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stoportotouch · 6 years

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ya know when you just can't fucking write for months and then suddenly you Actually Have An Idea and end up writing the end of a chapter at 4:30am the morning of the day you're meant to be going to london? haha nah me neither that would never happen.

anyway, anybody want to read something gay? yeah, me too, i'm always up to read something gay. (but there's no don giovanni fanfic so i guess i gotta write it. that's just how life is.) sorry if you Viscerally (or even vaguely) disagree with leporello and giovanni being gay, this and every other fanfiction i have ever written is a Gays Only Event.

this is... a little short

Leporello was completely aware that everybody reacted to shock in different ways. He had seen a good number of them in his time, tailing around after Giovanni and occasionally trying to clear up the emotional trauma he caused. He had been punched and threatened by some people, others had cried, and others yet had vomited. But what he hadn’t expected or experienced before was how Giovanni had reacted to this reunion.

Leporello had expected there to be questions, or maybe an argument of some sort. What he hadn’t anticipated, however, was for Giovanni to immediately be on top of him after he had thrown himself at him and kissing him.

It wasn’t as if Leporello was complaining, though. Not after a year when he hadn’t had the will to do anything of this sort, and especially not after a year when he had been constantly praying that he would get to do this again with Giovanni, even if it meant joining his master by his own hand. It had been a while in any case when Giovanni had been dragged down to Hell, not counting a brief encounter on a balcony that Donna Elvira, Donna Anna, and Don Ottavio had inadvertently cut short the night of the party.

As such, Leporello was extremely disappointed when Giovanni pulled away and sat up. He let Giovanni rearrange his legs so that he was straddling Leporello’s hips, but then pushed himself upright. Giovanni leaned into him for support and Leporello suddenly realised just how much smaller Giovanni looked here.

“What are you doing down here?” His voice sounded so hoarse.

Giovanni had never been a large man before, but he had always looked vibrant – well put together and in a way that suggested both his rank and the fact that he took pride in his appearance. But now everything about him looked pallid and sickly: his hair hung limply in front of his face, his shirt hung off him, and his face was pale, dark smudges under his eyes. “You aren’t dead, are you, my dear Leporello?” he drawled sarcastically.

Leporello spent a moment trying to figure out how best to approach this question – ordinarily, if he wasn’t dealing with an obviously traumatised man who had been dead for a year, Leporello would have happily offered an equally sarcastic response.

But that seemed unfair, given the circumstances. “No, I am very much alive.” That was inoffensive enough, Leporello supposed. When Giovanni slumped against him, he continued, with a smirk. “If I didn’t know better, I would say you were disappointed.”

Giovanni’s lips quirked up slightly, but it was enough for Leporello to know that he wasn’t angry, and this was only confirmed when Giovanni returned to kissing him again. Leporello would have stayed there for the rest of time if he could, and he was sure, given the circumstances and their location, that he could, but he was only too aware that it wasn’t safe, and that the cat was circling them again.

Leporello was confident that he would only need to put a tiny amount of pressure on Giovanni’s sternum to move him so that they could leave, but he didn’t want to. He was partly just enjoying the physical affection, but also, he was scared that if he let go of Giovanni he would simply disintegrate. But he still knew that he had to, so, unwilling as he was, he pushed Giovanni away.

“We need to leave,” Leporello said breathlessly, even as Giovanni buried his face in his neck again.

“You like it.” Giovanni’s voice was weak, and he leaned into it and clung onto Leporello when his arms went around his waist. “I seem to remember that you always did.” But Leporello gently pushed him away again, with too little force to knock him over but with just enough for him to get the point.

The cat was pacing agitatedly beside them now, and it had finally caught Giovanni’s eye. He held his arm out, and the cat came to him, sniffed him in a cursory way, and then started rubbing its face against the back of his hand. “You didn’t waste time in replacing me.” He scratched behind the cat’s ear, and it purred. “Does my replacement have a name?” he asked teasingly.

