OKAY let’s do the THING, I’m assuming that this is set, like, the same day they meet Lafayette. Also, bonus Schuyler sisters and Hercules Mulligan. EVERYONE, BASICALLY EVERYONE IS HERE, because Burr’s luck is bad like that. …it’s possible that this got away from me a little bit.
Has Alex made some bad decisions in his life? Well, no, actually, this particular go-round has overall gone pretty well for him (those couple of times he’s gotten into fights with people much bigger than him notwithstanding) but then again he’s still young and busy, it’s usually free time that gets him into trouble. He digresses. Alex has made some bad decisions in his time, is the point here, possibly many bad decisions in his time.
However, he’s pretty sure this is not one of them. He’s pretty sure that the exact correct response to finding an old friend from another life, who, incidentally, is still rich enough to play poker with God, is to call all your other old friends from other lives and go out drinking. Literally not a single one of them is legal, but Lafayette solves that problem on the spot by whipping out his phone to text Hercules.
“Stand together,” Lafayette orders, gesturing at John and Alex. He snaps a picture, sends it to Hercules with I found you a couple of loud-mouthed presents, we’re coming to you, and Alex grins, pulling out his own phone to text the Schuyler sisters—Laramie sisters, now, but it just doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well. Lafayette conducts them imperiously through the city to a bar—nondescript, plainly titled Cato’s—and when the man at the bar sees them walk inside, he grins like it’s Christmas.
“Alexander!” he says, bounding out to grab Alex in a hug. Hercules—who stares and says “Of course I changed my name, modern names just don’t come in flavors as good as Hercules Mulligan” as if John is a little dense—is broader in the shoulder than John or Lafayette, looming like a walking wall, but shorter than either of them. (He still has several good inches on Alex.) And, well, it’s not like the three of them didn’t start drinking before their twenty-first birthdays last time around, so Hercules waves away the concern of ID and Lafayette produces a credit card from thin air.
“Alex, do you even understand what self-control is?” Angelica asks with a sigh when the three sisters turn up. It’s Peggy’s last night in town and she looks delighted with this turn of events—Angelica and Eliza both look resigned. Alex smiles at them.
“I already had John right here, and Lafayette’s never been one to play the voice of reason,” he says with a shrug.
“Trust me, Angie, I’m like eighty-five percent of Alexander’s self-control,” Eliza sighs, patting her sister’s arm as she passes by. “Hi, Marquis,” she says, going up on her toes to kiss Lafayette’s cheeks—he still has to duck his head, she’s even shorter than Alex. She eyes the bar and says, “Hercules Mulligan, I presume.”
“Hey, ‘Liza,” Hercules says with a grin, and hands her a tall glass. “Long Island Iced Tea. If I’m wrong and you don’t like it, it’s on the house.”
Turns out that Hercules doesn’t just have a knack for being able to guess measurements with a glance. He does the same trick several times over, handing out various assortments of liquors—Angelica gets straight whiskey, not even on the rocks, and Peggy, on her sisters’ orders, gets one margarita. Hercules manages to produce some kind of craft beer for the four of them that is, wow, just blowing Alex’s mind, and Alex grins as they make a toast.
“To freedom,” he says, the same toast he used to make back when they were fighting the war, and John jostles him with his shoulder and Lafayette laughs and the sisters groan in a perfect fifth.
So suffice it to say, they’re all several drinks in and comfortably buzzed several hours later when Angelica, distracted, looks over John’s arm toward a back corner of the bar and says, “I think I know him.”
Alex starts to turn around, but Eliza beats him to it, and knocks back the rest of her third Long Island before slamming her hands down on the table and jumping to her feet. (Alex asks her, later, how she knew, and she scowls, but doesn’t answer.)
“Aaron Burr, sir!” she shouts, wading through the tables, and Alex whips around just in time to see a tall man with handsome dark skin look up in surprise. Eliza reaches him and he still looks confused when she punches him in the nose. The bar goes deathly quiet as Burr crashes out of his chair and stares up at Eliza in shock.
“Holy shit,” John says, admiring.
“That’s the spirit, Lizzie!” Angelica shouts, raising her glass to her sister, and Hercules and Lafayette whoop encouragingly as Alex gapes at Eliza.
“John, you know what’s going on here, right?” Peggy asks, arching an eyebrow at him, and he rolls his eyes at her.
“I might have died young, but I can Google, Margarita.” He takes another sip of his beer. “And I don’t know if you’ve ever read the John Laurens Wiki page, but I did a lot of reading on Alexander after I remembered.”
“Oh, mon ami,” Lafayette laughs, then hollers toward the fight, “You are the worst, Burr!” He pats John on the shoulder as Alex pulls away and walks to stand next to Eliza, looking down at Burr, dazed on the floor. Blood is trickling from his nose, and from the looks of him, he still hasn’t figured out who the girl who just slammed a right cross into his face actually is. Typical, Alex thinks wryly.
