DISCLAIMER: I do not own, nor do I profit from, the Disney Channel program 'Austin & Ally' or the characters therein. They are simply used in the following story for my own entertainment. Original story "I'll Be Seeing You" by PaganBaby. Names and some locations have been changed. No copyright infringement intended.
Chapter Fourteen
Ally stood in the shower stall, breathing heavily as she let the stream of hot water cascade over her face. Her palms were pressed against the tiles in front of her. She was so exhausted.
A quiet squeak was heard as the shower door closed behind her and two strong arms wrapped themselves around her slender waist line. A shiver ran down her spine at the cool flesh and tickle of hot breath on her ear.
"I'm so sorry I hurt you," he whispered, peppering her moist neck with soft gentle kisses. "You know I could never forget you…"
Her lip quivered at the thought but she pushed the pain away, only focusing on the feel of him all around her, behind her, pressing into her. All she thought about from the moment they made their first contact was having him there with her, and now, after a scare, she had him here.
Carefully she pushed off the wall and let herself melt back into his strong body, feeling his large hands work their way up from her sharp hip bones, over the skin of her belly, and tickle the undersides of her breasts.
She longed for him to just squeeze her, grip her with all he had, but he remained gentle and soft. Carefully he turned her around so she was facing him, and she watched as his eyes searched her own. She stared into the dark abyss of his brown eyes, knowing with perfect certainty that this was the man she was meant to spend the rest of her life with.
He lifted her and pressed her back against the tile wall of the shower. She expected it to feel cold and send chills through her skin but it didn't, so she simply smiled and ran her hands through his unruly blonde locks. She gazed at his features, noting how perfectly imperfect he was.
The spray of water landed between them, beating down on both their chests where they were pressed together and she gasped as he swiftly entered her, an instant shudder running through her entire body.
Their bodies were wet, but between them was a unique slickness that could only be caused by her instant arousal for him. He barely needed to push and he was filling her deep before pulling out swiftly and repeating his motions.
She tried to lean forward and kiss him as he moved within her, but each time she moved her mouth to be near his, he placed his lips on her skin instead. Kissing ever so gently on her cheek, her neck, her collarbone, and finally on her chest when she finally choked out a sob.
"Austin," she cried quietly. "Please…"
She needed to feel more, experience more of him and he was treating her like paper thin glass. What she needed was for him to bruise her, throw her against the wall and pound into her mercilessly to show his fervor for her, but it never came.
In one instant she was sobbing his name and lightly running her fingers through his soft hair, and the next her eyes were widening as she was being let go and was falling hard and fast.
oOo oOo oOo
Ally jumped in her bed and her eyes flew open. Her bedroom was bright. Almost too bright as the sun poured in through the wide open floor length windows, the long white drapes moving lightly with the outdoor air trickling in with the slight breeze.
She panted as she blinked rapidly, letting her still tired eyes adjust to the invasion of sudden light.
It was a dream. It had all been just a dream.
For just a snippet of time she thought she had gotten him back; that he was hers again and they would be okay. Rules of real life be damned.
But no.
It had all been just a dream.
Tears rapidly formed and she fought to keep herself from crying as everything came rushing back at her again. This happened all too often and she wondered why. Why was God, or the powers, or whoever controlled this thing called life, why were they torturing her?
Her sleep had been so irregular. She couldn't sleep soundly at night so she would stay up, working on the home's renovations or writing music. She would nap intermittently in the day, the sorrow filling her too much to handle with so many eyes on her. When she would stay awake in the day she would hope and pray that her phone would ring, that his voice would greet her on the other end looking for her and revealing that he remembered everything.
It never came.
It was quiet as she sat cross-legged on her otherwise empty, made up bed, leaning back against the wooden headboard and watching the curtains move ever so slightly, or what she could see of them through her water-logged eyes.
The last four weeks had been the hardest of her life.
"Austin it's me, it's Ally," she pleaded with him. "Baby, don't you know me? Don't you remember me?"
He stared at her blankly.
Her eyes darted around the room for a quick moment before she bent down so that she could whisper to him. "The house?" she pleaded. She looked up through her lashes at everyone in the room who was staring at her, many of the hospital staff quickly turning and pretending not to eavesdrop on their exchange. She looked back down at him. "The music… anything?"
