"Sorry, she set my wrist before the potion kicked in." Dean grimaced, knowing he deserved the revenge. Sinking back onto the bed, he leaned back against the headboard. He attempted to relax back against it, but could feel the tension still set in his shoulders and he wasn't sure exactly why. He had a lot of thoughts and feelings bouncing around in his brain, but he wasn't sure how to articulate them to Don Juan right now. Still, they had agreed on better communication.

"I have a question about something I overheard at work today, but we don't have to discuss it if you don't want to." Dean knew they had quite a bit of variables floating around and adding another probably wasn't the greatest of ideas, it was nagging at him. They'd already had a heavy discussion tonight though, so he understood if it needed to wait. He took a deep, pensive sip of his whiskey to stretch out the moment.

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Dean's attitude suggested this was going to be a capital-C Conversation. The amount of things that fell into that bucket which could also conceivably have begun with something he'd overheard at work were fairly limited. Jumping to conclusions was practically inevitable when there were so few possible conclusions in sight.

Hudson wanted to leave, Don Juan assumed. He traveled for work regularly, and some trips were much longer than others. Probably he had an opportunity to leave for a much longer stretch, and this was going to be a Conversation because he didn't know if Don Juan was stable enough to handle the world in his absence. (And would he have been wrong? Don Juan came here tonight unplanned because he hadn't been able to sleep. Where would he go if Hudson left for months?)

"We can talk about it," he insisted. He didn't want Hudson turning down opportunities for his sake, as depressing as the idea of going without him for any length of time was. He didn't want Hudson to treat him like he was fragile, even if he currently was.

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Dean supposed he should have put more of a qualifier on the discussion, but Don Juan could always end it if he wanted. "I heard through the grapevine," not surprising as the break room at the Ministry was as full of gossip as wealthy woman's parlor, especially given the Dempsey name. "That you've gotten notice of a daughter's existence?" After the initial surprise had worn off (which he'd kept his face admirably neutral in the office), Dean supposed he hadn't been shocked. Honestly he was still thrilled nobody had come to serve him with the same information. Still, it had sent him into an unexpected tail spin, which had been part of the reason he'd headed out for the fight tonight. His brain had been too keyed up to, spiraling in different directions, and he'd needed the distraction of the fight to get it out of his thoughts.

Mostly he wondered why Don Juan hadn't mentioned it himself. Beyond that, Dean had started to play the What If game and that had gotten him nowhere good either. They'd just come back together, was this going to throw them back off track? It was selfish he knew. If Don Juan really did have a daughter from his marriage, he ought to do something about it, but what would that, in turn, mean for them?

In trying to keep his features neutral, keeping the storm of bubbling emotions at bay, Dean turned to grab the bottle and add a little more whiskey to his glass.

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Don Juan's brow knit for half a second. His initial thought was to wonder why Hudson had phrased it as a question, because Hudson was the only person in the world that had already known about Adriana and his relationship with her. Had the existence of the girl really never come up? It seemed unlikely, but then... why would they have talked about it? Don Juan had always been resolute in his stance that she was much better of without him, so there wasn't much to say. Until now, anyway. Now that his parents were involved, he'd lost a good deal of agency in the decision.

"I knew she existed," he clarified with a frown. It wasn't necessarily surprising that that was the way the story was being repeated, though; everyone else had just heard she existed. "My parents just found out over Christmas, so now things are getting... complicated," he said with a sigh.

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Confused by Don Juan's nonchalance about it, Dean tried to keep his expression from saying as much. Wasn't this a pretty big deal? "Were you going to tell me?" What did he mean by his parents being involved now? The rumor he'd heard was that there was some sort of dispute over custody. He hadn't stuck around long enough to hear the whole story, knowing if he asked questions or anyone asked anything of him, his poker face might not cover his reaction.

"What do you mean by complicated?" Dean needed more information, all of it, before he figure out where his own head was at. He had to temper his expectations, he supposed. Maybe he shouldn't have brought it up. They'd already fumbled their way through a serious conversation tonight, this was too much. The problem was, he'd already started it and now he didn't know how to back out of it.

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Don Juan shrugged. He was reticent to get into too many details, reluctant to make this another conversation like the one on Christmas Day with all his family standing around expressing their various forms and degrees of disappointment.

