How High The Moon
Terk/Tantor
Human AU. Tantor, a fumbling germophobic zoologist, tries to catch the eye of his neighbor, a loud, tomboyish scat musician named Terk.
A squirt of hand sanitizer and Tantor was ready to go.
Well, another squirt after he remembered how absolutely contaminated doorknobs can be, but it creates time for him to cast one last longing look back into his office. Books, papers, maps, specimens: his zoological work consumed him, but not in an unwanted fashion. There wasn't really much to go home to - not to say he didn't have a wide and impressive family lineage, he did. All of his family were doctors, all biology majors and masters, travelers and figures of learning and discovery (He chose to explore the wonders of the world behind his desk, thank you very much, away from the various diseases and plagues in the spaces outsides of civilized society).
They were perfectly fine, and yet perfectly busy most of the time. They would come in like a stampede, fill his little apartment with noise and happy confusion, and then leave for months at a time. All the better, he supposed -
If anyone was around often, they would question why the notoriously germophobic Dr. Tantor so frequently visited a grimy little hole-in-the-wall jazz-club, when he himself was a fan of classical music.
He sidled in somewhat uncomfortably after showing his i.d. to the doorman (he was a doctor, for God's sake...well, not that kind of doctor. And the immature clothes choice of a big, shapeless yellow shirt hastily stuffed inside of his over-sized, characterless trousers didn't really paint a picture of aged-dignity).
But back to the sidling. That was mostly how Tantor moved. Carefully, awkwardly - he was painfully aware of his own considerable girth and made sure to not bother others with it, often compressing himself against a wall to let other's pass. And he tended to avoid most casual physical touches - why the mere brush of a bare shoulder against his scrubbed skin could result in diphtheria, streptococcus...who knows what!
He sat down in a cautious, exaggerated fashion after being careful to lay a handkerchief down on the cheap metal seat, pointedly ignoring the server's look.
"So bub, what'll be? A house beer? Rum and coke?"
Tantor looked down his nose in haughty disdain: "Why certainly not; I'll have a seltzer water and two lemons, thank you. And don't cut the lemons, please - contamination, you know."
The waiter moved off with a bewildered and critical roll of his eyes, raising a hand in acknowledgement when Tantor called after him -
"Oh, and don't forget a straw!" He was NOT putting his mouth on the side of some dirty glass.
He knew he didn't belong there, but the discomfort, the feeling of alienation among the smoky, loud crowd couldn't dissuade him from seeing her.
He felt a dreamy look cross his face as the lights changed to a flashing, colorful array and she sauntered on stage.
Oh good, he was right on time - as usual.
"Hey all you beautiful people, and hey, even some of you ugly ones - " a smattering of friendly laughter "I am going to do something different tonight, air out something I've been playing around with in my head for awhile. Maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't. But hey, keeping it fresh." she said with an easy shrug, all white teeth and thick lips.
Someone from the crowd yelled out - "You always keep it fresh, Terk-baby!"
She pantomimed a mock bow, "True, this is true. Alright, enough crap - hit it Mikey!"
And from that clever, loud, confidant mouth came words. Not really words, but vowels, syllables, all scrambled and juiced and pulped and poured in the glasses of her audience's ears.
"Zabwe dap dooby doo Zap a da dee dop zwe bop..."
Repeated, it climbs up and down again, carelessly flung from one nonsense verse to the other. In a rhythmless way, her hand follows the movement of her lyric-less song, flinging out gaudily bejeweled fingers. Her legs in their black, long boy shorts tap along and the chains from her pockets swing; her sturdy torso within the sleeveless band shirt moves along with it.
Add to that her short cropped black hair and dusky skin, and Tantor thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever saw.
Her set was over all too soon, and after long and gratuitous thank yous, she left the stage. Tantor rose to leave, his only reason for being in a place like this gone, but heart-stoppingly, there she was before him, clapping a hand on his shoulder and pushing him back into his seat. He forgot to be worried about strangers and germs as his tongue filled his mouth and sweat dampened his collar.
"Hey don't go disappearing again, big fella', I haven't even got to meet you."
"You know me?" Tantor asked somewhat stupidly.
