Chapter Text
It started in Philadelphia, on a hot summer night.
“Mr. Adams,” Jefferson said, “I cannot write your document.”
John Adams had been about to undress for bed. This late-night visit from his defeated-looking colleague was not only unannounced, it was entirely unexpected.
“What is this, Mr. Jefferson?” Adams asked. “You cannot? I thought we had agreed that you should write it.”
“As you know I was already tasked with writing the Virginia constitution.”
“I’m sure that can wait a day or two. Virginia is not going to drop off the earth if it stays without a constitution for a little while longer. As you know, I have managed to draft constitutions for several states, besides my congressional duties.”
Jefferson’s shoulders slumped a little, betraying his resignation. “I really haven’t the mind for it.”
John had a closer look at his fellow congressman. Jefferson was by nature a quiet, reticent, not very sociable man. Now there seemed to be a crack in his composure. Maybe his turning up on John’s doorstep in the middle of the night was his admitting that he needed help.
“Have you brought your notes with you?”
“No, I have not…”
John sighed and mentally prepared for working through the night.
“Let’s step over to your rooms and peruse the matter together…”
Walking through the sleeping city, they did not speak. This was not uncommon when taking walks with Jefferson, but still John felt like something was different than usual tonight. He kept turning his head to try to catch Jefferson’s eyes on him, but found the man looking straight ahead every time. And yet, he felt like he was being watched by him. The night was so warm that the air seemed to engulf them, wrapping them up in dark velvet, but looking at Jefferson, John felt himself shiver, not with nerves or fear but almost in anticipation of something he could not name.
“Good god,” he huffed. “What is all this chaos?”
Jefferson’s apartment was in extreme disorder, the floor littered with crumpled-up papers, the waste bin overflowing with them.
“I have tried to write a draft for you,” Jefferson said simply.
The shiver came back and lodged itself in John’s spine. For you, Jefferson had said. He hadn’t said for congress. Or even for the declaration of independence. No, for you. John sat down heavily in a chair next to Jefferson’s writing desk.
“Well, has anything worthwhile come of it?” he asked.
“Not really,” Jefferson sighed. “I cannot focus on it. The night is too warm and my mind is consumed with…” He halted abruptly.
“With the Virginia constitution?” Adams prompted.
“Yes,” Jefferson agreed, inexplicably reddening. Adams looked him over.
The temperature caused the both of them to perspire slightly. John, as a Northerner considerably less used to the warm weather than Jefferson, was no doubt sweating more, and yet some tiny strands of red hair had fallen out of Jefferson’s loose queue and were stuck damply to his forehead. John was struck by the urge to extend his hand and wipe them out of Jefferson’s face. His hand on the table twitched, but he controlled himself.
“Well,” he said, clearing his throat, “I suggest, then, that you write a quick outline of it and then, with that out of the way, you can devote your full attention to our task.”
“Yes,” Jefferson breathed, but he looked like he hardly knew what he was agreeing to. He had noticed the movement of John’s hand on the desk and had his eyes transfixed on it. He was breathing a bit heavily, his lips slightly parted.
“Are you alright?” John asked and now he had to lean forward, scrutinizing Jefferson in concern.
“Yes. I don’t know. Mr. Adams…” Jefferson muttered, leaning forward also. “I must admit I have been… watching you, during the debates.”
Their faces were suddenly very close. John became aware that he was technically inhaling the same breath Jefferson had just exhaled and he didn’t know how to feel about that. He could also smell no alcohol on the man’s breath. Not that Jefferson was in the habit to indulge but… it would at least explain the odd thing that had just come out of his mouth.
The statement in itself would have been perfectly innocuous in any other situation. Everyone knew that Jefferson was an observer, not a talker. Of course he would watch other politicians, especially ones who were as active in debates as John Adams, to see how they did it. But John had a weird feeling that this was not what Jefferson was getting at. The way his voice sounded… like he was disclosing a most intimate secret…
“The heat is getting to you,” he said. “I shall get you a drink of water.”