It was clear he was groggy and disoriented. She wondered if her pleas were only confusing him more.
Ally stood straight and watched as several doctors and nurses hustled and bustled around him, pressing buttons and removing tubes, adding new ones, taking vitals. They were preparing to take him down to CAT scan to see what was going on.
He was still staring at her like she was a complete stranger.
"Dad," he said, barely tearing his gaze from her and looking at his father to help him.
"Austin, my boy," he silently wept, just awestruck at the miracle that had played out before him. "I love you Austin, I'm so sorry."
"What happened?" Austin asked.
Mike, still holding his son's hand and shaking, looked up at her and shook his head. "I'm sorry, miss…"
Tears flowed down Ally's face as her vision blurred and she fell to the background of a myriad of people in the room. No one even knew she was there anymore. Her hearing seemed to fade out, like when you go underwater and everything just sounds muffled and far away.
With tears streaming down her face and her body feeling numb, she turned away, walking in what felt like slow motion toward the door.
Ally took another deep breath in and rubbed her chilled arms, closing her eyes and willing the painful memory to just stop replaying in her head like a bad broken record.
No matter what she did, it wouldn't stop. It was the hardest and most relentless, helpless feeling she'd had in her time since being home.
Never mind that she came home and had to deal with police report after police report, explaining the manner of Trent's death and the events that brought him to the house.
Never mind she had lied to the officers about the real reason she had called Trent threatening him that night. They'd really throw her in a psychiatric center if she explained that it was the justice for the ghost of her not-dead lover had prompted her to do it.
Never mind that she now had an enormous hospital bill to pay from her stay the one and only night she was there for the treatment of her injuries.
Never mind that she now had several news stations and papers knocking on her door daily to get more of the story of 'old Starr Mansion' and the mysterious death of the suspected murderer of the previous tenants.
Never mind that every local magazine and newspaper featured stories of the unbelievable; the man who awoke from a seven year coma and the question of whether or not he would return to the scene of the crime to speak about his experience.
Ally was the talk of the town now. The 'crazy' girl who claimed the ghost of a not-dead man was living in her home with her and interacting with her. They would talk about the insane coincidence that on the same night that the now confirmed murderer of the previous tenant was killed in a freak accident on her front lawn, she would leave the craziness of her home only to be found in Austin's room of all people, on the eve of his impending death, and argue with doctors to keep him alive only to have him awaken right then and there.
She knew they all thought she was nuts, and so she wasn't surprised in the least bit when she was recommended a psych visit from her doctor as was prescribed some funky medication she refused to take.
None of that mattered. None of that seemed to bother her. The only thing she could focus on was that, despite her initial elation that the man she was truly madly deeply in love with was alive, after months and months of believing he was actually dead, he now had absolutely no idea who she was. Like she never existed in his world.
She was nobody.
The initial shock was hard enough, but Trish had reassured her that perhaps he was disoriented and confused from the spiritual shift or whatever you want to call it. But when, two weeks later, he was released and went home with his father and he still had no memory of her at all… she was downright devastated.
She hadn't slept, not really. Every twenty four hours or so she would doze off, her body shutting down from pure exhaustion, but it would only last an hour or two. And even then, her sleep was restless, because all she did was dream of him, and his smile, and his touch, as she would wake up sobbing all over again.
She had hardly eaten, and for someone who was a light eater to begin with, she pretty much ate the equivalent to one or two sunflower seeds now. Just enough to keep her stomach from protesting, and yet the effects were already starting to show. Her skin was paling from avoiding her usual Florida sunshine and not eating had her petite form looking a little more skeletal each week.
She never spoke. Trish and Dez did what they could for her; bringing her food and water, staying in her room and chatting about the home renovations to try and distract her, to get her to engage with them. Ally would nod or give them small smiles of assurance, but she had lost her voice.
Figuratively, of course.
If she had wanted to say something, anything, she could have. But she simply had no words.
Ally knew what they were doing, they were just trying to help, and she was grateful that after so many weeks of her insubordination they still hadn't given up on her.
She just needed her time and space for now.
She didn't want to cry anymore. All she had done for the first seventy-two hours of being back home was cry over her situation and everything that happened. She had simply run out of energy to cry over the last thirty or so days. She had so many things rushing through her head, too, that her emotions were beginning to go haywire.
