Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Evan Hansen lays on the patch of forest floor where he died. He stares up, and up, and up through the path of broken branches and estimates where he had let go. He can still feel that whoosh his stomach made as it leaped for his throat when his fingers loosened and had nothing else to hold on to. Some animal instinct in him that had felt self-preservation launched at him at the very last second.

“Too late!” The words burst out of him in a chuckle he had never heard out from his own mouth before.

Evan always thought the afterlife would be just one great Nothing. He had hoped it would just cancel out his existence like pressing delete on a poor choice of words, the words being: Evan Hansen lives.

Unexpectedly, the afterlife is just hanging out in the place where one died. He assumes being surrounded by trees isn't too bad to spend eternity, especially when it feels like all the things he felt inside him have finally gentled to a numb purr.

Except he's not sure if it's apathy that's settled deep in his bones or if it's something else entirely---he doesn't think he's ever felt apathy in his life, he's always felt too much. Evan is too cautious to label it Peace, because that is definitely an alien experience. He would rather just hazily identify this quietness that has settled between each gentle rise and fall of his breaths as low-energy self-awareness.

He is dead and he thought it would just be oblivion, the kind of The End you see after a story is finished and there is nothing else to know and see of it. Instead, it's just one long meditative session.

Evan’s thoughts drift and he stares at the leaves, they rattle soothingly like waves. Or so he's heard they sound like ocean waves, he's never been to the ocean and he had wanted to visit the ocean---Florida or maybe California or maybe even Mexico---if he had ever had the chance.

He wonders who found his body. He wonders how long he's been in this Quiet Place.

He listens to the leaves and traces the branches and catches his eyes desperately upon the clouds above because sometimes his mother’s wavering grief-stricken face materializes suddenly in his thoughts.

In the Quiet Place, Evan does not think about how long it will be until slowly that veil of grief will lift from his mother's face when she realizes she does not have her broken son to keep hurting her and messing up her life.

Evan curls up into a ball upon the fallen leaves that-don't-feel-like-leaves and tries to convince himself that what he did was for the best. He won't think of his mom who will be able to just be Heidi and go and do the things she couldn't have done with him still in the picture. He won't think of Jared, his “family friend” and how he won't have to be pushed into driving Evan around and bribed into hanging out with him because his parents want him to. He won't think of his dad---he just won't. He won't think of Zoe, she won't even realize he's gone because she didn't even know he existed in the first place. When the school makes an announcement of his death to the student body she will probably know him for like a miniscule of a second before going on with her bright, brilliant life.

The peaceful neutrality he feels is a very fragile thing. He is a boy bobbing on the waves of his relentless anxiety, something nasty always manages (even in death) to wind itself around his ankle and drag him to the dark corner of his mind that led him here.

Every time he focuses on the leaves, the branches, the sky above---it is like a big heaving gulp of air away from the drowning sensation of thinking about his pre-death and post-death.

The crackle of leaves being trodden on send him shooting up into a sitting position and he hears someone say: “O shit...Evan Hansen?”

Evan whips around and nearly topples over when he spots Zoe Murphy’s brother, Connor.

Chapter Text

What the--?

Out of everyone Evan imagined would materialize into wherever the heck he is, he never, not ever even considered seeing Connor Murphy step foot here.

Overwhelmed with a barrage of question marks he's sure are plainly visible around his head, he watches silently as Connor visibly wavers a handful of feet away from Evan. He looks as if he wants to step towards Evan but kind of rocks on his heels and stays in place instead. Connor shakes his head and mutters something like: “makes sense…” before strolling to where Evan sits and plopping against the tree beside him.

Again, Evan has no idea of what to make of this. From beside him, he hears (fake?) Connor give a soft sigh as he arranges himself into an awkward looking seated position: his legs stretched out and his hands kind of fluttering around the leaves and his sweather like tiny birds before settling for his pockets.

Evan is not sure whether it's the place they are in that makes Connor look so out of place or if it's the fact that he is sitting next to Connor Murphy...in the place where dead people go.

Regardless, he is a strange sight, not just for the unexpectedness of his presence, but for the very slight incorporeal quality to his movements. Sitting close, Evan can just barely see the outline of trees behind Connor.

Evan knows he is staring, and jumps when Connor gives an awkward, “hi.”

“Uh--hi?”

Connor almost looks at ease besides him, a sight he has never seen on the boy at school. Connor always looks like he's trying to disappear by wearing all those dark clothes, and keeping his face shuttered behind his hair, but all that ever accomplishes is attracting negative attention. People peer at him like a malevolent specter two-seconds away from flipping a desk or throwing a printer.

Now, Connor kind of just has a miniscule tilt to his lips and a look in his eyes Evan can't quite place. Evan wants to ask are you dead too? But the words muddle his mouth like marbles. Some intuition is making him hold his tongue 

Instead Evan starts to ask the next best thing: “how are you---?” but Connor also asks “how did you---?” One of Connor’s thin eyebrow raises and he pauses expectantly but Evan presses his mouth shut for he is a little more curious as to what this more unwinded and slightly peaceful (Fake?) Connor has to say.

“How did you fall?”

Okay, that was unexpected. If Evan is correct and this is indeed a Connor Murphy his after-life decided to conjure up for whatever reason then why would he (it?) not know?

“I let go.” Evan decides to state honestly.

Connor’s eyes widen and then narrow, “Bull.”

“W-What?”

“I call bullshit.”

“Wait...Why?”

“‘Cause that's incredibly dumb and not to mention suicidal.” Connor huffs as if it were obvious.

Evan barely notices as his hand strays to the hem of his shirt and begins to tug at it “B-but that was kind of the point...the s-suicidal bit, I mean. I let go of the br-branch b-because I wanted to die.”

Now the Connor Evan has seen in the halls makes an appearance as a grim shadow encompasses his face. “Shut up.” Connor has turned all the way around to face Evan, an angry flush beginning to rise on his cheeks.

Evan had never realized how expressive Connor Murphy’s face is, but it makes sense given how when he is angry people are quick to flee the thundering mass of his frustrations.

If Evan were alive he would already be stuttering out some apology and stumbling his way out of this situation.

But this isn't real, and Evan’s missing raging pit of anxiety prompts him to say: “But I did?”

“What the fuck? What are you saying?"

Evan has no idea why he's starting to get a little annoyed by Connor’s denial. He is dead. He died. He succeeded. Why is his brain trying to convince him otherwise through Connor Murphy of all people? “I-I...I did-I did let go of that branch!” Evan flings his arm to point above him, “I let go so I would die b-because---”

“Goddamn it---!”

“---it was all too much!”

"SHUT UP!" Connor slams his fist against the trunk of the tree and Evan flinches. Evan feels as if he's been punched.

Something in the way Evan must be looking at Connor causes the long-haired boy's face to pale as his bird-like hands fly to his hair and tug. Evan hears Connor mumble, "Shit...I---fuck, I'm sorry it's just dreams aren't supposed to work this way...I just wanted you to stop saying such-such shit-awful things ‘cause Evan Hansen would never do that because he is nice, and quiet and good. I’m not! I’m the one that needs to die...not him…” Connor deflates at the end. His hair falls as his hands unclench from the tight white-knuckle grip he held them in.

There is silence, Evan feels like the heaviness between them is crushing him down into the floor, pressing him down to judge how he handles the situation before him. 

"Connor…” Evan whispers, it slips right out of him.

Connor seems to flinch at the sound but he keeps his head low, avoiding Evan’s eyes. But Evan can see. Despite Connor’s stone-cold stillness, every angle of his body is held in a tension that is poised to leap into a dash at any second.

The next thing Evan says, he says carefully, “No.”

Connor’s jaw makes a miniscule movement, “No?”

“No. You can't die.”

“And why the hell not?” Connor's eyes while back to pierce Evan. Connor has a certain gravity to his anger, like those moments before the sky cracks and everything smells of iron as it pours rainfall, “tell me...you know what? Tell me one good-not-broken thing about me.”

In the precious seconds before Evan knows he should answer he is pained to realize that he has not noticed much about the boy before him recently other than how he storms. Evan turns his thoughts to the rare quiet moments he's seen Connor inhabiting. Those times when Connor bends over a book in the library like he wants to fall into it. Or when Evan turns in his desk and catches Connor scratching carefully at the edges of his papers with colors other than the standard black and blue. This, Evan senses he can share. So, he says as gently as possible, “You are an artist…”

Connor scoffs and before he can be interrupted Evan literally jumps to continue, almost tipping too far into Connor’s space, “I-I remember in elementary school---I don't remember the grade---I think we had Mrs. Tiff? So, fifth grade? Anyways, I remember seeing you always drawing and I wondered what it was you would doodle be-because sometimes when the teacher would pass back your assignments I’d see things drawn along the sides of the paper or-or just taking up the whole assignment,” It feels like the words are just bursting out of him one after the other, faster and faster. And with each thing shared, Connor's eyes seem to get wider and wider with surprise. Evan had never noticed the brown patch of blue in one of his eyes before now. “and then one day when I passed I saw what you drew and it was the tree outside our classroom window, you were in the desk closest to it, and I thought it was so good!” Now that the words are out Evan doesn't want to stop.

Evan very nearly grabs Connor’s hand but instead continues in the river of words meant to sate Connor: “And---and, Freshmen year we had English together and we had an assignment where we had to c-combine two songs together to make a little short story b-but we could also draw something to go with it for extra credit. And I remember seeing a really neat one that I really wanted a copy of because it was so creative. It was a drawing combining The Beatles Nowhere Man and Starman by David Bowie except I had never actually listened to Starman before and I was a little confused as to why both were combined? And I had spent nearly the whole day afterwards thinking about it because I wanted to understand why and then I think I understood but it was dumb---anyways, that really great drawing I saw that day was yours and it was---it was beautiful.” Evan heaves a deep breath in after that and brings a hand to his chest because it is strangely beating wildly as if he still had a heart.

Connor’s angry flush has drained away and he no longer looks tensed to flee or anything of the sort at all. Instead, he just looks lost and found all at once, his body in limbo: hunching down to become smaller and leaning forward barely perceptively.

Surprising Evan once more, Connor simply asks “what did you think it meant?”

Evan takes a moment to sink back into his memories. He remembers laying on bed and turning the song lyrics over and over through his head, trying to see how they fit together like puzzle pieces. “I think I remember t-thinking that N-Nowhere Man was a p-pretty sad but nice song to choose and that Starman was kind of the opposite of the B-Beatles one? Starman is pretty hopeful and almost ch-childish? I just thought it meant that you can be a Nowhere Man but the Starman represented potential? Potential that is always there...that is b-because the Starman is in the sky a-and it's everywhere? It's dumb, I know…Sorry...”

There is silence and Evan has quite possibly held the longest ever eye-contact with another person in his life by now, “Did you read the story that went along with it?” Evan doesn't think anyone has ever looked so intently at him before as Connor is, as if he were something shiny and worth seeing. “No, s-sorry. I never had the chance.” Evan leaves out how he didn't want everyone to think he was that guy that looked at everyone else’s work. It always felt strangely invasive to him in some way.

Just like that Connor breaks the eye-contact they had been holding and looks at his hand that idly scratches at his arm through his sweater, “what you said...it wasn't dumb…”

“Oh um thanks.”

“I didn't think that you---that anyone---” Evan watches as the emotions flit through Connor's face like shadows highlighting off a fire, all of each expression having a millisecond before morphing into a new one. Evan gets chills as Connor’s face darkens again, “this is just a dream my fucking brain is trying to do a self-preservation mission with.”

Evan is dead and he is talking to a facsimile of Connor Murphy. He literally has nothing to lose unless this Fake Connor can punch him into the shadow realm, so he says, “Bull.”

Connor is startled into barking a high-pitched laugh, Evan feels a smile beginning to tug at his mouth by the sound but Connor is dangerously skirting the suicidal angle again and he is more terrified than amused.

“Just what is bull, Hansen?”

“I---I don't---don't take your life Connor...I don't want to say all those things that people always said like ‘you have everything to live for’ or ‘it'll get better’ because those never meant anything to me. But I---” He feels a desperate thing clawing at his insides because how does he convince Connor Murphy not to kill himself when everything in Evan has quieted down to a point where he feels something close to content? This moment feels incredibly important even if Evan is speaking to Fake Connor, he is consumed by the need to have Connor Murphy look him in the eyes and listen and understand to what he is saying. He can't tell Connor that for once Evan accomplished the best thing for everyone around him and himself.

So he lies, “I'm dead and all I want right now is to see my mom’s face light up when we finally get to see each other at some odd hour of the morning or night. I miss her. So much. I actually want to call the pizza shop because I want to hear those brief couple minutes of ads they always have before someone picks up the phone because I think the person there also doesn't want to answer the phone as much as I don't want them to answer. I want to sit in the car with Jared and hear him pretend to not know the lyrics to hundreds of show tunes as we drive. I want to have these ch-chances again because I'm afraid I've already been forgotten by the people I'll never forget.” He refuses to look into Connors eyes because he'd lied and feels an emptiness plug his thoughts.

When Evan touches his face he is surprised to find it wet with tears he hadn't realized he'd shed.

“Hansen,” Connor’s voice is soft, “You idiot.”

Evan trains his eyes on Connor’s birdlike thin fingers as they pick at a red leaf.

“I found you.”

When Evan looks up, Connor is gone.

Chapter Text

The moment Connor wakes up he feels as if he had been pissed off in his sleep. Now, that just seems typical for him but a bit unusual to feel that sort of anger while dreaming.

The day hasn't even started and he's already tired. He takes thirty minutes to go downstairs where he knows his mother has prepared breakfast for the four of them and she's probably picking slowly from her plate as she waits for him to go down and join them. She does this despite knowing he takes 20 minutes and longer to just slip on his usual outfit and barely even bother with his hair.

Summers are the worst. There's no school to take him out of the house and away from his family. But even with school in session he still manages to mess things up for everyone so, there ends up being little difference.

Even if he leaves to go waste away the day, when he returns he'll be met with suspicion as to what he had done that day even if all he did was sleep in the library and smoke at the park (but he wouldn't say it even if they know he does that).

At the top of the stairs he feels that awful indecision to take the steps down. His feet budge at the top and refuse to move for a second and he briefly considers just pretending to be asleep till he gets hungry and knows he's as alone as he'll get in the house.

That is until Zoe pokes her head around the corner and then faster than Connor can read her expression she disappears into the kitchen. He can hear her tiredly say: “He’s coming down.”

Damn. Now he really should go down or else fucking Larry is going to claim Connor is single-handled destroying their family by not eating his mother’s pasty vegan-pancakes. That would be blatantly untrue because he's destroying them in other ways that matter.

The dining table is quiet with a tangible tension. The quietness is brittle and set to break at any moment. He was right about his mother, she's halfway done with her plate while Larry and his sister are just about finished.

As he quietly starts his breakfast he takes glances at his hands where he had seen little half moon crescents from the pressure of his nails---they are gone now, but he still feels the ghost of them as he tries navigating through his head to remember what exactly happened in his dream. Of course he remembers Hansen, how could he not? Especially after yesterday.

Connor tenses when he catches his sister staring at him and he pulls a face. She rolls her eyes and resumes pretending he isn't there as she grabs the salt shaker just as he was about to grab it. Awkward Breakfast at the Murphy’s continues in silence as he tries to not obviously look at his hands.

There is a fwap as Larry aggressively turns the newspaper page, a furrow between his brows. Connor senses Larry has an interrogatory question chipping up between his teeth. Larry’s hand reaches for his coffee and the newspaper is beginning to lower and Connor is not ready to be questioned over where he was last night. Then, Larry just gets up, announces to no one in particular that he needs to get to work early today and then he's gone with the soft click of the front door.

The flight or fight instincts have not gone away even with Larry out of the house. Something thick and sharp is coiling around his mind today, it makes him itch to be far away from this place. The tension is still too brittle, the walls feel too fragile, the floor too weak. He feels like the mess inside himself is going to get too big and will escape to break everything around himself. There is a scraping noise of a fork scraping against ceramic, and he shivers.

Zoe begins casually, “I'm going to a friends place today.”

“That's great! Which one?” his mother seems to bloom right on the spot and grab onto this thing Zoe has offered. She and Zoe continue the conversation and he blanks out because his pants are dirty at the knees from yesterday. He's wearing the same outfit from yesterday when he had found Evan Hansen terribly still and cold on the ground.

When Connor’s consciousness joins the present once more he feels like he missed a step because his mother and Zoe are looking at him expectantly, although Zoe with a touch more doubt, “Connor?”

“What?”

“Zoe is going to use the car today. Is that ok?” His mother asks carefully.

No, he needs the car. He needs the simplicity of just driving today. Their mom can just take her if she really needs to get wherever she needs. Connor doesn't say that, instead he jumps up from his chair.

“I need it.”

“Where are you going?” His mother asks surprised. While Zoe looks at him with undisguised spite, “I knew this would happen.”

He whips the door closed behind him but not fast enough to miss his sister yell “you're such an ass--!”

***

He drives to nowhere in particular and just lets his thoughts wander to yesterday. Particularly, those moments where he had been interrupted in his wandering amongst the trees for a good place to plop on the floor and get high, and then he had nearly jumped out of his skin when suddenly a loud crashing noise from the sky shattered the quiet.

Then, where there had previously been nothing but sticks and leaves on the floor, there was a body---and it didn't move or make a sound. When Connor ran up to it, it felt like everything in his heart just shriveled and shot down to the floor because he recognized those clothes, that face, that person...

He's all of half-way across town when he haphazardly parks his car and stumbles to an empty bench at a car because his hands were trembling too much to not swerve the car into oncoming traffic. Sure, Connor has a death-wish but he doesn't want to take anyone else down with him in the process.

There are very few instances that he remembers experiencing fear. Most of them are from when he was a child with simpler problems to be scared of like being separated from his parents in the store or stepping on the crack-and-breaking-his-mother’s-back. Then, there was that time he nearly drowned. Thanks to that experience, drowning is at the bottom of his list on ways to go.

It had been incredibly painful, like fire burning through his lungs. He had thought it would never end.

That drowning feeling came up again when he had crashed to his hands and knees besides Hansen. At that moment he had felt such a visceral fear he thought he would stop breathing.

He remembers calling the ambulance and someone on the phone instructing him about how to check for vital signs. He remembers the sudden rush of steps as a squad of medics with a gurney lifted Evan’s body onto it. He remembers someone pulling him along. Somehow he had ended up making the journey in the ambulance with Evan all the way up to the hospital. By the time he had made it back home it was very late because he had to go back to the park to get his car and calm down enough to drive. Getting home late isn't unusual for him but the circumstances certainly were yesterday.

