Summer 1887 - Dean's House

Work had picked up in the last few weeks and frankly, Dean had been busy, both traveling and at the office. He'd just come back from a little over a week in Greece, trying to help with some documents that had eaten up a lot of time, but in the end, been a fabulously interesting puzzle to sort through. He was going to have to pick up some books on Ancient Greek and start studying. Being on the shore of the Mediterranean for almost ten days wasn't all that bad either. He was a little more tan than usual and tousled after travel. His department head had given him a few days off to make up for the straight sprint they'd put him through and Dean had every intention of taking one of those days to sleep off the exhaustion.

He'd spent the next couple of days after that still holed up in his bedroom for an entirely different reason. After he'd reconnected with an old friend while in Greece, a pretty brunette who had once helped him improve his Greek while he taught her French they spent some time just catching up, indulging in some curiosities. Dean rarely had to rely on the ministry appointed lodgings when he traveled. She'd also been curious a bout some of the other things he had an interest in and so she'd ventured up for a short visit to play around in his bedroom for a taste of what she'd been asking about. Dean had felt a little rusty, having abstained for a while, but she'd been a nice little sub to break in and she seemed to take to it, too.

She'd left a few minutes ago, headed off to Paris to visit friends and Dean had meandered into his office to get his cigarettes before he went to pick up his room and change the sheets. He was looking for his matches when heard someone step out of the floo. "Thaleia, did you forget something?" Dean called in Greek, not expecting anyone else this early in the evening. When he rounded back into the sitting room, it wasn't Thaleia though, it was Dempsey. Their schedules hadn't quiet connected in a regrettably long couple of weeks, but he hadn't expected to see him tonight either, but tomorrow; Dean had set aside the time purposefully. "Hi," he greeted with a warm smile, running a hand through his hair. "I thought you weren't going to be back until tomorrow?" It was a pleasant surprise at least.

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Don Juan Dempsey
to those of you playing along at home, M is just their default until proven otherwise xD

  

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Don Juan had misread the letter. Not the words themselves, but the subtext. He'd connected the dots between making arrangements for a given day and time and the intimation that Hudson was looking forward to seeing him again after so long and thought their planned night was the first day Hudson was back; that he had set aside the first time he could for them to spend time together. Don Juan hadn't clarified (had never even considered that there was anything to clarify), just assumed. Now he felt rather like an ass for having assumed anything at all.

When he'd headed through the floo an hour ago he'd been quite aware that it might be locked, and that would have been fine. He'd decided to go to Hudson's presumably empty house on a whim. He intended to leave an unpublished manuscript he'd gotten his hands on that he thought Hudson would like — one of the adventure stories he was so keen on. It would have been entirely understandable if the floo had bounced him back, if the house had been closed off by the staff and not yet reopened, and he just had to leave it in his bedroom until tomorrow. On the other hand, if the floo was online, he could drop it at Hudson's desk and leave a little note. Something sweet, but short. Proof that he'd been missed.

The floo was open, and he fortunately didn't run into the staff right off. He was vaguely aware that he was breaking and entering, so he moved quietly on the stairs towards Hudson's study door — and heard that the bedroom was occupied.

He left the way he came in, but he didn't floo home. He went to the Broomsticks, and walked from there. He told himself he was getting air to clear his head, but after a quick circuit of Padmore Park he ended up loitering on the street corner across from Hudson's house, chain-smoking.

It had been stupid to assume that the first day Hudson wanted to see him was the first day he was available — stupid to assume there was no one else who outranked him when it came to people Hudson enjoyed spending time with. He hadn't even once thought to question it. Why had he leapt so confidently to the wrong conclusion? Don Juan tucked the manuscript into the back of his waistband, feeling foolish holding onto it on the street. Particularly while Hudson was locked away in his bedroom, doing the sort of thing Don Juan didn't. Don Juan hadn't hesitated at the door long enough to listen much; as soon as he'd realized what he was overhearing he'd made his escape. He didn't even know the gender of the person on the other side of the door with Hudson. But he recognized Hudson's voice, obviously, and he didn't need to hear more than the tone to know exactly what sort of thing they were about. He'd been thinking about it since the aborted trial run in February, and thinking about how Hudson had described it afterwards. Intimate trust, was that the phrase? And he could supply half a dozen more descriptors of his own: intense, passionate, primal, raw. And here Don Juan was, on the street corner with a manuscript for a novel and the quaintly charming idea of leaving a note.

