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Late night. House of Atreus, Flat 3A.


"Here, let me help you."

Balfour dripped water across the tiled marble floor of his master bathroom as he grabbed a fresh towel off the rack and returned to the bath, handing it to the lanky wizard emerging from milky waters. It was late but they'd lost track of time since retiring from Le Masque for the evening. And what use was time, really, if it passed through their minds with little significance?

Steaming hot water and balmy, lemongrass salts had brought him down from drunkenness to a pleasant buzz instead. London was no more than an extrinsic din and he felt calm again.  Thoughts of dragons or epidemics or harsh and lonely nights dwindled pathetically.

The flat was quiet.

Balfour dried himself off, pretending not to watch Johann out of the corner of his eye, and feigning easy nonchalance.  "Better?" he threw his own towel in the laundry basket before leaning against the sink counter in all his unclothed glory.

They wouldn't need nightwear for this. And besides: he could hardly tear his attention away from his latest houseguest, whose pallid skin lost no allure in being exposed. Johann was the opposite of a shadow silhouette - seemed to exude light rather than be subject to it.

"The spare room[1] is still open if you want it ..." Balfour folded his arms, smiling boyishly and shaking out his wet hair.

1.	A Mask to Hide Us - September 9th 2010

The warm water could have threatened a natural lethargy had it not been for the company and the new surroundings. Across at Diagon Alley, Elixa’s sofa was vacant. Here he was raking back his dark curls, heavy with water, elbows dripping with a relative stranger offering him a towel. Being of no fixed abode had never looked so comfortable, and he had chalked off another first from the list.

“Thanks,” the linguist uttered, shaking off his hands before he received the towel. He was trying not to feel too self-conscious about his appearance as he stepped out of the water and wrapped it around his torso. For a few seconds he was motionless, dripping quietly onto Balfour’s bathroom floor as he watched the other wizard dry himself off. The shoulders above the water had already received a study while they bathed, complete with scars, and now the rest was receiving a second pass from his curious blue gaze.

A moment of self-realisation at his actions spurred him to life, one of the voices within cajoling him to action. The lack of sleep was slowing him down, but he was wide awake, alert. He couldn’t stand there dripping all night, Balfour would consider him strange at this rate. He busied himself towelling down his pale skin, sneaking not so subtle glimpses to Balfour. By the time the other wizard was stood before the sink, Johann felt he might be perceived as prude for being wrapped in a towel still, albeit drier now.

“No,” Johann replied quietly, “I’m alright, I er…” he bashfully continued, “... can see what I’d like.” His face wore a coy smile, dropping his gaze momentarily as his cheeks blushed. His fingers fiddled over the way the towel sat over his hips as he spoke, contemplating whether he had the confidence to drop it off and follow suit with the laundry basket. Out of clothes Balfour was just as attractive, and his easy confidence kept Johann’s attention entirely. He only wished he could emulate it as he rocked on the balls of his feet.

“I’ll…” Under Balfour’s gaze he decided he definitely did not need the towel. He couldn’t jump in with a toe, it had to be both feet. “I’ll follow you.” He finished the sentence, decisively taking a couple of paces towards the basket to leave the towel behind, feeling his heart pick up tempo as the air prickled corners of damp skin he’d neglected in his distraction.

Oh gods, that blush. Balfour didn’t intrude on what seemed to him a rather visible debate about whether or not they were both going to be entirely undressed for this situation - but he couldn’t help letting his eyes wander down to Johann’s pale arse when the guilty towel was given up. Anyone else and he’d offer to fuck them right there and then against the wall.

The dragon tamer left the bathroom just then, reminded himself to give Johann at least a smidgen of privacy by heading back into the bedroom first.

Elsewhere in the flat Whiskey and the Fates were silent. They had exercised the uncanny knowledge of creatures by failing to appear when the pair of them had arrived earlier, likely napping in the Study.

Balfour shut the bedroom door anyway, on his way to his dresser to procure and deftly slip on a french letter.

