A/N - 1.8k word blurb I completely forgot I wrote. Bringing this out of the archives, enjoy.
Warnings - slight cursing and angst, fluff, mutual pining.
Summary - Years of tiptoeing around one another and hidden feelings come to a head when Seamus finds a stack of art beneath Dean's bed. At last, something might happen.
“Hey Dean?” Seamus calls, breaking the silence of the half empty common room.
The two of them sitting together on opposite ends of a very comfortable and very small sofa with feet entangled in a contorted knot is not a rare occurrence, and everyone knows that the two like to be as close as possible. Dean has a notepad on the arm of the sofa, artistic pencils on the coffee table as he sketches away to his heart's content, while Seamus has a pack of muggle cards, teaching himself card tricks.
“What is it?” Dean replies, glancing up from his notepad to meet Seamus’ sympathetic gaze.
“Do you still have that muggle magic book? This isn’t going great.”
Dean chuckles, rubbing sleep from his eyes with the heel of his palm, deep brown eyes twinkling under the dim light from the candles. The way he watches Seamus when he isn’t looking is with nothing but pure adoration, not necessarily the way that friends should look at one another.
“Dean?” Seamus calls, suddenly much closer than before, kneeling in front of Dean’s legs now curled beneath him without his knowledge of putting them there.
“Uhm, the book? Yeah, it's under my bed. Careful you don’t find a banshee under there.” Dean says jokingly, curving his arm around Seamus’ torso to bring him closer, discarding his art for a moment, savouring the sound of Seamus’ laugh like music to his ears.
He stops thinking, and just exists for a second, only able to do that when Seamus is so close to him, chests pressed together, hearts beating as one, breath mingling and all inhibitions lowered. If he had a little more belief that Seamus shared his crush then he’d go the final step, bringing their lips together for more than a fleeting moment. If only he knew that Seamus in fact felt the same, equally as strong, equally as lovesick and just as scared of rejection. So for the meantime, they stuck to their own personal affections.
“I’ll be back in a minute, and I’ll call you if there’s a banshee.”
With a fleeting kiss that Dean pressed to Seamus’ cheek, the latter had disappeared up the stone stairs to the dorms.
On his way up, Seamus finds himself thinking non stop of the way Dean’s soft lips felt pressed against his cheek. Not like they haven’t kissed before, but every time it excites him, still bringing butterflies to his stomach after four years.
Their first kiss was in a game of juvenile truth or dare in second year, where Seamus revealed he’d never been kissed, and Dean was then dared to kiss him. That was the moment, for Seamus at least, that he’d realised he was gay - or at the very least, not straight.
It was half way through third year that the two had grown accustomed to holding hands and sharing clothes, stealing cheek kisses and cuddling on the odd night. None of this changed, even now they’ve become sixth years.
Seamus throws the door open to the dorm and leaps across to Dean’s bed, forever more comfortable than his own. He lies over it, inhaling Dean’s scent that he’s so used to wrapping him up whenever he sleeps. Oak and paint. The strangest perfection. After a moment of thought, he pulls up the west ham blanket, the oversized knitted quilt that the two made one Christmas night when they got far too cold, and finally the red sheets so that he gets a better look beneath the bed, which just so happens to be crammed full of random shit.
“Bloody hell Dean,” he sighs with a gentle smile, lighting his wand and sliding off the bed onto the wooden floor, preparing himself for a search.
Seamus sits and sifts through piles of books covered in dust, albeit in neat piles and just about alphabetised (all much more organised than his own), and a couple of boxes before he finds their old magic book.
Just as he moves to put everything back in its place, he comes across a locked trunk of chestnut wood and gold edges. It’s triple locked by the looks of padlocks atop the built in securities. But Seamus can’t help thinking, what does Dean have to hide from him? He’s always said “what’s mine is yours”, and that they know everything about one another. What could Dean possibly be so ashamed of that he didn’t even want Seamus to see? Chuckling at the first immediate thought, he pulls the box out and peers through a crack. It looks like… old notebooks?
“Cistem Aperio.” he utters the words used to unlock the trunk, only to find out that the padlock is a fake one and that the box itself only had one lock. Maybe the faux measures were to stop the other boys finding it, and not Seamus, but once opened, he’s astounded.
Piles of notepads and sketch pads fill the border of the box, but what’s in the centre is the most disconcerting. It’s Seamus, on canvas, ten times over. All from different angles, painted with watercolour or acrylics, all at different stages of completion because on some, the pencil lines are still apparent. Sure, Seamus knows that Dean is a bloody good artist, and Dean’s asked him to be a model once or twice, but this is another level. And even though he probably should, he can’t find it creepy.
