Back with musicals content—how could I not? This is rather long for a oneshot, really, but it didn't have any natural breaks in the story so I couldn't break it into acceptable chapters.
Title from Lorde's "Supercut"
"Um," says Evan, acutely aware that he's late, "um. What—uh... what do you think I should have?"
The barista shrugs. Which makes total sense—this is a coffee shop! What kind of recommendation was Evan expecting, anyway? But, of course, the answer is that he wasn't really thinking of what kind of drink to expect, only hoping that the barista would say some drink or other and he'd say yeah give me that, and that would be it.
Instead, the barista shrugged.
"Um." Evan had an order—the same one he's always had since... since forever—before he got to the front of the line and he knows it, but it's not coming to his mouth. His watch is on his wrist, and it's ticking. "Can I get coffee?"
"Yes," the barista says. They look like they're getting impatient, even though there's no one behind Evan in line—odd for the middle of the day in a coffee shop in San Francisco, but Evan's not going to complain. They have pink-and-green dyed hair and many piercings. They look so much cooler than Evan could hope to be. "We serve that here. Peet's. Coffee."
"Yeah, yeah, uh. Yeah, let me just get your, your..."
""A tall Americano, hot.... room for milk," comes a voice that is both familiar and unfamiliar. Male, but not too deep.
That was my order, Evan thinks dumbly.
"Wait your turn," says the barista reluctantly, as if they are resisting the urge to let the guy just cut.
Evan turns.
"You," he says.
It's Jared. Brown-almost-black hair, round glasses like Harry Potter, but with thick, black rims. Unbuttoned flannel, showing the same kind of nerdy-clever T-shirt Jared used to wear, seven years ago in high school when they knew each other. Hi Wiz, it says, with the dragon from the D&D logo peeking out from under the right side of the flannel. The Hi, Wiz is a play on high wisdom.
Does Jared know flannel is, like, a really GayTM thing now, or is he just wearing flannel because he's weird and San Francisco-ian, now, apparently?
"I," says Jared.
He's still got that air about him—a little cheeky, a lot sure. He knows he's a little weird; he's kind of proud he's a little weird. He was always a bit above all the other kids in school, even though all the other kids probably thought they were above him. Except Evan. Obviously.
Jared turns to the barista, clearly not as obsessed with drinking New Evan in the way Evan is obsessed with drinking in New Jared. "That's his order, not mine."
He hasn't changed one bit. He doesn't even look much older, not as much as Evan thinks he should after seven years. A bit sexier, maybe? That's what age will do to a face, at least when age is specifically going from seventeen to twenty-four. The new thing is the beanie. Jared's never really been one for hats before; a big percent of body heat leaves through your head, he'd said, and Evan's forgotten the percentage, but he remembers being impressed.
"Uh, yeah." Evan nods emphatically. "He's—yeah."
Evan still looks young, too. Too young. Still looks like a child, really, and if he ever tried to go to a bar or something, which he would never do, he'd definitely get carded. That's half the reason he doesn't go—even though he's old enough, that's an interaction he does not want to have.
The other half of the reason is that he has no desire to drink alcohol with a bunch of horny twenty-something tech bros anyway.
And now, talking to the sophisticated they/them name-tag barista in front of Jared, who definitely looks like he's figured out adulting by now, and barely making it through paying for a coffee—he's late and it's messing up with the way he had things straight in his mind—he feels like a child, too.
The barista passes him the coffee over the counter with a half-hearted patient smile, and Evan would not at all be surprised if Jared was giving them an I know, right? This guy look.
"Thanks," he says to the barista, and then to the cashier, fumbling with his credit card and nearly also fumbling the coffee. "Thanks," he says to Jared, who he'd really like to pack up and stick in his pocket until he can properly ask predictable questions like what have you been doing and where do you work and other things adults ask each other.
He's staring so much, it's a wonder he can make his way around people to the kiosk by the windows and gets the milk and sugar in without spilling them.
"Where are you off to in a hurry?" Jared asks, falling into step beside him like Evan invited him. Which he didn't. "Quite a lot of rushing going on."
"Not rushing," Evan says, and it's like they're in high school again. Not exactly, like Evan's in love again and Jared's an asshole again, but like they're pretending they didn't miss seven years of each other's lives. Just seven days, or seven hours.
"Yes rushing. You're going to spill your coffee trying to check your watch." Jared reaches over and takes Evan's coffee without asking, and Evan, who's trying to hold his coffee upright with his right hand and check his watch with his right hand and put his receipt in his back pocket with his left hand and not let his backpack fall off of his shoulder, makes an appreciative noise. "Should I take that stupid backpack, too?"
Jared has one of those stupid thin briefcase-satchel-man-purse over-the-shoulder things, the ones that are big enough for a laptop but don't have all this extra backpack space once you put the laptop and some papers in it.
"Shut up, Jared." That's still all he has in him. Shut up, Jared. "You haven't changed."
"Haven't heard a sorry from you, either, dipshit," Jared says, with this friendly voice that's got this little edge of bite, like he's still a little bitter and trying not to show it too much. "Come on, I'm just saying hi! Been a while."
"No shit," Evan says. He's finally gotten his receipt properly stored in his pocket and his other arm through his backpack so that it doesn't fall off his shoulder, and Jared hands back his coffee. Their fingertips brush. It's the first time he's touched Jared in seven years. "I'm going. Places. Somewhere."
Jared shoves his hands into his pockets. He's got on skinny jeans, and they cling to him a little too well because he isn't a stick the way the white guys with the pierced eyebrows usually are. "You going to work?"
And Evan would lie except that anyone—even someone he hasn't seen in forever, even someone who he'd never met before at all—can tell when he's lying. He's so shit at it, it isn't even funny. "No," he says, "No, I, uh, it's nothing professional."
"Lunch date?" Jared asks lightly. Too lightly—or maybe Evan's just hearing things.
"No." Evan takes a sip—just how he likes it, exactly. Is it weird and gay that Jared still remembers his coffee order? It's weird. Is it gay? Is Jared gay? They never really talked about it in their not-really-friendship. But Jared's, like, got the flannel. He's in San Francisco. "I mean, not really. Yes, kind of."
"Huh," says Jared. He's really trying hard to stick to Evan's side as they wind through the San Francisco streets—young people with drinks and loud, gossipy laughs; middle-aged business women in pencil skirts and heels, talking briskly into their phones; cars, dirty crosswalks, more cars.
Evan checks his watch again—12:00 exactly; he's really been power-walking, apparently, to get away from Jared. Even though he doesn't actually want to get away from Jared. "It's with my mom," he feels compelled to say, slowing. "If you laugh at me..."
But Jared's already laughing. There's a little bit of relief in his laugh that Evan doesn't know what to do with, but mostly Evan's noticing that his laugh is the same ugly laugh that manages to be both squeaky and scratchy at the same time, a little bit abrasive, a little bit unkind. "Sorry," Jared says, schooling his expression, "that's so pathetic. Let me walk you there."
Fucking Jared. He pushes those stupid nerd glasses up in this habitual movement he doesn't even realize, and his brown eyes blink at Evan, and Evan can't say no. Jared always had that incredible skill Evan was so jealous of—pretending to not notice that people don't want you there. Completely ignoring the social convention of not inviting yourself places.
He didn't really pull that shit on Evan. He never wanted to hang out with Evan badly enough.
When they get there, Heidi lights up. "Jared!" she says, stepping out of the sandwich shop with a smoothie and two sandwiches—Evan's usual and whatever kind she's decided to try today, "Is it really you? I can't believe it! What a pleasant surprise, I haven't seen you in forever!"
And that's how Jared ends up having lunch with Evan and Heidi... or rather, how Evan ends up having lunch with Jared and Heidi.
It's like an interrogation, but with food.
"Do you live here, in the city?"
Jared's apparently already had coffee and doesn't eat lunch. He keeps stealing sips of Evan's coffee, as if they know each other. They don't know each other! Not at a coffee-sharing level. Sip. "Apartment, ten minutes away." Jared points in a direction."
"That's wonderful! You know, Evan works about ten minutes in that direction, too." It's like Evan's fifteen again, and Heidi's still trying to socialize on his behalf.
"Does he?" Jared tilts his head a little Evan's way. "You holding out on me?"
Heidi frowns. "Evan."
"I found out he was in SF five minutes ago, Mom," Evan says. He's hyper aware that he's calling Heidi "Mom" in front of Jared.
"And where do you work?"
"Google," Jared says. Sip. "I'm technically on the clock right now."
