Dean's heart skipped a beat when he heard the knock on the door.

Blaise gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze before heading to the foyer. Scorpius tagged along, always happy to greet a visitor. Dean could see that little boy as his godson. Stepping away from the Hale family, he found himself at home in the Zabini house and happier than he had been in years. Yet, his entire body was half-numb knowing Seamus was mere metres away. The shame began to creep in.

"Ex-husband!" came Blaise's gleeful shout from the foyer.

"Future husband!"

Dean's heart beat so quickly he felt like he sprinted a kilometre. He hadn't heard Seamus's voice in years. He sounded different, somehow. Dean heard Blaise say,

"Come in." The front door clicked shut. "This is my godson, Scorpius."

"Oh. Nice name, that. Not terribly far off from my name."

Scorpius's voice was loud and happy when he asked, "What's your name?"

"Seamus."

"That's a good name. Uncle Blaise says you're nice, and I think you're nice, too."

Seamus's voice was soft when he replied, "Thank you. Blaise isn't so bad himself. He talks about you loads."

"That's 'cause I'm his favourite sous chef!"

Both men laughed. Dean found himself smiling, even. Relaxed just the slightest bit. This didn't have to be weird. It needn't be awkward. It was just a conversation with his ex-husband. Totally normal. They were two totally normal blokes. Blaise said,

"You are, but don't go letting on to my staff, Scorp." He paused then said, "Dean's in the snug, if you'd like to—"

"I'll take a moment here, if that's alright."

"Understood."

Blaise walked from the foyer into the snug and Dean tilted his head up just in time to catch Blaise's quick kiss. Blaise whispered,

"I love you, and this will be easier if you remember that he still loves you, too."

Dean nodded. Blaise held eye contact until he was satisfied that Dean was ready to be alone. He said,

"Scorpius, I am going to watch you play in the back gardens for a bit."

"But—"

"We can have lunch with our guests later. To the garden, now."

Scorpius patted Dean on the knee before heading to the back door. Dean stared at the rug until he heard the door open then close again.

"Dean?" came Seamus's voice.

His voice shook a bit when he called back, "Shea?"

"Can we have the conversation like this? Just shout it through the wall?"

Dean grinned and said, "I'm game if you are."

"Right. First off, I want to apologise for cheating on you. I don't think I ever did that to your face—"

"You're still not doing it to my face."

Seamus stepped into the snug and he looked good. Really good. He had his hands behind his back as he looked Dean in the eyes to say,

"I'm sorry for cheating on you."

Dean didn't really tell his legs to stand. He didn't tell himself to walk over, didn't mean to wrap Seamus in a hug. It just happened. Seamus hugged him back and it was all Dean had really wanted: an apology and a hug.

"I forgive you."

Shea chuckled and said, "That's too easy."

"I think we've got things to talk about that are far less easy than that."

"You mean how you landed the hottest man on the planet?"

Dean teased, "I can probably work that in there somehow."

"Christ, it's good to be in your arms again. Right, yeah, okay, tell me where to sit and I'll listen."

They settled into chairs facing each other, and Dean gave him the once-over. Shea was in jeans, but nice high street ones. His trainers were clean, his "going out" pair as opposed to his hiking trainers. His muscles were more defined than Dean recalled. He spent years with his head between those thighs, and damn Seamus had fantastic legs. Everybody gave him shit for being short, but only because they hadn't shagged him. Dean didn't need to see the outline of Shea's cock through his jeans; he remembered the size quite well. Seamus's jumper was thin, and his biceps were clearly visible—

"Why're you staring at me like that?"

Dean awkwardly cleared his throat and said, "Wasn't staring."

"Dean, we were married for seven years, I know when you're staring at my dick."

"Bit offended you haven't been staring at mine."

"Nah," Seamus grinned, "I'm staring at the light in your eyes. You look happy."

"I am." Dean believed it when he said it. "I am happy. I've, um, I haven't talked to my family in six weeks. They didn't take a liking to Blaise—"

"Olivia and Amelia filled me in."

"Right. I forgot you'd seen them because, well, I haven't talked to them."

"You made the proper choice."

"Yeah?"

