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It’s late in the evening one summer night, still stupidly hot from the record-breaking triple-digit temperatures reached that afternoon, when Ford’s assistant - quite literally - drags him up out of the basement and into the sitting room for a quote-unquote “minute’s reprieve”.
And, well. He should have known some sort of scheme was in the works the minute Fiddleford dragged the record-player-slash-coffee-table into the center of the room.
Ford grits his teeth against the hideous screeching sound of cheap, splintering particle board against hardwood, standing off to the side with his arms crossed over his chest. The other turns to face him, with his hands on his hips and a bright smile on his face, once he’s finally satisfied with the record player’s position.
“We should really put that thing out of its misery one of these days.” Ford comments in a tone that’s meant to be offhanded, rocking his weight from one foot to the other, “I saw an ad for one of those eight-track players in the paper the other day, prices are finally going down.”
“Nonsense, you don’t fix what ain’t broken,” Fiddleford dismisses with a wave of his hand, crouching to open the cabinet door beneath the turntable and rustling through the mess of vinyl and sleeves - some matched up, most mismatched and an unlucky few just thrown in loose - until he emerges with a victorious sound. He stands up, then, presenting the cover of the record he’s retrieved to Stanford with a flourish.
“The Steely Brothers,” Ford reads aloud, squinting at the words on the album cover, “Valley Tune Classics. What is this, what’s going on?”
Fiddleford just shakes his head, rolling his eyes with a fond smile as he turns to place the disc down.
“Nothin’ bad, you always jump to the worst conclusions. I figure we could just use some loosenin’ up is all.” He plucks the arm of the needle up with his typical dexterity, carefully lowers it to the vinyl surface, and immediately Stanford’s senses are assaulted with the tinny, frantic plucking of several bluegrass instruments at once.
“Come on!” Ford’s hands are grabbed tightly and pulled away from his chest before he can blink.
Stumbling forward, he doesn’t get the chance to right himself before he’s being swung around the sitting room like a popular girl from the movies, the sheer force of momentum making him curl his fingers tightly around Fiddleford’s own lest he go flying and crash into the far wall.
He trips over himself more than a little bit, spluttering indignantly as his feet refuse to settle into any sort of rhythm.
“Hey- hey! Stop it, I don’t know how to-”
All Fiddleford does is laugh at that, halting their spinning in a sudden stop that has Ford’s vision swimming dizzily, only to pull him in close so that their chests nearly touch. Their eyes meet, then, and Ford feels an incredulous smile threatening at the corners of his mouth despite himself. His heart is racing like he’s unused to exercise (which he’s not), and he’s positive he’s flushed red with surprise, embarrassment, and somehow also some tiny, budding sense of exhilaration.
“That’s just it about dancin’, you don’t really have to know how to do it to have fun doin’ it,” his assistant remarks matter-of-factly, and with that he practically throws Ford away from his body again, holding him at arm's length and starting to spin with him once more.
Maybe it’s the surprise, or the shock of moving so strangely after a lifetime of refusing to be anything but the most adamant wallflower, but Ford finds himself laughing as the two of them swing each other around the room.
The song changes, tempo kicking up impossibly higher, and Fiddleford gives an excited whoop that would seem uncharacteristic compared to his usual studious composure if he didn’t look so damn happy as he did it, beaming like the sun, brown eyes sparkling behind round lenses. It’s a short, sharp ‘yuhp!’ sound, and Ford isn’t sure what comes over him but he answers it with a breathless ‘woah’ of his own.
Before he has time to be embarrassed about it, though, he’s pulled in close to Fiddleford’s body again, their hands clenched tightly together as the change in centripetal force causes them to spin even faster. The walls pass in a blur in Ford’s peripheral vision, but he keeps his eyes on the man opposite him - the man who echoes his giddy laughter enthusiastically, letting out another shout, this one making more of a ‘hee-you!’ sound.
Feeling bold (or maybe careless), Ford is the first one to straighten out his arms again, taking them back to the slower, wider circles that they had started with, and Fiddleford obliges him with a seamless matching transition. He glances down, only feeling slightly nauseous despite the incessant spinning, and tries to note the pattern of his partner’s footsteps, tries to recreate the little skip-hops he seems to move with so effortlessly.
He even manages to follow something of a pattern, a little one-two-three step, for just a little while until the second song ends. In the brief silence between tracks, they just pant together, each out of breath but something like happy for it - they let go of each other’s hands and Ford steals a bafflingly shy glance up at Fiddleford that he can’t hold for more than a split second before needing to look away and laugh. He feels light in the head, like he hadn’t felt for, well - for a long time, to say the least.
He’s still breathing heavily as the next song comes on, this one a bit slower than the previous ones, starting off with smooth violin strings instead of the incessant twanging of a banjo. This one’s got words to it, too, a two-part harmony crooning about how hard love is, but “we’ve got to lean on each other”.
