Boys Like Us - Rainwater_Apothecary - Dear Evan Hansen (2024)

Chapter 1: 1 - During

Chapter Text

[“Dear Connor Murphy,

Today is going to be a great day and here’s why:

-First day of school! New Year New Us, I guess!

…God that sounds lame even to me… that’s how you can tell it’s REALLY lame.]

Teardrops mar the perfect digital blue and white lines that usually calm the writer when writing to his boyfriend and best friend.

[Connor, how the hell am I supposed to do this without you?

Mom keeps talking about how I’m gonna make friends! And how they can sign my cast! Like that isn’t a cry for help of the socially awkward with no friends!

Which is bullsh*t and it makes me so angry, Con. I have friends. Well, one.

I only really needed one.

Con, I miss you.

Why did you have to jump?

Why didn’t it take me out too?

Sincerely,

Well…you know. “]

Evan slammed his laptop closed with the click, still unused to how his strength distributed with half a mile of fiberglass encasing his arm.

Outside his window the blonde could see acres of blue summer sky (almost his favorite color but not quite. Evan liked more saturation than sunny.) and it felt like it was mocking him.

How dare the sky be so bright and so beautiful? Today of all days?

The first day of school was usually hell for boys like Evan. Boys who flapped their hands and winced when sound or light was too much. Boys who couldn’t quite make sense of facial expressions and who sarcasm was completely lost on.

Boys with autism who didn’t have any friends because they didn’t understand boys like him.

One year ago, Connor Murphy changed that.

Evan had never met a bastard like Connor. Tall as a sequoia and just as thin, who painted his nails black and painted his skin red in criss-crossing lines.

Lines that foundation didn’t cover up enough for boys like Evan to not see.

Boys like Connor didn’t change facial expressions much. Boys like Connor didn’t smile or laugh, didn’t talk much unless they got so angry and frustrated that the only thing they knew how to do was punch and hit and yell.

Boys like Connor didn’t make friends either.

Boys like Connor keep to themselves while boys like Evan can’t reach out.

-

“Why do you cover your arms so mmm…much? It…t gets h- Humid. Inside.” Evan had begun their relationship by putting his foot in his mouth and by god was he gonna commit.

Connor had raised an eyebrow and Evan had flinched. Preparing for ridicule.

Something shifted in the taller boy when he saw that flinch.

He saw a kid that was used to getting picked on for who he was and for asking questions.

That flinch told him everything he needed to know about Evan’s home and school life.

“I…I cover them because long sleeves are cool.”

Evan blinked at him.

“Fashionably … cool?” Evan was proud of himself for only needing a short pause. He hated ‘c’ words.

Or he did, one year ago.

Connor shook his head ruefully and smirked.

“Geez kid haven’t you ever seen Nightmare Before Christmas? Teaches you all about kids like me.”

“Delinquents?”

“Freaks.”

Evan didn’t know what to say to that. He did like Connor’s striped shirt though, and he could kind of see the Burton-esque flairs to the outfit, after Connor showed him the movie.

That was what Evan did. He focused on tiny details while the big, giant, glaring details went soaring clean over his head until it all backed up and he couldn’t function couldn’t speak couldn’t couldn’t couldn’t

Connor pulled down his sleeves enough to hide what the foundation didn’t.

And he started looking out for boys like Evan.

Because boys like Connor know what it feels like to be beaten for asking the wrong question.

To be ridiculed for being different.

And now boys like Evan had to face the school year alone.

Chapter 2: 2 - Before

Chapter Text

“Y’know what, Ev?” Connor looked up from picking his nail polish off.

“W…wh….at?”

The taller boy noticed how his companion’s face always went a little red whenever he stuttered, though out of embarrassment or frustration was anyone’s guess.

Well, not anyone anyway. Evan probably knew. His parents probably knew, too, come to think about it.

Connor internally shook his head. He didn’t like thinking about parents.

It was why he and his new ally had cut across the road during lunch break to hide in the man-made labyrinth of the nearby technical park.

They wandered and kicked at pebbles and just… talked.

Connor couldn’t remember the last time he just had somebody to talk to.

Neither did Evan.

They had a lot in common.

None of it good.

“You’re actually kinda smart. In a bookish kind of way.”

Evan thought that over with a tilt of his head. Those big blue eyes made Connor’s heart flutter against his ribcage and he wasn’t sure he wanted to look into why.

“Th…th-anks.” He decided, smiling with only one corner of his mouth.

Connor even liked how he did that. Jesus, he was in trouble.

He kicked a pebble and leaned a boney hip up against the guardrail.

“You think a lot, y’know? Not everybody does that.”

Evan smiled and the movement closed his eyes in his cheeks. The kid still had some vestiges of baby fat, but Connor found he didn’t mind it. Kinda’ made his friend look like an eager puppy.

“C…c…“ Connor looked over at the other boy but let him finish. “C..onnor. Do you w…wanna be f…friends?”

If the brunette boy’s hair wasn’t longer than his mother’s (a point of pride for him), then Evan would have been able to see his eyebrows skyrocket.

“Well…” He shrugged. “Why not? You’re kinda’ cute, we can make it work.”

Evan blushed sunburn pink before Connor caught up to what his mouth had done against executive orders.

The shorter kid flapped his hands in and out, picking up speed as he smiled.

“C-cool!”

Chapter 3: 3 - Before

Chapter Text

“Yeah, it’s kinda dumb, but my therapist-“

Connor made a rude noise and shook his head.

“D…do you want to hear it o..or n..not?”

The lanky boy pantomimed zipping his lips and tucking the key in a non-existent breast pocket.

“Anyway, Dr. Sherman says that writing letters to myself will be a good pep talk. Mom’s over the moon about it.” Evan rolled his eyes – definitely something he picked up from Connor, that was the patented Connor Chin Tilt.

Connor lay back against his stained previously-perfect-hyper-expensive-ugly-as-sh*t bedroom carpet and contemplated the ceiling.

His boyfriend’s voice came through FaceTime in the slightly muffled, delayed way the app had.

“I’m not sure it’ll w-work anyway. But m..m..maybe it’ll w…work f..for you?”

Connor let out a slow breath.

“I don’t know, Ev. Seems kinda stupid to just write to myself. I mean, I know exactly what I’m gonna say, so why write it down?”

Evan puffed out his cheeks and let out a long gust of breath in thought.

Connor just watched him like the lovesick idiot he was.

They were only able to talk late at night and during stolen moments in school, and Connor found himself growing fond of the way the blue of the computer screen caught his Evan’s eyes. The way they glittered in the low light of his bedroom.

Jesus, they hadn’t even been to one another’s houses yet. One year of friendship and 8 months of dating and they didn’t even know what the inside of the other boy’s house looked like outside of peeks behind webcams and phone screens.

The occasional funny picture.

For f*ck's sake they weren’t even friends on Snapchat!

Because boys like Evan were never friends with boys like Connor.

Boys like Connor didn’t have friends.

Especially not ones so funny and quirky as Evan Hansen.

“You s..sighed?”

Connor re-focused on the little screen that was the only source of light in his room. He raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, just thinkin’.”

Evan did his cute puppy-dog head tilt. Evan didn’t know that’s what it was called, but that was definitely its name in Connor’s mind.

A lightbulb went on in Connor James f*cking Murphy’s head.

“Evan, write to me. Send me emails. We can make secret accounts that only we can read.”

Evan looked thoughtful, rocking slightly if the rhythmic change in scenery was any indication.

The other boy nodded stoically just as Connor Murphy’s guts were beginning to get twisted with dread.

“Then w…we c-can talk during s…chool.”

A wave of relief Connor didn’t even know he was holding in brought out an honest-to-god smile to Connor ‘I don’t smile so I probably can’t even smile at this point’ Murphy.

“I’d like that, Ev. I really would.”

Evan Hansen’s smiles were like the sunlight to Connor’s dreary f*cking existence. Jesus, he had it bad.

Oh well, he was already pathetic enough and he was 16, so he had every right to be an overdramatic fool.

Besides, wasn’t that what gay guys were supposed to do? Pine and sh*t?

Chapter 4: 4 - Before

Chapter Text

[‘Dear Evan Hansen,

We’ve been way too out of touch. Things have been crazy and it sucks that we don’t talk that much.
I gotta tell you that without you life’s been rough. I miss talking about life and…..other stuff.
I love my parents but each day’s another fight.
If I stop smoking pot then everything might be alright.
I’ll take your advice and try to ‘be more nice’. I’ll turn it around, just wait and see.
All you gotta do is just believe you can be all you want to be.

Sincerely, me”]

Connor laughed so hard tears came to his eyes before he deleted that bad boy.

[“Dear Evan Hansen,

Today is gonna be a great day and here’s why
-I get to see you at lunch

…”]

Connor tapped his chipped, black-painted nails on his keyboard as he tried to think of something that might make them both happy.

He was drawing a big, Evan-shaped blank.

He widened his eyes.

When had Evan become his reason for living? God he was pathetic. He was disgusting. He couldn’t even build up the courage to end things because he was too busy simping after his best friend.

He needed a break from all this.

There was one thing that had come from their morning emails: Connor hadn’t touched a blunt in two months.

His razor had been seeing more action now that his dad was home more often, but not too-too much.

Today would be one of the days it did though.

The itch in his upper forearm told him where he needed to apply that merciful coolness of his blade.

Connor Murphy would sit on the toilet seat and mark his arm just below the inside of his elbow, then he would get ready for school and finish his email to his boyfriend in the car.

[“Dear Connor Murphy,

Today is going to be a great day and here’s why:
-I love you
-I get to see you at lunch
-Today my class is taking a field trip to the national forest
-I’m going to take so many pictures you’ll need more data for your phone when I send them to you :P

Sincerely, me”]

One corner of Connor’s lips twitched into a smile on the opposite side of where Zoe was sitting behind the wheel.

He brought his phone closer to his chest and read and re-read the tiny email from Evan. His Evan.

True to his word, Evan sent so many pictures of trees and grass and bugs and moss and selfies that Connor’s phone was buzzing for two hours solid once he’d gotten home. The little vibrations in his hoodie pocket were the only thing that got the emo kid through his family dinner.

Some ‘family’.

Lying in bed, sheets on the floor and ancient stuffed animals shoved into cracks between his bed and the walls and headboard, Connor Murphy stretched out like a starfish and stared at photos of his boyfriend. Debated making one his home screen on his phone.

Shot down the idea of making his home screen his boyfriend. His light, his love, his dumb, tree-loving best friend.

Eyelashes fluttering shut, Connor Murphy brought his phone down to his lips and kissed the boy he had literally dreamed about.

They had kissed before, of course. Quick pecks behind lockers and desperate, garbage kisses with too much teeth and bruised lips in abandoned classrooms.

Then Connor had a goddamn epiphany.

[“Dear Evan Hansen,

today is gonna be a great day and here’s why
im taking your ass out on a goddamn date

-Sincerely, me”]

Evan spent the day vibrating and walking in circles that reflected his mental state.

Heidi Hansen sat her boy down at their little kitchen table and rested a cheek in her palm.

“Okay Evan, what’s up?”

He looked down at the white-flecked table and flapped his hands breathlessly for long enough that his mom began to worry.

“Th..the g-guy I’m d…dating just a..asked me o..o..out.”

A pin dropping in the next county would have been deafening.

Ms. Hansen’s weekend came to a screeching halt.

Her son was dating?

How long?

How had she not seen it?

She blinked her shock away and smiled a big, genuine smile. Finally, Evan had someone!

“Who is he, Evan? What’s he like? How long have you been together?”

The flapping got faster and he began to rock in excitement.

“It’sbeenayearmom!Aglorious,wonderousyear.” The joy gave way to horror on her baby boy’s face as his slip-up registered. “But-but-but y-y…you can’t….y…you” He snapped his fingers beside one ear.

“But you can’t ..tell anybody. He doesn’t like that. Says it isn’t safe.”

Heidi watched her baby’s world crumble around him, right at her kitchen table.

“Oh Evan…” She reached out and waited for her son to lean into her hand. She rubbed the shoulder he offered. “Evan, you’re safe here. I won’t tell anybody.”

More snapping.

“Promise?”

