The main cabin of the Milano was, by current standards, a picture of domestic chaos. Peter Quill, twelve years old and clad in a faded flannel shirt over a Dungeons & Dragons t-shirt, was hunched over the control panel, his beloved Walkman already attached and chirping out the opening riffs of an aggressive punk song.
Yondu Udonta, meanwhile, was meticulously cleaning the air filter array near the secondary navigation console, a tedious task usually reserved for Rocket. He hated mundane maintenance almost as much as he hated Terran music, but Meredith Quill had, just yesterday, commented that the Milano smelled “like stale tobacco and desperate bachelorhood.” He’d been scrubbing ever since.
“She’s right, you know,” Peter mumbled, adjusting the volume on his headphones, though he still heard the scraping of Yondu’s tools. “The ship smells like the inside of a trucker’s cab after a chili cook-off.”
Yondu stopped scraping. “Pipe down, boy. I’m doing this fer you. So your high-and-mighty mama stops lookin’ at me like I’m gonna steal the silverware.”
Peter pulled the headphones off one ear. “She was looking at you like that because you are a wanted criminal who tried to sell me to my biological father before you decided to actually save my life—allegedly.”
“It was a sound business decision at the time!” Yondu snapped, then sighed, returning to the filter. “Point is, she’s back, ain’t she? And the only reason she’s tolerating me is ‘cause of you, and those little green and blue pests ya picked up outta the backyard—”
“Gamora and Nebula are not pests!” Peter protested, then paused. “Wait, you said she was high-and-mighty. But when she was talking to Stakar on the comms earlier, you were just sitting there, not even calling her a self-righteous mud-grubber, which is your favorite nickname for her.”
Yondu stiffened, his blue skin turning a shade paler, a reaction Peter had seen only when Yondu was about to be fined by Nova Corps or forced to eat a vegetable.
“She was talkin’ about supply routes,” Yondu grunted, avoiding eye contact. “Not worth the energy.”
“No,” Peter said, his own brain clicking through months of subtle data points: the time Yondu fixed the generator Meredith broke; the way Yondu ‘accidentally’ stopped by Meredith’s sector just to ensure she wasn't having 'trouble'; the time Yondu actually complimented Meredith’s aim—before immediately saying it was 'beginner's luck.'
Peter’s jaw went slack. The realization hit him with the force of an oncoming asteroid. It was a truth so fundamentally wrong, so revolting, so against the natural order of the universe, that his body reacted before his complex 12-year-old brain could process the magnitude of the horror.
He didn't just gasp. He didn't just shout. He released a sound that was a combination of utter disgust, moral panic, and physical pain.
He screamed.
A long, high-pitched, absolutely ear-shattering sound that could shatter glass and curdle milk across three star systems.
Yondu clapped his hands over his massive, fin-covered ears, dropping the filter wrench with a clang.
“GAH!” Yondu bellowed, reeling back. "Geez, boy, wake the dead, why don’t you? What in the blue blazes was that for?”
Peter was still screaming, but now it was devolving into panicked, stuttering speech, his face flushed magenta with revulsion. He grabbed his Walkman and flung it onto the dashboard, where it bounced harmlessly.
“It’s SICK! It’s GROSS! It’s just fundamentally—WRONG!” Peter jabbed a finger at Yondu's chest. “You! You and—you and her! It’s unholy! It’s like watching two different strands of nasty space mold try to fuse! It’s just… NO!”
Yondu stared at him, genuinely bewildered. His confusion was real. He was currently experiencing a low-level panic attack trying to figure out if Peter had just seen a cosmic horror or just realized he was out of mixtape batteries.
“What in the actual hell are you talking about, Quill?” Yondu demanded, removing his hands from his ears, the piercing whine still echoing in the tight cabin.
“You know what I’m talking about!” Peter shrieked, bounding off the panel and taking a defensive stance. “Meredith! My mom! Why you CAN’T like Meredith! She’s too good for you! She just got back! She’s my MOTHER! It’s illegal! It has to be illegal! It violates the Guardian Code!”
Yondu blinked slowly. “The… the what now?”
“The Guardian Code!” Peter insisted, stamping his foot. “The one we all follow! The one I made up! The one where we don’t steal from allies and we try not to blow up the main engines! And the first rule, the most important rule, is ‘Don’t Fall In Love With Star-Lord’s Mother!’”
