Hang On To Me

Disclaimer: Disney owns High School Musical, not me. I make no money off of this.

Author’s Note: This is my first HSM fic, so please forgive when it gets out of character. It is Angst filled, but it is not a tragedy. Do what you will with that information. I love reviews and appreciate them very much, but they will never be a requirement for me to keep writing. Please be civil, even if you decide to flame, and refrain from attacks on my person. Attacks on the work are just fine if you don’t like it.

Warning: This is a CHAD/RYAN SLASH fic. If you don’t like it, please, just don’t read it.


It felt like they were having a romance. Ryan Evans smiled softly, looking down at the current object of his affections, sharing lunch with his friends and laughing out loud, his head thrown back, his smile so wide. Ryan had never known what it was like to laugh like that, so uninhibited. He loved his family very much, his parents were good to him and his sister could be the most supportive, wonderful person in the world, when she chose. It was true that she didn’t choose to be so often, but he knew that if ever there was anyone who would have his back no matter what, it was his Sharpay. He had a wonderful, contented home life, but he had never known what it was like to show people just how happy or how hurt or how angry he was. His sister did it easily. Sharpay was allowed, felt it was her entitlement, to be the emotional one. He didn’t understand the nick-name “Ice Princess” for her. When she was angry, everyone knew. It was the same if she was happy or sad. There was nothing cold about her. Maybe it was because she could be hard to approach, but he couldn’t think of a less cold person. Arrogant? Yes. Hard to change? God, yes. Judgmental? She could be. But, never really cold. He didn’t think she’d ever frozen her emotions out, even once. The boy he was looking at now was just as emotive, in his own way, but Ryan had never learned how to be so. He could express whatever emotion was needed for a character, but if asked to display what he felt, he didn’t really know where to start. When he was angry, he kept it inside and hid it with a smile. When he was hurt, he did the same thing. It just seemed like the thing to do. Sharpay ruled the school as she saw fit and he was her shadow. There might be plenty of questions about Sharpay or why she did things, but never about him. Like any good shadow, he simply faded into the background. How much could anyone in this school say they knew about him?

He was Sharpay’s twin. He danced and could play baseball reasonably well. He had a backbone when he was on his own, but as soon as he and Sharpay were getting along again, he was right back to being her shadow. Everyone assumed from his flamboyant clothing and dancing that he was gay. He was. He had known he was gay from a very young age, but it would have been nice if someone asked him once, instead of just assuming. Those were probably the things that people would say if someone asked about him. You could count them on one hand. No one ever questioned why he stepped behind Sharpay so willingly. He would have told them the truth as long as they promised not to let Sharpay know that they knew she needed Ryan behind her to support her because she was actually more insecure than she could ever let on. His grades were some of the best in the school, but no one knew because he allowed them all to believe that he was still struggling with dyslexia as he had when they were younger. No one seemed to put together that he was in the same classes as Gabriella and Taylor or that he loved to study. No one knew he wanted to dance more than anything, but that if he never had to sing again he wouldn’t mind. He wanted to join the American Ballet Company more than anything. His teachers thought he just might have what it took to do it, too, if he just buckled down and began seriously studying ballet and stopped wasting time on frivolous musicals. He never told Sharpay what they said. She would be furious and she needed him, so he stayed right where he was. Truth be told, he had been glad when Sharpay had left him alone so much this summer. She was finally stepping out on her own. She didn’t even need him so much during this year at school. He was allowing himself to hope now that soon she would be able to stand on her own and he could go his own way because he wouldn’t always be able to be there. No one, not even his parents, knew that he had always known he would die young.

Of course, those were pretty deep things, not things you share with people every day. He would have been satisfied if someone knew that he liked action movies and was allergic to penicillin. He only knew one person outside of his family who could say those two things. He was watching him laugh with his buddies right now. He allowed his thoughts to drift back to where they had begun. It felt like they were having a romance. A secret romance. It couldn’t be called an affair because neither of them were otherwise attached to anyone else. He also wouldn’t call it a relationship because they were constantly sneaking around and both of them had a fear of getting caught. You didn’t “get caught” in a relationship because there was nothing to hide when two people were in a relationship. At least, that was Ryan’s way of thinking. There was also no label on what they were. Boyfriends didn’t fit because most of the times they got together it was for the simple purpose of having really great sex. Fuck buddies didn’t work either because sometimes, much more rare but still it was known to happen, when they together they didn’t have sex at all. Sometimes they simply curled around each other in one or the others empty house, making sure circumstances were such that no one could walk in on them, and watched a movie. Just looking at the boy in question could make him blush and stammer when he was normally so articulate and his heart hitched a little every time their eyes caught. Ryan wouldn’t have minded putting the labels of boyfriends in a relationship on them, but he knew the other wasn’t ready and that was okay with him.

