Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sixteen minutes left, and they’re down by a hell of a lot more than sixteen points.

Everyone in the locker room is dejected, slumped against the lockers, occasionally remembering to take a drink from the water bottles they’re gripping too tightly. Chad tips his head back against the cool metal and sighs. Beside him, Troy is equally frustrated. It’s their senior year; they were supposed to be kings. Basketball has been their life for so long that it tears something apart inside him to watch it end like this.

When Chad was a little kid shooting baskets on the lowered goal in their driveway and his mom called out the back door for him to come in, his dad would always grin at him and say, “Dinner can wait a few more minutes. End on a make,” and wait until Chad made a basket to go inside. His mom would roll her eyes and put their plates in the microwave. He wishes now that they could keep playing, game after game until their high school career ended on a make, on a win. There’s something achingly painful about their last season not being their best, and it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

Coach Bolton stands in the doorway, looks around, and nods sharply like he does at practice when he’s about to give them Life Advice and then make them run five more laps. What comes out of his mouth now, though, isn’t anything about hard work paying off.

“Okay, guys. You have sixteen minutes left in your last game of the season. And for the seniors, sixteen minutes left in your last game at East High,” he says, and Chad is suddenly overwhelmingly grateful that the championship is a home game. “Make it count. Forget about the X’s and O’s and go out there and play a game you’ll be proud to look back on as your last game together.”

Everyone stands in silence for a few seconds, although they’re slumping slightly less. Troy nods, and nudges him. Chad knows the cue.

This is the last time he’s going to do this, he thinks distantly. Sure, maybe it’ll happen at a party, or pep rally for another sport, or years later at a reunion, but this is the last time he’ll do it for real, in the heat of the moment, with all of his teammates here. He yells as loudly as he can.

“WHAT TEAM?”

“WILDCATS!”

“WHAT TEAM?”

“WILDCATS!”

“WHAT TEAM?”

“WILDCATS!”

“WILDCATS!”

“GET YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME!”

Chad leads the way out the locker room, and everyone claps each other on the back as they head back out to the court, re-energized. He notices that the cheerleaders look really tired in the half-second he can spare before focusing on the ball, not that he can blame them. The mascot is doing some sort of fancy dance moves—he vaguely remembers Darbus reading off some announcement about needing a last-minute replacement after some sophomore sprained their ankle, but he doesn’t know who she managed to rope into doing it. Whoever it is, they haven’t let East High’s slim chances of winning get to them as much as everyone else in the stadium has, but they definitely seem less upbeat than at the beginning of the game.

Chad shakes his head to clear it. Get your head in the game, Danforth. The voice in his head sounds like Coach Bolton, which is both motivating and really creepy.

One of the juniors on the team steals the ball and passes it to Zeke, who manages to make a layup, which goes a long way toward lifting everyone’s spirits, even if it doesn’t do that much toward narrowing the margin between the teams’ scores. Then Troy gets knocked over, and Chad knows he’s probably exaggerating the fall—they’ve been practicing that together since sixth grade—but he still winces. He can hear his dad yelling “That’s a foul!” over the voices of all the other outraged fans.

“You okay?” Chad asks, helping him up, and Troy looks dazed for a second, staring at the stands, before nodding. The ref calls it in their favor.

Troy makes the free throw. It’s looking like they can actually pull this off.

Ten minutes and two baskets later, when Chad gets knocked over, he cheers. That’s called in their favor, too, and Chad leaps to his feet, punching the air. It’s a bonus that the West High player who knocked him over looks really pissed.

Coach Bolton calls a time out. They’re only down by two, and Troy’s game plan is to put in the kid who unironically chooses to be called Rocketman. Chad can’t help but question Troy’s judgement, a little, but he’s not about to say anything; he knows he would’ve killed for the chance to play in the championship as a sophomore, and as long as Troy gets the ball, it’ll be fine.

Rocketman is entirely too hyper, but then again, he has been sitting on the bench all game. Chad really hopes Troy knows what he’s doing.

Everything is going according to plan; Troy gets the ball, and with ten seconds left, he leans around a West High player and—

He passes it. Rocketman is looking at the basketball like he’s never seen one before in his life, and Chad has just enough time to panic that this kid is going to cost them the championship before he makes a perfect layup. Chad is willing to bet that was pure muscle memory, and he’s suddenly very glad for all the mindless baskets Coach Bolton made them shoot at the start of every practice.

Amid all the frantic cheering and jumping and screaming and flashing lights and red and white everywhere, the mascot manages to catch Chad’s eye, throwing their hands up in a mix of celebration and relief and crashing to their knees in a move that would look painful if it wasn’t so obviously practiced. Chad keeps looking as someone from the Pep Club takes the mascot’s helmet off, and—

It’s Ryan Evans, gasping for clean (well, relatively; they’re still on a high school basketball court) air and shaking his head vigorously. His hair is soaked, and little droplets fly off. It looks like a shot from an overdramatic shampoo commercial, just a lot sweatier. He’s gotten a haircut since the summer, although Chad isn’t sure when; they’re in the same homeroom, but Ryan’s always wearing a hat, so it’s hard to tell.

Someone slaps Chad on the back and pulls him in for a hug, and he looks away from Ryan and lets himself get swept up in the energy. They did it. They won.

It was their last game.

He shoves away the bittersweetness of it; he can deal with that after the party. Instead, he focuses on the glory: they just won their second championship in a row.

He congratulates Rocketman and makes sure he’s out of earshot before asking Troy what the fuck he was thinking. Troy shrugs and says, “It worked, didn’t it?” and Chad can’t really argue with that, but he still shakes his head at him. Chad’s parents find him amid the chaos and hug him, even though he’s sweaty and they’re in nice clothes because they came directly from work, and Coach Bolton grins at him and tells him he should be proud, and everyone rehashes the same plays over again more and more loudly until Troy’s mom yells that they need to get over to the Bolton’s house so the janitors can clean in peace.

As he’s heading to his car—used, very used, but his, which made waiting tables all summer totally worth it, although he’s never going to admit that to Troy—he sees Ryan walking in the opposite direction, out of the mascot costume by now. His clothes look dry, and he’s definitely towelled off his hair; it’s sticking up worse than it did the one time in September when someone made the mistake of yanking Ryan’s hat off his head during homeroom. Sharpay had inhaled sharply, probably about to inform them what brand they’d treated so callously and exactly how much money it was worth, and Darbus had said “Mr. Prescott!” in her most indignant tone, but the guy hadn’t looked remotely worried until Chad glanced at him and said calmly, “What, man, did you think that would be funny? Stop taking people’s shit,” and What’s-His-Name Prescott had blanched and stiffly held the hat out toward Ryan, who had put it back on with a bit of a haughty sniff but also with an appreciative glance at Chad. Taylor had been giving him that look, slightly impressed and slightly shocked, like, I didn’t know you could express basic human decency, good job, and Darbus didn’t even give him detention for swearing.

And now, Ryan is whistling one of the less annoying cheers to himself and walking towards the front of the school. Chad looks around, but he doesn’t see any other cars in the parking lot besides the one he knows to be Jason’s, so he figures Ryan must be waiting for someone to come pick him up.

“Hey, Evans!” he calls. “Need a ride to the afterparty?”

Ryan whirls on his heel, ridiculously graceful for someone who has to be exhausted from hyping up the crowd for the last couple of hours. “Wasn’t invited,” Ryan calls back, but he’s smiling, and lifting one shoulder in a casual shrug. “Team members only, and all that.”

“I think you showed more than enough team spirit to qualify.” Ryan grins wider at that. “You wanna come?”

“Yeah, why not,” Ryan says, already walking to Chad’s car. “It’s that or paint Sharpay’s nails, so…”

It takes Chad a beat too long to get that it’s a joke—probably—but he laughs, and unlocks the car. He shoves some random shit, including several empty water bottles and a mostly-clean t-shirt, into the back, then realizes as Ryan’s getting in that he probably needs that shirt, so he twists around in his seat to grab it from where it’s precariously close to sliding off the backseat and onto the floor.

“Is it cool if I change?” he asks, and Ryan makes a funny expression but nods. He looks out the window while Chad yanks off his sweaty uniform and tugs the t-shirt on. He fumbles for the deodorant he keeps in the door, hastily applies it, and puts his warm-up jacket back on, then cranks the car. Ryan looks back at him.

“I should probably text my mom,” he says, mostly to himself, and pulls his phone out of the pocket of his ridiculously tight, ridiculously red jeans to do so. Chad nods and backs out of the parking space.

He’s expecting them to ride in silence—they haven’t had a real conversation since last summer, although they exchange nods in the hall sometimes and grin at each other when they both snort at one of the more outlandish things Darbus says in homeroom—but Ryan comments on the West High player who fouled out close to the end, and Chad launches into how the refs refused to call anything in their favor for the first half and what would’ve happened if he’d been the one to knock a guy over like that. Ryan looks mostly amused, and Chad figures he’s probably just humoring him, but Ryan adds something about how pairing those shades of blue and yellow together is a crime against humanity and whoever chose their school colors should be fired, or maybe arrested, and Chad laughs and relaxes somewhat. Trash talk is trash talk, even if he doesn’t know shit about the difference between yellow and chartreuse or the best design for uniform shorts.

When they get to Troy’s house, the party is already in full force. There are cheerleaders everywhere, yelling at least three different cheers at once, and all of the basketball players are laughing and talking loudly. Chad recognizes a few guys who were seniors last year and makes a note to go talk to them later. Ryan was right; everyone here is on the cheerleading or basketball team, or the date of someone on the team, like Gabriella, except—

“Hey, is that Taylor and Kelsi?” he asks. It is; they’re both nodding energetically to the music, a pair of red headphones pressed to Kelsi’s ears.

“Hey, Danforth!” Chad looks around. It’s not the first time someone’s called his name in the approximately two minutes he’s been here, but that is unmistakably Coach Bolton’s voice. Chad spots him and waves. “Come here, there’s someone I’d like you to meet,” Coach Bolton calls, and Chad nods, noticing that his dad is already standing over there.

“I’m going to go say hi to Kelsi,” Ryan says, smiling at him. “Good luck with whatever’s going on.”

“Yeah, I’ll catch up with you later,” Chad says, and smiles back. He walks over to Coach Bolton.

“Chad, I’d like you to meet Mr. Harrison. He’s the basketball coach at U of A.”

Chad gapes. The man holds out his hand, and Chad shakes it, trying to keep his grip firm even though his knees feel kind of wobbly.

“That was a hell of a game you boys played,” Mr. Harrison says, and Chad about falls over. The coach of the team he’s wanted to play for since kindergarten, maybe before, watched their game.

“Thank you so much, sir,” he says, and spends the next half hour talking about plays he made and potential scholarships and wondering if this is real. The coach says he’s pretty much guaranteed a spot on the team if he keeps his grades up, and before Chad has time to freak out over that—it looks like his dad is already close to crying—Mr. Harrison asks where Troy is. Chad was expecting that the second he walked up, so he’s honestly kind of flattered that the coach waited that long.

“I’ll go find him,” he says, and Mr. Harrison nods and shakes his hand again.

“I’ll see you this fall, if not before,” he says, and Chad grins at him and runs to find Troy.

“Dude, you gotta get over there, your dad’s been trying to call you for like forty minutes,” Chad says when he finally finds him, barely sparing a glance for Gabriella. “The coach from U of A is here—Troy, he watched our game, and he’s talking scholarships.”

Troy’s eyes don’t even widen. Chad gives him a look like what the fuck, man, which only intensifies when Troy nods and says, “Yeah, okay, I’ll catch up with them later.”

“Dude. We’ve been talking about playing for U of A since we were six. What are you doing?”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’m not six anymore, Chad.” Chad notices Gabriella backing away out the corner of his eye.

“Yeah, I know that, but we were talking about it last week.” He bites his lip before he says something he’ll regret, like, just because you can afford to throw opportunities like this away doesn’t mean we all can, so maybe at least act like it’s a big deal.

“I’ll talk to them later, okay?” Troy says, looking irritated, and Chad shrugs and steps back.

“Whatever, man. It’s your future.”

“Yeah, that’s what everyone keeps telling me,” Troy mutters, and Chad is glad he’s already turned away so Troy doesn’t see him roll his eyes; he doesn’t want to start a fight in the middle of the party.

He looks around, bursting with both excitement over U of A and annoyance with Troy and not sure where to direct the energy. He sees Ryan a few yards away, talking to a cheerleader and looking distinctly uncomfortable.

“Sup, Evans,” he says, walking up to them, and Ryan flashes him a relieved look.

“Hey! How was Mr. Bolton?”

“God, it was amazing. He introduced me to the coach of U of A—who watched our game, what the fuck, man—and they’ve pretty much confirmed that I’m getting a scholarship. They said I’ll get it in writing in a month or so as long as nothing drastic happens with my grades and stuff.” Chad is bouncing on his toes. He can’t keep the grin off his face.

“Holy shit, that’s incredible!” Ryan beams at him, and the cheerleader huffs and walks off. “You deserve it.”

“Thanks, man. God, I can’t believe it.”

“I can,” Ryan says, and Chad laughs.

He looks over at the food table. “I’m gonna go get some of Gabriella’s mom’s brownies to celebrate.”

“They’re gone,” Ryan says before Chad even takes a step. “She made like three batches, but there are a lot of hungry basketball players here.”

“Shit.” Chad is probably more disappointed than he should be over brownies, but whatever, he’s still pretty upset about Troy and they’re damn good brownies.

“But,” Ryan says, a smirk hovering on his face, “someone might have stashed a few beside Kelsi’s DJ equipment.”

“No way.”

Ryan shrugs. “I, uh, I remembered from this summer that you liked them, so… When it seemed like you would be talking with them for a while, I grabbed you a few. I figured if you didn’t talk to me again during the party, me and Kelsi could still eat them.” He sounds teasing, but Chad still feels the need to reassure him.

“Hey, I invited you, I wasn’t going to totally ditch you. I’m shocked you think so little of me, Evans,” and now he’s the one teasing, and Ryan grins. They walk over to where Kelsi is DJing and get there just as Taylor arrives, balancing three paper plates of food.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” Chad says, reaching for a pig in a blanket, and Taylor turns smoothly so he can’t reach it without spilling anything, which is impressive.

“I didn’t,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“Ooh, they still had some quiches left!” Kelsi says, and smiles at Taylor. “Thank you.”

“No problem. Oh, and the paw print cookies aren’t vegetarian.”

“Who would make a cookie with meat in it?” Chad asks, and Taylor rolls her eyes again.

“They probably have lard in them,” Ryan says before Taylor can tell Chad he’s an idiot.

“Oh. That sucks.”

Kelsi shrugs. “The sugar cookies are really good, though. And the brownies were amazing.”

“The ones for Chad are still here, right?” Ryan asks, and Kelsi produces a bundle of napkins from somewhere amid the tangle of wires on the table.

“Didn’t eat them, didn’t electrocute them,” she says, and shakes her head when Ryan breathes a sigh of relief. “As if I would. You made me swear on my autographed picture of Idina Menzel, remember?”

