Chapter Text
Will wakes early, the cock has not yet crowed, the sky yet dark on the horizon. Against him, Hannibal's arms rest heavy, protective and possessive both, and so comforting that Will almost curls back to sleep without a thought. But something lingers on his mind, tugs against his subconscious and keeps him awake.
There are no sounds, yet, in the house, the slaves not yet awake themselves to begin the morning chores. The animals unbothered by the night sleep on. Only Will stirs, now, unable to keep a smile off his face, unable to stop drawing his hand soft over Hannibal’s, splaying his fingers against the older man’s.
He lets his eyes take in the room properly, now that he is able to at his leisure. It is sparsely furnished, the large bed and small table the only truly worthy items of note. And yet something else holds its own within the space, tall as Hannibal himself, hidden beneath the shadows of the room far enough from the bed for Will to have missed it the night before, in such a corner as to not be seen from the door.
Will carefully extricates himself, bites his lip at Hannibal's grunt of displeasure, waiting to see if the man would wake - he does not - before making his way on tiptoes to examine this strange shadow further.
It manifests to familiar shapes as Will approaches and he smiles as he realizes what it is. Hannibal's panoply, in all its glory and majesty; and it is certainly that, to Will, who cannot take his eyes off of it.
The cuirass is bronze, once beautiful, etched with spirals to mimic the shape of the body beneath it. They are disrupted in their patterns where the armor was hammered back to wholeness, and freshly oiled leather is slicked through to join the shoulders. Above it on the stand rests a helmet, crested, shaped to curl against the cheeks and down nose. And across it all it all rests the familiar scarlet cloak, woven with golden laurels, soft beneath Will’s careful fingers.
He stretches them wide, the bright leaves roughly textured beneath his fingers, and gently pushes the chlamys signifying Hannibal’s service out of the way to reach the metal beneath.
It isn’t hard to imagine Hannibal in it - it seems so natural, a better fit for the man than the ivory drapes of cloth that lay soft against him every day. Will traces the spirals etched where Hannibal’s chest would be beneath it, spreads his palm down over the bronze that girded his stomach, follows the remains of a furrow run sharply along the side that draws Will’s brows in. A glancing blow, deflected, just where Hannibal had struck the boy softly in practice, and told him how poisonously slow his death would be if caught there with a spear or blade.
Stretching onto his toes, his curiosity settles on the helmet. He taps against the nose piece, imagines Hannibal’s dark eyes beneath it, the man’s harsh jaw held behind the low sweeps of painted bronze. Biting his lip, he lifts it very carefully, feeling it heavy against his fingers as he turns it over and finally lowers the helmet over his own head - too large for him yet.
Struck by the rich, musky scent that fills his nose - metal and sweat, old leather well-worn - he cannot imagine having to have it press against him as he walked into battle, pushed by a shield, pushing his own.
He straightens his shoulders, closes his eyes, almost hears the slow onset of a march, around him, before him, behind. Will bites his lip, imagines that if he looks up he would see the sun, filtered through light gray clouds, down he would see the mud through which he walks.
It is an incredibly heavy helmet, already putting strain on his neck, but Will keeps his posture, forces himself to imagine that such a gift is bestowed upon him, for his bravery, his skill...
Will’s eyes open and he sighs, fingers careful around the piece against his nose, tracing it as he had the face usually beneath it, the night before. He wonders if Hannibal would wear it for him. Let him tie the laces of the cuirass, slide his helmet on, and then - he considers with a grin - remove them once he’s done looking at him.
The thoughts are enough that - as if he’d stood any chance to do so - he doesn’t hear or see the movement of Hannibal stepping nearer to him on catfeet. Will’s fingers latch against the curves that would - no, have - protected Hannibal’s cheeks and Hannibal slips an arm around Will’s waist as soon as his arms are up, tugging the boy back against him.
“A little early to train, even for you,” he murmurs, and wraps his other arm around just as snugly, amused by the press of cool bronze against his cheek.
Will makes a soft sound of surprise, heart beating quick against Hannibal’s hands where he holds him. Will brings a hand up to curl around Hannibal's wrist, to hold him close. He cannot see the man, his peripheral vision cut off entirely, but he can feel the hard lines of his body against his back. Can feel how, already, Hannibal is hard for him as he slots their hips together.
