Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If you asked Charles Kaylee to describe himself, he’d tell you two things. A computer nerd, and a coward. The first item is relatively self-explanatory. Charles, or Charlie, as he prefers, loves computers with his whole heart. Gaming, software, coding, looking stuff up on Google, he loves it all. But the second item in his description… well. See here, Charlie’s the reincarnate of Charles Lee, the infamous Revolutionary War general who ordered his troops to retreat in the Battle of Monmouth, and just generally caused confusion by these orders, resulting in many unnecessary casualties. Charlie’s not proud of this, but it is his past. As soon as he got his revival and found out who he was, he used all those computer skills to research this Lee. Memories from a past life will only get you so far, and he needed more info.

So, apparently he was court-martialed for his actions during Monmouth. Well, that’s fair. He was kinda an idiot. Luckily he wasn’t subjected to the death penalty. But then… for some reason, he thought it was a good idea to insult George Washington? Charlie’s been to school and he has no idea why anyone, even his past self, would insult Washington. But the past is in the past and the past is an imbecile. Anyway, Lee then dueled somebody and got shot. Hah. Serves him right. Luckily, he didn’t die.

Charlie stopped his research there. He didn’t really want to know about how Lee died, lest he dredge up memories of that.

Now, all he has to do is hope he doesn’t meet the reincarnates of any soldiers his cowardice may have caused to die. And especially not that guy he dueled. John… L-something?

Chapter Text

Jackie Lancaster is not having a good day. First, their alarm clock woke them up with a jarring beep at the unholy hour of 6. Then, they remembered that today is a school day. Well, that explains the early awakening. Oh and this isn’t just a normal school day. It’s their first day at a new, private, and probably extremely stuck-up school.

They swing their legs down off the bed and bury their toes in the nice fluffy carpet. “Triple A, ready to start the day,” they mumble under their breath before heading downstairs.

Triple A. It refers to a very crucial part of Jackie’s identity. Agender, asexual, and aromantic, as they will proudly tell anyone who asks. Sure, their dad doesn’t agree with it at all, but what can he do? He’s already a Hispanic single father who is also a congressman, so there’s no room for genderqueer kids. Honestly, Jackie’s fairly certain that their dad’s completely given up on them and moved on to hoping their siblings turn out okay. There’s Mark, Tyler, and Lucy, and Jackie loves them with their whole heart. They’re the best siblings a person could ever have.

“G’morning,” Lucy mumbles, wrapping her bathrobe tighter around her and sitting down, bleary-eyed, at the kitchen table. Jackie looks up and has to stifle a giggle. Their sister looks like she got absolutely no sleep last night, a look you more associate with middle schoolers and not five-year-olds. But who knows.

“Good morning Sleeping Beauty,” Jackie says to Lucy, who smiles slightly and scoots her chair over closer to them. “Whatcha reading, Jack-Jack?” They laugh and close their book. “Gone with the Wind.” Lucy wrinkles her nose in fake-disgust. “But that’s so South-y!”

Jackie gives a little laugh. “Well, I always tell you that I want to move to South Carolina, right? I bet it’s warm down there. Not like up here.” Lucy sighs dramatically. “But Jack-Jack, we have lobsters up here! And Canada!”

Her sibling groans good-naturedly. “Lu-Lu, we don’t have Canada. Canada is its own country,” Jackie says patiently. They’ve explained this many, many times before. Their sister sighs, leaning forward on her elbows. “Drat. Canada is cool. They have maple syrup and meeses.”

“Moose. They have moose. The plural of moose is moose,” Jackie rebuts, another thing they’ve explained a million times already.

That’s how Jackie’s morning passes, until it’s 8:30 and they’re standing in front of their new homeroom. “Hey… I’m-” They were going to say Jackie Lancaster but suddenly they fall dizzy.

“Cold in my professions, warm in my friendships.”

“Those dirty earwigs who will forever insinuate themselves near persons in high office.”

“Number ten, places, fire!”

A ginger-haired man with the most beautiful blue eyes flashes in front of their… his… his eyes. Because he’s… he’s…

“John Laurens,” Jackie gasps out. Their eyes widen as memories flash in front of their eyes. Remnants of who they were before. “I’m… John Laurens.”

“Are you okay?” the teacher asks gently. Jackie brushes off their shirt and manages a winning smile. “Sorry. I’m… well, I’m the reincarnation of John Laurens apparently. But, personally, I’m Jackie Lancaster.”

A knowing nod from the teacher. Everyone knows about reincarnates nowadays, and it’s not uncommon to have maybe three or four in a single class. Though most kids get their revivals before high school. But there are always exceptions. Like Jackie, I guess.

Jackie gives a little bow of their head and walks back over to their desk. The revival will come on in full force later. Guess they’ll just have to wait and pray that this John Laurens didn’t die too violently.

That day, after school is over, they head back home and immediately flop face-first onto their bed, pulling out their computer and blasting music. Just wait for the memories to come then. Jackie’s done their research. For most reincarnates, they’ll have a quick flash and then several hours later the whole thing comes. So… if Jackie calculated right and all, they have maybe another half hour.

“Henry Laurens Jr, get your behind downstairs right this instant!” a young man calls up the elegantly sculpted marble staircase. A younger boy, standing at the top of the stairs, scowls. “Johnnnnnn do I have to?” His brother shrugs, beginning to start up the stairs. “Mother put on this whole fancy dinner party, why not take it? I hear there’s going to be some cute young girls, right about your age,” he says, knowing full well that Henry can’t resist that bait.

“John! Take your bags out to the carriage! We’re leaving!” John sighs and closes his book, casting his eyes around the library. He’s grown up in Mepkin his whole life, and now he needs to leave it for “schooling.” Hah. It’s really just because his father can’t deal with living in the house where his mother died. John can’t blame him. Mother’s loss affected everyone.

Law is so boring. But it’s a respectable profession, and would help John get a position in politics, so keep the work coming.

“Miss Manning, may I have this dance?” The girl giggles, giving a little nod. John smiles before extending his hand for the waltz. Martha really is highly attractive. Any man with half a brain would be overjoyed to be in close proximity to her. And John should be, she’s smart, well-educated, and the aforementioned attractive.

“Father, do you need assistance?” John asks his father, who looks up from his book and shrugs. “Not particularly. We embark for Philadelphia tomorrow; you should have one last night out on the town. Go do whatever you young men do these days. Just don’t get anyone pregnant again.”

“So, this is where we part,” Henry Sr. says, shaking his son’s hand. “Godspeed.” John nods and somehow manages a smile. This is what he wants to do. Fight and save people and free the country. All of it. Blacks, whites, everyone.

“Laurens, you’re drunk,” Lafayette says disapprovingly. John giggles and raises his mug up, toasting the air. “Yes, I know, but it’s fun! Care to join me?” The taller man nods, a grin emerging on his face. “Bien sûr, mon ami!”

The line of soldiers salutes the general as he rides past, and Hamilton elbows John in the side. “That’s what I’m going to be one day. The general, in charge.”

“Thousands of men died! You almost got shot at least three times! True, you’re too reckless for your own good, so the almost-shots may be your fault, but still! Lee has the blood of so many men on his hands!” Hamilton explodes. John crosses his arms, glowering. “You’re right. And then General Washington tells you not to fight him! I mean, I respect our leader greatly, but Lee’s an… imbecile.”

“You, sir, can go die in the pit,” John spits out, glaring at the British soldier, who just sighs and rolls his eyes.

“Hammy! We won!” John shouts, eyes glistening. His friend grins and hugs him. “I know, I know, I know!”

A small group of soldiers rides silently through the trees, John at the head. “Okay men, we’re going to ambush them,” he whispers, gesturing to the British regiment foraging in front of them.

Some loud shouts and pain, and Jackie snaps out of it. Well, so much for hoping that this Laurens died peacefully. And on that note… it’s that Laurens? The Revolutionary War one? It couldn’t be a distant cousin, it had to be the one who has an entire section on his Wikipedia page about “Sexuality and relationship with Alexander Hamilton.” Yes, Jackie has found themselves on some weird Wiki pages. To be fair though, that particular page was looked up because their friend was babbling about some siege of Charleston and the name Laurens came up.

Great. Now they knew who they were. All they’ve gotta do now is stay very, very, very far away from anyone who might be the reincarnation of Hamilton. And maybe Lee while they’re at it.

Chapter Text

“Alex!” Lisa, his foster mom, calls, jolting Alexander awake. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes and slowly traipses down the stairs. “Lisa, do you have coffee?” She laughs before presenting him with a cup. “Yep. Black and bitter, just like your soul. Drink up and then I’ll drive you to your new school. Are you excited?”

Alexander sighs, staring into his coffee. “I missed the first day of school because I was having a panic attack, so no, I’m not excited.” Lisa pats him on the back. “It’s gonna be fine. They’re gonna love you.”

These are the words Alexander keeps in his head as he walks into his homeroom and slips silently into the one available seat, next to some kid with curly brown hair and forest green eyes, and who isn’t too bad looking.

The kid looks up and gives a little wave. “Hey. I’m Jackie. They/them.” Alexander nods and squints closer at them. There’s a little tickle in the back of his brain. Does he know Jackie from somewhere? His other life maybe?

“Ahem…?” Jackie says, and Alexander realizes he still needs to introduce himself. “Ah, sorry. Alexander Haverly. He/him.” Jackie smiles slightly. “You remind me of one of my friends. She’d always introduce herself with both her first and last name. Do you do that often?”

Alexander nods and thinks silently to himself, this kid has a nice smile. But still, seriously, doesn’t he know him from somewhere. Going out on a limb, Alexander asks, “Might you be a reincarnate?” Jackie blinks slowly and then nods. “Yeah, found it out yesterday.”

Suddenly it hits Alexander. Jackie’s much less Southern, more Hispanic, a bit shorter, and younger of course, but the smile and the eyes are the same. “John Laurens,” he says quietly.

Jackie looks up from where they’re reading and their eyes widen. “What did you say?” Alexander thinks it through, and he’s sure. “You’re… John Laurens. I knew I knew you from somewhere.”

Then Jackie’s eyes get even bigger and they slam their book closed. “Hamilton, stay the frick away from me,” they hiss, grabbing the book and running out the classroom door.

Ugh. Alexander sighs. Just his luck. He finds the cutest person ever in both lives and they can never be his in either. What’s next? He runs into Maria Reynolds? Aaron Burr? Thomas Jefferson?

Chapter Text

“Jemmyyyyyyyyyyy wake upppppppppppppp!” Thomas squeals, hitting his sleeping friend in the face with a pillow. Jeremy slowly yawns awake and fake-glares up at the other boy. “Excuse you, sir, I was taking my beauty rest."

Thomas giggles and sticks his tongue out. “You don’t need beauty rest, you’re already beautiful, Mr. James Jeremy Mendoza Madison."

At that, Jeremy starts cracking up. “Gosh. That doesn’t even sound that weird when you say it.” Thomas tries to flip his hair but fails miserably, making his friend laugh even harder. “Everything sounds amazing when I say it,” Thomas says sassily.

Jeremy rolls his eyes playfully before floofing some of Thomas’ hair. “Whew, sassy today, I see. Check yourself before you wreck yourself, Mr. Jennings Jefferson.”

The two boys chat about everything under the sun, until Jeremy’s mother calls them both downstairs for a hearty breakfast of pancakes with loads of syrup.

Jeremy’s little brother, Hyrum, grins at the two of them, mostly to show off his missing front teeth. Thomas gasps in fake-surprise, looking at the little boy. “Whoa! Did the Tooth Fairy come?” Hyrum nods enthusiastically. “Yup! I got a whole two-dollar bill!”

His mom laughs, handing each of the three boys a plate of food. “Do you know who’s on the two-dollar bill, honey?” she asks, directing the question towards her youngest son.

Thomas and Jeremy look at one another before bursting out laughing and confusing the other two people at the table. “At least it wasn’t a ten-dollar bill,” Thomas says after his laughter has calmed down a bit. Jeremy almost chokes on his pancakes, and nods his head. “At least it wasn’t.”

Mrs. Mendoza looks between the two boys, forehead wrinkled in concentration. “Do you all… am I missing something here?” Thomas pastes on his most innocent expression and smiles up at her. “No ma’am. Just an inside joke.”

That afternoon, Thomas and Jeremy are hanging out in Jeremy’s room again and playing Monopoly when Hyrum runs in, sobbing.

“Oh no, what’s wrong, Hi-Hi?” Jeremy asks, glancing concernedly at his brother. Hyrum scoots over next to the two bigger boys and sits in Jeremy’s lap. “Brey, brey, ‘m Herkuese Mowegan,” he mumbles, his words distorted by his sobs.

Jeremy looks over Hyrum’s head at Thomas, who only shrugs. “What was that?” he asks gently to his best friend’s brother. “Was it in some movie you were watching?” Maybe it was some villain in a scary movie that shouldn’t have been on.

Hyrum shakes his head and taps his head with one finger. “In here. Get dizzy, then shouting. Brah, brah, ‘m Hercules Muwilgan."

The two bigger boys, having already had their reincarnation revivals, immediately understand what’s going on. “Aw, Hi-Hi. Y’know what that was?” Jeremy queries softly, hugging his brother, who shakes his head. “That was a very special thing called a revival and it means you used to be somebody a long time again, then you got born back into Mommy’s tummy, and now you’re you!”

Being seven years old, Hyrum doesn’t have any arguments with this explanation. “I’m Hercules Muwilgan?” he asks, awe in his little voice.

Thomas, who’s been scrolling through Google on his computer, nods and looks up at the two boys in front of him. “Hercules Mulligan. He was a spy during the American Revolution. Irish-American. Had two sons. Tailor.” Hyrum leans over and squints at the screen. “Oh boy, I was really ugly!”

All three boys dissolve into giggles. Crisis averted, and hey, they’re all from the same time period! Sure, Mulligan probably knew Hamilton, and like, Hamilton is ew, but whatever. At least this Mulligan lived a long life.

“So, guess what, Hi-Hi,” Jeremy says excitedly after the laughter has subsided. His brother props himself up on his elbows, eyes glistening. “We, Thomas and I, also used to be people a long time ago. I was James Madison and he was Thomas Jefferson.”

Thomas pulls pictures of those two up on his computer as well, and Hyrum starts laughing again. “Jeremy! You were all like…” He pulls a serious frown, trying to recreate Madison’s expression in the picture. “And like… bleh!”

Jeremy rolls his eyes playfully. “But Thomas looked seriously judgmental though. See?”

For the next half hour, the three boys laugh over memories of the past. And how ugly they were back then.

Chapter Text

Amanda, Liz, Phoebe, and Megan Schmidt haven’t killed each other yet, despite being quadruplets. Oh, and despite being the reincarnates of Angelica Schuyler, Elizabeth Schuyler, Peggy Schuyler, and Maria Reynolds. Yes. Maria Reynolds had the horrible luck to be born as a sister of the wife of Alexander Hamilton. After they all got their revivals in the same day, it’s true that no one spoke to Megan for at least a week, but soon enough they were giggling together about that really cute, albeit nerdy, Arnold kid in their grade, and fighting over who got to ask him out. That particular honor went to Amanda, by the way, who promptly dropped the boy like he was a hot potato and came out as grey-romantic. Her sisters supported her completely, of course.

“LIZ!” Megan shouts out the open door of their shared bedroom, waving a blouse in each hand. Her shortest sister comes running down the hallway and skids to a stop. “Yes, Meg? Oh, need fashion advice again?” Megan nods and her sister puts her hands on her hips, thinking. “Uh… well, you always look good in yellow or red, but of those two choices, the sleeves on the yellow one look the best.” Again, Megan nods, but as she turns to go back and change, Liz grabs her arms. “Wait a sec… did you take that shirt from Phoebe’s closet?” she asks with a teasing tone.

Megan flushes, looking up and down the hallway to make sure no sisters or annoying little brothers are eavesdropping, and then slowly nods. “Yes, but she just wore it last week and it looks really nice on me too,” she whispers.

Liz shrugs. “Makes no difference to me. It really is a cute shirt. Maybe I’ll have to steal it later too…”

After the whole family is dressed, which is no small feat, considering there’s four teenaged girls and three boys under the age of eleven, they finally get to eat. The kitchen is gigantic, just like the rest of their house. What can I say? The Schuyler sisters are rich in both of their lives.

Megan refuses to eat bacon or sausage because it’s so greasy, Amanda’s usually too distracted by a text on her phone to eat much, the twin boys, Peter and George, can’t eat sugar or else they’ll be bouncing off the walls all day, Liz hates cereal, Phoebe is lactose-intolerant and deathly allergic to peanuts, and the oldest brother, Jake, insists on eggs and potato wedges each and every morning. All of this chaos means that Mrs. Schmidt has to make different breakfasts for everyone, and if she gets even one meal wrong somebody’s going to be mad. Or sick, if she gives Phoebe peanut butter on toast, like she accidently did that one time.

Somehow, they manage to get everyone fed and onto their appropriate buses when they need to be. The Schmidt family has become a well-oiled machine, after fourteen years and seven children.

The four sisters sit next to each other on the bus, their very presence intimidating even the seniors. Everyone in town has heard of the Schmidt girls and their, quite frankly, amazing accomplishments. Megan and Phoebe play doubles tennis together, and attract all the guys (and some girls) while they do it. Liz is a straight-A, AP, college credit student, always rocketing to the top. And Amanda sings in select chorus, with the voice of an Alto angel.

“Bye y’all!” Liz shouts as they reach the front doors of First Phoenix High School, and she has to sprint off to her first period Latin class. Amanda drifts off to Algebra 2, while the other two girls have the same first class.

By the end of the day, they’re tired, loaded down with way too much homework, but still ready to take on the world.

It’s been a sweltering day, so tempers are starting to fray, and at dinner time, when Amanda announces her “genius” plan, the bomb’s ready to go off. Luckily, their parents have long since retired to their rooms to read and catch a break from the insanity of their family.

“So, I was thinking…” she starts off, innocently enough. Her sisters look up, while the three boys are engaged in a deep conversation about which Hogwarts house is the best. The answer is Slytherin, by the way. Anyway. Back to Amanda.

