Title: sugar we're goin down
Playlist: Sugar We're Goin Down- Fall Out Boy, Yellow Shirt- The Icarus Account, Fine By Me- Andy Grammer
Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize.
Warnings: er, language in some spots and heavy sarcasm sprinkled without.

Mondays in Atlanta truly should not be this cold.
If there's anything she has to be grateful for, it's that she's leaving this place for the summer, and hopefully by the time she returns for junior year, it will be rid of its abnormal cold spells and back to its wonderfully dry heat.

She loads her suitcases into the trunk of the Beetle with the help of her friend Elliot, and somehow, it all just fits.
Barely.

"Thank you so much." She sighs, wrapping her arms around his neck, which is sweaty from helping her drag these bags out of her dorm, but she'll ignore that.

"Aw, you're welcome,Ally." He responds, tightly winding his own arms around her waist a little more intimately than she would've preferred.
She knew he had a crush on her, but he didn't seem to be getting that she just wanted to be friends.

"I'll call you when I get home, okay?" She asks, pulling in the car door to shut it and turning on the engine.
He nods. "Drive safe!" He calls as she pulls out of the student parking lot.

It wasn't that she didn't like Georgia State- she'd already survived two years there, it would be a shame to not like it at least a little bit- but she would've much preferred staying close to home in Miami.
At least there was water there.
But GSU was the only place that offered her a full-ride in Music Composition, so she'd take what she could get.
Besides, she had good friends. Like Elliot.

Dear God, she needed to get out of this place.

Right before she gets on the interstate, she sees some blonde dude walking along the sidewalk, thumb out, guitar case strapped on his back.

Something, whether it was intuition or just utter idiocy, compels her to change lanes.
She remembers her father telling her never to pick up a hitchhiker, that they could be mass murderers or something like that.
He just looked lost, honestly, and she didn't feel any more found than he probably did.
She'd take her chances.

She pulls up next to him and rolls down the passenger window.
"Going somewhere?"

He smiles a crooked half-smile. She notices that he's quite clean-cut for a hitchhiker.
"Miami?" He asks sheepishly.

Fate, she tells herself.
Well, here went nothing.

"Get in." She told him, and he clambered into the passengers' seat ungracefully, awkwardly trying to adjust his guitar case so that it fit near his feet.

She watched in annoyance and placed a hand to her forehead exasperatedly.
"Oh my God, just put it in the backseat. People are honking."

"Oh." He grins sheepishly, realizing that that probably would've been the best thing to do initially.
After throwing it into the backseat, he starts to buckle his seatbelt but she stops him before he can.

"Don't bother." She says, pointing to the McDonald's right up the street. "We're stopping there."

He makes a confused face, cocking an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Because before I let you ride in my car with me for nine hours, I'm going to have to get to know you. 'Cause for all I know right now, I could be sitting next to a mass murderer."

"And if I was, you think I would openly admit it to a stranger in the middle of McDonald's?"

"Well, I'm Ally Dawson and we're still in the privacy of my car. So now that we're not strangers, are you a mass murderer?"

"Yes. And I'm on the run from the police, that's why I'm openly walking near an interstate."

She smirks. The guy's sarcastic. Dandy, this was going to be a wonderful car ride.
(She's not sure if that's sarcastic or not.)

"I don't know, man. You seem like you could be incognito, I mean, even I can tell that blonde ain't real."

He laughs. "Ain't?"

Her eyes widen at what she said as she turns into the McDonald's parking lot.
"I've been spending too much time in Georgia."
He laughs again.
"Oh, and Ally?"

She looks over at him.
"Thanks. Y'know, for the ride. Thanks."

He stares at her over their meal of McFlurries and Chicken McNuggets.
"What?" She asks, wiping extraneous ketchup off her chin with a napkin.

He chuckles and shakes his head, biting into a McNugget. "Nothing."

"So what's your story?" She questions, stirring the M&M's around in her McFlurry cup until the white ice cream becomes a rainbow mess.

