Archive of Our Own

It's becoming less unusual for Will Graham to show up unannounced on one of Hannibal's two respective doorsteps. What is uncommon is that he arrives with his gun wavering in the air at nothing, holding his own mind hostage.

It's the fever bright eyes and shaking that make Hannibal wonder if he's waited too long, or if he is on the verge of waiting just long enough. It's tricky to know with the mind, how and where the scarring will affect and how much the mind will adapt around it. William moves past him, gun up and issuing orders, and his gaze slides over Hannibal's face as he moves past and Hannibal holds the door. William's eyes are barely open, dark beneath and shiny with fever. The heat -the smell radiates off him in roiling waves like the pulses of blood through his veins.

Hannibal pushes the door closed and watches William negotiate a non-existent hostage into a chair. While his mind works, he runs his tongue over his teeth and sucks his tongue against the faint curvature of their surface and tries to decide how best to handle this manifestation of Will's desire to be a hero while still seeing the results of his first heroic act everywhere. How much of that is the encephalitis - and the smell of it has grown sickly spicy settling on the back of his tongue as much as the front of it - and how much is just Will Graham's unique profiling techniques?

"William," he tries, keeps his hands settled in his pockets so that he does not become a target. He moves obliquely to the field of vision that Will must have with his gaze fixated at seated level of one of the chairs. His intent is always to insinuate himself gently, like the fine blade of a scalpel into the skin beneath a sternum.

It was the heat. The heat when he’d gotten into the car, the heat of the man in front of him, too close to be comfortable or normal or anything but rank. He has him at arm’s length, the gun tilting but steady as Will steps into the familiar place and licks his lips to get some feeling back into them.

“He’s…”his voice doesn’t sound like his own, not as confident as it had in the car. Not as confident as he had felt he sounded in the car. Will blinks and draws a breath, tilting his chin up in another semblance of confidence, another show.

“Who do you see?” he asks, and his tone has slipped again, to something quiet, something he hasn’t heard himself use for a while. And he needs to know. He needs to have Hannibal confirm for him that Garrett Jacob Hobbs is right there, finally right there so Will can get rid of him.

Hannibal can see how William's hair is slicked against his forehead with snow or sweat, and he could bet the man had steamed outside in the cold. He had moved burning through the world and he could have taken his hostage anywhere, but he'd chosen here. Not Hannibal's office, another relatively safe space, but here at his home. There was logic ticking away in there somewhere still, running like the hands on a clock going backwards, and Hannibal thought briefly about the spatially warped clock face.

I feel like I have been gradually becoming someone different for a while. The voice that claws from William's throat is a shaking thing that requires two starts to pick itself off the ground. Hannibal turns his attention as indicated.

He arches his eyebrows, keeps his expression neutral. Regardless of what he saw, what matters is what William did. Whether he sees Dr. Gideon, or Abigail's father, or whatever monster William dreams into the space. "I see no one."

But he sees William with a shaking gun looking hard into the space that must be inside his mind and brought out before his own eyes into the light. And the light under which he had chosen to examine it was the artificial sun sliding ambient in Hannibal's own dining room.

Will shakes his head and bares his teeth in a frustrated snarl.

“No!” and it’s less a snarl now and more a whine, a pathetic weak attempt to get something to make sense. “He’s right there.”

And he is. Sitting there in the chair Will had forced him into, giving him that look that had haunted Will for weeks, months now. And he wants to repeat it, the make the words impress themselves against his lips, force themselves into the air around them. He’s right there he’s right there he’s right there.

But when he turns back, Hannibal’s expression hasn’t changed, he isn’t even looking where Will needs him to, he’s just looking at Will, eyes calm and cool and professional like they hadn’t been since their third or fourth appointment, since they’d changed to softer, understanding, warm eyes when he’d asked him if Will was seeing him as a therapist or if they were just having conversations.

Yes, he’d said.

He’s right there.

But the words that meet Will’s ears aren’t the ones he needs, they aren’t confirmation or understanding, they’re cold, bland, delivered so indifferently that Will can’t help but yell, can’t help but feel his heart pulse faster, the heat in his blood turning cold for a moment before flushing back hotter than before and he wonders how he’s still standing.

He’s lying. He has to be. Will can see the man in that chair, wavering as he blinks to clear his vision properly, tilting his head and smirking but there, right in front of them if he’d just look! But he doesn’t, and Will’s accusation falls short of any real effect and his next words are broken.

“Please don’t lie to me!”

"Who do you see, William?" Hannibal asks, watching Will shake his head out like one of his dogs with water sliding unwelcome into his ears. A bead of sweat creeps down his neck toward his open collar, and Hannibal keeps his house cool to almost a fault. He flicks his eyes in the direction waveringly indicated by William's gun, but to look too long would play into the worry.

Perhaps he had gone too long on this venture, and the fine china shell wasn't just cracking - it was crumbling. Hannibal keeps his hands in his pockets and wonders if he would crumble like this, if his brain was as hot as Will Graham's right now. If his processes would take him back to what he most regretted. When William's bright, dark eyes turn from the chair onto him again, begging him for vindication, Hannibal allows his expression to soften.

"I believe you may be having a seizure," he explains, drawing his hand from his pocket and extending it out at first carefully, with the back of his fingers pointed toward Will, like one might offer a hand to a dog that could bite at any second.

Will hears the words but they take a long time to register, to get through the rushing water in his head that’s making it harder to breathe the more he tries to. And then the hand is offered, a trusting motion and a slow one, and words aren’t fully words when Will speaks them anymore.

What’s happening to me.

He isn’t sure if he moves at all beyond bringing a hand to his face to keep himself together, to stop himself from flying apart into molecules too hot to stick all over Hannibal’s dining room, but the hand that touches him burns with how cold it is. And then the sob that shakes Will’s entire frame is pulled from his throat by force and he hasn’t allowed himself to let go this far for years. Even alone, dreaming of the deaths and the killings and drowning again and again he hasn’t let himself break and the terror loose.

He is unstable. He is broken and he is so far in, so deep, he can’t be sure he isn’t just breathing in the dark that is choking him. His lungs burn. His eyes burn. And the hand turns to splay against him more, still unbelievably cold – how had it not burned? Taken in the heat? Become just like him? – and draws him in, and he goes.

Now that he feels the heat, Hannibal can't stop touching. He checks from the cheek to the forehead with his free hand, as if his first assessment - clearly over a hundred, the man bleeds all the cool from his skin in seconds - could possibly have been wrong. The skin is clammy, the eyes vague and searching.

"It's 7:27 PM, you're in Baltimore Maryland, and your name is Will Graham," he reminds, repeating the man's mantra for him. He can see the face of his watch on his own wrist as he presses his hand over Will's heat, and then holds Will's face in both of his hands, watching his eyes. He can almost... see the way he was slipping. Ratcheting, each slide of the toothed gear and catch of the prawl where he tried to stop himself from going any further.

There is no chance of moving backward, however. William is still holding the gun in tightening fingers. Hannibal reaches down, to see if he can get William to surrender his hold on it.

He wants to tell him he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care what his name is or what the time is because clearly it’s done nothing for him so far. Nothing at all beyond remind him day in and day out that there is something wrong with him, that his grip on reality is as tenuous as his grip on the gun before his reflexes kick in. he doesn’t want the reminder and he can’t open his mouth to tell him.

So he watches. Just lets his eyes see the man in front of him who is holding him together, two hands holding him until the sinews can rethread and the muscles regrow and Will can figure out how to breathe or speak or think again without screaming. And the hands are still impossibly cold, and the air dragged between his lips the opposite; going in dry but filling his lungs like water, heavy and pressing and very much there.

And then he blinks.

And like returning to himself after ‘looking’, after letting himself become the monster Jack wants to stop, Will is breathing again, and shaking, the straight unyielding back of one of the dining chairs pressing him into remaining upright.

“My name is Will Graham.”

And the words aren’t coming from his lips, they’re coming from Hannibal’s. And Will finds himself parting his own to repeat the words robotically, to hear the way his own voice sounds tired and cracking in his ears.

This is not the way Will Graham usually loses time, Hannibal knows. This has gone on more or less long enough, when William drifts away with his eyes rolled back in his head and Hannibal betrays nothing more than his clinical interest, but he can see the exact moment when consciousness leaves and even then the man is locked up so tight he'd stay standing if Hannibal left him.

There is no reason, however, to do so. His mind considers the study of this particular autoimmune issue - the way the mind turned on itself. As he set the gun aside and folded William at the knees into a chair, he recalled things automatically. Like a sort of mantra. Ninetey percent of presented cases were women. Slightly less than sixty percent had a cancerous cause - a tumor, usually ovarian. A hundred percent with psychiatric effects. Seizures, unresponsiveness, instability... In twenty five percent, death or permanent deficit.

And Will Graham, without an ovarian tumor to be found, unless Hannibal had missed something truly profound in his study of the man, had presented with it anyway. His mind was attacking itself, seeking to swell out of his skull. Still his chances for recovery were... better than his chances not to. Such as William would ever recover, anyway.

"Hands up - higher please." William is still barely processing information, but lifting his arms above his head does not cause his blood pressure to bottom out or send him seizing again. Though he was barely - by the way his head slid and his attention refused to fix on anything - aware. Hannibal has a rare opportunity. "You may not feel much like doing it, but I need you to smile."

It takes the command a long moment to process, but there isn't any bilateral lagging when the expression answers his call - forced and failing though it was, and Hannibal's smile answers in spite of himself. Not a stroke. He still wasn't wrong. "We should try to lower your temperature, William. I'm concerned enough to think you should go to the hospital."

The words register. The pulsing humming that had been present before, when he'd heard Hannibal's words as though through water, was gone. Will does as he's told, aware that the time between the command and his responses is enough to test patience, yet Hannibal seems unaware of it. The smile he returns is - in Will's eyes - much more genuine than the one he asked of him.

He takes a breath, and it doesn't drown him.

"I'm fine," he tells the blatant lie with no heat behind it, well aware that Hannibal can see just what he is, "The fever... passes on its own I..."

Will frowns, trying to remember why he'd felt such a painful urgency when he'd come here, why he'd driven - had he driven? - delirious at some ungodly hour to Hannibal's house, but he can't. Beyond feeling a tugging urgency he could recall nothing more. The scan had come back clean. This was all in his mind. But day in and day out it's getting harder and harder to force himself to believe that what's happening to him is in the mind only when his body responds so violently.

It was fascinating. Everything about him was, but that he seemed most determined to be alright when he was the least capable, that fascinated Hannibal the most. No matter how Hannibal warned him that he was going to burn out brightly and quickly like a Zinc flame, and he certainly knew how hard he was going, he could not stop himself. Not when Jack Crawford kept picking him up from his rest and setting him on trails.

