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dontwantmebackTitle: Play Me A Melody (5/18)
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis/Veronica Mars/Heroes/Iron Man/Once Upon A Time
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Warnings: Rockstar AU
Length: 2114 words
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
The blizzard that stranded the tour bus not even halfway between Fargo and St. Paul would have been easily avoidable had they not been in such a rush to get on the road, and John blamed Rodney completely for it. Sure, a few extra hours of sleep would have been worth it if it hadn't been for the snow, but as it was John as stuck in a Bed and Breakfast, sharing a room with Veronica. If they hadn't been the ones to suggest it, in order to get work done, wanting to have enough material for an album by the time they passed through Nashville, John would have been astounded like convenient things like that could happen in real life.
Later, he would think it even more convenient that of sharing their room, John came across Veronica's secret notebook, filled with the kind of lyrics his first album had been filled with. Heart-twistingly honest words filled page after page, the kind of feelings anyone would be hesitant to express even in song, and he knew immediately upon reading them they were written by someone who had lived something tragic. He'd never thought it would be the story she'd told him, about her murdered friend, her own attempted murder, at the hands of a manager when they were hardly more than children.
Knowing better than to force someone to discuss something like that, John let the subject drop and for hours the two of them sat quietly, and did the work they'd set out to do, drinking coffee and making small talk about the snow between ideas. They were summoned by their hosts for dinner and went right back to it after they'd eaten among impressed murmurings about being impressively hard-working. Little did those people know the impossible schedule Woolsey and the label executives had put them on; they hadn't had a day off in months and it wasn't looking good for one until they finished the tour. Even the unexpected respite was going to be worked through, if only so they could put on the best show possible for all the people waiting on them across the country.
They worked until they got silly, and kept going through that, biting back laughter that kept popping up halfway through a verse, until they couldn't anymore and just let go. Despite warnings against it they went and played in the snow like children in an attempt to sober themselves, center themselves and get back to work. The sooner they finished it all the more rest they'd get later in the tour, when going as hard as they were would catch up with them, when it would take everything they had just to get up on stage.
When they returned upstairs they were windswept and shaking, still laughing but more in genuine amusement than uncontrollable silliness. They calmed quickly when John picked up his guitar, only to lose it all over when his hands were too cold to actually play. Veronica forced some coffee onto him, made him sit by the fire and warm up, declaring him to be completely useless if he couldn't even play his guitar. They managed about another hour of work when John's hands thawed, before giving up and setting all the papers aside with echoing sighs. The guitar stayed in John's hands, though, and he lazily plucked out random sounds that didn't quite go together while they sat quietly.
"Why don't you fly?" Veronica asked out of nowhere, almost hesitantly, like she was afraid to break the comfortable quiet between them.
For a long moment, John just looked at her, gauging, then dropped his eyes, his hands stopping and letting the music he played fade to silence. "I've got my own tragic back story that no one really knows about."
"Everyone knows your story, John. It's how they market you. You were in the army or something. The war hero who resigned to take up music instead."
"Not quite." John laughed quietly, leaned over his guitar. He didn't set it aside, using it as comfort, a sort of unconscious barrier between them. "It was Air Force, actually. I was a pilot. Helicopters, but I've done jets, too."
"It stands to reason you should like to fly, then. What happened?"
"I flew in Afghanistan," he went on, not looking at her. "Back around the start of the war. A lot of med-evacs but mostly dropping guys off in the field. After a while, you...get used to seeing the violence. You get used to being shot at. And that's fine; that's what it is being at war and I knew what I was getting into when I signed up. But then there was this one day. I'd been in country for something like two years, which is a long time but I didn't exactly have anything to come home to anyway. And this one day, I'm out doing a pick up and I hear on the radio that the evac a buddy of mine was flying had been shot down."
He could see her expression shift, like she knew what was coming, but John kept talking before she had a chance to say anything. "And when your friend goes down, you want to go out and pick up the survivors, because you can't believe everyone's dead. But I had a load of tired soldiers. So I take them back to base. The plan was to drop them and get back into the air to launch a rescue. I made the mistake of assuming there would be one. The second I touched down I was ordered to stand down, told there's not going to be a rescue mission. They hadn't even checked for survivors. They were just going to leave them out there to die and call it acceptable losses. So I went anyway. The people in that chopper were my friends and it was the right thing to do, so I disobeyed orders and went, because I'm apparently not as smart as I like to think I am.
