Work Text:
Or, The Adventures of Hannibal Lecter, Fake Veterinarian,
and His Equally Fake Veterinary Assistant
Their quiet evening at home tangled together in a lazy huddle is interrupted by a call from Adriana. Hannibal answers, but Will can hear her panicky voice even without the benefit of the speaker.
"It's Dot's first time lambing and she's gotten herself stuck between two rocks." Dot (presumably) bleats forlornly in the background. "I think she got a bit nervous and wanted to hide. If there's anything you can do, I sure would appreciate it."
Will counts back the days to when they adopted Cephi and adds on a few more. By his estimation, Hannibal is no more than two weeks into pretending to be a retired veterinarian, but he's apparently convincing enough to be called upon in the middle of the night.
"Sheep have always been one of my favorite animals," Hannibal says. Will raises his eyebrows at that. "I'd be more than happy to help. Tell the poor thing help I'm on the way."
"Oh thank you," comes her relieved reply. "And be sure to bring your friend! We may need his help, too."
Hannibal glances Will's way. "Of course. Paul would be more than happy to assist. He's nodding enthusiastically at me right now."
Will, definitely not nodding, stares at Hannibal for several moments after the call ends, and receives in return an expression of pure, puzzled innocence.
"You're going to get found out," Will explains.
"For what?" Hannibal asks. "And as what?"
"For being a fake veterinarian!" Will cries. "And as a cannibal on the run from the law! You don't know the first thing about helping a sheep give birth--and don't tell me it can't be that different from a human giving birth. There are hooves involved."
Hannibal reaches over and gives his hands a squeeze that's surely meant to be reassuring. "The sheep most likely doesn't need my help to give birth. She just needs a hand in extricating herself from the rocks--which is a subject that you may recall I know something about."
***
Fake veterinarian or not, Hannibal knows how to dress the part. He wears old jeans with the knees worn nearly bare and an olive green canvas shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His rubber knee-high boots shouldn't look sexy on anyone but somehow really, really do on him.
They bring Cephi along and let her out of the truck play with her old friends while they meet Adriana out by the barn. Behind it is a heap of rocks--some of them fully qualified to be considered boulders--about twice as high as Will is tall and thirty or so feet wide. Under normal circumstances, it's probably all the flock's favorite place to play. Currently, though, there's a ewe stuck between two of the larger boulders. Only the back half of her is visible.
"I know sheep don't have a reputation as the smartest of barnyard animals," Adriana says, "but I swear this is the first time one of them's been silly enough to get stuck like this."
"As you said, she most likely got nervous," Hannibal says. He lifts his chin into the wind and takes a sniff. "As much from impending motherhood as from the thunderstorm that's heading our way. Going to be a dreadful one, I think. Perhaps she's smarter than we humans give her credit for."
Dot bleats---in agreement or despair, Will can't say.
Hannibal gives her rump a soft pat to let her know he's behind her, then gives her belly and waist a more thorough prodding.
Will feels useless just standing there, occasionally nodding as if to say "yep, that is indeed a pregnant ewe and those are indeed rocks."
"Should I... boil some water?" he asks with a shrug.
"Lambing is quite different from human birth," Hannibal says with a smile that clearly comes across as smug even in nearly complete darkness. "That won't be necessary."
Will rolls his eyes.
Hannibal slips his right hand between the rocks to calm Dot with a gentle rub of her shoulders. With his left, he takes firm hold of her wool and tugs backwards.
"Grab her hindquarters," he says.
It takes Will a few moments to realize the instruction was meant for him.
"What? How?"
"I'll go get you an apron," Adriana says before heading towards her house at a good clip.
"Why do I need an apron?" he calls after her, but she's already too far away.
Will takes a few tentative steps towards the sheep and frowns. "Hm."
"Surely you've had to get a dog unstuck from something," Hannibal says.
"I mean, I've pulled dogs out from under cars and porches but they weren't stuck like this," Will says. "They didn't have hooves to kick me in the balls with, either."
He moves to stand a bit to the side of Dot's rump, but Hannibal shakes his head.
"You'll have better leverage directly behind her."
Will girds his loins---wishing he were doing so literally---and gets into position. Copying Hannibal's grip, he sinks his fingers deep into Dot's thick, oily wool and holds on tight. The smell from the business end of a sheep isn't great, but at least he's been around enough dead bodies to know there are worse odors in the world.
