He was close.

Like real close.

And she was fixing a button on his shirt and answering a phone call with the other hand, and shit, she was excellent at multi-tasking. She's spitting out words so fast into the receiver that he hardly has time to understand what she's saying. Obviously, the caller on the other end was in the same boat because Ally stomps her feet slightly and her lips curl with a moment of contempt and she repeats what she's saying a little slower.

It's all work related and she doesn't wait to see if the caller had caught it this time; she hangs up, throwing the phone onto a couch. Ally spins him around, pushing him abruptly out of the dressing room.

"Ally, Ally, Ally." Austin says, trying to put friction on his feet to stop her from her current task.

"What?" she snaps, glancing at the clock which reads 4 minutes until show time. She taps her foot and gives him an incredulous look.

"Relax." he smirks, having turned and faced her.

"I'll do that when you get to make up." she said.

"Makeup shmakeup!" Austin chirped.

"You have a zit and you'll be on camera." Ally informed him, eyes falling over to the zit located just to the bottom of his cheek.

Austin's finger subconsciously grazed the flaw on his cheek just as he shrugged, not seeming to find it all too harmful. He recalled the view of it in the mirror this morning. Hardly noticeable. Well, unless you were standing in Ally's position.

Face to face.

Up close.

A very small gap between two warm bodies.

Austin could reach out and twist his arms around her frame and pull her chest to chest with him - hell, he wanted to, but he couldn't. Not on the job, not when he has four - actually, three - minutes until show time.

"It's not about the appearance, Ally." His almond shaped - and colored - eyes stared down at her with a teasing glint to them.

She rolled her eyes and let them get stuck on the view of her watch, which was ticking away. He needed to be in makeup pronto. Those were orders from management. She could already feel the buzzing of their texts in her left pocket.

Her heart halts when she feels his fingers on her chin, forcing her to look up to him and away from that darn watch. He swears nobody even wears those anymore. She not so easily gives in and looks him in the eye. She makes herself appear as nonchalant as possible.

He touches the pulse in her neck. It's racing and he narrows his eyes on it oddly. He wasn't doing that to her. Not somebody like him. Maybe Austin had an ego, one that wasn't easily tamed, but Ally sure made him feel less than inadequate sometimes.

"Your heart is racing."

"I had caffeine." she blurts. It's a straight faced lie, but he buys it simply with a nodding of his head. He taps the pulse with his index finger and lazily gets the smirk onto his lips again.

She looks at him and notices an eye lash on his cheek. It's fallen uniquely silent between the duo. She can't feel his breath, but she can hear it. It's not quite a pant, but nonetheless, irregular and she shyly tells herself that he's anxious to perform. She wasn't the one doing that to him.

Kinda like he told himself that the upbeat pulse in her neck wasn't at all due to their closeness.

"You need to get to makeup." Ally tells him and his smirk lifts a little. She's a tad breathless, unless her tone was fibbing to itself.

"How many minutes?" he quizzed gently. He wasn't quite sure why he had stopped her in the first place. Had he needed something? He can't remember, but he's pretty sure it had something to do with staring at her pretty face.

And he wasn't one to be cheesy, so what the hell is going on?

She looked a little bit like a dork, lifting her wrist to gaze down at her wristwatch again. "It'll be two minutes in thirty seconds."

He slowly nodded. He's about to tell herself, but he glances over her shoulder and sees Trish watching him, big hawk eyes and a mouth curled into a frown. His best friend wasn't being much of a friend lately and he swore he was 3 music notes away from confronting her. He didn't want his manager. He wanted his friend. And his friend would notice that he wasn't playing this time. His friend would notice that Ally is doing things to him that he can't even comprehend yet, that he didn't even notice yet.

Her mouth forms the stiff word: 'Stage'.

He clears his throat and looks at Ally who was eyeing him oddly, noticing his pregnant pause. He gives her a feathery smile. Ally's eye brow quirk quickly in surprise before relaxing again; she hadn't expected that smile. "I guess I should do something about this zit."

She laughed slightly, and maybe he heard it wrong, but it sounded a tad shy. "I guess so." she crosses her arms behind her back. Austin scampers off to makeup just as Ally's phone rings.

She speaks quickly. "Ally Dawson."

"I was told to contact this number." It's a male's voice. Ally pulls out her organizer with her freehand, ready to book something if need be. Ally nodded her head and as if the unknown person had seen her, he continued, "I want a visitation to see Austin. I don't know when he's available, since he's considerably always so busy." There's friction in her chest and she doesn't know why. An odd taste fills her mouth, something like nostalgia, like she remembers a voice sounding so much like this. The kind of voice she hates to remember.

