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"Dance?" asked Knuckles.
He looked around at Sonic and Amy's faces in confusion. The three of them were sitting on stools around a table, just at the edge of the crowded dance floor, talking. Knuckles watched the crowd of people moving along to the loud music that was being blasted through the speakers everywhere around them.
Sonic had apparently been invited to this party by the town officials, and he wasn't going to show up until Amy caught word of that and forced him to come with her as his "date". Knuckles was here completely by accident. He'd been visiting the surface when he caught wind of some stray Egg Pawns wreaking havoc in this town, and he ran into Sonic, Tails, and Amy.
And now he was here, observing this strange ritual. It was a celebration he'd never seen before. There were lights flashing various colors and very loud music, but everyone seemed to enjoy it. They were talking, laughing, and, well, apparently dancing. It was chaotic and busy and reminded Knuckles of being chased by loud cars and badniks up and down the streets of Station Square.
The music being played was the kind that Knuckles knew—the same type of surface music he enjoyed, but he'd never been introduced to this kind of celebration of it. Nodding his head to it felt natural, but beyond that...
He watched the way both humans and mobians moved their feet on the ground, stomping to the beat or swaying to the sides. Some of the moves looked even more intricate and complicated and... cool.
"What? You've never danced before?" Sonic asked, resting his head on his hand. "I knew echidnas don't know how to have fun, but I didn't know it was this dire."
The hedgehog slid of the chair and walked around the round table, past Amy, already with some spring in his step that he usually didn't have, accurately swaying to the beat of the music, his feet naturally following the rhythm. He stepped to the side, the other leg followed, then he did it again, but to the other side. It was counterintuitive if he wanted to actually get around this table any time soon, but he was smiling.
"I know there were ritual dances in my culture, but they were only for very special occasions," said Knuckles, blushing shyly. "And the only kind of music I grew up with is the one the Chao like to sing. That's nothing like your music."
"But you like this music, right? You still have the MP3 I gave you!" said Sonic, and Knuckles nodded. "You can rap, but you can't dance!"
Knuckles looked at the crowd of dancing people. That was nothing like the daces he thought he knew. Here, the people were dancing to music, connecting their movements to the rhythm. The only dances he'd seen were the images carved into the stone ruins of Angel Island, but those were always silent sequences of stiff poses, coming one after the other. But could it be that he'd been wrong all along and the dances looked more like this? Fluid and flexible transitions to music.
"Come on, I can't let this continue." Sonic had a wide grin on his face when his hand wrapped around Knuckles' arm, and he pulled him off his chair and a few steps into the crowd.
It wasn't a tight fit, there was room for everyone, but as soon as they entered, a wave of nervousness washed over Knuckles. His muscles tensed and joints felt stiff, and he couldn't stop glancing around at everything and everyone around him. The moving wall of bodies seemed to completely surround him.
"Hey, it's alright!" Sonic must've felt the way he tensed, and he patted the echidna's shoulder assuredly. He pulled Knuckles' wrist lightly, getting his friend to look at him. "Try this!"
He repeated the same thing he did before, swaying from side to side, but Knuckles had trouble following. Foot out to the side, the other one follows. After a moment of that, Sonic told him to loosen up and bend his knees.
"Grr, I know!" Knuckles shouted to him, even though he really didn't. It was just hard to do all that when he was this nervous.
"You need to relax, Knuckles!" said Amy, suddenly next to them. Knuckles looked at her, and she was dancing too, in a different way. She swung her hips, making her skirt spin and flare out around her.
At this point, when Knuckles looked at Sonic again, the hedgehog seemed to be done dancing. He was doing tricks, one that tickled Knuckles' senses in a familiar way, making him take a step back, raising his fists up to his chest and frowning, confused.
"You wanna fight in here? Right now?" he asked.
He'd never say no to a challenge from Sonic, but this seemed like a bad place to play like that.
"Huh?" Sonic paused and then seemed to realize something and started laughing. "Knux, that's break dancing, not a fighting style!"
Knuckles felt his cheeks grow dangerously hot in embarrassment.
"Ha?! You do that all the time when you fight!" he shouted, baring his teeth. "You do all those tricks to distract me and..."
"That's dancing!" said Amy.
She was smiling, but at least she wasn't laughing at him. Knuckles' head spun towards Sonic again, dumbfounded.
"You dance to fight?" he asked.
Sonic shrugged like it was nothing special. Definitely like it wasn't the strangest thing Knuckles had ever heard.
"Hey, what can I say? I just love dancing. Come on, Knux, I'll show you how it's done!"
