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Will's sleepwalking subsides as quickly and abruptly as it first manifested, but that doesn't mean he's sleeping well. Truth be told, he hasn't slept well ever since Jack Crawford first stepped into his classroom with a series of ill-disguised demands, ever since only days later he fired a gun with killing intent for the first time. The sounds of the shots thunder in his ears in the early mornings, then transmute into the buzz of his alarm clock as the rest of his brain drags itself out of the depths of the same recurring nightmare. It's only been months, and Will can feel his work with the FBI as a constant drain on his energy.
Hannibal opened the doors of his home to Will after the first night Will spent sleepwalking in Wolf Trap. It's nice having the option, and deep inside he knows that won't be the last time he'll find himself in Hannibal's kitchen in the pre-dawn hours, but the easiest place for Will to solicit Hannibal's company remains his psychiatric office in Baltimore. It might even be the only place Will can relax anymore, aside from the acres surrounding his tiny house in the middle of the night.
One day, upon walking in, the image of his dimly-lit house floating darkly in a sea of reeds seems to transpose itself over the interior of Hannibal's office. He stops in his tracks, bewildered. It takes him a second to realize he's looking at a giant acrylic painting that Hannibal has propped up in front of his desk.
Behind him Hannibal says: "A vessel I saw on the Loire as a child pacing its banks in the night."
"You—did this?"
"Yes." Hannibal shuts the door behind them. "A commission from a patient, who is familiar with my aptitude as a painter and whose thoughts turn ever seaward."
Or towards my house, Will thinks, but it has to be a coincidence. He knows the make of all kinds of ships, from airboats to yachts, and he knows enough to know that the fishing vessel in the painting doesn't line up with the trawler he sees when he flips on the lights in his house and goes outside. He's also pretty sure that Hannibal has no reason to be anywhere near Wolf Trap at night, never mind at his house.
It's a close resemblance, though, down to the patterns of fog swirling just above the horizon and the orange lanterns that Will could mistake for his kitchen and bedroom lights. Close enough that Will finds himself drawn towards it, transfixed, almost near enough to touch.
"How long did it take you to do this?" he hears himself ask.
"Two days."
"It's...it's really nice." Will bites his lip. "Actually, it's gorgeous."
Hannibal tilts his head to the side. "Really." Then he steps away from his desk, sliding his hands back into his pockets. He looks between Will's face and the painting, then shrugs. "Then it's yours."
"What? No, I couldn't possibly—"
"Will," Hannibal says, his smile slight and kind, "when I was asked to enter your life, it was so I could bring comfort to your troubled mind. But peace often must be harvested from multiple sources, not just companionship." He makes an abbreviated gesture towards the painting. "Many look to art to fill some of the gaps."
Will wonders, idly, how he would carry it out to the car. "What about the buyer?"
"I will cancel the transaction and offer a refund. Mr. Jamm can easily commission another."
He makes it sound so easy. Will shakes his head. "I can't just take this, not without—talking to him, or buying it myself. How much did he offer?"
Hannibal bristles, as much as a man like Hannibal ever bristles. "Pay for your own gifts often, Will?"
Will touches the frame of the painting. It looks like a snapshot from his brief tenure at Pascagoula Bay, where he'd spent a few uneasy weeks in the local middle school and entire sleepless nights on the docks. He can almost feel the warmth of the spring air if he tries. Or maybe that's just heat beneath his collar, a faint, grateful embarrassment humming under his skin over the fact that he didn't have to ask.
"Thank you," he says. "Thank you. I appreciate it." He's said it to Hannibal dozens of times, sometimes perfunctorily and sometimes not. His manners aren't always the best, but today he means it, every word.
-
He wants to put it in his room, but between the bookshelves and the windows there isn't a lot of space for artwork on the walls, so instead he props the painting opposite his bed. It's too big for the dogs to knock down accidentally, so he figures he can leave it until he clears some space elsewhere.
The nightmares don't stop. He's honestly starting to wonder if they ever will. Thinking about the future feels like gazing into an unknowable chasm, and if he squints to try and see the bottom, all he can see are the reaching hands of madness.
But when he jolts awake at night, covered in sweat that chills him right down to the bone, the first thing he sees is the painting: the ship on the water. Or his house in the dark.
The nightmares haven't stopped, but at least he doesn't have to turn on the lights anymore to remember he's home.
-
At the end of the next week, Will is Hannibal's last appointment of the evening. The lights are already dim and the only thing Will can see out of the windows, behind the striped curtains, is an immense darkness dotted by streetlamps. He paces the floor, his shoulders rolling back nervously, while Hannibal sits at his desk and waits.
"I don't know if I feel like talking today," Will says finally. Even admitting it is a chore.
"But?"
