Work Text:
Will,
Though you assured me that everything is fine, it is my job as a professor to ensure that everything goes well. Especially when your thesis topic is as per my recommendation.
I have arranged for you to meet with a psychiatrist. He’s one of the best in the area and I have convinced him to see you free of charge. Please don’t try to get out of it, it is for your own good. Consider it a favor to me.
Meet with Dr. Hannibal Lecter this coming Tuesday in Psych 307. The two of you can exchange contact information there.
Jack Crawford
Psych Department
Will re-reads the email a total of ten times (at least) before he believes his eyes. This can’t be happening. It’s too out there, too coincidental. He feels sick to his stomach.
If his insides were not wringing themselves painfully against one another, he would take pride in how quickly he comes to a conclusion, how strong he can be. But instead, he feels the prickle of tears at the corners of his eyes, feels his throat closing up. And, in reality, if he really were self-sufficient, unperturbed, he would pick up the phone and do this in person.
He digs the business card Hannibal gave him out from underneath a stack of papers and takes the email address off it. As he types out the message, his fingers quaver:
You’re unbelievable.
I’m not a charity case you can fuck whenever you have a passing whim and I’m not some insane patient for you to psychoanalyze and publish medical texts about. I thought you were different, but it turns out that you’re just like everyone else.
Needless to say, I won’t be coming to our ‘meeting’ on Tuesday. I would appreciate it if you don’t contact me again.
Will Graham
Will sends the email before his angry courage has the chance to fade. Still, he regrets it almost immediately, locks down the computer so he can’t allow himself to stare at the screen, waiting fretfully for a reply that may never come.
About fifteen minutes later, his cell phone begins to ring. Will doesn’t even look at the caller ID, just shuts the phone off completely. Strips down to his boxers so he can crawl, shivering, under the covers and hide his tears from his empty room.
Maybe this was the point. Maybe Hannibal had become tired of putting up with him, and this was the torturous was of cutting off their relationship. He could see through Will from the moment he sat down beside him, amidst pounding bass and an alcoholic haze. Maybe he knew exactly the way Will would react, knew the burden of ending it could be lifted easily from his shoulders.
That’s what the negative, disparaging part of him says, even as his phone lights up with a call from the good doctor every other hour for the next few days. Even as another part of him questions the ridiculous request Hannibal made for Will to move into his home.
Will did not receive an email response, but a handful of voicemails that he refuses to listen to. One day after another, he clears the phone of Hannibal’s unheard words and sets the phone aside. It would, perhaps, be better to let his phone fill up to the point that Hannibal is no longer able to leave the messages, but Will cannot stand to look at them all day.
For the most part, he has forgone leaving his room. He throws himself into his dissertation and takes arbitrary hour-long naps rather than attempt sleeping through the night. If his friends don’t know for certain that Will’s short-lived relationship has ended, they must have guessed by the petty way he’s acting.
When he strays out of his room on Monday morning to find something to eat or, more likely, drink, as he isn’t sure he can stomach anything, he finds Alana doing the dishes, Beverly and Price sitting at the table.
“Is everything ok?” Alana asks. “No one’s seen much of you for a couple days.”
“I’m fine.” Will decides to get this over with and just blurt it out. “I dumped Hannibal.”
The looks of surprise exchanged between Price and Beverly tell him that while they guessed the end of Will’s relationship, they assumed Hannibal had done the dumping.
This knowledge makes Will’s heart sink, makes him ask himself what he’s doing, dumping someone as perfect as Hannibal because of something trivial.
But it’s isn’t trivial!
It may not be entirely vindicated, but he can’t help it—he feels so unbearably angry and betrayed, that Hannibal would agree to something like this.
“Can I… ask why?” Bev asks, leaning closer to him as if it will offer an increment of comfort.
Will spares a moment from his depressed stoop to provide the barest of details to his friends. He doesn’t want to worry Beverly and Price with all the effects his dissertation has had; Alana is already aware of them. When he is finished speaking Bev slaps her hand down on the kitchen table, already standing.
