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Hannibal likes to sit on their front porch and watch Will work. Eyes glinting, a mug of warm tea or coffee or something else in his hands. He does this for hours, has done it since he was able to get out of bed, and continues to do it every day. It’s not unsettling, not like it should be – the way his eyes roam his body has become something of a delicate intimacy between them. It’s as sexual as Hannibal has dared to be with him.
It’s how the preacher told him when he was 16 and his father thought he was fornicating with the girl–Chay–down the road, sin starts. A lustful look is just as guilty as the act itself. Louisiana summers, the sweltering heat, made sin easy. It got into people’s brains, into their souls, and made them want to touch each other. They had to be stronger than that, than Satan. They needed to rise above the enemy. He never has been strong. Nor has he ever cared much for the idea of the Devil.
Still, he’s reminded of that conversation every day that he goes out in the yard to work or, when he comes home from whatever job he’s done–typically the fixing of some local’s boat–and Hannibal watches him. Drinks him in. Takes in the way his body moves, the sweat on his skin, the pull of his shirt against his arms. It’s lust if he’s ever seen it, but somehow it remains untapped.
At 16, in the preacher’s office of that old Pentecostal church, Will didn’t feel guilty. He hadn’t so much as touched the girl, and despite thinking about it, he couldn’t see how the thought alone was just as bad as the action. He still doesn’t feel guilty. He’s no David. But he understands now what the preacher meant when he said a look can be just as bad. Hannibal’s looks, and his inaction, spark against his skin. It’s what he imagines Christian guilt really feels like, but it doesn’t make him want it less. It heats him up from the inside until his cock is hard and throbbing and something builds up in his belly. Something worse than damnation, worse than lust, worse than sin.
It isn’t the need to be touched or to touch. It’s something beyond physicality, but he has no way to experience it. Not until he knows what it’s like to have Hannibal the way he’s meant to.
The watching happens every single day, which is a constant agitation for Will. He wants Hannibal, he has wanted Hannibal for probably longer than he feels comfortable admitting, and he thought that once they were together, once they were healed, they could have this one thing without a game.
The two of them have waited all of this time, hurt each other in immeasurable ways, given up both of their respective ideal lives for each other, and the extent of their physical intimacy is all held up in lusty looks that Hannibal never does anything about. He just watches him, the way God might watch his worshippers.
All of this time and this is what they’ll be?
Will shovels snow today. Hannibal sits with a blanket over his legs, tucked securely around him. It isn’t hot here, it never gets as hot as it was when he lived in Louisiana, and yet his body is a suffocating sepulcher of all his past wanting. He’s all but laid it to rest, despite how brightly it burns, simmering down into him until he’s gasping for something more. This is their life. He’s accepted that fact.
He looks out over their yard. There’s a thick blanket of snow that runs for miles. The driveway is the only thing he’s concerned about, and he’s a little over halfway to the end. Despite the frigid air, he’s covered in sweat. Working in the cold, he thinks, is worse than working in the heat.
The sun is setting too, which makes this worse. He won’t get the whole driveway shoveled before nightfall, and by the time morning rolls around, there’s likely to be inches of snow over where he’s already shoveled. That happened a few weeks ago and Will nearly lost it. If it happens again, he might lock himself in his room and not come out until he’s sure he won’t hurt himself or Hannibal.
(Hurting each other is such a second nature for them both that when he gets angry, he can’t always control what he wants to do. He’s taken to locking himself up instead of throwing plates and cups. Hannibal thinks he might have a bruise on his brain, but Will has never cared to get it checked out. Besides, these angry spells are becoming less frequent now. Probably the bruise healing.)
Sometimes, he thinks God must be laughing at him. He wouldn’t be surprised anyway.
He turns back toward the porch, shovel in hand. He’ll leave the driveway for now. He doesn’t want to think about it at all.
“Are you unwell, Will?” Hannibal asks as he comes up the steps. Slush clings to the thick soles of his boots, muddy snow tracks over each step and the porch.
Will kicks his boots off, watches the mud-ice mixture fling around him. He knows better than to track it through their house. “Just thirsty.”
“There’s a pot of coffee on for you,” Hannibal says softly, “I already pulled the sugar out, as well.”
And despite his aggravation, despite the heavy, dying want in his gut, Will softens. “Thank you. That was… kind.”
