Stripped to Skeletons
Title: Stripped to Skeletons
Author: l3petitemort
Pairing: Seamus/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2725
Warnings: Angst, nonexplicit mentions of violence, rough(ish) sex, rimming, naughty words
Summary: Seamus used to be beautiful.
Disclaimers: I own nothing. I'm just poor and depraved.
Notes: I wrote this for the fabulous a_shadow_there (*waves*) for hpvalensmut this year. The incomparable wwmrsweasleydo was my beta, and she oh-so-gently reminded me of the wide variety of punctuation marks available to me and made this much more palatable! So thank you, my dear.
The painting mentioned is The Pink Boy by Thomas Gainsborough. If you're curious, you can see it here.
Stripped to Skeletons
Seamus used to be beautiful.
When the Battle is over and the dead are counted; when there is a thick and suffocating silence over the grounds, when the sleepless pace the castle like Inferi, Dean searches the planes of his face for something familiar.
He remembers Seamus as Gainsborough's Pink Boy, smooth and delicate with skin like fruit-flesh. Like a girl, Ron teased. Like a girl. But that never bothered Dean, because there was art in Seamus's face and its pretty proportions and long eyelashes.
There still is, but now he's more Picasso than anything: mangled and chaotic, skin the colour of broken capillaries with a scar cutting his mouth in two. His features are rearranged. He sleeps, somehow, his sandy head lolling against Dean's aching thigh on the floor of the common room that Dean hasn't seen in almost a year. He sleeps, but he can't relax, even in his dreams, because his muscles leap around like a Crucio victim's and his broken mouth scowls and screams with no sound.
Dean doesn't know whether to soothe him or wake him; to brush his hair back or be still.
Once, this decision would have been easy. Once, Seamus was his to touch whenever the desire moved him, and he would peel him like something succulent - robes, t-shirt, denims, shorts - until he was a bare and lovely plane of freckles and rosy nipples and angles. Now, curled half on the cold floor and half on Dean's lap, his wand still tight in his busted-knuckle fist, he is gritty and gnarled and stony, and Dean doesn't know who he belongs to anymore.
He is even less sure when he threads his fingers tentatively through Seamus's dirty, blood-matted hair, and without startling awake, Seamus slaps his hand away and cringes.
Dean thinks about crying. He even tries for a second, just to see if he can, but there's nothing left. His eyes are ash-stung and dusty, and his body with its battered ribs knows better than to shake.
_______________
Morning comes, and it's no different from night.
Some of the night-wanderers have dropped off, and those who slept - or pretended to, or tried to, or did neither - have taken their places. There are some whispers now, spells to repair eyeglasses and staunch stubborn bleeding, but no conversation. Not really.
Seamus wakes in silence and doesn't even yawn, just stares up into Dean's face with muddy-ringed eyes like he's trying to think of something to say.
Dean doesn't know this Seamus: the voiceless one with tight lips and heavy shoulders. He doesn't know what to say to him. They're alone, alive, together - finally - and neither of them can force it to matter as much as it should. Not when there are bodies on the tables in the Great Hall instead of puddings and blood like macabre graffiti on the walls.
Seamus tries to sit up, but his muscles are traitorous. He reminds Dean of his grandfather, struggling against himself to move. Dean thinks of Seamus's left heel - the one he shattered when he was six, leaping out of his bedroom window; the one his mum mended the best she could but that still howls when the pressure changes; the one with the funny bump - and reaches out to help. It's a reflex. He doesn't mean it. He doesn't think about it, and if he had thought, he wouldn't have done it.
Seamus's eyes are hard. When he pushes Dean away this time, he is conscious. The ferocity in him is still burning; the defiance that has always rushed through his veins is still there. It's a comfort, if only a small one, to see that there are some things inside of him unchanged. It's almost a relief to see his savage pride.
Seamus hobbles to his feet, using the scrubby cushion of the chair for support. He's barefoot and grimy, and his balance is off. He heads for the bathroom without speaking. He limps. Dean wonders, now, if he will always limp.
Seamus disappears behind the door, and Dean finally cries.
