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I'm Here

Summary:

Evan Hansen has found himself wrapped up in a spiral of lies like no other. Fuel is constantly added to the fire, intentionally or otherwise, and by the tragedies that begin to follow the Connor Project and its associates, getting burned is the least of his problems.

Keeping the secret is hard enough, but it's much harder when lives are on the line.

——

Canon-divergent horror AU.

Chapter 1: Sincerely, Me

Notes:

Welcome to I'm Here! A fun horror DEH AU I've been brewing for a while :] I don't wanna spoil too much of what I have planned, but I hope you stick around and find out! :D

Later on, the story will get pretty violent and grim, so if you don't think that'll be your thing, feel free to click off. For now, though, we're just getting through Act 1, so feel free to sit back and enjoy the calm before the storm.

Hope you like! Comments are appreciated ^^

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

If you'd asked Evan what he thought of Connor Murphy maybe, like, a week ago, he'd barely be able to come up with anything. Zoe's brother, the one there were hushed, whispered rumors about, maybe the fact he took a nail filer to his teeth to make them look like fangs in freshman year, but not much else.

If you'd asked him now... unfortunately, not much would change. He'd say unfortunately, because right now, his life pretty much hinged on pretending to have complex thoughts on Connor Murphy — on which he had none.

There were bits and pieces he'd learned from his family at dinner, yeah, but nothing that made him feel like he had a real, genuine friendship with the guy. Embellishing an anecdote to include Connor in it was easy, with the added bonus of nobody at the dinner table wanting to be that asshole and point out the inconsistencies of a story from a boy in shock, but actually getting into Connor's head was... much harder.

What did he even like? Knives? Pushing people? Hating skiing? What if he had some weird typing style Evan didn't know about and couldn't imitate that would blow a hole in the whole thing? What if he didn't even use emails? What if the Murphys knew this was all bullshit and were just humoring him, and he didn’t know, and he was humoring them humoring him? What if —

"You good over there?" Jared didn't even look his way as he pressed his laptop’s power button, but likely knew after ten years of not-quite-friendship that a quiet Evan was a spiraling Evan.

Fidgeting with the ridges of his cast, he just nodded, then promptly remembered Jared couldn't see it and mumbled some affirmation. "I— yeah, I’m just, a little scared?"

"Shocker."

His one family friend Jared may have been, the other’s dismissive tone still pissed him off. Not usually, but here, they really couldn’t afford to act smart. He hoped it didn’t show in his voice. "No, I, really, Connor's family knows him way better than we do... way better than I do." He gnawed on a fingernail, a gesture he knew grossed Jared out, but one he couldn't really help. "If we mess this up..."

"How hard can it be?" Jared deadpanned with a shrug, the kind of thoughtless confidence that Evan couldn't dream to imitate in a thousand years, even if here he got the feeling it was more dangerous than admirable. "Look, all you need to know about Connor is that he acts pretty much exactly how you'd expect him to." He leaned back in his chair as he watched his laptop boot up. Evan did too, if only because he felt like he'd get even more of a headache if he watched whatever old sitcom was playing on the TV. "Weird edgy freak, probably has some true crime blog, salted snails as a kid, you get it."

Evan distinctly remembered Jared salting snails when they were younger — far past the age of “kid”, even. He chewed his lip nervously — that approach didn't feel quite right, but he was probably the last person on Earth with a right to say so. "I, I mean..." he started, tongue dumb in his mouth as he fumbled for a moment longer before finding his words again. "You talk to your friends... differently... than you talk to your parents, right? He’d be more honest with me, ‘cause we’re friends."

"Well, yeah." Jared sat back up straight, irritably clicking the mouse as his computer refused to load past a buffer screen. Every cycle the little circles went spiked Evan’s anxiety higher — what if they couldn’t get to it tonight? "But we don't wanna weird out the Murphys. Just gotta make it sound like Connor and we're good to go. We're not writing his fuckin' memoir, we're covering your ass 'til this blows over."

That approach didn't feel quite right, either. Evan wanted this to be over as quickly as possible, but doing it just to cover himself left him with a sour feeling. Connor's mom had been so happy when he told that story about the orchard, and his words probably meant more to the family than he'd ever understand — God only knew how many times he'd accidentally tugged some heart-string of theirs he didn't even know existed because Connor secretly had a crippling fear of trees or something — he could do more than the bare minimum, right?

He couldn’t do much but stew in his thoughts, because Jared was prickly and hard to talk to during their day-to-day, much less about anything personal. The other didn't seem to mind this, fixated as he was trying to get his laptop to work. Evan just stared down at his shoes, counting the floor's tiles.

"Swear to God, if I have to waste another night on this..." he heard Jared grumbling and looked up, only to be cut off by the screen suddenly cutting to black...

...accompanied by the harshest, loudest static sound Evan had ever heard in his life. Screeching, something that sounded more likely to come out of a broken TV than a new laptop. He screamed in surprise as Jared recoiled, but the other quickly began to laugh as the sound vanished just as quickly as it came, shifting to the desktop screen like nothing happened. Evan wasn't sure if he was laughing at the sound or his reaction.

"Holy shit, dude, we're totally in a horror movie right now. You ever see Unfriended? Connor's about to stick my hand in a blender."

Evan laughed along, in his weird low this-isn't-funny-but-I-want-to-be-nice laugh. "Please don't say that." His voice cracked. He never believed in the paranormal — living people were stressful enough to be around, thanks — but he didn't need any more reminders on how morally dubious this was. Having Connor lingering over his shoulder would be too much to handle.

Regardless, Jared was already opening up a fresh email account as Evan's heart still hammered in his chest. He was typing something, and Evan squinted to get a closer look. It looked to be account information for the fake Connor, and Evan's eyes fell on the email address Jared typed. "...'sexygoth69420'?"

Jared snickered proudly as he began inputting a password. "What, jealous you couldn't come up with it first?"

"This has to be realistic...!" Evan whined, starting to regret his decision in enlisting help from his so-called best family friend of all people. Didn't he understand how devastating this would be if it got out?

There was an overblown sigh of annoyance from the other, like he’d just been told to run a mile. "Fiiine, God, fuckin', uh... 'murphythrowaway'." He tapped it out. "There." Generic, but it got the job done. Evan really wasn't about to explain to the Murphy parents the significance of the number 69420 to Connor - having to come up with convincing friendship details was stressful enough.

Clicking past extra account setup details - Evan doubted Connor’s phone number was relevant to any of this - they finally reached the inbox. "Now for the fun part." Jared grinned, the look on his face both a relief and a terror as he opened a text box to draft the first email. He was in his element, for… better or worse. Evan hated to waste a friend’s time, but that grin was a sign this would be a very, very long night. "So your weird narcissistic sex letters—"

"I-it's not a sex letter, I told you before, it-"

The pleas could not have fallen on deafer ears. "—they all start off, like, 'dear Evan Hansen', right? ‘Cause that's what the Murphys found when Connor Cobained himself. So I'm just gonna..."

Jared leaned forward to start typing, and Evan felt a sudden chill. He knew deep down — hell, not even deep down, knew on the surface — that this was fucked and wrong, but what else could he do? His only option was to dig deeper, and if nothing else, Jared would be happy to help with that - he was down for anything he thought was funny or otherwise benefited him, up to and including Evan's suffering.

The room was cold as Jared slipped all too easily into the fake Connor persona, and Evan watched the words form across the text box, knowing this was a point of no return.

Dear Evan Hansen,

We've been way too out of touch…

Notes:

Sincerely, Me is sacred ground. This may be a horror AU but I can't ruin it.