Chapter Text
Fate is a bullshit concept. Alex has always hated it.
Some people like the idea of fate. The idea that everything happens for a reason. That we’re all on a magical rollercoaster ride to our ultimate destiny, time moving forward on rails with no risk of altering course.
Some people like the idea of fate. Some people also like golf. And Michael Bolton. And anchovies. People are morons, basically.
At least, that’s what Alex thinks. People who live under the cosmic comfort blanket of ‘fate’ are just dissatisfied with the way their own shitty, uninspiring lives have turned out and are looking for something other than themselves to blame it on. They’re people who desperately want to shed the responsibility of decision-making and hand it over to a higher power. People who need the blissfully ignorant comfort of writing off the bland/embarrassing/disastrous/sexually disappointing (delete as appropriate) consequences of their own actions as a predetermined event that they had no control over.
Alex doesn’t have time for predeterminism. He makes his own fucking future, thanks very much.
But still, sometimes it can be a diverting thought exercise to consider the implications of a world where fate does exist. Who would make the decisions that dictate the meandering paths our lives ultimately travel down, and what governs those decisions? Would every event, every chosen fork in the road, be carefully engineered to serve a grand plan; humanity’s final purpose? Or would we simply be at the mercy of the whims and impulses that serve the amusement of some cosmic being?
Probably the latter, Alex thinks. Because, really, if fate does exist, then it’s definitely got a fucked-up sense of humour.
Because if fate does exist, he would really like to know what kind of fucking joke it thought it was playing on him when it put in motion the chain of events that made him end up here.
On his knees on Jefferson’s bed. Wrists tied to Jefferson’s headboard. Three of Jefferson’s fingers buried inside him.
Yeah.
He can feel a bead of sweat gently tickling his face as it makes its lazy journey from his hairline to the tip of his nose. He watches as it drips in slow motion onto the sheets below him, a weirdly soothing distraction from the relentless abuse his prostate is currently being subjected to. Then Jefferson twists and curls his fingers just so, a flawless duplication of the action he’s been practising to perfection for what feels like hours now, and Alex squirms and shakes and chokes out a mangled half-sob-half-moan; a noise as broken as he feels. His cock hangs, hard and flushed and maddeningly untouched, between his legs, but he knows Jefferson won’t make any moves to touch him where he needs it, not for a while yet.
“Oh, darlin’,” Jefferson tuts behind him, low and amused, his voice a devilish parody of sympathy. “Look at you. All shakin’ and desperate for me already. Did you really miss me that much?”
He’s a dick. Because the question might be supremely fucking arrogant and self-satisfied, but it draws distressingly close to the truth.
Jefferson has been away for two weeks, visiting a manufacturing facility in South Africa that their company has recently established. It’s a standard part of his job as their head of product management, even if Alex had loudly questioned the necessity of him spending that whole time staying in a luxury resort hotel on the company dollar. (That particular argument raged on for three days before Jefferson unfortunately won Washington over by highlighting the security credentials of the resort, and claiming that a cheaper, less secure hotel would pose a risk to his personal safety in an area notorious for violent crime. Alex doesn’t personally see how Jefferson getting murdered by armed robbers would constitute any sort of tragedy, but apparently other people disagree.)
And Alex hasn’t missed him. Ew. Not as a person, anyway. Certainly not as a colleague. The office has been fucking blissful without Jefferson strutting around like there’s a fucking trumpet chorus heralding his entrance into every room. Meetings have actually been productive and civilised and short, not being waylaid by their petty bickering which always inevitably rapidly descends into shouting matches. The hallways haven’t been heavy with a sense of slowly approaching doom. People have been smiling, relieved of the tension of always anticipating an argument. It’s actually felt like a happy, relaxed environment for once.
(Alex refuses to accept any portion of responsibility for the office’s usual state of heightened tension. If Jefferson weren’t such a disagreeable, irrational prick then Alex wouldn’t have to destroy the peace by putting him in his place so goddamn often.)
So, no, Alex hasn’t missed Jefferson at all. But this… arrangement that they’ve had going for a few months now, well…
The horrifying thing is, Alex can lay out with pretty much perfect recollection the entire fateful chain of events which led them here. He could write a fucking historical essay on The Saga of Hamilton and Jefferson’s Descent into Mutually Assured Destruction, complete with an in-depth analysis of every piss-poor decision they each made along the way:
December 15th, 5:30pm: The company Christmas party starts. The one night of the year where Alex and Jefferson are required to spend time together in a social capacity, and, as heads of their respective departments, they have been explicitly informed that they’re expected to be present and also maintain some semblance of peace and civility. Independently, they both decide that the only plausible way to achieve this is to take full advantage of the free bar (Bad Decision #1).
December 15th, 9:15pm: Alex finds himself alone at the bar with Jefferson. Both already pretty hammered, they challenge each other to a drinking game (Bad Decision #2). The slow, fully avoidable car crash is set in motion, while the details of the game itself are lost to history.
December 15th, 11:20pm: Jefferson invents a cocktail (Bad Decision #3). No one will ever be able to recreate this cocktail again, but it’s a potent and lethal blend, and it’s all the two of them drink for the rest of the night.
December 15th, 11:30pm to December 16th, 1.30am (timing accuracy under dispute): This portion of the saga is hazy, but features Bad Decisions numbers 4 through 27.
December 16th, 1:30am(ish): Alex and Jefferson finally forget how much they hate each other and find themselves stumbling into Jefferson’s hotel room, already undressing one another, mouths hot on bare skin, fingers fumbling with belts and pants, voices rough and desperate, blood surging with lust and need, filters dissolved by alcohol. Bad Decision #28.
(Unfortunately, it’s that perfectly ruinous level of inebriation. Drunk enough to shake away the inhibitions that would normally have them avoiding each other like the questionable eggs at the next morning’s hotel breakfast buffet, but not so drunk that they don’t both remember how fucking good it was come morning-time.)
