Disclaimer: No ownership to me; I just like to borrow Disney's toys every now & then.

Author's Note: Thank you to those two lovely workers at Costco, who allowed me to witness my very first marriage proposal, and give inspiration for this little oneshot.

Title: Clearly Not Romantic

Summary: Troy, being the boyfriend of the hopeless romantic, knew he should probably execute this in a different way.

Rating: PG (minor language)

Word Count: 497

He was the boyfriend of the hopeless romantic. The boyfriend who sat dutifully beside her as she wept over Jack and Rose, holding the Kleenex box for her. The boyfriend who bought her a dozen roses for the past nine Valentine's Days. The boyfriend who didn't dare make fun of the sappy romance novels she sometimes left lying around his apartment, for fear of castration.

So he should know how to do this better. The perfect way to execute this should be in his walking-around knowledge.

As the boyfriend of the hopeless romantic, he should know that what he was about to do was utterly and inconceivably wrong.

"Will you marry me?"

Too late. Apparently, the limbic system was having communication troubles with the Broca's area, causing him to blurt this out without really thinking it through.

Which brought him to where he was know, kneeling on the dirty tiled floors, his features much resembling Gabriella Montez's: shocked that he just asked that.

In the middle of Walmart.

"Excuse me?" Not as in, "can you repeat that?" but more like "excuse me, but what the hell do you think you're doing proposing in the middle of a supermarket?"

"Will you marry me?"

He had all the traditions of proposing down pat. He was on one knee. He had the velvet box out and open, revealing a three-diamond centerpiece circled by a 14K gold band. All the shoppers surrounding them could hear the sincerity of his voice in the proposal; they could see the way his eyes shone in love and anticipation of the young woman's answer.

So they thought.

They mistook beads of perspiration for beads of anticipation.

Because Troy Bolton, the boyfriend of the hopeless romantic, knew he was doing this all wrong. Because he knew that proposing to her in the middle of one of America's leading department stores with thousands of Christmas shoppers bustling about them was not what he was supposed to do.

Damn his cursed heart for even thinking for a millisecond that this was "the right time".

Clearly it wasn't. Clearly he was in some pretty deep shit that he really couldn't back out of now, seeing as all these people were watching him.

Clearly Troy needed his head exa—

"Yes!"

His turn to pretend to be hard of hearing. "Excuse me?"

"Of all the blasted places on this godforsaken Earth, you choose Walmart to propose to me. But," shuddering pause while she dramatically dabbed at her eyes, "there is no way in hell that I would ever say no to you, Troy Bolton. Never."

So maybe Troy Bolton is the fiancée of the hopeless romantic, Gabriella Montez.

But maybe she doesn't need romantic things to please her all the time.

Because, even though his spontaneous, drop-to-the-knee actions didn't really mirror the cliché fairy tale proposal that he knew she secretly used to dream of, he wouldn't take it back, not after seeing the smile on her face, a mile wide..

Note: Your limbic system controls your emotions, while your Broca's area controls your speech. So says Yahoo! Answers, anyways.

Reviews are dandy :)