"I'm looking at you right now, and I've never seen you like this, Dean. Not ever. You seem like you've finally chosen yourself, which is all I ever wanted for you. Blaise Zabini, though? Talk about the top of the bloody pyramid."

Dean felt himself blushing as he said, "Ginny set us up. Blaise hosted a party here at his house, I didn't know it was his house, otherwise I would not have come. I was in shitty jeans and I brought him dish towels as a host gift. He has hundreds of billions of pounds, Shea, and I brought him dish towels."

"Oh, I bet he loved it."

"He did. We spent the night talking, he walked me to my car, and I kissed him."

"Lucky bloke, then." Seamus said, "Zabini has become a good friend. He's funny, which I didn't expect."

"Everyone thinks he's quiet, but once you learn to understand his silence Blaise is quite chatty." Dean hesitated to ask, "You're engaged, as well?"

Seamus grimaced.

"It's not important. Life has been very different after our divorce, and not in a way I found favourable. This is where I've ended up."

Confused, Dean said, "You don't seem happy."

"I was happy in our marriage, until that last year. Haven't been able to recapture that for myself."

"Could've fooled me, seeing as you ended our marriage."

"Dean, you have no idea what was happening in our marriage."

He scoffed, "I was there."

"That's what I'm telling you. You weren't."

Dean swallowed his anger, because Seamus wasn't looking at him like he had done something wrong. He was feeling so many things that his emotions were an inescapable vise around his brain. Dean nodded for Seamus to say whatever it was he felt he needed to say.

"Look, you're a good person. And not in the he's-a-good-bloke, always-gonna-do-right-by-you sorta way. Genuinely, in your soul, you are the toxic combination of a giver and a desperately hard worker. From the moment we got married, you felt you needed to give me everything. All I wanted was for you to say, 'Fuck off, Shea, go hiking without me.'"

"I wanted to do what you enjoyed."

"But you didn't enjoy it!" Seamus tossed his hands in the air and said, "There was no reason for you to do everything I wanted to do, but you did. And you did it for me, for Zara, for your mum, for Harry and Ron and Hermione and Ginny and every fucking person you love, Dean. When you came to bed at night, you would look at the ceiling with nothing in your eyes. Every night when you went to sleep, you had nothing left to give. Then you woke up every fucking morning convinced you had reset yourself enough to give just as much, when you hadn't by half."

Perhaps that was true. Dean had always put the pressure on himself to keep his family above water. He never had a proper father and remembered those years his mum worked two jobs to keep them afloat. Then she met the wanker banker and life got easier for her, but not for Dean. Life with him was never easy for Dean.

"I watched you push yourself too far every day for six years, and I couldn't help you. Every time I told you to take a break, you thought it was me trying to pull you away from your family. If I told you to stay home while I went out, you took it to mean I didn't care for you, didn't want you around. So yeah, six years into our marriage I asked for a separation because I couldn't watch you wither away anymore."

Dean frowned and admitted, "I recall that differently."

"I'm sure you do."

"You said that you thought teaching was beneath me."

"First," said Seamus, "it is beneath your intellect."

"Don't—"

"No, no!" Seamus pointed at him and said, "Don't you fucking dare try to make me wrong about this. Your brain is so brilliantly wired, Dean, that it is wasted on kids. I know that's not the most popular thing to say, but Mozart wasn't composing jingles for children's toy companies."

"I don't think they had jingles—"

"And I didn't say that you should stop teaching. I said it was beneath you, I was right, but I never pressured you to stop doing it. You put that pressure on yourself because I asked for a separation."

Dean winced. He remembered that much. He admitted,

"I've never felt like more of a failure in my life."

"Exactly. So instead of giving me what I asked for, you decided to write books. You thought, 'If I can just give Seamus even more of myself, then he'll love me again.' Which was the opposite of what was true, Dean. If you had given me less, given anyone less, I would have been fine. You could have healed whatever was wrong inside of you, whatever compulsion this is to be so perfect for everyone. And I asked you every month for twelve months. I waited a full year, Dean. I waited."

"Did you really? I don't recall you asking again."