_______________
Seamus doesn't come out.
Dean's tears are long gone and his leg has long gone cold, but Seamus is still inside. Dean is afraid to go look for him. He thinks, after all that he has lived through - after all that Seamus has lived through, things Dean cannot even begin yet to fathom - that what is behind that door might be the most frightening part of it all.
But Dean is a Lion, so he fights back the terror that should have passed by now and rises to his feet. The pain is immediate and unyielding, but he muddles through it. He's gotten used to the muddling-through; he has lived the past nine months just muddling through, surviving, waiting for the worst to be over. He isn't sure if it is yet.
To his surprise, he finds the door unlocked and the floor soaking wet. Seamus is curled into a ball in the center of it, stark naked and mostly dry, gripping his knees and shaking. Dean draws a breath that sticks in his chest like a fist punched clear through.
Seamus's body is a war-zone of its own. Dean hadn't known, hadn't been able to guess from his face. It's like a grotesque canvas, smeared in the shades of pain: purples, greens, yellows, and browns. It's sliced through with wounds that have healed over poorly, without magic and without competent tending.
The first word Dean says after hours of silence is one he hasn't dared speak aloud in close to a year: "Shay."
He's surprised at the clarity of his voice; surprised it doesn't break and crumble to ash on his lips. Seamus doesn't look up.
"Shay," he says again, and takes a brave step forward. Seamus doesn't move.
Two more steps, and Dean is crouching at his side - his knees protest, and his back, and the blades of his shoulders - whispering it again and again and again. "Shay, Shay, Shay," and Seamus just shakes and doesn't look up. He isn't crying, and maybe he will never cry again, tears just one of things he has lost in the War.
He doesn’t cry, and he doesn't fight - not really, just a token shoulder-jab and a dagger-glare - but he doesn't help, either. Dean has to do all the work. Seamus isn't heavy; he's gotten skinny and wiry, sharp bones and jutting ribs, but it's all dead weight until he's on his ruined-looking feet.
They work, but just barely.
_______________
Dean strips himself down and tosses his clothes into the pile Seamus has made on the floor. They hobble into the shower.
Dean half-smiles against Seamus's arm when he thinks, absurdly, that this is how it is going to be when they are old. The smile implodes, crashes down on itself when he realizes that they are old now. They're eighteen years old, and they are veterans; they are the new Mad-Eye Moodys, mangled and scarred and missing pieces that magic can't ever replace.
The water feels good. It feels stinging-clean-good, like sterile needles and peroxide and the final yank on a scab. Seamus huddles against the tile wall and won’t look Dean in the eye. He swats at the flannel, but Dean insists. That is, he insists until Seamus grabs it from his hands with surprising strength and washes himself with a vicious thoroughness. It goes on for a long time, washing and re-soaping and washing and re-soaping and washing and re-soaping. There are things he can't rinse off, and he finally pounds his fist against the wall and throws the sopping flannel over the top of the curtain with a growl.
"Shay…" Dean starts, but then Seamus's fists interrupt him, pounding hard against his chest.
Dean lets him, even though it hurts.
_______________
They still haven't spoken, not more than that one word, when they climb into bed. It's Dean's old bed, and it still smells the same. Dean realizes after a moment that it smells the same because it smells like Seamus: warm earth, mellow soap, and sex.
Seamus has been sleeping in his bed.
They're in the middle of an angry kiss that Seamus initiates - too much teeth, tongues sharp and bloody like swords, smashed-lips and spit - when Seamus pulls back, his eyes frantic, and gropes wildly for his wand. Dean has placed it on the bedside table.
Dean is startled more than anything when Seamus whips it around and holds it to his throat. "What the fuck?" Dean asks, his heart pounding but not with fear - no, not precisely; there's maybe a little fear, but it's mostly confusion and arousal and dismay - and shrinks backward.
"I killed someone," Seamus says.
Dean just stares.
"I killed someone. Yesterday." He's in control for now, but there is something creeping up his throat, edging towards manic. The wand in his hand isn't steady.
"What?"
