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Oh, and fed him human flesh. Let’s not fucking forget about cannibalism and murder.

'Will, it’s Jack. Doctor Lecter is in the hospital.'

Why the fuck is it then, knowing all of this, that Will is speeding down the road in his car towards the hospital, his FBI badge in his pocket ready to be flashed at the first police officer that attempts to pull him over?

Because his life is a fucking joke, probably. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Will curses at a red light, hitting the steering wheel repeatedly, fighting against tears that have no right to be stinging his eyes, and swallowing around the knot in his throat. He doesn’t want to think about when that has appeared, much less why.

The light turns green and Will starts again to review all of the reasons why Hannibal Lecter is a fucking asshole that doesn’t deserve the way Will’s heart can’t settle. And this time, he focuses on murder and cannibalism, instead of the reasons solely based on Hannibal’s faults against him. 

Alana is there at the door of room 304 when Will arrives, which isn’t really a surprise. Jack’s there too, and that is a surprise. Jack is in the middle of an argument with Alana, which brings a sense of normalcy to the scene. 

“And what are you doing here?!” Alana snaps towards him, red in the face and spiraling closer to an emotional breakdown than Will had anticipated. For a single second, it evaporates the feeling of normalcy. In all the years they’ve known each other, Alana never would have thought of shouting at him like that. But then, this is Will’s new normalcy; fighting tears back for serial killers, visiting a cannibal in the hospital, and Alana angry at him. Jack grabs him by the arm, pulling him away from her, And that is at least a constant in Will’s fucked up life. He can always count on Jack pushing him around like Will has a leash that reads ‘FBI’s least favorite bloodhound’ on the collar.  

“Doctor Lecter is stable,” is the first thing Jack says once they’re away from Alana’s earshot. He doesn’t let Will say anything before he continues. Beautiful fucking normalcy again. “Car accident. He’s alright for the most part. A few bruises, nothing to be worried about,” he dismisses with a wave of his hand as if a car accident truly was nothing to be worried about.

In Will’s clusterfuck of life, a car crash honestly is the least of his problems.

Jack turns slightly, pausing to look towards Alana who stands like a guardian dog in front of Dr. Lecter’s door. The perpetual frown Jack has on his face deepens before he turns to Will. Jack has that bad-cop that’s playing good-cop gaze in his eyes, scrutinizing Will. Will consciously doesn’t straighten his back, just in case, and waits for whatever trap is about to come from Jack’s mouth because in his fucking fucked up life, Jack still doesn’t trust him completely.

And Will knows it’s on him. Maybe 10% of the fault falls on Hannibal Lecter’s hands, but the other 90% is entirely on Will’s. 

Maybe just 80%.

“Doctor Lecter has amnesia,” Jack says cautiously after a moment, eyes entirely focused on Will. Confusion strikes Will first. He’s already having a hard time picturing Dr. Lecter hurt. The Chesapeake Ripper was the Apex Predator, the God of Death between mortals, he wouldn’t get hurt. Or at least, not if it didn’t serve a purpose.  

The very few moments in which Will had imagined Hannibal Lecter hurt, had come with cartoonish imagery, something so ridiculous that looked like it had come from a Looney Tunes episode. Like how a kid that had never seen real wounds would imagine what wounds would look like. Will imagined spotless bandages over Dr. Lecter’s horrible paisley suit, and now, his brain adds bandages on his head. Will’s brain adds little cartoon birds flying in circles around Dr. Lecter’s head because that made more sense than Dr. Lecter being hurt.

Maybe even spotless bandaids, because the man would never do something so pedestrian as to bleed. 

(He had bled once, though, in the aftermath of Tobias Budge. Will had cleaned those wounds. Now that memory is tainted. Now Will remembers the blood as another stitch in the person-suit. Hannibal seeping blood at will, opening wounds and letting them scab just for Will to find and care for.) 

Jack relaxes mildly, taken aback at Will’s confusion, but seemingly pleased by it too. It raises red flags in Will’s mind. How did you expect I was going to react, Jack?

Will holds Jack’s eyes for a moment before looking away moving his gaze to his ear, digesting Jack’s words and body language. The sudden wave of relief from Will’s confusion, his presence here. He is waiting.

“I need you to do something, Will.” Ah, yeah, there’s the catch. Of course. Do your trick little pony. 

“You want to make sure he is really amnesiac,” Will realizes. “Do you think he is faking it?” 

“I think he is capable enough to fake it,” Jack concedes, clenching his fist inside his coat pocket. “The doctors say it’s temporary, and that his memory should be coming back in a few days. But he could be biding his time, stretching the condition longer.” Jack frowns, the lines on his nose deepen, like a dog watching a potential threat behind the bushes. He takes a step closer, hissing under his breath. “We can’t prosecute a man without memory. Our plan will crumble and he will escape right under our noses.” 

Will wonders what kind of person Dr. Lecter would be without memories. Would he still be a serial killer? Would he still be fascinated with Will? Will doubts he will be harmless, the vast emptiness inside his eyes wasn’t made only by trauma. But what would his nature be without nurture? 

“Can you distract the dragon so I can get into the tower?” Will asks in a low murmur, sending a furtive glance towards Alana. Alana, with her red face and shaking hands and teary eyes. Forgotten. She should be grateful for that rare gift of safety. She’s been wiped away from the gory table, no longer a shiny pawn to be used as a protective shield. 

“No.” She says as soon as Jack approaches,  taking a step to the side and flanking the door like the shiny pawn Hannibal Lecter has conditioned her to be. “He’s hurt, and has amnesia. There is no reason for you to be here,” she says in a loud voice, like she wants to shout but she has some respect for the ill. She points a long, accusatory finger to Jack, then turns to Will with cold fury. “ And you have even less reason to be here.”  

Will bites his tongue at that, because what could he say to that? Alana is right. He has stated that, if given the chance to, he would kill Dr. Lecter. Hell, he’s already tried to, more than once.  Nobody checked if he had a knife when he walked through the hospital door. But then again, most hospitals aren’t prepared for visitors trying to murder the patients. 

(Just to be clear, by the way, Will doesn’t have a knife. He promised to kill Dr. Lecter with his hands, after all.) 

“There is an ongoing investigation, Dr. Bloom, and–” Jack starts, with that stern tone of his that makes most cadets piss their pants. But Alana isn’t a cadet, and she has never been afraid of Jack Crawford.

“Do you even hear yourself, Jack? Can’t you just give him at least a day to recover? He hasn’t even been here for three hours!” She snaps, anger boiling under her skin and turning the rosy flesh of her cheeks a vibrant red. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Will groans, pushing himself through them to open the door, entering Dr. Lecter’s room and finding–

Nothing. 

Just a set of two brown eyes, soft and warm instead of blood red; like whiskey in the firelight, or honey under the sun. A curious tilt of his head, like a cat eyeing the thing on top of the table, considering if he is bored enough to knock it off, or if it’s better to just turn around and nap the interruption away. 

There’s no fascination, no endless curiosity, no deep desire. There is nothing. Just indifferent brown replacing the passionate red of Dr. Lecter’s eyes and Will feels completely, utterly empty. He is staring at a chessboard with half of the black pieces scattered on it, waiting for the inexistent whites to make their move.

Dr. Lecter regards him for a moment with a blank expression. Shivers run down Will’s back at the sensation of that unnerving gaze on him, pinning him on the floor, trying to discern who Will is and where he could have met him. Even without his memories he still has the same strong presence and predatory demeanor of his, just shy of his former self. Then he takes a deep breath before speaking and–

Recognition. 

The heart monitor connected to him makes a sudden, unrhythmical beep that hangs uncomfortably between them.

No. 

Not recognition. Not yet. It’s a flicker of it, similar, but not recognition. It’s like the moment you remember that you forgot something. Something you can’t quite figure out what it is, just that it’s important. Acknowledgement , then curiosity.

Curiosity turns to interest, like warning signs. It's close to the gaze Dr. Lecter had aimed at Will in the motel room when sharing  breakfast, but more similar to how Dr. Lecter had looked at him the first time they met in Jack’s office. 

Dr. Lecter’s eyes soften, then he frowns, affronted by the realization of his own reactions. Will wishes he could see Dr. Lecter’s skull open, and watch in real-time the innards of that terrible brain of his at work.

The door opens a second later, and Alana barges in like a typhoon of righteous fury ready to kick Will out with so much force he knows he would wear the shape of her heels in his ass for a month if he doesn’t run away in this exact same second. Still in a sudden, totally out-of-character decision, without a single iota of shame or filter –or god forbid, manners– Dr. Lecter looks at Will straight in the eyes and announces: 

“Your aftershave is atrocious.”

And Will, because he already has given up on grasping a single scrap of normalcy in his fucked up life, laughs. 

It is not a simple chuckle or a short laugh. No. It couldn’t be anything like that. It’s a full-on, unending fit of laughter that makes his stomach hurt, lungs begging for air. He remembers the time he told Dr. Lecter (the old Dr. Lecter, the man Will had naively considered his friend and confidant, a man who was harmless and good) that he had a scream trapped inside his throat, and he feared the moment he let it out it would never stop. That scream has metamorphosed into a laugh, finally overflowing him and coming from deep inside his gut. 

“I take that you forgive the rudeness of my comment?” Dr. Lecter asks, amusement taking a grip of his factions. He watches Will with interest and one of the most natural smiles Will has ever seen on him. 

“It’s not–” Will chuckles, covering his smile with his hand, breathing, trying to center himself. “It’s not the first time you tell me that.” 

Dr. Lecter mumbles a curious sound and straightens his back, sitting on the bed with his hands on his lap, elegantly even dressed in the cheap clothes that the hospital gave him. He’s undoubtedly growing fascinated with Will’s existence. 

It seems that some things never change, no matter how many memories a cannibal loses.

“Smell is often called the sense of the memory. Scientists believe that smell and memory are so closely linked because the anatomy of the brain allows olfactory signals to get to the limbic system astonishingly quickly.” Dr. Lecter begins explaining. Even without memories, he seems to be exactly just as much of a pretentious prick as always. “It’s also the oldest sense, and the memories brought by it are usually more vivid. It can bring to the forefront of our mind memories that we don’t even have a recollection of. Like the concept of our first summer. We experience the world first through our sense of smell, and that’s likely the reason why it not only brings memories but also sensations, feelings.”  

“You called it ‘something that smells like it has a ship on the bottle.’” Will says, finding himself unable to stop smiling. This feels so incredibly easy, like wandering back in time when there wasn’t blood on his friend’s hands. 

“And I stand by my old statement.”

“Has my cheap aftershave unlocked a memory, doctor?” Dr. Lecter’s microexpressions are a tad slower than usual and linger longer, but they are just as difficult to read. He tilts his head, interested in the professional way Will addresses him, clearly curious about it, holding that little puzzle piece in the air and examining it.

“Not a memory, but… and I’ll have to ask that you forgive my rudeness again.”

Will notices that he hasn’t yet apologized, and he’s presumably not going to. It’s an interesting experience to discover which things are stitches on his person suit and which are just personality traits. Asshole seems to be adequate for both Dr. Lecter (serial killer) and Dr. Lecter (I don’t remember I’m a serial killer). 

“I forgave you worse things,” Will answers with a sense of satisfaction, and Dr. Lecter, instead of being affronted by Will’s own rudeness, grows even more intrigued. His eyes focus on Will with the same intensity as his old persona, as if only by looking at Will for long enough without blinking he could get a proper read on him. Have a look inside his brain, even. “Please doctor, proceed.” 

Being capable of holding Dr. Lecter’s interest and making it burn bright like this, as usual, comes with a sensation of accomplishment and self-satisfaction. It’s infuriatingly familiar, in Will’s newfound ‘normalcy’.

To have Hannibal Lecter’s approval and interest is always intoxicating. Whether he is a serial killer or not, doesn’t change it.

“Not a memory, but a feeling, if it makes sense. I can’t recall who you are or what you are to me. Yet…” he pauses, taking a deep breath, closing his eyes. It feels indecent now, knowing that Dr. Lecter is indeed smelling him; that Alana is standing in the room with them, paralyzed by the scene developing in front of her. The realization of it also comes with a sensation of sick, vindictive pleasure that sits sour on the pitch of Will’s stomach. He buries it deep before it can develop fully. 

There’s another unrhythmic, loud beep in the room.

Dr. Lecter releases his breath, opening his eyes, now glistening with a fine coat of moisture. It’s just then, in that small display of vulnerability, that when Will finally realizes Dr. Lecter’s state. The way his movements are slowed by the concussion he must have; how his microexpressions have become expressions that linger on his face openly due to the drugs running rampant in his bloodstream. The bruises and scratches on his face, the messy hair and the hospital robe, the bandage on his arm. Will feels the sudden desperate need to kick Alana out of the room, to shield Dr. Lecter from the world until he is his respectable prim self again. 

“For as terrible as your aftershave is,” Dr. Lecter pauses. His breathing is heavier than usual and he lowers his gaze to the floor for a second, taking the time to recover before locking his eyes with Will’s again. “I find it impossibly endearing.” 

The integrity of Will’s ribcage heroically takes a potent blow as his heart tries to beat out of his chest at the confession. The words hang too heavy in the air, leaving Will speechless and pinned. Will can feel himself fighting against the tears that for the second time in the day have the audacity to crawl up to his eyes. 

“Forgive me for this but you must understand that with my condition… I don’t know plenty of things, and I find myself desperate to inquire,” Dr. Lecter says, taking a moment to wet his lips before continuing unashamedly. “Are we , per chance, in a relationship?” 

At Will’s side, Alana stiffens as if Dr. Lecter has just spat in her face. And, to be honest, he kind of did exactly just that. But you know, amnesia. She can’t really get angry at him for not remembering that she is the one Dr. Lecter is in a relationship with. 

Meanwhile, Will distantly remembers telling Alana ‘we know exactly where we are with each other,’ and he is only now realizing that that was a fucking lie, and he has no clue of how to answer Dr. Lecter’s question truthfully. 

Wait. No. He does know how to answer that question: No. 

No? Yes? Maybe? Kind of? No. No? No.

“No.” 

No? No. You sure? Shut up. 

Why would Will Graham need enemies when he already has his own traitorous brain?

Will wants to dig a hole in the ground and hide. Dig a deeper one and bury his brain there.

“No?” Dr. Lecter asks again, tilting his head like a cat presented with an expensive antique vase too close to the edge of the table. His brown eyes divert for a moment to watch Alana, completely aware of her building irritation. He grows bored in a fraction of a second, deeming her unimportant –not endearing– and he snaps his eyes back to Will. 

The sound of Alana’s anxious gulp echoes in the room. Dr. Lecter doesn’t seem fazed by it.

Will has the sudden desire to ask: Tell me, Doctor Lecter, what does jealousy smell like?

“No.” Will calmly insists, because he is not an asshole. Well, he tries not to be. Not all the time at least. Not the kind of asshole that Hannibal Lecter is, unapologetically. He can see Dr. Lecter’s inexistent cat tail stirring mischievously behind him as he puts his paw on the vase, holding eye contact with Will. 

‘No, stop it.’ Will wants to say, but he doesn’t because he knows that will only give Dr. Lecter more reason to push the vase off.

“Not even in the developing stages of it?” 

Yes. No. Maybe. Something like it. 

“No.”

Dr. Lecter has the audacity to pout. The painkillers must have been breaking total havoc inside him.

“Not even courtship?” 

Yes. Maybe? Will couldn’t technically say no. That would require a lot of explanation to do though, and that can’t possibly be done with Alana in the room. Anyway, who the fuck does courtship anymore? – 

Hannibal Lecter, his brain supplies. Of course. Who the fuck else? 

“We’re friends.” Will lies. (Lies? This is all very confusing for his poor, traitorous, caffeine-neglected brain.) He sends Dr. Lecter a glare that could freeze hell, asking him to please, just stop. 

Dr. Lecter is not deterred, he seems not to care for Will’s pleas at all. Who would have guessed? Another thing to fill under personality traits. 

“A shame,” he says with a finality in his speech that Will wrongfully takes as an end to his assault. Of course, Dr. Lecter continues, because of course ‘torturing Will out of his mind’ also falls under Hannibal Lecter’s personality traits. “You’re stunningly attractive,” He stops, deliberately pauses to roll the words inside his mouth before he says (because psychopaths have no fucking shame whatsoever) “And how would you feel about me inviting you on a proper date?”

Confused. Weird. 

Strangely agreeable. Absurdly horny, Will’s brain unhelpfully supplies.

Scratch that. We are definitely not horny. Will tells his brain, but his traitorous mind continues because it hates him (surprisingly) more than Will hates himself. 

Does dinner at his place count as a date? Because if they do we technically had a couple of dates already.

“Look at the hour! Will was just leaving,” Alana says between clenched teeth, grasping at Will’s arm. And maybe Will doesn’t have the outline of her heels on his ass, but she definitely is leaving the dents of her fingers in his arms as she promptly pushes him out of the room. Thankfully –honestly– because he really shouldn’t be allowed to answer that question.

She slams the door on his face, but not fast enough for Will to miss the deep, enamored sigh and soft look in Dr. Lecter’s eyes as he whispers ‘Will’. 

“What in the hell just happened there?” Jack shouts, bringing Will back to reality.

Ah, yes. Serial killer, cannibal, etcetera. 

Great. 

Will knows all of those little flaws that rather than flaws are bright, big red flags, and more than just red flags are crimes. Will knows.

Yet, here he is two hours later, holding a bag of overpriced food from a restaurant that he would have never stepped in, and knocking on room 304. 

It was a decision of the moment, totally spontaneous, and not something that Will had planned on doing because he cared for Hannibal Lecter, Dr. Cannibalistic Serial Killer. No, Sir. 