Seamus sighed, "Because you refused to hear it. I couldn't watch you anymore, I dunno if it was depression or some other melancholy inside of you, but whatever it was, it was too deep for me to reach. You were my best friend and my husband. I couldn't see you like that anymore because you wouldn't let me help you. That left me with only two options for divorce: either force you out of my house, or one of us had to commit infidelity. And …" Seamus's voice cracked. "I loved you too much to have the police force you to leave. I couldn't humiliate you like that—"

"But walking in on you sucking some bloke's cock wasn't humiliating?"

"It was the only way I could make it so the divorce wasn't your fault!"

"Do you have any idea what it's been like?!" shouted Dean. "Every day I see you in my head, see you with someone else's come on your face. My husband. My best mate of nearly twenty years and you go do that to me?! How did you think that would make me feel?"

"You wouldn't hear me, Dean! You wouldn't hear me every time I said leave. I told you to leave. I asked you to leave. I begged you to leave at the end, Dean. My grounds for divorce were either unreasonable behaviour or separation. You said, 'No, I promise Shea, I'll have my book advance then you'll see I'm worth it.' When it was never a question of your worth, it was only how little of you was coming home to me at the end of the day. You trapped me in a marriage you were hardly ever present for!"

"I always came home to you."

"Yeah, you brought back the bits of you that hadn't been given to your mum, to your students, to Zara and Hermione and Ron and Harry and Ginny and Ava and Kinsley and—"

"I get it."

"The last year of our marriage, you hardly talked to me."

Dean insisted, "That's not true."

"It is true. You went to work, then football with your mates, then came home to write the books. Get Luna to illustrate the books. Get a publisher for the books. You had no time for me, and I wouldn't have cared if you were doing it for you. But," Seamus's eyes were watery when he said, "you were doing it for me."

"You're right." Dean took a shaky breath in. "You're right about all of it. The past six weeks I haven't been speaking to my family and I've been more whole than I can ever recall. Perhaps I've given too much of myself away, and it's true I couldn't hear you."

"Thank you." Seamus repeated, "Thanks for saying it."

Dean sobbed, a sound that came from deep in his chest. Seamus seemed shocked by it, jumping a bit in the chair. That was odd; he was unflappable, part of the job. Dean shook his head and cried as all the pieces began fitting together. He had told Seamus that he could earn his place as husband. Dean had forgotten, and how much else had he misremembered?

"I—I—I just wanted to make my best friend happy." Dean shook his head and insisted, "It was all I wanted. When you divorced me, I hated myself so much for failing you. I'd taken away your twenties—"

"No." Seamus said, "You didn't do that. I don't regret our marriage, Dean. I loved you. I loved you more than I love my fiancé now. Honestly …" His face was red the way it always was when he was trying not to show too much emotion. "If anyone took something away from me, it was our friends. I had to rebuild a life without half the people I loved anymore. I have missed Olivia and Amelia like mad. I haven't spoken to Harry, Ron, or Neville in well over two years. My childhood friends turned on me like I was a villain."

"I never wanted that."

"I'm engaged to a bloke who's half-decent, but only because he asked. I don't know when I became the bloke who does shit just because it's asked of him. 'Seamus, will you marry me?' And it's like, I've got nobody else to love me, my friends've gone, I've got a nice house with nobody in it, and I'm gay so the options are fucking terrible …" Seamus shrugged. "It's still better than watching you try to rip yourself apart to please people."

"You have no idea how right you are." Dean shook his head and repeated, "No idea."

"What?"

Dean waved his hand, dismissing it, hoping to move on. Seamus wouldn't have it.

"Dean, what aren't you telling me?"

He had the right to know, but Dean hadn't the first idea how to tell him. Dean sighed and said,

"You took everything."

"It's lawyers, Dean! That's what lawyers do. They demand everything so we have a good bargaining position. Then you were meant to demand everything so we could compromise in the middle. Instead, you said, 'Let me keep my books.' I didn't give a damn about the book profits, Dean. I work in bomb disposal; I either work until I retire with the best pension in the country, or I'm dead. I don't have the luxury of a bad day at work. I never needed your money. You didn't put up a fight, you didn't even ask for anything else. I didn't take everything, you gave me everything. There's a fucking difference and it matters."

