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“What was it,” Johann purred, clasping Balfour from behind, lips closing in on his lover’s clammy neck, trailing kisses, “I recognise those terpsichorean hips?”[1]

Oh yes, he’d recognise these particular hips in any given situation now. Whether clothed, or entirely not, whether by sight, touch, or taste, and certainly by how they danced. Balfour always danced beautifully, in Johann’s opinion. Whatever the situation: dodging dragons, celebrating marriages, on Diagon cobbles at three in the morning, or across the bedroom rug. He danced every day in Johann’s heart, and in his mind, where he had unashamedly seized his platform.

Here, under the swirling lights of Le Masque, a year ago to the day, two wizards who hardly knew each other had encountered each other at the bar. Hiding behind masks they had been too curious not to reveal each other over a drink. The dance floor had been full that night too. Balfour had torn it up, driven by Johann’s verbal admiration and terrible encouragement. Showmanship, he’d declared, and then made the world stop for his partner.

He still could.

“Care for a drink, Sir?” Beneath the mask, his lips curled, betraying a mischievous, boyish grin as he closed in behind the love of his life, without a care for who saw them or what strangers thought.

They had worked their way down the menu, of course, only the ones they enjoyed, until they knew what had to come next. Even so, Johann stood close Balfour, sharing a menu, just as it had happened.

“Two margaritas please.”

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

That circumstances could be so similar to this same evening last year, and yet so undeniably different, was magic in itself. Balfour Spectre was in love - had been in love for longer than he’d been brave enough to acknowledge[1] before. Tonight there was no denying it, with the heat of his lover pressed against his back and the deep tenor of an irresistible voice speaking delicious words into his ear.

He pushed back slightly, emphasising these apparently terpsichorean hips whilst Johann offered a drink. Bal’s memory was nowhere near as accurate but he often dwelled on this night, often thought of how such simple words had led to what could only be described as a momentous and life-changing relationship. It was as if the world had lied to him about what it meant to be happy, until Johann Storm came along and redefined the concept.

This terrifying, divine man. A force of nature who made him feel all at once savage and tender.

            “Two margaritas please.”

Balfour turned his head slightly, chasing after Johann’s wicked mouth for a kiss. “You look gorgeous,” he observed with a soft smile even as his gaze dropped hungrily down his partner’s pale neck, where the shirt collar had been invitingly unbuttoned.

Their drinks arrived. Wanting to remain true to the spirit of their anniversary, he slid away from Johann to pick up his margarita and gestured for Joh to mirror the movement. No, he couldn’t remember the exact words, but he remembered this toast.

”Slŕinte mhath!”
              “Zum woh!”

The two wizards linked arms, Balfour almost forgetting to taste the cocktail. His grin was too wide and too wild, and he set down the glass with a laugh. He reached forward, unconsciously, brushing his hands through Johann’s dark curls.

“Are you going to ask me to dance now?” he raised an eyebrow, glancing at the throng on the floor, bodies shifting beneath blinking lights. “Or am I missing something?”

1.	25th December, 2010 I Know No Other Way

“I’m missing something, beautiful,” Johann smiled, tip of his tongue caught between his teeth as he lifted his fingers to Balfour’s lips, chasing a dreg of salt from the bow. He touched tenderly, every inch of him fighting the strong demand to sweep Balfour into his arms, brought on by the deepest of loves for the other, the alcohol and occasion. His bright blue eyes keenly recorded the moment, hoping he’d remember as much as he could forever.

Though they lingered, chased playfully by Balfour as memories resurfaced, Johann decided his fingertips couldn’t have all the fun. He slipped them nimbly behind Balfour’s left ear and leaned in, pressing their wet lips together with a pressure that conveyed his wanting and need for Spectre. It was a burning love and also lust that boiled up in Johann, being back in Le Masque, pressed against Balfour at the bar. He let out an entirely impolite moan from deep in his throat.

“Your hips have a lot to answer for,” Johann breathed heavily, tearing himself away. He slipped from the stool, and extended a hand, palm uppermost. “Dance?” 

If not to quell the growing need to do something disgraceful to Balfour in public, a dance would expend nervous energy as his plan for the evening swept along. They had drunk their margaritas…!

They trotted between other dancers with the mutual understanding of seers, swallowed by the heavy beat, volume and sheer energy of being amongst others. Long gone were the awkward, panicked moments of realisation that he needed to move like everyone around him. He had learned from Balfour that one had to let go, have no self-conscious reservations, and just dance.

Dance and laugh.

