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The storm is worse than most, though Washington barely notices it. He dictates messages to his new aide Humphrey and reads through correspondences to the sound of strong winds and pelting rain. The thunder does not begin until dinner time, and even then Washington thinks nothing of it. He’s an idiot.
Later, Washington will be grateful to Lafayette for being aware when he is not, but when he opens the door to his -now Hamilton’s- room and sees the twenty-three-year-old holding Hamilton as the boy thrashes silently, he only hates himself. He has no room for any other feeling. The boy was afraid of storms, and with the lingering hallucinations from the mushrooms he had been poisoned with it must be so much worse.
“I’ll take him,” he finally gets past his frozen lips. “You ought to go get yourself some food, Marquis.”
Lafayette looks up at him, tears in his eyes. “I do not wish to leave ‘im alone, monsieur.”
“I will stay with him, son,” Washington says, stepping closer to the bed, toeing off his boots. “Are the hallucinations bad?”
“He has always ‘ad visions during the worst storms,” Lafayette says, unwrapping his arms from Alexander’s torso. This turns out to be more than Alexander can handle, and the young man throws himself into Lafayette’s chest with a keening kind of cry.
“No,” he says, voice high and pleading. “No, don’t leave me, maman, I’m so sorry, so sorry, pardon, pardon, pardon, s'il te plaît . . .”
Moving quickly, Washington brings the boy into a hug. “Hush,” he rumbles, “hush, you’re alright, Hamilton, you’re alright, no one’s leaving.” Hamilton kicks out, flailing as he lets out a high cry.
“Non,” he yells, “non! Maman . . .”
“vous vous calmez, I am right ‘ere, Alexandre,” Lafayette cajoles, and moves to embrace Hamilton as the rain turns to hail, beating a yet louder staccato against the room. “I will eat when ‘e ‘as calmed, mon general,” the young man says as Alexander buries his face, wet with silent tears, into the Marquis’ shoulder.
Washington runs a hand through the boy’s hair, doing his best to avoid the still-tender spot where Doctor Mann suspects a bruising of the skull. Alexander is trembling, his right arm (his handless arm) curled against his own chest, but his left hand grasping at Lafayette’s shirt.
“All of this has been rather a lot for him,” Washington says quietly as Alexander lets out small choked noises in a sudden lull. It does not last long, and Alexander jerks as if to run when lightning flashes and thunder cracks nearly simultaneously.
“Eye of the storm, eye, the eye, it’s only-”
Lafayette wraps his arms even tighter around Alexander, and Washington situates himself more comfortably on the bed so that he can support Alexander from behind him. The boy’s muscles are tense, shaking with overuse. “We need to lay him down,” Washington murmurs, because they need to get that window out of the boy’s line of sight, and if they can somehow lull him to sleep . . .
They move somewhat awkwardly to lay Hamilton on his side, curled into Lafayette. He whines when Washington lays at his back, and twists his left arm awkwardly to clench his fingers into Washington’s coat. “Don’t leave,” he chokes out.
“I won’t,” Washington says, looking helplessly into Lafayette’s red eyes. “I’m right here my boy, right here.”
There is relative calm for a moment, only the rumble of distant thunder and the plack plack of hail. Then Hamilton starts sobbing loudly, hiccoughing in an attempt to breathe through muscle spasms. These are not the same as the terrifying spasms that had wracked his frame when his body was getting rid of the mushroom toxins those few days ago, but for a moment Washington is frozen in the panic of what to do if they were back, he did not think he could handle seeing his boy so panicked again.
But whatever it is that is happening, Lafayette seems to know how to manage it, speaking quietly into Alexander’s ear, massaging the boy’s shoulders. “‘e is anxious, and panicked,” Lafayette eventually says to George. “Sometimes ‘is muscles cannot handle the- ah- the chemicals in ‘is body. It is not a seizure, but ‘is body will hurt afterwards.”
Washington nods absently, wondering how much Lafayette knows about this boy that he himself does not. Hamilton has always been tight-lipped about his past in the way that only a penniless orphan ever is. There is much he does not know about his boy. A sudden thought occurs to him then, because there is one thing he knows.
“Has Eliza been made aware of the situation?” he asks quietly. Eliza. Elizabeth Schuyler. His Alexander’s betrothed. Lafayette closes his eyes.
“I have told her only that he is safe in camp once more,” he says, and Washington decides not to point out the fact that an army camp was never safe, particularly with winter on the way.
“It may be that she would be a more effective nurse for him than we could hope to be,” he offers as he holds Alexander tight against the boy’s storm-induced panic.
“I will write her in the morning,” Lafayette agrees.
“No, don’t send me away, no, please, rather kill me, please-” Lafayette cuts off the pitiful pleading by pulling Alexander’s face into his chest, face panicked.
“No, no, stop that, please, mon ami, no, no-one will kill you, no one will touch you!” Washington had heard of the violence the Lafayette men were said to possess, but he had never seen it in this boy until now, when his friend wished for death. “No, we will bring your Eliza here, she will keep you safe. . .” he trails off.
Alexander is trembling again, though the more pronounced spasms have stilled. In an apparent moment of lucidity, he says “I do not wish to burden her with this.”
“You will love each other in sickness and in health,” Washington said quietly. “She will be more a balm to you than anyone else could hope to be right now.” Alexander just buried his face into Lafayette’s neck and sobbed as thunder shook the house.