Chapter Text
“When I needed someone… When I really needed to reach out, you weren’t there,” the voice says.
There is sweat gathering against his nape, where the small hairs on his neck stand up. He shivers and the cold of the darkened room makes his skin prickle. He turns over and the bright red letters on his electric clock blaze in the early morning light, a reminder of reality against the fog of nightmares.
It’s 6:34AM.
Ryan shakes the sleep away from his limbs, the echo of that voice still slithering under his skin. But soon a coffee and a bagel dispel the last remnants of warmth and sleep from his body. He watches the city come to life, from his high up window in his too small apartment. Despite the hollowed out feeling of his place, he still feels a sense of excitement when looking out over New York. His apartment is small and cramped and, honestly, way too expensive - but he pays for the view. It’s this view that makes him throw on a warm hoodie every morning, it’s the bustle of the smoke filled roads that keeps him going, until his thighs burn slightly with delicious exertion, until his body is warmed up. He’s listening to a podcast as he gets the customary good morning message from his sister and he types back a response as he crosses the road. He’s misspelled ‘nightmare’, but at least he’s made it safe to the other side of the road.
He rushes up the few steps of the brownstone building and soon, he’s breathing in the dry air of the studio, his heart chattering in his chest. He sets his bag down in his usual corner, sitting with his back turned to one of the walls of mirrors. They are all around him, however, and as he takes in his appearance, he winces slightly. He runs a hand over his blond hair that is sticking up, as if full of static energy. Then he brings that same hand to his face, traces down the line next to his mouth, the one reinforced by every smile and every laugh he’s ever had. His phone buzzes again against his thigh.
Shar ✨
have you seen this??https://www.tmb.com/2018/09/05/boxer-chad-danforth-injury-leaves-him-out-cold
The preview of the news article shows a man with his head down, a cap snuggly sitting over his hair, shades hiding half of his face.
The scent of New Mexico comes back to him, the smell of the dry desert and pregnant clouds waiting to unleash rain. He drags in a deep breath and the scent is replaced by the smell of shoes and sweat and coffee. Some of his students have been making their way into the studio slowly, quietly. How long has he been staring at his screen, unmoved?
It’s 7:46AM.
He gets up, feeling his muscles tense and not warmed up. He breathes deeply through every stretch, every tendon and strip of muscle in his body taut attentively.
Shar ✨
you okay, ry?
***
Chad settles in the back of the car with a sigh, his dad next to him, his solid warmth reassuring. He takes off the ridiculously oversized sunglasses and the cap, shaking his head slightly, his curly hair springing back to its unruly shape.
“It will get better,” his dad sagely says, before he’s on his phone, typing up emails, tracking the news about him. He hums, then settles into the quiet ride. He logs into Instagram, a mindless habit. As he scrolls, he watches friendly faces, familiar smiles. This is a private Insta, not like the public one, that is carefully curated and shows him sporting the hottest brands, in the company of the coolest artists around.
This private one is devoid of any pictures of himself. He sometimes snaps photos of the stuff he cooks, but that’s pretty much it. But he likes seeing his friends. He likes watching Troy’s basketball team change as the seasons do, and his and Gabriella’s daughter, his god-daughter, Selena. He scrolls and there’s a picture of Zeke, white chef jacket on, tattoos lining his arms. He’s grinning, trying to hide the cigarette in his hand behind him. Chad briefly wonders who took the photo. The next is a carousel, beautifully framed pictures of Kelsi during a piano concert, ending with a picture that is less dressed up, more intimate, of her and her wife.
Chad looks out the window and feels the sky-scrapers close in on himself. He hates New York, with its population density and its rats and its loud cars. But New York is where the best physical therapist in the country is, so he flies from his sprawling home in New Mexico to New York, every two weeks, like clockwork, only to sweat and tear up with frustration over his stupid, broken, not good, stupid shoulder. He has the feeling that his father still hasn't forgiven him - he’s not sure he should feel this guilty at his big age of 29, but here he is. Sitting in the back of the car, suffocated, disappointed and ashamed.
***
Chad Danforth was the great love of his life.
Of course, Ryan didn’t know it back then, back when they were just getting to know the edges of each other during that summer at Lava Springs. He knows it now, increasingly with each year that passes.
He’s watching his date talk, but no words actually register in his mind. He keeps thinking back to that picture of Chad, rushed, coming out of the clinic, with his hair wild as always, eyes fearful behind the sunglasses.
“And what about you? What do you do, Ryan?” his date asks and pushes his glasses up, from where they slid down his nose. He has a beautiful nose - not straight, but not too crooked. Hellenic, perhaps.
“Um… Uh, I’m a dance instructor,” Ryan says with a muted smile.
“Wow, that’s very cool” the guy says and he smiles, wide and impressed. “Are you really flexible then?” he laughs, a little embarrassed in the way the guy - Terry, his name is Terry, Ryan should remember the name of his date - brings his drink to his lips and takes a sip of the cocktail.
“Yeah, kind of. I teach all sorts, I danced ballet for a long time,” he answers, dry, almost as dry as his martini which he sips delicately. Terry is smiling, his eyes full of awe.
