If Laurens didn't know better, he would think something changed. He heard from Hamilton that he and Jefferson had an adventure at the fancy party they had attended, but beyond the same few key moments, they didn't say much. No pictures of Hamilton had been taken, and when asked where the dress went, Peggy would always grin and fall silent. Jefferson sported a new black eye as a testament to their success. Maddison insisted on sitting Jefferson down for a proper examination when he heard about the fight. Hamilton told them all the story of how he had swooped in and saved Jefferson, bragging that Jefferson owed him his life. As Laurens watched them leave, Jefferson and Hamilton seemed closer than ever before. Not only were they physically closer, they really seemed to be listening to each other. From a work standpoint, this was excellent. On a personal note, Laruens was unsettled.
"Has something happened to them?" he asked aloud.
A few feet behind him, settling back at the computer, Maddison answered, "Nothing besides what Hamilton just told us about."
Laurens looked back at him curiously. "How can you say that with so much confidence?"
"Thomas tells me everything," he said, not looking up. "If something else happened, I would know about it."
"You don't think there's a chance they would… yknow." Maddison gave Laurens a puzzled look over his shoulder. "Get together. Hook up. Fall in love. That sort of thing."
A second passed by, and then Maddison turned to face Laurens, resting an arm on the desk. "Are you referring to when you and Lafayette swore to find them both dates by the end of the year?"
A little uncomfortable, Laurens looked away, pushing his hands into his pockets. "Yeah."
"If it makes you feel better, I knew it would fail from the beginning."
"How?"
Maddison gazed at Laurens unblinkingly. "If he hasn't told you, then I can't."
"Come on," Laurens pleaded, stepping closer. "Jefferson's enough of a friend that I won't tell anyone."
Turning back to the computer, Maddison said, "I won't betray his trust. You either hear from him or not at all."
Even more curious, Laurens knelt down on the floor at Maddison's elbow, resting his chin on his arms on the desk. "Please, Madds? If I guess it will you tell me?"
"No."
"Is he a closet gay?" he asked regardless. "Does he wish he was straight?" Maddison didn't so much as glance at him. "Did he have a bad experience at a conversion camp?" Laurens made puppy eyes that went ignored. "Is he asexual?" He scooted closer. "Did he have a bad experience with relationships? Did someone he loved die?" Laurens stared up at the side of Maddison's unfazed face. "Does he… not know?" Maddison erupted in a coughing fit, turning away from Laurens, who stood up, shocked. "I was kidding, does he really not know? As old as he is, he doesn't know?"
Getting a hold of himself, Maddison turned back to Laurens and grabbed his arm, saying in a low voice, "Don't you dare start spreading rumors. Let him think on his own time."
With a sad smile, Laurens assured him, "I know what it's like to be questioning, I wouldn't interrupt that."
"That means no interfering. No trying to set him up, no steering him away."
"Madds, of course. I swear. I'll talk to Laf and see if he'll back off too."
It was the perfect excuse. Laurens didn't tell him why, but Lafayette agreed to let things happen without their influence. If what Maddison had implied was true, then there was no reason to worry. Things would work themselves out after all.
Jefferson and Hamilton had learned a few key pieces of information from the previous evening's work. Firstly, that Jefferson was quite a good dancer. Secondly, that Jefferson and Maddison were not the only ones to survive the attack on their agency. Maria Reynolds was alive and well, and seemed to be involved with a less than friendly group of people. Thirdly, that a small crown had appeared in two places that held secrets.
When they had showed the crown to Eliza, she had them wait for a moment. She dug through files until she found the quickly discarded file of the man they had recently bugged. She found the screenshot of what they had discovered. The man's new tattoo of a small crown on the back of his wrist. Jefferson held his phone with the photograph of the etched crown next to the screenshot of the tattoo. The two seemed to be the same.
"There's no way this is connected," Jefferson said. "It can't be."
Hamilton reached for his phone. "These aren't the only two, remember. There was the one in North Carolina too." He scrolled through his photos and showed Eliza the crown carved into the wooden door. "That makes two non-adjacent states it has shown up in."
Eliza looked at the three pictures. "Well, the chances that they are related are pretty slim. The shape is so simple, it could have come from anywhere."
"Three sightings in less than a year? Seems awfully suspicious," Hamilton said, moving his phone right next to Jefferson's for better comparison.
Jefferson glanced at him out of the corner of his eyes. "Say it is a symbol then. For what?"
