Hamilton wonders how much they both see someone else, when he feels the wet of tears against his skin. Theodosia, and her daughter, and her son, for Burr -- and a sudden, bayonet-stab of longing for Laurens, for Hamilton. He remembers little about the duel, but he does know he thought he would see Laurens again, after his death.

He almost has the willpower to push Burr away. What they were talking about was important -- but it doesn't matter. He desires Burr so frantically and desperately, all the time, now, that hardly a touch has him surging into a cockstand, laying out a slick invitation for Burr to have him in more devastating and submissive ways.

Burr doesn't try, which Hamilton finds a relief, if only because he thinks then he'd be the one hiding tears, weakness, pain turned sin turned something that's a tortured kind of lovely.

He bites back the words that would turn this on Burr -- you're filthy, you should be the whore the way you use your tongue, you -- you --

It wasn't like this with Eliza. He was always so delighted that it made her laugh, when they knew she was pregnant, or when they felt a quickening like this. The backs of his eyes burn, instead, and the image of his own cock curving up towards his swollen belly is what shatters him, a sick satisfaction in it all.

He is trembling-weak after, and doesn't bother to clean himself up, just steps out of shoes and stockings and breeches and collapses down on the sofa nearby, flush-stained cheeks and undone shirt-tails doing a poor job at covering him. Alexander, the man of so many words, doesn't know what to say. Rests his hand on his belly, but the movement has stopped. Perhaps soothed by the paroxysms of muscle, gentle, in his pelvis.

"It's real, isn't it?" he asks. "It's real." He doesn't know what he's referring to.