Wasting no time on unlocking spells, Snape kicked the warded bathroom door until its frame splintered, and the door flew wide with a bang. Inside, Draco glimmered like a moth under the faint lumos, pressed white-lipped and trembling against the bathing pool's far edge.
"D-don't come in!" He raised his wand, revealing cross-cut, bleeding wrists. "You can't stop me!"
Snape eyed the blood, crawling along Draco's ivory skin to splat thickly into the pinkish water. Yes. He was in time. He wouldn't lose this one. He kicked the door shut with a sneer. "Stop you," he asked, unbuttoning his robes and pinning the youth under the full weight of his scorn, "why would I want to do that, Mr. Malfoy?"
"What are you doing?!" Draco shrilled, torn between running and blustering. "Get away! You can't-" he cut off with a squeak when Snape dropped his trousers. Snape waited while silver eyes mapped his scars, the hard-worn shadows on ribs and jutting hips, the lurking haunt of his Mark. They widened when they came to his crotch, and his prick gave an interested twitch as the pale boy swallowed convulsively.
"So... this is your answer?" Snape stepped into the pink, steaming water and settled easily against the side. Draco's wand tracked his movement, but Snape ignored it and spread his arms across the ledge. "This is how you face the future your lifetime of privilege has bought you?"
The silver eyes narrowed. "I'm not a coward! I just know what they want of me, and I can't do it! I can't be like..." Draco shook his head. "I'm making a choice, damn you! D'you think this is easy?!"
A curl of scorn twisted Snape's smile. "A sharp knife, a warm bath, a calm sleep with no waking, and no accountability at the end of it?" He displayed his own wrist and the ropy scar that ran from his palm to the crook of his elbow. A proper scar for a serious attempt -- lengthwise down the vein, because a crosswise cut clotted too quickly. The scar bisected the Mark, giving the shadowy skull a rakish, ironic sneer. "I think it far easier than you deserve, Draco Malfoy."
And with that, he struck. Surging out of the water like a shark after a seal, Snape grabbed the bloodslick wand in one hand, and Draco's slender throat in the other. The struggle was brief and weak and a single warning squeeze under the boy's straining jaw brought it to a panting close. Snape pitched the wand away and pulled Draco tightly against him, hardening further at the wet press of skin to skin.
"You soft-skinned Roman." Snape hissed into Draco's ear as a cold-fingered hand fluttered to rest on his hip, "Easy sacrifices are pointless in times like these," he palmed the boy's ribs, buying a shiver with the rough stroke, and a subtle shift that pressed the throat into his grip, and an erection into his thigh. Oh yes. He would not lose this one at all. "I could show you how a Pict buys freedom with his life," he thumbed the line of Draco's jugular, "but I think you are probably too weak for it."
His hand eased and he made to pull away. Draco immediately pressed forward, clutching his wrist with bloody desperation. The mercurial eyes pleaded, frantic and wet with a hopeless confusion Snape remembered all too well. He smiled and curled his fingers closed. "Then hold on tightly boy, for if you slip, I will let you fall!"
Draco groaned, shuddered, and brought both hands to his shoulders. A sanguine warmth trickled down Snape's chest like twin seeking tongues. "With blood it begins," he pressed his straining cock against Draco's, grinding the words in hard, "blood names your enemy, it shapes your vengeance, your grief, your will -- it speaks to the silent Gods of the moor and marshland." The trickle reached his nipples, curled around the hard-peaked, sensitive flesh until he reached up and collected it on two fingers. "But it does not pay. Understand?"
A nod, a convulsive gulp against his palm. Snape's cock throbbed hard, and he drove Draco's knees wide with a savage kick. "Blood is easy, but pain," he drove those bloodied fingers deep into Draco's liquid heat, clipping off the gasp with his other fist, "pain is dearer coin!" He worked his fingers inexorably into that tight, quivering channel, feeling the throbbing heartbeat from within. Draco's nails dug, but his hands did not move, and the boy thrust himself into the invasion, welcoming, weeping, submitting.
"Breath, however," Snape released Draco's throat just long enough for him to sob one shuddering lungful, "breath is merely pride, prayers, useless, fearful words that cannot save you now. Cheap vanity! Offer it up!" Draco's mouth gaped, impassioned and desperate. Snape locked his own over it, filled that airless place with the heat of his tongue, and let go a groan to feel Draco's twine around it eagerly. His cock yearned, weeping hot, pearly tears after the quivering, moon-pale flesh between his hands. A taut, tight little cauldron, seething on the cusp between boiling over and exploding outright.
Shoving hard from beneath, Snape lifted Draco high against the wall. The boy's legs clamped reflexively around his waist and Snape pressed his cock into the dark, wet cleft between. Along his wrist, into his bloodied palm where the wedge of his fingers guided him into Draco's clasping, hungry heat. He released the reedlike throat, let a shock of air pour in as gravity and the boy's own weight drove his cock deep.
He could feel that soul-deep gasp all the way through Draco's body, in the spasming clutch of silk around him, in the arching press of the sweating, straining chest against his, in the clamp of knees and desperate grind of pelvis. His grey eyes flew wide as life pounded into him from both ends at once.
"Do you understand?" He fisted Draco's cock and thrust up hard as the water churned around his thighs. "This is your vengeance! This is your victory!" The boy clutched at him, nodding, sobbing, rippling around Snape's cock as he came all over his hand and belly. "This is your sacrifice -- you live, damn you! You! Bloody! Well! LIVE!!" Snape crushed Draco to his chest, roaring as he came.
Silence. Labouring breaths. Trickling water. Gradually Snape's heartbeat subsided, and he could feel Draco shivering against him, hanging on tightly and trying to be silent as the tears won free at last. "We are the worm in the wood," he quoted, cradling the lithe body gently and waiting for the storm to subside, "we are the rot at the root, we are the taint in the blood, we are the thorn in the foot." He wound his fingers into Draco's hair, trickling damp with sweat and steam, and gave his head a little, centering shake. "Do you understand?"
For answer, Draco kissed him; a reverent, salty brush of lip to lip. "I'm frightened, sir," he shivered as Snape pulled out and eased him gently down, "I don't know what to do."
For answer, Snape kissed him; a commanding claim of tongue to tongue. "You do what you must. You attend your father's-" a derisive snort here, "graduation party, you charm and flatter as you have been taught. And when He reaches for your arm, you take the mark and mask and you thank them all for the privilege." Snape settled back, shoulder-deep into the water, drawing Draco with him, a mild shiver, shoulder to hip along his side.
"You do as you have always done, boy," he said, idly rinsing the bloody streaks from his chest, just as if his attention were not riveted to the ghostly youth and his barely-scabbed wrists, "you show the facade your audience expects. But," he caught Draco's chin, tipped it up, "you work the truth of your pledge in silence, in shadow, and in secret, until Rome falls into chaos, and the Praetorians beg your mercy."
Silence once more, while steam curled around them, redolent with the coppery scent of a hundred secrets, a thousand futures.
"I understand, sir." Draco said at last, eyes gleaming, argent and alive.