Chapter Text
James walks into the café only slightly apprehensive.
It’s not like he has any real reason to be nervous, after all, he reasons with himself. The place is nice and sunny and fairly public, not even far enough from the university campus to be particularly taxing for him to walk to. The music is quaint and peppy and not loud enough to feel distorted and make his ears hurt, and there are no papers due for another week at least, all the professors apparently unanimously deciding to take it easy in their post-exam haze of a week before break.
By all accounts, it should be a perfectly pleasant meet-up on a perfectly pleasant afternoon in a perfectly pleasant place.
It would be, if it wasn’t for the company.
James spots Hamilton almost immediately upon entering. The small man has sequestered himself away in a cozy nook by the window, papers spilling from the small table, his laptop perched precariously on his knee as he sits cross-legged in the towering armchair, typing at his usual frantic pace. He’s almost a permanent fixture at this little shop, and James is pretty sure the whole college knows exactly where to find him at any given time – something that Thomas often grumbles loudly comes in handy when he has to hunt down and drag his boyfriend into bed, spitting and hissing like a cat at the very idea of taking a break.
But thinking about Thomas in relation to Hamilton makes a stab of pain dart through his heart, so James takes a deep breath and forces himself to scan the menu instead, even though he already knows it off by heart from all the times he’s met Hamilton here before, from the times when he used to call him Alex and the young caffeine addict used to grin and make room for his shit on the cramped table.
He doesn’t remember what he orders, exactly, but James decides he has good taste as he takes a sip of the cup the barista hands him, the warmth steadying his frayed nerves.
Okay, so maybe James is more than just slightly apprehensive. He hasn’t met Hamilton in anything like friendly circumstances for over two years now, and he’s still surprised that he reached out to him and asked to grab coffee with no explanation except “we should talk”.
James has to pick up an armful of loose papers off the other chair and dump them on Hamilton’s table before he can plop himself down on it, only receiving an offended huff as he probably messes up whatever organized chaos the little gremlin had going, and he waits to be acknowledged. He knows better than to interrupt Hamilton mid-typing, knows to let him wrap up whatever he’s working on unless he wants to be snapped and snarled at instead of having a productive conversation – that’s more of Thomas’ thing, not his.
He waits a full fifteen minutes – which is quite short, by Hamilton’s standards – before the man decisively closes his laptop and turns to James. James is immediately taken aback by the bright smile on his bizarrely energetic-looking face, and the friendly warmth sparkling in his brown eyes.
“James! It’s been too long, how have you been?”
“I – uh – f – fine, I’ve been good, Hamilton. How… how about you?” James is fully aware that he’s floundering, extremely uncharacteristic for him, but to be fair he was expecting Hamilton to be a lot more hostile.
“Oh, you know how it is, classes being a bitch, Eliza and Herc constantly on my case and Lafayette bringing home a fucking pomeranian of all things, the boyfriends fighting each other over who gets a piece of this –” the younger man flips his glossy hair, spilling loose from his messy bun, dramatically over his shoulder, making it even messier, “Aaaand everyone’s helicoptering just a little fuck ton more than usual since the diagnosis, especially Washington, and I swear to god that man has a sixth sense for my sleep schedule –”
Hamilton cuts himself off abruptly before he can ramble into another one of his tangents, as he tends to do, and blinks before grinning dazzlingly again.
“All in all, life’s going as well as it could, yeah. Are those new hearing aids, by the way? I love the colour!”
James refrains from asking about Hamilton’s diagnosis now that the man so casually brings it up, but it’s a close thing. He’s heard Thomas wring his hands about how Alexander is adjusting to his new ADHD label and the extra-intense self-destructive moods he goes into far too often for his prying to be anything other than awkward. Instead, he latches onto the new subject quickly.
“Oh, yeah, Dolley’s got a friend of a friend who works on making disability aids less clunky and more user-friendly, so I got them from her.” He matches Hamilton’s aggressive friendliness with a pleasant smile of his own, sinking more comfortably into his seat. Knowing how the guy tends to chatter on, they’re going to be here a while.
He’s not disappointed. Over the course of their conversation, which consists mostly of James nodding along and contributing the occasional comment as Hamilton talks at breakneck pace, they’ve touched on an odd array of subjects ranging from Peggy’s new skincare routine to James’ mom’s side hustle (even though Hamilton has met her a grand total of one time).
It’s almost half an hour before Hamilton finally huffs to a pause, and takes a slow drink from his cup – which was refilled and practically tossed at him by a barista who fondly rolled her eyes as he whined “Decaf, seriously? Maria, you can’t deprive me of my life blood!” – and brings up the topic pressing on James.
“So, I did actually want to talk about a particular thing, you know. With you.”
“I never would have guessed.” James says drily.
“Mean, Jamie. It really is your own people.”
“Never let your guard down.”
“I’m wounded. Bleeding out. Aaaand I’m dead.” Hamilton intones in a complete deadpan that is at odds with his sunny expression.
“You are an insufferable little man.” James huffs with a fondness that is dangerous.
“So I’ve been told – and we’re deviating from the point again!” and then Hamilton is suddenly sitting ramrod-straight in a way that looks painful that James kind of wants to soothe out of him, and his face is screwed up in determination. “We need to make a plan!”
“A... plan.” James is lost, and the smaller man is glaring at him like that is supposed to convey something, “Like... an impossible study plan, a world domination plan, or a minor-to-major criminal offence plan?”
