Chapter Text
Stapled and taped to a tree in Prospect Park, Brooklyn:
Seeking a young, single roommate for 3BR apartment. 5th floor walk up, $800/month, three roommates. Must be trans and queer friendly. Must not be bothered by bees or other insects. No business majors or vegans. Text Dana P.
“Tell me something.”
Evan hasn’t even managed to fully settle in his seat on the peeling faux-leather of a couch that looks and feels as if it was fished directly out of the trash, when the person with the mullet and the septum piercing fixes him with a wide eyed look. Evan knows he’s staring. He should know better by now than to stare, but part of him can’t help it.
They just don’t make people like this back home. Or in Dubuque, Iowa, where Evan had spent his first few years of college.
People who are proudly queer, who are unapologetically themselves, who are… cool.
Evan is wearing a polo shirt, and he’s frankly pretty sure it’s been around since high school. He is an embarrassment to humanity.
It’s hard not to feel woefully inadequate in the style and personality department when you’re staring down the bleached blond mullet, floral tattoo sleeve, and glinting surgical steel septum piercing of by far the most textbook definition of cool you had ever encountered in your entire life.
Plus, like, this person goes by Dana P ., even though as far as Evan knows there aren’t any other Danas in this apartment or anything. The P. is a stylistic choice - an artistic, aesthetic, cooler-than-Evan-could-even-totally-comprehend sort of choice.
And to be presented with a question - well, not even a question , more like a demand - as open ended and undefined as “Tell me something”?
It is the sort of thing that used to send Evan spiraling.
Used to , he repeats to himself. As if thinking it harder will solidify it into reality. Used to send me spiraling.
He isn’t like that anymore. He doesn’t spiral. He doesn’t obsess over details or triple check over his shoulder or threaten RAs with the pocket knife he was gifted at age seven for sneaking up on him anymore.
All he has to do is be himself.
His calm, cool, collected, definitely never had a panic attack while home alone because the neighbor was taking out his trash bins noisily, self.
After all, it’s not like the prospect of homelessness in a brand new city is hanging in the balance or anything. It’s not like his whole future hedges on whether or not he can manage to find a place to actually live here in New York.
All he needs to do is be himself.
But also confident, that’s important. And interesting…. But not too interesting. Not like, freakshow interesting.
Just be yourself. But, like, easy to talk to. Approachable. Normal. Be normal .
But mostly just be yourself, that’s the most important is to just be true to yourself.
God, he sounds like a psychopath in his own mind.
“Um,” Is the brilliant thing Evan manages to produce because his brain is already gearing up for the spiral he’s outright just refusing to have. “I. Um. Sorry?”
They smile at Evan in a way that might suggest pity, and take an audible breath. “Just, like, a thing I might not guess by looking at you. Like, I once cried so hard I pulled a muscle in my face.”
“I - what?” Evan sputters. He has no clue what the correct response to a statement like that is. Is he meant to be sympathetic? Curious? Unbothered? In the end, curiosity wins out. “Why? H-how?”
Dana P. shrugs their shoulders. “Honestly, I don’t totally remember? Some friend of a friend of a friend was sick, I think? I had to go to the hospital for muscle relaxers. But I get like that sometimes.”
Evan laughs, a little incredulous. “So you’re, what, like an -”
“Empath, yeah,” Dana P. answers.
Evan ought to have known that an almost affordable apartment in Brooklyn was going to come with some provisos. Part of him finds it a little concerning that he would have rather found out that Dana P. was a cannibal.
Dana P. grins widely, “And you’re a skeptic.”
Evan doesn’t, like, love that tone. But supposes when it comes to woo-woo spiritual auras and energy and star signs kind of shit he is skeptical. But he has a right to be.
His mom once spent almost a whole month’s electric bill calling psychic hotlines, trying to piece together all of the missing and broken parts in her life. Evan tries to cut her some slack for that error in judgment. She was young and on her own when that happened, with a kid to raise all on her own. Her husband had disappeared, her best friend went mysteriously missing when she was a kid. Evan could understand, in theory, how someone could reach that level of desperation for answers. He just… he could also vividly recall the taste of room temperature spaghettios and feel the strain on his eyes from doing his spelling homework by candlelight. Also, Evan is young and broke and freaked out now , and he can’t imagine ever being so desperate he brings in a psychic.
And he’s literally staring down potential homelessness two weeks before classes start with a bank account that is precariously close to a negative balance.
“I guess… I prefer things I can prove, I guess?”
Dana P. narrows their eyes. “But you’re not a business major.”
Evan shakes his head. “No. God no. Environmental science and urban sustainability double major,” He tells them. Evan ducks his head a little bit. “I uh. I took a break from school for a bit, so I’m just getting back into it.”
Dana P. grins. “And your thoughts on bees?”
Evan tries to grin in a reassuring, I’m-Totally-Not-A-Serial-Killer way. “I am very pro bees, from an environmental standpoint?” He said. At the unblinking look Dana P. gives him, Evan adds, “Though I haven’t personally, uh, spent much time with them?”
“Jared!” Dana P. calls out suddenly. Evan can’t hide the way he jumps, a little.
A bespectacled guy wearing an unbuttoned tropical shirt over a light blue t-shirt advertising PrEP appears in the hallway. “Yo,” he says in a deadpan voice. “What up?”
“This is Evan,” Dana P. tells him. “He’s taking your room.”
“Oh sweet,” Jared says. “When are you moving in? I need to make sure I try to get the bloodstains off of the walls.”
Evan blinks a few times. “That’s it? I got the room?” A second passes as he brain manages to catch up with the conversation. “Also, wait, what was that about… Did you say blood?”
That’s one point in the These People Want to Kill Me and Eat My Flesh column. They’d been doing relatively well thus far. Maybe he determined that these people weren’t cannibals too soon. This was starting to feel like some Yellowjackets shit, and while Evan’s wilderness survival skills were decent his not-getting-eaten skills were thus far untested.
