"D'Ireland" for gala_apples
Title: D'Ireland
Author: marseverlasting
Giftee: gala_apples
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Seamus/Dean, Seamus/Draco, Seamus/Draco/Blaise, implied Harry/Ron
Word Count: 6581
Summary: Seamus has seen war - The Troubles, his father fighting in Ulster - but the Voldemort's return spells disaster for more than just his family; his friends, his loves too. He'll do anything to protect them. Anything.
Author's Notes: Oh, jeez. I really hope you like this. This story has gone through six hundred million drafts and I could never decide on quite how to do it. I hope, in the end, I've satisfied. Features, as per your request, threesomes, vaguely casual sex, D/s, an somewhat amoral Seamus, and pyjamas. There is also a special-edition cut scene (Seamus/Percy, NC-17, 1990 words) that I will post later. It didn't fit the story but I loved it too much to delete. Also, happy Guy Fawkes day!
Beta: Many, many thanks to danijo1 for holding my hand as I headdesked repeatedly while writing this. She is amazing and was impossibly patient as I sent her drafts at three in the morning wailing with misery.
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SIXTH YEAR; March
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Darling child of heart wears his mother’s crucifix about his neck and under his clothes, and it only comes out when he’s fucked. Jesus Christ’s head and sorrow-bitten fingerling hands dressed in gold, they only appear in night-time situations when Seamus is all stripped bare, showing white skin and pink nipples.
Dear mother’s crucifix swings in rhythm, a vital pendulum, knocking against his collar bone when Seamus’ hips are grinding, naked body moving back and forth, being forced to sway, rocked and rocked as offender’s arms clench at his shoulders, reach down and vice his nipples, slide up and gag his mouth with sweaty palms. It’s a whimper and a grunt when they come tumbling together, dragonfly-feeling in his stomach sent scattering about his chest, and at last the Irish lad’s slim frame is loosed, like a boat in a storm, and the two boys slide apart and heap and huddle on the bed, sticky and sour both.
He hurts a bit so Seamus rolls up against the headboard, his back to the wood and his bended knees making triangles with the plane of the bed. He’s offered a cigarette from his dark-skinned boy and he puts it between his lips, yellowed end tasting bitter in his mouth. He sucks on the unlit thing and savours the small wallow of taste that comes, sour and bad, and he feels strong and masculine. Hard-eyed Blaise, the dark-skinned one who gave him the cigarette, lights it with a strangely long match, meant for fireplaces probably, and Seamus suckles on the filter like a child, twirling the smoke about his mouth and nose, swallowing it, not inhaling it, like a fool and coughing from the burn.
“Wonderful,” Blaise says languorously, stretching like a panther. “Fucking wonderful.” He too is smoking, and he does so with slender fingers, little tails of smoke slipping from his lips. He’s stretched at the end of his bed, long and slender frame bent on a curve about Seamus’ legs. His large penis lies sleeping between his legs amidst a small curl of dark pubic hair. He touches himself absently, an indolent stroke that continues about his thighs before slipping up his chest to flicker at his own hard nipples. “I love a pliable boy,” he finishes, exhaling a vapour of smoke.
Seamus says nothing and continues to nibble about the end of his cigarette, letting gasp breaths of smoke and sighs. He watches Blaise with apathetic eyes, follows the trail of his hand feeling oddly faint.
“Shall we crack the bottle?” Draco asks from across the room, splayed naked and white in a dark-velvet chair, watching Blaise and Seamus with a rusty hunger. He seems a strange figure, a winter-light boy who gleans with ice and wealth; as a rigid sculpture of pearl; as stark and bright as naked David from Florence square; an Eros in furs. In position on the chair: he has his right leg acting a crook over the velvet arm and his body is shifted to that position, reclining and dismissive, like a lazy king. From there he speaks: “I just got it in last night. Owl from mother,” he explains.
“I think we should,” Blaise replies, crawling over Seamus for a bite at his lips before sliding off the bed.
A clock, somewhere distant, strikes two resonant clangs, and the baritone boom rumbles fillingly in Seamus’ chest.
“Two already?” Draco says, lifting himself from the chair and moving with liquid hips to his own bed. “I think just once more, and then sleep. Blaise?”
“I suppose so,” he replies, a slight disappointed. “Finnigan?”
Seamus shrugs and suckles again at the past-proffered fag. “S’alright with me.” Among cultured words and aristocrats, his surly brogue sounds harsh and cold, and he feels suddenly ashamed.
Blaise quirks refined dark lips before kissing Draco about the mouth, letting his impatient tongue slide and flick against the white-boy’s own. “You have the bottle?” he asks, on release.
Draco nods and withdraws the thing from beneath his bed - a rounded amber vessel that wears a black label with a red transverse sash. It is brandy, St. Rémy Napoleon-titled, broken-sealed yet almost wholly untouched. Draco gently works the cork from the mouth of the container and tips the bottle between his lips, taking three long pulls. He swallows with just a slight squirm and budge before handing the now-sainted ciborium to Blaise, for drink in turn. Blaise follows suit with three long draughts, lowering the bottle to hand and passing once more to Seamus.
Seamus drinks and reacts harshly to the liquor as he is wholly not used to the punch that is brandy. But he manages a trembling four passes at the drink before letting down the bottle to Draco’s bedside table. Blaise, who had always been one more for pre-passions, engages in Seamus a kiss, letting slip a slender tongue about the Celt’s lips in taste of the sweetness and the brandy. Finding this to be too soft a beginning, Draco slides in behind Seamus, coiling one damning hand around his waist and gripping Seamus’ now-growing cock, fitting his own erection about the freckled-boy’s arse, sliding it up along the cleft.
They sway gently, a vague and broken rhythm of several minutes before Draco seeks the bottle again. Continuing his slow-grind against Seamus’ back, he takes another burning swallow and passes it to Blaise who, in taking a pause from Seamus’ lips, withdraws a mouthful or two from the bottle.
After another guilty swallow of the drink and finally stubbing his deadened fag in the ashtray, Seamus falls to his knees, one steady hand running a path through his hair, shrugging the sandy sweep from his forehead. He looks up at the naked boys, Draco taking again from the bottle and Blaise swaying in place. Something strange passes between them, a little realization over the places of power. Seamus blushes, sighs, and finally closes his lips over the tip of the darker boy’s cock. The Snake twitches and jerks, gives a sharp moan, his liquor-swelled mind crumbling as guilty teeth drag slowly over the head of his cock. Draco catches his dark-boy’s mouth and swallows the whimpers, dissolves the taste of violence and sugar left on Blaise’s tongue.
Slowly Seamus works, very meticulously, sliding his tongue from base to tip, taking spirals and turns around the head which makes Blaise buck and push himself deeper into Seamus’ mouth. Seamus’ hands play gently about the base of his cock, touching and digging the thin web of dark hair, crawling in spider patterns around his hips to press against his arse and push him forward, swallowing him deeper. Draco, not to be ignored, leans in close to his mate and nudges the side of Seamus’ head with his knee, beckoning the Celt to his own cock, long and pink and slick with salt. Seamus switches easily, withdrawing from Blaise’s cock to sheath Draco, working his tongue in slow circles and rolling his teeth around the tip.
Blaise wraps his hands in the dirt-blond tangle of Seamus’ hair and guides him gently away. It’s not a battle of wills, but rather a battle of needs; Draco and Blaise, their minds mulled with amber and booze, feel that itching in their fingertips, the aching feeling in their stomach that makes them want something; it’s unnamable, but they crave it - action, reaction, attention, volition, power. And Seamus, freckled and alternately sweet and fiery, somehow fills them and pulls them, provides that something and takes from them their anger and hate, if just for a moment. So Seamus draws them both, sliding from one to the other, playing them each in exchange and in tandem. And all the while he looks up, hazel eyes grinning and dusty freckles gleaning like spots of mud as Blaise and Draco grunt and turn, wrench-close their eyes and bite their lips. Then finally, as Seamus drags his teeth and rolls his Rs, the boys release in unison, growling and bucking, sending strings of pearly come across the young boy’s tongue and over the part of his lips.
They stand up and clean off. Draco immediately pulls his cloth robe tightly around him, embarrassment shining through his lingering afterglow, while Blaise tugs for Seamus to stand, playful eyes gleaming as he kisses the Gryffindor, fiercely, tasting himself and Draco on the gentleboy’s plum lips.
They withdraw to sitting: Draco back to his chair, cloth hanging open over his body so his loose penis and coil of golden hair are exposed. There is something exciting about his pose; a wish or a promise contained in the lithe limbs and fading shame. Something deeply erotic, available only in the slim boyish frame.
Blaise and Seamus are obliged to sit once more on the bed, Seamus retreating to the headboard once more, feeling odd and vulnerable, as he always does in this period, while Blaise is content to lie back, running a slow hand from waist to chest.
“Finnigan,” Draco asks a touch sharply, “can I ask you a question?”
Seamus shrugs acceptance.