He looked over his shoulder in time to catch  Johann leaving the bathroom, turning to approach him and take his hand with a firm grasp. What passed through that mind? Were his nerves on end, did his heart race wildly? There was a way to confirm at least one of those.

“Looking forward to my terpsichorean hips?” Balfour quoted in a gentle, teasing voice and smiled into a kiss as he leaned in. His left hand slid up against Johann’s chest to rest against his breastplate, feeling for a heartbeat, and his right reassuringly smoothed down the swell of the other man's arse.

It was a slow and wet kiss that drew them closer to one another.

To his relief, Balfour left the bathroom without further query. Left behind, Johann darted to the sink in the owner’s wake, splashing cold water over his face. The bath had been blissful, but he needed a moment to focus and the shock of temperature did the trick like a slap to the face. His reflection stared back at him when he looked up, a drip running off the tip of his nose. Merlin, he really did look tired. The mask wasn’t there to hide it now, and in the different light of Balfour’s bathroom it was more obvious to his eyes.

Much as insomnia was his master, there would be time for sleep later if it came to him. Wherever he got to, whether here or back at Diagon on the sofa his feet stuck off the end of.

He hurriedly patted his face and hands dry, reappearing in the bathroom door just as Balfour turned back. Johann swallowed, suddenly feeling like he was stood there as if to say ‘well, this is me’, but the way Balfour looked at him brought back the feelings the fear had dampened for a moment. The thrill of how the world had stopped on the dance floor earlier that night, the elated way his feet carried him as if he had boundless energy when they’d gone back to dance some more, and the soft, the surprise at the appreciative noise that had escaped him when Balfour’s lips had explored his neck in the lift, while the hairs stood up on the back of his neck.

He let go of a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding when Balfour took his hand, and a smile returned to his features, though his eyes didn’t leave Balfour’s until drawn into the kiss. His fingertips found a home tentatively on Balfour’s bare back, and then settled, cool hands flattening, smoothing across skin. His eyes closed, and he went with Balfour’s pull. Being touched only intensified a longing he’d struggled with on and off for weeks, which had sprung up in earnest with their interactions in Le Masque. It was a strange but glorious thing to be touched, and he had never realised how much he craved it. It had been just to sit close at first, but this was different, this was a greedy demand. To be touched everywhere and anywhere, and to allow him to touch and explore just the same.

The initial hurdle of nerves was conquered just for being in contact again, though his heart raced unsteadily beneath Balfour’s hand on his chest.
“Not just those,” he assured Balfour drawing breath, dropping his right hand to rest on the other man’s hip, glancing down with a grin which the smile had grown into, admiring what he had recognised from a distance at the bar. “But I’ll be sure to continue to admire them along the way. I’m making a list,” he continued, though his face was far too close to Balfour’s to suggest he was going to say much more. He pressed his lips back against Balfour’s in earnest, making up for inexperience with enthusiasm, breaking only to ask cheekily, for it seemed Balfour had dressed appropriately, “we going to bed sir?”

“...we going to bed Sir?”

Who could fault the efficiency of such a mouth? He laughed, affectionately nuzzling the side of Johann’s face at this request and seizing him altogether by the waist.

“Is that what you call it?” he pulled his new bedmate along, tugging him down astride on his lap as he sat on the edge of the large bed with its soft bedding and mahogany headboard. The light friction of their bare skin sliding against each other kindled a warmth in his gut.

Nerves. They were bubbling under the surface - he could tell from the erratic heartbeat that had thrummed beneath his fingertips - yet Johann must have been brave because he seemed as eager as any. Touching honest, somehow, to be frightened and to want something anyway.

His hands hungrily stroked the sweet incline of Johann’s lower back, and Balfour’s lips sought out the slender neck he had savoured outside of Le Masque. The heated, scintillating desire he had felt was now set alight once more. It stole his calm.

