Private Storyline B2

[slowtoanger]

Burr goes back. Of course he goes back. How can he not go back? They spend nights together, opening each other's flesh, wrapped, circled, ensnared. And each time he comes he brings something; little gifts, trinkets, books, blankets, quills, parchment. Things he knows Alex will like, thirsts for, an attempt to plug a hole that is always widening, desperate, grasping.

He wants to tighten them. Draw them together. To draw Hamilton to him the way he has drawn other young men. To wrap him close, the way one holds a dangerous thing, slick and pointed and sharp. Oh, but this Hamilton is not the same. Perhaps if given power he will dissolve the same, into paranoia and delusion, yet this Hamilton is desperate, fragile, breakable, for as much as he covers himself in sharp edges. Not unlike the Hamilton he once knew, and yet--

Burr will not be in the position, to fall victim to him. Too old, already ruined. Perhaps they never could have been anything more than two sharp objects, poised always to cut, before. But now, maybe--. He doesn't know. He wants Hamilton to come home with him. Better than a brothel, for all he respects Benedicta. Hamilton deserves more than only bodily pleasures, as much as his need for independence burns. No less independent there, in the brothel, than he would be with Burr, but then, the brothel is an easier dependence, to no one person. Something like independence, if one could only close their eyes and wish hard enough.

Burr takes to hiring him for the day, the night, not at the brothel but at his own home. Pays extra for it--pulling in a steadier income than he ever has before. Sits with him at dinners, puts him to bed in his own room, even, on some nights, for as much as Hamilton is perturbed by such arrangments. Burr wont admit it. Would never say it. But. He is lonely. Frustratingly lonely, painfully lonely. Everyone he knows is dead, outside a few, and here is Hamilton.

Comments

[slowtoanger]

"Poor baby," Burr purrs, half-mocking, as he pulls Alexander closer. "At least I can rectify two of those things. You shall have one of my shirts, and now I shall get you some cold pork, left by the housekeeper. I can't have my omega going hungry, much less when they are carrying something so precious."

Small kisses down his neck before disentangling himself, if Alexander will let him, to retrieve the food. Hurrying back, to feed him small bits of that pork by hand.

"You must tell me when you are hungry, darling. I shall never have you wanting, if I can help it."

[non_stop]

"I want bacon," and there's a sudden and sharp eagerness in him that has nothing to do with sexuality. "I want the pork."

The noises he makes when he's fed are positively pornographic. Nips at Burr's fingers, playfully.

"So what are you going to do?" he asks, finally, after that's done, once he's draped himself onto Burr's chest. "You asked if I would have married you if I got you pregnant -- and the answer is yes, if you came before Eliza. Even if you infuriated me." He props his head up on his hand, and frowns at Burr. "So what are you going to do now?"

[slowtoanger]

Good feelings, stirring in Burr's chest at providing in this way. Good alpha, feeding his mate, and good omega, so accommodating, eating so readily.

"I am going to keep feeding you," Burr says, "and taking care of you." Reaches up to stroke Alexander's face. So pretty, and so much less infuriating now, as an omega, than he had been before, half in Washington's pocket, accusing everyone of every sinful thing at every moment.

He is asking if Burr would marry him, yet the question feels so much like a trap. Alexander, who prizes his independence so readily. Would he flee, if Burr wanted that? Burr wants what he wants. Wants him to be happy.

"I will do whatever you want, Alexander. In whatever capacity you would have me."

[non_stop]

Alexander reaches, and his fingers dig tight into Burr's arm. He presses himself against Burr, like he could make himself heavier by sheer force of will, like he could hold Burr down. Nothing about this is simple. Even what should be the easiest of instincts -- nesting -- is fraught, for Alexander, because he remembers a time when he didn't have those instincts at all, when he was something else. The second-greatest shock of this is finding out how much of what he knew was from his body and not embedded in his soul. The greatest shock was finding out how much was his soul, all along.

"You showed me things I was afraid to want." Many of Alexander's words to Burr are confessions, lately. Confessions of desire. Confessions of the past. These are confessions of sentiment, which are much, much worse. It's easier to say this into Burr's throat, tucked in on top of him, than it is to say it to his beautiful dark eyes.

"You've seduced me with -- with books. Respected my mind, or at least pretended to well enough, as you desire my body. Please, don't avoid the question. Please don't lie. Is it really this simple, Burr?" His voice has that soft, yearning quality that it used to get with Eliza. He is a sentimental fool, no matter what his body is, and Burr has brought it out in him. "Don't you still want to bring me low?"

[slowtoanger]

"It is," Burr whispers, and clutches back at him. "From the moment my bullet left my pistol I regretted it. From the moment you feel onto the ground, I wished only to turn back time. I didn't want you hurt, for all you had ruined me."

Spent the next years of his life until now unable to forget, for all he was unapologetic in public. Rallied against his vilification and the erasure of all of Hamilton's wrongdoings at the same moment he lost himself and drink and tinctures and whores. While this new Hamilton was suffering somewhere on an isolated island.

I'm old, Alexander. I've lost everyone. I don't want to hurt you." Leans in and presses a long kiss to his forehead. Holds him there. Prays.

[non_stop]

"You know that was my first memory?" Alexander asks. "The duel. Before I could walk, I was dreaming about the gunshot. Gunshots." There were two, weren't there?

He'd been too young to understand, for a long time. He doesn't know if this is the reason, but the moments of the duel are all scattered, now. He doesn't know what really happened because he dreamed it so many ways.

"There's always more to lose," Alexander whispers. "Aren't you afraid?" Of me. Of opening up again.

[slowtoanger]

"Yes," Burr whispers, and he had dreamed of the duel as well, from that first night, as the streets called for his blood. Laudanum had helped. A few drops before bed, then a few more. "Life is a game of losing."

And he is terrified, yet--

Lonely. He is so lonely.

"But losing while having had you sounds better than losing you through fear." Yet even now there is some part of him held back, numbed. He cannot love the same way ever again. Not since the Theodosias. Some part of him, laying at the bottom of an ocean. Is it the same with Hamilton, after Philip? It must be.

[non_stop]

Alexander doesn't respond. His eyes are closed, and he is starting to drift. Still burrowed on top of Burr, in the cozy warmth of the nest, the cave. A skinny little bastard islander and an old man, a whore and a has-been. The comfort is unspeakable, in a literal sense: Alexander could never say it out loud, because then it would be shattered.

He turns his face in towards Burr's throat.

His body is probably the most relaxed that Burr has ever felt it. There is no pure, unadulterated, pleasured-omega contentment here. Alexander's smell is complicated, as his emotions are complicated.

And yet, despite all that churns and rages in his heart, he is quiet.

He is quiet, and he is still.

And -- soft, just barely audible, just barely palpable -- he is purring, again, as he falls asleep on Burr's chest.