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Hannibal’s bedroom –
A level field, an arena, an absence of remorse. Smells like cedar and distant longing, cloaked in murky daylight filtered through drawn curtains. Will imagines his empathy to cross the physical boundaries of their separate constitutions, allowing him access to Hannibal’s nose, his eyes, his desires. He imagines Hannibal bleeding into him like a spring into a lake.
In all the years Will has lived with his odd condition, he’s never experienced anything like it. Meeting Hannibal was like feeling a key slot into place and click him open, inducing a sense of acute vulnerability, gratefulness and fear.
He isn’t scared now.
“How did you think we’d do this?” Will asks Hannibal. They’re standing so close their noses are almost bumping against each other, but they haven’t kissed, haven’t touched. They simply breathe the same air, letting the inevitable settle into their bones. “Assuming you’ve thought about it.”
“I regarded such thoughts as a lapse in self-control,” Hannibal says. “It felt degrading to us both to imagine it.”
“But you did.”
“Yes.”
“What did you imagine? Fucking me or being fucked by me?”
“I imagined, mostly, that you were inside me.” Hannibal looks like he’s about to smile, but then decides against it. “I was in a state of mind where I longed to be desired. You would have to desire me to partake in such an act. If I had my way with you, it wouldn’t require anything from you other than your submission.”
Hannibal’s words, his proximity, is enough to send a spark of arousal down Will’s spine. He pushes his hand against the bulging front of his pants, because he sees no reason why he shouldn’t. Hannibal doesn’t look down, gaze fixed on Will’s face. The look in his eyes is hard to describe, but it’s devoid of sharp edges, born from a soft, pulpous feeling Will is all too familiar with. He imagines the feeling would squelch and stick to his shoes like mud if he walked in it.
“You longed to be desired,” Will echoes in a slow drawl. There’s a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, but it’s fond, almost tender. “You may be projecting too much emotion onto a hard cock, Hannibal. It’s not exactly unheard of for men to fuck people they despise.”
“Despised or not, one is nonetheless desired. Love and hate are closely related in this respect,” Hannibal's face gains a contemplative look. “Passion would be more suitable to speak of, perhaps.”
Will hums in thoughtful agreement. It would be so easy to tilt his head, tip his face up and kiss him. There’s been enough words. There’s no doubt where they’re going. But this is a dance, and Will likes the pretense, the rhythm, leading while Hannibal follows.
Will takes a step back and gestures to the bed. “Show me.”
“What do you want me to show you?”
“How I’d fuck you. How you imagined it.”
“Realistically or ideally?”
Will considers for a moment. No matter which option he picks, it will tell him something about Hannibal’s perception of himself, of Will, and of their relationship.
“Realistically,” Will finally decides. He isn’t sure he’s ready for idealism yet.
The way Hannibal moves is like an actor with a memorized script, no hesitation, no considering pauses. In quick succession, he shrugs out of his jacket, takes off his shoes and makes his way over to the bed, where he kneels on the bedspread. Then he unzips his pants and pulls them down just far enough. His chest drops to the mattress, long legs propping his ass up while the side of his face presses into the sheets.
Will takes a moment to consider the fact that Hannibal’s face would hardly be visible to him from that angle, and most of his body is covered. So Hannibal thinks – or used to think, at the very least – that Will wouldn’t like to see him. Maybe he thought Will was straight, or he figured he’d want to distance himself from what he was doing in general.
Hannibal spits on his fingers and Will is jerked out of his musings. It’s a little odd to him that Hannibal would abstain from using the surgical lube they keep with their other medical supplies, just by the side of the bed. Then he realizes that this is probably what he himself would have done.
Parting his legs a little further, Hannibal reaches back and lets his hand start moving behind him. Will circles around to the foot of the bed, driven by a strange curiosity to see what, exactly, Hannibal is doing to himself. What Will is doing to him. Hannibal’s fingers are rubbing lightly over the wrinkled skin of his hole, spreading saliva around it.
It looks impossibly small to Will. He wonders how tight it would feel clenching around his cock and feels his stomach flutter with nervous excitement, not quite believing what he’s seeing.
