Chapter Text
After nine weeks of watching and live-tweeting the latest season of Chef’s Cabinet to his impressive online following, Hamilton has his pregame ritual down to an art.
Four shots of store-brand tequila, the kind that smells like hand sanitizer and doesn’t taste much better. Then half a burrito from the dingy store on the corner, so the first round of liquor can do its work unimpeded and the rest that he throws on top of it releases more slowly. The other burrito half he saves to soak up his hangover, even though the cheap meat, already rubbery, feels like chewing on a tire when he reheats it in the microwave the next morning.
(He smirks at the thought. If he has to eat cheap trash, at least he can make out that it’s some sort of rebellion. That it’s ironic. The guy who makes your haute cuisine subsists on rehydrated meat and cheese sprayed out of a can.)
Then, dinner eaten, Hamilton grabs the first of several beers from his cooler box to keep his buzz going, at which point it's quarter to and therefore time to fire up his Twitter.
The hordes are already assembling, waiting for him to kick off the evening's festivities.
The fucking final! he types. Who lost money betting that I wouldn’t make it this far?
His arrival online sparks off a frenzied avalanche of retweets and snarky replies, giving him a few minutes to sink back into the couch and stare up at the ceiling.
Hamilton sighs. He could do with a cigarette, but his security deposit is already looking fucking precarious from the hole-shaped, ah, impression that he and Hercules accidentally put in the wall after one too many edibles. Besides, he has some standards for his living space. If he really needed a smoke before the episode starts, he could run down the eight flights to the back alley—because this shithole’s elevator is always broken down—but it’s too fucking cold, and he doesn’t want to risk getting mugged. Not that there’s much to mug him over other than pocket change and a half-smoked carton of Camels.
Besides, there are promos running for the episode, and watching himself on screen, Narcissus-like, is a rare excuse for vanity. It’s the last episode, so he needs to savour it before he loses it forever.
He sighs again. Studies the water stain on the ceiling, wondering if it’s really getting bigger or if that’s just the blurry vision talking.
Hamilton hasn’t been able to plan a lot in his life—not for lack of fucking trying, that’s for sure—but of all the talents he could have chosen, the last one he would have picked is this godforsaken cooking skill.
It’s undeniable that he has a knack for it. More than a knack. Like a virtuoso musician with perfect pitch, his palate can pick out and assess the subtlest flavour notes. It always has, well before he’d ever heard of umami or the Maillard reaction. Even when he was a little kid, spoon raised to his lips to taste, he always knew what a dish needed: chives, achiote, cilantro, oregano brujo, recao. His mom would laugh and agree, and—
There’s just something indescribable that happens between his brain and his hands when he picks up a knife and transforms a pile of unimpressive ingredients into a transcendent meal. Half the time he doesn’t even know how he does it. It’s instinct, not tradition or schooling, but it fucking works.
Pity that it’s so damn hard to make a living cooking professionally—all the more if you’re just some scrappy brown kid with a community college culinary certificate and people won’t give you the hour it would take to prove their first sneering impression of you wrong.
But because he’s scrappy and stubborn, Hamilton scrapes by, makes enough to afford a shoebox apartment in New York because that’s where the game-changing culinary opportunities are. (Where else would he go, anyway? It was as far as the ticket could take him.)
He applied to Chef’s Cabinet on a whim; the auditions happened to come up when he was between jobs—he’s more between than on, these days, so that was no fucking surprise—and he submitted his audition reel to get Hercules off his damn back about it. And—again, like every time he’s actually managed to get his food in front of someone—he blew them away.
Got in.
Got all the way to the fucking final.
He checks the time. Ten minutes to the start of the episode. And then just one more hour until the news of his fate is out there.
He's going to miss this weekly ritual. Pretty much the only thing he can count on, these days. He’ll tackle the pit in his stomach when he’s sober again. He’s let it sit long enough.
Oh!
There's one new part to his ritual, since it’s a special night. Hamilton hauls himself back onto his feet, takes five steps straight across to the kitchenette at the other end of his tiny shithole apartment, and opens up the little white cardboard box he left on the counter. He pulls out the single cupcake he bought from the back of the supermarket (yesterday's batch, so it was half price) and carries it back over to the couch.
