Work Text:
I'm throwing caution
What's it gonna be?
Tonight the winds of change are blowing wild and free
If I don't get out
Out of this town
I just might be the one who finally burns it down
-The Killers, Caution
Connor runs.
He picks up and he fucking runs.
Wes is dead. Rebecca is dead. Those rich incest kids are dead and Sam Keating is dead and everyone is fucking dying.
Sure, they’ve made it past this investigation, they’ve made it past the burning down of Annalise's house, they've made it into a place where there isn't an active police investigation directly around them, and that should be giving Connor room to breathe-
But everything that Connor has ever worked to has crumpled around him. His grades are in the toilet. He sees ghosts in every corner.
He sees them in the goddamn mirror.
It’s impossible not to.
He sees Paxton, hanging onto that windowsill, pitching himself over the edge because holding on took more strength than letting go.
And Paxton had far less weight settling across his shoulders. Paxton didn’t have multiple murders branded in the back of his mind.
And so in the middle of the night, Connor turns over on his side, looks Oliver in the eyes, and says, “If I don’t leave it’s gonna fucking kill me.”
It’s a simple statement. A point-blank confession.
Staying here is killing me. Is dripping poison directly down into my core.
And if I stay, I’m gonna die.
Oliver looks at Connor. Really looks at him. Stares at him so long that Connor thinks that he's gonna be able to feel the itch beneath his skin.
And doesn't question Connor's statement. Doesn't doubt the way that Connor knows that if he stays here, it's going to eat him down to his bones.
“To Stanford?” Oliver asks.
Connor shakes his head. “I don’t know where. We can settle anywhere. Do anything. Figure something out. Whatever you want. I don’t know. I just-” His voice nearly breaks like the glass beneath Paxton’s body. “I am falling apart here. I need to- I need to be something good, instead of just trying to forget the fact that I’ve only been doing bad. Please. God-” His breath hitches. "I can't stay here any longer. It is killing me."
He is on the verge of breaking. Of shattering into so many pieces that he’ll never be able to pick them all up.
And Oliver Hampton isn't going to let him break himself open, not now that he knows every reason why Connor ended up this way, splintered and shivering and carrying the weight of a sky that only keeps getting heavier.
Oliver reaches out and pulls Connor into his arms, letting Connor sob into his shirt.
"Give me a day to gather up what I need," Oliver says, "And then we can go. I could use a bit of a change of pace, too. Let me help you carry this."
---
They pack the car with as much as they can take without getting a moving van and drawing attention, deciding that they'll withdraw money from some random ATM after they've already left town but before they get to wherever they're going. Oliver has a friend who can forge them real paperwork and ids to match the digital trail that Oliver himself hacks and fakes so that they can have a place to stay.
There isn't too much life that Connor needs to pack up. He wants as few reminders as possible of his life here and what it all spiralled down into, one bad decision after another until the ghosts were too heavy to carry.
And then they get into the car and they fucking drive.
---
They end up somewhere in Missouri. Some place called Independence, because Connor likes the symbolism and Oliver likes the fact that they’re not too far from a major city but still not swallowed up by the metropolis.
Here in Independence, he can see the horizon. There are no mountains, no skyscrapers, nowhere to hide and yet everywhere to get lost.
And maybe that's a good thing.
---
Connor goes to community college to be a social worker. To do the sort of thing that could make a real difference that isn't just chasing to clean up other people's messes after they've gone so far that lives cannot be saved.
He can’t scrub the murders from his mind. He can’t cleanse his fingers of the blood that stained them.
But he can do what he can to help other kids not end up doing what he saw so much of.
---
Connor and Oliver don’t have a tv in their studio apartment. They don’t watch the news. They don’t see the updates on what’s happening on a college campus a thousand miles away.
They don’t need to see the ghosts. They don’t need to wait and see if everyone else turns themselves into graveyards in the pursuit of trying to mop up a mess that can never be cleaned because every sweep of the mop just unleashes more blood.
Connor never hears about a federal manhunt for him and Oliver, and that’s all that matters to him.
---
Connor still sees ghosts in the corners of rooms, but they are gentler, nowadays.
Sometimes he comes home from cases and he’s failed. Sometimes he sees things and he can’t call them victories.
Sometimes he comes home and all he can do is tremble and shake and wonder if Laurel’s demand for him to kill himself might have had some merit-
But then Oliver pulls him into his arms and murmurs sweet nothings and sweet everythings, reminders that you’re more than one failure, Connor. All that matters is that you keep going and help the next kid.
But god. With every kid that he helps find a better home, with every family he keeps from being shredded apart by a broken system, with every teenager he helps avoid juvie, with every gay kid who he recommends to a counselor or testing or a youth center, some small stitch settles over the wounds in his heart.
Every single person is a win. Every single case is one more person that won't get drawn down into the whirlpool to drown and suffocate like he was.
The big difference between being a lawyer back in New England and being a social worker here in Missouri is that Connor is not just haunted by ghosts; every single case that succeeds is a life that doesn’t fall out of the window and into the graveyard.
There is a trophy back in New England, begging for its own graveyard, carrying its own ghosts, but here in Missouri, Connor has late nights with Oliver Hampton, dancing through their kitchen, laughing in bars over how obsessed people in this town are over the Kansas City Chiefs, sharing movie nights and Oliver’s aunt’s lumpia and the way that it feels to lay on the roof to see the stars that they couldn't see through the light pollution back east.
“If this is boring,” Connor says to Oliver with a smile, “Then we should have signed up a long time ago.”
Oliver, his shoulders less strained than they have been in ages, smiles right back as he leans in to kiss the margarita out of Connor’s mouth before they settle in to watch New Year's Eve fireworks that are so very legal here. “Can’t help but agree.”
---
There are some things that will never go away. Connor’s guilt and Oliver’s HIV diagnosis and their respective self-doubts and insecurities and the rest.
But they can build something here, together. They can set down roots. They can let flowers bloom.
Across the country, Annalise Keating and the remnants of her original five can tear themselves apart in their death spiral, but here, Connor is getting ready to go to the jewelry shop and ask for a ring in Oliver's size for a finger that is softened by office work and the occasional pirated movie, not blood-stained with getting drawn into a murder.