Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Alex sat at his desk, his work abandoned in front of him. 

There were multiple sets of eyes on him, he could tell–it was a rather unusual sight, after all, Alexander Hamilton at leisure with an unfinished missive right within his view–but he didn’t raise his head to find out who exactly was watching.

He had a few educated guesses. His father, most likely. Harrison. Meade. Burr, if he hadn’t left already, because Burr loved giving him the side-eye as if the man was trying to communicate to the world at large that Alex was up to something, and he was the only one clever enough to have figured it out.

It didn’t matter. Alex watched his finger trail along the blade of a simple, practical letter-opener. The edge wasn’t too sharp; it didn’t need to be for the purpose it was made for.

Hm. It may have not been too sharp, but it sure was pointy. If Alex were to stab with enough gusto, he could probably puncture a live-supporting artery.

Wouldn’t be his first time stabbing a man through the neck.

Alex blinked and shook himself, let the letter-opener clatter to the desk with a loud, metallic clang that was sure to attract even more attention, and scrambled to open his inkwell back up.

Goddamn, Hamilton. Get a hold of yourself.

He glanced up and across the room as he fiddled with his quill, debating if he should bother to sharpen it again or just get a new one. His gaze landed on John almost automatically–Alex shot him a smile when he glanced up and saw him watching, and John smiled back before he returned his attention  to what he was doing.

He was on his feet, leaning over his desk with his hands braced on the tabletop, a multitude of papers spread out before him; explaining something, animated, entirely in his element.

Under normal circumstances, Alex would have loved to see him like that. But the circumstances were not normal, unfortunately, and his smile soured when his eyes flitted from John to the man next to him, who stood way too close, who was way too at ease, who acted way too familiar, whose motherfucking hand found his husband's shoulder every two fucking minutes like clockwork-

An audible snap sounded. Alex looked down to see he held two separate pieces of quill in his hands–at least that decision was made now.

“Are you feeling well, Hammie?” a voice to his left said, and Alex turned to find Meade studying him with concern etched into his features.

“Of course. Perfect. Never been better,” he said and smoothly swept the two broken pieces underneath some loose papers as he pushed back his chair and stood to go peruse their office-supplies for a fresh quill.

He put a firm pat to Meade’s shoulder when he passed, hoping that would do to reassure him he was just fine, thank you very much, when he made the mistake of glancing back at John and the attractive asshole at his side again.

The bitch had leaned in even closer. That was bold, that was downright fucking cheeky, Alex didn’t even usually step into John’s space like that when they were in public, that fucking guy, what the fuck did he think he was doing, resting a hand on John’s back as if he had any right to, and making him laugh, and listening to him be all excited and flushed with enthusiasm, Alex would kill him-

Alright. Alex took a deep breath and forced himself to turn away and fall into motion once again. His heartbeat began to settle back into a healthy rhythm when he stepped outside the office and was no longer in vicinity to whatever the fuck that man thought he was doing with John.

How long had his father said they would collaborate with Greene and his staff? A few weeks?

Alex could make it a few weeks without snapping any necks.

Or stabbing a bitch.

Or pushing someone down a flight of stairs.

Jesus fucking Christ, he thought and pinched the bridge of his nose, an odd pressure behind his forehead. 

What was wrong with him?

John had never been secretive about past relationships.

Alex had asked once, not out of some misplaced sense of jealousy, just because he had been curious–after all, John's hands on his body had been sure and confident those first few times, practised even, whereas Alex had been a blushing, fumbling mess.

John had shrugged and admitted to it without much fanfare; he had been with a few other men before. That was alright. It was past, and Alex wasn't insecure enough to compare himself to faceless shadow-figures.

He'd never mentioned names, and he hadn't asked him to; but Alex would have bet his right hand that Colonel Elijah fucking Brown's stupid, handsome face fit on one of those vague silhouettes.

When he had walked in with the rest of Greene’s staff, shoulder-length black hair pulled back into a tight queue, clean-shaven, intelligent green eyes attentive over sharp cheekbones, Alex hadn't given the man much thought.

And then, he had spotted his husband, given him a quick once-over, mouth twitching, and had made a beeline for him. 

Fine. Alex didn't mind it when other people expressed interest in John. He had lucked out with him, and he was fully aware of how attractive he was, how inviting his smile, how tantalising his eyes; and that John wasn't usually rude enough to straight out halt any flirtatious conversation-attempts in its tracks.

But.

Recognition had sparked from those eyes, and John had shaken Brown's hand, smiled his usual polite smile–but with a little extra, a private curl to the corner of his mouth, a hint of familiarity–and called him by his given name.

They knew each other.

It was fine. Great even, that would make working together so much easier; or it should in the very least, if Alex were able to get any work done at all with that fucking hussy drawing tighter and tighter circles around his husband, and fuck, Alex knew John wasn't interested! That he probably didn't even notice it, that he took that guy's advances as friendly and nothing more, but it drove him insane, because John was his, Alex was the one who wore his ring on his finger and shared his bed and-

“Alexander,” his mother said as she lowered her stitching into her lap. Alex snapped his head up and was presented with a look, one he knew very well–soft eyes with a pinch of exasperation, but in a fond way. “You’ve had that book open for the past ten minutes and haven’t turned a single page yet. Would you like to tell me what’s bothering you?”

Alex opened his mouth, hesitated, clapped the book he had completely forgotten about shut. “Nothing’s bothering me,” he said, and she arched her brows.

“The overwhelming amount of annoyed sighs that left your mouth since you sat down would like to differ. What’s wrong, love?”

Alex heaved a sigh and dropped the book onto the small table in between the two armchairs they inhabited with a solid plunk. His mother smiled; it made her laugh-lines visible, and it occurred to Alex entirely out of nowhere that his father didn’t have laugh-lines. He had lines on his forehead, between his brows. Frown-lines. 

John would probably have laugh-lines one day. Alex… probably wouldn’t.

“There it was again. So?”

“I don’t know, Ma,” he said, shifting in his seat, and darted his eyes away. She had only arrived with them the day before and had succeeded in not being hostile to John yet, but- well, even though she’d promised to try, Alex didn’t like to remind her of their relationship more than what was necessary. “It’s about John, and it’s really stupid, you don’t have to listen to me complain about problems that only exist in my head.”

She stayed silent for a beat, and Alex risked a glance back at her–she picked at the frayed edge of the cloth she was embroidering, a thoughtful frown on her face. Gone were the laugh-lines.

“Well, my sweet,” she said and looked back up, a smile vanishing the frown like the sun would some early morning mist hanging over a meadow. “The thing about problems that only exist in your head is that they rarely ever stay just in your head. Better get them out here now before they find their own way.”

“Are you… certain you want to listen to me rant about my relationship with another man?”

“I said I would try, Alex, and I’m not one to go back on my word,” she responded, instantly and with a bit of an edge, but it wasn’t anger or even just plain annoyance; it was more of a discomfort that coloured her voice, as if she only said what she thought he would want to hear.

“If you’re sure,” he said, careful, and she gave a firm nod in response and took up her stitching again–to give her hands something to do. Alex knew the impulse. “Um. Well, as I said, it’s… really kind of stupid. We officially began working together with General Greene and his staff this morning, and…” Alex trailed off, gaze fixed on a particularly prominent spot of ink on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, and rubbed at it. He wished he had something to occupy his hands as well.

“And?” his mother prompted softly. The whole situation was so familiar and comfortable, Ma doing her stitching and listening to Alex go on about one thing or the other with an indulgent little smile, a fire crackling in the background, and Alex’s heart gave a squeeze so tangible he felt as though something had slammed into his chest at high velocity.

They rarely ever got to spend time like this anymore.

Alex was- he was grown now. He didn’t know what the future would hold, but if they won this war and all of them made it through alive–he seriously doubted that he could just go back home to Virginia with his parents. He had a law-degree to finish. A life to build with his husband.

There wouldn’t be many more nights like this.

Alex swallowed the sudden lump in his throat and shoved the sombre thoughts into a tiny compartment at the back of his mind, one he only ever examined when he was already crying anyway to make things even worse for himself.

“And… it seems one of Greene’s men knows John. Intimately. I haven’t, well, I haven’t gotten the chance to talk to him about it yet, not that there’s anything to talk about, and, I mean, I wouldn’t be bothered at all if it was just that, but that man," he spat, and the sudden venom in his voice startled his mother enough it ripped her attention away from her project. “thinks he can just cosy up to him like whatever was going on between them wasn’t years in the past, as if he isn’t mine, and I know it’s stupid and possessive, but I just can’t help it-”

“It’s not stupid,” Ma said, and Alex blinked, took a deep breath, and gathered himself back together. He had lost himself in his rant, which was not optimal, considering that this wasn’t even supposed to be an issue at all.

“What?” he said as if he hadn’t heard her perfectly fine the first time.

“It’s not stupid,” she repeated and regarded him for only another moment before she focused back on the task at hand. “It’s normal to feel that way sometimes.”

Alex’s teeth caught his bottom lip and worried it gently. He remained silent for a long few moments and just watched his mother guide the needle through the fabric again and again; the repetitiveness was soothing, in a way.

“How do you deal with it?” he said, and that stopped her mid-motion.

“Well,” she said, her lips curled into the beginning of a humorous smile. “I really don’t have to deal with much of anything in that regard. Your father is not as considerate as John, love. When someone gets too flirty with him, he shuts it down and walks away. It’s quite fun to watch, actually.”

He chuckled along with his mother’s quiet laugh, even though that was hard for him to imagine at all–people flirting with his father. Pa didn’t flirt. He was polite, but not overly so, and never did anything to invite any flirtatious remarks.

“People flirt with Pa?” he said, grinning.

“Oh, you’d be surprised. He was a good catch back when we got married, when he was just a handsome, well-off tobacco-planter and a rising star in the military. Now he’s one of the most influential men in the colonies,” she responded, a calm, almost serene smile on her face as she cut her thread and took up a new one.

“Huh,” he said. That did make sense, even if Alex would prefer not to think about it too much. As far as he was concerned, his parents were not… sought after in that regard. The thought alone that someone might look at his father with less than chaste intentions made him break out in all kinds of repulsed shivers.

But as interesting as this particular topic was, it wasn’t quite the direction Alex had wanted to steer the conversation. 

“That’s something I will avoid ever thinking about again,” he said, and Ma chuckled. “And… it’s not what I meant. How do you… I mean, I used to be around all the time. How did you deal with that?”

She snapped her head up then, the expression on her face almost offended, and the one in her eyes- there was no fire in them, she wasn't angry–she was hurt.  

His stomach plummeted as his eyes widened; he hadn't meant any offence, he had just figured that Alex was a very hard to ignore token from his father’s past, he hadn’t intended to hurt her, that was the last thing he wanted to do- 

“Alexander Hamilton, when I look at you I do not see another woman’s child passed off to me to raise out of necessity. You are my son just as much as you were hers, and the mere suggestion that you might serve as a reminder of your father’s past-”

The door squeaked open, and she fell silent. Alex swallowed and turned in his seat to see his father close the door behind himself, looking from Ma to him and back to her with raised brows.

“It has been a little over a day and there’s already a disagreement? I’d hoped we could make it a bit farther this time,” he said and stepped further into the room, paused to tousle a hand through Alex's hair, and went on to kiss Ma. 

"No disagreement, just a misunderstanding," Alex said and shot his mother a careful smile. "I didn't mean it that way, Ma."

She sighed and breathed deeply, took a moment to settle back down,  and returned the smile. "I know, love. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap."

"Mh. That's better. Dare I ask what this was about?" his father said, but Ma just shook her head and waved him off, so Alex followed her lead and shrugged his shoulders, noncommittal, when he turned to him instead.

"Unimportant," she said, and Alex nodded along. "What should interest you right now is that your son is currently a bit green-eyed over one of Greene's young men."

Alex groaned and rubbed a hand down his face; to show his exasperation, not to hide a faint blush, of course. “I’m not jealous, I am, frankly, incredulous that someone would be so bold, I am entirely unamused, I-"

"You're jealous," Pa interrupted with poorly concealed mirth and turned to hang his coat over the back of a chair–but not in time to hide his grin from Alex.

Well, at least his parents were having a grand old time while some harlot attempted to get into his husband's pants.

"I'm not-" Alex tried once more, but his father cut him off yet again, his back still to him, but the amusement carried clear enough in his voice.

"Alexander, my sweet boy, I was afraid for the man's safety today with how you were glaring at him. Don't think I didn't see you contemplate that letter-opener."

"Alexander!" Ma chimed in now, scolding but with a hint of humour, and Alex sank further into his seat. "No man is worth getting blood on your hands over. You have to wait, and only after they slight you, you bring out the letter-openers."

His father turned back to them and gave her a look. "While I would say that's sound advice, I do hope I haven't done anything to slight you yet, my dear."

"No, love," she said. "But there is a reason you are my second husband."

With that, she went back to her stitching. Alex and his father exchanged a set of bewildered glances, and Alex opened his mouth to- he didn't know, actually, he just felt he should say something to that, but Pa shook his head, so he kept his silence.

“Anyway,” he began slowly, the playful air bleeding from his demeanor, and fixed Alex with a questioning look. “What is it you’re worried about? Not even John is stupid enough to step out on you. You’re way too good for him already, he can’t do any better.”

Alex huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not worried about him stepping out. I just don’t like watching some guy throw himself at my husband.”

“I’m sorry, your what now?” his mother said, her hands frozen around their tight grip on the embroidering-hoop.

Oh. Yes, that was right, he hadn’t exactly told her about that development yet.

Alex snuffed out the deeply ingrained impulse to turn to his father for help in the face of his mother’s not-quite-anger; he was grown, he was an adult, a soldier, he could explain himself.

Or perhaps not. He had been silent for too long already, the air grew thicker around them with every new moment, and his head was achingly empty.

“Um,” he settled on, finally, after he had let a tense eternity pass, his heart in his throat. “John and I- a few weeks after your last visit, we decided to make it… somewhat official, I suppose. We had a little ceremony.”

