'Lying is the Most Fun A Boy Can Have Without Taking His Clothes Off' [Ryan Evans/Troy Bolton]
Title: 'Lying is the Most Fun A Boy Can Have Without Taking His Clothes Off' [sequel to Let's Get These Teen Hearts Beating (Faster & Faster)]
Author: that_1_incident
Fandom: High School Musical
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Breathplay, infidelity, profanity, sexual themes
Pairing: Ryan Evans/Troy Bolton, implied Gabriella Montez/Troy Bolton
Word Count: ~3,300
Summary: The morning after the night before...
Disclaimer: I don’t own HSM, obvs. Title belongs to Panic at the Disco (by the way, if you're into them, check out my collection of Panic!fic... just sayin').
Author's Notes: This was originally meant to be a Cliff's Notes-esque sequel to my Ryan/Troy/Jez Tyler from "Britannia High" fic titled 'Let's Get These Teen Hearts Beating (Faster & Faster),' written in response to several people's clamors (specifically amory_vain's observation of "Troy's going to have ridiculous hickeys to explain to his classmates the next day and Gabriella will probably faux-break-up with him and sing another PATHETIC, ANNOYING SONG about it" - we are not Gabriella fans, can you tell?) but somehow it turned into something fully formed and almost twice the length of the original freaking standalone. Niiice.
---<---<---@
Troy wakes up the next morning with an uneasy feeling in his stomach, arm slung across Gabriella’s torso and a faint pounding behind his temples. He hadn’t been that drunk, just buzzed - really, really buzzed - but it’d obviously been enough to quite significantly lower his inhibitions because (he winces as it all starts coming back to him) he would never do, er, stuff with a guy while sober, ever. He’d totally chalked that brief bout of fantasies he’d had about Chad a while ago down to hormones and nothing else, because he was only 13 at the time (well, okay, that’s when they started but he was a little older than that when they stopped - like, three years older, just before he met Gabriella… or a little while after, even, if he’s being honest with himself, which he’s not). But now… fuck, how is he ever going to face Ryan ever again? And… did he even get that other guy’s name? Oh, God, he’s a slut.
He rolls over and buries his head in the pillow, ignoring Gabriella’s sleepy, disturbed moan. He’ll deal with this when he wakes up.
--
Troy has been sleeping, deep and dreamless, but gradually becomes aware of what seems to be a small earthquake going on around him. He opens one eye and comes face-to-face with Gabriella, who is prodding his bare chest insistently with one hand and shaking his shoulder with the other. He rolls over and lets out a wordless grumble of protest.
“Troy, what are those marks on your neck?”
That wakes him up. He snaps into a sitting position like someone’s just lit a firecracker under his pillow, hand shooting up to his neck to hide the telltale markings of bruises and burst blood vessels (an action he’ll find really, truly idiotic when he thinks back to it later because Gabriella’s obviously already seen the marks, and covering them up only serves to make him seem even guiltier).
He flashes back to an image of the previous night - his eyes rolled up to the ceiling, fluttering open and closed as Ryan did something to his neck and collarbone, something involving the other boy’s tongue and lips and teeth and eventually his hand, which molded itself gently to the curve of Troy’s neck for just long enough to make him realize that he really, really liked that before Chad had stumbled into the bathroom to pee or throw up or both, and they leapt away from each other like they’d been burned.
“Well?” Gabriella has her hands on her hips, lips pursed, eyebrows raised. It would be funny if this wasn’t such an oh, shit situation.
“I don’t know, I.” Troy’s not quite awake enough to come up with a plausible-sounding excuse so he just sort of trails off and shoots his girlfriend a dazzling smile that he hopes will be completely disarming and result in him getting off scot-free. Gabriella just glares at him. Well, fuck. “You see, we were at this bar…”
Gabriella blinks in a way that implies she’s just traversed the line between mere suspicion and an actual, sinking sense of reality. When she speaks, her voice is deathly quiet. “Troy, who is she?”
Troy clears his throat, and his temples throb sympathetically. “Here’s the thing…” Gabriella waits, eyes wide, shock palpable. “Here’s the thing, I didn't exactly…”
“For fuck’s sake, spit it out,” and whoa, okay, Little Miss Lead Role Brainiac Got-into-Stanford-through-Early-Admission-and-Barely-Missed-a-Day-of-School-in-her-Life won’t say anything stronger than “damn” unless the situation strongly calls for it, so Troy obeys.
“I didn’t exactly get his name.”
Gabriella’s face turns a very interesting shade of red. “What?”
“He was… a guy, and I didn’t exactly get his name.”
