The Incident, part II The thing with your body being in forced stillness was that your mind was not. When Jean-Loup’s eyes had locked on Matthieu Montoir, a jagged spike of pure fear had pulsed through him. It continued to pound at the forefront of his consciousness now, as he lay motionless. It clouded everything, that sheer panic that took over your mind, screaming to do something, do something, do something but drowning out all reasonable suggestion as to what that thing might be. And even if he could think, it could not be sated because he could not move a muscle to follow through. He could find no release for the screaming terror pounding at the edge of his skull, pushing all reasonable thought aside.
He heard a crunch.
He knew the sound of a collision, more suited to the Quidditch Pitch than a quiet domestic refuge. He could hear Dorian getting hurt. He swivelled his eyes, the one part of his body he could still move, and he could just make them out in his peripheral vision, see Dorian’s body being jerked around and hear the resulting thuds as his head banged the wall. No, no, no.
He fought the feeling of lockdown. He had to fight. He had promised again and again that Dorian wasn’t going to get hurt any more. He was going to take care of him. He had promised so many people that. And even if they hadn’t known all of the details, he had vowed to himself that he was going to keep Matthieu away from him. He had thought he had done that - that he had put a firm dividing line between them. He felt the promises he’d made shattering into meaningless with every thump he heard of his boyfriend being attacked.
I. Can’t. Breathe.
Jean-Loup had been picturing the aftermath of Matthieu’s attack. Of Dorian bruised and bloody. The fact that he was getting hurt and that Jean-Loup had let him down, and how would he trust him again if he did nothing? And he had thought he had been afraid. At this, however, a fresh wave of panic burst through him, a picture of an ‘after’ that he simply couldn’t live with, and he desperately tried to turn again to his boyfriend.
And it worked.
Shaking off the bodybind curse, he grabbed his wand, swinging it with a non-verbal spell so that in quick succession Matthieu was pushed back off Dorian and disarmed. Matthieu staggered and fell to the floor, caught off guard by the spell, and Jean-Loup was on him in a moment, pinning him down.
“You are going to leave him alone,” he snarled.
“Get the hell off-”
“No!” Jean-Loup shouted, slamming Matthieu’s shoulders back as he attempted to force his way up. He hit the floor, his head colliding with it. “No. You’re the waste of space in this family. You’re the disgrace,” he stated, enjoying the symmetry of how when he drove his words home with shakes of Matthieu’s shoulders, it was now his head that bounced, hitting the floor below it, in perfect symmetry with what he’d been inflicting on Dorian moments before. “How about I do everything to you that you’ve ever done to him, and see how you like it?” he suggested with a snarl.
He pressed an arm across Matthieu’s chest, holding him down. He couldn’t quite get a good build up whilst keeping him pressed to the floor, but he sunk his fist into his face once, twice - and that was just today. How many times had Matthieu hurt Dorian in the past? What would it take to teach him a lesson, to make him leave him alone for good?
Matthieu’s arm worked free catching Jean-Loup across the face, a sharp hit to the mouth, followed by an elbow to the face as they struggled but he hardly tasted the blood – after years on the Quidditch Pitch, he was used to carrying on through the pain, used to pushing it aside to keep the upper hand. Matthieu swung at him again, but Jean-Loup blocked, keeping Matthieu on the floor. Until a voice from the door cut across them.