December 16th, 6:30am: Alex wakes up tangled in Jefferson’s bedsheets, the man himself still asleep next to him. A quick check confirms that they’re both naked. Disaster. Alex manages to escape without waking Jefferson, thus avoiding the awkward morning-after talk. They then proceed to continue not talking for a further four days. The rest of the office wonders if this is a Christmas miracle.
December 20th, 1:05pm: Alex enters Jefferson’s office to yell at him about an approval request for unplanned overtime (Bad Decision #29).
December 20th, 1:08pm: Alex finds himself pressed against Jefferson’s desk with his hands pinned behind his back, pants shoved down to his thighs, Jefferson’s teeth sharp on his neck, and Jefferson’s hand jerking him off to a brutal rhythm until he comes with a jerk and a sob all over himself.
And thus began the whole shameful tale.
So, yes, Alex can pinpoint the exact moment this whole mutually beneficial arrangement began, and somehow, in the months since then, it’s officially migrated from a fumbled-hand-jobs-in-the-office and lunchbreak-encounters-in-the-supply-closet type of deal to an almost organised thing, where they have actual intentional arrangements and go to each other’s apartments. (Usually Jefferson’s apartment, because “your sheets smell like an eternity of spilled coffee and dollar-store detergent, and the water pressure in your shower is so bad I’d have an easier time cleaning myself if I just stood outside at dawn and waited for the morning mist to descend.” Which… may well be true, but fucking rude.)
And that’s what it’s become now. Whatever you want to call it. Fuck buddies. Enemies-with-benefits. There’s no getting away from the fact that it’s now very much planned and very much deliberate, however shameful they both find it. But the thing is, they keep coming back to it, because it’s so fucking good.
So, yeah, Alex will never admit this to Jefferson in a million years, but a two-week business trip feels like about ten years in sex terms, and Alex has missed this. Because this is fucking incredible. And he could find something similar elsewhere. It’s not like they’re exclusive or anything so nauseatingly monogamous as that. But he doesn’t. Because it would pale in comparison. Because Jefferson has utterly ruined him for casual sex.
Even if right now he sort of wants to kill him.
“Fuck,” he chokes out, screwing his eyes shut and shuddering as Jefferson presses his fingers impossibly deeper, twisting and fucking relentlessly until Alex is squirming and pulling fruitlessly at his bound wrists. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Stop fucking—stop teasing and just—fucking fuck me already.”
It’s impossible to imbue his voice with any kind of authority right now, and Jefferson’s soft chuckle makes it clear he’s fully aware of this. He trails the fingers of his free hand up Alex’s thigh, barely there and yet it feels like fire and ice and acid and velvet all at the same time.
“Language, Hamilton,” he reprimands. “What happened to ‘patience is a virtue’, huh? You’ve been waitin’ for me two whole weeks. Surely you can wait a little longer, baby? Got all night yet.”
Alex lets out a shaky, shuddering breath, trying desperately not to moan and give Jefferson the satisfaction of knowing the effect his words are having. The thought of Jefferson keeping this up all night, stringing him along, playing with him, allowing him no respite, has his thighs shaking and heat building heavy and desperate between his legs.
“Fuck you,” he sobs, clenching down around Jefferson’s fingers, where he’s so fucking stretched and ready and it’s still not enough because he just needs—
“Poor thing,” Jefferson observes mildly, still with that air of affected sympathy, like he’s just an observer in this whole situation, like the source of Alex’s torment is someone else entirely. “Y’know, discourtesy doesn’t get you very far in life. Maybe I’ll be more inclined to give you what you want if you ask nicely.”
Fuck. How does it always end up like this?
Sometimes Alex comes at these encounters full of bravado, thinking maybe this will be the occasion where Jefferson ends up being the sobbing, desperate mess, coming apart at the seams as Alex toys with him. He’s even played the scenario out in his head, when he’s alone with one hand on himself (as has happened all too often over the last two weeks), has imagined Jefferson on his knees for him, pliant and wanting, and Alex wonders if that side of him even exists anywhere, whether he could bring it out if only he would get the chance to try—
But it never works out that way. Jefferson always gets there first. He wears Alex down with a voice smooth like satin, all dangerous words and cunning fingers, and Alex fucking lets him. Every goddamn time, he feels his resolution dissolving like cotton candy in a rainstorm, because… well. He doesn’t rightly know why. No one has ever done to him what Jefferson does.
A particularly vicious twist of Jefferson’s fingers has Alex crying out and gasping, open-mouthed, fingernails scrabbling against the headboard, hips rolling back to chase those fucking fingers even as the sensation becomes too much. His cock jerks against his belly. He can feel everything. Every bump of Jefferson’s knuckles, every tiny twitch of his fingers. And they can’t have been here that long, not really, but it’s been long enough that Alex is worked up way past oversensitivity, every nerve somehow on fire, every ounce of his concentration just centred on the fingers inside him.
And Jefferson must be getting impatient now too, must be itching to get to the actual fucking part of the evening, but right now he seems quite content just leaving Alex teetering over some kind of precipice, waiting patiently for him to crack, to bite back his own pride and just ask—
“Please,” he gasps out, finally.
At that, Jefferson just hums and removes his fingers completely, ignoring Alex’s whine of protest and leaving him empty and embarrassed as his hips thrust back desperately of their own accord.
“Tell you what,” Jefferson says, and it just kills Alex to hear how unaffected he is, how fucking casual, like they’re just discussing the salad selection in the office cafeteria. “You tell me all the things you did to yourself while you were by your lonesome waitin’ for me, and if I like what I hear, I’ll fuck you, ok?”
It’s something of an empty transaction; they both know that Jefferson has no intention of not fucking Alex tonight, but this is the kind of game Jefferson likes to play; dragging things out, amusing himself with needless demands. He’s the type of person who probably played with his food as a child and never got scolded for it enough.
“What makes you think I was by myself the whole time?” Alex mumbles, the removal of Jefferson’s fingers rendering him just coherent enough to string a sentence together.
“Oh, I think we both know that trying to reproduce this with anyone else would only lead to disappointment for you, Alexander.”
“…so full of yourself.”
“Mmhmm. Jealous?”