"Solicitor complicated," he said as though he didn't know anything deeper than that. He had the sense that the solicitor didn't really want him to discuss it with anyone, anyway, so this wasn't much of an exaggeration. They weren't telling him the details of how they planned to proceed with the case, because they assumed the more he knew the more he'd be able to fuck up, either intentionally or accidentally. He wasn't feeling optimistic about their outcome regardless; it would take a persuasive solicitor indeed to convince anyone that he was more fit to raise a child than Klaas Spaans was.

As for whether he'd been planning to tell Dean... the question confused him, honestly. Even if he hadn't forgotten that Dean didn't already know, this wasn't an issue for the pair of them. It was something his parents were doing, and now something people were talking about, but it wasn't as though it had anything to do with Dean. Even if they somehow won custody of Kaatjie, it wasn't as though Don Juan was going to be bringing her by here. Unless Dean thought this was another thing he'd end up having to worry about, sooner or later, the way he'd been the one picking up the pieces when Adriana had died and Don Juan had gone sulking by a frozen lake about it.

"I've only met her once," he said, hoping to give some reassuring evidence towards the point that he wasn't going to go spiraling if the court case didn't go their way. "She sort of ambushed me."

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His questions went largely unanswered and Dean was simultaneously frustrated and relieved by it. He hadn't gotten the information he'd asked for, but it was also an easy out from the conversation. If a solicitor was involved, things were really heading toward the legal route and now he wondered even more just what was going to change in the wake of it.

"Alright," Dean couldn't get a good read on how Don Juan was feeling about this. The casualness in his demeanor said it wasn't something to worry about, but how could it not be? A daughter was a pretty big responsibility. Dean still had a ton of questions, but got the impression this conversation was going to go nowhere, so there was no point in trying to prolong it and maybe spark an argument. He took a long swig of his whiskey, draining the glass, but didn't pour another. Instead he set it aside and ran a hand through his hair, unsure of what to do next. He still wasn't tired and he felt that strange itch under his skin again, but there was nothing he could do about it tonight.

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Don Juan didn't like the look of how Dean drained his whiskey. He was stressed, that seemed clear, but precisely what had snagged him was less clear, at least to Don Juan. "Alright," he echoed warily. He took a small sip of his own glass to buy himself a second to think. The root of this had to be that he was worried Don Juan would collapse under the pressure of something sooner or later, and he didn't know how to convince Dean that wouldn't happen. He wasn't even necessarily convinced himself that it wouldn't happen, only that he didn't suspect the thing that might cause him to buckle would be Kaatjie. She'd either stay with her uncle or she would move in to the Dempsey estate and be chiefly raised by his mother; either way it wasn't much his concern.

"What are you thinking?" he eventually asked when he'd exhausted himself trying to guess.

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The problem now was, that he didn't exactly have an answer to that. He had a lot of thoughts running rampant through his head, but Dean hadn't exactly made much sense of them, much less figured out how to articulate what it was that was bothering him. "I don't know," he started, shrugging. "I think it feels like a bigger deal than you seem to think it is?" It shouldn't be, shouldn't it? Maybe he was making a mountain out of a molehill.

Maybe he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Dean still felt like he was a little on edge at the moment. Yesterday he'd felt better about everything, like he'd found a good enough balance, but this added weight was shifting things in a direction he wasn't sure he could counterbalance well. This felt like a tipping point he hadn't anticipated. Not to mention he couldn't fathom why Don Juan hadn't thought to tell him. He'd told him all about Adriana, but not the kid? It left him feeling out of the loop and he hated that. He couldn't be missing information if he was going to keep things running smoothly.

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Don Juan took a long breath. Dean's opinion was a common one, he supposed, because his family had all had the same type of reaction on hearing the news. If he'd been secretly raising a daughter for a decade then maybe this sort of thought would have been warranted, but what was supposed to be shocking about this discovery, really? That he'd slept with a woman when he was nineteen? No one was surprised by that.

"Don't see why it ought to be," he said with another shrug, verging on defensive. "I was nominally involved in her conception. I met her once. I'll show up in court when the solicitor says to. Otherwise it's not much to do with me." He shifted his gaze away and tilted his whiskey glass as though he were more interested in that than the conversation. "Mum wants to take her in, Ana's brother doesn't want to let her go. It's between them, really."

