Since you're gone my empty arms have nothing left to hold

Title: il catalogo è questo [AO3]
Pairings/Characters: Don Giovanni/Leporello
Rating: NC17
Word Count: 5500 ca
Warnings: none that I can think of.
Summary: Leporello keeps two lists.
Disclaimer: while everything is public domain by now I guess, all this is based on the Mozart/Da Ponte opera and I own nothing.
A/N: written for brandytook for this year's Yuletide (originally posted on AO3 at the link above). Uhm, so, I wrote opera fic and I totally don't regret it even if it felt weird to make them talk in English, and really this is here just for archiving purposes. But considering that this kind of was my first slash ship in history I'll admit that I had a crack writing it.





Leporello keeps two lists.

The first works like this: a number, a name, a date, a place, all written in a neat, small hand on a journal he can comfortably keep on his own person. Not many people know about this one list – certainly not the girls whose names are on it. The list was his idea. It had been met with a favor that might have seemed odd, considering what exactly it was about, but then again saying that he works for an odd man would be seriously understating the entire situation. Some others have seen it, and everyone in the serving staff at the mansion knows about it, even if no one ever read it.

The second is an entirely different matter. The second works like this: place, date, odd numbers referring to the first list.

There are no names on it.

There’s no need for any names.

No one knows about the second list. It’s in a second journal, thinner, easier to hide. (But there are also less entries. On the first journal, the last number is #1265. On the second, the last number is #20.) He always keeps it on his person, as well. It’s all written in a small hand, but it’s not as neat as the first. Just by looking at it, you would know that his hand was shaking as he wrote each line.

It’s no matter, though.

No one knows about that second journal. No one ever will.

--

He had known that it would be different as soon as they met.

Leporello had been in an inn somewhere near Seville. He had already served for three wealthy men, but all of them liked to switch their staff once every two years or so, and he was hoping to find something better.

Maybe also some kind of job less tiresome than cleaning kitchens or serving meals and paid slightly better, even if in that moment he hadn’t held much hope for it.

That was before someone sat at his table, a glass in his hand hitting the surface with a soft thud, and said, “I heard you are searching for work,” with a voice deep and soft at the same time. Leporello had thought about dark red velvet satin before raising his eyes and looking at his potential employer. Tall, lean, long dark unruly hair, skin gleaming almost golden in candlelight; eyes not as dark as the hair but that could charm with merely a look. Leporello had looked at the clothing, and there could be no mistake – this man might not have looked like a proper nobleman at first sight, but his garments couldn’t be mistaken for anything but extremely expensive.

“I am, your –”

“None of that. Don’t call me anything for now, not until I know if you’re the man I’m searching for. Can you read?”

Odd question. Not a single one of his employers had ever cared about it. And they would have probably liked it better if he hadn’t known.

“Yes.”

“Can you write?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent,” the man had said, putting his elbows on the table, looking perfectly at ease.

Leporello had waited for him to go on.

“See,” the man had kept on, “I am in need of certain services that not everyone might want to provide. Which is why this is the fourth time in a year that I lose time in inns searching for a replacement.”

“Fourth?”

“They all left my service after a couple of months. Most inconvenient. Not that any of them was any good. All of them had problems over having to keep their morals intact. Or some nonsense of that kind. I can pay well, and I will do it. But I’m not keen to repeat my previous experiences.”

Leporello had nodded, thinking about it. Obviously, it means that if he accepts, he’s committing himself not to leave. “When you say you could pay well, how much are you offering? And what kind of position it is?”

“The position… means attending to my business and helping me with it personally. Would two gold pieces each week satisfy you?”

Leporello had swallowed – it was four times what he earned with his former master. “Well,” he says, “did your former servants complain about –”

“They complained about what I did, never about something they had to do. I will admit, what I do isn’t something that most people find acceptable by their moral standard, but I can assure you, it’s nothing that would put either you or me in danger. Much.”

“And is there a specific reason why you are asking me? I’m not the only one in here who’s searching for employment.” Leporello tries to ignore that much, which sounds everything but reassuring.

“True, but something tells me that you and me might get along splendidly.”

