Title: Dance Lessons

Author: Tazmy

Characters: Rodney, Teyla, Team, Katie (Shep whump!)

Pairings: Rodney/Katie (not the focus)

Words: 5,048

Rating: 10+

Spoilers: Takes place after Sunday.

Description: Rodney never would have believed that he'd like dancing.

A/N: This is a different story from my norm. To me it is a Rodney and team story. It does, however, have a bit of a pairing Katie/Rodney, but it is definitely not the focus. I'm at a loss as to what genre this fits in because it is a little bit of everything. It even has Shep Whump! I hope you enjoy. Thank you to Sholio and KodiakBear for the beta and support!

It was Katie's idea. Rodney tried to get out of it, of course, but she wouldn't let him. "It will be fun!" she exclaimed, her face lighting up with the sweetest smile. She seemed so happy at the prospect, and she was normally so shy, how could he tell her no?

Truth was, Atlantis didn't have many dating opportunities to begin with. The only restaurant was the messhall, movie nights were limited to whatever was in stock, and except for the moonlight outings on a faraway pier, dancing was their only other option. Gina was the Marine in charge of the whole event. Apparently she had grown up in a dancehall from the time she was seven on. West Coast swing was her specialty and, although Rodney was dubious of how 'fun' it would be, it just so happened to be Katie's favorite type of dance.

Atlantis wasn't large so the fifty or so faces that showed up were all familiar, and except for a scientist or two, they were still mostly strangers. At least John wasn't here, and if Rodney had his way, John would never know Rodney had attended such an event. He did, after all, have a reputation to uphold.

Gina made all the men line up on one side and the women on the other. The moment Katie started moving, helping Gina show off the moves they'd be learning, he forgot how he'd never wanted to come. Katie was gorgeous, enchanting even as her hips swayed with the quick movements. Why was his heart beating so fast?

"Okay, everyone ready to give it a go?" Gina asked, tugging her blonde hair out of a tight bun. There were a few uncertain nods.

Rodney, as it turned out, was not so graceful on his feet. By the end of the first lesson, Katie's feet were swollen blue and he was forced to carry her back to her quarters, asking repeatedly if maybe they should stop by the infirmary.

"No, I'm good. Really."

He laid her comfortably on the bed before kissing her goodnight. Massaging his back, he returned to his quarters, shocked to discover that despite his two left feet, he'd had a good time.

The next lesson, everything went wrong. Since most of the dancers hadn't come with dates, Gina insisted on rotating the women among the men. Rodney, horrified, tried to find some excuse, any excuse to get out of it.

"What's wrong?" Gina asked, "You're supposed to be a genius, right? You'll pick it up."

She could not have been more wrong.

The next morning at breakfast, Rodney sat eating his blue jello when John spoke up, "That's the fifth one today."

"Fifth one what?" Rodney asked between gulps. He glanced, along with Teyla and Ronon, at the line where John was staring.

"The fifth person I've seen limping. Did something happen last night?"

Rodney made a show of finishing his jello and shrugging. "No idea. If you'll, ah, excuse me." He couldn't have left faster if a horde of Genii had been on his tail.

The third lesson wasn't so bad. He found if he stopped trying to get the movements right and just concentrated on the rhythm, he could manage a straight line and not injure anyone. He only managed a few dances with Katie, but they left laughing and exhausted.

It continued in this way for sometime. During the eighth lesson, one of his scientists actually asked him to dance with her. After a few swings, while he was secretly watching Katie dance with the gate technician, Rodney returned to the waiting area only for another woman to ask him to the floor. He found himself wishing John were there, if only to rub in the fact that Rodney was getting popular.

During the fifteenth lesson, Rodney was midway into leading Katie through a twirl, when he saw Teyla enter the room. His first instinct was to duck, which meant his and Katie's arms managed to entwine themselves awkwardly and painfully before Katie tripped over his feet and they both went crashing to the floor.

"Rodney!" Katie cried, apparently thinking something was wrong with him by her horrified expression.

"Shhh!" He anxiously gestured toward the door.

