#will herc ever figure out what alex's fucking deal is? will alex ever learn how drinking works? how do you do college???

[swan-archive]

you: so, swan, wanna explain to the class why you haven’t filled 90% of those prompts your kind and delightful followers sent you?

me: :)

you: oh no

me:

--

Trust Burr, Herc thinks sourly, nursing his beer, to ghost on you right when you thought he was about to commit to something for once in his life.

He’s not really sure what he expected, honestly; it’d taken weeks to get him to agree to a meeting, just to talk about the idea of having him try and make connections with some of the British higher-ups, not even to agree on a course of action. Herc would’ve liked to scrap the whole idea ages ago, but names have power and unfortunately, even the British have some folks on their side who know better than to run their mouths around the good-natured, unthreatening help. Would’ve been worth trying that reserve against Burr’s upper-class mannerisms and modish style, but—well, no point in fussing about that now. A more hopeful man might say to himself, give it another quarter of an hour, perhaps he’s been delayed, perhaps he’s just being cautious, perhaps he doesn’t know if he can trust you yet, you know how that is.

Herc is a pragmatist. It’s been two hours since they said they’d meet. Caution has a place in these dangerous times, but at a certain point it tips over into pure foolishness, and Herc’s already got his fair share of fools knocking around.

He knocks back the rest of his drink and pushes his chair back just as some sort of disturbance erupts at the corner of the bar. He winces. Yeah, he’s getting too old for this shit. He can remember a time when he’d’ve thrown in on one side or the other, completely at random, just for the hell of it, but he can leave those kinds of shenanigans to Laurens or one of his fellow hotheads now.

Beth would laugh at him for that. Would say you’re not even old, Hercules, quit being such a grouch, and boy, that’s how he really knows he’s a grown-up, because the thought of going home and crawling into bed with her sounds like the best thing in the world right now, fuck Burr, fuck the Sons of Liberty, fuck a bar fight. God, he loves his wife.

He’s fighting his way over to the door when he catches a flash of oxblood red in the thick of it, over by the bar. Familiar shade. Burr with a new coat, adjusting his cuffs and making polite non-statements as Herc had tried to pin down a time to meet with him privately. So he bothered to show up after all, then.

Herc groans a little bit internally. Really all he wants right now is to go home, but Burr’s right there and it’d be a waste of an evening and god only knows if the man would be coerced into another meeting if Herc failed to make this one. Damn it. Herc turns around and starts pushing his way toward the oxblood coat. If it turns out that Burr has been here the whole time, Herc is gonna pummel him, vital espionage or not. Best not to make that obvious, though, so he hitches up his ruffian’s grin as he draws closer.

“About time, Burr, thought you weaseled out on me!” he says loudly, throwing out a hand to catch him by the arm—

The young man he’s grabbed spins around, stares at Herc from behind an untidy fall of black hair. Very obviously not Burr. Oops. Herc drops him, and he jerks back against the bar, baring his teeth like an angry dog.

“What do you want?” he snaps, rather shrilly.

Herc’s about to tell him to step off, kid, I just thought you were someone else, no need to get all excited, but the bartender’s noticed them talking. “Friend of yours, Mulligan?” he says. “You wanna tell him not to waste my time if he can’t pay for his drinks?”

“I can pay, I have money, it’s just—it was just here,” the young man retorts, fumbling at his pockets like a man who knows his pocketbook is long gone and is hoping to be subject to an act of God in the immediate future. Ouch. Tough break. None of Herc's business, though, and his family’s waiting for him at home, so all he can do is mentally wish the young man good luck and that his money’s in his other pocket.

The young man locks eyes with Herc for just a moment in his flurry of motion. Desperation stamped all over his face. He’s very young, just a kid, really, for all the sharpness in his voice. The bartender is giving every sign of being ready to chase him out of the tavern. Herc feels a little pang.

He just yelled at you for no good reason, says the reasonable part of Herc, and that may be true, but—Herc’s not made of stone. He has a heart. He’s always quite liked doing folk a good turn. It feels nice. And you can always cash in on it, later, if you need to, with the right sort of person. It never hurts to have an extra favor in the bank.

Herc makes up his mind.

