Chapter Text
Computer labs are supposed to be quiet. Not once was it established why, they just are. Like a digital library that no one wants to be in, sitting in silence clicking away at some career survey students don’t want to take and teachers don’t want to give. Click! You’re going to be an astrologer. Click! You should practice engineering. Click! Tough shit for you, buddy. Looks like you’re going to be working nine-to-five at IHOP for the rest of your life.
These are the only time's anyone is ever in any school computer lab anyways. And since those future-determining hell-meetings only happen once a year, Connor Murphy uses every other part of the year to just fucking get away. No ones is ever in here, so why not right?
Except for today, someone is. The guy he bumped into earlier comes stumbling in looking like a hot mess as he sits himself down on the opposite side of the room. He gets the feeling this kid is probably a loner and his thoughts are immediately confirmed when he sees the dude start talking to himself.
It’s not an issue, it’s just not something Connor’s used to. Most people use library computers for printing. If he’s being honest, the fact that people don’t print here more often is pretty weird because at least here there’s no fee. Maybe people prefer the welcoming atmosphere of the library over this cursed place. Or maybe people forget about this room as a whole. He decides the second one makes more sense.
The printer goes off, shocking him out of his train of thought. Looking across the room the kid seems to be making no move to grab his paper from the tray, just standing at his laptop talking to himself some more. Jesus Christ. It’s actually enough to let Connor decide fuck it as he’s up and out of his seat and moving towards the printer.
Grabbing the paper from the tray he makes his way over to- uh? He glances down at the paper and, Evan! God, he should’ve known that. He makes his way over to Evan, who seems to be extremely engrossed in his conversation with himself.
As he gets closer he realizes he has nothing to say to this kid , his eyes land on Evan’s cast and okay yeah this'll work.
He clears his throat a little before taking one final step forward and gesturing to the cast despite the fact he doesn't exactly have Evan’s full attention.
“So, um, what happened to your arm?” Smooth start, Murphy.
Evan’s head jerks up to face Connor and Connor nearly wants to nope the-fuck away at how squirrelly this kid is. Something inside him isn't letting him though.
“Oh, I uh,” Evan waves his finger around in the air, taking his time to find his words, “I fell out of a tree, actually.”
“You fell out of a tree.” He says it like a statement.
Connor actually feels bad for the kid when he ducks his head and softly mutters out a ‘ yeah .’
Of course, not bad enough, because the next thing Connor says to him is, “well that's just the saddest fuckin’ thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I know!”
He tries to ignore the forced laughter that follows.
“Hey, um,” his voice softens as he gestures to Evan’s cast, which is as white and blank as a sheet of printer paper, “no one’s signed your cast.”
“No, I know, I-”
“Well I’ll sign it.”
Evan blinks.
“You don’t- you don’t have to.”
No, he doesn’t have to. But he asks Evan for a sharpie and signs his name in big capital letters anyways, shrugging off the fake thanks he gets.
“Now we can both pretend to have friends,” he shrugs.
It gets shaken off as Evan starts to walk away and Connor realizes he still hasn’t delivered the paper. Interrupting Evan with an abrupt, “is this yours?”
Evan turns to look at him as he continues, “I found it on the printer. It’s uh, ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ that’s your name, right?”
Evan blinks at him and Connor notices visual panic as his body tenses and eyes go wide.
“Oh! No, no no, it’s uh- it’s this paper I have to write for an assignment,” he reaches out and awkwardly snatches the paper from Connor’s hands, leaving Connor staring down at himself in slight shock.
“Weird, okay,” he shrugs, looking back up at Evan and stuffing his hands into his hoodie pockets.
“O-Okay?”
Yeah?
“Yeah?”
Evan looks like he’s struggling to find an excuse to leave, shifting his weight from one foot onto another and repeat, fiddling with the paper in his hands and refusing to make eye contact as the rooms falls to an awkward silence.
“I-I really should get going. My uh- my mom is waiting for me,” he gestures over his shoulder and to the door as he starts to back away.
