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John Laurens was drunk off his ass, leaning against the wall. When he had shown up at the tavern with Lafayette, Mulligan had already commandeered the four stools closest to the back, giving John one of those steel-eyed stares that meant you’re getting put in the corner because last time we went out you started a fight and nearly had the cops called, and we don’t need your ass hanging from a tree any sooner than possible. Mulligan, when he put his mind to it, was the absolute fucking boss of saying stuff with stares. Which was how he had managed to get them set up the way they were, in order of most-to-least angry drunk—John against the wall, Alex next to him, Laf next to him, and Mulligan the closest to the swarm of noise and light that was the rest of the tavern.
John took a swig of ale. Today had been shit. Today had been literal fucking shit. A shitstorm, a shitshow…
“A shitnado,” he muttered.
Next to him, Alex blinked with the slow deliberation of the pretty fuckin’ soused. “Babe,” he said, his voice low enough for only the two of them to hear it, “What the hell is a sharknado?”
“Shitnado,” John corrected. “’S what happens when fuckin, fuckin, fuckin—”
His voice must have been rising in pitch, because Lafayette chimed in. “John Holt’s intern,” he offered. It came out Zhon ‘olt’s eeeentern, but that wasn’t necessarily due to the ale—Lafayette sounded like that every hour of the day, drunk or sober. Unless he was always drunk, which was a skill that John had to pick up. It would make dealing with assholes like John Holt’s snotnosed intern a lot easier.
“What’d he do?” This was Mulligan, leaning in.
John snorted. “Said that the article I’d spent two weeks working on wasn’t good enough. Somethin’ about, fuckin’…” He trailed off to take another drink, trying to remember the kid’s exact words. Turned out that was pretty hard when a good three-quarters of his brain was swimming in booze and the last quarter was forming itself into a self-loading pistol so it could shoot Holt’s intern through the eyes the next time John ran into him. “Too radical, piece of shit, like this isn’t a fucking revolution!”
Mulligan frowned. “The article on the battalion?”
John nodded.
“That’s shit.”
Lafayette’s lip curled and he spat a few choice words in French—words that normally John would have no problem understanding, but, well. Drunk. Hopefully soon to be more drunk. He picked up his mug again—since when had it gotten so heavy?
Oh. That was Alexander’s hand on his arm.
Alexander leaned in close, warm breath wafting over John’s face. He smelled like cheap soap and ale.
“Hey, Holt, right?” Alex had a gleam in his eye—the kind of gleam that meant somebody was either gonna get dicked, dueled, or dragged to death. John was down. He nodded.
“The little shit that follows him around.”
Mulligan snorted. “I know that guy. Married up the ladder, walks around with his nose in the air and a stick up his ass.” He took a pull of ale and snorted. “Bet I’ve seen his wife naked more than he has.”
“The stick up his ass might explain why,” Lafayette said, and John reached around Alex to high-five him.
“Fuck that guy,” Alex said, leaning closer. His nose bumped John’s cheekbone. John leaned into him; let Alex’s hair brush against his face.
Lafayette groaned. “Either sober up or ‘ave another, you’re making me want to puke.”
John wrapped an arm around Alex’s shoulders just to flip Laf off. And when he was done with the flipping-off he kept his arm there. Alex was warm, and softer than the wall or the bar, definitely softer than the floor. If he had to choose something to lean on he’d choose Alex, any day.
“So,” Alex said, so close that John could feel the word being formed, Alex’s mouth drawing out the o. It wasn’t a bad feeling—it was pretty damn nice, actually, soft and warm—so he pressed his face against Alex’s mouth some more. Alex pursed his lips—a feather of a kiss, but one that sung its way down John’s spine. A smile stole across his face.
“I have an idea,” Alex whisper-slurred; pulling his face slightly away from John’s to talk. “I talk to Holt, I say he should present a discourse on slavery after the war, right? I’ve written more articles for him than you can shake a stick at—we’re bros. So I get drunk. Write an anonymous article… get this…”
The three of them waited for him to finish.
“Defending slavery,” Alex said, and slammed both hands against the bar. “A super drunk article. Even, fuckin’ even your dad would think slavery is awful after reading this article. Fuck your dad.”
“Pass,” John and Lafayette said in unison.
Alex flipped both of them off. “So Holt’s like, shit, better get an article against slavery. Enter you.”
A grin spread across Lafayette’s face. Mulligan glared. “Don’t say it.”
Lafayette glared back. “I do what I want.” But he didn’t say it.