“Relax, Mo,” says Herc, “I’ve got his. And while you’re at it, another for me.” The bartender glares, but when Herc digs in his pockets and slaps the money on the counter he more or less obligingly draws two beers for them. Herc pushes one of them at the kid and steers him over to the first free table.

“You’ll have to excuse poor Moses,” Herc says, “he’s dealt with too many people trying to skip out on a tab in his day to remember what it’s like to have a little patience. Sorry about your wallet, pal. At least take a load off.” He pulls out a chair gallantly before settling back down himself.

The kid’s chin bobs in what might be a jerky nod and what might just be a twitch, and he crumples into the chair. Up close, he looks even younger, with big dark puppy eyes and an outsize nose and not even the slightest hint of peach fuzz on his chin. He clutches his beer and stares at Herc as though he suspects him of poisoning it. Doesn’t take a sip. Tense, Jesus. Herc takes a swig of his own drink and makes himself comfortable.

“Hercules Mulligan,” he says with a flourish, by way of introduction. Gives the kid a second to enjoy the name; he knows it’s an impressive one. “You got a name, friend?”

The kid looks, if possible, even more rattled. “Yes,” he says, his knuckles going white on the mug. There’s a long, awkward pause. Herc sits with it. Let him come to it in his own time. “Oh,” the kid says, finally, and then, “Alex. Alexander. Alexander Hamilton.” Can’t quite hide the pleased little smile that curls his lips as he says it. Pride. Which is funny, thinks Herc, given that he himself wouldn’t know a Hamilton from a hole in the ground.

No point in being antagonistic, though. “Well, Alex Alexander Alexander Hamilton, let me be the first to welcome you to our fair city. I am the first, right? Let me guess, you got off the boat, what, maybe four o’clock this afternoon?”

Hamilton scowls in a way that suggests Herc has hit pretty close to the mark. “How would you know that?”

“Call it intuition. I can tell a New Yorker when I see one, and you’re not quite there yet.” In truth, it’s that the tavern they’re in is close to the waterfront, a bit off the beaten trail, and someone wearing clothes as fine as Hamilton’s probably wouldn’t have bothered giving the place a second glance if he hadn’t just stumbled off a ship. Simple deduction.

Although he wouldn’t have blamed himself for guessing wrongly, given the kid's general state of dishevelment, the hair falling into his eyes, his half-buttoned waistcoat and sloppily tied cravat, like someone who’s been drinking for several hours already. But that’s impossible; no one could be that sloshed and still be as jittery as Hamilton is. So—newcomer.

“And what brings you to New York, Mr. Hamilton? You here for work, or pleasure, or—” he gestures grandly with his mug of beer, “—just to seek your fortune?”

To his great amusement, Hamilton perks up at that. “Last one. Definitely the last one,” he says. Herc can’t help but smile back.

“A romantic, huh? Cute. No, no, don’t be mad,” he says, when Hamilton bristles at his tone, “I think it’s nice. We could always use a few more dreamers in this world.” He waits for Hamilton to calm down again before continuing, “So you must have big plans for this city, huh? Gonna knock out a couple of life goals while you’re here?”

“I, um.” Hamilton stares down into his mug. “I sort of—I’m new here, like you said. I just wanna learn. Wanna see what there is for me to do.”

“You’re trying to do some learning, this isn’t a bad place for it. Not bad at all. Some great colleges around here. If you’re a scholarly sort, good with your words, you can get a solid start there.”

“College. Yeah.” Hamilton’s eyes brighten. “Yeah, I’m—I was—I’m pretty good with words. Numbers too. I used to think, maybe I could still—college. I like that. How do you do college?”

Herc snorts, but otherwise lets that slide. “Can’t just walk in off the street, for the first thing. You’d have to apply, there’s an exam to prepare for and everything. Might need to do some schooling before you apply, even, depending on how prepared you are. There’s places you can go for that nearby, though. It’ll be work, but if you buckle down—”

“I can figure it out.”

“What, just like that?”

“I’m smart. I remember a lot, I—” Hamilton frowns a bit, like he’s let too much slip, but goes on. “Anyway. I’m good at that kind of stuff. Reading. Studying. I’ll be able to do it.”

