“Yeah……
but you know….. some days I just… I think….. what Stakar said to me…..
how…. he said I did it for the money… that if it was from the goodness
of my heart I wouldn’t have taken the money…. I just…… was I just
greedy….. or….. not……. I just….. It’s hard….. …. hardest was being
abandoned…. again…… I.. was lost…. I still am…… you saw my ship… she’s
falling apart….. you look at the other ravager ships …. so different….
we don’t have enough jobs or credits to fix shit…..soon I’ll just be
captain of scrap metal…”“You were UBER-ing kids across the Galaxy,” Carlos said. “It’d be foolish not to charge something with fuel and power to consider. I… I really find it hard to believe that this Stakar person wouldn’t understand that. As for greed… well, what can one expect from Ravagers? But Yondu, I know you – you would never hurt a child intentionally. This Ego person… he sounds highly manipulative and, obviously, has committed serial filicide.You can’t blame yourself for his intentions and actions.”
Frowns. “What’s a ubering? But… regardless…. that’s how Stakar dealt with it.” Looks at him and rolls a bit grabbing him to snuggle nuzzling into his neck.
Carlos made a noise, surprised by the sudden affection, but he put an arm around Yondu comfortingly. “I’m sorry… for everything that happened.” He started to rub Yondu’s back.
“I meant ‘taxiing’. Ubers… they’re a thing on Earth that are like taxis, but more flexible and convenient.”
“Heh…. you Terrans are so weird..” Smiles a bit pressing close and sighs relaxing nuzzling against his chest closing his eyes. He was a secret cuddler and proved it by snuggling pressing as close as he could to carlos.
“It’s a brand name,” Carlos said. “That might be why it didn’t translate over that well.” He leaned his head in against Yondu’s. “I want to still be friends, Yondu. I really do. I don’t… I don’t want to give up all that’s happened in space. I want to be able to talk to you and to the boys. And, I dunno… maybe having someone from Earth that he could talk to would help Peter out a bit as he grows up?”
Yondu nods clutching just a bit tighter to him. Damn this terran for making him so sentimental. “I…. Ok….. not sure how well the coma will work over the larger distances but… we can.. test them and…. hopefully allow us to…. communicate….even a little.”
“And even if comms don’t work, there’s still just the space-mailing with electronic text messages,” Carlos said. He smiled slightly. “We call it ‘email’.”
“Yeah… there is that. But you can’t make fun of my spelling. Heh.” Nuzzles him and sighs. “I don’t …. do goodbyes well…… I hate them…….. especially when…. we’ll…. you know….”
Carlos nodded slightly. He bumped his head gently against Yondu’s. “But it’s not forever… we’ll still talk to each other. I’ll send recordings of stuff on Earth, and maybe some music that Peter might like.”
“Yeah.and I’ll send pictures of … everything I can. Just so… you know… earth doesn’t bore you to much.” Nudges his head back nuzzling at him and sighs closing his eyes breathing turning relaxed as he just rests with him until the food was ready. He was softly snoring in a light sleep after a few minutes lulled to sleep with Carlos so close.
Carlos just lay awake holding Yondu. This… this was nice. He didn’t actually lay down and have Yondu snuggle up against him like this and sleep. They didn’t quite get to that, as Carlos was still having trouble sleeping and he was afraid of waking up Yondu too much.
This was going to be the only time he’d experience this with Yondu. If he could move on… that remained to be seen. But this wasn’t going to happen again with Yondu, so he tried to commit it to memory.
After a while he heard Mikey’s voice calling for him and Yondu, and it honestly startled Carlos a bit. But he turned and started to shake Yondu awake. “Hey – dinner’s ready.”
The Perfect Scientist 