evan czarnecki. 27. and to tell the truth, i don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, i don't want to sell my life for money, i don't even want to come in out of the rain.
a self-para, and parting gift, for my second-favourite korean
trigger warnings for: allusions to domestic and child abuse
general warnings for: evan being a dick
i.
“This is her, right?”
Evan’s gaze flits to Connor’s phone screen. There’s a photo of a woman sitting cross legged on a piano stool, back turned against the keys.
“Yeah,” Evan tells him. “That’s my mom.”
“You look alike,” Connor says.
Evan laughs. “I know.” And it’s a nice thing, half the time, that he can look at the mirror and not see Rina’s husband instead. Lord knows he doesn’t want to be reminded of a pain that’s been buried. Still, there’s some pain seeing Rina’s face reflected, too — when the distance between past and present elongates, even the best memories turn bitter.
This is what they discovered about Rina Watanabe: She abandoned her ex-husband’s surname. She runs a semi-popular music store slash studio and still teaches basic piano to little kids. She abandoned the rolling mountains of Blackrock for the sepia-toned city of Cheyenne, Wyoming, which is apparently a real place that people live in and not just a state Eisenhower invented to add more stars to the flag. It’s also nine hours away from Montana by bus.
This is what Evan discovered about Connor Park: He cares enough to take him there.
He also knows Evan well enough to offer the window seat. Knows Evan well enough to inch away even if the seats are small and the bus is already pretty cramped. He knows Evan well enough not to say anything when Evan’s eyes, still lingering on his mother’s photo, turn downcast with the rest of his expression.
Of course, he reminds himself, Connor’s been through the same shit, so he has the decency not to pity him.
The rest of the bus ride is quiet. Behind the window, Wyoming’s rolling fields blur into long yellow lines. The mountains get smaller and bluer with distance. Connor’s listening to music on his phone. His fists are balled into his lap, and his expression is tight in a way that makes Evan suspect that he’s less focused on whatever he’s listening and more focused on a question running through his mind, like he wants to ask Evan something but doesn’t know where to start.
Evan realizes he wants to ask Connor things too. Wants to keep his mind away from his absent mother and the hole she left — wants to ask about the similar-shaped hole Connor might have, what’s the system like, do you remember your mom, how long have you and your brother been fighting, do you remember being a kid?
Instead he taps at his ear, gestures for Connor to pull an earphone out. When Connor does, Evan asks, “What are you listening to?”
Connor hands over the other earphone. “Do you wanna hear it?”
Evan takes it. It’s a Frank Ocean song, likely from Evan’s lost years, because it’s not anything he’s heard before. Still, the mellowness is familiar enough that a wave of wistfulness settles on his chest. There’s nothing out the window but vast space, so Evan looks at Connor, and right on that beat Frank Ocean croons, it’s quite alright to hate me now.
Maybe all Connor wants is for Evan to have the closure he and Noah never got. It’s too late to tell him that it’s not worth the effort — Evan’s not worth the effort — and what kind of person does this, anyway? What kind of person exhausts themselves to make sure another person doesn’t feel the pain that they’d felt? Evan furrows his brows. He imagines Connor, five years old, sat on a swing set waiting for a mother that wouldn’t come back. He imagines himself, twelve years old, staring at a window and waiting for a car that would never return.
The same story, different endings. Evan gets his heart broken and keeps the pieces to himself. Connor gets his heart broken and offers the pieces to other people. The comparison fucking stings. For a fleeting moment, he considers berating himself for being so goddamn selfish, but then he tells himself that, you know what, maybe it was neither of their fucking faults. There are versions of themselves that could have been kinder had they simply been afforded the privilege of being loved. A version of Evan where he isn’t too guarded. A version of Connor where he isn’t too insecure.
He imagines them then, as children, their hearts full and whole and unbroken. Evan’s much taller at six years old than Connor is at five, so when Connor sits at the swings his legs are still too short to kick himself up high enough. It’s the make-believe Evan that stands behind the swing, grabs it by the chains, and pulls. When he lets go, Connor soars.
