Which is brill. I'd never really thought about Lucius before. Now I am intrigued!
*grins* No, I never thought you were trying to trick me into thinking Patrick was a prostitute. I just had a moment of 'nooooo! what are you doing, Severus!'
Reading this reminded me quite strongly of my experience of reading Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother (http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/minisites/aspotofbother/) which is basically about a man who has a quiet, civilised nervous breakdown. It's the sort of book that's really very wonderful - but makes uncomfortable reading (at least it did for me), because it feels very real and close to home.
Basically, I could really see Severus acting this way - taking this path - even though I'd really rather he didn't :)