Laugh gleefully, like only someone truly at peace with himself and his love could, all teeth and bright eyes, lines curling up at the corners, cheeks flushed pink and sides shaking. This evening almost couldn’t be more perfect, not after everything that had shaped their year. Everything that had brought them together, made them solid, tested their resolve as lovers. Friends. Partners. Soulmates. He’d never been more sure of what love was, of who love was.

“Sir,” Johann raised his voice above the music, against Balfour’s ear, “my love - your hips, I’m jealous. Even though I know they’re mine.” He squeezed them possessively, dancing ever more tightly, eyes seeking Balfour’s behind their masks at every opportunity. “You know I’d take you here, in front of them all, when you do this to me,” he growled, bottom lip caught between his teeth, blushing at his admission.

He had never, not once in his life, given a fanciful fuck about what other people thought when it came to his exclamations of love… and yet, gods there was something about Johann’s moan that made even Balfour blush to his roots. It wasn’t simply the sound, it was the implication of it. The multitude of situations and scenarios in which he had heard the deep timbre recur over and over and over again. Including their very first night together, the first of many.

            “Dance?”
“Have you ever danced with a dragon tamer before?” he quipped without thinking, following the other wizard out on to the teeming dance floor.

As the music pitched forward into a different tune, and the high ceilings of Le Masque plunged into alternating flashes of light, he did truly feel like they had been taken back in time. Balfour loved it: moreso now because he wasn’t just performing in the way he always did, before Johann. They moved in tandem, broad shoulders and undulating thighs brought together by the crush of the crowds around them. So close he could smell the sour sweat off his lover’s skin, accentuated by familiar cologne and even more familiar liquor, a scent so addictive it only drew him closer. Fuck. He wanted to lick it off Johann.

The hands on his hips did nothing to alleviate this urge. Balfour’s gaze flickered feverishly from the slope of that sharp jaw, to the frankly obscene words dripping off his companion’s lips, to those brilliant blue eyes hiding behind the mask - the ones that saw right through him.

“What did I tell you about that filthy mouth?” he growled into the slim space between them, brow wrinkled in concentration. His movements slowed and he brushed his lips against Johann - not quite a kiss. “I want you right now, right here. Anywhere. I want them to see.”

That wasn’t in the programme for tonight, unfortunately, and they were already receiving their fair share of odd looks; two wizards slowing to a heated standstill in the middle of a shimmering, whirling mass. Balfour grabbed the hands that had come to rest on his hips, slipping his firm grip towards the wrists. Not here. Couldn’t do it here. Had to get outside, before he lost it, or forgot about the gold ring burning a hole in his breast pocket.

“Fresh air,” he intoned seriously.


Balfour wasted no time in shoving Johann against the wall as soon as they emerged from Le Masque, cold night cutting through their body heat like a fine knife. His one hand maintained a firm press against the other man’s chest, while his other leaned against the red-bricked wall by the head of curls. It had been raining earlier and Knockturn Alley was damp, its wet walkways glistening with mysterious light. The air carried a distant scent of fallen leaves.

He had forgotten to remove his mask, gone straight to fiercely kissing the love of his life, licking into a mouth of which every inch he knew as well as his own. They tasted of margaritas, of each other, of the last twelve months and the lifetime ahead.

It would be far too easy to get carried away, pinned to the wall in the Alley. Up here there was an audience too, far less distracted by melodies, but far more accustomed to fellow patrons pressing shoulder blades and hips to the bricks.

He felt Balfour’s fingertips grasp at his shirt as they breathlessly kissed, and his own slid up his lover’s back, and the other to the fine curve of the buttock. Johann knew just how to hold his love, to let Balfour keep the thrill of dominance. It wasn’t the moment to be entirely submissive. Not now, there were plans to unfold, and there would be a whole night to sate this burning desire, burn it through to the hot embers of what kept them warm every day together.

“Fuck,” Johann gasped as Balfour relented, his lips pleasantly sore from the fervent exchange. “The things you do to me.” His lips drew back into a delighted grin, gaze soft, “Gods I love you.” Again, again… how similar, yet so very, very different. He still felt like prey before a predator up against this wall, and the anticipation was every bit as good, if not more for knowing what they would do the moment they got home - if they could hold themselves until they were home. Tonight wasn’t the night to end up in cells[1] again.

It was time to calm the beast for a moment, find the words that had been running through his thoughts for weeks now. Rehearsing whenever he was alone, changing, rethinking, debating. It had to be just right. He wanted to remember, he wanted Balfour to remember it because it was everything he knew to be true.