Hannibal brings his cup to his lips, taking a slow, deliberate sip. “It’s the least I could do.”
No, Will wants to say, it isn’t. He clears his throat with a stifled cough and then slips through the front door. The heat of the house is balmy against his skin. The house is more of an open concept than Hannibal’s old Baltimore home, all the rooms sort of bleed into each other, and it feels right to Will. Less secrets, somehow. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t pushed the subject of physical intimacy so much. Maybe this is enough, somehow. Maybe a cup of coffee is enough.
He pours himself the coffee into the cup Hannibal’s also brought out for him, almost to the top, and then stirs a spoonful of sugar into it. He has to be careful not to slosh the hot fluid over the edges, and then carefully sips off of the top.
Hannibal pads into the kitchen with his tea. He limps, slightly, but it doesn’t look like his leg is bothering him as badly as it has been. Will’s shoulders droop and he leans against the island. Hannibal comes to stand close to him, one hand on the countertop to balance himself as they drink together in a gentle silence.
It’s times like this he thinks he could reach over and touch Hannibal, brush his fingers through his hair, rub over his neck with his palm, and learn where the soft of his skin turns bony. It wouldn’t be hard, it wouldn’t be strange, but he sacrificed everything for him, and he watches and waits for him to accept it. Hannibal could touch him, Hannibal could accept the sacrifice he made.
Over the last three weeks, he’s started to consider there may be something more sinister than Hannibal just playing a game. Perhaps he’s grown bored of him. The chasing may have been what intrigued him and now that he has him, there’s nothing more to be gained. Hannibal’s still too weak to dispose of Will, he needs him (he must hate that), but that thought chafes around the collar of his shirt every now and then.
Lust isn’t enough. Lust doesn’t keep interest. Hannibal can lust after anyone and kill them. It isn’t the same as love, as interest.
What will he do if Hannibal is bored? He can’t ask him directly, he’ll just deny it. He can’t lose Will’s support at the moment, but the thought has started to plague him. What happens when God tires of his worshippers? When he’s displeased with them?
He kills them.
“You know I love you?” Will asks, a sort of reconfirming action.
He hates how desperate the act is. He hates that he needs him to acknowledge it.
Hannibal nods, a small, slick smile on his lips. “Of course, as I love you.”
Will chews the inside of his cheek, staring into the dark cup of coffee. “Good. I’m happy.”
Sin and eternal damnation aren’t things he’s frightened of. If he dies, he isn’t going anywhere, but he is frightened of what’s happening between them. If Hannibal wanted him in more than a baseline, animal sort of way, he’d have him. His self control, to Will’s uneasy mind, is a sign of discontent between them.
“Is something bothering you, Will?” Hannibal asks, eyes narrowing.
He’ll keep asking until he picks at Will enough. People never asked growing up what was bothering him. They didn’t want to know the answer. He collected beetles and butterflies, put their little corpses in a shoe box, and had a fascination with the dead that any good Southerner would deem unfit. (He always was keen on the dying process. There was a deer that died in the woods just outside his home and he’d bring the other boys to watch it as it decomposed. At the time, he didn’t realize his fascination was far different from the other boys his age.) People didn’t want to know what bothered Will because a lot of them, deep down, felt that it was the Devil that truly rubbed against him. He wonders what Hannibal thinks is rubbing against him now.
He sniffles from the cold that still clings to him. “No, not at all.”
His body aches for him, the way the first Church ached for Christ. That ache, paired with the thought that Hannibal might be growing bored with their mundane life (a thought he’s trying to shake away. Hannibal isn’t strong enough to do more than stay home. If he’s bored, it isn’t because of Will), has him sore all over, like he’s been battered by the ocean and the beach yet again.
Hannibal rinses his empty cup and places it face down in the sink. “It’s too late for you to finish the driveway today. I’ll finish dinner?”
Will gulps down the last bit of his coffee, rinses the cup, and places it face down as well. “I’m gonna shower.”
They don’t have any other parting words. Will goes to his bedroom, strips out of his snow clothes, and steps into the bathroom. The tiles are cold against his feet and when he turns the shower on to the maximum heat, the bathroom is taken over by a plume of hot, moist air. It feels good in his lungs. His body’s never quite gotten used to this level of cold so the best he feels is often in the bathroom with the shower running.