There’s a small wince as Hannibal shoves a finger inside, a slight contortion to his even facial features. Will gets the sense that Hannibal is deliberately letting him in on his initial reactions, not masking them even though he could. The idea makes Will aware of just how vulnerable Hannibal is making himself. It’s intensely arousing and profoundly disturbing at the same time, making Will feel something uncomfortably close to pity. A second finger quickly follows, thrusting back and forth in a determined but rather sloppy attempt at fingering his hole open.
Just a bit too soon, Hannibal takes his hand away, spits on three of his fingers and shoves them all inside in one go with a low grunt, eyes pinching shut. Will watches in stunned silence as Hannibal starts fucking himself, moving his fingers back and forth in angry, short thrusts. His free hand is clenched in the sheets, nowhere near his cock.
”You must think I’m really selfish,” Will says. His voice sounds too thin. He clears his throat. “Or just unskilled. Don’t know which is more offensive.”
“I believe you were a very considerate lover for Mrs. Graham,” Hannibal says between shallow breaths, voice like gravel underfoot. “But I am not her. It doesn’t concern me. I’d welcome your selfishness.”
Hannibal’s presumption irks Will a little bit. Mostly because he isn’t wrong. Will spent a good chunk of his married life with his head between Molly’s legs, learning how she liked to be kissed, fingered, licked, how his tongue should twist, where to rub the pads of his fingers to pull high-pitched, thin moans and guttural groans from her.
He hadn’t always known what Molly was thinking, but he could always count on knowing how to make her hands pull his curls straight, trying to pull him closer and steer his tongue right between the slick folds of her cunt. It was, at times, disconcerting to him – knowing her body better than her mind.
The thought startles a truth to the forefront of Will’s mind. There’s no corner of Hannibal’s mind he doesn’t know, but the physical reality of his body still remains a mystery. An almost perfect inversion of his marriage.
Will has enough of watching. He climbs the bed, unzips his pants with hands that are trembling with tension and takes out his cock. Then he reaches into the first aid kit on the floor, getting the unused tube of lubricant out. He’s bigger than three fingers and he doesn’t trust himself to be as gentle as he’d like.
Smearing the cold slickness over himself, he distantly notices how Hannibal has stopped breathing. He pulls Hannibal’s hand away and pins it to the bed, then he places the tip against his hole and slides into him in one long, uninterrupted thrust.
Hannibal makes a small, completely indescribable sound and the muscles along the curved shard of his spine twitch. The tight, scorching hot slickness almost makes Will come on the spot, but he takes a deep breath and holds still, thinking of nothing. Once his body has adjusted, he grips Hannibal’s hip and pulls out almost all the way, pushing back in a little faster, getting himself used to it. Getting Hannibal used to it. In the end, it’s as easy as breathing.
Will fucks Hannibal with short, hard thrusts, chasing his own pleasure without a care for Hannibal’s body. He can take the pain. He probably relishes the pain, all things considered. He drapes himself over Hannibal’s back, suddenly resenting the amount of clothes separating them, wanting to feel the rub of skin on skin, their beading sweat, wants to know what Hannibal smells like stripped of everything. He pushes his nose into Hannibal’s neck and inhales deeply, wrapping one arm around Hannibal’s middle.
“Is this what you were thinking about when we were apart?” Will mumbles into the soft hair at the back of his neck. “Tell me about the other fantasy. Tell me about the ideal.”
Hannibal makes a choked sound and rubs his face against the sheets in an approximation of a head shake. “This is better. Don’t stop.”
Will groans, releasing a quivering breath. “Again, say that again.”
“Don’t stop, Will. Please.”
“I won’t. You feel so good. You smell so good,” Will slides his hand up over Hannibal’s chest and squeezes him through his shirt. His neck smells like lemony soap and skin, pungent and warm like a greenhouse. Almost like a woman, except there is no doubt that it’s Hannibal, and this realization makes Will want to smile. He’s already smiling.
Will doesn’t last long. He can’t. Not with Hannibal struggling not to squirm beneath him, mouth half-open and eyes closed. His legs are trembling. Will feels it where his hand is placed on his hip. When Will comes, it is with a loud, stuttered moan, leaning so heavily on Hannibal that he almost flattens him to his stomach.