She followed his gaze then laughed softly, probably out of relief. "It's just Teyla."

"She's going to see me!"

"So?"

"So? So she's one of my teammates, she can't know I'm doing this! You don't understand, they'll never let me live this down."

Katie frowned as a nearby pair of dancers nearly collided into them. "There's nothing to be ashamed of. Come on." Bringing herself to her feet, she reached out her hand and beckoned him back to the dancing world. Casting a last fearful glance in Teyla's direction, Rodney followed suit and found the rhythm once again.

Teyla didn't say anything that night or the next day, almost as if she could sense his discomfort at being caught dancing. She probably didn't understand, but Rodney appreciated her discretion all the same.

During the twenty-first lesson, Teyla asked Rodney to dance. He had always known her to be graceful, but the way she moved out on the floor…it was seamless. As he danced with her, his thoughts left him and he truly relaxed as he never had been able before. He could see the lights swirling by, could hear the distant music, but the dance had taken him.

"Just as long as it's only her dancing you like," Katie told him as he bid her goodnight, but her tone was playful.

Many more lessons passed. Even when Katie was sick, Rodney found himself going anyway and enjoying the evening. There was a loudly spoken rule, which Rodney made sure all of the dancers knew: no one was to speak of his attendance or their quarters would inexplicably lose power. So far, no one had tested the threat.

It was the day of what was to be their thirty-eighth lesson that Teyla and Rodney ventured to P5R-795. It had been sunny when they had split up from John and Ronon, but the dark clouds now rolling across the sky were unmistakable.

"Perhaps we should turn back while we still can," Teyla said, just as a loud crack of thunder rumbled above them. There wasn't even a warning drop or two before the drenching rain poured down, so much so that there was little point in retrieving their ponchos from their backpacks.

Shelter was easily found in a cave along the mountain path they had been traversing. It was approximately three miles from the jumper

"We are safe, John," Teyla called over the radio, "But we will have to remain here until the storm stops." There was a slight pause. "Yes, we are on high ground. Where are you?"

There was little else to do but dry off and find private areas of the cave in which to get into warm clothing. An hour rolled by and still the rains had not abated. The field below was flooded and only the cave's elevation kept them from drowning. Ronon and Sheppard had radioed ahead to check in, knowing Teyla and Rodney would be worried. They hadn't found shelter yet during the first call, and apparently now they were on a hill not too much higher than current water level.

"Have you managed to contact Atlantis?" Rodney asked, unable to keep the panic from his voice.

"No, and they won't be expecting us for a while. We'll be okay on our end. You guys just stay safe."

Rodney tapped his fingers in rhythm to the rain, not realizing he was doing so until Teyla pointed it out. After another hour, the water still rising but far from their location, Rodney put away his laptop, watched Teyla meditate for a few minutes, then jumped to his feet.

"Do you have any idea how much work I could be getting done right now?"

Teyla did not reply. Her legs stayed crossed and her eyes closed.

The view from the cave's mouth would have been breathtaking if not for the muddy water covering everything below. Treetops of blue could still be seen inching above the streams, their color almost lost to the dark clouds. Rodney tried to see if he could see John or Ronon in the distance, but there was no luck. Anxiously he looked at his watch.

"They're late. They could have drowned or caught some horrible disease from the tainted waters."

Teyla uncurled her legs, lifting herself up slowly with a resigned sigh. "They are only a minute late checking in."

"Yes, a whole minute! When they know we're worried!"

As if on cue, the radio crackled to life followed by Ronon's voice, "You guys okay?"

"Yes, yes! You're late! Do you have any idea how worried I've been?"

"Sheppard's hurt, but we've found shelter."

"Hurt? What do you mean hurt? Hurt as in he has a scratch or hurt as in he's lying on death's door?"

"We'll be okay. We'll radio back in an hour."

"Wait! You didn't answer!" But the familiar sound of the radio clicking off told him that his cries wouldn't be heard.

A gentle hand fell on his shoulders, causing him to jump slightly. Teyla's voice was soft, calming. "They can take care of themselves, Rodney."