"Huh?"

"You know, what's your name, how old are you, why the hell were you walking around an interstate with a guitar case, the usual background stuff."

He laughs. She makes him laugh a lot, he's noticed. He likes that about her.
"Okay, well, I'm Austin Moon, and my middle name is Monica because my parents have always fucking hated me, I'm twenty, and I'm trying to get back home for the summer but I own the crappiest car in the universe that still has an engine and it broke down outside of my school. So I hitchhiked."

She furrows her eyebrows. "You don't have any friends to call?"

He shakes his head. "Ha no. I haven't had friends since I moved here. Everyone thinks I'm an asshole."

"A valid observation."

He gives her a pained expression.
"Sorry." She apologizes. "I was kidding."

She stirs the M&M's around again.
"My best friend at GSU has a huge crush on me, so."

He raises a suspiciously dark eyebrow. "And do you have a crush on him?"

Ally rolls her eyes. "Yes, Austin, and we're madly in love."

So they're both sarcastic. Sue them .

"Well, still. I'd rather have a friend who adores me rather than no friends at all."
She shrugs. "Well, now you have one friend."
He looks over at her quizzically. "You consider us friends?"

She nods, eating a spoonful of her McFlurry and avoiding eye contact in fear of awkwardness.

"So don't ruin it."

They've been on I-75 for about an hour, making small talk about college- apparently he went to GSU as well, a Vocal Performance major- when he moves to turn on the radio.

Call Me Maybe starts blasting through the car's speakers and they both immediately scrunch their noses in disgust and reach for the 'Seek' button.

"God, no." They say in unison, then laugh.

He flips through the different stations until they settle on one playing Radioactive by Imagine Dragons.

"So now that I know that you agree with me on the dislike of Call Me Maybe, what kind of music do you like?"

"I mean, I don't mind that song. Or, I didn't until my roommate would play it over and over again at all hours of the night. Then it got annoying."

He chuckles. "You don't get along too well with your roommate, do you?"

"Huh? No, Trish and I get along just fine. We're just total opposites. She's loud and outgoing and I'm an introvert who hates initiating conversations and is intimidated by new people."

He scoffs. "Says the girl who picked up a total stranger from the side of the road. Especially, mind you, one that she seemed to have very high suspicions of being a mass murderer."

She bites her lower lip to contain her laughter. "Well, you're different."

He shifts over in his seat to look at her. "Uh-huh, and how is that?" He asks teasingly.

She wracks her brain to find an answer until she realizes that she legitimately cannot find a logical one.

"I don't know." She tells him truthfully. "You just are."

/
"Ally. Ally." He chants. The girl honestly looks like she's about to fall asleep at the wheel.

She abruptly sits up straight. "Huh?!"

"Let me drive."

She shakes her head and yawns. "What time is it?" She asks blearily.
Yeah, he's starting to get a bit worried for their safety. Even if there is only like ten cars on the interstate.

"It's like ten-thirty."

Ally groans. "Ugh. I knew I should've left earlier. Stupid Elliot, forcing me to spend time with him."

He has a feeling that she's not fully conscious of everything she's saying.

He coaxes her to get off at the next exit and she's too groggy to do anything but oblige.
The only place close that they can park is some sort of run-down strip mall.

"Where are we?" She whispers, as if she's going to disturb anyone who might be lurking in the dark.

He looks around for some sort of indication, a sign or something. "I think Jacksonville?" He shrugs passively.

"Ennnnng." She groans. He gets out of the car and opens the driver seat door. He tries shaking her shoulder to get her to wake up even more, to no avail. He resorts to lifting her up out of the car.

"What are you doing? Put me down." She yawns.

"Aha, no. As soon as I put you down, you'd fall because you're so exhausted, and I don't want to be responsible for any concussions you might get."

He readjusts her in his arms. "You know, you're pretty light."

She yawns again. "No I'm not. Stop trying to sound manly. You're not manly."

He chuckles. "Thanks, Ally."

