Chapter Text
Evan hunched deeper into himself, shying away from Kurt as he snickered. “You crying yet?” he asked, jabbing Evan in the shoulder.
He turned his face away, cheek to his opposite shoulder, to hide his tears, but that was probably answer enough. He just wanted to eat his lunch, but if he said so, Kurt and his friend, Marco, would probably steal his sandwich and chips and cookies. Evan was really just lucky that they’d cornered him before he could open his lunchbox.
The kids in his class always took advantage of lunch and recess, when teachers were scarce, to poke and prod and laugh at him. More than they did in class, at least. Only once had he tried to tell Ms. Monroe, and all it’d gotten him was broken pencils, ripped homework, and hisses of tattletale at his back.
There was no escaping the bullies, he’d come to realize with heavy, hopeless resignation. Especially when they outnumbered him like they did. Evan against his class—or rather, the other way around. He’d never been brave enough to retaliate. Though if he did, with his luck, he’d get in trouble for acting out just the once.
Kurt yanked on his hair, drawing a short yelp from him as his head was forced to tip back. “Am I boring you, Afton?” he sneered.
Both boys laughed when Evan whimpered, scrunching his eyes up. That was why a new voice took him by surprise. “Geez, did he put worms in your pants or something?”
Evan breathed a sigh of relief when Kurt abruptly let go of him, only to wince. The new kid had come up behind Kurt and Marco, and the glower he’d sent at the class during his introduction didn’t exactly bode well for Evan. The other boys would draw him into their bullying soon enough, he was sure.
“What?” Kurt asked.
The new kid raised an eyebrow at him. “I mean, what’d he do to piss you off?”
“Besides existing?” Marco replied, elbowing Kurt as they shared a smug look. “Nothing much. Afton’s always just asking for it.”
No, I don’t, Evan wanted to say. He rarely said anything at all to anyone during school. He avoided eye contact with his classmates, and he’d long since learned better than to try to befriend any of them. Really, he went out of his way to avoid interactions with them entirely—so, it actually was just about his existence.
He shrank into himself, focusing on the floor as his eyes welled up with tears again.
“See?” Kurt said. “He’s a total crybaby.”
Sounding supremely unimpressed, the new kid said, “You making him cry says more about you than it does about him. Scram, losers.”
Evan looked up in shock just in time to watch him push between them, sending the two shocked-silent boys stumbling. The new kid thumped his bag down on the table beside Evan, with a decent space between them, and sat without sparing them a second glance.
“But—but he’s a crybaby!” Kurt sputtered, as if this was some great argument-winning point.
The boy seemed to agree with Evan’s silent assessment, because he rolled his eyes and asked, “Yeah, and?”
“You want to sit with a crybaby?” Marco demanded.
The new kid pointedly looked around at the bustling, crowded cafeteria. “Gee, is there another mostly-empty table that I missed?”
It was true. Evan always got a table to himself. It was more of a mercy than some of his tormentors likely believed.
Kurt and Marco shared a confused glance. “Wouldn’t you rather sit with someone else?” Kurt asked.
And with enough scorn to make Evan’s mouth drop open, the new kid eyed the two up and down and said, “Someone like you?”
He watched in amazement as his bullies stepped back as though struck, shocked too small a word for the expressions on their faces, before they slunk away in silence. Unthinkingly, Evan turned his awe to the new kid.
Golden-brown eyes caught his, and he automatically curled in on himself. Stupid, making eye contact like that.
But instead of needling him, the new kid finished pulling his food out of his lunchbox and said, “I’m Gregory.” And then, curiouser and curiouser, he nodded at Evan’s shirt and added, “Same shirt.”
Sure enough, their shirts were almost identical. Solid colored collared short-sleeve shirts with two thin stripes going around the chest, just below their armpits. The only difference was Evan’s being black with gray stripes, whereas Gregory’s was dark blue with lighter blue lines.
A weak little snort-giggle escaped him before he could swallow it down, but Gregory only gave him a small smile in return before directing his attention to his food.