"I was imagining you wearing this and nothing else at all,” he replies, voice quiet in the dark pre-dawn.
A deep sound of approval rumbles from the man, vibrates hunger against Will’s back.
“As you are now?”
Hannibal needs not see the boy’s blush to know it’s there, and with gentle hands removes the helmet from him, to place it back atop the rack.
“You keep it in your room,” Will notes, leaning back into Hannibal as they were before, with a pleased little noise as Hannibal takes him in his arms again.
“One never knows.”
Touching low across Will’s stomach, Hannibal cups a hand between the boy’s legs and brings the other to frame with firm fingers his jaw, arching Will back until they can regard each other, albeit upside-down.
“Let me greet you,” Hannibal murmurs, “before dawn has had her chance to do so first.”
As they are, Hannibal leans low to kiss the boy, an awkward kiss but no less warm for the position, lips sliding as comfortably together as their bodies seem to fit, and a smile plays across Hannibal’s mouth as he does.
Will’s body feels too hot, too small for the emotions it contains. He brings a hand up to curl gently in Hannibal’s hair, smiles when they part for breath.
"Good morning," he sighs, blinking his eyes open and smiling wider, seeing Hannibal there. It feels comfortable, unlike the greetings Will had for so long forced himself to make awkward, jittery, rigid.
Not this.
Not now.
He practically melts against Hannibal with a soft sigh, arches his hips forward to feel the rough hand cupping him, back to feel the man hard behind him.
Then he turns his eyes to the armor once more and reaches out to draw his fingers over the marks there.
"It wears scars, just as you,” he says.
Hannibal lifts his eyes to watch Will’s hand against the armor - delicate, still, pale and lovely pressed to unyielding bronze - before demuring them again in favor of tucking his face into the crook of Will’s neck and nuzzling warmly there.
“It wears them in place of me,” corrects Hannibal. “I would be several times dead without it.” A flicker of frustration, perhaps, in his words, but it eases away before Will has time to consider it overmuch. “A gift from your father. It has served me well, and so I hope to do for him in turn.”
He skims his hand along Will’s outstretched arm, twines their fingers together to follow the movement of Will’s touch along the cuirass.
“You will have one, as well,” he murmurs. “A gift from me, when you are ready for it.”
When our time together is over.
The thought strikes Hannibal as if it were a blow and he grasps Will’s fingers to turn the boy in his arms and without warning, lift him from his feet, one arm tucked beneath his legs, the other around his back.
“Good morning,” he finally says in return, eyes alighting to watch Will bright above him, as another gentle smile upturns his lips. “How shall we spend it? Before hounds and horses and lessons call us away.”
Will squirms, delighting in how easily Hannibal lifts him, how close he holds him like this. He takes his time curling his legs around Hannibal’s waist, deliberately arching and turning until he settles, and feels Hannibal harder against his thigh.
"It is not true morning yet, for some hours still our time is entirely our own." He leans in to kiss Hannibal gently. "No hounds.” Another kiss. "No horses." Another. "No poetry or swords or spears."
He grins at the implication, bites his lip and pulls back just enough for Hannibal not to snare a kiss from him quickly.
"I would delight in learning your scars by light of early morning."
Hannibal chases another kiss, delighting - although he growls - when he is denied again. He turns and unhurried returns Will to the bed from which he escaped, dumping him back onto it unceremoniously and following, between his legs, hands on either side of him. “There are many,” cautions Hannibal, although his eyes draw up in amusement. “Are you so clever that you have time to learn them all, in such short time?"
Will considers, grinning. "Teach me of five a day,” he asks him, eyes narrowing. "And with them, five ways I can repay the pain you suffered with pleasure."
“Five?” echoes Hannibal, who does not resist dragging the length of his body in a slow rut against Will’s when he leans low to kiss him. “Ambitious boy. I admire your courage.”
With a sigh, Hannibal stretches almost feline over Will, allowing their lengths to bump softly together again before he rolls to lay on his back beside the boy instead, arms comfortably outstretched.