Sonic laughed as he dragged a flustered Knuckles closer. The echidna stumbled, pulled by the hedgehog into a clearing, but he thought he got it now... Just a bit.
Sonic kept his grip on Knuckles' hand, and it was easier to follow the rhythm this way. They bounced on the floor, Sonic showed him a dance move, Knuckles followed shortly, then another one, and another, all perfectly, or almost perfectly executed to the beat of the song. Then another one. The moves got more complicated as both of them felt more and more confident and were trying to show off.
"Okay, but can you do this?!"
Sonic did a headstand.
"Tsk, of course I can. Who do you think I am?"
Sonic laughed at him when the echidna did the same, but his long spines fell over his face when he was upside down.
"Yeah, but can you do this?!"
Sonic suddenly propelled himself from both sides, pushed and let go, spinning on his own head before graciously jumping back on his two feet. Huh, Knuckles thought and tired to do the same, but toppled over and started laughing. He was red in the face as Sonic, almost trembling from laughter, grabbed his hand and pulled him back up to his feet.
"I'll teach you that sometime," he said. "We'll get you ready to party hard!"
"Yeah, I'd like that," Knuckles said, a smile still plastered on his face. "I'll figure out how to do all those tricks of yours and blow the spikes right off your head!"
The song ended, and during the quiet in between Sonic said:
"You're gonna have to catch up to me first, Red. Wanna go at it again?"
"Maybe not the... head spinning, but I quite like your dancing."
But the upbeat music didn't return. Sonic looked up at the speakers when a much slower melody started playing.
"Oh, man," said the hedgehog. "Not a slow one! I'm out. I'm gonna look for Tails. He's not a partygoer. He's probably started fixing up the audio equipment backstage without asking anyone and is now tangled up into a bunch of cables somewhere there." And with a gust of wind, he was gone.
Knuckles looked at where Sonic had just been standing, confused. He looked at everyone else, but with the song being different, they were doing a different type of dance, and he felt self-conscious again, but only for a brief moment before he heard a familiar squeal and turned around to see Amy.
"I love this song! It's my turn with you, Knuckles!"
"H-huh?" The echidna hesitated. "I don't know, Amy, I don't even listen to this type of-" But before he even finished, the hedgehog grabbed both of his hands and pulled him towards a bigger opening.
"It's simple, see? You're a boy, so you're supposed to put your hands here." She set both his mitts on her waist. "And I put them here," she added, putting her hands on her shoulders.
Knuckles wasn't really paying attention, instead trying to get a feel of the music. It was slow, and he wasn't familiar with this genre. It was hard to find some rhythm at first, but the familiar sound of the drums was still there, and after a moment he picked up on it. After that, it felt obvious, even though he wasn't sure what to do with his legs.
"Amy, I'm not sure..." he started, but then she started swaying.
"See, you're just supposed to sway! Look at my feet, just follow me."
Carefully, Knuckles did his best to put each step next to Amy's. This was nothing like what dancing with Sonic had been like. It was ridiculously easy to step on the hedgehog's feet. Knuckles winced when he inevitably did.
"Sorry," he mumbled.
"It's alright. Relax, Knuckles!" Amy said, her hands patting his shoulders, that he hadn't even realized became tense again. He exhaled slowly. It was strange to dance like this and to be required to touch another person like this the entire time. It didn't hurt, but the echidna felt weird with Amy's hand constantly laid on him.
But it was peaceful. After a few moments, he thought he was doing better. He didn't even step on Amy anymore.
"Good job!" the hedgehog smiled up at him. "See, isn't this nice?"
There was this calm, slow harmony to this. The song wasn't bad, it was about love, something the surface loved to sing about. Knuckles looked up at the lights. They weren't aggressively stroking in all the colors anymore, but a soft, red, and orange glow that moves slowly over the dancers' heads. A calm smile crawled over his face when he realized the steps were so simple he could simply close his eyes and enjoy the music and the swaying.
"Yeah, this is nice too," the echidna said finally.
Amy giggled excitedly and wrapped her arms around his neck.
"I told you!" she said happily. "It's so nice to be able to dance with someone. Sonic is absolutely useless when it comes to slow dancing," she mumbled into his shoulder. "He likes showing off his moves, but the moment that's over, he's gone, and you won't find him until there's another crisis or something. He doesn't get how nice it can be to just have fun while there isn't a world-ending threat on our tails!"
Knuckles thought about that. He really didn't see Sonic beyond moments of crisis, when their paths only accidentally met as they both went about their respective missions. In between them, there was little time to just hang out. The most they did was fight each other. But maybe there were other things to do together. Like... this.