Not even this had stopped him. Perhaps it has gone on long enough. Whatever Hannibal was trying to prove - and even he's not totally sure what it was, but William would have shot Garret Jacob Hobbs again this evening. That makes him killer enough.

"You're fine," Hannibal agrees, repeating him in mirror to what he'd asked of Will just minutes ago. "For now. But you may seize again - your temperature is quite high."

He doubts William will allow his actual temperature to be taken, but Hannibal knows it is well past a hundred. He wonders how much of this fever dream William will retain, with the swelling pressing his brain so hard into his skull. A hospital would be better, to Hannibal's clinical mind, but it wouldn't allow such contact or for Hannibal to watch every change in William's eyes. He settles his hands on William's lap, crouched in front of him and looking up. A bath perhaps.

"Can you stand a short trip?"

Will's brows are still drawn but he nods, first slowly then a little faster, closing his eyes and rubbing them. Yes, he can stand a short trip. It had passed, hadn't it? And he doubts he'd work himself into another seizure so quickly, especially not when Hannibal was right there to pull him back from the edge. The man who is his gauge, his paddle, his voice of reason when Will is too far into another mind to know what's right anymore.

When he opens his eyes he offers a more genuine smile, though exhausted.

When he stands, he wavers, just once before he puts his feet more firmly against the floor and balances. But it's enough to knock him for a moment more, to make him think that perhaps he really does need a hospital, maybe he should let Hannibal take him and not bring up a word of argument. Will isn't stupid and he knows the body's limits. He knows he's far enough for it to be dangerous but... he can always go a little more. Until the case is over. Until Gideon is behind bars again and Alana isn't in danger from him.

Then he can rest.

But then there will be another case. There's always another case. And another.

Will gives Hannibal and look from under his hair, his head still ducked as though lifting it would hurt him, brows furrowed as though bothered by the light.

"I'm sorry I don't... what time is it?" he vaguely remembers Hannibal's calm voice telling him, not long ago, what time it was, where he was and who he was, but the first completely escapes him. He lets the man lead him where he wants and waits for his answer.

Rising to his feet, Hannibal supposes, in the ordered, practical part of his mind that has given him such a good ability to survive, that at the very least the bath will improve Will's smell, if not his temperature. He lays a supportive hand in the small of William's back, palm flat and behaving, so that he can guide without smothering, without having to make the man feel dependent.

Not that he wasn't already beautifully dependent. Hannibal felt a certain amount of pride that William would turn up here instead of perhaps at Dr. Bloom's house - then again, he'd been holding a hostage, in his mind. "Seven fifty six," Hannibal answers, after a quick glance at his watch, because at the moment specifics matter.

"Why do you think you saw Garret Jacob Hobbs?" Hannibal asks, as he leans Will against the vanity counter. The bathroom is immaculate, steel and heavy dark slate on the walls, with separately fixtured tub and shower. He settled on the edge of the tub and leaned over to draw the water - not cold, but he matches it first to his own body temperature and then up a few degrees. Likely it will feel cold to William at first anyway.

His mind categorizes various potential aides to help rehydrate him and keep the temperature down, but he keeps his eyes open and on Will for signs that the man might begin seizing again.

Will rests where he’s put and sighs, taking off his glasses to rub the hot lids with his wrist. After a moment he shrugs.

“I don’t know.”

He logically knows the man is dead, he killed him, he remembered watching him die as he tried to press Abigail’s blood back into her convulsing body. He knows that the manifestation of him is his mind’s way of reminding him of his humanity, of reminding him that he has taken a human life, as deserved as the killing was.

“I… was at a crime scene. Gideon he,” Will shrugs, setting his glasses behind himself on the counter, letting his hand relax to cover his eyes gently, keeping out the light, “He left a message. For Jack. And I saw something and…”

The sigh is frustrated, an almost defeated, tired sound. What had he seen? Had he dissociated again? He doesn’t remember the drive beyond the streetlights passing the window over and over and over… the pattern had been regular, constant, like a heartbeat, but Will can’t remember for the life of him getting behind the wheel. He rocks a little from exhaustion and drops his hand, looking to Hannibal for answers.

"And then you came here," Hannibal wonders, his tone turning up in curiosity. A message from Gideon - or rather, a message from the Ripper. Strange that William missed his signature - but perhaps it had crept into his subconscious. Possibly Will is closer than he thought. With some humor, Hannibal allows the he was in the same room. His instincts are still good, if maybe for the wrong reason.

He rose away from the side of the tub, and moved across the space to claim down two thick towels. He sets them nearby in readiness, and then steps back. He supposes he could take a few liberties, but he has little desire to handle Will's clothing - saturated as it is with the man's sweat. He has already extended more than his usual courtesy for the man, and he felt somewhat begrimed already, very aware of the scent clinging to his hands. "The bath will feel cold, but it is only because you're so warm. Would you like a hand getting into it?"

Will shakes his head, shrugging the jacket off his shoulders before bringing his hands up to fiddle with the buttons. He’s perhaps halfway through when his mind catches up with his hands, and he stops, blinks, and looks up.

Hannibal is watching him with the same calm, clinical expression which he’d levelled on Will the first time they’d met in Jack’s office. Right then, Will is a subject to him, something to observe, to carefully study before approaching and suggesting a diagnosis, and Will is almost surprised by how hard it hits him. He’s gotten used to the banter, the casual way in which they both approach the most gruesome of things and keep themselves distant.

Hannibal keeps distant. Will has slowly let himself sink.

It’s easier. It’s so much easier to just let go, to let the residual cold fingers of his suspension into another mind and another time stick and drag him back under. Just as it would be easier to let Hannibal dictate his movements now, dictate where to go and when, what to do and how. There isn’t a need for a why. Not when they’re in so far that Will isn’t sure if he’s of his mind or someone else’s.

For a long moment neither move. And then Will allows his fingers to continue, slower, ducking his head to watch the progress.

“No, thank you.”

Hannibal smiles under the assault of Will's gaze, in spite of himself there is something relieving to see him returning belatedly to his senses. He is aware that it's him grounding William down into himself again, and he wonders how long until he remembers he had walked off of a crime scene with a killer on the loose.

He trails his fingers through the water one last time, and then shakes them dry before he steps away from the tub to let William have access to it, moving for the door. He hesitates, however, as they would pass shoulder to shoulder, and stops, feels William stop as well while they stand close and face different ways. Hannibal lifts his hand again, and this time he lays it alongside William's neck to feel his heat and pulse.

He feels the man's heartbeat causing jumps in his blood and the faint trembling that lingers from the seizure rendering his muscles rigid. He'll be sore in the morning, sore all over and in places he wasn't aware he could be, Hannibal suspects. He works his own throat in a swallow and supposes if he were to make a move now to rid himself of Will Graham, he could find an easy arrangement to dispose of him and the false Ripper both. Occasionally, he still entertains such thoughts, as if he had not grown a mirrored reliance on the man as he'd worked hard to create a reliance in Will.

Besides, one did not butcher a sick animal. Hannibal allows himself a brief moment where he considers if he had tainted William purposefully to keep him safe from himself.

"You're still sweating, but it will be better if you keep hydrated," he says, as if that's explanation enough for all of this. "Can I trust you alone while I make you some tea?"

Will stays still as he feels Hannibal’s fingers against his throat, a gesture both possessive and protective, one that could turn to a caress as easily as it could turn to a choke hold. And Will finds himself conflicted as to which of the two he would prefer. Catches himself on the verge of closing his eyes, letting his mind sink into meditation, let the pendulum swing back…

…and down…

In the space of a breath, as one scenario overtakes the other and he sees himself pushed back and bent until his spine bruises against the cold marble from the struggle, until his body is too weak to fight back and he stills, stills long enough to be dragged forward, pushed under the water that stabs cold blades against his skin until they too fade to nothing just like the rest of him.

…and back…

As the other brings Hannibal’s hand higher, thumb pressing his lips out of shape gently as the rest of his fingers push his face to turn, and he turns, eyes still hooded and hot, entire body feverish and responsive, vulnerable, sensitive, allowing the man complete control and access to move him as he wanted and do with him as he chose; feeling his chin tilt up, eyes closing like those on an old cheap doll with weighted lids, bottom lip pulled down until his teeth are forced to part and…

He refrains. Blinking slowly but not dwelling, swallowing just enough for Hannibal to feel the way he’s holding him before turning his head on his own, just enough to acknowledge the other man.

“I’ll keep my head above water,” he promises.

He feels the pulse speeding and then slowing, and then racing, and it's like an RPM indicator for William's mind, which traps Hannibal fascinated and unmoving as William's pendulum swung and revealed a fork in the road. His adam's apple moves against Hannibal's palm, his eyes blinking away the look that suggested he'd gone away, and he comes back.

Hannibal's first answer is a weighty exhale, just air, and on the tail of it, a precise upward turn at one corner of his mouth. "Will you?"

They will find out. One of these days. Hannibal finally releases him and lets him attend himself into the bath as he moves to the kitchen to steep angelica root for Will's fever. He keeps a cautious ear attuned for sounds of the man falling or attempting to drown himself in the drawn water.

No sounds of immediate distress bring Hannibal back early, and he returns without knocking - perhaps because both of his hands are occupied, one with a mug and the other with a clear glass iced with frozen blackberries and deeply pink.

"Angelica root for the fever," he offers the mug first, but slightly behind his voice as if Will might have drifted in his absence. "I thought perhaps an alternative... you'll forgive that I've noticed how much aspirin you take."

Will takes his time undressing fully, setting his clothes aside with hands that are still shaking a little more than they should be. The water is, as Hannibal warned, cold, but Will isn’t prepared for just how cold. He keeps his teeth gritted, eyes closed as he sinks under the tepid water enough to wet just the tips of his hair at the back of his neck, resting his head back as his body is wracked by shivers.

He’s fairly sure he makes a quiet whining sound when he hears the door open, eyes still closed and teeth pressed together too harshly to voice that he doesn’t expect or want company. And then Hannibal is there, standing over him offering something Will hasn’t heard of for something he’s fairly sure he doesn’t have. The water’s just cold. Hannibal’s hands are just cold. He’s fine.

It’s fuck o’clock, in winter, I’m in Baltimore, Maryland, my name is Will Graham and I am fine.

He takes the mug and sits up enough to drink whatever’s in it, trusting Hannibal to not poison him, to hand him something that will heal, not hurt. To be his grounding.

At the comment about aspirin, Will chokes, the scent of whatever brew he’s drinking overpowering his senses for the moment.

“Are you my psychiatrist,” he manages finally, “Or are we just having a conversation?”

When he opens his eyes they’re still out of focus, still bright and wide, but amused.

If Hannibal pauses after turning over the mug to William to nudge the man's clothing aside with a foot, vaguely in the direction of the laundry hamper, it can likely be forgiven.