"Oh."

"Oh?" Seamus scoffed. "That's what you have to say? What, have you gone all this time seriously believing I wanted your car?"

Dean stared down at his hands and admitted, "I've gone all this time believing I didn't deserve my car. There wasn't enough of me left to love anymore. I was barely getting through the day. I missed you desperately, I felt unlovable, and I wasn't bringing in enough money."

"Your book advance was massive, and you make enough teaching to afford a nice flat. Where was your money go—oh." Seamus answered his own question. "Your sisters, I'm sure. Same as always, just giving yourself and your money away."

Dean nodded.

"On the anniversary of our divorce, the first one, I …" Dean couldn't finish. He was so ashamed. "I can't …"

He saw the moment Seamus realised what Dean was trying to say. Shea's entire body went rigid and his eyes were wide. Dean found it within himself to say,

"I updated my will so the book royalties would be left to Luna. I had been stealing painkillers from the guestrooms I stayed in. Had more than enough to do it, so I took twenty or so and washed it down with a bottle of really expensive vodka."

What happened next was a blur. Seamus looked to the doorway and seemed to realise there wasn't enough time to make it to the kitchen. He looked at one corner, then another, and finally managed to find a bin just in time to grab it and vomit. Seamus had nerves of the toughest steel, and Dean couldn't recall ever seeing him like that. He dry heaved a few times into the bin before wiping his mouth with the side of his hand.

"So sorry. So … So sorry." Seamus swallowed and grimaced. "I dunno why that happened. I suspected you would fall apart. Just hearing it confirmed, um, knowing I couldn't provide you a life you really wanted." Seamus wiped his eyes and said, "It's the biggest failure of my fucking life knowing I couldn't keep you from destroying yourself that way."

"I suspect you've got it wrong. I think you kept me from destroying myself for a long time, and it was only once I didn't have you there that I couldn't see the value in me. Hell, I'd've offed myself at twenty-six, probably, if you hadn't been married to me."

"I don't think that makes things any better."

"Shouldn't it?" asked Dean. "Maybe … Maybe the biggest failure in our marriage wasn't you failing me or me failing you; perhaps it was me failing myself."

"But look where it's gotten you." Seamus nodded toward the door to the back garden. "You've landed the most beautiful man, and he's your soulmate, Dean. I can see it."

"Look where it's landed you." Dean huffed, "I'm still causing you pain, Shea. That's the last thing I want to do."

"I want my friends back, but they'll never forgive me. Hell, I will never forgive me."

"I'll talk to them."

Seamus shook his head and said, "It won't do any good. I am grateful you let me see Olivia and Amelia. They're like my daughters and not seeing them was hell."

"I shouldn't've done that to them, and I shouldn't've done it to you."

"Well, I should've found another way to end our marriage. I wasn't thinking clearly, and looking back, I think I knew how close to the edge you were. I turned my back on you, Dean, and I—"

"Shea, I couldn't see how close to the edge I was, myself, until I was vomiting pills into the toilet. How can I blame you for leaving a marriage when I wasn't really there? I never even considered it from your view, as the provider. You provided everything for me."

"Not everything—"

"Shea, I'm still on your phone plan."

"I didn't want to ruin your life, Dean." His hands shook as he pulled a tin of mints from the pocket of his jeans. "I just wanted to walk away so you could find what you truly wanted to do. It wasn't me."

"It should've been."

Seamus shrugged and tossed a mint into his mouth.

"Look, Dean, there is nobody who can make that man," Seamus pointed toward the back of the house, "feel the way you have made him feel. I consider him a friend, now, and I can say you both are perfect for each other."

"I want to find that for you, too." Dean insisted, "If you're unhappy—"

"Dean, I don't want hope." Seamus sighed. "As much as I want my friends back, as much as I want to find a man to spend my life with, it won't happen. I don't know how to end an engagement when I never should have said yes in the first place. I think I've got to come to terms with," he gestured to the space between the two of them, "this. I've been running away from you the whole time."

"You're not running now."

Seamus didn't have a response to that. He threaded his fingers together and stared resolutely at the floor. Dean said,

"It seems you've forgotten things about our marriage, too."

