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It comes from the firelight. He’s sure of that, if nothing else.
It comes from the firelight, an ember that strikes on his terror and catches. It shoots upward, shadow becoming limbs becoming great, monstrous talons that spiderweb across the ceiling in search of the places his skin splits.
There are antlers, too, or maybe horns, fracturing up and out and closer, closer. Each new branching prong skitters hungrily out from its axis, from the coal-black heart of the creature he cannot name, dripping thick black pools of ichor across the hardwood. He can hear the floorboards hiss as the darkness turns to acid; footsteps from the underside of the world carving their way toward him.
It comes from the firelight, but it isn’t fire. Fire is warmth and light and safety. Even as it consumes, it caresses. Fire licks up the beams of a house, sinking its teeth into the bones. Fire cracks and peels.
It is a living thing. It is life itself.
The creature in Will's room is death. It is darkness and decay; the cold dark vacuum of space. It is the crush of the deep ocean, down where colorless, blind organisms from beyond time make their home. Nothing grows where it steps. It devours, but not to sate itself. It is a mouth that tastes only ash.
And yet, it hungers for Will. He knows this, like he knows it came from the firelight, like he knows his name is Will Graham and that it is 3:16am and that he’s in Hannibal Lecter’s guest bedroom.
Like he knows that the ache between his legs is wrong.
The penultimate fact-his being in Hannibal’s home - is the least plausible. Still, it must be true. The bed beneath him is too soft to be his own, the sheets too silky and fine. He could brush a hand across the comforter without finding a single strand of fur he didn’t track in on his clothes. It is quiet, funereal in its stillness, aside from the drip, drip, hiss of the thing creeping ever closer.
Will is drenched in sweat. That, too, must be real. When he drags his palm across his forehead, both surfaces come away wet. He doesn’t want to look down at his lap. He knows what he’ll find. He’s burning, wondering if the fever is hot enough to keep the shadow at bay.
One of the many voices in his ear, eldritch things with ill intent that taunt and torment him, tells him it isn’t. The thing is both lesser and older than any god. To stand and fight is to raise a feeble hand to the whims of annihilation.
So, he runs. Or, more accurately, he stumbles; his ankles catch on the cavernous folds of the sheets. He falls to the floor with a loud thump, half-twisted in the duvet. He shakes it off with some difficulty, feeling like a pilgrim lost in the woods, tripping over knotted vines that snake out to pull him back. Does the shadow have dominion over Hannibal’s bedspread?
That, he does not know.
With a series of increasingly frantic grunts and flailing limbs, Will manages to pry himself free. He kicks the sheets away, losing his drenched sleep clothes in the process; a casualty he’ll mourn later. They wouldn’t help anyway.
Briefly, he’s forced to acknowledge that he is, in fact, half-hard and pink with arousal. It doesn’t make sense, but it isn’t the first time. His body has lost the ability to tell his fear how it should manifest. He can’t be sure whether it will encourage or repulse the beast, but he’s not eager to find out.
He lurches to his feet. The ground takes offense to his hubris, undulating beneath him in rough, rocking waves. The walls melt steadily beneath his fingers, humming like flies as he grasps for balance.
He has to get out.
The hallway is dim, but it’s a different kind of darkness. A safer one. Gentler, more real. Moonlight pools over the furniture, streaming in from windows that hint dangerously of a world outside.
It is foolish to dream of safety. Of a place where corners meet neatly and gravity obeys its laws. His reality is borne from the fever, and it makes its own rules.
Behind him, the drip, hiss, drip, hiss of the creature echoes off the rafters, down into the pauses between each of his shallow breaths. It is coming, it is growing, it is bent on having its way. If he stops to look back, he will see nothing. He will see too much. If he hesitates, it will all be over.
Sweat blooms at his temples, racing down to quiver at his chin. The heat is unbearable, some primal attempt by his crumbling flesh to fight off a virus it cannot name or taste. He trips forward, the floors fighting him at every step.
They work for it, he thinks. It’s in the walls, the buzzing of insects. Is it in me, too?
He shakes his head, trying to burrow his way out of the waking nightmare. He doesn’t know where he’s going, or so he tells himself. There’s only one room at the end of the hall.
Where else would he go?
“Will?”
The voice is a porch lamp, a lighthouse in this tempest of rot. He turns his head in its direction, afterimages pockmarking his vision.
He thinks he speaks, but maybe he just groans. This thing isn’t the thing, but it knows the name of the shadow chasing him. It grows antlers of its own, eyes glowing milk-white.
“Will, what’s the matter?”
That voice. He knows that voice. Smoke and velvet, amber and sin. Consonants that strike against looping, languid vowels. Madness dressed as reason.
“Mm—Ha—“ he tries, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth like honey.