“Why do you do this?”
“Do what?” Seamus replies, adopting the surly tone he uses in opposition to Draco, a tone so typical of Gryffindors it might easily have been a requirement.
“Let us fuck you,” Draco says, smiling. He reclines in his seat and the power play is complete.
“Why not?” Seamus asks, his accent making awkward vowels of the word - oys and ays where they shouldn’t be, stretching the sound to the insolence and ignorance of the stereotypical Irish youth.
“I don’t know,” Draco replies, tightly. “I just thought your kind did not find us -” a purposeful pause “appealing.” He motions to Blaise. “We’re big bad Slytherins after all.”
“I don’t give a bloody fuck who either of you two are, it’s just a shag,” Seamus replies, rolling a hand through blond hair, his cheeks pricking with red. “I figured that was all that matters.”
“Hmm, I suppose so,” Draco replies thoughtfully.
“You don’t tell anyone about this, do you?” Blaise asks, suddenly, turning his head to look at Seamus, who was now covering himself awkwardly, hands clasped over his waist.
“No, I don’t. Why would I? Why is this such a big deal?”
“It isn’t,” Draco replies, his voice curling around the words like a python, making them lucid and sweet. “We just want to keep this private.”
“Fair ‘nough,” Seamus replies. “In any case, I’ve got an early Herbology class tomorrow. Good nigh’, Malfoy, Zabini.” With a nod to each, Seamus slides off the edge of the bed, quickly sliding on his shirt, leaving it open and unbuttoned, and pulling up his black trousers, not bothering to put on his underwear. Balling his socks in his shoes and throwing his tie over his shoulder, he heads to the door.
Draco, in a twist and a stride, catches him there with a cold grip on his shoulders. Seamus turns around and gives the boy a withering glance. “What do you want, Malfoy?”
“Listen,” Draco says, his voice adopting a strange, high quality, something Seamus had never heard from the boy before. “You - you’re not bad,” Draco says, almost gently. “I mean, for a half-breed.” Venom remains in touch.
Seamus’ lip curls. “Thank you. You’re a saint. Can I go now?”
“Listen, Finnigan, we’re not forcing you to come here.” Draco searches Seamus’ face and only finds the boy’s normal stoic look, blank of either anger or pleasure. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” The words are hard, but somehow, deep underneath, there seems to be a certain amount of respect, of compassion.
“No, it’s good,” Seamus says, his posture softening slightly. “I just don’t know why we have to talk about it. It’s no big deal. That we’re - that I’m a Gryffindor or anything.” His head hurts, from brandy and thought. He just wants to go.
“You’re not bad,” Draco says again, stiffly. “For a Gryffindor.” Seamus winces slightly but Draco smiles a wicked shit-eating smile, like an asp or a cobra. The white-boy - Endymion, maybe - leans forward and catches Seamus in a forced and awkward kiss, consisting almost solely of tongues and teeth. “Catch you around, lion.” His lips coil into a hard smile, almost somewhat of a grimace or a challenge; a Draco familiarity.
Seamus shrugs the boy off his shoulder and leaves the dormitory, sneaking from the Slytherin common room on tip toes. Stepping from under the tapestry that leads to the dungeons, Seamus falls back against the stone wall, gasping for air, sweating and crying as he slides down the wall. His chest hurts, and his head hurts, swimming in amber and fright. He doesn’t listen for Filch or Mrs. Norris, consumed almost entirely by the hard-wretch ripping in his stomach, the boiling quality under his skin as he tries to come to terms with this, this immediacy - where he is, what he’s doing, what’s to come.
He calms himself, steadies his breath and his heart. It might have worked; Draco told him he was - well, he wasn’t bad. That was worth something. Soon, his crying stops and Seamus rights himself again, stumbling through the castle halls until he reaches the portrait of the Fat Lady.
The frame is empty. The Fat Lady is gone, probably not expecting anyone to arrive at this time of night. Seamus leans in close to the empty portrait and talks into the frame: “Dean?”
Silence greets him, so again, louder: “Dean?”
He hears footsteps creep along the passageway and the door frame swings open with a creak. Dean’s scowling face meets him from inside, dark brows drawn and forehead furrowed with fermented anger.
“Do you know what fucking time it is, Seamus?”
“I know, I’m sorry.” He tries to step in but Dean doesn’t move.
“You said you wouldn’t be long,” Dean continues, arms crossed tightly over his chest. “It’s three fucking o’clock. What if I just went to bed, huh?”
“Dean, I said I’m sorry -”
“Sorry isn’t good enough, Seamus, I’m bloody sick of -”
“Oh,” Seamus said, growing suddenly angry, his face flushing in scattered red blots, as if he had been out in the cold, “thanks mam, for taking care of me.”
Dean glares, but says nothing.
“Are you going to let me in or what?”
Dean gives a guttural growl, resonating from somewhere deep in his belly. Presently he’s dressed only in the dark crimson Gryffindor bathrobe, tied awkwardly with his school tie (the real cloth cinch being lost long ago, in second year.) There’s something pleasing about him, even though he’s angry. Something domestic and familiar, a face to go home to, even if it wants to chew him to pieces. Dean speaks: “You fucked them, didn’t you?”
Seamus sighs and leans against the door frame. “Of course I did. You know I would. I told you I would.”
Dean stammers for a moment and takes a calming breath. “Seamus - Seamus why do -”
“Let’s not go there again,” Seamus interrupts, his voice withering into familiar, exhausted territory.
Dean stares at him for a moment, eyes open wide, almost comically. He runs a hand through his close cropped hair, and following that he takes a soft jab at Seamus, punching him easily in the shoulder. Dean’s expression fades into familiarity, an open kind of smile and soft, smiling eyes. His hand stays about Seamus’ shoulder before straying to the back of the Celt’s neck. Continuing the touch in a smooth upward motion, Dean captures the Irish boy’s cheek and cups it affectionately. “Come on, let’s go to bed.”
Seamus gives him a weak smile.
They slide through to common room and towards the gaping mouth of the stairwell. The room echoes broodingly, wind roiling through the empty chimney flue and whistling through the hallways. Tall shadows leap to the ciborium ceilings, pooling against gravity in the wells of the ceiling and giving the room a closed, enveloped feeling. Seamus grasps Dean’s hand before they can reach the stairway.
“Dean.”
Dean looks at him blankly. “Seamus.”
Shadows seem to loom in deeper, melting from the ceiling and down the walls and into the hollow of the Irish boy’s eyes. The only thing that stands out about him are his freckles, which seem to contrast against his skin like black on white, splatters and spangles of ink feathered over the bridge of his nose and lying about the tops of his cheeks. The rest of his face is shrouded half in darkness, arched cheeks and full lips casting round ribbons of black about his skin.
He leans in close to Dean: “Dean, you know I love you.”
“Don’t do this, Seamus,” Dean nearly pleads, his voice catching and trembling in his throat.
“It’s okay,” he wisps, cutting his own words into muffled noise as he falls into Dean’s lips, flowing against him like a silent wave. They kiss with painful hesitation, a give and take affair that stops often and easily. Dean tries to pull away but consistently finds himself playing into Seamus’ mellifluous actions that seem to roll and wash with the tide, rocking forwards and back in boyish half-rhythm, utterly inescapable.
They break and Seamus pulls back, rose-lips quirked into a satisfied smile. He blinks effeminate eyelashes and manages to link a hand under the cinch of Dean’s bathrobe, nudging at the knot in his tie. His hands move with promises.
“Don’t do this, Seamus,” Dean almost pleads. “I hate when you do this.”
Seamus frowns slightly, but nods. “I thought maybe -”
“You thought wrong.”
They walk up the stairs and slip into bed, Seamus into his own and Dean into his. They listen to the triplicate rhythm of Ron, Neville, and Harry’s snores, rising and falling like a multilayered wave as they sleep. Seamus whispers across the divide to his dark-eyed friend: “Dean, could we, maybe, just -”
Dean cuts him off sharply: “No, Seamus. You’ve already got my trust. You don’t need to play me anymore.”
He feels like an insect, a microscopic little thing put under a steady eye, observed from head to sting, his every flaw boiling and exposed. Seamus shrouds himself in blankets and turns away from Dean’s bed. He clenches into a tight ball and ignores everything but his cold feet and sharp-pained chest because if he thinks of how Dean is watching him, how Dean is aching about him, he’ll cry, he knows he will. He hates Dean, because he’s said the one thing Seamus hates about himself, pinned him like a butterfly in a glass case, right through his stomach.
“Don’t do it anymore,” Dean says. “Don’t see Malfoy anymore. Please. Just stay with us, with me, with Harry, we can - you don’t need them.”
“I do need them. It’s a - a precaution.”
“You don’t get it,” Seamus whispers back, angrily. “This is a war, Dean. I’ve seen these kinds of wars. I’ve fucking been in them, Dean. I’m Irish, for fuck’s sake, I’m a fucking soldier by birth. You just don’t fucking get it. I’m a fucking soldier, Dean.” That’s a lie; he feels like a boy.
