[potter wedding] love is patient, love is kind [seamus]

It hadn’t left his mind this time.

When the thought had occurred to him before—and of course it had—it had been a fleeting thing. A curious little what-if that he forgot about in a while. He’d been fourteen on a camp cot with Seamus snoring next to him, and wondered in a hazy moment what it would be like if they kissed. But it had never been an ache, a real desire. Dean had enough experience with that to know the difference.

But now, twenty-three and lying in the grass with him at his ex-girlfriend’s wedding, the difference was that aching and desiring was honestly fucking miserable. And this… This was easy and familiar. There’d been a lot said about love today, from the officiant, and the vows, and the toasts, and they had all characterized it as a stabilizing force. Safety, and comfort, and home. In a little chair in the Weasleys’ backyard with Seamus’s leg bouncing next to him, everything that had been floating around in Dean’s mind for months coalesced and solidified, and all at once he understood.

It was late in the evening now, late enough for the July sun to have fully set. Dean had to tap his watch with his wand to illuminate the dial. He looked down at it. The Finnigans had sent it to him on his seventeenth birthday: it was a wizarding tradition, he’d been told, that they hadn’t wanted him to miss out on. The watch itself was a simple, modern-looking thing, leather and silver. Boring, compared to some others—but it meant they’d known him. Safety, and comfort, and home.

Seamus shoved the pipe in his face. C’mon, mate, it’s your go.

More of their school mates had been with them earlier, flattening the tall grass next to a pond beyond the Weasleys’ tottering house. Neville had been the last to wade back across the meadow to the party. Now it was just the pair of them left, in their shirtsleeves and undone ties,  their dress robes spread on the ground as they handed Seamus’s silly Sherlock Holmes pipe between them.

The revelatory nature of the day’s thoughts had made it seem easier than it was to Dean to express them. He lay there and looked at the moon on the pond. This was an ache now, if a different kind than the usual. He didn’t want his relationship with Seamus to be that way. It would ruin what meant so much to him about it in the first place.

Dean blew out a plume of smoke. “You ever think about getting married?” he asked. It felt like the conversational equivalent of sticking his toes in the water. Harry and Ginny’s  reception was still going on, humming and lamplit in the distance—at least he wasn’t coming out of nowhere here.

@Seamus Finnigan
@Ginny Weasley the hostess

Seamus’s arm was falling asleep, crooked awkwardly to cushion his head against the Weasleys’ tall grass; he bent his legs to adjust himself, careful not to upset the pipe in his other hand. Last thing he wanted to do right now, start a brush fire. The party was still going, past the pond and the house; though there’d been a little cluster here earlier, all their old friends (how funny was it that they were at an age where they had old friends?) who’d had the same unspoken need to be together, a few steps away. Most of them had gone back to the celebration; it was just him and Dean now.

Just him and Dean now, in the Weasleys’ meadow, made him nostalgic in a way that their flat didn’t. Put him in mind of the two of them hanging around their dorm as Harry and co. were off being important. Wasn’t that what was happening now, in a sense?

At least they weren’t wondering -- the wondering had always been the worst bit of it. That and the exclusion, though he had always felt like Dean was less bothered by the way their dorm had divided itself up. It’d taken longer for Seamus to be okay being on the periphery, but it had gotten easier, natural. As a teenager he’d never have wanted to sit out a party to get buzzed in the grass by a pond but, now, he didn’t think there was any way he’d rather spend these few hours.

He exhaled, rings of smoke visible by moonlight, and held the pipe in Dean’s direction for a moment before sitting halfway up to put it more aggressively in his face. “C’mon, mate, it’s your go.”

Dean took the pipe and Seamus settled back down, the grass tickling at the back of his neck. He’d been uncomfortable most of the evening -- stifled and overheated -- but now that the sun was set, it was utterly comfortable. All the stuffiness and restlessness had calmed into something quieter, warm in his chest.

It was probably the weed, if anything.

He looked over at Dean; he felt like he should have grinned but he wasn’t quite in that mood anymore. “Not much,” he said. “Reckon that’s a bad thing?” Seamus supposed he didn’t need to ask why it was coming up -- it was a little obvious, given the location (a wedding) and the topics of half of their late-night conversations (vague speculation on the future.) He put his hand out to take the pipe back, instead.

Dean looked over at Seamus, considering him again. He’d been doing it all day now, in the different lights (afternoon, early dusk) and settings (crowd of Weasley relatives, crowd of friends) and expressions (laughter, eyeroll, vacant stare). Seamus hadn’t ever been attractive to Dean in the way other people were. He still wasn’t, frankly. But here in the dim light, smoke curling above Seamus’s freckled nose, looking at him made a fond warmth spread out in Dean’s chest. He’d felt this before but never thought much of it. Tonight he let himself dwell on the fondness—let it mean something.