Will had been just driving around Baltimore, making a necessary trip to the grocery store after he left the hospital. He totally didn’t spend twenty minutes in his car searching for that note he once wrote on his phone last year with the name of a restaurant that Hannibal had recommended and Will told him he would never go. 

He also totally didn’t skip going to the grocery store just to spend thirty minutes arguing with the manager to make an exception and serve him food without a reservation. Will certainly didn’t say the magic words (‘It’s for Dr. Lecter’) as a last resort, only for the issue to be solved on the spot. He didn’t just spend the following forty minutes waiting for the food. Then more continuous red lights that gave him time to change his mind, and turn his car around, get back to his house. Will hadn’t simply ignored his usual route back home just because he had a bag of overpriced food from a pretentious restaurant that Dr. Lecter liked and it was getting cold, and the hospital would be delivering Dr. Lecter bland food at any moment.

He totally didn’t spend those two hours thinking about Dr. Lecter calling his aftershave endearing. He didn’t spend two hours blushing like a schoolgirl thinking about Dr. Lecter openly flirting with him, nor mooning over the soft way he had whispered Will’s name.

Will’s life is a fucking cosmic joke. 

When he finally hears a cold ‘come in’ from behind the door, Will realizes that never for a second has it crossed his mind that Alana could still be there, or that she would be the one to make sure to bring Dr. Lecter some palatable food. 

Will looks at the wall, wondering how hard he would need to hit his head against it just to give himself a concussion and hopefully, maybe, erase completely and permanently all his memories, resetting his brain to factory settings. 

Then, he opens the door.

Beep.

He’s received into the room by the off-beat jump of Dr. Lecter’s heart echoing from the heart monitor. Dr. Lecter glares at it, betrayed by his own body reactions, and Will resists his brain’s attempts at thinking it’s cute. Not a very fitting word for a cannibalistic serial killer, for fuck’s sake. Graham, take a hold of yourself.

“Will,” Dr. Lecter greets him. He smiles the same way he always has; barely perceivable, and Will is able to tell he was smiling thanks to the wrinkles forming on the corners of his eyes. Maybe a little looser, but that’s most probably the effect of the painkillers. 

Will can also picture excited cat ears peeking between strands of hair, betraying the doctor’s joy just like the heart monitor.

“I brought you food,” Will says, because if he doesn’t he will end up saying something stupid. Like calling the doctor cute out loud.

Will swears he sees the imaginary cat tail wiggle. 

“You’re an angel, Will.” 

Lunch is a humble affair. The restaurant manager gave Will real cutlery instead of plastic, and he settles the table as Dr. Lecter stands and walks gingerly to the table, dragging the IV bags with him. 

“You won’t eat?” the doctor asks, staring at the single fork, single knife, single take-out container, single plastic glass, and a single bottle of water. Will remembers then that humans need sustenance to live, no matter how much he tries to convince his body that coffee and aspirines are a healthy enough diet. 

“I wanted to stop by and bring you food. I’ll be on my way now and I’ll eat at home,” Will evades the question the best he can, trying to make it sound believable. He seems to lie so badly that for a second something like recognition flickers in the doctor’s eyes. 

“Why is it that I feel like I shouldn’t believe you?” Dr. Lecter teases, sitting gingerly on his side of the table, the IV bags rattling when he moves them. It brings back to Will a memory of himself doing the same, and he quickly and surely hits the image with an imaginary crowbar, burying it deep inside his mind along with the other uncomfortably tender and sour memories he has with Hannibal Lecter.

Unaware of Will’s chaos of a mind, Dr. Lecter gestures to the other chair for Will. “Please, I insist. This is way too many crepes for only one person. Have some.” 

“You could use the extra nutrients,” Will says, but he’s already sitting down. 

“So could you,” Dr. Lecter shoots back, giving Will a look too similar to the one they shared in a motel room once before. “Eat.”

Will is already in need of a bigger hole to bury all the uncomfortable feelings he has rampaging inside him. Maybe a shovel to hit them and dig a little deeper, too. A shovel would do great to hit Dr. Lecter in the head.

They eat in silence for a while, Will accepting from time to time a bite from one of the crepes until Dr. Lecter eats two and he has one at the doctor’s insistence. For such a fussy man, Dr. Lecter is too comfortable offering his fork to Will. Terrible table manners if you ask Will.

It’s a quiet affair. Comfortable, familiar even, until Dr. Lecter asks suddenly, “Dr. Bloom told me we are doctor and patient. Is that why we never tried a romantic approach?” making all of Will’s blood pool on his face. It shouldn’t surprise him that Dr. Lecter went back to the previous conversation topic. He is the kind of man to pursue relentlessly what he wants. Funny that with or without memories, what he wants is Will.

Will has always respected that part of him. His sheer brilliance and resolution. The moment Hannibal decides that he wants something, he will recalibrate the universe to make it happen. No matter how impossible it looks he will find a way. It is admirable.

“I was never your patient,” Will sneers too fast, too sharp. “We were just having conversations.” 

It sounds rehearsed, like a little loophole that Will has repeated on and on inside his head trying to convince himself of it. It’s a loophole that Dr. Lecter has repeated on and on to convince Will of it, blurring all the possible lines: doctor and patient, friends, co-workers, fathers.

“And even if I were,” Will continues, following another of the possible lines Dr. Lecter blurred between them that Will never tried to focus on. Lovers. Tell me, Will, how does that make you feel? “You’re the most unorthodox person I know. I don’t think something like that would have stopped you.” 

Will thinks of the many dinners they had, before and after discovering what was on his plate. The constant weight of Dr. Lecter’s hand on his lower back. The unnamable feeling of vertigo in Will’s stomach every time their eyes met. The flashes of desire Will could discern in Dr. Lecter’s eyes during their conversations. 

The way Dr. Lecter’s hand is so close to his right now on the table.

“In fact… I think you were trying, and I just didn’t realize,” Will says, eyes fixed with a laser focus on their hands, resting against each other. They’re not close enough to touch, but he’s close enough to feel the heat coming from Dr. Lecter’s body. “Voluntary obliviousness.”

“And now that you don’t have the excuse of obliviousness?” Dr. Lecter asks, nudging his thumb against Will’s pinky finger. Will lifts his gaze from where they’re touching and finds want and amusement in those brown eyes. Still it has nothing on the ramping storm of desire and obsession that had nested in Dr. Lecter’s eyes and that Will has grown used to. 

“I think you should wait for your memories to come back before making that decision,” Will answers, moving his hand away, instantly missing the heat of Dr. Lecter’s skin. Another feeling to kick into the hole. 

Dr. Lecter takes the half-rejection gracefully, turning to look at the window on the other side of the small hospital room. 

“My memories will either come eventually in a couple of days, or they won’t.” Will lifts a brow, and even if Dr. Lecter wasn’t looking at him, he inclines his head as if he is, proceeding to explain his line of thought. “The arena of the skull is a tricky place. I’ve been trying to walk across it and found more traps and holes in the floor than doors.” 

Will wonders if it’s the human brain in general or just Hannibal Lecter’s brain in particular. Dr. Lecter frowns suddenly, and Will knows at that moment that he’s wondering exactly the same thing. 

Dr. Lecter promptly erases the expression from his face and Will files ‘control freak’ under personality traits. It’s a strange kind of relief to finally answer the million-dollar question about Hannibal’s psyche: Psychopath by birth, not by trauma. 

It brings up another question though: How much did the trauma influence? 

Would have Hannibal Lecter become a cannibal even without the trauma? Possible. Would have he become a serial killer without the trauma? Undoubtedly. Will eyes the line of Dr. Lecter’s shoulders, how he wraps his fingers around the plastic cup. Every little movement Dr. Lecter does is intentional, measured. The iron-clad control over his expression is looser, but not even monsters are immune to morphine. Will observes the doctor as he looks through the window, half-bored. 

God complex , check. Personality trait. 

Dr. Lecter turns back to Will with one of those rehearsed smiles that he wears. It melts away to something more natural as soon as his eyes (warm brown, soft) fall on Will.

“Then I’ll have the answers to many other questions about my life. Right now, I could use the excuse of morphine loosening my tongue.” 

“You’re using morphine as an excuse to flirt with me?” Will asks with scandalized humor.

“Perhaps,” Dr. Lecter tilts his head demurely. Elegantly, of course, a movement that could barely be perceived as a shrug. “You can’t blame someone in my situation for flirting with a handsome young man that brings him good food and good company.” 

“I can hardly be considered good company. Let alone handsome,” Will scoffs, turning his eyes aside.

“And yet, knowing you for only half a day, I have to disagree.”

“Because your nose says so?” 

Dr. Lecter takes Will’s hand in his and Will, too stunned to react, lets him bring it to his face. The first time Dr. Lecter had smelled him, Will was too surprised not to confront him. The second, the third, the fourth, Will just let him, enjoying the way the doctor stood close to him. Now, too, Will lets him once more. He shamefully basks in observing how the doctor takes a deep breath and leaves a soft kiss on the back of his hand.

Will can manage violence, he is used to it. 

But Dr. Lecter flirting with him? Will is not so sure he can deal with that. 

Soft, warm, brown eyes meet Will’s. For a moment Will sees again that infinitesimal flicker of recognition, like drops of blood over white snow. He sees dark tendrils weaving themselves desperately back onto the wrinkles of the doctor’s brain. He sees hunger in the way Dr. Lecter’s pupils pulse.

“Because my nose says so, yes.” There are specks of blood dripping into the honey-like brown of Dr. Lecter’s eyes, the dark tendrils inside Will’s own chest wrapping themselves around his ribs.

And then it’s gone. Like washing away the blood of a small, accidental laceration on his finger. 

When Will leaves Dr. Lecter’s room he doesn’t know what to do with the aching emptiness he feels. So he does what he always does: Bury it deep inside him until he can ignore it. 

Because Will’s life is a fucking joke, he’s in Hannibal Lecter’s house. 

It’s the perfect opportunity to be nosy, to look for anything suspicious. God, Will could even grab Dr. Lecter’s fridge, send it to Price and Zeller and finally be done with the Chesapeake Ripper once and for all.

Then, because his brain truly hates him, Will remembers the look on Dr. Lecter’s face. Those soft and warm brown eyes, and the antsy pout on his lips when Will said “I’ll be back later today with dinner, do you need me to bring you anything?” before heading out of the hospital. 

The way Dr. Lecter had resented his own needs, the way he’d looked at the bag of torn clothes with blood and dirt on them. 

“I’d hate to ask but…” 

So Will is here , inside the Chesapeake Ripper’s lair with an overnight bag, looking for underwear. 

The universe just hates him. 

Or maybe, it’s just good karma, compensating Will for the torture he had been through at the doctor’shands and offering him the best opportunity to finally end this game. 

But. 

Yes, of course, there’s a but. 

Will could, but, this is Hannibal. Hannibal, his friend (at some point in his life also a cannibal, most likely), and who somehow now, is very horny for him. 

Not Dr. Lecter, voluntary cannibal, known serial killer (for some reason also very horny for him). 

To violate the sanctity of his friend’s house when he’s the most vulnerable; when he’s an innocent man… he can’t do it.

Fuck, Jack will be so mad at him if he discovers this.

Will goes upstairs. He ignores the samurai armor because it’s creepy as fuck. He ignores the scalpel at the side of the bed. He ignores the first aid kit under the bathroom sink, fully equipped as if waiting for an apocalypse to happen. He tries ignoring the suits and the sudden jump his heart does when Will sees them. Instead, Will grabs the most boring-looking shirts, a soft sweater, and slacks. Then he braces himself to learn what kind of underwear Hannibal wears before he opens a drawer.

Will’s eyes end up focusing on a pile of blankets, neatly folded on top of a sitting chair in the far corner of the room. 

Even if he didn’t know what kind of trauma Hannibal has experienced, he’s plenty aware of the edges of it. The little tell-tales of someone terrified by the cold.  

The pantry filled to the brim with more food than the doctor could possibly eat, the thick covers on Hannibal’s bed, and the always-lit fireplace in every room.  

Every little detail is a crystalized testament to trauma. Trauma is like a snowflake, a story to be told in the little unique details that can be found only under the careful eye of a microscope. Will wonders how aware Dr. Lecter is of his own quirks and tells, if his superiority complex even allows him to be aware of them. 

Will grows more and more fixated on the covers the more he stands in Hannibal's room and wonders if those little details will manifest even without memories. He thinks of the hospital’s worn sheets and the itchy blankets they could provide if Dr. Lecter’s buried trauma resurfaces. With a defeated sigh, Will starts to look for a suitcase big enough where he could fit Hannibal’s clothes and a good amount of blankets. 

Will stops again in the kitchen, ignoring all the scalpels and potential weapons he saw in his short walk from the bedroom to here. He opens the fridge and ignores the meat, despite the pieces being carefully sealed and arranged, not looking like it came from any respectable butcher. 

He takes his phone, searches for a recipe, and starts cooking because his life is a joke.

Beep. 

Hannibal stares at the heart monitor as Will enters the room. Will can almost picture the doctor having a strong-worded conversation with the machine about not snitching on him again after Will is gone. 

“I made chicken soup,” Will says, just to watch those imaginary cat ears perk up, and Hannibal beams at him. “I didn’t have Black Silkie Chicken, but I hope a normal chicken is palatable.”

Will settles the table again, but this time, he made sure to bring enough for two.

“I’m sure it will be delicious, Will,” Hannibal says, moving carefully towards the small table. “Had I made Silkie Chicken Soup for you before?” 

“Yes, you brought some for me once,” hesitates for a moment as he sits down. He avoids looking at Hannibal’s eyes when he adds quietly, in hopes Hannibal doesn’t catch it, “when I was hospitalized.”

“And what ailed you then?” Hannibal asks, blowing on a spoonful of soup. 

“Anti-NMDA encephalitis,” Will comments offhandedly, trying to brush away the sour after-taste of the memory. There’s no reason to hold Hannibal accountable for the faults committed by Dr. Lecter. 

Or maybe there is, because Hannibal stops moving with half the spoon already inside his mouth. Surprise flashes in his eyes and something dark, too fast. A flicker of the light and then it’s gone. Will tightens his grip on his own spoon, breathes in, takes the spoon to his mouth and swallows the revelation for later. It’s infuriating that, even absent, Dr. Lecter is still able to keep secrets away from him.

“No memories resurfacing?” Will changes the subject, eyes focused on his own soup. 

“No memories, per se, but I know who I am.” 

Will’s eyes snap directly to his, searching for blood and finding just soft, warm brown eyes. The feeling of emptiness at Hannibal not realizing fully who he is sits uncomfortably in Will’s guts. He picks up the metaphorical shovel and starts digging a bigger metaphorical hole. 

“I know the things I like, art, music, cooking,” he pauses. “You.” 

Will huffs a startled laugh, trying to hide it behind a spoonful of soup. He wonders if this blatant flirting will continue once the monster in Hannibal’s mind resurfaces; or if they will return to metaphors and thinly-veiled flirting.

“I’m sure I know about psychology. If I focus, I can recall certain ideas,” Hannibal continues. “But that’s it, ideas, theories, recipes, muscular memory. No memories.” 

“Do you know the parts of the human body?” 

“Should I?” Hannibal dodges the question skillfully. Will can’t quite catch if there is a muted knowledge worming inside Hannibal’s brain or if it’s just part of his personality to be this playfully annoying. Most likely both.

Your extracurricular activities, Will thinks. 

“Surgeon, before psychiatry,” Will says instead.

“Ah, that makes sense,” Hannibal observes, then he pauses with a deep frown that looks out of place on his face. “My patients.”

“Oh,” Will realizes. It’s Thursday, patients must have gone to therapy and ended up finding Hannibal’s office empty without an explanation. He’s sure Dr. Lecter doesn’t really care – can’t really care– about the boring lives of his patients. He also knows he takes great pride in his work. “I can – I mean, I could stop by your office tomorrow morning, make some calls. Tell them that you’ll have to be absent for a while.” 

“Nurse and secretary?” Mirth dances behind Hannibal’s eyes (soft, warm, brown) as he takes Will’s hand in his. Like it’s something they do all the time, light touches made on a whim. He takes Will’s hand as if the gesture doesn’t make Will’s heart beat madly out of pace. 

Will stares at their point of contact, Hannibal’s wide hand on top of his. It brings the air out of his lungs, blood to his cheeks, and a mess of sensations to his stomach. A tangled knot of relief, joy, longing and pain. It’s closer to maggots writhing than to butterflies flying. 

It feels so easy to be with Hannibal like this. Nice, even. Will considers, for a fleeting moment, the idea of turning his hand and entwining his fingers with Hannibal’s. Will could do it if he wanted to. Let his future-self deal with the consequences.

“How can I repay you for your kindness, Will?” Hannibal asks, squeezing his hand softly, searching with his eyes (so soft, so warm, so brown) for Will’s gaze. 

Will doesn’t even muster an apology for his future self before he turns his hand upside down like he’s been longing to, and allows himself to smile when Hannibal does.

Stay like this.

“Let’s imagine that I am the one repaying you for all the dinners at your house?” He offers.

“That won’t do,” Hannibal frowns, almost offended by the idea. He moves his free hand to cover Will’s, fully enveloping it between his both hands. “Let me invite you on a proper date, Will.” 

He looks as honest as Will has ever seen him, even more so. Almost tender. It’s funny that he’s still manipulating the situation to have something he wants. Even without memories, Hannibal’s verbal sleight of hands are still as uncanny and just as natural as his charm.

“Sounds more like something you want, doctor,” Will deflects, hopefully a little bit flirtatious.

“Are you saying you wouldn’t enjoy it?” Hannibal deflects back, overly flirtatious.

Will grits his teeth into a grin, too wide and too sharp. This. This feels more like the Hannibal Lecter Will knows, the one he sometimes tolerates and mostly reluctantly likes. 

“Would you survive letting me eat food made by other people?” 