Ryan flushes slightly and puts the carefully-wrapped brownies on the table. Chad unwraps it. “Oh my god, you guys are the best.” Kelsi and Ryan are shooting looks at one another, but Chad ignores that in favor of shoving the first of the three brownies into his mouth. He closes his eyes and can’t help moaning a little.

“Disgusting,” Taylor says. Ryan coughs.

Chad spends the next half hour watching Kelsi DJ and slowly savoring the remaining two brownies. Taylor shoos him away a few minutes later when he tries to steal another piece of food from her plate, and he ends up wandering the edge of the Boltons’ backyard with Ryan, trying to escape the worst of the noise. Several people had come up and congratulated him while he was with Taylor and Kelsi, including the guys who were on the team last year, so he doesn’t feel the need to get back in the crowd and socialize right now.

“Is that Troy up there?” Ryan says suddenly, and Chad looks at where he’s pointing.

“And Gabriella,” Chad says. They’re in the tree house, running after each other and giggling. “So much for no girls allowed.”

Ryan snorts. “If I’d ever dared to deem something ‘no girls allowed,’ Sharpay would’ve had my head.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Chad agrees, laughing. It’s weird—he invited Ryan here on a whim, because he didn’t want him to feel left out or anything, but he’s actually really easy to talk to. Chad’s brain helpfully supplies an image of the staff baseball game over the summer, as it has several times throughout the semester, usually at far less relevant moments. It’s ironic—he’d been pissed that Gabriella had dared to include Ryan in the staff-only game, and now he’s the one who invited Ryan to the team-only party. He was the mascot, though, which gives him more than enough reason to be here, although Chad can’t remember if the mascot has ever come to these parties before, maybe because he still isn’t sure who the usual mascot was.

Ryan wrinkles his nose. He’s looking around as if the air has personally offended him. “Kelsi swore she wouldn’t play this song.”

Chad shrugs. He doesn’t recognize the song, but he says, “It’s not bad,” anyway, just to see Ryan’s reaction.

Ryan lifts an eyebrow. “Hate to break it to you, Danforth, but you have terrible taste. I’m going to go beg her to change it.”

Chad glances at the tree house where he spent the majority of his childhood. Troy and Gabriella are still up there, staring into one another’s eyes. He could go pester Troy about U of A again, or even just see if he wants to rejoin the party, or he could find Zeke and Jason and rehash the game for the tenth time tonight. Or—

“Wait up, Evans!” Chad calls, and runs after Ryan.

Chapter Text

Ryan isn’t nearly awake enough for this. Sharpay has had no less than four fashion crises this morning, and Taylor is rattling off a schedule of events so fast that even Gabriella looks like she can’t quite process it. The part he does catch, though, is Taylor talking about prom: “The theme is The Last Waltz,” she says, “and there’s limited space, so don’t be the last to pick up your tickets.” She emphasizes this by smacking her pointer down on Chad’s desk, and Ryan swallows. He has it on good word—namely, Kelsi’s—that Chad and Taylor aren’t a thing, but that suggests otherwise.

“Any questions?” she asks, and before Ryan can think of a way to ask her to repeat herself that won’t make it seem like he wasn’t paying attention, Chad raises his hand.

“Yeah, just one. What’s the lunch special in the cafeteria?”

Taylor doesn’t bat an eye, much less roll them. “New York deli.”

The whole class lets out a heckling oooooooh. Chad meets his eyes for a second, and Ryan smirks.

“Now to the matter of the spring musicale,” Mrs. Darbus says, accompanying the words with the sweeping gesture they deserve.

Sharpay raises a hand, already talking, and Ryan wishes for Taylor’s infallible composure. “Mrs. Darbus, I know everyone will be busy this semester, especially at the end, with finals and prom and college applications, so perhaps we should consider a smaller production. Maybe even a one-woman show,” she finishes brightly, and Ryan rolls his eyes, turning his head out of her field of vision just in time to see Chad snort.

Mrs. Darbus, of course, looks shocked that anyone would have priorities that would take precedence over their final opportunity to perform at East High. Ryan has to admit he feels the same, even though he knows that grades come before theater for normal people whose parents can’t just buy their kids a college acceptance.

Not that he wants to go that route, but it’s a good fallback, if chemistry keeps going the way it has been.

“A little light on the sign-ups, are we, Kelsi?” Mrs. Darbus asks, somewhat recovered but still looking vaguely offended. Ryan prays to the theater gods that Kelsi comes up with something. Sharpay stealing the spotlight is one thing, but the entire stage? That’s the stuff of his nightmares. He isn't looking for a repeat of last summer.

Well, not all of last summer, at least, he amends as his brain smugly supplies the mental image of Chad trying not to laugh as Ryan twirled to the bases in increasingly more elaborate moves; Chad looking him up and down and asking You got game? like he already knew the answer; Chad wearing Ryan's clothes after asking how he could possibly run like that in those and Ryan saying they're more comfortable than they look and Chad saying he'd believe that when he felt it and Ryan, still giddy off a loss that ended with them practically entangled, tossing his shirt across the locker room as Chad visibly swallowed.

So yeah, maybe he's all too willing to relive certain parts of the summer. (Like how Chad had changed in the locker room without waiting for Ryan to leave first, as if it had never crossed his mind to be uncomfortable. Like how often he'd smiled at him.)

Ryan forces himself to tune back into the current drama, which he would normally enjoy shamelessly, but this is Kelsi. He wants her to succeed. Plus, the decision of whether he plays backup dancer to Sharpay’s two-hour monologue or actually gets a fucking part hinges on this.

“Um, no, we’re actually doing really well,” Kelsi is saying. She rushes to the front of the room with the list.

“Well, well, well,” says Mrs. Darbus, beaming, “Almost the entire homeroom!”

The entire homeroom is clearly about to protest that they did not, in fact, sign up, but they’re upstaged by Sharpay’s indignant gasping, which she punctuates with a loud stomp. So professional, his sister. Kelsi shrinks into her seat. Ryan is equal parts proud of her and afraid for her.

Thankfully, the bell for first period rings as Mrs. Darbus is announcing the meeting to discuss this semester’s production, and he and Kelsi rush out. They run to the practice room, and Ryan shuts the door behind them.

The two of them are technically in online AP Music Theory this period, which they are supposed to work on under Mrs. Darbus’s supervision. The situation was arranged by Mr. Matsui after Ryan’s parents made some pointed comments about how funding for the arts program at East High compared to that of the sports program and how the classes offered weren’t meeting their son’s needs, and they wouldn’t want to have to withdraw their generous donations to the drama department, now would they? Kelsi and Ryan normally end up working on whatever show is going on at the time or just talking, but they get their assignments done on time, and Mrs. Darbus stopped checking on them after about the first week. First period has become their place to strategize, to create, to perfect their visions for the East High Drama Department without Sharpay waltzing in demanding more solos, and just to talk about how fucking gay they are. It’s a perfect haven from the madness of the rest of the school.

“How are you going to pull this off?” Ryan asks, hands on his hips. He’s dramatic; it’s his job.

“I don’t know!” Kelsi says, pacing. Her hat is off, and she’s turning it around and around in her hands, which means this is serious.

“You’ve got to get Troy on board,” Ryan realizes, sighing. He’d really prefer for his senior year musical, his last musical at East High, to not involve the jock-turned-Renaissance-man who’s never taken a singing lesson in his life, but he’d also prefer for there to be some actors other than Sharpay in this production, so it’s a lesser of two evils situation at this point. “Gabriella is the only one who actually signed up, and she’ll almost definitely try to persuade people that this is a good idea; if Troy agrees, that’ll give her the momentum to convince everyone else to join. No one can say no to her. Sorry,” he adds, and Kelsi rolls her eyes.

“I told you I was over her, like, four months ago. Calm down, Ry.”

He wrinkles his nose. “Only Sharpay gets to call me that.”

“Because you’re too afraid to tell her not to,” she teases, going to sit at the piano bench. Her hat is back on, which is a relief, so he lets her have that one and changes the subject instead.

“So Darbus is still down with the egocentric idea?” he asks, sitting beside her. Kelsi gives him a look like I know what you’re doing but I’m not going to comment on it and, true to her facial expression, doesn’t mention that they met with Mrs. Darbus to discuss the rough drafts literally yesterday. “I didn’t think she’d go for that.”

“I mean, it’s totally her style, if you think about it. She would’ve loved to be in a play about herself when she was in high school.”

“That’s fair,” Ryan admits, and Kelsi elbows him.

“So you spent a lot of time with Chad at the party on Saturday…” She wiggles her eyebrows.

He rolls his eyes and laughs and evades the non-question, and soon enough the bell is ringing over their giggling, which is how first period normally ends. “See you in free period!” Kelsi calls, on her way to bio while he heads to chem, which is on the other side of the building.

It’s not like Broadway performers need to know how to calculate equilibrium, Ryan reminds himself after 50 minutes spent planning how to convince Troy to be in the show instead of taking actual notes. He gets to the auditorium before Kelsi, which is unusual, but he quickly sees why when she walks in followed by a group of their classmates, who don’t appear to have calmed down at all during the past two hours. Well. He’s always loved a challenge.

Everyone starts listing their prior commitments and problems and conflicts at Kelsi, who’s looking increasingly more stressed. Ryan’s a little concerned, but he’ll have to make her a cup of tea later; right now, he has work to do.

He walks up beside Troy and nudges him. “It was a little surprising that Gabriella signed up and you didn’t. I would’ve thought that after last summer, you would’ve wanted to be in a play with her for real again. But I mean, you’re busy with college stuff, I get that. Managing U of A stuff and working with Sharpay on the talent show seemed like a lot of work, I can understand why you wouldn’t want to try to balance that again.”

“Yeah,” Troy says. His brow has become increasingly furrowed throughout this interaction. “Yeah, man, I’m just really busy with college and everything.”

“Like I said, completely understandable. I’m sure Gabriella’s really busy, too; isn’t she applying to Stanford?”

“Yeah,” Troy says, nodding. He’s looking a little distracted by Kelsi, who is now holding her ground, but that’s fine; Ryan’s done all he needed to do.

Maybe someone who didn’t grow up with Sharpay as their moral measuring stick would feel ashamed right now, but whatever. The show must go on, and for that to happen, there needs to be a show to begin with.

Gabriella, as predicted, gives an impassioned speech about how it’s the last chance to do something like this together as a group. “Oh, yippee,” Sharpay says, rolling her eyes, and Ryan hides his smile. If she’s being that sarcastic, she must feel that her plot to perform a one-woman show is being threatened.

“So what do you say, Wildcats?” Gabriella asks.

The Wildcats say no.

Kelsi bites her lip and looks at him, and Ryan shrugs. It’s out of their hands now. He glances at Troy, who looks like he’s having some sort of crisis, which is promising.

Troy raises his hand. “I’m in.” Kelsi squeezes Ryan’s arm.

“I don’t know how you do it,” she whispers.

Ryan shrugs. “A little guilt-tripping goes a long way,” he whispers back.

“Well, thanks for using your powers for good,” she says, grinning at him as Taylor starts questioning the time commitment.

“Yeah, and what the heck is the show about?” Chad asks, and Ryan swallows. Apparently choreographing one production with Chad in it wasn’t enough to exempt him for life; this is probably his penance to the universe for all the manipulation he just did to orchestrate this, in which case he can’t say he really regrets it.

“You, Mr. Danforth,” Mrs. Darbus says, dramatic as always. That’s pretty ironic, actually, because Kelsi revised all of Ryan’s initial ideas to include significantly less of Chad. (“It makes no sense to include scenes from the summer in a musical about senior year, Ryan.” “But those scenes highlight important character development!” Et cetera.)

Chad gapes. “Me?”

Sharpay slumps into the arms of that blonde girl who’s been following her around lately. Ryan wants to laugh, or maybe pat himself on the back for how well he and Kelsi have managed to keep this project from her, but instead he rushes for her perfume. The blonde girl sprays it on Sharpay, who immediately “revives.” Right. Ryan might be failing chemistry, but he knows that’s not how that works.

“The spring musicale is about all of you,” Mrs. Darbus clarifies. “A show about your final days at East High. We’ll call it Senior Year.” The handful of underclassmen in the drama club are not going to be happy about this, Ryan knows, but he can’t bring himself to feel bad about Mrs. Darbus’s favoritism.

“Genius,” Sharpay deadpans, smirking, and Ryan shares an exasperated look with Kelsi.

“Playing a role is easy,” Mrs. Darbus says, continuing her glide around the room, “but being yourself? Now that’s a challenge.” Ryan smiles softly to himself; that’s exactly what she told him when he came out to her, a scared freshman worried that he’d only ever love the theater. “And what, exactly, is wrong with that, Mr. Evans?” she’d asked, and he’d stammered out through tears that he wanted to have a person in his life, too, not just feathers and glitter and showtunes.

“You have plenty of people who bring love into your life, Mr. Evans,” she’d reminded him, and her smile was more gentle than usual. “And besides, the theatre will look out for you. It’s how my wife and I met.”

Ryan focuses back on what Mrs. Darbus is saying as she walks past him. “Now,” she announces, “I have some very important news from The Juilliard School in New York City, America’s preeminent college for the performing arts. For the first time in East High history, Juilliard is considering four of you for one available scholarship.”

Ryan might need Sharpay’s perfume, unscientific though it may be, because he is going to faint on the spot.

“Miss Sharpay Evans,” Mrs. Darbus says proudly, extending a booklet of information, and Ryan tries not to be miffed that he isn’t first.

“I’m already packed,” Sharpay says smugly, and Ryan rolls his eyes. That makes it clear where he stands, then; Sharpay will toss him aside in a heartbeat. Nothing’s changed since last summer.

“Mr. Ryan Evans,” Mrs. Darbus continues, and Ryan tries not to jump up and down too much.

“Dance,” he says, grinning, almost afraid to touch the pristine booklet.

“Kelsi Nielson.” Kelsi looks shocked, which is ridiculous, because if Sharpay gets one, so should she. Ryan hugs her even as she gapes. “And lastly, Mr. Troy Bolton.”

The universe has one hell of a sense of humor. Chad must think so, too, because he laughs, along with the other basketball players and Troy himself. Ryan’s heart is still racing faster than before his first audition, Kelsi is beside him trying not to cry, and Troy is laughing.

“I didn’t apply,” Troy says, “I’ve never heard of Juilliard,” and Ryan knows he’s done a lot of questionable shit, but come on, even Sharpay doesn’t deserve this, to have their fucking lives’ work equated to that of some amateur who got lucky with a callback to a performance he didn’t even want to be in junior year and hasn’t fucking heard of Juilliard. The theater gods are making a mockery of them.

“Well, that may be, Mr. Bolton,” Mrs. Darbus replies, dangerously calm, “but evidently, Juilliard has heard of you.”

Sharpay’s affronted expression is exactly the one Ryan wants to be making, but he doesn’t, because he’s a good actor. Good enough to get a scholarship to Juilliard, no matter how certain Sharpay is that it’ll be hers.