"We'll pull on three," Hannibal says. "If she kicks you anywhere important, rest assured I will personally tend to it with tenderness and enthusiasm."
"Yeah, you'd damned well better," Will grumbles.
Hannibal winks at him and begins the countdown. "One... two... thr--"
Something warm and wet touches Will's belly. "Hold up," he says, taking half a step back so he can get a look. "Um... there's a droopy balloon coming out of her."
Hannibal releases his grip on her wool. "The water bag. Her lamb is on the way."
Will knows this, because at nearly the exact moment Hannibal starts to announce the arrival, a pair of hooves with a little face nestled between them appears in place of the water bag. By the last word, the lamb has rocketed free from the birth canal and dropped into Will's arms. In floppiness, wetness and even weight, it feels like he's just caught a half-cooled lasagna fallen free of its baking pan.
"Oh," he says, nonplussed.
Dot, suddenly a bit slimmer around the middle, backs out of the rocks on her own. Will rolls out of the way with the lamb still in his grasp.
As soon as he sets the little thing down, its mother bends her head to sniff and lick its face, at first tentatively and then with growing confidence. The lamb blinks and lets out a diminutive "bleh!" to announce that everything is confusing, but basically fine.
Adriana joins them, panting for breath. "Oh, damn! I've missed it!" Then she gives Will a look, eyebrows going up as she gets to his splattered, gooey T-shirt. She holds up the apron she went to fetch. "That's what this was for."
***
Hannibal and Adriana get all the animals into the barn while Will rinses his shirt out at the water pump. It's not worth putting back on at this point, so he slings it over his shoulder with the thought that he might seduce Hannibal with his bare chest on the way home.
That's if they get home any time soon. He can hear the approaching thunder now, and smell the charged air that Hannibal picked up on an hour earlier.
Adriana leaves the barn with a big, relieved smile and a hug for Will. "Thank you both so much for everything. I don't know what I would've done."
"We really didn't do anything," Will says. "Your sheep basically did everything herself. I mean, at least Oliver comforted her. I was just sort of a... big catcher's mitt."
Adriana waves aside his protest. "It was a great help to my nerves to have you here," she says. "Speaking of which, Oliver says he wants to stay the night in the barn to make sure Dot delivers the placenta in due time. I figured he might want you to stay, too, so I volunteered to have Cephi in the house."
She gives him a slow nod as if they've shared some secret together.
"Oh... okay," Will says, not quite getting it but returning her nod anyway.
She claps him on the shoulder. "Just try not to upset Bartram. That old donkey positively hates curse words. It's the damnedest thing!"
He's as baffled as can be as he climbs up into the barn's hayloft, but begins to understand as soon as he sees the blankets strewn atop a makeshift bed. He understands completely when a mostly naked Hannibal steps out from behind a stack of hay bales.
"You're wearing rubber boots," Will says, covering his mouth to keep from bursting out laughing.
"I am."
"You're wearing just rubber boots," Will clarifies.
"I saw the way you were looking at them earlier," Hannibal says, drawing up one leg to gesture at the boot.
Will can't hold back the laughter. "What if Adriana had come up here with me and seen you posing like some kind of perverted galoshes salesman?"
"I would've heard her," Hannibal says. "Besides, she's under the impression that you and I have secret crushes on each other and just need to 'have a go at it.' It was her idea we stay in here together for the night."
Will twists his wet shirt into a rope and slings it around Hannibal's waist to pull him closer. "She's right, you know."
Hannibal gives him a drowsily lustful look. "Oh?"
"I do have a crush on you," Will says. "I have for a long time."
Hannibal gasps. "You'll never believe this, but I also have a crush on you."
Will gasps, too. "Really? What was it that first attracted you to me?"
Hannibal slips his arms around Will's neck. "The thickness of your thighs. 'He could strangle someone with those,' I thought. I hoped it would be me."
Will throws back his head and lets out a guffaw of genuine delight. "Knowing you, that's probably actually at least a little bit true!"
"It's a lot true," Hannibal corrects him. "And you? What did you first find attractive in me?"
"You already know how I feel about your ankles," Will says. "But of course I was intrigued by you long before that and didn't realize it. Something about what was going on in the bone arena of your skull."
Hannibal narrows his eyes. "Are you mocking me?"
