What Can Never Be

Sometimes he wondered if Washington knew. If Washington saw the way he looked at John, the way he sometimes pushed pieces of John's hair out of his face, the way he stuck close to John in battle and shot every man that John missed. He wondered if Washington knew that it was more than sex before Alexander or John knew, if Washington had seen the difference in their actions around each other once they realized it wasn't just for warmth or because there wasn't a woman in sight. It would be a surprise to Alexander if Washington didn't know, because Washington was quiet and observant, always watching Alexander and always knowing what was troubling him.

They had both cried the first time John didn't taste alcohol on Alexander's breath. He knew what it meant and he had pulled away immediately, as he had stopped drinking more than one beer before he waited for Alexander to come to the cabin and sloppily kiss him a week before. Alexander repeated that he was sorry and that he couldn't help it, but they were both scared for his reputation and if they would be killed for it.

"This cannot happen to you," John said and wiped some of the other man's tears from his cheeks.

"I know, Laurens. We knew it was ungodly and that it was sodomy before, but this is more than that," he said, "This feels, for an unknown reason, more ungodly to me."

"Alexander, it feels more ungodly because it is love." they continued to cry as they held each other's hands, "You want to change the country. You want to see the colonies become a country. You cannot do that if you are dead, hanging from the gallows, for loving me."

Alexander's eyes glowed in the light and John pushed a feeling away that possessed his body since he had first started yearning for the other man the week before. Before it had been that he had to be drunk enough that he could pretend that Hamilton was just a dominant woman, that he had curves and a vagina instead of a flat chest and a penis. He didn't exactly know when he realized that he preferred Alexander's body over any women's but, he had stopped drinking as an experiment that had results he hated. When he looked into those deep blue eyes and counted the freckles in the candlelight, he knew what the feeling was and he realized he had never felt this way about any woman. He felt slightly sick with anxiety, and cried only a little harder than he had before, which piqued Alexander's interest.

"Tell me you feel it too. Tell me you're crying harder because you feel it too!" He brought his hands to Laurens' face and Laurens gently leaned into the touch.

"Mmhm." He said quietly and Alexander clearly hadn't heard him.

"Yes, I feel it too."

"What do we do?' he asked and stopped crying as hard as he had been before.

"You have to decide. You have a future to pursue, and this is a tough situation that you face here," John said through tears that Alexander wiped away the second that they fell.

"I choose you. I will always choose you." He said and let out a sob as Laurens pulled his face closer to his.

Alexander Hamilton was ever the romantic. He had swooned numerous women with his romantic attitude and impulsive decisions. He had already told every women he held in the aftermath of sex that he loved them, and most of them had blushed and left. To him love was a loose feeling of happiness that came after the best sex and was nothing more than the polite thing to say. Whether he had ever felt what he felt for John Laurens was debatable, because he may have never felt true love before Laurens. He didn't recognize that it was love until John had told him, and it had scared him because it wasn't right to sleep with a man, but it felt more wrong to love a man. To him sex was just like his original belief of love, it was unconnected and used more as a past time than anything.

He couldn't tell Washington. For the very first time in his life, there was something that he couldn't tell the General. He knew everything about him from the fact he was a bastard to his opinion of Charles Lee, but he couldn't know about John.

There was no sex that night, there was only kissing and lying under the pile of woolen blankets in their undergarments. It was cold and the feeling of John's hands wrapped around Alexander's waist, one finger barely touching the part of his skin that was exposed, made his body feel warmer and his soul feel more complete. Their legs were entangled and they faced the other, Alexander ignoring the steady deep breaths that John let out instead of facing away. He only faced the other way once, and that was to glance at his cot, on the other side of the room. It was bare, all of the blankets were on them, and the light of the moon shined down onto it from the window. He wanted to put John there and paint a mental picture of him sleeping at complete peace to save forever.

Suddenly, his legacy meant nothing to him. All that mattered in the moment was John's hands on his hips, John's breath on his face, John's hair that was wild and draped over the pillow, John's voice saying a tired goodnight, and the way John had looked at him before he closed his eyes and fell asleep. If he died tomorrow, he wouldn't care, as he was already living on borrowed time and had been since he had survived the illness when he was younger. Even if God himself came down from the Heavens in the moment and told him that he was to endure an infinity of torture for loving John Laurens, he wouldn't move from Laurens' arms. Washington was like a father to him, and even him telling him that he was a disgusting freak and no longer worthy of his apprenticeship wouldn't make him leave those arms.

Never in his entire life had he fit in. He had always been more poor than the others, more easily aggravated, and more sensitive, but with John he felt perfect. He had felt substantial under Washington's mentoring, and he had learned how to be a gentleman from him, but not even he made Alexander feel so perfect. He wanted the feeling of being normal and perfect to last forever, but it couldn't and he knew that. The second he wasn't in John's arms he wouldn't matter any more, he would be incomplete and he would once again feel naked compared to the other men.

In a perfect world he would be able to tell Washington and the news would be followed with a pat-on-the-back of congratulations. In a perfect world he would hold John's hand and kiss him before every battle. In a perfect world he would taunt the other men, and laugh at the fact that it had been months since the last time they had sex, and John would blush. In a perfect world he wouldn't be expected to have a wife, instead he would live in a good sized house with John and live off of John's inheritance. In a perfect world he could boast to Layfette that his love was with him during the war, and not across the ocean. Instead he taught himself to not take things for granted and to treasure the moments he was allowed to spend alive with him. Maybe together they could fight against slavery and sodomy until both were forgotten and black people and men in love lived free.

It was an hour until he finally fell asleep and he wrapped his arms around John before he finally touched their foreheads together and slept. He wished he could live off of sex with John alone and never have to sleep.