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The spoon turns slowly between his fingers. The soup has cooled a little, but it still carries heat, and that heat climbs up the back of his throat every time he swallows, settling somewhere behind his ribs in a way that feels different from the fever that’s been chewing through him the past few days.
The broth is clear with thin slicks of fat drifting along the surface that catch the gray light from the window. Floating inside are pieces of black-skinned chicken, the skin wrinkled and glossy, the meat underneath pale and soft enough that it separates easily when the spoon presses against it. There are ginseng roots too, pale and twisted like old fingers, and wolfberries swollen red where they’ve bloomed in the broth. They’ve softened into something brighter than they probably were dry. They drift quietly along the surface when the bowl moves.
He watches one berry bump against the edge of the spoon.
The room smells like it now.
Not the hospital smell anymore, not entirely. Not the stale cotton smell of the sheets or the faint antiseptic in the air or the sour heat that had been rolling off him when the fever was at its worst. For the last twenty minutes the room has smelled like broth, like something slow-cooked and patient. Will breathes it in slowly and lets it settle.
He turns the spoon again.
Across from him, Hannibal is eating too. The light from the window settles against the side of his face, pale and flat, the winter sky outside giving the room that gray kind of daylight that feels unfinished. Will’s eyes move back to the bowl in his hands.
You made me chicken soup. He remembers the way Hannibal paused. Just a second. Maybe less. A small pause, the kind a person might not notice if they weren’t already looking too closely. Maybe the question sounded simple. Maybe it was an oversimplification on Will's part. But it’s true. Hannibal made him chicken soup.
He presses the spoon down gently against a piece of chicken, watching the meat separate along the grain. The black skin folds back a little, glossy and soft, the broth soaking into the fibers. The spoon lifts it and the piece trembles slightly before he brings it to his mouth.
The broth carries the bitterness of the ginseng, but it’s softened by the long cooking, rounded out by the chicken fat and whatever quiet balance Hannibal built into it while it was simmering. The wolfberries give it small pockets of sweetness that arrive late on the tongue.
He chews slowly. The chicken is soft enough that he barely has to. When he swallows again the warmth follows the same path down his throat, spreading into his chest. The soup was made for him. For Will. Because he’s sick. Because he ended up in a hospital bed with a fever that wouldn’t break and lungs that felt like they were full of wet sand. And Hannibal came.
Will doesn’t look up when he thinks that. He keeps his eyes on the broth. The surface of it trembles a little when his hand shifts around the bowl, and everything inside moves with it. Everything in it swims.
The dream had been there before he woke up. He remembers it in fragments, the way dreams break apart when morning gets close. Steam hanging over it thick enough that the air felt heavy when he tried to breathe. The kind of heat that settles into your skin until you can’t tell where your body ends and the water begins. It had surrounded him on all sides in the dream. No edge to it. No clear bank. Just water rising and falling in slow breaths. He had been floating. Or sinking. He can’t remember which. The water in the dream had been quiet. The heat had been rising off it in pale coils of steam, blurring everything. He remembers looking out across it and seeing nothing but that gray vapor.
It feels good, having Hannibal here.
He hates that he’s aware of it. Hates more how much he’s aware of it. But it’s the truth: it feels good. It always does. Even when it complicates everything inside him, even when it stirs thoughts he wishes he could boil down to something simple, friendship, gratitude, but can’t. No matter how much his own mind torments him, no matter how many spirals he’s built around this man, being near Hannibal brings something into focus. A hum he can’t get anywhere else.
He’s lost himself lately. He can admit that now that the fever’s broken. He’s been drifting, fading at the edges . Thoughts that don’t feel like thoughts. Darkness where there should be definition. Fear where there should be reason. He’s been scared of himself. He swallows, breath catching when it pulls too sharply on one of the sore spots deep in his ribs. He shifts in the chair but doesn’t look away from the bowl. The broth gives back the same slow motion, the same drifting piece of chicken skin.
A totem of your own making.
He didn’t understand it then. Or didn’t want to. But he understands it now.
Hannibal’s chair creaks softly as he reaches beside him. Another thermos, sleek steel. “Tea,” Hannibal says quietly, almost an afterthought, almost a comfort laid carefully at Will’s feet.
Will nods, though he doesn’t lift the spoon. A sinking weight inside him, as if his bones soften in their sockets. A loosening. A slipping. As if he could dissolve from the inside out. Like his body could slacken, soften, break itself down into fibers that drift apart in slow motion.
He feels suspended. Heavy and hollow at once. A float to him. A softness that isn’t peace. Like if he stayed too still for too long, he’d break apart into the water around him, whatever water the mind conjures. Something warm, thick, unforgiving. He feels the subtle pull of his edges thinning out, melting, unthreading. No structure. No certainty. A body becoming something that isn’t a body.
He grips the spoon tighter.
He's felt himself drifting toward some quiet internal collapse. A softening of shape, of self, until all that’s left is what floats. He exhales shakily. But Hannibal is here. Across from him. Present in a way that cuts through that dissolving sensation, even if only a little. An oar dipped into uncertain water.
Will feels that. Feels it deep, feels it across every frayed nerve ending, this sense that if he's drifting, Hannibal is the thing pushing gently against the tide. Not rescuing him. Not dragging him back. Just… steering. Offering direction where he has none. A paddle slicing into water that threatens to soften and swallow everything whole.
He’s been thinking about it lately, thinking in long spirals that wind around his mind at night when he’s too tired to hold the door shut, thinking about all the times his heart has kicked against his ribs , thinking about the warmth that crawls up the back of his neck when Hannibal stands too close, thinking about how none of it is something he ever asked for, and yet it’s here, alive inside him.
He’s never done anything real enough about it. He’s wanted to in flashes that hit him somewhere between longing and fear, in moments where Hannibal leans in too close or says his name in that soft voice that makes something inside Will’s spine melt and re-form—but he shouldn’t, he can’t, he won’t, because wanting is one thing and acting is another and he cannot risk the stability he has left.
He’s never been able to help the way he feels about Hannibal, but there are things he can help, things he can choose, and he has chosen again and again to ignore it, to tuck the feelings away, to bury them deep. Hannibal’s a good friend.
He trusts him with things he doesn’t trust himself with. Hannibal is the only person who makes the noise in his head quiet down long enough for him to breathe. But Will is losing himself lately.
He thinks of Abel Gideon’s scrambled brains, someone rifling through his head, rearranging the furniture, shifting everything into the wrong order until he didn’t recognize the house of his own mind anymore, and the horrifying truth is that Will understands that now, not just in theory, not just empathically, but viscerally, in a way that has carved its own mark into him.
Will’s furniture has been rearranged.
Not just slightly. Not just a chair slid a few inches left. No, things have been overturned, upended, taken apart by nightmares that creep in through the seams of sleep and fever and memory. He feels it every time he tries to think, tries to assess himself with the objectivity he once trusted. Something has shifted.
Empathizing with Gideon had been easy, too easy. He shouldn’t have understood Gideon so well. He shouldn’t have been able to feel the shape of that man’s unraveling from the inside. But he did. And he still remembers it, in flashes that break through the fog of his recent fever, Gideon whispering that he didn’t know who he was anymore. Will didn’t know who he was. It’s hard to be with another person when you can’t get out of your own head, when your inner world is a house with the lights off, when every room feels wrong, when the floorboards creak under the weight of doubts you never asked for. Will wants out. He wants air. He wants clarity. He wants—
“The nurses tell me you’ve been wandering, Will.”
He takes a bite instead of answering right away, lets the heat fill his mouth, lets the broth spread slowly across his tongue, the kind of warmth that feels like a blanket laid gently over the worst parts of him, and he closes his eyes briefly as he chews. It’s good.
He has been wandering. His mind flickers to the memory, following the stag, following something dark and slow-moving inside him that tugged him toward Abel Gideon. But he opens his eyes and lifts his spoon again.
“I was awake,” he says, taking another bite, trying to maintain the evenness in his voice even though he can hear a slight rasp he wishes wasn’t there, “and wandering with purpose. And good intentions.”
Hannibal reaches for the thermos at his side, and Will watches the arc of liquid falling into the small cups. Hannibal pours his own next, then glances at the pale rising steam, then back at Will, studying him for a silent second that stretches just long enough to feel like more than a glance.
He closes the thermos with a precise twist of his fingers.
“Visiting that unfortunate young woman who is suffering from delusions?” Hannibal asks, voice calm, almost gentle, but edged with that slight tilt of curiosity he never bothers hiding from Will.
Will chews slowly, sitting up a little straighter, the IV line tugging at his arm as he lifts his head. His spine aches but he ignores it.
“She’s my support group,” he says, swallowing, letting the words settle between them.
Hannibal tilts his head in a way that is so characteristic it almost relaxes Will despite the weight of the conversation, sets the thermos down and gives a small nod.
“And I hope you’re hers,” he says. “Nothing more isolating than mental illness.”
Will frowns. The phrase hits him harder than he expects it to. He’s had so much time to think in this hospital, too much time, long dark hours where sleep doesn’t come and he’s alone with thoughts he doesn’t trust and questions he doesn’t want answers to. He’s thought about whether he’s sick at all. Whether this is something else. Something worse.
