Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The first thing Connor knew after the overdose was that no, clearly he couldn't escape the dicks at school. After all, here he was, probably in...

This wasn't hospital.

In fact, he was exactly where he left himself - in his room, on his floor, feeling like shit. He tried to sit up and found he was lighter than he had expected.

Damn, woulda been starved if I hadn't got there myself first.

He stood up, surveying the room - it was 1am, about 2 hours after he knew he'd decided to make sure they could never laugh at him again. And yes, the note was still in his pocket, crumpled up after he'd punched the wall and cried soon as he got in. That damn note...

Evan Hansen's creepy obsession with his sister (which, in hindsight, had been what it was. Not a plan to ruin him, just some sick weirdo) made him turn to the door - he should go and check on her. Hopefully she’d be asleep; that way he could see his baby sister for who she was, not the brat she became whenever he tried to talk to her.

Except his hand phased right through the door handle.

He stumbled back, shocked by the sensation, and tripped right over his own corpse; pushing up against the wall, he stared at himself. Dead.

And then he realised oh, it's some kind of creepy lucid-dream-slash-trip. I don't even know what I took, probably most of the painkillers. Mom and Dad really didn't have a lot to kill me with.

And then he thought they're trying to It's A Wonderful Life me, right? Like, “oh, you're so missed and loved and everybody in the world is lighting candles at your loss, don’t do it”. Like anyone’s going to mourn me.

And then he thought shit, is anyone going to mourn me?

And he was still dead on the floor.

A lot of time must have passed between when he first woke up and when he next thought, because then his mom was yelling “Connor, get down here! Breakfast!", and he was still stood with his back against the wall, staring at his dead self. Which still hadn't moved, by the way.

Tentatively, he tried touching himself to see if his soul would, like, fuse back into his body, but no such luck. Sighing, he was about to go downstairs and join his family, make some bullshit up about how he’d seen the error of his ways and would never smoke again, when he phased through the doorknob for the second time. (It was far less shocking when a part of you expected it.)

Connor sat on his bed, eyes unfocused. Everything was quiet as they waited for him downstairs, even though he wasn't coming.

And then Zoe must have come to lean on his door like always, threaten him to come tolerate the rest of the family, and not expected it to be unlocked.

"Connor, you-! Woah! Jesus," she exclaimed, still backwards, not seeing anything of what was currently on the floor and he was dead and Zoe was about to find out and as she turned to look at his bed everything went slow-mo because damn, how could he face this?

"We're two days into school, you can 't be this bad ye- "

Zoe screamed.

She was looking at the dead Connor, and the real Connor started to say "Zo," started to move towards her, but she didn't look up for a second, still screaming, falling to her knees, checking a pulse that even as she listened for breath he knew wasn't beating, and

and

and as his arms swept uselessly through her, he realised exactly what this was.

Not a drug trip, not a dream - he was dead.

He was a ghost.

I always thought death was exit only, thought some of him.

Some more of him thought Checkmate, atheists.

After a moment Connor stood up, staring at the wall and his desk, littered with anything he hadn't wanted to deal with and now would never have to. Anything to avoid seeing his mom find out.

Without noticing, he reached for the note in his pocket and gripped it.

Time passed.

When he next knew what was going on, he felt significantly less like shit. Also, he was at school, somehow? Probably something ghosty, he didn't know, it wasn't like 7 hours of being dead had made him Ghost Extraordinaire, why the fuck were you asking him.

Evan Hansen, please come to the principal's office , the intercom told him, and he tuned it out for the split-second before he gathered himself. Evan was the creep who'd pushed him over the edge, so clearly the school had heard about it and were punishing Evan for making Connor do this - this was something he couldn't miss...

Except oh, he was already in the principal's office, and why were his mom and dad there?

She had been crying. He clearly hadn't.

Connor knew he picked his favourite parent right.