Two hours and a half later, he’s lying in the dark, in his bed, with Terry sprawled next to him, breathing slowly through the aftermath of their one-night stand. Ryan had decided, sometime during the date, it would be a one night stand.
He plucks his phone from the nightstand, then turns it on, bathing both himself and Terry in blue light. He does have the courtesy of turning on his lamp to allow for warm light to wash over them. Then he gets back to his phone. He clicks on the link just as Terry asks him where the bathroom is.
“Uh… Yeah… Down the hallway, next to the entrance door, can’t miss it,” he mutters, his gaze already going back to the screen.
The article is peppered with images of Chad - him smiling next to some rapper at a basketball game, him during a match, landing a punch on his opponent, him being declared the winner of the fight, his skin glowing with sweat, his hair slicked back in a bun. The heft of his chest leading to a dark trail of hair down his stomach, into the velvet of his boxing shorts makes Ryan feel warmth pool into his lower belly. If he had not cum moments ago, he is sure he would be desperately jerking off over this picture. As it stands, he just keeps reading. The article lays out how Chad got the injury. A miscalculation during a match and down he went, his shoulder irrevocably broken. He had been secretive about his recovery, but every outlet and close source were reporting an imminent return to the sport. Until the ‘close sources’ changed their stories - the silence from Chad’s corner didn’t help. That’s how he ended up hounded by the tabloids, all of them trying to get a picture of the elusive figure or a quote from him or his team.
Radio silence was the response from the Danforth corner, however.
Terry is now sitting next to him again, his skin cold to the touch now.
“Do you mind if I go? I don’t really sleep well in new places.” Terry smiles that placid smile and Ryan shakes his head.
“It’s all good,” he smiles back and watches Terry close the distance to place a soft, barely there kiss on his lips. Then he starts getting dressed.
Ryan reaches the comments in the article and reads through them too, like a man on the verge of existential thirst.
By the time Terry leaves twenty minutes later, Ryan has every image from the article memorised.
It’s 11:54PM.
Ryan falls asleep thinking of Chad’s smile and the way his hugs felt.
***
Chad wakes up with the warm sunlight of the autumn streaming through his windows, light pushing away at his curtains as it tries to invade ever more of his room. In the background, he can hear a TV - his dad, probably. Maybe his sister? His family often drop in, uninvited and unknown. Chad tries to pretend he minds it, but deep down he knows their constant support and presence are what keeps him tethered. He turns over, face in his pillow as his hand reaches for his phone. His finger is tapping and finding the Instagram app before he knows what time it is and his vision gets inundated with pictures and words.
He scrolls through, gaze trained on the screen, his thumb pausing its movement as he sees the latest post from Troy. It’s one he’s posted before, but now it’s accompanied by terrifyingly insistent captions. It reads:
ONLY ONE WEEK LEFT!!!! BE THERE OR BE SQUARE #reunion #gowildcats #08class
Chad would laugh at the cheesiness of the post itself, he would laugh at the neon reds and pasty whites and the blackest of blacks that Troy found to colour the image advertising the reunion of their high school class or the Comic Sans mixed in with other ridiculous fonts that made up the writing. He would laugh if only he didn’t feel his stomach lurching every time he thought about it.
Chad runs a hand over his face, his stubble scratching at his fingertips. He turns off his phone, watching himself in the reflection projected on its black screen. He looks tired. Old.
Back in those days, during high school, he felt like he could have eaten the world raw - taken pieces of it and gorged on it like a beast made of youth and ambition. Nowadays, he feels more like a shadow that was left behind by a creature that forgot to take its shadow with it when it ceased existing.
More than anything, he doesn't need the fundamental truth of his broken body and spirit to be reflected in the gazes of his former classmates - the pity and the worry and the search for a rumour, a salacious whisper, anything on him to sate their curiosity. Troy and Gaby and Selena are one thing - he can withstand dinners with them and their worried glances. He could even take on the dressing down that Taylor would give him, if she wasn’t so busy building rockets for NASA in the middle of Nowhere, Ohio. In fairness, the Nowhere in question is Cleveland. Everyone else, however… Even the people he once was close to, Zeke and Kelsi and Martha… They all would look at him and try to find in him someone he’s never sure he was.
The anxiety in his chest feels cloying and his muscles pinch with inactivity. He groans as he gets up, throwing away the sheets from himself, grabbing a t-shirt and pulling it on, wincing more in frustration rather than pain as he feels his shoulder muscles lock up, restricting his range of movement. When he finally makes it to the kitchen, he finds the TV on, but nobody is in the home. The only traces of his family having been there is a glass in the sink, a finger or so of orange juice sitting at the bottom of it. He grabs a clean one himself, going to get a fresh glass of orange juice, taking a swig from the carton before pouring a portion.
Dragging his feet across the wooden floor, he looks out into the New Mexico desert. The big windows surrounding him allow him a view of the low, blue sky of the morning. The sun looks white and hot already. Even in the middle of September, the temperature and feeling of summer clings on, and the sun warms up the sand well into October, when then the nights turn into frozen landscapes. It doesn’t really rain or snow, but it gets absurdly cold. It will soon be harder to make the trips to New York. He will soon feel the weather in his bones, an ache that is more accurate than AccuWeather itself.