Beep. 

Possessive. Another trait of Hannibal’s personality that is so intrinsically his. Will sees it glittering in his eyes, like a stormy cloud casting a shadow over a hill. Time stops, and Will sees a flicker in Hannibal’s eyes, the possessive monster trapped inside the doctor’s skull knocking at the door. Red tendrils reaching out, aching to overcome the warmth in that playful look. 

It’s gone too soon.

“You see through me,” Hannibal admits softly with a shuddering sigh, as if the words are more for him than for Will. He holds Will’s hand close to his face, inhaling the lingering smell of Will’s aftershave on his wrist, or perhaps the natural aroma of his skin. He lowers his eyes like the very few times Will has ever succeeded in overwhelming him. 

“I suppose. I would be tempted to feed you by hand then, to compensate,” Hannibal says, nudging his socked foot to Will’s calf under the table.  

The images come unbidden to Will’s mind. He pictures a restaurant with a low, constant murmur and dim lights. Hannibal in front of him, with his gaze (soft, warm, brown) offering bites of food. It’s so tender, an indulgent smile on the doctor’s lips and adoring eyes looking at Will. An implausibly dreamy picture, clean and perfect that wouldn’t look amiss on a magazine cover.

He thinks of the familiar place of Hannibal’s –no, Dr. Lecter’s– kitchen, where the lights don't let him hide. He thinks of Dr. Lecter pushing a piece of tender meat past his teeth with bloody fingers. He thinks of the flavor bursting on his tongue, delicious like everything Dr. Lecter cooks. Beautiful like everything he makes.

When heat colors Will’s cheeks and he feels his heart missing several beats, he really – really– doesn’t want to think which scenario is the one that triggered his reaction.

“Not in public,” Will stutters, air and words chased out of him by the indecent fantasies. If he focuses he can almost taste the iron tang of blood and the saltiness of the doctor’s skin. 

He makes sure to not focus on it. 

Hannibal pouts exaggeratedly, pressing Will’s hand to his cheek. He has no reason to look cute, and yet that’s the only word that Will can think of. 

Will finds himself sighing. It’s unfair.

“Dessert. Only one bite, and it has to be from yours,” he agrees.

“You’re utterly cruel, Will.”

I have reasons to.

“You wouldn’t like me any other way.” 

The fluorescent light of the hospital room makes Hannibal’s fangs look larger, and impossibly sharper. It highlights his cheekbones and casts shadows on his face that makes him look too dangerous – too primordial. He takes a long breath, and Will can feel more than see the monster hiding within. A beast stretching in behind the trees, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. 

“Atta boy.”

When the light falls just right over Hannibal’s eyes, Will swears he can discern specks of blood seeping into the lines of those warm brown irises, and he aches.  

Will rests his back against Hannibal’s door, outside of his room. Anxiety comes to him in waves of nausea like food poisoning as soon as he closes it. It’s a physical pain in his chest, a sharp stab of uninvited longing that sits uncomfortably behind his breastbone.

A murmur worms its way into Will’s brain. Come back, please. He’s aware that it is his own voice uttering the sentiment.

The thought is unwelcome, but Will has no time nor willingness to give it more thought than to acknowledge its existence. He pokes at it with the shovel and begs: Please, get inside the hole. 

Will sits at his all-purpose-table that he uses as a diner table, breakfast table and desk, looking through countless cooking blogs until he finds it. 

‘During recovery of anti-NMDA encephalitis, one should abstain from the common ‘recovery foods’ just as chicken soup and stews, no matter how much the body craves them [...] Anti-NMDA encephalitis means that the immune system is acting in overdrive and foods like these will only aggravate the symptoms [...]’

Will can’t even muster the energy to be angry about it. He just lies back in his chair and huffes a soft, “Of course.”

It’s the perfect opportunity to be nosy, like the bloodhound Jack wants him to be. Will has the time, and he has the opportunity when he finds himself once again alone in one of Dr. Lecter’s most private spaces. His office. The doctor’s –the psychopath’s– notes about him are right there resting on the shelf, waiting for Will to open the notebook and read.

How much has Dr. Lecter written about him? How incriminating could his notes be? Has he kept notes of how Will’s encephalitis developed? 

Will sighs and sits on Dr. Lecter’s desk –because after all, Dr. Lecter never really minded when he did it– and starts playing secretary.

Beep.

Will hasn’t even crossed the door when Hannibal blurts overly excited: “You have seven dogs?!” in a voice that Will can’t guess if he’s proud of himself for remembering, or scandalized by the sheer amount of dogs. 

By the look in Hannibal’s eyes (warm, soft, brown) he doesn’t seem to know how he feels either.

Will snorts, then chuckles, and finally he laughs so hard that tears fringe his lashes. 

And Hannibal smiles.

It feels really nice.

The days pass in a comfortable blur, with Will bringing food and changes of clothes, and stories about the dogs. It continues with Hannibal’s single-minded flirtation and Will growing uncomfortably attached to it, eager for Hannibal’s eyes and praise and touch.

It feels nice to be wanted in this neat, clean way. Not because of his darkness or his mind. Just because of him.

If Will closes his eyes, he can imagine that they’re at Hannibal’s dinner room, or at his own house, with dogs milling around the table searching for scraps. If Will closes his eyes and lets that part of him that wants win, he can imagine that the scars Dr. Lecter left on him never existed. That he’s the devoted boyfriend or pinning friend that the nurses are betting against each other that Will is.

When Will closes his eyes and feels Hannibal’s hand on his, he can imagine a future in which this could exist. The teacup gathering itself back together.

It feels so nice. It feels golden.

But when Will opens his eyes and finds soft, warm, brown eyes locked on his instead of red, he realizes that the tea is dripping from the cracks where the tiniest of pieces should go. It’s an illusion. There’s no gold holding the chipped bits together.

Then he’s out of the door, and the dirty feeling of emptiness comes back in full force. Then Will is at his home, sitting on the porch alone with a glass of whiskey, and it doesn’t feel nice anymore. Will thinks about Dr. Lecter’s suits and tells himself he doesn’t miss the clashing patterns. That Hannibal is better for Baltimore’s people than Dr. Lecter ever will be. It’s better for Jack, for Alana, for him. Especially for Hannibal. 

No memories, no pain, no trauma. No fear of being discovered. No twisted plans. He could be just a simple man living a simple life with Will.

Will likes Hannibal. He liked him when he was the harmless and eccentric Dr. Lecter, trying to worm himself into a friendship; and he likes him now, in his filterless and flirty charm. He enjoys spending time with him. He wants more time to spend with him.

Will tells himself that he doesn’t miss Dr. Lecter.

Will has always been good at lying to himself.

“I remember things,” Hannibal confesses with his face pressed to the pillow, a crease cutting across his cheek as he looks at Will. He is always looking at Will with adoring (soft, warm, brown) eyes. “Some memories keep coming back to me, little flashes of knowledge appearing where I already looked and found nothing,” he says softly as if he knows he shouldn’t. Like he could break this delicate thing between them if he remembers too much, too early. 

Like Will knows why Dr. Lecter let his brain simmer on its own juices for months. That if Will had seen too much, too early, this thing (similar to friendship but too complex to be called by that name) blooming between them could have shattered into pieces. 

Not that it didn’t.

Maybe Hannibal knows. He knows in the same way that Will had known that Dr. Lecter saved the man inside the ambulance too easily even after years of not stepping into surgery. In the same way Will knew Dr. Lecter was too fit for a man living the sedentary life of a psychiatrist. In the same way Will knew how quickly and eagerly Dr. Lecter decided to take care of Abigail, the first person he would have met that knew the taste of human flesh. 

“What do you remember?” Will asks. He wants to brush away the strands of hair falling over Hannibal’s face. He looks soft, approachable, harmless. He knows, not so deep down, that it isn’t totally real. That Hannibal can be dangerous, but he is so used to the inherent danger that Dr. Lecter represents that in comparison, Hannibal feels like the playful cub of a panther learning how to use its fangs. 

The only light in the room comes from the street, filtering from the window, and Will can’t distinguish if Hannibal’s eyes have specks of blood buried in the warm brown or not. He isn’t really sure how to feel about that, and so he focuses his eyes on the bridge of Hannibal’s nose, ignoring the possibility of facing the answer. 

Hannibal pauses, regarding Will for a long moment. Will’s heart flutters, soars for a moment, hoping for recognition. 

“I remember the first time I went to the Opera.” 

Just as quickly, Will feels his heart break. He takes the stab of confusing loneliness and pleads: Please, just stay inside the hole.  

“A core memory?” Will asks around the pain. He leans in his chair and Hannibal gives him one of those tight-lipped smiles of his that reveal nothing.

“You could say.” 

Will looks at Hannibal’s hand peeking from under the pillow. He wants to hold it. 

For some reason right then it feels like cheating, and he refrains from doing it.

“Tell me about it?”

“I’m not even sure if it’s indeed the first Opera I went to, but there was a scene that I can’t stop thinking about. It was Tristan and Isolde. From the era of Amour Courtois, during the middle ages. It was considered then that marriages held no love. Amour Courtois considered that true love could only be intellectual, to connect through the mind.” He turns his eyes to look at Will’s. A small, sincere smile cracks on his face; overly fond. “Tristan and Isolde broke this tradition, escaping from the court, Isolde leaving her husband and Tristan his life. They ran into a paramo, a dead forest, where the earth was dead, the trees didn’t bear fruit, and the rivers had long dried. They had nothing but themselves when they found a cavern.” 

Hannibal pauses, eyes going hazy as he travels through empty corridors, guided by the soft music. He looks far away, lost in time and in the maze of his own mind.

“But where there was a cavern, they found a church. Their vows to each other were to break this… social code of ethics, fusing soul and body together. They decide to leave behind what was considered proper and moral, accepting to succumb to the pull of love. Because for them their love had the same power as God’s divinity, they had no need for water or food as long as they had each other.”

Will can picture it in his mind-eye. The cavern like an open mouth, an oasis in the middle of the dead earth. A coven where they could rest, where they could be protected from the freezing winds and the unforgiving sun. The walls tall like the ones from a church, light filtering inside from spots of eroded rock where particles of dust float and, in the middle of it, stands an altar of flesh.

“I always wondered,” Hannibal whispers, and they meet again in their gazes. “How would it be to feel that kind of love, where hunger and thirst could be sated just by the presence of another being?” 

Will wonders when was it that Hannibal had seen that Opera for the first time. For how long had he been starving for connection. How deep did that gash run inside his soul, that he had to stitch it with young, inexperienced hands. A wound that had never truly healed, always leaking with pus and blood.

Will wonders how he will feel if Dr. Lecter never comes back. If he will still feel this hunger inside him growing every time he looks into Hannibal’s brown eyes, knowing what’s missing. Will it be enough to have Hannibal with him to sate this hunger? Or he will always feel a constant ache inside him, a laceration in his empty stomach with gastric juices preventing it from healing?

“You should sleep,” Will says after the silence stretches for far too long and he still hasn't found an answer. He watches the loose smile on Hannibal’s face, the fading bruises, the soft eyes pinned on him, the way he blinks lazily trying to sate his thirst and his hunger. 

“I’m not sure I want to close my eyes,” Hannibal confesses.

Will looks at Hannibal’s hand, peeking from under the covers, begging to be held. He hears the deep inhale coming from the doctor. Always starving, always trying to survive through his senses. 

“You should though, and I should go,” Will tells him, but he doesn’t reach to brush his disheveled hair, or touch his hand. It takes him a long moment before he manages to bring himself to stand. A lot more until he convinces his body to leave the room. “I’ll be back in the morning, I promise.” 

Will leans against the door of room 304. He feels like a starving kid again, back in a time when he had to wait for restaurants to close to look for scraps in trash cans. He’s starving, his stomach eating him from the inside. 

It hurts so much.

When Will enters Hannibal’s room there’s not a single beep to welcome him. Will glares daggers at the heart monitor for not beating faster. 

It’s borderline unreal to find Dr. Lecter doing something so human as to sleep; but this is Hannibal, he doesn’t need to be aware of dangers in the dark. He doesn’t need to be the predator in the room. 

He doesn’t perceive Will as a threat. 

Did Dr. Lecter perceive Will as a threat? 

Will stares at the sleeping man in front of him. He has the illicit opportunity to observe him without being observed. It feels like breaking rules, trespassing lines, or committing a crime. It brings the same thrill that drugs bring to the senses, the same rush of adrenaline he felt when he pulled the trigger and Hobbs’ blood splattered over his face. The same power he felt when he played Frederick Chilton, Matthew Brown and Hannibal Lecter at the same time while he was rotting inside a rusty metal cage.

Will had discovered then how good it felt to manipulate people. How easy it came to him. He understands now why Dr. Lecter enjoyed it so much.

Hannibal is so utterly vulnerable that Will could wrap his hands around his neck right now and kill him. 

Will wonders if that was how he looked to Dr. Lecter when his brain was on fire.

If Will were to look at his old self right now, without the fogged crystals of his glasses, would he too feel the desire to let his brain cook itself?

He doesn’t answer his own question, unsure if he can stomach it. 

Will stares at Hannibal under him, and he hates him. Hates how such a pedestrian thing as a car crash could have killed him. The Chesapeake Ripper shouldn’t leave the world in such a mundane way. The only way Will could ever picture Dr. Lecter dying is fighting, with blood raining from the skies and dripping from his mouth. It should be a passionate death, a monstrous death. It should be grotesque and obscene and radiant.

Not whatever this is.  

Will hates this. What if someone enters? What if there is a threat? What if Will were indeed a threat? 

(What if, what if, what if.)

Hannibal is not a killer. He can’t defend himself. Muscular memory could help him, but if something really dangerous were to happen, he wouldn’t be able to properly fight back. Dr. Lecter could, no matter how bruised, or how hurt he was. He would wake up at the softest noise, at the smallest change in the air, ready to pounce at the first notion of danger.

Will catches a glance of Hannibal’s arms, of his own marking on the doctor’s skin. Long and still a little tender, pink. Will has seen the pictures of blood and sutures, the photos of the scene left behind by Matthew Brown. 

Another undeserving death. The Chesapeake Ripper deserves better than a half-formed biblical reference. If Hannibal Lecter were to die –if the personification of Death was able to die– his death should be at Will’s hands and no one else’s. 

Then, in that unlikely scenario, Will would ensure to make his death worthy of the monster. He would make sure to elevate him into art as the Chesapeake Ripper deserves. He would make sure that Hannibal’s death was as passionate, monstrous, and intimate as he deserves. 

He would ensure to make it beautiful.

Will’s fingers twitch. He risks a glance at Hannibal’s face. There isn’t a beep, just the soothing sound of Hannibal’s constant heartbeat. Will’s own blood runs fast inside his ears, his own heart jackhammering inside his chest as he moves his hand to trace his mark on Hannibal’s wrists . 

The scar is rough to the touch, puckered at the edges. 

Hannibal is so warm. 

He’s alive. 

Beep. 

The universe really does have a personal vendetta against Will Graham, and it’s not even funny at this point anymore.

“Hello, Will,” Hannibal beams at him with a raspy edge to his voice. Thin lines from the pillow are pressed to his face. He looks so soft with his hair falling over his forehead, the skin of his cheeks slightly irritated by the razors Will kept smuggling for him (another revelation that Will had during the week: Hannibal Lecter has to shave, like a human) , his eyes squinting and barely awake. 

Will does an amazing job of keeping the word adorable inside his mouth.

“Hi,” he says instead, ducking his head after a moment. His eyes trail back to where his fingers rest over Hannibal’s scars, and Hannibal’s eyes follow.

“I must confess, I’ve been extremely curious about them,” Hannibal comments, moving his arms lightly to show more of the tender flesh. A show of trust, like a kitten baring his belly. “Am I prone to get in accidents often?”

“No,” Will sighs. “Not really.” 

Hannibal hums, regarding his scars like something fascinating, a new puzzle to be solved. “I have many scars for a psychiatrist.” 

Will nods. He brushes his thumb over the scabbed edge of the scar, growing shy now that Hannibal is awake but still feeling awfully entitled to them. He has put them on Hannibal’s skin after all, like a physical manifestation of their intimacy, a mirrored image of the metaphoric scars left on his back by Dr. Lecter. He’s sure that if he asked Dr. Lecter, he would let him explore them and open them again if Will wishes to. 

He wonders if Hannibal would let him.

“Most are because of me,” Will says, doing his best to lift his gaze and focusing on the healed scar left on the bridge of Hannibal’s nose – a gift by Tobias Budge. “Others you earned them yourself.” 

Will doesn’t clarify which ones are which, thankful that Hannibal doesn’t ask. He can’t really differentiate them. 

Will’s eyes drop back to Hannibal’s skin, on the map of scars. He wears the still tender line of Matthew’s attack upwards from the wrist, and the healed mark of a piano string circling the length of Hannibal’s forearm. There’s a possessive monster inside Will, one that has been fattened by Hannibal’s hand and now passes hungrily inside Will’s chest. It surges forward as he traces the scars one by one, familiar as they are all Will’s to some extent, for better or for worse.

Will wants to drag one of Hannibal’s scalpels down to his scars, open them again and make them all properly his. Tearing them and covering his hands with Hannibal’s blood, to close the wounds with careful fingers, stitch them together so the scars left behind will only be Will’s and he won’t have to share them with any undeserving swine. 

Hannibal places a hand over Will’s slowly, movements still slightly clumsy. He’s warm. Alive. 

What a world, in which Will Graham is glad that Hannibal Lecter is alive. 

“Are my scars dear to you, Will?”

Will doesn’t trust his voice to answer. He shouldn’t be allowed to answer that question. God knows what could come out of his mouth. He should keep his mouth shut. 

