NYE 1890 - here

Dean was fresh off a trip to the States, part of a multinational delegation for policies above Dean's pay grade, but he spoke the majority of the languages they needed and so he'd been pulled along for the ride. It had been a wild one too. Lots of long days, lots of document work, figuring out how to structure the language in the documents so it translated correctly to the multiple languages. Dean had been thoroughly exhausted, but felt a sense of pride at being involved.

He'd made it home in time for Christmas, spending it mostly with Mae and her growing family. It was odd to think of his baby sister as a wife and now mother, but he was happy for her. Seeing Mae with her husband dug up some long-buried feelings, but he had finally put those to rest. He had picked up with Winnie here and there, she was a good distraction, no strings, just scratching a mutual itch. Throwing himself into work and a new language was doing the trick. Mermish was a stupidly hard language to learn, far more difficult than Gobbledegook and that had been a nightmare itself. The magical languages always seemed to be, but it was a good challenge for this point in his life. Romance languages came too easy. He'd contemplated Spanish, but that seemed like rubbing salt in the wound he just wanted to be done healing from.

The event at the zoo wasn't normally something he'd attend, but he'd been intrigued and he needed something different these days. His socializing had slowed as he tried to occupy himself in other ways. If he was attending events, they were mostly foreign, no chance of running into anyone who was going to leave him wanting there. Dean was nursing his one glass of whiskey near the edge. He'd almost fallen off the wagon in that respect, but had managed to right himself from ruin once more. The floating dance floor was another thing entirely. He'd taken a turn or two with a couple young ladies, but was otherwise still looking for some good conversation to pass some time. He would have preferred to explore the zoo at large and he would have to remember to come back another day during regular hours.

With half a mind to head toward the stairs leading down, he caught a familiar face out of the corner of his eye, about to stumble right off the edge. For fuck's sake. Dean lunged forward, grabbing Dempsey by the arm. He knew the dance floor was enchanted to keep everyone on, but he wasn't about to take any chances. "Careful," he cautioned, keeping Don Juan upright for a moment longer before letting go.

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Don Juan Dempsey

  

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Decembers were difficult precisely because so many past ones hadn't been. December in Holland, living with Adriana, making wistful plans about their future. December with Hudson visiting the Dempseys for dinner and meandering through the garden afterwards, getting into the soft sort of trouble that left a smile in your eyes. December watching Elfrieda's eyes moisten when he presented her with a thoughtful book of poetry, cramped annotations in the margins. December in Spain surrounded by Valencia's boisterous family with their thousand traditions, as alien as they were heartfelt. Decembers, Decembers, Decembers. This year the month felt like a graveyard of past memories, of relationships he'd buried. He'd been — indulging a lot, to pass the time and take the edges off his recollections. After tonight December was over, so the party tonight was something of a celebration. A personal victory, his continued survival.

He'd been drinking, but he wasn't drunk. Someone had turned the wrong way on the dance floor and practically sent their partner careening into him, and he'd been obliged to quickly get out of the way, and yes, perhaps he had wobbled slightly in doing so. He certainly didn't think he was staggering, and would have been offended that someone felt the need to jump in and help him no matter who it had been. The fact that it turned out to be one of the ghosts he'd spent the month hiding from only made matters worse.

"I'm fine," he snapped. "Where are the damn stairs?"

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Well that was different. Dean fixed Dempsey with a raised eyebrow, unsure as to where the attitude was coming from. He'd seen Dempsey get knocked into, but also could see the familiar flush of alcohol on his cheeks. Perhaps not drunk, but on the way. Dean had no room to judge.

"I was headed that way myself," which was true and now it seemed like a purposeful coincidence, like that night Don Juan had walked him home, but he wasn't about to change his plans because Dempsey was cranky for some reason.

Dean turned back toward the way he'd been coming, keeping a slower pace than usual, so Dempsey could follow if he wanted.

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Don Juan wasn't keen to keep pace with Hudson on his way off the dance floor, but it didn't seem like he had much of a choice. Blustering ahead just to get away from him would have been too obvious, and he didn't want to make this into a thing. He didn't want Hudson to know he had spent the last month oscillating between thinking about him and getting intoxicated to avoid thinking about him. One of those facts might stir something up — Hudson's erstwhile desire to throw caution to the wind and be alarmingly romantic. The other would, Don Juan assumed, make Hudson worry about him, and Hudson wasn't in a position to worry about him any more.

So he plodded along behind Hudson on the way to the stairs, sulking at this turn of events. He made a meager attempt to not be obviously sulking but suspected it was obvious regardless. Probably not just to Hudson; probably to everyone. He wore his heart on his sleeve when he was drinking. He ought to go home, but it wasn't even midnight yet.