"I got shot down too. Probably by the same people who did them. And, well, in the end I got out again but the people I went in to get didn't. The military called it reckless, and wasteful, and threatened me with court martial for disobeying orders. And costing them another chopper. So I resigned my commission instead."
For a man like John, who didn't talk much about himself, that story probably met his yearly quota of personal reveals, and so when it finished he shrugged and finally set his guitar aside, leaning back against the couch. "Anyway. After all that, I just don't like flying anymore. Not to mention I'm really uncomfortable when I don't know whose doing the flying for me."
Veronica stared at him, in a way that made him extremely uncomfortable, and for a man who made his living standing in front of hundreds of people and baring his soul, that was a feat. It made him get up and pace awkwardly, straighten a few things that didn't really need to be straightened.
"John," she said after a moment, soft and more than a little shock obvious. "I don't know what to say."
"Nothing. Nothing would be great," he requested quickly. He didn't talk about himself, and when he did he didn't want to go on about it, didn't even want to think about it anymore. If anything, he wanted to open his own lyrics notebook and write something as raw and painful to him as his first album had been, as the memories were.
Veronica nodded, though, and folded her legs under her where she sat on the bed, and rather than ask him any more about it, or even offer sympathies that did him no good, she changed her questioning. "So you came back and decided you were going to be famous instead?"
"Not exactly," John laughed. "I didn't do anything for a while. Took up playing and writing because, like you said earlier, it's the best way I knew to process my feelings. I was actually just visiting someone in Nashville, playing for fun at this bar, when that Tony Stark guy from the label comes up to me and goes: you're good. What do you think about getting paid to do that? And I didn't have anything else going, so I said sure, why not. Next thing I know I'm meeting with Landry, recording a single. Then I was suddenly on magazine covers. I still don't know what happened."
"I think I hate you," Veronica told him plainly, blinking at him, and John laughed again.
"Most people in music say that when they hear the story."
They talked a while longer, about nothing in particular, and when the topic of Emma Swan came up, John was shaking his head and laughing again. Emma Swan was the host of some entertainment TV show that John had appeared on a few times and still didn't really remember the name of, and for some reason the public was convinced they were in love with one another. They were friendly, sure, and John always gave her an interview when she asked for it. But it was because she knew how to avoid the questions that hurt him, how to stay on the topics he wanted to talk about; she was a good reporter, and John wouldn't be surprised if she ended up doing proper news one day. But that friendliness meant love to the tabloids and any time they ran into each other in public it suddenly became a story about a secret date. They were hardly even friends, John said, just happened to share a lot of the same tastes in regular stuff, and Veronica laughed. Not too different from her and Evan's problems, she giggled, and she was right.
Sometime past midnight they decided to call it a night, and John immediately declared he would sleep on the couch, she should take the bed, and Veronica argued right back that he was ridiculous. There was no way someone as tall as he was would comfortably fit on that couch, so she would take it. She was tiny, she'd have room to spare. But John protested, he couldn't let her do that. He had proper manners and sorry if it was insulting but she was a woman; he wasn't about to let her sleep on a couch if a bed was an option.
Veronica scowled, John shrugged it off. She announced they were adults, there was no reason why they couldn't just share the bed. It wasn't like she thought he was going to be all over her in her sleep or anything like that, and to that John agreed. There was no reason, he wasn't interested in her and even if he was he wasn't about to do anything. So they got ready for bed, turned out the lights but left the fireplace burning for warmth. She was from California and John hadn't lived where it snowed much at all since he was a kid; they weren't well suited to being stuck in Minnesota's winter. They put enough space for a whole extra person between them in the bed, which seemed ridiculous and it was still cold even with the heat and the fire.
It was Veronica who first closed some of the space between them, moving to cut the space in half, and John followed suit. He turned on his side beside her, propping his head on a hand and peering down at her in the dim light of the fireplace.
"What?" she wondered, peering back, and John just shrugged a shoulder.
"Just...I don't know. Sorry. About the notebook thing. Again."
"It's okay," she smiled and poked him in the chest. "And, hey. Thanks. For the apology. And for trusting me with your real story."
John didn't quite know what came over him. One second he was about to roll his eyes and tell her she started it, about to roll over and go to sleep. The next second he was kissing her instead, right square on the lips. For a moment he didn't even realise what he was doing, it hadn't crossed his mind even once to kiss her, hadn't occurred to him that she was even attractive, though now that he was doing it he wondered why it never had. He moved to pull away, shocked with himself, not sure what had happened just there, was about to announce that maybe sharing the bed wasn't a good idea after all. But Veronica caught him by the back of his head and pulled him back to her.
