so for those of you who do not know, today (October 28th) is actually John Laurens' birthday. So I wrote this for him.

yes really don't judge me

Modern AU because I'm uncreative that's why, also heck if i know how birthdays worked in the 1700's.

It had been a long, soul-crushing day of work at a soul-crushing office job with soul-crushes co-workers and a soul-crushing boss. John Laurens had spent 9 precious hours of his birthday being yelled at by Charles Lee for every single stupid freaking thing. GOD if he could go back in time and beat the snot out of that piece of snot. He would have done it at the time, but for some reason Lee had chosen to yell at him only when Washington was around, and if John had punched him with Washington watching he would have been fired and if he'd been fired he would be really screwed because there weren't really any business still hiring around that would let him work for them. He kind of sort of maybe had a reputation for beating up coworkers. And it was kind of sort of maybe a serious problem.

Also apparently nobody had known what day it was. They knew "oh it's Friday" or "October 28th" but nobody seemed to know it was John Laurens' birthday. Or maybe they did, and they were just the type of people who treated a dude like dog poop on their birthday. It wouldn't surprise him.

All in all this was shaping up to be his worst birthday ever.

He swung open the door to his apartment. As always, it was a mess. Empty pizza boxes littered the floor. John may have a pizza obsession. So WHAT?! Pizza was GOOD, STOP JUDGING HIM GOSH. There were crumpled up pieces of paper on the ground, too, half-finished sketches he had given up on. Some of people, namely Alexander Hamilton, that he did not want them to see. mostly due to the fact that there MAY have been drawings of naked Hamilton-

ANYWAY
John collapsed on the couch. He pulled up one of the pizza boxes. It wasn't actually empty-one slice remained. It had something green on it. Odd, he couldn't remember ordering pizza with vegetables lately. Still, he ate it. It tasted weird in his mouth, and a few ideas about what that green stuff had really been bubbled up in his mind, but he really did not want to think about that.

All he wanted to think about what TV. He turned his television on. It was on Impractical Jokers which was nice because he definitely needed to watch some guys forcing each other to do stupid things.

This birthday was really sucking. In fact the only thing that could make it worse is if his jerky dad came in and started yelling at him for being a useless slob like he had throughout John's whole childhood.

Oh great now that would happen, wouldn't it?

John braced himself for his dad to magically appear. He went a full ten minutes like that.

Huh.

Nothing happened.

Well that sure wasn't bad, just weird. On TV that always happened. Not in real life. Nope, in real life he could just relax and-

"SURPRISE!"

John screamed and jumped up three feet. He shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out his pepper spray, spraying wildly with his eyes screwed shut.

"AHHH WHAT THE HECK MAN?" a voice yelled. "STOP! It's me!"

John lowered his weapon and opened his eyes to see Alexander standing in front of him, rubbing his bloodshot eyes with an annoyed expression. His other friends Hercules Mulligan and Marquis de Lafayette were behind Alex, looking a little scared.

"Oh my gosh," John gasped, "I'm so sorry I didn't realize it was you I thought somebody had broken in my house which you kind of did do why are you here?"

"It's your birthday, mon ami," Lafayette answered. "We came to celebrate."

"I got you a cake," Hamilton offered. "just watch it with that thing. Please," he added, poitning at the pepper spray.

"Oh." John put it away.

"Why did you even have that anyway?" Hercules asked.

John shrugged. "You never know when somebody might break into your house."

"Do you have some milk?" Alex said.

"Sure why?"

"The pepper spray dude."

"Oh," John said again.

He went into the kitchen and brought out a gallon of milk which Alexander promptly dumped onto his face. The whole gallon.

"That was like 10 bucks man," John complained.

"Then you need to find some cheaper milk you're paying way too much," Alex replied, tossing the milk carton on the floor. It hardly added to the mess. "Anyway we didn't just come here to scare you and use up all your milk we came here to throw you a birthday party."

John sighed. "Nobody at work remembered."

"Well we did. Get the cake, Laf," Hamilton ordered.

Lafayette reached down and pulled out a box. Inside was a cake. Probably.

"How did I not notice that?" John wondered.

"Honestly I would be more surprised if you had," Hercules gestured around at all the pizza boxes.

"Come on into John's kitchen everyone," Alex said.

"Really? I would've thought you'd want to go into his bedroom," Lafayette said slyly.

"Shut up," Alex snapped, his cheeks bright red.

Lafayette grinned cheekily and led the way into Laurens' kitchen. The others sat down at the table. Lafayette placed the cake in the center.

"SOMEBODY GET SOME CANDLES IT BOUT TO GET LIT IN HERE," Alex yelled.

"Why don't you do some work for once?" Lafayette said.

"Does anyone even say lit any more?" Hercules added.

"YES. I SAY IT, DUH," Alex said. "And I can't do the work."

"Why not?" Lafayette demanded.

"Uh I hurt my back." Hamilton groaned and rubbed his back.

Lafayette rolled his eyes and left. He returned with more candles than Laurens could count.

"Jeez I'm not THAT old, guys," John said, half-joking, half-serious.

"Yes, you are." Alex took the candles and shoved them on top of the cake. "262. I counted."

"Wow. Really?" John ran over the years in his mind. Wow. It was 2016, he was born in 1754... Ugh his day had been bad enough he didn't need to do math to make it worse. 262 sounded close enough, let's just go with that.

"Make a wish," Alex urged.

"Shouldn't you light the candles first?" John asked.

"No way it's going to cause a fire," Hercules answered. "It really is a lot of candles."

"Isn't the point to cause a fire?" John said.

"No I mean like a house fire burn your apartment down," Hercules explained.

"I know I was joking." John pretended to blow out his imaginary candle fire. He made his wish.

"What did you wish?" Alex asked excitedly.

John shook his head. "Can't say, or it won't come true," he responded firmly.

"Awww, come on," Alex urged, giving John puppy eyes.

"I think I know what his wish was," Lafayette said.

"That he could somehow have kids with Alex?" Hercules offered.

"Not even close," John lied. That hadn't been it exactly, but it actually was uncomfortably close.

"I think I know," Alex said.

"Guess," John dared him.

"This." Alex grabbed John's cheeks and pressed his lips against John's. John kissed him back.

"You got it right," he mumbled around Alex's mouth.

John felt Alex smile against his face. "Happy birthday."