He couldn't help it, smiling into the kisses they shared. It tasted all the sweeter now that a truth had been revealed and a weight lifted off his shoulders. The expression remained even as Johann pulled away - perhaps quicker to recollect their surroundings than Balfour, who would have been happy to carry on just about anywhere.

The following statement pushed him back into reality. His eyebrows went up in surprise and he placed his hand on the clenched fist, incredulous. "He wanted to buy you coffee? Christ, what was he thinking?"

A man had just been murdered!

Were there grief protocols in the Auror corps? Odin knew their lot needed more lessons in tact than an instruction sheet could provide. He stared at his partner with a kind of wonder, trying to picture him throwing a punch at the Head Auror. Charming image, really, even though he couldn't tell if that was the Haunting Hour host musing or his vaguely carnal desire to watch Johann in a fist fight.

Balfour distractedly took a long pull at the cigarette, reigning in his amusement - he sobered at the the possible consequence of assaulting any Auror. Forgivable in light of the circumstances but there was enough ill will towards Johann on level three.

"For what it's worth, I'm glad you didn't punch his lights out." He took Johann's hand, looking down at it as he tried to gently pry open its clamped digits. "Not worth it, believe me. Even if I would have paid top galleon to see the look on Pratt's face." An abrupt pause, cigarette dangling on his lips.

It was fleeting - only a moment to consider what he might have done in the Head Auror's place, faced with fresh anguish and the mounting pressure of responsibility at the scene.

"He must have thought he was doing you a kindness," Balfour reflected, looking up thoughtfully. "Doesn't strike me as a pitiless fellow." All the same, he didn't know Ed Pratt that well.

"I'm not quite sure what he was doing," Johann admitted, "other than defuse the situation. I shouted, but he said something flippant first - I keep trying to remember." He looked down at their hands and relaxed his to let Balfour succeed in prising his fingers apart from the fist they'd formed.

"I probably owe him an apology." He made a face at this, "And a half a dozen other people. Eesh." It was yet another weight on his mind, which he would prefer if he could set aside for an hour or so at least just to be himself. That was one of the reasons he'd chosen Balfour to return to, amongst other things like a warm bed he could curl up in ahead of any confrontation.

"Balfour, I've never been so angry as I have the last week. I was just lashing out at the nearest person. I'd have said you wouldn't have liked me but - well." He glanced up and gave a knowing smile that fell away almost instantly. Perhaps it wasn't good to joke so easily about the Haunting Hour, about Balfour's tastes like that, but now the words had slipped his lips he had to justify them.

"But I suppose that's hardly surprising, given your tastes." His arm around Balfour applied a gentle but deliberate pressure, akin to how Balfour handled Johann when they were alone. The past month had been a rapid education, Johann a more than willing pupil. Though he quite wanted to forget everything very soon in Balfour's arms.

As such, his mind, as it ever did, began to wander.

He looked about them again, at the fruit trees and the borders, and the shape of the beds that surrounded them. The thought of how he had broken the kiss a little prematurely a moment earlier on his mind. he was conscious of where they were. He wondered if Balfour in his exploits past, had ever come up here to do more than smoke.

There was something odd about the thought of being caught by Ira up there in particular. She was the sort of witch that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up for all the wrong reasons. Since he'd last parted her professional company in good form, he wasn't sure he wanted to have her next impression relating to what wizards got up to in her garden. Though he did not deny there was a sense of adventure and a thrill of the thought.

"You ever… up here?" He asked, thinking aloud at once, and blushing as he became a little more conscious of the odd diversions his subconscious took while quiet. He was pretty sure Balfour had become accustomed...

“But I suppose that's hardly surprising, given your tastes.”   

Balfour registered the change in the way he was being held, a familiar and pressing intimacy that he had missed over the last few days without realising it. He tried and failed to repress the dark half-smile that followed. It felt like a secret between the two of them, his particular combination of proclivities. And he could trust the other man  with such knowledge.

At least that was what instinct told him. "Anger is natural," he shrugged as he finally stubbed out his cigarette - dropping the tail end into his cardigan pocket without thinking. "Like love. I'm glad you came here, lashing out or not. My door is always open."

At least with Johann here he could sleep soundly knowing that whoever had done away with Wolfgang Storm wasn't developing a taste for dispatching German wizards, even if that did seem an unlikely probability. He turned to study the his partner's profile in the light of the setting sun, hungry for detail and the manner in which those eyes latched on to everything.

It was an elegant profile. What worked past those lips, on the other hand, didn't incite an elegant response.

"You ever… up here?"

The blush gave away the game and Balfour shifted his attention fully, disregarding the peaceful ambience of rooftop arcadia to raise a a quizzical eyebrow. Changes of subject was a recurring theme with them but not an unpleasant one. Both of them wanted not to think about recent events and there was no better way than by focusing on the present.

He slid his hand further down Johann's leg, slipping gently along the inner thigh with a squeeze. "Do I ever... what, up here?" Balfour teased momentarily. "Entertain? I bet you would enjoy that..." he licked his lower lip and leaned in, nuzzling Johann at the nape of his neck. "You'd be the first."

The meaning was clear enough, despite his mind dotting from one place to the next. The query a request to replace the lonely emotions with selfish ones of physical pleasure, to disengage his noisy mind and focus on one thing for a while.

Balfour's lips upon his neck sent Johann's head in the opposite direction, and his eyes closed automatically in response to the affection. He'd missed this chronically while on his own.

An involuntary sigh left his lips and his arm around Balfour's waist brought them together firmly.

"Not nearly as much as you will." He told Balfour in a low voice, turning back, pressing his hand firmly into his lover's chest as he sought out the other man's lips.

If anyone else ventured up here tonight, Johann thought, he would not be responsible for whichever hex he chose.

End