Chapter Text
If you asked anyone in the office what John Laurens did for Alexander Hamilton, they’d rattle off the list like scripture. Like a well-loved war story. Reverently. Exhaustedly.
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Got his coffee order right every time
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Brought him cough drops before he started coughing
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Gave him a new scarf when he forgot his (and never asked for it back)
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Took over his deadlines when he was sick
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Defended him in meetings like a man with nothing left to lose
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Gifted him a very expensive pen “just because”
If you asked why, they’d all give the same answer, with the same resigned sigh:
“He’s in love with him. Obviously.”
Because he is.
John doesn’t say it, not out loud. But it’s in how he listens when Hamilton talks—like the whole world quiets for him. It’s in how he looks at him: like Hamilton is sunlight, thunder, and revolution, all wrapped in one impossible man. It’s in how he keeps giving. Quietly, instinctively, like staying near him might be enough.
Everyone sees it.
Everyone except Hamilton.
Hamilton, for his part, is oblivious in the way only a man running entirely on chaos and ego can be. He crashes into the office late, trailing papers like a comet tail, grins like he hasn’t slept in three days, and says things like:
“You’re my favorite person here.”
“Don’t leave. I’ll die.”
“Hey, can I split your lunch? Yours tastes better.”
Then proceeds to hand over half his burrito without waiting for an answer and launches into a monologue about constitutional law while chewing.
Laurens, with the restraint of a saint and the pulse of a panicked teenage girl, says nothing.
The office—once a space of passive-aggressive emails and lukewarm ambition—has become a psychological battleground. A purgatory of the heart, where every employee is forced to witness the world's slowest, stupidest, most one-sided mutual pining in real time.
They tried, at first.
Hints. Jokes. “Work spouse” gags at lunch that landed like bricks thrown at Hamilton’s steel wall of oblivion.
Nothing worked.
So, in the middle of a perfectly normal Tuesday-morning budget meeting, while Angelica presents a slide titled “Q2 Departmental Allocations,” Lafayette leans over and slides a Post-It into her line of sight.
💸 “Hamilton finds out on his deathbed, John’s holding his hand” — $30
Angelica doesn’t blink. She grabs her pen.
“That’s generous. $50 says three years and one HR violation later.”
Behind them, Jefferson groans dramatically. “Okay, but hear me out—what if we just lock them in a room and make them work it out?”
“We’ve tried that,” Angelica says, without looking up. “They thought it was an escape room.”
“They solved it,” Lafayette says darkly. “Called each other ‘partner’ the whole time.”
“And high-fived at the end,” Angelica mutters. “It was spiritual violence.”
Jefferson drags a hand down his face.
At the front of the room, Hamilton—late, frenzied, and half-tucked—is clicking wildly through slides no one asked for, rambling about “defending the sanctity of municipal budget integrity.”
Next to him, John adjusts the mic wire. Refills his water. Straightens his notes with that same soft look in his eyes. The one that says: I’d do anything for you, and you wouldn’t even notice.
Angelica slumps back in her chair. “This should be illegal.”
Lunch breaks are the worst.
Not because of the food (though the breakroom microwave is haunted). Not because of the crowds (though Jefferson does loudly narrate his lunch like it’s a mukbang channel). But because lunch is the one time Hamilton wanders in looking soft around the edges—tie loosened, sleeves rolled, vulnerability peeking out from behind caffeine and ego—and Laurens forgets how to breathe.
And because, inevitably, Hamilton finds him.
"You're eating without me?" he says, scandalized. “Betrayal. Treason.”
John doesn't look up from his salad. "You were on a call."
“I was on a call about you ,” Hamilton says, dramatically flopping into the chair beside him. “Defending your honor to payroll like a knight in a very boring crusade.”
He reaches over, steals a cherry tomato, then adds, mouth full: “I would kill for you, you know.”
“Okay,” John says. “That’s not healthy.”
But Hamilton’s already halfway through his fries, launching into a rant about timecard discrepancies. And John is already too far gone.
Angelica watches it unfold with the blank expression of someone watching a horror film where she already knows everyone dies.
“I’m putting another twenty in the pool,” she tells Lafayette. “Final straw: they accidentally get married filing taxes together.”