None of his previous employers had ever said something like that. To be entirely truthful, he had rarely even spoken to them – they had someone who took care of searching for staff and that dealt with payments and everything else. None of them had ever gone to an inn to find someone suited to their liking. He had swallowed as candlelight danced in the other man’s dark, deep eyes, and he had found himself accepting without even knowing his employer’s name.

--

At the beginning, Leporello thinks he’s envious.

It doesn’t take much to find out what exactly was his predecessors’ problem. Surely none of Leporello’s previous masters had ever indulged in pursuing women the way his current one does. Leporello shouldn’t approve of that, especially when it becomes clear that it’s better if the pursue includes deflowering whichever girl his master fancies. But fact is, if helping him bed women is what Leporello is mostly paid for, and considering how much, he will keep his mouth shut and do what’s needed. After all, other than the excellent pay, there’s a single bed in a single room rather than having to share with six other people and the food is definitely better than he’s used to. Before he hadn’t even been outside Spain, and now he knows that in two months he’ll see at least France.

He should feel guilty, because nothing justifies the sheer immorality of his master’s habits or of his ways, but instead he can’t help that slight envy he feels.

He has never had much trouble finding a woman to bed if he so wished; he might have worked for three masters already, but he started when he was fifteen. He’s still young, and he’s still handsome enough – he knows he is. A life mostly spent working hasn’t hurt him in that sense. But he has never managed to charm a woman just with a wink and a few well-spoken sentences. Or with maybe a touch or two in the right places, but without being excessive. He has never managed to make them fall at his feet as effortlessly as he witnesses Giovanni do. That’s a talent he never had and never will master – it’s beyond him.

He can’t help envying his master at least some – if only he was half as good.

As things are, at most he can help facilitate an already easy procedure.

He asks one day, not long after their first meeting, how many he had already.

One hundred and twenty, is the answer. Could have been more if his previous servants hadn’t tried to stop him instead of helping him, and if he hadn’t lost so much time finding a replacement every time one of them left.

Leporello’s conscience says, leave while you still can.

For the first time in his life, he ignores it.

--

When he comes up with the list idea, six months after being hired (after all, his master keeps on saying he’d like to keep track of his conquers) Giovanni looks at him for a moment or two, that wicked, irresistible mouth quirking up in a sly grin.

“That’s an excellent idea,” he says. “You should go find an appropriate journal.”

Leporello sometimes wonders if that was the moment where he realized there was no going back anymore.

--

Or maybe that moment was when he realized that his envy was misplaced.

It’s been eight months since that night in the inn when he actually witnesses more than the usual preliminaries. Mostly it’s because the target was the house’s new maid, who after three days is already famous for not being particularly skittish to advances. Leporello knows that well enough, since she has let him touch her thigh under her skirt in the kitchens without flinching once.

So he shouldn’t be surprised if when he walks through the garden before retiring on the fourth day after he hires her he sees two people rutting against a tree. One is the maid, all right, her back against the tree, one of her legs hooked around Giovanni’s back, his hands skillfully running along her side and under her skirt as he kisses her.

It’s the kiss that makes him stop dead in his tracks.

It’s the kind of kiss you give to someone you deeply care for, not for someone who will be just a number on Leporello’s list in the morning. There’s tongue, there’s hands cradling her face, there’s a certain gentleness in the entire thing that makes Leporello think that maybe he might have understood part of the secret.

Who wouldn’t want such a charming, beautiful man to make them feel as if they were all his world, even if only for a handful of minutes, or one hour, or one evening, or one day?

A small part of him says, everyone would want that. And maybe you would, too.

Leporello pretends he has never heard it and when he’s back in his room, he opens his journal and writes, #537, Consuelo, Sevilla, Spain, July 11th.

--

So maybe he begins to take a little pride, when the plans go through thanks to his help.

His conscience might not agree, but he’s learning how to silence it, most times.

Oh, most times doesn’t mean always. He still feels bad for the girls who actually believe his master for real; some of them know perfectly that he’ll disappear in the morning, and others don’t, and the ones that don’t are left heartbroken. But for that one previous night, they had been happy, he tells himself as he writes down their names.

--

The second list doesn’t appear until after almost two and a half years.