Something is wrong inside him.Something he can’t name. Something he’s afraid of. He breathes out as he sets his spoon back into the bowl, the metal making a quiet clink. He leans back, the hard chair catching his spine just right to make it ache again. He needs to ask. He needs someone to tell him. He needs Hannibal to tell him.
“The hallucinations,” Will begins, staring at the surface of the soup as if the broth might reveal the answers first, “the loss of time, the sleepwalking—” he swallows, throat tight, “could that all have just been the fever?”
Hannibal takes a slow breath before speaking.
“Fevers can be a symptom of dementia,” he says.
Will nods, still staring downward, not startled by the response because he already knew that. He knows that fevers come with infections of the brain, inflammations, neurological collapses, the early signs of something unraveling. He’s not fixed from the medication and cooling-down. He can’t be patched. He can’t be sewn back into his normal self. He’s swollen with water, weighed down by it, softened by it.
“Dementia can be a symptom,” Hannibal continues, “of many things happening in your body or mind that can no longer be ignored, Will.”
Will finally lifts his eyes to him and he smiles. A small smile. A pathetic thing.
“Does Jack know?” Will asks, holding Hannibal’s eyes now. “That this could be more than a fever?”
“No,” Hannibal says gently. “I haven’t told him.”
Will frowns, confusion and frustration tightening his expression. “Shouldn’t you?”
“Not until we know for certain.”
The light outside the window is still muted, grey. Will stares at it through the thin white curtain, the fabric billowing faintly each time the vents kick on, stirring the room with recycled air.
“What we must do now is continue to support and monitor your recovery.”
Something in Will’s face falls. His features shift in that small way that only someone who watches him too often, too closely, would notice, and Will knows Hannibal sees it even if Hannibal is polite enough not to name it.
He thinks of Georgia then, Georgia under the hospital lights, her hair pretty and golden. He remembers how she spoke of treatments, of trials, of doctors promising recovery as if recovery were a ladder she could climb out of a dark well, rung by rung, if only she wanted it badly enough. People had told her she could get better with treatment. Encouraging words.
He's thought this isn’t something that can be fixed with medication. That this isn’t a flu or an infection or a fever that burned too long. That this—whatever this is—is him.
That he's losing control of himself in ways that will not stop, in ways that will not reverse, in ways that will hollow him out and leave him standing in the doorway of his own mind, staring into a room he can no longer recognize. He imagines waking up one day and not remembering what he did. Or remembering too vividly. He imagines pieces of himself washed away.
Hannibal wipes his hands delicately on the cloth napkin he brought. Will takes a sip of his tea, letting the warmth settle down his throat. The tea is mild, floral, soothing.
Hannibal watches him over the rim of his own cup and then, after a moment, says, “This young woman you were visiting—how is her recovery?”
Will swallows the tea. “I don’t think she wants to recover,” he says. “She’s afraid to remember what she did.” He watches Hannibal lift his cup again.
“Can’t say I blame her,” Hannibal says. Will can't blame her, either.
One summer afternoon when he was a kid, the heat had settled into everything and the only thing worse than stepping outside was staying inside with his father's silence thickening the atmosphere further. The pond behind the house had turned shallow by July, the water shrinking back and leaving the muddy banks exposed like peeled skin. He remembers walking down there barefoot, dust sticking to his ankles, a stick in his hand because kids always picked up sticks whether they needed them or not.
When he reached the water’s edge, the fish were floating belly-up. Their silver sides glinting white in the harsh sun, their mouths open in small frozen ovals. The air smelled faintly rotten, faintly metallic. Will had crouched down and poked one of the fish with his stick. It rolled with almost no resistance, its body light in a way that felt wrong, like it had been emptied of itself before it died.
He remembered wondering—do fish know they're dying when the water gets that hot? Do they feel the heat rising around them and understand something is ending? Or do they simply drift upward without knowing anything at all, their bodies giving in before their minds ever catch up?
“It’s an act of God,” his father had said, wiping sweat from his temple. Did God feel powerful when he did that? When he made the water so hot the fish suffocated where they swam? Did he feel powerful the same way he must’ve felt powerful when he collapsed church roofs onto the heads of the faithful, crushing their hymns mid-breath?
Georgia under his bed. Georgia living inside a body she didn’t know was alive. He thinks of her moving through the world thinking she was dead, her mind flickering in and out like a weak bulb, her body responding to stimuli she couldn’t interpret anymore. He remembers the dread he felt, not the fear of seeing her, but the fear of understanding her. He had reached toward her with the same solemnity he had felt poking the dead fish all those years ago, except this time the thing in front of him was not dead. It only believed it should be.
He remembers wondering, even then, what does it feel like not to know you're alive? To move through the world hollowed out, to breathe without claiming the breath, to suffer without recognizing the shape of the suffering? Maybe that’s what he fears most now. Not death. But that kind of unknowing. That kind of drifting upward belly-first into a world too hot to hold you, unaware of what’s ending until it’s already over.
He lifts his tea again, drinks the last of it, and lets the warmth settle in the same low places that have been threatening to empty themselves out entirely. Hannibal watches him.
“Do you consider her a friend, Will?” A simple question on its surface, but nothing Hannibal asks is ever simple. His tone holds something quieter underneath, something that curls around the edges of the words. “This young woman. Georgia. Do you think of her that way?”
Will exhales, slow. “I don’t know what I consider her,” he says, but he doesn’t leave the answer small like that; he keeps going, feeling out the shape of it as he talks. “I barely know her. I’ve spoken to her a handful of times. And most of those times she was terrified or confused or barely aware of her surroundings. But she needs a friend.”
He rubs a hand against the side of his neck, fingers pressing lightly where the fever had burned earlier. “So if being her friend is something I can be, then yeah. I guess I do consider her one. Or at least, I consider myself responsible to her in a way that feels close to it.”
Hannibal nods slowly, his gaze fixed steadily on Will, but the nod isn’t purely thoughtful; there’s a tightness under it, a smallness in the motion.
“Friendship,” Hannibal says carefully, “is a rare thing. A meaningful thing. It is not something to offer lightly, nor something to extend without understanding the weight of what it demands. Many people mistake need for companionship. Many people mistake dependency for connection. I wonder if Georgia understands the difference.” He sets his empty cup down. “And I wonder if you do.”
Will huffs out a breath that’s almost a laugh, but not quite. “I don’t pity her,” he says finally, voice firmer now. “That’s not what this is. I just… I can’t stand the idea of her going through all this alone. If she’s going to climb her way back to living again, she needs someone who knows the terrain she’s coming from. Someone who understands fear.”
“And you believe you are that person.”
“Yes.” Will doesn’t hesitate this time. “I do.”
Hannibal sits back slightly, considering him with a look that is warmer than it should be and cooler than it needs to be, something complex moving behind his eyes.
“It is admirable,” he says after a beat, “that you want to offer her that. Admirable that you extend yourself toward people who frighten you because you feel compelled to help them.” He folds the napkin again precisely on his knee. Will's always wondered if his need to straighten things out is a compulsion. “But friendship, true friendship, is reciprocal. Do you believe she knows how to give anything back?”
Will shakes his head. “I’m not asking her to give anything back. She can’t, not right now. That’s not what matters.”
“Not to you,” Hannibal replies softly. “But perhaps it should matter. A friendship in which only one person offers themselves is not a friendship. It is a burden. One that can erode a man without his noticing.”
Will thinks about that, eyes dropping to the cooling remnants of tea in his cup. “You’re saying I shouldn’t help her,” he murmurs.
“I am not saying that,” Hannibal says quickly, fluidly, too quickly. “I am saying only that you should be cautious. You give much of yourself already. To your work. To your thoughts. To the people inside those thoughts. And those pieces are not easily replaced once lost.”
Will stares at the table a long moment, then says, almost defensively, “She doesn’t take anything from me.”
Hannibal smiles faintly, a smile so slight it barely lifts the corner of his mouth. “Everyone takes something, Will. Even unintentionally.”
Will pushes a hand through his hair. “All right. Then let her take something. If it helps her survive.”
Hannibal’s gaze deepens, softens, darkens. “You are generous,” he says. “Extraordinarily so. But I worry that you give pieces of yourself to people who cannot hold them. People who do not know how to care for what you offer.”
He pauses, letting the air settle around the words before adding, “Friendship requires stewardship.”
Will finally looks up at him then, brow furrowed. “You think she’s incapable of friendship.”
“I think she is fragile,” Hannibal says, and there is something personal, almost tender, in the way he shapes the word. “And fragile people often break the things handed to them, even when they mean no harm. Even when they want desperately to hold on.”
Will sits with that. He sits with it long enough that Hannibal continues.
“You are not fragile,” Hannibal says. “But you are—” He stops, weighing the next words like they’re glass. “—fractured. Not broken, no. Simply divided between too many responsibilities, too many imaginings, too many fears.”
Will listens, but the words move through him in a way that feels distant.“She was under my bed,” he says. “In my house. I don’t think I told you that part.”
Hannibal looks up at him with slow intention. “No,” he says.