“Betsey, you’ve never looked so beautiful,” he says, and she gives him a rather sharp grin, shaking her hand out and observing the smudged blood on her knuckles.
“You probably wanted to be the one to do that,” she says, in the tone of a great concession. “But since he left me the widowed mother of seven, I think I deserved it more.”
“I would never dream of getting in your way,” Alex says, halfway to an incredulous laugh. Even at her most toweringly angry, he’s never seen Eliza even hint at violence, but she stands like she’s considering giving Burr a good kick in the ribs as he sprawls slack-jawed on the floor. He looks down at him and says, considerably colder, “Burr. Sir.”
“Alexander Hamilton, I presume,” Burr says, finally shaking himself out of his shock enough to raise a hand to his nose. “I think—ow—I think your wife broke my nose.”
“You’d deserve it if I did,” Eliza says, and sails away to where Hercules is holding out another Long Island and an ice pack with a wordless grin.
“You’re my hero,” John tells her, reverence in his voice, and reaches out to take her left hand as if to kiss it. “If you ever decide that modern men aren’t worth your time, I would marry you in a heartbeat.”
“Thanks, Laurens,” she says dryly, extracting her hand and holding the ice to her knuckles.
Burr stands up slowly, as if concerned that Alex is going to continue the trend and punch him next. Alex would be lying if he said he wasn’t seriously considering it. Burr sighs and says, “Mister Hamilton—Alexander. My actions were unjustified and hasty.”
“And murder,” John mutters to the closest person—Angelica—who muffles a hard-edged laugh in her drink.
“But to be fair,” Burr says, arching an eyebrow, “you’ve made your fair share of poor decisions yourself.”
“Burr,” Alex says, offering up his coldest smile. It’s the same one he used to wear when dealing with redcoats and Jefferson, and he was pleased—some years back—to see that it looks just as feral on this new face as on his old one. “To date, none of my poor decisions—and I’ve made some terrible ones—have led to me killing a personal friend who was very clearly planning to throw a duel.”
“Harsh, but fair,” Peggy remarks, as if playing announcer at a sports match.
“Oui,” Lafayette says, and Burr’s eyes flick over Alex’s head to the others, clustered around Eliza at the bar. Alex can’t see what happens behind him, although in the corner of his eye he catches the edge of a gesture from John that looks a little like a sarcastic salute, but Burr’s eyes go wide.
“My God.”
“Burr,” John says, sliding up beside Alex to drape an arm around his shoulders and eye Burr with a faint smile. Alex hears Hercules sigh behind them—John hasn’t changed much, and that liquid movement and thin-lipped smile, eyes bright with killing light, was always a precursor to trouble. A fight, usually.
“Laurens,” Burr says, reaching out blindly to grab a handful of napkins and press them to his nose. “Glad to see you’re back.”
“Mm-hm,” John says dryly. “I’m sure you are.”
“I think you’d better go, Burr,” Hercules says from behind the bar, his voice no longer warm or amused.
“Oui,” Lafayette agrees, unusually solemn. “And do not come back.”
“Alexander,” Burr says, looking at Alex and stretching out a hand. “Please. I was wrong, and I’m sorry. I couldn’t leave Theodosia alone.”
“Aaron,” Alex says, and he’s tired, now, the thrill of watching Eliza in a fight faded to leave behind the same bone-deep weariness he remembers from last time. He leans against the solid strength of John beside him, rubbing one hand over his face. It drops to touch against the space above the curve of his right hip, a prickle of phantom pain arching up toward his ribs and spine. “I wouldn’t have shot you and made an orphan of your daughter. You knew I was going to throw away my shot. We were friends, before everything, but I stand by what I said, every bit of it, and you could never get over that. I think this time we’d better cut our losses.”
“I–”
“Just go, Burr.”
Burr goes, and Alex sighs, raking both hands back through his hair.
“Well,” he says quietly. “That was fun.”
“Come on,” John says, the killing light and thin smile gone for a look of concern. “Let’s go back with the others.” He offers a smile, the one that used to cajole Alex out of dark moods at Valley Forge. “Hey, just think, you’ll get to tell the story of tonight to everyone else we find and they’ll all think that Eliza’s a goddess.”
Alex manages a smile back, a small laugh. “Well, there’s that. Even if I didn’t get to punch Burr myself.”
John laughs at that and draws Alex back into the warm circle of their friends at the bar, and Alex thinks that, despite all his best efforts as a young man last time, maybe he and Burr were never meant to be friends after all. The world might be wide enough for them both, but one room isn’t going to cut it.