In the first, there are 540 women for Spain, 300 in Italy, 45 in France, 94 in Germany, 91 in Turkey. They’re in Italy, a small town near Venice. Leporello has been ready to write down girl number #1070 (Italy’s #301) for the entire evening. Or well, at least since he came back to the bedroom he’s sharing with his employer. There was only one available. He’s sincerely surprised when the door opens before midnight. Giovanni comes in with his cloak on one arm and one button on his red silk shirt undone, but the state isn’t as debauched as it should be.

“Do I have a name to write?”

“Not tonight, I’m afraid.”

Leporello’s face must have shown his surprise, because before he can reply, Giovanni is doubling over laughing. At least he isn’t in service of a gloomy person, Leporello thinks.

“Did I do anything to cause that?”

“No one is infallible, Leporello. Not even me. And this one was more trouble than it was worth.”

“Was there some particular reason why your charm didn’t work?”

Giovanni snorts again, sitting down on the inn’s bed, taking off his shoes. Leporello likes that at least he’s not expected to do it himself.

“Isn’t it good enough for you that she refused?”

“Since when a refusal stopped you?”

Another laughter. Giovanni’s cheeks are flushed. He must have had some wine to drink, Leporello thinks, but not enough not to be in charge of his senses. In these moments, he wonders how women ever refuse in the first place.

It’s just being objective. He understands why they’d refuse him – Leporello has nothing of that charm, of that easy way of relating to everyone.

And he had thought that his envy phase had passed. Maybe it hasn’t.

“That’s a good point,” Giovanni concedes, pushing his shoes towards the corner of the room. “But this time it just wasn’t worth pursuing.”

It wasn’t worth it or maybe you didn’t feel like it? , Leporello thinks, and says nothing because there’s a limit to the confidence he can allow himself to take. They’re not friends or peers or equals, no matter how different Giovanni is from all the other nobles on the face of this planet, and he won’t forget that.

He shrugs, taking off his own shoes, and the last thing he expects when he raises his head is Giovanni standing right next to his bed.

“My head wasn’t entirely in it,” Giovanni says, voice still deep and smooth and hypnotic, and Leporello would like to answer that he’d charm a girl without even trying, whether his head was in it or not, but he can’t speak. Not when they’re in a position that is so very inappropriate, but then again since when Giovanni was ever appropriate?

“And where was it, if I may ask your lordship?”

He knows he’s risking – any servant asking such a question should sound a lot more submissive than he is. And whenever he uses that kind of titles, it’s never serious.

“In places that she couldn’t thankfully guess,” Giovanni replies, and then, then, then –

Soft, warm lips press against his own, not insistent but not gentle either, and Leporello should bolt, he should shout, he should say no, except that maybe –

Maybe when he envied, he envied the girls.

That thought has been suppressed enough times before now, but he can’t do it right this moment, not when his traitorous mouth is parting and hesitantly kissing back, and for a second he thinks, what if he kissed me the way he kissed that maid in the garden.

He doesn’t think what am I doing, or I should run, or this is not natural.

That last objection is the weakest one. Resisting a man like the one who’s currently kissing him would be not natural. Anything else is just not relevant.

When it’s done, he’s grateful that he’s sitting – his knees wouldn’t have held up otherwise.

Giovanni looks smug. It’s not a new look on him, but it’s the kind of satisfied> smug that Leporello should find unnerving and that he finds irresistible instead. Most times.

“What was that?” he whispers.

“I love women,” Giovanni replies. “I never let it stop me from liking some men if they were worth my time.”

That answer is just worthy of the man. He doesn’t care about laws or morals unless they suit him, why should such a matter be different?

Leporello’s throat goes dry, replies unable to form on his tongue. If he raised his hand, he could touch. If he moved just a couple of inches they could kiss again. He feels like a helpless moth in front of a flame so high that it reaches the sky, and he can’t help thinking that if he lets himself run into it, it’ll burn for a short while and then it’ll be done.

But out of the two of them, Giovanni never was the weak one.

“Among which there would be the likes of me?” Leporello finally manages.

“Why not? Do you think I care about status?”

Which is true enough – all the girls mentioned in his journal cover an extremely wide specter. Nobles, lowborn, maids, serving girls, whores (paid or not), countesses, a couple of princesses, even. Giovanni has never cared about their titles, if they had any. As long as they were warm and (somewhat) willing, he would pursue them. Old, young, in between.