Alex swallowed, looked from his mother’s expression of faint distaste to his father, who wasn’t even looking at him–he watched Ma with slightly narrowed eyes, so Alex wouldn’t get any help from there.

Not quite knowing what else to do, he ripped his left hand up from where it had been folded with his right in his lap and presented it with a nervous half-smile.

The ring gleamed softly in the light of the fire. Ma squinted at it, and her features rearranged themselves into something more neutral.

“It’s from him,” he explained needlessly.

“Well,” she said and cleared her throat, the white-knuckled grip she had on her hoop easing up; Pa’s stance relaxed ever so slightly. They were back in safer waters. “That’s a nice ring.”

“Thank you,” he replied, his voice soft and small; her shoulders lost their tension, and she raised her head to shoot him a fond, tender smile. Ma had caught on to his true meaning. “It was his mother’s.”

The stifling heat of the room reverted back to a placid warmth after that, and Alex let the rest of his apprehension slip away.

Pa let out a long breath when the atmosphere had finished its shift back to familiar and comfortable–the godforsaken grin had found its way back to his lips as well, if less pronounced than before, but Alex still thought it appropriate to fix him with a warning glare.

“You said it yourself, John is your husband. The idiot boy loves you too much to even notice that someone else is flirting with him,” he said, and Alex heaved a sigh, part relieved and part annoyed, if only with himself.

“I know, Pa. He’s just being friendly.”

“Mh,” he hummed in agreement and came to stand next to where Alex sat, smoothed a few wayward strands of hair back from his face, and Alex couldn’t help but lean into the gentle touch. “Besides, he knows I would slaughter him like cattle if he ever hurt you like that.”

Ah. There it was.

“Pa,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “You wouldn’t harm a hair on his head at this point, you love him too much.”

“I do not-” he began, outraged, but Ma cut him off with cool, calm authority.

“No, dear, Alex is right, you’ve grown too attached.” She raised her gaze from her lap and gave them a sweet smile. “I’ll slaughter him.”

Alex opened his mouth. No sound came out, so he closed it again and instead just frowned at her.

His father let out a fond chuckle and abandoned his side in favour of crossing over to Ma and bending down to press a soft kiss to her lips. “God, I love you so much.”

Alex blinked. “Ma. Pa. If you murder my husband, I will have a very hard time forgiving you.”

“Perhaps no murder, then. We could just make him disappear, right, George?” she said, and his father nodded in all seriousness.

“Nothing easier than making a man disappear,” he agreed.

Alex watched them for another moment, dumbfounded and without an inkling on how to handle his parents plotting John’s sudden demise or mysterious disappearance should he ever hurt him in such a manner, before- Christ, before a slow smile spread over his features.

“I love you,” he said simply, hiding his grin behind the hand that bore his ring.

“And we love you, my darling,” Ma said as Pa perched himself on the plush arm of the chair and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, content.

She went back to her embroidering, and Pa watched, silent, rubbing a gentle hand along her shoulder from time to time, and Alex had a clicking sensation, as though the scattered pieces fell into exactly the right place all at once.

This was what was wrong with him.

He was like this because he was raised by those two murderous lunatics.

He shook his head at the realisation, but his smile didn’t fade–his thoughts went on to John and their future, and he wondered if the two of them would be so over the top, insanely ridiculous as well in twenty years' time. 

He hoped they would be at least a little bit like his parents–they might be a bit absurd, even downright bizarre at times, and they did have their petty squabbles and disagreements, but at the end of the day...

They were happy. Happy and still very much in love, and Alex really didn’t wish for more than to be allowed to love John and be happy with him for years to come.

Chapter Text

Alex spent most of the evening with his parents. He took great care not to stay too late, no matter what they said or how often his father reminded him that John was out drinking with some of the others–some of the others, he'd specifically said, not mentioning any names like he normally would, so that just told him he had seen Brown leave with them–because he wanted Pa to get some rest for a change.

His father always slept better when Ma visited, but they wouldn’t go to bed as long as he still hung around.

So, when Alex left for their own room, it wasn’t too late yet; after he had gotten a fire going to shoo the all-encompassing darkness into the far corners of the room, he sat on the bed, not quite knowing what to do with himself.

Alone-time wasn’t something he just… had. No one in the army really got any alone-time, except for the Generals, perhaps–but the rest of them shared rooms and even beds in the winter or when there simply weren’t enough, and when they weren’t in their rooms with their comrades, they were in the office with their comrades, or out drinking, like tonight.

Alex’s alone-time usually included John.

He swallowed and shook his head at himself when a faint tug of longing stirred his gut; he couldn’t seriously be missing John, he had seen him hours on end that day, and he didn’t own him.

John’s life didn’t revolve around Alex, he could spend time away from him, he was just unwinding with their friends and-

Elijah fucking Brown.

The tug returned, but it was more like a sharp twist this time around.

Alex bit his lip and attempted to steer his thoughts into a more productive direction as he shed his uniform, gave himself a quick wipe-down in front of the washbasin, and slipped into his nightclothes, but the nagging drag of doubt wouldn’t leave him, no matter how hard he tried to shove it back into whatever hole it had crawled out of.

It danced along the edges of his mind, like an odd shadow one could only see from the corner of one’s eye, but he could neither get a good enough grip on it to haul it into the light and confront it, nor push it out into the darkness.

It was fine. Fine fine fine fine-

Alex heaved an annoyed sigh and dropped down to the mattress. He sprawled out on top of the covers and stared up at the ceiling for a few moments before he curled into himself and watched his fingers pick at the bedding instead.

What was he worried about? John loved him. He didn’t love the asshole with the pretty eyes and perfect cheekbones.

...but he had, probably, at one point, an unhelpful voice from somewhere deep within supplied.

John was- he was sentimental. A nice, well-raised southern gentleman, who hadn’t touched Alex until he had practically begged him for it when they had just started out, who kissed him so sweetly and held him close every time they made love, who’d asked both his parents for their blessing before he’d even brought up the idea of marriage to him, who'd put his late mother’s ring on his finger when he'd promised him forever.

He didn’t do casual. Not his John.

He had loved that man at some point. Before he loved Alex, before he’d even met him-

And what if he had been the one he’d wanted, what if he only moved on to Alex because he couldn’t have him, what if this reminded him how much he'd loved that fucking asshole and brought long buried feelings back to the surface-

The door creaked open, and Alex shot upright.

“John!” he said, and the net of self-doubt and–yes, he could admit it–petty jealousy he had gotten himself tangled up in was split down the middle and dropped to the floor.

John locked the door and smiled at him as he shrugged off his coat and crossed over to the bed to give him a gentle kiss hello, and the squeezing vice Alex had put around his own heart eased up.

His lips tasted faintly of ale, but nothing stronger, so that was good, at least. Alex… couldn’t handle drunk men very well.

“Hey, darling,” he greeted softly, and the small smile on Alex’s lips grew strained. John had already turned away to get ready for bed himself, so he didn’t notice.

Was he the first person he’d called that? Or had he used that endearment on that tramp, too?

“I didn’t expect you to be here when I got back,” John said, muffled by the shirt he was in the process of putting on, and Alex ached with the intensity of the affection that flared to life in his chest as John carded his fingers through his hair and tied it back up.

He slept like that sometimes, when his hair annoyed him too much–usually only in warmer, wetter climates, but tonight seemed to be an exception.

“I left as early as they would let me. You know my father doesn’t sleep enough, but it’s always better when Ma is around,” he replied. John sat next to him and pulled him into his arms, kissed his cheek, and Alex melted.

“Mh. Not sleeping runs in the family,” he said, and Alex scooted himself closer and swung his legs up over John’s lap.

John just rested his hand on his thigh, thumb rubbing gently back and forth, and pressed another kiss to his temple. “How was your day?”

“I missed you,” he said and nuzzled into the crook of John’s neck; they were pressed so close, John’s soft chuckle shook him and reverberated in his own chest.

“You missed me? We saw each other all day, darling.”

Alex pulled back a little, just enough so John would see his halfhearted glare–it didn’t last him very long, though, because he took that opportunity to kiss him again. This time, it was more than a sweet little peck, and Alex breathed a pleased sigh against John’s lips and opened his mouth when he swiped his tongue along his bottom lip.

“Wasn’t the same,” he mumbled and brought his hand up to caress the sharp line of his jaw. “I couldn’t kiss you.”

God, if the world wasn’t so fucked up, if they didn’t need to be afraid and watch their every move, if what they had was just as accepted as the love between a man and a woman–Alex could have put a stop to this whole situation that afternoon just by marching his ass over to John and the bastard, grabbing his husband by his lapels, and kissing him stupid.

That would have communicated to the guy to back the fuck off.

“Aw, darling,” he said and dragged the pad of his thumb along Alex’s lower lip; something in his gut had a very visceral reaction to that, and when John leaned in to kiss him once more, he was almost tempted to just forget about the whole issue for the night. He enjoyed the idea his gut was trying to sell him, to drag John down to the bed with him and get him back out of that shirt. “You can kiss me now.”

Alex grinned and bumped their noses together. “I do plan on that later.”

“Later?” he inquired with raised brows, and all of a sudden Alex’s usually so reliable tongue lay in knots against the roof of his mouth.

This was the moment to put it all out there.

But it was stupid, wasn’t it? It was irrational, because Alex knew full well that John was head over heels for him, just as he was for John, and that a familiar pretty face, pushy as it might be, couldn’t change that.

If he were to keep silent, though- maybe it would only get worse. John would make more of an effort to put a stop to the flirting if he knew Alex was bothered by it, as insecure as it would make him look.

He wasn’t insecure. He was careful, because he knew John could do so much better than him if he so fancied.

He wasn’t insecure just as he wasn’t jealous–he was realistic.

Alex sighed. “Tell me about Elijah Brown,” he said and gave himself a mental pat on the back for having resisted the urge to put a fucking in the middle of the name.

“Eli?” John said, and Alex had an odd sensation in his stomach, as though he had missed the last step on his way down the stairs.

“Eli,” he echoed, unenthused. “You have a nickname for him.”

“I mean- yes? Is that a bad thing? I don’t really ever call you Alexander, either,” he said, and oh boy, had that been the wrong thing to say.

Alex moved back on the bed until they weren’t touching anymore and breathed through what felt like hot coals in his stomach.

He wasn’t jealous. He wasn't insecure.

“So, we’re the same to you?”

John paused and scrutinised him closely, concern gleaming in his eyes. Alex leaned back against the wall, pulled his knees up to his chest, and watched him in turn.

“Of course not, Alex. What kind of question is that?”

Alex bit his lip, averted his eyes. “You… you’ve been with him. Right?”

John heaved a tired sigh and made a tiny, unfinished gesture with his hand Alex could just make out from the corner of his eye, as if he wanted to reach out but held himself back.

“Does that matter?” he asked, voice soft.

He hesitated–it didn’t. Not really, he was just being stupid, but- but after he had spent the whole day watching some hussy put his hands all over his husband, was it really so condemnable of him to want to hear John say that he was the only one who mattered?

“To me, it does,” he said, choked.

Another quiet sigh. “Alright. Eli and I met… about four years ago, I think? We had a thing, it lasted a couple months, and it didn’t work out. I haven’t seen him since, and it’s been a while, so it’s just nice to see him again.”

Alex scoffed, even though that reaction felt rather childish to him only a moment later. "I could see how nice it was for him to see you again."

There was a significant pause, long enough it prompted Alex into looking back at John; he frowned at him, caught between confusion and disapproval, and Alex shrunk further against the wall.

"What's going on in that head, Alex? What do you think Eli is doing?"

"What do I think he's doing?" he repeated, incredulous. "The man has been throwing himself at you the whole day, standing too close and touching too often, and looking at you like you were nothing more than a piece of meat for supper, and you are asking what I think that-" he cut himself off before he could voice any of the internal monologue he had entertained himself with since that morning. "very nice man is doing?"

John blinked, and Alex counted with his breathing until his heart had slowed down again.

"A piece of meat," he stated, rolling the words around on his tongue. "Eli has always been… physically affectionate. I don't think he means anything by it."

"This will sound so stupid to you," Alex said and cleared his throat, tried desperately to stop himself from tearing up out of pure frustration.

"I love it when you preface your emotionally vulnerable moments like that," John said with a small smile, and Alex was so glad to see him smile at him, because that meant they weren't fighting. He didn't want to fight.

He just wanted to be close to him, to be reassured that John wanted him and him alone.

"Um. You know I don't mind when you get close to other men. That's just how it is, we all live in close quarters, we touch each other a lot, and I think if we were to forbid Kidder from hugging people, he would simply perish," he said and answered John's quiet chuckle with a careful smile. "Now, for the stupid part. I don't like it when he touches you. Because I know he- touched you. I don't like him flirting with you, because I know that was a reality for you once. And I- I think he thinks he could get back with you, and the idea alone that he could be trying to get into your bed right in front of me had me plotting murder today."

"Hm," John said and left it at that for quite a while; long enough for Alex's palms to grow clammy, in fact.

"Is that all you have to say to that?" he asked, trying his darndest to keep his voice level and the throbbing hurt concealed.

John rubbed at his eyes and made an odd sound, like a sigh that wanted to be a laugh. "Alexander. Darling. My dearest. While I find it very sweet that you would kill a man for me, I would like to gently remind you that there are exactly zero reasons for you to be jealous of someone I last saw four years ago."

Alex's mouth hung open for a moment as a flush crept high into his cheeks. "I'm not jealous. And I think I just gave you more than enough reasons why I don't enjoy seeing him around you."

"I say this with love: You're being ridiculous."

"I don't feel very loved right now," Alex mumbled, aiming to make himself sound aloof, but only succeeded to come across as dejected.

"Hey," John said, gentler now, and crawled up the bed to sit beside him. "I don't mean to sound dismissive. Thank you for telling me how you feel. But Alex, you have to understand how this looks from my perspective. We were both nineteen the last time we saw each other, and I do have fond memories of him, but you are my husband, darling. This is just me reconnecting with an old friend, nothing more, nothing less, and I absolutely do not want you to feel threatened by it."

