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The darkness around him was complete and undisturbed, and John frowned up at the ceiling in confusion as he waited for his blinking eyes to adjust to the light of the crescent moon that filtered in through the window.
He was awake. He did not want to be.
Something had to be off, or else he wouldn’t have woken.
The mellow light carved shapes from the darkness, and as he let his tired gaze drift away from the ceiling and first to the door–closed and locked, just as he’d left it–then to his side, the tension in his shoulders he hadn’t even noticed build ebbed away.
Alex sat next to him, his knees pulled up to his chest and his head resting on them, turned away from him and facing the window, his fingers cramped into the fabric of his loose pants.
John was awake because Alex was. Alright, no problem, he could handle this.
“Darling,” he said, careful to keep his voice low–not willing to disturb the peace of night.
But his borderline whisper hadn’t been careful enough; Alex flinched and snapped his head up, turned to him with an odd glint to his eyes, and John was instantly suspicious. The reaction had been too startled. Alex knew he was there, after all-
And that was when a cloud that had partially obscured the moon slipped away, and a little more light illuminated the room. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for John to see the glint in his husband’s eyes for what it was–a film of tears.
John pushed himself upright immediately and reached for Alex, his chest tight with the realisation his husband had sat alone in the dark for who knew how long, suppressing the tears probably caused by another of his horrible nightmares, just to let him sleep.
Alex flinched away from his touch and pulled his knees closer to his chest, like a fucking shield, as if he thought he had to put something between himself and John. His hand dropped back into the sheets, a fresh fracture in his heart.
“Don’t,” Alex said, so small it didn’t even register as a command with John, it sounded like more of a plea.
A sharp pain flared in his chest, and it knocked the air from his lungs.
Did he think he would hurt him?
“Alex,” he said, a bit raspy, and breathed through the deep hurt that tore apart his ribcage. “Darling, please. What’s wrong? What do you need me to do?”
Alex took a shuddering breath and closed his eyes for a slow heartbeat; a tear fell, and John wanted so badly to wipe it away.
“It’s, um, it’s fine. I’ll be fine, don’t worry, I- go back to sleep, John, there’s nothing you can do.”
“Go back to sleep,” he repeated, slowly, as if he was trying to articulate something to a deaf man. “Are you fucking serious? Something is obviously wrong, and if you think I’ll just turn my back and lay back down-”
“John,” he cut in, and he sounded so unlike himself, so… flat, but urgent at the same time, as if he wanted to hurry the conversation to its end because he had more important things to focus on. “Please. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m not- you did nothing wrong. I just don’t want to talk.”
It wasn’t like him to speak this clipped. This blunt. Especially not to John–and with a flash, he realised what was going on.
“You’re in pain.” It wasn’t a question, but he took Alex’s answering silence as confirmation, anyway. “What- where? What’s hurting, do we need to find a medic?”
Alex shook his head but didn’t utter another word, and John’s heartbeat picked up, worry making his blood rush through his veins until he felt light-headed.
“Alex. How bad is it? Are you feeling sick? Do you want me to get your father?”
Another shake of his head was his only response.
John would be getting frustrated if he wasn’t so terrified. “I will anyway if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”
A low blow, perhaps, and a downright childish threat, to go tattle to Alex’s father, but he wasn’t getting anywhere. Alex was acting so off, and he could barely breathe past the cramping ache in his chest.
“No need,” he said, faint and thick with tears. “Just my back. There’s nothing- it’s fine, it’s healed.”
John blinked, comprehension just out of reach.
His back? It wouldn’t surprise him if Alex indeed had a backache with how much time he spent bent over various parchments, but that didn’t fit with it’s healed.
“It’s healed,” he echoed, in the hopes that perhaps if he spoke the words out loud, the pieces would fall into place. Alex just watched him from exhausted eyes, the shadows under them all of a sudden so much more prominent, and then it clicked.
“Your scars.”
Alex sniffled and leaned his forehead against his knees.
And John stayed where he was, at a complete loss.
Phantom pain. That was what it was called, he had read about it, of limbs that were no longer there aching and closed up and healed wounds flaring up again and again.
“Oh, darling,” he said, softly. “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?”
