Oh my Raura. You guys didn't give me 8 new reviews. You gave me a flippin 13! And I know that's not a lot to you people who have like 500 reviews per story, but it just makes me SO HAPPY. EVERY SINGLE ONE. OH MY GOD. FLIPPING OUT!

Anyway, my update day will from now on be FRIDAY. There will be a new chapter up every one OR two weeks, no set date. Just Friday. Simple enough, right? Updating this often means that chapters will be slightly shorter, so please keep that in mind.

Disclaimer: I don't own Austin & Ally or Hurricane by Bridgit Mendler. Okay? Cool.


Last time on Beautiful Noise (don't worry, I won't do these every chapter):

At first Ally refused to make eye contact. She never wanted to see that cursed shade of hazel ever again, never wanted to lose herself in them again, never wanted them to seek out hers ever again. Finally, though, she looked up.

Hazel eyes locked with chocolate ones and Ally's world collapsed around her shoulders, crumbling away to big pile of rubble and nothingness.


"Hi," Ally said awkwardly. She looked away from Austin. Instinctively, she began to reach up for a curl of hair to chew on, but she stopped herself; she was cool now, confident. Grown up. How often had she seen a grownup chew on hair? Never.

Biting her lip, she cautiously stole another glance at him, wondering what was rolling through his mind. Was it the same mess of thoughts she was thinking? Or was it something completely different? Sighing, she shook those questions away; she had no right to know what filled his brain, and he had no right to know about hers.

"Ally?"

She barely registered the sound of her name leaving his lips. His lips. So…soft…warm…kissable…

Stop that, she told herself sternly. There was absolutely no reason to be thinking about something as wrong as kissing Austin; he wasn't eligible for kissing anyway, because he wasn't a direct family member and he wasn't someone she was dating. He just didn't meet her standards.

Besides, it wasn't like she wanted to kiss him. Right?

"Ally. Earth to Ally." She became vaguely aware of the large, calloused hand that was waving in front if her face, almost hypnotically: up, down, up, down, up, down…

Her mental hand slapped herself. Focus! it told her angrily. She did as it told her to, forcing herself to look up at the blonde in front of her. "Yeah, what?"

"Nothing. You zoned out on me." He ran a hand through his hair. Ally noticed that he did that much more often nowadays; she wondered if it was a sign of anxiety or if he simply was becoming more vain.

She twiddled her thumbs in a meek attempt to make the situation less awkward. What was she supposed to say? What did he want her to say? "Oh Austin, I love you!" or "Oh Austin, I'm so deeply sorry for screaming at you! Please forgive me!"

Finally, without looking up from her hands, she spoke. "I'm sorry I yelled at you the other day." It came out more quietly than she had planned it to; more of a statement than an apology, much like a small be child having to say sorry for breaking his friend's crayon.

"It's okay," Austin replied. Picking at a hangnail, she noticed that he too was trying to make the conversation more casual. Like two good friends, and nothing more; not like two ex-lovers-best-friends. "I know you didn't mean it."

"Yeah." Ally fought to keep her temper down; she had meant every word of her shouted rant, and he knew it. Truth wasn't something to back away from, to duck under, to jump over: truth was something to accept. And she had accepted a long time ago that things had changed between her and Austin and that was just the way it was.

"I'm glad we've cleared that up," Ally said. She gave him a curt nod as if to excuse him before picking up her book and beginning to write again. She thought she had made herself clear, but apparently not; when she looked up, he was still standing there.

She sighed in exasperation. Another thing that she had learned to accept was the fact that boys are stubborn, and Austin was a boy, and that too was never going to change. She tapped her pencil against her book in irritation. Boys never learn. "Please go away," she said in the politest voice she could muster.

"Ally, I…" Austin began, but the brunette cut him off, tearing her eyes away from her book and locking them again with his.

"Get out of my store," she hissed, her voice deathly quiet. Raising an arm, she pointed. "There's the door."

She knew those words broke him. They had a special sort of value; it was one of Ally's first memories of the two of them together. But there was a difference between what was real and what was just a memory, because things had changed and would continue to change because that was how the world worked, and there was nothing either of them could do about it.

The blonde opened his mouth as if to say something, but quickly closed it again. Immediately Ally felt bad; his beautiful hazel eyes were draped with hurt and his eyebrows had furrowed in the way they did when he didn't want to believe something. Tears snuck into her eyes again, but she turned away from him so he couldn't see them drop; picking up her book, she held it in front of her face and continued writing.

After five minutes, she stole a glance over her shoulder. He was gone; but for some reason, she wanted him to come back again. She rubbed her temples in frustration; what was wrong with her? It was like a giant hand was using her thoughts for modeling clay: continuously molding and changing them, keeping her from making up her mind. Like the same hand was twisting up her insides, making her a completely different person. She couldn't hide that on the outside.

A slight smile graved her lips as she picked up her book again. And it's twisting up my insides, can't hide it on the outside*, she wrote. Perfect.


Clank clunk clank clank!

Every fiber of Ally's being was currently being wasted on resisting the temptation of plugging her ears as she and Nelson sat shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the piano. Ally had been teaching the small bespectacled boy piano for almost two years, but at every single lesson she wished she could quit; she knew she couldn't, though. She was Nelson's role model.

Nelson Sand** was the kid Ally had once been: dorky, unpopular, a nerd who only had three friends. Her mother had gone to Brazil for two years; his mother had died of cancer. The poor boy had only been five at the time, and he hadn't understood what was happening. His father was left with two kids, one of them being Nelson's little sister Jenna, who had been only a year old.

Just as it had been for Ally, music was really the only thing that kept the nine-year-old intact, and if it was as important to him as it was to her…well, it was her duty to guide him through it. She was the closest thing to a mother Nelson had, and a mother's role was to help her child grow up.