“Oh don’t worry,” Jared offers. “It’s not real blood.” He doesn’t elaborate.
Evan swallows hard.
Dana P. seems to realize this. “Sorry. Jared’s, like, really involved in local theater. Last season’s production of Roger’s and Hammerstein’s Cinderella got a little… experimental.” They give Evan a smile. “But don’t worry, we’ll get the residue off of the walls and sage the room.”
Evan tries to imagine why a production of Cinderella would require stage blood, but ultimately decides he would rather not know. “So you’re uh… moving out?” Evan asks Jared.
He shakes his head. “Nah, I’m moving into Dana P.’s room,” Jared explains.
“Oh,” Evan says. “You two are -?”
“Together,” Dana P. says, smiling fondly at Jared. It gives them this sort of softness that is unexpected. “Yeah, have been for about three years now, right babe?”
Jared grins. “Yeah. Not a lot of relationships can survive two gender transitions, so we’re thinking of starting a podcast.” Jared winks at Evan. “You want to be a guest? You can tell the story of when you met with us about the apartment and spent the whole time trying not to hyperventilate.”
“Um. I’m not hyperventilating,” Evan says, a little breathlessly.
“You seem to be having considerable trouble breathing, dude,” Jared says, eyebrows up.
Fuck. Evan tries to take a deep breath, ends up sputtering and coughing. “Fuck,” he mutters. “S-sorry, I um. I have um. An anxiety thing?”
“Jared,” Dana P. says, their eyes narrowing. “I told you to be nice. Go get Evan some water.”
Evan cannot believe he hasn’t left yet. Obviously there’s no way he can take this room. He’s having a fucking anxiety attack in front of these people over fake blood. He’s too much of a freak, and they’re like, too much…
Just too much.
Jared comes back with a glass of water, which he sets on the table in front of Evan. Eva’s grateful; he absolutely would have dropped it. He digs in his bag for his emergency Ativan, his hands shaking, and he’s being so stupid so fucking stupid what the fuck is the matter with him.
Dana P.’s face has drained of color, and they sit down on the coffee table directly facing Evan. “It’s okay,” they say softly. “Despite Jared’s dumbassery, you’re totally safe here. No murderers or kidnappers or anybody interested in crimes… unless you’re against occassional theft?”
Evan almost laughs, “Depends on who it’s from.”
“Mostly rich assholes,” Dana P. says.
Which makes Evan actually laugh. He nods a few times. He feels his heart starting to slow a little.
“So, uh, why don’t I tell you more about the place?” Dana P. offers in a calm, steady voice.
Evan nods. “Okay.”
“So we have another roommate, Sabrina,” Dana P. tells Evan.
“She’s great, but she’s a vampire,” Jared chimes in.
“She’s in school to be a nurse,” Dana P. says, shooting Jared a dirty look. “Stop trying to freak him out, you’re not being funny.” They turn back to Evan. “Sabrina is in school to be a nurse, and she also works as a bartender/burlesque performer, so she’s basically nocturnal. The first three months I lived here, we never even met.”
Evan nods a few times. Okay. That seems unlikely to get him murdered. “And um. There was something about bees?”
Dana P. nods enthusiastically. “I keep them! Up on the roof! So there’s always fresh honey, unless you’re one of those vegans who thinks honey isn’t vegan even though bees can, like, totally unionize. Sometimes one or two will come home from the hive with me by mistake, but they never bother anybody.”
Evan swallows. “I’m not a vegan.”
“Perfect,” Dana P. says. “How are you feeling? Any better?”
Evan doesn’t have a clue what to say. He feels absolutely insane. There’s no way he can take this room. He had an anxiety attack in front of these people. He doesn’t have any idea what he’s doing. He’s changed his major three times before dropping out of school for a while. He moved to New York in part because it was far away as he could stand to be from his mom. He’s deeply in debt, deeply unsure of what the future holds, and just keeps hoping someday he’ll wake up to find that the chaos in his head has been quelled.
That’s how he feels. Like a disaster. Like someone who is fucking it all up all of the time.
Not one of those things is the sort of stuff that gets people to like you. Not a single one of those things is going to endear him to an empath or score him this almost reasonably priced place to live. He obviously can’t take this room.
“Can’t you tell?” He says. “Since you’re an empath?” Evan jokes weakly.
Dana P. smiles a little. “You never did tell me something about yourself,” They say.
“I. Um.” Evan tugs at the hem of his shirt. He’s got nothing to lose, really. He won’t be taking this room. He might as well be honest. “I know a lot about. Um. Trees?”
Jared’s face immediately wrinkles in distaste while Dana P.’s eyes light up. “Trees?” Jared repeats, sounding unenthused.
“Yeah, um. Like I know a lot about why pollen allergies are so bad in cities? I was… I was an apprentice park ranger in high school,” Evan manages. “Until I, um, realized that park rangers are just kind of like. Cops? But in a forest or whatever. And, like, fuck cops, even tree cops so um. Yeah.”
And then something strange happens: Jared’s face splits into a grin and Dana P. literally starts clapping. “This is perfect .” Jared shakes his head. “Fucking tree cops. This guy’s hilarious.”
“Why are allergies worse in cities?” Dana P. asks.
“Oh,” Evan says, his cheeks growing warm. “Sexism, really.”
“Sexism?”
“Oh yeah. They mostly plant male trees, which release pollen? But they don’t plant nearly enough female trees that would use it to reproduce, so it just kind of… floats around? And there’s a lot of it in the air, so it triggers peoples’ allergies,” Evan says.
“That’s fucked,” Jared says. “We should protest that shit.”
“Tree sexism, who knew?” Dana P. says, shaking their head. “So, we good here?”
“Wait, you gotta tell him the rest about the place,” Jared says, and Evan is surprised and confused. Up until this point, Evan had fully thought Jared hated him.