As he put his phone away, Hamilton told them, "It could be a number of things. It could be a new trade symbol for something. It could be part of a code of some sort. It could be a special symbol for a certain group of people."
"Or it could be some kid who likes to leave a mark everywhere he goes, but he chose something generic because he isn't that creative."
Eliza rested her hand on her cheek in thought. "Whatever it is, I don't know if we should worry about it yet. Maybe you could see if anyone else has seen it."
As she suggested, Hamilton and Jefferson split up to ask around. As could be expected, the presence of such a small detail was hardly memorable to one not looking for it, and no one recognized it outside of their three examples. Once they had met to share their results, Hamilton seemed to believe more than ever that it meant something.
"Think about it," he said, kicking his feet up on his desk as he leaned back in his chair. "If you were trying to run some secret operation, wouldn't you want your secret indicator to be as common as possible?"
"It would get pretty difficult to know when it was the real deal," Jefferson argued between bites of macaroni.
"That's the brilliance of it though. It would throw other people off their trail, because some kids would think it was cool, and would go out leaving fake marks in completely irrelevant locations."
Rolling his eyes, Jefferson said, "No one is going to start copying some random thing they see. Kids have better things to do than make copycat graffiti everywhere."
Hamilton raised his eyebrows. "I forgot, you were a rich kid. Allow me to show you what real childhoods were like." He dropped his feet to the floor and picked up the nearest pen, and drew a series of straight lines on the side of a piece of paper, then showing Jefferson the little mark he had made.
Jefferson leaned in to see it better. "What is that, some kind of pointy 'S'?"
"Something like that. Somewhere, someone started drawing these, and before long, everyone was doing it." Hamilton turned the paper around to give it a judgmental look. "As far as I know, it doesn't mean anything. But that didn't stop us from drawing it."
"Drawing isn't really the word I would use to describe that," Jefferson muttered, leaning back in his chair again.
Hamilton put the paper and pen back on his desk. "The point is, kids don't need to know the meaning of something to go out and copy it. This crown is the same. It's simple enough that a young kid could learn to make it."
Jefferson rested his macaroni in his lap. "You're telling me that some big shot is relying on kids to help cover his trail?"
Hamilton held out his arms. "It's not unlikely. I would do it."
"You're not a criminal mastermind," Jefferson reminded him. "I still don't think I would trust you to keep my wallet safe, much less some big smuggling underground."
A sly smirk turned up the corners of Hamilton's mouth. "You don't know that I'm not a criminal mastermind. Maybe I'm just that good that I'm also my own double agent at the same time." Jefferson rolled his eyes, not buying it for a moment. "Another thing, how could they be coincidences? This crown has shown up in three distinct places, each when there was some kind of secret to be discovered. Not even small secrets either."
Jefferson held up his hand as he offered his argument. "A 'haunted' door would be a pretty good target for random graffiti."
Hamilton leaned forward with wide eyes, pressing his palms together. "That's the thing. The door wasn't painted over at all. So we can say that everything done to the door would still be very visible. But there was only one thing on that door."
"This crown," Jefferson said.
"Exactly!" Hamilton said, speaking more quickly. "No one would give it a second thought because like you said it seems like any other piece of basic graffiti. But someone who knows what it means would notice it. They would be able to communicate some piece of information right under everyone's noses. And with such a basic shape, imitations would spread, and would lead investigators down the wrong paths, because they would never know if it was a fake or if the secret just wasn't discovered yet at that symbol's location."
When he was sure Hamilton was waiting for a response, Jefferson said, "If that is the case, why haven't we seen one of these fakes yet?"
"Because we haven't been on an active hunt yet. As soon as we start looking everywhere for these, and not just in places where we already see suspicious behavior, we'll see fakes popping up everywhere."
Stabbing some more macaroni with his fork, Jefferson asked, "Have you told Washington about this theory yet?"
Hamilton nearly launched himself out of his chair to go report his thoughts, leaving Jefferson to enjoy his lunch in peace. Several minutes later, Hamilton came back with a smug grin.
"We have work to do," he said in a low voice as he leaned back against Jefferson's desk. "You and I get to go through all of our old files to find mention of the crown."
Jefferson looked up at his partner suspiciously. "When you say 'all our files'…"
Hamilton's grin grew. "Every file in this building."
"Oh good lord," Jefferson said under his breath.
