April faded into May as John's life became an endless cycle of studying, eating, sleeping, and studying more as he was thrown head first into final exam season. Occasionally, he made time to watch a movie with Hercules and Marquis or go out to lunch with one of his other friends, but nothing too exciting.

He hadn't seen Hamilton in almost three weeks. It had been three weeks since Alexander was in his apartment during their short interaction, yet John could think of little more. His mind was a shuffle of a playlist that was predominately Alexander and knowledge for finals, among other trivial things.

A little over a week after that day, John came home to find the clothes he lent Alexander sitting neatly folded outside his apartment, with a scrap of notebook paper reading, "I came by to drop these off, but you weren't in, so here. Thanks again. -A. Hamilton" He silently cursed himself for not being home when Alexander had come by, even though he knew there was nothing he could have done. He also cursed himself for not getting the boys number. But, most of all, he cursed himself for becoming so taken with the practical stranger.

-

As exams drew to a close, John decided to throw a small party from a handful of friends as a celebration for exams ending and the school year finishing up. As the lively group interacted, John couldn't help but smile to himself at the way his apartment was lit up with the energy of his friends

"Hey, Johnny, what's this?" John was pulled out of a conversation with Hercules and fellow biology major Theodosia Bartow by the voice of Lafayette calling from the kitchen.

"What's what?" John asked, walking over to Lafayette. "Oh, that," John mumbled when he saw the torn piece of notebook paper that was being held up between Lafayette's index and middle finger. "It's nothing," John replied, setting his beer on the counter and lunging for the scrap.

"Not so fast, explain," Lafayette pulled his arm back, dodging John's darting hand, an amused look on his face.

"I helped this guy out, and he said thanks. That's it. Now give it back," John made one more futile attempt for Alexander's note.

"You wouldn't be squirming this much if it was that was it. Now, is the A. Hamilton that wrote this note the same Hamilton from the coffee shop that day?" Lafayette was having fun now, seeing the shorter boy try to jump and grab the paper, which was in Lafayette's hand safely raised into the air, out of John's reach.

"What did I just hear? Does little John have a special someone?" Mulligan walked over to the kitchen after hearing the commotion. If John hadn't been blushing before, he definitely was now.

"No, I don't," John protested.

"Yes, he does," Lafayette teased at the same time, quickly slipping the note to Mulligan. Profanities sped all through John's mind as held the note out and cleared his throat. Here is comes...

"'I came by to drop these off, but you weren't in, so here. Thanks again. -A. Hamilton'" Hercules read from the paper and instantly started laughing. "Hamilton? Your salty law student acquaintance?" he questioned John, who was now pouting with his arms crossed across his chest and his face bright red.

"Yes, that one. You really do have a way words with Herc," John tried to set his face into a angry scowl at his two friends, but was sure he failed miserably when it just made them laugh harder.

"You know, it really wouldn't be a big deal, but based on your reaction it's a obviously a very big deal," Lafayette smirked at John, who rolled his eyes.

"Yo, Burr, come here," Mulligan called out to Aaron Burr, Theodosia's boyfriend and first year law student, who was perched in one of the navy chairs sipping a beer. When Burr arrived in the kitchen, a quizzical, slightly annoyed, look on his face, Hercules continued, "You're studying law right?"

"That's correct. Why?" Burr leaned on the counter, trying to read the situation.

"Do you know anyone by the name of Hamilton?" Mulligan raised a eyebrow. Beside him, John, wide eyed and red faced, frantically waved his hands and rapidly shook his head to try to stop Burr from talking. However, it was in vain.

"Actually, I do," Burr announced straightening up and laughing at the way John's face fell into a irked frown. "Latino, longish hair, looks tired all the time, doesn't shut up - that Hamilton?" Burr smirked and wiggled his eyebrows at John, who buried his face in his hands, slowly nodding his head.