"I said my home was always open for friends," he began, moving the soiled clothing in a lump but he tallies it briefly, and he can't help but notice exactly how many different colored hairs cling into the lining of the man's coat. "I rarely invite even those into my private bath."

But he has Will in that space between amiability and lucidity that leaves him able to smile with his eyes, and he has the impression that the man has gone pliant and boneless beneath the water, though he's taken the drink.

Hannibal settles as the other chokes, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to sit next to a bathing man. He doesn't feel any need to explain - William will likely substitute his own explanation, if he even requires one. "So I would say a conversation - unless you think you'd get more benefit from a session this way?"

“Do you just as rarely stay with them?” Will murmurs back, enjoying the contents of the mug more than he assumes he should, considering its purpose. He draws his knee up enough to retain even a little of his dignity, noting that Hannibal’s presence is very much felt but not necessarily intrusive, which in itself is worrying.

The water is still cold against his skin and the shivering increases only because his body can’t adjust, can’t find an anchor, and his head throbs in a constant pressure to the beat of his heart.

He passes the mug back.

“I doubt I would benefit from a session that I am unlikely to remember,” he says, “And what can we possibly have a conversation about?”

It isn’t meant to come out so biting, but the pain in his head is getting dangerously close to what he’s grown used to waking up to and the water just won’t get warmer. Will rests his head back against the bath and swallows.

Hannibal finds humor enough in that for his mouth to incline upward at the corners again. He keeps his gaze politely where it belongs at least, though he does notice that Will shifts himself for modesty. Hannibal would admit a certain intense curiosity as to the physiology of Will Graham - but he was more interested in the internal than the external by far.

He makes a point of deliberately rolling his sleeves up to his elbows, so that Will can see the motion and what it implies.

Hannibal retrieves the mug and passes the glass. "Perhaps that means you would let go of things you normally wouldn't, with the threat of memories looming over your head." He said, and waited for both of William's hands to be occupied with the glass before he reaches down to take his pulse at the femoral artery, as if it were the next logical step. If he's watching sidelong with only the faintest slip of his bedside manner for genuine curiosity well... perhaps because he is genuinely curious to see the reaction.

Wills accepts the glass and drops it nearly as fast when Hannibal’s hands – colder than the water – press against a pulse point and hold there. And he goes still, completely shocked into paralysis for a moment before he allows a breath to escape him in a slow not quite even exhale.

The entire evening rings strange in Will’s ears but he hasn’t stopped any of it, trusting, allowing, and in some way very curious to see what happened. He’d had doctors before, before the FBI, before he’d started submerging himself to completely into the mind of someone else, that had told him that before healing the mind it was absolutely vital to rule out any inconsistencies and issues with the body. To heal the body then work on the mind.

Will accepted that as logical, and doesn’t jerk away from the touch that truly leaves him feeling far more vulnerable than he’d felt when he’d broken down, when he’d let all of his inhibitions slip out the window so far as to forget what actually happened. He wonders if he should do the same here, now, take the backhanded advice to allow himself a freedom of forgetting.

He doesn’t shift into the touch but makes a point to not shift away from it.

With his fingers so intimately insinuated against the inside point of Will's hip, Hannibal feels the man's heart skip a beat. He arches his eyebrows and brings his gaze up in a slow motion that suggests he hadn't missed one second of the man's reaction. But at least he hadn't spilled the glass, as ungraceful as his sudden skyward jump had been.

But he resettles against Hannibal's touch, no further into it than he had been before his launch, and no further back. Hannibal flicks his gaze considerately toward the drink in the man's hands, and then Will himself. "Your pulse is normal," he states, belated of his intrusion, to see if William closes up in a defensive curl.

He wonders if he even has to try to explain for his next move, and he opts not to, instead reaching up carefully with his free hand to turn Will's chin toward him. Perhaps his intent is - in the first moments of the gesture, to simply gauge him by his eyes again - but he has already made impolite with his hands - in fact the other is still pressing firmly down into the crease of thigh against the artery.

So this time, Will need not imagine the extension of motion, Hannibal completes it to bring their mouths together. It feels more dangerous than it is, and he is ever so conscious of his teeth and their exact shapes as his lips pull back over them, and how he can still taste the remains of the angelica tea on William's mouth.

Will highly doubts the truth of Hannibal’s words but doesn’t voice his disagreement. He’s sure his pulse is not normal, not with someone pressing against his hip the way Hannibal is, not with the way he slowly, deliberately turns Will to face him and that’s it. He’s bargaining on forgetting, he’s hoping for it. He almost wishes he’d not joked about this not being a session so he could cite doctor patient confidentiality if he remembers.

If he remembers.

He feels Hannibal almost bare his teeth against him and parts his own, lips taking a moment to follow as he lets him in, eyes closed, head and heart pounding in a synchronized frenzy he assumes Hannibal had been waiting for. He’s still holding the cold glass in his hands, unsure of what to do with it or what exactly it is, and he hasn’t stopped shaking, not with more cold against his leg, his lips…

He pulls back first, or more accurately, he brings his lips together and curls them gently into his mouth before letting out another breath, and this one isn’t as controlled as the other had been.

Hannibal will hardly be running off to tell everyone he encounters, at least. Will Graham surely by now knows the man's ability to keep a secret - if not, perhaps, to exactly what extent. For the moment, he does not spare a consideration to how close he is letting Will into his space. It's dangerous for the both of them, but he wonders how long, how much trust before William comes to Hannibal when he turns that unique talent of his over onto Hannibal himself.

Instead he focuses on how he feels the pulse speed and pound beneath his fingers, a direct response to everything Hannibal does. He can feel his own slow and steady as a counterpoint but he is consciously aware of it in a way he often isn't.

William had been responding, until that moment when he'd needed to gather breath, and that's when Hannibal moves again, his fingers off of William's pulse and instead cups his palm over him at the join of his legs, and there is nothing truly clinical about that, nor the way his eyes have gone dark and half closed but still watching with keen attention, and from so close.

The shift isn’t sudden but Will’s response is. Moving instinctively to get away but doing nothing more than inadvertently opening his body up more: feet pushing against the slippery walls of the bath but not pressing his knees together, head back in an attempt to avoid more distracting contact there but baring his throat in the process.

But he doesn’t protest. Can’t bring his mouth to voice anything but a quiet sound at the fact that Hannibal is still touching him, still as calm about it as though it were a normal thing to do… and Will is responding as though it is. Surprised by how forward, but he doesn’t do nearly enough in his power to get the man to stop.

He’s still shaking, but less, and now certainly for more reasons than fever. And he feels so pathetic being as weak as he is, as unaware as he should be, as he usually is, as he forces himself to be on a job, in front of Jack, in front of the people he questions and the team… he shifts back enough to set the glass over the edge of the bath so he doesn’t have to hold it anymore, before turning his head back and meeting Hannibal’s eyes in a silent plea for explanation, not unlike the look he’d given him when the man had him recount the events of the evening.

Hannibal lifts his hand as one might away from a leery animal, and presses it instead palm-flat on William's stomach to get him to go still again. The communication is clear - I won't if you don't want me to, but I would like you to want to.

But he's aware enough to demand explanation with his look and Hannibal tilts his head just so, almost but not quite into making eye contact. There's no excuse to hide behind, and they both know it, but Hannibal smoothes the situation anyway, as he has any number of others that have led them here.

"Just making sure you were with me," he says, low in his chest, and then, "Say 'Stop'."

If that's what he wanted, he could and would, and Hannibal would withdraw and leave him to his bath and his drink without further intrusion.

Will keeps watching him, registering the hand against his stomach, placating but just as possessive as the hand against his neck had been, noting how quiet and low Hannibal’s tone had gone, how the choice was given in such a way as to not make it a choice, but a command. And some stupid, childish part of Will’s mind wants to rebel, to go against the command, against the request, and resist.

And in resisting he would open a floodgate of something he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to control again.

He sets his jaw, swallows, allows the feeling to wash over him; of the cool water, the colder hands, where the hands were now and where they had been, where they could be… where Will finds he wants them to be, if only for the stupid, damning human curiosity he can’t escape even in the state he’s in.

He parts his lips to breathe, to duck his eyes to the water that shifts in irregular tides against the side as he breathes and Hannibal touches him.

“No,” he says finally.

With that permission - or rather the lack of the revocation of it, Hannibal's motion resumes - but less direct. He strokes his palm over Will's stomach slowly, feeling the heat even with the lower temperature water trying to leach it out like a toxin from his body. The skin is smooth and vulnerable, elastic and healthy under his touch.

His other hand maps the bared column of pale neck, rough and unshaved and growing smoother as he traced down the sternocleidomastoid down to the smooth skin of his collarbone. Perhaps later, Will might consider this to be taking advantage of him while he had no capacity to object - the thought amuses Hannibal in some deep corner of his mind that is aware that he has already abused William's distinct lack in that area before.

His fingers trail lower again, down through the coarse dark curls over his pelvis and then back to where he'd first caught Will's attention. The edge of the tub is digging into Hannibal's sternum, and the posture is odd, difficult. Challenging, the way Will Graham was. The water is lapping against his rolled sleeve and soaking a damp spot up his arm, but Hannibal is more aware of the way Will's eyes are moving, his throat working, the way he's trembling now and it's not all from cold.

"Are you really so nervous?" he asks, unsure if he wants to hear William's biting tone while he curls his fingers and coaxes the tired body to respond with clear patience, or if he wants him to be unable to respond at all.

It’s the way he’s touching him, the way he’s taking his time to map out his skin with clever fingers, make Will twitch just from knowing the way he’s being touched is not the way he should be touched, not here, and certainly not by the person touching him. He thinks back to how Alana had responded, told him he was unstable, that he needed to get himself well before she returned, before she allowed something to happen.

And here he is, unstable, half certain he’s delirious by now with fever, very much far from consenting properly, and letting…

And he doesn’t want to answer, doesn’t want his words to waver in a denial – he is nervous, beyond the fact that this is happening with Hannibal, he has no idea what’s real anymore, and the only grounding he has is touching him in a way that sends his world tilting – doesn’t want to inject bite and sarcasm into something when it feels so good and is so welcome a break.

Instead he sighs and rolls his head against the edge of the bath before letting his eyes slip closed and his breathing to come louder.

Hannibal leans forward and sinks his mouth down against the exposed neck. His mouth at least is warm, and this leaves him in proximity enough to hear Will if he even tries to whisper a lie in defiance to the way his body is responding - his cock is growing heavy and thick in Hannibal's grip. He can feel the pulse under his open mouth, the way he swallows against Hannibal's tongue and his mouth gives one reflexive twitch before the urge to bite down hard subsides.