“Well, us four girls are all reincarnates, right?” A series of nods, though no one else knows where this conversation is going. “Okay, I thought that we could, well, there aren’t enough ways for reincarnates our age to meet others like us. So, I made a forum thing on that one reincarnation website, REbourn or whatever. Anyway, you have to be registered as a reincarnate who was alive at some point during 1770-1820, or else you can’t see this forum. To conclude, I thought that we could use that to meet other people like us.”

Immediately, the girls erupt into chaos. Megan is screaming something in French about James Reynolds, Alexander Hamilton, and mixing in a couple… choice words. Liz is sobbing violently and mumbling about Philip and how it’s not fair. Phoebe is running in circles, cursing out Aaron Burr, Benedict Arnold, and, strangely, George Clinton.

Now, Megan has moved on from insults to babbling about how horrible an idea this is and how stupid Amanda is, though still in French. Liz has continued sobbing, though now she’s just crying about all her children. Phoebe doesn’t even know what she’s doing anymore, only that if her parents heard her, they’d wash her mouth out with soap.

“Enough, enough, enough!” Amanda shouts after another minute of this. Her sisters all halt immediately and blink at her. “Can y’all shut up and listen?” she hisses. They slowly nod and she continues, a satisfied smirk on her face. “Thank you. Okay, but, look, Megan, we don’t hate who you used to be, and if Liz is okay with who you were, then that’s the biggest challenge dealt with right there. If James Reynolds, or whoever he is now, if he even is anyone, gets anywhere close to you we will all kick his butt, I promise. You’re our sister now and you’re amazing.”

That placates Megan for the time being, and Amanda moves on. “Liz, shh… it’s okay,” she soothes, putting a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “If they’ve been reincarnated, maybe you’ll get to see them again, huh? Yeah. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” Liz nods and blows her nose forcefully into a tissue.

And finally, Phoebe. Amanda scowls at her, but not too meanly. “Young lady, watch your mouth. Yes, we all kinda hate Aaron Burr. Yes, we all hate Benedict Arnold, and yes, his wife is a disgrace to the name Peggy. Sure, we don’t like George Clinton much. But watch your mouth.”

Damage repaired, Amanda smirks again. “I’ve already made the forum, so it doesn’t matter what y’all think. I’ll keep you guys updated. Ta-ta!”

She sprints upstairs and to her room, as her sisters chase after her.

In the wake of the Schmidt sisters, their three brothers are left at the table, blinking at one another before cracking up into giggles. Oops. Maybe Phoebe should have remembered they were there before she used her… very colorful vocabulary.

Chapter Text

“Frérot! Come downstairs, merci!” Paul Dupont calls up the stairs. In a few seconds, his brother Fredrick slides down the wide wooden banister, landing in front of Paul with an elegant bow. “Voila!” he shouts enthusiastically, displaying his full million-watt smile.

Paul smiles adoringly at his little brother, ruffling the boy’s curly brown hair. “Excellent. Now, time for le petit déjeuner.” Fredrick cheers and leans up against Paul’s leg. “Do ya think Maman made crêpes?” he asks, little voice filled with awe.

Again his brother smiles, sweeping him up into a hug. “How about we go see?”

Luckily for the two boys, their mother did make crêpes. Nutella ones for Fredrick and vegetable ones for Paul. Both boys practically inhale their breakfast, before kissing their mother on both cheeks and running off to their schools.

That afternoon, the family heads downtown to le Musée d’Orsay, to the immense relief of Paul, who had a particularly stressful day at school, and does not want to deal with this.

“So, you two, what d’ya say we go take quelques vacances down to England this weekend? Maybe London, maybe the countryside. Eh?” Monsieur Dupont asks as they’re all looking through the art gallery. Paul nods enthusiastically, while Fredrick seems to be lost in thought.

“Mum, why not the States?” he asks innocently, suddenly adopting a British accent. His mother looks down, confused. He’s never called her ‘Mum’ before. “Yeah. My father was from the States; did you know that?” Fredrick continues, unaware of the confusion he’s causing.

Madame and Monsieur Dupont share a bewildered glance as their youngest son babbles on. “But my real Mum, not you, sorry, she didn’t see my father. Then she got sick and died. It turned out my father died as well, back in the States. I was sad. But not very.”

Paul kneels down next to the smaller boy and puts his hands on Fredrick’s shoulders. “You had a different mère et père, n’est-ce pas?” he asks gently, wanting to get to the bottom of this. Fredrick nods, smiling again. “Mum was really pretty. Father was okay, I think. I didn’t get to see him. But he was a really brave soldier!”

A wave of realization hits Paul in a rush. Duh. How could he be such an idiot? “That sounds very nice, Fredrick,” he says, stressing the boy’s name.

His brother blinks up at him, a perplexed look in his eyes. “Fredrick? Who is Fredrick? I’m Frannie! Frances Laurens, at your service,” he adds shyly, dropping into a curtsy.

Their parents are, needless to say, utterly baffled, and have decided to just let their sons figure this out among themselves.

Paul squeals, forgetting that he’s in a museum, and picks his little brother up, spinning him around. “Ah, la petite fille de mon ami! He told us about you! Briefly, of course, and I sensed some issues there, but still!”

The confused light goes out of Fredrick’s eyes, and he squints at his brother. “Fille? Non, je suis un garçon! You know that, silly! I used to be une fille but now I’m un garçon!”

“Bien sûr, bien sûr, je suis désolé,” Paul quickly amends. “Tu es un garçon, je sais.”

Satisfied, Fredrick hugs his older brother, and the Dupont family moves into the next gallery.

Once they return home, after a hearty dinner at an expensive but amazing café, Paul immediately heads up to his room and pulls out his computer. He remembers seeing something about a forum for reincarnates of people from 1770-1820. Both he and Fredrick fit into that category. Gosh… if he finds the reincarnation of Laurens…maybe they could fix an over-200-year-old problem by reuniting them and Fredrick. Plus, he’d get his friend back.

There’s only two messages on the forum so far, one from ‘Amanda Schmidt’ the founder of the forum and the reincarnation of Angelica Schuyler, and one from ‘Aarjav Buchanan’ who claims to be the reincarnation of Aaron Burr. Oh, Burr. Paul remembers Burr. How could anyone forget that opinionless man?

Hey y’all! I’m Angelica, my sisters are Eliza, Peggy, and Maria. Yes, that Maria. Oh, if you’re James Reynolds, GO TO HECK PLEASE AND THANK YOU. Okay great. ~Amanda

Hello. I am the reincarnation of Aaron Burr. Please, please, please don’t kill me. ~Aarjav

Sounds interesting enough. At the very least, Paul will hopefully find one or two new friends, even if they aren’t necessarily the reincarnates of people he knew. Angelica though… Angelica was gorgeous.

Time to put himself out there. See how it goes.

Bonjour. I’m the reincarnation of the Marquis de Lafayette. My brother is the reincarnate of Frances Laurens. Does anyone know who John Laurens is now, if anyone? Anyway, merci for creating this! Paul presses send and the deed is done.

Chapter Text

Aarjav didn’t want to get out of his nice warm bed. To be fair, he never did. But the bed was particularly warm today, probably because his cat, Mr. Pickles, and his dog, Bubble, were both sitting on top of the covers. It’s just so comfy!

Nevertheless, his mother comes in at 6:00, telling him to get his butt downstairs and eat breakfast.

After she leaves again, Aarjav lazily reaches a hand down to scratch Bubble behind the ears, right where she likes it.

By the time his sister, Shrinika, comes in, Aarjav is asleep again. “Wake up, little bro,” she says gently, shaking her brother awake.

Aarjav, in his half-asleep state, has no filter on his mouth. “I killed him but he deserved it. He was an idiot,” he mumbles, rolling over to lie face-down in his pillows. Shrinika giggles and shakes his shoulders again. “Who’d you kill, silly? You’re much too young to be a mass murderer already.”

Her brother rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands and lets out a groan. “Hamilton. He was dumb and he didn’t vote for me. I’m kinda sorry though.”

Shrinika laughs again, before turning on the light and waking her brother up all the way. “Oh Mr. Burr, every good criminal knows that you don’t confess to your crime. I might have to call the cops.”

He rolls his eyes. “He’s been dead for a long time. And if the police show up, well, how could they arrest a charming little boy like me, based on only the words of his possibly insane older sister?” Shrinika ruffles his hair as they walk downstairs. “You overestimate your charms and underestimate my persuasiveness.”

Their mother hands them both a plate of scrambled eggs and toast, distracted by the debate she’s having with their little sister over whether you really need to wear underwear or not. All of Ms. Bahl’s lawyering skills are on full display, which is kinda overkill, seeing as Sara is only three years old.

“Okay, I’m not going to argue with you anymore, but wearing underwear is stupendously important,” she finally says, throwing her hands up in the air and walking off into another room.

Aarjav and Shrinika snicker with laughter, always loving to see how their baby sister can rile up their mom like that. Sara blinks innocently and toddles over. “Do you wear underwear?” she asks, peering up at her siblings.

Shrinika spits out her apple juice, laughing again. “Why… yes. Yes, I do. I have some basic dignity and respect for…” She trails off, and then her eyes light up. “A-A-rjav! I just remembered! You have that birthday party in an hour! We gotta get you ready!” High school distraction at its finest. Going directly from discussing underwear to discussing parties. Excellent.

Fifty-five minutes and nineteen seconds later, Aarjav is strolling into this birthday party like he owns the place. For a ten-year-old’s party, it’s pretty nice. It’s not at Chuck E Cheese, to the vast surprise and relief of all those parents. It’s at the house of the birthday boy, Ransom, and the kids have a whole basement for themselves. Kidz Bop songs are playing and everyone is either ‘dancing’ or running around on a sugar high. Which group will Aarjav join?

Evidently, the dancing. He sashays, yes, sashays, over there, shouting “I’m reliable with the LADIES!” Of course. Of course he said that. It appears that Burr, no matter what life he’s in, will always be an insufferable ladies man.

One of the girls, after whispering something to her friends, walks over in his direction. Aarjav’s seen a couple mushy romance movies, mostly when his sister was watching them. He never thought that it actually felt like time stops and everything revolved around this one person. Turns out, it does.

The girl’s ebony hair is curled in dozens of tight ringlets which are bouncing about her shoulders as she walks closer to Aarjav. When she stops staring at the floor, and instead stares up at him, her eyes look like they hold all the depths of the stars. Like… he could fall into them, fall into their infinities. Her skin is the color of cocoa powder, and with all that warmth. She looks… radiant. Glowing.

Now, away from her physical characteristics. Her dress, which happens to be Aarjav’s favorite shade of purple, goes down halfway her calves, and with every step she takes, it swishes about her legs. Black Mary Janes clop on her feet, maybe a size too large, but they show that this is a girl who cares about her appearance, enough, but not too much. That glorious hair is tied back with a purple ribbon that matches the exact color of her dress.

All of these thoughts flash through Aarjav’s head in the five seconds it takes the girl to reach him. When she smiles, he turns into a blushing, stuttering mess.

“Hey! I’m Therese Powell, but you can call me Tess. Therese makes me sound so… old,” she says, laughing and wrinkling her nose.

Aarjav nods and gives a sweeping bow. At this point, he’s fairly certain his brain would short-circuit if he actually tried to think about what the right thing to do is, so he’s relying on his memories from his Burr life. Burr seems to have gone to a lot of balls, and it would follow that he knew the proper protocol.

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Tess. I’m Mr. Aarjav Bahl. Let me just say, when I first arrived at this party, I was not expecting to find a beauty such as you.” The words are flowing smoothly off his tongue, which is highly surprising. The Aarjav most people know would rather hole up in a corner reading than talk to anyone. I guess you just have to throw a cute girl in to see what he’s capable of.

Tess giggles and then returns his bow. “Nice to meet ya. So… wanna go over to the snack table with me? We can get some chips and then dance, how’s that sound?

All Aarjav can do is nod and follow mutely after this beautiful girl.

After the two have them have gotten their snacks, they sit down against the wall to munch on them. The music seems to have a different plan though.

Soon after they sit down, Tess jumps up again, eyes gleaming. “Bad Blood! This is totally my song!” She smiles down at Aarjav and pulls him up to his feet. “Wanna dance?”

He nods, yet again, as she grabs his hands and spins the two of them around. When the song finishes, Tess flops to the floor, giggling, and Aarjav sits down next to her. “Well, you’re a good dancer,” he says cautiously.

She grins and, quick as a flash, lightly kisses his cheek. “You’re not so bad yourself, mister.”

Aarjav’s face turns a furious red, and he has to bite his tongue to keep from screaming. Oh my stars. She kissed him. On the cheek. That’s like, third base or something!

Chapter Text

“Good morning Philip,” the bus driver says politely as the small boy climbs the stairs. He gives a little wave and goes to sit in his customary seat, right in the first row. As the bus continues along, it picks up more kids, but none of them sit near Philip. They’re even sitting three to a seat, just so they don’t have to be near that “weird kid who’s too quiet.” Since when has being quiet been a signal of “weirdness?”

Philip stares out the fogged-up window, acutely aware that everyone’s whispering about him. His little finger lazily traces designs on the window, designs that stay for a couple seconds and then fade away.

At the next stop, a girl with her hair in two auburn braids and denim overalls skips onto the bus and, surveying the seat situation, plops down next to Philip. “Hi!” she says enthusiastically.

The small curly-haired boy looks up from the window and surveys this newcomer. “Hello,” he finally says quietly, deciding he likes this kid’s spunk. She grins, showing off her neon yellow braces, and scoots closer to Philip.

“I’m Sam! My mommy named me Samantha but she doesn’t know that I’m actually a none of the above so nanabooboo on her.” Philip blinks slowly, thinking it all through. This girl is actually not a girl? Can you do that? I think so. Sam nods he- their head, smiling again. “I’m a none of the above so you call me a none of the above. What about you?”

Philip shifts nervously in his seat. He doesn’t like talking about himself, but he’ll do it. Because Sam is nice.

“Well… I’m Philip but you can call me Pip or Philly if ya want. I’m a boy so you call me a boy,” he mumbles after a bit. Sam’s smile only grows. “Philly! Like Philly-delphia! You’re named after our city!”

Huh. Philip’s never thought of it like that. That’s… actually really cool. He gives Sam a shy smile. “You’re right.”

“Of course I am,” is the other kid’s cheeky rebuttal. Then they stop and tilt their head, listening to the music. Their eyes light up and they grab Philip’s hands. “The Last of the Real Ones!” they squeal. Philip has no idea what Sam’s talking about, but seeing his new… friend’s? happiness makes him happy too.

“‘Cause you’re the last of a dying breed, write our names in the wet concrete, I wonder if your therapist knows everything about me,” Sam belts out, voice sounding surprisingly good for 7:30 in the morning. “I’m here in search of your glory, there’s been a million before me. That ultra-kind of love you never walk away from.”

They lean towards Philip. “Now you shout ‘You’re just the last of the real ones’,” they stage-whisper. Philip blinks and then obliges, happy to be a part of this with Sam.

The bus pulls up to the elementary school, and all the children file off. For a second, Philip thinks he lost Sam forever, but the shorter kid pops up in the middle of the crowd, giving their trademark grin. “Pip! Over here!”

Philip edges his way over, careful not to run into the 5^th graders. “What class are you in?” Sam bubbles once he reaches them. “Um… Mr. Carter’s 2^nd grade class,” is Philip’s unsure response.

Sam squeaks and hugs their friend. “Me too, me too!”

The two kids run into the school and down the halls, ignoring the hall monitor’s shouted reprimands to “WALK!”

As soon as they enter the classroom, Philip seems to sink into himself. Sam looks at him concernedly, but chooses not to press the issue. The person that made him feel that way just happens to swagger over.

“Hmm… who’s this, Pippy? Your little girlfriend?” Ethan hisses, leering at the two of them. Sam gasps, offended, but before they can say anything, Philip swings back and punches the boy square on in the jaw. As he’s seven, it wasn’t a particularly good punch, but it’ll definitely leave a good bruise on the other boy.

“Owwwww!” Ethan shouts, glaring at Philip. The shorter boy returns his withering scowl. “I am not Pippy. And Sam is not a girl they are a none of the above so you need to call them that.”

Ethan lunges at Philip, but mercifully a teacher bustles over to separate the two. “Ladies and gentlemen, we do not fight,” Mr. Carter says sternly. Sam peers up at him and gives that winning smile again. “Hullo sir. I’m Sam and I’m a none of the above. Nice to meet you.” The teacher looks down and shakes their hand. “Nice to meet you as well, Sam. Now, who wants to tell me what happened here?”

“Well, Ethan here-” Philip starts, but is cut off by Ethan bursting into obviously fake tears. “H-he punched me… and his little girlfriend did t-too.”

Now it’s Sam’s turn to actually punch Ethan. They shove him to the ground and pummel him with their fists, tears streaming down their face. “I’M NOT A GIRL! I’M NOT A GIRL!” they shout, even after Mr. Carter has pulled them off Ethan.

Mr. Carter is too tired for this. He didn’t get coffee this morning, because apparently they only had decaf at his house and he refuses to drink decaf. Then he got to school and was immediately confronted by the principal who babbled something that was definitely discriminatory. And now he’s not ready to deal with a case of seven-year-old misgendering.

“Okay, Sam, Philip, Ethan. Fighting is bad,” he says, trying to stay calm. “Because I didn’t see Ethan doing anything against the rules… he doesn’t get in trouble. However, Sam and Philip, I have to keep you inside during recess.” The two shorter kids roll their eyes but don’t argue. For once.

That afternoon, when the rest of the class is outside, playing and having fun, Sam and Philip are inside, staring at their desks.

“Hey, Philly?” Sam asks quietly after a few minutes. Their friend looks over, with a little nod. “Yeah?”

Sam gives a cheeky grin. “Will ya cut my hair for me?” they say, handing Philip a pair of safety scissors.

Needless to say, they don’t get to go out for recess for the next two weeks. But Sam’s hair looks straight-up amazing, not to brag.

Chapter Text

“Hey, Jeremy, come check this out!” Thomas shouts to his friend a couple days later. The smaller boy pauses from rummaging through the closet for a sweatshirt and pokes his head out. “Yeah?”

