Warnings: death, bit of language, implied mental illness (depression), self-harm if you squint, mentions of sex but nothing graphic, slash
I worked very hard on this and would appreciate it if you could review it!
-Karo
Seamus always thought, or rather, he always felt, that Dean was like a great strong tree. An odd thought, perhaps, but not so strange when you knew Dean, really knew Dean, who had a voice like a powerful maple and a body like the solid, familiar oak in your grandparents' backyard. He was immovable, yet he swayed with the wind – maybe like a willow tree, which could be soft and gentle but could also withstand awful, desperate storms.
Sometimes, Seamus thought, Dean was like an apple tree – he'd always hated winter after all and much preferred the spring, which was when he really blossomed, shone dappled light on everyone he smiled at. His nimble fingers produced such beautiful things too, delicate pieces of art. Or maybe, maybe he was an elm, tall and steady and substantial, giving shade and shelter to those who needed it. Dean always helped those who needed it. Kind Dean, gentle Dean. Dean whose warmth exuded from him like branches, drawing others in underneath an immense canopy. Yes, Dean was definitely like a tree.
But Seamus, oh he knew he was not of the forest, no – he came, instead, from fire. It was why, when his temper blazed, sometimes too did his surroundings. He was the hiss and crackle of flames, pure energy; alluring, warm, but dangerous. He burned bright and when he was gone he left soot and cinders in his wake, still hot, tracing a path that would be foolish to follow. Because fire, unlike wood, is unpredictable.
After the war, after blistering, intense kisses in the Room of Requirement, after ohmygodimissedyou and deandeandeanithoughtyoudied, after spellfire and near-misses, after death and killing (so much killing, no one ever talks about the killing), after it was all fucking over even if at times it seemed like it would never end, it all broke. They all broke. Because before, well before they'd had a goal, you see, and it kept them all from falling apart, but now they had nothing. Nothing but bodies to bury and walls to mend.
And it was stupid, really, how Seamus had expected everyone to go back to how they were before, but he'd irrationally hoped anyway. His hope had been at its strongest that first night, when he'd stumbled into the room he'd shared with only one other that past year, only to find the others there too: Ron, Harry, Neville, Dean (yourealiveyourealive). For a fervent second, he thought maybe they could all be okay, because look, weren't Ron and Harry whispering secrets quietly just like they used to, and wasn't that Dean, waiting for him in his bed like before, holding his arms out? And if Seamus unfocussed his eyes just so, he could ignore that they were all covered in blood and sweat and dirt and ash and pain, and that Dean's arms were shaking when they took Seamus in them. But then Hermione and Ginny arrived, limping, with some Draught of Peace they'd found in the dungeons, and that was a right laugh because it was clear none of them would ever know peace again, and then Seamus' hopeful fantasy broke, too.
He couldn't tune out the sound of everyone crying (there were so many reasons to cry) and Seamus tried to weep too, but he still couldn't believe that deandeandean was holding him again, so he told himself the tears would have to come later. They were, really, lucky to be alive, and now Seamus thought Dean was more like one of the ancient baobab trees he'd read about once in his father's National Geographic magazines. Those trees could survive anything. But Dean's ribs jutted out at impossible angles, and his own flesh was slashed with fresh cuts, some crisscrossed with existing still-swollen ones (didtheywhipyou? fucktheywhippedyou). Still, they held each other as tightly as their injuries would allow, and it was a miracle they could even remember how to kiss each other, it felt like it had been years.
Everything was so broken, and Seamus, like the flames dancing in his skin, couldn't stay still for long.
At first, they'd gotten a flat in Dublin together. In the beginning, it was okay; they touched each other often, ifuckingloveyou and ohgodrightthere, and they comforted each other after waking from nightmares. Other than that, they spoke little, only when needed. Seamus worked at a muggle restaurant in the daytime, and came home to Dean at night. It was just okay. Guilt raked over Seamus like hot coals and he thought, well, maybe tomorrow Dean will leave the flat, or maybe tomorrow he'd finally make Dean laugh. Maybe tomorrow he'd help with the dishes, or maybe he'd pick up one of the expensive paintbrushes Seamus had bought for him and paint again. Maybe.
Maybe not; and Seamus tried, he truly did, to keep the fire from forming on his tongue, but it came anyway. It forced its way out without his permission after work one day, and the words he spat didn't even spark anything in Dean's deadened eyes. The frustration that had been slowly smouldering in the pit of his stomach ignited all at once, and he couldn't stay anymore, couldn't look at this strange quiet man pretending to be Dean anymore. He left his savings behind in a yellow envelope before he closed the door behind him.
The thing about fire is that it does not last very long without wood to cling to.
Seamus left the city and made his way through the countryside, picking up odd jobs and burning through bottles of whisky and men like paper. He decided he would go visit his parents in their old yellow house on the cliff, and for once Seamus felt like he had a goal. He had a purpose now; he hadn't seen John and Aileen in what felt like ages, and this was not, definitely not, running away.