There was no being calm around craving like this. He left fleeting kisses at the base of the throat presented to him, paused to taste in full Johann’s beautiful collarbones. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a fledgling thought cautioned him.

“Johann...” his gaze, darker now with desire, flickered up. “Tell me to stop, at any time, and I will.” Balfour heard the hoarse, low quality of his voice and felt his ears burn. Christ, he wanted to have it off with this wizard until they were both sore and (even more) exhausted.

He grasped Johann’s side,  twisted back to shove and pin the other man on to his back; damp curls splayed darkly against blue sheets. His lips continued their obsessive preoccupation of leaving stark love bites across white skin, spurred on by the sounds escaping Johann.

Balfour’s bed was softer than he expected - weeks of sleeping on sofas, floors, spare beds with a few nights at the Leaky Cauldron made it feel especially comfortable. Despite this, his mind didn’t linger on the luxury of the bedding, but rather more the wizard leaning over him. Kisses on his collarbone had rung out a gentle hum a moment before, arms looped around Balfour’s shoulders, but the bites induced an unexpected gasp of delight at the new sensation. His hands gripped the other man’s ribs in response, fingernails pressing into skin - not meaning harm but just reacting automatically.

“Merlin, I’m not going to tell you to stop, Balfour, fuck -“ He ran his fingernails gently across Balfour’s back, up to his shoulders, eyes following Balfour’s lips leaving marks across him, gasping sharply. His skin prickled and he shifted beneath, brushing against his partner. Johann slid his hands down to the small of Balfour’s back and pulled down, with just enough force to make it clear what he wanted. His lips sought out the strong neck and shoulders above him, peppering kisses and grazing his teeth. Balfour tasted of the lemongrass salts of the bath but Johann only wanted to taste and understand the new textures, breathing heavily over damp skin.

Balfour’s approaches were far more refined, polished than Johann’s. Witch Weekly was a source of advice taken with a pinch of salt, the overheard discussions of female colleagues recounting their nights another unreliable source. Reading about this was nothing in comparison to doing it. His mind was considering half a dozen possibilities, concerned he was going to do something distinctly unsexy and put the other wizard off, while simultaneously, he tried hard to stop overthinking and just get caught up in the moment.

Despite nerves and overthinking, he couldn’t keep quiet as the two of them handled each other, his appreciation a reassuring indication that the evening was turning out to be very pleasurable indeed. His fingertips found the shift of muscles beneath skin, of scars - somewhere out of sight but visible when they'd bathed earlier was the dragon tattooed across Balfour's shoulder blade.

“Sorry,” he murmured, head tilted back, swallowing down the end of a particularly loud response to Balfour's touch, as his hands mirrored Balfour’s navigation of his pale skin below, “too much?” The question was near vocalising his own insecurities over being touched, which was both fantastic and overwhelming. He drew a sharp breath in - Balfour's hand had just found an instant solution to Johann's noisy head.

There was an uncertain but hungry rhythm in the way he was being touched, soft pads of Johann’s earnest fingers pulling down his back. And the moans, Merlin, that noise should be outlawed, the way it sent a relentless pang of lust right through from lips to cock.

His skin prickled pleasantly and he raked his fingernails down to the pale buttocks squirming beneath him.

“No.” Balfour paused to admire the breadth of thin, untouched flesh at the furthermost curve of his playmate’s ribcage - he pressed his lips tenderly there and reached with one hand between their legs. “More,” the wizard growled incoherently as he fulfilled his grasp.

Every inch tasted might have been a first for Johann, and Balfour had no desire to withhold himself from the mouth that gasped sweet sounds next to his ear. He shifted his weight, all at once domineering and adroit, nudging slender legs apart while his free hand stole up to grasp one of Johann’s wrist.

“You sound incredible,” he managed articulacy at this point, pinning the wrist against the mattress. Fuck. It was criminal that nobody had touched Johann like this before, savoured him the way Balfour bit down now, just enough restraint not to break skin.