They reached the stairs. As Don Juan descended (with his eyes firmly on the middle-distance, so as not to see whether Hudson offered him a hand or not and therefore avoid the decision of whether to take it) he announced melancholically, "I think I'll go cozy up to the lions."

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Dean had kept his gazed focused singularly forward, just barely resisting the urge to make sure Dempsey was following along and managing the stairs. If he fell, he'd take them both down anyway and then Dean would obviously know.

At the bottom he finally cast a cursory glance over his shoulder just in time to catch Don Juan's rather gloomy proclamation. "I would prefer you didn't." Dean wasn't sure what had Dempsey feeling so down, but he wasn't sure he was allowed to ask anymore. There had been little more than brief eye contact between them at events in the last six months and less than that more often. With all of the travel, it had been a clear breather. Still, he would rather keep Dempsey alive.

"Come to think of it, I'm not sure they have any lions. You may be out of luck." A winged tiger perhaps, but Dean was pulling thoughts out of thin air.

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He made a show of being quite affronted by the idea that the zoo lacked lions. "Frederick Humphrey-Mavis has a lion," he pointed out. "You mean to tell me his gardens are better equipped than this whole..." He had momentarily lost the world for what this place was, so swept a hand widely through the air to encompass this whole. The animals might not have been the focus of the night but in Don Juan's opinion they were the only novelty of the place; he had bored of the elevated dance floor after two lackluster dances earlier in the night and had only been up a moment ago because it seemed the quickest route to where he'd been going next, which was — he didn't recall. Probably somewhere with booze. Was there a card tent here somewhere? He could stand to sit down and drink and lose some money, he thought; that was a more productive way to self-flagellate than making small talk with Dean Hudson.

"Whatever," he said with a shrug, an exaggerated gesture of indifference. "I'm going to find something dangerous and throw peanuts at it."

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Dean hesitated. This was new territory and he wasn't sure how to tread. "I would still prefer you didn't." Not that Dean thought Don Juan could actually cause any trouble, the zoo itself was quite locked down, or so he'd been told.

Truth be told, he was more worried about Dempsey's state of mind. Dean had come to terms with how he felt, still felt, about Don Juan and that it was not something that could be in the present, but it wasn't something he wanted to let go of either. Which meant not letting him get mauled by dangerous creatures if he could help it. He just wasn't sure how to go about it at the moment.

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"Then stop me," he said, like a dare. Without waiting for a response he strode away from the stairs, picking a direction more or less at random. He was rather counting on Hudson not following him and being able to disappear into the crowd, then later to disappear from the crowd. Not to throw peanuts at dangerous things, but to find somewhere more amenable to sulking through his feelings than a party. Possibly it would involve throwing peanuts, but that passing fancy had mostly already passed; he'd just wanted a phrase to illustrate to Hudson that he wasn't in the mood to stay and chat, and would rather be literally anywhere else, doing anything else.

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Clearly neither one of them had learned their lesson. Dempsey with that attitude that stirred something deep with in Dean's resolve and Dean had no wherewithal to see Dempsey making any more stupid decisions than necessary. Maybe that was his own vice that he could not quit.

He watched Don Juan go, hesitating again, but strode after him before the crowd swallowed him up. If nothing else he could keep an eye on him from across the party, pending Dempsey didn't do anything too stupid. The odds were not in their favor.

Dean caught up quickly enough, far too sober for this, but still determined to hover and be an obnoxious deterrent. "Maybe I'll join you." He said casually; as this was clearly his own stupidity surfacing again.

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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Don Juan thought it had worked, for a moment. Then Hudson caught up with him. Something in the back of his chest fluttered and he crushed it with a scowl. "Feeling masochistic tonight?" he asked dryly. He thought he had made it clear he didn't intend to be very good company. Not for Hudson, anyway. He could probably shift his mood to something more pleasant and perhaps even be charming if called upon, but not with someone who made him feel so aware of all his uncut edges.

"Or are you playing knight-in-shining-armor, here to save me from myself?" he continued. He put his hands in his coat pockets and shook them at Dean, to demonstrate that they were empty. Empty of potion vials, empty of pills. Just the usual flavor of self-destruction tonight.

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Dean sighed, mostly to suppress the mixed emotions welling up in his chest. If only he could expel them half as easily. Dempsey was apparently feeling cantankerous this evening, but Dean was not put off.