And then that dream…It was so vivid.

Connor had always had very vivid lucid dreams since childhood. Actually, he and Zoe used to believe that they shared a handful of dreams together in the past, but that was when they were very young.

They had been sitting watching TV, he had been absentmindedly gnawing on a graham cracker and something on screen reminded him of his dream. He'd turned to a younger Zoe and said he had been tumbling around in space, launching at planets and when his feet would strike a planet he'd jump to another. He remembers how Zoe had straightened up lightning fast and exploded that she had a dream like that too and she began to describe it but he interrupted her by saying the exact thing she was going to say because he remembered seeing her: she had been collecting stars.

Now she claims she doesn't remember. He knows it's because she doesn't want to share anything with him at all.

Connor feels a pang of guilt and reaches for his phone. He texts Zoe to see what time she needs the car but more than twenty minutes pass and she doesn't respond. He doesn't blame her. Sometimes he wishes he had someone to share things with again, though. He really wants to talk about what happened yesterday with someone but his family have all parted from his life like ghosts---each of them have moved on from trying to see and fix him. Now they just seem to come together and stand against the common enemy---him---the poltergeist of the Murphy house.

He wants to tell someone how it was so strange sitting next to the boy he saved. The familiar bright hospital lights and sterile smell of aggressive cleanliness. It was strange being told by a rushing medic “you saved his life,” when he is completely willing to end his own and has actually been in that same hospital after his failed suicide attempts. He did not sit beside that bed long, he was certain Evan’s family would arrive any moment. Besides, Connor felt he would bring bad luck or something to the pale, unmoving boy laying on the hospital bed before him.

He wants to share that experience with someone; however the dream he had after that whole event he would keep to himself. It was strange sitting next to Evan Hansen and being able to see his hazel eyes that look a bit green up close. Then there were his freckles and familiar honey-brown hair and the prim khakis and polo shirts. In his dream Evan wasn't pale and unresponsive, he had been peaceful in a way Connor had never seen in the quietly anxious boy before. He's studied the guy for long enough to know his character if just a little bit because Connor’s had this big stupid crush on him since fuck-all (since 7th Grade when Evan had shot a delighted smile his way after he signed his year book).

It was absolutely bizarre to have Dream Evan Hansen tell him he tried to take his life. Connor isn’t sure if it was that statement that ticked him off. Or the fact that his subconscious mind had definitely projected his own suicidal thoughts onto Evan Hansen...Maybe a bit of both?

Regardless, Evan Hansen is safe. He hopes he wakes up soon. Connor wants to die in peace.

Chapter Text

The Quiet Place is uncanny at times. There is no way to measure oblivion when he is unsure if the sun is supposed to travel the sky at such a slow rate to the point that it is almost never dark.

As a child he was never a big fan of the dark. He’d had a nightlight of a red truck besides his bed for the longest time---that is until his father drove off in one. After that, he and his mother put glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling of his room. The glow-in-the-dark stars were always a bit too dim, not bright like actual stars but he still appreciated their presence somehow. As he grew older he found that the sheer simplicity of having something visible and familiar became more of a comfort, not so much the literal dispersion of the dark. So, he kept those stars there. He wonders if they are still there or if they've fallen.

Sometimes Evan has a sneaking suspicion he refuses to even form into a complete thought: he isn't actually dead.

This terrible suspicion is due entirely in part because of what Fake Connor Murphy had told him hours ago? Days ago? Months ago? Evan doesn't even know how long it's been because everything remains frustratingly the same and whenever he thinks the sun is finally going to set and bring the night he blinks and it's daytime again.

The unreliability to measure time and the laws of The Quiet Place remind him a little too much of when he was alive. In the world of the living, there were many unspoken rules that everyone seemed privy to except him. In a way he also knew what those rules were but he knew them abstractly because those rules never seemed to apply to him---not in the cool sense, but in the way he was literally incapable of partaking in them.

Evan was never able to step outside amongst others and feel like he belonged. His stuttering, and sweating, and jerky movements all kept him from just being another person in the classroom who could lend a classmate a pencil without stressing the rest of the class period over if they'd give that pencil back (because that was his favorite and he didn't want to be rude by not giving them one of the best pencils he had but he also doesn't want to ask for it back).

That invisible social scripture dictated that anyone who couldn't handle being in the sun stay out of it. While others basked in the sun and in their own ordinariness, people like Evan inhabited the shadows: the barely inbetween.

Now, the sun is always a constant presence and Evan is still amongst shadows because of the trees and their shades. No one is around and it's just him. The irony is that he can simply be but he does not know how to define himself as himself without having someone there to compare himself to.

It's just Evan in the forest, with the tree where he let everything go. While gazing up at the trail of broken branches Evan feels a ridiculously hard pang of guilt at the evidence of carnage his falling body had left upon the tree. The tree spent over hundreds of years growing into the natural imperfections of its life, the branches growing strong and prickly with bark, the leaves varying shades of green and yellow and brown---and then Evan had to come along and break a hole through its perfect imperfections. Evan is riddled with imperfections but he is far from perfect.

He had left a mark on something but even then it is barely visible, he believes that only he can really see the trail because he was the one who made it in the first place---plus, of course he would be the only one looking for a sign that he ever existed in the first place.

Evan has come to understand that inhabiting Eternity means that he is going to have moments where it's not all numb inside. Those moments where the waves of all the tangled up things inside him start to lap at his legs and then before he realizes it the tides would have come in, setting him adrift in a state close to how he would be when he was alive.

This is one of those moments.

A flood of self-loathing and pain seizes at his chest and Evan feels absolutely uprooted from the ground. He is unsure if The Quiet Place is actually spinning or if its his head that has come loose and gone for a merry-go-round along with his crashing feelings.

If Evan were alive he would be finding it terribly difficult to breath right about now. It would feel like someone invaded his mind, swinging and whacking pots and pans through the chambers of his nervous system. His face would most definitely feel wet from tears. He would be curled up on the ground, wishing desperately for his mind and body to calm down.

The thing is, Evan is curled up on the ground, wet face pressed to his hands, and feeling for all the world like all the trees around him have crushed him, pinning him in a terrible mental space that feels to last forever.

All of this adding on to that terrible suspicion Evan refuses to acknowledge.

Evan is submerged in these thoughts and he grasps onto a truth, like a steady rope he can cling to amidst the onslaught of what seems to be every bad thought ever. He wants this tree to be more True and erase any mark that he was even there in the first place.

He pictures the thin, spindly branches regrowing themselves as paper-thin yellow and green buds and unfurling delicately. All of it criss-crossing into a geometric pattern of durability and age; all of it erasing the evidence of a broken boy crashing through and breaking the lovely things in his path.

After breathing steadily for God knows how long, something inside Evan unclenches and he feels an all-encompassing emptiness begin to settle in his bones. Suddenly, he notices something odd. Evan blinks the post-crying heaviness of his eyes away and feels something unnameable inside him ease open.

The tree has changed.

He knows that in its own way, it is a silly thing to feel relief from, but it has erased any sign of his fall through it.

***

The floor is dusted in white snow, as are the leaves of one of the largest trees in the world: The President. Evan remembers reading a National Geographic magazine dedicated to the tree. It had one of those pictures that was made up of multiple pages that flop open when tilted to the side.

When the picture was taken the tree was dusted with snow and the sky a soft white blur. The great bulk of the tree dwarfed the people climbing it, the climbers looked as breakable as dolls wearing reflective gear of bright green and orange---so they wouldn’t vanish amongst the girth of the gentle giant.

The tree isn't the largest tree but for some reason this article rooted itself in Evan’s memory for how much he found himself desiring to visit that tree, climb it, study it, admire it---he simply just wanted to see it.

And now he is there, surrounded by the very picture he dearly wanted to see.

It is when Evan contemplates the sensation of non-cold snow that Connor steps besides him. He looks odd and lanky amongst the sturdy and warm trunks of the sequoias. A somber figure dressed all in black amongst all this life. But the sun is a warm hue that casts his hair in an equally warm reddish-brown like the rich trunks of the trees towering before them.

“Where are we?” Connor asks, his chin tipped up and stretching to capture the height of the trees.

“Sequoia National Park.”

“Hm.”

Something about the abilities Evan has found himself taking advantage of in the Quiet Place makes him feel as if he has magic sparking ready at his fingertips. He wants to show someone, even if it is the strange fake facsimile of a person he barely knows, that he has found a place where the rules of his own and its existence can be reshaped by him. So far he has thought up Glacier Park, Yosemite, Yellowstone---at least, to the best of his recollections of what they should look like.

The anticipation of seeing and recreating another place prompts him to ask, “Where is your favorite place?”

Connor raises a brow and snaps, “What?”

Getting a good look at Connor’s face, the boy has bags under his eyes, and a dull sheen to his gaze---he looks tired. Evan’s shoulders crawl up his back as he feels foolish asking the question even if it bubbled up from an earnest curiosity. He makes an attempt to clarify, “Y-your favorite place? A p-place you think of when y-you want to be someplace else? Or m-maybe...S-someplace you’d r-really would like to see?”

“Why do you wanna know?” Connor asks distantly,

“B-because I'm curious?” About you---is unsaid, Evan snaps his teeth to keep that in. He wildly thinks maybe Connor heard it anyway---that given the snap of his teeth he would be able to know what Evan left unspoken.

The silence is awfully heavy. Evan feels small, and a phantom chill creeps into his skin making his hands tremble.

“Is this your favorite place?”

“Well, I g-guess you can say one of them? I-I was never able to r-really go anywhere and have the c-chance to decide that sort of thing I guess...so I'm kind of just m-making the places that could have been a favorite place…if that m-makes sense...” Evan fidgets, and tugs at one of his knuckles, he winces when he pulls too hard, “Listen, I d-don't even know why I asked that...J-just forget it.”

“I don't have one.” Connor has that same stiff appearance, his bird-like hands hidden in his sweater and pulling it downwards.

“Oh.”

Abruptly, as if snapped from a trance Connor asks, “Where’s another place you'd want to go to, Hansen?” Connor looks at him expectantly.

Evan doesn't say. He just shows it.

Now they are standing in The Rocky Mountains, at the foot of a still picturesque lake. Large swaths of green trees wing the lake from side to side and the mountain range is cold and grey with strength.

Connor snorts, “Of course there'd be more trees.”

“W-what do you mean?” Evan turns to see Connor carefully dipping the tip of his shoe in the lake. The water doesn’t move. Evan frowns and then it ripples as it should.

“You're like the resident Tree Boy or something. I um...I remember that one presentation you did about the rainforest...I liked what you said about how the trees are so dense it takes like 12 minutes for water to hit the floor?” The edges of Connor’s mouth are pulling at an awkward smile but Evan’s thoughts are elsewhere.

“O,” Evan mumbles, “It’s 10 minutes.”

Evan remembers that particular presentation. He hadn't been able to finish it and had had an anxiety attack afterwards. He'd gone home with a note from the Nurse's office, dreading returning to school the next day because everyone would look at him and laugh because he was the only kid who couldn't finish a five minute presentation about trees.

“What is it?”

“10 minutes...For water to reach the floor.”

“No, I heard you.” Connor peers at him with a frown, “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“N-Nothing.” Evan looks at his own hands, as he twists and turns them, pulling until he feels a pop in his fingers.

Connor presses, “I think there's something. What is it?”

“I d-don't know…” Evan tips his own shoe into the water, except not so delicately---he gets it more wet than he wants. Evan’s eyes flit fast towards Connor and he catches the look the taller boy gives him.

Evan sighs, and says, “Is it w-weird? Jared always makes it seem like it's w-weird for me to like t-trees and know all these facts about them...He t-twists it into something pervy and...I-I don't know.” Evan doesn't know how to express that it makes him feel uncomfortable to share the things he really likes with people. Especially Jared, he doesn't want to be more weird than the other teen already thinks he is and give him more reason to distance himself from Evan. Of course Evan likes other things, but sometimes he feels he will be ridiculed for those things too.

Evan is surprised by the heat in Connor’s voice as he says, “Fuck what Jared thinks---what anyone thinks for that matter. Why are you even friends with him? He's an ass.” Connor’s frown deepens as he reaches and catches Evan’s hands in his own, he separates them gently and says, “Stop that, will you?”

Evan, to say the least, is surprised. His hands swing listlessly back to his sides once Connor releases them from his own. Evan’s thoughts snag on how Connor’s nails are painted black, he thinks they look pretty on his thin fingers. Evan nearly asks: what were we talking about again? But some deity decides to smile upon him and the words readily spill out, “We're not really actual friends,” and ouch, Evan is surprised that some part of himself hurts to say that, “We’re family friends...there's a difference.”

“What bullshit. Let me guess, that was Kleinman’s idea?”

“Yeah…” Evan lowers his head and fixes his eyes on Connor’s black boots. They fidget a bit on the grass, teetering very slightly on the toes before rolling back softly.

In a calm careful voice Connor says, “Well, we can be friends…If you want?”

Evan lifts his head to see that Connor’s voice doesn’t match his appearance---Connor’s cheeks are slightly pink. Evan feels a warmth soften his shoulders and unknot a tangle in his throat when he realizes Connor is shy. The boy before him is scratching his arm and refusing to meet Evan’s gaze.

Evan nods, but Connor doesn’t see. Evan adds, “I’d like that.”

Connor’s cheeks spring into the first genuine smile Evan has seen on him. Evan’s face warms up at the sight of Connor’s sweetly crinkled eyes. Evan is suddenly very aware of the heart-he-doesn’t-have skipping unexpectedly.

That smile cants to the side, “Tell me some tree facts Tree Boy.”

Evan grins. He tells Connor many of the interesting facts he has picked up from his random late-night Google searches and books he’s flipped through. He shares with him the fungal network trees in forests use to communicate with each other, the oldest living trees currently known, the “moon trees”---of which Connor really seems to like.

They sit side-by-side on the floor by the lake that should be moving. The intermittent rustle of leaves in the wind rustle lightly when Evan’s ears search for that sound. Connor leans on his translucent arm, a bright and attentive look in his eyes. Evan finds it's actually nice being heard for once and he tries to get Connor to share something of himself too and Evan apologizes for talking too much, but Connor would shake his head and ask Evan how tall Sequoias grow or why certain trees smell the way they do.

It is when Evan turns around after pointing out a certain area of trees to illustrate a point that he finds Connor has vanished.

A sharp loneliness spears him and replaces the peacefulness he was unaware he had been basking in.

He doesn’t know why this Fake Connor Murphy appears every so often in the Quiet Place, but Evan doesn’t want him to stop appearing---no matter how much lonelier and emptier everything else around him feels after he disappears.

Sometimes, Connor actually feels like the only real thing here.

A chill has him pulling his knees to his chest; the space besides him feels far too empty. Evan winces at a sudden dull pain in his left arm. With a start, he realizes he forgot to ask Connor what he meant when he said he found him.

He will ask next time. Definitely.

Chapter Text

Connor turns the faucet, water runs loudly.

Sometimes it's the littlest things that set him off.

They could be pretending to have a regular, normal, ordinary family dinner and then something would be said that’ll make him feel like he got syringed with a vicious feeling to bite.

Sometimes things just seem so frail and delicate around him. He feels like someday he'll find he has some random allergy to orange juice and then he'd grow, and grow, and grow like Alice in Wonderland until his legs break through the windows, elbows topple the stupid China cabinets, hands punch holes through the walls, and his head would pierce the ceiling---if that should ever happen, atleast the view would be nice.

And then he gets the feeling that if his sister had magic like Harry Potter he would have ballooned like Aunt Marge a long time ago and just been whisked away.

Essentially, his thoughts always revolve around the idea that if he doesn't take his own life, some divine intervention will intercede and take him out. At times it's a comforting sort of daydream---realistically, he knows it's a deed he will have to fulfill on his own.

It doesn't really matter how to him. He justs wants it to be quick and efficient.

A wild knock shatters his thoughts. Connor hits the door to stop that pounding noise---also to show he's still alive, God knows why anyone would want that--- “The bathroom is goddamn occupied!”

“I know that, jerk. I'm just---” Zoe’s voice trails away as she obviously fishes for an excuse, “The water was running for a while…” she finishes lamely. She and Connor are the only ones in the house as their parents have gone. Of course now it’s Zoe’s duty to check to see if Connor is still breathing.

Honestly, they always do this. He can fucking be reading a book on his bed and they'll think he's reading the Communist Manifesto of Suicidal People. Or he'll just be drawing and then they'll peer over his shoulder as if he were plotting his own death in writing.

All of them play the Suicide Police in the house, all of them ready to sound the sirens and “save” him. But none of them are willing to just be his family again and help him get the help he actually needs. Instead they keep on handcuffing him to living a life he doesn’t even want to have anymore.

With each effort he makes to end it all, his family just intensifies their efforts to counter him especially after that really close call with the razors---he swears it felt as if the glory of the sun had outright beamed up his sorry soul and made him feel nothing---it was beautiful, yet they dragged him back into the living.

Something explosive and painful erupts in him when he thinks upon how he had been so close to getting what he and everyone else wanted and yet he keeps getting pulled back to the same destruction and turmoil his presence brings. Wash. Rinse. And Repeat. No one else, except him, seems to care that they are destined to repeat the same tragedy over and over till he is gone.

Instead, they have made his room like  a goddamn high surveillance prison. They’ve taken away his door, any sharp objects, any rope-like objects, anything lethal---they have even taken his art supplies, some books, and anything he remotely liked from his walls and boxed them up. Saving them for a better Connor, a healthier Connor, a trusted Connor. That Connor will never be able to reopen those boxes and start anew if he is to get his way.

There was a time when he had wanted help. He didn’t know where to get it but he knew it had to be given to him in some professional capacity with the inclusion of meds. Fuck, he had wanted that help so bad. He had wanted literally anything to give him a light, something to hold on to, so he can see that they still care for him---if they could seek out that help for him wouldn’t that mean they truly want to see him get better? Guess not. Now, he doesn’t want any of that---it’s too late for him.

In his peripheral vision he catches shadows moving faintly beneath the door. His simmering anger since this morning is stretching thin like elastic, it's beginning to snap,“Are you still out there?! God forbid I wash my hands without someone’s help!” Connor hits the door again, “Leave me alone!”

Zoe doesn't respond but he knows she's still out there because they are still smarting from his most recent attempt a handful of months ago. Even the bathroom is not enough to guarantee some modicum of privacy after all this time.

He feels something in him snap. God, he's tired of this shit. Connor whips the door open, a bark ready between his teeth, but the hall is empty.