The hot water prickles and stings as he steps into the shower, his muscles relaxing all at once. His shoulder has been giving him hell recently, but he pushes through. There’s nothing to be done about it now, the nerve damage is just a part of his life. The only thing that helps anymore are hot showers and the pills he’s trying not to take like tic tacs.
Leaning his head back, he lets the water soak him. His body is scarred in different ways, having been ripped open by the ocean and then once by Hannibal’s hand in the early days on the boat. Some of those spots tingle as the water hits them, but he doesn’t flinch at it. It feels good. It reminds him that he’s alive.
Once his skin acclimates to the hot water, he scrubs himself the sweat and grime of the day. He did some work in the backyard before he got around to the front (clearing out fallen limbs, cutting up a tree that collapsed from the heavy snow) and he knows if he can smell the build up, Hannibal certainly can.
The washcloth leaves him red, but even that isn’t enough to take the ache in his soul away. It’s too deep, beyond that first layer of skin.
He touches himself to try and relieve some of it. Hand wrapped tightly around himself, the other pressed to his teeth to keep any incriminating sound from coming out. It never takes long when he’s like this; desperate and raw. He comes with a shiver, and doesn’t give himself time to recalibrate, he just finishes his shower and then steps out to prepare for dinner.
Hannibal will know he’s touched himself. He always does, Will can see it in his eyes. His pupils dilate, his nostrils flare, and his throat works like maybe he wants to say something but decidedly doesn’t. As he comes down for dinner he sees that it’s no different. It’s times like these when Hannibal’s want is so visible, that he wonders why he never says anything. He can smell the heady lust on him and yet he keeps himself tightly knit.
“What’re we having?” He asks, leaning against the island again. Hannibal’s passing away from him, his shoulders rigid from the scent of his need.
“Vegetable soup,” He strangles out. “Something simple for such a cold day.”
Just the same, he thinks those darker thoughts that plague him could be wrong. It’s this back and forth sort of dance that drives him crazy. Hannibal wants him, he does nothing about it, and Will suffers for it. Is it too much to want him to do something after everything Will has given him?
He supposes Christ must’ve felt similarly as he died. All he did for his followers, and they turned and ran. All he did for God, and he looked away.
Hannibal ladles soup into two bowls, cuts them each a piece of crusty bread, and they find themselves in the dining room.
They eat in silence, mostly. Occasionally one of them says something, but it’s never more than a few words. Somehow, dinners have become a quiet affair. Things change after so long. Hannibal did. He did. He doesn’t know why he thought everything would go back to the way it used to be.
Like a child with a crush, he sneaks glances at Hannibal. Watches him eat. Their meals are so simple days, that he doesn’t know if it means something beyond Hannibal’s tiredness that seems to constantly cling to him. It doesn’t matter, he supposes. He spoons the vegetable soup into his mouth and thinks about the work he has in the morning. He’ll have to finish shoveling the driveway and then go into town, pick up Hannibal’s pain medicine, stop by the hardware store, and then come home to fix a window in Hannibal’s room that leaks cold air like a sieve.
Will thinks perhaps if they shared a bed, he wouldn’t feel as cross about the lack of true physical intimacy. He doesn’t understand why they don’t do this simple thing. Will has been in Hannibal’s bedroom only a handful of times in the months they’ve lived here and each time, he’s tried to show him what he wants. Stayed longer than he should, sat with him on the bed, hell–once when he was mildly buzzed and embarrassingly desperate, he told Hannibal his shower wasn’t working and he needed to use his and undressed in front of him. Nothing ever came of it.
It just doesn’t seem right, Hannibal is a hedonist, he’d never deny himself the pleasure of Will’s body unless he simply didn’t want it. Unless he knew having it wouldn’t benefit him.
They’ve never been direct either. Most of their conversations and their wants have always been danced around, spoken in riddles. Hannibal doesn’t enjoy directness, and Will has no desire to tell him what he wants. He already has; he gave everything up for him. That should be enough. That should tell him everything he needs to know.
“Help me with the dishes?” Hannibal asks as they finish their meal. Neither of them goes for seconds.
Will stands with his bowl, his spoon, and his empty glass. “Yeah, of course.”
That’s just another thing they do in silence.
Will dries one of the pans from breakfast that’s been handed to him. “How’s your leg?”
