28 September, 1891 — Near the Echelon Country Estate

"Come on, we're almost there," Bellamy called over his shoulder (rather unnecessarily, since he still had Alistair Darrow by the hand and had been holding on tightly since they'd left the house). Bell was mostly drunk, though, and therefore even less cognizant of how his behavior affected others than he usually was. Today was his twenty-first birthday, and after starting a party in their London estate several hours ago (a party which was presumably still going on without them), he'd eventually had the bright idea to get Alistair out into the middle of the woods. He'd pressured the other man into taking the floo with him to their country house, which hadn't taken much doing since Alistair was easy to pressure, and then he'd set off into the grounds.

"I've painted this spot, like, so many times," he continued as he ducked under a low-hanging branch. Hopefully Darrow was paying attention, because Bell hardly paused as he continued pulling him along. "We might be the only people who see it outside my paintings. There aren't paths that lead to it."

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Alistair Darrow Roberto Devine

  

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Alistair did not typically attend parties but he had felt compelled to go to this one. He was not drunk - certainly not as drunk as Bellamy Echelon - but he was experiencing a pleasant buzz. That feeling intensified somewhat when the other man singled him out and talked him into going with him to the Echelon country house. It was the liquor, he told himself because what else could it possibly be?

(The fact that Bellamy Echelons hand had a tight hold on his own definitely had nothing to do with anything. The hard beating of his heart was mostly surely because of the unexpected trek.)

Alistair was almost hit in the face with a low-hanging branch but managed to duck under it in time. "How did you happen upon it?" He asked curiously as he was pulled along.

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"I do a lot of walking," Bellamy said in an offhand way. "When I need practice. Landscapes don't complain when you paint them," he continued, shooting a wolfish grin back at Alistair. Truthfully, Darrow hadn't put up much of a fight at all compared to some of the people Bellamy had decided to paint spontaneously, but Bell thought it would be fun to tease him anyway.

He stopped short as they broke through the last line of trees around the clearing he'd been leading them towards, causing Alistair to bump into his back. Not that Bellamy minded. He quickly stepped aside so that Darrow could get a better view, since he'd seen it before. Before them was a small pool of clear water, fed by a babbling waterfall over a short series of rocks. Bellamy scanned the landscape and squeezed the other man's hand. "Wait for the sunlight," he breathed.

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Alistair blushed in mild embarrassment but couldn't help smiling. Bellamy Echelon just had such a way about him that Alistair couldn't even begin to explain. Then again, it was hard for Alistair to say no to anyone even without that element of things.

He was not expecting Mister Echelon to stop short which caused him to bump into the shorter mans back. His eyes widened as he stepped a little forward to take in the scene around them. The squeeze to his hand brought his gaze to Mister Echelons profile and his ears tinted a bit red as he looked back at the scenery before them. "It's gorgeous," he said as he took it all in.

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Bell grinned at the praise, but shook his head. "No, but wait for the sunlight. It gets even better," he promised. "We should be just at the right time of day for it, if the clouds get out of the way for a minute. The way the sun hits the water is — oh, wait," he said, leaving off mid-sentence as it appeared the clouds were starting to drift. A dappled bit of sun came in at the far edge of the clearing, shining through the leafy canopy above. Bellamy dropped Alistair's hand, now that he didn't need to pull him through the woods anymore, and moved behind the other man slightly. He didn't want to block the view, since he'd seen it all before.

He waited while the sun filtered in through more of the clearing, striking the water and making it shimmer with gold. With a scene this beautiful Bellamy almost felt as though it bled through to other senses beyond sight; it was like if he inhaled he could smell how picturesque it looked. He caught himself doing just that, in fact, but all he could smell was Alistair.

"Go sit in the sun," he suggested, nudging Darrow's shoulder from behind. "I want to see you in it."

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Alistair found himself missing the feel of the other mans hand in his own. Which was.. weird, right? It almost definitely was, Alistair felt, so of course he didn't say anything about it.

And as promised, the view of the sun filtering through the clearing was breathtaking. "Oh," he could not help but exclaim softly in awe. "It's like you have your own little fairy glen."

Alistair rose an inquisitive eyebrow as the other man told him to go sit in the sun. He saw no reason not to since it was just them. He wasn't wholly comfortable around Bellamy Echelon but he was at least mildly familiar with his quirks. "How's that?" He asked once he had settled in what felt like a good spot.

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Bellamy smiled at Darrow's assessment. A fairy glen seemed the perfect description for it. Unlike pixies, fairies had a reputation for serenity and beauty, and Bell associated both with this location. And with Alistair Darrow a little bit, too. He watched the man choose a good location and dropped to a sitting position in the grass himself. "Perfect," he pronounced. His smile was lazy but his eyes were quick and bright. He pulled a long piece of grass out of the ground and rolled it into a loose ball. He moved it idly between his fingers and his palms while he watched the speckled sunlight move across Alistair's curls. There were birds chirping in the trees nearby, the last hangers-on before their species fled for the winter.

"This is a good birthday," he observed after several moments of quiet. He tossed the ball of grass in Darrow's direction, but it unfurled and fell to the ground far short of its target. "Let's go swimming."