“Yes.” The answer was immediate and held an edge–he wanted to stop talking about it. He understood, but it just wasn’t in John’s nature to leave someone to suffer on their own, especially not if that someone was the love of his life.
“Alright, I’ll just… sit here, I guess, in case you need me.”
“Not necessary. You need to sleep,” he said, still not looking at him, the edge sharper and sharper with every new word that forced itself past clenched jaws.
John had to put real effort to not let himself get hurt by the tone; Alex was in pain, clearly not thinking straight, and he would most likely apologise for snapping like this come morning.
“So do you. I won’t let you be miserable alone tomorrow,” he replied in a perhaps poor attempt at some lightheartedness.
“John,” he pressed out, almost a growl. “I love you, but please just let me be. I know how to handle this on my own.”
...he did?
John blinked and thought it over, let a few long seconds pass, the silence stretching.
Realisation dawned slowly, probably because he pushed back against it, unwilling to face what Alex had just conveyed between the lines.
“This is not the first time this has happened.”
The statement was met once again with silence, and this time around, John could stop neither the stab of pain nor the flash of anger from clashing in his chest.
“I can’t believe you would keep this from me,” he said, quieter than he wanted to. “I cannot believe you put yourself through this- how many times? It doesn’t matter. You- why? Why would you want to do this on your own? I’m always right here, Alex!”
Alex raised his head from his knees and turned to face him again, the process gradual and slow. When his eyes finally met his, they were narrow, the expression in them unreadable in the dim light.
“You want to know why I didn’t tell you?”
“Yes!” he said, hating how upset he managed to sound in that single word.
Alex blinked, and God, he looked so tired, so hurt and worn out. John’s chest pinched; the temptation to just apologise and promise to do anything he wanted was so strong, but he kept himself from falling into it.
This was a serious issue, and John wouldn’t apologise for being upset over it.
“You are overbearing.”
Three words had absolutely no right to hurt him that much.
John cared. He wanted to help–he couldn’t bear to watch Alex be hurt or ill and just stand back without at least attempting to make it better for him, but- was that really what he thought of that?
That he was overbearing?
“I just want to help,” he said, hoarse.
Alex sighed, long-suffering, and closed his eyes for a moment. “I know. And I- I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. This is something you can’t help me with, and your insistence on mothering me just makes it worse, alright?”
“Mothering,” he said, flat.
Another sigh. “Just go to sleep. We can talk in the morning.”
“I’d rather we talk now.” There was no way he would be able to find sleep now, so there was no point in even trying.
Alex never talked to him like this, so he had to be in agony to act so not himself, and- well, aside from that, John wasn’t keen on going to bed angry. That just soured the next day for him, too.
Alex let out a harsh breath and raised a hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose, his annoyance mingling with his physical discomfort in an odd, twisted expression John hated seeing on him. “God, is it really so hard for you to shut up and leave me alone?”
Oh.
The silence rang in his ears, and John swallowed, cut his eyes away from Alexander so he wouldn’t see the tears that shot to them almost instantly.
“I can go,” he said in a whisper, even though he wasn’t sure where he would even go.
A pause. “No.”
John held his breath, hoping the next words out his mouth would be along the lines of I don’t want you to go or even just don’t leave, because he didn’t really want to go anywhere, he didn’t want to leave him all on his own in the state he was in, not even if he kept saying hurtful things that made John want to cry-
“I’ll go.”
Oh.
He didn’t watch Alex get up and cross the room on unsteady legs, and he most certainly hadn’t opened his mouth to ask him not to leave when Alex arrived at the door and spoke up before he had a chance to.
“Sorry. I- I don’t know. Don’t be mad. Please. Love you.”
John didn’t say anything when Alex slipped out of the room without a sound and left him with nothing but the dulled scythe of the moon outside his window and the tears welling in his eyes to keep him company.
George didn’t know how he'd ended up with an armful of trembling, sobbing son in the early hours of the morning; he just knew that he was very tired, and very worried.
Alexander hadn't even knocked. The boy just came in uninvited, swaying on his feet, and dropped into bed next to him as if he didn't have the strength to hold his own weight up any longer.