Faintly, the sounds of a guitar being tuned sound from Zoe’s door. The plucking of the notes buoying up and down to their respective sounds don’t do anything for the dizzying anger making him see red.

He nearly throws himself down the stairs to stop himself from doing something he’ll regret. On the way out the door he grabs his bag.

***

He doesn't know why he's here.

The room is awfully quiet except for the soft breaths of Evan Hansen and the beeps that monitor his beating heart. The boy’s arm is in a cast, it is blank, and rises and falls gently.

This is all kinds of wrong. Connor Murphy knows he shouldn't be sitting next to the comatose boy he barely knows (and has been dreaming about)---but he is.

Connor even picked up a pretty green leaf on the way there like a moron because the thought of getting flowers stressed him out way too fucking much for their implications.

If he did hypothetically get flowers, then Evan’s family would wonder who brought him them and then assume it was Kleinman, but then they would find out it wasn't, and then they'd casually ask who had been visiting Evan, and then the receptionist would describe some thin, dark-clothed kid with long hair visiting him like some pot-smelling grim reaper and…

The leaf is safer although he felt idiotic placing the damn thing besides the colorful bouquet that reads: “Love, from Mom” on a yellow paper-cutout.

Connor reaches towards his bag on the floor and pulls out a thin blue book. It's one of his favorites: The Little Prince. On the way to make his impromptu visit he stopped by the library to pick it up. He already has a copy but that was boxed up since all the things he holds dear pose a threat to his life apparently.

Anyways, he is not here to think about that. The anger from this morning has muted to a dull buzz. It’s still there, it never really leaves, but he is as fine as he can be now.

Feeling for all the world like the people out in the halls and the rooms next door and the buildings across the street have swiveled their eyes to stare at him, he cracks the book open to the first page, clears his throat, and reads:

“Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book…”

***

It's late by the time he gets home, he lights up a cigarette and sits in his car in the dark for a bit. He read that book soft and slow, he had forgotten how much he enjoyed it and found that he actually had a pleasant time reading it aloud.

Occasionally his eyes would flit to Evan’s sleeping face during the parts where a particular line flowed lovely or he felt a smile crack at his cheeks. Each time he felt a pang of disappointment when his eyes didn't meet Evan’s own. However, the sleeping boy had a quality of peace not unlike the feeling he gets when he dreams of him; so, Connor found it easy to relax in the chair and read unselfconsciously and even comfortably.

It is not until now where Connor remembers the latest dream. He vaguely recalls a lot was said about trees. At first, there was snow on the floor with these really tall trees surrounding them, and then they were by the Rockies or some equally as impressive mountain range.

Connor blushes when he remembers offering to be friends with Evan. The boy had looked so small and sad. But that wasn't all it, Connor would be lying if he didn't admit that a little part of him also felt a little small and sad at that moment. He truly wished for his offer of friendship to be accepted---accepted especially from the boy who’s smiles make Connor’s heart go soaring atop a warm wind.

A sweet feeling lingers in him and he holds it close as he enters the house. There is the sound of the TV playing some movie or something, the rest of the house is dark.

He is in the kitchen picking at leftovers from the dinner he missed when his mother walks into the room.

Great, just what he wanted.

She turns on all the lights and he pretends to be really engrossed in his too-soft yet too-something gluten-free pasta. He hears her put a kettle of water to boil---probably for one of her spiritually healing or fat-trimming teas--- she slides into the chair across from him obviously cautious.

“Where were you today?” She tries for sounding bright and interested. It falls a little flat.

“Out.” The soft feeling shrivels up far too fast and Connor spares a pang of grief before settling back into how he normally feels: awful. The lights are too bright and he wants to get up and turn out the lights but the switch is too far.

“Honey, I wanted to talk to you.” When he doesn’t say anything she continues, “Since you still have some weeks before school starts. We---I think it would be a good idea for you to start looking at where you want to apply and start your applications---”

Connor fades out of the one-way conversation. His family doesn't realize that most of the time they talk to him they are actually just talking at him. Like some mannequin that can’t hear and doesn't care to listen.

“---have all this free time with summer and we think it would lessen the stress from schoolwork if you start your college apps a little bit ahead? Of course we’ll pay for all the schools you'd like to try for and---”

Not only do they not realize they speak meaningless things to a hollow mannequin, they make plans for a thing that is going nowhere. Connor doesn't have any plans for the long-run, this fucker is going nowhere.

He vaguely registers the scream of the kettle and the earthy smell of his mother’s tea as she tips the steaming pot into a mug from the Apple Orchard they used to visit a long time ago.

A new voice draws him back into consciousness, “Did you hear your mother?” it’s Larry.

Connor's eyes stay fixated on the mug, it's big and childish, and must be hot to touch.

“Did you listen to anything she said at all? She asked if you will try to at least start looking at college applications?” Larry’s voice grows hard with heat.

Connor automatically brings the cold food to his mouth, only a couple more scoops and he’s done, “I'll think about it.” He really won't.

“Senior year is starting soon and then before you know it it'll be over. You need to prepare for afterwards.”

“I said I'll think about it.” He really really won't. He'll be busy not thinking about it, “As you said, I have the whole summer to do all that thinking.” He thinks he sounds reasonable

Apparently not, “Listen Connor---Look me in the eyes when I'm talking to you.” Larry demands, “We can't keep letting you leave to waste away the day doing God knows what when you can be doing something productive. Take today, you just got back at 10 and missed dinner probably getting high somewhere. That's unacceptable.”

“You should know I wasn't doing that...I was doing something else.” It's now when he meets Larry’s eyes that he realizes that it's oddly quiet. They paused the movie. Zoe is probably brooding on the couch staring at a frozen image and listening.

“That doesn't sound very convincing.” Of course it doesn't because they can't picture him doing literally anything else. “Care to share?”

Damn it. He doesn't think it's a good idea, and it feels all sorts of wrong, but he needs to distract his parents so he says, “I was visiting a friend.”

“A friend!” His mother nearly knocks her mug over in shock.

“What friend?” Larry sounds skeptical and the worry lines of his forehead have dropped downward in confusion.

This is where Zoe hears her stage que apparently as she says, “Connor doesn't have any friends.” He turns around and glares at her.

He finishes his plate and cringes at the cold pasta, “He’s in a coma. I wanted to see how he was doing.”

His mother covers her mouth, “Poor thing! Which friend, honey? What's his name?” As an afterthought she adds, “You should have texted us where you were.” She was aiming for stern but the delight in her eyes weakens it.

“His name is Evan Hansen.” He crosses his arms, “He likes trees. He told me they talk to each other using fungi.” The latter he adds for the hell of it---it’s not like they’re going to fact check it.

Then like reaching Nirvana---or some equally divine shit--- his mother, positively floating with delight, begins making plans for such things as preparing a get-well basket, a bouquet, visiting Evan’s family (God-forbid). Larry just kind of listens to her shell-shocked---he looks kind of like when Connor came out: constipated. It’d be kind of funny if Connor weren't so tired.

Zoe pipes up, “Never heard of him.”

“Do you know everyone in the goddamn school?” He snaps.

“Connor,” his mother warns, “Oh honey, this is wonderful! Not that your friend is in a coma of course but... Why didn't you tell us sooner?”

Because they aren't really friends. Connor just found the poor guy, saved his life, and has been having vivid dreams about him where they talk---God, he’s such a creep. Connor shrugs, “I dunno. Can I go to sleep now?”

“We'll talk more in the morning.” Larry says and leaves the room.

His mother draws near and pats his cheek, she says, “Of course! You must be tired, go to bed sweetheart.”

As he leaves, Zoe only gives him a skeptical look but she holds her tongue.

That was so easy. Connor can still feel the kind touch of his mother’s hand on his cheek, it has been so long since she has looked at him so delightedly and hell even given him a motherly touch like that. He thinks he should feel kind of bad about using Evan like this, but he doesn't.

If he feels anything at this moment, he feels a deep sadness over the friendship with Evan not being real and only a dream.

Regardless, he sleeps and pretends to only half-sort-of-wish for another dream with him.

Chapter Text

At this moment, everything is quiet in Evan, and it is suitable to have the world be quiet too.

Evan lays in a meadow and thinks about nothing. His thoughts trail on the slow moving clouds above him, sailing silently through a beautiful blue summer day. The sun is dazzling and he focuses on the warmth blanketing him gently. When he lazily lolls his head to the side, a small smile buds when his eyes meet Connor’s own.

Evan thinks he is happy.

He wants to touch Connor’s hand, so he does---he is not real after all. Connor looks surprised and stares at their hands for a moment before entwining them. The warmth from the sun is nothing compared to his heart-that-is-not-a-heart currently brimming with starlight in his chest.

Connor whispers, “Hi.”

“Hi.” Evan whispers back. He pauses, “H-Have you thought of your favorite place?”

Connor turns, careful not to break their hands and picks at a small yellow flower between them with his other hand. After a moment of thought he simply says, “The Grand Canyon.”

“Ok. We’ll go see it.” Evan smiles encouragingly.

Evan tightens their hands for a second. In a brief moment of panic he thinks that his hands are sweaty and gross, but then he remembers he is dead and that’s impossible. Evan closes his eyes, and opens his mind to search amongst the nothingness for a color, a sound, a feeling---anything. When he brushes against the edge of a faint hue of purple, he latches on to it before it can leave and color erupts.

The feeling of hardground and rock on his back is the first thing that tells him that they succeeded.

Now, they stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Everything about it booms with power. The clouds are a roiling mass of stormy grey and violets, and the sun pierces through to set the fiery colors of the canyon ablaze in ambers and golds. The canyon steals Evan’s breath away, something this beautiful and strange should not exist on Earth.

Evan turns to Connor, “It’s beautiful.”

Evan’s breath hitches, the roiling mass of clouds and the powerful sky are visible through Connor’s incorporealness. Evan is suddenly convinced that this is the sort of place where Connor would disappear---as the booming sky and chasmic canyon would welcome him amongst their ranks.

As if in a trance Connor lifts his foot over the edge and Evan’s gut goes plummeting as he watches him step off. In a split second the very worst thoughts ram into Evan’s head like seeing Connor’s body twisted on the floor, or both of them falling because they are holding hands. Evan has the insane idea that Connor shouldn’t fall---because Evan already did that---Connor needs to fly because he is made for the sky.

The spiraling sensation doesn't quell when he notices how Connor floats on empty space with their hands, still entwined, hanging between them.

Connor smiles delightedly as he looks down, but when he looks at Evan something on Evan’s face must scream of terror as Connor hurriedly steps back on the ground. Evan is only half-aware when he is tugged away from the edge and pulled down into a sitting position.

“---m such an idiot. I’m sorry.”

Evan shakes his head to erase the ringing siren in his head, and he doesn’t quite know what to do. He can’t quite breath right, the air won't come in even though he is free-falling. He is falling. Connor is falling.

Connor says something, but the ringing is loud. Evan makes out, “Breathe with me.”

He struggles to filter the ringing noise but he catches onto the sound of Connor’s breath and he realizes he is counting, “one, two, three---.”

Eventually, when Evan settles he wipes his face to clear the tears and snot, he mumbles, “I'm sorry.”

“Don't say sorry. I'm sorry. I should've warned you or something.” Evan notices he looks pale and tugging at his own fingers himself.

Evan shakes his head, “Its ok. Give me a m-minute.” The words muddle in his mouth, but he forces them out, “Y-you can go and explore the area, I'll b-be with you in a second.”

“Let's go somewhere else.”

“What?”

“Let’s go.” Connor firmly nods.

Evan shakes his head again and feels a frown tug down at his lips, “N-no, you---this is where you wanted to go.”

“It’s ok. We can always come back.”

“Then w-where?”

“The moon.”

Evan spares a sad glance at the canyon and thinks we'll come back before he closes his eyes and searches.

Evan hears Connor gasp and he blinks slowly as he processes that now they truly are in alien territory.

They are not freezing, but they should be. They are breathing when they shouldn’t be. They are both silent as they stare at the Earth---it is round, and more blue than green, and likely more lovely than it ought to be; but, Evan feels tears well up in his eyes.

Connor gently slips his hand out of Evan’s to go take a couple steps and then stops. Evan can not see his face but he knows they both feel the same being here.

Evan can see the sun from here, it is a ball of light and its brilliance feeds the Earth making it shine a deep blue. On the small blue orb, waves of white clouds embark on their own journeys.

The moon is grey and cold, there are high rock shelves and a certain blank quality to it that Evan finds far too alien. There is certainly no light pollution on the moon, and the stars are bright, brilliant, and devastatingly beautiful.

Evans walk up to join Connor, it all suddenly seems like a lot to take in. He does not know whether he should stare at the Earth, look at the Moon’s terrain, or the stars.

Being closer to Connor doesn’t really help because Evan feels far too something inside. It is extremely humbling seeing the Earth from this perspective but it all seems very delicate and that thought off-balances him. He focuses on a spot between his feet and with nary a thought a flower appears. Evan kneels besides it and lightly touches the petals, the delicacy and the life-that-shouldn’t-be-alive-especially-on-the-moon quells some off-balanced thing within him.

The words come unbidden, “If some one loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars.”

He senses eyes on him and looks to see Connor giving him an odd look.

“Where did you hear that?”

Evan thinks its from a book he just doesn’t know which one. “Somewhere, I-I don’t remember.”

The odd look doesn’t leave Connor’s expression but he slowly lowers to sit on the ground besides Evan. They both draw their knees up to their chests. He says, “That's from one of my favourite childhood books. Or just one of my favourite books period.”

“Which one?”

“The Little Prince.”

“I m-must have read it a long time ago or something.” Evan forces a chuckle and scratches his head, he doesn’t know how he knew that quote or why he said it.

Connor looks like he wants to say something but he just hugs his knees in tighter and sighs. He asks, “Did you have a favourite book as a kid?”

Evan gives this serious contemplation. The period up until his dad left is pretty much a blank except for trace memories of yelling and crying. There are, of course, some good memories but those are few. He is pretty sure his mother told him once or twice what she used to read to him but he honestly can’t remember any of that, it is as if someone took a sharpie and blacked out a chunk of his life without telling him. He decides to go with a book he read a little after his father left and he holds dear in his thoughts, “The Hobbit.”

Connor quirks a smile at that, “I like that one too. Why did you like it?”

Evan doesn’t know how honest he should be and he briefly considers just shrugging and saying it was ‘cool’ but some part of him also just wants to share. He says, “I picked it up sometime after my dad packed up and left. I thought---I thought it was the kind of fantasy that c-could be real somewhere, sometime. If that makes sense? I d-didn't think that exactly as a child but I felt it, you know? Somehow it was comforting? I don't-I don't know how to describe it but...it seemed like the kind of different life you could wake up to.”

Evan suddenly worries that he shared too much but Connor says, “I can understand that. I have definitely used books to escape my shit-show of a life. You know, my dad---Larry---once got pissed off at me for not wanting to play baseball and ‘keeping my nose in books all summer.’ He was afraid I’d ‘go queer’ or some bullshit idea like that. If hetero-nonsense has any basis, I guess he was right?”

“I’m Gay by the way.” Connor adds like an afterthought.

Ok, there is a lot to unpack there. “I guess that goes for Bi people too then---the whole allergic to baseball thing. My d-dad tried playing catch with me one of the few times we met up...I dropped the ball more times than I caught it and then ended up hurting my wrist somehow. It was not a g-good summer.”

Connor grins, “Baseball is a curse upon the Gays.”

“Exactly! But the question is w-why would we want to play any sport at all?”

“So, did your mom take it well?”

“The Bi?”

Connor rolls his eyes “Yes the Bi. What else? The baseball?”

Evan feels a smile grow as he remembers, “Yeah, s-she took it well. It-it was kind of dumb...How I came out t-that is…”

“Oh-kaaay, care to share?” Connor leans over and bumps shoulders with him.

“So, when I came out to my mom we were watching Captain America, and Bucky was was looking all starry-eyed at Cap, and I was like ‘same.’ She was like ‘same?’ So, then I just told her I’m Bi and we ended up talking about Stucky.” A smile stretches on Evan’s face. He hasn't thought of that moment in a long time because he had refused to think of anything from when he was alive that might hurt him. Sharing this now, Evan marvels over how he doesn’t feel pain, instead a little happy light blooms inside him.

Connor laughs kindly, “That’s kind of cute...”

“Yeah. Your family was ok?”

Connor takes a deep breath, “Mom and sister pretty much were. My dad acted like I shot a dog for half the day, and then my parents argued for a bit before he cooled off and kind of accepted but not really for a year or something. He finally accepted once I got a boyfriend, which only lasted briefly. And then instead of trying to pair me off with girls of the families in his firm he started trying to match me with guys...Which was just as bad because it’s my dad trying to set me up with someone.”

“That’s sucky.” He bumps shoulders with Connor in sympathy.

“Very sucky. So that now makes it four people in the world who know I’m Gay plus one who is currently not on Earth.” He gestures at Evan and the moon.

Evan nods, “And that'll make it two people in the world who know I’m Bi plus one who is also currently not on Earth.”

“Wait, I think you got the math wrong there pal.”

Evan pops a “Nope,” and grins, “Jared.”

Connor’s raised eyebrows clearly say: Explain.

Evan obliges. He shares in vindictive detail a Halloween night when they were both 10 and Jared hadn't started hating Evan yet.

Evan had been dressed up as Luke Skywalker and Jared as Han Solo. Evan is not exactly sure of the events leading up to it but they had been sitting in Evan’s room trading candies and then they began arguing over the superior candy. Evan was vehement that Twix is King but Jared insisted that Snickers were. Somehow they reached the conclusion that the other was tasting the chocolate differently and then their lips were touching in their first kiss. They both sprang apart, Jared wiped his mouth furiously and stared at Evan. He said, “let's never talk about this ever.” And Evan obliged, but he had found out that he hadn’t really found it as repellent as Jared had. It was literally kind of sweet.

“Ew. Your first kiss was with Kleinman?”

Evan nods and shrugs, “We were dumbass kids.”

Connor laughs, “Please tell me another story or something. I need to wipe that from my memory”

“M-may I make an observation?”

“By all means.”

Evan has never had a drink before, but at this moment he feels giddy and drunk on an unprecedented happiness. He giggles, “If we yell were queer from here then everyone on the planet will know.”

Connor hops to his feet and pulls Evan up, “Then let’s do it.”

And so they yell at the top of their lungs. And Evan feels like some part of him has taken flight amongst the stars.

***

This visit from Connor seems to last forever, and it’s wonderful. There is no way to measure time, and even if he could, he wouldn’t want to.

“I have stars on my ceiling.”

“Those plastic glow in the dark ones? Me too.”

