Fic: "For There's Nowhere Else on Earth That I Would Rather Be" [China Beach, McMurphy/Richard]

I wrote a thing! A thing I actually put on the interwebs, unlike all the other writing I've done this year!


For There's Nowhere Else on Earth That I Would Rather Be (3095 words) by icepixie
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: China Beach
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Colleen McMurphy/Dick Richard
Characters: Colleen McMurphy, Dick Richard
Additional Tags: Romance, AU, Banter
Summary:

"I was in a bar, and the jukebox started playing 'The Gal That Got Away.' It made me think of you." He started walking toward her, crossing the ward in deliberate steps. "And then I thought, the hell with that!"

Sometimes you just gotta have a happy ending.

I'm skaaating in the rain, just skating in the rain...

The rink should've come with its own weather forecast this morning: Foggy, with a periods of rain.

Some important parts of the (BRAND. NEW.) condenser and dehumidifier are broken, so we had condensation collecting on the metal struts overhead and drip drip dripping onto the ice (and us). We started out with a freshly resurfaced sheet, but as time went on the drips formed little stalagmites in orderly rows right under the struts. As you might imagine, this was quite interesting to skate on. The fog also made it interesting; you never knew quite who was coming out of the mist toward you. Oh, and the condensation eventually started getting into the overhead lights, causing them to blow with sparks and fire! All of us looked to the skater who's also a mechanical engineer, and he said we were safe, but I hedged my bets and stayed at the other end of the rink from where most of them were going off anyway.

On the other hand, I think all the kids were off at some competition, so with the exception of a couple of hockey players getting lessons, about nine other adults and I had the ice to ourselves for 90 minutes. It was AWESOME. P is lobbying the skating school director for an adults-only session on Saturdays, and I think we might actually get it given the turnout.

The new ice rink out in Antioch is holding free figure skating sessions tomorrow morning that I think I'm going to attend. One of our usual crew went today and said that right now they plan to keep one sheet for hockey and one for figure skating, so it won't get rutted like ours do. I could enjoy that.

This week I learned how to set up a single salchow! Note that I did not say "learned how to do a salchow," because that's a good few weeks away. Right now I'm doing the left forward outside 3 turn setup into a back two-foot glide, turn, and a vaguely waltz-jump sort of thing. This is one of the edge jumps, so basically all of that is going to go away when I actually do it, but it apparently helps to get the timing right.

I can't do a toe loop until I get my inside three turns not to suck, so we worked on that for a while. They are less sucky when I can remember to both not drop my hip and not raise my shoulder, which happens approximately 25% of the time.

To get me more comfortable with the transition between circles on the Waltz 8, we worked on a legitimate outside figure 8, which is much, much harder than it looks. Kinda fun, though. It's really helpful learning moves from someone who came up during the figures era and has all her figures tests; P knows all this great stuff about body position that does magic things to what your feet are doing. You shoulders should not influence what direction your foot points, and yet they do. Amazing.