Summary: Twelve things Broly experienced for the first time.
This Fragile World
Dancing -
Cheelai was moving... oddly.
Broly had never seen her move this way, and it didn't seem entirely necessary for her current task of cooking breakfast. Not that the food seemed to be adversely affected. The smell and sizzling of the pancakes and sausages (Cheelai seemed to greatly enjoy the earthling cookbook that had come with the capsule house), showed that the food was coming along nicely.
Yet, for some reason she was... moving. It was very rhythmic, he noticed, each motion timed almost perfectly with the music playing from the CD player machine that had come with the house (another addition Cheelai greatly enjoyed). Clearly, whatever these movements were, they were purposeful.
"All the single ladies, all the single ladies. Put your hands up!" said the singer, whatever that meant. Apparently the music was not entirely influencing Cheelai, because her hands did not go "up". Probably for the best—it would probably be hard to flip pancakes with her spatula swaying in the air.
The concept of music was not entirely foreign to him. There was a lot about it that was new, of course. He never knew anything about songs or lyrics or anything with actual structure. Even so, when he was young, he had discovered that humming different tones made very interesting sounds. He had been very enamored by his discovery, so very astonished that he could make such pretty sounds all on his own with so little effort.
Lots of things made his father angry, and he was sure that that would have been one of them. However, when his father inevitably overheard him, the man hadn't shouted at him. Instead, he had stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes clouding over as if he were in a daze, or seeing things that Broly could not. Once his father had recovered, he simply went on his way, surprisingly saying nothing about it.
Even more surprising, that very night, as they laid in their cave with a meager fire combatting the savage winds raging outside, he hummed his own tune. Each key sounded stilted, with odd pauses coming between, as if it were long forgotten skill slowly rising back to the surface. It had been the most fascinating thing Broly had ever witnessed.
His father had done that very thing many nights after that. Every time, Broly would lay his head on his chest and let the vibrations slide through his ears, letting the lull of the tune spark images behind his eyes that were so sweet they might as well have been dreams.
This motion Cheelai was engaging in, though, was unfamiliar to him. It was mainly from her waist and below, her hips shaking back and forth, her one leg popped out, guiding the movements.
They were very... interesting. He almost felt bad about having to interrupt.
"Cheelai."
She yelped loudly. She spun around, one hand flying up to grasp at her chest, as if her heart were in danger of falling out. Idly, he found it somewhat bemusing that he always managed to startle her. It was not as if he were trying to be quiet, and one would think that given the sheer size of him, he would be incapable of it.
That was another thing that Broly had learned, amongst the many others. He learned that compared to most people, he was quite large.
It was not as pleasant of a discovery as the others had been.
Growing up, his father had been larger than him, until their heights eventually equalled out. He did not know that height could vary so much between people. He did not know that he could look down on someone.
It was unsettling at first. He did not like how menacing he must surely look against those so much smaller than him. He did not like how fragile they looked compared to him, how dangerous he looked compared to them.
Lemo and Cheelai had never seemed bothered, though. They looked up at him with enough smiles and enough light in their eyes that eventually he stopped worrying over it. They were the ones that mattered after all, and if they did not feel afraid in his presence then why should he be bothered by their differences?
Looking down at Cheelai now, with her pink eyes staring widely up at him, he thought she looked less fragile and more... what was the word?
Cute. That was it.
"Broly!" she shouted, as if he erred unforgivably just by walking into their kitchen.
"I thought I would come help you," he explained. "So I can earn my 'cooking day'."
Every other day, Cheelai and Lemo swapped cooking duties. Broly helped as best he could (he had gotten quite good at rolling up the sushi meal) but anything involving stove usage or even seasonings was exceptionally challenging. He was determined to earn a spot in the rotation, though. They had already come all this way and agreed to stay with him. He didn't need them serving him on top of it.
"Oh," she said with an awkward laugh. Her cheeks started turning into that interesting red color they always did when she was embarrassed.
"What were you doing?" he asked.
The flustered look got worse at that. She sputtered for a moment, before she paused. The look on her face turned almost pensive.
"You've never heard of dancing?" she said in a disbelieving tone.
Dancing. He rolled the word around in his head, but he could not recall ever hearing it. In the short amount of time that they came into his life, he learned that there were a lot of things he never heard of.
He shook his head no.
She gaped at him. "Well it's, um..."
Suddenly, an impish look came over her face. "I could just show you."
He thought about that for a moment. Then he said, "Okay."
She looked surprised at that, and he thought that perhaps she had been joking. A moment later, though, she said, "Alright then!"
She pressed a button on the CD player, making a new song start. Then she skipped over to him. This close, he could smell the sweetness or her body soap.
With almost no hesitation, she reached out and put her hands on his hips.
"Now just follow me," she said, and began to move her own hips back and forth.
Her hands were almost ridiculously small against his body. It was nearly laughable that such small appendages thought they could force the sheer bulk of him into any kind of motion. Even so, he let her maneuver him, let the guide of her hands move his lower body from side to side.
He was aware that he was probably doing it wrong. She was giggling a bit, no doubt at the picture he must be making of himself. There was a fluidness to her motions that simply wasn't present in his. He didn't mind, though. It was an... interesting activity, he supposed.
Not quite as interesting as her hands, though. He realized that aside from the first time she touched Baa's ear, and the hug she gave him when they reunited, they never really touched each other. He found that he didn't want her to move her hands. Even when his sensitive nose picked up the smell of bitter heat, he had no desire to stop. He wanted to stay right here, doing this "dancing", until the imprint of her hands on him were so deep they wouldn't ever leave.
Eventually, though, the song ended. When the final note played out, Cheelai brought their bodies to a halt. Another song started to play, but she seemed more interested in giving him a very bright smile.
"There, now you've got the basics down!" she said, sounding very pleased.
"There is more?"
"Oh yeah, tons more." Her hands finally slid away, and a small part of him missed their weight. "Dancing is kind of like... fighting, I guess. Lots of different ways to do it, you know, depending on what you like."
Broly actually wasn't that familiar with different fighting techniques, but he figured he understood what she was trying to say.
He thought of her hands, the feel of them against him, the warmth that radiated from her body so close to his, and found himself saying, "Will you show me?"
Her jaw dropped a bit, her eyes going almost as wide as when he startled her earlier. Then her eyes darted off to the side and that flustered look came back.
"Well I mean I'm not an expert or anything," she said around another awkward laugh, one of her fingers coming up to scratch at an itch on her nose that he suspected wasn't actually there. "But, um, sure. I guess I could show you some more dances."
He found her reaction to be very strange. To be fair, there were probably a lot of things about him Cheelai found strange too.
Suddenly, her nose twitched, taking a sniff. It seemed the smell had grown enough that her senses could pick them up.
"Broly," she said, "is the food burning?"
"Yes."
"... Did you know it was burning?"
"Yes."
A second of silence.
"Broly!"
He tried hard to feel guilty as she scrambled to salvage their breakfast. Mostly, he just listened to the song currently playing, and thought that it would be a nice one to dance too as well.
TBC