He finds his focus in Will's lack of it, in the messy way his breathing is tousling Hannibal's hair and how Will hasn't lifted his own hands to help. He's disconnected, floating, and trusting Hannibal to move undirected and in his interest. That's slightly intoxicating - everything about Will is, leading Hannibal dangerously close to his variety of trust.

In a way, Hannibal isn't actually sure why he's here - specifically, here up to his elbow in bath water, touching Will Graham to feel him respond mechanically in the same way he seemed to be drawn along whenever Hannibal spoke. How he had stormed into Hannibal's office with a demand on his accessory to Abigail's crime and his only complaint was that it had ever come to light. He had no demands now, with Hannibal's arm working, and his mouth tasting the sweet fever-heat that Will exuded, touched now with arousal, more sweat - more heat.

And he's abandoned himself into this utterly. Hannibal feels it safe enough, for the moment, to do the same. William shares enough of his secrets already, and if he hasn't sunk his teeth until he tastes blood yet - it's safe.

When he thrashes again, it’s in wanting to adjust his position for comfort, not due to surprise or displeasure. There is certainly pleasure. It’s slow and deliberate and completely undeniable and Will keeps his eyes closed even as his lips part farther, the sound of water against the side of the bath loud in the otherwise quiet room filled only with his breathing. Hannibal doesn’t seem to need to breathe at all.

And then one hand comes up to cover Hannibal’s, a loose grip but an obvious one, his palm against sharp knuckles, shifting in tandem with him and allowing some of his breaths to bring sounds with them, quiet, soft things that Will can’t bring enough concentration to control anymore. And why should he? He’s already gone far enough for this to be completely destructing; for his job, his life, his mental stability – if that’s somehow still not an oxymoron.

The teeth are not a surprise but the pressure is. It stings and forces Will’s pulse to gravitate to just that spot, just that meeting of teeth and skin, hammering and changing speed and dulling all other sounds for the moment, and his other hand comes up to grip Hannibal’s hair, dampening it with the water, tugging it enough to feel and then a step beyond, to the edge of comfort as Hannibal’s teeth against his skin were.

And he doesn’t even notice his lips drawn back in a smile until a sound that leaves his throat is a close approximation of a laugh. And he wonders if the expression is just as forced and just as manic as it had been when Hannibal had asked for it after Will’s ‘episode’ or another animal entirely.

Drawing back as fingers settled in his hair, but only slightly, only so Will can feel his breath over the spot Hannibal has left wet and faintly indented on his neck. He licks once, with a wide swipe of his tongue, and then sits up to lean over Will's shoulder and watch the motion of their joined hands under the water. To listen to the noises crawling up from his chest in proximity.

It sounds almost agonized before Will is laughing, as if he were struggling for his life, and possibly he was. But Hannibal can feel, where his cheek is pressed against William's stretched collarbone, that the temperature is subsiding. He fits his teeth around the bone and watches their hands move together. Anyone else's wet fingers in his hair would be an annoyance, but from William, it's a reminder that the man is alive.

Perhaps the thought hadn't occurred to him in a while.

Perhaps it hadn't occurred to either of them.

Hannibal curls his hand tighter, strokes faster, as the fingers pressing between his own knuckles encourage, and he only very briefly considers that he has robbed himself of some of the tactile sensation, the knowledge of how Will Graham smells when he tips over the edge and lets himself go, but he knows what it is for the man to go still and utterly tense in his arms, and he supposes, as he watches the water absorb the streams pouring from him under the clear surface, the exact contrast of their skintones when Will is flushed and he is still calm, that this may not be his only opportunity.

He keeps up the motions until the silence that has grown in Will becomes faint protest, and then uncurls both their hands, swirling the water in a way that erases all suggestion of their trespass. He muses, briefly, that he might have understood empathy, for a moment.

The teeth against his collarbone hurt and Will’s laugh drags into a faint sound of pain before it doesn’t matter anymore and he tenses and the whine that accompanies his exhale is both justified and satisfied.

And then he’s boneless and pliant, and his fingers slip from Hannibal’s hair to just rest against the side of the bath, wrist up and fingers gently curled. His other continues the movement with Hannibal’s, though not gripping as tight or as desperate but still there. When it becomes uncomfortable he shifts again, and the man lets him go, and he’s left in the water weaker and hotter than he had been going into it.

The blood in his head is still thumping like the bass beat from hell, but when he curls the hand on the side of the tub around Hannibal’s soaked sleeve he’s fairly certain he’s in this – whatever it is – until he loses consciousness or something knocks him into sense.

Hannibal exhales as well, and leans back finally as Will relaxes against him, drawing his hand up the flat plane of stomach, soothing. It was what one did, soothed. He rises to his feet when he is sure William isn't going to slide down into the tub without Hannibal's support. When he draws his hand free from the water at last, the fingers are still linked with Will's.

He lifts them to his mouth to taste the backs of his knuckles before their hands slide apart, and he fetches a towel, offers William a supporting arm to help get him out of the tub. Too long in the water and he'll start to shiver for real, the evaporation will do some more to help cool him.

"You have two options," he suggests, with a disapproving glance down at his own sopping wet sleeve. "I can take you to the hospital, or you can spend the night here in my care, William. I think you can agree it would be irresponsible of me to let you drive."

It seems harder to find his feet after the bath, and Will curls the towel around himself almost like a shield. And the shaking is back, harsher than before, and he presses the fabric against himself tighter as he listens to Hannibal speak, voice clinical and calm as though nothing had transpired, as though the reason Will is now half-conscious is not due to pleasure as well as actively losing his mind.

The idea of a hospital sounds… far from pleasant. The last encounter Will had with a medical professional, he found them cut into a human Pez dispenser in their own office. And the hospital with its harsh light and machines and fussing people… he shakes his head.

“I’d be grateful for the use of your spare room,” he says, looking around for a moment for his clothes and not finding them where he thought he’d left them. His brows furrow in concern but he doesn’t voice them.

Hannibal casually nudges the clothes a little closer to the hamper and then recovers a heavy bathrobe from a hook on the back of the door, which he offers to trade Will for his towel, when he's finished for it. His expression isn't quite clinical when Will chooses his company again, instead of the sanctuary of the hospital.

"If your fever does not stay down, I'm afraid I'll have to insist on the trip," he says, holding the robe up for William to slip his arms through. "For now however, I'm satisfied with your partial recovery - though you should finish your drink."

Hannibal finally lets his facade crack just a little, to smile. "I'm afraid I did more to harm in my efforts to rehydrate you than I have good so far."

With the robe settled on Will's shoulders, he collects the man's clothes in the confines of the towel - which is damp but only with clean water, and when he curls the terrycloth around the discarded clothes it does much to dampen the odor. All of it can go into the laundry together - so that Will can wear it tomorrow.

Will wraps the robe around himself more securely than he had the towel and crosses his arms over his chest for good measure. The fabric feels foreign and cool against his skin but not uncomfortable, the weight of it oddly reassuring. He gives a cursory glance to the glass set by the bath when Hannibal mentions it, and his lips quirk in a smile again.

He takes up the glass carefully and smells it before taking a sip. It’s now fowl but it’s certainly not something he would drink by choice. Still, he diligently finishes the contents and draws his lips back in a sigh of displeasure before setting the glass next to his glasses, taking those up instead.

“I’m afraid your efforts are just… not as conventional… as I’m used to working with.” He told him honestly, unsure what else to say on the matter for the time being.

"I find conventional methods tend to yield fairly conventional results," Hannibal answers, easily, entering into a conversation of the sort that had come to happen readily between them.

He gestures their way out of the bathroom, taking up the empty glass and mug in his other hand in two quick swoops. "And I'm certain you've had your fill of conventional solutions, or am I wrong?"

Hannibal sets the dirty glasses upside down in the dishwasher with a precise amount of space between them, and then swings open the closet that neatly conceals the two machines. Into the first, he deposits the bundle in his arms. The mundane action seems to briefly strike him as humorous, as he measures detergent and softener into the machine, aware that Dr. Gideon is loose somewhere, likely stalking Alana - though he is certain Jack will have taken initiative. He wonders if the man will have taken enough, or, if like his measures with William, he will have underestimated what is necessary.

Will watches Hannibal set his clothes into the machine and the sheer normalcy is so odd to him, so out of place on the crisp and put-together man that he smiles.

“Conventional methods have yielded nothing,” he confirms, “Beyond more questions.”

That’s not to say that these so far unconventional methods have yielded anything but. Will still doesn’t know if it’s required or imperative to bring up what happened before, to ask what it meant, if he should even bother. He can still taste the man on his tongue behind the sharp taste of whatever he’d just made him drink, can still feel the teeth against his skin. he brings up a hand to feel if there are any marks and finds the indents still there, shallow but making the skin bump just a little against his fingers.

And he’s not sure what to think of that either.

Or what to think – or if he should even ask – of the fact that if Hannibal wants to monitor his fever for the evening he’ll need to check on him frequently, or be in the same room.

He lets his hand drop to his side again before folding it against his chest with his other.

"Questions can be revealing," Hannibal observes, closing the lid and working the dial. He swings the doors closed again. "I believe more than the answers you get from them, in certain situations."

Will is upright and coherent with a temperature a few degrees lower. That's an accomplishment. It's as good as they're like to achieve without corticosteroids, but it is safe enough to house him here for the evening and insist on the hospital in the morning. And Hannibal is there to keep an eye on him - much as William seemed to want.

Because he hadn't gone to Alana, even if that was the next most logical step. Or even, since he believed himself to be holding a captive, to Jack Crawford, who wanted Will to rely on his prickly, uneven stability. He was unaware that Will would never let the man see him fall, let alone allow himself to be caught by Crawford.

"Come upstairs," he invites - and leads him up the narrow stairs to open the guest room. It's dark and heavy, and doesn't seem to see much use, but the bed is large and comfortable and there is no space beneath, as it sits up on a base of drawers. "Will this serve?"

Will follows slowly, hand on the rail and sliding it up as he walks, feeling how cold the heavy wood is, how it tries to leech the heat from his hand and succeeds until he lets it go and the warmth returns, like a hostile takeover. The room is dark but not ominously so. Everything in Hannibal’s house – and his office – is dark, the tones rich and heady, very much how the man presents himself. And Will wonders again if there isn’t more to that, if he shouldn’t listen to Hannibal’s words as more than face value.

Questions can be more revealing than the answers.

And what questions does Will have regarding this man? This evening? He remembers he came here with a sense of urgency and need but what had transpired – he was certain – was not what he had come for. And yet, here he is, in the aftermath wondering if more will happen, forcing his mind to accept the fact that he will forget this, counting on the fact that he will, and because of that wanting to see if he can push for more to happen, if more is able to happen, not if more should.

Should is a word that left his vocabulary when he’d given his answer to Hannibal about stopping.