Will draws in a breath. “She crawled under there. Hid there. She didn’t even know where she was, not really. When I looked down and saw her staring back at me—those wide eyes, those dry lips… She looked like someone caught between worlds.” He swallows. “She asked me. I had to tell her. I had to tell her she was alive.”
Hannibal’s gaze sharpens almost imperceptibly. “How did she respond?”
“She looked at me like I was lying. Like I was trying to trick her into stepping into the light so something could grab her. She was shaking, but she didn’t know she was shaking. She was breathing, but she didn’t know that either.” He rubs a hand across his jaw. “I don’t think she’d heard anyone say her name in a long time. Not in a way she could understand.”
“And you gave her that,” Hannibal says. “Recognition. Identity.”
“I gave her a fact,” Will corrects. “I told her she wasn’t dead.”
“And she accepted that because you said it.”
Will doesn’t respond right away. He looks at the table, then the floor, then the faint gray light pushing through the windowpane. “Maybe,” he murmurs. “Or maybe she just needed someone to anchor her long enough that the world didn’t feel like it was swallowing her whole.”
Hannibal’s fingers lace together on his knee. “Do you relate to her?” he asks, voice smooth but probing. “To the sensation of not knowing whether you are truly alive in your own body? Truly present in your own mind?”
Will lets out a soft exhale that could almost be a laugh if it weren’t weighed down by everything he doesn’t say. “I still feel like I’m fading,” he admits. “Not dying. Not drifting away like she was. Just… thinning out. Like there are days I’m walking through the world and I know I’m there, but I can’t feel the shape of myself. Like I’m watching someone else’s hands do things and hoping I’ll remember them later.”
Hannibal tilts his head slightly. “A dissociation.”
“A disconnect,” Will says. “A quiet one. A polite one. The kind that doesn’t make a scene—it just waits for me to notice how much ground I’ve lost.”
Hannibal speaks softly. “And yet your brain scan showed nothing.”
“I know,” Will says, the words coming out with the weary acceptance of someone who has repeated them to himself too many times. “They found nothing. No tumor. No injury. Nothing remarkable. Clean bill of neurological health.” He laughs under his breath, but there’s no humor in it. “It’s almost more insulting that way. If something had shown up, at least I’d have a reason. Something to point to.’”
Hannibal leans in slightly, his voice lowering. “But the fever is gone now.”
“Yeah,” Will murmurs. “It’s gone.”
“And you can think clearly,” Hannibal adds. “Now.”
Will nods. “I can think now.” He takes another breath, deeper this time. “It’s like… someone opened a window in my skull. The air’s clearer. The thoughts aren’t pushing against each other like they were. It’s quieter in here.” He taps lightly against his temple. “Still not perfect, but quieter.”
Hannibal studies him for a long moment. “And how does that feel?”
“It feels like stepping back into myself after being away too long,” Will says. “But everything looks a little different. Feels different. Nothing’s in the wrong place, but nothing’s exactly where I remember it either.”
Hannibal almost smiles. “An unsettling sensation, I imagine.”
“Yeah,” Will says softly. “Unsettling’s a good word.”
“And Georgia?” Hannibal presses gently. “Do you feel connected to her because you fear becoming like her? Or because you fear you already are?”
Will doesn’t answer immediately. He chews on the question, letting the currents move where they will.
Finally he says, “I think I understand her. That’s all. I understand what it’s like to lose track of yourself. To feel your own identity slipping through your fingers like you’re holding onto fog.” He rubs at his thumb with his other hand. “I understand what it’s like to look at the world and not recognize the rules. To not trust your own senses. To think maybe you died somewhere along the way but no one bothered to tell you.”
Hannibal’s eyes deepen, warm. “You are not lost, Will. Nor dead.”
“I feel lost,” Will says.
“That is not the same thing,” Hannibal replies. “Feeling lost is not being lost. Feeling uncertain is not the death of certainty. You are here. You are thinking. You are speaking. You are choosing.”
Will absorbs that. “Maybe,” he says quietly. “Maybe I’m coming back.”
“You are,” Hannibal assures, his voice slipping into something that almost resembles warmth. “You are returning to yourself. And with clarity will come understanding of what frightened you. What confused you. What blurred your mind.”
“And what if I liked the blur?” Will asks suddenly.
“Did you?”
“No,” Will admits. “But part of me thought maybe the blur meant I didn’t have to look at things too clearly. Didn’t have to see myself too clearly.”
“And now?” Hannibal asks.
“Now I’m afraid of what clarity’s going to show me.”
Hannibal smiles gently, almost mournfully. “Clarity does not create monsters, Will. It only reveals them.”
Will exhales slowly. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
He can’t talk to anyone the way he talks to Hannibal, not really, not in the way his mind keeps begging him to, because something in him wants to spill everything out, just dumping the contents onto the table between them or into the space between their knees where the carpet thins beneath the weight of two chairs during their appointments, laying out every last thought, every awful impulse, every broken memory like pieces of some animal that’s been gutted, each piece placed carefully for Hannibal to gaze at, examine, all the things Will has never dared admit to anyone else, not even to himself on most days.
He imagines it sometimes, feels it pressing against the back of his throat during sessions, like words aren’t words at all but some thick, black liquid he’s holding back, some viscous thing that would spill slow and heavy if he just leaned forward another inch, if he let his ribs expand too far, if Hannibal looked at him with just a shade more invitation in those eyes. He imagines laying out everything he carries:the moments when he feels himself slipping sideways out of his own skin, the places where he can’t tell whether he’s good or bad or just something caught between definitions like a shadow that changes shape depending on who’s looking.
He thinks of telling Hannibal what happened in Louisiana, what really happened. He could tell Hannibal about the moment he didn’t pull the trigger, about the split-second where the world went thin and narrow and he couldn’t understand why his finger refused to move, whether it was mercy or fear or something darker that held him in place, and how, seconds later, the knife slid into him anyway, and how the shock of it wasn’t the pain but the realization that he had failed at something fundamental and he still doesn’t know what that thing was.
He could tell Hannibal about what his mind did afterward, the strange white wipe of it, the confusion, the fear, the way his thoughts scattered like birds startled from a telephone line, leaving only a ringing in his skull.
He could tell Hannibal about his childhood too. The swamp heat. He could tell him every dark corner of his mind.
It’s strange, how he’s gone from wanting to protect Hannibal from the mess inside him, from wanting to keep Hannibal out of the sharp angles and muddy places of his mind, to wanting the opposite, wanting Hannibal to step inside and stay there, wanting him to know him completely, to absorb him, to take in every secret and every sickness like Hannibal is some kind of vessel capable of holding it all without breaking, letting Hannibal drink him in the same way they shared the soup earlier, letting the sickness mingle with whatever lives in Hannibal already.
He thinks about the shift. how Hannibal went from an outsider at the edge of Will’s life to someone who pushed his way in. And now Will doesn’t want him out. He wants him in the thick of it, wants to keep him in the muddied currents of his world. Hannibal is still his paddle, he thinks, even if the river is the Styx and the water is filled with dead fish and old memories and the bodies of all the people he’s tried to save or couldn’t save or didn’t want to save but had to anyway. Hannibal is still the thing that keeps him moving forward, no matter how black the water gets.
He wants a million things. That’s what Gideon said—we all want what we can’t have. Will remembers that line, remembers the sting of the snow on his knees as he fell after shooting Gideon, remembers the whiteness rushing up around him. He remembers those hands in Hannibal's dining room, remembers the coolness of them against his forehead.
It’s all confusing.
He drags a palm over his face, feeling the roughness of the stubble against his hand. Wanting to feel alive shouldn’t be this hard, shouldn’t require this endless Herculean labor, wanting to be wanted shouldn’t feel like navigating a minefield where one wrong step will turn him into someone he can’t recognize anymore, but he’s never asked for anything like that before.
And now he wants it—from Hannibal.
He wants to stop fading.
He wants to trust Hannibal enough to dig through his mind, wants him to sift through the folds and hollows of his thoughts the way a careful hand might sift river silt to find something rare hiding beneath the mud, wants Hannibal to push past the noise and the dark static and whatever broken circuitry lives behind his eyes and find the glowing part of him that he's certain must be there somewhere, a spark or ember or core that the brain scan didn’t catch, something that proves he isn’t just slipping between the cracks of himself.
But Hannibal said there was nothing. And Georgia dreamt he killed Dr. Sutcliffe. She couldn't see his face.
Hannibal stays. Their conversation drifts in low currents. Will tries—really tries—to be present, to keep his focus from sliding sideways.
The window turns from washed-out winter grey to something darker, dimmer, a twilight color that sinks into the floors and makes the corners of the room look deeper than they were earlier.
They talk about nothing and everything. And even though he can hear himself growing quieter, can feel that familiar feeling rising, he still wants Hannibal here. Wants him sitting in that chair more than he wants any other shape in this dim, cooled-down room. The medication begins to show its weight, a slow curtain lowering behind Will’s eyes. His tongue feels thick.
“You are getting tired,” Hannibal says gently.
“Yeah,” Will murmurs. His voice is rough with the beginnings of drowsiness. “Medications they gave me… they creep up.”