Leporello and the cat made eye contact, and Leporello could have sworn that it shrugged at him, as though to say, “that’s your problem”. Leporello hadn’t given a moment’s thought to what the cat might be called until exactly this point, but he still tried to improvise. Unfortunately for both him and the cat, however, he had never been particularly creative. “Catalinón?” he suggested, asking the cat as much as himself.

The cat didn’t immediately jump on him and start attacking him, and Giovanni seemed too exhausted to think about the answer, so Leporello guessed that the cat was now officially called Catalinón. Giovanni simply nodded and got slowly to his feet and retrieved the sword. Leporello got to his feet, and finally took the chance to look around himself.

While it was dark, being that Hell was underground, Leporello still found that he could see everything around him. He and Giovanni were illuminated slightly red, but Leporello was sure he could make out every bone on Giovanni’s body even so.

That, however, did not make him weak.

Giovanni had returned the sword to Leporello for safekeeping and was now crouched down on the ground and petting the cat – Catalinón, Leporello supposed, not that he would remember the name for more than about five minutes. Leporello couldn’t take his eyes off him.

Leporello just wanted to be back up on earth, but he was wary of Giovanni’s temper – he always had been. So, instead of pointing out that they needed to get out quickly before Hell noticed that something was wrong, he let Giovanni lead the way. Or rather he let Giovanni set the pace – Catalinón was leading, because he seemed to know the way.

They walked in silence for a good few minutes after Catalinón, Giovanni looking suspiciously around himself and anywhere but in Leporello’s direction. Leporello occasionally found himself looking sidelong at Giovanni, but he couldn’t bring himself to draw attention to his presence. Even when other people had been surrounding him, Leporello knew from experience that Giovanni somehow had the ability to exude the air of a man who existed separately from the rest of humanity. Especially now, he needed some semblance of privacy.

“Which way?” It was unlike Giovanni to ask Leporello for advice at all. Leporello tried not to be surprised, but at the same time he couldn’t help but remember just one of the many times accidentally saying something that hadn’t sounded enough like a suggestion to his master had prompted Giovanni to nearly dislocate Leporello’s shoulder.

For a second, Leporello almost considered not commenting on Giovanni’s slightly odd behaviour, but for one thing he was worried about him (and for another he was curious, not that he would admit to the latter). He allowed Giovanni to gently steer him out of the way by his elbow, but he couldn’t pass on trying to gently untangle what was really going on in Giovanni’s head when he didn’t immediately let go of Leporello’s sleeve but instead tightened his fingers around the fabric of his coat just above Leporello’s elbow.

“Didn’t you try to…?” Leporello was wary to tread carefully, even though he still had control of all their weapons, because Giovanni wasn’t above punching or even trying to strangle him when he was sufficiently pushed, but he still quirked his head slightly upwards, too scared to say the words.

“Of course I did,” Giovanni said, but his tone just suggested a sort of culture shock, rather than actual anger at the fact that Leporello hadn’t immediately assumed that he had tried to escape. When Leporello looked directly at Giovanni was the first time he noticed the scratches and cuts, probably from the Imps, that covered his arms and what was visible of his chest and his shoulders. Even though he wanted to ask, or somehow acknowledge it if only so that Giovanni knew that he could talk about it if he wanted to, Leporello didn’t look for too long, instead focussing on Catalinón as he walked ahead of them.

By the time they reached the bridge that Leporello and Catalinón had crossed on the way over Leporello was completely convinced that neither he nor Giovanni would be sleeping at all when they got back. Giovanni was too visibly panicked to be able to sleep – not that he had ever been able to sleep much, even in the best of mental health – and Leporello didn’t want to leave him alone, even to sleep.

Something felt amiss, or at least more amiss than it had previously felt. Supposing that he was just being paranoid, Leporello tried to force himself to relax slightly. Surely nothing was going to go wrong now, not now that they had got all this way, and especially not now that there were two of them and they were both heavily armed.

