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Nobody taught Silver how to dance. He had once wondered why there were so many pictures and paintings from days gone by of people in odd poses. One special day while climbing the mountains of human consumerist remains, he found an answer: a closed box covered in brown polyester with a key stuck in it. With some psychic jingling and jangling, he could feel the cogs inside and how they wound, and turned them one by one with his mind, but that didn't open it. Instead, on the opposite side, there was a rusted metal latch just hardly holding the affair together. It crumbled away under the slightest effort.
Inside was a treasure trove: sparkly plastic friendship bracelets and tacky brooches had been protected from the air and decay, so their painted colour still gleamed on the pink faux-satin lining that was still soft, contrasting the exterior to tell a story of the mass-produced splendour this once was. But none of this was so magnificent to him as the sound, and the dancer:
A tinny trill warbled as the studded cog struck against eroded metal teeth. At the centre, before a plasticky mirror; a doll with her arms above her head stood on one toe and pointed the other straight out behind her, a ring of a skirt bursting from her middle. She shuddered around in a slow twirl as Silver turned the dials inside her plinth with his mind, performing the same dance for him as she had for a temporarily delighted child 200 years ago.
Silver planted her on the side of the skip he'd dug her out of; at just an inch tall she transfixed him. He kept her twirling slowly, and pointed his own toes to try to copy her, steadying himself with a glowwy aura. He turned her and himself manually, but one held the perfect physique of a purpose-built dancer, and the other was a feral and lonely child with no concept of so social an emotion as embarrassment. He was a slave-driver; he kept her dancing for hours while he copied her, fast and slow, to the same looping melody.
And from that day, he looked at the shapes differently - if the pointy ballerina had been a dancer, perhaps so too was the man in a cap holding himself up by a hand and an attitude. So too might be anyone kicking high, hopping, or bowing. Perhaps even those two holding eachother in a funny sort of embrace while the lady's skirt whooshed around them. He made the shapes alone, but without the concept of a consistent style or tune they just melted one to another to the confusing rhythms of his own humming mind and chest, which couldn't even stay in beat with eachother. But the shapes were fun, and they felt living and connected even though he danced on his own.
Nobody taught Espio to dance. He'd been far too focussed on what was important, productive, and crucially lucrative to teach himself. He knew how to strike a stoic and frightening pose, and he took those from the kata: position to position, without letting anyone know you spared a thought for how you got between them. Because the artistry was in the output for him; and if anybody were so shallow as to compliment is form... that didn't mean anything, he didn't care.
He plucked the Shamisen with shoulders hunched and one knee bent and locked on the wall behind him while Vector hopped around manically and Charmy committed musical attrocities on the drum. They'd had, all things considered, an awful day. Everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong. Their ensuing coniptions had them snipping at eachother, so Vector demanded them to the garage to work it out. He was screaming now, words Espio couldn't make out, while his jumps shook the ground and hands crushed the bent microphone stand. He didn't understand Vector, and Vector evidently didn't understand him:
"C'mon Espio! That's not the energy!" He roared, and with a ferocity that would have scared anyone who didn't know his face, Vector dragged him by the strap of his strings away from his comfort on the wall. He was just throwing himself about now to the eratic drum, and the fact that he managed to keep to a moving beat almost made sense of the din. He shook Espio's shoulders as he did so.
There wasn't much use to try to fight him, and there was nobody around to offer a sarcastic eye-roll too. They were alone and angry and without a better outlet, which was all the cause that Vector needed to dance like he was ready to kill someone. Worst, Espio knew Vector actually could dance, and had an incredible sense of beat, which meant this display was intentional, and he had to join in on total purposeful nonsense.
So, he jumped up and down with Vector, at first trying to insist on a beat, stamping close to Charmy and snapping with his long tail. But Charmy had a bee in his bonnet, a bee who hadn't gotten his way all day and was now determined to thrash that out. So that was hopeless, and Espio was alone in making a rhythm. This wasn't even enough; Vector shunted him with his tail, toppling him and forcing him onto one leg then the other to right himself.
"What kind of moves do you call that? Throw shapes, you're getting thrown in them!" He bellowed.