“They are nothing compared to these.” Evan points above them, "But I still love them.”

“Yeah.” Connor pauses, “I like it here. It is quiet and blank.”

They are laying on the ground and Evan shifts uncomfortably on the rocks. He likes it here too but he sort of misses the obvious life of the forests, mountains, and lakes---nature in general. The flower he conjured sways gently between them on a non-existent breeze.

When Evan doesn’t say anything, Connor says, “I would like to go somewhere blank.”

“Blank?”

“Hell yeah. I want that nothingness more than anything. I’m a nowhere man, Ev. I have nothing waiting for me in the future. I have nowhere to go. I have nothing to be. Why not just be nothing at all?”

Evan warmed at the nickname but a nagging feeling tugs at him, “I understand how you feel but---” he frowns, he is at a loss for words. He settles for understanding that he is going to hate himself for a bit because he is going to be the biggest, most idiotic hypocrite to grace the moon. He begins shakily, “There’s a starmaan in the skyy.”

“O my God.”

“He’d like to cooome and see youu.”

“I dont think those are the words.”

“But he haasn’t got the time”

“Those definitely aren't the words.”

“He’d like to--” Evan starts chuckling more than singing “boogiiee wooogiee.”

“Please---” Connor is starting to crack.

“Let the children DANCE.”

Connor then grabs his stomach and rolls on his back, his face scrunched up in laughter, “Christ!”

Evan joins Connor in his peals of laughter and he thinks he could just float away and he’d take Connor with him on this high of happiness, and they could vanish together.

When they have cooled down enough Evan fixes his eye on the stars, they stretch infinitely outward. He wants to pretend he doesn't know what he is asking when he says, “Don’t do it. Please.” Vanishing is impossible, Evan would know because he is dead and he is stuck here, in stasis. It’s not bad but...Evan still doesn’t know how he feels, he just knows he doesn’t want this for Connor---even if he is not real.

“I won't,” Connor whispers, “I’m waiting for you.”

“What are you talking about?” Evan desperately turns toward Connor but he is gone.

He brings his hands to his hair and tugs, a horrible spiral of thoughts tugging him downwards to a place he doesn't want to be.

The moon seems too blank and quiet and cold now Connor is gone and Evan turns The Quiet Place into someplace unblank.

Chapter Text

Connor wakes up with an empty pit in his chest. The sun shines brightly through his windows alerting him that it is very late in the morning. His limbs won’t work and he considers just laying there the rest of the day. The plan goes well for about 5 minutes before his stomach gives a weak growl, and he himself is weak, so he obeys.

Sitting on the kitchen counter he eats cereal and lets his feet thud against the counter. His parent’s cars are out of the drive-way so that means he is either alone or his sister is somewhere in the house---the latter being the most likely scenario.

He gets as far as thinking: I’ve been having some weird-ass dreams lately, when Zoe pads into the kitchen opens the fridge and grabs a bowl of fruit. Without once acknowledging him, she rinses the fruit, adds some berries, plops it on the kitchen counter and sits down. Unprompted she says, “So Emmet Heins, huh?”

His foot collides with the cabinet hard, “It’s Evan Hansen.”

“Testing you.” She’s frowning as if impressed.

He scowls, “You weren’t.”

“So, how did you two meet?”

“What? Do you care?”

“Yeah? Kind of?”

“Why?” He skeptically crunches on his cereal, and eyes her suspiciously.

“I don't know. ‘Cause your my brother and I dunno you seem different?” She waves her fork around as if that helps illustrate why.

What is she talking about? “The hell? We haven't even seen each other all that much.”

“Listen, I don’t know...Hate me for trying to see how you’re doing I guess!”

She grabs her bowl and is getting up to leave and for some reason Connor says, “We met just this summer.” He turns away from her. He slightly hopes this is an acceptable olive branch. He scratches at his arm.

She looks genuinely surprised by this admission, “Oh? How?”

Connor shrugs, he can’t exactly say he’s been dreaming about the guy---besides he lied about them being friends. He carefully says, “We met at the library.”

She’s looking at him as if expecting him to say more. He rolls his eyes, “He was reading something to do with---” He searches for something, the dude likes trees, “biology, like a nerd---” if his smirk comes across fondly then sue him. He likes the guy after all.

Zoe snorts, “You're a nerd.”

“Do you wanna hear this story?”

“Yeah, sorry.” She holds her hands up placatingly, “But you are. What were you reading at that time? A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?”

Connor crosses his arms and raises his eyebrows. Zoe spins her finger in the go on sign.

“Anyways, he saw I was drawing and told me it was nice. I recognized him from class and yeah…”

“Hmmm.”

He feels a prickle of annoyance and he’s not sure why, “What does that mean?”

“Nothing.” She says totally not innocent at all.

“Zoe.”

Zoe stands up to put her bowl in the sink and leans against the counter next to him, she shrugs, “I don't know. It's just nice.”

He snorts, “Me being friends with someone? I know, mom and dad nearly bursted into song.”

She nods and smiles tentatively, “That. But also, this. You telling me this. It’s nice.” She trails off, “Thanks.”

It is kind of nice. Connor doesn’t quite know how this happened but he likes it. He nods. The cereal bowl is empty. He jumps off the counter feeling a bit of nothing at all but also like the pit from this morning has shrunk the slightest bit.

“Where are you going?” She asks.

“To visit him.”

***

Connor barely gets past the first page of The Hobbit before the door opens behind him.

A blonde woman wearing colorful scrubs of rubber ducks walks in. She looks startled to see him and gives Connor a confused smile, “Hi? Do you know my son?”

Oh no. Connor wants to shrink, “Uh, yes. We're friends. I'm Connor.” He gets up not really knowing what to do, but years of enforced politeness from his parents has him extending his hand.

They shake hands. A look like the one his own mother had when he said he had made a friend, appears in the woman’s eyes and her smile grows, “I’m Heidi, Evan’s mom.” A look of shame furrows her brows, “I’m sorry, he never mentioned you? Well Evan doesn't really ever tell me much but…” Her eyes widen as they land on the book Connor has in his other hand, “Have you---have you been reading him that?”

Connor nods, his face heating up.

“That's one of Evan’s favorites…” Her shoulders visibly relax as that seems to confirm that the magical word: friendship, invoked by this strange kid appears true.

While Mrs. Hansen approaches Evan’s bed and runs her fingers through her son’s hair, Connor’s mind flashes back to when Dream Evan confided in him his favourite book---Evan’s mother interrupts that thought when she says, “I miss him.”

Connor’s heart gives a twist to see the tenderness in her face. She looks tired, the colorful scrubs clash with the worn pallor of her face. “I'm so thankful he didn't climb any higher. That sort of fall would've killed him.” Her hand rests in his hair, as if cushioning the spot that got injured from the fall.

Connor is not sure whether he should say anything, or leave, or what. He says, “I'm happy too. That he didn't---” Connor can't finish. He vaguely gestures at his bag, “I should---”

She straightens as if electrified, “No! You were reading to him right? My break is just about finished---you know, nursing work? It's a miracle I even got these handful of seconds to stop by---You should stay. I'm sure he'd really appreciate it!” She smiles imploringly at him.

“Um...If you’re sure? I can leave and then come back?”

“Seriously. Stay,” She's half way out the door when she gives him a considering look and says, “I'm glad he met you. You seem like a good friend.” Nodding to herself she closes the door.

The heart monitor continues beeping. Evan keeps sleeping, unaware of the interaction that just happened now, and unaware of the pain and love Connor just witnessed on Heidi Hansen’s face as she looked at her son.

Connor briefly entertains the idea that that is what his own parents looked like when he has been in a similar situation---bedridden and high as a kite, unaware to whatever it is they felt to see him lying in bed as oblivious to the world as Evan. Imagining that same pain feels wrong on his mother and sister, and even more wrong on his father---laughably so. He searches for some kind of idea as to what they might have looked like but he soon grows tired of it when all he can manage are blank faces. He can’t deny it hurts in some secret part of him.

Shakily, he sinks into his place at the chair he sits and picks up from the start, “In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.”

***

Connor is startled from his reading at the sound of the door opening---again. He turns around to see Jared fucking Kleinman, standing there, mouth open and bug-eyed. He would actually laugh at his expression if he didn’t dislike the guy as much as he does.

He watches, darkly amused, as Jared disappears behind the door lightening fast, a pause, and then the door opens to show the same perplexed Kleinman.

Connor barks, “Are you coming in or---?” He groans and smacks his forehead when Jared closes the door again. When it seems like he's not coming for an awfully long pause Connor shoots to his feet, “Shit!” He jumps into the hall to catch Jared speed-walking towards a security guard way at the end of the hall.

Connor sprints towards him and jumps in front of him, blocking his path, “Kleinman.” He grits, “Evan and I are friends.”

Kleinman tries moving around him, “Like hell you two are! Do you have some weird coma-kink or something, you freak?”

“Listen.” Connor pinches the bridge of his nose, “Can you just come back? I'll explain.”

“Nuh-uh. Don't think so. You can explain yourself to the officer of the law.”

By now the security officer has noticed something going down and approaches them, “Should I be concerned, boys?”

Like an ass Jared pushes his glasses up, “Yes, officer. I caught this creep here in a room with my comatose friend and---”

The officer interrupts, “Hey! I know this guy.” Connor is startled when he gets clapped on the back, “he came yesterday to see that kid in a coma and read to him or something. I thought that only happened in movies.” She chuckles, “My buddies and I noticed ‘cause it's pretty wholesome.” Connor coughs when he gets hit on the back, “Yeah, this is a good guy here.”

She points to Jared, “This guy botherin’ you?”

Connor, shocked, shakes his head.

“Well, ok. I'll leave you boys to it.”

Once they return to the room, Kleinman huffs and points, “Explain! But first...” he tugs a card out of his pocket and tosses it besides the bouquet and the leaf that somehow was not thrown out. He pulls out his phone, holds it over Evan and himself, takes a selfie, and then shrugs, “Evidence for the folks...Now, Explain!”

Connor grits his teeth at that whole display, “Evan and I are friends,” lies, all of it lies. But he has to go with it now since he's already told four other people.

“Sure.” Connor can tell Jared doesn't believe it, his arms are crossed and he leans against the bedpost of Evan’s bed and asks, “So, what? You've just been sitting here staring at Evan or something?”

“No, I’ve been reading to him.” Connor’s face heats up again. He very much wants to leave and considers just bouncing, but that would seem incriminating in Jared’s eyes. Plus, he kind of wants to show he's been a better friend than Kleiman.

“Since when have you been friends? I've certainly never seen you two talking at school.”

Connor tells Jared what he told Zoe.

Jared starts nodding slowly, as if deep in thought, “Uh-huh, ok, I see...Since when have you two been fuck buddies?”

Connor jumps out of his chair. “The fuck, Kleinman?! We’re not that. We’re friends.” He really wants to hit him.

“You expect me to believe a friend would read a book to their friend thats in a coma?”

“Well, you wouldn't know.”

“I guess I wouldn’t 'cause I’m not Mega-Gay.”

“Doing a decent thing for a friend doesn't make you Gay. Even if I happen to be.” He adds quietly.

Kleinman laughs, “Proves my point. Anyways, I have it on good authority Evan is Bi, do what you will with that information.”

And exactly like a person possessed, Connor says, “I'm sure you do, Han Solo.”

“I'm sorry did you just?” And then an expression of dawning horror strikes Kleinman’s face, “O no. No, no, he didn't.”

“He did.”

Kleinman swivels towards the sleeping boy with a mixture of horror and even as if impressed. He wails, “Evaaaan.”

Connor nods furiously, a grin hurting his face from hard it's stretching.

“When Evan wakes up I’m going to---” he turns to Connor, “I have so many stories of him. I'm going to fucking put them on a PowerPoint presentation…” And exactly like a Disney villain Jared dramatically exits the room and cries, “Just you wait!”

Connor bursts into laughter and collapses on the chair. Once he quiets down again he feels exhausted and turns to the comatose boy, “What the fuck, Evan? What just happened?” He semi-unwillingly picks the book up again. He'd like to just take a nap now, he’s been talking to way too many people in such a short period of time. He’d leave but he doesn't want to go home yet.

He scoots the chair closer to the bed and rests his elbows on it. He continues where he left off but soon his eyelids start to droop, he rests his head on his arms, and for a second a thought occurs to him but then he naps.

***

At some point between waking up from his impromptu nap and driving home. Connor simultaneously comes up with the most insane yet logical idea known to man: he has been communicating with Evan Hansen. The realization slams into him like a sledgehammer and he swerves into the parking space in front of his house.

“Fuck.” He whispers.

It makes sense. With shaking hands he pulls a cigarette out and fails at lighting it. He throws it at the seat next to him and crawls out of his car to sit on the curb holding his head.

It really fucking does make sense.

The Hobbit--Hell, even that random Little Prince quote Evan made.

And then the Han Solo story.

Evan being Bi. He had thought that had been some random fantasizing in his dream.

And then Evan and the tree---he had really tried to kill himself, he just didn't go high enough.

Connor feels sick.

Shit.

Once inside he ignores everyone's attempts to talk to him and runs up to his room.

That night he doesn’t sleep.

Chapter Text

There is no way to measure time in The Quiet Place, and for the first time in a long time Evan feels Alone. The time between when Connor last visited till now is like an actual physical sensation of loneliness. 

Without Connor, The Quiet Place feels more empty and fake than ever before. Evan looks at the trees and they don't rustle as they should, he looks at the water and it doesn't ripple smoothly, he peers up at the mountains and they look too flat and perfect in places that should have more edge---all of this, he begins to notice and it’s all wrong. 

He's had several spiraling moments and now he is too tired to climb back up. Terrible thoughts bombard him and a sick, queasy feeling makes him recoil from even moving too fast. 

He wants to press a button or something and have everything look as it should. 

As a testimony to the wrongness, Evan decides the place should look so wrong that it looks right. He starts by calling for a patchwork assortment of giant sequoias, sturdy oaks,weeping willows, and even cacti. He has The Quiet Place rise and fall at random in steep and shallow hills. Towering mountain ranges and canyons snap to existence---all of it defying the natural orders of the Earth as it should be, and somehow comforting Evan in its strangeness. 

 Everywhere he turns, he beckons a messy assortment of natural environments: snowing here, rainy there, foggy, sunny, windy---everything. The chaos is a little beautiful, and Evan revels at his own handiwork for a second. 

Lastly, he thinks to add a cliff and an ocean crashing at its base. He lets the ocean stretch before him, it is chaotic enough without his intervention. He doesn't need to add any crazy natural formations or anything. In a way, he thinks he shouldn't. It stretches before him, a powerful life of its own.

In the middle of the patchwork grid of natural areas he sits at the base of the tree where he died and he tries to think of nothing. 

***

When Connor appears Evan stumbles to his feet and runs up to him. “You're here!” He slowly stops a couple steps away from him. 

Connor has the same out-of-placeness to him from that first time he saw him here in The Quiet Place. They are only an arm-lengths away but he feels very far. A chill races up his spine as the uneasy feelings start to stitch their way up his gut. 

Connor gives a tired smile. “I couldn't sleep.”

“What do you mean?”

Connor breaks their gaze, “Nothing.”

“Um, are you---”

“What happened here?” Connor gestures at the mess of The Quiet Place. From where they stand a crisp mist has rolled in, but it does not hide the collateral damage that Evan’s loneliness razed upon The Quiet Place. 

Evan doesn't want to say everything was too broken and unreal so he made it as unreal as possible so he tries for levity and says, “I happened...Going a bit abstract here.” 

“Hmm.” A cacti tall as a pine stands closest to Connor. The sudden start to a mountain range only a couple steps away, with beds of flowers crawling all up its side. “I can tell.”

“Come with me.” Evan extends his hand for Connor to follow but he finds his hand being caught and held. Evan stares at their clasped hands between them and then his feet take the initiative to lead them.

He leads them to an old and gnarled oak tree. It has many sturdy and reliable branches, it is very climbable. 

Evan points at it, “Let's climb it.” He just wants to do something. 

Connor shrugs and their hands part as Evan jumps to take a branch and start their ascent. At first it's a fairly easy climb, like riding a bicycle, Evan finds footholds, and his hands find holds without even really thinking about it---It's easy at first, but then Evan feels a pain spike his left arm and he gasps softly. 

He hears Connor ask, “you ok?”

Evan’s brows furrow as he tries to make sense of this phantom pain, he shakily says, “Yeah, just think I pulled my arm the wrong way when I reached for a b-branch or something.”

They are nearly at the top and Evan is dividing his attention between the increasing pain and not falling. 

He can hear Connor beneath him cursing slightly. Sometimes he'll peek down and Connor doesn't notice because he intently studies the tree and tries to follow the path Evan leads. 

At the last strong branch Evan lifts himself and then settles against the trunk of the tree, he gently probes his left arm and feels the pain receding. Connor chooses a branch near him, huffs, and props himself against a good branch as well, he looks at Evan’s arm, “You sure you’re good?”

“I’m sure.” Evan drops his hand.

From their position in the tree they can take in the odd, unnatural view. They can see past the tree tops and sometimes a sequoia will tower over a bundle of trees. Then there are the mountains, going as far as the eye can see. And he thinks he can actually hear the crashing of waves from here. 

He turns to Connor and considers him. Something is off this time, there is an energy of something big not being identified between them. It is as if an invisible Canyon separates them. 

Connor turns to Evan and his eyes are wells of sadness, Evan longs to reach in them and see why they look that way. Connor says, “Evan, what would your perfect day be?” 

“W-what? I don't know…”

“Come on there has to be something.”

“I don't know…” Evan shakes his head and wraps his arms around himself, everything feels strange. 

Evan can just feel Connor frowning at him. Connor reaches over and pokes him lightly. When Evan looks up he's not frowning at him but his face is a little softer as if concerned, “Well, what have you always wanted to do?”

“I guess all of this?”  Evan gestures at everything around him. All of it mashed together, broken pieces of various sites held together by duct tape. 

“It's close...but what is something you wanted to do? Not somewhere you wanted to be.”

Before Evan’s fall, he doesn't think he ever had anything he wanted to do before he died. The biggest goal at the time was just that---dying. Anything else he put on the back burner, they were the things he couldn't do, not ever---like talk to a crush without crashing and burning in nerves or like driving without thinking about all the ways he could crash and kill someone---normal people could do it, just not him. Those things weren't meant for him. 

The words won't come. He chokes on his thoughts and looks at Connor for help.

Connor begins listing, “Drinking? You ever drink before?”

Evan shakes his head.

“Gone to a party?”

Evan actually snorts at the thought, “No.”

