I know, I know. Why the hell am I posting one shots when I haven't updated Rhetorical in months? Because when a plot comes knockin you can't leave it outside in the cold to die. Sorry.

This is short and sweet. Mostly fluff, basically, but keep going with it to the end if you want to read the deep stuff.

Disclaimer: I don't own Austin & Ally, or like, anything else you recognize. The writing's mine, though. Don't effing steal it please.

Prom night.

And Ally Dawson was not having fun.

It wasn't like she didn't know what fun was, before you say that, because she did; and it wasn't like she'd never been to any other dance or gathering or party before, because she had. In fact, she, during an inspirational moment of courage, had finally agreed to accompany her father to the yearly Christmas brunch Miami Mall hosted every December, where she'd actually met people and talked to people and yes, it had been fun. And — not to brag, of course — she'd also gone to Jimmy Starr's famous Halloween party last year. That had definitely been fun, at least by her standards; but even she, with her admittedly crippled knowledge, could tell that Marino High's prom was a definite miss. And if the teenagers sulking in the corners were any indication, she was definitely right.

The girls were all long hair and long skirts and long faces, the corsages on their wrists either withering or plastic; the boys, on the other hand, looked sticky with sweat, and frighteningly uncomfortable in the tuxes their dates had undoubtedly picked out for them. Ally sighed thickly; she, unfortunately, also happened to be one of said sulking teenagers, only she had no date to blame it on. She had been hoping — no, she was supposed to hope — that Gavin would show up at the last minute, but obviously his pig mud run or whatever the hell it was was more important to him than his girlfriend.

Oh well. She never really liked that guy anyway.

She looked around for Trish, but she and Jace, along with Dez and Carrie and Chuck and anyone else she could've potentially socialized with, had vanished. Including Austin and Piper, and the thought of what they might be doing sent a prickle of jealousy to the pit of her stomach.

But the shame quickly sparking in the same place was slightly more intense.

She didn't have her phone with her, or she would've called her dad to pick her up hours ago. Stupid, stupid, stupid. What kind of healthy teenager leaves her phone on her nightstand on a daily basis? A glance at the cheap clock on the gym wall was enough to push the situation into an even more pathetic state of depression; prom didn't officially end for another hour, and it hadn't even been five minutes since she'd last checked.

Fine then. That was okay. Because she was leaving.

She had no other choice but to walk home, because the last city bus would have already left and she had no way to pay for a taxi. Oh well. Better than this hellhole. She was actually kind of glad she hadn't let Gavin take her to such a miserable prom, and that he hadn't shown up to it either — how embarrassing would that have been? And more importantly, how dare she expect him to miss his mud run for this? Sucky girlfriend she must be.

She paused by the punch bowl to ladle up an obligatory last glass of disgustingly sweet, room-temperature punch, to celebrate the famous teenage rebellion that had obviously finally occurred in her when she made the decision to leave.

Leave. Prom.

Voluntarily.

What the hell was she doing?

She managed to wrestle herself through the barricade of students along the gym walls with a couple of hasty "excuse me"s, and although she was plastered with other people's cologne, perfume, and sweat by the time she resurfaced, the breath of glorious fresh air racing into her lungs when she'd pushed open the door was reward enough. She sighed deeply, and the sweet, relaxing breath helped her realize how immensely tired she was; maybe she could hail a cab home anyway, instead of walking. Yeah, she'd do that. It would only cost like forty bucks, and she didn't have a clue where she's get that kind of money at ten thirty on a Friday night, but —

"Leaving already?"

Her head snapped up. Her first thoughts were along the lines of rapist, gang member, drug dealer. The voice, though, the melodic, sweet-as-honey voice, matched none of those descriptions, and she wheeled around just in time to see Austin step towards her, previously concealed by the school building's shadows.

"Hi," she uttered, relieved to see him. "Hi. Where's Piper?"

Austin shrugged, his hands in his pockets — a typical I-don't-give-a-damn boy move. "I dumped — she, uh, broke up with me."

He'd dumped her.

He was single.

Irrelevant, though. By the way.

"Oh. Well, I'm…sorry to hear that." The hell you are.

He didn't reply, just kind of looked her up and down, slowly following the fluttering scarlet material of her skirt to the glittering silver vomit on the top, finally coming up to level his hazel gaze with hers. "I, um…I meant to tell you that I didn't mean what I said earlier. About how you didn't look good."

He came a step closer. Two steps.

"Because you do look good, actually."

Her cheeks flared. Her heart skipped more beats than was healthy.

She locked her gaze determinedly to his. "You think so?"

"Yeah."

Her eyes took on a mind of their own as the began to wander with her thoughts, trailing from his stylishly rumpled hair down to the light stubble along his jawline, darting out to trace the sharp swoop of his lower lip. She forced herself to meet his gaze again, which had a burning, insistent look that only intensified as he took another step in her direction. He was close now.

