An hour or two after Sleeping With Ghosts

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“Aha, there you are!” The benefits of height were many but in the Christmas shopping crowds of Diagon Alley, it was worth being able to see between the tall hats to spy the love of your life. “It feels like majority of the wizarding world are here.”

Johann swept his fiancé into his arms (though it was probably an equal effort), and delivered a grateful kiss. Despite dragging the healer out for a walk to try and lift the mood, he probably smelled of Arc and Elixa’s Diagon Alley flat a few minutes walk away from Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes at number 93. Balfour was incredibly understanding for letting him go that morning and satisfy his worries from Monday’s encounter.

“It’s just not right. He wasn’t happy at all. Unless he’s weirdly upset there’s an end to our appointments together. But that’s wrong even for him!” Johann had grumbled on Monday evening, rather confused by the interaction he’d had with Arcturus Hollingbury at St Mungo’s earlier in the day. The healer had confirmed Johann no longer had a rather worrying shelf life from his sleeping potion addiction and that two months free of any kind of sedative had at last turned things around. It should have been a little celebration - professional - but still a success.

“It has been a long morning, my love. I am grateful to see you.” Johann remarked, wearing the wide-eyed expression of a man who had seen some things.

In one moment, he was browsing the windows of Diagon amongst jostling crowds - thinking hard on a gift for Feliks before the young boy returned for winter break - and in the next, a beautiful wizard was slipping his arms around him to create a circle of space around the pair. If other Christmas shoppers looked, it was only to roll their eyes. That was the effect the two affectionate wizards could sometimes have. He never minded.

“Here I am!” Balfour’s own arms came to rest around his fiancé’s waist, smiling quite irresistibly at Johann.

The smile was tempered somewhat when he was reminded of the reason they were apart in the morning: a social visit to Arcturus Hollingbury. Not that he ever wanted to be controlling, it simply made him feel… perfectly… naturally ... green to see Johann still so close to, and so concerned for, an ex.

            “It has been a long morning, my love. I am grateful to see you.”

There was more to those words, he saw, and it sent a twinge of irritation through him. What did Arcturus do this time? Or rather, what was Arc like this time? Because Hollingbury rarely actually did anything, he just sat there looking rather sorry for himself.

“What’s the matter?” Balfour let go, leaving one arm around Johann’s waist so that they could walk down the alley hip-to-hip.

He’d left his shopping to collect later, not wanting to burden himself with all the bags. “Arsebadger gotten on your nerves, darling?”

“Naaarh…” Johann replied, entirely non-committal in answering that question directly. The noise alone gave an indication that ‘Arsebadger’ had not been a solely upbeat, friendly interaction. “I mean, he’s never sunshine is he? But I couldn’t leave it.”

In the most selfish sense, he was owed some recognition for two years of hell turned around. Hollingbury hadn’t given anything on Monday. It had irked Johann no end, but he’d remained professional, accepting his relationship with Arcturus was anything but straightforward now.

“He’s really down, Balfour. Down and something weirder. I don’t think he’s talking to Lix about it at all.” Johann gave a laboured sigh. “I know, I know.” He uttered placatingly. “He’s a grown adult, but …” For a man of words, they sometimes failed him when it came to explained the complicated motives and morals Johann followed, whether it was Arc or the likes of Layton.

Balfour snorted, not one to argue for Arc to be a ray of sunshine in anybody’s life. That Johann felt a debt was owed… it spoke more of the linguist’s values than of the healer. One good turn (and, every now and then, a bad one too) deserved another.

Down and something weirder? That sounded dangerously vague.

“He’s a grown adult but even grown adults need a helping hand up?” he hazarded obligingly, raising his eyebrows a little as they stopped walking behind a group of witches considering fashions in a shop window. Foot traffic was halting, at best.

There was nothing wrong with needing help from one’s friends or - as it was - the odd slap in the face. But looking at the dark-haired wizard now, the sighs and heartfelt frustrations, Balfour couldn’t help feeling a little angry. Did Arc have to make Johann work so fucking hard to help him? Is that what you do when your friends try?

“Tell me,” he squeezed Joh’s waist gently, fingers pressing into his hip. “Something’s spooked you, love. What is it?”

Johann wrinkled the top of his nose, wanting to tell Balfour, but at the same time, not really sure how to. His mouth pulled at one side.

“He says he’s hearing voices, Bal.” Johann shrugged his shoulders, avoiding his fiancé’s eyes a moment, “well not voices, plural, but a voice. Only it’s him. I don’t know, like a very loud conscience?” Gosh, he was making a hash of explaining it, but Arc hadn’t done much better had he?

“It’s ever since Musgrave sent that dementor on him, you remember? We sent that amazing card to try and cheer him up because we were all up our necks in the Ira business.” Johann waved a free hand as he explained and looked back to Balfour again.

