Chapter Text
Evan couldn’t breathe.
It was the next day, a merciful thursday, and of course he would stress sleep after sending Connor his messages.
A lot of it was just Jared telling him to “chill the fuck out” and “enjoy the show, Evan” which, admittedly, he did. He had tried to ignore his phone and the pang in his heart every time he thought about his response. It was dumb and he was dumb, but waiting for Connor’s reply was just going to double the dread in his stomach until it crashed over him in a wave of regret. Eventually he just zonked out, the stress sending him into a deep sleep in which brown, stoner-looking bunnies hopped around him calling him lame. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the worst dream he’s ever had.
He was harshly awoken from the surreal dream to Jared thundering around the apartment, yelling about his Further Java class and his “fucking Java concurrency in practise” textbook, all words Evan wasn’t sure he understood. Or wanted to be awoken by at 8 A bloody M.
His first lecture wasn’t until 12PM, a blessed Soil and Water Systems module that he could probably pass with his eyes closed, considering the summer he spent getting well acquainted with tree soil and water systems (and wildflowers, Evan often overlooks the hours he spent looking after the various flora in the park). Normally he spends these days sleeping until 10 am, slowly getting up and then meandering over (this class was thankfully in a building close to their apartment) to the lecture hall or labs. Today was a mix of both, an initial lecture and then a lab based off of the lecture. Pretty sweet. After that, he was going to grab some food, even though the thought of eating in front of strangers terrified him almost enough for him to debate not eating, and then head to the tutorial he had.
Jared’s little thunderstorm had all but messed up this sweet routine he had.
Technically, he could stay in bed, but the sun was starting to get to the level of heat that made him feel uncomfortable, the prickly almost-sweat clawing at every inch of epidermis until even his loose shirt felt unbearably hot. Even though it was autumn, and his room didn’t reliably get that much sun to become sweltering, his intolerance to heat affected him even when it should just be slight. Pushing off of his mattress, bare feet slipping down onto cool laminate, he padded down to their bathroom, washing his face and sorting himself out, taking his medication and backing out to their living room. It was nice, a stylish, surprisingly sleek for two 20 year old male students who are probably stereotyped to not shower for days, sofa set in the center, wide television on the wall opposite and the typical new york window with a fire escape set on the wall adjacent. The room was nice, including the desk set up in the corner, as it was where Jared often filmed his videos, and despite him only being a commentary channel (not a fancy dancy lifestyle blogger), Jared took pride in having a decent background.
Evan mainly filmed his videos in his bedroom, preferring the plain, all-white brightness of his room to the taupe of the living room.
Passing into the kitchen-y area, barely separate as even Jared’s substantial income (and Evan’s baby income) couldn’t afford a separate kitchen in New York, possibly the most expensive city in America, he poured himself a bowl of cereal.
And yes, Evan ate granola. He fit possibly every “weird environmental enthusiast” stereotype he’d ever been made aware of, including always carrying trail mix and using bamboo toothbrushes, although he supposes the latter was rather more absurd than the former. If he’s being honest, he supposes “weird environmental enthusiast” isn’t a common stereotype perpetuated in society. Still.
Moving back into the living room, he sank into the sofa, legs tucked up under him. He had 2-3 hours before he needed to even think about setting off, but he was tempted to leave early, set up shop in a coffee place or a cafe and power through his environmental law essay. His phone was still laying on his bedside table, forgotten in the mania of Jared and his outburst, so he ended up just being sat on the sofa looking at the plain wall opposite. He could put the television on, he ponders, but then he’d just get sucked into whatever was playing, and work needed to be done, preferably soon.
Still pondering, exploring the ways he could develop his essay, he finished the bowl of granola, the honey-nut still stuck in his teeth in annoying sheaths.
This essay really needed to get done, and now that he had some ideas and a place to start, he supposed he may as well just kickstart his day and head out to start it.
Plus, he really wanted to check his phone. He hadn’t gotten Connor’s last message (if he had even sent one) and for the first time he didn’t have that nagging feeling that the person on the receiving end of his self-pedantic messages was starting to get impatient or inconvenienced with and by him.
Padding down to his room, feet barely making a whisper against the laminated floor, he slipped through the doorway and checked his phone before he could do anything else.
Opening the blue app, Connor’s reply glowed blue at the top of his messages. So he had replied.
From: con.
u must be smart if u can do env stats 210 (?) push thru + ignore ur prof. i have a killer migraine after a graphics class which says a lot abt graphics. also, idm hearing abt true crime. i think its cool that ur into that kinda thing, no need to apologise.
Well. Connor certainly wasn’t a dickhead, despite what Evan’s inner fears might’ve suggesting (and Jared was right. God.). Now Evan needed to think of what he needed to reply with. He felt for Connor and his migraine, God knows environmental stats sent him burrowing under the covers on his duvet in his own little stress cocoon. Distance methods and the F distribution genuinely made his frontal lobe thrum with confusion. The thing with college is that subjects people thought they were good at in high school morphed into a completely harder, different subject. Evan didn’t mind AP statistics, came out with a 5, but any kind of environmental statistics turned all the previous knowledge he had on the binomial distribution on its head.