Hannibal nods, folding his hands neatly. “How have you been resting?”
Will thinks about it, his eyes half-lidded. “As good as I can,” he says. “Long nights. Short mornings. I’ve been trying.”
“And the nightmares?” Hannibal asks.
Will’s nod is minute, barely a tilt of his chin. “Still there,” he confesses. “They haven’t gone anywhere.”
Hannibal considers him with a softer expression than Will isn't used to seeing lately. “You should rest now,” he says. “Your body needs the sleep.”
Will’s eyes open a little more at that. Some instinct inside him stirs, not alarm, exactly, but something that pulls him fully back into the moment.
“Are you leaving?” he asks, and the question is quieter than he intends. He doesn’t look at Hannibal right away. There’s a pause. A perceptible one.
Then: “Would you like me to?”
Will’s mind drifts for one suspended second. No. No, he doesn’t want him to go. He sits with that truth for a heartbeat. Finally he says, with a tired breath, “Maybe you could stay until I fall asleep. If you want to.”
Hannibal stills. A single second where he simply absorbs the request, weighing it, holding it, appreciating its shape. Then he nods once.
“All right, Will,” he says softly. “I’ve brought a book.”
He gestures toward the small bag he brought, the same one he packed the soup in, the tea, all the quiet comforts he’d carried into the room without being asked. Now he stands and begins cleaning up what remains of their meal together. He stacks the bowls neatly. Wraps the utensils in the cloth napkin.
Will watches him through half-drowsy eyes, not entirely sure why the act feels intimate, but it does. The sounds are soft: fabric folding, ceramic clinking lightly, the zipper of the bag drawn closed with that gentle, final sound.
Once everything is settled, Hannibal sets the bag aside.
Will has already shifted back in the hospital bed, easing himself onto the pillow, pulling the blanket higher over his chest. His eyes droop in slow intervals, barely open, barely closed.
“Thank you,” Will mumbles. “For the soup. For staying.”
Hannibal steps closer to the bed, not touching, but near enough that Will feels the warmth of his presence at the edge of the mattress.
“You’re welcome,” he says.
Will closes his eyes finally, succumbing to the weight of the medication, the warmth of the room, the steadiness of the man beside him. And maybe it’s the exhaustion or maybe it’s just honesty slipping through while his guard falls, but he murmurs something small, something sincere.
“I—I’m glad you’re here.”
“So am I, Will.”
Before he went under, before the seizure and the fever dragged him down into that terrible blank space where time folded in on itself and left him with nothing but pain and white noise, Will remembers trying not to think about it. About him. About how Hannibal has been different lately, in ways that aren’t obvious to anyone except Will—because Will thinks of him too much, more than he should, more than he can defend, more than any reasonable person should think about someone who is supposed to be just a colleague, or a psychiatrist, or whatever name he’s been pretending fits Hannibal best.
He’d tried to push the thoughts away, focusing instead on the case files, on the ache behind his eyes, on the dizziness that had been foreshadowing the seizure for hours, but they kept circling back like insects around a lantern. Hannibal is different now.
It’s everything underneath.
A frozen stillness. An unnerving perfection so subtle that Will doubts himself for noticing it at all. Before the seizure, he’d told himself he was imagining it. But now, blinking his eyes open in the dim hospital room, he sees it again. Hannibal sits beside the bed, reading. Straight posture. Not a hair out of place. His stillness so absolute it feels sculptural. Encased in resin, Will thinks. Something preserved. Something away from him. Something present but unreachable.
It stirs something uncomfortable in him, something that makes him uneasy because the change is so slight, so easy to miss. He thinks about that evening in Hannibal’s office, the dim warm light, the glint of wine in their glasses, the quiet intimacy of it. Hannibal’s his expression gentle, conversational, soft in a way Will can still feel in his chest if he lets himself remember too clearly.
He thinks of the day he brought Hannibal that bottle of wine, his awkward, vague attempt to bridge something between them, to reach for connection without admitting that was what he was doing—and the way Hannibal had looked at him then. Soft-edged. Almost pretty.
Will looks at the straight line of Hannibal’s back, the perfect set of his shoulders, the total absence of any stray movement. He’s striking now, sharply so.
The last time Will saw Hannibal messy was that day, the bloodied face. A sight Will never meant to see, but one that has been burned into him . Hannibal had looked human then. Fallible. Wounded in a way deeper than the physical injury. Will remembers wanting to clean the blood off his face. Now he's all clean lines and closed doors again.
Will wonders if this desire is selfish. To want to see Hannibal undone. To want to see him slip. To want him messy enough that Will can read him again, feel him again, understand him in the way he used to before everything went sideways. But maybe it isn’t cruelty. Because Will feels messy all the time now—messy in his mind, messy in his body, messy in his emotions that are a tangle he can’t untie. The seizures, the confusion, the nightmares, the sense of fading. He feels jagged while Hannibal sits perfectly smoothed. And Will thinks, Is it wrong to want him closer to where I am?
Hannibal turns a page of his book, the paper whispering softly in the dim hospital light. The quiet between them is long enough that Will almost lets it settle into sleep, but Hannibal’s voice comes in.
“You’re not sleeping,” he says. “Your eyelids droop, your posture slackens, but you do not surrender to rest. You resist it.”
Will rubs a hand over his face. “I’m having trouble,” he mutters. “Every time I try to close my eyes, something kicks up behind them. The nightmares hover right there waiting. Hard to drop into sleep when it feels like I’m stepping off a cliff and diving into the sea.”
Hannibal hums lightly. “Sleep should restore you, Will. It should be a haven, not a threat.”
“Tell that to my subconscious,” Will says. His voice cracks a little around the edges, but he pushes through it. “What are you reading, anyway?”
Hannibal glances over the top of the book, the corners of his mouth lifting faintly. “A commentary on Greek cosmological myths. Primarily Hesiod—Theogony, some fragments of Orphic tradition. This section concerns the symbolic architecture of death.”
Will snorts softly. “Light reading.”
Hannibal turns another page,. “I find such texts grounding. They remind us that human beings have always constructed elaborate structures to make sense of suffering, of the unknown, of transition, especially the transition between life and death.”
Will shifts slightly in the bed, tugging the blanket higher. "Lethe for forgetting. Styx for oath-binding, and passage." He breathes out slowly. “I’ve been feeling like I’m stuck on the bank. Watching the boat go back and forth. Not sure if I’m supposed to get on or stay where I am.”
Hannibal closes the book partway, marking his place with a finger. “That sounds deeply unsettling, Will. Tell me more.”
“You know I feel half-alive some days,” Will says, staring at the ceiling. “Half-aware. Half-rooted. Georgia didn’t know she was living under the bed, and sometimes I feel like I’m doing the same thing. Watching life from under the frame instead of being in it.”
Hannibal’s voice softens, but not with pity. “The ferryman’s task isn’t to decide who crosses. Only to guide the ones who do.”
Will gives a tired, lopsided smile. “Yeah, well, I’m sick of the nightmares deciding things for me. I’m sick of waking up on the wrong shore.”
“If only you were an angel maker.”
Will shakes his head. “I don’t need angels to watch over me when I sleep.”
“No,” Hannibal agrees, his gaze steady. “You do not. Yet you asked me to stay until you fall asleep. Do you intend for me to remain here all night?”
Will’s throat tightens as he swallows.
“Maybe,” he says. “If that’s… something you can do. Would that bother you?”
Silence, then a slow inhale from Hannibal. He thinks about it, genuinely. Will can tell. Hannibal’s eyes drop to his book, then lift back to Will.
“No,” Hannibal says at last. “It would not bother me.”
Will’s breath leaves him in a shaky exhale, the relief quiet but real.
Hannibal continues, voice low and even. “The night is long, Will. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. A companion through it can make all the difference. And I find your presence companionable.”
Will almost laughs, but it comes out more like a sigh. “Do you have promises to keep? You’re probably the only person who would ever use that word about me.”
“Perhaps I do. If they do not notice, then they do not know you,” Hannibal says. “Not as I do. Not as you've let me.”
Those words slide under Will’s ribs like a warm hand. He tries to ignore the shiver they stir.
“Read out loud to me,” Will murmurs. It slips out before he can stop it. He blames the exhaustion, the medication, the heavy warmth blooming behind his eyes, softening all the things he usually keeps locked behind his teeth.
Hannibal glances up at him, just a brief flick of the eyes, quick but unmistakably attentive. His brow softens the smallest degree, then he looks down again at the book resting open in his hands.
“If that’s what you’d like,” he says.
His voice is lower than usual, quiet so as not to break the fragile dusk settling over the room. The cadence is steady, rhythmic, almost like water washing up against a dock, words flowing in a calm current that Will feels settling into him, lining the inside of his thoughts with something warm. Hannibal reads of rivers and gods, oaths and crossings, ancient geographies of life and death mapped in poetic detail.
Will listens with his eyes half-closed, soaking the sound in like heat.