"I killed him. Tall fuck, in the corridor. He… he had Luna backed into the wall. And…"
Dean cuts him off. "I'm not afraid of you." He doesn't know where the words come from, but they rush out of him too fast, and he has to say them again so that he can hear himself clearly. "I'm not afraid of you."
"No? Maybe you should be." Seamus is shaking in earnest now, his features taut like a strung bow.
"No. Never."
Seamus pushes the wand against his throat harder, but Dean pushes back, and suddenly they are kissing again, and it's more violent even than before. He doesn't know where Seamus's strength is coming from - maybe from the surging horror inside of him - but it's there in all of its former glory: that hard, tight, sinewy strength that is so Seamus. They're kissing, and the wand is against his belly now, and Seamus's other hand is in his hair pulling and pulling and pulling.
It's quick and dirty and hard. Seamus flips him onto his stomach and bites all the way down his back, movement stilted but swift: no grace, all possession. Underneath him, Dean writhes and struggles, just to make Seamus bite harder, push harder, be harder.
They're both hard in less than a minute, and Dean can feel Seamus's cock drag along his spine, feel his bony, disjointed knees against his sides as he crawls over him like a predator. It hurts - they're both nothing but bruises and pain and scraped-raw nerves - but it's that good, clean hurt again, that I'm alive hurt, so Dean arches up to meet him, grunting at the weight he has to put on his wrists.
Seamus pushes between his shoulder blades suddenly; he pushes so hard it's like a blow, and Dean's face meets the pillow with a dull thud. He throws his head sideways to breathe, and he feels Seamus's mouth, warm and sloppy with trails of spit across his neck, and then his tongue is in his ear. The whisper is wet and urgent, and it's just Dean and mine and you and mine and mine and mine and mine.
And it has been so long since Dean has been able to say yes to ownership, to anything, really. It's been months upon months of second-guessing and nos and not being sure, so he gives himself over with something that feels like relief. He babbles back a mouthful of yeses and yours until Seamus drops his wand, somehow reassured or placated or unguarded, and licks all the way down his back.
Dean knows what's coming when Seamus reaches his tailbone and sucks, and he can feel the drip of his cock against his stomach, trapped between his body and the mattress. It's going to hurt, but first it's going to be gorgeous, and it is.
This is another part of Seamus that hasn't changed - his hot, slippery tongue - and it makes no difference that it slides out between two scarred-up lips, because it's his and he knows what to do with it. He holds Dean apart with two fingers and licks a long, hard stripe, then circles, then another stripe, his now-crooked nose bumping and sliding and breathing humidly against Dean's skin.
Dean bites into the pillow when he feels Seamus fumbling for his wand again, and he grinds his hips down, open and aching. The spell feels familiar and good, and he doesn't even care that Seamus doesn't ask him if he's ready. He is.
He's inside in four halting motions, and then it's a blur. Dean pushes back. Seamus pushes forward. For the first time since coming through the portrait hole, Dean feels like he's really home, really safe - which might be odd, considering Seamus's confession, but it's the truth.
Seamus keeps his grip on the wand this time, more out of being caught-up than being menacing, but it digs against Dean's hip where Seamus grabs him. It's hard and fast and relentless, a constant ache that pulses like a heartbeat. There's nothing gentle about it, but it's good. It's fierce.
Dean can't get him deep enough. He tucks up his knees and arches and pants, and he can feel the juddering bones of Seamus's sharpened hips striking him over and over and over. Out of nowhere, there's something hard at his lips. It's Seamus's wand, pushing insistently against the corner of his mouth. Dean opens up and bites down, his chest swelling with words that can't get out, and the only noise he can make is a low moan against the willow-wood.
It's over too fast. Seamus comes quick and hard, and he pulls out immediately. His coordination isn't what it was, and he slips sideways, spilling hot and thick across Dean's thigh and onto the sheets. Dean ruts frantically against his own palm until Seamus slumps over him and takes over. His hand is bony and callused and as intimate as Dean's own, and Dean takes a strangled breath and comes over his fingers.
