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Alana isn't sure what gets her to spill the words she had overheard. She clearly had not been the recipient of them, yet she had gotten closer to the door of the empty English classroom anyway.
"What?"
Evan is confused, which, with her observations of their relationship, should be the obvious reaction, but she still pushes it.
"Jared likes you," she says, feeling the stab of guilt again.
The next morning, there is a clear shift in their relationship. Something has changed, and Alana could bet anything she knows it had to do with her conversation with Evan yesterday. As they pass, Evan sends her a look that confirms it.
She watches as Evan intertwines his fingers with Jared's, and she sees the dark blush that crosses said boy's face. Evan smiles slightly at the other, fondness clear before something flashes in his eyes.
She wishes she had a better feeling about this.
The entire thing was a spur of the moment idea. At least, that's what Evan would tell you if you asked. The truth was that, well, it would be something beneficial for both of them, even if Jared was unaware of the actual status of Evan's feelings for them.
Which, it was obviously none, no romantic feelings at all. Nope.
In theory, related to the plan, it was so he could say he knew what being in a relationship was. It was so he could assure that he had actually kissed someone, and he had gone steady with at least one person in his seventeen years of life.
And funnily enough, that "spur of the moment decision" takes place while the adrenaline is still kicking in his veins after his speech. He jumps off the stage in a hurry, palms sweaty as usual, and looking at the ground as he leaves.
He gets as far as the parking lot before he hears Jared's voice.
"Great speech."
It was short and to the point, the same way Jared usually spoke to him, but there was also some new vulnerability there, and oh, now he sees what Alana had been talking about.
He catches onto the way Jared's eyes roam his face, mostly migrating to his lips. He sees how Jared will bite their lip when they do, then look away with a barely-there blush.
Evan tilts his head a little. "I- uh, thanks." Jared gives him a nod of acknowledgment, and weirdly enough, Evan finds himself changing course from his mother's car to his family friend. Jared doesn't look up until Evan stops in front of them.
Jared raises an eyebrow, and Evan can see everything in slow motion.
Evan moves close enough to reach their arms, grabbing their wrists before leaning in and pressing his lips to Jared's. He feels the other tense under him before relaxing into it, adding a bit of pressure of their own. Evan moves from their wrists to cradling their head in his hands. Then he pulls away to see a wide-eyed, blushing Jared.
"I- uh-" And Evan really doesn't mean to say what he says next, not in the slightest, but it comes out of his mouth anyway.
"So something does shut you up," he mumbles in a complete thought association, and he sees the other's blush deepen even more as they look away.
"Obviously not," Jared retorts, sounding breathless. Their eyes move back from the ground to Evan. They linger again before making eye contact.
Over the next half-hour, the two talk it out, Evan tells his mom he's getting a ride from Jared, and Evan surprisingly initiates another kiss.
By night's end, both of them are officially together.
As everything continues with the Connor Project, Evan notices that Jared is genuinely happier. Even when Evan sometimes blows their dates because he had forgotten he was supposed to talk to the Murphy's again. He notices how even their personality changes, going from harsh, sarcastic, and frankly slightly annoying, to sarcastic, fond, and surprisingly enough to Evan, very clingy.
Evan hates that he chooses to use them like this.
He hates that he pretends to like them just for the experience. But then again, who else could he have asked?
Every now and then, he'll see Alana glancing at the two of them, and he stores her looks in the back of his mind. They couldn't really mean anything important, right?
It occurs to him on a Tuesday that something between them has changed.
Jared is lying in his lap, humming as Evan threads his fingers through their hair. Their eyes are closed, and Evan assumes that they're asleep until they utter something that makes Evan freeze.
"Y'know," they start, turning slightly towards Evan. "Whatever happened to your crush on Zoe?" They look up, watching Evan with squinting eyes as their glasses had been taken off a while ago.
And he knows this is a weird moment to realize things, but as he thinks about it, he hasn't actually thought about Zoe romantically in a while. All of his thoughts had been taken over by the person in his lap. He tries to think of a way to explain that, to explain the gradual shift from I wonder what it's like to hold Zoe's hand to I wonder what it's like to be with them for real.
"I, um, I guess it faded?" His voice tilts up at the end in a question. Jared completely turns over, their eyes roaming Evan's face again. Evan doesn't stop himself from doing the same because...because...
He's never really noticed how pretty it is when the blue of their eyes mixes into the brown. It never occurs to him how, when Jared scrunches their nose, it's almost overwhelmingly cute. And the way he knows how their soft lips taste...
A dark blush spreads over Evan's cheeks as something falls into place.
Jared seems to find what they're looking for as they rise on their elbows, and they move until they're actually sitting in Evan's lap. Evan wraps an arm around them loosely, resting his forehead against theirs.
"Can you promise me something?" Jared murmurs and Evan looks at him, humming after a moment in a way to say, of course . "Please tell me this is real." Jared's eyes are on him again, vulnerable in a way Evan doesn't see very much, if ever.
And Evan really wants to tell them the truth, tell them that this was all part of a plan, but the words will not physically slip past his lips. He can't tell them that; he can't lose this. Evan tilts forward, brushing his lips against theirs softly before saying, "It's as real as I am." But of course, he has to ruin it by adding, "If you want it to be." As if this thing they'd had was nothing more than a trial, and Evan hadn't considered them together at all. Jared pulls back, frowning.
"What do you mean by that?" they ask cautiously.
They're moving out of his lap now as he tries to find an answer.
"Nothing! Just-"
"Just what?" Their voice drops, and Evan can feel something clawing at his throat.
"It wasn't real before!" Evan chokes out, and Jared's eyes go wide, filled with hurt.
"What do you mean?"
Evan squeezes his eyes shut and takes a breath, rocking a little. "I- I still liked Zoe when I kissed you," he explains. "And I'm not- I'm not sure when it went from h-her to you, but it did, and-" Evan doesn't realize he's crying until Jared has a hand cradling his head, and they're wiping under his eye with a thumb. "I'm sorry," he says, letting himself be pulled into a hug even though he didn't deserve it.
"It's alright," they say, and Evan can feel a little relief in the mix of emotions in his chest. "It doesn't mean I forgive you yet, though. Not- not now." Evan sniffs as Jared continues. "But I know I will eventually."
They take a moment, rubbing up and down his back until Evan moves to sit back on his heels and wipe at his eyes.
"I'm sorry for lying to you," he says, not meeting their eyes. Jared intertwines their fingers, but they say nothing, just offering comfort.
And it takes a while, but eventually, Jared does end up forgiving him, and they decide to try again, just around the time Evan decides to cut ties with the Murphy's after the way the project ended.
They don't have a perfect story or a perfect ending, but the story that they do have is theirs.