26th June 1891 — Echelon Home, Somewhere in England

Bellamy had been nearly bouncing on his feet all morning as he waited for Alistair Darrow to show up. For some reason, he'd suspected that perhaps he wouldn't — hence sending the second letter in the first place, where he'd made concessions towards English sensibilities (which he might have forgotten about entirely if Hermia Bonaccord hadn't mentioned them at that party last month). The fact that he'd agreed so readily, and that he was available so soon, was such a pleasant surprise that Bellamy had entirely forgotten to ask what time he was coming. He thought afternoon was more likely, but that was probably just because it had been afternoon on both of the other occasions when they'd met. He'd gotten his studio arranged just the way he wanted it in the morning, just in case, then spent the day lazing around the house. He wandered through the garden and practiced obscure spells he'd probably never need to use, but which were rather visually appealing, then he'd gone swimming in the lake behind the house, then he'd eaten lunch in about four different parts between distractions from his siblings and his father.

He had greatly over-estimated his ability to stay still in one place for an entire day, even if the Echelon house was generally more full of amusements than the rest of England was, and by the time lunch was over he was convinced he was dying of boredom. He wasn't going to leave and risk missing Alistair Darrow, though, so instead he lay languishing on a sofa in the room with the fireplace until finally it lit up green. He was on his feet and halfway across the room before the flames had even died down, reaching for the man's hand.

"Oh good, you're here. I was going crazy, honestly, because there's nothing left to work on with the portrait except the things I need you for. Come on, then," he said, tugging him in the direction of the studio. "But don't look at it when we go in. It's not finished yet. And I don't want you to see what a mess I've made of your nose, honestly. It's embarrassing."

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Bellamy wasn't paying much attention to their surroundings as he dragged Alistair Darrow along (why would he? he lived here), so he hadn't actually noticed Val or William Shakespeare. "Oh, probably," he said with a shrug. "We've got a leopard, too. But he doesn't get to wander around the house," he explained casually. They had reached the door of his studio and he went in, first bringing his guest to the proper place and gesturing for him to sit. The studio wasn't a large room, but it was spacious for Bellamy's purposes, and the small raised dais on which he'd placed a chair for Alistair Darrow to sit was located more or less in the center of the room. One wall was composed of floor to ceiling windows in dozens of small panes, and it was near the corner of this wall that he'd set up his easel and canvas, so that the natural light would illuminate both his painting and his subject. They wouldn't get the sunlight at the same angle as it had been in Padmore Park in this studio, but it would be more than sufficient to finish what little was left to do.

"We were going to start a proper menagerie, but apparently some of the things we wanted aren't legal to import to Britain, and it's frightfully hard to get exotic fruit here in the winter, so it's difficult to feed them what they're used to," he explained as he went to take his place behind the easel. "So we gave up on it and we got rid of a few of the animals we'd started with, but the leopard's still here. Shakespeare's a little different, though. He wasn't ever part of the menagerie."

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"He's my brother's monkey," Bellamy said in response, as though this was an answer. In fairness, if Bellamy had a pet monkey he probably wouldn't have named him William Shakespeare. He didn't know what he would have named a monkey (and he had no particular desire to own a monkey, anyway), but probably not Shakespeare. Maybe Oscar Wilde or Dorian Grey, he thought, but he immediately discarded the idea. For one thing, he hadn't known anything about Oscar Wilde's work before he'd come back to England, so it wasn't as though he could have named a monkey after him two years earlier (assuming he obtained a monkey at the same time Val had). Secondly, it seemed mildly irreverent to use the names of people — er, one person and one fictional character — he actually liked and respected to refer to a monkey. Not that he didn't like William Shakespeare, but — he was a monkey. And this train of thought was getting away from him.

"Hold your head a little higher," Bellamy instructed as he slid in behind the canvas. "The light's better that way."

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"Ah," Alistair said, feeling rather awkward. Then again, when didn't he? Alistair wasn't a stranger to going to the homes of friends but Bellamy Echelon wasn't exactly someone he considered a friend. Not yet, anyway. He wasn't sure what he considered him. One thing was for sure, Alistair had never met anyone quite like the other man.

He held his head a little higher, his eyes darting around the room briefly as he took in his surroundings before landing back on the artist. He didn't think he had ever been in such a luxurious house.

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Bellamy grunted in approval as Alistair raised his head to the right height, the set about his work as quickly as he could. He recalled from their previously interactions in the park that the other young man could get fidgety as time went on (and had assumed this was an immutable character trait of Mr. Darrow and not a function of his being caught off guard in a public park). Bell was almost done with the portrait, anyway. It would be no lengthy work to fix the nose, now that he had a model to look at.

It occurred to him for the first time that perhaps it was mildly inconvenient to ask the other man over for a mere ten minutes of posing. After painting him in the park, Bellamy had treated him to dinner — ought he to offer the same here? He furrowed his brow in Darrow's direction, as though he had presented Bell with a puzzle, though he hadn't said a word. "What do you want to do after this?" he asked after a moment.

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Bellamy had no idea why anyone would want a tour of the house, since to him it had long since lost the novelty of a new place and he found it incredibly boring. It was a simple enough request, though, so there was no reason to deny it. Alistair Darrow was an odd fellow, Bell reflected. He seemed preoccupied with strange things, like whether or not people were staring at him in a park, and he was fixating on things Bell thought were rather dull. Like the leopard. It was really little more than an overgrown housecat in Bellamy's opinion, and here the other man was asking about it eating people, as though the Echelons would have wanted to keep it in the house if it did.

"He hasn't yet," Bell said with a shrug, as he continued to paint. "I think you're thinking of tigers. Tigers are much bigger, and they get into tussles with little rural villages in Asian all the time, from what I understand. I don't think a leopard even could eat a person. But I don't know, I haven't looked into it," he continued in an offhand air. "But anyway, just don't climb into his cage and I don't think it'll be much of a problem."

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Bellamy poked his head around the corner of the canvas so that he could raise an eyebrow at Alistair. Was that a joke? He hadn't heard the other man make a joke yet. Bell hadn't known that jokes were something he did. The tone was unmistakable, however, and he'd smiled. Well, then.

Joke though it might have been, Bellamy considered the question rather seriously. He even paused his painting for a moment to idly chew the wooden end of his brush while he thought it over. "Maybe if the lighting's right," he concluded. "As far as allegories go it's a little on the nose, but you can get away with a lot when it's got the right composition and dramatic shadow, I think." He dropped the brush he was using in a cup of water at the base of his easel and fished out another, narrower brush. "Only a few more minutes," he announced, his attention on mixing a slightly darker shade of Darrow's skin tone against his palette.

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Bell focused on his work for a few more minutes. The nose was finished now, but he needed to cut the bridge down just a bit by filling in some of the background color. Doing that didn't require him to check his model very often, so he leaned in close to the canvas while he continued. Afterwards, he stepped back and considered the canvas. He chewed the end of his paintbrush again, then finally nodded.

"Alright, it's done," he declared. "You want to see?"

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Bellamy was rather satisfied with the painting as he stood back looking at it, but he frowned faintly at Alistair's comment. Not the first half of it — Bell wasn't terribly modest, and certainly not enough that he would feel uncomfortable being complimented for his art. The second bit, though: this is what I look like to you. It was just so small compared to what Bellamy was trying to do with his art. He wanted what he painted to be expansive; he wanted the picture to come alive. He wanted what he put on canvas to be Alistair Darrow, not just an offhand impression.

"It's more than that," he muttered, agitated.

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