“Are you kidding me?!” Gabriella explodes, and Troy knows that’s usually a figure of speech but he swears she’s searching his face for signs that he’s about to burst out laughing any second now. “Two years with me turned you gay?”
Troy holds up his hands. “Wait, wait, what, no, I didn’t say I was gay. I didn’t say anything like that. I just. I kind of… you know, drank more than usual last night because we’re legal here and everything, and, er. One thing led to another, you weren’t there and he… was.”
“Who?” Gabriella demands, voice silky smooth and quiet as anything now, but Troy knows her, knows this tone is the most dangerous.
“Nobody. No-one. Just this guy we met. Tall. Blond. Like I said, I didn’t…” he breaks eye contact, knows how this makes him look, “get his name.”
Gabriella just shakes her head and makes a disapproving noise. “And what did you do with this nameless guy, exactly?” she inquires, the treacherous smoothness still in her voice.
Troy gulps. “Not much,” he lies, “just. Um, just made out in the bathroom.”
“You made out with a guy you met at a club… in a bathroom?” Now Gabriella seems amused, almost, but it’s that kind of hysterical amusement that bubbles up at the precise moment your life is completely breaking apart and you should be crying your eyes out.
“Gabriella, it wasn’t like that.” She just stares at him. “…Okay, well, it was like that, but it wasn’t, like. Cheap.”
“Oh, so it meant something?”
“Yeah.” Her face falls, and his brain screams out wronganswerwronganswer. “No. It was nothing compared to -” His mind is abruptly flooded with images of Ryan coming the first time, lips locked with the British boy’s, and then the second, hard and fast into Troy’s hand after the other guy left. “Well.”
The tears are flowing by now, and Gabriella is grabbing as many things as she can carry, jamming them into her suitcase, tote bag, purse. She marches to the door of their hotel room, arms brimming with unfolded clothes and various tchotchkes (scale models of Big Ben, that kind of thing), attempting to drag her suitcase with one finger and arrange the tote bag on her shoulder in a way that’s conducive to maintaining her balance. Troy wants to get up and help her but knows that won’t be appreciated. She spins on her heels to face her disgraced boyfriend, takes a deep breath and informs him, “I can’t look at you anymore,” which, okay, he gets that she’s upset and everything but come on, she could at least give him the chance to discuss things before storming off to… wait, where is she going?
“Gabriella, wait!” He leaps off the bed and makes for the door. “Can we at least sit down and talk about this before you go running off to Taylor’s?”
“I’m not going to Taylor’s,” she informs him stiffly. “I’m going to Sharpay’s.”
Troy’s mouth drops open. “Sh-Sharpay’s? But. It’s Sharpay. You hate Sharpay.”
“I like everybody,” she sort of sneers, and oh, right, yeah, perfect Gabriella doesn’t even have the word “hate” in her vocabulary, “and besides, she’ll be better than Taylor at coming up with some kind of way to get you back.”
“But, but,” Troy stutters. “She’s rooming with Ryan.”
Gabriella narrows her eyes. “So? Of course they’re rooming together, he’s her twin. Why do you even care?” and this is going to be so, so awkward for Ryan but Troy can’t really see any way out of it.
“I don’t. I mean, I care that you’re leaving, but not where you’re… just forget it. Listen, Gabriella, I made a mistake, I’m sorry, it won’t happen again - that’s all I can tell you.”
“Whatever,” Gabriella snaps, and slams the door behind her.
--
After Gabriella leaves, Troy goes back to bed. He pulls the pillow over his head and screams into the mattress, then spends the next half hour studiously Not Thinking in an unsuccessful attempt to fall back to sleep. Presently there comes a rap on his door and his first thought is that it’s Gabriella, but the knocking sounds too upbeat. He’s banking on it being a hotel employee or someone when a voice calls out, “Troy, I know you’re in there. It’s me,” and he practically falls out of bed in his haste to get to the door.
“Good morning.” Ryan Evans, as usual, looks ever so slightly amused by proceedings.
“Not really,” Troy responds, flopping down on the bed again - facing upwards, this time - and placing the pillow back over his head. “Gabriella knows,” he informs Ryan in a muffled voice.
“Well, she obviously doesn’t know the whole story, because I doubt she would’ve greeted me with a tearful hug and let me comfort her.”
Troy makes some kind of indistinguishable, strangled noise from beneath the fabric.
“Hey,” Ryan says, softer now, “I feel bad too, okay? She and I are friends.”
Troy raises the pillow and peeps out. “Yeah, but she’s my girlfriend.”
“I know.” Ryan sighs. “Look, just for the record, I don’t hook up with random guys in clubs, period, okay? I mean. Until last night.” He massages his forehead with his right index finger and thumb, and Troy can’t help but feel a (shameful, utterly shameful) twinge of arousal at remembering the sensation of that very same hand against his throat. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, you were smiling.”