In his mind, he sees the river, dark, wide, shimmering with a faint sheen of moonlight, the water thick enough that it looks almost black. Not frightening, not tonight. Not with Hannibal’s voice carrying him along. He imagines himself standing at the muddy bank, the air cool, the boat waiting, and he imagines Hannibal guiding him not into death, not into darkness, but through the narrow channel of his own mind, steering him back toward something like life.
It feels… good.
A nurse slips into the room, soft-soled shoes whispering across the floor, clipboard in hand. She checks the machines, checks the IV, checks Will’s pulse. She smiles politely at Hannibal, who lowers his voice further as he pauses mid-sentence, waiting. The nurse nods to both of them and leaves.
The door closes, and the room sinks back into dim quiet. Hannibal continues reading.
Will drifts in and out, letting the sound of the words fill the dark spaces in him. The river in his mind shifts slowly, gently. The ferryman’s boat glides. The oar dips and rises. Hannibal’s voice never wavers. The fish float to the top.
Eventually Will opens his eyes again, blinking to clear the haze gathering at the edges of his vision. The window is darker now, night arriving fully.
He turns his head slightly. Hannibal is still in the chair, still reading, still perfect in posture and poise, lit faintly by the bedside lamp.
“It’s getting late,” Will murmurs.
Hannibal marks his place in the book with a finger, then glances up. “It is,” he agrees.
Will swallows, his throat thick. “You don’t have to stay… there all night.”
The words slip out sounding too earnest. He doesn’t look away, but he wants to.
Hannibal studies him quietly. “Shall I go home?”
The question is even, neutral. Which somehow makes it worse. Will feels his heartbeat flicker strangely.
“No,” he says, voice rough. “I mean—no. You could just… there’s enough room for both of us on here.”
The second the words leave his mouth, he feels heat crawl up the back of his neck. He hears how it sounds, how it hangs in the air between them. The bed is too small. It’s not reasonable. It’s not a thing he should have said, not to Hannibal, not to anyone.
Hannibal does not respond right away.
Instead, he turns his head toward the window. His posture stills completely—frozen, statue-like—for a full heartbeat, maybe two. When he turns back to Will, his expression is unreadable but softened around the edges, something thoughtful flickering behind the eyes.
“Until you fall asleep?” he asks.
Will nods, swallowing hard. “Yeah. The nurses won’t—bother us for a while.” He knows how that sounds. But he can't take it back.
Hannibal closes the book gently, setting it on the chair beside him. The soft thud of paper against wood sounds strangely final. Then he stands. He removes his suit jacket, shaking it lightly by the shoulders to smooth the fabric before laying it neatly over the back of the chair. His movements are quiet, careful, as though stepping into Will’s space requires a moment of preparation. A moment of shedding the outer layer of himself, Will hopes. Fears. Hopes.
Will watches, half-nervous, half-something else entirely, his breath shallow.
Hannibal pauses once more before approaching, something unreadable tightening briefly in his expression, then softening again as he turns toward the bed.
Will scrambles slightly, shifting his body toward the far edge, pressing himself almost against the guard rail. His heart thuds, unsteady.
The bed is not big enough for two grown men. He knows that. He doesn’t know why he said what he said, why he wanted what he wanted, why he asked for this closeness—but he did.
Hannibal lowers himself onto the mattress with silent grace, moving slowly so as not to jostle Will, though the bed still dips beneath his weight. Their bodies brush, just barely, just enough that Will feels the warmth of Hannibal’s presence from shoulder to hip.
For a moment, they're pressed fully against each other.
Will’s breath stutters. His skin prickles. His pulse quickens dangerously. The water in his mind shifts again, the boat tilting, the water dark and warm and rising. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to breathe evenly, trying to control the swirl of sensation and thought and emotion that floods him in the tightness of that space.
Slowly, he turns onto his side, presenting his back to Hannibal. It’s easier like this, easier not to be face-to-face. Hannibal settles behind him, silent, a warm line of body just inches away.
He tells himself not to move, not even a twitch, not even the smallest shift of muscle. He keeps his eyes shut tight, lashes pressed to his cheeks, breathing shallow so he doesn’t disturb the space between them, not that there really is space. The bed is narrow, and every inhale shifts the air just enough that Will can feel Hannibal beside him, feel the warmth radiating from his body in slow pulses that creep across the sheet and touch Will’s spine like a hand that hasn’t yet moved.
He tries to will himself to sleep.
He knows it won’t work.
Water swims behind his eyelids whenever he tries, dark and heavy, the imagined current of the Styx lapping softly against the banks of his mind. Sleep won’t come for miles.
Will mirrors him. He listens. He listens to the soft hum of the hospital lights. He listens to the distant footsteps in the hallway. But more than anything—more than anything—he listens to Hannibal’s breathing.
He knows he could count the breaths, knows he could let the pattern lull him the way Hannibal’s voice had earlier, reading him across the dark river of his mind, but he doesn’t. He just listens. It’s enough to keep him present, enough to keep the water from pulling him under. He doesn’t know how much time passes.
Minutes.
An hour.
Long enough for the light in the room to shift again, becoming something deeper, quieter.
Then—
“Are you awake, Will?”
The voice is so close that Will’s whole body shivers before he can stop himself. Something tightens low in his stomach. His throat goes dry. He swallows. Barely. And forces out, “I… can’t sleep.”
Another silence follows. So long Will almost opens his eyes, almost turns to see if Hannibal is really there, if he’s slipped into another fever dream, if his mind is staging another cruel, beautiful illusion.
Then, softly—
“Hm.” A pause. Then: “Would it help if I held you?”
Would it help? No, a distant, logical part of him whispers. It would make things a million times worse, another part says. But deeper still—lonelier still—His throat tightens painfully. He can barely speak past it.
“If that’s what you want.”
Hannibal doesn’t answer. He just moves. The bed shifts, slowly, thoughtfully, as though Hannibal is giving Will time to stop him if he wants to. Will doesn’t.
A warm exhale drifts over the nape of his neck. Will shudders, a full-body tremor he can’t contain. Hannibal is so close now that Will can feel the shape of him, can feel the heat from his chest, can feel the careful stillness he adopts before reaching—
A hand touches Will’s waist.
Tentative. Testing. Almost shy, if Hannibal Lecter could ever be shy.
Will’s breath breaks free in a stuttering rush. He clamps his eyes tighter shut, as though that could hide the reaction, but he knows Hannibal notices. Of course he does.
The hand moves. Slowly, sliding upward along Will’s side, then across his stomach in a warm, sure glide that leaves every nerve in Will’s body sparking awake. Hannibal’s arm comes around him, fully, securely drawing him back into a loose, careful embrace.
Hannibal’s voice, when it finally comes, is a low murmur against Will’s hairline. “You’re trembling.”
“I know,” Will whispers.
“Do you want me to stop?”
Will shakes his head. Barely. Barely at all.
“No.”
Will lies as still as he can, though the effort takes more strength than he wants to admit. Hannibal isn’t pressed against him now; there’s space between their bodies, but his arm sits firm across Will’s middle, a single point of contact that becomes every point of contact. Everything Will feels seems to funnel into that one place, the warm weight of Hannibal’s hand resting against the center of his chest, just over his sternum, just over the place where his breath keeps stuttering.
Soft, warm breaths ghost against the back of Will’s head, stirring the short hairs at his nape. Will can feel them each time they land, each time Hannibal exhales with care, as though his breath could disturb Will too much. Will tries not to think about how close his mouth must be. And he can feel Hannibal’s eyes on him.
It’s a pressure more than a gaze, something boring gently into the back of his skull, like Hannibal is trying to map the shape of his mind by sight alone. Will wonders what he sees. Wonders what he smells.
Will imagines the heat of Hannibal’s hand on his chest from an aerial view, like a thermal scan. The center of his chest glowing bright orange, then bleeding out into the rest of him. He imagines Hannibal’s hand as the hottest point, his own body illuminated around it, lit up by contact.
Maybe it’s loneliness that’s been sitting inside him for years. Maybe it’s the angel the angel that doesn’t watch over him, but watches him, the one he feels hovering just at the edge of sleep.
Whatever it is, Will hesitates only a moment before lifting his hand.
He sets it gently on top of Hannibal’s. He’s never touched Hannibal like this. Not willingly, not openly, not even in moments when he’d wanted to. He blames the medication. He blames the fog in his mind. He blames the fact that Hannibal is holding him like no one has in years. He blames the river, the fish, the ferryman, the Styx—all of it.
Hannibal says his name softly. “Will.”
The word glows in the air, warm and dangerous. Will swallows hard, and then he intertwines their fingers. He holds Hannibal’s hand against his chest,. Hannibal’s breath catches, just slightly. Almost undetectable. But Will hears it.
Silence stretches between them, warm and fragile, until Will forces himself to speak.
“I think you’ve been… different lately,” he murmurs, voice low, almost hoarse. “You’ve been… away. Cold. Like you’re somewhere else even when you’re right in front of me.”
Hannibal doesn’t answer at first. His stillness takes on another quality, not distance, but thought. His thumb moves barely, a small brush against Will’s knuckles, then stills again.
“You noticed?” Hannibal says quietly, a strange strain in his voice.
“Of course I noticed,” Will breathes. “I notice everything about you. I can’t seem not to.”
