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Alexander's mother probably wouldn't have been called intelligent, although she was; Alexander knew this. He was certain that his mother was the smartest person in the world, if only for the fact that she always seemed to know the secrets of it.
She somehow knew which of Alexander's friends would stick around; she knew every recipe she ever needed; she knew how to keep them afloat despite how hard their circumstances were working to drown them.
But most of all, she knew about love. Love had found her and left her and hurt her and healed her, and yet Rachel Faucette was its biggest advocate. She told Alexander and his brother all about it constantly. She told them that love was everywhere, and that it was a superpower that made anything possible - like feeling colors.
She had a color for everything and everyone. She always told Alexander he was a stormy gray, swirling and shifting, never stopping. She gave colors to songs, some bright purple and others deep blue. The owner of their favorite bakery down the street was orange.
When he was very young, Alexander didn't understand. Colors were for seeing, not for feeling. But it grew on him, and he started feeling colors everywhere - in his friends, in his work, in his family, in himself.
Alexander was, by far, the closest with his mother. She confided in him some secrets of life, little tidbits of information to guide him through his journey, little clues, often about the colors.
Alexander still remembers vividly their discussion about love and colors. She told him about his father, and how she loved him in red, deep and fiery. She told him about her first love, a man who turned out to be anything but gentle, and how their romance had been black, intense and hard.
What she told him next has stuck with him his entire life.
"You're going to fall in love with lots of people who'll make you feel lots of different colors," she said. "But wait for yellow. Always wait for yellow."
He had furrowed his eyebrows and asked, "Have you ever found yellow?"
Her smile had been gentle, warm. "Yes."
"With who?"
She had taken Alexander's hand and ruffled his hair. "With you and James."
Alexander had felt awkward with the open declaration of affection, but he smiled nonetheless. He felt it, yellow, all around him.
When his mother died, he was certain he would never feel yellow again. For the longest time, everything felt gray, and not the silver, stormy color that he felt inside himself. This gray was drained, lifeless, pale. It surrounded everything.
In college, the gray started receding. He met Hercules Mulligan, his first best friend. He had the biggest crush on him for the longest time, a nice, pretty pink feeling, but then Hercules met Gilbert Lafayette and fell in love.
Alexander could see that they were bathed in yellow. They didn't see it, but Alexander did. He always did.
And then came John Laurens, and Alexander thought he found it. He thought he found his yellow. John smiled like the sun, made him feel like the stars.
But the more he examined their relationship, as nice as it was, he noticed that it very clearly wasn't yellow. It felt navy blue, and for the first time, Alexander wondered if his mother had gotten it wrong.
The navy blue was nice; it was comfortable.
But then it was too comfortable. He and John were a perfect fit - and it seemed that that was the problem.
They broke up on good terms, and Alexander knew, once again, that his mother was right; always wait for yellow.
Eliza was almost yellow. She was so very close, but just not quite. Alexander took one look at her and knew that she was bright, boundless. Alexander was nearly floored; he thought that he had found his yellow in one fell swoop, but after a few months of dating, he knew that just because Eliza was yellow, it didn't mean their love was. Their love was more lilac, and while it was pretty, Alexander wasn't satisfied.
Cheating with Maria was a mistake, but the lilac was so plain and the deep red that Maria gave him was so exciting. It was a mistake, and Alexander regretted it; but he knew that their breakup was for the best.
Yellow was just around the corner. He could feel it, could almost taste it.
But it didn't come. So he worked and worked to replace the absence growing inside him. He let his stormy gray take over. He wrote pages and pages and found himself beside George Washington.
His life seemed to be falling into place. He had nearly forgotten about his need to find his yellow. All that mattered was that he was in power, he was where he wanted to be, he was making a difference.
And then fucking Thomas Jefferson came along. The man returned from France seemingly with the sole purpose of throwing Alexander off track.
Alexander took one look at him and was overcome with the color purple, a flashy, royal hue that was nearly as obnoxious as the man himself.
They fought incessantly; they knew nothing else. They disagreed on nearly every front. They resorted to petty insults when they ran out of arguments on the topic at hand. Alexander often found himself wishing that Jefferson would drop off the face of the Earth. It would certainly make his job easier.
But then they get coffee. It's ridiculous, and Alexander can't believe he agreed, but some nagging voice in the back of his head told him to chance it.
Sitting at the little diner across from Jefferson, sipping his coffee, Alexander feels a little light, a little lofty. He's not sure what it is; all he knows is that when Jefferson makes a joke, it isn't an insult, and he feels comfortable laughing.
The light feeling fades as he leaves, and then is practically forgotten when he goes into work the next day and argues with Jefferson about foreign policies.
But then Jefferson offers another coffee. At the same diner, Alexander feels it again, the brightness that he let slip away.
Coffee becomes a regular occurrence. Then, slowly, their arguments dwindle. They still disagree, but their opinions are no longer a source of hatred.
Coffee becomes lunch, lunch becomes dinner, and dinner becomes just hanging out after work. Alexander can feel things shifting, can feel some colors in the world becoming less dreary, more saturated. He tries to shrug it off.
And then one night, they're in Jefferson's apartment, sipping wine and watching some documentary on the Discovery Channel that they've both seen, and Alexander stops paying attention.
All he can think about is how he wants to kiss Jefferson. It's not a nagging feeling, it's not a suggestion, it's an urge, it's a need.
He sets his wine on the table and says, "Jefferson."
"Hm?" Jefferson hums, turning to look at him, and Alexander doesn't hesitate. He kisses him, clumsily at first, and then with purpose as Jefferson responds, pulling him in. They abandon their wine in favor of kissing, languidly and lazily, as if everything around them is melting and it doesn't matter.
They stop sometime after midnight. They don't really have anything to say, so they don't say anything. They fall asleep on the couch, the television providing a quiet background murmur.
When Alexander wakes up, tangled on the sofa with Jefferson, he doesn't mind that he's going to have a crick in his neck for a week or that his limbs are twisted uncomfortably beneath him.
He doesn't mind, because when he opens his eyes, all he sees is yellow.