Work Text:
This is how it starts:
When Lady Washington leaves camp to return to Mount Vernon, when it has been deemed too dangerous for her to remain, Washington is, in a word, unpleasant. He acts increasingly tense, his answers clipped and terse, his patience failing. Perhaps because Hamilton is one of the few, even among his fellow aides, who spends so much time with His Excellency, perhaps because Hamilton voices his opinion without hesitation no matter the recipient, it is he and Washington who struggle the most.
After the fourth day in a row which Hamilton storms into their little room, John no longer soothes Hamilton with soft kisses and words and instead asks, “What did you do now?”
“Me?” Hamilton sputters, glaring at John. “It’s not my fault that the General is too absorbed in his own misery to listen to my sound advice—”
“But only you are provoking him—”
“—and furthermore—”
“—and you’ll notice that none of the rest of us are suffering as you are—”
“—he will not cease calling me son!” Hamilton fumes. “I have had enough!”
John falls silent. He doesn’t move from his perch on their cot. “You’ll have to fix it, Alexander,” he says. “You can’t put yourself and the General through this.”
Hamilton huffs, and stalks out of the room. The “talk” with John worsens his spirits, as he cannot explain to his dear, sweet friend precisely his problem with the General. He cannot well admit that his vehement reaction to Washington’s endearments is not because he believes that Washington is trying to replace his lost father. It is because his regard for the General is… not one of family.
It has taken him months of many sleepless nights listening to John’s breathing in the dark, asking himself Why can’t I be satisfied? To have the love of his friend, and the respect of his commander, and to have that be enough. Instead, he thinks about the powerful curve of his General’s thighs around a saddle, the strength in his arms as he lifts a sword, that broad chest under his uniform, calloused hands wrapped around a quill. If it was a matter of lust only, Hamilton could cope. But Washington is Hamilton’s aspirations made flesh: accomplishment, leadership, dignity, power.
Washington consumes him, and he wants to be consumed in return. It is base, and sinful, and he cannot stop.
The little farmhouse serving as the officers’ quarters is dark, and he wanders, attempting to calm his traitorous thoughts, until his feet lead him back to Washington’s door. He knocks, twice, and Washington calls, “Enter.”
He slips inside and shuts the door behind him, and Washington glances up from his parchment, scowl quick to form. “The answer is still no, Hamilton.”
He feels an answering scowl building on his own face, but tries to tame his expression into what he hopes is only polite distaste. “And I still disagree, sir, but that’s not why I’m here.”
Washington’s eyebrow goes up. “Yes?”
As his response, Hamilton crosses the room to where Washington is sitting at his desk. “If I may, sir?” he asks, hands outstretched, hovering over Washington’s brow.
Washington looks wary, but nods. Hamilton bridges the distance, pressing his thumbs into the soft skin of his forehead. Washington groans, just barely, before his lips thin and his eyes close. Encouraged, Hamilton continues his ministrations, further onto his forehead, then his scalp, down to his neck.
It is… intoxicating, being this close to Washington. They have never touched in this manner before, only the clasp of a handshake or a hand on Hamilton’s uniform-clad shoulder. His skin is marked here and there by a scar, but flushed and warm, clean and smelling faintly of lye, sweat, and his natural scent.
The rush of his arousal startles Hamilton in its swiftness and intensity, and thanks Providence that Washington’s eyes are still closed. His hands are now at Washington’s shoulders, but he has not asked Hamilton to stop, so he presses harder into the muscles. He swallows, helpless in the face of this unprecedented intimacy.
Hamilton wants, so he takes.
“I know we have been in conflict as of late, and it’s caused undue stress on us both. Though I cannot apologize for my beliefs, I apologize if I’ve given the impression that I am wholly dissatisfied with my position. I…” and here he trails off, and takes a breath, and slides his hands down so they come to rest on Washington’s chest. “I want to ensure that you’re aware that I am always at your service.”
Washington’s eyes open, fixing him with a disbelieving stare, and Hamilton knows that his insinuations have been understood. His hands close over Hamilton’s wrists—not tightly, but snug, to hold him in place. His voice is rough when he warns, “If this is some kind of jest—”
“Have you ever known me to be anything but honest, Your Excellency?” he interrupts. “See for yourself, if you will.”
Washington takes in the full measure of him for the first time—sees his arousal, jutting against his breeches—and looks stunned. “You are offering this… freely,” he says; it falls in the gray area between a question and a statement.