“Ah, right,” Dana P. says. “We’re pretty sure that the apartment is, like, crooked? So, like, maybe don’t wear heelies or whatever.”
“And, um. Well. Our neighbor down the hall is an operatic soprano,” Jared says. “So sometimes we hear her singing. But she’s a great singer, so it’s not so bad.”
“We’re not positive, but the fridge might be a load bearing wall at this point,” Dana P. says. “So it’s best not to move it if you can avoid it.”
“We’re pretty sure that the pizza place downstairs is a mob front but they still have awesome food” Jared adds.
“Oh, and we think the wifi router is haunted,” Dana P. throws in.
Evan narrows his eyes. “How can a router be haunted?”
Dana P. shrugs. “Seems to cut out whenever one of us is supposed to go to a zoom meeting,” They say. “Which, y’know, isn’t always the worst thing.” They tuck a piece of their bleached blond hair behind their ear, which Evan sees now has a number of piercings and a tiny tattoo of a rose on the fossa. “So. How does Wednesday sound for a move in?”
Evan swallows hard, looking between Dana P. and Jared. They are holding pinkies. Both of them are wearing periwinkle nail polish. It would have been obnoxious if it wasn’t so fucking adorable. Somewhere inside of him, a deeply felt loneliness twinges in Evan. Near a lung, he thinks. In the hollow under his ribs.
“Wednesday sounds perfect,” Evan says, trying to arrange his face into a smile. He can do this. He has to do this.
In the end, Evan always knew he would be taking this apartment. Even though he made a complete ass of himself when he first met his roommates. Even though he wasn’t positive that he was actually safe here. Sure, the place was weird and the roommates were a bit kooky in a young adult novel cast of ragtag characters sort of way, but it was still better than being back home.
There is no way he’s going back home.
Evan spent the last year in his childhood bedroom, in his childhood home, trying to figure out how to arrange his adult self into the space he left behind. It was unbearable in a lot of ways. Especially since he had made a whole big hairy deal out of how he wasn’t going to help her out investigating the case anymore when he went away to school. Only then he had to move back in with her.
Then it was a choice of either having to make a bigger deal out of how he wasn’t helping her or suck it up and help.
Evan isn’t sure if it was worse for him or for his mom when he moved back in. He just knows it was bad.
“The place looks nice,” His mom says on the phone.
She’s lying, but Evan knew she would. At least she’s a good liar. It’s hard to criticize a place for its theatrical blood stains when you lived in a place that was just a few short months away from being scouted for an episode of Hoarders .
“Yeah,” Evan says vaguely, looking around his new room. It’s small, but not too small. Wood floors that are slanted, but not as steeply as in the rest of the apartment. Evan learned this when he set a pen down on the floor to check something off of his to-do list and it rolled away, but only a few feet. The faux-bloodstains are a little more goth than Evan’s typical taste, but he figures maybe he could… decorate if he is really committed to hiding them.
Ha.
Like that’s likely.
Still better than home, with the aging prints of trees on his bedroom walls from several adolescent phases ago, and the boxes of public records piled up in the hallway. As a kid, Evan used to imagine making an obstacle course or a maze out of them. Creating tunnels out of cardboard boxes, corridors out of old phone books and newspapers.
At twenty four, now he mostly worries about how much of a fire hazard all of that paper is. He worries every single time his mom lights a candle that the whole place is about to go up in smoke. He worries more when the stress of no new information in months gets to her and she breaks down and un-quits smoking. Sometimes she would fall asleep with a lit cigarette in her fingers when he was a kid. She’d wake up with burns between her fingers.
It’s a miracle that Evan made it to twenty-four.
But the most worrisome is every few years when she decides she’s going to move on from searching every archive and public record and just move on with her life… only to end up right back where she started a few months later. Things were looking good for a moment there, Evan’s junior year of high school. His mom was back in school to be a paralegal, working nights at the nursing home. They started bringing carloads of old files to the waste management plant on weekends, and Evan got an apprenticeship at the state park.
But then he broke his arm.
And his mom didn’t pick up when he called her from the Emergency Room.
And by November, she had quit school and was back to spending her days in the library or harassing the local police or trying to haggle with a private investigator about his hourly rate.
“And the new roommates?” Heidi asks him, still smiling anxiously at him through the screen. Evan sets down the box he’s moving from one corner to the other. Practical basics, nothing flashy or fancy: shoes, clothes, the small collection of books he owns.
“They all seem good,” Evan says with a shrug. He isn’t sure he has enough data on them yet to give an accurate assessment; he still hasn’t even met Sabrina the burlesque performer, and Dana P. and Jared seem content to just do their weird beekeeping and theater projects on their own. “Like. Decent.”
“Well, don’t forget what I always say baby -”
Evan almost smiles. “Never let them get you to leave a primary location?”
“And get their DNA under your nails if you think they’re going to murder you,” Heidi adds with a smile.
Evan nods. “Have you gotten any update from that detective?” He asks cautiously. She usually re-ups her efforts after the new year. Evan knows he’s really poking the bear here, but his mom gets sad when he refuses to engage totally. And Evan really hates that.
“Of course not,” His mom sighs. “No surprise there. He’s an idiot. Cops are idiots, kid, never trust them to do anything.”
Evan sighs. He knows this all too well, but something about the way she always reminds him makes Evan feel small and stupid. “I’m sorry.”
“I know the case is cold,” Heidi says, somewhat wistfully. “But the fact that they aren’t even considering reopening it after all of the information I found…”
The information she’s found is pretty limited, considering it is the culmination of about thirty years of searching. It’s barely anything. Just, like. Scraps. A few clues.
“But enough about that,” his mom says, her voice firm. Like she’s doing such a good job of upholding Evan’s boundaries. “Are you getting settled in okay?”