Thomas grins, gesturing to the computer screen. “I found this! It’s like a forum for reincarnates from our time period. SELFIE TIME!” he suddenly shouts, jumping out of his chair and running over to Jeremy. His friend tries to cover his face, but the picture is snapped too quick.

“Great! Now, lemme just…” the taller boy muses, running back to the computer and pressing a few keys.

“There!” he exclaims, tilting the screen towards Jeremy.

[image.jpg] What’s up, you guys? I’m Thomas Jennings, and the painfully introverted one (hah, I guess some things never change) is Jeremy Mendoza. Jefferson and Madison. He has a brother around here somewhere, Hyrum, who is Hercules Mulligan. ANYWAY, Hamilton, we’re still better-looking than you!

Jeremy takes one look at it and starts laughing. “Insulting Hamilton across the centuries, huh?” Thomas gives a bright grin. “Of course. Now, wanna scroll through the other replies and see if we know anyone?”

Hey y’all! I’m Angelica, my sisters are Eliza, Peggy, and Maria. Yes, that Maria. Oh, if you’re James Reynolds, GO TO HECK PLEASE AND THANK YOU. Okay great. ~Amanda

Thomas snorts. “Well, that’s gotta be an interesting family dynamic.” Jeremy rolls his eyes but doesn’t disagree.

Hello. I am the reincarnation of Aaron Burr. Please, please, please don’t kill me. ~Aarjav

Here Thomas bursts completely out laughing. “Oh my god,” he says between laughs. “Poor Hamilton. Us and Maria and now Burr.”

Bonjour. I’m the reincarnation of the Marquis de Lafayette. My brother is the reincarnate of Frances Laurens. Does anyone know who John Laurens is now, if anyone? Anyway, merci for creating this! ~Paul and Fredrick

And in response to that one, Oh, mon ami, nice to know you’re here too! I’m Alexander Haverly, aka Hamilton, and interestingly enough, Laurens goes to my school. That was interesting. They’re Jackie Lancaster now, I’m fairly certain they’re nonbinary or something. Oh, and they hate me. I’m not sure why though. It was weird. I just asked, oh, are you a reincarnate and then they said they were and I figured out that they were Laurens and then they got up and left while telling me to stay away from them. I mean, do any of you guys know why? It’s not like I’m Lee or something. ~A. Hav

Immediately Thomas starts typing something, presumably an insult to Alexander, and Jeremy has to roll his eyes again at how childish his friend is being.

Once the typing gets to three minutes’ worth, Jeremy has to very politely tell Thomas to move on and that there will be more time to roast Hamilton later.

This was probably a mistake, me posting on here, but… hi. I’m Charles Kaylee and anyone with half a brain can figure out who I was. Besides an idiot. Though, were any of us not idiots?

“Me! I wasn’t!” Thomas says angrily to the computer. Jeremy puts his hand on the other boy’s arm. “Thomas. You were maybe the biggest idiot. Sorry.” Now it’s Thomas’ turn to roll his eyes as they turn back to reading the rest of Charles’ introduction.

I’m fairly certain I’m better in this life. At any rate, let me echo Aarjav’s post and say, please don’t kill me. ~Charlie

Having read through all the posts, the two boys look at each other and shrug. Thomas breaks out smiling. “I can’t wait to get to insult Hamilton again.”

Jeremy smiles slightly too and then coughs loudly into his elbow. For some reason, that makes Thomas immediately snap to attention. “Jemmy, you okay?” he asks worriedly. The small boy just rolls his eyes and sticks out his tongue playfully. “I’ve already survived an entire lifetime being sickly, I think one tiny cold in this life won’t hurt. Plus, we have better medicine now. Much better.”

Chapter Text

The next morning, Thomas is awoken by his phone ringing. He groans, burying his face in the pillow, but grudgingly reaches out as the mega-annoying ringtone continues to play.

“Thomas Jennings is here and he’s pretty much dead, call back later,” he grumbles into the phone, not even checking caller ID. On the other end of the line, Jeremy sighs heavily. “Thomas, we have to be at school in thirty minutes. I came over so we could walk to 7-11 and get a Slurpee before walking to school. You’re not even ready!”

Thomas groans again. “My blood does not have the common sense to stay inside my body where it rightfully belongs.” Jeremy doesn’t say anything for a second, and when he does, his tone is a lot softer. “I feel like you’re either bleeding out from a gunshot wound or on your period. Answer me honestly, have you dueled anyone this morning?”

That manages to get a laugh out of Thomas, making his mood a little brighter. “No, not yet. I do have an appointment to duel that idiot Jackson at school during gym today.”

Jeremy gives a light laugh too. “Okay. Okay. Well… I’ll use the spare key and… want me to pack your lunch, so you can get yourself dressed and we’ll still have time for 7-11?”

“That’d be great,” Thomas says. “Thanks Mom.” Jeremy laughs again before clicking the call off.

Fifteen minutes later, ten of which are spent just brushing his hair, Thomas emerges from his room, bags packed, and heads downstairs to where Jeremy is reading in the living room. He looks up when the taller boy comes into the room, giving a smile. “Great timing! So… Slurpee?”

Thomas nods enthusiastically. “Yes, Slurpee.”

The two boys walk down the street to the nearest 7-11, which isn’t too far. They’ve done this many times before and never been late to school. Thomas high-tails it to the bathroom while Jeremy positions himself in front of the Slurpee machine, debating what flavor to get.

When it’s been five minutes and Thomas is still in the bathroom, Jeremy sighs and goes over to check on him. “Thomas?” he asks gently, knocking on the men’s bathroom door. A very angry and very gruff voice replies that he is not Thomas and Jeremy should go away. Only he doesn’t say it quite so nicely.

“Thomas, are you in there?” he tries again, this time with the women’s bathroom. Of course Thomas would be in there. For Thomas, PMS seems to come with the side effect of low self-esteem and complete gender dysphoria, and so of course he went to the girl’s bathroom.

“Thomas?” Jeremy queries again. “I’m f-fine…” is the response.

“You’re clearly not. Pull up your big-boy pants and get out here so I can hug you or I’ll have to come in there,” Jeremy says. There’s a faint laugh, and the door swings open.

True to his word, Jeremy immediately hugs his friend. He only comes up to Thomas’ chin, but he’s a good hugger.

“And you’re a boy and so you don’t have to deal with it,” Thomas mumbles quietly. Jeremy pulls back and puts his finger to the other boy’s lips. “Thomas Still-Working-On-A-Middle-Name Jennings, you are a boy too and you are the second best boy I know, the first being me, and you’re amazing. I promise.”

“So, this is your little Thomas. Huh. Wonder why he was in the girl’s bathroom. Maybe he’s a she,” the anger-issues guy from the men’s bathroom says, glaring at the two boys.

Thomas stands up straighter and gives his best smirk to the man. “I mean this with the utmost politeness, but go to hell, sir.”

The man gives one more withering glare and then stalks off. Jeremy looks up at his tall friend with a grin. “Watch your language, young man, but job well done.” Thomas snickers. “I will watch your language when you watch Infinity War.”

Jeremy throws his hands up in the air in fake-disgust. “I will not be watching that miserable excuse for a movie! Doesn’t everyone die or something?”

His friend gives a little shrug. “Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so go-” Jeremy then claps a hand over his mouth, shutting him up. “Nope! If you want me to pay for whatever you get, you will not.”

Thomas shrugs again. “Okay, okay. On that note, we should probably get whatever it is and then go.” Jeremy grins brightly as the two of them walk back into the store. “Yeah. Y’know what, I think today is a coffee day, we deserve a treat. And caffeine.”

The taller boy grins and gives him a high five. “Amen, dude. That’s pretty much what everyone in our school needs. Caffeine, to fuel our late-night procrastination sessions, or to make up for them the next morning.”

They get to school on time and without any major mishaps, if you don’t count the weird look they got from the cashier lady when they slid two large cups of coffee forward on the counter.

For some reason, the French lesson today is strangely easy. The teacher blabbers something about past participles and Thomas could care less. He’s too busy trying to ignore the fact that he feels like he’s about to vomit all his intestines out to conjugate.

“For you three, you’d add an e and an s because you’re all girls. For you four, you’d only add an s, because of Jeremy and Evan here. And for you two… well, you four, actually, it’d be e and s because y’all are girls too,” the teacher says, pointing to each of the little desk clusters and saying something about the difference between “nous sommes allés” and “nous sommes allées.”

Thomas feels his cheeks start to heat up at the ‘girl’ grouping, and Jeremy reaches over to squeeze his hand.

A particularly observant boy makes a hooting noise. “Hey, nerd, is that your girlfriend?”

Jeremy’s eyes light up with an angry flame and he gives a condescending smirk. “Nope, actually. But, if he says yes, he’ll be my boyfriend.”

The boy who hooted blinks slowly, thinking this new information through. “Oh… she’s that tr-” Jeremy cuts him off by turning to Thomas. “This is kinda awkward but hey do you wanna be my boyfriend?” His eyes are pleading and Thomas starts grinning. “Yeeeeeeeeeeeee,” he squeals, before hugging Jeremy. “Yeah!”

Chapter Text

“Aarjav, Tess, downstairs!” Tess’ mother calls. The two kids giggle and jump down the stairs, running into the kitchen. “Hey Mom, d’ya have PopTarts?” Tess asks enthusiastically. Ms. Powell nods with a grin, rummaging around in the cabinet. “Yep. What type do you guys want?”

Aarjav’s eyes light up. Pop-Tarts? He hasn’t had one of those is positively ages! “S’mores, please!” both he and Tess say in unison, making Ms. Powell laugh.

The rest of Tess and Aarjav’s playdate, emphasis on the “date,” goes very well. When Aarjav’s mom comes to pick him up, Tess gives him a goodbye hug, making the boy blush profusely and grin like an idiot.

It’s only when he gets home, however, that the real fun begins.

“So, we all know that our little Aarjav here is the reincarnate of Aaron Burr, right?” Shrinika says after calling a family meeting and gathering everyone around the table. Mrs. Bahl nods, glaring at Sara, who’s sticking her tongue out at her older sister. “Great!” the older girl says enthusiastically, sliding a pencil behind her ear and tapping on her computer.

She turns it around to face the rest of her family, including a curious Aarjav. “I did research and there’s a retreat thing up in Philadelphia for kid reincarnates. The kids are age six to fifteen, so it’s not creepy adults. Even if he doesn’t meet someone from his time period, he’d probably make friends, and let’s be honest, he needs some.”

Ms. Bahl nods and then squints suspiciously. “Yes, I have heard of this, but to my knowledge, it’s highly expensive. What do you suggest we do regarding that?”

Shrinika brightens even more. “Well, I feel we could come to an agreement regarding the payment. It’s a thousand dollars for a two-month retreat, which is low because the organization providing views this as a socially beneficial program and so they do not charge what others may. I feel as though you, the parents, could pay for ¼ to ½ of the bill, while Aarjav and I would negotiate the other. I would be willing to pay out of my savings account and donate any money I may earn from babysitting or tutoring.”

Aarjav’s eyes light up, while his parents look at each other appreciatively. “I could use some of my money from taking care of the Turner’s pets!” the boy exclaims, earning a smile from his sister and a nod from his father.

“Now… this is two months long?” Ms. Bahl says cautiously. Shrinika nods again. “Yes ma’am. The organization partners with local schools to permit the children to attend a school close in academics to, if not exactly, their original school. So, for Aarjav, he’d attend a gifted school up there as a 4^th grader, exactly the same as here. They actually have a list of what schools they are…” she muses, scrolling through the webpage.

Ms. and Mr. Bahl share a look and then turn to their daughter. “We’ll pay 500 dollars, it’s up to you to get the rest.”

Immediately, Aarjav jumps out of his seat and squeals. “I’m goin’ to Pennsylvania! I gotta tell my girlfriend!”

All the eyes in the family turn to him and he reddens for the second time today. “Best friend. I said best friend.”

Shrinika giggles, hugging her brother. “You go call little Miss Tess. I’ll straighten out the final details of the payment.”

Aarjav sprints off to the front room to dial up Tess.

“A-A-rjav!” she exclaims as soon as she picks up. He squeals loudly. “I have something exciting to tell you!” they both shout together, and then start giggling.

“You first, ma’am,” Aarjav says politely, proving that chivalry is not dead. Tess laughs again and then takes a deep breath. “I’m a reincarnate!” Tess exclaims.

Downstairs, the rest of the Bahl family is deafened by the boy’s screams of “THEODOSIA!”

Chapter Text

Megan taps a few buttons on her phone, sending a new post to the reincarnate forum. Hey, this is Megan, Amanda’s sister. I think all y’all are 6 to 15, right? Yeah. So, there’s a camp thing for kid reincarnates up in Philadelphia. Um, that’d be interesting, so we could meet each other. If money is a problem, they have resources for that too. My sisters and I are going (as long as we keep our rooms clean, lol) and it’d be amazing to see you guys!

“What’s up?” Liz shouts, dangling her head over the top bunk. Megan shrieks and then glares at her sister. “The sky. And don’t scare me like that!”

Liz giggles before jumping off the bed and landing perfectly on the fluffy carpet. “Yeesh, salty. Seriously though, what’re you doing?” Megan’s attempt to cover up the phone fails when her smaller sister grabs it out of her hands.

“Oh. This. Yeah. You and Amanda are freaking obsessed, I swear, just don’t get murdered by internet stalkers,” Liza finally says, disappointment clear in her voice as she hands the phone back to her sister.

Megan giggles. “But don’t you wanna meet your little boyfriend?” she teases, delighting in how her sister’s nose wrinkles. “No, he kinda cheated on me, with you actually, so I’d say we have an equal claim to him.”

In a plot twist every book writer wish they had, Amanda and Phoebe run in with jazz hands. “Let’s make a harem!” the taller shouts, while Phoebe just giggles and adds, “I want no part in this harem but peace, pie, and wait a sec is Alex still bi?”

Chapter Text

“Wait! Lau- uh, Lancaster!” Alexander shouts, running down the hallway after the curly-haired kid. They turn around and scowl, but at least they do stop. “Haverly,” they say tersely as the boy reaches them.

He smiles sheepishly, giving a little bow. “I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot there, Jackie. May I call you Jackie?” They shake their head, smirking. “No can do, Haverly. I know enough to be careful around your charms this time.”

Alexander winces but respects that. “Okay then, Lancaster. So, I think I might have found the reincarnate of your daughter. Frances, correct?”

Jackie’s eyes widen quickly, and then they deepen their scowl. “Mhmm… please continue.”

Seeing this as at least a slight lowering of the walls, Alexander flashes a quick smile and the way Jackie’s eyes soften for just a second doesn’t escape him. “I got on one of those forum things, and, get this, someone says that he’s Lafayette and that his brother is the reincarnation of Frances.”

Again, Jackie’s eyes widen hopefully, but this time they then roll. “You can’t trust anything you read on the Internet. Plus, even if it was… Frannie, why do you think I’d want to see her? Him. Them. Whoever. If you didn’t notice, I kinda left them in England and then kinda died. She probably hates me.”

Alexander bites his lip, thinking that all through. “I’m sure she doesn’t. Yes, you might have made a dumb mistake or two or several, but we all did. Y’all get a second chance at this, we all do.”

Jackie nods and then jerks their head up to stare at Alexander. “Question, since when do you say ‘y’all?’ Isn’t this Maine?” The boy shrugs and smiles sheepishly. “I don’t know. It just sounds nice, alright? Plus, I thought you’d be used to it.”

The other kid rolls their eyes again but lets the faintest smile creep up onto their lips. “It was nice, just surprising.” Alexander lets out a little chuckle. “Okay. Great. So, um, in this forum thingy, they mentioned a retreat for kid and early teen reincarnates down in Philly. I was thinking, well, I checked it out, and it seems legit, but you can check it too. I told my foster guardian about it, and she said I could maybe go. Um… I just wanted to tell you.”

Jackie thinks that through and then nods decisively. “Give me the website and I’ll check it out. I’ll tell you what I think in 8^th period.”

The black-haired boy in front of them breaks out grinning and scrambles in his bag for a notebook. “Yeah… okay… here.” Jackie puts the sheet in their shirt pocket and then smiles at Alexander. “Nice talking to you, Haverly.” Alexander nods, smiling shyly now. “Likewise, Lancaster.”

“Hey, Haverly!” Jackie exclaims that afternoon, pulling Alexander, who happens to be their science lab partner, to their computer. “I checked it out, and yeah, it seems real. Pretty expensive though.”

Alexander beams. “Told ya. But yeah, it’s kinda pricy. Aren’t you a rich kid though?”

Jackie gives a snort of laughter. “My dad’s nothing special, just the governor. Geez. Yes, I’m what one would call a rich kid. I go to this school, for gosh’s sake.”

A flicker of sadness passes behind Alexander’s eyes, and he stares down at the table. This is an expensive school and he goes here somehow which has got to be taxing on his foster mom’s wallet. Plus, if he wants to go to this thing in Philadelphia. God. Why does Lisa put up with him?

“Lexi, you okay?” a voice asks softly. Alexander looks up and realizes that, one, Jackie looks concerned, two, Jackie’s hand is on his arm, and three, “Did you say Lexi?” he asks. A strong blush begins to creep across Jackie’s face. “Sorry. It was… a… well… y’know I… used to call you that… it just… slipped out, I swear,” they mumble.

Alexander giggles lightly. “It’s chill, Jack.” Now Jackie’s face gets even redder and they try to scowl at the smaller boy. “Don’t call me that,” they hiss. “NOW TOTALLY NOT CHANGING THE SUBJECT BUT do you want to come over to my house this afternoon?”

At that suggestion, Alexander’s mouth drops open. He’s never been asked over to someone’s house, ever. “Yeah. Let me just… text Lisa. My foster guardian,” he clarifies, seeing Jackie’s confused expression. They nod and smile out of one corner of their mouth. “Great.”

“Father, I’m home, and I brought a friend!” Jackie shouts, opening the door to the Lancaster’s ginormous house. Alexander is gaping around at everything and has to be physically pulled inside by Jackie.

Mr. Lancaster strides down the stairs, cutting an imposing figure in his suit. “Hello there,” he says evenly, standing in front of Alexander. The boy has to look up, way up, being much shorter than this man. “Hello. I’m Alexander Haverly, it’s nice to meet you. Sir.”

