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It didn't take long for Seamus. In a weird way, it’s like he knew he'd been waiting for Dean all his life, like the moment he met him his soul sighed in recognition. Even at twelve, he's sure that Dean is the one, but that doesn't mean Dean feels the same way.
And he doesn't.
For five years, Seamus watches his best friend and the love of his life pursue girl after girl, always wondering why it never works out and never once noticing how Seamus jumps at the slightest contact, how his heart leaps into his throat at Dean's proximity. He never sees, and Seamus never tells.
When they're fifteen, they're invited to Lavender and Parvati's parabatai ceremony. It goes off without a hitch, and afterwards, Seamus is in the middle of snatching another glass of champagne when Dean pulls him aside into an unoccupied room. The Brown Manor is massive, and there’s no shortage of hosting space. The girls had invited half of Idris to celebrate their union and more than a few of the side rooms have been claimed by Shadowhunters hoping to get lucky, so even though he knows that Dean’s intentions are entirely pure, he can’t help but wish for something more.
The look on Dean’s face when he turns to face Seamus is nothing less than a full-on beam. He’s absolutely confident, something Seamus’s always thought suited him, though he can’t tell how much of it is genuine and how much is alcohol-induced.
“So I’ve been thinking,” Dean says, swishing his glass of wine.
Seamus waits. “About?”
“I think…” he drawls, and something about his expression makes a pit drop in Seamus’s stomach, “...you and me should be parabatai.”
Despite his foreboding, Seamus cannot wrest his features into neutrality fast enough to fool Dean, who’s watching his face expectantly. All at once, Dean’s good humor disappears, replaced by surprise and a growing sense of embarrassment.
“Dean,” Seamus starts, not knowing what to say but desperate to salvage this before it ruins them.
“You don’t want to,” his friend realizes, a little too loudly.
“No--I mean, I--we-- shit .” Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. What the hell could he possibly say? The truth? Dean would never speak to him again. And even if he did, it would do irreparable damage to their friendship. He wouldn’t look at him the same.
“Is there someone else?”
“You know there’s not,” he whispers.
“So it’s me.” And Seamus is horrified to see the surge of embarrassment being overshadowed by anger, directed at everything and nothing all at once. It has no real purpose other than to save Dean’s pride. Without an outlet, it just burns.
“ No, god, it’s not--”
“Then what? You said you wanted one, before. I remember.” It had been ages ago, when they’d barely met. Seamus hadn’t yet known what Dean would be to him. How could he explain that there wasn’t anyone else he’d want as a parabatai? That Dean occupied that possibility entirely, even though it was impossible? That even though Seamus was in love with him, he’d never been able to entertain the thought of having someone else?
He couldn’t.
So he says, “I changed my mind.”
Dean snorts, though the sound holds no humor. Carefully, like he’s trying not to break it, he sets his glass down on the table next to him. “You’ve always been a terrible liar.” He doesn’t look at Seamus when he leaves, and Seamus does not follow him.
Instead, he shatters the glass in his hand, and punches the armoire next to him so hard that the face splinters into a thousand pieces.
He’s not sure how long he stays there. Long enough for the party to wind down, and long enough for someone to stumble upon his mess. The door slams open and a couple stumbles in, laughing and clinging to each other like their lives depend on it, so absorbed in each other that they don’t even notice Seamus is there. The awkwardness of it is enough to break his reverie at last, and he clears his throat just as the pair reach the middle of the room.
“Oh!” Lavender Brown disengages from a boy Seamus recognizes from the academy, acknowledging Seamus without really seeing him. “Looks like this room is occupied.” She pushes the guy back to the door, and only at the last second does she turn back. This time, she sees him, sees the broken armoire and the blood dripping from his hands, and it takes her only a moment to send her “friend” away and pull out a stele.
She scrawls an iratze on his forearm and immediately the wounds begin to heal. “This one’s gonna scar, you know,” she says, indicating the hand that had broken his champagne glass. He hadn’t even realized it was hurt. “You should’ve gotten to it sooner.”
“I know,” he sighs. “I’m sorry about the mess. I’ll take care of it, you should get back to your party.”
She snorts. “Nobody uses this room anyway. And the party’s half-dead.” Lavender flops down onto the couch, stretching out across its full length. “So tell me what happened.”
“It was nothing--”
“Is it Dean? I saw him storm out a while ago.”