Evan snorts. Heidi laughs awkwardly. The pair of them—neither of them know exactly how to respond to this. "Is that right?" Heidi seems to be struggling between urging Jared to work like he's supposed to or letting Jared stay and slack like "cool" people do, or whatever.
Evan was right—he did have a suspicion. Jared's a tech bro.
"How long have you been here?" Heidi's asking, and then, "Have you settled into SF?" And then, "Have you ever been to San Francisco Pride, and did you like it?"
Jared answers the first two smoothly enough: three years because he moved when he graduated college, and yes mostly, it's always changing haha, but then he stops short. He's been looking at Heidi this whole time, and occasionally at Evan's coffee when he's reaching for another sip, but now his eyes go to Evan again. "You know... it's kind of a gay place, you know? Pride is wild."
"Have you been?" Heidi presses on, oblivious. She's been encouraging Evan to go, even though Evan doesn't like crowds, doesn't like all the noise, and how you can lose sight of whoever you came with so quickly. The community has their chaos and their bright colors, and Evan has the pink and purple and blue flag stuck onto his mug at his desk at home and that's enough for him. "It isn't that wild, is it?"
"It is," Jared says. "Even more wild than it looks like."
"Wait," Evan interjects, the first thing he's contributed to this conversation. "You've been?"
Jared seems to size him up, and there's this moment, in the look he's giving Evan, where Evan knows they both know Evan's somewhere under the umbrella and Jared is somewhere under the umbrella and neither one of them wants to be the first to mention it.
"Yeah, I have." Jared doesn't offer anything more, and that's like checkmate because Jared could've gone with a girl—a trans girl, a bi girl, a pan girl, a straight ace girl. Then, as if he's pressing the victory, he leans forward a bit and spreads his hands. There it is, that shit-eating grin. "You got a problem with that?"
"No," Heidi says quickly, but then she snaps her mouth shut. She seems to finally have remembered high school. Middle school. Fucking elementary school.
An unconscious crush, and then a conscious crush, and then the day Evan refused to go to school because he realized he was in love with Jared, and thinking of talking to Jared in the halls like he didn't feel that way made him feel sick in the stomach.
"Evan," she says, checking her watch very dramatically. She's not a very good actor, Evan's mom. "I'm going to have to run, sorry."
"No, no! Not a big deal!" Evan smiles at her, though he knows it wobbles nervously a little, and she can see him toying with the edge of his sweatshirt. She's leaving him alone with Jared? Really? "I—My lunch break is almost over anyway."
This is false. Heidi knows it's false, but she doesn't call him on it, bless her.
"Jared, give Evan your new number, will you? He can send it my way."
Nevermind. To hell with her.
Evan's already muttering, "Don't, I'll just give you her number and you can text her," and Heidi's already walking off, and Jared's already calling after her, over the rushing city sounds, "I will," with this smirk that tells Evan he knows exactly how much Evan hates this, and then they're alone again, and Evan has to suddenly hold his own in a conversation.
Jared has absolutely no trouble just picking right back up. "Sorry man, I have to ask. Do you live with her?"
"No! Oh my god, Jared, no. I do not live with my mom." Evan snatches the coffee away from Jared before he can drink any more of it and very pointedly sets it on the other side of him. Jared rolls his eyes exaggeratedly and sits back in his creaky outside-dining chair. "I have my own apartment."
And Jared, he keeps on going. Questions about where he lives (a very small place) and if he has pets (no, they're not allowed), and if he's still in contact with Alana (yes, they message every now and then, because he doesn't know how to break contact off without it being awkward and it's not a huge burden anyway to get two messages a month).
And Evan, he doesn't know how to say, without being weird about it, what in the world are we doing?
"And Zoe? Are you still jerking off to her Instagram pictures or are you jerking off to the real deal now?"
So it just kind of pops out of him. "What—Jared, what are we even doing?"
Jared steals Evan's phone off the tabletop and presses the home button. When it doesn't let him in, he spins it towards Evan, like Evan didn't even say anything, like Evan isn't five different kinds of confused right now as to what exactly is the point here. "Unlock," he demands, "Let me add my number."
Evan huffs and obeys, because he still doesn't really know how to say no to people, and what's the harm in having Jared's number anyway? It's not like they're going to talk any more than they did in high school, which was shit like let me borrow your homework and my parents are having some shitty barbeque they want your parents at bring plates and napkins we don't have those, or even more than they did in middle school, which is not at all.
The Insanely Cool Jared Kleinman, the name reads, and for the first time that day, Evan feels something other than nervousness and vague attraction and confusion and annoyance.
He still remembers Jared's expression when they fought, not down to the last detail, but what emotion he had on his face, what emotion that sparked in Evan. The Insanely Cool Jared Kleinman, he reads, and he's... sorry. He's been sorry all these years, but it kind of got small, the way Heidi always promised it would. And now it's big again, it's back; Jared's here with his black black nerd glasses and his brown brown pretty eyes and his cocky crooked smile and Evan's sorry.
Leaning back in his chair, which is made of these plastic lattices that make him feel like he's too heavy for them even though they're perfectly capable of holding much more than his weight, Evan taps the little message icon under Jared's new contact, angling so Jared can't see him.
Jared makes a move for the coffee and Evan lets him, because it would be weird and embarrassing to get in a fight, even a playful one, over a half-full americano and the cup might spill.
I'm sorry, he messages Jared. I don't think I ever told you
Jared hears the chime and rummages around in that satchel briefcase thing he's put down on the concrete beside their feet, which is a bold move, because that concrete is filthy, and comes up with his phone with this little grin, and Evan just watches him and waits.
"Christ," Jared mutters, slurping up more of Evan's coffee. He was lying to the barista when he said it was Evan's order, not his own. "Don't do this, Evan, come on. Let's not do this."
Are you serious? Evan wants to say, do you know how long sorry has been sitting on my chest? Can you not be all about you for a minute? But he can't muster anything more than mumbling, "I am sorry."
Jared makes a face like he's just accidentally swallowed a bug and shuts his phone off, dropping it back into his bag with no regard for where it lands. "Yeah well you don't have to say it."
"If I don't say it, maybe it'll just never go away, okay? Maybe—Maybe I'm just going to lie awake thinking I wish I had a conversation with Jared or I should have insisted on seeing my apology through or something, right? It's going to bother me."
Jared's eyebrows jump, the way they always did when Evan had an outburst, but he's careful not to react. Like he always would be when Evan had an outburst. He just kind of kicks his legs out and crosses his ankles, casual and unimpressed. "'I wish I had a conversation with Jared'?" he echoes, "Is this based on experience, or is this a hypothetical future?"
"Sorry," says Evan, barrelling onward, "I'm sorry—"
"Oh-kay," Jared says, and this time he isn't looking at Evan at all, he's hauling his bag up onto his lap and shuffling through it as if he desperately needs something from it right this second. "I'm super desperately sorry for being an asshole and you're super desperately sorry for getting me to write fake emails pretending to be a boy who killed himself so you could get your dick in his sister and some school clout and then leaving me hanging with no friends when you got popular, god how sorry we are, let's do penance at the feet of Jesus Christ together and tell him how sorry we are for our sins, are we done?"
"Jared—"
"This—" Jared points between them, still looking through his bag, "we are not doing this. Please, Evan. We're catching up, like old high school friends, you know, on sitcoms. Where do you live? Are you still fucking that girl? Daaaamn, you have the wrong taste in grocery stores."
"Jared," Evan's saying, "Jared!"
"It's kind of funny, because we're picking up again, but we're also starting over," Jared's saying, still in this weird, false-earnest, mocking-a-sitcom voice.
"We weren't even friends in high school."
Jared shrugs his shoulder and crosses his ankles the other way, passing Evan's now empty cup back across the scratched glass tabletop. "Where do you work?"
"Will you stop?"
"Bet it's a bookstore or something, really something quiet, you know—"
And then Evan can't take it anymore, and he's pushing his chair back with a screech, and he's pulling his backpack back over his shoulders and taking his phone from the table again. But he takes the empty coffee cup, too, even though Jared drank most of it, because to put it in front of Jared and make him throw it away is the sort of thing that invites argument, while leaving is a perfectly passive move.
Especially if you say your lunch break is up, which it is, and which Evan does.
"I don't work in a bookstore," Evan can't help saying as he walks past Jared, "I work at Costco."
Loud and big and full of people pushing enormous carts. He doesn't mention he mostly works stocking shelves; Jared doesn't need to know that.
He throws away the coffee cup and heads to work, Jared's phone number in his phone.
