Okay, so I started this on March 28th of this year, and I literally came back to it just last night and finished editing it about thirty minutes ago. So yeah, this sucks, but not enough for me to have any shame in posting it because heyyy what's life without some chances huh, (I watched a bit of Grease Live yesterday so blame that.)
This was supposed to be lighthearted but it turns angsty so I probably will continue this but maybe not. So bleh.
This is all Kirsty's fault.
Twas the night before Monday, and all through the space, not a creature was stirring, for there was no rat race. The lights were off and not a sound, not a peep, with the hopes that Ally Dawson would be able to sleep.
And then Ally Dawson's neighbor decided to slam his hands against his keyboard in frustration, quickly expelling a couple insults and magically Ally's sleep decided to leave her.
"Why. Isn't. Anything. COMING. UP." He yells.
The walls were thin and apparently so was Austin Moon's patience. Ally sat up in her bed and knocked a few times to tell him to shut the pup up but most likely in his duress, he couldn't hear her.
As far as Ally knew, when Austin had moved in a few months before, he had been so silent and so quick in the process that she was half convinced that he had been a squatter for the longest time, raising money to legally live there. To this day she had not seen his face and he hadn't seen hers. It was the small ounce of mystery to add to their lives. She learned his name rather quickly because through the unfortunately thin walls, she could hear conversations with his friends.
(Or heard through by his lovers, (and how couldn't she, when they were repeating it constantly,) but she would never admit to that.)
A few days into Austin's presence as her neighbor, she quickly caught onto his schedule, which was mainly and unfortunately, nocturnal.
He stayed up late for hours, playing and dabbling on the numerous instruments she could hear, but he mostly stuck to the piano and the guitar and wrote song lyrics that just repeated the word "Boom."
The first "song" she ever heard was primarily: Sonic Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom.
Weeks later, she couldn't believe that her father had actually paid him and paid some producer to put that commercial on television (Although, it was only once in one day, for a trumpet sale. Seventeen percent off.) with the melody that had irritated her ears for three full nights.
Austin apparently composed jingles for commercials, the most popular she had listened into at two a.m. was: "Soup, soup, soup, soup soup, soup, soup." for a full two hours, and a few weeks after, Suzy's Soups commercial came on singing that song with his melodic voice accompanying the goofy propaganda.
It was entertaining and it was frustrating.
Because like a good little hamster, Austin spun and spun his mind around for ideas at two in the morning, waking only Ally because no one else on their floor apparently ever heard him yelling or playing the drums, piano, guitar, harp, trumpet through another trumpet.
(She supposes that last one isn't true, he sounded drunk when he announced it to his friend.)
"I need a song it can't be too long, song, song, song, song, song, song, song, songsongsong song, song."
He also spoke like that whenever going through writer's block.
"You take the lace, and tie it up. Go on the street, you're so proud, you… uh... STRUT. I cannot promote children strutting can I."
"You wanna tie tie tie, your shoes shoes shoes, cause you wanna go, go, go to the moon, moon, moon. Moon Moon? Was is this, a 2013 meme from Tumblr?"
A few chords struck later, he belts out:
"Prepare for trouble! And make it double! YES. WE. ARE. GETTING. SOMEWHERE."
Ally knocks on the wall again, "That's Team Rocket's motto."
"What? Shit, you're right, dammit." he muttered to himself then let out a loud "OH. SORRY." and fell into silence after most likely putting headphones into his keyboard.
Twas the night before Monday, and Ally Dawson could swoon, for not a creature was stirring, not even Austin Moon.
When she woke up the next day, she could overhear the grumbling and mumbling, the repeated C scale from her next door.
She couldn't believe that he stuck to it all night and probably had not moved from his spot in front of his keyboard.
She hesitantly knocked at the wall.
"Uhh… yes?"
"Go to sleep, it'll come up after you rest, if not you're just stressing yourself out. Go sleep. Come back to it later. Trust me"
"But the deadline is in two days, I have to-"
"Don't make me go over there."
"I- But-. Fine."
She could hear him start to put things back in place and no dabbling to be overheard. Satisfied with herself, Ally focused on her songwriting.
You could say that they had that in common, the writer's block, random bouts of inspiration at the most terrible times, deadlines trying to go whooshing by and feebly trying to catch them. Working with Ronnie Ramone was not easy especially since he really didn't take into consideration the fact that a "Hit song for Glo Baby that everyone will buy and make me feel like I rule Jimmy Starr's ass by next Wednesday." was not too simple.