“It’s not the heat,” Jefferson insisted, blushing more. “Or, maybe it is. But… I can’t help but… I adore you, Mr. Adams.”
“You…what?” Again, John was pretty sure that Jefferson did not mean for this to be an expression of his admiration of John’s political savvy. He now looked at his fellow congressman in a whole new light. So maybe it was not fever that was making Jefferson’s features glow like this… maybe it was… desire?
“Mr. Jefferson,” John said, trying and failing to sound like he was just making a little joke. “Have you come to my rooms tonight to proposition me?”
“I… don’t know. Perhaps.”
John flinched upright. The very concept behind that thought was entirely foreign to him. He had never thought of Jefferson, or any man, in that way. It was forbidding, it went against so many things he had taken for granted about himself and the way of the world. And yet…
He had never met anyone like Jefferson, with a mind quite like Jefferson’s. He transcended all these things, somehow. He transcended conventions.
“You are repulsed,” Jefferson said, misinterpreting his silence.
“No,” John said hurriedly. “I’m just… thinking. This is very…”
“Yes?”
“You’ve got to admit this is…unconventional.”
“Mr. Adams, I…”
This back and forth between them was awkward and painful and John thought he should end it. Reason dictated he should do so by leaning back in and kissing the man on the lips. It was a good moment for it. So he did that.
Jefferson made a soft noise upon impact and immediately opened his mouth into the kiss. They wasted about two seconds on being soft and hesitant but then, as the want for each other overwhelmed them, their kiss got as heated and fervent as it was artless, sloppy and slightly wet. They didn’t want to separate for something as trivial as air and ended up panting into each other’s mouths.
“What on earth are we doing.”
“I don’t know, but Mr. Adams, I’ve been wanting you.”
John couldn’t help but make a low noise deep down in his throat at that. “You’re too far away.”
“We were attached at the lips not one minute ago, my dear sir,” Jefferson said, still with that goddamned Southern politeness.
“There is a wooden desk between us,” John replied, hitting said desk with his hand for emphasis. Hearing that, Jefferson shifted in his seat and, with a nod of his head, gestured for John to come hither.
John was all too eager to practically sit on Jefferson’s lap and pull him close, to plunge his hands into waves of red hair, to resume their kissing and lose himself in bliss. Still there was an urgency to things, and even the bodily contact they now had was not enough. They blindly groped against each other, fumbling with buttons and neckties. John could feel himself growing hard, and when he trailed a hand up Jefferson’s thigh, he discovered purely by accident that the other man was suffering from same. At having his dick touched, Jefferson hummed appreciatively and tried to get even closer, to get more friction.
“Wait,” John gasped, breaking away.
“How about we do not wait,” Jefferson muttered, almost absent-mindedly, intent on undoing John’s cravat.
“Your wife. In Virginia.”
Now Jefferson snapped his eyes up. In a slightly disquieting way, John now had the man’s full attention.
“And yours,” he said, “in Massachusetts.”
“God, I know.” Of course now he had to be reminded of Abby. And he had not ended up here because he did not love Abby. John Adams worshipped his wife. And yet, here he was…
“You know, you can get off me,” Jefferson said quietly.
“No,” John groaned and kissed him again. It was ridiculous, here they were, husbands, fathers, both men filled with love for their families, rutting against each other in the dark like senseless animals. But they didn’t seem to want to stop. Jefferson had finally removed John’s cravat and was now opening his vest, all the while marking every new patch of skin he exposed with hickeys he was sure no one would see. John, grateful for the attentions, could only reciprocate by at least trying to remove some of Jefferson’s clothes in turn. When the junction of his neck and shoulder was harshly sucked on, all he could do was clutch him tight.
“Thomas,” he hissed out.
“Oh, Mr. Adams,” Jefferson muttered, licking the spot where a mark was already forming. “I have been delirious with wanting you. I could not think of anything else. I could not write. I could not live.”
