Another coda fic for "Matching a Malfoy."

CW: Strong Language
CW: Mild Sexual Content


"I ran into your ex-husband at the pub."

Blaise timed it perfectly. The football match was nearly at the half, which meant they would have fifteen minutes to work through whatever conversation needed to happen. Blaise was leaning into Dean's side, Dean's arm wrapped around his shoulders, hand resting lazily on Blaise's chest. Blaise felt him tense up at the mention of Seamus Finnegan.

"I hope he wasn't unpleasant."

"Not at all." Blaise turned toward Dean and looked up to see Dean's eyes firmly trained on the game, his jaw twitching the slightest bit. "I bought him a pint."

"We used to use your Instagram as small talk. Chat about the way you crop your photos so low on your hips, the best bloody tease. I'm sure he never expected you would find me worthwhile."

Blaise said nothing because that was so far from the truth. Seamus Finnegan knew exactly what Blaise saw in Dean; he'd seen it himself. They were together ten years and Finnegan knew Dean Thomas better than anyone. All their conversation did was confirm for Blaise that his perception of Dean was correct down to the core. Given how persistent the ache of their divorce had bee for Dean, it was best to let him steer this conversation and Blaise would follow with what needed to be said.

"We were a good pair for ourselves, but not necessarily outside of our core friends. His friends were always a bit skittish about me."

"Why?"

"Because I'm a man. They're not quite so fond of gay men, and both Seamus and I are not …"

Blaise watched Dean's face go through a few different confused expressions.

"We're not the sort of men for whom being gay is a dominant part of our personalities."

Blaise teased, "And being gay is three-quarters of mine?"

Dean snickered and agreed, "It really is, and I love that about you."

Dean's fingers ghosted over the right side of Blaise's chest, teasing his nipple. Blaise's entire body began to warm a bit because those gentle touches were more of a turn-on than Dean realized. Blaise shifted out of Dean's hold so he could concentrate on the conversation and not fall into the delightful temptation that Dean Thomas presented. Dean grabbed the popcorn bowl off the table in front of them and said,

"Seamus and I were two men who happened to be gay, and the people we met as a couple always seemed a bit surprised to find out we were together. They'd say things like, 'Dean, you're so tall and sporty, not at all the type to stick your cock up another bloke's arse.' To which I'd reply that they were right, and I preferred let my husband fuck me."

Blaise laughed along with Dean, but sensed this was beginning to go downhill. Dean tossed a bit of popcorn into his mouth. He allowed the match to play for a bit, until the half ended, and Blaise was happy to wait for Dean to figure out what he wanted to say. This could go poorly if it was rushed.

"My football mates always thought Seamus was a bit wrong for me. Too short, too big of a personality, that sort of thing. Everyone else had their girlfriends, always gorgeous and tall, while my boyfriend-then-husband was short and so fucking cool. That's why they hated him, you know, because Shea's the type of man who doesn't care about his height. He is an explosives tech, so he has eight thousand more pressing things to worry about. He'd make friends everywhere, tell stories about bomb investigations he worked on, tell the story about the live bomb he actually had to defuse. He's testified in court a few dozen times. He's properly amazing and …" Dean placed the popcorn bowl on the coffee table. "My career didn't really measure up."

"Do you truly believe that?" asked Blaise.

"I do. It's true, too, which makes it all the more difficult. I love teaching and I love kids, that's why I chose to do it. We had a beautiful house up in Chiswick, which Seamus paid for. A couple million Pounds, it was incredible, and I was just sort of there to be his husband. I contributed a bit, but he paid for most everything. About a year before we separated, I began to feel resentment brimming. I couldn't figure it, couldn't work out why. I imagined it was the money, so I wrote a book, shopped it around a bit, and Hermione knows a fantastic publicist. Bit of help from her and I had a book deal with a nice advance."

"Which you received on the day your husband did what he did."

"I don't want to talk about it."

Blaise nodded and gently squeezed Dean's shoulder.

"You never have to say anything. You're with me; you say only as much as you wish to say."

Dean took a deep breath and asked, "If I tell you everything, I need you to promise you won't speak a word of it to my friends. I genuinely believe Gin and Hermione would hurt him if they knew."