John leaned in closer to Alexander, hooked his chin on his friend’s shoulder. “You’re a genius, babe.”
Alexander nodded slowly, his eyes locked on John. God, John loved that look—his eyes opened up, seemed to lighten from an oak- to a brandy-brown, and it was like… swimming in a pool of brandy. Shit. That sounded awesome. When Alex half-turned, John leaned in to kiss him, which, okay, was not as awesome as swimming in a pool of brandy. Still pretty great though. Alex was a bonfire and the ale had them both moving slowly, had John feeling everything double. He licked his way into Alex’s mouth, threaded a hand through Alex’s hair. Alex scraped his teeth against John’s lower lip, turned John’s world white in an overwhelming burst, a bloodrush, a heart-pounding moment where the world around him just… stopped.
“Hey, La,” Mulligan was saying. “Look over there.”
Lafayette’s stool creaked. “What is it?”
“Deniability.”
John laughed into the kiss and closed his eyes, bumping his nose up against Alex’s. What would they need deniability for? For once in the day, he wasn’t doing anything ille—
…Oh, shit.
He pulled back fast, slamming his head against the wall. Shit shit shit. Shot a glance around the tavern. Nobody seemed to have noticed. Still. He rubbed at his mouth, like that would erase what he had just done, and looked at Alex. Alex, equally startled, had a set to his jaw that meant that the next person to look at him the wrong way was going to get a ten-minute explanation of everything wrong with them. John sighed. He needed a drink. He grabbed his mug, only to realize—
“Shit,” he muttered.
Empty. Because of course it was. That was exactly how the world worked.
Mulligan caught his eye. “Nobody saw anything,” he said, voice low. “But next time, Ham and La are switching seats.”
Lafayette groaned. “Why do I have to sit in the second-worst spot, when I ‘ave done nothing wrong in my life ever?” He said it eh-VARE.
“Then you can drink outside—the way you drink, you’ll need the fresh air.”
Lafayette grabbed Mulligan’s ale and drained it. “’ow do you say, fuck you.”
Mulligan grabbed Lafayette’s ale. “Pass.”
“Girls, girls,” Alex said. “You’re both pretty.”
Lafayette blinked. “Thanks. You’re a solid three, maybe a four with your ‘air down.”
“You’re a two and a half if you keep your mouth shut and your hair is your only redeeming quality,” Alex shot back. The retort was somewhat diminished by how thickly he was slurring, but it was still more entertaining than… just about all of John’s day. John leaned forward, rested his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands, and watched Lafayette and Alex go at it.
“You think a two and a half is pretty?” Lafayette snorted. “So much for your standards.”
“Maybe I’m just buttering you up to steal your money, seduce your wife, and live the rest of my life getting high with the French.”
“Adrienne would notice,” Lafayette said. He got that disgustingly sappy look in his eyes, the one that always showed up when he talked about his wife. “You’re, ah, a bit shorter.”
“Yeah, but I have a commanding personality.” Alex kicked John’s stool. “Laurens, you know me best, tell Lafayette about my commanding personality.”
John flushed at that one and shifted his weight. Only Mulligan saved him from making a complete ass of himself.
“If Laurens is gonna detail Ham’s commanding personality,” Mulligan said, “I swear to god, La, I’ll strangle you. And him. And everybody in this bar.” He finished Lafayette’s ale. “Not drunk enough for this shit,” he muttered.
“You are the worst, Herc,” Lafayette said.
Mulligan slammed his mug down. “Fight me.”
Apparently those two words were enough to summon the bartender. He swooped in like an avenging owl, mouth pursed in a tight line. “No fighting. Out.”
“Aw, man!” Mulligan groaned. “It’s just a figure of speech—”
The bartender pointed to the door. “Out.”
“You’re just sayin’ that because we’re young,” John protested. “Young and ‘cause we’re not walkin’ around with the Union Jack wrapped around our necks like capes.”
“My politics don’t come into question when you’re being an ass,” the bartender snapped, and whisked away John’s mug. “Get. Out.”
John groaned and slid off his stool, the world blurring around him in a familiar way. He reached forward, going to grab the bar, but ended up with his hand on Alex’s arm. That wasn’t half-bad either, only he could feel Alex’s knees buckling, just a little. Both of them were way too light for this shit—Alex was lighter though, so fuck the police. John stumbled for the door, out into the night, sucked in a greedy lungful of cold air. Behind him the tavern seemed to be surreal in how bright and loud it was, like it was trying to pull him back in, and he took another step forwards, towards Mulligan and Lafayette—goddamn tall assholes didn’t have nearly as many issues.