No, he doesn’t care about status. That isn’t what should be doubted.

“I’m not… you can’t want this.”

“I never said that this is an entry for your precious list,” comes the reply, right next to his ear, barely audible. Leporello’s heart is thrumming, his blood boiling, his entire body itching to touch. Is this how they feel every time? , he thinks, turning his head so that there isn’t that distance between them anymore, and when they kiss, he’s waiting for it.

He can bet that this won’t ever happen again.

--

On this, he’s wrong.

--

It isn’t a regular occurrence. It doesn’t happen every day, or every week (but most definitely every month, more than once). The other journal, one Leporello bought in Venice in a hurry the morning after, looks tiny in comparison to the first list. Only the first few pages are filled. It’s twenty, thirty dates – not even half of that ninety-one girls in Turkey, the nation with the lowest number of conquests overall.

It’s a business made of shared inn rooms, touching in the dark, grinning lips covering Leporello’s initially unsure ones; there’s no mention of it during the day, but then again what should change between them? It’s not as if they ever were an example for property, and at least Leporello can say that he didn’t start it – he has never been the one being overly confident and overstepping the boundaries. He merely followed his master’s lead.

If he has learned to keep up with it, and if in his heart he knows that if he ever was to serve someone else he would have to keep himself in check not to slip into something that is part a strange sort of companionship rather than mere servitude… well, it was bound to happen.

It’s not as if Giovanni knows of his precise feelings about their arrangement. Then again, maybe he knows already. Leporello only knows that he won’t ask why again – it has proved itself useless the first time, it won’t prove itself more successful in the future.

Sometimes he wonders if there’s a point where he would stop following where his master leads. He has gone along with everything until now, even actions that were questionable at best, and he has never thought, this is too much.

He never lets himself ponder that matter for long, though. It means uneasy nights, and whenever he gets to spend one in a bed, making good use of it to sleep (unless he has managed to find a girl for himself) is a better course of action.

--

It frustrates him at times.

Pressing the boundaries doesn’t change their roles. He’s paid for his work, and his work – other than supervising home chores without thankfully lifting a finger most times – is making sure that when his employer has his eyes set on one girl, he brings her to his bed. And of course cataloguing her name in his ever-growing list, but it would be a joke if that was his only job.

He’s secretly happy that after… whatever thing is between them started, his weekly pay hasn’t changed.

The day he starts feeling seriously accomplished (instead of only a little) when one conquest goes into port, Leporello wonders if he should set foot in a church for the first time in years, search for a priest and confess his sins, but he laughs at himself a moment after the thought occurs to him. Giovanni would find the idea ridiculous. Leporello isn’t surprised that it sounded like an option for those first two seconds only.

And sometimes he thinks, with a different kind of pride, that it’s been two years and a half, and those twenty, thirty lousy times noted in his secret journal were just with him.

He doesn’t delude himself into thinking anything more than that, though.

--

Every time he updates his secret journal, he wonders why is he even doing this all.

But it all goes back to what he had thought that first time – it’s all about who he’s doing it with. If you’re a moth you can’t resist a fire burning just right in front of you, as dangerous as it is. If stolen touches at night, keeping watch outside inns hoping that husbands or fathers don’t show up further on the road, the press of grinning, soft lips belonging to a man’s mouth against his neck and arranging for huge dinners made to impress some highborn lady mean that his soul slowly gets darker with each of his actions, he can’t bring himself to feel too guilty for it. It would be easy to say that he isn’t the one with the dark soul, that it’s his master, but only someone who has never known him would be so sure in affirming it.

No others would be so sure, especially not someone who has served him to the best of his possibilities for years. Being near him makes the world somehow less dull. Whenever Giovanni is in his room with his dark eyes, silk clothes (that he doesn’t hesitate to ditch in favor of commoners’ clothes if it means raising another skirt over a girl’s knees), easy smile and charm in his every motion, the surroundings seem to brighten, and there’s really no wonder that the last number on Leporello’s main list was #1650.

