Chapter Text
“Hungry, Will?”
The question shook Will out of his reverie. Before him, his wineglass sat forgotten, half-full. The rim bore the faintest impression of his lower lip—a smudge of oil and breath. He hadn’t taken a sip in some time, too distracted by the slow pageantry of Hannibal preparing the meal.
Or more accurately: the pageantry of the man himself.
Lately, it had become harder not to notice.
The little things, at first—how Hannibal’s voice dropped when he said Will’s name, how his gaze lingered just a moment too long. How he moved through the kitchen, through crime scenes, as if he were performing for someone. As if Will were meant to watch.
And Will had been watching. More and more. Letting his eyes wander when he thought he wouldn’t be caught. On Hannibal’s hands, especially. How they commanded a knife, coaxed beauty from raw flesh. Hands that butchered, sutured, and painted meals into art.
He’d told himself it was curiosity. Fascination, maybe. Awareness.
An ache in his chest when Hannibal leaned too close, murmuring in his ear when the rest of the team was distracted. A burn low in his belly when their fingers brushed. And in his quieter moments, when he let his mind go slack—fantasies. Half-formed, shameless, sudden. A flash of teeth. A firm grip.
Will hadn’t admitted it out loud. But he’d stopped denying it.
Across the table, Hannibal arranged the main course, a content expression on his face. Will’s eyes flicked downward—Hannibal had rolled his sleeves up past the elbows, exposing sinewed forearms. The veins in his hands stood in pale relief beneath the skin, moving with each subtle adjustment of the plate, each flick of a fingertip.
Yes, Will was hungry.
The dish came from a copper pan still whispering steam, filling the room with a lush aroma that clung to the air—herbaceous and sweet, with something darker underneath, like damp earth after rain or crushed blossoms underfoot. It made his mouth water. It made something in the air shift.
“Where did you go just then?”
Hannibal’s voice was gentle, coaxing. His expression open—no hint of mockery. Just curiosity, polished but sincere.
That made it worse.
Embarrassment spiked in Will’s veins, quick and hot. A flush rose unbidden across his cheekbones. He reached up and ran a hand across his brown, not quite scratching, not quite hiding. “Sorry, long day at work,” he mumbled. “Zoned out a bit.”
While appreciating how attractive my not-psychiatrist is went unsaid.
With a hum of acknowledgment, Hannibal placed the plate in front of him: a cut of seared meat, lacquered in a thick, golden reduction. The glaze shimmered like glass. It was crowned with delicate pale flowers—soft petaled and ghostly, like moonlight plucked and set down just so.
“This course is a rarity,” Hannibal said, voice smooth as the wine still breathing in Will’s glass. “The plant used in the glaze only blooms under very specific conditions. I was fortunate to acquire it.”
Will looked from the plate to Hannibal, brow lifting. A dry smile curved his lips, familiar armor against the heat still licking up the back of his neck.
“Sounds ominous,” he commented.
“Rare does not mean dangerous,” Hannibal replied with a minute frown, as if he was insulted that Will would think anything else.
“Not always,” Will countered, tapping the tip of his knife against the edge of the plate. “But sometimes it means… misunderstood. Unpredictable. Fatal, in the right—or wrong—dose.”
Hannibal smiled faintly. “Clever boy.”
Will resolutely ignored the way his stomach tightened at the words. It wasn’t even what Hannibal had said—it was how he said it. Like a reward. Like Will had been a very good student. His thighs tensed under the table. He didn’t move.
“So,” Will began after a few beats of silence. “You gonna tell me what is is?”
Hannibal’s eyes flickered down to the plate, then back to Will’s face.
“Something exquisite,” he conceded. “And entirely safe.”
Will stared, saying nothing.
“Trust that I wouldn’t feed you anything I wouldn’t consume myself.”
Will tilted his head, mouth curling into something crooked and faintly dangerous.
“Considering your diet, I’m not sure that’s the comfort you think it is.” His tone was dry, indulgent. He couldn’t help it. It was too easy, teasing Hannibal like this, needling the implication of what they both knew. He almost smirked when he said it. Almost.
“Then you’ll be relieved to know this course contains no long pork,” Hannibal snarked. “Tonight, your meat is thoroughly mundane.”
