his men had always brought him a sense of satisfaction, a feeling of power and leadership. But with Peter it just didn't work. The dull and regretful feelings of that morning were back ten fold.
"Stay here. I'll get to the bottom of this," Yondu groans.
He leaves Kraglin in his quarters and heads to Quill's room. Walking more quickly than normal down the hall, he wonders what could possibly be wrong with the boy. His mind spirals at all the frightening possibilities.
Damn it.
He barges noisily into Peter's room, a little out of breath and off his nerves. To make him even more aggravated, it takes Peter a full thirty seconds before he even notices Yondu standing in the middle of the room. He's lying stretched out across the bed, arms behind his head, listening to his music as if he doesn't have a care in the galaxy.
Sick, my ass.
When Peter finally notices him he jumps back a fraction, taking his headphones off and pulling his legs up to his chin protectively.
"What the hell is wrong with you, boy? Ya don't look sick, so why ain't you eatin'?"
Peter thinks for a moment before he answers, "I wasn't hungry." He says it so quietly Yondu can barely hear him.
He knows Peter well enough to know that his quiet, vague answers signified not a physical illness but rather something troubling the boy's mind. He seemed to have reverted back to the way he behaved in those first days, when Yondu had taken him away from Terra, when the boy was too frightened and upset to even utter more than a few whispered words.
"You don't feel sick or anything, do ya?" He had to ask just to eliminate the possibility.
The boy shook his head in the negative.
"Then what's wrong with you?"
He shrugged his shoulders in answer, looking at his hands as if they were very interesting. Suddenly, Yondu has an idea of what might be bothering Peter.
"Miss havin' all those toys?"
Peter shook his head, again.
Well, damn! What was it then?
"Ya miss your... home," he sighed, not wanting to ask.
"A little," he answers softly, still looking at his hands.
"So that's what's bothering ya?"
"No."
"Come on, boy I don't have time to play these guessing games. Now look at me and tell me what's wrong!"
The boy finally looked up at him, but Yondu didn't like what he found there. The corners of Peter's lip trembled ever so slightly and his eyes looked like over filled pools threatening to flood. He wished that manipulative pout had been back on his face - The Look - he wished Peter had yelled and cried for his toys back. But this. This. Yondu was not prepared for this.
He gets up and turns his back on Peter to swallow the lump of emotion in his throat as his eyes take a sudden interest in the door panel.
This boy will be the death of me.
After a moment, his meal of emotions digested, Yondu pulls up a chair next to Peter's bed and levels his gaze on the boy.
"Tell me what's makin' you upset, Quill so we can do something to fix it."
Peter responds to the change in Yondu's tactics.
"I was just trying... I just wanted to be a good Ravager. I thought you would be proud of me for sealing and getting away... well almost getting away with it. I thought you were gonna teach me stuff but maybe I'm just a problem or not good enough at it and I should go back home."
Yondu knew he couldn't let the boy go back to Terra, not yet anyhow. If the boy went back home now, Yondu didn't trust that psychotic celestial, Ego wasn't still nosing around. It was just too dangerous. In the beginning Quill wanted to stay with Yondu because Yondu promised him he would teach him how to be a good Ravager. Quill wanted to be something he called a Star Lord; whatever the hell that was, but Yondu just went with it.
"Ya can't just be a good Ravager or uh… a… Star Lord overnight boy. But you're right, I shoulda' been more focused on teaching ya stuff, not just givin' ya stuff. I suppose just givin' stuff to a boy to keep um' outta your hair is a lot easier than teaching. I'm sorry, Quill. Looks like we both messed up."
After a beat, "Does that mean I can punish you since you messed up too?" A sly smile crawls up the corner of Peter's lip.
"HELL NO!"
Yondu wanted to be angrier at the suggestion but all he could do was admire the boy's clever mind.
"Why?"
"Cause I'm captain of this ship and you better not forget that!"
"I hope one day I could be the captain of a ship."
"I don't doubt it, boy. You're sly as hell and you got all your wits about ya."
The boy's mouth turns up at the compliment in a way Yondu has not witnessed before. It wasn't sly or manipulative or a pout it was just…
Pure.
Yondu feels the muscle in his jaw moving in a dangerous direction as if to mirror the boy's new expression.
Before Yondu's unused smile muscles could get the workout they so desperately needed, Halfnut barges into the room in a panic.
"CAP! Something's seriously wrong with the ship! We're losing fuel faster than I can get her turned around and into port."
Yondu growls and strides toward the doorway.
Idiots can't even fly the damn ship!
Before he follows Halfnut out he gives Peter one last look.
The boy ain't gonna learn nothing if I keep him locked in a room all day.
"QUILL!" Peter looks up, surprised by the sudden address and a little slow to react. Yondu waves him over to get him moving.
"Come on, boy I'll show you how I handle an emergency."
Once Peter makes it to Yondu's side he bends down to Peter's level giving him a proper warning. "We're goin' to the flight deck and if you so much as get within an inch of the controls without my say so, I'll throw that music box out the airlock. YA HEAR!"
Peter's eyes get wide as he nods his head in agreement and follows Yondu out the door.