She held out her pinky.

He sealed the promise with his and met her eyes solemnly.

“Evan Hansen, I, Heidi Hansen, will never tell a soul about you and …?”

He beamed.

“Connor.”

“Connor.”

They shook on it.

Evan hadn’t stuttered a ‘c’ word.

-

[“Dear Connor Murphy,

Today’s going to be a great day and here’s why:
-I came out to my mom and she was really cool about it. She promised not to tell anyone I don’t want to know. She always keeps her promises. That’s one good thing about her, I guess.
Her name is Heidi Hansen, she’s a Taurus and a nurse at the General Hospital over on Banks.
She’s turning 41 in October and you’re invited if you want to come.
She doesn’t know anything about you. Just your first name, and she knows at least 12 Connor-s through the hospital.

Sincerely, me”]

Connor gripped his overly-long hair until it hurt his roots.

How could he?

How could Evan out Connor like that?

A traitorous part of him felt lighter at somebody, anybody knowing his secret.

Besides, Heidi seemed nice, if a little out of touch. She was always working, he knew that much.

…….Maybe there would be worse things than dinner with Heidi Hansen.

She had to swear on her mother’s grave that nothing would get back to his parents though. His life would be genuinely over if his parents knew.

Chapter 5: 5 - Before

Chapter Text

[“Dear Connor Murphy,

Today is going to be a great day and here’s why:

-My mom said you can come over for my birthday
-My mom also said that you’re welcome to come over whenever you want
-I’m so excited I can’t breathe

Sincerely, me”]

[“Dear Evan Hansen,

Ev breathe dude.

-me

Wait f*ck what am I gonna tell my folks”]

Evan couldn’t stop smiling, not even in gym class which was the worst of all classes known to man.

Just wait until the rock-climbing unit. Then Evan would rock them like the Queen song his mom listened to on repeat once the divorce went through.
He grinned through Jared’s assholish comments, his dimples practically hurt while other kids pointed and mocked him in harsh whispers, and he was over the goddamn moon when he passed Connor’s locker to see the taller boy pulling out a messenger bag that was slightly puffier than normal.

He’d packed for an overnight stay at Evan’s house.

They waited for the bus together, across the bus stop from one another, where no one would make the connection between where Connor f*cking Murphy stood looking at his phone with a faux bored expression and Evan Hansen bouncing on his heels while he watched for the bus, his phone buzzing in his hand with messages from his boyfriend.

Getting out of the ride home with his sister was depressingly easy, since Connor stormed out of school to walk the two miles home regularly enough. Nobody asked. Nobody cared.

Evan made him pack a refillable water bottle when he found out.

Connor had no idea where the street was that his friend rattled off when they got to talking about it, but sometimes Evan would leave the bus stop five minutes before the bus got there. Five minutes exactly. Nobody noticed. Nobody cared.

Connor would wait for him, leaning on the hidden side of the big stone post office on the corner.

Today Evan turned 17, so despite the late spring heat the two boys held hands as soon as they were out of eyeshot of their peers, turning down the secluded river path to walk together despite the mugginess. It was the first time Connor rolled up his sleeves, his stacks of bracelets hiding the worst of his cuts but his arms still told tales in even track marks from shoulder blade down to his palms. Angry slashes, uneven, shaking slices, cuts that went deeper than expected and scarred over in thick, roping scars that had turned silver with age.

Evan didn’t blink. He knew they were there.

The foundation hadn’t hidden them from Evan’s eye for details. Connor joked about those eyes, but not really in a cruel way.

In fact, he had a plan in place for playing poker with Evan by his side picking apart details in the deck of cards in front of them.

But that aside.

Today, on Evan Hansen’s 17th birthday, Connor Murphy held his hand in public and kissed him softly on the mouth where anybody walking the abandoned path could have seen.

It was the best birthday present he’d gotten to date.

Well, that and the blue-eyed stuffed seal he kept on the top of his headboard bookshelf. Her name was Luna and she guarded him while he slept.

She was his special anxiety stuffie.

He would make Connor swear not to bad-mouth her before he let him into his room.

-

Today the plan was simply unsimple.

The boys would walk to Connor’s house, sweating and joking and finally spending time together speaking their minds and telling jokes nobody but them would understand.

No screens, no secret email accounts.

Just two friends on a perfect day.

-

Connor hopped up the back stairs of a house that could fit two or three sub-divisions for families in Evan’s neighborhood.

He raised one ratty hoodie’d arm, with an index finger pointed up in the universal ‘just a sec’ motion.

Then he slammed the screen door hard enough to make Evan wince. He heard his boyfriend stomping hard up some stairs, yell something, stomp back down the stairs, and slam the door behind him. He kicked it for good measure.

Then he turned around and smiled to where Evan was hiding near some bushes.

“Home free.”

Stage One: Leave school together.

Stage Two: Make sure Connor’s family wouldn’t expect him to return until well after dark.

Stage Three: Spend the night at Evan’s house where they would eat cake and snuggle and just be.

Connor was terrified.

Evan was just sweaty.

“Welcome back boys!” Heidi smiled and greeted Evan at the door. Connor had frozen beneath the weight of his dread and the physical sickness of being out to literally anyone besides Evan and like, the one Bi kid from summer camp three years ago but he didn’t count because they were drunk and nobody saw them kiss anyway.

So it was really just Evan.

He could do this. He was Connor Murphy. Connor Murphy didn’t give a rat’s ass.

“M…m..om, this is C…Connor!” God damn it.

Evan’s Connor Murphy did.

He really, really did.

So he reached out to hold his boyfriend’s hand for strength and walked through the doorway that entered Evan’s house and exited his closet.

Chapter 6: 6 - Before

Chapter Text

It all started with a cheap toothbrush.

Connor could tell it was cheap, since it came in a pack of like 7 identical ones, but Evan didn’t seem bothered by it, happily brushing his teeth in pj’s that were in his favorite shade of blue with little vertical stripes.

It was cute.

Dorky, a little childish, but cute.

Connor slept in his clothes like a goddamn adult, thank you very much.

Which was why he was currently wearing one of Evan’s t-shirts that the other boy would never wear because the seams itched. Connor didn’t notice them, but he knew that was the reason.

That and it was heathered grey. Evan only wore blue and khaki. Sometimes white.

Connor didn’t mind it too badly, so long as nobody made him take off his hoodie.

Heidi’s sweat pants were soft, too. So his legs were covered and hidden from view.

Evan would see his body someday, he knew. They both knew. …Connor hoped Evan knew. That Connor wanted him to see his body.

Well anyway...

Heidi didn’t have to know, and he wasn’t ready for anyone over the age of 18 to see his scars.

Ms. Hanson had looked her boys over with a smile, a smirk that held no teasing or unkindness.

“I guess you two can share Evan’s room, but one of you should take the floor.” Connor raised an eyebrow. There was no way in hell they would both fit on Evan’s tiny twin bed.

Oh.

He never blushed so hard or so fast in his life. Ms. Hanson chuckled.

“Or you can both sleep in the living room. You can watch TV if you keep it quiet.” The boys looked at one another.

TV sounded baller.

Chapter 7: 7 - During

Chapter Text

Ice cream dripped down bashed up knuckles as the young friends took mouthfuls of each other’s desserts.

Connor’s hands were bashed to hell after beating up a kid in the school parking lot for making fun of Evan’s stutter.

Evan’s palms were bloody from falling down the tree he’d been trying to climb all year. He was gonna get it this time. He was.

“Ev, hold your cone and I’ll show you how it’s done.” The taller youth smirked in that co*cky way of his. It was the only time his smiles were genuine, and he kept them regulated around Evan so the other boy could follow along.

The naturalist groaned in frustration and stalked back over to his friend.

His boyfriend leaned over and gave him a chocolate-flavored peck on the lips.

Evan pouted but took both desserts – both his plain chocolate and whatever concoction from hell Connor had ordered this time.

Like a goddamn monkey the other teen took the trunk at a little bit of a run, catching higher boughs than Evan could have with his shorter limbs. Evan was only mildly jealous.

The other boy crowed from on high once he’d found a branch he could turn on.

“ASSHOLE!” Evan laughed, blushing slightly at the insult his boyfriend let him get away with. He had wanted to use ‘prick’ or ‘jerk’, but Connor just smirked, ruffled his hair, and spent the rest of the walk from his house to Evan’s coming up with insults that were two syllables or longer.

“COME UP HERE AND GET ME, THEN.” The other boy called down, shutting his mouth before it got away from him.

He loved the boy who stood at the base of the tree and looked up at him. Loved him more than he’d loved anyone since his sister Zoe decided to take their parent’s side and not his.

He would miss Evan.

Zoe too.

“Come on, Ev! You can do it this time! I’ll pull you up.”

Evan rolled those big blue eyes of his and dropped the melting mess into a nearby trash can. Always the stickler. The orchard hadn’t even been open in years and he was dating the one kid who refused to litter in a dump.

Evan’s hands were warm and slightly sticky from the ice creams but boy did Connor hang on and hang on like his life depended on it.

Well, like a life he cared about depended on it.

“sh*t, Ev. What have you been eating? You’re heavy!”

“Sh….sh..shut up!” The beautiful blond came crashing up the tree trunk, broken-in sneakers gripping just right in some places but slipping on others where the tread had been worn in. Connor wished he had some way of bringing that laugh with him. Evan’s laugh. It was a dumb laugh, all wheezing and hiccupping, but damn did it make him feel like he’d just won the goddamn lottery every time.

Evan didn’t laugh like that with anyone else.

Just his mom.

At least he would have Heidi after… after.

“Woa…” Evan’s (slightly pudgy with baby fat still) face went soft with wonder as he took in the sunset blossoming in the sky with reds and oranges. It was beautiful up here. Like you could reach out and touch it, hold it in your hands like river water and pull your fingers out covered in heavenly paint. Connor had to wonder if he would be up there soon.

Would he be looking down over the orchard some day? Watching Evan climb without him, without pain?

“You should get going, Ev. The mosquitoes will probably be out soon.”

Evan wrinkled his nose in an unattractive show of disgust. He hated those things.

“Stay safe, dumbass!” Connor waved as Evan got on his bike and pedaled in the direction of his and Heidi’s house.

Connor sat on the branch until his boyfriend’s form disappeared beyond the hill.

He sat on that branch, thinking, worrying a piece of paper with one hand while he looked without seeing. He itched for a smoke. Or maybe that was just the damn mosquitoes.

He sighed, getting to his feet on the slick bark in a way that always made Evan and Zoe jealous. He swore by Converse, so he taught himself to climb in them. He had an image to maintain.

He climbed higher.

Higher than he could get down from.

Higher than the thick branches that could hold his weight.

Higher and higher until the night air made his fingers numb with cold.

Then he fell.

In his pocket was a note, written to ‘Dear Evan Hansen’, just like they always did.

[Dear Evan Hansen,

Yesterday was not a good day. But we’re going to make today a good one, just you and me. Maybe I won’t even chickensh*t out of it and let my parents read this when it’s all over.

Maybe.

God, Ev. How are you still in love with a mess like me? You’re lovely and wonderful and smart, and I’m just the jackass who has trouble waking up in the morning on days when I don’t get to see you. f*ck, I’m pathetic.

I’m so goddamn pathetic.

Selfish, too.

So that’s why we’re gonna make today perfect.

Because Evan, tonight, after school, after you finally climb that tree you’ve been eyeing since September, after that? After that I’m gonna end it. I’m gonna finally kill myself.

And it’s gonna be great-

Well, I don’t really know what it’s gonna be like, I guess.

Man, can you imagine what your therapist would say if he actually read these letters?

B-

Bye, Evan Hansen.
Sincerely, me.

PS Mom, f*ck you and dad. Evan and his mom are my real family and they always will be. I’m gay mom. G A Y. And we were happy. Kinda. As much as your f*cked up kid could be after being raised by you and your abusive f*ckup of a husband.

Yeah mom. Since you never believed me.

Sincerely-
f*ck you,
Connor Hansen.]

-

-

-

“Connor? CONNOR?”

Evan was never going to like ‘C’ words now.