Hamilton’s hands are still trapped on Washington’s chest, but he is nimble enough to climb onto Washington’s lap, straddling his thighs. When their cocks touch, covered in cloth as they are, Hamilton feels the evidence of Washington’s own ardor and moans low in his throat. He rocks his hips, once, twice, again, until Washington takes a sharp, ragged breath. He leans forward until his lips brush Washington’s neck. “I am always at your service,” he repeats, “in all things.”
Washington releases his hands, clutches Hamilton’s ass, and pulls him closer.
.
.
This is how it continues:
“How dare they,” Hamilton hisses, tossing a pamphlet onto his desk. The offending object seems to mock him from its perch, title glaring On the Great Lion Tamer and His Pet.
Washington stands at the entrance of Hamilton’s tent, barely illuminated by the light from the lone lantern. His eyes follow Hamilton as he paces. “People talk. Rise above it.”
“You call this talk?” He feels the energy building in his limbs, incessant, inescapable. “This… this is slander! To say that you are my father—” he laughs, and the sound is shrill. “And that I have not merited my own achievements, and that you would be so dishonorable in your youth—”
“Stand down, Hamilton,” Washington admonishes. “And try not to disturb everyone in camp with your shouting.”
Washington’s flippancy only makes him more furious, and he stalks across the small space. Washington is steady in the face of Hamilton’s emotions, as he so often is, but Hamilton is nearly shaking in his need to fight or flee or fuck. Hamilton reaches for his own jacket, and is given only a questioning glance in return. “We will show them,” he vows, arms struggling in his frenzy to take it off, “but now, you can show me—”
Washington stops him with a firm hand on his shoulder. “No.” Washington’s voice is low and stern, his expression resolute. “I will not take you like this.” He softens, though, and continues, “Sleep. That’s an order. Come to me in the morning.”
He nods stiffly, dropping his gaze, and nothing more is said. But after Washington leaves, Hamilton sits motionless at his little writing desk. He stares at the pamphlet and at the missives strewn around it, one or two already marked with Washington’s signature in Hamilton’s own cautious, imitative quill strokes.
Instead of sleeping, he writes a letter to a doctor in Nevis that leaves camp with the morning courier.
For several fortnights, he forgets about it. The Continental Army is plagued with setback after setback, and he is too absorbed with composing strong but politely worded dispatches to Congress—requesting more funds, more supplies, more men, more support, more everything—to allow his mind to dwell anywhere else. He is caught unawares, then, when he shivers in the brisk evening air, sifting through the latest correspondence, and finds a response.
Washington is in a meeting with Lafayette, all the aides dismissed for the night and already at dinner, so Hamilton is alone. Victory surges in his blood and he is already mentally comprising his rebuttal to the damned pamphlet when he breaks the seal on the letter and reads.
When he looks up an interminable amount of time later, night has already pervaded camp. He barely notices. He nearly lets the letter fall from his hands before he comes back to himself, remembering its contents. He feeds it to the little campfire outside his tent and doesn’t leave the fire until it’s nothing more than ashes.
He feels disconnected—his lips speak, his hands write, his feet walk, but his mind is chaos. Washington must attribute his distraction to the state of the war or is distracted in his own turn, as he says nothing to Hamilton. John doesn’t ask questions with his words so much as with his eyes, which Hamilton appreciates yet does not answer.
Later, he repeats his findings silently to himself—as John ties his queue for him while the sun rises, as his quill scratches out missives to Greene and Knox, as he watches Washington from across the room, shorn head bent over maps and parchment. He is my father. The General is my father.
He waits for anger at the stolen opportunities, at the consequences of Washington’s actions all those years ago. He waits for the shame to curl in him, choke him, because he is no stranger to Washington’s bed. He waits to feel regret and remorse for his own choices.
He doesn’t wait long, because Alexander Hamilton is no Aaron Burr.
He doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t say no when Washington summons him.
But he doesn’t stop thinking about the letter.
When Washington bends him over his desk, his cock buried deep in Hamilton’s ass, he thinks, You are my father. When Washington releases with a groan and spills his seed inside him with a muttered “Alexander,” he thinks, You are my father. When he kneels in front of Washington, mouth stretched around his length, cockhead bumping the back of his throat, he thinks, You are my father.
There is no pleasure or revulsion in the thought. It simply is, and Hamilton in his desire remains like a farmer in the summer sun—parched, overheated, desperate for relief.
Washington provides, over and over and over again.
.
.
This is how it ends:
Tonight, they have the luxury of a bed and privacy, the other aides and officers celebrating a hard-won victory in a tavern around the corner. Hamilton stretches his body, stiff from holding himself on hands and knees for so long, and grins at Washington, who is appraising him with undisguised hunger. “I’m ready to go again, sir,” he quips, enjoying how Washington nearly growls at him in the firelight.