Evan glances around at the sparse collection of belongings he’s brought with him to New York. Truthfully, he doesn’t have much to settle. All of his could fit comfortably in a large suitcase if he wanted. If he decided to pick up and backpack through Europe tomorrow, he could reasonably bring all of his belongings without having to jettison much.
“Yeah,” Evan says, forcing a smile onto his face. “Great.”
“Well don’t forget that you only have sixty days left on your last refill,” his mom goes on. “So make sure you get into the student health center before they run out.”
“Of course,” Evan says. The sixty day drug countdown clock is already imprinted in Evan’s mind. He can practically hear the timer ticking down. He’s trying not to obviously bristle at her tone. It’s weird - she was never overbearing or helicopter-like when Evan was a kid. No, when he was younger it wasn’t like this at all. Evan was his mom’s partner in crime, her loyal assistant, from the minute he could walk. She’d trust him to sweet talk clerks at the county court house or to distract receptionists trying to keep Heidi from checking in with the detectives. Evan was a latchkey kid in the first grade; an adult in miniature. His mom always used to say he was born forty five years old and already going gray.
She also gifted him a pocket knife for his seventh birthday.
He’s always wondered if that had any connection to his dad leaving.
It’s only since Evan finished high school, only since he’s transferred schools and taken a lengthy leave of absence from college that suddenly his mom seems to think she needs to mom him so much. When he was back at home, it meant dinners together from TikTok recipes his mom found and a lot of nights watching repeats of House Hunters, which slowly turned into “While I’ve got you, can you have a look at this newspaper article from 1987?”
Funny how a little thing like a mental breakdown will change your relationship.
Now it seems, his mom’s approach to mothering was to offer “gentle reminders” that were hardly gentle nor actually helpful for remembering things.
“Listen, I’ve got to go. I’m covering Erica again tonight, trying to see if I can’t sweet talk Mrs. Lopez into telling me more about her daughter who is an FBI trainee,” Evan’s mom says then. “Can I give you a call tomorrow?”
“Sure thing,” Evan says, trying not to sound as weary as he feels. A fucking FBI trainee was not what his mom needed.
“Shit, I gotta run, love you.”
“Love you-” His mom ends the call before he can finish the words.
Evan sucks in a deep breath, staring at the blank wall in front of him.
He lives here now. This is where he lives.
He’s fine.
He can do this.
He can live in this place with the fake blood stains and the slanted floors and a so-called empath for a roommate. He can deal with his mom trying to sweet talk FBI trainees. He can totally do this.
About five seconds later, when Evan is flat on his back and an insistent, wet nose is snuffling at his ear, he has a few doubts.
“Shit man,” Jared’s voice manages to creep through the vigorous sniffing. “Forgot to warn you about Pam.”
Pam, who Evan could only assume is the creature trying to lick the roof of his mouth somehow, is currently perched on his sternum. There is something aggressively wagging close to his hips and Evan prays it is a tail.
Jared seems to take pity on Evan and scoops Pam up from his chest. It’s then that Evan finally confirms that Pam is, in fact, a dog. A little corgi with a long gingery tail. Evan always thought corgis had their tails clipped, but this one is whacking him fairly aggressively in the leg so apparently not all corgis.
“What… I mean. Pam?” Evan tries to ask.
“Right,” Jared says, like somehow he’s already forgotten the question. “So she’s Sabrina’s, technically, but we all sort of share her? She’s too cute to be nocturnal.” Jared sets Pam back down and she approaches Evan slightly less aggressively this time.
Evan tries to keep his face impassive, not show his surprise about the dog. He should have noticed that. The signs are all there. A leash by the door. A box of dog treats on the counter in the kitchen. He’d idiotically assumed that maybe one of his new roommates was a dog walker to earn some extra cash.
He’s disappointed in himself.
“Did you need help bringing the rest of your stuff in?” Jared asks, apparently unbothered by the small dog who is getting acquainted with Evan’s ears and neck.
“This is, um, this is all of my stuff,” Evan tries, but upon opening his mouth, Pam goes back to trying to lick it.
“Shit, you’re not in witness protection or something right?”
Evan wants to say that if he was - which he isn’t - he absolutely wouldn’t tell anybody he was in witness protection. He also wouldn’t be dumb enough to move in with strangers, one of whom he still hasn’t met, if he was in fear for his life. “No,” Evan says. “Just kinda - I’ve moved around a lot -”
“Hmm.” Jared takes a step into the room, finally saving Evan from Pam trying to make out with him by scooping the wiggly corgi off of his lap. “How do you feel about pancakes?” Jared asks then.
“Oh, I… Positive? But I can’t afford-” Evan struggles to explain the fact that he’s too broke even for pancakes.
“Come on, my treat,” Jared says with an easy smile. “Dana P.!” He shouts down the hall. “Pancakes!”
Dana P. emerges from their room with a pair of safety goggles on their head and a smudge of soot across their cheek. Evan’s not sure he even wants to know what they’re up to in the room across the hall. “Yes!” Dana P. grins at Evan, a grin that reads a little too much like his mom’s sympathetic sorry-you’re-socially-inept-and-have-no-friends smiles from the last year. “Don’t worry babes, we got you. You can get us back when you’re raking in the dough from saving the planet.”
Evan’s pretty doubtful that’s going to happen.
Besides, Dana P. never said they were psychic .
The three of them troop down the five floors of stairs and out into the bitterly cold January evening. It’s that time of winter where the only assurance you have that spring will come eventually is the way the dying daylight clings to the horizon.
In a weird way, Evan likes the winter. Something about the frigid temperatures always feel like the slap of wakefulness that he needs. Like the reminder that this is real, that he is real, that none of this is a dream or a simulation or whatever can only be proven by the sudden chill seeping through Evan’s thick winter jacket.
“Mother fuck , it’s gonna snow tonight,” Jared mutters as they cross the street and begin heading toward a diner.
