The iconic McElroy Double “Unless.” I can hear them perfectly.
I noticed a couple people in the tags saying the Double Unless is a Hamilton reference, which means there are people out there who don’t realize that Hamilton was actually referencing the McElroys, not the other way around. Lin said so himself.
So anyway, I just wanted to share the good, good news.
“So, mes amis, are you coming to the parade tomorrow?”
It’s a fairly simple question from Lafayette, but it makes John twitch a little before he masters the impulse. Then he smiles. He doesn’t have to answer, though–Alex is already talking, because Alex is always already talking.
“Of course we are,” Alex announces. “So are the girls. I tried to convince His Excellency that we could identify ourselves and really shake up some Republicans, but he said he’d get me suspended if he heard I started a fight with any political figures. Besides, John went last year without us.”
“John, I am hurt.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” John says, and rolls his eyes. “You were in France this time last year.”
“Well,” Alex says, and awards John his widest, toothiest smile, the one that always foretold trouble. “Maybe we’ll get on the news and your dad will blow a gasket. Should be good comedy from a safe distance.”
John grins at that. His father this time is not his father from last time, as far as he can tell, but a conservative South Carolina senator probably won’t be a much better outcome. But he’s not in South Carolina, he’s in New York City, and he has Alexander at his side, and friends with him, and the whole lot of them are going to Pride. It’s hard to worry about his father, just now.
5. Something sad
Alex has gotten used to nightmares. They happen. Once he’s old enough, he figures out that it’s because he’s carting around almost five decades of intermittent trauma in a teenager’s skull with unusually good recall–not everyone remembers past lives as clear and crisp as his, and there are pros and cons to that. Not a lot of pros, although his knowledge of constitutional law is unparalleled. Plenty of cons.
When the heat goes out in his dorm during November, he has fitful dreams of being feverish, and worse ones of seeing the sick and starving collapse in fields. When it storms, he dreams off and on of hurricanes and cannon fire. He dreams of searching through fields of bodies for familiar faces, or of trying to hold his son together by force of will, or of his mother’s arms growing stiff and cold around him.
The worst, though, are the dreams about letters. He gets the letter and knows what it is but can’t stop himself from unfolding it to read the handwriting, and sometimes Laurens is there, or worse, John as he is now, young and nearly free of his father but still bleeding and dying and dead.
There is, of course, nothing Alex can do to save John in the dreams. Part of him feels that this is only his due.
6. Something shippy
After John’s family figures out what’s going on–
Well. He always knew that he had exactly as long as it took for his family to learn his past life’s name, the name he’s using in New York, before they started asking problematic questions. It’s not hard to do a search for John Laurens and read the Wikipedia article that’s half about Alexander Hamilton.
So his father calls him up and they have a very tense conversation that comes to the ultimate question.
“Don’t lie to me, Jonathan. Are you gay?”
John sighs and takes a moment to be relieved that he saw this coming and made sure to make plans accordingly. He has insurance through the school, a place to live until summer and Lafayette’s apartment after that, and a job from Hercules. And it’s not 1784 anymore, and he’s not going to be hanged, and–
And he has Alexander.
He gives Alex a glance as if to say once more into the breach, dear friend, and says lightly, “Yeah, actually, I have a boyfriend. I think you’ve probably heard of him.”
*emerges from cave, shamefaced* Right, so, does anyone remember that this AU exists? Because I swear to God I didn’t forget, I just only now have had the time. I actually have a bunch of prompts for it, not all of them are going to get written based on…like…my inspiration level, but also this series is alive again, so like. Yep. Here is some Jefferson. Full disclosure, I dislike Jefferson and think his economic plan was some racist bullshit, so…that is evident.
To all you newcomers, I do recommend reading the other stuff, even if you could probably figure it out.
So, the academic affairs office holds out longer than their
predecessor. Not by much, but by a
little. It takes two full weeks for Alex
to hammer through his petition to be allowed to take more than max credits—and it’s quite a petition. Angelica takes one look at the twenty-page,
double-sided, single-spaced letter to the dean of academics and disavows any
involvement, and John grins fondly, remarking that the dean has no idea what he’s
gotten into.
The dean, incidentally, has lived his life with pleasantly dim memories
of Philedelphia with cobblestone streets and a vague impression that he knows
the unfortunate teacher annually strong-armed into teaching History of the
American Revolution. He recalls very
little else of his time in the Continental Congress—indeed, at gunpoint he
couldn’t have identified what exactly he was doing, back then.
He has a blindingly vivid
flashback upon looking at the first page of the letter—the pamphlet, really—and immediately feeds the entire thing through his
shredder.
“Jake,” he says, sticking his head out of his office to look at his
secretary.
“Yes, sir?”
“Approve whatever Hamilton’s request was before he sends anymore
letters. I’ve seen enough for several
lifetimes.”
“You got it, boss,” says Jake, whose past life was a blissfully
unremarkable farmer in the Italian countryside and who therefore has no idea
that his boss is sparing them all a lot of trouble.
Now, the reason this matters is because Alex walks into his Econ 101
class for the first time two weeks into the semester, takes one look at the
lesson outline the grad student wrote on the board, and makes a sound of
absolute incoherent horror.
“Oh my god,” Alex says faintly, frozen in place two steps inside the
door. He was never an especially
religious person, but he’s wondering if maybe the universe is punishing him for
past crimes. He’s not saying one way or
the other if he deserves it, but this seems excessive. “Jefferson is haunting me from beyond the
grave.”
blackash26 