What is it with women and their all-knowing bullshit? “...yeah, it is.”
She regards him for a moment. “Are you in love with him?”
If he’d been drinking, he would’ve done a spit take. He hasn’t told anyone how he feels, least of all Lavender Brown. He splutters, completely at a loss for how to respond.
“ I knew it. Oh my god, did you tell him?” She gasps, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. “Did he reject you?”
“No! I--how the hell did you know? That I like him, I mean.”
“It was mostly a guess.” She smiles, far too pleased with herself.
Sometimes he really regrets being friends with her. Oh how he wishes Parvati--or anyone--would appear to save him from this conversation. “Mostly?” he asks.
She glances away. “Well, yeah. I knew you weren’t into girls, but I also knew you’d never been with a guy, so I put two and two together.”
Everything about this is giving him a headache. “How could you possibly know I’m not into girls if I haven’t dated anyone?”
This time, she rolls her eyes. “Give me some credit. I’ve kissed a lot of guys, Seamus, and I know what it feels like when they’re even slightly interested. There’s a reason it only happened once.”
He can’t help it--he winces. The last thing he needs right now is to be reminded that his love life consists entirely of one kiss when he was twelve, and with a girl at that. It’s pathetic to even think about. All this time spent pining after Dean who is, most likely, completely straight, and he has nothing to show for it.
Lavender stands and approaches him cautiously, like he’s a wounded animal ready to run at any moment. “So he didn’t reject you?”
“I didn’t tell him. He...asked me to be his parabatai.”
She groans, “Oh god. That’s rough.”
“Tell me about it,” he laughs, but the sound is hollow.
She regards him for a moment before grabbing his hand and leading him to the door. “C’mon, there’s this half-Fey guy out here I think you’ll like.”
“Lav…”
“Shut up. It’s my special day and I say you have to dance.”
He protests all the way to the great room, while she pretends not to hear him. He’s not in a partying mood, and has every intention of leaving once she turns her back, but she leads him right up to the faerie boy, whose eyes shine in the dim light and…
Well, maybe Seamus can stay a little longer.
Dean is in the middle of studying for his Chthonian exam when Seamus comes in, stumbling and giggling and rumpled. His hair is sticking up in odd directions, his clothes awkwardly shifted, his lips red. It’s obvious where he’s been; Dean tries to ignore the surge of...something that rises in his chest.
Dean watches him strip off his shirt and flop face-down onto his bed. He considers not saying anything.
“How’s Aedion?”
Seamus hums, turning over so he can see him. “Good.” He grins, seeing something other than their room. “How’s Ginny?”
“Good,” he lies. They’d fought twice today. “You smell.”
“Like booze?”
Like booze, and flowers, and Faerie. “Yeah.”
“Sorry.” But he isn’t, not at all. He’s way too smug to be apologetic, too inebriated. But Dean’s been wanting to ask him something for a while, and he’ll probably get the most honest answer if he asks now. He glances over at Seamus, who’s drifting off on top of the covers, and clears his throat. “Why didn’t you tell me you were into dudes?” He hopes it doesn’t sound accusing; he certainly doesn’t intend it to.
Seamus’s eyes open, staring at the ceiling. He says nothing.
“Not that you’re like, obligated to or anything. I’m just...curious.” Stupid. He shouldn’t have asked.
Seamus sighs. “I just thought it would make things weird. Because we live together and everything.” He hesitates but does not continue.
Dean lets out a breath, relieved. “I mean, it’s not like you’re into me. There’s nothing weird about it.”
“Right.” Seamus turns over to face the wall. “Get the lights? My head hurts.”
“Sure,” Dean laughs. “You really shouldn’t drink so much the night before an exam. There’s no way you’ll pass.”
Seamus groans, “Okay mom .” And Dean turns out the light, trying to shake away the weight in his chest that tells him they’re both leaving things unsaid.
Dean is in the middle of hacking apart a Mantid demon when he learns. Parvati had joined him at the start of the exercise, snaking over to him while the rest of the class focused on their summoned demons. It isn’t uncommon, exactly--she and Lavender are always worming their way into people’s personal space--but something about her expression sets him on edge.
He leaps back when the demon makes a grab at him, swinging his naginata down hard through its foreleg. The thing cries out, enraged, and Parvati uses the distraction to gouge a deep furrow of chitin out of its back. In another moment, the demon is gone, leaving behind the familiar stench of ichor. Parvati hums, wiping her chakrams off on her pants, and Dean glances at the rest of the auditorium. They’re the first to finish.
