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Thomas wakes up with a pounding headache and hair just… everywhere. Sticking to his face, flat on one side, and frizzy as hell, looking like it took the idea of liberty and ran with it in ways that he’s fairly certain he would have voted against if they’d been proposed at the Constitutional Convention. But then again, he supposes, that’s what he gets for letting goddamn Lafayette talk him into going out for drinks last night, and now he’s lying in a bed that smells like French lavender with his hair drafting its own Declaration of Independence on Lafayette’s pillowcase, and that’s never a good way to start the morning. He moans and sits up, clutching the flat side of his head in a failed attempt to discourage it from hurting.
“Ah, mon cher, you are awake,” Lafayette says from the doorway into the adjoining powder room, where he has apparently already primped himself to face the day. Jefferson squints over at him with one eye, taking in the immaculately-tailored suit, the royal-blue silk tie, the tamed and carefully-coiffed puffy ponytail, then grunts in greeting and flops back down on the bed, staring gloomily at the ceiling.
Lafayette crosses over to the bedside and bends down, kissing Jefferson’s forehead. “I must be going, but you can stay if you like. You do not look well enough to be sent out onto the streets just yet.”
Jefferson frowns and peers up at the Frenchman. “Did we…?”
Lafayette snorts and rolls his eyes. “Of course not. That ship sailed many years ago, did it not? Besides, I prefer my men much less… intoxicated. Than you happened to be last night.”
Thomas swats at him and rolls over to bury his face in the pillow. “Go away.”
“Very well. Make yourself at home, cher,” Lafayette says, reaching down to pat Thomas on the back. “But do not be here when I return tonight. I plan to bring a guest and I do not need my bed to be occupied when he arrives.”
Jefferson turns his head just enough to glare at Lafayette with one eye. “Lafayette?”
“Yes, mon petit?”
“Casse-toi,” Jefferson mutters, reaching down to pull the blankets up over his head as Lafayette laughs and leaves the apartment.
//
He wakes up again an hour later feeling slightly less like death and slowly crawls out of the bed, stretching luxuriously and running through what he remembers of the night before--which, now that he’s awake and his headache is subsiding, is most of it. From following Lafayette to the bar to his first shot of the night, then through a series of increasingly-intimate dances with random guys at the bar (none of whom had been Hamilton, which not that he cares but it’s a little insulting that the asshole hadn’t even offered to dance with him when everybody else was clamoring for Thomas’s attention), and finally through what he’s going to pretend wasn’t a shirtless pole dance performance that he still can’t believe Mulligan talked him into and then the stumble of shame back to Lafayette’s apartment that had ended in a lot of platonic spooning but nothing more than that.
Laurens never remembers the shit that he does when he drinks. Thomas really envies the man for that. And also for the fact that he’d gotten to dance with Hamilton but that’s beside the point, and it’s really only because Thomas feels slighted and not because he actually wants to dance with Alexander Fucking Hamilton but still. Laurens had most likely had a better night than Thomas had.
He goes into the bathroom and splashes cold water on his face, finds an unopened toothbrush in the medicine cabinet and brushes his teeth to get the taste of stale beer and cigars out of his mouth, then takes a deep breath and looks up into the mirror.
Holy shit. He knew his hair was bad, but this… Well, he’s going to have to swear Lafayette to secrecy about how shitty his hair had looked this morning, that’s for sure.
He spends a few minutes trying fruitlessly to spruce it back up but ends up looking more like a mangy poodle than a man who knows how to style his hair, so he eventually gives up and decides to wait for a full styling until he can get home to a collection of hair products that don’t smell like--he picks up a bottle-- gardenias, for fuck’s sake. Leave it to Lafayette to have such ridiculously posh taste in toiletries, he thinks, then sighs and manhandles his wayward hair into submission, securing it with one of Lafayette’s hair ties in a puffball on the back of his head.
His clothes stink like cigarette smoke and bar sweat, so he strips them off and finds a t-shirt and an old pair of sweatpants in Lafayette’s closet. He’ll wear them home and then wash them and return them tonight, he thinks, and it’s not like Lafayette has never borrowed Thomas’s clothes before--they’re almost exactly the same size, after all, and it’s not the first time one of them has ended up crashing on each other’s couch after a night of partaking in adult beverages.
