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Alexander was halfway through his outro before he realised he forgot to mention the lifestream.
“Oh yeah…” he trailed off, leaning on the back of his chair and grinning towards the camera. “I may or may not have forgotten to say that in a few hours or so I am expecting a knock at the door, so three assholes can show up and ruin my too-small-for-this-shit apartment. Also Adrienne is coming with Lafayette, so we’ll have one saint among the sinners. The other two are John and Hercules, of course. So expect a lifestream tonight at some point! And, yeah, see y’all later!”
He waved, still smiling, and turned off the recording. Now to edit and upload all of this before three, and then he can go and try to tidy the rooms. Maybe.
(He wasn’t actually going to, of course. Besides, John’s apartment which he has visited just a few weeks ago looked worse, so he can’t be complaining, and as to the other three, well. They’ll live.)
The moment the video was up, the comment section began buzzing about tonight, speculating what will they do on the stream and being excited about it in general. As to the latter, so was Alex, literally bouncing around the place while he tried to find spare bedsheets, but as to the former, they literally had no plan.
“We’ll say hi and then ask Twitter for suggestions,” Laf shrugged over the Skype call three days prior when all the arrangements were made on a whim, and Hamilton couldn’t disagree with the fact that it was probably the best strategy.
(He did have a few games out in case they wanted to play them though).
When Hercules arrived, the first one out of the bunch, he threw his sports bag across the hallway and gave Alex a hug.
“I haven’t seen you in forever, man!”
“We literally Skyped each other a few days ago,” Hamilton shrugged, looking slightly flustered. Herc snorted.
“As if that could be a worthy replacement to seeing you irl.”
“Anyways, come in!” Alexander rolled his eyes, letting him past. “Everyone else isn’t here yet, Laf’s plane is supposed to land in like half an hour, and John texted me a few minutes ago saying he’ll arrive in twenty.”
“Great,” Mulligan grinned, and then stopped in the doorframe of the living room, his eyebrows creeping higher each second. “Also, do you ever clean up in this place?”
“Shush!” the owner of the said place frowned jokingly, falling on the sofa.
Hamilton could swear that you could set your watch by John, because he showed up at the door, ringing the bell non-stop before said door was swung open, exactly twenty minutes after the message was sent. He didn’t even properly set his suitcase aside before lunging forward and almost strangling Alexander in a hug, and, okay, if Hercules had an excuse of not seeing him for more than three months, John has literally met him a few weeks before.
Alex, however, was never the one to complain about hugs. Especially if the hugger was John Laurens. Hercules, who was chuckling to himself from behind, may or may not have known a bit too much about that.
“Herc!” John yelled after stepping away from Hamilton, who immediately dashed to get his suitcase. “Hey man, I missed you!”
“Same,” Mulligan grinned. “Now come in, Alex actually has food for once, so we can wait for the Lafayettes while preparing dinner.”
“I love how they’re not even married, and yet we still call them that,” John snorted, but did follow Hercules to the kitchen. Alexander, feeling the need to remind that hey, it is my apartment and maybe you should, like, wait for me, ran after them.
Dinner wasn’t half ready when Gilbert and Adrienne showed up, and she, being the saint she was, immediately offered her help. Lafayette though snorted and shook his head:
“I love you guys, but cooking is not my area of expertise.”
He did though kiss all of them on the cheek before collapsing on the sofa and ranting in a terrible mix of English and French about the horrors of travelling in economy class. (Alexander laughed very sarcastically and half-considered poisoning his food. Not really though.)
“Anyways!” John announced, when the lasagne was eaten and the plates were mostly cleaned. “Wow, guys! How long has it been since we have actually all met up like this?”
“Like, a year?” Alexander shrugged, laying on the floor and rocking his legs in mid-air. “All because someone couldn’t be bothered to leave France!”
“Excuse you, but a transatlantic flights are a mess,” the man snorted, rolling off the couch and settling beside him. Adrienne nodded in total agreement as Hercules laughed.
“True though,” Hamilton yawned. “I have visited you before, in case you forgot. And, hey, didn’t we promise people a stream?”
“I’ve never figured out what is it going to be about, but we did, didn’t we,” John nodded. “Wanna go set up the cameras?”