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SEVENTH YEAR; December
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It’s a cold London day.
And Seamus finds himself face to face with a cold London boy.
They embrace, quickly, quietly. Under a lamppost which floods them with white light, they grasp, needles of fingers pressing even though thick cloth and jacket. It’s a burning kiss, and Draco bites Seamus’ bottom lip with anger and want. “I knew I’d find you here.”
“Piss off, Draco, I’m on watch,” Seamus replies flatly.
“Ooh-hoo. And look who you’ve found.” Draco leans in and kisses the Irish boy again, but Seamus shies away. “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you happy to see me?”
Seamus gives a weak smile, which he quickly corrects into a frown. “It’s a pistol, actually.”
The wind whips around and there are no people to be seen. White spangles of snow fall thickly from the sky making inches-thick blankets on the ground. There’s a metallic crispness to the air, a recurring quality of winter nights. Snow gathers about them; wetting and clinging to Seamus’ schoolboy-swept hair, and blending seamlessly with the acid-white of Draco’s.
“Fucking hell,” Draco says, recoiling from his boy, “you’re actually carrying a gun? What are you -”
“-a soldier,” Seamus replies, his Irish accent glaringly rough. He curls his fingers about the pistol’s ice-cold iron handle. In the movement, his thumb kissing the tip of the hammer, his index finger riding the curve of the trigger, Seamus immediately feels like an IRA soldier, all green and underhanded and mismatched, a warrior for his country and his family; his friends. He’d do what he had to do. Pride and passion roll through him in one wave, and his cheeks immediately colour and he stands in defiance. “I told you, I’m on watch.”
“What the fuck is your problem?” Draco asks, sliding his hand into his pocket gripping his wand, suddenly feeling a surge of panic, realizing a moment of unpredictability.
Seamus shrugs. “We’re at war, Draco. We’re done. That’s it.”
“What do you mean we’re done? What were we before?” Draco sneers. “I fucked you a couple of time, what’s to make of that?” He feels his power slipping. “I’m a fucking Death Eater and you think we still had something?”
“Well, why aren’t you trying to kill me?” Seamus taunts in return. His hand grips around the pistol tighter, his other hand sliding about the narrow handle of his wand; he’s just waiting for the moment, just waiting for the movement, for Draco to slip. Seamus feels his chest tighten and his stomach turn, he feels the cold pendulum of his crucifix press in on his chest, feeling much heavier than usual. In that moment, that tense, coiled moment, Seamus thinks immediately to his childhood, to his seventh year, watching his father with his English-stolen rifle shoot the Unionist constable, the Protestant fire-breather, right between the eyes - watching the man’s blood and brains come out in a shower from behind his head. And running with his father after the deed, running till his chest was stinging and empty, until the sweat made his hair as wet as if he had been swimming. Seamus looks up, grimaces, and slowly, meticulously finds the spot, the cold place right between Draco’s razor-grey eyes, and his knuckles go white around the pistol’s handle.
“Now wait a second,” Draco says, gently. “I like you, Finnigan - Seamus. I don’t want you dead.” He voices curls and lilts, almost like it’s a joke.
“Ha.” Seamus hits the punchline and glares.
“I’m serious. You’re not a fucker like that Potter bastard. You might be a half-breed, you might be a fucking Gryffindor, but I don’t hate you.”
“What,” Seamus says, imitating Draco’s swaggering manner of speech, like nothing ever matters, “you looking for a medal?”
“I like you,” Draco continues, “which is why I’m going to give you a choice.”
Seamus frowns, his forehead furrowing deeply. “What do you mean, a choice?”
“I’ve got some information,” Draco drawls, confident once again that he is in a position of power. “Some information I’d like to run past you.”
Seamus gazes back blankly. A cold December wind rips through the air and slices across their faces, whipping and whirling their hair and catching their eyelashes with ice and snow, kissing their lips purple and blue. “What do you know?”
“I know there’s a certain dark-skinned Gryffindor roaming Piccadilly about now. I know he’s not expecting to find any Death Eaters walking ‘round London this fine winter’s eve. And I know, I know he’ll be surprised when I kill him.” A pause; a killer, manic pause. “Now, what do you know?”
“Dean,” Seamus whispers, turning to ice on the air. “Don’t you dare go fucking near him, Malfoy,” Seamus whips back, his voice cracking like a gun. “I’ll kill every fucking one of you if you do, I swear it.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” Draco says, fisting his hands deep in his pockets, raising his shoulders to bring the shimmering weave of silver fox-fur that lines the collar of his coat about his ears. His cheeks are stung pink and bright and his eyes seemed to glimmer with the snow of the season. Draco grins like a madman. “Didn’t I say I liked you, though? And I know killing Dean would upset you terribly. So. I’m giving you a choice.”
Seamus feels his body wither in face of what he must do, what he has earned. Sudden memories of Draco’s body, naked and white as fresh-fallen snow, creep through his mind. He remembers Blaise, and the dark hands slapping a red-fingers pattern against Seamus’ back and arse. He remembers Draco’s liquid kisses and flowing, rolling tongue; his long pink cock and the red-flush of his cheeks when he comes. He remembers what he did, and now he reaps the whirlwind. “What are my options?” His voice sounds dead, as dark as look of his eyes.
“Well, now. The Dark Lord demands the body of an Order member tonight. And I hate to disappoint him. Now, we both agree that killing Dean would make you a mess, and since I’m a generous boy, I’ll give you the chance of giving me another target.”
“You’re a bloody fucking arse, Malfoy. You’re a fucking bastard.” Seamus feels cold and pained all of a sudden, the winter-chill chewing through his coat and burrowing into his bones, turning his marrow to ice. He feels he might cry, and his hands shiver and tremble around the handles of his weapons.
“Not nice, Seamus. Especially after my giving you this option.” Draco leans in and kisses Seamus languorously, their lips hovering and brushing in equal measure, only touching in fractions and fragments. “Now, you going to tell me where else your little Order members are?”
“I could kill you now, Draco, I could fucking kill you right now.”
“Oh, you probably could. But Crabbe and Goyle wouldn’t appreciate that.” Draco motions with a quick nod to the two hulking, jacketed masses of flesh stood in the shadows beyond the icy statue of Eros. “And then they’ll take out their anger on you. And then Dean.” Draco smiles and leans in and kisses the corner of Seamus’ mouth, his tongue flicking like an asp’s to touch the boy’s purpled lips. “It’s lose-lose that way. My way, and it’s win-win.”
“Killing another one of my friends is win-win?”
“Compared to what could happen… Yes. I think so.”
Seamus stands tall. He slowly lets go of his pistol, his wand. He feels tears slip from his eyes and carve cold icy trails to his lips and his chin. He hates the quaking feeling his chest, the slow-ache in his stomach and lungs. His eyelashes feel stiff and heavy, and he opens his small mouth to speak: “There - there’s someone in - Oxford Circus. They’re in Oxford Circus. On watch, like me. And Dean.” His voice flickers, cracks and dies. In the smallest tone, in the quietest, most vulnerable voice: “Please, don’t hurt him.”
“See,” Draco says smoothly, pulling away from the Irish boy, “that wasn’t so hard. Now go find your boyfriend and fuck off. I’ve got work to do and I don’t want you bothering me.”
“This is it, Malfoy,” Seamus snaps. “This is the last time we meet. Next time I see you, I’m going to fucking kill you.”
“Just you try, Finnigan.” Draco grins that manic grin once more. “Just you try.”
He disapparates with a crack like a bullet. Pulling out his pistol, Seamus jabs the tip into the place Draco had just occupied and fires two rounds into the ground. With a single cry of grief, strict and strained in his throat, he, too, disapparates, Dean’s name cold on his lips.
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A few hours later
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Seamus steps in from the winter cold, his cheeks prickled bright red and his hair wet and slick from the lazy falling snow outside. He brings with him the outdoor smell; the wet, sharp quality of the winter air, a faded smell of pot and tobacco, and the more present sting of alcohol. Seamus, pulling off his gloves, proceeds to take off his thick outer jacket, stomping his matte-black combat boots on the dirty grey carpet, kicking them off into the hallway closet. His green sweater is wet, so he peels that off to shirtlessness, tossing the thick lump into the hallway closet as well. Letting his leather satchel drop to the ground, he pulls the heavy-iron pistol from within and slides it into his back hip pocket, his wand tucked neatly under the waistband of his black jeans, resting cold against his skin. He shakes his head like a dog and runs a hand through his hair, pushing it back in a strange wave and hooking the iced tendrils behind his ears.
The house is quiet except for the mulled sounds of a subdued conversation echoing from the kitchen. He walks down the hallowed halls of 12 Grimmauld Place, an arching gothic masterpiece that seem to be made of overwrought imagination and the designs of a psychotic Victorian architect. The uneven ceiling plunges up and over in a series of angled arches and buttresses, all covered in fuzzy white cobwebs and lurking shadow. The walls are patterned like the chiseled bases of a row of columns, fluted and chipped as they stretch, covered all in aged and wrinkled oil-paintings, their subjects having long since abandoned the house. Seamus touches the stone walls with displaced curiosity as he walks towards the kitchen.
