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Exhaustion was a funny, funny thing.
This clear communication between the human body and its brain to indicate the desperate need to rest. Most times, the brain listened and slowly shut down, preventing the human body from acting further; by ordering the eyes to close themselves, by instructing the mouth to open in a yawn, as a general would command his troupes.
It was quite a beautiful alliance between body and mind, a harmonious agreement, and Alexander had always hated it.
Exhaustion was an unnerving, constricting concept that he was convinced had slowed the process of the war and that of the American triumph. The thought had even grown in his head that, perhaps, fatigue was British and that its only purpose had been to corrupt and defeat Alexander.
In short, it had become his worst enemy.
It restricted him from writing and working as he wanted and if coffee -the second dearest friend he had made in America- could help him overcome it for an instant, he would brutally receive a severe pain in the wrist and become officially unable to write further. The battle against sleep was one he always lost, one he always left in miserable retreat.
It was a cruel, cruel thing and Alexander was convinced he could not hate something as ardently as he now despised exhaustion.
But, as every human makes mistakes, Alexander now realized his, even if he dared not voice it aloud, for, this time, he desperately needed rest and his mind would not cooperate with his tired body. He had finally voluntarily surrendered to exhaustion and it had decided to torture him, in the spirit of revenge, most probably. It raced from thought to thought at an incredible pace even his heart had struggles to follow.
Yes, he had been wrong: his loathing for exhaustion was much deeper than he had assumed.
Perhaps the worst thing was that he hardly understood the motive of such torment.
The British had vanquished, America had won, at last. If any night, this one was supposed to be the most peaceful one of these last few years, the calm after the disaster caused by a hurricane, the sweet silence after a dreadful storm.
A new government was to be created, Washington at its head, hopefully, Alexander as his right-hand man and democracy at its core; joy and anticipation filled the heart of every revolutionary.
And yet. Yet, not only did he not find sleep, much less comfort, but he struggled to feel any kind of relief at all. How could he feel an ounce of defeat in such glory? A pang of dread in such exciting times?
He turned again. And again. And again.
As he was about to turn once more, a groan broke the silence of the night and a strong arm squeezed Alexander’s biceps, “Alexander. Enough tossing, I am sleeping here.”, a hoarse, barely awake, voice complained, before retracting its arm from around Alexander’s. He stilled completely.
Ah, yes.
There was the cause of his insomnia.
John Laurens. Eyes of a deep piercing blue, Soft, long honey-blond locks, blinding smile, chest rising and falling slowly right next to Alexander, as peaceful as the night should be.
And Alexander stared. In awe.
In utter adoration before the most incredible man he had ever met; the rash, full of ambitions young man whom he had met years ago now. The quick-witted, tender, beautiful John who had become his dearest friend in a matter of weeks. The ideal confident, the best of them, the best of men.
Oh, and Alexander stared. In anguish.
In absolute terror of losing him, in a year, a month, a week, in this very cot. It was foolish to be frightened by so little, he was merely resting, after all, but the barely animated body of John Laurens made him clench his teeth at present.
Not enough sounds, words, and laughter were coming out of his mouth, there were not enough movements in a body who could be as restless as his own, not enough life in a man who meant everything to his.
Wasn't it a ridiculous picture? Two friends lying next to one another, the first comfortably settled in Morpheus' arms and the second, worried he might never retract from the embrace?
“And if he didn't die tonight, when?”, Alexander’s ill mind wondered.
His time on the battlefield had come to an end but not Jack's.
He and his battalion were still fending for their own liberty all over the country and it had been this way for years now.
When would his fight end? Would his fight ever end? To what extremes could his undying recklessness and persistent melancholia take him, without Hamilton by his side?
Oh yes, because if there was something to hate about this man, it was his recklessness.
The strong sentiment inhabited him since before their first encounter, and his speeches about seeking glory in death had always instilled anxiety into Alexander as he declared those words with a confident grin and sparkling eyes, as if he truly meant them.
Alexander had held similar speeches, yes, but deep inside him, death paralyzed him. He had been near her far too often, had seen and undergone the damages she caused, before and during the war.
He knew he had a future after the revolution, he had fought to live the birth of this new nation, to finally accomplish things the world would remember him for. His life was only beginning and despite his pretended carelessness of death, he knew he couldn't die now, not after doing so little, not when he hadn't written every thought of his mind on a piece of paper, not without a legacy to perpetuate the work he had begun.
Laurens, on the other hand, had no such qualms. The death of others concerned him much more than his own, in fact, the end of his existence didn't seem to concern him at all, as long as it occurred for an important cause and found in glory.
Every battle he fought felt like it was his last as if he were expecting his life to end in the heat of the war.
Whereas Alexander was ready to fight death, John appeared to greet her with open arms, like an old friend he'd eventually have to meet again.