Even languid and limber as he is now, he is fierce, the muscles that define his form are laid bare, painted in ink and ash and riven with the signs of combat. Will knows by looking at him that he’s felt but a fraction of the strength and speed honed in Hannibal’s battle-worn body, and that to see him on the field - in his panoply, astride his horse with weapons at the ready - he would be a terrifying sight.
All the more remarkable, then, to see the effect that he has on the man, the dark skin of his cock stretched tight where his length lies hard against his leg. And more pleasing still when Hannibal curls his fingers into fists only to stretch sleepily, eyes closing as he gives himself over to the boy’s gentle touch.
Subdued.
Content.
For Will alone.
“Where to begin?” Hannibal teases softly, feeling Will’s hesitation.
Will considers, eyes narrowing in pleasure, before he lets his fingers linger over a mark just beneath Hannibal’s collarbone, a thin scar, and light against his ruddy skin.
"This,” he says.
Beneath him, Hannibal adjusts, brings a hand to trace the mark as though to remind himself, remember the moment when blood had welled there, tiny bubbles of red until they merged to drip thick down his skin.
"Practice,” he says, "with an angry tutor. I was rewarded for my mistakes with the sword point, a tally against skin so I would learn." Hannibal's soft tone implies what he does not say, what he does not have to. Will knows he learned. Will knows that though his lessons may not be so cruel, he will learn as well.
"And this?" Another, by his shoulder, like a crescent moon.
Hannibal catches Will’s hand gently in his own and kisses the fingertips, pulling Will closer as he speaks.
"That I did to myself,” he admits, lips quirking in amusement. "When I climbed above a bramble bush and lost my balance into it."
Will laughs.
"A graceful general." He brings his eyes up to watch Hannibal closer. "Such battles you have scars from."
"All experiences are battles, Will. All life earns you scars. None ever lesser than another. These scars have built me, because I endured them I have been spared others, deeper, crueler, later. These are as honorable to me as those that mark the war."
Will considers the words, the gentle wisdom within them, before bending his head in supplication to worship the scar with his lips, to trace it with his tongue.
Hannibal sinks his hand through Will’s hair, relishes the way the curls wrap around his fingers, tugged straight as he strokes through it and bouncing back into place. His mouth is warm - hot, almost - in the early morning chill, but Hannibal makes no move to clutch the boy against himself, content to simply let himself be explored.
Kisses drift down Hannibal’s arm, his wrist held in Will’s hands and fingers brought to his mouth. He touches his lips softly to them, before - with a narrow-eyed look of delight - he teases the tip of his tongue against one, and draws it in. Pressing the pad of his finger against Will’s tongue, and pushing his finger a little deeper into the clever mouth that surrounds it, Hannibal allows a shiver to raise pinpricks across his bare skin, watching the boy with hooded eyes.
He slides it slowly free and kisses the back of Hannibal’s hand, up to his knuckles, and feeling the smoothness of the skin beneath his lips, Will asks, “Here?”
A laugh, low. “Many things. Scraped against walls while teaching stubborn horses. Battered against the inside of my shield until they were bloody.” He curls his fingers around Will’s hand and hums as the boy lavishes kisses across the pale scars. “Fighting, many times, when pushed to do so.”
Will remembers, delights in the idea of Hannibal fighting someone and winning without effort, in the idea that he only does it when driven to it by necessity, not because violence is his passion and his pleasure.
For long moments Will merely kisses skin, seeking blind with just his lips until he finds a raised scar, wide and large, against Hannibal’s side, bent in such a way as to follow parallel the curve of a tail of a creature Will can’t name. It looks like a shadow of a motion, a second skin shed by the creature.
“This one,” Will murmurs, lifts his eyes to look at Hannibal with a smile.
Hannibal hums, sucking in his stomach on reflex from the gently tickling feeling of Will against the sensitive skin. One hand he tucks behind his head, stretching his body for the boy above him to explore with soft sighs and gentle fingers. The other he settles against Will’s back, sliding his fingers over his spine and back up again in a gentle massage.