He steps inside and discovers Harry and Ron are the source of the light and the noise. They are sitting across from each other at the small kitchen table, a bent and ragged affair that’s been prematurely aged by countless fist-pounding arguments and spontaneous moments of lust. The boys look up to the newcomer and they smile at him with forced sincerity.
“Hey, Seamus,” Harry says softly, his smile scarcely reaching his eyes.
“Seamus,” Ron says in greeting, dipping his head slightly.
“Is Dean back yet?” Seamus offers as a reply. He slides in and sits next to Ron on the long wooden bench.
Ron turns to the boy and nods. “He got in about an hour ago. He’s gone to bed.” Seamus gives a faint smile and exhales properly in what seems like the longest time.
“I tell you, I’m fucking wrecked. Patrolling in this weather is a misery,” Seamus says, his whole body beginning to sag. In a movement, he leans forward and crosses his arms on the table and puts his chin over them. He looks up at Harry with sweet eyes, but Harry seems to stare far beyond him.
Suddenly, as if stirred from a dream, Harry speaks: “One of the Patils was killed tonight.” His voice sounds strained and bleak. “We don’t know which. We just got the owl now.” He gestures to the crumpled parchment laying before him.
“Jesus…” Seamus says, rising to sit upright. “Really?”
Ron nods. “She was on patrol in Oxford Circus.”
“Jesus, Mary. I mean, I thought we secured -”
“Apparently not,” Harry says bluntly.
“Goddamn sons of fuckers,” Seamus curses loosely under his breath. “Fucking hell.”
Harry shrugs.
A moment of silence passes before Seamus leans into Ron and puts his head on the crook of the boy’s shoulder, closing his eyes with exhaustion. Ron tilts his head in gently, kissing the crown of Seamus’ head red hair falling with Seamus’ sandy-blond, a strangely wanton symbol of fidelity. Ron’s hand slips gently about Seamus’ back and hooks into his jeans carefully, fingers just prying to the tops of his boxer shorts.
“It’s been a long day,” Seamus says, feeling all the world a soldier. The gun weighs heavy and cold on him, and his new cuts and scars criss-crossing his now-bare shoulders throb achingly. His wand feels hot and cold at once, biting into his skin where it lies against his hip. The green cloth he has cinched around his upper-arm is soaked through and tight, but he likes the sharp-dig of it, likes how it makes him feel like a real fighter, more than any scar, any sling-backed rifle or crackling, spitting wand will do. He feels like an Irish boy, a Catholic, a nationalist; like his brothers, like his father, like his grandfather.
“It’s always a long day,” Harry replies. He yawns, and Ron and Seamus follow suit. “I think we should go to bed.” Harry gets up from his place and stretches for Ron’s hand. Ron, sliding out from Seamus’ grasp, catches Harry and gives him a tight hug. Seamus follows in turn, and Harry embraces him tightly, too.
It feels odd, these cross-hatching moments of brotherhood and war, fight and peace, death and unity. For every member of this house, this Order, is Seamus’ brother, Seamus’ sister. Ron’s kiss, Harry’s touch; they’re the affections of siblings, the mark of long-held fraternity and affection, solidified by this war. It’s more than friendship now, it’s about family. And that’s what they are, all of them, dozens of brothers and sisters, affectionate and sweet.
And one of the Patils is dead. A sister. A friend.
Seamus feels like he’s going to throw up. He feels sick and wrong and scared and he misses her, misses her so much. But there’s a niggling in his mind and he knows what it is, and it’s Dean and he can’t ever let him down, his boy down. But he misses her, already, so damn much. He doesn’t feel like a soldier now, not even a Gryffindor. He feels like he’s going to throw up.
Harry and Ron each give Seamus a hug before they step into their shared room. Seamus pads gently to the end of the hall to the room he shares with Dean. He passes Hermione and Ginny’s room, he passes Fred and George’s, he passes Neville and Luna’s, and he reaches his own. He feels, oddly, like a little brother, a little boy, hidden under the shadows of his friends, his siblings. He smiles and feels calm of it.
Gently Seamus opens the door, which creaks as it sways inwards. The dim light of the hallway, lit by a half-dozen low-pooled candles, trickles into the room and catches over the bed, illuminating in honey colours Dean’s sleeping face. Seamus watches him sleep for a moment; the peaceful rise of his chest, the snuffling and huffing qualities of childhood sleep, and the guilt evaporates from Seamus’ mind. The Celt steps in and closes the door behind him, the jamb shutting with a loud click.
“Seamus?” Dean immediately says into the darkness.
“M’here,” Seamus replies, letting his jeans fall with a hollow clank to the ground. Dressed only in his soft cotton boxers, he approaches the bed slowly, wary of his night-blindness, edging his way to where he heard Dean’s voice.
“You’re late,” Dean says softly, the residue of sleep still clinging to his words.
“I am late,” Seamus agrees. “Sorry, a ghrá.”
“What does that mean?” Dean asks, gently.
“What, a ghrá?”
“Yeah.”
Seamus smiles and stretches. “Mm,” he murmurs, knowingly, “nothing.”
“You’re so annoying,” Dean says warmly. Seamus can almost picture the smile gracing the boy’s lips. “Was your watch boring?”
A pause, just long enough to fill a heartbeat or two. “Really fucking boring.” Seamus puts down his pistol on the cabinet near the bed, depositing it with a heavy clunk. He slides gently over the carpet, feeling his way through the dark with his toes, and puts his wand on the bedside table. “You - you’re safe on your watches, aren’t you?” Seamus pries, tentatively.
“Of course I am.”
A moment passes and Seamus runs a hand through his wet hair.
“Where are you?” the Celt asks, trying to get a feel for Dean’s position on the bed.
“I’m here,” the dark-boy replies, lifting the comforter from his body to let Seamus under. Obligingly, Seamus crawls into bed, all cold feet and sweet, still-wet hair. Curling about Dean’s half-naked body, he kisses the boy loosely at the corner of his mouth, and again lip-to-lip, a bent and curving thing that lets their mouths shift and blend. Seamus’ finger tips roll about the waistband of Dean’s pyjama bottoms, the soft cotton green things Seamus bought for him the month before. He dips his hands low to slide about the curve of Dean’s arse, pushing them close together as their noses bend and lips crest together.
“I love you, Dean,” Seamus murmurs, after just pulling away. His hands rise to Dean’s cheeks and he touches the boy’s lip gently with his thumb.
“I love you too,” Dean replies, filled all with shadows and quiet. “Goodnight, Seamus.”
“Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you hear - that, that Parvati, or Padma - we don’ know which - was, um, was killed tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“You did?” Seamus asks faintly.
“Yeah, I heard Harry - uh, I heard him crying,” Dean replies. “He - he always takes these things really hard. Thinks they’re his fault.”
“Oh.” Seamus sighs. A warm silence fills the empty spaces between them, and Seamus sighs once more into Dean’s shoulder. “My - my father. He, he fought in Ireland - have I told you this?”
“Yeah,” Dean replies, gently. “You told me he died in Ulster.”
“Yah.” Seamus takes a deep breath. “He told me, before he died, when he gave me his - his gun. You know, the one I carry around with me. He told me sometimes people, some people have to die for others to live. He said it needed to happen, in war. Me da didn’t say he liked killing. He just said you needed to sometimes. Sometimes people had to die for things to happen, you know?”
“Yeah,” Dean replies with a new gravity, something akin to understanding.
“He said that sometimes you had to kill so the people you love stay safe. He killed this - he killed this Orangeman, and I watched him do it. He told me he was - that he was threatening our friends, our brothers and sisters. Said it was better he was dead. He said he was protecting me.”
“Why are you telling me this, Seamus?” He wasn’t accusing; it was just a simple question, a why.
“Because I’d kill for you, Dean. You’re what’s important to me. Like my da, killing to save his brothers, to save me. That’s, like, that’s what’s going on. In this war. Sometimes people just - just die. But I’m going to protect you no matter what.”
“I’d die for you, Seamus. I’d kill too,” Dean answers, sleepily. “I wouldn’t want to, but I would.”
The knot in Seamus’ chest shifts and loosens, and he doesn’t feel like he’s going to throw up anymore. He sighs against his friend’s cheekbone, kisses him wetly and stupidly at his earlobe, settling with kicks under the layers of sheet and blanket. They don’t need to say I love you again.
Time passes, in silence, in half-sleep, and then:
“Goodnight,” Seamus says, feeling his body go limp with sleep, barely aware of his own words, his own breathy voice. He kisses Dean once more, almost like an echo of love evaporating before sleep, and finally he rests, and his muscles loose, and Seamus can’t help but think of Dean: it’s painful, it’s hard, but he’s worth the price to pay.