He doesn’t know when his eyes open or when they close, only that what he sees keeps changing. The beast is a man is a beast again, sanctuary and damnation alike.
The pulse between his thighs quickens.
Hannibal, his friend. Dr. Lecter, his counsel. Wedged between the two like fascial tissue, like carpenter’s glue, is a darkness with teeth. Will’s mouth gapes with the weight of epiphany; he could go toe to toe with the thing and emerge victorious. Bloodied and beaten, yes, but unchanged.
Glowing. Radiant, even. He can see it the way one might recall a vivid dream.
How has he never noticed the serpent coiled inside the man? It’s so loud.
“It’s—it wants m-me,” Will offers.
Death nips at his heels, seeking his tendons, calling him down. It wants him weak and hopeless. Hannibal, who wants the same, begins his approach. The edges of him aren’t finished. They fray and splinter with each movement like fabric without a hem.
“What wants you, Will?”
“It—it,” he yells, though it sounds like a croak. “Can’t you see it?”
Hannibal tips his head to one side, red eyes leaving ghostly trails in their wake. Headlights in the mist, sparklers flickering out. He stands like he stood over Abigail, too removed, too distant. Will pleads with whatever goodness is left in this broken universe. He misses his dogs.
How has he been so blind?
“I see nothing but a man out of bed, stumbling naked down the hall.”
The truth of it should shame him, but it’s a distraction. There are more important things to consider, now. It’s you, he wants to say. He’s dripping all over Hannibal’s neatly-mopped floor, sweat and fear and desire and the terror of understanding bleeding together at his feet. Slipping between the floorboards.
It can’t be real, any of this. Will squints, tears blurring his vision, warping the borders between waking and sleep. He’s hallucinating, or maybe he’s seeing clearly for the first time. Either way, it’s wretched.
“Nn—no,” he moans, the breadth of his helplessness yawning before him. “I saw it. I c-can see it.”
The walls are closing in. He has to get out.
Hannibal, or the demon wearing his curious smile, drifts forward until he can reach out and press a burning hand to Will’s sweat-soaked chest. He hisses, jerking back a half-step, branded by something he must have been warned about as a child. Something he should’ve prayed over weeks ago, when Hannibal rubber-stamped him; when he refused to entertain any idea but mental illness.
It’s been there all along, whispering in the dark. Scratching at the walls from the inside.
His fault, he knows, for tuning it out.
“You’re having a hallucination,” Hannibal states, as unmoved as he might’ve been to discover a book out of place. “You should return to bed.”
There is no pity or concern in his tone. Only interest, both morbid and predatory. Affectionate, perhaps, in the way a wolf is fond of its dinner. Will is drowning, and Hannibal means to hold him under.
“I’m—I’m sick,” he realizes, brows knitting even though it aches to move his burning forehead at all. “You know it. Knew it.”
Hannibal pauses. His eyes take the scenic route over each line of Will’s trembling form, lingering between his legs without any of the requisite shame one might expect.
If anything, he looks hungry.
Will feels himself twitch.
“You’re delirious,” Hannibal replies, tongue flicking out to wet his lower lip. He steals back the distance Will’s flinch gained him, ghosting his fingertips across the trenches of those slick, jagged collarbones. The contact sends a fresh, traitorous heat to his groin.
Will isn’t sure why he doesn’t run. He should run.
“Why?”
Asking shrinks him down to nothing, so small in the thorned shadow Hannibal casts. A speck of dust in a vast desert. A single, blinking star in the endless night.
Hannibal stares and stares, lids dipping only as he inhales a thick lungful of Will’s fever-sweet scent.
Of course. He knew, even then.
He could smell it.
Will isn’t sure why Hannibal tells the truth. Maybe he thinks his houseguest is too far gone to remember this. Maybe he’s planning to play cat’s cradle with the tangled strings of Will’s sanity when it’s all over, not for the first time. Whatever the reason; for once, he doesn’t lie.
“I was curious what would happen.”
It makes sense now; Hannibal is the sun, the fire that caresses as it consumes. Large enough to swallow the world, and certainly Will Graham. It is staggering to witness such terrible power. He wants to fall to his knees. He wants to scream until he coughs up blood.
“Th-this,” he murmurs, eyes wide and wet, gesturing to himself. “It’s bad. I know it is. You—you’d let me die.”
For the first time, Hannibal’s face sharpens. He resents the accusation.
“Die? No,” he argues, putting that to bed with a dismissive flick of his chin. “Perhaps when this began, I had fewer qualms with the possibility. Now, though, I find myself at a crossroads.”
The laugh that retches from Will’s throat is a sickly, starving thing. His body rattles with the force of it. He’d topple forward if not for the broad hand splayed across his chest, over his heart.
