Chapter Text
It wasn’t that James didn’t understand his boyfriend’s deep-seated hatred for Alexander Hamilton. The man was an ingenious motor-mouth with virtually no social skills. James would know; he had dated him for all of four months their senior year of high school before they all started to grow up. (Not that Thomas was even vaguely aware of that relationship – he had dumped his then bestfriend/now boyfriend for the foreign exchange program and was gone to France all of that year so hush).
So yes, James understood. He saw, in its entirety, where Thomas was coming from. On the other hand, the hand that-shall-not-be-named, James also wholeheartedly understood what it was about Jefferson that set their neighbor off. He understood particularly well as he woke up that morning to an empty bed and a tangy, citrus smell in the air.
A smell that did not in any way resemble macaroni, or cheese, or macaroni and cheese; cause for worry. Groaning, James forced himself to sit up and peer blearily around the room. Their clock read 6:13, much too early for Thomas to be up before James. That is unless, of course, he was plotting.
What a wonderful way to spend our Saturday, he thought to himself with as much sarcasm as he could manage that early. The floors were chilly under his bare feet when he rolled out of bed and his robe was nowhere to be seen. He grabbed Thomas’s instead, aware of how frivolous he looked in the too long magenta poof, but too cold to care. Overall, it was not shaping up to be one of those mornings where he tolerated The Feud. At least, not in his house.
Luckily, when he reached downstairs, his boyfriend was nowhere to be seen. The only sign of his recent presence was the lemons littered all across the kitchen and their poor Juicer sitting in the middle of it all. Raising an eyebrow, he took the quite moment to postulate how cute Thomas looked when he cleaned. He never had any idea what he was doing, throwing things this way and that until James was frowning a little less. His face was always scrunched together, as though the mere thought of putting things back was more baffling to him then Hamilton’s new plan for the Homeowner’s Association collection system. A confused Thomas was always a cute Thomas, and James began to tolerate the idea of their Saturday not being utter shit.
That was, until he heard said boyfriend screaming outside.
“Lemonade is an American tradition, not that you would understand you immigrant.”
James couldn’t understand Hamilton’s response, but he did understand that it was six in the morning and Thomas was fighting Alexander with lemonade and it was way to early for this bullshit. He wonders for a moment what it would be like to walk away, curl up in his chair, and just read. Maybe with a cup of tea.
“You wanna come over here and say that to my face?”
James pushed open the front door, stepping out into the real world. Or maybe stepping out of it. The latter certainly seemed more probable as he took in the sight in front of him.
Thomas sat, reclining nonchalantly over his office chair in the middle of the sidewalk. In front of him was that fold out table they had buried in the basement. The basement that was almost certainly completely upheaved now. James couldn’t read the sign taped to the front of the table, but he was fairly certain it had something to do with the pitcher full of lemonade and stack of plastic cups posed on the table.
Across the street, Hamilton’s sign was also a big clue.
Hot Chocolate – Only $2!
And then, on a smaller sign obviously tapped onto that one,
Proven to be 34.6% Better Than Lemonade!
These were, of course, taped to his respective chair and table, plopped right in front of his home across the street from theirs. Wait, was that his dining room table? The curtains twitched behind him, and judging from the look John gave the whole situation from inside the house, yes. It definitely was their heavy wooden dining table that Hamilton had dragged outside.
Thomas scoffs at whatever it was Alexander had said last, and James was jerked back into the present. The very unfortunate present. This was his life. A neighborhood subdivision where everyone simultaneously loved and hated each other in a strange and untraceable cycle.
Thankfully John caught his eye from inside, and dropped the curtain to move for the front door. James stepped off of their porch, making his way towards his boyfriend, who at that moment looked a lot more like his petty best friend at five years old than the grownass man he had gotten into bed with last night.
“James,” Thomas crows without turning around, trying to seem like an omniscient badass who knows all in the world, instead of a regular human being who had just heard James step on a twig. “I was just trying to explain to Alexander here what seasons are, since he doesn’t seem to know its late spring and not winter.”
“Madison,” Alexander yells across the street, not to be outdone, “I was just trying to explain to your simpleton boyfriend the basic principles of business, but it seems a bit out of his grasp.”
“Enlighten me,” James replies, deadpan, watching John emerge from the enemy’s abode and walking towards him.
“Well,” Alexander preens, interpreting Madison’s path in his direction as a win and he can just feel Thomas’s eyes squinting behind him, “business is simply about demand, and seeing as how there has been quite the odd cold streak these last few weeks, the technical season doesn’t matter,” his attention shifts back to Thomas as he yells, “you do understand that the weather isn’t determined by some weather-god with respect to the arbitrary seasons, right?”
James just walks past him, ignoring Thomas’s indignant response about a “weather-god,” and that conversation was officially veering into “six more hours of yelling minimum” territory.
John, looking entirely nonplussed by the situation but pleased with James’s presence, holds the door open for him.
“Tea?”
James just raises an eyebrow at his friend. John looks back out at their respective boyfriends and sighs.
“You’re right, it’s a coffee morning.”
“Every morning is a coffee morning in this neighborhood,” James grumbles, walking gratefully into the kitchen.
Every damn morning.