Evan Hansen scaled the old apple tree at a run spurred on by terror and desperation. Looking back, he wouldn’t even remember the climb, just the dizzying drop that caused his body to fall beside his incognito boyfriend and unlikely best friend.

Nobody was going to believe them. No one ever did.

The pain that shot through his elbow as his shoulder dislocated made his vision go dark.

Then he started to scream.

His arm.

He definitely heard a snap.

His arm made a snap sound.

And Connor!

Connor wasn’t breathing!

Connor had jumped, Evan knew he had.

He knew they should have exchanged their letters.

Why had they stopped exchanging letters?

Chapter 8: 8 - During

Chapter Text

Connor had been in the hospital for two days when the news hit the school.

All of a sudden everywhere Evan looked there were sad faces and mournful stories about his best friend.

Suddenly everyone knew Connor Murphy. Someone went to school with him when they were younger. Someone else sat near him at lunch (absolute trash, nobody sat near Connor at lunch. Connor left the school during lunch hour to f*ck off to who knows where. Probably to smoke or something.)

(Evan knew this because he wanted to sit near Connor at lunch. Wanted to hold his hand and talk sh*t about their classes and the horrible school lunches that were definitely not Kosher.)

Alana was the final goddamn straw.

“We were lab partners you know!”

“I knew him better than anybody in this school!”

“He mattered to me!”

Lies.

Connor didn’t even know her name let alone let her in on his confidences. Evan only knew her name because she sat near him in that one Honors class he took last year.

Junior year. The year things changed for boys like him.

Girls like Alana were quickly becoming a problem.

Evan sat grimacing over his lukewarm school lunch. His cast itched. He missed Connor.

Then Jared goddamn Kleinman set down his tray next to Evan’s boxed milk (untouched).

“W-what is th…is?” Evan’s blue eyes widened as Jared pushed his glasses up his nose.

“Some kid was selling them in the hallway behind the gym, thought I’d support a local business.”

Evan blinked.

Then Jared slid it from his lunch tray to Evan’s.

It was a button.

A button with Connor freakin’ Murphy’s face on it and the date of… when it happened.

Some f*ckhead was making buttons of his best friend. ‘In Support’, supposedly. Evan’s tenuous grip on his appetite vanished.

“D..d…d-“ His fists clenched. “Do you th….th…ink that’s a g..g-good i..dea, J…Jared? En..c-ouraginng th..em?”

The other boy raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t see why not! It’s just striking while the iron’s hot.”

Plastic silverware hit the Styrofoam tray.

“Th….that’s disgusting.”

Jared stilled.

“What?” The glasses went back up his face before the other kid waved his hands as he outlined the Black Market’s probable plan - while letting his mouth get ahead of his brain.

“They’re just filling a need! Connor Murphy merch is huge right now. Hell, I’m sure the Black Market is glad the kid didn’t die because then the fad would have been way shorter-” He seemed to slow down at the look on his ‘family friend’s’ face.

“H-H…he c…c..could die, Jared!” Evan raised his hand to snap beside his ear but was met with only the dulled pain of a broken arm on pain meds. His brow furrowed and his face darkened. Jared became concerned.

The idiot then had the guts to keep going.

“They’ll probably make some that are draped in black in case he beefs it.” Jared rubbed the back of his neck. “Just saying.”

A look at the deep hurt in the other boy’s eyes and Jared gulped.

“So um. Look out for that, I guess. Why are you so pissed off about this anyway? It’s not like Connor had anything to do with us, buddy. We were in totally different circles.”

Evan blinked.

Evan stood up.

“Evan?”

Evan Hansen left the lunch room, pouring his picked-at lunch tray into the eyesore of a rubbish bin by the doors.

Evan made a beeline for the nearest bathroom stall.

Hollow metal slammed behind him as he leaned back against the door and dry heaved into the bowl.

He missed his best friend.

He wanted his boyfriend back.

‘Totally different circles, what the f*ck?’

He missed his boyfriend, his best friend, the boy like him who understood, who comforted him.

A boy… The boy like him.

He also wanted to punch that asshole Jared Kleinman right in the glasses for hitting his terror of Connor not waking up right in the face.

Evan curled up on the floor with his back to the dull green of the stall and pulled his cast to his chest.

He should have tried harder.

[“Dear Connor…

[“Dear Connor Murphy,

Today isn’t a great day and here’s why:
-My arm itches.
-I miss you.
-Jared says someone is exploiting your memory and just told me that they hope you die. Our classmates want you dead.

(Living is hard enough for boys like me. Like us. I’m glad you will never read this, I can’t take losing you.)
(I can’t take it.)

So they can sell some motherf*cking pins behind the gym. The dark one; the gym nobody uses outside of those stupid, forced dances.
I wish we could have danced together. It would have been a mess.
…The thought almost makes me laugh, Con. Connor. (I don’t want to talk about cons, not with the f*cking pins going around.)
You’d wear your black hoodie and matching Converse and I would be uncomfortable the whole time because someone would make me dress up and I would be overdressed and stressed.
But it would be okay because you’d be there with me.

Why did you jump?

Sincerely, the one who is stuck here while you’re there…far away from

-me”]

…

He mentally kept typing as he began to rock his curled-up body. He felt small, and hurt, and so, so scared that Connor… Hansen wouldn’t wake up.

He shook his head and kept rocking.

[“Dear Connor Murphy…Hansen,

On top of the high school black market being its usual dark machine… it took Jared freaking Kleinman to it’s side. (So he’s now the enemy. I don’t know. I just need someone to blame, to be angry.)
(I’m so, so angry. At you. At the world that hates us.)
(Why did you do it? Why did you leave me here?)
…
Alana Beck seems to think that you were her best friend and that she is the only person on this planet who really cares that you’re in a medically-induced coma.
She isn’t. She doesn’t even know you.
I know you.
Or I did.
I wish you were here.
…Well, not here here because ‘here’ is currently the boy’s bathroom off the janitor’s closet where I am having a minor meltdown.
Alone.
In the dark, since the motion light just went out. Guess I’ve been in here for a while, then. I didn’t hear the period bell, but I don’t really care.
God Connor, why didn’t you tell me? We could have done something. I would have never ridden away.
I never should have ridden away.

Sincerely,

the boy who loves you so damn much.
please come back to me, Connor.

-me”]

Evan tapped his screen with one blunted fingernail. When had he started biting his nails again?

Oh yeah, when he called his mom in a pile of broken limbs and panic at the base of the tree his boyfriend had just tried to jump out of.

As Evan’s body hyperventilated he began to rock faster, clasping his arms tight around his knees.

“M…m…om?”

“Evan! What is it honey, is something wrong?”

“C-c- f…f….uck! Hospital. Take me with you when you g…g…go go to work?”

“Of course baby. Do you need to be picked up from school?”

He nodded miserably in the dark.

“Yes.”

“I’ll be there on my lunch break, okay? Can you breathe for the next thirty-six minutes?”

Evan squeezed his knees harder and let out a shaky breath.

“Yes.” His voice sounded so small.

He just wanted to be with his mom and with Connor.

No one caught him leaving.

No one cared.

Boys like him just seemed to slip through the cracks (branches) like that.

Chapter 9: 9 - During

Chapter Text

Every time Evan visited his boyfriend, lying there, in that hospital bed beneath the thin, bleached ‘blankets’ he just started to cry.

Why hadn’t Connor trusted him? Why hadn’t he seen…?

Had he seen how much Connor had been hurting and it just didn’t sink in due to his stupid autism and the stupid world around him?

Oh god.

Had Connor needed him this whole time and he just hadn’t seen it?

The next day Heidi brought Connor the thick, blue throw from the living room to put over the boy in the otherwise cold and sterile hospital room.

As a piece of home.

The good home.

The home that didn’t hurt him.

The place where he would always be welcome with open arms and smiling, genuinely smiling faces.

Evan didn’t tell her that that was the throw Connor had pulled over them after they lay panting and smiling dopily at each other after they figured it all out and finally had good sex. Evan had never really seen the appeal behind sleeping with another person, but he’d watched p*rn and masturbat*d like anyone else.

Guy-on-guy stuff had always gotten him going anyway, so when Connor began kissing down his neck and slipping his hand beneath the waistband of the khakis he’d been wearing, oh boy was Evan prepared.

Connor had done his homework too.

That throw would definitely make the comatose boy smile, even if they washed it after every time they did it.

Heidi Hansen was always away at work and they had needs that once awoken roared in their veins and throbbed in their bellies (and below), so the blanket had gotten a lot of washes.

…one time they may have done it against the washing machine while the blanket was in it.

Evan shook his head and his hands started shooting through their calming motions. He was trying not to hyperventilate.

He was back in front of that damn tree that his boyfriend, his only true friend, had tried to end his life in.

If he squinted he could see the blood that should have come from his friend, had the bleeding not been mostly internal.

With a sigh, Evan began to climb.

Then the next day, bruised, battered, yet somehow still alive, Evan Hansen made a speech to the entire, unfeeling school that cried out for help for his friend. Mercy for himself.

He just wanted to be found.

He was so alone. In so much pain.

The emptiness of his situation had swirled around him like an angry tornado and no amount of slapping his hands over his ears or rocking would sate.

He took a shaky breath.

Had the spotlight not been blinding him he would have seen the incredulous looks and silent tears forming on the faces of his peers.

Of course they’d felt alone.

If they disappeared tomorrow, would anybody care?

Thoughts of Connor filled his mind’s eye and the boy with the cast straightened up.

If he couldn’t do this for himself then he could do this for his friend.

For all the boys like them who felt unseen, unheard, alone.

For all the girls like them who hid behind lockers to hold hands with their girlfriends because their parents would never, could never know about their innocent, beautiful love.

Evan paused to clear the thickness from his throat.

It sort-of worked.

For once he couldn’t focus on the hot, scratchy feeling of his giant tears rolling down his face and soaking his neck – where Connor liked to rest his forehead when he needed to hide – wetting the expensive fabric of the tie Mrs. Murphy had given him after Connor eschewed it.

Images of his mom, of Heidi Hansen triage nurse and terrified mother, coming running from the car, running to the broken boys at the base of that damned tree.

Of soft hands coming down to assess the break in the pale arm of her pale, sobbing son.

When she lifted Connor in a feat of panic and adrenaline, she felt the sharp edge of a mercilessly folded piece of paper in his back pocket.

Heidi Hansen had to leave his homework or his letter or something in Connor’s back pocket because her other boy needed her. Because her other son lay literally broken on the ground at the base of the decrepit but giant apple tree.

Had the spotlight not been blinding him, Evan Hansen would have seen the phones of boys like him raised up to record his every word so girls like him, kids like him and Connor could grasp onto his words and maybe, just maybe, step down from their ledges, or put down their razors or stop unlocking their father’s gun case to end their lives. Because they were not alone.

Their beautiful words didn’t reach him that night. His video went viral while he sat in the cold hospital room clutching their blanket and crying his heart out to a boy who couldn’t hear him.

Not for lack of trying.

Connor twitched sometimes, in his induced coma. Every time, Evan’s head shot up or Heidi stood to get a doctor. It was always a false alarm. She knew that. She knew how medically induced comas worked.

Evan did not.

So while his words took off over cyberspace and saved the lives of millions of faceless boys and girls and kids like him… He sat keeping the one boy that he did have a face to him company. Wordlessly terrified and with freezing hands clutching one of his boyfriend’s.

Connor would not be alone when he woke up. The Hansens wouldn’t allow it.

Evan was not alone in that unfeeling hospital room made homier with every addition the little family made to it.

Heidi wouldn’t allow it to be unfeeling and sad.

Yellow daffodils from the patch out back - that she could not tame no matter how hard she tried - lit up the windowsill.

‘Get Well Soon’ cards were placed on a table just to bring color into the room.

Messy sketches and neatly folded notes that all began with ‘Dear Connor Murphy,’ or just ‘Connor’ – never ‘Con’ - floated around the room, first filling the table and then the windowsill, tucked between flowers and propping up lopsided get-well cards, then they slipped beneath Connor’s bed and slid between the pillows where they separated only slightly when the nurses came in to fluff them up and adjust his unmoved vitals and IV line.

The cleaning crew had swept up all of his ‘Sincerely, Me’ letters and put them in the dustbin by the time Connor woke up.

