Don Juan laughed. "What a kind thing to lie," he said, in response to Dean saying he found them charming. This was a deflection; secretly he was thrilled by the idea that Hudson had actually liked them, ridiculous behavior at dinner and all. For all his squabbles with his siblings he was terribly fond of them. It would have been difficult to swallow if Hudson had called them silly or ostentatious or absurd, even if he knew in fact they were all of those things. He wanted Hudson to like them as much as he did, though he couldn't have explained why it mattered. It wasn't as though he'd ever be bringing Dean Hudson 'round on Christmas Day to join in the family celebrations, or anything like that.

He took a long drag of his cigarette, growing more pensive at Hudson's last remark. "So long as they're the right sort of endeavors," he commented. There were certainly things he didn't tell his parents, and wouldn't, for fear of their disapproval; he suspected the rest of his siblings had some things, too. It may be that hardly any of the Dempseys were on the conventional path approved by society, but there actually wasn't a terrible degree of diversity amongst them. Porphyria the poet, Christabel the mystery writer, Lottie penning fantasy novels, Lycoris with her paintings. Oz and Endymion weren't poets, but they had the sort of careers that seemed fitting of romantic heroes in epic stories; inventor, cursebreaker. Don Juan wasn't sure what his parents' reaction would have been if one of their children had shown up wanting to be a patent clerk for a career. Bewilderment, probably. There was a great deal of pressure on them all to be Romantic. Don Juan often felt he was the one falling farthest from the mark on that front.

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