FIC: First Dances
Title: First Dances
Author: Rayvin813
Chapter: 1/1
Summary: John, Ronon, Rodney and Evan Lorne are the musical entertainment for the night in a local bar. When a mystery woman walks in, John's interest is piqued...First dances are always the sweetest. John's POV.
Pairing: Sparky!
Spoilers: NONE! ALL AU!! :)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: NONE!
A/N: Musician!John and Teacher!Elizabeth! WOO! *tips hat to the muses* BLESS YOU! The idea for this one came up while watching PS I Love You...the scene where Gerard Butler chases Hilary Swank around the pub singing to her. XD Enjoy!
DISCLAIMER: I do not own SGA, any of the characters contained herein, or the song, "Be My Baby Tonight," which belongs to John Michael Montgomery.
First Dances
She walked in and the moment he saw her, he almost forgot the next line in a song he'd sung a hundred times.
If it hadn't been for a nudge from Ronon, his bassist, John probably would have sat there in awe of her for the rest of the set. He had no idea who the mystery woman was, but as he continued singing, he watched as she ordered a Smirnoff and took a seat in the dark corner booth by herself. She picked at the label and tucked a stray strand of brown curls behind her right ear. Something made her look up, and their eyes met. A jolt ran through his body, down to his toes and, it seemed, straight into the floor. She smiled shyly and ducked her head, only to pick it back up again a moment later, just to see if he was still watching her. He was.
He watched as a blush burned up her cheeks and a laugh escaped her lips. God, what he wouldn't give to have a woman look at him like that every day of his life.
The song ended and he clamped a hand over the sound hole on the Taylor guitar, silencing the expensive instrument as he spoke into the microphone.
"Thank you!" he spoke over the mass of applause, something that was more and more frequent lately. Their band had been playing this bar for the last seven or eight months on Friday nights and had garnered more and more recognition in the local Washington D.C. music circles with their original songs while doing so. They'd even come to be familiar with more and more of the barhopping crowd of D.C. as they gained fan support. This, however, was the first night that he had seen this particular woman enter the bar.
"Thank you!" he tried again, and this time the crowd quieted a touch...just enough for him to speak. "We are going to take a short fifteen minute break and then we'll be back up to finish our set! So grab your waitress, and order up another round! Maybe we'll just come and have a beer with one of you!"
His eyes drifted to the curly-haired woman as he spoke, and their eyes met again. She gave him another shy smile as she looked down at her table. She now had a sizeable pile of peeled-off beer label in front of her. She motioned to the waitress for another bottle, and John smiled as he watched her finish off her first Smirnoff and hand it to the woman who brought her second round.
He led the way off-stage and motioned to the bartender for a Coors Light for himself. As he moved up to the bar to collect his bounty, he was accosted by a group of college-aged girls. All of them appeared to be eighteen, but he hoped that they were at least twenty-one for their sakes...every one of them were completely intoxicated. It took him a moment to extricate himself from the group of too-young girls, but as soon as he had, they turned their attentions to Rodney, Ronon and Evan, almost as if he were never there. He sent up a small prayer of thanks for the small favor, and then wondered why he hadn't even looked at the girls twice. He normally wouldn't have turned down such attention, but this time...this time was different. The woman in the corner was the only woman whose attention he wanted tonight.
He toyed with the bottle and raised the hem of his shirt to twist off the top of the beer as he shuffled through the crowd, stuffing the piece of tin into his jeans pocket after he'd achieved his goal. He cleared the last table of college kids and took a deep breath. The only thing that now stood between him and the lonely woman at the table was a span of two feet. The butterflies in his stomach started, and he took a drink of his beer as he walked over to her, sizing her up.
She looked anxious, as if something was plaguing her mind that she couldn't share with anyone, but wanted very much to. Her brown hair fell over her shoulders in a cascade of curls, and her green eyes sparkled with amusement as they rose up to meet his. He gave her a soft grin as he walked up to her table. "Would you like some company?"
She smiled. "More than anything, but I believe that you have a prior engagement," she replied, motioning toward the stage.
He laughed. "Yeah, well, she can wait," he replied, extending his hand as he introduced himself. "John Sheppard."
She accepted his handshake with a warmth dancing in her green eyes. "Dr. Elizabeth Weir. It's nice to meet you, John Sheppard. And might I say that you have a wonderfully entertaining band...I'm thoroughly enjoying being here."
"I'm glad to hear that, Dr. Weir..."
"Elizabeth, please," she cut in, shaking her head. "Dr. Weir is for my students."
He grinned like an idiot at her confession. "All right, then; Elizabeth it is. And you can call me John."
She nodded and smiled again. God, he loved her smile.