“Jared’s got PTSD from the last big winter storm we had,” Dana P. explains. “Nor’easter over Groundhog Day last year. No buses and a bunch of subways couldn’t run. Stressed him out majorly because his mom was meant to be visiting that weekend and ended up getting grounded in Philly.”
Jared scowls. “Fucking hate snow.”
Evan follows them both to the next intersection where Jared points out a diner on the corner. Evan can’t stop himself from smiling a little at the flickering rainbow neon sign in the window that reads “This Is It.”
“Well Evan, welcome to Tits,” Dana P. says with a smile, throwing their arms out wide.
“Tits?” Evan must’ve heard them wrong.
“Yeah. Everyone calls it Tits. It’s been around longer than any of us has been alive. Come on,” Dana P. tugs on his arm and pulls him toward a moderately full dining room, arranged around a long breakfast bar.
“Hey Dana P.! Hey Jared!”
Evan bristles immediately at the fact that people know his new roommates by name. When you’re not used to being noticed, it grates a bit when other people are.
“And who is this strapping young lad?”
Evan’s face gets warm. “Brian, meet Evan, our new roommate,” Dana P. says with a smile. “Be nice. He’s nervous around new people.”
Evan’s face gets hotter. Fucking hell. Brian gives Evan a nod. “Welcome to the neighborhood,” he says.
“Where’s Petey?” Jared asks. “Isn’t he usually on Wednesday nights?”
Brian hangs his head solemnly. “He quit. Gave up and moved back to Michigan. He just couldn’t afford it on tips alone.” Brian shakes himself slightly. “Just another day in Joe Biden’s America, y’know?”
“So… you’re hiring, then?” Jared replies.
Brian looks briefly offended. “I just told your ass that Petey is back in the sticks because he was too broke, and you ask me if I’m hiring? ”
Jared seems unbothered. “Pretty much, yeah. Evan’s looking for work.”
Brian recovers rather quickly and squints at Evan. “You ever been a server before?”
Evan tries to nod in a non eager, non-desperate, non obvious that he’s about to bend the truth kind of way. “An Olive Garden back home for the last couple of years. And I was a barista at the library cafe at my old college? And, I’m, uh. I worked at Pottery Barn for a while, also.”
“I’ll get you an application with your pancakes,” Brian says before hurrying off.
Jared and Dana P. trade a look. “Never took you for a scammer,” Jared says with a smirk.
Evan bites his lip. “It’s uh. I did work at an Olive Garden. Just. I was a bartender, mostly. Sometimes I did shifts doing to-go orders. But I was a barista.”
Dana P. smiles so hard that their eyes seem to vanish. “Lie by omission. I love it. Very smooth.”
Evan can’t help but roll his eyes.
Their food arrives and Evan fills out his application with on hand while clumsily feeding himself left handed with the other. He needs to eat but he also needs this job, and his anxiety seems to think the sooner he gets this app filled out the sooner he’ll have a check to take home.
Which is stupid, he knows. It’s just how his brain works.
“You never said why you moved to New York,” Dana P. says matter of factly while they douse their scrambled eggs in Tabasco.
Evan’s whole face flames. The back of his neck feels sunburnt. “Oh. Y’know. Just always wanted to uh… give it a try. And I liked the programs at Brooklyn College so….”
It’s the lamest answer.
It’s not even the truth .
Evan needed to get away from home, from his mom, from the ghosts haunting their house. He needed to leave behind the failures of his first two attempts at higher education and also at making any kind of meaningful connection with anyone who he wasn’t related to during the first twenty three years of his life.
He wanted to go somewhere where his solitude, his isolation might feel like it was a choice. Something intentional, sought after. Not something he was saddled with after a lifetime of disappointing missed connections and “a pleasure to have in class” report cards.
Evan’s fairly sure that this plan is… unwise. He’s up to his ear balls in debt, his mental health is so-so at the most generous of estimates, and he’s got no plan for finishing school or supporting himself or even what he might do if this apartment doesn’t pan out.
He’s a hot mess and he doesn’t even have a good reason for why he’s here. He just… needed to get out of his mom’s house. Evan never really got much further than that.
And part of him (read as: most of him, nearly all of him, like 95% of him) is suspicious of the fact that he hasn’t crashed and burned yet. It seems wrong . Like a trick or a joke or an elaborate prank. Surely something should have gone wrong by now, right? He can’t have actually picked up and moved his entire life to New York City and had it not result in catastrophe?
At this precise moment, one of the bussers is hustling past their table with a precariously fully stacked tub of dishes pressed against his hip when he loses his balance. Evan winces, immediately anticipating the crash of broken glass and displaced flatware. But somehow, miraculously, Brian their server swoops in and steadies the busser by the elbow and catches the bus tub before it goes sailing through the air.
Evan stares.
That was like.
Magic, almost. He can hardly believe his eyes.
Evan chances a glance at Jared and Dana P. Neither of them seem to have found anything unusual about the way the laws of physics were just defied in front of their eyes.
Evan swallows hard.
He’s clearly.
Well, he’s imagining it or something. There’s no such thing as magic.
Not even two full days after he applies for the job, Evan starts at This Is It. Apparently they're a little hard up to find people who are willing to work graveyard shifts slinging hash browns and pancakes. Despite the white lies that Evan told about his food service experience, he hasn’t managed to fuck up too royally in his new role.
He might have used all of his downtime to memorize the menu instead of actually doing his sidework, but he figures the morning shift folks will forgive him for not doubling the quota of rolled silverware before he clocked out during his first week. Evan assumes his somewhat compulsive personality is why he’s not totally failing at this job, generally. Or maybe this diner is actually magic or some shit. He can’t pretend to know.