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His confusion was evident on his face now. "You don't want to be involved?" The detachment felt a little harsh, even in this situation. Dean knew better than most, what had happened and he supposed that he could understand some level of wariness, but for it to be something that was being left up to Don Juan's mother and the girl's uncle without any input from Don Juan, seemed unrealistic. Dean hadn't thought much about what would have been his decision if presented with the same situation, but given that the poor girl no longer had a mother, surely she ought to have a father? Maybe he was reading too much into it.

Maybe he ought to be relieved that Don Juan was so blasé about the whole thing. It would mean that nothing would change. But Dean also felt like this would be a constant shadow that he was waiting for to creep up on him and throw everything out of whack. "What happens if your mother does take her in?" The questions were leaking out now and he knew he had to reign in the flood before he let a little too much loose. He pushed himself off the bed, pacing to the window, unable to just sit there, trying to find a suitable outlet for the energy.

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Don Juan couldn't help it; he scoffed at the question. "I don't want to fuck her up." Which meant he didn't want to be involved by extention. There was no kind of involvement he could have with a young girl, still developing all her notions about how the world worked and how she fit into it, that wouldn't leave her ruined to some extent. If she made it to adulthood and managed not to have a single thing in common with him, it could only possibly be to her benefit.

"I don't think that'll happen," he said, crossing his arms loosely over his knees. "Between you and me I think the case that I'm a fit parent is a pretty weak one."

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Brows furrowed, Dean took a minute to look at Don Juan, to really look at him. He blew out a long breath, running another hand through his hair and down the back of his neck, pressing his fingers into the muscles of his shoulder. Reeling in his own thoughts and feelings on the matter, he pushed them aside for the moment. He could sort them in his own time, now that everything was out in the open. "You really think that?" It's not like Don Juan would be raising her on his own. Like he'd said, his mother would be involved, and he had a boatload of siblings, all of whom still lived at the house in Galway. It wasn't like it would be a solo venture. There would be people to support him, even beyond just Dean.

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Don Juan looked at Hudson with his mouth set in a firm line. He did believe it, and none of Dean's sentimentality was going to dissuade him. "You came to get me after her mother died," he pointed out, meaning that Dean knew better than most people how entirely incapable he had been at the time of taking care of anyone; he hadn't even been able to take care of himself. And he hadn't made great strides in the interim, either. He wasn't drinking himself to death in the wilderness at the moment, but Dean still didn't know the half of what trouble he'd gotten himself into only a few months ago.

He didn't want someone depending on him if he wasn't sure he'd still be here tomorrow, and at the end of the day he wasn't sure of it. Even now that he was sober — it was too new and still felt too tentative for him to fully trust that it would last. But he was sure Dean didn't want to hear that, and certainly didn't want to hear about his brush with death back in December.

He finished his glass. "It doesn't matter what I think, anyway. It'll come down to who has the more persuasive solicitor. I just think they've got a lot more evidence in their favor than we do."

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Dean swallowed his argument. So far he hadn't done a very good at getting his point across tonight, so he would let it go for now. Well mostly. "For the record, I think you could do it." Don Juan probably was right though, the uncle would have much better resources and had already been raising the girl for what, ten, eleven years? It was strange to think the girl had been around the entire time that Dean had known Don Juan. Still, leading up to now, there was far too much evidence against Don Juan for there to be a good case.

Feeling conflicted, Dean also felt some of that new tension ebb. Maybe he was finally feeling tired. Everything was out in the open, all of the cards on the table that had him feeling out of sorts and even though he had some thinking to do on his own, he felt marginally better. He shook out his hands, a necessary physical outlet, and moved back toward the bed. He flopped haphazardly back down, rolling onto his back so he was somehow in contact with Don Juan and sighed. "I'll support whatever it is you want." He said finally, thinking that was really the best he could do, given his position on the periphery.

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Don Juan set the empty glass down and laid down next to Hudson on the bed, nestling into the crook below his arm. He took another long breath. "I want her to be better than me," he muttered. The way he phrased it didn't sound selfish, but maybe deep down it partly was. He held on to a lot of guilt for people he'd hurt throughout his life; he didn't want to drown under the weight of having ruined her life, too. And whatever people said about her having been abandoned, or what she'd lacked by not having a father growing up — he was entirely sure she was better off than she would have been if she'd been depending on him for anything in the last decade.

"I made her cry," he admitted quietly. "When she found me."

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