Archive of Our Own

This is a gift, it comes with a price

Who is the lamb and who is the knife?

Midas is king and he holds me so tight

And turns me to gold in the sunlight

The first time Hannibal attempts to kiss Will, it doesn’t go according to plan.

They are doused in the blood of a man now dead. Will’s is frenzied, Hannibal’s hair is a mess. Both are breathing the weight of anvils, fast paced, and pouring out adrenaline by the gallon. 

Will is leaning into Hannibal’s side, not quite the embrace they once shared, but even with this having been their second victim, he seems incensed to fabricate a pattern. Kill. Embrace. Ascend. His cheek presses hard against the bone of Hannibal’s shoulder, his chest rising and falling in a tidal rhythm. It makes Hannibal feel lucky to be far from the ocean. 

Hannibal meets his eyes, and Will is looking at him with stars reflecting in his irises; it seems easy then, to lean in. Eternity drags on, melding into paradise. 

Will pulls away, but Hannibal’s searching gesture had been so subdued, natural, that it is entirely possible Will had no idea what he’d been leaning in for. Apparently ascension has been dismissed from their new routine. 

Disappointment is an unfamiliar feeling, though not entirely damning. 

Hope is ever a stronger component, and the flame has not withered, merely lessened to its former kindling. 

Will saunters over to the body, still leaking profusely. New cuts and scrapes all over. Hannibal catches a glimpse of the man’s clerical collar. It stands out starkly red against the black robes. 

Will take in a deep, shuddering breath. 

“What would God say about killing a priest?” 

Hannibal smiles, disappointment forgotten. 

“I’d be daring enough to suggest what we’ve done here tonight could be considered divine intervention,” he responds lightly, taking his eyes off the clergy and finding the face of the only true divinity he’s ever known.

“First the priests arrive. Then the conquistadors,” Will quotes. 

“A wise man prepares for treachery.” Hannibal quotes Clavell back to him if only to see the minute twitch in Will’s brow, the frown on his lips. He nods down to the corpse. “This clergyman was not wise.” 

The rape of a child is much worse a thing than unwise.

“Perhaps wise men prepare for treachery, but treacherous men don’t.”

“Perhaps,” Hannibal acquiesces. “All the better for us.” 

Will smiles, the pan am smile he often doles out, and swipes the hair out of his face with a bloody hand. The act itself is careless, yet Hannibal is entranced by the way his hair shimmers wetly in the moonlight. It’s almost as if Will knows he's looking, but then again, the man had never been predictable. 

The evenings Hannibal spends with Will in Japan are the few genuinely rewarding instances in his life he could admit to being sated. 

Enamored with each second, intrigued in the next. It is a rest stop before they move into their new home in Avignon, France, but this fact only adds to the enchanted novelty.

One day, this will be nothing but a glimpse in their timeline. 

And what a glimpse it is turning out to be.

Will is jovial. Easy to earn a laugh from, and simple to joke with on trivial matters. Shock lights up Hannibal’s nervous system for long stretches of time, lapsing mostly into instances where he cannot understand Will’s utter euphoria at spending time with him.

If Hannibal decides to turn in for the night, occasionally Will tries to convince him to remain on the birchwood bench outside for another hour. They’ll watch the cherry blossom tree lose its petals, and comment passively on the grandiosity of the planet and their placement in the universe, in each other’s lives. 

Will holds his hand sometimes, or lays his head on Hannibal’s outstretched arm on the back of the bench. Hannibal usually agrees to stay for these moments alone. 

Most often, they retire to bed together. The same bed. They don’t touch, but the intimacy of the act of sleeping beside one another keeps Hannibal awake many nights, watching the back of Will’s neck in bone-aching awe. 

They get drunk one night (intentionally) and Hannibal teaches Will how to waltz, awkwardly and without precision. Will doesn’t care. Hannibal finds though he wishes to care, the proximity is enough to sate, and they retire to bed after, dizzy and exhausted. Alcohol takes its toll. 

That night they had touched, but only Will grasping fingers over his bicep as he snored, Hannibal blanketing his hand with his own, as if to reassure the touch. 

One afternoon, Hannibal teaches Will how to roll sushi. 

Will is a natural, and Hannibal is surprised to learn he hadn’t indulged in sushi much in America, despite thriving as an efficient angler. He slowly grows addicted to Hannibal’s special recipes for fish, and Hannibal can’t help but to watch lingeringly, Will adopting a new infatuation. 

Meat in the house runs low, and Will joins him yet again for a hunt. They kill a local whaler who’d been taking unsolicited boat trips. It hadn’t been hard to hunt someone down, someone Will deemed worthy of slaughter. 

Hannibal doesn’t try to kiss him after, instead making a joke about the meat they harvest in their kitchen involving blubber and the man’s weight. Will laughs, out loud. 

Another afternoon, Hannibal returns home from a banking trip into town to find Will sitting, knees spread, on one of the futons. A bundle of colorful fabric is lying atop the chabudai. Hannibal instantly recognizes them as the clothing he’d bought (and had tailored for Will) a few days prior. Will must have finally opened his closet. 

“I’m not wearing a hakama.” 

“You've scarcely given me time to suggest it,” Hannibal responds fondly, though the swell of disappointment meanders its way into the back of his mind.

“I don’t—” Will sighs, shifts. “I don’t want to go out, Hannibal.” 

The hamaka is not for wearing at home, Will must have realized. 

“Do you believe the immediate world sees you as the beast you’ve become?”

Will has not left their residence save for the nighttime, when they hunt. 

“Not everyone has your special rose-tinted brand of glasses,” he replies, itching at the scar on his cheek. The stitches came out fairly recently; Hannibal made the mistake of assuming after this, he’d be more inclined to escape his figurative hutch. 

Hannibal finds he has nothing further to say on the matter, and glances at the clothes. “And what do you wish for me to do with these?” 

“I don’t know, I just, wanted to—” 

Be predictably stubborn? Hannibal doesn’t say, yet it is tempting. 

“I suppose they’ll be useful for donation,” he asserts finally, and scoops them up in his arms, avoiding Will’s muddled stare. He’s prepared to store them in the bottom drawer of his wardrobe when footsteps spike in volume and Will appears in the doorway of their bedroom. 

“It isn’t a reflection on you,” Will assures him. “The clothes were nice, great even, I’m just not ready to go out, and be someone other than who I am with you, and who I am covered in blood.” 

“You would be with me on any venture, Will.” 

“No, I’d be with your alias. And in turn, I’d be my own.” 

Hannibal kneels down carefully, bullet wound still sending rivulets of pain up and down his side when he moves too quickly. Will kneels down beside him, quicker, and begins folding the suits, traditional outfits, into the bottom drawer with him. 

When they are finished, Hannibal sits on their bed facing the window and Will follows, shadowing his position. “You believe I am upset with you,” Hannibal suggests, as Will is not known to trail him like a pup. 

Will hesitates. “I don’t believe you understand how deeply I appreciate every gesture you make toward my happiness. My comfort.” 

Hannibal meets his eyes, smiles. 

“You don’t need to convince me of your appreciation. I won’t discontinue these gestures, regardless. They are mostly born of whim, and inconvenient compassion.”

Will smiles back. “Oh?” 

Again, it seems simple. The light shining in through the pale curtains casts a gentle glow on Will’s delicate features. His beard is freshly shaved down to its average stubble. He’s looking at Hannibal fondly, in the way that he mostly only catches glimpses of after a few tall glasses of alcohol, or after one of their harvests. 

Will glances down a moment, only to link their fingers together. Hannibal tightens his grasp and catches the object of his affection’s eyes once more before leaning in, intent on closing the final, lingering gap between them. 

He doesn’t expect the bewildered look on Will’s face, the instinctual draw back of his hand from Hannibal’s own before he says in a rush, “What are you doing?” 

Pulling back is pain, but the words are death. Hannibal sees red, then black, then white, all in succession. Urges pass through him like wisps, ridiculous notions such as anger toward Will for making him look the fool, dormant violence ready to stake Will in the heart, and then a suffocating, all-encompassing, sadness.

Will is frozen, staring at him blankly. 

The urges pass entirely, and Hannibal finds his head empty. 

“Apologies, Will,” he forces out. “I will not act in this manner again.” 

Will’s eyes are frantic, looking all over the comforter, their hands, but not Hannibal’s eyes. In confusion, he is still as gorgeous as daybreak over a savannah. 

“What manner is that?” he prods eventually, pointedly staring at the collar of Hannibal’s shirt. The collar suddenly feels tight around his throat, and he wants to tug at it. 

“I will refrain from kissing you,” Hannibal clarifies, “or attempting to, rather. I seem to have made a misguided assumption.” Several, he doesn’t say. 

There is a powerful silence between them. 

Will blinks, closes his eyes and steels himself for a significant while before opening his eyes and whispering, “You can kiss me.” 

Hannibal tuts. 

The rage is back for a moment, dire enough for Hannibal to consider snapping the boy’s neck just to escape this infernal torture cycle that is Will Graham’s indecision. Instead, he asks a question. 

“Will, do you wish me to?” 

Will meets his gaze then, eyes beady. “Uh,” stumbles from his lips obtusely before he replies, “I’m not entirely sure.” 

“Do you want to be sure?” Hannibal asks, softer. 

Those eyes widen, skittishly. He’s looking at Hannibal like he wants to look away, but can’t. There is fear there, underneath the scent of his cologne, and his natural musk. Acidic, as he’d once claimed, yet on Will it smells almost sweet. 

“Yes,” Will answers belatedly, as if having forgotten there is an expected give and take that comes with a line of non-rhetorical inquiry. 

Hannibal’s heart doesn’t skip a beat, but it practically flips in his chest. He draws the moment out, enough that he’s sure Will is internally suffering. How beautiful he is, in suffering, when he brushes his fingers over his rough jaw, bone-sharp and prickly. Will shivers, but doesn’t panic and erect a wall when Hannibal leans in again. 

He keeps it soft, kissing in a soft press for a few beats. Achingly chaste, as if it were a kiss from the silver screen circa the golden age of Hollywood. 

Will doesn’t kiss back. He expected that much. 

When he pulls away, there is no blush upon Will’s cheeks, but he has calmed, and is looking at Hannibal with glossy eyes. They weren’t so glossy a minute prior. 

Hannibal has to steel himself from grinning, bursting into a fiery delight, even from shedding a tear. The moment is so intimate, fragile, and yet he’s never felt more solid in his love. A foolish notion, to understand then, that if this one instance is all Will is ever going to allow, it will be enough. 

Will is kissing him before he can ponder the magnificence of the prior kiss any longer, and Hannibal lets out a small noise of surprise as the force pushes him firm against a bed post. 

Will has one knee on the bedspread, crushing into his side, kissing him firmly but close-mouthed. His eyes are shut tight, warm hand on Hannibal’s neck; Hannibal is hyper aware of every detail. 

Beloved, he muses inside when Will nuzzles his cheek against his. 

There are fists grappling with his shirt and he’s being tugged down, down and over Will’s body in a way he isn’t prepared for. Will’s sudden want is a stifling phenomenon, and he’s tense with arousal, just from the fervent kisses he’s received, but Will doesn’t exactly seem like he knows what position he’s putting himself in as he tugs Hannibal closer, wraps his arms around his body. 

Will has forgone kissing, instead keeping Hannibal trapped atop him, nuzzling his whole face against Hannibal’s temples, frenetic presses of lip against his skull, Will’s nose in his hair.

For all intensive purposes, Hannibal’s face is smooshed into his neck, gracelessly. If there were ever a place to die, he’d gladly suffocate in the place he can smell Will’s natural scent the deepest. But, he’s not quite dead yet, so he improvises and begins to kiss at his neck, suck lightly. 

Will goes rigid beneath him, but doesn’t tell him to stop. 

One of his hands moves to cradle Hannibal’s head, every digit stretched as if he could hold his decapitated skull in his palm. His other arm wraps tighter around Hannibal’s waist, and they shift on their sides with the force of it. 

