Chapter Text
In hindsight, Will really should have seen it coming. There’d been flags, big red flags: Hannibal guiding Will into his kitchen and office at any hour of any day, Will wound tight and aching and swaying between frenzied and catatonic, Hannibal endlessly enduring and permissive, cupping a hand around Will’s shoulder, bracing Will with a steadying hand low on his back, pouring Will into Hannibal’s chair, behind Hannibal’s desk. All liberties Hannibal would have never allowed others or else suffered through with pinched lips and shuttered eyes, waiting the amount of time it would take people to finally place that phone call and inquire after a first date before Hannibal sheathed himself from neck to feet in plastic, classical music stored in his car and cooking recipe in his mind — the former to gut to, the latter a civilised and cultured means to consume his kill.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Will, when him and Jack had brought Hannibal their caught trout, Hannibal’s eyes gleaming and pleased before he graciously ushered them both in for dinner — Hannibal had taken both Will’s and Jack’s coats, but he’d pulled out only Will’s seat, served dinner to Will first. They’d all three settled their numerous small betrayals against each other at that table, clinking glasses to ring in a fresh start: Jack and Hannibal impersonal and cordial, Jack and Will subdued and conspiratorial, Will and Hannibal simmering with too many shared experiences and withheld truths and banked emotions for Will to boil them down to any distinct classification. Will had gorged down the trout to its scales and fins and even its eyes, had held Hannibal’s lingering gaze and raised his glass for all additionally offered sloshes of liquor, then his plate for leftover scraps — sweetly trusting, attentive. Him and Jack had taken their leave and Hannibal had picked up Will’s coat, held it open for Will to slide his arms into. He’d nodded goodbye to Jack, coiled his larger hand around Will’s and accepted Will’s impromptu — and all the more stiff and cold for it — hand-shake.
And then, well. Then Hannibal had lifted Will’s hand to his lips, brushed a tender kiss across his knuckles.
“I won’t lie,” Jack begins when they're safely out of earshot and tucked up against the car, Jack smoothing leather gloves over his hands and Will raising his collar to thwart off the cold. “That right there answered a lot of questions I didn’t know I had.”
“It’s not part of the plan, Jack,” Will reminds him, still feeling the touch of Hannibal’s mouth against his skin, his breath warming the back of Will's hand.
“Isn’t it?” Jack asks mildly, all wide-eyed and fake ignorance, and then, seeing the mute wonder and confusion freezing Will in place, says, “Will. Hey, Will. You’re not to do anything you don't want to do, you hear?”
“Right,” Will murmurs, his lips gone numb.
“This doesn’t change anything,” Jack reassures him, folding his gloved hand around Will’s shoulder, and that’s a lie, of course.
Hannibal presses his palm over the throat of Will’s gun, disarming it, and then he cups his hand around the side of Will’s face, his fingers clasping the back of Will’s neck. He says, rough and intimate like he's confessing to a secret, “I could never entirely predict you,” and tows him in for a kiss — Will's eyes open and at a loss, Hannibal's half-lidded and so thoroughly awed Will can taste it on his lips.
It occurs to Will — moving around yet another crime scene with vacant eyes and his arms slack at his sides — that from Hannibal’s perspective, him and Will might as well have been engaged in a prolonged form of foreplay: Will in his somber and form-fitting clothes, his dark hair untangled and carded out of his eyes to flaunt the sharp curves of his face; Hannibal across from him in the chair, one leg folded neatly over the other and affecting cold detachment. Hannibal would be utterly remote and inert aside from the motion of his mouth, the flick of his eyes — serene and unwavering and yet snagging on Will’s undone collar, the long stretch of his throat. The only times Will would see Hannibal’s eyes flare imperceptibly wider and brighter was whenever Will bothered to unclench his hands and jaw and husk out murderous compulsions, and Will had been careful not to lower his eyes and follow the words as they sank all the way down to the bottom of Hannibal’s gut.
Hannibal — for a change gratifyingly helpless to the demands of his own body and mind — could never not ask, eager, if Will was still fantasizing about killing him, if these fantasies were bringing him pleasure. Will, deadly honest, would choke out an affirmative and then watch as Hannibal’s chest rose, listen to the whisper of Hannibal’s suit pants as his legs shifted. The climax, Will knows, would be reached through shared killing, but they’re still solidly at second base when Will drapes Randall Tier’s mangled, rigid corpse over Hannibal’s dinner table, Hannibal heavy-lidded and tending to Will’s split knuckles with the utmost tenderness, hovering close and sharing warmth and pressing a fond kiss to Will’s cold, taut cheek.
Alana, fiercely protective of Will and Hannibal both, decides to interrogate them over dinner, Will picking at his food and idly wondering whether he’s eating Randall Tier, Hannibal battling down amusement and overseeing Will and Alana’s restrained back-and-forth over the rim of his plate. Will manages to stretch his lips into a good-natured smile and force down every morsel of meat past his tight throat, but that’s his limit reached: he bids goodbye to Alana and Hannibal and tugs his coat off the hanger, shoves his arms into the sleeves just as Hannibal’s rounding the corner. Hannibal stalks close and reaches out to adjust Will's lapels, to proprietarily smooth his palms down Will’s arms.
“You don’t have to leave, Will,” Hannibal tells him, gently appeasing, and then he cups his hand around Will’s cheek, murmurs, “I can send her home.”