Will slouches against the desk, looks away, rubs the back of his neck. "I vomited at work," he says tersely. "Probably should've gone to a real doctor, huh?"
"I am a real doctor," Hannibal says, amused. Though he doesn't make a movement towards them or anything, Will's gaze shifts to the degrees on his wall as quickly as if he had. "But if you need to diagnose a gastrointestinal problem, I might have to give you a referral."
A smile cracks unexpectedly over Will's face. "I think it's from, um. Migraines, maybe." He shakes his head. "But I don't really wanna talk about those, either."
Hannibal considers this, his eyes scanning the paperwork in front of him. "This office closes in an hour, and my work for the day will be completed in two." He flicks his fingers towards the reclining sofa. "Perhaps you should lay down."
Will barks out a laugh. "I'm crazy enough without submitting to stereotype, thank you very much—"
"Not to talk," Hannibal cuts in, smooth as untroubled water. "Just to relax."
Will glances at the sofa. It does look welcoming, warm royal blue in its frame, the cushion clean and unwrinkled. His headache is pulsing at the base of his skull, sucking the energy out of his muscles, and the thought of driving home just makes his exhaustion that much worse. "Like a kid at school, lying down in the nurse's office and waiting for the bell to ring?"
"Were you ever that child?"
"Sometimes." Will tests the padding of the sofa with his hands, and the softness does him in: he sits down, and suddenly his entire skeletal system is grateful. "Kids project so much—it could be...overwhelming. But I thought I told you," he says, swinging his legs over the edge, "I don't want to talk. And especially not while I'm sitting on this thing."
He rests his head on the cushion and folds his fingers low on his belly. The ceiling of Hannibal's office looks endless, like it could swallow him whole.
"As you wish," Hannibal's voice says from somewhere above him.
There's a shuffle of papers, the creak of a book closing. The lights are a dusky yellow that doesn't touch the insides of Will's eyelids when he falls asleep, somewhere between the sound of one scratch of Hannibal's pencil and the next.
-
When Will wakes up, his headache is gone. The curtains have been drawn shut, but that doesn't stop light from trickling into the room, just bright enough to draw Will gently from the last throes of the deepest sleep he's had in months.
The realization that he spent the night in Hannibal's office comes in sluggish waves. Every time he blinks, the room around him grows clearer and clearer, though not nearly clear enough: he doesn't have his glasses on. Hannibal must have taken them off. He also seems to have dug up a sofa throw from somewhere in the office, in which Will has completely tangled his legs.
Will sits up slowly, trying to stretch the sleep out of his shoulders. He squints around the office. On the small glass table next to the armchairs, he can see a bright white notecard and the thin outline of what might be his glasses. He tugs his legs free from the blanket and stumbles over, practically smushing the glasses onto his face and fumbling the note up to eye level.
I was moments from waking you when I realized how restful sleep becomes you, but too often eludes you. I found I lacked the heart. Good night.
Please lock the office behind you when you leave. Both doors. There was a break-in once, when the lock to the discreet exit was stuck. A phrenology bust was stolen, but swiftly returned for reasons unknown. Can only imagine the guilt must have eaten the poor soul alive.
H.
Will looks down and, surely enough, there's a key on the table. He checks his phone. Hannibal usually comes by the office around eight. Will doesn't have work today, and it's half past seven, so the dogs will only be a little miffed if he waits a little longer to come home. He's not sure if he's annoyed or overjoyed that Hannibal didn't wake him up, but it seems like a feeling that will sort itself out when they actually meet face-to-face.
He sets the note down and stretches again, his jaw clicking with a yawn. He starts to walk the length of the office, lethargically drinking in all the obscure artwork that he doesn't really pay attention to during their sessions together. He reaches up to straighten a painting, then thinks better of it and tilts it further on the nail.
He steps over to the desk and runs his hand along the back of the chair, catching a faint whiff of what must be cologne or aftershave. It's a smell that's unfamiliar to Will, despite all the time they spend together—but then, Hannibal spends more time here than he does with Will. A stack of papers on the desk catches his eye, and his hand darts out to snatch up the topmost one.
It's a drawing of Will, asleep on the chair, perfect down to the patterns of stubble on his jawline. It looks like it came out of one of those old photo booths that would print a pencil drawing of whoever sat inside, or maybe even a photo of him in grayscale. The shadows under his eyes look especially dark in the picture, which makes Will touch the skin beneath his eyes unthinkingly, as if suddenly realizing Hannibal pays more attention to them than he does.
Will blinks down at the drawing for what feels like an eternity. Its very existence seems to tell a story that Will can't even begin to decipher. Or maybe he's looking for an answer where there is none, and the only story to be told is about how Hannibal can just do things like this as easily as he lives and breathes.