“You got your Greek, your Latin? Gonna need those if you’re interested in going down this path.”

“I’m sure I could pick ‘em up,” says Hamilton with absurd confidence, and Herc rolls his eyes. Yeah, okay. Just pick up some dead languages like it’s no big deal. Kid must already have some schooling under his belt, to be talking like that. Cheeky. But Herc kind of likes that swagger coming out.

“Well, once you do, give me a shout. I know a guy at Princeton, I could introduce you.”

“I, sure, yeah. Thank you. Princeton. That’s, is that in New York?”

“No…it’s in Princeton.”

“Right.” No comprehension on that face.

“Princeton, like, across the river and inland a ways. Jersey, you know. Or maybe you don’t, where are you here from…?”

“Oh. Inland. Okay.” Some of that nervousness filtering back in. “I was sort of trying to stay around these parts. If I could.”

“Yeah, well, slow down a little, you haven’t even applied yet, you don’t have to make any decisions right this minute. Although between you and me, might be safer for you to get out of the city, if you can. You’ve chosen a risky time to come here. We’ve got more than our fair share of unrest right now.”

“Do you?” Hamilton leans forward, raises his eyebrows with interest. “What is it, what’s going on?”

Herc sips his beer. Glances at Hamilton, without looking like he is. Could be a Redcoat, could be a spy, mutters a cautious voice in his head, you know they’ll use anyone. But Herc trusts his gut, and his gut is telling him that the Brits would be idiots to send a spy dumb enough to get in a noisy public argument, lose his wallet, and not know where Princeton is after him. Amateur hour. They’re better than that.

Hamilton is looking at him with what must be genuine curiosity, dark eyes like blank slates, and he had said he was a dreamer, hadn’t he? Give him some dreams to work on. No such thing as a bad time to recruit for the cause. Carefully, though, always carefully.

“Lotta stir, what with that rebel army up north,” Herc says in his most casual tones. “Gets people saying all sorts of things. Scandalous things. Downright seditious, even. They say folks are organizing, right here, in the city. Our King’s not too pleased with us right about now. Of course, I wouldn’t know anything about it,” Herc continues, lightly, “hardworking, law-abiding citizen like me. I just listen. Just hear things.”

Hamilton has caught on, though, and fixes Herc with a stare that puts Herc in mind of some hunting animal, cat, hawk. No, not a hawk, something colder, something sharper. Hamilton wets his lips, opens his mouth, and…

“What king?”

“…You serious? Where did you say you were from, again?”

“The—the Caribbean?” says Hamilton, sounding rather uncertain. He shakes his head and tries again. “The Caribbean. St. Croix. Nevis, and then St. Croix.”

“Right. You know you have the same king down there as we do, right?”

“Do we?” A little concerned line appears between Hamilton’s brows. “I mean, yes. We do. Obviously. Yeah, I know. The king, that king over in, in, uh…”

“England.”

“England,” Hamilton says, a little too hard on Herc’s heels.

“Really, though, how old are you, that you don’t know who the king is?”

“I’m nineteen! And I know, all right, I do, it’s just, I just…” He trails off, drops his eyes. “I’ve had. There’s been. Other stuff to think about. King didn’t really seem important.” He looks back up, beseeching. “Should he have been?”

Herc studies that expression for a moment. Shame mingled with desperation to be right, to understand. “Nah, you’re okay. We all miss things,” he replies, with a dismissive wave of his hand.

A few more pieces click together in Herc’s head. Came to New York to seek my fortune, right; translate that into came to New York for a fresh start, came to New York running from whatever—whoever—was dogging me so hard that I couldn’t even be bothered to look at whose face was on the money. Explains the jumpiness, and the badly-concealed lies—Herc’ll be damned if Hamilton is nineteen, not with that girlish complexion, and the way he stumbled over Nevis and St. Croix was more than a little suspect.

A runaway, then, huh. Poor kid. Which, Herc supposes, is all the more reason to give him a solid mooring, ideological if nothing else. And if people tend to stay loyal to their first benefactors, well, so much the better.

“Anyway, you wanna learn something about what’s really going on in this city, come to Fraunces Tavern two nights from now. Some friends of mine are having a meeting, we can show you the ropes. Where are you staying? I can tell you how to get there from your place.”