Well, lemme get right to the point, Ronnie. It's not that easy. Also, how does one rule Jimmy Starr's ass? Never mind, I don't want to know
A few hours later, she felt like Austin, repeating lyrics to herself, the last five pages of her notebook filled with clichè'd words and most of all, failed doodles and one big drawing of herself and Ronnie, handing over a sheet of paper that said "Song that will rule Jimmy Starr's ass".
Ally stood up, taking her own advice and walking away from the desk. Glo Baby was a cool person, and occasionally she and Ally would write together, but there was still this off feeling that came when writing for someone else. But it's not like she'd magically find herself in the middle of the spotlight with all the attention on her.
Despite having walked away from her desk and keyboard, she found herself rapidly going back, lyrics in her head and a song coming right up.
An hour later, Ally's finished her song, and held one in her head for Glo Baby and as she was about to leave the apartment to go visit her friend Dez; she's startled with a loud and emphatic gasp, followed by a:
"Holy shit."
"I got it. Holy shit, I got it-" and then starts knocking quickly at her wall. "Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou."
She found herself smiling, confused for a moment, she responds with a quick "Good luck!" before leaving.
It's not long before their relationship changed, he realizes. It had been a little over a week since Austin had given Kenny the new jingle for that kid's shoe company. It surprised him how he had spontaneously learned Ally's schedule and purposefully tried out songs when he could hear her in the room or when he was sure she was in bed.
There are slightly unspoken rules, which consisted of trying to avoid each other as avidly as possible, (despite how much they both wanted to see how they looked like, but unspoken rules are unspoken rules, as you see. But still, maybe not really avidly.)
They had somehow made a system of knocks to talk about whatever he was composing, this was mostly because Ally didn't dare raise her voice at the walls much after nine p.m.
So the "complex and fragile system" that they had made together consisted of:
One knock: No.
Two knocks: it's okay
A series of several knocks very quickly: that's the one or shut the pup up.
It really depended on how Ally felt in that moment or how late Austin started yelling at the wall, ensuring she'd wake up and help him.
Austin felt nervous on how so quickly he came to depend on her opinion on the simple minded jingles he came up with. Of course, she added a word or two, but it felt like every single word that came out of her mouth were worth a few dozen of his.
Maybe it was just the insecurity speaking.
But he couldn't explain that feeling, at two a.m. when he belted out some stupid line and the rapid knocking from her side of the wall and his heart tappity tap tapping at his ribs in exhilaration.
It's four a.m. and he's trying to write a song for himself this once. Nothing's coming up, except the drawing of cat attacking a man on his previously blank page. The only light in the room is from his desk lamp, but he found himself opposite of it; on the other side of the room, with his head leaned against the wall and the only sound he can actually hear is his own breathing and feel his heartbeat through his spine.
He can feel the lamp about to flicker off, like it's about to turn off just to spite him. The light twitching and tinkering, the light buzzing sound he's sure he's imagining goes mute before it the yellow bub turns gray.
He's alone.
Before he can even think about what he's doing, he lets out a temptative, "Ally?" It sounds like he's saying help.
Although it sounds like barely a whisper, and his tired mind convinces him he didn't actually say it, he knows he did, because it ached at his chapped lips to speak after several hours of self made silence that began when Ally had gone to sleep.
There is no answer.
His stomach drops.
It's not long before she realized how different their relationship is from where it was a few weeks ago. First it was occasional "Please be quiet, you ridiculously talented stranger but it's midnight and regular people sleep so if you must, please join the hamster kind, you could be considered their king, 'kay thanks bye."
Which somehow turned into a whole (what Austin would call,) "system" of knocks and small talk through the walls, and occasional shouts of Good morning's and Good night's.
That in some way transformed into whatever this was. Him and her talking through the wall as if there were no barrier between them and they had actually seen the other's face for once instead of just having to picture some random human on the other side.
Austin had told her that he was currently writing a song for some hipster clothing shop and they had told him that didn't want lyrics and just some simple background music that they'd most likely edit up.
Honestly, Ally really can't tell you how she ended up leaning against the wall at one a.m., hugging her puffy penguin pillow to her chest because she is slowly falling asleep but can't help but try to stay awake so she can help out this mysterious neighbor she sees as a friend.
"Why do you keep playing in a major key?"
"Because it's happier?"
"Let's ask ourselves this question, are hipsters truly happy?"
"So… minor key?"
"Nah, play in G sharp or A flat, it'll be different, edgier."
"A pain to the ears."
"Everything is a pain to the ears, you see, all sounds are constantly attacking you for your attention, you truly control your hearing when you can find yourself in a sole-track hearing aid."