No.

A telling answer that brings with it a few dozen confused but revealing questions.

“Very well,” he replies.

Hannibal notices no questions are forthcoming, likely they are flying around inside Will's head as he considers the space in which he has found himself - both mentally and physically. Hannibal busies himself with adjusting the room, as a good host might. he draws back a curtain and inches the window open just a fraction to keep the air fresh and circulating a little cooler than it might otherwise, so that when Will predictably bundles himself under the blankets, he won't totally insulate his fever in.

There are two doors that don't lead to the hall, predictably one will be the bathroom, which Hannibal demonstratively levers open and leaves to make finding it in the night easier - the other is likely a closet.

"I'm just next door," he explains, watching Will carefully, to see if there are any signs he might miss in response to the idea of Hannibal leaving him there on his own. "If you need anything...?"

“Thank you,” it’s a reply that takes a few moments of silence to be spoken, a few moments in which Will thinks and really wonders whether or not he really does need anything more.

Hannibal has welcomed him into his home when Will was clearly on the verge – and then most likely in the middle – of a mental breakdown, he has monitored his health, has offered things to help, has offered a bed to sleep in and quiet, undisturbed rest that Will hasn’t been getting recently where he is… and then the bath. Will still has no idea what to think about what happened there and whether or not he wants to ask about it.

So the question ends up being, in his mind, not what he needs but what he wants, and if such wants are appropriate to bring up or ask for or even mention around Hannibal. And yet at the back of his mind is the niggling, urging little thought that makes him remember that he’s allowed to forget today, that he has been encouraged to, and told he would, and that part of him really, truly wants that freedom of forgetting. To blame it on the fever and the seizure and the exhaustion. To do something and have no consequences.

He watches Hannibal incline his head, eyes still on him, before moving to pass him to leave the room – and Will – alone.

“But…” Will’s lips are drier than he remembered them being, “If it’s not necessarily a need, but a want…” he doesn’t finish the sentence, he has no idea how to. If it’s a want, do I come to you? Do I ask for it? Would you even give it to me if I knew what it was? He swallows, waits a moment before turning his head enough to see Hannibal properly, stopped in the doorway to watch him, but doesn’t meet his eyes.

Hannibal assesses his words quickly - he is not the psychiatrist here, just a friend. In theory. He is intent on behaving, at least to outward appearances, the way that he believes friends should. It's not his fault that William has proved consistently fascinating thus far, to the point of proving even he could be the ripper. Even innocent, unstable Will Graham could have done any of this - he could think of it, couldn't he? He could get down into a mind and feel the acts as they happened. And now, he was losing time.

Willing, in fact, to lose himself here on the merest suggestion of Hannibal's.

"Wanting things is natural," Hannibal assures, and he slides his hands into his pockets and rounds his shoulders into relaxation, smiling carefully to ask William to smile in sympathy without having to express any of that in words. "The way to get what you want, or to know if you won't get it, is to ask."

And of course he’s baiting him, he’s not making this easy, why would he? And Will is fairly certain Hannibal wants him to ask on his own because in his own, professional, calm, sane way he wants something from Will too, something he shouldn’t want as a therapist or a friend, not from someone so broken and incapable of thinking clearly enough to even hold time. And having Will ask for it takes the blame away, the guilt. A guilt Will has the luck and potential to forget and bury.

Wanting things is natural. But what about Will’s condition has been natural so far? Normal? Clear? At every step of trying to find out he’s hit a block, nothing on the scans, then no longer a doctor left to give him more. He has nothing, no grounding or support, except in the man standing in the doorway, relaxed and offering a smile as though none of this has the potential to turn on them.

“I’m asking,” he says finally, swallowing before turning to Hannibal more. I’m asking for more of what happened, I’m allowing myself to forget this later. And I will allow myself to give you something if you make the effort to take it.

There is a riddle here in what's allowed and what's not, what it's possible to consent when sane and whole and how sane and whole one had to be in the first place to know what they were asking for. Hannibal pushes the door closed on both of them, and the room is left dark except where the light is on in the bathroom, diffuse and leaving shadows to crawl heavily.

They might weigh as much as Hannibal's palms when they settle open over Will Graham's shoulders as Hannibal looks down at him and tries to decide how much of this mess it's his due to wade into given what a shambles he has currently thrown onto Will Graham's life, and he can smell it still, the fever on him, under the scent of soap and shampoo and his clean robe (and the smell of dog, too, it was always dog with Will, but usually in an inoffensive way.)

He doesn't want to be kind, exactly, not even after making Will come this far to meet him. Not even after making him prove himself, and how much he was not the delicate sort of china that Crawford believed he was, or so unstable that he couldn't manage if he just had... a decent paddle.
Besides, the sweat generated might help reduce Will's fever. And he was curious if the man would lose himself when voluntarily forgetting, and how far. Hannibal presses his mouth chastely at first against Will's forehead, and settles his arms around him and finds it not as pleasing or comfortable a fit as Abigail, but nothing about Will Graham had ever quite fit those two descriptors. He supposes he should be glad the room had a big bed, but he doesn't head for it yet. If Hannibal swallows, because he is salivating to excess with hunger, perhaps it comes across instead as something else.

"There are some who will assert that a little euphoria might benefit your condition," he says, sotto voce, and he draws back to pay attention to how Will responds.

It doesn’t feel like a comfort, it feels oddly out of place between them, but nonetheless Will leans into the embrace and lets his eyes close on a quiet exhale. He doesn’t bring his hands up to reciprocate the hold, does nothing, in essence, but stand there and allow everything to be taken from him in as slow a manner and as precise, as he’s come to associate with Hannibal.

At his words he smiles, the expression a tired but genuine thing. “Assertiveness is a rare thing when it comes to judging my condition,” he murmurs, the tone only slightly mocking. “Who would I be to ignore benefits?”

And it could be the low light, it could be the events of the evening, the entire messed up situation that Will doesn’t understand nor no longer attempt to control, but when he looks at Hannibal again the man looks dangerous. Something about his expression, the way it feels like he’s wearing a mask to cover something darker, something he usually wouldn’t let Will see but is currently debating showing. And it’s intriguing and worrying in equal measure; familiar like the pendulum swinging back and forth and back… but nothing changes, nothing disappears.

He looks at Hannibal like he wants to know him, to /see/, and for a moment that’s all he does is try, until he stops, the sensation unpleasantly close to overwhelming, and swallows.

It does feel strange, so Hannibal doesn't hold him longer than he has to, longer than is typical for comfort, before he steps back, only enough to glance at the bed in a way that suggests William might like to place himself on it before he follows after.

"I find you very assertive," Hannibal answers, even as he's the one asserting himself at the tie holding the robe closed over Will's chest - the catch inside holding the inner flap up - Hannibal knows the robe intimately. "I also find you commonly ignore what would benefit you."

Why else would he keep returning to Hannibal, aside from curiosity. He was far from an epicurean, in any sense of the word. But that laser focus of attention on him is uncomfortable, he doesn't want Will to have that much of him, not yet. Hannibal has tossed the dice a thousand times with Will Graham, choosing to keep the biggest threat to him the closest, using what information he gained to turn and pull and yet Will, for all his ability to slip down into the minds of others, had never thought to try himself at Hannibal's mind.

Perhaps Will Graham still found him uninteresting as Hannibal settled him down on the bed with his mouth affixed gently at Will's throat, before he folded himself onto his knees at the floor, and perhaps that was all that had saved him - that first assessment of 'uninteresting' - and none of his clever ruses or games.

It has been a long time since Will has found Hannibal uninteresting. But his interests in him, in his work, in his manner, are just as his interest is in Alana or Jack; as a friend, a support, someone he can trust to keep his head above water when his arms give up and he can do nothing but sink. It’s an interest that assumes anything beyond what’s offered is something he has no right to know, something he has no reason to push at, to dig in, unless it’s given freely, unless he’s earned that right to know it.

And so he hasn’t pressed. Hasn’t put Hannibal under the pendulum to slice layers of him down until it’s past bone and marrow and to the exposed, vulnerable underneath.

Perhaps that’s why it’s easier, easier to let himself be moved, undressed, handled and adjusted, easier to smile and realize it’s genuine when the feeling of Hannibal’s lips against his throat burns another warm reminder into his fragile memory, easier to let it happen and decide his level of participation as this progresses.

He doesn’t break contact, though, not this time. He keeps his hands against whatever part of Hannibal he can reach, sliding over the fabric of his expensive shirt, then up through his hair, still slightly damp from where he’d grasped it in the bath only minutes before, and curling his fingers in enough to have a hold. He doesn’t say anything, he doubts they need words or that he has the capacity to produce any that are coherent or remotely helpful.

Hannibal is grateful that the floor is clean and doesn't feel dusty under his touch, when he puts his knees down on it in the expensive suit. Will's hands are all over him, which is only fair considering that Hannibal's are all over him, finding his skin feeling cool at last, if only for the space of time it takes for the water to fully evaporate from him.

He tracks the line of Will's pulse fluttering down the carotid to the base of his neck where the beat grows from a slow steadiness to rapid again. His mouth is open over the sternum, and he can feel the heart jumping strong behind it, as if all that bone and skin weren't there and he could sink his teeth into it while it's still pounding. He doesn't.

Will can't know how dangerous this is, which is part of the allure. Even if he ever guessed what Hannibal was, he wouldn't know immediately that while there was a time and a place for raw - he rarely indulged. One had to be careful eating something too close to self, after all, lest you contract something.

His mouth trails lower still in a deliberate line following the routes of circulation, even sunk as deep as they are in the abdomen. All that blood required to run the systems of the body, to keep things oxygenated - well, by the way Will's breath has started drawing in faster, pulling deeper into his lungs as Hannibal traces the femoral artery where his fingers had gone with his mouth, then the inside of a thigh.

And it’s just as intoxicating and confusing and wrong – and thus childishly drawing him in more – as it had been downstairs, as Will assumes it will be for the rest of the evening; this strange concoction of feelings that don’t belong together, that leave a sticky residue in his throat. The further Hannibal moves from him the harder it gets to keep contact, to tug at Hannibal as desperately as Hannibal seems not to be touching him, a resisting, slow, teasing thing. The man to a tee. Will wonders if Hannibal ever lets go, ever lets himself peel back the mask.

Will finds his teeth gritting on reflex the lower Hannibal moves down his body, following a map he seems to know point for point, heart beat by heartbeat, pressure point, one, two, three. And his lips curl back into a snarl, then a grin, and the sound he makes is not quite a sigh but a breathy approximation of a groan. Hannibal’s lips are hotter than his fingers were, against his thigh, the delicate, fragile curve of skin and muscle between his legs… he isn’t hard yet, too soon, too sore, but he’s paying attention, concentration nowhere else but in the way Hannibal holds him, not still but down, how his lips curve up just enough for his teeth to press to skin; in warning, in promise, Will isn’t even sure anymore.

