Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
One last candle burning low,
All the sleepy dancers gone,
Just one candle burning on,
Shadows lurking everywhere:
Some one came, and kissed me there.

Tired I was; my head would go
Nodding under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
No footsteps came, no voice, but only,
Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,
Stooped in the still and shadowy air
Lips unseen - and kissed me there.
                                                              - Walter de la Mare

Bedtime. Balfour didn't need to speak to indicate it, just that tilt of the head and the touch with it. Johann had been 'resting his eyes' for a good half hour, the dwindling voices holding conversation were both intriguing and provided a primeval comfort of safety. In the shadows of the early hours of the morning, he trailed the other wizard up the winding stairs, rubbing at his face sleepily, trying not to leave a foot behind on the stairs out of tiredness. Faintly, and off key, he hummed along.

It was long past sane hours for all on the Spectre estate and even as Balfour attempted the worn out steps to his tower room, he felt the day’s festivities weigh down each motion. I saw three ships come saaailing in, the carol he half-hummed echoed in the stairwell twice over. When they reached the open door, he turned to help his partner in first.

“Straight to bed?” he asked.

"I think so," Johann replied quietly, eyelids heavy, "You've all worn me out." He gave a contented smile and approached the bed, settling down on the end of it and stifling a yawn. "Sorry to be such a disappointment. I had grand plans for you, but well… they can wait for the morning."

Balfour laughed at the mention of grand plans, sluggishly wrenching off his jumper. They were not in any state to be playing with brandy cream in bed. He was tired but perhaps less so than the other wizard. This was annual routine, after all.  “We don’t do anything by half measures,” he sat on the edge of an old armchair by the bed and smiled. “I look forward to morning, then. I always do with you.” That was as much him as it was the mulled wine.

"Any morning is better for a Balfour." Johann admitted. He lifted his right foot onto his left knee to work off one of the Christmas socks that Mrs Lanningham had made. He was sure the all-seeing eye of Balfour's secretary would have known if he had not worn them that morning, but really it was only polite to give them an outing on the big day.

"How is such a simple fact so lovely a thing to hear? He gestured with sock towards Balfour as he asked, and placed his foot back down. Before his lover could answer, the fingers clasping the sock snapped to with an upwards point. "I know! It's because they come out of your mouth." He giggled to himself, lifting the other foot and tugging at the sock.

Balfour leaned back in the chair, unable to help grinning at Johann’s sleepy rambling. He eyed the knitted socks for a moment and thought about how lovely the day had been - it left him relaxed in a way he hadn’t felt for months. Not since the epidemic.

“You, Mister Storm, must be very tired.” He pushed himself up and moved to the bed as Johann’s sock came off, and with it a scattering of red and gold glitter. His hands went straight to the other man’s shoulders as he reverently pushed him down on to the flannel sheets. “As much as I enjoy anything to do with your mouth.”

"Me and tired go way back." Johann replied with a shrug, but his eyes came open properly for seeing Balfour approach from the armchair. He offered no resistance for being pushed to the bed and chuckled again, genuinely happy, even the passing comment hadn't paled the contented feeling swelling his heart. Socks were discarded without ceremony, and arms instinctively reached to wrap around Balfour. "I am," he agreed to the observation, "but at last I have you all to myself." He lifted his head seeking out a kiss.

Balfour slid one of his hands away from Johann’s shoulder and along the back of his neck as he bowed to oblige - lips meeting. His stomach fluttered with feeling, unsettled in an eddy of warm affection and impulse. The kiss was slow, lazy. They tasted of Christmas; mince pies and sweet drink. He hummed pleasurably at the embrace before tilting back to look down at the pale face beneath him. It didn’t make sense that anything or anyone could make him feel this way. Balfour’s gaze, fatigued, was full of contentment and weakness.

“You may always have me all to yourself,” he reminded with a half smile. “I’m at your beck and call. Night and day.” Really, he was relieved to at last be alone with Johann.

The day had been one thing after another with little reprieve for the lovers.

"I know, and you know I the same for you, even if I am at the other end of the earth." Johann agreed, running his fingers gently across Balfour's back, blinking gently as his eyes glanced over his lover's face. He let his head rest a little in the clasp of the hand that had slid behind it as they kissed.