Rolling onto his side, he rested his cheek on his folded arm. It wasn’t an encouraging answer, but it rang true with everything else Seamus had ever said so Dean couldn’t be disappointed. “’Course not,” he said. “Not everybody’s cup of tea, I s’pose.”

He opened his mouth and then shut it again. He couldn’t do this hastily. There was a balance he had to strike between enthusiasm and nonchalance, not too “I’ve been thinking about you a lot” but not too ”I’d settle for you, if I had to.” Seamus could take things any number of ways. Dean liked to think he could predict them, but he just knew enough to think of all the possibilities.

“I always pictured being married,” he said eventually. “Not, y’know, like a little girl does,” (he could feel the jokes coming) “but just, I dunno—figured I would be.” Seamus handed him back the pipe and Dean took it as an opportunity to pause, turning his head to blow smoke at the night sky. “Thing is, romance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be," he said. “Or I’ve just got it all wrong, maybe. Like it isn’t how things are in books, it’s just…” Every explanation he considered here sounded idiotic. It’s just… Love. No shit! Dean still wasn’t sure if this was an epiphany other people had needed to have, or if he’d just been so monumentally misled by himself.

“It’s just being so comfortable with somebody, you think?” he asked. “I can’t spend my life with someone I feel like I’ve got to impress, when I’ve got someone who already understands me, yeah?” He hoped Seamus would get his drift here before he had to embarrass himself any more--and this was his point exactly, wasn't it? Dean rolled back over and sighed. The thought that he might be destroying this hadn't fully sunk in, but it was enough to make him feel vaguely sick and heavy.

Seamus was a little comforted by the ease with which Dean blew off his worry -- ‘course not -- and a little more wistful. Even years later he was still the one who got caught up thinking about this sort of thing, whether he was normal or not. Dean just never had been, in a way that Seamus caught himself being jealous of at times.

Even at a wedding, this wasn’t a conversation he’d have chosen, either. This time he did smile, fleetingly -- he knew Dean was right, but marriage had always felt like the sort of thing that should have been everybody’s cup of tea. At the very least he felt like it should have been his cup of tea, but clearly it wasn’t yet.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

Dean seemed to be picking his words carefully, so Seamus gave him a moment of privacy -- looked straight ahead again and took another hit off the pipe, nodded his head along with the music coming distantly beyond the field. He glanced back when Dean started to talk, a little haltingly -- Seamus opened his mouth to make fun of him just as Dean said not like a little girl does, and closed his mouth again sheepishly, passed his pipe back. “Me too, I guess,” he said. He realised with a weird start that he’d never really told Dean about the years he and his mother had spent on their own -- he supposed he had reason to have convinced himself that people weren’t meant to be on their own, even if it was a reason he didn’t want to say now, here.

Fortunately, Dean was moving on, sort of -- he was being philosophical now. Seamus figured this was just what weed did to him. Seamus, who couldn’t say he knew how romance was in books -- as a kid, the books he’d liked had had lots of pictures and next to no romance, and he’d stopped reading when he was like, ten -- didn’t know that he had any understanding of what Dean had used to believe, or what Dean believed now. It’s just love was like, a sort of lame conclusion to have drawn.

This didn’t feel like the time to interrupt, so Seamus scratched his nose and contemplated whether he ought to have looked away while he could; it didn’t feel like the time to look away either. Dean had the right idea, he thought -- Seamus couldn’t say he wanted to spend his life around someone he had to impress either. “Yeah,” he said again, “Guess that’s the dream, though, ain’t it?” Finally Dean settled back into the Weasleys’ grass with a little sigh; gratefully Seamus followed suit.

“I dunno,” he said finally -- he’d never felt as desperate to impress as Dean always seemed to be, when Dean was dating, and dating someone because she’d understood him, in that vague way that everyone who’d survived that year at Hogwarts understood each other, hadn’t worked out. Maybe he was looking for the wrong kind of understanding, but then he wasn’t really looking, was he?

He hadn’t thought Dean was, either. “What’s brought this on, then?” he said, with half a chuckle.

Seamus had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

Dean could see it in his face, a familiar deep yet politely-hidden confusion that made him laugh aloud and then feel a little bad about it. He didn’t like making Seamus feel like he’d missed something in the conversation. But he did do it a lot. Dean knew he could speak sometimes like whoever he was talking to could read his mind.

But he didn’t know if he could say this in a way Seamus would understand. He’d given Dean this look most of the time he’d said anything at all about love or sex or romance that wasn’t a dirty joke. Was there a joke to be made here? He watched Seamus scratch his nose and considered how easy it would be to just lean in and kiss him instead of saying anything at all.

He scoffed softly at himself and handed the pipe back.