Will kisses him again, between the brows, lips lingering too long.

It strikes Hannibal, Will is fidgeting closer and closer as if he wishes to melt into him, not because he’s aroused, no, he doesn’t scent that on him. Nothing close to it, in fact. 

He stops, before his own arousal contrasts too heavily with Will’s. 

Will lets out a few panicky puffs of air when Hannibal pulls away to level with him, and with the hand surrounding his skull, he tries to push Hannibal back toward his clavicle, but Hannibal puts a hand on his chest, until Will’s heart begins to calm its buzzing cadence. 

“Do I dare ask what you are feeling?” 

Will’s pink lips twitch and purse, but he doesn’t take his hand away from Hannibal’s head, nor does he let Hannibal free with the other arm. They are locked close. 

“Yearning for a psychiatric comeback?” he snarks. 

“I merely desire a clear motivation on your part.”

There is a noise close to a laugh, and Will remarks, “Since when do you discuss my motivations and feelings before you move to act upon a desire?” 

Hannibal can take barbs, but he refuses to be compared to an individual who would be forceful, careless in love, in affection. Physical or otherwise. Will knows better. 

Despite being quite effectively restrained, Hannibal is expert enough to know how to roll out of his confines, and away from Will, standing then to straighten his rumpled clothing. He allows the discomfort to show in his spine, his muscles. His eyes even, though he isn’t looking at Will. 

“Hannibal,” Will murmurs, sounding remorseful enough for Hannibal to turn around. He’s sitting up, balancing on both palms and seeming very much remiss of spite. “That was a deflection, instinctual. I didn’t think before I—” he huffs, frustrated. “I don’t have an unshakeable bond with my motives or my feelings like you do.”

Hannibal doesn’t respond, though he accepts the apology, however fractured. 

He moves to pull back the curtains, eradicate the proportionate darkness in the bedroom, but Will moves closer on the bed, desperation in the strained syllables when he says, “Stay.” 

Hannibal smiles. “And what do you wish for if I remain?” 

“I—I liked what we were doing,” he answers sheepishly. 

“I don’t believe you did.” Hannibal sits again, sideways to prevent Will from tugging him back down, but also open enough to encourage profession. 

Will looks at his hands, brow furrowed. “I did, Hannibal, I think we just have different definitions of what liking it means.” 

“Pray tell.” 

“I, uh, I liked how warm you were. I liked feeling your desire toward me, but that’s not a new feeling.” He looks past Hannibal, contemplating. “I feel this need to be close to you. It keeps me up at night.” 

Hannibal takes a moment, swallows before agreeing.

“I find I feel similarly.” 

“It was manageable before we killed Dolarhyde,” Will mutters, confession bordering on hysterical with the way his voice rises and drops in pitch, as if he doesn’t know how to feel about these new revelations. “I’ve thought about sinking into you, as if you were a smoke screen and I could stand in the place of your visage. I’ve thought about you touching me, everywhere.” 

“Everywhere?” Hannibal asks playfully, and Will laughs genuine and sweet. 

“Yeah, but it’s not sexual when I imagine it.”

How interesting. 

“How did it feel when we kissed?” 

Will licks his lips, parting them. “I wasn’t expecting it, but I felt closer to you than I’ve ever—” Will clears his throat. “There’s a level of conjecture to intimacy. I don’t believe I have to want it for the same reasons another person might. Kissing you made me feel like we were closing a circuit, and I didn’t want it to be severed.” 

Hannibal’s cheeks rise, and he takes one of Will’s hands, lifts it from the comforter and kisses his knuckles, rubs them with a fond stare. Will inches closer, allowing and wanting. 

“It’s sexual for you,” Will asserts, knowing Hannibal won’t bring himself to say the words. There is no judgement in his tone, merely wonder. 

“In some respects. I was prepared to live the rest of my life celibate were you not attracted to me in that way, am still, and am quite at peace with this absolute. There is conjecture on the charge of love, as well as intimacy.” 

“But you’d have me, if I let you. You want it.” 

Hannibal isn’t quite sure that’s fair. He just explained he doesn’t need it. Though he can’t lie and act as if he’s never wanted it, doesn’t want it still. 

“I believe that has been apparent,” he replies with mirth. 

For a moment, Will looks frightened or something close to worried, lifting the fingers Hannibal has in his grasp to the older man’s face, stroking the freshly shaven skin of his cheek, a thumb swiping over the dry underside of his bottom lip. Hannibal is briefly entranced, unable to process it when Will tips backward, splaying out flat across the sheets and murmurs, “Have me then.”

Hannibal’s vision blurs at the edges, and he manually has to push down years of potent evolutionary instinct that screams at him in waves to immediately mount and take.

“You just clarified what you feel for me is not sexual,” Hannibal reminds carefully.

Will still seems nervous, but resolute in his decision. Not denying the contention, he says, “Kissing is an act many consider sexual. I wanted it with you, regardless. Can’t I want this?” 

Hannibal’s head is spinning, certainly a novel feeling. 

He turns, facing Will completely. He sidles up close to him, knees tucked to the right as he benignly finds Will’s chest with a hand. His heart is beating fast, the rhythm far more anxiety driven than lustful. In fact, entirely so.

“Why would you desire something defunct of gratification?” 

“What is gratifying about spending three years in an institution?” Will shoots back, further deflection.

“I did not desire it,” Hannibal clarifies. “I felt it necessary.” 

“This isn't necessity,” Will says, frown stretching. “Nor is it lacking gratification.” 

“Sexual fulfillment, then.” 

“I don’t need that with you, to be with you, do I?” 

“Do you truly feel that this will bring you closer to me?” Hannibal quietly asks, wary of this entire scenario. He shouldn’t be edging them towards another proverbial cliff if Will isn’t sure, if Hannibal isn’t. But, Will does seem sure. Wants Hannibal to understand his surety. 

“I wouldn’t be asking for it if I didn’t.”

Air leaves Hannibal in a gust and he strokes a thumb across one of Will’s soft nipples over his shirt. Will doesn’t move away, even attempts relaxing his muscles to maintain a more open, willing offering. 

“I must be mad,” Hannibal murmurs, stretching back over him in the position they were in before. Timidly, Will drags his hands across his chest and with each second of contact, grows fractionally more audacious. Digging his fingers into his neck, his smile trembles. 

“You’ve just caught on?” 

Hannibal smiles at that and kisses him, with far more intent than before. One of Will’s hands flutters to his cheek, just barely pressing fingertips there as Hannibal coaxes his mouth open. He sighs into his mouth and Hannibal mimics the action, making Will beam.

“Tonight,” Hannibal decides, sitting abruptly up on his haunches and helps a befuddled Will sit up. “I want to give you time to think on this, and change your mind if need be.” 

For a moment, Will appears ready to protest, but he nods. 

“That’s fair,” he says. “But, I won’t change my mind.” 

“Even so.” 

Hannibal needn’t remind Will this is a goliath step they’ll be taking. Nor does he delineate that the only way this is going to work (seeing that Will’s erection is so far a no-show) is if Hannibal penetrates him. He wonders if Will knows that. 

Before Hannibal gets up to start lunch, Will’s hand slides over his leg, and he tells him softly, “Sometimes I feel as if we never left the bluff. I feel your hands clutching me, like phantom pain.”

“Does it hurt when I’m not close?” Hannibal asks, because it hurts for him when Will isn’t. 

There is no reluctance; Will nods, feverishly. 

Hannibal never admits to pain, and if he does, never the physical. 

“I have rarely known a greater pain than our separation.” 

Will’s eyes glisten and he casts his gaze toward the bedroom door, chuckling silently but without cynicism. “Do we have anything left of the priest?” he asks.

“A little priest,” Hannibal offers with a smirk, grateful when Will lights up at the reference. They will share a meager lunch, and rejoice in the conviviality of togetherness. 

The night goes along seemingly like any other. The promise of ‘tonight’ and what’s to come is simmering in the back of Hannibal’s mind, but Will does not seem frequented by the thoughts of their earlier intimacies, nor do his nerves become him. 

He cooks their dinner tonight, Crawfish Étouffée, which is probably as refined as Will’s tastes can get when it comes to him wearing the figurative chef hat. 

“I worked in a kitchen in Louisiana for a couple months before I found work at the boat yard,” he explains, setting the remarkably crafted dish in front of Hannibal. He sits adjacent to him atop one of the futons, picking up his utensils. 

“I never knew,” Hannibal responds, nostrils flaring to take in the scent. It’s spiced well enough, steaming perfectly. He’s almost beyond impressed, and would be lying if he said he wasn’t astounded and surprised by the achievement. 

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me,” Will offers. 

Hannibal glances at him, intrigued to see the playful smirk. He gathers a thicker portion of the stew on his spoon and lifts it to his lips, blowing lightly before ingesting. 

It is delicious. Hannibal falters in his shock, and Will laughs whilst he attempts to slip a veil over the reaction. Will starts in on his own stew and in a mollifying tone says, “You expected it to be appalling, you don’t have to pretend otherwise.” 

“Perhaps I held a preconception of you due to your taste in wine.” 

“I was never exactly a wine guy before I met you,” Will elucidates, humming over a spoonful of crawfish. “Brandy is kind of my forte.” 

“I had a wide variety of brandy,” Hannibal recollects. “Had I known—” 

“There was an appeal to you designating which drink would occupy our discussions,” he interrupts, smiling at his meal, reminiscing. “When you broke out the Chateau Bertranon I knew you’d end up talking about God.” 

Hannibal’s head inclines in thought.

“I wonder if I was so predictable before you stepped into my life.” 

“Everyone is predictable in at least a few, human ways,” Will tells him. “Even me.” 

“I should debate you on such a falsity,” Hannibal murmurs with a smile in his voice, “but that would make me more predictable than I already am.” 

Will huffs, humored. 

They eat in silence for a while, exchanging warm glances in between bites. Hannibal sips at his wine, and isn’t surprised to see Will already pouring himself a second glass. He doesn’t always, but perhaps Hannibal had been too quick to assume the promise from earlier had been forgotten. 

“Was my affection for you predictable?” Hannibal finds himself asking, and wishes to jab his fork into his own leg for such a banal, childish question. 

Will merely smiles. “Was it predictable to you?” 

“Hardly.” Hannibal had never expected to fall in love, let alone know an individual like Will. “Losing control over my faculties was an alien concept to me. Nothing I’d experienced in decades.” 

Will swallows a big mouthful and chases it down with a bountiful sip of wine. 

“Was Mischa the only person you’d ever loved?” 

Hannibal stills, the familiar cold wave washing over him. It does whenever he hears her name, and he allows it to pass, cool his skin before he speaks. 

“Yes.”

“Did your parents love you?” Will pushes further. While the line of questioning doesn’t appear to be coming from a place of malice, he’s asking with an unconscionable bluntness as if he’s entitled to the answers. And, he is. 

“If they did, I never knew it.” 

Will nods. Hannibal might ask the same if he didn’t already know the underlying platitudes of Will’s past, his absent mother, his deadbeat father. He wonders then if Will ever considered his own childhood predictable. 

Hannibal finishes up his meal, and Will pours himself two fingers more of wine.

“Your affection for me wasn’t predictable,” Will finally answers. “But, it was less of a shock than my own.”

Hannibal watches him, imploring. 

“Every single iteration of my future with you, for the longest time, I pictured bloody, vengeful. I promised you and myself a reckoning. I never planned to love you.” 

White strikes behind Hannibal’s closed eyes. Tremors rush through him and he forces his eyes open so he can see Will’s paled expression, worrying at his bottom lip from the weight of this confession. 

“I convinced myself it was a byproduct of my empathy, but I found myself troubled at the thought of leaving the grounds of your property in Baltimore, when you vanished to Florence.” 

“I never knew you returned there,” Hannibal muses quietly. 

“Like I said,” Will whispers. “Lots of things you don’t know about me.” 

