#philly-osopher

the sort-of sequel to this fic:

“Hey, man, how’ve you been?”

John glances up from his laptop to find a ghost from spring break leaning over the front desk. Thom grins at him like they’re old friends instead of one-time camping neighbors who haven’t interacted in months. “Did your kids pass their finals?”

“Um. Yeah? Sure.” He thinks Ethan dropped out to pursue a music performance track, but he never verified that. He looks past Thom to his daughters — Martha and Marie, he remembers. “Are you here to adopt a pet?”

“Nah, the ASPCA ads stopped having an effect, so we thought we’d see the animals in person.” Thom rolls his eyes, without letting go of that good-natured smile. “We’re looking to expand our family.”

“We want a dog,” Martha says. Her sister nods solemnly.

“Well, that’s a big decision,” John tells her. “We have a lot of dogs that need good homes. Maybe we can meet some and —”

“John! Kitten said her first word!” Alex explodes out of the back room, pulls up short when he sees Thom and the girls. If it were midcycle, his fur would be standing on end and he might perk his ears; since it’s new moon, or close enough, his brows wrinkle and his nose twitches, subtly sniffing at their visitors.

“This is my boyfriend,” John says, to cover for him. “He, uh, helps out when we’re short-staffed.”

“Alexander Hamilton.” He sticks out his hand.

Thom stares, glancing between the two of them. “Thomas Jefferson, professor of philosophy.” He doesn’t shake Alex’s hand. Alex’s mouth tightens in a way that John recognizes as the precursor to baring his teeth, but then — “These are my girls, they’re looking to adopt a pet. I think they could handle some extra responsibility.”

Alex drops to a crouch, arms propped on his knees. “Hmm. Yes, you both seem quite mature. Do you know what kind of dog you want?”

“Fast,” Marie says, at the same time Martha says, “Smart.”

“Those are good things.” Alex shoots John a wry grin. Like he doesn’t think his werewolf boyfriend is a genius — it’s the tugging on his leash John minds. He’d like to keep his shoulder in its socket, thank you very much. “I can think of a couple that might meet your qualifications. Let’s go say hi and find you a new friend.”

For someone who doesn’t hesitate to call a Twitter troll an “ignorant fuckwit with less common sense than a cockroach,” Alex is good with kids. He likes them, asks lots of genuine questions and lets them talk, nodding or making additional points. He takes the Jefferson girls to the back room and introduces them to a couple of dogs — he also translates Misty and Plato’s noises for them, rattling off their favorite spots to be scratched and what they like about the girls. Marie giggles when Plato, a terrier-mix, swipes a lick to her nose, his puppy-thin tail whipping his sides in excitement. “He likes you,” Alex confirms, his own body almost vibrating with barely-contained energy.

John hopes the Jeffersons think his boyfriend is just quirky.

Thom seems less than interested in getting on the floor and letting mutts run over him. John tells him about how terriers are clever but require firm discipline so they don’t develop bad habits.

“Was it hard training your dog?” Thom asks.

“My… oh? Alex?”

“Funny your dog and your boyfriend have the same name.”

John feels his blood go cold. “Ha, yeah. I, uh, I adopted Alex first. Weird coincidence.”

“Hmm.”

“But, no, it wasn’t hard. Training him. He’d been through a lot. I mean, he went through a bad chewing phase, and I made some unexpected Ikea trips.” John swallows, wills himself to stop rambling. “But it was worth it.”

Alex glances back and smiles at him.

Marie gets down on her hands and knees and barks, a childish sound interspersed with laughter. Plato yips and darts around her, trying to get her to play. Martha giggles. “Dad, I want this one.”

“He seems… feisty.”

“His name is Plato. You like Plato.”

“The Grecian Plato wouldn’t pee on my carpet.”

“This one won’t, either,” Alex says quickly. “But if you have a garden, you might want to keep him out of it, I think he’s a digger.”

Thom’s lips press together in obvious distaste.

Marie scoops Plato into her lap and gives her father a Sad Face. Plato squirms, but even John has to admit the face is pretty effective despite that. Her lower lip juts out and quivers, curls hanging over her big shining eyes. “Daaaaaaaad.”

Plato whines.

“He’ll be sad if we just leave him,” Martha says. “We spent all this time playing and then we go home without him? He’s gonna think it was his fault.”

“He needs a good home,” Alex adds. “Somewhere he can run around, get lots of attention. He’s young, too, so he should be trainable.”

John nods. “A friend of mine runs an obedience school, if you want a recommendation.”

“Seems like I’m outnumbered.” Thom kneels down and Plato wriggles out of Marie’s arms to scamper over to him, licking his outstretched hand. “Well, it’s your choice, girls. Little fella is pretty cute.”