“It’s nothing, Ryan, I was just thinking… nothing.”
“What?”
Troy scowls. “Your hand, if you must know.”
Ryan stops rubbing his temples. “My…?” He lowers the offending extremity to eye level, stares at it for a second, then looks back at Troy. “What about my hand?”
“You… really, it’s nothing.”
“Troy,” Ryan says sternly, and there’s that voice from last night, the one that gives the orders, and Troy sits up meekly, hugging the pillow against his chest.
“The one you… squeezed my throat with.”
Ryan tilts his head. “Oh?”
“I told you it was nothing.”
“Just like last night was nothing, right?” the other boy shoots back with a smirk.
Troy swallows. “Of course,” he maintains, but the sentence cracks in the middle.
“I see,” Ryan says, and Troy really wants to tell him no, it’s not like that, except he still can’t talk and now Ryan’s moving towards him, sitting on his hotel bed, leaning in and oh, he’s an even better kisser when he’s sober, when Troy’s sober, deliberate and passionate, and it’s really kind of dominating, the way his tongue locks against Troy’s, overpowering him. Troy likes it.
“Ryan, we can’t do this, okay?” Troy murmurs against the wet smack of the other boy’s mouth, but Ryan just grips onto Troy’s bottom lip with his teeth and tugs gently. Troy makes a small noise in the back of his throat and curses himself for it.
“Come here,” Ryan orders, taking the now discarded pillow and returning it to the head of the bed, evidently choosing to ignore Troy’s protestations. Meekly, Troy lies back like he’s at the dentist’s or something, but that feeling only lasts until Ryan straddles him, pants riding so low that the tops of his hipbones peek out, because for sure this has never happened at any of Troy’s yearly check-ups. “Just relax.”
Troy’s not quite sure how he's supposed to relax when his girlfriend is but a few doors over, undoubtedly plotting evil schemes with the Ice Queen of East High while he’s experiencing the full sense of said Ice Queen’s brother’s burgeoning erection as Ryan rubs slowly up and down against the very top of his thigh, but he’s trying - he is.
“Good boy,” Ryan praises, ruffling his hair, and he leans up into the touch, submissive, almost purring.
Ryan leans down and kisses him lightly, making soft noises in his throat as his hands traverse the other boy’s abs, dipping down just long enough to tease before moving back up again, passing Troy’s nipples (one of which he gives a cursory tweak) to arrive at his neck. Troy shivers when he realizes what’s going on, which is Ryan’s cue to clasp his throat loosely and apply some gentle pressure. Troy is so hard now. He knows where this is going and shuts his eyes, only to be reprimanded by Ryan.
“I need to see you,” Ryan insists, and Troy manages a pathetic, half-formed protest before the other boy explains, “I need to see you so I know when to stop,” and oh, whoa, okay. Troy just swallows and nods, lifting his hands until they’re resting up above his head. He’s not even sure why he does it, it just feels right. Ryan smirks. “You were born for this, weren’t you?”
“Wh-what?” he queries breathily. Ryan’s barely applying any pressure at all but just the sensation is enough to get Troy all hot and bothered.
Ryan laughs, and it’s different from his normal one - throatier, sexier - and he replies matter-of-factly, “Being a sub.”
“I am n -” Troy begins indignantly, but Ryan says, “Quiet,” and starts to squeeze, and that’s the end of that.
They’re moving against each other in earnest now, Troy pushing his hips up so his erection brushes Ryan’s. Ryan drops down to lie on top of him, using his free hand to release his own cock from his pants and liberating Troy’s from his pajama pants.
“Look at me,” Ryan says unnecessarily, hardness scraping against hardness - as if Troy can focus on anything else. He increases the pressure again, and Troy feels his body go into panic mode, heart pounding faster, the rush of blood in his ears, cock hardening more than he’d ever even thought possible. Amazingly, he can feel his orgasm build and build against this backdrop like a slow-moving steam train even though his cells are being slowly starved of oxygen, and if he didn’t trust Ryan a hell of a lot he’d be so scared right now because, hello, his life is literally in the other boy’s hands. It isn’t until he feels like he’s about to black out that Ryan stays true to his word and lets up on the pressure. The blessed whoosh of oxygen into his lungs is almost painful - not that he’s thinking about that aspect of it at all because with the oxygen comes the climax, hot and gasping and complete, like nothing he’s ever felt before, and Ryan grins and grabs his hand, forcing it down to his own erection. Troy manages a couple of jerky, discombobulated strokes and that’s all the other boy needs to come hard against his stomach, burying his face in Troy’s neck. Troy can feel his racing pulse refracting off the clammy, hot skin of Ryan’s forehead and he closes his eyes, drinking this all in - the perfection of it.