“Terribly provoking to say such a thing.” 

Will smirks, unable to make eye contact with him. Cocking a brow, he responds, “There isn’t necessarily a longevity to that truth.” 

“If we are to be conjoined, I wonder about the state of us by the time we know each other inside and out.” 

Will takes in a deep breath at that.

“No holds barred. Nothing squandered nor sequestered.” 

Hannibal prevents himself from waxing poetic on the subject of Will in death, eating him alive, eating parts of him leftover. If only he could know the reality of that and know him entirely, but he far prefers Will living than dead. Even if it means he’ll never know what Will’s delicate brain feels like falling apart upon his tongue. 

“I’m going to shower,” Will says, folding his napkin. “Do you want help cleaning up?”

Hannibal shakes his head. “I’ll manage, thank you Will.” 

Before Will departs, he reaches out a hand and runs it through Hannibal’s hair, dragging fingers through the silky strands. As he pets him, Hannibal finds his limbs have gone loose. He gazes at him fondly, delighted when Will locks eyes.

He slips off his futon to kneel closer to him, and presses his forehead into the crook of Hannibal’s neck. Hannibal turns into the touch, surges of warmth passing through him. 

Flushing, he allows himself to take in Will’s scent. 

“I could never just tolerate you,” he whispers to him. 

The words sink in slowly, and Hannibal nods, unable to form a reply. Will understands nonetheless, the gravity of the assertion, and doesn’t ask Hannibal to.

Hannibal has always known tolerance had never been a part of their relationship. Will’s anger had been real, and he often finds shadows of it in their present conversations, but hearing it from Will’s lips, in a way that implies Hannibal doesn’t deserve to think that tolerance was ever a part of their equation to begin with, is quite moving. He does not know what crawled into Will’s heart tonight, but he’s far from discouraging this indulgence of affection. 

Hannibal can’t keep himself from taking Will’s chin between his thumb and pointer finger. His thumb presses lightly into Will’s bottom lip and the younger man looks at him with familiar regard when he pulls him closer and kisses his slightly parted lips. 

It’s wet enough to leave them glistening when he pulls back. 

Will cracks into a smile and says, “I might get used to that.”

“I may never,” Hannibal whispers, acknowledging the pure marvel of it. Being allowed to kiss Will, feeling his lips against his own, willing and affectionate even without Will’s latent attraction. 

Will glances between his eyes and his lips, and gives him a few short, brisk and unsure kisses before swerving and pacing out of the room quickly. The nerves are back, but they are entirely endearing to behold. Hannibal finds timidity obnoxious on most, but in this, Will shines. 

Rinsing the dishes and filling the dishwasher seems an impossible task at the moment, but he does so anyway. The shower turns on, faint pattering of water sounding from down the hall. 

It doesn’t take long, and Hannibal entertains the thought it might look like he’s rushing to bed, pulling back the covers once he’s in his black, silk pajama bottoms, to whip out a book. 

The shower isn’t yet off, and Will isn’t known to linger under the showerhead. Hannibal has in fact admonished him for not spending enough time with soap and cloth. He’s too bullheaded when he comes in from a run around the property, impatient moreso. 

Two chapters further (reading lines over and over again in his distraction) and the shower shuts off. The silence is immediately jarring, but Will soon bustles out into their adjoining bedroom in a cerulean towel, appearing pink and shower soft. 

“Hey,” Will mutters.

“Hey,” Hannibal says back, bordering on sarcastic. 

Will swallows over a lump in his throat. “I haven’t changed my mind,” he tells him, the words definitive and devastatingly effective. 

Hannibal closes his book and places it on the bedside table, about to reply, but Will is moving deftly to the other side of the room. His towel sinks a bit lower on his hips, but Hannibal is watching the lowering of the light switch until the room is practically pitch dark. 

There is a sound of cloth hitting the floor and while Hannibal’s eyes adjust, the bed dips and Will climbs in, fully nude and breathing unevenly. 

“Is there a reason you’ve cast us in shadows?”

“Don’t analyze it,” Will’s voice is startlingly close. “I’m more comfortable this way for now.” 

That’s all Hannibal needs to hear. Will could demand they copulate in the forest like wild animals and he’d be remiss to discourage it. 

Hannibal’s eyes adjust to the dark quicker than most, and he begins to see the shape of Will take form, the whites of his eyes appearing as if out of fog, the swath of his curls bouncing as he shifts. Hannibal reaches out a hand, and grazes his palm against the scar on his cheek. 

Will pushes into the contact, turns to kiss his palm. 

“There’s terms I’d like to discuss.”

Hannibal almost laughs, holds it back for the sake of taking Will seriously. To negotiate sex in the dark is quite humorous, and it comes off like Will is frightened more of Hannibal in this way than he is when Hannibal is maiming or killing a man before him in the broad moonlight. 

“I will do my best to abide by them,” Hannibal murmurs, stroking the soft, heated skin of his neck. He smells like the mountains, or the watery depths of the caves within them. 

“This isn’t sexual for me, I don’t want you to get me off.” 

“Rather, you don’t believe I am capable of doing so,” Hannibal suggests, and from Will’s silence, he takes it that he’s struck the truth of the matter. “If you wish me not to, I will refrain, but I again wonder what pleasure you will be deriving from this experience.” 

“You’ll be connected with me. I want to feel it, every inch of you.”

Hannibal hardens despite himself. “But, you have no qualms with me finding pleasure in this act,” he says, a grave drop to his voice. 

Will chuckles, and Hannibal can see the flash of teeth.

“If we’re going to have sex, I would hope at least one of us is getting off.” 

“You do realize what position this would entail—”

“Yeah, I’ve, um—” Will takes the hand he still has in his grasp and lowers it to his hip, encouraging Hannibal to feel around behind him, find the wet entrance of his body. His voice is soft when he whispers, “I’ve taken care of that.” 

Hannibal huffs out a breath of surprise, Will letting out an amused noise. 

He curls his hand around the curve of one of his cheeks, squeezes the plush flesh. He nearly passes out from being able to do this much. 

“How do you want me?” 

The words are fire, and Hannibal palms his own cock to quell the bite of arousal tingling up his spine. He takes his hand dry of lube and cups Will’s neck, drawing him in for a kiss. His lips part easily for Hannibal, every muscle in his body pliant. 

Hannibal wishes to tell him how much he desires him, how thoroughly Will affects him, in his gut, how he’s kept him awake at night, especially in the institution. With thoughts similar to this moment, how they are about to recreate one of Hannibal’s many fantasies he could never seem to stop his mind from fabricating. He doesn’t, the urge not to nudge Will out of his comfort zone a fairly new feeling, but significantly fierce.

“On your side,” Hannibal tells him, fighting his own eagerness. “It will put less pressure on you, and you’ll be able to feel me more closely.” 

“Sounds good,” Will responds, clipped sheepishness a darling thing. 

He moves languidly, back facing Hannibal. 

Even though Hannibal is hesitant no longer than a few seconds, Will impatiently reaches back and takes Hannibal’s left arm, drapes it over his chest and shimmies closer, until his bare ass is snug against Hannibal’s clothed erection, trapped at half mast. 

“Don’t hold back for my sake,” Will murmurs as Hannibal’s hand feels along the scar on his stomach, grasping his hip before kissing his neck. He turns enough to kiss Hannibal’s chin, nosing along his jawline, sighs when Hannibal’s grip on him tightens. “Come on, Doctor Lecter.”

It doesn’t take long after that. Hannibal removes his briefs with his pants, and strokes himself to full hardness with a remarkably static emptiness in his mind. Will’s scent overwhelms him. The curve of his ass against the head of his cock is causing his skin to vibrate. 

Will’s hips fidget back, more of an independent twitch than anything else.

Hannibal becomes starkly aware of his own heavy breathing, and he stops teething at Will’s neck, lastly placing a kiss on the hot skin there before asking with sudden possessiveness, “Have you thought of allowing women into your new life?” 

“Would you tolerate it?” Will asks, breathy and amused, face half smooshed into the pillow beneath them. 

Tension crackles between them, and Will shakes his head. 

“They don’t matter to me, Hannibal. I don’t need women. I don’t need to be fulfilled, or however you prefer to say it. I haven’t thought of it, not even once. Happy?” 

For a moment, Hannibal fears the words are placating, disingenuous, but Will has not once looked at a woman in passing here, on their walks, or otherwise. He seems content. 

Hannibal pulls Will’s hips closer, and Will moves with it, pressing his back fully against Hannibal’s chest, his nipples, and dusky chest chair. He sighs with the full bodied contact, and Hannibal echoes the noise. 

“If you hold me like this every night, I might not even leave this room.”

Now that’s a thought. Hannibal smiles against his neck and sucks a kiss there. One tendon strains and trembles, and Will’s head tips back onto his shoulder, allowing him to mark. 

“I knew you liked touch, not to this extent,” Hannibal whispers. 

Everything is perpetually loud in the quiet. 

“I like to be held,” Will whispers back, softer. “It’s singularly numbing.” 

Hannibal works his free hand back in between them and draws his cock up the crease of his ass, and tries not to close his eyes when he gently rocks forward, grazing soft, wet skin. 

“God, you’re big,” Will mutters. “Is it going to hurt?”

“I won’t lie to you. It all depends on how well you stretched yourself,” Hannibal tells him, licking his palm twice, thick swipes of saliva before coating his cock diligently. 

“I’ve done it for a couple women. Not too different when it’s yourself.” 

Flirtatious, Hannibal says, “I’m not sure that’s quite true.” He feels he’s allowed, considering their position. Will doesn’t respond, but he’s still nuzzling beneath Hannibal’s chin. 

Licking his palm again, he makes sure his cock is slick. Hannibal finally lines himself up and presses the head of his cock between the cheeks of Will’s ass, pushing until it catches on the rim. Will gasps, nails biting into the arm around his chest, but he doesn’t tell him to stop. 

“Alright?” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Will pats Hannibal’s forearm, encouraging. “Go on.” 

Hannibal pushes further, until the head pops through the ring of muscle. They both grunt for different reasons, and Will shifts back, grunting again regretfully when it pushes Hannibal further in. “Fuck, that hurts.”

Hannibal moves to pull out, but the nails dig in again. Nearly drawing blood.

“It’s fine,” he clarifies. “Just need to adjust.” 

Though he feels as if he’s shaking out of his skin like a feral dog, Hannibal forces himself to stay still, inhaling unevenly in the crook of Will’s neck. He focuses on the light stroking of his forearm, Will’s soft, calloused fingers moving back and forth, unaware at how satiating the searing heat around the head of Hannibal’s cock is. If he thought he could survive without this earlier today, he must have been madder than he is now. 

Will works his hips back, signaling he’s ready for more, and Hannibal pushes again. Rocking back and forth to work himself into his body. Stuttering gasps fall from Will’s lips, pained and uncomfortable, but nothing near the first reaction. He lets out an abrupt sigh when Hannibal bottoms out. 

Hannibal loops his other arm around Will’s body, strokes his stubbly jawline, traces the contour of his throat. The kisses he leaves along his neck, the curve of his ear are a fraction more fervent, wet and hot like Will’s body feels around him. To be inside him is to finally understand God. 

“I feel like I can feel you here,” Will murmurs, linking their fingers together and bringing Hannibal’s right hand down to his stomach, pressing flat. It quivers under Hannibal’s light touch. “You’re everywhere.” 

Hannibal fights back the tears, but they swell and fall like rain drops on the back of Will’s neck. Will makes a tiny, wounded sound, turning as much as he can to cup Hannibal’s cheek. 

“Shh,” Will soothes, stroking a thumb under his eye. “I feel good. Do you feel good?” 

Hannibal kisses him, their lips not quite able to meet at this angle, but it’s enough. He says yes with his mouth, his tears, the hand that’s still grasping Will’s waist, keeping him pressed firmly to his body. 