Alex whines and twists against his bound hands. There’s a powerful ache building in his shoulders from the strained position he’s found himself in. It’s distracting, grounding even, but not distracting enough to pull his mind away from the desperate need that Jefferson has casually worked up in him over the past… how long has it even been? Ten minutes? Two hours? Time is a swirling puddle and he’s the unfortunate leaf left to drift and tumble across its surface, at the mercy of the elements. At the mercy of fucking Jefferson.
There’s a hand on his hip. A thumb rubbing gentle circles into the soft skin there. It’s an odd kind of comfort; a reassuring reminder of Jefferson’s continued presence behind him, in lieu of being able to actually see him.
“Don’t try and pretend you’ve been chaste this whole time. Tell me what you did.”
Alex takes a breath. In (shaky, shuddering) and out (rushed, heavy, practically a groan). He can feel his face burning before he’s even spoken a word to Jefferson’s lewd request.
“Fingered myself,” he mumbles, knowing Jefferson is grinning without even needing to turn his head and look at him. “A few times.”
“Oh, I’m going to need a lot more detail than that, Alexander,” Jefferson drawls, and, yep, he’s definitely grinning. “Did you imagine it was my fingers? Did you try and tell yourself you could replicate what I do to you?”
Yes.
“No.”
“Liar. How was it? Was it like this? Did you string yourself along for hours? Keep yourself on edge until you couldn’t take it anymore?” A solitary finger traces a line down his spine until it’s teasing gently at his entrance. Alex swallows back a frustrated groan.
“No,” he chokes out. “Not like this.”
“No. Thought not. You don’t have the patience to do this to yourself, do you Alexander?” That single finger continues to circle playfully around Alex’s hole as he speaks. “I know what you’re like; you have no discipline, no fortitude. Always craving the destination, never appreciating the journey. Even though you know it’s better like this, don’t you? You know when I eventually let you come it’ll tear you apart.”
The finger jabs inside suddenly, crooking, pressing hard and oh oh—
“How many times did you come on your own fingers, Alexander?” Jefferson asks, having withdrawn his finger as quickly as it went in, leaving Alex shuddering on a groan, yanked back from the brink once more.
“—didn’t fucking count—” he gasps—
“How many times?”
“Loads! I don’t know, almost every night, please just fucking—oh—”
Finally, finally, Alex feels the head of Jefferson’s cock teasing his hole and he gasps, pushes back, chasing it, but Jefferson shifts back with him, allowing him nothing, not ready to reward his honesty just yet.
“Tell me what else.”
Self-assured. Arrogant. Knows he’ll get what he wants just by virtue of demanding it.
Alex shifts a little. Rolls his shoulders as best he can to alleviate some of the dull ache in them. He shifts back, still unable to sink onto any more of Jefferson’s cock, then jerks forward in an awkward half-thrust, as if there might be an invisible fist hovering there, waiting to offer some relief to his own neglected, untouched cock.
He thinks back again to that other fantasy he’s been entertaining in Jefferson’s absence. The shift of dynamic he imagines he’ll one day be able to pull off. And maybe he can somehow shock Jefferson into giving him what he wants. Worth a try, right?
“Fucked my fist. Imagined I was fucking you,” he gasps out, and there’s silence. Just for a second, Alex has managed to render Jefferson speechless.
Only for a second, though.
“You think I’d like that, do you?” he hums in reply, not angry or defensive, just a voice laced with thoughtful curiosity.
“I’d make you like it.”
“Oh, would you now?” And the grin is back in Jefferson’s voice, that inherent playfulness in his tone that rarely disappears for long. “That’s a very confident statement, Alexander. You think you could fuck me as good as this?”
As if to illustrate his point, he suddenly presses forward, fucking into him partially, but not quite sliding in all the way. Still, it’s enough to make Alex gasp at the intrusion, because Jefferson’s cock is bigger, better than his fingers, and no matter how well prepared he is, after all this time being teased, the stretch is fucking heavenly.
“You shouldn’t—fuck—” he cuts himself off with a sharp gasp as Jefferson slides in another half inch, “—you shouldn’t underestimate me. Big mistake.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it. But I think that fantasy of yours will have to stay just that.”
And with that, he thrusts hard, twice, dragging another groan from Alex’s throat. He’s telling Alex that the admission hasn’t shifted the balance of power in his favour. Jefferson still holds command here, holds control.
Alex exercises the only bit of power he has left and clenches down, relishing the short groan he manages to elicit from his tormentor.
“Fuck me,” he demands. It’s not witty, or clever, but he’s too desperate to care. He’s fucking done with the banter. He needs to be fucked.
Jefferson’s hands settle, proprietary, on Alex’s hips.
“Well, darlin’, you have been good for me tonight,” he mutters, shifting slightly, and Alex can feel himself giving way to every fucking inch of him, every teasing motion an assault on his oversensitive rim. “I guess you’ve earned it.”
And Alex feels something inside him snap, hot and perfect, as Jefferson fucks into him, hard.
It’s not gentle. Jefferson is never gentle.
It’s punishing and relentless and almost mean. It’s everything Alex needs it to be. No more gentle hands on his hips, no false demonstration of caring. Just tight grip, pressing bruises, brutal thrusts that nail his prostate every time, the focal point of a throbbing ball of heat that never lets up or diminishes, just builds and expands inside him until he’s open-mouthed and gasping, rolling his hips back to coincide with Jefferson’s thrusts, to pull him deeper. He clenches down again until Jefferson moans, deep and feral, his thrusts speeding up, punching harder and fuck—
“Never can fully relinquish control, can you Alexander?” Jefferson growls, somehow maintaining his rhythm as he leans down to wrap one arm around Alex’s waist, holding them both up with the other, chest flush with Alex’s back as his mouth makes contact with the shell of Alex’s ear, sending a shiver through him as he mutters, “You think you can play this game, but I hold all the cards here. I can make you come whenever I want.”
And his knuckles brush, just barely, over the head of Alex’s cock, teasing out a gasp.
