At times; well, that was fine. Don Juan was unlikable half the time, too. Not on the surface — he worked hard to be charming, suave, witty. Even when people found him odious on a moral or philosophical level he still tried to keep a certain swagger about him. Confident enough to be captivated even by those who despised him. But he had the sense that under the surface, to anyone who had the misfortune to really get to know him, he was in fact deeply unlikable. That was why he was alone, passing out in places like this. Left by everyone who had ever tried to love him.

He heard the footsteps approaching, but didn't connect the sound to any meaning right away. He was processing everything two beats too late to react to anything. The stranger had him on the floor, bumping up against his legs — far from an unexpected turn of events, given the premise. Don Juan tried to get himself balanced on his knees and blinked his eyes open in the dark, on the lookout for an appendage being shoved his direction. It didn't come, but a hand did, and it was at that point he belatedly connected the dots. Footsteps approaching, be good and be quiet, the table over his head — he wasn't down here to suck someone off, he was hiding from someone. He didn't know who, or why, but wasn't in much of a position to question it, not while the stranger and another man were having a conversation two feet above his head.

The hand touched his face. Hazily, Don Juan recalled a scene in the moonlight study of an estate in a country house some weeks prior: voices passing in the hallway, him playfully admonishing the woman he was with to stay quiet to avoid discovery. The situation with him on his knees below a table at an opium den probably wasn't an either/or kind of situation, he decided — he was hiding, or rather being hidden, because the stranger still wanted him, and wanted to avoid the staff throwing him out before he'd had a chance to be of any use. He wasn't protecting Don Juan from anything; just protecting his own interests by ensuring Don Juan had a chance to sober up a bit. But selfish or not, Don Juan could be appreciative of it — it was cold outside and he didn't relish sobering up in the snow, and there was no chance of his making his way home on his own in his present state. So he was more than willing to play along with whatever the stranger wanted from him in the meantime. To demonstrate this, he reached up to hold the stranger's hand against his face again, then turned his head in to kiss his palm — then took one of the man's fingers in his mouth.

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