"You know I don't dance!" Espio roared back hoarsely. And it was true, because even when he did 'throw' 'shapes', they were precise and killer - he couldn't be tempted to this stupid and embarrassing kind of routine.
Espio hadn't learned how to dance, and so he didn't. Silver hadn't learned how to dance, and so he did, with unbridled joy:
Today he swayed his head to the pop song like it was heady choral prayer that threatened to ascend him. He twirled like a maniac, always out of time with the music by a little or a lot. If somebody near him started jumping, he jumped, and bounced to high with his psychic powers so he landed and stumbled. These could not be called shapes, they were more like incidents.
Espio watched him in the colourful party lights. He hadn't left the dance floor, and most people gave him a wide berth and ignored him at the start of the night. But now, everybody was well supplied or drunk by proxy, and suddenly his dancing was cool, earning him random rowdy cheers. But still, he was alone, not that it was personal; you couldn't get too close to him, since you never knew what he was going to do next. Unless you spent every social gathering watching his body move.
Espio melted into the wall he was leant against, his heart drumming an irregular beat. Silver's fur glistened with cyan and sweat and he barely noticed a thing, almost missing when the DJ slowed the song poorly, resulting in a clumsy pause that rendered the rest of the floor irritated. Finally, he twirled to a stop, sensing the change in vibration as people left the floor to top up on drink. He finished his twirl and opened his eyes, catching Espio's sheepishly as he realised he was alone on the colourful tiles, and scooted to the wall he leant on. Espio looked quickly away as he made his way over, and pretended to re-notice Silver when he was closer, but he didn't think his acting skills sold it.
"Having fun?" Espio asked loudly into his ear. Silver nodded firmly and beamed at him.
"Dancing is so much more fun with music!"
Espio chuckled, but Silver just cocked his head like he hadn't been joking.
"Well, don't feel you have to stop. There are probably more songs to come."
"Don't you want to join me? You looked like you might."
Espio's throat tightened and he coughed to clear it as he shook his head. The sound hit Silver's ears off-key, and he frowned.
"Ha. Okay, nevermind."
"Pardon? Never mind what?" Espio spoke hoarsely. Silver was standing marginally more upright and away from Espio, forcing him to lean to Silver if he wanted to be sure he was heard. Silver wrinkled his nose and smiled;
"I looked funny, I know. Forget I asked, not your kind of dancing, clearly!"
He was terrible at disguising hurt. Espio bumped him with his shoulder in reproach and shook his head as the chorus of a racing pop song finally dropped and the crowd caterwauled along.
"Nothing to do with you, I simply never learned to dance." Espio intimately shouted to him.
"Oh, me neither, wasn't a priority; fun though! I like how everybody's joining in now!"
He gestured to the crowd; a happy couple were spinning eachother clumsily and crashing back into eachother to their own amusement, bumping against other partiers that would join them for a moment before they split back off to their ragtag circles.
"Yes, it seems like given enough... artificial courage, everyone wants to dance like you." Espio jibed lightly. Silver flicked his eyes at Espio with almost-offence but too much warmth for it to stick.
"They just needed to come to their senses!" He chuckled, and leant his elbow on the wall next to Espio: "I take it you haven't had enough to want to dance with me then?"
Espio tutted and rolled his eyes, hot in the face. Silver was nothing if not consistent; consistently weird, and consistently hovering around Espio, were just two of these consistencies. He was in his space again, pushing his boundaries and getting reactions he hopefully couldn't see. He always stopped just short of actually touching Espio, but he was so unfathomably close and comfortable there if Espio dared to even sway to the music he'd find himself stuck to Silver like a magnet.
So Espio kept very still, because dancing was for Silver to do, and in Espio's addled mind he was the only person who ought to bother with the nonsense. Espio spent hours watching him dance without thinking a single coherent or verbally communicable thought, until his face was hot from the second hand exhaustion and speeding heart. It was the only reason Espio deigned to stay until the end of every party, night out or wedding, and everybody knew if you invited Silver he'd be there waving his head like a snake charmed in a basket.
