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Yuletide 2015
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2015-12-18
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come back to bed

Summary:

"Going to sleep" isn't big on Alexander's list of priorities. Eliza learns to work with it.

Notes:

Happy yuletide, empressearwig!

Thanks to K for the enthusiastic beta.

Work Text:

"Alexander, the clock striked twice," Eliza said, her voice soft behind him.

"I know," he said, dotting a t.

"You've been working on this for ten straight hours, isn't it enough?"

"I'm almost done. Go back to sleep, Eliza."

She sighed. "Is it the Constitution again?"

He finally turned his head to smile at her. "No, I thought I'd try writing something on banks, to change it up."

She approached slowly, returning his smile. He pushed his chair back to turn towards her, looking at her hips swaying under her nightdress. "Did you try..." she asked, teasing. "Rhyming 'bank' with 'frank prank'?" He laughed. "Or 'spank'?" she added, her voice quieter, as she finally stopped advancing, her legs settling between his.

He put a hand on her thigh, trailing it up to her hip, and finally said "Actually, it seems I'm drawing a blank."

She smiled and dropped a kiss on his lips. "Come to bed."

"I'll be done in a minute," he replied.

She sighed again.

---

The floor creaked, and he shut his eyes, cursing himself for getting lost in his work again. She didn't say anything, however, and he didn't dare turn around.

He heard padding across the floor, then he opened his eyes just in time to see a nightdress dropped on top of his work.

"I figured in the past hour, you've probably gone through all your paper," she said, and he thanked heaven that she seemed more amused than mad. "I thought of a few other canvases you could use."

He stood up slowly, carefully pushing back his chair, and finally allowed himself to turn around. His breath hitched - she looked stunning, the candlelight dancing on her curves, creating shadows and peaks he couldn't wait to explore.

"Do you want me to write financial advice all over your body, Mrs Hamilton?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "With your tongue." Her eyes were sparkling with mischief, and she looked proud of herself when he couldn't stifle a moan.

He took a step towards her and kissed her, his hands in her hair, on her neck, on her back. She kissed him back, still smiling, and opened his shirt. He bent his head to kiss his way down her neck until his mouth found her breast, and she held his head closer to her - she smelled of sleep and the evening bath she had taken, and for a moment he could not seem to remember what had been more important than spending hours with her in their bed.

He pushed her body back slowly until the back of her legs hit the desk, and then he went to lift her up on the desk, but- out of the corner of his eye he saw- his latest pages, still unfinished, right behind her, in danger of getting seriously wrinkled or maybe- if we was very good at what he did, and he was- seriously wet, and this just wouldn't work. So he kissed her again, his arms around her as he tried to remove the papers from harm in the subtlest possible manner, and he thought he was doing pretty well, considering, but then Eliza burst out laughing.

"You need some help with that?" she asked, and oh, he thought, she knows who she married. She made a show of picking everything up, her derriere up in the air as she bent down to put everything out of the way. "There," she said, while pretending to caress his desk lasciviously. "Everything to your satisfaction?"

"Not quite," he answered, and he grabbed her behind and hoisted her up on his desk, devouring her once more - licking his way down her body, until he was on his knees in front of her, this wonderful woman who wanted him, him who had never really been wanted by anyone, who wanted him again and again, despite him sinning against her by not sinning with her as often as she deserved. He licked his confession and begged for forgiveness at her altar, and she held his hair and threw her head back and moaned and said his name again and again, and he was absolved.

.&&.

He heard her footsteps creaking on the floor and every part of his anatomy stiffened. Eliza had figured out quickly that if she wanted intimacy she had better be willing to leave the comfort of their bed and spread her legs on his desk - and for a second he closed his eyes and remembered the last time she did so, her bent over his work and him filling her from behind. Financial systems were not the only thing conceived that night, he thought, grinning inwardly at his dumb joke.

But then he turned around, and his mood changed abruptly. "Everything all right, Eliza?" he asked, concerned. Her eyes seemed blacker than ever, dark islands surrounded by an ocean of pale skin. She was still beautiful- but he sensed that this wasn't the time to let his eyes wander over the valleys and mountains down below.

"Yes," she said, then she seemed to hesitate. "I'm sorry, you're busy, I shouldn't bother you-"

"Hey," he said, holding out his arms to her. She sat on his lap and buried her face in the crook of his neck. "You're sorry? I'm sorry, I should be in your bed warming you."