Regardless, working so many graveyard and swing shifts has royally fucked up Evan’s entire concept of time and his sleep schedule. He’s dead on his feet after the first week and despite how happy he is to have gotten a fifteen dollar tip from two friendly and chubby queers who were debating whether eating fingernail clippings counted as autocannibalism, Evan feels like he’s going to actually die as he sleepily blinks his way into the final hour of his overnight.
Which is how he fucks up and forgets the side of bacon and has to be told twice to bring his corner booth some hot sauce.
“Behind,” Brian says, appearing next to him like he teleported there. In Brian’s hand is a side of bacon and the twice requested hot sauce.
“I think I love you,” Evan blurts idiotically.
“Don’t go there honey,” Matt Holzter quips from the other side of the breakfast bar. “Not worth it.” Matt is one of the other servers. He also designs t-shirts. He calls it textile design. He’s also the guy who designed the This Is It t-shirts that the staff wear. If you ask Evan, the logo looks a bit Looney Tunes.
“Hey!” Brian gripes, pulling a dramatic pout. “You look like a zombie,” he says to Evan.
“Yeah, well, I guess I’m still adjusting to working in the middle of the fucking night,” Evan says, a little more sharply than he intended.
Matt and Brian share a look. “Baby, when’s the last time you ate something?” Matt asks Evan.
Evan frowns deeply. Truthfully it had been breakfast, at about 2pm before he started his double shift. Servers were welcome to all the water, coffee, and soda they wanted (according to the official This Is It handbook), but technically they weren’t meant to eat while they were on the clock. “I’m alright,” Evan says sheepishly.
“Hey Miguel,” Brian says, leaning into the service window. “Can you make us a Murphy?” He turns back to Evan. “Wait, any dietary restrictions?”
Evan shakes his head. He’d been a halfhearted vegetarian for a moment in high school, and the year Evan turned thirteen he and his mom tried to keep kosher for a bit, but realistically he grew up broke enough to simply eat whatever was available to him regardless of content.
“Yeah, Mig, a Murphy Special would be good,” Brian says through the window. “Hansen over here is over caffeinated and hangry enough to eat you .”
“Got it,” Miguel replies gruffly. He’s a pretty quiet guy, Miguel. Evan wonders what deity he angered to get stuck working overnights at a Brooklyn diner in his fifties, then catches himself in that thought and chastises himself. Don’t be so judgmental, college dropout. You fucking work here too.
“Um, what’s a Murphy Special?” Evan asks, trying to suppress a yawn and wondering if he can sneak another coffee without Matt or Brian noticing.
“Fucking life changing,” Matt says, looking a little dreamy.
“It’s a sandwich,” Brian says, rolling his eyes. “But it’s good.”
Evan’s not sure how to decipher whether or not this sandwich will change his life, so instead he offers coffee refills to his two tables and covers a yawn until Matt sets a sandwich with a side of breakfast potatoes in front of him. At first glance, Evan assumes the sandwich is just a standard Monte Cristo, but he’s hungry and doesn’t bother questioning why everyone was making this into such a big deal.
He’s wrong, it turns out.
It is a Monte Cristo, but it’s not just that. There’s a generous smear of raspberry jam on top of the gooey Gruyere cheese, crispy maple bacon, and thin slices of Granny Smith apple sandwiched between the turkey and ham. Evan is mortified by the sound he makes after he takes his first bite. It’s genuinely pornographic. He’s going to need to enter witness protection after having this reaction to a sandwich. He’s going to have to throw himself in the East River. Change his name, grow a mustache, and move to Toronto.
“Told you,” Matt says with a wink.
Evan is going to die of embarrassment, but at least he’s going to die eating this sandwich. Fuck.
“You need to eat,” Brian says with a nod like he’s so wise and so mature, even though Evan bets this guy is maybe twenty six, even if he seems to have his life far more together than Evan does. He bets Brian is the type of guy who is putting money away for retirement or something. Someone who eats the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables a day and doesn’t stay awake at night wondering if he’s fucked up his entire future.
Evan’s not sure if he’s jealous of Brian or just generally envious of anyone who seems to be a real person.
After the truthfully life-changing sandwich that is the Murphy, Evan manages to breeze through the rest of his shift. When he clocks out at 7:01am, Evan’s honestly feeling pretty decent, all things considered. He puts a reminder into his phone to check out the Brooklyn College student health hours as he makes his way up to the fifth floor. Another reminder telling him to call his mom at a somewhat normal time tomorrow.
Evan kicks his shoes off into the pile of Jared and Dana P. and Sabrina’s shoes and locks the door behind him. He lets out a sigh and tries not to obsess over being out of breath from the stairs when Pam launches herself at his ankles.
“Hey buddy,” Evan says with a grin, stooping down to fuss over her and rub her silly ears. If she was a cat, Evan bets Pam would purr.
“Oh, hey.”
Evan looks up to see a pretty South Asian girl with long dark hair coming out of his bedroom. She looks like an old fashioned pin-up model, even standing there in jeans and t-shirt.
She must be Sabrina.
Evan wants to ask just what the fuck she was doing in his room, but honestly isn’t sure he even cares. There’s nothing to see in there, truly. There’s not much that’s really his. Maybe she dropped something and him demanding to know why she was in there will be super upsetting for her and she’ll cry and Evan’s never known what to do when someone around him cries because shushing them never helps and he’s only just met Sabrina so he can’t just like, touch her-
“You’re Evan, right?” She says, knocking him out of his spiraling thoughts.
Evan gives her a nod. “Yeah, I… Evan, yes. I’m Evan. Fuck, sorry, god that was so annoying that I just said that and then repeated it like who does that, fuck.” He tries for a smile even though he’s still got one foot in a spiral about making her cry and another in righteous indignation over invasion of privacy despite not having much privacy worth invading. “Sorry. It’s my, uh. First week working overnight shifts? So I um. Sorry if I’m especially socially awkward, which I am realizing is a super socially awkward thing to say sorry.”