“Drive really fast?”

“I can't drive.”

“No?”

“I mean, I hav--had my permit and If I c-could I would never speed. Can you imagine the toll?”

“On everyone?”

“On me.”

“True.”

“Have you? Speeded?” For some reason this is something he bets Connor has done. He can already see him in his car and it's dark, the lights of the streets blur besides the windows like electric currents as he goes faster and faster down some empty road. It doesn't matter where he is going, he goes faster and faster going nowhere. 

“Yeah,” Connor admits, “I almost wrapped my car around a tree a couple times. In some ways I liked the thought of the instant destruction...But it was dangerous for the other drivers.” Connor absentmindedly scratches at his arms, “I didn't want to take any of them with me.”

Before Evan can ask anything, Connor shoots another question, “Have you been high before?” 

From the look on Evans face, Connor knows the answer, “O come on, it's a valid question! I need to cover all my bases.” He shoots him a quick smile non-judgmentally. He pops another question, “Had sex before?”

Evan actually considers throwing himself off the tree. 

“Connor! I literally haven't done anything!”

“You've kissed before.”  He teases with a slight leer, “and I'll take that as a ‘haven't’.”

Connor is suddenly closer and Evan blushes immediately. He feels like he's about to tip backwards and fall. He also thinks he didn't imagine Connor's eyes dipping to Evan’s mouth . He stutters, “T-That was a long t-time ago and only lasted a second! I d-don't count that! I mean I do...But…” Words fail him.

“Wow. Poor Jared, I actually feel bad for the fucker. You're a heart-breaker Evan Hansen.”

“I'm no heart-breaker.” He's had his heart broken so many times, he doesn't think he has the ability to break anyone else's. He is the Broken-Hearted.

A breeze lifts Connor’s hair around his face lightly, and it catches the light that breaks through the leaves, warming the reddish highlights of his hair. At first glance, Conor appears to be made of sharp edges, his chin and nose are slightly pointy, then his shoulders have their edges, and his eyebrows are a little firm. But then the sharpness turns a certain way and reveals its faint delicacy, like a mountain side softened by snow. 

Evan’s gaze catches on Connor’s and they stay frozen above the ground and amongst hundreds of rattling leaves for seconds that feel like hours. Connor’s eyes feel like the only real things here, they are mismatched like the landscape around them and yet, so True. 

Butterflies dance in Evan’s stomach and he marvels at the sensation. Connor interrupts the fluttery feeling as he says, “Let's do all that.”

That unheeded thought had caught Evan off-guard and he asks, “Do what?”

“Drive, get drunk, get high, the works...let's see what we can do here.”

Connor slowly starts climbing down, “Damn, this is gonna take forever.” He looks up and sees Evan unmoving, “Don't worry, Ev. We're not gonna do those other things we talked about. Get your mind out of the gutter.” Connor laughs and that is what gets Evan to start moving and follow him. 

***

Turns out the only thing they can do in The Quiet place is drive. 

They tried to do the drinking and smoking pot before driving out of curiosity but it didn't work. Since Evan had never had it before he wasn't sure how it was supposed to taste like, and it also felt like he was drinking air. It was much the same with pot, he was able to make it burn and Evan was able to recall the bitter smell of it but it didn’t do anything. 

It’s a nice car he guesses. It kind of looks and feels like his mom’s car because he is most familiar with it, even if they could have materialized a cooler car like a Ferrari, Porsche, or Tesla---his mother’s appeared and that’s alright. 

Not having to worry about pedestrians, wildlife, and other traffic hazards, Evan calmly drives. He takes a moment to glance at Connor who stares out the window. The scenery that flits past them is that of a road simple long and straight road flanked by trees and intermittent valleys. They drive away from the chaotic landscapes of Evan’s creation. 

Connor absentmindedly says, as if he can feel Evan’s eyes on him, “This reminds me of Apple Orchard road.”

“What is that?”

“It's this place my family and I used to go to.” Connor blows it off like it's nothing but Evan feels like it's not.

Connor taps his fingers on the window erratically and continues, “It's perfect. It's long and straight. You can drive down this road for a long time before you see another car. Which means you can go fast.” Connor twists towards him and says, “What do you think about speeding up?”

Evan doesn’t know what to say so he answers by hitting the gas. Connor whoops when the speed meter shoots up high, and the messy landscapes zip past their windows. It feels like they are shooting into hyperspace, that moment in Sci-fi movies where its all black except for the stars that blaze into millions of lines as the spaceship rocket away. Evan entertains this idea so strongly, that that is what happens. 

Evan hears Connor gasp and begin to laugh delightedly. A laugh leaps from Evan as well as he lets go of the steering wheel and stares at the light spectacle shooting past the windows of their car.

“Where should we go?!” Evan shouts, he doesn't mean to but this feels like a shouting moment. 

Connor shoots him a wide-eyed look, “I dont know?!”

Evan giddily laughs, “I d-don’t know either!”

Whatever had been making Evan uneasy has dissipated as Connor feels more present and real than he has in all this time. The blazing lights rocket past in colors of all sorts, like billions of fireworks being stretched from their moments of explosion and flying all around. The colorful lights dance in the car, and cast Connor and himself in hues of the rainbow---red, blue, green, pink, yellow---all of it flitting by on a cheekbone, on an eye, on a hand in milliseconds. 

Connor and Evan’s eyes meet amongst all this motion and hold steady. The lights and colors blooming and bursting in Connor’s eyes seem to hold their own brilliance, as if they come not from the starlight but from Connor’s soul himself. Connor’s smiling and the butterflies rush into Evan once again. 

In a moment of insanity or bravery Evan has never felt in his life, Evan declares, “You’re eyes are pretty.”

And then everything stops. The G-force of the car suddenly throws them forward, and Evan is so mortified he lets himself fly through the window. He is surprised to find himself crashing in sand. 

Evan swears the cartoon birds flying circles above his head are actually visible. He hears the sound of a car door slamming, and Connor comes into view. 

Evan shakes his head and groans, “I don't know why I said that. That’s so weird. I’m sorry. I---” The sight of where they have landed themselves silences Evan.

It is a beach. It is a beach but the sand glows a soft violet, and the gentlest of emerald waves slide lackadaisically onto the softest sand Evan has ever felt. He combs his fingers through it and they pass through like air. 

He looks up at Connor, and it is like the canyon has ripped open between them again. The unspoken thing is visible behind Connor’s face, Evan can read it in his eyes, he just can’t understand it. 

The sky behind Connor echoes the sudden momentous moment that has descended. It is the sort of sky that breaks at dawn, the stars shine brilliantly like waxed silver floating atop hues of pinks and reds and soft blues---the sky should sound calm, but it is powerful and cosmic, a mirror of the great Truth Evan senses deep in his bones. 

“I need to tell you something.” The gravity with which Connor intones this has Evan pulling himself to his feet. It feels right to stand---even if whatever Connor tells him will likely have him crashing to his knees.

Connor’s voice breaks, “You're alive.”

Evan shatters to hear this, but he does not go crashing, “I can't be...alive?”

“You are. You're in a coma. I found you. I found you when you fell from the tree---” behind Connor, where before there was only endless sandy horizon, the tree where Evan fell appears, “---and they took you to the hospital. You’ve been in a coma for 4 days.”

The shattered pieces in Evan puncture deep, he hears Connor and it makes sense but… “No, no, no. I can’t. It’s not true.”

Connor nods furiously, his hair falling into his eyes, “It’s true. Why---why do you think you remembered that quote from The Little Prince? It was word for word Evan.” When Evan can’t speak, Connor continues, “I’ve been reading to you while you sleep.”

The world is starting to spin and a big moon starts descending upon the beach, on it, a single flower. Evan brings a hand up to his head to quell pain starting to burst behind his eyes.

“Your arm! Your arm.” Connor points at Evans left arm that has been aching off and on, “You broke it in the fall. That’s why it’s been hurting you.”

The arm Connor speaks of flares like fire, and Evan keens as he falls to the floor. Connor follows him down, and props him up to look him in the eyes, “Don’t you see Evan? You’re alive. You’ve been dreaming all this!” A small smile lifts Connor’s lips, and his hands dig into Evan’s shoulders echoing the urgency to his voice.

Evan chokes, “And you? What about you? Fuck, are you even real?” There are tears starting to blur Evan’s vision and he furiously blinks them away because he can't see Connor clearly. Evan chokes on a sob, “Are you real, Connor? Please…” He has fallen into leaning on Connor and hides his face in his bony shoulder---it feels so real.

“Yes, I’m real. I have been reading to you, I did find you, and I have been visiting you somehow…” Connor slowly wraps his arms around Evan, they are a warm weight, “I think I’ve been dream-walking or something. I’ve always had these really crazy lucid dreams as a kid. Maybe this is what’s happened?”

Evan cries hard, his whole body trembling. All the while Connor holds him.

When Evan’s cries have subsided, Connor whispers, “Are you coming back?”

“I don't know.”

“What do you mean?”

“ I don't know.” Evan covers his face, he can't bear to see whatever expression Connor is wearing. He feels like he has been set adrift and also sinking simultaneously. He can’t think straight.

Evan likes it here. He doesnt think he is happy but it's quiet here. The thought of returning back to the world of The Living---no, it should be The Waking---terrifies him. A horrible dreadful monster eats up at his insides at the mere thought of it. Some window revealing these thoughts must open to Connor and the look in his eyes absolutely pierces Evan in the heart, he swears he can feel the grief crying from the wound. 

The canyon no longer separates them, the Truth has been laid bare, and Evan can no longer ignore its existence as it has impaled his heart. They are both free-falling in the space between, the moments of their decisions in the coming moments deciding how they land. 

Connor’s face shadows like the underbelly of a storm cloud going from the grief of the openly wounded to suddenly clearing into blankness. The silence speaks of an unspoken decision and the weight of it scares Evan.

Connor pulls away and walks to the edge of the water. He turns his face and Evan sees his sharp profile, he says something but Evan's can't hear. 

And then Connor’s gone. 

***

Evan stands beneath the tree where he didn’t die. 

He has truly spiraled in his thoughts, as the beach, the car, the moon, and the cosmic sky have all vanished to a blank and colorless landscape. It is like the night sky has been stripped of all light, and only the absence of that light is left---the dark.

He doesn’t know what to do. There are two combatting choices raging war within him: wake up or stay asleep.

He either wakes up and accepts the role he plays as Evan, the boy who inhabits the in-between, because the sun is not for him, and he can never be normal. Or he stays asleep and ignores all of that.

While the war rages inside, there is a poisonous gas running amok either side: Connor’s parting words.

What did he say? 

The gas sends both sides of himself into a frenzy of madness. It is enough to have him pulling his hair and have his heart go wild with worry. 

Connor could have said any number of things. He could have cursed, he could have called Evan a coward, he could have...Evan doesn't know but Evan irrationally fears Connor is planning something. Something like what Evan did, except Evan’s stomach plummets to genuinely image that he won't fail like he did. 

Evan hits the tree, and his arm throbs with pain. Goddamnit .

Chapter Text

The first thing Evan notices when he wakes up is the cold air. The air is actually cold. It painfully races up his nose and through his lungs when they instinctively heave in for a breath of air. He starts coughing and is suddenly aware of a lot of things all at once. His throat feels like a rock, he isn't even sure if his legs are still there, and a beeping noise starts going off-the-charts fast. Soon, a nurse runs in and then he passes out. 

When he wakes up again, many hospital-like things happen but Evan isn’t even aware enough for most of it. The only things taking precedent in his mind are his mom and how she’s going to react, and Connor because he is mainly why he is awake in the first place---that is if he hadn't just made him up in his dreams in the first place. 

Evan jumps as his mother bursts into the room, a flurry of tears and warm hugs. Her hands run through his hair, touch his face and grab his good hand. The other is broken, Connor was right. Or maybe he wasn’t. Evan doesn’t know. She calms down after awhile and is just painfully happy, and she tells him so. She keeps smiling as she tells him what he missed as if he were gone for years, and she hands him the cards by his bedside. There are three of them. One from his mother, Jared, and even his father. 

Evan is surprised by her show of affection and the waves of happiness washing over him. Evan wasn’t sure what he was expecting. Maybe some sign that her happiness is a fraction disingenuous, and that she wishes he hadn’t woken up because she had gotten a new, better paying job, her degree, a boyfriend---all in the days that he had been gone because of the significant amount of less worry she must have felt...But no, it brings tears to his eyes to realize he doesn’t sense that at all. 

His mother notices the tears pooling at his eyes and draws him close again. He cries, he cries for the part of himself that is screaming over being awake and having to live through the horrors of the days to come. He cries for the part of himself that had led him to this point, the part that had had hope and never thought he would mess up dying. He also cries because some messed up part of himself, some foolish, broken, and idiotic part of himself is happy to be alive. 

He cries because it has started again: he feels too much.

***

The rest of the day after Evan wakes up he curiously flexes the fingers of his good hand and ghosts his fingers over the texture of the cast of his bad arm. His foot twitches and the blankets are a little thin but regardlessly warm. 

Sensation. 

Being awake again is almost too much. There are sensations and things he is being made aware of once more. The clock across from his bed ticks at a measured pace and does not skip backwards a couple hours or leap forward a whole day. He is aware of the sun’s presence outside his window, a part of him hyper-fixates on making sure that it reaches sundown and darkens to nighttime. 

He’d like to think he’d be awake if he hadn’t met Connor in his dreams, but the pool of uncertainty that wells up inside him is too large for him to decide on an answer. He tries to imagine himself still asleep, still in The Quiet Place, still thinking he was dead---would he have been fine? Or would he have gotten lonely and woken up anyways. 

Evan sighs and turns on the TV to have some noise. 

He doesn’t think so. He doesn’t know if he should thank Connor or not---whenever he shows up---Evan hopes Connor shows up. Evan hadn’t even been sure if Connor had been some crazy part of his dreams but when his mother brought up Connor’s name when talking about his stay at the hospital Evan’s heart had leapt. Evan is awake because of him, and the jury is still out on whether he should have stayed asleep or not. 

Regardless on how Evan feels to be awake again his thoughts always return to this:

What did he say?  

Evan wants to ask a passing nurse or doctor that, he wants to ask a passing stranger, to ask his mom and have someone look at him confused because what are you talking about? And that would mean nothing would be wrong, except everything feels wrong and not just because Evan is awake and alive. 

Evan wants to know what Connor said even though the raging whirlpool of anxiety and dark thoughts swirling in his gut whisper it to him quietly and stroke the embers of his worries---Evan is scared and he doesn’t know if he has reason to be as scared as he feels. He doesn’t know how to contact Connor, he doesn’t have his number, his address or anything. 

He leaves tomorrow. He hopes Connor shows up by then.

**The Next Day**

Connor doesn’t show up.

He and his mother gather what little things of his that occupied the bedside table. She comments on his quietness but doesn’t push him. 

Evan finds a leaf, it’s edges are on the cusp of drying up and wrinkling inward. He twirls it between the fingers of his good hand. 

“Come on, sweetheart.” His mother waits by the open door.

The part of him that wants to wait has him linger in the room. He carefully puts the leaf in an opened envelope and leaves. 

**A Week Later**

This summer's the worst one yet. 

Much like the days following his return home, Evan wakes up before dawn and sits at the kitchen table in the dark. He had walked past his mother’s room and the door had been closed, meaning she hasn’t gotten up for work yet. 

His dreams are like how they used to be before he fell from the tree and met Connor---they are normal. Within the dreams there is that ordinary disconnection from the happenings of the dreams as things kind of just unfurl without his input and when he wakes up at odd hours of the night he does not remember much. The only new thing about his dreams is that when he wakes up he feels as if he has lost something. 

When he first returned home he felt like an intruder. 

Before the fall he inhabited this space naturally, not questioning the threadbare couch and the mysterious stains on the kitchen counter. But now that he has returned, these types of things seem much more glaringly obvious---like the haphazardly folded blanket scrunched up in the corner of the couch that the Evan-before-the-fall had left. When he spotted that he immediately flashed back to when he had been distractedly folding that as a---truly silly yet astonishing---soap opera played on TV.

He thought that at least something would have changed. He thought that maybe the house would reflect his absence in some way like maybe the couch would have moved a little to the right, or maybe the things in the cabinets would have been moved to different cabinets. But no. Like his room, the minute he stepped in to it it innocently looked back at him unchanged. A sweater of his was still in the place where he had left it: hanging on his bedpost. His room looked exactly the way he left it. There were papers on his desk still, his laptop’s orange light blinking in and out as it charged and his backpack peeked out of the closet. All these things remained where they were, as they were, and yet it was like he stepped into a stranger’s room. 

Everything is the same and somehow it gives him a very strange feeling of displacement that really shouldn’t be since...Everything is the same. Evan’s head begins to hurt because here he is trying to figure himself out again. 

He sits quietly, not knowing for how long until his mother pads into the kitchen. She jumps slightly when she spots him.

“Evan! What are you doing up, honey?” She reaches for him and runs a hand through his hair. Ever since he got back she’s been ceaselessly tactile—-as if to make sure he’s really there. “Sorry, you just surprised me.” She flicks the light over the stove top on. For that, he is at least grateful because it’s a dim small light and if she turned on the kitchen lights he might’ve cringed out of misery. A concerned frown pulls at her face, “Are you ok?”

Evan shrugs and feels his shoulders hunch in on himself. He mumbles, “Just woke up.” He knows if he says he couldn’t sleep she’d be really worried and he doesn’t want that—-she’s had enough worry these past couple days if the smattering of gray hairs that weren’t there before are anything to go by. 

Heidi offhandedly checks the clock---5:00 a.m. and gives him another barely concealed look of concern before beginning to prepare her breakfast. She grabs two plates—-she’s going to make him something too. She opens the fridge and with as much energy as one can have in the early early morning pulls out a carton of eggs, “Since we're both up I can cook us up something!”

He casts a glance out the window, it is quiet and dark outside, not even car has past during the unknown amount of time Evan sat there. He musters up a smile and nods. It’s not like he’s going to fall back asleep anytime soon. Besides, it’s rare when his mother actually has time to cook anything for the two of them.

“Why don’t you toast some bread while I scramble this up?” Her smile is a bright persistent thing and that is what makes Evan slip from his chair and do as asked.

He’s standing by the toaster when his thoughts slip away again. The back of his neck throbs in agitation when he starts to prod at the tangled up thoughts in his head. The smell of toasting bread and the sound of a spoon whacking a bowl barely register as he leans against the counter of what feels like a stranger’s house. 

“Drat.” The smell of something burnt hits his nose and draws his attention to his mother staring reproachfully at the steaming pan of eggs, “I put the heat on too high.” She explains as she tosses it out. 

