A/N: Yes, okay, yes. It's yet another Austin and Ally high school AU.

What? All the other kids were doing it and I wanted to be cool, too.

Disclaimer: I do not own Austin and Ally. I merely borrow them, dress them up, and act out scenarios with them. Not unlike dolls.

There's rumors of a huge end of summer bash the Saturday night before school starts up again and while Ally hears about them, they don't catch her interest. Oh no, never, not in a million years would she be caught dead at one of those parties, with the drinking and the partying and the grossly inappropriate dancing.

She laughs at the idea of them, scoffs at them, even. Seriously, never. Never ever, never.

Well, I've been wrong before, she thinks wryly as she stands in a corner of Jenny Graham's living room, wanting desperately to go back home to her warm bed and collection of Jane Austen novels. Instead, she sighs and glares with all her might at a Latina girl, dancing crazily in the midst of the make shift dance floor that is Jenny's other half of the spacious living room. She glares harder and curses her friend for convincing her to come as the designated driver.

Holy crap, this night is going to suck, Ally realizes with a sinking feeling. She crosses her arms and leans all the way back against the wall and decides to just wait it out until Trish reaches her limit, and when that happens, her role is to swoop in and take her home before she can do anything too embarrassing. She's not sure whether she's glad or annoyed that Trish's alcohol tolerance is pretty damn high.

A shoulder bumps hers and she jumps a bit, turning quickly to the side. She frowns as she looks into the glassy, blue eyes of Jason Crow, her school's quarterback. She eyes him wearily and finally says, "Hi, Jason." She takes a step back to avoid the smell of alcohol on his breath.

He grins at her as he slurs, "Hey, what's up? You're, uh, you're..." he pauses, stumbling over his feet and words, before pointing at her excitedly when her name finally clicks in his foggy mind, "Your name's Natasha, right?"

A beat passes. "Close. It's 'Ally'."

He frowns in confusion and scratches his head like a dumbfounded monkey. "Uh. Weren't you my lab partner last year?"

"No. That was Stacey." Ally points to a cute brunette across the room. "She's over there, if you wanted to hit on her."

He follows her finger and squints at the brunette. Then he punches Ally on the shoulder, who tries not to fall over from the brute force of it, and grins toothily. "Thanks, dude!"

"Still 'Ally'," she winces wryly as he stumbles drunkenly toward an unsuspecting Stacey. "Ow," she mumbles as an afterthought. She's about to reach up and rub her shoulder when she hears a chuckle behind her.

"Huh, I remember that chemistry class," a voice says, sounding amused, "You two were lab partners."

She whirls around and blinks in surprise, not expecting to meet the devilish smirk and twinkling brown eyes of Austin Moon, the most popular boy in her grade. He'd transferred to their school during the second half of Junior year and within weeks, had climbed the social ranks faster than their peers thought possible.

Other than that one chemistry class, where he borrowed her notes on a daily basis, they had nothing in common. She remembers, very clearly, all of their previous moments of interaction; none of them are particularly fond memories.

So yeah, it takes her a moment to get over the initial weirdness that is the school's resident IT Boy talking to her willingly instead of asking for her awesomely thorough and color-coordinated chemistry notes.

Ally realizes that maybe she'd been staring a bit too long for what could be considered socially acceptable. Shaking herself out of it, she finally gives a small, casual shrug. "I'm not the one with a crush on him," she says.

His eyebrows raise and he pauses from taking a sip from his red solo cup. He looks across the room and sees Stacey helping the drunk jock sit down on a nearby couch. "Really?" he muses with an impressed scoff, "That was pretty cool of you."

She opens her mouth, closes it, and opens it again. "Uh, thank you?"

Austin continues to look amused. "You're very welcome." When she does a short, little awkward nod without looking him in the eye, he grins. "Jeez, it's like you've never gotten a compliment before," he teases as he smirks flirtatiously at her, "That's hard to believe, cute girl like you."

She gapes for half a second at the comment and hopes he won't notice the light rosy dusting across her cheeks. "It's not that," she says with a wave of her hand and a roll of her eyes, "It's just—" and then she hesitates, not quite sure how to point out that they've never really spoken to each other before and how this whole conversation's throwing her off.