He swallows, sliding it beneath the pile. The picture directly beneath makes his stomach drop into his knees.
The next picture is a drawing of Will and Abigail, on one of the visits they'd made to the psychiatric facility as a pair. He remembers that day well, because that was one of the few days Abigail had found the institution tolerable enough to have a conversation with Will that wasn't about her father or the FBI or death. Instead they'd talked about a shared interest in the outdoors, an interest which Hannibal had seemed to lack: he'd hovered silently on the fringes of their company instead, relaxed and inattentive, more interested in listening than talking. Apparently, he'd been watching too.
That day had given Will hope for Abigail and, inexplicably, himself. He can see it in the drawing. They're looking at each other, grinning at some sheepish private joke they'd managed to make in spite of the dark history between them. There are smudges of graphite at the corners of their smiles in the drawing, as if Hannibal had lingered overlong making the mouths just right. Their eyes are almost identical in shade and detail, which makes Will wonder if somebody could see this and make the mistake of thinking they're related.
Will doesn't know how long he's been staring at it when the administrative door finally opens to admit Hannibal. He shuts the door behind him, then turns around. Before he can say anything, Will holds up the picture, pointing to it wordlessly.
"Oh," Hannibal says. His brow furrows, the only measure of surprise on his face. "Those...were not meant for you."
Will watches as he steps slowly into the office, setting his briefcase down and removing his jacket. His lips are pursed, his expression considering.
Finally Hannibal maneuvers past him and sits down at his desk. "Well?" he asks at length. "Do you like it?"
Will turns the picture back around, gulping down air. "It's very, um." He almost says pretty, or maybe well done, but instead the truth winces its way out. "Devastating."
Hannibal's expression becomes shuttered. He reaches forward, absently, to restack the drawings and set them aside. "Our time together," he says, "as a party of three, has been...turbulent. Such is the nature of our relationship. We are in blood stepped in so far..."
He pulls a sheaf of letters in front of himself and taps a Montblanc against the topmost sheet, as if he's having trouble finding words. Will wonders if that's ever true.
"That day, I saw joy in the face of Abigail Hobbs for the first time. And peace in yours for giving it to her. The image stayed with me."
He eyes the top letter critically, then scratches a small paragraph into one of the margins: Will catches the phrases developing pain coping skills and cognitive behavioral hypnotherapy.
"Put it back, Will," Hannibal says finally, completing the paragraph with a calligraphic flourish.
His tone is gentle, but the words themselves make Will flinch, chastened. He takes one last look at the drawing before setting it down on top of the stack of illustrations. Hannibal's words from the other day echo unbidden in his mind, something about art filling gaps that people can't.
"Sorry," he says before he can stop himself, "for looking." He gathers his courage for a last indignant sniff. "Even though technically it would seem as though you looked first."
Hannibal smiles. "You must be complicit, then, in drawing my eye."
Will laughs, though he can feel himself reaching out in his subconscious, feeling blindly for whatever gaps that Hannibal tried to sate with pencil and paper.
He shuts down the instinct as quickly as he can, but when they sit down together at last, he gets the sudden feeling that it doesn't matter: like a homeowner who can sense a snoop, all Hannibal has to do is shut the blinds.
-
A week passes with guilt hanging over him like a raincloud, and eventually Will finds himself at Hannibal's door with a brown paper bag. There's no response when he knocks, though he knows Hannibal is home because his sleek black car is in the driveway and there's a light in one of the windows.
He reaches for the doorknob after a few minutes pass and is surprised to find it already open. He lets himself into the foyer, looking around. The house is pristine, as always, and the thready strings of Bach float faintly towards Will's ears from another room.
"Dr. Lecter?" he calls out. "Hannibal?"
When no answer comes, he starts to make his way to the kitchen, but Hannibal isn't there either. Will can't tell where the music is coming from—it sounds like it's coming in from the very vents of the house. He feels like he's in a movie set, the house picture-perfect as it is, his own reflection gazing at him in the stainless steel of Hannibal's kitchen appliances.
He shakes his head at the sight of himself and exits the kitchen. "Hannibal," he says again, more loudly this time.
Hannibal's face appears from the top of the stairwell. "Did you allow yourself in?" he says, his voice nonplussed over the music.
Will raises his hands in surrender. "You left your door unlocked," he says. "What was that word you used last week? Complicit?"
"Touché. Please, come." He disappears from over the rail and Will doesn't see much else to do but follow. He's never been on this floor of Hannibal's home, mostly because he's never been invited. The second story of his home is every bit as lovely and meticulously decorated as the first, but it seems even more sterile here somehow. He passes by one closed door after another, thinking, so this is where you sleep.