The ring of the toaster goes off and Evan mechanically drops the two slices on a plate and puts two more in the toaster. 

“Are you excited for school?” 

Evan’s not sure what look he gave his mother but it must not have reflected one of excitement as Heidi huffs and smiles fondly, “I know you’re probably thinking ‘ mom, what are you talking about? It’s school’ but I feel this year will be good for you.” She’s beating the bowl again and the eggs spin around in a slowly increasing bubble of yellow, kind of like what Evan’s brain feels like during school---or just on a regular basis, really. 

Evan grimances, “I don’t think I’ve ever had a good year of school.” And then he clamps his down on his mouth because that was a little more honest than how he usually is around his mom. 

Heidi checks the heat and then pours the egg batter into a fresh pan, “I don’t know, but---call it motherly instinct---but I’ve got a feeling. Especially since you’ve got that new friend of yours.”

Evan’s breath hitches, “Y-you mean Connor?” And like the toaster is a part of this conversation it ‘ dings’ merrily right as he said Connor’s name.

“Yes! He was very sweet and seems like a good friend. How did you two meet?”

They haven’t really touched upon the topic of Connor. Evan just never brought him up after finding out that he really had been visiting him and that the dreams were---true? Real? He’s still not sure how to think of them because when he does it sends his head into unexplored new heights of confusion---both mentally and emotionally.

“Um. During the summer. Before I fell. We met at---” Evan can’t exactly say dreams, now can he? He finishes lamely, “at the park.”

He’s not sure if it sounded more like a question than it should have.

Heidi chuckles and she lifts the pan and hovers them over the plates, “I’m happy for you, Evan.”

And it's silly. But the warmth with which she says it is like a warm hug---and he flashes back to the hug on the beach and feels the ghost of an arm around him. His face warms up and he fusses with the toast, God. How much he wants to see Connor and have him confirm it was all real. 

Heidi serves them the eggs and they sit at the table together. They talk, Heidi shares some work gossip and odd stories she’s picked up along the way. Evan nods along and tries not to feel like this sort of meal likely would not have happened if he hadn’t been in a coma very recently. He can’t even remember the last time he and his mother sat down together and ate something prepared in the kitchen---even if they are eating at an ungodly hour of the morning.

Evan wonders if his mother has always been this...He’s not sure how to think of it...Happy? Pleased? Content? Content now that he is back?

The bags under her eyes have significantly reduced since he’s woken up. When he got home there were wrappers from energy bars and not much besides a carton of apple juice in the fridge. It’s odd to think that his mother had been affected so strongly by his absence, he thought that that sort of emotion would be reserved for parents with children who weren’t such a wreck as him but his mother hadn’t been starting the life he had wanted her to have with him gone. Heidi interrupts these thoughts by saying, “Look, Evan. The sun.” 

His thoughts are popped like a bubble as his eyes are drawn to the slowly warming sky. The warmth of the kitchen suddenly draws him to the present when his feet touch the cool tiled floor. He blinks. She’s right, the sun is beginning to rise. He’s unwilling to delve deeper into the thoughts of what she would be like if he had actually succeeded and died. The reality of what just this little glimpse of the truth of what his absence would do to her unsettles him greatly. 

Heidi gets up, empty plate in hand, “Remember you have that appointment with Dr. Nadia today. I have to get off to work now.”

He’s still poking at his food and tries not to sigh, “Ok.”

Evan is surprised yet pleased when he is tugged into a hug. Heidi presses her hand against his cheek and he smells the clean soap of her hair, he feels warm. She pulls away with an “I love you,” And then she’s gone.

By the time Evan leaves the kitchen he doesn’t need to turn on any lights, the sun has risen and washes the kitchen in a faint blue. He feels like maybe those rays of sunlight filtering gently through the blinds have somehow reached and touched a little corner of his heart. 

For the first time, Evan counts down the days till school starts. 

When senior year starts he hopes to see that familiar face.

Chapter Text

It feels like nothing short of a tsunami will get Connor to step foot into the hellish halls of high school. Even if being at the house feels like the very bottom of a fathomless abyss, school is just a foot above it---therefore it is a little less worse. It’s just taking the sucky and putting it in a different setting. 

Atleast at school he won’t have the quiet halls and his empty bedroom, with only the odd strums of Zoe’s guitar faintly floating in the air. Atleast at school there is the endless noise of students chattering, yelling, running and dropping things---all of their eyes grazing past him with indifference---they have ceased to fear the guy who doesn’t want to be seen. 

At the house, it feels like there are eyes all over the place. That house has seen some things. The weight of that gaze falls especially hard when it is joined with Larry’s, that unmistakable look of judgement and evaluation. Connor isn’t sure what Larry looks for, he has the feeling that even if Connor weren’t the way he is, that he would still see that same lightless look in his father’s eyes. 

Then there’s his mother and sister. His mother’s eyes fall on him so fragilely even if she knows that any second Connor can take that and snap it in half. Zoe looks at him like she’s not even sure if he’s actually there, as if he were fading in and out as she searches his eyes---it’s hardest to meet her gaze over their father’s sometimes.  

The handful of weeks leading up to school have been familiarly tense. Connor could have been hyper-aware of any noise or movement in the house because of his tremendous lack of sleep after that last dream with Evan, or it could also be that he has an incredibly practised eye for sensing when shit’s about to hit the fan in the Murphy household. 

Perhaps the weight on their shoulders wouldn’t be as heavy if he hadn’t have been dragged away to that retreat with his mother up in the mountains, then he wouldn’t have been pissed at not being able to go see if Evan was awake. He can admit it, he raised a hell of a ruckus when he found his bags were packed and everything because apparently this was planned months in advance and they couldn’t not go because that would reflect badly on the family and they very much would like to go back there sometime in the future. If anything, they found his reaction to be another reason he should leave and have time away from any “bad energies” as his mother put it. Funny thing was, they went to Colorado. And Connor was very close to saying he’d been there before.

It doesn’t really matter anymore, though. Today is the first day of school and Connor rests his head on the table and feels miles away. His head throbs and the table persuasively invites him to rest his eyes for a couple seconds. His arms prickle, an itch just beginning to register.

“You need to hurry up, Connor. It’s getting late and---” A pan clatters in the sink, the sound painfully pinches his brain, “---You haven’t even eaten anything!”

As if from far away he hears the sound of a newspaper rustle, it sounds like leaves. Larry’s voice drips with barely disguised disdain, “Why are you resting on the table? Sit up and eat what your mother’s prepared you,” Connor doesn’t sit up.

The next words out of Larry’s mouth, are curdled like all these thoughts have been building up for too long, “What’s wrong with you? You’ve been like this all summer. Sitting here morosely, disappearing God knows where, ignoring us and not doing anything to prepare for the future like we’ve told you. All this even after Colorado. I can’t believe we raised such an ungrate---”

“ Larry!” His mother cuts in. Connor involuntarily lifts his head a little, she looks like a ghost. She’s trembling, “It’s Connor’s first day of senior year. We’re not going to---we’re not going to start the morning like this.” She whispers and grips the counter. 

Connor clenches his hands into fists. She says it's the first day of senior year as if it's supposed to mean something to him or anyone else. Connor can do any number of things right at this moment. He can spring up from his chair and toss his bowl of food at his dad. He could tell him to fuck off and goad him to finish what he was about to say. He can let the boiling mass of magma spew and positively wreck ‘ his first day of senior year’   he snidely repeats to himself. 

But. But, he’s tired. And if all goes well today at school and he sees an awake, conscious, very much alive Evan then everything will be settled, and everything is going to stop and nothing will matter anymore.

Connor stands, “I’m not hungry.”

Larry scowls. Before he can say anything else Connor mutters, “I’m leaving.” He grabs his bag and next thing he knows he’s in his car. Except, he does not start the ignition. His scars have been itching all morning. Sometimes it feels like no matter how much he scratches them they won't ever be satiated like a black hole that just keeps on consuming. When he scratches at the scars through the sweater---or better, without the sweater---it's like sweet pure rain on a scorched Earth. 

They itch and an emptiness has scooped everything out of him until all he can focus on is the itchiness and the desire to go take his car and speed away from it all. He wants to sleep the sleep of the dead---without dreams---and banish all conscious thought. 

He scratches above his wrist and then he hears his car door open. 

Zoe’s mouth is pressed into a thin line and her face is pinched. She quietly sits in the passenger seat and hugs her backpack to herself and stares out the window. Things have been rocky between them ever since that one tenuous conversation they had regarding Evan. Once or twice, Zoe has attempted to strike up more conversations like the last one, but Connor was unwilling to try and cross the bridge Zoe was obviously trying to build. He’d like to blame it on the lack of sleep but he knows an even bigger part of him doesn’t even know where to start and is afraid of messing up. It’s not like he has much time left anyways, so he didn’t really see the point. 

“Are you going to drive or should I?” Zoe asks like she has to drag the words out.

Connor just steps on the pedal.

***

Connor walks the halls in a daze. The second Connor’s eyes clap on Evan, his heart lifts almost painfully and then goes crashing when he hears an obnoxiously loud voice:

“Hey! Murphy, ‘diggin the hair cut! Very school-shooter chic.”

Whatever rush of relief Connor felt grazed his heart, he batters away and sinks back into the empty pit. Anger replaces it fast, the magma from not even 15 minutes ago at the breakfast table bursts up and directs Connor’s anger towards Jared.

“Ha.ha.ha. Very funny.”

Jared backs up, “Woah man, it's just a joke.” He finishes weakly.

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m laughing can’t you tell?” He feels high on this anger. It’s a dumb, stupid comment and its not like Jared hadn’t already seen Connor’s hair a couple weeks ago when they crossed paths but the guy obviously said it because everyone in the hall could hear it and see him and laugh. Dammit, Connor doesn’t want to be seen.

“Man, you have to learn when to take a joke,” Jared turns to Evan for help, edging a little behind the flustered boy, “You guys are friends, and you think it's kinda funny right?”

Evan’s eyes keep flickering up towards him and then away, he fidgets on his feet and Connor can’t push away the crushing feeling of disappointment in his gut. 

However, Connor is surprised when Evan turns to Jared and says, “I-it wasn’t f-funny Jared.” 

Jared, red-faced, narrows his eyes and says, “Fine. I’ll leave you freaks alone so you can talk with your boyfriend.” Jared deliberately pushes Evan aside when he walks by him and angrily mutters something too low for Connor to hear.  

Evan has his head down and doesn’t say anything. Neither of them say anything. And with a horrible pang of realization Connor realizes maybe Evan doesn’t want to be seen with Connor because...Connor Murphy is Connor Murphy, and they are in school, and things are different. 

He hears Evan take in a breath, “Um,” and a small smile forms as Evan lifts his head. But the hurt part of Connor lashes too fast, because goddamit it hurts, “What are you laughing at?” And he pushes Evan as he runs away. 

***

Stunned, Evan leans against the lockers and tries not to feel like he can see the pieces of his heart shattered around him. Students stepping on the broken pieces as they unthinkingly pass him, unseen and hurt. 

Then a person steps in front of him, stars on the cuffs of their jeans, “O my gosh, I’m so sorry my brother did that!”

Evan nearly hits his head on the locker behind him with how fast he looks up. Zoe Murphy stands before him with her hand outstretched, “I’m Zoe, by the way,” she says. He shakily accepts her hand and tries to smile and calm his racing heart. 

“I k-know. I know you’re Z-Zoe, Zoe,” Even though he may no longer like her like that, she is still such a brilliant light and Evan has trouble interacting with people like her, “I mean, uh---Evan. I’m Evan H-Hansen,” He hears Zoe give a soft gasp and he internally winces at his awkwardness, “And no, no he didn’t m-mean it. It’s ok.”

“ You’re Even Hansen!” 

“Evan, yes,” he thinks he might actually be dying inside.

“It’s not ok!” Zoe insists and draws the attention of passing students. She says a little quieter, “You two are friends, right? I can’t believe him...”

“I’m fine,” Evan says and his eyes dart away from hers, they really are very too bright. Her face is twisted into a deep frown but like it was never there she quickly lifts her mouth into a sweet smile---the likes of which would have made him melt within a second of seeing it not even a month ago.

“Well, I’m sorry again,” She says, some sadness still lingering in her voice, “You seem nice,” she pauses a moment and then quietly says, “Too nice for my brother.” 

“Um.”

“See you around, Evan.” And with a small wave she’s gone.

***

Dear Evan Hansen,

Turns out this wasn’t an amazing day after all. This isn’t going to be an amazing week or an amazing year, because why would it be?

I know, because…

 Earlier this morning Evan was under no impression that the day would go well, let alone be amazing, but he had thought---something’s gotta change? Even just a little bit? Evan squeezes his eyes closed as a tidal wave of disappointment rushes over him with just how sucky the day has gone so far, even if no part of him actively thought it would be anything other than bad: which is his normal. 

He can’t deny the part of him that was counting down the days till school started because he wanted to see Connor. All those times he thought about how he would approach Connor he hoped it would never go as bad as it did this morning. 

He imagined maybe they’d spot each other in the hall and then a click of familiarity would slide into place as they would say, “Hey, I know you.” Or something like that. He rehearsed it all in his head, Evan wouldn’t let himself be a mess in person and would instead play it cool. Evan even daydreamed about what it would have been like if Connor had actually visited him in the hospital after he woke up. Sometimes he imagined Connor walking in, appearing suddenly like in the Quiet Place, maybe they’d be awkward, maybe not, but the main commonality between all these imaginings was that they were happy. 

He hadn’t counted on Jared being the first to spot him and immediately saying a Jared-like thing: which is to say an asshole-ish thing. 

He continues his letter: I know because why would anything change? Everything is the same and the only thing that’s different is my broken arm. But you know, I talked to Zoe today, that was different. But I was still an absolute mess because she’s still so bright no matter how I feel. 

I’m still the same after the fall, I’m still such a mess. 

I was wrong. I think everything would have gone on like it always has, with no room for me because I have never actually been a part of anything. I’m not anything. I’m nothing. 

Sincerely, 

Your best, and most dearest friend, 

Me 

P.S. 

The funny thing is I had actually thought I’d have a friend when I got back to school.  

Evan chokes up at that last line, it had come out of nowhere. He feels his heart thumping in his throat and shakily sends the document to the printer. 

“Hey.”

Evan free-falls in his seat. He recognizes that voice, not because he heard it just this morning, but because...It’s Connor.

Connor stands awkwardly behind him. One hand gripping the strap of his bag and he has his eyes on the ground. 

Evan coughs, “Um… Hi.” There are a million things Evan would very much like to do right now if his legs weren’t currently glued to the floor, such as dash away. He very much doesn’t want to be here because he doesn’t know what to do. Are they going to pretend that the dreams weren’t real? Are they going to immediately address the very sizable elephant in the room? Evan can’t take it anymore and the question bursts out of him, “It was real?”

Connor's knuckles noticeably turn white as he grips the strap of his bag tighter, “The dreams?”

Connor phrased that like it were question when it was really an answer. An answer that has Evan feeling a whole mix of emotions to finally have it confirmed, “Oh,” Evan suddenly finds the texture of his cast very interesting, “You’re here---We’re here...B-but...d-doesn't it feel a bit strange?” 

 “I’m not pretending it was normal ‘cause it was fucking werid,” Evan glances at Connor, he is scratching his head, “But it was kind of…” Connor trails off, “I dunno it was---I mean it wasn’t cool that you’ve been in a coma and got hurt and all that but...It was---”

“Nice?”

Connor nods, “Nice. It was nice.” 

Connor is standing right in front of him, he thinks he can hear him breathing, and the non-translucence of him makes it very clear that this is real. But, Connor still feels far away, like he is still in that dreams-cape with Evan. It comes almost as a surprise when Connor suddenly grabs the chair besides Evan and awkwardly sits beside him. 

“Your cast. No one’s signed it.”

Evan automatically looks at his cast even when he knows full well that it is blank. He says, “Yeah.” As if he just noticed.

“I can sign it.” 

Evan automatically reaches for the Sharpie he knows is in his bag because he curiously feels a little blank at this turn of events. Connor accepts it and steadies Evan’s casted arm after he tugged it a little painfully, he glances apologetically at Evan and then takes the sharpie to his cast. 

The light of the computer room is a sad white light and it pales Connor’s face further and Evan can’t help it if he stares because his friend (?) is besides him, in person, and it feels right. Connor’s tongue pokes out and his brow furrows in concentration. He’s at the cast for a little longer than Evan expected.

“You’re not d-drawing anything y’know…?” 

“I would never,” Connor holds a hand to his heart, “Now keep still. I’m almost done.”

Evan grumbles, his arm has been lifted for quite a bit now, “I am still.”

“Hush. You’re gonna love it.”

When Connor releases Evan's arm, Evan sees what he had done. It is a small drawing done in the simple yet skilled lines of a professional doodler. Where the cast was previously blank is a little moon with a little flower atop it. Surrounding this are little stars.

“I wish I had a red pen for the flower but…” Connor shrugs, “Blood is definitely out of the question.”

Evan marvels at the drawing and breaths, “Connor, it's amazing!” But there's an absence of something, “Where's your name though?”

Connor waves and caps the pen, “You don’t want---”

“I do!” Evan coughs and fights the heat that threatens to rush to his cheeks. He thinks they’ve gone red anyways---traitors, “Could you?”

Connor studies Evan for a second and the pen hovers over the cast, Connor quietly says, “I’m sorry for pushing you earlier.”

Evan feels a rush of affection and the hurt from earlier that morning lessens a bit, “It’s ok,” he says, “I-I wasn't l-laughing at you. I was n-nervous and I wasn’t sure w-what to do or say...”

A flash of annoyance flashes over Connor’s face, “It’s not ok, I think I knew that somehow but it didn’t matter ‘cause I’m an asshole.” Evan can’t catch Connor’s eyes as he looks away from him with a self-loathing expression Evan can recognize all too well.

“Connor?” Evan waits till Connor reluctantly meets his gaze, “Just sign your d-damn name.” 

That startles a laugh out of Connor and he raises the Sharpie theatrically with a manic glint in his eyes, “Ya’know since you asked nicely, I can write my name in big letters all across—.”

“Don’t. D-don’t even think about it.” Evan’s finding it hard to hold back a smile.

Connor snorts at the expression he gives him and he sighs the long suffering sigh of the put-upon, “ Fine .” He gently grabs Evan’s arm, unlike last time, and writes his name in a small scrawl. It contrasts with the care given to the drawing.