If he were in a different frame of mind, the action of shaking out his pockets might have stirred a different feeling in him. As it was, Dean simply shrugged. It would be easier to be angry, he supposed, but after sobering himself up after his year in the bottle, Dean had come to several conclusions and none of them anchored themselves in anger. Regret, disappointment, frustration with himself, but never angry.

"It is only as much as you've done for me." Walking him home after too much to drink; making the hard, albeit right, decision last time Dean had a moment of weakness. If Dean had been enough to save Don Juan from himself, they might be in a drastically different place in life. Tonight he could at least keep him alive for another few hours.

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Don Juan suddenly felt explosive.

"We're not nannies trading shifts," he snapped, then abruptly changed direction and surged forward, hoping Dean would take the hint and stop following him. He wished he'd had less to drink, so that Hudson wouldn't feel obliged to look after him — or that he'd had significantly more, so that Hudson would be too embarrassed to look after him. It would have been difficult to sober up at this point, and as he'd just indicated he didn't have any other intoxicants squirreled away (tonight was supposed to have been better; he wasn't supposed to have needed it). So another drink would have to do — if he could find one.

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Dempsey wasn't wrong, but it did not absolve Dean of his feelings. His feelings however, were not Dempsey's problem anymore.

Holding up his hands in surrender, Dean yielded. It wasn't worth antagonizing him into doing something worse than stumbling around drunk.

"Alright." Maybe he ought to find himself another drink. One more wouldn't tip him over the edge. Maybe he could just keep an eye on Dempsey from across the party if he stuck around. It was better than nothing.

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Hudson stayed back as Don Juan plunged ahead into the crowd, which was ostensibly what he'd wanted, but it didn't make him feel less volatile. He was disappointed in himself, he recognized, for having been so quickly and thoroughly thrown off by an entirely banal interaction with Hudson. It had been... how long had it been? Nearly three years, by now. He had no right to be so affected. It was pathetic, really. He fetched another drink but spent more time staring at it than sipping it. If he drank more, the disregulation that had so frustrated him during his conversation with Hudson was probably only going to get worse. Increasing the odds that he would make a fool of himself before the night was over. Maybe it was already inevitable.

Well, if he was going to make a fool of himself one way or another, Don Juan decided he could at least choose the kind of fool he was. An emotional mess, mooning over someone he'd lost three years ago, or the kind of fool who ruined parties. He had a reputation to uphold, after all — no one had threatened him with violence since he'd fled Spain. Maybe that would change tonight. He could stand to be despised, so long as he wasn't considered uninteresting, he thought; nothing was less interesting than being hung up on someone who had left you.

It took him some time to decide the best course of attack, but eventually he ended up slipping out of the party proper and into a small room, probably generally used for zoo maintenance but which was being used to stash fireworks for the celebrations later tonight. He picked through them in an unhurried way, reading the handwritten labels and trying to imagine which would cause the most chaos. He was in a considerably better mood when the door opened and — who else? — Hudson slipped inside.

"I couldn't find peanuts," he explained blithely, making a sweeping gesture with one of the fireworks. "Have you been stalking me?"

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Maybe he was feeling masochistic tonight. He had picked up a conversation with an acquaintance, all the while distracted by watching Dempsey out of the corner of his eye. It wasn't that hard, he was as subtle as an erumpet on a good day, but drunk, well, it was even easier.

Which of course was how he noticed Dempsey slip off, out of the crowd while after staring at his drink for a little while. Hudson had downed another one of his own, feeling the buzz settling into his veins, though he was far from drunk. It was a good place to be, to help settle the nerves that always seemed to accompany Don Juan's presence these days.

Against his better judgement, Dean followed Dempsey far enough away from the party. He would rather the man stay in one piece and if he was hell bent on getting into trouble night, Dean was going to at least make sure he wasn't by himself while doing it. He ran a hand through his hair at watching Dempsey enter a building he was certainly not allowed to be in. "Stupidly, yes." He replied simply as he closed the door behind him and leaned against it. "I did say I would prefer you not snuggle the deadly creatures, or with fireworks."

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"Fireworks weren't part of the deal," he retorted, aware that this was childish and feeling no hesitation about playing into it. He'd rather be accused of being immature than of being hung up on someone. He picked up another firework and pretended to read its label, though really he was watching Hudson's posture out of the corner of his eye. "This is a no-supervision-required sort of project, so if you're not here to help, you can go," he said, with more amusement than frustration in his tone. He had been annoyed before: annoyed that Hudson had caught him stumbling and thought he needed looking after, annoyed that there was nothing to attribute his bad mood to except Hudson's presence. Now he had discarded his real feelings for a party mask of cheerful havoc-wrecker; he was more amenable to Hudson's company in this state.

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