Hamilton smiles unconvincingly. “Oh, uh, I was just planning to, you know, find somewhere around…”

“Got it. You have nowhere to stay. ‘I was just planning to find somewhere.’ Jesus, you really are new to this city, aren’t you.” Herc pushes his hat back on his head, sighs, and then rises from the table. “Nothing for it, then. Finish your beer, and then you’re coming home with me.”

“What? No, it’s fine, I don’t need, you don’t have to do that!”

“I do, unless you like the idea of sleeping in the gutter. No arguments, my man, I’ve got a spare bed and you don’t wanna spend your first full day in New York in the lockup for vagrancy.”

Those huge eyes of Hamilton’s get even bigger, and he stammers out a few words of argument before falling quiet. Herc can almost see his brain working at this additional unexpected generosity, like he doesn’t know what to do with it.

In the end, he just says, more quietly than he’s said anything all evening, “Thanks. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Now, you gonna finish your beer or what?”

Alex looks dubiously down at his full mug of beer. Lifts it to his mouth.

“Whoa, hey, I didn’t say inhale it—shit, Hamilton, are you crazy, cut that out!”

Hamilton makes a noise like huuurghlgh and spews half the contents of the mug across the table before doubling over, choking. He looks very green, and for a second Herc is afraid he’s going to vomit, but he recovers his color, sits up and paws at his mouth in abject disgust.

“Fucking—what the fuck—what is—vile fucking shit—”

“All right, all right, take it easy,” says Herc, pulling out a handkerchief and mopping at the beer splattered all over Hamilton’s coat. He’s contrived to spray it backwards, somehow, so it’s dribbled into his hair and down the sides of his collar. “Look, forget what I said, I’m cutting you off. You got your stuff?”

Hamilton coughs several times, makes a face at Herc. “My…my stuff?”

Herc rather belatedly realizes he hadn’t seen Hamilton carrying a bag at any point in the evening. Good God. Lost in New York without a wallet, without connections, without anything but the clothes on his back. He’s lucky Herc found him, or he would’ve ended up dead in a gutter before the end of the week.

“Never mind. C’mon, up. We’re going.”

With a last vicious glare at the mug of beer, Hamilton gets up and follows Herc to the door and out of the tavern, and they set off for the house. It’s slow going; Hamilton’s unsteady on his feet, and keeps stumbling until Herc throws a steadying arm around his narrow shoulders. And what’s that about? He can’t possibly be drunk, not on a mouthful of beer he didn’t even swallow. Herc leans over and sniffs discreetly, willing to walk back on his earlier judgment of this kid is not an uncontrollable lush, but can’t detect a whiff of anything harder under the smell of the beer.

“It’s not far, your place, is it?” Hamilton says with a bit of an edge to his voice. He glances back over his shoulder towards the waterfront.

“Like ten, fifteen minutes’ walk. Not bad at all. Hey, don’t worry,” he says, clapping Hamilton on the shoulder and almost causing his knees to give out, “you stick around until after my shift’s done tomorrow, I’ll show you around town a little, help you get your bearings. You’ll be a New Yorker before you know it.”

“Yeah,” says Hamilton. He shivers. Looks back at the harbor. Catches Herc noticing, and points his face back homeward. “It’ll be fine. I’ll figure it out.”

“That’s the spirit. Watch the cobblestones there.”

Hamilton yelps and hits the ground. Herc hauls him back to his feet. It’s gonna be a long walk home.

--

(part the second)

[philly-osopher]

Macaroniverse headcanons, Angelica edition

So after I posted the last installment of the Macaroniverse, @herowndeliverance​ asked if there would ever be an Angelica/ Maria Cosway side-story, and that’s where these headcanons were born from :)

Available here on Ao3, if you’d prefer that format. Warnings for sexual content.

Part I

Look, normally it’s not Angelica’s style to publicly eviscerate the arguments of people who disagree with her in class. At least, it hasn’t been since sophomore year, when a professor actually took her aside and said, look, you’re brilliant, everybody knows you’re brilliant, but just… please let the other students breathe. So she had, and she’d kept the peace for a long time. But there Angelica was, a senior in this upper div policy course, and a younger girl, one she had tutored last year, no less, sort of stumbled over her point, and this obnoxious know-it-all boy had pointed out her error and gone on this long speech about all the reasons why this was the better idea and Angelica. Flayed. Him. Alive.