“No reason it can’t be all three.” Hamilton says pleasantly, then tacks on, “Although it would have to fit around Thomas’ birthday next week. April 13th, remember?”
Oh.
“Oh.”
“Mhm! We’ll have been together exactly one year and twelve days at that point, and I want to do something special.”
Oh.
James squashes down a pang of ache, of longing, somewhere in his chest. He’s used to it by now, he just needs a second –
“Of course I remember.” He says honestly once he recovers, “Well, if you wanted advice...”
But there’s a glint in Hamilton’s eye that James knows too well, that sets him on edge instantly.
“You already have a plan.” It’s more of a statement than a question.
“Yup.”
“And it involves me somehow.”
“Yup.” His eyes are positively sparkling now. James sighs.
“And that’s why you invited me to hang out with you today?”
“Nope! I just like hanging out with you!” Hamilton grins and responds chipperly, “But by total coincidence, I do have a plan and I do need your help.”
For fuck’s sake.
John finds him only five minutes after James leaves, and Alex feels warmth curl in his heart because John knows him so well.
Alex tends to ramble and recheck and extrapolate for ages, holds fascinating but meandering conversation and can’t ever seem to cut them short – at least I know why now, there’s a bitterness to the thought that wasn’t there when he first realized it, that just keeps growing – and his writing is the same, brilliant but long. Everyone pretty much figures it’s useless to time him, just work around him as best as they can, but not John. John knows him, somehow, can predict how long he’s going to take accurately every single time and always shows up when he’s wanted. It makes Alex feel so seen, so loved.
“Hey, Lexi.” John beams when he sees him. Alex smiles at him, but doesn’t tear his eyes away from his laptop, where he’d started typing again as soon as James had left. Five minutes was still 300 seconds, and he’d gotten bored.
John rolls his eyes.
“Alright, you get one minute, babygirl.”
Alex flashes him a grateful smile. It’s inconvenient to cut his work off when he’s in a flow, of course, but John seems to have a gauge for how invested Alex is, too, and gives him time to wrap up and save whatever he’s doing. The article he’s writing right now isn’t particularly important or interesting, so Alex can take a minute and get done with how much ever he can, but he can get anywhere from ten seconds to half an hour based on some algorithm only John knows but that works spectacularly well. (“It’s much politer than snatching my fucking laptop and threatening to yeet it out of the window!” Alex has snapped at Thomas multiple times.)
“There! Done.” Alex shoves his laptop away – John scrambles to catch it, he fucking loves John – and stretches, spine cracking from sitting so tensely and trying to control his nervous jitters. He sees Maria shake her head as John looks a little alarmed, and mouth ‘decaf’ at his boyfriend.
“So, how’d it go with Madison?” there’s a bit of a protective lilt to his voice, and Alex leans up to kiss John softly.
“It went fine, I think he was a little nervous!” he considers, and says, “But then again, so was I.” At the same time John says, “So were you, idiot.”
They both giggle, and Alex lets John yank him up by the arm and start to pack up his stuff. James had messed up his paper organization anyway, he’d always had a habit of doing that. People tended to assume Alex didn’t know shit about what he was doing, but well. John and Thomas and his friends who mattered got it, so there.
Maria tosses a croissant at him as Alex yells that they’re leaving, and John catches it in the two seconds he spends panicking.
“Fucking stab me and get it over with, why don’t you, be faster than death by anxiety...” Alex mutters darkly.
“The speed of death is inversely proportional to the entertainment gained by it.” John says sagely, breaking the croissant in half (Lafayette had screamed “DISHONOUR! DISHONOUR ON YOUR, DISHONOUR ON YOUR COW –” for half an hour for that crime once) and handing one warm, chocolate-gooey piece to him.
“I think it’s gonna work out just right.” Alex declares around a mouthful of the pastry, “James agreed, and you know Thomas, he’ll never see it coming, they’re both going to love it.”
“And he didn’t guess your secret matchmaking motives?”
“Nah, he’s just as bad as Thomas. And Thomas is a fucking imbecile. An imbecile I unfortunately love, and fucking hate seeing all pining and sad and droopy, but this will fix that at least. Those idiots need to get their heads out of their asses like, yesterday. Anyone can see they’re into each other, this one time Washington told us to get lunch to class, and this dumb bitch –”
Alex bites his tongue so hard he physically jerks, but it manages to stop the stupid thing from running away with him and talking for way too long again. He’s been learning to identify when he needs to shut the fuck up, stop being so damn annoying, and it’s hard making a habit out of it when going down random tangents is second nature to him but he’s trying.
His smile is more of a grimace, but Alex smiles anyway to put John’s concerned glance at ease.
“Are you sure about this?” John asks finally, cautiously.
“Am I ever not sure about anything?” he counters.
“No! That’s the problem!”
Alex tries not to cackle but fails miserably, and eventually even John joins in as they make their way to the dorms.
“This is gonna be the best surprise ever.” Alex sighs, in his element with his probably-outrageous scheming. John pulls him close to his side in the warmest hug known to man, and that only makes the world that much brighter.
“You’re so oblivious.” The man chuckles fondly, and Alex makes a miffed sound, “You’re also the only person I know who actively ships his boyfriend with someone else.”
“You did it first.” He grins up at John, full of love. Hazel eyes crinkle happily down at him, a blush rising on those freckled cheeks.
“You are an insufferable little man.”
“So I’ve heard.”