"Right, and that's why Sheppard has a longer infirmary record than the rest of the Marines combined!"

Teyla hardened her grip, twisting him around to face her. "They will be fine."

Rodney shook free, leaning against the cave's mouth. "Yeah, this just sucks. We're supposed to be in dancing lessons tonight, not waiting for this awful planet to drown our friends."

If he thought hard enough he could smell Katie's sweet scent as she leaned into him in the dance, only for the move to carry her away before whipping her closer once more. He knew she worried every time the team went out on a mission, and he hated to think that instead of enjoying lessons she was probably back on Atlantis now, worried about him, convinced that something terrible was going to happen. Sometimes she was more of a pessimist then he was.

He forgot for a moment that Teyla was with him, before he felt her hand on his shoulder once again. "There is no reason that we cannot dance here."

"Here?"

"It would help pass the time."

The good thing about West Coast Swing was that it was made for tight quarters. Teyla moved as seamlessly as ever, and Rodney lost himself to the moves. The rain kept the beat but the absence of music went almost unnoticed. He felt foolish, to tell the truth, but there was no one around to see and this was the only thing that could keep him from thinking about Sheppard bleeding to death on some floating rock.

When the radio crackled to life again, he was shocked to find an hour had passed, though his sweat told the story well enough.

"You okay?"

"Yes, yes, we're okay. What about Sheppard? Sheppard okay? Why isn't he on the radio?"

"I'm going to swim to the gate and have them send a jumper."

Rodney fell back against the cave wall, meeting Teyla's worried gaze. "Oh God, I was right. He's dying, isn't he?"

"I should reach the gate within the hour, Ronon out."

There was still another six hours before they were late for contact. If Sheppard really was in trouble there was no other way, but that didn't stop Rodney from trying to call Ronon back before the radio contact ended. Swimming through that mess, in that current, no man could do that. Maybe Ronon had the ability, maybe, but if he drowned too…

He didn't realize he had said any of these thoughts aloud, but Teyla replied, "Ronon is strong. I am sure he will make it."

But Rodney's mind would not be turned off. All he could think about was Sheppard dying and Ronon drowning and just how tired he was of living through this same scene over and over again. "They're going to die. We're stuck here in a cave, dancing of all things, and our teammates are dying. There has to be something we can do!"

"Ronon will get help, Rodney. We have to trust him."

Then she grabbed his hand, leading him back into the dance until he took over. His anxiety took him and he had to have stepped on her feet at least three or four times, but it was better than just waiting…just worrying.

"Rodney, Teyla?" Major Lorne's voice called over the radio.

Mid-twirl, Teyla and Rodney both released their hands and fell away from the dance. "Major? How's Sheppard? Did Ronon make it…?"

"They're in the doc's care now. We're on our way to your position, just hold tight."

Sheppard looked like a mess when they visited him, and Ronon not much better. Sheppard suffered from a nasty head wound and a compound fracture in his right arm, each of which had become infected in the muddy waters. Dr. Keller was no Carson, but Rodney had learned to trust her medical skills. When she said Sheppard would recover, he believed it. But that didn't stop Rodney from staying by his friend's side.

Ronon was suffering from exhaustion. He had swum a mile to the gate despite the rushing current heading the opposing direction. Unfortunately, he had managed to breathe in some of the water and the doctors were worried about any bacteria that might have entered his lungs. He was pale and unconscious, not likely to wake up for a while, if only from all the energy he had exerted trying to get help.

When Rodney and Teyla were finally kicked out of the infirmary and told to get rest, Rodney found himself at Katie's quarters. He was exhausted, and tired, and even a little sniffly from all the cold, but his mind couldn't rest and Katie just had a way of making things calm down for a while.

They ventured to a faraway pier, taking a stack of blue jello and a stereo along with them. Beneath the moon's glow they danced and Rodney wondered, not for the first time, if he was falling in love with her.