“I’m g-glad to hear you’re h-having second thoughts about k-killing me,” he stutters. The room is mocking him, an extension of Hannibal’s cruelty.
“You, of all people, should understand the significance of that hesitation,” he purrs.
He means it. He really means it.
Will shivers violently. His legs give out. Another hand catches on his broiling skin, cupping his jaw to hold him upright with a tenderness so grotesque he thinks he might faint after all. The swollen tip of his cock brushes soft fabric, a smear of fluid marking his weakness; he winces. Hannibal’s calloused thumb paints slow arcs along the dip of his cheekbone, soothing him as one might a skittish fawn.
These are the devil’s hands, he thinks, though they’re perfectly cool against his fevered flesh.
He hates them. He leans into them, leaking around their edges, between each finger. Swelling, melting. Conforming to their shape.
The further he falls, the more he knows.
“I d-do,” he answers at last, speaking with ghosts. Bargaining with the ferryman when he’s already got one foot in the river. “You—you wanted to, to toy with me. It’s wh-what you do—pull the strings. Pluck them, play them. Listen for the sound it makes when they s-snap. Should’ve known since w-we f-first—”
He pauses, eyes darting shakily side to side as they climb to meet the twin pools of Hannibal’s lightless, fixed pupils.
“B-but something changed. It m-must have. Or I’d be d-dead already.”
Hannibal blinks once, a brief respite from that bottomless stare. It hits Will like a bolt to the spine.
“Yes,” is all he says.
Will wonders if he’ll end up with the scars that lightning survivors carry; long, gnarled fractals over his limbs like branches, like antlers. If he lives through the night, he deserves to carry that truth in his skin.
“What w-was it?” Will asks. “You l-let me stay tonight. Would you have w-watched me go? If I got up and—and went to the car? Dazed and s-sick?”
Hannibal guides Will’s jaw from one side to the other, inspecting the fluctuations in each tendon as he considers his response. His fingers are wet.
“I would have followed you.”
They’ll dry salty and chapped, like Will’s lips. All the madness he's been holding in is leaking out of him. Everything he touches leaves a stain. He is a chipped mug on a glass table, spilling out even when he tries, he tries so hard, to keep his hands from shaking.
“What would you have d-done? If I hit someone or—or walked off a b-bridge?” His eyes widen, a thought occurring like an icy draft brushing his lower back. “If it caught me?”
The angry resentment in Will’s stomach is growing fangs. His gut is a hostile environment for such a manic thing, but it shares its host’s survival instinct.
Hannibal watches, gaze hovering over the sweat pooling temptingly on Will’s upper lip.
“What is it that hunts you, Will?”
Another weak chuckle. “I thought I knew. I had the shape of it, in my m-mind.”
“Something changed for you, as well.”
Will’s head is so heavy. It weighs on his neck. His brain presses up against the beams of his skull, ready to burst free. It wants to burn its way out, and it's content to let Will burn with it.
“Not before,” he shudders. His palm is sliding down the wall, buzzing with its chorus of insects just out of sight. “Not ‘til t-tonight.”
Hannibal’s blank expression is more honest than Will’s ever seen. Gone is the sculptural politeness, the mask he’s so carefully crafted over a life hiding in plain sight. The corner of his lip twitches; is he impressed?
“The scales have fallen from your eyes."
Run, Will thinks again.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he wipes more sweat from his brow, a fruitless attempt to clear his thoughts. Everything is swimming, swirling like gasoline in sunlight. He thinks of the monster he came out here to escape. Its talons have retreated as if it, too, can sense the presence of an apex predator.
“I let the f-fear settle and grow in all the wrong places,” Will rasps. “You’d already t-taken root. I couldn’t s-s- see it.”
Hannibal’s thumb finds the hollow where his ear meets his jaw. Is he going to snap Will’s neck? It sounds like mercy.
“You could have,” the man murmurs. “If you’d wanted to.”
The cold shock of the wall at his back knocks a gasp from Will’s open mouth. He can’t remember being turned, guided so that his shoulderblades kiss the branching floral wallpaper. He doesn’t know these woods.
“I–”
Hannibal crowds him, scenting him, memorizing the shape of Will’s distress. He’s naked, but the knowing flays him open. When a clothed thigh finds him again, slotting between his legs, he groans.
“Fuck. Hannibal–”
The lips at his neck whisper more of their secrets to him, tendrils that creep and curl around the fragile cage of his bones.
“You’re a clever boy, Will. I have been less careful in your presence than any other."
Why is he telling me this?
"You, with your empathy; your insight. I fit the profile. I had access. Did you really never wonder?”
A shudder crackles through Will, making him sag into Hannibal’s grip. This creature, this killer, has him blanketed against the wall. His thigh moves against Will’s cock, grinding with purpose.