Rolling on to his side, Dean tucked his arm under his head. “I dunno,” he said eventually. “I’m just thinking a lot about this shite, y’know? We grew up with Harry. It’s weird.” He gave a quiet laugh, mirroring Seamus’s. And then he took a long breath.

“It’s you, mate,” he said. “I’d spend the rest of my life with you, before anyone else.”

Dean laughed; Seamus waited for a moment in case he was going to get an explanation, but he got the pipe back instead. He took a hit, letting the smokey warmth settle into his chest before he breathed it out.

No shit, Dean had been thinking a lot about this -- in Seamus’s experience, the more he thought about something, the less he was able to articulate it understandably. He imagined the same thing was happening to his friend. “Guess so,” he said. He never knew if he felt like he’d really grown up with Harry -- just next to him. It didn’t seem to mean so much to have expressed the same feelings at the same things -- girls or classes or whatever -- as Harry. Harry had always had more to worry about than the things that Seamus worried about.

Besides -- Seamus thought the most growing-up he’d done had been his seventh year.

It was this sort of thing he was pondering when he finally made sense of what Dean had been saying for probably the last five minutes (ironic, he thought, that Dean had started out with the clearly untrue statement that Seamus understood him.) His jaw dropped slightly; for a moment he was stuck in the panic of surprise before he managed, “Whoa.”

He’d taken it for granted that he and Dean would spend their lives together -- not like that but as best friends. Something of that kind. He knew Dean had meant it like a confession, but it’d barely sounded like one. Seamus had always kind of subscribed to the belief that you knew what love was when you felt it but who was he to assume?

“Oh shit,” he said; he jerked the pipe upward and sat up, grabbed a fistful of his dress robes and patted urgently at a spot of grass that was starting to smoke. “Sorry, wasn’t --” clearly Seamus hadn’t been paying any attention to anything at all, but that didn’t mean he knew how he was meant to take this. He blew out his breath, tried to calm down his almost-started-a-brush-fire panic, and said, “Sorry -- you got me off guard.”

Seamus looked tentatively back at Dean; his friend’s expression, anxious and anticipative, made him feel madly guilty for his indecision, or his surprise, or his lack of preparation, or something. “Give me a moment?” he said, finally, “You don’t gotta leave or anything, just let me think.” He wanted to add something to that -- I’m out of practice or I’m sorry but both felt wrong in his throat; instead he took another hit off the pipe, out of turn.

He could see Seamus catching on, in something like slow-motion. Vague amusement fading off his face almost too gradually to track it. Dean opened his mouth at once. He’d prepared for this—he’d have been a fool not to! Hope made the odds feel larger, but Dean knew there was no reason to believe Seamus felt the same. He had a whole spiel to head off any weirdness if he could. Obviously I’d be just as happy just keeping on as we are. Don’t mean to change things if you don’t want. But for some reason, it stuck in his throat. He kept trying to summon words, apologies… But it was the small fire that did it. “Oh, Christ—” Dean rolled upwards, joining Seamus in swatting the smoldering grass for a few seconds before remembering he had a wand. ”Aguamenti!”

The pair of them met eyes over the smoking patch of grass. As close as they’d come to burning down the Weasleys' fields, Dean felt oddly thankful for it. He motioned for Seamus to hand the pipe over.

“Sorry,” he said. The shared indignity had eased his awkwardness, but not cured it. “Not that I said it, I just—should’ve been more direct, I reckon.” Usually he wasn’t like this. It had to be the monumentality of what he was laying on the line here. All their years of friendship felt like something priceless and fragile that Dean had just picked up and hurled as far as he could. He’d spent hours unable to say it, years unable to even think it. This was truly messing him up.

“Obviously I’d be just as happy keeping on as we are,” said Dean at last. “Don’t mean to—change things, if you don’t want.” He forced a quiet laugh, mostly air. “I promise I’m not getting, y’know, weird about you.” God forbid Seamus heard “I love you” and thought anything untoward of him. “I’d just be—whatever you wanted me to be.” His lips twitched in an apologetic little smile.

Dean stuck the pipe back in his mouth and looked away. This was so stupid. He just had to trust their friendship was more of a cannonball than a crystal vase. How could he think less of Seamus?

Dean met his gaze and Seamus had to fight down a broad, stupid smile -- the fire, and Dean’s attempt to put it out, had reminded him of a lazy day in Charms, and if they’d been talking about anyfuckingthing else he’d have brought that up. Remember old Flitwick setting me lines?

Instead, Dean apologised; as Seamus was sheepishly passing the pipe back, he averted his gaze just a scootch. “I get it,” he said, then, “Fuck” -- the crassness made him feel a little more like himself, a little less out of his depths. They’d never even talked about attraction before -- not in a real way. Most of what Seamus knew was from off-colour jokes he’d gotten from Fergus.