"Sheppard!" Ronon called out behind him. John turned to see the big man waving him back up to the stage. Rodney was beginning to extricate himself from the mass of college girls and head that way as well. John held up one finger and turned back to Elizabeth.
"Well, it looks like I have to get back up there...can you do me one favor?" he asked as he looked her squarely in the eyes. She nodded, willing him to go on with her eyes. "Have some fun? Get up out of your seat...the next one I'm playing is one where everyone circles the stage and sings along. If you listen to country music at all, you'll know it."
"Johnny Cash?" she asked with a raise of one eyebrow. The ease with which she did it made him think that it was a frequent expression.
"Nah, I respect the man too much to rip off one of his songs," he admitted, a smile growing across his face. "But I have no qualms about ripping off John Michael Montgomery."
She laughed then, and the sound warmed his heart more than he cared to admit.
"Promise me you'll get up there," he pleaded again. "It looks like you're preoccupied with something, and I'd like to fix that, if it's all right with you. You're here at my show, and I'd like you to have just a little bit of fun."
"I promise," she told him with a smile that, for the first time, reached one hundred percent of her eyes. She held out her hand to him as she slung her small purse over one shoulder and picked up what was left of her Smirnoff with her free hand. "Lead me where you want me."
He grinned widely as he led her up to the table in the front row, right in the middle of the stage. "This way." He sat her down and looked directly into her eyes. He knew that she could tell something was coming, and that the rational part of her brain was probably screaming "RUN!" but, to her credit, she wasn't moving a muscle.
She opened her mouth to speak, but closed it before uttering a syllable, and smiled instead.
John wondered what she was going to say. Maybe it had something about the way he carried himself, so full of cockiness and confidence, but up close, and in truth, he wanted her to see the boyish vulnerability in his eyes when he talked to her. He wanted to be sincere with her, something that he never wanted to be with women he'd met after his massive failure with Nancy. That mask had become a self-preservation method he'd come to employ around the opposite sex, but this time...Elizabeth made him feel different.
"Sheppard!" Ronon called out again, and John held up a hand.
"Go," she told him. I'm not going anywhere. He gave her a smile and bounded away from the table, back up onto the stage where he pulled the guitar strap back over his head and began tuning.
"All right," he spoke into the microphone, taking a half a step back when an unexpected wave of feedback squelched from the sound system. "Okay, we're going to have a little fun with this song, because this is our last one of the night. Everyone get on your feet, and sing along if you know it!"
He began to play, and the music, combined with the vision in front of him, moved him to do something he hadn't done in years...since the night he'd met his ex-wife, Nancy. The superstitious side of him, the side from his mother, said that he shouldn't do it again; that it didn't work the first time, so it wouldn't work this time. The rational side, the side of him that was from his father, said that superstition was stupid. He opted to listen to that side of himself.
He took a breath, feeling the air fill his lungs and stretch his diaphragm, and began to sing, making sure he looked her in the eyes with every word.
"I know you've heard that worn-out line
About love at first sight,
Well, I never knew those words were true
Till you walked in tonight.
All it took was just one look
To knock me off of my feet
I'm not a man of many words
So I'll make this short and sweet..."
She blushed as he sang, feeling his gaze on her like a weight, and behind the microphone, he grinned at her reaction. It was exactly what he'd been hoping for. The crowd sang along with him, and he could just hear them over the PA. He winked at her, and she laughed as she started to sing along.
"Could ya, would ya, ain't ya gonna, if I asked ya
Would ya wanna be my baby tonight?
Yeah, take a chance, slow dance, make a little romance
Honey, it'll be all right.
Girl, you got me wishin' we were huggin' and a-kissin' and a-holdin' each other tight.
So could ya, would ya, ain't ya gonna, if I asked ya
Would ya wanna be my baby tonight?"
The butterflies in his stomach started moving again, flying around at breakneck speed as if they were trying to move him from the inside. He took the hint and started walking, leaving the microphone behind on the stage as he took the steps slowly, one at a time, though the tension vibrating in his legs begged him to take them two at a time. He continued to play the guitar, thankful that he'd invested in the wireless transmitter instead of being tethered to the stage by a thirty-foot cable. It would have been one more thing for his wobbly feet to trip over.
He walked toward Elizabeth, his eyes locking onto only her. She blushed under his gaze, and he wondered for a moment if this was wise of him...she might turn and run away. But she wasn't. He raised the level of his voice in a vain effort to attempt to compensate for the missing microphone as he started the next verse. It really didn't matter as the standing crowd sang along drunkenly anyway.
"I'm not trying to come on like
Some rhinestoned romeo.
I'm lookin' for a whole lot more
Than a one night rodeo.
What can I do to prove to you
I'm layin' it on the line?
