This is Fine Alternative Denouement

[slowtoanger]

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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[slowtoanger]

"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.

[non_stop]

(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."

[slowtoanger]

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.

[non_stop]

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."

[slowtoanger]

"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.

[non_stop]

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."

[slowtoanger]

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.

[non_stop]

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.

[slowtoanger]

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.

[non_stop]

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."

[slowtoanger]

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.

[non_stop]

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.

[slowtoanger]

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.