“Well, that was fun,” she says, drawing his attention. Without missing a beat, or even attempting to preface her next statement, she asks, “What do you think of Aedion?” and Dean balks.
“He’s fine.” When she looks unsatisfied, he huffs, “Did you come over here just to ask me that?”
She grins. “You haven’t met him, have you?”
He rolls his eyes. “No.”
“You probably wouldn’t like him.”
Dean flounders. Seamus didn’t talk about his...boyfriend?...much, and Dean didn’t ask. It’s not that he’s against it or anything--he’s no bigot--it’s just not a thing that they talk about. In the entire time Dean was with Ginny, Seamus only mentioned her a handful of times. Guys just don’t talk about that stuff.
Undeterred by his silence, Parvati trudges on. “He’s not my favorite person either, but Lav likes him well enough. Probably good that Seamus finally moved on, too.”
That gets his attention. “What do you mean?”
She looks at him incredulously. “Come on, don’t play dumb.” At his expression of complete and utter dumbness, her eyes go wide. “Wow. You really didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
Eyes darting to where Seamus and Lavender stand, Parvati takes two steps into Dean’s space, tugging at his sleeve when he instinctively tries to scoot away. She bites her lip, still staring across the room, and Dean starts to worry, what with the conflicted look on her face, if she’s going to leave him hanging after all.
Suddenly, she faces him again, mind made up, and speaks in a hushed whisper. “Look, you didn’t hear it from me,” she says, the murderous glint in her gaze daring him to oust her, “but Seamus has had a crush on you for, like, years--” and Dean stops listening.
Stops hearing, really, because there’s a ringing pounding around his skull and he thinks he might be having a heart attack. Seamus likes him? Liked him? His first instinct is to reject the notion outright; he would know if his best friend had feelings for him.
Then again, shouldn’t he have noticed that Seamus is gay? If something as big as that could slip under his radar, something as small as a crush definitely wouldn’t have crossed his mind. His brain jumps into overdrive, providing memory after memory of Seamus acting just strange enough to pique Dean’s notice, a hundred little instances that Dean had written off as one thing or another but which, when seen altogether, made for the simplest and most obvious conclusion: Seamus liked him.
The memory of that awful night at Brown manor rises unbidden, leaving Dean sick to his stomach. Of course Seamus had reacted the way he did, of course he couldn’t say yes. God , Dean was so stupid. How had he not known?
Parvati’s voice cuts back into his reverie, and he realizes she’s been talking throughout his crisis.
“--means he’s just a rebound pretty much, so it definitely won’t last. And honestly I always thought you kinda liked him back, but I guess not--”
The instructor’s whistle blows, signaling the end of class and saving Dean from having to confront that particular topic. He’s the first out of the room, leaving Parvati in the middle of her spiel, and the first to the dorms where he takes the quickest shower of his life before falling into bed. It’s barely dusk when Seamus eventually makes his way back to their room, but Dean feigns sleep well enough that his friend doesn’t try to wake him for dinner. Instead, he changes out of his gear as quietly as he can and turns the lights off on his way out, leaving Dean staring into the darkness, wondering why his heart had yet to calm down and why Parvati’s second statement was the only one echoing in the empty room.
When Dean first arrived at the academy, he filled countless pages with sketches of runes. At first they were rough, made with too-small utensils, always curling too much or too little or in the wrong places altogether. But once he got his hands on a decent piece of charcoal, the shapes became fluid and right , flowing from his hand like he’d been drawing them his whole life.
In time, the runes moved from the paper to his skin. Dean traces the voyance rune on his left hand idly, comparing it to the ones he’d put in his books. Drawn by the Silent Brothers, it is textbook perfection, while his own are noticeably his. He flips through the pages, transitioning slowly from rune-centric to sketches of his friends and the academy: Seamus polishing his kindjal; Ginny laughing over dinner; Harry and Ron sparring, grinning at each other; Lavender and Parvati, surrounded by heavenly fire.
After that, the runes come back alongside the pictures, drawn lightly in the margins of every page. Many of them are the more complicated ones, like True North and Familias, which take time to perfect. But past them are sheets and sheets of nothing but the parabatai rune, and Seamus. Always Seamus.
