*
"I fell in love with Peter Pan when I was eleven," she whispers into his ear one night. "I saw the movie, made my au pair read me the book, dragged Ryan to the play, and even forced my parents to take a trip to London so I could go to Kensington Gardens."
He thinks it's perfect for her. After all, with her pink and her glitter and her performing, she never really ever has to grow up.
*
They do everything in the wrong order. They sleep together first, date next, and fall in love third before they really even completely know each other. He sees her pee before they date but after they sleep together, and she kisses his gross morning breath before she loves him enough to forgive him such things.
Still, he thinks one morning when Sharpay's eating cereal in his old t-shirt, he thinks they must've done something right to be this happy.
Still, she thinks one morning as Chad steps out of the shower smirking knowingly at her, they must've done something right to be this happy.
*
His friends call him crazy, sleeping with the Ice Queen.
"Remember," they say, "how you were the one who said that she's a mountain lion? She's cute, I'll give you that, but she'll claw your face off."
He smirks, shakes his head, and laughs with his friends. "Yes, she's cute, yes, she'll claw my face off, but she's totally worth it."
Her brother, her parents, her friends don't get it. Ryan even asks if she's pretending Chad is Troy. She raises an eyebrow, smacks him across the face, and ignores him for two weeks.
*
Sometimes, when she's on the phone with her brother, her eyes get big and broken and her voice gets a little sharper. She listens to Ryan talk about Broadway and dance and Juilliard.
Broadway, the magnificent musicals she's been listening to and attending and dreaming of since she was little.
Dance, her weakness that she worked at for hours because even though drama and music came easily to her she had to work a little bit harder at dance than Ryan.
Juilliard, the only truly important thing that he managed to steal out of her perfectly French manicured hands.
She'll hang up and curse U of A and all that goes with it, before Chad opens the door and kisses her senseless. New York's overrated anyways.
*
The first time Chad sees her drunk, it's almost too intimate for him to watch. Sure they've had sex, but sex is nothing and they argued before and a whole lot after so tender memories aren't usually associated with it.
She's alone, walking crookedly down the sidewalk. Later, he learns she sends her admirers off herself, probably aware of what she turns into. She's not crying, or hysterical.
On the contrary, she's quite intellectual. She's the only person he's ever met who sounds smarter wasted than in real life. She looks up at him after plopping herself on the sidewalk.
"I wonder," she starts, "what exactly happens to a dream deferred?"
(It's the first time he's ever seen her not performing and it scares him a little.)
He thinks he should know the answer considering the Lakers aren't calling and basketball keeps getting harder instead of better.
"Fuck if I know," he says with his foot scuffing the ground.
They sit on the sidewalk, under a streetlamp, and think.
*
She's majoring in theatre, obviously. But she's minoring in photography and it surprises him. She's always, always been the one in front of the camera. In front of any camera, really, and he can't ever picture her behind it. The ruffles and the colors and the shine couldn't possibly fit behind a tripod. She belongs on a stage, not in a darkroom with no spotlight.
Turns out he's right. A couple months later she declares it a ridiculous attempt and changes to public relations, a much more suitable field. She giggles about it later, wondering who she was trying to be. She belongs on the stage, obviously.
*
They talk about high school, in depth. "Explain Troy Bolton," he says. She looks at him with something in her eyes he can't quite name.
"Why don't you?" He realizes that look is defiance.
"Tell me about Taylor," she demands.
"Tell me about Zeke," he retaliates.
They sit there in silence, shame and pride and loneliness in their eyes, until he decides to throw her a bone.
"Troy was golden and I got whatever was left over. Taylor was, there I guess. Right place, right time, wrong person."
He shrugs. She nods.
"Troy was golden, and I didn't even get the leftovers. I got the desperation and humiliation while he got his happily ever after. Zeke was never enough."
"Okay,"he says.
"Okay," she says.
They don't talk about it again.
*
He loves basketball, yes, but he knows he's not good enough to play professionally as he'd always deluded himself to believe. He's not Troy, so he can't forsake one skill and immediately excel at another. For a while there, he's lost.
Sharpay picks him up, yells that being in the NBA was unrealistic anyways, and tells him to figure out what he wants to do with his life.
He refrains from commenting on her drawer full of dreams, and instead says, you. She smirks, as if to say, "Who doesn't?"
Needless to say, they spend the afternoon in bed. Career paths and other, grown-up things can wait.
*
When they move in together, she immediately throws away his baseball glove beanbag, collection of restaurant napkins, and his little black book after finding it wedged beneath his moldy socks and old magazines. He's never been one to sit back and take it, so he throws away her portable sequin station, the pink furry-framed mirror that talks to her, and her little pink book. It's only fair.
They fight for hours and end up keeping his lava lamp and her Audrey Hepburn themed coffee table books. Eventually their room goes from white to red and pretty soon his dingy bachelor pad has been transformed. He's pretty sure he likes it. Not that he'll tell Sharpay that.
*
He tells her he's still scared of the dark. Just a little bit though. She laughs her head off, as suspected, kisses him, then jumps out of bed. He can hear her footprints in the kitchen, and after looking around anxiously, reaches over to the nightstand to turn on the lamp.
After a few painfully long minutes, she flounces back into the room with something in her hand, bending over to fiddle with something. When she steps back there's a round, orange, sequined, glowing basketball sticking out of the socket.
He doesn't think he's ever been so relieved when he turns out the light, and it's still shining brightly.
*
They fall in the love the same way they do everything. Stubbornly, passionately, quickly, arrogantly, perfectly.
Stubbornly, they fight about everything. Who gets to pick the DVD. Who looks better in the color red. What they mean to each other, at first. When they should go out for dinner.
Passionately, they make up. Usually involving crazy, kinky, steamy, hot, makeup sex.
Quickly, they fall into each other's lives, almost as if they'd always been there.
Arrogantly, they claim each other for themselves, skipping the "talk" and assuming rightly what should be theirs.
Perfectly, they live happily ever after.
*
AN: Chad and Sharpay are literally the best looking, most awesome, most entertaining couple in the entire HSM fandom and I don't understand why more people don't read/write/review the stories. Join the revolution. You write it, I'll review it. Guaranteeeed. Now please review mine!