Anything for you, Laurens. Soooo…I know you wanted fluff…we’re not doing that. I don’t actually know if Laurens was in Washington’s camp for this, but we’re going to assume history is flexible because extensive googling did not produce an actual date or shit for this battle (besides ‘between September 1777 and June 1778’), which was hardly a battle at all. Also technically Lee sent a letter but whatever, we’re doing Some Shit with history anyway, might as well go hard.
to see our glory
The message from Lee was greeted by a long beat of silence.
“My sympathies, Your Excellency,” Lee said, doing a poor job of imitating poise as his shirtsleeves dripped steadily on the ground. The word simper drifted through John’s mind at the sound of Lee’s voice.
“Yes,” General Washington said flatly, both hands braced on the table that had been serving duty as a tactical map minutes before. John couldn’t bring himself to look away from where the general’s little finger had pushed aside the marker of a British fort, one that he and Alexander had been bickering over not a day past. “Thank you for informing me, Major General. You are dismissed.”
Lee left, and the tent was deathly silent, the general still standing over the table with his head down, John still fixed in place where he stood near the far corner of the table, the handful of other men in the tent stony.
“Gentlemen,” General Washington said, his voice perfectly controlled. “Please send for the Marquis, he will want to know. If my aides would stay, it would be appreciated. The rest of you are dismissed.”
Because I AM NICE, and also because @twistedangelsays asked, and also because I’m a history nerd with zero impulse control, I wrote more. A couple thing: I’m pretending that, for whatever reason, Washington is where Schuylkill happened because otherwise I’d have to go through the above and make a bunch of changes to make it Valley Forge rather than bumfuck-nowhere Tent City, and second of all I’m picturing the musical characters because, uh, I can. With the caveat that, historically, Laurens was probably somewhere between 6′ and 6′5″, so just imagine that Anthony Ramos got put in a stretcher like taffy.
“You are going to freeze to death,” John muttered once they were back in their tent, rummaging through their sparse belongings for a few moments before coming up triumphant, a clean set of trousers in one hand and a shirt in the other, a soft cloth between two fingers. “Put these on.” Alexander made a mutinous noise and John set his jaw. “Put them on, Alexander. You have put me through enough tonight.”
Guilt flickered over Alexander’s face and he complied without another word, stripping to the skin and rubbing himself closer to dry with the cloth John offered. Once he had dressed, he was still shivering, but his skin had regained some of his usual color, and John moved his wet clothes onto a chair before changing himself.
[[MORE]]“I am sorry,” Alexander said as John pulled on a dry shirt and started pulling the blanket off his cot. “And that’s yours, Jack,” he added.
“Not at the moment,” John said, draping the blanket around Alexander’s shoulders firmly. One of Alexander’s hands came up to wrap around his wrist before he could retreat, long deft fingers cold and stiff rather than inkstained.
“Dear Laurens,” Alexander said, somewhere between serious and impish. “I could not live with myself if you suffered the cold for me.”
“You will just have to cope,” John said, giving the blanket a final tug and stepping back. Alexander’s hand opened when he pulled away, letting go his wrist, and his face lost its humor.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Alexander said. Apology was an uncommon thing on his features, but whenever it appeared it wrote itself into his face so deeply it seemed like a scar. His old accent, so well erased to protect him from those who would treat him differently, started to creep back into his tone with emotion, and it was always worst when he felt guilty. “I—I did not realize the distress it would cause, if I was late in returning.”
John sank onto his cot, the strength going out of his limbs as if he had come to the end of a terrible battle, and braced his forearms against his knees, head lowered. “Alexander,” he said, and his voice shook again, with some maelstrom of feeling he couldn’t identify. “My dear boy. I have never seen the general so despondent as he was in the wake of Lee’s news. Lafayette wept for…I do not know how long it was. An hour, perhaps, between his arrival and your return. You are much cared for, here.”
“And you, my Laurens?” Alexander asked, voice soft.
John took a moment to consider, lowering his head into his hands and burrowing his fingers into his curls. “I would rather have been killed myself than lived another hour believing you to be dead. The thought that the world no longer contained yourself–” John bit the words off and shook his head. “I do not think the word ‘distress’ quite does justice.”
There was a quiet sound, wounded, and Alexander’s cold fingers slipped around John’s wrists again, tugging gently until John dropped them from his hair and looked at him. Kneeling on the ground as he was, Alexander’s head was well below John’s—par for the course, given John’s height advantage—and his dark eyes glittered in the candlelight.
“I am sorry,” Alexander said for a third time, and this time his voice was rough. “Forgive me my recklessness, John Laurens. I would not do you harm for all the gold in the British Treasury.”
John sighed and twisted one hand until it was pressed palm-to-palm against Alexander’s. “I do not believe you would do anyone harm for money, my dear boy. But I am uneasily aware that you would give anything for the cause, and that devotion,” he hurried to add, “is your crowning quality in all things. It does not make it easier to bear.” He tightened his clasp on Alexander’s hand and pulled him up to sit beside him on the cot, half-turning to face him and drape his coat, dry and sturdy and skin-warm, over the blanket to ease Alexander’s shivers. “You must promise me, Alexander, that you will not die in this war,” he whispered. “You must promise.”
“I cannot–”
“You must,” John said sharply, his grip tightening on Alexander’s hand. “Our new country will need your brilliance. And I—I cannot stand to face it without you. Promise me that you will live, Alexander.”
Alexander sighed and reached out to wrap a hand around the back of John’s neck, bringing their foreheads together with a gentle bump. His skin was still stubbornly frigid, but warmed slowly with the contact. “I promise, my Laurens,” he murmured. “I will not die in this war. You will see.”
“Good,” John said, closing his eyes and taking the moment to relish the touch of skin, the simple reassurance that Alexander was here, alive and wild and ever-hungry, with his hand on John’s neck and his heart beating under his ribs.
“Good,” Alexander echoed, and John opened his eyes just in time to be unsurprised by the brief press of lips to his. “There, now, Jack,” Alexander said with a smile. “Are you not glad to see your Hamilton after all?”
“I am always glad to see you,” John said, too wearied from the day to be anything other than painfully honest. “Never more so than tonight.” A shudder wracked Alexander’s slender frame, more notable than ever as he began to warm, and John sighed, tugging him close. “I will offer you a compromise on the matter of the blanket, Alexander. You are too cold to go with only one, and you will not agree to let me go without, so we will share. Is that satisfactory?” Alexander nodded and John rose. “Stay here.”
He returned a moment later with the blanket and poor excuse for a pillow from Alexander’s cot to find that the younger man had already made himself quite comfortable on his own. His damp black hair spilled around him like ink, and he smiled sleepily up at John.
“Laurens,” he said lazily, shifting to one side so that John could stretch out beside him.
“Hamilton,” John returned as they neatly arranged both blankets and John’s coat over them. The cot was not designed for two—it was, Alexander had said sourly at least twice a month, barely designed for one—but with Alexander half on top of John’s longer frame it was manageable. John stretched out an arm to extinguish the last candle and closed his eyes, concentrating on the steady beat of Alexander’s heart.
A pair of lips brushed the point of John’s collarbone, absentminded and gentle, and Alexander spoke into the skin of his throat. “Did I truly frighten you, dear Laurens?”
John remembered the all-encompassing emptiness that had loomed around him, within his chest, at the thought of a world without Alexander in it. He remembered the thought that anything, even an end—any end—would be better than suffering the grief of it. He remembered the fleeting breath of relief that, after all, they were at war, and his odds of being forced to bear up for long were slim.
“Yes,” he finally murmured. “More than you can imagine, I think.”