Chapter Text
What Yondu noticed when he finally snapped awake was that the pounding on his front door was not, in fact, a dream. It was three in the morning and, out of spite for whoever was waking him up, he didn’t bother to grab clothes as he walked to the door. They could deal with the “haven’t done laundry this week” underwear.
He found himself face to face with someone he’d really hoped never to see again. It wasn’t a bad face, but that was the problem. A decent face on a very shitty person he’d love to avoid, before his life managed to get further ruined.
“Ego.”
Before he’d met Ego (which was a dumb name), his life had been okay. Well, maybe not okay. He still lived in a shitty part of town with shitty neighbors and a shitty car. But he’d had friends and, hell, he was in his twenties. Life was good when you were that young. Until Ego. Then it was a heap of bad shit that alienated everyone he’d ever cared about. The pain of loss was fairly unsuccessfully dulled by the ridiculous amount of money he got from it.
So he stopped talking to Ego, moved towns, started on a slightly more legitimate path, and that was supposed to be the end of it. Until a few years of banal not-quite-suburban existence was interrupted by Ego once again.
“Yondu! Still fond of the no-pants look.”
Then he noticed the kid next to Ego; a sniffling boy with a black-eye and a bookbag over his shoulder. “Who’s that?”
“This is Peter. I need you to look after him for me, for a few days at most,” he said. Then he dropped his voice, leaning over Peter’s head to speak directly to Yondu. “His mother and grandparents died in an awful fire. He’s my son.”
He didn’t look much like Ego, but Yondu guessed that was in his favor.
“Fine. Call me when you’re ready to pick him up,” he said, gesturing for Peter to follow him inside.
“Where’s he going?” the kid asked, his voice hoarse.
“Says he’s got things to do, kid.”
He sniffed again.
“Your daddy give you that shiner, boy?”
The kid shook his head. “I got into a fight at school today.”
A scrappy lad. Not too much like his old man, then. “The spare bedroom is at the top of the stairs to the right.” Yondu trudged back to his bedroom, but stopped short when he didn’t hear the kid move. “Kid?”
A pause. What was his name?
“Peter?”
“…Can I stay with you tonight?” the kid asked. The kid was in shock, he guessed there wasn’t much else for it.
“Sure. Follow me.” Yondu put on pants before he settled back into bed. The kid’s mom had died, he may as well try and be nice. Peter sat on the edge of the bed, fiddling with an old Walkman with frayed headphone wires.
Three weeks passed before he heard anything from Ego, and it was just an odd woman with a stack of papers that stated that Ego had forfeited his parental rights to Yondu. He wasn’t sure who had been paid off to make this possible, and frankly he didn’t care. Three weeks was enough for him to know a kid like this didn’t deserve a dad like Ego.
He signed them, and that was that. Peter Quill was his.
Peter made his life a little less miserable than it had been.
So when he found two street kids with no names or homes rummaging through the trash at his autoshop one day, he brought them home too. Suddenly the house was fuller and Yondu had a built in excuse to keep people at arm’s lengths; three sons to take of, certainly don’t have time to make friends or have relationships.
And that’s how he ended up taking care of Rocket and Groot.
He wouldn’t say he was a great parent. Hell, even “good” would be a stretch. But they developed like they were supposed to, ate two or three meals a day and had a roof over their heads. He was at least a mediocre dad.
Nine years passed from the night Ego dropped off Peter without so much as a hint of where the man had fucked off to. Peter was nearly grown. Life was pretty normal.
Of course, shit was gonna have to change eventually, right?