Because really, talking to him has been weird enough but now he's flirting with her? What is this? The Twilight Zone? Holy hell, this evening seriously could not get any more bizarre. She turns pinker and mutters, "Um, well... Never mind," and starts to turn away from him, fully intent on running and hiding.

"Hey, whoa, wait up!" he says. He reaches out and grabs her wrist, pulling her back to him. "You can't just leave me hanging like that!" he laughs. He tilts his head to the side, and Ally can't help but think it makes him look far more innocent than what should be allowed, considering his reputation.

She sighs and looks at him, notices that he seems much more entertained than genuinely curious. "We had chemistry together last semester and you're choosing now to flirt with me?" she asks dryly with a raised eyebrow. Then she looks down at his hand that was still on her wrist pointedly.

Austin immediately stops the little, intimate circles he'd been drawing with his thumb on the inside of her wrist. He gently drops her hand and has the decency to look a little sheepish. He laughs a bit, but he doesn't sound nervous or embarrassed. Then with a playful shrug, he says, "Well, it was worth a shot." He eyes her small form appreciatively and somehow manages to not make it nearly as sleazy as most guys would. "I wasn't kidding when I said you were cute, though."

Ally frowns at the compliment, determined not to let it get to her as she flashes back to that one time when she found him pinning the head cheerleader up against her locker with his tongue down her throat. She had tapped him on the shoulder and deadpanned, "Hate to break you two lovebirds up, but I really need my math book." His response had been to impressively roll himself and his tasty cheerleader over two lockers without breaking mouth to mouth contact.

And on top of all of that, whenever he had asked for her chemistry notes, he had called her 'Molly' each and every time. She never bothered to correct him.

So considering his history of locker-defiling and note-borrowing, this cute-calling was entirely new territory for her.

Obviously, her brain still hasn't completely processed the fact that Austin Moon had just called her cute, twice, because kind of stupidly, she blurts out, "Do you even know my name?"

He blinks at her bemusedly and then rubs the back of his neck. "Well... I thought it was Molly, but, uh, I heard you tell Jason that it's Ally... so, um," he pauses, frowning at her, "Why didn't you ever correct me?"

She rolls her eyes and points out, "If you couldn't read my name in giant block letters across the front of my chemistry notebook, you were obviously a lost cause."

His jaw drops a little and holy crap, were his cheeks turning pink? "Oh," he mutters with a wince, "Sorry."

"It's okay." Ally smirks a little. "You're not known for your intelligence and skills of observation."

Austin's eyebrow lifts a little at that. "Yeah?" he asks, his voice dropping low, "And what exactly am I known for?" He leans toward her a little and her back bumps against the wall. He places a hand against the wall and half-boxes her in. His smirk is devilish and his gaze drops to her lips. He moves his lips close to her ear, whispering in a husky voice, "Well? Care to enlighten me, Ally?"

Her eyes open wide and she stutters a bit. She swallows nervously and ignores the pounding in her chest. "Well, uh... um..."

Austin looks incredibly pleased at her reaction to him and repositions his hand so his entire forearm is against the wall, bringing him closer to Ally's small form. He places the other hand on her hip, causing her to jump in surprise at the contact, eyes darting to his hand in alarm. He starts to lean in closer when he suddenly feels two small hands pressing against his chest.

"Whoa, there, cowboy!" Ally yelps desperately, turning her head to the side, eyes screwed shut.

He stands there, stunned, unable to remember the last time a girl turned down his advances. Oh, that's right, he can't remember because it's never happened. He gapes for half a minute, before uttering a wholly shocked sounding, "What?"

At his dumbfounded expression, Ally squares her shoulders and regains her sass. "You wanna know what you're known for?" she asks with a raised eyebrow. "You're known for being a notorious flirt. You're known for hooking up with random girls at random parties and never calling them the next day, or ever. You're known for only dating cheerleaders despite your tendency to hook up with any sort of girl at said parties." She jabs at his chest with a finger. "That is what you're known for." Her eyes narrow as she stares him down.

She decides to leave out the bits about his ridiculously good looks and easy charm. She figures it would go straight to his ego and take away from the point she was trying to make.

The expression of shock drops and then he ducks his head, chuckling a little. When he lifts his head back up, his eyes are bright with amusement. "You forgot my ridiculously good looks and easy charm."