And it’s still slow. And it’s still deliberate, no motion without reason, no touch without careful, seemingly cruel thought. So Will lies back, body twisted, bent just enough to keep one hand in Hannibal’s hair, and gives in.

Will has always surrendered to Hannibal's lead. He might snap and growl in his own yielding way, like an animal with an injured paw that nonetheless trusts you to only be hurting it from necessity - only here, instead of pulling away or favoring his injury, William is leaning into it.

This is almost as far as Hannibal ever lets go, and it's still William leading him on in his own right. Leading forward by refusing to resist, by laying flat in trust and letting Hannibal - /asking/ Hannibal to roll over him again and again, clever, supposedly delicate Will Graham.

"Ask," Hannibal says as he leans back and looks up, crouched between Will's knees and waiting. He senses the impatience slowly coming on, though at which of them it is directed is uncertain.

Never easy. Not then, not now, but unlike before, there is no option given to Will, no chance to say stop, just an order to say when. And somehow it feels like the last choice Will will get for the evening, and holding back on replying is a small, very satisfying defiance. But the question hangs between them like a pendulum in suspense and after a moment Will sets it swinging.

“Please.”

And it’s more, somehow, than his last permission was, than the hints and suggestions and skirting the issue without actually explicitly stating it. Perhaps because it’s not permission or request so much as it is a plea. And a plea delivered calmly and steadily is still a plea, still a surrender and an offering.

Will lets out a slow, low breath and waits.

Hannibal barely even has to tug the strings anymore. It's powerful, it's an incredibly powerful feeling to make the barest motion of intent and find Will responding to it, no matter what it was. He wonders, in a clinical sort of way, how much he could admit right now and still retain his power. In a way, he supposes everything. He will always have this part of Will Graham's life, even if he has nothing else.

He knows someday that's likely what will keep him going.

Right now, however, he has so much more than that. He has Will Graham, living and breathing and feeling at his command, and Hannibal does take command when he's asked to, reaching up and pushing one hand flat over Will's stomach, and turning himself to lean in, lean down and lick a broad halfcircle around the base of his cock.

"I intend to please," he says, inches from skin and as if the plea had been the demand to please, satisfied with Will's politeness, not intending to make him beg. He almost has the man there without trying, and it's surprisingly arousing. What has Will been keeping from him all this time, to be this willing and ready with only the promise of lost time to excuse anything he wants. "But in this, you don't have to sit silent and take what is given."

This is not a crime scene, this is not all about input - he's not truly alone, right now.

It feels so refreshing to just let go. To let someone take control from him. To not have to be in any scene, in any mind but his own, and even then the point was optional. Will digs his fingers into Hannibal's hair a little harder before relaxing, a silent reply to his words; understanding. He is certain he will be far from silent. But silence doesn't need to be broken by words.

He shifts against the hand splayed on his stomach, contracts his muscles first before exhaling again, feeling the long fingers press down just a little harder. He doesn't know why it matters anymore to consider time outside of today. Outside of now. Time doesn't exist in his head anymore. Time technically doesn't exist anywhere. It's a man made concept to feel in control of something so big it is unfathomable.

And Will hardly has control either; he's less giving it up and more accepting it, greedily selfishly asking for it to be shown, used, not wasted in his weak grip.

Hannibal isn't surprised to find that Will has wiry muscles beneath his skin, nervous and hard the way his manner always was, the way his exterior usually is. He feels the muscle bunch and shift under his fingers, appreciative of how vital and alive he felt - as if he were a vibration in an entirely still world.

Applying his tongue again, he closes his eyes and allows himself that vulnerability in order to focus more clearly on his other senses. Predominantly taste - sweat and clean skin and fever heat lurking beneath. He can still smell the infection, too, sharper now. He ignores it, as he has these few weeks, and works the length of Will slick with his tongue.

Without the water, he can smell the way arousal charges beneath the man's skin, slow to wake and moving unhurriedly upward toward some unseen peak. Hannibal takes him deeper in his mouth for a moment, then draws back and shifts his hand down to curl his fingers where his mouth had been, pushing up with stroking fingers as his mouth moves lower still. He pays attention to the differences in sensation and taste as he works his mouth over William's balls, then behind but only just.

Then he draws back and leaves him wet and cooling with evaporation as he dares a glance up to see what expression has written itself - would it be hunger or desire or even a second guess or aversion - but he has answer enough in the shuddering breaths that suggest Will is slowly coming apart. Hopefully differently than his usual.

There is something far more intense, far more visceral, about a hot mouth compared to a clever hand. Will keeps his eyes closed, lips parted to draw in shorter breaths as Hannibal explores his body at his own pace, taking what Will is giving and returning what Will is wanting, a symbiotic, dangerous little game. Surrender for control.

Cool fingers replace hot mouth and Will hisses, lips drawn back and wide in a pleased smile, brows furrowing and rising, jaw working to keep his mouth relatively slack without much success. A quiet moan draws his chest up, back arched just enough to notice, and his mouth opens more, the breathing now more ragged, not quite as controlled.

It feels like the fever had, overpowering and too hot to be comfortable and he’s unable to keep still, hands curling first loose then harsh fists in the bedspread under him and twisting, body following a similar pattern or subtle twisting then less than subtle undulation. Will is fairly certain if he opens his eyes he won’t like the look Hannibal gives him. what frightens him is that he isn’t sure he wants the man’s expression to be one of awe, or enjoyment, or one of triumph. A triumph over something Will had felt almost certain he’d seen on the man before.

There is so much response in Will, like he's been wound up into kinetic for so long that the slightest provocation sets him twisting and marching like a soldier with a key in his back. Perhaps that was a better analogy for what Will Graham had become under the pressures from Jack Crawford - and Hannibal, too, he'll admit. His pressure is gentler, like a warm mouth and an exploring tongue.

But he can see here writ as clearly as day on the pale lines of throat and the open cut of his mouth, the dark feathers of eyelashes stained against Will's cheeks under his drawn in eyebrows, he can see his effects. He gets up.

He takes the time to fold his suit coat, though he removes his waistcoat with it at the same time, leaves them together as they go in half, then in half again, and then aside somewhere they won't be stepped on. The robe he'd lent Will was spread like an open ribcage beneath the man, dark on the light cover. The image, where Will has bent himself back, laid out flat on the bed and with his hands curled into whatever they could grab, is not unlike wings, save where the outflung arms spoil it.

Hannibal turns each sleeve up with a practiced motion three precise folds that leave the shirtsleeves at his elbows, and joins Will on the bed that has never belonged to anyone and smells like nothing but old clean sheets and disuse. Instead he pulls Will back against him, so they both settle on their sides and he can turn his cheek along William's neck and feel him breathe. He can smell the old cologne, lingering under the hairline where Will had splashed it after shaving, the shampoo he uses which is cheap and might also serve double time for dogs and horses, if Hannibal remembered correctly.

He curls his hand around Will's cock again, pulls his body back against his own in a long line, and his free hand curled gently - carefully - over the junction where collar bones meet, and with half his hand and thumb extended up along the join of his throat, and he feels every swallow and change as he strokes, with Will's body writing every reaction directly against his own. He could close his fingers here, just so, and the flow of blood to brain would cease, where it was already diminished. Hannibal didn't think it would take long. He wasn't sure if Will would struggle until it became a fight for life. He also didn't do it, just pushed the pads of his fingers gently along the vulnerability.

Will twists, arching back against the shift of position, turning willingly against Hannibal and curling for just a moment against the sensation before a hand carefully works itself against his throat and he obediently straightens. And he is moving now, no longer just resting back and enjoying the feeling, but rolling his hips into the hand against him, the lean, tight body behind him.

And Hannibal doesn’t rush, doesn’t speed up, doesn’t hurry Will over like he had before. It’s still just as slow, just as torturous, just as intense. But now Will can open his eyes. He takes a moment, one hand out in front of him, clawed against the sheets for balance as well as grounding, before slowly moving his other to cover Hannibal’s over his throat. Feeling the way he was holding him but holding back, back from pressing harder, from choking him, killing him, completely controlling him.

Just as slowly he arched back, baring his throat more, turning his head enough to breathe against Hannibal’s throat, eyes hooded, sounds now coming with every harsh breath. He bit his lip before letting it go and pressing his teeth against the skin as Hannibal had done, pressure slowly rising as his eyes closed tighter and his hips stuttered against Hannibal’s hand.

Hannibal doesn't control Will's pace, he lets him take his pleasure at his own speed, even as he feels the cage of fingers at his throat, even as his own fingers close overtop he's accepting the boundary as easy as a genuine caress, and that was always the mystery of him, that he could push the line of punishment and pleasure. Hannibal leans up over his shoulder, watching Will's outstretched fingers flex and relax, pulling himself forward in speeding surges that his whole body follows, sinuous and hypnotizing against Hannibal's front.

He's not usually so involved, some survivor of his logic protests at the back of his mind, as Will twists against him in a way that can't be comfortable, all vulnerabilities and obedience. Sound too, the soft breaks painting themselves in his voice as if he were in pain, and that's what sends cold electricity down into Hannibal's lower back and renders him almost permissive.

"I could stop," he suggests, right on the verge, and right against Will's ear as the other twists himself, and his fingers slow just a little, loosen just a hair. He can sense it coming, smell it too, and he wonders aloud, "Do you have the patience for that?" The tone is curious, almost prompting. It suggests he would not be stopping for good, only prolonging.

Will is fairly sure that if he breaks now, that’ll be it. He’s exhausted, body responsive and over-sensitive but weak still, strong enough to move himself, to roll back, to arch, but not strong enough to withstand much more if he lets himself fall now. He whines and mouths against Hannibal again, fingers digging into the other man’s in warning.

Patience he has in abundance. His entire life and livelihood is patience. Taking time to get into a scene, to get into the mind of someone, to have the patience to stay in there, to walk through something horrific, let himself feel it, to return, to put himself back together… obviously not as well as he’d once done. But he is patient. And the challenge makes him smile.

“I have patience enough.” he murmurs.

So there's the challenge - instead of just compliance this time. Any time something is asked of him, Will Graham tries to become it. He wonders how far the empathy extends if he'd let it. Clinically, the curiosity curls up in Hannibal to wonder if he let himself into this a little further, if Will would feel that too. How far would the mirror reflect?

So he stills his hand, presses the palm down on William's thigh. Hannibal releases William's throat, too, soothing in a line down over his sternum. There, plenty of room to regather.

"I know," Hannibal answers, quietly. He likes this position, this place that William has gone down into because there is all that intoxicating power balanced on the knife's edge of a game he has let go on far too long. He dislikes how far he has gone along with him, however. The engagement is foreign.