"I promise that nothing you tell me in confidence will ever be shared. With anyone, Dean Thomas."

"Neville and Ron know. They're the sort of blokes that get it. Harry and the girls are either too vindictive or too … I dunno, too …" Dean grit his teeth before admitting, "I don't trust them to understand."

"Do you trust me to understand?" asked Blaise.

"I do." Dean nodded and repeated, "I trust that you'll get it, but it means I have to tell you. It's the telling that's hard."

Blaise shifted so his left arm was resting on the top of the sofa and waited for Dean to explain. Or not to. Though, Blaise was fairly confident he would get the full story. This was something Dean knew he needed to share sooner rather than later. Dean stared resolutely at the television when he began.

"Shea knew when I would be coming home, and he decided we would separate well before he cheated on me. We'd talked about it twice by then. When I asked why he wanted to separate, he kept saying that he wanted me to be more, and to stop making him feel bad for asking that of me. I couldn't figure out what it meant, so I made a second career for myself. I tried to contribute financially and it wasn't enough."

Blaise shifted on the sofa as Dean slid lower on the cushion. Dean's neck was resting on the top of the back of the sofa as he stared at the ceiling. He closed his eyes, recalling a painful memory.

"The thing is, it didn't have to happen the way it did. Both Seamus and I could have made different choices. He could have asked me to leave the house for awhile and officially separate. When I walked through the door that afternoon, I heard moaning from our bedroom. Sounds that were certainly not coming from my husband. Ten years I'd been shagging the same man, I knew every sound he made and how to tease out each of them. I could have turned around and walked out the front door and spared myself the visual confirmation. I chose not to do that."

Blaise asked, "What did you do?" though he already knew the answer.

"I'd never been so angry in my life. I don't believe I am a particularly angry person, but I knew what was happening so I stormed into what was still my goddamn bedroom to find my husband on his knees on our floor, mouth around some bloke's dick. And the worst part was that he was clearly a stand-in for me. My height, my build, even the same colour skin." Dean's jaw twitched before he added, "He had a smaller cock, though."

Blaise didn't move. It seemed that Dean was saying this more for himself than for Blaise's benefit.

"Seamus was fully clothed; he hadn't intended to get off on this. He wanted me to come home and see exactly what I saw. Shea couldn't have timed it any better because that fucking bloke came just a few seconds after I flung the door open. And I don't …" Dean's breath caught in his chest. His mouth moved but no words came out for a moment. "I've made a lot of excuses for the shame. I've lied to my friends about it for three years, claiming it is because of the general infidelity. There are a lot of things that Shea did to hurt me in that moment, but there's something about seeing your husband with someone else's come on his face. I just can't stomach it. Ten years, ten fucking years and he hated me so much …"

Tears were streaming down Dean's face and Blaise's heart broke for him. It hurt to know that Dean had carried one specific image in his mind for three years, and it hurt even more to know that Finnegan never meant for it to be so persistent. Blaise learned enough about Dean Thomas over the past month to know it was best to let him experience these memories on his own. Blaise was there as a vehicle for reliving the memories, and there to provide solace once Dean was finished. Dean took a shaky breath in before he continued.

"I looked at this random bloke and said, 'I can see that you're finished.' He seemed pretty pissed. My guess is he didn't know he was shagging a married bloke and Shea probably found him on Grindr. Once he left, I lost my head. I never liked to use my height over Shea, but I did then. I pulled Seamus by the collar into the snug and tossed him onto the sofa like he was nothing. Because that's how he made me feel, like fucking nothing. He was terrified of me, I could see it in his eyes, he knew he'd gone too far. During the divorce he admitted he thought I was going to burn the house down."

Blaise offered, "Perhaps you should have."

"No, no, I gave him a chance to explain. I still, watching him lick a bit of leftover come off his lips, I thought maybe there was a way for us to work past this. He cheated on me, but perhaps I deserved it. I'd been working so much on the books that our marriage had taken a bit of a backseat. Shea'd gotten it out of his system, he'd humiliated me, perhaps that finally balanced the scale."

Blaise guessed, "It did not."

