Title: Night and Day (5/?)
Genre: dramatic romcom, AU
Rating: currently T, M for later chapters
Couple: Austin/Ally
Summary: Austin Moon is the world's most famous rockstar and due to heartbreak completely out of control. So his agency brings in songwriter Ally Dawson, who is as brilliant as she is desperate. She needs a job - and what she gets is Austin Moon's crazy everyday life.
Chapter 5 - Brainstorming & Faraway Lands
It was easy to track her down, mostly because her car died around two blocks down the road. Austin left the car he had borrowed from Dez, a orange and green monstrosity called Berta, and sauntered toward the car in front of his.
Ally was inside, clutching the steering wheel and crying uncontrollably. Her make-up had smeared and made her look like a panda bear.
Austin knocked at her window. "Hey, there."
She rolled down the window. "How did you find me?" she sniffed.
"You can actually see my house from here," he said and pointed. "Over there, see?"
"That's only because it was a tower," she cried, pointing at the tower accusingly. "Who's house has a tower atop of it?"
Austin chuckled. "C'mon, get in here. I have called car services to take your car - and they won't with you inside it."
"Don't trash it!" she said, a hiccup in the middle of her speech. "I adore this car!"
"It's ancient," Austin tried, but it was useless. When your heart was attached to something, everything else was unimportant.
"I adore it!" Ally repeated, poking Austin's chest with each word she said.
Austin caught her hand. "Then let the repair guys to their job and come out," he said.
She immediately pulled her hand away. Except for Denny, she wasn't big on hugs and contact and Austin decided to respect that. He found it weird, though: He liked to be touchy-feely. It made him feel closer to people and he wondered what it made people who didn't like to be touched.
"Are you hungry?"
"No," she said quickly and tried to avoid his eyes. He leaned down far enough to catch her glance and raised an eyebrow.
"Yes," she finally admitted.
"Do you like hamburgers?"
"I don't eat fastfood," Ally said.
"Okay … what do you eat?"
"Why are you being nice all of sudden?"
"Why don't you ask my completely harmless question about food?"
"Do you ever answer any questions?"
"Do you?"
There was a long moment between them.
"I only eat organic food," Ally finally said with a sigh.
That got Austin thinking. "Are there organic cheeseburgers?"
Around fourty minutes, a trip to two supermarkets, three pictures and twelve autographs for cashiers later, they made it with food to the outskirts of the city and from there to a small hill. The look over the city was amazing and while Ally was captivated by it, she couldn't help being cynical. He had known the way up here so easily, he must have brought a lot of people up here. Girls, mostly, she presumed, and she wondered why she was slightly disappointed by that.
Maybe because it proved her point of Austin Moon being a womanizer and disproved her hope that he wasn't? Ally generally disproved of a somehow lax life style - and especially the kind of lifestyle she had seen in many popstars she had worked for.
"You are too strict, Ally," her father had sometimes told her, but Ally couldn't help herself.
They sat on the hub of Dez' car, Austin with a hamburger and Ally with a jar of pickles. Between them balanced two bottles of beer: One regular and one rootbeer.
"O bet you have driven a hundred girls and more up here," Ally said.
Sipping on his bottle, he shot her a sideways glance. "A dozen? What do you think I am?"
"A rockstar," she said solemnly. "And I know your kind."
"Ouch." Austin laughed. "Really, Miss Dawson, I am hurt. Hurt. I would never bring a dozen girls up here. One at the time, if you don't count the twins of the Playboy's October issue."
Ally huffed and rolled her eyes. "So what's the story?" she inquiered.
"The story?"
"You. Songwriting. Singing. Behaving like a jerk."
"There's no story."
"Uh-huh. What's her name?"
Austin looked at Ally and after a long moment, he suddenly found his hamburger incredibly interesting. He started to plig the tomatoes from it and ate them separately. "Cassidy," he said with some finality.
"Your former songwriter?"
"Yes."
"Why did she leave?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Austin said, taking a determined bite from his hamburger. "I'm not good at expressing feelings and stuff."
"Maybe that's the problem," Ally shrugged. She examined her soon to be eaten pickle in her hand. "I have stage fright because my eaminer during my music school exam screamed at me and told me I was wasting his time. I never performed after that - because if I don't perform, I can't fail."
Austin stared at her, his half eaten hamburger frozen on the way to his mouth.
She met his eyes oer her pickle. "Think you can top that?" she asked quietly.
"Reverse psychology?"
"It works with Denny - sometimes," she smiled.
