Nowhere Else I'd Rather Be • Tree Bros

Awkward

"What? What the fuck is so funny?"

Evan's eyes widened as he realized what he had done. He thought he was actually going to get out of here with no sense of panic (that could be seen at least), but things don't happen as planned.

"I'm sorry, it was nothing, I didn't mean to- It's just that, uh, Jared, earlier, he said something a-an-and..."

Evan stopped when he saw Connor's shoulders drop, his defensive mannerism was shutting down. He watched as Connor took a breath and muttered to himself.

"I- I'm sorry... It's just, well... As you can clearly tell, I am very defensive about myself and my ability to do things. If... That makes sense. I worded that weird. Still."

Evan nodded to confirm that he got what Connor was saying.

"So... What did Jared say that made my piano so funny?"

Evan straightened his back up and cleared his throat which felt like it was clogging up.

Connor slowly made his way back to Evan, but instead of sitting so their knees touched again, he sat a little ways away.

"Uh, so, " Evan swallowed a weirdly large amount of saliva and took a breath in, "When you winked at me, you know, earlier, he, uh, Jared said, uh, 'Di- did MCR just flirt with you?' and- and it just reminded me of that... You know? Irony... Ahh..."

Connor breathed out a laugh, "I can see why you laughed, I guess." Connor started playing with the cuffs of his jeans.

"Sorry... I didn't mean to yell at you."

"I-it's fine."

Evan started thinking to himself, his thoughts blocking out any outside noise that could come.

'Damn. Evan, why are you like this? Couldn't you have just NOT laughed at his piano? Now it's awkward and he's apologizing. Can you even fix this? Is that possible? Alright, we could try but we gotta think about what we say-'

"No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have laughed, it- it sounded nice." Evan silently scolded himself for not thinking before speaking. At least he didn't say anything stupid.

Connor shook his head, "It's fine, you didn't do anything. I'll just... Blame Jared."

Evan laughed a little but caught himself wanting to defend Jared. He shouldn't do that. No matter how much he liked Jared, he sometimes deserved it.

"So, Evan, what are you thinking about over there?"

"Nothing, nothing at all."

"Huh. Nothing? You blank a lot then."

Evan shrugged, not really knowing how to respond. I mean, he could practice fake confidence and make some snarky remark, but would it even make it through without stuttering and having to repeat?

He figured he'd practice some other time.

Evan snapped back to reality as he watched Connor start reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a rubber band and tied his hair up.

"So... Jared's here... a lot?"

Connor breathed a short 'mhm'.

"What's he do?"

"Honestly? He just yells about everything. He once yelled about this guy he was dating, blond apparently."

Evan started fidgeting with the edges of his cast, not wanting to make eye contact, "Really? What'd he say?"

"A bunch of sappy shit. Oooh, my boyfriend is amazing, ten-out-of-ten, would recommend~! I mean, who the hell recommends their boyfriend?"

Evan managed to mumble out a small, "I don't know, " without showing pure embarrassment from his voice.

"You seem close with Jared, is he still with his 'dreamboat' man?"

"No, no, uh, no." Evan repeated no too many times for his comfort, but he couldn't take back words that tumbled out.

"Wow. What'd he do?"

"Mm... I don't think he did anything, I think it just- maybe they just didn't click..?"

Connor nodded, choosing to ignore the shade of pink that was painted on Evan's face.

It went quiet, the conversation didn't just flow like it should, it stood still, waiting for a new topic to appear.

"Is there something that we can do?"

Evan didn't like how that left his mouth, it sounded too demanding to him, like he was demanding an activity for Connor to present.

It stayed silent right after that. Evan assumed that he killed the friendship and made everything bad because of his tone and word choice.

"We could watch something. "

Evan quickly nodded, looking for any scraps of salvaging what he was sure was a broken 'friendship'.

Connor hopped back up, searching for the remote. As he did this, he was telling himself to calm down. He wasn't all good with Evan's laugh from before, it still bothered him. He knew it was because of a joke, but he couldn't help but think it was because Evan wanted to make fun of him.

He found the remote and started to look through his streaming services. He put a random show on, just to play in the background. Evan, trying to be nicer than ever now, stared at the tv. He didn't fully understand what was happening in the episode, because he was more focused on looking focused.

His surroundings sounded muffled like his head was underwater. Then he finally heard clearly.

"EVAN!?"

His head looked straight up to Connor, trying to figure out what he had done wrong just sitting there. Connor looked more concerned than mad, which probably meant something better than what he thought.

He thought maybe he stared at the tv so intently that he went through the rest of the day trying to look focused and in the moment, or something worse. But... Connor just looked the same, everything, looked the same.

"Hey, Evan... Are you okay there? I-I don't know if this is common with you but you looked like you were... Uh, not to be rude or anything, but it looked like you were dying."

"Oh, I- Oh... Sorry! I didn't, I was just... Zoning... Out?"

Connor nodded, unconvinced, but he was going to let it go.

Rapid knocks hit the front door, making Evan jump.

"It's Jare-"

Connor couldn't even finish before Evan was at the door allowing everyone in, trying to escape the lonely awkwardness between him and Connor. It was stupid to think anything of his inner ramblings, but he still let them, supposedly, ruin unstarted relationships.

Not only was he wrong with that, but he was also absolutely nowhere near right. In fact, Connor had taken an even bigger interest in him from just the small interactions they had for maybe 5 minutes.

Word Count - 1076