Then suddenly, the chair lurched beneath them.
“What is this! Is it going to give way?” John had no other explanation for this sudden shifting; maybe their combined weight was more than the chair could stand.
“No,” Jefferson said, smiling a little. “It is a chair that spins. I designed it that way.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. I find spinning things relaxes me.”
“Certainly not in this position.”
Jefferson’s smile was somewhat lopsided, but it looked genuine. John found he liked it. “No, not really. On the bed, then.”
They somehow managed to shed most of their clothes on the way there, and when they finally gracelessly tumbled down onto the bed, they couldn’t keep their hands and mouths off each other. Both their cocks were hard and straining and they had angled their hips so that they were grinding up against each other. Already Jefferson was trying to stifle his moans, and John found himself driven out of his mind by the friction.
“I want…” It was half a whimper. Finally Jefferson had found his voice. Tonight was honestly the first time John ever heard him vocalize his wants. “More. Closer.”
“I don’t know how.” They broke apart for a moment, John with a sound that was half huff, half laugh. “We’re not very good at this, are we? How does one commit buggery?”
“They hang a few sodomites every year,” Jefferson said a little harshly. “They sure knew how it was done.”
“Unfortunately we cannot ask them. We are lost without a guide.”
Jefferson sighed. “I have perused volumes upon volumes about the Greeks. Too bad they didn’t go into detail regarding techniques.”
“Yes, too bad.” He trailed a hand up Jefferson’s thigh and grasped his cock, giving it a few shallow strokes. “Just this then?”
Jefferson whimpered and tried to shift closer. “I know there are other ways.”
“We can find out about them another time. Just, tonight, please, I need you now.”
“Then, yes. Just this.”
“Here, let me.”
John took both their cocks in his hand and jerked them together, brought closer to the brink by every moan Jefferson forgot to stifle now that he, too, was nearing orgasm. John loved the control he had; the younger man was basically putty in his hands, was clinging to him, hips bucking into his touch. For Jefferson to relinquish control, for John to obtain it, they had needed this.
They came almost simultaneously, Jefferson first, John chasing him. There was a sticky mess of come everywhere; on their bodies, around on the bedsheets, and in the stifling heat they could do no more than tiredly and haphazardly wipe each other clean using the blankets. They remained stretched out on the bed, not touching because they were sticky and gross, but together.
“You should go home maybe,” Jefferson slurred, his eyes half-lidded, looking close to falling asleep.
Maybe he has a point, John thought. Maybe he shouldn’t spend the night here. People would notice. He made a valiant effort to move, but his limbs were heavy as lead and would not yield to his commands. Not that he wanted them to very much. He was just so tired. It had been a long day and now this…
He opened his eyes again when he felt Jefferson sit up. He observed as the man rubbed at his eyes, yawned and grabbed at his nightstand, taking an object from it.
“I thought you were falling asleep,” John said.
“I cannot. See, I just thought of a great opening paragraph for our declaration.”
John saw that Jefferson was now holding a quill and a small inkwell. With a satisfied noise, he drifted off to sleep, secure in the knowledge that finally progress was being made.
He woke up the next morning with writing covering his chest.
“I am so sorry, Mr. Adams, I couldn’t find any paper.”
“We just slept together. Call me John.” John looked down on himself and tried to decipher what he saw there.
“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and assume among the powers of the earth… this is quite good.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, I assure you. Keep it up.”
This day was a congress day, and they went together, almost strangers again as soon as they stepped into the hall. John, as usual, sat at the very forefront of the Massachusetts delegation and stole glances at Jefferson taking his place in the very back of the Virginia one where he, by the look of it, promptly zoned out. He never looked back at him, and didn’t say a word.
The next day congress didn’t meet, and he was back at John’s door.
“I’ve tried again to write it,” he explained, looking unnerved. “It is no use. I touch quill to paper but no thoughts are forthcoming. Please, Mr. Adams.”
