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Burr's home, once ordered, has long given way to disaster—papers scattered, books stacked in corners, quill nibs and ink splatters. It is a marked decline: Burr has always taken great care to keep things neat. Sin and slovenly housekeeping go hand in hand, Rhoda used to say. And Timothy— tuck your shirt in, shine your shoes. Look like someone. You're worth what you look like you're worth.
Burr, despite his dislike of all things ‘Edward’, took that lesson to heart, perhaps more so even than Rhoda herself, whose broom always seemed to miss crumbs and bits of dust. Burr likes things to be clean and neat. But, well—if he wanted that, he supposes he should never have opened the door to Hamilton on Saint Valentine's day.
Hamilton is not cat so much as bird, but he certainly occupies space like a cat. Let one in and suddenly there is furr everywhere, and you can’t sit on your favorite chair without squishing a tabby lump. There was no use ignoring him after the door had been opened: Hamilton sought Burr out when he wished, without even the courtesy of a calling card.
Hamilton, clean this up. No, not there. Why would papers go in the kitchen? Why are you even here? Don’t you have a dozen children to look after?
But the only skill that rivals Hamilton's ability to not stop talking is, evidently, his ability to annoy Burr. His ability to ignore Burr when he is complaining, and—
Well.
Hamilton slips in as easily as he slips out. They are a tangle. They have always been a tangle, but not in the way Burr is used to. Not in that awful way, that feels as good as it hurts them both. Because this tangle—Burr is the only one drawn up, struggling in knots. Burr is the tangle, and Hamilton slips free every time, leaving behind only pieces of himself. Quill nibs to pierce through the silk of Burr’s stocking when he steps wrong, papers with half-finished rants and poems that he discovers crinkling the bedclothes. Detritus.
And Burr kept that poem, that piece of paper, silk-bowed that Hamilton pressed into his hand when he lay fucked-out on the couch that Valentine's day. He had tucked it carefully in that velvet-lined box, hidden in the back of his desk drawer—the box he keeps pictures of his Theos, the letters from Bellamy, one of Montgomery’s rings that had inexplicably passed to him.
A box of once-loves, things that burn bright and leave behind pittings. Because Hamilton does not need Burr like Burr needs—doesn’t need, doesn’t—Hamilton. Because Hamilton slips in and kisses Burr like fire, like buds through wet, warming snow, doomed to freeze solid once again, leaves them wrecked in tangled sin, and slips out again just as easily.
Philip is sick. Betsey needs me to see to that broken window. And gone again. And maybe—Maybe Burr doesn’t mind the mess after that. Or maybe he minds it more, those little reminders of what he has and doesn’t. The reason he packed up Theodosia’s things in a chest and stuffed it far back beneath the bed, all those years ago.
Burr doesn’t need Hamilton, or want him, and maybe that is why he can’t stop this, them.
“It’s pagan,” Burr says, “I thought you would have known that.” An early, snowy day, after All Saints’ Day, Hamilton badgering him about decorations. It was illegal in Massachusetts for a while, even. Fines for hanging decorations, the lightest sentence when the whole town could shun you. Burr can remember Christmases sitting on hard pews, shivering in black clothing and staring hungry-eyed at small shoulders wrapped in wool blankets. No blanket for Burr. No, he learned those tenants hard: solemnity. Suffering. Stoicism.
It’s not so bad as Jesus nailed to a cross, is it boy? You can do this one little thing for him. And why—he’d never quite known why god should want them to suffer. Understood it only in half-truths, the mortal need for vengeance and reparations on a godly body. Blood for blood.
Burr thought the cold bad before, but he’d never quite recovered after Monmouth. Now only the mildest of weather leaves him unaffected. Chills and fevers steal in like oxygen. He’d stood shivering in the doorway while Hamilton carried in paper-wrapped packages, but the cold was made sweeter by its thaw, by the way Hamilton deferred to Burr’s comfort, the way Hamilton pulled him near the fire, wrapped him up in arms and his own cloak.