Hannibal moves it, shakes it like something could change. “The cold makes the pain worse, but I’ve certainly managed.”
Another pan, smaller, is passed between them. Will presses his tongue against his teeth, thinking. “Do you want to go into town with me tomorrow? I need to get your medicine and stop by the hardware store. You don’t have any more pills so I figure if you go with me, you can take one as soon as we get it.”
Hannibal rinses a plate under the faucet. “That would be nice. We could stop and grab lunch.”
Will gives one curt nod. “We could go to that little diner off of Main you like. My treat.”
He can see him smile out of the corner of his eye. “I would like that very much.”
Will looks into the empty side of his sink, but he can hardly comprehend what he’s doing. All he can think about is Hannibal right next to him, how seeing him laid out makes him ache, and what he’ll do if Hannibal doesn’t want him for whatever reason.
The predictability of their life has become an oppressive weight over Will. It’s crushing him in their kitchen. It isn’t just Hannibal who hates predictability, and he hopes he knows that. He thinks if they could just kill, if Hannibal’s leg was better, things would be better. Maybe he’ll find someone, maybe he’ll drag Hannibal out of the house one night so they can hunt.
(He realizes now that he feels like some husband who just realized his marriage is failing and is trying to solve it with things he should’ve done a long time ago.)
Dropping the dish towel, Will pushes away. It must look like a sudden thing to Hannibal, but he doesn’t react.
“I want to leave by 9,” He decides, wiping his hands on one of the drier ones. “I’ll wake you up around 8:30.”
Hannibal glances at him, lips pursed. “I’ll set an alarm as well.”
Will nods once and leaves him to wash the last few dishes. He needs to lay in bed, to figure this out. Although, he does this most nights. He wonders if those who came before him ever felt this way. If Bedelia ever laid in bed and wondered what she could do to be… right. If Randall Tier knew the moment Hannibal lost interest in him, or if he was too consumed in the performance of it all to realize.
He settles in his bed, face pressed into the pillow, and forces himself to sleep. He hears Hannibal move through the house, hears him pass his door, and fruitlessly hopes he might come in.
Around 2 or 3 AM, Will isn’t sure, he wakes up thirsty. The kind he can’t exactly ignore. He pushes himself out of the bed and goes to the kitchen to make himself a glass of water. He tries to be quiet but not long after he’s on his second glass, Hannibal pads into the kitchen half asleep.
“What are you doing up?” Will asks, voice graveled from sleep and this unquenchable thirst.
“You woke me,” Hannibal answers as if it’s obvious.
Will swallows another mouthful of water. “Sorry. Tried not to.”
They stand there for so long that Will’s tired mind starts offering himself solutions to his problem. Solutions he isn’t sure he should partake in. He’s finally quenched his thirst when he settles on the fact that if he wants Hannibal, he’ll have to set it into motion. If Hannibal guts him again, well, his tired mind says that’s just a price he’ll have to pay.
“I think I’ll stay in the living room, and finish a few sketches,” Hannibal says, slipping away from him before he can try anything. Like he knows what Will is thinking. “I doubt I can sleep again. Perhaps I’ll ride into town with you another time.”
He puts his cup in the sink, bristled from what seems to be some sort of rejection. “Right, I’ll see you when I get back then.”
Frowning, Hannibal nods. “Yes. Of course. Goodnight, Will.”
Will steps away again. What he was going to do falls away and he stumbles from the kitchen, not looking at Hannibal again. “Goodnight.”
This time he doesn’t sleep. He crawls into his bed, alone, and tosses and turns. There’s nothing comfortable about his bed. It’s cold, and his body trembles from the lonesomeness of it. If he were well rested he wouldn’t be thinking about getting out of bed again. Is it ten minutes? Twenty? An hour? He doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed and forces himself up and out of his room. All of this is a lot of forcing himself to do it, to get up, to take what he wants. He’s too tired to know better, all of this has just built up, today is just the day he’s decided to let it break.
He comes into the living room and stands, his chest sickeningly tight. He should do this, he thinks, but as he watches Hannibal, lying over the couch with his sketch papers, he wonders if this is a mistake.
Maybe Hannibal will rip him open, dig his fingers into the scar across his stomach, and kill him like a sacrificial dove. Another mistake before he finds the right person, the one who doesn’t need years with someone else to know what he wants. Will this person be a woman? Will she know him, keep him interested? Whoever comes after him, if this is the end, won’t let domestication crush them. Hannibal will be too precise.
