Hello. So I'm beginning a new fic. Sure, why not?

Thanks to my beta delusionaldemise. All credit for the title goes to (I strongly suspect) her.

It was a strange time, the late nineteenth century. So strange, in fact, that it even seemed to me as I was living that what was going on was not reality, but instead some wild imagining made up by a mind not quite clear. And that is the core of our story, mine and Alfred's.

My good friend Alfred F. Jones, a writer of novels who had moved to London from America for reasons he would not reveal, liked to say, "Keep an element of mystery around you at all times, Arthur. Then no one will know what you will do next, donate to charity or begin slicing people up like that fellow in Whitechapel."

Perhaps his words fell short of Shakespearean, but even when he spoke in jest, people listened closely to him. At a bare twenty years of age he had risen to become one of the most prominent authors in the hemisphere, and he knew it. Oh, how he knew it!

When I met him that morning for breakfast in the spring of 1889, he was playful as ever, his cheeks rosy and his eyes alight with inspiration and happiness.

He set out immediately to tease me, a favorite hobby of his. "Hello, Arthur!" he called in the American accent some called droll. I thought it was an inexcusable affront to the English language and told him so often. "You will never guess who I met for a drink last night!"

"Who, Alfred?" I asked, knowing better than to ignore him.

"Francis Bonnefoy!" he responded. "The painter. I think he's wonderful."

My mood immediately turned sour. I hated Francis Bonnefoy, the painter, perhaps unjustly. He was French, from a rich family, had been raised in Paris and summered by the sea with his family during his childhood. He was despicable. His most famous work was and is still L'amour Sans Complications, Uncomplicated Love (I thought the title was incredibly cumbersome and terrible, but to the London upper class, everything in French was très sophistiqué), which caused an outcry due to the subject matter: it depicted two male lovers naked in bed. He claimed it was a representation of the growing population acting on their desire to engage in that act with other men and said nothing further on the subject, even when pressed. Once acquainted with him in person, it became obvious that he was one such man, or wanted to be.

"Oh? And what did you drink? Scotch and soda?" I muttered.

Alfred laughed as if this was the funniest thing he'd heard since he'd read the latest book by the outlandish comic writer (and a good friend of Alfred's, of course) Mathias Køhler. "Oh, Arthur," he said. "No, of course not. This is Francis. We had a lovely Cabernet."

"Wonderful," I responded. "Now not only have you become a drinker of French wines, but also you and Monsieur Bonnefoy are now on a first name basis."

Alfred laughed again and lifted his arm to place round my shoulders. "Arthur, one must have as many friends as possible. Surely you don't understand, you only have me, after all, but I know that the best way to live your life is through letting go of all formality and abandoning those who disapprove."

Such was Alfred's thinking. I disagreed with nearly everything he ever said, and yet somehow-we worked out.

"Besides," Alfred added, "I have known Francis since I stepped off the boat two years ago. It is not like me calling him by his Christian name is a new thing."

That night Alfred was invited to supper with the musician Roderich Edelstein at his house, and Alfred decided to bring me along, which had apparently been met with excitement from the Edelstein end. I suspected the invitation came from Edelstein's wife, Elizabeth. She was the more social of the two, and thus more disposed to want company for supper.

Also invited was, to my dismay, and certainly Edelstein's as well, Bonnefoy. He arrived fashionably late, as was his style, and entered with a flourishing motion of his cape before dropping it dramatically into the arms of the butler, and went around the table kissing all the guests but me, which irked me greatly, though I suppose I should have been relieved.

To my right was Alfred; to my left Elizabeth had placed Bonnefoy, surely knowing of my dislike for him. She was that sort of character. To Bonnefoy's left was another writer named Gilbert Beilschmidt. He was Alfred's sort of man, but he lacked the kindness that Alfred possessed, the kindness that stopped me from cutting myself out of his life completely. That's not to say he wasn't kind, but he felt threatening to me, and his writing only solidified this feeling. To his left Elizabeth had placed herself, and left of her, at the head of the table, was her husband. Left of Edelstein was who was apparently his old friend, though the pianist looked less than thrilled to see him again. The man in question, a Vash Zwingli of whom I had never heard, appeared to reciprocate this unhappiness. To his left was Mr. Køhler, and to his left was his good friend (Alfred suspected them to be lovers), Lukas Bondevik, the older brother of famed violinist Emil Steilsson Bondevik, and to the left of Mr. Bondevik the Elder was the musician in question. To his left sat the shy Lithuanian composer Toris Laurinaitis. Finally, at the other end of the table was young Feliciano Vargas, a talented painter who, as critics said, "Embodied everything that was beautiful about the Renaissance." I did not see it. In fact, I rather wished Alfred hadn't brought me.

Along with the food (which was excellent, though I could have made better, I'm sure) came hearty conversation, mostly driven by Alfred. He spoke of baseball, his favorite sport, where I prefer cricket, and America and the many ways he claimed it was better than England, but after a few too many glasses of wine he grew mellow and spoke of love with a languid smile.

"I love you all," he murmured. "I do, truly. Even you, Roderich. I love you too. You are all beloved friends of mine."