The fact that he didn’t mind hearing about Evan’s interest in true crime (especially the less-gory and slightly boring white collar stuff) assuaged the fear he had that Connor wouldn’t be interested in anything he was messaging him about, a fear that plagued him often when he messaged new people, even sometimes people he already knew from classes, rarely Jared, but sometimes he couldn’t make out the tone from messages and then that made him more anxious and then his perception of the message spiralled out of control and his self image ended all but egregious.
So he was genuinely relieved to see that the anxiety he had originally felt was ephemeral and wouldn’t last throughout their correspondence, because if so that would suck balls.
From: Evan
It’s under MATH2740, which is stupid because I’m not even a math major, but I guess that’s how columbia likes to roll :) How is your headache now? Graphics seems kind of hard, but so does all sorts of artistic-y disciplines to me, art was never something that clicked for me, I didn’t even do AP Studio Art.
He hit send before he could regret it, and clicked off the app, starting already to get dressed. Sometimes the thing that made him feel the most motivated was when he actually got in the mindset of someone who was awake and prepared to write an entire essay on environmental law and why the original Wildlife and Countryside Act needed the amendments that occured in the law, and how he as a student would improve acts like this and which pressure groups he would pair with to get the bill passed. It was interesting and intricate but it sometimes dragged for him. Evan was a much more hands on person, preferring to see the actual mechanisms of the subject he was learning about, such as leaf and plant analysis and the like.
Pulling on a loose pair of jeans and sticking on a blue NYU sweater, courtesy of Jared from when he worked at one of the NYU gift shops before his youtube got big enough for him to completely subside on that revenue, bought on sale and with a staff discount. It was funny to walk into a Colombia lecture in an NYU sweater, the irony didn’t escape him, especially since he got rejected from NYU and ended up going to somewhere better for his specific course.
Grabbing his phone and his laptop, he stuck both into his backpack and grabbed an almond snack pack and his keys, nudging the door open with a single, air force covered shoe and letting it fall closed behind him as he made it out onto their hallway. He locked the door, double checking it before he set down the stairs and out the building into the crisp air. Even though it was sunny, and felt like a hot box inside of the apartment, the actual shadow of the towering buildings and the breeze quickly lowered the temperature outside on the streets. He decided he wasn’t going to go to a cafe, partly because he didn’t want to spend any money in an overpriced cafe, on a drink he didn’t really want just so he could write an essay. Instead he was going to the library connected to his lecture-and-lab building to attempt at least the outline and the first draft.
The walk was fairly brief, but he felt the buzz of a twitter notification on his thigh from where his phone was. Hopefully, by all Gods’ of Gods’ above, that was Connor, because oh hell did Evan want to shoot his shot with that boy.
The library was before him, the cold concrete bricks of the old fashioned, 1800s architecture of the typical new york university buildings in front of him, the prestige-oozing steps making Evan feel that littlest bit less deserving of his place and scholarship. He flashed his ID at the sensor and got in, walking straight down the walnut floorings to the small, individual booths that he once made his home during last year’s finals when he studied every night (and God, was he glad it was a 24 hr library). Luckily this would allow him to get his head down and start writing his essay and also not stress about having to make hs lecture in time. He was really glad it was only 9AM.
He did want to check his phone before he got down to any work though.
From: con.
yeah my headache is way better, i took my meds which really helped… ig that’s what theyre there for ahaha. and i took like 5 aps but two of them were studio art (3d & 2d), one of them was music theory and the other two were eng lit and eng lang, so what i was best at ig. what aps did u do? & colombia wow! u must be smart as hell
Well. Connor was right about the medication thing, they did do what they were meant to do. The fact that he took studio art TWICE at AP level proved to Evan that he really was talented, because he honestly struggled with normal high school art.
From: Evan
AP art twice?! You must be really good at art, but I suppose that’s obvious as you go to The New School! I took as many APs as I could throughout all my years in highschool, so in total I did like 11. I did Lang, Lit, APUSH, Stats, Calc BC, Bio, Chem, German, Phys 1, Env Science and Human Geog. I did some college classes to, which is the main reason I got the scholarship at Colombia. I don’t think I’m that smart, I just worked really hard in high school cause I only had like Jared.
Well, he offloaded a little bit too much about the fact that he was a complete loner there. He could’ve lied and said he wasn’t one but it felt too disingenuous. And he was proud of the APs he took, he did sweat out in high school and he was really glad it paid off.
His phone buzzed as the reply from Connor came through.
From: con.
and let me guess, u got all 5s? knew u were smart as shit :) and i think im mediocre at art but my style is kinda cool so i think thats why ppl like it. I kinda wish id taken music instead but i love art equally as much. does that mean u can speak german? i can speak basic spanish which is handy for new york and thanks to my parents i can speak polish (my mom is polish)
As he typed out his reply, the environmental law essay he was meant to do was left untouched.