There Is Quiet
Henry Laurens heard a knock on the door to his study, and, upon checking his watch, decided the visitor must be John. "Come in."
Sure enough, John Laurens entered, his hair a bit more disheveled than usual and his face alight with some sort of suppressed grin. Henry shook his head. Whatever reason John had for such an expression was certain to be frivolous, and Henry had tasks to complete and no time to spare for frivolous matters.
"You asked to see me?"
"Yes. Your meeting went well?" Henry decided his usual pleasantries would be suitable, ignoring the look of bliss that John was trying so obviously to conceal (which, if Henry was being honest, was bordering on irritating).
"Very well."
"Wonderful. I got a call from Mr. Manning, by the way," Henry smiled. "His Martha says hello. She says you've been in contact?"
"Oh, yeah," John said, giving a brief smile. "I emailed her last week."
"She's a lovely girl, Jack." Henry looked again at his son.
"What do you need help with?"
"Well," The elder Laurens looked at the papers in front of him and glanced at his computer screen beside him, "Your sister's taking care of dinner, so I just need you to look over this paperwork for me. It's proofreading, Jack. You can take it to your room if you'd like, but I need it done by eight o'clock."
"Okay," John took a small stack of papers from his father's desk, looking back up at Henry when they were firmly in his arms. "Is that all?"
"Just about," Henry replied, scanning the email on his screen. John shifted on his feet. "When you'd said you were discussing funding at your council meeting, I didn't know there would be funding going towards a gay-straight alliance of some kind."
John froze. "Oh. Yeah, they're building one up."
"Huh." Henry gave a shrug that John found shockingly (and unnervingly) hard to read.
Certainly if his heart hadn't already stopped beating, it did now. "Strange."
"Mhm."
"It's just such a different world from the one I grew up in," Henry continued. He looked at his son, his expression the oddest mix of blankness John had ever seen. "When I was a kid, people like that were outcasts. Now they're hailed as heroes. It's just... different, Jack. I suppose I don't know what to tell you about this... situation."
"Yes."
Henry sighed. "Well, I'm not in support. I don't think anyone needs handouts for being different like that. They already get enough praise as is, no need to encourage them to open up more gay bars or make more money off merchandise."
John's world spun, the room shifting sideways.
He nodded, unsure if, perhaps, his head was actually going side-to-side in line with his swirling surroundings, and carried the papers out in weak arms. The door closed behind him.
John saw gray as he sprinted up the stairs through a world turned upside down.
Frankly, it was a wonder that he didn't drop the paperwork he was carrying, considering how much of a struggle flipping the light switch was, what with the numbness that had set over his hands. John slammed the door shut with his whole body, leaning against it to close it and fumbling to turn the switch for the lock.
It clicked.
He was alone.
The meaning of this washed over John as he blindly crossed to his bed, eyes open but unseeing under the condition of his sudden panic. He was alone. He was alone. He was alone. John retreated into a shell he was rapidly creating, building a cold palace of his father's words and his mind's own twisted conclusions.
People like that. Outcast. Hailed as heroes. I'm not in support. Different. Different. Different. It's just different.
John was moving towards the state of mind he had so often tried to avoid, and this time, he was plunging deeper and deeper. It was a rabbit hole of proportions even its creator was unaware of— and John was falling faster by the second into its depths. Thoughts morphed into what seemed like reality. A sharp, twisted looking glass fell over the world, and John couldn't help but look through it with terror.
He will hate you. You are alone. Outcast. His son. Your father. Different. Different. Different. You're just different.
John was shaking, curling his knees close to his chest in a subconscious attempt to protect himself from the onslaught of disapproval and loneliness that was so jarringly upon him. Had it really only taken that little to push him so far into his own fear and insecurity so quickly? It had only taken a handful of words to prove to John that he was unwelcome. It had only taken one conversation to prove that the true John was unwelcome. He barely registered the hot tears that were all over his face, his arms, his hands, his clothes. He barely registered that his shaking was the product of racking sobs. He didn't know what was happening, but the world still spun. It spun and it spun and it spun around him, faster and faster, a wheel churning out an endless cacophony of jaunts and jeers and hatred that flooded John's senses.
You are going to be disowned. You will always be alone. You have no pride. Your family hates you. The world hates you. Different. Different. Different. You are different. You are different.