“Well, what can I do for you?”
“You can help me find my words. Somehow, you can. Please, John.”
“Lock the door behind you,” John said quietly. “Wouldn’t want anyone intruding.”
This time John took him in his mouth, made him fall apart with just his lips and his tongue. He had orally pleasured his wife before, and tried telling himself that this was not too different. But of course it was. For one, Abigail did not have red pubic hair.
Did he, he pondered a while later, do this purely to further progress on the declaration? Jefferson was reliant on him in his battle against writer’s block, and post-orgasmic glow seemed to do wonders for his creativity. John looked at the man next to him in his bed, scribbling on a piece of paper with enthusiasm. Jefferson looked different when he was writing, he looked absorbed, and happily so. John tried to think of a single other time he had seen the man truly happy. He could not think of any.
“Your indictment of the king rolls well off the tongue,” he said, leaning his head on his bedmate’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of the writing. “You should read this out to congress when you’re finished with it.”
Jefferson ended a sentence with a decisive full stop. “The very thought mortifies me.”
John huffed. “I will never understand you. What kind of politician is not also an orator?”
Jefferson looked up from his paper and directly at John. “My kind,” he said simply.
“Mr. Jefferson, the more I learn of you, the more I come to the conclusion that there is no one of your kind.”
Jefferson’s eyes widened slightly, their gaze intensifying. “Please. Do call me Thomas. Like you did the other night.” He leaned in and gave John a small, soft kiss. “You taste odd.”
“You’re tasting merely yourself.”
“Let me reciprocate,” Thomas said, going down.
The switch from Jefferson, his colleague, to Thomas, his lover and friend, was easily made.
Thomas was quiet and not known to socialize much, and John Adams was obnoxious and disliked, so no one cared or ever inquired about what they did in their spare time.
So they… convened. A lot. At first they tried to limit themselves to just the nights, but their need for each other consumed them when they were apart. They had to see each other during the day, too. In the stifling Philadelphia heat, they made love. Slowly and cautiously they learned each other, and what to put where for which results. Thomas knew where to touch and how to tease all the pent-up frustration out of John after a particularly stressful congress meeting, and John knew what to do to coax Thomas out of his reverie and make him clutch at the sheets and utter curses he had picked up from – as he confessed – his slaves. John had never thought he’d hear one of these self-proclaimed Southern Gentlemen curse like Thomas did when John did that thing with his tongue that he loved that had him writhing and gasping for more.
In the golden glow of post-coital exhaustion, Jefferson wrote best. Sometimes he would reach for the quill in the middle of the act itself and scribble blotchy notes on John’s skin and the ink got runny with sweat. When they looked at the writing later, it would always be a piece of the most ingenious prose John had ever read. Sometimes they would stay together afterwards and idly chat for hours between lazy kisses, about politics and their fellow congressmen and what they would do when (if) the British were defeated. John reveled in these hours as much as they puzzled him. Because they were where the line was drawn between pure carnal pleasure, between two lonely and frustrated men whiling away the hours with each other that they couldn’t spend with their wives, and something else.
John found he liked just looking at Thomas, or talking to him and enjoying that he was starting to let his hair down a little, enough to have actual deep conversations. Sometimes they read or wrote letters in silence, but the silence was never uncomfortable. It was just that Thomas preferred peace and quiet to the constant noise that usually dominated John’s life. Sometimes they took walks together, conversing of innocuous topics and never touching, and still John felt like the secret they were bearing was written all over them in vivid paint and wondered how not one person they passed by ever seemed to see it.
Currently he was watching Thomas in the bath, cleaning off the traces of their last tryst. He had freed his hair from its queue and looked about as relaxed as John had ever seen him, humming under his breath as he washed off the stickiness of lovemaking. That was another thing you had to get used to as an… intimate acquaintance to Thomas Jefferson: constant absent-minded singing. Never loud, never inappropriate, just quiet, incessant, low warbling. Just last week in a congress meeting, during an intense Adams vs. Dickinson stare-down, the only sound in the room had been Thomas humming. It had unnerved Dickinson and strengthened John’s resolve.
