Title: Broken Glass (4/?)

By: M.A. Blackthorn

Contact: Romance (slash), Drama

Keywords: Lucius Malfoy, Remus Lupin, slash, MWPP

Rating: R (slash, some language, and domestic violence)

Summary: Lucius and Remus fall in love. Remus hopes for a peaceful life with his mate, but his abusive father stands in their way. Both are sixteen years of age.

Spoilers: PoA

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. I only own the plot.

A/N - Let's not count the years between updates. This is for A.L. Caraway, who's been there, through thick and thin.

Chapter 3

"You can't do that to him!" Lucius, shouted, as he tried to push past Remus' father. Remus was right behind that door. If he could only get to him.

"Don't you dare try to tell me what I can't do in my own home," the older man replied, his voice quiet and controlled. The initial rage had faded and in its stead there was something darker, meaner, and a spot more sinister. The alarm bells in Lucius' head were having a heyday. He was treading dangerous water now. He didn't need the sneaky little voice inside his head to whisper, 'Proceed with caution.'

Lucius stopped struggling. If the quality of the man's voice hadn't been enough to send most sane wizards running in the opposite direction, shrieking in terror and clawing their own eyes out, the look in his eyes, the determined set of his jaw would have been. Funny how sanity never entered the equation. With as much determination as he could muster, he leveled his gaze on the elder Lupin. If Remus was to be safely vacated from the premises, there was to be no running or shrieking. Just plain old home-style chivalry.

Lucius opened his mouth to speak, but stopped when he heard a noise. A small distant sort of noise, but one that he recognized. The door to Remus' room was being tapped. No. Not tapped. The door was being pawed at. Nails, thick as those belonging to any wolf, scratched at the metal door, the noise having a strange reverberating quality. He heard a quiet whimpering, so soft that if he hadn't been listening, he would have missed it. That was it. Forget the straw, the camel was broken in fucking two.

"Do you really want me to leave?" Lucius asked, vaguely proud that his voice didn't shake with the barely restrained rage that was burning in his bloodstream so strongly it felt as though it might burst through his skin.

"You're damned right I want you to leave," he answered gruffly, "Get your faggoty arse the hell out of my house."

Lucius' lips curved upwards in a ghost of a smirk. 'If that's the game you want to play,' he thought, 'we'll play.'

"I'll get my faggoty arse out of your house," Lucius began, calm, calculating. A whine floated to him from behind the door. "But only if Remus' faggoty arse comes with me."

As a pureblood member of the most influential and affluent family of the wizarding world, Lucius Malfoy had not been exposed to what Muggle children across called Saturday morning cartoons. There had been one occasion in which he was privy to this early morning event with Remus courtesy of a stolen Muggle television in the Shrieking Shack (the television, of course, had been bewitched to function without satellites or electricity). Remus' presence, as it often did, distracted him from the bulk of the program - however, the one detail he vividly remembered was an exploding vein on the forehead of a stock character, accompanied by steam coming out of the ears, much like that of a locomotive. Remus' father, for a brief, yet impressive instant, reminded Lucius of this image. It should have been comical. It wasn't.

"That is enough!" Lupin shouted, each word punctuated by a shower of spittle. "This is my house and I refuse to tolerate this . . . this indecency. It's disgusting, is what it is . . . you disgust me as much as he does! It was bad enough before, but then he had to drag even more filth into this house. Now, you get out, you leave, right now!"

Hoping he sounded braver than he felt, Lucius responded, "And what if I don't?"

Lupin roared, the sound more animal than human. His fist shot out from his side with more speed than Lucius credited his portly body capable of and slammed into the hallway mirror behind his head. Glass shattered with a thunderous cacophony. Lucius felt shards raining onto his neck and back and barely registered a trickle of blood down his shirt.

Though he would never admit it aloud, to himself or anyone else, Lucius knew that for the moment, he was beat. There was no way he could stand against the deep rooted rage of this man, wandless, and without the slightest clue as to how to defend himself in a physical confrontation. Charm school hadn't quite covered fisticuffs.

'Sometimes the best way to win a fight is to concede defeat,' he thought grimly, as whining yaps drifted to him through the metal door of Remus' bedroom. Lucius could feel the other boy's fear as though they were joined by some intangible thread stronger and more palpable than any bodily contact. His throat was dry, his chest tight. He needed to get to Remus, he needed to hold him, or pet him, or tickle him behind his adorable wolfish ears and know that he was safe. It was a feeling of such necessity and required such immediate attention that he knew nothing would be accomplished by swapping insults and flaunting half-hearted bravado with a bigot.

"Point taken," Lucius muttered, unshed tears building pressure behind his eyes so badly it stung. The tightness in his chest swelled. 'Please, understand, Remus,' he thought, 'please.'

