Ricky Bowen Sickfics

30

Guess who got their laptop back!!!! I have a good bit of break left before my next semester starts so hopefully I will be able to write some more of these quickly :)

I will be fulfilling 🤍 

Nini's POV

Ricky was quiet during when he arrived at rehearsals. Usually when Ricky walked through the doors of the auditorium he'd be goofing off with Red and they'd immediately walk up to Gina or Carlos and start chatting. That's what Red did when he arrived ten minutes before Ricky walked in. He was walking a fine line. He entered the room about two minutes before rehearsals were supposed to start. He set down his bag and sat next to it, looking at the floor and avoiding all conversation. 

Miss Jenn walked in and clapped her hands together. I noticed Ricky flinch and then look up at her. Miss Jenn started talking about what we'd be doing today and I found it hard to listen as I focused on Ricky. He was white as a sheet and I was starting to get worried. 

I tried to scoot myself as close to him as I could from my seat on the ground about thirty feet away from him throughout Miss Jenn's speech but I was moving slowly to try not to disturb her and I didn't make it close enough to Ricky to talk to him before Miss Jenn clapped her hands again and told us to get started. 

I looked up at Miss Jenn as she started walking towards Carlos and when I looked back to where Ricky was sitting he was gone. I didn't even know what I was supposed to be doing. 

"Hey!" Ashlyn's voice brought me out of a trance. "Are you ready?"

I apologized immediately, "I'm so sorry, Ashlyn, I was all in my head while Miss Jenn was talking. What are we running?"

"No worries, Nini, we're running Troy and Gabriella's audition scene." Ashlyn glanced over at Miss Jenn who was talking to Ricky. There he was. "Miss Jenn is just giving Ricky some notes, I think. He went up to talk to her instead of coming over to our group so that's what I assumed."

"Oh, okay," I said. 

Ashlyn and I started reading over the pages for a few minutes until Ricky approached us. When he did I realized he looked worse from up close. His eyes were wild and I could hear his breath audibly wavering from a few feet away. 

"Hey, Ricky," Ashlyn said. 

Ricky spoke with a small voice, "Hey, Ash. Nini."

I smiled at him as encouragingly as I could. Ricky started flipping through his script to try to find the scene we were working on. He couldn't find it after a minute and he was becoming visually frustrated. 

"Bottom of page nine," I said. 

Ricky flashed a sheepish smile in my direction. He scrambled to the page and then cleared his throat and started reading. 

We worked through the scene just sitting down a few times and we cut over the song. Ricky was stumbling over his words and speaking quickly. I wasn't feeling any emotion from him but I was scared to criticize him, he looked like he was about to break into a million pieces. 

Miss Jenn listened to us read the scene without the song and then had us warm up our voices while she worked on another scene with a few other students. 

Ricky sounded good. He seemed to calm down a little as he sang. 

But then it was time to put the song and the scene together. 

"Well that was just...very disturbing! Go see a counselor. Next!" Ashlyn said with a strong voice. 

I crept up behind Ricky and pretended to startle him like the script said, but he seemed to jump a little for real. "Hey! So you decided to sign up for something?"