Will doesn’t want to answer; so he does something far worse because that’s how Will Graham’s brain works, somehow. When you don’t know what to do, choose the worst option. Blessed will be the day in which Will Graham makes a single good choice.

The mattress dips when Will sits on the bed. He holds Hannibal’s wrist in a loose grip and lowers his face to leave a barely-there kiss over the scar, mouth ghosting over the thrum of blood in his veins. Then he moves on to the other.

Will can feel the rush of Hannibal’s blood under the thin layer of skin, the faint after-taste of iron and salt. He closes his eyes, focusing on that spot of contact where the chapped skin of his lips gets caught with the scabs and rough edges of Hannibal’s scars.

Will lifts his head slowly, panting at the effort of something so small. He looks into Hannibal’s (warm, soft, brown) eyes and what he sees… it’s so close to recognition. 

But in the end, it isn't. Hannibal still doesn’t remember. 

Tears pool in Hannibal’s eyes anyhow, distorting the shape of his irises from perfect circles to wobbling shapes. 

“I’m afraid that my amnesia has robbed me the chance to understand the amount of importance behind this gesture,” Hannibal mutters. It’s raw and thunderous, the way he slowly pushes the words out of his mouth. One single tear falls down his cheek as he scowls at his scars. He flexes his fingers as if trying to make his body and mind listen to him, commanding the stubborn vessel to bring his memories back.

“You don’t remember the context,” Will says, trailing the length of Hannibal’s scar once more and putting pressure on a scab. Hannibal doesn’t flinch but the small sting of pain succeeds in bringing his attention back to Will. It takes great effort for Will to lift his gaze and lock his eyes with Hannibal’s, but he does. He sees when drops of blood seep into brown eyes, giving Will that little spark of before that he has been looking for. “But you understand.”

The click of Hannibal’s throat as he swallows cuts through the silence of the room. He lowers his gaze, overwhelmed by a myriad of emotions that Will is sure he can’t really understand, not completely. Will wonders if Hannibal could even name them. 

“I do,” Hannibal murmurs so softly, his voice barely audible, overpowered by the constant sound of the heart monitor and the muffled sounds of the hospital. Hannibal tentatively reaches for Will’s hand and Will doesn’t allow himself to think before he entwines their fingers together. 

Will finds he’s surprised that the heart monitor doesn’t register the spike in his own heartbeat. Surprised that the violent thud inside his chest doesn’t echo inside Hannibal’s.

“Maybe you could do it again, once I remember,” Hannibal teases, squeezing their hands tighter.

No. 

Maybe. 

Will ducks his head, avoiding Hannibal’s eyes. He squeezes his hand back. 

“We’ll see.” 

“Do you have any scars of my making for me to kiss?” 

Will chuckles, more sound than emotion. He is covered in invisible scars and yet, he has nothing to present for Hannibal to kiss. The fleeting image of him holding a bone-saw in his own hand and removing the cap of his skull is an enticing idea, but sadly, he doesn’t have a bone-saw at hand.

“Not unless you want to kiss my brain.” 

Curiosity, interest, obsession. A new shiny piece of the puzzle. First encephalitis, then chicken soup, and now this. Will sees questions flash inside Hannibal’s eyes; he watches the tickling seconds that it takes for Hannibal to rearrange the pieces in front of him, trying to decipher the final shape of it without a cardboard image for him to orient himself. 

Will bites back a smile. He has to concede that to Dr. Lecter at least. It is fun to watch others squirm trying to grasp half of the things he knows. He can understand why Dr. Lecter did it. With a God complex like his, the world must feel disgustingly dull. Watching the FBI chase its own tail must be the most fun he has had in decades.

(Will wouldn’t blame his dogs for chasing a rabbit. He supposes the same idea can be applied to Dr. Lecter. Could he blame a chef for attempting to cook ‘FBI profiler’s brain’? It must have been a very tempting recipe for a cannibal.)

The moment ends when Hannibal pushes the puzzle pieces aside. Mirth crinkles the corners of his eyes in a way that makes him look like a real human being.

“I can think of an alternative,” Hannibal says. Will is still too focused on making cannibal jokes inside his mind that he can’t process Hannibal’s words and how he’s leaning closer to Will, threading his fingers into his curls and cradling the back of his head. 

“No, wait, you don’t have to–” Will panics, but Hannibal doesn’t listen to him. He pulls lightly at Will’s hair and Will goes obediently, slack like a ragdoll. 

Hannibal holds him, one hand on the back of his skull and the other still squeezing his hand. The press of Hannibal’s lips to his forehead burns. Will’s eyes are burning. His lungs are burning. The tears falling down his cheeks burn. 

Will will look at himself in the mirror later and he will see himself scarred for life, with bright lines down his cheeks and the outline of Hannibal’s lips on his forehead. 

He reaches for Hannibal’s shoulder, fists the horrible hospital gown, and he sobs.

A knife cutting through his flesh should be the proper next step in their courtship. Not a kiss. Tenderness is worse than violence. He can’t handle the tenderness of the touches, the light brush of Hannibal's lips on his forehead, the reassuring grip of his hand on Will's hair. 

“Will,” Hannibal whispers, cupping both of Will’s cheeks. Hannibal is so warm and Will will have the shape of his hands forever engraved on his face. Hannibal lowers his voice, stern and hard, pulls at his hair with an order. “Will, look at me.”

Will opens his eyes like a reflex, tightening his grip on Hannibal’s gown. He’s a mess, and he wants Hannibal to clean it up; to guide him through the worst of it, and hold him until Will can hold his weight on his own. 

“That’s it,” Hannibal coos at him softly, pressing their foreheads together, and Will hates him. Hates the grip on his hair that is shy of too tight, hates the fake expression of worry on Hannibal’s face, hates the fingers tenderly brushing his tears away. 

He locks his gaze with those warm, soft, brown eyes and Will hates this poor substitute of a man in front of him.

Come back, come back, come back.

There’s a creature inside of Will’s skull, howling for its mate. It searches blindly in the endless cavern for the real Hannibal’s mind, in the fathomless pit of those sickeningly warm, soft and brown eyes for the barest sign of blood. 

Come back.

Will sinks his nails into the flesh of Hannibal’s forearm, digging into the wound until it hurts. He bares his teeth at the man wearing Hannibal’s body, ready to bite a chunk of him.

“Will.” 

The monster howls back at him with Dr. Lecter’s voice, and it freezes Will on the spot. 

Hannibal digs his fingers into the meat of Will’s cheeks and peels him away as tears still fall down, dampening his fingertips. There’s no change in his expression or his stance, no inflection in his voice, and yet he looks like Dr. Lecter, solid like a medieval castle. His eyes are dark, not fully red, not fully brown. Like dried blood on a white shirt. The monster inside Hannibal is right at the surface, salivating, scratching at the door to be let inside. A shadow that dances through the gap under the door.

If Will just knew where the key is, he would open it.

The thought comes uninvited and sudden, stumbling and kicking over everything inside his mind and Will berates himself for it even before the thought materializes completely. Still, the damage is done and the thought exists now.

See me, it begs. Come back.  

If only it were so easy to think that a thought materializes out of nowhere. Will knows it was there, hiding in a corner where shadows clung heavy. In the same corner where he had hidden: possessive, psychopath, surgeon, cannibal, ripper.

There’s no care in Hannibal’s touch, or if it is, it’s too utilitarian to be understood as care. His expression is mostly blank as he takes on Will’s reaction, except for a small twitch between his brows that precedes a frown. 

Sadism. Affection. Obsession. Care. Want.

An uncomfortable combination. Will almost pities him.

Hannibal wants to enjoy Will’s pain and his tears and he can’t, and he resents his own mind for not being able to understand it. There’s no pleasure to be found in breaking something and not understanding the why and the how. 

Hannibal wants, and he wants so much. He wants everything. He wants to make Will cry and wants to comfort him. Wants to be the reason for his pain and for his pleasure. He wants to know which strings to pull for every reaction. He wants to know and understand the reasons behind every reaction.

Will’s heart soars, swoons. 

There you are. 

Will sags towards Hannibal with a deep, relieved sigh. Like seeing from a distance a tree bearing fruits after walking for days without food as Hannibal guides him to rest his head against his shoulder. 

Will feels suddenly like he weighs nothing at all, made only of air. He relaxes, sliding an arm over Hannibal’s belly, and hearing the soothing sound of Hannibal’s heart against his ear. When Hannibal presses his nose to his temple and inhales, Will feels a smile fighting its way onto his face and he’s far too tired to fight it back. 

“Shall we do it again, once I remember?” Hannibal mutters.

Please. 

Will hides his face deeper into Hannibal’s chest, whispering softly. 

“If you want to.” 

Hannibal Lecter’s brilliance and resolution are otherworldly. If he sets his mind on something, he won’t stop. He will bend reality to his wishes if he so desires. Will is surprised that he doesn’t recover all of his memories on the spot just because he wishes to. But it’s a question of when, not if. Will can hear the intricate machine of Hannibal’s brain working. Cogs turning like a tightly wound clock in motion. Doors being opened, slammed closed, and opened again.

It’s just a matter of time before the universe obeys Hannibal’s wishes and makes blood rain from the sky.

Will tightens his grip and buries his face further into Hannibal’s chest, enjoying the easiness of it while it lasts. 

Beep. 

“Well, hello to you too,” Will smiles as he enters the room, acknowledging the nurse lighting a flashlight in front of Hannibal’s eyes with a nod.

“Everything seems to be in order, Dr. Lecter,” the nurse –an old woman dressed in pink scrubs– says as she pockets a small, pink flashlight. “No memories yet?”

“Nothing substantial, no.” 

She pursues her lips, blond bangs obscuring the frown on her forehead as she looks through her papers. 

“Legally, you can leave today if you want, Dr. Lecter, but we’d prefer if you stayed one more day. I’ll schedule an MRI scan for tomorrow morning in case there was something we missed with the first one.” She seems hesitant to continue speaking, tapping her fingers on her –also pink– plastic board. “But if we don’t find anything…” 

“I shall start considering the possibility that my memories may not come back,” Hannibal finishes for her, completely unbothered by the prospect.

The idea sits sourly with Will, and the pit where he has been burying all the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings is running out of space for more.

“Therapy can be helpful to unlock some memories,” she resumes with an empathetic smile. She wants to reach for Dr. Lecter’s shoulder – old enough to be a former colleague, close enough to know not to feel pity for him; yet angry at herself for not being able to do more. “Maybe you’ll get back to your home and memories will come back in an instant.”

“Maybe. Maybe it's just my mind refusing to acknowledge my previous life because this one is better,” Hannibal says with a shrug, tilting his head slightly to look toward Will. 

Red. 

Eyes the color of a deep red, like an open wound seeping blood all over the clean hospital floor. Long gone is the honey-like brown of Hannibal’s eyes.  

Want. Adoration. Hunger. Obsession. Love. Love? 

Love. 

Will finds the rawest, purest, more dangerous kind of love in Hannibal’s gaze.

It’s all merging together. It’s all the same. Hunger. Obsession. Love. A long, sharp pin of HungerObsessionLove strikes Will in the middle of his sternum, making him unable to look away, frozen in the spot, pinned, cornered. 

“Smooth, Doctor,” the nurse chuckles, oblivious to the monster that sits in front of her, and unaware of the current nervous breakdown Will is experiencing no more than a few steps away. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

She leaves, giving them a playful wink before closing the door with a final, thunderous click. 

Hannibal waits patiently for Will to catch up with the situation or decide to stop avoiding his eyes. The beat of Hannibal’s heart is steady from the monitor in contrast to Will’s, which insists on hammering loudly inside his chest.

Will slowly leaves his satchel on the table, keeping the doctor in the periphery of his eyes, just in case. He stretches the seconds as much as he can until he has to look into the piercing red eyes again.

He feels like a bug stepping carefully, but still stupidly voluntarily –almost suicidally– on a spiderweb. 

Meeting blood-red eyes Will finds that he has to wet his lips and swallow before he can speak out loud.

“No memories yet?” He asks with unawareness that he does not feel, stepping into the thin threads of the sticky web. He knows just by the millimetric upturn of Hannibal’s lips, that the doctor also knows. 

“I’m afraid not,” the spider lies between venomous fangs. He stitches a new person suit, one specially tailored for Will, replacing the previous one with it. Like the wolf dressed as the grandma, this is Hannibal; the friend, the helpless and harmless amnesiac. It looks well-fitting, but rushed, with some loose threads here and there. The spider wears it elegantly, proud of his work. 

“You don’t seem especially bothered by it,” Will pushes, sitting on the side of the bed. He puts his weight on the center of the web, daring the monster to pounce.

“Should I?” Hannibal lifts an elegant brow, the spider still refusing to jump onto him. Will doesn’t have an answer for that. Hannibal reaches to put his hand on top of Will’s, unbothered by Will’s silence. “Do you think I did not mean it, Will?”

“Mean what?” Will frowns, trying to not focus on the sensation of their conjoined hands.

“That I enjoy this life, more than I could enjoy the previous one.” 

This new person suit is well-tailored despite the rushed execution. Hannibal puts attention to every detail as he does with everything. He wears it proudly and he wears it well, though it still looks slightly uncomfortable.

Will wonders how long it can last.

“I brought lunch.”

The MRI comes clean and the Chesapeake Ripper is released again to the world.

Will offers himself to drive Hannibal to his house since he supposedly doesn’t remember where he lives. 

“So,” Will asks, stepping after Hannibal inside the house. “What do you think?” 

Hannibal regards his house like he truly doesn’t recognize it, exploring with his eyes the decor of the room. He ends up in the dining room with Will trailing behind him until they reach Leda and the Swan. Hannibal eyes it with a sense of accomplishment and humor. 

“I’d say I have exceptional taste,” Hannibal’s face morphs into an expression that probably could be described as sheepish by anyone else, but Will’s scrutinous gaze manages to find a mischievous glint on the dark eyes. 

Will suppresses the roll of his eyes, focusing his attention on the painting instead. Leda, aware of Zeus’ machinations and lies, of the farce of his disguise, and still feigning innocence as she dutifully spread her legs for the god. His thoughts are spiraling out of his control, but always fixated on the man at his side.

“I should go,” Will says. The fleeting thought of calling Jack crosses his mind for the first time. He turns to the doctor but refuses to look him in the eyes. Instead, he rests his gaze on his shoulder. No matter how well-fitting this new person suit is, the monster is awake now, able to smell the slightest changes in him. Now that they are at some kind of middle point, Will refuses to lose the little ground he has managed to conquer. 

Will fears that Hannibal –no matter how human– can see inside his brain and reach that tangled knot of loyalties and unmade decisions that Will still has, latent and ignored inside of him. If Will were to stare into the void, the void could stare right back. 

But spending many days in this new relationship has been intoxicating. It has been nice. Will feels slightly reluctant to let it go completely; and judging by Hannibal’s lies, the doctor feels the same. Or maybe it’s just another manipulation. 

Who knows? Clearly not Will. Not when Hannibal is involved.

“Will you be okay on your own?” Will asks and the comment comes back to bite him in the ass when the spider slides easily to his side, one sticky hand on his arm. 

“Physically? Yes, I think so,” Hannibal tells him, feigning nonchalance. “But I could use a friend.” 

“I guess I can visit you,” Will offers, focused on Hannibal’s shoulder. 

(Because he doesn't have a single iota of self-preservation in his bones) 

“I wouldn’t want to monopolize your time,” Hannibal lies and Will wants to laugh. 

After all, what time has Hannibal to monopolize that isn’t his already? Will doesn’t have classes to teach. His main job is to spend time with Hannibal and report back to Jack. He spends his free time thinking about Hannibal. His dreams and nightmares have been taken hostage by him as well. 

“But would you consider staying a little longer? I–” A slip, just a little slip. The antlers protruding from Hannibal’s skull. I would love to have you for dinner. Will snaps his eyes up, just in time to watch Hannibal compose himself, stitching that small tear in the fabric of the person suit. His eyes are not purely warm brown, but they’re far from red blood. “I must admit, I have gotten used to sharing dinner with you,” he corrects. 

Will forces a smile. He takes the metaphorical shovel he’s been using lately to bury all of the things he can’t make sense of. The things he knows he refuses to make sense of. He hits the stab of loneliness he feels and pushes it inside the hole of unaddressed things. 

At some point he will have to address all those things. He figures he should before they start to crawl out of the hole, and force Will to acknowledge everything. God knows that he can’t address a single thing by itself, lest he could all of them, all at once.

For now, Will observes how Hannibal ignores the packets of sealed meat in his fridge. He buries another stab of hunger that he doesn’t want to acknowledge yet and wonders if Hannibal’s slip was accidental or purposeful.

“Is pasta alright?” Hannibal asks, and Will nods.

Jack calls –seemingly having reached the end of his patience– in the middle of the night, exasperated by Will’s silence.

“Dr. Lecter was released,” he says as a greeting, and Will refuses to sigh out loud.

“I visited him every day, I drove him today to his house. He…” Will hesitates. If Hannibal is willing to play, and Will wants to play... is it so bad to have just a little bit more time with this harmless version of him? “He hasn’t remembered anything yet,” Will finishes. 

He can hear the sound of Jack clenching his teeth from the other end of the line. Will wonders if it comes from the phone, or if the sound is really loud enough that it reaches Wolf Trap.

Hallucinations aren’t common anymore, or if they decide to appear Will knows they are just a manifestation of his mind, unwelcome or not. He waits to see a dark apparition in the shape of a swan. When it doesn’t show up, Will throws the anger and disappointment into the pit. 

He wonders if it’s too late to dig deeper.

One day becomes two. Two becomes three. Three days turn into a week and then two, and the farce continues. Will eats at Hannibal’s table, Hannibal still lies about his memories and lives his life unbothered. They don’t resume their sessions, but Hannibal resumes his practice. He seemingly hasn’t looked once into Will’s files to refresh his memory (or so Will supposes), and Will makes no attempt to bring it up. The Chesapeake Ripper is absent, there is no meat on Will’s plate. 