Oh, and there was Evan, little dick with his blue shirt and broken arm. Connor had scrawled himself all over that cast, because clearly the kid didn't have any friends to do it instead. He now regretted that this was the last thing he had written.

"Good morning. Is Mr Howard...? Sorry - sorry, just they... said on the loudspeaker for me to go to the principal's office -"

"Mr Howard stepped out," his dad interrupted. Evan seemed scared, but hadn't he always been one of those weird, scared kids? Connor perched himself on the window behind Evan. "We wanted to speak with you in private, if you'd like to maybe..." He gestured to the chair, in that annoying, non-verbal way that Dad always did, expecting you to understand with barely any clues.

Evan sat, and Connor felt the awkward silence fall. It dawned on him that he could start chicken dancing and none of them would know - but he didn't.

"We're Connor's parents."

"Oh." Yeah, damn right, oh, you killed their son.

"Why don't you go ahead -"

"I'm going as fast as I can," his mom protested quietly.

"That's not what I said, is it?"

His mom was holding paper (crumpled, he noticed) - well, less like 'holding', more like 'clutching as though her life depended on it'. Something important.

"Connor, he wanted you to have this." What? I didn't leave him anything.

"We'd never heard your name before, Connor never... and then we saw... Dear Evan Hansen."

… oh. Oh, no.

His hand went to the note in his own pocket, and he pulled it out. They were crumpled the same way, it had to be the same one... They thought that-?

"He gave this to you?" Evan didn't seem to get it yet. He was shaky, sure, but Evan Hansen was a shaky person, and it seemed to Connor like he... like he didn't know yet.

"We didn't know you two were friends."

"Friends?"

"We didn't think Connor had any friends."

("Well, gee, thanks, Dad," Connor muttered.)

"And then we see this... letter, and it seems to suggest pretty clearly that you and Connor were - or at least that Connor, that he thought of you as..."

"... A dick," Connor finished sardonically.

And he could have sworn he saw Evan jump.

But maybe it was just his mind.

"I mean, it's right there, Dear Evan Hansen, it's addressed to you, he wrote it to you."

"You think that this, um, that Connor, wrote this to me?"

His mom swallowed, with difficulty. "These are the words Connor wanted to share with you -"

"- his last words -"

"this is what he wanted you to have."

It took Evan a second.

"I'm-I'm sorry, what do you mean, last words?"

Dad had to fill in - Mom was crying again, shaking her head. He felt the need to go comfort her, tell her it'd be alright, but what could he do that would reach her?

"Ah - Connor took his own life."

OK, that stung a little to hear, Connor wasn't lying. It's not every dad you hear your dad tell some punk pervert that you killed yourself, alright?

(And maybe he'd been starting to forget that his parents' eyes passed through him.)

"...he what?"

"And this is all we found with him -" Liar, you found all your med bottles there too, I saw myself "- he had folded up in his pocket. I need you to see that he was..."

"What?" Connor snapped, standing again. In front of him, Evan flinched.

"He was trying to explain it, why he was..."

I wish that Dad was quoting the letter, and he read it aloud too, subconsciously everything was different, I wish I were a part of something, I wish what I said mattered

"Larry, please stop it!"

"Okay, but that's - this is not, um - I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Connor - uh, Connor didn't write this."

Huh - honesty from the scheming creep. He had expected anything different, really, but he had expected death to be the end, and look how that turned out!

"... What does that mean?"

"Connor, uh - he - Connor, he didn't write this."

"What does he mean?"

"He's obviously in shock."

"Or maybe he's right!" Connor offered, to no avail. (No, Evan really must just always be this jumpy.)

"No no no, I just, he didn't, he didn't -"

"- it's right here! -"

"he probably just - can I please go now?"

They all talked over each other. Evan offering apologies for nothing, Dad trying to keep the peace, Mom - confused and scared and so, so hopeful that he might not have been an utter failure of a son -

Connor spoke, in the loudness.

"Give it her back."

He was actually surprised when Evan said "here, you should take it back, just please!"

