amrev_intrigues | This is Fine Alternative Denouement

Burr is not wholly sensible to the movement, to the space, where he is and who is with him. But he recognizes the smell. A good, wonderful smell. Yes, yes, this is where he needs to be, even as it is undercut by a feeling of sick wrongness. But--maybe that is the smell of the wound. Of suffering.

Burr drops to his knees immediately, trembling to the side of the bed Jefferson reclines on. There is still something lingering here, faintly. Too faint for anyone to notice but his own--heat, stale beneath sick. He ducks his head, presses it against Jefferson's outstretched hand, a show of submission. A plea.

He remembers--he was told to go. He needed to be with his mate. He was told to be with his mate.

"He won't have me," Burr says, a little broken sound. "I have to--he said--I need to be with my mate." Confusion there, beneath fever.

"Then go be with him," Jefferson says, pulling his hand away. It's enough to inspire pity in anyone's heart, but he cannot, if only for the purposes of preserving his own flesh against a traitorous madman. He cannot summon forth any sort of purr, any sort of reassuring croon, and he is upset -- he does not want disharmony in his household, nor in his personal life, and this occasion has ruined his careful peace so quickly. Burr must have returned home and immediately confessed. Blamed it on Jefferson. Looked piteous. Maybe they both planned this! Nothing would be beyond Hamilton's constant scheming.

"Of course he will have you," says Jefferson, trying to be soothing. "He cannot spurn someone as lovely as you."

And Burr is confused, but his distress ebbs for being in such a place, among such smells. But Jefferson is rejecting him, just as--nobody wants him. No one will--

And he is crying then. Those omega smells. The please and the protect me, take care of me smells that one might expect in one unattached, or attached but alone.

"But I am," Burr says, and he doesn't understand. "I don't--you don't want me?" And he isn't acting like himself. But everything is wrong and he doesn't understand. "I need my mate, he told me to go to my mate," and he reaches out for Jefferson's hand again, bares his throat.

Jefferson flinches from the smells. He is aware, uneasily, that he bears some fault for this utter distress, this heat-sickness. He devoted himself to toppling Mr. Burr-Hamilton from his pedestal, and now he looks wary upon the man brought low.

"Your husband is responsible for you," says Jefferson, shortly. "It has nothing to do with what I want." Though there isn't much to want, right now. Burr's graceful charm is nowhere in this tortured form. Was it truly such a crime to want to capture some of that charm? Hold it, even if just for a moment or two?

He should not waste his time arguing. Burr is insensible of the fine distinctions.

"Your mate is Alexander Hamilton," he emphasizes, though his voice is weak, his breath short, from the intensifying pain. "Not me." He has no mate. His mate is gone.

He has to try and catch his breath, from the strain. "He cannot be seen this way," he manages, to Jupiter. "Provide him an escort back to Mr. Hamilton."

With this second denial, this refusal, this inability to sate the heat-sickness which has been growing since Hamilton left him collapsed on the floor of their home, Burr shatters completely.

There are no loud sobs, but his frame shakes, and those omega sounds spill from his regardless. He gives up. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go. Where his life had been the morning before, everything is lost in ruin. There will be no peace for him, even unto death. He gives up.

He doesn't fight when the slave carries him from the room, because to fight or even assist would mean he is working under any power of his own. He thinks, if he is left in the street he will stay there. Find some dark place to lay until he never moves again.

He is not thinking of his children, or Hamilton. It is all lostnand confused beneath a muddy mess of hormones and a pain which stretches to the core of him, which will not be soothed by anything which holds the power to soothe.

Edited 2022-11-24 02:44 (UTC)

"Wait!"

The call comes from a diminutive, portly man, instantly recognizable as James Madison, come to pay a call on his ill friend, diverted by the emergency in front of him. What could Burr-Hamilton be doing here? Could it be that this was truly a crime of adultery and not ravishment?

The poor omega is ill and insensate, not responding when Madison calls his name. "Mr. Hamilton... Mr. Burr." He looks to the slave. "Lay him out on the sopha."

"Mr. Jefferson has instructed me to bring him to the Hamilton residence..."

"Then lay him out in the carriage. Let the poor man down." Madison sends his own carriage ahead and climbs in after Burr. The only place he can lay properly is on the floor, and Madison lowers himself next to Burr, projecting as soothing a scent as he can manage. Presses his wrist against Burr's lips, so that one of his scent glands can be close to Burr's nose. It would ordinarily be unthinkable to take such liberties with pheromonic manipulation, but he believes the extraordinary measure is called-for.