Sometimes Hannibal holds Will’s hand across the table, and Will allows it. 

Will ignores TattleCrime. 

The corpses of unaddressed feelings and revelations keep piling up, up, and up – until there is barely any space left inside for more. Will hasn’t bothered to dig a bigger hole.

At some point, Will finally snaps.

“This isn’t sustainable.” 

Because he has no sense of self-preservation whatsoever he snaps in Hannibal’s kitchen, while the doctor is holding a knife. You know, cosmic joke of the universe and all that that is his fucked up life.

Unperturbed, Hannibal doesn’t even lift his gaze or stops chopping vegetables. 

“I truly do hope you’re not talking about my cooking.” 

Will huffs, undecided if he’s attempting to be bitter or annoyed. He leans on the counter, frowning, pushing the words between clenched teeth. 

“To a certain extent. A facet of your cooking at least.” 

Hannibal doesn’t sigh but he clasps his hands together, regarding Will with endless patience. He hangs up the person suit over the back of a chair and stares at him with blood in his eyes. Will represses the shiver that wants to run down his spine at the sight of the deep void of Hannibal’s eyes.

“It’s not a compulsion, Will.” 

It’s the closest thing to a confession Will knows he could ever aspire Hannibal to give him. He is also aware that Jack would have sent countless Miriams and Wills to the slaughter to attain that sentence alone.

Will knows that compulsion isn’t part of Hannibal’s pathology, but that doesn’t mean restraint costs him nothing. In the end, no matter how much Hannibal claims he can do this – live in this seemingly perfect dollhouse, at some point, Will’s presence won’t be enough. The possessive, obsessive nature of Hannibal’s monster will take hold of him and the cardboard walls won’t be enough to protect Will. 

At some point or another their relationship will end in blood. Better sooner than later, Will figures.

“You don’t want to stop,” Will accuses. “Don’t lie to me, we’re beyond that.” 

Hannibal looks almost offended. “You don’t believe me capable of putting your desires over mine?” 

“I think you’re capable of manipulating my desires until they suit yours.” 

Hannibal smiles at him with patient, knowing amusement. He took it as a compliment, Will realizes, the fucking bastard. 

“I missed my friend,” Will spits out of pure pettiness and he sees something dark and hungry flickering in Hannibal’s demeanor, unable to hide it without his person suit. Jealousy. 

Hannibal straightens his back and rolls his shoulders, putting the person suit back on. The tone of his voice is different when he speaks. Softer. Kinder. Fake. “You can have him back. Both of us, bound together in madness. Almost literally.”

“Folie à Deux,” Will whispers, eyes cast to the floor. “Two halves of one fucked up whole.” 

Hannibal leaves his place behind the counter and circles it slowly, steps echoing in the room purposely for Will to know exactly where he is. Little by little he fixes the person suit until he stands in front of Will fully dressed, two kind fingers guiding him to lift his chin. 

“Exactly.”

“Why?” Will demands between clenched teeth. “How can you possibly look at me in the eyes and tell me that you could be happy like this?”

Hannibal swallows with a loud click that reverberates in the kitchen. He lowers his gaze humbled, properly admonished. “You asked me not to lie to you, so I won’t. I’d rather that you take me as I am, but I know I am in no position to make demands. If this is the only way you would have me, then that is what I will offer to you.” Hannibal pauses and Will sees the space between his brows twitching with effort. His face falls as he releases a quivering breath. A broken facade, the prideful mask finally gets disregarded with no small amount of honest sourness when their eyes meet. “I made myself once, but for you I’ll become undone. I can build myself again, Will, for you.”

Will looks at him, truly looks into the deep dark pit of blood that are Hannibal’s eyes, past the soft, warm brown. He looks until his hands start to shake and his breath starts coming out in gasps. He stares, and the void stares back. Will’s whole mind illuminates all at once, the thought coming to him with force, thrashing in his mind: Will can do anything he wants to him, and Hannibal will allow it. Welcome it, even. He will encourage him. 

“No!” Wil shouts, pushing Hannibal away, pacing around the kitchen like a caged animal. “You can’t bring back someone who never existed. Don’t belittle me. Don’t try to convince me that this can exist.” Will turns furiously to lock his eyes with Hannibal’s, gesturing between them with his hand. “This, you, me. Playing house, playing amnesia. This isn’t sustainable.”

Hannibal bears Will’s outburst calmly, though he isn’t patient anymore. Will can see him being as tired of Will, as Will is with Hannibal. He can see the veins in Hannibal’s forehead throbbing, the sheer control he has on his muscles being just enough to not reach for the knife and be done with Will’s impertinence, once and for all. 

Will can almost hear Hannibal calling him an unbearable, petulant brat inside his mind. He would laugh if only Hannibal wasn’t close to a knife. The feeling is short-lived. 

He wants to push Hannibal further. Watch him snap. Make him realize that this isn’t possible. 

He wants to bring Hannibal back.

Will rears towards him, one hand ready to push him against the wall. He presses an accusative finger against Hannibal’s chest. “You are lying to yourself, and I’m fed up with your lies.”

Hannibal snaps, griping Will’s wrist with brutal force – enough to make it hurt. Enough to show the strong core of the monster, the years of breaking bones and carrying corpses. 

“Have you finished your tantrum?” He snarls, discarding the person suit completely. Will snarls back at him, daring the monster to snap his wrist. 

Hannibal takes a long breath as he composes himself, not yet reverting to the person suit. “You are… an enigma,” he says with a tilt of his head, regarding Will like an amusing yet tiresome, constantly misbehaving dog. 

“You like that I keep you on your toes,” Will tells him, nodding to where Hannibal still holds him. “I wouldn’t be alive if I didn’t.” 

Hannibal eyes his own hand where he holds Will’s like he is just realizing the fact that he has one. He squeezes the flesh of Will’s feeble wrist, his grip strong enough to bend steel. Will doesn’t flinch. He still dares him to break the bone.

“As annoying as sometimes it is dealing with you… Yes, I do,” he says, finally releasing Will’s arm. He regards Will for a moment, with his person suit forgotten. He looks at Will clinically and efficiently, straightening his shoulders, bottomless eyes scrutinizing the man before him before Hannibal resumes speaking with an even voice. “Do you know why you are so difficult to predict?” 

“I imagine you’re going to tell me.”

Hannibal smiles, a fast twitch of his lips before he settles for something more adequate to his factions. Natural, then controlled. Some kind of simmering amusement as he tucks a rebel curl behind Will’s ear. Will glares at him, but allows it. He tries to ignore the way goosebumps spread over his skin and fails.

“Because you don’t know how to make a choice,” he comments and Will doesn’t hold back his annoyed huff. “And which choice you are going to make it’s as much of a mystery to you as it is for the rest of us. Do you know why?” He steps closer to Will, and Will allows himself to be cornered against a counter. He allows Hannibal to lean over him, tentatively bringing his nose to Will’s temple as he inhales.

Will just realizes how much he always allows Hannibal to do to him. 

He realizes then, that he doesn’t want to stop allowing him things. He doesn’t want to follow that train of thought. 

“Why?” Will asks in a low murmur, lining his lower back with the edge of the counter and letting it bite at his spine. He feels the huff of warm air shaped like Hannibal’s smile brushing the soft skin of his ear as the doctor leans even closer.

Hannibal lines their bodies together and Will allows it; he indulges Hannibal, not moving when he feels the warmth of Hannibal's flesh pressed against his, slipping between Will’s legs. He indulges Hannibal even further and tilts his head just slightly to the side, giving him more space to comfortably speak into his ear with his hot, damp breath and the outline of his teeth shaping the words.

“Because you don’t make a choice until you’re forced to.” 

Will sneers, focusing his eyes on the line of the doctor's jaw as he reels back only by a few inches. Now he’s over Will's face, one of his large hands cups the back of Will's head. 

Will can't control the path his eyes take, suddenly snapping to Hannibal's lips. He’s hyper-aware of every inch where their bodies touch, how close Hannibal's lips are to his, the tension heavy in the air – almost physical – like mist. 

Will parts his lips, his body tenses and relaxes against his better judgment. Air he doesn't know he is holding escapes out of his lungs in a trembling gasp, and he grips the counter in a desperate attempt to not hold onto Hannibal's clothes. Will closes his eyes, holding onto his scowl like a lifeline, and realizing then how many times his stomach has dropped again and again when Hannibal is close to him. How unbearably much he wants.

Will tilts his chin up, closes his eyes, and waits for a kiss that does not come.

“A shame, really,” Hannibal whispers, hovering over Will’s lips without touching them. “How you always let your morals limit you.” 

Will snaps his eyes open, furious and betrayed. He watches Hannibal retreat back to his spot on the other side of the counter with a triumphant smile. 

"Tell me, Will," he says, annoyingly pleased with himself and resuming his cooking. "Do you think this is not sustainable because you think I’ll get bored? Or because you don’t think you can live like this without getting bored?”

He lifts his gaze to look at Will with soft, warm, brown eyes, nothing in them but bland curiosity. Not a hint of Hannibal Lecter, just the person suit back in place. Will takes a sharp breath, shaken to the core by how easily Hannibal slips back into those eyes like they were always a part of him and not a careful makeshift illusion. Eyes that Will knew once they were honest, and now are simply a new disguise.

Will grips the counter, hoping he can leave the mark of his fingernails on it just to leave his mark and ruin something of Hannibal’s. 

“I’ll go set the table,” Will snarls, promptly exiting the kitchen.

Will feels like a scolded child the whole dinner. Hallucinations are uncommon, the days of seeing Garret Jacob Hobbs and ravenstags and losing time are long gone. When they appear, Will knows them to be a fragment of his imagination, bothersome but ignorable. 

Yet in the dimly lit dining room –with Hannibal Lecter purposely absent even when sitting in front of him, enjoying every second of Will’s personal hell– Will sees Leda laughing. In his mind, Will looks down at the pit of unaddressed things, feelings, and revelations and he sees them writhing like worms.

“What about Alana?” Will forces out. He tries to seep some concern into his tone. More from a lingering sense of obligation than anything else. More from a sense of what a good man should do, than out of any respect he has left for her. 

After all, Alana would be better off being left alone; and in all honesty at this time in his life, Will isn’t sure he can muster any real concern for her.

Will resents how pleased Hannibal looks at him. As if he can see inside his brain now and know all the little things Will’s thinking of. How respect is reserved only for the people equal to him. The little and the big things nesting inside his mind, all the vulnerable things, the knot of emotions and half-loyalties. 

"Ah, Dr. Bloom,” Hannibal murmurs, eyes focused on his glass of wine – turning it around to make it catch the light. He speaks of Alana as if recalling the face of a person he only saw once in passing, unbothered and uninterested in her existence. “I informed her that sadly without my memories, I felt no attraction to her, and wasn't interested in changing that," he pauses for a moment to sip at his wine, smacking his lips, the lower one tinted with the barest hint of purple. His tongue peeks from behind his teeth before Hannibal turns his gaze back to Will, drops of blood seeping into his irises. "I also told her that she had no need to wait for me. That she was free to pursue any relationship she wanted, and that, if my memories came back we could see how we developed from there."

Will's brow shoots up scandalized. He feels vindication blooming in his chest and lets himself enjoy it for a moment before he tosses it reluctantly into the pit, along with the other things he shouldn't feel.

"How polite," he mocks, impaling at a piece of duck that he knows for sure is a real duck. 

Hannibal is ruthless in his manipulations and Will doesn't know how to feel about not being the focus of them, but the reason behind them. 

Pleased, maybe. 

Will’s smile is a small thing but it exists. It manifests. It’s getting more and more difficult to throw things into the pit.

It’s too cramped anyway. Maybe Will can keep this one inside his pocket. Turn it on his fingers, smooth it with his touch until it isn’t deadly sharp.

"I would hate to break her heart and also be rude," Hannibal tells him with bothersome good humor.

Will nods, eyes flickering back, again and again, to Leda during the rest of the dinner.

At some point after they have dessert, they move towards the study, forgetting the wine to indulge in stronger drinks. The soft buzzing of alcohol isn't enough to make Will bolder, but it’s definitely too much for him to drive. An annoyingly useless middle ground. There’s a lit fire in the room that Will focuses on watching. The night outside seems endless, and the trek back to Wolf Trap even more.

Hannibal, attuned to Will's inner machinations as always, moves behind him. Will doesn’t turn, he is –just like Hannibal– perfectly attuned to the monster prowling around the room. He turns his face, stretching his neck and Hannibal takes the invitation, shamelessly trailing his nose up Will’s neck. He doesn’t lean enough to make contact but this close Will feels the electricity between them, charged atoms vibrating like static tickling at his skin.

When Hannibal deposits the much-needed second glass of bourbon in Will’s hand, Will accepts it.

“What does dread smell like?” Will asks.

“Is it ‘dread’ what you are feeling now, Will?” 

“A cocktail of feelings – too many to classify,” Will says bringing the glass to his lips. A moment passes before he elaborates, “Anxiety?” 

Will can feel the heat of Hannibal’s body behind him, hotter than the fire. He can feel the soft outline of Hannibal’s smile just by the way the air changes. Hannibal doesn’t ask permission to touch him. He rests his hand on Will’s waist, and caresses the thin layer of skin of his throat with the tip of his nose, inhaling deeply. 

“Acrid,” Hannibal answers, resting his nose on the sensible spot under Will’s ear. He trails two fingers slowly up Will’s sternum, barely a touch. “Nervousness and anticipation. It makes the stomach clench. It brings hints of gastric juices up through your esophagus, and taints your dermis like sweat.” 

“Sounds like it smells awful,” Will comments attempting to sound indifferent, and missing by a mile, betrayed by a traitorous soft moan when Hannibal slips one finger inside his shirt between the buttons closer to his sternum. 

Hannibal hums, inhaling again behind Will’s ear, close to the back of his head. “Many things can be found awful and lovely at the same time, Will.”

“Like my atrocious aftershave?” 

A pause, another inhale. Will feels every nerve ending of his skin come alive. Hannibal slips open the first two buttons of Will’s shirt with deft fingers. Will, once more, slips into this thrilling habit of letting Hannibal do all the terrible things he wishes to do. 

“This smell comes from the deepest, warmest part of you, something that your body has created. It’s intrinsically yours, emotions and flesh. To be able to take it inside me…” Hannibal trails off with a deep sigh, something that never happens. Being able to unravel a monstrous man like Hannibal to the point of speechlessness –until he forgets himself– is intoxicating. Accomplishment takes roots inside Will. “It wouldn’t be amiss to say it’s the most wonderful smell that I’ve ever experienced.” 

Hannibal spreads his fingers, pressing his palm over Will’s chest. He puts just the barest pressure but Will leans back easily, resting his back on Hannibal’s frame. He can feel Hannibal’s heart thudding unrhythmically and fast. He guides Hannibal to move his hand over to his breastbone, where he can feel the echo of Will’s heart beating just as violently.

“Did you remember your name when you woke up in the hospital?” Will asks with difficulty, a heaviness in his breath that clogs his lungs. 

“No,” Hannibal murmurs, lips pressed on Will’s pulse. “The doctors told me my name and I had no reason to doubt them, but the knowledge of it only came to me during the third day.” Speechless, Will slips his fingers between the spaces of Hannibal’s hand, his own heart brutally pulsing adrenaline through his veins. He fears closing his eyes, be it that he sees the mix of feelings crawling out of the pit, climbing like spiders up his body. “I didn’t know myself and yet when you stepped through that door, I knew that you were dear to me. That I wanted you, and I wouldn’t stop until you were mine.”

“How did it feel?” Will asks, surprised when his voice doesn’t shatter. “To not know yourself, but know what I meant to you?”

Hannibal grips Will’s shirt with his free hand, pressing himself flush to Will’s back. He wraps his arm around Will’s ribcage until there isn’t a spot where their bodies aren’t touching. Will throws his head back, alcohol and Hannibal’s presence making it pound. 

“Exhilarating,” Hannibal pants. “Horribly thrilling. I hated every second of it, and I hated every second that I wanted you and I hate every moment in which you’re away from me.” 

Me too, Will thinks, closing his eyes and leaving the glass of bourbon over the fireplace. He grips Hannibal's hand on his, throwing his other arm over Hannibal’s shoulder. He slips his fingers on the doctor’s hair to pull him closer. God, me too.

It strikes Will just then how much he wants. How greedily he yearns –has always been yearning– for Hannibal’s attention, his presence, his touch. How pathologically he enjoys his time with Hannibal. How Hannibal has manipulated their relationship and the world around them so Will can’t have anything that isn’t him. 

How he has conditioned Will to not want anything that isn’t him. Will realizes with horrible satisfaction that now no one else can have Hannibal ever again. He can have Hannibal all by himself, every gesture, every word, every feeling, every look. Everything will be his. He will be the center of Hannibal’s world if he accepts to play this game. Hannibal won’t know anyone, won’t remember anyone. He will have Hannibal Lecter isolated, just like Hannibal has made him.

He realizes then the magnitude of what Hannibal is offering him, the magnitude of things he would let Hannibal do, and just how far he is willing to go to indulge Hannibal. 

Sounds like a fair trade off, all things considered.

Will feels a monstrous ache inside him and for the first time, instead of ignoring it, he embraces it. 

“Alright,” he sighs, gripping Hannibal’s hair and turning inside the hold of Hannibal’s arm. “Alright,” he repeats, gasping heavily over Hannibal’s lips. “Folie à deux.”  

Will wants and he takes. 

There’s a blink of hurt on Hannibal's face but it disappears, replaced by bitter acceptance, then desire as Will closes the remaining space between them. 