Seamus rolls them both sideways and jams his fingers between Dean's lips, knocking the wand aside, and Dean sucks on them, salty with his own come, until they're clean and Seamus's knuckles are hooked over his bottom teeth. They stay like that for a moment, breathing hard and radiating heat, and Seamus runs his fingers all around Dean's mouth like he's looking for something; words or kisses or secrets like treasure.
_______________
There are more secrets now than before.
They lie side by side and stare up at nothing, breathing raggedly, their fingers wet and twined together between them. Seamus has killed; Dean has run; they have both bartered and compromised and promised and lied. The war has stripped them to their skeletons: hardened and strong; bare and broken.
Finally, Seamus speaks. "You left me."
Dean doesn't look at him. "I had to."
"You left me." There's a toxicity to his voice, a desperation.
"For fuck's sake, it wasn't a fucking holiday, Seamus. Do you know… no, you don't. How could you fucking know? You don’t know shite about it."
"I don't know shite? I don't know shite? Did you see what I fucking look like, you fucking cocksucker?! Take a fucking look at me and tell me what I don't know!"
Seamus has hauled himself onto his elbow. He's leaning over Dean, his eyes on fire, his chest heaving, and he looks terrifying and brutal. And beautiful. Beautiful in a hard way now, like sunshine off a knife.
And despite all of it - despite the fact that Dean has sunk his teeth into a wand that ended a life while he was being fucked senseless and didn't care; despite the fact that his body hurts and his heart throbs and his brain bleeds and screams; despite the fact that Seamus is no longer his Pink Boy but a bruised and haunted man - he tells him.
"Shay," he whispers into a face he barely recognizes but loves nonetheless, "you look… you're so beautiful. I'm so sorry."
And he is.
Seamus closes his eyes and stops breathing, like he's been struck from behind, and lets Dean reach up to fit his palm against his cheek. "Beautiful," Dean says again, his thumb brushing the scar that splits Seamus's mouth in half.
Seamus slides down onto the sheets like paint sliding off a canvas, and Dean pulls him close.
Nothing is all right, but everything is better.
Author: l3petitemort
Pairing: Seamus/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2725
Warnings: Angst, nonexplicit mentions of violence, rough(ish) sex, rimming, naughty words
Summary: Seamus used to be beautiful.
Disclaimers: I own nothing. I'm just poor and depraved.
Notes: I wrote this for the fabulous a_shadow_there (*waves*) for hpvalensmut this year. The incomparable wwmrsweasleydo was my beta, and she oh-so-gently reminded me of the wide variety of punctuation marks available to me and made this much more palatable! So thank you, my dear.
The painting mentioned is The Pink Boy by Thomas Gainsborough. If you're curious, you can see it here.
Stripped to Skeletons
Seamus used to be beautiful.
When the Battle is over and the dead are counted; when there is a thick and suffocating silence over the grounds, when the sleepless pace the castle like Inferi, Dean searches the planes of his face for something familiar.
He remembers Seamus as Gainsborough's Pink Boy, smooth and delicate with skin like fruit-flesh. Like a girl, Ron teased. Like a girl. But that never bothered Dean, because there was art in Seamus's face and its pretty proportions and long eyelashes.
There still is, but now he's more Picasso than anything: mangled and chaotic, skin the colour of broken capillaries with a scar cutting his mouth in two. His features are rearranged. He sleeps, somehow, his sandy head lolling against Dean's aching thigh on the floor of the common room that Dean hasn't seen in almost a year. He sleeps, but he can't relax, even in his dreams, because his muscles leap around like a Crucio victim's and his broken mouth scowls and screams with no sound.
Dean doesn't know whether to soothe him or wake him; to brush his hair back or be still.
Once, this decision would have been easy. Once, Seamus was his to touch whenever the desire moved him, and he would peel him like something succulent - robes, t-shirt, denims, shorts - until he was a bare and lovely plane of freckles and rosy nipples and angles. Now, curled half on the cold floor and half on Dean's lap, his wand still tight in his busted-knuckle fist, he is gritty and gnarled and stony, and Dean doesn't know who he belongs to anymore.