Right on time, Frank Ocean sings, we’ll never be those kids again.
ii.
In the music store in Wyoming, there’s a small child. Her face looks like Evan’s. A near splitting image of his eight-year-old self. Evan watches her run up to the woman leaning by the cash register, gives her a kiss on the cheek and says, I’ll see you at home, Mom.
Then his eyes find the woman at the counter. Evan knows that posture. Relaxed shoulders, elbows propped on a surface behind her, back leaning, entirely graceless and casual. She waves goodbye to her child as her mouth splits into a smile, a fondness Evan doesn’t realize is familiar until his heart sinks to his chest.
Mom.
Evan takes a breath.
Connor faces him. Evan can feel the concern in his eyes even without looking. “You don’t have to do this now,” he says, and he’s right, because they’re both still exhausted from the bus ride. “There’s still time tomorrow.”
Evan shakes his head. “I’m good.”
Hands slide into his pockets. He doesn’t break his gaze from the woman, who has yet to notice him, too busy throwing her head back in laughter as she gets lost in her conversation with the man at the counter. She looks happy. Happier than she ever was at home. If any painful feeling arises from that, Evan keeps it buried.
He drags his feet toward her. His heart feels heavy. This is a bad idea, he thinks, but he doesn’t stop walking until Rina turns her head and stops at the sight of him.
Her eyes widen. Her mouth opens, then closed. She looks at him the same way most people in Blackrock do, at least after the lost years. Like the can’t tell if the man they’re looking at is anything more than a ghost.
Evan wills himself to smile at her. “Hey.”
She smiles back, startled and painfully forced. “Can I help you?”
“Mom.” His voice drifts with the softest sort of desperation. “It’s me.”
She blinks. Her gaze won’t meet his. There’s shame evident in her eyes — which, if he were crueler, might make him feel better about all this, but now all it does is stab a knifelike pain through his chest.
Her lips press into a thin line. If he remembers her correctly — and he probably doesn’t — it means she’s fumbling her mind for words. Her eyes finally meet his, and when her mouth opens, the words are slow to come out.
“Do you,” she asks, “want to talk outside?”
Now, it’s Evan’s turns to pause. “Sure.”
Connor’s standing by one of the drum sets, one finger tracing the circumference of a cymbal. He stops when he catches Evan’s gaze. Evan mouths, I’ll be right back and waits for Connor’s nod before following Rina out the door.
Outside, Rina fishes a pack of Marlboros from her pocket. She leans against the wall and plucks a light out of the box. Head turning to him, she says, “Do you smoke?”
Evan purses his lip. “Kind of.”
She hands him the cigarette in her hand and picks out another for herself. It’s silent, mostly, when she takes out her lighter and sets the tail end aflame. Evan doesn’t ask her to light his. It seems that she, too, forgets to offer.
She takes a drag. A long one. Only when she huffs the smoke out does she face him again. “You’ve grown.”
“I mean,” Evan says. “It’s been a while.”
Rina sighs. Evan can’t tell where the frustration is directed: herself, or him. Her brows crease and form a worry line. “I’m sorry — I just. I thought you were—”
Evan cuts her off. “I’m here now. The girl in the store earlier. Is she your—”
“She’s my daughter.” Even if guilt drips through her voice, the words are a gut punch.
He’s been playing the same made up story in his head since he was twelve. Sometimes she comes up in his dreams. It starts without awkwardness. They speak about everything and nothing until the conversation’s strong enough to carry the heavy shit — the questions he couldn’t ask and the answers she failed to give. At twenty-seven, his mind rewrites the story. First, she’ll asks, where have you been, and whatever flippant excuse he might give for his disappearance won’t matter, because she’ll throw her arms around him and say that she missed him, say that she’s sorry she ever left him behind.
But she doesn’t ask him where he’s been. She asks, “Why did you come here?”
And here’s where he starts to regret asking for a light. Grief wells at his chest, pushing his heart to his throat. I had some questions I wanted to ask you, he should say, but his impatience gets the best of him, pushing the words out too soon. “Did you—” And he shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t ask questions he doesn’t want to know the answers to. “When I disappeared, did you — did you look for me?”
