Gah. So, if you haven't checked out a premier Chadpay writer and friend, StarVitamin, go do that now (actually, go do that after you're done reading this), because she is in need of your love, for not only writing really good Chadpay, but also for inspiring me to get off my ass and polish up this epic of a fic (over 2000 words!), which I'm not entirely happy with, but I'm also doing "One Thousand Words" in GA, so I'm just going to have to live with that.

That was one very long sentence.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

There was always the question, wasn't there, the simple, heart-thumpingly complex, multilayered question that burned in her brain, which she never asked him, not once because they didn't do that sort of thing.

And how would she phrase this question, anyway? "Chad, darlingheart, there just aren't enough cliché romance scenes in our high school, so I was wondering, because I'm a small, self-doubting, helpless little girl who's never been kissed before, if I were to get stuck in a burning house, would you go in for me, and please say yes because the script calls for things like this?"

To begin with, she didn't call anyone darling, much less "darlingheart."

And she wasn't a self-doubting, helpless little girl (smallness was not the same as littleness. It couldn't be helped.)

She'd certainly been kissed before, though not in a swept-off-the-feet, stirring-breezes-through-the-hair way, and she didn't intend to get kissed that way for the first time by Chad Danforth.

But the real issue was...really, burning houses, Sharpay? No. Not burning houses.

Not burning houses, because not matter what you say when you're asked that question, you don't know, you're never really sure if you will go into that flaming wreckage of death and destruction to save the person you say you love.

And Sharpay wanted to be sure, regardless of the fact that they weren't really in love with each other, nor had they ever kissed. Nor had they even had a decent, soul searching, lasting until four in the morning conversation. Over the phone. Underneath the covers to avoid detection. No, they'd never done that.

So what would she ask?

"How far would you go for me?" No. Nonono. That was what lovers asked. They weren't lovers. They were friends.

Not even. They were pseudo-friends.

Which meant sometimes they bummed rides off each other and went to Starbucks during free period.

They didn't usually get coffee, but they did take over the couch area and stretch out, heads almost touching, except for two armrests in between. And they didn't talk. They never talked, but they did lie there, eyes closed sometimes, thinking of things to say to each other, questions and answers to other questions, but never quite voicing them out loud.

She didn't know if this was because they were uncomfortably dependent on each other, or because they were comfortably independent enough to spend silence together. Maybe they were just happy that she wasn't Troy and he wasn't Ryan. They were the pseudo-replacements for those friends.

Pseudo-friends didn't give birthday gifts, or Valentine's Day cards. They exchanged twenty-dollar gift certificates to Panera on Christmas, and before school let out, they wrote "Had a great year, hope to see you over the summer," in yearbooks.

She and Chad didn't do this, so maybe they were just...

What the hell.

She'd had his phone number on speed dial (#7) and didn't use it for a month. (And even then, it was to tell him to tell Troy to tell Gabriella that she wouldn't make it to rehearsal that afternoon.)

He'd ridden sullenly in her car, listening to A Chorus Line for the five hundredth time, before he started singing along (horribly off tune), so loudly that the driver next to them at the stop light flipped them off. Blatantly. Multiple times.

They'd tolerated each other simply to accommodate their friends and family, and then it never crossed their minds to become intolerant when everything else ended.

So, this...this tolerance.

"Danforth, just how much longer do you think I'm going to make coffee runs with you?" (Wrong, stupid, and relationship-needy, none of which described her at all.)

This was stupid. This was stupid and pointless and Sharpay Evans had better things to do than sit in her car on the side of the road, with a flat tire in a thunderstorm, debating whether or not to call Chad Danforth to bail her out (because tonight was Ryan's turn to deal with the parents.)

She certainly had better things to do than think about coffee and stupid basketball players who couldn't even brave a one-octave range.

And she certainly could think of better people to call when she was stranded on the highway (Ted Bundy, for example.)

But nevertheless, her finger hovered over the number 7 on her cell phone, and she wasn't sure what annoyed her more, that it hovered or that it was even contemplating hovering.

Because it was one thing to go out for caffeine and never speak.

It was another thing to change flat tires in driving rain (no pun, she swore) and never speak.

And admit it, no one in his right mind, small and underused as it might be, would come to her rescue, even if she was Sharpay Evans.

