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The wound is ugly: more black than red, split wide and crusting around the edges, the flesh around it swelling in a hot angry flare. He can’t help but envision the way that the bullet must have torn through his skin—carved such a ragged path—fierce hot metal that he barely felt, but which now burns and surges like flame—
“John.”
The voice reaches his ears in a muffled haze, and he blinks—his own blood is beginning to look rather gray.
“Stop looking at it.” A hand on his cheek, the sensation distant but relieving—cool against the heat that’s swathed itself around him. “You pale so.”
He swallows, and it catches in his throat—blinks a few more times, and then, at the insistent press of Hamilton’s fingertips, drags his eyes away, lands them instead on the soothingly blank surface of the snow pooling around them. Hamilton murmurs his wordless satisfaction, then lowers his hand back to Laurens’s arm. Sickening as the bullet’s work may be, it has been deemed a minor threat; the two of them sit behind their own tent, a ways away from where the medic cares for those in greater danger, and Hamilton has been giving the task of bandaging.
A few buzzing moments pass—Laurens pulls his breath in and out, in and out, until his eyes have regained sufficient focus to discern the fragile patterns on each descending snowflake. If he focuses on them, he can barely feel the pressure upon his arm, the sting of cloth as Hamilton dutifully swabs away at the worst of the bleeding. Some semblance of tranquility, perhaps—then Hamilton snickers.
“What?” By instinct, Laurens moves to jerk his arm away, but he’s held fast.
“Hush.”
“Why do you laugh?” He attempts to glower, but can’t maintain it for long—Hamilton needs only to glance up, half-smile tugging, eyes wide and dark and liquid-sweet, to dissolve any expression of disgruntlement.
“So courageous on the battlefield, and yet—” He begins to weave a bandage around Laurens’s elbow, each movement deft and businesslike. “Such a sensitive maiden when confronted with its aftermath.”
“I am hardly moved by wounds,” Laurens scoffs—he tries to turn his eyes back towards the ground, but finds his gaze wandering irrevocably in the direction of Hamilton, whose smile has drifted away in exchange for a furrow-browed expression of intent concentration. “I take no issue with blood—”
“—Save for when it is your own.”
“Well. Yes.”
The smile again—a fleeting flash, but enough for Laurens’s stomach to tighten. “I know you, John.”
I know you, John. Swift motions of the bandage—around, around, around, almost dizzyingly. Like in all of his work, Hamilton is rapid but not inattentive; concentration permeates his nimble fingers, his sharp eyes, his tense lips. Laurens’s arm aches and smarts, but he disregards it—without looking at the blood, it’s easy enough to dismiss.
“You have dealt with wounds enough,” Hamilton muses after a handful of seconds—too restless; always too restless to occupy himself with one task alone. Talk and work. That’s the way of things. “One would think that, by now, you would have built up some defenses....”
“I do not look at it until the battle is over. That is my defense.” He sighs through his nose, and his breath mists in the air. “It is easy enough to find distractions in that heat.”
“Fair enough.” Hamilton’s long lashes flicker as he works farther down, tucking white cloth ever-so-carefully around the rip in Laurens’s arm. He clears his throat, and when he speaks again, his voice is softer. “You could stand to be a touch more careful.”
A grin finds its way onto Laurens’s lips, hooking them a bit lopsidedly. “Oh?”
Hamilton’s eyes remain determinedly downturned. “Only because—”
“You worry?”
“I—” A particularly strong tug of the bandage.
“Damn—”
“Sorry—”
“Shh.” Laurens tilts his head back, exhales the bolt of pain into the sky. A few snowflakes touch upon him, and he squints against them, holding in shivers as the cold brushes his lips, eyelids, the tip of his nose. The wind moans through the woods around them, trembles ice-laden pine, whips against the tarp of their tent. The noises of the camp on the other side of their tent are faint; only the most distant trace of boisterous voices and crackling fire permeates the frosted tranquility of their makeshift hideaway. “I scarcely feel it.”
“Of course not.” A smile is poorly disguised in Hamilton’s voice. “A mere bullet could never ruffle the unshakable imperviousness of Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens—”
Laurens rolls his eyes and tries to jerk his arm away, but Hamilton holds it fast. “Hold still, for God’s sake. Have you some death wish? Perhaps Lafayette spoke the truth....”
“Leave me be.”
“As soon as I finish ensuring that you will not bleed to death with any particular haste.”
Laurens sighs and lets his eyes close, doing his best to ignore the pain that pulses through his arm. Hamilton is close enough that Laurens can feel the cloud of his breath upon his own cheek, pressing in sweet gentle waves through the chill of the air. The strong soft fingers finish their work, tying the cloth off neatly at his wrist, and Hamilton sits back.