Rina looks down.
She folds her arms. It makes her posture look more closed, like she’s putting space between them. “I tried. I tried very hard, for a year.” Rina wraps her arms tighter around herself. Her head hangs low. “I just — I had my obligations here, so I had to—”
“You gave up hope,” Evan says.
She tilts her head up slightly, to face him. There’s very little resentment in his eyes, but she still seems to shrink under his gaze. “But you’re alright now, aren’t you?”
It’s tempting to snort at that question. Six years, Evan things. Nobody had seen him for six years. “I’m getting by,” he says, voice flat. “Dad’s dead. You probably already knew, though.”
“I’m sorry,” she says.
The laugh he tears out of his throat is small and dark. “Come on. Don’t lie. We both wanted him gone.”
And maybe his expression’s gotten darker, because his mother’s shrinking deeper and deeper inside of herself. “It must have been hard, still.”
“It was harder when he was alive.” Evan steadies his voice. He knows he doesn’t need to say more than this. But the anger wrenches at his chest, and the bitterness leaks through his words. “You know, everything he did to you, he did to me.”
Her face is all heartbreak and shame. Not the strong-willed mother he once knew. Or maybe she was just louder in the house because she needed to be. He used to think neither of them gained anything from living in that shitty manor, but maybe, in the cruelest sense, it was a learning experience. Rina learned to fight back, and when she couldn’t, she learned to run. Evan learned to take a hit.
“I’m sorry.”
Evan scoffs. “I mean, it’s cool.” His voice is a calm and wretched sound. “Did you know bones get stronger after you break them? They have to adapt after the fracture. Become more resilient to stress. I think I feel invincible now. You can put me in Guinness records for world’s best pain tolerance.”
He imagines himself, on a swing set, waiting. Hang on. That’s not right. He imagines himself, at a piano, waiting. He imagines this small girl, at a piano, Rina holding her small hands, guiding her fingers along the keys. He imagines this girl, a bruise on her neck in the shape of a man’s hand. Wait. That isn’t right either.
He imagines himself, twelve years old, sitting shotgun at Rina’s car, watching Montana blur past them. Rina turns the radio up and tells him to sing with her, so he does; he sings and stares at the road ahead and smiles bright even if — or maybe because — he has no idea where they’re headed. He imagines a life where she saves him. He imagines a life where neither of them have to heal.
“I’d understand it,” she finally says. “If you hated me.”
Evan’s face falls. “I never hated you.” He drags a sigh out of his throat. “I just — I don’t know. I guess I just wished you loved me.”
iii.
He’s fine. It’s not a big deal. It’s not like he didn’t expect this. Did he get his hopes up a little? Maybe. But it’s not something he can’t survive. That’s what he’s good at, right? Surviving. He survived broken bones, a broken home, a broken life. He can survive a broken heart.
Connor shuts the door of the motel room and leans against the wall. Good. He knows when to keep his distance. But Connor opens his mouth, because of course he has to say something, and immediately, Evan thinks, this is going to get ugly.
“If you need me—”
Evan says, “I don’t need you.”
“—I’m here.”
This is going to get ugly.
“Thanks,” Evan says.
Connor looks so small like this. When Evan meets his eyes, Connor’s gaze flits away. Maybe that pisses him off. Things are fine, right? So Connor should be a better friend and act like things are fucking fine.
But maybe Evan wants Connor to open his mouth again, say something stupid, cross a line. Don’t take it personally. His anger’s just a ticking time bomb and it just so happens that Connor’s within the blast zone.
“It was hard too. When me and Noah found out that our—”
Evan laughs. “How’s that hard? It’s not like you actually knew her.”
“Our mom,” Connor continues, and Evan can tell that it’s getting harder for him to stop himself from getting angry. “She had a new family, too. I’m just trying to say that I get it.”
Evan’s mouth splits into a wry smile. “Projecting. That’s always fun, isn’t it?”
“Evan,” Connor warns.