"Yeah, 'course I do." Terk pulled out a chair for herself opposite Tantor, who berated himself silently for not doing it for her. There goes his gentleman appeal. She didn't seem to mind, though, and threw her feet up on the table, unconcerned with how her graffiti and dirt covered Doc Martins came in contact with a surface for eating.
Distantly, Tantor was aware that this should horrify or at least disgust him.
"How could I not recognize my biggest fan? You make it a point to show up at every one of my sets, big guy." Terk said with a grin.
Tantor tried to wave the embarrassing proof of his obsession away, affecting -
"Oh no, I come to this place all the time. It's my favorite est-, erm, club. My favorite club. I'm a right regular."
Terk looked unimpressed but benign.
"Uh huh, sure. Hey Eddie!, two for me and my pal, here! Chop chop!"
Two what, exactly? Wait, did she say pal? As in more than a stranger? As in possibly even more than that? Tantor had to remind himself to act like a normal human being.
"Oh I already ordered..." he started to say, but then suffered another mini stroke when she began to finger her nose ring and look at him in a considering fashion up and down. "So, what's your name? Whatcha do for a living? All that good stuff..."
"It's Tantor, Dr. Tantor," he added somewhat proudly. She didn't have to know he wasn't that kind of a doctor.
"Ah doctor," she said, with an impressed whistle through her teeth. Tantor preened, feeling like maybe he had a chance of making a cool impression.
"And you're a fan of scat?"
"Wait, what?" Surely she didn't mean the guano? Why would anyone be a fan of that? Maybe it was a sexual thing he didn't know about - Oh God, this was going much faster than he read about in Parade Magazine.
"Scat. You know, what I did up there. What I always do." She spoke slowly, as if talking to a small child, jerking her thumb to the stage.
"Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, I'm a big part of the scat scene. Like I said, I'm here all the time, isn't that right Teddy?" as a man approached bearing their drinks. Isn't that what she called him?
"It's Eddie." he said, and set down two frosty, label-less beers in front of Terk and a sparkling, crystal glass of seltzer water in front of Tantor.
He turned as red as his tie and attempted unsuccessfully to slip between the floorboards. Drat these atmospheric concrete floors...
Terk laughed, but not unkindly and held out one of the beers.
"No worries, Tantor-baby, cheers!"
And Tantor drank a huge gulp to cover up the choke her gave upon hearing "baby" and his name associated in Terk's mouth.
That sat there, for a wondrous, timeless while. What Terk could have possibly saw in him, Tantor did not know, but she was spending an awful lot of time on a gesture of pity. Still, they talked - Terk about just how amazing scat was, how she wanted to get good enough at skateboarding to compete, how someday, maybe, she''ll scratch up the dough to travel all the places she wanted to see, like Africa and the Amazon. And Tantor, if asked questions directly, would answer sparingly, turning it back to Terk if possible. He was enraptured; why reveal his unremarkable, academic life?
Suddenly, Terk popped up with a grinning "Oh Yeah." Tantor cocked his head as some brassy, crashing tune came on the embedded ceiling-radios. "Come on Tantor, let's go. This is my song!" she urged in a winning fashion, taking his arm and attempting to drag him onto the dance floor.
Oh no, dancing - the overweight man's greatest fear. Or at least Tantor's. Shuffling his feet around in a cramped space with strangers would only exacerbate his body consciousness to an unbearable level.
But Terk was smiling right into his face, and he could smell cinnamon and aloe and curse his male hormones, because he followed like a dog on a leash.
Terk led him right into the center of it and started to dance, singing her favorite parts of the song aloud. But then she caught site of miserable Tantor standing there still and paranoid, and took his big, meaty hands and placed them on her generous hips. "Go for it Tantor, just follow me if you want."
And he moved. He wasn't a Tony Manero by any means, but he wasn't tripping or attracting any critical glances, so that was more than enough for him. He had a college degree, several of them, actually, so he could understand the basic mechanics of filling in the spaces she left, shifting his body in subtle ways to follow where she went. He even moved his head a little bit, bobbing uncertainly to a song that suddenly seemed a lot more friendly.
"That's it Tantor, you got it baby!"