“You–”
“No,” Hannibal snarls, low and awake. “You wouldn’t allow it. All those walls, those brilliant forts of yours; you built them around me, too, from blueprints I drafted.”
Will whines, or maybe sobs. The friction is torture, spreading the wetness dripping from him back against his skin, ruining Hannibal’s surely expensive pajamas. Showing him what he’s become, like rubbing a dog’s nose in the carpet.
“You shook hands with the devil, darling. Covered your mouth and closed your eyes, as if the scent of brimstone wouldn’t linger.”
This time, Will moans. That isn’t true; isn’t right. Part of him knew. He must have. Didn’t he?
“You’re a bastard,” he snaps, the first sentence he’s managed all night without a stutter.
A wide, sharp smile unfurls across his throat. Hannibal presses closer, as if he means to split Will down the middle and crawl inside.
“Yes,” Hannibal agrees. “I am.”
He seals the confirmation by shifting his body so that his covered length glides up against Will’s, slotting into place.
Was he hard when Will found him, or did it start when the lies fell away?
“Are you g-going to kill me?” Will asks, quiet and small and hopeful.
Hannibal’s nose brushes his neck as he shakes his head. Slow, deliberate.
“Not tonight,” he hums, finally allowing his lips to land softly on Will’s skin. Sweat catches and parts for the kisses that burn a silver-sweet path down to his collarbones.
Will thinks he might drift apart, land splitting after an earthquake before the ocean rushes in. His own hands, he realizes, are pressed palm-down at his sides to the wall behind him. Why isn’t he fighting back? Can he blame the sickness for the way it feels when Hannibal ruts against him, filthy and raw?
He wants to give in. Maybe if he lets Hannibal devour him, lets the fire take and sear and blacken its pound of flesh, the ache will stop. A knife across his throat or a kiss to seal his fate; it doesn’t matter anymore.
He needs, he needs, he needs.
“Then w-what,” he inhales, though he already knows. “What are you going to d-do to me?”
He wants to hear it. Needs to.
“What I should have done weeks ago,” Hannibal answers. “What I couldn’t do until now.”
The hand at Will’s chest, held so long over his heart, glides lower. It’s so easy. There are no barriers. The sweat feels like an invitation, leading the way. A red carpet rolled out straight down to his cock.
“Oh, God–”
Will’s head thunks back against the wall as Hannibals fingers circle him, tightening their grip. They stroke down and back up again, wrist curling like he’s testing the range of a new instrument.
Methodical. Curious.
“You’re afraid,” he observes, “yet you arch into my touch. Does fear excite you?”
He can feel how hard Hannibal is, a thrilling indent at his hip.
“N-no,” Will whimpers, though it sounds like a question. “N-not fear.”
The stroking continues, drawing out every breath. He thrusts forward without meaning to, seeking more, deeper. The feeling is so much better than the fire in his skull. If he closes his eyes–which he already has–he can pretend he isn’t panting under the thrall of what he now knows is the monster he’s been chasing.
“No?” Hannibal asks, teeth grazing his ear. “What, then?”
“You know w-what.”
A nip to his sensitive lobe draws a sharp gasp. “I’m beginning to.”
Without sight, Will drifts. The words come easier. He can pass off what he sees in the dark as a dream, pretend his confessions are prayers that might just go unanswered. Every touch of Hannibal’s hands and mouth bursts behind his eyelids like fireworks. The kind that catch as they land, grow fat-full in the wind, and raze entire forests to the ground.
“What I’m curious about,” Hannibal mutters, “is why you were hard even before you found me.”
A whimper, then. Pitiful, like a wince.
“I don’t know.”
His head falls forward as the hand at his jaw trails down his chest to tease at a peaked, perked nipple. His hands, at last, find purchase on Hannibal’s arms. They twist in the soft fabric of his shirt, begging for something he can’t yet name.
“You said you didn’t want it to find you. Is that why?”
Will shudders. “No. N-no. I don’t–it just happens.”
Hannibal keeps toying with his cock, slipping his thumb back and forth through the slit just to spread the wetness around. His thumb brushes across the nipple it’s claimed as a prize. This isn’t what you do with someone you find sleepwalking in a fever, half-lucid and weak.
“Does it, indeed?” the beast chuckles, playing lazily with its meal.
Understanding snaps into place with horrible, fluorescent clarity.
The organs. The copycat. Not trophies at all, but–
“F-fuck, Hannibal,” he groans. The hand on his cock squeezes, torturous in its skill.
Run. Run.
“I might’ve let you go,” the man reconsiders, almost clinical in tone, “if you hadn’t stumbled into my arms with such reckless, obvious need.”
Will squirms against the wall. “It’s not–I told you. I can’t help it.”