Connor stares back and gives a half-hearted wave as Evan darts from the room.
Bye then.
Connor winds up going home not too long after Evan leaves. He ignores the ride request text he gets from Zoe, digging the keys out of his pocket and driving himself home.
The rest of the day after that goes the way he’d imagined. Zoe gets home on the bus and screams at him, they all eat a “family” dinner, and at the end of it all Connor storms up to his room after picking another fight with his dad halfway through.
And then the day process repeats.
He gets up, pulls on his jeans and throws on a t-shirt with his same old hoodie, grabs his keys, and is out the door.
He sleeps his way through first and second period, both of his teachers knowing by now not to mess with him. By the time he gets to third he’s just about ready to die as his government teacher gives him all sorts of hell for nothing, who gives heavy assignments on the second day of school? This class is going to be his demise he swears it.
Lunch finally hits and he’s up and out of class and straight down the hall to the bathroom because God knows he needs to get stoned right about now.
He should've expected thirty minutes wouldn’t be enough for him to come up and go down all at once. The joint’s smoked and he’s sitting on the floor in the corner on his phone for the rest of his day, having decided to skip the second half.
Once the bell rings he’s up and out of there. He’s making it out to the main hallway and close to freedom when a familiar voice behind him starts asking around about something.
He turns and sees Evan standing tense and awkward to the side, stepping forward and asking people how to get around.
He’s going to have to do this, isn't he?
Connor sighs and kisses beating traffic goodbye before walking over to Evan’s side. He places a hand on Evan’s shoulder- which, frankly, was a mistake, because Evan practically jumps out of his skin.
“Oh, shit!” Connor should have been, but was not, prepared for that.
When Evan laid eyes on him Connor was half-expecting him to calm down at least a little. He didn’t.
“God, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there, I’m so sorry I didn’t even realize- or- or,” holy shit.
He can’t even blame Evan for freaking out, especially after being pushed by yours truly yesterday.
“-Evan.” Connor’s words cutting through like glass, immediately shutting Evan right up. “What are you exactly trying to do?”
Evan huffs out a breath and looks down at the ground.
“I can’t find the drama room.”
Connor blinks, stunned silent for just a second. “You what?”
Evan doesn’t say anything.
“You’ve been here just as long as I have and you’ve never once been to the drama room?”
“I’ve never had a reason to, okay?! Only- only drama kids and- and- stoners know where it is.” He drops his voice to a low whisper on ‘ stoners’
Connor smirks at him, shoving his hands in his pockets. “What’s your reason to now then?”
Evan looks away and mumbles something under his breath.
“What was that?”
“I’m…trying out for the school play.”
“ You? ” He bites down on his tongue to shut himself up because Jesus Christ way to let that one slip.
“Look if- if you don’t want to actually help me then I’ll just-”
“-No, no. Sorry about that one I actually didn't mean to say it out loud,” wow, “but luckily for you I’m a big scary stoner, so let’s get moving.” His tone playing it off as a joke, leaving Evan frozen in his shoes. “Come on,” he gestures with his head as he starts off towards the drama room.
Evan follows in tow as Connor navigates through the main hall, the two moving like fish swimming upstream.
“How- how do you know how to get here?”
Connor turns around to walk backwards after turning off into a less-crowded side hall. “I come here during fifth. There’s no class and the teacher leaves the door unlocked.”
“Wait…so you actually,” Evan drops his voice to a whisper, “ smoke weed? ”
Connor barks out a laugh and turns forward again. “Holy shit dude. You don’t need to treat it like such a crime.”
“It’s illegal!”
A hand comes out of his pocket and he waves it in the air nonchalantly.
“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”
Rounding the corner he goes to stand next to a door that way too many papers pinned up outside it. “Anyways, this is it.”
“Oh, uh. Thank, thank you for um,” Evan trails off, his eyes focused on the audition sign up sheet outside the door.
“Yeah, dude. Whatever.” Connor’s turned around and nearly around the corner without a goodbye. He throws a look over his shoulder before ducking out of sight.