He is even less sure when he threads his fingers tentatively through Seamus's dirty, blood-matted hair, and without startling awake, Seamus slaps his hand away and cringes.
Dean thinks about crying. He even tries for a second, just to see if he can, but there's nothing left. His eyes are ash-stung and dusty, and his body with its battered ribs knows better than to shake.
_______________
Morning comes, and it's no different from night.
Some of the night-wanderers have dropped off, and those who slept - or pretended to, or tried to, or did neither - have taken their places. There are some whispers now, spells to repair eyeglasses and staunch stubborn bleeding, but no conversation. Not really.
Seamus wakes in silence and doesn't even yawn, just stares up into Dean's face with muddy-ringed eyes like he's trying to think of something to say.
Dean doesn't know this Seamus: the voiceless one with tight lips and heavy shoulders. He doesn't know what to say to him. They're alone, alive, together - finally - and neither of them can force it to matter as much as it should. Not when there are bodies on the tables in the Great Hall instead of puddings and blood like macabre graffiti on the walls.
Seamus tries to sit up, but his muscles are traitorous. He reminds Dean of his grandfather, struggling against himself to move. Dean thinks of Seamus's left heel - the one he shattered when he was six, leaping out of his bedroom window; the one his mum mended the best she could but that still howls when the pressure changes; the one with the funny bump - and reaches out to help. It's a reflex. He doesn't mean it. He doesn't think about it, and if he had thought, he wouldn't have done it.
Seamus's eyes are hard. When he pushes Dean away this time, he is conscious. The ferocity in him is still burning; the defiance that has always rushed through his veins is still there. It's a comfort, if only a small one, to see that there are some things inside of him unchanged. It's almost a relief to see his savage pride.
Seamus hobbles to his feet, using the scrubby cushion of the chair for support. He's barefoot and grimy, and his balance is off. He heads for the bathroom without speaking. He limps. Dean wonders, now, if he will always limp.
Seamus disappears behind the door, and Dean finally cries.
_______________
Seamus doesn't come out.
Dean's tears are long gone and his leg has long gone cold, but Seamus is still inside. Dean is afraid to go look for him. He thinks, after all that he has lived through - after all that Seamus has lived through, things Dean cannot even begin yet to fathom - that what is behind that door might be the most frightening part of it all.
But Dean is a Lion, so he fights back the terror that should have passed by now and rises to his feet. The pain is immediate and unyielding, but he muddles through it. He's gotten used to the muddling-through; he has lived the past nine months just muddling through, surviving, waiting for the worst to be over. He isn't sure if it is yet.
To his surprise, he finds the door unlocked and the floor soaking wet. Seamus is curled into a ball in the center of it, stark naked and mostly dry, gripping his knees and shaking. Dean draws a breath that sticks in his chest like a fist punched clear through.
Seamus's body is a war-zone of its own. Dean hadn't known, hadn't been able to guess from his face. It's like a grotesque canvas, smeared in the shades of pain: purples, greens, yellows, and browns. It's sliced through with wounds that have healed over poorly, without magic and without competent tending.
The first word Dean says after hours of silence is one he hasn't dared speak aloud in close to a year: "Shay."
He's surprised at the clarity of his voice; surprised it doesn't break and crumble to ash on his lips. Seamus doesn't look up.
"Shay," he says again, and takes a brave step forward. Seamus doesn't move.
Two more steps, and Dean is crouching at his side - his knees protest, and his back, and the blades of his shoulders - whispering it again and again and again. "Shay, Shay, Shay," and Seamus just shakes and doesn't look up. He isn't crying, and maybe he will never cry again, tears just one of things he has lost in the War.
He doesn’t cry, and he doesn't fight - not really, just a token shoulder-jab and a dagger-glare - but he doesn't help, either. Dean has to do all the work. Seamus isn't heavy; he's gotten skinny and wiry, sharp bones and jutting ribs, but it's all dead weight until he's on his ruined-looking feet.
They work, but just barely.
