"Make Me Shiver Without Warning"
by: singyourmelody
Disclaimer: Don't own Austin & Ally characters. Title is from Ed Sheeran's "Cold Coffee."
The night he wins a Grammy for "Best New Artist," they decide to celebrate in style.
And she doesn't normally drink but this is not a normal night. She's wearing a designer dress (so what if she can't pronounce the name?) and her high heels are three inches higher than she usually wears and they are at this posh club and there is magic surrounding them.
They both can feel it and when he orders a round (and then another and then another and then maybe two or three more) she doesn't object.
His song (their song) starts streaming through the speakers, and he drags her onto the dance floor and pulls her close to him as his fingers press into her hipbones and his heart beats in time against her back. She doesn't know what makes her do it (well, really she does—two strangers called Bacardi and Tequila and the fact that she never knew she wanted this so much, until this very moment) but she reaches her arm up and wraps it around his neck, pulling his head even closer to hers. He's practically resting it on her right shoulder and it should feel weird, them being this close, but any weirdness melted away with their third drink and this is the best night of his life (their lives) so she doesn't really care.
She turns her head slightly to ask about getting some water, but he turns his as well and suddenly their faces are half an inch apart and she's not sure what to do.
For just a moment.
Then she pulls back and heads to the bar.
"Water" she mouths to him and he nods and keeps dancing.
They'll dance a few more songs together before people start recognizing him and they bolt from the club into a waiting car to take them back to the hotel.
And she's more than a little drunk (she knows this) but she can't stop laughing at the photographer who fell into a fountain trying to get a picture of them and he can't seem to stop playing with the ends of her hair. He picks up a piece and then drops it, then picks it up again and twirls it in his fingers and she decides two can play that game so she tugs lightly on his cropped and expertly gelled hair and he pulls away from her.
"No touching the hair," he says in between bursts of laughter.
"Then no touching my hair," she counters.
"Oh this is how we're playing this?"
"Mmhmm. If I don't get to touch, you don't get to touch." She's not really making sense, but she's suddenly finding words sort of strange and sentences a little ridiculous. What's the point of speaking anyway?
"I dunno. Let's stop talking," he says and she realized she voiced her last thought out loud.
"Oops. I didn't mean to say that," she says. "Words are hard." And then they're laughing all over again as the car pulls to a stop and the driver opens the door for them.
He manages to walk her to her door and gives her half of a hug before standing back and just looking at her.
He tilts his head. "I won tonight."
"Yeah you did," she says, smiling a small smile and leaning against the doorway.
"We won tonight."
"Nah," she says, nudging him with her hand. "I just write the stuff, you make it come alive."
He grabs her hand before she can pull away. "Nah," he says, grinning.
Their hands swing back and forth a moment before he finally lets go, his eyes never leaving hers.
She opens her purse and pulls out her key card.
"Guess I'm going to bed now."
"Yeah," he sighs. "I don't want this to ever end."
"You'll still have that trophy tomorrow, you know. No one's gonna come steal it."
"I know. . ." he says, his voice trailing off and he takes a step closer to her.
She looks up at him and she knows he has something else to say but he's not saying it so she says, "Night Austin."
He gives a small nod. "Night, Ally."
She manages to get the key card in the slot on her third try and shuts the door, leaning against it. It was different tonight. Something was. Things felt new and promising and suddenly, with the click of her door frame, it was as if she had shut it down. Closed more than just the door behind her.
And she doesn't want that.
So she drops her purse and leaves her key card safely tucked in the inner pocket (ignoring what she knows that means) and she kicks off her too-high heels and walks barefoot out the door.
He's three doors down from her so it doesn't take her too long to get there but it's enough time for her to change her mind and then change it again. She's barely sober but she has enough of her senses to know what she's doing when she reaches up and knocks twice on the door. He answers after a minute with a brief, "Comin.'"
And he's surprised to see her but his face softens just a little bit.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey," she says, shifting back and forth on the balls of her feet.
"Did you get shorter?" he asks and she laughs too loudly.
"Can I come in?" she asks and he locks his eyes with hers.
"Um, yeah." He opens the door wider and he looks like he's quickly sobered up.
"Nice room. Looks just like mine."
"What? I distinctly remember asking for a bigger room than yours," he says, teasing.
"Well we can't always get what we want," she states.
"I do."
"Oh really?" she asks.
"Of course. Music career? Got it. Fame? Got it. Grammy award? Got it. And now. . ." he trails off.
"Now what?" she questions. It makes her pulse race and her blood feel hot.
He steps closer to her. "Now you tell me."
She nudges him again with her hand. "Cop out."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah really. I think you're scared."
"I'm scared?" he asks, disbelief written all over his face.
"Mmhmm. Terrified."
"Of what? You?" he says, laughing.
"I can be very intimidating."
He doesn't respond but keeps laughing.
"Well sometimes I can at least be a little threatening. . ."
This only makes him laugh harder.
She holds up her finger. "Let's remember who actually had the courage enough to come here? I didn't see you knocking down my door. . ."
He stops laughing then and looks at her.
And she has to focus very hard on her breathing. Make sure her lungs expand and contract, expand and contract.
Because when he's looking at her like that she's pretty sure everything stops, even that thing in the center of her chest, keeping her alive.
"I didn't know you wanted me to come," he says finally.
She shrugs. "I didn't know it either until I started walking here."
"Oh."
And she's mentally cursing herself because she's pulled an Ally and gone and made the whole thing awkward and really, she's twenty-one years old, hasn't she learned how to act around guys yet?
But he doesn't seem to notice any of that as he moves so that he is standing right in front of her and suddenly that moment in the club seems like a long time ago.