They kiss as if they had kissed each other before, as if this wasn’t as brand new as it truly is. There are no soft, exploratory movements. Will uses the first opportunity he gets to slip his tongue inside that dangerous mouth; presses his lips against Hannibal's with aching need, and Hannibal meets him with the same fierce ardor. 

"I'm too drunk to drive," Will half-lies, unburies the hot coals of desire that he has tossed into the pit. 

"I have a guest room ready for you," Hannibal concedes, large hands covering every inch of skin he happens to reach and Will allows him, enjoys it, and writhes in Hannibal’s hands. 

"Try again," Will pulls at Hannibal's hair, keeping the doctor away from his face enough for them to look into each other's eyes. Will feels how he tears some of his hair when Hannibal tries to reach for his mouth. He sees how Hannibal's eyes darken, a Minotaur voluntarily trapped inside the maze of the doctor's skull. The only light comes from the lit fireplace, and Will can’t distinguish if Hannibal’s eyes are brown or red. 

"My bed is big enough for two." 

"That's better." 

Will lets Hannibal guide him up the stairs, drag his hands under his clothes, mark his skin with trails of blunt nails and rings of teeth. He lets him suck bruises up his throat and kiss him until their lips are swollen.

They stuff lies down their throats. They push half-truths against each other’s lips. ‘I miss you’ hangs uncomfortably at the tip of Will’s tongue. He bites at Hannibal’s upper lip hoping the doctor will return the favor and sever Will’s tongue before Will can say it. The confession, if spoken out loud, Will thinks it could bring the end of the world. 

Or maybe it wouldn’t, not in an apocalyptic end-of-times explosion. It won’t make blood rain or raise the flames from the center of the Earth, but it will free the devil from inside the deepest pit of hell. If it came to that, if Hannibal were to offer his hand to him appearing like Mephistopheles to Faust… It didn’t end well for Faust. It won’t end well for Will, and the only thing that would remain will be a trail of bodies and Hannibal’s hands drenched in blood.

People like them don’t deserve a ‘happily ever after’. People like Will don’t get to live happily ever after. People like them are doomed to live their lives in blood and ruin. Tearing strips of skin from each other, living in a limbo of hate and love, unable to differentiate pain from pleasure.

So Will kisses him and embraces this dream in which they can be together without blood in their hands. That the only trail they left behind is of their clothes from the study to the first floor, with Hannibal’s suit jacket as the first casualty somewhere. Will’s shirt ends up being tossed from the top of the stairs to fall wherever it lands, and his belt hangs precariously over the railing. 

Will embraces this opportunity to love each other as Hannibal tips him gently onto the bed. Will can barely see him in the dark, just the outline of his form. If Will focuses hard enough he can discern the sheen of Hannibal’s eyes, and the dark red of his irises like a dim, distant fire in the middle of darkness. 

Hannibal’s body over his isn’t monstrous. He’s reassuring and gentle in every touch, powerful in his own way, taking when giving. Just like Will had thought he would have been, in those passing half-fantasies he had long ago when Hannibal was still harmless and innocent. He had wondered then how those big and kind hands would settle on him, if Hannibal would have left bruises and welts on him if Will asked nicely enough. 

Will wonders how he must look right now, knowing the danger under the person suit. If his own pupils are blown, if the feverish blush on his cheeks has spread to his chest. If Hannibal is able to look at him and see.  

“I’ve never… not with a man,” Will murmurs against the warmth of Hannibal’s throat. He trails his hands up and down Hannibal’s back, marveling at the strong muscles of his arms, the toned back. The way Hannibal leans over him like a protective blanket; he embraces Will’s body like he wants to tear open his own ribcage and bring Will inside it. The closeness maximizes the amount of warm skin gloriously pressed against his own, the unhurried friction between them. 

Will marvels at the hard length of Hannibal’s cock, how good it feels grinding against the planes of his stomach. Occasionally –blessedly– it catches on the hollow of his hip and smears pre-come all over him. “We'll go slow, tonight, just this," Hannibal promises, nuzzling at Will’s hair. He moves his hips in a slow, endless rhythm that promises to drive them both out of their minds. 

It’s just like Will had imagined Hannibal would be in that previous life, when the only guilt came from having desires about a friend. Back then Will had thought mostly of how it would feel to kiss Hannibal – if he could feel the harsh stubble, how different would a man's lips feel from a woman. The few times he had allowed his thoughts to wander any further he had dreamed of this: large guiding hands, touching him with such kindness that brings tears to his eyes. Hannibal’s soft groans in his ear, his low voice whispering sweet nonsense. The labored breathing with small grunts of genuine effort as Hannibal grinds down on him, the desire overflowing the both.

Will can hear the sound that their cocks make as they slide against each other’s, wet and obscene in such high contrast to the way Hannibal kisses Will’s cheeks, his face, his hair. Hannibal touches him so worshipfully, sinking his fingers into the tender spots of him like he can’t stop himself. 

It feels so nice, in that pure, clean way of love that they know is a lie. Will rolls his hips, pleasure sparking up on his spine sharp and hot as he embraces the burning in his lungs and the fading edges of his vision. He sinks his nails into the strong muscles of Hannibal’s back, rewarded by the low, predatory moan that erupts from the other man.

It’s a beautiful farse, bittersweet with salty tears prickling at Will’s eyes. Bittersweet in the shape of Hannibal’s powerful hands, groping hard at his flesh and softening the kisses that Will tries to make more violent. Hannibal moans every time Will drags his teeth over his skin when he bites at Hannibal’s lips with the insensately suicidal need to tempt the monster.

‘I miss you.’

Will wonders how that phrase smells. If Hannibal is able to scent it on his skin. The humiliation, fear, indecision, dread, and longing; how all that knotted up inside his guts like a tangled up fish-hook, floating in the dark waters of pleasure looks like to Hannibal. If it’s as beautiful as Hannibal said Will’s anxiety was, by virtue of being Will’s. 

Will bites at Hannibal’s lips again, wanting to draw blood. He grips at Hannibal’s hair to pull his head back just enough to bare his face and look for the dark red in Hannibal’s eyes as he jerks his hips erratically. In the near darkness of Hannibal’s room he sees only longing in Hannibal’s eyes, his lips parted by a choked cry in the shape of Will’s name as he thrusts into the sticky wet mess between their bodies. 

“Please,” Will begs, dragging Hannibal back to his spot between his throat and shoulder. He tightens his grip on Hannibal’s hair, pressing him closer to the thin skin there, and begging again just for a small show of truth in their relationship.

Will knows that Hannibal knows what he’s asking for. Will knows how Hannibal’s teeth must be aching right now with the urge to sink into the tender skin – to draw blood and taste Will at his most raw. How he aches to drink from Will’s life and show himself, at least only for a moment. That it doesn’t matter that Will can’t see him, so long as he can’t ignore it. He’s already agreed to renounce his truth for Will, but he needs to know that Will won’t forget that the creature he tamed has teeth .  

Fair is fair.

And Will wants those dangerous hands to take him apart, just not in the same way Hannibal took other people apart. He wants the doctor’s fingers buried deep inside of him, exploring and rearranging his guts like searching for a bullet inside a wound. Rearranging Will to his liking, until Hannibal is finally –if only momentarily– satisfied.

He wants so much with Hannibal. He wants this lovely farse between them to flourish. He wants Hannibal’s kind hands and sweet kisses. Hannibal’s love, or the idea that the world has of love. He wants the sharp edges of Hannibal’s teeth in his skin, the charged atmosphere around them that makes Will feel like he’s being stalked. Hannibal’s relentless, encompassing, all-consuming obsession. Hannibal’s undying, toxic, possessive love. 

Will wants everything and the thought pisses him off.

Part of him is still angry, might always be angry. That part of Will hates the way his body reacts to Hannibal’s touch (how has always reacted to Hannibal’s touch, voice, presence), how his cock twitches, fills, and leaks with every new drag of Hannibal’s hips. Hates how his orgasm crests abruptly when Hannibal’s fingers bite at the flesh of his ass. Hates how Hannibal’s deep groans make his legs tremble and every one of Hannibal’s kisses materializes moths inside his guts and throws fuel to the fire ignited inside him. 

Will both hates it and loves it. The pleasure always spiced with pain, the pain always brought by Hannibal’s hand with shades of pleasure. It’s far too much, pushing Will close to a sensory overload. Hannibal’s hands are everywhere, his mouth is indulgent, and Hannibal –like the true definition of hedonism– is dragging Will down with him. This thing between them has festered on them both, made roots in their systems, rotten their flesh. 

Will just can’t bring himself to care as much anymore. His own actions catch up on him, then his thoughts. He’s definitely doing this.

“Please,” Will insists, disregarding his morality’s feeble protests, pressing Hannibal against his neck. “Please,” he begs, and it echoes ‘I miss you.’ 

Will can’t bring himself to say it, but he guides one of Hannibal’s hands between his legs and further. Where his internal hunger translates into a deep ache, with his body gaping around a vacancy.

“Will,” his name comes out from Hannibal’s lips in a broken gasp, reverent and sinful at the same time. He feels Hannibal’s muscles flex, trying to restrain himself, and that won’t do. Not here in the dark, the only space where they can have this without lying. 

“We can have tender later,” Will mutters, aiming his lips at Hannibal’s mouth and missing but kissing whatever spot he lands on with the same vehemence. He presses his damp face to Hannibal’s, unable to distinguish if he is damp with sweat or tears. If the tears are just his own, he cannot tell. “Please,” he says, chasing Hannibal’s fingers with desperate rolls of his hips.

Hannibal groans, sounding like a maimed beast. The sound seems to crawl up from the deepest part of the  Earth and shake the walls. Or maybe it’s just Will the one who is shivering with need. Will who is unable to contain his own wounded cry when Hannibal does the unimaginable and extricates himself from the needy grip of Will’s arms. 

The air is too cold on Will’s sweat-slicked skin, and the absence of Hannibal feels like losing multiple limbs all at once. Will hopes that for Hannibal it hurts the same, or hopefully worse. He hopes that there’s an outline of warmth in Hannibal’s body, the shape of Will burning in his skin and cooling rapidly. He wants Hannibal to feel the same phantom limb syndrome Will feels every time they’re away. 

There is a cacophony of sounds as Hannibal searches for something on the drawer of his bedside table. It’s the first time Will recalls watching Hannibal do something imperfectly, clumsily. He hears the drawer opening loudly by Hannibal’s hurried, brutally desperate movements. The noise of things clattering on the impeccable floor is startling and Will wants to laugh with satisfaction at having ruined Hannibal Lecter so deeply, debasing him to this point. 

Hannibal’s body is back over him suddenly, and Will forgets about everything except how right it feels to be touching each other again. How hard and empty he is. How much he needs and wants. 

“I need it, please,” Will moans when he feels slicked fingers prodding against his hole. He wants to cry with relief but is not nearly enough. “Please,” he insists. He would feel self-conscious about how high-pitched and broken his voice sounds and how much he is begging for Hannibal to ruin him in return, but the other option is to voice I miss you and he is not ready to do that now. He is not sure he will ever be able to. If he can say it and mean it, and be able to face the consequences of that choice. 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Hannibal’s voice is hoarse like gravel. Isn’t that the most hilarious thing he’s ever said? After everything he has done to Will this is where he draws the line, when Will needs him the most to blur the lines between them. Will needs him to make bleed pain into pleasure. 

“I do,” Will answers, spreading his legs open until they hurt and then some more with the help of his own hands.

Hannibal’s reaction is immediate and two slicked fingers enter him, ignoring the resistance of Will’s body. The lube doesn’t remain cold for long, warming quickly with the burning heat of Will’s inner walls. Hannibal moans like he is the one being penetrated; he shivers, and stays still like he is the one getting pleasure from this. 

(Maybe he is, in that deeply twisted way of his. Finally able to touch Will’s innards at his most tender.)

It shouldn’t make Will’s heart fill with warmth, but it does. This time he doesn’t resent himself, nor he throws it into the damned pit of things he isn’t ready to address. He takes this feeling for himself and embraces it with all he has. He drags Hannibal to his lips with urgency, kissing and biting and sliding his tongue inside Hannibal’s mouth before he loses it, and blurts all the things he has trapped inside his chest unleashing a beast he can’t control. 

Hannibal sighs inside his mouth, melts into his touch and moves his fingers with clinical expertise. He fingers and stretches Will’s hole, purposely avoiding his prostate. Will hates him and adores him for it in equal parts, knowing he would come on the spot if Hannibal were to touch him where he needs him. Will wants to stretch this as much as they possibly can and at the same time, he wants Hannibal deep inside him right now. 

“Please,” Will says against Hannibal’s swollen lips. Will threads his fingers in Hannibal’s hair, pressing him tighter against his body, wrapping his legs around Hannibal’s waist. He hooks his feet together because he doesn’t have any strength in his legs anymore, shaking as he is. Will says please and he’s not begging anymore. It’s an order. He says please, and it means do it now. 

There is a moment of horrible emptiness, a deep ache that Will has never felt and he swears he could die from it. Then Hannibal is pressing against his hole, filling him, and disregarding every single barrier of muscle. Will could cry with relief if only it didn’t hurt so fucking much. 

Will’s throat constricts involuntarily, fighting for air and there’s a fist clenched in his air, yanking his head back. He feels Hannibal so deep inside him, unrelentingly invading his body. Will feels so full he can’t breathe. More tears cling to his lashes – he isn’t sure when exactly he had started to cry in earnest. He only knows that he is crying from the sheer euphoria of everything.

It hurts. Not just physically so. It hurts on the inside, it tugs at Will’s chest and over his breastbone where his heart thrashes against his ribs from the exertion, and from whatever trapped feelings he has there too. 

“You need time to settle,” Hannibal pants, but his own words don’t stop him from thrusting into Will’s body with aborted motions. Will would laugh if he could take some fucking air into his lungs. Instead, he hugs Hannibal and encourages him to move with small, tentative rolls of his hips that send piercing pain to the base of his spine.

Pleasure finally bleeds into the pain when Hannibal starts thrusting long and slowly. He clings to Will, whispering soft apologies that Will shushes away. He chases Hannibal’s movements with his own as they meet each other halfway. 

It hurts so much but it’s good, in a way so little else is. In a way nothing in Will’s fucked up life has ever been. Will finds himself lost in it – in the rising pleasure and the rhythm they find instinctively, effortlessly. 

There is a constant echoing sound of the wet slap of Hannibal’s ball against his ass. Hannibal’s ragged breathing and muttered flowery nonsense cascades out of his mouth in Italian and French. Will tunes it out, focusing only on the sound of Hannibal’s voice, knowing that it’s his way to release the things Will isn’t prepared to hear. Will it’s thankful for the involuntary little moans that are shoved out of his lungs with every slap of Hannibal’s hips against his, forbidding him to voice his traitorous thoughts.

I miss you. 

I need you. 

I want you back. 

There is no way Will can speak, but words between them have never meant anything more than lies and baiting. He begs Hannibal with his body, clenching around him, and feels the answering jerk of Hannibal’s hips betraying how close he is. 

Will doesn’t have the ability to speak, but he drags Hannibal by the hair to his neck. Will holds him down until he’s sure Hannibal can’t breathe. He is demanding the monster to break the skin and mark Will in every possible way.

Will can’t breathe either when Hannibal quickens his thrusts, lifts Will’s ass from the bed and rests it over his own thighs. When he pushes Will impossibly closer, dragging his cock over and over that bundle of nerves inside him that makes the bedroom walls shake. 

Will’s orgasm comes suddenly, its existence is as violent as it should be when it’s shaped by Hannibal’s teeth against his throat, and Will spills between their bodies. The friction of Hannibal’s stomach against his cock is far too much, pushing him past the pain of oversensitivity. Hannibal follows him soon after with a wounded sound, spasming over Will, and coming when the taste of blood bursts inside his mouth. 

In the darkness they kiss naked, wet with blood and tears, come and sweat. In the darkness Will manages to get a glimpse of the monster, eyes a bloody red matching his stained lips. The thin lines of moonlight intrude on their small world through the curtains and make it look like an abysmal black.

In the darkness, looming over him like a beast, Hannibal brushes damp curls away from Will’s sweated forehead. With a kiss, he leaves the crimson shape of his lips tattooed on it. 

Will doesn’t have any more tears to shred, so he brings Hannibal as close as possible and clings to his body. Tangled within the sheets, Hannibal laps at the wound in the crook of his shoulder like a newborn kitten, tenderly and reverent. Will swears he hears Hannibal purr with satisfaction, but he is so tired he is not sure if he may be hallucinating it. He combs his fingers softly through Hannibal’s hair though, moaning softly with every new stroke of his tongue.

They fall asleep like that, with Hannibal’s face buried deep in Will’s neck, inhaling deeply, quiet snores tickling Will’s skin. They fall asleep entwined in a crushing and bloody embrace, just like their relationship merites.

Will lingers at Hannibal’s door the next morning. He’s always had difficulty knowing how to say goodbye to the doctor, always reluctant to leave Hannibal’s house. Will had looked time and time again for any excuse to linger a little more in Hannibal’s presence, even back then when he was just the harmless Dr. Lecter trying to worm his way into a friendship. 

It wasn’t any easier for Will later on, too. When Dr. Lecterhad already crawled up his ribs, crept up to him and set roots inside Will’s spine – his voice already replacing the one inside his thoughts. 

It isn’t getting any easier now either, with a pleasurable ache both in his muscles and in the mark of Hannibal’s teeth – so far up in his neck that the collar of his shirt barely covers it. It’s harder with Hannibal’s hand cradling the back of his skull, his other hand tracing soft patterns under his shirt, over the soft flesh of his waist. 

“I have to get going, I left the dogs alone for far too long,” Will says, absently playing with one of Hannibal’s shirt buttons between his fingers.

