Chapter Text
Wednesday, Wk. 6, 7.40pm approx.
The document is blank. It has been blank for twenty-six minutes, and the cursor blinks back at John as if mocking him. This shouldn't be hard. He's done it dozens of times before. True, he's never had a client like Alexander Hamilton before, but with close to two years experience as a sober companion and however many similar and complete reports under his belt, there shouldn't be anything different about this one. It's supposed to be an evaluation, a summary of their time together which John has to have ready by the end of the week and he can't think of a single thing to say.
Well. That's not exactly the problem.
The problem is that he has too much to say and no way of really saying any of it. How does one sum up six weeks working, going places, living with Alexander in what should essentially be a five hundred-word report?
Eliza had told him, over the phone when the case first came up, that it was unlikely to be much like one of John's usual assignments. "It's difficult to explain," she had said. "You really have to meet him in person."
Keeping odd hours, a tendency to make what could often be incredibly personal deductions about people without even blinking, and the police consultancy work had all come up in the course of discussion. Alexander's way of making a person almost unconsciously put their life on hold just to better revolve around him once he had their attention, however, had not been mentioned, and John would really have appreciated the warning.
When asked how she knew Alexander, Eliza had replied, a little pointedly, that they were old friends. It might have been nothing, but the weight behind 'old friends' seemed heavy with the certainty that, some time ago, he had broken her heart, probably without even realising he'd done it, because that's just Alexander's way. John knows that much.
We visited crime scenes, he thinks. I helped solve a murder case. Somehow our lives became really fucking entwined more quickly than anything should and now I have to leave because our time together is almost over and maybe I wouldn't be freaking out about it so badly if I wasn't an idiot who goes around kissing his clients.
Even as he mentally lists the reasons why that's a terrible opening statement, there's a small part of John that can't help thinking: Not clients. One client. Because of course Alexander "stubborn as hell, will make everything difficult for his own amusement" Hamilton would have to win him over just because he could and be so fucking memorable that John's going to be comparing every new client, every assignment from here on out to him, and the worst part is that he can't even find the will to mind as much as he ought to.
Not that he's planning to include that in the report.
My weeks with Alexander Hamilton have been, he types, then stops. Fuck.
Delete.
The past six weeks have proved an eventful and insightful experience. There. One sentence down, however many more to go. It's concise. It's to the point. It's coherent, and it reads like he's talking about volunteering abroad or trailing about on work experience, missing out everything important, like how Alexander once climbed onto a table when speaking so as to make his point more emphatically. Or how his eyes light up when he's close to solving a case, or the times he forgoes technology for some hours in favour of pen and paper when he can't make sense of his thoughts, and emerges with ink-covered hands and a tired, desperate smile.
Alexander stretched out among scattered papers, asleep because nothing short of passing out from exhaustion wherever he may be sitting is enough to get him to bed. Alexander persistently refusing all of John's attempts to get him to eat, but never failing to take the food left for him in the fridge when John's not there. Alexander wide-eyed, trembling slightly, bone-tired and entirely too alert after seventy-two sleepless hours fuelled by coffee and half a bowl of cereal. Alexander as John will never see him again, and fuck but he shouldn't care about that as much as he does.
It's domesticity, in an unusual way, and John knows very well it won't be replicated with his next client, or the next. It's something about the way they'd instantly clicked, underneath Alexander's insistence that he didn't need John there in the first place, beyond John swearing up and down to give up entirely and find Alexander a new sober companion. Through seemingly endless arguments over everything from healthy eating habits to Alexander's refusal to actually sleep when he needed it, to going to the required group support meetings to the concept of personal space, a certain unspoken knowledge that if they'd met under any other circumstances, their being mostly inseparable would have nothing at all to do with John's job description.
John's job description barely covers that fact now as it is. Screw it.
With a sigh, he closes the lid of his laptop on the unsaved document, and heads downstairs to where he'd left Alexander an hour or so before. The other man is hanging upside-down on the sofa, apparently quite at ease, bouncing a tennis ball against the wall and catching it in a manner which suggests he's been at it for a while. There's an abandoned mug of coffee on the floor, and a stack of files likely pertaining to their-- Alexander's latest case.