Author: marseverlasting
Giftee: gala_apples
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Seamus/Dean, Seamus/Draco, Seamus/Draco/Blaise, implied Harry/Ron
Word Count: 6581
Summary: Seamus has seen war - The Troubles, his father fighting in Ulster - but the Voldemort's return spells disaster for more than just his family; his friends, his loves too. He'll do anything to protect them. Anything.
Author's Notes: Oh, jeez. I really hope you like this. This story has gone through six hundred million drafts and I could never decide on quite how to do it. I hope, in the end, I've satisfied. Features, as per your request, threesomes, vaguely casual sex, D/s, an somewhat amoral Seamus, and pyjamas. There is also a special-edition cut scene (Seamus/Percy, NC-17, 1990 words) that I will post later. It didn't fit the story but I loved it too much to delete. Also, happy Guy Fawkes day!
Beta: Many, many thanks to danijo1 for holding my hand as I headdesked repeatedly while writing this. She is amazing and was impossibly patient as I sent her drafts at three in the morning wailing with misery.
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SIXTH YEAR; March
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Darling child of heart wears his mother’s crucifix about his neck and under his clothes, and it only comes out when he’s fucked. Jesus Christ’s head and sorrow-bitten fingerling hands dressed in gold, they only appear in night-time situations when Seamus is all stripped bare, showing white skin and pink nipples.
Dear mother’s crucifix swings in rhythm, a vital pendulum, knocking against his collar bone when Seamus’ hips are grinding, naked body moving back and forth, being forced to sway, rocked and rocked as offender’s arms clench at his shoulders, reach down and vice his nipples, slide up and gag his mouth with sweaty palms. It’s a whimper and a grunt when they come tumbling together, dragonfly-feeling in his stomach sent scattering about his chest, and at last the Irish lad’s slim frame is loosed, like a boat in a storm, and the two boys slide apart and heap and huddle on the bed, sticky and sour both.
He hurts a bit so Seamus rolls up against the headboard, his back to the wood and his bended knees making triangles with the plane of the bed. He’s offered a cigarette from his dark-skinned boy and he puts it between his lips, yellowed end tasting bitter in his mouth. He sucks on the unlit thing and savours the small wallow of taste that comes, sour and bad, and he feels strong and masculine. Hard-eyed Blaise, the dark-skinned one who gave him the cigarette, lights it with a strangely long match, meant for fireplaces probably, and Seamus suckles on the filter like a child, twirling the smoke about his mouth and nose, swallowing it, not inhaling it, like a fool and coughing from the burn.
“Wonderful,” Blaise says languorously, stretching like a panther. “Fucking wonderful.” He too is smoking, and he does so with slender fingers, little tails of smoke slipping from his lips. He’s stretched at the end of his bed, long and slender frame bent on a curve about Seamus’ legs. His large penis lies sleeping between his legs amidst a small curl of dark pubic hair. He touches himself absently, an indolent stroke that continues about his thighs before slipping up his chest to flicker at his own hard nipples. “I love a pliable boy,” he finishes, exhaling a vapour of smoke.
Seamus says nothing and continues to nibble about the end of his cigarette, letting gasp breaths of smoke and sighs. He watches Blaise with apathetic eyes, follows the trail of his hand feeling oddly faint.
“Shall we crack the bottle?” Draco asks from across the room, splayed naked and white in a dark-velvet chair, watching Blaise and Seamus with a rusty hunger. He seems a strange figure, a winter-light boy who gleans with ice and wealth; as a rigid sculpture of pearl; as stark and bright as naked David from Florence square; an Eros in furs. In position on the chair: he has his right leg acting a crook over the velvet arm and his body is shifted to that position, reclining and dismissive, like a lazy king. From there he speaks: “I just got it in last night. Owl from mother,” he explains.
“I think we should,” Blaise replies, crawling over Seamus for a bite at his lips before sliding off the bed.
A clock, somewhere distant, strikes two resonant clangs, and the baritone boom rumbles fillingly in Seamus’ chest.
“Two already?” Draco says, lifting himself from the chair and moving with liquid hips to his own bed. “I think just once more, and then sleep. Blaise?”
“I suppose so,” he replies, a slight disappointed. “Finnigan?”
Seamus shrugs and suckles again at the past-proffered fag. “S’alright with me.” Among cultured words and aristocrats, his surly brogue sounds harsh and cold, and he feels suddenly ashamed.
Blaise quirks refined dark lips before kissing Draco about the mouth, letting his impatient tongue slide and flick against the white-boy’s own. “You have the bottle?” he asks, on release.
Draco nods and withdraws the thing from beneath his bed - a rounded amber vessel that wears a black label with a red transverse sash. It is brandy, St. Rémy Napoleon-titled, broken-sealed yet almost wholly untouched. Draco gently works the cork from the mouth of the container and tips the bottle between his lips, taking three long pulls. He swallows with just a slight squirm and budge before handing the now-sainted ciborium to Blaise, for drink in turn. Blaise follows suit with three long draughts, lowering the bottle to hand and passing once more to Seamus.
Seamus drinks and reacts harshly to the liquor as he is wholly not used to the punch that is brandy. But he manages a trembling four passes at the drink before letting down the bottle to Draco’s bedside table. Blaise, who had always been one more for pre-passions, engages in Seamus a kiss, letting slip a slender tongue about the Celt’s lips in taste of the sweetness and the brandy. Finding this to be too soft a beginning, Draco slides in behind Seamus, coiling one damning hand around his waist and gripping Seamus’ now-growing cock, fitting his own erection about the freckled-boy’s arse, sliding it up along the cleft.
They sway gently, a vague and broken rhythm of several minutes before Draco seeks the bottle again. Continuing his slow-grind against Seamus’ back, he takes another burning swallow and passes it to Blaise who, in taking a pause from Seamus’ lips, withdraws a mouthful or two from the bottle.
After another guilty swallow of the drink and finally stubbing his deadened fag in the ashtray, Seamus falls to his knees, one steady hand running a path through his hair, shrugging the sandy sweep from his forehead. He looks up at the naked boys, Draco taking again from the bottle and Blaise swaying in place. Something strange passes between them, a little realization over the places of power. Seamus blushes, sighs, and finally closes his lips over the tip of the darker boy’s cock. The Snake twitches and jerks, gives a sharp moan, his liquor-swelled mind crumbling as guilty teeth drag slowly over the head of his cock. Draco catches his dark-boy’s mouth and swallows the whimpers, dissolves the taste of violence and sugar left on Blaise’s tongue.
Slowly Seamus works, very meticulously, sliding his tongue from base to tip, taking spirals and turns around the head which makes Blaise buck and push himself deeper into Seamus’ mouth. Seamus’ hands play gently about the base of his cock, touching and digging the thin web of dark hair, crawling in spider patterns around his hips to press against his arse and push him forward, swallowing him deeper. Draco, not to be ignored, leans in close to his mate and nudges the side of Seamus’ head with his knee, beckoning the Celt to his own cock, long and pink and slick with salt. Seamus switches easily, withdrawing from Blaise’s cock to sheath Draco, working his tongue in slow circles and rolling his teeth around the tip.
Blaise wraps his hands in the dirt-blond tangle of Seamus’ hair and guides him gently away. It’s not a battle of wills, but rather a battle of needs; Draco and Blaise, their minds mulled with amber and booze, feel that itching in their fingertips, the aching feeling in their stomach that makes them want something; it’s unnamable, but they crave it - action, reaction, attention, volition, power. And Seamus, freckled and alternately sweet and fiery, somehow fills them and pulls them, provides that something and takes from them their anger and hate, if just for a moment. So Seamus draws them both, sliding from one to the other, playing them each in exchange and in tandem. And all the while he looks up, hazel eyes grinning and dusty freckles gleaning like spots of mud as Blaise and Draco grunt and turn, wrench-close their eyes and bite their lips. Then finally, as Seamus drags his teeth and rolls his Rs, the boys release in unison, growling and bucking, sending strings of pearly come across the young boy’s tongue and over the part of his lips.
They stand up and clean off. Draco immediately pulls his cloth robe tightly around him, embarrassment shining through his lingering afterglow, while Blaise tugs for Seamus to stand, playful eyes gleaming as he kisses the Gryffindor, fiercely, tasting himself and Draco on the gentleboy’s plum lips.
They withdraw to sitting: Draco back to his chair, cloth hanging open over his body so his loose penis and coil of golden hair are exposed. There is something exciting about his pose; a wish or a promise contained in the lithe limbs and fading shame. Something deeply erotic, available only in the slim boyish frame.
Blaise and Seamus are obliged to sit once more on the bed, Seamus retreating to the headboard once more, feeling odd and vulnerable, as he always does in this period, while Blaise is content to lie back, running a slow hand from waist to chest.
“Finnigan,” Draco asks a touch sharply, “can I ask you a question?”
Seamus shrugs acceptance.
“Why do you do this?”
