Not intended to infringe. This story entirely based in the "John Adams" HBO movie universe -- written and presented as thoroughly fiction. Doo daa, doo daa.

Unanticipated Possibilities by Melody Clark

The scent of night-blooming flowers was swept in by an evening breeze, lighting the night with a memory of a garden. He stared down through the open obturateur de fenЙtre with its secreted view of their curtilage surrounded by a deep trainband of trees. The flowers and breeze and memory itself swarmed in harmony together as if phantoms wandering aimlessly through moonlight. There was a misty rain clinging to the spectral light. There was a fall of frozen leaves before the threshold. And suddenly there were sharp, measured footsteps making their approach with the brittle crunch of frosted groundcover between the drifts of frozen leaves.

John heard the footsteps pause beyond the open twin doors and watched a tall shadow of a man step inside the archway entry followed by the man himself.

Adams was about to step forward and contest a stranger's presence at his door when he recognized the visitor as a friend. "Thomas? Where on earth have you come from at this hour of night?"

The man inside the doorway toasted the air with the glass of sherry Adams recognized as the aperitif from their earlier dinner. Jefferson's shirt was open and he was smiling rather too freely -- a most engaging and therefore dangerous smile -- as he leaned against the vaulted doorway arch. ⌠And I might ask of you to where on earth you fled? At dinner, I turned to speak with you and found you had abandoned me to the Viceroy's suspect gifts for storytelling. As if you had not already been all but silent the entire evening. Especially by recent standards." Thomas covered his glass of sherry and glanced up at the worsening rain. "May I come in?"

"Of course you may, where are my manners?" John said, standing away to welcome him through that door and shortly into his chambers. "Please, won't you join me by the fire?"

Jefferson followed him to the hearth, Adams feeling the bright presence of his gaze watching him until they reached the hearth. Jefferson smiled, surveying the room to be assured the two men were its only occupants.

Thomas' most dangerous smiled returned to him. "Where is Mrs. A ... if I may ask?"

"The vice-chancellor of Orsay's wife has taken ill. She is a friend to my wife. They have seven children and a nurse but no tutor for them. Abigail has gone to instruct them until they may arrange a tutor. I pray it isn't long. The nights are deep without her. I have no notion how I survived without her for all of that span of time."

"I have," Jefferson said, staring out one of the room's few windows. He drew the pocketed curtain with its privacy furbelow across the slender margin of hazy glass. John could no longer see any vestige of the world outside.

"I thought we had agreed that we would not speak of such matters again," Adams said sharply, turning away from the glow of the hearth to reach for the other man's collar, pulling it up and together. "Nevertheless, at very least, repair yourself, sir, for you are a scandal in the making."

Jefferson finished his wine and set his glass on the hearth. He took a step toward Adams. "There will be no scandal for we are not in Boston, John. And so to the matter of your quietness."

"Of the fact we are not in Boston I am much aware, believe me," Adams said, stepping back to one end of the hearth. "And I should think my quietness would be of some relief to you. To you and to most of Paris, I would imagine. I am surprised that you would venture out at night merely to question it."

Jefferson's glowing smile seemed to enter this world from a different one. It was, to John, as kind and gentle and knowing as ever. Thomas moved toward him again as the soft, intoxicating poetry of his voice replied, "I am this moment less concerned with the pleasure of your silence as I am the meaning of it."

"Very well," Adams said, taking a step back as if to reach for the hearth iron. He took it up and stoked the fire with it. "I am to attend the RИception de Banque de Palais. I must remain quiet to sustain my voice for a speech to be given in such a vast room. That is the reason for my silence, as you call it."

"No," Thomas said simply, "it is not."

"Why is it not?" Adams said, a trifle flustered with forced indignation.

"Because reasons must have reason behind them, John. That is what makes them reasons. I fear that assertion has little to none."

"And I fear your minting of apothegms proves you have been too long and too often in Brother Franklin's company ... Thomas." He lowered his voice to a small if threatening flame. "Why would you not accept my reason on my word?"

"For a simple reason of my own."

"Which is?"

"Which is the fact we are both to attend RИception de Banque de Palais. You are not slated to speak but I am."

Adams grimaced with a sharp twinge of discomfiture and guilt. He nodded his concession. "Very well," he said softly, sinking into the hearth chair. He thought for a considerable moment. "It is simply this. On my farm, life makes sense. And if there may be found reasons for my silences, as you call them, they reside in my absence from it. And my presence at that ... portion of the city which you saw fit to force-march me through this very afternoon."

"Ah, at last we arrive at the reasonable reason. The one I had surmised." Jefferson's smile grew soft and sad. "I had merely hoped to encourage your sympathies toward your son's plight."

Adams' constant stare of ready sadness focused in on the other man. He averted his gaze. "My wife should not have spoken to you of those matters."