“So I’m there trying to empathise with that... and it’s not just in his head but starts ranting at me. It was the strangest thing and I drew my wand thinking he’d actually lost it. He won’t tell anyone because he thinks he’ll lose his job, but I’m more worried he’ll flip out at a patient and that will definitely get him fired, or suspended.” Johann let out a huff of irritation. “I didn’t know what to do, or say. Totally out of left field.”

To Balfour, who didn't even dream in his sleep, the idea of hearing voices had always been a foreign one - and to have found out that Johann was burdened by such dark mutterings was a painful reality to face. The addiction, the troubles, the hurts. He wanted to enfold them somehow: to help carry it, even though that was all he could really do. Help.

The chatty group ahead moved on but the two wizards remained at the shop window, and the crowd surged around them instead like a stream around a rock.

“I’m not sur-- he started ranting in the other voice?” Bal stared, affronted, holding the other closer without realising it. “What the hell was he saying that you drew your wand?”

His mind jumped to same thing that Johann’s did: what if Arcturus hurt someone one of these days? Wasn’t it terribly dangerous, letting him treat patients when he could just snap all of a sudden?

“Gods, he should be getting his head looked at,” Balfour pressed on angrily, torn between being alarmed and the infuriating idea of anyone being a threat to his lover. “Imagine if he’d pulled this shit while he was treating you? Before, I mean,” he gestured, referring to the past.

The past, before Le Masque and before Ira and glowing blue vomit. “I can’t believe he ranted at you!”

“Yeah, well, I might have implied he should give a shit about himself and get some help…” Johann admitted, keeping his voice a little lower considering they were surrounded by milling shoppers. His shoulders were hunched as he confessed that.

“He went on about how he pretends to be nice… that I … put him on a pedestal of some sort - not that those were his words. But that he, or this split personality, doesn’t consider himself ill.” Johann shrugged and the corner of his mouth downturned.

“I drew my wand because Arc doesn’t rant, not like that.” Johann shook his head. “It was verging on a level of me bitching about Iravani.” He gestured to himself, well aware he’d more than once bent his lover’s ear about the irritable Deputy Head of his Department who was looking after things while Gabrielle was on maternity leave.

“I didn’t know if what he was hearing… speaking aloud… would be as bad as mine got when I was at my worst. I mean, he hexed me in surprise when I sent the cat in to wake him up, but-.”

If the Arc he knew was only pretending to be nice, he really didn’t want to know what the Healer was like in actuality - nice was a word Balfour used for people who had a good bedside manner and didn’t threaten to throw books[1] at their patients’ heads.

A few passersby cast curious looks in their direction, and he nudged Johann closer to a wall by the shop window so that the other man had his back to it.

            “...when I was at my worst. I mean, he hexed me in surprise when I sent the cat in to wake him up, but-.”

“He what?” Balfour growled into the sentence before it could get any further, surprise quick making way for his infamous temper. “Hexed you? How? Where?” he reached to touch the side of Johann’s face, looking him over searchingly, trying to find some obvious harm having been done.

What in Odin’s name was Hollingbury doing hexing his fiancé for? “That halfwit!” he continued without pausing for breath, clenching his fist. “I’ll bloody break his nose in!”

Hex! His Johann! Absolutely fucking not!

1.	8th Dec '10 - Johann's Care Sheet

He had always known Balfour found it difficult that he went to see Arc for anything but professional reasons. His fiancé was possessive (but not too so) and Arcturus was Johann’s ex (even if it hadn’t been much of a relationship). This was always going to be a difficult thing to explain, even to the person he loved and trusted more than any other person (excluding his mother, perhaps). Balfour was always the more emotive of the pair, the greater bellicose potential. His fierce need to protect Johann had saved them in the past, but at times like this only made the explanation harder. Saturday was turning into something far from relaxing and sociable!

“I’m - I’m fine, Balfour, honestly. It was just a flipendo and it was my fault for not standing by the bedroom door and yelling ‘good morning’ to wake him up.”

A knockback jinx! He threw a knockback jinx at Johann?!

“Don’t defend him!” Balfour argued a little too loudly, jaw drawn taut. The way they talked about the healer sometimes, like he was an additional child in the family to fuss over, unable to look after himself! “Just a flipendo? In what world is it acceptable to hex people who’ve had the good grace to get a miserable little shit like him out of bed?”

Oh, he didn’t know where to put the fire in his chest, and it was rather lucky that they weren’t stood in front of a fine china shop this instant. Simply trying to imagine Johann being knocked back was enough to make him as mad a Hungarian Horntail.

“How dare he?” the Scotsman sighed heatedly and ran a hand through his auburn hair, “the man doesn’t deserve to touch you much less hex you.”