“Do what?” Seamus replies, adopting the surly tone he uses in opposition to Draco, a tone so typical of Gryffindors it might easily have been a requirement.
“Let us fuck you,” Draco says, smiling. He reclines in his seat and the power play is complete.
“Why not?” Seamus asks, his accent making awkward vowels of the word - oys and ays where they shouldn’t be, stretching the sound to the insolence and ignorance of the stereotypical Irish youth.
“I don’t know,” Draco replies, tightly. “I just thought your kind did not find us -” a purposeful pause “appealing.” He motions to Blaise. “We’re big bad Slytherins after all.”
“I don’t give a bloody fuck who either of you two are, it’s just a shag,” Seamus replies, rolling a hand through blond hair, his cheeks pricking with red. “I figured that was all that matters.”
“Hmm, I suppose so,” Draco replies thoughtfully.
“You don’t tell anyone about this, do you?” Blaise asks, suddenly, turning his head to look at Seamus, who was now covering himself awkwardly, hands clasped over his waist.
“No, I don’t. Why would I? Why is this such a big deal?”
“It isn’t,” Draco replies, his voice curling around the words like a python, making them lucid and sweet. “We just want to keep this private.”
“Fair ‘nough,” Seamus replies. “In any case, I’ve got an early Herbology class tomorrow. Good nigh’, Malfoy, Zabini.” With a nod to each, Seamus slides off the edge of the bed, quickly sliding on his shirt, leaving it open and unbuttoned, and pulling up his black trousers, not bothering to put on his underwear. Balling his socks in his shoes and throwing his tie over his shoulder, he heads to the door.
Draco, in a twist and a stride, catches him there with a cold grip on his shoulders. Seamus turns around and gives the boy a withering glance. “What do you want, Malfoy?”
“Listen,” Draco says, his voice adopting a strange, high quality, something Seamus had never heard from the boy before. “You - you’re not bad,” Draco says, almost gently. “I mean, for a half-breed.” Venom remains in touch.
Seamus’ lip curls. “Thank you. You’re a saint. Can I go now?”
“Listen, Finnigan, we’re not forcing you to come here.” Draco searches Seamus’ face and only finds the boy’s normal stoic look, blank of either anger or pleasure. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” The words are hard, but somehow, deep underneath, there seems to be a certain amount of respect, of compassion.
“No, it’s good,” Seamus says, his posture softening slightly. “I just don’t know why we have to talk about it. It’s no big deal. That we’re - that I’m a Gryffindor or anything.” His head hurts, from brandy and thought. He just wants to go.
“You’re not bad,” Draco says again, stiffly. “For a Gryffindor.” Seamus winces slightly but Draco smiles a wicked shit-eating smile, like an asp or a cobra. The white-boy - Endymion, maybe - leans forward and catches Seamus in a forced and awkward kiss, consisting almost solely of tongues and teeth. “Catch you around, lion.” His lips coil into a hard smile, almost somewhat of a grimace or a challenge; a Draco familiarity.
Seamus shrugs the boy off his shoulder and leaves the dormitory, sneaking from the Slytherin common room on tip toes. Stepping from under the tapestry that leads to the dungeons, Seamus falls back against the stone wall, gasping for air, sweating and crying as he slides down the wall. His chest hurts, and his head hurts, swimming in amber and fright. He doesn’t listen for Filch or Mrs. Norris, consumed almost entirely by the hard-wretch ripping in his stomach, the boiling quality under his skin as he tries to come to terms with this, this immediacy - where he is, what he’s doing, what’s to come.
He calms himself, steadies his breath and his heart. It might have worked; Draco told him he was - well, he wasn’t bad. That was worth something. Soon, his crying stops and Seamus rights himself again, stumbling through the castle halls until he reaches the portrait of the Fat Lady.
The frame is empty. The Fat Lady is gone, probably not expecting anyone to arrive at this time of night. Seamus leans in close to the empty portrait and talks into the frame: “Dean?”
Silence greets him, so again, louder: “Dean?”
He hears footsteps creep along the passageway and the door frame swings open with a creak. Dean’s scowling face meets him from inside, dark brows drawn and forehead furrowed with fermented anger.
“Do you know what fucking time it is, Seamus?”
“I know, I’m sorry.” He tries to step in but Dean doesn’t move.
“You said you wouldn’t be long,” Dean continues, arms crossed tightly over his chest. “It’s three fucking o’clock. What if I just went to bed, huh?”
“Dean, I said I’m sorry -”
“Sorry isn’t good enough, Seamus, I’m bloody sick of -”
“Oh,” Seamus said, growing suddenly angry, his face flushing in scattered red blots, as if he had been out in the cold, “thanks mam, for taking care of me.”
Dean glares, but says nothing.
“Are you going to let me in or what?”
Dean gives a guttural growl, resonating from somewhere deep in his belly. Presently he’s dressed only in the dark crimson Gryffindor bathrobe, tied awkwardly with his school tie (the real cloth cinch being lost long ago, in second year.) There’s something pleasing about him, even though he’s angry. Something domestic and familiar, a face to go home to, even if it wants to chew him to pieces. Dean speaks: “You fucked them, didn’t you?”
Seamus sighs and leans against the door frame. “Of course I did. You know I would. I told you I would.”
Dean stammers for a moment and takes a calming breath. “Seamus - Seamus why do -”
“Let’s not go there again,” Seamus interrupts, his voice withering into familiar, exhausted territory.
Dean stares at him for a moment, eyes open wide, almost comically. He runs a hand through his close cropped hair, and following that he takes a soft jab at Seamus, punching him easily in the shoulder. Dean’s expression fades into familiarity, an open kind of smile and soft, smiling eyes. His hand stays about Seamus’ shoulder before straying to the back of the Celt’s neck. Continuing the touch in a smooth upward motion, Dean captures the Irish boy’s cheek and cups it affectionately. “Come on, let’s go to bed.”
Seamus gives him a weak smile.
They slide through to common room and towards the gaping mouth of the stairwell. The room echoes broodingly, wind roiling through the empty chimney flue and whistling through the hallways. Tall shadows leap to the ciborium ceilings, pooling against gravity in the wells of the ceiling and giving the room a closed, enveloped feeling. Seamus grasps Dean’s hand before they can reach the stairway.
“Dean.”
Dean looks at him blankly. “Seamus.”
Shadows seem to loom in deeper, melting from the ceiling and down the walls and into the hollow of the Irish boy’s eyes. The only thing that stands out about him are his freckles, which seem to contrast against his skin like black on white, splatters and spangles of ink feathered over the bridge of his nose and lying about the tops of his cheeks. The rest of his face is shrouded half in darkness, arched cheeks and full lips casting round ribbons of black about his skin.
He leans in close to Dean: “Dean, you know I love you.”
“Don’t do this, Seamus,” Dean nearly pleads, his voice catching and trembling in his throat.
“It’s okay,” he wisps, cutting his own words into muffled noise as he falls into Dean’s lips, flowing against him like a silent wave. They kiss with painful hesitation, a give and take affair that stops often and easily. Dean tries to pull away but consistently finds himself playing into Seamus’ mellifluous actions that seem to roll and wash with the tide, rocking forwards and back in boyish half-rhythm, utterly inescapable.
They break and Seamus pulls back, rose-lips quirked into a satisfied smile. He blinks effeminate eyelashes and manages to link a hand under the cinch of Dean’s bathrobe, nudging at the knot in his tie. His hands move with promises.
“Don’t do this, Seamus,” Dean almost pleads. “I hate when you do this.”
Seamus frowns slightly, but nods. “I thought maybe -”
“You thought wrong.”
They walk up the stairs and slip into bed, Seamus into his own and Dean into his. They listen to the triplicate rhythm of Ron, Neville, and Harry’s snores, rising and falling like a multilayered wave as they sleep. Seamus whispers across the divide to his dark-eyed friend: “Dean, could we, maybe, just -”
Dean cuts him off sharply: “No, Seamus. You’ve already got my trust. You don’t need to play me anymore.”
He feels like an insect, a microscopic little thing put under a steady eye, observed from head to sting, his every flaw boiling and exposed. Seamus shrouds himself in blankets and turns away from Dean’s bed. He clenches into a tight ball and ignores everything but his cold feet and sharp-pained chest because if he thinks of how Dean is watching him, how Dean is aching about him, he’ll cry, he knows he will. He hates Dean, because he’s said the one thing Seamus hates about himself, pinned him like a butterfly in a glass case, right through his stomach.
“Don’t do it anymore,” Dean says. “Don’t see Malfoy anymore. Please. Just stay with us, with me, with Harry, we can - you don’t need them.”
“I do need them. It’s a - a precaution.”
“You don’t get it,” Seamus whispers back, angrily. “This is a war, Dean. I’ve seen these kinds of wars. I’ve fucking been in them, Dean. I’m Irish, for fuck’s sake, I’m a fucking soldier by birth. You just don’t fucking get it. I’m a fucking soldier, Dean.” That’s a lie; he feels like a boy.