Of course, the scholarship is all Sharpay wants to talk about at lunch. Ryan’s already pissed that Troy was just handed something Ryan’s been working for since his kindergarten ballet recital and then didn’t give a shit about it, treated it like a fucking joke, and now he gets to also be pissed that Sharpay continues to act like she’s already been accepted.

He orders the New York deli, and by the time Sharpay’s shadow or whatever she is sets Sharpay’s ridiculously fancy tray down at their table, Sharpay is already planning out the rest of their lives.

“Just think how amazing it’ll be when I get the lead in the first audition after college, Ry,” she gushes, and takes a dainty bite of something that was definitely not cooked in the cafeteria kitchen.

“And will there be a part for me?” He doesn’t bother to disguise the sarcasm, not that she notices.

“Well, of course,” she huffs, and he rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, right. I can see the billboard now: ‘Sharpay and What’s-His-Name.’”

“Sounds exciting, right?” she asks, obviously ignoring all of his concerns in favor of her daydream. Not that he expected any different.

“Yeah, very inviting,” he says, to himself at this point, and makes a face.

Sharpay starts counting off her future staff on her perfectly manicured fingers. “I’ll have a personal stylist, an agent, a publicist, a maid, a chauffeur…”

He doesn’t point out that she already has the last two. “Okay, Shar, I get it. What I don’t get is, where do I fit into this?”

“We’re a team, Ry,” she says, like it’s obvious, like she’s ever treated him as an equal. “With you we can win. Don’t you want it all—fame, fortune, a star on my dressing room door, my name in lights at Carnegie Hall…”

He does want it—his name, not hers, some piece of stardom that belongs to Ryan Evans, not to ‘Sharpay and her twin’—more than anything, so badly it burns in his bloodstream. So badly his chest hurts.

Sharpay is looking at him expectantly. “Yeah, okay, I want it,” he agrees. “But they’re only giving one scholarship.”

Sharpay waves this off like it’s irrelevant. “We’re twins. They’re going to have to take us both.”

Ryan knows that isn’t true, and he knows that when it comes down to it, it won’t matter that they’re twins; Sharpay will care about winning more than anything else. And so will he.

“We just need to make sure that Troy isn’t going to upstage us,” Sharpay continues, fully into scheming mode by now. “Kelsi always writes the best songs for Troy and Gabriella,” she pouts, and proceeds to instruct him on how to schmooze his own damn best friend into giving Sharpay the best numbers. He supposes this is her only option, since she can’t pull the employer card like over the summer.

“And how do I do that?” he asks, because as much as he doesn’t want to continue this conversation, he needs to remind himself how little she knows and cares about his life.

“I don’t know,” she says, waving a hand, “Buy her coffee, polish her glasses. Take her to prom,” she suggests, as if he isn’t gay. “Figure it out.”

Well. Now that he has been sufficiently reminded that Sharpay doesn’t give a shit about his life unless it benefits hers, he needs to yell about it.

“Great idea, sis,” he says, plastering on a smile. “In fact, I think I’ll try to find Kelsi right now.”

“That’s the spirit,” Sharpay says. Ryan is already walking off. He puts his tray up and heads to the practice room. Thankfully, Kelsi’s in there, eating her veggie wrap at the piano bench.

“If you damage the instruments, Mrs. Darbus will kill you. And she won’t let you compose the musical.” Kelsi rolls her eyes as he sits down beside her; she knows how many times he’s balanced a cup of coffee in one hand while playing piano with the other.

“I take it Sharpay is less-than-pleasant company at the moment?” she asks, and he sighs dramatically, flopping back against the piano keys so they make a loud clanging noise. It’s a sign of how much time they spend together that Kelsi doesn’t even wince. And Sharpay hasn’t even noticed they’re friends.

“She literally thinks I don’t know you,” he sighs, and proceeds to rant as Kelsi nods sympathetically.

“Hey,” he says when their lunch period is almost over, “Congratulations on Juilliard. You deserve this.”

Kelsi smiles and brushes it off, but it’s true. She probably deserves this more than he does.

By the end of the week, the prom committee is in full swing, pun completely intended (he wants to be a dance major, he’s allowed to make dumb jokes about it). Martha’s posters look amazing, and while Ryan isn’t sure why they need to start selling tickets two months early, he admires their dedication. The edits to the musical have been going great, and the opening song is ready for everyone to start rehearsing next week, so Ryan is humming as he heads to the practice room after school on Friday. He opens the door while balancing the two cups of coffee Mrs. Darbus had pretended not to see him snag from the teachers’ break room—and freezes.

Chad is standing in the middle of the room, talking to Kelsi, who’s seated at the piano as usual. He turns around when Ryan opens the door.

“They were out of creamer,” Ryan says, recovering his composure. Chad takes one of the precariously angled cups and passes it to Kelsi.

“I was just, uh, asking Kelsi for some pointers on the whole dancing thing,” Chad says, putting his hands in his pockets. “All this prom talk has got me kinda freaked out—apparently we have to actually waltz at The Last Waltz.”

“Who would’ve guessed,” Ryan says, smiling, and Chad laughs.

“Ryan’s the dance expert, not me,” Kelsi says. “Maybe you should ask him.”

Ryan tries to glare at her without Chad noticing. Kelsi smirks.

“Yeah, you’re majoring in dance, right?” Chad asks, and Ryan nods.

“Yeah, I am.” The only time he mentioned that around Chad was when he received the packet from Juilliard. Chad remembered. Ryan's not even sure if Sharpay knows his intended major, to be honest.

“Can you help me out?” Chad asks, and Ryan swallows. He is a professional. He’s taught dance for years. He can do this.

He’s taught dance to seniors and little kids for years, not cute guys his own age. He absolutely cannot do this.

“What all do you want to know?” Ryan asks as he starts stretching. It’s just a waltz, but you can never be too prepared; besides, he’ll probably be doing hours of yoga to destress from this whole experience afterwards.

“I mean, can you just, like, walk me through it?”

He is a professional. He is a professional. He is a really gay teenage boy and he is going to die. “Yeah, sure, like—you want me to dance with you?”

Chad shrugs. “Yeah, if that works.”

“Okay,” Ryan says, exhaling. “I don’t really know how to teach it without being the lead, and I’m used to leading, anyway, so I don’t know how that’ll work for you—”

“I don’t really care what part I’m doing or whatever, man, as long as I learn some of it. Taylor’s been on my case about learning the choreography for the play, and whenever I try to tell her we haven’t been taught the choreography yet, she just tells me to ‘figure something out, Chad. Use your time constructively instead of gazing forlornly at your basketball.’” He rolls his eyes. "I tried to tell her I don't dance, but apparently I have already committed to participate in the play and that is a commitment that must be honored no matter the sacrifice, so." He shrugs one shoulder. "You know how she gets. It was easier not to argue."

Kelsi grins. “I’m sure Taylor would be perfectly comfortable leading, anyway.” Ryan tries to shoot her a look, but she avoids looking at him. He’ll pester her about it later; for now, he needs to survive the next five minutes.

Ryan steps closer to Chad, and Kelsi starts playing a basic waltz on the piano. This is so fucking surreal, but Chad isn’t stepping back or telling him to stop or running out of the room screaming, so Ryan forces the stress away to deal with later and concentrates on the movements. “Okay, so just, take my hand like this... Hey, take a deep breath, you got this. It’s not that hard, I promise.” He moves his hand to Chad’s hip tentatively, watching for Chad to back up or flinch away, but he doesn’t, so Ryan settles his hand there and counts his breathing in his head. Chad puts his hand on Ryan’s back, and Ryan is going to die right here in this practice room and his goddamn gay ghost is going to haunt future theater nerds for the rest of East High’s existence.

“Let the music guide you,” Ryan says, which is one of his Dance Instructor Lines that he normally says to little old ladies and five-year-olds. “You can concentrate on the beat, at first, but you should try to get to the point where you just feel it, where it’s natural. Okay, so step back now. And just… follow me. One-two-three, one-two-three—yeah, that’s good, move your shoulders back a little and relax them. One-two-three, one-two-three—nice, yeah, let’s try that part again.”

Kelsi keeps playing as they waltz around the room a few times. “You seem to be getting the hang of it; try looking up from your feet now,” Ryan suggests, and immediately regrets saying it because that means Chad is meeting his eyes as they dance together and Ryan is going to spend the afterlife in a fucking public school. God. He’s also slightly concerned that his hand might catch on fire, or go numb, or otherwise just stop functioning, much like his brain; it’s a good thing he’s taught this dance so many times, because he is on autopilot right now, all of his awareness focused on the fact that he is holding Chad Danforth’s hand.

“I think you’ve got it,” Ryan says finally, after determining that he will either faint or say something really, really stupid should this continue. He drops Chad’s hand and steps back. “You caught on pretty fast, I think you’ll be fine at picking up the choreography later.”

“Thanks, Evans,” Chad says, grinning. “Sorry for interrupting your meeting.”

Ryan shrugs. “No big deal.”

Chad grabs his backpack and heads to the door. “Have a good weekend,” he tells Kelsi, and then, “Later, Evans.” He’s still smiling.

Ryan waits until he’s out of earshot before flinging himself onto the piano bench. “Kelsi,” he says, pleading, “what the fuck.”

“Yep, you’re screwed,” she agrees pleasantly, and Ryan groans.

Chapter Text

Chad isn’t so sure about the whole lockers thing, honestly, but Troy had given him that look that has been getting them both into trouble since preschool, the one that says “you’re my best friend, what do you mean you won’t do this incredibly dumb shit with me?” and Chad had caved. So when Rocketman and Donnie look back at him, towels slung around their waists, and ask for the combination to his and Troy’s gym lockers, Chad smirks. “It’s like he said, you gotta earn ‘em.”

He takes off running.

He’s mostly just following Troy’s haphazard path through the school, but he keeps glancing back to make sure the freshmen aren’t slipping on the gym floor or the tile of the hallway; Troy might think this is funny, but Chad doesn’t want anyone busting their skull open. Around the time they get to the machine garage, he’s very actively fighting off his mom’s voice in his head from last month when she made him swear that if he chooses to join a fraternity next year, he won’t engage in any of that hazing bullshit.

“It’s juvenile, and it’s also dangerous,” she’d said. “Your father and I both know that we raised you to respect people more than that.”

Chad swallows and slows down a bit. If they catch up with him, he’ll give their clothes back, he reasons. Troy makes a turn for the theater.

Chad barely has time to register that Ryan is at the front of the stage, leading everyone in some sort of bizarre yoga stretch, before Troy is screeching to a halt stage left and Ryan’s eyes are widening and immediately averting. Everyone else is laughing, including Chad, but Ryan is quickly making his way to the curtains. He looks terrified.

“Yearbook opportunity!” Gabriella calls, and Chad grimaces behind his hand; he expects this bullshit from Troy—and himself, to be honest—but he would’ve thought Gabriella, at least, would be telling them to cut it out. Hopefully Taylor will say something, and then he’ll have a reason to toss their clothes back to them, and this will all be over. Except for the social torture the freshmen will have to deal with for a while.

“Even forms of hazing that seem ‘innocent’ can still cause trauma,” his mom had said, and she’s a psychologist, so she would know.

Taylor takes a photo, and Chad’s laughter becomes significantly more forced.

Mrs. Darbus looks intently at Rocketman and Donnie, and while Chad would’ve said thirty seconds ago that they couldn’t possibly get any more uncomfortable than they already were, he would’ve been wrong.

“Bold choice, gentlemen,” she says, and someone snorts. “We all must have the courage to discover ourselves” —and Chad could swear she glances at him, but it’s probably just because he’s holding their clothes— “However, at East High, we will discover ourselves whilst clothed.”

Troy is still laughing, even through Darbus’s mini-speech welcoming the freshmen into the drama club whether they wanted to be a part of it or not, and it’s starting to get really old.

“If you would resume the stretches, please, Ryan,” Darbus says, and only then seems to notice that Ryan isn't there, which is surprising; his absence from the stage is palpable to Chad, insistent and distracting. He would’ve thought Darbus would have felt the difference, too.

“I'll go get him,” Chad volunteers, and Mrs. Darbus nods sharply. Chad heads backstage at a light jog.

The light is on in the men’s dressing room. The door is open, but Chad knocks on the doorframe as a heads up, and he can hear the water shut off. “Come in,” Ryan calls.

Chad steps in. “Darbus said she needs you for the stretching stuff.”

“Right,” Ryan says, drying his hands off and tossing the paper towel into the trash. “Just needed to wash my hands. You would not believe the gunk that's on the stage floor,” he finishes brightly, adding a pronounced shudder. Something sounds different about his voice, though, and Chad realizes with a start that he's lying—acting, more accurately.

“You okay, Evans?” Taylor would probably say something about his lack of tact, but whatever, he has to try.

“Peachy,” Ryan says, still smiling, but the bitterness in his voice is obvious now.

Chad swallows. “Seriously, what’s wrong, man?”

Ryan’s expression hardens. It’s almost a relief, though, because at least he’s showing his real reaction. “What’s wrong—god, okay, you really don’t fucking get it.”

Chad waits, and raises an eyebrow when it seems Ryan isn’t planning on elaborating. “Get what?”

Ryan swallows, and his anger isn’t diminished by any fraction of a degree, but on top of it he now looks so scared. “Sharpay and I turned 18 three weeks ago.”

Chad remembers hearing about the lavish birthday party, and seeing Sharpay’s new, brighter pink car and wondering what Ryan’s gift was. “Yeah, I know.”

Ryan rakes a hand through his hair. “I can be tried as an adult. Like, I obviously could have been before, because the legal system is shit, but no amount of my parents’ money can get me out of that now. And they can buy my way out of an F in chemistry, sure, or into a good college despite it” —he looks pained, but continues— “but not out of a sexual assault charge.”

“Wait, what the fuck?” Chad stares at him, horrified and deeply confused at the turn this conversation has taken. “You didn’t assault anyone.”

“Did you know that the gay panic defense is still accepted in court in 48 states? And last I checked, Albuquerque isn’t in California or Illinois.” Ryan sounds vaguely hysterical, like that one time sophomore year when he did a rendition of Lady Macbeth’s monologue to the drama club while Chad was painting sets in detention.

Chad rubs a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, man, I’m really not following.”

Ryan takes a deep breath. “Everyone at this school knows I’m gay, Chad.” And now is really not the time to be dwelling on Ryan’s use of his first name, but, well. “And you and Troy fucking Bolton just led two naked freshmen boys directly in front of me. All it takes is one person to decide I looked at either of those guys a half-second too long, or at all, and suddenly half the school is saying I tried to touch an underage basketball player and I’m fending off an accusation. Or one of their teammates thinks he saw me staring at one of those kids and decides to take matters into his own hands, and he tells the court, ‘I’m sorry, your honor, I didn’t mean to attack him, I was temporarily out of my mind because he tried to hit on someone,’ and the court says ‘yeah, that makes sense, go on your merry way back into the public, just try not to bash any more queers this time. Or do, we don’t really give a shit.’”

