A series of drabbles for the Proboards June 2016 prompt - the song I'm using is 'Dear Maria, Count Me In' by All Time Low, which is apparently about a stripper - I'm pretending it's a singer for the sake of the story! :) Sorcha xox
{I want to watch the way you take the stage by storm}
The club is one of his regulars, and the waiting staff greet him and Elsa with smiles as they step through the veil, off the busy Viennese street and into the smoky, velveteen air of the lobby, handing their coats to waiting attendants and waiting to be seated.
"There's a new act tonight, Captain von Trapp," the hostess confides as she leads them to his usual secluded seat, away from the prying eyes and flirtatious glances of women young enough to be his daughters. "She doesn't look like much, but her voice…"
"We'll look forward to it," Elsa interrupts in her bored, aristocratic drawl, settling herself fussily in the seat pulled out for her, adjusting the fall of her silk skirt and taking up the wine glass that's already filled with her favourite. She leans forward and takes Georg's hand once the staff have retreated to a respectful distance. "So."
"So," he repeats, not sure if he likes the look in her eyes this evening.
"I propose a toast."
"To?"
"Us, of course, darling."
He gives her his uneven wry smile and she laughs, pretend and alluring and deep in the back of her throat, raising her glass. When they've drunk, there's a rustle from the stage at the front of the room, and a small, slender young woman with cropped hair and a plain blue dress settles herself down on a stool, clutching her guitar to her like it's her lifeline.
"She really doesn't look like much," Elsa says disparagingly, taking another sip of her wine.
"Now, now," Georg says, "Sheath your claws. You heard what the hostess said."
"Good evening," the girl says, her voice thick with the west, Salzburg and the Alps and the sunset. It reminds Georg of home, in a way, and he glances back over at her. Elsa's lips thin as she follows his gaze.
"Georg…" she says, but he ignores her. The girl starts to sing and his heart stops in his chest. She's singing what his mother used to sing, and Agathe after that and what he's sure Liesl still sings whenever he isn't home. Her voice is as clear as a mountain stream and full of mountain air and he cannot stop staring at her, even with Elsa's fingers digging sharply into his.
At the end of her final song – one where she yodelled with all the skill of a goatherd up in the gentle embrace of the rising hills – her head comes up and she looks around the room, blushing at all the applause. Her eyes catch his, and he calls out, "Bravo!" before he can stop himself.
Neither of them know it, but that is their beginning.