He’s wandered into the kitchen to see if Lafayette has any decent cereal in his pantry (he doesn’t) and is trying to decide between making brioche toast or just saying fuck breakfast and heading home for that too when there’s a knock on the door. Jefferson frowns and puts the loaf of bread back in the old-fashioned bread box, then trudges over to the door and looks out through the peephole.
It’s Hamilton, because of course it is. Thomas lets his frown turn into a scowl as memories of the night before flash through his brain: the way he could hear Hamilton’s voice even over the thrumming bass on the dance floor, the frustration of being overlooked as a dance partner, the jewel-toned club lights reflecting in a pair of deep brown eyes that weren’t looking at him, dammit. What an asshole, he thinks, then opens the door ready to tell Hamilton exactly where he can go and what anatomically-impractical things he can do to himself when he arrives there.
But Hamilton, unsurprisingly, beats him out of the gate as far as speeches go, as he pushes past Thomas into the living room, hands in his own loose, shiny hair as he rubs at his temples. “Lafayette, man, you need to help me.”
Thomas blinks, closing the door slowly and turning toward Hamilton. “Uh…”
“He’s just… fuck. Did you see him? Motherfucker he looked good.” Hamilton walks over to the couch and plops down onto it ungracefully. “How am I supposed to resist when he looks that--did you see him pole dancing? He was pole dancing for fuck’s sake. I’m going to murder Mulligan with a knitting needle, I swear to God.”
Thomas just stares at him. “Who?”
Hamilton rolls his eyes and shoots him an impressive, withering glare. “Fucking Jefferson, of course. Who else do I come over here ranting to you about? God, he’s such an asshole, with those arms and those eyes and that smile . And that’s not even talking about his ass. Jesus. I can deal with it at the office when he’s wearing a suit jacket that covers it but he may as well have spray-painted those jeans on last night and I literally choked on my beer when he walked in. And the pole dancing. Shirtless pole dancing. With his abs . I’m telling you, Gilbert, you’re lucky I’m alive this morning because I nearly died.”
Thomas looks behind himself even though he knows Lafayette isn’t there, then back at Hamilton, who’s put his elbows on his knees and is staring at the floor, fingers steepled in front of his mouth in his frustrated-thinking pose. He wonders if Hamilton has forgotten to put in his contacts or something this morning, because even though he guesses that he and Lafayette have some similar features, there’s no way they look enough alike to fool one of their best friends. Even if Jefferson is in Lafayette’s apartment. Alone. Wearing Lafayette’s clothes. With his hair pulled back in one of Lafayette’s hair ties. Which might mean...
But Hamilton has started talking again, which surprises no one. “It’s just that I know he doesn’t want me. So why does he have to look so… so… God, he’s a motherfucking Adonis and I’m just a hot mess. It’s not fair.”
Jefferson crosses his arms loosely over his chest, and if he lets a little bit of a fake French accent lilt his words just slightly, well, it’s not his fault that Alexander is confused about who he’s talking to, is it? “And yet you did not ask him to dance.”
Alexander scoffs and sits back, running a hand through his hair. “If I’d asked him to dance then he either would have laughed at me and said no or he would have said yes and I would have ended up humping his leg on the dance floor like a horny Shih Tzu, and nobody wants that.”
“Perhaps Thomas would,” Jefferson says, still not quite certain what it is he’s hearing and whether or not Hamilton is just fucking with him as he tends to do.
Of course, Hamilton usually doesn’t lie to him. Their mutual dedication to bothering the shit out of each other is more of a ‘biting sarcastic insult’ thing than a ‘giving false information’ thing. And Jefferson is pretty sure that Hamilton doesn’t have a good enough poker face to pull off something like this. The Alex he knows would have already broken character to laugh at him for buying into the scam, and he definitely wouldn’t be staring at Thomas like he’d grown another head right now.
“I’m sure he would like to see me beg for it, but I’ve got to have more self-respect than that.” Hamilton stands up and starts pacing, quick steps punctuated by tight spins at the end of each circuit. “I’ve got to stay strong. I’ve got to keep my resolve. Even if he does dance like… like erotic poetry. Like the way fire feels on your skin. Like…” Hamilton huffs and sits back down again heavily. “God. I just compared Thomas Jefferson to poetry. I’m so fucked, Lafayette. What am I going to do?”
