Ox loses his patience when Harvar trips for the fourth time. It wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that Ox is tense with trying to remember how the steps to the dance go, and trying to remember how to reverse them for the girl's part, and trying to compensate for Harvar's own too-stiff movements. It doesn't help that every time they miss a step he can feel Harvar's embarrassed flush shock through his entire body with a tiny electrical discharge that might not be painful, exactly, but is definitely unpleasant.
"Okay, stop," he snaps, snatching his hands away and shaking them to try to dispel the clinging static. Harvar is scowling, his head tipped down so Ox can't make out the details of his expression, and no sooner has Ox pulled away than he's tucking his arms over each other and pressing his hands in under his arms. "Can you please control your electricity at least?"
"Sorry," Harvar growls, sounding like exactly the opposite. "I don't know what I'm doing, I can't pay attention to that and my feet at the same time."
"This is hardly a simple undertaking for my role either," Ox points out with less grace than he would like, Harvar's anxiety still crackling in his blood. "I'm not accustomed to taking on the woman's role. And then I still need to lead you."
Harvar rolls his eyes. "Well, obviously. That's why you're supposed to be teaching me in the first place, except that you're a fucking shitty teacher."
"Excuse me," Ox protests, stung. "Do you want to continue or not?"
Harvar throws his hands up, pivots on his heel to retreat down the hall. "Not like this I don't."
"Harvar," Ox sighs, but the other boy is already past the door to his bedroom, slamming the door with more force than it needs. It makes the point about his desire to be left alone, at least, a point Ox notes and ignores in favor of following his weapon partner past the unlocked door.
Harvar's sitting on the floor, his back against the edge of the bed and shoulders hunched in; he doesn't even look up as Ox comes in, just says "Fuck off" without even a spark to the words.
Ox steps in over the distance between them, drops to sit heavily on the floor next to Harvar. They're close enough that their shoulders touch; he takes it as a good sign that Harvar doesn't flinch away from the contact.
"Sorry," he offers, because Harvar won't, because he wants to ease off the strain in the weapon's shoulders.
Harvar sighs like he's breathing out the self-conscious hunch in his body. His spine uncurls a little, some part of him melting into more softness than he usually shows, and when he says, "I can't fucking do it" it sounds more dejected than angry.
"That's not true," Ox says, leans in to press his shoulder against Harvar's. "With a little more practice-"
"No," Harvar snaps, swings an arm out to smack hard at Ox's wrist. "No, fuck, I'm sick of practice, it's stupid and I can't do it and I'm tired of trying." His shoulders slump again, his head falls forward.
It hurts to watch. Ox hates to see Harvar like this in any situation, for any reason; knowing it's ostensibly his fault, or at least something he could have prevented, hurts like he's been punched. He almost wishes Harvar would hit him; at least physical pain he can deal with, that's almost normal for Harvar's self-expression. This way he just feels helpless, a failure of a meister with a depressed weapon he can't support. He should be able to help, that's his job, to figure out how to compensate for each other's weakness, to determine how best to bring two different minds and bodies and souls into sync with each other, the same way they do when they Resonate.
And just like that he has the solution.
Ox scrambles to his feet, pushing himself upright so fast Harvar jerks back in shock, glares up at him with something like betrayal tensing at his mouth even when Ox sticks a hand out to pull him up.
"Harvar," he says, clear on the vowels and sharp on the consonants. "Dance with me."
"I just said-" Harvar starts.
"This will be different," Ox says. "Come on." And because he's Ox, and Harvar's Harvar, and they're partners, Harvar comes, closes his fingers tight around Ox's wrist and lets the other boy drag him upright.
Ox moves fast, before Harvar has a chance to close himself off again. One hand comes in at Harvar's waist, fingers curling in against the shape of his ribs like Ox is fitting his hold in against the handle of Harvar's weapon-form. Harvar lets his hold go, hand half-raised uncertainly, and Ox reaches out to take it and pull it up to more or less shoulder level.
"Shoulder," he says, and Harvar obeys the meister-command before he has time to think, as Ox intended. Fingers close at Ox's shoulder, tighten against the cloth a little too hard, like Harvar's trying to force himself to ground out, but Ox doesn't think about the threat of electricity; concern will only make him more tense, will catch contagious from his body to Harvar's, and he doesn't want that.
"I don't know what I'm doing," Harvar says, the words catching into a plaintive whine in his throat, and Ox tosses his head back, adopts his best meister-tone as he speaks.
"It's fine," and he sounds calm, steady, like he knows what he's doing. "Just think about Resonance."
That gets him a look, a raised eyebrow and a twist of a frown. "What?"
"When we Resonate," Ox says, takes a step sideways so he can draw Harvar with him. "Think about what that feels like."
"This is stupid," Harvar sighs, but Ox takes another step, forward and in this time, and Harvar moves while he's still frowning, matching Ox's action without thinking. There's a stutter of hesitation, Harvar nearly tripping as he looks down in the first jolt of shock, but Ox pauses, gives him a moment to recover before he moves again. It's easier like this, when he's not trying to match some set rules for dance steps or attempting to imitate some generic partner stand-in for Harvar; this is just him, moving in time with his weapon partner, and this has always come easy.
"You can do it," Ox says after a minute, when they're falling into a rhythm for their motions and Harvar's shoulders are uncurling from their rigid panic. "This is fine."
"This is with you," Harvar says, but he's smiling under the shadow of his hair, the expression softening his features into helpless delight and warming all the corners of Ox's limbs.
"We can work up to other styles so you can dance with other people too," Ox offers, but Harvar is shaking his head, rejecting the idea almost before Ox has put it to words.
"No," and he sounds certain, rather than abrupt and snappish. "This is fine."
Ox blinks, nearly misses a step for watching Harvar's face. There's something under his smile, maybe a lighter touch of the hand at Ox's shoulder, an outline of an explanation forming itself in the meister's mind. Harvar's smile twists into a smirk, he lifts his head into the light as he pushes Ox back into motion, and Ox moves, the action reflexive as his mind stammers over an explanation he had never thought to consider before.
It might not be the dancing as much as the partner than Harvar wanted.