Will pulls out and winces in sympathy at the way Hannibal’s reddened hole is twitching, shiny and dripping with spit and semen and lube. Even after the rose tint of sexual excitement has faded, Will likes it. He wonders what the rest of Hannibal’s body looks like in the throes of arousal, how the stern lines of him would bend to the pursuit of pleasure.
“Turn over,” Will says. “Take off your clothes.”
Hannibal moves slowly, as though he’s just woken up, unbuttoning his shirt and taking his pants and underwear off along with his socks. He leaves his clothes by the foot of the bed and turns onto his back. His cock is hard and slick with precome. His body as a whole is nothing like anything Will has ever wanted before, but now he can’t imagine wanting anything other than coarse chest hair and muscular thighs and veined hands, reaching out to him like something desperate.
“You too,” Hannibal says to Will, almost pleading. He sounds so sincere. Will feels an irrational tug of jealousy at the idea that anyone else might have heard it, though he doubts it.
Will takes his sweater off and kicks off his shoes and socks, struggling out of his pants and underwear. There is a question in Hannibal’s eyes, but Will answers it only by crawling in between his legs and placing an open-mouthed kiss on the underside of his dick. Hannibal chokes on a surprised moan and bucks up helplessly for more. Will pushes him down with one hand on his hip, firm and decisive, but he has to use both his hands to keep Hannibal still when he wraps his tongue around the tip to give it a slow, caressing suck.
“Will,” Hannibal says, pawing at Will’s head with something that closely resembles uncertainty. “I won’t last.”
Will hushes him. “It’s fine, it doesn’t matter. Just let me do this, this is my fantasy.”
Will takes him into his mouth with a confidence he doesn’t really feel. He’s never sucked anyone off before, barely even looked at a dick that wasn’t his own, but things like that don’t seem to matter much where Hannibal is concerned.
When Will feels Hannibal going tense, he lets his cock slip out of his mouth. Hannibal groans and tries to chase after his mouth with his hips, but he can’t when Will is holding him down. Will places a sloppy kiss on the head, slowly taking it back into his mouth to knead it with his tongue. When it feels like Hannibal might come again, he backs off, wrapping his hand around the slick length to give it a few slow, loose strokes.
“You’re doing great,” Will assures him, feeling an odd inclination to comfort. “This is perfect. Calm down a little.”
Hannibal nods absently. It seems like he’s barely listening. “Is this truly a fantasy of yours?” he asks between strained breaths. “You needn’t do this only to please me.”
“I’m not. This isn’t just for you. Besides, I’m making a point.”
“What point?”
Will rubs the pad of his thumb over Hannibal’s slit, coming away with see-through strings of precome. It looks like liquid glass or cobwebs in sunlight. He puts his thumb in his mouth and licks it clean, watching Hannibal watching him with awe etched onto his face.
“You thought I wouldn’t want to see you. Feel you. I’m showing you that I do.” Two of Will’s fingers rub around Hannibal’s stretched hole, dipping shallowly inside. “You’re beautiful. Your body’s beautiful. I love what it does for me. I love how it opens,” Will lets his fingers sink in, almost groaning at the slick heat and the way it feels like it’s trying to reel him in deeper. “I love how greedy it is for me.”
Hannibal writhes and moans as Will starts sucking him off again while his fingers search for that bundle of nerves to make it even better. He knows he’s found it when Hannibal shudders, and then it only takes a few hollow-cheeked bobs of Will’s head before Hannibal comes with a sob-like grunt. Will swallows, because he can’t imagine doing anything else. This is about consumption. Most aspects of their relationship touch upon consumption.
Will rests his cheek against Hannibal’s thigh and closes his eyes, trying to catch his breath. Hannibal puts his hands under Will’s arms and hauls him up to rest beside him, twining their legs together and tucking his head under Will’s chin. He sighs and nuzzles Will’s neck, all sleepy and ruffled and achingly, oddly, uniquely beautiful.
Will idly wonders if Hannibal finds him as beautiful as he finds Hannibal. If he experiences attraction in that base way Will does, or if it’s all about the mental connection through flesh for him. He looks at the place where Hannibal’s leg wraps around his and notes how his skin looks a sickly shade of white in comparison to Hannibal’s darker complexion. Even though Hannibal has spent three years in prison, his body still appears more toned than Will’s, fat and muscle disciplined into perfect ratios.
