Chapter Text
His vision brightens. As his eyes begin to focus and his mind begins to awaken, he recognizes his hands, right in front of his face. But they’re blue; or bluer than they’re supposed to be. He thinks. He hasn’t thought in a while, he realizes. He blinks a few times, or at least he thinks he does; he doesn’t see any difference, his only assurance that he did is the nerve signals going from his brain to his eyelids and back.
Everything feels numb and foggy; He has no idea what’s going on, but he’s honestly not conscious enough yet to worry about it.
He looks around the room he’s somehow in. It sure as hell doesn’t look like his room. Connor’s room was always dark from the drawn blinds, with clothes that he couldn’t bother to pick up scattered all over, and his old broken electric guitar in the corner, a constant reminder that he couldn’t even hold onto a simple hobby. that everything he had ever tried always failed.
No, this room is different. Its light and clean. and also very small. Connor can hear the birds chirping outside of the window, and a constant tapping of fingers on a keyboard. He tries to turn to the source of the sound and barely stops himself from falling over. He instinctively looks down at the floor and realizes, in disbelief, that he’s not standing. on the floor, at least. He moves his foot around a bit and yeah, hes literally floating. That explains the lack of stable ground.
after finally ungluing his eyes from the floor, Connor takes notice of the source of the annoying noise.
Its some small-framed kid with curly brown hair. He’s sitting, back to Connor, hunched over a small-- what is that? Connor can’t even call that a laptop.
So - great. amazing. absolutely fucking magnificent! Connor tried to kill himself, if he remembers correctly, pretty sure he did, but now he’s alive again. Well, he wouldn’t call that alive, since he cant feel his lunges like he did his blinking.
to all that Connor can only remark:
“What the fuck.”
Immediately the kid in front of him flinches, turns back, and upon noticing Connor Shrieks and falls out of his chair.
If Connor wasn’t practically frozen in place from the absurdity of the situation he would’ve barked out a laugh at that.
Instead they just stare at each other for a few seconds. Or minutes? Connor was never good with time, dammit. The kid’s face - which Connor feels like he recognizes for a second; maybe from the bookstore or something - is frozen in an incredulous expression, his eyes darting back and forth across Connor’s face; which, if he’s being honest? Is starting to piss him off. He has had enough of these stares back when he was… alive? Back then, before he just gained consciousness. Anyways, he absolutely hates when people stare at him like this. Like he’s some three-headed freak that escaped the circus.
“...What the hell is going on?” Connor barks out. Stupid question, really. But Connor is used to having stupid knee-jerk reactions. If Connor himself has no idea whats going on, this kid definitely doesn’t. Calling him a kid seems weird, he looks about Connor’s age, but he’s really short, and at first glance you would think that he’s a middle schooler.
The guy seems to break from his trance and frantically starts to feel behind himself with his hands, like he’s trying to find something. Connor just stands - well, floats - before him and stares; because what is he even supposed to say in a situation like this?
The boy clumsily snaches his school bag and practically runs out of the room while mumbling something under his nose. probably some insult or fearful comment.
The door closes with a bang, and Connor’s left all alone.
Okay.
Now what the fuck is he supposed to do here?
* * *
Evan runs out of his room as fast as he can, probably stumbling several times. He’s not really in the moment right now, all his thoughts in a mess. There is no way he simply saw what he thinks he did. No way in hell. This has got to be an undocumented side effect of his new dose of medication (that will inevitably get the production company in a lawsuit), or- or just his mind playing with him. He couldn’t have seen Connor Murphy, the dead kid himself, standing in front of him in his own room. That even sounds absurd! But what was that then?
Evan doesn’t even want to think about it. He doesn’t want to be here. He has to go to school, Jared’s probably waiting for him already. Evan finally menages to put on his shoes with his shaky hands (He’ll have to tie the shoelaces later) and is already halfway through opening the door when he feels an icy hand on his shoulder. He freezes in place, and not only because of how cold the hand is.
“Hey.”