“There isn’t anyone else in the world I’d rather be thrown against a wall by,” Johann told Balfour in a low voice, his smirk calming as his arms relaxed around the other. He lifted his hand to dispel his mask, allowing him to gaze into Balfour’s dark eyes, lovingly.

“I never knew, a year ago, right here, that a chance margarita and a dance with a dragon tamer could change my world - make my world. That through everything that fate threw at us, one soul would be my constant.” Johann smiled happily at Balfour, words not quite coming out as he intended, but it was too late now. His heart was attempting to escape his chest, and his skin was alight.

“I’d travelled the world, met hundreds upon thousands of people, and not one had ever made such an indelible mark than a most extraordinary, magnanimous, generous and loving Scotsman.”  Johann continued. Mid-sentence, he glanced up,, a little tearily, to the dark sky above them, and shrugged his shoulders as the nervous emotion climbed his spine. The butterflies in his stomach circled as he gazed back at the man who was everything to him.

1.	14th February, 2011 Outraged Public Decency

Valhalla was a dark, damp night in Knockturn Alley. Balfour swallowed his nerves as they caught their breath and wavered on the fine line of desire. He could still remember how it felt to proposition the other wizard in almost exactly this same spot - even then he was hesitant, afraid he might scare this beautiful person right out of his life. But Johann didn’t scare easily. He embraced every crazy, tempestuous idea in Bal’s head; if anything, seemed to set them further alight in a ouroboros of pining and perverse gratification.

            ”That through everything that fate threw at us, one soul would be my constant.”

Balfour slid his hand up Johann’s chest, neck. Caressed the side of his face as they held themselves in one another’s eyes, listened like his life depended on it. Maybe it did, because life would be a dull affair without moments like this, moments for which the world could be ignored. The other wixes lingering outside of Le Masque barely registered in his consciousness.

Only the mesmerising velvet of the voice addressing him.

            ”...not one had ever made such an indelible mark than a most extraordinary, magnanimous, generous and loving Scotsman.”

Nobody else could assert such words with earnestness. Balfour leaned in for another kiss but Joh looked up instead, and he discerned a faint glimmer of tears even when his gaze returned to meet him. Now, it occurred to him. He had to ask right now or he’d lose this precious juncture.

“Darling.” Fleetingly, he pressed his lips to the sharp slope of a cheekbone; and then that imperious nose, the corner of a wide and unruly mouth. “I don’t know how I lived before you. Or loved. You’re my everything, my first and utmost thought, I wish… I wish I could put it into words, how you’ve changed me. Every inch of me.”

He stepped back, reaching into the breast pocket of his black shirt and - at the same time - forcing himself down to one knee. Balfour gripped the golden ring in his closed fist. This was it. This was the moment he had been preparing for weeks now.

Seanair, Nathaira, Alex, Feliks. They’d been told and sworn to secrecy.

“Johann Storm.” Balfour looked up at his lover, eyes imploring something soft and secret. “You’ll forgive me for the absence of grand words? All I have to offer is the rest of my life.”

Johann’s lips formed a quiet ‘oh’ as Balfour descended, his hands outstretched, gripping at air as the distance between them swelled. He blinked rapidly, wondering if Balfour had chosen that moment to dip to tie his shoelace, or one of Johann’s own, or if he was unwell, or about to do something that they probably shouldn’t do in public.

“All I have to offer is the rest of my life.”

The pair were not beyond moments of adoration and romantic gestures, whether it was surprise bunches of flowers, writing poetry, reciting it, breakfasts or kidnapping from the office to enjoy a holiday. Tonight was the night Johann had planned, to be such a moment, but with an important question. His closest friends, his mother, Feliks, had all sent their best of luck and warmest wishes. Advice not to overthink it, but equally not to jump the hex.

“You always think you need them,” Johann replied, bemused. “When you know I will always love you as you are, because that is all I want.”

He sank down in a crouch in the rain damp alley and rested his hand on Balfour’s raised knee.
“What are you doing down here, my love, you’re stealing my lines… you’re meant to be standing up?”

His brow wrinkled in confusion when Johann joined him on the ground, where their gazes met on equal standing once more. What was going on? Why were they both down here? This was precisely why words weren’t Balfour’s forte. It would have been better if he just said what he meant instead of trying to be flowery.

“Stealing your lines!” he echoed, solemnly studying his partner’s countenance.

A suspicion arose in the back of his mind but, not wanting to lose momentum, he decided to offer a hand instead. Balfour opened his fist and revealed the simple ring sitting in the palm of his hand - a single dark sapphire was embedded in the gold. It was an old piece of jewellery. The gem caught the dim light of the alley. So old that it had been inherited by his great grandfather, a century ago. Now it was his. Or rather, it was Johann’s, to whom Balfour belonged.