Ally turned her tired eyes to her balcony window and watched as the sun began to slowly slink toward the horizon, signaling the start of nightfall. She took a deep breath and turned her eyes to her tattered song book,
oOo oOo oOo
Austin looked up from the newspaper article and glanced at the clock on the wall for the thousandth time that night. It was almost three in the morning and he still hadn't slept a wink. Everything just felt so… wrong.
He was lost in this world. He was known as the miracle-man, but he felt an awful lot like a circus freak show. During the day there were reporters, writers, photographers, and then all of a sudden they would be gone, and he would find himself alone. Just him and his thoughts, his scattered and fuzzy memories.
Something was missing, and it wasn't the last seven years. It went deeper than that.
He was eternally grateful for his second chance at life, there was no questioning that. He was just… well, lost.
For a few months he was going to have to go to physical therapy, to build his muscles back after lying on his back for years and years. But, once that was over… did he go back to school and try and get a degree? Did he stay with his dad and try to slowly morph back into a normal life?
He didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. All he did know, was that he was going to work his ass off to get his body back, so that he could stop relying on everyone else and create a plan.
"Austin," his father's raspy voice sounded from behind. "What are you doing awake at this hour, you should sleep. Get some rest…"
Austin shook his head and smiled at his aging father as he took the seat across from him on the sofa. "I've been asleep for seven years, dad," he joked. "You rest."
Mike smiled somewhat sadly and transferred his gaze to the newspapers on the coffee table between them. "Catching up on all the town news?"
Austin furrowed his brow and nodded, looking back down at the scattered papers around him. "This girl, dad," he said as he reached toward the article that featured a large picture of his old home. In the bottom corner another picture, one snapped of Ally when she was trying to enter her home while shielding her eyes from the onslaught of flash photography. "Do you know this girl?" Austin asked.
Mike sat up a little straighter in his seat and looked quizzically at his son. "I don't know her personally, no."
Austin furrowed his brow again. "But you know of her?"
Mike shifted a little, still bewildered by the story of Ally and her role in everything that had happened. "Well she lives in the mansion, as I'm sure you've read."
Austin looked down at her picture again and shook his head, thinking. "I've seen her before. I just don't know where."
Mike nodded slowly and took a few long moments to stare at his miracle of a son. He had been so flustered and aggravated with Ally the night he met her, but looking back on everything, and seeing the outcome, he couldn't be more grateful to the girl, no matter what her reason for being there had been.
"Miss Dawson was in your room the night you woke. That may be why you recognize her."
Austin was surprised to hear this. What would the current tenant of his old home randomly be doing in his secluded hospital room? "Why?"
Mike pursed his lips and simply shook his head. "I'm not really sure, son. Sometimes, people are just in the right place at the right time I guess."
Austin had heard the rumors. He knew there was a girl that caused a scene that night. The doctors told him that maybe it was just the amount of stimulation his brain needed to finally kick back into gear. That maybe instead of letting him be and letting him rest, he needed something to get him going.
That girl was the reason he was alive, he just knew it.
Austin nodded and smiled weakly at his father as he stood and gave Austin's shoulder a squeeze before grabbing a glass of water and returning to bed.
He would need to find a way to thank this girl for whatever it was that she did, as soon as he was strong enough to go out on his own.
He would find her.
oOo oOo oOo
Ally had waited for Trish and Dez to fall asleep before she finally dragged herself from her bed. Hours she had spent locked in her room after sunset, writing away feverishly in her book for the first time in weeks.
Her windows were still open, the cool night breeze flowing into her darkened room making her shiver.
She didn't care. The cold was the least of her woes anymore.
Carefully, she opened her bedroom door and poked her head out, listening closely for any sign of movement anywhere in the house. When she could hear nothing, she crept slowly downstairs to the main floor and crossed over the large reception room toward her sanctuary of a ballroom.
The hardwood was cold on her feet, and she felt it was fitting, because she felt nothing but cold and empty inside anyway.
She sat timidly on the bench before her grand piano, looking over it at the small layer of dust that built up over the last month or so. She hadn't even thought of touching the instrument until now, and there had been no reason for either Trish or Dez to come in this room, let alone touch the piano or bother cleaning it.
