InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Or coming and staying?"

Alexander Hamilton (unimpeachable) wrote in spinningcompass,
@ 2022-05-14 14:00:00

Who? Alexander and Liberty
Where? The Hamilton Residence
When? Backdated - Wednesday afternoon
What? Alexander is lonely and hungover.

The previous evening had been great while it was happening. His son was an absolute marvel, and the more alexander had drank and chatted and relaxed into it, the better he had felt. He was distracted, that was the whole truth of it. It had been exactly what he had needed to come out of his sadness.

Then the next day had hit. Initially, he'd still been on something of a high, feeling like total shit but happy enough to make jokes, and flirt shamelessly with Maryanne. It was strange - the second Maryanne had even hinted at a no, his mood had immediately dipped to the depths. What the fuck was he doing? Maryanne had shared such vulnerable things with him, he knew her history, and he wasn't proud of himself for what could easily be construed as him taking advantage.

Then, there was Liberty. God, he loved her, but for everything he just couldn't see any possibly way that she could feel the same way. She was often all business, then there would be moments like through in France, or the way her eyes lit up when they were chatting in the evening, or the way she smiled when he let his hand linger on her arm. Yet again - another situation that could easily be considered him taking advantage of a younger woman in his employ.

So, he had almost told her no. There is nothing you can do, go back to work and forget it. When he'd admitted speaking with Dan, and that he was really struggling with Philip being older, all of those feelings and emotions had rushed back to the surface, and he just wanted her there. Like he had when he'd been sick in the medbay, he'd just wanted her to be there. It was selfish, really.

But she was coming over. Alexander had looked in on Philip, seeing a grown man fast asleep in a small single bed, surrounded by the nine year olds belongings, the nine year olds books, clothes, little shoes he'd never be able to squeeze his feet into. That alone told Alexander that this was temporary - the station hadn't brought Philip's belongings to him when he'd stayed over. It wasn't the most logical thing, but it made sense to him.

He'd placed a glass of water by his son's bed for whenever he woke, and then tried to make himself somewhat more presentable for Liberty coming over. He'd washed his face and brushed his teeth, and tied his hair back. He was not dressed as he would going into the office, but he was at least in a shirt, breeches and stockings, rather than a night-shirt. Then, a very quick clearing of clutter from the living room, so the carnage of the previous evening wasn't quite so in your face, and he was ready for her.

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libertybecket
2022-05-14 04:59 pm UTC (link)

Liberty's thoughts were troubled. Philip's arrival had unsettled her, quite profoundly. The little boy she'd grown attached to was suddenly the same age as her, and not only was it impossible for her to write it off as the station doing things, as if steel and plastics had formed some sort of capricious deity, she couldn't shake the sense that he knew things he ought not to. Liberty Becket believed in self-determination. It was one of the core values of the Charter. She held also to the existentialist notion that there was always a choice, no matter what the situation.

That was why she hadn't asked Philip for the details of her future. She'd have been utterly determined to prove him wrong, as a matter of principle, and that wasn't a sound basis from which to make decisions. That meant it was better not to ask. Not to know. Of course, Alexander didn't have that luxury, and that was why she worried for him too. Not because of the drinking, which was harmless in itself. She could have gone with them. Her pregnancy had been an all-too-convenient excuse. Philip himself was wonderful – not at all how she had envisioned him, grown to adulthood, but wonderful nonetheless – but what he represented was something Liberty wasn't ready to confront.

For Alexander, though? He was more troubled than she was. He'd said it might help if she were there, and she hadn't hesitated. She was good at not making everything about her own feelings, these days. She'd certainly buried her feelings for him deep enough, recognising that he was in contract – and that it wasn't merely some legalistic obstacle which she was too fundamentally Rican to attempt to evade; he loved Eliza. And if Liberty loved him? It didn't matter. Another woman had gotten there first. She would have his friendship, and that would be enough.

True to her word, she'd gone straight to his house after their communication. As they'd predicted, Liberty's pregnancy was now too far along to be disguised with strategic frills, and already she was finding anything overly tight or clingy to be a discomfort. She'd taken to wearing loose, layered dresses. They wouldn't have been out of place on Rica, and the station – Liberty reasoned that nothing was out of place on the station, a glance around the hall during the last meeting was enough to tell her that.

'Alexander!' There was her usual warm smile at the sight of him, along with a rather more calculated mental appraisal. He looked tired, a little the worse for wear after the previous night, but not so bad as she'd imagined. 'It's good to see you. I brought you some pills for your head,' she added sympathetically.

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unimpeachable
2022-05-14 06:51 pm UTC (link)

Of course, Alexander had known she was coming. And yet, at the same time, he felt pleasantly surprised that she had actually got there so quickly. Maybe he’d had her a little worried. He knew that he hadn’t been his usual self since coming back from France, and that mood had dipped even more with the arrival of Philip. But he thought he’d not done the worst job of covering it up.

