Underneath My Skin

Underneath My Skin

Chad Danforth is struggling with who he is and afraid to speak to anyone about his situation. His withdrawal from the Wildcats is raising eyebrows at East High, but what lands at his feet one dark and stormy night, will change his life forever. ChadxRyan (Chyan)

Authors note: A billion apologies for the very delayed post. I am thrilled that so many people like the story and I have been exploring several directions for the story to go (all Chyan of course) and it has taken me a while to settle into one. This chapter is sort of random but I hope you guys will stick around as over the next few chapters, Chad and his fellow wildcats use some detective skills to identify the culprit and bring them to justice..
Now on with the chapter

Disclaimer: I obviously don't own it…

Ryan stayed in hospital for another two days under observation. Chad visited him everyday and was there to greet him when he was discharged. Ryan had not once admitted to knowing who had attacked him and Chad was starting to get upset. It was almost like Ryan didn't trust him and that hurt. Chad and Ryan had gotten into the habit of telling each other absolutely everything, Chad whinging about basketball and Troy while Ryan complained about Sharpay, Drama and Sharpay some more. It was deeply disgruntling to not know what had happened to Ryan. It was almost like there was this invisible barrier between them and Chad hated it.

While Ryan's parents picked him up at the hospital, Chad waited at their home with Sharpay. Her usually waspish demeanour had changed dramatically since Ryan has been hospitalised and instead of criticising and judging Chad as they sat together in the kitchen waiting for the remaining Evans family members to get home, she simply sat in silence and stared off into space with her arms folded across her chest. Although Chad hadn't really spoken to the other Wildcats since Ryan's attack, Zeke had been particularly disturbed by Sharpay's sudden and deafening silence. So as they sat together Chad stared at her. Sharpay was generally a very confusing person. She had mood swings so dramatic that you'd wonder if a typhoon had struck her to change her mood so rapidly. She didn't even acknowledge his gaze, simply staring further off in the distance, decidedly ignoring him or simply forgetting that he was present.

This got Chad thinking. Sharpay and Ryan were very close. Sharpay must know who upset Ryan and why the upset him. It was therefore conceivable that she did know who had attacked Ryan. Both her parents and Zeke had tried to coax her to talk about who had been giving Ryan a hard time but she simply wouldn't budge. She was as hard to crack as a walnut and could be as venomous as a snake when the desire took her. Chad desperately wanted to know who had hurt Ryan. He had never wanted to know anything more in his life. He wanted to rip the person responsible to pieces with his bare hands. He was however, afraid of Sharpay and what she would do to him if he asked her. He could imaging a million horrible ways she could punish him for being nosy and asking about something that she would assume had nothing to do with him. In Chad's opinion, it had everything to do with him. Putting aside his complex feelings for Ryan, friends look out for each other and helped each other threw periods that were difficult because that's what friends were, the people who helped pick up the pieces when things didn't go quite right. Therefore, anything that happened to hurt or upset Ryan was Chad's business because Chad was his friends. Content with this argument, he turned to Sharpay.

As he opened his mouth, Sharpay burst into tears and threw herself at him and left Chad wondering what he had gotten himself into. She buried her face in his shoulder and proceeded to drench his brand new shirt with her tears. She was mumbling incoherently as she clutched him. Chad awkwardly brought his arms around her and again wondered how he had ended up as a human tissue. He patted her on the back until she calmed down enough to talk coherently but in Chad's opinion, she still wasn't making much sense but he could at least understand what she was saying.

"Its all my fault, all my fault."

Sharpay repeated as she clutched him and Chad was dumbstruck. It was pretty obvious that Ryan was attacked by someone who was very strong and he doubted that even Sharpay in one of her tempers that she could have defeated the person that attacked Ryan. Although afraid of the answer, he decided to ask her why she had concluded that it was her fault.

"Come on Sharpay, how is this your fault. Its not like you have to be with him every second and protect him from everything. No one blames you."

She pulled away from him and little and looked at him with mascara running down her face.

"If I hadn't been so insistent on rehearsing, he would have been with you and this wouldn't of happened but I told him that he saw you enough and he would live if he spent one night away from you and the endless baseball that you guys watch and he got hurt…."

She then reburied her face in his shoulder and continued to cry. Chad sighed and resumed patting her back. He could see where she was coming from but he still thought it was stupid and told her so.

Sharpay soon recovered from her bout of tears with ice cream and they sat in a comfortable silence until Ryan arrived home with their parents. Chad watched the smile on Sharpay's face fall when Ryan and their parents turned away from her. Chad and Ryan went up to Ryan's room and Chad helped him with his arm in its sling before folding out his camp bed. He knew that Ryan didn't want to talk about what had happened and as they crawled into bed, Chad made a promise to himself and to Sharpay. He would find out who had hurt Ryan, no matter what the cost and they would pay severely.