Seamus shrugged, unwilling to admit he'd done anything right. Dean had carried Seamus's mistake with him for three years, but it never occurred to him that Shea had also been carrying it.

"As I recall, I never bought new boots for football. Whenever I needed a new pair, one always seemed to appear. You always fluffed my pillow before I got into bed. I remember Molly teaching you to darn the holes in my sweaters. You always let me choose where we went on holiday."

Seamus shrugged and insisted, "I tried to be a good husband."

"And you were. Don't ever think otherwise. Our marriage was over long before you cheated on me, and I hadn't opened my eyes to it."

Seamus nodded in agreement. Dean reached for his hand, but Seamus pulled away. It seemed everything had tilted from how the conversation began. Dean was trying to pull Seamus's head out of his arse, to keep him from that dark place Dean knew so well. He could see Seamus slipping closer and closer to it.

"Hermione's dating Blaise's ex-boyfriend, now. It's a bit strange, because she and Ron are so close even though they're divorced. Draco and Blaise are close even through their own nasty breakups. I want you in my life like that, Shea. I want my best friend back."

He stood up and said, "I need to go."

Dean was so stunned that by the time he stood, Seamus was already out the door. Dean rushed to the front window, expecting to hear the Range Rover's engine turn over. Instead, Seamus was sitting in the driver's seat with his forehead resting against the wheel. His shoulders were shaking, and it took a moment before Dean realised Seamus was crying. He'd rather be sobbing alone in his car than in front of Dean. That hurt more than anything else Seamus had ever done. They never hid from each other, not as friends nor as husbands.

He considered texting Blaise. Oi, chef, can you come check on my ex-husband because I told him something I probably shouldn't've done. Then he'd be in trouble with both men. Dean grumbled to himself before flinging open the front door and storming into the passenger seat of Seamus's Range Rover. He slammed the door closed and looked over to see all the air leave Seamus's body.

"Dean, get the hell out of my car."

"I'm not letting you leave thinking you pushed me toward suicide."

"Give me an alternate view of it, then." Seamus sat up and groaned. "Tell me how I am meant to see this as anything other than me putting you into a situation—"

"You said it yourself, didn't you? I gave my money to my family and they took it. It wasn't like they gave it back, Shea. It wasn't as though anyone offered to help me emotionally. Our friends gave me a place to stay, hopping week to week from one couch to a guest bed to another. But while they were all too happy to say shit about you, which of our friends took me out for a pint? Which of our friends asked, 'Dean, you okay, mate?' Harry wasn't around to do it. Ron was focused on his wife having a baby. Neville is still teetering on bankruptcy. The girls …" Dean conceded, "The girls dunno how to help anybody in deep the way I was. They didn't want to see it."

"Doesn't change anything. Just because they were shit doesn't mean I wasn't even more."

Dean sighed.

"Looking back, you loved me more than anyone. It's why I married you."

"It's why I married you." Seamus shook his head and said, "For years, I watched you try to figure yourself out. I knew you were gay because I was your best mate, but you needed to figure it out on your own. When you did, you didn't even look at me—"

"Because I didn't want to jeopardize our friendship and, if you recall, you hadn't exactly told me you were gay."

"That's fair."

"I spent so much time caring for my mum's new family that I never focused on creating my own." Dean admitted, "Not even when I was married to you. Truth is, Shea, these past six weeks have been the easiest of my entire life. I was wholly committed to my half-family, and only half-committed to the man who gave me a hundred percent of himself for six years."

"It's because I wasn't enough of a husband for you. I could never hold your attention the way I did when we were just mates."

"I don't believe that to be true at all."

Seamus shrugged and said, "Doesn't matter what you believe. That's what I felt. It's why I wanted a divorce, because I couldn't get you to focus on our marriage. I missed my best friend."

Dean shifted a bit in the seat so he was looking directly at Seamus.

"I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to be honest with me."

"Fucking hell, Dean, I'm always honest with you."

"I know."

"Then why're you asking about my honesty?"

"Because I want to know why you didn't fuck him."

"Fuck who?"

