Summer 1890 - House Party

It had been a couple days since his ill-advised letter to Dempsey and Dean was feeling... well reticent. Seeking the company of his female bedmates had been a better pick-me-up than expected. Two years was a long time to mope and Dean had convinced himself that he was over it, until that last letter from Dempsey. He hadn't meant to give so much away, but in having to translate (bad) Spanish from a borrowed text had really set him off.

In an effort to push it (and the lack of a reply) from his mind, Dean had accepted an invitation at the behest of a French friend visiting relatives in London for the week. He was due to be off for a bank assignment in a week's time and he was ready to trade in the British isles for the heat of Egypt. Maybe he'd start working on his Arabic so he could go down more often. Gobbledegook was good for the bank business, but if Dean wanted to travel more, he was going to need to learn new languages. He'd start thinking about which the next time he needed a distraction. He was no longer drinking in excess, a year of that was enough, and Dean had learned his limits, found better ways to occupy his time and wayward thoughts. After getting sent home from work on day for looking like shit, he'd learned his lesson. Perhaps a new language would be a better use of his time.

An hour past his arrival and nursing his one glass of whiskey, Dean was in an animated conversation about French wine with his host when he spotted Dempsey. Of all the places. He obviously hadn't seen much of him, considering one or both of them had been out of the country lately, but the letters were still fresh in his mind. This time he wasn't about to flee, but he also wasn't about to engage; the ball was in Dempsey's court, even if Dean wasn't sure he wanted to volley.

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Don Juan Dempsey

  

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He was too indulgent to get rid of the letters. Don Juan knew it was the sensible thing to do. He knew keeping them wasn't doing him any favors. He knew pulling them out and rereading them late at night, trying to memorize that one critical phrase in every language, was self-destructive... but like so many other things that wrecked his insides, he couldn't simply stop.

Dean Hudson wanted to be stupid about this. This left Don Juan in the most unfortunate position of having to be the responsible party, between the two of them. It wasn't a mantle he wore well. He was never cut out for being responsible, which was why he had so far failed to respond to Hudson's last letter. He knew what he ought to say, but couldn't bring himself to say it.

He was looking for distractions when he went to the party today. He didn't have the ability to be particularly choosy about where he spent his time these days; his pool of society invitations had shrunk significantly since his exile in Spain. When he was invited, like today, he was more often present as a curiosity for the other guests than as one of their members. Don Juan the infamous; here to regale with tales of his iniquity. He didn't mind the role. Acting blase about everything that had happened to him over the past two years was the best method he had found of coping with it all; having an audience for whom to pretend confidant nonchalance was a boon for him. So he was looking for that, for a chance to lose himself in the overblown persona society had created for him — instead he found Hudson.

"Excuse me," he said to his conversation partner, abruptly. "I need a cigarette."

He met Hudson's eyes, a regrettable accident, and fled to the patio.

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MJ made this <3

He'd been keeping a weather eye on Dempsey since spotting him, but when the other man sped from the room, it wasn't hard to tell why. This was probably wise, for once.

But Dean hadn't been lying when he said Dempsey made him stupid.

It was an internal struggle he'd been battling with for two years and he'd held our for longer than he expected. Dean wanted to be smart about this, to somehow forget the way he'd felt and the way Dempsey made him feel, but it was an insurmountable task.

The battle lasted a solid ten minutes before he found a plausible excuse to slip away from his conversation, thinking he ought to find a different distraction, meandering from the house into the garden for a cigarette himself. It was of course where he found Dempsey, unintentionally. Now faced with the decision all over again, Dean cracked.

"Got a spare?" He motioned to the cigarette with a raised eyebrow.

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He tensed on hearing the voice and cast a wary glance over his shoulder. Hudson was alone. Don Juan had been smoking in solitude for ten minutes, nursing a cherry-flavored cigarette he'd rolled himself so that he could shove thrice as much tobacco into it. He had just been thinking he needed to go back inside, after having experimented with and discarded a dozen different reasons for leaving early. And now here was Hudson, finding him alone on the patio and asking for a cigarette.

He nodded and shifted his weight to fish his tobacco pouch out from his interior pocket, then started rolling a(n appropriately sized) cigarette. "You won't like these," he pronounced before running his tongue along the edge of the paper to seal it. "Too sweet for your tastes."