Alex took a shaky breath and drew his knees tighter against his chest, fisted his hands into the bunched up fabric on his thighs, did not meet John's eye.

"Did you love him?" he said. Everything else John had just told him was all nice and good, but that was the point of contention. 

John covered his left hand with his own, gently worked it free of its claw-like hold on his pants, and brushed his thumb over the golden line of the ring on his finger.

"I do believe I've told you before that you were the first person I've ever fallen in love with," he said and carefully raised Alex's hand, guided it up until he could press a kiss to where his thumb had just been, and Alex wanted so bad to put out the forest-fire of insecurity that tore through him and let himself be with John.

But his stupid emotions just didn't work like that, unfortunately.

"Loving someone and being in love with someone are two different things," he whispered.

It made John sigh again, and Alex hated that he gave him reason to look that exasperated, that tired.

He should just let it go, it wasn’t a big deal, he was being stupid and insecure and annoying, he nagged him about things John obviously didn’t consider important, and forced him to talk about something he didn’t want to talk about.

Alex drew his free arm close to his chest and wished he had worn a long-sleeve despite the comfortable warmth provided by the fireplace.

Like this, John was not only privy to all the ugly emotions swirling inside him, but also all his other imperfections.

Alex was ugly inside and out. He didn’t deserve John, anyway.

“I suppose,” John said after he had taken a few moments to think it over. “I suppose I did love him, then. On some level. But not like I love you, Alex; nothing I ever had with Eli comes even close to what we have, alright, darling?”

Alex nodded, mute, not trusting his voice enough to answer aloud.

He glanced over at the rustling of sheets. John shuffled closer until they were touching thighs to shoulders, then shifted his gentle hold on his fingers to his other hand so that he could slip an arm around him and gather him close.

“I’m sorry for being like this,” Alex said, quiet, for fear John would hear the tears burning behind his eyes if he spoke any louder.

“It’s alright, darling,” he said and planted another kiss on the back of his hand. He was too good for him, Alex should stop being so selfish and let him go, let him be with someone worthy of him-

“We both know that if I’d seen someone flirt with you, there would have been at least one broken nose, so you reacting with just murder-fantasies probably saved us quite some trouble,” John said with a smile too sweet for the vaguely threatening thing he had just shared, and Alex felt himself reminded of his mother.

Still, it startled a laugh out of him–it was far from his usual laugh, a little wet, a little hoarse, a little hurt. God, he was so weak, so useless-

“You’re upset,” John observed, his smile gaining a concerned note. “Hm. What if I promise you that I will try to keep a respectful distance between Eli and myself? I won’t be able to stay entirely away from him in the office, obviously, but- you are more important to me than he is, Alex. I don’t want to hurt you, ever, and when he comes too close from now on, I’ll just- take a step back, alright?”

You are more important to me.

That was what he'd wanted to hear, and yet it didn't serve to calm his disarrayed thoughts and feelings.

“Thank you,” he said, blinking the tears from his eyes. Then, after another quick heartbeat, “Are you… sure it’s me you want, though? I bet he would be a lot less trouble.”

“Alex,” he said, flat and- disappointed? Alex tensed up, drew his hand from his grip, and curled it against his chest as well.

“Sorry. I’m sorry, I’m so stupid-”

“Don’t talk about yourself like that. You’re the smartest man I know, clever and well-read, quick-witted, kind, caring, and absolutely stunning on top of that. You’re perfect, Alex, and you know I don’t tolerate you putting yourself down like that,” he said, his voice hard with determination, and yet warm with genuine love and affection, and Alex teared up again.

“I don’t deserve you, you’re too good-”

“Wrong. You are intelligent, strong, beautiful, hard-working, resourceful–the list goes on. You could have had anyone, Alex, and you chose me, and I’ll be forever grateful for that. No more of that self-deprecating bullshit, alright?”

John’s words settled over the freshly opened wounds in his soul like a soothing balm.

Alex was desperate to believe him, to take those pretty words and wrap himself up in them until nothing could hurt him, but- no matter how hard he tried, there was always this little voice. Always a tiny weak-spot. A small crack that would shatter the whole construction if it was struck just right.

Words wouldn’t be enough tonight.

He sniffled and stretched his legs out, uncurled himself, and crawled up into John’s lap; he settled gingerly and glanced at him through his eyelashes to make sure he wasn’t bothering him with his neediness.

John just shot him a tender smile and brought his hands up to his hips, slipped his thumbs underneath Alex’s shirt, and rubbed soft circles into his skin.

He met him in the middle when Alex leaned in for a kiss, slow and deep and without urgency.

“Make love to me?” he said, the request little more than a puff of air against John’s lips, as small and frail as Alex felt.

He just needed to be close to him, to have him, to reassure himself that John was with him, not with Eli, that he wanted to be with him, that he loved him.

“Is that what you need, Alexander?” he whispered into his skin, the tip of his nose trailing along his cheek as he scattered kisses all over his face, and Alex shivered. John rarely ever called him by his full given name, as he had pointed out himself earlier, and to hear it spoken like that, between just the two of them and the lurking darkness, pressed into his skin almost like a prayer–it did things to him.

“Yes,” he breathed. One of the hands pushed fully under his shirt, warm fingers ghosting along his ribs, and Alex felt raw. Cracked open, laid bare; and he didn’t mind even a little.

It was John. John’s hands, John’s warmth, John’s breath, John’s lips, and he trusted him with his life, with his heart and soul.

He was his, Alex’s, no one else would ever feel his lips on their neck or his hands on their body, because he was his.

“Alright,” he said, and with a sweet kiss to his lips, John gripped him around the waist and tipped him backwards, down onto the sheets.

Chapter Text

Alex maybe couldn’t stake his claim on John by yanking him in by his cravat and kissing the breath from his lungs in the middle of the office, but at the end of the day, Alex was a man of innovation. Of adaptation.

John had been a bit annoyed when he'd discovered the lovebite just underneath the line of his jaw; dark purple, very obvious, too high up to hide–and he had good reason.

Their colleagues were all a bunch of nosy little bastards, and as soon as the first man saw it, the news that John Laurens had gotten laid last night spread through the office like wildfire. 

He would never hear the end of it.

Alex had the luxury to just stand back and grin like an idiot; he was not incriminated, after all.

Well. Except Tilghman knew about John and him, and the one and only time their gazes met that day, he blushed up to his forehead and almost ran straight into a wall in his attempt to break eye-contact. 

Oops. Alex had not considered that.

Still, he couldn’t deny that leaving a mark in such a visible place was… thrilling. Their comrades could see it and know John had been with someone–which, as expected, was made very obvious by a litany of innuendos they snarked his way over the course of the day, ranging from clever to downright ridiculous–and Alex couldn’t help but smile every time his eyes caught on the lovebite.

Another added bonus was that John spent pretty much the entire day with a flush high on his cheeks, colouring the tips of his ears; one that deepened and made his freckles stand out with every new alteration of what kind of bed-bug bit you, Laurens their insanely clever colleagues came up with. Alex did enjoy the view very much.

There was something else that had slipped his mind, though–or rather, someone else.

He thought he had actually been privy to his father's soul leaving his body when they had first come in and Pa's eyes had immediately been drawn to the mark like a moth to a flame. Alex had flushed a little, then; while he was fully aware his father knew they were intimate with each other, and quite frequently at that, he never went out of his way to remind him of it.

John froze, eyes wide and terrified when they met his father's slightly narrowed ones, and bolted to the other side of the room like a spooked deer the first chance he got, but Alex remained. He was the right hand. His place was with his General.

"Was that really necessary?" Pa muttered under his breath once Alex was close enough to hear it, low and a little gruff, eyes on some correspondence he shuffled through.

Alex cleared his throat and twitched his shoulders, nervous and with embarrassment pricking his nape.

"Absolutely," he said nonetheless.

His father sighed and glanced at him from the corner of his eye. "Be glad your mother isn't here to see it. If she was, you would soon find yourself in need of a second husband as well."

Alex had to pinch his thigh hard to stop himself from bursting into startled laughter, and Pa's eyes crinkled at the corners in a fond half-smile as he slid over a stack of parchments for Alex to take care of.

To his chagrin, Colonel Eli fucking Brown didn’t seem all too perturbed, though.

And he saw the mark. Alex knew he did, his eyes lingered on it when he stood still way too close, even though John, bless him, really did make a visible effort to put some distance between them every time he moved too far into his space.

Alex shrugged it off and went about his day as he usually would–well, he made an honest attempt to do so, and that was good enough, he thought. He just couldn’t help glancing their way at least every ten minutes or so, but his mood didn’t sour quite as intensely as it had the day before.

After the night they’d had- Alex blinked, the heat creeping out from underneath his collar and up his neck, and ducked his head.

After that conversation and everything that followed, John’s body a comforting weight on top of him, his eyes overflowing with adoration, his perfect lips pressing sweet thing after sweet thing into his skin- he couldn’t really find it in him to feel threatened by Brown’s audacious attempts.

John wanted him. Only him.

He repeated that to himself like a mantra, similar to the counting he used to keep himself from panicking, and he got through the day without incident.

After they’d all vacated the office, Alex dropped by their room to take a short breather before he went to join his parents for the evening.

Even though he thought he had handled everything quite well that day, it had taken a lot of effort to not let Brown’s obvious flirting with his husband get to him over prolonged periods of time.

But it was fine.

The day was over, and it had been so much easier than yesterday had been. He could make it through the next few weeks.

Alex took a quick drink of water and stretched his arms up over his head. His spine popped and cracked, which was not all that surprising, but still made him wince, and then, he turned to leave.

John was… somewhere. Out with some friends, probably, maybe with Lafayette who had dropped by earlier and devolved into a fit of helpless gasping, trying to suppress his laughter, when he saw the lovebite that adorned his neck.

He felt vaguely bad about abandoning him for two evenings in a row like that, and Alex really wished he could take him to spend a few hours with both his parents, but he knew that wouldn’t end well, at least not yet.

It was a different thing when it was just them and his father. Pa loved John; no matter how much he liked to deny it, how firmly he plastered on the façade of annoyed exasperation, it was obvious in how well they got along now. He could see it in all the little gestures, how Pa sometimes tucked John's hair back behind his ear, and how he smiled at him all proud when he did something well.

Frankly, it was adorable.

But his mother wasn’t ready yet. And Alex knew damn well how John would react to her disapproval–he would bend over backwards to make her like him, courtesy of the shitbag Henry Laurens who had spent years of John’s life shoving him into more and more demanding, increasingly impossible poses that had him collapse in the long run, just to please the asshole.

So, no. Not yet. Alex would get her to soften up a little, and they would spend some time all together before she had to leave again.

He shook his head free of those contemplations and made his way over to the door, but before he reached it, it swung inwards, and John stepped into the room.

Alex opened his mouth to ask what was going on, what he was doing there, but he hesitated.

John pointedly avoided meeting his eye. His gaze was fixed to the ground, and his shoulders were hunched–he looked almost ashamed, as if he thought he’d made a mistake that would inspire his ire.

Alex stood and waited, the quiet click of the door closing almost too loud in the absolute silence of the room.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, careful. “I thought you would stay out tonight, I was just about to leave-”

“Eli kissed me,” he said and rubbed a hand down his face with a weary sigh, turned away from him, and Alex just stood there, dumbfounded. “God, I- you were right, I’m so sorry-”

Alex blinked, cleared his throat, wondered why he didn’t feel anything.

Eli kissed me.

And yet, the asshole was still Eli.

“What did you do?” he interrupted, toneless.

John whipped his head around to face him, and their gazes clashed for the first time since he’d come in.

“What do you mean, what did I do? What-”

“Did you kiss him back?” he asked, a pit in his stomach. He knew John wouldn’t have. He didn’t know why he'd even asked that question.

John reared back, his hands formed fists at his sides, and his shoulders squared. It was by all means an aggressive stance, but Alex knew that wasn't what he meant by it.

John would never hurt him.

“Of course not! I pushed him off and told him I was with someone, and then I left. Do you- you didn’t really think I would have kissed him, did you?” His voice held a slight tremor; he sounded almost desperate.

Alex was aware he had probably hurt him by questioning his faithfulness. Especially after he had come straight to him to tell him what happened, but-

Something was wrong. He just didn’t feel right. 

“No,” he said, and something in John’s features relaxed ever so slightly. “I know you wouldn’t have, and, and it’s not your fault. I’m… not mad.” He wasn’t. All he felt was an odd numbness, and it worried him a little.

“You’re not,” John stated, swallowed, and let out a long breath in something like relief. “You’re not. God, I’m glad, I- I feel horrible, I really didn’t think he would-”

“I know you didn’t,” he said and cleared his throat, blinked a few times. The unusual tightness squeezing in from his nape, a pressure as if a heavy hand was weighing him down, did not subside. “Anyway, I, um, I’m late. I have to go.”

With that, Alex fled the room and slammed the door shut behind himself in his hurry to get away, cutting off John’s tentative call of his name.

He needed to- he wasn't sure. But the quiet that enveloped his mind, the complete absence of any emotion at all, was familiar. He knew it wouldn't last, and Alex would like to be with his mother when everything came crashing down.

His eyes were on the floor, and they didn't burn, they weren't wet–he wouldn't cry, that would be stupid, this wasn't an issue, but his sight was… a little fuzzy. It didn’t help that the corridor he hurried down was mostly dark, except for the little light that spilled in from lamps around the staircase at the end of the hall.

That, coupled with the fact Alex wasn’t looking where he was going anyway, meant he was not even a little surprised when his shoulder bumped a soft, warm, boney mass; the impact had enough force to turn him halfway around, which was perfect, because he needed to apologise to whoever he had just run into-

“Christ, Hamilton- careful, I don’t think you need to be moving quite so swiftly at this late an hour,” the man said with a hint of humour and put a steadying hand to his shoulder as if to belatedly catch him, and Alex swallowed–he wasn’t in the mood for humour, and he was most certainly not in the mood for some man putting his hands on him in a dark corridor.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, shuffled out of the loose grip. “I’m sorry, I didn’t watch where I was going, I was- a bit distracted.”