"So are you actually going to try to explain, or are you just gonna look sorry for yourself?" Lafayette prompted Laurens to tell the story of how the scrap of paper ended up on his kitchen counter.

"I saw Alexander in a coffee shop and he looked like he could use some help, so I brought him here, let him take a shower, and fed him some pizza. I also let him borrow some clothes because his were dirty, so he returned them with the note," John recounted the tale in between lunges and jumps for the note as Marquis, Aaron, and Hercules passed it between themselves; he finally snatched it from Burr's hands and stuffed it into the front pocket of his jeans for safe keeping. He silently prayed the boys would not taunt him too much for the fact that Alexander was naked in his apartment, even it was just in the shower.

"It sounds like John was just being a decent human being," Angelica Schuyler defended John as she made her way over to the kitchen, slide onto a stool at the bar, and rested her elbows on the counter top.

"Yes, exactly! That's all it was," John cried out. "Y'all can all go fuck yourselves," he added for good measure. Not wanting to argue anymore, especially after Angelica put her support with John, the boys in the kitchen dispersed, but not without throwing winks and suspicious smiles John's way.

"That's not all it was, was it?" Angelica asked John once the others had joined the party in the living room, keeping her voice hushed just in case a nosy party-goer wandered over. When John sighed heavily, Angelica's lips crept into a small, knowing smile.

"I don't know what it was, but it was something. It is something. I can't stop thinking about him," John's voice trailed into a whisper as he spoke. "And, I feel incredibly stupid because I don't know him, yet I feel this unbelievable connection to him, you know?" his hands clenched into fists in front of him and then stretched out again as he ran them through his curls as he attempted to communicate what he felt. In the end, he sighed again, soft this time, and leaned against the counter, looking up at Angelica with doe eyes and a meek smile.

"I do know, John," Angelica's smile bloomed into a bright one, lighting up her features. "It's called love at first sight."

-

April faded into May as Alexander's life turned into a existence revolving around finals. He spent almost ever waking hour of the day in a library, pouring over his textbooks. He was taking the final exams for his first year of law school and could not afford to do anything less than ace them; although his GPA was flawless and his achievements on past exams were astounding, Alexander wanted completely, utterly sure his odds of getting into graduating first in class from Columbia's School of Law were as close to 1 to 1 as he could get them. First year mattered just as much, if not more, as the rest. Some students may slack first year, but Alexander knew it was imperative to get off on the right foot. A minuscule amount of time of Alexander's day was spent praying his rivals, namely Thomas Jefferson and his cronies, were slacking.

Occasionally, as he laid down on his hard twin mattress in his small room, freely loaned to him by a kind store owner in Washington Heights, to get some well-earned, extremely needed hours of sleep, Alexander let his mind wander, thoughts swirling around his brain like a hurricane. Almost always, the eye of the hurricane was John Laurens, and the thoughts of him that floated Alex's brain. Alex was never able to pinpoint exactly what it was about the boy that calmed the chaos of his mind, he just knew he liked the effect John had. Many late nights, Alex drifted to sleep, with a smile on his face, put there by John's freckles, or curls, or southern drawl, or smile, or laugh, or just about every part of the boy's existence.

Alexander made multiple trips to John's apartment at different times on different days, carrying the loaned clothes under his arm, hoping he would catch John at home. However, his knocks were never answered. Defeated by the new thoughts springing forth in his head that maybe the universe wanted to keep the two boys apart, Alexander settled with scribbling a small note on a piece of paper he tore from his notebook for his Macroeconomic Analysis class, and placing the clothes outside John's door.

"I came by to drop these off, but you weren't in, so here. Thanks again. -A. Hamilton," the note had read, Alexander pleased with the shortness and sweetness portrayed in his rushed hand, which he hand attempted to neaten for John's sake. In reality, Alex could have wrote the boy an essay scrutinizing his feelings; he could have let the words pour out, his thoughts translating onto the paper as an river made of deep lines and churning paragraphs. The only thing holding back him back, acting as a dam to his feelings, was the fact that his feelings were absurd. 'Was it normal to be so entranced by someone you know next to nothing about?' Alexander wondered.