Absently, Will runs his tongue over his bottom lip. His lips used to be fuller. He considers his face, which is marred by scars and unkempt stubble, recalls the way his eyes are ringed by discolored, puffy skin. There was a time when sleepless nights and the calls of the dead couldn’t touch him, but that has started to catch up to him in hollowing, thinning, bloating, all in the wrong places.
The idea makes Will ache, just a little bit. He knows how Hannibal feels about beautiful things. He wishes he could show pictures of when he was nothing but sun-kissed skin and loose curls and sleepy eyes sheened with sticky sickness, a teasing glimpse into the secret horrors within – like something out of an Oscar Wilde novel.
That man would have caught Hannibal’s attention even before he opened his mouth. Will used to be an ideal.
Hannibal tilts his head up, looking at Will with glimmering, hooded eyes. He touches Will’s lips with that odd uncertainty of his, following the outline of the delicate flesh with his fingertips.
“May I kiss you?” he asks, hopeful and without any attempt to conceal it.
Will smiles as kindly as he knows how, wanting to compensate for things Hannibal probably hasn’t even considered. “Did I kiss you in your ideal fantasy?”
“You kissed me in every fantasy. Eventually. My self-control always seems to lapse with you.”
Will puts his hand on Hannibal’s cheek and tilts his head before pressing their lips together. They kiss like it’s the first time either of them is kissing anyone, slightly off-center, almost biting their own lips before their mouths get used to each other. Hannibal’s eyes are closed, but Will keeps his open, wants to know what Hannibal looks like in this too. Through the blur of his vision, Will sees the lines in his face even out, eyes moving behind closed lids like he’s dreaming.
Hannibal doesn’t stop kissing him. Will has to break it off, and even then, Hannibal rubs their noses and foreheads together.
“This is so different from what I thought it might be,” he says. “I couldn’t have imagined this. Did you imagine it, Will?”
Will automatically glances down to the tan line on his ring finger. “I tried not to.”
“But you did.”
“Yes,” Will releases a shallow breath. “I thought it would hurt. One way or another. I didn’t think you’d let this happen without causing me pain.”
“Did that arouse you?”
Will almost blushes. He ducks his head. “After everything—how couldn’t it? When I think of you, I think of violence.”
Hannibal kisses him again, soft and almost timid. Then he crawls on top of Will, pinning him beneath his weight. The kiss transitions from an exchange to an assertion, Hannibal’s mouth bearing down on Will’s until it gets hard for him to breathe. A hand snakes up into Will’s hair and pulls sharply without a hint of uncertainty.
“I will stop if you tell me to,” Hannibal says in an almost soothing tone of voice. Then he kisses Will again, harder, faster, grinding their hips together until they’re both hard. A rough hand wraps around Will’s cock and starts stroking while the hand that was in Will’s hair trails down to his stomach, fingertips grazing his scar.
Will leans into it, understanding intuitively. “Don’t stop,” he pants into Hannibal’s mouth. “I won’t tell you to stop.”
Seconds later, blunt fingernails dig into the scar tissue, twisting wrench-like in the sensitive skin.
Will jerks and stutters out a pained groan, feeling like his old wound is being torn open all over again. He doesn’t go soft. If anything, blood rushes to where Hannibal’s hand is holding him firm, hips moving to follow the rhythmic strokes.
“You called me beautiful,” Hannibal says, nails still buried in his scar. “If you could see yourself the way I see you, if you heard—”
“Tell me,” Will pleads.
“The way pain and pleasure sounds the same in your voice. The look in your eyes when I touch you. Your eyes, your mouth. The curve of your nose. It makes your profile so very soft.” Hannibal leans over Will and kisses his forehead, a startlingly gentle thing compared to everything else. “Your face yields where your mind won’t. It’s a beautiful paradox.”
The pain feels like home. Hannibal’s hand is a five-bladed knife, almost slipping over the blood and sweat welling up from Will’s skin. He kisses Will’s mouth, so hard his teeth threaten to pierce the fragile skin of his lips. And Will –
He comes. He arrives. He’s back where they could have been all along. It’s beautiful.