The man gives a pained grimace and then turns to Jackie. “Jackie Ann, what can you tell me about this little friend of yours?” he asks, acting like Alexander’s not even there.

Jackie grits their teeth and tries to manage a smile. “It’s Jackie, Father. Just Jackie. And, ah, Alexander is in both my homeroom and science class. He is excellent at English and History, as evident in his grades. Overall he’s a good student. What else do you want?” they add, spitting the words out.

“I want you to not be so saucy, young lady. But thank you for your input, I shall be speaking directly to your friend now.” He turns to Alexander, who is trying not to get in a fistfight with the man, due to his complete… why is the governor this dumb? Is that legal?

“Young man?” Mr. Lancaster says, and it’s evident that he’s been speaking for a while now with Alexander lost in his thoughts. “Yes?” the boy ventures. Jackie’s father huffs and glues on a fake smile. “I asked, are you an… unnatural person like my… daughter here?”

Alexander takes a deep breath, praying to all the deities that he won’t punch this man out. “If you’re asking whether I identify as something other than cis, the answer is no. However, I am exceptionally bisexual.”

Jackie blinks, vaguely impressed, but Alexander doesn’t stop. “Sir, I don’t mean to insult you… well… I do, but I don’t care. I’ve noticed that you’re calling Jackie here your ‘daughter.’ Based on what I have discussed with them, that does not correspond to how they identify. You, sir, are an ugly prune who is mostly bald and much less attractive than our current president. And that’s saying a lot. I hope that a truckload of your treasured Bibles fall on your head and-”

Jackie coughs into their elbow and hisses to Alexander, “We’re atheists.” The boy blinks slowly and then he nods. “Well, I hope science falls on your head then. Or maybe… the entire state of Maine.”

Rolling their eyes, Jackie steers their friend up the stairs to their room just so Alexander won’t get into a fight with their very important and influential governor father.

“That. Was. Great,” Alexander says, flopping onto a beanbag beside Jackie’s bed. They sit down on the floor next to him and frown. “I mean, yeah? You are savage, but there’s no way he’s going to pay for me to go to that Philadelphia trip now.”

Alexander’s face falls until the lightbulb of an idea brightens up behind his eyes. “I’ll smuggle you there. If I keep with my tutoring and you donate some of your rich-kid money, we can find the money for you, and after that it’s just a matter of can we stay unexposed until we get out of the state!”

Jackie rolls their eyes but doesn’t object too loudly. So with only a whispered “may the god of science watch our scrawny butts” and a reassuring “this’ll be fine, I promise,” they make plans to smuggle Jackie a couple states away and keep them there for two months.

Chapter Text

“Mom! You can’t make me go!” Charlie shouts, burying his head in a pillow. Ms. Kaylee smirks and walks over to sit on the foot of her son’s bed. “Yes, I can. I’m your mother.”

Charlie sputters, looking for a rebuttal. “But… but… um… is Dad on board with this? He’s gonna be mad if I miss my weekends with him!” His mom rolls her eyes, used to his deflections, and nods. “Yes, I talked to him first. Really, Char-Char, what problem do you have with this? It’ll be a trip to Philadelphia, time off of your school that I know you hate, new friends, and, heck, I’m not even making you pay for any of it!”

“Mom…” Charlie groans, hoping his mom will just leave. When she doesn’t, he sighs and lifts his head off the pillow. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m Charles Lee. Not someone who was pretty well-liked and cool, like George Washington, but Lee, the guy who retreated and then insulted Washington. They’re gonna hate me.”

Ms. Kaylee gently strokes her son’s light hair. “No, they won’t. They’ll take one look at you and see that you’re so much better now. I swear, by the time the two months are over, you’ll have a bunch of new friends. Or at least a bunch of stories to tell.”

The boy slowly nods but shoves his mom’s hand away. “Does the school I’ll be attending up there at least have a good computer class?” Ms. Kaylee’s eyes light up. “Yeah! I looked into some of them and Oliver A. White High has an excellent coding program and advanced classes—” She babbles on and on as Charlie closes his eyes and tries to convince himself that he’ll have a good time in Philadelphia.

Chapter Text

“Caroline! Downstairs!” Mrs. Jennings shouts. Thomas reluctantly walks down the stairs, grumbling about “my name is Thomas for goodness sakes” and “I should actually tell them” the whole time.

“Hi, honey,” his mother clucks, earning her a little nod from the tall boy. “Now, your father and I have been discussing that little… camp thing,” she continues. Thomas looks up, hoping that this is going to be good news.

Mrs. Jennings smiles like a particularly benevolent patron saint. “We decided that you can go, and your little friend too, we’ll pay for both you and him, if you go to that dance thing we signed you up for a while back. And wear a dress.”

Of course. There had to be a catch like that. Thomas restrains himself from groaning, and plasters on a smile. “Thank you. I’ll tell Jeremy the good news.” As he speedwalks off to his room, he hears his mother mumble, “That poor girl, being the reincarnation of some musty old American man.” Hah.

To Jemmy <3: hi

From Jemmy <3: Hello, what’s up?

To Jemmy <3: my mum said she’d pay for both you + i 2 go 2 that PA thing

To Jemmy <3: BUT

To Jemmy <3: and there’s a big butt

From Jemmy <3: Wait WHAT?

To Jemmy <3: *but

To Jemmy <3: there’s a condition to our going that is large

From Jemmy <3: Lol. That makes so much more sense.

To Jemmy <3: yah.

To Jemmy <3: she said i gotta go 2 this dance thing and it’s old-fahonsed

From Jemmy <3: *fashioned

To Jemmy <3: yes, that.

To Jemmy <3: okay but like i have to wear a dress

From Jemmy <3: Oh.

To Jemmy <3: Yeah.

From Jemmy <3: …

From Jemmy <3: WAIT!

From Jemmy <3: Is it old-fashioned enough that they have dance cards?

To Jemmy <3: i tink so

From Jemmy <3: *think. And send me the address and the time of this dance.

To Jemmy <3: Okay…? it’s at 6:00, lemme find the address

From Jemmy <3: Actually, don’t text it, email it.

From Jemmy <3: Gotta be careful about those Russians.

From Jemmy <3: Don’t want them reading our texts.

To Jemmy <3: ummm are e-mails ne more secure and im fairly certain that Americans r the only 1s who haf 2 worry about that

From Jemmy <3: *any *I’m *are *have

From Jemmy <3: See you later! J

That evening, Thomas reluctantly walks into the hall, after being reminded by his mother to “smile and be the charmer I know you are!” As soon as he enters the room, he starts feeling unable to breathe. There’s so many people and they’re all looking at him and they all want him to be a girl they want him to be Caroline Jennings the daughter of the influential businessman and he can’t be who they want him to be and his dress feels awkward and he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe.

“Thomas,” a familiar voice whispers as someone puts their hands on his shoulders, albeit after they stand on their tiptoes to reach the proper height-. Thomas looks down at Jeremy, who gives a smile. “You look amazing. And look, I’ve got your dance card!” He presents a slip of paper to Thomas, still grinning.

“You’re… you’re listed for all the dances!” the taller boy exclaims, looking up from the paper at his small companion. Jeremy’s smile widens. “Yep! Had to fight off the hordes to do so, but it was easy enough. I just commandeered the card and erased the names of those idiots who were dumb enough to write in pencil. Voila. Your boyfriend, Jeremy, writes in pen because he’s smart.”

Two hours later, the two boys are exhausted from all the dancing but completely excited for the trip they know this earned them. “Seeing Philadelphia again will be so amazing! I can’t wait!” Thomas exclaims as they’re both waiting for his mother to pick them up. Jeremy smiles lightly and presses a gentle kiss to Thomas’ cheek. “It’ll be great, I agree.” The taller’s face heats up to a furious red, a blush that you can see even with his dark skin, and he busies himself thinking about the trip and not how soft Jeremy’s lips felt against his cheek. Nope, nope, nope.

Chapter Text

The next week, all the packing is done, and three boys stand staring out the glass window of an airport. “We’re gonna be on that plane right there,” Jeremy muses. Thomas grins and wraps an arm around the shoulders of the smaller boy, ruffling Hyrum’s hair as well. “Jemmy, I dare say we’re going home. Not to our darling Virginia, sadly, but Philadelphia, which by now has got to be our second home or something.”

“Okay, okay, break it up!” Mrs. Jennings exclaims, coming up behind them. They turn around sheepishly and she grins. “Caroline, make sure Jeremy takes his allergy medicine. Don’t go into dark alleys. Remember, it’s America, so be very careful. Don’t eat McDonalds. Don’t become obese. Watch over Hyrum or his mother will kill me. Don’t turn into, how do they say it, ‘rednecks.’ Caroline, once you get home, we’ll get you a boyfriend. Don’t get attached to anyone over on that side of the pond.” The woman turns to Jeremy and pinches his cheeks affectionately. “You too. I’ll see what I can do for you when you get back.”

Behind his back, Jeremy is fidgeting with his fingers like he does whenever he gets nervous, but on his face is a shiny smile. “Yes ma’am.”

Mrs. Jennings grins and backs up. “Well, I think they just called for you boarding.” She bends down to Hyrum’s level. “You’re in good hands, little mister. My daughter and your brother are going to take excellent care of you.” The little boy grins brightly, until his face falls. “But Thomas is a—” Whatever he was going to say is muffled as Jeremy claps a hand over his brother’s mouth. “Thomas is Hi-Hi’s invisible friend,” he says, covering up before that becomes a problem.

The dark-haired woman grins, thinking nothing of it, and presses a kiss to each of the boys’ foreheads before pushing them towards their gate.

There are the normal delays, safety announcements, and then they take off, as Jeremy’s face grows progressively paler at the thought that they’re actually doing this, flying across the freaking Atlantic Ocean, this was a horrible idea.

For his part, Thomas is too busy trying to locate all the airline barf bags to notice Jeremy’s conundrum. In a stark contrast to the other two boys, Hyrum is actually managing well. He’s got his books and crayons and drawing tablet and he’s blissfully unaware of the thoughts of oh my God what if we crash into the ocean and what if I puke all over myself and have to meet Hamilton in that state that are racing through his companions’ heads.

Halfway through the trip, when Thomas has been in the tiny airplane bathroom for at least fifteen minutes and Jeremy is anxiously tapping his fingers on the arm rest and trying to ignore all the blue beneath the plane, Hyrum looks up at his brother. “Jerry, what’s Philadelphia gonna be like?”

Jeremy manages a smile, thankful for the distraction from his thoughts. “Well, from what I’ve researched, it’s a big city. It was very important in the Constitutional Era and I—” He is shushed by his brother shaking a finger in his face. “Jemmy James Madison, you’ve told us all a million times. You spent lotsa time in Philadelphia, you were famous person, oh, Philadelphia was so nice, Hyrum you should have seen it in spring, right before it got insanely hot it was beautiful,” the little boy says, mocking Jeremy’s voice.

The older boy laughs, running a hand through his short curls. “You’re right, you’re right. So, well, about the camp thing we’re doing, I don’t know much about that. I’m guessing that you’ll get to hang out primarily with people either from our time period or around your age.”

Hyrum’s eyes widen. “Jemmy, what happens if we see Marie Antoinette? What if her head is all like... bleh?” he asks worriedly, reaching out towards his brother, who gives him a hug. “Aw, Hi-Hi, I’m sure if we saw her, she wouldn’t be like that. Even if she was, I probably know enough French to make sure she doesn’t be mean or creepy or… whatever it is you’re afraid of,” he replies reassuringly.

Satisfied with that answer, Hyrum hugs his brother again and turns back to his coloring. A few minutes later (read: a couple fear-inducing hours later), Thomas emerges from the bathroom, face still slightly green, but luckily they land in the airport only about five minutes after.

“This is it,” Jeremy breathes out once they’ve collected their luggage and are standing out on the sidewalk waiting for the bus to come pick them up. Thomas laughs and abruptly lifts the smaller boy up, spinning him around. “Jemmy, we’re in America! Again! We’re home, Jemmy!”

Hyrum giggles at the antics of those two. “I’m home too, right?” he queries innocently. Thomas smiles kindly down at him and ruffles his hair, though at some point during the flight it became covered with a much-too-large beanie. “Of course. We’re all home.”

Jeremy grins, pulling his brother and boyfriend even closer as they see the white bus they’re supposed to get on drive into the parking lot. “This is it. Only half-an-hour more and we’ll be kicking Hamilton’s butt again.”

The bus screeches to a halt and the door creaks open. “Um… you guys with the New Bearing group?” the driver asks, squinting at the three boys. Thomas bounds up the steps and flashes a bright smile before shaking the man’s hand. “Yes sir! Thomas Jennings at your service! These are Jeremy and Hyrum Mendoza. It’s a pleasure to meet you!” he bubbles.

“Hah. Well, you guys sound British, is that true?” is what the bus driver says next. Jeremy, who finally got up the stairs and grabbed a seat, smiles politely. “Yep. Though that’s only with this life. We were Americans, born and raised, back when we were—” “Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Hercules Mulligan!” Hyrum interrupts, pumping his little fist in the air. “Whoop, whoop!”

They all share a laugh as they find their seats, and the driver looks back through the mirror. “We’re picking up two more arrivals, a pair of brothers from France. You guys know them?”

Thomas thinks for a second before nodding a bit. “If the forum is correct, they may be Fredrick and Paul. Ooh, wouldn’t that be nice, to see Gilbert again, albeit with both of us being much younger…” he muses, leaning back in the seat.

Sure enough, only ten minutes pass before a tall boy runs up to the bus, towing a cart piled with suitcases and a younger giggling boy behind him. “Sorry, sir, we apologize,” he says hurriedly with just a tint of a French accent.

At the sound of that voice, Thomas jumps up out of his seat. “MON AMI!” he shrieks, hugging the unprepared boy. Fredrick giggles even more and climbs off the cart. “Hey dude! ‘M Fredrick, nice to meet ya!” he says, sticking his hand out for a handshake. Thomas lets go of a clearly confused Paul and shakes the smaller boy’s hand. “Nice to meet you too. I’m Thomas.”

The two French boys load all their stuff into the bus and find seats as the driver closes the doors and finally pulls away. Fredrick and Hyrum are sharing a seat and giggling about their brothers’ antics. “An’ then Jemmy sneezed and knocked over the ENTIRE BLOCK TOWER and it fell on his head but he didn’t cry ‘cause he’s AWESOME and really brave!” Hyrum says, finishing up an intriguing (for him at least) story. Fredrick gasps and puts a hand over his heart, clearly having a flair for dramatics. “Mon Dieu! Your brother must be… like… Superman!” Hyrum smiles wistfully and looks over to where Jeremy is chatting enthusiastically with Thomas and Paul. “Yeah. He is.”

Chapter Text

Next to arrive was Charlie, angry that his mother made him take a plane instead of driving him down to Philadelphia herself. It’s only about 500 miles from Toronto, and they’ve driven further than that before!

At any rate, here he is, standing in front of the not-too-exciting building that’s going to be his home for the next few months. Fantastic. He took a taxi from the airport, and the taxi’s long gone now, so it looks like his only option is to go in.

He pushes the door open and squints around the room. Two tall-ish men are standing and talking to three kids. The tallest kid, the one with their hair pulled back into two frizzing ponytails, is animatedly describing something with a faint British accent, though with every word they speak, their accent becomes more Southern. Beside them, two other kids are chatting, both with chocolate-brown skin and licorice-black curls. The smaller one, now that Charlie thinks about it, looks like a copy of the bigger one, so maybe… siblings?

“Hey! You, over here!” one of the men shouts, waving to Charlie, who pales slightly and walks over towards the little group. The kid with the frizzy ponytails smiles brightly at him as he arrives. “Hi there, I’m Thomas, unless you’re Hamilton we won’t have a problem,” frizzy-ponytail kid bubbles. Charlie gives a little smile and nod. “Thomas… Jennings, correct? So these must be… Jeremy and Hyrum. Mendoza. Right?”

A little gasp from the smallest boy, who Charlie is now guessing is Hyrum. “You’re real smart! Yee, I’m Hyrum, but if you’re gonna be my friend, you can call me Hi-Hi.” Aw. He’s adorable. Charlie smiles down at him and then shakes the hands of the two bigger boys. “Nice to meet you two. I’m Charlie.”

“Charlie… that’s a really nice name,” Jeremy muses, giving a quick smile. He quickly backs out of the way as the taller of the two men they were talking to approaches Charlie. “Nice to meet you, son,” the man booms, shaking Charlie’s hand. “I’m Mr. Wilmington, and I hope you’ll have a good time here with us.”

Charlie’s eyes widen as he realizes who this must be. Wilmington. Washington. “S-sir… I’m… I’m really s-sorry for… um… like… being rude… and uh… y’know,” he squeaks out timidly. Mr. Wilmington laughs, not unkindly. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve got a fresh start.”

The fair-haired boy nods and then turns his attention to the second man. “Hello sir,” he says politely. The man looks up from his clipboard, squinting through his glasses at Charlie. “Hello there yourself. I’m Mr. William Augustus, you can call me Mr. William.”

At this point, Thomas can’t hold in his laughter and it spurts out. “He was… he was King George the third!” he cackles out in between laughs. Mr. William’s cheeks redden and he stares down at his clipboard. “Well, you were a slave-holder and a horrible person, you don’t see me holding that against you,” he mumbles.

Hyrum nods knowingly. “He’s right, Tommy.” Thomas rolls his eyes and affectionately sticks his tongue out at the smaller boy.

The door blows open and two short people stumble in, burdened down by the weight of about four duffel bags each. “Oh, no, it’s fine, we didn’t need any help,” the one with the darker hair mutters, dropping his bags to the ground.

Chapter Text

“Alexander Haverly,” he says, sticking his hand out for a handshake. Thomas’ nose wrinkles up, and Alexander notices. “What? Let’s see here…” He squints at Thomas and Jeremy and then his face lightens up. “Well, the tiny sniveling one there has gotta be James Madison, so… you, tall one, are you Dolley Madison? That’s gotta be it.”