It was okay.

Evan could tell him himself.

They were not alone anymore.

Evan’s video had made sure of that.

Chapter 10: 10 - During

Chapter Text

Connor f*cking Murphy woke up to a heaviness in his body that he hated. He hated the light above him and he hated how cold his arm was.

He hated whatever the f*ck that beeping was.

Brown eyes blinked open and boy howdy was that a mistake.

“sh*t.” The boy croaked beneath his oxygen mask.

Wait…

sh*t.

“Connor!”

sh*t sh*t sh*t sh*t-

And that goddamn beeping.

“Connor!” Something crashed across the room and a familiar voice shrieked at the loud sound. Familiar worn sneakers skidded towards wherever Connor lay, though he could probably give it a great f*cking guess.

“Connor you’re awake!”

Connor’s eyes shot open.

“Ev? Where’s your stutter?” Jesus his voice sounded like sh*t. But he’d said his piece, now maybe they’d take him off life support-

“Too excited. Doctors say that sometimes helps.” God, he loved how Evan’s voice sounded. The beeping slowed down.

Evan sat down on the hospital bed beside him and brightened up the whole room with a light that didn’t hurt Connor’s eyes.

“You’ve been in and out of consciousness for the last week! I’m so happy to see your eyes.” His face darkened. The boy in the hospital bed was momentarily confused.

“Three weeks. Three weeks you were out! I was so worried- I was so f*ckING worried about you, Connor!” The lanky kid in the hospital gown flinched a little at the probably-deserved tongue lashing.

Shaking hands held one of Connor’s. God it was so warm. So much warmer than his-

The beeping picked up the pace as he realized that there was nothing covering his arms.

There was nothing but Evan’s hands on his- His scars-

And why couldn’t he feel both of his boyfriend’s-?

His eyes widened at the blindingly white cast that covered Evan’s left arm from knuckles to bicep. Practically up to his armpit.

Evan looked sheepish when he noticed Connor’s shocked expression.

“I climbed up after you and… and fell.”

Connor would have bolted upright to give his boyfriend a piece of his mind had he not been immobile for so long. His body wouldn’t listen to him and that was scary.

Losing his best friend was a different type of terror.

“Evan Hansen you told me you wouldn’t-“ He hissed.

Evan’s face went stony and dark with anger and his eyes teared up. God he was really pissed this time. Connor’s little Cancer-cusp didn’t cry unless he was really livid.

“Connor James Murphy you promised! We stopped exch…anging letters because you g-got t…tired of it! You were relapsing! Why…why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you r…reach out? Mom was so- I was so-“

Connor flinched. He’d forgotten about Heidi. Of course Ms. Hansen would be hurt if he died. Goddamnit.

“Is she…”

Evan wiped his eyes angrily and looked Connor Murphy dead in the eye.

“She’s the one who drove us to the hospital, Connor.”

If he wasn’t already f*cking freezing from the paper-thin hospital gown and the lack of sleeves, Connor would have gone cold.

He felt sick picturing that phone call. His boyfriend, his beautiful best friend calling his pseudo-mom because his own suicide attempt had failed.

Connor had been so stupid. He should have waited- Tried a different method-

Done something.

But Evan had come to get him. Evan hadn’t left him to die alone.

Brown eyes felt pierced with burning heat as Connor’s frozen body finally felt something.

“I’m so sorry, Ev.”

Connor Murphy didn’t f*cking cry.

But then, maybe Connor Murphy had died up on that hill. This Connor could cry. He could cry and he could hold his boyfriend and apologize to Heidi over and over until he didn’t hurt so bad anymore.

Speak of the blonde she-devil.

Vending machine snacks were quickly stowed in her massive purse and pushed into one of the cheapo plastic chairs beside his hospital bed as Heidi Hansen swept into the room.

“Connor! Honey how are you feeling? Oh baby, it’s okay. It’ll all be okay now, sweetie. We’re here. Mama’s here.”

The off-duty nurse gathered both crying boys in her arms, gently holding them in the cool light of the fluorescents. She reached out and turned down the beeping with practiced motions.

She had a thing or two to say to Mrs. Murphy if she ever met the woman who let her baby get this far gone.

It was true, Heidi Hansen didn’t have a big mansion, didn’t have a lawyer husband who brought in more money than an ER nurse ever could, but goddamn it she still put warm food on the table and always had space for a sleeping bag if anyone ever needed it.

Something told her Cynthia Murphy didn’t do either of those things.

Speak of the botoxed god-damned-she-devil-herself.

Unforgiving high heels clicked across the sterile tiles of her ER.

Connor’s mom usually wore expensive Toms or Keds, but he knew her angry clip. She had seen his arms.

She had-

Connor ripped his face away from the comforting warmth of Evan’s mom’s scrub’d chest and looked at Evan in horror.

“The note.”

Evan went pale.

“Connor sh…sh…sh…she-goddamnit.” He snapped beside his own ear (his weaker left hand this time), spine lengthening in protective instincts for his best friend and the love of his short life.

“She took it. I tried to hide it, but they gave her your things instead of me.”

Connor wanted to go ramrod straight.

Especially if it was the last time he would ever be ‘straight’ in front of the woman who had given him half his zygotes…

Then she was there. Mrs. Murphy. Mother to the biggest f*ck up of the 20th century who couldn’t even kill himself right. Jesus, what had he been thinking when he wrote that? He should have burned it or bled on it or something – Anything.

Anything.

“I would like a word with my son, if you don’t mind.” Luxury lipstick and expensive hair color did nothing to hide the venom in the woman’s tone. Her body language could stop a runaway truck.

Connor was no such thing.

He was just a kid.

Evan’s warm hands- well, hand and a half or so- closed around his cold and shaking one. They realized belatedly that this was probably a bad idea.

The way the woman pursed her lips and crossed her arms roared volumes.

“I see.”

“Mom don’t-“ Connor rasped.

She brushed off her son with a practiced ease that made Heidi’s blood boil.

“You know, at first I was glad you had made a friend at that atrocious school you seem so set on. Now I know why you refused to go to the Academy with Zoe.” Connor’s boney shoulders tried to creep up to guard his ears.

“It was so that you could be a little fa*ggot under the radar. You could never be half the student your sister is, or even a sliver of a man your father is-“

“Mom –“ he whispered.

“Don’t interrupt me, Connor.” She spat his name. He flinched.

He flinched like the first time he met Evan in Junior year.

Evan felt his tongue sticking to the top of his hard palate. He tried so hard, so so hard to speak up. To push past his anxiety, to be a real friend-

“It makes sense that your father isn’t your biological father. Larry could never have sired a filthy queer. And who do you think you’re kidding with your little stunt?”

She flicked her expensive acrylics at the boy in the bed she was systematically tearing apart better than years of razor blades in a dark bathroom ever did.

Stunt.

Like a grab for attention.

Like what she thought mattered to him.

He wished he was the Connor Murphy that didn’t cry again.

But he was the Connor that cared now.

He was the Connor who just wanted his mom.

The mom who talked his dad into going to the orchard for the day. Who went to his little league games with the team logo on her ballcap.

The mom who was less silicone and more heart than the woman standing before him tapping her foot.

Like he was the problem.

Well.

He was.

He was a filthy hom*o who got sh*t grades and noticed other boys in the halls.

Never boys like him.

Boys who flinched. Boys who painted their nails and their eyeliner and their converse black black black -

Warm arms came around Connor’s shaking form as his vision tunneled.

“Honestly you should have stayed unconscious, then your father could have made a case out of this shoddy establishment.” She looked down at her nails then up at the cheap plastic clock on the wall.

“But no, you will cost us thousands of dollars in medical bills instead of keeping your head down like anyone who actually matters. I have no idea how we’re going to come back from this hissy fit of yours at the country club. The governor’s daughter had the decency to have anorexia, at least. A fashionable problem. A problem that didn’t disfigure her and leave her bleeding in a hospital room. I’m not even sure what to say, you disgusting fairy. Even the Smith’s son actually succeeded so his family could have the nicest little funeral-”

A resounding slap rang through the ward as Connor’s head spun.

Cynthia Murphy looked past her stinging cheek at the enraged off-duty nurse who now stood between her and her offspring.

“Get out.”

Evan hadn’t seen his mom get this angry since his dad left when he was four.

Rage came off of Heidi Hansen in waves.

With the help of some sympathetic security guards – both of whom had had to protect queer kids from parents and relatives for decades, one of whom had a lesbian daughter himself - the Hansens got Cynthia Murphy the hell out of that hospital room.

Heidi strode from the room to make arrangements with the visitors’ desk to make sure Cynthia and Larry couldn’t make an appearance unless Connor wanted them to. The boys were left to themselves with a security guard who left eventually, seeing how uncomfortable Connor was having him there.

“I’ll be just outside. If either of you need anything, just yell.” He tipped his hat and closed the door gently behind himself.

Evan fell onto his boyfriend, hands smoothing hair and cupping cheeks, unable to look away for even a second. The taller boy wasn’t sure he wanted Evan to look away. He wanted the touch, wanted the warmth. He craved the contact with someone who wouldn’t hurt him, who had been there that day and still stood by him.

“I missed you.” Evan’s big, blue eyes filled with tears. Connor hoped they weren’t angry tears. He didn’t have the energy for anger right now.

“You could have died, Connor. You could have l…eft me al-lone.” It hit home then, the magnitude of what he’d almost done. What he’d tried to do.

Long, weak limbs wrapped around the short, soft boy as best they could while still being hooked up to machines that were at least blessedly quiet now.

“Your parents found one of your notes to me, Con.” Scarred arms tried to tense.

“It was awful. They treated me as if I was j..ust your best f..riend and I had to tell them lies. I l….ied to Zoe and your m..m..om and d--dad.”

Connor rested one high cheekbone against his friend’s hair. Evan had a hard enough time talking period, let alone lying.

And lying about something so delicate and important, at that.

“What did you tell them, baby?” God, his voice was so quiet and scratchy.

The shorter boy sniffled into his boyfriend’s pale blue hospital gown.

“I s---said-“

Connor moved with fingers clumsy with cold and weakness to snap near Evan’s head. The blond’s shoulders relaxed slightly as he realized what his lover was trying to do. His free hand came up to hold Connor’s hand against his cheek. The familiar feeling (though cold as hell) soothed him.

“I told them we m…met last summer. That we bonded over trees. That the version of you that I saw was d…i…fferent how they knew you.”

Evan laughed wetly.

“They don’t know you at a-all, Con. Your dad went on and on about this b-baseball glove he got you f…or your birthday but he couldn’t even remember the year! And a baseb…all g--glove!” Connor went still.

He remembered that thing. He remembered being hurt first that his dad didn’t know him from Adam and then physically hurt later when he didn’t want to use it. Larry had smacked him around until he’d been allowed to hide in his room.

The glove got kicked under his bed where he’d spent the last three years trying to forget it existed.

Just another disappointing birthday that ended with his mom wiping his blood off a wall.

………Except that that meant his family had been going through his room.

“Evan what else did they find? How much do they- do they know?”

Evan blinked blearily – had he been sleeping here? No, he probably hadn’t been able to sleep with the weird textures of the chairs and the scratchy blankets. Had he slept recently?

“Not much, Connor.” The shorter boy yawned. “I t-told them that you l…liked your p--privacy and that I’d be able to f…find things in your room b--b-etter than they would.” Well that was a bald-faced lie. Even Connor couldn’t find jacksh*t in his room and he practically lived there.

“Thanks Ev.”

“mhm. …Zoe called you a monster.” Connor laughed drily. She would. “It’s not funny, Connor! To her you were a superv…illain who would yell at her through her d-door and pound on i…t.”

Connor went pale.

Even more deathly pale.

Zoe had heard him? Zoe had heard him beating on her door, asking for entrance because their father – her beloved father who never raised his hand to her- was chasing him up the stairs and her room was the last one with a lock that Larry hadn’t busted down on his way to hurt his step-son.

Zoe had heard him yelling and done nothing. Just like his mom.

Anger burned sour and bright at the base of the teenager’s tongue. The machines picked up their whirring and would be causing a ruckus if they weren’t muted by a merciful Heidi Hansen.

