When Love Comes To Town

5. When Love Comes To Town. (Feb 24-May 13.)

Old vinyl albums of his father's aside, Seamus was pleased to learn that sorry did not seem to be the hardest word. The following morning, he had sat down to breakfast with the rest of the Gryffindors and ignored the pointed glares and glances that could all be reduced to one very simple phrase - a familiar two word incantation which started with a 'f' and ended in an 'off', more useful than any Latin. Dean had been typical Dean, really, shovelling food down his throat as if he thought he was going to turn to skin and bones sometime within the next sixty seconds. Seamus caught himself thinking that Dean's table manners didn't really matter when you considered the fact he was a great laugh, and a wonderful friend, and he had this smile-

Seamus stopped himself halfway through a piece of toast and put the piece down on the plate. He was gay, he knew that. He was a big, angsty, queer type person, although at least he wasn't as camp as a row of tents (or any number of Hufflepuffs.) In addition, it seemed he was Heavily Falling For His Best Friend, which despite some recent improvement in their relationship, still counted as #3 on the list of things which Seamus knew he Should Not Do, up there with Be Nice To My Sister, and Abuse Capitals When Thinking About Myself In A Pedantic and Self-Congratulatory Way.

Bugger.

"Do you want that bit of toast?" Dean asked, and when Seamus shook his head quickly, Dean scarfed it up with his knife and fork. Feeling suddenly panicky - he'd lost his appetite several uses of Capitals before - Seamus moved to rise from the bench, but Dean's hand shot across the table with a speed that would have made Harry jealous and grabbed hold of Seamus' lower arm. Dean tightened slightly, almost painfully, and Seamus was almost too bewildered by the action to fully register the slight twinge.

"I think we have something to discuss first, yeah?" Dean spoke low, still seemingly concerned with wiping up the last bit of egg from his plate, and when Seamus returned to his seat with a slight 'ooof' (due to sitting too hard too fast on the hard wooden bench), he let Seamus' wrist go and returned his attention fully to his meal. Overdoing it slightly for effect and possible sympathy, Seamus let out an audible wince of pain and rubbed his wrist. The entire table was watching them now, but Seamus only had one particular audience in mind.

"Not here, though," added Dean, and wiped his mouth a napkin. Dean then baled it up in a fist and threw it onto his plate, arching back over the bench with his long legs and strode over towards the main exit. He didn't check to see if Seamus was following, but Seamus thought that was sort of the point. Shrugging helplessly at the assorted stares of his fellow housemates, who only seemed too happy to find something else to blame him for, Seamus quickly trailed after his erstwhile best friend.

It was a relatively easy matter to slip out of the Great Hall and into the side corridor - the hubbub of breakfast was quickly hushed by the sheer bulk of the thick mahogany doors, and Seamus could almost imagine that this was a proper castle, a castle like something out of a bard's tale, or a story of Amhairghin and Eriu, or the fables his father used to tell him when he was a child and believed in a certain kind of magic. The magic his father told him about was mysterious, and always had a price even if you couldn't be sure what it was. It was real because it was dangerous; it wasn't his mother muttering a cleaning charm to do the washing or his sister fixing something new with her hair. Real magic burned when you played with it, and the castles in stories always had traps.

It was dark in the corridor, shadows playing on the walls, and it was suddenly so very quiet. Anything could happen here. And then Dean came out from the shadows behind him and clamped a hand on his shoulder and Seamus squealed, nearly pissing himself in fright.

"What did you do that for?"

Dean was too busy bent over laughing to answer probably. "You should...have...seen your face," he managed to get out, the tears running down his cheeks. Not feeling especially charitable, Seamus grabbed his shoulders and kneed him in the balls. Dean made this face that was a cross between shock, pain and constipation, and went down like a sack of potatoes.

