WOO, I am literal Laurens/Hamilton garbage, tell your friends.
All In One Spot AU
John has been at Columbia for a year and, honestly, he’s starting to think that he was wrong, that no one else is here. He walks past the law center every chance he gets, and he doubles the time of the walk from his dorm to the natural sciences building every single day to pass Hamilton Hall. The statue is…reassuring, somehow, Alexander’s fine-drawn face cast in bronze and a quill in his clever fingers. When John’s tired, or he’s had a bad night, full of nightmares with bayonets jumbled in with cars, the cinch of a noose tangled with the static of a television, he’ll stop and look at the statue until he can breathe again.
It’s not all bad. John is in New York City, and he finally gets where Alexander was coming from all those years ago, this might legitimately be the greatest city in the world. It sure beats South Carolina, hell and gone. He’s introduced himself to everyone as John, here, and even admitted to a handful of people that he was a soldier in the Revolution. He doesn’t have any close friends, but he doesn’t have any enemies, either, and the handful of familiar faces who see him when he quietly attends a Pride parade don’t say a word. He’s taken a handful of prerequisites for a biochem degree, in the pre-med track—he always wanted to be a physician last time, and his father is too distant to fight him this time.
He spends a little money on a sketchbook or two, on a set of pencils, and draws old faces, tries to imagine them in the modern world. Lafayette, eyes bright and smiling, dressed in a suit. General Washington, hands folded behind his back—no matter how many times John tries to give him a modern military uniform, his long heavy coat takes shape. Aides and friends and soldiers whose faces he half-recalls, in t-shirts and jeans and flannels. And Alexander, a thousand times Alexander, Alexander in modern clothes, in his Continental Army uniform, in shirtsleeves, in the coat he wears in the statue. A few times, in the safety of his locked single room, John carefully sketches Alexander stretched out in their cabin at Valley Forge, lit in candle-flame and all smooth planes of muscle and skin, smiling at John, soft and sated. An entire sketchbook fills itself with Alexander, over John’s first year at Columbia.
The point is, John knows pining when he sees it—or does it—having spent solidly six years of his very brief previous life doing the same thing, over the same man. It’s for the best that he doesn’t have any personal friends, or he’d probably never live this down.
It’s about four days into his second year when he walks past Hamilton Hall, heading back to his dorm, and sees a figure give the statue a wry little salute with two fingers of a hand balancing a stack of books.
Honestly, it’s the pile of books that gives it away, four thick law books propped against the young man’s jaw and his backpack visibly straining around more. His hair is black instead of auburn red, skin honey-bronze rather than creamy pale, but hell, John takes after his second generation Puerto Rican mother, all wild dark curls and freckles, there’s no mandate that you look like your past life. He’s still small, built on slight lines and just tall enough to avoid being exceptionally short, and he still moves like he’s on a mission.
John stares, frozen and feeling his heart stutter, for so long that the boy almost manages to get all the way to the library next door. Then he starts forward, almost tripping over his own feet, and his voice is faint when he calls, “Hamilton? Alexander?”
Alexander turns, startled, and John sees him take a moment to angle the books so that he can see over the top. “Yeah?” he says, shifting the books into the crook of his arm and giving John a bemused look, lips quirked into the shadow of a smile. Standing beside the statue, it’s clear that, even with some superficial differences, he looks much the same, fine-boned face and piercing eyes. They’re as black as fresh ink, rather than violet-blue, but they’re beautiful. He’s wearing a lanyard with a student ID on it—he must be a freshman this year. The handsome face is still confused—it takes John a moment to realize that, wearing a hoodie against the cool September air, he’s unrecognizable.
He pushes his hood down and steps forward, opening his mouth helplessly. He’s imagined this moment a dozen times a week since he remembered, but he has no idea what to say. Finally, he stretches out his hands wordlessly and manages to say, “It’s me.”