He turned on his heel and left Lupin standing in the hallway, in such supreme silence that he could hear the older man's labored breathing. He haphazardly tossed what possessions he'd missed while trying to make a clean getaway with Remus into his bag. Slinging the bag over one shoulder, he exited the room, and spared a single glance at Lupin before descending the staircase. The man was immobile, the knuckles of his right fist dripping blood onto the light blue carpet. Their eyes did not meet. Perhaps it was better that way. As a low mournful howl drifted down the stairs to wrap its eerily beautiful notes around him, Lucius knew he would not have the courage - or was it cowardice - to walk away again.

---

As a wolf, Remus' ears were capable of picking up the slightest noise, but he didn't need supernatural hearing to understand what was transpiring beyond the nigh impenetrable door separating him from the hallway, from his father, from Lucius, from freedom, from everything. Voices were raised – mostly his father's – harsh words exchanged – the row disrupted by a crash, deafening to his highly sensitive ears. A whimper escaped him – they had been so close. It hadn't mattered where they would go or what they would do. All that mattered was that he was going to get away, that he would never feel his father's hand striking his face, that would never be ashamed of his own duality because it had been embraced, not by himself, but by his mate. All that had mattered was Lucius.

The silence that followed was impossibly more disconcerting to Remus than the arguing had been. Had Lucius given up? Had he realized how much easier his life would be sans werewolf lover? He didn't know, couldn't tell, wouldn't accept that as truth. A fine trembling had started, first between his shoulders, then advancing throughout the rest of his body. He waited.

The sound of footsteps reached him from the hall – lighter, he thought, than his father's – and retreated down the stairs. Remus couldn't help the insane thought from entering his mind in a flash, 'You're going the wrong way. I'm over here, Lucius.' A second pair of feet – heavier this time – pounded down the hall, advancing on the room. The sound was nothing new to Remus. It was a scenario he'd lived more times than he'd care to admit, but this time, it was different. Lucius had been there and now he wasn't. This time, it was worse. The first footsteps had belonged to him and now they were gone, past the range of his hearing, down the stairs and away from Remus. This time lacked any and all familiarity. It felt like the first time. A howl was ripped from his throat, unwillingly, as if Lucius, in the act of walking from Remus, his father, and that blasted metal door, had tied a leash to it and dragged it from him, taking it with him down the stairs and out the door.

Remus had never quite understood the saying "out of body experience," but when he heard the scratching sound of the key being inserted into the lock on the door as though he, his father, and the door were all floating underwater, the sound waves almost visible in the air before him, he thought maybe that was what people meant. He was there, but he was elsewhere. He'd always had some form of escape mechanism in the past, but he knew without trying, that nothing would suffice now. Remus had never been accustomed to the notion of hope. It had seemed like a foreign anomaly. Something that happened, perhaps, in stories or on television, but never to him. He had never dreamed of the possibility of finding solace in such a seemingly ridiculous notion. It had appeared as nothing more than a waste of time. A child's fancy. An abstract that looked pretty on paper, but was incapable of translation into real life. But Remus knew differently now . . . he had tasted it, rolled it around in his mouth and savored it. It was like one of those optical illusions that one has to stare at for sixty seconds before the image appears. Once it was seen, it couldn't be unseen. It became imprinted in the mind's eye as deftly and permanently as if it had been there the whole time. And for Remus, that was very much what hope was like. It had teased him and now it had abandoned him and left him alone, used and bitter, much as he'd always been, with his father.

The door swung open, banging the adjacent wall, carried by its own weight and the force of his father's shove. He knew what was coming. He'd always known. The tiny voice returned, its tendrils tickling the insides of his skull, tormenting him and his silly notions of hope and rescues and cowboys and sunsets. He should have anticipated this. After a lifetime of the same, the possibility of change should have seemed preposterous, but it was testament to Lucius' power that the he had been able to make Remus forget the years of hurt and shame and convince him that he could run away. In the time they'd known each other, Lucius had caused Remus to embrace a slew of emotions – anger, irritation, love, joy – but this was the first time he'd been made to feel like a fool.

The blows fell harder than they ever had, the slaps had greater sting. Remus' life had been altered, unrecognizably, irrevocably within the span of several minutes. What had been, wasn't. What was, would never be. Each bruise blossomed with the fresh realization that despite the grandiose dreams of a naivete born of a first love, there was only one thing in life that was certain and that was pain. There would be no happy ending, no steed in the sunset, no credits rolling while the orchestra reached its crescendo.

As his father's footsteps receded and the bolts slid firmly into place, Remus slid down the wall, failing to notice - or perhaps failing to care - that the back of his head left a thin trail of blood down the wall.

'I told you so,' a nasty little voice whispered, smug as hell.

"You were a fool to believe," he whispered, to no one. The darkness didn't answer.