He managed to stay for eleven days. The first day, his mam fussed and baked and his da looked at him strangely, as if he didn't recognize Seamus. The second day his mother cut his hair. The third day his father wanted to take him apple-picking, but they had a row when Seamus refused to leave his wand at home. The fifth day was a Sunday, so they went to church; the dusty pews were familiar and comforting, even if the faces surrounding him were not anymore. The eighth day it rained, and Aileen asked about Dean for the first time. The tenth day he answered. The eleventh day he picked up his old dirty rucksack again and followed a portkey back to Dublin.
He'd been gone for 93 days in all and when he returned, he decided that finally, finally, he and Dean would talk. A real conversation, remember those? And there it was again, that stubborn little flare of hope, whispering more Maybes into his ears: maybe now Dean will be better. This time though, it was echoed with strange What Ifs, and they swirled around him like steam: what if he's not better, what if he's not there, what if he doesn't want you anymore?
But Dean was still there like an old withered tree, and Dublin felt like a forest, for in 93 days, it seemed nothing had changed. The November wind was cold when Seamus walked up the cement stairs of the ugly old building, and he shivered when he knocked on the door.
Dean did not greet him with a smile but with a wand pointed to his face. When Seamus raised his hands and tried to make a joke, Dean did not laugh. There was no light in the place, and no hot water – themoneyranout – and empty take-away boxes littered the floor – ivebeenobliviatingthem. The hope inside him spluttered, but fire is nothing if not persistent, so over the next few days he scrubbed the floor and the walls until his fingers were raw. He opened the curtains and let the meagre sunlight in for the first time in 93 days. He paid the bills with money his mother had forced into his hand as he left the house on the cliff, and when the hot water came back he slowly undressed Dean, took his hand, then sat in the shower with him, washing away all the grime and loneliness and deanisthatblood?
Seamus stayed longer this time – he couldn't decide if it was the guilt or the loyalty or the love that made him stay. The restaurant took him back, and he worked evening shifts now, so he could spend his days with Dean. He remembered how Dean used to be his shelter, so now he tried to be his warmth. Seamus brought him to art galleries and museum, the ones Dean would have loved a year earlier. He made all his favourite foods – shepherd's pie, nice curries, sugar cookies – and he cleaned the sheets twice a week because he knew how much Dean used to like falling asleep in clean sheets. When came Christmastime, Seamus bought a small tree and decorated it with gaudy little baubles. He sent gifts to his parents by muggle post, and bought Dean a new woollen sweater.
They still lived in heavy silence, and Seamus knew the conversation would have to wait.
It was exhausting, and if fire does not last long without wood to cling to, then Seamus knew wood could not survive when fire is near. It had been so easy before (it seems like so long ago but really happy19thbirthdaydean), and now Seamus had never had to try so hard for anything in his life. And it could have just been his imagination, but slowly, so fucking slowly, he thought he saw progress. A smile, once, fresh like a new leaf. A mumbled howwasworklastnight, a few paintbrushes scattered around a canvas in a way they hadn't been before, in a way that made Seamus think maybe they'd been picked up today.
They still shared a bed but touched each other only once, and the next day a mottled gray owl pecked at the window with the news that John had been in an accident.
When Seamus left, he pretended that his sadness and fear was not laced with relief.
The funeral was to be on a Tuesday, three days after Seamus arrived. The old yellow house on the cliff, the home where he'd grown up—where his father had taught him how to play chess (rather badly) and how to speak Gaeildge (rather proudly), where he'd clumsily climbed aboard his first broomstick, where he'd kissed Dean the very first time three summers ago—felt unfamiliar now. Empty. He drifted from one room to another, bumping into relatives he hadn't seen in years, eating the food the neighbours brought. His mother cried relentlessly, and Seamus felt that the house had gotten too small for him, or else that he, somehow, had too big.
Tuesday morning, Seamus woke before his mam and the aunties and uncles who'd come to stay. The house creaked in the wind when he walked through, and a bottle of Aileen's favourite wine sat empty in the sink.
He wished now, more than ever, that he could be made of forest-stuff.
After it all, after they'd lowered his father into the goddamn ground, after the walls started pressing in on him so tightly he couldn't breathe, he made the short walk down to the beach to walk along the rocky sand. His house looked smaller and older still in the distance, and the wind sprayed violent splashes over him. The cold was harsh on his skin but he didn't care anymore, and he finally understood it all, why Dean was the way he was, why they were the way they were.
And here was the terrible, painful truth: Dean was not like a tree, not at all, and neither was Seamus a flickering body of flames. No, Dean was a rugged, familiar shore and Seamus a beckoning, rolling wave, and no matter how far he would go, no matter how often he went, the coast still waited, and the tide still hungered for its touch. Another truth: cliffs and beaches and rocks and shores eroded, it happened all the time, and sometimes it was because of the water. But it did not stop them from needing each other, from meeting time and time again, in and out and back and forth, interminably, through storms and currents and great, blustering winds and – and deanwhatareyoudoinghere?
icamehereforyou. imsorryiwastoolate. imsorryseamusimsorryimsorryim
And one, final truth: men are not oceans and they are not shorelines. Men are not infinite. But Seamus remembered now that once, when he was a clumsy child and had burned his leg accidentally (he could not recall how), his father had brought him down to the sea and made him wade through the water, because salt heals wounds, son, remember this, okay?
illneverleaveyouagain. iloveyoudeaniloveyouiloveyoui