Sheppard was still unconscious two days later so Rodney had no choice to but to harass the staff until they made him wake up. Since none of them had that power, the nurses were more than happy when their shifts ended. It wasn't until Ronon mumbled under his breath for Rodney to shut up, his voice raspy and breathless, that Rodney settled down. Frustrated and tired, Rodney fell into the nearest chair and awkwardly reached for Sheppard's hand.

"You have to stop doing this," he whispered. "One of these days I'm going to have an aneurysm from all this worrying and whose fault do you think that will be?"

Sheppard woke up a few hours later, his head whirling and sick to his stomach. Satisfied his friend was going to be okay, Rodney let the nurses take care of the vomit and other disgusting sick stuff. He had almost made it to his lab when the call came that all available offworld teams were to report to the gateroom.

With Sheppard and Ronon out of commission, Rodney and Teyla were to be temporarily assigned to a different team before visiting QMR-993, where Major Lorne's team was under siege. These were the missions Rodney hated the most, because he was a bad shot and terrible at hand-to-hand combat. They used to offer for him to stay behind, but he had always insisted on coming, though he was never really sure why.

They waited in the gateroom for the new team to arrive, and Rodney couldn't help but turn red when Gina showed up in full military gear. It was a good thing Ronon and Sheppard weren't there or they would have noticed the tension for sure.

Her hair was back to being tightened in a bun and had more of the Rambo look than that of a graceful dancer. Rodney could hardly believe it was the same person. She nodded curtly to each of them. "Teyla, Rodney, I understand you'll be with us for this mission." She gestured back toward two Marines and one scientist, none of which were terribly familiar to Rodney.

The fight was ugly. Some Ancient device shielded the warring villagers so bullets bounced off them. However, the shield, programmed to deter weapons, did little to stop a fist. As a result, most of the fighting was hand-to-hand.

Rodney's team's job was to get to the Ancient compound where two Marines were being held prisoner and find a way to free them. As he had always said, the important jobs were always left to the geniuses.

Dirt flew into his eyes and the smell of blood threatened to overcome him as he raced toward the compound. The holding cell was definitely Ancient but easily hackable. Rodney turned around with his proud smile to inform the others that it wouldn't take more than a minute, when he noticed for the first time that they were all engrossed in individual battles. No one was attacking him, mostly because the others were keeping them away, but Rodney couldn't help but stare.

He had seen Teyla fight many times before, but it was the first time he had ever noticed how much the battle was like a dance. She pushed toward her fighting partner then pulled away, in fluid, quick motions. Although enemies, there was a communication that happened within the fight, and as Teyla leaned in, so did her aggressor. Gina, despite the soldier exterior, could have been on the stage giving a performance. Watching the two of them was mesmerizing.

"Hey, you think you could let us out of here anytime soon?" one of the captured Marines, a tall man with muscles almost as big as Ronon's, asked. Blood soaked his face and uniform, and Rodney cringed at the thought of what might have happened to them under captivity.

Turning from the fight, Rodney continued with the hacking and a moment later the Marines were free and joining in the combat despite their wounds. Unfortunately, more of the villagers had joined as well. Panicked, Rodney tried to duck away, but a strong hand fell onto his shoulder, swinging him around. Face to face, Rodney couldn't help but notice the rotted, putrid teeth of his aggressor, not to mention the horrible smell.

The villager moved to hit him and Rodney just managed to duck. He tried throwing his own punch, but it was blocked and a second later he was on the ground with no memory of how he had gotten there. Teyla was lifting him to his feet without so much as asking if he was okay or not. "We must go now!"

Despite the dizziness and overwhelming feeling of nausea, Rodney forced himself to run, breaking free of Teyla's hold. The fight outside was uglier than it had been before, but it was hard to see for all the raised dust. For once, Rodney's team was the first through the gate. He took one glance at the control room, then passed out.

He dreamed of fights and dances until he woke up in the infirmary with a massive headache and a worried Katie holding his hand. From just behind her, he could see Sheppard lying on his own bed looking slightly better than he had before they had left.

"You can't keep going out there," Katie told him once he had been released. "Not without knowing how to fight."

