Don Juan had missed Hudson while he was away. Probably that would always have been the case, but it seemed especially poor timing given that while he was gone the Dempseys had met with the solicitor and he'd spent some subsequent days feeling maudlin about Kaatjie. There wasn't anyone else he felt he could talk to about it, because everyone else had jumped to their own conclusions already and didn't have sympathy to spare for hearing him out. Now that he'd been bottling it up for days he wasn't sure whether he wanted to talk to Dean about any of it anymore, if only to keep from giving the impression that every time Dean left Don Juan was liable to have some sort of crisis. This wasn't a crisis. He could do things on his own. He'd sent Kaatjie a letter, which she hadn't responded to yet. Maybe she never would. Maybe having sent the letter in the first place would be enough to get his mind off the matter, particularly now that he had Dean back to distract him.

Coming through the floo only to be met with a flash of fresh-blood red certainly wasn't the type of distraction he'd had in mind. His eyes widened slightly in shock, but he understood immediately what Dean was asking. "Yeah," he agreed, heading straight towards the downstairs bathroom. He knew where they were because he'd gone looking for them, after overhearing the conversation where the mediwitch had dropped them off. A few days later he'd added a few potions he'd picked up at the apothecary to the collection, without saying anything about it to Dean. Don Juan didn't know if Hudson was going to follow through on his resolution to stop fighting or if it had just been something to say to keep him from worrying, but in any case he had no desire to have Dean left in the same state as he had been the night Don Juan had surprised him. Particularly not when it was, in a roundabout way, his fault that Hudson had gotten himself into that situation in the first place.

"What'd you do?" he asked, glancing only briefly at the blood stained towel. At least he could be relatively certain that hadn't come from getting beaten up in a fighting ring. Not that he would have said anything even if he was sure it had — he was in no position to judge Dean for any of his habits or coping mechanisms. He couldn't even be upset about the lying, if that's what it was. He was no stranger to promising his partner things and meaning them in the moment and then being unable to follow through when it came down to it. So there was nothing to fight about — but there was plenty to worry about, and even if the supply of healing materials in the bathroom cabinet never budged it would probably be months before Don Juan stopped feeling the urge to check them to be sure.

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