I would love you if your name was written nowhere

by Icarus_summer

Summary:

Alexander Hamilton worries about his legacy. John Laurens reassures him

Alexander Hamilton was, as he often was in such hours of the night, hunched over his desk, the room illuminated only by candlelight, his hand on his quill, writing. Writing as if he was running out of time. John could hear the very familiar sound of the tip of the feather scratching the paper, unstoppable.

John studied him, as he often did. He simply enjoyed watching Hamilton work. He simply enjoyed watching Hamilton do anything. It certainly helped that the man always looked handsome. When he worked, the sharp lines of his face, the restless energy that never seemed to settle, that all became more noticeable. His eyes shined with determination. It was a vision worthy of a painting.

That was the determination of a man who had decided to make something for himself. To carve his place into the world, to etch his name into the pages of history, to wield his pen as one would a weapon. It was beautiful, it was intense, it was dangerous. Just like fire, it could keep you warm or it could burn you.

Hamilton had not noticed him yet. That was a rare thing. Hamilton noticed everything. Every opportunity, every slight, every moment he could seize and shape into something lasting. But now, he was lost, his lips moving together with his hands as he crafted his next thought, his next line.

John stepped forward, the old wooden floor groaning under his weight. At last, Hamilton turned, quill pausing mid-air, turning to John with an affectionate smile.

“My dear, sneaking is a spy’s job.”

"You're working late," John murmured, wrapping his arms around the other soldier.

"Who said I was working?" Hamilton answered with a smirk, stretching his ink-stained fingers. “This is personal.”

Laurens looked over his shoulder. He could not understand it just at a glance. He feared only Alexander could understand his delirium. He did, however, admire the man’s ability to create entire realities with just his words.

To be a god is to create. And in those lines, Hamilton sewed his destiny. He had mention to Laurens before, his plans to change the Nation’s financial system. He thought himself the savior of Continental Economy. And Laurens thought that perhaps he was right. He knew Hamilton better than anyone else. And he knew that if there was someone to create a financial system capable of bringing their great country out of the debt that the war would surely leave them with, that person was named Alexander Hamilton.

But Hamilton was not as certain. That was the reason why he kept overworking himself. He believed he had to prove his valor at that very moment. And John could not help but be worried.

“My dear, the war is not yet done. If we are to battle soon, then I would like you to be rested.”

“As if his excellency would ever let me be in battle.” He rolled his eyes. “If he believes I can only be useful with my pen then I shall do exactly that. I shall not be a footnote in another man’s story, a mere soldier lost in the annals of war.”

Laurens started massaging his shoulders. Slowly, but with intent. Each movement a quiet plea, coaxing him back from the cliff-edge of thought where obsession had fastened its grip. “Isn’t your job as aide enough proof of value? Your deeds in Brandywine? In Monmouth?

Hamilton scoffed, but there was no humor in it. "Enough? John, men die every day, and the earth forgets them as soon as the wind carries away the last breath from their lips. I will not be one of those men."

John could see he was preparing himself for a speech, so he sat down. If uninterrupted, Hamilton could go on for hours. Hamiton got up, leaning on the table. At least he stopped writing. With a confidence that only he could muster at this impromptu speech, he started:

“There are two certainties in this life. You shall be born. And you shall die. For even the ones who go too soon, who live just fleeting moments in our world, they breath their first air and they cry for they are already dying. Not the cleverest, the strongest, the agilest, none have escaped this fate.”

Laurens waited. He was clearly going somewhere. Alexander moved his hand, in that way he always seemed to talk while gesturing. Maybe that was what had entranced him so much. It was impossible to look away.

“Man has tried to avoid this ever since man was man. Since the beginning of time, humanity searched for immortality. Each with their own ways. The Philosophers’ stone. The Fountain of Youth. Even so, none have achieved that... Or so we thought. Cicero, Alexander, Caeser. Tell me, what those men have in common?”

Laurens let his head fall slightly, eyes wide. “They were... ancient?”

He laughed. “Yes, but not quite, dear. You see, these men walked on earth century ago and yet we still speak those names with reverence. We still know and share their thoughts, their beliefs, their lives. This, my friend, is true immortality. At least the closest humankind will ever achieve. To be remember after a thousand— no, two thousand years!” His words were more feverishly now. His eyes were bright with mania. It was incredible but also terrifying. “People shall still say your name. They shall make marble statues of your likeness. It does not matter if people who knew you are already dead, for they will talk about you to their children, who will them tell their children. And you ought to be immortalized. A demigod. A hero. A legend.”

Laurens should have said something. He wanted to. But in truth, he was impressed. In awe, even. Who else could speak like that? Who else could stand there with nothing but his mind and make the future sound like scripture?