Jared replies, later, in text. This. This is why Evan shouldn't have given Jared his phone number—and now he's already opened the message, so Jared knows he's read it, and now he has to come up with his response, what the hell is his response to okay I'm sorry too.
It's okay.
No. Delete, delete, delete...
We're both sorry. It we were teenagers, and teenagers do dumb things sometimes.
Jared will think Heidi has the phone. Delete, delete... Jared can probably see the bubbles appearing and disappearing, too, if he's watching. Although, why would he be watching?
Okay, he ends up sending, and immediately regrets it. Why don't you want to talk about it? he tacks on, so that there isn't so much focus on okay.
He's on the couch, flicking through Netflix, thinking about all the sad things he could watch to get his mind off of his run-in with Jared, about the text from his mom sitting on the open-screen of his phone because he was smart enough not to open it that says how did it go with Jared? And these eye emojis, like his mom is twenty years younger than she is and like she expects it to have gone some other way than the two of them setting off these little explosions between them. Again.
He settles on some slice-of-life show that follows a young-ish girl who doesn't have a life. She's living in a big city and she's in love, but she's not quirky-interesting, and no one is secretly in love with her. Her life is exactly as sad as it looks, and she eats alone and she walks alone and she FaceTimes her father, who feels bad for her. She doesn't even have her coworkers' numbers. There's no one to see her sadness.
Kind of lucky, almost, Evan thinks, to have no audience to your sad life. Luckier than living seventeen minutes from his mother's house, luckier than running into the boy you loved for your whole childhood who works for Google and telling him you work at Costco.
The movie's sad, though, and he likes that. There is no hidden silver lining. Her life is sad.
Evan's phone is ringing. He shouldn't pick it up, and the whole reason he watched the movie was to feel like the girl, but now he suddenly doesn't want to feel like the girl, and it's ten at night, and he thinks, somehow, that if you have a call at ten PM with someone who isn't your family, isn't that... well, isn't that something? That has to count as something.
"Dude." Jared answers. "Did you just let it ring all the way out and then call me directly back? Let me answer that—yes." There's a rustling; it sounds like Jared's in bed, or at least in blankets. "Did you just sit and watch the phone ring?"
Yes, Evan did. "I couldn't get to my phone in time," Evan lies. "I was doing..." but he can't think of anything.
"Hot girl shit," Jared says dryly. "With your hot girl?"
Evan huffs, and then wishes he hadn't. He doesn't think that kind of thing sounds very nice over the phone; it probably was all staticky. "Why are you so obsessed with Zoe?"
"You faked a friendship with her brother after he committed suicide to get in her pants, who's obsessed?"
"Seven years ago. We're over it; she's forgiven me." Evan pads over to his bed and sits there; it makes no real difference, but his bed is more comforting than the couch.
"We!" Jared's laughing again. Sounds like there's an edge to his voice, a bitterness, but maybe it's Evan's imagination, maybe it's the phone, maybe it's late and everything sounds harsh. "You're a we?"
"Jared, literally what is your obsession, it's ten."
"You were obsessed with her first! Now I just want to know where that went. Now I know."
"We're not a thing."
There's silence on the other end of the line. Eventually, "We?"
"Me and Zoe?" Who else would it be? Evan and... Evan and no one. He doesn't really know anyone else, except for this cute guy at work who isn't Jared.
"No shit?" There's another laugh, this one not so harsh. "You two are friends?"
"Yeah, long distance friends." Evan laughs, and to his surprise, it's real. It's not Jared; Jared's funny but not in a warm way—it's thinking about Zoe, who's living her best life and still finds the time to call Evan every now and then, with genuine enjoyment. "She's dating Alana; we're very... not a thing."
He's cold, so he tucks his legs into the blanket and stares ahead, leaning against the headboard with his pillow behind him. He hadn't realized until now how much strain between him and Jared came from looking at each other—Jared's quick-changing, smirking, ready-for-it expression never ceased to alarm Evan. Evan was not ready for it, and Jared would keep it coming.
"Huh," says Jared. "I didn't realize she was queer."
"Mmm, yeah." Now Evan realizes it's just talking. They're just talking. And it's so much less overwhelming, not being able to see Jared speeding through his thoughts, looking Evan over, raising his eyebrows. Only having to deal with what comes out of Jared's mouth. "It was never about Zoe, you know."
"Shit, Evan, why do we have to talk about this even more than we already have?"
"We haven't talked about it! I've talked about it! You haven't even answered my text."
There's a beat. "Asking me why I don't want to talk about it? Why would I want to talk about why I don't want to talk about it?"
Evan just sits there. Jared knows he's being a smartass, but he's always a smartass, especially when he wants to get out of something. Jared doesn't like silence, so Evan is silent. He tries not to even breathe audibly enough that the phone will pick it up.
"Shit, Evan," Jared says again, "I just don't need you getting all weepy on me, you know? I don't need that."
Ah. Okay then. "That's real nice of you, Jared," Evan says, and hangs up.
And silences his phone.
And tries to go to sleep, but he can't. He keeps thinking about that movie, instead, and the way her days always closed with a fade-to-black of her in her bed, curled up, alone.
In the morning, he calls Jared.
And Jared picks up.
"Not what I meant," Jared says the moment he's on the line, as if that's just been sitting on his tongue all night, "Not at all what I meant, dude."
"Jared," Evan says, and it's like the only thing his mouth knows how to say. What's with that? It's like it's all he wants, to keep having these conversations with Jared that go nowhere at all. He can't stop, just like he couldn't before. "Why do you wear the beanie?"
There's a laugh on the other end, pleasantly surprised, not as unkind and abrasive as Jared's laugh usually is. It's something that Evan shouldn't be hearing first thing in the morning, when he's not fully awake yet, when he's not fully able to rationally deal with the feelings that laugh sparks in him. Not that he's much more functional in the middle of the day, but sometimes that much more composure is the deciding point.
"Fucking cold in SF, man," Jared says, "You were in a sweatshirt when we met. And still the khakis."
"I was in my uniform," Evan says. "And a sweatshirt on top."
"Yeah? Do you wear something other than khakis when you're not going to work? What's on your legs right now?"
Evan's in the middle of changing, with his phone between his shoulder and his ear. It makes him feel busy, like he has a life, which he's not going to ever admit to Jared. "Nothing."
Silence on the other end of the line. Silence. "You're not going out like that, are you?" Jared's voice is weak.
"Putting on jeans."
Jared snorts; it seems he's found his conversational footing again. Good for him; one of them has. The other hasn't ever had it in the first place. "Original."
"You were wearing skinny jeans," Evan counters, "Just the other day. You're all the skinny white men we made fun of. The beanie, too! The flannel!"
"The flannel is gay!" Jared shouts into his ear, laughter in his voice, and Evan, his other foot halfway into his jeans, loses his balance and topples spectacularly onto the floor with a shout. "What was that," Jared's little tinny voice comes from the speaker of his phone, on the floor about a foot from Evan's hand.
"Nothing," Evan grunts, fumbling his way to standing. He finishes yanking his jeans on with more force and deliberate movement than is necessary and presses the phone to his ear again just in time to hear Jared make a skeptical noise.
"Fall again, Hansen?"
That weird thing that was happening just a minute ago, where they were having a conversation like friends—real friends, not ex-fake family friends in order to pay for car insurance—it disappears.
Jared doesn't know; Evan never told him.
Evan's broken arm is still a joke.
Strangely enough, it's this thought of all of them that makes him do it—the thought that if Jared did know, he'd never make fun of Evan's broken arm again, and the breathtaking realization that they were just teasing each other, playful and easy, thoughtless.
He could tell Jared, Evan thinks. Jared's got a real shitty exterior, but Evan thinks... if he told Jared it wouldn't be terrible. And he thinks oh, Jared is someone who has something to give under all that.
There's something there to latch onto.
Thinking that makes Evan want to try. "Lunch, same place, today next week."
Evan hangs up.
He likes hanging up—it's something bold and kind of uncalled for that he can do without having to really deal with the aftermath of it, and there's a thrilling moment with his phone in his hand where he thinks of Jared blinking at his call ended screen. He wouldn't dare do it to anyone but Jared.
After, he's not so sure he should've done that, because Jared didn't even agree, and how's Evan going to know whether to expect him now, but Evan has the same seat at the same sandwich shop whether or not Jared joins him, so it's not like his plans are going to change. He's just justifying this to himself when Jared calls, two days into Evan's endless wondering, to ask if he should bring Evan coffee and meet him there.
"Do you... know how much milk to put?" Evan asks.
