Trigger warning: reference to suicide and homophobia, not directly addressed though.

The Letters.

He first started writing them after his mother died. He would write one to her every single night without fail. It gave him something to look forward to, something to keep him from taking the route his cousin did. He felt that if he were to stop writing, he too would stop.

He didn't stop writing the letters, even when he was on the boat to New York City. He was almost completely out of ink when they reached the harbor and one of the first things he did was buy more with a bit of the money meant for college, lodging, and food he had left. He skipped a few meals to make up for it.

He continued the letters in college, keeping them in a small box under his bed. He never threw away a single letter.

He wrote about the people he met, the places he saw.

When he met that freckled boy with untameable hair, there were a lot of letters about him.

Letters about their friendship.

Letters about how he felt that friendship growing into something more and he was terrified Laurens would hate him for it.

Letters about the night Laurens got drunk and showed up on his doorstep only to pull him into a heated kiss before slapping him and asking why he had made Laurens make the first move.

Letters about hiding their love.

He didn't stop these letters when he started courting Eliza. After rumors started about their love affair, he and Laurens discussed him courting a girl to dispell them. He had been less willing to agree, but he had never been able to say "no" to his John.

He had shown the letters for his mother to his John. The man was moved to tears and had pulled him into a kiss.

He wrote the letters to his mother alongside the ones he wrote Eliza. He always felt a horrible ache in his chest when writing the latter ones, despite John often being in the room when he wrote them.

There was a lengthy letter the night before his wedding, covered in his tears, and after John read it, more tears joined them.

He never showed the letters to Eliza.

By now the box they were in was much bigger, hidden in his study under lock and key. He missed sitting at the desk in the corner of their room with John on the bed while he wrote them, then passing them to John to read. Out of all the times they made love, John reading his letters was the most intimate thing they did.

The night he got the letter from South Carolina announcing John's death (John. His John. His lover. He'd never see his John again, never tangle his fingers in that curly hair and kiss each freckle one by one after John had read that night's letter. Oh, God. No. Please.) he wrote two letters. One to his mother, and one to John.

He continued writing two letters every night.

He did love Eliza, after a while. But their love was never as intense as the love between him and John.

He threw himself into his work, making sure he had as little time as possible to think. He still wrote two letters every night without fail, though.

He had a very large collection of letters.

After the death of his John, he grew reckless. One particular letter was added to his collection that he did not write.

From James Reynolds.

When Eliza burned the letters he had written to her when they were courting, he found that the only thing he felt was numbness.

The day that Philip died was the day he thought he would die. It hurt so much. He couldn't bear the idea of writing a letter every night to his son as he did to his dead secret lover and long deceased mother.

So he didn't.

Instead, he wrote one letter. A letter he tucked into the waistcoat adorning his son's body before the coffin lid was nailed down and lowered into the ground. No one ever saw what he put in that letter.

He wished John was there to read it.

He wished he never had to write it.

It was the night before he was to duel Aaron Burr. Eliza was sleeping in bed, not noticing him leave. He pulled out the box of letters that had grown to a size he struggled to carry and took it to the fireplace. He lit a fire and read each letter from the oldest to the newest. He cried. Words were slightly smudged by tears as he read. Paragraphs brought back pain, but also the remembrance of lost love. Of sweet kisses. Of lingering hugs.

When he had finished reading each letter, the fire was strong. He fed it.

He wrote four more letters that night, two of which never saw the morning sun.

One was to Eliza. An apology. A false hope that he would be home.

Another one to explain what he planned on doing.

He wrote one last letter to his mother. Saying that he would see her soon.

The last letter he wrote was to his John.

John,

My love. My light. Every day I have thought of you. I write to you every night, just as I did to my mother. I missed you reading the letters to her every night before we slept. I miss holding you. I miss kissing you.

I know you'd be disappointed in how I reacted to your death. You would have wanted me to remember you happily, not hide from our shared memories. Hide from the pain. Hide from my wife and children.

I've made mistakes, my dear John. Mistakes I regret. This hole I've dug for myself only seems to grow as time goes on. Our friend Aaron Burr is angered with me. I did not endorse him when he ran for president and he lost the election.

I will see you soon again my love. Aaron has called for a duel. I intend on losing.

Yours, Alexander.

Ok, so I wrote this after inspiration smacked me upside the head while I was eating ice cream. I liked the idea for this that came to me so much it took all of my self-restraint to not abandon my ice cream and get in front of a computer that very second. I was listening to the Hamilton soundtrack while weeding the yard today when I was thinking about "Why do you write like you need it to survive, write day and night like tomorrow won't arrive," and I thought about how Alexander grew up surrounded by death, and how he threw himself into learning when his father left, when his mother died, and his cousin passed away. I figured it could have been a coping mechanism. When Laurens died, he immediately threw himself into his work with more vigor than before. I'm just kinda insane at this point, I know, but review tell me what you think! Reviews make my day. I literally have cried on multiple occasions when reading reviews, my friends can attest to this. I also have never deleted an email announcing I've received a review, I keep them in a folder in Gmail where I read over them when I'm feeling down.

Also, I'm copying Soulmates to AO3 along with my other works. You can find me under the user Satan_the_One_and_Only