The man chuckled, low and warm but with a bit of an edge. Strained, almost.

The sound prompted Alex to finally raise his gaze from the floor; he looked up to find too familiar green eyes watching him.

Colonel Elijah Brown, of all people.

He could have fucking screamed.

All the anger he couldn’t direct at his husband because none of this was actually his fault came rushing, crashed through the walls of his non-emotive state and ripped him down into a current of fury.

“It's alright, I- I wasn’t really looking, either, to be honest,” he said and scratched the back of his neck. His boot slid along the wooden floor as he shifted his weight–he looked uneasy, nervous.

Good.

“I- I don’t mean to be a bother, but- have you by any chance seen John around?”

He had to be fucking kidding him. There was a ringing in his ears, a screeching, almost, similar to the sound a kettle might make when the water boiled- perhaps that was the sound of his blood cooking up in his veins, rushing in his ears.

“Why? What is it you want from him?” he hissed, more aggressive than he'd meant to, and Brown took half a step back. He obviously hadn’t expected such a hostile reaction.

“I don’t think that’s-”

“Any of my business?” Alex paused, clenched his jaw until his muscles strained from the effort, and he narrowed his eyes. “Get it into your head, Brown: He doesn’t want to kiss you.”

The moments that followed were like the tense anticipation in the adrenaline-fueled heartbeats just after one heard the unmistakable boom of a cannon being fired. The still horror, the locking eyes with one's comrades, the call of Incoming!, the frantic scattering.

Brown’s eyes widened until they looked ready to fall out of their sockets.

The gravity of what he had just snapped at the man only dawned on him after the cannonball had already barreled into the midst of their troops and devastated dozens of men; neither of them moved, even though Alex wanted nothing more than to bolt.

“What did you say?” Brown choked in a hoarse whisper, and even in the dim light Alex could see the absolute and complete terror in those eyes he so despised, but- he hadn’t meant, he didn’t want to scare him like that, he wanted him to stay away from his husband, not have him fear for his life-

“Oh, God,” he rasped and stumbled a step farther along the hallway, put more distance between them. “God, I- I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have- I overstepped, I’m sorry!”

He whirled around and bounded down the rest of the corridor, turned the corner, and dove into his parents’ room without knocking first.

His mother unsurprisingly jumped and clutched at her chest when he so brazenly ripped the door open and closed it behind himself with too much enthusiasm.

It looked like she had been in the process of cleaning up a little before Alex had burst in; her brows set themselves into a stern line, and her mouth was already half open for the scolding he was sure to receive for startling her so, and it's the polite thing to knock, Alexander, you weren't raised in a barn.

But her features softened once she took in Alex's state.

"What's wrong, love?"

Alex stayed silent for a moment, hating that even now, he felt compelled to give her an out before he started talking.

"It's about John," he said.

Nothing in her expression changed; it remained concerned, and it did not gain a note of even the vaguest disapproval.

The realisation that perhaps his mother was indeed coming around to the idea of John and him would have sparked a lot more happiness had he not just struck the fear of execution into a man's heart.

He drew a shaky breath and blinked–now there was a suspicious wetness behind his eyes, and he wanted to slap himself, what the fuck was he crying about? That his loving husband had shut down a romantic advance on him and then immediately come to tell him about it, even apologised for not taking his concerns more seriously?

That he had just unwittingly made a man think he was both aware of and repulsed by the fact that he had kissed another man? Another man who hadn't been receptive, who had run off and told someone else right after, and God, what kind of impression that must have left on him.

With a flash like cold lightning Alex remembered how he had shaken his hand off, as though he was disgusted by him, how he had snarled at him that John didn’t want anything from him-

He probably hadn’t come off as a jealous lover, it was more likely he had seemed like someone whose close friend just disclosed a serious transgression done to him, someone who was in a hurry to get somewhere in a state of heightened emotion–Brown knew his station of chief aide, he knew he had a direct line to General Washington-

He had to be so scared.

Alex hadn’t meant to, he truly hadn’t-

He just hoped the man went on to find John and would have the situation explained to him.

“Alexander?” his mother said, and Alex snapped his blurry gaze up. He had been silent for too long, lost in his swirling guilt.

She stepped closer, her concern quickly overtaken by full-fledged worry, and she stopped just short of him, raised her hands to his face and cupped his cheeks.

“I fucked up, Ma,” he said.

She clucked her tongue at the language but didn’t reprimand him.

“Hm,” she said, hands slipping down from his cheeks to fix his collar instead; it was such a her thing to do, and a spark of warmth filled the icy cavity around his heart. “You’ll have to tell me all about it and let me be the judge. Alright.”

She smiled up at him and booped his nose like she used to do when he’d been a child, turned on her heel, skirts swooshing softly, and made for the fireplace.

Alex remained, blinking, and scrunched up his nose belatedly.

“Don’t just stand there, love, go sit on the bed. I’ll make some tea and then you tell me what happened.”

He furrowed his brows and glanced at the bed, then the perfectly good armchairs near where his mother boiled some water.

“Why the bed?” he asked, then remembered what she was doing and added, “And it’s fine, you don’t need to-”

“Because I want to cuddle,” she cut in and gave him a look, one glinting with amusement, but also one telling him he had no say in the matter whatsoever. “And of course I have to. You’re upset, so you get tea.”

Alex pursed his lips, tempted to argue some more just for the sake of crafting some playful banter to distract himself from the situation he had caused and then promptly ran away from, but that wouldn’t get him anywhere in the end.

He settled on crossing over to the bed, slipping out of his boots, and sitting down with his back to the headboard and his knees to his chest.

A few minutes passed like that, with Ma humming softly to herself as she prepared tea. Alex was suddenly struck by how frequently he felt himself reminded of his childhood during her visits; this was another scene he had experienced so often that it awoke an odd sense of deja vu in him.

Not only of her, though.

Back on Nevis- not everything had been bad, not always. James Hamilton had had a tendency to just disappear sometimes, and those times had almost been good. Money had been tighter, of course, but Maman had been happier, and Alex had valued her smile over a pair of shoes that fit, anyway.

She used to take them to the beach on her days off. Jemmy and him ended up soaked every single time and were instantly bundled up in a pile of towels once they got back home, towels that looked comically large on their small frames, and Maman would laugh at their attempts to wiggle their heads out and call them her little hermit crabs.

Sometimes he could still smell the salt, feel the breeze tousling his hair, the sun on his skin, hear her voice calling out for him to not wander off too far.

Ma had warned them of that as well, every time they went down to the river to play.

Alex was jerked back into the present by a warm cup pressed carefully into his hands, followed by the bed dipping next to him when his mother sat down at his side, folded her legs up on the mattress, and smoothed her skirts out.

He blinked down at the cup in his hands for a moment, watched the steam rise, then shifted his focus back to his mother when she softly bumped their shoulders and pressed a brief kiss to his cheek.

“Chamomile blossom for my little chamomile blossom,” she said, and Alex groaned, embarrassed, and attempted to hide his furious blush behind a curtain of hair.

Not that that worked very well. She simply brushed his hair away from his face.

“Ma,” he mumbled, but she just chuckled.

He had brought her little bouquets of chamomile from time to time when he had been around ten–almost twelve years ago, and yet, every time he thought that perhaps she had finally forgotten about that pet-name, she brought it up again.

“Alright, alright,” she conceded and reached over to the nightstand to take up her own cup. “Now, tell me what spooked you enough to have you burst in here pale as a sheet and on the verge of tears?”

Alex ducked his head and swallowed, took a sip of his tea to buy himself some time–he could detect a hint of sugar; he hadn’t even asked for that, hadn’t reminded her that he took his tea like that, she had just done it, and Alex almost teared up at how attentive she was to him.

He shook himself, forced his mind to focus.

Another moment or two passed in which he drew a deep breath to steady himself, did his best to gather his thoughts–and then, he started talking.

Chapter Text

Ma didn’t say anything.

She didn’t interrupt him once as he rambled on about John, about how he knew that he loved him, that he knew John couldn’t help it when other men were interested in him; overall, Alex took great care to emphasise just how little his husband was at fault for this.

And then, he haltingly described how he had bumped into Brown in the corridor. How he had acted towards him.

Ma didn’t interrupt just as she didn’t judge. She just listened, and Alex was so grateful, because- as much as he loved his father, and he did love him dearly, he was so glad to have him, but he knew what this conversation would have looked like with him.

He would have tried to calm him. To comfort him, tell him it wasn’t his fault because he was upset, that he certainly could have reacted better, but it was in the past now.

Ma offered a more passive kind of comfort. Her presence alone had a calming effect.

She gave a sharp nod of her head when he had finally fallen silent and took a moment to set her empty cup down on the nightstand before she carefully rubbed her hand up and down his bicep.

His own cup was still almost entirely full, and he took a lukewarm gulp of tea as he waited for her to formulate her answer.

“Perhaps you are overthinking this,” she said at last, and Alex frowned. Of course he was overthinking this. That was what he did. “As I understand it, the thing you are most upset about right now is what you said to that young man?”

Alex worried his bottom lip between his teeth and nodded, staring down into the tea. 

He could still see it before his mind’s eye, Brown's face twisting with the cold, frightening realisation that someone knew.

“Don’t you think the conclusion you jumped to is a bit of a reach, love? Why do you think he would assume you said those things because you were going to punish him?”

“What?” he said and raised his head, his brow furrowed in confusion.

Ma just looked at him with a small smile and squeezed his arm. “You just said John didn't want to kiss him. And, well- he doesn’t. Why would he immediately jump to execution?”

Alex blinked, gobsmacked, and stayed silent.

What else would his conclusion be? That he was giving him some friendly advice in a tone that suggested he would like to saw through his jugular with that goddamn letter-opener?

“I wasn’t exactly friendly when I said it."

“So you weren’t,” she agreed with a slight shrug. “But execution? He knows John, doesn’t he? Would he really assume he would forsake him like that?”

And that was when it hit him. When it just backhanded him across the face like… too many men in his life, really.

“You don’t understand, Ma,” he said, flat, and rid himself of his own cup. Now it was her turn to frown at him; Alex covered the hand on his arm with his own to assure he hadn’t meant any offense.

“You don’t- um, being- being like this, it’s dangerous. It’s deadly. So many men are court-marshalled or executed with just the faintest whisper of proof to back the accusation, and- even if they are just court-marshalled, a lot of them end up dead, anyway. Loving like we do is difficult. And it’s a death-sentence if someone finds out. I could see it in his eyes, Ma. How scared he was, the terror, I- I’ve seen men die in battle with more peaceful expressions on their faces.”

His mother’s face changed as she listened, her features slipping from the unbothered side of neutral into uncomfortable confusion, and ended up frozen in a worried grimace.

“Is that how you feel, Alexander? How you live? Every day?” she said, her eyes, the concern, the pity in them piercing straight into his soul, and Alex turned away.

“Yes,” he whispered and swallowed, and a sensation like a thousand small needles prickling under his skin enveloped his whole body. “I’m scared. A lot, all the time, really, but- not for myself. I know Papa would move heaven and earth just to keep me safe, whatever the cost, but-” He broke off there, his stomach in knots.

Ma was silent for a moment; it stretched, even though it probably wasn't all that long.

"Your father would do the same for him," she said at length. It sounded odd to his ears. Detached, but not unsure.

She was certain of her words, but it seemed she didn't much like it.

"Not like he would for me. If he had to choose- if there was no other way, Pa would throw John to the wolves to keep me safe, and-" Alex blinked, his vision blurry with sudden tears, a lump in his throat. "And John would thank him for it."

His mother didn't respond to that. Alex hadn't expected her to.

He breathed deeply and made an honest attempt to pull himself together.

"Anyway. I- I know how Brown feels. How he must have felt when I hurled those things at him, he- he had that same expression of absolute dread on his face as John did that first time Pa walked in on us, and I never ever wanted to make anyone feel that way, not even some- some guy who thinks he can kiss my husband."

Alex didn't have it in him to call Brown a name now, not after he had wronged the man like that.

And he also couldn't swear in front of his mother. He had enough problems at his hands already.

"John... said something along those lines once," she said, quietly and a bit distracted, as if she was reliving the memory she referred to at that very moment. "That I could love my husband in a way he would never get, without fear."

Alex blinked, stunned. John had said that to her? To her face? Just like that?

Something in his chest throbbed with unadulterated affection.

That man. That wonderful, stubborn, fearless man Alex loved so much.

Ma raised her gaze and looked him dead in the eyes. 

"I suppose I haven't given those words as much thought as I should have. I'm- I'm sorry, love, I never looked at it that way."

No, she wouldn't have. He doubted Pa had, either.

And even if they had tried to put themselves in their shoes, they would never understand what it truly felt like. The underlying anxiety, attached to them like a shadow, there in the most comfortable and innocent of conversations.

The little voice in the back of his head, whispering to him that if he slipped up just once, if a single poorly phrased joke landed wrong enough, it could plant suspicion in someone's head.

If someone caught him staring at John when his thoughts wandered, if someone saw their fingers brush when they were standing next to each other, thinking nothing of it–until they noticed that neither of them had pulled away, that their fingers perhaps arched a bit to chance another touch-

It was a lot.

She wouldn't understand.

Alex all of a sudden felt very alone.

"You just always seem so at ease," she said, the words carrying a twang of… curiosity? Alex arched a brow and waited for her to continue. "With your comrades, I mean. Don't think I haven't heard of the lovebite that mysteriously sprouted on Lieutenant Colonel Laurens' neck overnight, Alexander. That's quite daring, wouldn't you say?"

Alex flushed and ducked his head, averted his eyes. "Pa told you about that?"

His mother made a sound like a snort, and he glanced back at her. "No, love. The maids were giggling about it this afternoon. Colonel Brown is not the only one drawn to your John."

Your John.  

Despite the intense embarrassment gnawing away at him, his heart was enveloped in warmth.

