Title: A Quiet Little Place

Fandom/Pairing: HSM, Chad/Ryan

Rating: PG, PG-13

Disclaimer: Belongs to Disney

Summary: The more people find out about Chad, the more ask whether he's told Troy. Chad doesn't really get it. Chad/Ryan, but predominately about Chad, and about Chad and Troy's relationship.

Notes: Sequel to my previous fic, Ways Undefined, and yes, I realize it took me a ridiculously long time. It makes me feel no better to say that an Enrique Iglesias song prompted me into finishing this. Also, the only reason it's finished is because I'm sick, which is also the only reason it's posted because it feels kinda dumb and crappy to me.

From:

To:

Subject: Kelsi song

1 Attachment

Hey Chad

This is that song I told you about once. Kelsi wrote it a while back- she said it was basically thought out for you.

And. Um. Me.

Right. Moving on. We are not going to have a song. That's too quaint.

Anyway, back in NY, is gorgeous, blah, blah. Kelsi and I have started a new show together- drummed up all our friends to dance and sing. And no offence, but these guys are professionals. They so beat East High. How's Shakespeare going?

Ry

"Stop whatever you're doing," Sharpay announced, flinging open the door to Chad's dorm room as if she owned the place.

"I could've been jerking off in here," Chad said mildly, clicking away Ryan's email.

"Ew, bad mental image," Sharpay winced, nose wrinkling.

"Aw, come on," Chad grinned. "You know you want a piece of this," he puffed out his chest and flexed his bicep.

She gave him a disgusted glare, which he took as a compliment because it translated into a blush and a giggle for any other girl. Then, she sat down on his bed, which was all kinds of invasive, but he was used to it by now.

"I'm in love," She announced.

"What?"

"In love."

Chad raised his eyebrow in silent question.

"I've been having these…thoughts about someone. And these dreams. And I never thought that was what I wanted, but it's like this dream I had last night opened my eyes."

Chad couldn't resist any longer. "In sleep he saaaang to me…" he wailed.

Sharpay hit him. "Passing over the fact that you know far too many musicals and that quoting them at me is so not funny, you're missing the point here!"

"Enlighten me. What's the point?"

"I'm in love. And I need your help to get him."

"I'm not shanghaiing anyone," Chad warned.

"I don't," Sharpay said with utmost dignity, "shanghai."

"No, you manipulate, which is just as bad, and when you're through and the victim realizes he's been manipulated, it'll feel like shanghaiing."

She stared at him a moment. "I'm not even going to dignify that with an answer," she said disgustly.

Chad sighed, quietly waved goodbye to the email he'd wanted to write Ryan, and asked, "Okay, so who is it?"

"Zeke."

He looked at her a moment, wondering if there was a punch line missing somewhere. "I'm sorry," he said carefully. "Could you please repeat that?"

"I," she declared, with all the theatrical prowess she was capable of, "am in love with Zeke."

She was capable of a lot of theatrical prowess.

"Okay," Chad said. "Why do you need to talk to me about this?"

She stared at him. "I need a game plan. You do sports, you're good at those. What do I do?"

Chad snorted. "Just walk up to him and kiss him. He's been in love with you since sophomore year."

"You are so…" she searched for the right word. He had to assume she hadn't found it, since the one she used was "useless," and that was a bit insulting.

"Oh, come on," he said. "You don't need to find out if he likes you, you know that already, you don't need to seduce him because he'd jump at a chance at you. All you need to do is tell him you want him."

She bit her lip.

"What?"

"Well…" She sighed, lying back against his pillow. "It's kind of classless. I feel like I'd be using him. Making him wait for me and expecting him to just snap at the chance."

"Who're we talking about?" Zeke asked as he walked in.

Sharpay squeaked and sat up really, really fast.

Chad sighed to himself. He'd actually wanted to call Ryan.

"No one!" Sharpay said.

Zeke studied her for a long moment. Then he shrugged. "Okay. So anyway, I was wondering what you guys are doing tonight. My mom gave me these two movies she said were great and I don't feel like watching them alone…"

Perhaps Chad was feeling particularly morbid today. "Science fiction double feature?" he grinned. Really, he didn't know why he did it himself.