He feels someone’s breath down his back, or maybe he’s hallucinating. He could definitely be hallucinating. But that honestly sounds more terrifying. Did he not sleep enough last night? Staying late at Jared’s to finish his latest fraud-mail doesn’t seem like such a bright idea anymore. Or what if he’s trapped in some nightmare like those ARGs he watched on youtube. No, that’s absurd even for Evan’s mind’s irrational Catastrophizing-
“Can you stop running away?” That voice calls out again. That low voice that Evan thought he would never hear again.
Before Evan even thinks what he’s doing, he turns around and starts rambling.
-”Im sorry! I didn’t mean to, um, to run away or- something. why would I be running away? I mean, its not like you would, uh- hurt me, or, or something… well I was just.. Im kind of late for school and I really need to go, so I’m sorry but I have places to be and, yeah…” The longer Evan’s mouth is open, the higher his voice becomes and the faster his heart beats.
He tries to look anywhere but at Connor (or whatever is in front of him, currently gripping his zip-up like his life depends on it. That’s a funny way to phrase it.) and Evan’s eyes land first n the clock on the wall - spelling out his incoming doom and detention - and then on his prescription bottle standing on the table. He forgot to grab it with him, but now it’s too late, and he really needs to get to school, so he’ll have to pass this time.
Thankfully, the icy hand slides from his shoulder (although it felt more like through his shoulder), and before whatever is in front of him can muster another word, Evan turns on his heel and runs out of his apartment. He could barely close the door behind him, and his house key never left his pocket. Another thing to worry about later.
Evan is as good at running away from the thing in his home as he is at running away from responsibility. Same thing.
The school day seemed to be kind to Evan so far. Maybe running all the way to the bus station without taking a proper breath wasn’t ideal, but at least his bus came in a minute or two. Evan would say those were the most terrifying minutes of his life, but he could probably think of a worse event.
When he entered the school halls the only abnormal thing he saw were two kids making out in the hallway. Evan could never imagine doing something like this. How weren’t they afraid of getting caught? But he didn’t want them to think he was judging them, so he looked down at his feet and continued on.
He was still shaken from the morning, so he carefully surveyed every room he was in, too anxious for his own good. Although, when wasn’t he? Despite his fight Or Flight instincts screaming at him to run (preferably anywhere but his house), he held his head low as always; Evan didn’t want people to think he was finally starting to go crazy and seeing things that weren’t there. If they would, they would surely tell their friends about it, and then the entire school will think that Evan Hansen is insane. Maybe the principal will call his mom, and she’ll tell Dr. Sherman, and then he would be forced on another new medication, and the consequences of that are already making his mind spiral.
But beside that, the day was fine. No one was picking on him, and he didn’t feel any burning cold anywhere near his body.
That was until History class. As much as Evan tried to assure himself his mind was just playing guilt games with him this morning, he couldn’t stop all kinds of possibilities from invading his head. Evan was never that good at ignoring the problems bugging him. So while he was slowly going insane from his own thoughts, the teacher called on him to read aloud, and usually Evan would start practicing the text in his head the moment he heard “public speaking”, but today he felt like he couldn’t focus on anything. So he pathetically read out a couple words before the teacher took pity on him and asked someone else to read. Evan felt everyone’s eyes pocking into his back all the way to the library, where his fuck-up streak continued. He couldn’t focus on the emails, and Jared had to practically squeeze words out of him before feeling pity for him, probably (because why would anyone feel anything else for such a fuck-up), asking him if he needed a paper bag. Evan could feel Jared’s fake caring tone from a mile away. He just excused himself to the bathroom and walked away, feeling the most pathetic he did all day.
But that was all Evan was, wasn’t he? He was pathetic, still playing his lies so confidently while not even being able to tell his therapist how he really felt; And such a fuck-up, because who would even get in a situation like this in the first place?
Evan sobbed tearlessly into the disgusting bathroom sink. He was really starting to feel the weight of forgetting his drugs at home. He hated how he couldn’t move on from the morning, this was surely just some dream he confused with reality, and yet his brain kept replaying the same dump conversation. At the back of his mind Evan still heard that low voice that petrified him this morning. Those words he couldn’t stop replaying in his mind-
“Hey.”