When they made it to the flight deck, Yondu found that the Eclector had suffered a major fuel leak. Yondu had to switch off the main engine and use the axillary one to make an emergency landing on Knowhere.
What struck him however, was Quill's genuine fascination with the ship. The boy had stood quietly and did exactly as he was told; which was something new for him. Normally, Quill was bouncing off the walls or getting into something he shouldn't. But the boy really had made an effort to learn what he could.
When Yondu had asked him to push the switch to change over to axillary power, the boy's face lit up like Yondu had never seen before. He hates to admit it but he almost liked it when the boy looked like that.
Quill even asked a few questions too. Not the kind that most annoying little kids would ask - What does this button do? What about this one? Can I push this? Can I press that? - No, Quill asked very thoughtful questions about just what Yondu was doing and how to do it and about the inner workings of the ship. Some questions Yondu himself couldn't even answer. He had almost forgotten he was talking to a boy so young. Peter's behavior, more like a young man who was in his first day of flight school.
Impressed with his willingness to learn, Yondu finds Peter after dinner the next day, dutifully cleaning the mess hall, per his punishment. He strides up to Peter as he's cleaning one of the long, crumb ridden tables with a rag. He sits down in the chair next to where he was standing and pulls out the Terran dog bobble head from his jacket pocket.
"But I'm not supposed to get one back for another four days and seven hours," he says excitedly then becoming a little apprehensive.
The kid was counting down the hours too!
"Yeah, but ya did good the other day helpin' me land the ship." He slides the toy across the table to Quill.
"But I was just watching. I didn't really do -"
"Yeah, but your watchin' helped. And so did your askin' questions. I'm getting old, sometimes it helps when you ask me questions about the ship so I can remember stuff I might have forgotten - gives my brain some exercise."
"Oh." Peter fully accepts the ridiculous notion, but there was some truth in it.
"I'll make you a deal, boy. If you keep doin' what you're doin' and stay outta trouble, every other day after dinner and after you clean the mess hall, I'll give you a flyin' lesson."
"Really!"
Yondu nods his head.
"Yes. Yes! YES!" Peter hops up and down excitedly, flipping the rag in weird directions and doing one of his odd Terran dances.
Yondu wants to tell him to stop but all he can do is crack a smile. He's glad none of the other Ravagers are around to witness it.
"And remember, ya keep doin' good and in time you'll earn all them toys back and when that happens I'll be able to call you a real Ravager."
Peter beams at the thought.
"I'll teach ya other stuff too; how to fight, how to use a weapon and about thieving, real thieving. But lesson one about thieving boy; you do not steal from your own men. Us Ravagers have a code. Ya see, let me explain something, the Ravagers are a gang... uh... group - I think the Terran word might be family but I'm not sure - and you don't steal from family, boy.
"But... if you want to use that pout to your advantage, I'll teach you how to do it right. Ain't nothing in the Ravager code that says we can't steal from folks that ain't Ravagers, if ya catch my drift."
Peter smiles that special smile again.
Yondu's mind drifts further, remembering that first flying lesson with Peter. The boy was excited but Yondu could tell he was a little nervous under it all.
Right away Peter notices Yondu hanging a pair of gold dice next to the control panel when he flies.
"How come you all put something different there?" Eyeing the dice.
It had become a kind of tradition, whoever was responsible for flying the ship that day would put their own unique little bobble or trinket on the Eclector's dash.
After he explains this to Peter, the boy digs through his jacket pocket and puts the little bobble head dog on the dash tentatively, giving Yondu a questioning look.
"Okay Quill, but just for the lesson. Then the toy goes back to your room."
Yondu remembers fondly the boy's unmistakable swell of pride as they began their first flying lesson. Just as he remembers how Peter's feet dangled in the co-pilot's seat. But he mostly remembers the look in Peter's eyes when he flew the ship for the first time. That special day was truly something they had both earned.
Through the years, Yondu's rule about Peter's toys only staying for the duration of their lesson crumbles and many of the toys he earned back for his good behavior find a new home on the ship's control panel. Before his eyes, in what seemed like such a short span of time, Yondu sees the toys grow in number on the Eclector's dash. So many there is not an empty space left. And with their growth, so too does Peter.
-oOoOo-OoOoO-oOoOo-
"So can I have it?" Grown Peter asks, face still held in that infamous pout. Yondu, thankful for the interruption out of his shameful, overly sentimental remanices.
Peter holds the toy just above Yondu's head testing his new height but thinks better of it when Yondu gives him a warning look.
"No" replies Yondu.
"Fine," says Peter, handing it to him. But then a small wicked smile flits across his face. "So can I have Hot Babes of the Southern, Northern and Western Quadrants?" Holding up the trio of vulgar magazines.
Yondu almost feels his cheeks heat with embarrassment. He thought he had gotten rid of those stupid things. For a second he ponders what other things he has left behind in his storage unit.
"Guess we know now who Scrote, Kraglin and Halfnut originally stole these from," he adds, ogling the scantily clad women on the cover.
Before all his traitorous feelings threaten to spill over, Yondu swiftly punches Peter in the stomach.
"Ouf! What was that for?"
"You earned it, Quill."
The End. :)