Thomas inches over to the couch and sits down beside Hamilton. “Tell him?” he says, laying the French accent on maybe a little too thickly--tell heeeem--but Alexander doesn’t seem to notice and instead just scoffs.
“Are you insane? That’s a terrible idea. He’d just… laugh at me. Or at the very least look at me like I’m stupid.”
“You’re not stupid,” Thomas says softly, feeling a spike of bittersweet pain in his chest at the way Alex’s eyes light up at the faint praise. “I think you should tell him, ma puce. You may be surprised.”
Alexander laughs quietly, a little quiver of nerves lighting the edges of the sound like embers from a bonfire. “I don’t know what I’d say,” he admits after a moment. “Imagine that. Alexander Hamilton with nothing to say.”
And even though it seems like the worst idea he’s ever had, Jefferson hears himself speaking, feels his torso twisting so that he’s facing Hamilton, his ears burning as if they’d literally caught fire and his breath shallow in his lungs, blood rushing through his veins like whitewater. “Pretend I’m him, then. Practice on me.”
Hamilton chuckles again, breathless and bright-eyed, and Thomas’s eyes filter down to his lips--lips that normally just spit out words that infuriate him but are now looking far more enticing than they should, lips that Thomas can imagine against his skin, the tiniest flash of a pink tongue that flicks out to moisten them before he speaks. “Thomas Jefferson, I hate your guts,” Hamilton says, then laughs, reaching up to rub his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I do. I loathe him. Every word he says is ridiculous and every idea he has could ruin the whole country. Why can’t I get the asshole out of my head?”
Jefferson chuckles, trying to add in a little bit of a French hon-hon to it to make himself sound less… Virginian. “Lust is a powerful drug,” he says, doing his best to ignore how his fingers itch to reach for Alex’s throat and do something other than strangle him for once.
“God, if only that was all it was,” Hamilton mutters, then stands up again and shakes his arms out. “Okay. I’ll give it a try. Come on.” He flips his hand impatiently at Thomas until he stands too, and their eyes meet for a breathless moment, electricity flowing between them that slowly pulls Hamilton’s brow tighter, draws his eyes into a narrower line. “Lafayette?” he asks, sounding slightly off-center and unsure, and Thomas takes a deep breath.
“Call me Thomas,” he murmurs softly, suddenly desperate to hear his name on Alexander’s lips. “And tell me what you want from me.”
Hamilton bites his bottom lip and looks down at the floor for a moment before flicking his gaze back up to Jefferson’s. “Thomas,” he says, sending a spike of heat down Jefferson’s spine that curls into his stomach, flickers through his loins like fire licking up a line of gasoline.
“Yes, Alexander?” he says, then takes a step forward. Hamilton has gorgeous eyes, dark lashes framing the fathomless depths of eyes that are more pupil than iris at the moment, and God help him, Jefferson wants him. Not just as a hate-fuck, not just as a one-night stand, not just because he can’t have him, although heaven knows this is a terrible idea and they’re just as likely to murder one another as they are to make it work. But Hamilton’s been accused of many things in the past, and ‘deciding against a terrible idea’ has never been one of those things, and so Jefferson can only hope that trend will continue.
Alex frowns, flicking his eyes down to Jefferson’s mouth and then back up to meet his gaze again. “Gilbert?” he breathes, sending a shock of jealousy through Jefferson’s nervous system that makes his eyes go hard, his feet take another step forward.
“Thomas,” he corrects, then slides his cheek against Hamilton’s own so that his lips are millimeters from Hamilton’s ear. “Dis moi ce que tu veux, mon petit. Tell me what you want your Thomas to do to you.”
Hamilton shivers as Jefferson trails his fingers over the skin of his forearms, then he takes in a shaky breath. “He’s not my Thomas. God, I wish he was.”
Jefferson smiles and turns his head to kiss just below Hamilton’s ear, running his lips over the skin of his neck and smiling at the gooseflesh forming under his mouth. “What would he do if he was yours?”