“A spear skimmed past me,” he says. “I did not see the wound until the heat of the blood turned to cool and dried against my skin.”
“It didn’t hurt?” Will asks, eyes widening a little.
Hannibal tilts his head, meeting the boy’s gaze even as Will’s tongue teases along the mark. The corners of his eyes lift in amusement, before he closes them contentedly.
“No,” comes the answer. “Some time after, perhaps, but in the moment I was only aware that I had not been impaled. The mind sings in battle, like the humming of an aulos, droning over notions of pain or fear. To not let that drive you is to falter. Had I felt it, I may have stopped - a hesitation long enough to allow him another chance.”
His jaw works a little before easing again, and he resumes the gentle rubbing of Will’s back from where his hand had stilled.
“Did you kill him?”
“Yes,” Hannibal responds with a slight smile. “I imagine so. Though there were many, it is hard to say exactly, but I struck, and he did not have strength enough to do the same again.”
Will blinks at him, heart beating faster at merely hearing the story, imagining the power such a blow would have taken, imagining how strong Hannibal must be to twist through it, survive, and take his vengeance on the man who had tried.
“Is courage gained?” he asks softly, and moves to rest against Hannibal’s chest again, hands folded softly against it. “I cannot imagine such things without quivering in fear.”
Hannibal’s smile grows fonder, and he finds his fingers unfurling the soft curls again, stroking them from Will’s face.
“You underestimate the strength within you already,” he assures the boy. “You underestimate the simple victories you hold every day. You will gain the courage that you fear you do not have. You will find it.”
Will feels himself smile at the words, spoken gently but without a hint of pity, without any sign that the man was patronizing him for his own amusement. He is growing stronger with the sword. He will grow stronger still with his courage.
“Will you choose a fifth?” Hannibal asks him, blinking at Will where he lies. Will blinks back, settles more comfortably where he is. After a moment he levers himself up a little higher, ducks his head, and presses his teeth against the soft hollow of Hannibal’s collarbone. His lips settle around them and he sucks, hard enough to draw a hiss from Hannibal but no retaliation, and when he lifts his head, a bright mark, bruised, where he had been. Languidly Will licks against it before regarding Hannibal from behind hooded lids.
“This one,” he asks.
The faint smile that had lingered long on Hannibal’s lips splits into a grin, nearly a laugh, before he finally catches Will in his arms and rolls to hold the boy beneath himself now, instead. The wriggling adjustments, the breathless laughter tease a purring pleasure from Hannibal and he kisses Will until Will’s fingers rest against his cheeks, and they part only to breathe.
“That,” Hannibal murmurs in a dire tone, “is an exciting story. A most fierce battle, between unyielding opponents, one very strong, and one very clever, both entirely too stubborn to bend to the other.”
He runs his hands along Will’s arms, until he pins both wrists gently beneath one hand, and can return the other to rubbing firm strokes along the boy’s squirming body.
“Squared off against each other, neither willing to step first, until by some sudden movement of Fate’s hand both did, at once,” he continues, voice low, as if telling myths of gods and monsters. “And this is the mark left, when both finally learned the measure of the other.” A pause, considering, and another soft smile tucked against Will’s chest where Hannibal nuzzles into a soft kiss. “A happy ending, this one, though yet unfolding.”
Will bites his lip and arches. The sky outside still dark, though the feeling of dawn is near it, something lightening, something softening to make it so. He turns his wrists gently in the grip against them but does not struggle. Instead he just watches Hannibal above him, smile soft against his lips, body warm beneath him as he slowly shifts one knee then the other to spread and slide up around Hannibal.
“Five scars,” he murmurs, licks his lips. “Five pleasures?”
It’s a pleasant sort of irony when Hannibal realizes, regarding the rosy-cheeked youth beneath him, how much more he knows of combat and war than of peace and pleasure. Though no stranger to the gentler possibilities of the body, it has always been a somewhat functional pursuit to him - something that needs tending to but not worth a great deal of attention beyond that, less pressing in compare to a well-cooked meal, and less substantial. His girth and size and strangeness - the tattoos he bears always a point of interest - had won him some favor with certain adventurous whores, but what he knows from sharing time with them hardly applies here.
