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If Burr confessed to anybody what he had been up to as of late, and furthermore what he had been seeing as of late, he would be called crazy no doubt. Really, at first he had thought he was too. Could you blame him, though? With all the experiences, and then the sudden clear communication between the two of them, the entire story behind the entire thing… It was all a lot to handle. Almost too much at once. Surreal, truly surreal. As mad as it was driving him, he had been attempting to keep his mouth shut.
He could only get so far beating around the bush like this, though. He flipped another page of the book that he was reading, pretending as though he was actually focusing on the words in front of him.
Paranormal experiences. That’s what he was referring to. He couldn’t tell you the exact day that it started, but what he could tell you was the pure FEAR that he felt when it did. He didn’t get scared easily —- at least he tried not to. But he was unashamed to say that when his bookshelf started moving, his inkwell had been thrown full force in that direction.
He took a glance over in that direction. The stain of the ink still remained, and no matter how hard he scrubbed, he had been completely unable to get the dark black out. At this point he had just accepted it as part of his decor. What more could he do, really? He had bigger things to be focusing on than just a stain.
Politics for one, but also the ghost of a man now living in his house with him.
That had been far from the last time things moved in his house. After a certain point, he had just started getting used to it. He didn’t question it anymore, as long as the… thing didn’t try to hurt him. At times, he had debated getting into contact with a priest. But, really, he saw no need. It seemed friendly enough. And that experience was only proven the first time that they had finally talked to each other.
THAT was a day that Burr could remember clearly in his mind, even if it had been months ago. It had been a normal day, for the most part. Burr hadn’t noticed anything moving on its own that day or the past few days prior, he had thought the ghost had left… and possibly taken one of his favorite books with it. He wasn’t sure how, but he had managed to lose the thing. It was a bit uncharacteristic of him — he tried to keep all of his stuff in check to the best of his abilities. So, he admittedly was a bit frustrated. He was attempting to not uproot his whole house, but a few things had been thrown out of place. Yet no matter what he did, he simply couldn’t seem to find it. He was about to resign, when he walked out into his living room once more, just for a final check. And he simply. Just. Froze.
There, sitting in one of his chairs, was a man. Not anybody he recognized at all. He had dark skin and eyes, little hair, and he was tall, muscular, and broad. His clothing didn’t seem anything recent in the slightest — a Greek chiton slightly falling off of his left shoulder, where a singular shoulder pad made of silver was also resting, paired with a blue ribbon tied around his waist like a belt, sandals, and a large sword on his back. What stood out the most to Burr, though, was the slightly transparent appearance to him, and the bright yellow cracks in his skin. If he were to compare it to anything, it would likely be lightning. And he was reading the exact book that Aaron had been looking for moments prior.
The lawyer was frankly too stunned to speak. And you would be too in that situation. The spirit that had been living with him for about a month now, casually sitting in his living room, reading one of his books. And he could see him. He could see him clearly. That shouldn’t be possible.
“...Sir?”
Burr wasn’t sure what compelled him to speak, but it was clear him acknowledging the ghost caught him just as off guard as him being there for Aaron. The pair of them had made eye contact for a long, uncomfortable while. Neither of the pair could blame the other. What were they meant to do here? The spirit was so used to being invisible, and Burr was used to him being invisible as well. The sudden harsh shift–
“You can see me?”
The ghost spoke next, his words coming out as more of a statement than a real question. His voice was smooth — it sounded nice, Burr took note of. Not what he would’ve expected from a ghost. He was thinking it would be a bit more… echoey? Harder to hear than it was. But no, the lawyer could hear him clear as day. Hesitantly, he nodded and cleared his throat.
“That I can. I can only assume you are the one I have been… rather unconsenually sharing my house with as of late?
The ghost closed the book and looked away from Burr, properly and gently setting the item down in his lap. Burr could be grateful for that much, at least he knew how to handle literature.
“A crude way to word the question, but I suppose you could say that, yes.”
“What’s rather crude is haunting an innocent man.”
“I think calling yourself innocent would be a bit hubris, we’ve all committed our sins.”
That response caught Burr off guard. He hadn’t expected the spirit to be able to quip back with him the way that he was. He couldn’t say that it wasn’t… appreciated, though. If he was being honest, outside of the courtroom he didn’t get much debate. At least not much debate that he was satisfied with.