Part Six
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis/Veronica Mars/Heroes/Iron Man/Once Upon A Time
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Warnings: Rockstar AU
Length: 2114 words
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
The blizzard that stranded the tour bus not even halfway between Fargo and St. Paul would have been easily avoidable had they not been in such a rush to get on the road, and John blamed Rodney completely for it. Sure, a few extra hours of sleep would have been worth it if it hadn't been for the snow, but as it was John as stuck in a Bed and Breakfast, sharing a room with Veronica. If they hadn't been the ones to suggest it, in order to get work done, wanting to have enough material for an album by the time they passed through Nashville, John would have been astounded like convenient things like that could happen in real life.
Later, he would think it even more convenient that of sharing their room, John came across Veronica's secret notebook, filled with the kind of lyrics his first album had been filled with. Heart-twistingly honest words filled page after page, the kind of feelings anyone would be hesitant to express even in song, and he knew immediately upon reading them they were written by someone who had lived something tragic. He'd never thought it would be the story she'd told him, about her murdered friend, her own attempted murder, at the hands of a manager when they were hardly more than children.
Knowing better than to force someone to discuss something like that, John let the subject drop and for hours the two of them sat quietly, and did the work they'd set out to do, drinking coffee and making small talk about the snow between ideas. They were summoned by their hosts for dinner and went right back to it after they'd eaten among impressed murmurings about being impressively hard-working. Little did those people know the impossible schedule Woolsey and the label executives had put them on; they hadn't had a day off in months and it wasn't looking good for one until they finished the tour. Even the unexpected respite was going to be worked through, if only so they could put on the best show possible for all the people waiting on them across the country.
They worked until they got silly, and kept going through that, biting back laughter that kept popping up halfway through a verse, until they couldn't anymore and just let go. Despite warnings against it they went and played in the snow like children in an attempt to sober themselves, center themselves and get back to work. The sooner they finished it all the more rest they'd get later in the tour, when going as hard as they were would catch up with them, when it would take everything they had just to get up on stage.
When they returned upstairs they were windswept and shaking, still laughing but more in genuine amusement than uncontrollable silliness. They calmed quickly when John picked up his guitar, only to lose it all over when his hands were too cold to actually play. Veronica forced some coffee onto him, made him sit by the fire and warm up, declaring him to be completely useless if he couldn't even play his guitar. They managed about another hour of work when John's hands thawed, before giving up and setting all the papers aside with echoing sighs. The guitar stayed in John's hands, though, and he lazily plucked out random sounds that didn't quite go together while they sat quietly.
"Why don't you fly?" Veronica asked out of nowhere, almost hesitantly, like she was afraid to break the comfortable quiet between them.
For a long moment, John just looked at her, gauging, then dropped his eyes, his hands stopping and letting the music he played fade to silence. "I've got my own tragic back story that no one really knows about."
"Everyone knows your story, John. It's how they market you. You were in the army or something. The war hero who resigned to take up music instead."
"Not quite." John laughed quietly, leaned over his guitar. He didn't set it aside, using it as comfort, a sort of unconscious barrier between them. "It was Air Force, actually. I was a pilot. Helicopters, but I've done jets, too."
"It stands to reason you should like to fly, then. What happened?"
"I flew in Afghanistan," he went on, not looking at her. "Back around the start of the war. A lot of med-evacs but mostly dropping guys off in the field. After a while, you...get used to seeing the violence. You get used to being shot at. And that's fine; that's what it is being at war and I knew what I was getting into when I signed up. But then there was this one day. I'd been in country for something like two years, which is a long time but I didn't exactly have anything to come home to anyway. And this one day, I'm out doing a pick up and I hear on the radio that the evac a buddy of mine was flying had been shot down."
He could see her expression shift, like she knew what was coming, but John kept talking before she had a chance to say anything. "And when your friend goes down, you want to go out and pick up the survivors, because you can't believe everyone's dead. But I had a load of tired soldiers. So I take them back to base. The plan was to drop them and get back into the air to launch a rescue. I made the mistake of assuming there would be one. The second I touched down I was ordered to stand down, told there's not going to be a rescue mission. They hadn't even checked for survivors. They were just going to leave them out there to die and call it acceptable losses. So I went anyway. The people in that chopper were my friends and it was the right thing to do, so I disobeyed orders and went, because I'm apparently not as smart as I like to think I am.
"I got shot down too. Probably by the same people who did them. And, well, in the end I got out again but the people I went in to get didn't. The military called it reckless, and wasteful, and threatened me with court martial for disobeying orders. And costing them another chopper. So I resigned my commission instead."