The Scotsman found that even now he was quite at loss for words. He glanced up from the ring, unabashedly hopeful.

“You… you’re all I want as well, Johann.. I love you,” was all that could be said - in it, a brazen plea. “For as long as we might live, I love you.”

The moment Balfour’s hand unwrapped, Johann forgot how to breathe. He stared, wide-eyed, and blinked, only looking from it when Balfour addressed him. The crowd around them had faded into the background and with them all the noise in Johann’s head. All he heard were Balfour’s beautiful lips utter words he knew, but would hold in his heart and covert.

He had known he loved Balfour long before he managed to find the words, before his love had saved his life a second time over, not that he knew it was more than twice now, such had their year been. He’d never loved anyone in the way he knew he loved Balfour. That being apart made his heart ache, and that being together made it sing and his head join in. He had such fierce friendship and closeness with Balfour that superseded any bond he had known in his life. Spectre had lifted a lid on a whole other side to life, held his hand through it, and not stepped in his way. Life had gone from months to years, decades and the prospect of old age with someone at his side.

Where they might not have shared a moment on the dance floor where the world stood still, and Johann chose to list what Balfour tasted of in conclusion of their first kiss, the world had paused now to watch two crouched wizards in an alleyway.

That was a ring. A ring on Balfour’s upturned palm. A ring and a declaration of love and lifetime.

“But,” Johann replied, with what could have sounded like a possible rejection, only his hand slid into his inside jacket pocket, his eyes glancing back to Balfour’s big honest ones with a mixture of embarrassment and bashfulness. His own hand unfolded beside Balfour’s.

Snap.

“Balfour Spectre,” Johann’s voice wavered a little, eyes meeting Balfour’s. “I love you, of course I love you, and I will spend my life with you,” he assured the other wizard in softest tones, surprised tears burning up the back of his eyes, “But would you do me the honour of marrying me too?”

… but? His heart skipped a beat and, for one incredulous moment, Balfour thought he had made the wrong decision by proposing so soon. He had met his equal match in Johann. The one wizard who could effortlessly reduce him to utter tears or pure lust or tender emotion. All three at once. Marriage seemed like only a grand formalisation of a universal truth between them: that they were meant to be. Always. In all universes, all forms, every road led to their being together.

And then he saw the other ring.

If there were words in his mouth, they died on his lips. Balfour pulled his gaze up to openly stare at his lover instead - he saw that the both of them were on the verge of tears, happiest of tears. They were fools. The best and brightest of utter fools. He swallowed. Nodded. Hands shaking slightly, Bal took Johann’s other hand into his own and slipped the ring smoothly on to his finger. It was easily worked past the knuckle.

It didn’t even occur to him to get up. This felt right, kneeling before one another in the most unlikely of places and pledging a lifetime of love to one another. He offered his own ring hand to the other man.

“You’ve made me the happiest man alive.” Balfour spoke, finally, still looking a bit like he couldn’t believe his luck, even after all this time. “Gods, Johann, we’re doing this aren’t we?” he licked his lips and laughed, something fragile but boyish in his grin. “We’re going to be husbands.”

“We are!” Johann managed in response, his voice wobbling with emotion as his hands slipped the white band, engraved with dragon scale, he’d purchased specially onto Balfour’s finger. He had decided that it wouldn’t be appropriate to offer Balfour the rather feminine ring he’d presented Hannah with, which had come from his family. One of his cousins would need it. He’d wanted to choose

“And ‘made you’?” Johann asked, his mind jumping back, “I still plan to make you the happiest man alive.”

Rings on their fingers, it would have taken a stampede of animals to keep them from clasping hands, pressing lips and sweeping each other into a happy, tearful, excited embrace. Their unconventional proposal had caught the attention of nearby figures outside Le Masque, and the chatter and smoke interrupted briefly with a trickle of unanticipated applause.

Smiling like his cheeks were about to snap, Johann laughed merrily in their embrace, squeezing Balfour tight. “I’m never going to stop being in love with you,” he assured Balfour, giddy with the thrill of asking, of being asked at the very same moment. Proof indeed that the two of them were meant to be. He never wanted to imagine life without his wizard. He felt he could burst with emotion.

Right now, he knew exactly what they should do to celebrate, and perhaps surprisingly, it didn’t involve whisking Balfour off to somewhere private. Not yet.

“Time for one more dance?”

End