Title: Modern Lovers (or, how Troy won back Ryan's heart or how i met your father (the crash course survival guide).)
Author: Ray
Rating: 14+
Word Count: 1500~
Pairings: Troy/Ryan, Troy/Gabriella, Sharpay/Zeke, Ryan/OMC, Troy/OMC.
Summary: Troy told Ryan he wasn't gay the end of Senior Year. That they needed to end this thing they had. Well then why three years later was he caught getting head by his male theatrical TA?
Three Years Later
Ryan was late. He was extremely late, so late in fact that Kirsten the late shift manager was sure to scold his balls in hot coffee, and Ryan had proof and evidence that she was that low of a person to do it. Late shift often stretched from six o'clock in the afternoon until whenever the last customer decided they were through with studying. Working part time at the coffee hut and full time at Julliard wasn't the healthiest option for any human being. Long hours choreographing and long hours waiting took toll on anyone's body; Ryan however felt the toll tenfold.
Kirsten liked to be mean, she got off on it. Her boyfriend, who was ironically the nicest man on the planet, summarised this characteristic as 'the anger generates into bed, and oh my god I love being her boyfriend' it's safe to say Ryan can leave it at that. Sometimes however if Ryan were to catch her on a good day, where she got someone to cover her late night shift, or, Tyson (the boyfriend) bought her a bouquet of flowers, she would sit down and eat left over pastries with him. She'd share stories about her childhood, and what it was like to own a small coffee shop with no help at all from the Government or family and friends.
That's only some of the time, and unfortunately that 'some of the time' wasn't today.
"Evan's you're late" Kirsten snaps the minute Ryan enters the coffee shop. A few regulars who know him by name look up sympathetically, and Ryan knows today is not one of those days to test Kirsten's fragile mind and talk to them so he waves politely and heads to the back room.
"I don't care if your daddy is Paul McCartney or whether your posh school wants you to stay back to paint sets, if I tell you, not ask may I remind, to come in at a certain time, then you damn well come in at that time. Do you hear me Evan's?" Kirsten admonishes, throwing a balled up apron towards a sad faced Ryan.
"Yes ma'am" Ryan answers, tying the apron on hastily avoiding Kirsten's eyes as she snaps a book in his direction and points him towards filling tables.
"Smile or you're fired"
Oh Ryan loved the days Kirsten wasn't the spawn of the devil.
Ryan receives a text message half way through his shift at the coffee shop. Tired and annoyed, Ryan ignores the insistent buzz and continues to mop the "outrageously dirty floors Evan clean them up". His break comes forty five minutes later and Ryan scrambles for the back door before Kirsten can holler at him to give her a hand. The text is as usual from Kelsi.
I am not going to be home when you get in tonight. Lock the apartment when you get home. I have my key. See you when I see you. xx Kelsi
Ryan sighs, fumbling with his iPhone, Ryan types out a barely legible message, before returning inside to finish his vigorous shift.
Ryan gets home at two in the morning. This usually didn't bother him as much as it did today, because most of the time he had prior knowledge to that much of a late shift, today he was left in the total dark. Ryan was pissed. Kirsten eventually decided to go home and had left Ryan with the responsibility of locking up shop. Lachlan the work experience apprentice Kirsten hired on board a month ago begged off with the excuse of looking after his sick pet dog.
This meant that in the end Ryan was left all alone with excruciating College students who didn't recognise the etiquette of closing up shop before midnight.
Stumbling to his bed without taking his clothes off, Ryan falls asleep, lacking to notice a silently pissed off Sharpay Evan's waiting up to see him.
Ryan's iPhone has three different unique ringtones. The first one is Under Pressure by Queen. Kelsi who idolised and worshipped the ground Freddie Mercury used to walk on, fell head over heels in love with the track and deemed it important to put on any stage production, mix tape, and birthday party. Whenever the song starts to feel like it is getting repetitive, Ryan has learned the hard way it's best to ignore and walk out of the room, then try with all a man's will to turn it off.
The second ringtone is for everyone else on his contact list. The ringtone is some composition Kelsi created in high school and got everyone in the group to chip in on. Even Sharpay took a role in singing a verse, and that made the song feel entirely more whole, even if she was still pissed that she didn't get the lead roll Gabriella seemed to always be getting.
