Work Text:
With only the inner upheld
Your reflection can't offer a word
To the bliss of not knowing yourself
With all mirroring gone from the world
But still the mind
Rejecting this new empty space
Fills it with something or someone
No closer could I be to God
Or why he would do what he's done
He was burning up from inside. Will had always run hotter than others, but this felt feverish. Like illness taking root in him.
He could feel the maggots crawling under his skin, taking root in his tender flesh and burying into his marrow.
The vultures picked at his eyes, once so reluctant to make eye contact, were now staring at him, half mauled and gutted, blood pooling thickly in the sockets and dripping down his hollow cheeks.
The dimpled mouth moved, skin cracking around the lips.
"See me…" It whispered.
With a start, he woke up. His skin was clammy, white shirt sticking to his clavicle and desperately breathing belly.
He felt nauseous. He felt hot. He felt cold.
He felt like a little boy back in the bayou's, calling out for his daddy as he got lost in the backyard swamps; humid clothes sticking to his skin like it was now.
He felt lost and desperate.
He's not thinking when he fumbles with his phone on the bedside table. His eyes barely adjust to the searing light before he swipes it open. With squinting, bleary eyes, he hovers over the name he desperately wants to call. The voice he wants to hear when nothing else feels real.
Before he can spiral into self doubt, he presses the call button. It rings once, twice, before it clicks as Hannibal answers.
"Will?"
Will pants into the line, trying to form sentences through the hazy memories that plague him, the unmoored feeling of being adrift at sea. He thinks he might throw up from motion sickness.
"Will?" Hannibal asks again, voice sounding a bit more urgent than before.
"Dad." Will garbles out, not convinced it wasn't slurred out in broken syllables.
There was a pregnant pause as Hannibal was shocked into rare silence. But then again, he thought as his shock wore off, was it truly a surprise? An absent father, and illness taking root in his brain and spreading like fungus. It would make sense to project his want to be taken care of onto the next stable male in his life.
"Will, son, what's wrong?" Hannibal asked after some contemplation.
"Dad- Dad, it hurts. It's so hot," Here, Will broke off into a whine as another flash of heat pooled in his belly, flushing his already pink skin.
Hannibal shushes him, and it has the effect of centering Will, if only slightly.
"Tell me what you need."
Will's lips tremble with the effort of keeping himself contained. The walls click and bulge around him, insects crawling within the plaster and their little scurrying legs rubbing against the drywall. Will rubs his face with his free hand, closing his eyes against the nauseating sight, trying to contain his broken, jagged pieces into something neat and orderly.
He fails.
"Will," Hannibal starts, tone firm, "tell me what you need."
Will groans like he's been punched in the gut. With a wet, hot gasp, he opens his eyes wide, unseeing.
"Daddy, daddy." He chants, over and over, pleading for salvation, for a tether, for anything but the sickly sweet stickiness of the Lousiania heat.
"Daddy's got you, sweet boy. Tell Daddy what you need."
"Hah-" Will stutters, instincts rooted deep within against asking for help and showing weakness, "Help, please."
"As my boy wishes."
The line goes quiet, long enough that Will starts to wonder if he hallucinated the whole call. He's starting to pull the phone away when he hears noise again.
"Will, listen to me carefully, son." Hannibal's tone is so stern, he can't help but to straighten in instinct, which quickly has him scowling and slumping back down.
By now, the cloying heat is receding, and the memories of what he was doing are washing away, pebbles in a fast, bubbling brook.
He is vaguely aware of Hannibal speaking to him, only aware it is Hannibal because the phone he is squinting at says Dr. Lecter.
His final thought before he falls asleep, now cold and clammy, is wondering if he'll remember any of this when he wakes back up or if Hannibal will forcibly remind him.
Daddy was able to get you the soonest visit with an old colleague of his. Daddy will pick you up, sweet Will, two days from now, 9 am sharp. Don't disappoint him.
Will can see the text was sent at 6 am, right around the time he would have been waking up for work. Will knows with a sickening, sinking feeling that what happened last night was no fever-induced hallucination. He had called Hannibal his dad, his daddy.
He felt sick with the horror, but beyond that, he felt sick with the realization that he enjoyed it. Part of him was eager to see if Hannibal would follow through, and the larger part wanted to bury himself into a pit and never come out.
Will briefly considered playing dumb.
He knew Hannibal would never buy it, though. And Will would sooner saw his own leg off than to dumb himself down in front of Hannibal.
He badly wanted to play back and fuck back with Hannibal the way he just knew Hannibal was fucking with him.
I don't need your help, Will brusquely replied, So just leave me alone, Hannibal.
Will pretended not to care about the response, but he watched the three dots pop up while his coffee brewed, showing Hannibal was formulating a response. He expected violence; a spanking, or even an open handed smack or the belt. Shuddering away memories of his drunken father, he looked down to see Hannibal had replied.
It felt like the air was sucked out of him. Vacuumed away into space, compressed into gas and turned into helium balloons. He felt hot, and clammy, and excited and nervous all in one.
Is that any way to talk to your Father, young man?
Will shut his phone off, not wanting to engage any more. He may have been off for once today, but that didn't mean he had to humor Hannibal's sickness.
He pretended his phone wasn't a ticking time bomb.
He pretended everything was okay.