I'll even get down on my knees
Just to beg you one more time."
She stood there, holding his gaze and blushing, no longer able to sing along as he approached her. With each down beat of the drums, he took another slow step, and placed maybe a little too much emphasis into the words of the song, bobbing his head and smirking at her in certain places. She laughed as he drew closer, the bottle of Smirnoff dangling perilously from her fingertips as she did so. He smiled at her and continued to sing and move toward her playfully, bouncing at his knees as he moved. He'd two verses ago forgotten about the men on the stage behind him, and the only person in the room right now was the beauty in front of him.
"Girl...could ya, would ya, ain't ya gonna, if I asked ya
Would ya wanna be my baby tonight?
Yeah, take a chance, slow dance, make a little romance
Honey, it'll be all right.
Girl, you got me wishin' we were huggin' and a-kissin' and a-holdin' each other tight.
So could ya, would ya, ain't ya gonna, if I asked ya
Would ya wanna be my baby tonight?"
He was now two steps in front of her, and he could see the blush creeping up her cheeks, and the dark-skinned woman who was now standing next to her grinning at the display. John heard her admonish her friend for egging him on.
"Teyla, stop it!" Elizabeth pled with the woman who'd seemingly appeared out of nowhere, but Teyla simply smiled at her friend and backed out of John's way so that he could come up next to Elizabeth and sing in close quarters. Whatever he'd had in mind was quickly dismissed as Elizabeth took a half step backward. John smirked at her response and stopped playing his guitar. He pulled the leather strap back over his head and tossed a look over to the side of the stage, where the house sound technician stood, enjoying the scene unfolding before the crowd. He caught the man's attention and nodded him over, motioning to the guitar and the wireless microphone that sat unused in the stand on the stage. The sound tech, a man John knew only by his first name, Radek, jumped up onto the stage, grabbed the mic out of it's cradle, and came over to him with one hundred percent business on his face, and a light laughter in his eyes. He quickly exchanged the mic for John's guitar before the next chorus started.
He danced over in front of her during the break between choruses, his cowboy boots clomping across the hardwood dance floor as he moved, and he sidled up to her, extending a hand in an invitation to dance. She blushed and took it nervously, her hand shaking. He shot her a look that said she shouldn't be nervous, led her out into the open area in front of the stage without a word and began dancing around with her at a speed he hadn't remembered being able to dance before. The feeling of butterflies in his stomach was stronger than ever at his close proximity to Elizabeth, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this natural with a woman he'd just met.
He grinned like an idiot as he two-stepped with her and spun her around the floor one-handed, and she looked just as happy and excited as he felt as he began the next chorus. She was keeping her eyes on his, only every once in a while glancing down at their feet, but mostly...her green eyes were on his, and he could feel the heat in her gaze. He imagined that she could feel the heat in his as well.
"Girl...could ya, would ya, ain't ya gonna, if I asked ya
Would ya wanna be my baby tonight?
Yeah, take a chance, slow dance, make a little romance
Honey, it'll be all right.
Girl, you got me wishin' we were huggin' and a-kissin' and a-holdin' each other tight.
So could ya, would ya, ain't ya gonna, if I asked ya
Would ya wanna be my baby tonight?"
He spun her around again and she laughed, eyes closed, the air rushing past her face. The feel of her hand in his gave him such a thrill that he briefly wondered if he might be dreaming. He suddenly recalled that he had two more lines to sing before the song could end, and he pulled the microphone back up from his pocket just in time.
"So could ya, would ya, ain't ya gonna, if I asked ya
Would ya wanna be my baby tonight?"
He spun her around once more, bringing the song to a close as she came to rest pressed up against the length of him, breathing heavily. She laughed, and the sound filled his heart and inclined him to do something he'd longed to do since she walked into the room. He leaned his head toward her, and felt her tense in his arms. He paused and, a split-second later felt her soft lips press gently to his. He bit back a moan and deepened the kiss, wrapping his arms around her waist and lifting her off the ground. The crowd cheered, and Elizabeth pulled away from the kiss, tilting her head back and her laughter pierced the air around them as he lowered her back to the ground.
"Well," she laughed. "Now, that was a good time."
He smiled down at her and winked. "I told you you'd have a good time. Feel like another dance?"
She smiled wider as he nodded at Radek to put on a CD. As the bass began to pound through the speakers once again, he offered her his hand and, again, spun her around the dance floor as she laughed and he smiled.
It was that first dance that got them started on a lifetime full of dances. For the first time in years, he felt happy and at peace with being himself. That was something that he could attribute to the woman before him; the woman who walked into a strange bar, sat down alone, and captured his mind and his heart with one, single gaze. She was his best dance...and he wouldn't trade a single moment with her for anything. Ever.