Something snarls under Hannibal’s skin with that little admission. His hold tightens, jaw squared. The teeth gently teasing his pulse bite down a little harder.
“I must admit,” he replies, allowing himself an indulgent mouthful of Will’s taste as he licks up the column of his throat. “I find myself wondering what else you can’t help.”
Consuming like fire, like death, like love. How will Hannibal prepare him, when the time comes?
Will’s eyelids slam shut in protest. The cruel sting of arousal grows sharper below his gut, building to something he doesn’t want, not yet. Nails pinch his reddened nipple. His teeth chatter.
“I’m sick,” he chokes, twisting his fingers in Hannibal’s shirt. It’s damp there already.
“Yes,” Hannibal agrees, tonguing along the Adam’s apple that quivers and juts out to meet him. “So often, fear spoils the taste. Makes it bitter.”
“...Not me?”
“No. Not you. You taste… of citrus and heat. Chili oil, whiskey. Need. Death in the margins, waiting to take hold. The sickness makes it almost unbearably sweet, but the hunger…”
He trails off for a moment, sampling again to refresh his palate. Will moans, the vibration tingling Hannibal’s lips.
“The hunger adds a necessary element. It burns from within, beneath the fever. When you wake like this at home, do you touch yourself?”
The question sends a jerk through Will’s hips. He bucks up into the grip, seeking more. His hands are slipping. Hannibal’s don’t falter.
Killer, killer. Danger. Run.
“N-no,” he lies, shaking his head. Hannibal’s hand tightens, threatening to crush him. He yelps, writhing in place. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t always r-remember.”
“Mm,” Hannibal hums, acknowledging without judgment. Adding it to his notes. “That must be quite frustrating.”
Will doesn’t know what to say. Yes, he thinks. It is. It’s awful. I need so badly it feels like dying.
The hand on his chest stills, pausing its torment for a moment as Hannibal makes a decision. The one wrapped around his cock slows its pace. He backs up just enough to meet Will’s heavy-lidded eyes.
“I’m going to take care of you now, Will.”
The shivering man pauses, uncertain. The world is still fluid, vignetted with static, and his body is barely his own. He doesn’t understand. Doesn’t want to let himself hope.
“H-how?” he asks, afraid to know. “You’re n-not taking me to the hospital.”
A small, kind smile creases Hannibal’s eyes. He strokes Will’s cheek again, tucking a few damp curls to the side.
“No, I’m not,” he says, “In the morning, yes. But not tonight.”
The lines on Will’s face deepen as he struggles to make sense of it.
“Then what–”
The effortlessness with which Hannibal lifts him is as shocking as an elevator dropping under his feet. A blink, a gasp, and he’s in the master bedroom, laid out on a royal-blue duvet like an insect under glass. Another blink, another gasp, and Hannibal has shed his top and prowled onto the bed between his legs.
“H-Hannibal?”
“Hush,” he replies. “Let me give you what you need.”
Plush, pink lips find his inner thighs. Strong hands wrap around the backs of his knees, pushing upward. Hannibal kisses every inch of him, nipping, grazing with his teeth. When Will doesn’t stop him or kick him away, he draws a plump bit of flesh into his mouth and sucks over and over until it stings, until the roots of the bruise reach down to his bones. It’s a struggle not to cry out.
“F-fuck!” he yelps anyway, ruined by the sudden embrace of pain he’s spent so long fearing. It hurts, yes, but the satisfaction of it scratches an itch he thinks might start in his soul.
Hannibal pulls off with a lewd, wet pop, staring up at the half-conscious shape of Will from below. His lips are swollen, his cheeks pink.
“Your body wants this, Will. I can taste it.”
Colors swim and weave over and through each other. Hannibal is real, a man like any other, and then he is the beast, ink-black claws tearing Will to ribbons.
“I’m sick,” Will repeats, the protest weak even to his own ears.
“Yes, you are,” Hannibal purrs against his hip, mouthing his way messily down to the side of Will’s cock. It jumps, fresh wetness beading at the tip before rushing down along a vein where it, too, is consumed.
The heat of his mouth is indescribable. Will shoves his hands under the pillow behind him, gripping the sheets as it trails lower. He’s going to die here, from Hannibal’s teeth or the fever. He jumps, just a little, as two thumbs arc down between his cheeks and begin to pull him apart.
“Wh-what are you–”
“You’re wet here, too. Did you know that?”
Will wants to argue, to say something in his defense, but then Hannibal’s tongue finds his hole and wipes every hope of thought clean off the map.
“Jesus, Hannibal!”
A pleased hum reverberates through the sensitive skin up to Will’s groin, which jolts with renewed, frantic interest. He hasn’t–not ever. Not there, not really. Images flood his mind, of organs cleaned and prepped and diced, served with clever garnishes and expensive wine. It’s all so obvious, now.