Hannibal looks up at him, eyebrows knit together. “Yes?”
Will stands there a moment longer, hands rubbing against his sides as he tries to decide if it’s worth dying tonight to try and get what he wants. It is. “Put your work down.”
Hannibal looks at him strangely, like he’s the devil perched up, offering him the bite of fruit, deceiving him into damnation. Regardless, Hannibal puts the sketches and his coals to the side. He looks up at him, waiting.
There have been times that they’ve touched. In the boat, Will had to touch him to stitch him up, to check for fever–for infection–but those things were clinical, necessary. Their hands may brush when they pass dishes, or when they stand too close to each other, but it has never been this.
Will comes across the room with mechanical steps. Their clinical touches, the time on the boat Hannibal cut him open and then tried to close him back up, don’t compare to what he feels as he lowers himself next to him on the couch.
The warm, heavy pressure of Hannibal’s body pressed against him shocks him. All the tiredness drains from his body and he’s left with the heat between them and the knowledge he’s giving him a vulnerability he hasn’t wanted to. It feels like the first time he ever held someone’s hand, some 25 odd years ago, on a fishing dock in an old Bayou. Rejuvenating.
Their bodies mold together, Will’s half on top of Hannibal, and Hannibal stares up at him like he isn’t quite sure what’s happening or what to do.
“Will…” His voice is caught, concerned.
“Hannibal,” He whispers back. His eyes flicker down to his lips. If he doesn’t do it now, flush and trembling, then he doesn’t think he’ll ever do it. And now that he’s felt the warmth of his body, how his flesh gives for him, he thinks he deserves to have it all.
Sinful, dirty, guilty. He is offering Hannibal some strangling fruit. He’s going to press it upon him, and hope he takes eat.
Their lips brush, tempting and shy, and then Will kisses him fully. His teeth sink into his lip, harder than they should, and he pushes Hannibal down into the couch, slotting a leg between his thighs as he kisses him. His breathing is fast and hot, his hands are all over Hannibal. He needs this, he has needed it, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop needing it, even in death. He is a ravenous creature, desperate and wanting.
Will’s tongue presses between Hannibal’s lips, swallowing down the soft sounds he makes. He doesn’t taste like blood or rot. His mouth is sweet, and pliable. It opens for him without a fight, offering him the space.
“I need you, Hannibal.” The words are muffled, smearing against both of their lips. His thigh presses against Hannibal’s hardened cock, just the slightest bit of pressure, meant to make him squirm. “I want you to give yourself to me.”
Hannibal stiffens slightly, a soft moan between them. His fingers dig into Will’s shoulders, his throat working.
Will pulls back, a string of spit connecting their lips. Hannibal is flush, blinking, almost confused.
“Did you just–“
Hannibal’s lips part, eyes wide. He’s all of a sudden mortified by the truth of the matter. If he wants Will to go, he can’t get it out.
Will bursts with laughter, he can’t help him, and leans in for another kiss. Pressing them against his mouth, his cheeks, the curve of his jaw.
“Will,” Hannibal breathes, “Please understand–“
He kisses him again, silencing him. “I understand. Come to bed? Or is your refractory period slow?”
Hannibal scowls. “I’d like to come to bed with you, regardless of my refractory period.”
Will crawls off of him to stand. He offers him a gentle hand and sighs when Hannibal takes it. His pants are wet, ruined, and Will feels the worry of boredom start to dissipate. How long has Hannibal gone without touch? He knows he was with Bedelia in Europe, that he never denied himself the luxury of her body, but then at the BSHCI he wouldn’t have any sort of contact. Hardly anything clinical as well. There were always cameras, always someone watching. He doubts Hannibal ever had the privacy to satisfy himself.
Is that what this has all been about then? Years without the touch of another has left him aching and fast. A tongue in his mouth and the slide of a leg between his thighs is enough to get him off now.
They go to Will’s room, it seems like the logical answer since he invited him to bed.
“I thought you…” Will purses his lips as he steps out of his sleeping pants. “I thought you were bored.”
“Waiting,” He counters. “I waited three years, I could wait longer.”
Will almost smiles. “More like five.”