"Too much," Jared replies, and Evan smiles—only because Jared can't see him through the phone—and says yes, Jared can get him coffee.
"Gosh, thanks, what an honor this is," Jared says, but he shows up in his scuffed-sneakers and clip-on Google nametag, a new, different flannel and new nerdy t-shirt and red skinny jeans—same exact outfit in different colors—bearing a hot cup of coffee and a smile like he can't help it.
He sets down the briefcase-man purse and crosses his ankles and hands Evan a coffee.
Evan looks at him, and he can't not smile. Jared is smiling, brown skin under the thin SF sunlight looking even better against his stupid two layers of shirt than he did last time. It's the arrogant smile, the come at me smile. Completely unafraid of being cringey, as long as he's clever in his own book.
It's the kind of smile Evan spent seven years wanting to kiss, and seven years after that missing.
"Hello," says Evan, "I'll feel awkward eating lunch with you just sitting there, watching me."
"Fuck," Jared says easily, "I'll get one of your stupid sandwiches."
"That was unnecessary," Evan mutters. He's trying not to smile, because Jared's actually pulling out his wallet and standing up, and it's making his heart do somersaults.
Jared taps Evan's shoulder and then flicks his fingers to his bag, wordlessly asking him to keep an eye on it. "Getting a sandwich? I'm a gentleman."
"Making a big deal about it." Evan pats the strap of Jared's bag, hanging across the back of Jared's chair, and waves Jared off. He eats what he can while Jared's gone anyway. Jared will just pick at the sandwich, unless he's changed, which it's totally possible he has, but since Jared doesn't eat lunch, apparently, Evan thinks it isn't likely Jared has changed.
When Jared gets back, half of Evan's sandwich is already gone, and he's wrapping one of the flimsy paper napkins around the other half to save in the plastic tupperware Heidi strongly encourages him to bring in a mini-campaign against food waste.
"We're going to talk about the past," Evan says, the way his therapist makes him practice speaking—firm, certain, a statement of fact.
Jared seems unimpressed. "Are we now?" He tugs his ham from between the rye bread and eats that in small bites, blinking at Evan like he's waiting.
"Yeah," says Evan, much less sure now. "We can't just..." He doesn't have anything more than that, so he shrugs.
Jared seems to consider him, flicking his brown eyes from Evan's sandwich, now packed in the tupperware, to Evan's face and then to the side, as if he's thinking very profound thoughts. He doesn't stop eating the ham. Eventually he sits back, ham eaten. "Are we even going to happen?"
Evan startles so hard he upsets the table. Are we even going to happen? Asks Jared. Who is wearing flannel and knows it's gay and has been to SF pride and lives in the same city as Evan—what's Evan supposed to think?
But he asks anyway, and thank god he does, because Jared swallows and explains, "You know... like are we going to hit off and be friends for life, because then maybe you're right. But if we're not planning on being godfathers of each other's children or something, I don't know why we'd go through the effort of talking about all that shit."
"I... I dunno," Evan stumbles, "I mean, my therapist says talking about things helps with it. Like, even if we never saw each other again, it would help."
"Help you, maybe." Jared's eating the lettuce now, ripping it with his fingers. Evan passes him a napkin. "Is this the same stupid therapist who's recommendation kicked off the Connor Incident, as it were?"
Evan glances around the crowded outside dining space of the sandwich shop, as if the words Connor Incident is going to spark a reaction in anyone other than himself, but of course the people just continue their chatter, talking about their happy lives and their cute gay boyfriends, and the juice bar down the street. "No, we got a new... well we moved, so we got a new—I got a new therapist. Here."
"Huh. And—"
"Anyway, Jared, do you want to happen or not? Us, I mean. Do you want us to happen or not?"
Now Jared's just shredding the lettuce, and his tray is a mess; he shouldn't have gotten lunch if he wasn't going to eat it, and Evan shouldn't have encouraged him. "Well, do you suddenly—plot twist!—" He pops his hands open in a surprise! gesture. "—have a wealth of friends, or is it just me?"
Evan grits his teeth. "Is that a yes? We're not even, like, you're not even a good friend."
Something flashes quickly across Jared's face, but it's gone before Evan can catch it, and then Jared looks Evan's way, and so Evan looks at his coffee and the small stream of steam rising from it.
"True but very harsh," Jared says, his voice light again.
"And you're the one who called me, and you're even the one who followed me from Peet's in the first place—"
"Alright, alright."
"It's not like I invited you to come and eat with us, and now my mom's going to want us to be friends because she's still too involved in my life—"
"Okay, you've made your point, I want us to happen, yes," Jared says loudly, over Evan, and someone passing by goes, ooh, shoot your shot. "The vestiges of our shitty not-friendship still live in me at the bottom of my heart, shriveled up with old age and lack of nourishment. Do you share this sentiment, Evan Hansen?"
Not really, Evan wants to say, but that wouldn't actually be true. If he could get away with not admitting it, he would, but Jared will probably just abandon ship if Evan lies, so he focuses on his coffee again, sliding the little paper loop around it up and down so that it clacks against the table top, and says, "I mean, yeah, I guess."
"Great, I'll be at your place after work to write the emails," Jared says, and then without even pausing, "Kidding, what should I do now that I have an in?"
"You make it sound like I'm, like, a target. Like of an assasination or something."
Clack, clack, clack. The truth is, Evan's not really sure. He's had a couple friends that faded out before much came of it since he graduated, and one single boyfriend who mostly bought him tea he didn't like and kissed him in public and conveniently forgot he didn't like gatherings of large numbers of people. He's not, like, a mastermind at developing friendships, especially not with people who already know you, but they don't. But they really do. But they don't.
"Goal of friendship officially created, over. Proceed towards goal of friendship, over," Jared rasps, cupping his hand over his mouth like he's holding a walkie-talkie. So cringe, but it's working: Evan feels the wind go out of the sails of his indignation, and he kind of just wants to be friends, wants to hang out with Jared at sandwich shops and laugh at hipsters who walk by and then laugh at Jared for being so much like them. "Not the case, cross my heart, swear on American Pie."
"Okay but can we talk about it now?" Evan still doesn't look at Jared when he asks, because Jared's going to make a face and Evan doesn't need to see it. He should've established this as a condition when he agreed that yes, maybe he'd like to have a Thing of Some Sort with Jared, even though it's very ill advised.
Turns out not looking at Jared is pointless, because Jared makes his lack of enthusiasm very clear with a long, drawn-out groan. "Uhg-g-g-g-g," he says, timing each of his gs with a clack of the coffee cup sleeve. "I have to get back to work, so-rry. Just come to my place or something so that we don't have to do this in public. Just in case there's some crying involved."
Evan opens his mouth to object—really? He's running off now? But Jared must anticipate this, because he rushes to stand and grab his stuff, saying, "Listen, we can talk, if you really want, we can make that happen. Like, seriously, I promise. But can we please give it some time?"
They're friends and they're not. They clash and they fit.
They both need the space to leave some things be, Evan thinks, instead of trying to shove them into place.
He's kind enough not to say just in case you cry, even though they both know Evan was always the one crying about everything. Evan's nice enough not to point out that last time, Jared didn't care that he was on the clock while they had lunch, or demand that they talk about it immediately.
It's weird pulling punches, but when they wave an awkward goodbye and Evan goes to work, there is no part of Evan that wishes he pushed the point.
They keep in touch, him and Jared, through text and occasionally through lunch, although Tuesdays still belong to Heidi and Evan has very firmly told Jared he cannot come—there's only so long Heidi can keep her mouth shut about going to Pride and Evan's crush on Jared, even if she thinks she's being subtle. In any case, it gives him time to discuss his situation with Heidi, at least to the extent that it's possible with how much he tells her.
He doesn't tell her he lied for years that Jared was a good friend because Jared told him to. To pay for his car insurance. He doesn't tell her that Jared's still got his thing going, the deflect and be a smartass and sometimes an asshole to maintain control of the conversation, because she never knew he did that in the first place. But she knows about the Connor Project, and she knows about his crush on Jared, and she can tell it's still very much there.
She advises him to let Jared talk about it in his own time.
His therapist tells him Jared deserves time, deserves to have Evan wait, but that it might also not be very good for Evan to be kept hanging like this, waiting for this guy he's clearly got lodged in his heart to settle correctly into Evan's life.
Evan decides to wait on it.
And weirdly enough, they kind of do settle.
