chasing paper, getting nowhere [dean]

The giddiness of being on the same side of the Atlantic as Dean had taken a little time to wear off; until he’d gotten his job, Seamus had needed to actively resist the temptation to visit Dean whenever he was bored (which was helped by the fact that Dean was a tattoo artist and had the most insane work schedule in the world.) Not that he thought things were a little weird between them— but he was very eager to keep things from being weird between them, if they happened to head that way.

Seamus had a job now, which had nicely limited the amount of time he could bother Dean. And the plan, anyway, was that they were about to spend a lot more time together anyway, or as much time as a tattoo artist and a bartender could make that coincided. As nice as it’d been to be home at first, three months of it was making him feel a bit too mothered. He supposed she must have missed him.

A part of him had been expecting and dreading the inevitability of him and Dean finding, somehow, that things had changed with distance— that the war and all the shit they’d been through since had made it impossible to fall easily back into step again— but nothing had happened. He’d come home and been thrust back into the terribly familiar pattern of being stuck at the sidelines of some enormous mess that could ruin things for everybody he cared about.

At least, if they were lucky, they were going to move back in together— then, Seamus reasoned, they wouldn’t be stuck with the awkward necessity of talking politics first whenever they saw each other. (How could they not? Things were turning sour and it felt like a crime to ignore that.)

He knocked; as soon as Dean opened the door he asked, half apologetically, “Read the Minister’s speech yet?”

He didn’t really want to talk about it in depth, though, so he shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets— “My mam gave me a list of places to check out, but I figured you’d want to try Muggle London first.”

@Dean Thomas

He’d been excited to see Seamus, but the first think out of his friend’s mouth took a solid chunk out of Dean’s good mood. Seamus wouldn’t be Seamus if he didn’t ask, and Dean loved him for it, but he sighed deeply. “Yeah,” he said. “Hopefully that’ll be the end of it.” The worrying supremacist mutterings, of course, but also this conversation. Yesterday he’d had a whole discussion about the political landscape with a client while inking a falcon into her thigh, and frankly he wasn’t keen on getting into it all again. Little had even happened, at least in Britain, after all. It was all fear—the paralyzing fear of what they’d all lived through just a few years ago. Dean was tired of fear. Maybe there was a moral imperative, but he was too exhausted to fight things before they happened. He’d start getting angrier when the government started trying to murder him again.

Seamus mentioned advice from his mother, but then that he’d probably like to start looking at Muggle places. “Oh, I mean...yeah, I guess,” said Dean, who had taken it as a given. He really had no idea why, now that Seamus was asking—or not asking, exactly. Just knowing him well enough to assume right. “Got to live someplace the telly’ll work, yeah?” he said with a weak laugh. Most other things about Muggle buildings were an unnecessary pain: getting their money changed over, making sure no one saw anything, the extra forms getting the Floo connected, all that secret-society shit Dean had grown to dislike about magic.  He knew people who lived in magical buildings off Diagon Alley, same as any other city-dwelling twentysomething might, and he’d have considered that, but... Well, he hadn’t decided but. For whatever reason, despite the hassle he had to live in connection to the real—no, not the real world, he always had to remind himself. The greater world. He didn’t like the feeling of isolation that magical spaces created.

The television was a large part of it, though. From what Dean remembered of living with Seamus, surely he’d agree.

“I got the classifieds from Mum and Dad,” Dean said, opening up the newspaper he hadn’t opened beforehand solely just to look casual now. “Dunno what we can like, afford together, though.” He looked down at the ads upside-down from the other side of the kitchen counter, then back across at Seamus. “What’s the pay like, at the worst pub in Britain?” he asked, half-teasingly. “Ab raise his prices now that it’s been a rebel base?”

Dean seemed about as eager to discuss politics as Seamus did, to his vast relief; he grinned and followed Dean into the kitchen. Seamus’s mother had been pushing them (well, Seamus) toward the pockets of magical people settled in the city, the ones in hidden buildings down side streets, but he was a little gratified that he’d guessed correctly, that Dean wanted to keep living in the proper city. It wasn’t something Seamus really understood— and probably something he never would, either— but Dean had a reason for it, he figured. He’d speculated a lot about it, the first time they’d been living together, about whether having one foot in regular muggle life was some sort of safety net in case things turned sour again. (If it was, it was a damn good impulse, but they weren’t thinking about that.)

And then again, Dean had spent a lot more time than Seamus in the muggle world. It was homesickness, more likely; that was something Seamus knew better. 

He bent his neck to look at the paper as Dean opened it, smiling. “Yeah, exactly.” Not that he was hoping to spend as much time as he had in 2000 watching the news and the soaps and the football— he had a job now, and shit— but there was only so much time he could kill without television, and he wasn’t about to start playing solitaire.

What could they afford together— that he didn’t know. Probably better than what they could have afforded last time; Seamus folded his arms on the counter, looking more intently at the ads, then glanced up to meet Dean’s eyes— “I reckon he thinks the DA was bad for business, honestly,” he said, half-joking. “Here he’s trying to run a smuggler-friendly bar and they’ve got Aurors popping by all the time.”

This he regretted saying once he’d said it, so he pulled the newspaper closer with three fingers and added lightly, “The pay’s decent enough, though— reckon we could at least do a bit better than last time. More room would be nice.” They still wouldn’t live anywhere great, but it’d be a solid improvement. (He glanced around Dean’s flat as he thought so. Dean had grown up in London, but Seamus hadn’t; Seamus had never really gotten used to cramped living. His parents lived in the country.)