He's going to have to get used to that, soon. No longer two consultants but one, no more their case and their work and it's ridiculous because he was never really part of it in the first place, it just so happened that John's job involved following Alexander to his. But when Alexander catches sight of him and exclaims "John! Good! We have work to do," suddenly the last thing John wants to do is bring up the argument, yet again, that Alexander needs to get used to operating on his own now that their days together are so clearly numbered. It would be a hypocritical argument, anyway -- both of them have grown too used to this, to the routine and strange hours and always having the other not far away. John shakes his head slightly as Alexander pushes himself up from the couch, picking up the discarded documents and handing half to John.
"Phone records," he explains, beginning to pace the room and displaying his uncanny ability to gesture with both hands as he speaks while not dropping a single sheet, "I think I'd like to talk to the wife again, but we need something more concrete than what we have, she knows we can't pin anything on her and..."
Alexander carries on talking. John stares down at the printed phone records without seeing them at all, and thinks: We are so fucked. He's distracted enough by this thought and similar variations thereof that it takes him a minute to work out what's wrong with the first thing Alexander said.
"Hold on a second," he says, holding up a hand. "You told Washington we were looking into the Eacker case."
The way Alexander waves him off is so casual he almost does a double-take; Alexander's never been so disinterested in anything in his life, except perhaps when Thomas Jefferson is speaking to him, and even then it's a short-lived disinterest usually dropped within the first minute or so to engage in over-zealous debate. But Alexander's been following the George Eacker case since word of it first spread through the department, waiting around outside Washington's office more than once in the hopes of picking up information Washington hadn't seen fit to give him. Washington officially allowing Alexander access to the case two days previously had been, in John's humble observations, like Christmas had come early for the consultant. He'd hardly stopped to draw breath between giving rapid-fire theories and criticising the work the department had already done, lamenting how much further on they could have been if he'd only been brought in earlier.
And now-- nothing?
"Alexander, you've been begging Washington to let you consult on this case for almost a week, and two days in you're dropping it?"
"Hardly begging," Alexander sniffs, and doesn't look up from examining his share of the phone records.
"Alex," John tries again, and is rewarded by Alexander all but slamming down the sheets and twisting to face him, features pulled into an expression of utter frustration.
"Would you drop it?" he snaps, and because John has dealt with a moody Alexander enough over the past weeks and has no desire to be forced into doing so again, he just mutters "Alright, alright," and does what he's learned to do when this happens -- makes for the kitchen and starts rooting around for the instant coffee. He's pretty sure he's never drunk as much coffee in his life as he has during his time living with Alexander, which is probably not a good development, but a sadly necessary one, not only because of the late nights and being woken at the ass-crack of dawn but also because Alexander is just that sort of person.
He definitely shouldn't be thinking that with as much annoyed fondness as he is. Fucking fuck. John pours two cupfuls, mostly out of habit, and is more than halfway through his own when Alexander finally wanders through. They've lived with each other for over a month by this point, so John isn't as offended as he possibly should be when the first thing Alexander does is look towards the second mug of coffee in a way that clearly reads "Is that for me, and if not, can I have it anyway?" Instead, he just nods.
Living together for over a month or not, though, John is never prepared to watch Alexander down an entire mug of unsweetened black coffee in one go, and winces slightly as his housemate does exactly that. It's made somehow worse by the knowledge that Alexander, unlike John, doesn't even like his coffee black, but nonetheless takes it that way whenever they're in the middle of a case requiring a less-than-average amount of sleep. (That is to say, most of their-- his cases.)
"I'm dealing with the Eacker case," says Alexander, making a disgusted face at the now-empty mug, and it's not really an apology, nor even a promise that he actually is working on it, but he does look ridiculous and John bursts out laughing. It lifts his mood enough that he spends the next few hours sorting through the seemingly-endless pile of phone records with reasonably good grace, stopping only to retrieve his laptop so he can fire off a quick email to Angelica, keeping her updated of their progress as usual, and then one to Eliza, letting her know he's almost finished with the evaluation report and will send it over to her as soon as he can.
The document, with its unpromising opening line and nothing else to show for his efforts, glares back at him until the guilt becomes too much and he closes it, turning back to Alexander with the guilty promise in the back of his mind that he'll finish it tomorrow.