It took maybe around half an hour to get all of the equipment working, post a notification on every social media in existence and finally collapse on the couch after checking that the cameras are, in fact, rolling. Not having anyone to deal with the technical side was kind of a problem, but they all agreed to keep an eye on it from time to time, and it’s not like the comments, through which Adrienne was scrolling with an amused expression, would not tell them if something was wrong.
“So!” Alex began. “Hello to whomever is watching, and welcome to… a random lifestream we decided to have three days ago and made Laf and Adri fly across the ocean for. And… John, say something, I have no idea.”
Laurens chuckled, picking up the sentence.
“And we, not unlike Alex, have literally no idea what to be doing, so if you guys have any suggestions, Facebook, Twitter, comments – we’re monitoring everything. Post it with a hashtag… uh…”
“Hamisqad!” Hamilton interrupted, grinning.
“No way we’re using your surname in this,” Hercules rolled his eyes jokingly, but Alex shook his head.
“Nu-uh, we’re doing this, too late! Hashtag Hamisquad – suggestions, questions, pictures, whatever you want us to see, I guess.”
It took them forty seven seconds of the stream to burst into laughter for the first time. (Lafayette will later claim that was probably the new record.)
They somehow went through a lot of things before they even hit a two hour mark. They played Seven Second Challenge (which Hercules totally won and nobody even tried arguing with that fact), managed to pull up a few multiplayer games on Alex’ TV, had a makeup master class from Laf and Adri and answered a dozen or two questions related to their lives and work. Hamilton didn’t even know until now how much did he miss all of them being together like that, because holy shit – but also he probably wouldn’t have admitted it out loud.
Besides they weren’t close do being done streaming.
“We should totally play Never Have I Ever!” John exclaimed. “Suggested by Melody413. And, like, yes. I’m up.”
“We’re not getting drunk on a lifestream,” Hercules interjected. Lafayette, visibly disappointed at that, rolled his eyes, and Alex jumped up.
“We don’t actually have to, though! I have those little sweets, what’re they called, the jelly ones! We can just get like ten each and eat one whenever?”
“That actually sounds like a good idea,” Adrienne nodded, still looking at the comments. “People seem to like it at least. You want me to read out their suggestions, and then you four can actually play?”
“If that’d be alright with you, you are a saint,” John grinned, and waved to the camera. “Send your ideas, guys, Adri will pick some random ones. Don’t be too cruel.”
“You realise that she is the one who is going to be cruel?” Lafayette raised his eyebrows, chuckling and pointing at his girlfriend. She threw a pillow at him.
(It took around quarter of an hour for the pillow fight to settle down and for all of them to return back to their seating places, plastic cups with ten Haribos in each in their hands. The room may have been a bit more of a mess, but hey, that’s how they chose to live their lives, Alex laughed.)
“Okay, so, number one. Never have I ever worn a dress.”
“That’s not too bad,” Alex grinned, biting a head of a gummy bear. So did Lafayette (“You’re doing this just to spite me, aren’t you…”), John and Herc though passed, exchanging confused glances.
“Never seen either of you in a dress,” Laurens noticed. Hamilton blushed.
“It’s not like a normal occasion,” he shrugged. “Just once or twice for the videos.”
“Send me a link to those, I want to see them,” John grinned. Lafayette whopped suggestively.
“On with the game,” Hercules rolled his eyes, thus probably preventing another pillow fight from stating. Adrienne scrolled through the chat for a couple more seconds before looking up.
“Never have I ever googled intentionally a fanart made of me,” she read out. Alex snickered, winking at John.
“God, those things.”
It would be a lie to say that Laurens did not blush at the comment, pretending to choose a sweet from the cup while trying to find his face from the camera. Judging by Adrienne’s laughter, the comments missed nothing.
“I mean, of course we did,” Lafayette shrugged, as both he and Hercules ate a sweet as well. “Actually, just send us your fanart on Twitter, you know the hashtag, we’ll look at it after we finished playing. ‘S gonna be fun.”
“Nothing too incriminating!” John added, still trying not to look straight at the camera. Hamilton winked at him once more.