“We are going out tonight!”
Will drops his head. “Bev, thanks, but it’s a Monday and I don’t think—“
But Beverly is already hauling him out of his seat, pulling him down the hall into his room so she can pick out something ‘sexy’for him.
In the end, Alana comes along, if only to make sure Beverly doesn’t push Will too hard. Will has been explicit about the fact that he isn’t ready to look for another guy. But if two of his best friends want to buy him drinks to help him forget his ex, what reason is there to refuse?
He’s just had his third shot of tequila, is wincing around the lime, when his phone begins to vibrate in his pocket. He stands a bit too quickly from his perch, at a high table in the bar nearest their flat, and almost goes tumbling into the cement floor.
Outside the bathroom his answers the call, taking great effort to keep the light drunkenness from his voice. “Hello?”
“Will.” His heart clenches a bit painfully.
“Hannibal?” He jerks the phone away from his ear and checks the caller ID again. It doesn’t indicate that it’s Hannibal, it’s just some random number with the same area code as everyone in the city.
“I’m calling from a colleague’s phone. You haven’t been answering my—“ Will hangs up. He knows he’s being unnecessarily rude, but he’s had enough of people taking advantage of him, of people talking to him and spending time on him simply to gauge his medical condition. To understand him.
Hannibal’s readiness to accept Jack Crawford’s request proves that he is no different. Just another doctor wanting to poke at his mind.
As painful as it is, Will refuses to let his relationship with Hannibal corrupt to something as clinical as therapy. The idea makes his tongue pull back in disgust. Breaking it off was really the only option.
He goes back to the table in a new breed of depression, born from alcohol and the knowledge that there is no one to blame for all this but himself. But by the time Beverly confiscates his phone, coaxes him to swallow a large gulp of her vodka, the feeling is gone, forgotten to a new anger at Hannibal, which he begins messily articulating to Bev and Alana, as well as half the bar.
Two hours later, Will is stumbling to the bathroom again, this time for another purpose. He empties his stomach into a toilet, reads an inscription of a girl named Stacy who is apparently a crazy slut as well as her phone number which is missing a number. Behind him, the door to the bathroom opens, but he doesn’t register it until he stands and opens the door of the stall.
And sees Hannibal standing there.
“William.” He looks worried, vaguely.
“What’re you…” His mind is going a mile a minute, questions popping up and disappearing with enough speed to give him a headache. Why is he here? And more importantly, how did he find me? to name a few.
He tries to take a step forward, towards Hannibal, but instead experiences a wave of nausea that only barely gives him enough warning to return to the stall. Through it, he feels arms wind around his waist, fingers brush through his hair.
“Why are you doing this to yourself?” There is a small pause, as if for thought. “Is this because of me?”
Yes, Will almost says.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” comes out instead. Hannibal laughs; Will is unsure if the dark edge to it is his imagination.
“I am taking you home.”
Will purses his lips, turns his head to glare at Hannibal. The true effect of his expression is likely lost by the newly formed bags under his eyes, the exhaustion from sickness, but it’s the thought that counts.
“No. My friends are here. They’ll take me back.”
“Stand up, please. My car is just out front.”
“Yer not my doctor,” Will replies. Refuses to budge from his kneeling position on the dirty tiles. “Or m’dad. Though you might be old enough to be.”
It’s a cheap shot, but Will is too drunk and out of it to ponder on the fact Hannibal isn’t even fifteen years older than him. “Stop bossin’ me around.”
He pauses to turn and flush the toilet. Using what leverage he can, he pushes himself up and tries to glide past Hannibal’s form. He fails miserably, ends up banging his shoulder against the man’s chest. It gives him the opening he’s obviously been looking for, because almost immediately he takes hold of Will’s elbow and pulls him closer. He glares up defiantly.