“Can we stay like this for a few minutes? Not moving, I just wanna feel us,” Will requests gently, keeping his other hand pressed to his stomach as if he can reach through. 

The idea is grand; Hannibal wants nothing more. 

He heaves Will closer and they both gasp as he shifts within him. There is a long stretch of silence where they match their breathing together, and when Hannibal’s hand travels from his stomach to his face, tracing and searching, he feels a relaxed smile upon those perfect lips. 

“I was thinking I could fall asleep like this,” Will murmurs, pitch low and dreamy. “The pain’s gone. I can feel your heartbeat.” At first Hannibal thinks he means his chest against his back but Will adds, “Inside me.” 

“Will.” Hannibal’s voice is shot, straining worse than his cock. 

“Do you wanna move?” Will asks, a hint of guilt. “You can. Whenever you want.” 

Hannibal kisses behind his ear, drags his cock back and presses in, as gentle as he’s ever been. He knows how to unravel someone; he’s been rough, his stamina stuff of legend. He’s given women several orgasms in one night, and given some men the same treatment. Part of it comes out of his own worldly expedition of pleasure. He searches, he finds, he takes. He shows off. Never has he ever been so attuned to what another person wants, and Will doesn’t want to be unraveled, he just wants to be with Hannibal as he does. At this angle, the pressure on his prostate will be weak, and unless Hannibal hammers into him, he won’t feel the ache tomorrow.

So, he continues slowly. Shallow thrusts back and forth, as he pants against Will’s skin. Will doesn’t moan or buck backwards in search of pleasure. He ghosts his nails across Hannibal’s forearm, fights against the small breathy noises he doesn’t want Hannibal to hear. 

Their legs tangle together as sweat begins to accumulate. 

Hannibal forces himself to maintain the same pace, even as he allows his hands to wander, pressing into muscle, pillowy flesh, outlining Will in his mind because the dark, shadowy silhouette before him almost isn’t enough to convince himself this is real. That he’s making love to Will, and Will wants him to regardless of his proclivities. 

As desperately as he wishes to take his cock in hand, feel the head of it for purposes of memorization, or dig fingers into his ass, squeeze the cheeks to mimic a pulse, he refrains. 

“You want me so much,” Will whispers, syllables skipping. He says it as if he hadn’t quite believed it before, and Hannibal isn’t sure how he feels about Will protruding the tendrils of his empathy around him at this moment, but he’s not in any position to stop him. Will could kill him now, and he’d gladly let him. “Do you want—” the small hiccup-like noise again, “—to-to…inside me?” 

 For all the fiendish things he’s done, Will is too bashful to say the words. 

“May I?”

“Y- ugh -Yeah.” Will is gritting his teeth, Hannibal can feel it in his clenched jaw. Hannibal’s picked up the pace a tad, just enough to chase his climax. He hopes he’s not hurting him too dearly, but he’s essentially blinded by need. 

Now would be the time he normally reaches a hand down and brings his partner off, in an attempt to synchronize their orgasms, but Will had specifically asked Hannibal not to try, not to touch him there. He wants to, if only to see if Will is entirely flaccid. 

Somehow, he contains himself, and tightens his grip on Will’s hipbone, the fingers on his other hand coiling through his curls and tugging his head back so he can suck the skin along the column of his neck. He can taste blood beneath the epidermis layer, rising to meet his suction. It’s ambrosial. He can’t help the sharp snap of his hips in response and Will cries out. 

“Did I hurt you?” Hannibal asks, slowing but not stopping. 

“No,” Will stammers, trembling. He repeats it, the word elongated as Hannibal grazes a sensitive spot inside of him; “N-uh- No. ”

On instinct, Hannibal’s hand twitches down the path of Will’s thigh from his waist, so he consciously brings it up to his chest, feeling his heartbeat instead. It’s thumping fast, erratic. 

“You close?” Will asks in an urgent rush, turning his head as far away from Hannibal’s as possible. Up until now, he’d been melting back into him, encouraging and open. Currently, he’s tightening up, body clenching in intervals, burrowing his cheek into the pillow. 

Hannibal’s body moves with him until he’s mostly on top, grinding down.

If he hadn’t been close, the warm walls squeezing his cock would have been persuasive enough to give him that last push, but he’s already at the edge, tumbling hard into white hot bliss. He comes inside of him in heated, wet pulses. Will jerks a bit, forward and away, but Hannibal keeps him constrained, breathing heavily against his shoulder, fighting the moan stuck in his throat. 

He shudders once, burying his spend into Will’s body with one last thrust. Will is quiet beneath him, the only indication of his being alive being the tight furrow between his shoulder blades, and the gentle breathing. 

An obscene noise follows Hannibal pulling out, but he flops on his back without paying it any mind. Eyes fully adjusted to the dark, he carries his gaze across the expanse of Will’s backside. The sheets have been fought with, pushed down to the point where they’re covering only his calves. 

Will is facing away, hands splayed flat on the pillow on either side of his head. The curtains are drawn, but Hannibal can still see the glistening wetness between his cheeks, even without moonlight. 

He would smear it up his tailbone, paint his back.

If he could, he’d bury his face in the crease of Will’s ass and show him how it feels to be eaten out directly after being fucked. Clean him of the mark Hannibal left within. 

Calm down.

Hannibal catches his breath, beginning to feel clear of mind. He reaches out a hand, strokes his knuckles down Will’s spine, pausing only when he feels the violent tremble of his body. 

“Will—?”

Will jolts, scrambling a bit to the edge of the bed where he sits in a slump, back facing Hannibal. Hannibal props himself up on an elbow, concern sinking into every bone in his body. 

There is a possibility he had hurt him, or perhaps Will had told him to stop and he hadn’t heard. It’s one of the few instances he feels genuine fear; hurting Will is something familiar to them both, but Hannibal could not bear hurting Will unknowingly, least of all this way. 

He shouldn’t have allowed this to occur. Will never wanted sex with a man. 

“I’m gonna shower, sorry. I’ll be right back,” Will mumbles, pacing quickly to the bathroom. The light flickers on before the door slams shut, and Hannibal catches a glimpse of his mottled neck. 

A part of him thrills, but it’s overshadowed by ambivalence.

The shower turns on, and Hannibal settles back into the sheets, feeling short of breath for other reasons. He should turn the lights on, they should discuss what happened, why Will suddenly shut down. Hannibal should apologize, clearly and without twisted fanfare. 

Since when had he become so banal?

Minutes into muddling over how to word what he’ll say to Will next, the shower turns off, and there is a rustling before the lights click off. Will emerges from the bathroom in boxer briefs, toweling his hair, then reaches out with it in his fist.

“You need it?” 

Hannibal props himself up on his elbows.

“No, thank you.”

Will hangs it on one of the rungs in the bathroom before sauntering over and hopping in bed beside him. He turns on his side, facing him in the dark. Hannibal startles when a hand reaches out to stroke his skin, collarbone, neck, up to his cheeks. 

“Did I not injure you?” 

Will lets out a soft questioning sound, continuing. 

“Just now, you appeared distressed.” 

There is an agonizingly lengthy silence before Will says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out. Wasn’t you, Hannibal.” 

The tone of his voice is discouraging Hannibal to dig further, even if he very much desires to. Will abandoned him like a distrusting hound, but he supposes Will willing to touch him after the ordeal, seeming to want to, is perhaps the only relief that matters in the moment. 

“Was it good for you?” Will asks him then, humor evident in his tone. 

Normally at such a comment, Hannibal would be vexed. 

Instead, he huffs a quiet laugh and holds Will’s hand flat to his cheek, smiling into his palm so he can feel it. It isn’t his greatest night when it comes to vulnerability; he feels it leak out of his sides like grease from a steak. “I’m afraid it troubles me I cannot ask the same of you.” 

Will sighs and fidgets closer, slotting himself chest first into Hannibal’s arms. He wraps around him, limbs like bramble. “If you expect me to regret what we did, that’s not gonna happen.” 

“I’m not certain if I expected your regret. Though, I’m also not certain I expected your contentment.” 

Hannibal feels the smile against his sternum, cheek pressing flush to his skin. 

“You want unexpected?” he murmurs, drowsy. “I wanna do it again.” 

The clock ticking in their bedroom suddenly sounds like a gavel. Hannibal stiffens, baffled, enthused, uncertain, tense all at once from the admission. Will nuzzles closer, drifting off when he adds, “Don’t strain yourself dwelling. I’ve never felt closer to you, Hannibal. That much is true. We can have this.” 

Hannibal’s hands slip over his lower back and he clutches at his waist, lifting him bodily up until he can kiss his lips, holding his head in place with a hand to lick over the seam of his lips. 

Will allows it, not quite venturous in his own method of kissing, but he isn’t close-mouthed like the first time they did this. He’s open, hands ever curious as they press and knead at deposits of flesh on Hannibal’s stomach, his hips.

“Tired,” Will whispers on his lips, and he sounds so incredibly sweet, that Hannibal wastes no time gently maneuvering him to the position he’s most comfortable, and strokes his hair until his breaths are deep, elongated. 

Hannibal is awake long after, watching Will in the dark, stroking his back, dragging knuckles faintly over his ribs. Smiling when Will snorts in his sleep and haphazardly readjusts. 

He would like to discuss why Will left, why Will wishes to have sex with him again. In theory, he’d prefer an hourly long discussion with wine and firelight, but he may have to settle for brandy and futons. That is if Will agrees to discuss, which Hannibal fears he may not in the vicious light of day, where intoxication and inhibitions are taboo subjects. 

As always, he falls asleep reminding himself; Will is anything but predictable. 

The morning after finds Will gone from bed. 

When Hannibal wanders into the kitchen to prepare morning tea, he finds Will in waders, packing himself some leftover sushi from a few nights prior. 

They make eye contact, and for a charged moment, there seems to be a competition on who will look away first. Will loses, shooting a strange, gawky glance at his pack lunch before shutting the tin box and attaching it to his belt. 

“I can drive you to the lake,” Hannibal offers. Will has not been there yet, and he doubts he remembers the vague directions he had given in passing conversation.

“Thanks, uh, I’ve got it.” Will nods and smiles, awkwardly placating, and Hannibal stares for a moment, turning back to his tea when he decides there is nothing in his expression to garner. 

Will lingers, failing to find a reason to stay, but staying anyway.

Hannibal could call him out on it, but he’s feeling generous. 

When his tea is poured, he takes it in hand and inclines his head, murmuring a soft, “Have a good morning, Will.” 

Will’s hands are shoved into his pockets, and they seem to shove even deeper as his back straightens to a point of rigidity. He nods, gaze averted still, before muttering, “You too.” 

Will turns to leave first, and Hannibal sips his drink as he walks through the halls of their house to his desk. He turns on his tablet, but doesn’t read the headlines or the weather report. Sinking into his thoughts, he finds himself smirking, nearly laughing out loud at the uncovered truth. 

Will is many things. He is incredibly provocative when he wants to be. He’s as sweet as he is bitter, and as violent as he is tender. Will is also shy. Vastly so. 

Anticipation crawls up his spine, and he’s suddenly looking forward to dinner.

Will arrives later than Hannibal would have expected. Late in the afternoon, around three. At first glance, he assumes Will was trying to avoid him, but then remembers that Will genuinely loses time in the quiet of the stream. Truly, he seems less on edge than this morning. 

He lays out three, incredibly large, fish on the island in the kitchen, telling Hannibal with muted enthusiasm about each of the catches. 

The conversation carries on into dinner, after Hannibal bends the fish into art, a dish to be served to kings and princes. Will is on a higher scale for Hannibal than the men who bear those labels. 

“Would you ever consider teaching me to fish?” Hannibal asks, pouring himself a brandy, and moving to pour Will’s, but Will covers his glass with a hand. Easily, he assumes he’ll drink later into dinner. 

“You wanna learn how to fish,” Will states, with a playfully raised brow. “You’d let me teach you, you’d wear waders with me.” 