He rubs a hand across the boy’s bare, hairless chest and chases it with his lips.
“Shall I show you directly, then?” asks Hannibal, eyes darting upward to watch Will’s lip snare between his teeth, and widen in a grin as he nods.
An exploration for both, then, equally unfamiliar with the feel of another man - or boy - against them in this way. Hannibal dips into the curve of Will’s neck, kissing softly up to his ear, to catch it between his teeth before sucking lightly.
“One,” he whispers, and the breath is enough to send a cascade of shivers down Will’s spine.
It’s pleasant, and something so simple that Will would not have considered. The sensitive skin of his earlobe, behind it, the shivers that skitter pleasantly over Will’s skin until he makes a soft sound, pleased and warm, like a purr.
He shifts against Hannibal how he can, the way he’s held, knees drawing higher and hands twisting more languidly in Hannibal’s rough palm. It’s delightful being held this way and Will arches higher, back in a curve off the bed, head back against the pillows.
He doesn’t think of how he will have to do chores when the dawn comes, how he will have to keep himself from simply wrapping his arms around Hannibal when they practice on the training field later in the day, or go riding together towards evening.
He doesn’t think on it because he doesn’t want to leave this bed, he wants to stay here, close, like this, for as long as they can, and then longer still.
Will grins as Hannibal kisses his way to his throat, lower still to his chest, tongue leaving cooling traces against the skin there before it moves to circle a nipple, just a bare lick, gentle turns around and around the little nub until it hardens, until Will is biting his lip and arching up higher. Then Hannibal obliges him, presses his lips around it to kiss, draw the velvet-rough of his tongue over it fully until Will is making soft breathless sounds against him.
“Two?” he whispers.
“Two,” agrees Hannibal, releasing Will’s wrist to wrap his hands against his waist instead. He kisses across to the boy’s other nipple - already hardened in anticipation - and draws it between his lips, sucking lightly, teasing with his teeth, until Will tugs Hannibal’s hair to lift his head, his entire body trembling and alight with sensation.
Breathless overstimulation, hips rolling against the air, against Hannibal’s belly, Will writhes delighted and watches as Hannibal relents in his ministrations to instead slip lower, lower. He grasps Will’s legs and slides his hands behind the boy’s knees, pushing them up to bare him, to spread him wide.
The weak noise of alarm snaps Hannibal’s attention to the flushed lips that unfurl to make it, and his length - aching now - stirs in kind.
“Courage,” he murmurs, kissing Will’s ankle and sliding lower, settling across his own stomach - allowing the pleasure of some small friction where he can press his hips into the bed - and lowering his head to Will’s thigh. Open-mouthed kisses, the swipe of his tongue, draw up the taste of sweat and semen there and lower he goes, until just in the join of Will’s leg - fine twists of dark hair against his skin, Will’s cock twitching alongside his cheek - he kisses, sucks, draws the boy’s silken skin between his teeth and leaves his mark there in return.
“Oh,” Will’s toes curl, the sensation unlike the one the night before, where he had felt Hannibal entirely between his legs, rubbing and rutting and stroking there. This is entirely more intimate, feeling his lips where only fingers have ventured, feeling Hannibal nuzzle against him where he had never imagined the man’s lips to go.
He makes a weak little trembling whimper of need and exhales slowly, allowing his body to slip to relaxation where he had tensed at the foreign sensation.
It feels good, just as everything Hannibal has so far done to him. Everything has felt exquisite, had left Will entirely breathless and needy for more, greedy for it, hungry for it. It occurs to him that this is merely the third thing Hannibal is showing him, that they have two more, just this morning, to explore, and shivers in anticipation of it.
“I will certainly remember three,” Will sighs, biting his lip and letting it go again, cheeks dark and smile evident.
He cradles the boy’s cock in his hand, breath hot against it as he touches it against his mouth, grazing his lips softly over the tender skin, stretched taut and flushed to a beautiful rosy shade.
“There are, of course, pleasures not yet known to you that you must find a woman to perform,” Hannibal teases, before he sinks into a kiss - biting softly - against the boy’s belly. “But more yet for us, I imagine - many more things.”