"The bloke that prompted our divorce, Shea. What I caught you doing, you were fully clothed, on your knees—"

"Let's not with the visual—"

"I live with it, so you're going to shut the fuck up and live with it, too," snapped Dean. "Why weren't you getting off? That's my question."

"I already told you." Seamus huffed, "Cheating on you was one of two options I had for divorce. It was that or separate, and you wouldn't leave our house. Cheating on you was a technicality. It wasn't something I enjoyed doing, I wasn't going to bend over for some bloke I met on Grindr, I just wanted our marriage to end so I wouldn't watch you fall apart day after day."

"Okay. I believe you."

"Good. Now get out of my car."

"One more thing."

"Yes?"

"When I tried to kill myself, I'd left my phone on. Spotify was playing my 'liked' songs or whatever, because dying in a silent flat would've been too pathetic. I wanted noise, and halfway through the vodka bottle our wedding song came on. That's why I vomited everything up, Shea; I remembered how happy I was to marry you. It was the first time that happiness had felt tangible in years. Then I phoned Hermione and she got me to hospital and so on … But when you look at what happened, you weren't the one who pushed me there. You brought me back from it."

Seamus clenched his jaw and stared out the windshield.

"I need you to get out of my car so I can process this alone."

"Shea—"

"Alone, Dean."

"But—"

"Then I will go home." He swallowed thickly before saying, "Please apologise to your fiancé for my abrupt departure."

"No," Dean insisted, "Blaise is excited to cook for you."

"Then you should've saved the bit about your suicide for another time." Seamus leaned across Dean, grabbed the handle, and tossed the door open. "Please, for once, listen to me when I ask you to leave."

Dean felt that like a punch to the stomach, but he did as Seamus asked. He walked back into the house feeling like he'd lost his husband all over again. Of all the ways he believed this could end, Dean never considered this. Blaise brought Scorpius into the snug not thirty seconds later, as though he'd been watching the camera in the drive. He breezed past Dean, out the front door, and sat in the passenger seat of the Range Rover for several minutes. Dean watched Scorpius spin around in one of Blaise's swivel chairs. He pulled his legs in tight and spun until the momentum stopped.

"Scorpius, you will need to say hello to Seamus another time." Blaise's voice surprised Dean, who hadn't heard him come through the door. "He needs to go home. Will you head to the kitchen and set out plates for three?"

"Okay!"

That little boy zoomed into the kitchen faster than Dean would have thought possible. His heart ached because he finally understood Seamus's intent with their divorce. It made so much sense; far more sense than the unnecessary shame Dean had harbored for three years. Dean looked out the window to see the back of Seamus's car pull through the gate.

"He's gone."

"When I suggested you invite him to lunch, it was to provide him the opportunity to share his perspective on your divorce. It was not so you could tell him about your suicide attempt. You have no idea what that does to a man, Dean. To know you have driven someone to that point—"

"It came up in conversation. He asked it of me."

"Then you circumvent the topic! Finnegan saw you for the first time in two-and-a-half years, and you think it appropriate to tell him you nearly died? I know how that feels. Draco tried to kill himself and I felt it was my fault."

"It wasn't."

"It felt like my fault. You have no idea how difficult it was to cope. I skipped Bastien's wedding because of the grief. I could hardly get out of bed for a month. That was the man I loved. The only man I had ever loved, Dean, and he didn't have anything to live for. I nearly took his life from him."

"Draco doesn't see it that way."

"But I feel it."

Dean placed his hands on Blaise's shoulders and said, "Seamus will come around. When he does, he'll see that I was loved by him enough in my twenties to have the confidence that I can love you the way you deserve for the rest of our lives. I love you enough to join your family and make it my own, and I want to thank you for bringing Shea back to me."

"I didn't want to marry you if you were still so broken. Scorpius has helped me to heal all the wounds caused by my family. You needed Finnegan to heal yours."

"I sense that your anger is less about my honesty," replied Dean, "and more about the meal you cooked for my ex-husband which he will no longer get to eat."

Blaise's voice was soft when he asked, "Do you promise that he will recover?"

"I know Shea better than anyone, so I know he will process this quickly and perhaps we can rebuild what we once had together."

"Good."

Dean agreed, "Good."

"Then I want to invite him to our wedding."