George hadn't been asleep, of course not, so he'd just gathered his boy up against his chest–carefully, after Alexander's pained whimper–and held him through whatever this was.
He was hurt, somehow, that much was clear, and in a frenzy. If that hadn't been enough to almost stop his heart, the fact that Alex had just crawled into bed with him and proceeded to cling and bury his tears against his chest would do the trick.
His son hadn't sought him out like this since before his voice had started to break.
This had to be bad.
George stroked Alex’s hair, damp with cold sweat, and frowned down at the top of the boy’s head.
“Tell me what’s wrong, love,” he said–an order, but a gentle one. He had to tread carefully.
“Hurts,” was the stifled response, almost lost to his heaving sobs, and George’s blood ran cold.
He was hurt.
In the middle of the night?
“Where does it hurt, my heart?” he asked, all his effort focused on keeping his voice soft and calm, on not letting the mounting panic shine through.
A deep inhale and exhale shuddered out against the fabric of his shirt. “My- my back.”
“Anywhere else?”
“No.”
“Alright,” he mumbled, his fingers gently working out knots in his son’s curls as his other hand came to rest on top of Alex’s and massaged at the white-knuckled grip he had on his shirt. “Can you tell me why it hurts, Alexander? Did something happen?”
If his idiot boy had gotten into another stupid fight–it had been a while since the last one, but it was never not a possibility–gotten hurt and kept it from him, so help him God-
The boy sniffled, and the preemptive righteous anger that had flickered to life just beneath where his son’s head rested faded away.
“I’m not- hurt. It’s healed. Just- it still hurts sometimes.”
It’s healed.
Oh, Christ.
George closed his eyes to hold back the hot tears that blocked off his voice, and cleared his throat.
That godforsaken whipping. Not only would it stay with his sweet boy forever, just like the marks of every other torture he’d had to endure, on top of that horrible reminder it still pained him.
Had he not suffered enough? What kind of God-
“Papa,” Alex said, and that ripped him from his thoughts. The fingers in his son’s hair had ceased their movement; a dead giveaway about George’s state of mind at that revelation, even to someone as out of it as Alexander.
“Sorry,” he responded, barely above a whisper but still choked, and renewed his efforts to comfort his son. He took a deep breath and gathered himself, then went on, “How often has this happened, dearheart?”
There was no doubt in his mind this wasn’t the first time he’d suffered one of these attacks–if Alexander was one thing, it was stubborn, and if he was another, it was ‘hesitant to ask for help when he needed it’.
Some things just never changed, he supposed, a dull ache in his chest.
“Couple times,” he rasped and squirmed closer, tucked his head farther up George’s chest, and the ache deepened. “But- never this bad. I can just wait it out, usually. Doesn’t hurt hurt. This time, it’s- it’s bad.”
“My poor boy,” he said and held on a little tighter. There was nothing else he could do, after all, there was no cure for phantom pain, no treatment, nothing.
“Can you keep talking? To distract me.”
George hummed a sound of agreement and said the first thing that came to mind, “You know I’m glad you came to me for help, love, but what about John? I would have thought he would be the more obvious choice.”
Alexander burst into tears again, and George almost startled at the reaction to what he had assumed would be an obvious question Alex would have expected to come his way at some point.
“I was so mean to him,” he sobbed and turned his face fully into his chest in an attempt to quieten himself. “He- he’s so sweet, he just wanted to help, and I was horrible, I- I-”
“I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as you’re making it out to be,” he cut in and craned his neck to press a short kiss to the top of his son’s head.
“I told him to shut up and then I just left,” he said directly into his shirt, muffled by the fabric and his never-ending tears.
Well. “Nothing is perfect all the time. Every marriage has its rough patches, you just have to apologise and work together to mend this.”
He didn’t get an answer. The fingers tangled in his shirt and clasped between his own trembled, and Alex’s breath hitched, barely audible, his shoulders quaked–a soft ow reached his ears, and George wished he could do more than just hold him.
“T- tell me something. Please,” the words were quiet but the tremor in them still obvious, and he- he felt so helpless.
He couldn’t fix this and he struggled to even comfort his boy through this, when Alex just needed him to help him, to make it all go away.
“Like what?” he asked.