She had never referred to John like that before–most days, she was hard pressed to refer to John by name at all. To acknowledge their relationship so clearly, it was- good.

It felt good.

"But you dodged the question, my sweet. You and John seem so comfortable around the other boys."

Alex hummed, thoughtful. "We are. We are comfortable around them, they are our friends, and- and a few of them actually know about us, but- I don't know. It's just a lot easier to not think too hard about what could happen if they were to find out. How fast some of them would turn on us."

A long moment passed by, silent.

She heaved a sigh, tired and with an underlying sadness Alex was too familiar with, and her hand slid down the length of his arm until she could gently grasp his hand in hers.

Alex hated it when her eyes clouded like that, as though she was trapped in a horrid memory just because he had opened his stupid mouth.

“Alexander,” she said, not quite meeting his eye. Quiet, subdued, uncomfortable. She squeezed his hand, and Alex squeezed back. “My darling, that’s no way to live. I- I’m not saying this because I want to tell you what to do. I’m not trying to sway you, this is not me expressing disapproval, but- are you absolutely certain this is how you want to live your life?”

His mother raised her head and brushed her thumb over his knuckles, and Alex went cold. First his chest, then his stomach, and then the frost seeped out into his limbs, crept along farther and farther with every new beat of his heart until it froze the tips of his fingers.

He didn’t answer.

“I don’t mean to sound harsh. It’s just, your father said you find yourself attracted to both men and women? If you were to find a wife-”

“I don’t want a wife,” he cut in, barely any louder than her. His throat was too tight to produce anything above a whisper, and Alex struggled to fight down the faint betrayal bubbling up from a pit near his heart, struggled to resist the urge to pull his hand from hers.

Ma wasn’t saying this to hurt him. She was worried.

“I want John. Just John. No one else.”

She nodded slowly, reached her other hand over to rest it on his upper arm. “Can you promise me he will be enough for you? That he’ll make you happy in spite of the secrecy and fear? That- that you won’t wake up in ten years and ask yourself what you’re doing with your life, without a family of your own, unable to let anyone else come close for fear they’ll find out-”

“Ma,” he croaked, and she fell silent, watched as Alex took a few steadying breaths and wiped a numb hand over his stinging eyes. “Mama, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. As long as I have him, my world keeps turning, I- I love him. And I promise we will be enough for each other. He swore to spend the rest of his days making me happy, and John- he keeps his promises.” He sucked in another breath and let it out through his teeth. “We promised each other a lifetime, and that’s what I intend to give him.”

Ma just looked at him for a beat. Two. Three.

Her gaze was intense but not uncomfortable, and there was no disappointment behind it, no judgement, nothing that made Alex think she would not accept the answer he had given.

No, her eyes were simply searching him, evaluating his sincerity, trying to read from his face if he had told the truth, if he was certain.

Alex was, so he didn’t worry.

“Alright,” she said, her voice so soft, and yet Alex almost jumped when the silence  shattered into pieces and the odd tension between them with it.

“Alright?” he repeated, a bit unsure of her meaning. His mother let go of his hand and reached up to take his face into her hands instead, shot him a sweet smile that made him see Patsy for a split-second, and he swallowed around the renewed lump in his throat.

“Alright.” Her thumb moved gently back and forth over his cheekbone, and Alex leaned into the hand cradling his jaw, the tension and anxiety seeping from him like sand slipping through his fingers. “As long as you’re sure this is what you want, and as long as he makes you as happy as you always claim he does–I’m glad.”

She paused to press a kiss to his forehead, then returned to watching him from adoring eyes, and Alex blinked a few times, desperate to keep the tears at bay.

“When George first brought you home, I- I thought that you looked so sad. So hurt. And you were so shy in the beginning, it took you two months before you could even call me anything other than 'Ma'am', and- and the only thing I ever wanted for you was to have something to smile for." 

Alex looked down at the sheets, not able to bear the painfully honest expression in her eyes, but she tapped his chin and made him return her gaze again.

"I only ever wanted you to be happy, my darling," she said. Alex's sight blurred, but he didn't avert his eyes again. "And if John Laurens gives you a reason to smile every day, I can suck it up, be an adult, and be happy for you.”

Alex couldn’t help it–he sniffled a little, and a lone tear escaped him and fell down his cheek despite his best efforts.

This- this was more than he would have asked of her. All he’d wanted was for her to try, to tolerate John and their relationship if she couldn’t accept it yet, to see how far and violently he had fallen for that man, even if she couldn’t understand it.

This, he wouldn’t have asked of her. He’d hoped she would be ready some day, of course, but it was so much sooner than he’d dared to dream.

Alex shifted on the mattress, tucked his legs underneath himself instead, and reached out to pull his mother into a tight embrace. She made a soft sound of surprise, but wrapped her arms around his shoulders to reciprocate immediately.

“Thank you, Ma. Really, I- you don’t know how much this means to me. Thank you. I- I know you would really like John if you gave him a chance, I mean, Pa does, and Pa doesn't really like anyone at all-”

“Alexander,” she interrupted with a soft chuckle, took him carefully by the shoulders, and pried him away until they could see each other’s faces again. “It’s alright, my sweet. I’ll be staying with you for at least another eight weeks. I think I could arrange for some free time within the next two months to get to know my son-in-law.”

Son-in-law.

Alex felt like his heart was about to burst clean out of his chest.

But before he could sob out a response, she went on, “Right now, though, I think you have a young man to apologise to. That’s the more pressing matter, wouldn’t you agree, love?”

Oh.

The thick fog of pure delight that had clouded his thoughts ebbed away and vanished, revealing the issue of his own making that had brought them there in the first place.

Elijah Brown–she was right, Alex had to apologise to him; he just hoped John had explained the situation already.

“You’re right, Ma. Of course, I- I’ll go,” he said and shook himself, attempted to get a grip on his turbulent emotions before he went and got a whole other set of his feelings twisted around and bent out of shape.

She nodded and smiled at him, tenderly brushed the dried tear-track from his cheek, and kissed his forehead once more.

“We can talk more tomorrow,” she said. True to form, she didn’t make it sound like an offer, but more like a decision she had made for the both of them without consulting him first.

Alex had the sudden realisation that she was probably the only person he didn’t mind taking orders from; his father was a different story, he had to take his orders when he was his chief aide, but as his son? 

Alex preferred to do as he pleased, and Pa had always been very aware of that fact.

“Sure,” he replied, leaned in to press a quick peck to her cheek, and jumped back to his feet. A few moments later, he was back in his boots and already putting the words swirling around his brain into a semblance of order.

“Thanks, Ma,” he said, easing the door open. “This… was a good talk. Helped a lot.”

“You’re very welcome, my darling,” she said with a smile and made a slight shooing motion, telling him to get on with it without saying the words.

Alex took his leave, and by the time the door had closed behind him, his small smile dropped from his features like the deceptive calm that had settled over his mind.

John was probably mad at him now.

He had to be, what kind of person just did something like that? And then left poor fucking Eli all on his own in most likely a panic, not to mention that Alex had unintentionally incriminated John as well by throwing into Brown’s face that he had told another person about the kiss.

Alex shook his head at himself and forced his spiralling thoughts back in line as he jolted himself into motion.

John would hear him out. He always did, he wasn’t the kind of person to hold Alex’s…  emotional outbursts against him.

He rounded the corner and, lost in his own head as he was, ran into solid mass, for the second time that night.

Perhaps he should put more effort into watching where he was going in the future.

Alex had already opened his mouth to apologise when two warm but firm hands settled on his upper arms and held him steady, and he snapped his eyes up, ready to break someone’s nose if he needed to-

“There you are. I was getting worried,” John said in a low voice, and Alex’s shoulders slumped when all the energy that had already gathered hot and tingly under his skin dissipated again.

And then he remembered that John wasn’t necessarily the best person to run into, after all.

He averted his gaze and studied the floorboards at their feet instead of returning John’s gaze, shame blooming in the spaces between his ribs.

“Did Brown find you? Is he alright?” he asked, and the hands slipped from his arms and fell back to John’s sides.

“He sure did find me,” he said, the relative gentleness of his voice replaced by an edge, and Alex willed himself not to flinch. “But I wouldn’t say he’s alright. He was… very upset, and it needed some convincing and me explaining the-” he paused, and Alex glanced up to see him checking if someone was coming up the stairs before he went on in almost a whisper, “nature of our relationship to get him to calm down. That- why would you say something like that to him? To anyone?”

The question didn’t even sound accusatory from John’s mouth. It was a talent of his, he thought, to make anything sound genuine when he said it in that smooth, calming voice.

Alex bit his lip and crossed his arms over his chest, ducked his head. He didn’t like that they were having this conversation out in the open, where anyone could come across them.

“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly, and John let out a loud breath. “I, umm, I really didn’t mean to scare him. I didn’t think before I started talking, he’d just asked me if I’d seen you, and I was- I was angry at him, and it all came out really wrong-”

“Alex,” he interrupted, calm but without room for argument, and Alex shut his mouth. “You can’t lash out like this at other people. I can take it, I know you don’t mean it when something like this happens, but Christ. Eli was convinced he would be facing a firing-squad in the morning.”

Alex squeezed his eyes shut, as if that would do anything to make those words less real. The guilt enveloped him steadily, like sparse drops of rain that marked the beginning of a proper shower, multiplying in their numbers until it was full on pouring and he was soaked from head to toe.

“I know, I’m sorry, I- I was on my way to apologise before I bumped into you-”

“Good. But can we make it a proper apology? None of that backhanded stuff you’re so fond of, alright?”

He opened his eyes then to meet John’s gaze dead on, a little bit offended. “Of course. I wronged him, so he’s getting a real apology, why would you even question that?”

John sighed, and his lips curled into the beginnings of that crooked smile that made Alex swoon every time. “Because you are jealous of him and a very petty person.”

“I’m not petty!” Alex shot back immediately, trying and failing to keep his voice down.

“But you’re jealous?” John said, a single eyebrow raised, and Alex deflated again, the short flare of indignation dying down as fast as it had sparked to life.

He stayed silent for a second, thinking to himself that yes, he was both jealous and petty, and he hated himself a little for it.

“Of course I’m jealous,” he said, a bit put out. “All that flirting, and then that kiss- but that still doesn’t excuse my reaction.”

John softened and reached out to raise Alex’s chin so he would look at him again. “You’re right, it doesn't. Even though I can’t say I would have reacted any better if I’d been in your place, to be honest. And… I’m a bit miffed about that kiss as well. That’s why you should ask first, but I digress. We can make this right, darling.”

Alex nodded, shot John a hesitant little smile. The term of endearment did a lot to settle his nerves and reassure him John wasn’t actually too mad at him, and the use of we was also very encouraging to hear.

They were still a team, even after Alex had fucked up again.

“Absolutely,” he agreed, and John’s lips stretched into a proper smile at that.

“That’s what I like to hear,” he said and stepped up next to Alex, fit himself to his side, and wrapped an arm around his waist. “After you, Colonel Hamilton.”

“John,” he gasped, a bit scandalised. “We are in public-”

The arm around his waist reeled him in even closer, and Alex couldn’t help but melt a little at the possessive gesture, even if it did make him feel like some swooning maiden.

“If someone were to see us, I would just tell them you had too much to drink,” he answered flippantly as he dragged the both of them down the dark corridor, back to their room.

Alex snorted a laugh and tried to sound equal measures offended and sarcastic. “Thanks.”

“That’s what you get,” he teased–it was good-natured, and bizarrely, Alex felt more at ease at that very moment, pressed up against his husband where anyone could see, on their way to confront a man Alex had both antagonised over the past few days and deeply wronged on top of that, than he had all evening.

They reached the door, and that sense of comfort evaporated. Something cold and heavy settled in the pit of his stomach; John gave an affectionate squeeze around his middle and pressed a brief kiss to his temple, and Alex relaxed a little.

He drew in a breath and reached for the doorknob.

It was time to right his wrongs.

Chapter Text

They entered, and the warm weight of John’s arm around him fell away, left him naked and shieldless. Vulnerable. There was a click as John locked the door behind them, and Alex took another few hesitant steps farther into the room.

Brown stood by the window, arms crossed and fingers twisted into the fabric of his coat, one of his knees twitching in a quick, jerky motion that was without a doubt some kind of nervous tick–he wasn’t at ease, despite John’s reassurance.

Alex couldn't say he was surprised.

The silence filled every little nook and cranny of the room, and the air grew thicker and thicker until every breath dripped down his airways and into his lungs like mud.

Brown and him stood and looked at each other, neither wanting to make the first move.

John heaved a soft sigh and stepped up next to Alex, rested his hand on the small of his back, and used the leverage to gently nudge him forward.

“I think all of us started off on the wrong foot,” he said. It sounded forced, and it did absolutely nothing to make the air any less sludgy. 

“Alex, this is Eli,” he went on, sliding his hand around to rest on Alex’s hip. He squeezed softly and gestured at the man who looked on in both distrust and wariness. “And Eli, this is my husband, Alexander,” he finished.

Alex's eyes widened, and he grabbed for the hand on his hip out of reflex.

He had to blink a few times to prevent his eyes from misting over and to banish the burn of tears back to where it had come from.

John had never introduced him like that before; and he never would get to do it again, either, but Christ, did he want to hear that over and over.  My husband, Alexander. 

He wished they could refer to each other like that all the time.

They couldn’t, though, and that was not the issue at hand, anyway.

“Husband,” Brown mumbled, intense gaze dropping from Alex’s face down his body and stopping at his hand. “Explains the ring.”

Oh.

Oh, of course, Alex wore a ring, but John didn’t-

“You assumed I was married,” he said and clasped his hands in front of his chest, twisted the ring around his finger. “You- I mean, I am, but- you couldn’t have known about, well, this, you-” Alex was very much aware he wasn’t making any sense, but he just felt really stupid all of a sudden, and he needed to get the jumbled thoughts out.

“You’re rambling, darling,” John cut him off gently, and Alex closed his mouth.

