Dear Readers;

Thank you for all the feedback on the previous chapter. I am so happy that you are all into this angsty tale.

I wanted to do my best to keep both men in character – or at least my interpretation of it. It's actually pretty fascinating to get inside their heads, trying to figure out what made them who they are. It's been enjoyable to explore that.

Here is the next bit, which as usual, just showed up on its own.

Please let me know what you think! :)

Sincerely,

Chaos

~

Algolagnia

Chapter 5

"The inner censor of the mind of the true believer completes the work of the public censor; his self-discipline is as tyrannical as the obedience imposed by the regime; he terrorizes his own conscience into submission; he carries his private Iron Curtain inside his skull, to protect his illusions against the intrusion of reality."

- Arthur Koelster

~

"Tell me."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"Because I don't know."

But on some level, he did.

~

Food came and went, but it was ashes in Lucius' mouth and lead in his stomach. Severus had scarcely more appetite and Lucius tried to focus on that rather than the gnawing in the back of his own mind.

Severus would not let him.

"Tell me. If you think you cannot tell me then speak of something else."

They lay in bed once more, the dim comforting glow of candles turning the room to shades of black and gold. Lucius knew that he should get his clothing on and go. Go back to the certainly he had before this morning, go back to…

But Severus, he could not leave Severus in his isolation, not when that isolation was eating him alive.

"I don't want to speak, Severus. I want to listen."

"To what?"

"Evan," Lucius curled around Severus from behind, wrapping an arm around his waist. "I want to hear about Evan."

How close had he just come to saying  'need' instead of want?

Severus was quiet for so long that Lucius pushed himself up on one elbow to see if he had gone to sleep. Instead, Severus' eyes were open, seeing not the dark paneling of the room, but the past. Lucius kept his peace, the feeling of blessed control returning, welcomed like rain in the desert.

"I don't know where to begin." Severus fell silent again.

"With the first thing that comes to mind." Yes, Lucius could feel the uncertainty and conflict inside the other man and began to carefully lay it bare.

"I did not want to love him. To care for him as much as I did." The sentences were jerky, splintered things. Not so much spoken as expelled. "I knew – we both knew – what awaited us after graduation. Our parents had already posted the marriage bonds. Every time we were home, some 'friend' with a freshly nubile daughter came to visit."

Evan and Severus had spurned arranged matches made by their parents. Though not bound by law, arranged marriages were part of custom in the oldest pureblood lines – there was no legal way to force the young men to comply, other than disinheritance. It had been a terrible scandal at the time.

"When you and Narcissa left, I went home. There was nobody there other than the house elves and I was just… alone. Evan came by, I don't know how much later. A few weeks, maybe a month. He didn't put the pieces back together, but he kept me from completely falling apart."

Lucius felt a deep pang of guilt. Sev had been fourteen, in love with all the intensity that age could devote and suddenly ripped away from his constant. Evan had been there at the moment of opportunity, picking up Severus with all the ease of someone picking up a discarded, hurt and grieving pet.

How very Slytherin of the boy – Lucius would be proud, were it under different circumstances. Severus had never been just a pet.

"I tried not to want him. Tried not to want anybody." Severus fell silent again. "He came to me one night, crawled right in beside me. Let me wake up with him there. Evan didn't kiss the way that you did. Didn't touch or breathe or move the way you did. That was good, to me, because I could not pretend that he was you. He didn't try to be you."

It made Lucius feel better to know how deeply Sev had been hurt, to know that he had grieved. It was good to know that his lover had not simply ricocheted into someone's arms, seeking to obliterate sorrow with sex. It was horrible to know, because of the few things that Lucius held dear and sacred, Severus had been one – and Lucius had broken his heart.

Not intentionally, no – but somehow Lucius felt that was worse.

"When I saw you again, that day outside the Coffin House, when you kissed me," Sev whispered, "when you touched me – fuck. It was agony, but I wanted the agony and I wanted you. I didn't care if I bled to death."

It had been violent. Lucius shivered as he listened. Their kisses had been almost brutal, anger at leaving and anger at having been left fueling a darkly passionate, vicious fuck. Sev had bled, both of them had, by the time it was over and the bed in the cheap bundle-bin sagged on broken slats.

"Evan knew. How I don't know, but he knew. He cried, but he was furious with me, with you, but most of all with what we had done to each other – the bites, the bruises. He asked me how I could think so little of myself, to let myself be used, marked up, and cast aside like a Horizonte Alley boywhore." The smooth voice was jagged, cut by emotions sharp enough to cut to bone. "I hit him. He kissed me. He didn't stop kissing me. He loved you, too, you see, but hated the fact that you took me from him. Evan thought that you stole me. He loved me and I never knew."

Oh, how that knife could twist! Yes, Lucius had stolen Sev – simply by virtue of being first. Evan was pretty - porcelain skin, blonde wavy hair that Gilderoy Locktwit would cut off his left ball for, eyes the shade of warm ocean water – but ultimately, Lucius had been able to handily seduce Severus when Evan was still trying to figure out whether he preferred his left hand or his right.

For nearly a year and a half, Lucius would steal time to be with Severus. Meeting him in Hogsmeade, avoiding the Three Broomsticks and lodging for a half-a-day at the Serpent and Staff – fucking each other's brains out.