"ARGH! Sharpay yelled. "WHY do you ALWAYS do that? Why do you even know so freakishly many musicals?"

"He grew up with Michael Crawford in his fridge," Zeke said. "We think that's where it started."

Sharpay stared pointedly out the window for a moment, then carefully said, "Yeah, I'm up for a movie night. I am, however, going to ignore that piece of utterly strange information."

Chad grinned to himself. "Nah," he said. "I'm out. Promised I'd go to my mom's for dinner."

"Kay," Zeke shrugged nonchalantly, which Chad congratulated him on, because he knew the guy well enough to know he was jumping up and down screaming "SCORE!" on the inside. "So I'll see you at seven?" He asked Sharpay.

She nodded, and he left.

Chad was just about to reopen Ryan's email when he realized she was still sitting there. He looked up, questioning.

"What do I wear?" She asked.

Chad groaned.

"No, seriously, what do I wear?"

Chad spun around on the chair to face her, glancing her over. "Wear heels," he said.

"Why?"

"It'll put you closer to his level and make kissing more of a possibility. Also, Zeke has a thing for heels."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. Said he likes the noise they make."

"Okay," Sharpay said. "I can work with that. Anything else?"

Chad considered. "Well, you'll want to wear a skirt, since that'll show off the legs-attached-to-feet-attached-to-heels best, which means you need to shave your legs and narrows down your choice on shoes to the ones that match a good skirt."

"Oh, my god!" Sharpay said, pointing and gasping in a way that made Chad supremely uncomfortable. "You're gay!"

Chad felt his ears start to heat up. "Um." He said.

Her eyes widened. "You are! Oh. My. God. Chad Danforth, basketball star, is gay?"

"Rub it in a little more," he said dryly. "Yell it loud enough for my jock roommates to hear."

"Oh, my, god." She said again, face entirely too gleeful. "Does Troy know this?"

"No," Chad said in a tiny, tiny voice.

She pursed her lips, said nothing and proceeded to make him help her pick her outfit out for three hours.

It was seven by the time Chad finally had the time to call Ryan.

-

Ryan and Chad had been dating again for two months when Chad finally called Taylor. It was a good thing the Evans had a private jet or they'd hardly ever have seen each other and would have had to live off e-mails and phone sex.

The conversation was strained and awkward, to say the least. It went a bit like this:

TAYLOR: Hi, this is Taylor McKessie.

CHAD: Hey, Tay. How's it goin'?

TAYLOR: …Chad? Um. It's, uh…it's going fine. Good. Everythings…okay. You?

CHAD: Oh, yeah, sure, great, U of A and all.

TAYLOR: Um. So. I hear you've been hanging with Sharpay?

CHAD: Yeah, she's not all bad once you get used to the…

TAYLOR: Sharpayness?

CHAD: That's the word.

(Pause)

CHAD: So…you have a boyfriend?

TAYLOR: Yes, actually. He-

CHAD: Ohthankgod.

TAYLOR: What does that mean?

CHAD: Nothing, just…glad, I guess. I was afraid I'd put you off dating forever.

TAYLOR: The last pitiful attempt at dating we made was almost a year ago. Why the sudden concern?

CHAD: Uh. Well, there's some stuff I didn't tell you that I should have, and I'm doing it now.

TAYLOR: Shoot.

CHAD: Okay. Uh. Before I start, you know this is an overdue apology, right?

TAYLOR: I figured.

CHAD: Okay. I did really like you, you know. You were smart and pretty and had a great rack-

TAYLOR: Chad!

CHAD: Trust me. I'm not trying to make things worse. Anyway, Troy was making us all be friends and accept each other and stuff, and that put up some issues for me. So Troy and Gabriella had their thing and I've always done whatever he does and I liked you. So I asked you out and we went out and it kind of sucked.

TAYLOR: I'm with you.