A short silence enveloped them as Alex thought it over, the only sound that broke through his son’s laboured, heaving breaths.
“How did you meet my mother?”
George frowned, and the soothing motion of his fingers in Alex’s hair stilled without him meaning it to; an unhappy whine snapped him back to movement.
“Have I never told you that?”
Alex sniffled and shook his head as best he could, but didn’t answer otherwise.
“Huh, then it’s about time I did, I suppose,” he said and fell silent for a moment or two. He had to take some time to puzzle all the fuzzy details back into order–that had been… twenty-two, almost twenty-three years ago, after all, and as he began to recall everything that had transpired on Nevis back then, it became very clear to him why he’d never told Alex.
“I… might have broken her husband’s nose in a bar-fight.”
A heartbeat passed, and nothing happened. Then, the hand in his own relaxed and gently drew itself from his grasp, and his other hand fell away from Alexander’s head when the boy lifted himself up from where he’d rested against his side, arms shaking as he struggled to hold himself upright, to give him an incredulous look.
It would have been funny had his face not been red and streaked with tears, the line between his brows and a pinch at the corners of his mouth betraying that he was still very much in pain.
George sat up as well and pressed his back to the cool wood of the headboard, reached out to tug Alex back down next to him for worry he would collapse if he didn’t have anything solid to lean against, and kissed his forehead.
“A bar-fight,” he said, flat and stuffy but at least distracted for the moment. “You were in a bar-fight. And- and you broke-” He paused, and the fact that he still had trouble to even say his name out loud broke George’s heart all over again. “that man’s nose?”
“I used to have very bad impulse-control,” he explained, and Alex snorted.
“How do you even get with a woman after you’ve knocked her husband’s lights out?”
The question was so dry, it startled a surprised chuckle from George, and Alex shot him a hurt little smile before he nestled himself to his side again. He stroked a few wayward strands from his boy’s face and pressed another kiss to hair.
“Well. She came up to me and told me that was her husband I had just punched across a table, I told her the man was an ass and she could do better, she agreed, and I offered to buy her a drink. That’s pretty much how.”
“That was smooth as hell. Does Ma know you can be such a flirt?” he said, and George couldn’t help the small smile that curled his lips as he rolled his eyes.
“How do you think I convinced a woman like her to marry me, hm?”
“Fair point,” he agreed with a quiet laugh that ended abruptly in a sharp intake of breath.
George pressed his lips together as the reality of the situation crept back in, as he reminded himself why his very much adult–in theory–son had come to climb into bed with him like he'd used to do when he’d been twelve and just woken from a nightmare.
“Is it getting worse?” he said and found his boy’s hand again, clasped it and laid their joined hands gently against his own chest as he stroked a thumb over his knuckles.
“No, but it’s- it’s not really getting much better, either.”
Alex swallowed and rested his head on George’s shoulder, locks of hair tickling his neck; Alexander’s weight against him was heavy and boneless and made unsteady by a slight tremor. The poor boy had to be exhausted.
They didn’t speak for a few minutes. Alex moved their hands down to his lap and took George’s hand in both of his, played with his fingers like he had when he’d been so much younger, careful but absentminded.
“Can I tell you something, Papa?”
“Of course, dearheart,” he said.
He was met with a tense pause. Alex fit their fingers together and left them like that, and when he spoke next, it was so quiet George would have probably not heard it if the rest of the house around them hadn’t been asleep. The words were halting, hesitant, almost as if Alex wasn’t sure if he wanted him to hear at all.
“When Maman told me I wasn’t- that I wasn’t Hamilton’s. That was when we were already sick, but not yet delirious, just before- before it got really bad-" Alexander shuddered, and George squeezed his fingers, silently encouraging him to go on.
"When she told me about you, she said you were a good man, and that you would take care of me if anything happened to her.” He took a deep, rattling breath and returned the careful squeeze. “And I… I resented you in the beginning. I thought if you were such a good man, why did you leave her with that man? Why didn’t you help us?”
George closed his eyes, thankful that their position didn’t allow his son to see his face.
He had known. That had been everything he’d feared Alexander would think when he met him that first time on Nevis, and he had known just because the boy hadn’t voiced any of it hadn’t meant those thoughts didn’t exist, he-
He’d deserved it.