Hamilton shivers again, harder this time, and Jefferson feels the man’s hands land on his hips, the touch light like moths drawn to the fire growing in Thomas’s loins. In the back of his mind, Thomas considers stopping, considers telling Hamilton whose tongue is really tracing patterns on the curve of his neck, but he can’t not do this, can’t have Alexander Hamilton this close to his mouth without touching him with it, and so he allows himself a few more moments of indulgence before the inevitable confession.
Alex tilts his head, exposing more of his neck to Jefferson’s questing mouth, and laughs softly, nervously. “This, pretty much.”
“Only this?” Jefferson asks, his lips moving against Hamilton’s skin as he speaks. “Nothing more?”
Alex laughs again, relaxing against Thomas’s body at last and arching into his touch. “Jesus, Lafayette, are you going to suggest that we practice me getting fucked by him too?”
Thomas pauses, then pulls back to look Hamilton in the eyes--eyes which are glazed with confusion and misdirected lust, and it makes something in his stomach twist with greed, with possessiveness, with the need to have this man all to himself. “Is that what you want Monsieur Jefferson to do to you?”
“You know it is,” Alex whispers, closing his eyes and leaning his forehead against Thomas’s. He lifts his arms up from Jefferson’s waist to wrap around his neck loosely. “Why doesn’t he want me?” he asks in a quiet, strangely timid voice. “I keep hoping that he’ll just snap one of these days when I’m in his face, that he’ll just throw me against a wall and kiss me breathless. But he doesn’t. He won’t. And I don’t know why.”
Thomas lets out a shaky breath, closing his own eyes and letting their foreheads stay connected. “Why haven’t you told him yet, mon cher?”
“I can’t get the words right,” Alex murmurs, sounding mortally offended at himself. “I’ve written everything in my life. Lists and essays and letters and arguments. Reports and declarations and journal entries. Everything is words and it’s the one thing I’m good at, the one thing I can seem to get right, and then I sit down to write something for him and it comes out like a third-grade ‘check yes or no’ note.”
Jefferson blinks, the twist in his stomach creeping slowly up toward his heart. “Why is that?”
“Because I’ve never been in love before,” Alex says. He lifts his hand to the band holding Jefferson’s hair back and toys with it, seeming for all the world like he hasn’t just shaken Thomas’s universe down to its very foundation with a word like love--a word that, if he’s being honest with himself, he’s been avoiding while thinking about Hamilton all along, masking it behind other terms like jealousy, like envy, like reluctant admiration.
Thomas’s blood surges and he takes a deep breath, gathering himself to tell the truth, to put Hamilton out of his misery and do just as he wants: press him up against Lafayette’s apartment wall and kiss him until neither of them can find the boundaries of themselves where they’ve faded into each other. But then Alex’s fingers tug the band loose, the whisper-soft sound of it hitting the floor as loud as sirens in the suddenly too-small room, and before Jefferson can get his wits about him, Hamilton’s lips are just a breath from his, close enough that he can feel them move as the other man speaks.
“Let me pretend,” Alex whispers, then slides his fingers into Thomas’s hair at the same time that he claims Jefferson’s mouth with his own like an explorer finding another New World.
Thomas makes a surprised sound that quickly morphs into a soft moan, opening his lips as Alex’s tongue brushes against them, and it feels like fire singing in his veins, like trumpets announcing royalty, like the sound of a pen hitting the desk when that last perfect word is written, and if this is what it’s like to kiss Alexander Hamilton then he’s sure this is the only thing he’ll want to do for the rest of his life. He pulls Alex closer, their bodies pressing tight against each other as Alex’s lips and tongue and teeth take Jefferson apart from the inside out, as Alex’s fingers card through his hair and set his scalp tingling with joy.
And then it’s over, Alex pulling back slowly with his eyes clamped tightly shut and his hands still in Thomas’s hair. “No, I--can’t. I’m sorry, Laf, I just--you’re not him. And I can’t.”
Jefferson blinks a few times rapidly to get his brain back online, but Alex’s eyes open first, full of regret and longing and desire, and Jefferson is lost in them for the barest second before they harden, glinting with fury as he takes in the puffed-out hair and the way it changes Jefferson’s appearance to be less French, and he feels Hamilton’s fingers tighten in his hair to pull at it hard enough to hurt.
