Alphabet Drabbles fluff

H-Happy (Nevershoutnever)

August 2006

"Hey Evans," Ryan spins around before he hits the door to see Chad still sitting on the ground. "Thanks."

"Oh, it's really no big deal, I love teaching dance so this..."

"No, for being my friend." This throws Ryan off bit. "I mean really I was a jerk to you in the not-so-distant past. I am glad that we are able to be friends."

"Oh, yeah, you're cool. Like actually. I'm happy we are friends too." Ryan tries to hide his confusion. He is happy they are friends, he is incredibly happy. He is going into his senior year feeling like a part of the school. He couldn't ask for much more than that.

Then the silence came. There were a lot of these silences this summer. At first Ryan hated them, they filled him with panic that he had said or done something wrong. Now he is used to them, they are pockets of time that the two of them sit in together, sometimes for seconds, or minutes, once a whole hour. Like alone time from the weight of their own words.

"So, uh. I tend to stop and get fast food on the way home. Wanna join? Feel free to say no." Chad says as he lifts himself off the ground and joins Ryan in the doorway.

"Totally. I usually stop for coffee anyway."

"Coffee? At 11pm?" Chad eyes him.

"What can I say, I'm a night owl?" They leave the building together, talking about where they will stop and who between them can eat the most. Ryan knows it's actually Chad, but he won't admit that, not at the sake of his pride. It isn't until they're parked outside of Whataburger that Ryan realizes he's had never really had a friend like this before. The only person he had been this close outside of Sharpay was Kelsi. Both of those are different though. Sharpay is his sister, so friendship is a strange word for him to apply to that dynamic. He and Kelsi hang out, but it's almost always drama related, he wouldn't say they're risk-getting-ketchup-on-his-car-seats close. They definitely haven't gotten sleepover at the country club close.

"Oh, there was time freshman year," Ryan's been totally zoned out the conversation the two of them were having, "that I had this huge crush on a dude on the team and he..." Well they're definitely that close.