Sabrina nods, “You get used to it.” She smiles. “The overnights, I mean. Sorry, I’m also pretty socially awkward sometimes.” Sabrina tucks some hair behind her ear, looking embarrassed. “That’s… I wasn’t trying to be a creep or whatever. I just noticed you didn’t have, uh. Curtains? In your room? And my window faces the same direction as yours, so I know that it can be murder on the eyes after you’ve worked all night to have the sun come in full blast at like eight fifteen so. Anyway, I hope you don’t mind, but I sewed you some curtains out of an old topsheet I had? I never use topsheets, like, I don’t get the point and I feel like people who use them might be sociopaths. Unless you like them, of course! A person who uses a topsheet, not a sociopath. Because Jared and Dana P. probably wouldn’t let a sociopath move in and ha I guess now I’m the one who is being all socially awkward, right?” She gives him a sort of sad damp kind of smile. “Sorry, I have had… a lot of coffee.”
Evan feels his face split into the sort of smile he didn’t know he was capable of offering: raw, open, and vulnerable. He finds himself starting at this bombshell of a woman and feeling such sudden and deep kinship with her all over fucking overnight work shifts and foot in mouth syndrome. And she made him curtains. Evan has never owned curtains in his life; the house he grew up in just had cheap plastic Venetian blinds that he and his mom never replaced, even when some of them broke. “You did that… for me?” Evan says, and to his utter horror he’s choked up about it.
Sabrina tries to shrug it off, but it doesn’t quite work because she gives Evan the same kind of wrinkled tissue paper sort of smile that he’s wearing. “I moved here a few years ago with nothing, and the only person I knew was my auntie Lakshmi who works like ninety hours a week as a surgeon and my ex, and I just… I figured, y’know. Pay it forward or whatever.”
Evan nods. “I really… you have no idea how much I appreciate it,” He says quietly. Far too honest for somebody he just met, regardless of whether or not they live together.
Sabrina grins. “Don’t make it a thing, dude,” She says, giving an absolutely terrible impression of nonchalance.
“I really like Pam,” Evan says suddenly.
Sabrina grins happily. “Yeah, she’s great. Like an instant shot of serotonin.”
Evan smiles.
Sabrina pats her thigh and then Pam races off toward her, apparently understanding that to mean it’s time for bed.
“Well uh- ” Evan starts.
“Do you really sleep on an air mattress?” Sabrina asks.
Evan feels his face get warm. “For now?” He tries, but it’s honestly not even true. He has basically zero plans to replace it any time soon. The air mattress is fine. Working nights is fine. Moving across the country randomly is fine. Evan is definitely fine.
He’s fine.
Sabrina wrinkles her nose at Evan. “There’s a neighborhood Facebook group you can join? You can probably find something free-to-cheap there. Just make sure you check it for bedbugs before you commit to lugging it up five flights.”
Evan nods. “I… thank you,” He says softly.
Sabrina nods, ducking her head a little sheepishly, before heading down the hall to her room, Pam hot on her heels.
Evan heads into his bedroom, turning on the light and smiling when he sees his new navy blue curtains hanging in the window. Evan peels off his Tits t-shirt, which is sticking to him slightly from the long shift and the climb up the steps despite the January chill, and kicks off his jeans before crawling onto his air mattress.
He sighs as he lays there. Thinks about what it would mean, if he got himself a real mattress. A real bed. If that would make this place permanent or just inconvenient if he learned that it wasn’t.
Evan smells like maple syrup. He smells like maple syrup and coffee that’s almost offensively strong and bacon. He smells so much like bacon he suspects his ancestors would have an issue with it, honestly. And he feels greasy, even though he ducked into the bathroom to wash his face and change out of his Tits shirt before heading to the train. It’s like bacon and hashbrown grease are squatting in his pores. Like he rubbed a can of crisco on his face.
The worst part is that it’s making him hungry. Apparently working in the fabulous world of 24-hour diners does not, in fact, cure you of a desire to eat nothing but waffles drowning in maple syrup all day everyday.
But there’s no time for food because today is Evan’s first day of school in a year. It’s his first day at a new school, first day of a new program, first day with new people and new professors and a new commute on the Q line.
Evan can’t help but be reminded a little too much of the sort of nerves he’d felt before his first day of senior year of high school. It had been September and he’d been seventeen with a broken arm and his mom tried to convince him to ask everyone to sign his cast.
In the end he couldn’t work up the nerve to ask anybody.
And it’s cold and damp today, which means his wrist twinges a little, which means Evan’s distracted and not thinking about his new commute or new school or new major. No, instead he’s thinking about how he hasn’t really improved his social skills since he was seventeen, how he’s tired and hungry and this coffee he stole from work is getting cold, how he feels like he’s disappointing his mom somehow, even though she tells him whenever they talk how proud she is of him.
Evan is so in his head that he doesn’t see the patch of ice until he’s watching himself slip on it. Like he’s outside of his body, just for a moment, watching this disaster of a 24 year old comically eat shit by slipping on a patch of ice like a cartoon slips on a banana peel. Evan slams back into his body just as his left hand collides painfully with the pavement and his right hand, holding tight to his lukewarm coffee, convulses and crushes the paper cup against Evan’s chest, staining his blue striped shirt.
Evan sits there for a moment. On his knees, which are smarting after making friends with the pavement, with his outstretched hand stinging, and watches as his backpack is kicked down the concrete by the rushing crowd.
Keep it together, Evan tells himself as someone accidentally kicks his phone.
Keep it together, Evan thinks through gritted teeth as he learns his backpack’s zipper has broken. He gathers up his belongings, all dirty and slightly damp from this excursion into the subway station, and keep it together is what Evan thinks when he hears the train pull out of the station, and keep it together is his mantra as he has to swipe his Metrocard three times before the turnstile grants him entrance and keep it together Evan is all he can think when he experimentally flexes his left hand a few times and winces at the pain that shoots up his arm.