He doesn’t envy any of those girls, though. He knows that a lot of them must have run into trouble because they couldn’t resist Giovanni’s charms, and since Leporello has done the same, he can’t say that he doesn’t understand them.

Still, a part of him likes to think that he’s somehow at least slightly better than the whole lot of them, since his small, private journal grows slow but steady.

--

There are a lot of things he complains about, to himself. Being on husband-watch duty when it’s the middle of the night and it’s raining, for one (this while his master is inside a warm room with an equally warm body to touch and he’s left outside thinking about it). Or having to distract said husband (or father, or uncle, or female friend whom he can’t charm as nicely as his master can) while Giovanni performs certain duties in his stead (or maybe runs out of the room before he can be caught). Dealing with the fall-outs, because when there are and somehow the involved people catch up with who did the deed, Leporello is the one taking care of it. Sometimes not even finding time to eat because either the day or the night is young (not according to him, but it’s hardly the point). Finding some girls, as well, in which case Leporello always tries to pick ones that are already deflowered and whose husband isn’t around or, even better, doesn’t exist at all, regardless of his master’s preferences. He strictly enjoys doing none of it, and the latter point especially doesn’t sit well with what is left of his conscience.

Then there’s the fact that it’s still the most comfortable life he’s ever led, regardless, but it’s not even really the point. There’s seeing places he couldn’t have dreamed of seeing in a lifetime, there’s serving someone who sees at least a person in him instead of just a face that he pays for tidying his bedroom or cleaning his kitchen.

(His previous employers certainly didn’t whisper his name on the back of his neck late at night when no one could see them, but then again Leporello is sure that they had forgotten it ten seconds after hearing it for the first time).

There are hands that are rougher than a nobleman’s should be but nowhere as much as his own that trail down his spine (for some reason, whenever it happens, Giovanni is always there in the morning. Leporello isn’t sure he can explain that to himself), there’s a demanding tongue, there are lips that grin against his own whenever Leporello reciprocates the kiss without holding back. There’s that voice that makes him think of dark red velvet and that he realizes he can’t refuse, whatever it asks of him. There’s a lithe body shaped like a god’s that sometimes is above him and sometimes lays beneath him, as if it didn’t make a difference.

There’s this feeling that his life before Giovanni sat in front of him in that inn was made of dull, dark gray, and now it’s all bright colors, as vivid as that red cloak Giovanni likes to wear most.

Sometimes Leporello hates him for having changed his life so drastically. Sometimes Leporello hates himself for allowing it.

He still rarely has time for self-hate or conflicts with his still not completely quiet conscience, because if someone asked him whether he would go back to the way his life used to be, he knows his answer would be no.

--

The list has reached the number #1869 when Leporello asks that question again. It’s in the main residence for once, even if it’s his own room.

“I suppose I couldn’t ask why again, could I?”

Giovanni merely raises an eyebrow, long, soft curls falling on his naked shoulder. The room is completely dark except for one mere candle on the windowsill.

“Is the arrangement troubling?”

Leporello is tempted to roll his eyes – that tone was anything but serious.

“No. I’m merely curious.”

Giovanni nods again. For a second his eyes seem really on fire. “Fair enough. But let me ask you one question. Since when have I ever troubled myself with petty reasons when I want something?”

The answer is there on the tip of Leporello’s tongue – never, and he has stopped asking for reasons a long time ago – but when he’s about to speak, something stops him.

When I want something.

He’s grateful that his back is to the candle – Giovanni probably knows that he must be flushing, he would be lousy at what he does if he hadn’t guessed it already, but it still means that he won’t see it.

He doesn’t say anything else.

“Well.” Giovanni’s voice breaks the silence, low and barely audible but definitely amused. “It seems like my instinct wasn’t wrong, when it told me you seemed quick on the uptake. Then again, no one else lasted almost seven years.”

He doesn’t say anything else, the last sentence barely whispered. Leporello doesn’t like speaking when they share a bed, mostly because his speech tends to become too familiar even for the way they are during the day (and what makes him uneasy is that he isn’t reprimanded for it), and it’s not as if he’s the only one who mostly stays quiet. There’s really no need to say more. It’s true – Giovanni never was the kind of person who does things because of deep, complicated reasons. He beds women because he loves women (all of them, apparently, or at least a good number), and if he wants this, he has never troubled himself for it. Leporello might want it because he couldn’t resist at first and because for some warped chance of destiny he isn’t just serving the man in front of him, he actually cares for him. He could never find words for the ways in which he does, but that’s how it is and not much can change it. If it means that he’ll never know why Giovanni ever wanted this in the first place, so be it.