He sees a smaller stairwell leading to a loft that must have been an attic at one point. The music is loudest up here, in the highest open space in the house, which is probably why it pervades the rest of the house so easily. When he reaches the top step the floor crinkles beneath his feet. He blinks down and realizes the floorboards are covered from wall to wall with plastic. He looks up.
Hannibal is standing in front of a canvas that's nearly as tall as he is, a palette resting on his hand and a brush behind his ear. He hasn't started painting yet, though there's a row of filled canvases leaned against the wall to his immediate left: buildings, mostly, and people shrouded in shadow. The conspicuous blank spaces between some of the paintings correspond with the number of canvases that are turned around and perched directly behind the canvas Hannibal is working on. Will wonders if they're private, peculiar, or both.
"Good afternoon, Will," Hannibal says without looking at him.
On a clinical level, Will knows he's walked in on something intimate, but for some reason the sight of Hannibal's feet bare on the floor is what really makes him feel like he walked in on someone in the nude. "Hi," he says, his tongue almost tripping over that singular word. He lifts up his bag. "I brought—"
"Aberlour?"
"Um. Yeah, actually. How did you—"
"The cork must have loosened in transport," Hannibal murmurs. "Thank you. Would you like some now?"
"Not if you're busy." Will walks along the edges of the loft, glancing from picture to picture. There are charcoal drawings pinned to the walls as well, and every extraneous piece of furniture is covered in plastic. "What're you painting?"
"I thought I knew until I arrived." Hannibal touches the canvas, then lifts it up and turns it on its side. "Now, not so much. Perhaps we will open that Aberlour after all." He pauses. "Unless..."
"Unless?" Will prompts.
The corner of Hannibal's mouth keeps doing this little twitch. When he turns to face Will, there's a light in his eyes, maybe even a challenge. "Have you ever sat for a portrait, Will?"
"What, you mean like the president?" Will says. Then the full weight of the question hits him and he's shaking his head before he can even muster up words. "You—can't be serious. Can't you just use a photo? And why me?"
"As I said, you do draw the eye." Hannibal is running his fingertips over his lips, sizing Will up, mentally translating his bodily proportions to the canvas. The scrutiny forces Will to look out the window. "I have the requisite skill to replicate a photograph, it's true. I wonder if I can say the same for capturing an essence, as a portrait would require. The very flavor of an individual."
Will drags his hands over his face. "Look, I'm...flattered? I guess?" He palms his mouth, then looks at Hannibal archly from over the tops of his fingers. "Doesn't it take hours upon hours to do that? Between me having to run home for the dogs and—and our jobs—it could take awhile to make any actual headway. I'm not in Maryland all the time, believe it or not—"
"Will," Hannibal says.
Something in the tone of his voice makes Will realize that Hannibal almost never asks for anything from him. He wonders if that's deliberate, if he knows exactly how to level his voice so the tone falls somewhere between a plaintive plea and an almost professorial demand.
Will scowls. "What would you do with such a thing?"
Hannibal makes a flippant hand gesture that indicates the answer should be quite plain. "Give it to you. Of course."
Will shoves his hands in his pockets and maneuvers back towards the wall. He touches his hand to one of the charcoal drawings, paging through all the ways he can say no. He doesn't even know what people do with giant paintings of themselves.
"All you would have to do is sit," Hannibal says pointedly.
"Sounds like a drab use of my time," Will mutters.
"It sounds peaceful."
Will looks at the window, the way the light from the window gently delineates the dust motes wafting through the loft. The Bach record plinks to a stop just in time, leaving Will and Hannibal standing together, silent in this small space where the walls are papered in beauty. Every room in Hannibal's house feels like this, a spot in warm sunlight where Hannibal surrounds himself in comfort and finery. Breathable.
Will can't make his own house breathable. He can barely breathe in the confines of his own skin.
"Maybe," he says. He knows, somewhere deep down, it's as good as a yes.
-
When Will comes for the first sitting, he ascends the stairwell to find the loft much cleaner than it was before. The charcoal sketches, the completed paintings, the canvases leaned against the wall—all of them have been removed to make room for a single easel and a single canvas. Hannibal's wooden trunk of art supplies sits against the wall. And directly beneath the small window that illuminates the entire loft during the day: an armchair.
He's arrested briefly in place by the absurd mental image of Hannibal carrying it upstairs before Hannibal ascends the stairs gracefully behind him.
"Thank you again for coming, Will," Hannibal says, in the midst buttoning up a clean linen shirt. Will catches a glimpse of clavicle, then automatically looks down at Hannibal's bare feet, feeling another twinge of embarrassment. "I needed the practice. And I have figured out how to make this a better use of your time."
Will scoffs, but he sets down his bag and meanders towards the armchair anyway, looking it over critically. "I don't know what you mean. I can't imagine a better use of my time than waiting silently for a to-scale replica of my eye bags."
