A/N: Surprise, surprise, it's fluffy genfic with Evren and Vette! For the record, I imagine the Khel Shor dance as something like the tango: passionate, aggressive, and intense. Very Sithy.
Bodies In Motion
o.O.o
"I'm bored," Vette announces. There's an indistinct flump noise, and then she continues, somewhat muffled, "Hyperspace travel takes forever, ugh . . ."
Evren sets down his half-disassembled lightsaber and peers into the main room. Vette has cast herself across the jump seats, face-down in the lonely throw pillow, lekku and limbs spilling every which way. Evren tilts his head to the side. "That does not look comfortable."
"Nnnghh," she says.
Apparently discomfort is preferable to boredom. This is serious. "Anything I can do to help?"
"Mmph." She raises her head to cast him a wan look, then rolls off the jump seats and starts wandering around the holoprojector, aimlessly agitated. "Gonna start bouncing off the bulkheads or something . . ."
"Stillness is not to your liking, then."
"Yeah, no."
Evren considers, then says, tentatively, "Sparring . . .?"
"Maybe something not combat-related?" Vette says. "I mean—it's great that you're so, uh, focused, but . . . If we didn't have a galley, would you seriously just run lightsaber drills and tinker all the time?"
Realistically? Yes. "Of course not."
"So what else? What do Sith do for fun?" Vette pauses, wrinkles her nose, and adds, "Okay, that might go not-so-great places, but—you get the idea."
He blanks for a horrible moment. Therefore, he babbles. "It varies from person to person, same as anyone, I suppose—"
"And you?"
Hells. There's not much in his personal experience that isn't combat-related, aside from, well, cooking, but there are only so many pastries two people can make in cramped quarters before they run out of ingredients or start fantasizing about setting the entire galley on fire . . .
Not sparring. It was a monumentally foolish idea anyway. But—motion, something active—ah.
"Can you dance?" he asks.
Vette stops her pacing and raises an eyebrow at him, speculative. "I can move to music, but nothing, like, established as an art form . . ."
"Interested in learning?"
She frowns, then shrugs. "Hell, why not. What's the dance?"
Evren considers for a moment—the Adastan is visually interesting but a bit stilted, the Kaasi waltz requires much more space than they have on the ship . . . "The Khel Shor. Traditional Sith style."
"Ooh, cultural thing, you know me so well," Vette says.
"Would you rather learn to lead or follow first?"
"What's easiest to teach?"
He shrugs. "The basics are mirrored between roles; there's not much difference."
"Okay. Uh . . . Let's start with lead, maybe?"
"All right. The base step begins on the left foot . . ."
Side by side, they trace out the first movements of the dance. Vette is a natural, repeating the motions until she can execute them with the same grace she brings to combat. Once she has the base steps memorized, Evren turns to face her and offers a hand. "Left hand takes my right, your right goes to my waist," he says. Then his least favorite part: "The more points of contact between partners, the better. It's far easier to control the dance when you can feel what the other person is doing."
Vette nods and takes him by hand and hip, and he rests his free hand on her shoulder. It's fine. He's fine. "So we get all smushed together?" says Vette.
"Correct. Smush away." As she shuffles forward until there's no space between them whatsoever, he meets her eyes and smiles, quick and bright. He's fine. "I'll be pushing back. Resistance is vital to the dance—otherwise it becomes a mess of the leader hauling the follower around like a sack of zella nuts and stumbling over each other's feet. So. On your count."
Once they're moving, the crawling under his skin eases into simple rhythm and muscle memory. The upside of Vette's inexperience is her absolute focus: she broadcasts her intent clearly, so even when she stumbles—a rare occurrence—he knows what she meant to do and can adapt to compensate. Vette drives them back and forth across the main room, down the port and starboard corridors, muttering the count under her breath, and though the space is restrictive, the dance itself is linear enough to proceed more or less naturally.
Evren calls a halt after a few minutes of practice, disengaging and falling in beside her once more. "Excellent form. Now for some variations."
Spins, reversals, dips—that's interesting to negotiate, given their height difference. Evren ends up on the floor as often as not once they start attempting them, laughing as Vette covers her face and apologizes through her giggles. "You did that on purpose," he accuses her, after the third mishap.
"I did not!" Vette says. She helps haul him to his feet and smiles innocently. "Well, not that time."
"So it's to be sabotage? Congratulations, you've just graduated to advanced Sith dancing," he says, showing a few more teeth than strictly necessary.
Vette starts to laugh, then blinks. ". . . Wait, seriously?"
"Oh, yes."
"Oh, no."
Evren beams. "This is how you 'overthrow' your partner . . ."
o.O.o
end