He swallowed a breath and relinquished he hold, gliding his touch down Johann’s right leg and then, with abruptness, hooking it by the crook of the knee. The rest of the room didn’t exist anymore. Couldn't exist. It was simply a place, a stage for which they were the sole audience.

And Johann had his attention in entirety.

Balfour pulled back slightly to observe, an intense glimmer in his eye, while he parted his prey. He bowed his head and licked his thirsty lips.

The response was met with a quizzical expression up from the blue sheets as he was pinned. It had never crossed Johann’s mind whether his incoherent gasps and noises from physical interactions could sound pleasing to another’s ear. He’d not been curious, preoccupied more with language, accent and intelligent responses. To be robbed of words through natural reaction was a frightening but ultimately thrilling transfer of control to another.

For a cowardly wizard, it was somewhat overwhelming but months of frustration, the need to understand what sleeping potion had drowned out but couldn’t mask entirely kept him going. That, and the fact he felt inordinately happy every time he looked to Balfour or felt his touch. It was like laughing until you cried with glee, combined with the feeling of leaving your stomach behind on missing a step on the way down a flight and the high he got from being clever.

At the pull of his knee, Johann propped himself up on his elbows and looked down, feeling he probably should be attempting something in return only… Only it seemed Balfour had elected on what he was up to next, and Johann suddenly couldn’t keep his focus, and vanished behind his hands pressed to his face. The noise from his mouth was silenced a moment by his hand pressed to his lips until he let out a self-conscious laugh.

“Alright, alright…” he muttered, reassuring himself more than anything, though speaking aloud to indicate to Balfour he was alright. He swore under his breath, forcing his hands away from his face and his blushing, risking a look to the other wizard. Merlin, if he didn't feel it quite so magnificently like his nerves were alight, if they hadn't spent the evening together already, he might have considered this an elaborate potion-induced dream. Balfour was incredibly, handsome - the sort that Johann pegged as unobtainable. The sort that Witch Weekly could run a fan club for. He danced, laughed, was extraordinarily polite, and though opportunity for conversation had been limited, Johann perceived he could be equally, if not more intelligent than himself. It simply wasn't possible that such a person could exist and look at him twice, let alone be doing -- oh F...

Johann extended one long arm down, sliding fingers through auburn curls, gripping automatically as his toes curled.

“Merlin - I can’t think straight, you’ll ha… return… let m…” No wonder people talked so much about this in column inches and over coffee - it was impossible to hold an analytical conversation about it during the process. He was sure his eyeballs had attempted to roll out in different directions.

He gripped again, more decisively this time, swearing loudly, other leg folding up in response to the incredible attention. His head felt like it might roll off after his eyes.

“Alright - alright -“ Johann uttered again, insistent, not reassurance this time but command. He lifted his head as best he could from the bed, his face flushed, an elated, spaced expression across his angular features. He nodded to Balfour as their eyes met. “You’ve convinced me."

Balfour lifted his head at the second pull of his curls, licking the dribble off his lips as he looked up from between Johann’s legs.

“Already?” A hungry, teasing grin. It was difficult to cease, to take oneself away from the musky and erect chapters of a keenly responsive physique. The other wizard made such vulnerable noises. He smoothed his hands up along either thigh, relishing the feel of skin against skin, and clambered up to plant a messy kiss to his bedmate’s mouth.
 
A man could grow addicted to this taste. One of Balfour’s hands found their way to the back of Johann’s head, sliding into the dark curls possessively while he pulled his lips away and pointedly licked his own fingers instead. This romp was a distant cry from how he’d imagine the evening to go - but now that he was in bed with a beautiful man the alternative hardly crossed his mind.

It seemed miraculous that they had worked in the same Ministry for so long without him ever thinking to bite down on those red and insolent lips. Ships passing in the night - but not tonight. Tonight they’d dropped anchors and turned off the searchlights. 

To be found by nobody else but each other.