His phone buzzes on the kitchen island, long and as if crying, and the whole house seems to shake with the sound of it. He hurries to pick it up, answering the call before he realises who’s calling. After a second of buffering, the screen comes to life to show on the other side Troy holding Selena in his arms.
“Hi guys,” he sighs with a smile, unable to keep the grin away from his features when Selena starts calling for him.
“Chad! Chad!” she blabbers, shushed into a semblance of quiet by Troy.
“Let daddy speak as well, please.”
“I want to say hi, dada.”
“Yes, yes, he heard you. Didn’t you, Chad? Did you hear her?”
That’s his queue to join back into the conversation and he nods, messy curls bouncing against his forehead.
“I heard you, sweetie. What’s up?” He directs the second half of that towards Troy as his gaze moves towards the adult on his phone screen.
“You still haven’t RSVPed, Chad,” he says and, for a moment, Chad can see a flicker of old Coach Bolton in the way that his best friend looks at him.
“I know… Listen, I’ll do it today, okay?” he says, no conviction in his words. He thinks for a moment on whether he just lied to his best friend… He didn’t. He will make an effort. It’s the least he can do to support his friend. Troy has been excited for ages for the reunion. Since before they even made it out of high school for five years, he was already planning it, talking Chad’s ear off. Chad isn’t sure when he had the time with basketball and everything. He guesses the same way he’s had the time to buy a house and look for his dream car and become a godfather while busy building a boxing career after it became quite clear his own basketball one wouldn’t take off.
“I’m holding you to it. And it’s not me you gotta worry about, it’s Gaby,” his best friend says over the phone, his voice too tinny for Chad to take him too seriously despite the wincing expression on Troy’s face.
“Juice, dada,” Selena is saying now, hitting Troy's chest with her sippy cup. Everything is a jumble for a moment, as Troy tries to stop his daughter from the ongoing assault with the sippy cup. The shakiness subsides just as Chad schools his expression into something serious again, smiling at his friend.
“You want to come over tonight, by the way?” he asks, casually, and watches Selena’s face brighten, her voice loud and shrill, in that endearing way kids sound when they excitedly talk about stuff.
“Now I guess we gotta…” Troy lets out a sigh, but he smiles nonetheless. “I can make sure you do the G-O-D-D-A-M-N response to the reunion invite that way,” Troy grins as Chad’s brain is catching up with the careful spelling of the swear word. Chad wants to tell his friend ‘goddamn’ is not exactly a swear word, but the conversation moves along.
They talk about what they were going to have for dinner - are his sister and his sister-in-law coming over as well? Not sure, Chad says, and finishes his orange juice. At some point, Gabriella pops her head in the frame, only to press a kiss against her daughter’s and husband’s cheeks and wave them all goodbye as she hurries to the lab.
It’s almost an hour later when they get off the phone. Troy will for sure be late for drop-off for Selena and for work, but if there is anyone who can get away with such infractions, it’s Troy.
***
Sharpay arrives precisely five days before having to fly back to New Mexico. It’s a strange commute she’s doing, flying from California to New York and then back to their hometown, but Ryan does not complain. His cramped New York apartment feels alive. She brings laughter and the scent of Chanel perfume and mess. One of the few things he misses is her mess. It keeps his hands busy, especially during those moments when his mind can’t help but keep wondering, butterflies gathering in his tummy. Will he be there? How will he react? Has he thought about Ryan at all in the last 4 years? Then there’s a scarf left on the couch, or shoes that need putting away, or coffee stained mugs to clean and Ryan feels calm again, his thoughts no longer chasing each other in circles in his mind.
There’s other things he likes about having Sharpay closer. It gives him a respite from having to voice things. It’s a twin thing, they’ve always said. From the first glance, Sharpay knows everything that is going on with him. A single look is all that is needed for her to guess the secret corners of his heart. And in turn, she knows he can read her as well. Her work is rewarding, but tiring at the same time. After a short but fulfilling adventure on Broadway, in those early days of them discovering New York together and dreaming big, she settled into a news anchor career and, surprisingly, found she had a knack for journalism. He can see the late nights at the corner of her smiles, in her hidden yawns. He wants her to rest more. He doesn't bring it up, however.
On their flight over to New Mexico, she holds his hand throughout the entirety of the flight, even when Ryan’s own gets sweaty, something she always complained about.
He has to breathe in deeply the recycled air of the airplane to not let his eyes get misty.
He missed her.
Looking at her now, sleeping next to him in her comfortable business class seat, their hands still loosely intertwined, he wants to let the tears out freely. The hollow beneath his ribs feels less now. He wants to hug her, wake her up, tell her to never leave him again - but that would mean actually waking her up, risking her ire, especially given she has her mouth tape and sleeping mask on. Still, he squeezes her hand in his and looks at the sky and the clouds breaking apart beneath him as the plane carries them closer and closer to the place they once called home.