“D’you mind if I rinse out my mouth?” He can hardly believe the animosity coming out of him. He’s never this defiant, towards anyone, for any reason. He supposes, despite the sick, he should be thankful for the alcohol’s angry presence in his blood stream the first time he and Hannibal met following the breakup. Hannibal releases him so he can stalk to the sink, but he hovers unnervingly close. As if worried Will is going to make a break for it.
Which he would, if he trusted his legs.
“I want to take you home. You are in no state to be walking around in the middle of the night.”
“Fuck you, Hannibal!” Will snaps. “I don’t need you to babysit me. I’m a grown man.”
Of course, vocalizing your status as an adult doesn’t exactly make you sound like one.
Will takes a step towards the door and almost falls flat on his face, if not for Hannibal’s arm on his bicep. He doesn’t look up at him, unwilling to see the ‘I told you so’ expression. He wants to curse himself, but Hannibal is right. There is no way he can walk the three blocks back home. Will exhales, conveying as much annoyance as possible.
“Fine. But don’t think this changes anything.”
Out of the bathroom, Beverly and Alana are waiting, obviously having seen Hannibal come into the bar. Still, Beverly, just as drunk as Will, and Alana, constantly working to be as polite as possible, are at a loss for what to do. Especially since Hannibal is completely articulate and persuasive that he be allowed to drive Will home. Eventually, they can’t really do anything but agree, especially when Will is nodding, giving his admission. The two of them depart the bar.
“How did you even find me here?” Will mutters under his breath as they approach the car.
After a moment, Hannibal responds, “It was quite loud on the phone, Will. It didn’t look like you were having a party in your flat, so I checked the nearest bar.”
The way Hannibal speaks, flat, and a bit bored, he sounds as if it was the easiest thing in the world, to track Will down. Although, he admitted to going to Will’s flat to find him, then coming here, which must have taken a bit of time. Why he didn’t do it before tonight is beyond him. He does know where Will lives, after all.
Will snorts. Perhaps he was given a ‘grace period’.
Once seated in the moving car, Will finally has the chance to realize that he has never been this drunk before. He feels his head bobbing with the slightest of motions. He hopes he isn’t sick again all over the interior of the car. It would serve Hannibal right, but Will sure would look like a fool. He lets his eyes fall shut to try and fight down the nausea.
When the car pulls to a stop, Will cracks open and eyelid and groans at the sight of Hannibal’s domineering house. It looks a tad petrifying, in the night. “I thought you were taking me to my home.”
Hannibal does not speak until after he circles the car and leans in to unbuckle Will. Pulls him out slowly.
“I lied.”
Propped up against the side of Hannibal’s ever-pristine vehicle, Will suddenly becomes aware of a pressure on his waist. He bucks his hips, attempts to ward of wandering hands. The pressure doesn’t leave. Instead, Hannibal leans in closer. Presses the ridge of his nose against Will’s jaw and breathes in.
The staccato sound of Hannibal smelling him sends a shot of arousal through his body. His hands grip at the hair at the nape of Hannibal’s neck, scrabbling for purchase even as he knows he is essentially bowing to the good doctor’s whim. They kiss against Hannibal’s car, with hands slowly crawling around to Will’s backside, where he can easily grope at the flesh.
Eventually, Hannibal pulls away to tug Will inside. Once in the entry hall, Will find himself immediately pinned to the wall. There is very little difference in this position and the one against Hannibal’s car, moments earlier.
“You have been very rude over the last few days, William…” Hannibal growls against his throat. Teethes and nibbles at flesh. “What is to be done about that?”
Will gasps, arches his back and throat into Hannibal’s open mouth. Tries to press himself closer and retreat from the assault all at the same time. He raises his leg in a spasm, uses his ankle to create the necessary leverage to rub their clothed crotches against one another.
In all honestly, Will would be perfectly content just to get off like this—rub one out, cum in his underwear like a teenager and fall asleep at the foot of the stairs. But Hannibal seems to have other ideas. In one movement he undoes the fly of Will’s pants and draws him out, strokes him up and down with fingertips that rarely provide enough pressure to give Will anything more than an excruciatingly slow build.