After successfully transferring her to the passenger seat, he starts up the engine and pulls out of the strip mall.

Right as he's about to head back onto the interstate, Ally chimes in.

"Austin, I'm hungry." She moans, leaning her head against the window.
He's got to admit, she looks kind of pretty right then, her eyes closed and her curls falling over her face.

He slams on the brake. "Seriously, Ally? Are you fucking kidding me right now?"

She giggles. "Sorry."

It makes him smile, for some unknown reason. "No you're not."

She giggles again, her eyes still firmly shut. "Yeah, you're right. I'm not. I'm just hungry."

Would it be weird to say that he wants to spend the rest of the life bantering with a girl he's just met like five hours ago? That's not normal, right?

He turns the car around and pulls back into the strip mall.
Ally opens her eyes for just a second. "Why are we in a strip mall? No strip malls sell food."

"Just hush, Allyson."

"That's not my name." She says.

"It's not?"

She shakes her head. "No, my full first name is Alexandra."

He furrows his eyebrows. "So they call you Ally?"

She frowns. Seems as if she's started waking up. "Yes. That's really not that weird."

He shrugs. "I know. But pretty much all of the girls I've ever known whose names were Alexandra went by Alex or Lexi or something. Just not Ally."

A grin fights it's way onto her face. "What about the guys named Alexandra?"
He watched as she cracked up at her own joke.

"That was terrible." He remarks.
She continues laughing hysterically.

"Ohhh, that was a good one." She sighs after thirty straight seconds of laughing.

He shakes his head. "Only you."
She laughs again. "You know you loved it."

Austin rolls his eyes. "Yeah, you're hilarious, Alexandra."

She sobers up enough to give him a flat glare. "Don't call me that."

"Why?" He asks teasingly.

She opens her car door. "Because this is my car and we're still like four hours from home."

He shuts up.

Back on the interstate, Ally noshes loudly on her gummy bears.

"McDonald's and now this? You're not much of a healthy eater, are you?"

She scoffs, plopping a blue bear into her mouth. "Hey, there's a salad in here!" She huffs indignantly.

Austin laughs. "Yeah, and it's mine."

Ally pouts. "You know, you're very rude for a guy who's only known me for a few hours. And whose ride home depends solely on me."

He feels a slight pang of guilt, but decides not to admit that.
"Yeah, but it wouldn't be a very fun car ride if I was always chivalrous and subtle."

"Sure, but at least I wouldn't feel like a fatass."

Okay, now he feels really guilty. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel bad."

She just sighs and blows her bangs out of her eyes.

"Ally?"

He receives a grunt of acknowledgment in response.

"You're not fat, okay?"

She shrugs.

"You're gorgeous."

She blinks, startled, but merely shrugs again.

As soon as they hit Tampa, he realizes that if he doesn't pull over soon he's going to crash and potentially kill both himself and the coolest girl he's ever met.

He stops at the first hotel he sees- Days Inn.
"Ally. Ally. Als, c'mon, you've got to get up."

"Undfng." She responds, still mostly asleep.

"Dear God, Alexandra." He sighs. Lifting her out of the passenger seat, he kicks the door closed and carries her into the lobby.

"Where… where are we going?" She asks blearily, wrapping her arms around his neck and snuggling closer to his chest, probably without realizing anything she was doing.

He tried to fight back a smile. "We're going to Kansas."

"Mm… but I wanna go home."

"Shh." He shifts her around so that he's not carrying her bridal-style anymore, instead her legs are wrapped around his waist and her arms slung loosely across her shoulders.

"Hi, we'd like a room for the night, please?" He asks the overnight clerk as Ally starts to slip out of his arms. He catches her before she can fall.

My God, I'm so tired. He thinks, yawning widely. If he were by himself, he would've sucked it up and slept in the car. But he had Ally to worry about, and she was very quickly becoming an important figure in his life. He was not risking her safety.