They lie like that for a little while, just catching their breath, and then Ryan presses a kiss to his already bruised collarbone and says, “This isn’t really a one-time thing anymore, Troy.”
Troy doesn’t open his eyes. “I know.”
“What are you going to do about Gab -”
“I don’t know.”
Ryan gets the hint after that, lapsing into silence. Troy can feel the other boy’s breath against his skin, hates himself for liking it so much.
“Maybe we can come back from this,” he says finally, opening his eyes and addressing the ceiling. “As far as Gabriella knows, it was just some random guy at a club - which, technically not a lie, okay, I just... left out the fact that you were involved. I was drunk, he was there, I regret it, end of. Maybe she and I can just go back to how we were before.”
“Is that what you want?”
Troy hesitates for half a second, but it’s enough for Ryan to read between the lines. “It’s how my life is supposed to go,” he says lamely, and the other boy lifts his head and just stares at him.
“Yeah, never mind what makes you happy, right?”
“It’s not like Gabriella makes me unhappy,” Troy protests, like somehow that justifies it.
“You know,” Ryan begins airily, “it’s this time of year that a lot of seniors’ relationships break up.”
“I’m not breaking up with her.”
“But is she breaking up with you?”
Troy puts his hands over his eyes. “I don’t know. I can’t deal with this, Ryan. Please, stop asking questions.”
“You really should stop hiding from your problems at some point in your life. Just saying.”
“I’m not breaking up with her, okay? I love her. I want to be with her.”
“Will you look me in the eye and tell me that?”
Troy exhales noisily, but removes his hands from his face and meets Ryan’s gaze as he repeats, “I’m not breaking up with her.”
“And the rest of it?”
He kind of wants to laugh because Ryan’s got him totally trapped here - completely cornered - because the other boy will know if he’s lying but he’s not going to tell the truth because that would mean acknowledging it.
“I’m not breaking up with her,” he says again for, what, the fourth time now.
Ryan just rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah, Troy, I get that part,” and all at once Troy starts feeling really awkward, lying here like this, and Ryan obviously feels the same because he starts to pull away, but to his surprise (and Troy’s), Troy reaches out to grab his wrist.
“Don’t.”
Ryan gives him a look of utter exasperation. “Will you make up your mind?”
“Look, Ryan, I got with a couple of guys when I was really fucking drunk and my girlfriend wasn’t around, okay? I did. I’ll admit it. But that’s it, yeah? That’s as far as it went, and that’s as far as it’s ever going to go, but I don’t want to lose, like, our fucking friendship over this.”
Ryan sits up, adjusts his pants and tucks himself back in. “You weren’t that drunk,” he murmurs.
“Excuse me?”
“I said you weren’t that drunk. I was with you like, the whole night. I saw how much you had, Troy, and we’ve been to enough of the same parties for me to know what your limit is.”
Troy frowns. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you being wasted is a really good excuse, but that’s all it is.”
“Ryan…” Troy says slowly, evenly - too evenly. “Don’t make this into something it’s not.”
“Don’t pretend that this isn’t what it is,” Ryan shoots back, and Troy’s eyes flash.
“Being with you felt good, okay? Is that what you want me to say? Last night and this morning - they were amazing, but it ends here. It has to end here, get it?”
“Not really,” Ryan says mildly, rising from the bed and zipping up his pants. “This isn’t fair to anyone, you know? Even if Gabriella forgives you… something’s going to happen. Somewhere down the road, this will come out, or there’ll be someone else, some other guy. You can’t just repress parts of yourself like this and be happy, Troy.”
“You can’t, Ryan, but maybe I can, okay? I want to try. I need to try. For me, for Gabriella, for my parents. Everyone.”
“For your reputation, you mean.”
“Fuck you.”
Ryan doesn’t say anything in response, just nods slowly. “I’m going back to my room now,” he says eventually, in surprisingly measured tones. “I’ll tell your girlfriend you want to talk to her.” Troy shoots him a panicked glance so he continues, “I won’t say anything about what happened, don’t worry. I’m not particularly interested in being associated with someone who’s willing to sweep parts of himself under the rug just to live up to other people’s expectations, to be honest with you.”
“Ryan, don’t be like that.”
“Hey, you made your decision,” Ryan tells him firmly, closing the door behind him with a soft click and leaving Troy to his own devices.
“Fuck,” Troy explodes, swiping furiously at the evidence of their encounter that’s still all over his stomach and the bedclothes. “Shit. Fuck.”