_______________
Dean strips himself down and tosses his clothes into the pile Seamus has made on the floor. They hobble into the shower.
Dean half-smiles against Seamus's arm when he thinks, absurdly, that this is how it is going to be when they are old. The smile implodes, crashes down on itself when he realizes that they are old now. They're eighteen years old, and they are veterans; they are the new Mad-Eye Moodys, mangled and scarred and missing pieces that magic can't ever replace.
The water feels good. It feels stinging-clean-good, like sterile needles and peroxide and the final yank on a scab. Seamus huddles against the tile wall and won’t look Dean in the eye. He swats at the flannel, but Dean insists. That is, he insists until Seamus grabs it from his hands with surprising strength and washes himself with a vicious thoroughness. It goes on for a long time, washing and re-soaping and washing and re-soaping and washing and re-soaping. There are things he can't rinse off, and he finally pounds his fist against the wall and throws the sopping flannel over the top of the curtain with a growl.
"Shay…" Dean starts, but then Seamus's fists interrupt him, pounding hard against his chest.
Dean lets him, even though it hurts.
_______________
They still haven't spoken, not more than that one word, when they climb into bed. It's Dean's old bed, and it still smells the same. Dean realizes after a moment that it smells the same because it smells like Seamus: warm earth, mellow soap, and sex.
Seamus has been sleeping in his bed.
They're in the middle of an angry kiss that Seamus initiates - too much teeth, tongues sharp and bloody like swords, smashed-lips and spit - when Seamus pulls back, his eyes frantic, and gropes wildly for his wand. Dean has placed it on the bedside table.
Dean is startled more than anything when Seamus whips it around and holds it to his throat. "What the fuck?" Dean asks, his heart pounding but not with fear - no, not precisely; there's maybe a little fear, but it's mostly confusion and arousal and dismay - and shrinks backward.
"I killed someone," Seamus says.
Dean just stares.
"I killed someone. Yesterday." He's in control for now, but there is something creeping up his throat, edging towards manic. The wand in his hand isn't steady.
"What?"
"I killed him. Tall fuck, in the corridor. He… he had Luna backed into the wall. And…"
Dean cuts him off. "I'm not afraid of you." He doesn't know where the words come from, but they rush out of him too fast, and he has to say them again so that he can hear himself clearly. "I'm not afraid of you."
"No? Maybe you should be." Seamus is shaking in earnest now, his features taut like a strung bow.
"No. Never."
Seamus pushes the wand against his throat harder, but Dean pushes back, and suddenly they are kissing again, and it's more violent even than before. He doesn't know where Seamus's strength is coming from - maybe from the surging horror inside of him - but it's there in all of its former glory: that hard, tight, sinewy strength that is so Seamus. They're kissing, and the wand is against his belly now, and Seamus's other hand is in his hair pulling and pulling and pulling.
It's quick and dirty and hard. Seamus flips him onto his stomach and bites all the way down his back, movement stilted but swift: no grace, all possession. Underneath him, Dean writhes and struggles, just to make Seamus bite harder, push harder, be harder.
They're both hard in less than a minute, and Dean can feel Seamus's cock drag along his spine, feel his bony, disjointed knees against his sides as he crawls over him like a predator. It hurts - they're both nothing but bruises and pain and scraped-raw nerves - but it's that good, clean hurt again, that I'm alive hurt, so Dean arches up to meet him, grunting at the weight he has to put on his wrists.
Seamus pushes between his shoulder blades suddenly; he pushes so hard it's like a blow, and Dean's face meets the pillow with a dull thud. He throws his head sideways to breathe, and he feels Seamus's mouth, warm and sloppy with trails of spit across his neck, and then his tongue is in his ear. The whisper is wet and urgent, and it's just Dean and mine and you and mine and mine and mine and mine.
And it has been so long since Dean has been able to say yes to ownership, to anything, really. It's been months upon months of second-guessing and nos and not being sure, so he gives himself over with something that feels like relief. He babbles back a mouthful of yeses and yours until Seamus drops his wand, somehow reassured or placated or unguarded, and licks all the way down his back.