So when he cornered her in the dining hall the next day, she wasn’t expecting him to be actually pretty charming. And sheepish, once she’d pointed out to him that he’d been an obnoxious dick. Certainly she wasn’t expecting him to beg for more correction. He'd reread the text and refined his point. Still wrong, but wrong in an actually interesting way. They'd stayed and argued until the cafeteria closed and then returned to her dorm room and ended the encounter with his face between her thighs.

Aaaaand he was a freshman. Whoops.

Still, he was an adult, and he was not only talented but willing to take instruction, and as far as the sex went he seemed to prefer taking care of himself, which… maybe had some hangups, maybe he was some rare subcategory of ace, who knew. Angelica wasn’t about to look a gift fuck in the mouth, so to speak. Except Herc started giving her dirty looks everywhere and Herc got along with everyone and Angelica wasn't really used to the idea of making a faux pas without knowing it, so she'd gotten all worked up about it and asked him, except he'd said he couldn't tell her and she should ask Alex and... and well...

Yeah, she really, really should have asked earlier, because at that point Alex accused her of pitying him (true), of not even being attracted to him (false!), of using him (... true, she supposes, although she hadn’t really known it, had she? Hadn’t he had some responsibility to communicate?). And then when she'd tried to work it out he'd picked up his wounded pride and stormed out.

She'd written him a letter. A careful but heartfelt apology, after half a bottle of wine, with Eliza consulting by phone from an ocean away, that had boiled down to, I want to make this work. Eliza kept Angelica from veering off into either wallowing self-flagellation (her first instinct) or point-by-point rehashing and complete denial of responsibility (her second).

He answered her long letter with his own long letter, and she’d cried reading it, how hurt this boy was, not so much by her as by the world, and they’d gotten back together and didn’t really talk about it all that much again. And they'd never were exclusive with one another, but were so mutually obsessed that the question didn't arise. Like, usually Angelica is so intense she has to spread it across multiple people, but not with Alex. She loved showing off all her ideas to him, arguing and blowing off steam until early in the morning, taking it straight into the bedroom. It was glorious, for a couple months.

She knows deep down that what they’ve got going—good friends, nice benefits—isn’t going to be enough for him. She finds herself rereading his letter, feeling his loneliness and all his sharp edges, feeling a deep compulsion to make it better, to make him a Project. She could do that, maybe, could refine his heart the same way she’s refining his mind with every argument he comes this much closer to winning. But that’s not her strong suit—that’s Eliza’s, maybe, but now that Angelica’s had Alex, that would just feel… weird. She’s not really the type to share, and nor is Eliza, for that matter.

Still, she might be able to grow her relationship with Alex, if she just puts in enough time, and effort, and worry, except—except she's going to law school in New York next year, damnit, she's going to need every advantage, and Alex is taking so much of her time and her worry already, this boy has already become a Project for her and that's not fair, it's not her job to be his fucking… refiner and it's not his fault he needs refining but she can't afford to be slowed down. She’s already a black woman in America, does she really want to stack the deck against herself further? Why can’t she just get back together with Church and have a slick, safe boyfriend who will look great on Christmas cards?

And maybe she's worried deep down, too, that if she spends all her time polishing this boy up one day he might outshine her. Alex is that brilliant. That's a mark of respect, she tells herself, that she's started to see him as a rival and not an interesting intellectual toy. That's a mark of the work that she's already put in, all those nights of long debates and subtle corrections and just-right follow-ups. This, she tells herself, as she breaks up with him, two months before the end of her senior year, is the mark of a job well-done.

She was ready for him to be sad, but she wasn’t ready for the heartbreak that flooded into his eyes the minute she told him. He has to turn away for a moment. She doesn’t follow him, doesn’t put a hand on his shoulder. Pretends she has no idea what’s happening. It’s better that way—she doesn’t want to hurt his pride, when she’s already hurt so much else.