Evan’s still staring at the paper as if it’s the genie's lamp from Aladdin and it holds three wishes or some shit. He pulls a pen out of his pocket and uncaps it but making no moves to sign.
“Hey, Hansen, you know the ink? It goes on the paper.”
That seems to snap Evan out of the whatever he was in because he jumps when he notices the pen has leaked all over his hands, staining them a dark blue.
Connor goes back to standing by the door, leaning himself against the wall next to the audition paper to face Evan.
“So,” he starts, “why isn’t your name on the Sheet of Doom yet?”
Evan’s body tenses and he looks at the floor. Connor almost pities him.
“I’m not good enough for this.” His tone broken.
Crossing his arms he makes himself more comfortable leaning on the wall, a foot coming up to rest on it along with the rest of his body. “What makes you think that?”
“Be-Because I can't even talk normally to one person!” Evan throws his arms in the air, blue hands and all. “If I can’t speak to one person as myself, I definitely can’t speak to hundreds of people as someone else!”
“Well you’re talking to me, right?”
Evan’s face contorts and he huffs out dramatically. “Yeah but you’re different, you started it.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means- it means, I don’t know! It means I’m not used to people starting conversations with me. Or helping me, or- or, whatever it is you’re doing right now!” Evan’s face is red and he looks so heated that he might actually cry. It’s enough for Connor to push himself off the wall standing straight.
“Whoa, whoa man. I didn’t actually mean for you to lay it all out there on me, holy shit.”
Evan rubs his arm and goes back to looking at the ground. “Sorry.”
“Nah dude, look,” is he really going to do this? “Neither of us have friends, yeah?” Evan winces. “So like, listen, why don’t you come over to my place and I can help you with lines for the audition?”
Evan’s head snaps back up and he looks at Connor like a deer in headlights.
“ What? ”
God, he’s really doing this. “Yeah! Shit, dude grab a script, let’s go. It’s not like I have anything to do today.” He pulls his keys out of his pocket and jangles them in front of Evans' face.
Evan blinks at him. “Uh.”
Connor grabs a script out of the folder hanging next to the audition sheet and hands it over to Evan. “Uh,” he mocks, “let’s get movin’”
Once again Evan is following in tow of Connor’s lead as the two make their way out to the car. Saying that the ride home was awkward is an understatement. Evan kept shifting in his seat and fiddling with the air conditioner, all while asking to skip song tracks or turn the radio up and down accordingly. It was a nightmare. Note to self: don’t take this kid on road trips.
Eventually, though, they make it inside the Murphy household. Connor ignores Zoe when she asks where he was and walks to the kitchen. He pulls out two sodas, one for Evan and the other himself. When he turns he sees Evan still standing inside the front door, not moving, staring at Zoe.
“Did you bring home a statue?” She asks.
“Funny. Zoe, Evan. Evan, Zoe. Let’s move,” Connor gestures to Evan and then to the stairs, waiting for him to follow. He doesn’t.
Zoe crosses her legs on the sofa and leans forward to rest the front of her arms on them, eyes narrowing as she asks, “what are you? Like, another stoner friend?”
Apparently, that question is enough to shock Evan back into reality, because he then proceeds to say no like a scratched record.
“I don’t even smoke drugs- uh, do drugs. Un-Unless you do drugs, in which case, I do drugs all the time. Uh, every drug.” He’s talking nightcore levels of fast and Connor’s eyes roll so far back into his head he’s afraid they might get stuck. Scratch that. He hopes they get stuck so then he doesn’t have to watch this .
He walks over to Evan and shoves the soda in his hand. “Hansen. Let’s get upstairs.”
“Right! Right, okay. Sorry, uh, b-bye..then,” he’s still making no effort to move from the doormat.
“Oh for crying out loud,” Connor grabs Evan by the sleeve, dragging him out of the room and up the stairs. Once they’re up, the door to his bedroom slams behind them and he immediately whips around to Evan, “look, dude, I won’t help you with this if you’re going to be crushing on my sister the whole time.”