The horror of that mouth on his most vulnerable parts does absolutely nothing to stop him gasping, bucking against the strong muscle of Hannibal’s tongue.
It should. He knows it should.
“This is insane,” he murmurs, blotting his flop-sweat on the pillowcase. “You’re insane.”
A soft chuckle at his rim makes Will want to die. He feels so weak and helpless, trapped here at the mercy of a murderer. He hates that the more he thinks about it, the tighter that knot of arousal in his groin gets.
Hannibal flicks his tongue out once, then again. Will groans.
“A feeble defense, I think even you can admit. I am perfectly sane, Will. What I am not is limited by it.”
That’s worse, Will thinks, then chokes on a whimper as Hannibal gets right back to eating him out like he’ll starve if he doesn’t. Just when he feels like he’s going to black out, Hannibal kisses his way back up to Will’s knee and raises up, slotting between his hips.
He’s naked, now. When did he get naked?
“A sane man might bring you water and tuck you back into bed,” Hannibal explains, rocking his hips forward. “He might also put you on your back and taste every part of you, or fill you until you cry out for mercy. Sanity has nothing to do with this, Will. You know that.”
“Christ,” Will grunts, eyes widening as he looks down to see the place where their cocks find each other, side by side. Hannibal is thick– not especially long, but substantial. Squeezable, Will thinks. He’s uncut, foreskin already peeled back to reveal an angry purple head that drips eagerly onto Will’s stomach.
“Will it be worse, later, to know that? That I brought you to my bed without any madness to guide me, fully aware of your condition?”
Will tries to speak, but Hannibal’s right hand wraps around both of them, pressing them together. Everything is wet, precome and sweat, ichor and blood. The glide is so easy. Even as he fights the urge to scream and what’s left of his mind begs him to run, he jerks up into the tight tunnel of Hannibal’s fist. Skin on skin, body to body, he maps the places their veins collide.
“F-fuck, fuck,” he rambles, the whites of his eyes flickering beneath his damp lashes.
“I am not a good man, Will,” Hannibal purrs, savoring every thrust. “You see me, now. Every facet. I should kill you.”
It’s almost a laugh, the sound Will makes, though it ends in a high-pitched hiss of want. “Y-yeah. You p-probably should.”
He blinks his eyes open just enough to find Hannibal’s, challenging him through a haze of sickness and lust that has the room swaying. Their bodies crush together, closer, tighter.
“B-but you won’t.”
Hannibal’s lip curls. He lets out a short, sharp hum of delight.
“No,” he agrees. “I won’t.”
Then he slides back to sit on his heels, leaving Will bereft in a way that stains his cheeks a deep crimson. He has less than a second to think before Hannibal’s fingers drag through the pool of their shared precome, gathered in the hollow of Will’s navel, and slip down past his balls to circle his entrance.
Will’s eyes widen again, his entire body throbbing in anticipation.
“I have a much better use for you,” Hannibal smirks, pushing one of Will’s thighs up and back, closer to his chest, folding him nearly in half.
“Oh–” Will chokes, realizing he should’ve expected this, but–
“You haven’t been claimed like this yet, have you?”
The casual tone of his question has Will burying his face in his bicep. It’s too detached, which is too filthy, which is too good. He’s never going to make it out of here alive.
“N-no,” he answers, trying to sound braver than he feels. “Not, not really. Not like that.”
Hannibal hums again, pleased. “It may hurt.”
Will waits for the follow-up; I’ll be gentle, perhaps.
It never comes. What he gets, instead, is, “at first, anyway. In time, you’ll look forward to it.”
A finger slips in to the first knuckle, then out, then in again. His hips jerk and bounce, but he’s held firm. Will has tried, he’s touched himself there in the shower like any red-blooded man, but it’s nothing like this. Like Hannibal, solid and broad and fearless.
“W-what makes you think I’ll let you when, when…” his forehead creases with the effort. Another finger, pressing deeper, seeking. Unraveling.
“You’re so hot here,” Hannibal notes, ignoring Will’s remarks. “The fever makes you tighter, too. I’ll miss that, when you’re well again.”
A dark shudder ripples under Will’s skin. His stomach dips. Those fingers, scissoring and twisting, thrusting him open with obscene, wet sounds.
Is this real? Is anything?
He knows it is when they find his prostate.
“Fucking, Jesus–!” he cries out, limbs tensing as his mind races to process the new sensation. It’s electric. He thinks again of lightning scars, that he wants to be branded by this feeling.
“You should’ve stayed in your room,” Hannibal tuts, a third finger joining the others. They curl and beckon at the bundle of nerves without hesitation, driving Will into a frenzy.
“Oh God. Y-yeah, m-maybe… Shit, Hannibal!”