“There. You are more than lucky it missed the thickest of your veins....”
Laurens’s eyes slide open, and he glances aside to Hamilton, who isn’t looking at him—his eyes are cast to the snow as he speaks. He’s the most beautiful, of course, when he doesn’t know he’s being watched—his tension moves from mouth to forehead, and his gaze slips out of focus, as if the spiraling infinity of his own mind’s many layers are too distracting to allow any attention to be given to the outside world. Yet he concentrates so finely—with the task of bandaging aside, his hands have shifted to the snow, tracing it with meaningless patterns. Working. Always finding ways to work.
“So tense, Colonel.” Laurens allows a smile into his voice.
“Mm.”
“...You are worried.” His mouth tapers into a frown, and he tilts his head, leaning a bit closer. “You—”
“Hardly,” Hamilton insists, but doesn’t meet his eyes—Laurens lifts his uninjured hand, brushes his fingertips ever-so-lightly along the edge of Hamilton’s cheek. Hamilton clenches, and his shoulders twitch in a light shiver—he looks up, breaths issuing in swift silver fans from his lips, snow caught in his long eyelashes and something hard and bright glittering in the obsidian depths of his gaze. “I only... I value you, John. You know that. I pray that you keep that in mind.”
“...Oh,” Laurens hears himself say. Softly. Oh.
Hamilton’s lips fidget for a moment, as if, for once, he can’t find the words he wants—then his shoulders sink in a sigh, and he reaches up, firmly settling one warm hand at Laurens’s neck and the other at his cheek—two heavy chills emanate from the point of contact, rippling down Laurens’s throat and breastbone before finding purchase somewhere in the knots of his stomach.
“Stay alive,” Hamilton murmurs, his eyes earnest. “That’s all I ask.”
“I do my best.”
“Not per Lafayette’s word—”
“Hush,” Laurens implores, and tips his head closer, until the tips of their noses are brushing. Hamilton’s eyelids flutter. Laurens’s thumb runs along the soft curve of his jaw, wanders up to his cheekbone, presses along the edge of his lashes—then, just gently, he leans in and brushes a kiss to Hamilton’s familiar, warm mouth. Hamilton’s lips part further under his, the hand at his shoulder tightening—he lingers, longer than he needs to, marveling as always at how such hard words can constantly slice from such soft lips. His chest flares with the warmth of risk, the knowledge that there are men just on the other side of the tent, men who could see—yet he doesn’t pull away. He kisses Hamilton until his head spins, losing himself in the heat, the small low noises that the other man elicits, his ink-and-woodsmoke scent... a dull ringing is beginning to cloud his ears—
“Steady.”
Suddenly, the cold air upon his face again—he blinks away the gray staining his vision and finds that he’s leaning heavily upon Hamilton’s shoulder, strong arms holding him firmly there. His breath stutters as he scrambles to fill his lungs, bring his eyes back into proper focus.
“I—”
“Have lost too much blood.” Hamilton squeezes him tighter, enough to spark a small whimper of pain, and delivers a quick but insistent kiss to the top of his head. “And now you rest.”
“I am fine.”
“You will be once you have slept,” Hamilton corrects, and, despite Laurens’s mumbled protests, there’s an arm sliding beneath the crook of his knees—he feels the pull of Hamilton’s muscles tensing, and then the ground drops from beneath him, and he presses his nose into the warm shoulder nuzzling against his cheek, listening to the thrum and huff of Hamilton’s pulse and breath as he’s carried one careful step at a time inside the tent.
“It is well within my ability to walk,” he mutters into Hamilton’s jacket. “An arm injury has not robbed me of that much.”
“You half-swoon at a kiss, and you expect me to allow you on your feet?”
“I did not—”
“Shh.” Hamilton’s arms shift, and then there are blankets beneath him, his head tilting back onto the tangle of spare shirt that serves as a pillow. He exhales, opens his eyes and startles at Hamilton’s proximity.
“Now you rest,” he repeats, a smile playing with his lips—that same damned smile that faithfully turns Laurens’s stomach and tightens his chest, lets him forget the sting in his arm and the cold outside. It’s a smile that makes him want to resist—makes him want to snatch Hamilton by the collar and drag him down again, kiss him until his lips are bruised and everyone in the camp will know—blast their judgment—yet, lying down, the spinning of his head has become more welcoming than nauseating, and his eyes are slipping shut against his will.
“...Damn you,” he gets out. Hamilton’s laugh floods him.
“Sleep soundly, John.”
“Stay with me?”
“Of course.”
Hamilton’s hand finds his—their fingers wind together, and Laurens sinks back, his consciousness narrowing off to sweet dreamlessness against the brush of Hamilton’s touch and the full, soothing sound of his steady breaths.