“I did assume that,” Brown said, fingers gripping and releasing the fabric of his sleeves in an uneven rhythm.

“You should stop assuming things, Eli,” John said–sweet but with an undeniable edge, a sharp undertone that conveyed just how unamused he was about being kissed out of an assumption.

Alex once again couldn't help but feel himself reminded of his mother–John and her really had potential to become the best of friends.

Brown flushed and dropped his gaze to the ground instead. “I- know I've said it once already, but- I'm sorry. I was out of line, John.”

John sighed and softened around the edges–some of the tense energy left him, and Alex couldn’t help but relax as well at the shift, if only a little.

“You were, but that’s not what we are here to discuss,” he said, rubbing his thumb back and forth over Alex’s hip-bone.

That was his cue.

“Look,” he began, shaky despite his best efforts, and paused to clear his throat. Brown fell entirely still all of a sudden, every movement had ceased; Alex was almost more unsettled by the complete stillness than the restlessness of his little ticks. “I- I never meant to scare you, Brown. I, um, I wasn’t exactly… thinking.”

Alex heaved a sigh and leaned into the safety of John’s embrace, knowing full well that whatever he was producing right now was somewhere near the top of the hypothetical ranking of ‘most pathetic apologies ever’.

“You don’t have to forgive me,” he said, his voice soft, staring at a shallow scrape in the leather of Brown’s boots. “I know what I said was cruel, even if I hadn’t meant for it to come across that way. It understandably frightened you, and I really shouldn’t have said something like that in a space where other people could have overheard, and- and I shouldn’t have run off after. If I had stayed and explained- I don’t know. I was upset and not thinking straight, but that’s no excuse-”

“Hamilton,” Brown cut in, toneless, and Alex snapped his gaze up and met those green eyes, dulled by exhaustion. “You are General Washington’s voice. You of all people should know the power of words and what harm they can do. Just- be more careful.”

Alex hesitated–a multitude of emotions he had no hope of placing flashed across Brown’s features in quick succession. Above all, though, he looked tired. The adrenaline had ebbed away and left a bone-deep fatigue in its place.

He nodded.

“Greene has been court-marshalling a lot of men lately,” John supplied with a quiet, almost mournful air. “We can’t give anyone any reason at all to think Eli might-”

“It’s fine,” he interrupted once more, clipped. “It’s fine, John. I always knew what I was getting myself into, joining the army, being the way I am. This whole thing gave me a fright for sure, but- well. It was my fault, too. I shouldn’t have kissed you, and I am truly sorry for that.”

“You’re forgiven,” John said with a small smile, and Alex’s eyebrow twitched in irritation, but he bit his tongue to stop himself from contesting that–too quick, in his opinion–forgiveness. It wasn’t his to give; it was John’s. “I will assume you’ve learned your lesson, so- no hard feelings.”

Brown let out a long breath, his shoulders slumping as his whole body seemed to deflate.

“Thank you,” he whispered. At least he really did seem sorry; this was not an empty apology, he could see the error of his ways, and he cared enough about his relationship with John to admit to it. 

Alex could respect that.

A beat passed, and Brown drew himself up again. “I’ll take my leave, then, I think we’ve discussed everything in need of discussing-”

“Wait!” Alex called and reached an arm out to halt Brown's attempt to leave the room–before he remembered with a sudden flash that the two of them were not on those kinds of terms at all. He ripped his hand back and clutched it to his chest instead.

Brown stared with wide eyes, frozen on the spot, and his gaze flickered from Alex’s flushed face over to John, confused. Alex could feel John’s clueless shrug, and Brown returned his attention to him.

“Sorry,” he said, now in an appropriate volume again. “I- I just, I’m not done yet. I have more things to apologise for.”

If he let him leave now, this would weigh on his conscience for some time to come.

Alex had done him wrong; he had made assumptions based on nothing but his own insecurities, he had let himself be consumed by jealousy and anger, and he had let it all out on him, even though Brown had never given him any reason to before tonight.

His parents had raised him better than that.

“You… do?” he said, bewildered. “You really don’t have to, Hamilton, I consider this issue over and done with-”

“This is not about the corridor,” Alex interrupted, and Brown clicked his mouth shut, his brow furrowed in a way that very clearly communicated what on earth is it about, then?  

He swallowed and drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, and cut his eyes away from the man’s face. “I treated you unfairly. Even- even before tonight. I called you a lot of very unkind things in my head, and I did kind of fantasise about stabbing you a little bit, and you don’t deserve any of that. I’m sorry.”

Brown blinked at him, taken aback. John heaved a soft sigh, but Alex didn't turn to see his without a doubt exasperated expression–the silence was complete but fleeting, only there for a second, before Brown burst out into hiccuping laughter.

"Stabbing?" he blurted and covered his mouth with his hand to quieten his guffaws.

Alex opened his mouth and closed it again, lost as to how to respond to his explosive reaction. He really had expected more… outrage, if he were to be honest.

Brown calmed gradually, reigned himself in bit by bit, until his laughter had faded to soft, melodic chuckles, and Alex hated how much he liked the sound. It was warm and comfortable; he could see how John could have loved the man, now that he wasn't blinded by his own prejudice.

"Stabbing," he repeated to himself, light and soft, and turned back to John. "Where on earth did you find that one?"

John chuckled fondly and tugged Alex closer until his back was flush to John's front, and he wrapped both his arms around him, kissed his cheek and rested his chin on his shoulder–every single one of his instincts told him to pull away, to put distance between them, but he squashed that impulse.

It was… unusual, to have someone not his father see them like this, but it was alright, he reminded himself.

Brown was like them. He knew, they didn't have to hide in front of him.

“New York,” he said. The smile carried in his voice, and Alex forced himself to relax, leaned back into him.

“Lucky find, huh?” Brown said, one eyebrow quirked.

“The luckiest,” John replied without pause, and heat rushed into Alex’s cheeks.

Brown hummed in response–his stance had lost the wooden quality, and his fidgeting had ceased entirely. He held himself in that easy, comfortable way that Alex used to envy on other people when he’d been younger, and his eyes had regained the lively spark he had wasted way too much energy hating these past few days.

And all of a sudden it hit him all at once, like an unexpected punch to the face; Brown wasn’t a bad guy.

That had all been Alex.

Well. Up until the point where the bastard had kissed his husband-

Deep breaths, Alexander.

“So, Hamilton; may I inquire what unkind things you thought about me?” he asked, burying his hands in the pockets of his coat, a playful air about him.

Alex pursed his lips, not sure if he should respond to that truthfully. “That depends. Are you going to take that personally?”

Brown blinked at him, cocked his head to the side. “Didn’t you just tell me to my face that you thought about stabbing me?”

“That does ring a bell,” he said and swallowed, the tips of his ears now slowly heating up as well. He averted his gaze again, watched his own fingers caress John’s arm wrapped around his stomach instead. “Umm. Well. ‘Bastard’, for example. ‘Tramp’. ‘Hussy’, when I was feeling especially slighted. Sometimes even ‘Harlot’.”

There was no answer, so Alex forced himself to raise his gaze.

Brown watched him with blatant amusement and not a hint of offense. “That’s fair, I suppose.”

“It is?” John said, doubtful.

“Sure. I did flirt with you,” he said with a slight shrug, and Alex clamped his jaws shut to prevent the I told you so from bursting forth. John was well aware of that already. No reason to dig the fresh and shallow grave back up.

“I’m still sorry about that,” Alex said and carefully lowered John’s arms from around his body, removed himself from the embrace altogether, and stepped towards Brown instead.

The man had a few inches on him, but Alex had oddly never taken notice of that before this very moment when he had to tilt his head back a bit to look him in the eyes.

“Maybe we could start over?” he offered, tentative. He’d meant it when he said that Brown didn’t have to forgive him, and if he prefered not to speak to him for the rest of his stay, he would respect that.

Brown’s eyes flickered to a point behind him once more–he looked to John for guidance on this. Perhaps because he still wasn’t sure if John wanted to stay friends after the events of tonight, perhaps because he was asking for permission to let him down easy.

Alex withstood the urge to turn and see John’s reaction for himself.

“If you would be open to that,” he said at last, a bit unsure.

For the sake of their fresh ceasefire, Alex refrained from pointing out that he had been the one to suggest it in the first place. Instead, he said, “I think it would be… nice, perhaps. I’ve never met- or, well, known for a fact that someone else was like us. We shouldn’t be against one another.”

He wasn’t naive enough to think he had never actually met anyone like them–he just wasn’t close enough to anyone to be certain. Lafayette hadn’t seemed disinclined when he’d found out about them, but to Alex’s knowledge, he did prefer the company of women, and he had never uttered another word about it.

Perhaps he was just french.

“Yes, that- yes. I agree,” he said, stumbling a bit over his words, and Alex couldn’t help but smile.

“Good.”

“Great.”

They stood in awkward silence for a few moments, having talked themselves into a corner.

Huh.

That never happened to Alex.

“Jesus Christ, has either of you ever had a conversation with another human?” John said from behind, part exasperated and part amused.

Alex flushed, and so did Brown.

“This is just sad to watch, guys. How about this: We all agree we’re friends now and go to bed, because I don’t know about you, but I’m tired.”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely.”

They both blurted at the same time, and Brown scratched the back of his neck with an awkward chuckle.

“Alright, I- good,” Alex said, entirely unsure of where he had been going with that, and he thought he could hear John’s hand collide with his face.

Brown, bless him, got himself back together then. “Well, I’m glad we could resolve this.”

“Me too,” Alex responded quietly, chest tight with embarrassment.

“Alright, then- goodnight, John, Hamilton,” he said, nodding at them both in turn, and made to leave.

“Just ‘Alexander’ is fine,” he said in the hopes that hadn’t been too much too soon, cheeks burning.

Brown stopped, his hand already on the doorknob, half-turned away from them. He hesitated, and Alex began to sweat. 

“If that’s the case, you can drop ‘harlot’ and just call me Elijah as well,” he said, an amused glint in his annoyingly green eyes, and John burst out laughing as Alex ducked his head in a failed attempt to hide his red face.

“Goodnight, Eli,” John called as the man slipped out of the room and closed the door behind himself.

They were settled in bed maybe twenty minutes later, curled up on their sides facing each other, Alex’s face tucked securely against John’s throat.

He felt like hiding, for some reason; the day and all the emotions it had stirred up within him had been a bit much, perhaps.

Brown- or, well, Elijah may have forgiven him on some level, and the bad blood was set aside, but he still felt… guilty. Guilty and unsettled by how readily he had lashed out at a virtual stranger.

John gently worked his fingers through Alex’s hair and scratched at his scalp in the exact way that was sure to make him melt into a little puddle every time.

“What’s going on in that head?” he murmured, voice already laced with sleep. “I can hear the cogs turning.”

Alex sighed and backed up until they could look each other in the eye–John’s features were soft, not even the faint echo of a frown on his face. 

A pure, overwhelming fondness enveloped Alex and forced the guilt from the forefront of his mind.

“Nothing,” he replied, but he knew John wouldn’t take that, not even when he was half-asleep already, so he decided to bring up the other monumental thing that had happened that night. “Well, maybe something. I- I had a talk with my mother. A great talk, and-”

John watched him from undeniably tired but still so attentive eyes, he wanted to hear what he had to say, and Alex was so overcome that he just couldn’t help himself; he bridged the space between their faces and kissed him.

Soft, sleepy kisses were one of his favourites, he reckoned.

“You were saying, darling?” John said once they’d separated again, lips stretched into that crooked smile, and Alex gently bumped their noses together.

“Sorry. Can’t possibly resist when you’re looking at me like that, though, so it's your fault for distracting me,” he said, and John snorted, then grabbed him around the middle and hauled him closer with solid strength Alex hadn’t expected from him with how worn out he seemed.

Alex may have let out a little squeak at the rough handling, not that he would ever admit to it.

“It’s always my fault, isn’t it?” he shot back, rolling Alex over onto his back. He gently cupped his jaw and turned his head to kiss him once more, then rested his hand warm and heavy on his chest, trailed it down over his stomach and up again–Alex had the inexplicable urge to purr.

“Well, usually-”

“Alex,” he interrupted with a quiet chuckle. “Darling, you were telling me about the talk you had with your mother?”

Oh. Right.

“May I first of all inquire why you saw it necessary to manhandle me onto my back like some kind of limp puppet?” he said, just to be difficult.

John answered by shuffling down the bed a little and pillowing his head on his chest, fingers tracing the small sliver of skin bared where his shirt had ridden up on his stomach.

“Hold me,” he commanded, and Alex’s limbs obeyed and curled around him without any input from his brain.

John sighed, obviously very comfortable. “You may speak.”

“Thank you, your grace,” Alex replied, rolling his eyes fondly and holding his husband a bit tighter. “Ma said- well, she said a lot of things. She’s… she supports us.”

His voice got smaller and smaller with every word until it trailed off entirely, and Alex just lay there for a moment, a hurricane of emotions whirling along inside of him, and stared at the ceiling.

He was met with a slow moment of silence.

“That’s amazing, darling,” John said at last, just as quiet as him. “I- I was genuinely worried that I could cost you your relationship with her-”

“Never, John. Don’t think like that,” he cut in, rubbing his shoulder. John curled further into him in response. “And… she wants to get to know you.”

“She does?” he asked, something like surprise in his voice; but that wasn’t all. There was a hint of vulnerability there as well, and a whole other flavour of guilt swamped his senses as he reminded himself that Alex actually had cost John the relationship with his family. Henry Laurens had been good riddance, but his siblings-

“Yeah,” he croaked, a lump in his throat. “And I know she’s going to love you. I think the two of you will get along splendidly.”

There was a controlled exhale against the fabric of his shirt, and then John raised himself up again, cupped his cheek, and leaned down to kiss him.

“I love you,” he said, regarding him with such honest and fierce affection, Alex teared up.

“I love you,” Alex whispered back, covering that hand with his own–his fingers smoothed over nothing but naked skin, but that no longer sat quite right with him.