It took a few minutes for Evan to muster up the courage, but he had no reason to think Gregory would react poorly. Unless this was some elaborate trap…
But if it wasn’t… if Gregory’s simple kindness was genuine…
“I’m Evan,” he finally whispered, sniffling.
Wordlessly, Gregory reached reached down to rummage through his backpack, which Evan was only just now noticing he had with him. He pulled something out, and a moment later, a small travel pack of tissues was slid across the table to Evan.
It was arguably the kindest thing anyone had done for him in ages, in and out of school, so Evan couldn’t even blame himself when he promptly burst into tears.
And miracle of all miracles, instead of calling him names or laughing or getting up to leave or any of the other cruel things kids had done in response to him crying, Gregory patted him on the back and said wryly, “Nice to meet you, Evan.”
• • •
There were some days when Evan couldn’t believe Gregory was real. Okay, a lot of days. Like, maybe he finally snapped and Gregory was an imaginary friend he’d created to cope. Admittedly, that was unlikely, given that plenty of other people interacted with Gregory.
But still. What were the odds of him somehow unintentionally becoming friends with the new kid, who was not only very nice to him, but who very quickly established himself as the toughest kid in class?
After school that first day, sometime around when Evan had started crying again when Gregory revealed they lived barely a minute’s walk away from each other, Kurt and a bunch of other boys had followed them down the street a little ways, calling insults at both of them.
Gregory tolerated it for only a minute—long enough, he later explained to Evan, to be clear of the school and thus unable to get in trouble with teachers—before he dropped his backpack, turned around, and marched right toward the cluster of bullies.
Kurt stepped forward, puffing up a bit. He and Gregory were about the same height, both only being a few inches taller than Evan himself.
Whatever Kurt expected to come from Gregory’s anger, it clearly wasn’t a fist to the face. He toppled backwards, wide-eyed, as Gregory raised his fists, glaring daggers at the rest, and snarled, “Who’s next?”
They all cowered back. Kurt, nose bleeding, started crying.
“What was that you were saying about crybabies at lunch, huh?” Gregory said in a mocking tone.
The whole group had scattered, which was one of the most satisfying things Evan had ever seen in his life, and it was three weeks later and Kurt still couldn’t look either of them in the eye.
Word had quietly but quickly spread, it seemed, because no one in his class was foolish enough after that to target Evan while Gregory was around. Or when he wasn’t, not after the one time he’d been home sick but exacted revenge when he came back to find Evan all sniffly and sad-eyed.
If that wasn’t enough, Gregory also almost always dragged Evan to his house after school, particularly after Evan admitted his siblings weren’t much kinder than his bullies.
And Gregory’s family… Evan definitely saw where Gregory got all of his… Gregory-ness from.
Gregory had only one sibling, Vanessa, who was older than Michael by a few years. She, like Gregory, had great capacity to be genuinely, effortlessly mean. But also like Gregory, beneath that layer of glares and scraped knees and bloody knuckles, she was so incredibly kind.
They chose kindness, Gregory and Vanessa, in a way Evan hadn’t really thought was possible.
Vanessa cautiously skirted around him for a little while, aware of his hunched shoulders and instinctual flinches, before finally settling on treating him much like she treated Gregory, just a bit gentler. She ruffled their hair, threw packets of fruit snacks at their heads, and aggressively plied them with water when they played outside. She and Gregory would smack each other around, too, which scared Evan at first, until he finally began to recognize the difference between this kind of play wrestling and the way Michael was rough with him.
(Shamefully, he wished sometimes that he was Gregory and Vanessa’s younger brother. That this house was his home, and their parents were his parents.)
Except, it wasn’t just their parents. The house hosted a family and a half, it felt like. It took multiple visits for Evan to finally work out which of the extended group of adults were Gregory’s actual parents—adopted, though, Gregory had explained with a shrug.
Mr. Freddy was the obvious one. He clearly adored Gregory in a way Evan wasn’t used to seeing in fathers. He was so gentle, and very free with his hugs (even to Evan!), and he was practically always smiling. He was never too loud, but Evan also never felt like Mr. Freddy was putting on a front around him.