I should be the cold one, Hamilton said. From how he complained it seemed Nevis never got cold. Until the storms came. Hamilton’s bravado at war with his desire for attention, and neither one of them ever had gotten the right kind of attention. Drowning under the weight of the thing they had but did not want. Dreaming of things they weren’t sure really existed.
Hamilton left him curled in front of the fire, hugging warm stone, and Burr hadn’t known till Hamilton pulled him up, out, cold hands in warm.
You have a tree in the house, Burr had said.
It's the season.
To have a tree in the house? Burr asked, sneezed.
It's catching in England. A German tradition, though.
Fancy yourself a globalist? Burr barbs, sometimes, when he doesn’t know what to say. He’s not used to this, doesn’t know how to talk to Hamilton when he does something kind, doesn’t want to talk to Hamilton the way he had once talked to his uncle. The way he talked to his Theos.
They never did this in Saint Kitts, but—they had this festival. A pagan thing, J’ouvert, they call it now. It’s everything they ever said about us—wicked “island magic”, people dancing in paints, half-naked.
Burr stays silent. He doesn’t engage Hamilton on these matters—theology. They’d sparred too often, nights ending in tears. Hamilton, fanatic in the way only non-believers can be. And Hamilton is floundering. He’s never known himself enough to be able to justify the things he does. Hamilton is like a child, a baby crying for need without knowing why.
I don't understand why you would kill a perfectly good tree, Burr says, a rescue. Look, there's a bird nest. And Hamilton flushes and he looks—and they forget themselves in laughing.
That night Hamilton takes Burr against the window. Turns out all the candles and pushes him against frigid glass, lets his breath puff there until the whole world goes foggy, and he’s gasping words he doesn’t recognize. Hamilton is a warmth at his back, a heavy heat, and when he whispers sweet nonsense into Burr’s ear, he can almost believe the words are for him.
No one can see them like this. But here, through the fog—Burr imagines that they could. Wonders what it would be like, if they could.
Hamilton leaves that night. Stocks the fireplaces before he goes, looks at Burr like—Hamilton likes to pretend. That Burr needs him, that Burr is feeble and helpless. He would like Burr more if Burr were a woman, he thinks. Ah, but Hamilton has always been disastrous with women.
I'm abstaining in recognition of our lord’s humble and austere origin, Burr writes his uncle, ignoring pine boughs and half-hung garland, trailing pollen and dead bugs. He shivers, stokes the fires. There is a fever coming, he knows, and the windows rattle in their panes.
You could come to dine with Betsey and I, Hamilton says, but it is a wheedle, a sideways, nervous, cantering thing. He doesn’t want Burr to say yes. An idea Hamilton took to and discarded before he had finished saying it. They are laying in bed—after the window, but before he leaves. Burr is wrapped in him, cold skin, dark.
And your twelve children? I would rather stay here and freeze to death, a joke, but no, he can see it in Hamilton’s eyes, that quick flash of fear. They’ve both known people to die that way.
I’ll have extra wood brought in, Hamilton says, and he lurches from bed, comes back and shoves one of those packages in Burr’s hands, one of the few unopened. You can have this now. I fear it won’t fit you. I know you’re very small—short, I mean. But it’s warm.
And Burr doesn’t know what to do with the package in his hands. Stares at it and doesn’t know what to do. It always felt so—it feels fake. Ungenuine, everything Hamilton has ever accused Burr of. To stand stiff, and say thank you, and try not to smile or flush or in any way make it seem like Burr is greedy for it. For affection—for Hamilton. It is easier, to take a poem when one is already naked. To pass books back and forth with the Theodosias, all three of them given to downcast eyes and reserve. Gentle little teases and soft words. No, they are not like the Hamiltons, and it always had been two categories in opposition. Them and him.
But Hamilton kneels over him and kisses him. A stupid sentimental thing, on the corner of his mouth. So Burr carefully opens the paper—doesn’t tear it. And—there is a housecoat there, a rich quilted thing, much too expensive, in a deep berry colored red. Thick, warm. It looks handmade.
Where did you get this? Burr asks, thumb playing over fabric. Of course it is expensive. The kind of thing you would get a mistress.
I found the fabric in town. The color—it suits you. Do you like it?
But who made it?