"Meditation," Hannibal says as if Will hadn't spoken, nudging open the chest against the wall and removing implements one by one. "Psychologists have long recommended Buddhist practices to patients in pursuit of awareness. In your case, awareness of the self."
"Meditation," Will repeats dryly. "You sure you don't just want to slip me a Xanax?"
Hannibal shoots him a look. "Improve your connection to yourself, and it will become easier to hear your own voice in the bedlam. Additionally," he says, eyes gleaming with something that almost resembles mischief, "the closer to yourself you feel in this room, the closer to reality the portrait becomes."
Will collapses into the armchair, scrubbing his face with dry hands. "And...I suppose you'll show me how to do it?"
"I spent time in the tutelage of masters," Hannibal says, which—honestly doesn't surprise Will at all. When he peeks at Will again from behind the canvas, that gleam is still in his eye, like a grin that never quite makes it all the way down his face. "And, fortunately for you, I can instruct and paint at the same time."
-
Each week, Hannibal has Will sit down in the armchair and tells him to straighten his back a certain way, to relax his diaphragm, to listen to the sound of his breathing. He punctuates his directions with delicate gestures, sweeping his hand up his shirtfront to indicate the path of Will's breaths, heedless of the dripping brush in his hand. Then finally, once he's satisfied with Will's posture, he leans back behind the canvas and applies himself to his work.
His voice periodically coils out from behind the easel like smoke, telling Will to focus on parts of his body that feel neutral, to expand his consciousness, to drape peace over places of internal unrest like a muslin shroud.
He also talks about the adaptation of mindfulness as a psychological concept, and a commute he used to make weekly to Bethesda to partake in Vipassana meditation sessions. His voice is less cloying when he talks history, which Will finds he prefers: for all that the meditation in its own right really does take the edge off the working week, Will has always been more comfortable paying attention to other people than his own body.
There's something else, though, that keeps him from reaching real inner serenity or whatever it is he's supposed to be looking for during their sessions, and that's the fact that Hannibal keeps touching him.
At first, Will doesn't really think much of Hannibal frowning at him thoughtfully, then stepping in close to adjust his sleeve or tip his shoulder further towards the light. The proximity makes him fidget at first, but Hannibal is always quick to murmur an apology around the paintbrush between his teeth and duck back behind the canvas. He genuinely seems to be resolving small problems as he finds them—after all, the light is always changing behind Will's back, and even in his calmest states Will can't help the little twitches of his arms.
But over the course of the weeks Will spends in the loft, Hannibal seems to be getting progressively less apologetic, and his hands seem to be slipping away from Will's clothes and onto Will himself. His fingers smooth over a wrinkle in Will's cuff, then brush over the inside of his wrist; he runs a hand along the back of the chair so he can segue innocuously into flattening Will's shirt at the shoulder; he uses both hands to move one of Will's a millimeter to the left.
Will wasn't born yesterday. Some kind of hypothesis about all of this is taking shape in the recesses of his mind, a sketch in want of texture and color, and every second Hannibal's hands linger on his wrists or his exposed collarbone is more empirical evidence to add to the pile.
Then comes a day when Hannibal tips his jaw up with a knuckle, and Will can't hold it in anymore—the words practically fall out of his mouth.
"You know," he says, "I really, ah, appreciate your unique approach to this entire process."
Hannibal meets his gaze levelly, amusement creasing the corners of his eyes. "Do you?"
"Really—" Will gestures flippantly to the hand at his jawline. "Hands-on. If you know what I mean."
The creases at the corners of Hannibal's eyes vanish. He gazes at Will long and hard, gauging the danger in his words, or perhaps paging through that internal pile of evidence as if it were made for him.
Then he fans out one elegant finger after another on the side of Will's face. The flushed heat of his fingertips matches the color of Will's nervous energy, and when one brushes up against the corner of Will's mouth, lust hits him as swift as a punch in the gut.
"Do you know what you mean, Will?" Hannibal asks softly.
Will can't look away from his face. "I...no," he breathes.
Hannibal looks at him steadily for several heart-pounding seconds, then draws his hand away.
"I thought not," he says, too knowing for his own good, stepping back to the easel and continuing their session in cold and utter silence.
For the first time he even instructs Will to let himself out, tossing a hand carelessly towards the stairwell with the palette knife back between his teeth. Will gathers his things and makes probably the most awkward exit he's ever made from anywhere, dragging his feet deliberately, though he's not sure what he's expecting. He can't decide if he's expecting anything at all.
-
Will tries harder than ever to focus on the meditation aspect of their sessions to keep himself from overthinking all of these inane gestures, but Will overthinks everything under the sun. It's what he does for a living—he revisits catastrophes in his mind from multiple camera angles. And this has to be some kind of catastrophe.