"A visitation?" she echoes, keeping herself as emotionally detached as she can. Cassidy had coached her to never allow curiosity, resentment, fear, or excitement inside the tone of voice. Accordingly, it was unprofessional.

"Yeah." She hears something glug and it makes her flinch.

"I'm sorry, sir, I'm just looking for an explanation." Her voice is honey smooth and polite, so she wonders why the male on the other end had scoffed at her reply.

"I don't need to explain myself to see my son, now do I?" she almost feels the male's spit, "Give me a time and I want to see him."

She freezes up.

Visitation. Austin. Son.

Oh, for Goodness sake.

Something swells inside her chest, but it's not sweet or full of butterfly wings. It's more like broken winged moths, or tar, or something not-so-nice gripping her sternum.

"Oh, I, um," she stumbles over an appropriate response. He chuckles arrogantly on the other end. It doesn't bother her too much. At least not more than the remembrance of the look on Austin's face bothered her. Those angry, sad eyes. Those flustered words falling out his confused lips. That drunken tongue. The blonde hair that stuck up in different directions from all the times he'd probably ran his fingers through it.

Ally gnawed on her cheek. The music starts to boom through concrete walls and she winces at the sound of Austin greeting his crowd. Ally looked over to the clock on the wall. She should've been with him. He's exactly one minute late for the show.

"Sorry," she laughs breezily, the sound ten pounds of nerves full. "He's actually, um, away right now. He's on an American tour. So, I mean, unless you...you, um...you..." Was she allowed to book this? She couldn't without Austin's consent. Had this been Jimmy Kimmel or David Letterman or Kelly and Michael or any other famous interviewer she might have done it without a grimace or second thought but this was Austin's father and she knew quite well how he viewed his father.

He didn't even pressure her through. He kept glugging whatever drink was in his hand. She could hear him breathing heavily through his nose and gulping the contents loudly. She winced again.

"I need to check with Austin." she blurted quickly. "I have to run this by him. See if it's okay."

The man gulps his drink again, exhaling loudly. "It will be." She hears the glass bottle clank against his front teeth.

"No...No, I really need to confront him first." she insisted, "New regulation." she lied smoothly.

"I'm his goddamn father, let me see my son." he snarled and Ally flinched.

"Don't worry about it, Mr. Moon, um, I'm sure he'll be fine with it. It really is a regulation." Ally grimaced.

"Well, then," he sighed with aggravation weaved through it, "Ask him then."

"He's actually performing right now, but I'll definitely tell him right away." Ally said, already fearing the moment when she would have to tell Austin.

"Alright then." he muttered, irritated. "What's your name?" He slurred that bit.

It sounded like a song. The kind that played over and over again, simply stuck in your head. What's your name. What's your name. What's your name.

/

Ally smiled as she stared down at the new notebook. Her father had bought it for her and drew a large, detailed 'A' on the front, symbolizing her first name. It wasn't all that pretty, but it was enough. Ally certainly still loved it. She never cared for fancy gifts much, just the thought of them. That's always what counts in the end - the thought.

She hears a laugh. It's wild and drunken and free. But it hangs and clacks in Ally's like silver spoons. She suddenly feels like running back home to her Dad, but he had just driven out to the airport for his business trip.

Something very cold rubs on her heart and it burns. Her feet don't feel weightless anymore, they're like brick and she's struggling to drag them to her mother's house. She fills her lungs with the fresh air as she looks heavenward, silently questioning God on this one, on why he gave her such a mother. Her lungs feel cold and stiff, but she manages to breathe. She always manages to breathe.

"Oh, hey...hey...yeah, hey baby." The giggle's are maniac and Ally used to join in with her mother's contagious laughter but after a while, things stopped being funny.

"Mom." Ally replied, her mouth shaped into a disappointed curl.

"Hey...Hey you." She gives her daughter a bold point with her finger tip.

Ally self-consciously glances towards the neighbors house. They're peeking out their window from behind the curtains. Ally's eyes slowly shift back to her mother, who is drunk, sprawled across the lawn. She is still laughing.

"Abby-cat..." she giggles and incoherently talks to herself, "No...No...Allah..." she laughs loudly at that one and Ally's fist curls. But she's so patient. She waits, standing there on the side walk, staring at her mother, notebook clutched into her arm. She's already got piles of words centered in her brain and she can't wait to run inside and just get them all out. She can't wait to not see this anymore.

"Amy...Amy? Amy..." Penny's eyes sparkle brightly in awe. She mumbles more incoherent and slurred words. She giggles again and looks at her daughter, drunk and tired. "Addie," she doesn't laugh this time, "A...A...hm..." she smirks, but she's tired of laughing. She lets her head fall on the grass. She shakes her head. "What's your name?" Ally's not supposed to hear it, but does anyway.

