Hello, all! This is just an older fic I found buried among my forgotten files. Ordinarily I would let it rot there, but I'm very fond of this particular story, so here it is. I've heard it said more than once that fanfiction is a way for fans to fix what went wrong or didn't happen in the show/book/story they loved: here is an illustration of that principle at its best.
I, like most of you, I'm sure, was very frustrated that Troy and Gabriella hadn't kissed by the end. This is how I vented that frustration. It's sappy and sugary and sickeningly sweet, but I'm fond of it all the same.
"We won."
The night was cool and breezy, the sky a smear of the deepest blue swaying in and out of sight through the tops of the trees. There was not a cloud in sight; whenever the leaves parted the smattering of stars blazed through, bright and clear and cold as Troy had never seen them before.
"We won, too! It was incredible, you should have seen it, the best game of the year!" He was almost shouting, feeling all of the adrenaline, the heat and pounding rhythm and rush of his triumph flooding back into his veins all at once. He had been lying on his back in the Montez backyard, staring up at the sky; now he rolled over onto his side and wrapped his arms around Gabriella, hugging her fiercely in a sudden burst of joy. She shrieked, startled, and pushed him away – a mistake, as it turned out, because his response was to tickle her mercilessly, ignoring her pleas for help and her flailing hands.
When he finally released her they both collapsed back onto the grass, laughing, Gabriella not without a parting slap to his head for good measure. Troy only laughed, and started up right where he had left off. "It was the last thirty seconds of the game – no, ten! And this big hulking guy from West High was guarding me, and, I mean, he was a monster, this brute waving his arms in my face, and it looked hopeless! And then –"
"And then, of course, Troy Bolton, the white knight of East High, rides in on his trusty steed and saves the day." Gabriella's voice was soft and more than a little amused; she lay next to him in the tall grass, watching his hands trace wild gestures in the air. "And the crowd goes wild!"
"Well, my dad wouldn't actually let me bring the horse into the gym," Troy replied teasingly, "But, yeah. So how about East High's resident Einsteinette? Tell me your fabulous success story."
He didn't glance over at her, but he could feel by the brushing of her shoulder against his that she had shrugged. "Nothing nearly so spectacular. We won, sure, but that's not what I was talking about before." She turned to look at him now, propping herself up by one hand, and Troy thought that the smile she flashed him blazed through the night brighter than the moon. "Of course, I wouldn't expect a lunkhead basketball boy like you to grasp all the subtleties."
He was distracted by her smile, and noticed with a start that she was haloed; the warm golden light from the house trickled out onto the grass, lighting up the air around her, and Troy found himself thinking irrelevantly about radiance and angels. He shook himself back to reality an instant too late; she had been staring at him for a moment, and when she asked "Troy?" the teasing lilt was gone from her voice.
"A lunkhead basketball boy like me, huh?" he snorted, grinning up at her, refusing to explain the daydream he had lost himself in. She smiled hesitantly in answer; convinced that he had returned from wherever he had been, she settled back down onto the grass, this time even closer, so that he noticed with a shock not of surprise, but of pleasure, that her head was almost resting on his chest, and could feel her form pressed up against his side. When he managed to speak again, he found his mouth suddenly dry, the words becoming tangled on his tongue; "Well, go slow – use small words. I'll try and follow – the best I can."
"Nothing." She seemed unperturbed by the change of position, and if she noticed his sudden discomfort, she didn't comment. "I just meant – it wasn't just our teams that won their competitions – it was us. You and me." She slipped her hand into his, casually, as though the contact meant nothing and was nothing that deserved any kind of special moment; Troy felt the soft touch of her fingers and felt all thought temporarily blasted from his mind. This, he managed to wonder with some difficulty, was what being hit by lightning must feel like. It took a massive amount of effort for him to realize that Gabriella was still talking; he barely managed to distinguish her words from the rattling of the branches above them in a cool night breeze. "I mean, we've changed the entire school now, you and me. We've changed the way that people think – about themselves, and about us." He could hear the smile in her voice, though it had grown too dark for him to see it. "Now, we don't have to worry about labels, about stereotypes – none of that can touch us anymore. We can be exactly who we are. Not math-girl and basketball-boy; just girl and boy. Just Gabriella and Troy."
"Gabriella and Troy," he echoed, the rest of her words sifting through his mind and leaving no impression, like the faint sounds of Ms. Montez clattering around inside the house. "Gabriella and Troy." He liked the taste of it, liked the way it rolled around in his mouth; he liked the way it escaped and rang in the air, the way it almost sounded like a song. The notes escaped him, the exact tune refused to be pinned down; but it was a song, he was certain. He was getting drowsy, or possibly drunk; drunk on Gabriella's closeness, on her warmth, on his own exhilaration. He made a mental note to ask Kelsey, on Monday, to write him a song to the tune of Gabriella and Troy.
"Troy?"
"Hmm?" The pressure of Gabriella against him vanished, and he felt a sudden vast disappointment that he could not explain; he felt as though he had been removed from the core of the sun, and plunged instead into a cold and leaden sea. The song in his head dropped into a mourning dirge; then he saw that she was leaning over him, her face illuminated in the moonlight, and he decided that he liked this new position much better.