“You were a professor were you not?” Hannibal reminds, spooning a roasted portion of fish into his mouth. He chews and swallows before he adds. “I never saw you grading papers.” 

“I’d do them at my desk before our appointments, usually.”

“Your job seemed to be the last subject you ever wished to discuss.”

“Boring subject,” Will replies, mouth full. 

“The subject matter of your classes was not.”

“You’re saying that because I was teaching a room full of impressionable youth all about the grandiosity and style of your murders. You wanted to become a philosophical lecture.”

“You’re the one who encouraged the philosophy. I don’t recall your awareness of my secret whilst you were still teaching. That was all you, I’m afraid.” 

Will rolls his eyes, then says, “Jack recruited me for the first time after a class.” 

“Oh?”

“He asked if he could borrow my imagination.” 

“When one borrows something from another, one expects that something back with a level of immediacy. Jack was dishonest from the start it seems.” 

“He did give it back, eventually,” Will offers, without zeal. 

“You took it back,” Hannibal asserts. Drinking the rest of his brandy, he eyes Will’s empty glass and considers offering him some (he’d harbored the intention of loosening him up a little), but Will sips at his water, deftly focused on the perspiring shape of it in his hand. 

“Relocated it,” Will acquiesces, frowns. “Sometimes I wonder…”

There are enough emotions packed into the short phrase that Hannibal can’t help but immediately inquire, “What do you wonder, Will?” 

Sober reluctance to admit the thought, but he gives in as always. 

“Where I’d be if Jack had never come to my classroom.” 

There is a stark awareness of their surroundings. Hannibal knows he wouldn’t be in Japan, neither would Will, if Jack had never orchestrated their meeting, their sessions. He would most likely still be in Baltimore, and Will in Wolf Trap. 

“Perhaps you’d have three new dogs.” 

A strained laugh tumbles out of Will. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, I probably would. And, I’d be teaching. I’d be alone at night, waiting for the next day, and the next.” 

“I doubt you’d be alone,” Hannibal tells him. There had been Molly, her son. If not her, perhaps another family would have taken him in like a lost stray. 

Alone, no. Alone in every way that matters, yes. 

Will is staring at his fish, what’s left of it anyhow. There are no eyes, but he’s looking at it as if there are, as if something is staring back at him with a dead plea. 

“I’ve felt more alone, the less alone I become.” 

“Family and friends remind us of our misplacement. Blood ties exist for us to challenge genetic disposition, and peers encourage our reflection on who we are without our family. There is little room for peace, with one’s self and their position in life.” 

“You don’t make me feel like that,” Will tells him. 

“No,” Hannibal agrees. “I believe that would defeat the purpose of why we are here now. The question is why you wonder.”

“Don’t you wonder?” Will asks, warily. “It’s natural to wonder.” 

Hannibal cannot say that he does. “I wondered, briefly, what may have happened if you had left with me that night in Baltimore. Come away to Florence with me and Abigail.” 

There is ancient guilt written all over Will’s face.

“But, I’m not the type of man who questions the path fate decides.” 

“Sounds pretty theological coming from you, Doctor,” Will admits, poking at his food. It is rude table manners, but Will has done much worse and garnered far less irritation from Hannibal. 

“If I have dipped my toes into the pool of the divine, it is because you inspire me to do so,” Hannibal responds, smug when Will flusters and chugs the rest of his water. 

“Would you rather wine?” he asks then, with the convenient excuse that Will has run out of beverages. To his dismay, and muted shock, Will shakes his head. 

“I’m not drinking tonight.” 

He drinks every night, if just a spoonful of champagne. 

Hannibal should ask why, but each iteration of the question sounds equally boorish in his head, so he remains silent. Will gets up with a back-aching grunt to refill his water and returns to plop gracelessly atop the futon. Water spills over the edges of his glass, but he’s licking up the droplets and sipping until it is no longer brimming. 

Hannibal finds he’s staring, so he turns away, swirling his brandy around in his cup before delineating, “I wanted to discuss last night.” 

“Hell,” Will chuckles nervously, looking desperately like he wants that drink. 

“No psychoanalyzation,” Hannibal promises, to Will’s suspicious expression. “I merely wish to know what went through your head when you left. You said it was nothing I’d done.” 

“No, of course it wasn’t. You were—fine, it was fine. I just wanted to shower, it was messy. And—” Will swallows and curls his fingers over the edge of the table. “I don’t want to discuss it.” 

“I’d like to prevent further discomfort.”

“For you or for me?” Will bites out, erecting his forts.

Hannibal sighs. “Will, despite what you may think of me, had there been regret or pain enabled by me unknowingly, I care to know about it. You brushed it off.”

Will says, “I didn’t brush it off,” posturing agitation. 

“Internalized it, then.” 

“Nothing about it was internal,” he mutters under his breath, but doesn’t clarify what he means. Then, he meets Hannibal’s eyes, completely earnest. “I’m a straight man, Hannibal. There are conventions that even I can’t shake, no matter how much pride you hold for me when it comes to my unconventional nature. If you want me to say I had to reconcile the fact I had let a man fuck me, then sure, it was something along those lines. That doesn’t mean I was fostering regret, nor does that erase how the act made me feel, aside from the resolution.” 

Hannibal was expecting to make Will blush with embarrassment tonight, but perhaps he’d been putting too much faith in the alcohol Will refuses to drink. 

“I would not have judged you, Will.” 

“It’s not that,” Will replies, lips twitching up. “I wanted to do it again, and I didn’t want to ward you off by crudely explaining everything I was feeling.” 

“If I may be so bold, you came across far more dramatic than you would have had you explained,” he teases.

“Coming from the overlord of drama, that’s a big insult.” 

Hannibal’s lips stretch into a smile, and Will chuckles, rubbing a thumb over the watery edge of his drink. The following silence is comfortable; Hannibal feels easier about last night. 

Will is watching him finish his food and brandy with a look bordering on sultry. He’s quite sure the man isn’t aware himself how he looks when he makes that face, but it mirrors those late night dinners in Baltimore, lost to time and circumstance. 

“Do you want to—” Will waits patiently until Hannibal turns to him. “Tonight?” 

So soon? Hannibal is floored. 

“Are you not sore?” he asks, hiding the fact he is caught off guard. 

“You were gentle with me,” Will says simply, tone low. 

All that talk about reconciling the splintering of sexuality and orientation and Will appears eager to repeat the act, climb under the covers with Hannibal and let himself be taken again. 

Unpredictable, capricious, lovely boy.  

Words of worship float around Hannibal’s head as he fights to bring them to his tongue, anything other than stupefied silence. The mocking expression on Will’s face is merciless and by the time he finally finds his voice, he interrupts him. 

“If you’re going to say I’m not obligated to fulfill my promises, or make some guilt-laced declaration about my hesitations, I’ll cut to the chase and tell you to save it. Actually, bury it.” 

Hannibal gawks, having enough coherency to at least keep his jaw snapped shut. 

“I’m sick of it,” Will adds with a laugh. “Take me to bed.” 

Will allows Hannibal to stretch him open unlike last night. 

It feels uniquely novel, even if they are in the same position. Will is nuzzling his jawline, the act beginning to come across as instinctual. Only one of Hannibal’s arms is wrapped around his waist. The other is crushed between their bodies, two fingers buried in his ass. 

“You do it differently than I do,” Will murmurs, strained.

Hannibal is mostly going off of muscle memory. He’s done this to several men, men who wanted to be stimulated. Some had even reached their climax this way, but Will isn’t searching for an orgasm. That means steering clear of his prostate, which isn’t impossible, but inconsistently accomplished. He forgets, scissoring in a way that makes Will shudder against him, and let out a harsh, thin sound. 

“Compliment or admonishment?” Hannibal asks, kissing his eyebrow. The hair shouldn’t be so soft there, but it is.

“Both, I think.” 

“You didn’t stretch yourself properly last time.” 

“It’s a good thing I have you to do it for me, then,” Will remarks, grumbles when Hannibal bites the lobe of his ear. “Did you sharpen your teeth or something, when you were younger?”

“They’ve always been this way.”

“Did your ancestors swim with sharks?” Will gasps when Hannibal presses a spit-slick third finger in beside the other two. Lube had been used excessively already, there isn’t a need to reach for it again as of yet. 

“Did yours burrow with mongooses?” 

Will laughs, shoulder blade nudging Hannibal’s chest. Hannibal litters the back of his neck with winded kisses, graciously accepts one on the lips when Will cranes his neck back. He scissors his fingers hard enough to hurry along the stretching, and chastises himself when in his haste, he grazes hard against Will’s prostate. 

Will locks up, and Hannibal noses against his nape in an apology. Will doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to. There is an inescapability to feeling pleasure during sex, Hannibal supposes, even if you aren’t rising to the occasion. A foolish part of him wishes Will could enjoy this in the manner he does. His cock is hard, pressing against the jut of his hip bone. He’s not sure anyone has ever aroused him as devastatingly as Will. 

There is a possibility that one day, Will may have a change of heart, but after last night, he appears resolute in his sexuality. Unwavering. 

Hannibal lubes up his cock and lines up, waiting a moment for Will to resist. He doesn’t, rolling his hips back in encouragement. That’s enough for him, so he pushes in. 

A tense grunt, and then muscles relaxing in intervals. 

“Hannibal,” Will sighs, drawing an arm back to curl around Hannibal’s head. He turns, and in the dark, they can still see each other’s eyes. “Do something for me.” 

Hannibal inhales his scent, as if strengthening his high. 

“Anything,” he promises and means.

The arm that is cradling Hannibal’s head moves until it is twisted back, and his nails are scratching down the older man’s arms, stopping at the hip and digging in. 

“Fuck me like you mean it.”

Will is still adjusting around him, tight walls flexing and searing. Hannibal’s breath stutters, not expecting the crude language, but he can hardly deny him this. 

The gentleness he’d appreciated, but apparently he wants to see the spectrum of Hannibal’s lovemaking. Wants to be behind the veil even if it means pain, humiliation. Wants to know how Hannibal fucked Bedelia, wants to be the object of Hannibal’s passion over her. Wants it all. 

Hannibal’s cock throbs, and he barely lasts more than a few seconds before he’s pulling back and slamming in. Will cries out, the hand not clutched to Hannibal’s hip flies to the forearm flat against his abdominal scar. 

He’s prepared for the next thrust, muffles his own noise, but it comes out strangled. Blinded by lust, Hannibal thrusts at the same angle just to hear the same noise. A curse tumbles out of Will’s mouth, and in Hannibal’s haze, he can’t pinpoint which one. 

There isn’t much room for talking. 

Hannibal pistons in and out of him, wracked with the relief the sensation brings. To sink himself into Will’s cramped, wet heat. Hear every little reaction forced from his throat. The slapping noises that grow in pitch creating a rhythm. 

He doesn’t think when one of his hands travels from Will’s hip to his thigh, dangerously close to the man’s cock. He only grips onto the meaty flesh there, doesn’t draw closer, but nearly does. Will’s nails (with the arm still clutching Hannibal’s hip) dig into skin torturously, almost in warning. Flay me alive, he prays. 

The hand that isn’t on Will’s thigh travels across his abdomen, to his pectoral muscles. Feeling the thrumming heartbeat, he slows his hips just enough to focus on the jackrabbit hammering of his heart. He also notices Will’s breathing then, erratic, high-pitched. 

The hand travels further, until he’s clutching Will’s throat. 

Will groans, head flinging back against Hannibal’s shoulder. One of Will’s hands flies up to cover the one around his throat, but he doesn’t pry his fingers off, just holds him there. 

The smooth passage of his body clenches, and Hannibal muffles his pleasure in Will’s trapezius, biting, soothing with licking kisses, then sucking to distract himself. 

“Will,” he whispers, overcome.

“Hannibal,” Will croaks out, and it sounds so close to need. 