It’s oddly centering, only being able to focus on Jefferson’s voice and not his face. It heightens Alex’s sense of everything else Jefferson, all jumbled together until he can hear Jefferson’s grip on him, smell his confidence, feel his voice thrumming deep inside until it’s a physical presence in his chest.
And suddenly Jefferson’s not toying with him anymore. He getting close himself; Alex can tell by the unrestrained groans above him, punched out with every sharp thrust inside him, filling him, getting faster, wilder, pulling at Alex’s composure beyond breaking point, and he’s past the point of need; he’s a mindless ball of pure desperation, with no thoughts beyond his impending orgasm.
“Please please please please please—”
He’s so close, he’s so fucking—
And then Jefferson’s hand is on him.
It takes barely three strokes of that hand on his cock for Alex to fall over the edge, and he registers dimly that maybe that should be embarrassing, but he doesn’t fucking care.
Everything burns white for a second. He can feel his orgasm across the entire expanse of his skin, tingling and sparking as it rips through him like lightning, and he arches, shouts, sobs out his release. His skin prickles, oversensitive to the max as Jefferson thrusts into him a few more times before going still with a ragged groan, buried as deep into Alex as he can get, falling apart on top of him.
And then he’s boneless. The ties around his wrists pull and rub painfully as his knees finally give up and he collapses into the mattress, but he doesn’t care. He barely feels it. He just feels pleasantly light, like he could float away, practically numb with endorphins, so numb that he only distantly registers the faint kiss that gets laid on his shoulder before Jefferson reaches up to untie him.
His mind is too foggy to attach any significance to it; he simply drops his head into his now pillowed arms, and grunts an affirmative when Jefferson asks, “You good?”
He’s fine. He’s fucking great. He just can’t believe such a mind-blowing lay could be delivered by Thomas fucking Jefferson.
Yeah, there’s no way fate exists. Fate could never be this much of a bitch.
“It’s late, Hamilton. Just stay over.”
Alex pauses in the middle of pulling on his jeans and frowns at the bed, where Jefferson is still sprawled, naked, lazy and unmoving, filling the bed with his physical presence and the rest of the room with his towering fucking ego.
“Huh?”
His articulacy earns him a withering look.
“Stay over,” Jefferson repeats. “This is so much more comfortable than that pile of polyblend and matchsticks you call a bed. There’s no point in wasting time going home. God knows you could use the extra hour of sleep.”
Alex frowns. It’s not like he’s never stayed over at Jefferson’s before, but that usually only happens when it’s already the middle of the night by the time they’re both fucked out enough to go to sleep. Generally, it’s a ‘get in, get off, get out’ type of situation. Right now, it’s only 10pm, and there’s absolutely no need for the two of them to spend any more time in each other’s company.
It’s not the kind of arrangement where they linger.
And on the few occasions where Alex has spent the night, it’s been… strange. A little close for comfort. For a number of reasons, really, but it turns out Jefferson is a surprisingly cuddly sleeper, and those nights… well. Alex always finds himself waking up too early in the morning, with Jefferson draped all over him, breathing in his hair, excessively warm and something weird stirring in his chest that he can’t quite identify.
“Uh, no,” he says, after a slightly-too-long pause, going back to doing up his jeans before casting around for his shoes. “It’s fine. I’ll just get an Uber home.”
“We’re both going to the same place in the morning, Hamilton. I can drive you to work. Maybe even make you a breakfast that’s marginally more nutritious than your usual seventeen cups of coffee.”
Breakfast? What the fuck is going on?
Alex scoffs, “I’m sorry, you wanna do what? Read the morning paper over heart-shaped waffles and playfight over the business section? What the fuck’s gotten into you?”
Jefferson rolls his eyes and scratches distractedly at his upper arm.
“Well, I thought I was just making a logical and practical proposal, but I guess I should know by now that sensible and practical aren’t actually words that appear in your vocabulary.”
“I don’t need you to make me breakfast, Jefferson. You’re not my wife.”
“What an eye-opening insight into your antiquated opinions on domestic gender roles, Hamilton.”
“If this is what can be expected from your level of breakfast conversation, then I’ll definitely pass, Jefferson.”
“Oh my God, you are so fucking intransigent.”
Jefferson is starting to sound terse and weirdly wounded, which is new and paradoxical and just utterly bizarre to listen to. Alex doesn’t know what to make of it at all.
“Why the fuck is this becoming an argument?” he asks, incredulous, voicing his confusion. “I’m voluntarily leaving your apartment. I’d have thought you’d be fucking delighted.”
Because that’s the rule. That’s the unspoken rule that has kept this whole thing from blowing up in their faces. The rule that reminds them that this arrangement is strictly against their better judgement, that they’re secretly both above this, that they can choose to back out whenever they so please. Because the rule says, in quite clear if unwritten terms, that never, under any circumstances, are they to behave in any way as if they actually fucking need each other.
And Jefferson seems to remember the rule at this exact moment, because a half second passes and he blinks and curls his mouth into a sneer. His voice, when he opens his mouth, is familiar, in a somehow reassuring way: drawling, impatient, irritated, patronising. He waves a dismissive hand at the door.
“Jesus, Hamilton, it was just a suggestion. Fuck off, then.”
So Alex does, but not before throwing up a middle finger and a scowl.
On the surface, when they both return to work the next day, things are completely normal.
They bicker and they fight, challenging each other over the slightest infractions wherever the opportunity arises. Burr goes back to scheduling an extra twenty minutes into all of their senior management meetings to account for ‘Additional Discussion’ (read: sniping and childish insults with a heightened risk of flying projectiles).
But there’s now a distinct frostiness to their interactions that’s probably not so obvious to the external observer. Whereas normally Jefferson might accompany one of his usual takedowns of Alex’s latest financial report with a playfully raised eyebrow or a wry grin, now he’s all glares and spiteful venom. Alex questions one of his product development timelines during their weekly New Projects meeting, and Jefferson snaps It’s an accelerated timeline because half the components are already in production, you intellectually challenged, sophomoric dipshit at him with such vitriol that even Adams, normally one of his staunchest devotees, is moved to tell him to relax.