In the spaces between breaths, he sees nothing but himself in prismatic repetition, the tips of Hannibal's fingers trailing a haunted path over his lips and jaw, Hannibal's broad palm cupping his face with aching tenderness. He hears Hannibal's breath in his own chest, pitched low as white noise to mask a demand that has taken root in his very lungs. And, somewhere in the back of his throat, there's an acrid smell he can practically taste: cheap aftershave with a ship on the bottle.
All he has is sense memory, though, because ever since that day Hannibal has stopped touching him. It's like he knows he was caught, like he didn't shut the blinds in time. He's warm at the front door but inscrutable behind the easel. Will doesn't even know when he last looked over, which Will is pretty sure defeats the purpose of having someone sit for a portrait.
He doesn't have to wonder if the silence is as tense for Hannibal as it is for him. It clearly isn't. But for him, at least, the air in the room is electric on the back of his neck, underneath his shirt. His heart thuds slowly in his chest, like it's getting ready to crawl out of his mouth. He knows his awareness of his own body, his own breathing, isn't from the weeks he's spent on meditation but rather something else. Something with teeth.
He feels terrifyingly alive.
At last Hannibal's voice pipes up from behind the easel. "Will," he says. "If you could lean forward, perhaps half an inch. And...if you could push your glasses up as well."
"No."
There's silence behind the easel. Then: "Pardon?"
Will barely even recognizes the sound of his own voice. "Why don't you," he pauses, squeezing the words out through a locked jaw, "come here and do it for me?"
After a moment there's a series of soft clicks: Hannibal putting the paintbrush down on the tray, putting down the palette, laying down the palette knife. Then he leans out from behind the easel, slowly adjusting the cuffs of his shirt.
"Is that a request?" he says lightly, though there's no trace of humor on his face.
Will swallows. "No." And, okay, he'd never even consider doing this normally, not in a million years—but when he drags his gaze up the length of Hannibal's body, the good doctor's eyes blacken and smoulder like coals, and he'd known that would happen but it makes him shiver anyway. Because. He'd known. "More like a, um. Suggestion."
The attic is small, but every step Hannibal takes towards him sounds as if he's coming from a great distance. He hunkers down in front of chair, knees bent just enough to keep Will at eye level, and raises a hand.
"Because I was so good at it before, I suppose," he says, amused, pushing Will's glasses up into his hair. His hands slide up to grip Will's face, careful, like he's holding something valuable or complicated. Then Hannibal kisses him, abrupt and vicious, a snake coiled too long in hunger, and Will fumbles for his shirtsleeves, opens his mouth, succumbs.
Will is usually the kind of person who doesn't know he wants something until it's already passed him by, so the desire that's deep-sixing his brain feels like heat he siphoned from someone else's body entirely. Hannibal practically eats up the way his teeth keep chattering, swallows up every groan like a connoisseur; he's so busy tasting the inside of Will's mouth that the fact that Will is vibrating out of his skin doesn't seem to concern him at all.
He breaks away for air and touches their foreheads together, pressing a gasping, open-mouthed kiss to the side of Hannibal's mouth. Up close Hannibal's eyes are steady and fathomless, hunger clouding his gaze like an oil spill. His hands glide up Will's back, delicately untucking his shirt, sliding warm onto his sides. They're big hands, hands that paint and cook and comfort. Will is giddy with the absurd need to suck on his fingers.
"If I may, ah," Hannibal says, maddeningly calm, "offer my own suggestion—"
"Yeah, yeah," Will says, shoving hard at his shoulders and clambering out of the chair. They get caught up in kissing again halfway through the loft, Hannibal's hands carefully stroking along his face and throat, and then Will is stumbling after him down the tiny stairwell, Hannibal shutting his bedroom door behind them like they aren't alone. Immediately he crowds Will up against the closed door and buries his face in Will's neck, mouth wet and hot on his pulse point.
"Will," he murmurs, "are you sure?"
"For the love of god, Lecter," Will snaps, in the midst of solving the impossible Swiss puzzle of Hannibal's belt buckle, "a minute ago you didn't seem too worried about breaking me—"
There's a searing flash of teeth on his neck, and then Hannibal is pulling his shirt off, biting a wet angry trail down his chest and deftly undoing his fly. The sound of Hannibal's knees hitting the floor sends electric shocks up Will's spine, never mind the actual sight of it. And when he sinks his mouth onto Will's cock, it's insanely wet, sloppy in a way that doesn't even remotely suit the prim and proper Hannibal Lecter. Like his mouth was watering for it, Will thinks, and he practically bangs his head on the door to keep from coming on the spot.
Then Hannibal is rising again, guiding him to the bed with steady hands. He sits Will down and vanishes into the bathroom without a word.