He kissed the side of Johann’s face as he reached down, grasping him by the hip. “I love how you taste...” Balfour whispered in confession and rested their foreheads together. He was breathing heavily, heart racing with excitement and need. Every passing second was an agonising, pleasurable test of patience. It was wonderful.

His fingers slipped slickly between Johann’s buttocks; he pressed their lips together and tugged at the curls the way he had on the dance floor.

“You might over-convince me,” Johann admitted, a hand dropping back to his forehead as he continued to blush and swallowed audibly. The hedonic attentions from the other wizard were like nothing quite felt before, and although his response was awkward but he didn’t mean it negatively. Now he felt lousy for the interruption. Balfour took it in his stride, or so it seemed, delivering another, messy kiss which tasted different to before. Good different, different that he wanted to kiss Balfour again, and for longer. Merlin, kissing Balfour was fantastic!

Johann's hands found their way back to his partner's shoulders, eager to pull them back together, but the other wizard had control. The action had Johann paused, lips apart in fascination. Damn it was sexy. He hated how uncoordinated he felt with his inexperience, he wanted to return the attentions to Balfour and show willing. Pressed against the bed by such a strong body he felt an overriding desperation to touch and push up against the other man, to get closer than they were.

The room around them had faded into irrelevance behind Balfour, and all he wanted was right now. An infuriating, maddening craving to touch as much of the body baring down on him as he could. To understand it and marvel at it. It was such an intense and ridiculous feeling and his mind fought itself over the notion.

“Merlin I want you.” Johann uttered, the words rushing from his lips, begging, in response to Balfour’s mention of taste. The intense need won out and at last suppressing the logical side of his brain which preoccupied itself with observation, possibilities. That oft-ignored voice told him just to hold on for the ride now it had taken charge. At once, hungrily, Johann seized Balfour’s head with both hands and received the renewed pressure of kissing with enthusiasm and laboured breathing.

Even that couldn’t keep him quiet - for someone so used to communicating and verbalising thoughts and directions, it was impossible to keep hushed. Besides, Balfour had demanded he didn’t try to keep quiet, and that was one thing he could do before he reached out in an attempt to reciprocate with one hand. The other raked through auburn curls, keeping lips in near constant contact, pausing only to re-establish intense eye contact before tipping back with a gasp at the progression of Balfour’s fingers.

For a moment they were still, Johann holding Balfour tightly, staring up. It was a moment of trust - they’d only just met even if they’d shared a place of work for almost two years. This was closer than anyone had ever been before, and as much as he couldn’t wait, it still made his heart skip a beat. No, he wanted this, and more than that, he wanted Balfour. Johann exhaled, visibly relaxing, shoulders dropping, and his fingertips lessened their grip on the other man, though as they began again, his fingers flexed and toes curled. Why - why had it taken him so long? Why had he spent so long denying it all and missing out on this?

“That feels like nothing else,” he admitted croakily, his flushed face wore a enamoured smile.“you’re turning me into a quivering wreck Balfour Spectre.” Johann swallowed, feeling a joyous laugh brewing, “and I fucking love it.” He pulled down on Balfour’s head gently, kissing him messily, on the lips and across his cheeks, breathing thanks beneath his breath.

Johann’s laughter was infectious, tickled Balfour’s nerves like temptations of eden.

If he were not already flushed with excitement, a blush would have broken out across the wizard’s face. He couldn’t tear his attention away from Johann - whose moans inspired desperate desire, and whose earnest words stripped Balfour of anything that was not tender.

These past months had been little more than violent numbness. Dragon epidemics, politics, coming home tipsy. He had revelled in this, gone drinking and fucking to keep it up… but the way his bedmate reached for him now, wanted him, made it impossible to want to be numb. Balfour wished to feel everything as keenly as he felt affection for Johann at this moment.

And he could not help admiring the other man’s courage. To have faith in a relative stranger, to open up to them in more ways than one.

Balfour tightened his grip in Johann’s curls, tongue slipping hungrily into each of the kisses and eyelids flickering with pleasure. His ministrations below were slow and teasing; never one to rush, at least not since his youth.