Dark eyes focused on Will’s parted lips and the beautiful gasping silence that pants past them, Hannibal tightens his fingers around the head of Will’s cock. Clear fluid rises to the tip of it, slicks down the side, and he’s surprised at having to remember not to debase himself by licking it clean again. An unnatural instinct, perhaps, but one that comes readily to the surface.
Humming, he kisses the boy’s belly instead, and with a careful touch - mindful not to tug too quickly - Hannibal slowly tugs back the skin that wraps warm around the scarlet head of his length, until it is laid bare and glistening and beautiful. He strokes this way, palm wrapping warmly around the tip, thumb pressing against the slit, and watches the boy above him nearly arch from the bed.
Will makes a high sound, loud, entirely surprised at the sheer power of the sensation that nearly overcomes him. His body shivers, feels hot, cold, trembling all at once. It’s electric, something Will has never anticipated he could feel, something he has certainly never felt when he had touched himself alone.
“Hannibal -”
He lies back panting, shaking, brings a hand to his mouth to bite against the knuckle to keep the needy sounds away as he shifts his hips up in languid, desperate stretches.
“I can’t… for long…” he curses, a breathless thing and bends his neck back, lips parted to gasp in air, eyes wide, dark with pupil as the sky outside starts to show the first hint of morning light.
“You can,” Hannibal assures him, pleasure wrought across his face as he dips his head again to kiss the boy’s soft thigh, tastes the saltiness of it left by them both the night before. He touches only his fingertips across the head of Will’s cock, swollen and shining red, until he feels Will’s legs start to shake beneath his mouth, and finally relents. The soft skin is slid back up and Will’s exhalation is almost a cry of relief as he drops back onto the bed, a sheen of sweat on his brow.
He drags his hand along it and turns his eyes down to Hannibal, his face nearly as scarlet as his cock had been
“Wait until you’ve felt a woman’s mouth upon it,” Hannibal murmurs against the boy’s tender thigh before holding the backs of his knees, and rolling him onto his belly.
Stretching catlike, Will splays his arms out before him and drags himself upward to lay against his shoulders, cheek against the bed, eyes turned back over his shoulder. His legs tightly pressed together, his body bare and trembling as he presents it to Hannibal, the older man cannot help but think of the many years left before them to play this game, and so many more.
“A curious thing,” Hannibal murmurs, to himself more than Will, as he frames Will’s backside - flushed pert and pink - with his hands. He has done this before, or something very nearly like it, on a particular prostitute who long held his interest before disappearing, as so many due, when she grew round with child. With curiosity, he sets his lips to kiss the join of Will’s thighs, humming pleased when the boy reaches back to slowly touch himself.
Long kisses, tongue stroking between his legs, teeth snaring the fragile skin only to pinch, to tease, before Hannibal moves up higher still. He knows no stigma about such things, has never heard of the practice, but imagines he would have were there disdain for it. With hands braced against the boy, he spreads him wide and takes in the sight of him.
Will shivers entirely, from his toes, up his thighs and down his back, unused to being so bared and so seen, cheeks darker still for the scrutiny as his lips press together and he makes a soft sound of pleasure at being so - albeit strangely - adored. Every inch of him, every gentle stroke of skin.
“What are you doing?” he asks softly, one hand braced on the bed as he turns to look over his shoulder, eyes blinking wide, smile small but gentle. “Have I earned my fifth pleasure of you between my thighs?” he asks with a nervous laugh.
To be honest, Hannibal isn’t entirely sure what he’s doing. It’s a different view than he’s seen before when considering such possibilities, although not entirely, he notes with amusement. And as it so often does with him, curiosity wins out in the end.
“Not yet,” he murmurs.
With his thumbs he strokes from the underside of Will’s ass, up over the swell of it, to press just gingerly and spread him a little wider still, fingers pressed against the tender skin outside his opening. Will sees him lean, feels warmth breath against his exposed body, and Hannibal strokes his tongue broadly across it, once.