"It was a very intense line to use on someone you'd just met! I'm never going to let you forget it."
Hannibal slides his hands to Will's shoulders and up the sides of his neck, his fingers tantalizingly light in their touch. "It all worked out in the end eventually." He traces the outline of Will's lower lip with his thumbs before going in for a soft, lingering kiss. Hannibal hasn't shaved all day and Will finds an odd pleasure in knowing his lips will be red and stinging by the time the sun comes up.
The storm rolls in above them with low rumble of thunder and the drumming of rain against the corrugated metal roof. Will feels the nervous energy of the animals below them, the way they shuffle and jostle each other. Dot is in a stall with just her lamb, away from the others.
Will sighs when the kiss ends. "I suppose you should go check on your patients."
"I suppose I should," Hannibal says before moving in for another kiss.
Will holds up a hand between them. "If you kiss me again, I will push you down onto those blankets and won't let you up for at least an hour."
Hannibal wiggles his invisible brows. "Adriana will be so pleased she was able to bring us together at last."
Will gives him a slap on the butt. "Go."
Hannibal drapes his nakedness in a blanket before starting down the stairs. "An hour," he reminds Will. "I'm holding you to it."
Will waves him off. "Go!"
He stretches out on the hay bed and crosses his arms under his head. He listens to the rain as it pelts the roof harder and harder and the low rumbles are punctuated by sharp snaps of thunder. Beneath that is Hannibal's voice as he talks soothingly to Dot and the lamb. He says things like, "What an adept mother you're proving to be," and "Such a lucky baby boy," with little coos of approval in between.
Hannibal heads back up the stairs a few minutes later. "She's eating the placenta now, so all is well." Will makes face. "She has to keep the predators from smelling her baby, Will."
Will rolls onto his side. "Are sheep really one of your favorite animals? Is it a biblical thing? Religio-aesthetic parallels? Maybe there's some Medieval painting of a sheep you're sentimental about."
"Their coats are very bouncy," Hannibal says, shedding his blanket with the flair of a matador twirling off his cape. He kneels down beside Will on the bed. "I enjoy petting them."
Will stares at him for a moment. Then stares at him for another moment. "So that's what's going on in that bone arena of yours."
Hannibal swings one leg over and straddles him at the waist. "There isn't always a complex reason for the things I feel."
Will moves his hips to grind his erection into the sweet curve of Hannibal's ass. "You feel that?"
"And what's the reason for that?" He reaches down to start unzipping Will's jeans.
Another grind. "You make me utterly and shamelessly horny. There are times I wish I could crawl inside you cock first."
"We could discuss quantum mechanics and wavefunction and the probability of occupying the same space at the same ti--"
"Or you could go for a ride," Will says. He gives a playful slap to Hannibal's hip. "Giddyup!"
"Just to remind you, you're the horse in this sexual metaphor," Hannibal says, and settles in for the ride he's been offered without further edification.
Sometimes Will gets so caught up in just watching Hannibal that he entirely forgets about his own pleasure. Or maybe looking at Hannibal is the lion's share of the joy he feels whenever they land in a bed together. Or a kitchen table. Or a pile of hay in a barn...
But God damn, he's gorgeous. Hannibal is in amazing shape, but he'll always be a little soft low in his belly, which Will finds both endearing and sexy as hell for some reason. His thighs like the rest of his legs are lean and shockingly strong, so Will always takes some pride in making them weak to the point of shaking. Then there's the sweat beading off his brow, coursing down his face and collecting in the hollow of his throat, gleaming on his skin in the occasional flash of lightning like streaks of mercury. He's like some kind of primal god and he never breaks eye contact the whole time he's moving, undulating his hips and clenching his muscles in a steady rhythm. It's hypnotic. Will can't even bring himself to blink for fear of missing any moment of this sight.
"Come back to earth," Hannibal says, not letting up.
Will exhales a laugh. "I shouldn't be surprised anymore that you can read me so well."
Hannibal swivels his hips. "When we spend our entire lives... believing no one... will ever truly see us... perhaps it never stops being a wonder... when we're proven wrong." He's breathing hard and his muscles are trembling, but he doesn't slow down.
"Lean forward," Will says. "Put your hands on my shoulders... let me take over."
The new position moves Hannibal just a little up and forward, so Will shifts slightly to get back under him.
