29. Full Capacity #5
"Yeah, well, on Earth they do, and they do it badly," Charlie insisted. "That's the whole point, actually. Try it again."
Reyna did try again but it was still too fluid, too controlled.
Kaelari refinement was fighting this Earthly choreography and winning, straightening every lurch back into something closer to a processional than a shuffle.
By the fourth pass, Reyna's jaw had set and her shoulders had climbed toward her ears.
"Your shoulders are rolling," Charlie said softly, stepping in.
"They need to be locked." Charlie saw a flash of frustration cross Reyna's face.
It was endearing to see the Captain upset with herself over a zombie dance.
"Here," Charlie said, walking over and putting both hands on Reyna's shoulders, pressing them into position. "Like this. Stiff. No movement."
Charlie then moved one hand to the back of Reyna's neck.
"Now the head," Charlie said, focused on the position.
She tilted Reyna's head softly to the correct angle, her fingers landing where the gold markings ran up into her hairline.
"Snap it right on beat three. Sharp. Like something startled you. "
Reyna snapped her head. But again, it was too controlled, too deliberate. Everything Charlie handed her came back too clean.
"I can't get you to turn it off, can I?" Charlie said, a small laugh under her breath. "Okay, let's just try for the hips. Then you've got the whole thing, and you can run it perfected into oblivion," she said. Charlie took a deep breath. "Here."
Charlie stepped in directly behind Reyna and set one hand on her hip with the other on her shoulder to walk the captain through the whole dance. Arms stiff. Step. Drag. Snap.
On the third pass, her hand settled properly against Reyna's waist, her palm wrapping around the curve of her hip. In a single moment, Charlie realized just how close she'd gotten to Reyna.
It was close enough that she could feel Reyna's breath hitch against her, her back expanding flush against Charlie's chest. Reyna went very still. She turned her head, her breath reaching Charlie now, warm against her jaw. Charlie looked up and found Reyna already looking at her.
Charlie should have kept moving. Every part of her that ran on procedure was telling her to finish the step and let go.
But she didn't, because she wasn't even able to.
Reyna was looking at her, and it flattened every thought Charlie had.
She was so close she could feel the warmth of her under her palm, the gold markings at her throat near enough to catch the light, the heat of her coming through two layers of fabric.
All she could do was stand there, captured by the amber eyes and the stillness, her own pulse erratic in her ears.
And under it, quiet and certain and worse than any of the rest of it, came the thought Charlie had been outrunning for weeks.
I don't think this is something I can stop. And I have no idea what happens if I don't.
Charlie forgot the count. In fact, she forgot the entire room practicing around them. Somewhere behind her she could hear voices. Voices like Tavi's and Maren's, even Selowen in the background. But they were lost to her. She would never know what they said.
Charlie pulled her hands off Reyna on their own, and she stepped back. And slowly, everything came back around her. The room, the music, the voices.
"Yeah," Charlie said, clearing her throat. "That's... that's it. All in the hips." She turned to Tavi. "From the top, please, Tav."
He restarted the song, and Charlie watched as the group ran the dance again. Including Reyna.
She had it. All of it. She had the drag and the locked shoulders and the head snapping over on beat three.
It was all stiff and wrong in every joint, just as it was supposed to be, the poise the Kaelari had built into their spines finally quitting the argument.
When Reyna came out of the last snap, she looked down at her own feet like they'd done it without asking her.
"There," Charlie said quietly, and Reyna looked up at her. "You've got it."
For a second, neither of them said anything. Then Reyna stepped out of Charlie's space entirely, and the ordinary set of her face came back.
"Yeah, well, I had a good teacher," she said.
It was an easy thing to say, and it landed that way, like a door swinging shut on the last thirty seconds, turning all of it into a dance lesson and nothing else.
But Charlie took it. Whatever had just happened, she wasn't ready to hold it up to the light either, and the easy thing let her set it down.
