Alexander Hamilton: A Short Story

1554 Words4 Pages

The light pattering of rain on the window steadily escalated to a constant pounding, accentuated by flashes of lightning, followed by the boom of thunder. While the rain was a welcome respite from the heatwave that plagued New York, it only meant trouble for Alexander Hamilton. The rain, wind, thunder, and lightning brought back desperately repressed memories of a tropical storm years ago that devastated his hometown. Even now, every clap of thunder made him jump, the ever-present sound of rain giving him a headache.

Alexander had been awake for days, and hadn’t eaten in longer. He was too busy writing, writing, writing. Getting his plan through congress was the most important thing now.

Alex shifted his attention back to the page he was …show more content…

Once again trying to focus, he didn’t even realize how bad his hands were shaking until he knocked over the bottle of ink sitting on his desk. Black trickled down the slightly crumpled paper, ruining the paragraphs he had written in the past four hours.

“No, no, no!” he whispered frantically to himself, doing his best not to wake John in the other room. He was so stupid. How was he supposed to write with his hands shaking? This was the most important piece of writing he had ever done in his career - no, his life - and he had just set his progress back by eight pages. Now he’d have to start over, try to remember everything he had gotten out of his head, focus on his persuasion techniques, ignore the storm, and it was too much, it was too much, he couldn’t handle this anymore-

Thunder boomed and cracked, shaking the house. Alex collapsed onto the floor with choked sob. It was too much, he was seventeen again, clinging desperately to hope that took the form of a saturated table as his home was ravaged by the storm. Lightning flashed, and thunder came soon after, forcing Alex’s hands to clasp tightly around his head. A vice-like pressure surrounded his chest, cutting off his breathing. Spasms coursed through his body, and his eyes were wet. He was vaguely aware of a voice calling his name and pain on his hands, but it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think, he was on the floor but it …show more content…

I understand if you don’t want to tell me everything, but at least let me know what I can do to help.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Alex said, giving up on trying to break free and turning around to face his significant other. “There’s just a lot of things I need to do, I need to get my plan through congress, but then I spilled my ink, and the storm...”

Alex’s eyes glazed over and he didn’t speak for several minutes. His breath hitched, and John just held him tighter, letting him know it was okay.

“When I was seventeen, a hurricane blew through my town,” Alex started softly, and John ran his fingers through his hair, silently urging him to continue. Alex took a deep breath. “It was awful. There were bodies everywhere, people I knew. Everything was destroyed - my home, my belongings, my books.” He shuddered at the memory and rested his head on John’s arm. “I guess I just really don’t like storms,” he said defeatedly.

Laurens held him close, doing his best to soothe him. John finally understood why Alex always shut himself off whenever there was even a light drizzle, why he could never appreciate the rain the way John did.

Alex fell back asleep to the feeling of Laurens’ hands in his hair and his chest rising and falling

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