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Connor leaves Middleton—leaves law school, leaves Annalise’s control, leaves the ghost of Sam Keating—on a Tuesday.
For the first three weeks after Rebecca’s disappearance, he writes and rewrites a letter he knows he’ll never send, and every night, he cards his fingers through his hair as he deletes that day’s draft. Oliver watches him from various places all over the apartment, balled up in blankets and peering out like a science fiction sandworm but saying very little.
Connor calls him in sick for the first week. On the second week, his boss asks for a doctor’s note. Oliver closes himself in the bedroom for a full day, silent as the grave, and he only eats when Connor brings him soup from the deli down the block.
“You want to talk about it?” he asks, the same as every day since the tests.
“Do you want to talk about your stuff?” Oliver returns, and Connor shakes his head as he looks away.
On the third week, Oliver emerges from his self-imposed exile and tucks himself up next to Connor on the couch. “You don’t need to do this,” he says quietly.
“Do what?” Connor asks. He writes, deletes, and rewrites another sentence. Oliver purses his lips. “I’m not doing anything, I’m just—”
“You want to be here,” Oliver interrupts. “You want to be a lawyer, you want to—I don’t know, either steal people’s souls or save them, depending on how the job market is at graduation. You shouldn’t give all of that up because of me.” When Connor blinks dumbly, Oliver shrugs. “I read your letter yesterday while you were in the shower.”
For three or four seconds, Connor loses himself to remembering yesterday’s letter, to the anger that’d burbled up through him and out through his fingers, a fire that’d spread across six single-spaced pages. He remembers accusing Annalise of ruining him, of destroying everything she touches, but he’s pretty sure that’s as specific as he got. Plausible deniability, he’d reminded himself every time he’d saved the document. Nothing that proves I knew about Sam, about Rebecca, about how deep all of this actually goes.
Oliver just watches him, his brow furrowed and his eyes exhausted behind his glasses, until finally, Connor releases a sigh. He scrubs his hand over his face, through his hair, down the side of his neck, but Oliver never glances away. He waits, like he’s waited since the day Connor showed up in a helpless panic. Since the day Sam—
“You’re more important,” Connor blurts, sharp enough that Oliver flinches back like Connor’s slapped him. He reaches out and grabs Oliver’s hands, pulls him close, holds him in a way that Oliver’s not allowed in the last three weeks. He feels too thin, almost unfamiliar, and Connor shoves his face in his hair. “You’re more important,” he says again, stronger this time. “Annalise, she— She’s like the opposite of King Midas. Everything she touches turns to ash, and I’m not letting her do that to me anymore. I can’t be there and here and—” His voice starts to crack, and he swallows. “I’d rather be with you—be here for you—than in law school. The last few weeks just proved that.”
Oliver snorts slightly against his neck. “You’d rather become a hermit with me than a lawyer in a penthouse?” he teases, but Connor hears the worry that lurks underneath the joke.
He pulls away and plants hands on Oliver’s arms. Stares him down, and for the first time since Annalise Keating picked him as an intern, he feels clear and sober, like he’s really just broken through the haze of addiction. “I’d rather be here than anywhere else,” he promises.
Oliver ducks his head, nodding. “Then what do you want to do? Besides sending your professor a ten-page letter detailing how much you hate her, of course.”
Connor grins. “I’ve got a plan,” he says, and steers Oliver toward the computer.
==
The letter he leaves tacked to Keating’s door is three lines:
Leaving town, and Middleton, and all of this bullshit.
I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.
Don’t try to contact me.
==
They spend the first month at his sister’s house in Michigan, camped out on the sofa sleeper like the reviled out-of-town relatives they are. His sister’s kids giggle every time they catch him with an arm around Oliver or his face in Oliver’s hair, but his sister just smiles.
Twenty-two days into their visit, Oliver’s landlord calls while he’s in the shower. When Connor picks up, the man growls at him in his usual pack-a-day way. “Tell your girlfriend he’s not allowed to sublet,” he grumbles.
Connor frowns. “He didn’t—”
“I know you think you can charm your way out of just about everything, pretty boy,” the landlord huffs down the line, “but beardy there in the apartment told me Hampton sublet to him. And like I told Hampton—”
“Either he breaks the lease or pays rent, no middle ground,” Connor finishes, and the landlord grunts in confirmation. “Listen, about the subletter. Brown hair, beard, well-dressed? Middle thirties?”
