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Alexander Hamilton wrote everything down and kept it. His letters to Eliza, his letters from Eliza, all of them were in a box on one of their shelves, right next to his personal diary and his old childhood poetry and the folder containing the bills that he had authored. But there was one thing that he would never write down.
He had wanted to, at first, so he would always have a record of that night. He sat at his desk, paper in front of him, quill dipped in inkwell, but as he placed it on the paper, he hesitated, and the ink bled through the parchment and stained the wood under it. So all Alexander could do was clench the quill in his hand, furiously penning another idea for his financial system, and remember another night when he had been writing.
He had made himself a deal and set his decision firmly in stone. He would under no circumstance leave his office at work until he finished the bill that had been giving him nightmares for the past few weeks. In his workplace at night, as he explained to Eliza, he would be undisturbed, accompanied only by a candle or two as he wrote and revised the financial plan that he needed to get passed. Eliza had protested at first, and so had Angelica and even their children, but he had put his foot down.
"Eliza, I can't stop until I get this plan to Congress," he had said. "I promise that when I'm done, I'll spend as much time with you as you want me to."
Eventually, she had relented. And so he had been in the office that he shared with the other members of Washington's cabinet, sitting at his desk and writing, a single candle burning gently beside him. He had been in the middle of scratching out a line that he didn't want to include when he heard the door opening so loudly that he jumped, spilling a spot of ink on the paper.
"Where the fuck is-oh. Hamilton. What are you doing here?" It had been Jefferson, dressed in what looked like a bathrobe of some sort, hair wild around his tired-looking face.
He had rolled his eyes and sighed. "Just working. What are you doing here? And why the hell are you wearing a robe?"
"Shut up. What you wear on a daily basis is much worse than what I'm wearing this one time. Anyway, I'm looking for my cane. I left it here yesterday while meeting with Washington."
"Jefferson, it's the middle of the night."
"Tell that to yourself. Why are you working?" The taller man had crossed over and peered over his shoulder, slender arms leaning on the desk. "Oh. It's your shitty financial plan."
"It won't be shitty when I'm done with it."
"Hamilton, everything you write is shitty."
"Everything you say is shitty. I mean, your opinions on it during our meeting? I was cringing the whole time. Honestly, you shouldn't even talk."
"I mean, I'm right. The lower classes will hate it. It's outrageous."
"Yes, but the economy will benefit from it. And I'm working on how to make the lower classes hate it less right now."
Jefferson had stood up and walked over to the drawer in the corner of the room, opening it to continue searching for his cane. "The lower classes will never stop hating it. The system is inherently beneficial to the rich and detrimental to the poor farmers."
"I already said that farming would still be an important part of the economy. Do you even listen to me?"
Alexander resumed writing now, and he had resumed writing then, trying his best to ignore Jefferson's grumblings and mutters and searches. But it was too loud, his peace already disturbed, and he couldn't restrain himself from snapping.
"Will you be quiet? I'm trying to work here."
"So am I. I'm looking for my cane. That's more important than your shitty legislation."
"No, it's not. Your cane benefits no one. My system will benefit the entire country."
"Hamilton, you are so insufferable. Why the hell do I love you?"
Alexander had stopped writing in shock, and he stopped writing now in memory, a blush rising to his cheeks as he stared down at his hand.
"What did you say?" he had asked, sure, so sure that he had misheard. How could he not have?
"Do you know why I don't believe in God, Hamilton?" Jefferson had turned around, standing up straight, and walked in Alexander's direction, robe streaming behind him like a smaller version of the cape that he usually wore.
"No, and I don't care." He doesn't love me. I don't love him. He's my enemy. I don't care about him.
"It's because no god would be cruel enough to give such a perfect figure to someone so damn frustrating."