He laughed nervously at her encouragement, but beamed like a fool. He felt flushed, even more so when the song left off and another more sultry tune began on slow horns and whining guitars. Because Terk, always music conscious Terk, began to dance slower as well, closer to Tantor.
He might have died if she started that booty-grinding stuff he saw on MTV when he flipped around the stations if National Geographic was on commercial, but thankfully, she was nothing like that. She spun and stomped and cavorted, her eyes closed in a private bliss. And when her rear, her ass brushed against the front of his khaki's, he was in bliss too. He felt feverish, and daringly, pulled his little dancer closer. "Alright, then." Terk said approvingly.
They danced through five, ten, maybe 100 songs, and finally collapsed laughing at the bar where Terk once again ordered for the both of them, and the beer didn't taste so bad going down his throat. She was sweaty and disheveled and glorious, and she daringly plucked a pen out of his front pocket and chewed on it.
"You know, you're alright, Tantor."
He flushed from his large (or regal, he thought) ears down to his tightly-belted belly.
He cleared his throat.
It was now or never, Tantor.
"Oh umwouldyouliketogoonadatemaybe?"
Terk laughed.
"Not sure if I caught that."
Tantor cleared his throat, and settled from taking his nervous hands from his thighs, to to the top of the table, interlacing his thick fingers.
"I mean, would you like to go on a date with me?" The silence stretched, a silence he felt only in his brain. "Maybe?" he added nervously.
She laughed again. Man, he could listen to that laugh forever. It was like her music: unconventional. Girls generally made Tantor feel self conscious and miserable. They tittered, they gleamed, they pranced and he felt like a mountain of unwanted flesh. But Terk...well she was small in the sense that she was short, but she was thick, appealingly so. Tantor guessed it was more muscle than his guilty snacking-pounds, but she was solid.
And that laugh. That laugh was rough and musical and infectious and throaty and he felt like even if she laughed at him now, it was okay, even if he was rejected.
She leaned closer, and a flash of silver glinted behind her teeth (another ring, a tongue-ring? How had he not caught that before?)
"Tantor-baby, I thought that was what were doing."
He looked at her questioningly, hearing the music thrum around him and then fade all to focus more on her impertinent, red mouth.
"You know, flirting, dancing, drinks..? Sounds like pretty average date material to me."
Flirting? Oh God, did he flirt? Was that what that was? Did he glaze right through a sociological breakthrough?
He gaped after her and she didn't seem to mind, rising from the bar chair and stretching with her arms above her head with a loud yawn. "Welp, this scene is pretty much done for me." She ran a hand through her tousled hair and slipped on a battered bomber's jacket. "Hey Eddie, put it on my tab, will ya?" She called back to the dwindling bar. What time was it? He had to be up in the morning for a thesis-presentation ("The Migration Patterns of Piranha: Africa or South America?") but when he ran after her to slip his hand in hers and she didn't pull away in disgust, it was suddenly okay.
Holding hands, he thought, I am holding hands and it's not gross. It's not indecent. It isn't contaminating. It's right, just right.
"Absolutely not, we shall put it on my tab. A gentlemen never lets a lady pay. On my tab, Eddie!" he yelled imperiously, the effect somewhat ruined when he had to duck quickly to avoid hitting the door frame on his way out.
"Your tab, huh? Must be planning on coming back." Terk said as she turned up her collar against the sudden blast of the cold wet air coming down the late Autumn city streets. She winked in a way that made Tantor feel absolutely included.
"Of course, I must catch every performance of the bella donna."
Terk gave him a shove.
"Would you stop that?"
Under the streetlamp, he swore he could catch a blush. A blush for him?
They walked in companionable silence, not caring where or why, hand in hand, until suddenly Tantor could hear Terk laughing under her breath. He leaned down to catch it.
"Ha, a lady."
They neared an enormous puddle and with a boldness quite outside himself Tantor picked her up in princess fashion and carried her over it.
"A lady must never soil her steps in rainwater!"
She put up a mighty loud protest, but threw her arm around his neck all the same.
With Terk, Tantor didn't feel too big or too awkward. He felt big enough to hold her, and light enough to keep up.
