Fic: Terpsichore

[miriam_heddy]

Terpsichore
By Miriam Heddy

When I sit, you sit. When I kneel, you kneel. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera!

"So what're you two up-"

"Charles, please reassure me on one point. You do know how to count to three in base ten

Comments

[terpsichoreslyr]

I haven't read the story (not one of my fandoms) but I love the title. :)

[miriam_heddy]

I figured you would *g*.

[leaper182]

Awww. I rather liked this one. Alan thinking there might be something more than what's going on, the kind of innocent slash between two absent-minded professors who might not even be aware of the slashy possibilities. And the two of them being nice enough to dance for charity! That's so sweet.

*cuddles Larry and Charlie plushies*

[miriam_heddy]

Plushy hug!

Sometimes, I do have my "awww" moments, as a writer. And I love Alan, so it was hard to resist. Glad you liked it!

[melissima]

"Okay, so let's try boom-tick-tick...boom-tick-tick-and lean. No-lean or you'll pop the clutch on your-”

"There's a clutch? Where's the clutch?"

I'm laughing to beat the band at this one, Miriam, but help me out here-- I don't dance. What exactly is Larry insinuating?

Here's hoping Alan and Don adjust soon. I love the idea of Charlie and Larry dancing together so much!

[miriam_heddy]

I found that terminology on a waltz instruction website. You need to proceed forward motion with a lean to signal to your partner where you're going. Oddly enough, on Wiki's site on manual transmission driving, they had this advice:
To avoid grinding, do the waltz: think 1-2-3. On the count of 1, press the clutch all the way down to the floor. On the count of 2, move the stick to the desired gear. On 3, release the clutch. To speed up the gear change, you must speed up these motions individually, and not "cheat" by trying to overlap steps 2 and 3. There is little room for that. In particular, the lever must be in the final position before the clutch moves off the floor. Where you can save time is by tightly combining 1 and 2. Push or pull on the stick while pressing the clutch, to get it moving as soon as possible. Practice the waltz: count 1-2-3 in your head. Try doing it very slowly, and then speed up the tempo.So anyway--language is a fun thing, really

[vily]

Ah, Alan. You managed to capture both his inflexibility and his love and his acceptance for his sons so neatly.

Wonderful!

[miriam_heddy]

Thank you!

This is one of the few fandoms where I find myself not narrowing my focus in that OTP way so that all others end up fading out. Alan is just so vivid--so interesting--and this felt very much like his story, y'know?

[lucia_tanaka]

Oh, how do I love this fic. Charlie is the graceless wonder, Larry is the impatient teacher, and Alan rocks as hard as he does in canon. Alan cannot lose. And, the description of the dancing, the little in-joke the boys did, and this:

Just don't practice on Larry, okay? Because even he's better at it than you are.

100% hilarious and brilliance. And, oh god, 69. I cracked up and didn't stop laughing until:

two men who could count the stars in the sky but who had taken decades to get to this point, out of step with the rest of the world, and sometimes each other

when I died of wonderfulness. That's a stunning sentence, it really is.

*claps loudly* Bravo!

[miriam_heddy]

*grins*

I'm so glad you liked it, as I remember when you first said "dancing" I was thinking, "Oh, that's a story I can't imagine writing." (Which of course I took as a personal challenge).

Alan's POV is one that I find really fun to try out, in part because Alan's relationship with Charlie and Larry is just complicated enough that writing Alan's POV resists the frequent Yenta thing or the perfectly happy for them voyeur you get in many fandoms when you try to have one person seeing the couple.

Anyway, I clearly enjoyed writing it.