“Too optimistic,” he replies. “I say Alex realizes he’s in love when John starts dating someone else. ”
Angelica turns slowly. “You take that back right now.”
He just shrugs. “C’est le drama.”
In the afternoon, the office printer breaks. Again.
Hamilton—naturally—takes this personally.
“I swear this printer is in love with Jefferson. It only works for him. It senses malice.”
John leans over, flips a few trays, and hits the side with a practiced hand. It starts printing. Hamilton stares at him like he’s a god.
“How do you do that?” he says, genuinely amazed.
“You have to be gentle with it,” Laurens says.
Hamilton blinks. “You think I’m not gentle?”
There is a beat.
John looks up. Looks into Hamilton’s eyes. There’s laughter there. Playfulness. Familiarity. Something dangerously close to affection.
Their hands brush on the paper tray.
John pulls back like it’s hot. Laughs awkwardly.
“Maybe not with printers,” he says, and hopes Hamilton doesn’t notice the way his voice cracks at the end.
He does not. He’s already turned back to the paper, flipping through it, mumbling about footnotes.
One day, John sees it.
The pen.
Or rather, the lack of one.
Hamilton’s favorite pen—a sleek Montblanc he got from some internship years ago—has finally given up the ghost. He clicks it in despair for a full thirty minutes before solemnly laying it to rest in the office trash.
John tries not to care.
He fails.
Three days later, he’s standing in a boutique pen shop with absolutely no plan and the vague feeling he’s about to do something monumentally stupid.
The clerk shows him a dozen pens. None are right.
“Do you have anything,” John says slowly, “for someone who writes like they’re trying to outrun God?”
The clerk, either used to deranged clients or just very patient, smiles. “We do, actually.”
He leaves the store with a bag containing a ridiculously nice, shockingly expensive pen—and a receipt that makes his soul leave his body.
He doesn’t give it right away.
He tries to wait for a birthday, or a promotion, or literally any excuse that wouldn’t sound like I bought this for you because I’m in love with you and you deserve beautiful things even if you never look at me the same way .
But then Hamilton shows up to work in a storm.
Not a real one—a Hamilton storm. Papers everywhere, shirt rumpled, muttering like a man personally betrayed by the concept of Tuesday. And when John comes by his desk, he’s furiously trying to sign a document with a hotel pen that keeps breaking .
John doesn’t think.
He just reaches into his bag and sets the pen down beside him.
Hamilton freezes.
“Oh,” he says.
He picks it up gently. Clicks it. Tests the ink. It glides like silk.
He doesn’t look up.
“You didn’t have to do this,” he says.
“I know.”
“This is—John, this is... way too much.”
“I know.”
“I—thank you. Really. This is. God.” He breathes out a laugh. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Glad you noticed,” John says, trying not to sound like his heart is about to combust. “Use it well.”
Hamilton does. That day. Every day after.
A few weeks later, Hamilton starts to get sick.
Not all at once—he’s not that lucky. It starts in the throat, a scratch like sandpaper, which he power-throughs with the intensity of a man who believes the laws of biology do not apply to him. Then comes the congestion. Then the fever. Then the full-body existential collapse disguised as a sniffly rant about spreadsheet formatting.
He tries to pretend he’s fine. He’s not.
He shows up to work Monday with a red nose, a voice like gravel, and a determined death wish. “I don’t get sick,” he says hoarsely, pouring coffee with shaking hands. “My immune system is—”
He sneezes so hard he knocks over a mug.
John, wordlessly, passes him a tissue.
By the time the morning meeting starts, Hamilton’s already halfway through hacking up a lung. Everyone is ignoring it with the silent horror of coworkers unsure whether this is a cry for help or just business as usual.
And then, just as Angelica starts presenting, it happens.
Hamilton leans back in his chair, rubs at his temple, and lets out a quiet, miserable cough.
John doesn’t even look up. Just reaches into his pocket and slides a cough drop across the table.
Cherry flavoured—his favourite.
Hamilton blinks at it.
Looks at John.
Takes it.
There’s a long pause as he unwraps it, tucks it into his cheek, and lets out a sigh so relieved it borders on obscene.