Ally runs inside.

/

Ally swallowed. "Ally."

Mike mutters about recalling her having said that at the beginning of the conversation and merely chuckles to himself. "You ask him and you get me a visitation to see him. Okay, Ally?"

"Yes, absolutely." Ally nods.

There's a click. Ally stares at a TV screen for a moment before finding it in her to hang up, too. She exhaled slowly, combing her fingers through her brown mane as she reasoned silently on how to destroy his night by explaining that his father called.

She takes a deep breath and heads away to the kitchen. She was ordered to be backstage at all times in case of emergencies, but Ally really wanted respectful quiet time to sum up exactly how she'd break it to him.

x

She's stirring the coffee; round and round, round and round, round and round.

"Wow. You're making me dizzy."

She almost crawls out of her skin and he laughs at the expression on her face. She quickly looks back and curses under her breath. She had spilled the coffee that she'd only spent an hour stirring. It was already cold.

"Whoops." Austin smirked.

Ally gave him a narrowed look. He chuckled slightly and searched through a few drawers until finding a rag. He tossed it at her and she ran it under the sink. She carefully wrung it out and robotically placed it down on the mess, watching the coffee soak up.

Austin eyed her. There was something off. It was practically in the air. Not to mention, she wasn't where she was supposed to be and Ally was always where she was supposed to be.

But he refused to say anything. She was his personal assistant, not his friend. She would tell him what was important and if it didn't concern him then, well, he'd have to suck it up. He helped dab up the mess, glancing over at her every now and again. She had drifted inside her thoughts and it wasn't hard to notice.

He nudged her. She looked up at him. He lifted an eye brow. She gave a small but tight smile in response. "I'll make you a new one. You should shower. You're sweaty." she said.

There is something on her mind. There is something on her mind. There is something on her mind. His subconscious chanted to him, but he throttled the thought as he nodded at her. He dabbed the counter a couple times before leaving the duty up to her like she was insisting through mumbles.

His feet walked him to the door, but his mind and curiosity was still standing next to her. He glanced over his shoulder at her. Her mouth was in a thin line, pressed together. He shrugged to himself and walked off to his dressing room to have a shower.

Ally let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding. She shook her head.

"Ally."

She jumped again and saw Trish by the doorway. She smiled slightly. "Hey."

"Sorry to scare you." Trish laughed softly. Ally shook her head. She looked down to the rag that was soaking up a mess. Trish bit down on her lip before saying, "Austin was just here."

"Yeah. I know." Ally smiled slightly.

"Was there a reason?" she questioned, trying to put such little suspicion into her voice as possible.

Ally shrugged and took the dirty rag to the sink, running water on it. "Not really," Ally replied, "He scared me, too," she laughed gently, "Thus the mess, but other than that. I don't really know what he wanted. We didn't say much. Never really do."

Half-lie.

"Really?" Trish questioned.

Ally sighed. "Trish, is there something you want to ask me?" she blurted. Trish's eyes got a little more round. She hadn't expected Ally's outburst. "You seem concerned about something. You've been following Austin around like a lost puppy since the tour started and I'm not body language expert but I think he's getting annoyed," Pause, "And I'm sorry to say it, but I'm getting annoyed. With your constant questions."

Trish grimaced. "I'm sorry."

Ally nodded, searching the kitchen for a dish towel. Trish opened a drawer and handed one to her. Ally smiled thankfully.

"Look, Ally, I am sorry. Honest. I don't mean to badger. It's just...Consider it a friendly deed." Trish said.

"A friendly deed?" Ally laughed slightly.

"Yeah. From me to you." Trish smiled. It faltered slightly. "I know Austin, Ally. I've been there for his ups and his downs. I know everything there is to know about him and I love him. I really do, but I am not going to let him waste you."

"Waste me?" Ally looked at Trish, an eye brow raised.

"Austin goes through assistants like he goes through takeout food." Trish deadpanned.

Ally shook her head. "Austin's not wasting me. I'm never going to leave. I kind of enjoy this job, to be honest." Ally admitted.

Trish's eyes grew. "You...You do?"

Ally laughed slightly, "Well, Yeah. I mean...It's the best pay I've ever gotten, I'm living in L.A., I'm working as a songwriter now, and I've made some cool friends." Ally smiled.

Trish closed her eyes for a moment before opening them and blurting, "Is there something going on between you and Austin?"

As if on cue, the door had opened. Both girls jumped as a thunderous Austin burst into the room. "I knew it!" he growled, pointing at his manager.

"Austin," Ally stammered.

He ignored his assistant, focusing in on his manager. "You've been following me around because you can't believe, for one little second, that I might not be getting into trouble!" he snarled.

"Austin." Trish sighed.