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MJ made this <3

Dean could feel the tension rolling off Dempsey and now he was second-guessing himself. He'd been questioning himself for days after the letter exchange, unsure as to what he was possibly angling for here, but still it was hard to stop. At least he was sober this time. At least he had his head on straighter than he had in months.

Maybe that was what made the thoughts running rampant in his head worse.

He had vague flashbacks of that night when he'd been plastered and wondering when it was Dempsey had switched from the vanilla cigarettes and if it was his fault. The scent that had clung to every memory Dean had of the other man was laced with vanilla and now it seemed strange that these were different. "I like a lot of things I'm not supposed to." He said as he accepted the cigarette, taking caution in that their fingers didn't touch and that he gave Dempsey a little bit of breathing room.

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Don Juan had held the cigarette out to him carelessly, his attention already focused on closing the tobacco pouch with his free hand, but then he said that. Don Juan tensed. What a devastatingly careless thing to say in a situation like this. How catastrophically romantic. That was what made it so difficult to discard Hudson's letters, at least in part; he was mimicking the sorts of epic poems Don Juan had grown up on, throwing caution to the wind and making bold declarations. I would do it again, dans chaque vie. Ready to be unspeakably stupid. Liking things he wasn't supposed to, unapologetically. Like the last two years hadn't happened, or like he didn't care. Worse: like the last six weeks of their relationship hadn't happened, or like he'd forgotten. Don Juan hadn't forgotten.

"Dean," he said, like a warning.

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MJ made this <3

Wasn't this a strange paradox. Dean hadn't any idea what he was doing, but he could hear the tone in Dempsey's voice. It resonated down in his chest and gave him pause.

"You're right," he inhaled, taking a long drag of the cigarette, letting it out on a long sigh.

He should be leaving well enough alone. Showing his stupid now was just going to be painful for them both. Enough time had passed that the ache was dull, if persistent. No need to go tearing anything open. "Thanks for the smoke." He held it up in salute as he stepped back. He could muddle through another hour before he could reasonably excuse himself.

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Hudson took a step back and Don Juan felt something like panic swell up inside him. Hudson backing off was the right answer, the logical answer, but there was a reason Don Juan hadn't found the words to return his last letter yet. He wasn't ready to kill the fantasy; wasn't ready to bury the past.

"It's —" he started, with a note of desperation. It's not that I wouldn't want to. In ogni vita. He ached for it; ached for someone to love him like Hudson had when they had been together. Enough time had passed that he could lie to himself about it most of the time, but the letters had poked open old wounds — and he'd never really been over him, anyway. Not deep down. But time had passed and Don Juan had learned things about life, and about himself. He had tried to devote himself body and soul to making someone happy, contorting himself to fit all the gaps in her life, becoming the romantic hero for her sake that he had secretly dreamed of being since a child. And all of his efforts meant nothing for her in the end; she was ruined, now, exiled from society and trapped in a marriage with a husband who hated her but did not respect her enough to let her leave. Don Juan had done that — his good intentions, falling flat, turning sour. And in Spain he had met someone who knew nothing about him, and he had tried to keep his distance, sure he would only hurt her, until eventually she wore down his defenses and he allowed himself to think she was his second chance. A chance to do things right, maybe, sidestep the problems he'd had before. She wasn't married to someone who neglected her. Don Juan hadn't had access to any of his usual vices in Spain. It was a level playing field, or as level of one as he had come across since being a teenager, and he had ruined that too in the end. Ruined her life as well, and twisted her heart on his way out. It was what he did — this was what he left behind him when he left. Disaster. Hudson knew that. Still drinking himself into a stupor while Don Juan was being challenged to duels; picking himself up while Don Juan flounced off to Spain. Hudson knew the risks and Hudson wanted to be stupid, but Don Juan couldn't stomach the thought of ruining the same person twice.

"— I haven't changed," he admitted, feeling raw.

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MJ made this <3

Dean knew that. Despite his better judgement, he'd kept tabs on Don Juan over the years, just to make sure he'd hadn't gotten into too much trouble. Of course the big shit had hit the news and Dean wondered just what exactly Dempsey had been thinking, but he'd known it then, as he knew it now, forward thinking had never been one of Dempsey's strong suits. Dean thought that at least personally, he'd gotten better at predicting the rise and fall, but he hadn't know what to do about it, if anything. Don Juan wasn't much different than the character from the story he'd been named for, but that hadn't changed how Dean felt, not even in the years since.

