Living a Lie [Jamilton]

Chapter 19

Warning they talk about drag queens in this chapter I don't know if that offends anyone but in case it does you've been warned

Thomas Jefferson was acting different. 

Everyone said so. 

People at work told him that he looked different, asked him if he'd changed his hair or gotten a new tie. 

He hadn't. 

He looked exactly exactly the same as he always had. 

It wasn't his looks that  had changed. It was his personality. 

He was happier. There was more bounce in his step, the smile on his face was no longer forced, but truly genuine. 

People no longer stopped him and asked him if he was feeling sick or if he'd gotten enough sleep last night. 

Why had Thomas changed? 

The answer was simple: Alexander Hamilton. 

Speaking to Alex brought him immense amounts of joy, perhaps more joy than he cared to admit to himself. Talking to Alex had a way of easing him, of soothing away his troubled thoughts and allowing him to relax for the first time in what felt like forever. His sharp wit and wacky sense of humor seemed to make all Thomas' problems melt away. When they talked on the phone, his laugh could make Thomas smile even on the darkest of days. 

A single text from Alex made Thomas smile like a giddy schoolgirl who had just gotten a text from her crush. His heart did backflips in his chest when his phone lit up with Alex's name. 

Gosh, he was in love. 

He knew that it was wrong to love Alex the way that he did, knew that in feeling this way he was betraying Lafayette, but he simply couldn't help it. The relationship between the heart and the mind was a strange one. The heart was a free spirit, often traipsing about pursuing its flights of fancy, heedless of the consequences that might arise or the very logical obstacles that might stand in its way. The mind was the logical one, trying hopelessly to reign in the heart and knock some sense into its careless counterpart. But the heart shrugged off the mind's warnings, leaving the mind to clean up the mess when it was done. 

But Thomas couldn't help himself. His heart had fallen head over heels in love wih Alex, and no matter how much the mind tried to convince it that being in love with him was wrong, that loving that man would lead to nothing but trouble and heartbreak, his heart refused to listen. His heart loved that man with the same intensity with which it had loved James Madison, perhaps even more intensity. The heart did not listen to the mind. It followed its own agenda, and logic and morals played no role in that. 

Later that night, Thomas was sitting on his couch procrastinating getting into the shower. It wasn't that he didn't want to take a shower, he loved being clean and the thought of going to bed without a shower made him want to throw himself into the Boston Harbor with all of Alex's gay founding fathers. The problem was the physical act of getting off of his soft couch and removing his warm clothes and getting into his cold shower and having to wait for the cold water to warm up. 

Just when Thomas was finally going to drag himself off of the couch to get into the shower, his phone buzzed. 

James Madison: Good evening, Thomas.

Thomas smiled. He'd been speaking to James a lot more as of late. Speaking to him didn't hurt anymore, didn't feel like he was staring through a window at something he'd once had then lost and had no chance of ever getting back.

Their interactions had changed too. They were no longer two ex-lovers awkwardly walking on eggshells around one another trying to avoid bringing up the fact that they were ex-lovers.