Surprisingly, the slap to Alexander’s face is not from Thomas, but instead from Jeremy. “Guess we don’t need psychic skills to figure out who you are, Mr. Hamilton,” he hisses acidly. “Now, this here is my best friend and boyfriend, Thomas Jefferson, and you seem to be heck-bent against repairing any damaged relations between us from our past life.”

Alexander’s mouth drops open, and for once, he’s speechless. “I’m… well… uh… very… very sorry, Mr. Jefferson.”

Thomas smirks and gives a sweeping bow. “By my extreme grace and generosity, you are forgiven. Don’t expect it to last long, however,” he says sassily, delighting in the I’m-about-to-punch-you look that appears on Alexander’s face.

Before those two get into a shoving match, the second kid steps up between them and gives a winning smile. “Jackie Lancaster. Not Alexander’s date-mate. Nice to meet you two.” Jeremy smiles back and shakes their hand. “Jeremy Mendoza, and the angry one wishing he could commit homicide with Alexander as the victim is Thomas Jennings. It’s a delight. I hope we can become good friends, or at least be united with the common goal of keeping our companions from murdering one another.”

Jackie giggles, grabbing Alexander’s arm and casually pulling him away from Thomas. “Nice to meet you, Jeremy. And your Thomas.”

Chapter Text

Running feet are then heard, and someone tosses their arms around Jackie, squealing. The freckled kid slowly turns around, ready to yell at the invasion of personal space, but stops when they see the light-haired boy. “Frannie,” they say softly as the boy grins up at them, knowing instinctively who he is. “Frannie… I’m so sorry about it all.” The boy frowns and put his small hand over Jackie’s larger one. “It’s okay. So… um… I’m Fredrick Dupont,” he says, dropping into a curtsey.

Jackie beams, wiping away the light tears in the corners of their eyes, and returns the curtsey. “Jackie Lancaster. Pleased to meet you.”

Fredrick squeals again and hugs Jackie even tighter. “Were you a real cool soldier? Mum said you were,” he asks them. They shrug, reaching down and ruffling the small boy’s hair. “I’d say so. When I wasn’t busy being a jerk, I was, as you say it, ‘a real cool soldier.’ But being a jerk took up most of my soldier time.”

The little boy giggles, a clear sound. “Mum said you were pretty too, but, I don’t see it,” he whispers conspiratorially. “You’re too short. And you have little poop dots all over your skin.” Jackie reddens indignantly and is about to refute that claim, but Fredrick keeps talking a mile per minute. “Hey, do you think Mum is gonna be here too? That’d be real awesome, huh? You could talk to her some more, I remember she was real sad and talked to me a LOT about you left-ing. Leafing? How you say?”

Finally, Jackie gets a chance to speak. “Leaving. The word is leaving. And they are not poop dots, they are freckles, for goodness sakes!”

The seven-year-old’s eyes widen and he practically falls down to the floor laughing. “Of course they are. ‘M sorry.” Jackie rolls their eyes and then notices the tall boy standing a few feet behind Fredrick. There’s a moment of pause as the two kids scrutinize one another, and then they’re hugging and Jackie might be crying again.

“Laf! Mon ami!” they exclaim after the hug has concluded. “It’s amazing to see you I missed you so much I’m sorry for dying how were you?” The French boy grins brightly, and his smile mirrors that of his brother. “I missed you too. No need to be sorry, death takes us all in the end. And I was pretty okay. Oh, and, by the way, it’s Paul.”

Jackie shakes Paul’s proffered hand and then pulls him in for another hug. “I’m Jackie. And yay!”

Chapter Text

Just then, in a gust of wind worthy of any Disney villain, the door blows open and reveals a dark-skinned boy and girl. “Aaron Burr,” the boy announces, striding confidently into the midst of the older kids. “Now known as Aarjav Bahl.”

A hushed silence falls over the group as everyone stares at Alexander, wondering what his reaction will be. And they are not disappointed.

“You’re a son of a bi-” the dark-haired boy starts, before Jackie slaps his arm. “I meant… you’re a son of a gun!” He grabs Aarjav by the collar, pulling him up. Surprisingly, this doesn’t seem to faze the younger boy one bit. “I’m ten years old. In this life, I harbor no ill will towards you, as long as you’re not as much of an idiot as you were before,” he replies coolly. “Now, will you please put me down?”

Alexander reddens as he realizes how dumb he was, being mean to a ten-year-old kid who never did anything to him in this life. “Sorry…” he mutters, letting go of Aarjav. The smaller boy nods solemnly and Alexander hustles to repair any damage that he may have done. “How can you forgive me?” Then Aarjav’s face lights up and he smiles wryly. “Twinkies. If you remember, America stopped making them a few years ago, and since they started re-making them, I’ve never had enough.”

A little snort of laughter erupts from Jackie, though they try to hold it in. “God yes. I remember that. It was traumatizing.”

“You got me there,” Alexander says, smiling a little. “Okay Tiny-Burr, I’ll get you some Twinkies at my nearest opportunity.”

Aarjav grins brightly. “Great! Thank you Alexander! Now, I’d like everyone to meet Tess, the reincarnation of my wonderful first wife, Theodosia.”

Chapter Text

A squeal erupts from the doorway as four teen girls spill into the room. “Theo!” Liz shouts, running over and spinning the smaller girl around. Tess giggles and drops into a curtsey as Liz returns her safely to the floor. “Miss Therese ‘Tess’ Powell, at your service, ma’am. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Liz and all three of her sisters return the curtsey. “Miss Liz, Miss Amanda, Miss Phoebe, and Miss Megan. The pleasure is ours,” Megan says, smiling kindly at the little girl. “And, may I add, I love your dress. It’s so flouncy.”

Tess’ eyes light up and she hugs the girl in the red jeans. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Then, the four older girls notice Alexander. He’s standing awkwardly, arms crossed across his chest, but in more of a “don’t hurt me” pose than a “I’m so tough” pose.

The wide gap between Liz and Alexander is swiftly closed as the girl runs over, throwing her arms around him. “ALEX!” she shouts, voice full of joy.

When the boy looks up at her, his eyes have tears in their corners, and his voice is wavering. “Betsey… I’m so sorry.”

Everyone else, even Thomas, is drop-dead silent, watching this reunion that they know is mega-important to those involved. Aarjav can’t help but feel bad about ripping these two people apart, even if it was in his previous life and even if it may have seemed like a good idea at the time. Megan feels the same way. It was her deadbeat of a husband’s fault, but that doesn’t excuse any of it. She knew it was wrong, and she still did it. Heck, even Jackie feels a little twinge of guilt, though they don’t know exactly why.

Chapter Text

A couple more kids arrive, none of any particular interest to our protagonists, at least not right now. “Okay! We’re all here and, I admit, I didn’t realize it was Thanksgiving, dumb me, so, we’re gonna have a nice big dinner and introduce ourselves!” Mr. Wilmington exclaims, clapping his hands and looking around at the assembled kids. “Soooooo, Alexander and Thomas, if you two would stop glaring at each other with murder in your eyes, we can go into the dining room.”

The two boys in question nod and follow the rest of the group into the large eating room, still scowling.

There’s a table filled with turkey, tofurkey, stuffing, potatoes, rolls, cranberry sauce, corn, pretty much everything you could ever want. Each of the kids has their own place at the table, and you can practically see their eyes getting larger at the sheer amount of food.

Mr. Wilmington smiles again. “Fantastic. So, I know some of you have already met one another. But, for the sake of the group, and Mr. William and myself if we didn’t get to speak to you, give a quick introduction. Name, pronouns, who you’re a reincarnate of, then anything else you may want to say.”

Jackie shrugs and starts the ball off rolling, a surprising show of confidence for them. “Jackie Lancaster. They/them. Reincarnate of John Laurens. Before you ask, let me answer some questions I anticipate you may have. Yes, it hurt to die. Yes, I was an idiot. Yes, I’m aware that slavery has since been abolished. Yes, South Carolina was nice. Yes, nature is cool. Thank you.”

“An’ I’m Fredrick Dupont! I’m a boy! I’m the born-thingy of Frances Laurens who was John’s daughter and that’s really cool and you should all be real nice to Jackie ‘cause they’re amazing. I know French really good and English really good too.” Everyone at the table smiles at the adorable little boy, hearts melting.

“Paul Dupont, it’s a pleasure to meet you. He/him, please, though if you accidently mess up, meh, it doesn’t matter, I’m chill. Honestly, you could just say ‘the fabulous French one over there’ and everyone would know who you’re talking about. Hah. Um, reincarnate of…” He takes a deep breath and flashes a daredevil grin. “Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, Marquis de La Fayette.” A round of clapping ensues, mostly because no one else would have the time or patience to memorize the correct pronunciation of that name.

“Beth Trenton. She/her. Eliza Trist.” Thomas and Jeremy gasp in unison. “I remember you!” Thomas squeals. “You ran that boardinghouse!” Beth gives a shy nod, averting her eyes from the two boys.

“Now that I spoke up, I guess I’d better go!” Thomas continues with a laugh. “Thomas Jennings. He/him. Reincarnation of the fabulous Thomas Jefferson. And, since I know that my darling Jemmy here isn’t going to introduce himself, I guess I’ll have to introduce him myself. Jeremy Mendoza, he/him, reincarnation of James Madison, and about as small and sick. He’s absolutely adorable, and he’s taken, so back off!”

“Gregory Allen-Yates. He/him. Robert Troup. Nice to be here with y’all.” Aarjav and Alexander shout in unison, “HI!” Gregory blinks a couple times before smiling back at both of them. “Hi y’all.”

All the other kids go, with various semi-helpful commentary from the peanut gallery. Hyrum introduces himself last but not least, through a mouthful of mashed potatoes. That is taken as the signal for everyone else to dig in too, and they do so quite willingly.

For thirty minutes, the room is awash with talking, laughing, and comradery. Jeremy and Thomas are catching up with Beth about what they got up to after leaving her boardinghouse. Hyrum and Fredrick are continuing their discussion from the bus about their brothers. Aarjav is staring low-key lovingly at Tess as the girl chats with Beth and the Schmidt sisters. Gregory is talking with Alexander, probably retelling stories from their glory days in college. Jackie and Paul are firing off rapid-fire French, effectively ostracizing pretty much everyone else at the table because really does no one know French these days?

Mr. William and Mr. Wilmington are smiling at all the kids, proud of how far they’ve come since the 1700’s. Well, Mr. William isn’t smiling at them, he’s half-smiling at his plate, afraid of making eye contact. And afraid of maybe getting beat up. That wouldn’t be good. Frankly, it’d be quite painful.

Dinner passes like that, full of food and happiness. I mean, it’s Thanksgiving, for science’s sake.

Chapter Text

The kids get a tour of the whole facility, including, as Mr. Wilmington loves to boast about, separate rooms for each kid and gender-neutral bathrooms. He promises them that they can decorate their rooms however they wish. All-in-all, the kids are getting pretty excited. Thomas is secretly pumped about the bathrooms, as they more or less eliminate all potential awkwardness. Jackie is not-so-secretly pumped, smiling like an idiot for most of the tour. Alexander doesn’t think it’s a bad look on them.

“Okay, you should all know where your rooms are by now. Go there, we’ve put a present for each of you on your beds,” Mr. William announces. As the kids turn to leave, he adds, “Wait, Alexander and Thomas, we need to talk to you.” The two boys turn back around and walk over to the two men, glaring at each other the whole time.

Mr. Wilmington laughs as he sees that. “And that, sons, is why we need to talk.” Alexander’s cheeks tint a bit pink and he stares down at his feet. “It’s not my fault,” he mumbles. “It’s his. He’s still an idiot.”

Thomas clears his throat. “Ahem? You haven’t actually talked to me much in this life, but you’ve already got this opinion of me. As well, you thought I was Dolley Madison as soon as you came into the building.”

“Well… yeah… but in my defense, you look like a girl!” is the other boy’s rebuttal. “You still do,” he adds quietly. “Say that to my face, you pr—” Thomas shouts, being cut off by Mr. Wilmington.

“Alexander, Thomas is a boy, okay, let’s not tell him he looks like a girl. Thomas, don’t call Alexander names.” The two boys barely hear him before delving back into some deep argument where Alexander insults Thomas’ fashion choices (“Who the heck wears purple jeans?”) and Thomas insults Alexander’s shortness (“Watch out everyone, it’s an escaped Munchkin! We’ve gotta send him back to Oz, posthaste!”)

Mr. Wilmington just sighs now and heads back to his office, in desperate need of some aspirin. “This will be a long two months,” he mutters. Mr. William gives one last nervous glance at the feuding boys and speed-walks away. Hopefully they won’t kill each other, but if they do, would it really be such a disaster? They’d get rid of at least one loudmouth, which might be good.

Chapter Text

On the peaceful side of this, the other kids are having a good time unpacking and discovering what gifts they got. Jackie got a stuffed animal turtle. They run down the hallway and bang on Alexander’s door, shouting, “HOLY SCHIST, HAVERLY, IT’S A TURTLE!”

Alexander opens the door, already scribbling away in a new journal, and eventually looks up. “Ah. Yes. I see.” Jackie grabs him by the collar and stares him in the eyes. “No, you don’t get it. It’s a fricking turtle. Tur-tle.” Alexander feels his face start to heat up as he studies Jackie’s forest green eyes, and he has to duck his head before the other kid notices. “Y-yes… a turtle. Very nice,” he stutters out.

Jackie gives a huff of annoyance and storms back off to their room, yelling, “IT’S A FREAKING TURTLE, YOU DON’T GET IT! I LIKE TURTLES!”

In his room, Jeremy discovers a soft green and white scarf with an attached note reading, “It gets cold up here. Stay warm. We don’t want you catching pneumonia any more than you already do.” He gives a little squeal and starts twirling it around, reveling in how spinny it is.

“Looks like you’re having fun. Just don’t kill yourself with that,” Thomas says, coming in and leaning up against the wall. Jeremy stops the spinning and smiles sheepishly. “Yeah. I won’t. How was Hamilton?” The taller boy groans, pressing a hand to his forehead. “Horrible and as argumentative as usual. But hey, I got a stack of old newspapers from Virginia, so that’s cool.”

The four Schmidt sisters are all clustered in Phoebe’s room, oohing and ahing over each of their gifts. Phoebe got several packs of 5 Gum, which she shares with her sisters. Megan got a beautiful lacy shawl with red lace ruffles on the edges. Liz got a book written in French, which she takes the privilege of reading aloud to her sisters, who know limited French at best, and a lot of Spanish at worst.

Paul got a very large French flag blanket, while Fredrick got an entire book on John Laurens because why not. Maybe he’ll learn something.

Down the hall, Tess is squealing about a cute purple crocheted hat that she got, deafening the two other boys hanging out in there with her. Aarjav, with a book about oceans, and Hyrum, with a large grey beanie made of soft fleece.

Alone in his room, Charlie is busy reading his way through a book about photography, and low-key wishing he had friends here. Welp. There’s always tomorrow, and that Jeremy kid seemed pretty nice.

All in all, the kids are pretty satisfied with their gifts, and when Mr. Wilmington goes around to warn them that lights out is at ten, they all enthusiastically thank him. Except Hyrum. Hyrum’s asleep.

Chapter Text

That night, Jeremy is awoken by a knock on his door at about 1:37. He wasn’t asleep, more like reading, so he isn’t too annoyed, but still. “Yes, what is it?” he asks as he opens the door, smiling when he sees that it’s Thomas. The taller boy grins and grabs Jeremy’s arm, dragging him down the hallway without even an explanation beyond, “It’s gonna be super fun, I promise.”

They reach room seven, and Thomas barges in. Everyone over the age of nine is assembled in there, seated in a circle. Alexander looks up and sticks his tongue out at the pajama-clad new arrivals, but he scoots over to let the two of them sit down in the group.

Jackie gives a smirk and starts rooting around in a large bag behind them. “We’re playing Never Have I Ever,” they announce. “With apple juice.” They toss a large bottle of apple juice to each of the kids, and no one questions where the heck they got all this juice.

Aarjav is staring at his bottle with what can only be described as utter hatred. “I can’t hold my alcohol, or apple juice, y’all know this,” he hisses quietly. The only person who heard him, Tess, giggles wickedly. “It’ll be okay,” she reassures the boy, who just rolls his eyes and glares at his juice more.

“Okay!” Liz exclaims. “Both lives are fair game for this. If you have done something, take a drink of your apple juice. If you finish your bottle, I believe Jackie has more.” They nod, affirming this fact, and the girl continues. “So… let’s just start. Never have I ever… been in a mental hospital,” she starts, confident that no one will be drinking.

To everyone’s surprise, Alexander sheepishly takes a small sip. Immediately everyone’s eyes are staring at him, asking the unsaid questions, and he reddens. “It’s a long story that begins with two police officers, has a middle of a week in a green and white cesspit where I couldn’t have pens or anything actually useful to write with, and ends with me still not knowing how to spell Zoloft.”

There’s a long moment of silence, because no one has any clue how to respond that, until Alexander looks back up from the ground and decides to change the topic. “Um… never have I ever eaten an entire large tomato like it was an apple,” he says, smirking at Thomas.

The taller boy’s eyes light up and he chugs half his apple juice, ignoring the objections of everyone else. After Thomas is quite done with his drink, Phoebe squints suspiciously at him. “Jennings, what the France?” Thomas snickers, replying smoothly, “I literally do that all the time. It’s actually really good. So, due to the fact that I’ve done it a lot, I thought I should drink a lot of the juice.”

Phoebe and her sisters share a collective groan before she waves for Thomas to ask his ‘Never Have I Ever.’ No one noticed that both James and Tess took a small sip of their juices as well. If they had noticed, I’m sure there would have been a heck more questions. The boy with purple pajamas snickers again. “Never have I ever written fanfiction for something that I was particularly obsessed with.”

Legit, about half the group pales and takes a swig from their bottles. Thomas cackles and points a finger at each one. “What was it of?”

“Jackie?” They blush a little, embarrassed, then respond, “Ummm… Percy Jackson. Don’t judge. I was nine.”

“Aarjav?” He looks down at his apple juice bottle, probably wondering why he agreed to this. “Um… Supernatural,” is his answer. Thomas narrows his eyes at the smaller boy. “Why is a ten-year-old watching Supernatural?”

