AFTER THE STORM
A Jamilton fanfic featuring two broken old men in the modern era
Word count - 3.6k
CHAPTER THREE
The sky was the kind of gray that felt like it might never change—thick clouds stitched across the horizon like a closed wound. The air smelled like damp pavement and rotting leaves, the kind of Southern winter that didn’t quite commit to being cold. Thomas Jefferson pulled into his driveway, headlights briefly illuminating the pale shutters of his house before dimming to silence.
He sat in the car longer than necessary, engine off, fingers still wrapped around the steering wheel. Another day done. A long one. The spring concert was two months away, and middle schoolers had the collective focus of moths. He’d spent an hour trying to get the brass section to stop laughing every time someone squeaked.
When he finally made it inside, the familiar creak of the wooden floors greeted him. His house was always quiet. The kind of quiet that used to needle at him when he first moved in. He used to play music just to fill the silence, to keep from thinking. Now he’d gotten used to it. Grown into it like a second skin. The rooms didn’t echo so much as hum with his routine. Keys in the bowl. Shoes by the door. Jacket over the stair banister. All neat. All controlled.
He rounded the corner into the kitchen and froze.
“Jesus Christ!”
His voice ricocheted off the cabinets.
Standing there, by the fridge, was a woman he hadn’t seen in three years.
Anna.
His youngest sister.
She stood with arms crossed, eyes narrowed, and an anger that was far too loud for the silence around them.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” she said, voice flat.
“You—” Thomas ran a hand over his mouth. “You broke into my house?”
“You leave your back door unlocked. Still paranoid of alarm systems?”
He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. She was the last person he expected to see standing in his kitchen on a Thursday evening.
“You gonna offer me something, or just stand there looking like I slapped you?”
“You did just appear in my kitchen like a damn ghost,” he muttered, walking past her to grab a glass of water. His hands were shaking slightly, but he hid it.
Anna didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just stared at him like she’d been carrying this moment in her back pocket for years.
“You didn’t come,” she said finally.
He turned slowly, the glass still half-full in his hand. “Come to what?”
“The funeral.”
The word didn’t land. Not immediately.
“What…funeral?”
She stared at him. Not like she was surprised, but like she was disgusted. “Don’t act like you don’t know.”
“Anna,” he said, a slow realization settling behind his eyes. “Are you telling me…Dad’s dead?”
She didn’t answer. Just let the silence confirm it.
Thomas blinked once, then twice. His stomach didn’t drop. His heart didn’t race. There was no immediate surge of grief. No nausea. Just the sharp crack of something old and hollow.
“When?”
“Three days ago.”
He put the glass down. “No one told me.”
“Oh, sure,” she snapped. “Because no one in this town knows where to find Thomas Jefferson, right? No idea how to get ahold of the Great Music Teacher of Lexington, Virginia.”
“I changed my number, Anna.”
“You changed more than that.”
He looked at her. Really looked. Her coat was still damp from rain. Her hair was shorter now, chin-length and darker. Her cheeks were pink from the cold. But her mouth—the way it pulled down at the corners, clenched like she was biting back the real words—was the same.
“You could’ve called the school,” he said weakly. “I would’ve come if I’d known.”
“You didn’t come when Mom left.”
“That wasn’t the same.”
“You didn’t come when Louisa had her baby.”
“I sent a gift.”
“You didn’t come to the hospital when Carrie had her miscarriage.”
Thomas winced. “I didn’t know about that either.”
“Bullshit.”
Her voice was louder now. She took a step closer.
“You think because you ran away and play piano for teenagers that it absolves you of the name we all still carry? You think buying a house with inheritance money and sipping whiskey alone every night makes you anything but his son?”
“Stop it.”
“No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to stand there and pretend like you didn’t make a choice to leave us.”
“I had to leave.”
“Why? Because it was hard? Because staying meant facing what we grew up with?”
“Because I was suffocating!” he shouted. “Because every room in that house made me want to rip my skin off. Because I couldn’t breathe there without hearing his voice in my head. That’s why I left.”
Anna blinked, startled.
“I didn’t run because I didn’t care,” he said, quieter now. “I ran because if I didn’t, I wasn’t gonna survive.”
Silence.
Thomas leaned on the counter. His knuckles were white around the edge of it. His breath came heavy, but even.
Anna’s voice was smaller now. “He left you everything.”
Thomas looked up. “What?”
“In the will. The house, the land, the stocks, all of it. No mention of us. Just you.”
Thomas laughed, bitter and short. “Of course he did.”
Anna said nothing.
“He always wanted to shape me into him,” Thomas muttered. “The next politician. The prodigy. I was the only one who ever…did what he said. Until I didn’t.”
“He thought you’d come back.”
“He was wrong.”
A long, heavy silence settled between them. Anna crossed her arms tighter, her face unreadable.
