The Whistling Kettle

Affair

Really, what would it matter?

He was no fool. Trips to France every other month followed by weeks on end with hardly any calls or messages; his husband was having an affair, all the advice columns he had read said so. 

So then, why would it matter if he, too, decided to throw their marriage vows out the window and turn his back all they had promised each other? After all, if  Francis could bed another as his husband and child awaited his return, why should Arthur not do the same?

This was never his initial plan, of course not. He had thought to pack everything and leave before Francis came home, or wait until his return before he beat him black and blue and left with their adopted child, never to be heard from again. He'd had a million other responses to the situation, but Alfred F. Jones had never been one of them.

"You're Mr. Bonnefoy, right? I think the mail guy got the addresses mixed up- this is your package, right?"

Those words should not have made his stomach flip like it had when he was so young. The boy before him was on the cusp of adulthood- no more than 18, Arthur would say. Imagine his alarm when his cheeks flushed at the sight of the young man standing at his door, skin kissed by the sun above and eyes so blue that Arthur felt as though he was drowning.

Despite all of the other options that had crossed his mind, being pinned to his bed by a man who was certainly not his husband, was not one of them. For a man of 30 years, one would think that Arthur would know better than to invite the boy into his home for a quick thanks and a cool drink. One, of course, would think he'd know better than to acknowledge the youth's wondering eyes with some glances of his own. And certainly, one would undoubtedly assume that he would know far better than to brush his hand against the tanned thigh sitting on his kitchen chair.

He had little doubt that Francis spent his nights in the arms of another, so really, why did it matter that he began to spend his nights in Alfred's?