Alex caught his arm, pointed up. It was a clear night and the stars were shining brightly, thousands of them speckled across the sky. “It’s like your face.”
Something in John’s chest turned over and he stared at Alex for a long moment, trying to formulate a response, trying to think of something that would be the right thing to say but wouldn’t get him arrested, trying to—
“Man, why does everybody look at us and assume we’re trying to start a fight?” This question came from Mulligan, down the road, and John and Alex had to scramble to catch up with him and Laf.
“Because we are?” Lafayette suggested.
“Hey,” John said. “I’ve never picked a fight with anybody who didn’t have it coming.” It was just that a lot of people had it coming. Loyalists, slavers and their ilk, upper-class snobs, those special brand of assholes that thought that their money bought them the world to play with…
“Yeah,” Alexander said. “Name one time any of us has actually started shit. We’re revolutionaries—that means we’re reactionary. We blow up the powder keg, but they lit the match and placed the fuse and put all the powder there in the first place.” His face twisted in distaste. “You know why they don’t like us.”
All four of them were silent for a moment of complete agreement. None of them was exactly… well, respectable. Lafayette and Alexander—immigrants. Mulligan—a tradesman. John—well, just because he didn’t start fights didn’t mean he didn’t get in them. Him and Laf were the closest to being proper gentlemen by the only measurements that meant anything—wealth and breeding—and both of them were estranged enough from their families that it didn’t matter. And then there was John’s… well. There was Alex. The one thing in his life that he couldn’t fight for.
Mulligan spat on the side of the road. “Let’s go home.”
Home meant that they split up. Mulligan off to his shop, Lafayette off to whatever fancy rich-person house he was renting, and Alex—
“Babe, do you have a map?” Alex said. “’Cause I’m getting lost in your eyes.”
That was the best line John had ever heard, and he said as much. Alex grinned.
“I lost my address, can I have yours?”
John snorted at that one, which unbalanced him and had him stumbling down the street. The night air was sobering him up but it wasn’t leaving him sober. And Alex wasn’t in much of a better state. So… “Yeah, let’s go back to my place,” he said. It was easier to say that with the jokes as a way of brushing it off, with the ale humming in his ears, when the street was empty. Easier to pretend that it didn’t mean much. And God, wasn’t that a kick in the balls.
They headed off to the house John was staying, walking close enough that their knuckles bumped on every other step. Thank god, the landlady was asleep. John didn’t think he could stand to be on the receiving end of one of her glares the next morning—he was set up for one hell of a hangover already. But still, it didn’t hurt to be careful. He slipped off his shoes as he walked to his room, motioning for Alex to do the same. Fortunately Alex was, in fact, capable of shutting up for periods of about thirty seconds, so they slipped in and John eased the door shut.
Alex set his shoes down carefully before spinning and pressing John up against the just-closed door, kissing him like they were about to die. John’s shoes slipped from his grasp, thudding against the floor, as he kissed Alex back with the enthusiasm he’d been bottling up—all day, all evening, all the walk back. He slid Alex’s coat off his shoulders, kicked it away, let Alex do the same to him. When Alex pulled away to kiss his neck, his collarbone, John was left breathless, trying to pull in air without making much noise. That was goddamn difficult, especially when Alex was making himself very distracting, planting feather-light kisses seemingly at random on John’s neck. He was humming drunk, kissing like he had had a pot of coffee instead of a couple pints of ale. His mouth was warm, so warm, and for a while all John could do was stand still and gasp, biting down on his lower lip.
“Babe,” John finally gasped, “slow the hell down.”
Alex sighed and kissed him again, this time slower, pulling John’s hair tie off so he could card his fingers through John’s hair. John sighed at the sensation and rested his hands on Alex’s hips, tracing bone with booze-shaky fingers, giving as good as he got.
This time it was John who pulled away—breathing through your nose was great and all, but it wasn’t perfect. He rested his forehead against Alex’s, taking slow breaths.
Alex kissed his cheek. “I hate everybody.” His nose. “Everybody except you and the squad, honestly.” A spot on his forehead—Alex had to lean up for that one.
John smoothed some of Alex’s hair away, tucked it behind his ear. Then he used his other hand, the one still on Alex’s hip, to turn the two of them around so he could actually walk into his room instead of just stick to the square foot of space by the doorway, acquainting himself with the feel of wood against his back. He took a step back, overestimated, ended up flailing his way to a spot on his bed. Oh well, might as well make the most of it.