“We have to get you a ring,” he said and squeezed John’s hand.

John blinked down at him and cracked a small smile before joining him on the mattress. He got comfortable at his side, nuzzled into the space under his chin and left a few kisses there.

“Hm. What if someone asks about it, though? Why would I be wearing a wedding ring if I'm not married?”

Alex huffed and wrapped his arms around John’s shoulders.

“Why would I be wearing a wedding ring? No one’s asked me yet. If someone asks you, just say you have a wife in Europe or something.”

“Wife in Europe,” he mumbled to himself, a pleasant twang of amusement to his voice. “Got it.”

“Yeah. At least people won’t feel inclined to flirt with you then.”

“Sure, darling. Whatever you say,” he chuckled. Alex pouted up at the ceiling as John grew noticeably more and more relaxed against him.

“Don’t laugh at me, this is a serious matter,” he said.

“Mh. Sure it is. Very serious.”

“It is!” he insisted and slid one of his hands down to rub gentle circles into the space between John’s shoulder-blades. He let out a low groan against the dip of his collarbones, and Alex smiled. “Because you are mine.”

“Yours,” he agreed. His chest rose and fell in such a slow and even rhythm, Alex knew he would fall asleep any second now, so he closed his eyes as well.

“Exactly,” he said, mostly to himself, and listened to his husband’s deep breaths change into light snores as he waited for sleep to claim him, too.

Chapter Text

The next few days were like a gentle breeze compared to the thunderstorm the ones preceding them had been.

Any hint of the heavy, insistent jealousy he had been harbouring had dropped away, and Alex felt… freed. His tasks around the office really did take a lot less effort when he wasn’t working with a split mind, one half of his consciousness focused on what he was doing, the other zoned in on John, constantly glancing up to see where he was, who he was with, what Brown was doing if he was with him.

And a lot less energy was lost to murder-fantasies, which really upped his productivity, he found.

Regarding Elijah, well- an odd kind of silent, mutual respect had formed between the two of them. Alex wasn’t avoiding the man, per se, but he also wasn’t seeking his company, and he would say it was the same the other way around; it worked out well enough.

They were polite when their paths crossed, offered nervous, awkward smiles, but they really didn’t talk a lot.

Alex was surprised to note, though, that Elijah didn’t shy away from touching John at all–he was even more surprised to find that he himself just… didn’t mind. The first time the man had clasped his husband’s shoulder in a friendly greeting, he had already prepared himself for a fierce stroke of possessiveness, or perhaps offense on John’s behalf, but nothing had happened.

John wasn’t uncomfortable around him, so Alex’s instincts to protect and defend weren’t triggered even a little bit.

He didn’t know how John did it–how he could just move past something like that, something Alex would have seen as a huge breach of trust; if someone, anyone, were to kiss him without his consent, without offering him the basic decency to ask first, he didn’t think he could ever find it within himself to forgive them.

Perhaps it was because John had actually kissed the man before, and he didn’t mind it as much when it was someone he had a past with? Someone he had trusted like that at one point?

Or maybe it was just a kiss to John at the end of the day. A non-consensual kiss, but… John had kissed other people before Alex.

Alex hadn’t really kissed anyone before John, sparing the occasional peck with a couple girls back at home.

John had been his first real kiss. He would never tell him about this line of thought because it had reached lethal levels of sappiness, but Alex supposed he liked the idea of his husband being the only person he had ever really kissed. It was… kind of romantic, in a way?

He shook himself.

To think he usually was the one to call John sappy. And yet, there he was, contemplating the overall romanticism of his first kiss having been his husband like a little girl daydreaming to herself.

Ugh. Anyway.

John was comfortable around Elijah, so Alex found himself unbothered by the continued shows of affection.

It was the way he looked at him now, he thought. Before, there had always been a certain level of desire, an underlying attraction that would have been mistaken for fondness by anyone unsuspecting, but Alex had seen the intentions behind that smoldering gaze from the very beginning.

Now, though, all of that was gone. Elijah looked at John like he looked at the rest of his comrades, and he touched him like he touched the rest of his comrades; never lingering. Alex was satisfied with the knowledge that he respected both his husband and their relationship enough to adjust his behaviour like that.

Besides, he couldn’t deny John and Elijah worked as friends. Their senses of humour were similar enough, and their personalities played off each other quite well.

John... laughed a lot. He always did, but- he could admit that his smile came a bit quicker than usual these days.

And, well–as long as he was happy, Alex was as well.

The office was empty by the time Alex finished everything he had wanted to get done that day, and he still had a few minutes before he needed to get going, so he took the opportunity to clean up a bit around the room.

Well, around the room was perhaps overstating it; he mostly sorted through the documents on his father’s desk and organised them into stacks of requests, responses, lists, Congress, and private.

His father tended to just shove everything into the same goddamn pile at the end of the day, and it drove Alex insane.

A timid knock on the still wide open door had him snap his head up, the much repeated line of Yes, I’m allowed to go through these documents, I wrote most of them on the tip of his tongue, but the words stuck in his throat when his eyes met those of Colonel Elijah Brown.

“Alexander,” he greeted with a slight nod and stepped into the room, an unmistakable tension to his shoulders as he carefully closed the door behind himself.

Alex blinked, gobsmacked that the man would actively seek him out. He had been fairly certain their silent agreement had an unspoken clause against that somewhere in there.

He cleared his throat and ripped his gaze away, scanned the last of the papers in his hand, and sorted them into their corresponding stacks.

The last one he put on private was from Jacky–his eyes lingered for a moment, and he gathered just enough to conclude that he was fixing to visit them sometime after their mother had departed again.

He forced the oncoming smile from his features; there was someone else in the room with him now, he reminded himself, and he could squeal about finally getting to see his brother again later.

“Elijah,” he responded after an awkwardly long stretch of silence and gave the man his full attention. “Is everything alright?”

Alex regretted the words as soon as they'd left his mouth. Why was his immediate reaction to Brown wanting to talk to him to assume something was wrong?

“Oh, uh, splendid. Everything’s just- splendid,” he said and turned away from him, pulling a grimace he’d probably not meant for him to see.

Alex related very much.

"Um, great. What can I help you with?" he tried again and straightened from where he had been bent over the desk, rounded it, and perched himself on the edge.

Elijah watched with skeptically raised brows, and the realisation that he’d just sat on his superior’s desk like he owned the place struck him rather belatedly.

Ah, well. Moving now would seem weird, too; Alex stayed put.

"I just- I suppose I wanted to apologise. To you," he said, fidgeting with his golden cufflinks, eyes on the floor.

...huh?

"Why would you feel the need to apologise to me?" he said, brow furrowed.

"Well, I, uh-" he stuttered, lowering his hands back to his sides and curling his fingers into fists. A tense moment passed before his eyes found their way back to Alex's face, and only then did he continue, "I was just thinking about it, and… it couldn't have been much fun to watch me try to seduce your lover, and while I of course mainly wronged John." He paused and crossed his arms, fingers twisting into the fabric at the crook of his elbows now. "And I mean, I really wronged him, but I also wronged you to some extent. I mean, if this was like a- a real marriage, I suppose, you would have grounds to shoot me. In theory. I guess.”

He cut his eyes away again and drew his arms tighter around himself; Alex let his gaze drift as well, the sudden queasiness in the pit of his stomach compelling him to redirect his attention to his father's cluttered desktop.

While he was pleasantly surprised Elijah acknowledged that flirting with someone’s husband right in front of that someone might not have been the most polite thing to do, he also kind of wished he hadn’t come in just to tell him that.

He took to absentmindedly twisting his ring around his finger, and that just steered his mind towards the part of Elijah's little monologue he was trying his darndest not to acknowledge.

If this was like a real marriage.

Alex thought it was very real. They had done the engagement, the ceremony, the vows, the consummation, the- the ring-

He swallowed before the lump could form in his throat.

It was real. Elijah didn’t know what he was talking about, anyway, he was just stammering his way through a well meant but poorly executed apology as Alex himself had done a few days ago.

They were even now, he would say.

“I did think about that,” he said, and Elijah looked back up, confused. “Shooting you, I mean.” Alex flashed a quick, too small smile just to make sure Elijah would take it as the joke it was intended as, and hopped off the desk.

It was about time he left.

He received a careful smile back, and- oh, the fucker had dimples, what the fuck-

Alright, enough of that. They were friends now. Friends.

“I thought your preferred method was stabbing?" he said, an amused glint in his eyes; it startled a quiet laugh from Alex.

He couldn't deny he quite enjoyed the guy's sense of humour, now that he actually listened to the words he said instead of ridiculing them to himself.

"But… I can’t blame you for that, to be honest. I- uh, I was being kind of oblivious in places, and I can imagine that would have been very infuriating,” he said, shifting on the spot as he uncrossed his arms and slid his hands into his pockets instead.

That almost made him look at ease, Alex thought, the faintest of smiles tugging on the corner of his mouth. 

His earnest awkwardness had something endearing to it; and Alex very nearly hated that Elijah could bumble his way through a conversation and still seem likeable at the end of it. Meanwhile, Alex wasn’t allowed a single wrong syllable, or someone would take the opening to rip him to pieces, either to his face or behind his back.

There was no charm in Alex’s general awkwardness, and that just really wasn’t fair.

“Oblivious?” he asked, his interest piqued.

“Ah,” he breathed and ducked his head, a pinkish flush to his cheeks. “The lovebite. I really should have put two and two together, then.”

Oh.

Warmth spread across his face and seeped up into the tips of his ears.

Alex cleared his throat, remembering quite suddenly that he had meant to leave.

“That… yeah. That was meant as a back off. Didn’t really work all that well,” he said, and Elijah let out a strained chuckle. Before he could respond, Alex went on, “In any case, thank you for the apology, but I have to go. Duty calls.”

Well, duty. It was more that he was afraid John would never forgive him if he was late and left him alone with both his parents for any amount of time.

“Of course, I don’t mean to keep you,” he said. His posture straightened, shoulders squared and stance sure–remarkable, how he could flip between that confident persona and the bumbling mess he’d just been. 

There was a beat of silence as Alex went over to his own desk, double-checking if he had closed the inkwell before he left for the night, and when he turned back around to Elijah, his expression had changed. Softened; and the small smile on his lips was genuine.

“Congrats, by the way. I don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve said your vows, but I thought- well, you probably didn’t get a lot of well-wishes, so: congratulations. I can see how happy you make each other.”

Alex stood there, frozen, mouth agape like an idiot.

Absolutely no one had congratulated them; not his father, especially not his mother, and- well, that was everyone who knew.

“Thank you,” he choked and blinked a few times to clear his misty vision. Alex would not burst into tears in front of Elijah Brown, of all people.

The man nodded once and turned to leave, but stopped just as he reached the door and glanced back at Alex over his shoulder.

“Take care of him,” he said and didn’t even wait for Alex’s quiet of course to ring out before he pulled the door open and was gone.

Alex stared at the spot he had disappeared from, an uncomfortable jumble of emotions knotting his chest. He was overly aware that he needed to get a move on, but also felt inexplicably raw.

How was he supposed to go and spend a–hopefully–nice evening with his parents and John now, when his throat was tight enough it hurt and his heart was seemingly beating sideways?

He took a deep breath and tried his best to shake himself out of that headspace–his parents were waiting for him, and John would probably banish him to the second bed if he left him alone with them for longer than ten seconds at most.

Alex scrubbed a hand down his face, pulled himself together, and left the office behind.

“Thank God, you’re here,” was John’s greeting when Alex slid to a stop in the corridor outside the sitting room. No one ever really used it, especially not at night, and they thought it would make for a more comfortable experience than cramming themselves into either of their rooms, laid out for two people each.

He’d run back to their own lodgings first to rid himself of the outer layers of his uniform, not keen to spend the rest of the rather warm evening in his coat and waistcoat, and then he had hurried there, hoping John had had the good sense to wait for him outside.

Alex took a moment to catch his breath. “Good, you waited,” he said, still a little wheezy.

“Of course I waited! They would have ripped me to shreds!” he said in an almost comical kind of stage-whisper and made an emphatic gesture at the closed door.

Alex rolled his eyes, glanced behind himself, then behind John to check if they were truly alone, and took both of his husband’s hands in his own.

“It’ll be fine, John. Don’t worry yourself too much. My father loves you, and so will my mother, trust me,” he said with a reassuring smile, gently rubbing John’s knuckles.

It was almost amusing how the tables had turned–Alex as the level-headed and calm one talking his lover down from a ledge of his own making was not something they had often.

John stared down at their hands and let out a long breath; it carried some of the tension from his shoulders with it, and he relaxed just a fraction.

“Sorry, I- I’m nervous. It took months for the General to warm up to me, and we don’t exactly have that kind of time here, and- and if she decides she doesn’t like me after all, it’ll put a strain on your relationship, and I don’t want that-”

“John,” he interrupted gently, and his eyes blinked back up to his face. “Everything will be alright, I promise, my love. It’ll go well. We’ll be just fine.”

He swallowed thickly and squeezed Alex’s hands. “Yes. Alright. It’ll be fine.”

“Exactly,” he said and leaned in to softly kiss John’s lips. When he pulled away, they stretched into a smile, and Alex smiled back.

Just getting to see him settled whatever Elijah had stirred up within him again.

He would have to tell John all about it later–after a hopefully successful evening of slowly introducing his husband to his mother, but for real this time. No threats, no snide remarks, no arguments. Just Alex, his parents, and his husband, attempting to puzzle themselves into a proper family.

“Deep breaths,” he said, which prompted a quiet chuckle from John; Alex would take it, even if he didn’t sound entirely at ease.

He knocked, more to announce their presence than to ask for entry, and pushed the door open, pulling John into the room by their linked hands.

Chapter Text

The lock set with a barely audible click that somehow still managed to be deafening, and the four of them were alone for the first time in months.

His parents were seated on one of the two sofas, placed opposite each other in front of the fireplace, a polished, dark table in the middle that barely came up to their knees. His father’s arm was curled around his mother’s shoulders as they conversed lowly, an easy display of affection that put Alex in a mind of home, where they never held back with the casual touches and tender looks exchanged.