George had been young and stupid and drunk, he had slept with a married woman he’d known for barely even two weeks, he had gotten her with child and left her with a man who beat her and her children, even if he hadn’t known at the time, and he deserved Alexander to hate him for it.
But his immeasurable guilt, the countless 'what if's he'd found himself contemplating over the years, had never quite managed to convince him he'd made a mistake with Rachel. He couldn't regret it, he couldn't bring himself to.
It got him his sweet, wonderful boy, his brilliant Alexander, and he wouldn’t trade him for anything in the world.
“And I’m sorry for that, Pa.” He ripped his eyes back open and glanced down at his son, watched in disbelief as Alex squeezed his fingers again. “I was a child. The world was a lot more black and white back then, and- and I’ve felt really awful for years now for ever having thought of you like that. I guess I just needed to tell you now or I would have felt too guilty to even think of sleep tonight, because- you’re so good to me, you don’t mind when I do shit like this, and you’re always there for me- um. What I’m trying to say is, I love you, Papa, and I’m glad you’re my father.”
“Alex,” he choked and squeezed his fingers back, his eyes wet and burning, a lump in his throat, and his impossible boy relaxed next to him. “I love you so much, my heart, and- and I know I wasn’t there for you when you needed me, but I- I will be, alright? I’ll always be there when you need me now, my love, I promise, I-”
“Pa,” he interrupted, quiet and sluggish, and George clicked his mouth shut. “I know. I know you will be. I don’t blame you for anything that happened on Nevis. You couldn’t have known.”
It was as if Alex had read the exact words needed to halt the whirlpool of guilt in his chest straight from his very soul, and George let out a long breath, feeling so much lighter than he had in a long time.
He hadn’t realised how much he had craved absolvement, how much he hadn’t thought himself worthy of it, until Alex had given it.
George swallowed, his throat dry and his lids dragging over tired eyes like sandpaper.
He was drained.
“How are you feeling, love?”
“Better,” he mumbled, sounding half asleep already. “I think it’s over.”
“Thank God. Time for bed, then?”
Alex let out a tired hum and nodded weakly, nuzzled closer. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No, dearheart, you can stay,” he said and shifted, did his best to peel his son away from his side and lower him down to the mattress instead. He couldn’t help the fond chuckle that escaped him when Alex made a borderline indignant little sound because George pulled his hand from his grip, so he could tuck him in properly.
"Sleep," he said and stroked a hand over Alexander's hair, watched as he curled in on himself, and got settled next to him.
"Yessir," he slurred back.
George's heart swelled with pure affection, and he couldn't resist brushing a last kiss to his boy's forehead before he drifted off.
Pa had woken him just before first light–and Alex may have apologised for the last night around six times in the first sentence he spoke that day, because God, how old was he, five? –so when he slunk back to their own room, head ducked and cheeks on fire, it was still dim.
John was asleep, and Alex couldn’t help but wonder with hot shame pooling in his gut how long it had taken him to find sleep after he had just stormed out on him.
He really hadn’t been thinking. His back had felt flayed all over again, his skin stretched too thin over his bones, claw-like nails raking through his muscles, and he had been so scared, because that had been nothing like the few times it had happened before, so intense and real and frightening-
So he had lashed out at John. Because John had been there, and he had been talking, and every single new piece of sensory input had battered away at his brain like a sledgehammer.
He heaved a quiet sigh and padded over to the bed, lifted the covers and climbed in behind John; he lay on his side, facing away from him, and Alex pressed himself along the length of his back, threw an arm over him, and put a soft kiss to his neck.
John stirred almost immediately, grumbling something under his breath. He was not a morning person; he tended to walk around all squinty-eyed, and most days needed three attempts to tie his boots, half asleep as he still was–and Alex found it unbearably adorable.
“Alex?” he mumbled, voice rough with sleep–or so he hoped, he didn’t want to even consider the possibility he might have made him cry last night.
“I’m so sorry,” he muttered back and kissed the corner of his jaw. John shifted in his arms, untangled himself from the sheets until he could roll onto his back and regard him with one of his early morning squints.
They just looked at each other for a long moment before John spoke up again.