Hannibal slips out of his nightclothes, and Will looks over his body. It isn’t like he hasn’t seen him nude before, but it’s different when he’s better, when his body is meant to be seen as something sexual and not a broken beast. It’s his turn to drink him in, and he takes his time, watching him position himself on the bed. Half hard and sticky with his own release and sweat.
“It has been a long time since I’ve had sex, Will, and longer still since I’ve been with a man,” He explains. “You should be aware of that.”
Will opens his nightstand, grabs his half used bottle of lube, and squirts some onto his fingers. “Are you asking me to go easy on you?”
“No,” Hannibal says but Will feels like he wants to say yes. “I simply wish to explain what happened in the living room.”
Will hums and lies next to Hannibal. His lips catch the corner of his mouth and his fingers slide against him, pressing into him slowly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
He’s tighter than he expected, tighter than anything he’s ever experienced. He presses a finger inside of him, feels him clench around him, and then pulls out. Hannibal’s eyes are closed, his jaw set. Will doubts it hurts, but he wants to keep himself together for his own sake after what happened.
As gently as he can manage, (which isn’t very gentle at all) Will presses a second finger into him. He kisses Hannibal, feels him whine against his mouth, and has to wait for him to relax to press any deeper than halfway between his first and second knuckle.
“Does that hurt?” He whispers against his cheek. A nonsensical question, but he feels the need to ask it anyway. Hannibal doesn’t care about pain, any comfort he has in anything is because Will has insisted upon it.
“No,” Hannibal responds. His throat clicks. “Keep going.”
His stomach clenches and Will presses all the way inside of him. His body tightens and then relaxes. Deep down, he knows he should open him up more, but his cock is a throbbing mess, and Hannibal lets out this wet sound that he can’t ignore.
He rolls away and takes the bottle of lube in hand again. He squirts some directly to his cock and covers himself in it. Just that motion had his thighs twitching and he knows he needs Hannibal right now or else he might finish himself off with his hand. It’s an unfortunate thing, the fact that Hannibal’s in his bed is almost enough to push him over the edge. (They aren’t so different. They’re both lustful creatures.)
Will settles himself between Hannibal’s open legs. He’s so warm, so real. He’s dreamt of this, the moment he could touch Hannibal, the moment he’d let him.
“I’ve missed you,” Will admits, pressing his cock into him. His body seems to all but suck him and Will crushes Hannibal beneath him. It takes everything not to let go and fuck into him until he comes–and God, he doesn’t think it would take long. “I need you like this.”
Hannibal tucks his face against Will’s neck, breathing him in so deeply that Will shivers. “You have me.”
“Tight” Will murmurs as he presses another inch inside of him. It’s hard fought, but he goes slow and he’s rewarded with the soft moans against his throat from Hannibal. “So warm. I think I could live right here, inside of you.”
Hannibal’s fingernails dig into his back, hard enough to break skin. There’s always a pleasure to his pain, and Will knows now is no different. His legs wrap around his waist, pulling him closer, demanding the entirety of it despite whatever pain has to be erupting through his body.
“Then live inside of me, Will.” Hannibal kisses his neck, his tongue presses against his quickening pulse. “I’ve always wanted you in me, in every way I can have you.”
It takes great effort, but Will pulls almost all the way out of him. The muscles in his thighs and gut tense, and he slams into him again. He doesn’t give him time to adjust again, he pulls out and then slams back in. Hannibal shakes beneath him, clawing and clinging as each thrust slams into him. Maybe he hasn’t been with anyone in three years, maybe he hasn’t been with a man far longer than that, but Will is determined to make any time before him a forgotten thing. To split him open, to bury himself as deeply and painfully as he can. He knows Hannibal doesn’t want it any other way.
The thighs around his waist clench, spurring him on. He tucks his arms under Hannibal’s shoulders and neck, presses his face against his shoulder, and fucks into him faster. He has to hold him like this, his body would slide over the sheets if he didn’t. Each time, Hannibal jerks and moans, begs–Harder, harder, like that. Take me, Will. Don’t stop. It hurts, keep going.
“You feel so good. Never thought you would feel like this.” Will kisses his face. His cock throbs inside of him, his warm, tight body accepting all that he’s giving him. “All mine, you’re all mine.”
“Deeper, Will,” Hannibal begs through a broken sob. “Deeper. I need all of you. I need to feel all of you. To be one with you.”