John grabbed at the fabric of his sheets, wanting something, anything, to hold onto. If he could have wrenched open his jaw, he thought he would have screamed, cried out for mercy. Mercy. His father, Henry Laurens. The man who took care of John, the man who shared his home with John, the man who was John's family... The man who wasn't proud of him. Laurens registered the sobs now. They had taken control. His own father would be disappointed in who he was. Who he was! Who John was! He was the one thing in life he couldn't control. Who John was was the one thing that his father had to be proud of from the very beginning, from birth, from his first breath on the same earth with Henry Laurens, no matter what. Yet here John was, fundamentally unable to support such a simple, natural task. And there was more. He would destroy his father's entire reputation, so irreversibly that to avoid such damage altogether, Henry would be forced to expel John from the family. John felt darkness around him. His siblings...
His siblings.
John's head fell against his knees with a hard hit, and he saw his siblings through the distorted looking glass. Martha, his younger siblings, his responsibilities— they would no doubt be forced to carry on without him. Just because of his... Condition. At that, Charles Lee crept into his mind, and a new coat of hysteria painted itself over John's world. His siblings had only him. He was the oldest and the wittiest and he had to care for them— he cared for them and he cared about them. John felt himself lose control, the rabbit hole widening. If he were to be himself, his siblings would suffer. If he were to be himself, he could risk never seeing them again. His siblings. John felt himself slipping into the madness of panic, the madness of fear, the madness of pure delirium.
Different. Different. Different.
If John were to be himself, his siblings would pay for it. How could he do that to them? He was all they had most days, and Martha... Martha Laurens. Martha already bore so much. She held so much weight on her shoulders... Would she be proud? Would she hate her brother?
Different. Different. Different.
John clutched a fistful of bedding, his head throbbing with each quake that ran through him. How could anyone be proud of him? He wasn't right. He wasn't the right person. He wasn't the right son or the right brother.
Different. Different. Different.
Madness coursed through the world. The hurricane had no eye. Martha had been through so much, they all had, since their mother died.
John's mother.
Silence filled him.
Silence.
There was a long pause. The distorted world around John took a breath.
Would she be proud?
John Laurens had had the most wonderful mother. He remembered her, now, as if she had been beside him just yesterday— glowing, smiling, just how she always was.
This was the eye of the hurricane.
Would she still love him?
Something in John's heart gave way, and the tears that flowed out now were bitter and endless. The looking glass projected his siblings, his friends, his father, his late mother, everyone he knew, and a voice inside John cried out, begging for an answer to a question that tugged John's arms tighter around him and squeezed his eyes shut.
What is pride?
How could John possibly know he was making the people he loved proud? He wanted so badly for them to be proud. So often John found himself wondering whether he would be better in the eyes of his loved ones if he were a different person. His family. His friends. The opinions of these people conquered and shaped him, even when this was the last thing he could have wished for. It wasn't quite insecurity. It was a sense of pride all its own; one instilled in his heart on the behalf of others, one that had the potential to break him.
It was so hard to meet expectations that were impossible to meet, not because they were too high, but because they were too far from who John truly was that they would prove unachievable.
This was the eye of the hurricane.
In his mind's eye, the looking glass shifted. John's mother came into focus with his father and his siblings. There was quiet. Total silence engulfed him.
John looked at who he was. He looked at where he had to be. If staying by his siblings' sides and bringing honor and pride on his late mother's name meant suppressing who he was, hiding himself, following the one plan his core and his heart opposed... He was willing to do it.
John was shaking again, only slightly, more of a nervous shiver than anything. He stretched his legs out, uncurling within his palace of panic that had now become overtaken by quiet. There was one person left, one person who hadn't yet entered the realm of the hurricane. This person arrived now, the final nail in the coffin that was John's own heart.
Alexander Hamilton stood before him in his mind.
A stronghold. A person to hold his heart. Someone who could bring joy to him, without fail. Every time. Any time. Just in time. The recipient of his love— his absolute, unconditional love.
John felt a new weight on him. He would have to let go. He would have to let go of Alexander.
The harsh winds of the hurricane came rushing back at John, and paralyzing sobs returned at the blink of an eye to swallow him once more.
John saw nothing but gray in this world turned upside down.