If he'd thought about it, he could've iced some sort of cryptic message on it—and for a few moments he actually considers whether he had anything that could serve as a makeshift piping bag. But he definitely doesn't have icing sugar, nor the fucking patience or sobriety right now to whip up some buttercream. Oh well.
Hamilton snaps a photo of it and creates a Twitter poll— Celebration or consolation? —and lets the digital mob do its thing.
That gives him another few minutes to chug beer and reflect. Mope. Whatever.
He wonders what the other contestants are doing now; whether they've been sucked into his little on-screen psychodrama, or if they stopped caring about the show at the point they were eliminated. His fellow finalist, Burr, is definitely tuned in. Lee, that greasy fucking weasel who could barely peel a potato, is probably watching out of spite, hoping to see Hamilton lose. Eliza has likely tuned in for the opposite reason, though he bets she's too busy with her cookbook deal to really care about the outcome.
Laurens must have long since drowned his sorrows in daddy's money and top-shelf booze and forgotten all about it—and him. Hamilton should've called him at some point in the last three months. Seen if there really was anything real between them amid the backstage embers.
Oh well. Another opportunity lost. Add that to the pile.
When he checks the poll, he already has a few thousand votes, fairly evenly split with a small trend towards victory.
Ironic, really. Even though these are his fans, only half of them have any faith. Not that he can really complain about them not being justified.
He scrolls through the replies, retweets some of the funnier ones, answers a few questions. The screen is getting a little blurry. Three minutes to episode start. Perfect timing.
Hamilton cracks open another beer.
If he hadn’t devoted his life to becoming— trying to become—a successful chef, he could probably have made a fortune as a professional Twitter troll. Extorted money from people to avoid coming after them. Maybe he can find a way to reappropriate his audience into some sort of deal—
Later. He has a show to live-tweet, and anyway he’s too buzzed to plan his future right now.
Future? Ha.
Losers don’t get a future.
All they get is tomorrow—another miserable, defeating day to crawl through, another day wasted scraping together food and rent money, another day where he surrenders dignity for survival. It’s just so fucking relentless. He’s worked so hard. He deserved this break—infinitely more than fucking Burr, some trust fund kid with no style, substance, or anything worth half a shit to offer the world.
At what point are you just unlucky, he has often wondered—and when is it reasonable to start thinking you’ve been cursed? To a life of dollar-store booze and mystery-meat burritos and anger there’s no way for him to channel. To waste his luminous talents on bullshit corporate catering.
Cursed to insignificance.
At least this time Hamilton knows it’s not his fault that his life has been irreparably fucked yet again. He can blame this misfortune on Thomas fucking Jefferson.
Right on schedule, the pre-show promo plays. It’s the usual overdramatic music and quick cuts, then, just as he suspected, in a dramatic drawn-out reveal, the focus shifts to Jefferson: the tie-breaking guest judge brought in special for the final. His accolades flash up on screen—the Cordon Bleu schooling, the stars, the sponsorship deals, the first black chef to—
Hamilton drowns it out with the sound of beer fizzing down his throat.
His eyes flick to the phone screen, to the show’s tag. One by one, the messages flood in. His followers are just as surprised and impressed as he was.
He envies them. Hopes they never have to meet their heroes.
Hamilton has made a point to keep the judges out of his Twitter storm, knows they were just doing their jobs to the best of their ability, but if Jefferson thinks he's going to escape it, he has another thing coming.
Enjoy the metric fuckton of shit heading your way, Hamilton thinks. Hurricane Alexander is coming.
---
The showrunners don’t tell them who the weekly guest judge is ahead of time. Something about more realistic reactions—they must mean from him specifically, because Hamilton’s pretty sure Burr wouldn’t react with more than a microscopic twitch of an eyebrow if his toque blanche caught fire. The judge thing, like most information, is kept tightly under wraps—but this one feels different somehow. More secretive.
Hamilton half-suspects they’re going to pull some kind of stunt, get some or all of the eliminated competitors to come back and judge blindly or something. But he gets no indication either way until he and Burr are placed neatly on their marks across from the two regular host-judges, Knox and Conway. The cameras are rolling.