And over the following days, there’s absolutely no suggestion of any illicit lunchtime meetings in Jefferson’s office for a quick bout of stress relief, which had become something of a common feature for them. Alex has far too much pride to outright suggest any such meeting, but he does send a speculative ‘?’ over text at one point, which gets roundly ignored.
He doesn’t really understand where the abrupt coldness has come from.
But still, he has no particular intention of actually trying to do anything about it. If Jefferson wants to flounce about being even more of a whiny, attention-seeking prick than usual, then that’s his fucking prerogative. Alex refuses to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging it. He resolves to completely ignore Jefferson until the man manages to get back in touch with his inner adult and get the fuck over himself. All communication occurs via passive-aggressive (or just outright aggressive) email and that is it.
Unfortunately, what with the business world operating approximately thirty-five years behind the real one, pen and paper is still the medium of choice for half of their contacts, and it’s only a few days before Alex finds himself forced to venture into the lion’s enclosure of Jefferson’s office in search of his signature.
He’s expecting to walk into Jefferson’s office and be immediately struck by a flying writing implement of some kind.
He’s not expecting to walk in to almost no reaction at all.
The lights dimmed to almost-darkness, so that Alex almost has to squint to be sure Jefferson is even in there, but there he sits, fully dressed in his stupidly expensive cashmere coat (the one that Alex tells Jefferson to his face makes him look like a member of the KGB, but is privately pretty envious of), staring blankly at his computer screen without appearing to be actually reading or doing anything in particular.
Alex pauses. Throws a wary look in Jefferson’s direction.
“Why are you sitting in the dark?”
Jefferson barely looks at him, just throws a weak hand in the general direction of a filing cabinet.
“I wrote it up already – it’s in that pile over there. Take it and fuck off.”
“That’s not what I—are you okay?”
Jefferson lets out a pained noise, dragging a hand across his face. He’s shivering.
“No. I have a migraine and your presence is making it worse.”
“Why are you wearing a coat?”
“Because I’m cold,” Jefferson snaps. “Why the fuck else?”
“It’s July.”
“Great, you finally learned the months of the year. Maybe now you’ll be capable of filing our budget reports within the financial year instead of during whatever random fucking month takes your fancy. Go away, Hamilton.”
“Are you sick?”
“Ask me one more asinine question and I swear to God I’ll beat you to death with a laminator.”
He doesn’t sound very imposing. The threat comes out weak and reluctant, like he’s really just making it because he knows it’s expected of him.
“You shouldn’t be in work if you’re sick,” Alex says. “You’ll pass your germs onto everyone else.”
“I wasn’t near anyone else until you walked your undersized ass into my office, jackass. What the fuck do you even want?”
Alex sighs. Pursuing this argument feels pointless. There’s still a sour undercurrent of genuine resentment in Jefferson’s voice, and while Alex would normally gleefully prod at that sour undercurrent until it becomes a full-blown shouting match, he can’t get any pleasure out of pissing Jefferson off when he’s sitting there looking so fucking pitiful.
“I need you to sign these.” He drops a folder of supplier contracts and production orders onto the desk. “So that Angelica’s new supplier can kick off production tooling on their new line of ultracapacitors.”
Jefferson lets out a long, exhausted breath. He doesn’t argue or question the contract wording like he normally would; he doesn’t say anything, in fact, just slides the folder towards himself and starts signing the papers one by one. His signature, normally ostentatiously loopy and elegant, comes out wobbled and scrawled as his hand shakes.
“Are you sure you’re-?”
“Drop it.”
Alex drops it.
Alex doesn’t care about Jefferson’s wellbeing. He really doesn’t.
He doesn’t.
But his excuse for finding his way back into Jefferson’s office the following day is admittedly weak.
(It’s not out of concern. It’s just… professional curiosity.)
“Jefferson, you missed out one of the contracts I asked you to sign yesterday,” he announces as he breezes through Jefferson’s office door without knocking (fully ignoring the weak protests coming from the desk of his assistant), brandishing a fresh copy of one of the contracts that Jefferson definitely already signed.
He swiftly comes to an abrupt halt.
If he thought Jefferson looked off-colour yesterday, then today… well.
The lights in his office are still dimmed, but by contrast to yesterday, instead of dressing up like he’s ready to face the frigid conditions of the Arctic, he now looks like he’s just walked fully clothed into a sauna. His forehead is shiny with sweat and his normally bouncy curls are limp and lifeless. It’s pretty significant that he seems to be feeling hot and uncomfortable enough to loosen his tie; something no one in the office has ever been on record as seeing him do.
(The one time he used it to tie Alex’s hands behind his back while fingering him to an incoherent mess over his desk notwithstanding. That doesn’t count.)
And, much like yesterday, he barely reacts at all to Alex blustering, uninvited, into his office. He just glances up, blinks a little blearily and says, intelligently, “Huh?”
“Jefferson—” Alex pauses, then takes a few paces closer to the desk. “You don’t look well.”
He chooses not to question why his first weird instinct is to place a hand on Jefferson’s forehead to check for a fever, thinks better of actually doing so. It’s pretty fucking obvious he’s got a fever, and besides, Alex isn’t sure what kind of reaction that would elicit, as any display of anything vaguely resembling concern is generally considered to be well beyond the remit of their tolerance for one another.
“’M’fine,” Jefferson mumbles, holding out a hand for the contract. “Give it here.”
Alex hesitates. There’s a weird sensation of sympathy festering inside him that he really doesn’t appreciate, but Jefferson looks so fucking pathetic and miserable that Alex can’t help but feel a little sorry for him.
“You’re sick,” he says, leaving as much concern out of his voice as possible. “You should go home.”
“No.”
“You have a headache? Sore throat? Nausea?”
“Stop…” Jefferson hauls in a deep breath and then lets it out with a great deal of drama. “Stop playin’ nurse, Hamilton. S’not like you’d be able to come up with a… uh, a… whatever… the word… is.” With some effort, he waves a hand at Alex, looking weary and defeated.