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SEVENTH YEAR; December
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It’s a cold London day.
And Seamus finds himself face to face with a cold London boy.
They embrace, quickly, quietly. Under a lamppost which floods them with white light, they grasp, needles of fingers pressing even though thick cloth and jacket. It’s a burning kiss, and Draco bites Seamus’ bottom lip with anger and want. “I knew I’d find you here.”
“Piss off, Draco, I’m on watch,” Seamus replies flatly.
“Ooh-hoo. And look who you’ve found.” Draco leans in and kisses the Irish boy again, but Seamus shies away. “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you happy to see me?”
Seamus gives a weak smile, which he quickly corrects into a frown. “It’s a pistol, actually.”
The wind whips around and there are no people to be seen. White spangles of snow fall thickly from the sky making inches-thick blankets on the ground. There’s a metallic crispness to the air, a recurring quality of winter nights. Snow gathers about them; wetting and clinging to Seamus’ schoolboy-swept hair, and blending seamlessly with the acid-white of Draco’s.
“Fucking hell,” Draco says, recoiling from his boy, “you’re actually carrying a gun? What are you -”
“-a soldier,” Seamus replies, his Irish accent glaringly rough. He curls his fingers about the pistol’s ice-cold iron handle. In the movement, his thumb kissing the tip of the hammer, his index finger riding the curve of the trigger, Seamus immediately feels like an IRA soldier, all green and underhanded and mismatched, a warrior for his country and his family; his friends. He’d do what he had to do. Pride and passion roll through him in one wave, and his cheeks immediately colour and he stands in defiance. “I told you, I’m on watch.”
“What the fuck is your problem?” Draco asks, sliding his hand into his pocket gripping his wand, suddenly feeling a surge of panic, realizing a moment of unpredictability.
Seamus shrugs. “We’re at war, Draco. We’re done. That’s it.”
“What do you mean we’re done? What were we before?” Draco sneers. “I fucked you a couple of time, what’s to make of that?” He feels his power slipping. “I’m a fucking Death Eater and you think we still had something?”
“Well, why aren’t you trying to kill me?” Seamus taunts in return. His hand grips around the pistol tighter, his other hand sliding about the narrow handle of his wand; he’s just waiting for the moment, just waiting for the movement, for Draco to slip. Seamus feels his chest tighten and his stomach turn, he feels the cold pendulum of his crucifix press in on his chest, feeling much heavier than usual. In that moment, that tense, coiled moment, Seamus thinks immediately to his childhood, to his seventh year, watching his father with his English-stolen rifle shoot the Unionist constable, the Protestant fire-breather, right between the eyes - watching the man’s blood and brains come out in a shower from behind his head. And running with his father after the deed, running till his chest was stinging and empty, until the sweat made his hair as wet as if he had been swimming. Seamus looks up, grimaces, and slowly, meticulously finds the spot, the cold place right between Draco’s razor-grey eyes, and his knuckles go white around the pistol’s handle.
“Now wait a second,” Draco says, gently. “I like you, Finnigan - Seamus. I don’t want you dead.” He voices curls and lilts, almost like it’s a joke.
“Ha.” Seamus hits the punchline and glares.
“I’m serious. You’re not a fucker like that Potter bastard. You might be a half-breed, you might be a fucking Gryffindor, but I don’t hate you.”
“What,” Seamus says, imitating Draco’s swaggering manner of speech, like nothing ever matters, “you looking for a medal?”
“I like you,” Draco continues, “which is why I’m going to give you a choice.”
Seamus frowns, his forehead furrowing deeply. “What do you mean, a choice?”
“I’ve got some information,” Draco drawls, confident once again that he is in a position of power. “Some information I’d like to run past you.”
Seamus gazes back blankly. A cold December wind rips through the air and slices across their faces, whipping and whirling their hair and catching their eyelashes with ice and snow, kissing their lips purple and blue. “What do you know?”
“I know there’s a certain dark-skinned Gryffindor roaming Piccadilly about now. I know he’s not expecting to find any Death Eaters walking ‘round London this fine winter’s eve. And I know, I know he’ll be surprised when I kill him.” A pause; a killer, manic pause. “Now, what do you know?”
“Dean,” Seamus whispers, turning to ice on the air. “Don’t you dare go fucking near him, Malfoy,” Seamus whips back, his voice cracking like a gun. “I’ll kill every fucking one of you if you do, I swear it.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” Draco says, fisting his hands deep in his pockets, raising his shoulders to bring the shimmering weave of silver fox-fur that lines the collar of his coat about his ears. His cheeks are stung pink and bright and his eyes seemed to glimmer with the snow of the season. Draco grins like a madman. “Didn’t I say I liked you, though? And I know killing Dean would upset you terribly. So. I’m giving you a choice.”
Seamus feels his body wither in face of what he must do, what he has earned. Sudden memories of Draco’s body, naked and white as fresh-fallen snow, creep through his mind. He remembers Blaise, and the dark hands slapping a red-fingers pattern against Seamus’ back and arse. He remembers Draco’s liquid kisses and flowing, rolling tongue; his long pink cock and the red-flush of his cheeks when he comes. He remembers what he did, and now he reaps the whirlwind. “What are my options?” His voice sounds dead, as dark as look of his eyes.
“Well, now. The Dark Lord demands the body of an Order member tonight. And I hate to disappoint him. Now, we both agree that killing Dean would make you a mess, and since I’m a generous boy, I’ll give you the chance of giving me another target.”
“You’re a bloody fucking arse, Malfoy. You’re a fucking bastard.” Seamus feels cold and pained all of a sudden, the winter-chill chewing through his coat and burrowing into his bones, turning his marrow to ice. He feels he might cry, and his hands shiver and tremble around the handles of his weapons.
“Not nice, Seamus. Especially after my giving you this option.” Draco leans in and kisses Seamus languorously, their lips hovering and brushing in equal measure, only touching in fractions and fragments. “Now, you going to tell me where else your little Order members are?”
“I could kill you now, Draco, I could fucking kill you right now.”
“Oh, you probably could. But Crabbe and Goyle wouldn’t appreciate that.” Draco motions with a quick nod to the two hulking, jacketed masses of flesh stood in the shadows beyond the icy statue of Eros. “And then they’ll take out their anger on you. And then Dean.” Draco smiles and leans in and kisses the corner of Seamus’ mouth, his tongue flicking like an asp’s to touch the boy’s purpled lips. “It’s lose-lose that way. My way, and it’s win-win.”
“Killing another one of my friends is win-win?”
“Compared to what could happen… Yes. I think so.”
Seamus stands tall. He slowly lets go of his pistol, his wand. He feels tears slip from his eyes and carve cold icy trails to his lips and his chin. He hates the quaking feeling his chest, the slow-ache in his stomach and lungs. His eyelashes feel stiff and heavy, and he opens his small mouth to speak: “There - there’s someone in - Oxford Circus. They’re in Oxford Circus. On watch, like me. And Dean.” His voice flickers, cracks and dies. In the smallest tone, in the quietest, most vulnerable voice: “Please, don’t hurt him.”
“See,” Draco says smoothly, pulling away from the Irish boy, “that wasn’t so hard. Now go find your boyfriend and fuck off. I’ve got work to do and I don’t want you bothering me.”
“This is it, Malfoy,” Seamus snaps. “This is the last time we meet. Next time I see you, I’m going to fucking kill you.”
“Just you try, Finnigan.” Draco grins that manic grin once more. “Just you try.”
He disapparates with a crack like a bullet. Pulling out his pistol, Seamus jabs the tip into the place Draco had just occupied and fires two rounds into the ground. With a single cry of grief, strict and strained in his throat, he, too, disapparates, Dean’s name cold on his lips.
------------------------------
A few hours later
------------------------------
Seamus steps in from the winter cold, his cheeks prickled bright red and his hair wet and slick from the lazy falling snow outside. He brings with him the outdoor smell; the wet, sharp quality of the winter air, a faded smell of pot and tobacco, and the more present sting of alcohol. Seamus, pulling off his gloves, proceeds to take off his thick outer jacket, stomping his matte-black combat boots on the dirty grey carpet, kicking them off into the hallway closet. His green sweater is wet, so he peels that off to shirtlessness, tossing the thick lump into the hallway closet as well. Letting his leather satchel drop to the ground, he pulls the heavy-iron pistol from within and slides it into his back hip pocket, his wand tucked neatly under the waistband of his black jeans, resting cold against his skin. He shakes his head like a dog and runs a hand through his hair, pushing it back in a strange wave and hooking the iced tendrils behind his ears.
The house is quiet except for the mulled sounds of a subdued conversation echoing from the kitchen. He walks down the hallowed halls of 12 Grimmauld Place, an arching gothic masterpiece that seem to be made of overwrought imagination and the designs of a psychotic Victorian architect. The uneven ceiling plunges up and over in a series of angled arches and buttresses, all covered in fuzzy white cobwebs and lurking shadow. The walls are patterned like the chiseled bases of a row of columns, fluted and chipped as they stretch, covered all in aged and wrinkled oil-paintings, their subjects having long since abandoned the house. Seamus touches the stone walls with displaced curiosity as he walks towards the kitchen.