He finished the cigarettes he'd had left in his case and paid a boy passing by a sickle to bring him more. It wasn't his usual brand and the only flavor they had was tinny tobacco, but they would have to do. He lit the first one and it felt cheap in his fingers. Enterprising boy — bought the cheapest cigarettes available and pocketed the overhead, probably. Don Juan couldn't exactly blame him.

It wasn't that he'd never reconsidered the idea, after that night in February. After Hudson had explained it Don Juan kept going back to the idea, turning it over and over in his mind. They'd been set up for failure in February for a multitude of reasons, but one of the chief one was that Don Juan hadn't been entirely sure of Hudson's motivation at the time. They'd parted on cool terms and not spoken for months; it would have been easy for him to have been resentful. He'd been flustered at the party before Don Juan came to his house; it could have been nerves or it could have been anger. They never discussed what they were about to do before it happened, at least not explicitly. So Don Juan had wanted to think Hudson was going to have fun with him... but there were at least even odds that he'd instead been trying to teach him a lesson. That he'd wanted to see Don Juan squirm and eventually break, so that he could then stand over him with a sense of superiority and say see?

He wasn't unsure about Hudson's motivations now. (Or, he thought wryly, if this was still part of some anger-fueled revenge scheme, Hudson had been playing the long game well enough that he deserved the point). He'd thought about what might happen if Hudson asked him to do something like that again — the ways in which everything might be different. But Hudson had never asked, probably too wary of being seen to pressure Don Juan into something he didn't want... and Don Juan was, frankly, too embarrassed about the way the last time had gone to conceive of bringing it up himself.

But this was what Hudson wanted, clearly. He was up in his room growling directives at someone else right now, while Don Juan smoked cigarettes he didn't even like. If Don Juan didn't figure out how to bring it up, then he could not pretend to be affronted when Hudson went and found it somewhere else.

A flash of green from behind Hudson's parlor windows brought him back to the present; he'd been watching the house without really taking anything in for some minutes. Someone had left through the floo, probably; Hudson was finished with his... fun. There was no point in standing on the sidewalk and watching an empty house, and this would only get increasingly more pathetic the longer he loitered (it had not yet entirely dawned on him how pathetic it was already). He stubbed out the cigarette and headed back to the Broomsticks, mind still in a haze. He was going to go home — except the address he said was a Bartonburg one, and then he was stepping out into Hudson's parlor. And Hudson was still here, because he'd called down right away. Don Juan froze for a second, panicked, and by the time he'd managed to think just leave again, idiot Hudson was already coming down the stairs. Hudson's smile made Don Juan's stomach do somersaults, in the worst of ways.

"Did I mistake the date?" he asked, pulling this pretense out of thin air but immediately deciding to latch onto it wholeheartedly. "It's not — which day is it?"

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   Dean Hudson

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MJ made this <3

Dean was now second guessing what he'd told Dempsey in the letter he'd sent. His time spent in Greece had been busy, both day and night, so it was not entirely impossible that he'd given the wrong day. "I'm not even sure," Dean chuckled. "Been a long couple of weeks." For multiple reasons. Dean hadn't quite realized just what he been amiss until he'd rolled over one night and it was Thaleia's form he was next to. Much smaller and softer than the body he was used to and it felt off, almost wrong. Which was both startling and had him wondering just what it meant.

"No matter, tonight is free too," he assured Dempsey. More time was not a bad thing, Dean had just tried to give himself enough of a buffer, so he had the right focus an energy. He was tired for a different reason other than travel, but given enough time, could probably rally for tonight. "I was going to have some dinner, are you hungry?" He'd brought back an assortment of treats from Greece, but the staff had also made him enough to get by for the couple of days they'd been dismissed while Thaleia was visiting. They were paid well for their discretion and often got time off; Dean had never had trouble keeping staff.

He still needed to clean up his room, which was a mess of half-unpacked travel items and some of the toys from the last two days, but it reminded him he had also picked something up for Dempsey while he was there. It wasn't much, just a little carving out of olive wood, but he'd seen it and picked it up on a whim.

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Don Juan hesitated, caught between how genuinely lovely it sounded to have a meal with Hudson and the certainty that he'd end up saying something very stupid if he stayed. It would have been smarter to leave, but he didn't know how to manage it now. If Hudson had invited him to stay, and Don Juan had shown up pretending he'd forgotten which date it was, it was going to be hard to sell a lie that he had some other pressing engagement to attend to. He could claim he wasn't hungry, but that wouldn't get him out of hanging around. Really the only way this might have worked was if Hudson had said he was busy, and then Don Juan could have shrugged and promised to come back tomorrow. If Hudson had no plans, there wasn't really any way for him to leave without arousing suspicion.