Minutes later, he’s signing adoption papers. Alex presses his forehead to Plato’s, silent wolf goodbye, before handing him over to Martha, who buries her face in his wiry tan fur. He twists around to give sloppy kisses to her cheek and neck. Thom scratches his ears. “Maybe our furry philosopher here will be making a class field trip.”

Alex elbows John.

John rolls his eyes. “No.”

Thom gets a weird expression; as a distraction, John reminds him that Plato has had his most recent round of shots but should get a visit to the vet in the next couple months so they can be sure he’s healthy and adjusting well to his new home. Thom extends another invitation to drop by his class, bring his dog Alex for a playdate. John smiles politely.

When the Jeffersons are gone, Alex turns to him. “Let’s adopt a puppy.”

oh- yeah, so a ‘mustang’ is someone who went from being enlisted to officer. 

They’re generally highly-respected and well-liked on both the officer and enlisted side of things because they know what it’s like to be the grunt at the bottom of the chain of command and they’re bringing enlisted skills and mindsets to their leadership as an officer.  During Hamilton’s time, that was probably even more true since the divide between the social caste of enlisted footsoldiers and educated, wealthy officers was far more defined.  I’m not sure how much that really applied to Hamilton though since he got his commission before really serving in any major battles.

11. What do you like best about this fic?

Hmm, that’s a difficult question!! There’s a couple of things I could think of!

1) The fic premise was one of the earliest Lams ideas I came up with, back when one of the main engines for imagining scenes in my head was ‘how could a possible bio series based on John Laurens go?’ (I got really into it? And got very specific about some things? Like I always imagined it as two seasons of 10-12 episodes each. Not sure why.) Hold Your Grandmother’s Bible was also inspired that way. But because of that, my original vision of it in my head was very, well, visual. Which became an issue when I started writing and suddenly realised that I really wanted the opening ‘shot’ to be really atmospheric, but couldn’t figure out how to communicate that through writing. The thing lingered there in my drafts for months just as a couple of paragraphs because I just felt really dissatisfied with the feeling of it. In the end, I decided for Ham’s birthday I’d finally just try and make it work, and... well, I’m pretty happy with it! Still doesn’t evoke EXACTLY what I was imagining in my head, but ‘the whole scene is lit with a warm, orange glow’ just... doesn’t translate into words very well lmao.

2) Most of the getting together fics I’ve read for historical Lams have pretty much begun with Hamilton making a sexual advance. That’s super plausible and I enjoy those fic a lot, but I wanted to kind of try something else for a change with this one! ‘Cause for me, one of the most interesting and emotionally satisfying things to read about is, essentially, intimacy and vulnerability. So, I really wanted to communicate that in this one, Alex is already pretty head over heels - and John is not far off, though he’s much less aware of it. And even more so, John doesn’t really understand Alex’s feelings either - something that’ll become more obvious over the next couple of sequels, heh. So not only did I have to communicate this about Alex, I had to do it through the eyes of John, who isn’t getting the message. (Also, the bit where John watches Alex and he’s looking at him with such an expression of love that Alex is really taken aback... yeah, not the easiest thing to write from John’s perspective, lol.) I love writing layered stuff like that so it was really fun and I enjoyed being able to write this other side of Alex!

3) When I first envisioned the fic, there really wasn’t any examination of Alex and John’s relationship up until this point. I fact, as it was imagined as a visual thing as I said above, there was v little internal thinking going on. (Which, heh, I’ve always admired the skill of some authors to communicate so much about their characters’ mindsets without ever outright telling us what they’re thinking, so I’ve tried many times recently to emulate that minimalist writing style, especially since I have a tendency to over-explain in, um, pretty much all situations... but clearly, it hasn’t always worked out. :P) That could’ve been a good fic. But because it took so long for me to write those parts, by that time, I had a lot more ideas about their relationship and how they would view it given the standards of the time. I still have a looot more to learn about all of that so I can’t say for sure that it’s accurate, but I think it’s probably better embedded into those contemporary norms, and certainly made for a more thoughtful and interesting fic IMO. So in that sense it’s kind of a good thing that I kept putting it off out of frustration, haha!

uuuuggggggghhhhhhh why would you SAY THAT my CHILDREN I can’t KILL one of them 😫

3. what book are you planning to read next?

answered, but also since i have a long tbr pile and a wish list, i can also say i might just buy Annette Gordon-Reed’s Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings: an American Controversy this week and read that instead. i have thus far managed to restrain myself from impulse-purchasing it during class discussions.

40. name one of your favorite books from your teenage years.