"No, he'd decided our marriage was over. He did what he did to show me that he could still pull blokes. His point was that if we'd just met right then, at thirty-one, he could still pull me but I wouldn't be good enough to pull him. That was what he was trying to prove. I think that's when I stopped being angry and began to realize that me, as Dean, had stopped being good enough for him. It was my fault that he did this. When I asked why—"

Dean abruptly stopped talking. He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers at the nape of his neck. Blaise watched as a tear made its way down the side of Dean's nose.

"When I asked why he'd done it, he said, 'I like every bit of you except you.'"

Blaise placed his hand on Dean's thigh and gave it a gentle squeeze. He felt Dean's heartache and knew it cut down to his soul.

"I looked at him and said, 'You made me happy, and I wish you'd told me how I could make you happy again. I would've done it for you.' To which he said, 'That's just my point; you can't.' So I left, made for Neville's place, holed up in his spare room for a couple days and didn't move."

Blaise tentatively asked, "Can I ask how low you went?"

"Oh, I thought I was going to kill myself for awhile. I mean, I thought about it. I was there, but I started considering the how. Thought about who'd end up finding my body, and I'm so fucking tall they'd have to get two people, probably, to move it. My family would have to pay for a funeral because, obviously, Seamus wasn't going to do it. Probably would've just tossed me into the Thames, happy to be rid of the trouble. Eventually I phoned everyone for a group lunch and told them what happened."

Dean sat up and wiped the tears off his face.

"The divorce was awful. I asked for my car, one of my favourite watches, and twenty thousand Pounds so I could land on my feet. I thought there was no way he could say no to that. Then he did. We were in the divorce proceedings and he said, 'I gave you everything; now you get nothing.'" Dean swallowed thickly before admitting, "He was right. I couldn't have been a teacher, doing what I really enjoyed doing, couldn't've done it without him supporting me financially. He was right to take those things from me because I took them for granted while I had them."

Blaise asked, "Are you ready for my opinion?"

Dean laughed through his tears.

"You have an opinion?"

"I love you, of course I have an opinion."

Dean's cheeks turned the slightest bit pink. Blaise said it because Dean needed to hear it, but watching Dean blush a little was a delightful bonus. He continued,

"I am honoured you told me all of this. I see what happened differently from you. Your husband saw your potential and presumed you were squandering it because you saw success differently. Success, to me, was Scorpius saying I am as good as his parent. All I wanted was to be a father to a child so I could give them what my mother never gave me. I have that, now."

"I don't want to jeopardize it."

"You won't. You couldn't. To you, success is making the world brighter for children who are only just learning what the world can be. If a child begins life searching for love and comes up empty, the way I did, they believe that is how the world is meant to be. Your books are about love and kindness and choosing to be a good person in the depths of true hardship. Traits you exude when you step into a room, which is the reason I fell in love with you the moment you walked into my kitchen."

Dean laughed.

"It's a massive kitchen." He paused before wondering, "Did you speak to Seamus for long?"

Blaise nodded and did not respond further. He watched Dean's face fall as he recognized what that meant. He shook his head and grumbled,

"Unbelievable."

Blaise didn't move.

"I cannot believe he got to you. He is so fucking likeable, but—"

"We did not discuss his job."

"Oh, what did you discuss, then?" Dean said, in a tone that was so unlike him that Blaise could not continue the conversation.

Blaise turned toward the television and turned up the volume. Dean grabbed the remote and turned off the television before demanding,

"You cannot cut off this conversation because it's making you uncomfortable."

"I ended the conversation because you no longer sound like yourself."

"This is who I am when Seamus is the topic of conversation, Blaise. The shame, the guilt, the reality that I was not enough of a man for my husband—"

"That is not what happened. Finnegan never stopped loving you. He still loves you."

"Don't say that." Dean's face fell into something painfully vulnerable as he demanded, "Don't say that to me."

"He cheated on you because he loved you, and he was in pain. He wished for you to hurt as badly as he was, so he made the one choice that would force you to be angry at him."

"He told you this?"

Blaise nodded, and Dean stood up from the sofa. He placed his hands on his hips and admitted,

"I don't know how to feel about that. Everything I believed about how our relationship ended … I was wrong?"

Blaise said nothing. This was Dean's moment of clarity and Blaise did not need to interrupt. A dozen different thoughts seemed to flit across Dean's face as he reconsidered the divorce with this new information. Blaise watched as Dean paced out of the room all the way to the stairs, then back again to stand in front of him.