Seamus didn't want to see Dean's face. He didn't want to hear him, or acknowledge what he'd just done, or the fact that really, he probably had just extinguished whatever hope he ever had of saying 'I love you' without getting laughed at. He turned on his heel and strode away as fast as his legs could take him without actually running. Because that would look, you know, guilty. Or distinctly uncool. Or gauche, which was a wonderful word Seamus had discovered when he'd realised he was gay and looked up the thesaurus in the vain hope of cultivating (see, there was another word he'd found) the proper type of vocabulary.

Now being guilty was one thing, but appearing gauche? Seamus would rather die. Or wear pink taffeta. Well. Maybe that was a stretch. After all pink taffeta wasn't permanent. And he was good at memory charms.

However, despite his primal fight-or-stalk-off-in-a-moody-fit reflex, Seamus never got more than five steps away. It was perhaps a result of the strict Irish Catholic upbringing, or his mother's tendency to guilt trip, or his father's passive-aggressiveness, or the fact that, shamefully, Niamh was probably the Second Coming and even he couldn't ignore it (or her), but whatever passed for his conscience was yet again beating him over the head (metaphorically speaking) with its mitre and copy of Councils of Trent and Nicea.

So he stopped. He turned. He looked at the floor. He shifted his weight from foot to foot. He laced his fingers together, and stretched them. He opened his mouth, and-

"Aren't you going to help me up?" Dean implored.

Oh. Oh. Seamus sucked in his breath, and resisted his natural impulse to flee, scuttling forward and grabbing one of Dean's arms, pulling back and hauling him up in the process, looking quite comical. "Sorry," he said, tersely, dusting Dean off with his hands.

"That's alright," Dean replied, but he moved back from Seamus' touch quick enough.

Bugger. Bugger bugger bugger bugger. Or in laymen's terms, fucking fuckity fuck fuck fuck. That was not a good Sign, in the whole history of Signs. And he was capitalising again. Seamus took a deep breath and stepped back, his hands held up, palms open, arms rigid. If Dean so much as moved he was tempted to deck him, and properly this time. He'd had enough of playing and pissing about and lying and sparing everyone else's feelings.

"Look," Seamus spat, backing up. "I am sorry and I'm not going to grope you, okay? I'm sorry that I insulted Harry, I'm sorry that I defended my mum, I'm sorry that I can't fit into your perfect little world."

With that, he marched off, head proudly held up. Now this was making an exit.

"Don't have a hissy fit," Dean called out.

"I am not having a hissing fit!" Seamus yelled back, and turned to face him. But Dean was grinning, not scowling or anything else, and in a few moments Seamus was grinning too. He apologised to Harry the following day.

That night, Dean sat opposite him at dinner as he always did, and Seamus noticed a lot less glare going round the Gryffindor table. Fortunately, Pansy Parkinson was more than making up for it, the way she was giving him the eye.

"What's with Pansy, then?" Dean asked, around a mouthful of food. "She looks like she wants to off you or something."

"Oh," said Seamus, vaguely, and gestured with his fork. "I hung talking to her when I was in exile from all things heroic."

"I know," murmured Dean, eyebrow raised, and gave no further comment.

"Well. She's probably just annoyed I can't prostrate myself before her heaving bosom."

At this point Dean started choking on his broccoli, which Seamus decided was probably indicative of the sheer vileness of all vegetables. By the time Neville reached over to slap Dean on the back, everyone around the table was glaring at Seamus again.

Felt like old times.

People got on with their lives. Time had a way of passing appropriate enough to the temporal constant and the speed of light, and many other scientific terms that Dean attempted to explain (rather badly) to Seamus one afternoon in March after Dean had leant him a copy of Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars. In the end Dean had given up and just tried to get Seamus to think about all things scientific as a form of crude magic, because it was the only way he would accept them.

Of course, Seamus was torn between the discussion and looking at Dean during said discussion and moments like that - even if they were fleeting and isolated - were getting more and more frequent.

He was falling for him, hook, line, sinker and bloody pier, and there was seemingly nothing he could do about it. So, Seamus did what he did best in times of emotional crisis. He angsted. For the entire month of April, he mooched about Gryffindor Tower, hands in his pockets, bottom lip prominently stuck out, his entire body fixed in a pout. (It was something he'd practiced over many years of Coping With His Sister, and he'd perfected it in the mirror, and took great pride in it.)