Will can tell Hannibal wants to take him to bed: his other hand snakes around Will’s waist to settle low on his back, the hand on Will’s face tipping his chin up, trying to coax eye-contact. This is all new to Will: he’s used to women luring him into bed — a hand high on Will’s thigh, fingers curling around his wrist to tug it towards their tit. Hannibal’s all solid muscle and masculine and a hair’s breadth taller than Will, the broad span of his shoulders trying to cage Will in, and Will, losing his nerve, improvises: sways close, brushes his mouth over Hannibal’s smooth-shaven cheek. He says — quietly, so Alana doesn't hear — “I’ll see you tomorrow, Dr. Lecter,” patting the small of Hannibal’s back, and takes his leave without a backwards glance.
Later, after Alana’s eyes have swept back open and Hannibal’s taken it upon himself to handfeed Will his latest spoils, Will’s going to be able to spew all sorts of excuses: he’d never been with a man before and he figured he should at least get some practice before going to bed with a cannibal serial killer — because that’s undoubtedly where him and Hannibal are headed; he didn’t know how to feel about being deflowered by said cannibal serial killer, which is a defence that the common individual can surely empathize with. And so he’d gone out and come back home with an attractive stranger, and they’d fumbled their way through a fairly awkward but ultimately satisfying first time — Will being told to move his tongue and throat around another man’s cock just so — before black night bled into orange dawn and finally into pale blue morning.
Now Will’s stumbling out of his bed in only his underwear and a flimsy shirt, and staring him down just beyond his door, citing concern and bearing the tagalong in the appeasing form of a dog, is Alana. Which is fine, Will had known she wasn’t done with him yet — even more so now, listening to Freddie Lounds’ choked off shrieks pouring out of Jack’s phone. What is not fine, and freezing over Will’s lungs and extremities faster than the frosted chill of winter ever could, is that standing just beyond Alana — his eyes narrowing and flitting down to the soaked neck of Will’s shirt, then up into Will’s increasingly horrified eyes — is Hannibal: cool and detached and frowning ever so slightly at Will’s bare feet, so carelessly exposed to the cold.
“This is a bad time,” Will says — desperately to Hannibal, appealingly to Alana. Beyond Will’s shoulder, in the corner of his bedroom, Will can make out the rustle of clothes, pants sliding over legs and feet jamming into shoes. Will’s heart is beating out of his damn chest, and then he feels the warmth of this easy, undemanding stranger against his side, pressing a kiss to Will’s cheek, saying, “Don’t you dare lose my number, alright? I’ll see you.”
But Will never does see him again, because whatever little humanity Hannibal is pretending to have is leaching away from his face, skin stretching tight over bones and shadows flooding the hollows. Hannibal's regressed to knee-jerk instinct, and he doesn't hesitate: Will watches his eyes empty, his hands coiling viper fast around Alana’s neck and knocking her out. It takes Will lunging forwards and folding his arms around Alana, lowering her gently to the ground, for Hannibal to catch up to Will’s one night stand — because that’s all that poor guy was, God rest his soul — and cheerfully calling for his attention, stalking forward and lodging the blade of his knife into the base of the man's throat.
Hannibal tears him open, throat to chest, cutting through bone and muscle and cartilage, his shoulders heaving. Will is momentarily amazed by his own tolerance for such flagrant and loud violence: he watches, sweat-soaked and snow white, as Hannibal takes down his prey — this man who’d touched his lips to Will’s skin and warmed him through with the touch of his hand — and guts him, cracks him open and lifts his own torso away to observe the warm outpouring of blood: a pulsing flood that spills out over the man’s sides and soaks the ground around them, leaving behind the steadily dilating imprint of a bloody snow angel.
By the time Will realizes he’s moved, bare feet trudging through the snow, he’s already come to a stop beside Hannibal, touching his fingers to Hannibal’s shoulder — to this thing that’s more animal than human, Hannibal's arm still lashing tirelessly, his muscles taut and veins protruding.
“Hannibal,” Will murmurs faintly, all vacant stillness, and Hannibal releases a gust of air through jagged teeth, blows his undone hair out of his eyes. He huffs out, “Just a moment, dear,” and his arm comes down, savage and staking his claim.
Will’s lashes sweep down, his eyes closing, and he listens to Hannibal climb to his feet, opens his eyes to watch him peel off his blood-soaked gloves. Hannibal is a picture of self-possession and deadly calm, his expression bland and indifferent, but Will can see the blood pulsing hot and violent underneath his skin — Hannibal’s eyes dark and gleaming, his veins stark and bulging in his temples.
He prowls towards Will, smooths his tongue over his own teeth — sharper than Will remembers them, than Will’s ever seen them. Hannibal reaches around Will and shoves his bare hand down the back of Will’s boxers — Will lifting up onto his toes and gasping hot and outraged across Hannibal’s face when he feels two fingers jam inside, probing. Hannibal holds Will’s gaze: glacial, emotionless, harrowed.
“Do I pass inspection, doctor?” Will gnashes out, hissing the words against Hannibal’s closed mouth.
“I haven’t gutted you yet, have I?” is all Hannibal says to that, rasping, and politely removes his hand, lets it fall to his side.
Will can’t help it, he yells, “That’s your lover unconscious on my porch!”
“Yes, and you had better displace her,” Hannibal returns, drawing back and contemplating the carnage he’s left behind in front of Will’s door.
Will swallows down all sorts of colorful and hurtful curses in response to that before he hurries back inside, swathing his limbs in last night's clothes and hauling Alana up into his arms. He sweeps past Hannibal, scowling, and makes for the car.
“That guard you sent to kill me,” Hannibal speaks up an indeterminate amount of time later, idly rapping the ballpoint tip of his pen against a blank page in his journal.
“You think I'm a slut now, don't you,” Will says.
“Are you?” Hannibal asks.
Will, feeling vengeful, balls up one of Hannibal's sketches and tosses it into the fire.