Leporello grabbed Giovanni’s hand, eliciting a slightly startled noise in response, partly to chivvy him along but partly just for support. Catalinón ran across the bridge, reaching the other side just as Leporello and Giovanni arrived at the nearer side of it, and Leporello was beginning to make to push Giovanni across ahead of him, because he looked like he might collapse if he took his eyes off him, when something in the centre of the bridge flared up in a great burst of flames that somehow didn’t damage the bridge itself ahead of him. Even though Giovanni had frozen at the first sign of it, Leporello immediately dragged him back by his wrist.

Leporello went to pull out the sword, but he instinctually knew that a sword would be of little use against a sixteen-foot humanoid creature made of pure flame. The heat that whatever the creature was seemed to be radiating above even the ambient heat of Hell was making both Leporello and Giovanni sweat even from as far away as half the length of the dining room in the palace. Knowing that there was nothing that he could do, Leporello dropped his hand to his side again, trying to keep Giovanni close to him instead.

“Giovanni…” Leporello didn’t know what it was he was trying to ask of Giovanni, or even if he was going to ask something – there was little that he could say that would sound coherent. What is it? Do you know it? What does it want? Maybe all he wanted was to let Giovanni know that he was still there, even if he was cowering behind him like he always had been before.

Giovanni didn’t identifiably take his eyes off the creature, but he shushed Leporello and made a placating gesture in his general direction. Leporello could see that his hands were shaking, and he chanced looking up at the creature, to see if maybe it was the Commendatore. It wasn’t, or at least it didn’t look like him, but over the past couple of minutes it had started to take on a more and more human face and form. Leporello didn’t immediately know the face that it had taken on, but he somehow felt that he had seen it before.

“You shouldn’t be here.” Giovanni’s voice was level, but level in the way that the voice of somebody deliberately trying to keep calm to avoid provoking anger sounded level. It was a tone of voice that Leporello knew only too well – he had found himself talking to Giovanni in exactly that tone of voice many times in the past to try to disarm an emotional outburst.

Leporello had never been particularly good at it and as such he had eventually given up and just let Giovanni’s moods run their course, no matter how aggressive and angry he got, because Giovanni would invariably come back after an hour and beg for forgiveness. Giovanni, on the other hand, sounded like he had had decades of practice speaking to somebody exactly like this.

The creature didn’t speak, but made a sound in response, and if it was intelligible to Giovanni he didn’t let on to Leporello. He stayed perfectly still, just looking at the creature as though he was just daring it to say something again. Leporello was desperate just to know what was happening, not least because neither of them was doing anything, the creature staying in the middle of the bridge while Giovanni kept his distance just ahead of Leporello.

Leporello wanted to speak, but he was too scared, and he was shaking too much to move, so instead he just stayed behind Giovanni. He screwed his eyes shut against the brightness, and against the creature making another sound, this one like metal scraping against rock, and if he had opened his eyes he would have seen that Giovanni looked around at him.

“No, I didn’t.” Clearly, the creature could communicate, but only with Giovanni, and its words sounded like unholy screeching to Leporello’s ears. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was saying to Giovanni, because, despite his attempt to sound calm, Leporello could hear his voice shaking slightly.

Another shrieking sound, and Giovanni made a frightened noise in response. Leporello finally chanced opening his eyes, and the creature no longer looked human, but it still looked terrible. Leporello craned his neck up to try to look into its ‘face’, but even though there were no identifiable eyes, or even the depressions where eyes would be, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was staring at him and judging him.

“I didn’t – he didn’t!” Giovanni sounded panicked now, and Leporello wanted to pull him back and comfort him, but the fact that he was talking to a metres-tall column of fire made Leporello think twice. The creature continued to make screeching sounds, with Giovanni occasionally interjecting with “I know,” his voice getting increasingly high in pitch as he spoke.

The creature was showing no signs of yielding, but nor was Giovanni, and they just stared at each other for a few seconds, Leporello struggling to comprehend anything that was going on around him and trying to look around the creature to see if Catalinón was still there. He hoped he wasn’t; he knew that he could find his way back easily enough with Giovanni, and it wasn’t safe for even a supernatural cat.