Speaking of.

The off-duty nurse came into the room to check Connor’s machines and pulled up short.

Connor went numb.

He knew that Heidi knew about them. Hell, she’d said so when he’d slept over at the Hansen’s. He had a toothbrush in the cup by Evan’s sink for chrissakes!

But panic didn’t care. Panic said someone walked in on him showing affection for his boyfriend.

Someone saw him being gay.

He went cold.

Evan began to rock. Both of them. Evan was holding him with that damn cast cutting into Connor’s bare back and holding him.

He was safe.

It was just the Hansens. He could be himself with the Hansens.

Hell, he’d lost his virginity in their house and if that wasn’t a level of comfort then he didn’t know what would be.

Chapter 11: 11 - During

Chapter Text

Alana Beck had taken one look at Evan’s arm – AKA anything that wasn’t about her and immediately made Evan feel like sh*t for existing.

“Aw, my grandmother broke her hip and the doctors said that was the beginning of the end. She died.”

How the hell was Evan supposed to contend with a dead grandmother? He’d just fallen out of a tree trying to save his secret boyfriend and incognito best friend and snapped his arm. He was young, it would heal, he’d been told at least sixteen times in the hospital. The same hospital said secret boyfriend had undergone emergency stabilization so that his ribs wouldn’t pierce his lungs or any other kind of internal injuries Evan didn’t want to think about.

“Thanks! Nobody f*cking asked.”

Connor.

Evan knew today was the day Connor sans-Murphy would be coming back to school. Had it written on his calendar and in his phone. He’d been looking forward to the day and dreading the sight of his best friend back in school. He knew Connor could take it. He was a tough son of a bitch. But school was hell to boys like them far before Connor Murphy tried to take his own life and got caught.

Now he sleeps in the hospital under constant monitoring and goes to school where everybody knows everything about what happened.

Except for why it happened.

Evan brightened at his best friend over Alana’s braided head.

Connor crossed his arms and looked coolly down at her.

“Nobody f*cking cares about your grandma, so f*ck off and find somebody else to talk at. I’m walking here and you’re in the way.”

He pushed past her like she wasn’t even there. Evan wished he could be like that. Not to the point of callousness- Nah, y’know what, he would take the callousness.

Alana pushed her glasses up her nose and blinked, turning pink.

“But-but we were lab partners.” As if that should mean something to the tall boy flicking his combination into the lock built into his locker door.

“That’s nice, now shut up.”

Evan forgot how rude Connor ex-Murphy could be. He blinked.

Then he walked behind his boyfriend’s back and hit his ass with his cast.

Connor huffed a breath of air in a laugh as he grabbed his books.

‘Asshole’ he whispered, just for Evan’s ears. Evan smiled to himself.

‘You s-..s..tarted it.’

Connor actually chuckled, but Evan knew their routine. He kept walking, he didn’t look back. Him and Connor didn’t know each other at school.

Except they did.

sh*t.

Evan turned to go back to his boyfriend but the torrent of students was pulling him away to his next class.

Connor-the-student-formerly-known-as-Murphy straightened up and looped his bag over his shoulder. If messenger bags didn’t look so damn cool then he’d pitch his, it hurt his shoulder.

He barely registered the whispers in the hall anymore. He knew what he was, what he had done.

Then he heard Evan Hansen mentioned over and over.

Brown eyes went cold and calculating.

He knew Evan had had to lie to his parents. Evan had told him.

His mom and his sister were social media monsters who lived for gossip.

How much did his classmates know? How much would he have to beat out of them – his breath hitched – how much would he have to beat out of them once his ribs healed?

Everyone kept looking at their phones and then up at him.

Then he passed a flyer someone had tacked to a bulletin board for the beginning of the year.

‘Suicide prevention assembly
Gym A
Wednesday 3-4pm’

He paused.

‘Sponsored by The Connor Project’.

He didn’t want to know what that meant, but he could guess.

Now who the hell started this mess?

Not him, he knew where he was at the time.

There was a Facebook set up for this Connor Project though, so he could Google himself.

A video came up instead.

It was of Evan.

In one of the god-awful ties Connor’s mom had gotten for him the year all of their family friends turned 13.

Connor put in his earbuds, closed his eyes, and pressed play.

Connor heard his lover’s voice shaking as he cried out into the void, laying himself bare in front of the whole school. The video had thousands of likes and shares, it came up on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, everywhere.

And Evan’s message and his care came across so strongly that his stuttering got lost.

God, his boyfriend’s voice sounded so vulnerable and small. So sure, and so powerful.

God he should have reached out.

He nearly shredded his best friend, his boyfriend, the most beautiful soul Connor had ever met just because he didn’t realize how much he cared.

Evan was never anything but genuine with Connor. If he was pissed, he was pissed, if he was happy, he was happy, when he looked at him and smiled… God, Evan Hansen loved him, Connor, enough to stand up alone in front of their whole school and talk about his pain.

And Connor didn’t even let them be friends in school.

How was he such a f*ckup?

He breathed out a breath made shaky with emotion and opened his eyes long enough to push past his tears and download the video onto his phone.

After that he heard the speech everywhere. Nurses at the visitor’s station would show it to their replacements. Commuters would be listening to it at the bus stop. People shared it with their loved ones during visiting hours. It was everywhere.

And every time he heard it Connor had to stop whatever he was doing and just listen.

Listen to his best friend and his boyfriend reach out as best he could, not knowing if Connor would wake up, despite everything.

Everything he’d done for Connor. The broken arm. The speech. The hours spent with Connor’s family while keeping everything that they were and felt deep within himself.

Connor made the most genuine man he knew lie for him while he was lying there selfish.

Epiphany shot tendrils of ice down Connor’s scarred arms.

Evan wasn’t just talking about him.

Evan was speaking from experience.

How could Connor have been so stupid? So f*cking selfish that he forgot that Evan was just as in pain as he was and just as mute?

Connor was not alone.

Boys like Connor and Evan weren’t alone. Not anymore.

These boys had each other.

They had found each other, and Connor wasn’t letting go of Evan’s hand ever again.

Chapter 12: 12 - During

Chapter Text

“Hey Connor! Love the new look. Very school-shooter-chic!” Evan winced behind Jared f*cking Kleinman’s back. Connor gave him his patented flat look. It was a look that said ‘I would shoot you if you were worth the energy’.

Jared just waited for his distasteful joke to land.

“Well!” Jared threw in the towel and walked away with ‘freak’ dropped not quite under his breath.

Evan’s big, mournful blue eyes caught Connor’s flat, borderline-dead eyes. They were counting down the days until the emancipation went through, they knew.

For now though, Connor was still on physical therapy and suicide watch. His hair was growing out, he was losing weight, he was building back up muscle. He was skinnier than before.

Evan wanted to hold him.

Evan wanted to hold him so badly.

Connor sighed and brushed past him on his way to class.

Supposedly.

One hand with chipped nail polish and thick rings caught Evan’s hand and tugged.

Wait a few minutes.

A few, excruciating minutes where Evan waffled at his locker looking like an anxious freak himself.

He slammed the olive-green door a little harder than he meant to and jumped at the sound. His hands came up to clap over his sensitive ears. He whimpered as the cast he’d taken for granted came up to thwack against the side of his head.

He dropped, curling up on himself.

Connor would come to get him if he was made to wait too long. The taller boy knew Evan wouldn’t stand him up, so something must be wrong.

He was right, though the kid was currently doing a great shrimp impression in the middle of the hallway, curled around his knees and rocking.

“Evan? Ev, babe, what happened?” Black hair swung in a greasy curtain as the taller boy looked up and down the hall. He was still closeted. Him and Evan were a closely-guarded secret. But damnit his boyfriend needed him.

Settling onto the knees of his ripped jeans, Connor Last-Name-Here reached out a tentative long-fingered hand.

“Evan?” He asked softly.

His eyes widened when he saw the blood.

“Come on Ev. We’re going to the nurse’s office. I’ll go with you.” The taller boy helped Evan to his feet where the shorter boy curled around his cast. Connor still got that painful twinge in his chest when he saw the glaringly white evidence of Evan’s loyalty. Just one more week. The break had already healed, the fresh cast was just there to protect his bones while they fully hardened. Connor tried not to think about how his boyfriend’s arm was knitting itself back together. Because of him.

Well-worn sneakers trotted along beside well-worn converse. The lack of tread on the two pairs of shoes would have been dangerous in any other weather or if there were any puddles on the floor, but it matched the worn-out barely-contained feeling their wearers echoed down to their cores. Connor only wore ratty, black high-tops and on days where he gave a crap, combat boots.

He didn’t give a crap very often.

Evan hated the nurse’s office. It smelled bad, the lights were too bright, and the big windows didn’t have curtains. It was too bright. The lights buzzed. He crammed his hands over his ears more before patient hands guided his cast away from his raw ear. (Connor Last-Name-Here? Patient? That was new. Or maybe it was just an Evan thing. Yeah, probably just an Evan Hansen thing.)

The nurse raised a sculpted eyebrow at the unlikely duo. Connor’s glower cut through her mounting anger at a perceived damage he’d done to little Evan Hansen.

“His cast cut his head. There’s blood.” Connor didn’t realize he was fighting back panic of his own at the sight of his best friend’s blood on his head.

The nurse blinked and got to her feet, walking around the corner of her massive, metal desk.

“Sign in if you’re going to be staying.” She pointed at the battered clipboard on her desk. Connor blinked down at it and then back up at Evan.

He debated.

Could he get away with skipping class? This had never been a concern before, but he wasn’t sleeping in a hospital before. f*cking suicide watch. They’d probably like that he was at the nurse’s instead of lost to the wind for a change.

He picked up the pen.

He scrawled a messy signature beneath the three students before his name on the clipboard. Slow day, then.

He would be here for Evan. Hopefully a messy scrawl in place of his name would keep their connection under wraps.

Brown eyes shot up and rage poured into his belly at the sound of Evan hissing in pain. What was she doing to his boyfriend?

“Ow-ow-“

The taller boy closed the space between himself and the nurse in two long angry strides.

It was a disinfection wipe. Must’ve stung his open cut.

It was a cut; he saw with relief.

The nurse handed Evan another little wet wipe to clean the edge of his cast with. The shorter boy’s shaking fingers made it impossible for him to open the little package. Connor felt his anger towards the callous adult return before he caught the little rectangle as it fell from Evan’s shaking hands. The shorter boy cursed.

Long, spindly fingers picked the tiny packet apart and offered the wet wipe to the shorter boy. The nurse didn’t comment on the tenderness shown between two boys who, by rights, shouldn’t even know one another. Yet here they were, one of them vulnerable and the other fighting past his weakened body to open a disinfectant wipe.

Connor rested a hand on his friend’s knee and Evan squeezed his hand before sticking his tongue tip out in concentration. The wet wipe left cold moisture on Connor’s fingers, but he wiped it off on his jeans.

It might even clean the damn things a little. Now that was a novel thought.

Jesus, how sucky was his life that clean jeans was the lap of luxury?

He was pretty sure the hospital had washing machines hidden away somewhere. Maybe he could convince an aide to put his jeans through.

Evan’s eyebrows lowered as he picked at the sharp edge his cast had sprouted when he wasn’t looking. Damn.

The nurse put a small, circular Band-Aid on his ear and declared him done.

It itched.

His cast smelled like disinfectant.

His unlikely friend’s voice cut through his mounting panic.

“Did your mom make you pack that sharpie again?”

What?

The blond boy blinked.

He rummaged through his pocket and fished out the black marker he’d forgotten to take out of his khakis.

‘Forgotten’. Like he wasn’t secretly holding out hope that someone in this godforsaken school would give enough of a sh*t to want to sign his cast.

Connor uncapped it with a pop and took Evan’s hand gently.

Then he signed his name in big, black letters clean up Evan’s arm.

Evan looked at his cast in shock.

Connor smirked and recapped the pen.

“That’ll get the ball rolling, Ev.”

Evan’s shock morphed into a gentle smile when he realized his boyfriend had just staked his claim – as childish and silly as a name on a cast, however huge the letters of the six-letter name was – in a way that people could see.