“Chefs,” Conway begins, and Hamilton swears an indignant sneer surfaces on his gaunt face when his eyes slide over from Burr to him. “Over the past nine weeks, you’ve been through unnumerable—”
“— in numerable,” Hamilton interjects.
Conway stops his little monologue, fixes Hamilton with as much of an irritated look as he can manage given all the Botox freezing his face in place. Knox snickers, her sharply-drawn eyebrow twitching up. Not for the first time, Hamilton is glad that at least one of the judges is on his side. And, yeah, to be fair, Conway has occasionally had a moment of humility where he sides with Hamilton too—but, fuck, he’s a fucking short-sighted, biased prick most of the time. Like now.
“What?” Conway snaps at him.
“The word’s innumerable. You said unnumerable.”
“I think I have sufficient grasp on the English language to know what the word is,” he retorts haughtily, scowling, and Hamilton shrugs.
“Hope it’s better than your grasp on Mexican seasoning,” Knox stage-whispers, and Conway’s irritated glare slides to her.
“Can we take it from the top?” Conway asks the director, who sighs begrudgingly, shoots Hamilton another in a long line of reprimanding looks, then motions for the cameramen to start a new take. “Chefs,” Conway begins a second time, “Over the past nine weeks, you’ve been through innumerable...”
Oh, so now he fucking listens.
Hamilton shares a covert look with Knox, who pouts to tamp down her smile.
“...and now you have one last judge to impress if you want to be named the winner of this season of Chef’s Cabinet. You know what’s at stake—bragging rights, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in prize money, and the opportunity to join the cooking team at one of the top restaurants in the country,” Conway finishes the spiel.
Hamilton has heard some variation of this at least a dozen times by now. Still, it never fails to make his stomach tighten with eagerness. It’s life-changing. Maybe not for Burr, but for him—and he’s so close.
Knox speaks. “Chefs, it is my great pleasure to introduce a true American icon.” An irritatingly familiar pause for dramatic effect: probably a commercial break when the show airs. Hamilton rolls his eyes internally; he doesn’t want to interrupt Knox’s take by making it overt, but everyone they’ve had so far has been either overhyped or washed-out. They even had to stop one take and send a guest judge back to costuming because the, ah, powdered sugar on his collar would be distracting for the viewers.
“Our guest judge is a Le Cordon Bleu alum and award-winning cookbook author. Just seven years ago, he was the winner of the first season of Chef’s Cabinet —”
Wait, Hamilton’s mind supplies, sound cutting out for a second.
“—And he's the visionary chef behind the first black-owned restaurant to be awarded two Michelin stars.”
Wait, wait, wait, there’s no way, it couldn’t be —
“Please welcome the luminary behind Monticello Restaurant— Chef Thomas Jefferson.”
And on cue, out from the set entrance saunters the man himself.
Oh, shit, Hamilton thinks, and it must show pretty damn clearly on his face, because he sees the cameraman zoom in on him. It barely registers.
Jefferson smiles brightly at them and then the camera, his teeth veneer-white, greets Knox and Conway with handshakes and some familiar banter that Hamilton can’t quite pick up from the other side of the room before he turns to him and Burr. Hamilton wonders if he’s wiped the dumbfounded look off his face quite yet.
“You’ve heard of me,” he says, mouth twisting into a smirk. “I don’t think I need to introduce myself any further.”
No, he fucking doesn’t. Yeah, Hamilton knows him. What chef of color doesn’t? Certainly not one who’s a competitor on the show—a show with a history of unrelentingly white and male winners. Jefferson’s hot shit in the cooking world, has been since Hamilton first picked up a pan, one of those people you can genuinely call a pioneer for all the firsts he’s accumulated.
Whoever his booking agent is keeps the man damned busy beyond his restaurant: cookbook deals, TV appearances, high-profile catering—didn’t he cook for the president once?—charity events, his own damn line of tie-in products.
And that’s not even to mention everything outside food. He’s a goddamn tabloid darling. It’s impossible to escape his face in any checkout line: one cheap magazine after the other, plastered with paparazzi pictures of him with some model, actress, socialite. If the papers and gossip sites are to be believed, he’s never met a woman he hasn’t wanted to—
“Fuck,” Hamilton mutters, maybe more than a little in awe.
