He had most definitely been blushing - not that anyone their right mind could blame him.

Alanzo, the delivery wizard, flashed him such a knowing grin that Balfour was certain he would be unable to walk into the rib shack restaurant this next month without feeling his ears burn. "Pity they weren't ten minutes later, I was definitely getting somewhere." Johann had remarked when he returned to the kitchen to reclaim his dressing robe and set out the food.

He wondered if all linguists were so skilled with their tongues, or so solid on their knees.

The thought was the only thing keeping him from intently watching the other wizard intently tuck into the ribs, all licking fingers and supping teeth. Balfour leaned back in his seat and kicked his legs up on the spare kitchen chair as they ate. The cats had fled in that uncanny way of animals who knew a thing before it happened; Whiskey on the other hand had sniffed out the food and idled in the kitchen.

Balfour reached for a napkin, wiping his fingers clean to wield a fork - sweet mash simply being one of those dishes you couldn't dig your hands into - while Johann spoke. No doubt, the staff on level five knew more than one Ira in their international dealings.

"Mm. Nearly three years now. Is your Ira an Almasy as well?" he poked at the potatoes, glancing up to see if the name made an impression. "There's only one of her. Fortunately and unfortunately." The wizarding world only needed a single Ira Almasy. Any more would be an excess in style or theatricality.

Whiskey whimpered quietly and he looked down, distracted, to fling him a clean rib. The dog snapped its jaws shut on the bone.

"A nomadic lifestyle?" Balfour turned back to watch Johann eat, gaze falling on the man's lips before meeting his eyes.  "I was  like that myself before I returned to work here. It was easier not to have a place, yet now I can't imagine anywhere like it. " The jellyfish bobbing above the kitchen table glowed orange in response to this warm feeling.

He was so used to them that he hardly noticed. "Moving around all the time, that can be tiring." Balfour added in a light voice, remembering but not lingering on how deeply Johann slept the night before. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and reached over to wipe a smear of sauce off Johann's cheek. "It's worth being woken up by hyperactive pets."

Whiskey interrupted his own meal to give a playful yelp at this.

"… is your Ira and Almasy as well?" Balfour glanced to him and Johann's expression confirmed recognition before he gave a small nod and raised an eyebrow fleetingly in agreement to the following statement.

"Moving around all the time, that can be tiring. It's worth being woken up by hyperactive pets." He paused as Balfour wiped his cheek, cool prickles down the back of his neck at being touched unexpectedly. He blushed and brushed the cheek with the back of his hand, unaware he'd made a mess until then. Suddenly he became self conscious at how he'd been stuffing his face. It had been too easy to fall into a state of homelike comfort with Balfour, given how up close they'd been already.

"Well, no shortage of those here." He agreed, glancing down at his hands and suddenly feeling the messiest person alive. Whiskey was playing with one of the ribs on the floor between them, illustrating.

"And yes, it can be tiring, but so can monotony." He gave a shrug and turned the chicken wing between his fingers, contemplating how best to eat it like he wasn't ridiculously hungry. Balfour's bright gaze was suddenly rather intense again, as if he were studying everything about him under a magnifying glass. Johann's subconscious mulled over the fact the other wizard was remarkably attentive with his eyes, and he tried to push aside any self-conscious apprehension with regards to this. It was odd to be the subject of study, particularly when he applied it to others so often.

"Makes it easier to just up and go to Suriname and such with the Department." He explained and looked up, more of a bashful smile reaching his lips as he watched Balfour eat mashed potato, eyes enjoying the shadow on the jaw and Balfour's neck as his gaze ran down towards the green dressing gown. The week away in August had been a welcome escape from everything in Britain, even if Gabrielle had been in two minds whether to prevent him going, but they needed a Dutch speaker. It had been so very warm, and their hosts had been most gracious in entertaining them.

"I wish there were more times when I was away from the office. I get itchy feet, and it's fantastic work to immerse and not speak English for a while. Oh, heh, me talking about shop this time." He put three fingers to his lips as if to silence himself and gave a little shrug, leaning back in his chair.

"You must have travelled a lot yourself for business… pleasure?" He waved the rib in one hand towards Balfour in gesture, "I would wager that you, like me, buggered off to see the world after final exams and didn't want to come home." Question posed, he made short work of the rest of the rib, though eyes and ears were very much attentive to the reply.