Evan’s heart twists painfully to realize he missed his friend. Evan wants to ask if they are friends just as badly as he wanted to confirm that the dreams were real. The question is right on the tip of his tongue and then it finally jumps out, “Are we—-are w-we friends? I know it’s a silly question. No, it’s weird? It’s a w-weird question because w-who asks that? Um—-I don’t know but...Are we?” Heat burns Evan’s cheeks.

“Yeah,” Connor smiles and yet he still seems so far away, “You know too much about me now to not be my friend.” It’s not unlike The Quiet Place where Connor was translucent and a barely there presence, “And I know enough about you to make it even.” Connor takes a step back and points behind him, “I better get going now.” 

“Wait!” Evan flushes, and reaches for a piece of scrap paper and scribbles on it, “Here’s my number.” It feels like it’s too soon for Connor to leave and he wants to make sure they actually talk after this, “You can text me w-whenever. I won’t answer past midnight though. Or maybe I w-would b-because insomnia is a t-thing. Anyways, you h-have my n-number now.” 

Connor has a small smile as his attention lingers on the piece of scrap paper for a moment before folding it and stuffing it in his pocket, “That I do.”

A warm feeling suffuses Evan and he lets it momentarily distract him as Connor heads to the printer and picks up his paper, “This is yours, right?”

Evan blanks out and then panic strikes him because he can’t remember exactly what he wrote, “It’s m-mine. M-maybe don’t---” Evan reaches out for the paper but Connor is already reading it and Evan helplessly watches how Connor’s face darkens and a grim line twists his mouth into a frown. 

“What the fuck is this?” Connor whips the paper up accusatorily, “‘No matter how I feel?’About Zoe? My sister ? What does that mean?”

“I-it’s a letter---an assignment for my therapist. I have to w-write letters,” Evan tastes the iron in Connor’s stormy eyes, “And—-Uh, I don’t know why I wrote that. I mean, I---”

“You like her?” 

“I---” Evan raises his hands searching for words, hoping the air currently suffocating him would have some mercy and help him say something, anything to bring Connor down. “I used to.” 

 “Liar. Why else would you write about my sister?” Connor’s jaw works and his eyes are bright with a devastating emotion, “You don’t even know her! That’s fucking weird, Hansen.” 

“I’m sorr—“

Connor crumples the paper into a tight fist and says, “You know what? Fuck this. My life is a fucking joke.” 

Connor violently opens the door and is halfway down the hallway with his long-legged strides when Evan dashes after him, “Connor! Wait! Come back!”

Connor ignores him and runs down the empty hall to the school’s exit and Evan tries to follow but with a falling heart finds him nowhere. He is gone.

***

Evan returns for his things and prints out a new copy of his letter in a daze.

He walks home because he misses the bus and can’t bring himself to willingly wait and then ride a bus at the moment when all he needs is air. 

When he arrives home, it is empty and quiet. He slips his backpack off his shoulders and it crashes to the floor. The silence that greets him should feel like a balm to the cracks that were building up inside him all day but instead he just shatters and sits on the floor of the living room.

It is significantly darker than when he returned home when he comes back to consciousness. Long shadows dim the living room and it's starting to get to the point where he will need to turn on the lights. Apparently, at some point he had mechanically started doing some homework without really processing anything. His stomach gives a weak growl for attention and nausea silences it. 

A chem formula is interrupted by the ringing of his phone. He picks up the phone, the screen alerts him of an unknown caller. His heart lifts for a second and he doesn’t think twice about answering.

“Hello? Connor?”

There is silence for a moment, “Is this Evan?” 

Confusion and a creeping sense of fear sends a cold wave over him, “Yes…” He knows that voice but he is not sure, “Zoe?”

 “Yea. It’s me---”

“Is-is Connor ok?”

“I was kind of hoping he’d be with you. I don’t know where he is.”

“W-what?” A ringing noise shrills in the distance, "Nuh-no he's not w-with me..."  

"Listen---Hang on---" The ringing noise is unbearably loud, he blinks away black spots and heavily sits on the couch. The second Zoe speaks, he latches onto her voice, "Can you help me look for him?"

“Yes, but...I-I don’t have a car.” 

“I’ll pick you up.”

Chapter Text

“I’ll pick you up.”

Evan hastily gives her his address and paces his house in mounting worry. Thoughts of Connor in a ditch somewhere, perched at the edge of a bridge, doing something incredibly dumb, dangerous and scary send Evan spiraling. He’s right on the edge of breaking.

He flinches when he hears the honk of a car horn.

He locks the front door of his house with shaking hands and internally thanks his mother’s erratic schedule for the fact that she won’t be home till past 3 in the morning.

A lone, cold wind races by and he regrets not grabbing a jacket. It’s like the clouds appeared out of nowhere.  

Evan throws himself into Zoe’s van and asks, “Where s-should we go? Did you already call the police? D-do your parents know? How long has he been gone? D-did you see him after school?”

Zoe moves the car as he fumbles for his seatbelt. She glances at him and shakily says, “To your first question I have some ideas. And yes, I already told my parents and the police are looking too. I know the drill,” They’re speeding down streets Evan has never seen before except in passing. Now he scans them like each shadow and each blade of grass will help them find Connor.

Zoe says, “He came home…I saw him after school and he was so—-He—we got into a fight and then he just left,” They slow as they approach a park, “I found a piece of paper with your number on the floor, it fell out of his pocket and—-well, you know...”

She parks the car and they both agree to split up and look in opposite directions of the park. Evan runs but slows to a brisk walk towards the playground. It is empty and cold where children have screeched and bounded through the fixtures during the day, now it is approaching night, and no one would realistically be at the park.

A lone hunched figure walks ahead of him, fading in and out with each street lamp---but the clothes are all wrong, the hair and height are all wrong too. Evan turns right around, heart in his throat to meet Zoe back at her car.

She returns seconds later. Her face drawn but a determined set to her expression keeps him floating. They get in the car and keep driving. They keep searching.

They drive through all the haunts Zoe believes Connor may be in. Either one of them will hop out of the car, or both of them sometimes, to check an alley, a park or the library (it’s closed)—- still no Connor.

Zoe pulls up to a familiar building and he had an idea where they might be heading because of the streets they were taking but it still takes him a second to recognize it. It is their old elementary school, it has a fresh look of new paint and they even added landscaping now, but it’s still the same building: flat and stodgy, like an old wet dog.

Chewing on her lip Zoe gets out of the car without a word and Evan follows her out into the frigid air. It was always cold here somehow. As if the clouds gathered at this particular spot to torment elementary children---particularly Evan. He does not remember Elementary school with much fondness.

A drop of water hits his nose so lightly he thinks he might have imagined it.

Zoe says, “Let's meet at the playground.”

They part ways and Evan wades through memories he hasn't thought of in years as he walks the perimeter. He turns the flashlight on on his phone and somehow the strangeness of seeing this place in the dark makes it easier for images of people’s faces to flash through his head, each person showing up as fleetingly as a dream that’s slipped away.

Evan looks inside the windows against his better judgement, logically he knows Connor couldn’t possibly be in there but he is hit with wave after wave of memories of their time as children.

There was a time when Connor was like the other kids in class---Evan may as well include himself in there too. That was a much simpler time, a time he barely remembers except for singing songs and the soft solitude of naptime. But even then, he remembers not sleeping sometimes because he didn't like the disorientating feeling of blinking awake to see that the lights were on and the other kids were staring at him because he was still on the floor. He remembers feeling sad that the tranquility was broken.

And then, one day, Evan noticed Connor. On the day the printer flew everyone noticed Connor. The second the printer hit the floor Connor became the boy that no one wanted to talk to. And yet, even if Connor withdrew, he was always there—-as familiar as the phases of the moon.

The one clear memory he has of him from the early years is a time when...

It was raining and Evan was waiting. His mother was late again. The other children that still needed to be picked up were playing in the cafeteria---he could hear their squeaking shoes and shouts. He sat on the benches all along the front of the school because the shade extended very far and he could watch the rainfall. Evan stared so long at the growing puddles of water that he hardly noticed the sound of someone sitting a little ways from him on the benches too. Connor sat with his knees up to his chest and a book in his hands. Evan prayed his mother showed up soon because he was cold and he didn't know if he should try and talk to Connor. He nervously glanced at Connor and flushed when he noticed that Connor was already looking at him oddly—as if he were going to say something before Evan turned to him. Evan shakily tried to smile. Connor’s brows knitted and he started to say something when a friendly honk alerted Evan to his mother’s car pulling in. Evan spared Connor an apologetic glance and ran through the rain. Heidi had berated him for not getting his umbrella and asked if that boy—Connor—needed a ride. Evan shook his head and the next day Connor didn’t speak to him, and the years that followed too.

The dry leaves rattle around his feet as a snappish wind runs by. Evan picks up the pace.

They meet at the school’s playground. A swing groans and Zoe blankly stares at its miniscule movements. Evan shivers, neither of them are dressed for this sudden cold. He doesn’t know if he should say anything. He’s thrumming with nerves and twitches to the tick of an invisible clock.

“You know…” Zoe begins, “This has happened before. And each time—I find myself looking for him anyways. I don’t know why? Sometimes I think I hate him, and I think I actually do.”  

Her throat works and she’s staring at something Evan can’t see, “It’s not easy, you know? I wanted to help him---I mean, I still do. So does my mom, oh my God, it’s practically all she ever thinks about…Sometimes I forget how he used to be because he can be so scary sometimes. It’s scary when he gets angry and it’s scary when he’s gone…” Zoe finally meets Evan’s gaze and her eyes are bright with unshed tears, “Yet I’m here.”

Evan gently touches her shoulder, “We’ll find him.”

A tear slips loose and Zoe turns away to wipe it, she gives him a small wan smile and says, “I’m glad you’re here with me.”

“M-me too.”

They’re in the car when Evan dares to ask, “Can you think of anywhere else we should go?”

Zoe groans and rubs her eyes, “No, and the thing is...I don’t know if we should even be looking for him. He used to do this a lot more, just disappear and then come back worse than better. And if he really is ok and he finds out we have been looking for him with the police, he’ll be even more difficult to be around. But…”

“But you’ve got a bad feeling?”

“Yeah.” She breathes.

“Fuck.”

Zoe snorts, and it sounds like Connor and Evan’s heart breaks and starts racing with worry all anew. He briefly wonders if his heart is going to fail at some point with all this activity. Zoe says, “Sorry, you just don’t seem like the swearing-type,” Her face crumbles, “What’s wrong with me? We should keep driving and—“

“Wait,” He speaks before the thought has even fully formed, “How about the orchard? The apple orchard that you guys used to go to? He told me something about a road—-.”

Zoe lights up, “Yes! We haven’t been there in so long,” Zoe starts the engine and speedily backs up, “Can’t believe I didn’t think of it. He has to be there.”

I hope so.

***

It starts raining when they spot Connor’s car. And as if for the sheer theatricality of it, a flash of light snaps the sky followed by a boom.  

They slow the car to a crawl and park it mere feet away from his car. Through the splattering rain,  Zoe’s headlights reach Connor’s car and that flash of red is the only thing they can really see through all the water and darkness.

“It’s his car,” Zoe says even if they both know it.

They sit silent. Tenser than when they were driving from place to place and each place devoid of Connor.

Zoe’s fingers thrum on the steering wheel and she says, “I can’t speak with him. You should go.”

“Wait, what?”

“You should go to him. He’s not going to listen to me—“ Zoe nods determinedly, as if she’s given it much thought---maybe she has, but Evan can’t deny he wasn't expecting that.  

“But—.”

“Believe me. I know from past experience,” Zoe glances at the car bitterly, “Please, Evan.”

Evan chews on his lip and slides out of the car, “Ok. I will.”

***

It’s cool in the car and he feels nowhere at all.

He’s been sitting here for an hour. Enough time to watch the clouds darken and then break into the rain hitting his car. The road ahead is not visible in the darkness and the sheets of water hit his windows excessively.

It’s rather nice, actually. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt this calm before. There is a silence in his head that he imagines he would find at the very top of a mountain. It’s almost like being underwater, the sound cancels out and then there is darkness behind closed eyelids. The patter of rain disrupts the quiet he was inhabiting for the past hour but he welcomes it, he had always loved the sound of rainfall.

A flash of light strikes the sky and then there is a clap of thunder. He closes his eyes and counts between that and the next strike. 1-2-3 all the way up to 14 and then it’s there. He does this until the count shortens, meaning the storm is getting closer. He can appreciate the timing of it given how his own time has come.

Early that day he had been angry. He had been angry and blinded by the color red. It sent him flying to his car and then he has a vague memory of being at the house, Zoe had been there, and they got into a stupid fight over something dumb but it felt monumentally worthy of the cruel things he threw at her at the time. He’d escaped back to his car and drove around aimlessly until he ended up here: the Apple Orchard Road. And all that time his heart throbbed with a gash that was oozing something too close to heartbreak.

It doesn’t really matter anymore, though. Nothing does. He had recalled a realization he had made during one of his bouts of insomnia: all those times Connor failed to kill himself and his lucid dreams were all meant to lead him to being able to save Evan Hansen. Connor has nothing else waiting for him, he wasn’t planning anything past seeing Evan wake up, and he did. Well, he didn’t actually see him wake up but he saw him awake and alive and that is as good as it gets.

Connor listens deeply for the next clap of thunder and then he hears something odd. It sounds like a soft knocking noise. He opens his eyes and turns towards the noise, jumping slightly when he sees a silhouette crouched and peering into his car. The rain on his windows distort any facial features and Connor turns to see twin lights from a car parked not far behind his own.

The knock starts again, a little harder, the face is nearly pressed against the window. A pair of familiar eyes squint at him, blinking rapidly. With a start Connor realizes it’s Evan. Before he can think Connor reaches over and opens the door and then Evan hurtles into the passenger seat with a loud squelch.  

Evan looks soaked to the bone, his hair sticks darkly to his rain streaked face.

Connor turns away, unable to look at him and regretting even opening the door. Why did he even do that? He’s such an idiot.  

“Connor? A-are you ok? H-how come you haven't answered anyone’s c-calls? D-do you have your phone?”

Maybe if he just closes his eyes and keeps silent long enough Evan will get tired of him and leave?

Evan gives a small cough, “C-connor?”

“Why the hell are you here?”

There’s only a faint amount of light coming in from the back window of the car but there is concern in the sheen of Evan’s wet face, “You were g-gone and we’ve b-been looking for you…”

Connor’s eye twitches, “Because of today? I’m not angry anymore,” in a sense it's true, he doesn't actually feel anything at all at the moment. Except, he would very much appreciate it if he were left alone and if Evan would kindly vacate the vehicle, “Don’t know how the hell you found me but can you just go?”

“I can’t d-do that.”

“They threaten you or something? Of fucking course you can leave. I won’t stop you.”

“I d-don’t want to,” Evan insists.

Connor breathes in deeply and pinches the bridge of his nose, he’s starting to get frustrated, “Listen, I’m out here in my car. I wasn't trying anything. Why don't you run back to---who are you with anyways? And how did you---” From the look of Evan’s face he knows, “Zoe.” It can't be anyone else.  

“She found my number.”

Connor stays silent. Processing.

“Connor?”

“Get out.”

“I won’t.”

“Get. Out .” He grips the steering wheel so tight it’s painful.

“No, we’ve been looking for you. I’m—-“

Connor sneers, he sharply says, “With who? Zoe? What is this, a wet dream of yours? You’re what? Gonna save Zoe Murphy’s brother and then get in her pants?” Evan’s eyes widen, “You’ll probably do anything for her because... what was that again? ‘She’s such a beautiful light no matter how I feeeeel?’”

“N-no! That’s not true at all!” Evan recoils, but then his brows furrow, “Wait, hold on...Save? Save you?” Connor scowls and looks away. Evan carefully asks, “What do you mean by that?”

Connor’s foot jitters by the pedal, “What do you think I mean?”

Evan’s weighty silence is answer enough.

“You have some idea, don’t you?”

Evan’s voice wavers, “You can’t.”

“I will. I’m going to fucking floor it even if you’re in here with me.”  

“I d-don’t care.”

“Fuck off, don’t be an idiot. If I have to, I’ll shove you right out of here.”

“N-no, I’m not leaving.” As if to make a point Evan grips the seat. He’s calling Connor’s bluff---dammit.

Evan jumps when Connor hits the car horn and it blares crashingly into the silent and empty road.

Connnor catches Evan quickly looking behind them to see if Zoe might be coming. Connor turns too, squinting against the lights but she doesn’t come. In some ways he feels relief.  

“Why are you doing this?” Why can’t Evan leave? Why did they have to find him? A claw of light tears through the sky. Why is this happening? Why does he always mess up?

Evan quietly says, “You woke me up. M-maybe I’m st-still at that point w-where I don’t think it’s s-such a good thing—-“

Connor can’t believe what he just heard, “Bullshit, it is a good thing! It’s the best thing I’ve ever done!”

“What?”

The audacity , Connor is reeling in place, “I waited for you to wake up. I needed to make sure you woke up—-So, you better fucking stay alive, dumbass.”

Evan blinks owlishly, and then points accusatory at him, “W-what about you? I-i don’t want you to d-die either!”

He doesn’t understand what Evan doesn’t get.

“Look at me!” He gestures wildly at himself, “I’m a fucking wreck, Evan! I don’t know what you want me to do? Get better??”

“I want us to try! I’m a m-mess too, I’m a f-fucking wreck too! But I want to try and get better with you!” Evan’s eyes shine bright.

Both of them are turned all the way towards each other, it’s incredibly stuffy in the car and their shared breaths have fogged up the windows. He can’t see anything outside and Connor is starting to entertain the idea of just getting out of the car for air because his heart is starting to crawl up his throat and he’s beginning to wonder if the shaking he feels is something Evan feels too. He could just roll down the windows but that would feel like defeat.

“I don't think I can get better,” The words slip out of him, it must be the heat. He doesn't think he’s breathing anymore, “I’m so tired. Every day is---they just keep coming. It’s endless. Do you get it? I’m so goddamn exhausted all the time. Of me.”

“I get it. I really really do. I also wanted to make everything stop. Especially me , I needed to stop---”

“Exactly!” Evan’s eyes widen, and then Connor realizes what that sounded like, “No, not you. Me. I need to stop. There’s all these days ahead of me, they are going to keep on coming unless I stop them. All those days where I’m just going to keep on messing up and keep on destroying and keep on hurting everyone and I can’t, I haven’t thought about where I’ll be in the future. Who I’ll be---will I be worse? So, I decided I’ll just go nowhere!”

Evan gets it, he must understand. Connor turns to him and...

Fuck …

Evan is crying. He made Evan cry.