The third one was Sharpay's and it was conveniently waking him up right now. Grumbling loudly Ryan tucked his hand underneath his fluffy pillow and decided heartedly that he was going to ignore the ringing for now, if it was important he knew Sharpay would call back later.
This all soon failed when Miley Cyrus' whiny voice wouldn't shut up –
"What in the fuck Sharpay" Ryan groans lifting his head up to yell at his phone, his eyes widened startled at the figure standing before him.
"You are not supposed to be here" Ryan whispers to himself under his breath, counting his breaths in his head to settle his fast beating heart. Sharpay who hears every word whispered with her fantastic theatrical senses smiles wickedly and perches herself on her brothers bed.
"Is that in any way to talk to your favourite sister?" Sharpay admonishes, brushing a hand through her wild curly hair. Ryan sits up, resting the pillow on the wall so his back is perched comfortably.
"You're my only sister" Ryan reminds, removing his hand from his chest to smile nervously at his sister. Visits from Sharpay were never good.
Three months after Graduation Ryan and Kelsi moved closer to Julliard. The rooms at the school were expensive but luckily for the both of them it came free with the scholarship. Ryan who was not really looking forward to living in a small room with some stranger decided to put a down payment on a nice three bedroom apartment close to the school, while giving away his free room to some other student who couldn't really afford the monthly pay.
Alone and looking for two roommates Ryan pushed Kelsi into taking up a free bedroom in his apartment. Kelsi being the nice girl she is refused to pay absolutely nothing for the room so in return bought the groceries and did most of the heavy duty cleaning.
They didn't get a third roommate because not another person was needed, the third bedroom was set up as a spare bedroom and randomly when family or friends needed a place to crash they could always crash there. However Sharpay never visited for unimportant reasons. Her first visit was to tell Ryan that Taylor and Chad had broken up, that their relationship had been on the rocks for months, and Taylor falling in love with someone at Yale was the final nail in the coffin.
Ryan remembered being horrified at the intense smug look on Sharpay's face. He learned to live with it, he learned to deal.
The second time was to tell Ryan that she engaged to Zeke, and engagement that continuously was broken off and put back together so many times that Ryan was sick of the words Zeke coming out of his sisters mouth.
They were two of the many times, but they always, ALWAYS led to trouble.
"Whatever, anyway did you hear?" Sharpay said covering over her tracks with a wicked smile. Ryan shook his head and schooled his features into an impatient 'come on tell me', something he had been trained to do since Sharpay learned that power was everything.
"Troy broke up with Gabriella"
The world closed in and around Ryan, because what?
Troy and Gabriella were worldly. That's exactly what came out of the horse's mouth three years ago.
The main fact was that Troy lied when he told Ryan: "It's over, me and Gabriella, we are going somewhere, we are worldly".
He had lied when he said that he and Gabriella were going to last forever.
He had lied when he said he wasn't gay: "this was fun Ryan, though I am not gay, it was just fucking, we can still be friends right"
Troy made Ryan feel this way, feel incompetent, feel like an underprivileged mistress.
Troy –
"Why?" Ryan gasps out,watching Sharpay squeal with delight.
"Gabriella caught Troy getting head from" pausing Sharpay giggled loudly and unnaturally not perfect. Ryan nervously bounced his leg up and down, up and down.
"Who, a cheerleader of the basketball team?" Ryan asked and Sharpay laughed louder,
"No his TA for theatre" Sharpay answered with a grin. Ryan shrugged his shoulders,
"What's so funny about that?"
"His TA...William"
- Lied. Lied. Lied. Lied.
To Be Continued
Authors Notes: I was sad yesterday to see that there wasn't a lot of Troy/Ryan slash. And the ones that were weren't what I wanted and were very cliffnote versions of cliches and predictableness. I guess I am trying for something different. This isn't my first slash story. I am not that great of a writer, I think I lack deeply, however this came to me and i thought that I would share it with the world. I would love Constructive Critisism. Since this is my first High School Musical fiction I would like to learn the ropes, and get a deeper understanding on what the deal is with all this Chad/Ryan love.
Anyway, if anyone would like to BETA or to stimulate some ideas into my muse feel free to email me at: the hushies [at] hiptop [dot] com [dot] au , or, at my livejournal page 2hot4lilly_kane [at] livejournal [dot] com .
Thank you for reading.
- Rachel.