"Great. This is just great."
The words echoed and distorted in the narrow space, blending with the sound of sloshing water and distant machinery. The creaking of wood and skittering of the occasional vermin were just percussive background noises. The noise that was missing right now, the noise they really needed, was the beautiful sound of a functioning comm.
"I can't reach anybody else. Stupid tunnels." Peter stomped through the knee-deep water. "And no offense, but you're a pretty one-sided conversation partner."
"I am Groot," Groot offered mildly from beside him.
"I bet you're loving this," Peter muttered. His feet had been squelching around in his boots for two hours now, and he was about tired of it.
Groot, though, had only gotten cheerier the longer they trudged through this endless frickin' creek-tunnel. He splashed around in answer, beaming.
"Augh." Peter wiped droplets off his cheek. "Save it for the pool!"
He vaguely remembered going to swimming pools as a kid, and it turned out it wasn't just a Terran thing. He could list three planets off the top of his head, two of them part of Nova, that had some public-use bodies of disinfected water, and he'd insisted they go. Groot had loved it. Everyone else, not so much.
Peter went straight from smiling about the image of Drax at the pool (standing ankle-deep in the water and frowning stubbornly) to wondering whether he'd gotten safely to the Milano. "They probably made it back," he said, as much to himself as to Groot. "We're the ones who had to take the detour." Groot patted his shoulder reassuringly. Peter beat the comm against his palm one more time and muttered, "They'd better come looking for us."
"I am Groot."
It sounded pretty confident, so Peter was hoping that was a 'They definitely will, I in my infinite tree wisdom know this to be true.' "Thanks, buddy."
Groot rumbled.
"I hope they bring dry shoes," Peter added wistfully. "And socks. And pants. Or else I'm going full-out nude as soon as we get out of here."
His friend made a deep, hesitant noise, as if unsure whether he should say anything. "I… am Groot." He lifted one massive foot up out of the water and let it splash back down.
"Come on, man!" Peter whined, shaking the water off his jacket sleeve. But Groot looked so troubled that he had to add, "Don't worry about it. It's not your fault I can't get more than three words out of whatever you're saying."
They had found out the hard way that Rocket really wasn't guessing and making crap up. None of them had had any doubt that Groot was trying to communicate something, but they had secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) doubted that Rocket understood any more than they did. Turned out that he actually could get everything Groot said. And Groot was apparently a huge gossip.
"Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. Strip down and moonwalk right onto the Milano." And then he'd take a shower and get some clean clothes. Or hey, maybe not. It'd been two years since the Guardians had formed. That was two years of not being allowed to wander around naked on his own ship.
"I am Groot?" Groot ventured.
Peter squinted at him and shrugged, one corner of his mouth pulling back. "I got nothing." He tried to think of anything he'd said the big tree would feel compelled to ask about. "Uh… the moonwalk, maybe? It's a dance move."
Suddenly Groot was leaning over and there was a big, bright-eyed, wooden face right in Peter's. Groot had gotten hooked on his tunes as a plant-pot baby, and ever since then it hadn't been hard to catch him bouncing around to a beat. He was a dancing machine.
Peter grinned. "It's like walking backwards, but…" He tried to demonstrate, but just ended up sloshing around. He couldn't even see his own feet. "O-kay, I can't really demonstrate while we're walking through nature's sewer or whatever this is."
But when he looked up, Groot had maneuvered so that he was turned around and was stepping carefully in time with Peter. "It's not just walking backwards," he began, but Groot smiled widely at him and he let it go. "All right. Okay, we're doing the moonwalk now."
They carried on like that until they found a path back up to the surface, by which time Groot had added his own personal side-to-side wobble and Peter had almost gotten through a full rendition of "Dancing Machine" in his friend's personal honor. He was still half-humming it when he got the comm working and called the Milano.
Gamora, Rocket, and Drax had made it back, and the volume of their reactions to his call told him they'd been waiting on him and Groot a while.
"We are heading for your coordinates now," Gamora informed him tersely once they had settled down.
"So sit tight," Rocket added.
"I am Groot."
Peter could practically hear Drax leaning forward, though there was a mic in each flight deck chair. "What dangers were you occupied with?"
"Nothing much," Peter admitted, mostly because he didn't have a cool story ready. "Groot and I got some bonding time. Hey Rocket, he says I'm his new best friend."
Groot looked mildly stricken, but Rocket didn't buy it for a second. "Don't give me that, Pete. You don't understand a word he's saying."
The call ended and left Peter and Groot in relative silence. That is, until Peter thumped his friend in the chest and announced, "Okay, now I can show you how to do the moonwalk."