“Maybe that’s why you brought me here. Couldn’t fix your fucked family relationships, so maybe fixing mine’s enough of a compensation.” Evan puts a hand on his chest. “Your thoughtfulness knows no bounds. Thank you, Connor.”
Connor narrows his eyes. There’s a flicker of something dangerous in his gaze. “You asked me to take you here.”
“I said thank you, didn’t I? I think it’s real nice of you to keep putting in so much effort as if it’s ever done anyone any good.” Evan’s mouth curls into a sneer. “Persistence. I like that in a man.”
Connor frowns. “I’m gonna take a smoke outside. Don’t talk to me until you’re done throwing a tantrum.”
“Oh, nice.” A wry laugh leaves Evan’s lips. “Connor Park’s walking away from someone. Isn’t it usually the other way around?”
That gets Connor to flinch.
His eyes meet Evan’s. “Look, I get that you’re hurting, but don’t you dare take it out on me.” A sigh leaves his throat, frustrated. “All I fucking wanted was to do something nice for you.”
“I’m not,” Evan strains to say, “hurting.”
“Like I said.” Connor’s gaze doesn’t break from his. “I get it. I’ve been there.”
“You really think we’re the same, huh?” Evan folds his arms. Under Connor’s stare, his body feels very close to shattering. Still, he keeps his voice tight. “You don’t know me. You don’t know half of what I’ve been through.”
“Can you stop acting like you’re the only person who’s gone through shit?” Connor snaps, with a fire that almost gets Evan to smile. “Look, fine. I don’t know what happened to you. But I know—”
“What do you know?”
“—that you like to lash out when you’re upset.”
“Go on,” Evan says, sharp and venomous. “I’d like to know more.”
There’s a glint of cautiousness in Connor’s eyes. For a fleeting second, Evan expects silence, suspects that Connor is afraid of saying the wrong thing, as he always is. Connor opens his mouth anyway. “You’re pushing me away so you can prove that I don’t really understand you. Because you don’t want to be helped. Because you want to hurt yourself. Or Because—”
Connor pauses. His eyes meet the ground. Evan’s voice goes tight. “Because what, Connor?”
A breath escapes him. Connor finally tears his gaze away. “You don’t want people taking care of you. Because then they’ll have the power to hurt you.”
Jesus. Connor Park is so fucking smart.
“Or maybe I just don’t want you taking care of me,” Evan snaps. “I’m starting to think that maybe you like that I’m damaged.”
“Why the fuck would I like that?”
Evan started this fight; he’s not about to lose it, not even when his legs feel weak and his heart wants to leap out of his throat. “Why else?” he asks, but it’s not really a question. “Can’t solve your own problems? Why not throw yourself into someone else’s. You think that if you save me you can save yourself from having a nonexistent sense of fucking self-esteem. But guess what? I’m not you fucking project, Connor. So stop trying to fix me because I’m not fucking broken.”
Connor’s face falls. He looks more hurt than angry. “I don’t,” he says, “think you’re broken.”
Evan knees collapse from underneath him.
His hands ball into fists at his lap. His eyes fall shut when he lowers his head, body keeling forward, mouth falling open as his heart dredges from his throat a scream that comes out soundless. His lip quivers. Small, unwanted dew drops form at the corners of his eyes and spill into the floor.
There are versions of themselves that could have been kinder to one another had their lives been kinder to them. “We deserved better,” he says, because it’s a lot easier to say than I’m sorry. It’s true, anyway. His mind runs through the same sentence, again and again and again — we deserved better. We deserved better. We deserved better.
Or maybe he’s very close to proving that he’s capable of being crueler than his past. It’s just Connor that deserves better. Deserves more than an absent mother the set of transient homes she’d doomed him to, deserves better than a friend who gives him a verbal beating for — what? Doing exactly what Evan asked?
Guilt, useless and cloying, floods at Evan’s chest, punishing him for wanting comfort. Evan’s never been good at asking for help. Connor’s never been good at giving it, or perhaps that’s because he gives too much — and Evan would like to ask, now, but what right does he have? An apology is owed and he’s too much of a coward to give it.
Connor still kneels down in front of him.