As he was taking off his shirt, fumbling with the buttons before just shucking it, Alex sat down next to him. He didn’t bother taking his shirt off, just flopped back. “The world sucks.”
John scooted back, pulled Alex all the way onto the bed. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “If—” He was cut off by John rolling on top of him. He smiled. “Hey.”
John smiled back. Alex was so beautiful like this—stretched out in the pale moonlight with his dark hair fanned out around his face, his eyes shining as bright as the stars themselves—or a thousand other ways, ways that were admittedly less attractive due to not being in front of his face at that exact moment. “Hey.” He leaned in for a kiss.
This one was slower than the others had been, softer. The kind of kiss suited for a long afternoon in the sunlight. John traced a line down Alex’s neck with a slowly steadying finger and Alex wrapped an arm around John, pulling him down.
“If it weren’t for the fact that I had shit to do,” Alex said when they had stopped, “I’d off myself. Leave them with something to talk about.”
John sat back up and tugged at Alex’s shirt, pulling it up but not off—his shoulders were in the way. Alex was skinny, skinnier than John, but with a decent amount of toned muscle—enough to make looking at him enjoyable, not enough for him to hold his ground in a fistfight. Not that that stopped him—he ran on coffee, adrenaline, and alcohol in varying quantities. John did the same, but he could also pound out a few sets of pushups in the morning.
“Die valiantly in battle or some shit,” Alex continued.
John skimmed a few fingertips up Alex’s side, drawing a gasp. “Valiantly in battle sounds good,” John said, leaning forward to kiss Alex’s cheek, up high, near his ear. “Tell me more.” He said these words against Alex’s skin, not worrying about speaking up—nobody needed to hear but the two of them.
“Well—” Alex started, and yawned. “I—” Another yawn, and this had John joining in, distracted from his attempts to kiss his way down Alex’s jaw. John let himself go limp, sprawled across Alex, their legs tangled together. Alex—Alex was using his toes to take John’s socks off, which would have been really hot in an admittedly stupid way if John had been hopped-up enough to appreciate it. But like this all he was aware of was the feeling of Alex’s skin against his, a light breeze against his now-bare feet…
When he woke up, the streets were full of shouted haggling for cheap produce, birds were screaming at each other as they fought for food, and the sun was glaring down haughtily as it rose over the horizon—in short, everything was out to fucking kill him. John burrowed his face into Alex’s chest and groped around for the blanket, tugging it over them as best he could. In the darkness he could focus on things that weren’t the pounding in his head—namely, the cramps in his legs, the itch of dried sweat on his skin, and the feeling that something had curled up into his mouth, died, and started to rot.
He made the best life choices.
And then somebody on the street started swearing and a long stream of loud, angry curses started pounding their way into John’s brain via his ear canals. “Fuck off to hell,” he muttered back, squeezing his eyes shut. If he weren’t seven seconds away from literal death he’d yell it, fight them too, but as it was even muttering felt like a worm knowing on what little brain matter he had left.
“Good morning to you too,” Alex said, and groaned. “Jesus, what a thing to wake up to.”
John grunted agreement.
“When do you think Fuckmonster Smith out there is gonna shut his trap?”
“Fuckmonster,” John repeated, trying to distract himself from the swearing—which, fortunately, was dying down. “Who’s named Fuckmonster?”
John could feel Alex’s shrug. “Somebody who says the word often enough probably has it in their name,” Alex said, and pushed lightly at John’s shoulder. “You gonna let me up?”
John went to shake his head, but apparently there was a very accurate recreation of the goddamn war going on inside of it, because it exploded in brutal agony. He settled for grunting instead. A very articulate grunt, though, so Alex could understand exactly how much death he was feeling like.
Apparently either his grunt wasn’t articulate enough or Alex was still drunk, because instead of stroking John’s hair and whispering tender nothings to him, Alex snorted. “Wanna make yourself useful and get a little further down?” He even lifted his hips. John inched a hand up, covered Alex’s face—yep, he was smirking too. And raising an eyebrow. Fucker.
“Fine,” John said, and pulled his hand back so he could edge himself down using his elbows. “Gonna give you the best good-morning blowjob in the world.” He rested his chin on Alex’s stomach, dragged it down. “Gonna get my booze breath all over your dick, Hamilton.”
