Chapter Text
“Burr.” The familiar voice filtered through Aaron’s phone on a sunny Sunday morning. It was worried, almost scared sounding, a striking opposite to the nice day that it was outside. Aaron sighed softly against his phone, closing his eyes for a moment as he wedged the device between his shoulder and his ear to keep his hands occupied with cooking eggs for himself. “What, John?”
John Laurens was elusive in Burr’s life. The man was always far too loud, far too exciting and noisy. He held qualities that gave Burr a headache. The man was deemed a mysterious entity at times. John’s interests and needs were ever-changing, his personality making him wild and reckless. Aaron read him like an open book. John Laurens was a twentysomething who was afraid of any sort of commitment and was chasing a high he could never obtain. He was the literal opposite of Burr, who had a stable job and was settled into a small house. John was always in and out, mostly caught in places with friends, almost never alone. So having the elusive John Laurens call him at eight AM on a Sunday caught him off guard.
John sighed back into the phone at Burr. “I need to call in a favor. It’s really, really big and really, really important. I’ll owe you big time.” He even sounded like he was chewing his nails as he spoke, or maybe the end of a pencil or a paintbrush.
Aaron rose his brow a little as he turned the stove off to start pushing the eggs onto his plate. “Can you tell me what this favor is so that I can tell you whether I accept it or not?”
“Do you have vacation days saved?”
“Uhh... yes, I believe so? What does this have to do with your favor?”
“Can you take a week off for Christmas?”
“John, why do you of all people want me to take off of work the week of Christmas?”
“I got invited to go home for Christmas, for some fucking reason I don’t know. It’s gonna be a family event and I can’t go there alone.” He sounded scared now, and Aaron could almost hear him pacing.
Oh. John was asking him to go meet family. What the fuck?
“Why can’t you go alone? Actually, hold on. Why can’t you get Alexander to go with you?”
“He’s too busy with Eliza and Philip to escort me to my country home. Trust me, I asked everyone already. Lafayette is going on vacation with Hercules to France that week, and Thomas Jefferson is going to spend Christmas proposing to Angelica. Don’t tell him I told you, that’s all a hush-hush event.” He mumbled slightly. “Look, if you can’t come either, then I’ll go by myself, as much as I really don’t want to. My family is... Crazy.”
“What do you mean by crazy? Why don’t you want to go home to spend time with family?”
“My family is crazy! They’re just crazy. All my siblings and my father, cooped up in one house for a whole week, it’ll be like a chicken coop. I can’t go there alone, man. It’s gonna be a shitshow from start to finish. I need someone to come with me. Plus, I kinda told Henry that I’d be bringing someone for him to meet.”
“What are you talking about? None of this makes sense, John. Stop pacing, gather your thoughts, and then talk.”
“Mmh.” Some shifting could be ears before John was finally talking again. “Henry, my father, called me to invite me to family Christmas. He asked me about how things were up here in New York, and I told him I met someone. So I need you to come with me to South Carolina for Christmas with my family and pretend to be my partner.”
Oh. That’s why he was worried.
“You want me to pretend to be your boyfriend for a week while we meet your family?”
“Yes. I need you to come because if I go alone, I’m gonna get chewed out by Henry and my siblings. Please. Think about it. It’s in two months.”
“Two months. Uhh... What are the exact dates?”
“December 20th to the 26th. Saturday to Saturday. You don’t have to pay a cent. Everything is covered.”
“I’ll let you know, alright?”
“Sure.” Hope was evident in John’s voice by then. “Thank you, seriously. Thanks.”
“Sure. I gotta go.”
“Alright. Seeya.” John hung up first, and Aaron looked at his phone screen for a moment to check his calendar. Nothing of importance was going on during that week, but it was also still the beginning of October. The weather was chilling slightly as fall started its slow descent into winter.
