Title: Inspired

Fandom: Stargate SG1

Pairing: Carolyn Lam/Agent Barrett

Rating: PG

Word Count: 783

Spoilers: None

Notes: Very overdue, for demon_faith and her request in the first kiss meme.

This was not, Carolyn Lam swore, her fault.

For a start, she hadn’t even wanted to go out that night; Beth had dragged her, insisting that it would help her feel better, that she working too hard, that she needed to let her hair down.

For another thing, this bar was the last place that Carolyn would have chosen to come. It was everything she hated about weekend bars – packed with people, impossible to get a drink, and as if all that wasn’t bad enough, they’d come here on karaoke night.

Listening to drunken men and women butcher some pretty good songs wasn’t her idea of a good time, and things didn’t improve when she’d turned and seen him across the room.

Agent Malcolm Barrett, NID agent. Not the last person she expected to see here tonight, but certainly close to it, and one of the last people that she wanted to see.

Not that she’d had that much to do with him, the paths of an NID agent and a doctor at Stargate Command didn’t tend to cross that much. However, he definitely recognised her – that look of surprise in his eyes told her as much – and she really didn’t want to be reminded of work right then. So when he came over, hesitant smile on his lips, and began to make conversation, she wasn’t as friendly as she could have been.

Of course, being able to see Beth’s knowing grin out of the corner of her eye didn’t help matters much.

When he finally left to rejoin his friends, Beth’s eyes followed him across the floor. “If all the guys where you work are like that, can you get me an application?” she wondered.

“Get a medical degree, you can have mine,” Carolyn told her, and that was when it happened.

A roar went up from the area where he’d just arrived, and before Carolyn knew what was happening, he was being pushed up onto the stage, a microphone thrust into his hands, and he began to sing.

“Well, I’m the type of guy who never settles down

Where pretty girls are, well you know that I’m around…”

Carolyn realised two things instantly; that this wasn’t his first time doing this, and that he was damn good. Against her will, a smile came to her lips, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

When the song ended, she shook herself. “Not a good idea,” she muttered to herself, trying to banish the less-than-innocent thoughts she was having, having about as much success as she was at ignoring Beth’s catcalls.

She expected him to leave the stage, but he caught her eye in the crowd and smiling, turned to the DJ in the corner and said something to him. The other man nodded and set to looking through a book of CDs, leaving Malcolm – Agent Barrett, she chided herself, when had she begun thinking of him as Malcolm? – with the microphone.

Keeping his eye on the other man, he didn’t turn to the crowd and speak until a CD was being placed in the player, a song being cued up.

“I’d like to dedicate this to the loveliest lady in the room,” was all he said before the song title flashed up, and a very familiar introduction boomed across the bar.

“Where it began, I can’t begin to know it,

But now I know it’s going strong…”

Carolyn was having a hard time catching her breath; Beth was harbouring no such impulses. Gripping Carolyn’s arm, she had her other hand across her lips in shock. “Oh my God,” managed to escape, and when Malcolm got to the chorus and substituted Carolyn for Caroline, her grip was so tight it was almost painful.

Only when the song ended to a firestorm of applause did Beth release her grip, and before she knew what she was doing, Carolyn was moving through the crowd towards him. He saw her from the stage and dropped down into the crowd, making his way towards her, meeting her halfway.

She wanted to say something, anything, but no words came out, and he must have felt the same way, because he simply lifted his hands in an exaggerated shrug.

Which is when Carolyn did the only thing that seemed appropriate under the circumstances.

She kissed him.

A minute – an hour, days, who knew? – later, when they pulled away, she finally found words. “That was amazing,” she told him, and without dropping his arms from around her wiast, he shrugged again.

“It was inspired,” he told her, the obvious sincerity in his eyes rendering her completely speechless.

So she did the only thing she could.

She kissed him again.