“Hah—Hannibal!“ Will gasps. Licks his lips and leans forward to tuck his forehead into the base of Hannibal’s neck. He brings his leg up to join the other, hanging loosely about Hannibal’s hips. Mostly supported by the man’s one armed grip on his ass. “Please—“
“Apologize for not taking my calls. Then I will see what I can do about this.” In emphasis, Hannibal’s hand on his dick makes a twisting motion. The grip turns hard for only a split second before it goes back to nimble and teasing.
Will is suddenly overcome with a split second of sobriety. He leans back against the wall before lurching forward to send them both toppling to the floor. He is thankful for the wide, lush hallway. Otherwise they likely would have been injured in the movement. Hannibal gasps in surprise, groans upon impact on the (luckily) carpeted floor. His arms fall away from Will’s body for a moment and he takes the chance to pin them to the floor, rise up on his sore knees and promptly sit on Hannibal’s erection, through their trousers.
“Maybe you should apologize for trying to psychoanalyze me.” With each individual word, he grinds his hips down against Hannibal’s. Staring down at the man to take in every twitch of his expression.
“That is what I was trying to do, you know.” And with that statement, Hannibal wrenches his hands from Will’s grip and flips them both over. “You may have realized that, had you not screened my calls so insolently, as you did.”
His hand is on Will’s cock again, the other pushing and it suddenly strikes Will what this is. Both still mostly clothed, Will’s trousers and underwear slowly being pulled away while Hannibal has only undone his pants to release himself. It’s not quite hate sex, not quite that extreme, but angry sex, at the very least. Tension-relieving sex. Although, with his teeth bared and his arms halfway between throwing the man off of him and pulling him down tight against his chest, Will wonders whether or not any tension will actually be ‘relieved’ by any of this.
Hannibal kisses him, hard. Hard enough to make the bones in his neck ache. After only a moment of it, of Hannibal’s tongue licking at the roof of his mouth, quickly battling his own tongue into lax submission, Will feels like he’s floating. The ground he’s pinned to far beneath him, his consciousness spinning out of control as if in the seconds before a fatal car wreck. The uncountable shots of tequila and vodka come rushing back to it, the amount that he was unable to purge. He is really too drunk to be held accountable for any of his actions.
That’s what he thinks, anyways, when he moans obscenely into Hannibal’s mouth. Parts his legs and angles his hips towards the man’s inevitable, waiting erection. He moans again, unable to speak for the tongue confining his own, forced to convey his need in whatever way he can.
Hannibal understands, presses a single finger up inside of him and bends it at the second knuckle. Brushes his prostate once and only once, and even that sends a feeling resonant of falling through empty air, perhaps into dark waters below, through Will’s gut. There’s a whining sound, then. It must be coming from him because Hannibal would never make a sound like that, right? But he can’t ponder on it, because the finger is gone, the tip of the cock of his ex—his lover—his whatever, already inside and positioned at his sphincter.
Hannibal pushes past. Once, then again and again.
Oh. It really should be so earth-shattering, being fucked by Hannibal. Especially since the last time was only Thursday, in the lecture hall. It had barely been four days. But, for four days, Will believed they would never do this again, that he would never see him again. That everything between them was over. When did the man become so necessary?
Orgasm comes embarrassingly quickly, but then again, he is rather drunk. His eyes close; he screams into Hannibal open mouth. The way Hannibal is kissing him, kissing him still, it almost feels like he’s sucking the sounds of his release out of them—swallowing them down and consuming them.
In the post-coital aftereffects, he’s fading fast. Exhaustion catches up quickly. He feels his body go limp beneath Hannibal, eyes already closed and he can’t imagine opening them even if he wanted to.
A few moments more and Hannibal bites lightly on his tongue. He groans into his mouth, but Will is already virtually insentient.