He steps inside and discovers Harry and Ron are the source of the light and the noise. They are sitting across from each other at the small kitchen table, a bent and ragged affair that’s been prematurely aged by countless fist-pounding arguments and spontaneous moments of lust. The boys look up to the newcomer and they smile at him with forced sincerity.
“Hey, Seamus,” Harry says softly, his smile scarcely reaching his eyes.
“Seamus,” Ron says in greeting, dipping his head slightly.
“Is Dean back yet?” Seamus offers as a reply. He slides in and sits next to Ron on the long wooden bench.
Ron turns to the boy and nods. “He got in about an hour ago. He’s gone to bed.” Seamus gives a faint smile and exhales properly in what seems like the longest time.
“I tell you, I’m fucking wrecked. Patrolling in this weather is a misery,” Seamus says, his whole body beginning to sag. In a movement, he leans forward and crosses his arms on the table and puts his chin over them. He looks up at Harry with sweet eyes, but Harry seems to stare far beyond him.
Suddenly, as if stirred from a dream, Harry speaks: “One of the Patils was killed tonight.” His voice sounds strained and bleak. “We don’t know which. We just got the owl now.” He gestures to the crumpled parchment laying before him.
“Jesus…” Seamus says, rising to sit upright. “Really?”
Ron nods. “She was on patrol in Oxford Circus.”
“Jesus, Mary. I mean, I thought we secured -”
“Apparently not,” Harry says bluntly.
“Goddamn sons of fuckers,” Seamus curses loosely under his breath. “Fucking hell.”
Harry shrugs.
A moment of silence passes before Seamus leans into Ron and puts his head on the crook of the boy’s shoulder, closing his eyes with exhaustion. Ron tilts his head in gently, kissing the crown of Seamus’ head red hair falling with Seamus’ sandy-blond, a strangely wanton symbol of fidelity. Ron’s hand slips gently about Seamus’ back and hooks into his jeans carefully, fingers just prying to the tops of his boxer shorts.
“It’s been a long day,” Seamus says, feeling all the world a soldier. The gun weighs heavy and cold on him, and his new cuts and scars criss-crossing his now-bare shoulders throb achingly. His wand feels hot and cold at once, biting into his skin where it lies against his hip. The green cloth he has cinched around his upper-arm is soaked through and tight, but he likes the sharp-dig of it, likes how it makes him feel like a real fighter, more than any scar, any sling-backed rifle or crackling, spitting wand will do. He feels like an Irish boy, a Catholic, a nationalist; like his brothers, like his father, like his grandfather.
“It’s always a long day,” Harry replies. He yawns, and Ron and Seamus follow suit. “I think we should go to bed.” Harry gets up from his place and stretches for Ron’s hand. Ron, sliding out from Seamus’ grasp, catches Harry and gives him a tight hug. Seamus follows in turn, and Harry embraces him tightly, too.
It feels odd, these cross-hatching moments of brotherhood and war, fight and peace, death and unity. For every member of this house, this Order, is Seamus’ brother, Seamus’ sister. Ron’s kiss, Harry’s touch; they’re the affections of siblings, the mark of long-held fraternity and affection, solidified by this war. It’s more than friendship now, it’s about family. And that’s what they are, all of them, dozens of brothers and sisters, affectionate and sweet.
And one of the Patils is dead. A sister. A friend.
Seamus feels like he’s going to throw up. He feels sick and wrong and scared and he misses her, misses her so much. But there’s a niggling in his mind and he knows what it is, and it’s Dean and he can’t ever let him down, his boy down. But he misses her, already, so damn much. He doesn’t feel like a soldier now, not even a Gryffindor. He feels like he’s going to throw up.
Harry and Ron each give Seamus a hug before they step into their shared room. Seamus pads gently to the end of the hall to the room he shares with Dean. He passes Hermione and Ginny’s room, he passes Fred and George’s, he passes Neville and Luna’s, and he reaches his own. He feels, oddly, like a little brother, a little boy, hidden under the shadows of his friends, his siblings. He smiles and feels calm of it.
Gently Seamus opens the door, which creaks as it sways inwards. The dim light of the hallway, lit by a half-dozen low-pooled candles, trickles into the room and catches over the bed, illuminating in honey colours Dean’s sleeping face. Seamus watches him sleep for a moment; the peaceful rise of his chest, the snuffling and huffing qualities of childhood sleep, and the guilt evaporates from Seamus’ mind. The Celt steps in and closes the door behind him, the jamb shutting with a loud click.
“Seamus?” Dean immediately says into the darkness.
“M’here,” Seamus replies, letting his jeans fall with a hollow clank to the ground. Dressed only in his soft cotton boxers, he approaches the bed slowly, wary of his night-blindness, edging his way to where he heard Dean’s voice.
“You’re late,” Dean says softly, the residue of sleep still clinging to his words.
“I am late,” Seamus agrees. “Sorry, a ghrá.”
“What does that mean?” Dean asks, gently.
“What, a ghrá?”
“Yeah.”
Seamus smiles and stretches. “Mm,” he murmurs, knowingly, “nothing.”
“You’re so annoying,” Dean says warmly. Seamus can almost picture the smile gracing the boy’s lips. “Was your watch boring?”
A pause, just long enough to fill a heartbeat or two. “Really fucking boring.” Seamus puts down his pistol on the cabinet near the bed, depositing it with a heavy clunk. He slides gently over the carpet, feeling his way through the dark with his toes, and puts his wand on the bedside table. “You - you’re safe on your watches, aren’t you?” Seamus pries, tentatively.
“Of course I am.”
A moment passes and Seamus runs a hand through his wet hair.
“Where are you?” the Celt asks, trying to get a feel for Dean’s position on the bed.
“I’m here,” the dark-boy replies, lifting the comforter from his body to let Seamus under. Obligingly, Seamus crawls into bed, all cold feet and sweet, still-wet hair. Curling about Dean’s half-naked body, he kisses the boy loosely at the corner of his mouth, and again lip-to-lip, a bent and curving thing that lets their mouths shift and blend. Seamus’ finger tips roll about the waistband of Dean’s pyjama bottoms, the soft cotton green things Seamus bought for him the month before. He dips his hands low to slide about the curve of Dean’s arse, pushing them close together as their noses bend and lips crest together.
“I love you, Dean,” Seamus murmurs, after just pulling away. His hands rise to Dean’s cheeks and he touches the boy’s lip gently with his thumb.
“I love you too,” Dean replies, filled all with shadows and quiet. “Goodnight, Seamus.”
“Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you hear - that, that Parvati, or Padma - we don’ know which - was, um, was killed tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“You did?” Seamus asks faintly.
“Yeah, I heard Harry - uh, I heard him crying,” Dean replies. “He - he always takes these things really hard. Thinks they’re his fault.”
“Oh.” Seamus sighs. A warm silence fills the empty spaces between them, and Seamus sighs once more into Dean’s shoulder. “My - my father. He, he fought in Ireland - have I told you this?”
“Yeah,” Dean replies, gently. “You told me he died in Ulster.”
“Yah.” Seamus takes a deep breath. “He told me, before he died, when he gave me his - his gun. You know, the one I carry around with me. He told me sometimes people, some people have to die for others to live. He said it needed to happen, in war. Me da didn’t say he liked killing. He just said you needed to sometimes. Sometimes people had to die for things to happen, you know?”
“Yeah,” Dean replies with a new gravity, something akin to understanding.
“He said that sometimes you had to kill so the people you love stay safe. He killed this - he killed this Orangeman, and I watched him do it. He told me he was - that he was threatening our friends, our brothers and sisters. Said it was better he was dead. He said he was protecting me.”
“Why are you telling me this, Seamus?” He wasn’t accusing; it was just a simple question, a why.
“Because I’d kill for you, Dean. You’re what’s important to me. Like my da, killing to save his brothers, to save me. That’s, like, that’s what’s going on. In this war. Sometimes people just - just die. But I’m going to protect you no matter what.”
“I’d die for you, Seamus. I’d kill too,” Dean answers, sleepily. “I wouldn’t want to, but I would.”
The knot in Seamus’ chest shifts and loosens, and he doesn’t feel like he’s going to throw up anymore. He sighs against his friend’s cheekbone, kisses him wetly and stupidly at his earlobe, settling with kicks under the layers of sheet and blanket. They don’t need to say I love you again.
Time passes, in silence, in half-sleep, and then:
“Goodnight,” Seamus says, feeling his body go limp with sleep, barely aware of his own words, his own breathy voice. He kisses Dean once more, almost like an echo of love evaporating before sleep, and finally he rests, and his muscles loose, and Seamus can’t help but think of Dean: it’s painful, it’s hard, but he’s worth the price to pay.