Searching every file in the building made for a lot of tedious work which filled a lot of dull days. Since the crown had appeared both as a tattoo and as graffiti, all reports of missions and of persons of interest had to be searched, even if the person in question was dead. Much to Jefferson's relief, this agency was not as old as his past employer's, nor was it as large, so the sheer number of files was mercifully less than he originally thought. Nonetheless, it took several days of searching. One weekend passed, and another approached, the passing days only unique by the fading of Jefferson's black eye and the replacing of Hamilton's beard stubble. On Friday, Hamilton's impatience had reached its peak. They had been through almost everything, and yet it was obvious they wouldn't finish by the end of the day.
In the middle of the afternoon, Hamilton suddenly stood up, and Jefferson watched as he went to Washington's office with none of his files in his hands. When he came back, he said, "We're staying overnight tonight to finish this."
"Who said you got to decide for me?" Jefferson asked, turning his chair to eye Hamilton as he sat down.
"Washington's orders. We're staying overnight," he said, not looking back.
"You ass, you asked him from both of us?"
Hamilton spun his chair around and caught Jefferson's eyes with a very serious expression. "If we stay, we finish this tonight and get the rest of the weekend to not have to worry about it."
Jefferson resigned to that logic and turned back to his files. Both Maddison and Laurens stopped by before leaving, and wished them luck on their search. Jefferson glanced out the window as the city darkened. He got up to stretch his legs, wandering to the window to peer out. The clouds coming their way were a dark grey.
Time crept on. A flash of lightning lit up the city, and a muted distant rumble of thunder followed a few seconds later. Hamilton stood up and excused himself to the bathroom. Jefferson paid him little attention. Rain started pouring. Jefferson checked his watch, and glanced behind him. It had been a while since Hamilton had left. A few files later, Jefferson checked his watch again, and sighed. A dozen more files and Hamilton had still not returned. Jefferson tossed the last of the files on his desk and stood up, muttering to himself about certain people who suggest something unpleasant and leave it to others to do the work.
As he looked around for his missing partner, Jefferson amused himself with a bad impression of Hamilton. He poked his head in the bathroom and stopped short. Hamilton was facing the far wall, head in his hands, taking very intentional shaky breaths.
"Alex?" Jefferson said, not sure if he was seeing things correctly. "I thought you went home, are you… crying?"
Hamilton dropped his hands and turned his head slightly, clearly trying to sound tough. "You can fuck right off."
Jefferson pushed the door open more, saying, "Jesus, I just want to help, what happened?"
Hamilton turned sharply, pointing a threatening finger at him, though it was clear that he was shaking and fighting not to cry. "I'm not a child, and I don't need your help, so get the hell out of-"
A flash of lighting behind Jefferson cut him off, followed by an accompanying crash of thunder. Hamilton stood paralyzed by it. He slowly lowered his arm, unable to hold back his trembling or his tears. He stared at Jefferson for a few more moments, and looked away to the floor.
Jefferson watched this change with a dawning understanding. "It is the storm."
"I'm fine," Hamilton said weakly.
Jefferson stepped into the bathroom, offering his free hand. "We can wait it out in the file storage room, it's far more secure there than here."
"I'm fine," Hamilton insisted, his voice cracking.
"I know."
Jefferson handed Hamilton his cane and put an arm around his shoulders. Hamilton clung to the cane as he let Jefferson lead him through the building to their file storage. As its heavy door closed behind them, Jefferson turned on the lights in the windowless room. Before the door could close, Hamilton caught it with his hand.
"I know you're going to blackmail the shit out of me on Monday, but for now could you just leave?" he asked, holding Jefferson's cane out to him. "I really don't have the energy to deal with you right now."
Jefferson took his cane back. "Alex, I'm not going to-"
"And stop calling me by my first name. It's weird."
Hamilton let the door go, and Jefferson caught it as Hamilton leaned back against the nearest filing drawers and slid to sit on the floor. Jefferson looked at the door in one hand, and then at his cane in the other. He let the door fall closed as he came to sit next to Hamilton. The closed door cut off almost all of the sound of rain.
"Didn't I just tell you to leave?!" Hamilton said as Jefferson joined him.
"Why don't we consider the facts," Jefferson said, his accent more pronounced as he laid down his cane beside him. "It's already nearly impossible to drive in this weather. I'm sitting here because it's the closest place to sit and quite frankly my leg is aching, due to the storm which is preventing me from going home." He looked over at met Hamilton's eyes. "It's a cycle of misfortune, really." As Hamilton watched, he shifted and pulled his phone and wireless headphones from his pocket. "So to make this night a little more bearable for me, I'm gonna have to ask you to take these."
Hamilton glanced back up at him. "These don't work with my phone."