He probably ought to clean himself up and go find Gabriella so he can grovel at her feet, but all he really wants to do is forget this is happening and go back to sleep.
---<---<---@
Author: that_1_incident
Fandom: High School Musical
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Breathplay, infidelity, profanity, sexual themes
Pairing: Ryan Evans/Troy Bolton, implied Gabriella Montez/Troy Bolton
Word Count: ~3,300
Summary: The morning after the night before...
Disclaimer: I don’t own HSM, obvs. Title belongs to Panic at the Disco (by the way, if you're into them, check out my collection of Panic!fic... just sayin').
Author's Notes: This was originally meant to be a Cliff's Notes-esque sequel to my Ryan/Troy/Jez Tyler from "Britannia High" fic titled 'Let's Get These Teen Hearts Beating (Faster & Faster),' written in response to several people's clamors (specifically amory_vain's observation of "Troy's going to have ridiculous hickeys to explain to his classmates the next day and Gabriella will probably faux-break-up with him and sing another PATHETIC, ANNOYING SONG about it" - we are not Gabriella fans, can you tell?) but somehow it turned into something fully formed and almost twice the length of the original freaking standalone. Niiice.
---<---<---@
Troy wakes up the next morning with an uneasy feeling in his stomach, arm slung across Gabriella’s torso and a faint pounding behind his temples. He hadn’t been that drunk, just buzzed - really, really buzzed - but it’d obviously been enough to quite significantly lower his inhibitions because (he winces as it all starts coming back to him) he would never do, er, stuff with a guy while sober, ever. He’d totally chalked that brief bout of fantasies he’d had about Chad a while ago down to hormones and nothing else, because he was only 13 at the time (well, okay, that’s when they started but he was a little older than that when they stopped - like, three years older, just before he met Gabriella… or a little while after, even, if he’s being honest with himself, which he’s not). But now… fuck, how is he ever going to face Ryan ever again? And… did he even get that other guy’s name? Oh, God, he’s a slut.
He rolls over and buries his head in the pillow, ignoring Gabriella’s sleepy, disturbed moan. He’ll deal with this when he wakes up.
--
Troy has been sleeping, deep and dreamless, but gradually becomes aware of what seems to be a small earthquake going on around him. He opens one eye and comes face-to-face with Gabriella, who is prodding his bare chest insistently with one hand and shaking his shoulder with the other. He rolls over and lets out a wordless grumble of protest.
“Troy, what are those marks on your neck?”
That wakes him up. He snaps into a sitting position like someone’s just lit a firecracker under his pillow, hand shooting up to his neck to hide the telltale markings of bruises and burst blood vessels (an action he’ll find really, truly idiotic when he thinks back to it later because Gabriella’s obviously already seen the marks, and covering them up only serves to make him seem even guiltier).
He flashes back to an image of the previous night - his eyes rolled up to the ceiling, fluttering open and closed as Ryan did something to his neck and collarbone, something involving the other boy’s tongue and lips and teeth and eventually his hand, which molded itself gently to the curve of Troy’s neck for just long enough to make him realize that he really, really liked that before Chad had stumbled into the bathroom to pee or throw up or both, and they leapt away from each other like they’d been burned.
“Well?” Gabriella has her hands on her hips, lips pursed, eyebrows raised. It would be funny if this wasn’t such an oh, shit situation.
“I don’t know, I.” Troy’s not quite awake enough to come up with a plausible-sounding excuse so he just sort of trails off and shoots his girlfriend a dazzling smile that he hopes will be completely disarming and result in him getting off scot-free. Gabriella just glares at him. Well, fuck. “You see, we were at this bar…”
Gabriella blinks in a way that implies she’s just traversed the line between mere suspicion and an actual, sinking sense of reality. When she speaks, her voice is deathly quiet. “Troy, who is she?”
Troy clears his throat, and his temples throb sympathetically. “Here’s the thing…” Gabriella waits, eyes wide, shock palpable. “Here’s the thing, I didn't exactly…”
“For fuck’s sake, spit it out,” and whoa, okay, Little Miss Lead Role Brainiac Got-into-Stanford-through-Early-Admission-and-Barely-Missed-a-Day-of-School-in-her-Life won’t say anything stronger than “damn” unless the situation strongly calls for it, so Troy obeys.
“I didn’t exactly get his name.”
Gabriella’s face turns a very interesting shade of red. “What?”
“He was… a guy, and I didn’t exactly get his name.”
“Are you kidding me?!” Gabriella explodes, and Troy knows that’s usually a figure of speech but he swears she’s searching his face for signs that he’s about to burst out laughing any second now. “Two years with me turned you gay?”