Well, that strikes something.
Evan’s face flushes and he screeches out, “what?! No, no no no, you must’ve been- I’m not- you’re confused, I- I don’t even-“
“-Hansen, it was a joke.” Connor makes the mental note that Evan doesn’t do jokes.
“Oh…”
Come on, Murphy, change the topic, change the topic. He racks his brain trying to remember why the two of them are even in his room in the first place- Oh!
“So!” Connor claps his hands together and pretends not to notice the way that made Evan jump. “Let’s get started, yeah? Toss me your script.”
Evan scrambles to get his backpack off and then struggles some more getting it open. He digs around for the script and Connor can’t help thinking, “Christ's sake he just had it.”
The script is found and makes its way to Connor’s hands, despite it all. “Huh,” that wasn’t a play he was expecting to see, “Peter Pan?”
Connor notices the way Evan’s face goes red, wrong question? “My therapist gave me an, uh, ‘assignment’ to do something to put myself out there- that I- normally wouldn’t do. And Peter Pan is my mom’s uh- her favorite. And I just, I don’t know it’s stupid.”
Not wrong question, but wrong way of handling it. Connor makes a mental note to talk back to Evan, because apparently if he goes unanswered he just keeps talking to fill silence.
“No, it’s not stupid. It’s a little extreme for a first-time putting-yourself-out-there thing, yeah. But it’s not stupid.”
Nothing follows but silence. Evan's still standing by the door, looking down at his feet with a thoughtful look. Connor sat on his bed, legs crossed, in the comfortable silence he made, thanking God and also Jesus for it not being really awkward. But Connor Murphy can only stand comfortable for so long.
“Whelp!” He pats an open space on the bed next to him for Evan to come sit. “We better get to this, right?”
Whatever trance Evan was in immediately breaks, “y-yeah! Okay, yeah.”
After that the rest was history. Evan stumbled over his lines, which was to be expected. Connor did his best to be patient with Evan, helping him slow down when he got nervous, which was often. The main problem they seemed to bump into was whenever Evan got insecure on his lines, he’d speed up beyond control. That’s the first thing they worked on that evening, needless to say, it was the only thing.
After a while, Evan claims he should be leaving, wanting to beat his mother home to avoid any unnecessary confrontation. Connor offers to drive him home but Evan insists on walking. One strap of his backpack already back over his shoulder, Evan turns for one last thank-you-goodbye all in one before zipping out of Connor’s room.
Connor remarks on the little peace-sign-wave Evan gave him. Cute. He stands by his desk until he hears the front door shut. With a huff of a sigh, Connor falls back onto his bed. What was that? He gives himself a few minutes to just process everything. For obvious starters, he has a friend now. Sort of. Right? He made the proposal for them to be friends- God, that in itself was kind of dumb. When was the last time he’s even had friends over? Should he have offered snacks? Why didn’t he offer any food? Connor closes his eyes, rubbing at his temples as he gets himself to calm down. He shouldn’t be worrying about not offering snacks to a senior in high school.
After he calms down from whatever that was, Connor changes out of his jeans and into sweatpants and kicks back in bed for the rest of the night. After a while he hears his dad call him down for dinner, electing to ignore it, Connor turns off the lamp on his bedside and buries himself under the covers.
That seemed to work well because before he knew it, it was the next morning and he was waking up to the sound of the endless screeching of his alarm. Not endless for long, he reaches for his phone and jambs his thumb on the snooze button, getting out of bed anyway. It’ll go off again in five minutes and he’ll deal with it again then.
The rest of his morning goes the way it always does. He gets dressed, the alarm goes off again, he shoves the absolute bare minimum of what he needs in his backpack and heads downstairs.
Zoe already has her head shoved in the fridge, looking for something, anything to eat. Connor practically inhaled breakfast yesterday and is a Murphy Champ at draining their house dry of any food. His mom says it’s because he’s a growing boy, but he’s already the size of a giraffe and knows for a fact he hasn’t grown since freshman year. If anyone asked, the answer would be weed. Thankfully no one has asked, and even if they did, he can guarantee himself he wouldn’t give them the right answer.