"Hush, now," he murmurs: "You'll be home soon."

Burr doesn't know where he is. His eyes are open, but they roll unseeing in his head. Has an omega yet died of heat sickness? If he were sensible to know, he would feel like dying. His skin burns, and the jolts of the carriage shoot through his joints like lighting. He is making sounds--sounds he doesn't wholly recognize, and his face is wet, and--he is shivering. Shaking apart, and he must be bleeding still.

He is far away, lost in an endless sea of things unfulfilled. He was used to that, once. Disappointments without end, tossed about like the last crust of moldy bread. He was used to being discarded, once. When had that changed? He sees his uncle, he thinks, sitting on the seat near his head, and he shrinks away.

A disappointment, a slut, a whore, spreading your legs for some Irish bastard, some island whoreson, I never want to see you again, would that you were born a man, and Burr tries to plug his ears with hands that won't cooperate.

But there's the smell--cutting through delerium, and it lights in him like something burning, wet wood cracking and splitting and popping. He latches on, drags that smell closer, and he's sobbing for all he's not sure he makes a sound. He thinks--is Montgomery there? They've been away so long. But no, not Montgomery, but--Hamilton. His mate. His love. Not his mate. No, not--he has no mate. There is no one. No one, but--

He latches on anyway. One solid point in a storm with no end. A man who can focus on only one thing for sanity, in a nightmare without end.

"Hush, now." Madison strokes Burr's throat, where there are signs of a fresh bite. (Thomas couldn't have -- he couldn't have.) Burr leans against his thigh, and Madison sits, awkwardly, with his legs half-bent in front of him, braced against the carriage's walls. Sets his cane aside, and begins to rub Burr's back. "There. I'll have you back to your husband."

But, as it turns out, Hamilton is not at his home. Theodosia directs them towards the President's house, her lips pressed thin in what Madison can only assume is anger. He remembers the months working with Hamilton on the Federalist Papers, Theodosia underfoot, curious and sharp and dazzlingly witty. How different, that time, from this one -- cold words and colder silences. She does not want to see Burr like this, and Madison cannot find any fault in that.

The slave wants to leave Burr and return home; it takes all the authority Madison can bring to bear to have him go on.

The carriage jostles unpleasantly, almost bruisingly, as Madison tries to comfort the insensible omega. The smell is almost too much for him, overwhelming in its distress.

--

"Where is Aaron?"

Hamilton is shaky but conscious, now; he has little to dull the pain of a tearing heart. He turns from Ned, turns from Ned's question. "He would hardly touch me," and Hamilton shudders. "He would hardly look at me."

"Where," Ned enunciates, slower, "is Aaron?"

Burr doesn't really come to his senses until he is being carried inside. Even then, there are only half snatches of reality. Dark wood walls wheeling and pitching sickeningly. He is put in a bed, and he has hardly been set down before he is retching, awful and painful and choking over the side.

His head pounds, and his eyes are watering, and he can feel his heart beating too-fast, clenching and cramping as he sucks air through a space that seems too tight.

There is someone on the bed, kneeling over him, caressing his face, cool water, and he thinks--

He is breathing slower, and maybe it will be fine after all. But then he smells it--catches a whiff of something, of--someone he can't--and then he is leaning over and retching something horrible again. Spots in his eyes.

He thinks he might die. He will die. There exists more than one thing can contain, a limit to pain or--and he smells Ned, Ned, and Ned is--Ned is good, and Burr reaches for him, wraps himself in his, shivering and shuddering and wracked with pain.

Edited 2022-11-25 04:38 (UTC)

"Let me," cries Hamilton, "let me--" And Ned shuts the door on him, no matter how Hamilton bleeds out the scent of mate, distress, need, because Burr's reaction is dramatically out of character from what Ned knows of him: there are always rumors of Burr wandering from the marriage bed, but never of rejecting the bond between Hamilton and himself.

And so Ned presses cool cloths to Burr's fevered forehead, has him drink water and fortifying wine, sends for gruel. And Hamilton is left curled outside, at the door, exhausted from the strain and panic from the brief and frenzied search. He has to stop himself from whining like a dog.

"Well," comes a soft voice, "this is a bit pathetic, even for you."

Hamilton turns his enervated gaze on Madison. His eyes flood with tears; he hurts, hurts from the pit of his chest, like a bullet took him straight to the spine. He accepts the proffered handkerchief, and curls so his back is against the wall, instead of his side. His leg is numb. He is, perhaps, too old for this shit.

"He made his way to Thomas's residence," Madison tells him. "He was seriously ill when I found him. Thomas sent him back here."

