The two entered to see Alfred sitting at Kiku's prized white piano with his back to them, flicking through a music book, "Can I borrow these, Kiku?" he asked without looking around, "I want to learn them for the performances next week."

"That depends on how you sit today, Alfred," Kiku replied; Arthur was surprised not to have heard him recite his usual passive response of 'we shall see'.

"I'm tired of sitting – I mean, I don't think I even want a life-sized portrait of myself," Alfred said with a grin, swinging around on the stool childishly. His grin faded upon realising that Kiku was not alone and he faltered for a moment, a faint blush colouring his cheeks, "Sorry, I didn't know you had anyone with you."

Arthur waved a hand in dismissal before seating himself on the divan and opening his cigarette-case, "Think nothing of it,"

"I have just been telling Arthur what a capital sitter you were," Kiku said, a hint of amusement to his tone, although one could not be sure that he was intentionally being ironic.

"Aren't you tired of looking at me yet?"

"Certainly not," Kiku replied, "The more I look," He made a small, delicate stroke which slightly changed the expression of the Alfred in the painting to one more like that that he wore in person, "The more I see."

"Surely you must be nearly done?"

Arthur wondered why it was taking so long for the painting to be completed – he'd seen Kiku complete many a portrait before this one and none of them had taken nearly as long. Perhaps it was Alfred, he thought as he glanced over to him; yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth's passionate purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. It was no wonder Kiku practically worshipped him.

He got up from the deviant and began to walk behind the painter, before he was stopped with a warning look – it did not stop him because of what it was but rather because of whose face it was on, "I want to see it."

Alfred chuckled, "He won't even let me take a look."

"You may see it when it is finished."

Arthur continued to chat to Alfred – although it was generally felt that chat was too light-hearted a term for the sort of things that Arthur said in conversation – and it became increasingly difficult for Kiku to paint when his muse was moving about quite so much.

"I mean," Alfred had begun to talk with his hands a little, ever increasing the difficulty in capturing him in a painting, "I've been in London two weeks now and the only people I've met are the ones who come up to me after concerts,"

"You have met me," Kiku said suddenly, despite being silent until that moment.

"Oh, I didn't mean—"

"These parties are terribly dull, Alfred. You will not be missing anything," He replied stoically as he captured the way the light reflected off the white of the other's eye on canvas.

"I know, it's just..." he shrugged with a light grin, "I thought it might be fun."

"Don't squander your golden days listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, giving away your life to the ignorant – realise your youth while you still have it!" Arthur said, waving his smoking hand as he spoke so that the scent of tobacco and opium sprawled across the room.

"Arthur, why don't you take a walk while I work up the background?" Kiku said diplomatically, eager to get back to work.

"You don't need Alfred for that," he said, getting up from the divan and facing Alfred, "Let's both take a break."

Kiku put down his brush, "Perhaps we should all get some air."

"Yes, and I know just the place."

. . .

As the coach travelled Alfred watched as the exterior gradually changed from the charming, well-to-do side of London that he had grown accustomed to: grubby pedestrians slunk like rats through the street, pilfering and pillaging as they went; the putrid stench of poverty hung in the air like fog; the houses loomed over them as if they would swallow the sky. The further they penetrated into this Whitechapel, the more his heart sank, yet he was adamant that it couldn't possibly be as bad as it looked if someone like Arthur would venture there.

Soon it got to a point where it was impossible for the coachman to continue due to gradual decrease in the width of the road, if it could be called that now, and so the three got out and began to walk.

Without the barrier of the carriage between Alfred and the sullen streets, he felt as if he'd been thrown into some sort of bizarre dystopia. Everywhere he looked there was some sort of deviation: a bloated, red-faced man hacked at a butchered animal which based on his appearance he couldn't possibly have obtained legally, his associate threatening the clientele who protested that the meat was five days old and not worth what they asked for; through a doorway lacking a door he saw a girl no older than ten struggling to bathe her younger siblings who squirmed in the small steel tub; upstairs a couple screeched at each other, the sounds of smashing and thumping almost tangible. He stopped walking, overcome by so many things. The crashing. The shouting. The little girl…

"Alfred," Kiku's voice pulled him away from his thoughts.