Will releases, like all he had been up until this point is tension. He remains aware of his form, aware that Hannibal hasn’t been touched in such a way for a long time, but he can hear it in the stuttering breaths and every word that tumbles out of his mouth that he needs this more than Will. He wonders what his mind has been telling him.
Three years without him, waiting on him. Will married, he was a father, and Hannibal rotted in a cell hoping that one day he’d come back to him. He must’ve felt his own God betrayed him. Who cares about church roofs crushing worshippers, Will turned his back on him and gave him nothing. Not even the promise of some sort of afterlife.
Hannibal clings to him, and that thought–did he think Will was bored with him? Did he think Will hated him?–settles in his gut. He’s gone without touch, without affection, from the one person he’s craved the most. Was he… frightened? Some part of him must have felt that way. It must have kept him from doing anything more than what Will had already offered.
“We are one,” He groans, swallowing down the emotion that breaks through his chest at the thought of that. “I want you to have me. I want you to taste me. I’m yours, Hannibal. All yours.”
Hannibal hardly hesitates, Will feels his teeth sink into the muscle of his good shoulder. Hannibal breaks skin faster than he thinks he’s ever done so before, letting him bleed directly into his mouth.
All of him, he knows. Hannibal needs all of him.
“Fuck!” His hips stutter. He moves the arm under his shoulders and presses it between their bodies, taking Hannibal’s cock and pumping it in time with his thrusts. “Keep drinking, I’m all yours.”
Those words are enough, Hannibal’s cock twitches and he comes, staining them both in his release. He moans against his bleeding shoulder and Will sinks all the way inside of him and comes, collapsing on top of him and refusing to move, even as Hannibal’s mouth leaves his shoulder and he feels his body start to melt into the mattress, crushed by the weight of him.
“Will,” Hannibal mumbles.
Will kisses his face, lapping up his own blood from Hannibal’s stained lips. “Don’t move. Just lay like this. I want to go again.”
“I need a moment,” Hannibal says, but Will already assumes as much.
“Too old?” He teases through heavy breaths. “I thought you would be better than that.”
“I just want to enjoy your affection,” Hannibal confesses.
That must hurt to say out loud, but Will knows that the fact he says it as all is a great feat. There wasn’t a time before now that Hannibal could say something like that. All of Will’s affection was directed elsewhere, directed where it was easier.
“You could’ve had it this whole time.” Will noses against his cheek, kissing his cheek, sucking the specks of blood away. “Since the boat. I… wanted you to have it.”
Hannibal laughs, visibly startled by Will’s words, “I could hardly dream of that.”
Will presses his face close to Hannibal’s. “I know you could dream of it. I’m sure you kept yourself occupied with your dreams.”
“I have you with me, for a time, I thought that was a fantasy.” Hannibal closes his eyes, as if he’s there again, back in his cell, dreaming of Will. As if he might open his eyes and be there again. “It was enough.”
“Look at me,” Will whispers. Hannibal obeys, and when he does, Will sees that his eyelashes are wet. “I didn’t give it all up to be your roommate, Hannibal. It isn’t enough for me.”
“We’re hardly roommates,” He murmurs, lip quivering in a way Will never wants to see again. “We are closer, we always shall be.”
He presses a hand to his cheek, thumbing under his eye. “I haven’t been waiting for marriage. I just want you. I want to live with you, and sleep with you, and eat with you. Cry with you. Hunt with you. I want to suffer together and laugh together. I just want to be yours. Completely yours.”
Hannibal’s lips twitch, his maroon eyes shining with unshed tears. “I believe we’re on the same page for the first time, Will.”
Will rolls off of him, pleased with that, and Hannibal straddles his waist immediately. Will grabs his hips, rubbing his hip bones with his thumbs. Above him, Hannibal looks like a God, truly. How he might imagine the Christian God. Powerful, destructive, soft. His chin is still covered in blood, but it adds to the overall beauty of this. Will is covered as well. He thinks he has always been bound in blood. Protected. Is he the lamb?
“You’re not going to break a hip are you?” He asks. “Or fuck your leg up more?”
Hannibal presses a hand to his chest. “Be gentle.”
Will looks up at him. The darkness engulfs him, and sucks up all that is human about Hannibal. He’s something to fear, something beautiful, and he is all Will’s. “I’ve waited too long to go easy on you now.”