One Wednesday afternoon, Alexander found himself one of many students pouring onto the streets of New York City after the Moral and Political Philosophy final exam. Suddenly, he felt a strong clap on the back of his shoulder, "Hey, Hamilton, wanna go get some drinks?" Alexander looked back to see Jefferson walking behind him. Thomas slid his arm around Alex's shoulders as they crossed the street and waved his arm behind him to show Alex the other boys that would be there.

"Dude, it's like 4:30," Alexander looked at Jefferson with knitted eyebrows and an amused look on his face.

"We just finished our last final exam! We are free men, my friend!" Jefferson practically shouted, trying to convince Alexander.

"Well, there is still that whole 3 more years of law school thin-" Alexander began to point out matter-of-factually, before Jefferson hushed him loudly.

"Just let it all go, Hamilton," another boy, James Madison, came up and fell in stride on the other side of Alexander. "Why do you always have a stick up your ass, man?" his laughter filled the air. Alexander glared at the sidewalk and held his tongue.

"So where we going, Tom?" James Monroe, Alexander's favorite of the group because of his quiet politeness the others lacked, asked Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was officially the unofficial group leader, always picking the parties the boys attended or which bars they frequented.

"I was thinking The Bronx," Jefferson deadpanned.

"You've never set foot outside of Manhattan," John Adams, a boy who just rubbed Alexander the wrong way, joked.

"Forget just Manhattan, this man has never been north of 96th street," Madison teased Jefferson about his snobby disposition.

"Adams, you do realize I'm from Virginia," Jefferson spoke to the boy like he was an idiot, giving him a rude look, but he laughed at Madison's comment, playfully punching him on the arm. Alexander simply rolled his eyes.

Fast forward an hour and the five boys were sitting at the bar of a club in SoHo that Jefferson had chosen. Alexander had allowed the boys to lead him right up to the stool he was currently sitting in, too tired to argue. Alexander and Monroe, the only other non-materialistic one, ordered beers while the others order fancy martinis and cocktails.

Fast forward three hours and Alex was on his second beer, on top of the numerous shots he had taken with Jefferson and Madison. He did not really have a reason to be drinking, he just was. Each time his head tipped back and alcohol burned down his throat, he felt more and more at peace, more relaxed. That's why he was drinking: to lose hold on reality and just let go. He was tired of being so high strung all the time, so he took another shot.

The nightlife was starting to pick, people streamed in as a band began to play. Alexander watched from his spot at the bar as Jefferson jumped around on the dance floor, a girl on each of his arms and his curly mop of hair bouncing in rhythm. The two James's were also on the dance floor, Monroe with a pretty blonde, and Madison trying, to no avail, to get a girl to let him buy her a drink. Alex hadn't seen John Adams since he walked towards the bathroom with a girl on his hip, so Lord knows what he was doing.

Alexander slide off the stool to go join Monroe on the dance floor, the pretty blonde had a pretty dark-haired friend, and realized how much his head was pounding; his legs seemed to have a mind of their own and pitched Alexander to the side, right into another man, sending the man's glass of some sort of alcohol to the floor. Alex mumbled a generic apology and was trying to stumble away when the man roughly shoved him in the back, sending Alex careening headfirst into the hard wooden floor. He laid there for a moment, his cheek resting on the wood as the room spun around him. Before he knew what he was doing, letting his anger grip him, he pushed himself up, spun around, and felt his fist make contact with the other man's jaw. "You little bitch," the man sneered, obviously drunk himself. The man's arm coiled back before shooting square into Alexander's nose, a flash of white going across his eyes and his head snapping back when the contact was made. Alexander shook off the pain and lunged at the man, drunk enough to not be thinking rationally, ready to fight to the death, but a few good bystanders jumped in, strategically positioning themselves so the two belligerents could do no more physical harm to one another. Feeling something warm dripping on his face, Alexander brought his hand up to his nose, only to find it was bleeding.