"Evan never asked me not to see you, not to fuck you. Back at school, when things were unbearable, he was there, plotting with me – usually in detention with me, too. After… that night," a shiver wracked Sev's body and Lucius could feel the skin break out in gooseflesh. It had something to do with Potter and Black, but beyond that, Severus would never say. "I woke up in the infirmary and everyone was running around like headless chickens over the God's-Gift Gryffindors, Evan was there. Not even my parents showed up, but Evan would not leave me."

Lucius had been on business for his father, returning home to a pile of letters in Evan's hand, begging him to come to the school, to find out what happened to Sev, because Sev wouldn't tell.

"If we love him, if we can make him talk, it will be better for him. Damn Dumbledore! Lucius, the old bastard said something to him and now he won't talk about it!"

The next letter had been begging. "Please, leave him to me. If you really don't care any more than his parents, please don't come around him anymore. He needs you, and you're not here!"

The third; "He won't be able to go to Hogsmeade for some time. It's more for his protection than anything else. It's open warfare around here because the fucking Gryffs did this to him and aren't being punished at all. Potter is free as a bird and fucking Black is on restriction rather than being expelled. Lupin had something to do with it, because Sev won't get anywhere near him. The Gryffs are putting it all on Sev when it was Sev who was in the infirmary for a week!"

That had been it. Lucius had no access to Severus, nor did Severus have a way to get to Lucius. Evan and Severus became each other's beloved, as well as lovers.

When Lucius ratcheted up his courage and owled Sev about his plans for the summer, the response hit him like a kick to the balls. Severus was not going back to the isolation of his ancestral holding. Severus and Evan were going to Santorini and Mykonos. They'd send postcards.

Jealousy nearly ate Lucius alive.

The pictures and postcards fueled the fire and Lucius took his wrath to Horizonte Alley, finding sunny-blond and ink-tressed boys upon which to exorcise his demons. The whoremasters took his gold and asked no questions, tossing their merchandise to him with a grin and a leer. With the black-haired ones, Lucius ended it at the first true howl of agony. With the blonds…

"You were so distant in your letters, I thought that you had… moved on. That 'Cissa had filled up the part of you that was mine. By then, I loved him. I don't know when it happened, but it did, and I never wanted it to stop." Even now, there was longing in that voice. "Then we were in disgrace, and there you were, riding to the rescue. You stood up for us, and Even nearly choked to death when he admitted that he was wrong about you."

Lucius fought the urge to squirm. At the start of seventh year, it was customary for parents to announce the matches that would be formalized and consummated after graduation. In the old families, even if one was to be going on to university, it would be as a married student. Severus and Evan balked – much to the relief on one prospective bride and to the everlasting fury of another.

Disowned, dispossessed, they were living in a room over the Fiddler's Bitch on Knockturn Alley – paid for out of the allowances of Charlie Wilkes and  Jean-Paul LeStrange. At the mercy of angry and powerful parents, the two boys had been denied access to trust funds set up for their future benefit by long-dead relatives. While living relatives could and did revoke their trusts, these others were in a grey area. Lucius had applied a lot of pressure and one very aggressive solicitor to get them and their funds loose of some very blatantly grasping relatives.

The young men were stunned. They were also surpassingly, completely thankful.

Just as Lucius knew they would be.

A hero's welcome would be a poor way to describe their gratitude. Lucius had been boneless for days afterward.

Then came graduation, and freedom.

Lucius worked at the Ministry, rising in the ranks on his own ruthlessness and his father's connections. Severus and Evan worked for Gringotts in the research caverns. Jean-Paul married a stunning Durmstrang graduate from Belarus. Charlie was training as an analyst in the Department of Mysteries. Avery was still a rank little coward, a bootlicker in the Department of Apparition.

Those days were golden in Lucius' mind, as thick and sweet as honey in his memory.

"I never wanted it to end. I had heaven. I was loved. I had people to love. I had work that I enjoyed. I had a cause, a purpose and something to believe in and for which I could strive." The hitch in the breathing, the silent, gasped sobs. "And in a night, all in the space of one… bloody… night…"

Red slitted eyes, a face that Lucius once thought held all the wisdom that cowards were afraid to speak.

"Lucius, there you are, the very man I need. I requirethe use of  your judgement and keen mind  in a matter of some importance to us."

"Yes, my Lord? How may I serve?"

Pride, o, such pride to be asked for his counsel by their Lord.

"I need two of our best and brightest to undertake an errand for me, to retrieve an artifact being hidden by the Aurors at a cottage in Taff Fechan. Whom of your bright young charges could you recommend to me? They must be our very best, Lucius. There is some degree of danger involved, and I require absolute discretion."

Lucius bowed his head, burying his face in Severus' hair, weeping with him, and for him, and also for himself. Oh, molten iron did not begin to describe the searing, howling pain building up inside of him. Lucius thought that he would rather have Cruciatus than this, he prayed for a muttered 'crucio' so that this pain - the one that he thought to heal Sev of, but had instead embedded in himself – would cease to be important. Give Lucius the freedom to be lost in the white-hot madness of the curse and he would scream smiling.

Unbidden, the words seeping onto his tongue like some poisonous miasma, burning and sickening, "Severus… I have… something… I… have to… tell you."

~

TBC