Troy holds up his hands. “Wait, wait, what, no, I didn’t say I was gay. I didn’t say anything like that. I just. I kind of… you know, drank more than usual last night because we’re legal here and everything, and, er. One thing led to another, you weren’t there and he… was.”
“Who?” Gabriella demands, voice silky smooth and quiet as anything now, but Troy knows her, knows this tone is the most dangerous.
“Nobody. No-one. Just this guy we met. Tall. Blond. Like I said, I didn’t…” he breaks eye contact, knows how this makes him look, “get his name.”
Gabriella just shakes her head and makes a disapproving noise. “And what did you do with this nameless guy, exactly?” she inquires, the treacherous smoothness still in her voice.
Troy gulps. “Not much,” he lies, “just. Um, just made out in the bathroom.”
“You made out with a guy you met at a club… in a bathroom?” Now Gabriella seems amused, almost, but it’s that kind of hysterical amusement that bubbles up at the precise moment your life is completely breaking apart and you should be crying your eyes out.
“Gabriella, it wasn’t like that.” She just stares at him. “…Okay, well, it was like that, but it wasn’t, like. Cheap.”
“Oh, so it meant something?”
“Yeah.” Her face falls, and his brain screams out wronganswerwronganswer. “No. It was nothing compared to -” His mind is abruptly flooded with images of Ryan coming the first time, lips locked with the British boy’s, and then the second, hard and fast into Troy’s hand after the other guy left. “Well.”
The tears are flowing by now, and Gabriella is grabbing as many things as she can carry, jamming them into her suitcase, tote bag, purse. She marches to the door of their hotel room, arms brimming with unfolded clothes and various tchotchkes (scale models of Big Ben, that kind of thing), attempting to drag her suitcase with one finger and arrange the tote bag on her shoulder in a way that’s conducive to maintaining her balance. Troy wants to get up and help her but knows that won’t be appreciated. She spins on her heels to face her disgraced boyfriend, takes a deep breath and informs him, “I can’t look at you anymore,” which, okay, he gets that she’s upset and everything but come on, she could at least give him the chance to discuss things before storming off to… wait, where is she going?
“Gabriella, wait!” He leaps off the bed and makes for the door. “Can we at least sit down and talk about this before you go running off to Taylor’s?”
“I’m not going to Taylor’s,” she informs him stiffly. “I’m going to Sharpay’s.”
Troy’s mouth drops open. “Sh-Sharpay’s? But. It’s Sharpay. You hate Sharpay.”
“I like everybody,” she sort of sneers, and oh, right, yeah, perfect Gabriella doesn’t even have the word “hate” in her vocabulary, “and besides, she’ll be better than Taylor at coming up with some kind of way to get you back.”
“But, but,” Troy stutters. “She’s rooming with Ryan.”
Gabriella narrows her eyes. “So? Of course they’re rooming together, he’s her twin. Why do you even care?” and this is going to be so, so awkward for Ryan but Troy can’t really see any way out of it.
“I don’t. I mean, I care that you’re leaving, but not where you’re… just forget it. Listen, Gabriella, I made a mistake, I’m sorry, it won’t happen again - that’s all I can tell you.”
“Whatever,” Gabriella snaps, and slams the door behind her.
--
After Gabriella leaves, Troy goes back to bed. He pulls the pillow over his head and screams into the mattress, then spends the next half hour studiously Not Thinking in an unsuccessful attempt to fall back to sleep. Presently there comes a rap on his door and his first thought is that it’s Gabriella, but the knocking sounds too upbeat. He’s banking on it being a hotel employee or someone when a voice calls out, “Troy, I know you’re in there. It’s me,” and he practically falls out of bed in his haste to get to the door.
“Good morning.” Ryan Evans, as usual, looks ever so slightly amused by proceedings.
“Not really,” Troy responds, flopping down on the bed again - facing upwards, this time - and placing the pillow back over his head. “Gabriella knows,” he informs Ryan in a muffled voice.
“Well, she obviously doesn’t know the whole story, because I doubt she would’ve greeted me with a tearful hug and let me comfort her.”
Troy makes some kind of indistinguishable, strangled noise from beneath the fabric.
“Hey,” Ryan says, softer now, “I feel bad too, okay? She and I are friends.”
Troy raises the pillow and peeps out. “Yeah, but she’s my girlfriend.”
“I know.” Ryan sighs. “Look, just for the record, I don’t hook up with random guys in clubs, period, okay? I mean. Until last night.” He massages his forehead with his right index finger and thumb, and Troy can’t help but feel a (shameful, utterly shameful) twinge of arousal at remembering the sensation of that very same hand against his throat. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, you were smiling.”