Evan holds his head up. Looks at Connor, watches as reluctance and concern flickers in the other’s eyes. Cautious as always. Evan loved and hated that about him. He moves closer, wraps his arms around Evan, pulls him close to his chest. Against his own self-scrutiny, Evan buries his face into the crook of Connor’s neck.
Evan’s shoulders drop down. His breathing remains shaky and jagged, but it slows as Connor’s arms fold around him. His grip tightens, but it doesn’t hurt. That’s funny.
“If you let me take care of you,” Connor says, “I promise — I am not going to hurt you.”
Evan’s voice goes very quiet. “Don’t let go, then,”
“Okay,” Connor tells him. “Okay.”
iv.
The bus ride back to Blackrock is mostly quiet. It’s a night ride though, so Evan’s exhausted, and not even Frank Ocean’s crooning can keep him awake. He drifts off, eyes fluttering drowsily when he turns to Connor, mouth falling open, as if to say something. To ask for something. No sound comes out, but still, Connor lifts a hand and guides Evan’s head down his shoulder. Something warm fills Evan’s chest. He’s not sure what to call the feeling, but it’s quite a special thing, when someone knows exactly what you need, and you don’t even have to ask. Evan’s head stays on Connor’s shoulder for the whole drive home.
He does not hear the little voice. Not at first, at least. It sounded far away, as if it was underwater as the headlights of Mar’s car nears them. It was only when he caught himself in his little trance that he looked down at Evan, then at Evan’s arm where his hand had tightened its grip.
Sam, it’s okay. I’ll be good.
Too often, lately, he’d had mirrors placed before him, forcing him to see himself in forms that he did not recognize. He saw it in Evan’s panicked eyes, far too similar to the Evan he once knew long ago for him not to remember what that young man slumped over the piano during mass had to endure in those days.
Cautious fingers curled around his hand, as if it would burn them, and Sam cannot recognize his reflection. He doesn’t want to.
The hand relaxed, leaving the other entirely.
Mar appeared beside the two, and a simple question was met with more confusion. “I can’t let him just leave like this, Mar,” Sam said, trying to exhort some type of positive authority, but feeling like he was failing with every word. The feeling of those scared fingers refused to leave the skin of his hand. “He’s concussed or something. He needs to go to the hospital.”
“–– Yeah.” The word is clipped, but not cold; Mar stealing a glance at Sam before her focus returned to Evan – Evan, out of it; Evan, I don’t know.
“Hey.” It was instinct, stepping closer, while reason told her to not crowd him in. Her voice was low, warm, as she spoke, her eyes trained on him. Her own had never looked like this, but she could hear it – the shortness of breath, the way it staggered out of him. “We’re gonna be okay. I won’t leave you.”
Two lithe hands reached out for Evan’s, fingers finding his, gentle because it was all she had to give.
“Tell me if I can’t touch you. I won’t be mad. But– we have to breathe. Yeah?” Inhale. Exhale.
He hates his body. Hates how fear is its baseline, how the feeling makes a home out of him, takes so much space that it wrings all reason out. There’s a better version of him in his mind — Evan with his back straight, Evan with his shoulders relaxed, Evan with a steady breath and an easy smile to match. That’s the only Evan anyone’s allowed to see. But there’s a monster in his mind and it makes his body smaller.
“I don’t,” he strains to say, syllables dragged raggedly out of his throat, “want to go to the hospital.” He’d say please but he’s tired of asking for things. He’d say please but he’s tired of feeling ashamed. Still, his fingers tighten around the hand holding his. There’s an impulse, then, to rest his head on her shoulder, but he’s far too tall to reach her height and far too old to be thinking so childishly.
But she says they have to breathe. So breathe. “I’ll try,” he says softly. The bounding of his chest slows. “I’ll try.”
Evan steps back. And it shouldn’t strike at his chest like a knife — he was the one to rush at Evan, after all — but it still cuts him. Progress is comprised of both steps taken forward and back; he understands this better than most in the house, with the twenty years he’s spent trying and failing. But he cannot deny the bitter taste of disappointment at himself. Has he pushed too hard? Has he overwhelmed Evan with expectations? How does that impact this moment?