Hannibal turns him in his arms, shifts them - not quite face to face, he has settled higher up the bed, and he can feel that his hair is sliding free of it's usual careful keeping, rushed there by William's grasping fist. It's not the only dishevel he feels. Hannibal tilts his head back as they resettle together, and he lets his eyes close, as much of an invitation as the other will likely get to turn the soft, needy motions of his mouth against Hannibal's skin into demands of teeth if that's what's lurking under the gestures.

He wonders if Will can feel the allure of having a predator utterly at his mercy, or if the other man has lost too much focus for that.

The freedom is a relief, though a short-lived one. The distraction had been enough to keep Will’s mind from working, from overthinking. And now it’s gone and he can concentrate on the feeling of his heart hammering, of his blood rushing behind his ears, of the way his body is responding to everything and the fact that despite promising patience and requesting the same from Hannibal, he can’t just stop.

Will shifts eyes up enough to see Hannibal but nowhere near high enough to meet his eyes. Hands grabbing at the shirt that’s still too pristine, too put together for what they’re doing, for what Will assumes and anticipates will escalate. And it’s strange, having Hannibal so passive for the first time since this started. It’s wrong. And as his capacity to think is returning so too is the demand for control, the craving for it.

So Will turns more, and one hand moves to grasp Hannibal’s hair again, to tug it, to tilt his head back as his eyes are slits, not relaxed but testing, waiting, baiting… and Will brings his lips to the clean smooth skin again, parts them, trails slick teeth over it and hums.

Two hands curl in Hannibal's shirt, then one, and he settles his own over Will's hips and pulls until he can insinuate one suited knee between Will's thighs so their hips can seat closer together - friction, but no pressure.

He does tip his head back, so they don't have to look each other in the eyes - Hannibal knows better than to trap William that way, though he supposed the man had already guessed more about him than what he could see in eye contact.

His breath leaves him when teeth just faintly scrape his neck, and Hannibal swallows - not nervous, but hungry. Surprisingly so. He had asked patience, and had it granted, but he already misses the surging of muscles and the way Will hadn't fought his contact at all. This is almost as good, because he is asking for it, and Hannibal... withholds.

Keeping his hands on Will's hips, he relents, baits carefully by simply welcoming it, and he swallows against Will's mouth again, slides his hand down low on Will's belly between them and pushes his thumb just above the base of his cock, but does not offer any pressure back until he feels pressure himself. If it's a stalemate, he supposes it comes down to who can crumble the other's patience first.

The friction is maddening. Simply because nothing else is accompanying it, no pressure, no movement, nothing. And it’s still a game, a test, an effort that’s needed for something to give and it’s as infuriating as it is familiar and Will presses his teeth harder against Hannibal’s throat, enough to feel the sharp edges but not enough to hurt. The way he’s biting, he could leave a mark, and a vindictive, childish part of him wants to guarantee that he does.

He pulls himself higher up the bed, up Hannibal’s body, away from the friction and his hands holding him down, curling his shoulders and bending his back so his mouth doesn’t shift, lips peeling back and pressure increasing, and then Hannibal’s patience wavers as Will’s had, or perhaps it was simply a reward for the fact that Will hadn’t waited him out, hadn’t tried to, and his jaw relaxes some, a weak sound escaping him and eyes flickering closed.

And he wants more than this, more than hands and lips and strong, practiced hands. Will wants something to send his mind away, something to set the pendulum burning. White noise to replace the questions slowly becoming more and more coherent at the forefront of his mind. and the next sound he makes isn’t a weak one but a demanding one. And when his teeth return to the red marks they’d left on Hannibal’s throat they press harder.

There's urgency in Will's grip, impatient demand that echoes in the frustrated growl of his voice that he heaves wordless between his teeth at Hannibal's throat and Hannibal sighs - not impatient, but understanding. It would be messy and connected and would ask more of Hannibal than he usually allowed. He was put together, always put together, and instead of asking Will to come up to his level, he was surrendering to the demand to come apart down to Will's.

Empathy is a strange beast to Hannibal. For just a moment he realizes that he has already lost control when all he'd meant to do was slip it ever so slightly.

This is not the sort of thing Hannibal is prepared for, much as he is for almost any other occurrence. He only rarely indulges, and never this far, but when William is clawing at the buttons of his shirt almost frantically enough to threaten the threads holding them together, Hannibal's mind finds something suitable in its remote inventory of the house. He presses Will back, wordlessly, eases himself to his feet. He doesn't issue any orders on going or staying, but his purpose should be clear enough. It's up to Will if he wants to follow Hannibal into his room - into his closet in fact, where everything hangs neatly pressed and ordered and even his belts and shoes are settled by color. It's for the leather that he keeps the plain blue and white tube.

He supposes he is lucky that he has stopped using saddle cream. He allows the amused thought that it might compliment Will's conditioner, standing in the dark of his own room in his socks and shirt sleeves. He smiles as he turns back toward the hall, Hannibal is not immune to humor.

Will makes a very frustrated sound when Hannibal holds him back, pushes him down, and stands. And he looks at him, finally catches the man’s eyes for a moment and he realizes he shouldn’t have. Hannibal seems unaffected, turning to walk out of the room, leaving Will sitting up in the bed surrounded by slightly crumpled sheets, legs and arms spread for balance, hair a messy tangle and eyes out of focus.

But it’s a palpable loss, the contact is gone, the atmosphere is gone, and Will feels helpless, discarded, with the familiar trembling preceding a panic attack starting in his arms. And like a rush of noise he’d wanted his mind filled with, his thoughts return, the higher brain function that should dictate the properness, the normalcy, the socially acceptable. And with the thoughts the doubts. The worry. The niggling memory of coming here for something else, for something urgent. The phantom feeling of a gun against his fingers and the warm hands that pried it away.

And then Hannibal returns, and his expression knocks Will into silence again, the part of him that wants to forget back to push away the logic and reason, to remind himself that he’s allowed to forget that he wants to forget that he will forget… that perhaps he came here to forget. To the only person he would trust to lose his mind near and have him hold him still. To the only person he would trust to keep him sane. And he knows he brought this on himself, brought this entire storm down on them both by not letting it lie.

By not letting Hannibal take the blame for it.

And he meets Hannibal’s smile with his own.

The storm clears from Will's features when Hannibal returns and that's perhaps when Hannibal realizes the enormity of the issue. It's perhaps that after working so hard to get Will pliable and reliant, he isn't quite sure he will be able to push the other into the fire, if the time comes. All his careful positioning won't matter if in the end he can't pull the trigger.

It's not a sensation he's felt in a very long time, the ability to summon up a smile by simply offering one of his own. Hannibal sets all that complication aside for later. It was a tricky knot that would take more than a little work to untie. Right now he had enough on his hands to distract them both.

Hannibal decides it's better to leave his shirt out of reach of the threat of Will's fingers - it has already become disheveled, he'd rather not lose a button. He already feels the first suggestion of a mark on his neck that it's unlikely his collar will fully hide. He wonders, as he undoes the button of his pants, with his eyes still on Will, what Jack Crawford would make of the suggestion that Hannibal was just human as well.

He wonders if anyone else would be able to match the dimensions of the mark to the mouth that made them. Instead of lingering on the thought he folds his discarded clothes together and sets them aside. They'll want pressing.

Settling on the bed to crouch low over Will and working the cap to work a generous amount of the jelly over his fingers to work it cool over the pads of his first two fingers and thumb until it begins to grow warm. In the interim, he curls his free hand around Will to guide him back into his mouth, reward for him waiting so long and so uncomplainingly for Hannibal to come back and distract him.

There is a point when the mind just gives up and floats, doesn’t process coherent thought, doesn’t process anything, only lets the base and instinct function. Will’s is coming close. He doesn’t think of the fact that this is happening, doesn’t think that what is going to happen is something his body has never actually experienced before, that he should worry – for far more than the physical – instead it floods with a kind of humming, a vibration tremor echoed in his body as touch returns.

He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, or any part of him really, but he doesn’t want to just lie back, doesn’t want to just take… besides, Hannibal had told him not to; this wasn’t a crime scene where he just took and didn’t give. Will just doesn’t know what to give.

So he groans, a quiet sound, lowers himself back to rest on his elbows and brings one hand to stroke through Hannibal’s hair. Fingers splayed, movement slow and adding pressure the lower his fingers travel, increasing in correlation with how deep Hannibal takes him, how delicious and teasing the pressure is.

There is that supposition that Will has never done this. Hannibal supposed there might have been some sticky strange questing in Will's youth that he supposed had terminated when the closeness got too awkward to uphold - or perhaps when Will had lost too much of himself in someone else's constant presence.

He made no suppositions about Alana Bloom, but the assumption that she might have done this with him is not one that Hannibal would bank on. Instead he takes it slow, distracting with his mouth as he works his slick fingers against him, only pushing when he has Will sunk deep in his mouth, when he can feel Will's fingers scratching short nails through his hair.

It's not patient, not exactly, but it is careful - Hannibal seems to know just when to push and when to yield, and he never has to force - strangely enough it's all on Will's terms that Hannibal sinks two fingers deep inside him and then hooks them up unerring, curling them toward himself as if beckoning. It's not the first time he's misused something learned in medical school, but it is a rarity in that no one will have to be buried as a result.

“Shit,” it’s an exhale and a whine, and Will’s body goes first completely still then dissolves into pliancy, near-boneless. It’s a strange feeling but not unwelcome, certainly not unwelcome, and Will shifts, drawing Hannibal closer, curling his legs around his shoulders and demanding, wanting more.

And his mind is silent now, not there, and time doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know if he has a fever, he doesn’t care if he does, but the hands now touching him are warm, not cold, the sheets under his back aren’t harsh, and he can feel the heat pooling, very present and very close and it’s not enough. This is not enough. but he’d be damned if he asks for more, if he opens his mouth and tries to speak again, Will is certain his tone won’t be level, won’t be calm. And he’s given enough of himself away already.

And still the sound that comes out of his throat when Hannibal curls his fingers again is a loud, helpless thing, and low.

The sounds are as gone and surrendered to abandon as his mind was. Hannibal hears every nuance in breath and voice, the way he tips and pushes himself down, asking for more without raising his voice. He isn't sure Will even knows exactly what he's asking for, aside from a general expectation for more, and what that would basically imply, and he draws back finally.

Hannibal sits up curling one arm under one of the knees hooked over his shoulders and braces himself up, finding it strange that Will should hold back now, only his voice when Hannibal has absolutely everything else, before he withdraws his fingers, scissoring them apart as they come free. He slicks himself, and with his free hand guides himself to press, as he leans up over Will and waits for the other to relax.