But really he couldn’t argue with the point made.
“I suppose you have a point, but I still stand my case. What’s your reason for being here? Why my house specifically, if I’m allowed to ask? I assure you that I’m not that interesting of a man, if you haven’t noticed that already in your time here.”
The ghost had to take a noticeable moment to pause and think about a response to the question asked. That made Burr equally satisfied and annoyed. Truly, did he have no reason for it? It had been causing him quite the bit of stress and quite a few spooks at times.
“It was just the first building I saw that looked welcoming enough. I’ve been dead far too long to care.”
Burr tilted his head.
“What does that imply?”
“I’ve been dead for hundreds of years, and I’ve been lost and wandering. My stomach is constantly empty — I made several stupid mistakes which cost the life of my own and many others and I hold the guilt of that to this day. I died hungry and I remain that way in the afterlife. It’s a feeling I’m used to. I go house to house to try and find some sort of comfort in my new reality, but I’ve found no luck so far,”
He looked back at Burr.
“I’m beginning to think my luck has run out. That is what that implies.”
A silence held for a moment.
“Well,”
…
“Welcome home then. My name is Aaron Burr.”
That caught the spirit off guard. He took a moment to register what he was told, before a small smile crept up onto his face. This was new. Not a bad sort of new, but still… new. He had never had somebody welcome him with open arms like this before.
Well, he had. But that was many years ago.
“Eurylochus. Thank you for letting me stay.”
The name caused the lawyer to freeze.
“Eurylochus? As in Eurylochus of Same?”
“You’ve heard of me?”
Okay. Burr had to be losing his mind.
“Are you attempting to tell me that a character from Homer’s Odyssey has just shown up in my living room, has been haunting my house for the past month, and I have just ever so casually invited him to move in with me.”
“Homer’s… Odyssey? I don’t know what you’re talking about, apologies.”
“Follow me.”
“Oh—”
He didn’t think he had ever walked to his study so fast. The spirit — Eurylochus — followed behind him without much question, either. If curiosity killed the cat, Eurylochus would have been the largest feline of them all.
But that was just… how the rest of the night went. Burr read Eurylochus Homer’s Odyssey, and they discussed things that were different in the story from what Eurylochus remembered. There were a good chunk of them, all of which Burr had written down. For… later purposes, he figured. And this had gone on and on until the lawyer had merely fallen asleep without realizing it.
The next day, he had woken up in his bedroom. Tucked in like nothing had happened. Part of him wanted to believe it was a dream, but the ghost sitting in the corner begged to differ about that part.
And so it went on like this for months. They had started bonding — the closer they got, the more they learnt about each other. And the more they learnt about each other, the more that they found themselves never wanting to leave the others side.
It had escalated to the point where Burr had woken up with Eurylochus in his bed a few times. Nothing had happened between the two the night prior, nothing the lawyer could ever remember, which led him to believe that the man simply got lonely throughout the night and decided to crawl in. He never said a word about it.
The others, Hamilton, Lafayette, Laurens, Mulligan— all of them, had clearly started to notice that something was different about him. Maybe it was the way he seemed a bit more well rested lately, or how he carried himself a bit higher. Possibly it could have been the more chipper tone that he was taking on. Burr wasn’t sure, but it was clear that they knew something was up. He couldn’t help it, Eurylochus just made him feel that way.
The way his cheeks would flush whenever the man got close, the few times he caught his mind drifting off and thinking about the man, the butterflies that would form in his stomach at every little interaction… It wasn't normal. That wasn’t how you felt about a friend.
They didn’t call it love. It was never outwardly stated as such. But if someone were to peer inside from the out, that’d be exactly what it would look like. It wouldn’t seem like two friends trying to get by, but two lovers instead. And thinking about it now as he was sitting here, Burr wasn’t sure how much of a problem he had with that.
He felt a gentle head rest on his shoulder, a small fizz of electricity starting to crackle through him. A feeling he was used to. It was what happened whenever he made contact.
“You’re not really reading that, are you?”
“Caught me red handed.”
“Thinking about me, huh?”
“You know me too well.”
He felt a gentle kiss get placed onto the crook of his neck. He smiled.
No.
Burr didn’t have a problem with that idea at all.