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Mike spent a lot of time walking down the hallways of the USS Hawkins . Somehow, despite the existence of the ship’s computer and comms systems, there was still an inordinate amount of getting from Point A to Point B that needed to get done in the course of his duties. He was long since used to it; it had been the same way when he had been a first officer, and even before then. In some ways he even welcomed it. It was a chance for him to slow down, disengage from his work and let his mind realign itself, to ponder ongoing issues that were larger than his day-to-day problems--which he had more than a few of, at this point.
It was at one of these moments, walking down the hallway, that he suddenly found a sound intruding onto his thoughts.
It was gentle, soft, slipping into his awareness so subtly that it took him several moments to even realize it was happening. His brain automatically categorized it as music , though it was quite unlike the music he normally listened to. It was an intricate interweaving of tones, rising and falling, forming harmonies and counterpoints in a smooth flow that put him in mind of a river, curving around bends and parting around rocks, but always flowing downstream.
It was coming from El’s quarters, he realized.
Oddly entranced, he stopped walking and took a few steps towards her door. He had no intention of ringing the entrance chime--he wouldn’t want to intrude on her personal time like that--but the music was capturing him, and the small part of his brain that wasn’t completely caught up in it was reasoning that he could afford to stop and listen for a couple of minutes, at least.
Even after the song wound softly but purposefully to its conclusion, though, Mike found himself still standing there. The aftereffects were still reverberating through him. He was oddly at peace--more relaxed than he had been in at least a couple of weeks--and he couldn’t quite bring himself to return to his routine and shatter the mood.
It was shattered for him a moment later when El’s door suddenly slid open, drawing identical yelps of surprise from both of them as they found themselves unexpectedly facing each other.
“Captain!” El gasped. “I-I’m so sorry.”
“No, no, please, Lieutenant--El,” Mike said, waving the apology away and trying to ignore the fact that he was probably turning beet red. Very professional, that. “It’s entirely my fault for lurking outside your quarters like this. I’m sorry.”
El smiled at him, and he felt his insides relax in relief. “Then you’re forgiven,” she said, “ if --” Mike’s eyebrow shot up in response “-- if you tell me what you’re doing hanging around my doorway.”
He could tell that she was teasing him, but he couldn’t help but feel abashed anyway. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean--I was just walking along, when I heard the music coming from your quarters, and so I stopped to listen.”
She blinked, looking genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know you liked Tymbrimi music.”
“Neither did I, until a couple of minutes ago.” Mike shrugged. “It’s my first time hearing it.”
“I see.” El’s eyes were shining, and her smile grew even more brilliant, if that was even possible. “Well… if you happen to have a bit of time, I’d be happy to show you more.”
“Well…” Mike mentally discarded his own business without question; the Hawkins was in the middle of a long warp jump, which meant several days without much in the way of urgent tasks. What he was doing could wait. His only hesitation was… “If you’re sure I’m not intruding--”
“Mike,” El said. “I wouldn’t invite you if you were.” She reached out and took his hand, and he allowed himself to be drawn into her quarters and sat down on her bed.
“Now then…” She crossed over to her personal terminal. It chirped happily at her, and she murmured something to her pet AI that lived in the Hawkins’ computer system--that was a whole other story, one that Mike was still a little murky on. “Like in all cultures, artistic expression for the Tymbrimi is an expression of their culture’s ideas and ethoses. Music being part of that, of course.”
“Sorry, did I just sign up for an academic lecture?” Mike asked.
“Yes,” El replied, giving him a wry look. “Now, Tymbrimi culture, informed a great deal by their--our--natural psychic abilities, places great value on being in tune with the universe around you, of feeling its ebb and flow. Tymbrimi music is a sort of… invitation into this sense of oneness, a sort of guide to help you get into the flow.”
“Huh, really?”
“Well, some of it is,” El said. “Like all advanced cultures, they’ve also invented pop music.”
Mike snorted. “I see.”