Beside him, even Burr seems a little stunned.
Jefferson crosses the room.
“Aaron Burr?” he asks, shaking his hand, drawl catching on the vowels.
“Yes, sir,” Burr says, almost painfully deferential. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“Mhm.” Jefferson’s smile curls up smugly before he turns to Hamilton. “And that makes you Alex Hamilton, doesn’t it?”
“One and only,” he says, taking a moment to find his voice.
Hamilton wipes his clammy hand surreptitiously on his thigh before he takes Jefferson’s outstretched hand and, okay, fuck, he never really quite prepared for the possibility that Jefferson is as impressive—as fucking attractive —in person as he is on TV, in every photo that’s taken of him, even the paparazzi candids. Surely he already went through makeup—those people work overtime trying to conceal Hamilton’s dark circles, bless them—but still.
And he’s fucking tall.
Taller than he expects, cutting an even more impressive figure in person, larger than life. Broad shouldered and fit, well-built forearms leading up to equally muscular biceps that disappear under his clothes: a purple dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, black suit pants, matching black jacket already folded over an arm even though he’s only just walked on set. Staged, Hamilton figures, but he doesn’t even care.
Holy fuck.
“Heard a lot about you both,” Jefferson says, and his eyes seem to linger a little longer on Hamiton, sweeping up and down. “Hope that you both came to impress.”
Which is such a stupid, canned thing to say—what, like they came this far to fuck up everything and and lose?—but he lets it slide because it’s Thomas fucking Jefferson. His idol for the better part of a decade! And, damn, Hamilton wants to impress him. Get that pristine eyebrow to twitch up. Curve the corner of his full lips into a smile—
Jefferson raises his brows when neither respond—Hamilton because he’s still struggling to find his brain, never mind his voice, and Burr because he’s fucking Burr and probably wouldn’t respond to a gunshot to the ribs. Except he also looks sort of shellshocked when Hamilton glances over—even if only to make sure he’s not about to be outshone. Jefferson waits another moment, then glances irritably over to the director.
“Cut,” the director calls, moving over to the camera. “I think we got the footage we needed.”
“Good, ‘cause I need to be out of here by six,” Jefferson responds, bright smile dropping off his face as he turns away. He impatiently checks his watch. “Let’s keep it moving. What’s next?”
“Back to your mark with Knox and Conway. You have to explain the challenge. Remember your lines?”
“Sure,” Jefferson says noncommittally, and he pulls a notecard out of his pants pocket as he walks back over the others, apparently not having memorized his lines at all.
“Did you know that he was the guest judge?” Burr hisses to him once he’s out of earshot.
“C’mon, Burr,” Hamilton says, shooting him a grin. “You really think I could keep my mouth shut about something like that?”
Burr offers him a tight-mouthed smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. There’s distance in them, a certain amount of mistrust.
Hamilton doesn’t blame him.
There’s two of them and only one winning spot. No walking out of here as friends—not after this challenge is done. One of them goes home with nothing, not even scraps.
For a second, Hamilton misses the earlier days of the competition, back before things got so damn serious. He’s never been super close with Burr, but at least the other man smiled a little more at his antics back then. And he always had Eliza and Laurens in his corner, back before Laurens stormed off the set in a monumental fit of rage and before Eliza—sweet, lovely, too-good-for-this-world Eliza—was eliminated.
“Take your places,” the director calls.
Fuck. One thing at a time.
“And… rolling!”
Jefferson looks at them both from across the room.
“You’ve already proven your capacity to cook a wide variety of cuisines, many of which were undoubtedly well outside of your comfort zones.”
No kidding. Hamilton never wants to fucking touch Greek food again.
“So, for this last challenge, we want something authentically you. No restrictions or limitations other than the two-hour time limit. We’re looking for your signature entree and a dessert—something that tells us who you are as a person and as a chef, about where you’ve come from, and where you’re going. Take your speciality and elevate it to a level that proves you are the best.”
That’s it? No limitations or restrictions? Just fucking go for it?
