Okay, so this should be known as the chapter that nearly killed me. I honestly just left it for like, three days because I was so frustrated with it, but thankfully, dear old Gossip Girl gave me a little bit of help.

I'm also ridiculously sick and it's dreadful. :( My computer also hates me, but hey, Zac and Vanessa went furniture shopping on Saturday, so life is good. :)

I make a couple of references here. Hope you pick up on them! :) And the song is 'Secret' by The Pierces.

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For the Hundredth Billionth Time

The Sharpay Evans Factor

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"Breathe, Gabi, breathe"

Chad Danforth's head was spinning as he sped down the residential street at forty miles over the speed limit. In the backseat of the Audi were Troy and Gabriella, with the latter panting and groaning in pain while clutching the former's hand.

He should have never told them, oh god, what was he thinking? This couldn't possibly be coincidence! The stress of what he had just told them had totally induced labour!

"Oh my god," Gabriella said, her voice strained and Troy whipped his head around.

"Can't you drive any faster?" he barked, brushing the strands of Gabriella's hair away from her forehead.

Gritting his teeth, Chad pounded on the pedal harder. "I'm trying to go as fast as I can without getting us killed!"

"If you don't speed up, pal, I'll gladly kill you myself!" Gabriella let out another moan and leaned against the car seat.

Troy squeezed her hand and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Gabi, remember your breathing."

"Oh shut it, Troy!"

Weaving in and out of traffic, Chad tried tried to remember his own breathing. This interlude of sorts in his most vulnerable moment was most convenient and most distressing. All he knew was that he had to get Gabriella to the hospital and pronto or else major complications would arise.

When they finally pulled up to the hospital two minutes later and the paramedics ushered Gabriella into a wheelchair, Chad found himself following behind idly, having trouble taking in the whole situation. This was something he would never experience. He would never know what the panic of having a woman deliver his child.

It was odd, accepting that fact. Then again, it wasn't something he had ever really imagined, just something he had more assumed would happen. He cast a hand over his face, feeling older than his twenty-six years and watched as the world unravelled around him.

Entering the hospital, he was overcome with the bright lights and stench of cleanser. Everything was so orderly and neat and yet chaotic and messy all at once. He felt sick at the thought that in one room, someone was probably letting go of their lives and here a new one was just beginning.

Why the fuck was he being so deep all of a sudden? He finally found Troy, standing at the reception desk; filling out papers and arguing with the receptionist.

"Look, lady, do you really need to know my phone number right now?" He argued, setting the pen down and gripping his hair. "I need to get back to my wife!"

"The faster you fill out the paper work, sir, the faster you can get back to your wife," she answered in a monotonous voice.

Twisting his wedding ring, he glared. "Just let me go! I promise I'll come back and fill it out later!"

"I'm afraid I can't permit that, sir."

Chad came up beside his friend and laid a hand on his arm. "Chill, man. Just fill out the paper work."

Troy glared back in response. "Leave it to you to be rational right now! I can't, I have to get back to Gabriella!"

"Just fill out the paper work, Troy. Gabriella will still be there to break your hand when you're finished." His words left no room for argument and he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Troy comply and fill out the rest of the paperwork. When he was finished, he set down the pen and stared at the receptionist.

She nodded, bored. "You may go."

As he set off down the hallway, Chad felt himself lurch forward and he grabbed his friends forearm. He suddenly had to know if everything was alright between them.

"Troy," he said, his throat tight. "About earlier..."

"Look, Chad," Troy shook off his arm. "Earlier was serious, I get that. And we will discuss it further in detail and I'm sorry, but right now my wife is in labour and if you can actually comprehend it, she and my child are all I can think about at the moment, so let me go."

With that he turned and ran back down the hallway to a nurse that was waiting for him to suit up in scrubs to enter the delivery room. Chad stared at him, feeling claustrophobic, just like he had all those months ago.

"Oh my god, we got here as fast as we could!" a voice squealed and Chad looked up and was met with the sight of hot pink and blonde hair. Sharpay Evans was dragging her fiancee, Zeke Baylor by the hand, looking frazzled and excited all at once. "Is there a bouncing baby Bolton yet?"