“Hey, Liberty!” he smiled, his voice hoarse and scratchy from so much singing and shouting conversation over the music. Some pills? Oh. He was quite familiar with them after the bout of malaria, but for some reason it hadn’t crossed his mind that he could take them for a hangover headache too. Obvious, really.

“Thank you, that’s really sweet of you,” he told her sincerely. “And thanks for coming, I…” he led her through the living room, as he realised he didn’t have a reasonable explanation. “It’s good to see you, too,” he said, hovering and waiting for her to take a seat first.

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libertybecket
2022-05-16 03:06 pm UTC (link)

'It's nothing,' Liberty told him quickly. 'I wanted to be here.' He'd have done the same for her if she needed him, she reasoned. She followed after him, close enough that she could smell soap and mint and a hint of something sour. She took a chair in the living room, not wanting to be on her feet for longer than was necessary, and then took the little packet of tablets from her pocket and placed them on the table. If he was still wary of the medicine, she wasn't going to press the matter, being cautious enough of it herself. Some of it was downright dangerous by comparison to the advancements on Rica, but these tablets seemed safe enough.

'Is Philip here?' she asked him, and while it sounded like nothing more than small talk, to Liberty it was an important question. Philip was the cause of much of Alexander's unease, she suspected, but she wasn't about to broach the topic if it was possible the younger man would walk past and overhear. None of it was his fault, after all.

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unimpeachable
2022-05-16 03:57 pm UTC (link)

Alexander gave her smile and a nod. He wouldn't push the point, but he really did appreciate her being there. He looked at the packet, and realised he was going to need to get some water.

"Can I get you a drink or anything? Tea, coffee?" he asked, without his usual pep. He just felt weird and deflated.

At her mention of Philip, Alexander avoided eye contact at first but gave her a nod of confirmation. "Mmhmm. Sleeping, though," he clarified. "I doubt he usually lives here, but... I don't know, he wanted to make sure I got back home alright," he shrugged. It was meant to be the other way around, surely. He was meant to be looking after his son.

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libertybecket
2022-05-16 08:20 pm UTC (link)

'Coffee, please,' Liberty replied. She could tell that Alexander was very far from being his usual self, but it would do no good to draw attention to it, because he likely knew it as well as she did. Maybe Liberty wasn't herself either, but she couldn't tell how much of that was down to worry, and how much was just because she didn't think he'd appreciate her being talkative and theoretical when he was clearly feeling dreadful.

'I told him that,' she said after Alexander had explained about Philip. 'Or I told him to make sure you looked after each other, at least. Got home safe.' She hadn't wanted to overstep, and if she was honest she hadn't really wanted to go out in the middle of the night to find them. She'd trusted that together they'd find their way back to the house.

The living arrangement seemed odd, but then she shook her head. 'If he lives somewhere else, usually, that house is probably bare right now, or full of space station junk.'

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unimpeachable
2022-05-16 09:26 pm UTC (link)

"Sure," he nodded, but just kept standing there, as if he'd somehow forgotten what he'd just asked already.

"You did?" he asked, tilting his head a little and examining her expression, wondering why it was that she would care. He had been a drunken idiot, there was no reason for her to care a jot if he ended up passed out on a viewing platform or whatever. Was there? He'd care, if it was the other way around. Was that anything more than a gentlemanly concern? He was staring. Stop staring, stop it.

"Oh, sure. I... I didn't think of that," he admitted, and then cleared his throat. "All of his things are still here. His nine year old things. They're still..." he stopped, feeling that sudden rush of emotion he was trying so hard not to let out, and didn't trust himself to keep talking.

"Coffee," he said instead, and turned quickly to head to the kitchen.

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libertybecket
2022-05-18 08:13 pm UTC (link)

'Of course I did,' she said, with concern in her eyes. Another time Liberty might have made a joke of it, teased Alexander about drunken antics she'd heard about previously. Today, though, her attitude was softer. She was in a more fragile state of mind than she cared to admit, but that meant that she could recognise the same in him. He had to know how much she cared about him. Not the nature of her regard – that, Liberty was still doing her best to conceal – but the fact of it? She found, suddenly, that she didn't want that called into question.

She didn't speak immediately when he mentioned little Philip's possessions, because her mind started racing in an effort to make sense of it. It was logical, on the surface. Philip vanishing didn't mean that the objects he'd owned should. It wasn't as if he'd packed up and left home on purpose. But there were other complications, primarily that older Philip's things should have been there too. It was an empirical prediction, if nothing else. Trying to make sense of that was like staring at an incomprehensible terror she had no words to describe, and so she had stopped trying. No wonder this was all so difficult for Alexander.

She took too long in her thoughts, and lost the moment, and then he was turning away. No, she couldn't leave it that way, send him away for coffee, of all things. Liberty got to her feet, none-too-gracefully, and went to stop him with a hand on his shoulder.