“Easy, Balfour, easy.” Johann heard himself say aloud. He didn’t want them to cause a scene in the Alley! Witch Weekly only took a glimpse to write something awful.

“I gave him a start. He didn’t know I was coming over…I .. I’m defending him. Fuck it.” He realised himself mid sentence and glared at the kneecaps of passing shoppers.

He gathered himself and tried again to answer the earlier question. “I drew my wand because I didn’t know how bad these voices were. I didn’t know if he’d start threatening me with this other voice and I’d need to leg it.” He gestured more desperately with both arms outstretched before them. “Because I know what it’s like to have someone in your head telling you to do awful things to people. Arc knows that, and I think that’s why he’s told me rather than anyone else. Because I might just understand.”

He appealed to Balfour to see reason and gripped his hair. “He’s promised to speak to someone, but I get this feeling he won’t, you know?”

If it had been anyone else trying to calm him, Balfour might have balked. But this was Johann speaking - who’d seen him rush off to trade hexes with Ira Almasy in the middle of the night, who could bring quiet into his heart which had rarely known quiet before.

It was hard to imagine Arc as sharing in his partner’s mental instabilities. They did not seem so alike to him, though he knew that was probably because his experience of Joh was in different context. Both of them had eras of their lives lost to history, maybe for the better.

“If you…” Balfour trailed off, still struggling to put a cap on his temper. “If you think he is a danger, which sounds like it to me because normal people don’t hex friends who wake them, then you should tell someone.”

He drew closer, closer than was polite even on the side of a thoroughfare. “He’s a danger to his patients and he was a danger to you, today.”

The familiar scent of another home lingered between them, and he recognised it from other times Johann had gone to visit Arc and Elixa. His brow wrinkled in helpless discontent.

“Fuck, you smell like him.” Balfour shook his head like a dog trying to shake off a bad scent.

“Don’t,” Johann replied quietly, but firmly, looking up at the grey December sky, exasperated. “I know you hate me going to see him. Can we… not.”

He hated to quarrel with Balfour, especially as they so rarely did. He knew that any mention was a risk, and that the simplest way would be to cut ties, but he was his own man. His own concerns, his own agendas as well as the one they made as a couple. It wasn’t as if he was slipping off to do it secretly, or spending a morning laughing and enjoying each other. He never made snide comments about Balfour to Arc, and the healer didn’t either.

“Forget I said anything. He’s not coming between us. Let’s just, let’s just focus on what we need to get.” He rubbed at his forehead and hoped they could leave it all behind. Probably precisely what Arc wanted Johann to do about it too. It was all giving him a headache. He’d only wanted advice from Balfour, not a disagreement.

“Here, give me one of your smokes.” Johann held his hand out, expectantly, and drew his wand.

Balfour eyed the other wizard, unhappily and uncomfortably aware of how jealous a lover he was becoming - had it ever been like this in any of his past relationships? He didn’t think so, didn’t remember ever feeling the overwhelming urge to strip them clean and mark them up for the trivial sin of visiting an ex. Another, sultrier way to mask a scent.

“I won’t just forget it,” he breathed out slowly while he reached into his pocket for the cigarettes, “because it’s important to you. I’m sorry, I just... you’re right to be worried.”

Scowling at himself, he stuck a fag between his lips before offering one to Johann. Bad habit, the smoking, and they were the kind of men who fell into certain habits together.  “You should follow your instincts,” he mumbled as he leaned in to let Johann light him up. “Gods know they’re better than mine.”

They were in the middle of Diagon Alley on a busy afternoon and his ‘instincts’ were telling him to find the closest, most private nook so that they could press themselves against one another.

“Weasley’s, after this, to get something for Feliks?”

“Don’t berate yourself,” Johann uttered quietly as Balfour simmered down again and he lit for both of them.

“Weasley’s after this, to get something for Feliks?”

“Yeah, something to terrorise Slytherin with when he gets back to school.” The answer was a little too quick, keen to move the conversation on. He took a short drag on his smoke and made a point to try and hold it close to his coat. Better to smell smoky than to smell of Arc and Elixa’s flat, if Balfour felt so repulsed.

“Not that we should be encouraging him…” He revised his answer, the realisation that they’d be back in ‘parent mode’ by the end of the week coming back to the forefront of his mind. To think he’d chatted so happily to Arc about the fact Feliks would be back the following weekend! Arc had given no real response to that either. Merlin.

Johann glanced sideways at Balfour to try and measure his mood. He’d probably simmer on this exchange for a few hours, even if he didn’t say anything. Perhaps the shopping trip would be littered with sarcastic comments. Ordinarily it was the sort of dark humour Johann adored.

“I’m sorry.” He apologised, without being clear exactly what for. He leaned in towards Balfour, looking to kiss him, “I’m yours, and only yours.” Their lips found each other. “I love you.”