“ Jefferson?” Hamilton gasps, then yanks at his hair again. “What the fuck?”
“Ow,” Jefferson says, raising his hands to try to pry Alex’s hands out of his curls. “Be careful there, mon cher--”
“Oh, don’t you mon cher me, you pompous asshat,” Hamilton bellows. He finally lets go of Thomas’s hair and takes a step backward. “You are such a dick. Letting me talk like that, letting me… Never mind. Fuck you, you old-money cocky Virginia bastard. I’m out of here.”
Jefferson jumps forward to block him from leaving the apartment, putting a hand on Hamilton’s chest that gets slapped away with remarkable speed. “I’m sorry. I was going to tell you. I was just about to tell you--”
“Before or after you fucked me on Lafayette’s bed with your badly-pronounced oui’s and mon ami’s and tell heeem’s?” Hamilton spits out, then forcefully straightens his shirt and stands up taller. “You didn’t fool me, you know. I knew it was you all along. Your French accent is terrible and your hair looks like shit.”
“But you love me,” Jefferson says, raising an eyebrow as his usual confident smirk filters back onto his face. “Alexander Hamilton is in love with me. Imagine that.”
“Well, you’re going to have to imagine it because I’m going to knee you in the balls and then go drown myself in the Hudson so that I never have to look you in the eyes again, so congratulations.” Alex blinks a few times and looks away, tears shimmering in his eyes that Thomas is pretty sure are angry rather than sad. “Fuck you.”
Thomas softens a little at that, taking the tiniest step forward. “I didn’t know,” he says quietly.
Alex scoffs hard and locks his eyes on the floor. “Yeah, well, that was intentional. Listen, just do me a favor, okay? You owe me. Promise me not to tell another soul what you saw here.”
Jefferson bites his lip and tries to will Alex to look at him. “Just so you know, this wasn’t… planned. I wasn’t dressed up as Lafayette waiting on you to come by so I could trick you. You just assumed before I could say anything and then…” He stops and shrugs. “Well, then I wanted to know what you had to say about me. Because I’ve been feeling the same way about you for a while now and so if we’re dating it will be awkward not to tell anyone that I know you care about me.”
Hamilton narrows his eyes and raises them up to glare at Thomas. “Are you fucking with me?”
Jefferson smiles softly and steps forward again, getting back into Hamilton’s personal space. Alex tenses up slightly but doesn’t move away, and Thomas slides his arms around him. “Let me make it up to you. Give me a chance.”
Alex glares even harder at him for a moment, then gives a curt, quick nod. “Okay.”
For the briefest moment, a bit of surprise flashes through Thomas’s mind--had Alexander Hamilton really given in that easily? Surely not--but then Alex licks his lips and Thomas’s brain short-circuits as he leans in for another kiss.
This one is explosive, even better than the first, because now Alex’s hands are back in Thomas’s hair and he knows who is kissing him, and that knowledge turns Thomas on like nothing else in his life ever has. There’s a sense here that he’s conquered the unconquerable, that something about Thomas’s own body and mind and willpower has finally brought Hamilton down to the level of mere mortals, but more than that, there’s the sense that Hamilton has done the same thing to him, that they’re both the victors in this fight, that this relationship is going to be a level playing field for the first time in Thomas’s life, and he loves that. Loves that every interaction is going to be a fight, that Alex will never just let him win, loves that there’s enough passion in their souls for each other to keep them both interested for years to come. A worthy opponent at last, and Thomas can’t wait to start their new life together.
And then pain explodes in his body, sharp stinging pain from Hamilton’s hands in his hair coupled with a dull, throbbing, overpowering pain in his groin. Jefferson doubles over as Hamilton steps backward, smirking hard as his knee detaches from Jefferson’s balls.
“You’re taking me to dinner tonight to make this up to me, you asshole,” Hamilton says. “Pick me up at seven and don’t you dare be late.” He turns and stalks to the door, then looks back at Jefferson, who’s still whimpering incoherently and cradling his aching testicles protectively. “And you’d better bring lube,” he finishes, then steps outside and slams the door behind himself with a flourish, leaving Thomas aching in more ways than one.