There were three distinct times Chad could remember giving Sharpay Evans more than second thought over the past three years. She was an acquaintance and his good friend's fiancee, but nothing aside from that. She did not have a spot in his little black book, nor was she on his Christmas card list and vice versa.

It was funny how all of that had changed in the past few months.

The first was the time in the tenth grade when he spent an entire week pursuing her romantically, and while they had made out in the kitchen of a lame house party, that was as far as they had gone. He was pretty certain that Sharpay was so intoxicated that she didn't remember a single second of it, or that she had just decided to block it from memory. Either way, neither had ever brought it up.

The second was in junior year when he decided that he hated her more than math homework and made every single effort possible to ignore her completely. She was a haughty, prissy little bitch and she hung onto Troy like a leech and he hated her. God, she just wouldn't go away for a long enough period of time.

The third and most recent time was three months ago, when she ran into him at Kitson LA.

Riffling through a stack of Disel jeans, he was painfully aware of the paparazzi snapping away outside the window. He grinned to himself, however, pushing the rim of his aviator sunglasses up the rim of his nose, thankful that for once the attention was not on him. A particularly high-profile couple from some Disney musical (or something like that, he wasn't sure) were walking hand in hand and gasp! Drinking coffee!

Apparently they were more interesting than him buying jeans.

Just as he found the one pair of vintage dark wash distressed jeans he had been searching for for the last half hour, he looked up to see a lot of blonde hair and tanned legs. He gulped.

Sharpay Evans stood before him, balancing a Dolce and Gabbana tote bag on one arm and tapping her Marc Jacobs flats. She glared at him.

"Danforth," she said in way of greeting, her pink lipstick glistening. He winced, remembering the taste of it on his lips all those years ago. It had been goddamn awful.

"Evans," he said, nodding before turning back to the jeans. Fuck trying them on. With her in the store, there was no way in hell he was sticking around any longer than he had to.

"How have you been doing?" Sharpay, however, had a different idea in mind. She idely glanced at a stack of t-shirts and began unfolding them and reading their slogans.

He narrowed his eyes in response. What did she want? "Um, I've been good. How about you?"

She shrugged and set the t-shirts down. "Not buying these tacky t-shirts, I can tell you that." She looked him up and down. "Those jeans you're thinking of buying? Hideous, by the way."

His mouth dropped open. "They are not!"

"They are too," she smirked and then looked him in the eye, suddenly serious. "So I got a phone call from my choreographer brother. He had some interesting things to talk about."

Chad felt all the blood rush from his body and go straight to his head. Oh, good God, she knew. This was horrible! Only Taylor knew about the crazy, messed up fiasco that was...whatever the hell if was he had with Ryan.

He should have known better, though. The Evans twins were always glued to the hip and it was expected that Ryan would have told Sharpay all about their budding...thing.

He gulped. "Oh, did he now?"

She smiled coyly and stepped forward, setting a hand on his shoulder. She seemed calm then and sympathetic.

"I think you need to get really drunk and watch Gossip Girl with me."

And that is what they did. He found himself on the couch of Sharpay Evan's apartment six hours later, drunk off his ass from all the tequila he had downed. She sat curled up beside him clad only in a hot pink Juicy Couture sweatsuit. Holding the neck of the bottle, she took a fierce gulp and he marvelled at the way she was able to hold her alcohol. But that only entertained him for .05 seconds before he turned back to the television.

The scene was elegant. Figures dancing around a ballroom at a cotillion, girls dressed in silver and gold gowns and the men in dashing tuxes. Chad watched in awe as one of the male protagonists proceeded to get in a fight on the dance floor.

"What the fuck?" he screamed drunkenly, grabbing the bottle from Sharpay and taking a gulp. "Damn, Blair shoulda gone to the cot-cot-tillion with Chuckie, not Nateee."

"Nate's s'hot," Sharpay slurred. "He looks sorta like Bolton, yah know?"

Chad leaned in closer to the television screen, inspecting the actor. Indeed, he did resemble his best friend.

"Yah thinks he's pretty?" Sharpay asked before bursting into giggles.

"What?" Chad flushed. "No!"

"S'not your type, then?" she laughed wickedly. "Someone more blonder?"

"Shaddup, bitch. You don't have any-any idea what you's taking about." He focused back on the program where the lyrics of the song the actors were dancing to hit his ears.