Human AU. Tantor, a fumbling germophobic zoologist, tries to catch the eye of his neighbor, a loud, tomboyish scat musician named Terk.
A squirt of hand sanitizer and Tantor was ready to go.
Well, another squirt after he remembered how absolutely contaminated doorknobs can be, but it creates time for him to cast one last longing look back into his office. Books, papers, maps, specimens: his zoological work consumed him, but not in an unwanted fashion. There wasn't really much to go home to - not to say he didn't have a wide and impressive family lineage, he did. All of his family were doctors, all biology majors and masters, travelers and figures of learning and discovery (He chose to explore the wonders of the world behind his desk, thank you very much, away from the various diseases and plagues in the spaces outsides of civilized society).
They were perfectly fine, and yet perfectly busy most of the time. They would come in like a stampede, fill his little apartment with noise and happy confusion, and then leave for months at a time. All the better, he supposed -
If anyone was around often, they would question why the notoriously germophobic Dr. Tantor so frequently visited a grimy little hole-in-the-wall jazz-club, when he himself was a fan of classical music.
He sidled in somewhat uncomfortably after showing his i.d. to the doorman (he was a doctor, for God's sake...well, not that kind of doctor. And the immature clothes choice of a big, shapeless yellow shirt hastily stuffed inside of his over-sized, characterless trousers didn't really paint a picture of aged-dignity).
But back to the sidling. That was mostly how Tantor moved. Carefully, awkwardly - he was painfully aware of his own considerable girth and made sure to not bother others with it, often compressing himself against a wall to let other's pass. And he tended to avoid most casual physical touches - why the mere brush of a bare shoulder against his scrubbed skin could result in diphtheria, streptococcus...who knows what!
He sat down in a cautious, exaggerated fashion after being careful to lay a handkerchief down on the cheap metal seat, pointedly ignoring the server's look.
"So bub, what'll be? A house beer? Rum and coke?"
Tantor looked down his nose in haughty disdain: "Why certainly not; I'll have a seltzer water and two lemons, thank you. And don't cut the lemons, please - contamination, you know."
The waiter moved off with a bewildered and critical roll of his eyes, raising a hand in acknowledgement when Tantor called after him -
"Oh, and don't forget a straw!" He was NOT putting his mouth on the side of some dirty glass.
He knew he didn't belong there, but the discomfort, the feeling of alienation among the smoky, loud crowd couldn't dissuade him from seeing her.
He felt a dreamy look cross his face as the lights changed to a flashing, colorful array and she sauntered on stage.
Oh good, he was right on time - as usual.
"Hey all you beautiful people, and hey, even some of you ugly ones - " a smattering of friendly laughter "I am going to do something different tonight, air out something I've been playing around with in my head for awhile. Maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't. But hey, keeping it fresh." she said with an easy shrug, all white teeth and thick lips.
Someone from the crowd yelled out - "You always keep it fresh, Terk-baby!"
She pantomimed a mock bow, "True, this is true. Alright, enough crap - hit it Mikey!"
And from that clever, loud, confidant mouth came words. Not really words, but vowels, syllables, all scrambled and juiced and pulped and poured in the glasses of her audience's ears.
"Zabwe dap dooby doo Zap a da dee dop zwe bop..."
Repeated, it climbs up and down again, carelessly flung from one nonsense verse to the other. In a rhythmless way, her hand follows the movement of her lyric-less song, flinging out gaudily bejeweled fingers. Her legs in their black, long boy shorts tap along and the chains from her pockets swing; her sturdy torso within the sleeveless band shirt moves along with it.
Add to that her short cropped black hair and dusky skin, and Tantor thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever saw.
Her set was over all too soon, and after long and gratuitous thank yous, she left the stage. Tantor rose to leave, his only reason for being in a place like this gone, but heart-stoppingly, there she was before him, clapping a hand on his shoulder and pushing him back into his seat. He forgot to be worried about strangers and germs as his tongue filled his mouth and sweat dampened his collar.
"Hey don't go disappearing again, big fella', I haven't even got to meet you."
"You know me?" Tantor asked somewhat stupidly.