"I'm your DJ tonight. I hardly get around to using it, but I have a playlist of calming music."
Since he was hardly in a position to question things, Hamilton raised a trembling hand and put the headphones in. He watched as Jefferson hit shuffle on his playlist and set his phone down. Serene piano music started playing in the headphones, drowning out the last of the rain sounds. Hamilton drew his legs to his chest and closed his eyes, and let time slip into nonexistence.
Waters rising. Struggling to escape. For every inch closer he got, the door moved a foot farther away. There was no way to reach it. He was trapped. Wind ripped everything away, leaving him surrounded in black. He turned around. His mother lay before him, dying. She reached out to him. Her hand fell limply onto the blankets. He tried to go to her. Her form changed. His cousin, hanging from the ceiling. Death doesn't discriminate. He fell backwards. Alone. No escape. When's it going to get me?
Hamilton woke up with a jolt, his heart racing. His eyes landed on the door, the filing cabinets, and Jefferson's feet. His mind registered the calm music in his ear as he turned to see that Jefferson was asleep. Hamilton checked his watch. 2 a.m. He sighed, and looked back at Jefferson. "Out of everyone, it had to be you, didn't it…"
Carefully, Hamilton stood up, and took the headphones from his ears, setting them quietly next to Jefferson's cane. There was rain outside, but it was barely audible. Hamilton silently willed Jefferson to stay asleep as he opened the file room's door and eased it closed behind him. He took a deep breath. The worst of the storm was over. As he made his way back to his desk, he silently reassured himself that things would be fine. He went over his list of things to pack. He realized that the busses don't run at such an ungodly time.
Standing under the overhang in front of the agency's front doors, Hamilton took deep breaths, telling himself that it was only rain, and that he could handle a few miles's walk. The door opened behind him, and he heard his name called. He turned to see Jefferson, who joined him outside and leaned on his cane, clearly having just ran to catch up.
"What are you doing?" Jefferson asked, catching his breath.
Hamilton looked back across the street. "Going home."
"Please tell me you realize the busses don't run this early?"
"I'm gonna walk."
Jefferson straightened up, gesturing down the road. "Don't you live miles from here?" Hamilton looked the other direction, ignoring him. "Come on, it's still storming. Do I need to remind you of what just-"
"It's raining," Hamilton corrected him, cutting him off. "And I'm not about to stay here all night."
Jefferson turned to face him fully, regarding him as if he were stupid. He leaned on his cane, his accent coming out again. "Did you forget that I have a car?"
"What?"
"You heard me."
"Yeah, I did, what are you getting at?"
Jefferson sighed, his accent even more prominent as he said, "Oh my god, I'll DRIVE you home. Washington would hang me out to dry if he found out I left 'daddy's favorite' here."
Hamilton straightened up and held his head higher. "Don't call me that!"
The distant sound of thunder stopped him from arguing further as he took a defensive step away from the rain.
Jefferson looked down at the wet pavement and back up to Hamilton, his voice calm. "You still really wanna walk?" Hamilton didn't answer. "I'll bring the car around. You can wait here if you want." He held out his cane, and Hamilton looked at it for a moment, before taking it. He held it tightly, backed against the agency doors, as Jefferson walked through the rain and parked his car in front of the curb a few minutes later.
In the warm and dry of the car, the radio played quietly. Most of the way through their trip, the rain slowed to a sprinkle, and stopped entirely.
"So…" Jefferson said with an awkward smile. "The rain finally cleared up."
Hamilton, who had been staring out the window, dropped his eyes to his hands in his lap. "It was nice of you to give me a ride home, but drop the act." Jefferson glanced at him for a moment. Hamilton sighed. "You know I'm not the best at formalities, so let's skip all that and get to the point." Hamilton reached over and turned the radio off. He sat in silence for a few more moments as he collected himself, and then began to speak.
"I don't know if you know that I'm an immigrant, but I am. I came from an island in the Caribbean called St. Croix." He paused to take a slow breath. "While I lived there, a hurricane came through and completely destroyed my town."
Jefferson glanced at him again. "Alex, you don't have to-"
Hamilton shook his head and continued. "The lightning and thunder isn't what I'm afraid of, like you thought. It's the water." He paused again, mentally skipping to the relevant details. "I was already an orphan when it happened. The building we took shelter in collapsed on top of me. I was trapped… for a long time. I don't know how long, but the water started rising, and I heard people wailing, and dying and…" he took a deep breath to stay calm. Jefferson kept his eyes fixed on the road. "Eliza is the only one who knows how I get during a storm." Hamilton looked out the window with an ironic smile. "I know now that you've found out it's just a matter of time before the whole agency does too, but… Please, just let me be the one to tell Washington. I should have already because it's a liability, but- God, I just-" He seemed to struggle to find words. "I didn't want him to see me as lesser, I-I didn't-"
"You didn't want his pity."
