Piety of the Tomcat
To you,
He has always been Alexander
From the day you met him in that tavern
On that street
His clothes smelling of books and knowledge,
Peach fuzz on his face and Caribbean sand in his pockets.
His eyes looked like the calm before the hurricane
His mind some impregnable fortress
Must've been some avatar of a deity of intelligence,
And oh you remember he walked like the mangy cats in alleyways
Guarded and wily,
And some sort of feral
You do not expect a force of nature to love you back, but
You knew from the moment you locked eyes
He was no title to you, no "Hamilton, sir";
This hurricane personified
Was your Alexander.
The first time you address him by his first name
He draws back in surprise
This, after all, is an intimacy shared by lovers
In the warm dark of the night.
And though he does not protest
And your innocent eyes still believed those perfect lips built bridges, not walls
You can tell it phases him.
So you grin: you have caught the attention of the hurricane personified, you have
Stilled his raging movement, brought him to a halt,
You have said
"Goodnight, Alexander"
And it's funny because it's not your first step towards romance; why,
Just earlier that night you found yourselves in the corner of the pub, your
Fingers tangling and hipbones brushing and his face too close to yours
In the carriage ride home he leaned his head against your shoulder, but it's
"Goodnight, Alexander,"
That made him pay attention
And in the warm dark of night you could have sworn he was going to fold his body into yours, so
It hit you with a pang when he draws back and instead says, "Goodnight, Laurens."
And you'll always be Laurens to him
Close comrade and affectionate touches but nothing more,
Never John except in the warm dark of night when the camp is sleeping and the air is still—
Then he stirs it up. Fever rising,
His hands running over your body,
(John)
Fingers grasping, grabbing, hair mussed and
(John)
His mouth on yours and
(John)
He whispers your name like sinners sing hallelujah.
John, John,
Stay with me
Blankets tangled around intertwined legs, he says
John
In the dead of night when virtue falls asleep, but
In the morning—
He's gone from your tent,
And he's gone from your bed
His hair is pulled back neatly, clothes crisp and clean
"Laurens," he greets you pleasantly
And you smile back to cover the fact that it smarts
That you'll never get the privilege of pet names in the light of day
You are confined to the space inside your uniform;
You push against your boundaries, blinking a bit too fast
"Alexander," you reply
And it stings.
You've been linking fingers and trading breath in secret for months now
And you swear it's alright that you give and give
When Alexander seems only to take because sometimes (all the time)
He gifts you with fleeting kisses and intellectual conversations and late nights writing essays
The hurricane has never looked more alive than with a quill in his hand and it's enough for you, you swear
But sometimes you remember that Winter's Ball.
The woman in the sapphire dress
Lighter and more breathable than your deep blue uniform
Her onyx eyes
In his letters to you he gushes about them
He calls her his Mistress, his lady
His Elizabeth
And you think as much as you wish he would call you John in the light of day as you call him Alexander
That would be preferable to the way he sings her name now when he used to breathe yours
Eliza! he hums happily,
E-liza!
It's at camp when he tells you
Your head against his chest, his voice
Humming in his ribcage
And the crack of British cannons doesn't compare to your deafening silence
He ducks his head, slightly excited and guilty because of it, carefully explains how
Eliza
Is to be his wife, his
Eliza
Forevermore; he opens his bed to you on his wedding night but
Eliza
Refuses and you attend his wedding,
The best man, you lead a toast to the bride and her groom and
Share a melancholy glance with the maid of honor, because you're both putting on a show
You think there should be a special drinking song for this kind of misery:
It'd be called, A Wedding for the Tomcat.
And perhaps you shouldn't have come to this celebration.
Because now you have to watch him dance with her, prance with her
Watch their bodies fitting together perfectly
Sit through the way he sings her name while you got murmur in humid Virginian summers
How he wraps himself in her like he never did to you
And maybe it's why this hurts so much:
It's glaringly obvious that
John is a sin, a confession, a dirty little secret that if discovered would get them both hung,
It would destroy his reputation and sully his legacy while Eliza is his ticket out and up;
Your Alexander is not a cautious man but you both know it's safer to love her instead of you
Your Alexander is not a wholly religious man, but he whispered your name like a sinner in church
While hers
Was always the hallelujah.
Author's Note: I don't own Hamilton. And yeah, I know Ham probably only calls Laurens "John" because there are multiple Johns in the play and "Laurens" fits better with the rhythm of the lyrics, but it was an interesting topic to explore.