"Yeah, 'course I do." Terk pulled out a chair for herself opposite Tantor, who berated himself silently for not doing it for her. There goes his gentleman appeal. She didn't seem to mind, though, and threw her feet up on the table, unconcerned with how her graffiti and dirt covered Doc Martins came in contact with a surface for eating.
Distantly, Tantor was aware that this should horrify or at least disgust him.
"How could I not recognize my biggest fan? You make it a point to show up at every one of my sets, big guy." Terk said with a grin.
Tantor tried to wave the embarrassing proof of his obsession away, affecting -
"Oh no, I come to this place all the time. It's my favorite est-, erm, club. My favorite club. I'm a right regular."
Terk looked unimpressed but benign.
"Uh huh, sure. Hey Eddie!, two for me and my pal, here! Chop chop!"
Two what, exactly? Wait, did she say pal? As in more than a stranger? As in possibly even more than that? Tantor had to remind himself to act like a normal human being.
"Oh I already ordered..." he started to say, but then suffered another mini stroke when she began to finger her nose ring and look at him in a considering fashion up and down. "So, what's your name? Whatcha do for a living? All that good stuff..."
"It's Tantor, Dr. Tantor," he added somewhat proudly. She didn't have to know he wasn't that kind of a doctor.
"Ah doctor," she said, with an impressed whistle through her teeth. Tantor preened, feeling like maybe he had a chance of making a cool impression.
"And you're a fan of scat?"
"Wait, what?" Surely she didn't mean the guano? Why would anyone be a fan of that? Maybe it was a sexual thing he didn't know about - Oh God, this was going much faster than he read about in Parade Magazine.
"Scat. You know, what I did up there. What I always do." She spoke slowly, as if talking to a small child, jerking her thumb to the stage.
"Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, I'm a big part of the scat scene. Like I said, I'm here all the time, isn't that right Teddy?" as a man approached bearing their drinks. Isn't that what she called him?
"It's Eddie." he said, and set down two frosty, label-less beers in front of Terk and a sparkling, crystal glass of seltzer water in front of Tantor.
He turned as red as his tie and attempted unsuccessfully to slip between the floorboards. Drat these atmospheric concrete floors...
Terk laughed, but not unkindly and held out one of the beers.
"No worries, Tantor-baby, cheers!"
And Tantor drank a huge gulp to cover up the choke her gave upon hearing "baby" and his name associated in Terk's mouth.
That sat there, for a wondrous, timeless while. What Terk could have possibly saw in him, Tantor did not know, but she was spending an awful lot of time on a gesture of pity. Still, they talked - Terk about just how amazing scat was, how she wanted to get good enough at skateboarding to compete, how someday, maybe, she''ll scratch up the dough to travel all the places she wanted to see, like Africa and the Amazon. And Tantor, if asked questions directly, would answer sparingly, turning it back to Terk if possible. He was enraptured; why reveal his unremarkable, academic life?
Suddenly, Terk popped up with a grinning "Oh Yeah." Tantor cocked his head as some brassy, crashing tune came on the embedded ceiling-radios. "Come on Tantor, let's go. This is my song!" she urged in a winning fashion, taking his arm and attempting to drag him onto the dance floor.
Oh no, dancing - the overweight man's greatest fear. Or at least Tantor's. Shuffling his feet around in a cramped space with strangers would only exacerbate his body consciousness to an unbearable level.
But Terk was smiling right into his face, and he could smell cinnamon and aloe and curse his male hormones, because he followed like a dog on a leash.
Terk led him right into the center of it and started to dance, singing her favorite parts of the song aloud. But then she caught site of miserable Tantor standing there still and paranoid, and took his big, meaty hands and placed them on her generous hips. "Go for it Tantor, just follow me if you want."
And he moved. He wasn't a Tony Manero by any means, but he wasn't tripping or attracting any critical glances, so that was more than enough for him. He had a college degree, several of them, actually, so he could understand the basic mechanics of filling in the spaces she left, shifting his body in subtle ways to follow where she went. He even moved his head a little bit, bobbing uncertainly to a song that suddenly seemed a lot more friendly.
"That's it Tantor, you got it baby!"