Ryan is breathing hard, and his face is flushed an intense red, like when he finishes a complicated musical number but without the smile on his face, the contentedness that always radiates from him when he’s onstage. He yanks the sink handle and splashes water on his face. “God, Sharpay’s going to fucking kill me. She always thinks I overreact to this shit. Maybe she’ll be too busy taking over my musical to notice,” he muses.

Chad hands him a paper towel. Ryan takes it without looking at him and dries his face off.

“That’s easy for Sharpay to say; it doesn’t affect her. I think your reaction was totally understandable—honestly, I’m kind of scared for myself, now, since I was the one to actually take their clothes.” Chad swallows. “I’m really fucking sorry, Ryan.”

Ryan presses his lips together. The raw fear in his voice has been forced out, replaced by that carefully measured bitterness. “Yeah, well, try not to lose too much sleep over it. There’s a solid chance your basketball scholarship and heterosexuality will save you.”

Ryan brushes past him to leave, and Chad shrugs internally. He’s involved with the drama geeks now; might as well take advantage of the excuse to be dramatic.

“I wouldn’t bank too much on that last one.”

Ryan freezes halfway through the door.

“Honestly, the main reason I’m not out is because of the basketball scholarship,” Chad continues. “And the basketball team, both the one here and at U of A. A lot of the stuff you said last summer, about why you quit baseball—I wasn’t ready back then to say that I get it, but yeah, I get it.”

Chad can hear Ryan breathing, recognizes it from his endless insistence that the cast practice yoga breaths to calm stage fright and opening night nerves, even though they’re still over a month away from opening night. It can’t hurt to get in the habit, Ryan is always saying. “You’re—you’re not straight.”

Ryan can’t see him shrug, because he still hasn’t turned around, but Chad does it anyway. “I’m not straight,” he confirms.

Ryan swallows—Chad can see the muscles move in the back of his neck—and nods once.

“I’m sorry,” Chad says again.

Ryan exhales. “Just tell Troy he’s not as funny as he thinks he is, next time,” he says, and walks away.

Chad tries repeatedly to catch Ryan’s eye during detention—Ryan didn’t get detention, of course, because he didn’t do something fucking stupid like steal two kids’ clothes; he stayed after school to work on sets voluntarily (although Chad figures he’d probably do the same thing if the alternative was spending more time in a house with Sharpay)—but Ryan is always across the room and looking away. Chad meets Kelsi’s gaze a few times, though, and tries to smile at her each time. She just gives him really strange looks in response.

He hangs around for a few minutes when he’s done painting to see if Ryan needs a ride, but Ryan’s mom pulls up in a lavish and impractical car and sweeps Ryan and Kelsi off to who knows where, so Chad heads home. He texts Troy to see if he wants to shoot hoops and gets no response, which means Troy is with Gabriella, so he goes into his driveway by himself and launches the basketball against the headboard, listening to the crashing sounds until it’s dark out.

“Doesn’t sound like you made very many,” his mom teases at dinner. “Forget how to play since your last practice?”

Chad shrugs. “I just needed something to do to get my energy out.” His mom nods; she’s a huge fan of constructive outlets. Chad looks at his plate. “So I, uh… I did something really stupid today.”

His mom sets her fork down. “We need to wait for your father to get home to have this conversation stupid, or we’re specifically having this conversation while your father isn’t home stupid?”

Chad shrugs. “Neither, really. It’s just, Troy and I pranked some of the freshmen who wanted our gym lockers…” His mom raises an eyebrow, and he knows that means he needs to elaborate, and fast. “We, like, ran through the school with their clothes when they got out the showers, and they seemed okay—I know we still shouldn’t have done that to them, that’s not what I mean—but just, it really upset this guy I’m trying to be friends with, and I don’t want to have messed things up with him that badly, and I don’t really know what to do about it.”

His mom folds her arms. “Focus on your friend later. Right now, you need to apologize to those boys.”

“Yeah, I know,” he sighs, and proceeds to hear all the ways in which he is now grounded.

The next day, Chad stops by the yearbook classroom with Troy and a tray of brownies he paid Zeke $20 for—those A’s in Zeke’s Family Science class are totally going to his head. Troy, of course, thinks the brownies are a bribe to get better photos of them in the yearbook, not a thank-you for deleting yesterday’s pictures of Rocketman and Donnie. He can tell from the look Taylor gives him that she doesn’t buy this as a group gesture, but whatever, she’s eating a brownie instead of questioning it.

“Zeke doesn’t know they’re gone, so you have to eat all the evidence,” Troy says, and Chad wants to facepalm or maybe knock some sense into his past self so he’d have just told Troy the plan, but instead he mouths I paid him in Taylor’s direction.

She rolls her eyes and mouths back, I know.

“Kissing up to the yearbook editors,” Gabriella says, and Chad wonders if she’s just playing along or if Taylor actually didn’t tell her. “Smart move.”

“Yeah, well, Chad’s hoping for two pages on himself. Maybe even a third page, just for his hair,” Troy says, rolling his eyes. It strikes Chad that if Troy knew he wasn’t straight, that’d probably be a gay joke. As it is, he makes a quip and laughs it off.

“Hey, Troy, by the way, could you take me after school to check out that tuxedo?” he asks, just to shift his thoughts away from further wondering about what would happen if Troy found out that he’s gay.

Troy nods. “Tuxedo? For what?” Taylor asks, fake confused, and Chad grins, rolling his eyes. Banter, he can do.

“For prom.”

“Aw, honey. If that’s what you call an invitation, you’ll be dancing with yourself,” Taylor says, and elbows his basketball out from under his arm. She huffs off, and Chad follows, hearing Troy’s laughter in the background.

“Wait, you know I wasn’t asking you, right?” he asks under his breath when he catches up to her at a printer. Taylor rolls her eyes.

“Obviously. But I’m not wrong; Ryan would never go for that.”

To his credit, Chad only takes about three seconds to recover from the discovery that Taylor knows all of his deepest secrets. By this point, he’s fairly used to her knowing literally everything, anyway. “Okay, so what do you suggest I do?”

She shrugs. “Talking to Kelsi would be a good start. She is his best friend and all.” She says it in that way of hers that suggests he should have already thought of this, but he thanks her anyway and heads to find Kelsi as soon as the bell rings.

She’s in the practice room, as he expected, and thankfully Ryan isn’t there. Chad taps on the glass and she turns, startled, but brightens when she sees that it’s him, which is a good sign.

“Hey, do you have a minute?” he asks, tucking his hands in his pockets and bouncing slightly on his toes.

“Yeah, come on in,” she says, shutting the door behind them. She gestures to the piano bench, and he sits. She sits beside him, which is kind of awkward because they’re very close and it’s hard to actually look at each other, but whatever.

“So, uh, two questions, I guess,” he says. Kelsi nods. “One: does Ryan hate me right now?”

Kelsi bites her lip, but not in a “he totally hates you and I don’t want to have to tell you” way, more like she’s trying not to laugh. “No. He’s not exactly thrilled with what happened, but Taylor might have let slip to me and I might have let slip to Ryan what you did with the yearbook, so while I’m not going to say all is forgiven, he knows you weren’t trying to hurt anyone. You just didn’t really think things through.”

“Yeah, I know,” Chad says, and tries to run a hand through his hair without elbowing Kelsi in the face.

“Next question.”

Chad glances at her. “Does he like grand gestures?”

She tilts her head slightly. “It depends, I guess. If it’s ‘here’s an extravagant apology to convince you to forgive me,’ then no, he gets enough of that with Sharpay. If it’s something else… Well, he is a fan of all that is over-the-top.”

Chad nods slowly. Kelsi hesitates, but continues. “Look, I’m not trying to make any assumptions here, just—don’t do anything unless you’re sure. Gabriella stopped talking to him after last summer because Troy got jealous and apparently it was easier for her to ditch Ryan than to tell her fucking boyfriend that her friend is gay. He doesn’t want to be ashamed of it, you know—neither of us do—but it’s a lot harder when other people are ashamed of us.”

Chad stares at the piano keys, trying not to wonder why Gabriella didn’t want to even mention someone being gay to Troy. Trying not to think what that will mean for him. After a second, he glances at Kelsi and tries to look supportive. “Did you just come out to me?”

“I don’t know,” she says, grinning. “Did you just come out to me?”

“Touché,” he responds, smiling back, and she glances at the door.

“Heads up, you have about twenty seconds.” He doesn’t need to ask until what, and sure enough, Ryan steps through the door nineteen seconds later, once again balancing two coffees. He passes one to Kelsi and raises an eyebrow at Chad.

“I feel like I should start asking for your order, too.”

Chad shrugs, but inside he’s—exploding into confetti. Spinning like a thousand pinwheels. Dancing. “I have a free period.”

“Yes, well, not that I don’t enjoy your presence, but we do have work to do,” Ryan says, but he smiles at him, and Chad’s brain is going wild repeating the part about Ryan enjoying his presence, so he nods.

“See you at lunch,” Kelsi says, as if that’s something they’d discussed, and he’s pretty sure she winks at him.

“Yeah, see you,” he says, and leans against the wall for a minute to collect himself as soon as he leaves the room.

Chad spends the half hour until lunch pacing in the locker room and trying to figure out when, exactly, his heart started going haywire around Ryan Evans. It must’ve been sometime between the championship party and his fuck-up yesterday—sometime during those first few weeks of rehearsals, he must’ve started noticing when Ryan wasn’t there, when Ryan was acting, nodding calmly to Sharpay and then rolling his eyes at Kelsi or sometimes Chad as soon as she turned away—but then he remembers automatically looking Ryan’s direction in homeroom whenever something happened, wanting to see his reaction to an outrageous homework assignment or some classmate’s petty drama, and has to admit that this has been a long time coming. And then—then he thinks about the summer, about his very obvious once-over even as his brain was screaming at him that he shouldn’t do this, his teammates were watching, about their legs tangled together over home plate and his heart racing faster than it has for any other game, any other win, even the championship—

He’s been dancing (or not-dancing) around this for at least a year, if he’s being honest. When Troy decided to audition for a goddamn musical and said, shrugging, “Sharpay’s kind of cute,” Chad’s first thought was, So is her brother. And now they have five weeks of school left, and according to Taylor, Chad has no idea how to ask someone to prom.

He does know one thing, though: Kelsi told him not to do anything unless he was sure.

He’s sure.

Chapter Text

The prom scene is probably the choreography Ryan’s most proud of, even if it is obnoxiously heteronormative. Everyone is starting to look like they know what they’re doing, even Jason, and if Chad meets Ryan’s eyes for a few beats too long as he waltzes with Taylor, well, Ryan tries not to think about it. Which is surprisingly easy, since he doesn’t have time to think about anything other than counting beats and adjusting postures and making the last few tweaks to footwork until after rehearsal.

Everyone’s singing is pretty good, too, even though it’s not his job to deal with that. On the second or third run-through of the afternoon, he’s confident enough in everyone’s dancing to glance away from their feet once every few minutes, and he gets to enjoy the other details of the number, such as when Kelsi makes a face at “dressing to impress the boys” and Mrs. Darbus, unexpectedly, lets her get away with it. Ryan’s not a huge fan of that lyric, either, but Kelsi is the one who wrote it, so it seems kind of hypocritical of her, but he’s not about to argue. He can’t help smiling to himself a few lines later when Taylor sings, “No one better wear the same dress as me,” staring pointedly at Kelsi’s identical costume; it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing Taylor would normally care about, but it would admittedly be awkward if they did the whole matching-couple thing.

Not that that’s anywhere near official yet, but Ryan’s an optimist.

Sharpay promptly ruins his good mood at the end of rehearsal. “I bet Kelsi’s writing something amazing for Troy and Gabriella,” she says, crossing her arms, and Ryan barely suppresses his eyeroll. As if Kelsi cares more about making Troy and Gabriella look good than about her own work being good enough to get her into Juilliard.

“A song, most likely,” he says, biting back a dozen even more sarcastic responses.

Sharpay huffs. “Just find out what it is.”

Ryan sighs and walks off to find Kelsi; they need to talk about recent changes to the scenes they’re rehearsing tomorrow, anyway. His mood improves somewhat when he sees Troy, who had leaned in to kiss Gabriella, be immediately cockblocked by a freshman—“Dude, stop doing that!” Troy says, and Ryan can’t help but snort. Just as he reaches the other side of the stage, he hears Troy telling Rocketman that Sharpay has a secret crush on him. Ryan spares a second to pray for the poor kid’s soul.

Kelsi is backstage, sitting on a throne that’s been repurposed throughout dozens of productions and writing rapidly on some sheet music. Ryan rests his elbow on the top of the throne back and leans forward to read over her shoulder.

“There’s not enough light back here to be reading,” he says, and Kelsi doesn’t look up, but he knows she’s rolling her eyes.

“You sound like my mom.”

“God, I hope not. The importance of avoiding eye strain is probably the only area in which the two of us would agree.” She’s still scratching out lines and drawing arrows in the margins. Ryan frowns. “There is such a thing as over-editing, you know.”

“Bullshit,” Kelsi says, pushing her glasses up her nose. She sighs, and finally looks up at him. “It has to be perfect.”

Ryan gives her a reassuring smile. “It already is perfect, Kels. Don’t wear yourself out.”

“Yeah, easy for you to say,” she scoffs, looking back down and flipping to the next page.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Kelsi’s shoulders are stiff, and her pencil is pressing sharply into the page. “All of my compositions have to be flawless. You know I can’t afford Juilliard on my own—I can’t afford any music school on my own, and my parents aren’t about to pay for it, so if I don’t get this, I’m going to have to be a fucking business major, and I’m competing against Troy Bolton, who gets everything the theater has to offer bestowed upon him without even trying, and you and Sharpay, who, yeah, you work your asses off, but I don’t know why you’re even competing for this scholarship because it’s not like you need it—”

“You know I do,” Ryan interrupts sharply. “My grades aren’t good enough to get in through general applications. This scholarship is solely talent-based; if I don’t get it, they’re going to take one look at my GPA and SAT scores and say good luck at community college.”

“There’s nothing wrong with community college,” Kelsi says, jaw tight.

“No, there isn’t, unless you want to be on fucking Broadway.”

“Well, maybe you should’ve thought of that before you and your sister spent your junior year scheming instead of studying.” She turns to face him, and although he’s spent the past few minutes trying to get her to look at him, he now wishes she wouldn’t. “You have control over your grades, Ryan. I don’t have control over my parents’ bank account.”

Ryan takes off his hat, runs a hand through his hair, and tries to make his fingers stop shaking from frustration. “You literally just said that even if they had the money, they wouldn’t pay for you to major in anything within the arts. And you of all people should know—you’re one of the only people who knows—that even if I should be in control of my grades, I’m not in control of my brain, and no matter how much money my parents have, that’s not about to change—”

“Yeah, but they pay for your tutors. And they’ll do their damnedest to pay your way into Juilliard, too, even if you don’t deserve it.”