Then—quietly, raspily—he mutters, “You’re a lifesaver.
John shrugs. “I came prepared.”
“For me?”
“For the chaos you bring.”
And for a second, just a second, Hamilton looks at him. Really looks.
There’s something warm in his expression. Grateful. Surprised. A little undone.
But then he sneezes again, and it’s gone. He launches into a debate about budgetary oversight like nothing happened.
Still—he doesn’t give the wrapper back.
He fiddles with it all through the meeting.
And John just sits there, trying not to fall apart.
The scarf happens in November.
Hamilton forgets his again—he always forgets things like that, like his body exists and needs care. He hurries out of the building like a man on a deadline, coat open, throat bare against the wind, and John watches from the glass doors with a grimace. By the time lunch rolls around, Hamilton’s sniffing through a spreadsheet and muttering about deadlines, stubbornly refusing tissues like they’re a personal insult.
So John brings him a scarf.
Not just any scarf, either. A dark grey merino one, soft as anything, something John bought for himself last winter but never wore. He sets it on Hamilton’s chair before he arrives the next morning. No note. No explanation.
Hamilton takes three days to even bring it up.
“Hey,” he says finally, cornering John at the coffee station. “Weird question, but did you... leave this on my chair?”
He’s holding the scarf like it’s a puzzle. Like it might whisper its secrets if he stares hard enough.
John shrugs, casual as he can. “Maybe. Figured you’d lost another one.”
Hamilton blinks. “It’s really nice.”
“It’s just a scarf.”
“Yeah, but...” He wraps it around his neck slowly, tugging it close. “It smells like you.”
John chokes on his coffee.
Hamilton doesn’t seem to notice. “I’m keeping it,” he declares. “It’s mine now. You can’t sue me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” John says, throat tight.
It becomes a permanent part of Hamilton’s winter uniform. He never gives it back.
Then there’s the rain.
It’s late, the end of a long Thursday. Everyone’s gone except for the two of them, still at their desks like idiots, chasing deadlines and caffeine highs. John finally stands up, stretches, and glances out the window.
“Shit,” he mutters.
“What?”
“It’s pouring.”
Hamilton joins him at the window, squinting at the streetlights glowing through sheets of water. “It wasn’t supposed to rain today.”
John pulls his hood up. “Forecast said clear.”
“Well,” Hamilton sighs, reaching for his messenger bag, “guess we’re both idiots.”
John hesitates at the door. “You don’t have an umbrella.”
“Neither do you.”
“I have a hood.”
“I have charisma.”
“That’s not waterproof,” John says flatly.
Hamilton grins. “Wanna split a tragedy?”
And somehow, impossibly, they do.
They walk together under a single jacket, half-drenched, pressed shoulder to shoulder, laughing at nothing like a pair of lunatics. John tells himself it’s fine, it’s nothing, it’s just rain and proximity and bad planning. But Hamilton’s shoulder is warm against his. Hamilton’s mouth is close when he talks. And when he swears and ducks his head to avoid a splash, John catches the smell of his shampoo, which is citrusy and warm and makes John a little insane.
They part ways at the train station.
Hamilton’s hair is soaked. He looks like a wet, furious cat.
“I blame you for this,” he says, adjusting the scarf. “I was perfectly dry before you showed up.”
“You were perfectly doomed ,” John replies.
Hamilton laughs.
Then he does something stupid.
He reaches up, brushes John’s wet bangs back, and says softly, “You really need a hat.”
John stares.
Just stares.
And Hamilton—oblivious or pretending to be—waves goodnight and disappears into the subway.
John doesn’t sleep.
Of course he doesn’t.
Instead, he lies in bed, scrolling through old texts, letting the rain knock against his window like it’s trying to remind him of everything he didn’t say.
Then, it comes:
alex: you ever think about how weird it is we’re not married?
John stares at it.
alex: like statistically we should be at this point. logistics-wise.
He types:
jack: every day.
Deletes it.
He types:
jack: lol maybe one day
Deletes that too.
Finally, he just sends:
jack: yeah, weird
And then he stares at the ceiling, and counts how many ways he could say “I love you” that Hamilton would never believe.