Chapter 5
Chapter Five
It had been a simple photographic session, nothing more.
People wandered into his studio all the time to have their picture taken.
He hadn’t tried to hide who he was or what sort of photographs he took from the world. Of course someone like Brutus would know who he was and where to find him for that particular sort of photograph.
All those thoughts and more raced through Jonathan’s head for the rest of the morning, as he walked Charlie through the process of bathing the dry plates in pyrogallic acid to reveal the negative, washing them gently in water to halt the development process once the image was dense enough, then bathing them in sodium thiosulfate to clear away the remaining photosensitive chemicals before setting them aside to dry.
“The plates require an hour or so to fully dry before we press the image into the treated paper,” he told Charlie once everything was where it needed to be before the final step. “Whatever shall we do in that time?”
The way Charlie had gazed back at him, the desire in his young eyes somehow magnified by the ruby light that gave the entire room and their faces a sensual glow, was all the answer Jonathan needed.
He hooked a hand behind Charlie’s neck, tugged him close, and planted his mouth over his while gripping the young man’s hip with his free hand.
It was probably deeply wicked and irresponsible for him to take Charlie back to bed in the middle of the day fucking his already rosy and sore hole with abandon, instead of tidying the young man up and putting him back on the street where he belonged, but the odd intensity of the morning and the clear air of sexuality that had existed around Brutus and Phoebus had left him hungry for pleasure.
If he didn’t know better, Jonathan would have said Brutus fully intended him to exit their curious encounter as randy as a goat in heat, and that he was supposed to express those desires with Charlie.
Not only did Charlie react as though being used was a pleasure and not a violation, he followed their sudden passion by fetching a wet cloth from the bathroom and bathing Jonathan with all the tenderness of an angel come down from heaven to heal the deepest wounds.
Fucking Charlie might not have pricked Jonathan’s conscience, but preening and purring as the young man showed devotion to his body, kissing it as well as cleaning it, most definitely left him feeling sheepish.
“I shouldn’t let you treat me so tenderly when our acquaintance is destined to be so fleeting,” he said breathlessly, his cock twitching like it might have actually had the wherewithal to rise again so soon after release.
Charlie stopped his reverent kissing across Jonathan’s thigh and shrunk back, head lowered, the light dimming from his eyes.
Dammit, he’d upset the man. That hadn’t been his intention at all.
“No need to worry about that now,” he said, forcing his smile to return and sitting up amid the pile of tangled sheets that had become of his bed. “We have photographs to finish, and once that’s done, the house could use a decent tidying.”
Charlie’s tentative smile returned. There was something else in his eyes with it, an urgency and a need to please that went beyond the sort of eagerness to make friends that Jonathan often saw in the mirror.
He wasn’t sure he liked that particular reflection. It said a bit too much.
They washed a bit more and dressed, then headed back to the darkroom.
Charlie hung on Jonathan’s every word and watched what he was doing with sharp eyes as Jonathan demonstrated how to apply a sheet of albumen paper to the dry negative, then how to clamp them into wooden frames so the paper was held tight.
The final step of the development process involved bringing the plates and paper out into the sunlight to imprint each image on the paper.
Jonathan had an area in the tiny garden behind his house that was sheltered from the houses around him built specially to complete the printing process without any prying eyes seeing the resulting images.
Watching Charlie’s face as each image appeared and sharpened on the paper was something else entirely. The way the young man’s eyes lit up with wonder and lust as the captured expression of his own body and desire unfolded before them was captivating.
“It’s me,” the young man whispered, staring at the image of himself, spent and splattered after Jonathan had fucked him.
Jonathan pulled his gaze from the memory of the night before to the reality that stood in front of him, looking at himself in all his debauched glory for the first time.
Charlie hoarded his words as if they were diamonds, but each one that he offered was as precious as the gems themselves and contained just as many facets.
“I told you you’re beautiful,” Jonathan said, uncharacteristic gentleness in his tone as he reached out to brush a lock of Charlie’s blond, curling hair away from his face.
Charlie breathed in at his touch, but kept his gaze firmly locked on his own image.
Nothing that had happened in the past day should have happened to Jonathan. He was a practical man, a man of freedom created by his own choices. He was not even remotely sentimental.
But he suddenly couldn’t remember his life before Charlie, even though that life existed less than twenty-four hours before.
“I’ll show you where I keep these sorts of photographs before passing them along to my distributor,” he said, alarmed at how rough his voice sounded, and for no reason at all that made sense to him.
He cleared his throat, then went on to say, “And then we need to set up for Lord Paulson, who has an appointment to bring his daughters in to be photographed this afternoon.”
It should have been easy to gather up all of his almost-finished work up to the storage room across from his bedroom. But when Charlie turned his head to smile eagerly at him, Jonathan could have stayed where he was all day, just looking at the man.
He was an image that had somehow come unbound from the photographic paper, a piece of Jonathan’s imagination that had breathed in life and now stood on his own.
That thought brought too many emotions and too great an intensity for him to bear thinking about just then. So Jonathan did what he always did. He smiled, smacked a kiss on Charlie’s lips, winked at him, then turned and walked away, gesturing for Charlie to follow.
The rest of 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.