“You are staring,” Thomas said now. Rays of sunlight filtered in through the window and made his hair shine like polished copper. It fell in wavy strands down onto shoulders littered with freckles. John wanted to touch him there and count all the freckles on his body, but he knew it would be futile; they were everywhere, innumerable.
“How can I not look? You’re beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” Thomas laughed.
“It wasn’t a joke.” John got up off the bed and stood by the tub, gazing down at his lover. He hadn’t even bothered to get dressed again. “I honestly can’t fathom what you want with me… obnoxious, aggressive, irritating, fat John Adams.”
“You seem to place more emphasis on one of these attributes than on the other three.” Thomas tilted back his head so that it came to rest on the rim of the tub to meet John’s eyes. “Why should I care that you are… on the stout side? It was your mind, your passion, that attracted me.”
“Is that so?”
“John, you must know I love you.” It was said in a kind of earnest wonder, as if Thomas really couldn’t fathom how John could not know this.
“Ah! Now I know it.” A part of him wanted to say it back. The rest of him still shied away from the implications of it. If he admitted that these feelings had a place in his life, things got immensely complicated. He’d shared a bed with this man for weeks now and still, he couldn’t quite stop hanging on to a shred of hope that he was not yet doomed. That they could still step away from this. When the declaration was finished. Then they could both take a trip home to their wives and put this madness fueled by frustration, prolonged solitude and the heatwave behind them.
If Thomas picked up on John not reciprocating, he didn’t say a word of it. “The water is icy,” John said, trailing a hand through the tub to distract from the topic. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I prefer it to be cold. It’s healthier.”
“Healthier? This is the most nonsensical thing I’ve witnessed since Franklin’s so-called air baths.”
“You mean the ones where he just walks about his house buck-naked?”
“Precisely. I assume the somewhat dubious health benefits are merely an excuse for Franklin to… well, to walk about his house buck-naked.”
“You might be on to something.” Laughing softly, Thomas dragged him down into a kiss.
“I’m coming in there,” John said, lowering himself into the tub.
Thomas put on a token protest, “Again? John, I’m exhausted… it’ll soil the water” but it was obvious from his tone and the gleam in his eyes that he was eager. His impossibly long limbs wrapped around John’s body like an affectionate octopus and gently nudged him where he needed to be. Straddling him, John didn’t even need to prep himself extensively, he was still loose and slick from before. They had long since discovered the joy of second and third rounds, and the oil that Thomas had purchased the week prior certainly helped.
John sank down on Thomas’s dick with a satisfied moan. More often than not their roles were reversed and it was Thomas who let himself be filled up by John, but today was one of the rare days where they had switched it around. John began to move, setting the pace, while Thomas clung to him for dear life, his blunt nails leaving little pink half-moons in John’s flesh. The water splashed around them as they moved, and Thomas was already making these little whimpers that indicated that overstimulation was driving him out of his mind. John rode him faster, harder, and every thrust of Thomas’s length hit that sweet spot inside him just right.
Then he heard, “John…ah…love…I’m about to…”
“Yes,” he gasped and gave his own mostly neglected erection a few deft strokes. It was all he needed to spill a smear of his release all over Thomas’s abdomen. Simultaneously, he ground down on Thomas’s dick one last time, taking it in to the hilt, which was enough for Thomas to come with a surprised little sound. Orgasm always seemed to overwhelm him.
When Thomas pulled out, his come leaked out of John’s hole after him. John had never felt this indecent in his life.
“It is as I said,” Thomas said, still slightly breathless. “I have cleaned up for nothing, and the water is now warm.”
They stayed in the lukewarm bath nonetheless, scrubbing each other clean. John started an attempt to count Thomas’s freckles, but there were simply too many and not even Thomas knew the location of all of them.