Nobody prepared you for liking people. Attraction was one of those things you sort out while you're dating at Hogwarts or (in his case) gallivanting across different continents but at the end of the day, everyone had their own idiosyncratic view on actually getting along with another person. You don't inherit a perspective on relationships, you develop one.

Balfour decided that outside of their recently physical intimacy, he quite enjoyed Johann's company. It felt friendly and earnest. He couldn't imagine Johann being anything besides what he was.

Listening to him speak, he'd barely realised that he was staring at the other man's naked collarbone the entire time. and abruptly roused himself from introspection.

"Do you often just up and go, then?" Balfour smiled, though quite blatantly trying to grasp the rhythm of this whole other life colliding into his. "I do understand not wanting to stay in the office long. It's more exciting when I'm in the field. Nothing is black and white, there." They lived and worked in the grey area of creature handling or training; the compromise between too much or too little force.

It was important to know when to stop pushing. He put down his fork, sweet mash untouched, and tackled the corn on the cob instead - tearing into it in a quick, wolfish bite as they ventured into that dreaded territory of the past. Travelling. That life felt altogether distant and near.

"You would win that wager," he scratched his fair stubble as a slight frown failed to be repressed. "Youngest son, trying to prove myself in the wide world. That's how I met Ira, actually, when I was in the Russian reservation during the second war. She wasn't as-" a pause to politely choose the right word. "- as refined. More pleasure than business."

He seemed to go off their food for a moment, tongue running along the inside of his mouth to catch the loose corn skins. Buying time as his thoughts reluctantly wandered backwards into the passage of time. Youth is retrospectively less enjoyable when you remember how stupid you were.

"I suppose I did end up proving myself in the end at any rate." Balfour pushed his chair back and lowered his legs to cross them, staring at Johann and not quite meeting his eye. "Returned home to bask in it, and then realised nobody was surprised. Didn't even know I had that chip on my shoulder."

It felt curiously reckless to say that out loud - he didn't trust enough people with those insecurities but Johann had been forthright about his own and the wizard did not seem the sort to use it against him. Balfour adjusted his position, still feeling the soreness of being backed against the kitchen counter.

"There's monotony in always shifting about, too." He tilted his head to the side, thoughtful. "Do you ever want to go home, or has this become a kind of home to you?"

"Do you often just up and go, then?"
"Not for official visits, like that one, nah," Johann shrugged, "But it does happen."

Johann's mind was now busily imagining the Spectre family, trying to predict siblings - certainly a brother 'youngest son' possibly two brothers. At Balfour's mention of pleasure over business, Johann wondered if the two were somewhat intermingled as they'd been with Vedir behind the scenes. What he knew of Almasy was admittedly whispers amongst that crowd but still enough to give him an idea.

Balfour stopped eating a moment, and although Johann continued to appease his stomach that continued to demand to be fed after being ignored, one blue eye observed the pause, wondering if Balfour had bitten the inside of his mouth or got corn on the cob stuck in a painful gap between teeth.

"… returned home to bask in it, and then realised nobody was surprised…" Johann frowned a little as he tried to understand what Balfour was on about. It seemed that the end of his travels had a bittersweet ending, though from what Johann could understand, the second Voldemort was had left quite a crack in a generation that he shared. Those that survived seemed to have either fought, or received violence during the time, or aligned themselves on the wrong side in an attempt to survive. And some of them had run away.

He didn't think Balfour was the sort to run away. The man handled dragon's for Merlin's sake. Johann knew all about running away, and Balfour didn't meet the basic criteria. He had a backbone, he had responsibility and he had… eyes that made him forget how to eat and shoulders that he got distracted kissing that had faint fingerprint bruises from where he'd reached up to grasp…

"Do you ever want to go home, or has this become a kind of home to you?"

He filed asking Balfour about when he'd gone abroad for another day, though he could probably predict it given their close age gap.

"Home to Germany?" He asked, giving a little start. "Apart from being the country of my birth and giving me an accent that hangs on to my English, I don't think of it as home. Best of my family's left it too." He shrugged his bare shoulders, "Britain's far more intriguing, and lucrative." He smiled to himself, eyes raising to the jellyfish and the pencil once more.

He did miss the folks in Hanover once in a while, but he had written to Hanna[1] who had got married and was expecting her first child in his absence. She had filled him in on anyone he was curious enough to ask. It wasn't enough to send him back over there to live.