Jared's place is nicer than Evan's—no surprise there—and they have dinner together, sometimes, on the couch in front of Jared's flatscreen TV, which he says he definitely could not afford but bought anyway. Evan says this means he could probably afford it; he knows Jared keeps tabs on his finances in all his stupid spreasheets. Jared admits yes, he could afford it, but he had to pinch a lot of pennies to justify it to himself, skimping on coffees and impulse buys and sometimes very good food, and that counts as not being able to afford it.
They bicker about this often. It's kind of nice.
Jared, for all his penny-pinching, has a Nice place, Nice with a capital N, with furniture that seems relatively new and clean and walls that are any color but white, but which clash enormously. Evan's not allowed in Jared's bedroom, so he suspects that's where most of the mess is—the rest of his place is shockingly neat, as if he's just been treating it like a guest house for three years.
Jared likes to call Evan a cuddler, but it's Jared who keeps picking horror movies with too many jump-scares, and Evan needs someone to cling to. And even though he warns Jared of this, Jared picks them anyway, and then makes fun of Evan for jumping. But he doesn't ever remove his arm from around Evan when Evan presses into his side.
Sometimes—and this is a very rare sometimes—Jared will pick something so boring that Evan will fall asleep on his shoulder and wake up two hours later with a crick in his neck to find that Jared has not elected to wake him up; instead he's scrolling through Twitter having arguments about 1D, who he's never listened to, or what the real plural of platypus is.
The first time Evan wakes up like this, he wakes up with a jolt. The last bits of a nightmare—or memory, whichever you call it—about falling in a forest are fading from his mind, and he finds Jared's warm fingers running through his hair.
They freeze the moment Evan jolts, but the thing about freezing is that they're still in Evan's hair. Evan doesn't want to move them from there, so he simply stays still and moves his eyes, flicking them to glance at Jared's face, which is hard to see because it's nighttime, the TV has turned off, and Jared has apparently not gotten up to turn on the light, probably because it would wake Evan up. By the light of Jared's phone, though, he can tell Jared's not looking at him, as if he doesn't even notice Evan's awake.
If he's going to do that, Evan finds himself thinking, then Evan's going to do that, too. He watches Jared's jaw move just a little bit, like he wants to swallow but he won't, and the faint glare of Jared's Twitter on his glasses. The angle of the light on his phone emphasises Jared's nose, the shine of his dark hair. It makes his eyelashes look a mile long from where Evan's head is on Jared's shoulder.
Evan suddenly feels that even his breathing is a little too loud.
He can feel the warmth of Jared pressed against him; soft flannel and a T-shirt and the steady flame of body heat underneath, the whole line of where their ribs press together and then where Evan's cheek rests on Jared's shoulder and to the hand still in his hair.
There's a very human give to him, a softness.
"I know you're awake," Jared says, all raspy. A morning voice, but for 11:30 at night. With as much grace as Evan thinks is probably possible for the situation, Jared extracts his hand from Evan's hair, leaving the top of Evan's head feeling cold. "If I volunteered earlier to be your pillow, my memory has since been erased. Up, up."
Evan sits up with reluctant obedience and swallows down his question about what Jared's hand was doing running through his hair, but it must show on his face, because Jared pats Evan's knee placatingly.
"You looked like you weren't having a very nice sleep," he says, eyes returning to his Twitter trolling, "Seemed to have a positive effect."
"Oh, thanks." And that's Evan's 11:30 at night morning voice.
In the light of Jared's phone, Evan thinks he can see Jared's cheeks darken just a little, can see Jared's eyes dart almost helplessly his way before focusing on his Twitter again.
"What's on Twitter?" Evan stretches a little before settling back into Jared's couch.
"Uh... soccer player came out as bisexual." Jared's thumb is now scrolling too quickly for Jared to actually be reading any of his feed, and the soccer player is probably fictional, but Evan doesn't call him on it.
Instead, still about a quarter asleep, Evan murmurs, "Hey, twins!"
And when Jared says, "No, I'm gay," Evan takes a little pause to think about what he wants to say. His therapist has basically told him to come out whenever the fuck he wants—as long as he's comfortable and it's his choice, as opposed to someone forcibly outing him or Evan accidentally outing himself to win an argument, which is the kind of thing only his therapist, and maybe Jared and his mom, know him well enough to know that he would do.
"I'm bi, I mean," Evan says.
Jared's phone screen clicks off, and now the only light is the faint light from around the corner, where they left the kitchen light on, and it's barely enough to make out the silhouette of Jared's features: his eyebrows, his nose, his lips.
"Huh," says Jared, his glasses glinting faintly. He sounds funny.
He's closer than Evan thinks he is, and when Evan sits up, that glasses-glint is right up in his face for a split second, before Jared sits back quickly to restore their distance.
"I should probably get home before I'm tired enough that I'll fall asleep behind the wheel," he says in one big rush of words.
Jared stands, and his silhouette moves. There are footsteps away from Evan, and then a click, and then the lights all flood on, blindingly bright. "I drove you here, actually." The funny note in Jared's voice has faded, replaced by his usual deadpan. "I'll drive you back."
Evan doesn't like driving, and avoids it when he can, and so Jared usually drives him.
They kind of look at each other when Evan's at his apartment door—Jared having walked him like a gentleman, but saying things like if anyone got robbed halfway up to their own apartment, it would be you as if this kind of behavior demands an excuse—and don't say anything.
"Bisexual," Jared says, pointing at Evan's chest, and then he smooths down Evan's hair with this soft little smile and turns and leaves with zero explanation as to what's happening, and then they just get back together two days later and do not mention it.
Jared doesn't put his fingers in Evan's hair again, and they go on with their lives, ordering out and eating it in front of the TV.
They order out everything, Evan curious because making orders he hasn't ordered before or going to new places makes him nervous and Jared because he has apparently no limits on what he's willing to eat. Jared orders over the phone for both of them, or sometimes drives to order take-out, leaving Evan alone in Jared's flat with nothing but his anxiety and his curiosity and a little bit of his depression.
When Jared's gone, Evan wanders the apartment with his hands tucked into his pockets like he's in a museum.
It's during these times that he notices little things that make this place Jared's, like how he has indoor house-plant pots full of dead things that he doesn't bother to throw out lined neatly up on the windowsill in front of the kitchen sink, like a plant cemetery; and how he keeps the Nutella in the fridge because he's a heathen; and has cat bowls, even though he doesn't have a cat, in the corner, filled with orbeez—the squishy ones with water, not the dry ones. There's practically a collection of bath bombs in the bathroom cabinet, and the combined aggressively pleasant smell of them makes Evan's throat itch with the urge to cough.
Sometimes it makes him very warm that he gets to see these stupid things.
Other times he wishes he had his own stupid things; the only things lying around in his apartment are unused paper napkins, clothes around his bedroom floor, jackets and shoes out of place near the front door and random flyers he wasn't interested in but didn't know how to turn down from street-corner activists talking to him about gentrification. He always feels really bad when he sees them, because he's exactly who they don't want—a young twenty-something white man, moving here when he is specifically twenty-something and making a market for squished-together, big-profit city apartments that make prices go up and up and up and up.
The only thing he's missing is working for a tech industry and being deeply enthusiastic about organic juice.
When he tells this to Jared, Jared laughs out loud, and it makes something tumble in Evan's stomach. "Yeah, they hate us," he says, slipping off his Google lanyard. After all these weeks, Evan still doesn't know if Jared has to wear it to work or if he just enjoys wearing something as deeply uncool as a lanyard. "Tech is fucking this place so hard in the ass, culture-wise."
It's ramen tonight, which Jared picked up on his way back from work. He'd told Evan to just let himself in, and Evan had said he didn't have a key. Jared sets down the ramen now and goes off to get bowls from the kitchen, because he refuses to eat soup out of plastic cylinders and he refuses to let Evan eat soup out of plastic cylinders in his presence.
He raises his volume and keeps talking: "Don't feel so guilty about it, dude. It's not like you single handedly gentrified the entire Bay Area. I'm the one who works in tech."
"Yeah, but at least you're not white."
Jared rounds the corner with two bowls and stops in the doorway, raising them in the unmistakable Lion King all-hail-Simba pose. "Yeah, well, you're not single handedly responsible for the inherent racism of gentrification either, jeez. Sometimes you're at fault without it being, like, your fault, you know?"
Evan snaps his chopsticks and pours his ramen into the bowl carefully. Everything ends up upside-down—the egg and the green onion and the meat on the bottom, the noodles on top. "That doesn't make any sense. I'm literally—I'm literally part of the problem, like, that's not... you can't... that's non-debatable."