This need is different, the pleasure cruel. He can tell this might bring him to some version of climax, but it’s not what he wants. It’s not enough. He must be making plaintive noises, because Hannibal stills, withdrawing at last. Will sits up on his elbows just enough to fix him with a panicked, ruined stare.
“You’re ready,” Hannibal says, holding Will’s gaze as he licks his fingers. “I’m going to fuck you now, Will. Can you be good for me?”
Will blinks. His lip quivers. His mind is on fire, and this is the worst possible thing to be doing right now.
He nods.
Hannibal grins, malice draped in adoration like a scarf might diffuse the light of a bedside lamp. It fills Will’s chest with champagne bubbles.
For a moment, he worries he might float away. Then the heat of Hannibal’s cock drags against his rim, and he crashes back down to earth with a long, ragged moan.
“It will be easier if you bear down. There will still be some discomfort, but that’s to be expected.”
Will shudders. Trembles. He’s not sure he hasn’t been doing it since they started.
And then Hannibal pushes in.
His back arches, as much as it can with his body folded in on itself. The pain is immediate, sharp, radiating from where Hannibal’s girth begins to stretch him. Everything is wet, slippery from their shared fluids, but the lack of actual lubricant is hard to ignore. He whines, toes curling as if he might fight his way free.
“Fuck, fuck, hurts–”
Instead of pulling out, Hannibal pets a hand down his side. He presses soft kisses to Will’s knees, shushing him, holding him firm as he slowly continues inching further in.
“Push against it, Will. That’s it. I’m not going to stop, so you’ll have to adapt. Touch yourself, if you need to.”
Will thinks he might combust. Every nerve ending sparks, desperate for mercy. He might be drooling, or drowning. Above him, the shadows in the rafters lengthen. They’re watching, waiting; animals blinking up at the kitchen table, hoping for scraps.
He reaches down, hand jittering, and grips his flagging cock. The relief is immediate.
“Oh, God,” he sighs, tension melting from him as the rhythm of his hand battles the ache inside. It’s still too much, too big and too soon, but now there’s a counterweight. Something to split his focus. He clings to it like a liferaft, stroking faster as Hannibal sinks deeper.
“There,” Hannibal praises, offering a gentle smile that conflicts violently with the way he’s breaking Will apart. A single strand of his hair tumbles out of place, hanging over one eye. “That’s better, isn’t it? You’ll start to feel good, soon.”
Will gurgles out some form of agreement, thumbing at his slit. Palming his balls with one hand, anything to draw more pleasure from the well of pain.
Above him, the shadows laugh, whispering to each other behind clawed hands. Look at him, they cackle. Watch how he debases himself. He should have run, but it’s too late now.
He groans loudly as, at last, Hannibal’s hips land flush against his ass. Buried deep, burning Will at his core, he closes his eyes and inhales. His fingertips dance along hollowed ribs until they find his hips, where they angle him up.
Will’s hand never stops moving. It can’t. His free one trails up to his chest, pinching the nipple Hannibal hadn’t been torturing.
“You’re so malleable like this,” his monster sighs, wistful. Another kiss to his knee, a reverent smile at the way Will teases himself. “A pity we can’t keep you ill a little longer. You can’t imagine how good it feels inside, Will. I’ve dreamt of this, but it’s much better than I’d hoped. The fever makes you beautifully warm.”
“Christ,” Will groans, squeezing below the head of his cock to keep from losing control. “Do you hear yourself?”
“It’s euphoric. I couldn’t stop now if I tried,” he chuckles faintly. He leans in a bit closer, adjusting Will a little more despite his high-pitched whines of protest. “Don’t get any ideas, darling. I’m not going to try.”
Without warning, he presses his lips to Will's. He swallows the trill of surprise, letting their tongues find each other. Exploring.
And then he starts to move.
The pain returns, but Hannibal’s right; it does start to feel good. At least, there’s good mixed in with the bad. As it turns out, the angling of his hips allows Hannibal to hit his prostate. Between that, the kiss, the erratic jerking of his hands, and playing with his terribly sensitive nipples, the scales are almost tipping in Will’s favor.
If only the shadows would stop laughing.
“So good,” Hannibal grins lazily, pulling back to enjoy the way the wet slap of skin on skin makes Will blush and squirm. “It’s better now, isn’t it? You’re starting to like it, the stretch. I knew you would.”
It’s unbecoming, the way Will huffs in response. Petulant and small, but it’s all he has. Hannibal hasn’t asked if he’s okay, not once. Will knows he should have. This shouldn’t have happened, not when he’s delirious, not when he’s sick. He shouldn’t have let Will get this sick, or taken him to bed. Everything he’s done is monstrous.
He wants more.