“It’s nothing, Ryan, I was just thinking… nothing.”
“What?”
Troy scowls. “Your hand, if you must know.”
Ryan stops rubbing his temples. “My…?” He lowers the offending extremity to eye level, stares at it for a second, then looks back at Troy. “What about my hand?”
“You… really, it’s nothing.”
“Troy,” Ryan says sternly, and there’s that voice from last night, the one that gives the orders, and Troy sits up meekly, hugging the pillow against his chest.
“The one you… squeezed my throat with.”
Ryan tilts his head. “Oh?”
“I told you it was nothing.”
“Just like last night was nothing, right?” the other boy shoots back with a smirk.
Troy swallows. “Of course,” he maintains, but the sentence cracks in the middle.
“I see,” Ryan says, and Troy really wants to tell him no, it’s not like that, except he still can’t talk and now Ryan’s moving towards him, sitting on his hotel bed, leaning in and oh, he’s an even better kisser when he’s sober, when Troy’s sober, deliberate and passionate, and it’s really kind of dominating, the way his tongue locks against Troy’s, overpowering him. Troy likes it.
“Ryan, we can’t do this, okay?” Troy murmurs against the wet smack of the other boy’s mouth, but Ryan just grips onto Troy’s bottom lip with his teeth and tugs gently. Troy makes a small noise in the back of his throat and curses himself for it.
“Come here,” Ryan orders, taking the now discarded pillow and returning it to the head of the bed, evidently choosing to ignore Troy’s protestations. Meekly, Troy lies back like he’s at the dentist’s or something, but that feeling only lasts until Ryan straddles him, pants riding so low that the tops of his hipbones peek out, because for sure this has never happened at any of Troy’s yearly check-ups. “Just relax.”
Troy’s not quite sure how he's supposed to relax when his girlfriend is but a few doors over, undoubtedly plotting evil schemes with the Ice Queen of East High while he’s experiencing the full sense of said Ice Queen’s brother’s burgeoning erection as Ryan rubs slowly up and down against the very top of his thigh, but he’s trying - he is.
“Good boy,” Ryan praises, ruffling his hair, and he leans up into the touch, submissive, almost purring.
Ryan leans down and kisses him lightly, making soft noises in his throat as his hands traverse the other boy’s abs, dipping down just long enough to tease before moving back up again, passing Troy’s nipples (one of which he gives a cursory tweak) to arrive at his neck. Troy shivers when he realizes what’s going on, which is Ryan’s cue to clasp his throat loosely and apply some gentle pressure. Troy is so hard now. He knows where this is going and shuts his eyes, only to be reprimanded by Ryan.
“I need to see you,” Ryan insists, and Troy manages a pathetic, half-formed protest before the other boy explains, “I need to see you so I know when to stop,” and oh, whoa, okay. Troy just swallows and nods, lifting his hands until they’re resting up above his head. He’s not even sure why he does it, it just feels right. Ryan smirks. “You were born for this, weren’t you?”
“Wh-what?” he queries breathily. Ryan’s barely applying any pressure at all but just the sensation is enough to get Troy all hot and bothered.
Ryan laughs, and it’s different from his normal one - throatier, sexier - and he replies matter-of-factly, “Being a sub.”
“I am n -” Troy begins indignantly, but Ryan says, “Quiet,” and starts to squeeze, and that’s the end of that.
They’re moving against each other in earnest now, Troy pushing his hips up so his erection brushes Ryan’s. Ryan drops down to lie on top of him, using his free hand to release his own cock from his pants and liberating Troy’s from his pajama pants.
“Look at me,” Ryan says unnecessarily, hardness scraping against hardness - as if Troy can focus on anything else. He increases the pressure again, and Troy feels his body go into panic mode, heart pounding faster, the rush of blood in his ears, cock hardening more than he’d ever even thought possible. Amazingly, he can feel his orgasm build and build against this backdrop like a slow-moving steam train even though his cells are being slowly starved of oxygen, and if he didn’t trust Ryan a hell of a lot he’d be so scared right now because, hello, his life is literally in the other boy’s hands. It isn’t until he feels like he’s about to black out that Ryan stays true to his word and lets up on the pressure. The blessed whoosh of oxygen into his lungs is almost painful - not that he’s thinking about that aspect of it at all because with the oxygen comes the climax, hot and gasping and complete, like nothing he’s ever felt before, and Ryan grins and grabs his hand, forcing it down to his own erection. Troy manages a couple of jerky, discombobulated strokes and that’s all the other boy needs to come hard against his stomach, burying his face in Troy’s neck. Troy can feel his racing pulse refracting off the clammy, hot skin of Ryan’s forehead and he closes his eyes, drinking this all in - the perfection of it.