"Yeah, I mean, you're right, but—shit." Jared didn't dump his ramen as carefully as Evan did, and now it has splashed over the table and onto the back of Jared's fingers. Jared unselfconsciously sticks his fingers in his mouth and sucks on them, and Evan feels very warm. "It's good," Jared says, pulling his fingers out of his mouth, and then, catching sight of Evan's expression, shrugging. "Ramen broth on my hand," he says, as if this justifies giving his fingers a blowjob in front of Evan's face, and he shuffles off, presumably to wash his hand off and fetch a rag or something.
"At least we don't have a detrimental level of enthusiasm for organic juice," he says over the sound of running water. When he comes back in, it's only in a T-shirt that says I only do one kind of gag, which Evan has seen him wear before, but never without a flannel or jacket on top. And pants, of course, he's also wearing pants. "Soup got on my shirt," Jared explains, his cheeks a little flushed.
Evan knows Jared likes to wear loose things, and that T-shirt doesn't cut it, and he can respect that and everything, but in his humble opinion Jared looks—really good in just the T-shirt. He can finally see the real shape of Jared's shoulders, and tonight's really looking like more than Evan can handle.
Jared wipes up the spilled ramen with a rag with one hand and passes Evan his chopsticks with the other.
Evan pulls them out of their little paper sleeve. "You should snap your own chopsticks. Grow up, Jared."
"They hate me," Jared calls over his shoulder, leaving with the dirty rag. "They refuse to break right for me."
"No, you suck because you have no practice."
"Slander." Jared stands in front of Evan, picking up his ramen bowl and waiting with no suspense. He knows Evan will snap them for him, and Evan does; they come cleanly apart. "Thank you, my hero, my darling, the chopstick-snapper of the country, I hardly know how to express my gratitude..."
Evan just lets him go on as they settle themselves on the couch, having long learned that Jared doesn't care if they're eating soup on the couch, because Jared can be a very neat eater if he tries and he doesn't seem to realize that this is not a skill everyone shares.
The back of Jared's I only do one kind of gag shirt says, the sucky kind on the back of it.
Evan's never seen the back of this shirt before.
He feels very acutely like he's going to die.
"No jump scares," he insists as Jared flicks through Netflix, "Please? It's just—we have soup."
"Yeah, yeah." Jared's got his socked feet up on the couch, and his bowl clamped between his knees and he's fiddling with the remote with one hand and slurping ramen noodles with the other and Evan cannot look at him or he will get very, very nervous. "Calm the fuck down, if I spill and burn my dick off, that will be my problem to deal with, not yours."
"Will it?" Evan says, not looking away from the Netflix screen and definitely not thinking about Jared's dick.
There's a little fumble next to him, and then a shit, and Evan risks a look. A little bit—not too much, but definitely some—ramen noodles have made their way onto Jared's I only do one kind of gag shirt.
"Um." Evan looks at Jared, and Jared stares back at him, his bowl still precariously between his knees, making no move to pick the noodles up. Making no move at all. What did Evan say? He can't think of anything weird that he's said. "You know, because, um. I mean if you did... seriously burn yourself, I'd have to help you, right? Or like in the worst, worst, worst case scenario, like—I mean I think the, really, the worst—I'd, like, have to drive you. Like to the doctor. Or call someone."
"Right. Yeah, that makes sense. You're making sense," Jared says faintly. He cracks a little bit of a smile. "Calling someone, worst thing in the world." He picks carefully at the noodles on the stomach of his shirt. "But I could probably drive myself, if it was like, the total end of the world for you to drive."
"I do drive sometimes," Evan mumbles. "Anyway, no you couldn't. I mean, like, not if you burnt your dick off, hypothetically. Like I think that, you know, I think that would hurt kind of a lot. To drive."
There's a pause. "I think you just won an argument against me for the first time in your life," Jared says mildly, handing the remote to Evan and smirking at Evan's obvious relief when he uses his now free hand to help himself sit properly and hold his bowl with his hand this time. "If no jump scares, you better choose the movie. Show me what you got. But for the record, when have I been known to spill things? I would've been fine."
Evan doesn't really know how to choose a good movie on Netflix. He usually just picks one that doesn't look like it has horror elements and goes with that; sometimes he likes them okay, sometimes he loves them, sometimes they really suck, but it's kind of funny to see how bad it is. "I mean, you know, you spilled when you were transferring it into your bowl. And also just now."
"I didn't spill, they dropped from my chopsticks."
"Okay." Evan settles on the depressing one, with the girl with no friends living alone in the city.
"Also, anomaly," Jared says. "Today's not a good day for me."
"Uh-huh." Evan half-grins Jared's way. "You have, like, half your bowl left."
"Just fucking press play." Jared's grinning back.
They watch as the main character goes through the motions: eat, work, eat, work, eat, call her father, go to sleep, repeat. Check her phone, empty, check her phone, empty, check her phone, still empty.
Evan didn't cry the first time, but for some reason he's tearing up watching it this time, watching her look out the window with muffled sadness, like she hasn't even had enough to lose enough to really know what she's missing. She's wishing for an idea—something better, something more.
"Jesus," Jared says somewhere in the middle, "is this the kind of thing you watch by yourself?"
Evan hums an affirmative and takes Jared's bowl to the kitchen, because Jared seems reluctant to pull himself away from this girl's story, even though the plot is very slow and nothing... really... happens, per se, in the movie. It's like a picture of this character's life, stre-e-e-tched. It's kind of cute to him, feels kind of warm in his chest, the way Jared's oddly pulled into this movie the way Evan is.
"Depressing as hell," he thinks he hears Jared say, and then, louder, "you should watch this shit with me, at least. This is a terrible thing to watch alone."
Evan returns, bowl-free, and settles himself into Jared's side. "Hmm. Maybe. It's better than the horror movies."
The girl eats another microwave dinner and closes the curtains, turning off the light in her bedroom. Hands on her stomach. Looking at the ceiling.
When the credits roll, they're both quiet. Evan thinks they might both be almost-crying, unable to make a sound without opening the gates, based on the rapidity of Jared's swallows.
They sit there in front of the black screen when the credits are over.
"You know," Jared says abruptly, in a very clear voice. "We're friends."
Evan is quiet for a moment, unmoving on Jared's shoulder, his heart beating solidly in his chest. Then he lifts his head. "We happened." It's the first time he's thought about them that way.
They're friends.
Jared's very close; Evan can see the beginnings of stubble—he shaves every morning without fail, and it's seven-thirty now, even though the summer evening makes it look like it's still 5 o'clock PM outside, and he's always rubbing his jaw at the end of the day with his thumb like he can just imagine the annoyance of stubble coming in if he skips a day.
"I did want to be your friend in high school. The car insurance thing was one hundred percent a lie," Jared says, still very close. "Non sequitur."
Evan blinks and sits back. "What? The, the car insurance?"
Jared's arm is still slung up on the back of the couch, and he taps his fingers against the cushion, tap-tap-tap. "I mean it was a pretty flimsy story to begin with; I'm surprised you bought it."
"But—But—" Evan has lived with knowing that his one high school friend was his family friend, who wasn't actually his friend and who only talked to Evan to ensure Evan would put in a good word with his mom, to get his parents to pay for his car insurance. It's a very... round-about story, now that he thinks about it, but that's just been one of the facts of his social life for ten years. More. "But you weren't even my friend, like, like that doesn't even make sense, like if you—I don't know. If you wanted to be my friend, or whatever, and you had this whole, like, story, right, to make an excuse for why you had to be my friend, right, because that's what you're saying, then, then, I mean that's what you're saying right?"
Jared raises his eyebrows and nods. "I verbally confirm."
"Then, then why weren't you, like, actually my friend? Like what was the point of that excuse if you weren't even going to do it?"
The tapping increases speed. "Turns out friendship is a very complicated endeavor that requires more than I expected."
A laugh escapes Evan, not entirely made of amusement. He can absolutely see this in Jared. "Yeah, it does."
"I'm trying to..." Jared's forehead wrinkles, the way it does when he's trying his very best to say something genuine and it's not coming out. "I'm trying to talk about it."
Evan's breath catches. He realizes, for the first time, that among the past couple months, the objective of talking about it has faded and faded until somewhere in there, he had forgotten about it completely. Jared was right after all—they could forge this thing between them without ever looking back.
"Evan, if you leave me hanging..." There's a weak threat in Jared's voice.
"No, no, I'm just—" Evan turns on the couch, because they can't have this conversation shoulder to shoulder. "Just surprised. I mean you didn't like, I just didn't expect that. But thank you, I mean, I know you don't want to."