Her hands went on without her and held down the 7 button for two seconds and propelled the phone to her face, and it wasn't until she heard the connecting rings that she started to hate herself.

So now she had five seconds to phrase her question correctly. "I've got a flat on inner city 66, you want to be useful and help?" Somehow, she didn't think that would convince anyone.

Shit.

"Sharpay?"

"Hello to you, too, Danforth." Damn. Truthful yet unhelpful.

"Is...there something wrong?"

"I just..." Question, question, question... "I have a flat tire."

"So?"

"You're amazingly unperceptive."

"You're calling me at 11 o'clock at night." She sighed, and he mock sighed back, and she wanted to hit something. She settled for disdainful incoherence instead.

"Danforth. Chad. It's 11 o'clock at night. It's raining outside. It's raining hard. Ryan is trapped in the talons of my parents, who are probably not wondering where I am. I'm sitting on the side of 66, very tempted to just go to the IHOP across the street and eat pancakes all night long. I don't like pancakes. My hands are cold. A deer almost attacked the car about fifteen minutes ago. There can only be one reason that I'm rambling on a cell phone to a mentally deficient child."

"The side of 66, across from the IHOP?"

"Yes."

"Okay." He hung up. She could only assume that he meant to come get her, because nobody ended a phone call like that only to keep watching Saturday Night Live.

So she hadn't asked him. Which wasn't a problem, really, because the answer shouldn't really affect her. At all. Not really. It was just some...insecurity she had, when she was feeling vulnerable (almost attacked by a damn deer. Weren't they supposed to be docile and Disney-like?)

Time always passed implausibly quickly when you weren't sure if you wanted someone to show up, and so, in about five seconds of time, a Land Rover pulled up behind her Mercedes and honked. She made sure she was silhouetted against the headlights before giving Chad the finger.

"If you think I'm going out there in this weather," she growled to herself, "I will personally maul you beyond recognition."

Now he was in the passenger seat next to her, turning the heat up and shaking out his obscenely oversized hair. She wondered how he got there. "So, you have a plan about this flat tire?" he asked. "Or are we just going to sit in your car until the gas runs out?"

"I don't have enough cell-phone minutes to waste on letting you sit in my car until the gas runs out." He didn't respond to that, and she smiled, just a little, at the triumph.

"Do you have a jack?"

"Dunno."

"Oh come on, Sharpay, this is a Mercedes. It has to come with a spare tire in the compartment under the trunk and a handy first aid kit and a car jack."

"Mm, no, not on my list of What To Look For In A Car. Sorry."

"Great."

"You could just go look in the trunk, if you're so distressed about it," she said flippantly.

Chad said, "I'm distressed? You called me, remember? You called me at 11 o'clock at night, expecting me to come change a tire for you in horrible rain, and you're calling me distressed? We don't even know each other, and you're already labeling me. Unbelievable."

"Is it?"

"What?"

"Is it that unbelievable?" He looked at her incredulously for a few seconds.

"No," Chad said. "No, it's not."

"And I'd say we know each other pretty well."

"Yeah, okay. I know you like Broadway, and you know I like rap. I know you're a stuck-up bitch, and you know I'm a lazy slob." He hit his head against the seat.

"I know you pretend to like coffee. I know you don't wish you were Troy, but you pretend to, because it makes sense. I know you pretend you're stupid, and I guess you are, because you think that trying hard is overrated. Except in basketball, of course," she amended. "I know I should probably stop talking, because I've proved my point and you're about to say something clever to try to prove me wrong, and I know it's not going to work, because you know I'm right."

He shook his head. "Why'd you call?"

"Oh, so now you're switching the subject."

"Sharpay, can we just say you win at everything and have a normal conversation?"

"Absolutely impossible."

"Of course." They sat in silence a bit longer, as silent as it could be with the heat on full blast. She studied her nails in the faint illumination of the streetlights.

"I don't know."

"Hmm?"

"I said, I don't know. Why I called you." She couldn't resist, and added, "Listening helps."

"So I've heard."

Sharpay glared at him and said, "You want to hear me bare my soul or not?"

"Do you even have a soul?"

Without missing a beat, "If I did, do you want to hear me bare it?"

"Bare away, my dear."