Hamilton’s face breaks out into a grin. Oh, he’s fucking got this. This is easy. Shit, he was prepared for the worst: to cook blindfolded, maybe, or with one hand tied behind his back, or to have to swap stations with Burr halfway through. This is nothing at all. He’s fucking got this.
“Cut!” the director calls. He turns to the judges. “Alright. We need you three for individual interviews. Mr. Jefferson, you first.” He glances at Hamilton and Burr. “The two of you need to be back on set in half an hour for pre-challenge interviews. That’s ten thirty. Got it?”
“Understood,” Burr says, polite as ever.
In turn, Hamilton waves a dismissive hand, already halfway to the emergency exit that opens onto the alley.
No time for pleasantries. He has a show-stopping meal to plan. And a long-overdue smoke break to take.
---
Hamilton almost drops his cigarette when the door opens, thinking it’s one of the underlings sent to come fetch him. Through trial and error, he’s done a good job of picking out somewhere low-traffic to smoke where he isn’t bothered by an endless revolving door of obnoxious production assistants and sound guys and fuck knows who else.
It means that his surroundings are a little—or a lot—dingier than the designated smoking areas, sure, but it’s his little brick alley of turf, his own private oasis. By now, everyone fucking knows not to bother him, and he’s pretty sure the crew draw straws to choose the victim whose turn it is to fetch him if he misses his time cue.
Yeah, smoking is a shit habit. Yes, he knows cigarettes are poison. But it’s not like he can afford classier drugs, and he needs something to ease the unbearably eager twitch in his fingers to get started.
But it seems they’re fetching him too early; he’s still churning through options for side dishes to go with with his pressure-cooker pernil, and wavering on whether he really should stake his hopes on his not-perfectly-reliable pumpkin flan for dessert. If the pumpkin’s properly ripe, if he has enough time to roast it...
So when the door swings open, and it’s Thomas Jefferson, he does a double take. Jefferson seems equally surprised to see him, but he recovers before Hamilton thinks he’s even wiped his dumb, starstruck look off his face. Realizing as much, he hastens to do so.
“You took the wrong turn to get to the parking lot,” Hamilton says, figuring Jefferson must have run out to get something from his car. He takes a drag from his cigarette: he can sympathize. The studio’s a fucking maze of half-built sets and entirely unhelpful signage.
There’s a split second before Jefferson smiles haughtily at him, a grin too practiced and polished to be authentic, eyes sweeping him up and down in a way that feels like being sized up.
“Hamilton,” he says, with a questioning note like he’s not quite sure he’s got the name right. There’s something about the way it hangs on his tongue, drawled out like honey, that makes the back of Hamilton’s neck flush. “Trying to get rid of me already?”
Hamilton’s mind takes a second to buffer. He laughs a moment later than he should, the nervous sound forced out from his tight throat. Was that flirting? On someone else, he’d call it flirting. But this is Thomas Jefferson, and—
Well, fuck, from what he knows of Jefferson, it very well could be. He flirts like it’s a goddamn Olympic sport. Hamilton has seen him labeled everything from a ladies’ man (on the gracious end of the spectrum) to a playboy, philanderer and womanizer. And, sure, that confirms where his interests lie, but doesn’t necessarily deny they could be broader.
Right?
And there’s the whole thing that Hamilton vividly remembers watching go down on Twitter a couple of months ago—a blurry picture of a disheveled Jefferson stepping outside his apartment building with another man in tow, what was debatably a hickey peeking out from below his shirt collar. Jefferson, of course, had ignored the rumors until they’d gathered steam, finally alluded to some excessively passionate woman, denied any allegations of anything with the man with a bit more vehemence than Hamilton had thought necessary at the time, but—
Maybe it makes sense. God, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do if he’s actually being flirted with. He’ll make a goddamn fool out of himself in front of someone he looked up to, and—
Fuck, one thing at a time.
“I haven’t known you long enough to want to get rid of you,” Hamilton answers, putting on a smile he’s not sure he really feels through his nerves. “But why would I want to?” he adds playfully, not sure what kind of response Jefferson is fishing for, trying to feel it out.
Jefferson’s smile takes on a conspiring note as he absently shrugs a shoulder. He pulls out his packet of cigarettes— shit, so he smokes too, huh?