"I mean... I kind of do want to. I just don't want to."
"Yeah," Evan says, because he doesn't know what this means. "Uh, okay."
Jared's got his fingers tapping relentlessly now, and his expression is almost shockingly serious, because his expression is almost never serious, and now it's a bit startling to see.
Evan just kind of looks at him for a moment. "I just wanted to... to apologize, I think," he says finally. "Because—"
"This is the part I didn't want, where you list my grievances."
"Um, well, I'm going to." Evan pauses awkwardly. Jared just heaves a sigh. "I mean, it was really messed up, you know, to, to, to have you, write the emails. I mean to get you to do that—that's so fucked. And like, you should know, I think, I mean I should say, I've wanted to say, I... I know it was fucked. I mean, and I knew it was fucked. To you. I mean it was fucked in general, but like, especially what I did to you."
"Never have I ever heard Evan Hansen curse that much," Jared mutters, but Evan can tell, from the way his body is turned, that Jared's listening.
"And then, afterward, when I... I mean I did ditch you. I mean, I didn't really think I was ditching you, like I didn't think you'd care, but I did it. You know? Like I didn't think... but either way, I guess in the end I realized it upset you and I didn't ever make up for that."
Jared's fingers still on the back of the couch. "Kind of making up for it now."
"I also... want to say..."
"A lot to say."
"I had a lot of time to think about it." Evan looks down, away from Jared's unreadable expression and his blink-blink eyes, as if he's just drinking Evan's words in indiscriminately. He fiddles with the edge of his shirt and watches his fingers twist. "I thought, you know, that if I saw you, I kind of wanted to clear my name, or whatever. Because Zoe, she let me explain, and I don't think she got over it fast, or whatever, but she at least knew how I felt, you know? And with you I think you never really did know." He glances up for a moment, to see if Jared's following.
Jared scoffs and looks away for the first time in the past few minutes. "Uh, yeah, you were in love with her," he says, very flat, very duh. Bitter, Evan thinks.
"No, I mean." Evan looks back at his hands, at the fabric wrapping around his fingers, unwrapping, wrapping. "You said, you know, oh wow, Connor killing himself is like the best thing that ever happened to you—"
He can feel Jared flinch, and hears Jared mutter a curse.
"—And, you know, that I got popular off of our fake friendship, and that I got to dick down Zoe—which I didn't do, by the way—"
Jared makes another sound, a curse, again. This time, it sounds mostly out of surprise.
"But I just wanted to explain. Like, that for what it's worth, and maybe it isn't worth that much, but for what it's worth, I didn't want those emails and a fake friendship with Connor and everything because it would make me popular or get Zoe to notice me, or, or, or anything like that. I mean, I really did just want the Murphys to be happy, you know?" Evan can feel his heart quicken and his breath quicken and his words quicken. "And then I was lying and I didn't know how to stop or when to stop—"
"Evan," Jared's saying, "Evan, whoa, hey, slow down." Jared's warm brown fingers close around Evan's fumbling ones and pull them away from the edge of Evan's shirt. "You always get so upset about the Connor Incident," he says quietly. "Just breathe."
"For what it's worth," Evan pushes on, determined to finish the thought, though he takes care to slow his words, "I think I screwed you over for better reasons than you think I screwed you over for."
Jared shifts on the couch, and the cushions dip, his hands finding a stronger hold on Evan's. He's doing this little thing with his thumb, running it back and forth, and it's in time with Evan's breathing, slow, slow, back and forth. "I mean, if you think social cowardice is a better reason than social ambition," he says, but it's almost warm. There's nothing angry about it, nothing at all.
When Evan glances up, Jared's gaze is fixed on Evan's face. "I did know."
"Um." Evan's had this sitting on his chest for forever, and he's still trying to process that it's finally made its way out of his mouth and into Jared's ears. It isn't helping that Jared's looking at him like that, or that Jared's holding his hands. "Knew..."
"Your reasons for the whole Connor thing," Jared clarifies. "It was kind of my fault."
Evan bites his lip. "Mmm, no, not really. It was, like, definitely mine, Jared."
Jared pushes his glasses up his nose, even though they're not slipping, which he does when he's agitated. "What was I saying earlier about you being at fault and it not being entirely, completely your fault? Something like that. That, what I said before! Again! It was your decisions, and they were bad ones, but you were also a victim of circumstance."
"Oh my god, Jared."
"I mean, to a degree."
"I mean, I really think there's no... like, there's no question, here, you know? Like who did those things? Me. Who made those decisions? Me."
Jared breaks eye contact and hand contact and stands, making his way around the couch towards the light switch. "You didn't hold me at gunpoint and demand I help you with the emails." He hovers by the light switch after he turns it on—it's a dimmer, and he's absently raising and lowering the level of light in the room, not looking at Evan. Not even facing Evan. "I made decisions too, you know."
"That's just a really clear statement, you know, Jared." Evan's hands, now empty, settle in Evan's lap.
"I mean..." Dimmer... brighter... dimmer... brighter.... "I knew what you were like. What you are like. You worry so much about what people think, but not like me, right? I want to be cool, or whatever."
"Really? Wow."
"Fuck off. My very correct apartment, my gay flannel, laptop and crappy coffee, the whole nine yards, right? And you—" Jared turns back to Evan, the crease between his brows now visible in the light. "I've always known you care about being, God, I don't know, good. Keeping people happy. Letting me pick the movie and never snooping in my room, you know? Lunch with your mom every Tuesday. You're not even brave enough to hang up the phone!"
Evan makes a sound of protest.
"Except for on me," Jared amends. "Anyway, I knew. And seventeen-year-old me was a stupid fuck, right? What did I say to you, every day, every time we talked after they found the letter in Connor's pocket."
"If I tell the truth, they'll hate me," Evan supplies. He's not sure if it's automatic reflex. "If they find out what they thought was their son's suicide note was just my stupid letter to my stupid therapist I would break their hearts and they'd all hate me."
Jared nods, once, and then looks away, still leaning on the wall next to the light switch. "I mean, I knew what I was doing," he says to his shoes. "And then after you lied, I said some shit about how they better not catch you lying, or there could be legal charges."
"Which was not true," Evan says. He's since found that out. He didn't really know what to do with that information, but it was always a fuck moment whenever he remembered. Fuck, it didn't have to go that far. Fuck, it didn't have to go very far at all. It didn't have to go anywhere, if he'd just grown a pair. "But I still lied to them. I mean, I still fucking said yes, I was best friends with your son and those are his last words in a letter addressed to me, like those words came out of my mouth. Willingly."
"This is why I didn't want to talk about it." Jared speaks softly, pushing off the wall to finally walk closer to Evan. "You're so fucking guilty about it. I mean, what am I supposed to say to you? Yes, it's definitely your fault, and yes it was a shitty thing to do."
"I know. It was. And it was."
"But it's also not. It wasn't all you. It was also me, pushing your buttons just because—I mean, to this day, I cannot fathom why I did that—because I liked it when you came to me for advice? Because I wanted you to keep asking? And it was also nobody, it was just chance. It's not your fault Connor was an asshole who stole your letter to your therapist. It's not your fault your therapist had terrible ideas for therapy. It's not your fault they thought it was Connor's letter to you, and it's not your fault your dick was so hard for Zoe Murphy you were incapable of looking at her and breaking her heart by saying yes, Connor left them without a note or anything, it's not your fault your dad's an ass and your mom's always working, and Connor's rich mom and his rich dad loved you and they spoiled you and cried their big sad tears all over you, and you didn't want to make them any sadder, especially after I told you it would shatter them." Jared's standing right in front of Evan now, the back of the couch between them, his fingers digging into the back of the couch as he looks down at Evan. "...You know?"
Evan stares at Jared—his chest rising and falling, his brows drawn together, his mouth a tight line. "You know, I think. I think... I think you didn't want to talk about it, maybe, because you're guilty."
Jared's shoulders drop, and he steps away from Evan, walking over to slump down on the couch beside him. "Blame can be shared among multiple persons. As they say. You did some real fucking over, you know? But you, specifically you, were also deeply susceptible to being fucked over by that particular situation. And who put you in that situation?"
"Connor."
"Shifting the blame to a dead man, dick move."
"He took the letter."
"Whatever, he took the letter because he's naturally an asshole; he's an external factor."
This shocks a quiet laugh out of Evan, and something that's been wound tight inside him—for years, he thinks—loosens. "That's not very logical. And now you're speaking ill of the dead, Jared. Dick move."
