Give love a try. [Chyan]

16. Working girl

6 am. That's when the alarm went off that morning. Chad wanted nothing more than to burrow deeper into the blankets that now smelled like Ryan.

"Get up. You have work." Ryan groaned without opening his eyes, not fully awake yet, "Come on working girl. You don't want to be late, Fulton's got a huge stick up his ass and will make your life hell, so get up." He sighed and sat up, smiling at the pained expression on Chad's face and leaning across him to turn off the alarm. Ryan couldn't help but giggle when he felt Chad's arms snake around his waist and pull him down onto him, "No, you need to get up." He spoke half heartedly, letting his head fall into Chad's neck, smiling to himself and readjusted his body before speaking again, "You're a bad influence, I hope you know this." And kissed him. Moments like these are ones to live for, Ryan decided. Moments where you're insanely happy, cut off from the world for just a bit, with the person that gives you goosebumps and butterflies. The person that gives you this bubbly feeling in your chest that makes you laugh and you don't even know what's funny, you're just so happy in that moment it comes out.

Chad giggled against Ryan's lips when he laughed, "What's so funny"

Ryan shook his head, "I don't know, I'm just happy. Now get up, I refuse to be the reason you get in trouble." With that he got up off of the bed, pulling off Chad with him. "Go shower, I'll make breakfast, and I promise I won't start a fire." He kissed him on the cheek and walk out to the kitchen. 'I should show him around later.' Ryan thought to himself, scrambling eggs.

Their morning had been relatively quiet, it felt peaceful, both of them were excited about the summer. Three months together to do just about anything they wanted when Chad wasn't working. It sounded like a pretty perfect summer to them. "Okay, it's 06:40. I'll walk you there." Ryan told Chad, putting their dishes in the sink to wash later. Walking to the main building, hand in hand was nice, the already blooming flowers made the air smell nice and sweet, a part of Ryan felt like he must be dreaming because things like that didn't happen in real life. He squeezed Chad's hand, maybe to reassure himself that it was all real, he wasn't sure but the way Chad raised his hand to press a kiss to the back of it had his heart fluttering near erratically.

"Well, this is my stop. I'll see you later today, maybe I can teach you a few moves on the court."

Ryan took Chad's face in his hands and smiled wider, "Only if I get to teach you a little something about dancing."

"I don't dance." Chad responded, grinning so much his cheeks were started to hurt, but that was an easy price to pay for the feelings Ryan made him feel.

"We'll see about that." Ryan went up on his toes and drew Chad in for a kiss, smiling into it even more when he was pulled against a notably solid chest.

Their early morning banter was cut off by the door slamming open, "What are you doing out here, the orientation is about to start. Get inside now." Demanded Mr. Fulton.

The man was partially dreading having to work with a bunch of teenagers for the summer, although the raise he got from agreeing to make their lives hell made it kind of worth it. He didn't want anything to do with whatever scheme Sharpay was running, he would however follow her instructions of working the teens so hard they would quit, well not all of them. For some reason, she wanted him to spare the blue eyed, mop-hair having boy named "Troy", Fulton could only assume he was either in on her scheme or she was trying to somehow garner his affections by treating him better than the rest of the staff. He didn't understand Sharpay, but then again, the girl had always had a rather strange thought process.

Ryan pulled away from Chad and sighed, "Relax, we're right on time." Fulton had always been a very punctual person, him and Sharpay joked that it only added to his British butler charm. "Okay, I'll see you later, bye." Ryan pecked him one more time before letting go, staying to watch Chad go in, 'He is so stacked.' The slacks he had chosen for him that morning were definitely tight in all the right places.

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The orientation hadn't taken very long, they were given a tour of the premises, had the rules explained to them and were then separated into teams according to the skillset each of them possessed. The real hard work came after that, Chad's team had been tasked with cleaning the lobby and dining hall from top to bottom while being supervised by the senior cleaning staff.

Chad had never really minded cleaning much, it could be therapeutic even, but this was not. Being forced to clean a pretty big lobby with like four other people while having a woman who reminded him a little too much of his history teacher breathing down his neck was anything but therapeutic. It was their first day, Fulton couldn't expect them to do all that so soon, and yet, the man would periodically walk in, inspect the room and tell them how bad of a job they were doing. He envied Gabriella, lifeguard duty was definitely much easier than his job, especially when their weren't any guests there yet.

Chad couldn't be more thankful than when 18:00 rolled around, walking tiredly to Ryan's condo. He felt a lot like he'd been run over by a truck, which was not what he expected from his summer job, a part of him was regretting taking the job, summer was supposed to be about relaxing and yet here he was, feeling just as beat up as he would after a full day of school and basketball practice. Upon walking into the living room, he face planted into the couch, groaning at the, "Hey", that was called from somewhat further in the house. He could hear Ryan's footsteps come closer until they were muffled by the rug next to the couch, "Fulton is a douche." Was the first the first thing out of his mouth.

Ryan chuckled at that and sat next to Chad, lifting his head onto his thigh, "Rough day?" He could see the mild exhaustion in Chad's face, and the way he slumped against him when Ryan coaxed him more into a sitting position.

"I'd say so, Fulton made us clean the entire lobby and most of the dining hall, we barely knew where anything went and this lady who kind of reminds me of Mrs. Ramsey was supervising us, which was not fun. And he would come and go, commenting on how badly we were doing, we don't know anything about this place, how the fuck are we supposed to do a good job when he didn't even know where we were going half of the time." The more he talked about it, the more worked up he got, they didn't deserve all that, in Chad's opinion, they deserved a grace period of at least a week to figure stuff out.

Ryan looked at him with furrowed eyebrows, "What? That's not how things are supposed to work, we usually have new staff shadow someone so they can learn how things work before being tasked with anything. I'll talk to him tomorrow. But if it makes you feel better, I went out and got us ice cream and a cake." The way Chad's eyes lit up at the mention of cake let Ryan know that was good move, kissing Chad on the forehead as he got up to get the snacks.

It didn't make sense, Fulton usually never did this with new staff, leaving them to their own devices in an unfamiliar environment was a recipe for disaster, 'What was he thinking?', Ryan thought to himself, whatever the reason was for it, he was going to get to the bottom of it because not only was this bad for business, but it was also bad for his classmates, he didn't want them to have terrible summers because Fulton seemed to be taking his frustrations out on them, it wasn't fair and Ryan was going to do something about it.

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The next few days were better, although it didn't last long before they were being worked to the bone. It was during their break in the kitchen that they were all finally together again. "This fucking sucks. There are so many other things I could be doing with my summer and instead of having fun I'm cleaning up after rich asshats who have clearly never worked in customer service." Justin complained to them, it got a chorus of agreements as they all took turns to air out their grievances with their jobs.

After a few minutes Troy jumped down from the counter he had been sitting on, "Come on guys, stop with the negativity. Sure this isn't what we expected, but at least we're all together, and think of all the money we're making, what we could do with it. Besides, it can't be this bad all summer, they're probably hazing us, think of it as preparation for college. We can't all quit, we've just started, just give it a couple weeks, it'll get better." Troy's happy go lucky attitude was actually kind of contagious, it was effective enough to get them to ,albeit reluctantly, agree to stick it out a little longer. Although it was doubtful that it would last, the treatment they were receiving was bound to push someone to their breaking point.

Constructive criticism is very welcome and very much appreciated and if any of you have any advice you'd like to share please do so.

Published: 26-03-2022