And then there were so many other family members, it’d taken two weeks of Evan going over after school for him to finally meet them all.
There was Miss Roxy and Miss Chica, who both took some getting used to, for different reasons. But they were also both patient and never pushed his boundaries. Miss Roxy was always trying to show him how to punch people without Mr. Freddy noticing and stopping her, and Miss Chica had a strange, if useful, habit of always having food with her. But not in a soccer-mom’s canvas bag of supplies way. Evan had once watched as she magically produced three plastic-wrapped brownies out of her pockets, followed by half of an apple and two cheese sticks.
Neither of them were Gregory’s other parent, though they did lots of parenting. Gregory had two dads, not a dad and a mom.
Mr. Foxy confused Evan for a while, since he dressed and talked like a pirate. Gregory finally explained that his uncle worked as a performer at a nearby amusement park, and he had so much fun being a pirate that he was almost always in character, though Evan often just wasn’t around when he exchanged the costume for something more comfortable. The first time Evan ever saw Mr. Foxy in sweatpants and a t-shirt, he’d almost mistaken him for a whole new person he hadn’t met yet.
(When they laughed over his confusion, Evan didn’t feel like he was being laughed at. Not when he was giggling too.)
Uncle, though. Gregory called him his uncle, so Mr. Foxy was also out of the running.
Then, there was DJ. Evan had only seen DJ a few times, and he had no idea if that was actually his name or not. But he stood out because he was big, even for an adult—tall and broad. The suspenders and brightly colored dreads and headphones sitting around his neck effectively kept Evan from being too intimidated. As did DJ’s dog: a friendly chihuahua that Gregory claimed was named M&M, but Evan had yet to see any proof for or against that.
He wasn’t around enough to be Gregory’s other dad, not with the way Gregory talked about his papa.
The twins were too young, he figured, both being in college. Evan didn’t know what their real names were, but he suspected their nicknames were Sun and Moon largely because they were a picture-perfect example of opposites. Light haired, dark haired. Freckles, no freckles. Always smiling, always frowning. Reds and yellows and oranges, blues and purples and blacks.
They were really only ever home from college on random weekends, from what Evan had observed, but they were both nice when they finally met him. Ironically, despite Sun being the super friendly, cheerful one, Evan favored Moon with how quiet and calm he was. But Gregory finally let slip that they were cousins, confirming his suspicious—though which, if any, of Gregory’s aunts and uncles were their parents, Evan couldn’t even begin to guess.
Ultimately, it came down to Mr. Monty and Mr. Bonnie. And Evan felt kinda bad for being relieved when he finally discovered it was the latter. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Mr. Monty… it was just that he kinda reminded Evan of Michael a little. Just—more. He rode a motorcycle and had a mohawk and worse fingerless gloves and old band t-shirts. He was loud and would sometimes swing Gregory up into the air, upside down, and it was only Gregory’s shrieking laughter that kept Evan from being truly afraid of Mr. Monty.
But he was nice, and he’d crouch down to talk to Evan, which made him much less intimidating. With each visit, each interaction, it became easier to relax around him.
After Mr. Freddy, though, Mr. Bonnie—Gregory’s papa—was Evan’s favorite. Mr. Bonnie played guitar and made the best lemonade and had this slow, fond way of smiling that never failed to draw a smile out of Evan in return. He had some scars, on the sides of his face and his upper left arm, but they didn’t make him scary. And even though Mr. Freddy gave the best hugs, Mr. Bonnie was the easiest for Evan to talk to. There was a calmness to him that Evan craved in his own home.
They were a crazy family, Gregory and his sister and his cousins and his dad and papa and his aunts and uncles and M&M. But they made Evan feel welcome, and they were kind, and they never pushed him to talk about his own home life.
Evan had always thought his family was plenty big, him and his brother and sister and parents. And he’d certainly never wished for it to be bigger. But when he was at Gregory’s, just down the street and around the corner, and there were as many as eleven voices ringing throughout the house (twelve, if you counted him), it seemed like the perfect number.