“All right, here. This is one of my favorites…” El tapped at something on her terminal and another song began playing, filling the small quarters. Mike closed his eyes and let it wash over him. It had the same gentle, flowing quality to it as the other one, but there was something… else. A subtle tone running through it, something more firey and aggressive, asserting its presence where the other song had been more content to simply be. He recalled El saying something, only recently although it seemed far longer--something about the aggression of her inherited human temperament making it difficult to fit into Tymbrimi society. Small wonder she was so drawn to this song, then; it probably made her feel more like there was a place where she belonged.
When he opened his eyes, El was moving.
She swayed from side to side, her weight shifting from her left leg to her right and back again, shoulders swiveling slightly, hands tracing aimless yet intricate patterns in the air. Her eyes were closed, face turned slightly upwards and set in an expression of deep rapture.
“Are you… dancing?”
He’d blurted the question out without thinking, but to his relief it didn’t make her stop, only drawing a small smile from her as she continued. “Hmmm,” she replied, a warm hum that he supposed was an affirmative. “You could call it that, certainly. It’s part of the experience, allowing the quality of the music to permeate your body and move in tune with that.”
“I see.” Mike grinned. “You know, we humans do that too.”
She cracked her eyelids open just enough to regard him with amused skepticism. “Yes, I’ve seen that frantic flailing that you call ‘dancing’.”
“I think you’ll find there’s quite a bit more to our dancing than you realize,” Mike said. He stood and held out his hand, an invitation. Eyes flicking from his hand to his face, El accepted it, clearly intrigued.
It had been a good long time since Mike had done any partner dancing, not since that series of classes his mother had made him attend in his pre-academy days, and they hadn’t gone particularly in-depth into any of the multitude of styles they had presented. Still, none of them would have fit the music that was playing anyway, so Mike did as El had said: he let the music move him.
He’d been taught to allow his partner to determine to distance at which they were comfortable dancing, and so it took him slightly off guard when El immediately pressed up against his body as he pulled her in, the centerline of her torso along what would’ve been the line of his suspenders if he had been the sort to dress up in anachronistic clothing. Mike settled his right hand on her shoulder blade, letting it transfer the motion of his body to hers through his arm, and they moved together. Old steps he thought he’d long since forgotten drifted into his head, and he fit them in where they seemed right, adapting them to the feel and flow of the music. El giggled slightly as he spun her out in a lazy twirl, then back in again.
Time drifted away from Mike as he allowed himself to be carried away by the sensation of his and El’s bodies moving in concert with each other, but it marched on regardless, and soon the song wound down to its conclusion, one final note vibrating through the air before fading out. Mike and El drifted to a halt, standing still in the silence, the rise and fall of their breathing pressing against each other as they basked in the afterglow.
Then, quite abruptly, it occurred to Mike that he was holding his operations officer to his chest.
“Um,” he said, breaking the embrace and stepping back with a suddenness that made El gasp. He tried to regain his composure. “So--so that was, um, an example of another form of human dancing.”
“I… yes, I see,” El said, seeming vaguely flustered. “It… worked surprisingly well with the Tymbrimi music.”
“Well, it wasn’t so much an actual human dance as it was… applying the principles of human dancing to a different context, I guess,” Mike admitted.
“Ever adapting and reinventing, hm? That certainly sounds like humans to me.” A small smile crossed El’s face. “Thank you for the lesson. I… think I would be interested in learning more, if you’d be willing to show me.”
Mike laughed. “Oh, I’m far from being an expert. Or even an enthusiast, for that matter. I don’t think you’d want me as a teacher.”
“Hm,” El replied, eyes glittering. “Somehow, lack of expertise notwithstanding, I’m quite sure that I would want you as a teacher.”
There was a long pause in which something undefinable passed between them.
“--anyway, I should get back to my duties,” Mike said quickly, not sure what had just come over him. “Paperwork’s not going to do itself, you know.”
“Oh--right, of course,” El said. “Thank you for stopping by, captain. It was a pleasure.”
“The pleasure was mine.” Mike smiled. “Thank you for sharing your music with me.”