Dean knows what's coming when Seamus reaches his tailbone and sucks, and he can feel the drip of his cock against his stomach, trapped between his body and the mattress. It's going to hurt, but first it's going to be gorgeous, and it is.
This is another part of Seamus that hasn't changed - his hot, slippery tongue - and it makes no difference that it slides out between two scarred-up lips, because it's his and he knows what to do with it. He holds Dean apart with two fingers and licks a long, hard stripe, then circles, then another stripe, his now-crooked nose bumping and sliding and breathing humidly against Dean's skin.
Dean bites into the pillow when he feels Seamus fumbling for his wand again, and he grinds his hips down, open and aching. The spell feels familiar and good, and he doesn't even care that Seamus doesn't ask him if he's ready. He is.
He's inside in four halting motions, and then it's a blur. Dean pushes back. Seamus pushes forward. For the first time since coming through the portrait hole, Dean feels like he's really home, really safe - which might be odd, considering Seamus's confession, but it's the truth.
Seamus keeps his grip on the wand this time, more out of being caught-up than being menacing, but it digs against Dean's hip where Seamus grabs him. It's hard and fast and relentless, a constant ache that pulses like a heartbeat. There's nothing gentle about it, but it's good. It's fierce.
Dean can't get him deep enough. He tucks up his knees and arches and pants, and he can feel the juddering bones of Seamus's sharpened hips striking him over and over and over. Out of nowhere, there's something hard at his lips. It's Seamus's wand, pushing insistently against the corner of his mouth. Dean opens up and bites down, his chest swelling with words that can't get out, and the only noise he can make is a low moan against the willow-wood.
It's over too fast. Seamus comes quick and hard, and he pulls out immediately. His coordination isn't what it was, and he slips sideways, spilling hot and thick across Dean's thigh and onto the sheets. Dean ruts frantically against his own palm until Seamus slumps over him and takes over. His hand is bony and callused and as intimate as Dean's own, and Dean takes a strangled breath and comes over his fingers.
Seamus rolls them both sideways and jams his fingers between Dean's lips, knocking the wand aside, and Dean sucks on them, salty with his own come, until they're clean and Seamus's knuckles are hooked over his bottom teeth. They stay like that for a moment, breathing hard and radiating heat, and Seamus runs his fingers all around Dean's mouth like he's looking for something; words or kisses or secrets like treasure.
_______________
There are more secrets now than before.
They lie side by side and stare up at nothing, breathing raggedly, their fingers wet and twined together between them. Seamus has killed; Dean has run; they have both bartered and compromised and promised and lied. The war has stripped them to their skeletons: hardened and strong; bare and broken.
Finally, Seamus speaks. "You left me."
Dean doesn't look at him. "I had to."
"You left me." There's a toxicity to his voice, a desperation.
"For fuck's sake, it wasn't a fucking holiday, Seamus. Do you know… no, you don't. How could you fucking know? You don’t know shite about it."
"I don't know shite? I don't know shite? Did you see what I fucking look like, you fucking cocksucker?! Take a fucking look at me and tell me what I don't know!"
Seamus has hauled himself onto his elbow. He's leaning over Dean, his eyes on fire, his chest heaving, and he looks terrifying and brutal. And beautiful. Beautiful in a hard way now, like sunshine off a knife.
And despite all of it - despite the fact that Dean has sunk his teeth into a wand that ended a life while he was being fucked senseless and didn't care; despite the fact that his body hurts and his heart throbs and his brain bleeds and screams; despite the fact that Seamus is no longer his Pink Boy but a bruised and haunted man - he tells him.
"Shay," he whispers into a face he barely recognizes but loves nonetheless, "you look… you're so beautiful. I'm so sorry."
And he is.
Seamus closes his eyes and stops breathing, like he's been struck from behind, and lets Dean reach up to fit his palm against his cheek. "Beautiful," Dean says again, his thumb brushing the scar that splits Seamus's mouth in half.
Seamus slides down onto the sheets like paint sliding off a canvas, and Dean pulls him close.
Nothing is all right, but everything is better.