He turns over a couple of the older canvases dating back to the bottom one, a mix of acrylic paint and heavy pencil shading. ‘Seamus, 7th April 1994; I wonder if you think of me half as often as I think of you.’
His heart stops just for a moment. Does dean… no chance. No way, there’s no way that Dean fancies him too. He could have anyone in the school, why would he fancy his dorky Irish friend?
He takes out a couple of the pads, opening to reveal pages of sketches of Seamus. The two together, Seamus at the lunch table, by the lake, with other people or asleep in Dean’s bed. Just the sight of Dean’s talent makes his belly flip. The curved pencil lines, the soft brushes of his coloured pencils, the perfect shading wherever it needs to be in the different photos. Each one has Dean’s signature, a date and a title in the bottom right hand corner., but some are a little more smudged with, tears?
He grabs the most recent sketchpad and tucks it beneath his arm, going to open a note pad filled with dozens of poems and quotes, but the most common one hits him hard.
‘You have to let it all go. The way he kissed you, the way he smelled, the way he touched your waist and pulled you in. You have to let it go and you have to let him go. Because he’ll never love you that way, he’ll always be your friend, and he’ll never be yours.’
That’s essentially all the confirmation that Seamus needs to realise that Dean’s liked him all this time. How could they have been so stupid, avoiding each other and never confessing?
He rips the page out of the notebook and runs out the door, the leather bound sketch pad bouncing in his clutch. He bounds down the stairs as ungracefully as possible, taking them two by two, his shoes resounding on the stone and hereby making a racket that the whole common room can here.
Seamus appears at the bottom, breathless and flushed as opposed to covered in soot, but his eyes are filled with a new flame.
“Dean,” he pants, eyes darting over to where he's curled up in the same spot as before, knees tucked under his chin with an art pad on the arm of the sofa, tucking his extortionately expensive pencil behind his ear when he sees Seamus all hot and bothered.
He stands, towering over everyone as he takes quick strides across the room, his breath hitching when he sees the sketchpad tucked haphazardly beneath Seamus’ small arm.
“Sea, please,” he begs, eyes brimming with tears to match Seamus’.
They stand an awkward distance from each other for a minute before Seamus takes the final step and closes the gap, gripping Dean’s tie and pulling him a little closer to his own height.
“Did you draw these of me?” Seamus asks with a raspy, trembling voice, filled with anguish and longing.
“Yes.” Dean murmurs softly.
“Did you write these poems about me?” he waves the tear stained page of perfect ink in front of Dean, making the taller boy swallow thickly.
“Were you ever going to tell or show me?”
“Maybe one day.” Dean says guiltily, averting his eyes to the floor for only a second before meeting Seamus’ intense gaze once more, the flames behind the freckles on his cheeks a little intimidating.
“Do you, do you love me?” Seamus asks finally, taking a leap of faith, one that is finally reciprocated.
That’s all the ammunition that Seamus needs to tug Dean’s lips to his own, crushing them together and engaging in a fiery kiss of nothing but long awaited passion and love. Their tears dissipate as Seamus weaves his arms around Dean’s neck, and his curl around Seamus’ waist, lifting him up like he weighs nothing. Seamus deepens the kiss, licking along Dean's bottom lip to request an entrance which is more than eagerly granted, allowing them to explore each other's mouths finally. Dean lets out a muffled moan when Seamus bites down on his lower lip, the most heavenly sound Seamus has ever heard. Dean squeezes the ass that rests on his hips just for a moment before sliding his hands beneath his jumper, his dark palms running over Seamus’ milky skin, the perfect contradiction.
They become so enveloped in their bubble of passion, tongues dancing tantalisingly together, that they forget they’re in the common room, awkwardly withdrawing when the need for oxygen becomes too dire.
However, instead of the angry shouts and disgruntled faces they expect, it’s actually faces of sheer relief and lazy smiles all around.
“About bloody time!” Ron shouts.
Dean chuckles softly, lowering Seamus to the ground. The pair scrabble for their stuff, grasping it in uncoordinated handfuls, stuttering apologies before darting upstairs. Once at their dorm, they slam the door shut and throw their belongings elsewhere without a care, fighting over who gets to pin the other against the door.
“Have we really been dancing around our feelings since we were twelve?” Dean asks, trying to keep his focus on the time being while Seamus works tirelessly at the bottoms of his shirt, leaving kisses everywhere in his wake.
“Yes we have. And that means we have five years to make up for now.” Seamus quips, bringing Dean’s lips to his own once more, moving to enjoy their time together, at last.