“You live a stupid, perfect little life here,” she said finally. “And you pretend it isn’t all built on Jefferson money. You act like you’re some enlightened, better man. But you’re still him.”
That hit.
Thomas’s eyes snapped to hers. His jaw clenched.
“Get the fuck out of my house.”
Anna blinked.
“I’m serious,” he said, stepping toward her. “You wanna come back and yell at me for missing a funeral I didn’t know about? Fine. You wanna say I abandoned you? Fine. But don’t come into my house and call me him.”
Anna didn’t move.
“You don’t get to say that,” he hissed. “You don’t know what he did to me.”
Her mouth opened, then shut again. Her expression faltered.
Thomas pointed to the door. “Get out, Anna. Before I make you.”
She turned slowly, eyes glassy with something that wasn’t quite tears. Maybe it was disappointment. Maybe just exhaustion.
She didn’t slam the door behind her. She didn’t yell anything else.
He watched from the window as she walked down the street toward a silver rental car parked under the streetlight. She didn’t look back.
When the taillights disappeared, Thomas closed the curtains and sat down on the couch.
It was quiet again. The kind of quiet that wasn’t peaceful—just empty.
His father was dead.
And he could care less.
The echo of Anna’s footsteps had long faded into the night, but her words clung to the walls of the house like smoke. His breath came in shallow waves. He stood in the darkened entryway of his home, one hand on the door handle, the other limp at his side.
“She said I’m just like him,” he muttered aloud, to no one.
The silence didn’t disagree.
His mouth was dry. His chest felt too tight. And there, underneath all of it, was the brittle edge of something else—something he didn’t want to name. Not grief. Not anger. Something older.
Thomas grabbed his coat, shrugged it over his shoulders, and left.
He knew where he was going.
—
By the time he reached the edge of town, the streets were cracked and uneven, dotted with broken streetlights and closed storefronts with metal shutters pulled down. Neon flickered in the distance—half-lit signs advertising pawn shops, liquor stores, and twenty-four-hour diners that never looked clean enough to risk.
Thomas drove with the windows down. The air was thick with the smell of exhaust, fried food, and something musty, almost damp. It wasn’t the kind of place most people in Lexington knew. Hell, most people in his circle didn’t know it existed. But he’d found it years ago. In his twenties. A different life.
He parked in the alley behind an abandoned laundromat. There were no lights except the faint glow from a cracked red bulb hanging above an unmarked metal door. No sign. No name. Just the dented steel and a rusted buzzer.
He pressed it once. Then twice.
The door clicked open.
The inside smelled like sweat, old smoke, and perfume that was maybe two decades out of date. But it was warm. The walls were a deep plum, covered in old posters and faded event flyers: Lipstick Revolution, 2003, Kings and Queens of the Night, Open Mic Queer Voices. One corner still had glitter stuck to it.
There used to be more drag shows. Before the town cracked down. Before the “concerned citizens” held their damn rallies. One night, a protest turned violent, and a few of the queens moved away. A few didn’t.
Thomas had been here that night.
Now, the place was quieter. More low-key. The stage was still there, though it hadn’t seen a real show in months. The music was low—Prince’s “When Doves Cry” crackled through the speakers—and a few patrons were slouched at booths, nursing cheap drinks and dreams too heavy to carry home.
He slipped inside like he belonged there. Because in some ways, he did.
No one looked twice at him. That was the comfort of this place. Everyone had their own ghosts.
He sat at the far end of the bar.
A heavyset bartender with lavender eyeliner and chipped silver nails raised an eyebrow. “Whiskey?”
Thomas nodded. “Neat.”
The glass landed in front of him with a quiet clink. He didn’t sip it right away. Just stared at the brown ripple of liquid. His reflection shimmered in the curve of the glass, fractured.
“Rough night?” the bartender asked.
Thomas gave a low laugh. “You could say that.”
He didn’t offer more, and they didn’t ask.
That was the other comfort of this place—no one pressed. You could be whoever the hell you needed to be for one night. Just another shadow in the dark.
He finally took a sip. It burned, but the burn was welcome. Grounding. It gave him something to focus on besides the dull weight sitting behind his ribs.
He leaned back against the worn leather of the barstool and glanced around.
Two men were whispering at a table near the stage—one wearing too much cologne, the other wearing army boots. A trans woman with long curls and a denim jacket sat at the jukebox, flipping through the song list with a bored expression. A cluster of friends laughed in the back corner, loud and unapologetic, their joy like a middle finger to the world outside.
Thomas closed his eyes for a moment.
This place had saved him once. A long time ago.
He had been twenty-one and fresh out of college when he first stumbled through that rusted door. Back when he was still pretending to be straight. Back when his father had just announced his Senate run and needed his son to look “polished and traditional.” He was supposed to go to law school. Join a campaign. Date a nice girl. Make speeches.
