He sees it when she's folding her hands in front of her lap and rocking back and forth from her heels to her toes, those big cappuccino irises sparkling up at her father. "Come on, Dad, please!" She's got these lips the color of alchymist roses and they taste like poetry. Austin gets nervous when her father's eyes condescend him like get away from my daughter because she's got to be with somebody better. Probably somebody who builds things, somebody who doesn't buy her flowers when she deserves them, probably somebody with bad taste in music, probably somebody who goes bald by the age of 35.
"You be back by eleven, understand?" her father gives her a stern look. He's never exactly given them his blessing to date but Ally argued with Austin that they didn't need that, that's cliché wedding stuff. Austin and Ally are just dating - her father isn't going to be a problem until Austin buys her a ring which he's sworn that he will.
He sees it when her face lights up, the vibrant happiness that runs through her like a tidal wave and chipping off any uneasy edge inside of her. She's smooth and warm - literally. Her arms link around Austin's, he can feel the flawlessness of her skin and her palms are warm but not clammy. Austin finds it in him to smile at her father gratefully and Lester's lips seem to twitch but they don't curl.
Austin takes her out, chanting to himself that he'll bring her back by quarter to eleven, just so her father can see that Austin really is a good guy. They laugh, they argue, they shout with love in their lungs, they sing to the stars in the sky and watch as the stars twinkle gratitude. Austin forces her on the Ferris Wheel, into the funhouse, on a rollercoaster and although she didn't like the rollercoaster very much at the end of the night, her lips are pouting around cotton candy because she doesn't want to go home. He gets her back by quarter after eleven. Fifteen minutes past curfew. Oops.
Oh, Darn, Ally's grounded but she's seventeen so the grounding is only No phone, No going out with friends, No Austin. When her father's left the store to herself and she sees Austin behind the glass door, she laughs with a bird's song in her throat. It's just so beautiful. He's even got flowers for her and an apology tattooed on his tongue.
She waves her hand dismissively. It's not his fault, her father is just too stern suddenly. She's sure it has something to do with the fact that Austin is Ally's first real boyfriend, and not some wimpy kid at a summer camp. Both of them can recall when Lester thought Austin was great, when he appreciated the boy for bringing Ally out of her shell. It wasn't until Ally ran home and told her Dad over a glass of orange juice that she was considering dating Austin. He huffed and said that he didn't agree with it. Ally rolled her eyes at him and then he rolled his eyes at her when she came home the next day, sashaying Austin on her side with the label boyfriend.
The situation only gets better when Lester gets back from a mall meeting early and sees Austin perched up on the counter top with his lips rubbing against his daughter's lips. Fiery inferno of rage builds in his chest and he breaks them apart with a cough vibrating out of his throat. Ally feels Austin freeze but she is smiling. She seems to only ever be a rebel when it came to showing her father how great Austin Moon was. Austin only ever became a chicken when this would happen.
Austin Moon gets sent home with Ally begging her father not to be so hard on him and Austin leaving the store praying to God that the mistake of going against his girlfriend's father's orders didn't just cost him the relationship with her. Lester turns around and stares his daughter in the eye and asks why? Why Austin Moon, What was so great about Austin Moon?
Her eyes travel somewhere far away, like she's building an entire new galaxy in her mind and it's only filled with Austin's smile and his laugh that she tells her father sounds like Heaven in her ears. She says her favourite thing was when he laughs while kissing her because she can feel his breath vibrate on her lips and it makes her chest feel like it's ruptured the aorta and she's going to die because oh, god, she loves him so much. Lester is rubbing his forehead with his palm. His daughter is a hopeless-romantic-lunatic! She cannot be in love like this, not at this age! But she's really doing a good job telling Lester how much this boy means to her and Lester can't even get himself to start ignoring her when she tells him that Austin's got eyes like a stingray and if he tells her to never see him again, she won't ever talk again. She swears, on her entire life, he's the one. He's the one, daddy, he's the one.
Lester was supposed to warm up to the idea of Austin but he grows colder now that he sees how much his daughter loves him. He was supposed to fold into himself and start catering to his daughter because she really was in love and it wasn't hard to tell, but now he wants that boy away from her but he wouldn't dare wreck her spirit so he un-grounds her. The first thing she does is call Austin and he's angry with that. She could have called anyone, Trish, Dez, her mother, Kira. But she calls Austin and then she hangs up because although they'd seen each other literally a few moments ago, they're gonna go to the beach and think of some songs to write.