"Nice one, Hamilton," Jefferson called, attracted to the scene by the crowd that had formed. Alexander ignored him, afraid of what might come out of his mouth if he opened it. Instead, he turned and made a beeline for the door. As he half ran, half staggered to the exit, someone grabbed his arm.

"Ham, stop," Madison tugged on his arm. Alexander forcefully shook him off and pushed his way outside. Alexander wasn't even disappointed when James didn't try to follow him; no one really cared.

Instantly, his face was drench by water. "Of fucking course," Alexander swore aloud. He was drunk, alone, and tired, his nose was bleeding, and now it was raining. Didn't situations like this only happen in movies? He patted his pants for his MetroCard, which, naturally, was missing, and he had no other money on him to get a taxi. As he started his walk back to Washington Heights, which he figured would take about three hours, he held his forearm to his nose in an attempted to slow the bleeding and focused on his footsteps, trying not to wobble. Despite his drunken state, his mind, thankfully, felt clear enough, but his body was a different story.

After an hour and a half of trudging along in the rain, Alexander had had enough. The only bright side was his nose had stopped bleeding, the rain had most likely washed the obvious traces of blood from his face, and the rain had done him a small favor in that it sobered him up slightly and kept him alert enough to not walk into the road or a lamppost. Everything else was negative. The rain had thoroughly soaked all his clothes and caused a chill to settle in his bones; his head was pounding and dazed and his strides were choppy and forced; the rainstorm had progressively morphed into a thunderstorm and every clap of thunder and bolt of lightening caused Alexander to shutter with memories of his past he kept shut away in the far reaches of his brain; and, worst of all, he felt alone. Although he spent much of his time in solitude, he never felt alone; he always had himself, his thoughts, and his writing to keep him company. But now, dragging himself down a New York City sidewalk, he felt utterly isolated, forsaken, lonely, and a million other words that could be applied to the situation. He really had no one in life, and it took him until now to figure it out. At every bench he pasted, he forced himself to continue on, fighting the urge to lie down and sleep forever.

Another lightening flash lit up the sky, and the puddles forming on the sidewalk reflected the light back into Alexander's eyes. Thoughts raced around his mind, mostly thoughts telling him to get off the sidewalk and into anywhere really that offered shelter, but there was no where to go; it was getting late at night and establishments where he may have sought shelter were closing, and the remaining ones most likely didn't want a soaking wet, drunk man hanging around. His hands were now shaking and his heart was racing as an earsplitting crack of thunder sounded. His breathing hitched and tears spilled down his cheeks uncontrollably. He could hear the screams from his memories and he was acutely aware his whole body was shaking now, but he carried on, burning every single ounce of self control he possessed to continue to place one foot in front of another down the sidewalk. He had been dealing with this for a while, and, while he could not stop it from happening, he was becoming pretty good at functioning while it was happening if he needed to keep going. But he knew he needed to get off the street fast before it got unbearable.

Without really thinking about it, Alexander's feet led him to somewhere they must have known he would be welcome. He tried not to trip as he walked up the stairs, the stairs reminding him he was certainly drunk, even if it was only a little. Walking down a long hallway, he came to a door, and began to knock.

-----

classic drunken bar fight, oh alexander... also, i decided to add james monroe, even though he wasn't in the musical; i wanted another person for the Law School Fuckboy™ group and added him, so yay. also, i am using Bartow as Theodosia's last name instead of Provost because Bartow was her maiden name, just so no one gets confused. and im doing the whole PTSD from the hurricane thing with alex so i apologize if its cliche by now but i like it.

and no i totally didn't write that whole section around "never been north of 96th street" just to get an In The Heights references in there...