author's note: i know i need to upload another chapter of Summer Nights but this story kind of wrote itself. sorry for the horrible ending, but i may write a sequel in the same universe with famous!Austin I don't own Austin & Ally, which belongs to Disney, the title is from the poem here i am, and the quote is from Neil Gaiman's Sandman.
x
we all wanted the love songs to be true
Austin/Ally
"I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend…I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend…"
—The Sandman Vol 7: Brief Lives
x
He liked being famous — really; he did — most of the time at least.
He liked the constant buzz of excitement and the aura of splendor that always surrounded him, he liked the crowds screaming his name — "Austin! Austin! Austin!" — and he liked the thrill of the stage where it's like the whole world consists of him, his guitar, the band, and the microphone. Where his heartbeat is measured by the pounding of the drum, and he can't see a thing because he's blinded by the stage lights but it doesn't matter because he's free.
He likes this all, really, but sometimes — mostly when he's in a sentimental mood, he wonders what it'd be like to be normal for once. To be able to go grab a pizza without girls — and boys — screaming his name, or to be able to leave the house without a security guard, or three.
It's one of those days again, where he really wants to be normal, but alas, no such luck. "Mom, do I really have to throw a party?" he asks his full-time agent and part-time mom when she walks briskly past his room in the penthouse, she stops for a second — just a second, of course, because she's too busy to spare more than that on her only son — and stares at him through narrowed eyes.
"Can't you see, Austin? This is all for your own good! People from MTV are going to be here, and it has to be perfect — your record sales are depending on that." And with that cheerful note, she's gone, Austin can distinctly hear him shouting, "No! I said Thai food — not Chinese! This is a travesty! You'll never work — " her voice gets cut off as Austin slams the door, sighing.
"I can't believe I even thought that reasoning with her would change anything," he mumbles to his reflection, "I should have known that her one, true family is my music career." Saying it aloud, despite the fact that it was most likely true, didn't make it any easier.
There was no point in even attempting to change her position on the matter, and so, taking a deep breath, and grabbing his red hoodie and sunglasses, Austin slipped out the door.
He wanted to be alone right now, not that the boneheaded security guards would even notice, or care, so he needed a way to get out of the penthouse without anyone noticing, for they'd all tell his mother, and she'd go on a tangent about how his career would be ruined. Shuddering, he turned three hundred and sixty degrees, looking for the nearest exit, and he saw it — in a window.
Was this dangerous? Yes. Was this risky? Yes. Was it likely to end his career if he slipped and fell? Yes — his career if not his life. And yet, knowing all that, he still slipped through the window, hoisting one leg over the other and praying to God or the stars or whatever the hell was up there that he wouldn't slip, he landed, cat style, on the terrace.
He prayed that no one would recognize him — or if they did that no one would mention anything—as he crept slowly down the rickety stairs on the balcony.
The sun was just setting, leaving the sky tinged with purples and royal blues and hints of a fading gold and everything looks so different when you're not surrounded by an entourage or cameras and you can be yourself.
He smiles, freedom is liberating.
x
He goes to a pizza place first.
Not a gourmet place with its orderly staff and Italian chefs, but a real, honest to goodness, greasy, place where people shout orders to the back in a cramped kitchen and it's real, it's real. His mother wouldn't be caught dead here, and his dad would sooner close down the place down.
He orders a pepperoni pizza which is so greasy that it leaves stains on his plate — which is plastic and cheap and disposable, like everything in the restaurant — and it's the best food he's ever had, really.
After that he walks around aimlessly, entering thrift stores or other places that seem interesting that his parents would never allow him to enter. Being normal is quite fun.
He feels a small twinge of satisfaction, hiding away from his parents like this, although they probably haven't even noticed he's missing yet as they're schmoozing their way to music royalty.
The night in New York is actually quite beautiful; the sky looks darker than it actually is because of the lights, but it could still be daytime. People wander up and down, with seemingly no plan of stopping anytime soon, and Austin realizes that truly, the city never sleeps.
A huge crowd of Japanese tourists all jump off a tour bus, pointing at monuments and snapping pictures on Polaroid cameras and one of them jostles his blue Yankees baseball cap off his head, and before he can put it back on —
"Oh my God! I recognize those golden locks anywhere! It's Austin Moon!" But he's already started running, however, the crowd seems to press around him, compressing him and people are chanting his name, ("Austin! Austin! Austin!") but for the first time he doesn't want to be seen, he doesn't want to be known, and he keeps running — thank goodness his mother makes him keep in shape, he thinks wryly — until his legs ache and his heart's pounding so fast it just might break out of his ribs.