Another long silence follows, heavier than the last. Hannibal’s voice is softer when it returns. “How can you notice,” he whispers, “even now? In this state? In this exhaustion?”
“Because you’ve felt far,” Will says. “You’ve felt… sealed off. Like you’re here, but not here. And I don’t know why.”
Hannibal’s fingers tighten faintly around Will’s.
“Why do you notice?” Hannibal asks, the words slipping out almost despite himself. “Why does this matter to you?”
Will’s breath shivers out of him, shaky and thin. “Because I care,” he says. “Because whether I want to or not, I… I pay attention to you."
“And what do you think has changed?” Hannibal asks. His voice is steady now, but beneath the steadiness is something else, something sharp-edged.
“I don’t know,” Will murmurs. “Maybe you’re trying to keep yourself separate. Maybe you don’t want to be seen. Maybe you don’t want me to see you. I just—” He breaks off, throat tight. “You’ve felt cold.”
Hannibal’s hand tightens again, not painfully, not possessively, but with conviction.
“You see too much,” Hannibal says, voice barely above a whisper. “You always have. Even now. Even lying half-asleep with nightmares nipping at your mind. You still look at me.”
“Someone has to,” Will says. “Someone has to see you. Someone has to see past the… shell.”
“Shell?” Hannibal repeats, and his breath grazes the back of Will’s ear.
“Yeah,” Will whispers. “The shell you’ve been hiding in.”
Hannibal’s breath warms the crook of Will’s neck. When he speaks again, there’s a note of quiet bewilderment in his tone. “I didn’t think you could feel that distance,” Hannibal murmurs. “Your mind is out of your contro, isn't it? I thought I’d concealed it.”
“You didn’t,” Will whispers. "Not well enough."
Hannibal’s fingers tighten minutely around Will’s, their hands interlaced over the center of Will’s chest. Will can feel his pulse kicking up beneath Hannibal’s palm. Hannibal breathes in quietly, and then his voice comes low, close, almost brushing the shell of Will’s ear.
“It is hard to hide from you, Will,” he murmurs. “You do things to my heart that I cannot control, and I find myself exposed no matter how carefully I try to guard against it. You perceive what I do not speak, and you reach places in me I had long assumed unreachable.”
Will’s breath shakes. His fingers squeeze around Hannibal’s hand with something close to desperation, something raw and unfiltered. “Your hands,” Will whispers, “they’re so cold. But they felt nice… when I was burning up earlier. When the fever had me.”
Hannibal hums, a small contemplative sound that vibrates faintly against the back of Will’s neck. “And do they feel nice now?” he asks softly. “When your body is no longer burning but still trembling under my touch? Do you feel steadier with them on you, or are you humoring me because you fear you might float away again?”
Will nods. “They feel nice. Better than nice.”
There’s a quiet pause, and then Hannibal exhales slowly. Will feels the shift before he understands it, Hannibal sitting up slightly, pulling back just enough that Will can feel the loss of warmth at his back, then leaning in over him, studying him. Will doesn’t open his eyes at first. He can feel Hannibal peering down at him.
Will finally lets his eyelids flutter open, half-lidded and heavy, and he catches only a glimpse—just a flicker—of Hannibal’s eyes. They’re soft again. Soft in that way Will remembers from the wine in Hannibal’s office, from the nights when the lamp caught his face just right, from those moments before Will's mind fractured.
But Hannibal bends down again too quickly for Will to read more, bends until his nose touches Will’s hair, pressing there gently like he's drawing in a scent.
Hannibal drags his nose slowly through Will’s hair, the motion tender, careful, as though he fears Will might crumble under anything too sharp. Then, with a quiet exhale that warms Will’s skin, Hannibal presses a small, impossibly gentle kiss to the shell of Will’s ear.
He wouldn’t stop Hannibal even if he wanted to. And he does not want to. He wants—God, he wants so much more than he can ever ask for.
Hannibal’s kisses move. They trail from Will’s ear down to the soft skin just beneath it, where the neck curves into the shoulder. Will grits his teeth, breath harsh, fingers squeezing Hannibal’s hand so tightly he half-expects the bones to crack, thin, delicate, dead-fish-bone fragility, but Hannibal does not flinch. Then Hannibal’s lips move to his cheek, brushing once, lingering just long enough to make Will’s pulse thrum painfully beneath his skin.
Hannibal’s voice is low when it comes again.“Do you still feel restless, Will? Does your mind still swim and churn with unease?”
“Yes,” Will whispers. “I still feel restless. I still feel like I’m… floating.”
Hannibal’s lips hover near his cheek. “And do you still feel like you’re fading? Do you still fear the river pulling you away from yourself?”
“Yes,” Will says again, a harsh breath leaving him. “I still feel like I’m fading. But you’re—” He swallows.“You’re supposed to be my paddle.”
Hannibal breathes in sharply, like something inside him caught on that sentence. "I am." He leans up then, just enough to press a kiss to Will’s temple. Will’s whole body lights up with the warmth of it, a flare of heat from the point of contact that spreads down his face and into his chest.
Will turns his head without thinking, turning toward Hannibal, seeking him, wanting more. He tilts his face up, aiming for Hannibal’s mouth, but the angle is strange in the narrow bed and his lips land on Hannibal’s jaw instead, warm skin, faint stubble.
“Hannibal,” Will says, voice breaking, stern in a pathetic, trembling way.
Hannibal’s lashes flutter. A soft sigh escapes him, a sound that feels like surrender. He turns his head,and then his lips press against Will’s. The angle is awkward. The space is small. Their bodies are twisted and tense.
This is not professional. This thought surfaces somewhere in the back of Will's mind, distant and irrelevant, like a memo from another lifetime, a message from the person he used to be before the fever. he's in a narrow bed with his psychiatrist, his hands wrapped around one of Hannibal's and they're kissing, and it's not professional, it's the least professional thing two people in their positions could possibly be doing, and Will cannot bring himself to care, cannot find even a flicker of the shame or the guilt or the complicated ethical anxiety that he suspects he should be feeling. He's too busy feeling everything else, feeling the way his own lips part feeling the sound that escapes him when Hannibal's tongue traces the seam of his mouth.
Hannibal kisses him chastely at first, soft and slow. Will lifts his head, turns it until the angle hurts his neck, until the strain in the muscles is a bright, sharp counterpoint to the softness of Hannibal's lips, and he deepens the kiss himself, takes control of it the way he's been taking control of nothing else in his life lately, and he feels Hannibal's breath catch against his mouth, feels the surprise in it.
Their tongues meet, and it's nothing like Will expected. He doesn't know what he expected, exactly, he's spent so little time imagining this, has carefully kept himself from imagining this, but whatever he might have constructed in some forbidden corner of his mind would have been wrong anyway, would have been too neat, too much like Hannibal and not enough like them. This is Will tilting his head further, further, ignoring the protest in his cervical spine, and Hannibal making a sound. Hannibal's tongue slides against his, and it's warm and wet and insistent, and Will's breath picks up, goes ragged and uneven.
Hannibal breaks away, just for a second, just long enough for them both to breathe, and Will rubs their noses together, and he feels Hannibal go still beneath it, feels the shock in his body, the wonder, and then Hannibal swallows, a visible, audible swallow that Will feels more than sees, and then he's kissing Will again, but it's different now, it's frantic, desperate, like he has never done anything like this before, and his breath is harsh, coming in short, sharp bursts against Will's cheek, against his jaw, against the corner of his mouth when they break for air and immediately come back together.
Their lips slide together, soft and wet and good, so impossibly good, and Will thinks about all the ways this could go wrong, all the ways it probably will go wrong, all the ways he's not stable enough for this, not whole enough for this, not enough for anything really, but Hannibal's mouth is on his and Hannibal's hand is in his and Hannibal is making those sounds.
He sits up more, or is sat up more, it's hard to tell the difference when Hannibal's mouth is on his like that, when every nerve ending in his body is firing at once. Will can feel everything, can feel the solid warmth of Hannibal's chest through the fabric of his shirt, can feel the sharp press of Hannibal's hipbone. They kiss and they kiss and they kiss, and every time one of them has to pull back for air, gasping, stealing a breath like it's something they have to snatch away from the world, they're already leaning back in before the breath is even finished, already finding each other's mouths again, already picking up exactly where they left off.
Will wants to say something, wants to tell him something important, something true, but he doesn't have the words, doesn't have the breath, doesn't have anything except need, so instead he just turns his head slightly and kisses the corner of Hannibal's mouth.
Hannibal's eyes are still closed, his lashes dark against his cheeks, and Will watches him, watches the way his chest rises and falls too quickly, watches the slight tremor in his jaw, watches the way his lips, red and slightly swollen, part on each exhale like he's still tasting Will on his tongue. And then, finally, slowly, Hannibal opens his eyes, and Will's breath catches all over again because those eyes are swimming again, are soft again, are pretty in that way they were before, in that way Will missed.