Hopefully, none of that crosses his face. He stays in place, allowing that space to remain between the two of them, and waits for Evan’s answer.
It arrives with no fanfare, just an absolute that Evan was proven right, despite Diego’s assurances. He was too slow to act.
Closing his eyes for a few moments, he nods once, twice. “Yeah, that’s grounds for a hefty fine and jail-time,” he murmurs, rubbing a hand over his face. But Evan’s right — it’s the least of their worries. He only has pieces of Evan’s life before he transformed, and those pieces are too small to stitch together a plausible past.
Painstaking moments of silence follow, as Diego gathers his thoughts. He has to force himself to remain still, lest he expose the nerves coursing through his veins by an incessant tapping of his foot or the disastrous shake to his hands.
He keeps his gaze on Evan, and takes a deep breath. “What do you think the cops know?” It’s a question that needs honesty, for Evan to admit something he might not be ready to confess. And still, Diego presses forward. “Why do you think it will be easier for Sam to figure out what you are by knowing your actual name?”
A wry laugh escapes him. “Guess I’m fucked.” Everything would be easier if Diego didn’t see something in him worth saving. And fine, maybe Diego’s right, because Evan knows he’s not half as terrible as he pretends to be — Evan’s not bad, Evan’s not bad, what’s bad is the hand he’d pulled, because it’s hard to survive the terrible without becoming something worse. Doesn’t he deserve to be forgiven for that?
Fine. Diego’s right. Evan’s worth saving. Knowing that doesn’t make asking for help any easier.
“My dad died the day I went missing. Wolf attack.” In mind, he looks different. He’s standing in front of Diego with his head held high, a knife of a smile cutting across his face. Crooked and daring. Dangerous. Except that’s not what he looks like now. The strain of saying the truth out loud affords him little energy to school the solemn look on his face. He folds his arms. He feels so much smaller than what he wants to be. “Not like the cops really know what we are. Like, I’ve been like you for six fucking years, and the idea’s still barely fucking believable. But it’s like, with all the wolf-related shit that’s happened lately, y’know, their minds might go there.”
He feels his hands fold tighter around himself. Holding his body together, trying to pretend it wasn’t close to shattering. “I want to think,” he says, “that their minds won’t go there. But there’s this—“ Evan bites his lip. He very well knows that he doesn’t need to say anything beyond this. He recognizes the weight in his chest for what it is: grief. Something that has no place in this conversation. It gets harder and harder to wring the emotion out of his voice. What do you think the cops know? Evan furrows his brows. “Never mind.”
1. What does their bedroom look like? AND 48. How do they express love? alternately, if evan were ever to fall in love would he feel himself doing it or would he not realize what was happening until it was too late?
What does their bedroom look like?
It looks like Connor’s bedroom, because it is, indeed, Connor’s bedroom. They share a bunk bed. Sometimes there are Ritz cracker crumbs on the floor. That’s Connor’s fault.
How do they express love?
Acts of service, babey! e.g. I will read you a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit because it meant something to me and I’m hoping it will mean something to you. I will vacuum the whole house and make you crepes for breakfast because you look tired. I will clean up all the Ritz crumbs on the floor even if we aren’t speaking with one another, because we both deserve to live in a clean space, and I will force you to ride a ferris wheel with me so you can get closure from the pain you got from the argument that I started. Still, Evan being Evan is not very forthright about love and he will pretend that everything he does is for his own benefit.
As for the second question, who knows. He’s never been in love. He’s overly self-aware to the point that he can make sense of his feelings as they happen, but at the same time, he’s really big on denying his emotions and actively tries to pretend that they aren’t what they are. So the likeliest outcome is that he will feel himself falling in love, but he’ll also pretend it doesn’t matter, or worse, actively distance himself from the feeling. Commitment’s scary, anyway.