“Maybe because they fucking give a shit about me and my dreams,” he says, but inside, he’s thinking, How dare you. He’s thinking, You’re right.

After Kelsi slams her folder of music shut and stomps off, and after Ryan presses his forehead to the wall, cries a little bit, and somewhat composes himself, he changes clothes, grabs a bucket of paint, and walks onstage. He’s about halfway through with the first coat on the door of a house from the prom scene when someone in the audience calls, “Hey, Evans! What are you still doing here?”

“I could say the same to you,” Ryan calls back, smiling in spite of himself. Chad, who is leaning against the wall by the theater door, shrugs.

“I was going to try to catch you after rehearsal, but I didn’t see you, so I figured you’d already left. Then I get outside, and I see this baby blue scooter in the parking lot, and I’m like, ‘That can only belong to Ryan Evans. No one else in Albuquerque has the guts to pull that off.’ So I came back in.” At this distance, Ryan can’t quite tell if Chad is smirking at him, but it’s a reasonable inference.

“To do what, mock my taste in motor vehicles?” Ryan asks, but he’s smiling. Chad shakes his head and pushes off the wall, walking toward the stage.

“Nah, I was planning to ask if you wanted to go get food or something. But I can help you paint instead, if you want.”

Ryan shrugs. “Sure. I just need a constructive outlet right now, you know?”

Chad snorts. “You sound like my mom.”

“That is the second time I’ve been told that today. Brushes are over there,” Ryan says, gesturing at the bucket just inside the wing.

Chad grabs a brush. The other paint buckets are over there, too, and Ryan expects him to pick one up, but instead, he dips his brush into the same bucket Ryan is using and starts painting the door with him. “Who else said you sound like my mom?” he jokes, and Ryan rolls his eyes.

“Kelsi said I sounded like her mom earlier. Among other things.”

Chad raises an eyebrow at his tone. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know, we both just said a lot of hurtful stuff. We’re both stressed from working on the play, and with the scholarship and everything…” Ryan sighs. “She deserves it, and I’m more than a little jealous. I don’t want to let it come between us, but I also can’t make myself care any less about this—I’ve wanted to go to Juilliard since my first dance lesson, you know? It’s everything to me. That obviously doesn’t justify the shit I said to her, and like, I know she wants this just as badly as I do, it’s just… It sucks.”

“No kidding.” Chad looks away from the door and at Ryan. “I can get where you’re coming from; I’ve wanted to play for U of A since I was like six. I can’t imagine being up against Troy for the same scholarship.”

“Yeah,” Ryan says, running a hand through his hair. “It’s hell.”

“I’m sorry,” Chad says, and Ryan manages a small smile.

“Thanks.”

They paint in silence for a while, moving from one door to the next. It’s almost eight when Chad announces that the paint bucket is empty and stretches his back, the hem of his shirt riding up across his stomach. Ryan swallows and looks away.

“So where do you want to eat?” Chad asks, grinning, and Ryan tries not to look too surprised. Either his acting is shit right now or Chad knows him too well already, because Chad says, “That was my initial question, like, two hours ago, remember?”

“Right,” Ryan says. His throat is dry, and he’s not sure if it’s from the paint fumes or from Chad’s arms in his t-shirt with its characteristic weird slogan.

“I’m going to go wash the brushes,” Chad says, and Ryan hands his to him. “Be thinking of where you want to eat, because I’m starving and paint is toxic.”

Ryan nods, too emotionally exhausted by the past few hours to think of a response. Painting with Chad had been calming, yeah, but it was also a very specific kind of agony.

“Where to?” Chad asks a few minutes later, tossing his keys from one hand to another.

Ryan shrugs. “I figured pizza.”

Chad gasps, mock scandalized. “You know, Evans, for someone so sparkly, you can be remarkably boring.”

Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Sparkly, huh?”

“Have you seen your hat lately?”

Ryan has; it’s lime green and glittery, and he’s worn it to every audition for years. It hasn’t been helping much in the luck department lately, to be honest.

Chad swallows, and doesn’t quite meet Ryan’s eyes as he adds, “And, I mean, your personality and all. You’re just… bright, man, you know? Energetic and unapologetic and all that stuff.”

Ryan gapes at him for a second before Chad coughs and says, “Anyway, pizza it is. Let’s get going before Darbus gives me detention for the rest of the year for eating her props.”

Ryan laughs and starts walking towards the exit. “Gross, Danforth.”

Chad just grins.

“So, why’d you decide to spend your whole evening at the theater?” Ryan asks once they’re seated in a corner booth with a mostly-eaten large pizza between them. “You didn’t exactly seem thrilled when Gabriella signed you up; I would’ve thought you’d want to get out of there as soon as possible.”

Chad leans back in his seat and shrugs. “Maybe things have changed since Gabriella signed me up. Don’t act like you haven’t noticed—I know you pay attention to stuff.”

Ryan smiles wryly, looks away, and unsuccessfully attempts to convince himself that the things that have changed have nothing to do with him. He remembers dancing with Chad, their hands clasped together, and wonders, and wants.

“Besides,” Chad continues, and Ryan forces himself to take a breath and look back at him, “Troy’s been kind of a dick lately.”

“How uncharacteristic,” Ryan says, deadpan, and Chad snorts.

“Yeah. I guess I needed a distraction, y’know?”

Ryan nods. “Glad to be of service.” He takes a bite of pizza and hesitates, swallowing. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Chad sighs. “I don’t know, I get that he has to figure out his own path in life or whatever the fuck my mom says, but that doesn’t mean he has to throw everyone else to the side while he does it. And don’t get me wrong, I like Gabriella, but it seems pretty ridiculous to choose your high school girlfriend over the dream you’ve had since you were fucking six.”

“Yeah, I agree,” Ryan says, wincing. “I mean, dreams change, and if he genuinely wants to do something else, that’s his decision, but—it doesn’t look so great from the outside.”

“No kidding.”

“Sorry he’s being shitty to you,” Ryan says as Chad grabs the last slice of pizza. Chad looks at him, and Ryan forces himself not to swallow or blink or move in any way; it feels like the slightest shift, and his hands, his throat, his eyelashes will give him away.

“Thanks,” Chad says, and looks away, and Ryan exhales.

Ryan gets to school even earlier than usual the next morning, but Kelsi is still in the practice room before him. He pours himself a cup of tea and doesn’t allow himself to hesitate before sitting beside her on the bench. She’s working on “I Just Wanna Be With You”—it’s probably the one she was editing last night. Ryan plays the first few notes, and Kelsi slides the sheet music over closer to him. He lets out a little of the breath he’s been holding; that’s a good sign.

“I got a lotta things I have to do,” Ryan sings on cue, “All these distractions—our future’s coming soon.” When he glances at her, she’s smiling slightly. “We’re being pulled—”

“A hundred different directions,” Kelsi sings with him, and he grins.

“But whatever happens,” he continues, forcing the lump in his throat to retreat until later.

“I know I’ve got you,” they sing in unison, looking at each other.

“It’s beautiful,” Ryan says.

“It’s for you,” Kelsi says quietly. “I mean, Troy and Gabriella will be singing it, but—it’s for you.”

“I’m really sorry.” Ryan takes his hands off the keys and folds his fingers together. “I know you have to work as hard as you do, and I hate it for you, but I shouldn’t have tried to stop you. And… I’m really sorry for bringing your parents into it, that was a low blow. I fucking hate that they aren’t supportive of you—all of you—and I should’ve been supportive, too, not tearing you down like that.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Kelsi says. “I never should’ve said those things about your dyslexia and stuff—god, that was so shitty of me, especially when I know how hard you work at everything, and I know your parents’ money doesn’t magically make your life perfect. That was just. Such a dick move.” She leans her head on his shoulder. “You’re one of the only people in our class I’m really going to miss, and I don’t want to fuck things up in the last few weeks we have together.”

Ryan wraps his arm around her. “I’m going to miss you, too. You deserve that scholarship, you know. I really hope you get it.”

Kelsi buries her face in his shoulder and hugs him. “You deserve it, too.” Not as much as you, Ryan thinks, but that’s not the kind of conversation he wants this to be.

“So,” Ryan says after they sit in silence for a few minutes, “what are you doing for prom?”

“It’s two days before the show,” Kelsi says, rolling her eyes at him, “What do you think I’m doing? I’ll be writing orchestrations and fixing charts—I still have to write lyrics!”

“Great,” Ryan says, grinning at her. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

She elbows him, but he just laughs and starts playing again. “You’re on my mind, you’re in my heart; it doesn’t matter where we are,” he sings, “We’ll be alright—”

“Even if we’re miles apart,” she sings with him, and even though he feels like he’s going to start crying, he believes it.

Chapter Text

Troy’s car might be even more used than Chad’s, if such a thing is possible. It’s certainly more prone to falling apart, which is how they end up at the junkyard instead of prom shopping with Gabriella and Taylor. 

“You aren’t supposed to see the dress beforehand, anyway,” Gabriella had said yesterday, and Taylor had leaned over to Chad, looking horrified.

“Please tell me they aren’t thinking about getting married.”

Chad had shrugged. “I don’t think he’d tell me if they were.”

Now, though, he feels for the first time this semester like he actually might still know who Troy is. One minute, they’re hunting for parts for Troy’s piece of shit truck in absolute silence, and the next, they’re chasing each other through the junkyard, laughing, yelling stories back and forth from when they were eight years old.

“I’m suddenly really glad my mom always made me get the fucking tetanus shot boosters,” Chad says as they leap across scrap piles. Troy shoves a couple tires in his direction, one after the other, and they continue the tradition of using them as makeshift chairs, covered in sweat and still laughing.

“I’ve missed you,” Chad admits, and tries not to wince at his own vulnerability. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing with my life,” Troy admits after a long pause. Chad tries not to read too hard into the difference in their confessions. 

“I can’t believe Mr. Riley already bought U of A season tickets.”

Troy grins, but it’s a little bitter. “He’s only been talking about it since we were toddlers.”

“It’s a good thing Gabriella’s on birth control, because you clearly know nothing about child development,” Chad says, and Troy laughs for real.

“Yeah, your mom was always big on that kind of thing, huh?”

After another couple of minutes of silence, Chad swallows. The sun has set. They’re suspended on the brink of their childhood, rubber and sweat and uncomplicated conversations, tipping forward into something that looks more tangled and distant every day, and they can’t go back. “What are you gonna do if Juilliard says yes?”

“They won’t,” Troy says immediately, shrugging, and Chad rolls his eyes.

“You’re good at the theater shit, okay, man? Sharpay fucking Evans admits it, in a roundabout, paranoid way. They’d be lucky to have you.”

“Thanks,” Troy says softly, looking at him, and sighs. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I guess I’d have to think about it.”

They get Troy’s truck functional and are on their way home, windows rolled down and Chad’s hair blowing everywhere, radio blasting hits from the 90s, singing about half the words at the top of their lungs, when they pass Gabriella’s house.

There’s a For Sale sign in the front yard.

“Fuck,” Chad says. Troy is silent, knuckles white around the wheel, lips pressed tightly together. “Fuck.”

“I’m so sorry,” Chad says when Troy parks in his driveway. “Do you want to come in? My mom would totally be cool with you staying the night or something, you know that.”

“Thanks, man,” Troy says. Swallows. He sounds hollow, like if you knocked on his chest you’d hear the impact echo back. “But I, uh. I think I should probably get home. Call her, figure out what’s going on.”

Chad nods. “Okay, yeah. Just, like—let me know if you need anything, okay?”

Troy nods, but for an actor, it’s desperately unconvincing.

Chad texts Ryan, just to give his mind something to focus on other than the absence of any notification from Troy. Well, mostly just for that reason.

hey , he types, idk if u know already but i think gabi’s moving. troy & i saw a for sale sign in her yard. i don’t wanna like spread her business or whatever but i thought u should know

All Ryan says in response is fuck.

Chad does not want to know what kind of late-night, panicked damage-control sessions Ryan and Kelsi are undoubtedly having.

Up until the next day, when Ryan texts him a photo of him, Kelsi, and an unholy amount of empty iced coffee cups, and the accompanying message if you’re free, moral support would be greatly appreciated. Chad’s halfway out the door when his mom clears her throat.

“Last I recall, you were still grounded.”

He sighs. Turns to face her. Smiles sheepishly. “Would you buy, ‘I’m on the way to save a friend from the impending negative health consequences of excessive coffee consumption’?” 

Her face softens. “Depends on the friend.”

“Ryan,” he says, and she sighs.

“Dang it, I do like him. And it’s not like his parents are about to notice that something’s wrong, huh?”

Chad swallows, bouncing on his toes.

“Okay,” she says, waving her hand at him, “be home by one or let me know by midnight if you’re staying over.”

“Thank you,” Chad says earnestly, and she smiles softly.

“You’re welcome. He’s lucky to have someone who cares about him the way you do.”

Chad tries not to think too hard about that as he jogs down the driveway, gets his car on the road, and breaks the speed limit all the way to the Evans’s house. 

“It’s a fucking disaster,” Ryan announces when Chad follows Kelsi into Ryan’s bedroom, which has conspiracy-theorist levels of sticky notes, photos, and arrows spread out all across the floor. “It is an unmitigated, irredeemable clusterfuck of a nightmare and I should resign immediately to spare myself the shame.” 

“He always like this?” Chad asks under his breath, and Kelsi rolls her eyes and mutters something that could, from the right angle, sound very suspiciously like I’m not the one who’s into him.

“Hey, man,” Chad says, because he doesn’t have the time to even consider confronting that, “I swear, whatever the solution is, you’ll make it happen. The show must go on, right?” He looks at Kelsi, and she nods, like, yes, that’s a thing, you said it correctly.

Ryan jabs a manicured nail into the center of the web of papers taking over his carpet. “Sharpay” —that’s whose face his finger is on, Chad realizes— “would have to be lead.” Chad winces. “And her underclassman lookalike would have to be her. And she and Troy would have to produce believably authentic chemistry in the span of two weeks when, no offense, I truly and deeply believe that Troy’s ability to act as a man in love with Gabriella fully hinges on his love interest being Gabriella .”

“Okay, but, counterpoint: Sharpay’s acting ability doesn’t hinge on anybody.”

“Right, right, except for the fact that she can’t pull off sweet and earnest and nerdy without a complete fucking personality transplant.” Ryan looks up at the ceiling in despair. “It’s over. Goodbye, Juilliard. Goodbye, cruel yet beloved world of theater. And I’m failing chemistry, so it’s not like I can get into a goddamn STEM program—no, it’s business school for me, friends. Business school.”

“That’s not a great option, either, considering you hate math,” Kelsi points out helpfully, and Chad rolls his eyes.

“Dude, Juilliard isn’t judging you on whether your cast is compatible. They’re judging you on your choreography, and it’s obvious that you know your shit—everybody’s killing it, even Jason, because you’re a great teacher, and because you care about it so much that you make everybody else want to care about it, too. This is the first class I’ve done my homework in since kindergarten.” Ryan laughs, and he looks a fraction calmer. “Juilliard’s gonna be able to tell how great you are and how hard you’ve worked on this, and if that’s not enough for them, then fuck them. Seriously. And even then, it’ll still be a great show and something you’ll be proud of as your last musical at East High. Because no matter what you do, this is your last musical at East High, and you’ve got to suck it up and stick with it. You’ve got to end on a make, man.”

