Ultimate OTP Competition: Action: one half of your pairing is hiding under the bed
7. Drawn
When he returns to the dormitory it is empty, but he can hear the shower running. He kicks off his shoes and sets his wand on the bedside table before noticing Dean's things spilled across his bedspread, his shirt over the footboard and trousers on the floor.
This exact mundane situation has probably happened dozens of times but something makes it weird now. It's like he's alone with Dean, which he hasn't been in about a thousand years. Seamus glances toward the bathroom door and bounces a little nervously on his toes. It's like being alone with him, only he doesn't know, which just makes him feel intrusive and uncomfortable.
A red book spilling out of Dean's schoolbag grabs his eye, and an insatiable curiosity grabs his chest. He's drawn forward and pulls it all the way out. He knows that looking through other people's things without asking is rude, but it's like he can't stop himself.
This is Dean's fault, really, if you think about it because have they said more than two words to each other in as many days? He's always doing something now. Homework or Quidditch practice or snogging Ginny Weasley or what the fuck ever. If he actually spent time with his friends then maybe they wouldn't have to rummage around his stuff like desperate losers.
(This is definitely a desperate loser thing to do, of course, no matter who's to blame, but by this point Seamus has made his peace with it. He has too much of his mother in him and poor self-control. He'd probably read Dean's diary if he kept one.)
He opens the sketchbook and flips through to the first blank pages. Dean has had this one since September and it is still half unused. He used to go through them faster than his school parchment, but maybe he doesn't have time anymore. Or maybe it's just dropping History of Magic that did it. He's more a doodler than a deliberate artist, Seamus thinks, and most of it always happened during worthless classes.
Sure enough, the most recent page is a muddle of absolute bullshit. There are a lot of intersecting lines and some cartoonish snails. He finds himself chuckling. Shouldn't have expected anything more profound or insightful than this.
He continues to turn the pages back through patterns and scribbled-over things, a small smile growing on his face, until he finds a delicate portrait that makes him pause.
Dean sometimes complains that when he draws people, they end up better-looking than they are in real life and this always made Seamus, whose drawings of people look like potatoes with hair, want to scoff, but now he sort of understands. It is clearly supposed to be Ginny. She's wearing her hair the same way and covered in freckles dotted in with soft pencil, but her generically pretty face lacks an essential Ginny-ness.
It's obvious he tried. Her eyes sparkle; she wears a confident smile like the bold, stunning girl she is. Seamus doesn't really want to look at it for long but his brain doesn't make the connection to turn the page.
The sound of a doorknob turning makes him jump and he realizes in horror that the shower is no longer on. Though he has made peace with his questionable decision, he hasn't made peace with Dean finding out about it, so he slams the sketchbook shut and throws himself down behind the bed.
He regrets this choice immediately, obviously.
The bathroom door opens and Dean's feet creak around the wooden floor. Seamus starts to edge underneath the bed. The decision to hide can't really be un-made now without looking like a massive idiot. All he can do is hide better.
"Fu—Seamus!"
His head bumps into the edge of Dean's bedframe.
"What are you doing?"
"Sorry—I'm really sorry—" Seamus rolls over onto his back between their beds. "I just panicked..."
He opens his eyes in spite of his shame. Dean is standing over him in his underwear, his face incredulous. "Why?"
"I was just looking at your drawings," mutters Seamus.
Dean's eyes flick to the red sketchbook, out on the middle of the bed, clearly not where he'd left it. "Oh." He looks thoughtful for a few seconds, trying to come up with some response to this ridiculousness. "You could've asked, I don't care."
"Sorry."
His mouth twitches like he's tempted to laugh, but restrains himself. "Get up, mate."
Seamus heaves himself up from the floor as if he weighs a ton.
"Just wanted to see if you'd drawn anything interesting lately," he says, because he feels compelled to keep justifying himself and can't keep from babbling something inane. "You know, Snape in drag, something like that."
"Well, I figure we could just get Neville up against a boggart if that's what you're after," says Dean with a weak laugh. Seamus wholeheartedly appreciates the effort to extend his lame joke instead of rolling his eyes.
He watches him put on his pajamas, pensively, a low frustration smoldering in his stomach. Something about it just isn't fair. Dean has developed into a nice, normal person who draws pictures for girls while he's become the sort who hides under beds like a fucking moron.
Seamus was never surprised that Dean was the one who got the girlfriend. Dean with the social skills and talent and handsome face and broad shoulders, of course it would be him. And he's happy for him, mostly. What bothers him is that he has nothing but Dean, that he's not good at sharing him.