"I never wanted you to." Dean had fallen in love with the impulsive, impractical, passionate idiot Don Juan had always been. The drugs changed that about him. That's who he'd wanted to change, to disappear. "I just wanted you to quit something that will get you killed." Dean had just wanted to be enough for that to mean something.

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Don Juan blushed. He was usually on the other side of these emotions, especially these days; he said things just to shock people, because they came to talk to him expecting to be shocked. Hudson's earnestness had him off-kilter, though. These were not the sorts of things people said to each other at parties, whether they could be overheard or not. These were not the sorts of things people said to each other. No one was meant to be this sincere. It was blinding.

"I'll disappoint you," he said with certainty. He had learned about the world and about himself; this was perhaps the only thing he was truly certain of, in the end.

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MJ made this <3

That may have been the truth, historically and still now, but underneath the disappointment had been something deeper. Dean's own securities had been his own issue. He hadn't known what he'd been asking Don Juan to do; hadn't actually known how to handle it when it hadn't worked out. He was more disappointed in himself for feeling overwhelmed and unable to fix it.

"I disappointed you too," Dempsey couldn't shoulder all of the responsibility here. Dean wasn't sure what it changed, if anything, and maybe nothing would come of this, maybe nothing should come of it. He took the last drag of the cigarette and snubbed it out. Feeling like he was teetering on the edge of something and he didn't know if he should jump in or back away.

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Disappointed him? No, Don Juan wouldn't have said that. Watching Hudson walk out of the room after having neatly piled up all of his things had been devastating, but he didn't blame Dean. When he'd spiraled out over the next six weeks it wasn't rage he felt, or despair or loneliness. It was self-loathing, pure and simple. There was no one to blame for how things had happened last time but him, his self-destructive tendencies and his lack of impulse control, the spinelessness he had displayed in letting a handful of friends bully him into doing something he'd promised not to do. Hudson hadn't disappointed him.

Don Juan looked at his shoes, blowing out a long cloud of cherry-scented smoke. "We can't have this conversation here," he pointed out. He didn't know how much of what he was thinking he wanted to say to Hudson, but he knew that none of it was the sort of thing someone else could harmlessly overhear.

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MJ made this <3

Another point for Dempsey. Dean had already said too much given their surroundings; his stupid was showing again. They were alone in the garden for the moment, but anybody could come out at any time. Still, "I can't leave yet." He hadn't yet given a sufficient appearance tonight, not when he'd been specifically invited. It wasn't quite work, but it was close enough that he had to play the part appropriately. This French friend of his had connections in the French parliament and Dean wasn't going to step on any toes.

"Another hour or so," the address was the same, the floo was still open, so was the invitation, even if Dean didn't know what it meant.

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How simple it was for Hudson to extend the invitation. An hour or so. And then? Don Juan supposed he would head to the same floo address he always had before, walk into the same parlor, sit down at the same dining room chairs where he'd shared breakfasts or dinners? And then would they have a somber conversation about the gravity of what Hudson was proposing and the consequences that would ensue when it all went wrong? Or would Hudson lean forward and put his hand on Don Juan's knee while he said something entirely too heartfelt? Would they kiss in lieu of asking any of the difficult questions? Slip back into the way that things had been before, as though there had been no interruption at all? No drinking binge. No frustrated nights where Don Juan had tried and failed to explain to another man how he wanted to be touched, held, fucked — unable to articulate what was missing in it, except that it hadn't been Hudson. No Elfrieda Yaxley, no duel, no Spain, no Valencia Delgado. Just the pair of them doing it all over again, se káthi zoí. Impossible, however intoxicating the idea might have been. Don Juan knew this kind of allure: too bright, too perfect, too captivating. A glittering facade covering a million pitfalls, any of them ready to collapse and bring it all crashing down to violent jagged ends. Yes, Don Juan recognized what Hudson was offering him, even if Hudson didn't: this was a drug, no better than opium.

"I can't come to your house," he said firmly. He ground his cigarette out on a paving stone. "We should probably get back in."

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Boundaries. Dean recognized one when presented with it and it would be hypocritical of him not to respect it.

It was the right choice.

It still hurt like hell.

Dean knew he'd been playing with fire, making stupid moves and he had no right to be as disappointed as he was. "I understand." He nodded, feeling that uncomfortable drop in his stomach that followed the sting of rejection. As his father had always said, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

"Go ahead, I'll be a few." He needed to pull his poker face back together and get through the rest of the evening and that would require a minute to gather his thoughts.

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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