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Opulence disgusts Alexander. If it’s gilded and expensive, he wants nothing to do with it. There’s no point in using money on giant houses with antique furnishings and expensive decorations. It’s excessive. The cash that goes into all those mansions could be spent in much better ways, ways that really matter. But it’s blown on diamonds and designers and nothing makes Alexander more sick to his stomach.
So of course John Laurens lives in such a way.
Alexander loves John with all his heart. John is kind and compassionate and smart and sexy and fun to be around. On the flip side, he can be selfish, arrogant, snobbish, and he is the definition of “rich boy”. He throws around money like it’s nothing because his father is rich and he hates his father. Or at least, that’s his reasoning. Alexander thinks it’s because he can’t bear to live without his luxuries, as much as he might want to give them up.
John’s father set him up with a big, beautiful, expensive penthouse suite. It’s in New York, far away from John’s home in South Carolina, and it’s basically a place for Henry Laurens to stick his disappointment of a son where he doesn’t have to look at him or acknowledge him. All Henry really does is throw money at John in exchange for John not speaking to him and not causing any trouble and not telling anyone who his father actually is. Only a handful of people know Henry Laurens even has a third son.
John uses money like a weapon. If Henry pisses him off, he rushes off to Monaco or the Hamptons without telling anyone, just to waste money. He buys the newest everything, fills his penthouse with all manner of fancy toys. However, Henry comes from old, old money, along with his fat politician salary. John could spend thousands of dollars every day for the rest of his life and never run Henry Laurens dry and he hates that.
Alexander wishes he could feel sympathy for John. But there’s something about the disinterest John shows, the pure needlessness of it all, that doesn’t burn right in his poverty-soaked blood. Alexander has never been rich. He has always had to scrape and crawl and fight for anything he wants. Nothing has ever been handed to him. John, though, John was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. As long as he stayed quiet and acted like he had no relation to his father, he got whatever he wanted. And Alexander just can’t get past that.
John gets what he wants when he wants it, and Alexander refuses to be just another shiny toy. So he’ll tamp down his grief when he walks into John’s penthouse, tries not to trip over cigarette butts and tiny liquor bottles. The whole place smells like marijuana the source being John, who reclines on a leather couch with a fat joint in his hand. He smiles, slow and syrupy when Alexander walks in.
The smile slips away as Alexander shakes his head, takes off the sparkly ring John gave him months ago. He sets the ring on a hall table and turns around to go. John is up and screaming and stumbling to stop Alexander. Asks why. Begs for him to stay. Demands for him to stay. Grabs at his shirt and his arms and Alexander wrenches away. The door slams behind him.
Alexander knows very well who John is. And when he collapses against the hallway wall, he figures that a self-made success and a young James Dean were never going to work out anyway.