The man snorts. “Why you asking me? Don’t know your own squatter?”
“Humor me.”
“Yeah, that’s the prick. Fancy-ass suit and all.”
Connor thanks him, hangs up, and curls his hands into fists to keep from shaking. He resolutely resists the urge to throw up in the nearby garbage can, but only because his nephew’s nearby.
When Oliver emerges from the bathroom, steam tailing behind him like a vapor trail, Connor presses him against the hallway wall. “Canada,” he says as Oliver blinks. “Good health care, good jobs, gay marriage, a lot of attractive hockey players on TV six times a day—”
Oliver raises his eyebrows. “Should I read into the fact that you included the ability for us to get married in that list?”
“Unless you’d rather I just be your arm candy for the rest of our lives, sure,” Connor answers. Oliver’s face breaks into a shocked grin that only disappears when Connor leans in and kisses him. It’s a long, lazy kiss, full of promises Connor intends to keep for the first time in his life—not the least of which is the one where he protects Oliver from Keating, and Frank, and all the ugly truths he’s buried in almost a year of lies.
Oliver’s breathless and wide-eyed when they break apart, and Connor shoves his face in his neck. “Canada,” he repeats.
“Canada,” Oliver agrees, and kisses his ear.
==
They end up in Calgary, a beautiful city that sometimes reminds Connor of Michigan but mostly feels brand new. For the first six months, they live mostly off their savings, random checks from Connor’s sister, and Oliver’s limited income from a string of temporary jobs, but then a bank hires Oliver full-time and they’re able to rent an actual apartment in a nice part of town. Connor drifts from one crappy retail job to another until he lands at a book store of all places, and he settles there, content to discuss the finer points of Jane Eyre with college students who resent their summer reading.
When they get married, a year after leaving Middleton, Connor changes his last name to Hampton. He cuts his hair, changes his clothes, assembles himself into an actual, functional, rational adult. Oliver teases him about his collection of sweaters and his sensible slacks, but he presses him against the wall and kisses him hard whenever he comes in from work wearing a collared shirt, too.
Their third year in Calgary, they buy a house. Their fourth year, they adopt a pug named Cooper. And instead of feeling itchy or uncertain—instead of wanting to tear his hair out, climb the walls, and run—Connor feels okay. Feels good, most days, like maybe he was always meant to wake up before his husband to brew the coffee and walk the dog around the block.
One day during their fifth year, Oliver glances up from his phone and frowns. “Did you hear the news out of Middleton?” he asks, and Connor jerks so hard that he almost drops the coffee pot. “It says this girl who went missing five years ago just turned up—”
“I don’t want to know,” Connor snaps. His voice is too hard, too sharp, and Oliver drops his eyes back to his phone. There’s worry creasing his face—worry lines, because they’re older now, men instead of confused almost-kids—and Connor sighs. “Middleton almost ruined me,” he says, quieter this time. “It turned me into this addict, into a person who couldn’t turn off the worst parts of himself, and I don’t want to be him anymore. I don’t even want to remember he existed, if I can avoid it.”
“Except I fell in love with you when you were at Middleton,” Oliver murmurs. “Even when you showed up at my apartment, strung out and broken, I knew—”
“You fell in love with the person who existed under Middleton,” Connor interrupts. Oliver lifts his head at that, and Connor forces a little smile. “And since I didn’t even know he was there until you found him, that’s technically not Middleton’s doing. It’s yours.”
Oliver rolls his eyes, but he smiles. “You could just tell me to drop the subject, you know.”
Connor grins as he passes Oliver his coffee. “And leave out the compliments about how great you are? Never.”
==
“Connor?”
He recognizes her voice first, that mousy murmur he’d mocked during their first weeks working for Annalise, before blood and fire smelted them together into the worst kind of steel, Keating’s four disciples. She’s wearing a suit and heels, her hair up in a twist, and for a moment, they stare at each other: him kneeling on the floor as he organizes the nonfiction section, her with a slack, though still very pretty, face.
He glances down at the John Adams biography in his hands before he officially decides to stand. “Laurel,” he finally says, his fingers digging through his hair, “you need to understand—”
“Shut up,” she spits, but before he’s even able to process the instruction, she’s hugging him around the neck, her fingers clutching at his shoulders. He blinks for a moment, shocked and more than a little helpless, before loosely hugging her back. They linger in the aisle for a long time, her perfume almost choking him, before she finally steps away. “After that night with Rebecca, we thought you were—”
“Can we not do this here, please?” he hisses. A few quiet, midday shoppers eye them curiously, and Laurel pales slightly before she nods. “My break’s in ten minutes, we can, I don’t know. Get a coffee, walk somewhere.”