John stayed the night, and fell asleep to the sight of Thomas hunched over his portable desk, toying with his quill.
In the dead of night, he was awoken.
“John,” Thomas whispered. “John, wake up and look. I believe it’s finished.”
“What is finished?” John asked groggily.
“Why, the declaration, of course!” Thomas was waving a piece of paper under his nose. “Here, read it. Look at it.”
John read. He recognized phrases that had been written on his own skin and wondered if he would ever be able to look at this document without blushing. Still…
“We must show this to Franklin tomorrow. This is brilliant.”
“Thank you.” Thomas smiled gratefully at the praise, although his eyes were strangely sad. John didn’t like that look on him. He kissed him, and when Thomas reciprocated, his kiss was hard and urgent, no trace of his soft shyness left in it.
“Come,” John said and gripped Thomas’s hips. “Let’s celebrate.”
He took him right then and there and afterwards, Thomas complained that he now had to copy everything again because his draft had been crumpled up carelessly between them and the ink was all smeared. But the strange sadness had left him for the time being, or he kept it under lock.
Not only Franklin thought that editions to the document had to be made, but the entirety of congress shared his opinion. When the suggested changes got more and more ridiculous, John stood up to defend the declaration that had partially been written on his skin… since the writer of it wouldn’t.
John knew how prickly Jefferson had reacted whenever he had proposed changes to the declaration, knew that he hated having his work tampered with. Now that he had every single man in congress against him, Thomas shrunk from defending his writing to the overwhelming majority. At every new change, he withdrew a little more, his eyes growing duller as the hours passed. John felt angry at the man’s apathy, and at those who caused it, so he took up the sword in Jefferson’s stead.
When at last the meeting was adjourned without them having finished, Thomas caught him in the corridor.
“Mr. Adams,” he snapped, “a word.”
He led him none too gently by the wrist, back into the now empty hall. All their fellow congressmen were already on the way home.
Now that they were alone, Jefferson let his guard drop, showing his resignation.
“Stop it, John,” he said. “It’s my document. If I saw need to defend it, I could do so myself.”
“But you’re miserable.”
“That doesn’t matter. I did not write this for me, or you, or any one man, but for the American people! Now their representatives are wanting to make changes. I don’t like it, but we must resign ourselves to it.”
“Their suggestions are ridiculous!”
“Yes, and they’re concerned mostly with details. It’s not that important really. I will keep some copies of the original, if that helps you any.”
“You don’t mean that…”
“Mr. Adams.” Jefferson bowed and left.
He did raise his voice in defense of his declaration when John Dickinson suggested they should not call King George a tyrant, because apparently this was too awful even for him, but everything else he left to the rest of congress to decide. In the end, about a quarter of the paper and many things that had, in John’s opinion, made it great, were erased. He tried not to complain too much.
When the document was finally signed, the declaration committee and everyone who’d backed them hit the next tavern to celebrate. That night, John took Thomas home to his rooms and, drunk on rum and a hard-won victory, they made out and fell into his bed together. Thomas slipped out at dawn, leaving a short and cordial note for John saying that he had gone home.
He didn’t visit for the rest of the day.
John didn’t think too much of it. It was very likely that he was incapacitated from the effects of last night’s drinking. The best course of action was probably to let him rest.
Thomas didn’t visit on the next day either, or on the day after that.
Now John was starting to grow worried. Usually it was Jefferson who came to him. He tried to remember if anything had happened between them that would make Thomas want to stay away, but except for their little argument over the declaration, nothing came to mind. And that hadn’t even been a real argument, merely a difference in opinion, as it happened to everyone now and then. They couldn’t agree on everything now. Granted, Thomas had been a little too formal then, but that had most likely been caused by their being in public, nothing else. And besides, he could just catch Thomas after the next congress session and ask him what was up. He would be there; he had never missed a meeting before.
Thomas decided to thwart John’s plans by being absent at the meeting.