She is oxygen in his lungs and he knows it when he's got her shirt off and he can't breathe anymore. His body sets on fire and he can't stop moving his mouth along her jaw line. Her lips are sweet and now there is overall proof that God exists because he just kissed this beautiful woman and told her he loved her and she said it back and now there on his bed and they really shouldn't but they do. She becomes his entirely and he becomes hers. Two bodies, two souls, become one. But hell, Austin deserved this. He deserved to be able to feel her skin beneath the pads of his finger tips because the last year was spent being jealous of water while she was in the shower and it got to hold her curves, her every edge, the way he always dreamed of and now he finally did. He got to see the scar on her thigh from where she cut it as a child and he got to see the birth mark just above her hipbone. He's never seen such beautiful flaws, he kissed them.
She intrigues him even more when somehow they scheme up a way to move in together. Somewhere downtown in a small, one-bedroom apartment that was hardly big enough for the two of them but they manage it with gratitude. Austin assured Ally that he could buy her a big house with a rose garden and a picket fence in the front year with the money he makes but she says no and likes the apartment.
He becomes addicted with the sound of her voice in the shower, it's better than when she sings in concerts or next to him at the piano. Maybe it's more beautiful because the water echoes the melody or maybe because she goes for a soft tune that tackles the hum of the water lapping at her feet. Time keeps going on and her father still doesn't like him, their friends are still wide-eyed with the fact that they're only eighteen now and live together, and he still gets obsessed with the feeling of her skin and how, in the middle of intimacy, she'll burst into a fit of giggles because she'll remember a joke she's heard.
"Go ahead." Ally grins at him, her voice is soft and there's a smile playing her lips. It's genuine but at the same time it's mocking. He swats her with a dish towel, but faces the image of whatever he's decided to make and she even hides her laughter when he burnt it.
"It's not even funny anymore." Austin said because she keeps letting him cook dinner even though he's burnt it over and over again. The only time she'll ever suggest that he stays away from the kitchen is when guests are over. He doesn't mind that. He could watch her in the kitchen, watch how she stirred whatever was in the pot, watch how she tore pieces of meat from the chicken and stuffed it in her mouth. She points her index finger upwards and taps the air as she nods her head to the beat of the radio. A song she likes makes her smile wide, in the kind of way Austin tells himself he'll make her smile like one day because he doesn't know that even the pronunciation of his name makes her smile even wider.
She even eats the burnt food he made which is astonishing because even Austin never had the courage to eat it. He made himself a peanut butter and jam sandwich. Ally cringes as she swallows but tells him that it was good. He laughs and kisses her lips because their home and when he's not kissing them he gets homesick.
Austin loved watching movies with Ally because she always curled up into his side and it made him feel peaceful. He could be silently stressing about any situation and she'd just press her body against his and the stress would be gone. He finds his home sitting next to her and yeah, they're always gonna love each other, no matter what. Even if he loses his hair or maybe she can't recognize him anymore and confuses him with somebody else. Doesn't matter. He will always love her and she will always love him. This is his home. She is his home.
He asks her to marry him one day when she's leaning over the hood of his car and trying to figure out how to fix it. He knows how to fix it himself of course, but he likes to see her try. He smiled at her for the longest time while she thought hard about the parts of his car. He didn't even tell her that she was messing everything up even more. It's simple, something like "You should be my wife" because if it's something that tender and she says no, maybe it won't hurt as much or maybe the rejection won't stab him with a jagged edge.
She looked at him and couldn't believe what she heard and neither of them care about blessings or any of that crap as she wraps her arms around him and cries into his shoulder. Maybe she can't fix his car, but he loves her and he'll get over the fact that she likes to read boring novels, and eat pickles every day, or the fact that his taste in movie genre will make tears of boredom stream down her face.
He sees it everything he looks at her, everytime he listens to her, everytime he's with her. He sees how much he loves her and how many times he would break his bones if it meant shielding her from everything else because he just loved her and he swore if anything were to harm her, he'd probably crumble to pieces.
Her daddy still told him to leave but he always stayed.