amrev_intrigues | This is Fine Alternative Denouement

This is Fine Alternative Denouement

Hamilton is there, when Burr comes home. He's not supposed to be there. Burr learns later: he finished his business early, returned to Philadelphia to surprise Burr. Because he loves Burr. Because he feels pained, when they are apart. But Hamilton arrives and Burr is not there. At dinner, the housekeeper tells him. But then hours pass and Burr still does not come home. Maybe that is not out of the ordinary, for them. Working late, wandering the streets.

But Burr doesn't expect Hamilton to be there, when the door comes open, and Burr stumbles in wrecked and weeping, abortifacient clutched in one hand. His heart stops, when he looks up and sees him. Freezes in the doorway, legs shaking. The smell is wafting off him. Heat, and Jefferson. Burr whimpers.

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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.

Ned has made a discreet exit. Hamilton can smell the two of them, Ned, the traces of the slaves and servants who keep the room for the President -- and, beyond all of that, the alpha-alpha of Washington. It is a sort of safety, he finds.

Burr is feverishly hot, damp and sticky where his skin touches Hamilton's. Hamilton croons, soft, shifts a little to tuck the blankets closer. If this were a more primitive time, perhaps his desire would be to hide his mate away, in darkness and safety and comfort, warmly cocooned, and pace at the entrance, growl at anyone who passed. How does a gentleman behave, now? Likely, a gentleman does not shoot his political rival.

"I have you," he promises. "I'll keep you warm."

And Burr doesn't stop crying. There is something, this loosening, that means once he starts he cannot stop. And he clings to Hamilton, clutches at him, and lets out those awful sobs which make him gasp for air.

"I'm sorry," Burr says, bites his neck, "I'm sorry," and he's not warm but he is warming, not calm and not calming but--better, maybe. Less like--not that they will be okay. But that they could be. That it is a possibility now. And that Hamilton is here with him and will not go to Jefferson again, and neither will Burr, and--and he gags a little. An unproductive clenching of muscles, horribly sore, but he does not throw up. No, this is something working out of him, because they will be okay now, won't they? Hamilton is here.

And so Burr wiggles his body, back and forth, grinding down into the bed, into Hamilton, in that pointless primitive omega way, settling into a nest. He is okay, and Hamilton is here, and they are okay.

He wraps his husband, his omega, into his embrace; he purrs full-throated, now, though he cries, too. He aches terribly at Burr's pain, but he is confident now that this pain is survivable, and this eases his fear.

A wounded and inflamed part of him, buried deep, insists: see, he belongs with me, he wants me, he's mine and preens with a kind of sick pride over it, that he would win even in this most intimate of battlegrounds. But that is only a very small part of him, shrunken and banished under the attentions of his mate, his children, by the happiness they have enjoyed. Once, he was all wounds. Now, those have healed to scars, and even his scars have grown soft with time.

He settles into a half-doze, attentive for Burr's state, for Ned's return, for movement outside their little refuge.

Burr does sleep, too. Deeper than Hamilton, pulled under by fever. And he expects to be better when he wakes. Doesn't expect, for it is not so conscious. Rather it is a child's hope, belief--that this is just how things are. You go to bed sick and you are looked after so it must be that when you wake up you are well.

But Burr does not wake up well. He wakes sweat covered and retching, rolling to the side of the bed, though there is nothing to come up, and immediately that old fear slams back into him, and he is heaving himself to his feet and walking unsteady to the desk, delirious, head pounding, casting about for a quill and a scrap of parchment.

He needs to--he should write Van Ness. This can't wait another minute. Burr has--he's ruined everything and unless he deals with this right now it will be too late. It's that old terror. The one that paralyzes one part while leaving the body moving.

Don't think about it, just--the letter. Send the letter. He needs more of the potion. He needs to be sure. And Van Ness would never turn him away.

Edited 2023-06-21 04:35 (UTC)

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This is Fine Alternative Denouement

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