Will exhaled sharply through his nose. The subtle emphasis Hannibal put on meat was suspicious, but that was as much information as he was going to get. And, God help him, he did trust Hannibal.
“This had better be the fun kind of drugging,” Will warned before picking up his knife and cutting into the meat, the blade sliding through with no resistance.
As was his custom, Hannibal was watching him, gaze heavy and unblinking. He looked ravenous.
Will brought the bite to his mouth. Chewed.
The flavor bloomed with a strange brightness, perfumed but not cloying. It spread under his tongue and around his gums like syrup, soft and slow. Every nerve in his mouth lit up, tingling where the glaze lingered.
The vividness of it was startling.
“Huh,” he muttered, mostly to himself.
“Too strong?”
Will chewed slowly. Swallowed.
“No,” he said, licking a trace of glaze from his lip. “Just… rich.”
Hannibal seemed pleased by that—just the barest twitch at the corner of his mouth. Satisfied, he turned his attention to his own plate and began to eat, as serene as always.
The conversation wandered easily after that, like it always did once Will let himself relax into it. They spoke of work—one of the newer agents at the Bureau had nearly botched a crime scene photo sweep, and Will had psent the better part of the morning trying not to bit someone’s head off. Hannibal listened with quiet interest, occasionally prompting him with questions or comments that somehow managed to both soothe and provoke.
Talk turned to the dogs. Buster had eaten something he shouldn’t have. Again. Hannibal asked after Winston specifically, with the kind of fondness normally reserved for… well, nobody, really. Except maybe Will himself.
All the while they were talking, something was changing.
It started as a low pulse in his belly. Subtle. Background noise. A pleasant warmth that he barely registered. Like the comfort of whiskey on an empty stomach—except it wasn’t spreading outward. It was dropping lower, deep and unmoving.
His skin felt oddly aware. Not necessarily flushed, not exactly hot—just present. As if every inch of it had been reminded it existed. The brush of his shirt against his arms. The pressure of his belt where it cinched at his waist. The soft, dry bite of denim at his thighs. Normal sensations, suddenly foregrounded.
Will shifted in his chair. Just a small shift, a slight roll of his hips. But the fabric of his jeans dragged just so, and the sensation bloomed, warm and unwelcome, right across the front of his groin.
He cleared his through, reaching for the wineglass like it might distract him from the feeling gathering below his belt.
It didn’t.
Rather valiantly, he thought, Will carried on the conversation with Hannibal, even as the warmth became more insistent. It curled just above his hips, pressing in with slow insistence.
He adjusted in his seat again. The again. Crossed one leg before immediately uncrossing it. The friction of denim was suddenly criminal. He was almost certain he could feel the seam.
Hannibal’s voice broke gently through his spiral.
“Are you uncomfortable?”
Will looked up sharply. Hannibal’s expression was all polite concern, with just a dash of clinical curiosity.
He is so full of shit .
When he had asked if Hannibal was drugging him, he hadn’t expected this . He hadn’t expected to be melting from the inside out, blood rushing to the wrong places, lungs tightening with want. He hadn’t expected heat. And he definitely hadn’t expected to be trying to maintain a conversation while slowly getting hard in his new, expensive pants.
But Will had committed to eating the dinner Hannibal had placed in front of him, knowing that it might be drugged. He would stick it out.
Okay, so we’re doing this.
“Christ. Did you turn up the heat in here?” he asked, voice hoarse enough to make it worse. It scraped in his throat like a match striking tinder.
“I haven’t noticed,” he said smoothly after a moment of consideration. “Would you like me to adjust the thermostat?”
Will opened his mouth, then closed it. No. No he did not want Hannibal standing up, walking across the room, leaving him exposed in more way than one. He did not want to sit here alone with a half-chub and a fucking identity crisis.
And, really, who wouldn’t be having an existential crisis while getting progressively, obviously, hornier in front of the man they’d been circling around for months like a half-feral dog? Guess I’m being forced to acknowledge it, he thought grimly.
“No,” he said, a little too fast even to his own ears. “No, it’s fine.”