'I don't know what it means,' she said. 'I won't pretend to. But I know it's not right. And that it's natural to miss your little boy, Alexander. It doesn't mean you don't care about the man he's going to become. I miss him too, and you're his father, and I can't imagine what you're going through except that it must be...so very complicated.'

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unimpeachable
2022-05-18 08:44 pm UTC (link)

Really, Alexander had rushed from the room because he didn’t exactly what her to see just how shaken he was. He wasn’t used to showing anyone that level of vulnerability, he was used to coming across as strong, determined, someone who always had the answers.

He put water into the coffee machine, and then stood holding onto the counter as if he just couldn’t remember what the next step was.

Liberty followed, and he squeezed his eyes shut and refused to turn to look at her as she spoke. Oh, God, he should never have asked her to come over. He just wanted to spill everything, and wrap her in his arms, and made all of this disappear for a while.

“He’s meant to be two,” he said after a moment trying to gather his thoughts. “Actually, he’s not even meant to be born yet,” he realised, even though the memory of it seemed as fresh and real as any other. “He just… he grows up here. We don’t… ten years and we’re still…”

He really didn’t want to start crying about it, so he blinked rapidly against it, swallowed it down, and busied himself with putting the coffee in with shaky hands. “It’s just not the life I wanted. For him, for me,” he explained, sounded more annoyed than upset now.

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libertybecket
2022-05-19 01:52 pm UTC (link)

Liberty's strongest urge was to comfort him, but when he didn't do so much as turn around, she took a step back. She wanted to be there for him, but not if he felt it was intruding. She stood, and listened, and the fact of it was that his words mirrored her own fears, and so Liberty didn't have the answers. And how she hated that she didn't have the answers!

It wasn't the life any of them wanted, she thought, but she wasn't going to put that on him either, because it was one thing to fear that something might happen, and quite another to know that it would.

'I'm sorry,' she said eventually, quietly. 'I am. Of course it isn't what you wanted.' She paused, and reached up to push her hair back from her face. 'The only glimpse of light is that you'll go back someday, isn't it? Even if it takes ten years. You'll go back where you should be, and maybe…maybe what you learn here will help you there. And you'll have those years over again.'

It had its own problems. Perhaps not as much for Alexander as for Philip, who would go from being nineteen to nine again. Or Liberty herself, which went some way to explaining her desperation to find Rica in the conventional way, so that she could keep her son with her, and not have it seem as though he never existed. But for Alexander, perhaps the thought would be a comforting one.

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unimpeachable
2022-05-19 03:52 pm UTC (link)

Alexander just kept making the coffee. Funny, really, that the very concept of electricity had been alien to him only so recently, and now he was going through the motions of turning on a coffee machine as if it was second nature.

"Yep. That's what Maryanne said," he told her, a little dismissively. Fuck, fuck, fuck, why had he asked her to come over if he was just going to shut down and refuse to engage. He turned and stepped towards her as the machine whirred away in the background.

"Look, we don't need to talk about it, okay? It's shit, there is nothing you can say. I'll deal with it. I just wanted you to come over, because I wanted to see you, and be with you, and I thought it might make it feel better if..." he shook his head a little, not wanting to fill in the if with anything too forward, he didn't want to scare her off. "Just... if... if you were here."

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libertybecket
2022-05-20 02:51 pm UTC (link)

'You discussed it with Maryanne.' Liberty's voice was flat, and sounded hollow to her own ears. Alexander had confided in Maryanne and not her. Not just another woman, which might not have troubled her unduly, but a woman he'd suggested to her that he wasn't comfortable with, that he didn't want to meet with alone again.

What else might he have lied to her about?

She had no entitlement, she reminded herself. Not to his friendship, certainly not to anything more. It was all in her head, wasn't it? He could turn to whomever he wanted when he was feeling low. That he was the person she'd choose didn't mean he had to reciprocate that.

Still, he might have seen the little hurt look on her face when he turned towards her, just for a moment. Then it was gone, and she was nodding her agreement, because despite everything, she couldn't not.

'Whatever you think might make it better, Alexander,' she told him, sincerely and with no trace of the conflicted thoughts she was still struggling with. 'I'm here. For as long as you like. We don't have to talk about it. I can put some music on, or I can give you a new draft of the trade treaty to look over. Whatever you think might help.' It wasn't as if her words had done him any good, anyway.

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unimpeachable
2022-05-20 04:52 pm UTC (link)

It had been so offhand as a comment that he hadn't realised how it sounded until it was too late. He sighed, one hand lifting to rub at the back of his neck as he considered how to get himself out of that little confession.

"Yeah," he said, with a softer tone. "It just came up. I didn't seek her out specifically, it just sort of... burst out," he explained, not really sure why he was explaining. Did he have to explain? Why would Liberty care who he chose to share his feelings with?