Honestly, it was no surprise that people shipped the two – with the amount of time they spent together, recording videos, visiting each other and meeting up at cons. Plus Alexander was openly bisexual and Laurens was gay – so it wasn’t beyond plausible. But John could really never tell whether Hamilton was joking or not when he winked at him like that – and he wasn’t about to ask. There were too many ways this could go.
“Never have I ever,” Adri continued, “fired a gun, but not in like a shooting gallery, just for fun, I guess.”
“Shooting galleries are fun,” Alex shrugged, eating a sweet. “But yeah, quite a few times.”
“Should I be afraid to ask?” Hercules raised his eyebrow, however, choosing one himself. “Went hunting once or twice.”
The game moved by quite quickly, occasionally interrupted by “When the fuck did you do that?!” and a few crazy stories from each person in the room, at least once – by Adrienne’s fit of laughter as she read out “Never have I ever been arrested” and proceeded to stare at her boyfriend for three long seconds, and twice – by Alexander spilling his candy. (“Once I’d understand, but two times?” Hercules rolled his eyes. Hamilton shrugged, snickering.)
Somehow John was the one losing. He had a single sweet left in his cup by the sixteenth question, and while Alex was not far behind with only two, that didn’t stop him from laughing and trying to come up with the punishment for the loser on the go. Hercules and Lafayette, both with four sweets, exchanged understanding glances as Adri continued scrolling through the chat in search of suggestions.
“A-ha!” she exclaimed, finally looking up. “Never have I ever kissed a guy!”
“Duh,” Hamilton shrugged, eating one of his remaining candies and staring at everyone else expectantly. So did, to his moderate surprise, Hercules, Laf chose to pass, which Alex has slight doubts about, but decided not to voice out loud, John, however, set his cup aside as well.
“Nope. Go on.”
“Wait,” Hamilton frowned. “You’re gay, dude. Are you meaning to tell me you have never kissed anyone?”
“I’ve kissed girls,” Laurens shrugged. “Let’s not get into reasons as to why on a stream, okay? But we’re equal now, Ham. Gonna have to see who gets more lucky!”
Adri giggled and was about to read something else out, but Alexander shook his head and handed his cup to Hercules for safekeeping – and then leaned over to John, who was just to his left, joining their lips together.
When later asked whether he expected this, John Laurens will admit that no, he didn’t. That’s just how it went with Alexander, he made decisions on a whim and executed them immediately, and if someone’s brain didn’t run at two hundred miles per hour they wouldn’t have been able to predict his actions. Right now, however, John was far from being able to form coherent sentences; his only thoughts were something like “Holy fuck, Alexander is kissing me, please do not stop doing this in the nearest thousand years please.”
“Mon dieu,” Laf chuckled all too soon, and Alex almost jumped back.
“Oh. Sorry. Got carried away there, cause…” he trailed off, picking up the last sweet from Laurens’ cup and putting it in his still half-opened from shock mouth. “Well, I wasn't gonna risk losing. Anyways, on with the game. John's out of candy, so we have to come up with a punishment, I guess!”
“The chat is on fire right now,” Adrienne noted calmly as everyone else didn't bother responding to his words, still processing what has happened. “Someone just promised to make thirty two thousand gifs out of that.”
“You know the hashtag,” Hamilton shrugged, bouncing in his seat. Hercules rolled his eyes.
“If you’re planning to overlook the fact that you just kissed John, we’re not doing that,” he finally said. Lafayette nodded in agreement, as Alex looked down, his ears burning.
“Can we. Like. Finish the stream first,” he muttered. John nodded absently, staring at his shoes and clutching his fists almost too tightly.
“Yeah. Yeah, sure. We really should. I lost, didn’t I. Huh. What now?”
Laf growled loudly. Adri laughed:
“Can I please read some of the comments out?”
Alexander moaned, hiding his face in his hands.
Somehow they managed two more hours. They did end up looking at the fanart (it would be a lie to say that Alex didn’t scroll through one or two or three illustrations of the kiss which were somehow drawn quickly enough to post them), then played another multiplayer game, fighting over the three controllers, and finally flopped back on the floor, waving at the camera.
“We’re gonna do something tomorrow as well, but probably not a stream, maybe a few challenge videos or something,” Hamilton explained before nodding to Hercules who was standing near the camera to turn the streaming off. “Anyways, see y’all later. Bye.”
