It wasn't a large group that was at the edge of the field to see the guardians off very early the next morning.
That was by design, though. Most of the goodbyes had been said the night before, but Tony, Pepper, Peter, Ned, and Steve were there, watching as final supplies were loaded – including a very large supply of junk food that had been taken care of with a simple trip to a larger grocery store. Easy on Earth, but much harder when you were flying around the edges of the galaxy.
"You know where to find us, now…" Tony told the guardians, offering Quill his hand. "Don't be strangers."
"We won't." He smirked. "We'll run out of Ding Dongs eventually and will need to come get more."
"Plenty of ding dongs in this ship," Gamora said, smiling as Tony offered her his hand, too.
Pepper wasn't nearly as formal. She hugged Peter, and Gamora – who tensed for just a moment and then allowed the gesture and even returned it. Drax seemed to welcome the embrace, and Mantis was wallowing in the warmth of the emotions of the people around her. Pepper knelt down in front of Rocket who turned his head, slightly, as if unaffected by all the sentimentality going on around him.
Which made Pepper smile.
"I'm going to hug you," she told him. "You can let me, or I can do it against your will and make it last even longer."
Rocket looked up at Tony, who was watching Peter talking to Groot.
"You married this woman, willingly?"
"Absolutely," he confirmed. "Hug her," he suggested. "Otherwise she might decide to kiss you, too."
"Humans are weird…"
He didn't look at all annoyed, though, when Pepper gathered him into her arms and hugged him, close, and if his cheek pressed against her neck for a moment and his grip tightened as his arms went around her as much as they could? Well that was just to make sure she didn't hold him too tightly and smother him, right? Peter finished saying goodbye to Groot and looked at Quill and Gamora.
"Thank you for coming to save me…"
Both adults smiled at the boy.
"You could always come with us," Quill told him with an amused expression. "Leave this squalor behind and come be my sidekick. I'd never ground you…"
Peter grinned, glancing at Tony, who rolled his eyes, also amused.
"The allowance is pretty good… can you make me a better offer?"
Pepper smiled, letting Rocket go with a kiss pressed gently against his furry cheek, not at all concerned about the razer sharp teeth that could do serious harm being so close to her face, and then standing and putting her hand on her son's shoulder, possessively.
"You can't keep him," she told the guardians. "We need him here."
"For comic relief, if nothing else," Tony added.
The boy shrugged, and then reached into his pocket, pulled out a small device and handed it over to Quill.
"Here, I made this for you."
"What is it?" he asked, looking down at it, curiously, realizing even as he asked that the thing looked like it had an adapter that would fit the interface of the Milano. "A file…?"
"I had Karen pull and save all the classic rock music from her files – which means pretty much all the classic rock in the world, including the stuff we were listening to on the way to get corndogs. It'll interface with your systems, so you can listen to it if you're in the mood for something different, sometimes."
Quill smiled, touched. He hugged the boy, roughly, and let him go with a slap on the back.
"Thanks, Peter. That's awesome."
"You mean we will be able to listen to something other than those songs that we've been listening to for the last couple of years?" Rocket asked, looking at Peter (the younger one).
"If you want."
He just wanted to give the older man a way to have access to all the music from his childhood – and maybe his mom's childhood.
"Give me a hug, kid, before I decide I have to kiss you, and ruin my reputation for being a hard-ass."
Peter laughed and leaned down, hugging the raccoon, a little awkwardly, since he really wanted to pick him up and cuddle him like a teddy bear. He felt the toddler inside doing a happy dance at the contact, and squeezed Rocket for just a moment longer before letting him go.
Gamora stepped forward and hugged the boy, as well.
"It was nice to meet you, Peter," she told him. "Thank you for what you did."
He wasn't sure if that meant killing her madman of an adoptive father, or the music file, and he didn't ask. He just returned the hug with a cheerful smile, and felt her press a kiss against his cheek that made him blush, unaccountably.
"You're welcome," he said, pulling away and stepping back to stand between Tony and Pepper, near Ned and the others.
Quill nodded, and looked around, breathing the fresh air, deeply, another long moment.
"I'll be back," he told them. "And it won't be so long between visits, next time."
"We'll be back, too," Drax agreed, moving to stand with his people, and joined by Groot. "I like this place."
"Good." Tony looked at Quill. "You have Friday's frequency. Keep in touch."
"We will."
There was another spat of goodbyes and then the space pirates headed for the Milano, joined by Carol, who hugged Steve. They all saw the kiss that followed, and Stark was glad that he had put his glasses on after the last goodbye, having decided to have Friday do a final scan of the spaceship's system to make sure everything was in order.
Clint and Natasha would definitely want to see that.
Steve smiled at Carol as he let her go, and moved to stand by Ned. The group watched as they vanished into the ship, and the hatch closed. Tony stepped back a little, pulling Peter with him and followed by the others to allow a safety zone. The ship's engines fired up and in the silence of the morning it rose in the air ungainly and was gone in a flare of thrusters and a somewhat muffled sonic boom.
"That was so awesome…" Ned said, shaking his head and smiling. He looked over at Peter. "You're the best best friend someone could ever have. You know that, right?"
Peter smiled.
"One of the most interesting ones, anyway."
Stark wasn't the only one to smile at that.
"What are you boys going to do, now? Stay up? Or go back to bed?"
Peter looked at his watch. It was only just six in the morning, and they'd had enough sugar the evening before that they'd ended up staying up fairly late. Ned didn't even bother looking at him to see what he wanted to do.
"I'm going back to sleep. In the tent," he added, before someone could suggest that it get taken down.
He wanted to see if he could wake up with deer grazing around him in the morning – although they almost certainly were scared off by the launch, quiet as it was.
Tony looked at Peter.
"I'm going to go send an email to Shuri," the boy replied. And see if she'd sent one to him – or if anyone else had. It was so weird not to have his phone and the instant communication with all of the people he knew. "Just to make sure she's taking her medicine and to see how she's feeling. Then I might go back to sleep, too. In the tent."
"You do that." He took Pepper's hand, but he was still looking at the boys. "We're leaving for brunch at 10:00. Ned? We're taking you home from there, so make sure you're packed."
"I will. Thanks."
Tony looked at Steve.
"You realize Romanoff and Barton will pay me good money to see the lip lock that I just recorded you and Danvers sharing…?"
Rogers smiled, and they could all see the slight blush that tinged his cheeks.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Stark..." he said, turning to walk toward the building. "You're seeing things…"
"I'm not the only one who saw it."
"I saw it," Ned added, looking pleased – and cheerful at the fact that he was teasing Captain America. That never got old, after all. "It was right out of a movie… 'here's looking at you kid,' and all that…"
"There's probably some swamp gas leaking around here, or something," Rogers told them all. "You're all delusional."
Tony smirked, but didn't argue with him. He winked at Pepper, and they started walking back to the building, as well.
"We'll see you in a few hours," he told the boys. "Stay out of trouble."
Ned and Peter waited until the adults were all gone, before heading for the tent.
"He sure says that a lot," Ned pointed out.
"Yeah. Makes you wonder how much trouble we'd get into if he didn't say it."
They both grinned at that.
"Do we have any marshmallows left?"
It was never too early for a sugar rush, after all.
"Yeah."