"What do you think I've been training to do the last three years, sew buttons?" Rodney defended himself. Though he hated to admit it, training sessions were little more than 'kick Rodney's butt' time.

"I just don't want to see you hurt."

Just before the forty-first lesson, Ronon and Sheppard were released from the infirmary. After a short celebratory dinner, Teyla and Rodney each made their excuses on why they had to leave, making sure to go opposite directions before going to the dance room.

"I do not understand why you continue to hide this," Teyla told him, but she agreed to still keep his secret.

Rodney watched as Gina and Teyla danced with their respective partners, remembering the way they had fought just a week before. When he offered his hand to Teyla for the second-to-last dance of the night, he knew what he needed to ask.

"Look, I know I'm a genius and I'm supposed to be good at everything, but we both know that I'm a little lacking in the whole fighting area. I've been thinking, and I was wondering, and you can say no of course, but maybe you could teach me to fight."

Teyla's gaze didn't leave his as she turned below his arm. "I do not understand. We have training sessions every week, do we not?"

"Yeah, but, I was thinking. Perhaps I'd do better if it was just you teaching me?"

It was one thing to watch the battle dance, it was completely another to master it. Rodney had thought that once he had seen the moves, once he understood that all this time what he had been doing wrong was not feeling the rhythm, that he'd do great. Unfortunately, even in private lessons Teyla continued to leave him bruised and not much more improved.

But slowly, just as the dancing had come to him, he found himself sensing her blocks. It was in her eyes, in her movements, he realized. As though each of them were leading into a move and it was the other's job to react. Stick collided with stick, and though he still failed to reach the abilities of most on Atlantis, he found that maybe he could hold his own after all.

After lesson fifty, Gina was recalled to Earth. There was much deliberation over whether or not to continue the dancing without her, and in the end it was decided that Teyla could be their new leader. Rodney couldn't think of anyone better for the job.

The day after that lesson, Rodney had training with Teyla once more. He had managed to parry one of her blows only for her to turn her body left. He knew well enough what this meant. She was going to attack with the other hand, so he moved to block, only to land on his feet from a swoop of her legs. Grimacing, he tried not to think about how sore his back would be the next day. This couldn't be good for health.

To his surprise, he heard clapping from the doorway. Forcing his body to move, he moaned as he saw the two men standing and grinning. With horror, he realized Sheppard and Ronon had been watching, but for how long he couldn't be sure.

"Great, just great. What are you two doing here? Ran out of Marines to chase around the city and came to see me humiliated instead?"

To Rodney's surprise John wasn't laughing. The Colonel's grin fell, his eyes narrowing. He watched Rodney as though he had never really seen him before. "Since when do you fight like that?"

"Fight like what, exactly?"

"Like that. That was…That wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either."

Ronon looked just as incredulous. "When did you start lessons with Teyla?"

Afraid of exactly where this conversation was going, and feeling horribly humiliated, Rodney kicked off the floor, hiding his red face. "I uh, recently, I suppose. Did you want something or did you just come to stare?"

He wasn't sure why being seen fighting with Teyla made him feel so embarrassed; it wasn't as though John and Ronon hadn't seen them fight before. But not like that. Not as though it were a dance. What if they found out about his secret?

On the day after lesson fifty-five, the team returned to the water planet, as Rodney had dubbed it, in hopes of finding the Ancient machinery that had brought them there in the first place. The floods were long gone, but the destruction left in their wake was devastating. The once-blue tops of tall standing trees now littered the ground, purple and shriveled with time.

Unwilling to separate this time, they landed the jumper and walked together toward the mountains where Teyla and Ronon had danced away their anxiety. Rodney and Teyla exchanged significant glances: John and Ronon could never know what had transpired there.

They managed to locate the device some two miles from where Rodney and Teyla had been looking previously. Unfortunately, the planet wasn't uninhabited, as they had previously thought, and the villagers weren't too keen on having strangers examine their device.

After some negotiating, they managed to convince the village elder that they were well intentioned. Surrounded by about twenty guards, Rodney was allowed to examine it all he wanted, but not to touch.

"The machine controls the weather patterns of this planet," Rodney explained.