Look, he doesn’t — he can’t claim to know Raine, to really know Raine. He’s not supposed to be drawing these conclusions about them. Evan leans forward into the bathroom sink, one hand pressed against the glass, the other tracing the rapidly-healing bruise from the other day. Raine had helped him that day. Had looked at him with genuine concern. So why is it that when Evan looks at his reflection — the blues on his cheekbones — all he can think are Grey’s battered face, the fists that might have beat them, and the apologies people were screaming in this too-crowded house.
He’s got no proof Raine did it. But the body never needs logic to feel what it feels, that’s the frustrating part. Evan runs the faucet over his hands and spatters a splash of water over his face. He dries off with a roll of toilet paper because none of the towels are dry — it’s hard to get used to this, sharing a space with so many people — and when he’s done he hurls the rolled up ball over to the trash bin and swings the bathroom door open.
And of course, speak of the devil, Raine is there, waiting outside. Evan tries to relax his shoulders. He hated what his instincts did when Raine was around — hated how they made him want to shrink himself, hated how they made him more aware of the space he took. Evan takes a breath, schools his expression into something more casual, and wills himself to get rid of any evidence of fear in his body. Exhale. “Hey,” he says. “Got a minute? There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
He turns his back for one moment and everything has gone haywire.
Boots thud against the ground as he cuts across the square, moving quicker from the gazebo where he had been waiting than one would expect a weak creature like him to move. “Watch your feet!” He will not shout at the other, but his voice is stern as he points to the ground.
Around the young man’s feet were many semi-flat stones with symbols carved onto their tops, they had been strategically spread out in the grass by Santí about an hour beforehand. Now, a few of them had been scattered by the other’s path.
“Careful! You will ruin it!”
A month after his abrupt return to humanity, Evan accepted that, with the state of the world, there was no other choice but to throw everything he knew about the world out the window. Every new piece of information desensitizes him to the unexpected. Werewolves are real. Sam Mehta’s a cop. Justin fucking Bieber is married. One Direction broke up and now two of them are fathers. Taylor Swift is playing Bombalurina in a live action version of Cats, and more surprisingly, she’s been in a steady adult relationship for three years (good for her).
That’s why his face stays mostly blank when the human version of Sonic the Hedgehog runs toward him at full speed. His expression does shift, feature by feature, narrowed eyes first, a tilt of the head, then his mouth falling open slightly. Sometimes, things just happen. Don’t question it anymore.
“Ruin what?” he says, tone dripping with exhaustion. He sweeps his dead-eyed gaze over to the ground where he finds many strange-looking stones spread out around the grass. Evan’s mind jumps to a hasty conclusion before the logical side of it can provide any proof. “Oh,” he deadpans. “The Chaos Emeralds.”
“I think I’d marry Grey because they’re pleasant to be around even if they’re... a little strange. I’d have sex with Naomi because -- wait, who’s Conor? Yeah. I don’t know a Conor, so we’re killing Conor.”
favorite music artist or group that came out after you turned into a wolf? also do you think we'd all be better off as wolves instead of werewolves or humans?
“I like that Hozier guy. It’s people like him that make me feel like being human isn’t so bad. Being a wolf is nice, but then you remember you’d miss out on things like -- I don’t know -- music, art, literature.” He laughs, wry and self deprecating. “I sound pretentious, don’t I? I mean, if we could just -- if we could -- I don’t know, be less cruel to each other, hurt each other less, then I think being human would be worth it. But look at the state of the world right now. I don’t think it’s worth it.”
“Anyone who owns a gun. So like, ninety percent of the population. Not to be controversial, but I don’t think most people should be allowed to own a metal murder stick. Get a new fucking hobby.”
Diego: 8. Diego’s an all around good-looking guy. I think emotional intelligence is the sexiest kind of intelligence a person could have. Also, I bet he’s got a big... heart.
Naomi: 9. I respect women.
Noah: 7. He has the face shape of a Dorito, but somehow he makes it work.
Connor: 6.9. I think he would be the better looking twin if he didn’t always look like he was on the verge of crying. Still, you know. His face is pleasant. Symmetrical.
Grey: 7. They would have been a 10 but seeing someone eat out of a garbage can really dampers your view of a person.
Raine: 420.
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