“I am not,” Washington counters. His hand falls with a swift sting on Hamilton’s ass and Hamilton moans, writhing under his touch. Washington, still naked, climbs out of bed and over to his table across the room. Hamilton makes a sound in protest as Washington picks up a few unopened correspondences. “Hush,” he says. “You’ve been quite a distraction tonight. A few minutes, then we’ll continue.”
“At your service,” Hamilton murmurs. His eyes are half-closed, but he doesn’t miss the way Washington stills after opening the third document in the stack. He examines Washington more closely, seeing him scan through the contents quickly, then slowly, as if trying to decipher them. When Washington looks up, though, his expression is dark, brow furrowed, voice ringing in command when he demands, “What is this?”
He makes no move, so Hamilton follows Washington’s footsteps, gaze fixed on the paper. He takes the letter from Washington’s hands, suspecting its purpose before he even reads it. To the Esteemed Gen. Geo. Washington, in regards to my most recent letter and your previous queries regarding your son Alexander Hamilton, I have since discovered…
He doesn’t read the rest. He doesn’t need to.
“I will not repeat myself a third time,” Washington cautions as he draws himself up to full height, prior intimacy forgotten. “What is this?”
Hamilton tries to ignore the intimidation, but it’s difficult with Washington towering over him. He concentrates on ensuring his hands don’t shake when he puts the letter on the table. I made my choice, he reminds himself, and he forces himself to look fully at Washington when he answers, “The truth.”
“I trusted you,” Washington says angrily. “I gave you a privilege afforded no other man. And—and—” For one of the first times Hamilton can remember, Washington stumbles over his words. “And if this letter is the truth—”
“It is,” Hamilton interjects. “This is the second. I burned the first.”
As usual, his mouth is quicker than his reasoning; he doesn’t realize precisely how much he’s revealed until Washington stares at him, comprehension and horror dawning in his eyes. “You knew.”
“Sir—”
“You knew, Alexander! You allowed this… this sin to continue!”
“It was already sin,” Hamilton retorts, “or did you forget?”
“Do not play games with me, Hamilton—”
“Yes, I knew,” he admits, struggling to keep his tone even. “Do you imagine it was easy for me? Reconciling the boy you were with the man you are? Knowing that though we are of the same blood, I will never have your name, or your titles, or your land, yet the accomplishments I’ve made in your absence are credited to your influence? Do you imagine I didn’t think about it? That once you also found the truth, you would send me away from your side? That if we were discovered, the punishment would be swift and painful—for me, certainly, and perhaps for you as well? That I…” He swallows, a lump forming in his throat. “That I have committed the worst kind of betrayal against you? Yet…” He feels the burn of tears forming in his eyes, but blinks them away. “I would do it again.”
Washington’s hands flex at his sides, his breaths too deliberately even, his eyes narrow in displeasure. “This will be permitted no longer. Get dressed.”
“No.”
Washington’s eyebrows nearly touch the top of his head. “Excuse me?”
“You will permit it,” Hamilton says more forcefully, more steadily. “You gave me up then. I will not give you up now.”
Washington glowers at him—and a thought appears in Hamilton’s mind. It is vicious, and contemptible, but the twisted, tangled knot in the rope that inexorably binds him to Washington urges him onward as he says, “As you know, I have friends working at a number of papers. Even around matters of the war, I’m sure I can develop quite the narrative for them. See here Alexander Hamilton, bastard born of the man who became General George Washington. How sad for Alexander and his late mother, abandoned and left destitute and dying while Washington achieved further and further glory. Sadder still for Lady Washington, who deserves better than to know of her husband’s disrepute, and her children, whose futures might now be in jeopardy.”
Washington’s face contorts in rage. “You dare.”
“I have nothing to lose,” he taunts Washington, and, emboldened, risks a step closer. He is close enough, now, to feel the heat radiating from Washington’s skin, to smell their drying sweat and seed. His body tightens in response, and he sees disgust added to the rage, but—
“Your body wants this. Wants me,” Hamilton continues softly, seductively. “If the thought is so abhorrent, think of this as a compromise. I can’t speak while my mouth is around your cock—”
Washington’s hands shoot out, seizing him by the wrists. His grip is painful, excruciating, and it takes all Hamilton’s control to suppress a scream. He forces Hamilton’s arms down, down, until Hamilton has to sink to his knees to keep his bones from cracking, Washington’s stiff cock now only inches from his mouth. “Damn you, Alexander,” Washington says through gritted teeth, like every word is being ripped from his breast.
Hamilton looks up through his lashes, wets his lips, and smirks.