Alex’s hand tangled in John’s hair, held him steady. “Changed my mind!” His voice, though panicked, was quiet. Either he had wised up to the whole “Landlady from Hell” thing, or he was also hungover. John was willing to bet the latter—Alex would fight anybody, anywhere, over anything, regardless of any extenuating circumstances. Those conditions including “a literal demoness”, “in a rented room still reeking of booze”, “a literal hanging offense”, and “one of the worst hangovers ever.”
Or maybe he wouldn’t fight her, per se, but the next day a down-on-its-luck newspaper begging for attention would publish a ten-page essay denouncing the evils of renting rooms and then expecting one’s tenants to live like proper human beings and not cavort around all hours of the day. It was making John’s hangover even worse just thinking about it.
John sucked in a quick breath, gritted his teeth, and sat up.
“Holy shit,” Alex said, woozy. “You look like… an angel. Your hair’s like a halo. You’re illuminati—illuminated.” He reached out slowly, touched John’s shoulder, drew a line up to his mouth. “I love you.”
The sunlight was still offensively bright, the streets still hellishly loud, and Fuckmonster Smith had apparently found a friend to start screaming with, but Alex was in his bed, tangled up in his blanket. Alex’s were dark eyes bright and earnest in his haggard face, his shirt pushed up high enough to expose his ribcage. There was a mark on his neck, purplish against light brown skin—nothing that a shirt wouldn’t cover, but a mark all the same.
“I love you,” Alex repeated. Three words, nothing like the thousands that he had written against slavery, nothing like the long arguments that he could get into at the drop of a hat, nothing like the anonymous articles dragging names through the mud. Three words and the world didn’t shift—it just became more focused.
“I love you too,” John said, and carefully, oh-so-carefully, leaned in to kiss his cheek. It didn’t keep him completely free of their combined awful breath but it spared him from the worst of it. And then he forced himself to his feet. His head was ringing and he had to shift his weight to steady himself a good two, maybe three times, but he made his way to the wardrobe and pulled out clean shirts—his fit them both, breeches—Alex kept a spare pair in his closet, and socks, tossing them onto the bed. “Get decent.”
He kept a wine bottle full of water, a half-cake of soap, and a small pile of rags in his room for this purpose—okay, and for cleaning up after sex—and the two of them washed and changed in silence, drinking the remaining water straight from the bottle. It still tasted like cheap wine, which, to be honest, was an improvement.
“Alright,” Alex said. He leaned in and kissed John now that the two of them didn’t absolutely reek. John smiled into the kiss, kissed him back as Alexander tied up his hair with his own hair tie.
“You’re always a multitasker,” John said, touching the hair tie. It wasn’t a half-bad job, either. “It’s kinda hot.”
Alex was silent for a moment. “I can’t think of a way to make that one dirty, and I feel like I should be able to,” he finally said, frowning. And then he shrugged. “Just know that the sentiment is there. I’ll write that article this evening, have it to Holt before I see you… tonight?”
John nodded. “Want to meet up at Mulligan’s, around nine, head down to the bay? I heard there’s a couple of guys who’re trying to organize a mutiny on English cargo ships—they could use our help.”
Alex’s eyes lit up at mutiny, and John felt a corresponding grin spread across his face. There was nothing more satisfying than the rush you got when you were in the middle of a crowd, standing on whatever high surface you could get a foothold on, screaming your head off, inciting a revolution. It was what made the endless nights of papers and tiny print worth it, what made the constant paranoia worth it.
“I’ll see you then,” Alex said, and stood on John’s bed to open his window. Fuckmonster Smith and his buddy had long left, which was fortunate. Alex barely glanced around before he leaped out, onto the street below. He waved and was off, hands in his coat pockets.
John stood, stretched, made his bed, and spent a solid quarter of an hour cleaning up his room. Only when that was done did he allow himself to look at the frankly massive amount of paper on his desk. There was his “letters to Martha” pile, most half-finished, his “petitions for the battalion” pile, almost all pending edits, a fairly decent stack of “letters from Alex” that he really did need to put away somewhere, and, of course, a huge pile of “letters bearing some kind of resemblance to the cause that I couldn’t be fucked to organize because they just pile up again.” He pulled out a chair and started going through the last pile, headache slowly subsiding as the world fell away.
It wasn’t what he would call pleasant—having to read insults in-between lines and then respond in kind. It wasn’t enjoyable to write letter after letter, article after article, knowing that words could gain inches of progress when fighting gained feet, meters, miles. But he had Lafayette and Mulligan by his side—and Burr too, when the wind was blowing in the right direction and they had chosen to water themselves down to near-noninvolvement with anything politically charged. And he had Alex…
Well. He had Alex. Yeah, he could work with that.