Following Directions

Title: Following Directions

Fandom: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which qualifies as a teensy fandom at AO3's total of 409 fics per sailorkitty's Tiny Fandoms Challenge on Dreamwidth. The prompt was 'touch starvation' from a generator.

Characters: Admiral Harriman Nelson, Captain Lee Crane, mentions of a leprechaun, and always, always, the submarine Seaview.

Summary: I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and I know this is the beginning of a story that ABC-TV would not have had the spoons to produce in either black and white or color. At least not in 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, or 1968. I'd love to see what the network could do with the premise in 2020. :D

IOIOIOIOIO

As he hunched over the charts table with familiar submarine noises pinging and bubbling around him, Admiral Nelson never knew he was starved for touch until Captain Crane reached for the parallel rulers the same time he did. A spark danced between their fingertips, at least it did to Nelson, and the same thing happened five minutes later when they both reached for the dividers to determine the lengths of lines and approximate lengths of non-linear paths on the mysterious chart that the good leprechaun Patrick Moore O'Shaughnessy had left behind. It was frustration itself to discern the tattered parchment's markings, which promised the adventure of a lifetime to the seasoned admiral and his beloved creation, Seaview. The clearest feature remained the compass rose that unhesitatingly pointed True North whatever way the chart was oriented on the table. What unnerved Nelson more was how Crane's slight shifts of weight or position as he stood nearly shoulder to shoulder with the admiral resulted in the compass swinging to him briefly before returning to True North.

Nelson decided there were two mysteries here, and he'd be bound before he'd give up on either one of them.