"I believed he cheated on me because he didn't love me anymore. You're telling me that he still loves me? Did he say that to you?"

"Yes." Blaise confirmed, "His phrase was, 'I love that man so much it makes me stupid.'"

Dean looked at the ceiling, his eyes watering with tears from what Blaise presumed were too many emotions to name.

"Then why … Why would he do what he did to me? All the hate, the truly hateful things he said—"

"He was weak, Dean. It takes a strong man to love someone as good as you. Finnegan was not confident enough in himself to support you anymore because it made him feel weak. He leaned into that weakness. He made a mistake and that mistake is the best thing to ever happen to me."

"Hah." Dean laughed and shook his head, tears clinging to his eyelashes. "You're saying you are strong enough to love me, then?"

"Without question, Dean Thomas."

"Why do you call me by my full name, like that?"

"Because it suits you."

"I've been thinking I might change it someday soon."

Blaise frowned and asked, "Why? Each of your books has your name on the cover: Dean Thomas. Why give yourself a new name when yours is so established?"

"I am only thinking perhaps the next book will say Dean Zabini on the front."

Blaise leapt off the couch and asked, "You would take my name?"

"Shea and I each liked our names as they were, and we wanted to keep parts of ourselves separate. I cannot imagine a single part of my life without you in it. I love you so much and I have been so afraid you would fall out of love with me the way my ex-husband did. That's why I haven't said it, because once you know how much I care for you, I can't take it back. I love you and—"

Blaise threw his arms around Dean's neck and kissed him as hard as he could. Dean's hands were everywhere, on Blaise's back, grabbing his bum, the pads of Dean's fingers on Blaise's cheek when he pulled back just far enough to say,

"Yes, you can have it. My name is yours, Dean Thomas. I'll get a ring."

"Oh, no." Dean shook his head and insisted, "You'll need to meet my family, and I still have to meet the most important part of yours."

"Scorpius will love you." Blaise could feel himself smiling bigger than he ever had. "I want to meet your family, and I have to ask your mum for permission to marry you like a proper gentleman."

Dean leaned down to steal a kiss and said,

"You and I both know you are not a proper gentleman, but I do want a proper proposal. I want the beautiful, quiet, enigmatic man in front of me to get down on a knee and ask me to marry him. Because I will say yes—"

"I will be creative about it." Blaise wrapped one arm around Dean's waist and looked up to say, "Your ex-husband shook my hand and said, 'You will care for him better than I did.'"

"I believe he's right."

"Then I followed him back on Instagram."

Dean laughed. He stepped back and unfastened Blaise's trousers, pulled down the zip, then stuffed his hand down the front of Blaise's pants. Blaise sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth as Dean palmed his cock. Blaise closed his eyes and tilted his head back, so Dean made a trail of gentle kisses down the side of Blaise's throat.

"Unlike my ex-husband, I have the privilege of seeing everything below the bottom edge of your photos."

"I am yours alone, from now 'til the end of time." Blaise twisted his fingers in the hem of Dean's t-shirt as his cock hardened between Dean's hand and his pants. "I've been waiting my whole life for you, Dean Thomas, soon-to-be Zabini."

"It's even better when you say it."

Blaise smiled and said, "Dean Zabini."

Dean hummed softly against Blaise's neck and said, "I'm glad I loved someone else before you, because now I know how to do it properly. You deserve a husband who can love you properly."

Blaise sighed very slowly, a groan coming from deep in his chest. Dean asked,

"What brought that out?"

"Husband." Blaise grabbed Dean's hand and guided him to a quicker speed. "The past several years, I worried I would never be that for anyone. Now you're here with your hand on my dick saying you will take my name …" Blaise paused as his breath caught in his chest. "I've never been this happy."

Dean pulled his hand out of Blaise's pants and nodded toward the sofa.

"Let me finish you off over there?"

"If you get me off before the second half, I'll go down on you while you watch the game."

Blaise watched as Dean's eyes went wide, then he pushed Blaise onto the sofa. Blaise laughed, leaned back, then pushed off his trousers. He spread his legs wide and watched Dean settle between them. Dean smiled up at Blaise and said,

"Challenge accepted."