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Alexander flicks a sweat-damp clump of hair out of his eyes and leans further back into the rickety wooden chair. He usually tries to swap it with one of the better-constructed chairs when he’s the first to wake, but Laurens was already halfway through a letter which required all of his concentration, apparently, because he couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge Alexander’s entrance, but Alexander wasn’t at all bothered. The only thing he was bothered by was his inability to swap chairs, as Laurens certainly would have had something to say to whichever aide had to sit in the rejected chair, the prig he is.
“Do you need something?” Laurens huffs, the first words they’ve spoken in… days, perhaps. Has it been days? The last thing Alexander recalls saying to the man was an offhanded request for some of the coffee that Laurens had brewed and brought to the aides’ tent. He was met with a tin cup, already heated through at the bottom, enough that it reddened the tips of his inkstained fingers, filled with bitter coffee and placed carelessly into his hands, not a word’s confirmation, no response to his murmured thanks.
“I’m fine,” Alexander replies tersely, laying the sheet of parchment back onto the writing cabinet balanced in his lap. “We’ve been sat hunched over like this all week, ‘s’all.”
“I find it bearable,” Laurens says quietly, barely audible above the early-morning hum of crickets and mourning doves. “It’s the heat I detest.”
“You’re from South Carolina, are you not?” Alexander scoffs lightly.
“I spent the last few years in Europe.”
Alexander’s lips purse. Of course he did. Of course the heir of one of the largest fortunes in the colonies spent his adolescence flitting about Paris or Geneva or Rome or wherever the elite find fashionable nowadays. “Of course, I’m sure you never withstood a moment’s discomfort,” Alexander breathes out a tightly-baled sigh, massaging his hand while he skims over what he has written thus far. Sometimes, when he gets overtired and thoroughly worked through, his own penmanship becomes undecipherable to his mind, slurs together drunkenly like he’s spilt something over the fresh ink.
“Martyrdom and suicide are two different things, Alexander.”
Alexander doesn’t know what to make of that until suppertime, when the other aides are lured from the thickly-humid tent by the promise of salted beef and their allotted gill of peas. Alexander doesn’t go with them, he wants to finish before sundown so he can find a winnowed-down tributary of the Schuylkill to bathe in. He isn’t one of those men who constantly perfumes and pomades, but he has acquired an off-putting smell somewhere between horse shit and an unsettlingly salty musk, neither of which he finds pleasant.
“Where are you off to?” Laurens asks as Hamilton stands from his chair and stretches out his arms above his head. Both shoulders click as he flexes the stiff muscles.
“I finished my work.”
“That wasn’t my question,” Laurens replies, oddly gentle. The loose pieces of his blondish hair, gleaming pale gold in the dim glow of the few candles they’ve set alight in preparation for the approaching sunset, and his pale eyes, half-lidded, loan his face an almost soft countenance that it rarely has. Laurens is sharp, like Alexander, sharp and guarded and fastened in place with polished brass buttons. His navy-blue jacket crisp and his cravat fluffed practically to his chin, despite the wilting heat. Alexander watches him, every night that he and Laurens bed at the same time, which isn’t often, but still, Alexander watches Laurens lay each piece of his uniform over his chair, smooth out each wrinkle and settle the epaulettes right against the splintery wooden backrest so they sit right and proper on his broad shoulders.
“I’m going to bathe, not that I owe you an explanation.”
“And what if I wished to join you?”
“Do you?” Alexander spits, challenge plain in his tone.
The corner of Laurens’ pale lips quirk into a pleased grin. “And what if I do?”
Alexander nearly ignores his teasing, he shouldn’t engage with such aggravation, he already has a reputation, as Tench and Washington and Gilbert are quick to remind him, but something in the way Laurens’ eyes glitter makes Alexander want to smack him across his mouth, and he won’t be the one to back away from whatever stupid confrontation they’ve built up between them. “Join me, then.”
Surprise tugs at Laurens’ smirk, but his insistence doesn’t falter. “Alright.”
The two emerge silently from the canvas-flapped tent and begin towards the outskirts of the camp. Alexander leads, mostly, walks just a pace in front of Laurens. He marches, straight-backed and surely, towards the cluster of forest more tightly-packed than the open valley they’ve been camped in for the better part of the last week. After just a couple minutes of walking, they come upon a clearing, mossy and cool, shaded from the sunset by a canopy of waxy leaves, cut through with a slow-trickling creek. Alexander lays his canvas bag upon the surface of a flat rock, far enough away from the water that its contents won’t get damp. Laurens hangs his from the lichen-coated stump of a long-gone tree branch.
Alexander glances over his shoulder at the man. This felt like a dumb bluff all the way to the river, but now both men have to bathe. It isn’t unusual to undress in front of the other men, all of Washington’s aides share a single tent, Alexander has caught incidental glances of Laurens’ bare skin, his lightly-tanned shoulder or tightly-muscled back, often enough that he could probably piece together the man’s whole form if he wished to. Still, it feels palpably uncomfortable to strip down in front of the other man, so he faces his back to Laurens and begins shucking his coat from his arms as he stares into the forest, lit only with patches of blazing sunlight filtered through gaps in the trees and collecting in puddles against tall fern and rotted wood.