"I'm pretty sure you added words to that sentence to make you sound smarter but actually make no sense. Are you high? Have I kept you up for too long?"
"My dear friend, I am simply becoming one with the hipster,"
"I don't think that's it,"
"Hipster and I. Me and the Hipster. Hipsters. Hipstees. Hipstys. Hipstites, an entire colony of hipstites."
"That sounds like a distant cousin of hepatitis."
"The inner hipster in me is saying in number thirty six Courier New font, with a faded picture of purple stars and some weird sky DON'T LET THE HATERS BRING YOU DOWN."
"Go to sleep."
She raps on the wall, sharply and just once.
"Just play what we have so far."
He does.
"Ugh, you're right, keep it in minor scale, then use the G sharp in the bridge."
He does.
It's not long before they're both up at an unknown time in the middle of the night and there is no song to be written, there is no jingle to be discussed, there's nothing in the dark and quiet night.
Everything important in that moment just consisted of Austin, Ally and the wall.
"I know how you feel. My dad never supported what I did for the longest time, he saw it as a hobby rather than anything I could really try at, he always thought on other things for me, mostly jobs that would have me behind a desk for the next forty years, with three kids and married by twenty eight and divorced by thirty four. Mid life crisis at thirty seven in which I buy some expensive thing that'll kill me."
And at some point conversations found themselves turned into echoed confessions toward the quiet, empty room, rather than another human.
"I have stage fright."
"I'm afraid of the dark."
"It's ironic, to have stage fright but to be so into the business, I don't even know how I manage to hand in a song without crying, because each time I see another artist read over the lyrics my heart feels like it's beating out of me and I swear that I'll quit. I'll quit but I can't. The times an artist hasn't liked the song I've had to wait full hours to stop crying and to pull myself together and I hate it, I hate this industry and and I hate being so insecure at something I like and have been told I'm good at and I hate it, and I hate it and I just want to quit before they all see me in midst of a panic attack in front of some big name, and then only be looked at with that condescending oh sweetie type of look whenever I want to work and be taken seriously."
"I don't know why. I don't think it's really fear what I have, I hate being alone. I hate it, it drives me absolutely insane, especially if I nothing to do because then my mind will wander to… thoughts. I start overthinking, over believing, overhearing conversations about me that have never happened. I start to think about what I've never confronted, on how I really don't like myself, on how I'm wasting my life on stupid little jingles that people forget the second the commercial ends. How I wanted to do something bigger with myself but ended up in a corner I can't fight out of. Being in the dark is a moment where all of it comes back, every bad thought, every insult, every time my dad would tell me to just quit music because the world was full of talented people and I was not one of them; and I can't hear it, I can't take it to the point where I can't leave the lights off for a few minutes because I feel like I'm choking, I'm choking on my goddamn thoughts,"
Along with all the words that keep being said, that keep falling out and laid out in the open. The world opening inside their individual rooms and the conversation that kept stringing along for hours and hours, that when morning comes, the scariest thought is that they were not done.
"You know, if you ever need me because you've had a bad day at the office or a bad time with an artist you can call me. It doesn't break the rules. I'll answer every time. No matter what time it is."
"I'm only a knock away, when you feel alone, or when the dark is just too overwhelming no matter what amount of light. I'm always a knock away"
The sun reddening the sky, the clouds turning orange-y, pink and blue outside the window. The world waking up, and them having not even slept but being invigorated in some different way that they had not understood yet
It's not long before,
"Austin?" She rasps out, but it does not sound like she's saying his name, it sounds like the way one would say words like please and i beg of you and help me. Her voice hushed through the telephone, cringing at the sound of her voice resounding through the empty bathroom tiles for fear of someone listening to her by accident. Her face aches, red, tear streaked and tired, she can't make it through the two syllables in his name before her voice cracks.
"Yeah." His voice over the phone is different than what she's used to, muffled and thick to travel through the wall. Calm, comforting, affecting her through the phone and reaching the calamity of herself.
"Can you just… talk to me? For a bit? For a while. I don't know, I'm-I'm sorry, if you're busy I'll talk to you at home."
"No, it's fine. I'm just in bed. So let me tell you about how I should go to jail for how monstrously tried to strain porridge. So here's the thing, I was young, okay? Nineteen or so…."
It isn't long before he told her one of his songs would be airing in a bigger commercial period on a kid's TV channel. So she finds herself watching Nickelodeon for two hours trying to hear the jingle Austin wrote before they had begun to be friends.