“Megan?” The girl gives a wide smile. “Harry Potter crossovers with every single fandom you can imagine!” she bubbles. “Also I wrote some about ‘Once Upon a Time’ a couple months ago.”

“Liz?” She smiles kindly before answering, “Miraculous Ladybug. Most of it was written in French. Because I can.”

“Jemmy? I think I know… Sherlock, right? And then… didn’t you write that Spiderman one back in 3^rd grade when you were unhealthily obsessed with Marvel?” Thomas’ boyfriend nods, opening his mouth to add, “I also wrote some Harry Potter and Sherlock crossover fanfic last year. It was trash, to be honest.”

“Haverly?” Thomas’ tone is one of abject disgust, as expected. Alexander blushes bright red and ducks his head before mumbling, “Hamilton.” Thomas nods before he really hears what Alexander said, and when he does, his eyebrow raises. “You do realize we were the actual people that that musical was about… and like… just… what the heck. I’m not going to question anymore.” Probably a good idea.

The game continues, with some memorable Never Have I Evers such as:

“Never have I ever fallen down a flight of stairs.” (Phoebe and Jeremy each took a guilty drink of their juices.)

“Never have I ever had a murderous goat. Or a goat at all.” (Thomas cackled while chugging the rest of his juice and receiving a new bottle from Jackie.)

“Never have I ever actually enjoyed the taste of baby food.” (Jackie took a swig of their juice, responding to the weird looks with, “Those rice puffs, okay?)

“Never have I ever eaten grits.” (A collective gasp went up from the Southerners as they all took a large sip of their juice. Tess, Aarjav, Jackie, Amanda, Phoebe, Megan, Liz, Thomas, and Jeremy all drank.)

“Never have I ever eaten gumbo.” (Now Jackie was just downright offended as they drank at least half their remaining juice in one gulp. Aarjav and Tess took drinks as well. Megan took a small sip, after being reminded by her sisters.)

After it’s over and everyone has finished at least one bottle of apple juice (or, if they’re Thomas or Jackie, more like three,) they all lie back and stare up at the ceiling.

“It’s about three in the morning and I think we’re all drunk on Mott’s apple juice,” Alexander mumbles. Jackie gasps indignantly. “Not Mott’s! I wouldn’t be caught dead near that disaster of a drink.” The other boy just nods, accepting this, or maybe he’s just too tired to argue, a feat that is rare but certainly possible.

Jeremy is fast asleep, possibly having fallen to sleep after the question involving pulling all-nighters. Thomas smiles slightly and steals one of Jackie’s blankets to put over the tiny sleeping boy. Jackie is about to protest this, but the sight of Jeremy being so freaking adorable while asleep is able to stop that idea. I would be lying if I said that Alexander didn’t wish, in just one little part of his brain, that Jackie would look at him like that.

That morning, at seven AM, the kids get a rude awakening. Well, most of them were already up, busy playing Truth or Dare, but still.

“WHERE ARE Y’ALL?” Mr. William shouts, bursting into the room. He immediately has many pairs of eyes on him, and blushes self-consciously. “Ummm… we just thought we lost you all on the first day.”

Thomas laughs, not rudely for once. “Nah, the big kids were all in here. Sorry if we scared you.”

The man nods, and announces, “Yeah… okay… well it’s breakfast time. Then we’ve got a group meeting, then this thing where you get paired up with people you hated and y’all try to talk it out, then—” As he blabbers on, the kids roll their eyes and walk past him, out the door and down to breakfast.

Chapter Text

The aforementioned breakfast is surprisingly good. A table, covered with trays of eggs, French toast, normal toast, bacon, and more. There’s even cereal for the boring kids. Those boring kids would be Aarjav, by the way, or maybe he’s just a creature of habit. That would make sense.

Jeremy is sitting at a table by himself, stirring his oatmeal and humming a little tune. Thomas is off chattering with Aarjav and Paul, which makes sense, because otherwise he wouldn’t dare be any further than a couple feet from Jeremy.

A tray is plopped down next to the smaller boy, and he looks up at Jackie. “Hey!” the other kid says, surprisingly chipper after staying up all last night. “I heard you singing or humming or whatever, what song was that?” Jeremy blushes and mumbles, “It’s called ‘Tell Me.’ It’s by CudaTels.”

Jackie nods their head, still smiling. “I haven’t heard of that song, nor the band. Is it any good?” The boy returns the nod. “Yep. It goes like this.” He takes a deep breath and then starts singing softly. Huh. He’s not too bad. “Tell me we’re not crazy, tell them you can save me. Tell them we grew up, and we’ll grow old, just like you said.”

After he’s done, Jackie’s eyebrows raise appreciatively and they clap. “Wow. Are you in chorus or something at your school? You’re definitely good enough to be.” Jeremy blushes even redder and he has to duck his head to hide it. “Nah. I’m more of an orchestra geek. But thanks.”

The other kid giggles, before turning their attention to the food on their plate and sticking their tongue out at it. “I’m not sure this is really food. What d’ya think? Food or no?”

Those two talk as the clock ticks on and the rest of the kids clean their plates and walk off.

“Well, I guess we’d better go,” Jackie says, standing up with their tray. “Also, that boyfriend of yours is really nice.” Jeremy laughs and gives a bright smile. “I would say the same about yours, but we’re low-key rivals.”

Now it’s Jackie’s turn to blush bright red. “He’s not my boyfriend,” they mutter. The curly-haired boy’s mouth opens in a little o and he apologizes profusely. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just assumed.”

After another minute of silence, Jackie smiles again. “Nah. So, we should actually go.”

Jeremy laughs awkwardly and piles all his trash on his tray. “Yep. Definitely.”

Chapter Text

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While those two were having fun, Amanda and Thomas were having a… bonding experience too.

“Jennings!” Amanda shouts, running up behind the boy as the two of them exit the cafeteria. Thomas turns around and smiles brightly at the smaller girl. “Hi Amanda. What’s up?”

She smiles innocently and then shoves the boy into a wall. “Hey there.”

Thomas blushes a furious red, something that’s only happened once or twice before. Yes, he has a boyfriend, and yes, he really, really, really likes his boyfriend, and yes, he knows what’s going on is really, really, really bad. But he’s exceedingly pan and this cute girl is in close proximity to him and she’s slowly getting closer and closer and closer until their lips are pressing up against each other.

And Thomas doesn’t say no.

Amanda isn’t actually into this boy at all, but it’s part of some mind-frick Alexander told her and her sisters to pull. So, while she’s kissing Thomas, she’s off in a mind palace, off daydreaming about vacations in Spain with her family. Well, not her brothers. They can stay home with a babysitter.

When the two teenagers pull apart, Thomas’ face is absolutely scarlet. He kissed a girl, he already has a boyfriend, and he liked the kiss. What does that make him?

A cheater.

That’s it.

Amanda winks flirtatiously and boops Thomas’ nose. “Nobody needs to know. See ya soon!”

With that, she flounces off, leaving Thomas to wonder what he just did, and trying to pretend he doesn’t know exactly what. And trying to pretend that he didn’t like it. Oh schist.

So, to anyone who actually scrolled down and read this.

Shhhhhh,  I wanted to add drama.

And... lemme clarify

Amanda is, as mentioned, not into Thomas. Alexander just told her to mess with Thomas and Jeremy because...  he's...  kinda...  a...  butthole...

yeah

so  like  he hates Thomas  with all his heart  and  he's  a  butthole  to him, and soon enough, to Jeremy by extension

I just wanted drama.

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Chapter Text

As the last kids, namely Jackie and James, trickle in to the common area, Mr. Wilmington looks around and then nods. “Fantastic. If you will all be seated, we can begin. Alexander? There’s a seat next to… ah… Thomas.” The dark-haired boy shakes his head and gives a pained smile. “I’d rather stand then sit next to that bi—” “OKAY thank you for telling us your opinion, Alexander,” the man frantically interrupts. “That leads me into our first topic. Rules.”

Beth frantically waves her hand, but whatever she had to say goes ignored as Mr. Wilmington continues. “First rule, we’d rather if you didn’t curse. There are seven-year-olds here, for goodness sakes.” He is not glaring at Alexander and Thomas as he says this. “Thank you. Second, this shouldn’t need to be said, but don’t smoke or drink alcohol or do drugs or whatever it is kids do these days.”

“That’s my alcohol,” Gregory mutters, a useless side note that doesn’t actually further the conversation.

“Third rule,” Mr. Wilmington adds. “Physical contact needs to have the consent of both parties.” He glances down at his clipboard and back up at the kids. “This sheet wants me to say that no boy and no girl are allowed in a room together alone, but I find problems with that. First off, it leaves out those who don’t conform to binary gender norms. And secondly… um… also, many of y’all, based on your intake sheets, have said that you aren’t into… boy/girl relationships.” That’s a light way of putting it. “So just… exercise common sense, y’all.”

Alexander coughs, and whispers under his breath, “The only people here into boy/girl relationships are probably Jeremy and his girlfriend.” Jeremy tenses, sitting up straighter, and you can tell that this issue is going to become a large problem soon enough. “You complete as— um… butthole!” Thomas yells, throwing a crumpled up copy of the rule sheet at the small dark-haired boy.

Mr. Wilmington sighs, massaging his temple. He knows that Alexander doesn’t know exactly what’s going on with Thomas, he knows that Thomas is covering up the hurt by being ticked off, but geez. He couldn’t have a normal set of kids, huh.

“That’s another thing,” the man proclaims. “Teasing or bullying is not allowed. And, each of you have stated your pronoun preferences at the introductions. Please respect those preferences of everyone. Um….” He looks at his clipboard again. “I think that’s most of the big rules. Don’t murder anyone. Pretty much just common sense. Now, that’s boring, so let’s move on to a bit of more fun activities!”

The kids cheer, being absolutely bored with the rules, and Mr. Wilmington laughs. “So… um… let’s play charades!”

Paul goes first, and by some stroke of luck, gets France as his thing to act out. He jumps up and down, twirling an imaginary mustache and drinking some imaginary wine, but it still takes everyone a while to guess. When they do, Thomas squeals and exclaims, “I just wrote an essay on France a couple weeks ago!” Yeah, that’s actually not concerning at all. Honestly, with this group, if someone hadn’t written an essay or two or fifty-one on the topic of France, that’s where you’d have to start worrying.

For the sake of the author’s convenience, because he’s really bored and his distracted despite listening to one of his favorite songs, let’s not have a whole writing thing, just like bullet points. In retrospect, the cup of coffee probably isn’t helping the distraction bit. Yeah. He shouldn’t have drunk that coffee. Eating so much of the candy couldn’t have been a good idea either. But he did, and we’re here, so let’s go. Just a sample of the charades that occurred. Not all of them. Only like three. Because the author is lazy and he wants to get this chapter out to apologize for the lack of Chapter 27.

Thomas- A train; he acted it out by running around in circles pumping his arm like a smokestack, because he can. After Hyrum guessed it correctly, the older boy shouted, “Yo, I’m Thomas the Dank Engine!” and flopped down on a chair next to Jeremy, who was silently giggling.

Megan- A tree; she stayed still and waved her hands gently, a stark contrast to Thomas’ hyperactivity. Seriously, someone might wanna check that boy out for some sort of ADHD or something.

Tess- Peace; she mimed shaking hands with herself while grinning, not even complaining about the fact that peace is a weirdly abstract concept for charades.

Chapter Text

After the group meeting, they have breakout sessions.

All I can say is, what a disaster.

Whoever thought this was a good idea was wrong.

Charlie and Jackie? One ended up in tears

Alexander and Thomas? Well, let’s just say it’s a surprise that the world didn’t blow up.

The original plan was to have Liz and Megan talk too, but they’ve been sisters so Mr. Wilmington decided it wasn’t necessary.

Let’s take a look at what happened.

~~~

First is Charlie and Jackie. The former arrives early to the meeting room, just in case there are any snacks. And there are, which is great. He’s munching on some animal crackers when Jackie storms in, eyes ablaze. They sit down heavily in their chair and scowl at the smaller boy. Mr. Wilmington follows after them, to moderate this and make sure no one gets murdered.

“Let’s get one thing straight. I hate your guts. Okay? Okay,” Jackie spits out. Not a good start. Charlie blinks slowly and extends his hand. Three animal crackers shaped like turtles lie in his palm. He gives an apologetic smile and asks, “Do you want this?”

Mr. Wilmington blinks and squints at the boy with the tousled blond hair. For Pete’s sake. How can this boy be the reincarnation of Charles Lee? Lee was a buttface, and Charlie seems to be insanely pure and far too good for this world. How?

Jackie apparently doesn’t share this view. They smack the crackers out of Charlie’s hand and grab a bag of Cheetos, still scowling. “No thank you.” Charlie just shrugs and picks the crackers off the table. “So… I’m… sorry? For insulting you, over two hundred years ago? That wasn’t nice of me.”

A rude snort of laughter from Jackie. “Yup.” They don’t say anything more, and it’s kinda evident that Charlie is expecting an apology from them for shooting him. But the apology doesn’t come, even as the two kids have a staring match, and Mr. Wilmington has to step in.

“Jackie?” he queries. “Do you have something to say?” They roll their eyes, practically shooting daggers at Charlie in their glare. “Not to this little schist, sir.”

“Excuse me?” Charlie shouts, his normally calm demeanor ruined. Jackie meets his eyes, fire in their own, and nods. “You heard me.”

Charlie slams his hands on the table, making the wooden frame shake. “Then, y’know what? Meet me outside. In the hallway.” With that, he storms out, tears pouring down his face, despite Mr. Wilmington’s attempts to make him stay. Jackie rolls their eyes and walks out too. Around then, that is when Mr. Wilmington must admit that this first meeting was a failure and the “no murder” rule might be pretty hard to uphold.

As to what happens in the hallway? Well, let’s just say, the first duel between these kids might be coming sooner than anticipated.

~~~

When Alexander and Thomas walk into the room, glaring and shoving, Mr. Wilmington is frantically taking some aspirin in preparation.

The two boys have begun arguing even before they sit down. “Are you color-blind?” Alexander asks sassily. “Because your clothes don’t match, again. You’re rich, right? Well, buy yourself some better clothes, please, so everyone else’s eyes stop bleeding.”

Thomas sighs heavily and gives a condescending smile. “Darlin’, you used that insult yesterday, and, wait a sec…” He picks a folder up off his lap, and flips through the printed pages. “I may have picked up that little habit of yours of writing down every single grievance. You used that one on Burr, correct? And it got you shot? Hmm. Looks like I’m having better luck.”

He smiles like a shark. “The first time you used the color-blind/clothes insult was… September 7^th, 1789, right after I got home from the wonderful country that is France. Then…  once a week for the entirety of January to November 1791. In 1792 I had to go back to France, just to get away from you. That was the most peaceful three years of my life. Once I came back, in ’95, you used that insult every other week or so for a few years. Then, December 4^th, 18^th, 31^st, 1801. The last couple times were in August and October of both ’02 and ’03. The absolute last time was, oh, it looks like it was July 7^th, 1804. Then you went off and died and saved us all from perpetual headaches.”

It looks like Mr. Wilmington is the one having the headache as Thomas smirks and digs in his pocket for a wad of 2-dollar-bills, throwing them at Alexander. “Buy yourself some better insults, honey.”

Alexander sputters and shoves the bills back at the other boy. “I don’t want to have your face following me around. Bad enough that I had to suffer with it for fifteen years, and am going to have to do so for two whole months now, I don’t want that ugly mug of yours in my pocket.”

“Hmm…” Thomas sasses. “Strange, I say the same thing when I get ten-dollar-bills. In fact, my aunt gave me one just last week and I burnt it and everything it touched. Don’t worry, I handled it using gloves. The filth on that thing… you’d be absolutely disgusted. Well, you wouldn’t, you were born right in that filth last time. On that subject, have you seen your mother in this life? Is she still a s~~~?”

“TAKE THAT BACK YOU IDIOT!” Alexander shouts, jumping up and looking like he wants to strangle the taller boy. “MY MOTHER IS, SHE IS THE ONE THING THAT IS NOT OKAY TO INSULT. INSULT MY SHORTNESS, INSULT THE FACT THAT I CAN NEVER TAKE A BREAK, BUT NEVER INSULT MY MOTHER!”

Thomas looks around, but Mr. Wilmington seems to be traumatized and unresponsive, so the boy leans in and whispers to Alexander, “Okay, but it’s true. She was one, you were one. Maria Reynolds, need I say more? Hey, have you gotten with her yet while we’ve been here? If not, that’s remarkable self-control, especially for you.”

The other boy’s eyes flash with anger, and he swings a punch, hitting Thomas in the nose. “Ow!” the latter shouts, hand flying up to his nose. “Jesus, Haverly, what was that for?” Alexander scowls and sends another punch, though this one Thomas can duck to avoid. “That was for my mother, you little jerk!”

Even though Thomas’ nose is bleeding, yup, he still can smirk and say, “Are you sure you’re not the little jerk here?” Ah. True. Alexander is the short one.

The aforementioned short one storms out, and Thomas runs out a minute later, presumably to get some tissues for his bloody nose.

They have left a semi-comatose Mr. Wilmington in their wake. He looks traumatized, vaguely dead, and like he’s seriously questioning what the heck he’s doing with his life. That’s probably a legitimate question, and if they ever get reincarnated again (after doing research on this whole reincarnate thing, scientists say it’s possible, apparently) he will definitely be smart enough to keep Alexander and Thomas separated for the entirety of their lives.

God. He’d better start working on the incident forms that are going to need to be filled out when one of the boys ends up dead under suspicious causes.

Chapter Text

Based on the events of the next morning, while the kids are walking to their separate schools, it looks like Mr. Wilmington might need to write more than one of those incident reports. Jackie is glaring daggers at Charlie, who is trying to just ignore them but failing. Nothing much comes of that, luckily, until the older school kids reach the wonderfully average-looking school of Central Middle High School. That’s when the students loitering about in front of the school, waiting to go in, are treated to an amazing display of exactly what a duel is. Except, like, no guns. Because this is the 21^st century, and gun control is getting insanely protective. Which is chill.