No-one paid him any attention. Which was good in a sense, because there was less of a chance anyone could find out about His Secret Love. Also bad, because after, who was he pouting for if not someone whose identity might be vague and uncertain at best? Someone who would listen to his problems, hear him angst, and do the usual kind of thing one did to an angsty teenager. Not even Dean gave him what he wanted (oh, there was a double entendre and a half.) Oh, they talked, and they did things, and they studied and they hung about together, but Dean never mentioned his moodiness - and even, once or twice, he'd caught Dean grinning at him, as if Seamus' depression was something to make light of! It was enough to make a man listen to the Wyrd Sisters' attempt at wailing depression and cynicism, entitled Broken Little Charm.

In a horrible moment of clarity Seamus realised he was becoming a cliché: he only needed to start writing out god-awful poetry (no offence to any superior deity, especially not his superior deity being intended there) and growing his hair long, and he'd really be It: The Troubled Teenager.

He was stillworking out in his head whether that meant he should stop the manly brooding or not one Sunday in May, when Dean walked up to him, as he often did, and sat besides him on his bed, which he often did as well. Except for Dean being so close. Because he was close. Surprisingly close. The kind of close that set Seamus' heart aflutter and made him get all sweaty and palpitate and damn where was there a handcloth when he needed one?

It was for occasions like this, Seamus supposed, that God invented trousers.

"Hey."

"Hey." Well, he was capable of replying coherently. That was a good sign.

Dean leaned in a little further. "Are you in love with me?" he asked, in a very sensible tone of voice.

"Gah," said Seamus. Bad sign. Bad. His mouth formed various shapes for a few moments as he attempted to make some kind of sense, trying to work out what he was going to say. Or possibly could say. It was for occasions like that that God had developed the human capacity to exclaim, "Oh, look behind you! It's McGonagall on a spot check of the dorms!" and do a runner. Except his pesky conscience was getting in the way again, muttering about divine will and eternal salvation. Seamus took a moment to curse God and then realised that he wouldn't be able to get off that one with just a Hail Mary. "Uh." Oh, good, he was being vaguely coherent again. "What. Makes you think. That?" he asked, the sentence seemingly broken into various individual parts, and he reached a hand up and over to scratch the back of his neck.

"Pansy Parkinson," Dean replied, and Seamus wondered how anyone could be so calm, so easy at a time like this. Then he caught himself thinking that Dean was 'easy' and giggled.

Dean made a face at him. "What's funny?"

"Uh, nothing, go on."

"Anyway," he continued, "she marched straight up to me, bold as brass and started telling me how the fact that you were stalking the corridors and generally looking like a drowned rat was upsetting the castle's aura and her karma. This was apparently because you are madly in love with me and want to jump my manly dark torso." Dean coughed slightly, and had the decency to appear embarrassed. "Her words, not mine. Then she started talking about the stars and crystal balls and the voices in her head, and I, uh, ran."

Seamus realised he'd gotten out of the whole Pansy situation pretty lightly, all things considered. "Oh," he murmured, and he had the kind of absent soft quality in his voice that one uses when one is likely to pass out as the mind attempts to insulate itself from the sheer insanity of daily life.

"So, are you in love with me?"

Seamus did not, despite his own prayers and expectations, pass out. He was denied the easy escape this time. "Er." Things were looking up. After all, he'd just said 'er' which had a far more respectable and longstanding tradition as a verbal indicator than, say, 'gah.' If he kept this up he might start making sense any minute now. Seamus thought about it and dismissed the possibility out of hand.

That was when Dean kissed him.

Seamus wasn't able to make any real kind of verbal indication; he was too busy going into shock. Dean's lips were warm against him, and smooth, and he could see the most minute details on Dean's skin, the pattern of his pores, a slight discolouration, a blackhead or two. The fact he needed to pluck between his eyebrows.