“B-big,” Will whimpers. There are tears forming in his glazed, sea-blue eyes.
Hannibal’s smile widens. A faint flush decorates his skin now, one of the few signs of exertion. Will cherishes it through the fog.
“It is,” Hannibal agrees, snapping his hips forward to prove the point. “Yet your body welcomed it so easily. Are you sure you haven’t done this before?”
The words hit Will like a slap.
“No!” He barks, shaking his head with a wild dose of panic. It’s a trap, he knows it, but the need to prove himself is a flashfire. “Never. I haven’t, I wouldn’t have–”
He thinks Hannibal’s eyes might be glowing again. Is this the first step? Hannibal fucking him apart, then carving off pieces until there’s nothing left of this night but gristle and bone?
“Are you certain? I expected to meet more resistance. Perhaps you’ve been hiding a part of yourself from me. Do you go out at night, searching for pretty faces and warm beds? Someone to leave you sore and wanting, to drive out the nightmares?”
“N-no–”
“If that’s all you’re after, I understand, but it’s a waste of your talents. You’re more than a lovely pink cock and needy set of holes, Will.”
He clenches everything at once.
“Jesus–”
He wishes he could stop whimpering. This isn’t like him. He’s more than this; better. Still, with every word, every taunt about his virtue, Will leaps closer to the inevitable. His body gives him away, spasming and leaking at the baseless accusations.
When did he stop stroking himself? He’s not sure it matters. He’s going to come either way, and soon.
“I think I’ll keep you like this,” Hannibal purrs, running his hands up to stroke Will’s neck again, circling it. Not choking, but reminding Will that he could. That he has. “I don’t like picturing you out there, flaunting yourself. When it aches, you come to me. Every day, if you must. Every night, until your body remembers the shape of mine.”
“Fuck, I’m gonna come. Please,” Will begs, jaw clenching as his hands find the thicket of hair on Hannibal’s chest. His fingers card through it, the sensation shooting straight to his groin.
He grabs. Holds on, as Hannibal drives deeper.
“No one else,” he snarls, accent rough and ragged. He’s close, too. “Do you understand? You belong to me.”
“Yes, yes,” Will sobs, voice broken open. They’re looking into each other’s eyes, bodies sliding and slapping against each other in the crooked dark. “Please.”
Hannibal abandons any pretense of dragging this out, working them both to a fever pitch. His hand finds Will’s cock and strokes fast, almost too hard. Will feels his thighs tense, his shoulders lock.
“I’ll miss your fever, Will, but not this. This doesn’t stop.”
“Never,” Will cries, frantic with agreement. “I need it. I n-need this so fucking bad, Hannibal. Break me. Pull me apart, just d-don’t kill me. I’ll come back, if you do it. I’ll come back for this.”
“Will,” Hannibal groans, sinking his teeth into the meat of Will’s shoulder as he comes. The feeling, so foreign and perfect and wrong, drags both men over the edge. Heat erupts over Will’s stomach, sticky and wet, spilling down his sides. Time splits apart, making space for their stars to collide.
Somewhere above them, far away, the shadows whisper to each other. Perhaps it’s the intensity with which they crash together, but their teeth don’t seem quite as sharp as before.
His mind is still boiling, sweat drying salty and tight over his skin everywhere that isn’t still drenched in sweat or come or tears.
A baptism of sorts, he thinks.
Eventually, their breathing slows. Hannibal drapes himself over Will, planting soft, wet kisses across his chest. Stitching him back together. It’s ritualistic, almost worshipful, as if he’s afraid this is a dream. That Will might vanish if his hands stray too far. It's striking, after so much cruelty.
“Hannibal,” Will sighs eventually, petting through fine, silken strands of silver and gold.
“Will,” comes the reply, whispered into the rise of his shoulder.
The vast wealth of things to say bleeds together into white noise. It’s too much, and he’s so tired. The headache that his orgasm staved off is thundering back. He’s so thirsty his throat clicks when he swallows.
“I’m not leaving,” he murmurs instead, because he’s an idiot. He’s stupid, reckless, blind and self-destructive, curled up under a killer.
He feels Hannibal smile against his collarbone, a thing so fragile Will can see exactly where to press to make it crack. He wants to poke at it, to follow the spiderwebs of hurt as they race across the glass.
More than that, though, he wants to stay.
“Good,” Hannibal hums, slipping out from Will's body with a careful hiss. He guides him from his folded position, gentling his legs back down with circular movements of his thumbs, encouraging blood flow.
Everything is going to hurt tomorrow, but that’s okay.
He’ll go to the hospital. Hannibal won’t let him die, not now. Every day from now on, he’ll get better.
Maybe then, he’ll kill him.
Probably, he won’t.
Every day from now on, he thinks.
I can live with that.
*