"No, Trish. You think I've been messing with her, don't you?" Austin spat, "You think I'm sleeping with her!"

"Austin!" Trish exclaimed, eyes wide.

He laughed bitterly. "You don't trust me. You think I can't be trusted for even a minute."

Something exploded in Trish's chest. She felt her face get hot with anger. "Trust you? Austin, you've been into nonsense for two years! I tried to trust you! Mistake, after mistake, after mistake, until I finally can't anymore! How many times are we going to get a call that you've slept with a fan, or some lonesome girl at a bar, or that you've been spotted on the streets drunk or punching some homeless guy?"

"No, Trish, you don't get it! You think you have a take on all of this, but you don't! You don't have a fucking clue!" Austin was beginning to lose his cool. Ally flinched at his raised voice. Not Trish, even despite how close she was standing to Austin, she didn't move a muscle. She was stone solid.

"I don't have a clue? I've literally been picking up your ass since this entire thing started!" Trish growled. "I was the one who was always ripping your ass away from a bar fight or when you decided on filling your lungs with filth! I was the one throwing your practically-limp body onto a bed when you were so drunk you couldn't see straight and not once did I get a thank you!"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Austin said, narrowing his eyes at her, "Thank you, Trish."

Trish's fists balled at the amount of arrogance in his voice. She let out a scoff. "You're fucking welcome!" she snapped, "If it wasn't for me, you'd have your ass in a dumpster! I'm the one looking out for you!"

"Looking out for me?" he scoffed, "From what? From Ally's schedule? From getting road rash when I trip over my feet after a party?"

Ally awkwardly stood there, looking between the two whose voices were growing louder within each bicker. She contemplated texting Cassidy for help, but she was currently too afraid to move. Austin looked like he was going to tear a door from the wall and Trish looked like she was going to tear bones out of the skin of anyone.

"I'm tired of this! I've tried to be there for you! I've tried to be there when you had no designated driver, or when you let another assistant fall through the cracks, when you were too busy knocking the teeth out of some stranger, when Jimmy was pulling the daylights out of you!" Trish gritted her teeth.

Austin stared down at her. He shook his head.

"What?" shrieked Trish, "What could there possibly be left to argue about?"

"Where were you?" he ground out, the anger so evident in his voice that his teeth practically clattered. "I mean, when I needed it, when I needed my best friend. Where were you?"

Trish shook her head, staring at him confused.

"You know, when Mom died." He somehow remained as detached from the sentence as possible. "Where were you? Were you scraping to make ends meet when I took a break? Were you counting all the tickets that weren't selling? Were you calculating when exactly the next album could be released?"

"Austin." Trish said, gently.

"Wait," Austin said, pausing for dramatic effect, "You weren't there."

"Yes, I was. I..." she trailed off, unable to address the situation.

Austin shifted, grabbing onto the counter behind him and staring down at his feet. He shook his head. "For what? The first three months until I started to drink? Then it got easier to take care of me, right? All you had to do was give me Advil in the morning and everything was fine. It was so much easier to say you were there for me when I was acting like a selfish ass."

"That's not..." Trish shook her head, her words floundering in her mouth.

Austin laughed bitterly, although it appeared more as a scoff. "You don't have a fucking clue what I deal with."

Flustered, Trish stumbled out, "How...How did this conversation turn into this?" she asked him, laughing slightly but afraid to meet his eyes. She wasn't afraid to see what lied there: Hurt, disgust, pain, anger.

Austin took a deep breath and finally let the air fall silent for a good few moments. He glanced over at Ally from behind the blonde swoop of his bangs. She was standing there, uncomfortable, holding her one arm against her side, a tea towel clutched in her hand, yet she still held a certain amount of passion in her eyes. She looked over to him and her face softened when she found him looking at her. One corner of her mouth lifted before it faltered again.

He might have detached any other emotion besides anger from his voice, but she got it. She knew what he was hiding. He looked away to stare down at his feet again. He didn't like that he was vulnerable under the spotlight of her gaze, but at the same time, he appreciated it.

"Austin, I didn't..." Trish sighed, "I'm sorry, okay? I don't know what else to say. I didn't know what else to do at the time. You were...really sad and I tried. Maybe it didn't feel like it, but you were my best friend and I tried and if that's not enough for you, I don't know what is."

That angered him, but there was a numb feeling crowding his chest from all the yelling. He didn't look at her. Trish excused herself, leaving the kitchen.

"Your Dad called."

It was a squeak, her voice hardly heard at all.

Austin looked over at Ally. She was still standing there, practically using one arm to hug herself. She glanced at him nervously.

He scoffed and looked away. "Well, that's just fucking perfect now, isn't it?" he spat, leaving the kitchen with a slam of the door.

Ally grimaced.