"Ally?" A small finger poked her shoulder and she became aware that the noise had stopped. "Ally, are you there?"

Nelson was looking up at her through the thin lenses of his glasses, which had slid down the bridge if his nose and had come to a rest at the tip. His fingers had left the piano keys; instead they had returned to his lap, where they patiently rested, folded into each other.

"I'm fine." Ally mustered a weak smile. It was nearly painful to spread her lips apart and stretch her cheeks. She wanted them to fall slack again, so she could continue to host a one-person pity-party.

Nelson cocked his head, almost like a confused dog trying to understand her: big, innocent hazel eyes studying her as if through a microscope. His eyes were very nice. They were so deep, and so hazel, almost—she realized with an inner smile—the same shade as Austin's.

No! she reminded herself angrily. Stop thinking about him!

But no matter how hard she tried, he wouldn't get out of her mind. He was like…like…she tried to think of an insulting metaphor. He was like those stupid aphids that ate up her garden every year. She could spray them and spray them, drench them in bug spray, but they would only come back again the next year as if she had never drove them away and the bug spray would have to come out of the cupboard all over again.

Just as she let out a small groan of frustration, the door of Sonic Boom swung open and and two boys—a blonde one and a tall one—entered, bringing with them the chilly air that lingered after a storm. The rain had stopped falling hours ago, but the wet feeling still remained, the clouds still stretched tight across the sky, threatening to burst loose with another storm.

"Oh, God," she groaned. She grabbed Nelson's shoulders and tried to duck out of sight behind the small boy's back. "Hide me!"

"Why?" he questioned. "It's just Austin and his wacko friend—"

"Hey Nelson." Suddenly Austin was upon them, casually peering over Nelson's shoulder at Ally, who was attempting to fold her body up and become invisible. Please don't talk to me, please don't talk to me, please don't talk to me, please please plea—

"Ally."

Crap.

"I can see you." She could practically feel his smirk burning into the back of her head as he towered over them. Nelson, who apparently noticed the tension between the two teenagers, quickly leapt up and scuttled away to Dez, not wanting to be caught in the middle of the emotional storm about to break loose. This left Ally awkwardly hunched over and looking like a ridiculous idiot. Why could Austin make her feel so awkward lately?

She had always been an awkward person: it was in her blood. Written in the stars. Set in stone. Whatever she wanted to call it, she was awkward. But Austin…he just made her feel awkward. She knew she was just that way, and she was so used to it that she usually didn't even notice it; only when she was thinking about it or when someone pointed it out. Like right now, for example, she was feeling awkward because Austin was intimidating her and she was in an uncomfortable position, and because she was thinking about being awkward, which only proved the fact that she was generally nothing more but an awkward little girl.

She looked up at the blonde, who, as she had predicted, had a smirk–although it was hiding a smile– etched on his face. Ally's eyes traced over the fine curve of it; it looked so soft. The smirk was sort of…what was the word? Pleasant? Sweet? She drew her lip into her mouth in concentration of defining it. Cute. The smirk was freaking cute! She shuddered, angry with herself at the perfect word she had involuntarily come up with. That smirk was going to be the death of her. There she went again. Awkward.

"Earth to Ally." Austin's voice drizzled down upon her like a fine mist. Why did he have to be talking to her right now? Could he not see that she was very busy thinking about being awkward and about how adorable his smirk was? Don't answer, don't, don't, don't

"Yeah, what?" Ally. Stop talking!

"Do you wanna…go…work on the song for the webcast?" Austin's voice was—if at all possible—hesitant, almost. Like his confidence was finally wavering, bending, but not quite broken.

The words not really fizzed to the tip of her tongue, but she bit them away. She knew it wouldn't be fair to Austin if she refused; wasn't that one of the reasons they had broken up in the first place? Because their relationship was getting in the way of their partnership? And, of course, there were broken hearts and exes involved in the breakup, but that wasn't the point.

"Sure," she said finally, caramel-tipped curls bobbing as she nodded. She stood up and stalked, slightly unwillingly, up the Sonic Boom stairs and into the practice room, Austin close on her heels. She made a point of "accidentally" slamming the door in his face right as he was about to go inside, making him walk straight into it and earning him a quick shock of pain in his forehead. "Oops, sorry," she said, biting back a giggle as she let him inside.

"Not funny," he muttered. The duo disappeared through the door, leaving Dez and Nelson together in the store.

"That was scary," Nelson whispered. "I've never seen Ally like that." He ran a hand through his short sandy curls, adjusting is glasses in the process. Dez couldn't help but smile down at the little boy in front of him. Nelson was so…so pure, so innocent. He had not yet been exposed to the wonders and horrors of the world yet: he had only seen a little sliver of it all, a tiny piece of a puzzle that was much too big for one small boy to complete. He had no idea of what love could make people do, let alone what it could and would do to two stubborn opposites like Austin and Ally. Two people who felt so much for each other, but hadn't learned how to play the game of love yet—only the game of denial.

A grim smile lightly curved Dez's lips as he ruffled Nelson's hair. "Believe me," he told the kid, "I've seen much worse go down."


I really don't like how this chapter ended up. I can't believe I wrote an entire thing about being awkward. That is so stupid. Oh well.

*Again, a line from Hurricane.

**Y'all know Nelson. His last name was never mentioned on the show, so I just made it the same as the actor who portrays him.

So yeah. There ya have it. Oh, and could you copy-paste your favorite part of this chapter into a review? I want to know what you guys like.

Also, now that I know you guys can do 13 (!) reviews on one chapter, let's shoot for 9 reviews this time, yeah? You can do it, I believe in you! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME GET THESE! I'm begging you. Like, yeah. Mia tired and frustrated ;)

~Mia