Everything about him changed in an instant then, from his posture to the expression on his face, even to the way he held his wine glass, and he stared down into the red with what the writers around the table would all describe as "melancholy eyes."

"Indeed," he continued. "I love you all so much, and I need to love you, as my brother is not here with me. Who shall I love if not my brother? All of you. I love you because my brother is not here."

His speech was beginning to run in circles, so I stood and said to Edelstein, "Excuse us," and told the butler to call us a cab.

"I am fine," Alfred grumbled as he told the cabby his address.

"I did not know your brother was dead."

Alfred looked at me, a smile on his face, though this one was much dimmer than his usual. "My brother is not dead."

"Oh?" I said, surprised. "The way you spoke at dinner made it seem that way."

He brushed me off with a flick of his hand which, because of the drink he'd consumed, swatted me across the nose. "Don't be silly, Arthur. I only meant that he is in America still, and that I miss him greatly."

"You do not speak about your brother very much," I remarked, quickly amended by a, "Not that I care, but what is his name?"

"Matthew," replied Alfred, leaning his head against the cushion and sighing, the type of sigh only an artist can make sound dreamy. "Matthew Williams." Before I could ask why they didn't share a surname, he added, "I changed my name after I left home. It used to be Williams."

I supposed at the time that it was my natural need for truth that drove me to ask this question, not my concern for Alfred, but I asked, "What happened between you and your family to make you want to change your name?"

Alfred looked at me then, and this time his smile was more than dim; it was downright sad. I thought (and hoped) that the wine would make Alfred answer me honestly, but he just said, "Arthur, sometimes there are things even you don't need to know."

I felt he was making fun of me, and this combined with not receiving the desired answer caused me to say a bit crossly, "Are you making fun of me, you twat?"

Laughing, his mood suddenly brightened, Alfred said, "Yes, a bit. But I am mostly telling you what I really think. Don't press further, Arthur."

There was nothing threatening or intimidating or anything of the sort in the way he said those last four words. They were, in fact, spoken as if he were making happy, trivial, light dinner conversation, but as I had known Alfred fairly intimately for nearly sixteen months now, I knew that when speaking insignificantly he was really at his most serious.

I did not speak to Alfred of his family again on that carriage ride, but he spoke and spoke and spoke, happily, of what he had wanted to say at the dinner but wasn't able to due to me 'rudely interrupting his beauteous talk of love,' as he put it. But what he spoke of seemed more fit to two ears only, and those of a good friend, rather than a large party of eleven others.

"Love is everywhere, Arthur, and it shifts and changes. I think Mrs. Edelstein is no longer in love with Mr. Edelstein, and has a new love."

"Who?" I asked.

"Why, Gilbert, of course," Alfred responded. "I saw the way they looked at each other. And did you not hear Gilbert call her 'Elizabeta'? Not only are they close, as Elizabeta is a more Hungarian name than Elizabeth, I would be willing to say that she has told him her given name. Now why would he call her by the name her parents gave her when her husband does not?" My friend did not smile then, though he did not look unhappy. "They are sleeping together."

I was dumbstruck. I did not know what to say.

"Every morning," Alfred continued, switching subjects as he was disposed to do, and staring up at the night sky, "at six, a young man of perhaps sixteen and a young lady of around the same age, though in appearance much younger, meet near my apartment and whisper sweet words of love to each other. Is that not adorable?"

"Adorable," I murmured, thinking that this young couple of Alfred's was, at least partially, made up (how else would he know all this?).

"It is!" he exclaimed, snapping out of Contemplation and entering Enthusiasm. "Young love is wonderful! I wish I had had une petite copine when I was sixteen."

"And now you are speaking French too." I tugged at the sleeve of my jacket. "Brilliant."

He did not notice my sarcasm, or pretended not to, anyway. "We are here!" he shouted suddenly, and indeed the four-wheeler was slowing. I could see Alfred's building a bit down the street.

Ignoring the hand that was offered to him by the cabby, a thin older man with his cap pulled down so low all I could see of his face were his crooked teeth (they were grotesque-overlapping and broken in a way that looked improbably like yellow butterflies), Alfred used my arm to steady himself as he got out of the carriage.

"Excuse me," Alfred said to the cabby, "but I seem to have forgotten my keys. Would you mind terribly knocking on that door there?" He motioned toward his building. "The owner will answer, not to worry. You won't wake him either; as far as I know he doesn't sleep."

The cabby nodded once, a little curtly, and walked to Alfred's door.

We were practically alone on the street. Alfred had not let go of my hand. He glanced over his shoulder, and I followed his gaze. His eyes were on the cabby's back. I scarcely had time to wonder why he was staring so intently on the man, a pointless servant, when he leaned forward, tilting his face ever so slightly upward, as he was on the street and I was in the carriage still, and pressed his lips softly against mine.

I was stupefied-unable to speak. I couldn't even take hold on a single thought that was in my head, though I felt the presence of thousands.

Alfred pulled away and smiled once more, as softly as his kiss had been. "We are so young, Arthur. Let's be in love."