Will jerks, shifting forward in surprise, eyes wide and lips parted in silent shock. It’s the most unusual feeling, stranger yet than Hannibal between his thighs, than Hannibal’s hands against him in such a way as to bring him entirely to weakness. It should be wrong, Will thinks, should be revolting and not done, and yet he finds himself gingerly shifting back against Hannibal’s hands for another, squirming with a pleasant hum when he does it again.
Will can see his hands, how tightly they grip the sheets beneath him, in the morning light that slowly creeps to the sky, slowly fills the room with cool light and the promise of a clear day.
Another broad stroke of Hannibal’s tongue and Will laughs, shaking and delighted, breathing another gentle curse against the pillows before he bites down against them, arches his back harder, and, red-faced and grinning like a fool, presents himself for more.
With only one hand to keep him bared, Hannibal skims the other up over, to rub the small of his back, to push against it and bow the boy even more. He does not dip his tongue inside, would not demean the boy in such a way as that, but with a rumble wraps his lips in a sucking kiss against the sensitive skin. He holds it, savors it, until Will has gasped himself so breathless that Hannibal is concerned that perhaps he has fainted, before finally relenting to lap firmly with his tongue again.
“Five,” he finally murmurs, his own heart allowed to race as he fills his lungs with air. A grin, unseen, as Will swears again beneath him in relief and starts to turn, before Hannibal snares him around the thighs and buries his face again to hear the boy moan.
And he does, loudly and in a voice that is no longer his own, so much higher and tighter than he usually sounds, helpless to this pleasure that is being wrought on him. Will’s toes curl, he ducks his head, turns it, arches harder and tries to catch his breath, all the while his hips move back against the man’s mouth, shameless in his need for more, in his demand and enjoyment of it.
He wonders how Hannibal knows of this, what he has done, if he has felt this, if he will expect Will to do the same to him -
His hand squeezes harder between his legs, cock already leaking copiously from the over stimulation, the tautness of his muscles, the burning in his lungs. Will has never felt so alive, he wants this never to end.
“More… please…” he gasps, bending one way, then another, aching to spread his legs wider, to feel… “More… more… Hannibal! Hannibal - oh…”
A particular delight sings through Hannibal as he hears his name called and begged and sobbed so sweetly, and from this boy who he knows to be his - more so in this moment, in particular, he muses. He drives his tongue harder against Will’s opening - twitching sweetly, impossibly warm - as he seeks to make him cry out more, despite knowing the slaves will be waking soon, and surely will hear it.
There is a particular delight in that, as well, he supposes.
Hannibal surges forward, lips curling against his skin - sucking, licking, tasting, teasing - and as Will’s voice pitches higher, more unsteady, Hannibal reaches around his waist to shove the boy’s shaking hand aside and take his length into his own grip instead.
“For me,” he murmurs grinning against Will’s skin, his breath cool where his spit glistens. “Finish for me, peacemaker.”
Will feels as though his entire vision goes white, as though he has looked at the sun too long then looked away, as his lips part on another shuddering moan of pleasure and he feels himself cum, quick and hot, in the hand that strokes him over and over, curls over the head until Will is shaking and begging for him to stop because he’s so sensitive he can feel every brush of air against his skin.
“Please,” he begs, adjusting to spread his knees just a little, rocking his hips just enough to be enticing, tempting, entirely wanton.
“You, I want you. Hannibal, Gods…”
Will laughs, curses, laughs again and knows he is trembling entirely, head to toe, and that he wants nothing more than to bring Hannibal to his pleasure between his legs.
He does, again and again that day, when despite Hannibal’s insistence that lessons not be missed, he seems entirely content to let the day slip away without leaving the other’s side, with food and wine brought to them where they lay entwined.
Hannibal does, however, make Will recite for him, from astride his hips.
And the next day they are up, finally, with Hannibal sending a say nothing look to his slave who regards him with obvious amusement beneath the rueful arch of her brow. Days pass, weeks, a peaceful rhythm between them of fond flirtations and lessons learned, hard days of dust and clattering weapons punctuated by whoops of victory and tears of frustration, and long nights of rumination over philosophy and language and discovering precisely the right way that the other likes to be touched.
There is no news from Athens. There is no news from Persia. And there are times in which it seems as though there are no others in the world but themselves.