“Th…thanks b…ud.” Connor ruffled his hair and picked up his brown messenger bag.

The antiseptic smell didn’t hurt Evan’s nose so badly anymore. Not when his best friend had written his name on his cast. He could see the weave of the fiberglass peeking out around the ‘O’ and the ‘C’, where the sharpie had bounced along the uneven surface. He stared at it all through fourth period.

He couldn’t help but smile now. It was like the six letters on his arm protected him from the disdainful stares and harsh whispers for the rest of the day. A couple underclassmen even asked to doodle on his cast, putting a little stick figure in the first massive ‘O’ and a wicked shark along the bottom of his arm.

Then the bus home happened.

Connor put in his earbuds and tapped away on his phone while waiting for the social worker to pick him up and drive him back to the hospital.

[E: How much longer until you can live with us, Connor?]

The tall youth was glad his hair covered his smile.

[C: still waiting for the hospital to clear me. your moms nice tho.]
[E: Can you have visitors yet. . .]

Connor watched the three dots travel across the speech bubble of his texting app.

[E: Can you have visitors yet? I miss you.]

Connor smirked. He’d been tied up in finding a nickname.

[C: idk. hope so. ]
[E: Want me to ask mom?]
[C: yeah. ]
[C: oh, social worker’s here.]
[C: ttyl baby ]
[E: Love you <3 ]

Connor slid his phone into his hoodie pocket and smiled to himself as he got into the grey vehicle driven by an equally grey individual. Some people are just like that. Desaturated. Willing to sink into the background. God, he hoped the guy hadn’t once been a boy like him. He didn’t want to be alive, sure, but he especially didn’t want to grow up to be forgettable.

Evan gripped his arm over the ‘N N O’ as he watched his best friend get into a car he didn’t recognize and drive away.

He would miss him tonight. They hadn’t been able to text or email since… well, since that day in the orchard. The hospital took Connor’s phone before admitting him to the psych ward. Evan was scared for him. The shorter boy didn’t like how lonely the hospital would be overnight… and he certainly didn’t like the unknown that was the psych ward. Both Connor and his mom had tried to explain how the modern hospital wasn’t the same as those scary asylums on the internet and in video games, but he wasn’t so sure.

All he knew was that there was radio silence from 5:56pm until 7:45 in the morning.

Chapter 13: 13 - During

Chapter Text

“Having goals will be good for you, Connor. Can you think of where you’d like to be in ten years?”

The black-haired-but-it-was-growing-out-now boy looked up at the tacky foam ceiling tiles.

He could think of one goal and one goal only, but it was a damn good one.

“I want to marry my boyfriend.”

Connor was tired, and he just wanted to go home (wherever THAT was), but if the therapists and nurses and sh*t were going to give him hell for dating – for loving Evan Hansen then damn it he was willing to fight them all. He could rest when he had Evan in his arms and Heidi on the couch next to them.

The slap never came.

Instead, when Connor sans-Murphy looked at the therapist once more, the man was beaming at him and writing something on his clipboard.

“My husband would say that that’s a very good goal to work towards.”

Connor froze.

“Really?”

This hetero-looking dude who met with him every other day from six o’clock to seven-ten pm...

He was gay?

And the world hadn’t ended?

He was happily married to another man and working and nobody hurt him?

Connor Hansen had much to think about when they turned out the lights to stare at his ceiling that night.

He hoped Evan was sleeping well, wherever he was.

As he rolled onto his side and slid his arm beneath the thin hospital pillow, he knew he’d have to figure out a way to keep Evan and Heidi away from the Murphy’s as much as possible. He had plans and they didn’t involve his zygote donors or his traitorous sister.

Thin sheets rubbed against each other in the darkness as he tossed and turned. He had to keep them away from the Murphys. Had to protect them, the Hansen’s. His family. His real family.

With a sigh and the memories of a thick, blue throw beneath his hands, Connor Hansen slipped off to sleep.

--

Turns out ‘I want to marry my boyfriend’ is a great goal. Like, a really great one. Connor rode its coattails straight (hah!) through his court battles for Emancipation, his meetings with his therapist, his many long, dark nights in the psych ward with wandering kids like him in the hallways, listless just like he had been before he had a goal.

Before he had Evan.

He tried not to think about it.

But today...Today he was going to do it.

He could do it. For Evan. For his best friend. For his light, as f*cking sappy as that sounds.

With shaking hands and a palpitating heart Connor Murphy reached out and held his boyfriend’s hand. Right there in front of the lockers before fifth period.

Evan lit up like a Christmas tree, nearly blinding the taller boy but flooding him with warmth and a wash of joy so perfect that Connor momentarily forgot where they were. What they were.

Boys like them didn’t get together.

Gay boys like them didn’t hold hands in school.

Gay boys like them kept their heads down and stole kisses in their parents’ basem*nts and gazed wistfully at one another’s lips during a presentation or whenever a teacher asked them to read a passage aloud.

Evan was mercifully never called upon to read out loud.

Connor was not granted the same leniency. Not when the teachers discovered his even timbre and easy way of bringing words to life.

So, Connor got stuck reading sh*t aloud and Evan, dear Evan, got stuck with making starry eyes at his boyfriend as he read. It didn’t matter if the sh*t was F. Schott Fitzgerald or Shakespeare, Connor got stuck reading it; one hand in his hoodie pocket, the other almost lazily holding the cheap paperback version of a classic that his sh*tty public school provided.

But gay boys like them? They didn’t hold hands in public.

Ever since Evan’s cast had come off earlier in the year Connor had been eyeing his hands (Moreso than normal, which he tried to write off as ‘not creepy’. Some days he could convince himself better than others.) and waiting.

Building up courage that the one clinical psychologist planted as a gay little seed in the hospital hell hole he lived in, Connor sans-Murphy said ‘f*ck it’ and slid his hand into Evan Hansen’s where it dangled as he walked away.

They were doing it.

They were holding hands.

Boys like them didn’t hold hands in public.

It was like the two boys dropped a lit match in a forest of kindling.

When Connor’s digits began to shake from the whispers, Evan held his hand tighter. The shorter boy’s hand was so warm. Not sweaty at all, like he would panic at length about while Connor told him not to stress.

Telling Evan Hansen not to worry about something was like slapping a band-aid on a raw amputation. It wasn’t gonna do sh*t.

But today Evan’s hand didn’t sweat. The normally anxious wreck stood tall and smiled.

It was his usually cool and aloof boyfriend who was the anxious wreck. It was only years of cultivated apathy and naturally resting bitch face that got him through the length of that hallway to drop Evan off at his class before collapsing in the janitor’s closet.

Long fingers gripped his hair and shaking palms pressed on his cheeks.

Breathe Connor Hansen, Breathe.

Remember your damn goal.

Remember the damn goal.

High schoolers don’t matter.

Let them talk.

Him and Evan had already survived his suicide attempt at the beginning of senior year.

The weather was already warming up, summer vacation was coming.

Connor’s mouth began to over-water but classes had already started.

Bursting through the metal janitor’s closet door the panicking boy streaked into the bathroom across the hall.

Boy was he glad he pulled the hand-holding stunt before lunch and not after.

Tying his hair back in one of the hair ties Heidi had given him (black, he’d noted with a smile at the time), Connor bent over the sink and washed out his mouth. He’d have to borrow some gum from Evan when he could.

The thought of leaving the bathroom to see his boyfriend was almost too much. There were people out there.

But Evan.

He couldn’t send Evan in alone amongst all those damn sharks.

They would tear his gentle, loving, trusting Evan to bleeding shreds.

So, Connor tied his hair back, pulled down his hoodie sleeves, and walked out the damn bathroom doors.

The fluorescent lights were too much for his little show of bravery and he untied his hair to block them out.

A blond head bobbed out of the classroom doors he had left his boyfriend at and his stomach settled.

“Connor!” God he was beautiful.

“Hey Ev.”

It was like a damn dam burst. After he’d held Evan’s hand once his traitorous fingers went back to their mate’s like a subconscious magnet.

He could do this.

They could do this.

They held hands all the way from the lockers to the lunchroom. Evan even swung their hands a little.

Connor sans-Murphy smiled when he felt it.

Connor sans-Murphy smiled.

It was no surprise that the whispers and rumors started the second their backs were turned.

The asshole had the stones to throw an arm over Evan’s shoulders, forcing his head down. Connor felt a growl forming low in his throat.

“I’m just glad you got rid of that stick up your ass! Even if you had to replace it with a dick.”

Connor slugged him.

“f*ck dude, it was just a joke!” The pee-on clapped a hand to his bruising cheek.

“It wasn’t. Funny.” Connor was quickly approaching 6’2” and he used it.

Jared motherf*cking Kleinman was quickly approaching slug height.

Jared goddamned Kleinman scurried away like the vermin he was.

Connor shook out his hand and looked at his boyfriend in concern.

“Ev, you okay? He’s a jackass, nothing he says matters.”

Evan was shutting down on him and he could see it.

Evan slammed his locker door.

Only twelve more weeks until they graduated and never had to see any of these people ever again. Evan was going to become a famous author and move in with his boyfriend and then they’d see.

He was going to be rich and he was going to be gay and it was going to be great.

That didn’t make the angry sticky notes on his locker and poisonous notebook pages everywhere he looked any easier though.

“Evan, just ignore them. They might be self-righteous, but they’re dead wrong. Can I say that? I mean Connor survived- Speak of the devil! Hi!”

The blond sighed and his shoulders slumped. Alana.

The black girl stood twirling one of her braids when he looked up. He felt so tired.

“What do you want?” Connor crossed his arms and leaned against the locker behind Evan. Evan couldn’t help it, his eyes brightened at the sound of his ally’s voice. Connor literally had his back; they could handle Alana.

“My moms are lesbians you know. And I have an aunt who started life as my uncle. I dated a girl in middle school and have decided that my moms are right and men are overrated.”

Evan blinked.

Connor raised a thick eyebrow.

She smiled at them and waved.

“Welp, can’t be late for class. Bye guys!”

Connor and Evan just stared as the whirlwind that was Alana Beck bounced away from them on too-perfect Mary Jane-style shoes.

Connor hated that he knew that. Evan didn’t notice that he knew that.

They really were hom*os, huh.

“Well she’s…” Connor started.

“A l..l…ot? Yeah.” The blond boy rested his forehead on the cool painted metal of his locker door. With his eyes closed he didn’t have to see the hateful statements scratched into the puce paint with a paperclip.

At least somebody on staff had their backs, since they would come back to school in the mornings to freshly-painted lockers and lewd drawings and sh*tty insults torn from the walls and bulletin boards.

Every time Connor passed one of the small staples with paper torn from beneath it, he felt a little stronger. A little more accepted.

For once the adults didn’t completely suck.

Evan sighed shakily whenever his gym clothes were shredded. Whenever his books had water dumped on them. Whenever he would get shoulder-checked in the halls.

He started skipping gym, he couldn’t wear the borrowed clothes. They itched, or scratched, or still had tags.

Oh, how he loathed tags.

Connor deadened himself inside.

He opened his locker and let the sticky notes flutter to the ground. He shoulder-checked and tripped right back. The spiteful gay boy let his rings scrape asshole’s arms and hands as they walked past.

They couldn’t touch him anymore. He had a goal.

Evan Hansen didn’t have much of a goal. He had a dream, and he had a home.

He just wished school didn’t take up nine hours of his day that could have been better spent either at home or daydreaming.

Some days he stayed home sick.

On those days Connor would keep his phone in hand all day, when he couldn’t skip due to graduation requirements. (Which was most days now, he knew he would have to either repeat the year or get a GED otherwise just to get the hell out of here and move on with his life.)

Sometimes Evan just needed time to himself anyway.

Sometimes Evan would take the time to bury himself in blankets and cry.

Some days he would spend all day and into the evening wandering between his bed, the kitchen, and the bathroom, too physically ill to do much else.

Other days he would go for a walk.

He would climb trees – but never too high.

Chapter 14: 14 - During

Chapter Text

They started hanging out with Alana and her moms on the weekends. Turns out she was just lonely and isolated throughout the whole Connor Project (that Connor himself now helped out on now and again) fiasco.

“Why don’t you guys write a book about it? I can do PR!”

