Title: Sugar and Cinnamon
Summary: Drabble on Kelsi and her guys.
Pairings: Chad/Kelsi
A/N: Takes place after the events of 'High School Musical'.
Sugar and Cinnamon
The guys always thought of Kelsi as their mascot. Well, East High already had a student dressed in a stuffed cat suit for their mascot, but for Troy and Chad's little bunch of basketballers-turned-social-barrier-breakdowners, Kelsi was always the innocent little girl with her hair hidden by her hat and her fingers always with a piano or a pen nearby.
After the entire chaos of scholastic decathlon and basketball team finals, and the victory of Troy and Gabriella over the blonde bitch and her brother, she felt as if life was just going to subdue, like the world's biggest anticlimax. Kelsi had never been good at keeping her hopes (and her feet) firmly on the ground, but as the remnants of the winter in Albuqerque melted into a spring and then the promise of summer, the others were off being the patron saints of Social Acceptance and Kelsi was stuck as a tag-along.
Then when their perfect snowglobe of an existence broke around them, Kelsi realised. Over the summer, Gabriella's mother had been offered another job promotion and the two of them were moving. Moving away, with all of the little memories that the gang had accumulated like trinkets; days where she, Gabriella, Taylor and Sharpay had spent hours watching romantic comedies to piss off the more bloodthirsty Chad or the more action-packed Troy; swimming in the Evans' mansion pool and burning their fingers on Zeke's butterscotch cookies straight from the oven; watching the performance of Twinkle Town from her trusty piano, laughing and half-singing as the two sweethearts danced around stage, their eyes locked onto each other as if there was no-one else in the world.
Which, in Troy and Gabriella's eyes, they were. Their romance had seemed sweet and natural to Kelsi when they first gotten together after everything that happened. But even Kelsi, whose experience of emotions was watching re-runs of Dynasty and weepy made-for-TV movies like "From Now Until Eternity", knew that their romance was almost too perfect, because any relationship needed a spark, a little darkness to combat the light and a little bit of anger. According to "'Death Us Do Part", anyway.
So when Gabriella waved goodbye to New Mexico and felt the cooler but bigger arms of Chicago welcome her, the entire gang realised it could never last. And it didn't. Sharpay and Ryan left soon after her and Taylor's father moved to Vermont, leaving Kelsi the only girl in her circle of friends.
Strange and selfish as it seems, she was almost glad that Gabriella and Sharpay had done a Houdini. The guys finally started to notice her. Not that they hadn't never not noticed her, not since Chad had called her 'small person' and her petite frame had been practically drowned in a sea of basketball-beaten muscles and bright white and crimson tracksuits.
Being the only girl, the guys, and the guys being Troy, Chad and Zeke, were protective of her. Not obsessive stuff because she probably would have slammed Chad's head in the piano if he had tried to stop her dating a guy because he didn't like the look of him. But they did sweet little things, the sort of moments in friendships which you rarely notice, but reflect with smiling eyes years later, when you're married and have kids and a white picket fence.
Every lunchtime she and the guys would have a lunch-table and while the guys talked about defence and how the West High Knights were working on a new offensive, she would be plugged into her iPod, Tori Amos and Ash and the occasional smattering of the Grease soundtrack caressing her ears. But even she never realised how much the guys actually depended on her. She didn't mind when Chad practically begged her to help him revise for a biology exam (no revising was actually done; they spent the day around Chad's mansion and ended up having a Star Wars marathon and getting popcorn in the leather sofa), or when Troy asked her to accompany him to see the new Mel Gibson film (because he didn't want to go by himself and the last time he went to the movies, it was with Gabriella), or when Zeke and she spent a whole morning testing his new caramel shortbread.
She realised she was the only constant girl in their lives and with her mighty pack of wildcats around her, Kelsi really felt like the safest girl in the world. When the old bullies walked the halls like prowling lionesses, ready to munch and devour, tearing at the skin and flesh, drawing blood, her boys would be around her, like a human shield. Even though she was the only girl, and she couldn't really discuss things that were more feminine based (she thought that Troy would faint if she ever asked him about where to buy the new sort of tampons), she thought having these three guys as friends, for however long it might be, would be amazing.
To fit with the whole "rebel-music-girl-with-popular-friends" image, despite social stereotypes having been pretty much shoved in the garbage with last Thursday's mystery meat, she had agreed to have her hair streaked (because it looked cool and she had always loved Mac from Veronica Mars) a bright, vibrant colour. She had sat on Chad's bed, her legs folded Indian style while the guys tried to fight for their chosen colours (Troy had wanted her to streak it red; Chad, blue; and Zeke a platinum colour). She had taken the three packets, padded into the luxurious bathroom and emerged ten minutes later, her hair unchanged, saying, if she had wanted to, she would have already, making Troy and Chad scrunching their faces in confusion, while she and Zeke had laughed at them.
So, at the end of years where teachers, homework and general mayhem had ended, and the long summer stretched in front of them, with Chad insisting they live in his place, the Danforth Mansion, for the summer. Kelsi's mom didn't mind too much because she was too busy dealing with the threat of divorce and things that Kelsi knew involved her but right now, all she wanted, was to be with her friends and have some fun before the reality of life settled over them like an impending cloud in their previously cloudless expanse of azure.
And when Chad began showing a more-than-friendly interest in her, she had sat back and waited (as was her skill). She waited for Troy to sort out his life and for Zeke's untapped potential to burst open like the rhetorical dam and for the chocolate fudge brownies and iced carrot cake to earn himself millions. She waited, until Chad finally kissed her over a tub of Cherry Garcia and the new Keanu Reeves movie, and he tasted like sugar and cinnamon.
And when she awoke one late morning, with the scent of summer in the air, and with Chad's muscular mocha-coloured arm possessively around her waist, his eyes looking at her in adoration, she knew.
She knew she wasn't just a girl. And her friends just weren't some guys.
They were each other.
She smiled at Chad, and then kissed him, hunger, sweetness and love pouring into that single action.
They kissed and the world was reborn.
Fin