Very close.

Her heart was absolutely palpitating.

And, as she searched his eyes for hesitation and instead found a deep, almost exaggerated desire, she decided that his must be, too.

Good. They were on the same page, then.

He started to smile. A real, crooked, genuine Austin Moon smile, that was all white teeth and chapped lips. And her heart became a professional gymnast. "Yeah," he repeated. "I really do."

She closed the gap, and promptly forgot why she shouldn't have.

He froze, just for a moment, as if expecting her to pull away. Like hell she would. His resistance only urged her to kiss him harder, and it was wonderful, so wonderful, the way he tasted like punch and Austin and cold nighttime air; she kissed him like she had never kissed him before, and as his lips began to move against hers she wondered what the hell she had been thinking when she decided she didn't like him like that anymore. His right trailed down her side, touches that were featherlight through the fabric of her dress, before coming to a stop at the small of her back; the other, his left, found her right, and laced their fingers together in a tight knot. His palm hot and rough and comfortable against hers as he drew their linked hands up beside his heart, and she could practically hear the muscle beating beneath the skin — or perhaps that was her own. She snaked her free hand into his hair, fisting the soft golden locks; she let them go as he drew her closer to him, his lips driving hers apart, and she dropped her hand to cup his shoulder.

They stood there for a minute, maybe two, maybe an hour or a day or a year, swaying on their feet as they danced to the rhythm of their thumping hearts, the cars racing in the distance the beat and the breeze whispering around them the melody. It hummed past their joint bodies and flattened the fabric of Ally's skirt against the back of her legs, slipping through the thin material like sand through a sieve; she was cold, but she didn't notice, and if she had noticed she wouldn't have cared.

It was impossible to say how long they stayed like that, memorizing the feel of each other's lips; even after they had pulled away, their faces cracked and plastered with ridiculous grins, neither left like they had planned to. They stood, together, in the chilly nighttime air, each hand squeezing the other's tight.

"Wouldn't it be nice," Austin said a long while later, "if I'd never met Piper and Gavin didn't exist?" He began to kiss her forehead.

"Mm. Yeah." A kiss to her cheek, to her eyelids, to the tips of her ears.

"We could have had months together. Years, maybe. If we'd…figured out what we felt earlier."

She let out a little sigh as his lips traced from her ear to her collar bone. "But I know — we know how we feel now. That's the important part."

"Yeah." They fell silent, the only sound the whisper of the breeze as it curled tightly around the night sky. Then he said, "Hey, Ally, I…I need to tell you something."

She nodded against his chest.

He bit his lip, taking her by the shoulders and tilting his face so that his gaze could meet hers; his eyes were a molten amber that had her weak at the knees. He looked away again, hastily. "Ally, it's like…it's like…okay. How to say this." He ran a hand through his hair, his lip between his teeth again. "It's like you're…you're the sun, okay, and I'm the earth, and basically everything of me is because of everything of you. I get to see you and admire you and need you every day of my life, and literally the only thing I have to do is keep myself the hell away from you — but that? It's the hardest goddamn thing, Ally, it's just impossible, because you are the most beautiful being I have ever seen and all I need is to be close to you. But then I just…it hits me that it doesn't matter how much I want you, because I can't have you, I just can't."

His face had been downcast as he said all this, but now he raised his eyes again to meet Ally's; she was slightly startled by the conflagration in them, the burning defiance abstract and out of place in his expression.

"Because I would ruin us, Ally. I'd ruin me. I would voluntarily be burning myself to ashes if I came close to you, and the crazy part? I would do it, and then I'd do it all again." He exhaled. "That's how I feel."

Oh.

She was speechless, because that was exactly how she felt — only, "you took the words right out of my mouth" didn't quite seem like an appropriate response.

So instead she raised herself to her tippy toes, just high enough to kiss him if she wanted to, and leveled her gaze with his; she knew she must be grinning like an idiot when a relieved smile began to bloom across his face. Not bothering to force her own away, she clasped her hands behind his neck and pressed a kiss squarely to his mouth.

"Don't," she murmured, in between said kisses, "say that."

Don't tie yourself to me.

Don't say things you might regret.

Don't love me more than you should.

Even though I want you to.

His hand came up to cup her cheek, rough and calloused against her skin. "I want to."

Then he kissed her again, and they walked, hand in hand, away from prom and into the night.

If this was bad, don't judge, because I wrote most of it in three hours tops. Except for Austin's little speech thing, that took like two extra hours of editing to perfect.

Thanks for sacrificing ten minutes of your life to read my work, and possibly an extra forty seconds if you reviewed it. I accept both love and hate, if you ever feel like leaving me either of those.

And for those interested, I have two almost-finished chapters of Rhetorical in the works, so those will be up soon :) thanks, love the love.

~Mia

The button's right there. Seriously.