"Oh, sorry," he said dazedly, as he hurried to catch up.

"You can see why some are so eager to help Whitechapel,"

Arthur scoffed at the artist's notion.

"You don't think we should try and help?" Alfred asked, the scene behind him engraved in his mind.

"I've no desire to change anything in England, except the weather," Arthur said, skilfully avoiding a gentleman trying to sell him this and that.

They came to an archway which opened out to an inn, and before they'd even set foot inside Alfred could hear the sound of a fiddler playing, people laughing, drinking, and dancing. His spirits lifted as they entered the establishment to see that it was just as he'd imagined from the outside, albeit a little more deviant. People paired up and danced gaily to the play of the fiddler, who was stood on a table with a woman dancing on the next. Groups of men clinked their glasses together in celebration of this and that, or simply in celebration of being alive. At tables men sat with women draped across their laps, all laughing endlessly at the same joke. Alfred was surprised to find that he recognised several of these men.

"Welcome to my little hellfire club,"

They sat down at a table in the corner, and

"'Ere you are, gents," A barkeep said as she set down three glasses roughly on the table.

Kiku and Alfred stared at the drinks that had been set before them blankly; Arthur picked up his glass and drank it in one. In turn Alfred picked up his own, studying the contents for a second. As far as he could tell it was just whiskey. He raised it to his lips.

"No, don't," Kiku said with a slight warning tone before Alfred threw the liquor down his throat. It burned the back of his mouth and made his tongue tingle, and before he could control the impulse the bitter liquid sprayed out of his mouth, showering the table – the other dodged away from the worst of it.

Arthur looked on in amusement as Alfred struggled to come back from a fit of coughing and spluttering.

"Barkeep!" he said, signalling for more glasses to be brought to the table.

Alfred, now mildly taken aback by his reaction to the drink and taking it to mean more that what it did—which was that as he didn't drink very much very often a half-pint of such concentrated alcohol was by no means the optimum choice for himself—looked around once more, and began to unpick the seams of the inner workings of the inn. He noticed the way most of the women had their skirts hiked up far higher than was acceptable, and that if he wasn't careful about how he angled himself he could see right up one girl's dress as she kicked her legs out periodically whilst dancing atop the table. He noticed the creeping hands of gentlemen, the sordid remarks they exchanged with women who Alfred now realised must be a different sort of woman than he'd thought them to be at first.

"There's no shame in pleasure, Mr. Jones," Arthur said, as if reading his mind, "You see man just wants to be happy, but society wants him to be good, and when he's good, Man is rarely happy. But when he's happy, he's always good."

These unusual statements which Arthur threw his way felt like riddles for Alfred to decipher, as if by understanding the meaning of the man's needlessly lengthy ways of saying something simple it would somehow make him into a better quality of human being.

"And you want to be good, don't you? And happy," He said cogently as he reached for his drink.

Despite the other's way with words persuading him greatly Alfred still felt uneasy as he glanced around the tavern and caught sight of one of the many harlots strewn about the place looking at him; he unintentionally met her eyes and she winked, a honey-sweet smile playing at her face, "Isn't there a price to pay for that sort of thing?" he said uncertainly, quickly looking away from her and back to Arthur.

He glanced at the woman who'd just winked at Alfred, "Oh she's quite affordable," he said casually, causing Kiku to choke on his drink a little.

Alfred pressed on regardless as he noticed the woman stand up and start walking over to the table, "What I was asking about was the affect on–" And then she was right beside him, blocking Arthur from his view, and he had no idea where to look.

"Will you buy a lady a drink?" she said coyly, her voice like silk.

"On– on the–" The words caught in Alfred's throat as he tried to ignore the harlot before him and produce a coherent sentence at the same time.