As much as he desires to draw this out until one or both of them perish, Hannibal feels his climax building, ready to sweep over him at any moment. Will lets out that small, choked up noise he makes on every other thrust and Hannibal comes, twitching as he fills him deep. He holds back a groan, allows himself to instead shake with the paralyzing pleasure, letting Will soothe him back to reality with soft stroking fingertips once he’s spent. 

As he’s catching his breath, he feels the still-rapid rise and fall of Will’s body. Before he can focus, ask if Will is faring well, his breathing begins to even out too. 

“Is that how you fucked them?” Will asks, in a petty voice.

Hannibal had been right. Will had been curious. About Bedelia, Alana even. 

“Yes,” he admits, heaving into his curls, brushing through them with a sticky hand. “Though, with them, I didn’t feel as if I’d succumb to cardiac arrest.” 

Will doesn’t respond, but when Hannibal moves to pull out, he keeps him locked close. His arms haven’t moved, his nails digging into his hip still. 

“Stay inside me,” he whispers. “Let’s sleep like this.” 

He needn’t tell Will of the pains of overstimulation on both their parts, but Hannibal surmises it’s a small price to pay for being able to remain linked with the man he loves. He settles, and pulls Will closer, if that were possible. They breathe in unison, and Will’s nails finally retract, instead pulling Hannibal’s arms closer around him.

“How fast did it beat for them?” Will asks quietly. “Your heart.”

Shush, dear thing. They meant nothing to me. 

Hannibal wants to say it, but can’t bring himself to. Awash abruptly in his own possessiveness, he draws a finger in a zig-zag over the scar on his stomach. 

“How fast did yours beat for your wife?” 

Will falls silent. There isn’t precisely an acidic atmosphere, but it is not altogether tender. They don’t move from each other’s grasp, and Will falls asleep shortly. 

Hannibal continues to ponder the questions, and it strikes him suddenly how fast Will’s heart had been pumping during the sex. In the moment, he’d marked it down to Will being easily overwhelmed, but perhaps it derived from the severity of his love. Hannibal’s own heart experiences palpitations even at the sight of Will; he never considered the possibility of the same for Will, in relation to him.

They don’t fuck like that again. 

Hannibal trusts Will to tell him if he would like a repeat of the gesture, and he doesn’t, though they have sex nearly every night. Will occasionally shows up in bed already open, and less often he allows Hannibal to work him open. Either way, they fuck slow, dreamlike; sometimes Will tells him to stop altogether so he can feel them breathing in accordance, or just to relish the feeling of Hannibal’s cock spearing him open, instead of a knife. 

Only one instance came close to the night where they fucked instead of making love. They were taking an afternoon nap together in their bedroom; the curtain had been drawn back, a clear view of the sunset cast over the veranda. Hannibal had woken up hard against Will’s back (Will’s scent has been doing that to him lately) and Will, bravely in the daylight, had said, particularly salacious, “I want you to possess me.”

Hannibal possessed him, with his average amount of restraint, this time both clothed in simple button-ups and trousers. Nap clothes they didn’t feel like peeling off. They sweated through them so Hannibal had pulled out at the end to come over the back of Will’s shirt. If they were headed to the wash anyway, at least Will wouldn’t have to deal with the cleanup. 

Will hadn’t writhed or moaned, but the novelty of seeing the younger man’s face in the orange light, to visualize how it made his blue eyes swirl into green. The way his mouth looked, slack and red from sex-kissing and not tender -kissing.

It was rattling. 

The only downside was that Will had gotten incorrigibly shy after that, and religiously stuck with their nightly routine. Sex in the dark. For a while, Hannibal had wondered if Will had been uncomfortable with the clear view of him, but after seeing him fidget with his scar in the mirror, more often than normal, he figured out it had something to do with latent insecurity. 

He could fall on one knee and declare him the most gorgeous man to ever walk the Earth, but Hannibal acknowledges it would only force Will further inside himself. 

Their time in Japan draws to a close, shortly after this. 

It feels like they’ve been here for years. The house smells of their mingled scents, the veranda is where Will stores his fishing rods, and Hannibal had become used to the kitchen. 

This had only ever been a rest stop, even with the uncovered revelations. 

Will is clingy today. He’s been clingy all week, knowing what their stay in Japan ending means. Hugging Hannibal as the man brushes his teeth, trapping him with his legs as he sits on the kitchen counter and distracts Hannibal from dinner. They are going to be traveling separately to their new, (relatively) permanent location. He doesn’t want to travel alone, without Hannibal. He’s argued this topic many times, but Hannibal had always won honing pure logic at his helm. 

“A week seems so long,” Will murmurs, leaning back into Hannibal’s body. He’s framing him against the bureau as Will buttons up a more comfortable shirt than the itchy sweater he’d been wearing before. The flights will be lengthy, arduous.

“We’ve been separated for years at a time,” Hannibal reminds, kissing his cheek, but he must concur. “I will miss you terribly.” 

Will swerves around in his arms, shirt still half-unbuttoned and kisses Hannibal with tongue and teeth, everything that screams I love you, I need you to know that. He’s been getting better at communicating his affection with kisses. He doesn’t struggle with words, but when it comes to love, he becomes overwhelmed with the ache and intensity it brings. 

Hannibal kisses back in the same manner, nosing at his eyelids to feel the paper thin stretch of skin. His most vulnerable places, where he is allowed to touch. 

Something in the back of his mind pings with irritation. No, he still hasn’t touched Will’s cock. It seems foolish that he hasn’t after everything they’ve done. Even if they have stuck to the same position, the same lighting, the same everything.  

He tells himself he isn’t frustrated. 

“I can still take the route through Taiwan. You can take the car, you don’t have to take the bus,” Will tells him, overly indulgent in his premature isolation. 

“Take the car, Will. I can survive public transport.” 

“Your face is more recognizable than mine—”

“We’ve discussed this,” Hannibal reminds, stroking firmly through his hair to enunciate the point. “They can’t take me. And if they take you, I’ll burn down the cage they trap you in.” 

Will clutches Hannibal’s hips, flexing his fingers over muscle. 

“Would you kill someone without me?” 

“Unless I’m recognized, no.” 

Will sighs, glancing up with a smirk. “Good,” he says, the subtext in bright glowing letters, Don’t fuck anyone either. 

Hannibal isn’t sure he’d be able to maintain an erection for anyone else at this point, even if he were inclined to look at another in that manner. He kisses Will on his cheek scar, a promise. 

An hour passes, and they depart. 

Miles stacking upon miles in the opposite direction of Will makes him far more savage than he could have ever imagined. Their separation hadn’t been like this before. The institution had been a breeze compared to this feral ache. 

His first night in a hotel in Taiwan is agony. 

After the gratuitous experience of taking several buses, he thought he would hit the mattress and conk out. Normally, he is in complete control of these aspects of his life. 

He sleeps for one hour, incapable of more. The instant coffee they offer in the lobby grates on his nerves, but he drinks every drop, needing his strength for the long journey. And he knows Will would encourage him to drink some. 

No, a week isn’t particularly long, but it feels like a lifetime. 

Will’s first flight will take him to South Korea where he’ll meet up with Chiyoh. At least he’ll have company. He doesn’t want Will traveling extensively without a guide; Hannibal has globe trotted enough times it’s like riding a bike. Plus, he knows several languages. The only language other than English Will knows is dog.

A few flights each, covertly in several directions, where finally they will meet in France. Paris would be too risky, though he plans to take Will there. They will be living in Avignon. 

Cutting through Africa to get to Spain, Hannibal convinces himself on one of the many long train rides that perhaps Will had been right. The risk factor of traveling together hadn’t been so high, and they could have easily taken fewer flights and train trips. It is almost as if Will has perched himself on Hannibal’s shoulder, to argue his case again, even in his absence. The looming specter makes him forget why he planned their departure like this in the first place. 

Each hotel he stops in, he checks the spreadsheet he’d made to line up where Will is across the globe in correlation to him. Somewhere in Russia, then. 

He looks up at Orion in the stars at night and wonders if Will is looking up at the same constellation. He wonders if they’ve become so connected. He wonders also, if Will misses his embrace in the night. Or even just a kiss. 

It isn’t until he reaches Spain that he begins to wind himself up. A blonde woman accompanies him in the train cart on the first trip. She flirts, brazenly and without shame. Hannibal considers snapping her neck, but even if he were not complying with Will’s request, he finds he’s lacking the motivation to do even that much. It is not something he is used to doing considering the rudeness of the act, but he ignores her, as if she were a wall, and after an hour that stretches on like a bungee chord, she gives up and fumblingly departs at her next stop. Three hours later, he regrets not killing her.

He stops checking the spreadsheet. He doesn’t need to know where Will is, or rather the more often he checks, the worse he aches. Japan had been serene; he wishes they were there. 

It’s futile to fantasize about foolish things, but he can’t seem to stop. 

Hannibal finds that his excitement to see Will again doesn’t overpower the overwhelming sensation of loss. Searching in his mind for an appropriate analogy to amuse himself, he figures it’s most like being unable to look forward to a prosthetic after losing a limb in a terrible accident. 

There is consolation, that the gut-wrenching discomfort will vanish the second he lays his eyes on Will. Codependency he finds, is not so glamorous as he first envisioned. 

There is one more hotel he is stopping in at the border of Spain. 

A part of him wants to cast aside the travel plans, go arm in arm with sleep deprivation, and troop along forward until he reaches their secluded villa in Avignon. Another part of him would deem that surrender, and he refuses himself the human failures of giving into a whim.  

It seems the universe has other plans in mind. 

He is drinking the complimentary champagne left in the hotel room, out on the balcony. Unable to resist the urge to watch the stars and wonder. It isn’t long until he sees a squirming shape in the darkness, just beyond the property of the inn, trapped in the garden surrounding the walls. 

The shape takes form, and Hannibal’s eyes adjust.

It is a dog with a dark pelt, caught in the bramble of a thorny bush.

Hannibal watches and sips his champagne, turning away from the creature and returning to his room. When he sits atop the foot of the gold and white comforter, he is displeased to find the image of the stuck dog unwilling to vacate his mind.

He finishes his drink, and is still thinking about it.

He places his glass atop the dresser and grabs his morning coat. The outdoor stairwell is spiral, and clanks metallically as he makes his way down. The walk to the gate leading into the garden is short, and soon he’s in front of the writhing, mewling animal.

It’s smaller up close. Brunette fur, light eyes. 

Hannibal watches, and the dog makes eye contact with him. He grits his teeth and succumbs, bending to aid the trapped creature. It’s what Will would have done. Will also would have taken the dog back to wash it, soothe it. Give it a name, most likely keep it.

Holding it an acceptable distance from him with two hands tucked under its arms, he observes the pelt and finds that it's covered in small puncture wounds from the thorns. At first he thinks the dog’s coat is matted, snarled, but it’s just curly. Curly brown, and up close he can see that the light colored eyes are blue. His teeth grind against each other now. 

Suddenly, he’s back in his hotel room, washing the animal in the shower and making sure the wounds don’t require tending. The dog appears grateful, thwapping its tail against the glass shower door. Hannibal sighs, peeved that he’s amounted to this. 

Flinchingly, he dries the dog with an expensive hotel towel, noting that the animal is a female when he moves it along her underside. When he moves to wash his hands in the sink, she sits at his feet, tail still wagging wildly over the tile floor. Hannibal’s heart aches less than before. 

He doesn’t harbor any presupposition about why the little thing is lessening the pain of separation; he knows it is solely because the dog resembles Will, and Will would have taken it in. 

He never planned to have a dog in their lives.

If Will had begged, he would have considered.

He’s irritated that he’s the one to change his own mind. 

The dog follows at his heels as he retreats to the bed and sits down to remove his shoes. She yips until he hushes her, and then she falls silent. Obedient, for a stray. 

“Stay,” he commands, though it’s not as if she understands. He strips himself for bed. At first he thought with the nerves of anticipation for the coming day, he wouldn’t be able to rest, but when he lays down, the dog finally disobeys and sniffs at his shape under the sheets before curling up by his shoulder. 