At the two hour mark, after the ending of a good SpongeBob episode, the commercial airs with a small kid running around a playground and then some slow motion stuff that she can't deem herself to pay attention to until the end of the short propaganda where the kids are just running around Austin's voice, edited and modified by a thousand sings:
they wanna know know know your name name name they want the kid kid kid with game game game and when they look look look your way way way you're gonna make (make) make (make) make 'em do a DOUBLE TAKE
And in big bold letters, the logo, occupying her screen. DOUBLE TAKE SNEAKERS.
She shut the TV off and has half the urge to scream.
Her song.
Her song?
Her song.
How dare he use her song as a stupid jingle for CHILDREN'S SNEAKERS and then go around and act all proud of it like she would like this. How dare he? Did he really have the nerve to do something so, so, so… so!
Ally was decided. She didn't know when she had decided but her feet weren't stopping, her heart was still thundering and she found herself outside his apartment hitting his door as if were a mass of dough. Then, out of spite, she covered the peephole with her other hand and kept knocking.
From the other side she can hear him "Whoa, whoa. Hey. Doors cost money.", then as he starts to open the door she allows herself to begin her rant/half hour monologue with a loud and well placed:
"FIRST OF ALL, HOW DARE YOU."
That's all she can let out before she catches sight of him.
Tall, blonde, messy haired with confused eyes because he has no idea why this tiny stranger was at his door yelling at him and holy shit was she gawking at him now and why wasn't he wearing a shirt how dare he open the door without wearing a shirt that it completely unfair since she can't do the same thing since apparently
"Holy shit, Ally?" His eyes bulge and his arms raise to his sides as if he doesn't know what he wants to do yet, but a hug was definitely in the options.
She wants to hug him because the corners of her mind realizes that this is her friend, who's she told things she hasn't even told Dez about. There's a lingering thought in the back of her mind that she had just ruined the whole mystery factor going on between them, but that small thought is overcome by the memory of why she came there in the first place.
"Yeah, it's me. Now. How dare you!"
"How dare I what?"
"Use my song for your stupid sneakers jingle!"
"What song?"
"Double Take! Well, it wasn't called that before you took the chorus and sped it up and changed the genre and used your own voice as the vocals."
"No, no, no no. I wrote that song. i wrote it the day when you told me I should go to sleep, maybe you heard me rehearse it and thought you had written it?"
Ally bristled, "Don't you try to turn this on me Austin Monica Moon!" He glares down at her, slightly betrayed. "I wrote that song on that same day, I have jotted down in my notebook. I wrote it the same day I came up with some of Glo Baby's song that she turned down."
"Then what, Ally Edgar Dawson, I had a light sleep cycle and coincidentally overheard your song then woke up believing I had written it and then turned it into my boss before he stabbed me with a rusty jack hammer?"
"I would believe you just confessed. Austin Moon in the desk, with a rusty jackhammer."
"Ally, I know this is the first time we've actually met, but c'mon, give me some credit." He crosses his arms and leans on the door frame. "Look, thinking back it makes more sense that you wrote the lyrics. I don't wake up out of nowhere with lyrics, I work days for them, or just spit out soup seven times at the meeting but I didn't mean to, you gotta believe me on that."
"All I know, is that I had a song and friend. Now I have a jingle and a song murderer."
"I didn't murder the song! I thought the song went like that, blame my sleepy conscious rather than my conscious-conscious."
"I'll tell your conscious-conscious now that I'd like to file a complaint to the sleepy-conscious."
"Ohh, you'll have to wait till next Tuesday. It has a day off on Monday and plus, you've arrived on non-business days." He says in a very business like tone, but the corner of his mouth kept twitching to break into a grin.
Ally giggles and Austin smiles at her before she finally takes in the moment to realizes that the former stranger in front of her, was her best friend. He uncrosses his arms and she likes to think that they had the same thought.
Stepping forward, she wraps her arms around his waist and lays her head on his chest. He smelled of metal from guitar strings, the smell of old polished wood and coffee.
His skin was warm and his heartbeat sped up as she hugged him.
"Austin." It sounds like she says a long expected and long awaited hello.
He wraps his arms around her and holds her to him tightly
"Ally," It sounds like he's saying finally.
Okay. Phew, aren't you glad that's over with? I am.
If you actually read the whole thing you are a strong human being who can withstand some sucky writing.
So if you hated it and never want to see me again, I'm equally as annoying on twitter which is LaurasParachute by the by and I am shamefully self promoting myself hell yeah.
IT'S GONNA BE MAY
- Justin Bieber or Justin Timberlake or some other Justin!