Will lets go of Hannibal's hand, his fingers uncurling slowly, reluctantly, and he sighs when that hand doesn't leave him, when instead it moves, sliding softly against his belly. Those fingers trace the line of his waist, dip into the hollow there, and then slide lower, lower, dipping under the white t-shirt he's wearing, pushing the fabric up as they go. Will turns his face away, presses his cheek into the pillow, because he can't look, can't watch. He feels Hannibal's lips press to his cheek, soft and a little wet, and then his hand keeps sliding, keeps exploring, palm flat against the heated skin of his stomach, fingers spreading wide.
Will's muscles twitch under that touch, involuntary responses he can't control, can't hide, and Hannibal makes a small sound of what might be satisfaction or wonder or both, and his hand keeps moving, keeps sliding, keeps learning. It slides up over his ribs, fingers counting each one, and then over his pec, and then then the thumb brushes across his nipple, just once, just lightly,. Hannibal's lips keep pressing to his face, to his jaw, to the corner of his mouth, soft and persistent and unbearably tender, and his hand keeps moving, keeps touching.
"Tell me what you desire," Hannibal says, his voice low and soft in a way Will has never heard before, “Name it plainly and I will give it to you. If you ask for my help, you will have it. There is very little I would refuse you.”
Will shudders, a full-body tremor that starts at the crown of his head and ends at the tips of his toes, and he thinks about all the things he wants, all the things he's never let himself want, all the things that have seemed impossible for someone so unstable, so adrift. "I think," he whispers, his voice muffled by the pillow, "I think I want things I can't have."
Hannibal's hand stills on his chest, just for a moment. “You say that as though the boundary were external,” he replies. “As though the world had drawn the line and you had merely discovered it.” He exhales softly. “In my experience, the limits we mourn most fiercely are the ones we have constructed ourselves.”
Will doesn’t answer.
“You have spent your life practicing refusal,” Hannibal continues.” His voice lowers. “It is a very disciplined way to suffer.” He rests his palm more fully against Will’s chest. "You can have anything, Will,” he says. “Not because the world is generous, but because desire becomes possible the moment you stop arguing with it.”
Will turns his face back toward him, looks up into those dark, swimming eyes, and feels something crack open in his chest. "I want you," he whispers. "Is that something I can have?"
Hannibal nods against him, nods frantically, a little desperately, in a way Will has never seen him move before. And then he's capturing Will's mouth again, kissing him like he's been starving for this. His palm slides down again, down over Will's stomach, down over the fabric of his flannel pajama pants, and then it's there, it's right there, palm pressing against Will's cock through the soft material, and Will curses into Hannibal's mouth. "Fuck."
He tries to turn, tries to shift, wants to reach for Hannibal, wants to touch him back, wants to make him feel half of what Will is feeling, but Hannibal's other hand squeezes him, holds him in place, keeps him where he's, and then Hannibal shifts closer, moves against him, and Will can feel it, can feel the hard line of Hannibal's cock pressing against his ass through both their clothes.
He can't believe this is happening. He can't believe this is real. He thinks about hunger, about all the hungers he's spent his life trying to understand, trying to control, trying to keep from swallowing him whole. He thinks about how his hunger has spawned other hungers, has spawned this hunger, this need, this desperate, aching want.
Suffocating fish mouths, those gasping, dying fish from that long-ago summer, their mouths opening and closing in the thick, stagnant water, floating belly-up, gasping for air he couldn't reach, waiting to die or be saved or something in between. And now Hannibal is here, Hannibal is touching him, Hannibal is kissing him, and the water doesn't feel so thick anymore, doesn't feel so suffocating, doesn't feel like it's going to close over his head and never let him up for air.
He feels more alive than he has in weeks, than he has in months maybe, than he has since this whole thing started, since the Ripper case landed in his lap and his brain started coming apart. Hannibal's mouth is on his, Hannibal's tongue is in his mouth, licking into him, sweeping over his teeth and curling against his tongue in ways that make Will's whole body tighten and strain. Will wonders if Hannibal kisses anyone else like this, if there is someone else who gets this version of him. He hopes not. He hopes there is no one else. He hopes he's the only one, the first one, the last one, and the thought makes him want to cry or laugh or both, makes him want to turn around and demand answers he has no right to ask for.
He can barely breathe. It's not the suffocating lack of air from before, not the drowning feeling, it's something else entirely, something that steals his breath because there's too much feeling. Hannibal's hand is on his cock through his flannel pajama pants, stroking him with a rhythm that matches the movement of his hips, the way he's pressing against Will's back, rubbing himself against Will's ass through their clothes, and Will can feel everything, can feel the hard length of Hannibal's cock, can feel the way it jumps and twitches against him, can feel the small, desperate sounds Hannibal keeps making into his mouth, can feel the heat building in his own groin, the ache, the need.
He doesn't feel adrift. He doesn't feel like he's fading away into nothing, like the current is pulling him under and he's too weak to fight it. it's all so real that there's no room for floating. Everything in his wrong mind comes with wrong desires, he knows that, has always known that, has spent his whole life knowing that the things he wants are not the things other people want, that the thoughts that come easily to him are the thoughts other people have to work to imagine, that the darkness he swims in is deeper and colder and more populated than anything most people ever glimpse. He has wanted things he shouldn't want, has imagined things he shouldn't imagine, has felt kinship with things that should repulse him, and he has spent his whole life hiding it, controlling it, keeping it locked away where it can't hurt anyone, where it can't hurt him. But Hannibal knows, Hannibal has come closer, has stayed closer, and now he's here, his body pressed against Will's like he can't get close enough, like he wants to crawl inside Will's skin and live there.
Hannibal crushes him tighter, pulls him closer, wraps himself around Will like he's trying to absorb him, and Will makes a noise that gets swallowed by Hannibal's mouth, and then he's pulling back, just far enough to speak. "Touch me," he whispers, and his voice is wrecked, is raw, is nothing like his own voice at all. "Touch me, touch me, Doctor—"
Hannibal hushes him, a soft, gentle sound,and then his hand is moving, slipping beneath the waistband of Will's pajama pants, beneath the elastic of his boxers, pushing through the hair at the base of his cock before his fingers close around the root of it. Will is so hard it hurts, so hard he can feel his pulse beating in his cock, can feel every throb of blood, every twitch of muscle, every tiny movement Hannibal's hand makes.
"Beautiful boy," Hannibal murmurs against his ear, and his voice thick with something that sounds almost like awe. "You are so beautiful, Will. So responsive. So alive under my hands." Alive. His fingers tighten slightly, adjust their grip, and Will's hips jerk forward into his hand, just pure instinct, pure need. "I will do anything you ask me to," Hannibal continues, and he presses a kiss to the spot just behind Will's ear, that soft, sensitive place that makes Will's whole body shiver. "Anything. Tell me what you want and it's yours. Tell me what you need and I'll give it to you. Tell me to stop and I will stop, but I hope you won't."
Will bites down on his own cheek, bites hard enough to taste blood. Hannibal's thumb sweeps across the head of his cock, spreading the wetness that has gathered there, and Will makes a sound that gets muffled by the pillow he's pressed his face into.
Hannibal's hand speeds up, just slightly, just enough to make Will's breath catch, and his voice drops even lower, even rougher, even more intimate. "That's it, Will. Let yourself feel it. Let yourself want it. Let yourself have it. You deserve this. I adore you. Don't be ashamed. I'm your friend."
"I can feel it now," Will says, and his voice is muffled by the pillow. "I can feel you. I can feel how much you want me. You're desperate for it. You're as desperate as I am." He turns his head, just enough to see Hannibal's face over his shoulder, just enough to catch the expression there. "Have you been as lonely as I have? All this time?"
Hannibal doesn't answer with words. Instead, his other hand comes up, tangles in Will's curls, and tugs gently but firmly, angling Will's head back, turning it further, until their mouths can meet again. Hannibal's tongue pushes into his mouth, and Will tastes himself there, tastes the salt and the want. They kiss like that for a long moment, breathless and frantic, and then Hannibal pulls back just far enough to speak, his lips still brushing against Will's with every word.
"I can't give you the closeness I desire," Hannibal murmurs. "The closeness that you know I desire now. Not yet. Not like this. But I'd like to use your thighs, if you'll let me. I'd like to be between them, to feel you around me, to find some version of what I want with you. Would that be alright?"
Will shivers, and he nods. "Alright," he whispers, and the word comes out broken, breathless, barely a sound at all. "Yes. Alright."
His own hands move then, fumbling with the waistband of his pants, pushing them down along with his boxers, and the rustle of fabric under the sheets is loud in the quiet room, loud against the sound of their breathing, loud against the pounding of his own heart. Hannibal's hand leaves his cock, but then those same hands are helping him, pushing fabric down, baring skin, and the cool air of the room hits the sensitive places that have been hidden for so long. Hannibal lifts the hospital blanket, that thin, scratchy thing that Will has been sleeping under, and Will watches him, watches the way his eyes move, the way they trace down Will's body, the way they linger on the curve of his back, the dip of his waist, the swell of his hips, the pale skin of his thighs. Hannibal gazes down at him, at the sight he must be, lips parted and wet from kissing, eyes swallowed by pupil until there is almost no color left.
Hannibal just stares for a moment, frozen, transfixed, and Will needs him to move, needs him to do something. "Doctor," Will whispers.
