The first chapters flip-flopped between both of them at random but from here on out it'll be more obvious which chapters are Chad chapters and which chapters are Ryan chapters. There should be at least 10 chapters overall. IDK.
Chad Danforth's life had just begun.
He was seventeen, staring at the ceiling in his bedroom, up at the poster of LeBron that he'd stuck on his ceiling, trying to figure out his feelings.
Well, that wasn't quite right, because he'd figured out his feelings days ago, but he was still turning them over in his head because it shouldn't be possible that those were his feelings.
He thought about the time he'd spent with Ryan in the days since the accident. He focused on the warmth burning through his chest when Ryan had told him he was gay and how quickly it had occurred to him to say that he was also gay.
Why had that been his first thought, when it couldn't possibly be true?
And then, why couldn't it be true?
There was that crush he'd had on Taylor, crushes he'd had on lots of girls, actually. Could you like girls and guys? Maybe you could. But did he, or was Ryan just on his mind every second of every day because they'd accidentally killed someone together?
"This is bad," He murmured to himself, but for reasons that he couldn't completely explain.
Was it bad because people, like Ryan's father, treated gay people like shit? Well, yes, of course, but it was maybe a bit deeper than that. Chad was the basketball and baseball dude. And sure, Troy had shown that people could be more than just athletes but that was Troy and Troy was, well, popular. Chad was popular by association. If he stepped out of the role that had been defined for him he would be judged for it. He might even lose Troy, and Troy had been his best friend since they'd been little kids. Maybe he would lose everyone if he was the gay basketball and baseball dude.
And what if he lost Ryan, because of this? The person he couldn't get out of his head. Who was kind, handsome, anxious, and stronger than anyone Chad had ever known. Chad was afraid that if he even thought about coming out he'd end up pushing Ryan away. Ryan would think Chad was mocking him, or worse, if Chad showed interest in Ryan, Ryan might think that he was nothing more than Chad's homosexual experiment.
Those were all the cons. All the reasons why Chad couldn't be gay, or at least all the reasons he could never tell anyone he thought he might be.
But Ryan was one hell of a pro.
Chad stared up at his basketball poster, not really seeing it, and imagined kissing Ryan Evans. He imagined it would start slow and gentle at first and then get more passionate. He wondered if Ryan had ever kissed anyone before. He wondered how Ryan knew he was gay. How could he be so sure? Chad wasn't sure about anything other than the fact that Ryan had completely and utterly captivated him.
This was a really, really bad time to be going through a crisis about his sexuality. What could he do? Talk to his parents about it? They were already on edge because of the "suicide", they'd freak out if he said he needed to talk to them. They'd freak out even more if they found out why he needed to talk to them. He couldn't tell Troy, because Troy might hate him. The only person he could think to talk to was the person he was falling in love with.
And he couldn't bring it up to Ryan for all the aforementioned reasons, plus the big elephant in the closet that Ryan was dealing with an endless flood of grief right now and didn't need anything to complicate that.
Like, what was Chad going to do? Make out with Ryan at Sharpay's funeral?
"Chad! It's time to get ready for the funeral!"
Well, he'd been overthinking it for a solid week now, a few more days couldn't hurt. Then maybe he'd talk to someone, maybe even Ryan. Now was not the time for a sexuality crisis.