“Diagnosis?”
“Yeah, that.”
“Jesus, Jefferson. It’s like your frontal lobe evaporated.”
“Just… gimme the fuckin’ contract,” Jefferson sighs, then adds, “Dick,” as something of an ineffectual afterthought.
Alex keeps hold of the paper, trying to consider how to handle this situation. On any other occasion he would just get Madison and make him deal with it, but Madison is away schmoozing potential clients in Dubai for the next two weeks. He could call Gil, but Gil is frankly not their most responsible friend, and there’s decent chance he’ll simply leave Jefferson alone with a bottle of brandy and tell him to sleep it off. And it’s not like Alex has any interest in being involved enough in Jefferson’s social circle to know any of his other friends.
No. For some godforsaken reason, the cosmos has conspired to make this Alex’s problem.
Fucking great.
“I’m serious. You need to go home.”
“’M’fine,” Jefferson groans, sounding the polar opposite of fine. “Just… picked up a bug or somethin’ on the plane.”
“All the more reason to go home and spare the rest of the office from picking up the same bug. You want to be responsible for the entire company being off sick? I don’t want whatever this is. You look like crap. And that’s no easy feat for you.”
“Thanks, Hamilton,” Jefferson mumbles, sans the knife-edge his sarcasm usually carries. “You have a special talent for backhanded compliments.”
“Go home,” Alex repeats, for what feels like the millionth time.
Alex is fully aware of the fact that he’s in absolutely no position to tell anyone else when they should or shouldn’t go home sick. He himself has previously carried on working through colds, flus, and, once, the early stages of appendicitis before being forcibly dragged to the nearest hospital. But… ‘do as I say and not as I do’ and all that. He figures the best approach is to appeal to Jefferson’s weirdly uptight sense of honour (which applies to everyone in the world except Alex, apparently) and remind him of the consequences for everyone else if he sticks around.
“Seriously,” he says. “Washington won’t thank you for getting everyone sick.”
Judging by the way Jefferson glares at his desk with a semi-defeated look, it seems to somewhat work.
He heaves in a breath and scratches his arm, still looking bleary and absent. “Fine. Fine. I’ll work from home.”
Alex rolls his eyes. “Or you could do us all a favour and not. Have you even done anything useful today beyond deepening the ass-print in that stupid ergonomic chair of yours?”
“I can’t just drop everything. I have… things.” Jefferson gestures weakly (unconvincingly) at his desk.
“Right, right, of course. Things,” Alex scoffs. “Remind me, what’s the name of the tier one supplier for the voltage regulator in that alternator that you’re putting into production next week?”
Jefferson just stares at him blankly, looking like he barely even registered the question.
“Better yet,” Alex says, “what’s the name of the client?”
“There isn’t… I don’t…”
Alex snorts. “Yeah. Thought so. I highly doubt any work you produce right now will be worth shit to anyone, Jefferson.”
Jefferson doesn’t even bother replying, just drops his head into his hands with a groan. It’s a hopeless, pained noise, one that seems to suggest he’s finally come round to Alex’s pleas, which initially feels like a small victory, but then he’s reaching into his desk drawer for his car keys and-
Nope. Bad idea.
What with the distinct sheen of sweat visible on every exposed patch of skin, the still-shaking hands and the complete lack of apparent mental focus, he definitely shouldn’t be driving anywhere.
Alex closes his eyes for a second, bracing himself for the painful argument he knows he has to start, then says, “No. Give me your car keys.”
And that demand certainly brings some of the life back into Jefferson’s demeanour. He looks up, glaring with open disgust like Alex has just casually requested to try one of his kidneys out for size, and says, “Um, no. Like fuck are you driving my—”
“You shouldn’t be driving when you’re like this,” Alex interrupts, flatly. “If I let you drive, when you inevitably pass out at the wheel and kill everyone in a massive, fiery pile-up, I’m the one that has to deal with the guilt of knowing I could have prevented it.”
“Wouldn’t think you’d care if I died in a fiery pile-up.”
“I don’t. I’m more concerned with your innocent victims.”
“You’re not taking me home. You’ve got your own goddamn work to do.”
“I’ll text Washington. Hand them over.”
“No.”
“Jefferson—”
“You’re not driving my car.”
Alex drives Jefferson’s car.
Jefferson’s condition continues to deteriorate on the way back to his apartment. He spends most of the drive with his eyes closed, breathing shallowly and looking vaguely nauseous. At one point he looks so ready to hurl that Alex actually offers to pull over (mostly out of consciousness of the fact that it will definitely somehow end up being his fault if Jefferson ends up with vomit all over his car), but Jefferson waves him off with a grimace and they complete the journey without incident.
And by the time they actually end up walking through the front door of Jefferson’s apartment, all prior notions of working from home seem to be well and truly squashed. Jefferson actually sways a little as they cross the threshold, and Alex almost gets ready to catch him if he passes out, but he manages to steady himself and make his way into the bedroom, where he collapses onto the bed with an uncharacteristic lack of grace.
Alex lingers in the doorway for half a second just to make sure he’s actually still breathing, before retreating to the bathroom in search of a thermometer and some Tylenol.
He finds both in a cabinet otherwise filled with extra-strength migraine medication and a truly ridiculous array of vitamins and supplements. Jesus, Jefferson. Just eat a fucking vegetable.
When he returns to the bedroom, Jefferson is sitting on the edge of the bed, hunched over and grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes. He doesn’t look up until he hears Alex approaching, and, on seeing the thermometer, makes a vain attempt to lean away and bat the thing thing out of Alex’s hand. “Hamilton, what the fuck. Get the fuck away from me, you freak. You’re not my mother.”
But it’s a sure sign of how crappy he must really be feeling that Alex easily catches him by the wrist and sticks the thermometer assertively into his open mouth (barely resisting the urge to try and stab his tongue with it). The complete lack of further fight (from a man who, lest one forget, once actively wheeled Alex’s boardroom chair all the way out of a meeting room just to keep him from asking him questions) is actually pretty concerning, because Jefferson just huffs and glares, doesn’t even pull away from the grip Alex has on his wrist, and Alex can feel a pulse underneath his fingers, rapid and fluttery and uneven. He swallows and lets go, trying to ignore the way Jefferson’s hand just flops limply into his lap.