He reached for the wine again, hoping it might blunt something—his thoughts, his body, his embarrassment. His tongue felt hot. Too hot. Sensitive. The wine was too smooth, too easy, too good. He set the glass down, fingers stiff on the stem, afraid of shattering it if he moved too fast.
Trying to will the moment back to normal, Will made a weak stab at restarting the conversation.
“So. This rare ingredient. You sure it wasn’t sourced from Area 51?”
Hannibal didn’t smile, but something in his eyes gleamed. “You’re flushed.”
Will snorted. “No big deal,” he said, deadpan. “I just seem to be having a religious experience with your sauce.”
He shifted again. His hips rolled forward and the stimulation to the head of his cock made his vision pulse. His breath stuttered, caught somewhere between inhale and groan.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?” Will ground out, knowing his desperation was audible.
“Too intense?” Hannibal politely asked, parroting himself from the beginning of the meal.
Will swallowed, dragging a hand across his jaw; his beard scraped like sandpaper, a welcome contrast to the slick heat blooming across his skin. His belt felt like it was cinching itself tighter with every moment. His jeans—his favorite, worn in jeans—felt like a trap. Every point of contact with his own body was magnified.
Too much. And still— God, it’s not enough.
This was not a normal meal. This was not a normal evening with his not-psychiatrist-turned-colleague-turned-maybe-friend.
And this was not a normal erection.
Because he was hard. Fully. Painfully. The kind of arousal that made his legs twitch with the effort of holding it in. Sweat gathered at the small of his back, dampening his shirt. His nipples ached beneath the fabric, stiff with sensitivity. A single bean of sweat trailed down his chest like a finger tracing a line, and he nearly moaned.
What the fuck did he feed me?
Hannibal’s eyes dragged over Will’s body, studying him like a specimen pinned delicately in place.
Will inhaled deeply, then said—too casually, too late, “You said this stuff only flowers once every seven years. Guess I’m lucky.”
“Your symptoms are not unexpected,” Hannibal replied, as if reading from a case file. “Warmth. Heightened sensitivity. A certain... urgency.”
Will opened his mouth to fire back something dry, something scathing, something normal .
But the words slipped away the moment he shifted in his chair.
A jolt of sensation fired through him—not from his cock, but deeper. A hollow ache that rippled outward, each wave edged in pleasure, in need. It startled him. It curled hot behind his balls and up his spine, a deep pang that, while pleasurable, felt like an unbearable emptiness.
He ground down into the chair instinctively—just trying to relieve the pressure, the ache, the something —and this time he didn’t just twitch. He gasped, sharp and involuntary, as pleasure echoed through him, radiating from his ass.
His hand gripped the edge of the table.
Fuck.
It wasn’t just that he was hard. It wasn’t just that his skin felt too tight, his body a live wire. It was that something inside of him felt missing, a space that shouldn’t be empty, a place that needed to be filled.
“Will,” Hannibal said gently.
Will shook his head. His breath was coming faster now, chest rising and falling like he’d run a marathon. A fine tremor had taken up residence in his thighs.
“Why aren’t you also affected?” he choked out, voice catching on his own breath. “It’s not fair. You’re just sitting there like it’s a Tuesday.”
Despite the lack of a visible reaction, Hannibal was smugness personified.
“I have had time,” he said, voice like velvet across skin, “to cultivate restraint. A tolerance, if you will.”
That sentence landed in Will’s chest like a spark in dry grass.
Who else? Who the fuck else has Hannibal fed this to?
He had said it was rare. He said it only bloomed under impossible conditions. So who had he cultivated restraint with before? Who else had sat at this table, squirming and sweating and needing, right alongside Hannibal?
Possessiveness ripped through Will so fast it made him dizzy. Jealousy cut clean through the haze of heat—only to deepen the ache beneath it.
Hannibal’s voice, smooth as wine and twice as dark, offered no comfort.
“The herb affects individuals differently,” he said, casually. “It depends on one’s body chemistry. Orientation. Disposition.”
Will's stomach twisted. The fuck was that supposed to mean?
“You’re not even hard, are you?” Will asked, the words a slur of bitterness and disbelief. It sounded like a challenge, like an accusation—but it felt like begging.