Alex dragged John across the room and situated them on the unoccupied sofa, never letting go of his hand–Pa offered them a small but genuine smile, while Ma’s was more forced. Not because she didn’t want this to happen, no; she was nervous, and Alex bit back a laugh and squeezed John’s hand when he noticed her discreetly fidget with her wedding ring, twisting it around her finger.

He wondered how often she had done that in his presence before, and how often he had missed it. Perhaps he only noticed it now because he tended to do the exact same thing.

“So, I see you’ve finally decided to join us,” his father said, an amused quirk to his lips, and Alex huffed in response.

“We’re not that late. This is a fashionably late arrival, at most,” he said and scooted a bit closer to John to rest his head on his shoulder. The firm muscle stiffened under his cheek, and Alex administered another soft squeeze to his hand, communicating to him that everything was just fine without saying the words.

His mother looked… unsure, but not repulsed or disapproving. Alex was glad–he knew he was being very forward, and he would have held back with the shows of affection a bit, usually, but the day had been long and exhausting, and he had missed his husband.

Besides, putting on an unnatural act for her sake wouldn’t help, either. 

That wasn’t the purpose of this exercise.

“So,” Ma began suddenly and cleared her throat, let her gaze flicker first to Pa, who watched her with brows raised in interest, then to Alex, and finally to John. “I hear the two of you have recently resolved quite a… situation?”

Alex couldn’t help but snort at her uncharacteristic awkwardness, and his father turned his eyes skyward, expressing ‘good God’ in a way that wouldn’t get him elbowed in the ribs.

“Quite a situation,” John agreed, his back ramrod straight, the hand clawing into Alex’s clammy and white-knuckled. “Um. Yes. But we have indeed… resolved it.”

Lord have mercy, Alex had witnessed more natural conversations between two people who didn’t share a language between them.

He turned beseeching eyes to his father, who returned his gaze with nothing but disbelief and a helpless raise of his shoulders. What, did he think he could just sit there and pretend he wasn’t involved? No, Alex would expire from sheer secondhand embarrassment if they let them keep going like this.

He made his eyes go wide and pleading, pushed his lower lip out into a tiny pout, and ever so slightly cocked his head to indicate whatever the hell was currently transpiring between his mother and husband–Pa’s shoulders slumped, and he closed his eyes for a moment, presumably to brace himself.

Alex leaned back, suppressing a grin and gently sweeping his thumb over John’s almost bloodless knuckles. There hadn’t ever been a situation in which Pa had been able to withstand the kicked puppydog eyes, as Jack liked to affectionately call them.

“And I was both pleased and proud to see that no harm befell Colonel Brown in the resolution of your situation,” Pa said, a tiny, teasing grin tugging on the corners of his mouth, and Alex rolled his eyes even though he knew he was right.

That drew a genuine if a little strained chuckle from John, and the quiet panic in his eyes subsided somewhat. Even Ma huffed a short laugh, and she leaned a bit into Pa, as if she’d only now remembered he was there, but found comfort in his presence.

“Well, Alex did give him a bit of a fright, but I’m glad to say he kept his murder-fantasies just that–fantasy,” John said and turned to face him. Alex puffed out his cheeks and glowered, but didn’t attempt to explain or even defend himself; his husband was right, and he deserved a bit of good-natured teasing after all the problems he had unwittingly caused for all of them.

His silent acceptance didn’t mean he had to like it, though. So, he reciprocated John’s adoring look with a halfhearted glare, which of course did nothing to perturb him.

Alex only dropped his offended act when John gently gripped him by the jaw and breathed the softest of kisses to his lips.

“You’re cute when you pout,” he mumbled to him as he pulled away, and that smile had Alex just absolutely besotted.

“Boys, for Christ’s sake, my old heart can’t take this much sap anymore. Please refrain from these disgusting displays of affection until you’re out of my line of sight.” His father’s voice burst their little bubble, and both John and Alex quite suddenly remembered that his parents were very much in the room with them.

They turned back around, embarrassment colouring their cheeks, and were presented with Pa’s playfully disgruntled and Ma’s by all accounts a bit surprised gaze.

“Sorry, Sir, Ma’am- I forgot myself,” John said, but even his apologetic smiles shone brighter than the sun itself, and Alex couldn’t imagine that his mother had it in her to hold a grudge in the face of such unrestrained friendliness. His husband finally detangled their fingers and wrapped an arm around his shoulders instead, pulling him as close as he dared, perhaps encouraged by Pa’s nonjudgemental presence or the absence of any negative inclination in his mother’s expression.

“Yes, you tend to do that,” Pa agreed and arched a single brow, and John could do little more than shrug with a sheepish grin. “He always does that, distracts Alex like the little scoundrel he is,” he went on, now speaking to Ma as if neither John nor Alex were within earshot, and Alex shook his head, fond, and kissed John’s cheek. “and then pretends like he’s innocence personified.”

Ma chuckled and grasped Pa’s hand in both of hers, dark eyes squinted in a private smile. They looked at each other like they were the only people in the world, and Alex had a sudden and startling moment of clarity when he realised that this was what his father had to put up with daily from John and him.

Alex wasn’t sure if he liked staring into this mirror very much.

“For some reason, I can imagine that very well, dear,” she responded and cut her gaze away, watched her own hands give a gentle squeeze to the one between them. “But… I can’t say I’m too bothered.”

A moment of bone-crushing, heavy silence passed between the four of them.

Pa froze before a slow smile spread over his features and replaced the dumbfounded expression.

Alex thought he could hear the iron cage of worry around John’s heart creak open and drop away, and he himself found he could breathe easier as well. Of course he had known she wanted to try for his sake, Lord, only a few days had passed since she had looked him in the eyes and told him all she wanted was for him to be happy, and that she would be there no matter what-

But her offering her acceptance and support like this was something entirely different.

“I’m glad, my love,” Pa said, his words quiet and just for her, eyes brimming with affection, before he leaned back and continued with a glance in their direction, “But I am. Get your hands off my son, Laurens.”

There’d been a time in their lives when John would have scrambled to obey immediately, when he would have flinched away as if burned, hoping the instant compliance would dampen his father’s scorn a bit.

Those times were long past, and the only reaction John managed to muster up now was to pull him a little closer and press a kiss to his hair.

“Need I remind you that he’s my husband, Sir? The only person who gets to decide if and when I’m allowed to touch him is Alex,” he replied, and Alex snickered at his father’s resigned look. Even Ma had to bite back a smile, he noted, a warm, fuzzy feeling spreading around his ribcage.

“Hmm, I wonder which idiot gave you his blessing,” he said, and now Ma couldn’t help it; her smile broke free, and she shook her head fondly.

“You did, dear,” she said, and Pa heaved a long-suffering sigh.

“So I did.”

“But so did I, if I recall correctly.” 

They shared a look Alex couldn’t hope to decipher. A sort of silent communication only long married couples could achieve–God, he couldn’t wait to get there himself.

“I seem to remember that as well. Remind me, love, why did we do that again?” he said and glanced at them, obviously teasing, and Alex rolled his eyes.

Ma huffed a gentle laugh, her demeanour softening further.

“Because they’re in love,” she said and turned to face them. “It’s clear as day.”

Oh.

Alex swallowed around his tight throat and burrowed deeper into John’s embrace, overwhelmed with just how lucky he was to have a family after- after everything. That he had parents who loved him fiercely and unconditionally, who supported him in his choice of partner, unconventional as it was, and that he had his wonderful husband, who would be with him through thick and thin and everything in between.

John looked stricken when he glanced up at him, as if the realisation that he had a family and would always have one had knocked him off his feet.

He couldn’t blame him–Alex knew just how much he’d longed for a real family, even if he tried his darndest to conceal that deep-seated ache from him, and he was just over the moon that he could offer his own to John. Finally, after all the anxiety and stress, he had been properly and truly accepted into their family.

“Thank you, Ma,” he croaked past the tears welling in his eyes.

Ma smiled, open and honest, and so did Pa; the conversation moved on after that, but the all encompassing warmth sparked by that exchange stayed with him well into the night.

“He actually came to see you?” John said, something like disbelief colouring his voice. He finished unbuttoning his shirt and let it slip from his shoulders, then dropped down to sit on the bed with an endearing little bounce.

“He did,” Alex said, still a little gobsmacked by that conversation hours after it had ended. “You didn’t know he would do that, then? He didn’t mention anything?”

“No… no, he did not,” he replied, frowning to himself. John gave a half-shrug and undid his queue, raking his fingers along his scalp and making his curls fall open around his shoulders.

Alex didn’t even attempt not to stare–that was his husband, he was allowed.

“Well, what did he want? I’m sure he didn’t seek you out just for the hell of it, Eli is rather… awkward about you, to be honest.”

And Alex was rather awkward about Elijah, so he was almost glad to hear that.

“He- well,” he began but broke off and swallowed. It was almost overwhelming to think that despite their rough start, they had arrived at a point where Elijah could congratulate him for marrying the man he’d once had–and presumably still had to some degree–feelings for.

“He came to apologise to me,” he said and pulled the ribbon from his hair as well, then made his way over to John, and straddled his lap without another word.

John’s eyebrows shot up his forehead.

“Apologise?” he echoed, hands automatically settling on his hips to steady him. “Well, that’s- I mean, that’s pretty big of him.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is.” Alex planted one hand on John’s chest, palm right over his heart, fingers pressing soft caresses into the skin; his other arm, he curled around his husband’s nape. “And that wasn’t the end of it.”

John cocked his head to the side and thumbed gentle circles into the skin just over his hip, silently encouraging him to go on.

“He also congratulated us. For our union. He said he could see how happy we make each other.”

John blinked back at him, speechless.

“Eli isn’t a bad guy,” was all he said after several beats of silence, his voice quiet. Alex cracked a small smile and did his best not to interpret anything into the way John’s eyes clouded over as he contemplated what he’d told him.

“No, he isn’t,” he agreed, and that snapped John out of his stupor, stunning hazel eyes shining like miniature stars once more. Alex leaned in and kissed him, soft and with as much love as he could possibly channel into something as simple as a press of lips. The steady thump thump of the heartbeat under his palm stuttered, and God, he was lucky, so lucky, the luckiest fool on the face of the earth for being loved so deeply and being able to love just as honestly in return.

“He also told me to take good care of you,” he mumbled against those lips and felt them stretch into a smile.

“Yeah?”

“Mhh. And I intend to do so right now by declaring it time to go to sleep,” he said and playfully shoved John down to the bed, chuckling along with his delighted laughter. 

“To think I get to see the day Alexander Hamilton is the one who is pushing me to go to bed-”

“Oh, shut it,” he chortled and dipped down to seal his lips with another kiss.

“That will always get me to shut up, darling,” he said once they separated and softly trailed his fingers along his cheek. Alex relaxed into the tender touch, only for it to disappear the next second, and then two strong arms grabbed him around the waist-

In the blink of an eye, he found himself flat on his back with his husband above him, grinning down at him like the cat who got the cream. Alex blew out a breath and tried to muster up a glare, but broke out into hiccuping giggles instead.

“I love you,” he said and slid his hands into the unrestrained locks of his husband’s hair, gently urging him down so he could kiss him.

“I love you, too, darling,” he said and pushed himself back up to blow out the candle, plunging the room into complete darkness for a few moments before Alex’s blinking eyes adjusted to the mellow light of the moon spilling into the room.

Still, he couldn’t see much. He just so made out the outline of John as he lay down beside him, gently pulling him close until Alex’s back was pressed flush to his front, John’s nose buried in his hair.

“It’s been a long, very eventful day. Time to sleep, dearest,” he mumbled and kissed the spot behind his ear.

Alex wiggled around and turned in his arms so that they were face to face, not that they could see much of each other.

“To a lifetime more of long, very eventful days,” he whispered into the darkness, and John snorted and pressed closer, leaned their foreheads together.

“Can we please aim for a lifetime of long, uneventful days? I’m only twenty-three and I feel like I’ve lived through too many events already.”

“Fine,” Alex said with a soft smile, lost to the darkness. “No more events. We can just retire to the countryside straight away and bake bread together.”

“Oh, that’s something I can get behind,” he said. One heavy, warm hand found the side of his neck, and his thumb swept back and forth over his pulsepoint, repetitive and soothing.

Alex let his eyes slip closed and slowly succumbed to his exhaustion, wrapped up in the safety and warmth of his husband.

He drifted in and out of sleep for what felt to him like only a few seconds, but were most likely several minutes.

“Darling,” John said, loud enough it pierced the fog but not to wake him had he already been asleep. He hummed in response to signal he was listening. “I- your mother approved of us.”

Alex struggled to crack his eyes open and peered back at the dark form that was John. His voice had a fragile quality to it, something emotional, and he thought he understood.

“She did,” he mumbled and shifted closer. “I hope you know that means there’s no escape anymore. You’re part of us now.”

John drew a wet breath, almost a sniffle. He had felt adrift for a while now, Alex could tell; John’s father had never been truly family to him, and while getting rid of him had been like prying his foot free from a beartrap, it had still been a blow, to some extent.

He hadn’t only ‘lost’ Henry Laurens, he had also lost his siblings, and Alex knew from his own experience just how hard that was to bounce back from.

This, being accepted by his parents, would help John a bit, he hoped.

Of course John and Alex were each other’s family first and foremost, but they- they were also young. To have someone to fall back on, someone who cared, was invaluable, especially in times like this.

And Alex was so glad he was able to share that with him, at last.

“You’ll always have a place where you belong, my love. I promise,” he said, and John huffed a wet laugh–a sound not of sadness, but joy, and he scooted closer until he could bury his face against Alex’s neck, his arms wrapped around his back, holding on.

“Thank you, Alex. I love you,” he whispered into his skin, and Alex smiled to himself and pressed a last kiss to his hair.

“I love you, too, John.”

They relaxed into each other’s embrace and slowly but surely let sleep claim them–a long, eventful day behind, and many more ahead.