He might never understand what he had done to come across the wonderful creature gazing down at him, but he could live with one unsolved puzzle for the outcome. The thought of Balfour, even before his presence could turn a calm thought into a fervent daydream, and when his mind was shrieking and shouting, he could drown it quiet. It wasn't to say that the other man held the only keys to such transformation, but that his were the best fit, the quickest to turn and the ones his heart ached for. Hazy lingering scents of favourite aftershave hung over the rather human notes of a warm body at the end of a long day. The smell of their bed, of safety, of home. There was a blissful, empty silence in his head over it all.

"I am the luckiest - we are the luckiest in all the world."

Balfour played with the curls at the nape of his partner’s neck, fingertips snagging softly on kinky knots and tiny gold stars. He swallowed back a response - ready to argue that he was much luckier for having Johann - and made a noise of agreement instead, as he licked his lips. They were terribly lucky. No argument there. He had fallen completely for this… absolute rarity. Nobody could compare, not with Johann or with the intensity he inspired.

“I wish I’d met you sooner.” Balfour muttered sleepily, pressing his lips chastely to the other’s cheek. “You have no idea- ” he smiled into the kiss, “- how happy you make me.” It was almost too impassioned, he thought, and if he was more tired perhaps he might have found himself teary eyed with relief or exhaustion.

But only his quiet, rasping voice gave away the emotion. “I’d do anything for you.” It seemed a serious, unusual thing to say considering their merry day and evening but the events of the past few months had tempered his cheerful happiness into something like devotion.

Beneath the kisses, Johann wriggled ever so slightly, more out of mirth and  for the slight tickling of his lover's lips and breath. A lazy bare foot trailed over the floorboards and the edge of the rug as he did. Cheeks became taught with the brilliant smile that grew and grew.

"Anything?" Johann queried, his eyes suddenly wide. His hands clutched at Balfour - it wasn't alarm, more comedy, he was still smiling. It took his mind a moment to register the tone it had been uttered in, about to make a joke - to ask whether Balfour would march outside right now without a strip on to dive into the nearest snowdrift. "I'm honoured, darling. Nobody's ever said that to me before."

He lifted his head again and mirrored Balfour's kisses, returning them on the cheeks. "But anything's a dangerous promise, Balfour. I wouldn't ever ask you to do something that I knew you couldn't." He shook his head gently, curls flattened against the flannel.

"You don't have to prove how much I mean to you - I can see it in the way you look at me. I feel it." He dropped his left hand from Balfour to press his fist against the middle of his chest. "And I don't know how I've ever managed to live without it. It's like a whole chunk of me was missing and I've found it right here," he lifted his hand to press Balfour over his heart, "in you."

Balfour would have rather watched that smile, brimming with playful levity, than anything else in the world right now. It lifted the heat in his chest - the brewing, rioting sentiment that arose when they were alone together. He felt its reverberations from fingertip to toes, tingling like a lambent flame.

But Johann’s words made him blush, and the wizard dipped his head embarrassedly in hopes of hiding it.

“Sorry.” He heaved a heavy sigh and suddenly shifted, climbing off to lay side by side on the bed. His right hand was still tangled up in Johann’s curls; it extended from him as the other arm came to rest on his full stomach. “I’m terrible at this. I… the feeling is mutual.” Balfour closed his eyes to the sloping ceiling of the room and the miniature wreathes that the bairns had hung along its beams. “I didn't think I would meet someone like you.”

Johann let out a little 'heh' of a sigh at Balfour's familiar blushing at his words. Sometimes they felt a little overcooked, admittedly, but Johann meant all of them even if they seemed too much for his lover to absorb in praise. Sometimes they came out in the wrong language, and he had to think of how to make them sound quite as lovely in English.

"You're not terrible, anything but." Johann protested quietly as the weight of the other man rolled away. He stretched and shuffled on the covers, turning to look to his left at Balfour. He rolled onto his left side, head resting beside Balfour's right hand, fingers catching his hair.

"It never occurred to me that I would meet anyone, let alone someone who would want to spend all my life with me too." He glanced down at their feet, and reached out his right hand to lace fingers over Balfour's stomach and rubbed gently.

That opened Balfour's eyes. All their lives? There was no point in hiding the blush anymore, and he angled his head slightly to glimpse the look on Johann’s face even as those bright blue eyes were directed elsewhere. He felt their fingers touch, intertwine. His heartbeat picked up a little and he bit the inside of his cheek instinctively.