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Alistair smiled a bit awkwardly when the other man dropped into a sitting position on the grass himself. He watched the other for a moment as Mister Echelon played with a blade of grass and seemed to be watching the sunlight. A faint flush colored Alistairs cheeks and he had to look away.

He looked back when the other man spoke, laughing softly when the mans blade of grass didn't reach him at all. "Swimming?" He repeated in surprise. "But it's the dead of September and I don't have my swimming clothes."

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"September is still fine for swimming," Bellamy protested. "Any later and it'd be too cold." England wasn't exactly the tropics, but it was still nice enough weather that Bell thought they could manage it. The sun was shining, after all, which was a fortuitous sign, and the copse of trees would shelter them from any gusts of wind. This was probably the best place in England to go swimming at this time of year, now that he thought about it.

"And don't worry about swimming clothes. It's not like there's any girls around," he pointed out as he climbed to his feet, already reaching to pull his own shirt off over his head.

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Well, that much was true. And it was Mister Echelons birthday and he didn't feel right declining the wishes of the man who was celebrating his birthday. The wind was kept from them by the trees so they shouldn't get too much of a chill. But that still left the problem of his lack of swimming clothes.

"That. Th-th-that's true," Alistair stammered out when Mister Echelon pointed out that there weren't any girls around. Still, he did not move to pull anything off just yet. He was inexplicably unsettled by Mister Echelons shirt coming off. Not that Alistair could understand his own reaction. It wasn't like Mister Echelon was a woman for him to have to be honorable with.

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Bellamy didn't miss how Alistair had stammered in his response, but he wasn't sure what to make of it. It didn't help that it had happened while he'd been in the process of tugging his shirt off over his head (getting caught slightly — he hadn't bothered with enough of the buttons to make it slide off easily) and therefore hadn't been able to see the other man's expression as he'd spoken. Once his shirt was off he tossed it to the grass at his feet, but hesitated before doing anything else. Clearly he had no qualms about undressing to swim, but he felt a little strange taking his clothes off when Alistair Darrow wasn't following suit.

"Well?" he asked, raising one eyebrow.

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The other man clearly had zero qualms about undressing in front of another. Was he the weird one here for thinking so much on it? "Uh, yes. Sorry. It's just not typical here for men to just undress around one another." Or maybe it was and he was just overly conservative.

Even so, he managed to undress as well before swiftly diving in the water. The cold water worked perfectly to help ease his overheating cheeks."Careful, it's rather cold," he finally managed to say.

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Bellamy accepted Alistair Darrow's excuse at face value, since he had no reason to doubt it. He hadn't had many opportunities to undress around other English men, so for all he knew they would all be as shell-shocked by it as Darrow seemed to be. Bell couldn't imagine why, when there wasn't really a substantial difference between seeing another man's body and seeing your own in the mirror. Surely all these prim-and-proper English types bathed (it did not occur to him that perhaps others spent less of their allotted bathing time contemplating their own reflections in full-length mirrors; it had always been a habit of his).

In any case, he merely rolled his eyes and continued undressing, then followed Alistair into the pond. It was cold, but since he'd been the one to suggest swimming he didn't want to admit it. "You'll warm up once you move around a little bit," he responded, splashing a bit of water towards Alistair's face. "Are you a strong swimmer? We could have a race."

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Alistair was quite thankful that Mister Echelon seemed to just accept what he said. He still didn't know if it was an actual thing for other men to be discreet around one another. It was definitely a thing for himself though. He couldn't quite say why. He just knew his eyes had an urge to linger a little too long on various aspects of the other mans form.

He managed a laugh when the other man splashed water towards him. "Not quite but we should race anyway," he said. Anything to keep moving and to keep his mind off of places they shouldn't roam. Especially when he wasn't sure why they were roaming such places in the first place.

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Bell wasn't sure whether or not he'd heard Alistair Darrow laugh before. When they'd first met the man had been so quiet and uncertain of himself that laughter hadn't seemed very likely, and while he'd grown marginally more comfortable in Bellamy's presence he still wasn't exactly the life of the party. He may have chuckled on a few occasions before, but he usually still seemed nervous about it, like he wasn't sure whether or not he ought to be laughing — or like he was only laughing because he thought he should, not because he was actually enjoying himself. This seemed a little different, but whether it really was or whether it was just the difference of setting — alone in the woods, both of them undressed — that made it feel different, Bell didn't know. In any case, Bell liked the way he laughed. He wanted to make him do it again, but wasn't sure how.

"Alright, but promise not to drown," he teased. "I can't be responsible for your death. And this would probably be a pretty lonely spot to haunt, if you stayed around as a ghost." (Alistair Darrow seemed the type who would stay around as a ghost). "I'd come visit you," Bellamy continued in a chipper tone. "But you wouldn't get much other company."

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"I will do my best to not die on your property," Alistair replied in response to the other mans teasing comment. "While this a lovely spot, I would not want to haunt it." Alistair was pretty sure ghosts could move around but what if it took them years to learn how to do that? He did not want to be stuck in the Echelons glen for years on end. "Haunting Hogwarts seems like a fun time, though." There had been plenty of ghosts at the school, both residents and visitors from other places alike.

"Let's race, then," he said, splashing the other man in revenge for Mister Echelons earlier action of doing the same.

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