The boyfriends looked at one another and raised an eyebrow in mirror to one another. It made Alana and her currently-home-from-work mom laugh.

“How long have you two been together?” Shelley, Alana’s white step-mom asked over a bowl of M&M’s and popcorn.

“Two years in August.” Connor reached over Evan’s arm to grab a handful of the snacks, picking out the hard shells from a kernel or two to hand to his boyfriend. He’d just gotten used to the soft smiles Alana’s moms would give him when he did stuff like that. Evan didn’t like the pointy bits in popcorn and he hated M&M’s, so Connor took the bullet for him and ate the sugary bastards of crunchy goodness for him. It was messy work, but Evan was worth it.

(Besides, it was good for his ‘fine motor skills’ or whatever. Stupid coma.)

Connor Hansen smirked as he put a handful of M&M’s into his mouth, knowing the light tinkling would drive his friend up the damn wall.

“G-gross.”

Connor stuck out a tongue with candy shell all over it.

He then laughed when Evan elbowed him in the stomach for it.

“I can tell.” stated Shelley, popping a handful of popcorn and candy into her mouth.

The boys liked both of Alana’s moms for different reasons.

Shelley was easy to hang out with, the blonde all yoga pants and laughter. She also brought out the candy and unhealthy snacks. Breakfast for dinner at least once a week with her.

D’Asia was quiet and beautiful, brown with sunlight in her skin and a doek piled high with thick braids. She smelled of patchouli and something woody; her hands covered in henna and tattoos of constellations.

Shelley worked as an architect for the city, wearing a hard hat and pantsuits during the week.

D’Asia was a sculptor and a painter, sweeping from her studio in the barn out back into the kitchen and back as the whims took her.

Shelley looked at her wife with that same love-light in her eyes that Connor felt towards Evan.

He handed him a couple more edgeless popcorn pieces. Evan put exactly five red M&M’s onto Connor’s hoodie pocket where it pooled in his lap. They clinked against his teeth when he popped them into his mouth.

Evan shook his head in loving exasperation and slid onto the carpet to better sort the candies by color. Neat rows like an equalizer sprouted beneath his fingertips, to be doled out to each of his cohorts based on their preferences.

Alana liked the blue ones. Connor liked the red ones. Shelley liked them all.

“I’m serious guys! It’ll be a hit! Everybody loves a story like that. Two underdogs taking on the world, going viral, living to tell the tale.” Alana’s eyes sparkled like a hunter cornering her prey.

Shelley looked at the ceiling where she sprawled across one couch.

“I’d read it.”

The boys looked at one another.

Connor added a new goal to his list:

-Marry Evan Hansen
-Write The Connor Project (by Evan and Connor Hansen)

Yeah.

Yeah, he liked the sounds of that.

Chapter 15: 15 - After

Chapter Text

Connor sans-Murphy was leaning against the glass counter of his part-time job at Hot Topic when his boyfriend swept into the store looking thoroughly like he didn’t belong there. It always made Connor grin.

Evan Hansen ran straight (hah!) up to the glass and pulled Connor by his lanyard across the counter to peck him on the lips. All of Connor’s pride pins made the glorified necklace an easily grippable handle for such maneuvers and he didn’t mind in the least. His man was shining like the sun, beaming through the freckles the summer sun always darkened on his face. His tan polo looked a little out of place on Evan, but still looked cute. It just wasn’t blue.

“What? What’s up, Ev?”

The other boy was drawing his top lip over his bottom lip repeatedly with an odd expression. He still hadn’t gotten used to Connor’s lip piercing and it was absolutely adorable. But Connor was going to die if he didn’t find out what had gotten his boyfriend this excited.

“Dear Evan Hansen is going to be published!” He said the sentence so fast Connor took a second to translate it in his head.

His jaw dropped.

“When?!” Connor laughed, vaulting the counter on one arm. His rainbow pin clanked against the black ‘No H8’ pin on one side of his lanyard and his ‘American Idiot’ pin clanked against one of the My Chemical Romance ones beside it. Hey he got employee discount, why not? He sounded a little bit like edgy sleighbells when he got going, but this was worth it.

He started to reach for Evan’s hands before the other boy started flapping in excitement. The tall kid leaned back against the counter to take in his ecstatic boyfriend, watching him flapping and experiencing happiness with every cell in his body.

God, Connor loved this man.

‘Dear Evan Hansen: The true story behind The Connor Project and the speech that went viral’ had been a labor of love from day one. Connor had had to push it to the back of his mind to work on studying for the GED exams that would be on him in the coming weeks, but it had been percolating. Waiting for the right moment.

That moment arrived in the form of Evan Hansen sweeping into his room (the Hansens had cleared out the attic space for a bed, nightstand, and dresser behind all of the memories and junk an attic would collect. Connor liked it that way. Gave him things to focus on while he worked on his poetry and writing projects. He even took up sketching again, though he didn’t have his boyfriend’s photographic memory or his way with words.

Alana’s moms and Heidi liked his poetry though, so he stuck with that.

Evan didn’t write poems anyway, couldn’t get the words to stay in place like he liked. Poetry was all about flowing imagery and intense emotions. Evan got frustrated when he tried for it.

But damn could the kid write.

Hundreds of words would just pour from his lover’s fingers onto his laptop, losing him in his own little – Well, big, wide world.

He would forget to eat, forget to blink, start and stop rocking at uneven intervals.

Connor loved it. Heidi liked it when Evan could be convinced to eat. His boyfriend would usually bring comics or job applications to work on on the floor when Evan got to writing so he could tip Evan over and tuck him in when he fell asleep sitting up.

Heidi Hansen didn’t quite know what to do with Connor’s sudden drive after the court order went through. The kid ate through textbooks, actually studied for his tests, and got a job as soon as he could legally work.

He had done his research though. He knew weddings weren’t cheap.

So, he worked, he studied, he wrote poetry, and he kept his goals to himself.

So when his writer of a boyfriend knocked on the bottom of the trap door that lead to Connor’s room with an armful of notebooks and his laptop, Connor was ready, even if he didn’t know he was at the time.

Evan slid onto the unmade mess of a bed Connor was folded onto with his laptop and a chewed-up pencil.

“C-connor! Willyouwritewithme? I think Alana has-had a great idea! I already mapped out some ideas for chapters and we can use your poetry in and out and you can help me make my writing make sense because not everybody thinks like I do and your writing is more beautiful than mine and I love it so everyone else will too! Look, look, look, I wrote down some ideas on my computer and wrote some snatches and you were reading weren’t you.”

Connor reached out to gently put his hands on his lover’s biceps.

“I’m listening to you now, Ev. Editing can wait.”

Evan Hansen lit up and opened his laptop.

Heidi Hansen found the two boys asleep in Connor’s bed, piled one on top of the other with laptops and notes spread out everywhere.

“Dear Evan Hansen,
Today is going to be a great day and here’s why…” She read.

Tilting her head, she scanned some of the open spiral notebooks the boys had been scribbling in – she could tell because one set was in Evan’s neat blue pen strokes and the other was in Connor’s dark, heavily pressed pencil marks.

Each color crossed out the other and wrote notes in margins, table of contents came together and separated into page headers.

Evan’s speech from the beginning of senior year was open on Connor’s thick laptop (with the little golden star next to the URL that meant he visited the video with some regularity, even all this time after, she noted.). The Connor Project Facebook page was open on Evan’s, with a pop-up messenger messages from Alana and D’Asia Beck.

Heidi smiled to herself and closed their computers gently.

She brushed Connor’s forelock out of his face so he could breathe easier and pulled down her son’s shirt so his stomach wouldn’t get cold from the temperature Connor kept his room at.

She picked up a few items of clothing and put them in the hamper on her way out, looking back at her boys with a soft smile. It was good for Evan to have someone at home when she was at work and, well, it was good for Connor to have somebody, period.

That wasn’t to say that it was an overnight production.

Writing a book was hard, especially one like theirs.

Sometimes Connor’s words didn’t flow or wrap around the audience just right.

Sometimes Evan would get too wordy and then shut down when Connor and his mom tried to edit for him.

D’Asia Beck stepped up to that plate.

“Evan sweety, can I look?”

Evan was so shell-shocked that all he could do was nod with wide eyes and hold out a shaky hand filled with ripped out notebook paper or turn his laptop to face her.

And she read. Sometimes she wrote him notes where he could see her every word being formed in her dyslexic scribbles that carried nothing but love and beauty.

His cuticles were constantly in pain and bleeding from where he picked at them until his mom put Band-Aids around them and Connor kissed each finger in the darkness of his attic room where they lay together, just breathing and shooting the breeze.

Telling jokes no one understands except the two boys who lay side by side taking in each other’s silhouettes in the moonlight and the way that celestial beings glittered off the whites of their eyes until they fell, one after the other, into sleep.

Sometimes Connor would stay awake after his boyfriend slept and take notes.

He would open a Google Doc and just stare at the white screen.

Sometimes words would come to him, or letters to his best friend, and sometimes nothing would happen except drivel that solved nothing but released his tension enough to go to sleep.

Sometimes Evan would forget to sleep and his co-author and his beloved editor would wake up to hundreds of thousands of words for the book they were now calling ‘Dear Evan Hansen’.

It started as a joke.

Then they read the YouTube comments and the Facebook posts and looked at each other.

“It should have both our names.” Evan snapped his fingers and nodded.

Connor showed his friend a small smile.

“Yeah. Should probably mention the Connor Mission or whatever it is.”

“The Connor Project.”

“Did you come up with that?”

Evan looked sheepish.

“Me and Alana, mostly.”

Connor’s small smile turned into a wide grin with the speed and heat of a forest fire. Now that he could believe.

“Wonder if she’ll want royalties.” Connor looked at the bare wood joints above him where the Hansen’s (of which he was one, just ask anybody who mattered) attic met the roof.

Evan snorted.

“Pr…robably.”

Sometimes the words that flowed from Evan’s pen hurt.

Sometimes the scenes Connor painted with his chewed-up pencil stubs showed more abuse and manipulation than he had let anyone know.

His life was a little like his pencils, he thought. Chewed up, spat out, cut short – Now none of that, Connor Hansen.

Sometimes it was just the name that calmed Connor down.

Sometimes it was his goals.

-Publish ‘Dear Evan Hansen’
-Marry his dear, darling, wonderful Evan Hansen and finally become the Connor Hansen everybody knew him as at this point.

Chapter 16: 16 - After

Chapter Text

The GED came and went with a bang. Evan had passed with his finals with flying colors. (When Connor saw his boyfriend’s scores, he slapped them onto the fridge and aggressively congratulated him and made a big production of it. It had made Evan blush and Heidi chuckle before she slid the fridge magnets holding Evan’s score sheet in place over so that she could also hang up Connor’s.)

Connor didn’t do as well as Evan, but he had clawed and studied his way to a decent score. A respectable score, considering his track record of apathy and medicalized coma.

His chest swelled with pride at the two score sheets on the fridge.

The scores stayed there until the critical acclaims for ‘Dear Evan Hansen: The True Story Behind The Viral Speech and the Connor Project’ started rolling in.

Newspaper articles about the local boys and the high school scandal were carefully censored and put on the fridge.

Printed out reviews and acclaims from the internet filled in any open space on that fridge (and freezer!) door.

The two boys still had a lot to learn about writing and about each other, but with the help and support of those millions of viewers and the Beck family and Heidi, their book came together.

Chapter 17: 17 - After

Chapter Text

Evan Hansen stood entranced by the thin gold band his boyfriend had just given him.

It had been five years since they first met, all those years ago in the cold halls of the high school they would warm with each other’s company.

Four years since Connor had woken up in the hospital with bruised ribs and a broken heart.

Four years since Connor had met the psychologist with the warm smile and the beautiful husband. (Because he had to be beautiful, their love was. It held the stranger seated across from him closer than the ‘equal rights’ sticker at the back of his clipboard. Kept the doctor company even when he had to remove his wedding band to work in the troubled youth’s ward every day.)

Connor never got to see that wedding band, but he could (and did) pick out his own.