"Hold still now," Will instructs him.
Hannibal nods without a word.
Will takes hold of his ass, spreads his cheeks apart to get as deep as possible, and rams himself home.
Hannibal gasps. Sweat shakes loose from the fringe of his hair and drops onto Will's face. He licks some off his lips then tilts his head up, asking for a kiss.
When Hannibal obliges him, Will pulls out and rocks back into him hard enough that their teeth scrape together. Hannibal grunts into his open mouth.
"Too hard?" Will asks.
"You know it isn't," comes the throaty reply.
Suddenly Will feels like he can't touch enough of Hannibal all at once. Well, it's not that sudden, since he almost constantly feels that way, but the need feels particularly urgent now. He wants to cup that sweet little ass, dig his nails into that curved back and tear away the brand scar, twist his fingers into Hannibal's hair--both on his head and on his chest--all at the same time.
"It nearly drove me mad," Hannibal says.
"What did?" Will asks, fucking into him again.
"When you climbed up here... shirt over your shoulder...water dripping down your bare torso. I wanted to take you then and there... or be taken by you."
"I commend you for still tending to your patient," Will says, punctuating every other word with another thrust.
Hannibal's hands slide off Will's shoulders. His left elbow buckles and he lands on one forearm. He doesn't try to get back up again, but he holds his position. Will can feel Hannibal's as-yet-ignored cock swinging against his belly, dripping onto his skin.
"Finish me off," Hannibal whispers shakily in his ear.
He keeps one hand at the nape of Hannibal's neck, tangled in his hair, and reaches down to make a fist for his cock with the other. It takes only a few twisting strokes before he hears Hannibal's groan and feels the hot spurts of come slicking his fingers.
Hannibal looks at him again just in time to see him licking his reward off his hand. "You beautiful thing," he says, reverently. "Ah, you beautiful thing, give me everything."
Unable to hold back after such a plea, he spills inside Hannibal with an anguished cry. It feels too good. It should be impossible to feel this good. How can it feel this good to explode like a neutron bomb? Every particle of his body is scattered across the barn. He obliterates into pure liquid energy. He's pretty sure he blacks out for a little while.
When he starts to get his wits back, Hannibal is lying half on top of him and half on the pile of hay.
"I have a confession to make," Hannibal mumbles into the side of his neck.
"Mmh?" It's the only syllable he can form at this point.
Hannibal rolls part of the way onto his back. "We agreed that we would tell people that we were long-time friends and business partners if they asked. Yes?"
"Mmh," Will agrees.
"I may have sounded... wistful... when I told Adriana we were friends."
Will shrugs. It's not his preferred disguise, but he doubts Adriana is a homophobe. "Iss fine." The ability to speak is coming back to him a little at a time. "Dishy act like iss not fine?"
"Actually, I suspect she may have helped Dot get stuck in those rocks," Hannibal says. "As a way to bring us together."
Will snorts, and then the snort turns into sex-drunk laughter. "I have to say... her plan worked perfectly."
"If only we'd known her five years ago," Hannibal says.
"Nah," Will says as he leans in, still laughing a little. He rubs nose-tips with Hannibal. "She could help Oliver and Paul. I don't think she would've known what to do with the real us."
Hannibal reaches up to brush the wet hair off Will's brow. "It's not as much of a difference as one might think," he says. He draws his thumb again over the outline of Will's lips. "I merely returned to my old mindset when I spoke of you with her, said the things I wish I could've said then."
"Like what?" He's genuinely interested to know.
"I said I didn't always know how to approach you... That I wished I could just tell you the truth about me, but knew you weren't ready to hear it."
Will tangles their fingers together and kisses Hannibal's knuckles. "Did you tell her that truth was the fact you're a cannibal and killer?"
"Of course not," Hannibal says, turning their hands so he can kiss Will's wrist. "Nor did I tell her that you're terribly rude and I must have lost my senses to be so smitten with you."
Will gives him a playful shove, then pulls the blanket up over them both. "Let's listen to the thunder for a while," he says. "Then we can trade metaphorical positions."
Hannibal makes a drowsy sound of agreement.
Spending the evening at home would have been a fine way to pass the time but this, Will thinks, is far better than he could've predicted when he was standing at the back end of one of Hannibal Lecter's surprisingly favorite animals, waiting for a lamb's arrival.
-end-