Contains a number of my Seamus headcanons explored in more detail in other fics, namely "The Things We Overcome" and to a lesser degree "A Matter of Culture" but can be read alone.
He sits through the funeral with a blank face, looking forward. He doesn't react.
His stepfather is dead.
His mother died years before.
He is all that remains.
Sitting next to him, Dean grips his hand.
Seamus doesn't look at him.
He can't.
Because if he does… he's not sure whether he'd burst out laughing or crying.
After, they make their way to the manor house that is now his. The halls where he grew up are large and empty, sitting alone in the South Irish countryside, amidst the Wicklow Mountains.
Dean stays at his side, and doesn't make him say a word as he draws his fingers along the familiar stone walls.
He looks at the stairs, in the front entrance hall — the stairs he once couldn't look at without feeling a weight in his chest, without feeling like he couldn't breathe. The stairs his step father pushed him down three times before he went to Hogwarts.
He looks at the kitchen, remembers the burn of his hand being shoved into the fire, remembers being forced to reach in and pull out a burning pot that he'd dropped. Remembers the way his skin had peeled off in massive sheets.
He makes his way upstairs, remembering all the places his ears were boxes and his wrists were gripped so hard they bruised and he was punched in the stomach so hard he was left gasping for air.
There's a reason he hasn't been back here in over forty years. He never wanted the inevitable confrontation.
His stepfather hated him for his muggle blood and his mother hated him for the way he reminded her of her rebellion and Seamus had always known he was never welcome.
And now it's his.
He doesn't want it.
He wants to go back to his one bedroom flat in London with Dean. He wants to curl up in their bed, in the space where he's never wondered if he was welcome, where he's always known his place.
But he can't just do that. He has to clean the place up, clear out any sign of magic, put it up for sale. Otherwise it's a danger to nearby Muggles.
He stops in the room that was his bedroom.
The bed is still there, still made. It looks exactly like it did the day he walked out at 17 and never came back, except that now it's covered in a fine layer of dust.
He remembers being seven years old, talking back to his stepfather. He doesn't even remember what he said, but he does remember spending a month with no blankets and no mattress, curled up in the corner of his cold stone floor, sleeping under the single robe they left him.
And suddenly he can't quite catch his breath.
He's almost sixty years old but he feels like he's seven, cowering in a corner in fear of the man who made his life hell.
The man who is dead, now.
And suddenly he's crying.
He's not sure how much of it is relief and how much is pain but it doesn't matter. Tears are falling, and he's turning his face into Dean's shoulder, and Dean is holding him tightly.
It's over.
It's over.
Words: 541
1000 prompts: 91: Seamus
365: confrontation
Assignment 8: Games Dev, Task 7: Prompt: Write about a family member leaving your character property or a business to run.
Auction: 25.1: Song Lyric: 'You can't wake up, this is not a dream' - Gasoline by Halsey
Em's Emporium: Relationships: (ship) Seamus/Dean. Alt — (ship) AstoriaLuna.; Liza's: Write about someone protective of another person. ; Lo's: C6: Moriarty - (character) Seamus Finnegan; Bex's: Sam Wilson/The Falcon: (Trait) Loyal
Pinata: Hard: Trio Era
Funfair Basket: Purple grass: (genre) friendship