Work Text:
Seamus has never been very good at being careful. His clothes rip too easily, his shirts are perpetually untucked and his potions have always been a little on the explosive side. He’s too impulsive. He moves too quickly and lets his mouth run away with him - it’s why he never quite made the quidditch team in spite of his enthusiasm, and it’s why some of the scars will never fade.
With Dean it’s different. Dean doesn’t look like the kind of boy you need to be careful with. He’s a head taller than Seamus and his shoulders are broad, defined; growing up in London has given him a walk not to be messed with, and when he needs to, he steps into the background and lets the chaos pass him by. Seamus has seen him do it, keeping the peace in the Gryffindor common room, escaping trouble so Seamus would be stuck in detention all by himself again, rolling his eyes at Dean’s apologetic wince of empathy. The war changed them, though. Seamus looks in the mirror and does a double take at the face staring back at him even now, a year on, a world away from Hogwarts in their tiny flat, hidden in the bustle of the city, and Dean disappears too easily. Seamus thinks that maybe he got too good at running away, in the end.
The walls in their flat are paper thin, but it’s nice, normally. After six years together, a year apart is something Seamus never wants to repeat again, and the sounds of Dean moving around in the kitchen, the scratch of his pencil dancing across sketchbooks in the living room, the muffled noises as he rolls over in his sleep, just a wall between their two beds, are a comfort. It means they both hear it when one of them wakes up screaming or choking for air, and it’s a short walk, just a few, bare-foot steps from one room to another, until their two separate bedrooms feel more like one, shared and with an inconvenient wall splitting them down the middle. This is how Seamus learns to be careful: pushing Dean’s door open slowly and padding towards him, a mirror of Dean slipping into his room the night before. He crawls into Dean’s bed to make sure Dean isn’t going to disappear on him again, curls around him even though he’s always been too short to be the big spoon.
“Man up, Thomas,” he says as Dean rolls over to face him, blinking through the gloom, shadows thrown over his face and masking his eyes. They’re stupid words, a throwback to challenges and competitions back in their dormitory; Seamus is clinging more than he’d like to admit. Not very manly, but they’re past that point anyway.
“Piss off,” Dean mutters, but he moves in closer. His thumb is warm as he traces it over the jagged scar cutting across Seamus’ cheek. “You know I’m man enough.” He’s smiling faintly, but his eyes are still dark.
Seamus attempts a leer, weaker than usual. He softens. “Bad dreams?”
“I’m tired of them,” Dean says, because the yes goes without saying, and he even sounds tired, and Seamus knows how he feels. Sleep is never refreshing when it’s broken up with flashes of dead friends and what might have been.
“They’ll pass,” Seamus says, although he doubts this himself most nights, when it’s him shaking awake in the dark. Dean’s always been the voice of reason. He’ll take his turn now if that’s what will help. “Dunno when, mind,” he adds, and Dean laughs. It’s a shaky laugh, but that’s the other thing Seamus does, jokes around and draws out smiles even though now he has to be more careful about it sometimes.
“S’alright,” Dean says. He wraps an arm around Seamus’ waist. He folds a hand around the jut of Seamus’ hipbone and even now, the large, hot spread of Dean’s fingers across his skin makes him shiver. “Could be worse.”
Seamus closes his eyes, because he has to be careful not to think about that, too. He closes them for longer than he thinks; when he opens them again, he’s rolled over, Dean spooned up against his back this time. “Yeah,” he says belatedly, struggling to keep the conversation going.
“What?” Dean says, breath skating across the back of Seamus’ neck, ruffling his hair. He sounds sleepier than he did before. His voice goes lower, rougher and scratchier. It makes Seamus smile every time. “Oh. Yeah. Go to sleep.”
“'Kay,” Seamus says. He closes his eyes again, Dean a solid, distinct presence along his back, and curls his fingers loosely around Dean’s wrist, careful to keep holding on.