I’m going to combine this with @calltomuster‘s request for hamifeels
–
The first time he watches television they stare at him, rapt, as though the expect him to reel back and cry witchcraft! or else swoon like a maiden in the high heat of June. He is astonished, yes, but he does not permit himself to gawp like a savage; he says, instead, “How does it work?” It is something to do with tubes and light and satellites, apparently. Quite, quite remarkable.
The films come next. Popular culture, they call it, and once again Hamilton is struck that although man has progressed in technology the stories he tells are always the same: of love and women and blood and glory. Of course, there are some small alterations: he is first scandalised, then gratified, at the quantity of nudity onscreen – likewise with the depiction of same-sex intercourse. Tony Stark seems shocked when he watches Queer as Folk and does not immediately go to the confessional. Didn’t you study history at all, he hears Sam gloat, didn’t you read his letters.
“My children burned the good ones,” says Hamilton, smirking (and saddened, of course he is saddened; Laurens is long-gone; how he wishes he could read his sweet words again –)
Anyway. The films. “This is a classic,” says Steve Rogers. Hamilton was offered a floor in Stark Tower; he refused for several reasons, most prominent among them the fact that he despises Tony Stark and cannot bear to be anywhere near the yammering arrogant man who believes that his way is the only correct way of conducting business (what do you mean? This is not ironic, not in the slightest. Hamilton is nothing like Stark: he is certain of his own rightness, perhaps, but that is because he actually is right.)
Instead, he has rented a room in Brooklyn, sharing an apartment with Steve Rogers and his paramour Bucky Barnes. Not that they use the word paramour. Not that they even acknowledge that they live together. A strange pair, so devoted to each other that they never need speak devotion aloud: it is communicated entirely in their longing glances and lingering touches. That, and the obnoxiously loud coupling every night. On the third night of interrupted work, Hamilton recorded the racket and threatened to release it to the press if they did not keep it down.
They obliged, though Steve had the temerity to say, “Shouldn’t you be asleep at three am?” and Hamilton said nothing, only fixed him with the shadowed angry glower of a man who has just discovered the wonders of modern-day coffee.
“What is it?”
“Star Wars,” says Bucky, grinning. He smiles a lot now – and every time Steve looks at him like the expression is a rare and treasured thing. Perhaps it is. Hamilton thinks of Eliza, Laurens, Philip and aches. All he loves is dead and gone – but he has his work, his legacy, time. He can endures. If there’s a reason I’m still alive, when all who love me have died – then I’ll get the job done. Something like that. He struggles to remember the lyrics.
(This is a lie. He’s seen it eleven times. He knows every word off by heart. He has written Miranda lengthy essays on the points he got wrong.)
‘Star Wars’ may be set in the far reaches of space but it is, at its heart, a fairy story. Lost princes and princesses, tales of liberty and tyranny. Hamilton loves it.
“I am your father,” says the mechanised Vader to young Luke Skywalker (nineteen and dreaming of glory) and Hamilton’s eyes grow wide. Afterwards, he says:
“He didn’t deserve redemption.”
“What – Vader? Well –” and Steve looks like he’s about to launch into a spiel about love and doing terrible things for it, but Bucky taps his elbow. By an unspoken accord, he lapses into silence.
“He failed his son – he let him make the same mistakes he did, fall into a life of violence and blood and war. He abandoned him,” and Steve thinks how Hamilton’s father left him and his mother on some scrap of land in the Caribbean and maybe it is that –
– but then he thinks: there was once a boy who died in a duel to defend his father’s honour. And there was once a father who outlived all his children. A man who died, leaving a widow to raise eight babes alone. A man who returned when the battles had been fought and won.
He places a hand on Hamilton’s shoulder. He does not speak. What could he possibly say?