See, she was fine. She was being logical and helpful and he'd obviously just made this whole... thing between them up in his mind because he was lonely and desperate. It was embarrassing, really.

"God, no, no treaty," he shook his head. He paused for a moment, unsure of how he was meant to explain what it was he wanted, or needed, or what would help, without either terrifying her or making her feel obligated to stay.

He was just going to have to hope that he didn't upset her, or disgust her. She deserved to know what the hell was going on in his head.

"I asked you to come over because I didn't want to be alone, but it's not just that. It was you specifically I wanted. That I always want. I know that you don't want to be here any more than I do, but you know if I'm going to be stuck here for ten years then I don't want to be alone the whole time. I know it's selfish, and I should be ashamed of myself for even considering it, but I'm not," he rambled on a bit.

"If I'm way out of line, and you're here purely as some sort of professional obligation, then I'll drop it, you can go, or you can show me the treaty and we'll pretend I never said anything," he added quickly, with a sinking feeling. "Otherwise... just stay. Please. Know that I love you, and just need a little time. Just stay."

The last two words were almost whispered, and the love had slipped past his lips unnoticed by him at first. His mind caught up to his mouth, and only then did the anxiety set in. He wanted to just turn back to pour the coffee and pretend he hadn't said a damn thing, but he forced himself to just stand and bear it.

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libertybecket
2022-05-21 07:19 am UTC (link)

Things didn't just burst out, thought Liberty, but she wasn't going to argue the point, because it really wasn't any of her business. She shouldn't care. Not this much. She should go back to simply worrying about the paperwork, because Alexander clearly didn't trust her.

He didn't want to look at the treaty either, though, and that only made her feel more useless. Then what did he want? Why had he asked her here if he didn't want to talk, and didn't want the distraction of work?

Then Alexander explained, and as he did, Liberty relaxed, the worried expression on her face fading. He just wanted her company, and – oh! It was more than that, far more, and as understanding dawned on her, her eyes lit up, and she smiled in absolute, undisguised delight.

'It was never just an obligation,' she told him. Had he really not known? 'Alexander, I feel...well, there is a simple way to put it. I love you, too.' She'd said it. She'd really said it, despite all the complications, because it was the honest truth.

'I've never felt like this before, not about anyone. There's no shame in it, is there? In not wanting to be alone? But I can't make promises I can't keep. I can't promise you ten years, but I can promise you whatever time we have. I can wait until you're ready, and I can stay with you now.' She wanted to do nothing more than embrace him, have the closeness she'd been yearning for since they'd returned from France, but she waited. There were the terms, all laid out. Would it be enough?

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unimpeachable
2022-05-21 08:52 pm UTC (link)

Maybe he was blind, but Alexander really hadn't known what sort of reaction he ought to expect. It was plainly expressed on her face, though - he didn't even need her words to see the truth of her feeling written there.

His own stressed look relaxed into absolute relief. She understood. She more than understood, she.. she loved him, too. The look of relief changed to a proper smile, and he didn't hesitate to cross the room and get closer to her again.

"You love me, too?" he repeated, his voice pitching a little as if he just couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Yeah, there's nothing else you have to promise me. That's enough. More than enough," he nodded. "Oh God, you've no idea how long I've wanted to tell you that," he admitted with a soft laugh, before finally giving in to the space between them. He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close into an embrace.

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libertybecket
2022-05-22 09:16 pm UTC (link)

'I do,' Liberty answered simply. 'I love you, Alexander.' She was repeating herself, but there was no denying the little thrill it gave her to even say the words. To be open about it, and speak the truth without apprehension.

When he pulled her closer, Liberty draped her arms around Alex, and rested her head against his shoulder, drawing comfort from their closeness. It felt right, she realised. For that moment, it felt as if nothing else mattered, not the complications, not the impossibility of their whole situation. It didn't matter, because it had led her to this.

'Did you not know?' she asked him softly. 'I thought that you would. I thought I wasn't any good at hiding it.' It would have been obvious on Rica, she thought. More than obvious, if she'd put so much effort into work she wasn't even being paid for. It hadn't all been an excuse to spend more time with him; of course what they were doing had its own value – but it was undeniable that Alexander's company had been at least part of the appeal.

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unimpeachable
2022-05-23 10:08 pm UTC (link)

Maybe it was the shock of the alcohol draining out of his system, or maybe it was the sincerity in her voice when she confirmed her feelings yet again, but Alexander felt as though his emotions might swallow him whole. It was more than he could possibly have hoped for. His heart ached for her - quite literally in that moment.

"I didn't know!" he told her, mostly into her hair and he held her close in his embrace. "I thought... I thought you just... really liked... charters," he realised how fucking stupid that sounded when said aloud, and he was soon giggling instead.

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