He grabs a granola bar that was conveniently sitting on the kitchen counter and heads out the door.
The rest of his day drags on from there. Every school day seems like a countdown. Countdown until the period is over, countdown until the period after that is over, countdown until lunch. Lunch both took too long and came too soon.
He watches the way the cafeteria floods only after a minute of the lunch period having started. It’s absolute chaos. He was about to ditch out of the cafeteria, electing to go get stoned in the bathroom instead, when he spots an open table in the back of the cafeteria. Open for the most part, seeing how Evan is the only one sitting there. Connor mentally curses at himself for what he’s about to do, because something inside him makes him go sit with Evan.
In all honesty, he doesn’t know why he expected any other reaction than a stunned ‘uh’ from Evan. He feels like an idiot. ‘He’s probably sitting alone on purpose, idiot’ But he still sits down across from Evan, the increasing awkward tension building and Connor’s already considering getting up, leaving, and never coming back. The Universe had different plans, apparently, because right as Connor started to get up, Evan blurted out, “hey! I- uh- hi. Please..uh- sit.”
This is fuckall awkward. He stays, but it’s awkward. Evan’s face tells all that he feels the same. It’s almost unsettling. Connor focuses in on Evan, his face pale and hands trembling. Something’s up. Turning around, Connor notices the last traces of staring eyes dart back to their own tables. Oh. He shoots a glare at people’s lingering looks. Jesus. Could people just mind their own business? Ironic, considering Connor befriended Evan via not minding his own business. But that...that was different.
Evan must’ve trailed off in his own thought’s too, because before he knows it Connor catches him nearly literally snapping back into reality. “So!” He says, his voice reaching an uncomfortable pitch, “what uh- what uh- do you do for fun?”
“Smoke weed and suck dick,” Connor replies deadpan.
It took a lot inside him to not break down laughing at the following chain of reactions. Evan chokes on the fries he was snacking on, trying to cough them up as tears form in his eyes. Holy shit. In the midst of his coughing fit he manages to squeak out a, “o-oh! That’s nice!”
Connor has to hold back an awkward laugh, letting Evan finish coughing his lungs up before prompting: “So, what are you into?”
It’d be an understatement to say Evan was blushing. He’s full-on flustered, and Connor for a brief second fears Evan is about to reveal he has a secret collection of miscellaneous toenails, or a closet full of hair. He doubts that from Evan, but what other interest is worthy of word-loss?
What Connor wasn’t expecting, was for Evan to shyly say, “I-I uh...like girls.”
Connor stares at him, blank and unblinking. This fucking guy. “Dude,” he tries hard not to pinch between his brows, he can’t let Evan think he’s frustrated. He’s not frustrated, but Connor knows his gestures, and how they’re perceived, “I meant like...interests.”
“Oh! I,” Evan looks flustered again, “I knew that.”
Connor throws a smirk across the table. “Okay, sure,” a beat, “but uh- for real, anything you're into?”
Might as well get something out of this lunch period.
For the rest of what they have left of lunch, Evan goes off about how he worked at a State Park over the summer. He tells Connor about the trees they had him work with, the apple orchard across the way that he’d go to during his lunch breaks, going off to talk about work stories in general. Connor actually enjoys listening to someone speak endlessly for once, it’s nice, keeps him out of his own head.
When lunch ends Evan apologizes for talking so much. Connor raises his hands to interrupt Evan before he could finish whatever spiel of personal degradation he’s about to subject himself through.
“Don’t even apologize, this was nice.”
“O-Oh.”
Not the exact reaction he wanted, but he’ll take it.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Hansen.” Connor bid his farewell with the wave of two fingers and a swift exit of the cafeteria doors. Evan calling an, “okay, bye!” in the distance.
Some dare say they saw Connor Murphy smile as he made his way to his next period.