"I'm just so tired," she said. He brought his hand up to her swollen belly and caressed it.

"This one giving you trouble already?" he asked, kissing her forehead.

She bit her lip before speaking. "No, it's-" A cry interrupted her. She sighed and slumped against him even more. Come to think of it, Alexander had heard Phillip crying at random intervals throughout the night.

"Oh. Is he sick?" he asked, his worry now extending to his firstborn.

"He has been a little feverish, but I think it's just his teeth. He seems to want nothing but being close to me all night long," she sighed again.

"Well, I'm sure his daddy will do just as well," he said. She looked up at him with wide, surprised eyes. "I mean, not that anyone can replace a mother-" he hastened to say.

"Alexander," she said, cutting him off imperiously. "Are you offering to look after our son while I sleep?"

"Yes?" he replied cautiously. "I figured, since you're looking after our daughter…" he pointed to her stomach again.

He was interrupted by his wife kissing him ardently. Her tongue tangled with his and her efforts woke up parts of his body he had been trying very hard to calm down since realizing what kind of late-night visit this was.

She stopped when Phillip protested again, resting her forehead against his. "Thank you," she said. "Maybe you could bring his crib over here," she added, looking around as she stood up. "Do you need help?"

"No," he said, kissing her one last time. "Go to sleep."

Phillip did quiet down once he was in his father's arms. "I think your namesake didn't take much late-night care of his baby girls," Alexander told his son, who was hard at work producing copious amounts of spit. "Daddy can work with you here, can't he? Writing only takes one hand."

When she woke up, Eliza found a single page with zig-zagging handwriting, and her two men fast asleep, cuddled up together on the couch.

.&&.

"It's been a while since you last stayed up so late," said Eliza, placing her hands on her husband's shoulders and massaging a little. "What's taking you from me this time?"

"Our President has a lot of ideas for his last address," he said. "He suggested that I start with what Madison worked on, four years ago."

"You must love that," she said, grinning. "Hamilton and Madison, writing together again."

He wrinkled his nose. "It's all terrible."

She laughed. "I'm sure it's not that bad. Can I take a look at it?"

"Oh, all my papers are a mess, I don't want you to feel like you have to dredge through it-"

"I don't mind," she said, interrupting him. "Can I sit?"

She sat on his lap, and he rested his chin on her shoulder as she read. He had written down a couple of drafts - more like plans than actual texts, with some salvaged bits of what Madison had written.

"Right, so, what do you want to start with?" she asked after perusing for a while.

He looked at her in wonder for a minute before answering. "Do you not mind working at three in the morning?"

"This is your hour," she said, with a small laugh. "At what hour are we supposed to work together? During the thirty minutes of nap time your children bless me with after lunch?"

"All right," he said, kissing the back of her neck. "But I'll find you a chair. This is distracting," he added, caressing her breast to illustrate his point.

He threw all of his ideas at her; she wrinkled her nose or smiled or suggested, and he kept thinking of better ways to spell out what he meant, because he wanted to impress her (still, after all these years, and he thought back on the letters he wrote to her from the trenches, and his heart swelled). She wrote down what he dictated as he paced around the room, and she laughed at his self-conscious bouts of despair about his incapacity as a writer.

"He's insisting that that bit of scripture shall be there, but it just doesn't fit with the rhythm," Alexander said.

"The vine and fig tree thing again?" Eliza said. He nodded and she pondered. "Just change the rhythm. Make it lyrical and classic, it'll stand out more."

"Like a bridge?" he asked, and he mimed the piano chords in the air. "And then that leads into a spoken version of the rest…"

They worked until the sun's early rays peaked through the window. He looked at the pages, both of their handwritings tangled together, and thought about his legacy, and sharing it with her.

.&&.

"I distinctly remember you asleep in our bed tonight, so you haven't been up all night," Eliza said. "Alexander, come back to sleep."

"I have an early meeting out of town."

"It's still dark outside."

"I know. I just have to write something down."

"Why do you write like you're running out of time? Come back to bed, that would be enough."

"I'll be back before you know I'm gone."

"Come back to sleep," she insisted.

"This meeting's at dawn."

"Well, I'm going back to sleep," she shrugged, and turned away.

"Hey," he called back at her, and she looked at him again, with a tired smile. She left, and he looked at the empty space where she'd been for a long while.

"Best of wives, and best of women," he murmured, before putting pen to the paper once again.