"You smell like alcohol," she whispers.
"So do you."
And it's probably the least sexy thing anyone could have said to her, but this is Austin and at this point, he could have sung the phonebook to her and she would have swooned, so she looks up at him through her eyelashes and gives a slight nod. And she knows that's all he was waiting for because he reaches down and kisses her then and it's as if she's drifting to sleep and finally waking up at all once. He pulls her even closer than they were at the club and his hands are everywhere, but then again so are hers, and he tastes bitter like booze but also like something else, something inherently Austin.
He moans a little bit and says Ally before he backs her up against the wall and pulls her up higher so that he can kiss her better. She always was too short for him, but that doesn't seem to matter when she's kissing down his neck and his hands are ruining her carefully blown out hair and she's pretty sure her makeup is smudged, but this is what she came here for so she doesn't think twice about it.
Eventually he pulls back a little bit and the full force of what they just did comes rushing back at her, so she ducks her head to hide her blushing cheeks. He notices though and bends his head down to meet her eyes.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she says, shaking her head a little bit.
"Okay," he shrugs. He steps back again and grins. "I told you I always get what I want."
"And you want me."
His eyes flash with something she's never seen before.
"You want me too," he says.
And well, she does.
"You want me more," she counters. And she's not entirely sure where this flirty side is coming from, but she's going to take the advice of Jamie Foxx and blame it on the alcohol.
He exhales. "Probably."
She blinks. She wasn't expecting that.
"It's kind of hard to cool down from something like that," he says, pointing towards the area of the room where they had just been standing.
She nods and walks towards him. "What if I don't want you to cool down?"
"Ally," he says and it's almost a warning. A warning that there's no going back once they cross that line.
She stands on her tiptoes and leans up to his ear, stumbling only slightly so that he has to wrap an arm around her waist to steady her.
And she says, "I've already come from all the way down the hall. Don't you think you should have to do some of the work?"
He reaches around and picks her up, setting her down on the edge of the bed. He moves to sit next to her and begins kissing her jawline as her eyes flutter closed and her fingers gather up the fabric of his shirt.
She wakes up to his phone buzzing and his arm around her waist. She's not sure where she is at first but then she looks down at him sleeping next to her and realizes that she might puke.
There's a reason why she doesn't drink, she thinks as she lies down on the bathroom floor, wearing his button-down from the night before. She never was one to hold her alcohol well.
The third time she throws up she decides that honestly, it might just be better for God to take her now, when she feels her hair being gently pulled away from her face. She wipes her mouth and turns to look at him.
He, of course, looks perfect. Sometimes life really isn't fair.
When he's sure she's done for the moment, he leaves the bathroom and comes back with a bottle of water from the minibar.
"I must look awful," she says after taking a few sips.
"Are you kidding right now? You're the prettiest puker I've ever seen," he says, sitting next to her on the floor. "Um. . . this," he says, gesturing to the toilet, "doesn't have anything to do with what happened last night does it?"
She groans loudly. "It has everything to do with the fact that I should have stopped at one drink."
"Lightweight," he says, smiling. He reaches up and brushes one of her curls behind her ear.
"So are we okay?" he asks.
"Okay?"
"Yeah, with everything that happened."
And she realizes that this is the brush off. This is the "thanks for a good time, let's not do this again." This is the breakup via post-it note. Only without the post-it.
"Because it all still feels kind of unreal to me," he continues. "I mean, I won a Grammy last night. That's crazy enough. Then you and I happened. I had to pinch myself this morning to make sure it was all real," he says and she's confused.
"It was real," she says slowly.
He slides closer to her. "Good, because that was the best night of my life. Even if it does feel like someone is jack hammering through my skull this morning."
And she lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding.
"Are you going to throw up again?" he asks and she shrugs. "Because I'd really like to kiss you good morning, but I can't do that with your head in a toilet."
"Austin!"
"Well, I could try but it'd probably be kind of hard and gross. And you probably should brush first. . ."
"Didn't pack my toothbrush. Guess I'll have to use yours."
"No way, pukey."
She smiles and shakes her head at him. "Last night was the best night of my life too."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
His phone rings in the other room so he sighs and gets up to get it, playing with her hair as he walks out.
He's got a solid day of interviews booked, because that's what happens when you're a Grammy award winning artist and he makes her go with him to all of them (because "resisting him" was never high on the list of things she is good at).
He skirts around all of the personal questions the reporters ask and she can tell that he tries his hardest not to look at her standing on the other side of the room but that he's also failing miserably at it. She momentarily wonders how anyone can ever keep a relationship a secret when it feels like her heart is going to explode out of her chest at any moment.
But Martin, his manager doesn't seem to notice and neither do Dez and Trish when they call to congratulate him. She can hear little Sammy running around in the background screaming about pencil monsters and she looks at him and she decides that she might want her own pencil monster someday. Not today, but . . . someday. She likes the way that word feels on her tongue.
She brings him a sandwich between interviews and he holds her hand for far too long as she hands it off so she pulls it back firmly and send him a warning look. His eyes are dancing with mischief, however, and she can already tell this, whatever this messy complicated beautiful thing is, is going to be an adventure.
Finally, after his last interview they stumble back to the hotel. He is completely exhausted, they both are really, and she doesn't bother with her own room, but follows him into his where they collapse on top of the covers and she curls her body into his to keep warm.
She wakes up with her feet all tangled up in his and their hipbones perfectly aligning and when his alarm starts ringing, he swats it off, whispers "Good morning," and kisses her soundly.
(They miss most of his interviews that day but neither of them seem to mind.)
End.
Thanks for reading and reviewing. Love to all.