Ryan looks at him for a long moment, then squares his shoulders and nods. “Alright, then. Let’s draft some carefully-worded announcements.”

Sharpay is Gabriella and Gabriella is at Stanford and Ryan is in bright pink plaid pants, which are awful, and Ryan is smiling across the stage at Chad during water breaks, which is awesome. He’s showing Troy the steps for the thousandth time, still patient and controlled, and Troy hisses under his breath, “You’re easier to dance with that she is,” and Chad makes a valiant effort not to think about dancing with Ryan in the practice room. About dancing with Ryan at prom, maybe, if he ever gets the guts to ask.

Chad tells his mom one night that he’s going for a walk to clear his head, drives to the school, and paces the hallways. 

He wants to ask Ryan out, really badly, is the thing, wants to ask Ryan to prom specifically and do all the high school bullshit he’s been mocking his friends about for months, but no matter how he does it, that means, to some degree, coming out. And word gets around. And U of A has plenty of loopholes to get around the paperwork he’s signed, to leave him high and dry, or worse, benched. And Troy—

Chad doesn’t want to think about what could happen with Troy.

He winds up at the auditorium eventually, and he walks down the aisle, stands center stage, tips his head back, and screams. 

He notices, when he opens his eyes again, that there’s someone sitting in the back row.

“Mrs. D?” he asks, squinting at her. “I know I'm not supposed to be here…”

“Aren't you?” she asks, which, okay, cryptic. “Nor should I be at this hour, I suppose, but I am trying to direct a show in which Sharpay now plays the role of Miss Montez.” She sighs, then gives him a softened version of her usual piercing stare. He would almost prefer she give him detention. “And the reason for your visit is?”  

Chad swallows. Puts his hands in his pockets. Shrugs. “I don't know. I think I feel like this is a good place to…”

“Scream?” she offers. “Feel free.”

Chad scuffs one sneaker against the tape marks on the stage. There’s the spot where Ryan touched his left shoulder blade on Wednesday, brief and familiar, adjusting Chad’s angle to the audience. “Or just to think.”

“The stage can be a wonderful partner in the process of self-discovery,” Mrs. Darbus says, and her tone is far too knowing. She tilts her head. “You seem comfortable up there.”

Chad blinks at her. “I do?” 

She nods. “Uncomfortable with that natural comfort, though, perhaps.” Chad swallows.

“I'm just confused.”

“What a life in the theater has taught me,” Mrs. Darbus says, smiling, conspiratorial but genuine, “is to trust one's instincts. And that takes courage—a quality you don't seem to lack,” she adds.

“Last one out turns off the lights,” she says, standing, and leaves him alone to think about whatever that was. Chad paces the stage for the next hour and wonders how to go about trusting instincts that terrify him. This isn’t a basketball game, where his hands reach for the ball so fast it feels like his brain hasn’t even had the time to send the signal. It’s—a dance, clumsy and unfamiliar, and he isn’t confident that he knows the correct next step.

Chad goes with Troy to pick up their tuxes, then comes over for the first time in weeks. Troy’s mom is happy to see Chad again, and she and Troy talk prom logistics until Troy’s phone rings. 

“It’s Gabriella,” Troy says, and answers.

“So who are you taking to prom, Chad?” Mrs. Bolton asks as Troy steps away, and Chad winces.

“I still haven’t gotten around to the actual asking part.” It’s two days away. He’s cutting it so close.

If Mrs. Bolton thinks he’s made a horrible mistake in not having handled that by now, she doesn’t show it. “Well, I’m sure she’ll say yes,” she says, smiling warmly, and Chad coughs and nods.

"No, don't even say that," Troy says into the phone, and Chad and Troy's mom share a nervous glance. “Gabriella, prom is in two days. You're supposed to be on a plane now.” They exchange a few more sentences, Troy looking increasingly agitated, until Gabriella hangs up on him. He stares at his phone for a long moment, then looks at Chad. 

“She's not coming back, man.”

“Is she going to miss prom?” Chad asks, wondering what Stanford professor he should be directing his anger at over some extra credit event or exclusive seminar too prestigious to miss.

“No,” Troy clarifies, still looking shocked, “she's not coming back at all.”

“What the fuck,” Chad says immediately, then winces. “Sorry, Mrs. B.”

“You’re fine, Chad. I’ll give you boys some space.” She presses a kiss to Troy’s forehead on her way out. 

Chad looks at him. “I’m really sorry, man.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. She’s in college already, moving on with her life, and I’m just, what? Supposed to go through the motions of the last couple weeks of high school, shit that I was planning to do with her, like it means anything without her here?”

Chad decides it wouldn’t be beneficial to mention how hurtful that is, as if the team—as if he, Troy’s best friend for their whole goddamn lives—isn’t good enough, isn’t worth sticking around and sitting through ridiculous end-of-high-school shit for. “Hey, you’ll be in college, soon, too. It's a whole new ball game.”

“Maybe I don't see my life as a ball game anymore, man,” Troy says, shaking his head, and Chad really doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he goes back to the previous thing.

“Look, I’m really sorry Gabriella won’t be there, but just because she won’t be a part of it doesn’t mean you should skip out on the end of high school and all the momentous shit that comes with it. You're gonna go to the prom with us, be with your friends. You're gonna have a good time. All right?” 

“Oh, I don't plan on missing my prom,” Troy says, and Chad grins.

“There we go.”

It’s the day before prom, and Chad Danforth is holding his basketball, leaning on the rail overlooking the cafeteria, and panicking. 

“It's now or never, man,” Troy, who, to his credit, is there rather than off moping somewhere, says.

Chad laughs. “No shit.”

“The garden club is rooting for you,” Troy adds, handing him a bundle of small purple flowers. God, this guy knows everyone.

Chad takes a deep breath. “Okay, I'm going in.” 

Troy slaps him on the back and grabs his basketball out from under his arm (Chad may or may not have been shooting stress free throws for the past fifteen minutes). “Go get her.” 

Right. That’s a conversation they’ll have to have later, which scares Chad more than this whole ordeal, and maybe there’s a better way he could’ve handled that, but. Too late now.

He walks down the steps to the cafeteria and weaves his way through to where Ryan is sitting with Kelsi, Taylor, and Martha. 

“Hey, man,” he says, but it comes out too quiet, scratchy. He clears his throat and tries again, but Ryan hasn’t noticed him yet, and Taylor is being no help whatsoever, outright ignoring him and distracting Ryan. Some wingwoman.

Well. Go big or go home.

"YO!" he yells in the same voice he used to pump up the basketball team before games. The cafeteria falls silent. Ryan blinks up at him, mouth open.

“I, uh.” Chad swallows. “I have something to say.”

He glances around, and, seeing there’s an empty section of bench and a portion of surface without food on it on the table next to Ryan’s, climbs up on it in two large steps. He holds the flowers out to the side, free hand also extended, heart beating harder than when someone passed him the ball with two seconds on the clock during the first game of the season his freshman year. Harder than when Ryan took his hand and led him in a waltz.

He clears his throat.

“Ryan Evans,” he says, steady and distinct, no mistaking it, no ignoring it, no denying it, “will you please be my date to the senior prom?”

Chapter Text

Ryan gapes at him.

Chad is standing on a table, and the cafeteria is hushed, and Ryan’s ears are ringing as he tries to determine whether there’s a discreet way to pinch himself. Taylor handles that much for him, at least, elbowing him in the side and whispering, “Say something!”

So—this is real. This is his life. Chad Danforth , nervously swallowing, asking him out—well, it’s real life, but maybe it isn’t real —what if someone put him up to this? But as soon as the thought crosses Ryan’s mind, he’s ashamed to have even considered it; Chad isn’t some jealous and homophobic Little League player. He’s kind, and he’s supportive, and he’s gay, and he’s asking Ryan to prom.

Holy shit.

“I—I would be honored,” Ryan says, blushing in front of an audience for the first time in his life as a few students, scattered throughout the cafeteria, genuinely start clapping. It doesn’t even sound sarcastic. Chad closes his eyes for a millisecond, exhaling, clearly relieved, and then hops off the table, grinning, and sits beside Ryan as Taylor moves seats. She’s rolling her eyes at them both, but she’s also smiling. 

The cafeteria settles quickly into its usual chatter—nothing can hold a high school student body’s interest for long—and Ryan dares to survey the damage. Sharpay is on her phone; he wouldn’t put it past her to have missed the whole thing. Zeke, who Ryan hasn’t exchanged more than two sentences with since second grade, catches his eye and shoots him a thumbs up. Troy Bolton is standing frozen at the foot of the stairs, looking stricken, and as Ryan watches, he swallows, sets his shoulders, and walks out of the cafeteria. 

Ryan briefly considers not saying anything, but as tempting as the possibility is, it’s not his business, and whatever decision Chad makes, it should be fully informed. He nudges him in the shoulder, and when Chad looks up questioningly, angles his head to where Troy is turning the corner to the hall.

“Fuck,” Chad says under his breath, and sighs. “Don’t think I’m a terrible person for this, okay, but I really don’t want to deal with that right now.”

“I don’t think you’re a terrible person,” Ryan says, smiling softly at him, and Chad, shockingly, blushes.

“Cool,” he breathes out, and nudges Ryan’s knee with his, and doesn’t move away. They spend the rest of lunch tethered at that point of warmth.

Chad’s suit does not match Ryan’s whatsoever. It’s white and purple, for some unknown reason—“Brings out my eyes,” Chad had said, winking, and Ryan had been too busy cursing himself for blushing to press the issue—and has his fucking basketball number on the back, and, most horrifying of all, Ryan doesn’t mind. He even, God forbid, finds it endearing. Finds it attractive . 

“You have lost your mind,” Sharpay informs him as she carefully applies mascara. They’re in her bathroom, which crosses the line into definitively too pink even to someone as unabashedly camp as Ryan, and they have an undiscussed but unquestionable truce. It’s their senior prom; no way they’re getting ready alone.

“There,” Ryan says, finishing pinning back sections of Sharpay’s hair, carefully curled hours ago, and stepping back to admire his handiwork. He holds up a hand mirror so she can see the back of it.

“Oh,” she breathes, wholly genuine for once in her life, “Ry, it’s perfect.”

That’s the closest she’ll get to a thank you, he knows, but that’s alright. “You’re welcome,” he says gently, and turns for her to do his mascara. He’s never gotten the hang of sticking something that close to his eye. Thank god he doesn’t need contacts.

“I’m happy for you, you know,” Sharpay says, and it doesn’t escape him that she’s chosen to say this while he must remain motionless lest he get stabbed in the eye. Sharpay hates vulnerability; she wants fans, followers, not friends. But she’s stuck with him, and she knows that, and so sometimes there are moments like these, one of them averting their eyes while the other is briefly raw. 

She caps the mascara, looking into the mirror and fixing imaginary flyaways. “You deserve a high school romance. Don’t know why it had to be him, but to each their own,” she adds, shifting back into petty soon-to-be Prom Queen.

Ryan rolls his eyes, passes her the hairspray, and politely hides his fond smile.

They aren’t renting a limo, of course; they own one. Their parents’ driver arrives promptly at six, the back fully stocked with soda, candy, and sparkling grape juice. They pick up Chad first, and the back of his hand brushes against Ryan’s and then stays there as they get Taylor, Kelsi, and Zeke. 

“One stop left?” the driver asks, and Ryan looks at Chad, who shakes his head. 

“He isn’t coming.”

“I’m sorry,” Ryan says, and Chad looks away.

“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

Ryan nods, and Kelsi asks Chad if he can pull up the restaurant menu on his phone so she can find a vegetarian option, even though Ryan knows that she both has a phone and definitely scoped out the menu before they chose this place. God, he loves her.

Dinner is fun, even if the waiter clearly assumes that Ryan is with Kelsi and Taylor is with Chad. They seem to think Zeke and Sharpay are a couple, too, but that one might actually have some substance to it by the end of the night; Troy is conspicuously absent, and Sharpay is in one of her rare tender phases (tender being a relative term), and Zeke has loved her for so long, inexplicably but obviously. Who knows? It feels like tonight, anything could happen.

Chad holds his hand in the limo, all the way to East High.

Prom actually isn’t underwhelming, partially because Ryan had fairly realistic expectations—it is held in the school gym, after all—and partially because Taylor, Martha, and the rest of the prom committee have outdone themselves. The fairy lights shimmer gently, the decorations are tasteful, and there isn’t a piece of ancient chewed gum to be seen. They dance as a group for a while, forming an awkward but fun circle and witnessing the true depths of Zeke’s lack of coordination anywhere that isn’t a basketball court. Sharpay looks downright affectionate, though Ryan wouldn’t dare tell her that.

Eventually, of course, it’s a slow song. 

Kelsi nudges him. “Cover me?” she asks, looking from him over to Taylor, and he nods, then exchanges some exaggerated head motions with Sharpay until she leads Zeke over to a spot that’ll strategically block Kelsi from view of the students in about half of the gym. She rests her head against Zeke’s shoulder as they sway, and it’s honestly sweet.

Ryan maybe forgets his sister is a teenager, too, sometimes.

Kelsi is talking to Taylor from where they’re standing sheltered in the corner, heads bent together, and then she beams and takes her hand.

“That’s our cue,” Ryan says, and he and Chad shift to effectively block the rest of the possible vantage points. 

“Do you guys have a code or something?” Chad asks, mystified. “A wingman handbook?”

Ryan shrugs. “I just know her really well, I guess. I’m sure you and Troy have done something similar.” 

“Yeah, maybe at some point,” Chad says, scuffing his dress shoes against the gym floor. Ryan frowns and makes a mental note to tell Kelsi how grateful he is to be close enough to practically read her mind. It won’t be via song, probably, but still, that kind of thing feels a lot more important as the school year careens to a close. ‘Once a Wildcat, Always a Wildcat’ is pithy and all, but everyone knows they probably won’t see most people in this building ever again, and it gives the air a strange weight even as it’s freeing.

“I’m sorry,” Ryan says, feeling like he’s said the wrong thing. Chad shrugs.

“It’s okay. Sorry for being a downer.” He looks around them, hands in his suit pockets, and then tilts his head at Ryan. “Do you want to dance?”

“Chad Danforth,” Ryan says, grinning, “I thought you’d never ask.”

“You aren’t allowed to tell Darbus this in a million years,” Chad says a minute later, muffled from where his head is tucked against Ryan’s neck, “or Gabriella, for that matter, but—I was relieved to be voluntold for that fucking musical.”

“Really?” Ryan asks. His arms are around Chad’s waist, and yeah, prom is definitely exceeding his expectations. He even prefers this to his own glamorized, perfectly choreographed version, to be honest, even when Chad jokingly stepped on his foot a bit too hard when they started dancing.