Looking at them now leaves Dean tense. His drawings are like a diary, revealing his thoughts as plainly as words, and so much has changed since then. The thought of Seamus as his parabatai feels fundamentally wrong now, though it had seemed so obvious before. He tells himself it’s because of Seamus’s rejection, and turns to the next page.
The parabatai rune isn’t seen again. The focus changes to Ginny and her wildfire hair, painting the book with color, though those too cease. It goes back to random runes, and then a page of just one: Wedded Union, drawn absentmindedly in the corner. And below it, an unfinished portrait of sandy hair and freckles that he’d know anywhere.
He slams the book shut.
In the months that follow, Dean has a lot of time to think. He doesn’t get the chance to say goodbye before everything goes to shit, and even if he had, he’s not sure what he would’ve said.
He’s always known that Seamus is important to him, that given the choice, he’d rather be with him than anyone else. It took him far too long to realize what that meant, who Seamus really is to him. Even now, he has trouble putting it into words. Dean misses his friend more than anything in the world; being on the run means that he goes weeks without speaking to another human, let alone another shadowhunter, and he’d give anything to see a familiar face.
In a roundabout way, his wish is granted. He’s captured by Voldemort’s followers and taken to the Malfoy’s current institute. They lock him up, along with Griphook, Olivander, and Luna Lovegood. He’d never been particularly close with Luna, aside from training with her under Harry’s tutelage, but he can’t help the sense of complete relief that comes over him at the sight of her messy hair and distant gaze. If it weren’t for her disheveled appearance, he’d never know she’s been imprisoned; something about her is so warmly consistent that it takes him straight back to the Academy, back to his first time using a stele, his first time naming a seraph blade and feeling it come to life in his hand.
She talks with him sometimes, late at night when the others are asleep. She always happens to be awake whenever he needs her to be; he never has to broach a subject first because she knows, every time, exactly what he needs to talk about in order to rest.
“Do you miss Seamus?” she asks out of the blue. He startles, looking up to find that she’s been watching him for some time. Her eyes go straight through him, and even though she asked, it seems like she already knows the answer.
“Yes,” he whispers, conscious of the others sleeping nearby.
“Do you love him?”
His hands tremble from the damp cold, every sound putting him on edge, but he feels safe under Luna’s gaze. “Yes,” he says, and the cold melts away.
Dean stumbles through Olivander’s portal, barely making it through before the warlock collapses on the other side. It disappears with a sigh, leaving Dean kneeling in the last of the evening sun. His fingers dig into the grass at his sides while he draws in a deep breath. It’s been a year since he last saw the shadowhunter homeland, and despite everything, it’s even more beautiful than he remembers.
“We should get going,” Luna says, standing patiently by him. “It may take a while to sneak into the city, especially without steles.”
“Right, let’s go then.” They start off towards Alicante, gleaming across the Imperishable Fields. The trek is long, and by the time they reach the city it’s pitch-black out. They avoid Voldemort’s patrols easily, slipping down alleyways and over walls until they reach the academy, standing like a fortress in the night.
Almost like the academy wants them there, they maneuver down the halls entirely unnoticed. Luna pulls a crumpled paper from her pocket. “Their message said to meet in the south wing, but not exactly where.”
Dean frowns. “Didn’t Fred and George blow up the south wing?”
“Yes,” she says cheerily, and he sighs.
The south wing, they find, has seen minimal repairs in the last two years. Most of the walls are standing, but the rest is in varying states of disarray.
“It’s deserted.” Just as he says it, a girl who looks no more than twelve appears at the end of the hall. Dean tenses, reaching for weapons he no longer has. The girl stares at them a long time, and he prays she won’t reveal them to Snape.
After an eternity, the girl waves them forward and disappears through a hole in the rubble. Dean and Luna follow close behind, re-covering the entrance as they pass. Inside, they find themselves in a large room filled with students sharpening blades and applying runes. They’re all wearing gear, and Dean feels naked in his borrowed clothes.
Luna grins and skips into the crowd, hugging Ginny close. Dean glances away, a lingering awkwardness flooding through him. He’s over Ginny, truly, but there’s still something weird about seeing your ex, even with a battle on the horizon. Besides, there’s only one person he really wants to see right now.
“Dean!” someone calls, and his heart skips a beat. He turns just in time for his friend to throw himself into his chest, nearly sending them both to the floor. He laughs, almost giddy with joy, and clutches Seamus close.