“You most malodorous cur, scum of the earth!” Jackie shouts, squaring up and shoving one of Charlie’s shoulders. As Charlie was not expecting this, he stumbles backwards slightly and sputters out, “You earwig! It is interesting, the things that do not change over the centuries! You’re a… you’re a scoundrel!”

Jackie gives a shocked gasp, before digging in their pocket and pulling out a Kleenex. “Good sir, I challenge you to a gentleman’s duel, as you have slandered my honor!” they exclaim, before throwing the tissue at Charlie.

Before the tissue has hit the ground, Charlie and Jackie are already throwing off their backpacks. A crowd slowly drifts over, wanting to see how this fight between the two new kids who talk weirdly will turn out. Alexander just sighs, pushing past the assembled students and walking into the school. The sisters (minus Phoebe, she stays to see what’ll happen) cast a pitying glance at the kids, and follow after Alexander, as Amanda mutters something to the effect of “we’re having a duel already? Really?” Beside her, Eliza giggles and is heard to be saying, “I won the bet, pay up sis.”

“Sir, as the challenged, you have the right to choose the weapon we will use,” Jackie proclaims, crossing their arms and glaring at Charlie. The boy nods, before loudly announcing, “I choose the swords.”

“Wonderful,” Jackie sneers. They dig in their backpack and pull out two inflatable swords. “I presumed you would say that, so I came well prepared.” Charlie grabs one of the swords and turns it over in his hands, before nodding at the other kid. “Back to back. On the count of ten, we shall turn around and this shall begin.”

The two kids turn around, backs to one another, as the crowd around them begins to count. “One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten!”

Charlie whirls 180 degrees, raising his inflatable sword. Jackie mirrors him, but then they send a low jab to Charlie’s torso. The boy glowers, though obviously it didn’t hurt much, if at all, and slashes up, just barely grazing Jackie’s sweatshirt.

“Imbecile,” Jackie taunts, sticking their tongue out and returning with a harder rap to the other boy’s head. “Do you apologize yet?”

“Never!” is the cry from Charlie. Apologize for what, who knows, but Jackie wants an apology that they’re not going to get. Fun. Fun times.

Jackie and Charlie continue to duke it out until some sort of bell rings from inside and the crowd begins to disperse. Still, they don’t stop, only slow down. They only stop when some teacher comes out, shaking her head. “What in tarnation?” she asks roughly, getting a little giggle out of Phoebe, who is still there. The woman sighs, clearly wondering why two kids are fighting with inflatable swords, in front of a school, here in the middle of Philadelphia, and it’s not even some sort of D&D club thing.

“Oh,” she finally says, as Jackie hits Charlie one more time before putting the swords back in their backpack. “It’s you guys.” She sighs again. “Mr. Wilmington has been in contact about y’all. Okay. Which of you are Alexander and Thomas?”

Thomas sheepishly raises his hand. “I’m Thomas. Alexander went inside before the duel, like the little coward that he is.”

The teacher gives a pained smile. “Fantastic. I’ve… heard a lot about you two. And… fighting children?” Charlie plasters on a polite grin. “I am Charles, but you may call me Charlie, ma’am. And this is-” “I’m Jackie,” Jackie butts in. “My dad’s the governor of Maine.”

“Charmed,” the woman says. “I’m Miss Courfeyrac, the French teacher here.” Jeremy gives a little laugh, though at least he tries to stifle it.

Miss Courfeyrac looks over at him, clearly confused. “Young man? Is there a problem?” Jeremy frantically shakes his head, smiling now. “It’s just… Courfeyrac. Have you… by any chance… read the book?” She frowns. “No… what book?”

At that, Jeremy can’t help but sigh heavily. “Nevermind… but thanks for indulging my question.” Miss Courfeyrac squints at him, finally seeming to decide that it’s not worth further questioning. “Well, you kids had better get into your classes. If you have any concerns, my door is always open.”

After thanking her, mostly for not suspending them, the kids scamper inside, heads on swivels as they look around and drink it all in.

Phoebe darts off, like a little skink, to the gym. Whew. That’s a horrible way to start out, but it is what it is. Best of luck to her, having to put on a disgusting gym uniform so early in the morning.

Jackie and Charlie, after glaring at each other more and whispering threats of future duels, also walk off, though luckily in different directions.

Chapter Text

Thomas grabs the straps of his backpack and keeps his head down as he winds his way through this crowded hallway. Beside him, Jeremy is humming a song, probably from some musical, and trying to ignore the fact that he’s one of the shortest people here.

They, through some lucky twist of fate, have 6 out of their 8 classes together, the only differences being their first elective block (Jeremy: Orchestra, and Thomas: Drama. Hah. Like he needs any more drama in his life) and second elective block, where Thomas has International Studies and Jeremy has Creative Writing.

Together, they walk to homeroom, which is French with that absolute gem of a woman they met outside, Miss Courfeyrac. To both of their dismays, they learn that Alexander is in their class as well. He sits there, staring down at some book in his lap, and doesn’t seem to notice when Thomas and Jeremy sit down in the only two available seats they can see, the ones next to him.

But, oh boy, he does notice when the teacher begins to call roll. “Alexander Haverly?” He then looks up, raises his hand, and then stares bug-eyed at Thomas. “You’re here too?” Thomas smirks and gives a nod. “Yup, you’re never going to get rid of me.”

“Caroline Jennings? Miss Jennings? You here?” Miss Courfeyrac asks, tapping a pencil on her clipboard. The three boys in the corner look up, Jeremy and Thomas with looks of dread, and Alexander with a look of confusion.

“Um, ma’am, I believe there was a mix-up,” Alexander says, before Thomas can even say anything. “There’s no Caroline Jennings, last I checked, but there is a jerk over here named Thomas Jennings.”

Thomas can’t even be mad, even as Alexander gives him a funny look, clearly trying to puzzle this “mix-up” through in his head.

“Oh. Thomas, of course. I apologize,” Miss Courfeyrac says quickly. The boy just nods, grateful that his enemy just saved his butt, seemingly without realizing it. Then the teacher sighs. “Ah, yes, it’s you two, Alexander and Thomas. Maybe one of you could move seats? I don’t believe our insurance covers murder, and I’ve been warned that murder is exactly what will happen with you two if you are not separated.”

Immediately, all the girls, and one boy, start clamoring for Alexander to sit next to them. Wait… what? He’s not that cute, is he? Maybe. Maybe he’s cute and doesn’t know it. But probably not. Or maybe they just think he’s smart and want to cheat off him.

Alexander scans the classroom and finally decides to go sit by the boy, who is sitting alone at a table, and who grins. “I’m Leo, it’s nice to meet you!” Alexander gives a pinched smile. “Pleasure.” He’s clearly not too happy. But why? This Leo actually is cute. Like… really cute. Whatever. If Alexander wants to throw away his shot, well, it’s his shot to throw away.

Class begins with the Pledge of Allegiance, recited in French of course. That is a strange experience for Thomas, who vaguely regrets never looking up the words to the pledge. He could be saying something along the lines of “Death to all the British people!” for all he knows. Probably not, but based on what some people have said about Americans and their holding of grudges, it’s certainly possible.

Then Miss Courfeyrac dives into some sort of conjugating thing, which is extremely boring, though not too difficult. Alexander seems to breeze through it insanely fast, even for someone who used to be Hamilton, and it takes all of Thomas’ self-control not to be mad at him for seeming to still be fluent in French. Thomas was fluent in so many languages, and now he can barely remember how to spell ‘necessarily’ in English. But he still has some of the Italian, which is cool. But still. Here Alexander is, being a freaking prodigy. Dang it. Why does he have to be a genius? Thomas is going to need to invent something new just to catch up!

On that note, why are these chairs not swivelly? They should be swivelly! This is Philadelphia, for goodness sakes, it’s the capital of Pennsylvania! Sure, that logic doesn’t work down in Richmond, which is a shame, because Virginia is awesome. (We have no swivel chairs in school [I mean, does anyone?] and yes, I wish we did have them, because I like spinning around and stuff. Also fidgeting. Fidgeting is great except when you click pens and annoy everyone during writing class. But I’m sitting on one now [a swivel chair, not a pen] at my dad’s work, so that’s chill. I’m also listening to Hamilton and Les Miz [the movie] [also, the book is so much better] and The Greatest Showman and yes, I might be obsessed with Hugh Jackman’s singing just a little.) (Hi, I apologize for that random side note. I had eaten too much candy again. *sigh*) Hey, maybe they could take a trip down there someday in the next couple of months. Jeremy would like it, Thomas would love it, and probably Mr. Wilmington would like it too. They could go to Monticello! As long as it hasn’t been destroyed by the slow, deadly march of progress. But if they went to one person’s house, they’d have to go to other people’s house, and Thomas doesn’t really want to go all the way down to South Carolina to visit Mepkin. Bleh. The heat would not be good for his hair. And you can just shut up about the fact that Virginia is hot too. Well, of course it’s hot, it’d have to be hot to produce such hot people. Holy crap.

Thomas begins to wonder if he’s okay. Then he decides that he’s really not and doodles on his worksheet. Hey, what else is there to do? Except annoy Alexander, but Alexander is all the way across the room, trying to ignore Leo, so Thomas can’t exactly bother him. Looks like Leo is doing a good enough job of that on his own anyway.

A bell rings, children move through the halls, blah de blah. From there, the day doesn’t go… optimally. Paul will say that he did not burst into tears at the dirtiness of these American children. Jackie will argue if you suggest that they got lost and wandered around for the entirety of 2^nd block. Alexander will insist that he did not run into a wall while trying to read and walk at the same time. Thomas will protest the fact that it is claimed that he started speaking semi-fluent Italian in the middle of English class, scaring the beejeezus out of the teacher, who thought the boy was summoning a demon. James will vehemently insist that he did not, and never would, help Thomas start a minor rebellion during lunch when the mac-and-cheese was, honest to God, vaguely grey and vaguely sticky. Actually, he probably would admit to that. It was kinda funny, as long as you ignore the whole fact that the mac-and-cheese was entirely disgusting. Oh, and ignore the fact that a couple kids, including Jeremy, fell off lunch tables. Who cares about them, though? Well. Everyone cares about Jeremy, but, like, the other kids. Kids are yucky.

~~~

Let’s actually go back to that revolution. I swear, it was great.

~~~

“Jemmyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy what the heck is this crap they call mac-and-cheese?” Thomas whines, leaning up against the smaller boy. Jeremy laughs before shoving Thomas away. “I don’t know, but most likely, it’s not actually mac-and-cheese. Did you consider that?” Thomas’ tongue gets stuck out defiantly as he wrinkles up his nose. “How dare they? How dare they promise me mac-and-cheese and then give me this?”

His eyes light up. “Y’know what this calls for? A good old revolution! Like… like the French Revolution!” Jeremy snickers. “How about… not like the French Revolution. There were far too many French Revolutions, so that pretty much tells you all you need to know about the success of them. How about like the American Revolution? Or the… Industrial Revolution! Or, really, any revolution but the French one. But not the Haitian one. Yeah… let’s just go with the American Revolution, if we actually wanna win.”

Thomas sighs heavily. “Yes, and we do. Okay, let’s go!” He stands up, waving his arms around, trying to get everyone’s attention. “Hey, y’all!” Only a few uninterested glances are cast his way, so Jeremy stands up too to help. Being short, he has an even lower chance of being seen, so he stands up on the lunch table. It’s slippery, and, predictably, he falls off and onto the hard tile floor.

Bang. Well, that certainly caught peoples’ attention. They all look over and begin to whisper about how weird all those new kids seem to be. First, two of them get into an inflatable sword duel and talk in old-timey speech, and then these two are standing on and falling off tables. Also shouting and stuff.

“FOR THE REVOLUTION!” Jeremy shouts, raising his fist up in the air. “Will you join in our crusade, who will be strong and stand with me?” Though the other kids have no idea what this revolution is about, they like the general idea of a revolution. Some party pooper of a kid decides that the proper response is, “For shame!” Yeah, no. That’s never the correct way to respond to a revolution. The correct way is what everyone else is doing, listening intently.

“No offense to the fine lunch ladies, but this mac-and-cheese is disgusting! Also your tomatoes aren’t even slightly red! And the cafeteria smells like a toxic waste dump, though that’s probably due to the horrid body odor of teenagers who don’t realize such a thing as deodorant exists!” Thomas shouts, before helping Jeremy back to his feet.

A few kids nearby have scooted closer, clearly wanting to get in on whatever this is. True, half of them think that these kids are high, but at least, if they are, there’ll be some quality entertainment.

“So, anyway, revolution! For the sake of the mac-and-cheese!” Jeremy adds. “Which, yes, is a legitimate reason!”

Over in the corner, Amanda and Liz are shaking their heads at the completely insanity of those two boys, while Phoebe and Megan have run off to listen better. Well. You’ve got two types of people right there. Teachers are beginning to wonder if they should stop this, but as it’s not a problem yet, they decide against it.

“Hey, how do you do a revolution?” Jeremy whispers to Thomas. “The only way I can remember involves building barricades, and I don’t think that’s quite feasible here.” His friend laughs. “We could use the lunch tables.”

The revolution actually gets to the point where other kids stand on the tables too, but once they fall off, adults actually get their crap together and calm everyone down.

~~~

As you can see, the high schoolers didn’t have the best first day. But that just means there’s room for improvement, right?

Chapter Text

At the elementary school, stuff is going… slightly better? Aarjav and Tess have the same teacher, to the relief of them both. Some idiot decided that making Fredrick go to the ESL class was a good idea, and he tells that aforementioned idiot off in both French and perfectly fluent English. After that, there’s a quick emergency meeting, and the administrators decide that this strangely well-spoken French boy can be moved into the same class as Hyrum.

“Oh… Où est-ce que tu as été ?” Hyrum stumbles out slowly, trying out the one French phrase he can remember. Yes, Jeremy taught it to him, saying that it comes in handy (here the older boy glared at Thomas) when your friend decides to go off to France and leave you alone with the world’s biggest loudmouth in Congress with you and the weight of the entire South on your shoulders, and then he comes back five years later like nothing ever happened, no, I’m definitely not bitter.

Fredrick grins brightly, showing off his adorable and slightly crooked teeth. “Convincin’ them not to make me go with the Spanish kiddos, that’s where. Though, to their credit, those kids did seem pretty chill. But you are chiller.”

Hyrum giggles, before turning his attention to the teacher who has entered the room. Well, if the teacher had entered the room normally, Hyrum probably wouldn’t have noticed. But instead, Mr. Carter tripped over his feet like twice, dropped the books he was holding, and muttered an expletive. Because these are second graders, they giggle behind their workbooks and make lots of disparaging comments.

“Okay, okay, calm down y’all,” Mr. Carter says, once he finally picks his books up and makes it to the front of the room. “Now, I’ve heard that we have a couple new students today.”

From his seat, Fredrick leaps up, waving his hand in the air. “Hi, I’m new!” The teacher gives a pinched smile and nods to the boy. “Fantastic to meet you. Now, if you’re new, please all stand up, and everyone else will introduce themselves.” Fredrick pulls Hyrum up to his feet, and the other boy smiles nervously, not really being one for introductions.

It doesn’t go too bad. There’s some red-headed kid with an immense amount of spunk, a curly-haired boy who introduces himself with some poem or something, twin boys who finish each other’s sentences, three girls who seem like they’re set to become the cast of Heathers, and all the other second-grade clichés.

And recess? Recess is great. The playground at this place is awesome, and they get a whole thirty minutes out there! Tess skins her knee while playing kickball, causing Aarjav to fuss over her for five minutes, until she shoves him away, telling him to go take their team to the kickball championships. She’s fine, by the way.

Fredrick finds some frogs over in a ditch by the blacktop, and actually fits them in his pocket. This causes a problem later, when they all decide to jump out in the middle of his math quiz. But hey, the kids have a fun time, and they get to get out of the math quiz, as Mr. Carter has a headache and just wants Silent Reading time for God’s sake.

Even when the dismissal bell rings and they all meet up near the front to wait for the big kids to pick them up, Fredrick still has two frogs in his pocket. They jump onto Hyrum’s head, making him scream, but then Tess picks them up and puts one down Aarjav’s shirt, making him squeak and almost faint. Definitely a sign of love, putting amphibians down your significant other’s shirt.

~~~

Whatever that was, at least it was better than the high schoolers’ day, huh?

Chapter Text

That day after the trauma of first days of school, the troupe of children clomp down the sidewalk, their breaths fogging up in the chilly air. All the older kids have cups of coffee, with decaf for the boring ones (well, more like, for the ones who are okay with not having bursts of maniac inspiration brought on by the caffeine,) while everyone under the age of eleven or so has hot chocolate with whipped cream. They’re all so bundled up that you can barely tell exactly who is who, and Tess starts talking to one boy thinking he’s Aarjav but he turns out to be Jeremy. Well, it was an honest mistake, the two boys are similarly short.

Alexander and Jackie are engaged in a debate about whether chocolate or vanilla ice cream is better (answer: strawberry) and not paying attention to the sidewalk in front of them, causing them to ram straight into two smaller kids.

“Watch it!” Alexander snaps, glaring at the floofy-haired boy and his auburn-haired companion. The kid with the reddish hair inhales deeply before they snap. “Mr. Hamilton, you are a monumental disgrace to the colonies, sir!” Alexander is clearly confused, and you can see the exact moment the realization hits him.

“Seabury,” he hisses, not even a question. The kid smirks and sticks their hand out crisply. “Sam, at your service.”

Alexander rolls his eyes and turns his attention to the little boy next to Sam. “And who are you? Another Tory?” But the boy doesn’t respond, instead he stares at Alexander like a deer in headlights.

“Ph-Philip… Hamilton…” he finally stumbles out. “Dad!”

By now, the rest of the coffee/hot chocolate-drinking kids have caught up to Alexander and Jackie, and they stare blankly at Philip. Hyrum dimly recognizes the two kids from his class, but his attention is split between them and Fredrick babbling in French, and let’s be honest, French is hard to understand, especially if you’re a seven-year-old who is not in fact from France.

Liz’s squeal breaks the silence, and she rushes forward to embrace Philip. “Pip!” she shouts, hugging the shocked boy. Alexander is tearing up, looking at the little boy and shaking his head slowly.