Hey, maybe his ghost powers were -

"Larry, look. His cast."

Shit. Should have known everything I ever do comes back to bite me.

Because scrawled right across Evan's stupid broken arm was CONNOR, and now they had no chance at getting Evan out of this.

His best and most dearest friend , yup, all there on the fucking letter.

And that was that, he supposed.

And "you really have no friends?" Connor half-laughed. "I didn't either, but how lame is that when you know the whole story?"

And his classmate stayed staring at the cast for a good 20 seconds after his parents left, having told Evan to come to dinner, they want to hear more. So Connor stuck around.

And when Evan left, something drew Connor to follow.

When Evan got home, the house was empty. Connor had never imagined the interior of the Hansen household, maybe because he'd never interacted with the Hansens, but he didn't think Evan would be home alone.

"Sweet digs though, man," he commented.

Evan locked the door, locked it again.

Then turned on him.

"What is this?"

Connor inhaled sharply, his eyes widening. "You can? - what do you - I -"

"Connor, what the fUCK is this." Evan sounded like he was threatening, but Connor could see the other boy shaking.

So he turned around, faced the door, and reevaluated his options. Then he spoke.

"Alright, first of all, you - you can see me, correct?"

"What are you - YES, I can see you. You wouldn't shut up that whole time with your parents, I don't know what your problem is, but -"

"Dude, I'm a ghost."

Evan stopped. He looked through furrowed brows at Connor, who shrugged and shoved his hand through the wall for a couple seconds.

A moment.

Realisation.

Then -

"OH MY GOD," and Evan was hyperventilating now, stepping back, turning, running up the stairs - Connor followed, long legs had never been so useful - into his room. On his bed. Face in pillow.

"Evan -"

"You can't be real," came the muffled response. Connor pushed past this.

"Evan, my whole family can't see me, but somehow you can, and it's probably because you killed me, but -"

"What?" interrupted Evan. "I didn't kill you, you killed yourself."

"You... I, I was sober, and tired, and I find a letter from you in the printer -" he pulls out the note, the ghost one - "about how all my hope is pinned on Zoe and, fuck, I guess you just... broke me. 'Cause I went through with it, and it worked first try. Y'know?"

"I mean, I... Shut up. You - can't be real."

Connor considered this, looking down at his ghostly hands. They looked pretty real when they weren't shoved into a nearby solid object.

"Can I not?"

"No, you're - a, a hallucination, a freaky brain thing that's only here because I feel bad about, about everything, and you're here to torment me even more, right?"

"Pretty sure I'm just a ghost."

Evan groaned, a hand moving to his collar, the other holding his pillow like an anchor to reality. After a second, he turned over to face Connor.

"You're not going away, are you?"

"Don't think so! Restless spirit, unfinished business, that sort of shit." He grinned briefly and, as Evan's legs pulled in to more closely imitate the fetus position, he took their space on the bed.

Evan said nothing. It was hard to tell his expression, being that his face was back in the pillow, so Connor could only assume Evan was waiting for him to continue.

"... Last time I sat on a bed, I was waiting for someone to find me."

Evan seemed to stick on this. "Who did?" he asked quietly.

"Zoe."

"What'd she do?"

"Scream. Call Mom and Dad."

Evan sat up a little, and Connor filled the extra empty space that created. "Did she cry?"

"Not then. I don't know if she has yet. I was there then, and I was in the principal's office next."

"That's - three days."

Three days?

"Oh."

"So - uh, so now I know you're actually. dead, not just my brain finally giving up on me too - why can't your parents..."

"See me? I don't know. Maybe I accidentally swore vengeance upon you when I was. Y'know."

"You seem so different right now to how you are at school," Evan thought aloud, by now having edged up enough to actually look at Connor. Their eyes met - Evan was still clearly scared (but by now, he could assume that was just part of his disposition).

He should have realised this wouldn't last. People never meant that when they said it.

"Do I?"

"Yeah. I don't - I don't know, just..."