He laughed nervously at her encouragement, but beamed like a fool. He felt flushed, even more so when the song left off and another more sultry tune began on slow horns and whining guitars. Because Terk, always music conscious Terk, began to dance slower as well, closer to Tantor.
He might have died if she started that booty-grinding stuff he saw on MTV when he flipped around the stations if National Geographic was on commercial, but thankfully, she was nothing like that. She spun and stomped and cavorted, her eyes closed in a private bliss. And when her rear, her ass brushed against the front of his khaki's, he was in bliss too. He felt feverish, and daringly, pulled his little dancer closer. "Alright, then." Terk said approvingly.
They danced through five, ten, maybe 100 songs, and finally collapsed laughing at the bar where Terk once again ordered for the both of them, and the beer didn't taste so bad going down his throat. She was sweaty and disheveled and glorious, and she daringly plucked a pen out of his front pocket and chewed on it.
"You know, you're alright, Tantor."
He flushed from his large (or regal, he thought) ears down to his tightly-belted belly.
He cleared his throat.
It was now or never, Tantor.
"Oh umwouldyouliketogoonadatemaybe?"
Terk laughed.
"Not sure if I caught that."
Tantor cleared his throat, and settled from taking his nervous hands from his thighs, to to the top of the table, interlacing his thick fingers.
"I mean, would you like to go on a date with me?" The silence stretched, a silence he felt only in his brain. "Maybe?" he added nervously.
She laughed again. Man, he could listen to that laugh forever. It was like her music: unconventional. Girls generally made Tantor feel self conscious and miserable. They tittered, they gleamed, they pranced and he felt like a mountain of unwanted flesh. But Terk...well she was small in the sense that she was short, but she was thick, appealingly so. Tantor guessed it was more muscle than his guilty snacking-pounds, but she was solid.
And that laugh. That laugh was rough and musical and infectious and throaty and he felt like even if she laughed at him now, it was okay, even if he was rejected.
She leaned closer, and a flash of silver glinted behind her teeth (another ring, a tongue-ring? How had he not caught that before?)
"Tantor-baby, I thought that was what were doing."
He looked at her questioningly, hearing the music thrum around him and then fade all to focus more on her impertinent, red mouth.
"You know, flirting, dancing, drinks..? Sounds like pretty average date material to me."
Flirting? Oh God, did he flirt? Was that what that was? Did he glaze right through a sociological breakthrough?
He gaped after her and she didn't seem to mind, rising from the bar chair and stretching with her arms above her head with a loud yawn. "Welp, this scene is pretty much done for me." She ran a hand through her tousled hair and slipped on a battered bomber's jacket. "Hey Eddie, put it on my tab, will ya?" She called back to the dwindling bar. What time was it? He had to be up in the morning for a thesis-presentation ("The Migration Patterns of Piranha: Africa or South America?") but when he ran after her to slip his hand in hers and she didn't pull away in disgust, it was suddenly okay.
Holding hands, he thought, I am holding hands and it's not gross. It's not indecent. It isn't contaminating. It's right, just right.
"Absolutely not, we shall put it on my tab. A gentlemen never lets a lady pay. On my tab, Eddie!" he yelled imperiously, the effect somewhat ruined when he had to duck quickly to avoid hitting the door frame on his way out.
"Your tab, huh? Must be planning on coming back." Terk said as she turned up her collar against the sudden blast of the cold wet air coming down the late Autumn city streets. She winked in a way that made Tantor feel absolutely included.
"Of course, I must catch every performance of the bella donna."
Terk gave him a shove.
"Would you stop that?"
Under the streetlamp, he swore he could catch a blush. A blush for him?
They walked in companionable silence, not caring where or why, hand in hand, until suddenly Tantor could hear Terk laughing under her breath. He leaned down to catch it.
"Ha, a lady."
They neared an enormous puddle and with a boldness quite outside himself Tantor picked her up in princess fashion and carried her over it.
"A lady must never soil her steps in rainwater!"
She put up a mighty loud protest, but threw her arm around his neck all the same.
With Terk, Tantor didn't feel too big or too awkward. He felt big enough to hold her, and light enough to keep up.