There was a long silence between them. Austin finished his hamburger and after a few minutes Ally suspected he would never answer, but then, much to his surprise, he said:
"She said she couldn't handle me."
"What exactly was it she couldn't handle?"
"Everything?" he suggested. "I'm too loud, too childish, too generous with everyone's time, too chaotic, too impatient, too possessive, too jealous, I don't know when to stop, just everything." He laughed bitterly. "I'm the world's worst boss." He met her eyes. "I made you cry today, didn't I?"
"Yes."
He fiddled with his fingers. "I'm sorry," he finally said. "I didn't mean to. I didn't know you would react like that. I thought it would just stress you out enough to quit."
"You did a very good job," Ally said. "If you hadn't come after me, I most certainly would have quit."
"And now?"
"I'm thinking about it," Ally admitted. She finished her last pickle, produced a handkerchief and wiped her hands on it. Then, she produced a small plastic bag and put the handkerchief into it and stored the small bundle inside her purse. Austin could just wonder. "Look, Austin, if you want to make this work, you need to change - I can't do this if I basically have to drag you to work."
"I know," he said miserably. "And I want to work, but - I just can't! It's like I'm sitting there and I want to just run away. Or compose an opera filled with sadness!"
"But there mist be stuff you like," Ally said. "Stuff that's important to you." He opened his mouth to say something, but Ally was faster: "Stuff other than Cassidy."
"Pancakes," Austin said without much thinking.
Ally rolled her eyes. "I am Grammy nominated, Austin. I will not write a song about pancakes."
"Hmm," he thought about it. "When I was younger, I wanted to be really famous for my music videos - like they would top all the Youtube charts and receive, like, a billion hits."
"A billion hits," Ally echoed slowly. Out of her jacked, she pulled an old, worn notebook. "A billion hits. Hm. Anything else?"
He stared at her, slightly unsure. "I - I don't know?"
"Come on, this is brain storming. What else do you like?"
"I already said pancakes, but you didn't like it," he grumbled.
"Besides pancakes. There must be more besides pancakes and youtube videos," Ally said. She poked him with her pen.
"Vacation?" he asked, then his face brightened in a kind of way Ally found disconcerting. "Oh, oh, oh, I know! Vacation! We could go on vacation!" He took out his cellphone. "I could call my agency and we could go, to, like, I don't know, Reykjavik. I like Reykjavik. It has a really funny name and -"
"We are not going to Reykjavik and I'm not writing a song about that," she quickly said. God, he had the attention span of a four-year-old. "Tomorrow, you will get up at eight o'clock and we will start working on a billion hits and the Vacation Song, for the lack of a better title."
"Oh, c'mon," he pouted and scooted closer. She scooted away. He scooted even closer. "Reykjavik is fuuuuun. Let's go there!" He tried to poke the book out of Ally's hands.
"Don't touch my book!"
He ignored her. "Abd getting up at eight? That's like the middle of the night!"
"You need a daily routine," she said, scooting further. "You need to work regularly - it'll help you to handle your heart break and return to life.
"But Rekjavik -!"
"Moping all day and throwing parties is not a functioning workaday life," Ally said, fencing his poking finger away with her pen. "You need to do your job. People are relying on you."
"I'm not sure if I can do that," he admitted, trying to catch the pen.
"I have been hired to help you write one album. And I have a reputation to loose. One album it is."
"But what if I don't get up?"
Her eyes held determination. "I'll make you, don't worry."
Austin gulped heavily and continued eating. No wonder Dez and Trish had insisted to keep her. She didn't only do her own job, but made everyone else do theirs, too.
She reminded Austin a bit of Cassidy - and that was a dangerous thing.
When Dez entered his office, he was of the steadfast expectation to find kangaroos, turtles with donuts and swamp monsters there. What he didn't expect was his best friend, hanging in a lounge chair, playing a video game.
"Oy!" Austin greeted him and Dez, startled, let go of all he was carrying: a huge piece of a plastic crab, several jars of jam and a collection of colorful umbrellas.
Austin eyed those with special distrust; childhood memories and Dez' insistent attempts to get him shoot a movie about a lifeguard.
"Austin!" Dez laughed, exchanging high fives with his best friend. "What up?"
"What up, Dez," Austin laughed. "I just wanted to drop by and get my old notes. You know the ones about the songs I wrote before - everything."
"Seriously?" Dez asked. He seemed excited. "You are writing stuff again?"
"No," Austin shook his head. "Ally says it's best to burn them."
"Burn them?! You cannot burn them! They are songs! Good songs!"