"Oh what?" Arthur said, sounding irritated but looking slightly amused.

"Well, on the soul," he managed, sounding quite solemn.

"One's soul?" he said it as if Alfred has queried as to whether Saint Nickolas would still bring him yuletide gifts if he partook in such things, and leant forward with a gleam in his eye that Alfred couldn't quite decipher; it was somewhere between amusement, disgust, and malevolence, "This is my church," He picked up his drink and drank it in one before placing it down hard onto the table, "With this dram, right now, I nail my soul to the Devil's altar."

"You'll never meet a more eloquent philosopher of pure folly," Kiku said, sounding slightly weary. Arthur grinned at this, which made him mildly irritated, which was just about as irritated as he could stand to be, and he stood up, "It is time to show you what we've made,"

Alfred's eyes lit up, "Really? I can see the painting?"

Arthur scowled at Kiku's sudden move to leave and had already refilled Alfred's glass as he spoke his last sentence, "The boy hasn't even finished his gin," he said as he placed the bottle down so that Kiku could clearly see that he'd just refilled the drink: a subtle signal that the painter was overstepping his bounds, "Go and fiddle with the background; we'll be along shortly."

Of course Kiku knew not to take the matter any further, and gave a very small bow to Arthur before turning to leave. Alfred watched him go, purely because he had nothing else to do other than drink – and he was understandably disinclined to try another drop of the stuff any time in the near future – when yet another woman caught his eye. She had a lovely face, shoulder-length blond hair and blue eyes

Feeling mildly annoyed with himself, he quickly scanned the rest of the group she was standing with and observed her for a little while before coming to the pleasant conclusion that she was not another strumpet. He grinned to himself.

"Perhaps you should go and speak to her," Arthur said, in a way which made 'perhaps' redundant.

Alfred became slightly flustered at the very idea and made an attempt to backtrack, "Oh, I– I didn't realise that she—"

"Go."

There was an odd sort of feeling in the air as Arthur continued to fix Alfred with his gaze, as if there were things passing between the two that had been compacted into a single word and now yet again Alfred was left to decipher the cryptic message which was presented to him. He blinked as Arthur stared at him for what felt like eternity but it was really only a matter of seconds. The intensity of his expression made Alfred wonder whether perhaps he was being set up somehow.

Still, he barely considered it before breaking eyecontact and glancing at the girl before shaking his head and looking at the table, "I wouldn't know where to—"

Once again Arthur cut him off, "You see, I envy you Alfred."

"Me?" He said, visibly taken aback, "Why?"

"Everything's possible for you because you have the only two things worth having. Youth..." he paused, his eyeline not even wavering from the other as if he was somehow transfixed, "And beauty."

Alfred shifted, no longer able to look him in the eye; Arthur had been looking at him as if he was some sort of exotic animal that he wanted to shoot in the head, out of kindness to the poor creature, and have mounted on his wall. He hastily glanced at the girl again in an attempt to hide his discomfort, but just as he looked at her she began walking away with one of the men she had previously been standing with.

"The moment's lost," Arthur said suddenly, back to his usual blunt way of speaking, and he picked up his drink once more.

Alfred turned back around in his chair feeling a little disheartened, but determined not to let Arthur know this, and so he shrugged in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner, "That was probably her husband," he said, as if to justify not having the courage to go over to her; he said it more for himself than for Arthur.

"Oh yes, very sensible," Arthur said, though his tone was so dripping with solemnity that Alfred knew that he was mocking him. Suddenly he leant forward and fixed him with a look in his eyes of such intensity that if it wasn't for his coherence it would have made him appear a complete lunatic, "People die of common sense, Alfred, one lost moment at a time. Life is a moment, there's no hereafter," Alfred could do nothing to get away from that look in his eyes, his words: words which cut through him far more easily than he'd like yet which he consciously absorbed as if they were what was keeping him alive, "So make it burn, always, with the hardest flame."

And Alfred was left with those words ringing in his head for many days to come.