"Got a secret, can you keep it?

Tell me this one you'll save.

Better lock it in your pocket,

Taking this one to the grave.

If I show you then I know you won't tell what I said,

Cause two can keep a secret if one of them is dead."

"I fucking luvre this song...and it's like...like your theme song!" Sharpay said, pausing the DVD. She jumped up, tripping over her feet and paddled over to her iPod dock, where she some how accessed her brain power and found the song and it began blasting through the apartment. "Dance with me, Danforth!"

Chad stood and grabbed Sharpay's hand. "Of course, my...my..lady person." The two began dancing in what they believed to be an intricate waltz rivalling that of the actors on the screen. Really, it was a mashed up mess of swaying, knocking knees and stepping on toes.

"I don't know what the fuck you did, Danforth," Sharpay said, leaning against him lazily. "But my brother sure is fucking crazy about you."

"S'no big deal," Chad muttered, playing with strands of her hair. "Hey, do you 'member that time in tenth grade when we made out?"

Sharpay burst into loud giggles. "Oh, yeah! You were making out with the wrong Evans, Danforth!"

He didn't smirk. "Shaddup, Sharpay."

"Whaaat?" she asked, blinking owlishly. "You and my brother are h-ook-ing up, Danforth. It's weird, I know, but it's hella awesomeness and you will be a sex-ay couple giving Troy and Gabriella Bolton a run for their money. And they have l-ots of it!"

"Yeah, but s'that's easy," Chad grinned. "Gabi's knocked up, 'member?"

Sharpay paused, processing the information. "Oh yeah! She's fat! Ha ha!"

The air in the room grew suddenly somber and Sharpay pulled Chad close. "Don't break my brother's heart, Chad," she said, and for a moment, both were completely sober.

"I'm trying my best, Sharpay." For now, that was the best he could do.

"Oh, okay. Let's go watch Nate and Blair fuck, now, okay?"

And on the couch, fast asleep, with the DVD opening menu playing on repeat was where Zeke found them two hours later.

Chad recalled that evening with Sharpay with both fondness and regret. Fondness for he had found a trustworthy confident who most likely understood better than most and regret because he now knew every single plot line from the first season of Gossip Girl.

Nate and Blair should have stayed together, he thought bitterly.

"I thought she wasn't due for at least three weeks," Zeke said, staring at Chad confused. "What happened?"

"Zeke, baby, these things are normal. Sometimes doctors predict the due date off by a few weeks," Sharpay explained. "The exact date of conception can be difficult to determine."

"Oh, no," Chad shook his head. "I'm pretty sure that I induced the labour."

Two shocked faces stared back at him. "Um, excuse me?"

"I, uh," he scratched the back of his head. "I told them I was gay."

"YOU'RE WHAT?" Zeke screeched as Sharpay brought a hand to her forehead.

"Um, gay?" Chad said meekly. Why was Zeke freaking out? Surely Sharpay had told him... "Didn't Sharpay tell you?"

"Tell me what?!" Zeke's voice raised to an extremely high octave and he grabbed Sharpay's arm. "What didn't you tell me?"

"That I'm gay," Chad felt this should have been more obvious. "How could you not tell him?"

Sharpay threw her arms up, frustrated. "I was waiting for you to tell Troy and Gabriella first!"

"What, that I'm gay or that I'm dating your brother?"

"What, so you wanted me to be last? Wait, you're dating Ryan? What the hell?!"

"Oh, Zeke, shut up for two seconds!" Sharpay yelled. The three fell into an uncomfortable silence, avoiding each others eyes.

"Sorry I'm late, everyone!" A chipper voice proclaimed. "I brought flowers! We can all sign the card."

Three pairs of eyes looked up and fell on the blonde and blue eyed Evan twin. He smiled, oblivious.

Sharapy slumped against the wall. "Well, if things were sufficiently awkward enough, we just need the doctor to come out and tell us that Gabriella is having sextuplets and being featured on Jon and Kate Plus 8." She glared at her brother. "Way to pick your moments, Ryan."

He stared, helplessly and held up the bouquet in confusion. "What did I do?" He looked at Chad for an explanation, but when his eyes met his, Chad was taken out of the moment and thrown back to that morning four months ago that changed everything.