"Yeah," Charlie's voice came out almost normal. "You're a fast study."
Reyna held her eyes half a beat longer, looking back and forth between Charlie's.
Then she smiled and nodded before moving off toward the edge of the room.
Charlie followed her as she went, not taking her eyes off her.
Reyna settled into her spot by the door and looked out at the room, at Tavi and Maren, at the mess of the dance still going. At everything except Charlie.
Minutes later, Reyna approached Charlie on her way out. "I have early rounds with Torvax," she said. "So, I'll see you in the morning."
It was a perfectly ordinary thing to say. In fact, Charlie almost missed what it meant. Reyna was telling her not to wait up, not to expect her at 0300 in the Observation Room. Tonight, the bench would be empty on purpose. But by the time Charlie understood it, Reyna was already gone.
And Charlie's first thought, her reflex that couldn't head off before it arrived, was that she'd done this. She'd stood too close in the office, and looked, and Reyna had felt it.
This was the correction. A captain putting a respectful meter back between herself and the crew member who'd started looking at her... differently.
It was the sensible read. But Charlie knew it was also the read she always reached for first, the one where she was the problem that needed managing.
She'd been reaching for that one since she was thirteen.
And Charlie's first thought, her reflex that couldn't head off before it arrived, was that she'd done this. She'd stood too close in the office and let her face do whatever it had done, and Reyna had felt it.
This was the correction. A captain putting a respectful meter back between herself and the crew member who'd started looking at her... differently.
It was the sensible read. But Charlie knew it was also the read she always reached for first, the one where she was the problem that needed managing.
She'd been reaching for that one since she was thirteen.
Charlie made herself turn to the music equipment. It gave her hands something to do, and it gave her somewhere to look that wasn't the door. She stayed there, starting the next song cycle, and allowed the room to engulf her again.
But Charlie's hands wouldn't stop tingling with the warmth and curve of her. And she highly doubted it would fade by morning.
That night, after Earth Night ended, and after the entire crew had danced the 'Thriller' dance more times than Charlie had done it in her whole life, she found herself alone in her quarters, unable to cool down.
She hadn't come down since the dance, since her palm had found the curve of Reyna's waist and Reyna's breath had hitched against her chest. The whole room had dropped away, and it hadn't faded on her walk to her quarters the way she'd hoped it would.
It was still there.
Charlie could still feel the exact shape of her in her hands if she thought about it. So, Charlie was doing her level best not to think about it and having her usual amount of luck with that.
She dropped onto her bed and lay her head on her pillow, closing her eyes.
She took a few moments to focus on her breathing before her eyes popped open again, reaching for her datapad.
Going right into the music library, Charlie didn't have to search for anything because she already knew what she was looking for.
She tapped the play button on a song. "I'm on Fire" by Bruce Springsteen began, the synth and the drum tick driving up front, her heart beating faster than the tempo. She closed her eyes again, letting the datapad fall against her torso.
And then the voice, two and a half minutes of a man singing over almost nothing, staying down in his chest the whole way through, never once lifting. She added it to the playlist.
It had been a long day, and she'd been standing too close to a lot of things. A body ran warm after a day like that. She lay back in the dark while the song played itself out.
But the thing was, she didn't cool down. No matter how many times she played the song, no matter how many deep breaths she took, Reyna stayed in her hands.
What she wanted, lying there, was for morning to put it back.
For the alarm to go off and the day to start and this whole thing to shrink back down to a size she could carry to work and set on a shelf and ignore.
She wanted the version of herself from a week ago, the one who still had this handled, who knew exactly how far the feeling went and exactly how to keep it there.
She noticed she was not hoping for the other option. The one where morning came and Reyna had felt it too and meant it. She wouldn't reach for that one. It wasn't even disappointment. It was just what she'd come to expect. A variable, not to be chosen.
So she lay there with her hands open at her sides, waiting on a morning she wasn't sure would fix a damn thing.