I had it sewn— Hamilton looks away, haltingly.
Yes, I know it didn’t sew itself, but who made it?
Betsey made it for me—for you.
You told your wife you bought this for me?
Does it matter? And he’s dodging again, because of course, of course, Hamilton didn’t tell her. She thinks this is Hamilton’s coat, Burr thinks, and he doesn’t know why it chills him but it does. A coat from Hamilton’s wife. He probably saved money on it that way. Not that he knows how to keep more than a day’s wages in his pocket. Not that Burr knows.
It will keep you warm, Hamilton says. You should wear it.
You have to go, Burr says instead. And he knows this will be an argument later, but something stops Hamilton now, this time. He folds down again, over Burr, and they cling to each other in a way they shouldn’t. They hold on too long and too hard and will not look at the other. They tangle limbs and Hamilton takes Burr's face in his hand and kisses him like desperation, kisses him again and again and again. He kisses like a dying man, a Judas kiss, thinks Burr, but there's will not be a cock crow.
He leaves, and Burr’s feet brush abused paper, tossed aside and finding their way somehow here, beneath bedclothes. Hamilton writes in bed sometimes, while Burr wanders and avoids sleep. The times Burr does sleep, tucked against him.
Poem scraps, and Burr folds each one to tuck into the bedside drawer. Hamilton is sick with poems. And Burr—what does one given to excess get another inclined to the same? He’d thought about fine things—french imports one must buy in darkened, windowless shops, beneath other shops. Silk and chain and leather. Discarded the idea just as quickly. Thought of fine books and engraved, metal-tipped quills.
But Hamilton liked words. And perhaps he would treasure Burr’s all the more, for the lack of them. Thoughts he wouldn’t admit out loud. He had agonized over the writing for days, but now—Hamilton is sick with words, too. They flow from him in such excess as to be worthless, more worthless than any material good Burr might have purchased. He loves Burr with words, like they are nothing—nothing, and what can be more painful than lack, what had either of them learned in years of hunger and chasing unfilled desires?
Hamilton loves Burr in words that dash out of him as easily as air. Passes love notes as easily as he discards them at the foot of their bed, as easily as he slips out the door each early morning.
Late night at the office, he must tell his wife, but he will smell of Burr when he tucks his children into bed, and the ink stains on his fingers will have mirroring stains in Burr.
Burr sleeps poorly that night, as he does most every night. He tosses, and the fire gutters and fizzles, and a cold draft blows in around the windows and door. Years ago, they might have passed this time as a family—Theo snuggled between him and Theodosia, warm for all the frigid air and drafts. He prefers life in the city, but only because the weather is not so harsh there. But the wind winds down streets regardless, whips around buildings and flashes down alleys, renewed for its routing.
He should have liked Montgomery Place, if Montgomery had not died. Janet had turned it into something of a nature reserve, a testament to wild beauty. Burr should have passed hours there, his family and theirs, but there would have been—they would have been something like—but Burr had never cultivated that connection, him and Mrs. Livingston-Montgomery. What would there be to say? I saw your husband die.
A crack then, and a rush, as the fire hisses and dies. Burr’s eyes ruined by spots, but there is snow there, a small melting lump on dead logs. The cowling given way, but Burr is no builder, and it is too cold to rise. He is shivering, sweating, and his stomach flops. He felt this way after Monmouth. And every too-acute touch of weather since.
If an iron stomach is one unassailable then Burr has a stomach of soft, riverbed clay. Eats like a bird, he’d heard said. Picking over small, light pieces, unbuttered bread to sop a burning stomach. Barely-brewed tea and raw fruit.
He lays shivering, fevered, until day comes. He hides under blankets, feet numb, until he can no more, and then he dresses quickly, leaning half against the wall. His heart is in his throat, and he drags the bedding into the study, lights that fire with shaking hands, seals up the door and stuffs a blanket along the bottom of it. A small, still chamber.
What is Hamilton doing now, he wonders. He seems one to sleep in as much as he seems one to fly from bed after scant hours of sleep. Has he allowed himself some reprieve, him and the children slumbering in a quiet house, or is he up, rousing the children while Eliza warms cold bread and butter?
