The rigidity of this assertion left Don Juan feeling unsettled. He leaned back slightly, just enough to pull his head back from Hudson's hand. Hudson acted as though there was an ocean between what Don Juan had done while high and what others had done to him or with him, but that simply wasn't reality as Don Juan saw it. Sentiments like this just left Don Juan more anxious that someday when he realized that, when the version of Don Juan he had propped up in his mind collapsed, the only thing remaining to fill the gap would be these caricatures Dean demonized... and then on determining that was who Don Juan was, Dean would leave him again.

"If you think I'm not responsible for what I did while high then he isn't, either," Don Juan pointed out. Maybe this was news to Hudson. Maybe he'd been picturing someone sober on the other half of these scenes when he imagined what had happened to Don Juan, but Griffith was as much of an addict as he was. At the beginning of December he'd told Don Juan he'd kicked the habit, but if that were true none of what followed would have happened.

Don Juan shifted on the bed, sitting with legs loosely crossed and then pulling his knees up towards his chest and wrapping his arms around them. "You think it's different because you love me," he said. (Did Griffith have someone in this position, too? Someone trying to chase away his demons and holding his head in their hands and reassuring him that nothing was his fault?) "I made bad choices. I did bad things. Sometimes I was a bad person," he admitted, hugging his legs closer to his chest. "This is what I get for it. I get nights where I can't sleep and I get hands that shake and I get flashbacks. And I'm getting off easy, because I'm still alive," he continued. Dean still didn't know how close Don Juan had come to that not being the case, and if he was having so much trouble with what he did already know Don Juan couldn't imagine ever telling him.

"And I've got you," he added, softer. "I've got more than I deserve."

---