"Why." It is a whisper, but it is anguished. Why would Burr go. Why would Burr go there. Why didn't Burr let Hamilton comfort him, care for him? He wants to be a good mate. A good husband.

"I don't know. It is an unexpected betrayal, if he was more than heatstruck. Thomas can be very persuasive. Very... seductive. It isn't his style to employ ill treatment, which I think must be a reason Burr found his way there."

The tears come again. Hamilton weeps quietly, in heartbreak.

"Will this leave you a broken man?"

It is a question and a challenge, both. An appeal to his pride, though he feels as though it has all been stolen away. Yes, it might have left him a broken man -- at least, before the question was asked.

He breathes in, shakily.

"The Union is in your hands, and mine," says Madison. "Call upon me when you want to save it. Take up your pistol again if you would see it destroyed."

After this, Madison goes, and Hamilton waits, in the hall, for a long time.

Burr doesn't die. For all he feels like he is dying, he doesn't die. He is--he is hurt. Deeper than he's ever been. Every awful thing Burr ever feared about himself--those things worse even than he would allow himself to think but always suspected--Hamilton had confirmed them, tonight. He wanted it. He asked Thomas for it, and even then--neither of them wanted him. Who would, after being used like that?

He is shivering, insensate, as Ned sees to him. But there's a worse desperation inside him, a certainty that he will be alone, confirmed already twice over, that he shall be left in the streets and will never see his family again, subject to no more affection or care until the day he dies. And the wildness--that is there then, the kind of desperation one can only be when they know there is no hope.

Burr grabs at Ned. Burr pulls at him, tried to show with his body. Is shaking, but opens his legs, and tilts his head back, that display that invites. He is available, see? Please.

"Your husband is outside," Ned tries to reassure him. "He's waiting. You're all right, you have a mate." He's seen bond rejection before, in a pregnant waif of an omega girl, heartsick and heatsick at the same time after the alpha that had made promises to her had abandoned her. It doesn't make sense that Burr is acting the same way -- after all, Alexander is just outside, their bond is as secure as any that Ned has ever seen, and, anyhow, Aaron was the one refusing what Alexander offered. Alexander did heed, however reluctantly.

Unless he didn't, when Ned was gone.

No, that wasn't like him -- even drugged, he wouldn't have forced Aaron, wouldn't have punished him, wouldn't have done any of those things that alphas are entitled to do, by law, but should never, ever do, by justice, to disobedient mates. Perhaps he said something. But it is hard to think of a thing Alexander could say that would drive Aaron to a man who seduced and ravished him, unwillingly, in heat.

He wipes away the fever sweat. "Do you want him here?"

Lacking a firm response, he calls Alexander in. "Carefully," he warns. "He's very ill, and I know not precisely why."

It's Jefferson's fault. Alexander knows it is, whether he did it on purpose or recklessly. His breath dies in his chest as he sees Aaron again. He kneels by the bed, pushing Ned's stool away, and carefully takes Aaron's hand in both of his. Kisses Aaron's knuckles, once, briefly.

"Don't leave me," he pleads, soft. "Please don't leave me." His pride is withdrawn, dead and shriveled and crackling in him. Not like this, not like this; he can't lose Aaron like this.

"No," Burr says, even as he thrashes, shivering. "No, he doesn't want me," Burr babbles, "he told me, he told me to go--" back to? "Back to my mate," and Burr is crying, breath hitching up in his throat, and--he's cold, and Ned won't come here, and--

"But he won't--nobody wants me," Burr says, and he is sobbing then, ugly, cracking things that shake through him in waves of hurt.

"I know Alexander," says Ned; "He adores you. He is your mate. You're the mother of his children -- you're his husband. He loves you. He was begging for you, earlier." He's tucking another blanket around Aaron; let him sweat out the fever. It will do him good. He rubs Aaron's shoulder, his arm. "He's outside. I can ban him from your sickbed, unless you want him here."

Burr doesn't know why he's so confused. Why everything is so wrong. But he--he wants Alexander. He wants Alexander, and maybe that is Burr's weakness, the one person who can make Burr vulnerable enough to break. To go against reason and self preservation. And Alex hadn't listened before, even when Burr said know. Had thrown it back in his face, but--Burr wants him.

So he nods. Yes, he wants him.

Alexander stops stunned when the door opens. An undignified scramble to his feet follows, and he clutches his jacket to himself, dusty and bloodied as it is. It seems disrespectful, somehow, to just be in shirt-sleeves.

"-- and I know not precisely why."