“Yeah,” Chad mumbles, “I wanted an excuse to keep talking to you. Not like there were gonna be any more basketball parties.”

“Ah, yes, the only good thing that came out of that godforsaken mascot role,” Ryan agrees, and Chad snorts. “You did have my number, you know,” he adds, after debating it for a second. Better to get that kind of thing out at the beginning, right?

“Yeah,” Chad says, and is silent for a second, but his arms are a little tighter around Ryan’s back. “I don’t know, it sounds stupid, but—summer felt like another world, you know? We got back and it was all, like, college application shit, and basketball season, and—”

“You didn’t know what to do with me in that setting?” Ryan asks, not ungently. He can tell Chad’s shaking his head from the way his hair tickles Ryan’s neck as it moves.

“That’s not it. I just felt kind of boxed in by this role everybody expected me to play, you know? Colleges, and my parents, and the team… I know everybody means well, but there isn’t a lot of space for being a person who doesn’t look good on paper, you know? For being complicated.”

Ryan thinks about how different working with Sharpay has been lately, if he can even call it that. They used to be a team, a unit, and now there’s this unfamiliar, fearful tension between them, way beyond the petty one-upmanship they’ve done their whole lives. Some of it’s about Troy, sure, and he hasn’t entirely forgiven her for vying for a one-woman show to begin with, but—even that was about the outside pressure, too, really, making them both more cutthroat in a way that’s par for the course in this field but still something they never expected to feel towards each other.

But there’s the kind of people they want to be, and then there’s Juilliard, and there’s only one scholarship. He’s surprised Kelsi let herself be convinced to come to prom, to be honest.

“Yeah,” Ryan says quietly. “I know.”

Chad sighs. “Troy’s at Stanford,” he says.

Ryan gapes at him. “Wait, seriously? I assumed he was at home moping, like a normal high schooler.”

Chad snorts. “Troy’s a lot of things, but despite the all-American exterior, normal isn’t one of them.”

“Fair enough,” Ryan says. “Damn.”

“I feel like he’s choosing her over me,” Chad confesses. “And, like, right now he literally is, but just… overall, too. He’d probably say he’s choosing himself, which is good, you know, I want to be happy for him, but… We’ve been friends since kindergarten. I don’t want to go to college alone.”

The song has changed, but they’re still swaying together. Ryan swallows. “I’m sorry. That’s really understandable, though, it’s fucking scary.”

“Yeah.” Chad sighs. “It is.”

The upside to the situation, Ryan thinks, pressing his forehead to Chad’s, is that this time, when they talk about heavy shit, Ryan can hold him closer instead of just wishing from across the table.

“Prom was lovely,” Ryan tells Taylor as they drop her off, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “You outdid yourself.” She beams at him.

“How come she gets a kiss and I don’t, Evans?” Chad asks, elbowing him and smirking. Ryan promptly shuts the door on Taylor’s catcalling with a final wave. 

“Well, she did orchestrate the magical night and all,” Ryan says primly, hoping Chad can’t tell how fast his heart is beating.

Chad’s eyelashes have no business being that long. His expression is soft even as he fakes offense. “Hey, are you saying I didn’t make your night magical?” 

“Not at all,” Ryan says, and kisses his cheek before he can talk himself out of it. The pale pink lipstick on Chad’s skin catches the light. 

Sharpay makes a gagging sound from a few seats down, and Ryan flips her off without looking. 

“What, so only one of us gets to PDA? Seems a little homophobic, Shar.” She sticks her tongue out at him, and Zeke, from where he’s got his arm around her, laughs.

Chad kisses Ryan’s cheek on his way out the limo when they drop him off, and Ryan utilizes every ounce of self-control he possesses to not reach an awed hand up to rest his fingers against the spot until he’s safely in his room, away from Sharpay’s rolling eyes.

The next 30-something hours fly by impossibly fast, a blur of last-minute edits and late-night rehearsals and a chemistry test he definitely flunked. And then— 

It’s opening night. 

He leaves a potted succulent on the piano bench for Kelsi. His parents have sent him and Sharpay each an elaborate rose bouquet—pink for hers, of course, and his are a lovely cream color—and Chad had caught his wrist long enough to tuck a singular carnation into his shirt pocket before Ryan rushed off to take care of another urgent detail, beaming. 

Of course, it wouldn’t be opening night without a disaster, and Ryan is content to blame this wholly and uncharitably on Troy’s mile-wide selfish streak. He doesn’t have time to panic before he needs to take his place in the wing to await his cue, though, so he’ll have to trust Mrs. Darbus to do it for him. He mentally boxes up all thoughts of Troy and Sharpay and Stanford and freshmen with ridiculous nicknames and kicks the box to the side. It’s showtime.

He’s draped comfortably across the stage when the orchestra starts up, and it’s a good thing he’s supposed to be meeting Kelsi’s gaze through the opening number, because he wouldn’t be able to look away from her if he tried. “It’s our last chance to share the stage before we go our separate ways,” she sings, and he does not get choked up, because he’s a damn good actor, but he is absolutely going to cry over this later. She’s his best friend—the first one he’s ever had aside from Sharpay, if she ever counted—and she wrote this for him, for them, and they sing it flawlessly to each other as if the crowd isn’t even there, smooth and bittersweet. Then he looks up and crooks a finger, briefly embodying all the best of Robin Goodfellow, beckoning the audience into the world they’ve worked so hard to portray. Remember when you were in high school? his expression asks. And it was all dizzying light and color and noise, and everything meant something, everything mattered? It was larger than life, but it was your life? Come remember.

The applause is thunderous.

He can’t help watching from the wings during the next number as Chad grins with the basketball, nailing every move. He looks good center stage, more comfortable than Ryan ever thought he’d see him there. 

Ryan kills his own number, of course, flamboyant as all fuck. He means every lyric from the deepest part of his chest, too—he wants it all, more than ever, renown and glamour and his name on Juilliard’s admissions list as a precursor to a Broadway marquee. He sings his fucking heart out, not just for the future that’s riding on it but also for the past, for the love of it, for every thrill in his veins he’s ever experienced on this stage. More than anything, he loves this. And god, does the crowd love him. 

He stands expectantly by Sharpay in the wing afterwards, waiting for her trademark passive-aggressive-but-secretly-proud congratulations, but she just says, “Aww, cute pants!” when she looks up from her phone, as if she hadn’t been to a single dress rehearsal. And on that patronizing note, she heads onstage for her own number, leaving Ryan to huff and quietly nurse his hurt feelings.

He still watches her song. 

She’s doing great—not earnest enough by half to be Gabriella, but most of the audience won’t know what they’re missing—when the fucking understudy misses his cue. Repeatedly. Despite everything—despite even the last five minutes—Ryan hates seeing her left hanging, growing more frazzled even as she tries to maintain her composure and make the best of it. 

And then the Rocket explodes onto the stage, setting a world record for the number of ways one outfit can clash. Ryan’s heart hurts for the costuming department. 

The audience takes it in stride, at least, laughing delightedly, which is a relief because apparently even Sharpay isn’t a good enough actress to fake attraction to Jimmy Zara. Ryan exhales in relief when the orchestra plays the last note. He follows Sharpay backstage to console her, because even she didn’t deserve whatever that was; she’s worked harder than almost anyone for this, even if forty percent of that work was schemes, and it’s her last opening night at East High. And then—

Enter Troy and Gabriella, stage left.

Stage back door, technically, but whatever. 

“Oh, perfect, go for it, save the day, whoopee,” Sharpay says, stomping past them without a backwards glance, and Ryan decides that if she clearly wants so damn badly to be alone, who is he to stop her? He’s got a show to salvage.

“You guys gotta see this,” Ryan says, leading them to where Rocketman or whatever is still bowing to an amused crowd. Troy looks stiff and awkward, and Ryan remembers too late the circumstances of the last time they saw each other. God, and unless Troy told her, Gabriella doesn’t even know about him and Chad. 

Well, no time to worry about all that now. “You didn’t buy a ticket, so I’m assuming you’re planning to go onstage,” he tells Gabriella even as he motions for one of the tech crew to mic them, and when she nods at him, she’s smiling. She hasn’t looked at him like that since last summer. 

No time to dwell on the friendship that could’ve been, though, either—he motions to Kelsi that they’re here, because what does another last-minute cast change matter at this point, and bless her, she restarts the song.

They do the whole number again, with Ryan’s original choreography, from before Sharpay was Gabriella and the world turned upside down—not all in bad ways, though, he thinks, catching Chad’s eye from opposite wings as they wait for their cues. Everyone adapts beautifully to the change, with a few added improvised moments of tenderness as people see Gabriella again. At the final chorus, though, Ryan can’t help but notice that everyone from the main cast has their arms around each other besides him; he’s off to the side, a body’s width gap between him and Taylor. When he choreographed this, he was so scared of getting too close to Chad, or anyone, really. While he’s certainly under no  misconceptions about how most of the school, and society at large, thinks of him, Chad and Taylor and even Zeke are his friends. He wouldn’t do things the same way if he was choreographing it now.

There isn’t much time to ruminate on moments of growth, though, because soon there are two Sharpays onstage, which is quite literally the stuff of Ryan’s nightmares. He’s torn between fury that she’s ruining his choreography and pity for her obvious fear of losing her shot at Juilliard; it isn’t her fault that Troy Bolton left her with the world’s most obnoxious freshman for what should’ve been her big number, then showed up at the last second with her role’s original star. If Gabriella gets to be Gabriella, then Sharpay should get to be Sharpay. He just wishes his meticulous blocking wasn’t a casualty. 

Still, he presses the button on the trap door with gusto, lowering both of them offstage.

And then it’s time to graduate.

Well, not really, but it still feels momentous, standing in his cap and gown on this stage that’s held so much of his sweat and tears and joy the last four years. He’s poured so much of his soul into this place and bared so much of it on it, and now it’s his last opening night and Mrs. Darbus is affectionately announcing them as “our seniors.”

“Kelsi Nielsen,” she begins, and then she goes off-script. “The Juilliard School scholarship recipient, music.” 

Mrs. Darbus is beaming. Taylor is hugging Kelsi tight, and it looks like they’re both crying. Ryan is reaching around to clasp her hand tight, trying to convey all of his love for her in one look, but he’s also wondering how they decided so fast, and why they decided to announce it here. He can appreciate the drama of it, sure, but it’s also unfair—he and Sharpay and maybe even Troy, if he gives a shit, don’t deserve to be caught off guard with rejection onstage. It’s only more real when U of A is announced as Sharpay’s destination, and then he really has to fight to hide his panic, because he can’t even think of what she’s going to read for him, what his backup plan could possibly be. He isn’t sure if he had one.

When it’s time for his name to be called, Mrs. Darbus improvs again. “And I am pleased to announce,” she says, and he attempts to quell some unrealistic and persistent hope, “that due to the excellence displayed here this evening, the Juilliard School has made an extraordinary decision. Another senior is being offered a Juilliard scholarship. Congratulations, Mr. Ryan Evans, choreography.” 

Giving him this much joy publicly, while poetic, may be equally cruel. He’s trying so hard not to cry, god, and he’s going to school with Kelsi, and he’s going to Juilliard, and he remembers as Sharpay hugs him how confident she was that someone would make an exception for them.

Well, he thinks, arms tight around her, grieving even as he’s so elated he half-expects to float off the ground, apparently only one of them.

Chapter Text

Chad is brimming with pride and adrenaline and relief—he’d been briefly upset when he thought Kelsi was the only scholarship winner, which he feels bad about, because Kelsi is great and deserves the world, but Ryan deserves this, too—and then Mrs. Darbus introduces Troy as a senior with a decision to make, which is kind of an exaggeration. Chad has known since the first day of class after winter break junior year what— who —Troy would choose.

“I’ve chosen basketball,” Troy says, and Chad is so furious and hurt he doesn’t know what to do with his hands when he continues, “but I’ve also chosen theater,” getting his hopes up for some cruel reason and dashing them for dramatic effect. He never even told Chad where else he applied; Chad could’ve asked, but it was unbearable to keep putting effort into something so clearly one-sided, dashing himself against the same rock for old times’ sake.

“The University of California, Berkeley, offers me both,” Troy continues, writing his own monologue into the script. “That's where I'm going to be attending next fall.” He pauses, but only for a beat. “But most of all, I choose the person who inspires my heart,” and Chad knows it’s hypocritical to want to roll his eyes at that when he’s equally head-over-heels for his own high school romance, even though he’d rather die than say so onstage. (The cafeteria is a different story, okay, there’s no lights or leotards, and anyway, he was subverting heteronormative traditions or whatever it is Taylor said.) “Which is why I picked a school that's exactly 32.7 miles from you,” Troy finishes, looking at, of course, “Miss Gabriella Montez, Stanford University, Pre-Law.”

Man, fuck kindergarten. Fuck 13-year friendships that apparently end in, what’s the phrase, not a bang but a whimper. And god, fuck Troy.

Chad doesn’t hear Darbus call his name. Ryan will probably be furious at him for fucking up the show, and then Chad will be furious at himself for fucking up the only real relationship he’s ever had when it’d barely gotten off the ground, but at least he isn’t throwing his future away for the guy. He goes to the gym, of course, needing something familiar but also feeling like it’s the only thing he can do, like maybe he’s the only one here without hidden depths. 

He saw Taylor’s presentation from their disastrous and deeply misguided scheme junior year once, over the summer, and he laughed, but it made something in his chest hurt. Troy Bolton, star player and lead actor and open romantic, and Chad Danforth, basketball bobblehead. Maybe he shouldn’t blame Troy; maybe Troy has just outgrown him.

He takes a shot. Misses.

But then—what was it his mom had said, when they’d had a Serious Talk after that prank, and he’d quietly admitted to her how he’d kept it out of the yearbook? “You have a good heart, Chad,” she’d told him, still angry but also obviously proud. “You did something wrong—cruel, even—and that’s normal, but you did what you could to make it right, and that takes courage.” 

He hears footsteps behind him and thinks he could do with some more courage right about now. 

“He goes up for the shot and it’s good! East High Wildcat victory for the record books!” Troy says, vocalizing the cheers of the crowds. It feels, briefly and painfully, like they’re 14 again in Troy’s driveway, fantasizing about their future legendary feats as high schoolers. 

Chad turns to look at him. “Once they hand us that diploma, we’re done here?” 

He doesn’t just mean with school. He means them.

“What makes you think we’re getting diplomas?” Troy asks, and Chad could take it as a cop-out, a dismissal, but he knows Troy too well for that, even now, so he laughs. It’s not an apology, exactly, but it’s something. Chad wants it to be something, even though he’s still angry and hurt, because god, he’s missed Troy so much. They’re brothers; yeah, they hurt each other, and it sucks, but they work it out—they have to. Chad doesn’t want a clean break here, he wants a messy future, one where his best friend is still in it.

They shoot baskets in silence for a few minutes, passing back and forth, as easy as breathing after so many years, or sometimes in spite of them. “Ryan Evans, huh?” Troy asks finally, and he looks awkward as hell, but he doesn’t look angry. 