“Well that was a rollercoaster,” Adrienne giggled when the stream has, in fact, stopped. “The chat is still on fire in case you were wondering. Even more so than before.”
John jumped up, biting his lip.
“I’ll… be in my room. Guest room. Whatever. Goodnight guys.”
He stormed out of the door a second later, leaving Laf and Herc shaking their heads, Adri looking at where he was standing a moment before sympathetically, and Alex – incredibly confused.
“Shouldn’t you, like, follow him?” the girl asked after a few seconds.
“Thank you for pointing out that incredibly obvious course of action to him,” Hercules snorted.
“No?” Alex shrugged. “Yes? I don’t know! He doesn’t seem like he wants to talk to me, and like – I didn’t – what if he hates me now? Shit, that was a horrible thing to do, and – what do I even say?!”
“You literally make people give you irrelevant topics and rant about them for twenty minutes on your channel. You’ll find something to say,” Lafayette sighed. “Just do it!”
“You did not just use that meme on me,” Alex sighed, hiding his face in the pillows on the sofa, then moaned. “I don’t want to fuck up any more than I did!”
“Do you need us to spell it out for you?” Herc rolled his eyes. “John doesn’t know whether you meant it as a joke or not. He is, like, the most oblivious and insecure person there is, excluding you perhaps, and if there is one way to make it worse, it’s not to talk about it at all and make him reach his own conclusions. So go and fucking talk to him.”
“Since when is Hercules so wise?” Laf stage-whispered to Adri. She snickered.
“Fine, fine, fine, whatever,” Alex sighed, standing up. “But if it goes wrong, I’m blaming you guys.”
“So heartless,” Mulligan snorted.
John was in the middle of changing when someone knocked at the door cautiously. He expected it to be Adrienne, the only person among them who ever bothered to knock, maybe Hercules, who did so occasionally, but definitely not the owner of the apartment. He barely resisted the urge to shut the door in his face, instead stepping away from the doorframe and sitting down on the bed. Hamilton instead chose to use floor for that purpose.
“Hi,” Alexander finally said after at least ten seconds of silence, and Laurens couldn’t help but wince at the sound of his voice.
“Hello.”
“So,” Hamilton said, after no other attempts to keep the conversation going followed from John. “Do you want to… talk about it?”
“Talk about what?” Laurens hissed. “You kissed me, you won the game, done. What is there to talk about?”
“Like… the fact that you kissed me back?” Alexander shrugged, looking at the door (which he, thankfully, shut after coming in). “Or… I don’t know, something.”
“You can’t just expect to kiss me and me not to kiss you back, Hamilton,” John closed his eyes, suddenly feeling tired as hell. “But really, let’s just forget it. It was a fucking game, it’s not worth me saying things that can ruin… things.”
Fuck. Sometimes he wished he’d be as good with words as Alex. Maybe then it would be easier.
(It wasn’t really, judging by how the man himself was struggling to find something to say.)
“Okay, you know what, whatever!” Hamilton suddenly exclaimed in a few more moments full of heavy silence, jumping to his feet and making John flinch, then almost launched himself onto the bed, staring him in the eyes while sitting only a few dozen centimetres away. “Laurens, do you like… like me? Yes or no answer.”
And sure, John would probably say something (something that would probably not be either yes or no), but Alexander's lips were so close, and hey, he might as well, right? If Alex does not like him back, well, he’ll just do it one last time, and if he does, then–
Yeah, John totally didn’t finish that thought before leaning forward and kissing him.
And Hamilton totally kissed back.
- - - - -
Alexander Hamilton is now in a relationship with John Laurens.
Hercules Mulligan: fucking finally
Marie-Joseph de Lafayette: @hercules rt.
John Laurens: Why arent you guys asleep =.=
Adrienne de Noailles: They are waiting for people’s response. You know how I said the comments were on fire during the stream? Well that was nothing compared to what’s coming.
John Laurens: Oh god were gonna burn arent we.
Alexander Hamilton: Together <3
John Laurens: <3
Hercules Mulligan: o m g
Marie-Joseph de Lafayette: agreed.