“Are you alright?”
Alex swallowed and gave a hesitant nod. “Are you?”
Another pause, this one longer, and Alex’s stomach sank farther with every second that passed in silence.
“Not really,” was the eventual response, and Alex let his eyes slip closed.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, his brow furrowed. “So sorry, I- I couldn’t think, and I was hurting, and everything felt off and wrong, and I was so scared, but- none of that is an excuse, because you just wanted to help, and I love you, and I- I’m so lucky to have you as my husband, and I hurt you, I shouldn’t have left you, I-”
“Alex,” he interrupted, and all the words disappeared right off his tongue. “I- yes, I’m hurt. I’m a bit mad and very confused, and last night scared the living shit out of me.”
“Sorry,” he whispered, annoyed but not surprised when he blinked and his vision blurred with tears. “Sorry.”
John sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. When it came away, he seemed a fraction more awake than before, but his eyes held an exhaustion that made something in Alex’s chest seize.
“Explain it to me,” he said, and Alex nodded frantically before he had even finished the sentence.
“It wasn’t the first time something like that happened,” he began, and John looked on, unimpressed. He knew that already. “But it wasn’t- it’s never been like that. I would wake at night with an odd sensation along my back, but not in pain, just mild discomfort, but yesterday-” He broke off and screwed his eyes shut.
After a few moments, he forced them back open and soldiered on, “It hurt so bad, and I didn’t know why, I don’t know what happened, I- I was so scared.”
John pressed his mouth into a line, watched him with an odd, guarded expression Alex didn’t like at all.
“You flinched away from me. You looked like you thought I would hurt you,” he said. His voice cracked, and he cut his eyes away and fixed them to the window instead, but not in time for Alex to miss the tears obvious in them.
“You would never,” he responded with such intense conviction it even surprised himself. John glanced back at him, a rare sliver of vulnerability flickering across his features, and Alex softened both his expression and voice. “You would never. I trust you with my life, John, you know that.”
John blinked a few times and swallowed thickly–Alex knew that tactic, but it didn’t work; the tears glistening wetly in the early morning light didn’t disappear.
“I really hated that you just left.”
“I won’t do that again. It was immature, and I promise I wouldn’t have done that if I’d had even a single coherent thought left,” he said, and John chuckled. It sounded strained, and Alex hated it.
“I- um, I understand if I’m not the person you need sometimes. I get that, I promise, and I love that you’re so close with your father and trust him like that, but- it still hurt when you left without any explanation after you’d just told me to shut up and stop mothering you because that just makes everything worse.”
Shame rushed him, hearing the words he had thrown at John in his despair recited back to him.
“I didn’t mean that,” he mumbled, remorseful. He couldn’t believe he would say something like that to John, his wonderful husband who was way too good for him, whose first reaction upon being woken up in the middle of the night by the emotional mess that was Alexander Hamilton wasn’t shut up and go to sleep, but how can I help?
“I know that,” he said after a long, uneasy pause that told Alex he didn’t actually. “But it still hurt.”
“I’m sorry.” He ducked down and kissed him, soft and slow; John’s lips were dry against his own, but familiar and oddly comforting, and Alex’s heart skipped a beat when John’s hand came up and tangled itself in his hair to keep him from pulling away.
“No more surprises and half-truths, alright?” John said after he’d loosened his grip enough to let Alex move back far enough they could look each other in the eyes again. “If something happens–something like this, something less serious, something more serious, I want to know about it. I understand you’re as stubborn as a mule and think you can handle everything on your own, but that’s not how it works in a marriage, yes?”
“Yes,” he said without even a hint of hesitation. “Of course, I’m-”
“Stop apologising, you’re forgiven.” John shot him the first real, blinding smile of the day, and Alex felt like he’d just fallen head over heels in love with that man all over again.
He cleared his throat and offered a wobbly smile in return. “Thank you. I love you so much.”
The hand at the back of his head tugged him closer again with gentle pressure, and he went along willingly when John pulled him back down for another kiss, this one longer but not any less tender.
“I love you, too,” he mumbled, lips brushing Alex’s as they formed the words, and when he pressed closer once more for another kiss, he could feel John smile into it, and his heart soared.