So John found himself approaching the Virginia delegation, hoping he looked casual and unconcerned.
“I don’t see Mr. Jefferson here today,” he addressed them, apropos nothing. “He’s not usually absent from these meetings.”
“Mr. Jefferson is ill,” he was told. “A migraine headache. He gets them occasionally.”
“Well!” John said, digesting that information. “Let us hope for his speedy recovery.”
John was on his way to Thomas’s rooms.
He didn’t know if his illness was real or feigned in order to avoid him, but either way he had to see for himself. And no one had forbidden him from visiting Thomas. It was a free country (or at least it would be). So why was he nervous?
The first people he saw upon entering were two black men seated at the foot of the stairs leading up to Thomas’s apartment, talking quietly. John had met one of them before: Thomas’s slave. Jupiter, the man’s name was.
They had, in the beginning of their liaison, had a Conversation regarding slaves. They had agreed that it wasn’t John’s place to complain when he encountered them at Thomas’s apartment, but when Thomas visited John he had better come alone. Sometimes he did wonder how he could in good conscience share a bed with a slave owner… it was the ugly side of getting involved with the men from the South.
“Good day, sir,” he said, approaching the man.
Jupiter stood and inclined his head. “Mr. Adams.”
Yes, they had encountered each other before, a few times in situations very incriminating to John. According to Thomas, Jupiter could be trusted completely (the relationship of slave and owner was a strange, unnatural, convoluted thing).
“Do you happen to know if Thomas is upstairs?”
“Mr. Jefferson has instructed me to turn away all visitors.”
John cocked his head, thinking that over. “Well, would you be so kind as to go and ask him if he’s willing to make an exception for me?” He wasn’t in the habit of being rude to the enslaved. They had it bad enough. His harsher tones were reserved for their masters, normally. Thomas Jefferson was both the example of and the exception from the rule.
Eventually, he was allowed to pass. Halfway up the stairs, he started hearing music – someone was playing a sad melody on the violin. So Thomas was at home.
He gave the door a few brisk knocks. “Thomas, are you in there?”
The violin stopped and, seconds later, the door was opened.
Thomas looked the most unkempt John had ever seen him. He was wearing a large, horribly patterned robe and slippers, his hair was in disorder, and he evidently hadn’t shaved in several days; his jaw was covered in red-gold stubble. His greeting was a hoarse whisper.
“So it is you,” he said.
“Can I come in?”
“If you must. But do speak softly, your voice is hurting my head.”
John tried. “Do you often get migraines?”
“Not often. Just in the wake of… certain events.”
They went inside. Thomas reclined in his unholy spinning chair, clutching his temple. He deliberately swiveled the chair so that no direct sunlight could hit his face from the window.
“Has this been ailing you these past three days?” John asked.
“Only today.”
“Then I don’t understand why…”
“Why what, Mr. Adams?”
He hadn’t meant to finish his sentence, but now he felt he needed to. “So now I’m Mr. Adams again? You’ve been avoiding me as of late, and I’d like to know why.”
“Avoiding you…?” Jefferson began, then sighed tiredly. “I suppose there’s no denying it. Yes, I have tried to stay out of your hair. The declaration is finished now, isn’t it…”
“So what, you have no more need for me?” John couldn’t help raising his voice. Had Jefferson used him? Had he been no more than a convenient remedy for boredom and writer’s block all along?
“Shh, shh, no, I assumed… I assumed the opposite was true.”
All the anger that had flared up in John’s gut just seconds ago abruptly turned to ice. He felt numb with the shock of it.
“I’m sorry, what?” he asked.
Jefferson’s lips were pressed into a thin line. “You were humoring me, were you not? So that I would write your declaration. I know how important that was to you. I’m sure you never meant any harm to…”
“Now hold on…”
“Shush, Mr. Adams. I have written it now. It is signed. This is finished. Is it not.”
“No, wait. When did we ever say we’d stop as soon as the declaration is finished?”
