Disclaimer: I own neither Lucius or Severus (sadly) or any other characters that may appear in the fic. What kind of weirdo actually owns people?

NB: I hate the phrase making love but I thought it relevant to the story.

NNB: I don't know what NB means could somebody clear it up for me?

Chapter 1: Never Again

Severus hadn't wanted Lucius to see him cry so he'd sat dry eyed and calm while a voice inside him screamed and bawled and was stumped out before it could find an escape across his tongue and out of his mouth. He'd cried before, every other time Lucius abandoned him, but this time it had been different. This time Lucius said the two words Severus had hoped he wouldn't have to hear. Never again.

Those were the last words Severus had heard and they had resounded in his head like the cell doors of the prison he'd spent one night in as a teenager after a protest had gotten violent. The rest he knew anyway, without listening. He had his wife and son to think about; he knew how hard it was; he was sorry.

He'd never stop loving him.

Severus thought back to the last thing Lucius said (he hadn't heard it but had known it was there nevertheless) with bitterness. How could he love him when he hurt him so often?

Now Severus lay curled up in the corner of his bed, longing for Lucius to be beside him to warm up the cold, unsympathetic blanket he cowered upon. That yearning made him feel pathetic, desperate even, yet he could stanch the steady flow of burning tears no more than he alone could warm a bed grown accustomed to two inmates.

He pushed himself closer to the wall, away from the room that held too many memories. Right now he didn't want to remember. He wanted to find some piece of mind in deep, dreamless sleep. And eventually he would sleep, although he would be haunted with dreams of hopes and aspirations, of Saturday nights spent talking and Sunday mornings spent making love, even of the weekend they'd gotten drunk and Severus had spent nine hours chained to a bedpost in Lucius' summer house while Lucius searched frenziedly for the small gold key.

But for now he lay curled in the corner like a hormonally driven teenager; despairing, deploring, dying.

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