He still had the manuscript tucked into the waistband of his pants — he was going to have to pretend to go use the lavatory and some point and find a way to get rid of that. He certainly didn't want to give it to Hudson now. It felt too... cute. But he also had no illusions that he'd be getting through an evening with Hudson with his pants still on.

"Peckish, sure," he agreed. "What's on?"

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MJ made this <3

"Leftovers, ham maybe? The staff had been off the last couple days." It felt sort of weird in an unexpected way to explain that he'd had company. They hadn't exactly established any boundaries around other partners and Thaleia coming back with him had been a bit of a last-minute decision, but Dean wasn't sure now and was annoyed with himself for not thinking about it sooner.

But maybe he was making something out of nothing. "Or I brought some snacks home from Greece, or I can make something?" He'd been working on his pancakes with his housekeeper's help, which was a laughable experience. She didn't want him starving and so he was learning the basics for those days when he gave them the time off.

He waved Dempsey on toward the kitchen, barefoot and bare-chested as he hadn't anticipated staying downstairs, but the house was warm and he'd be fine, probably. "What are you in the mood for?"

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The staff had been off for a couple days, he said. That wasn't the time he'd been in Greece; he'd been away longer, Don Juan was fairly sure. So that had to be the time he'd been back. Don Juan's assumption that he was the first thing on Hudson's to-do list on returning to the country was even farther off than he'd guessed. That stung, but it shouldn't have — you're being an idiot, he told himself, because there was no reason to have made that assumption in the first place and he'd already learned an hour ago that it was misplaced. He was getting sore over the same thing twice, and he had no one to blame for it but himself. This was an invented injury; Hudson didn't owe him anything here.

He drifted into the kitchen, a few steps behind. Hudson was achingly attractive. He'd gotten sun in Greece and it suited him. He was magnificently disheveled. Someone else had done that. Maybe had their fingers in his hair, maybe unbuttoned his shirt for him. Don Juan leaned against the counter nearest the kitchen door, utterly miserable.

"Sure, make something," he said. A strategic choice: something from Greece sounded lovely, but if Hudson was cooking then he would be distracted for a few minutes and Don Juan would not be so wholly Observed while he fought through his feelings. In the meantime, he offered a bright smile. "Whatever's easy."

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   Dean Hudson

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MJ made this <3

Dean started getting some things out to make eggs. He really didn't have the energy to go for anything more and so he took the easy way out, as offered. "Brave choice," he warned. He'd made breakfast for them before, so it really wasn't that big of a gamble. Probably. It would be fine.

After collecting everything he put the pan on the stove top and lit it with his wand. He kept resisting the urge to saunter over and kiss Dempsey, wondering if that would be too weird? He'd missed him, of course, but this felt far too casual of a situation to call for it. Delightfully domestic, Dempsey had called him one time, but Dean rather thought he'd be teasing then.

He started shuffling around eggs in the pan, bread on the toasting plate, he started the kettle. He wasn't much for tea, but he could use a cup of coffee right about now, a little boost in energy. "Coffee?" He continued to putter around for a moment before adding, "Sorry it was longer than anticipated, they kept adding more documents." Originally he'd only been signed up to be gone for three or four days, but then a week and ten days. He wasn't complaining, it hadn't been too bad in the long run, but he kept having write home to detail he'd be longer than anticipated.

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Hudson started cooking, and Don Juan became viscerally aware that he smelled of the cheap cigarettes he'd been smoking for the past half hour. Had something changed in the air when Hudson lit the stove, and that made it more obvious? Or was it just that he'd spent long enough standing still in a closed room to realize it? He wondered if Hudson had noticed. If he had, he hadn't reacted to it. If he asked, what excuse woudl Don Juan give? Someone had given him some and he was just using them up, maybe; he'd borrowed them from someone when he ran out of his own at their house. But either possibility implied that he was spending a lot of time hanging around other people sharing cigarettes, and... did he want to imply that? Maybe. It wasn't as though it was untrue. Hudson was having people over for days at a time. He wouldn't think twice of Don Juan implying he'd picked up a bunch of shitty cigarettes when he'd slept over with someone else. (Would he? If someone had asked him a day ago he would have thought that perhaps Hudson would mind — maybe not that he would be angry about it, but perhaps passingly disappointed? But this had been, like everything he'd thought prior to today, just an assumption. Entirely unverified.)

He'd rather avoid the question if he could. Maybe it was just his coat that chiefly smelled of smoke — but that didn't help, because he couldn't take it off until he'd found somewhere to get rid of the manuscript, or Hudson might see it and he would certainly ask about a sheaf of paper tucked into Don Juan's waistband.