Ugh. But still, this was Dean, so in likelihood it would be a sexy monobrow. After all, Seamus had been raised to have faith in higher powers, and he trusted God not to fuck this up. But he trusted himself to do the exact opposite, and so very gently, he extricated himself and walked from the room without a word.

Some days were just too much.

That night, Seamus avoided dinner, claiming he was nauseous. He could tell at least half his fellow Gryffindors thought he was lying, possibly to get attention, or make a scene, or something. In their eyes, he was probably contaminated and suspect and ostracised without realising it. After all, he'd hung around - in public no less - with a Slytherin. Please, someone take me out and bloody flog me, he thought. He just wanted some time alone, was that so much to ask?

Clearly it was, because he could hear the creak of the bedsprings as someone clambered onto his bed behind him. Seamus was lying on his side, on top of the sheets, facing away from the door, so he couldn't actually see who it was. Although he had a pretty good idea. Bugger. Bugger fuck titty fuck fuck fuck, and that was an understatement.

Strong arms wrapped around him, pulling him back against the other person. Someone nuzzled against his hair. Dean smelled like cinnamon, pungent and aromatic. He was drowning in the scent.

"I thought you were straight," Seamus whispered, and didn't look back.

"Why ever did you think that?"

"Because I'm not the hero. I'm the sidekick, the comic relief. It doesn't matter if I get what I want. God isn't about to go all out just to make sure I'm happy."

There was a pause, and Dean nibbled at his neck, drew him closer. Seamus shivered. "Does this mean I can make you happy?"

"...Maybe." Seamus bit down on his lower lip. "We'd have to see, really."

Those same strong arms unfolded from around his chest, and turned him round. Seamus looked into warm brown eyes, and a finger traced the curve of his lips. "I thought you'd gone evil or something," Dean breathed.

"Nah," said Seamus, still speaking softly. They were the only two in the room, but it seemed wrong to break the mood. The fact they even had a mood seemed to be distinctly in Seamus' favour. "I was only kidding."

And then Dean grinned at him, and Seamus grinned back. He knew that he looked like a complete slackjawed yokel and did not give a fuck. Things were good between them again - better than good, better than he'd ever thought possible - and Seamus threaded his fingers into Dean's hair, curling them against his scalp, and wondered at the small sigh Dean let out as if it was the most amazing thing in the world.

This felt so very, very right.

"I'm going to kiss you now," Dean murmured, and Seamus felt breathless and giddy, virtually floating. He hadn't even drunk anything.

"Oh?" He was squeaking, voice all high and reedy out of sheer shock and surprise, but again, not much with the caring.

A moment passed.

"So are you going to kiss me or what?" Seamus demanded, half-cross and felt something leap inside him at Dean's answering snort-turned-broad smile.

"Alright, alright, don't get your knickers in a twist."

"We'll save that for later."

Dean tapped his nose. "You are impossible."

"And that's how you like me." Seamus' voice was breathy, his lilt noticeably stronger.

"Are you going to let me kiss you or what?"

"Go ahead then."

Dean leaned forward. "Oh, just a minute, no!" Seamus cursed, and pressed a finger against Dean's lips. "One question, that's all, then full frontal snogging, I promise, with tongue and everything."

Seamus removed his finger from Dean's mouth and sighed, exhaling slowly. This was a very important question, one that decided whether he would be able to show his face ever again or have to skulk the corridors like the recluse he was.

Okay, maybe that was going a bit too far. But this was his story, in the end, and Seamus Kirkpatrick Finnigan could tell it whatever way he wanted it to be told.

"Do you think Draco Malfoy's at all good looking?" Seamus asked Dean, owlishly.

"Well," Dean said slowly, scrunching up his face in a way that Seamus was already mentally labelling as 'adorable'. "I suppose, you know, if you like Slytherins."

"Thank God," Seamus muttered, and kissed him. On the mouth. With tongue.

Felt bloody fantastic, really.