She isn’t giving him much room to move, and it’s not as encumbering as he would have imagined. He reaches back to turn the lamp on the bedside off and shifts onto his shoulder to get a better look at the dog. She’s small, and smells like the earth.

He pets the soft curls on her head, stroking down to her back where the curls continue. Soft and sleek, and quite a beautiful stray in comparison to what he could have found. He supposes he can settle for this thing being in their life. 

She licks his hand and he draws it back disapprovingly. 

“Mongoose,” he decides. 

In the dark, he can hear her tail thump against the mattress. 

Hannibal wakes up early and buys a large black satchel that will fit Mongoose. The train he’s taking from Barcelona into France doesn’t allow animals, and he isn’t up for rescheduling and hunting down a track that does. 

Mongoose is patient, and doesn’t squirm until he settles into the train cart. Luck is on his side that he is the only passenger in the closed off room, otherwise they would have questioned the wiggling satchel on his lap. He unzips it just enough for her to poke her head out and shake off the cramped feeling. With the motion, her curls stick out in ten different directions.

He pets her, dumbly confused at how pleasant the act is. 

He must truly miss Will.

An hour into the train ride she begins to whine, and he feeds her the jerky he bought from a street vendor. It is far too dry for his liking, anyhow. He’d been in a rush after purchasing the satchel and hadn’t taken time to hunt down anything of real sustenance. 

She falls asleep in his lap, huddled in the unzipped bag.

Just several hours more and he’ll be with Will in France, if everything’s gone according to plan. He trusts Chiyoh to make certain Will gets safe passage to and from his destinations, but there is always the looming reality that something may have happened. To both of them. He’s sure Will is more worried about him than vice versa, but he should also know that Hannibal is capable of taking care of himself. 

Mongoose yawns as he strokes through the curls on her back.

And then some. 

The old stone house Hannibal hasn’t visited since Bedelia was in tow is the same as if he had taken a picture. The only difference is that the paint lining the railing that leads up the stone steps is chipping. Window shutters are all closed, insinuating that perhaps Will hasn’t found his way home yet. Flowers in the pots lining the foundation of the house lie wilted, ready for revival. 

Mongoose sits upright in her satchel, clutched in Hannibal’s left hand. With the other, he hauls his sole suitcase up the steps and past the vestibule, familiar enough with the grounds to be able to walk straight up the stairs and to his bedroom.

There is no reason to assume Will is going to choose to stay in another bedroom, so he makes room for his belongings in the wardrobe and dresser, bringing everything else down to the washing room in the basement. 

He’d left Mongoose in the bedroom but she barrels downstairs after Hannibal, wagging and ruffing softly. He sighs and picks her up so she does not injure herself running back up the steep steps that lead to the kitchen. 

Ideally, he’d have a meal prepared for Will when he arrives, but he finds he’s far too waspish for the stores; he would much rather wait for Will and allow himself to relax. 

He does set out a bowl for Mongoose and heats up some oatmeal with water. She eats it ravenously, and he escapes to the study where he can idle at the piano and watch the roads and hilltop estates in the distance and ponder where Will is amongst the city folk and medieval ruins.

Mongoose eventually wanders into the study with a full belly, and settles at the fireplace. It isn’t lit, but she seems to find comfort in the beige ottoman a few feet beyond it. He plays the piano and she doesn’t rouse, not for an hour. When she lifts her head up, snout pointed high in the air, Hannibal stops playing and watches her curiously. 

She begins to bark, something she hasn’t done yet, and clambers off the ottoman and out into the hall. He follows despite himself, and stops dead in his tracks when he sees Will at the open front door, kneeling down and greeting Mongoose with a wide grin, even in his bewilderment. 

“Hello, Will,” Hannibal says, incapable of voicing the absolute relief of seeing him after a week without. Will looks up and his face droops with alleviation. 

His neck is wrapped in a lavender scarf, and he’s wearing a matching camel colored outfit, jacket and trousers. Chiyoh must have taken him shopping. Complaints don’t seem to come. 

“Hannibal,” he murmurs, already stumbling forward over the excited, yipping dog, and wrapping his arms around his neck. He kisses him wantonly and Hannibal nearly crumples to the floor. 

“I’ve missed you,” Will whispers on his lips, kissing him again, soft, bringing his hands down to squeeze Hannibal’s shoulders. “You don’t know how much.”

“I might have you beat,” Hannibal replies, connecting their foreheads before gesturing to their new dog. Will kneels down again, and pets the belly she’s parading; he then seems to connect the dots to the resemblance. 

“You got a dog because it reminded you of me?” 

“In all interest of fairness, I saved the dog. Though, I admit, it was not completely an act of gallantry. I’ve named her Mongoose.” 

Will looks up at him, glossy eyes and blushing cheeks. The blush is new, or perhaps Hannibal hadn’t noticed it before. He stands again and pulls Hannibal’s arms around him. He’s warmer than Hannibal would have expected after days of travelling through the coldest parts of Russia. 

“I couldn’t keep my mind off of you.”

“I know,” Hannibal responds, relating. 

Will pulls back to meet his eyes, clasping his feverishly warm palms on either side of his neck and tells him, “I kept remembering how you felt inside me.”

Incapable of keeping his shock at bay, Hannibal’s eyes widen. Heat transfuses from Will’s fingertips, all throughout his body. For all the ponderings that had come to mind over the past week, lewd visages hadn’t been a part of them. In fact, his most thrilling daydream had been on one of the train rides, remembering their first, chaste kiss. 

“I’ve missed it, god Hannibal, I want it,” Will confesses, mouth latching onto Hannibal’s neck, sucking a mark into his skin as his fingertips tap and trail down his bicep. 

“You must be hungry, Will,” Hannibal murmurs, to balm the vibrating tension, but Will nips at his skin and shakes his head. 

“I want to see the bedroom.”

Hannibal’s head is spinning, but he kisses Will on the lips and takes him by the hand, leading him ardently through the house until they reach the bed they’ll be sharing. Earth tones and silk textures, all wrapped up in a king sized bed, far bigger than the last. 

Mongoose has taken it upon herself to steer clear of the unfolding situation. 

Good judgement, on her part. 

Will is frantic, kissing with clinging lips, working vigorously to get Hannibal’s belt off, fly open. Hannibal wants to slow down, savor whatever hungry beast crawled into Will’s vessel, but by the nature of his bearings, he cannot. Will wants him, has been thinking about this, them together in this way. 

When Will is nude, socks stubbornly remaining on, Hannibal crowds over him on the sheets, button-up hanging off his shoulders, his cock jutting out of his briefs. Will is kissing him like he expects to die tomorrow, nails scratching and digging everywhere. 

He’s beautiful, eyes shining bright and blue in the daylight. His beard is a tad fuller than the last time he’d seen him, and it makes him look younger somehow. Will’s hands search his hair, and he smiles weakly when he’s able to rough it up. 

“I missed your mouth,” he stammers when Hannibal descends from marking his throat, to the clear span of skin around his pecs. He smells like Will Graham, and also of winter. 

“My mouth missed you, ” Hannibal jokes, nearly biting a nipple.

Despite Will’s eagerness, he’s not sure how far Will wants this to go. 

He runs his hands up Will’s thighs to feel him shiver, and steals a glance at his cock. It is half hard, twitching when he licks at the hickie he’d just given him on his clavicle. 

Oh.

Will flips around onto his stomach, either eager or abashed. He looks coy, back inclined almost imitating a cat. Hannibal doesn’t need to hear the order; he gets up to retrieve the lube stashed in their new, adjoining bathroom. He slips his briefs off while he’s there and kneels on the bed. 

Will has settled further against the sheets, ass squirming restlessly until Hannibal places a kiss to his lower back and coats his fingers, drawing them up the crease to press over his entrance. 

“Did you kill anyone?” Will asks, and it appears he doesn’t seem to mind one way or the other if Hannibal did, otherwise he wouldn’t have brought it up now. He gasps when the first finger slips in. 

“No,” Hannibal replies, entranced by the sight of Will’s flushed, pale body shifting beneath him, twitching responsively. Perhaps it always has, and the dark obscured it. 

“Want to?”

“Yes,” he concedes, blanketing him with his body. Will’s ribs are quivering under his touch, back muscles clenching and relaxing in intervals. He’s pushing his face into a pillow with every push of his finger. Hannibal adds two. “It wasn’t the thought of your disapproval that stopped me.”

“What was it?” comes the garbled, strained voice. 

“She didn’t seem worth the effort.”

Will muffles a moan into the pillow, and Hannibal is wracked with inexorable urges. Seeking out his prostate, he grazes along the bulge intentionally, making Will buck and writhe underneath him. “Hannibal— ” he breathes out, surprised, but doesn’t tell him to stop. 

“I found myself replaying a conversation of ours in my head these last few days,” Hannibal tells him evenly, watching without offering clemency. He coats a third finger and works it in too soon to see Will fist the sheets and groan, uncomfortably turned on. 

“What conversation was that?” Will grits out, hips working back a bit to meet his movements. 

“It wasn’t truly a conversation,” Hannibal explains. “Though, as always we understand the underlying implications of any spoken phrase. You told me to fuck you like I mean it.” 

Will locks up, and Hannibal batters his prostate relentlessly with three fingers until he whines, loosens and clenches as his cock fills, harder and thicker. If he leans back, he can see the taut pull of his balls. He wonders if Will likes it when he swears. He doesn’t do it often. He could change that.

He nips at his ear, and Will twitches away.

“You wished to be behind the veil. If I couldn’t help you find your release, you, at the very least, wanted to know what I was like during an average sexual affair. You wondered how hard I would work to get another person off. Your desire to know everything about me overrode your hesitancy to feel sexual pleasure with me, because of me.”

The pitch of Hannibal’s voice is low, rough under Will’s ear. When he twists his fingers inside of him, Will’s hips hitch up, chasing the sensation and he shudders with the impossibility of keeping himself quiet. Poor thing, Hannibal muses, had no clue what he was yearning for. 

“I showed you how I fucked them,” Hannibal reminds. “Not how I would fuck you. ”

“Hannibal—” Will begs. He sounds wrecked. 

“Would you like me to show you now?” 

Let me. 

“Yes,” Will whispers, so quietly that Hannibal has to twist his fingers again, hard against his sensitive walls for Will to wail, “Yes!”

Hannibal grins, all teeth, and pulls back to line himself up. Keeping his thumb tugging at the edge of his rim, he holds Will’s slick entrance open before sliding in completely. 

Will shouts, one arm flying to grab the headboard, the other flinging back to keep Hannibal’s hips stationary. “Fuck, fuck,” he mutters to himself, grinding his face into the pillows.

This angle is new. He normally has Will on his side, where he wouldn’t feel anything other than shallow, gentle thrusts. Hannibal bends over him, rocking deeper and Will groans, his nails digging into Hannibal’s handles. 

Hannibal waits for the moment Will tells him to wait. Every time they did this, he’d ask to stay still, just feel each other, and now Hannibal wonders if it was a way to calm himself down. Push down the ache in his groin, relocate his desires, lock them away where he couldn’t find them until the next night, and the next. 

Hannibal takes Will by the hips, and lifts himself up on his knees, pulls back and thrusts in hard. Will shakes, letting out a small hurt noise. 

He does it again, and a moan stumbles out. 

Keeping one hand on his waist, he moves the other over the plane of his back, rubbing the nape of his neck as he begins to build up a rhythm. Will pushes back, breathing hard and fast. 

“Did you have an erection when I first did this to you?” Hannibal asks directly. He can’t take his eyes off over the way his cock slides in and out of Will’s red hole. The tight heat is pulsing around him; he had not been lucky enough to see this the last time they made love in the sunlight. They had been squished close, legs tangled, Hannibal’s face buried in his curls. 

“Don’t,” Will pleads, sweating where Hannibal touches him. 