This thought was enough for him to shudder, the sole idea of a world without the presence of John was impossible to imagine, completely devoid of sense.
Over the years, he and John had learned to live with one another. They bantered as if they had known each other since their most tender childhood, carried an affection towards each other that none other could ever fully grasp.
Alexander had spent so much time with the man that he had learned to fully forget about a past without the bright smile and the profound, pure blue eyes of the South Carolinian.
This being said, he didn't wish to remember, either.
John’s arrival in his life had been a drastic turn of events for how could he have excepted to care for a man, anyone really, in such a violent manner?
He was undeniably, utterly in love with this man, as sinful as it may seem to the eyes of others, and every day that passed, his affections intensified almost as much as did the frequency of their separations.
Every time John came back, it was less and less easy to let him go again and he was afraid that this umpteenth departure would be the end of him. Or sign the end of his love.
And if it happened, how, oh how, could he ever bear it?
John had brutally taken his heart years ago, now, so much that it probably belonged to him sole.
Elizabeth.
His son.
These were the times when he was reminded of them, like a warning, almost as if the universe sought to hit him with a pinch of guilt, a zest of reality, a way to tell him “your heart cannot belong to any other than them”
And, yes, his heart belonged to them as well, this much was undeniable. Betsy was a smart woman, a kind one, and Alexander cared about her dearly, deeply, his son would carry his legacy and he already felt for him a particular fondness although the boy was nothing more than a baby.
However, it was impossible to create with anyone the bond so scarily symbiotic he shared with John Laurens. No person could understand him as thoroughly as John did, not even the wisest of spouses.
Betsy was comprehensive, caring but alas not enough to handle the whole of him, and probably no different from the rest of them.
If she ever heard about her husband's ungodly preferences, she would be as disgusted as she would be humiliated and how could he blame her? The poor woman had given him her entire life just to live with the inevitable fact that he would never give her the entirety of his.
That the most well-hidden recesses of his soul would never belong to her, not any woman, in fact, but a man. Truly, it was protecting his wife to keep her from his secrets.
But John. Oh, John.
How shameless he allowed himself to be in his company! Unafraid of rejection, of a rope around his neck. They shared the same sentiments, passions and fears. John acknowledged things about Alexander that no other did and ever would, Alexander kept inside him every illegal secret Laurens had shared with him.
In spite of John's boredom for women, he could listen and understand his friend's appreciation of it.
As he was free to talk about it with any man, bringing up such subject to his ears was utterly useless, so, instead, they would talk about their common appreciation of mankind.
He reminisced those nights when, drunk, they would whisper and giggle like teenage girls about men they fancied until the candle died out when they would both fall asleep into each other's arm.
Those same nights when they would end up confessing their mutual affection, quietly, in each other’s ears, slipping sweet ‘I love you's as the night slowly died and holding each other close until they could finally forget everything.
The cold of the war.
The hunger.
The war itself.
The purpose of such.
Death.
When they were together, they would briefly forget about glory, honor, duty, and sin.
When Hamilton was by his side, Laurens seemed to soften and lose his interest in fatality. With him, he not only considered the thought of a future after the war, he seemed excited by it.
When John was by his side, Alexander was able to truly stop, sit and rest, to let go. In his company, the future didn't matter as much because the present was exhilarating.
They were each other’s exceptions.
They would refrain each other's impulses and succumb to others.
The idea of a debate, a fight, the cacophony of a crowd or of a battlefield became tasteless for a few seconds as at night, they would dream about fleeing it all, take a horse, or a boat to Europe.
At times, Alex had no more burning desire than to take off his wedding ring and give in his entire body and soul to Jack.
This was one of those times.
Eyes still trained on his lover’s figure, Alexander took a deep breath, softly stroking his sharp cheekbones with his knuckles, and exhaled shakily.
There was still hope.
John was still here, in this cot, still breathing, still alive.
He rarely trusted hope but had it not worked for the revolution? Wasn't one of the reasons he and John were still alive, still lying in the same bed, due to the hope of such? Was it not because he had dared to believe?
Would there truly be something wrong to believe again? To dare, take a bet with the universe?
Tomorrow, they would let each other go one last time, and as long as the letters were frequent, maybe he could hold on a few months.
And John would come back, eventually. And they would live their love away from the war, the blood and death, behind closed doors, but united, at last.
Slowly, his eyes started to close, he could feel a deep yawn reach him.
He smiled softly and put his head against John’s chest. His smile deepened as he heard the beating of his heart, loud, clear, there.
Their time would come, they had deserved it for, if God did not approve of their union, he rewarded bravery, patience, and love, and God knows how much they had had all three.
However, during those few instants of faith, before he fell asleep, Alexander had not realized he had already started to dream.