Experimentally she pressed a key, allowing the noise to fill the otherwise empty room. She pressed another, and listened to the vibration until it faded into silence once again.
Swallowing, Ally set her book in front of her and opened right to the page she had last been scribbling on. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, her fingers automatically landing right where they needed to on the keys. She didn't even need the book, she already knew exactly what notes to hit and where.
Take what you need 'cause I can't hold my breath And if I lose it all Don't change a thing, perfect as you are And if I lose it all
Say what you feel 'cause I got nothing left
I made a promise to myself last night
I'm gonna keep it if it's wrong or right
There'll be nothing left to lose and I would take the fall
'Cause knowing you are out there breathing
It's so wonderful, it's a chance I take even if I break it
I lose it all, if I lose it all
Wouldn't matter anyway
Time has a way, time is all I've got
If my heart should shatter watching you
That'd be one less thing I'd have to prove
There'll be nothing left to lose and I would take the fall
'Cause knowing you are out there breathing
It's so wonderful, it's a chance I take even if I break it
I lose it all, if I lose it all
Trish watched from the doorway, her heart aching even harder for her best friend as she listened to her pain come out in strings of beautiful lyrics. She wished she could trade places with her, just to ease her pain. She was the last person on earth who deserved the hurt she was experiencing.
Heaven will be waiting when I fall into your open arms And if I lose it all And if I lose it all
I believe you'll find me there
You'll find me there
There'll be nothing left to lose and I would take the fall
'Cause knowing you are out there breathing
It's so wonderful, it's a chance I take even if I break it
I lose it all, if I lose it all
There'll be nothing left to lose and I would take the fall
'Cause knowing you are out there breathing
It's so wonderful, it's a chance I take even if I break it
I lose it all, if I lose it all
Wouldn't matter anyway
"I'm so selfish, Trish," Ally sighed, not even turning around to look at her friend. She could feel her there in the doorway. She had known when the door cracked open, and could see the robe-clad Latina from the corner of her eye as she sang. Unlike usual, she couldn't bring herself to care that someone had actually watched and heard her sing.
Trish wasn't even surprised that she had been caught. Ally seemed to be just a little other-worldly these days, and with her relationship with a ghost, or, whatever Austin was, she was sure Ally learned to pick up on the changes in atmosphere.
"That song was so beautiful, Ally. What on god's green earth is making you feel selfish?" she asked as she moved further into the ballroom.
Ally licked her lips and turned her tired eyes to her friend. "All this time," she whispered. "All this time we were together, up there in my room and around this house, acting like a real couple."
"You were a real couple."
Ally's eyes welled as she shook her head. "All that time spent fooling myself that we could be something when- when I thought he was dead. Who does that?"
Trish rubbed her friends arm, feeling the cold skin beneath her warm hand and wondering what she could possibly say to make Ally feel better.
"Then," she sniffled. "Then this amazing thing happens. He's alive!" Tears streamed down her cheeks and dripped into her lap. "He was alive Trish and I should have been so, so happy for him. But I wasn't. I was so mad that I lost him for myself, that I wished he had really been dead."
She shook her head in disappointment with herself and wiped furiously at her eyes as her vision began to blur with onslaught of tears she thought she had already shed.
"Trish, I'm just trying to keep from dying,' she sobbed, falling forward on the bench to bury her face in her best friends lap. Her body wracked with sobs as she finally let out every inch of emotion and sadness she had been holding inside for a month.
Trish's heart broke for her friend all over again.
There was no denying the complete weirdness of the entire situation and how everything had gone down, but regardless of how the skeptics treated her or how people who heard to rumors of Ally's episode at the hospital looked at her, nothing killed Trish more than to see her best friend so heartbroken.
It was clear that Ally had more than an infatuation and freaky kinky relationship with a would-be ghost – She had truly been in love with the man who had no memory of her.
With sad eyes and her own tears on her brims, Trish ran her fingers through her best friend's hair and did her best to soothe her while allowing her to cry. After all, she knew there were no words to soothe her in this moment. Instead of trying to talk her into feeling better, she would do what best friends were supposed to do…
She would just be here with her.
TBC
Song is 'lose it all' by the backstreet boys.
It's one of my favorites.