The hand on Will’s nape moves to his hair, and he pulls until Will is on all fours. He lets out a strangled noise, scrabbling with his hands and knees. At this angle, it is obscured, but Hannibal can see the hint of the grimace on Will’s face as he fucks into him. 

It’s full of pleasure, not pain. 

He tightens his grip until Will rambles, “Yes. I did, yes!” 

Foolish boy. They could have avoided all of this. 

He lets the hair free, and Will’s head drops down between his shoulders. Hannibal picks up the pace, losing himself in the rush of pleasure. Will getting off on his cock, Hannibal having him, it’s far better than he could have imagined. 

It feels like the first time. 

Will is trembling, arms moments from giving out, and his moans are rising in pitch. “It feels so good,” the admission falling from his lips, unwittingly. 

Hannibal breaks when he sees one of Will’s arms disappear between his legs, moving to stroke himself off. He pulls out with a snarl and flips Will onto his back. 

The full picture of Will, pink head to toe, mouth as red and swollen as the crease of his ass, heaving like he’d just killed a man. Round blue eyes sparkling up at him through a fog of arousal, and arms splayed out at the sides, in offering for however Hannibal wants him. 

His cock is hard, leaking against his stomach.

Hannibal barely has time to think before he’s hooking one of Will’s legs around his waist and fucking back in, beholding the sight of Will throwing his head back in bliss. 

He could write sonnets solely about the beauty of his neck. 

“I didn’t…” Will kisses him breathlessly, clasping Haninibal’s head in his hands to drag him closer. “Hell, I didn’t know how to ask.”  

Hannibal traps Will’s upper lip with both of his own, sucking as he fucks into him at a quick, but loving pace. Reverence is what he wants Will to see. To understand that this isn’t just sex for either of them, it’s far more than a climax. They’re connecting, synchronizing. 

He bows to take the skin of Will’s throat between his teeth and he makes that sweet hiccup-y sound again, sinking nails into Hannibal’s back.

“Feel like I’m going crazy,” he stutters, arching up against Hannibal’s body, groaning when his cock rubs against his lower abdomen. “Couldn’t stop thinking about this.” 

Hannibal leers back, meets his eyes and marvels when Will doesn’t pull away, gasps into his mouth instead and lets him watch, watches him back. Something untethers between them and Hannibal fucks into him harder just to watch Will seize and throat catch with moans. 

“Let me touch you,” Hannibal prays, between kisses. 

Will nods, eyes slipping closed when Hannibal finally wraps a hand around his cock. It is hard, slick with pre-cum, pulsing in his hand. It is more beautiful than anything he’s seen in Greek Tragedy. Not a moment later, he’s pumping it in time with his thrusts. Cracked noises are forced from Will’s mouth and Hannibal is positive the nails in his back will leave marks for days. Let them. 

One of Will’s hands abandons his spine and finds Hannibal’s free hand which is bruising his thigh. He links their fingers, bringing their hands about to look at them intertwined, behind heavy lidded eyes and wet lashes. 

The end begins to build for both of them, Will’s eyes squeezing tight when Hannibal cramps his fist around the head of his cock. Hannibal’s pleasure lights up his body, crackling fire spreading quickly from his temples to his groin. 

“You’re beautiful,” Hannibal whispers into his skin, nosing his collarbone. Will lets out a strangled cry and spends all over his stomach. He clenches around Hannibal so hard, he nearly pushes him out, but Hannibal fucks through the fluttering passage and follows, coming with a groan that releases as more of a growl, filling him to the point of leaking. 

Hannibal collapses atop Will, chest to chest, two of their hands still intertwined and resting numbly on the sheets. Will strokes his back with the other hand, over the red angry marks he left behind. Hannibal presses his face as deep into Will’s neck as he can, scenting him. 

The aftershocks last far too long, and Will’s body does finally push his dripping cock out with one last throb. Hannibal can’t complain. 

Breaths slow in unison, but Will’s heart is slower to restore.

Hannibal takes his hand from Will’s flaccid cock, and licks it clean. Will cracks open an eye and watches him dubiously until he’s finished, burrowing back into the crook of his neck. Shame seems a far away thing, not that it ever existed in him to begin with. 

“Christ,” Will croaks out a laugh. “I don’t think I’ve ever come that hard.”

Hannibal is shocked at how little he wishes to speak.

“That is why I make it a point never to deny myself,” he says anyway.

“I wasn’t denying myself,” Will murmurs, taking a minute to collect his thoughts. The place where their groins meet is hot, wet, and altogether cozy in a way Hannibal could never have predicted. “I wanted to be sure, what I was feeling.” 

Hannibal leans up, then. Propping himself up on the elbow of the hand that is still interlaced with Will’s. He kisses his knuckles and meets his eyes, glossy with tears that never came. 

“You were sure when you walked in the door.”

“You, Hannibal Lecter, brought home a dog. Of course I wanted to jump your bones.” 

“Will,” he chides. 

Will sighs, glancing around the room to take it in. He hadn’t truly looked before they fell into bed together. His expression is content, nearly pleased. A priorly unmaterialistic Will Graham would not have cared. 

“A few days into the trip, I got hard just thinking about you having me. I figured at that point it wasn’t just attraction by proxy or by circumstance.” 

Hannibal shakes his head. “You baffle me.” 

“What would you do if I didn’t?” Will asks with a grin. Tugging him down for a kiss, Hannibal realizes that post-orgasmic tenderness is a luxury he never cared for before. The soft press of fingertips, the warm kisses pressed sloppily against each other’s faces. The numbed out gratification of having experienced something so viscerally perfect with the one you love. 

“I saw a bakery down the street, you wanna go?” Will asks when they begin to doze off, nuzzling and prodding weakly. 

Will wishes to go out, to a public venue, so soon after they arrived. It had taken him weeks to go anywhere in Japan, fearful of the outdoors, of people potentially recognizing him. Will appears lax now, trusting entirely of Hannibal’s acumen. If he says it’s safe to go, it is. 

“I don’t particularly believe I have the strength to cook for us at the moment, so I yield to your better judgment,” he agrees, drowsily. Will chuckles and strokes his hair with affection.

Mongoose toddles into the room, whimpering. 

Will sits up, dismantling their bodies in the process. Hannibal hits the mattress with a gruff noise, watching, irked as Will’s attention shifts entirely from him to the dog. 

“C’mere, girl,” Will urges, patting a space on the bed. 

Hannibal wrinkles his nose when she hops atop the silk sheets and sniffs around Will, wagging happily as he pets her. Hannibal finds himself getting up to avoid the dog sticking her nose in any questionable places. Will sees his standoffishness and holds back a laugh. 

“How did you not kill her on the trip here?” 

“I only found her yesterday,” Hannibal says, moving into the bathroom to wipe his cock clean before the semen starts to dry. He can shower later tonight. 

“How’d you get her aboard the train?” Will questions, as the dog plays tug of war with one of his fingers. Her teeth are too small to maim. 

While he puts his clothes back on, Hannibal turns, scanning the room until his eyes fall upon the black satchel. Will follows his gaze and sighs, frustrated. “Hannibal.” 

“She could breathe.” 

“Even so,” Will shakes his head. “Gotta teach you a few things about caring for dogs.” 

“Perhaps you could stick to the caring for, and I’ll cook her meals, hm?” 

Will leaves Mongoose to roll around in the sheets (contaminating them, as far as Hannibal is concerned) as he slips on his underwear and trousers. He approaches Hannibal and slides his hands over his ribs, nails gentle on his skin unlike before. 

“We could compromise and take care of her together. Some part of you must have wanted that when you brought her here.” They could not have another child; perhaps there is some truth to the accusation. Hannibal doesn’t respond, and kisses the scar on Will’s forehead.

“Avignon awaits, my dear Will.” 

The culture and architecture in Avignon is a conglomerate of Greek and Italian styles, but vastly outweighed by the French flavor surrounding the commune. 

Hannibal originally took to the city because of the palace structures and overgrowth. Vines seemed to grow from every crook and crevice on the grounds. Will comments on the cool breeze, but nothing else. 

Mongoose is at home, left locked in their bedroom, the gate to the balcony shut. Neither of them trust her with the whole house quite yet. If she makes a mess, at least it will be manageable. 

Will surprises him by knowing quite a few French phrases, even understanding limited amounts of phraseology from the locals. He orders their lunch, and Hannibal is left stewing in thought until they locate an empty table with an overhead umbrella outside. 

“I bought a French to English dictionary during my travels,” he explains.” 

“Chiyoh took you shopping.”

“No,” Will laughs, readjusting his grip on his sandwich. “I dragged her around mostly everywhere. She was kind of pissed.”

Hannibal washes down a portion of salad with water, and smirks. “Did you buy the outfit you arrived in solely for my benefit?” 

Will blushes, licking his lips with a shake of the head. 

“I know how much you like it when I dress nice.” 

Memories of slicked back hair and a salmon shirt, pressed perfectly to fit the contours of Will’s body pop to mind and he shakes them off, returning Will’s jovial expression. 

Without considering, Hannibal reaches across the table and takes Will’s arm in his own, exposing the pale inner wrist. Nosing along the bluest vein, he presses a soft kiss. 

There is muted shock in Will’s eyes when he glances up, and he moves to drop Will’s wrist, an apology on his lips for committing a public display of affection, but Will’s wrist twists in his hand and he links their fingers together, a gawky smile forming. 

“How would you have killed her?” he asks, shooting back with something equally shocking in public. Hannibal knows he means the woman on the train.

“I would have snapped her neck. The appearance of slumber.” 

“Growing dull, are we Doctor?” 

“What would you have done?” 

“What was her offense?” Will asks.

“Flirting with me,” Hannibal tells him, priggish. “Excessively.”

The flash of jealousy in Will’s eyes is undeniable. 

“What would you have done?” Hannibal repeats, quieter. 

Will unwinds their hands, and picks up his water, drinks two large gulps before setting it down with a hiss. “I think I’d take her heart.”

“For its courage?”

“For its ill-advised appetence,” Will snaps. 

“I think what you’re looking for would be below the waist,” Hannibal responds, with humor, and waits patiently for Will’s eyes to soften. They do, fractionally. 

“I checked the travel spreadsheet every night,” Will admits, fiddling with the lettuce sticking out the sides of his sandwich. “Tried to visualize where you were.” Hannibal bows his head, smiling. 

“I watched the constellations and hoped you were watching them too.” 

“It was different, knowing I was coming home to you.”

“It was different knowing you were on your way at all.” 

Will nods, and they fall into the comfortable silence Hannibal had so missed. They drink in unison, and Will’s foot finds his under the small table, stroking and nudging. 

Hannibal nudges back. 

“Tell me why you picked Avignon,” Will demands. 

Hannibal tilts his head, “For us to live, or when I originally purchased the property?” 

“Both.”

A waiter comes around to the outdoor tables, a wine list clutched in hand. Hannibal orders two glasses of Chateau Bertranon, gauging Will’s reaction. 

He waits until the waiter is gone before speaking. 

“The history drew me in to begin with. In the early 1300s, Avignon was strictly under papal rule. Popes resided here, reigned here. Crusades were born of this land and war, cultivated.” Hannibal takes in a mouth full of salad, chews, and swallows. “I suppose I cared more for the Palais des Papes, the medieval palace structure that looms over the commune like a reminder.”

“A reminder of what?” Will asks quietly. 

“That war still wages here, and that God has abandoned his post. Man left defenseless, surrounded by stone walls of their own creation. It casts a lurid mask over the city.”

Will huffs in understanding, leaning back against his chair in a way that signifies he’s entirely forgotten about his sandwich. He nods at Hannibal, coaxing.

“And why bring me here?”

Hannibal grins. “You seemed to develop a taste for the ecclesiastic.” 

Will grins back. “You want to celebrate communion in a Godless land?” 

Something potent passes between them, and Hannibal whispers, sacramental, “You and I will show the world our own rendering of transubstantiation.”