Evan looks behind himself in the mirror the second he hears it. Right on one of the stall doors he sees - oh god - Connor Murphy; just sitting there. Staring at him with those dark, cold eyes.
Evan has a heart attack at this moment, he thinks.
He would pinch himself, but (beside being frozen in place) he knows it never helped him when he had nightmares. So he just stares at Connor's reflection behind him and hopes time would stop so Evan won't have to figure out what to do next.
Sadly, time has never been on Evan's side.
Connor groans. He rubs his eyes and mumbles “can you just- fucking talk to me? for once?”
Even if this is not real, Evan doesn’t want to test the guy who was infamous for being the most likely to become a school shooter. He never understood the sentiment, frankly. Evan always believed - or at least wanted to - that every person is always trying to be their best self. That was the only belief that got him through his life so far. The only one to ever make him doubt that sentiment was himself, of course; he was always a disappointment, even when looking in the mirror.
Evan commands his body to turn the 180 degrees necessary to look polite, darting his eyes around before deciding to focus on the scribble on a stall door, reading: ‘hows the day, gayass?’. Evan is pretty sure he remembers Jared writing this with a perma-marker, much to Evan’s discontent. He’s confident Jared already knows how his day went.
Evan tries to choke something out before settling on a questioning hum.
From the corner of his eye he sees Connor’s figure looks at him for a moment, his face probably judgmental (or at least that’s what Evan can interpret with his limited social capabilities), before sighing again. Evan doesn’t know what to prepare for. Is he going to get yelled at? mocked? is the person in front of him going to use his supernatural powers and choke Evan, and he’s going to die on the spot, and he’ll only be found tomorrow when his body already turned cold, and
Evan shakes this train of thought; he might be paranoid, sure, but he never believed in ghosts.
“ugh… listen,” the dead boy in front of him begins, “I have no idea what in the hell is happening, okay? But it’s… something. And I don’t want to just act like a dick to you again, and..-” Even while averting his eyes Evan notices Connor Runs his fingers through his hair a lot. “- you’re the only person who can even see me, so…” his voice fades out.
So weird. Evan doesn’t know what to call this, but worst comes to mind; This is the real, (in)tangible Connor Murphy, and it’s all complete reality. Evan finally decides to look at Connor and sees him swiftly turning his head to the side.
Connor seems to be phasing through the stall door slightly, and his skin is gray and bluish. His entire being is, really, which makes him stick out harshly from the bathroom. Evan is pretty sure he can see right through him.
Connor turns his head back towards him, and Evan remembers that he needs to respond in conversations.
– “Yes, I, um- I understand!” Evan clears his throat. Connor raises his brow slightly.
Oh my god, Evan is so dead. Connor will find out that Evan lied about him and he’s going to start haunting him and people will surely start to think that Evan’s insane then, and they’ll send him to an asylum and-
– “Cool.” Connor said curtly.
They just stood there, in extremely uncomfortable silence. Evan didn’t know what he was supposed to say in this situation. Now would be the appropriate time to say that he has been through worse, but he can’t really think of a situation worse than looking at the kid who committed suicide some weeks ago and is now indirectly conceding that he’s sorry for something that was your fault, really.
“How long has it been since i killed myself?”
Well that was direct.
– “Oh, it’s been.. two weeks, maybe? wasn’t that long since…” he trails off awkwardly.
The boy in front of him hums in understanding and rests his face on his hand, clearly becoming bored of Evan’s hopeless ramblings and looking for something better to do. Even the dead don’t want to talk to you, a part of Evan’s mind says. He absentmindedly starts picking at the loose strings on his cast.
Before any of them could get any more fed up with the silence between them, the school bell rings. Evan almost can’t believe it, but he thanks whatever benevolent powers still watch over him for making the bell ring out now. He doesn’t think he could bare even one more second in this situation without panicking.
– “Well. I have to go.” Evan takes a half-step toward the bathroom exit, hoping that it’s acceptable of him to leave at this point of the conversation. He is starting to get worried about his lonely backpack in the school library.
– “Sure” is the only respond he gets. So he mumbles a goodbye and leaves.