Hannibal blinks. His eyes focus, find Will's, and then he's leaning down, kissing Will again, hard and hungry, and his hands are moving, fumbling with his own slacks, undoing buttons and zippers with an urgency that is so unlike his usual careful grace that it makes Will's head spin. Will can't see him, the angle is wrong, and the blanket is in the way, but he can hear the sounds, the rustle of fabric, the soft word Hannibal mutters when something catches, and he wants to see, but can't. So he reaches back, reaches under the blanket, reaches until his hand finds what he's looking for, and then his fingers close around Hannibal's cock, warm and hard and foreskin silky in his grip, and Hannibal breathes out sharply.
"Come on," Will says, and his voice is rough, urgent, demanding. "Come on. I'm right here. I want it. I want you."
His hand leaves, drops away, and then he feels Hannibal shifting behind him, feels those hands on his thighs, guiding them together, positioning him, and then Hannibal's cock is slipping between them, sliding into the hot channel of skin, and the feeling of it, the feeling of Hannibal inside that small, intimate space, makes Will's breath catch, makes his hips push back instinctively, makes him want more. Hannibal's grip tightens in his hair, pulls just enough to keep Will's head tilted back, to keep him accessible for kisses, and his other hand comes around, finds Will's cock again, starts stroking in time with the thrust of his hips.
Hannibal fucks between his thighs, and Will can feel the stickiness of it, the wetness of Hannibal leaking and ready, making the friction easier, smoother, better. The sound of it is obscene, a soft, wet, rhythmic sound. He's never done this before, never even imagined doing this before, never let anyone this close, never wanted anyone this much, but he likes it, he likes it so much it scares him, likes the feeling of Hannibal moving against him, inside the space of him, likes the way Hannibal's breath stutters and catches with every thrust, likes the way Hannibal keeps pressing kisses to his shoulder.
"You feel incredible," Hannibal murmurs. "So warm, so tight, so perfect around me. I want—" He breaks off, thrusts harder, and Will feels the head of his cock push further, feels his skin press against something sensitive, feels his whole body light up with the sensation. "I want more than this. I want all of you. But this—" Another thrust, harder still, and Will's breath punches out of him. "This is enough for now. This is everything for now."
Will turns his head, catches Hannibal's mouth with his own, kisses him messily, desperately, and Hannibal kisses him back just as messily, just as desperately, their teeth clicking. Hannibal's hand speeds up on his cock, and Will feels the pressure building, feels the heat coiling low in his belly, feels himself getting closer and closer to something that feels like falling, feels like dying and being born all at once. This is what Charon must have felt, he thinks, steering his boat across that dark water with the dead piled around him, the weight of them pressing in from all sides, the knowledge that there is no going back, no return.
The feeling of it, the pressure of it, the way Hannibal's length slides against his skin, against the sensitive place behind his balls, against everything, makes Will gasp, makes his hips jerk, makes his own cock leak against his belly.
"Like that," Will breathes, and he reaches down, guides Hannibal's hips, shows him the rhythm, shows him what he wants. "Like that, Hannibal. It's perfect."
Hannibal groans, a sound so deep and so broken that Will feels it in his bones, and then he's moving, thrusting, sliding against Will's skin, into the tight space Will has made for him, and it's so good, so intimate. He can feel the wetness of him, the precome that is steadily leaking, won't stop leaking, making everything slick and messy and perfect.
"Will," Hannibal gasps.
Will's hand finds Hannibal's, wraps those cold fingers around him tighter, shows him what he needs, what he wants. "Don't stop," he whispers, and his voice is just as wrecked, just as desperate. "Don't stop touching me. I want to feel you lose control."
Hannibal's hand moves on him, faster now, less coordinated, matching the rhythm of his thrusts, and Will can feel how close he's, can feel it in the way his hips stutter, in the way his breath comes in short, sharp gasps against Will's ear, in the way his body trembles, shakes, falls apart piece by piece. He's leaking so much. His thighs are sticky with it, and he presses them together tighter, gives Hannibal more friction, more pressure.
Hannibal's eyes snap to his, and Will sees it, sees the surrender there. He thrusts harder, faster, his rhythm falling apart, his strokes on Will's cock becoming uncoordinated, desperate, and Will matches him, meets him, pushes back against him, takes everything he has to give and asks for more.
"Please," Hannibal whispers, and the word is so unexpected, so unlike him, that Will almost comes right there, almost loses himself in the sound of it. "Please, Will, I need—"
"I know," Will says, and his voice is gentle now, tender.
His hips press forward one last time, grinding against Will's thighs, against his ass, against the hot, slick skin there, and then he's falling apart with a sound that is half groan and half sob, a sound so raw and vulnerable and beautiful that Will thinks he might never forget it, might hear it in his dreams and his nightmares and every quiet moment in between. Hannibal shudders against him, shakes against him, and he presses his forehead against Will's temple, nuzzling there, nuzzling harshly, desperately, as he shivers through it, as he rides it out, as he comes and comes and comes against Will's skin, painting his thighs with it.
Will watches him. He can't look away. He has never seen anything so beautiful in his entire life, and he has seen beautiful things like ugly things, has seen sunrises over the Louisiana bayou that looked like God's own watercolors, but none of it compares. Hannibal's face is slack with pleasure, his eyes half-closed, his mouth slightly open, his breath coming in those short, sharp gasps that slowly lengthen into something more regular.
His hand has stopped moving on Will's cock, has just rested there, wrapped around him but still, and Will can feel his own need pulsing there, can feel how close he's, how ready, but he doesn't want to move yet, doesn't want to break the spell, doesn't want to do anything except watch Hannibal come back to himself, watch Hannibal's eyes focus, watch Hannibal's expression shift from pure abandon to something softer, something sweeter, something that looks almost like young-boy-wonder.
Will pushes Hannibal's hand off his cock gently, and Hannibal makes a small sound of protest, but Will just shushes him, just kisses his cheek, just reaches down between his own thighs and gathers some of Hannibal's cum there, and he brings it up to his own cock, wraps his hand around himself with it, uses it to stroke, uses it to finish what Hannibal started. And Hannibal watches him now, leans in and kisses Will softly, with a tenderness that makes Will's chest ache, makes his eyes burn, makes his hand move faster on himself because he can't handle it.
"You're so pretty," Will whispers against Hannibal's mouth. "When you stop holding back."
Hannibal makes a small sound, and he kisses Will again, deeper now, slower now, his tongue sliding against Will's in a rhythm that matches the stroke of Will's hand on his own cock. His hand slides up to Will's ribs again, presses there, grips there, like he's trying to take them, trying to hold them, create a man.
He thinks about drowning then, thinks about the river, mouths open in small, stunned O's. He thinks about Hannibal drowning with him, thinks about them sinking together, their bodies tangled in the murky depths, their lungs filling with water, their eyes open and staring at nothing. Maybe that's what this is, maybe that's what they're doing, maybe they're drowning together, swimming in the river and waiting to go belly-up, waiting for the current to take them somewhere they can't predict and won't remember. But Will is not dead, not yet, he's alive.
But he's still sick. He knows this. He feels it in the way his mind still swims, still churns, still shows him things he doesn't want to see and makes him feel things he doesn't want to feel. He feels it in the way his grip on reality is still slippery, still uncertain, still prone to sudden shifts and unexpected drops. he's still sick, and Hannibal knows it.
Will's hand moves faster, faster, and he breaks the kiss, gasps against Hannibal's cheek, presses his forehead to Hannibal's shoulder, comes with Hannibal's cum still slick on his hand, comes with Hannibal's hand still gripping his ribs, comes with Hannibal's lips pressing soft, sweet kisses to his temple, his cheek, his jaw, his neck, everywhere he can reach. And when it's over, when he's empty and shaking and spent, he just lies there in Hannibal's arms.
Will keeps his eyes closed. He remembers standing on the muddy bank with a stick in his hand, nudging one of them and wondering if it knew what was happening while the water around it grew hotter and hotter. He wonders now if people are the same. If you know you are fading while it happens, or if you simply drift until someone points it out.
Georgia didn’t know.
She lay under the bed thinking she was dead while the world kept moving around her. She breathed, she felt the air move across her skin, she heard voices, but none of it reached her the way it should have. It took someone else telling her she was alive before she could even begin to believe it.
Lately he has been moving through the world with that same strange distance, like a man watching his own reflection in water that refuses to hold still. The brain scan said there was nothing wrong. No lesion. No tumor. No bright fracture in the circuitry of his mind.
Nothing.
But lying here now, with Hannibal’s arm still wrapped around him and Hannibal’s hand resting lightly against his chest, Will imagines that scan again. The cold machine circling his skull. The empty gray images sliding across the screen.
He imagines Hannibal leaning closer to the monitor, studying the map of Will’s mind. He imagines Hannibal refusing to believe the emptiness of the image, refusing to accept that there is nothing there to find. In Will’s mind, Hannibal reaches forward and touches the screen.
And suddenly there is a light.
A small one at first, faint, buried somewhere deep in the folds of Will’s brain where the machine could not see it. Something warm and living that pulses quietly in the dark. The Fields of Asphodel.