“Yeah,” Chad says, and that’s that. “You missed a good time at prom, man.” Troy nods slowly, sensing there’s more. “You missed a lot of things.”

“Yeah,” Troy says, “I did,” and it’s a relief that he doesn’t apologize, because they’d both know it was mostly bullshit, but he does look regretful. “Gonna let me keep your defense skills in shape this summer?” he asks, and Chad can hear Taylor in his head heaving a sigh over emotionally stunted sports men who are allergic to communicating about their feelings, but he grins.

“More like the other way around.” He swallows. “One question. Does Berkeley play?”

“Oh, yeah,” Troy says, and that—it gives Chad some hope. “We're scheduled to kick some Redhawk butt next November.”

Chad laughs, and he feels so much lighter, looser, like he just used a roller on muscles that were tight and screaming. “Game on.”

“Danforth!” says a voice that can still strike fear into Chad’s heart. He half-expects them to get extra laps for this. “Bolton! You get out there and you get onstage.”

Troy looks at him, vaguely horrified but also unable to hide his joy. “I never thought I’d hear my dad say that.” 

And who are they to disobey the coach, so they get out there and get onstage and take their bows to applause so loud it’s frankly overwhelming. Ryan is beaming, though, freakishly white teeth on full display, and Troy looks—comfortable, in a way he hasn’t all semester, so all in all, it’s not so bad.

“I’m sorry I left,” Chad blurts the second the curtains close and their mics are off. Ryan shakes his head.

“I get it,” he says. “Can’t say as I’d be thrilled if it’d happened before I knew I got the scholarship, but thanks to Mrs. Darbus and her infinite wisdom of timing, all’s well that ends well.” He’s still grinning, and Chad can barely form a coherent thought beyond God, he’s so cute.

“I’m so proud of you,” Chad says, and Ryan hugs him, quick and tight. 

“What about you?” he asks. “Is everything okay?”

Chad follows the movement in the corner of his eye to where Troy is trading jerseys with Jimmy, laughing and looking about two seconds away from ruffling the kid’s hair while Gabriella looks on, taking a picture on a camera she got from god knows where. The yearbook may be published already, but he bets this shot will be on the drama club’s promotional material until the end of time.

“Yeah,” he says, smiling softly at Ryan. “I think it will be.”

The crowd in the school lobby is frankly terrifying. Chad is unused to receiving so many congratulations after anything other than a game and doesn't really know the proper responses—why isn’t there a script for this part, too? He wishes Ryan were here to smile and say something theater-y and charm everyone while Chad stood there and nodded pleasantly, but he’s swept up in his own crowd of congratulations about the choreography and his performance and Juilliard, so Chad leaves him to his limelight with more than a little pride and amusement and says “Thank you, thanks so much, thank you for coming,” over and over until everyone’s compliments blend together. He slowly makes his way to the door to a hallway and is about to duck through for a few minutes of quiet when Darbus’s “Mr. Danforth!” stops him in his tracks.

“I was just—” he starts, wondering if she can even give detention when there aren’t any classes left and envisioning a horrific scene of him painting sets in summer school even after graduating. When he looks at her, though, she’s smiling. 

“Outstanding performance tonight,” she says, and everyone else’s congratulations are a blur, but he knows he’ll remember this one for the rest of his life. “I trust that you and Mr. Bolton had positive results from your unscripted exeunt ?” 

He thinks he gets the gist of what she’s asking. “Yeah, we’re good. Or at least, I think we will be, if things go okay.”

She nods, satisfied. “You have a good head on your shoulders, Mr. Danforth.” Chad feels like he’s going to fall over. “And more importantly, a good heart.” She pauses, like she’s weighing her words, and says them anyway: “Mr. Evans is a very fortunate young man.”

Chad, to his horror, blushes. “Th–thank you.”

“My wife and I will have to attend one of your,” she continues, and waves her hand vaguely, “basketball performances next year.” 

He grins. “Name the date and I’ll get you tickets, Mrs. D. Courtside.”

She smiles warmly. “I look forward to it.”

“There you are!” Ryan says, walking briskly towards them. Behind him, the lobby has emptied substantially, and he’s changed into a t-shirt and yoga pants but still has his stage makeup on. Chad really, really might be falling in love with him.

“Here I am,” Chad echoes, still feeling out of his element at just about everything happening right now, but Ryan smiles. 

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to steal him away now,” he tells Mrs. Darbus, who nods while Chad tries fervently not to blush again. “Come on,” he says, grinning at him, “we’re going to Waffle House, it’s tradition.”

“Uh–see you at graduation, Mrs. D,” Chad says. “Thank you. For–for everything.”

“You are most welcome, Mr. Danforth,” she says, and her eyes are positively twinkling.

Apparently tradition consists of most of the cast and crew taking up three-quarters of the Waffle House seating, ordering more food than Chad has even seen the basketball team collectively consume, and being loud as all hell on post-opening night adrenaline. 

“I leave a really big tip,” Ryan tells him, leaning closer to be heard after he must see Chad’s intimidated expression. They’re sharing one side of a booth, Kelsi and Taylor on the other, and Chad’s placing bets with himself as to whether they’re holding hands under the table. He feels giddy, and not just from the sugar rush of the obscene amount of chocolate chips on his waffles. 

“Hey,” he says a few minutes later, nudging Ryan’s shoulder, and Ryan looks up from his food, eyebrows raised. “You really killed it tonight, you know.”

Ryan smiles, warm and proud. “You did, too. Seriously,” he says as Chad immediately tries to brush it off.

“Well,” he says, shrugging, “I had a great dance teacher.” Ryan laughs, leaning his head briefly on his shoulder before turning back to his massive plate of food. Sharpay isn’t here, Chad noticed, but he decides not to bring it up until tomorrow. Instead, he scans the room, commits it all to memory like after their last basketball game. Closes his eyes for a second and basks in the contentment and cacophony. 

They have two more performances—matinee and evening Friday, since graduation is Saturday—which both go smoothly, no more unexpected arrivals or departures or catfights. At dinner Friday night after the performance, which his parents insisted on attending even though they came to opening night, gave him a huge bouquet of red and white flowers and everything, he casually says, “I’m dating Ryan Evans,” between bites of chicken. 

His mom looks at him incredulously. “You mean you went to prom with a date and didn’t let me take pictures?”

She manages to extract a promise that Ryan will be at his graduation party to remedy this oversight, and Chad calls him after dinner, flopping onto his bed and feeling like the embodiment of every teen romcom. And happy. God, he’s so happy.

“Sure,” Ryan says easily, “Ours is at around the same time, but it’s really Sharpay’s party anyway. My parents won’t mind if I miss part of it. And I’d rather be with you, anyway,” and Chad smiles into his phone.

Graduation is, in Chad’s opinion, frankly overrated. It’s hot, and the absurdly expensive gown is made of cheap, scratchy material, and his last name is just far enough in the alphabet from his friends’ that he can’t exchange bored looks throughout the whole unending process. For a monumental rite of passage, it’s incredibly dull. Taylor gives a great valedictorian speech that he immediately forgets, which he feels kind of bad about, but he hugs her afterwards and throws his cap and then drives Ryan to his house, where Chad’s mom, as promised-slash-threatened, takes an outrageous number of photos of them and compliments Ryan’s choreography using words Chad’s never heard before.

Ryan keeps his distance from Chad’s relatives—or, more accurately, from being near both Chad and his relatives simultaneously. He makes plenty of polite conversation with people, but always seems to be at least a few yards away as Chad makes the rounds, thanking people for gifts or talking about his intended major or avoiding talking about his final grades.

“I’m not embarrassed of you, you know,” Chad says when he finally catches up to Ryan at the snacks table— hors d'oeuvres, they’d be called if this was at Ryan’s house—because it feels important to say. 

Ryan rolls his eyes. “As if you could be.” Chad laughs, but he must see the question in his expression, because he continues, “It’s still just… Sometimes it’s a good idea to ease people into it, if you do decide at some point that you want them further ‘into it’ at all.”

“Makes sense,” Chad says, but he’s still a little worried, up until Ryan puts his hand on his arm briefly and assures him that really, he’s having a good time, Chad’s family is lovely and his mom continues to have impeccable taste in musical theater. “Okay, okay,” Chad says, laughing, but he can’t say he isn’t relieved. He can’t stop thinking about the first party he took Ryan to, less than five short months ago, enthralled despite himself with someone he didn’t really want to think too hard about. And now—this is still so new, but Ryan looks at him like that anyway, impossibly soft and so happy, and Chad made him feel like that. It’s unbelievable; it’s a blessing.

People start to filter out around mid-afternoon. Ryan sticks around to help clean up, and gets away with it until Chad’s mom notices and shoos him away from the sink. 

“If you’re not too tired, you should make an appearance at your own graduation party, you know,” she tells him, and he nods sheepishly and thanks her for her hospitality—literally says it like that, and at this rate Chad’s mom is going to like Ryan better than him—before turning to Chad.

“You can just drop me off, if you want,” he says, “but you’re welcome to stay.”

And thus Chad finds himself back at Lava Springs after the end of a school year, this time as a guest rather than an employee. This time with a name for the swooping feeling in his stomach every time he looks at Ryan. This time with Ryan leaning over after an agonizing forty-five minutes of what apparently qualifies as fun to rich people and asking if he wants to get out of here and Chad taking his hand as they run giggling through a maze of fashionable buildings until they reach the garage. Ryan holds up the keys dramatically, shaking them for effect, and unlocks the gate, punches in the code to open the massive garage door. 

Which is how Chad finds himself being driven around a country club by Ryan Evans on a commandeered golf cart at a speed that is definitely ridiculously dangerous. Ryan is laughing, though, Chad holding his Wildcat red hat from when it almost blew off his head half a mile back, freer than Chad’s ever seen him offstage. And then Chad starts to recognize where they are.

Ryan parks haphazardly in front of the entrance to the baseball field and holds Chad’s hand all the way as they rush to home plate, urgent with some mix of nostalgia and uncertainty and, despite it all, uncomplicated glee. They come to a sudden stop when they get there, just staring at each other for a long moment, breathing hard, momentum dissipating into the dust around them. Ryan swallows.

“Evans,” Chad says, and Ryan cracks a nervous smile, “did you take me here to have a poetic and dramatic first kiss at the place where we first became friends?”

“Is that what you want to call it,” Ryan says, and then, fake arrogance and innocence both ruined by how much he’s blushing, “Does that sound like something I would do?”

“Yeah,” Chad says, putting his arms over Ryan’s shoulders and clasping his hands together behind his neck, “it really does,” and Ryan proves him right by kissing him.

Chapter Text

August 24, 2008

East High has already started back, and they aren’t there. 

It’s still weird to think about, even though Ryan never related to the more nostalgic moments of their own musical, never wants to set foot in the building again. He’s glad high school is over, and while he’d never say it out loud within earshot of Sharpay, he’s glad the longest summer break he’ll ever get was spent with Chad. 

And Taylor and Kelsi, of course, and sometimes, strangely enough, Troy, who even apologized for thinking Ryan was trying to steal his girlfriend a year ago in what was easily the most awkward conversation of Ryan’s life, made simultaneously worse and bearable by Chad’s barely muffled laughter beside him. 

He thinks sometimes of what Sharpay said to him at her locker after the last day of junior year, all the ways he evolved over those couple of months that he didn’t really notice until he looked back on it. And now, in late August, he and Chad the only two left in the car after dropping everyone else off, the day before classes start at U of A—

It’s almost fall, Ryan. Everything changes.

Hopefully not everything. 

Since Juilliard is up North, his classes start almost a week and a half after Chad and Sharpay’s, and he might’ve waited until the last minute, but he does need to know whether he’s going to spend those nine days curled up with a cheesy movie, a box of tissues, and some ridiculously expensive ice cream or not. He turns to Chad, who’s parked just out of view of Ryan’s house, and says, “So, are we going to—” at the same time Chad says “I was wondering if you wanted to—”

They both laugh, nervous and fond. 

“You first,” Ryan says, and Chad looks like he really wishes Ryan would go first, but he taps his fingers on the steering wheel and starts talking. 

“I, uh. Like, if you feel differently, if this was just an end of high school thing, I get that, my mom’s been dropping all sorts of reassuring comments about stages in life and everything having a season and whatever. But…” He visibly steels himself, looking like he always did before going onstage during the musical. Bracing for an impact that won’t come. “If you want to try to make this work, I’m down. I’m—I want to.” 

Ryan beams at him, and Chad gives a little smile back, soft and relieved. 

“I do, too,” Ryan says, reaching to the steering wheel and squeezing Chad’s hand. 

“I know we won’t be able to see each other much—” he says, and Ryan grins. 

“You vastly underestimate the size of my allowance. Besides, my parents will want to fly me back home for breaks, anyway.” The dates won’t always line up, he knows, and sometimes he’ll have rehearsals that he can’t miss, but he’s okay with working around their respective practice schedules, stealing the moments they can. 

“God, I should’ve gotten a summer job,” Chad says, shaking his head, “I’m so going to need an unlimited phone plan.”

December 20th, 2008

Ryan checks the map on the bulletin board for the fifteenth time in the past ten minutes. Sharpay had told him this was the right building, which doesn’t exactly inspire his confidence, and he’s been loitering as dozens of students rush out after their last final of the semester, their relief palpable. He checks his watch, also for the fifteenth time, wondering if Chad left through a different door, and then looks up and sees him. 

Chad’s gotten a haircut since Thanksgiving, and it makes his face look different in a way that wasn’t quite captured in the photos Chad emailed him, and he looks tired, like he definitely stayed up too late studying for this exam, but he’s still familiar, he’s still the only person who makes Ryan’s heart rush like this, he’s still—walking the other direction. 

Ryan cups his hands around his mouth and makes good use of all that vocal training. “Hey, Danforth!” he calls out, and Chad stops in his tracks, “Missing something?” And Chad is already pivoting on one heel, literally running to where Ryan stands in the lobby, hugging him tightly enough to pick him up and spin him around like they’re in some romcom. 

Ryan’s hat falls to the ground, and Chad picks it up and puts it on his own head. 

“And everyone says I’m the dramatic one,” Ryan says, laughing. “You saw me a month ago.” 

“And now I’m going to see you for almost a month,” Chad says, grinning, and Ryan smiles back. 

“How’d you get here?” Chad asks, and, “Do you have plans? I need to stop by the dorm for my laptop, make sure I unplugged the microwave and everything, but I don’t really need to pack anything else. I shoved some clothes in a duffel bag last night, but a lot of my stuff is at my parent’s house, anyway. Still glad the scholarship included housing, though.” 

“Sharpay drove me,” Ryan says, and Chad raises an eyebrow. “She will absolutely still kill you if you repeat this, but I think she likes you. And no, I’m free; I can come to the dorm with you, if you want.” 

“If I want,” Chad says, rolling his eyes, and takes Ryan’s hand, interlocking their fingers, and leads him down the hall, already plotting to steal a pan of Gabriella’s mom’s brownies at the Boltons’ Christmas party.