Disclaimer: I do not own Austin and Ally or any of the characters.

Ally Dawson was no fool.

She was actually plenty smart, mind you.

Sure she had a tendency to ramble on and on when she was nervous. Maybe she did ask a tad too many questions when she got excited.

And god knows how awful her stage fright is.

But she had long since learned the beauty of balancing things.

Like her dear old father always told her, it's not about how much you carry; it's about how good you are at balancing what's on your plate.

And she had always done a pretty decent job at maintaining her top notch school grades at school and the number of work hours her father insisted on having her take care of. She was used to lecturing her Latina friend the importance of keeping a job and how a little diligence and effort goes a long way.

She was used to cramming up in the practice room full of inventory and unsold instrument parts, hitting all the right notes perfectly on her old forsaken piano, fantasizing of one day finally being able to live the life she wanted.

Her balancing scale was just a little thrown off by the new friendships she soon acquired. Because really, when you throw in a wind-swept blond song thief with a killer voice and a freckled red head pulling a kangaroo, your scale tipping slightly was kind of to be expected.

Somewhere between all the mischief and mayhem her group of friends caused her, she had worked out a new scale- actually less of a scale, more of a teeter totter that was constantly tipping and rising in an irregular fashion.

And in that sorry excuse for a scale she found a sense of peace.

So when Austin started acting especially nice to her that particular day, she knew something was up.

Not that he was usually unkind to her or anything like that, just the fact that he offered to stack up all the boxes that arrived the night before, or the fact he singlehandedly polished the clarinets he made fun of her for polishing just the previous day.

And maybe it was the way his eyes seemed to flutter nervously when she questioned him on his sudden attempts at being considerate.

There were also several instances where he looked like he was about to say something but would then decide against it and close his mouth. A process repeated so many times she internally compared him to a gutless fish in her mind at one point.

Now if this were any other day she would have sat him down and had a long talk with him about modesty and feelings before forcing out whatever it was that he wanted from her.

But of course, this wasn't any other day the store was inexplicably crowded this particular day with even a line up stretching to the door in the afternoon.

So instead she was thankful to have Austin's help in the store that day and settled for just doing a quick mental check on all the instruments Austin could have possibly destroyed which might have been the cause of his guilt and over niceness.

It was only when the store was locked up and she was leaning over the front counter in exhaustion over a long day's work did he finally come up to her.

She looked up at him expectantly with a slight tinge of a smile. This ought to be good.

"Busy day." Austin conversed casually. Or almost casually, if it weren't for his nervous stance and constant hand twitching she might have actually believed he was attempting conversation.

Never the less, Ally nodded along, deciding to humor him.

"Yeah, one of our worst." She propped her elbows up on the counter and stared back at him with glassy brown eyes as if daring him to carry through with his plans.

Austin's eyes flickered as if he was hoping her answer would have been longer and could have spared him a couple more seconds before he would be obligated to spit out the inevitable. He scratched his hair for a full minute before he leaned over to her, resting his hands on the register.

"I need a favor."

Ally tilted her head with a knowing smirk and she walked over to him with her arms crossed in false surprise even though it was the most obvious thing in the world by now.

"Oh really, tell me about it."

Austin seemed to have regained most of his confidence as he took a step closer to her before he put both his hands on Ally's shoulders.

"Okay," He looked up at her with hopeful and slightly fearful eyes, "I need you to pretend to be my girlfriend."

And the sly smile playing on Ally's thin lips immediately vanished.