Jefferson had been at the other drawer, still searching for his cane, completely silent, as if trying to pretend that he had not spoken. Alexander had tried to do the same thing, writing with more furor than before. But he found that he could not concentrate; every pen stroke reminded him of the perfect lines of Jefferson's face, every word of the curly mass of hair on his head, every sentence of the body that he could look at for ages and ages. He loves me were the only words that he could focus on, and he didn't know why he was suddenly thinking of his sworn enemy in ways that he had only ever thought about Laurens or Eliza.
Eliza. She had been at home, waiting for him with their children, probably asleep or singing one of them a lullaby. But she had been so far away, and Jefferson so close, and so beautiful, and he loved him, and Alexander had been ready, ready, ready, and all other thoughts had drifted away as he had stood up and walked over and kissed him.
Jefferson had responded to the kiss instantly, moving aside and allowing Alexander to wrestle him to the ground. The Virginian's arms wrapped around Alexander's, hands running up and down his back as their lips connected. Alexander's own hands found their way to Jefferson's hair, stroking the curls as if he had wanted to do it for his entire life. Maybe he had, because the connection that they were experiencing was something that Alexander had never felt before, and his body was glowing in the places where Jefferson had touched him.
They had rolled over on the floor, and when Jefferson was on top of him, they pulled free, the other man developing a worried look. It was weird to see such an expression on his face.
"Hamilton, you're married. And if we're caught, we'll be hanged. And I don't know if we can continue this for long, someone's bound to find out, and-"
"One night, then," Alexander had whispered, leaning up and letting a hand drape around Jefferson's neck. "Just for one night, we have time to ourselves. Just one night."
"One night," Jefferson had repeated. "Just one night."
Neither of them had been writing then, pen and paper and inkwell long forgotten on the table, and Alexander stopped writing now, staring ahead, burning the memory in his brain as Jefferson's skin had burned on his.
"I love you," Jefferson had said, over and over again, despite both of them knowing that the memory of the words would sting when the sun rose and they had to leave.
"Thomas," Alexander had said, whispering the name into every part of his lover's body, despite knowing that he would never call him that again.
There had been no tomorrow that night, and neither of them had had lives outside of the room or loves outside of each other. To Alexander, there was only Thomas Jefferson's dark skin and hair and eyes, his robe coming close to slipping off as skin touched skin touched skin, as they kissed until both were breathless and touched until both were exhausted, at which point they had just lied down on the floor, Thomas's slender fingers running through Alexander's long hair and freeing it from its ponytail, and Alexander writing his name with his finger on Thomas's back. Neither of them spoke, but maybe it was better that way; during their daylight interactions, they spoke too much for a normal conversation. Maybe silence was how their relationship was meant to work, free of politics and arguments and debates, free of opposing opinions and daylight technicalities, united as one on the floor of the office at night.
This was the only place where they would be united, both of them knew. They would never write each other love letters. There would never be a marriage certificate on which their names were written side by side. Historians would only see the business letters that they had written each other, only see private journal entries of people witnessing their debates and deciding that they were enemies. Tonight would die with them, and historians would never know what happened.
"I love you," Alexander murmured into Thomas's skin, not caring about any of that. He didn't want to think about what would happen once the sun came up. Not tonight.
"I love you, too."
Daylight had come, and they had left, Alexander with an unfinished bill and Jefferson with a newly found cane. They had cleaned up the books that they had knocked over, wiped away the ink that they had spilled, left everything just as they had found it before they left through the front door. And the only record that Alexander had of how Jefferson's body felt on his own was his memory, and even that faded away when they argued during cabinet meetings or fought against each other to get their ideas onto the Congress floor.
Alexander put away his writing utensils, crumpling up the paper and throwing it away as he did so, took off his glasses, and left the room to get changed for bed.
Thomas Jefferson only wrote down practical things. He did not feel the need to write down his personal emotions where no one would see them but future historians, so he kept those private, giving to history only the logical details about his life. And so he had never written down a record of that night, and it was only a memory in a corner of his mind.