I haven't kept up with htgawm either because i couldnt handle how those two play with my heart. maybe you reminded me just HOW MUCH i love coliver and I started crying reading your fic god i love them so much thank you so much. If you don't mind doing another one "What am I supposed to do? Just sit here and not fall in love with you?" (thanks again a lot for the other one i love it so much thank you thank you thank you)
i know! i just got tired of getting emotionally tossed around. and yeah, yeah, i know it’s called how to get away with murder, but also there’s such a thing as too much murder! at what point do they become serial killers for being involved in like 10 different deaths???
anyway, i love them and i appreciate you for your incredibly kind words. oh my goodness. it’s been a while since i’ve written them, and honestly i’ve forgotten how much i’ve missed them. so here goes nothing.
canon divergent post season 1.
connor and oliver date for a little bit, but connor, unable to live with guilt about sam, tells oliver. oliver breaks up with him, and they go their separate ways. connor barely scrapes by through grad school. he ends up working his way up the ladder from clinic to clinic until he’s at a respectable one, but after about five years of it, he can’t handle it anymore and quits, picking up a job in brooklyn as an editor at a small publishing company working in mystery and crime novels. he has several casual relationships and dates a guy for a year and a half, but they decide to break up after they both realize it’s not working out and they aren’t making enough time for each other.
he’s working in a coffee shop on some edits for a big release they have coming up when he looks up, and –
it’s oliver. and fuck him. oliver’s coming up on 38, and he looks like he hasn’t aged a day. connor watches as oliver orders, and when he sees the to go cup, he scrambles to pack everything up as fast as he can. oliver is almost down the street when connor runs out, and he screams his name after him.
when oliver catches his eye and realizes who it is, he freezes, and connor can hear his heart pounding in his ears.
they agree to grab lunch next week, and connor can barely wait. he reaches out to michaela, the only person from middleton that he’s kept in touch with. she had picked up the pieces after his first break up with oliver, so she warns him to be careful.
lunch is awkward. he finds out that oliver is dating someone, someone he has been dating for three years now. and connor doesn’t know what he expected, but his heart sinks anyway. when they leave, it doesn’t seem like oliver really wants to be friends. so connor drops it.
he throws himself into work with a newfound intensity for a few months until he runs into oliver again late one night at the christopher street station. oliver’s boyfriend, robert, is there too, and they talk for a little while as they wait for the train, and robert invites connor over to their apartment on friday for dinner.
connor wants to say no, but robert insists, so connor says yes. and he brings a pie he’s cooked. dinner is much better than lunch was. perhaps it’s easier now that the ice has been broken or perhaps oliver’s stupidly nice boyfriend moves conversation along, but it’s smoother than it was.
connor invites them to a book launch by a prominent author, and they agree to come. in fact, oliver and robert become friends with connor fast. it takes oliver longer to warm up to connor than it takes robert, but once he does, he and connor become close.
they spend their spare time together. he, oliver, and robert spend connor’s 35th birthday together. and oliver’s 31st. and when michaela visits, he, michaela, and oliver go out drinking and get ridiculously drunk, and for the first time, connor feels free in a way he hasn’t since before everything happened with sam. since he was younger and falling in love for the first time.
and he’s sitting with michaela in his apartment the next day, when michaela remarks, “you’re doing it, connor. i told you to be careful, but you’ve fallen in love with him again.”
and it hits connor right in the chest. he hasn’t thought about it that carefully until now, but now that it’s in the open, he can’t pretend it isn’t real. his head reels, and he feels everything he’s worked so hard to build crumble beneath him.
as much as he tries to file it away, pretend like he and michaela never had that conversation, robert and oliver notice a change in connor’s behavior around him. so one night, when robert is out on a business trip, oliver asks connor what’s been going on.
connor can’t hold it in anymore. he knows it isn’t fair. he knows oliver deserves better and so does robert, but oliver asked, so he tells him. oliver says nothing for a while until he finally asks, “why”
connor shakes his head and reaches for oliver’s hand. “what am I supposed to do? just sit here and not fall in love with you.”
“yes, connor! i have a boyfriend! i’ve had a boyfriend since before you came into my life again.” oliver tells him to leave, and connor does, knowing already that he’s ruined everything.
he waits a week before texting oliver, but oliver doesn’t text him back. and when he goes on facebook, he realizes that robert has unfriended him. connor feels like he’s at middleton again, falling apart and unable to cope. only this time, he never even dated oliver.
his other friends help him. and although he doesn’t tell them what happened, he knows they must have figured out it has to do with oliver because he went from being around constantly to out of his life. almost half a year passes, and connor is at a book release in los angeles when the phone rings, and it’s oliver.
oliver doesn’t want to talk over the phone and says to call him back when he gets back to new york. but once he does, oliver doesn’t pick up. in fact, connor’s beginning to think he made it up when, almost a week after, oliver sends him a text asking if he can come over.
oliver takes a while rambling before he finally gets it out. “i think i have feelings for you too, and it wasn’t fair to robert.”
and connor isn’t sure if he understands. “you broke up with him?” he asks, not too tactfully.
“maybe this was all a big mistake,” oliver wails. but connor shakes his head and wraps his arms around oliver – his oliver.
“stay,” he asks. for a moment, he thinks oliver is about to panic and refuse, to run away and try to take it all back. but he doesn’t. he nods, and for the first time in a long, connor feels truly happy.
send me a made-up fic title and i’ll tell you what i would write to go with it