He can't give him more unless Will accepts it. He leans up, stretching the leg pushed over his shoulder as he works his mouth now against Will's collar, over his neck in a soft shape that contrasts his earlier use of his teeth, and he just keeps pressure and waits until Will relents to it, even as the other reaches up to claw nails into his shoulders and tries to keep demanding.

He soothes with only a low noise, a steadying glance. "It's better not to rush," he assures, and that's all - as if this were every day, any normal thing between them.

So Will lies back, and eases his breathing, and allows himself to enjoy the gentleness of Hannibal’s lips as he’d enjoyed the harshness of teeth not long before. The tension in his muscles is a distraction and for a moment he opens his eyes and raises them.

Hannibal had noticed, amused, when they’d first met that Will disliked eye contact. And Will had conceded, claiming eyes distracting. They see too much, don’t see enough. and for a moment Will feels as though he’s seeing too much; actually seeing the man above him, as undone as he supposes he will ever see Hannibal Lecter, with his hair tousled and lips dark, actually seeing the situation, assessing it, that this is happening, that whatever claim of friendship or trust he had with the man he could lose after this, because of some misguided need to come to him for aid, and then to push for this…

And yet…

It’s not a pained sound that escapes him when Hannibal moves, but a surprised one, and he blinks, confused again as to why he’s determined to blame this on himself, to blame it on his need for protection and help, on his delusion and fear, on his promise – Hannibal’s promise – that he could and would forget this. Confused as to why he’s not blaming Hannibal for this, the man who’d brought him to his most vulnerable and had taken advantage of it. Touched him first, initiated this in such a way as to know it would continue, know that Will would twist the situation in his mind, roll it over and over as all possible scenarios and play-throughs until he hit this point, until he got what he wanted and in that way gave Hannibal what he wanted.

And then Hannibal pushes further and Will’s eyes close, face turning away in a confusion mixture of embarrassment and desperation, a low whine escaping him again, and then he doesn’t see too much. He closes himself to seeing more. Refuses to let the pendulum swing even though his gut is telling him he’s close, so close, to seeing just enough to matter.

He can feel every out of place hair just now, in the slow moment where Will has almost figured something out about him. Of course, as much as Will was out of line pushing, Hannibal was equally out of line allowing himself to be pushed. He was not exactly a flexible man, save in very particular circumstances. Perhaps he has given Will Graham leave to forget as much for his own sake.

To keep the images from looming up amongst Will's waking dreams, perhaps. But Will needs the comfort, and after all of this Hannibal can give it to him. It's a small offer in response for all he's taken. Not that either of them really needs to worry about blame in the end. There are things enough to blame each other for without this creeping up onto the list.

He doesn't shush Will, he never has. There are enough people who don't want to hear him truly express himself, Hannibal has always given him free range with his voice - and the sound isn't pained, but Hannibal pauses anyway because that was what you did when you were concerned, and he might well be, if he wasn't so fascinated by the way Will shut himself down into a world free of obligation and expectation. Hannibal strokes a thumb under the line of his jaw, down over his sliding adam's apple and feels him try to learn to do this without having to bring his mind back into focus.

The intimacy of the moment is almost too much for him, so Hannibal shuts his own thoughts down too, and focuses instead on moving when he can, in shallow motions that only ease him deeper in fits and starts. He wonders if he should not have stuck to his mouth and fingers, no matter how much more Will refused to ask for.

The sounds are coming louder now, still subdued but most certainly unmistakable as the juxtaposition of pressure and caresses drove that pleasant numbness further into Will’s mind. and he was back to demanding, dragging his fingers over Hannibal’s back and lower, then up to his shoulders again, certain he was leaving marks the man would feel later, wear as another layer under his pressed suits.

He twisted a little, goading, encouraging, feeling sweat appear on his skin again and certain this time it wasn’t fever. He can hear Hannibal breathing now, no longer a statue of a man above such human things, and somehow that’s a comfort and Will lets his eyes open again, slid to the side before he lets his head turn.

“Why don’t you let me see you?” it’s almost rhetorical, almost as though he’d been asking himself but happened to voice it aloud, but he realizes he wants to know the answer. Wants to know why Hannibal has never shown anything to Will but the façade he shows others. He feels guilty, he hates that it’s even a consideration, but Will has never trusted someone fully, never enough to open himself up and let his vulnerabilities lie. This is the closest he’s come. And yet he still refuses to believe that Hannibal’s outward face is his true one.

There’s the familiar electric rush of pleasure again but harder, and Will bends, mouth open on a loud moan, back off the bed before returning to it heavily, body suddenly alive with movement, faster breathing, tremors, insistent pushing… reminders that he’s alive, that he can feel this.

It’s 8:45pm, my name is Will Graham, and I am alive.

Hannibal tilts his head at the question so they can both make indirect eye contact, only at the corners of their eyes like something half-seen and crept in from another world beyond or a hallucination, and Hannibal exhales a sharper breath in a sudden rush that might have been a laugh, a small one, if he wasn't exerting himself as he was.

"You'll see too much," he answers, low in his chest, and breaks their line of vision, and closes his teeth once behind Will's ear instead before he continues. "And realize I'm uninteresting again."

It's partially the truth. He knew that the instant they solved the riddles they saw in each other they would gravitate apart, whether violently like a collision or simply drifting away for their own safety was the question. Like the gap Will left between himself and everyone else. Hannibal finally reaches down as Will arches up and strokes him in a tight fist to tip him the rest of the way over once he's started - and he'd admit it's partially to control the oncoming mess.

It's the sound that does it for Hannibal in the end, the desperate further noises issuing from deep within Will's throat and the beat of his blood against his mouth, soft but for one single pinch of teeth as he follows after, silent as a reflection. It's wild and rushing, the sensation, as helpless (and hateful, as a byproduct) as he remembered it to be, but tolerable enough that he does not drag himself immediately back to control.

Even if he's paying attention to the pulse acutely, sure to not let it slow too much closer to lucidity before he eases back, takes a deep breath. Hannibal soothes the place he bit once with his tongue before he draws back, and helps Will unfold.

It’s a relief, if anything, to not be told to look. To not be encouraged to. To, in fact, be told to not try. And the sensations white out Will’s mind, and he’s fairly certain that some of the helpless weak sounds are his own and not in his head. And then he’d panting and trying to gather himself and finding that it isn’t a priority, that’s he’s content, for the moment, to drift.

He groans quietly when he can lie flat again, when his body is no longer contorted by sensations and held open by strong, careful hands. He runs a hand over his face, fingers catching his bottom lip just enough to tug before resting his palm over his chest and blinking his eyes open to a languid, half-mast state. And he’s content to drift, to let his body remember itself again, to feel his heart pounding blood from his center to the very tips of his fingers and toes, to feel how his breathing is cooling his throat but not drying it, how he no longer feels the tremors of a breakdown clawing their way behind his eyes.

“They were right,” Will murmurs, words not slurred but soft, quiet, nothing like the way he’d spoken at the start of the evening, “Those who asserted that euphoria may benefit my condition.”

He licks his lips and sighs, adjusting himself on the mattress a little more. “The numbness is welcome.”

It had been a long time since his mind had been so quiet and hadn’t ended in a jolting awakening in his sweat-soaked bed or a horrific crime scene.

Hannibal allows the mess on himself to cool only barely before he becomes far too aware of it to truly be comfortable. Even then, he makes a point not to rush into the guest bath and scrub himself. He can survive a few moments outside his comfort zone - Will practically lives outside of his these days.

He settles on the edge of the bed, and stretches his shoulders, before he glances back over one, and is careful to reach with his clean hand to brush Will's hair back. "It benefits almost every condition," Hannibal asserts, so as not to seem disengaged, nor to make too much of his solution. He doesn't suggest that it hasn't benefitted his, either. He has allowed his mind to be clear for a few unique moments, of ulterior motive.

The temperature is lower, for sure. The bath and the sweat and exertion combined. If it would stay down was another matter. "If your fever goes back up, I'll have to insist on a hospital visit."

He stands again, breaking contact for practical reasons. He can only take being sticky and clammy for so long, but he doubts Will would like another shower so soon.

Will frowns at the gesture simply because it’s completely unexpected. Gentle, intimate, out of place in whatever strange relationship they now share. Hannibal simply checks his temperature and Will lets his eyes close, makes his mind slow down. Makes his mind calm down. It needs rest, just as he does. It needs sleep. At Hannibal’s words he nods.

“If it does, I’ll be sure to tell you,” it comes out as a sigh, resignation, but not defeat. His muscles ache in places he wasn’t sure he was meant to, ever, but he’s more relaxed than he has been in months. Since before Jack called him in to consult, to ‘be sociable’. He rubs his eyes with another quiet intake of breath and opens them to watch Hannibal step away again.

What unnerves him the most in the entire situation is how oddly normal it feels. Or perhaps it’s because his mind hasn’t started turning enough for regret yet, perhaps the logic that he forces to govern his emotions hasn’t returned. Perhaps because his emotions themselves are on lockdown. Will’s brows furrow again and he shifts around a little until the top sheet is covering him, fairly certain he’ll fall asleep soon and not move till the morning. He doesn’t need a cold on top of whatever causes his fever.

He doesn’t say anything more and isn’t sure if he’s waiting for Hannibal to conclude with something or hoping he says nothing at all.

Hannibal isn't sure if that's a suggestion that it's better he keep his hands to himself going forward, but he trusts he'll be able to tell pretty quickly if Will has a relapse into fever. He's also pretty sure there will be one but not immediately - likely Will can have the rest of his evening in peace to sleep and forget coming here with a gun in his hands and his imagination on overdrive.

Washing his hands in the sink, Hannibal considers the evening and what he's made of it. In the case of Will Graham, this was a better impulse to follow than the ones he usually allowed, in careful measurement - or occasionally to excess. He knew all the metrics - that killers upped their games, intensified. He made a point of playing into those expectations and then dropping them suddenly.

In the interim, there is this. He's not sure that Will is ever going to acknowledge it, but he has the suspicion that he'll see more of him in the mornings. As he cleans up, he wonders what the morning will bring aside from Will appearing in his bathrobe, and he makes a note to himself to transfer the clothes from the washer to the dryer, as simple as that. It's ironic that so much of what Will smells like will soon be smothered under the baselines that Hannibal has become accustomed to as his own.

He leaves the light on in the bathroom as he steps free, but swings the door most of the way closed. He can't sleep in strange places without that faint disorientation looming on the notion that should he wake in the middle of the night he won't know where he is. Will has crawled under the sheet, and Hannibal pauses to take up his rumpled suit and shirt with a brief glance in his direction as if to assure himself he wasn't the one hallucinating, and then his footsteps carried him out of the room and into his own.

Working his tongue over his teeth he tastes the remains of Will Graham's skin and sweat, and he tries to decide what he makes of the fact that they are utterly normal.