Hamilton tries to figure out why he didn’t go to one of the marked smoking areas out front, why he followed him out back to this unfrequented little alley—then Jefferson pats his pocket for his lighter, irritation flashing on his face when he comes up empty. He gives up the search, takes out a cigarette and says, all wolfish grin, “Light?”
He is flirting, right? Surely he has to be. Even if he did somehow end up out here by accident, no one could be that cliche by accident. He hasn’t even checked all his pockets. Hamilton procures his own lighters, ignores his clammy palms. Fuck, his nerves are so damn shot that his hands are trembling. He doesn’t quite roll the striker yet, not wanting to give away how embarrassingly shaky he is.
“You know, I kind of thought you’d have a better line than that,” Hamilton says with one side of his mouth twisting up, trying to come up with something that can land both soundly as flirty and safely as joking. “What with how your, ah, reputation precedes you and all.”
Jefferson gives him a deeply questioning look.
“Beg your pardon?” he asks, impossibly Southern.
Hamilton blinks, laughs again, vaguely aware of the red flush creeping up his neck.
“What, should I ask you if you come here often?” He shrugs, realizes he’s probably coming on too strong, hastens to change the subject. He forces his hand steady and holds out his lighter, mouth twisting into a smile, jokes, “I didn’t take you for a smoker. Seems kind of, what, low class, don’t you think?”
Jefferson gives him another long, searching look—but then takes the offered lighter and lights his cigarette, exhaling a lungful of smoke.
“People at my level do far worse than smoke,” he says offhandedly, and when he returns the lighter, Hamilton swears that Jefferson’s hand stays over his a little longer than is socially acceptable.
“Guess it’s cheaper than coke,” Hamilton concurs, talking so fast he’s almost tripping over his tongue, talking through a cloud of white. “Pick your poison, or whatever it is they say.”
He rolls his cigarette between his fingers, using the smoky haze to get a good look at Jefferson without any risk of watching cameras. He drinks in the man’s pretty face: eyes, hair, fuck, his mouth. Fuck, he’s hot. What everyone says about him is right and more.
But he doesn’t want to get caught staring, so he looks away to the end of the alley that feeds out to the lot where he parks his shitty rented car. Another fucking expense he can’t really afford—he doesn’t know how anyone lives in LA, where there’s no goddamn public transport and everywhere takes two hours to get to besides.
Jefferson’s eyes flick up when he looks back, and, with the most certainty Hamilton has felt in anything all day, he’s convinced that Jefferson hasn’t been sizing him up, but checking him out.
Shit. He drags in a breath, too sharp, regretting that nicotine makes him talk a mile damn faster than he does already. It takes a conscious effort to slow himself down.
“So, have you liked what you’ve seen of me?” he asks, cockier than he feels. “I figure they tell you a little about us. And, I mean,” he goes on, “other things too.”
Jefferson hums to himself, not turning to look at Hamilton, eyes flicking over in a way that brings the word coy to mind.
“Think it’s best if I don’t share my thoughts right now.”
Jefferson’s already standing so damn close, into Hamilton’s personal space in a way that gives him the burst of confidence he needs to turn sideways, face him directly.
It’s not like he needs an extra advantage—he can cook circles around Burr, no under-the-table help required. It’s just that he’s not stupid, that he doesn’t ever turn up an opportunity to tick the dial a little more in his favour. And, fuck, Jefferson is so damn good looking that it’d be its own reward, because God knows that he’s pictured him more than once—
“What, so then maybe after the show?”
“Mm. My contract says that I should avoid, uh, fraternizing with the competitors.”
“Lucky that I’m not a competitor in a few hours then, huh? Besides, they must’ve been talking about Burr,” he jokes. “I like him fine, but Christ, his idea of a good time is watching paint dry.” He flashes the most charming smile he can muster. “I promise that I can be much more entertaining.”
Jefferson doesn’t return the smile, though his eyes slide towards Hamilton.
“I suggest you focus on being effective rather than entertaining today,” he says neutrally.
“I can be both,” he replies, smile easing towards something a little more salacious. “Besides, who says I was still talking about cooking?”
At last, Jefferson turns slowly to look at him, his expression mirroring the same faux innocence Hamilton has directed at someone else a hundred times before.
