Chapter Text
“I told you I learned a truth about myself when I tried to have you killed,” Will responds to this question, almost non-sequitur but certainly not without purpose. Hannibal tilts his head curiously at the reminder. He has not forgotten what truth Will uncovered about himself. That doing bad things to bad people feels good.
“Learned a truth about you too now, doctor,” Will continues, the revolver in his hand still dangling casually at his side, pointed at the floor for the moment. “There were little hints. When you stopped me from killing Ingram. When you sent Randall Tier to my house just to see what I would do. And last night, when you fed pieces of Mason Verger to my dogs.”
“What truth would that be, Will?” Instead of answering, Will smiles without teeth and steps closer, until he and the psychiatrist are mere breaths apart, the tips of their shoes touching just as they had done last night. There is a quiet thrumming energy about him that vibrates along Hannibal’s skin.
He brings up the gun, pressing the cold barrel against Hannibal’s temple.” “Kneel, doctor,” he commands, his tone surprisingly gentle, soft and whisper-sweet. Hannibal obeys.
“You told me you no longer intend to kill me, Will,” he points out, gazing up at Will from his position on the floor. “But that in your imagined scenarios, you fantasized about doing it with your hands.”
“‘Fantasize’ wasn’t the word I used, Dr. Lecter. It was yours.” The small grin Will bears now is sharp and coy. “You think about it a lot, don’t you? About how intimate it would be.” The revolver presses now against Hannibal’s closed lips. “But have you earned that intimacy yet?”
Hannibal, whose pulse never rises when he is killing or even when his own life is threatened, feels his heart pump faster like an animal pacing to be loosed from its cage as he parts his lips to allow the barrel inside. The taste is atrocious, oil and iron, but he suckles on it nonetheless and watches as Will’s eyes darken, accommodatingly opening his mouth wider as Will begins to thrust the pistol rhythmically, careful not to scrape the metal against his teeth.
Only when the scent of arousal between them is strong enough to nearly overpower the scent of the metal barrel and residual gunpowder does Will pull the pistol entirely free of his mouth. Hannibal’s gaze flits at eye level to the far more appetizing, notable tent in Will’s trousers, then up to gauge the other man’s verdict. The man considers him for a moment, then slowly nods once.
Hannibal’s already partly abused mouth tilts upward in a proud, pleased smile as he unbuckles Will’s belt and opens the fly of his trousers to claim his reward. His first few licks are testing, tentative, focused merely on overriding the lingering taste of the gun with the flavor of Will’s salted skin and musky sweat. The pistol returns to press against the dip between his shoulder and neck. He takes this hint to pick up the pace and slackens his jaw to swallow down more of Will’s length and suck. The gun digs a little harder into his shoulder as Will’s grip on its hilt tightens and his free hand comes up to grab Hannibal’s other shoulder.
Will starts to carefully thrust and Hannibal hums approvingly, thoroughly enjoying his cunning boy’s selfish use of his mouth and encouraging it. He squeezes his lips tighter and lays his tongue flat against the underside of Will’s cock to increase the suction. Will’s voice pitches to a cracked, broken moan and he begins to thrust faster, deeper, making choked-off sounds in time with Hannibal’s own as Will’s cockhead pushes against the back of his throat and triggers his reflexes. Instead of allowing himself to relax and adjust to the intrusion, he intentionally continues to gag so he can hear more of those beautiful, sympathetic cries.
The barrel digs again into his shoulder where it will be sure to leave a lovely bruise and the hand on his other shoulder squeezes harder just before Will comes down his throat, throwing his head back and releasing a long, low groan as Hannibal swallows it all down greedily. Such a delightfully vocal lover. Hannibal longs to take him home and find out what other delicious noises he’ll make.
Will stumbles back a few steps, allowing Hannibal to stand as he tucks himself back in, showing a trained marksman’s care in keeping the barrel of the gun still in his hand pointed away from himself or his psychiatrist now. He doesn’t offer to tend to the bulge in Hannibal’s own slacks and Hannibal doesn’t expect him to. It is entirely possible that this is to be a one-time interlude, an experiment just to see how much power Hannibal would be willing to cede.
“I didn’t kill Freddie Lounds.” This confession is uttered quietly into the stillness of the room. Hannibal feels the cold burn of betrayal for an instant, followed by the brightening, wildly growing flicker of hope because this, Will choosing to tell him now, is significant. The gun remains pointed downward and loosely held in Will’s hand, giving not so much as a twitch to indicate he intends to raise it again in self-defense should Hannibal react poorly to this news.
“I didn’t kill Abigail Hobbs,” he confesses in kind, and watches the myriad, swirling emotions that rapidly steal over his beloved’s features with a rapt gaze. “To use your words, I suppose this again makes us ‘Even Steven,’” he adds when Will seems at a loss for what to say. The younger man lets out a hoarse laugh.
“Well, fuck me,” he says, allowing another astonished giggle to escape as yet another of his illusions about the man before him is permanently shattered.
“I would very much like to.”
“Ok, don’t ruin this moment with more of your terrible puns right now. Or at least give me another minute to come out of the afterglow before you start or I will shoot you.”
“One shouldn’t make idle threats without the willingness or means to carry them out. Or at least don’t make them when the gun is not even loaded, Will.”
Will points to the damaged chair Mason stabbed with his little silver knife and squeezes the trigger. The sound is explosive, violent and ringing in the harsh quiet that follows. Hannibal eyes the new hole in his chair, reassessing a few of his own assumptions.
“You were going to replace it anyway,” Will points out sweetly. Hannibal gazes reverently at the unholy creature standing in his office, and would drop to his knees again if the being before him were not still wholly human and therefore in need of time to recover before Hannibal could properly worship at his altar again.
Will’s gaze flits down to the still prominent bulge in Hannibal’s trousers, which feel impossibly tighter than before in clear evidence of his ardor. “You still want to earn these hands, don’t you? Then come on, let’s go somewhere more comfortable than your office, where you can show me just how badly you want them,” he says, and walks out, leaving the gun on a side table next to the stag statue. Hannibal follows.