"Coffee," he agreed, aggressively cheerful — the scent of coffee might be strong enough to mask the cigarettes.

It was also beginning to dawn on him that he was failing to make conversation. Had he crossed the line into suspiciously quiet yet? He had to avoid that at all costs. "You look good," Don Juan blurted, which was the first thing that came to mind but did not exactly qualify as making conversation. Fumbling through, he continued, "It must have been a good trip, I mean. You look — relaxed."

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MJ made this <3

This was the part of cooking he wasn't very good at; getting it all to be done at the same time. The eggs were now scrambled instead of fried like he'd intended, which was fine, it all tasted the same to him. The toast was... toasting and the water was on the burner. Needless to say, distracted as he was, he could still tell Dempsey was off.

Dean wasn't sure if he wanted to bring it up or not, but there was a strange fluctuation to Dempsey's tone and the lulls in the conversation were noticeable. "Thanks, the Mediterranean isn't a tough place to be for a few days." Dean thoroughly enjoyed it there. He had stayed for a couple of months after graduation and had really grown to enjoy it. The people, the weather, the food, there wasn't a bad thing about it.

He waited a few more minutes to finish up the cooking, letting the silence overtake them again. As he slid the food onto plates, he pulled the kettle from the stove and poured it over the grounds. It was going to need a minute to steep to reach his preferred strength. "You okay?" He asked, not in the mood to try and figure it out on his own. He'd thought, he hoped by now that if something was bothering Dempsey, he would just come out with it. They'd been around this block too many times and Dean wasn't any good at it so he didn't want to beat around the bush.

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It had taken him a few seconds of silence to consider whether he ought to try and revive his flimsy attempt at conversation, and by then he'd suspected it would feel too forced. So he waited out the quiet, watching Hudson work. Was it a good sign or a bad one that Hudson wasn't making more conversation himself while he was cooking? Maybe he was just focused; this certainly looked difficult to Don Juan, who had never attempted cooking in his life. Or maybe he, like Don Juan, was muddling through his thoughts and trying to think of what to say.

The food being set out was a relief, because it gave him something to do with his hands rather than leave them in his pockets or cross them over his chest. He picked up his plate and fork and started towards the dining room table, but stopped when Hudson asked if he was alright. It was an obvious question, but not one he was ready to answer. He looked at Hudson half a second and tried to say Yeah, of course and sound like he meant it, but there had already been too much of a delay to pass it as authentic, hadn't there been?

Looking caught, Don Juan stabbed his fork into the eggs and shoved a bite into his mouth to buy himself even that much more time. Then immediately had to do the least graceful thing imaginable: open his mouth and drop them back on his plate, exhaling hard.

"Nyeh," he said, tongue hanging out. He felt ridiculous, and offered a sheepish and entirely needless explanation: "... 's hot."

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MJ made this <3

It was kind of like watching a comedy in slow motion. The exaggerated expression, the eggs, obviously too hot to eat just yet; Dean didn't know whether to laugh or sigh. He wound up swallowing the chuckle, sighing softly.

He strode forward, taking the plate from Dempsey's hands and set them on the end of the counter. With empty hands now, Dean placed them both gently on Dempsey's jaw and kissed him, swiping his tongue along wherever might have gotten touched by the hot food. He poured a little bit more into the kiss than he intended to, but he hoped the message was somewhat clear; I missed you.

He took an indulgently long time to pull back, eyes meeting Dempsey's, "Better?"

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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The kiss at least was something where his nerves stood no chance of getting in the way. He might have forgotten how to hold a conversation, but his tongue would never forget how to respond to Hudson's. He closed his eyes during the leisurely kiss and took the opportunity to breathe — with Hudson this close he was no longer quite so distracted by the smell of smoke on his coat. Hudson broke off and asked if he was better and Don Juan found to some surprise that he was. Kissing Hudson hadn't tied up all the loose ends that had been rattling around in his brain, but it seemed to have put his feet back on solid ground; he didn't think he was going to be two beats behind in responding to seemingly innocuous questions now.

"Think I tied myself up in knots," he admitted, still sheepish. He bit his lower lip and spent a second looking at Hudson's eyes, trying to catch and interpret any emotion that might have flickered through them. The sustained eye contact quickly became unbearable, though, and Don Juan shifted his eyes up to a corner of the ceiling while he ran one hand through his hair in a gesture of agitation. "I didn't mean to eavesdrop. I didn't know you were home yet, or that you had company. I didn't stay to listen. I just —" He exhaled, not sure what he even wanted to be conveying. He glanced at Hudson's face briefly, then immediately back up to the ceiling. "— I don't even know why I came back. I think I must have said your address by mistake instead of mine. I've been so in my head about things, I just — I don't know. Are you angry?" he concluded, finally letting his eyes meet Hudson's again.