He doesn’t know what he wants. Burr had always thought Hamilton the unreflective one, the one who didn’t know himself or his desires. A hollow doll, nothing inside but endless spills of meaningless words. Burr had never marked the holiday by melancholy before, but now—
He has letters to answer. Paperwork. He wraps himself up in the blankets but there are pine boughs even here, tied with little red ribbons like the fabric on the coat. He tries to write and breaks one pen nib, two, with shaking, shivering hands.
This is Hamilton’s fault, he thinks. A nexus of disorder and ruin. Burr doesn’t want him here. He doesn’t. But—
He remembers Theo opening unwrapping books with shaky, clumsy hands. She started reading so early, starting asking questions Burr did not know the answers to. Smarter than me , he had told his wife. Maybe even smarter than you . He hadn’t known there’d been an ache there, on that Holiday, until he had found them—felt that something when he was with them.
Burr falls asleep there, on the floor of his study. Collapses in front of the fireplace, skin burning, burning, and wakes hours later with his tongue cotton and his clothing wet through. The door is opening, sluggishly, nudging him in the back and shifting bedding.
He doesn’t know what’s happening until Hamilton is kneeling over him, cold, freezing hand on his brow.
You’re feverish, Hamilton says, with that feral-worry glint.
As I am every winter since the war, Burr says, thick.
You’ve never missed your legal work on account of health, as if one thing excludes the other, and Burr dodges a hand, tries and fails to stand, and Hamilton has to haul him to his feet, pressing in again with worry, worry. He asks something, Burr doesn’t hear, and—
What do you care? He slurs.
What? Hamilton asks, draws back. Halfway to the bedroom now, and Burr pushes back, unsteady on his own feet, and Hamilton grabs his elbow.
Go back to the grange, Burr says, sharper than he meant, more than he meant. Hamilton stops.
You’re jealous, Hamilton says. Burr scoffs.
That would be rather foolish, Burr says, considering I have always known you to be a married man. Ah, but if feelings gave consideration to reason perhaps men would not kill and die so readily.
I don’t think sentiment foolish, Hamilton says.
Does a fool find foolish things foolish? Burr bites, tires to step around him but Hamillton grabs his hand and—
You’re freezing! He says as Burr pulls away, and—I told you to wear the housecoat, and the fire is out! Here now, put it on—and Burr jerks back, shoving Hamilton away.
I don’t want the coat your blasted wife made!
Silence. Burr can see Hamilton working through those things; don’t talk about my wife like that, to you’re lonely. You missed me.
Instead he says: I’m sorry, and once again Burr doesn’t know what to say. What would Burr want him to say? ‘ I want to be with you and I can’t?’ Some problems have no solutions. Some things can’t be fixed. Even without Betsey they would be living in fear, deception layered over deception.
I love you, Hamilton says, as if those words could patch together what parts of Burr have always been broken. As if Hamilton would ever pick Burr over Betsey, would ever love Burr enough to not leave him with this broken, half-shard of something. As if Burr could ever love Hamilton enough to do the same.
But they’re both of them selfish. Used to wanting things they can’t have, fighting for them harder than they know how to breathe.
I wrote you a poem, Burr says, and his voice cracks, and Hamilton’s eyes go soft, and it’s easier like this—to pretend there is a terminus for them that does not end in heartbreak. That there is some room there for Burr between Betsey and Hamilton and all of their children that is not unequal ground. And no, it’s not easier, but there is something easier still:
He kisses Hamilton. He molds his shivering body against Hamilton’s warm one. He lets Hamilton take him to bed, and care for him like he would his wife. He gives him his poem, and doesn’t complain about the papers in the bed, or the ink stains, or the pine boughs and needles and pen nibs scattered around the house.
And later, he’ll pull Hamilton down on top of him, writhe against him, work heat up to shivering skin until he shakes apart. Because this is the easiest thing: to give up to the bodily when he wants so badly to avoid that worse truth: That he does want Hamilton. That he wants him and can’t have him. That he will have to content himself with this half-love, this less-than piece on the tail end of a string of broken ones. That they will come together only as they fall apart, again, and again, and again.