(And, later, when Hamilton realizes that he’s a fucking idiot, he realizes that this is the moment he should’ve caught on, bowed out before he really fucking wrecked himself.)
“I’m sorry?”
Hamilton takes one last drag from his cigarette, then flicks the rest of it onto the ground, takes a step to grind it out with his shoe that places him just into Jefferson’s personal space, flashes another smile.
“C’mon. You of all people should know what I mean.”
Jefferson stands his ground, but he leans away a little, his eyes narrowing with alarm and his mouth curling down with blatant distaste.
“For your sake, I am going to pretend that I don’t.”
And then in a moment of clarity that reframes the last two minutes of his life, it occurs to him that he’s spectacularly fucked this up. Misread every cue, whether out of nervousness or outright stupidity— shit, he thinks, and then his internal monologue is just a litany of swears as a red flush creeps higher up his neck. Oh god. He’s a fucking moron. He’s worse than a moron. He’s the stupidest goddamn man alive, and he’s just shot himself in both feet.
But he bounces back, bristles at the alarm in Jefferson’s eyes, deflects his own embarrassment.
“Right. Don’t ask, don’t tell,” he says, probably a little more accusatory than is prudent.
Jefferson just stares at him, speechless. Oh, Hamilton’s fucked this one up good. He wants to melt into the goddamn ground.
“I’m—shit, I’m sorry. God, please, forgot I ever opened my mouth,” he manages, eloquent words failing him, turning and making a beeline for the door.
Jefferson lets out a rough, derisive scoff as he retreats.
“They did warn us,” he mutters, but it’s loud enough that Hamilton knows he’s supposed to hear it.
The words stop him in his tracks. He stiffens. The smart half of his mind tells him to just lay himself and this entire conversation to rest six feet under—but the more reckless, less wise half wins out.
“About what?” he asks, voice growing cold, because he’s half-sure he already knows the answer.
Jefferson takes a drag. Regards him contemptuously through a cloud of smoke.
“Your lack of professionalism.”
Professionalism.
The word rings in his ears. Oh, he’s always fucking right, isn’t he? It’s a goddamn curse. What he wouldn’t fucking give to be wrong about this kind of thing just once.
Because, yeah, Hamilton knows all about what kind of professionalism the producers who talked to Jefferson want. He remembers one of them, some halfway-to-dead old fuck, approaching him after filming a few weeks ago, all slimy smiles that didn’t reach his eyes, suggesting that he take on a more impersonal tack with some of his competitors. Maybe that Laurens boy specifically—in the name of professionalism. That maybe he’d be better to cultivate an onscreen relationship with that sweet Eliza girl or another less controversial kind of competitor instead.
Which happened not at all coincidentally right after he and John spent the better part of their joint team-up challenge friendly, laughing, more touchy than absolutely necessary, a little too familiar for the camera, apparently. Too flirty. Too unprofessional. A fucking travesty for prime-time TV in the shareholders’ eyes.
“Be more professional? You mean be less of a queer?” Hamilton had asked the old prick in a moment of rage-induced righteousness, flashing his teeth in what had almost been a smile.
“Not what I said at all, son,” the bastard had replied, except they’d both known otherwise.
And now he’s here, having that same damn word thrown at him in the same context, learning that the producers have been fucking warning a judge about him, apparently.
Your lack of professionalism, Jefferson’s voice echoes.
Some fucking hero.
There’s a distinct note of humiliation that burns brightly in his chest, but he can twist it into something else. It’s better than running back inside with his tail tucked between his legs like some beaten dog, taking whatever blows rain down onto him.
Hamilton takes the embarrassment in his chest and transmutes it into something that makes him seethe, and he’s never been any damn good at doing that silently.
“Professionalism? Is that—what did you say—what people at your level say instead of calling me a slur?” Hamilton snaps. Fucking bigot. Fucking prick. It’s making sense, now, why Jefferson was so desperate not to possibly be interpreted as having fucked some random guy—some toxic fucking masculinity desire not to be seen like someone like him. “Fuck off,” Hamilton snaps, unthinking of the consequences as he storms inside and slams the door behind him.