It’d been a little too long before either of them spoke, but Dean broke their silence first, rushing again to reassure Seamus that they were alright as they were. Seamus, still staring a little desolately at the burnt, soggy grass, nodded. He knew that Dean was alright as they were -- somehow it hadn’t really occurred to him that this might be Dean’s way of asking for something else. It was probably one of those being-understood things Dean had been talking about, that Seamus had been utterly confident that Dean was happy with their status quo. He didn’t want to dwell on that.

Seamus tried for a moment to think about what Dean meant. With a sudden burst of emotion -- not anger, he didn’t think, but more urgent than he was used to -- he realised he didn’t really want to decide what he wanted Dean to be. Not if Dean was going to mould himself into it. That was bullshit.

The option was right there, he knew, to just carry on as they had been; at least he knew what he’d be getting, with that. They’d go home and forget this. It seemed like an awful disservice to Dean, who was probably losing his damn mind now, but it would be comfortable. Wasn’t that what Dean had been saying, anyway, earlier?

When he forced his eyes back up, Dean wasn’t looking at him.

He knew Dean enough to know that Dean must have thought about this for a lot longer than he’d let on; it was scary, knowing how far behind he was in the introspection department. Weren’t they already spending their lives together, anyway? He was happy with their status quo too; he was happy with the eternal bachelorhood he’d been assuming he’d have for the last few months; he was happy imagining life where they never had to change.

“I mean,” he said finally, “For right now I just wanna enjoy the party, mate, get some champagne or something.” Even he could tell this was a coward’s answer, but -- for right now -- he wanted to worry about it when they weren’t high at someone else’s wedding.

Ten seconds ago Dean hadn’t regretted anything, but as he watched Seamus fumble around for the kindest way to brush this aside, it became clear that this had been the world’s worst idea and furthermore, he was a terrible friend. Who does this? What a shit situation to put somebody in. If there’d been any indication at all Seamus felt similarly for him—or indeed, for anyone—it might have been different. But as it was…  Why would Dean think he needed to say everything he felt? What was the point of making things weirder than they had to be?

In another world their hands might have brushed between them—fingers first, awkwardly tangling until they figured out how to fit together. They might have looked at each other like there was something new to see. Dean might have leaned over him and kissed him slowly, hidden in the dry field grass and the warm summer night.

For right now I just wanna enjoy the party. Dean cringed. Even thought he knew this was Seamus—Seamus, who liked to think big things over on his own terms—the no-ness of it all was too deafening. “Yeah, should’ve waited, shouldn’t I?” he replied. He gave a little laugh, nervously manic. “Over breakfast or something. I’m in love with you; pass the jam?” At least it was getting easier to say.

He vanished the last bit of ash in Seamus’s pipe and stood up, bringing his dress robes with him to drape over his shoulder. Best forget all of this, if they could. “C’mon, mate,” said Dean. He held out a hand to pull Seamus up. “Let’s go see how drunk all our old professors are.” Surely half the reason Ginny would have invited them.

[out]

Dean cringed and Seamus winced in sympathy -- if he could have justified his need to wait, somehow, he would’ve. It made perfect sense to him -- someone who’d never been in love, who didn’t know what the hell it was supposed to be like -- to filibuster this a little more. It would have been better just to know already, but Seamus hadn’t thought about something like this, ever, in his life.

At least Dean was starting to seem more at ease with it -- enough to joke around, at least -- but it was probably just some compulsive need to cover up the awkwardness Seamus had caused. When they’d been talking seriously it Dean still hadn’t said the words, really -- hearing them almost in a laugh stuck straight into Seamus’s stomach.

Christ, he wished he’d known to think about this sooner.

“Less dangerous,” he agreed, glancing downward to scuff at the scorched bit of meadow with one shoe. “Well -- don’t reckon anybody’ll notice it.”

Dean offered a hand up -- when Seamus took it he couldn’t help trying to analyse it (cool and strong but, you know, just a regular hand -- not like Seamus had any idea what holding hands with a bloke was supposed to be like, and Merlin’s socks he didn’t want to think about the possibility that his long disinterest in women made him gay -- didn’t he have to also have an interest in men for that? -- but most pressingly Dean had tried again to save face and Seamus so far had just stood here trying to tell if he’d helped him stand up in a platonic way.)

“Yep,” he said, and grinned. Thinking about their old professors gave him such a sense of deja-vu, like McGonagall would come swooping by any moment to tell him off for uniform (lying in their shirtsleeves in the grass had certainly taken its toll, and he’d had to loosen his tie about five seconds into the ceremony.) He turned to follow Dean back toward the reception and said, in one last feeble attempt to be normal before their moment to themselves was over, “Dare you to ask Sprout to dance.”

[out]