The clerk's long acrylic nails click-clack noisily on the keyboard as she looks for unbooked rooms.
"The only rooms we have available are one-bed suites." She eyes the exhausted, bedraggled pair in front of her. They could be a couple, she thinks. Or maybe not. Mostly they just looked like they needed sleep.

Austin sighs. "It's better than nothing."

He hands her his credit card and she hands him the key card.

He walks around for a few minutes just trying to find out where the hell the stupid room is, running into the laundry room, the ice machine, and a deserted payphone in the process before realizing the damn thing is up the stairs.

Looking at the metal stairs in front of him, he sighs exasperatedly.
Shifting the sleeping Ally around again in his tired arms, he places a foot on the first step.

"You better love me." He whispers into her ear.

She responds with a very heartwarming 'mrm'.

"'Mostly because I'm pretty sure I love you."

Whether it's subconscious or not, she tightens her grip on his shoulders after that.

Despite what his classmates might have thought, Austin's truly not an asshole, and he definitely would never think of taking advantage of a girl. Any girl., really, but especially Ally.
This is why they started the night (it was actually like four a.m when they checked in, but those were minor details.), she is on one very edge of the bed and he is on the other.

Though somehow, Ally had rolled over closer to him and wrapped an arm and a leg around his body.
"You're warm." Ally mumbled.

He chuckled before disentangling himself from her limbs. "Ally, wake up. It's nine in the morning."

Ally's eyes fluttered open. Of course. When she woke up, she looked like a princess and he looked like a fucking ogre with messy hair and bags under his eyes.
But maybe this could be a Shrek story.

"Huh?" She asked, slowly propping herself up on her elbows. "Where are we?"

"We're at the Days Inn in Tampa."

She makes a face. "How'd we get here?"

He chuckles. "I carried you in."

Ally nods slowly. "Oh." Suddenly, she slid across the bed and hugged his shoulders.
"Thank you."

He smiled, wrapping an arm around her and holding her close.
"It's no problem."

She looks up into his eyes and the sunlight's streaming in and he is literally this close to leaning in and kissing her but then her goddamn phone rings and the moment is ruined.

She frowns at the screen. "Oh. It's Elliot."

"Hello?"

She swears she can hear Elliot exhale a sigh of relief. "Oh my God, Ally! Thank God you're alright. I called you several times last night and you never responded, I was afraid you'd gotten into an accident."

Austin, who was listening to the whole conversation, raised his eyebrows.
"Great guy." He mouthed sarcastically, giving her a falsely enthusiastic thumbs up.
She reached back and smacked his forearm.
"Shut up."

"No, Elliot, I'm fine. Sorry I didn't see your messages, I was really tired last night."

"Oh, it's alright, Ally-gator!" He said cheerfully. Ally cringed at the cheesy nickname and Austin cracked up as quietly as he could manage behind her.

"So, are you home?" Elliot asked.

"Actually, no not yet. I, uh, I guess I spent the night at a hotel in Tampa with Austin."

"Austin? Who's Austin?" Elliot interrogated, jealously immediately coating his voice.

Ally cringed again. "Um, he's a guy from our school that I sort of let hitchhike with me?" She said, as if she were unsure of what happened.

Elliot was very obviously alarmed by this. "You what? You met a guy yesterday and you're sleeping with him? Ally, you kicked me out of your dorm in freshman year as soon as it was nine o' clock! And we were still in the middle of Sixteen Candles."

All of this was clearly very funny to Austin, who had not stopped laughing, but it was highly frustrating to Ally.

"Elliot, first of all, I didn't sleep with him. I just slept. And even if I did, who are you to tell me I can't!? We're not in a relationship. You're not my father. "

"Ally, I'm just trying to be a good friend and protect you from making any stupid decisions!" Elliot screeched.

Ally's eyes widened in anger. "Really? Because all you're being is an asshole!"
She hung up and threw the phone to the floor, flopping limply into a fluffy feather pillow.

"You okay?" Austin, who had stopped laughing as soon as he realized how upset Ally was, asked softly, placing a hand gently on her back.

