Broken- And Fixed Again- (A Jamilton Fanfic)

Chapter 33: Say Hi To The Jeffersons

//TW: mentions of depression, death, swearing, suggestive content\\

Alexander

I downed the warm, bitter coffee, reveling in the way it slid down the back of my throat. It defogged my mind, made the world just a bit sharper and more bearable. Thomas laughed as I refilled my cup a third time, with me muttering some nonsense apology as I did so.

"Didn't sleep well?" he asked, tending to the pancakes.

"I wouldn't say that. It's just...it's a lot bigger of a bed than I am used to. And softer, too."

Everything here is a lot different than I'm used to. One glance around, and it isn't hard to discover that I don't belong here. I stand out like a weed amongst roses, especially when compared to Thomas. He merged so effortlessly, the endless fields accepting him back into their arms without so much as an apology. And I was left standing there, staring at the boy who escaped.

But I'm honestly trying not to dwell on that.

Instead, I glued my attention to that easy smile that danced across his face, awakening that vicious swarm of butterflies within my stomach. Still, after all this time, they never faded.

"Don't tell me you actually like sleeping on that rock we have at home?"

I paused mid-sip, for something relaxed in my shoulders just to hear him utter that word. That even though we were standing directly in the center of the palace of his past, our tiny apartment wedged haphazardly in New York is what he considered his home. I smiled into the mug, before taking yet another sip of the coffee, which Thomas had prepared for me exactly the way I like it.

Black. Bitter. Its natural flavor still intact and not polluted by sugar and cream. The way God intended us to drink such a beverage, such a luxury.

"Yeah. It's comforting. Do you?"

"God, no," Thomas returned, his head falling back in a laugh. The sound was rich, sweet, and it bathed the room in such a relieving melody that I couldn't help but smile. He flashed me the widest grin I had seen from him in quite a while, before turning back to the oven and checking on the bacon once more. "It hurts my back, if I'm being honest."

"Well, don't be honest then."

He gasped, in over-dramatized fake shock that never failed to elicit a smile from my face, especially when coming from him. It melted my heart to see him this happy, this at ease after the storm had passed. "You'd rather I suffer in silence then confront you?"

"If it means sleeping on a bed that doesn't cave in whenever you lay on it, then, yes. I do."

"Wow," Thomas said, shaking his head. "You're addicted to that bed, Alexander. Perhaps it's time I staged an intervention." He paused, glancing at me as I finished the rest of my coffee. "Perhaps not as addicted as you are to that coffee, though."

"What can I say? Coffee is my one true love." He turned to me, crossing his arms. "What?"

"You're an ass."

The word, coupled with his absolute deadpan delivery, caught me completely off guard. It seemed so wrong coming from him, yet so right at the same time. And I laughed, almost falling off the stool as the joy gripped my body. One night spent lounging under the Virginia sky, and that is all it had taken for the pureness of the air to fill his body, to return him to the way things always should have been. That's all it had taken to reveal the beauty and the joy lurking underneath the fear that had once corrupted him so completely. And I would never be thankful enough to see it gone.