At seventeen, Alexander had survived a hurricane. But Laurens sometimes wonder if the man hadn’t simply absorbed the hurricane unto himself. Taken wind and rain and the wrath of nature to fuel him, the raw fury of a force beyond comprehension, lightning in in his eyes, electricity in his touch. Laurens admired him like the force of nature he was. He talked like a prophet, like a storm bottled in that frail, thin flesh. He wished not just to build a financial system, but shape a country, drafted by his hand, revised and argue it into being.

“Think of Achilles. He knew he was to die in the war against Troy, but he went anyway. He could've stay in his kingdom and live to be an old man, but he knew that he would still live less if he had not gone than if he fought and die with glory. Because yes, his body was gone, but his name, his legacy, that lives on.”

John did not know how to stop him once he got like this. Alexander’s words worried him. His desire for martyrdom. Achilles and his lover had died. Who cared about legacy and the things the people who lived would say if they were both dead? John would prefer to stay with Alexander, to make their own memories. It was not like they could be honest about their nature, about their love, so what use was that legacy if it was incomplete?

“But, Alex—”

Alexander moved to hold John, he grabbed both of his arms with intensity and conviction. It was night and cold, but Alexander was warm. He was always burning inside, burning from within like a star doomed to consume itself. Being next to him was just like being next to a hearth. Not long ago, back in Monmouth, Alexander had almost died from dehydration and overheating. Ever since, John worried for him at any sign of fever.

“If I had died years ago, back in St. Croix when no one knew my name, when I was just a poor bastard, no one would mourn me, John. My mother would be dead too. My father was already gone, my brother might’ve wept but he would live.” He spoke with the objection of a man narrating someone else's story. Completely detached. But Laurens knew better. He could hear it, the trembling beneath the words, the exhaustion of a man who was plagued by memories. “And even now, sure, you might shed some tears. Meade, Lafayette, maybe His Excellency.”

John could not believe he was really hearing this. Did Alexander really thought he wouldn’t be mourned? How could he? Did he not know that John, same as Achilles, would be lost without Alexander, without his Patroclus? He would die to avenge him and then let their ashes be mixed so that they would stay together in the afterlife.

“I wouldn’t just ‘shed some tears’, Alexander. I would be devastated.” John grabbed him with the same intensity. “Do you understand that?”

“Yes, but soon, although I wish that soon in comparison to the time Earth has existed and not in comparison to our contemporaries, soon you will die as well. And so will everyone who fought by our side. And what will they say of me? Who will remember the secretary?”

“I will remember. I won’t let you be forgotten, Hamilton. Even after I am gone.” He reached for Hamilton's hand, fingers sliding against his palm, calloused from war and work alike. He gripped it tightly, grounding them both in that moment.

Alexander looked down at their joined hands. His jaw twitched. He simply sighed, not gripping John’s hand with near the same strength. He let his head fall to the ground.

“That’s a nice sentiment, my dear Laurens. Yet, I want to be more than just a fleeting breath in a dying man's chest.” He pulled his hand back; in the way a man pulled an anchor so he could sail. “People think death is when your body starts bleeding. When you close your eyes and don't open them anymore. Thats not true. Death, my friend, real death, is when the last person in the world who knew your name suddenly doesn't know it anymore. Forgets. Die. And you are gone to history. Only your actions remain, and even those are cursed to be only the actions who are remembered.”

“You think legacy is the only thing that can keep you breathing,” John murmured. “But you’re wrong.”

Alexander looked at him, with a sad shine in his violet eyes, the look of a man who was close to tears.

“You’ve already changed the world, Alex. You changed mine. If all the statues fell, if every word you wrote was burned, if the world forgets you tomorrow, I wouldn’t. I would carry you in my heart. And even after I am gone, that love won’t be gone with me. It will stay on the air, on each leaf, on the singing of the birds. You want a legacy, but I want you. I would be satisfied if I had nothing but you.”

Alexander’s gaze lingered on him, his mouth slightly parted, his brow drawn as though caught between disbelief and surrender. His eyes, always sharp, always brimming with thoughts that moved too fast for the world to keep up, were suddenly still. Laurens realized then that he didn’t believe him.

He was so brilliant, but so blind to his own sagacity. Like Icarus, he kept flying higher and higher, closer to the sun, not realizing his wings were melting.

“I would love you if your name was written nowhere," John said, voice steady, unshaken. "If no one ever spoke of you again, if every word you penned vanished into the void, if history forgot you as if you never lived. I would still love you."

Hamilton blinked. Whatever retort had been forming behind those sharp eyes died before reaching his lips. Laurens held Hamilton’s face with both of his hands, making he look at him, at his eyes, making he see how certain Laurens was, how much he loved him.

John smiled, just a little and his thumb caressed Alexander’s cheek. "Your mind, your ambition, your penmanship... They are remarkable, yes. But they are not why I love you." His thumb brushed over Hamilton’s lips, and he touched their foreheads. "You could have been anyone. You could have been a farmer, a sailor, a man with no legacy, no laurels. You could’ve still be that orphan boy in St, Croix. And still, I would have found you. And still, I would have loved you."