"We are currently writing a new song," Austin said. "It's actually going really well, but we are not finished yet."
Dez eyed him suspiciously. "You are writing a new song?" he asked. "What is it about?"
"I tried to make it about pancakes," Austin said.
("I love pancakes!" "I know! Me too! But she wouldn't let me!" "Darn.")
"But instead it's going to be called 'A Billion Hits'." Austin grinned. "You'll like it, it's totally awesome. And this afternoon, we are flying to Reykjavik."
"I love Reykjavik!" Dez cried. He paused, put his hand on his chin and narrowed his eyes. "What's in Reykjavik?"
"I want to see the vulcanoes!" Austin said. "Ally's a total know-it-all and she's totally trying to control my daily routine, but I made a deal with her - I worked a bit and she let's me go to Reykjavik. It's awesome!"
"She's actually making you work?" Dez asked.
"He's working?" Dez' previous sentence seemed to contain some sort of trigger word, because Trish almost fell through the door. "Seriously?"
"I wrote, like, three faces or something," Austin said. "Something like I'm always improving, always on the move and working on my flow to take it to the ronde-oh!" The last didn't seem right. "Ronde-oh!" he sang again. He blinked and thought hard. "Or something. I'm not sure. Hm."
Dez and Trish exchanged a glance behind Austin's back. Dez gave her a cheesy thumbs up, but her brows furrowed and she tilted her head to both sides.
I'm not sure if it really merits one of your cheesy thumbs-up, she communicated silently.
Why not? He's working and I get to do an Austin Moon video soon again. Yay!
Still! Reykjavik. Ally Dawson seems like a gift send from heaven, but I don't think she knows what she has gotten herself into with Austin. He can be quite a handful!
Remember the party? He made her cry. I think she knows what he's like. And you just want to go to Reykjavik with them to see the spas!
Austin observed their silent communication from the outside and saw the dark, evil glances they shot at each other. Last time, their expressions had been like this, they had had a heated conversation about the importance of Ralphie Hayes and his influence on the dog food economy. It quickly escalated and turned ugly.
"Anyway," he said. "The notes, Dez."
Trish unglued her angry stares from Dez' equal one and turned with a conviction toward Austin he found slightly alarming. "We will accompany you," she said.
"Because of the spas?" Austin asked, carefully.
"No! Not because of the spas! Did I say anything about spas? No, I didn't! Can't I accompany my favourite star on his trip to Iceland so he won't be ravaged by paparazzi, huh?"
"I guess," Austin said, scratching the back of his hair.
Dez huffed and shook his head. He rummaged in his desk for Austin's song notes "Don't forget to pack your sauna towels," he said.
"Yeah," Austin said. "Anyway." He snatched the notes from Dez. "I'll be going. Have fun, you two. I see you at the airport."
Outside of the building, he told his driver to pick up Ally, who in turn was picking up her son, Denny. The huge limo caused quite a ruckus in front of Denny's school, but they managed to get away quickly.
"Dez and Trish are coming, too," he told Ally.
The young woman was busy fixing her son's tie. "They do know we go there to write songs, right?"
"I'm not sure what they really do know," Austin said after awhile. He turned toward Ally. "Do you know anything about Ralphie Hayes' influence upon the dog food economy?" And off her and Denny's blank stare, he said: "It seems like a popular topic nowadays."
"No," Ally said slowly. "I don't know anything about that."
"Huh." His thoughtful expression disappeared and he was back to his flighty cheerfulness. "It's going to be awesome!" He rubbed his hands happily.
Denny leaned toward his mother. "Does he know that Iceland has around 23 degrees Fahrenheit this time of the year, that you can build snowmen and that they eat half-cut sheep heads for breakfast?"
"The brain is removed from those," Ally said.
"I don't think that's the point, mom," nine-year-old Denny said.
"Right. No, he thinks the Blue Lagoon there is the same one Brooke Shields paddled half naked in," Ally said. "And that everything there looks like LazyTown."
"I see. Are you going to tell him?" Denny asked.
"No. I'm just going to mix up the tickets at the airport and book something for the Bahamas. Or Abu Dabi, I haven't decided yet."
"I see," Denny said and leaned back.
But the thing is: Most things don't turn out the way you want them too, especially when a car is following you, colored in an aggressive pink, it's interior paved all over with Austin Moon memorabilia.
Tilly Thompson's obsession had reached a critical mass.
end (5/?)
Ten reviews, you guys? :) And the Blue Lagoon on Iceland is a big, vulcano-heated spa. I highly recommend it, should you ever visit the island.