Ford’s face is suddenly flushed for all the wrong reasons.
And suddenly he doesn’t know what to do with his hands again, isn’t sure where to place his feet. He’s about to retreat into himself, about to clear his throat and call the whole thing off, when Fiddleford steps in close to his side and reaches deftly for him again.
He does something weird with their arms, moves them into a configuration that doesn’t make any sense, and it leaves Ford feeling like a pretzel if he’s being completely honest. They’re facing opposite ways, and he’s got his left arm bent behind his back, holding onto Fiddleford’s right hand. Ford’s own right hand is clasped in a mirrored position behind Fiddleford’s back. The position has them in what feels like an embrace, arms all threaded through each others’ the way they are, and when they start turning, walking slowly around each other, the oddly intimate feeling only grows stronger.
The slow song seems to go on forever. At some point, Fiddleford had started humming along with the words, and Stanford finds himself listening more to him than to the music itself.
Fiddleford starts doing a swishy sort of thing with his hips, their steps transforming from just plain walking to something more rhythmic, something more like dancing, and Ford listens raptly as he sings softly: “So let’s turn back, start all over, my darlin’..”
Ford had been aware that his assistant was a musical kind of guy, of course, but he’s suddenly struck by the realization that he hadn’t actually heard him sing before.
It’s. It’s nice.
He’s not Jim Richmond, he’s not belting velvety notes or crooning like a film noir lover boy, but he’s got a nice voice anyway. It’s got a good quality to it, and he’s hitting all the notes decently well - in a sweet, homely way, it’s incredibly attractive.
Ford’s head is a little muddled, full of confusing thoughts and still feeling liable to float away when the song ends, and he feels his hands being squeezed gently before Fiddleford steps away from him to turn the record over.
He doesn’t register the funny look aimed at him until the b-side kicks into gear, blinking a few times before reaching up to rub sheepishly at the back of his neck.
“You alright?”
“Yeah-yes,” Ford nods, biting down on the inside of his cheek as Fiddleford comes back over to him.
The way he takes Ford’s hands this time is slower, more purposeful. He runs his thumbs over Ford’s knuckles gently (one-two-three-four-five) and then intertwines their fingers. There’s a pause, then, and he’s definitely waiting for something - but he’s not sure if Fiddleford is waiting for the same thing, and he has the awful feeling that he’s somehow fundamentally misunderstanding the situation-
Fiddleford leans in, calm as anything, and pecks him right on the mouth.
It’s over in an instant. Ford feels like he literally blinked and missed it. Technically his first kiss - he doesn’t count the time in high school when Cindy Guiliani had mistaken him for his brother - and now that it’s over he supposes he understands at least some of the fuss surrounding the whole kissing business.
He feels a little dizzy even before the next song starts up - this one the most frantic-sounding yet - and as he’s spun around the room once again he couldn’t shake the dopey smile off his face if he tried. It might be the adrenaline from ‘dancing’, or it could be the giddiness coursing through him from the kiss (it was a kiss!), but suddenly Ford thinks he might be able to see something worthwhile in this type of music after all. It’s certainly got heart. And a kind of down-home charm that some other things - like cooking, or a way of speaking, or the way a five-string banjo sounds on the porch late at night can have, too.
(He, uh. Might already be in deeper than he thought he was. He’ll have to unpack all this later.)
Fiddleford lets go of his hands suddenly, jumping back with that broad grin, and Ford goes flying just like he thought he would, stumbling but managing not to actually fall.
“Whew!” Fiddleford exclaims brightly, swatting his thigh before placing both hands on his slender hips. He takes a minute to catch his breath, leaning forward, and then straightens back up. “I dunno about yourself, but that put me just as right as rain again. How d’ya feel?”
The needle slides off from the last track, bumping against the record label with a staticky sound.
“I- fairly refreshed, I think,” Ford mumbles, clearing his throat before flashing Fiddleford another, smaller smile. “I suppose you were right, that didn’t do any harm.”
“Naw, I’d never do any of that to you.” Fiddleford says, as genuine (bordering on tender) as anything. Ford flushes and glances away, but his gaze is drawn back when the other snaps his fingers and gestures excitedly. “Hey listen, what would you say to learnin’ how to play sometime? You strike me as a spoons fella, or wait, no,” he pauses,eyes narrowing in thought, before pointing at Ford good-naturedly. “Bodhran.”
“Boy-ron?” Ford blinks. “Is that foreign?”
“Probably,” Fiddleford shrugs. “Takes a steady hand.”
Huh. Maybe.
He takes a second to think, crossing his arms over his chest more out of habit than anything else.
“Maybe after we finish the project, when I’ll have some semblance of free time.”
Fiddleford looks elated. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Ford has to return the smile, he can’t not. They’re contagious. “It’s a de- I promise.”
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