“One hundred and two degrees,” he announces with exaggerated flair, a few moments later. “Huh. You’re pretty sick.”
“Thank you for your informed medical opinion,” Jefferson snaps. Well. He tries to snap, but there’s barely any energy behind it as he falls back onto the bed, his eyes drifting closed in a grimace.
“You’re still sweating a lot,” Alex observes drily, ignoring Jefferson’s responding exasperated groan. “You should drink some water with electrolytes. I can-”
“Hamilton, seriously. Shut the fuck up. Your voice is like a goddamned car alarm.” Jefferson pinches the bridge of his nose, looking pained.
“You’re dehydrated. You need fluids, Jefferson. Don’t be such a fucking baby.”
But Jefferson is already shuffling to bury his face in the truly extravagant number of pillows he has piled up on his bed as he mumbles, “Go ‘way.”
“Oh, real mature—”
“Get the fuck out of my apartment.”
(At least, that’s what Alex assumes Jefferson has said; with his voice muffled by Egyptian cotton and goose feathers it’s a little hard to make out.)
He glares at the mess of curls which is now all he can see of Jefferson’s head.
“Thanks, Hamilton, for driving me home, you’re a fucking saint, I really owe you one. You know what, fuck you. Die for all I care,” he mutters under his breath, before casting around for a trash can, which he finds next to the desk in the corner. He dumps it, with a little more force than necessary, next to the bed, before glancing up and realising that Jefferson has already completely passed out.
He hasn’t even taken off his shoes.
For fuck’s sake.
Alex vows internally to personally apply a red-hot poker to whatever part of his brain it is that makes him flop to his knees and unlace Jefferson’s shoes for him.
Still clutching the shoes, he stands up and critically regards the mildly pitiful, sleeping form of the man who was driving Alex to one of the best orgasms of his life just a few days ago, which may as well have been a different century for how things have shifted since then.
Jefferson’s face is still half-smashed into his pile of pillows, the side of his mouth and one closed eye just visible under his hair, and with his mouth all pouty and the way he sniffles and scrunches his nose every few breaths, there’s a weirdly innocent quality to his expression. If it weren’t for all the sweat and the laboured breathing, he would almost look peaceful, or even cute.
Ugh.
Alex rolls his eyes at his own mawkishness. He drops the shoes at the foot of the bed with a carelessness probably unworthy of their price tag.
Then he fucks off.
[A.Ham] Just FYI, Jefferson is sick and he looks pathetic. I told Washington already but I thought you might want to know since you’re his babysitter or whatever.
[Madison] Yes, I guessed that earlier today when he sent me a completely blank email with just the subject line ‘Dear yes please send now asap warm thank Jeff’.
[A.Ham] Sounds about right.
[Madison] What’s wrong with him?
[A.Ham] I don’t know, some kind of flu or something. He wasn’t very forthcoming when I asked about it.
[Madison] I hope you made him go home?
[A.Ham] I took on the even more joyful task of driving him all the way home and putting him to bed. He was not as appreciative as he should have been.
[Madison] Thank you. Don’t let him come back to work until he’s better. I’m sure you’ve noticed by now he’s a whiny pain in the ass when he’s sick.
[A.Ham] Yeah. When he’s sick.
[Madison] Please can you check in on him tomorrow?
[A.Ham] Absolutely not. This is not my problem anymore.
[A.Ham] He’s a fucking grown up, even if he rarely acts like it. He can handle a few days of being sick without being pampered like a baby fucking princess.
[Madison] Please Alexander. You’re the only one who can do it.
[A.Ham] Why me????
[Madison] Because you have a key to his apartment.
[A.Ham] No I don’t.
[Madison] Yes you do. I know you do, and I know why. I do a really good job of not thinking about it most days so please don’t ruin that for me.
Alex coughs at Madison’s last message, mildly horrified.
Great. So apparently Jefferson has zero qualms about telling his friends about their mutually beneficial, secret(or so Alex thought) arrangement, while Alex himself has been so fucking ashamed of the whole thing that he’s kept it very explicitly and determinedly hidden from his own friends.
And with good fucking reason. He already knows exactly what every single one of their reactions would be, and he has neither the energy nor the desire to have his predictions confirmed, whether it be the negative (John: “Are you fucking serious? That self-absorbed asshole?” and Angelica: “Oh, Alex. I know you have a predisposition towards self-sabotage but you really are outdoing yourself here.”) or the positive (Eliza: “Why keep it a secret? I’m so happy for you!” and Gil: “Putain de bordel de merde. Finally. I was getting ready to lock you two in a room together and force-accelerate the inevitable.”).
Although, now that he thinks about it, Gil is Jefferson’s friend too, which means there’s a distressingly non-zero chance that he already fucking knows, and has been laughing and gossiping about it for weeks already, which is a prospect too horrifying to even think about.
[A.Ham] Jesus christ. Fine. You fucking owe me.
[Madison] No, Hamilton, I don’t think I do. Don’t even try and pretend like you weren’t going to go over there and check on him anyway.
Alex’s subconscious is not something he really thinks about very often.
This is by design of course. If subconscious thought were something we have constant awareness of, it would cease to be subconscious by its very definition.
But still, when he lets himself into Jefferson’s apartment, as promised, the following morning, he has the distinct impression that his subconscious is trying to tell him that something’s wrong.
He doesn’t quite know why he feels so uneasy walking through the apartment, but there’s a general sense of quiet that’s just a little too heavy for comfort, and somehow he just knows that something’s up before he even enters Jefferson’s bedroom.
Because the human brain has a finely-honed skill for instinctively picking up signals that you wouldn’t normally notice or analyse. Details that you didn’t even realise you were cataloguing will entrench a sense of unease and imbalance much later when they change and you don’t know what’s different, only that it is.
And sometimes, what should be different. But isn’t.