Heidi Hansen had seen it coming a mile away. Her ward had always been a quiet, shrewd boy, but recently he’d been getting a build-up of energy that he just couldn’t suppress and couldn’t hide. Evan had thought it was due to something at work, and his mom and lover didn’t try and correct him. (Connor had told him it was just work, after all. If the other boy- Man, at this point, they were both in their early twenties now … which wasn’t a number either of them really thought they would ever see. – wanted to tell him what was bothering him, then mother-henning him would usually do far more harm than good. They had Heidi to mother them, they didn’t need more.)

Connor had been daydreaming and doodling that band almost since the day he was finally released from the hospital.

That thin, gold piece of jewelry had gotten him through his boring classes, the harsh jeers, the hate, the scorn, the painful walks that took him past Zoe’s school and the awkward ‘family’ dinners he was forced to go to until his father put a stop to the farce...

+++

“If the boy-“ Always ‘boy’, never ‘man’. That was its own slap in the face. But he digresses. “If that boy doesn’t want to be a member of this family then he has no more place at my table.”

Connor’s mother kicked up a fuss, as she does about most things that will curry her favor at the homeowner’s association or the bridge parlor or the country club where the Mayor and his wife take their 2.5 children who are all perfect and straight and have never nor will ever do anything untoward like dating another man.

That’s right, dad. Evan’s a man and he is my man and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So suck it.

Connor left that ‘family dinner’ to the sound of the woman who gave birth to him having a swooning (and when that failed, screeching) spell over his ‘father’s’ blustering and slamming of tableware and doors and stomping of hand-polished kid leather shoes. He didn’t have to look back to know the familiar – painfully familiar, he would later admit to a therapist or two, once the book took off and he could afford it on top of saving for a wedding – look his sister had had on her face. No, it was just Zoe now. Zoe Murphy.

Because he was Connor Hansen in every way except blood.

Although Evan would point out that he’d spilled enough on his account to be considered family, if they weren’t sleeping together and intended to spend the rest of their lives together, which would make being blood relations, well, bad.

So, the future Connor Hansen squared his shoulders, stood up straight, and walked away from the passive, glazed-over stare of the girl who used to be his sister, the narcissistic whinging of the woman who gave birth to him, and the complete write-off of his step-father with his head held high and his heart finally, miraculously, light.

The court order came in a week and a half later.

Connor sans-Murphy was his own man.

He didn’t have to show up to the Murphy’s after school, didn’t have to sleep under their roof.

He was emancipated.

Able to make and keep his own money, live where he wanted, talk to who he wanted, befriend who he wanted, and by god it was nice.

It was finally, finally nice.

Alana and her mothers joined the Hansens for a celebratory dinner of dishes-to-pass that probably shouldn’t have all been on the table at the same time and it was perfect.

Heidi Hansen even gave Connor permission to have a sip of her wine.

It was disgusting, but it was novel.

He held hands with his boyfriend under the table, not because they weren’t allowed to show affection and be who they were… but because there was so much food ladening their table that there wasn’t any room for anything else.

It felt good.

It felt different.

A good kind of different.

In a lull before they cut into the pan of not-‘green’ brownies Shelley had brought over (with fudge thick on all sides and sinful chocolate chips all throughout), Connor took a moment to take in his real loved ones.

They were none of them perfect, but none of them tried to be. They had no one to impress, unlike the woman who birthed him. They were together by choice, unlike the man who ruled over the Murphy’s with an iron fist.

And Alana smiled at her moms and at him and at Evan with so much natural warmth that it would have made Zoe Murphy sick.

Good.

Then after dinner, after the leftovers had been doled out and put away, tucked beneath saran wrap and aluminum foil (except the brownies, there had been no survivors there) and carried out to cars and Alana was bundled up into Shelley’s red coupe and D’Asia had given Heidi, Evan, and Connor deep velvety red kisses to each cheek, after Heidi Hansen had clicked off the television and called it a night,

Evan and Connor rolled onto their sides on the living room carpet to just look at each other. Just enjoy their space and finally /breathe/.

Then, in the quietest, most peaceful voice Connor had heard from his boyfriend,

Evan Hansen promised that he would marry Connor sans-Murphy.

The blond slipped off to dreamland on a full belly and warm cuddles shortly afterwards, which was a good thing because otherwise his long-time boyfriend would have been torn between kicking himself for not proposing first and trying to keep his heart in his chest from where it wanted to soar through the roof of their little house and float weightless among the stars. Earth’s atmosphere wouldn’t be enough to contain Connor future-Hansen’s heart, his love, his relief at the acceptance and unguarded promise his best friend had just made to him.

+++

Five years later and an untold amount of ‘almost’s later…

And Connor had finally, finally bought the ring he’d been plotting and saving for, and the day of their anniversary he slipped it onto Evan Hansen’s left hand.

Evan looked a bit lost at first, but Connor held on. He had prepared for this. He knew his boyfriend and he knew what the end result would be. What Evan’s next words would be.
Evan Hansen’s smile lit up the room and perfect, crystalline tears beaded at the corners of his eyes.

“Of c….c..ourse, C…on-nor.”

Connor unfolded his long limbs and practically leapt the table to hold his boyfriend – his fiancé in his arms and cover his lips, his perfect, slightly chapped lips set in soft cheeks that still smelled vaguely of The Pottery Barn in kisses. Breathtaking, breathless kisses traded back and forth until both men were dizzy with it, delirious with happiness and lightheaded with lack of oxygen.

“God I’ve been waiting so long to do this.”

Evan looked slightly shocked, bless him.

“Y-you sh…should have t-told me, C…con!” The blond swatted his best friend- his boyfriend- his future husband on the arm. “We c…could have w…worked togeth…ther on it!”

Connor Hansen just chuckled into his cheek and nuzzled the other man’s dimples with his sharp nose.

“I’ll let you help plan the wedding, alright?”

Like he didn’t already have everything all set and ready to go.

He let Evan help anyway.

He valued his best friend’s input and viewpoints, after all. And it wasn’t just his special day.

It was theirs. Theirs together.

Chapter 18: 18 - After

Chapter Text

Alana, Shelley, and D’Asia were there, as well as Doctor Carringer – it had been Carringer that had been the bright fellow who saw a boy in an in-hospital care center after school with bandages up both arms and a ‘suicide watch’ stamp all over his file and decided that yes, this was a boy to care about. This was a boy who just needed a goal. An aim in life. – and his husband, who was just as beautiful as Connor had always seen him as, though he was slightly too tall and a little broader than would be considered attractive, but he made the redheaded doctor smile and laugh, and their wedding rings still shone through the scrapes and scuffs the electrician and psychologist in the suicide ward had gone through together.

Connor couldn’t wait until his and Evan’s bands looked like theirs, all broken in and loved.

He held Evan’s hands (that only sweated a little) and looked into those bright blue eyes that had saved him from razor after razor, drug after drug, and told him that he would be his and only his long after they had lived their lives through.

Heidi Hansen helped tie their wrists together before Connor Hansen grinned wolfishly and kissed his husband. He thinks someone whistled (probably Shelley), and more than one grown-ass adult needed tissues, but he honestly did not notice.

His heart was full, his arms were full, and their book was hitting the best seller list while they looked in the other direction.

“Dear Evan Hansen,” Connor breathed into the side of his new-only-on-paper husband’s neck where he rested his forehead against the shorter man’s shoulder.

Evan hummed, just for him.

“Dear Connor Hansen,”

Okay, so maybe his gay ass would also need a tissue or three, but nobody could blame him.

Mentally, Connor Hansen crossed out the goal that had guided his life since the day he woke up still alive in his senior year of high school to a terrified lover, a protective (of him!) future guardian and life-long friend, and hom*ophobic zygote donor.

He let the bliss of the moment soften the edges of such a momentous driving force slipping away from his now ringed and fasted hands.

A new goal floated to the top of his subconscious list, there for him to consider and deem satisfactory in a time and place where he wasn’t dancing with a very teary-eyed Heidi Hansen that he could only see with roughly 80% of his own watery vision:

-Live it up, laugh often, and never let his family go.

And he never did.

Not a man like him who had finally, finally been found.

Chapter 19: 19 - After

Chapter Text

Shortly after the two men’s handfasting (and honeymoon, which was a week at a cabin deep in the woods Evan had volunteered in during their junior year, of which Connor had also been saving up for all those years), they sat down with Heidi at the kitchen table they had logged countless hours of homework, headscratching at ‘Dear Evan Hansen’, and family dinners that consisted of everything from solo dinners of dry cereal to happy feasts with the Becks.

“M…mom C….on-nor and m…me d..d…” Three hands moved to snap for him. He smiled, eyes watering with affection. “Connor and me don’t want to move out.”

“It makes more sense financially to stay here and help out with the house, and that way Evan won’t be taken out of his comfort zone.”

“Yeah, I’d miss you, mom.” Her boys were holding hands atop the table, knuckles going white as they plead their case.

“And we’d probably be visiting so often that it would be like paying a mortgage on a house we’d rarely live at-“

Heidi raised a palm and smiled, cutting their pleading up short.

“Guys, you don’t have to convince me. I was just wondering how I was going to deal with the wicked empty nest feeling I’d get if you guys left.” Evan’s face began to glow at her words of acceptance. She laughed at herself and shook her curly, blond head. “I was even considering taking up a hobby! Me, a hobbyist!”

Connor laughed. He knew how hard Heidi worked to make ends meet, had lived with her for years.

The idea of the still-active hiker and triage nurse (who volunteered with the NICU and made weekend visits to nursing homes in the area with Evan when he was up for it) picking up a hobby that wasn’t one of those things was hysterical. The woman knew what she liked and she disliked doing things that didn’t have a purpose. Climb to the summit, watch the squirrels on the trail, make the elderly and the forgotten smile and laugh, hold babies for the serotonin, it all had a purpose and it all helped her feel fulfilled outside of her life with her son and his husband. Evan didn’t need her as much as he did growing up, but none of them wanted to consider what anxiety and breakdowns he would have if they broke his routine that drastically. It had always been Heidi and her little guy. Connor wasn’t about to break up the roundup gang, as it were.

So they didn’t. The boys sorted out how they could have a bigger bed (Evan’s budgeting surprise that Connor hadn’t really thought about outside of ‘man this is annoying, sharing a twin-size bed for sleepovers and writing stints’. God Connor loved that man.) and a married life with their jobs and their writing (Evan had found a fierce enjoyment of it and it allowed him to make a solid income without having to work retail and be around people he couldn’t read wearing clothing he didn’t like. Putting ‘New York Times Bestseller’ on his covers also did wonders for the self-confidence.) while still giving Heidi her space and their family the cohesiveness that they’d built together since the day Connor had given up on the Murphy’s.

Earlier, actually. He’d been visiting his then-boyfriend for a year or so before the explosion that rocked the Murphy family to its core. The explosion the men and their guardian didn’t have to talk about anymore, not after the massive tell-all they had published that had skyrocketed past anyone’s expectations (except possibly their publisher). Connor had attempted suicide, as had Evan (a fact neither his mother nor his future husband had known until it spilled out onto the page and D’Asia had gone quiet and asked to show Heidi and Connor), Evan made his speech, Connor’s gay psychologist set him on his life’s path, Heidi had battled with the courts to set Connor free from his abusive father and manipulative mother, and…

Yeah.

The Murphy’s couldn’t bounce back from that tell-all.

It had happened. It had all happened.

And the Hansens had moved past ‘moving on’. They hadn’t ‘moved on’.

They had moved forward.

Through it all and out to the other side.

(Where boys like them, girls and kids and people like them… had been found.)

They had been found.

Evan had his books, Connor had his list, and Heidi, well, Heidi had her boys.

Chapter 20: 20 - Epilogue

Chapter Text

Connor Hansen found himself wandering around his house on one of his super-rare days off (press releases and two full-time jobs will do that to a man).

Heidi Hansen looked up from her steaming mug of tea and raised an eyebrow.

“Whatcha thinking about, Connor?”

Connor Hansen looked at his mother-in-law.

“I think I want to write another book.”

She looked impressed.

He added another goal to his list:

-Live a long life and laugh often beside Evan Hansen
-Help Heidi keep the house and keep Evan safe
-Publish a book of poetry (as edgy as that sounds)

Yeah.

Yeah, that felt right.