"It is a gift from the Ancestors," the elder answered, smearing the ceremonial paint upon a soldier's face.

"Yes, yes, I'm sure. Look, the point is that the device is broken. The weather you've been having on this planet, you said it's killed over a hundred of your people in the last few months. If you don't let me fix it, many more are going to die."

"No!" The elder yelled, causing the soldier to back away, bowing. The elder stood to his full height of eight feet, waving his hands madly. "The Ancestors provide so we trust the Ancestors. No one shall desecrate their sacred gift."

"I don't think you understand," Rodney continued, feeling rather intimidated by a man that could probably take Ronon in a fight, "if you don't let me do this, all of you will be dead within the year."

The elder sneered, motioning to two of his men, who quickly left out another door on some unknown errand. "Your lies insult us. You will leave this place at once."

There was little choice in the matter. Although the rest of the villagers were the height of an average human, their were twenty of them. Ronon looked ready to fight, but John knew a lost cause when he saw one. To Rodney's horror and relief, the order was given for them to leave.

Once the villagers thought they had left, many of the guards were removed from the room where the Ancient weather device was stored. Ronon took the two in the front out with his stun gun, while Teyla and Sheppard knocked out the two inside. Rodney raced in and set to work, but the machine squawked loudly the moment he touched it, summoning every guard within a hundred meters back to the room.

Tuning out the fight behind him, Rodney raced to fix the machine. Someone tried to grab him from behind, but somehow he sensed the movement and whirled around. His first punch missed, but the guard was luckier with his attempt. Rodney's hand came back from his nose slightly stained with blood. Then the dance began. The aggressor moved in and so did Rodney, then Rodney swung left, his fist contacting with the villager's chin. Not wasting a moment, Rodney turned quickly toward the controls and entered the final sequence, listening to the machine's hum go silent.

"Behind you!" he heard Ronon shout before the room went dark.

When he woke up in the infirmary, he was glad to hear that the device, although not fixed, had stopped controlling the weather. It was uncertain how the planet would react, but the result was bound to be better than what would have happened if the device were still on.

While Rodney had ultimately lost the fight with the villager, he was quick to point out that his aggressor hadn't left without a bruise.

After lesson fifty-six, private lessons with Teyla became lessons with the whole team. Sheppard and Ronon were amazed at Rodney's newfound confidence, even if he ended up beaten and bruised more often than not. Once, Rodney even managed to hit Ronon before being thrust down to the floor. It was one of the proudest moments of his life. He couldn't have been more impressed with himself if he'd just found an odd perfect number, a yet unsolved problem in the world of mathematics.

It was at lesson sixty, when Rodney and Teyla were midway through a dance, that Ronon and John found their way to his lessons. Rodney was too lost to the dance to notice Sheppard's chin dropped, or Ronon laughing. Each of them had a lady attached to their arms, neither of which had ever been to the dancing class before and clearly didn't realize the rules. When Rodney caught them out of the corner of his eye, he kept himself from ducking and hiding, although he was tempted to do so.

When Ronon injured more women's feet than Rodney had on every lesson put together, it was Rodney's turn to laugh. John, as it turned out, wasn't so bad. Rodney suspected he had been out dancing before, which would make sense since the man was a womanizing Kirk.

"Now it all makes sense," John told him later that night. "Why you were fighting the way you were."

"Yes, well, one word making fun of this and you'll have cold showers for a week. Not to mention everyone on Atlantis will know how bad of a dancer you are. Try getting the girls then."

But he needn't have worried. John and Ronon were in the same situation now—each dragged by a woman—and after a while, Rodney knew, the dance would take them. Well, maybe not Ronon, but John anyway.

A week later, he escorted Katie up to their pier. They spent the first few hours staring at the glistening waters below, looking back on all that had happened over the last year. Then taking her hand gently into his, they danced. She was lovelier to him than she had ever been before and he couldn't help but be grateful for the first lesson they had attended together that had led to so many more.

THE END

I hope you like this! It's so different from my norm, I'm a bit anxious about it!