"No, I can see myself stopping in the country for a few more years yet at least. I've grown fond." He lowered his eyes and retained the relaxed smile as he looked to Balfour. If he had the joy of Balfour's company in future, that would certainly keep him there, but it was so very early on, he didn't want to get ahead of himself. It just seemed so easy and so normal as if they'd known each other years already.

"So apart from Russia, though I'd gather you didn't travel all of it, given the size, where else have you been along the way? Here be dragons, or not." He asked, referring to cartographer's descriptions of uncharted areas.

He sucked the end of his rib and offered it to Whiskey who was waiting attentively, applying those hopeful eyes only dogs could pull off. Always make friends with your boyfriend/housemate/partner's animal, it paid dividends.

1.	June 2008, Intelligence and Morals are not Always Hand in Hand

He couldn't help the little smirk at the start Johann gave, as if though Germany was an unthinkable final destination.

The accent was pleasurable. Distinct. It vaguely reminded Balfour of Dietrich,  although the tattoo artist was so far gone into Americanisms that even his oldest friends might forget he had once been at Durmstrang. Most of all there was the deep, satisfying texture of Johann's voice: he would like to listen to it read from a book.

Its other, more raucous capabilities, they had already acknowledged.

"I was underneath the equator to begin with." Balfour felt the fond gaze on him and he matched it with his own appraising, unreadable expression while Whiskey accepted the wizard's rent fee (the side of the bed being his usual place taken over). "Australia, New Zealand. Antipodean Opaleye. I was in Sydney but we had to apparate to the border of the reservation every morning. " He bared his teeth into a rueful grin, recalling. "Nearly lost my arm to a bairn."

Unconsciously, the fingers of his right hand flexed and curled in. It had been a close call. He could still hear the scaled jaw, seventeen years ago, snapping shut on thin air.

"But I spent most of my time weaving in and out of the States. West coast." Anyone with a good ear - and he was certain that his new bedmate possessed an excellent one - would hear it, the confused Scottish-English accent struck down by harder consonants or the occasional turn of phrase. "East Europe, too. And a few months in Japan when one of my brothers married to settle there."

Cormag had been the one to convince him to return to Britain but that felt like a story for another time, to be shared when they were at an ancient, hornbeam dining table with other Spectres and the threat of deep fried Mars bars on the horizon.

He pushed his chair back to rise, collecting together some of the takeout rubbish.

"Never been to Suriname. Brazil, yes, but it's not a part of the world I know very well." Balfour glanced at Johann, then past him at the three cats who had finally declared the kitchen to be a safe area in which to meander. "Nowadays it's mostly Scotland and Wales. My family has a private farm in the highlands but I don't have much a hand in it. Drink?"

He listened to Balfour's description of his route around the world. He'd set off at a far greater distance than Johann had - he'd never really spent any time a far as Australia and New Zealand, they were still on the list.

Whiskey's jaws were quick on the rib, and Johann wiped off his fingers and widened his eyes at Balfour's description of nearly losing an arm to a dragon, and his eyes caught the twitch of Balfour's right hand.

"… never been to Suriname… … Drink?" Johann's eyes trailed Balfour, lost in listening to things until the question.
"Yes, please - let me help." He busied himself with collecting the rest, getting up and grasping at the debris on the table, his wand somewhere in Balfour's bedroom.
"I'd never been until the other year," He clarified, referring to Suriname, "But it's a Dutch-speaking nation, and a rich source of creature and plant trade, and we do like a little visit once in a while to keep everything running smoothly. I mean, Britain does." He shrugged, following Balfour's lead on where to put things before helping himself to more water. He was absolutely parched from earlier that evening still, but indicated to Balfour as he decided what to drink that he'd still join him for something.

"You did all round the outside of where I went. I've done Europe to death, well, some days it feels like it, but I did Japan, and a while in China, and a few months doing the likes of Singapore, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia… not seeing enough of any of them really." It had been those countries where his insomnia and underlying issues had started to become rather more difficult, and he'd turned to sleeping potions with more regularity. His memories of it all were slightly hazy as if viewed through a poorly focused camera.

He crouched to venture an attempt to pet one of the cats, never quite sure how best to approach felines. Arc's Rustle, a kneazle had been different, and it had definitely been bribery by cheese. The three of them were suitably distracted by the thought of food, so Johann relented not long later, getting back to his feet and adjusting the sheet around his waist. If he ever visited again he'd have to ensure he had his bag.