Alexander leaned forward. The space between them was small, yet it felt vast, like the edge of a precipice. And then he kissed him. It was a soft kiss, at first. His mouth pressed to Laurens’ as if afraid he might shatter if he pushed too hard. But Laurens responded with quiet certainty, one hand reaching to hold Alexander’s waist, pulling him closer.

But eventually he pulled away. And the sadness in his eyes was still there.

"You say that now." He reached out slowly, like someone handling something fragile, and his fingers ghosted along Laurens’ cheekbone, tracing the curve down to his jaw. "But years from now, when we're nothing but dust, what will we have left? What will they say of us?" He glanced at Laurens, eyes sharp, searching. "You say you'd love me even if my name was written nowhere. But I need my name to be somewhere. I’m not like you, who’s family legacy was already written before you were born. I am the only one responsible for my name.”

He grabbed Hamiltons hand and put it on the left of his chest, just above his beating heart. "Your name is here. Is that not enough?"

Hamilton pulled back ang got out, supporting his weight on the table. He fell as if the ground was shaking on his feet.

“I want them all to remember.”

“Alexander, pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

“I know,” he said. “God help me, I know. But what am I supposed to do, John? Crawl? Wait my turn while lesser men sit on thrones they never earned? Watch the world break and pretend I cannot fix it?”

He moved toward John, hands trembling slightly. Whether from fatigue or fury or maybe the copious amount of coffee, he couldn’t tell anymore.

“I survived a storm when I was a child. Everyone else prayed, and I wrote. When my prayers to God were met with indifference, I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance. That’s what I am. I create things. I make sense from chaos. I don’t want to fall into the sea, Jack, but I’d rather scorch in the sky than be forgotten in the dirt.”

“Very well.” Laurens moved away. “I’ll leave you to it. But don’t forget, I am here for you. I am yours. Always.” He got out of the room and his hands, shaking, levitated on top of the handle. “You know, you don’t have to set yourself on fire just to be seen.”

He turned before Alexander could answer. If he didn’t, he knew he might not find the strength to leave. And he closed the door behind him. He’d done everything he could. And it was not enough. He stood there for a long moment, palm still pressed flat against the wood as if he could feel Alexander’s heat through it. But the fire was on the other side now, unreachable. And he was left in the cold corridor, alone.

He let his hand fall and went back to his room.

Now alone, Hamilton let out a slow breath, shaking his head. He wanted to believe that. He wanted to believe that he was worth loving no matter what. He truly did. But love, no matter how fierce, was fragile. It faded. It could be erased. He didn’t want to be loved, he wanted to be inevitable. If he was loved, he would be remembered by those who favored him. But if he was a pivotal, crucial man in history, even his enemies would be forced to speak his name.

Hamilton stood at his desk, fingers tracing absentmindedly over the spine of a book: Plutarch’s Lives, its edges worn from years of handling. The candlelight flickered against the open pages, casting shadows over the names of men who had shaped the world: Alexander, Caesar, Cicero. Names carved into history, unshaken by time.

He exhaled sharply and turned away, pacing the length of the room.

What was he, compared to them? A bastard from the West Indies? A nameless secretary? His bones would turn to dust as surely as any other man’s, but their words, their deeds, their conquests… They remained. Cicero’s speeches still stirred men to action, Alexander’s name was whispered with reverence, Caesar’s death had shaped an empire. They had not been forgotten.

That was the difference.

Laurens had spoken of love, of remembrance held in the fragile walls of a single heart, but Alexander needed more. He looked back at the book, at the Latin inscriptions, the testaments to great men. Their names had not faded. Their words had not turned to dust. And neither would his.

His gaze returned to the name at the top of the page. Alexander.

The name he carried. The name of a king. If he ought to be remembered, his competition was Alexander the Great. Of course he had to apply himself. Of course he had to be greater.

Hamilton had devoured every account of his ancient namesake, as a child he dreamt of leaving a legacy like his. To create one of the largest empires by the age of thirty. Those who feared, those who loved him, they all remembered him. His empire had crumbled, his body had decayed, but the world still spoke his name with awe.

That was what Hamilton craved.

Yet he had no army, no throne, no endless lands to claim. His battlefield was not waged with swords but with ink and paper. But if the greek Alexander had taken his empire by force and battle, Hamilton would take his with words and arguments. He would not let his name die in obscurity. He would build something that endured, something stronger than war, something that was going to outlive him.

He reached for his quill, dipped it into ink, and let the black strokes form his signature at the bottom of the page. Alexander Hamilton.

Notes:

heres a funny image to yall: me late at night pacing while working on Hamiltons feverish monologue out loud lol