In fact, all things considered, Evan is keeping it remarkably together as he gets on his train. Despite the now very cold coffee he’s wearing and his throbbing wrist and his broken backpack, he’s not hyperventilating or freaking out all that badly. He’s going to just… go to class.
He wanted to start over at a new school so he’s going to fucking start over damn it.
It’s all going to be okay. Evan’s fine. He’s fine.
The subway car is crowded, but Evan manages to find a seat. He can’t bring himself to look up from the floor where a puddle of unidentifiable liquid is flowing toward the door until suddenly there’s a body blocking out the flickering lights. A long legged someone in a tight pair of black jeans and combat boots.
Evan is absolutely going to lose his mind if today is the day he’s finally subjected to some asshole who takes their dick out on the train. He swears he will go absolutely batshit and put a pen in someone’s windpipe.
“Shit,” Skinny Jeans says.
Evan looks up. He’s 96% sure he’s about to get an eyeful of Subway Perv balls, so he’s shocked speechless when instead he’s greeted by a lanky guy with shoulder length dark hair and a charcoal denim jacket looking at him with concern. The guy has a crooked smile, a very straight nose, and expressive eyebrows.
He’s possibly the hottest person Evan has ever seen, and he took one look at Evan said said, “Shit.”
Evan’s going to actually die.
“Ha, yeah, I need to watch where I’m going,” Evan says, unable to make eye contact. He fixes his gaze back on the puddle of liquid of undetermined origin.
But then Hot Guy plonks his messenger bag down on the seat beside Evan and starts rummaging through it. Evan can’t help but watch. The guy has black painted fingernails. He’s wearing a few rings. He pulls a few odds and ends out of the bag - three paperbacks, a pack of Juicy Fruit gum in weirdly retro packaging, and then finally a dark blue plaid scarf. “Here,” the guy says, holding the scarf out to Evan.
Evan stares at the soft-looking blue fabric, unable to make his brain do important brain things like speak or respond in any way other than staring. “I… what?”
The guy gives Evan a sympathetic smile, one that makes his eyes crinkle and a dimple appear on his cheek. “Take it,” He says. “Cover up the… coffee?” He takes maybe half a step closer. “It is coffee, right?”
“It’s coffee,” Evan says, defensive and incorrect and awkward. “It’s just coffee, not like puke or anything disgusting.”
Fuck why did he say that?
Does he want to scare off the first friendly stranger he’s met in this whole city? Does he have to just say shit?
But, by some fucking miracle, the guy with the legs laughs. “I was more worried you had fallen in whatever that is,” he says, pointing to the foreign liquid still spilling its way down the car in horrifyingly unidentifiable rivers.
“Good point,” Evan says with a slight smile.
“So… what’s the story?” Legs for Days asks, leaning slightly on the pole they are wrapped around. “If you didn’t fall into the satanic antimatter over there.”
Evan sighs, his face growing horrifyingly warm. He’s probably going to burst a blood vessel out of pure mortification if he’s not careful, fuck. “I was, um. Thinking about how I just moved here and have to figure out a bunch of stuff and got distracted on my way into the station,” He mumbles. “I slipped on some ice.”
The Retro Fashion Model stares at Evan for a beat. “You slipped on ice?”
“Yeah.”
“Because you were thinking too much?”
“I know,” Evan says softly.
“That’s the saddest fucking thing I’ve ever heard, oh my god,” Evan’s Knight In Black Skinny Jeans says with a soft laugh that both utterly destroys Evan’s last remaining shred of self esteem and also makes him want to grab this guy by the collar and kiss him a lot which is horrifyingly embarrasing.
“I know,” Evan says, trying to laugh along and knowing he’s not quite pulling it off. “I can’t take your scarf, though.”
“Sure you can,” The guy replies. He sort of wiggles it at Evan. “Seriously. Take it. Come on.”
Evan shakes his head, a little more aggressively than is probably, like, normal. “No. No, I can’t, I-I mean. It’s cold out and I’m the one who spilled coffee on myself, so. You shouldn’t have to, like, feel sorry for me or whatever. It’s not a big deal.”
Long Legs wrinkles his nose slightly. “Who said anything about feeling sorry for you?”
Evan feels his face heat up considerably, and he’s unable to find any words to make this less weird or awkward. He should have just taken the damn scarf, but now he’s protested and declined and made it an entire thing. He’s such a fucking idiot, why can’t he just have one somewhat normal conversation?
“Listen,” the Subway Angel says in a surprisingly kind voice. “It looks like you’re heading somewhere important, and it’s just a scarf.” He holds it out again “So take it. Seriously, because I don’t want it and if you don’t it’ll just become, like, subway litter.”
Evan titters out the most embarrassingly high pitched laugh. “Are you sure?”
Subway Angel gives Evan another grin, and Evan can’t help staring at the dimple that pops out and wishing he could, like, curl up inside of it like a sexy ringworm, except Jesus Christ there is absolutely nothing sexy about a skin fungus what the fuck is the matter with him why is he like this. “Dude. Take the scarf. Please.”
So Evan takes the scarf, the moment that the soft fabric touches his skin, Evan is zapped with static electricity. He startles, the movement obvious and spastic, and his subway savior smiles and laughs in a way that doesn’t make Evan feel like he’s being laughed at, exactly. More like he’s being laughed with .
It’s an unfamiliar feeling.
Evan’s Knight in Skin Tight Jeans gives him a grin, revealing very straight and white teeth. “Anybody ever tell you that you smell like pancakes?”
Evan ducks his head for a moment, unsure if he should be embarrassed or emboldened by the fact that this conversation hasn’t ended. He looks over to say something to his Savior in Black but at that precise moment the subway car’s lights flicker and go out, just for a moment.
When the lights come back on, Evan’s subway angel has vanished.