He might have been chosen, in that inn, because he looked quick on the uptake; he definitely isn’t paid to keep on asking questions that can’t be answered.

--

Looking at the main list is another source of pride. It’s mostly in his own skills in organizing it – keeping such a list up to date, without missing a name or misplacing a detail isn’t easy. It’s the pride you take in doing your job well.

While looking at the journal that he keeps secret, at its smudged ink, at the writing that is barely readable sometimes, at the mere nine pages that are filled in comparison to the hundreds of the other one, he should probably feel shame. At least, the first one is merely recording what his master does. The second, not so much.

Instead, whenever he risks taking it out in the open and flipping through it, he feels something different. It’s a different kind of pride, because maybe he hasn’t fully understood Giovanni and he most probably never will (not completely – you can never know such a man in all of his faces), but he somehow has something that is sure no one else had. Or no one else had as long as him – of that he’s had enough proof. (Not that he can’t understand the others, whoever they have been. Putting up with someone that can be as fickle or harsh as he can be generous, and deliberately cruel as much as a pleasure to be with isn’t easy. What’s left of his conscience knows something about it.)

He doesn’t want to know what it says about him that feeling the weight of that journal on his person is one of the reason he puts through with all the blows his position deals him.

(Not many years from this point, he will burn the main list, staring at the fire for only the necessary time. At that point, he will have developed an aversion for fire. His eyes will be wet as he watches it burn, but he will have to do it – that list was always meant to die with Giovanni. But he will keep that other one to himself. He will talk about searching for a new, better employer, but he will know a lie when it leaves his own mouth; he will never find another person to serve and he will have enough earnings to live comfortably. He will never live the life of a gentleman as he had wished for time to time, but he it will still be a decent life.

The second list was always meant to die with him.)

--

“May I ask a question?” Leporello had asked after accepting the job.

“Suit yourself,” the man who had just hired him said before taking a good drink from his glass of wine.

“What tells you we might get along splendidly?”

There had been a laugh, deep and smooth and genuine, that had made something inside Leporello twist and turn.

“I merely have a certain feeling. The fact that you just asked me what I’d call a good question only makes me think that I was right. As you will find, I have no use for people who can’t think for themselves. Or who can’t think at all.”

“I must be insane. I don’t even know who am I working for,” Leporello couldn’t help saying. It had earned him another laugh. “And you told me not to call you any name before I accepted, but I think I should know now.”

“What about you? It’s not as if I know your name either.”

“Leporello,” he had answered.

“Charming. Giovanni. Don Giovanni. About how to call me by, padrone will suffice. I have no use for flattery. And I won’t have use for flattery from you.”

“You are… if I may say, you’re quite different from… any man I ever met,” Leporello had said, wishing he had kept his mouth shut instead.

“Oh, I can safely assure you that I have yet to meet a man like me either.”

Leporello couldn’t help being intrigued. And he had to agree with that statement.

“And what is it that I should do in your service?”

“You will learn soon enough.” Leporello couldn’t stop staring at Giovanni’s lips – they had looked dark crimson. Most probably because of the wine. “But there’s something I can assure you.”

“What would that be?”

“You won’t find it boring.”

With that, had asked for another glass to be brought, and a minute later Leporello had wine for himself, and from the bottle on the table, he had been sure that in his entire life he had never had the chance to drink wine as good as that.

“I think we should toast,” Giovanni had said.

“To what?”

“I’ve only ever toasted to freedom.”

“Freedom? I think I fail to see –”

“You might fail to see the point right now, but I think you will understand soon enough.”

Leporello hadn’t known what Giovanni had been promising.

But as their glasses clinked against each other and he drank wine that he could have never afforded otherwise, he had thought, maybe this could be my very own stroke of luck.

--

The last time Leporello writes in his secret journal, he writes down the date of that first meeting.

It’s the only entry written in a steady hand.

End