Hannibal’s gaze flicked down briefly, then up. And then—he reached out.
His fingers touched the back of Will’s hand, which was clenched tight around the table’s edge like a drowning man gripping driftwood.
The moment their skin met, everything inside Will clenched. A pure, electric heat shot through his arm, across his chest, down his spine. His cock throbbed violently, a pulse so intense it made his hips twitch. He whimpered—high in his throat, utterly unguarded.
Pleasure. From just his hand.
“Your experience is yours,” Hannibal murmured. “Mine is… beside the point.”
But his hand remained.
His thumb made a single, absent-minded circle against Will’s skin, and that small movement felt like being stroked from the inside. Like Hannibal had reached through his chest and brushed against his heart, his gut, the desperate space clenching low inside him that wanted .
Will’s breath hitched. He wanted Hannibal to touch him everywhere. Wanted that hand dragging down his chest, under his shirt, inside his pants, around his cock, inside him— anywhere .
He was distantly aware of a voice in his own mind. It wasn’t conscious thought. It was rhythm. Chanting.
please please please please please—
Hannibal’s voice broke through again, calm and infuriatingly assured.
“But yes,” he said. “I am.”
Will let out a sound he didn’t recognize—half-laugh, half-moan. Strangled. Desperate. He tipped his head back, exposing the long line of his throat, and his eyes fluttered closed.
He was undone.
Flushed and glistening, lips parted. His chest heaved beneath his damp shirt, the fabric clinging to his skin like a second, suffocating layer. He could feel his pulse in his cock, in his fingertips, in the back of his tongue. His whole body felt flayed, nerve endings exposed.
And his hand —Christ, it burned.
Where Hannibal touched him, fire seemed to have embedded itself in the muscle. A brand. A claim. The warmth was too much, too good , and it was going to break him.
With what felt like the last of his strength, Will yanked his hand back—ripping himself out of Hannibal’s grip like a man yanking free of shackles he no longer wanted to be free of.
“Hannibal,” he growled, the word nearly guttural. His voice had dropped—rough as if it were being dragged up from his belly instead of his throat. “What did you give me?”
Delight lit up Hannibal’s eyes—not cruel, not even smug. Just... satisfied . Like Will had spoken the answer to a riddle only he was playing.
“Something with no name,” Hannibal answered. “Like most pleasures worth chasing.”
Will’s fingers dug into the edge of the table again, harder this time. His nails ached from the pressure. But it was still better than touching himself —barely. He wasn’t sure anymore. He ached. Ached for Hannibal to touch him again. The ghost of that contact still thrummed in his palm.
A small part of Will—tiny now, barely a whisper—was still annoyed. Still clinging to something like pride. Pissed that Hannibal couldn’t just give him a straight fucking answer for once. But the rest of him? The majority?
The majority was focused on how erotic Hannibal’s voice was. The sound of his words folded around Will’s brain like warm hands. Like rope. Like an embrace he’d never quite asked for but couldn’t stop wanting. Every syllable seemed to slide across his skin, stroking him without contact.
“This isn’t—I didn’t expect this,” he said, words stumbling. “I didn’t— God , I can’t—”
“You’re resisting the inevitable,” Hannibal said, soft and low. “You don’t have to.”
Will’s eyes darted up, wide and glassy. He knew he looked wrecked . His mouth opened, but no words came. The need had hollowed him out. Left no room for thought.
“I can help,” Hannibal said. “But only if you ask.”
Will’s body screamed with want. He was sweating. His cock was throbbing, fully hard and leaking in his briefs. He ached in places he’d never let himself feel before, not like this. His pulse thudded between his legs, behind his knees, in his throat. He clenched his thighs together and it only made it worse.
And Hannibal just sat there—still, unmoving, composed. Watching him fall apart.
“Please,” Will whispered, before he could stop himself.
Hannibal didn’t move.
Will’s hips jerked forward again, trying to recreate that friction, chasing it. His mouth dropped open with a soft, helpless sound.
“ Please ,” he said again, louder this time. “Touch me. Do something. Anything. I—I can’t —”
Hannibal rose from his chair.
Graceful. No rush.
Will couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t think.
He was begging .