Aaron sighed and put his phone face down on the table, pushing his breakfast around with his fork in thought. John Laurens needed him to pretend to be his partner for a week to get through a family Christmas. Honestly, spending a Christmas in South Carolina didn’t sound half bad, despite the reason. It would be significantly warmer there. No snow to deal with, no heavy coats. Just... an apparently crazy family, an esteemed politician, and the politician’s son, who seemed to be having an anxiety attack from the mere thought of a family Christmas.
Aaron didn’t know John too well. He knew of him in college, through Alexander, and met him a few times in bars (most of these times never ended well), but that was it. So going from somewhat close-acquaintances to pretending to be lovers would be one huge jump. He sighed softly, shoveling a forkful of eggs into his mouth. Would he actually be able to pull off pretending to be this reckless man’s partner? He didn’t know for himself, not quite yet.
Then he suddenly remembered that John was supposed to be a struggling artists. How come he offered to not let Aaron pay? He was immediately on the phone again.
John picked up after the first ring. “Are you coming?” The hope rebounded in his voice, the soft smile readable in his tone.
Aaron blinked once before shaking the image of a soft-smiling John out of his head, trying to remember the man who broke another guy’s nose in a bar. “How can you pay for both of us to go on this trip? I’m sure there’s gonna be dinners and lunches, not to mention we need a mode of transportation to get down there-“
“My father is a congressman, Aaron. I’m basically a trust fund child.” The hope and smile were gone as he continued. “I don’t like using the money in my trust fund, but for this occasion I’m gonna use it. Also, we’re driving down to South Carolina. It’s the cheapest route, and we can stop at a Waffle House when it just opens. I’ve got it planned. We leave two AM Saturday morning and get to my father’s place late Saturday afternoon. Saturday morning breakfast is a stop at Waffle House, lunch is wherever you want to stop on the road.”
Aaron was quiet for a moment. “You really thought this through.”
“I mean- Yeah. I did.”
“Where will we be staying?”
“I don’t know if my father is gonna let us stay in the house. If he does, we stay there. If not, I already have a hotel room set up. It’s got two beds, because I figured that you wouldn’t want to sleep in the same bed as me if we didn’t have to.”
“I want to at least pay for something.”
“You can pay for lunch on the trip, and gas money. But that’s it.”
“Are you sure about all this?”
“I’m as ready for this stupid fucking trip as I’ll ever be. I just need to know if I’m facing my family alone or with someone.”
Aaron tapped his fork on his plate, looking out one of the windows in his kitchen. What would he even be doing on Christmas this year? Probably the same thing as every year: go to the company Christmas party, catch a cold, complain about the weather.
Maybe a change of pace was good. It would get him out of his monotonous slump that he felt he was in. And this trip could also prove that John Laurens couldn’t just disappear at the drop of a hat, like he always seemed to do.
“Alright, fine. I’ll come with you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’ll come.”
“Oh thank God. Thank you, shit, thank you so much man. I owe you big time. Thank you.” He sounded relieved, sounded like he just flopped back into his bed in happiness, sounded like he was smiling so wide up at his ceiling.
Aaron hummed a little, gave a slight smile back. “Yeah, shut up. I need a vacation anyway. I’ll call my boss and ask for the week off.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“Sure, man. But you owe me one.”
“Definitely. Thank you.”
“You can stop thanking me.”
“Alright, alright, fine. But hey, we should meet up before the trip, maybe have dinner? To go over what we’re okay with. Because, remember, you’re supposed to be my fake partner any time we’re in the presence of my family and my father.”
Aaron pretended not to notice the way he separated his family from his dad. “Yeah, I got it. When do you wanna have dinner?”
“Uhh... I can do next Friday. There’s this diner I’ve been meaning to try. It can be a practice date, or something like that. We can have a few of them to get accustomed to.. Whatever we need to get accustomed to, yknow?”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
“I’ll pick you up at eight, next Friday. Thanks again, man. I’ll see you.” And then the line went dead.
Aaron put his phone down and looked at the junction where the wall and the ceiling met. This... This could either go really well, or be a shitshow from start to finish.
Aaron was ready to take that chance.