The creature carried on making screeching sounds, and Giovanni suddenly straightened up, tipping his head to the side. He waited for it to finish – he had been interrupting it before, sometimes cutting it off in a way that rendered him barely audible. “You’re right,” he admitted, although what it was right about, Leporello couldn’t begin to understand. “And you know what?”

Clack, clack, clack. The creature leaned down almost patronisingly.

“I sorely regret that you weren’t there for me to tell you all the details.” The quick look that Giovanni threw back to Leporello suggested roughly what the conversation was about, and even though he was absolutely terrified, Leporello was fairly sure that he could feel his pupils dilating when Giovanni looked at him like that.

In any case, Giovanni seemed to have managed to offend the creature into dissipating, and it was rapidly melting back into the magma underneath the bridge. Leporello could just about see Catalinón on the other side of the bridge, standing up on his hind legs and swishing his tail as if he was asking Leporello and Giovanni what they had been waiting for.

Giovanni grabbed Leporello’s hand and started running, essentially dragging Leporello across the bridge and throwing a cursory, “Leporello, don’t ask anything until we get back up there,” in Leporello’s direction. Rather than speaking, because he was afraid he would never be able to stop if he started, Leporello squeezed Giovanni’s hand in response.

As soon as they were both safely across the bridge, Leporello realised that the staircase leading back to the surface had disappeared, having been replaced with what looked like a tunnel leading up a steep slope. Both Leporello and Giovanni once again took off at a run, this time following Catalinón towards the tunnel.

Leporello was slightly behind Giovanni, who was somehow managing to keep pace with Catalinón, despite how horrifyingly weak Giovanni looked, even when he was running. Leporello was trying to think where the tunnel might lead to, but at this stage he was too pent up and anxious to care, as long as it was anywhere but where he was now.

Leporello was beginning to be able to see a light towards the end of the tunnel, and Catalinón must have seen it too, because he slowed down to a more reasonable pace – more like a quick jog than sprinting like he had been before, which was more like walking pace for both Giovanni and Leporello. Now that they had slowed down, Giovanni and Leporello were able to fall into step beside each other, and Leporello could see the rise and fall of Giovanni’s chest under his shirt. He didn’t want to ask if he was alright, but he also wanted to hold Giovanni until he at least started to forget about all the trauma of the last year.

This was not the time.

Leporello reached for Giovanni’s hand again, but just ended up running his thumb against the back of his hand, but Giovanni seemed to understand the sentiment. His hand briefly touched Leporello’s back, but then he returned to looking ahead towards the end of the tunnel. Leporello just tried to think coherently, but after the experience he had had that day he wasn’t sure he could for a while.

But the small point of light at the end of the tunnel was starting to give way to a larger warm, pleasant light that suggested that they would be reappearing roughly where Leporello had left from. Leporello tried not to think too hard about the method by which they had managed to seemingly leave and re-enter the same place, but through two different routes, because they were nearly home, and he was worried that if he thought too much about it then he would just vomit.

It somehow took both far longer and far less time for them to emerge through the doors into the dining hall of the palace, and when he suddenly remembered what was – or rather had been – in here Leporello hastily spun Giovanni around to face away from the room. Leporello thought that he just wanted to be sure that the statue was no longer there, but he realised that he just wanted to be close to Giovanni again. Even when he realised that the statue of the Commendatore had left as mysteriously as it had appeared, though, Leporello didn’t let go of Giovanni’s arms, or even loosen his grip on him.

For his part, however, Giovanni seemed to realise that they were back, but Leporello could tell from his face that he didn’t know how to react to it. Rather than letting him struggle with whatever emotion he was feeling, Leporello pulled Giovanni against him, letting him bury his face in his chest and holding him tighter when he felt Giovanni start to shake with mixed relief and unaddressed trauma.