"Thanks," He uttered as Balfour organised something more substantial than water, and wandered from the kitchen once more, eyes preoccupied with examining Balfour's flat, possibly with slightly more interest than was polite.

The cats were unanimous in their indifference to all guests who passed his threshold but it was good to see that Johann didn't take it personally. Canines were much more consistent if you were looking for a reaction.

Balfour gave his wand a quick flick, retrieving the small Port glasses in the lower cupboards. He ducked out of the kitchen through the parlour opening just as he noticed the other wizard ambling out into the main corridor. A nagging worry prodded at his otherwise relaxed consciousness - did he have anything to hide that he didn't want found? Not many were so curious or as observant as Johann. Generally speaking he could rely on people's lacking attention to glaze over the details of his personal life.

He poured the Port, cradling the glasses in one hand. Whiskey gave him a lazy and doleful look as he crossed the kitchen to see what had become of his house guest.

"Hope you don't mind a dessert win-- Johann?" Balfour called down the passageway, but quickly noticed the trailing hem of blue crossing into the Study. He approached the doorway and leaned against the frame.

The Study was lit with a warm, golden light. His desk was at the far end by one of the windows and across from it, where Johann was stood, were the bookshelves - mostly filled with Magizoology tomes, dictionaries, the odd adventure story or anthology of poems. A magical grandfather clock (it didn't match anything else) was stuffed in a corner, next to an old chaise lounge and armchair.

Its five brass hands traced the general movements of five individuals. The shortest hand, inscribed with the letter B and a dragon's eye, pointed to "Atreus".

"Haven't yet stumbled onto my closet of skeletons, I see." Balfour remarked as he considered Johann's pale shoulders, the soft incline of the spine that smoothed into the small of his back. "I'm afraid there isn't much to me beyond beasts."

Having already mastered where Balfour kept his teaspoons and other common things in the kitchen, Johann was now prowling the flat to find out where everything else was, marvelling at regular intervals with the jellyfish.

Balfour's flat certainly reflected his interest in creatures, and Johann wandered from examining what was hanging in the hallway to an infinitely more interesting looking room - particularly because it contained books. You could tell a lot about a wizard from the books he kept, and the shelves he kept them on.

"… Johann?"

He was midway to running his fingers over the spines of some of the more loved books when his eyes properly noticed the clock in the corner wasn't conventional but one of the family clocks that kept track of people. Five hands, each with different letters. His left hand had settled on the spine of one of the books, forefinger resting on the top as if to draw it off the shelf as he tilted his head to examine the clock a little better, and stirred to look round as he saw Balfour's reflection approaching in the glass behind his own.

"Not yet, no." He replied softly to the mention of skeletons, and glanced down at the glasses in Balfour's hand, receiving one with a smile, lifting his hand from the book to swap the glass into his left so he could kiss Balfour gently on the cheek for the port.

"And I'm sure there is. There's more to everyone than what they do for a living." He winked and smiled more broadly, toasting Balfour before he took a sip of the port. Not something he usually drank, unless accompanied with cheese, but plenty fine. His hand returned to the books a moment, but his eyes glanced between Balfour and the clock before them.

"Siblings?" He asked, recalling Balfour's mention in passing earlier as he gestured to the face. "You shouldn't be the shortest," He added with a sly smile, "It's not fitting of the reality." He gave the smallest of glances downwards before taking another sip of port, blue eyes sweeping in the rest of the study without shame, fingertips stepping from one book to the next absentmindedly.

He slipped his arm around Johann's waist, fingers clasped softly at the side as his thumb ran gentle circles while they spoke. There was space to meander in the study - normal whilst entertaining guests - but he was still feeling rascally from their untimely interruption in the kitchen before dinner.

Balfour's gaze followed the query to his grandfather clock in the corner and his cheeks flushed, never quite used to having the length of that hand remarked upon. He tilted back his head, taking an unwise dram of the port before leaving the glass to balance precariously on a shelf.

"Aye, siblings. Shortest because I'm youngest," he bit his inner cheek, then continued in the long-ago cadence of a Scottish upbringing. "Wee Balfour, not to be trusted to go wandering on his own. I won the clock from our father when he realised mither would go into hysterics every time I fell into Mortal Peril."

The longer version of the story included the competition of his brothers, the family plot, and an extremely convoluted drinking game that lasted them three nights. It wasn't the story he told everyone because he never remembered it well enough.