Will eases up against the headboard, panting. It only occurs to him that he should maybe try to strip off his belt when Hannibal comes back out, a simple little bottle of something clear and syrupy between his fingers.
"You can still run," Hannibal says. He's smiling.
There's this thing about Hannibal, where the primal glitter in his eyes matches the dense sparking noise in Will's head. Will realizes it slowly, in frame-by-frame, because he's the one lunging for Hannibal's clothes but he still ends up on his hands and knees. And Hannibal is the one whose gentle hands open him up, whose cock nudges its way into Will's tense body with a patience which is its own kind of filthy, but there's a fine tremble in his chest when he presses himself over Will's back like a shadow. Will tentatively juts his hips back—the stretch really is incredible, painful yet somehow indescribably sweet—and receives hard teeth on his shoulder for his trouble.
Hannibal fucks him slowly for what feels like years. At first Will wants to scratch, tear, devour, but the heat of Hannibal's body draped over his makes all his nerve endings taper off into this exquisite mugginess. He can't think, can't speak for gasping. The last of the afternoon daylight recedes from the room, but the heat doesn't go with it. Hannibal is still working him over long after dusk hits outside, touching every inch of him in a darkness so complete that when he comes, fucking finally, he does it with grasping hands because he can't tell where one body ends and the other starts.
-
There are at least a dozen reasons Will doesn't want to open his eyes in the morning, but probably the biggest one is that his body just doesn't want to move. His limbs and shoulders feel loose, even agreeable for once. He's cocooned in Hannibal's thousand-count sheets, the softness of which is tempting him back to sleep. Also, he isn't lying down on a towel, probably because he ran out of sweat somewhere between tearing off Hannibal's shirt and falling asleep on his bed.
Will presses his face into the pillow, then glances sideways at the cup of coffee steaming on the nightstand. Downstairs he can hear pans clanging, the crackle of oil on a skillet.
He juts his hand sideways anyway, but the fact of Hannibal's absence is a foregone conclusion. He draws himself up, reaching for his glasses and the coffee.
The smell of bacon curls into the bedroom from beneath the closed door. Will flexes his hands around the cup and idly looks down into it. At first he's just looking at his fingers, then he realizes he's looking into a latte with an apple drawn in the foam. He stops trying to fight a smile.
Eventually he descends the staircase and pads into the kitchen, empty cup and plate in hand. Hannibal is seated at the counter, a full breakfast and two mimosas in crystal glassware laid out in front of him. He's skimming the news when the sound of Will's footsteps catches his attention; he glances up, folding the cover over his tablet and pushing the plate to the empty seat beside him.
"Ulster fry," he says, apropos of nothing.
"Good morning to you too," Will says dryly.
Hannibal's face moves in something approximating a grimace.
Will sniffs, shuffling over to the sink and setting down the dishes. "I thought an awkward morning after was more my wheelhouse than yours."
"...hardly," Hannibal says with distaste.
Will slides into the stool next to him, rolling up his sleeves and picking up his fork.
Beside him Hannibal reaches for his mimosa with one hand and uses the other to flip his tablet back open. "I prefer awkward afternoons," he says.
Later, grinding furiously down on Hannibal's lap, Will scrabbles for a hold on the chair they're piled in and realizes dizzily it's the companion to the chair in the loft. His fingers curve with numb reverence around the familiar wooden whorls on the arms. He's struck with a sense of inevitability, like it was always going to end up like this. The thought fills him with a vexing tenderness that only further complicates itself when Hannibal's fingers touch his cheek. His eyes fly open; his orgasm startles itself out of him. He reaches up jerkily to grab Hannibal's hand, maybe even to force it down, but all he succeeds in doing is tangling their fingers together; and just like that, their hands clenched together tight, Hannibal comes too.
-
Will still comes once or twice a week for the sittings. It just so happens that now those sittings are punctuated by sex, sometimes before and sometimes after. He continues to step out from behind the easel on occasion, though, to move Will's hair out of his face or adjust his glasses just so. Sometimes his hand drifts down, the heel of his palm pressing warm and provocative against the front of Will's pants, and it's all Will can do not to lunge out of the chair and climb him like a tree.
He finds himself thinking of Hannibal while he's dozens of miles away from Baltimore, grading papers and poring over crime scene photos. Sometimes after a harrowing day he sits in his car, just outside of the field office, and texts Hannibal to ask him when their next session is. Hannibal always responds with affection and an invitation, both so unambiguous that Will has to drop his head onto his steering wheel for a second just to laugh at himself, because he's seriously going crazy over the one person whose job is literally supposed to be making him sane.
