Don Juan couldn't look away while Griffith drew it out. This killed me, he thought, repeating like a heartbeat. This had killed him; he shouldn't want it. He had stayed away from Griffith so that he wouldn't take it; he'd bought the opium so that he wouldn't need it. This had killed him — but when the dropper turned towards him he opened his mouth automatically, expectantly, hungrily, and felt a rush of shame and disappointment mixed together when Griffith took it for himself instead. Taunting him. The words that followed might not have sounded gleeful but they were a taunt, too — the better man. Ha.

The reference to the man he loved was so jarring that Don Juan was momentarily displaced. Allusions to Hudson didn't belong on Griffith's lips; didn't belong in a scene like this; didn't belong in a place like the Orchid. For a moment he thought he must have been dreaming, twisting contexts together nonsensically. Griffith shouldn't have even known about him. There was no world in which they should have been having this conversation. But if he were dreaming, would his hands be shaking this way? Would he have put himself in withdrawal if this was all a play-act in his subconscious?

No. This was real. Griffith knew about Hudson because he'd pulled it out of his thoughts when he'd been rummaging around indiscriminately through his mind. It should have felt violating, Griffith saying this, but Don Juan blamed himself for that more than he blamed Griffith. He'd done this to himself; he'd invited it.

"No," he said stiffly. "He isn't." If Hudson was waiting for him, Don Juan could never have found himself here. "Not anymore," he continued, tone turning listless. "Not for a long while."

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