"Abigail has become my friend. We speak of many things."

"Abigail is my wife, sir, and as dear a friend as you are to me, I would prefer she keep such matters in the confidence of our marriage. Since she has already indulged herself in gossip on this subject then I shall tell you that our son has merely fallen into the company of unsavory men. Fortune has required that he be without a father's firm hand and his mother's steady guidance. Our correspondence will amend that. Charles will come to his own good senses in time."

"And if he does not?"

"He will."

"But if he does not ... "

"Then we will deal with that moment as it presents itself. I'll thank you, sir, to let me know my own son's heart."

"As well as your father knew your heart?" Jefferson asked, walking toward the hearth as he once more closed the distance between them. "As well as any man knows his own? Your failing, as ever, is in not trusting your heart, John. Have we not crossed such a bridge before?"

Adams felt the moments pass as if as hours. He centered himself again, shut his eyes, stated firmly as if by reflex, "In trusting our own hearts we must still abide morality and conscience ... as informed by religious instruction."

"Spare me the sermons, John. Deacon Adams cannot hear you. Your father is long away. You no more believe in all of that than I do. We are rare creatures, you and I, men who think for ourselves."

"Then there is simply the matter of the rule of law -- "

"Whose law? The rule of kings? Tyrants? Impossible gods? We solved such a conundrum before, you and I. How did we come to our solution? By knowing with our own minds. When a law is unjust, it is the right of -- "

"No need to quote yourself, Thomas. I've heard all of that before."

Jefferson smiled. "Beyond all of that, we are in Paris and the flies seemingly have more important things to swarm. The constables scarcely take notice of such matters in these days. In that way, we are free, John. As free as men can be in such a world."

"We have already acknowledged that we are in Paris," Adams said with a deeply drawn sigh. He shook his head and softly said, "My God, you have changed. This country has changed you and you have changed me. My quiet Virginian friend has become a man of single-minded capriciousness the sum of which may very well be my damnation ... and possibly his own as well."

"Then stay," Thomas said, stepping toward the hearth chair to touch a gentle hand to John's face. He laughed softly. "And save my soul. I shall then save yours."

John stood up to quickly move away. "You are drunk, sir."

Thomas grasped John's hand so he would not walk away again. "I am drunk, John, but not with wine." He reached for Adams' other hand. He drew both upward toward him to consider them closely before his eyes. "Such gentle hands. For a farmer. I would venture to guess that only Abigail and I know the true gentleness of their touch."

"You would venture correctly," John said, entirely uneasily.

Jefferson lifted Adams' captive hand toward his face. He kissed the ring on one of them then quickly slipped his tongue between its fingers. Adams felt himself begin to melt into the moment, reveling in the other man's ministrations. Then he recovered sufficiently to fight for custody of his hand.

Jefferson held the hand hostage more tightly than before. He pressed his lips against the other hand, opening the palm to stroke his tongue adroitly along its edge.

To John, it would have been so easy to cede the moment. So easy to surrender as all the other times before.

Finally, he wrenched his hands free, grasping out for a piece of hearth, his lungs chasing madly after breath. "For the love of God, Thomas -- " John coughed out. "Once again, fortified by Spanish wine, you arrive at my bed chamber in the very dregs of night and make it all but impossible to turn you away. All the times before were born of loneliness and far too much French ale, I grant you, but I have not been drinking now."

"You were not drunk each time."

"To borrow a phrase from a friend, I was drunk but not with wine." Adams shut his eyes hard against the light outside and the fire growing within. "It is, in fact, an inebriation without remedy. That I fully comprehend. But I am a married man who loves his wife ... your friend, sir ... to whom I would remain faithful."

"As you know yourself, in other times and places, men had both wife and husband. That is how I understand these matters regarding Abigail."

"These are not those times and places. When they are, we will speak of it again. Until then ... please ... Thomas ... this night's impertinence must end."

"Very well," Jefferson said sadly, stepping back to move away. "Yet shortly, your fine mind will begin its permutations to see roads where there were none before. It always finds them. And you will recall how my kiss feels on your skin and you will remember where I am. Until then, forgive me, sir, the sheer impertinence of loving John Adams."

Jefferson moved quickly toward the door through which he had come.

But Adams' smallest voice flickered through the room like a feeble shadow on a distant wall, "I believe I would forgive you anything but I had not thought a need to forgive you that."

"You have my heart," Jefferson said softly. "Did you not know that?"

Adams paused a moment before whispering, "I can only know that you have mine."

Jefferson smiled softly. "You know where I am."

As the tallest shadow in the room roamed beyond its walls, Adams stood alone by the quiet hearth. He was resolved. He would stand firm. And with it all he knew too well in whose bed he would awaken come the morning.