“I thought—I mean, I knew… law school, but I thought we had… I thought we had another couple months, I didn’t—”

“I need to get used to being by myself,” Angelica says, simply. “Stand on my own. Independence is really important.” Those reasons, at least, he’ll understand. All the others she’ll keep for herself.

“Yeah,” Alex rasps. Angelica wants to take his hand, turn him around, give him a hug, but their relationship was never all that huggy, anyway, and anyway, he's not her project anymore. It's a relief, to absolve herself of responsibility for Alex's emotions. She walks away, texting Herc as she goes. Hey, if you don’t see Alex at dinner tonight you should grab him something, okay? Herc will figure out what happened from that alone.

After they break up Alex seems to bounce back pretty fast. The first time they do lunch it’s weird, the careful deference they have for each other, never letting fingers touch, like even that would send them flying back over the edge. But gradually they learn to be comfortable in each others’ company again. After she moves to New York they Skype every so often. Angelica still really enjoys talking to him. That spark is still there, ready to be fanned into a flame. But she leaves confident that he'll return to her circle soon enough, refined by life and his own hard work. The question is whether she's willing to wait that long—or whether she'll find someone else in the interim.

Part II

Angelica's law firm had been getting their portraits done by Rick Cosway ever since his dad died a few years back and he inherited the business. She'd just made partner—youngest ever by about ten years, first woman, first person of color, no big deal—and she was so, so ready to have that portrait looming imposingly over everyone walking in the door. Yeah, that's Angelica Schuyler. No, she's not here to take your lunch order, she's a motherfucking partner, now show some goddamn respect.

Rick Cosway's studio is unexpectedly hip, in this strange shared makerspace warehouse in Brooklyn. His stodgy traditional half-done portraits look really out of place compared to... well... everything else in there. Angelica steps over a lot of extension cords in her Louboutins to get to the chair for her sitting.

Halfway through her sitting the guy gets up to take a fucking phone call. Well, that's unacceptable. Angelica had just wanted to send him a photograph anyway, but he'd insisted on her coming down to sit for the portrait and all the old white dudes at the firm had said it was a rite of passage and she'd wanted the full partner experience but whatever, this is bullshit. She gets up.

Literally as she's in the middle of walking imperiously out in her heels she sees something that makes her gasp. Makes her come to a full stop like she’s run into a fucking wall, and just stare. It's a painting, probably twelve feet high, of a woman, and she's smirking straight down at Angelica, arms crossed over her chest. She looks like a sailor, covered in old tattoos—but her body is also painted in the tattoo style, and the tattoos continue straight off her body, and as Angelica looks it's almost like she's reading a story of all the shit this Nasty Woman has overcome to get where she is and Angelica's just fucking. Blown away. This titanic figure is on her level, this is someone who gets her—

At the foot of the painting is a Latina woman very much covered in tattoos and Angelica realizes this is a self-portrait and feels like she's been struck by a fucking lightning bolt.

Just then Rick Cosway comes trotting up with an apologetic smile. "Sorry," he says, "important client. You know how it is." The woman with the tats is listening, Angelica can tell.

"First, I am an important client. Second, I don't need your services anymore," she says coldly. "I'm commissioning her."

Something in the unhurried way the woman turns around spooks Angelica. "... if she'll have me," she finishes, suddenly self-conscious. What if she's too corporate, too alpha-bitch, too uncool for this clearly very cool very creative very strong-willed woman?

"I dunno, Ricky, should I let her buy me a drink? Treat me real nice?" the woman asks.

Later—at the bar, in fact—Angelica learns that the two of them are married for tax and immigration purposes. She also learns that Maria works half as a painter, mostly portraits, and half as a tattoo artist, and has been profiled on 60 Minutes and gotten a goddamn genius grant and a shitton of awards.

Maria's not at all modest about any of these things, which is a relief because that way Angelica doesn't have to figure out a way to be subtle about working the fact that she was the first black female president of the Harvard Law Review into the conversation.

And when Maria raises an eyebrow and asks "wasn't that Obama's job once? Are you planning on following in his footsteps?" Angelica doesn't do her usual cute laugh and change the subject routine. She doesn't turn down any of the intensity in her voice when she says, "Absolutely."