"That's not half as dirty as you want it to sound." She dropped her seat back a few inches, stretched out her legs, rolled her neck around a few times. "I...called. Because Ryan is busy and Bolton and Montez are somewhere I don't care to think about, and Kelsi is a complete and utter spaz, and everyone else, who you don't know, is doing things that are none of your business."

"How'd you know I'd show up?" And there was her question. How did she know that he would show up? They weren't even friends. If she was stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire, would he care enough to bail her out? But that was too specific, so she'd simply demanded his presence, and somehow, that wasn't the same thing.

She could still gloat. "You're here, aren't you?"

"That doesn't answer the question."

She bristled; "Look, it doesn't matter, you're here, and I haven't done anything terrifyingly grotesque yet."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, shut up," she finally snapped, defeated.

The clock on the console said that ten minutes had passed, but in no time at all, he asked, "Do you really hate pancakes?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"Pancakes are fried cake with liquid sugar poured all over them. It's like inhaling a cavity."

"Well, if you put it that way..."

"I am putting it that way," she said. "Omelets are so much better," she added, after beat, when she decided that she'd throw him a bone.

"From IHOP?"

"Doesn't matter. I can make a good omelet, though. Foodgasm-inducing good."

She smiled as he digested the word 'foodgasm.' "I'm not even going to ask."

"Do you need to?"

"No." A smile floated over his lips. "This is the most we've spoken...ever, I guess."

"Un fortunately, I've had to be present for most of it," she said.

"It's hard to talk when you're listening to a girl sing about getting silicone implants." Chad pulled a pained face as he said it, and sighed. "We are never getting out of here."

"Don't sound like we're about to die, Danforth."

"I'm about to die," he deadpanned, and she felt a bit irritated.

"Why don't you have a car jack in your car? You knew I had a flat."

"Mine's rusted. And I thought you had one in your car."

They glared at each other before she rolled her eyes and said, "This is going nowhere."

Chad said, "I'm not changing a tire in this weather."

"Then why'd you come?"

"Because I— I don't know."

"Aw, no soul-baring revelation?"

"Sorry to disappoint."

"It's hard to disappoint when the expectations were low to begin with."

He clutched a hand to his chest. "Oh, my heart. Pieces on the floor, Sharpay, look at it."

"Funny, can't see a thing. Must be too small." He smiled, but she didn't see. She'd turned her head to look at nothing out her window, quiet for a few minutes. He didn't bother to break her self-imposed isolation, instead drumming his fingers (painfully loudly) on his knee. Sharpay felt her face flush with annoyance, and she just knew he was waiting for a good explanation for both of them to be here on a Saturday night, as though it was all her fault.

She felt the words build up in her throat, rearranging themselves in sickeningly fast patterns until she was in danger of vomiting them up.

She opened her mouth, grateful that she wasn't facing him as syllables and sounds fought to form themselves on her vocal chords.

Finally, "Chad?" in a strangled, unused-to-speaking voice that sounded completely wrong.

"I'm here." He didn't say it in a horrible, smug, that's obvious kind of way. She wasn't sure if that was good.

Sharpay clamped her mouth shut, determined to get the next words out correctly.

"Are you?" And now she fought the urge to take Chad's fist and slam it into her head for saying that.

Silence for a few seconds, after those devastating two words, and then, "Yes."

Her head snapped back around, eyes searching, almost uncertain that this scene of vulnerability even happened. She hesitated. "Good."

"Well, I'm not going anywhere soon, so you might as well enjoy it."

He gave her a cop-out, and for that, she kissed him on the cheek.

She didn't have a reason for what happened afterwards, but she could say it was better than an omelet induced foodgasm.

Wow. Can we say OOC Sharpay at the end there?
Anyway. Do you love Idina Menzel? I love Idina Menzel. She writes great songs. "Here" is a perfect example, and it was part of the inspiration for the beginning of this fic. So yeah. Go download or something and listen to it.
The part in the middle somewhere about a girl singing about her implants? That's "Dance: Ten; Looks: Three" from A Chorus Line.
"Foodgasm" is a word that's been floating around in my head for a while. I'm pretty sure several hundred different people can lay claim to it. It's almost as good as another word, but I can't type that one in a PG-13 note.
Ted Bundy was a crazy serial killer who lured women into his van by...being distressed on the side of the road.

Whew! Okay, I'm done. Review and go read StarVitamin's stuff.