Instead, he’d kissed a man in the alley behind this bar and cried about it for an hour afterward.
Now here he was again. Older. Still hiding. Just… better at it.
He finished his drink and ordered another.
It was past ten now. The place filled up a little more. Soft laughter. A shuffle of heels. The low thump of a new song on the speakers—Sylvester, “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).”
The music was like a balm. A gentle reminder that joy was still possible. Even here. Even now.
“Mind if I sit?”
Thomas opened his eyes.
The speaker was a man, maybe thirty-five, in a corduroy jacket and too-tight jeans. His eyes were kind, and his body language relaxed.
Thomas shook his head. “Be my guest.”
The man slid onto the stool next to him. “You new?”
“No. Just haven’t been around in a while.”
“I’m Jesse,” the man offered.
“Tom.”
“Good to meet you, Tom.”
They shook hands. Jesse’s fingers were warm.
“Rough day?” Jesse asked.
“You have no idea.”
“I can listen. If you want.”
Thomas gave him a crooked smile. “Thanks, but I’m not sure I’m good company tonight.”
Jesse shrugged. “Then I’ll just keep you quiet company. I’ve got nowhere else to be.”
Thomas didn’t argue.
They sat like that for a while, drinks in hand, the kind of silence that wasn’t awkward. Just… companionable. Like they were both clinging to the same rope in different storms.
Eventually, Jesse excused himself to go to the restroom.
Thomas stayed. He let his gaze drift to the stage again. The lights flickered above it, casting shadows that danced like ghosts. He remembered a queen named Mona Devine. She used to perform here every Friday. Had a voice like thunder and lips always painted crimson. She once told him, “You can’t outrun yourself, sugar. You just end up getting tired.”
He wondered where she was now.
He downed the rest of his drink and felt the buzz start to warm his chest.
It was nearing midnight.
He didn’t want to go home.
Not to the empty house. Not to the silence. Not after tonight.
Anna’s voice still echoed in his ears.
You’re still him.
Thomas shook his head, as if that might dispel the thought.
He wasn’t.
He was a music teacher. He wore lavender cologne. He helped twelve-year-olds tune their flutes and taught them to love Stevie Wonder. He went to therapy now. He drank oat milk. He wasn’t Peter fucking Jefferson.
Right?
A slow song came on—Brandi Carlile. “The Joke.”
Thomas stared at the stage again. Something in his chest cracked.
He stood up, threw a twenty on the bar, and made his way to the back exit. He needed air. He needed to remember who he was.
Outside, the alley was quiet.
He leaned against the brick wall and closed his eyes.
The night was cold against his face. But it didn’t feel punishing. It just… was.
Thomas stood still, back pressed to the brick wall, the smoke from his cigarette curling lazily into the air. The sounds from inside the bar had dimmed, replaced by the occasional gust of wind or the distant hum of a car on the highway. It was quiet out here. Private. This alley was a barrier between two worlds—the chaos of the bar behind him and the bitter quiet of the rest of the city. It was a sliver of space where he didn’t have to choose who to be.
He let the cigarette burn low in his fingers, his thoughts stuck in a loop—Anna’s face, the rawness in her voice, the echo of her anger. It clung to him, made his clothes feel heavier, like grief that didn’t quite fit.
He heard footsteps too late.
At first, he thought it was someone from the bar, maybe Jesse coming out for a smoke, or the bartender tossing something into the trash bins—but the stride was too measured. Not stumbling. Deliberate. The hairs on his neck stood up as he turned his head—
And froze.
There, just a few feet away, half-lost in the shadow of the narrow alley’s entryway, stood Alexander Hamilton.
Thomas blinked.
Alex’s posture stilled just as fast, like someone had pressed pause. His eyes widened, hazy in the low light, brows scrunching as he adjusted to what he was seeing. The jacket, the sharp lines of his face, the permanent set of exhaustion in his shoulders. It was unmistakably him.
“…Jefferson?” he said, voice low and wary.
Thomas instinctively pushed off the wall, cigarette falling to the concrete and extinguishing under his heel. “Hamilton.”
They stared at each other.
Neither of them moved.
The awkwardness hit almost immediately, sharp and uncomfortable. It didn’t help that the alley reeked faintly of piss and whiskey, or that the door behind Thomas was humming softly with pulsing music—music Alexander would absolutely recognize if he got too close.
“Didn’t expect to see you here,” Alex said after a beat. His tone wasn’t accusatory. More… confused. Curious, even.
Thomas’s mouth opened, then closed. He had to say something. Anything but the truth.
“I was—just getting some air,” he offered, too quickly. “Needed to clear my head.”
Alex squinted slightly. “Out here?”
“Sure,” Thomas said, leaning into his practiced casualness. “Some of us have taste for sketchy alleys, you know. Gets the blood pumping.”