Alexander must restrain himself from darting past Ned. From flinging himself to Aaron's side. His husband smells of desperation and fear, anger and grief and horror. It's Jefferson's fault, he knows it. Somehow, it's Jefferson's fault. The one man who can wound them both.

He kneels by the bed, pushing Ned's stool away, and carefully takes Aaron's hand in both of his. Kisses Aaron's knuckles, once, briefly.

"Don't leave me," he pleads, soft. "Please don't leave me." His pride is withdrawn, dead and shriveled and crackling in him. Not like this, not like this; he can't lose Aaron like this.

"You told me to go," Burr's voice cracks out, small and and needy and nothing like himself. "You didn't want me."

But he can't let go. His hand tightens on Alexanders, even as he shivers and sweat beads and his hand grows damp.

(Behind Alexander, Ned crosses his arms.)

"What?" Alexander is astonished. He remembers they spoke, before Burr left -- he remembers that Burr rebuffed him, did not want to touch him or be touched. "I would never -- I would die myself before I turned you out, before I left you to his mercies -- it was you, who wanted nothing to do with me."

But Burr is ill, and none of it makes sense. His whole body hurts, and when Alexander looks at him like that he must close his eyes and turn away. His body wracks with something, a spasm of pain, and he bites back a sound.

He's cold, freezing down to the bone, but his eyes feel hot in their sockets. Burning, burning.

"I can't," Burr says. "I don't want--I want you here," he says, but he can't--put it in words. "It's too much," he says, helpless.

He looks on, helplessly. He does not understand.

On his knees, before the man who has him by the heart, he kisses the hand that has known his lips time and time again.

"What can I do?" he asks. "I'm at your command -- I always have been."

"I don't know," Burr says, and he's crying again. "I don't know what's happening. I'm--confused." Now and earlier, with Jefferson. He doesn't know what's going on. He hardly know where he is, who he's with. Has only just realized a loose grasp on reality.

But Hamilton kisses his hand again, and Burr's so cold, and his body is crying out for it--his mate, his mate.

"Come here," Burr says, tugs. "But don't--don't touch me. Let me." Like--like alpha's are supposed to do, in an Omega's nest.

A palpable easing of tension, in Ned, but Hamilton hardly notices. He lets Burr reel him like an angler, move him by the hook pierced through a place in his soul shamefully tender.

He releases his jacket next to him as he lays by Burr. "As you wish."

Burr positions him carefully--laying on his side , so that Hamilton is between Burr and the door, but so that the other side, the one closest to Ned and his instruments, is left clear.

Burr still doesn't--he still wants to be alone. To hide his shame, heal behind closed doors. But that is not something he can have. Not something Hamilton could stand, and now, the friction between them has made it something Burr cannot stand. He needs Alexander, as much as whatever Burr has become, now, after Jefferson, curls back.

But there's a comforting familiarity to this. The times Hamilton has held Burr through illness, and the times Burr has held Hamilton. Heat stroke and gunshots and spring fevers and child pains. Burr is still wrapped in blankets, but he nudges his way forward, lays his face a hairsbreadth from touching Hamilton's throat, does touch there, with the tip of his nose. Close enough to feel warmth, to smell. Works one hand free to lay Hamilton's arm carefully over him, then works his arm back inside, closes his eyes to sweat out his fever.

His scent changes as soon as Burr is close, as soon as his eyes are closed. The fight in him, the distress, the muscles and organs held so tense, all start to fade to quiet and comfort. It is something biological and instinctive, and not what he expects to feel: he does not reach out, but instead goes liquid at Burr's touch, feels almost as though he has gone beyond liquid to something translucent and caressing like mist. His scent says safety. It says calm. It isn't a conscious manipulation, but rather a response.

"He needs rest," Ned points out.

A slight nod, a stirring, as he takes in Ned's words. He makes a concession to his desires, but only a little, just canting his head to the side, towards Burr. And he purrs, quietly, ever-so-soft, enough that Burr can feel the vibration in his throat.

And Burr does feel--the way Alexander reacts, and he isn't who he has been since Burr came home. Since Hamilton dropped him on the floor of the entry, said--didn't care if Burr should live or die.

So Burr relaxes too, in what way one can, in the middle still of sickness of breakdown. He'd thought--he'd thought he would die. And Hamilton would leave him. And Hamilton would--so Burr pushes forward, buries his face there, clutches on with his hands, shaking, shaking.

He's crying again. He doesn't know why.

"I'm cold," he says, muffled into Hamilton's neck, wetted through tears.

This is Fine Alternative Denouement

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