#don giovanni #leporello x giovanni #mozart #opera tag #ollie writes #ollie considers #link #it fucken took me long enough #jeez

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stoportotouch · 6 years

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so this was originally gonna be straight-up giovanni has a breakdown, leporello tries to deal with it, but I Guess It's Introspection. and something vaguely akin to character study, because that's all i can fucking write apparently. surprise.

as stated above this is for widevibratobitch, but it's also kinda an idea i had a while ago. i'm MEANT to be writing an essay about don giovanni's character but like. he doesn't make any Fucking Sense (which is one of the main points in the essay tbh). so i wrote this fic instead.

there's a lot of animal metaphors in here, which you are more than welcome to read something into if you wish, but that you are also welcome to ignore in their entirety. it was just the imagery that came to mind when i was writing it, but jeez there was a lot of animal-based imagery Within The Confines of my mind.

For the whole of his life, Leporello had never had a master, nor had he known any person who ranked any higher than him, who seemed to enjoy his company, or at least not like Don Giovanni appeared to. He knew that Giovanni was an accomplished liar, but even so the past four years had only seen the odd ridiculous squabble and, once Leporello had accustomed himself to Giovanni’s habits and personality, he found that they worked quite well together.

Not that there weren’t certain things about his master that Leporello disliked.

There were the obvious things, yes: the constant lying, the philandering, the seduction of innocent women, but those all went without needing to be said. He had known four years ago when he had been told what his duties would entail that there would be parts of the job that he wouldn’t agree with doing, but it was hardly the first time he had had a job with aspects that he disapproved of. He had thought, foolishly, for maybe a week, that it would just be the same situation as those jobs.

He had never been in a position, however, wherein he was constantly in the company of his employer, and therein lay the problem. Even for a nobleman, Giovanni was an odd man. Quite aside from his particular habits of apparently trying to seduce his way around Europe (and the expectation that Leporello facilitate this), he was completely unlike anybody that Leporello had ever served.

Sometimes, Leporello was reminded of a finch, or another small, quick bird, when he watched Giovanni. He was never still for more than ten seconds at a time, constantly flitting from place to place and from thing to thing or fidgeting with whatever he was holding. Leporello had seen him pace for hours on end, tossing a dagger from hand to hand, just for want of something to do. (It was little wonder, then, Leporello thought, that he was so skinny.)

He was energetic in a way that exhausted Leporello, who had previously thought himself to be active, but it was almost as if Don Giovanni operated on a different sense of time and energy to the rest of the world. He would be up for days sometimes, forgetting to eat unless Leporello gently reminded him and walking miles, and Leporello would usually feel as though he had to keep up with his master’s antics in case he found himself in a ditch.

When Giovanni was in this sort of state, Leporello had rapidly discovered when they he had first joined his service, he could be horrible to be around. He was already unpredictable as standard, with moods that seemed to last for between two seconds and two minutes, but when he was also frantic Leporello didn’t think it was worth even trying to guess what sort of mood Giovanni was going to be in for that five second period.

Leporello generally just assumed that Giovanni would be violent and angry if Leporello accidentally did something that he took to be an insult. He was right most of the time – Leporello was no stranger to ducking out of the way of flying glasses which, no matter how much Giovanni’s hands and entire body seemed to be constantly shaking, never missed their mark. He was also no stranger to picking up both the literal and figurative pieces after Giovanni had a breakdown, and he sometimes thought that this usually excitable, effervescent man sobbing so much he nearly vomited was worse than the initial fury.

He stuck with it for two reasons.

The first was that Giovanni paid him far more than any of his other masters ever had (partly out of a lack of understanding of the value of money, not that this was something that Leporello was complaining about), but partly because it was the only way he could get anybody to stay. The second was that Leporello was far past a point at which he would have been able to leave. Giovanni could have stopped paying him years ago and Leporello would still have stuck doggedly by his side; he was far past being able to disentangle his and Giovanni’s lives from around each other. In all honesty, he had probably been past that point for about four years, possibly even since the instant he and Giovanni had first met.