Alex didn’t laugh, but his mouth twitched like he almost did. “Could’ve picked a better part of town for that.”
Thomas shrugged. “I’m not as fragile as I look.”
Alex gave him a look that didn’t quite say “bullshit,” but wasn’t far off. He tucked his hands in the pockets of his jacket and took a slow step forward, eyes scanning the space, the surrounding buildings, the flickering red bulb above the door.
Thomas tensed subtly.
Please don’t ask about the door. Don’t recognize the place.
“Didn’t think teachers from Ruary strolled down here after dark,” Alex muttered, but it felt more like thinking aloud than accusing.
“I could say the same to you,” Thomas said quickly, redirecting the spotlight. “What are you doing here? Looking for a fight? Or just your next bad decision?”
Alex snorted under his breath, tired but not irritated. “Neither. I just wanted a drink.”
Thomas raised a brow. “In an alley?”
“No, jackass. There’s a bar down this way. At least, I thought there might be.”
Shit.
Thomas’s pulse jumped. He shifted his weight, half-blocking the door behind him as casually as possible. “Most places don’t stay open past ten around here.”
Alex gestured toward the cracked neon sign on a building nearby. “Yeah, I figured, but…” He trailed off. His jaw flexed. “I dunno. I was hoping. had a bad day.”
Thomas tilted his head, studying him.
Alex didn’t elaborate. His shoulders were hunched slightly, like something was weighing on him—not physically, but emotionally. There was something brittle behind his eyes, something barely held together.
“You okay?” Thomas asked before he could stop himself.
Alex looked at him for a long moment. “You ever just… want to be somewhere no one expects to find you?”
Thomas smiled bitterly. “Yeah. I’m familiar.”
Their eyes met.
It was a fragile connection, nothing spoken outright, but Thomas felt something stretch between them. A kind of mutual understanding. Two people who lived most of their lives pretending to be whole in front of others.
The silence hung there, dense with things neither could say.
Thomas cleared his throat. “You won’t find anything open here this time of night. You should probably head home.”
Alex looked up at the sky. The streetlights cast orange shadows. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Didn’t really expect to find anything anyway.”
“Still,” Thomas said, folding his arms over his chest, “not the safest area.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “I fought in a war, Jefferson. I can handle an alley.”
Thomas chuckled despite himself. “Alright, soldier. Whatever you say.”
Alex finally cracked a small smile.
It didn’t last long, but it was real.
He turned slightly, glancing down the alley toward the street. “Well. Thanks for the public safety announcement.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I won’t.”
Alex paused again, hand on his keys, like he wanted to say something else but didn’t have the words.
Instead, he offered a half-wave and said, “Goodnight.”
Thomas nodded. “Night, Hamilton.”
And just like that, Alexander turned and walked off, the sound of his boots echoing against the concrete.
Thomas watched him go.
He waited until Alex was gone from sight, his figure swallowed by the dark curve of the street corner, before he allowed himself to breathe.
His hands were shaking again.
He leaned back against the wall and looked up at the red light above the door, still flickering. Still untouched.
God.
That could’ve gone worse.
It could’ve gone so much worse.
He’d managed to avoid mentioning the bar. Managed not to give away anything. But it had been close. Too close. If Alex had gotten just a little closer… if he’d heard the music, caught a flash of someone walking out in fishnets or stilettos—
Thomas shuddered.
He didn’t know how Hamilton would react. The man was an ex-soldier. Tough. Burned around the edges in a way Thomas still didn’t fully understand. Would he be disgusted? Would he pull away? Would he tell someone?
No. That last one didn’t feel like Alex. But the others?
Thomas didn’t know.
He pressed his palms against his face, trying to force the heat from his skin.
The worst part?
He’d wanted to talk to him. For months.
And now that they’d crossed paths—accidentally, out of nowhere—he still didn’t know how to talk to him. Didn’t know how to stop treating him like something sharp and distant.
He pulled his coat tighter around himself and turned toward the bar door.
Then hesitated.
Instead of going back inside, Thomas walked to the edge of the alley, stared down the same path Hamilton had disappeared down.
He watched the empty street for a long time.
Something about that interaction had left him hollowed out. Not in a painful way. Not like Anna. This was different.
Lonelier.
Because in that moment, with their eyes locked and their walls still up, he realized how similar they were. Two men shaped by silence. By expectations. By the terrible things they didn’t say.
And now Alex was walking away again, like always.
And Thomas let him.
He didn’t know what he was protecting more—his secrets or his pride.
But it didn’t matter now.
The bar door buzzed behind him as someone stepped out for a smoke.
He turned back into the dark, swallowed by the lightless part of town, wondering when, if ever, it would feel safe to tell someone like Alexander Hamilton who he really was