He meets Jared's eye, and he can see that little ever-present spark of humor beginning to return. "Okay, okay," Jared says. "Check and mate."
And he leans against Evan, laying his head on Evan's shoulder.
When Jared drives Evan home, there's a different sort of quiet between them, a very satisfied quiet, the kind of quiet that is more than pleasant and more than okay. They're basking in this thing between them, both new and familiar, and they're settling into what they are post-Talking About the Past.
Evan suspects Jared has gotten more off his chest than Evan himself.
The city is loud, or at least louder than it usually is when Jared returns Evan to his apartment, because it's earlier than Evan usually heads in. Even though noise usually feels like it's pushing in on Evan just a little, right now it doesn't feel like that at all; it feels like there's a bubble that envelopes him and Jared. They're in a universe inside a universe, and the only sound inside their universe is their clunky foot-falls on the metal stairs up to Evan's apartment.
They both stall in the doorway. "Who needs a therapist when you have me to argue with," Jared jokes, in almost this tender way. His hand reaches out to Evan's and kind of brushes it before falling back to his side, which is such a useless, hapless movement that it makes Evan's heart skip. Jared claps his hands together and keeps them clasped in front of them, as if he's trying to keep them in check. "Just cancel and give me a call. It'll save you money."
Evan can understand why Jared clasped his hands; his own hands tingle with the urge to reach out and touch Jared, for some other impactful gesture, like clapping him awkwardly on the shoulder. He's standing on the threshold, so he places on hand on the doorway and one on the doorknob, to be safe. "I don't think you have emotional distance," he says uncertainly.
He means it. He's not sure if Jared will admit to it—it's probably a very easy thing to laugh off. It was made for a wiseass to run his mouth about.
Jared just pushes his glasses up his nose with a knuckle. "Guess I don't."
They stand there, Evan watching Jared watch Evan. Jared's shoes scuff against the landing, and Evan's fingers tap against the doorway.
Evan can see it in Jared's eyes, in his face, in the way he stands, now that he's brave enough to look hard enough, now that he feels freer than ever to breathe around Jared.
Jared wants to hold him and touch him and have him.
It's a quiet realization.
An easy one.
Evan thinks it has been creeping up on him, step by step by step, for a long time, now. Weeks. Tiptoeing into his brain and darting out of reach, leaving little clues behind, so that when Evan finally found that realization, it didn't feel like a surprise. It felt like, oh, there you are.
Finally stopping his fingers from tapping on the doorway, Evan lets out a breath. "I'm going to hug you," he says carefully, and Jared looks up, and Evan thinks maybe Jared knows that he knows.
"Bring it in, Hansen."
Evan wraps his arms around Jared's shoulders, and Jared's warm arms close around Evan's ribcage—he still hasn't put anything over that T-shirt and the heat of his skin bleeds through Evan's shirt easily. Jared is solid and soft, off-brand cologne and fingers digging into Evan's sides, his breathing even and his heartbeat uneven.
Jared presses his forehead into Evan's neck and murmurs, "'Night, Evan."
"Goodnight."
It happens on a completely uneventful afternoon.
Summer has faded into fall, and Jared has started to come over to Evan's place as well, although they both agree that Evan's place is nicer. They sit at Evan's table, Evan in a chair and Jared on the table beside him, his legs hanging off the edge, swinging.
Evan's looking at his screen time week wrap up, mildly proud of himself for not spending so much time on Instagram, being paranoid that he's a fraud of a 25 year old because he doesn't have a picturesque life with one kid and one pregnant wife and two dogs and a moderately attractive house. Instead, according to his phone, he's spent battery and screen time on messages and, on occasion, FaceTimes and calls. There are only two people he feels comfortable FaceTiming and calling—his mom, who calls all the time but rarely for more than two minutes, and Jared. He's spent the majority of his battery and his phone time on Jared.
The same can not be said for Jared, in terms of percentage of screen time spent on Evan. He's on Twitter now, in yet another of his trivial fights, completely trolling. JK Rowling stans, Taylor Swift stans, Michael Jackson stans, teenage Beatles fans who say they were born in the wrong decade. Completely ridiculous shit, as Evan has discovered. Ringo Starr kissed my dad's ass at a baseball game and Taylor Swift did a meet and greet on the moon and JK Rowling has announced the release date of the Grindelore sex tape for this December.
"What is it now?" Evan asks absently, clicking off his phone and nudging Jared off the table so they can grab their dinner from the microwave, which is beeping loudly.
"Someone's taking my claim that Hermione kissed Draco onscreen very seriously," Jared says, following Evan into the kitchen without looking up. "I think maybe I made my claim too realistic."
"That's propaganda for the het agenda." Evan takes out oven mitts—Jared snickers at how Evan needs oven mitts to take a glass container out of the microwave, but he always leaves that part to Evan, so it just makes Evan smile at this point—and tries not to laugh when Jared laughs.
"Good job, Evan, you did a funny."
Evan sets the food on the counter and turns to look at Jared. He's surprised for a moment to find that Jared has tucked his phone away in his back pocket and has both hands shoved deep into his front pockets, the way he only does when he's nervous. His glasses are freshly pushed up his nose, making his brown eyes a little blurrier.
More important than all of this, he's looking at Evan without a trace of humor on his face—there's the corner of a smile, maybe, in the crinkle of his eyes, but it just looks affectionate. There's something deeper and stronger and solemn in his gaze.
"What," says Evan. He barely gets the word out.
"You know what." It's so strange to hear Jared talk without an edge of laughter to it, absent of irony and his cheeky wit. He swallows and presses his lips together, almost like he's frowning, and his glasses slip down just a little bit.
Evan can't speak, and his heart is skipping in his chest, and he suddenly feels shaky. Oh, he thinks, is this how it happens? He rocks forward on his heels and doesn't know how to lean closer without being awkward and flicks his eyes over Jared's messy curls and his bitten lips, his stupid tight skinny jeans and the way he sets his jaw when he's nervous.
"Look at you," Jared says, his face close, his hands still in his pockets, "You totally know."
And Evan does.
And so it happens. Evan and Jared, they happen.
Evan's hands still in oven mitts, Jared's hands still in his pockets, the edge of the kitchen counter pressing against Evan's back, that's how their first kiss goes. With Evan's heart beating in his chest, I know, I know, I know.
Evan's hands free of oven mitts, pressed hesitantly to Jared's back; Jared's hands out of his pockets, his fingertips on both sides of Evan's jaw, that's how their second kiss goes. Right after their first kiss, their lunch cooling on the countertop and Evan's body warming under Jared's like butter in the summer sun—soft and gradual and smooth.
Evan's hands locked in Jared's, Jared's hands locked in Evan's, that's how their twentieth kiss goes. On the street corner with annoyed pedestrians streaming around them on their way back to work after lunch, Jared's phone chiming in his back pocket with what Evan knows is a reminder that Jared's on the clock.
Evan's hands wringing tightly together, Jared's hands lightly on his biceps, that's how their one hundred and sixth kiss goes. Evan's heart trembling in his chest and the words I didn't fall, I let go still in the air around them, Jared's eyes red. It's chaste and gentle and fluttering, on his cheek and his forehead and his jaw, on the corner of Evan's mouth and on Evan's chest over his heartbeat.
Evan thinks yes, he was right, those months ago, when he'd thought of telling Jared and thought of how Jared might respond and knew that there was something in Jared that he wanted to keep.
I never had a "massive fucking hard on" for Zoe Murphy. It's always been you. That's how their two hundred and seventy-seventh kiss goes. It's a long one, in bed, so fierce it's almost angry. It's knees between legs and hands under shirts and not all on the mouth, I only do one kind of gag. Arguably it is the two hundred and seventy-seventh, the two hundred and seventy-eighth, the two hundred and seventy-ninth....
Sometime after, whatever number it is, they're outside of a coffee shop with an americano that they're unofficially sharing. It's winter, and Jared's pulling his flannel a little closer as he drops into a seat, setting that one-strap laptop bag of his on the ground, his beanie squashing his curls down. He kicks out his feet and crosses his ankles, and Evan laughs, breathless, his chest hopelessly warm.
"What," Jared asks, pushing his glasses up.
Evan smiles and pushes his coffee Jared's way. "You know what."
And that's how their first I love you goes.
It's a quick kiss, and Jared confessing he's actually on the clock, and Evan hurrying off to work. It's easy to say and easy to hear, as if it's been there all along.
So glad to finally be publishing musicals content again! SMH the next one will not be a musicals one but there IS a couple more coming... in a bit... Thank you for reading!!
—tigerlilycorinne