"Are you okay?" He was captivated by her lips moving, shaping the words, so that their meaning almost escaped him. He felt vaguely as though something in him had changed since that afternoon, and yet another part of him felt as though nothing had become different, only grown stronger. "Troy, what's the matter? You keep drifting off. Today was the best day of our lives, you should be happy."
"I am happy." The response came immediately, instinctively, and he was glad to note that, for once, he was not faking it in response to Chad's insistent interrogation. "I've never been happier in my life."
"Then why aren't you talking to me? Troy?" He caught himself drifting off yet again, and this time snapped himself back to reality, locking his gaze on Gabriella's eyes and nowhere else. Yet he found that didn't really help; her eyes were gleaming with reflected moonlight and enchanting.
"Huh?" he was shocked back to himself yet again by the look of distress that suddenly appeared in her eyes. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. It's nothing, I promise, I really am happy, I just –" he cut himself off almost mid-word. He realized what he had been about to say, and it startled him.
"Just what?" A strand of her hair had fallen down to hang into her eyes, and Troy found his hand itching almost of its own accord to reach out and brush it away. "Tell me, Troy. Maybe I can help. You know I'd do anything for you."
The comment was earnest and oblivious, and a part of Troy's mind wondered, Anything? but was quickly silenced. "It's nothing, Gabriella," he assured her again, his voice much quieter now, suddenly aware of his heart beating faster than the dribbling basketballs he remembered distantly, as from a faraway memory.
"Don't lie to me, Troy," she murmured, distress growing more pronounced in her voice; the expression on her face was one close to hurt and close to worry, and Troy found that, for reasons he could not explain, it made his chest ache uncomfortably close to his heart.
"I'm not lying! I would never lie to you, Gabriella," he said fervently, planting his hands in the grass and pushing himself into a sitting position so as to look her in the eye. She quickly moved back and away, and again Troy felt the vast disappointment of losing her warmth next to him; she now sat a few feet away, on the border of a tree's shadow, her profile half in darkness, half in the bright light of the stars. "You have to believe me," he begged her, his voice soft and low, "I'm okay, I promise. It's better – better if I don't tell you. Take my word for it, okay?"
"No, it's not okay! You can tell me anything." She was looking at him earnestly, her eyes bright with fear, lips pressed into a thin line, and Troy felt the ache in his chest grow sharper, more pronounced. He realized suddenly that he had already lied to her; he was not okay, and his chance to make himself okay was slipping away faster with every moment.
"You're right." He felt his mouth moving, felt the words emerging without the consent of his brain. "You're right, I'm sorry. It's just – I got everything I wanted today, everything I've dreamed of. Won a championship game, did the best singing performance of my life, got into the show and got a chance to give more amazing performances. Not to mention beating Sharpe." He flashed a brief grin and she smiled haltingly, hesitatingly, in return. "That was a rush I'd never felt before – being on stage. Different from on the court, but the same – almost. Today I've experience everything I've ever wanted – except one thing."
His even, measured confession had erased the fear from her eyes, and curiosity had taken its place. "What's that?" she asked, and the question had been irresistible, inevitable. It had been a simple invitation, an openness, a brightness and a warmth that he had not known he had been craving until he finally received it.
"Gabriella Montez, I love you," he said simply, "And I didn't get the chance today to tell you all the times that I wanted to." The confession took no courage, because it felt as natural as releasing a breath; there was no fear, because he could not think of anything he could possibly be afraid of. Only that she would disappear, vanish completely from his life; but he knew she would not do that to him, he counted on her pity for him, if nothing else, to stave off that ultimate disaster.
But the sudden gasp from the shadow of the tree did not bode disaster; he saw her hands, white in the moonlight, fly to her mouth, saw the sudden upwelling of tears in her eyes, then found himself embracing her, gasping as though the wind was knocked out of him not at the impact, but at her touch. "I love you too, Troy, you great brute," she murmured into his shirt; and then the song came to him, the rising notes, the tide of music lifting him to soar the heavens on its crescendo, the music he had been hearing all along and hadn't known the words to sing. He knew them now, and they pounded in his moonstruck brain, formed in his chest and rose into his throat, and he felt himself mouthing them silently into her hair; Gabriella and Troy. Gabriella and Troy. Gabriella and Troy.
"We won," he murmured; then, sliding two fingers beneath her chin, he tilted her head up until he was looking directly into her eyes, and he kissed her.
The stars gleamed more brightly than they had since New Year's Eve. In another house in another neighborhood, Chad told Taylor how their respective best friends had opted out of the after-party, and both smiled. On Monday, when those friends arrived at school holding hands, Chad and Taylor would feel those same smiles spreading over their faces again; and when the much-exaggerated tale of what had happened that night in the Montez backyard spread throughout East High, the response of most the student body would be, simply, "What took so long?"
Well, there you have it. Thoughts, please?
Your Humble Writer
Daughter of Atlas