Even though Ryan’s coming out had been relatively painless, his parents having always somehow known their younger twin was more attracted to his own sex rather than the opposite, he understood that for some people it was a painful, frightening, even traumatizing experience. He wasn’t naïve enough to think that all parents would be like his and smile and tell him that they loved him and supported him in every way. He, also, hadn’t had an image to worry about ruining, or friends who might not have accepted him. The boy he was currently watching had both. He played sports and wasn’t flamboyant in any way. A high school sports player couldn’t be gay, according to the current public opinion. Though it wasn’t fair, he knew that the object of his affections could lose his place on the teams he played on, possibly a scholarship to a good college, and the respect and love of the people he had only ever known as friend all his life if he came out and claimed Ryan as his boyfriend. So, he understood when Chad didn’t want to come out and they never even really discussed it.

It was fine. Just being with him was enough for now. He had never expected anything of the sort to happen, so he would take whatever he could get. Watching Chad now rolling his eyes at the ridiculously sweet way Troy was kissing Gabriella’s knuckles Ryan couldn’t help but smile. He had always been attracted to Chad, but he had never expected that he would ever do more than have a few daydreams (and a few wet dreams, if he was being completely honest with himself) about him. He couldn’t say when his longing glances had begun to be returned, as long as no one else was looking, of course. He couldn’t really place when they began “accidentally” bumping into each other just so they could rub arms or when he had taken to placing his hand just slightly behind him when Chad passed so that he could feel Chad brush his fingers or maybe even squeeze them if there was time. He knew exactly when they had first kissed. Granted, being pulled into a linen closet for a harsh, frantic make-out session that had left them both shocked when Chad had come all over himself just from a little rubbing wasn’t the most romantic situation, but to Ryan it was perfect. He remembered the first time they actually had sex, too, almost a month later. He had guided Chad through it gently, not wanting Chad to pull away because of embarrassment. It had hurt a little at first, because it had been so long for him and Chad hadn’t lasted long, being in him for the first time, but they had gotten better and better at it until now it was nothing less of great every time.

In a way, his inability to express his strong emotion to anyone but those closest to him was an advantage in keeping his non-relationship with Chad a secret. To the rest of the world he was the same old Ryan he had always been. He could smile at Chad, but others might just assume he was smiling at his sister, sitting so happily at the jock table while Zeke fed her one of the delicious treats he had baked just for her. After all, all Ryan Evans cared about were things that affected his sister. No one would ever be able to see his desire for Chad to throw him on one of the tables and take him right there, a rather naughty fantasy they had recreated on the dining room table when the other Evans’ were in New York for a dinner while Ryan had claimed illness. Not even his family could see the thrill it gave him every time they ate at that table now, good memories making him smile. Not even Sharpay knew that he was seeing Chad. It was the way he wanted it. Chad was his secret. He was content to let it be that way for as long as it would last.

He stood, bracing himself from the eventual scene that would occur when he went to get Sharpay from Zeke’s lap so they could go get ready for the scene they were presenting in Drama this afternoon. It wouldn’t be bad, it would just be a scene. He brightened when he realized that where Sharpay was sitting would allow him to stand close enough to Chad to touch without it being noticeable. He had just reached the stairs when an intense pain flashed through him like lightning, centered in his chest. It was gone as quick as it had come, but it left him breathless. He put a hand to his chest, and grasped the rail with the other, leaning over slightly.

“Ryan?” Kelsi called from the table where she was just getting her things together to go as well, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he straightened, “It was just . . .”

Suddenly, the pain hit him again. It was as if someone had reached into his chest and was squeezing his heart in a strong fist. He couldn’t hold back the cry of pain that came from his throat even as he struggled to breathe. He doubled over, using all the strength he had left to keep himself from falling to his knees, both hands clasped over his heart. He heard Kelsi jump to her feet, her papers scattering everywhere. She was at his side in seconds, her gentle hands on his back as she leaned to the side and tried to speak to him.

“Ryan? Ryan, what’s wrong? Ryan, what hurts?”

He wished he could answer her. He wanted to answer her, but he couldn’t even breathe, much less speak. His vision began to fade and he almost sobbed in relief. If he passed out he wouldn’t feel the pain anymore. At the moment he was willing to do just about anything as long as the pain would stop. The last of his strength deserted him and he felt himself fall over, tumbling down the stairs like a rag doll. It was probably better that he couldn’t control his body. He had read somewhere that a person who fainted hurt themselves less than someone who tried to catch themselves in a fall. He didn’t even have the strength to try to stop himself. He felt the pain of the fall as if through a tunnel, like it was too distanced to affect him at all. The pain in his chest was too intense to let anything else past. He heard the sickening sound of a bone snapping when he finally landed at the bottom of the stairs, but couldn’t do more than release a low moan as he looked up a the ceiling, grateful that it, too, was beginning to go dark.

“Baby? Ryan?” Chad’s panicked voice finally reached him and he turned his head a little to see the boy he was almost in love with kneeling by his side, “Ryan, talk to me. Tell me what happened. Come on, baby, stay with me.”

He called me Baby, in public, was Ryan’s last thought as his vision faded completely even as Chad took his hand. He heard Chad cry his name once more before everything went away into the black and he knew no more.