Yondu threw his hands up, exasperated. “Quit it with your Terran delusions already, kid! There ain’t no code! And I don’t ‘love’ your mama, and she doesn’t like me! She wants to skin me every time I’m within ten feet!”
Peter recoiled as if struck by a lightning bolt of realization. His eyes narrowed dangerously.
“Oh, so she’s a challenge? You sicko!”
Yondu’s patience snapped. He was used to Peter being annoying, but this was venturing into high treason territory. “Oh, now what?! What fever dream are you concocting now, boy?”
“You like a challenge! You like a fight! You like danger!” Peter was practically vibrating with teenage righteous fury. “You see her as all of the above! She hates you, she insults you, she keeps you guessing! You see her as the ultimate thrill! You see her as the ultimate heist! Your disgusting, gross, code-betraying… sociopath!”
Yondu clenched his fists, the blue veins standing out on his arms. “That’s not what a sociopath is, Quill. And I’m about three seconds from spacing your whole little collection of 1980s garbage right now.”
He took a deep breath, trying to regain control. “Listen to me, boy. I tolerate your whole mess of a family—Meredith, Jason, Darlene—and that whole gaggle of miscreants you call a crew, only because of you. That’s it. End of story.”
Yondu leaned in, his voice dropping to a low, spitting growl, listing his grievances. He needed to prove, for Peter and himself, that the revulsion was mutual and deserved.
“I hate your mother,” Yondu stated firmly. “She’s self-righteous. She’s Stakar’s blasted ‘pet project’ these days, thinkin’ she’s better than the rest of us just ‘cause she can shoot a laser. She calls my arrow a toothpick! A toothpick, Quill! She called it 'a pathetic little whistling stick' and then she froze it mid-flight with one of her blasters! She calls me every ugly name in the Clans—traitor, weakling, blue-painted garden gnome! She constantly believes I’m ‘grooming’ you to be a criminal! And worst of all? She’s as soft of a Terran as you are.”
Yondu paused, needing to catch his breath after the tirade. He was angry, genuinely furious. The fact that the list of complaints was so detailed, so specific, and so easily recalled didn't register as a red flag yet.
Unfortunately, he thought, his chest cavity suddenly feeling heavy and squishy like a thawed swamp slug, that’s the whole damned problem, ain’t it?
She was soft, yes, but she was also tough as iron. She never backed down. And the way she handled herself, the way she managed to run with Stakar’s crew despite having been born on that mudball—that was what caused these intrusive, weak thoughts in his head. That’s what caused the horrible, squishy feeling in his chest.
Peter stared at him. The fire had left his face, replaced by a cold, dawning realization. His jaw went slack, his eyes wide as dinner plates.
“Oh my God.” The whispered words were quieter than the hum of the engine. “You do like her.”
Yondu groaned, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “That ain’t what I—”
“YOU BROUGHT UP SPECIFICS!” Peter erupted again, the sound bouncing off the walls. He was pointing now, a frantic, accusing finger. “THAT’S LOVE LANGUAGE!”
“I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!” Yondu roared back, utterly defeated. “It’s a list of reasons why I hate her! You think I keep a ledger of how many times a target calls my weapon insulting? This is just normal communication, you lunatic!”
“No, it’s not!” Peter insisted triumphantly. “Normal communication is you grunting! Specific communication is what she said, when she said it, and how she looked doing it! You remember exactly how she insulted your arrow! You’re obsessed!”
Peter clapped his hands over his mouth, suppressing a fresh wave of horrified screaming. “Wait till I tell Gamora! She’s going to think this is even sicker than that time Rocket tried to date a vending machine!”
Yondu felt his metaphorical blue heart sink into his boots. He took one look at the sheer, unadulterated disgust radiating from his foster son, and the crushing realization that he was caught—caught by a twelve-year-old child using Terran relationship jargon—was too much.
“Get out,” Yondu muttered, gesturing vaguely toward the cargo bay.
Peter didn’t move. “Are we going to talk about this? About your feelings? Maybe buy her flowers?”
“We are never talking about this again,” Yondu hissed, picking up his plasma pistol. “And if you mention ‘love language’ one more time, I’m jettisoning your tape deck into the void. Now scram, Quill. Before I invent a new rule for your little code.”
Peter, momentarily silenced by the threat to his music, finally backed away, giving Yondu one last, horrified, scrutinizing look. "You know, Gamora says denial is the first step to acceptance. Which means—”
“GET OUT!”