Espio blinked and cleared his eyes of the glowwy sheen they'd gained while thinking about Silver. He tried to detrance himself, fearing even Silver could observe what anybody could assume; worse, he was psychic, and if he ever chose to exercise those skills in a different direction... Espio would have much to explain. For a frightening moment he feared he might have known, as Silver cracked a small and cheeky grin, but then that melted into a shiny and sweet smile again, and it all just had to be a coincidence.
"You're smiling, you totally want to!"
"Want to..."
"Dance! Come on, you've been watching me, all jealous and mopey on the wall!"
"Right. Of course. Dancing."
"Uh, yeah? What were you thinking about? Anyway, have you got enough 'fake confidence' yet?"
Espio looked down at his soft drink and thought stupidly for a moment, before he chugged it in one go.
"Just about. If it would make you happy."
Silver didn't wait for him to put it down, swiping the glass from his hand with his psychic bubble and plonking it on the nearest flat surface. He took Espio by two emptied hands and dragged him into the flashing lights.
"Oh, it would make my night! Now, what do we do?" He shouted over the music, already swooshing Espio around with a lot of vigour, releasing him from one hand to tug him back with the other. Espio had watched enough hours of Silver on a dance floor to know he would fall often if it weren't for his psychokinesis, and he was already employing it here, rushing Espio back into his arms to charge about in a glow. Somebody nearby was laughing and whooping, and Espio whipped his head around to find the source, but it was just a girl being twirled around and chucked. Silver saw it too.
"Please don't throw me!" Espio said suddenly shunting into Silver's chest to assure he was heard. Silver cackled and squished him, choosing instead to twizzle himself under Espio's fingers and whirl back into him.
"Well, then you'll have to throw me!"
"I don't know how to do that!"
"Oh, what's to know? It's just making shapes!"
"Do you mean 'throwing shapes'?"
"Oh since you insist-" Silver squeezed his hips threateningly and found his hands gripped very tightly, and a tail bound itself like a vice around his leg. He laughed again, shimmying his right and Espio's left hand off his hip to hold at shoulder height, then weaved his other onto Espio's back.
"I won't, I know you're only just about putting up with this."
He rocked them back and forth oddly, as Espio gazed at him with a dozy wide eyed expression. A variant of the one he always had when music got loud and Silver got moving.
"Thank you..." he murmured, then repeated himself closer to Silver's cheek, the heart of his chest flush to fluff.
"But now I have to wonder:" Silver began, speaking in fractures of a sentence whenever the volume allowed it:
"If you didn't actually have an overwhelming desire to come and dance with me, what were you watching for, all that time?"
He smiled cheekily, raising his brows as high as they could go, and gesturing with a nod down to Espio's body that he'd left so carelessly wrapped in his arm. He shifted the leg that was tangled in a tail, subtly brushing it on Espio's own thigh to prove the tail was still there and didn't want to leave. In the blaring sirens, the sweat that stuck him in place, and the overwhelming flashing lights: Espio was an outlaw caught in the scene of the crime.
He pulled his lips into a small line and glared at Silver's mirth. Embarrassment in front of the whole party around them was one thing, but Silver? Silver giving him a teasing smile and tripping him onto the wrong foot so he bumped his hips against his? Unacceptable and unthinkable levels of mockery. He refused to be one-upped, and only pride could supercede his the screaming in his head.
"An opening." He said quietly, and just as Silver leant closer, about to ask him to repeat that over the noise, he pushed his nose into Silver's and found his mouth beneath it.
Silver stopped rocking them weirdly to the music, instead lulling to a gentle stop. It took him seconds to adjust course and let Espio's left hand free to grab his hair, while his own right floated idly like it had no idea where to rest. Espio whipped his tail from Silver's leg to firmly plant that hand at the base of his own spine, then coiled around his middle to keep it fixed to him like glue. He kissed in a rhythm - somebody had to follow this damn rhythm with him - and slowly but steadily nudged Silver backwards off the main dancing block and into the shade.
They thought about dancing like making a series of shapes and fumbling between them. Like the shape of two people who happened to bump into eachother, to the state of being obsessed with eachother, and eventually completely drowning in eachother - leaning against a cold wall and deaf to the music mixing around them. The details of how you got from one to another were already forgotten.