A/N: This lack of Peaweedness/movieverseness/fickle inspiration for my Wicked story is really beginning to bug me. XP But I hope this is still good. I haven't seen more than one of this pairing yet.

In the End

By Nor of Kiamo Ko

What was normally an annual routine for Amber was quickly turning into a total disaster of a day.

Every year it was the same thing: all the girls on the Corny Collins Show danced (most of them a million times more talented than she was); she won by a landslide, seemingly because she had managed to sway the male viewers by lifting her skirts a little higher than what was appropriate; she walked away with the crown. It had gone like this for three years now, and she wasn't really expecting it to change.

But in the space of about three minutes, everything had gone to ruin. Amber's title had been stolen from her by a twelve-year-old who shouldn't have even been in the competition, and her boyfriend was looking at the elephant of a girl who had crashed her way onto her show like she was some kind of flabby angel. Worst of all, it turned out that it was neither her talent nor her perfect legs that had won her the Miss Hairspray title three years in a row: it was her mother. Her conniving, Machiavellian mother had been switching the votes all this time.

She should have been miserable. And, underneath the shock, she was admittedly a little disappointed, and worried about what kind of snit her mother would be in for the next year.

But mostly she was wondering about the strange attraction she had to the black boy in the suit who had just run onstage.

He had a million-watt smile, and the way he danced gave Amber a strange wobbly feeling in the pit of her stomach. Not nervousness. Pure chemistry, the kind she had never had with Link or the other council boys she'd dated.

The fact that he was completely and totally off-limits just made him seem more alluring to her. She didn't care what her mother thought, and she never would again.

He looked her way; she seized the moment and shot him her most seductive smile. He looked surprised at first, his eyes widening as his eyebrows arched; but then he smiled again and danced over to where she was standing off-camera.

"Swift step," she commented, looking up at him from beneath her eyelashes.

He grinned at her. "Ain't nothin' to it. It's just like this," he said, demonstrating it to her. She tried to imitate him, but she knew it probably came out looking all wrong. For the first time in her life, she actually wished for a moment that she wasn't so… white.

He chuckled. "You've got it. C'mon, you can do it with the rest of us—"

She laid a hand on his arm. "Oh, no, I couldn't, not with this ankle," she said, showing him where she had landed when she'd fallen from the gigantic can of hairspray. She twisted her mouth into a wry, enticing smile. "Besides, I really don't feel like…" She slowly moved her hand up his arm, stroking his bicep before placing it on his shoulder. "…dancing, anyway." She winked at him, sure that his skull would have to be two miles thick for him not to get the message.

His eyes got wide again. "I, ah—"

Suddenly a pretty black girl came up behind him and said, "Duane, what are you doing? Get back onstage, boy!"

He turned around—did he look relieved?—and replied, "All right, Lorraine." And he actually had the nerve to lean down and kiss her!

The couple danced back on set, and Amber stood by, watching them with a wholly different smile than the one she'd been wearing a moment ago. She'd win him eventually.

After all, Amber Von Tussle always got what she wanted, in the end.

A/N: Okay, guys, I PROMISE I will update my Wicked story soon, and write another Peaweed fic that is not based on the movie. By now I am beginning to scare myself with how completely OOC I am being. XD