They lie like that for a little while, just catching their breath, and then Ryan presses a kiss to his already bruised collarbone and says, “This isn’t really a one-time thing anymore, Troy.”
Troy doesn’t open his eyes. “I know.”
“What are you going to do about Gab -”
“I don’t know.”
Ryan gets the hint after that, lapsing into silence. Troy can feel the other boy’s breath against his skin, hates himself for liking it so much.
“Maybe we can come back from this,” he says finally, opening his eyes and addressing the ceiling. “As far as Gabriella knows, it was just some random guy at a club - which, technically not a lie, okay, I just... left out the fact that you were involved. I was drunk, he was there, I regret it, end of. Maybe she and I can just go back to how we were before.”
“Is that what you want?”
Troy hesitates for half a second, but it’s enough for Ryan to read between the lines. “It’s how my life is supposed to go,” he says lamely, and the other boy lifts his head and just stares at him.
“Yeah, never mind what makes you happy, right?”
“It’s not like Gabriella makes me unhappy,” Troy protests, like somehow that justifies it.
“You know,” Ryan begins airily, “it’s this time of year that a lot of seniors’ relationships break up.”
“I’m not breaking up with her.”
“But is she breaking up with you?”
Troy puts his hands over his eyes. “I don’t know. I can’t deal with this, Ryan. Please, stop asking questions.”
“You really should stop hiding from your problems at some point in your life. Just saying.”
“I’m not breaking up with her, okay? I love her. I want to be with her.”
“Will you look me in the eye and tell me that?”
Troy exhales noisily, but removes his hands from his face and meets Ryan’s gaze as he repeats, “I’m not breaking up with her.”
“And the rest of it?”
He kind of wants to laugh because Ryan’s got him totally trapped here - completely cornered - because the other boy will know if he’s lying but he’s not going to tell the truth because that would mean acknowledging it.
“I’m not breaking up with her,” he says again for, what, the fourth time now.
Ryan just rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah, Troy, I get that part,” and all at once Troy starts feeling really awkward, lying here like this, and Ryan obviously feels the same because he starts to pull away, but to his surprise (and Troy’s), Troy reaches out to grab his wrist.
“Don’t.”
Ryan gives him a look of utter exasperation. “Will you make up your mind?”
“Look, Ryan, I got with a couple of guys when I was really fucking drunk and my girlfriend wasn’t around, okay? I did. I’ll admit it. But that’s it, yeah? That’s as far as it went, and that’s as far as it’s ever going to go, but I don’t want to lose, like, our fucking friendship over this.”
Ryan sits up, adjusts his pants and tucks himself back in. “You weren’t that drunk,” he murmurs.
“Excuse me?”
“I said you weren’t that drunk. I was with you like, the whole night. I saw how much you had, Troy, and we’ve been to enough of the same parties for me to know what your limit is.”
Troy frowns. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you being wasted is a really good excuse, but that’s all it is.”
“Ryan…” Troy says slowly, evenly - too evenly. “Don’t make this into something it’s not.”
“Don’t pretend that this isn’t what it is,” Ryan shoots back, and Troy’s eyes flash.
“Being with you felt good, okay? Is that what you want me to say? Last night and this morning - they were amazing, but it ends here. It has to end here, get it?”
“Not really,” Ryan says mildly, rising from the bed and zipping up his pants. “This isn’t fair to anyone, you know? Even if Gabriella forgives you… something’s going to happen. Somewhere down the road, this will come out, or there’ll be someone else, some other guy. You can’t just repress parts of yourself like this and be happy, Troy.”
“You can’t, Ryan, but maybe I can, okay? I want to try. I need to try. For me, for Gabriella, for my parents. Everyone.”
“For your reputation, you mean.”
“Fuck you.”
Ryan doesn’t say anything in response, just nods slowly. “I’m going back to my room now,” he says eventually, in surprisingly measured tones. “I’ll tell your girlfriend you want to talk to her.” Troy shoots him a panicked glance so he continues, “I won’t say anything about what happened, don’t worry. I’m not particularly interested in being associated with someone who’s willing to sweep parts of himself under the rug just to live up to other people’s expectations, to be honest with you.”
“Ryan, don’t be like that.”
“Hey, you made your decision,” Ryan tells him firmly, closing the door behind him with a soft click and leaving Troy to his own devices.
“Fuck,” Troy explodes, swiping furiously at the evidence of their encounter that’s still all over his stomach and the bedclothes. “Shit. Fuck.”
He probably ought to clean himself up and go find Gabriella so he can grovel at her feet, but all he really wants to do is forget this is happening and go back to sleep.
---<---<---@