“You have no idea what you’re doing to me,” he laughed and pulled away to look down, eyes meeting again. So blue. Johann’s eyes were astonishingly blue, full of joy and nerves and trust -  and something mercurial that refused to be named.

Oh, gods. That…that bloody hand was extremely distracting.

“You’re driving me wild!” Balfour nudged at the other’s nose with his own, nuzzling, an almost animal-like affinity. “I want - fuck - I want your arse right now -“ he didn’t wait for a response, having been assured by now that they both wanted this (and wanted it badly).

The bed shifted comfortably beneath them as he grabbed Johann by the hip, sliding back on his knees so that he was aligned between his partner’s legs. Balfour held him close, bared chest pressed to bare chest and boney shoulders knocking, the shared heat off their bodies burning him up from the inside out.

He trailed his hand away, clasping his own lubricous sex to prepare. “Yeah?” he breathed in the slim space between them.

“Yes.” Johann replied, and gave a nod to reaffirm, though his response had been sure and loud enough to convince there was no doubt. The rest of him was a buzz, fluttered nerves, excited energy, a high that wasn’t the same as any other, not drunk, better. Unsure of what exactly to do at this moment, Johann was still and obedient, allowing himself to be shifted by Balfour’s more experienced hands while he rested his own on the other wizard’s shoulderblades, their bodies infuriatingly close.

He gasped suddenly, every part of him stiff in surprise at the new feeling - Balfour’s gaze was attentive to his reaction and paused. The breath he had quickly inhaled was released with a relaxed drop of Johann’s eyelids, lips apart still, letting go the tension with a noisy exhalation. His fingertips applied a modest pressure to shoulders in encouragement, and his head pressed back against the sheets as Balfour pressed into him in turn. Johann’s lips formed silent words, suddenly quiet, eyes coming open, wider, surprised. It was not as he expected but not ultimately foreign to reason of what was happening of how it should feel.

Beneath his partner, he shifted his hips, brought up his knees a little further to find a better angle to accommodate Balfour, consciously trying to relax against everything that felt so tight and anxious. This was what he wanted, but there was an internal battle taking place in that split second of doubt whether he was doing things right - and whether it felt right at all.


He stared up into Balfour’s clear blue eyes, sensing a new clarity to the gaze they shared. There was no doubting the strong desire but Johann felt safe, and the more he realised and accepted this, the more he felt himself relax. Slowly he let go, voice returning, corners of his mouth curling into a happy, elated smile which reached his eyes before he kissed Balfour. He tasted different again, like before but with the tang of salty sweat from the heat between them. The taste, the pressure and the burning need it provoked were entirely criminal and thoroughly addictive, his voice expressed as such, though words were few and far between in any language.

Left arm looped around Balfour’s shoulder keeping them together as they moved, his right reached down to clasp and encourage. Initial apprehension passing, his head was clearing of any nagging doubt with the overriding need of more. As Balfour found a rhythm, albeit perhaps a more sedate one than he might with another he fell into bed with, Johann reflected, he found the pleasure of it all quickly outweighed the initial discomfort. A thirsty, uncontrolled need for another that had grown to great frustration over summer was fulfilled in this instant by a wizard he barely knew but simultaneously felt as if he’d been meant to wait for. A perhaps frankly ridiculous notion, but nonetheless one that passed through his mind pressed close.

Balfour’s name slipped from his lips as his fingers gripped.

Framed between Johann’s knees, he clenched and unclenched his grasp of dark curls as hips shifted below. It was too easy to forget how delicate people were, how delicate he himself could be. Two men laid bare before one another. Balfour ran his left hand along the underside of pale white thighs, as much to steady as for the sensitive feeling. His brow furrowed in concentration...

Held feverishly close, gazes meeting, feeling out the other wizard for the faintest change in intimacies. As close to a human being as can be - this sweet strain of entering another so much so that every tremor running through Johann was answered by a shift in Balfour’s bearing. Fuck, Johann was tight.