Balfour indicated the other hands on the clock, brass against the dark luminescence of a night sky. "Nathaira is eldest, me si-- my sister. She's expecting a bairn next year." The N hand was pointed "Home." He explained the others with a touch of confusion. Cormag and Goraidh were the same length because they were twins, one "Abroad" and the other at "Farm". The final hand - only slightly longer than Balfour's - was also resting at "Abroad". Like his own there was an odd sheen to the metal. It did not look like it often moved.

"Frances isn't a Spectre but she's from my birth mother's side so we like to know when she's in trouble." He stared a little longer at the family heirloom, lost in thought and trying to remember when he'd last heard from her. It took him another moment to snap out of it. "Sorry. Haven't had to explain that to anyone in a while, sometimes forget it's there."

Balfour turned his head to Johann, glancing at where the other hand had occupied itself on the shelf. Just along from an ancient Encyclopaedia of Dangerous Beasts. His books were not organised in a sensible way - borders between work and art hardly existed, which perhaps said something about his state of mind. "Are you planning on reading to me?" he laughed. Johann did seem a rather bookish person.

Balfour's hand upon his bare waist made the hairs prickle pleasingly on the back of Johann's neck. He took great pleasure in being touched, and Balfour appeared to have already caught on.

As he described his siblings, Johann's eyes were drawn away from the clock to watching Balfour intently. The wizard's accent shifted towards the Scottish rhotic accent as his mind moved to home, and Johann's ears enjoyed the change in characteristic and register when he described himself in third person.

Johann's keen memory took in the names of the Spectre siblings, and their honorary Spectre, committing them down for later reference, and the arrival of a niece or nephew. Both a godfather and soon to be an uncle, if he wasn't already.

When Balfour paused, Johann looked from him to the clock, wondering if something was wrong, or where his lover's thoughts had tripped off to, and he reached out a hand to Balfour's dressing gown.

"Are you planning on reading to me?" Johann's expression moved from passive listening, caught up in Balfour's gorgeous voice and the way his expression changed when he spoke about family. He blinked and looked to where his hand had ended up.
"I was just looking, in truth - what was most leafed. Curious - well, most people would call me nosy." He turned mouth hands over in a little shrug.

"Why, would you like me to read you something, Mr Spectre?" He attempted to adopt a more formal British accent, and lose the Germanic tinge. His fingers jumped from one spine to another across the shelves to see what caught his eye while his mind dug through his memories of poetry - something he didn't partake in all that often.

Then one, though he had learned it in the original German. He closed his eyes to try and remember and to translate it.

"Stars, you are unfortunate, I pity you,
Beautiful as you are, shining in your glory,"

Blue eyes opened and he turned to Balfour, gesturing upwards as if addressing the night sky,

"Who guide seafaring men through stress and peril
And have no recompense from gods or mortals,"

He fixed Balfour with an intense stare, hands reaching out to grip the dressing gown by the collar across Balfour's chest.
 
"Love you do not, nor do you know what love is.
Hours that are aeons urgently conducting
Your figures in a dance through the vast heaven,"

Johann leaned forward over Balfour's shoulder to speak beside his ear, hands sliding around his waist.
 
"What journey have you ended in this moment,
Since lingering in the arms of my beloved
I lost all memory of you and midnight."

He left a gentle kiss on Balfour's neck and chuckled softly to himself, drawing their bodies closer, unable to help himself, and rather pleased he'd managed to remember it all after so long.

Reciting poetry was utterly unfair.

Balfour smirked at first, amused by the change of tone and the theatricality of speaking to the stars. Heavenly bodies envious of mortal ones. The smirk was easily wiped away - dying on his lips as Johann's hands moved past his robe, the pair of them drawn closer until it seemed to him that nothing else could possibly be so warm or so comfortable as the other wizard's skin against his.

He tilted his chin back at the kiss and let that awareness of baring his neck linger for a little while.

The vulnerability of opening yourself to mockery or physical harm. It was a quiet, thrilling rush. Balfour stole his arms completely around Johann's waist and skimmed his hands here the bed sheet was loosely secured, fingernails raking lightly. In an abrupt motion, he shoved him roughly against the bookshelf - the port glass trembled riskily.

"Such a beautiful mouth," he slid a hand up to Johann's face to trace his elegant jaw. Balfour bowed his head lower, hesitating just before their lips could touch. "Don't move."