"Oh. I know what you mean, I was a dick before, but now I'm just annoying you."

"No no no, it's not that! I just - sorry - I -"

Connor stood up. "It's fine! I get it! I mean, nobody else likes me anyway, why did I ever think you would?"

"Connor -"

"I'll shut right the fuck up, go on, if you don't want me here..." He paused, not quite knowing what to say, and took a step towards the door.

'Then just say so."

"JESUS FUCK," Evan yelled, and Connor whirled around, and when had the sun set?

"What?"

"You disappeared! You were like, "if you don't want me here," and then you were just - gone."

"I was?"

"I thought you'd gone to try something else, I, I should have known not to say anything, when does anybody want to hear it? "

Connor pushed past that last bit. "That was, like, a second though, I said one thing, and you're like HOLY SHIT and I'm like what the fuck, did somebody die?"

A pause.

Connor laughed, and Evan smiled, looking down at his laptop (which was there, apparently) but he was laughing at Connor's joke, not something on the laptop, probably, most likely.

"No, but - it's been three hours, Connor. I figured you weren't coming back, I mean, I don't know how ghosts work, I thought, oh God, I really am crazy, what was I thinking -"

"Evan!"

"Sorry."

There was quiet. Connor felt himself relax back a little.

"While you were gone. I. Uh. I talked to Jared."

"Jared Kleinman? The shitbag with you yesterday?"

"Three days -" he'd forgotten "- I told him about the meeting."

"And did he think you were crazy?"

"I didn't mention you , obviously! Just that - your parents think we were friends now."

“I saw.”

"And he was like, ‘wow, you really do suck at life,’ and I guess I was like, ‘yeah’.”

“... Really.”

“Oh, and Alana Beck is all over Facebook like she knew you.”

“Who?”

“Exactly. Apparently, she learned your true self in your English class 2 years ago.”

“Nobody knows my true self… I sound like an absolute fucking hipster, oh my god.”

He lifted his knees up, briefly checking Evan's room out. There wasn't much - mainly a bed, the table next to it, no desk. He was probably poor or some shit.

…

Evan was staring.

“What?”

“You're floating.”

“I'm -” he looked down, and immediately dropped back into a standing position, one hand going to his leg. “I can float?”

“You learn something new every day,” Evan chuckled.

An idea came to Connor. "Woulda helped you out, right?”

“What?”

“You fell. Out of a tree, you could have used floating.”

“... mhm.”

Evan was looking back at his laptop screen - some part of Connor saw he had struck a chord, and it clashed.

“Uh. Sorry.”

“No, no, it's okay, it's fine, it's cool. I just - I just - it's okay, it's okay, it’S ALRIGHT, OKAY?”

“Evan, it's. It's clearly not okay.”

“It's fine. It's fine! It's, it's fine, sorry.”

“Sure…”

Evan, now silent, returned to the internet, and Connor tried floating again (with success - it was kind of like being on the moon; you could stand if you wanted, but you could float as well) until the novelty wore off. By the time it was dark, Evan had fallen asleep, leaving his laptop to overheat in his bed - Connor would have taken it from him, but he couldn't touch stuff. Time passed.

And then he was on his street, trailing behind Evan.

“Hey.”

“Fuck!” Evan exclaimed emphatically, “please stop doing that.”

“Why are we here?”

“It's Friday, I got invited to your house.”

“... Oh yeah, you did.”

“And Jared said that all I gotta do is just nod and confirm -”

“Wait, what are you confirming?”

“Stuff about - you, they want to know about you…”

“Wh-” Connor almost laughed. “They're my parents! You didn't even know me! Why would you know anything?”

“Well, you see, that's - that's the thing, I mean, you were there, in the meeting, they thought - that I meant a lot to you.”

“And, what, that means you know all my secrets?”

