breathe; tree bros

two

evan felt bad.
after witnessing jared's small argument with connor murphy, he realised how unnecessarily rude kleinman actually was.

it's not like evan had to stay around him, he just didn't want to leave. he had no other friends and his debilitating social anxiety didn't exactly make it easy to talk to... anyone.

and its not like he didn't care about jared, because he did. most of the time.

jared made evan wonder if it was possible to both like and despise someone at the same time.

jared kleinman was a family friend to the hansens. he was egotistical, rude, and felt the need to be as uncivilised to connor murphy as possible.
jared claimed he only hung around with evan because his parents would pay for his car insurance if he did.

but they were friends, despite jared's protest. and even though jared was relentlessly mean to evan, and claimed all his real friends were his 'camp friends', and had literally eaten a bathbomb before getting fired from his part-time job at lush, evan cared for him.

because evan knew that he was a good guy, under all the of the... asshole-ness.

"dude, don't you think that was uncalled for? he's been through enough, and it's not like he was aggravati-"

"if you love him so much hansen, go suck his dick." jared smiled sarcastically and nonchalantly threw his backpack over his shoulder. evan couldn't help but roll his eyes at his friends poor response, which prompted jared's immediate defence.

"hey! the guy has it coming with his 'i don't give a fuck' attitude and-and he's literally high! in school! all the fucking time. i mean who does that? and let's not forget that..."

evan zoned out as they made their way to their homeroom, and they both took a seat.

there was this nagging at the back of his mind, trying to persuade him to go apologise to connor for his friend's words. he just had to work up the courage to do it.

a million and one scenarios began to fly round his mind, and this throat closed up at the thought of talking to connor, which he'd only done before once. evan had a gift in overthinking.

honestly, evan was kind of scared of connor. not because of his attitude or the way he dressed, or the way he talks to people- but because of a close encounter that had happened around 6 months ago.

as an assignment from his therapist, he had to write letters to himself talking about how he felt. his mom, heidi, had interminably encouraged him to write these letters, but he didn't know what to write.

he found talking to his therapist uncomfortable because he felt his feelings were private. his palms would get sweaty and he'd stutter and blush and he'd not know what to say and everything would be quiet except the ticking of the clock and the scribbling of his pen and the walls would feel like they were closing in and-

he thought maybe, letters would be easier.

at the time, evan had a crush on connor's sister zoe. he made sure to include that in the letter, since everything else he'd written had been hopelessly depressing.

and to quote what he said, "All hope is pinned on Zoe."

connor found said letter when evan had to print it out at school. he just assumed it was intended to hurt him, it wasn't. evan was mortified when he found it. connor threw him to the ground, where evan didn't movey for ten solid minutes, absolutely petrified of what murphy would do.

that had been the first time evan had ever had any sort of contact with connor, despite being in the same class for years.

the second time was a week later, when evan once said, "here, i-i'm sorry abo- well you..." and shoved a crumpled up letter explaining why he'd said what he'd said in to connor's hand.