“You’re from the Indies,” Laurens calls out. From the way his voices carries and echoes, Alexander can tell he also turned to face the opposite direction.
“I am,” Alexander nods to himself as he places his folded-up jacket next to his bag. “Nevis, and then Saint Croix when I was older.”
Laurens doesn’t respond, but Alexander doesn’t mind. He continues undressing, hesitating when he’s stripped to nothing but his shirt and his breeches. After some consideration, he pulls his shirt above his head and resolves to keep his breeches on. When he turns to face the creek, he sees that Laurens has done the same.
Laurens’ skin is paler than Alexander’s own. Where Alexander’s is freckled reddish-brown atop an expanse of perpetually tanned skin, Laurens’ is pale, caramelized like a loaf of half-baked bread. The tawny hairs dusted over his arms glow like spun sugar in the sunset. Alexander returns his focus to the stream and takes a slow step into the water. He isn’t in any danger of being toppled by the current, but it flows freely enough that it hasn’t settled and built grime upon its surface.
“It’s cold,” Laurens observes as he follows Alexander in.
“I thought you were too hot,” Alexander teases.
“And now I’m too cold,” he grins, arms curled to his chest like a fox squirrel. Each step is tentative, in a way Alexander has never seen Laurens.
“Apologies, I’ll warm your bath next time,” Alexander scoffs lightly, reaching back to shore to pull his bar of soap, only half its original size, from his bag. It smells vaguely sweet, but entirely dissimilar to the almond soap the Stevenses bought monthly, or the lavender his mother made. Still, it completes its task just fine. He wets the soap and lathers it between his hands before running the slick mess of suds over his heat-parched arms. He tries not to pay any mind to Laurens, after all, Laurens is the intruder upon Alexander’s bath, but he still feels the weight of his presence. His own movements are stilted, awkward, afraid that Laurens might be watching, silently judging. However, each time he glances past the cusp of his shoulder, Laurens is just as singularly focused in his own task. Perhaps Alexander should not have assumed that Laurens only joined him in jest. Perhaps he simply wished to bathe.
“Did you… did you live in South Carolina all your life? At least, until you moved to Europe?” Alexander asks as he splashes water onto his soap-glazed skin.
“Yes, I lived in Charleston until I was seventeen.”
“I was also born in Charlestown. Well, Charlestown, Nevis.”
“I suppose there are plenty of Charleses to name towns after,” Laurens chuckles.
“I suppose,” Alexander grins. “Do you have any siblings?”
“Yes. Two brothers and two sisters. I’m the eldest.”
“I have an elder brother.”
Once again, silence, punctuated only by splashing water and anxiously croaking bullfrogs. Alexander truly does not mind silence, shared with much of anyone else. With Laurens, though, he feels… perpetually vexed, a slight irritation simmering just beneath his skin, like a hive of wasps.
The dampened hems of Alexander’s breeches skirt the surface of the water as he rinses himself off. The wet fabric sticks to his skin, though no longer with sweat, which is marginally more tolerable. Once he is clean, as thoroughly as he can be while still clothed, he steps back to the edge of the creek. He sits upon the flat rock, next to his bag, and lets his legs dangle into the water as he waits for his chest to dry. When he next looks to Laurens, the other man has shed his breeches to wash down his thighs with a rag, presumptively pulled from his bag while Alexander was occupied. Alexander turns away his attentions, staring into the empty forest once more.
“We ought to get back soon,” he suggests cooly, as if he hadn’t seen each contour of Laurens’ backside moments earlier.
“It isn’t too dark,” Laurens hums. He places the rag down on the rock next to Alexander, and the soap upon it. Alexander struggles to look neither at Laurens nor too intensely at anything else, lest Laurens realize how intentional his avoidance truly is. “I’m nearly finished, we’ll be to camp soon enough.”
“Alright,” Alexander nods, pulling on his shirt, despite the beads of water still trickling down his back. He leaves his waistcoat unfastened, however, and doesn’t brother at all with his coat.
“You’re never this quiet with anyone else,” Laurens observes as he walks back to shore and leans just slightly down to pick his breeches from the ground. “I’ve yet to observe a moment’s silence when you’re with the Marquis du Lafayette, or Tilghman. Even Washington, a man to whom you should defer.”
“Any time I attempt conversation, you close yourself off to me. Which is just fine, I simply need to be able to work alongside you.”
“I do not close myself off. Perhaps I’m not as… affectionate as the Marquis–”
“Oh, just call him Gilbert,” Alexander scoffs. “He is years younger than you, not everyone is as strait-laced as you insist upon being–”
“And now I remember why I don’t wish for you to speak.”
Alexander scoffs and pushes himself up from his perch upon the rocks. He yanks his stockings on and steps into his boots. “Then don’t whine that I ignore you.”
They proceed back to camp wordlessly.