Dean whispers his name, accidentally reverent, and buries his face in Seamus’s shoulder, pretending not to feel his shiver. Seamus pulls away first, giving Dean his first proper look at him in nearly a year.
“Jesus, what happened to your face?” he gasps.
Seamus rolls his eyes. “Thanks for that.” Dean takes his head in his hands, tilting it in order to better examine the damage. Seamus’s eyes are both black, his cheeks puffy and lip split open. “They like to rough us up a bit, the Carrows. Makes ‘em think they’re crushing our spirits or something.”
Dean’s hands tremble with red-hot rage. He grinds his teeth to keep himself quiet--he’s sure a detailed explanation of how much he wants to rip the Carrows limb from limb isn’t the ideal confession--and reaches for the stele in Seamus’s belt, raising a brow as he does so.
Seamus explains, “We’re not supposed to have steles, so it’d be pretty damning if my scrapes healed up overnight. ‘Sides, I think I look pretty good like this.”
Dean smiles, his anger fading. You look good all the time , he thinks, tracing an iratze on Seamus’s neck. Immediately, the swelling goes down, his bruises fading from dark purple to yellow in seconds. Satisfied, Dean returns the stele, says “I think I like you better like this,” and watches a blush flood his friend’s cheeks.
They find him gear and seraph blades, Ginny even managing to procure him a naginata. He and Seamus catch up while they prepare, and Dean feels better than he has in months, like part of him only lives in Seamus’s presence. His hands brush Dean’s skin when he applies his runes, raising goosebumps in their wake and leaving Dean’s heart racing. He wants to tell him but the words stick in his throat.
“How’s Aedion?” he asks instead, cringing before the sentence is even finished.
Seamus looks at him strangely. “We broke up.”
“Right,” he says, triumphant, then corrects himself. “Sorry, I mean.”
“It was mutual,” Seamus says, and they move on to safer topics. All the while, Dean can’t stop watching him; over the last few months, Seamus filled out, finally shedding the last of the childish roundness from his features, though he hasn’t grown any taller. It’s endearing, that even though so much has changed, a lot has stayed just the way he left it.
He chews on the words, trying to find the right moment, the right way to tell his best friend that he’s in love with him, has probably always been a little in love with him, and always will be. At one point, they run into Lavender and Parvati, who gives him two encouraging thumbs up.
He flips her off.
They’re given their assignments, Dean at one end of the academy and Seamus at the other, and he’s grateful; right now, he doesn’t think he’d be able to fight without constantly checking to make sure Seamus is okay. A blessing and a curse.
Seamus hugs him, a little too tight and a little too long, and Dean hugs him back. Please, he thinks, not entirely sure what he’s asking for. For Seamus to still love him? For them both to survive this? For them to win? He doesn’t know. Please.
“Seamus, I have to tell you something.” He pulls back enough to look Seamus in the eye, keeping his arms around him. He swallows. “I--I didn’t know how you felt back then, and I’m sorry for not noticing. It took me a long time to see you--to really see you--and even longer to see myself. And how I felt about you.” He takes a deep breath. “You’re my best friend. You always will be. But I need you to know that I--”
Seamus presses his hand over Dean’s mouth, silencing him. His eyes are glassy, staring up at Dean with an unreadable expression. “Don’t,” he whispers, and Dean panics.
“Don’t you dare say that like you think we’re about to die.” A tear spills over. He shakes his head. “I’ve waited so long and you are not allowed to ruin this for me.”
Beneath his hand, Dean smiles, eyes softening. He pulls Seamus’s hand away only to bring it back, pressing a kiss to his palm, where a kindjal will rest in no time at all. “Okay.”
Seamus exhales shakily. “Dick,” he admonishes, and Dean laughs.
After, when the last of the demons have gone and Voldemort lies dead, Dean lets himself think about Seamus, to wonder if he’s alright. He goes looking for him, refusing to search the growing lines of the deceased, but Seamus finds him first.
They lock eyes across the mess hall, the tension they’ve been holding melting away. Seamus breaks into a sprint, and Dean has just enough time to drop his weapons before Seamus is kissing him. His brain short-circuiting, Dean forgets everything outside the circle of his arms, pressing impossibly closer to the love of his life, realizing as he does so that this is the first day of his forever.
“I love you too,” Seamus gasps. “I love you too.”
And Dean kisses him again.