For a man like John, who didn't talk much about himself, that story probably met his yearly quota of personal reveals, and so when it finished he shrugged and finally set his guitar aside, leaning back against the couch. "Anyway. After all that, I just don't like flying anymore. Not to mention I'm really uncomfortable when I don't know whose doing the flying for me."
Veronica stared at him, in a way that made him extremely uncomfortable, and for a man who made his living standing in front of hundreds of people and baring his soul, that was a feat. It made him get up and pace awkwardly, straighten a few things that didn't really need to be straightened.
"John," she said after a moment, soft and more than a little shock obvious. "I don't know what to say."
"Nothing. Nothing would be great," he requested quickly. He didn't talk about himself, and when he did he didn't want to go on about it, didn't even want to think about it anymore. If anything, he wanted to open his own lyrics notebook and write something as raw and painful to him as his first album had been, as the memories were.
Veronica nodded, though, and folded her legs under her where she sat on the bed, and rather than ask him any more about it, or even offer sympathies that did him no good, she changed her questioning. "So you came back and decided you were going to be famous instead?"
"Not exactly," John laughed. "I didn't do anything for a while. Took up playing and writing because, like you said earlier, it's the best way I knew to process my feelings. I was actually just visiting someone in Nashville, playing for fun at this bar, when that Tony Stark guy from the label comes up to me and goes: you're good. What do you think about getting paid to do that? And I didn't have anything else going, so I said sure, why not. Next thing I know I'm meeting with Landry, recording a single. Then I was suddenly on magazine covers. I still don't know what happened."
"I think I hate you," Veronica told him plainly, blinking at him, and John laughed again.
"Most people in music say that when they hear the story."
They talked a while longer, about nothing in particular, and when the topic of Emma Swan came up, John was shaking his head and laughing again. Emma Swan was the host of some entertainment TV show that John had appeared on a few times and still didn't really remember the name of, and for some reason the public was convinced they were in love with one another. They were friendly, sure, and John always gave her an interview when she asked for it. But it was because she knew how to avoid the questions that hurt him, how to stay on the topics he wanted to talk about; she was a good reporter, and John wouldn't be surprised if she ended up doing proper news one day. But that friendliness meant love to the tabloids and any time they ran into each other in public it suddenly became a story about a secret date. They were hardly even friends, John said, just happened to share a lot of the same tastes in regular stuff, and Veronica laughed. Not too different from her and Evan's problems, she giggled, and she was right.
Sometime past midnight they decided to call it a night, and John immediately declared he would sleep on the couch, she should take the bed, and Veronica argued right back that he was ridiculous. There was no way someone as tall as he was would comfortably fit on that couch, so she would take it. She was tiny, she'd have room to spare. But John protested, he couldn't let her do that. He had proper manners and sorry if it was insulting but she was a woman; he wasn't about to let her sleep on a couch if a bed was an option.
Veronica scowled, John shrugged it off. She announced they were adults, there was no reason why they couldn't just share the bed. It wasn't like she thought he was going to be all over her in her sleep or anything like that, and to that John agreed. There was no reason, he wasn't interested in her and even if he was he wasn't about to do anything. So they got ready for bed, turned out the lights but left the fireplace burning for warmth. She was from California and John hadn't lived where it snowed much at all since he was a kid; they weren't well suited to being stuck in Minnesota's winter. They put enough space for a whole extra person between them in the bed, which seemed ridiculous and it was still cold even with the heat and the fire.
It was Veronica who first closed some of the space between them, moving to cut the space in half, and John followed suit. He turned on his side beside her, propping his head on a hand and peering down at her in the dim light of the fireplace.
"What?" she wondered, peering back, and John just shrugged a shoulder.
"Just...I don't know. Sorry. About the notebook thing. Again."
"It's okay," she smiled and poked him in the chest. "And, hey. Thanks. For the apology. And for trusting me with your real story."
John didn't quite know what came over him. One second he was about to roll his eyes and tell her she started it, about to roll over and go to sleep. The next second he was kissing her instead, right square on the lips. For a moment he didn't even realise what he was doing, it hadn't crossed his mind even once to kiss her, hadn't occurred to him that she was even attractive, though now that he was doing it he wondered why it never had. He moved to pull away, shocked with himself, not sure what had happened just there, was about to announce that maybe sharing the bed wasn't a good idea after all. But Veronica caught him by the back of his head and pulled him back to her.
Part Six