“Was it not implied? I was assuming, since you so obviously do not return my… feelings, that you were merely… you know. Lying back and thinking of America. I am sad to see this come to an end, but I assure you, you will have no further trouble from me. My inclinations notwithstanding, I will not pursue you further. These last three days were spent coming to terms with that. Now I suppose everything is said. Can you please leave?”
“Do you want this to end?”
“No. But for your sake, because I do love you, I will not insist on it continuing. I don’t know if I was making myself quite clear. It is hard to form a coherent thought. The headache.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” John muttered. “So this whole time you were thinking I’d, what, send you away as soon as this was over?”
“Mr. Adams, please, I…”
“No. Thomas. You will call me John, and you will kiss me right now.” John leaned in, carefully cupped Jefferson’s face, and pressed a kiss to his lips. It was a tremendous relief to be able to do that again, so he did it once more, and a third time for good measure.
“John…?”
So timid. John’s heart was heavy.
“I did this. I am not usually given to hesitation, but now… with my selfish doubts, I have hurt the best and greatest man I know.”
“I don’t think…”
“Thomas, no. I might not have said it then, but I knew inside myself that it was, and is, true. I love you, and I miss you.”
“You…?”
“Yes. I don’t know what this is that we are doing. And how we are going to continue doing it. We are both still married men, and I for one still love my wife.”
“So do I, of course.”
“But somehow I also love you. I am in love with you.”
“John…” Thomas whispered. He sounded happy, but exhausted. He was swaying a little, looking considerably ill.
“We shall get you into bed and shut the blinds now. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how the light hurts you.”
“I think I would feel better if I could just sleep a little,” Thomas suggested, clinging to John with almost childish affection.
“I will get you something that’ll make you sleep.”
“No, don’t leave me,” Thomas whined, clutching him tighter. “We can send Jupiter.”
“You know my stance on slave labor. I’m going myself. I won’t be long.”
Despite their – frankly ridiculous – height difference, John somehow managed to carry Thomas into bed. Then he went around the room shutting the blinds so that only some small rays of light filtered in. He took care to give Thomas another small kiss before he went out to acquire some laudanum.
It made Thomas amusingly loopy for about fifteen minutes before he eventually dozed off with his head in John’s lap.
They agreed that it was time to come clear to their wives.
They wrote a letter each, and didn’t show them to each other. Some things had to remain private.
Surprisingly it was Thomas who first got word back from Virginia.
“Martha is… more sad than angry,” he summarized, folding the letter and putting it away.
“Well, that sounds… promising. What has she written?”
“She believes I am trying to replace her.”
“Why is that?”
Thomas sighed. “What happened last year has put something of a dent in her self-confidence.”
“What happened last year?”
“We lost a child.”
John’s breath caught in his throat. He knew it happened all the time, infants were so fragile, and they died… a lot. It hadn’t happened to him and Abby, they had four strong, healthy children. Unthinkable, that it should happen to him…
“Martha is not… a strong woman,” Thomas went on. “She’s wonderful, just… she’s of a rather fragile disposition. Giving birth wears her out, and losing the little one broke her heart. Now she seems to think I blame her for it. That I’m seeking refuge in someone stronger. Namely, in another man. She cannot understand this.”
“Now what will you do?” John felt something close to fear. Perhaps, to console his wife, Thomas would now leave him.
“I will reply to her letter and try to reassure her. Do not worry, John. I’m not going anywhere.”
This day marked the beginning of a long and wearying exchange of letters between Thomas and his wife that dragged on and went nowhere. Having witnessed this, John was gripped by a considerable amount of inner turmoil when, finally, he held an answer from Abby in his hands.
With trembling fingers he opened the letter. It took him a minute to decipher the first sentence; Abby had grown much better at ciphers than he.
“My dearest friend,” it started, “I have perused your last letter with interest. In reaction, let me propose this: bring your Southern boy to Boston, and let me see what he is made of.”
John grinned.
He loved her so much.