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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[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.