CHAD: Thanks. So we went out, and then we kissed and that pretty much sucked too, and I didn't stop flirting with you and I didn't ask you out again. And- here's the part where you can start hating me. I used you. Everyone thought we were together, high school romance, that that meant I support tolerance and stuff since we were from way different social circles, and it meant they never thought to question- me.

TAYLOR: O…kay…

CHAD: I did like spending time with you. You helped me out with school stuff and kept me from being too cynical about Troy. I really really liked you. Except…

TAYLOR: Except?

CHAD: Except always platonically.

TAYLOR: I figured.

CHAD: Yeah, I guess the never trying to get at your bra thing was a tip-off.

TAYLOR: (giggle) Yeah, that's it.

CHAD: So since I kind of strung you along, I figure you deserve to know why, and how much it was completely, totally and in all other ways not your fault.

TAYLOR: Uh-huh.

CHAD: Okay. Here goes. You were not the only person I was seeing in high school.

TAYLOR: Um.

CHAD: Please, don't hang up on me. Maybe if I get through this you won't think I'm such a jerk?

TAYLOR (coldly): Go ahead.

CHAD: Okay, summer before senior year, I had a thing with this…anyway. And once during senior year too, for like two weeks. You were…Christ, Tay, I'm so sorry. You were my alibi girlfriend. I'm…oh, my god. This is worse than with my mother. Taylor, I'm gay.

TAYLOR: Uh. Oh. …huh. Um. Does Troy know?

CHAD: …okay, why does everyone keep asking me that?

TAYLOR: Um. I don't know why anyone else would have asked that, but I asked it because my first thought was you and…Troy.

CHAD: No. Ew. Really. Ick. Dude, that's like…incest.

TAYLOR: Okay.

CHAD: No, seriously. Ew. Don't make me come over there and wash your mouth out with bleach.

TAYLOR (giggle): Okay. Chad, thank you for telling me. It means a lot to me that you told me, and…I do forgive you for the stuff you pulled.

CHAD: Well, that means a lot to me. I…I was going through a lot then, and you were the best fake girlfriend a guy could've asked for.

TAYLOR: Friends?

CHAD: Definitely.

-

Things came to a head during spring break. After much cajoling from all sides, Ryan and Sharpay invited their whole group to their Florida vacation house (which, Chad said, was just a given. Of course they owned a villa in Florida).

It was weird, now. They were all there- Sharpay and Ryan, Chad, Zeke, Kelsi, Troy, Gabriella, Taylor, Jason, Martha…all of them. But they'd grown apart in the almost-year they'd been separated.

Sharpay and Zeke were all over each other, sharing a bedroom and making out publicly. To those of the group who hadn't known, it was kind of a shock. To those who knew it was just kind of sickening.

Troy and Gabriella were too, but that was no surprise. The surprise was that Troy invited himself into Chad's room (which was also Ryan's, but Troy didn't know that) and sat down on the very very edge of his bed.

"I slept with Gabi," he blurted.

Chad turned round, studied him, and said, "Huh." He turned his head to the side as if that would help him discover a visual sign of Troy's lack of virginity. "Congratulations?"

Troy grinned. "Thanks," he said, and it was a little bit strange that he actually took that seriously.

He shifted around uncomfortably for a few minutes while Chad unpacked, and then said at length, "So, have you ever…?"

Seriously? Chad thought. It must have read on his face, because Troy flushed bright red. "Uh, yeah, dude."

"You never told me," Troy said, and sounded kind of insulted. Well, there was a lot Chad hadn't told him.

"Didn't know our friendship worked like that," Chad said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Y'know. Chick flick stuff. Secrets and sex and stuff."

Troy crossed his arms and shifted on Chad's bed, taking up more space and wordlessly stating his intent not to leave until he wanted to. "It totally does. So gone on, who was it with? Taylor? And when?"

Deciding to ignore the sheer idiocy of the first two questions, Chad said, "Summer before senior year."

"What?? Seriously?" Troy squeaked, sounding insulted. Seriously, Chad hadn't thought he'd actually care, seeing as relationship crap had always been Troy's thing and the he was more Troy's wingman, his basketball buddy, who connected with him in male, brotherly ways.