“Of course,” Hannibal agrees, with that polite but warm charm that characterizes him. When Hannibal leans towards him it’s a tentative touch. It’s different from the always measured yet decisive demeanor of his. Hannibal moves slowly and carefully so as to not scare him, slightly nervous. It is the only time Will has seen him being the closest thing to afraid. 

Hannibal’s lips over his forehead feel like a panic attack knocking on the door of his mind. 

He grips at Hannibal’s shirt, trapping a choked sound. Will keeps his eyes open, focusing on a spot of Hannibal’s skin that shows where he has neglected to button up the collar of his shirt. Will’s skin tingles all over and he slowly forces himself to accept the touch, to relax into it. 

It’s easier than he thought it would be. It scares the living shit out of him.

Hannibal drapes one arm around him, and Will melts into the action, leaning into Hannibal’s body like he is made of warm butter. Will refuses to lift his gaze and meet Hannibal's eyes. He doesn't know how he will feel if he looks and finds them a soft brown. Much less so, if he lifts his eyes and finds them a bleeding red.

“Drive safely, Will," Hannibal mutters, and Will aches with want. He wants to say I miss you but he only manages to sigh. He leans more onto Hannibal, silently begging for another kiss that Hannibal dutifully grants him. 

Weeks turn into a month.

Hannibal kisses Will’s forehead all the time. 

He kisses him hello, and kisses him goodbye. He kisses it when passing around. He kisses it every time Will lingers at the door. He kisses it while serving breakfast. He kisses it before going to sleep and as soon as Will wakes up. Will knows Hannibal must kiss him when he’s asleep too. 

It’s not an apology. It will never be one. Hannibal will never apologize for things that he believes he had to do.  Will wouldn’t accept an apology that doesn’t exist.

(Even if it was an apology, in whatever twisted way Hannibal can manage, he will never accept it.)

But the kisses remain and Will likes them. He clings to Hannibal as if they were an accepted apology. 

Sometimes, he’s the one to ask for them, in the only way he can – closing his eyes and tilting his chin down, headbutting Hannibal’s lips with his forehead as his dogs do, and Hannibal always indulges him. Sometimes Will is the one to kiss Hannibal’s scars in the darkness of his bedroom. Hannibal never asks him to, nor with words or body language; but when Will leans on top of him, Hannibal opens his arms like the bed is his own cross and Will takes his time. 

It’s not an apology either, but it’s the closest thing Will has to say ‘I miss you.’ 

One month turns into two.

They dine, they spend time together, they kiss, they cling to each other, and they lie. Every time, Will's stomach clenches around a vacancy of violence, at the meatless dishes and at the bloodless eyes. Hannibal doesn’t seem faced in the daylight – but at night he clings to Will hard in the bedroom, and harder still in the morning.

Sometimes it’s easy to enjoy this: the pure, the clean, the soft warm brown of Hannibal’s eyes. Sometimes it’s not, and Will grows restless with his pathological, almost-suicidal need to prod at the stitches of Hannibal’s person suit. It’s becoming a compulsion to see how strong Hannibal’s stitches are. How far they can stretch. How much he can pull at Hannibal before Hannibal’s suit tears.

So far, the only thing that Will has managed to get is a vibrant maroon in Hannibal's eyes. Not yet red, not yet brown, but familiar, like a knife to the throat. The inscrutable expression that precedes the moment when Hannibal's eyes become ice, and he refuges himself inside his mind palace. Will wants to lick them and soften the ice into the heat of his mouth. Bite down on the gelatinous flesh and return them to their original color.

This pathological desire gets worse and worse. 

Every day is more unbearably dull and lonely than the last. Hannibal becomes an expert at reading Will, at knowing when Will is becoming restless and lonely, and when Will wants to pick at him for that little spark of blood that speaks of recognition. Because Hannibal is able to notice when Will becomes restless, he starts reinforcing his barriers, making sure it’s more difficult for Will to get what he craves. 

It's becoming chronically toxic, but they've never quite been the definition of healthy.

It’s a constant game. One in which Hannibal softens the desperation that Will tries to infuse in their kisses. Will knows that it's Hannibal's way to say 'You made your choice. You can't have both.'  That it's Hannibal's polite way of saying 'fuck you'. 

Words don't work for them, because for them words are only meant to lie and manipulate. Like when Will dresses up, brushes his hair, shaves, and puts on his aftershave. Not too much as to clog Hannibal's nose, but enough to make it obvious that he’s making an effort. He doesn't hear a loud, off-beat beep , but he knows it’s there when Hannibal takes a deep breath.

"Do you remember that you promised to take me on a proper date?" Will asks, feeling the rumble of Hannibal’s soft hum against his skin rather than hearing it. 

Will still passively allows Hannibal to scent him to his heart's content. The small difference lies in Will welcoming it openly, tilting his head to the side, stretching his neck without faking obliviousness. The difference lies in Hannibal, running the tip of his nose across the length of it, his chest pressed to Will’s back.

Hannibal’s hands on him feel natural. Everything feels inexplicably natural; the touches, the secretive glances, the understanding. Sometimes, fleeting smiles and sparkles of red.  

It’s surprising how many things had changed between them without truly having changed at all.

Flirting is no longer veiled. The tension (emotional, erotic, romantic, co-dependent) is as strong as it was before, and addressing it –acting on it– doesn’t seem to diminish it. Instead, it strokes the fire of it further.

“Is this your way to ask me to take you out on a date, my dear?” Hannibal asks, his lips forming the words across Will’s throat. Will’s mind wanders, goes away for a little moment, and he thinks: how would it feel to have Hannibal hold him just a little bit tighter? How would it feel if Hannibal decided to worry a patch of skin between his teeth?

“Perhaps,” Will answers, keeping hold of those thoughts.

Manipulation, to no one’s surprise, is just as easy as it was before. Maybe even more fun, now that there is not a constant threat to Will’s life. This relationship is safe, it’s clean. It’s a particular brand of perfect, neat-packaged relationship in that dreamy quality that they would have never got to experience in any other way, or with any other person.

But.

(Yes. Of course there’s a but.)

But there is that other constant threat underneath. A hole in the ground hidden by the rug that Will should want to avoid and still finds himself voluntarily tip-toeing around, testing where he needs to step before he falls.

“I shall take you out, then,” Hannibal says with a small smile, the elegant upturn of his lips and soft, warm, brown eyes. 

Will had wanted to kill Dr. Lecter. A part of him would probably always want to, would always fantasize about it. A part of him would always remind him that he should want to. But lately, Will finds himself fantasizing about digging his fingers into Hannibal's eye-sockets, erasing that soft, warm brown and watch red blood rain down. He fantasizes about digging far enough, past Hannibal's forts and into his terrible brain and taking hold of the monster, dragging it back to him.

Will smiles and kisses Hannibal's cheek, trying to not feel disappointed about the lack of blood leaking from his eyes. 

Hannibal notices. Or Will thinks (hopes, fears) he notices. There's a sudden twitch in the left corner of Hannibal's mouth, a sparkle in his eyes that speaks of victory. Hannibal could have noticed. It could also be that he enjoys when Will manipulates his way into things (not surprisingly another one of his personality traits).

Will always thought, in the sparse moments in which he was drunk enough to allow himself to, that life with Hannibal Lecter at his side would have been a constant silent fight, always one step from snapping at the other and killing each other. Barely held back tears and blood and hate and constant physical and emotional pain. Instead, is this. 

Whatever this thing is. 

There are moments of domesticity that come so easily, so naturally that it isn't possible that they’re crafted, and Will often wonders, could it really be like this?  

"Tomorrow night?" Hannibal asks cheerfully, leaving a last kiss on Will's cheek. Will catches on Hannibal’s delight with an ease that comes from a relationship so intricate as theirs. There's a crack in his barriers that Will isn't sure if it's real or fabricated, an undertone of triumph in his voice and the echo of veiled anger. It's a small snap of a stitch, a silent slip of pettiness that says 'We could have had this too, but you didn't want it.' 

"Yes, tomorrow night sounds good," Will sighs, in lieu of saying ‘Well, fuck you too’ when in reality he wants to say 'I do want to.'  

Will clings on that small crack without knowing if he can believe it, but wanting to.

Always wanting to. 

Throughout dinner Will looks down at his metaphorical pit of buried things – to set them on fire would be easier than to address them. If only he could set his own brain on fire.

(Ha, isn’t that thought so fucking hilarious?)

Their date is exactly everything Will always thought it would be, and he hates it. 

The dim, romantic light of the restaurant, the constant buzz of conversations and cutlery. It's exactly how he imagined it. Good wine, decent food, questionable company. Then there's the lack of something, the silhouette of Hannibal's absence. His body in front of Will, the light conversation, the casual displays of affection. 

The bloodless eyes. 

The dinner is something normal. The kind of normal that Will always wished to experience. Something he thought he would like to enjoy with someone. Normal intimacy, normal dates, a normal relationship that hasn't been corroded by death or tainted by blood and darkness. 

And now that he finally has it, he is bored.

Now that he has experienced Hannibal's monster unveiled, this is boring. A store-bought relationship that Will can't bother to care about.

The dinner passes without shame or glory. A normal date between two people that act as if they enjoy this. Hannibal’s acting is far more convincing than Will’s.

The absence of Hannibal’s true nature has been driving Will out of his mind. This craving has become more terrible than encephalitis had been. It turns this suicidal exercise of poking at Hannibal’s person suit into a full bloom pathology. 

There had been moments in which Will felt so close to cracking open Hannibal’s barriers, so close that he was sure this was going to be the time Hannibal would come back to him. Flashes of red, a hand gripping tight around a knife… but it never was. 

As it always has been with Hannibal, the closer Will comes to catch him, the more difficult it becomes the next time. Every new attempt requires a more drastic approach and Will just can’t stop. With every new opportunity he becomes bolder, tries harder. He is decided to crack Hannibal’s barriers open. He doesn’t know what will happen when he (if he) manages to. All the options are coated in blood. Mostly Will’s but that doesn’t stop him. 

The new opportunity comes with dessert. Chocolate mousse for Will, caramel for Hannibal, and Will just can’t stop himself.

“I think I promised you something about dessert,” Will says, absently playing with his spoon. Flirting has always come easy to him when he tried, the only plus to his empathy. It’s different with Hannibal, it’s easy but never boring. It’s dangerous yet so rewarding. There is nothing more thrilling than to see Hannibal’s calm and controlled demeanor rattle. “Or have you forgotten?” Will adds after a pause, and what he means is ‘Do you remember?’ 

What he truly means is ‘I miss you.’ 

“How could I forget anything about you?” Hannibal replies playfully teasing. There’s a gleam in his eyes, not dark enough to become red –and the dim light of the restaurant doesn’t help Will to discern the color– but his words are sharp and measured. Just like he always spoke to Will, with that underlying sense behind them that Hannibal is meaning more than what he says. 

Will is instantly hooked, ready to drink every word, every consonant. Ready to carve Hannibal’s words in his ribs one by one, cover every square inch of his bones with them. 

“I know you, at my core,” Hannibal continues, and Will is mesmerized by him. He is memorizing every step, every motion of Hannibal’s hands. “There’s a part of you so intrinsically weaved inside me, a part of your soul that I cannot seem to shake even when I have no recollection of myself.”

Hannibal smiles, and it’s so close to what Will craves, an almost perfect rendition of his real self that Will’s breath catches in his throat. Hannibal makes a show of his movements (measured, controlled, elegant). He dips his spoon into the mousse and offers it to Will.

Will wants to say many things, confess his thoughts and let Hannibal win. He isn’t sure anymore that he cares if it ends with his own blood smeared on the floor as long as it means he will be held by Hannibal while Hannibal kills him. 

Will wants to confess ‘I think I am in love with you’, but he won’t. Or at least, he won’t confess this to a person suit. If he says it to him, it has to be to the real Hannibal. 

Instead, Will leans forward and hesitates before taking the bite. 

Will doesn’t confess, but when he lets out a shaking breath and says, “Sometimes I don’t know where you end and where I begin. Sometimes, I feel like our souls are a mirror of each other,” it’s as close to a confession as it could get before he seals his lips around the offered spoon.

Hannibal’s pupils pulse and Will loses his breath, his thoughts, anything that defines him. He is reduced to his reflection in Hannibal’s blood-red eyes, voracious and hungry. It’s not romantic, or not in the pure, clean way that they have adopted as a farce. It’s Hannibal’s brand of gothic romance, one that consumes and obsesses and possesses.

Every muscle in Will’s body is tense, trying to restrain himself from jumping over the table and saying ‘I miss you, come back’. So he holds Hannibal's gaze, desperate to keep the monster here on the surface with him. Will doesn’t dare to blink for fear that if he does Hannibal will disappear, and he will be left alone again with this impostor.

Will’s inhale is shaky. He keeps his eyes on Hannibal’s the whole time as he dips his spoon into his own dessert blindly, guiding it on Hannibal’s way. 

Hannibal looks like he is a moment from running away or from killing Will on the spot. Will puts his hand on top of Hannibal’s, successfully trapping him. Hannibal running away when they’re this close to being what they were is a fate worse than death. 

Hannibal hesitates, and Will recognizes the moment that Hannibal is trying to take hold of his own emotions. 

“Please,” Will begs softly and Hannibal closes his eyes with an expression of unending suffering. A moment after he leans forward and when he closes his lips around the spoon and opens his eyes, he is there. 

Will gasps, lost into Hannibal’s eyes. The monster is pounding against the walls of his skull, screaming and howling. They’re both breathing heavily when Hannibal reels back. Will’s eyes suddenly come to Hannibal’s throat. He watches for a second the lewd bob of his Adam’s apple before he snaps his eyes back to Hannibal’s. 

The monster is still there, lurking in the shadows. It waits for a signal, the smallest display of vulnerability to sink his teeth into it. It’s dangerous to give Hannibal exactly what he wants. Even more dangerous still when they both want the same thing. Will does his best to suppress the shiver that wants to strike through him, he does his best not to look away.

In this moment everything else is meaningless. The restaurant, the date, the roles they’re playing. Will could say  a single word now and they would revert to this pure, perfect and boring mirage of a relationship. Will could also say another word, and Hannibal would come back to him. 

They could be in another country by the end of the night. 

It’s a decision unfortunately Will is not ready to make. That he shouldn’t be allowed to make. The tickle of danger in the air makes his breath quicken. He shouldn’t make that choice. He is torn from both sides, his morality and his desires. 

Will knows what he wants. He knows the intensity of how much he craves more than brief flashes of Hannibal. 

Still he can’t make that choice. Morality is not something Will can shrug off easily. Without his morality, he wouldn’t know what he could become. Morality is what had kept him –more or less– sane all this time. What dictated the things he had to do. Catch killers. Save lives. Sacrifice. More than rope, it had been a lifeline. How could he let go? He can’t even remember when it was that he first grasped it. It’s never been an option to let go. 

But sometimes in moments like this, filled with could it be's , Will realizes the true weight his morality has on him. He wishes Hannibal would simply take what he wants. Make that choice for him, put something in Will’s drink and take him away overnight. Relieve Will of the heavy burden of making a choice he knows he shouldn’t want.

(We could be like this).

After long enough, even holding onto a lifeline burns .

Hannibal has always done that to him. Put him behind bars and put him away, he’s arranged the pieces so Will had no other choice but to do what Hannibal wanted him to do. Will knows Hannibal could do it again, right now. He wants Hannibal to do it again. 

Will can’t ask for that. Asking would be making the choice and he can’t do that. One small nudge in the wrong direction and all could end up in disaster.

Yet this is the closest Will has been to the monster in weeks. Hannibal is again in front of him, all sharp edges and dangerous eyes with that obsession clear in him. Will may not let himself ask, but he parts his lips and wraps his fingers around Hannibal’s wrist, slipping his thumb to stroke the scars on Hannibal’s forearms.

“Please?” Will begs again, gesturing with his eyes to the desserts.

Will listens to Hannibal inhale, and he knows there is a part of Will in him. The scent of him in Hannibal’s lungs bringing life into him, sustenance. It permeates Hannibal’s mind palace. 

There is a mere blink of Hannibal’s eyes which marks his only reaction. The hunger that Will has glimpsed has doubled, emboldened by Will’s half-hidden invitation, and it’s finally Hannibal in front of him. Hannibal, who disregards all etiquette and moves his chair to Will’s side. Hannibal’s fingers are cruel when they sink into the flesh of Will’s cheeks, he grips Will’s face like a reprimand. He guides him to open his mouth and Will can’t help but lick his dry lips, accepting obediently the new spoonful of chocolate mousse that Hannibal places on his tongue.

Will’s brain is foggy, his heart is heavy, and he can’t really recognize the decadent flavor of the mousse. He is painfully focused on the sting of Hannibal’s blunt nails, the feeling of his fingers digging into his flesh, and the sensation of Hannibal’s scar under his fingertips where he still clings to the doctor’s wrist. He looks at Hannibal and sees hunger and blood-red eyes and for that moment, against all odds and against all the reasons that he knows why he shouldn’t, Will is happy. 

(We could be honest)

“You are terrible,” Hannibal says, low and dark, just as decadent as the melting chocolate mousse on Will’s tongue. 

“Yes,” Will answers after swallowing. He is floating inside his mind, in Hannibal’s hand. The world around them has disappeared, it has become unimportant. The only thing that matters is Hannibal, finally in front of him again. God, Will missed him so much.

“Have you finally grown bored?” Hannibal inquires curiously. He sounds disinterested to the common ear, but Will is an expert in every nervous twitch of his. Hannibal’s breath is too even, too mechanical. His hand is too still. He is shaking inside, nervous. Taut like a violin chord before finally snapping. 

“You say it as if you didn’t love chasing after me,” Wills says, aiming for petty and missing. His heart is rabbiting, his voice quivers and it ends up sounding playful.

