The restof the day passed in a concerted effort to make things feel as ordinary as possible. Charlie was as helpful as the most loyal servant, gathering and fetching whatever Jonathan needed as he prepared for Lord Paulson’s daughters. He stood attentively to the side, handing Jonathan plates once he’d framed the girls in their scene, cutting the magnesium ribbon, and holding the flash pan as it exploded when his shutter opened.
It would have been appropriate to pay Charlie the five shillings he was due and to walk him back to Seven Dials after that, but Jonathan came up with a list of tasks for the young man to do that would keep him there.
After they ate a cozy supper together, Jonathan decided it would be cruel of him to turn Charlie out after dark. Besides, hadn’t Brutus said to bring Charlie with him to his club when he delivered the photographs of Phoebus?
Thinking about Brutus, whose surname wasn’t even printed on the simple card he’d given him, only made Jonathan nervous. So he tucked those thoughts away and snuggled into bed with Charlie in his arms.
He should have showed the man to the spare room, where the boys he photographed usually slept after their sessions, but that didn’t feel right either.
Charlie was still there in the morning, which came as a surprise and a relief. There was nothing keeping the young man with him. There was nothing that demanded Charlie wriggle his way between Jonathan’s legs before he was entirely awake to suck and swallow his cock. All thoughts about why the young man would rush to pleasure him that way without being asked or prompted were immediately drowned in the bliss of the young man’s hot, eager mouth.
It had been ages since Jonathan had greeted the morning by having his cock sucked. He’d forgotten how much he liked it.
Maybe it wouldn’t be terribly wrong of him to keep Charlie around for a few days more.
“I have more eggs and a side of ham in the larder,” Jonathan panted once he was spent and Charlie had rolled abashedly to his side, half hiding his face in the crook of his arm. “And there’s always toast.”
It was the least he could offer in exchange for such enthusiastic magnificence.
Charlie said nothing about the way they’d started their day. Of course, Charlie more or less said nothing under most circumstances. He washed and dressed in his ridiculous costume from the day before as Jonathan bathed, shaved, then put on clean clothes, then went eagerly to work helping Jonathan to make breakfast and set the table.
“I might let you have a go at developing one of Lord Paulson’s photographs on your own this morning,” Jonathan said, letting the thoughts he’d been having all through the meal find their voice once the food was almost gone. “You seem to be a clever lad. I’m certain you observed enough yesterday to have a grasp of the process.”
Charlie smiled at him, a genuine smile filled with the eagerness to please.
Moments later, a loud, demanding knock on the door at the other end of the studio wiped that smile from his face.
Jonathan tensed, but instead of giving way to the dread of uncertainty, he smirked and said, “Are we doomed to have our breakfast interrupted every morning?”
He winked at Charlie as he rose, for the second day in a row, to leave his kitchen in order to see to whoever was pounding on his door now.
Whatever cheekiness and curiosity he had about his latest visitor dissolved into cold, clammy dread when he opened the shop door to find his father standing on the doorstep.
“Jonathan,” his father grumbled, then pushed his way into the shop and straight past him into the studio.
“It’s a bit early for a social call, isn’t it, Father?” Jonathan asked, closing and locking the shop door, then following after him.
“This isn’t a social call,” his father snapped. “It’s a disciplinary hearing.”
Deeper dread pooled in Jonathan’s gut, and dammit, it made him feel as young as Charlie or younger.
“What do you want?” he snapped, no longer even slightly inclined to be polite to the man who seemed to believe it was his mission to make Jonathan miserable.
His father ignored the blunt question, turning on him as soon as they were in the cluttered sanctity of his studio. “You were unforgivably rude to your mother the other night,” he said. “She took to her bed in tears after you left.”
“Perhaps she couldn’t stand to be around you for another moment,” Jonathan said, hating the taste of his bitterness on his tongue. “I know I certainly couldn’t.”
“Stop this petulance at once!” his father shouted, the same as he had when Jonathan was a boy. “Every attempt I make to bridge this gap between us, every effort I put into reforming your soul and leading you back to the light, you always meet it with this insolence and defiance.”
“I never asked you to lead me back to anything,” Jonathan insisted, marveling at the speed with which he and his father could fall into a fight.
Then again, they hadn’t really stopped fighting for the last twenty years.
“You will return to the house this morning and apologize for your behavior,” his father threw down the ultimatum.
“I will not,” Jonathan said, crossing his arms and shrugging with pretend ease.
That was the sum total of their ongoing conflict, but it didn’t feel anywhere close to being the end of things.