He swallowed, unable to help the smiling lips that sought his own, leaning in even closer once Johann had eased the physical tensions between them. His hips pushed forwards and back, patient in rhythm not only for consideration of his bedmate but the drawing out of an unendurable pleasure.

Balfour felt something inside him stir at the mention of his name.

It had nothing and everything to do with how he pressed his frame against Johann now, back muscles shifting beneath the hands clasped around, and mouth bearing down urgently against bitten red lips.

“Johann,” he growled into every slow, starving bite. Balfour felt that he could not resist this, neither this moment nor this incredible man who was driving him utterly fierce with impulse. His fingernails dug unconsciously into Johann’s thighs and he quickened their pace, struck by the desperate wish that the pair had met sooner than this night.

Because, gods, nothing could sound quite so dulcet in his ears - and through his haze of lust, of the urge to dominate, Balfour perhaps sensed that he wanted more of everything to do with Johann.

For the first time in a very long time indeed, Johann’s mind felt released, unhindered by criss-crossing thoughts. Every change in angle, prick of nail against his skin and chafe of sweating limb was bright in his head, real. Eager, urgent kisses turned sloppy, uneven, messy across their faces and necks, Johann’s hands gripped, eyes heavy-lidded.

He swore and sucked air through his teeth when they came up for air, the faint underlying pain of his body unused to such activities would remain with him in the morning he was sure, but every inch of him felt alive. He hadn’t felt like that in months… years… perhaps not ever since experimentation on his travels. The vivid look of the world had only set him on a spiral out of control back then - this was natural - this was everything he’d ever wanted but had been too dulled on sleeping potion to acknowledge. The sudden, overwhelming realisation brought his eyes shut tight as if in pain, trying to stop the unexpected water swelling. He held tight to Balfour at the same moment, as if hanging on to life.

From below he felt Balfour’s pace falter, meeting a return of resistance. Hoarse encouragement followed, bright blue eyes eventually coming open, blinking hard, whispering “It’s ok, I’m ok, I want this, fuck…” How had he stumbled across Balfour that night - to meet someone who didn’t balk at his inexperience and could take it in their stride. Literally take him by the hand. The way he looked down at him now made Johann’s heart skip - nobody had ever looked at him like that. Not Arcturus, not even the girls who in the past had attempted to catch his attention which he now acknowledged.

There was no doubt to him that tonight would be the first of many, though at that exact moment he was far more preoccupied with vocal appreciation and the fact a rising sensation had brought his hand automatically from Balfour to himself.

The way in which Johann had clung to him, eyes closed tightly, brought Balfour to a more considerate tempo - he did not press his kisses urgently against the other wizard but allowed their laboured breaths a little space to mingle even as he pinned him firmly to the mattress. His skin tingled at alterations of warmth and cool, clammy sweat.

“It’s ok, I’m ok, I want this, fuck…”

His eyes fell tenderly to Johann, countenance as hungry as it was concerned for this man who had been flung out of the blue. Gods knew how they'd come to meet by chance, and he felt like he had been entrusted with something inexplicably precious. He saw a vulnerability that made him feel as equally exposed to the world's avarice - yet found nothing but sweetness in Johann.

Balfour’s hips adjusted to resume a quicker pace, adamantly holding their gazes as if though looking away might wrench them apart for good.

He didn’t speak. It was only silence, panting, the sweet drawn out moans that escaped Johann and sharply found a home in Balfour’s capricious chest. With one hand amorously grasping to his bedmate’s curls, he reached down with the other to lace his fingers with the slick ones that were bringing Johann to the very edge.

Balfour was losing thread of his own pleasure - the entirety of his body humming at the slightest quiver between them, the smooth close and open of pressure building up to the bright heat of his primal mind.

At the very final moment he braced himself against Johann, every limber muscle tense in anticipation and the onset of a groan at the base of his throat.