The resolve that hardens across her expression is the same as five years ago. “I’ll meet you outside.”
“Right,” he agrees limply, and watches as she saunters away.
There’s a brisk breeze outside, the usual cold Calgary spring, and he digs his hands into his pockets as he and Laurel wander down the street. They’re quiet for a long time, but he feels her studying him, her eyes as sharp and keen as during the case with the hunter all those years ago. A shiver runs up his spine, and when he moves to zip up his jacket to his chin, Laurel catches his left hand.
“You’re married,” she says. It’s not a question.
Connor nods. “Four years ago, now.”
“Oliver?” When he nods again, Laurel releases a long, unsteady breath. “Frank looked for you—and for Oliver, I guess, after he knew for sure you were gone. He said Oliver’s apartment was still full of furniture, like he might come back. We started to think . . . ” She purses her lips for a moment, her eyes dropping to the sidewalk. “You can probably guess what we thought.”
“That I panicked and ran? That I let Rebecca go? That I killed her?” Laurel pales at that, at the edge that creeps into his tone, and he shakes his head. They start walking again, Laurel’s heels a drum beat on the pavement. “I needed to leave,” he admits after a few more seconds. “I needed—”
“To abandon the rest of us?” Laurel cuts in. He glares at her, and she shakes her head sharply. “We were trapped together, Connor. Me, you, Wes, Michaela— The four of us needed one another, we needed to stick together and protect one another, and when you left—”
“I proved that there’s something more important than Annalise and her house of horrors?” Connor snaps at her. She grinds her teeth together, anger flashing across her face, and he laughs as he throws up her hands. “Listen to yourself, Laurel. Five years later—five years after everything went to hell and we all almost lost everything, almost lost the rest of our lives—and you’re still talking about it like we were the fucking sisterhood of the travelling pants!”
Laurel jabs a sharp finger into his shoulder. “Just because you chose to be a coward does not mean—”
“Oh my god, don’t you get it? I’m the only one who didn’t act like a coward!” Her jaw slackens, her mouth hanging open, and he huffs out a hard half-laugh. “The three of you stuck around, kept waiting for Mama Keating to fix all your problems—have Frank ditch the car, have him plant the ring, frame Nate, tape Rebecca to a fucking chair in the basement—but I got out! I broke out of that fucked-up nightmare, and I picked the hard thing. I picked leaving everything behind, loving someone who’s dying, throwing away everything I’d ever wanted to be—and all because there are more important things than Annalise Keating!”
The last syllable of Keating echoes against the tall buildings around them, and two old ladies at the end of the street pause to stare. Laurel purses her lips together, her eyes focused on the sidewalk between them, and for a moment, a cold spark of guilt twists in the depths of his gut. He swallows around it, his fingers dragging through his hair again, and his breath shakes when he sighs. “Laurel—”
“What else were we supposed to do?” she asks softly. She swipes under her eyes with a knuckle before she glances back up at him, and for the first time, Connor sees the exhaustion in her frame, the age that’s settled into her features. She shakes her head. “Sam died, Rebecca disappeared, our lives were unravelling around us— What were we supposed to do besides trusting Annalise?”
Connor wets his lips. “I don’t know.”
Laurel’s mouth twitches into the ghost of a smile. “Nobody did. That’s the point.” She draws in a breath, her spine straightening, and Connor watches as the resolve hardens across her face again. “I’m happy for you and Oliver,” she says.
He forces himself to nod. “Thanks,” he says, and they start walking again.
==
Late that night, their bedroom dark and still, Connor presses his forehead against the back of Oliver’s shoulder. “Someday,” he says quietly, “I’ll tell you about Keating. About the other interns, about everything that happened. Someday, I’ll—”
His voice cracks, then, or at least shakes, because Oliver wriggles around under the covers until they’re facing one another. He tangles his legs in Connor’s and places a warm palm on Connor’s cheek, and for a moment, they stare at each other in the dark.
“I don’t care what Keating did to you,” Oliver finally says, “as long as you’re here now.”
Connor chuckles and shakes his head. “Little late for me to run somewhere else, you know.”
“I know,” Oliver replies, and kisses him on the forehead before they drift off to sleep.