At his best, Giovanni was brilliant and charming and witty, and Leporello could understand only too well how he left a trail of women weeping after him, and how he managed to charm his way out of beatings from furious husbands and fathers and friends. At his best, even though he was easily distracted and excitable and sometimes even frantic, Giovanni was impossible to dislike, and he was utterly compelling to be around.

This was one of those rare moments when Leporello would actively seek out Giovanni’s company. Usually, if they happened to be in the same place at the same time, Leporello would put it down to luck, or fate, or the size of the palace, or something else that he had no physical control over, and he would get on with what he was doing while Giovanni got on with whatever it was he did with his time.

In this case, though, Giovanni and Leporello had been sitting together, companionably but quietly, in one of the drawing rooms of the palace for a couple of hours now. Giovanni had been plying Leporello with whisky for most of the time they had been together but, after four years, Leporello had finally become wise to the fact that Giovanni had considerably higher alcohol tolerance than he did, so he hadn’t drunk more than about half a (very small) glass, and Giovanni had drunk most of the rest of the bottle. Despite this, they were about as drunk as each other.

“Leporello?” Usually, Giovanni’s voice sounded nothing but measured, even if he was affecting a higher level of passion than he was currently feeling. Now, though, Leporello could tell that something was off, but he decided to test the theory and didn’t answer. “Hey. Leporello.”

Oh dear. Leporello lifted his head slightly and pretended to stop reading his book, even though he had stopped paying attention to it when Giovanni had first spoken. “Sorry. I was…” Leporello slightly inclined the book, but instantly regretted it, and every other decision he had ever made, when Giovanni’s expression didn’t change.

Sometimes, Leporello thought that he understood Giovanni’s emotions better than Giovanni himself did, but moments like this made him realise that no, Giovanni only broadcast a small fraction of his emotions in a way that would make sense to Leporello. There was a lot more going on in his mind that Leporello would ever be able to understand, and a lot more than Leporello wanted to understand. Yes, Leporello was particularly empathetic and he found it easy to read the feelings of other people, but Giovanni operated in a manner that sometimes barely seemed human.

This was one of those times, where he seemed more like some sort of very dangerous predator, and even though he tried not to let it, the sudden switch from friendly but quiet to anger scared Leporello. Logically, Leporello knew that Giovanni simply couldn’t accept not being the centre of attention for even a second, but that knowledge was of about as much functional use to him as somebody pointing out to somebody that the starving predator stalking him was just after food. He still didn’t want to be the sole focus of Giovanni’s anger.

Leporello still knew to play his part. He slowly put the book down and pressed his body backwards and against the back of the armchair he was sitting in. In this case, though, it appeared that even giving Giovanni the attention that he had decided that he wanted to begin with wouldn’t suffice, because he was almost instantly on his feet.

For a second, all that Leporello could think was God, you know I’m not acting, you know I’m legitimately scared of you, why do you need to act like this? But he knew that Giovanni was barely aware of what he was doing most of the time. This was probably one of those times.

Even so, knowing what he was doing didn’t help when Giovanni was deliberately winding him up and trying to press all his buttons at once, because Giovanni was close enough to Leporello’s face that Leporello could smell the alcohol on his breath. Leporello didn’t want to, because showing weakness in the face of this would just make it worse, but he leaned back and tried to look away, but Giovanni clearly wasn’t having it, any of it.

“I think we have a misunderstanding.” This had to be a trap, it had to be, but Leporello couldn’t understand how. He said nothing, hoping that Giovanni would continue and not just loom threateningly over him. “We can act like I am your friend, Leporello,” he said, dragging out his name in a way that was more menacing than anything else he had ever said, “but that’s only on my terms, not yours. You seem to have forgotten that I am your master.”

Leporello swallowed heavily and nodded.

“Do you understand that?” Leporello nodded again, but apparently that didn’t satisfy him either. “Do you understand that?” He wasn’t shouting, he never did, not unless he or Leporello was in danger and they needed to move now. But the low, soft voice, scarcely more than a growl or a hiss, that he used when he was truly angry with Leporello was somehow more frightening.