The thing that Alex isn’t consciously registering, but that nonetheless sends warning signals firing through his brain and dread brewing in his gut, is that when he lets himself into Jefferson’s apartment and walks through the silence, everything is the same as he left it.
Everything is the same.
The door to the bedroom is the exact same six inches ajar that it was when he left through it yesterday. The thermometer he used still sits on the kitchen island where he abandoned it as he walked past. The hallway rug is still rumpled in one corner where he tripped over it on his way out and didn’t bother to straighten it. Jefferson is too much of a neat freak not to fix that if he’d seen it, flu or no flu. Which means no one has left the bedroom since yesterday.
It's a subsurface kind of trepidation. Just a lingering uneasiness. It’s not until he actually enters the bedroom that the feeling of dread in his gut solidifies like molten lead dropped in water.
For one thing, Alex knows from experience, on the few occasions that one of their trysts has inexplicably resulted in one or other of them spending the night, that Jefferson always sleeps on his side or his front; likes to sleep buried deep into his pillows and bedsheets and wrap himself around whatever object or person is closest to him. Right now, he’s lying on his back with a single sheet pushed down to his hips, making the heaving, laboured movement of his chest all the more obvious. All of the usual pillows and adornments that he likes to decorate his bed with are flung to the side or to the floor, as if they were pushed away in heated frustration. It’s the same with the clothes he was wearing yesterday; thrown to the floor without care (and Jefferson never treats his clothes with such disregard) and he’s left in just his underwear, bare chest shining with fever sweat.
And as Alex approaches the bed, it’s like a black hole opens up in his stomach as he starts to consciously register that not only is something not right, it’s actually very, very wrong, because Jefferson’s eyelids are fluttering and his breathing is coming in shallow, ineffectual gasps and every so often he flinches and his whole body flexes in some kind of uncontrolled reflex, and his face—
He looks like he’s in pain.
He looks—
Alex drops to his knees by the bed.
“Shit. Shit. Fuck. Jeffer—Thomas. Thomas, can you hear me?”
Jefferson seems to be entirely unaware of his surroundings. Sweat is beaded heavily across his forehead and his chest, and Alex can see his pulse fluttering unevenly in his neck. His lips are moving rapidly, like he’s muttering something to some invisible entity, and as Alex leans in, he can just make out a few slurred words out of the sea of incoherent, breathless mumbling.
“…’s impor’nt for nex’ quarter’s p’duction line upgrade… send ‘em another… uhh… contract…”
Jesus fucking Christ. Even while feverish and delirious, the guy still manages to dream about work.
“Thomas,” Alex prompts again, a little desperately, “Thomas.”
Still nothing. Just a string of useless babble, followed by a low, cracked moan. Alex curses, panic rising in his chest. His own heartbeat is everywhere, in his ears, his mouth, the tips of his fingers, pounding like a desperate captive, trying to escape. He realises he’s forgotten to breathe and chokes in a shaky gulp of air.
“Jefferson. Thomas. Fuck. You absolute fucking asshole.” He fumbles in his pocket for his phone, fingers shaking, slipping uselessly against the screen as he tries to dial. “Jefferson, I’m calling an ambulance, okay? You’re gonna be fine.”
As he’s lifting the phone to his ear, he reaches out with his other hand, almost rethinks it, and then tentatively takes Jefferson’s hand in his own.
He will be fine.
Has to be.
“Has Mr. Jefferson travelled to any malaria risk areas in the past month?”
Alex blinks at the doctor. The question registers in his mind after a short delay, and then a thousand and one assumptions have to reset and recalibrate themselves before he can even begin to formulate an answer.
He feels like a zombie. Hollowed out by panic and exhaustion, rendered groggy and useless by the interruption to his normal steady supply of caffeine. He’s been numbing his ass on this horrible plastic waiting-room chair for the last four hours, and he hasn’t had a single coffee in that time (which might genuinely be a record for him), too anxious to leave the waiting area just in case someone appears with even the tiniest crumb of news. The rush of adrenaline that got him through the initial emergency and the surreal ambulance ride that followed has long since worn off, leaving him emotionally depleted and somehow aching in every single one of his muscles.
He breathes deep, trying to maintain some detachment, trying to make some logical sense of the question, but logic refuses to cooperate. “I mean… he got back from South Africa last week, but… just, I’m sorry, are you saying he has malaria?”
“Mmmm. South Africa’s not generally considered a high-risk country, but it is present in certain regions. Was he taking anti-malarial medication?”
“If he wasn’t, I’m going to fucking kill him.”
“Well,” the doctor responds, bemused, frowning at him through gold-rimmed reading glasses, “that would be somewhat ironic, Mr. Hamilton, because if it weren’t for you, there’s a good chance he’d already be dead.”
Alex swallows.
So.
Not flu, then.
Jefferson sleeps.
He meanders between states of consciousness, but mostly he sleeps.
Alex makes himself into a semi-permanent fixture in Jefferson’s hospital room. He leaves only briefly to collect his laptop from the office, and on multiple quests to refuel with the colorectal sludge which passes for coffee in a hospital cafeteria. He updates Washington on the situation with as few words and as little background information as he can get away with. Washington, mercifully, takes the hint and doesn’t ask too many questions.
Jefferson sleeps.
It’s not a restful kind of sleep. It’s sporadic and interrupted, punctuated with noises of distress. Sometimes he’s animated enough to jerk awake, fixing his eyes on Alex in something almost resembling recognition, but he doesn’t seem to register where he is. A few times, he mumbles what sounds like ‘Jane’, but Alex doesn’t know who ‘Jane’ is. He assumes he’s saying ‘James’.
Jefferson sleeps.
Alex sits by the bed, watching, waiting for progress that refuses to be hurried. Hours pass. Eventually he curls up in the room’s singular armchair, tries to get comfortable. Fails. A day passes. At one point, Jefferson blinks blearily at him and says Hamilton, why are you wearing pants, which would be pretty funny if everything weren’t so horrible.
Another day passes.
Jefferson sleeps.
Alex sleeps.