Alexander’s sharp eyes take him in for a moment, and John sees the moment it clicks—he’ll have to ask later what it is that tips him off, if it’s the look on John’s face or the familiar gesture of outspread hands or even the little turtle keychain Mary went to so much trouble to find him. Those black eyes go wide, and a stunned smile starts to spread over Alexander’s face.
John has the singular pleasure of watching Alexander Hamilton, of all people, abandon his books and bag on the ground like trash and rush forward.
“John,” Alexander says as he slams into John, almost hard enough to bowl him right over onto the grass, and wraps lean corded arms tight around his chest. John, still a little lightheaded in shock, does the same, closing his fists in the back of Alexander’s jacket, and, oh, that will wrinkle, he’ll be upset, but John can’t bring himself to let go. Instead he grips tighter, curling around Hamilton like he used to when it was cold during that terrible winter at Valley Forge, until he can feel Alexander’s heart beat against the wall of his chest.
It takes him a moment to realize that they’re both laughing, a half-tearful and wholly uncontrolled laugh of relief, of grief falling away. John feels like he’s won the lottery, or gotten a call from the President, or fallen in love—it’s been two hundred and fifty years, almost, and he has Alexander in his arms again. It’s the best moment of both lives, feeling Alexander laugh into his shoulder as they mutually try to crush each other.
“My dear boy,” John says, and Alexander laughs again. God, his laugh is still so beautiful.
Stepping back to observe John at arm’s length, Alexander scrubs at his face absently and gives him a scowl. “You are in trouble, John Laurens.”
“What did I do?” John asks, and Alexander punches John in the shoulder—hard, with some real anger behind it.
“You died, you absolute bastard!” He pokes John hard in the chest, several times, and John tries to focus on what he’s saying rather than the way anger still makes him shine. “The war was over, what were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry,” John says, sincere—his death hadn’t been unwelcome to him, but he hadn’t let himself imagine that it would cause Alexander so much grief. “I really am.”
“You left me,” Alexander says, dropping his hand, and a wave of grief tinged with guilt crashes over John. “God, John, you died and I was…” He shakes his head, as if even his silver tongue has failed him.
“I’m sorry,” John says again, reaching out to catch Alexander’s hand. “I should have come to Congress, like you asked.”
“I didn’t need you with me,” Alexander says quietly, letting John pull him into another tight embrace. “I just needed you alive.” John doesn’t say anything to that, just nods, his cheek pressed to Alexander’s head, and some of the tension bleeds out of Alexander’s taut frame. He sounds almost whimsical when he speaks again. “You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent.”
John laughs at that, loosening his grip on Alexander. “I remember that letter.”
“Yes, well,” Alexander says, stepping back again and gesturing for John to come with him as he goes to collect the books he dropped so precipitously in favor of John. John’s fairly certain he’s never been so flattered in all his lives—plenty of people earned elaborate compliments and veiled, and not-so-veiled, flirtations from Hamilton during the war, men and women alike, but John’s never seen him risk damaging one of his precious books for someone before. “I meant it.” He stands up with his bag and his stack of texts, and gives John a glance over the top. “I didn’t expect to find you here.”
John shuffles a little, awkward, and studies the shoe of the statue still towering above them. “I assumed you’d show up at King’s College eventually,” he says, scrupulously not looking at Alexander. “So, uh…I didn’t apply anywhere else and told my dad it was the most prestigious school I got into and figured I’d just…wait for you.”
“You’ve been waiting for me?”
John gives him a very flat look. “Alexander.”
Alexander gives him a smile, half-arrogant and halfway to something like shyness. “I, um. If I hadn’t found you by the time I left college, I was probably just going to go to South Carolina and start knocking on the doors of the biggest mansions I could find.”
John knows that the smile spreading across his face probably looks completely absurd. He also doesn’t have it in him to care. “I’m glad it didn’t come to that.”
Alexander’s face softens and his dark eyes linger on John’s face. “I missed you, Laurens,” he says quietly. “Try not to die young this time, okay?”
The tang of guilt is still on John’s tongue when he says, “I promise.”