“So… they’re weird. Let’s let them reunite, and the rest of us can talk,” Jackie says, smiling at Sam. The little kid grins and sticks their hand out for a handshake. “I’m Sam! I’m a none of the above!” Jackie gasps and their smile widens. “Hey, I’m a none of the above too! Maybe we can make a none of the above club!”

This is the exact moment when Thomas decides to stick his nose in their business, like he does. “Y’all making a non-cis club or something? Sign me up!”

Jackie blinks slowly at Thomas. “Um… yeah… but like… I’m not entirely sure why you’d join. Do you have something you need to tell us?” The taller boy’s eyes light up and he lets out a giggle. “Mon Dieu. I’m trans, how did you not notice that? Did my baggy sweatshirts actually fool y’all?”

“Oh…” Jackie mumbles, flushing a bright red. “I’m very sorry. Sure, you can join our non-cis club.”

Sam squeals and rushes forward to hug Thomas. “Hiiiiii!” they exclaim. Thomas laughs again, hugging them back and looking around the group of kids. “Anyone else we need in this club? Fredrick? I think that’s it.”

After at least another twenty minutes of Liz and Alexander crying over Philip, Thomas and Jackie fanpersoning with Sam over this new club, and everyone else standing awkwardly around, the kids have to part. Sam skips off, dragging Philip behind them, and promising to meet up with the rest of the kids soon again.

Chapter Text

“Oh my golly, Betsey, did you see him? Or did I hallucinate? Was it a mass hallucination? Did the rest of you guys see it too?” Alexander bubbles. “Well, Jennings, I don’t care if you did or not. Your opinion is invalid, because you are not me.”

Aarjav crosses his arms, giving a smirk. “Hmm. I am not you either, is my opinion invalid? Well, that’s not a fair question, considering our past. Jackie is not you either, is their opinion invalid?” Alexander lets out a long whistle, squinting at the younger kid. “Dang boy, you could be a lawyer if you worked on that a bit.”

Yet again, Aarjav smirks. “You seem to be forgetting the fact that I was in fact a lawyer, which you were as well, and I was a person who was smart enough not to get shot, which you were most certainly not.”

“You shot me!” Alexander rebuts. The smaller boy rolls his eyes. “I said I was sorry. On that note, did you get the Twinkies you said you’d get?”

Alexander sighs, before massaging his forehead. “Yes, I rap-battled somebody at school until they gave me their box of Twinkies.” At least two people, Jeremy and Phoebe, spit out their coffee at that. “You… ugh, of course you did that,” Phoebe says, wiping her mouth. Alexander gives a sheepish smile and digs in his computer bag. “Here ya go, tiny and maybe vaguely murderous child,” he announces, dropping the box of goodies in the smaller boy’s hands.

~~~

Amanda corners Thomas again that day as everyone’s going to their rooms to do homework.

“Hey, Tommy,” the girl says, leaning up against the wall and blocking the boy’s path. He looks up from the book he’s reading and frowns heavily. “Hi… Amanda,” he says, voice resigned. Amanda leans in, until their noses are almost touching. “Whatcha doin’?”

Thomas swallows a lump in his throat and leans closer to nervously kiss Amanda. When he leans back, he mutters, “That, I guess. That’s what I’m doing. Don’t tell anyone, please?” Amanda’s smile grows, and she pantomimes zipping her lips shut. “Not a word. Like I said, nobody needs to know. Ever.”

Chapter Text

“Class, class, we have a new student!” Miss Courfeyrac booms on Wednesday morning, holding a lanky boy by the elbow. “This is James Lewis, he’s in the 10^th grade, and is simply in French 3 just to catch up.”

The boy, James, rolls his eyes and blows a bubble with his chewing gum, making it clear that he doesn’t care. At the teacher’s prodding, he strolls over to the empty seat next to Thomas and Jeremy. The latter looks up from his book, and, after taking one glance at James, scribbles a quick note to Thomas. Do you think he’s who I think he is?

Thomas glances at the new boy, and hastily replies. Reynolds? Definitely. Jeremy, upon reading that, sighs heavily and rests his head down on his textbook. “Guess we should tell Megan, just in case,” he mutters, loud enough only for Thomas to hear.

After first block is over, the plan gets put into motion.

“Hey, Megan!” Jeremy exclaims, seeing the dark-haired girl. She turns around and smiles, before slowing down to walk next to the smaller boy. “What’s up, Little Jemmy?”

Jeremy smiles nervously, before mumbling, “We might have found your… ah… ex-husband. James Lewis. Tenth grader.”

The grin quickly dissipates from Megan’s face, and she blurts out, “Find out for sure, then fight him.” With that, she strides off, her positive mood of earlier now completely ruined. Jeremy stares at her retreating back for a second, before straightening his back, ready to accept this challenge.

In Jeremy’s brain, the wheels spin all day, finally coming to a conclusion right before lunch. James is also in his orchestra class, so Jeremy had more time to observe him and decide that, yes, James is a jerk, and he is most certainly James Reynolds.

The lunchroom is crowded, as it always is, but Jeremy has his sights set on only one person. James is sitting at a table by himself, chewing some sort of sandwich and glaring at everyone around him.

“Hey there,” Jeremy starts, standing by the end of the table with his lunch tray. “You said your name was… James, right?” When the older boy nods, Jeremy gives a bright smile. “Great! I’m Jeremy. Jeremy Mendoza. You sit at my table in French, and you play third chair viola in orchestra. I’m first chair violin. Um, anyway, some of my friends noticed you looked a bit lonely, so we were wondering if you wanted to come sit with us.”

James huffs angrily, but stands up and follows after Jeremy as the shorter boy walks over to his lunch table. He sits down right next to Thomas, who plasters on a fake smile as Jeremy continues talking.

“So, um, we’ll introduce ourselves, but how ‘bout you tell us a little bit about yourself first? I’m sure we’re all so excited and awed to be talking to a tenth grader.” Coming from anyone else, it would sound sarcastic, but Jeremy manages to make it sound innocent.

Again, James huffs, because he’s a jerk and has issues, but he actually talks. “Yeah, I’m the big man everywhere I go. I’m actually a reincarnate, do you know what those are? I guess you wouldn’t, because you’re barely old enough to wipe your own butts after you crap. Hah. Anyway, I got saddled with this idiotic last name. Lewis. It’s like… karma or something. And I don’t like it.”

Under the table, Jeremy kicks Thomas, silently communicating his disgust, before he smiles brightly and interrupts James, who was still blabbering on.

“Oh, that’s fascinating!” Now Jeremy’s tone becomes less high-pitched and young-sounding. “We’re actually reincarnates too, but I guess we’ll get around to that in a bit. So, I’m Jeremy, you know me. This is Thomas, my boyfriend.” James makes some weird noise in the back of his throat, but Jeremy plows on. “Then Alexander, we’re not friends, more like enemies.” Alexander nods, as if to affirm this statement. “That’s Jackie. They are amazing and I think they might have a black belt in martial arts. So they’re pretty kick-butt. Then there’s Charlie, who is also kinda kick-butt. He’s also a genius at… computers, right? Yeah. And finally, we’ve got Megan. She’s great, and a total fashionista.” Megan nods and gives a watery smile, one that doesn’t hide the way she’s glaring at James.

James fake-yawns and leans on his elbow. “And y’all say you’re reincarnates, huh? Of who? The Teletubbies?” Thomas has to bite back a laugh, before sassily saying, “Hmm, you hit the nail on the head. I’m Tinky-Winky.” Jeremy’s eyes get steely cold, as he stands up and scowls at James. “Mr. Reynolds, I do believe you would have some sort of notion as to who we are.”

The tide suddenly turning on him, James stands up too, and surveys the group of assembled teens. Then he breaks out in a semi-evil smile. “Ah… Maria,” he drawls, dragging out the ‘I’ sound. “Long time no see, honey.”

Jeremy takes a deep inhale, trying to keep himself composed. “She is not the only one of us you should recognize, sir. In fact, I believe you were on… interesting terms with one other here. Blackmail, perhaps?” Alexander smirks at that, glaring daggers at James. “Let me just say, I certainly did not appreciate that.”

As James’ eyes widen, it is evident that he is now realizing what a mess he got himself in. He still doesn’t know anyone else at the table, except for an inkling about Jeremy and the “Thomas” kid. They stir a memory in him, of paintings he’d see hung everywhere and all sorts of campaigns and sitting in a bar when a crier came in and announced… president? Someone was the president?

Jeremy’s now-strong voice jolts the older boy out of his thoughts. “James Madison. Thomas Jefferson. Alexander Hamilton. John Laurens, though I do not believe you knew him. Charles Lee, you did not know him either. And, of course, Maria Rey- uh, Lewis. Maria Lewis.” James rolls his eyes, picking up his tray. “You’ll regret this,” he snarls, clearly going for that classic villain look.

Instead of being intimidated, Jeremy just smirks and hits the lunch tray out of the older boy’s hands. “Oh, I will, will I? Well then, guess we’ll have to make sure you’re the one who ends up regretting it at the end. Town Square. 4:45 Bring a second. I’ll bring the Nerf guns.”

“Ooh, ooh, I’ll duel you afterwards!” Thomas exclaims, waving his hand around. “So, be ready!” Alexander mutters, “Me three.” From around the table, everybody voices their plan to duel James as well.

So just like that, James has six duels on his hands, one after the other. Fitting punishment, huh?

Chapter Text

 Thomas takes a deep breath, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead. “Jemmy… am I really doing this?” Jeremy nods and hands his boyfriend the phone. “Yes you are, and it’ll be great, and I’ll be right here.” Giving Jeremy a nervous smile, Thomas punches in the numbers to call his house, and silently prays that he won’t have to leave a message. Boy, would that be awkward. More awkward than this’ll already be, that’s for sure.

Luckily, his mom picks up on the second ring. “Hello! Is this Caroline?” Again, Thomas takes a deep breath, stammering out, “Y-yeah… um… about that…” He glances up to where Jeremy is giving him an encouraging thumbs-up, and quickly says, “I’m transgender which means I’m Thomas I’ve known this for a long time I’m so sorry Mum.”

There’s a few moments of silence, every second of which feels like a knife jammed into Thomas’ heart. Then Mrs. Jennings slowly says, “Alright Thomas. So… you’re a boy, huh?” Thomas dare not think that this is going well, but he kinda does. “Yeah. As much a boy as someone with a biologically male body and who identifies as male. So… yeah… that’s that.”

When Mrs. Jennings speaks again, her tone is much softer. “Okay darling. Is there anything else I need to know, Thomas?” Her use of his real name makes Thomas smile, and gives him the courage to say, “Um, yeah, I’m dating Jeremy.”

On the other end of the line, his mom laughs, but not rudely. “Oh darling, his mother and I expected as such. That’s not really a surprise. Well, you guys have fun all the way across the ocean, and I can’t wait to see you, my favorite son, when you come back home.”

With that, she hangs up, and Thomas starts squealing. “I haven’t been disowned! I haven’t been disowned! She knows I’m trans and gay and I haven’t been disowned!” Jeremy breaks out smiling, and ruffles Thomas’ hair, though he has to strain up to reach it. “I’m so proud of you, Tommy!

Chapter Text

Mr. Wilmington sighs and massages his temple, leaning his elbows on the desk. It’s only been… what… a week? They’ve already had… let’s see… at least one duel that he’s heard of, and who knows how many ones in secret. Plus, whatever it is that all those high school kids snuck out to do this afternoon. Thomas and Alexander keep getting into fights. There’s something between Thomas and Amanda, but Mr. Wilmington doesn’t want to jump to any conclusions there. Jackie, based on their dinner discussion with Jeremy one night, may have murdered someone. Those two random little kids that don’t actually go to this program keep hanging around until Mr. William has to literally shove them outside.

Ugh. Jesus, this is shaping up to be even more annoying than the constant cabinet arguments they used to have. What’s a man supposed to do? It’d be so relaxing to just… not do anything for a day, but someone would probably end up dying and then there’d be lawsuits and just more stress.

“Sir?” Mr. William asks, knocking on the office door. Mr. Wilmington looks up and gestures the younger man in. “What can I do for you, son?” Mr. William blinks quickly before muttering, “Um, well, that one ner-” “Really? We don’t call the children nerds, son.” “Oh. Uh, yeah, well, that sick, short one. Jeremy? Um, anyway, he just came in, with Thomas, and, uh, Jeremy’s puking.” Just peachy.

Again, Mr. Wilmington has to massage his temple. “Shoot,” he mutters under his breath. “Tell Jeremy to go to his room or at least a bathroom, and tell Thomas to stop worrying.” Mr. William raises his eyebrows at that, and starts asking, “Why would he-” but Mr. Wilmington cuts him off with a look. “Trust me. I’ve dealt with that boy for far too long. Anything relating to Jeremy, or, y’know, Madison, he’s worrying like a crazy person.”

Mr. William salutes and runs out, leaving the older man to more seriously consider the idea of a vacation. What’s one death? Manageable, if you cover it enough. Or chalk it up to external forces.

 ~~~

“James, James, James, I’m really sorry, do you want me to stay back with you?” Thomas says all in a rush, running his fingers through his hair. Jeremy looks up, shaking his head and giving his boyfriend a skeptical look. “You do realize that you called me- oh shoot-” With that, he vomits into the toilet again. Once that little spell is over, he sighs and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “You called me James.”

Thomas gives an apologetic shrug. “You know how I get when you are sick, darlin’. Not in my right mind and all.” Jeremy rolls his eyes at that, but he understands the sentiment. “Makes sense,” he murmurs, reaching for Thomas’ hand. “Would you be a dear and help me to my bed, then get a bucket for me, then grab me a book?”

Of course, Thomas is quick to agree, and once Jeremy is sitting up in his bed, Thomas hands him book after book. “Okay, okay, I think that’s enough,” the shorter boy says with a laugh. “Now, you’d better run so you’re not late for the duel.” Thomas looks like he’s about to argue, so Jeremy gives him a little nudge with his foot. “Go. Go fight James Lewis for me.”

Pressing a bold kiss to Jeremy’s forehead, Thomas sprints out of the bedroom and down the hallway, past a confused Mr. William, and finally back out the door.

Chapter Text

4:45 comes, and the high school kids (plus Aarjav!) (and minus Jeremy, of course) are standing in Town Square, nervously spinning their Nerf guns around and looking for James. It’s not until 5 that the older boy shows up, cocky smirk on his face that shows exactly what he thinks of the other kids.

Alexander takes charge once James arrives, striding over and sticking his hand out to the taller boy. “Mr. Lewis, I’m glad to see that you have arrived. It’s a pleasure to be doing business with you. Again.” James rolls his eyes, but grudgingly replies, “The pleasure is mine.” Probably the only courtesy he ever has shown anyone.

Aarjav runs up, waving his arms excitedly, and shoves a Nerf gun into James’ hands. “Wonderful to see you again, James. I hope you didn’t forget exactly who it was that got your lovely wife divorced from you,” he says, his tone one of condescension. “I have been forbidden to duel you, due to my ‘young age’ or whatever, but rest assured that I would certainly do so, a hundred times over, if I were permitted.”

As the boy runs back off, all James can think is oh shoot I’m screwed. Good for him.

“First up, Mr. Lewis and Mx. Lancaster!” Angelica calls, clearing everyone except those two out of the way. “Remember, the rules are 10 paces, turn and fire, only one shot each! One!” Jackie glares at James before turning on their heel and beginning their paces. “Two! Three! Four! Five!” James passes Aaron, and the shorter boy is pleased to note that the other is sweating nervously. “Six! Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten! Places, fire!”

Jackie swivels about, smoothly firing off a Nerf bullet. It hits James in the shoulder, making him scowl. Somehow, the older boy’s Nerf gun “accidently” has no bullets in it. Just like Aarjav “accidently” has a whole stash of Nerf bullets in his pocket.

The duels proceed as normal, all until the last one. That’s the one between Alexander and James, and it ends… sub-optimally. Right after “Six!” is called, James, who finally scrounged up a Nerf bullet, turns around and fires right at Alexander’s back. Being a foam bullet, it doesn’t hurt the younger boy much, but it is a serious breach of dueling protocol. How dare he?

Alexander comes to the same conclusion, and there is fire in his eyes as he stalks up to James. “I don’t know why I expected anything else from you, Mr. Reynolds,” he spits out. “But that is still low, even for scum like you.” James just smirks, casually crossing his arms in front of his chest. “Says the one who slept around with my wife, then paid me hush money. I’m sorry, who’s the scum here?”

Just like that, Alexander’s fist flies at the taller boy’s face, making him stumble backwards. James hastily cups his hands up to his nose, but the rest of the kids can still see that Alexander gave him a gusher of a nosebleed.

“Uh… Alexander… maybe we should run now,” Thomas whispers. Alexander slowly nods his head, and the kids sprint off, leaving a raging James back behind them in the town square.

~

When they arrive back at Mr. Wilmington’s building, they’re covered in sweat but laughing. Alexander even goes so far as to smile at Thomas. Shock horror, I know!

Mr. William gives the children a suspicious glance when he opens the door to let them in, but they just run off to various bathrooms, still chattering. Ugh. Maybe he should report this to Mr. Wilmington. But then again, maybe he shouldn’t. The boss is stressed enough already. And he doesn’t need to know everything.

Chapter Text

OKAY SO

after consideration, for like, a million thousand years, i realized that i have a crush on this one girl

so... i suppose i'm demiromantic, seeing as i've known this girl for years and we've become best friends, and only now am i developing a crush

BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT'S IMPORTANT

i told her i had a crush on her

and she said she had a crush on me back

SO SCHOOL'S GONNA BE AWKWARD AS HECK TOMORROW

BUT IT'S OKAY

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Hi!

So, it's been a while, hasn't it?

I must confess, I entirely forgot my password to this account for far too long.

But now I finally got around to changing it! And I'm back (y'all) !

So, y'know, I could probably continue this story? If anyone still wants to read it?

Or I could just... let bygones be bygones and move on.

But if anyone wants to read more, just let me know, and I might be able to try.

Other than that, I'm doing good (despite this whole pandemic thing, ah!) and I hope y'all are too.

I've gotten into Les Miz significantly more. And Newsies... and Lord of the Rings...

Hamilton is still interesting though.