Ally nodded into the pillow before standing back up and picking her phone up off the floor.

"Yeah, I'm okay." She said, but he could see her wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. "Can we just… let's go."

He nodded, wrapping one of his arms around her shoulders protectively.
Before she unlocked the door, she looked over at Austin.

"Did you tell me you loved me last night?" She asked blankly.

Austin paled.
"If I did, would that be okay?"

Ally nodded, but her expression remained blank.

"Yeah." She told him, opening the door. "Yeah, that's okay."

They reach Miami at noontime.

Ally breathes a deep sigh of relief. "Oh, gosh. It already feels so good to be home."
She rolls her window down and lets the salty ocean breeze blow her hair in all directions.

She closes the window so that he can hear her better before she speaks.
"You know what's ironic? I picked you up off of the street, and yet you've driven the majority of this trip."

He smirks. "It's because you were tired. And I'm clearly the better driver."

She scoffs indignantly and swats at his arm. "That's a lie."

He starts trying to convince her that it is very obviously the truth but she places her hands over her ears and chants a very annoying song very loudly.

"You know, you are a very confusing and highly conflicting person, Alexandra Dawson." He says, making a left turn onto a road near the beach.
She realizes that she has no idea where he's taking them, considering he doesn't know where she lives and vice-versa, but she decides not to care. She trusts him.

"Yes, but you love me." She smirks.

Austin moans. "What, are you just going to tantalize me with that and use it against me at every available opportunity?"

Ally frowns. "Use what against you?"

"Well, I very vulnerably admitted my feelings to you after about nine hours of knowing you and I do not regret that and I am very sure that I love you but yet you have not said one thing about your feelings for me. Matter of fact, for all I know you might not even have feelings for me and this car ride could have just gotten very awkward and I will have to live with the shame of unrequited love for the rest of my life."

Ally chuckles. "I pulled over, didn't I?"

"Huh?"

"I said, I pulled over, didn't I?"

"No, no, I heard you. I just am not comprehending."

Ally takes a deep breath. If she's going to be honest with herself here, she's never been any good at verbally expressing her feelings. Or, like, socialization in general . This was probably one of the reasons she'd taken up songwriting in the first place.

"Austin, have you ever done something that at first glance looked stupid and irrational but you sort of just felt like you had to do it? Like, you were literally meant to do it?"

He nods. "Yeah. Once."

"Well, when I saw you on the side of the road, I remembered my father telling me to never ever pick up a hitchhiker. And I guess in the moment I rationalized it as a moment of teenage rebellion- except, you know, like a year overdue- but anyways I've spent the last twenty-four hours realizing that I did it because I saw you and I wanted to know you and you have to know that I don't do that. Like, ever."

A grin spreads across his face. "So, I'm special?"

She nods happily. "Very special."

She has no clue where they are right now (it's some remote area of the beach, he explains later) but honestly she could not care less because he is leaning in and the only thing she can really think is ohgodohgodohgod but then he's kissing her and it actually feels rather okay.

This Monday is very suspiciously cold for Miami, but his arms are wrapped securely around her so that she is warm.

"I'm hungry." She complains.

He groans. "My God, you are a highly conflicting person, Ally."

She smiles sweetly and leans in to peck his lips in hopes that he will get out of bed and retrieve food for her.
He will, because no matter how much of a confusing and conflicting person she is, she is his confusing and conflicting person.

So he'll get used to it.

::Fin::

A/N: okay so I've decided that whenever I write a fairly happy/fluffy fic the ending feels rushed and inconclusive so I'm going to have to work on that one.
Aside from that, though, I am oddly proud of this one (I think) so whoop go me and my lack of anything better to do for Spring Break.
oh yes, this was written for the prompt "Write a story involving these three things: a musician, a strip mall, and a broken down car."
Ba-bam.
Oh and also the ending's timepoint is supposed to be fairly ambiguous, whether you want it to be the next Monday or a year later, it's all good.

-Tessa-