He's on a side street now, he doesn't know where, but the flashing lights and the noise and pollution aren't that far off, so he deduces that it'll only be a few seconds, a minute at the most, until they catch up with him. He pulls out his BlackBerry, wondering if he should use it to call his parents, but he hesitates.
He knows how much trouble he'll be in when he gets home, and he isn't looking forward to that, but he can hear the crowd in the distance, screaming, getting closer; he doesn't have much time.
"Get in here," a voice hisses from the left. He turns and sees an open doorway.
Contrary to popular belief, he's not stupid. He knows not to take candy from strangers, or to get into strange vans. And he definitely knows not to listen to disembodied voices telling him to come into their homes.
"Are you crazy?" the voice asks him again, this time taking a more urgent tone, "they'll tear you apart!" The owner of the voice steps into the light and Austin has to remind himself how to breathe.
She's pretty, in a natural way, with soft brown hair and eyes and pink lips. "Uhh," he tries to remember how to speak English but all knowledge seems to have fled from him at this point, apparently. "Who are you?"
"That's not important," she says, rolling her eyes. "What's important is the crowd that's going to eat you alive in a few seconds unless you get in!" Austin sighs, weighing his options, and, before he has time to regret it, runs through the doorway. "I thought so," she says with a small smile.
"Thanks," he replies, covertly glancing at her with a sidelong glance. "You're not going to ask for my autograph, too, are you?" He says this jokingly, but she laughs.
"I already have it, so not worth the trouble."
"Everyone wants a bit of the Moon," he smirks in that way that gets most girls fawning over him, but this girl is different, and she just laughs, unimpressed.
"Of course we do, you just keep thinking that," she says with a grin that lights up her features. "Well — aren't you going to ask where we are?"
"Uh, right." The girl had been so distracting — and so different from the girls he was normally used to — that all that had fled his mind. "So — where are we?"
"We're — wait, shh," she stops talking for a moment and they both listen to the buzz outside the door, the crowd was right there. "Austin," she says with an air or determined calm. "Go into the pantry — first door on the left — and don't make any noise."
He's not stupid; he usually didn't take orders from strangers — or from anyone at all. But something about the girl just made him trust her, and just as he dashed into the pantry — which was rather large and luxurious — the door literally shook with the force of repeated knocking.
"Hello?" The girl opens the outside door casually, as if there wasn't a huge mod of hysterical teenage girls — and forty-something soccer moms — outside her back door. "What's the matter?"
"Austin Moon!" He heard another girl, who seemed to be the leader of the mob, shout, "he ran this way — have you seen him?"
Austin holds his breath, hoping and praying that the girl could lie convincingly.
"Oh my God, Austin Moon?" she says with such a loud squeal that the windowpanes in the pantry shook. "Where? You have to tell me if you see him! I have all his CDs, he's soooo cute!" Austin blushes, somehow, he found it incredibly endearing that a girl he didn't even know — but who had probably saved him from an insane mob — called him cute.
"Oh, so you haven't seen him?" another voice asks, disappointed. There are infuriated murmurs from the crowd, and they slowly fade and are cut off as the girl closes the door.
"Oh my gosh, you are a life saver," he breathes the second the door snaps shut and she gives him a thumbs up, signalling that the crowd is gone. He wants to hug her, thank her, something, but she frowns.
"You'd better get home, Austin," she says, glancing at the clock, "your party's going to start soon. I'll call Charles with the limo." She dashes through the door and makes a call.
Five minutes later, he's in a lavish white limo with bottles of champagne and Perrier and tinted windows and he's going back home — to his party, the party he never wanted.
It takes half the journey for him to realize that he doesn't even know what her name is.
x
"Austin, where have you been?" his father asks him the second he gets into the Penthouse. To any normal person, this would be a sign of concern, but Austin knows that his dad only noticed he was gone because his colleagues wanted to see his musical trophy son and he couldn't be found. "You're quite lucky that you are home now, young man, your mother is going spare."