She crosses her arms. "No, I purposefully left those out because your ego is already alarmingly huge." And then she smirks at him.

"So you think I have ridiculously good looks and an easy charm?"

She shrugs innocently. "Maybe," she says with a quirk of her lips and laughing eyes. "Or maybe that's what everyone else keeps telling me."

He laughs out loud and shakes his head. "You're something else, Ally..." and then he trails off, silently asking for a last name.

Ally rolls her eyes in exasperation. "Oh my god, you are embarrassingly hopeless. My last name was written on my notebook, too."

He pouts at her and he looks so much like a puppy, she actually has to resist the urge to scratch at his belly.

She takes an exaggeratedly deep breath, as if his entire existence was inconveniencing her. "Dawson. Ally Dawson."

Austin brightens and smiles. "You're something else, Ally Dawson." And then he taps a finger on the very tip of her nose.

Her brown eyes widen for a fraction of a second before quickly turning into flat stare. "You have no concept of personal space or boundaries, do you?" She tilts her head and arches a perfect eyebrow.

"And what makes you think that?"

"Well, for starters, your hand is still on my hip," she says pointedly as she looks him straight in the eye.

His thumb stops its lazy circling and it's his turn to arch an eyebrow. "You know..." he starts lowly, "you could have totally moved my hand a long time ago," he points out, eyebrow arching even higher.

Really, seriously, this was his grade A material and in all of her seventeen years, nothing's prepared her for this caliber of flirting. Mostly, because, you know, the idea of the school's most popular boy flirting with her was hilariously and disturbingly absurd.

And yet, it was still happening.

Her cheeks are flushing madly and she finds that she has no witty retort. She opens her mouth and snaps it shut with an audible click from her teeth. It isn't until his thumb continues their ministrations that she huffs and finally pushes his hand away from her hip.

Austin grins, opens mouth his like he's about to say something when Ally notices Trish out of the corner of her eye.

"Uh-oh," she interrupts softly, eyebrows furrowed. "I think Trish just reached her limit."

The blond frowns in confusion. "Who?"

"Um, uh, my friend, Trish," Ally explains distractedly, trying to get a better look at her. She stands on her tip toes and tries to look over Austin's shoulder.

Austin turns around a little, looking out at the dance floor. "Which one is she?"

"Do you hear any Spanish?" she asks worriedly, ignoring the question and straining her ears.

"What? Spanish?"

And then Austin hears it: a loud, drunken, angry screaming, but all in a high pitched language he doesn't understand, but recognizes as Spanish.

"Oh no," Ally mumbles, eyes going wide, "I have to go." And then she ducks under his arm and runs out to the dance floor.

"Whoa, hey!" Austin calls after her. She either doesn't hear or chooses to ignore him so he watches her go.

Ally stops when she reaches a short, Latina girl with wild hair. Trish's face lights up and she sloppily kisses the taller brunette on the cheek. "Ay, chica!"

"Hi to you, too, Trish," Ally says dryly, starting to lead her to the front door. "C'mon, let's go home."

Trish says something in Spanish and Ally's picked up enough throughout the years to understand bits of it.

"Um, my night?" she asks hesitantly. Her eyes flick over to meet brown ones from across the room. Austin catches her gaze and salutes with a small, knowing smirk. Ally rolls her eyes before going back to focus on an easy path to the door. "You wouldn't believe me even if you were sober," she says decidedly.

Trish stumbles and starts shouting obscenities in Spanish.

Ally sighs heavily. "C'mon, mamacita, let's get you home."

She purposefully ignores Austin's eyes boring into her as she leaves the party.

A/N: I know there's a metric-fuck-ton of Austin and Ally high school fics, but it's one of my favorite cliches and I really wanted to give it a shot. Honestly, this probably won't have much of an actual plot, outside of character development, relationship building, and day-to-day shenanigans. So if any of that bores you, turn away now.

This was partly inspired by bookworm3's Insane, which is probably my favorite high school AU fic on the site. There really aren't that many similarities, other than Player!Austin and Sassy!Ally and their first real encounter is at a high school party.

Also, thanks to Elizabeth for reading this and basically telling me that this did not suck and assuring me that I was not putting out crap. You, dear, make me confident in my writing abilities.