Short Fic: "A Midnight Meeting"
Hello? Anyone? Has the comm died again?
Well, perhaps a story will rejuvenate it? I wrote this recently while my computer was busted (thus keeping me from reading fic instead), and have been threatened ordered strongly encouraged to post it here. Thus. Here it is. Enjoy?
Title: A Midnight Meeting
Pairing: Adams/Hall
Rating: G-PG
Summary: Hall is disheveled. Adams is lonely. Will a chance nighttime meeting have longer-lasting effects than even Adams's dreams of independence might have imagined?
Hall slept, fittingly enough, in the hall. Not a literal hall, of course, a long corridor with myriad doors leading away from both sides, doors full of mystery and potential. But Hall's hall, too, was full of potential - the potential for the creation of a new nation, if Franklin and Adams and Jefferson were to be believed, and the mystery too, of success or failure and future or just a continuance of the past.
Hall slept, fitfully, in the hall. He slept in the bell-tower, on the stone ridge surrounding the bell itself. It was magnificent - the bell, of course, not the ridge, which was hard and uncomfortable. Hall had arrived more than a fortnight hence and had yet to find lodging - every landlord, every lady with a spare room and a sign in the window, suddenly lost their vacancies or raised their rates almost instantly after hearing his occupation. Although they knew nothing of him, and in fact he would not have been a troublesome tenant, still he was excluded on the basis of career alone. Their reputation precedes me, he had thought wryly, once he had realized the situation, nearly stomped away from the last landlady, and returned to the bell-tower to sit down and calm himself. That was when he had decided to stop looking and just stay here. The next day, he retrieved his one bag of essentials from Rutledge's rooms - the other Southerner had insisted that he leave them there until he found rooms of his own - and placed the spare key Rutledge had given him in prominent view, on a desk by the door, and carefully ignored the odd sounds from behind the open door to Rutledge's bedroom. The bag was now stowed behind the bell, half-hidden by its shadow for most of the day. Hall hoped no one had seen it there. He'd seen Adams come up here more than once during the long days of unresolved debates...
Over the next few days, Rutledge, evidently assuming - and why not? - that Hall had moved into some apartment of his own, asked numerous times whether Hall would like some company for the evening, mentioning something about "breakin' it in." This would have worried Hall immensely if he were actually in an apartment, as he would neither have wanted it broken into nor desired that any of the furnishings be destroyed, but worried him anyway because quite obviously he was unable to accept the invitation. So he turned Rutledge aside, every time, first feigning other commitments, then gently, firmly, and finally brusquely rejecting the other man's self-invitations. At last, it seemed Rutledge had given up, returning to his other Southern compatriots, and of course to Dickinson, who must have been the only Northern delegate with whom Rutledge could stand to civilly converse.
And so Hall had made his home here, above the meeting chamber. Every morning, he would awake at a quarter to eleven, dress, wash, and shave as neatly as he could with only one tiny mirror to help, then go downstairs and out to buy something to carry back and eat in the meeting room, and find himself entering it at nearly the same time as everyone else. Every night he would dawdle until the others had left, arranging his quill and fan on the desk, putting on his coat, wishing he had a cane to bang against things and waste more time, and would then gratefully flee up the long staircase to the place he was beginning to consider his home. Well, inasmuch as his home could be in Philadelphia, in any case.
Which brought him back to the present, wherein he slept fitfully in his pilfered quarters, wearing the same clothing he'd worn the previous day, now creased and unkempt from its day's use and its half-night on the stone, and with its cravat undone. Hall awoke slowly, thinking this awakening just one more among the dozens that resulted from his inhospitable conditions - but, as he slowly came to realize, this time was different.
Softly, from below him - in the meeting room? at this time of night? - he heard a voice. It was unmistakable - what man in Congress would not recognize the most prominent voice in it? It was, of course, that of John Adams, which still left the questions of what exactly he was doing and just why he was doing it now. And was that - singing?
Curiosity now most definitely piqued, Hall rose from his uncomfortable supine position, stretched briefly to return the feeling to his limbs, and half-stumbled down the long flights of stairs, following the singing below. Upon reaching the bottom, he peered through the meeting room door, which stood slightly ajar - it was indeed Adams, and he seemed to reveal more about himself in that one moment than in all the weeks Hall had spent with him in Congress. The man was worried, and alone, and his heartfelt song made Hall's own chest tighten in response.
And when Adams sang, "Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I see?" nothing in the world could have stopped Hall from pushing the door fully open and stepping through and saying simply, "Yes, Mr. Adams. I do."
Not his embarrassment, or that which he could already see blooming on the other man's face; not his own appearance or the awkward probing questions it might raise; not even his Southern and Georgian loyalties, which would certainly cast his actions in an even stranger light.
This last also could do nothing to stop the final pieces of a puzzle from clicking into place in his mind - the puzzle of his loyalties, and those oh-so-personal, oh-so-undecided convictions on the matter of his vote for independence.
Recalling a fitting quote - from a member of Parliament, no less - he spoke it, and strode calmly to the board where the votes were tallied, though his hands were shaking and his heart still in an unfamiliar place in his chest. He slid the vote to the opposite column, with the rest of the votes of consent.
Adams did nothing but watch - in disbelief? surprise? desire? - as Hall calmly walked back the way he had come, exiting the large room and climbing the stairs as quietly as he could. Once at the top, he allowed himself to slide down against the wall until he sat with his back to it, breath finally evening, head rested on his folded arms.
Eventually, Hall returned to his makeshift bed, sleeping soundly for the first time in a long while. He awoke as the early morning sun crept through the glassless windows of the bell-tower, feeling more rested than he had any right to expect after his late-night interruption.
Someone had slipped a pillow beneath his head during the night. Hall realized that he didn't know why he'd never thought of the idea himself - he hadn't brought any such items with him from home, assuming that any rooms he found would have their own linens. Sitting up, still wondering, he saw that the pillow was not the only new addition to the small chamber - a large pile of soft, folded blankets lay beneath one of the windows. On top was a note, neatly pinned to the uppermost blanket, clearly so as not to get lost.
Dr. Hall,
I do not question your decision to lodge in the bell-tower; after all, I am sure the company is infinitely better than that of most boarding-houses.
However, the quality of the lodgings themselves seems rather inferior - and so I hope you will not think it too forward of me to leave you these, so that you may create a more comfortable sleeping place.
In addition, please keep in mind that there is a spare room in my apartments, in which you may certainly stay if you choose to leave your current quarters.
Yours,
John Adams
/Fin/