“I tried stopping. I tried to make it all stop but it didn't work...And I didn't know it,” Evan pauses, and breathes deep, “And then you came. You came and found me. That’s all I ever wanted, I didn’t realize it then, but I---I didn't feel alone with you.”

Connor weakly reaches towards him, “Evan---.”

“If you die now, if you try again later...You--You’ll go to a place where no one can find you and bring you back like you did for me...And that would be---” Evan can’t finish, “You’re m-my friend. Earlier you told m-me we know too much about each other, it’s true. I think I know you, b-because I know me. Stay. Say you’ll st-stay.”

Connor heavily leans against the steering wheel, a small-ringing noise wails in his head and he presses his head onto his fingers that grip the steering wheel.

Evan whispers, “Let’s get better—-together.”

Evan may as well as reached into Connor’s chest and gathered his heart---a small mangled, pitiful thing---just to show him that he still had one. Together. That echoes around in his head, a dangerous song, its too sweet, its making him falter.

Connor wearily lifts his head, “Evan?”

“Y-yeah?”

“Go,” One last try. Connor thinks he may be getting dizzy, his eyes are swimming.

Evan speaks, “I can’t promise that we won’t make mistakes. But the important thing is that we try? We try before we stop ourselves,” and then he reaches over and gently loosens Connor’s grip. He murmurs, “You’ll hurt yourself.” A drops of water trail down his cheek and Connor wonders how rain got in his car.

I love him.

Connor cracks his car door open and cool air races through his lungs. Fuck, he loves him. He rubs his eyes and blinks away his tears as his heart breaks and then pitter patter softly—-stupidly alive and stupidly sweet for sweet, sweet Evan Hansen.

I’ll stay. For you.    

Through the open space, the tension has floated away into the darkness and Connor cries. He doesn’t remember the last time he cried. Even with the snot plugging his nose, he doesn't think he’s breathed in air so fresh and crisp. Water droplets make their way inside and splash coldly on his face tipped to the sky. Absently, he realizes the thunder has long gone but the rain pours all the same.

He hears a shuffling noise and then Connor is pulled into a one-armed hug.

Evan is damp, his cheek is clammy against Connor’s own. But his good hand is big on his back and Connor falls into the hug and draws him closer. Both of them trembling.

Evan pulls away after what feels too soon and Connor sighs. He was so close to doing it, but now he’s tired in the way that makes him think of blankets and pillows, “ok” he says, “ok.”

He starts the car and he hears Evan give a noise of confusion.

Connor says, “I’ll drive you home,” he turns the windshield wipers on, “Text Zoe.”

***

They pull up to Evan’s house and Evan knows that he should get up and leave but he doesn’t. He wants to go home with Connor and Zoe, he wants to make sure Connor goes to sleep in his bed, and that when he wakes up in the morning he won’t disappear.

Evan tries to figure out a way to say this without sounding creepy. Is there a way to invite yourself to someone’s house to make sure they’re fine? The adrenaline rush from earlier still hasn’t really left him, it thrums through his blood—-he doesn’t think he’ll get any sleep himself.

“If it’ll make you feel any better. I’ll go back home in Zoe’s car.”

“Yes! I mean—-N-nooo? Not if you don’t want to? It’s up to y-you really.”

“I’m going to.” Connor kicks the door open, “Let’s go. You should really get out of those wet clothes.”

They run up to Evan’s door in the rain and stumble into the entrance of the house. Evan fumbles for the light switch and flicks it on.

It’s the first real look at Connor he gets and he looks so small. They are both pooling water at their feet and it’s honestly a little sad. Evan can hear Zoe’s engine running from outside.

Connor quietly says, “I’m going to try.”

“Me too.”

Evan blinks back tears with his head down, which is why he misses the nervous look Connor casts outside for a second before pulling Evan in for another hug. It’s brief. So fast. And yet, Evan feels a brush of tranquility relax his shoulders the slightest bit. Connor gives another soft sigh and it whispers past his ear.

Connor steps away, and as he does Evan may as well have imagined it from delirium, but he feels something soft brush his cheek and then Connor’s halfway down the driveway running through the rain like a criminal.

Evan coughs, and it doesn’t matter if his clothes are wet because he’s burning and he doesn’t know why—-it was a nice hug? Why does his cheek feel hot to the touch? His fingertips touch it lightly and he watches as Connor leaps into Zoe’s car. He watches as the twin lights light the road ahead, swinging in an arc as they turn around and Evan gives a small wave---he sees a hand poke out of the car, but maybe he imagined it and once he can’t see their lights anymore he closes the door.

His shoes squeak on the floor as he heads to his bedroom.

He downs a pill because the shaking hasn't stopped and it's not just from the cold.

Within a few minutes, a soft calmness settles in and he takes a shower.

Evan is slipping on warm, dry clothes when he checks his phone.

He picks it up. It’s listed as unknown:

?:

I’m home.

Evan:

Good

Connor:

Good night

Evan:

good nightt

Chapter Text

It’s the fourth time Evan has ever been to the Murphy house when all of the Murphy’s were there too. He’s known Connor for approaching a year now and yet Connor has calculatedly managed to have Evan only show up at the Murphy house whenever his parents weren’t there (Zoe is ok—-sometimes). 

Tonight, he’s squished himself into the corner of the couch as opposed to the lounging sprawl Connor has on the other side. Connor’s legs are kicked up and his socked feet rest on his lap. There’s a hole in one of his socks and it’s more endearing than Evan thought it would be.

Evan can hear the soft rise and falls of conversation happening in the kitchen. Zoe, Cynthia and Larry are there. A soft feeling settles in him because he can just feel how pleased Zoe is to be speaking with them about whatever it is they laugh about periodically. 

Connor doesn’t seem to notice, or if he does he doesn’t care that he’s getting left out. His shoulders are soft and he’s engrossed in the movie that Evan stopped paying attention to a while ago.

They’ve been marathoning horror movies. 

He’s already seen the one they’re watching now—-The Poltergeist—-it’s really not scary at all and it barely escapes with an 80’s charm. On screen, the father is high up on the hill with his manager. The sun shines brilliantly on them as they peer down at the town. Evan pulls out his phone.

Things have been different, they have been changing, and he’s found that it’s sometimes getting a little easier to be in his own skin. He’s been going to a therapist who makes him feel a little lighter after their sessions---even if the feeling only lasts for five minutes, it’s something different, something good. 

Heidi still has the same erratic schedule, and when he sees her it’s nearly always in passing. However, she does notice what he’s been doing and takes delight in the fact that Evan has made friends, she has not hidden how much that pleases her—-and to his embarrassment---has taken many opportunities to take pictures of him while he’s with his friends. 

Evan opens his phone’s gallery on a whim and scrolls through the pictures saved on his phone, because even if it initially embarrassed him to see all these pictures he can’t deny that it makes him happy to have them. He smiles to himself because he has so many more than a year ago. 

There are the pictures that Heidi sent him of moments where he wasn’t looking as he and Connor watched movies (sometimes with Zoe, Jared and Alana---Alana joined their “friend group” sometime in Senior year). Not all of them are photos his mom took clandestinely though, there are also a surprising amount of selfies taken that were mostly initiated by Zoe and even Jared. Then there are, of course, pictures of trees, skies and different natural things he found pretty. 

But the photos he lingers on with a warm face are the ones of him and Connor.

The older pictures of them are few and scattered. Both of them had a tired look about them, Connor looked sickly in comparison to now and the later photos. Evan didn’t look sickly but he could see an air of lostness around him. 

The further Evan scrolls down the gallery towards the recent photos, the more the photos become more vibrant and numerous.  

He reaches the very most recent ones which are pictures from their graduation. The sun was shining very brightly that day and their red graduation robes caught the sunlight like flowers. Heidi got Evan to take pictures with all combinations of his friends. And there are pictures with her as she proudly hugged him from the side and he shyly displayed his diploma.  

At the very end of this set of photos are Connor and him where they are of course looking at the camera, but then Evan swipes onto one where neither of them are looking at the camera. His heart stutters so fast he drops his phone. Connor sends him a look, and he shakily reaches for it again---heart beating fast. 

Evan has his face turned up towards Connor, and he’s looking up at him as if Connor descended from the sky. And Connor is looking at him like---he doesn’t know. 

The thing is, they look so happy. They look so happy together and Evan looks so obvious in the pictures, so much so he wonders if his feelings are so clear on his face in real life. Does Connor know? Can he see? Evan wants to cover his face at the thought of it.

Evan pretends to pay attention to the movie. He nervously checks to see if Connor is looking at the movie but he gets caught looking. Connor raises a questioning brow and Evan stammers, “I’m going to the b-bathroom!” he slides Connor’s feet off his lap and dashes away.

In the bathroom Evan splashes water on his burning face. That was awkward. It’s been awkward for some time. Sometimes they’ll be fine, they’ll be talking and acting like normal until they accidentally brush hands or Connor laughs at something he said and then Evan shuts down as the gears in his head will have stopped turning. It’s almost like when he had a crush on Zoe (it’s exactly like when he had a crush on Zoe) except Connor is different because he knows Connor and he can talk to him, but sometimes his heart gets too big for his chest and he can’t speak.

It’s all Connor’s fault.  

When he reenters the living room, he’s surprised to see the couch more full than when he left. Zoe and Cynthia sit on the couch, and there is a space between them and Connor---with a curious feeling he realizes it’s for him because Larry rests in an armchair off to the side. 

Evan looms in the shadows for a second without joining them. He finds his feet won’t move because the image of the Murphy’s all sharing the same space with such ease and familiarity makes a feeling as warm as honey tentatively suffuse him. Cynthia has her hand in Zoe’s and Zoe rests her head on her shoulder. Larry has his sleeves rolled up as he rests on the arm chair with his eyes closed and Evan doesn’t think he’s ever seen him rest before. 

And then there’s Connor, he is slouched with his arms crossed in the spot Evan had occupied but he has the faintest trace of a smile softening his face. Connor catches Evan’s eyes and he flicks his head the slightest bit so Evan will join them.   

He does.

***

They’ve been talking.

It’s 2 a.m. 

But they’ve been talking about everything and nothing and Connor doesn’t want to fall asleep. He doesn’t want to fall asleep because somehow during their conversation they slid all the way down the bed till they laid down and faced each other. Only a handspan of space between their faces. 

Evan is obviously trying to fight away drowsiness as well as he yawns and sleepily slurs, “I want to learn how to sail.”

Connor murmurs, “That’d be cool...” and then he falls silent with something on his mind. Connor blinks away sleep and decides he should tell him. It’s been bothering him for awhile. He only realized this when his therapist had somehow made him think of it during one of their sessions. 

He says, “I wasn’t going to do it.”

“Hmm?” 

“When I said that I’d do it even if you were in the car with me—-I wasn’t actually going to do it.”

By the faint light in the window he can see Evan’s face screw up in thought before it opens into realization, “Oh.” 

Connor rolls onto his back and faces the ceiling, if he squints he can see the plastic glow-stars, “I said it to scare you. I wanted you to leave me. I’m sorry.”

Evan still sounds sleepy and he gently says, “It’s ok. I knew that.”

Connor feels his heart beat faster for some reason, this has been bothering him for some time. He thinks about it whenever Evan smiles one of his kind, sweet smiles at him. He thinks about it when they walk side by side, their arms brushing. He thinks about how it seems they keep getting closer to each other, and closer to something else---something bigger---but Connor doesn’t feel he can take the extra step towards until he’s cleared some things up. So he asks, “Did you really?”

“Yeah.”

“How?” 

Evan simply says, “Because you wouldn’t do that.”

Something sharp eases out of his heart and he feels strangely loose as if Evan untied a heavy weight around his shoulders and neck. Connor believes him.

“You’re fine.” Evan softly puts his hand on Connor’s cheek and it lingers. It feels like ages until Connor reaches his own hand to delicately reach Evan’s and he taps it gently. Evan’s hand falls loosely away and Connor turns to see Evan has fallen asleep.

Connor falls asleep too.

***

They drive, well it’s more like Connor drives because Evan still doesn’t like to get behind the wheel—-he only does so when it’s clear Connor is very tired and he needs a break.

The sky soars above them, a dreamy blue as bright and pure as fresh paint. Connor’s car tears down the highway that seems to have no end. 

It’s moments like these where he can sit in companionable silence with a friend, his best friend---Evan, that make Connor feel like he might be ok. 

It’s not just Evan, though. He finds these moments when he sips the first bitter coffee of the morning. When he finishes a book and he’s suddenly happy that he stuck around long enough to finish it. When he draws and he gets a perfect crisp inked outline of his sketch. 

One recent example was when he talked to Zoe and forgot the last time a conversation of theirs erupted into an argument. 

Another is when he came back home one day after being at Evan’s and found that his bedroom door was put back. At dinner that night he saw his father was sporting a freshly bandaged hand. 

Then there was the time he and Evan somehow got roped into helping his mom cook dinner. He thinks it may have been because Evan was being overly polite and accidentally volunteered to cut the carrots. By the end of it, Cynthia banned Evan and Connor from the kitchen. 

It’s these things that bring a little hope that maybe he can make it happen again. That maybe he can experience it again. That maybe he’s getting better.

He’s not quite sure what “better” will entail exactly, but life has become just a little more bearable without him realizing it. He’s getting help, both of them are, and it’s getting a little easier to get up in the morning. 

In the car, Connor is pulled down from his thoughts by a humming. He glances at Evan, who’s faced away from him, but who is clearly humming a tune. 

It sounds nice.

Connor listens to him hum something he does not recognize and keeps driving. 

***

“We’re back,” Evan finally manages to say after they have stood at the same spot, without saying anything, for at least twenty minutes. 

Connor nods, his eyes wide and says, “We are.”

The canyon is just as grand as it was in The Quiet Place, except where the sky was thunderous and roiling with power---here, now, the canyon itself is sharply brilliant in all its fiery glory. 

It’s hot here, the sun beats down on the two of them and they both have sweat beading on their foreheads and trailing down their arms. When they reached this point they both reached for their water bottles and Evan downed half of his in seconds.

“This is—this is unbelievable,” Evan manages to say. Marveling at how small he feels in comparison to the sky and the canyon that stretches before them. 

“Almost like a dream.”

Evan turns to Connor, and sees he is grinning. Evan smiles too and shoves him lightly.

Someone offers to take their picture and both of them end up smiling more at each other than at the camera.

***

They just finished setting up camp when the air got noticeably cooler and stars started to twinkle into focus as the sky dimmed. 

Connor thought Evan would know how to make the tent instinctively, but he didn’t—-so they had grappled with the poles and muttered curses as they warped the tent into shape.

 It took a lot longer than they thought it would so the mini-grill they had let build up heat during that ordeal became more than sufficiently hot to roast marshmallows. They made smores until their hands were sticky with graham cracker crumbs.

Evan rolled out a blanket his mom let him borrow and he and Connor stretch out onto it to look up at the stars. 

There’s a campfire nearby and Connor can very faintly hear the conversation of the other group of campers, but they are not so close as to be distracting. He thinks he even hears soft music from a radio but he’s unsure. 

Connor wishes he knew the names of the stars and their constellations, but even if he did he would probably not be able to recognize a single one due to the sheer amount of stars that invade the night sky. There’s so many, the night sky wears them all with a dazzling extravagance unparallel to the humble night sky he is used to at home. 

Connor asks, “Do you remember that Starman-Nowhere Man drawing you reminded me about a while ago?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“I didn’t really have any intention of putting any meaning at all when I made it. It was just, I heard Nowhere Man and I really fucking identified with it at the time. And then I’ve always liked Starman so I was like ‘What the fuck? Why not?’ I thought everything I did at that time didn’t mean anything , and I did a lot of shitty things because nothing mattered.”

Connor doesn’t really know where he’s going with this but he’s already started so might as well keep going, “The story I completely bullshitted so I’m glad you didn’t read it. But the drawing—-I can’t look at the drawing the same way because of what you told me.”

“What did I say?”

“You said---ok, so I remembered this because look above us,” Connor points to the sky, “There’s stars, stars everywhere and up till recently I thought I was a Nowhere Man, y’anno making nowhere plans for nowhere and nobody? We are in the middle of nowhere and yet look at all of them! That’s always there even if we can’t see it! Do you get it?”

“The potential?” 

“Yeah. I mean---I guess? Honestly, I don’t know but it’s something.”

“Something that’s not Nothing,” Evan says unsure.

“Yeah, something that’s not nothing.” 

In true serendipitous fashion Connor unmistakably hears the song play from the semi-distant radio. He whispers, “Holy shit.”

Evan looks at him in equally confused delight and says, “Wow.”

They fall silent and Connor strains to hear the song.

Evan whispers, “he’d like to come and see you ‘cause he thinks you turned out alright...”

And Connor whispers to the melody of the song, “those aren’t the lyrics Evan…” 

Evan continues to botch the lyrics and Connor can hear the smile in his voice. He doesn’t say anything more.

Another song starts playing but Connor doesn’t recognize it so he says, “My dreams are different now…” 

Evan gives a small roll to face him, “Mine too.” It’s too dark to see his freckles, but Connor knows they’re there, like all those stars he didn’t see at home. 

“I haven’t had a lucid dream in a while. Things kinda just happen and I don’t realize they’re dreams until I wake up.” Connor has been a little disappointed by that. But mostly he can’t deny that it’s much nicer interacting with Evan while they’re both awake. Although, he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the image of that silver-sanded beach, he’s tried to paint it but it never comes out right. 

Evan adjusts his arm under his head and scoots closer, “My dreams have always been n-normal. The Quiet Place was the first time I ever had control of them. It was cool.”  

“Do you miss it?”

Evan falls silent. Silent for so long Connor catches a glimpse of a shooting star. He finally says, “No.”

“Oh.”

Evan sits up and Connor follows. Evan quietly says, “It’s just—-Awake is better. Being awake right now is better.”

“It is.”

Evan quirks a smile as if surprised and Connor realizes he didn’t make a wish when he saw that shooting star. 

But then he realizes he didn’t need to when he’s reached over and pressed a kiss to Evan’s lips. Evan is still for a few seconds too long and Connor is about to pull away with a heavy heart when Evan gives a soft sigh and presses closer. Evan’s hands tentatively rest on his shoulders and Connor own hands go to hold his dear face gently. 

No stars burst behind his eyelids, no earthquake shakes him to his core. Rather, it’s soft and quiet as a rosy sunrise. 

***

Evan wakes up and automatically brings a hand to his tingling mouth. He looks to Connor and he’s blinking awake too. Soft light spills into the room as the day breaks outside their window. 

When their eyes meet, they don’t need to say anything---they both know what’s unsaid.