Leporello fought off the urge to just pull his arms up over his head and retreat into himself. “Yes.” God, he sounded pathetic, but it at least seemed to satisfy Giovanni. He patronisingly patted Leporello’s chest in a way that made him cringe noticeably, and then went and sat back down. Leporello wasn’t sure what Giovanni wanted now, but he was too scared even to look in his master’s direction, let alone to ask, so he just sunk even more into the chair.

Leporello was trying to pretend not to be paying complete attention to Giovanni – because for all he knew, that would set him off too – by staring into the fire that had been roaring about half an hour ago. Now it was barely embers, but neither of them was going to get up to put more fuel on it. But – and Leporello knew that Giovanni knew this – he was watching Giovanni out of the corner of his eye, his shoulders slightly raised and his body language suggesting that he was expecting to be murdered any time now.

Leporello was beginning to think – not for the first time, either that day or that week – that if he just left Giovanni now he would be so much better off for it. It was less, these days at least, that he had periods when he thought that he was better off leaving Giovanni as that he had periods when he wanted to stay with Giovanni, and then the rest of the time he wanted to leave.

He was beginning to calm down a bit when Giovanni suddenly stood up. Before Leporello had any opportunity to react, or even to ask if something was wrong (although he knew that something must have been wrong), something exploded on the wall above his head. He heard the unmistakable sound of glass smashing against a solid object because it had been thrown, followed by Giovanni all but screaming, “God, I can’t stand this!”

Leporello was too frightened to get up from his seat, even as Giovanni, physically shaking and with his hand clamped over his mouth, took a couple of steps backwards and then sprinted out of the room. Leporello was dragged back to the real world by the door opening again, to reveal one of the palace’s maids

Leporello had been doing his best to keep Giovanni and this maid as far away from each other as possible, partly out of pure possessiveness of Giovanni which he would never actively admit to but also partly because God, she couldn’t have been much more than about fifteen or sixteen years old. She was far too young for Giovanni, a man over ten years her senior, to so much as touch, and, to absolve for his lack of empathy for anybody else Giovanni had seduced and then abandoned, Leporello had taken upon himself to keep her out of harm’s way.

“Sir?” She was sheepish, and tiny in a way that even Giovanni (who had always been incredibly slight) wasn’t, and Leporello had never been so glad to see another person in his life.

“Don’t go after him,” Leporello said immediately, then, when the maid looked confused, he added, “he won’t want attention in that state.” Yes, he would want attention, but he would want exactly the wrong sort of attention. He didn’t want to drag her into this; she didn’t deserve it.

Finally, Leporello forced himself to get up and went over to examine the bottle of whisky that Giovanni had primarily been drinking from. They had started with a full bottle, but there wasn’t more than about half an inch of the drink left in the bottom of the bottle now. He would probably finish it once he had cleaned up the damn broken glass and then gone and made sure Giovanni was still alive.

“What is it?” The maid had found an old newspaper, bless her, and she was clearing up the broken glass.

“Be careful of that,” Leporello warned, his tone sounding far too paternal for his liking. “It was a bottle of whisky,” he said, swirling it around in what passed for an appraising manner. “Now it’s… a good couple of measures of whisky.”

Naturally, because the maid was very young, she looked completely blank at Leporello’s mention of a “measure” of whisky, but she still laughed good-naturedly. Leporello went over to the cabinet full of bottles of various liquor in the corner of the room, unlocked it, and put the bottle back with rather more force than was necessary. The other bottles rattled.

Seeing that the maid was nearly done clearing up the broken glass, Leporello looked at the door. “I should go and deal with…” He indicated the direction he had heard Giovanni running in when he had left. He didn’t know what “deal with” would mean, but there was nobody else who either would or could “deal with” Giovanni when he was in a bad state. Leporello locked the drinks cabinet again, finished off the half a glass of whisky he had left because he was too anxious to drink it when Giovanni was in the room with him, and then went off in search of his master.

#don giovanni #mozart #opera #opera tag #wolfgang amadeus mozart #ollie writes #link #ollie considers

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