“I… guess?” They reached his front door, but Evan hesitated, clearly not ready to face the Murphys. Connor stuck his head through the door (uncomfortably; feeling your brain pass through solid wood does tend to give you a headache) and saw his mom preparing chicken, his sister probably upstairs, his dad in the living room waiting for Evan. How would they react, if they saw him? What would they say?

The thought filled the house like poison gas and he pulled back out, not facing Evan. “They're waiting for you.”

“So… what am I gonna do?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“Nod and confirm, he said… nod and confirm. I can do that. Nod and confirm.”

“And if they ask you about something?”

“Then… then you help me out.”

“... Evan, I'm dead.”

“No, I mean! Uh, if, if they say ‘hey we never saw you and Connor hang out when and where did you go’, then you can say ‘oh yeah there’s this’, uh, ‘this park I used to go to a lot’, and I’ll say ‘me and Connor used to go to the park’, and then they’ll say ‘oh yeah he did go to that park I’m glad to know he had a nice life sometimes’. Like. like that.”

Connor thought about this, and came to the conclusion that it was a pretty good plan and they didn’t exactly have many other options. He was about to voice this opinion when Evan started up again.

“I mean - sorry, I’m sure you did have a nice life, I’m sorry, it’s just I thought - sorry - I didn’t think about it -”

“Jesus, Evan, do you actually have something wrong with you?” It had dawned on him before, of course, because Evan never stopped apologising for things he hadn’t even done wrong, and it was a little more than you’d expect from your average nervous and shy kid, but… He didn’t even know why he’d asked, yet Evan looked up at him with wide eyes, then looked away and grabbed at his shirt reflexively. It told Connor more than whatever stuttered explanation Evan would have provided ever could.

“Right,” Connor said, after a second of uncomfortable silence. He couldn’t see what was going on in Evan’s head, but then Evan pushed the doorbell, and it was too late to go back.

“Just - tell me what to say.”

“Okay.”

“... okay! I can, do this. I can do this.”

“We can do this,” Connor corrected, a little offended. His dad opened the door.

“Evan. Come in.”

Evan nodded, and followed his dad inside - but, as Connor moved to follow Evan (as he so often seemed to be doing these days), the scene changed around him. Evan’s blue walls, Evan’s bed, Evan’s bedroom, Evan.

To Evan’s credit, he was only surprised for a second at Connor’s sudden reappearance before his face set. Anger, frustration, exasperation - maybe a little bit of relief was in there, too.

“Of course you’re here now. You know, I’m really starting to think I made you up this whole time.”

“What, even when I was alive? Tough job. How long was I… somewhere?”

“Few hours.”

“And I missed the whole of dinner? ... what happened?”

“Oh,  nothing. Just me doing it all by myself, and not needing your help at all, no thanks.”

“Wh- you did?”

“Well, you weren’t there and so I figured I had to just, make it up myself, you know, and it actually worked out because there was this moment where Zoe was like ‘there was nothing good about Connor tell me a good thing’ and - uh.”

“Oh, no no, go on.” He was a dick to Zoe most of the time, especially once she got to high school - he couldn’t blame her.

“Uh, I said, ‘we had a really great time when we went’ - ah, I think I said ‘apple place’? I have no idea, and I thought I was gonna be busted right then, but then your mom says ‘oh yeah we actually used to go to the orchard that’s a treasured memory I can’t believe he took you there’, and I said, uh, ‘yeah? Yeah that’s what happened’, and to cut a long story short I accidentally made it so you were there that day when I… broke my arm.”

“The orchard?”

Fuck, he hadn’t thought about that place in years. They had picnics there, whenever it was sunny out, he remembered! It was really nice there, but they’d stopped going nearly ten years ago, when it closed. “You - you accidentally got something we used to do exactly right.”

“Heh, yeah.”

“So you didn’t need me, at all.”

“No, that’s-that’s not what I - meant -”

“Even though that’s my house? My parents. My sister -” he pulls out the note, holds it up “- who you’re apparently obsessed with. My… my life, you’re pretending you were part of, are you gonna stop there? Would you want to? No, you don’t need me! You probably wouldn’t notice if I just… disappeared tomorrow!”