Hannibal smiles, pleased with the show of Will’s teeth. He takes another spoonful of mousse, bigger than the previous ones. He brings it to Will’s lips and smears it all over his tongue.

“You keep teasing me, prodding at me. Waiting, hoping maybe, that I will pounce on you,” Hannibal says, leaving the empty bowl of Will’s dessert alone and bringing his own closer. With the same spoon, he brings caramel mousse to Will’s lips. “But I won’t, my dear,” he coos, overly sweet. “I’m not chasing you. I’m here, at your side.” 

Hannibal’s grip on his jaw is tight, preventing Will from snapping at him. It doesn’t stop Will from snarling at him. “No. You’re not.” 

The smug smile on Hannibal’s face would drive Will mad with anger any other time. It still does now, but it also comes with a sense of relief, the sense that everything is as it should be. That Hannibal is still here, even when he takes his eyes away from Will to take another spoonful of mousse.

“I told you already Will, this is what you wanted. This was your choice. Open,” he orders, offering the spoon to Will. Will eyes it warily as if Hannibal could have put something in it – as if Will hasn’t been hoping that he would. He relents after a moment too short. Will parts his lips, swallows around the spoon obediently again, just to witness that pleased glint in Hannibal’s eyes.

“I offered you a rare gift Will, it’s not my fault that you refused it.” 

Will looks at him with fury raging inside him, holding into a sneer. He wants to say ‘Didn’t I?’ but instead what comes out of his mouth is, “I can’t accept it.” 

“You can.” Hannibal says with that sense of finality in his words that make Wil think that maybe, maybe yes, he can. Their good old mind games. Hannibal didn’t seem to lose his practice while absent. “It’s here for whenever you’re ready to accept it. The only thing you have to do is ask.”

Hannibal rations the mousse now. The next spoonful is smaller than the previous ones, and Hannibal hovers it over his lips with eyes pinned on Will’s. For a moment Will thinks this will be the final step. That Hannibal will give him an order and Will will be unable to refuse him. He would do as Hannibal wants. He would finally be free of choice. He can almost taste the mousse on his tongue, hear the echo of Hannibal’s order inside his mind: ‘ask me’. 

“My darling boy,” Hannibal says instead, utterly fond. He places the spoon on Will’s tongue, puts pressure on it and forces Will to open his mouth wider. “I am happy. You are the only thing I need. The only one insisting on suffering is you. You act as a martyr by your own choice. This is your choice Will, I won’t make it for you. Now swallow.”

Will does and closes his eyes. The pinprick of tears stings his eyes. Hannibal hovers over him, leans closer, and buries his nose in Will’s hair. He nurses on the scent of Will’s pain like it’s his own dessert. He strokes Will’s skin gently, gives him a small taste of him but takes away what Will truly craves. Will wants to stay in this moment forever. Will wants Hannibal to just take, to give him the last shove Will needs. 

Hannibal retrieves the last of the caramel mousse in the spoon.

“Say goodbye Will, because no matter how much you kick and scream, you won’t see me again.” 

It’s almost the shove that Will needs but it’s not enough. It’s a threat though, and Will knows Hannibal means it. Will’s heart jumps inside his ribcage, he is frozen in place and his tongue refuses to collaborate when Hannibal slips the last bite inside his mouth. 

“Unless there’s something you want to say, Will?” He prompts. He moves Will like a doll, guiding his face to the side, making Will look at him in the blood-like eyes. Hannibal regards him with that cruel gaze of his that never fails to shake Will to his core. Will wants to answer, wants to say something but nothing comes out. His tongue is tied in a painful knot, the words trapped inside his chest. He tries to lean onto Hannibal for support but Hannibal doesn’t allow him. He tightens his grips and keeps Will where he is. 

Hannibal is cruel within reason, but he is not a heartless monster. He leans forward and places a soft kiss on Will’s forehead.

Will tries to cling to him but Hannibal denies him, reeling back, hovering over his lips like a ghost. Will refuses to swallow. If he keeps the mousse inside his mouth, this moment won’t end. 

“Nothing to say?” Hannibal mutters. “Such a shame, my darling,” He traces a soft pattern with his fingers over where the mark of his teeth still lingers. It  will keep on lingering on Will’s neck. His tone drops then, his smile falls and he orders, “Swallow.”

The illusion shatters when Will opens his eyes and his mouth is empty. He sees the darkness and the blood disappears from Hannibal's eyes as he folds it away and zips the person suit up tight. In front of Will sits a different man. A man with soft, warm, brown eyes and a kind smile that looks alien on his face.

Will aches.

The next few weeks are horrible. 

Hannibal is perfect in every sense. The devoted boyfriend, the gentle friend and kind doctor. He is isolated by the world by his own design and loves every second of it. His sole focus is to dote on Will.

Will is desperate. Every attempt to crack Hannibal’s barriers is met with indifference. Hannibal still gentles their kisses. Every cruel remark goes straight over his head. When Will tries to kiss his scars, Hannibal takes them away from him. 

Hannibal has become exactly what everybody thinks he is. 

Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Gentle friend, perfect socialite, benevolent doctor. Kind, harmless, good.

Will hates him.

Will tries to grasp what he can. He clings to the idea, the knowledge that Hannibal’s monster takes immense joy in torturing him like this. 

In the end, it’s not enough. 

Will looks into Hannibal's warm, soft, brown eyes and he craves and aches. He wants to shout, kick and scream; and more than that, he wants to reduce this person suit to shreds and bring Hannibal back to him.

The dogs are restless around him. Will did his best to hug them all as much as he possibly could, kiss them, and then he’d hugged them again. His heart hurts, but he can’t drag them into this mess.

He has a message written in his phone, saved on drafts, ready to ask Alana to take care of them for the night. Will knows he is on no good terms with her but she has always been kind. He knows she will come tonight if he asks her to. He knows she will take good care of them, and make sure that they get good homes.

Will knows tonight can end in two ways: With Hannibal taking him away or with a splatter of blood in Hannibal’s kitchen. Will knows that at some point their relationship will end up with his blood spilled on Hannibal's kitchen floor. If that happens tonight or months from now, that’s a problem for future Will. It’s always a problem for future-Will. There’s no doubt why he hates past-Will so much.

But that’s not important right now. The important thing right now is that Will Graham, for the first time in his life, makes a fucking choice. 

He has enough time to muster an apology to Beverly and another to Abigail while the phone rings. There is another moment that he could have used to muster an apology to Hannibal’s old victims or Hannibal’s victims-to-be, but instead he uses it to take a deep breath. 

Jack answers in the third ring. Will thought he was going to hesitate when Jack answered. He does not, and beats Jack to the first word.

“I quit.” 

It’s incredibly more cathartic than he thought it would be.

“Listen, Will–”

“No Jack, you listen. I quit.” Will says, looking at the countless pictures of Hannibal’s tableaux scattered on his kitchen table. He does not feel the guilt or the anger that he knows he should feel. He feels nothing at all, except a deep sense of relief. “This is the best possible outcome. We could have never caught the Ripper. Now he is gone. Enjoy a Ripperless world.”

Winston nudges at his hand, and Will fails to end the call right there.

“And what if he comes back?” Jack asks with good reason. He doesn’t know, but the Ripper is about to come back at any moment. 

“Then take this as a well deserved holiday, a time out if you want. For fucks sake Jack, take Bella to Italy.” It’s a low blow, honestly, but desperate times require desperate measures. In all honesty, a holiday would do Jack well. He deserves it. So does Bella.

There’s silence on the other end of the line. Will waits for a whole four seconds as he pets Winston’s head, and when Jack fails to answer that too, Will continues.

“You’ll have my formal resignation letter at your desk by morning.”

Will ends the call and he wishes flip phones were still in fashion. It would have been so satisfactory to end the call with a hard click of the cover.

Well. Fuck. Social anxiety is a bitch, but it has an advantage: Once you put things into motion, you stick to that.

Will hugs the dogs one last time, leaves his phone on the table, leaves the door open, and hugs the dogs another last time. Then he goes to the car.

Will barges into Hannibal’s house because he doesn’t have a single bone of self-preservation left inside his body, and because clearly his moral compass doesn’t have a north anymore. Hannibal Lecter has meddled up with it until he turned the already beaten-up thing useless. 

Will, being fed up with a useless compass, crushes it with the metaphorical shovel.

Hannibal is stronger, faster, and more experienced. The only advantage Will has is his puppy eyes and the element of surprise. There isn’t a beep when Will enters the house but the delighted intonation in Hannibal’s voice is close enough. 

“Will, you’re early–”

Or it is until Will pushes him against the counter (because of course, Hannibal is in the kitchen) and grips at his collar. Satisfaction curls in his guts when he sees Hannibal clenching his hands, his eyes snapping towards the knife at his side. 

“This isn’t. Fucking. Sustainable,” Will snarls, taking the metaphorical shovel in his hands, decided to demolish Hannibal’s barriers and break him from the cage.

“I have no idea of what–”

“Oh, stop this shit, will you? I’m asking , Hannibal,” It’s the second time within one minute that Will interrupts him. It’s really a good thing that Hannibal still wants to play amnesiac boyfriend because if not, Will is sure he would have been thrown into the oven by now. 

“Will–” 

Three times in a row, new record.

“I quit the FBI, and programmed the email with my resignation letter for tomorrow morning,” Will takes Hannibal’s hands in his, reducing the possibility of a blood bath as much as he possibly can. He looks into Hannibal’s eyes and tries to shove some sense into that thick skull of his. “I texted Alana to take care of my dogs tonight. I left my phone at home.” 

Hannibal’s eyes flash to his, a deep red starts bleeding into his brown irises. Will is staring into the abyss, and the abyss is finally staring back. The monster is raging. Will sinks the head of the shovel between the doors of Hannibal’s mind palace and breaks his way through it with a forceful stomp. 

“I have a bag ready in my car.” 

Hannibal lunges towards him, reversing their positions. Will finds himself pinned to the counter, it’s edge biting at his lower back as Hannibal fists his hair. 

It’s by no means their first kiss, but it feels as it is. It’s soft and desperate all at once, a kiss that’s been a long time coming.

Adoration. Hunger. Obsession. Teeth, blood and want 

Hannibal sinks his teeth into the meat of the opportunity, and moans when the first drops of Will’s blood fall on his tongue. Will drinks it all in and kisses him with the same ardor.

Love. Love. Love. 

Passion, chaos, emotion. So many emotions. They thrum against Will’s ribs, a tumultuous typhoon inside of him. Will’s body cannot contain the whole of his want – the whole of his relief. His happiness is unprecedented. He feels at the point of breaking. The unaddressed things buried in the pit of his mind come suddenly crashing through his mind palace, stumbling with everything in their path.

Hannibal kneels on the floor. There’s red smeared on his bottom lip. There is blood in his eyes. He untucks Will’s shirt from his slacks and Will is so happy he could cry. 

“What exactly are you asking for, my dear?” Hannibal asks with impossibly good humor as he rolls Will’s shirt up and kisses a path up the skin of his abdomen.

“I’m asking you to come back to me,” Will moans, one hand threading his fingers into Hannibal’s ashen hair, the other gripping at the counter behind him so as to not fall on his knees with him. He feels Hannibal smile, the doctor’s teeth scraping at the soft skin. Will looks down and confesses what has been killing him for months now. “I miss you.”

Hannibal’s teeth are deadly sharp and he doesn’t hesitate for a second to bite a smile on Will’s abdomen. Bite after bite, tracing a shape from one side to the other, nursing at the blood that drips down and damps Will’s slacks. He grips at Will’s waist, keeping him in place while Will tries not to squirm. 

The pain stings but Will’s heart is soaring. Hannibal is finally there in front of him, on his knees. There’s blood on Hannibal’s kitchen floor like Will had expected, but he isn’t really complaining when Hannibal unbuckles his belt.

“Fuck, we don’t have time for this,” Will says, but he makes no attempt to stop him and still offers the tender parts of his belly to Hannibal. All the vulnerable parts of him at the mercy of Hannibal’s sharp teeth. Somewhere in the pits of Will’s brain, he knows that sticking his cock into a cannibal’s mouth is a very bad idea. He would listen at any other point, if only Hannibal’s mouth didn’t feel so fucking good, hot and wet against his skin.

Will takes a deep breath and looks down at where Hannibal is still kneeling and the picture in front of him steals his breath away. 

Until now Will has only had puzzle pieces of Hannibal’s love for him. He had been thinking that it would end at some point, that once the chase finished he wouldn’t find Will interesting anymore. Will had come here prepared to be taken away and hoping he would survive for as much as he could. He’d been ready to enjoy his last moments with the real Hannibal, no matter if they were going to be years, months, weeks or just that, mere seconds in his hands – but then Will looks down and meets those dark eyes. 

Hannibal’s love is unending, raw and devastating. It’s brutally violent and tender, so tender that Will’s vision blurs. The things that he had glimpsed on Hannibal’s eyes all this time doesn’t even compare to the intensity in the emotions of the man in front of him.

“We’ll need to make a detour before going to the airport,” Hannibal says, pressing his forehead to Will’s skin. He presses a soft, crimson kiss to the skin and smears blood further. “And I’ll need to clean these,” he says, nudging at the bleeding injuries on Will’s abdomen.

Will’s laugh is less a sound and more a shaky breath when he combs his fingers through Hannibal’s hair. “Are we going to get the dogs?” 

“Two detours then,” Hannibal amends. “And a private jet.”

“How the fuck can you arrange a private – you know what? I don’t care,” and there’s nothing more truthful than that. Will doesn’t care how or where. He came here ready to leave everything behind and follow Hannibal to the end of the world. He catches a tear falling down Hannibal’s cheek with his thumb. There is a tenderness in that action that should feel alien to this new union, and yet it feels natural. Easy. Easier even than whatever they have been doing until now. 

“Stop looking so smug,” Will says endearingly, even if Hannibal looks the furthest thing from it. 

Hannibal chuckles, releasing a deep breath. He closes his eyes and nuzzles at Will’s skin, mutters against it “I’m utterly happy.” 

Will has no option but to smile. 

“I bet you are,” he says, and what he truly means is ‘Yeah, me too.’ 

“You’re not asking where we’re going?” Hannibal whispers. His hair feels smooth and soft sliding through Will’s fingers, and Will wishes they could stay here a little more basking in this afterglow.

“Are we taking the dogs?”

There is a long-suffering sigh from the floor, and Will makes an effort to not laugh. 

“Yes.” 

“Take me anywhere you want then, I don’t care,” Will says, fists Hannibal’s shirt between his fingers and casually pulls at Hannibal to stand up.  

Hannibal fits between his legs, and his hands cup Will’s cheek gently. His eyes are a deep red, and Will cannot for the life of him stop looking at them.

“And the other detour?”

“I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

Will nods once, then twice, then thrice and he feels the telltale of tears pooling in his eyes ready to spill. He brings Hannibal closer to him and tucks his head under Hannibal’s chin. He finally relaxes in Hannibal’s arms, free of his decaying ethical battle and the moral responsibilities he could no longer shoulder. Finally he embraces Hannibal.

“I missed you,” Will confesses with a sob into Hannibal’s neck. The confessions and unaddressed feelings start to crawl out of the pit and Will can’t control them. Hannibal tightens his arms around him and Will takes a small satisfaction knowing his blood is staining Hannibal’s clothes too. Maybe that will teach Hannibal not to make him bleed. “I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t stop. I missed you and it hurt. Every day I wished you stopped being someone else, you just – left me alone.” 

Will takes a breath that smells only of Hannibal, takes him inside his lungs and then reels back. Hannibal’s eyes are still a deep red, there’s still blood on the corner of his lip. There’s a coat of moisture on his eyes that speaks of the force of his feelings. He’s still in front of Will, and Will clings to him making sure he won’t ever leave ever again.

Will has still the vague recollection that he’s still bleeding. Slightly – probably without the need of stitches, though they should really take a look at those bites. Right now, what Will really needs is to make sure the next time he looks into Hannibal’s eyes, and all the times after that, he will only see red.

“You can’t leave me again, Hannibal,” Will words it like a fact, but in truth is both an order and a plea. ‘Don’t leave’ and ‘Please, don’t leave me alone again.’ Will doesn’t say ‘If you leave me, I will die’ but is there, hidden underneath, implicit in the space where their souls have bonded. Where they both know if they get severed, there will be an empty space gaping with the shape of the other. 

Hannibal hears it. Will knows he knows, that he understands, that he sees past his words and directly into his soul. 

“And when I come to you with red fingers?” Hannibal asks and it rubs on Will’s mind like a splinter, so small and fine he almost misses it. A tiny, crystalline fragment of vulnerability. 

There is still the last barrier between them, and Will destroys it in a breath.

“I lick the blood off them.” 

Will finally sees all of Hannibal’s walls fall at his feet and he holds onto Hannibal. Will accepts the kiss that comes with more tears, and whispers ‘Don’t ever leave me again,’ into it.

“I promise.”

The dogs are piled in the back of Will’s car, all happy waving tails and pure excitement. Will has a bandage wrapped around his abdomen, and he really shouldn’t be driving but Hannibal has been busy since they left his house – making call after call on his phone. In the hours they’ve been in the car Will has heard Hannibal speak three different languages and make at least twelve –if not more– calls one after the other.

At some point Will catches the word Italy, so that’s one thing he knows. At some point, he hears Hannibal say ‘prepare your bags’ and hang up immediately after, and that’s one thing he doesn’t understand but he trusts that the answer will eventually. It does. 

In the shape of Abigail exiting a safe house with a bag in her hand, one ear less, bright eyes, and alive. 

Will turns open-mouthed to Hannibal and he feels the sudden need to punch him in the face and kiss him at the same time. “Surprise,” Hannibal says, and he looks so fucking full of himself that Will has no option but to drag him into a kiss to erase that smug smile off his face.