But he can't bring himself to care exactly what his mother thinks right now because he remembers the girl, with her soft brown hair and rose coloured lips. He doesn't even know her name, and yet the mysterious girl is infiltrating his mind.
"I was at the gym, dad," he lies automatically, the lie slipping through his teeth easily. "You know, I have to look good for the party."
His dad looks unbelieving, but Austin just walks past him into his room.
x
He's always hated big star parties, especially when he's the center of attention.
Despite popular belief, he actually doesn't like being the center of attention all the time — just most of the time. Of course, when it comes to crawling his way up the music industry, his parents don't care what he thinks about the parties as long as he smiles and talks to all the right people and makes all the right friends.
This party is no exception. For the first hour of the party, he is led by his mother to various people who she thinks will be "great allies in our musical goal" and it takes all his gumption to not say, "Don't you mean your goals?" But he doesn't, he just bites his tongue so hard that he starts bleeding and smiles and nods and laughs at the right time.
"This is Lester Dawson," his mom hisses in that fake voice she uses, her lips in what is obviously meant to be a smile, "he's a big shot record producer for the label Sonic Boom, and you'd best to impress him." Austin stares at the man, who looks kind of familiar, and smiles.
"Hello, Mr. Dawson," he's good at this, faking smiles and acting, and he does it almost every day, all day. "I must say, I'm a huge fan of your work."
x
Finally, when it seems that his mother has introduced him to every influential person in the room, he excuses himself to get some fresh air and he remembers the feeling of biting into a greasy pizza.
He looks up at the stars, twinkling away right above him, argentine and silver and blazing through the night sky. It almost seems permanent, even though even the brightest stars fade away eventually, right here, right now, he can pretend that it all lasts forever.
"Enjoying yourself?" a voice calls from behind him and he jumps, but the voice is familiar.
"Hello," he says awkwardly, smoothing down his hair — why did she have to make him feel so awkward? — and smiling at her genuinely. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm obviously invited to the party," she rolls her eyes like the answer is obvious, and really, it kind of is. "I saw you talking to my father earlier."
"Fath — ?" and then he realizes with a gasp, the same brown eyes and matching smile, "You're Allyson Dawson." She stiffens, bristling.
"It's Ally, actually," she offers as explanation. "I can see that you enjoy these parties as much as I do." He laughs, because she's obviously escaping, too, and she joins in and for a minute, it's the only noise on the terrace.
"Thanks for saving me, before, I mean," he says and he gulps because Ally is kind of making him nervous even though she's just standing there with a cute smile on her face. "I really appreciate it. And thanks for not freaking out."
"No problem," she grins, "I know how you feel — my father is Lester Dawson, remember? I kind of hate this lifestyle." She stares at him for a long moment through her eyelashes, as if she's trying to discover the secrets of the universe in his eyes. He blushes.
"I like it." She stares at him as if she doesn't believe him. "Well, I like some of it — the music part. I like singing and playing the guitar and that feeling you get when you're on stage and the crowd is cheering your name and nothing exists in the universe but you and your guitar," he says and it's true, "that's the part of music I like — that's the reason I put up with all this, you know?"
"I know — actually, I don't know, but I understand," she says with a cute smile that makes his heart pound and his palms sweat. "I write songs and my dad wants me to sing them, but I can't — I can't but no one will listen."
"Can I see the songs?" he asks, "If you don't mind, I mean."
She smiles and takes his hand. It's warm and soft and perfect.
x
They sit at the grand piano in his bedroom, both on the bench, pressed side by side. It's kind of squished there, but it's also kind of nice. "I wrote this song last year," she says and she sounds kind of nervous, like she's afraid he'll hate it or something.
"Come on and take a chance, make a stand and break, break, break, break, down the walls," she sings and that's the moment when the butterflies start.
"You're amazing, Ally Dawson," he says, "did you know that?"
"Actually, I did," she replies with a grin, "but you're kind of amazing too, Austin Moon."
"Really?"
"I've never meant anything more," she rolls her eyes, but she smiles and that has to mean something.
It's right then and there that he decides that right now is everything and nothing else in the entire world matter but them.
She grabs his hand and it's like all the cheesy love songs from the '80s that he likes to listen to when no one's around are true, and it means the world.
x
fin
author's note ii: sorry for the general suckishness! don't favourite or alert without leaving a review!
- madeline (overstreets)