When he looks in the mirror and sees the finger-shaped bruises on his hips, the fading bites on his neck, he can feel the hunger that made them. He can feel the man to whom that hunger belongs, who is both in Baltimore and Wolf Trap, who sleeps in thousand-count sheets and yet also inside his own skin. It has to belong to them both, because Will is pretty sure he's never wanted anyone so badly in his life.
At least in the physical sense. He's not sure what else he wants from Hannibal, but Hannibal seems to be perfectly content without labels. He keeps scheduling their appointments like clockwork, calling him in for sittings, and consulting with him on cases. He never initiates sex unless Will clearly signals he's in any kind of mood for it. He's patient, presumably waiting for Will's fortresses to dismantle themselves—and Will is wary because he's always wary, but Hannibal just evidently likes him that much.
Evidently. "Will," Hannibal says, at the end of one of their sittings, "I have a confession to make."
Lying facedown on Hannibal's bed, trying to scrape his voice together: "Oh Jesus Christ what," Will croaks. More accurately, it slips out, and things just don't stop slipping out. "Hannibal, wait, don't—"
"Will." He sounds amused. "Not that one."
Will discreetly tries to smother himself with the pillow. Hannibal reaches over to tug it ever so slightly out of his grasp—and, God, just looking at his bare forearm makes Will's skin prickle. "What?"
"I would like to keep the painting," Hannibal says.
Will props himself up with his hands. "What?" he repeats dumbly.
"The painting." Hannibal withdraws his arm and rests both hands on his chest. "Don't worry. I wouldn't be so gauche as to hang it above my mantle. But, as an artist, one occasionally finds oneself in doubt. As you found me, when you first entered my home unannounced."
"You left your door unlocked."
"And in such a situation," Hannibal continues, "the artist likes to keep in private reserve some evidence that a muse once guided his hand, and perhaps may do so again."
Will looks at him. "Yeah," he says, after a moment. "Sure. Do whatever you want."
And, okay, it's a little creepy. But Will is genuinely starting to realize, not without a trace of irony, that Hannibal might be the best friend he's ever had, might be the best anything he's ever had. Will doesn't know how he feels, but it's byzantine in nature and full of moving parts. If anyone can figure Will out before Will even tries, it's Hannibal Lecter.
-
One day, during one of their sittings, Hannibal has to disappear downstairs to take a distress call from a patient. When Will becomes cognizant of his body again, he takes a moment to stretch, his limbs stiff from so much time spent motionless. He kicks his legs out, then stands up, wavering a little on his feet.
He flexes his feet on the plastic, but it's taped so tightly to the floorboards that none of it gathers between his toes. The plastic doesn't really feel necessary, since Hannibal doesn't seem to ever spill paint, but he figures as a precautionary measure it's ultimately less of a hassle than repainting the floors.
He traverses the length of the attic, though honestly there's not much to see. Hannibal never replaced the drawings on the walls after that first day, so for the most part the room looks as clean as if Hannibal had just moved in.
The chest on the floor is open and looks like an antique treasure chest. Will crouches over it idly, sifting things around. There's nothing particularly noteworthy inside, not that Will actually knows what painters need outside of what he's seen of Bob Ross on television. He flicks his fingertips over some of the brush tips, then stands up and turns to the painting.
The painting is of Will, as promised: Will in the outfit he was asked to wear for each sitting, his face the very picture of the absolute emptiness in which Hannibal has been instructing him for so many weeks. The depiction of Will is accurate in every way, down to the patterns of stubble on his jaw, but the armchair he's been perched in every week has been inexplicably transformed via acrylic into an elaborate throne of human skulls.
He stands very still for a very long time.
"Oh," Hannibal's voice says from somewhere behind him. "A bit rude, Will, don't you think?"
"What," Will says. "What the hell is this?"
Hannibal steps closer. He looks at the painting, arching his eyebrows primly. "It's you," he says mildly, as if the answer should be obvious.
"No. You know what I mean. What in the hell is this? Hannibal," Will says, his voice rising with—with anger, or panic, he doesn't really know, and his tongue feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. "What—"
He tries to grab the painting by the edges, but Hannibal's hands clamp down viselike on his wrists, guiding him up against the wall with superhuman ease. He even kicks the chest out from beside Will's feet to better slot their hips together.
"Calm down," Hannibal says gently, and kisses Will so hard that his knees start to shake, though that might also be sheer animal fright. He can't tell. For some reason, he can't tell.
"Tell me," Will says. "Just tell me—"
"Calm down," Hannibal repeats. "It's nothing."
He cradles Will's face tenderly with both hands and bends their heads together until all Will can see are his eyes. Will fumbles his hands between them, seizing trembling fistfuls of Hannibal's vest. He can't seem to find the strength to push. He wonders, wildly, how long he's been falling in love. If it's too late to stop.
"Or rather," Hannibal amends, "it's only yourself."