"What's going on here?" Ryan asked as he came in.

"Summer BEFORE senior year?" Troy asked.

Chad shook his head at Ryan frantically. "Ooh," Ryan said with a little too much interest. "That was a good summer."

"Oh yeah?" Chad said, momentarily forgetting the fact that he was trying to salvage two years worth of lying to his best friend.

"Yeah," Ryan grinned at him. "Lost my virginity."

Troy's eyes went wide like a cartoon character's. "Wha- bu- Oh. Oh my god."

Chad buried his face in his hands.

"What?" Ryan asked. "What'd I say?"

"Train wreck," Chad mumbled, "carnage everywhere. I was trying to do this slowly."

"So wait," Troy said, "you've been gay for more than a year and a half and you didn't tell me?"

"Uh. Yeah."

"Why not?"

Chad sighed. "Honestly, I thought you'd be a jerk about it."

"What?!" Troy exploded, standing up.

"Not like that," Chad said impatiently. "I just thought you'd be…well, you, dude. You'd get in my face about it, be so supportive it makes people sick. It'd suddenly be about how Troy the musical star was helping his poor gay friend, and I don't want that. It's not a big deal and I don't want it turned into one."

"But it's a huge deal!" Troy said. "It means you- you-"

"It means I don't slot neatly into the heteronormative way of life. I'm cool with that."

"What?" Troy said. "Seriously, what, dude? Since when do you talk like that?"

"Since always!" Chad said. "It's why I'm majoring in English as well as sports!"

"What?" Troy asked angrily. "Do you not tell me anything anymore? I thought we were, like, brothers!"

"We are, Troy. But you don't get it half the time. You don't get that I know a lot about musicals, and you never bothered to ask me when you started your musical thing even though I could have told you so much about them. You never once realized how much I like English classes, and you never asked what other courses I was taking in college even when we planned to go together. You ditched me all the time over the summer before senior year, and I would have needed you like you wouldn't believe because I was in the process of realizing I was gay, but you weren't there so I had to figure it out on my own and I never told you." Chad slowed to a halt in his speech, looked Troy over. He'd wilted a bit since his earlier outrage. "You're my brother, Troy, and I love ya, but you've spent way too long disappointing me for you to be upset about this."

Troy nodded slowly. "Okay," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Chad said, attempting to speak past the lump in his throat.

"I think it'd be best if you left now," Ryan said to Troy, all but pushing him out of the door. Then, he turned to Chad, who was inches from breakdown.

"Hey," he said. "Come here." And Chad did, and one of the best things about having a boyfriend was that you could have a breakdown in his arms.

-

"Okay," Troy said, coming into the living room, where everyone was watching Grey's Anatomy for no apparent reason. "I may not be supposed to say this, but apparently since he told me it's all out now- did anyone here know Chad's gay?"

Zeke raised a hand, and both Sharpay and Taylor said, "yes, why?" Kelsi nodded, still watching the screen avidly.

Troy sat down hard. "He told you guys before he told me?"

"I guessed," Zeke said absently, his eyes on the TV screen, his hands massaging Sharpay's feet.

She nodded around her forkful of a cake he'd baked her. "Me too," she said.

Kelsi said, "me three," absently, apparently unconcerned by this new development.

Gabriella, Martha and Jason, however, were listening with rapt attention, baffled looks on their faces.

"He told me," Taylor said, apparently not finding the show as fascinating as the others who knew.

"When?" Troy asked.

"A few weeks ago. He just called up out of the blue, apologized for being a jerk to me while we were still dating and said I deserved an explanation."

"Okay," Troy said. "I still don't get why he didn't tell me."

Taylor bit her lip in indecision, before deciding that when it came down to it he was still kind of a jock. "This may sound stupid, but did you ask?"

"Of course I did! He said some stuff about me making a big deal out of it, and about not knowing him."

Zeke finally tore his eyes off the screen. "Let's face it, dude, you hardly do anymore."

Troy's face spoke epic poems of confusion.