“So you did read it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and he didn’t.

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you!”

Evan tuned him out and grabbed his laptop, probably going to tell Jared Kleinman about what happened at Connor’s house, and there was quiet.

Connor opened up the letter and read it - really, properly read it - for the first time.

When he had first found it, it had been a blur except for Dear Evan Hansen yeah that kid over on the other side of the computer lab maybe this is his and because there’s what the fuck does this kid think he’s doing talking about Zoe? Oh, it must be just another one of those assholes who think it’s so funny to make me freak out, well guess who’s the freak now, not me except when he got home and cried and killed himself it was pretty freaky but there was no turning back.

When he had next seen it, he hadn’t read it at all - it had been in his pocket when he woke up, and also in his actual pocket where he would never wake up ever again. (Zoe had found him - had she read the letter? Did she see what Evan wrote about her?) He had stumbled and fallen over the fallout it had caused, and it was too late to see that nobody cared enough about him even to go that far wanting to see him freak out, that it was just Evan being fucking creepy about his sister, his sister who saw his body and screamed, her scream would follow him forever, but now he couldn’t go back.

When they took it to school, to show Evan, he had heard a little bit more of the note, seen a little bit deeper into what Evan felt like and what his parents thought Connor felt like, even though he’d never wax poetic like that, especially if he’d planned to write a suicide note. Still, I wish that everything was different, I wish I were a part of something, I wish what I said mattered - it sounded like the kind of thing that went on a note you’d been planning for months. And was Evan really so alone, to feel like nobody really cared about who he was and what he wanted? Well, in the moment it had sounded pretty accurate to how alive-Connor felt. Any way you went about it, they had been so hopeful to hear that maybe their son wasn’t the gas station attendant waiting to happen all his teachers had said he was, and Evan clearly hadn’t wanted to ruin it, so... He’d pushed aside his feelings to help them with theirs, and he would never have the heart to take it back.

The note had sat in his pocket from then on. Sometimes, when something important was said, he’d find himself reaching for it, gravitated towards it, as though it were what kept him stable. Maybe it was some sort of ghost thing - his anchor to the real world? That issue didn’t particularly press him like it probably should have. What he was currently focused on was how this letter was the saddest thing he’d ever read.

Dear Evan Hansen,

Turns out this wasn’t an amazing day after all. This isn’t going to be an amazing week, or an amazing year, because why would it be? Oh, I know, because there’s Zoe, and all my hope is pinned on Zoe, who I don’t even know, and who doesn’t know me… But, you know, maybe if I did, maybe if I could just talk to her, then... Maybe nothing would be different at all.

I wish everything was different. I wish I was part of something, I wish that anything I said mattered to anyone. I mean, face it, would anyone notice if I just disappeared tomorrow?

Sincerely, your best and most dearest friend,

Me.

Like, how bleak ?

“You do matter,” he murmured. Evan looked up.

“Huh?”

“It says, I mean, you do matter. To lots of people.”

“Uh, thank you?”

“And…  mean, not to sound like a clueless, artsy, wannabe therapist or anything, but - it doesn’t have to be an amazing day. Like, just because a day’s not the best fucking day you’ve ever had doesn’t mean it’s a failure.”

Evan didn’t say anything to that, but he did smile, and that was a win in Connor’s book, so he sat on the end of the bed while Evan typed. He was stronger now, more corporeal, and he could be completely solid (he figured) if he tried - the sensation of feeling the fabric, of gripping something tightly, was comforting. Relaxing, with the tap-tap of Evan's laptop in the back of his mind. It was subtle, but worked perfectly to make him feel real… realer. He smiled.

And then the Skype ringtone started, and Jared Kleinman broke the peace very loudly through Evan's shitty laptop speaker a second later.

“His parents think you were lovers, you realise that, right?”

Connor silently flopped back on the bed. This was not gonna be easy.