“Who wouldn’t want that?” Balfour murmured, not thinking about his words anymore but about abstract notions - touch, image, the familiar scent between them that seemed to find a place in the room’s fragrance of settled dust and old books. “You’re bloody amazing. And to think that you’re mine…” his gaze lingered on Johann’s pale brow, trailed down to his pink lips. “And I’m yours.” He stroked the dark curls adoringly. “Every inch of me."

It was Johann's turn to blush at the words, and as he did he wriggled his way over to Balfour, less co-ordinated for all the alcohol than he might normally be. His lover's outstretched arm remained beneath his head, but he rested closer now, and his right leg entwined. His blue gaze fixed keenly on Balfour once he had settled again. There were words that had been trying to get out of him for weeks now, but he'd never felt it was the right phrase, the right time - too rehearsed, too insincere.

"Balfour," he blinked once, fingers caught in his lover's tensing ever so slightly "You know that I love you?" He lay quite still, staring, and a beat passed before he continued, his heart threatening to leap into his throat.

"I love you unconditionally, openly. I knew so when we went away, but this is all so new to me I feared I was too rash. Before I met you, I didn't plan so much as a few weeks ahead. But since I met you, that's been months, and now, here, I look ahead and think of years… A lifetime with you. Never in my life other than for academic obligation have I thought like that. Never would I have dared." He swallowed and blinked twice, heart thumping beneath his ribs. "Balfour, you are the most extraordinary, adventurous, magnanimous creature I have ever had the fortune to share a margarita with, let alone share my body, life and heart with. I may be ridiculous, but I can't help but love you."

Balfour had hummed pleasantly as Johann drew closer, eyes not once leaving the other man but growing grave in its look. He was so focused on what was being said that it didn’t even occur to him to blush - or to have any reaction at all, besides staring blankly at his lover. The thought of it, of the word, of love, had been so prevalent in his mind that hearing it spoken out loud felt akin to miracle.

It was different from that tumultuous night at the hospital. Here, in the home of his upbringing, laying beneath the roof that had sheltered his youth. On the same, worn out bed that had contained his restless and confused adolescence. The certainty of Johann’s confession was a thunderclap in rooms gone stagnant. It electrified the air.

And then he remembered to breathe.

It was a hoarse, laden gasp. Balfour felt stinging tears and furrowed his brow up in such a way that he almost appeared apologetic. But he was flooded with a sense of utter relief, tinged by the sadness of knowing Johann had kept this inside of him all the while.

Balfour pushed himself up by the elbows, just enough to lever the other wizard closer and kiss him - fleetingly, lips barely grazing before he spoke. “I know now.” His racing heart jostled to make him brave. “You make me nervous, Johann. Flustered. Scared, even. Do you know what I mean?” he paused for a second to fight back the sob in his chest, quelling it.

“I’m not afraid of anything. Not dragons nor monsters. I wasn’t even afraid of dying until you came along.” Balfour had to release Johann’s hand to rub his eyes self-consciously because this was a good moment and why in all the worlds was he crying. “I love you too. I can’t explain it. You’ve broken me,” he laughed a little through the tears.

Johann had nodded at Balfour's query, he recognised it in the moments where Balfour was seemingly lost for words. When that happened, it didn't matter to him. Language wasn't words alone. To hear the words in confirmation made his heart sing within him, and the bright smile upon his tired face grow until his cheeks might snap. He knew in his heart that it had been the truth for a while, but they had both been so careful, so fearful that they might hurt each other by telling the truth too soon.

"Broken you?" He echoed, and reached up to wipe at Balfour's eyes in turn with his thumb. Those tears were at risk of setting him off as well, he could feel the tightness in his throat. "Well, if that's the case my beautiful broken Balfour, I shall have to hold you forever until I find how to put you back together." With that decisive declaration he hugged tight to Balfour with both arms.

Held firmly against his lover, Balfour shifted so that he could lean entirely into their embrace and tuck his head in the space between them - where their breathes mingled and where one, with a careful ear, might be able to hear two hearts beating at once. What candle and moonlight in the room seemed to have ebbed with time. Nothing prevailed but soft shadows and the sound of lenient winter winds.

"Never. I'd rather be broken and in your arms, always..." he trailed off voice heavy with love and sleep. Love. He could say that now, would say it always. Every morning and every night. In throes of passion, in tender moments, in casual passing. Balfour nuzzled closer to Johann to feel their shared warmth - still in their Christmas day clothes, legs lifting off the rug to curl up on the wide bed. Somewhere in the distant woods surrounding the estate, a wolf called out and a chorus of owls cried in response.


I love you, I love you.