"You never understood the thing with the English major, or the thing with the musicals-"

"God, is that ever annoying," Sharpay said. "Michael Crawford is one thing, but he actually sang RENT at me recently. It's like he's seen every musical ever produced."

"Okay," Troy said, "So I don't know everything about him. So what? He should have at least told me about the Ryan thing."

That stopped all watching of Grey's Anatomy dead.

Heads spun. Eyes widened.

"I knew it!" Zeke crowed. "He never would say, but I knew they'd gotten back together."

"Back?!" Sharpay almost-shrieked, "there was a before?"

"Summer before senior year," Zeke and Troy said at the same time.

"Oh," Taylor said, with a tone of enlightenment.

Sharpay sat up fully, taking her feet off of Zeke's lap. "I think we need more information. They're together now?"

"Yeah," Troy said. "Ryan kicked me out after Chad said all that stuff about not wanting to tell me he's gay."

She smiled smugly. "Good thing our intercom system can be rigged."

-

If there was one thing Ryan had learned in all his years as a gay theatre geek, it was how to create an ambiance. He'd drawn the blinds and set the lighting low in his room, and ensconced Chad on a strategically placed mound of sinfully comfortable pillows with a glass of tequila from the minibar he'd installed the last time his mother lent him her credit card.

They were quiet for a long time, just sitting, pressed together, sipping alcohol.

"Never really thought about telling him," Chad said.

Ryan looked at him questioningly.

"I mean, everyone kept asking if I'd told him yet and it just didn't make sense to me. I mean…Troy's the playmaker. It's about him. Not supposed to be about me."

"What do you expect?" Ryan asked gently. "He's your friend, he cares about you."

"I guess," Chad said. "But it's been about him for so long. Plus what I said before."

"The thing about the heteronormative lifestyle?"

Chad exhaled a laugh, of sorts. "That's the one."

"You know our friends. They're all…shockingly hetero everything."

"I know." Chad sighed, leaning his head against Ryan's. "I mean, they sing in musicals, they bake, they write sheet music and they're the biggest bunch of drama queens this side of Broadway and yet they are all stubbornly straight. It's…dude, it's weird."

"Don't think I haven't noticed," Ryan answered, voice light and teasing despite the weight they both felt.

Chad turned his head a fraction of an inch to meet Ryan's lips with his, and for a while all that could be hear was the wet sound of tongues and lips connecting.

They separated with no more noise than a soft sigh.

"So I guess I'll have to introduce you to my mother," Chad said.

"Don't sound so thrilled about it. Otherwise I'll go down there and tell Sharpay."

Chad fake-shuddered. "The horror, the pain."

Ryan snorted.

"Okay," Chad said. "That's enough bad stuff. This is our first day of vacation, isn't it?"

"Yep," Ryan said. "What are we gonna do about it?"

"Well…" Chad got up, stretched, walked across the room he had yet to explore properly. "Hey! You've got, like, a band without the players over here!"

Ryan snickered. "Yeah, I like music. Tell me you're not surprised. I may have to reevaluate our relationship."

"Oh, shut up," Chad said, picking up a guitar. "Can I?"

"Sure," Ryan said.

Chad sat down on the bed, ran his hands over the guitar, played a few chords. "Sing for me," he said quietly, after a while, and began to play a familiar melody.

And Ryan couldn't help but smile, because it was cute, and not like the cheesy musical quoting, but really cute, cute.

"I know I stand in line until you think you have the time to spend an evening with me," he sang, and, smiling at Chad, sat down next to him on the bed. Chad grinned at him, and he looked so much like a little boy that Ryan fell just a little bit more in love with him.

And when he joined the song, his voice wasn't quite as good as Ryan's, but hey, Nancy Sinatra hadn't seemed bothered by that.

Anyway, it didn't take too long before they lay aside the guitar and looked into other activities to do with love.

-

Sharpay shut off the intercom about halfway through the song. It didn't seem right, even by her loose moral standards, to listen to any more.

"I think," Troy said, frowning, "I understand it a little bit now."

Privately, she wondered if he ever really would.