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MJ made this <3

Well that would explain Dempsey's strange behavior. The question was, did it make him angry? Something had welled up in his chest, but he felt more sheepish than anything else. He wasn't mad about Dempsey coming to the house, the open invitation was not for just when he was here, with people he trusted, but he felt like he should at least be frustrated? Mostly he settled on initial apprehension.

When their eyes met again he knew he had to say something, even if he wasn't really sure what it was he wanted to say. "No," He'd dropped his hands, but hadn't moved back. "Can you tell me why it has you out of sorts?" Maybe that would help him figure out how to answer better. Dempsey didn't seem angry about it either, which Dean supposed he could have had every right to be, except they hadn't discussed anything related to this yet. They both skirted around deeper issues until they became unavoidable. It wasn't the best way to operate, but Dean didn't quite know what else to do. Dempsey was an anomaly in his life he hadn't quite figured out.

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Don Juan huffed, somewhere between laughter and relief. He was glad to hear Hudson wasn't angry, especially given his response seemed genuine. He would have had every right, given that Don Juan had arrived unannounced and interrupted (or could have interrupted, at least) a private moment. But could he explain what he was feeling? "No," he said wryly; he was still exasperated with his own head, but Hudson's patience was making it feel less catastrophic and more like something he could be amused about, in a self-effacing way.

"Do you know, I used to be charming. Articulate. Poetic!" he joked. "Sometimes I still am. But never around you." Jokes aside, though, he knew he had to try and explain, even if he wasn't entirely sure what it was that had set him off in the first place. He tucked his hand back in his coat pocket and looked down to Hudson's lower lip, frowning faintly as he thought.

"It's — I missed you," he said eventually. This was not exactly it, did not explain anything, but it was one of the emotions down at the root of things, he thought.

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MJ made this <3

Dean was not wholly surprised that he got an incomplete answer. He couldn't exactly figure out what emotions it had brought up in him either. Still, he easily recognized the warmth that spread through his chest when Dempsey said he'd missed him. "I missed you too."

He wanted to understand better, if he could, though. "Was it because I was with someone else?" No boundaries had been set around that yet and they hadn't defined what exactly they were to each other. Dean had never been monogamous, wasn't sure he was built for it, but he could try, if it was that important. If it was, then they were going to have to agree on some terms going forward.

If it wasn't that, Dempsey was going to have to give him more to go on. Dean stepped away and circled back for the coffee, taking both cups and both plates to the little kitchen table instead of the dining room. Hopefully they could talk it out, whatever it was.

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Don Juan furrowed his brow. "No." Wouldn't that have been presumptuous? It was a valid question, because as he was currently very well aware, feelings weren't always based in logic. But he knew he had no right to care whether Hudson slept with other people. They'd never talked about it one way or another, but Don Juan had always sort of passively known that he was. There was a certain way someone carried themselves socially when they were interested in casual hookups; Hudson had that way about him, and Don Juan ought to know because he had it, too. Another reason it would have been presumptuous to be upset that Hudson slept with other people: Don Juan was doing the same. Not today, but he'd had a few casual flings since Hudson and he had reconnected in February, and more when they'd first been together, because things had gotten... more complicated. So it wasn't that — but Don Juan didn't know how to explain what it was.

There was a qualitative difference in their side dalliances, maybe. Don Juan had slept with people since February, but not when he had the option just as easily to go to Hudson's. He slept with other people because Hudson was gone, or busy, or because he was elsewhere and Don Juan didn't know whether or not he was available and someone else was present and flirtatious and easy. If it was a choice, he always chose Hudson. He had assumed — the core assumption, the root of all the others that had gotten him into trouble today — that was reciprocal. But perhaps for Hudson, Don Juan was just one of several good options. Don Juan didn't want to demand that change. That wasn't how these things worked. He wanted to earn a top place in Hudson's affections, and he wasn't sure how to do it, or how to communicate that. The best phrasing he'd come up with so far was I wish I could give you everything you need, but he was afraid that no matter how he prefaced or bookended that it would come across like he wanted Hudson to stop sleeping with other people, which was categorically not the problem.

"I just... starting worrying," he began (a grievous understatement). He followed Hudson to the table and dropped into the chair. He wrapped his hands around the coffee mug but didn't take any move to eat or drink; he just wanted to hold something while he continued to wrestle through his tangled thoughts. "That there's something... missing, between us. I don't — I don't want there to be."

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MJ made this <3