The words hung in the air for a few seconds. Hamilton looked back at his clasped hands. "Yes," he said quietly.
Jefferson nodded a little. "I know exactly how that feels."
They spent the rest of the drive in silence. "This is my stop," Hamilton said, pointing to a building up ahead. Jefferson pulled up to the curb in front of it, and Hamilton unbuckled his seatbelt. As he reached for the door handle, Jefferson stopped him.
"Hold on a second," he said, shifting the car to park and dropping his hands to his thighs. Hamilton withdrew his hand a little, and looked over at him. "I lost my leg about…" He made face as he considered it. "Almost three years ago? Huh, it's been a while. Anyways, when I came back to work, all I got was pity." He raised his hands in mock surrender. "Suddenly I was this delicate, sad excuse of a person, even though I could do the same things I did before." He rolled his eyes as he dropped his hands to rest on the steering wheel. "It was almost worse than the pain or anything else. It was so obvious that everyone saw me differently than before, and I hated it."
"How did-"
"That's why when James and I joined this new agency, I was… kind of glad, in a way. Obviously I wasn't glad to see everyone I worked with before dead, but… Well, the only ones who knew anymore were him, me, Washington, and Laurens. …And I suppose Maria Reynolds too… But then you found out, and I thought it was over for me." He looked over and met Hamilton's eyes. "And yet, with how much you seem to love the sound of your own voice, you didn't tell anyone. So I thought we could make a little deal."
Hamilton blinked at him. "What… kind of deal?"
Jefferson shrugged a shoulder and looked around them at the buildings nearby. "You don't tell anyone about my leg, I won't tell anyone what happened tonight. It's a simple concept, I don't think I need to spell it out for you."
"But you-" Jefferson met Hamilton's eyes with a raised eyebrow, and a new smile. This one was kind, understanding. Hamilton could feel his right hand longing for a pen and paper. Jefferson stuck out his hand. Hamilton looked at it, and exhaled a small laugh, taking Jefferson's hand and shaking it. "Deal."
Jefferson nodded a little, his smile growing. "Deal."
They held each other's eyes. Hamilton noticed again that Jefferson's eyes were that nice deep mahogany color. They seemed to draw him in closer. His heart was beating faster, but it felt different than the fear from before. He realized that he was squeezing Jefferson's hand when Jefferson started squeezing back. Glad to focus on something else, Hamilton did his best to crush Jefferson's hand as his own hand was crushed. Jefferson eventually conceded and let go with a small laugh.
Hamilton stepped out of the car, and bent down to eye Jefferson again through the open car door. "Drive safe on your way home, I'd hate to have to finish the files by myself."
Jefferson massaged his crushed hand with a grin. "I will, see ya Monday."
Hamilton closed the car door behind him and entered his apartment building as Jefferson drove away. He jogged up the stairs, feeling his face grow warmer as Jefferson's eyes came back to mind. As soon as his apartment door was closed behind him, he leaned back against it, and placed his eager right hand over his beating heart. He took deep breaths, expecting to feel his heart rate slow as he caught his breath, but his partner crossed his mind again, setting his heart's pace renewed. It was impossible to deny any longer. As soon as he found the words to begin writing, words became phrases and sentences faster than he could write them down. He wrote until he could write no more. His mind was quieted, but his heart wouldn't stay silent. He stood up, and thought of one more sentence, which he added at the end. 'I just hope he did make it home safe.'
Jefferson didn't turn the radio on as he crossed town. He would normally hum along as the music kept him company, but even the sound of his car's engine seemed loud enough. Time slipped by unnoticed. When he was in his apartment, surrounded at last by pure silence, his mind could no longer distract itself. He covered his mouth with a hand and begged for this to not be happening. Just as he was finally free of it, Hamilton just had to give him that look. That look of grateful understanding and appreciation. The same look Maddison had worn all those years ago. 'This will be different,' a small voice told him. 'This time, it's someone who is capable of reciprocating.' All the same, he knew it would only be worse. This time, he wouldn't be able to silence himself with a lack of hope. Hamilton's eyes seemed to be calling him, and he wanted to answer, but he still couldn't. Even if he might become helpless, he had to say no to this.
